Jacques Prévert

Jacques Prévert (February 4th 1900 - April 11th 1977) is a Poète and Scénariste French. After the success of its first collection of poems, Paroles (at 46 years) it becomes, thanks to its familiar language and its Word games, a large popular poet . Its Poème S is since then famous in the Francophonie and massively learned in the school S Frenchwomen.

Biography

Poet and scenario writer, originating in a middle-class and devout medium of Neuilly-sur-Seine, Jacques Prévert does not cease making fun of suitabilities, the clergy and the religion. He takes part in the surrealist movement before moving away some, then is interested in the theater (Groupe October). Joseph Kosma put in music its texts (Barbara, dead Sheets…).

Jacques Prévert carries out the scenarios and the dialogs of large poetic realistic films of the French cinema, whose Jean Renoir and especially Marcel Carné are the realizers. After the publication of its collection Words , in 1946, he becomes a large popular poet, thanks to his familiar language, with his humor and his hymns to liberty. About Words , Carole Aurouet writes in Prévert, portrait of a life (Ramsay, 2007, page 126): “In addition to the topics approached, Paroles is also innovator, atypical and explosive, by its form and its style. It is a collection placed under the sign of the eclecticism in which as well one finds texts short as songs, stories, the instantaneous ones and inventories. Prévert mixes the kinds there. It does not fall under any poetic taxonomy. In addition, it twists the neck with the rules of traditional versification, as well on the level of the rate/rhythm as of the provision or the punctuation. Prévert in particular kept of its passage by surrealism a singular way to destroy the linguistic stereotypes and the commonplaces. It attracts, for example, the attention of its readers on the arbitrary one of the sign. It uses with brilliance of the spoonerisms, the puns, