Delfeil de Ton

Journalist of the French written press, Delfeil de Ton is a reference as regards humor of style and independence of esprit.
He was one of the prestigious writers of legendary the Hara-kiri monthly newspaper stupid and malicious, of Hebdo-Hara-Kiri entitled successively Hara-kiri-Hebdo then Charlie-Hebdo . Since 1975, he is collaborator of the weekly magazine Nouvel Observateur . Under the title Mondays of Delfeil de Ton , page created in Hara-kiri hebdo in 1969, it treats topicality, facts of company, finding matter to be written in what we could call our time .

History

Delfeil de Ton, from its true name Henri Roussel , was born in Paris region. He is the son of a civil servant and a mother to the hearth. After a Propaedeutics with the faculty of letters and a year of studies of Right, it is grabbed by its military obligations and passes more than thirty months in Algérie. Of return to Paris, it undertakes of par the search for an employment, then employment and the writing. It writes the Mémoires of Delfeil de Ton while wishing to integrate the journalistic medium.

Monthly hara-kiri

During the winter 1966, it sends its manuscript to monthly Hara-kiri. François Cavanna notices it and keeps it in reserve while waiting for that Hara-Kiri, which has been at this time prohibited for several months, is réautorisé to appear. For that, It will be necessary to wait until February 1967. The first chapter of the Mémoires of Delfeil de Ton is published in March 1967. Cavanna requests other writings then. Very quickly and regularly, Delfeil de Ton occupies several pages. One finds his first articles there on the Jazz. It signs under different Pseudonyme S (for example Gunnar Wollert ), to make number, because after this prohibition, Hara-Kiri has few collaborators.

Monthly Charlie

In February 1969, with Georges Bernier, alias professor Choron , begins Charlie-monthly magazine. Delfeil de Ton is editor association until in 1970.

Hara-kiri hebdo

In February 1969, it is one of the collaborators founders of Hara-Kiri hebdo , launched by Georges Bernier, alias Professor Choron, and with Cavanna, another writer, as well as the draftsmen Willem, Georges Wolinski, Cabu, Reiser, Pierre Fournier, and Gébé.
Let us recall that in November 1970, the weekly magazine Hara-Kiri is prohibited by the Minister of Interior Department Raymond Marcellin. Despizing this prohibition, extremely support and echo which it causes - Nouvel Observateur goes until their proposing to accommodate them -, all the team decides to circumvent the censure.
It is under the title Charlie-Hebdo , supplement weekly of Charlie Mensuel , which it reappears. It will preserve this title until its disappearance in 1981.

In this publication, each one goes there from its page and expresses itself there with complete freedom. It is the beginning of the Mondays of delfeil of Tone with these famous postscript which do not have anything to see , they are also various headings like the little place of the culture , quickly one is in a hurry , special copinage which is worth the celebrity to him. It gives established among with a whole cultural movement that the institutional press is unaware of.

One recognizes to him an eminent role in the establishment of the Free-jazz in France (Albert Ayler, Sun Ra,…) and in the notoriety and success of the theatrical troops cultural underground. Let us quote: large the magic circus of Jerome Savary, the theater workshop with coffee of the station of Romain Bottle, Splendid , the widow Pichard , With the True Parisian Knack …
Its audience is considerable. It is very followed by the readers who establish with him a bond of complicity, as testifies to it the public which it moves and mail that it receives.

The departure of Charlie-Hebdo

It is thus in full glory and without another explanation that Delfeil de Ton will leave Charlie-hebdo in February 1975.

This departure was done in two times. First once in 1974 where after one month it yields to the requests of the team and returns. The second time, in 1975, it remains deaf with the calls which are made to him. The departure is définitif.
This rupture made run much ink and given place has many interpretations. With the passing, most plausible, appears to us to be of order journalistique.
It should be said that during this time of after 1968, Charlie-Hebdo is in crisis. The ideas and the protest movements of which he was the spokesperson, the case of resonance are not any more topicality. The weekly magazine sees its assistantship diminuer.
This is all the more worrying as, without publicity, it draws its resources only from the only sale of the newspaper. To try to rectify this situation, Cavanna and Delfeil de Ton defend of the divergent positions. Cavanna wishes to maintain the status quo and to leave with the newspaper its character scathing attack in the style and the spirit of the Plate with Butter . Delfeil de Ton thinks that the newspaper must evolve/move and open with other collaborators who will cause new intérêts.
To that is added, for Delfeil de Ton, with the passing of years, a certain lassitude. It is exhausted more and more by the rate/rhythm and the quantity of work imposed by its double collaboration (monthly magazine, hebdo).

It thus leaves Charlie-Hebdo , but does not leave therefore the Hara-Kiri team. It will remain, until in the last years of its publication, regular collaborator of the monthly magazine Hara-Kiri . It keeps his friends there.

Let us announce that Nouvel Observateur him must have been able to recruit in January 1981 the draftsman Reiser then, after the death of this last, Wolinski (March 1984).

Release

Delfeil of your free thus hebdo in 1975 and turns to the daily newspaper Libération. With complete freedom, it brings its texts there. It creates a heading rapido there. It is a collaboration voluntary, abstract, which will be maintained until in 1981.

Nouvel Observateur

In September 1975, it enters to the Nouvel Observateur and takes again there its page of Charlie-Hebdo : Mondays of Delfeil de Ton .

One finds echoes of this recruitment in the talks that Christiane Duparc and itself gave to François Kraus and such as it brings back their remarks in Press-hebdo .

Since 1974, Christiane Duparc, journalist with the Nouvel Observateur , the direction of the service Our Time had hastened to contact it and to propose to him to enter in Obs. But its arrival runs up against the hostility of several leaders who consider that, by their vulgarity and their violence, his papers “are not made for the Observer .”. Moreover, itself prefers to return to Charlie Hebdo .

After one sabbatical six-month period made profitable to collaborate voluntarily in Release , it enters in September 1975 to the Nouvel Observateur , and this in spite of a notable wage loss. It should be said that it is filled with enthusiasm by the idea to put its chronicle ( Mondays of Delfeil de Ton ) in synergy with the data base of Brétecher in order to create “a kind of minis Charlie Hebdo” in the middle of the newspaper. Relatively in withdrawal of the topicality - its paper is given Monday for a looping Friday -, it shows an extreme susceptibility as for its freedom of speech so much so that Christiane Duparc is only drafting which it authorizes with reading its texts before publication.

Claude Perdriel and Jean Daniel recruits it then as “an attraction” which has, at best, “the possibility of attracting 500 or 1000 readers in more”, and brings to him especially a corrosive, libertarian and virulent tone.

It should be said that its chronicles are more virulent with regard to institutions like the Église, the Armée, the Justice or the Police. These two last make, in the purest tradition gauchist, the object of an main interest. He thus frequently criticizes the Racisme police force, the “justice of class” or the expeditious character of the procedure of red-handed. The Church is dedicated as much to the gémonies, with the limit of the antichristianism. Attempting to stress the sectarian character of the Church, he still denounces the instrumentalisation of the Christ in the fight against the Marxisme. he does not hesitate to assimilate the figure of the Pape and that of Pinochet in a scene of torture where he poses this last in “last defender of Christendom”.

But this Anticléricalisme lies within the scope of a more general rejection of the moral order . This rejection appears particularly on the questions of manners, of erotic productions or publications. The law against the pornography is presented like a concession “to the bawlers réacs” aiming at terrorizing the French cinema. It is caught of it with the lobby anti Avortement. Its attacks do not save either the television of State or the press of right-hand side. He protests thus against the stop of the Masque and the feather on FR3 (February 1976), the practices of the group Amaury or the extent of an empire Harrowing of which he describes the flagship (Le Figaro) like “the newspaper of the smart ladieies and the Sirs decorated” “with the range with any colonel to the retirement”.

Its glance on the foreigner is marked by his anti totalitarianism. By the means of the culture and in particular of the jazz and rock'n'roll, he denounces the oppression undergone in the East in the EC what he describes as “country of the bureaucrats”. And, like he writes it about the Uruguay, “dictatorship military of right or left the dictatorships is always soldiers, always of torture”.

In a concise fast style which is clean for him, with an often black corrosive humor, its writings locate it apart from any obedience, of any bias militantist, out of the politically correct one. Attached to all freedoms, individual and collective, its standpoint in favor of freedom of expression and particularly of freedom of the press are very noticed.
Burning defender of French language, that it controls and handles to perfection, in a style short, concise which is clean for him, it is with passion and virulence that it launched in the written press the countryside against the ministerial project of spelling reform (and was joined by Cavanna).
Nothing astonishing that this cultivated man, that the literature impassions as far as the press, takes the feather so that the Web remains an extraordinary means of culture and communication with range of all (royalty - numeric library)

Become a figure of the newspaper, considered by some as the guarantee gauchist even anarchizing Nouvel Observateur , it does not remain about it less one of his/her more eminent collaborators. Its interest for the contents sociétal leads it to refuse a place of leader-writer towards 1980/1981. One finds his page in Our Time . Elsewhere, one still punctually finds his signature in the literary pages (articles - tickets in whistle-ovations ). The Web is made the echo-memory of the interest and the multiple reactions which its writings cause.

Until 2005 they were free access on the Web on the site of the New-obs daily newspaper. Currently, the access requires a subscription.

Other collaborations

the other newspaper , transitory but legendary publication of Michel Butel, founded in 1984, disappears to reappear in 1992.

In 1992, if it takes part in the project and the launching of new the Charlie-Hebdo of Philippe Val, Cabu and Gébé, it will quickly take the distances with this new weekly magazine and will quickly put a term at its collaboration as a writer (three months).

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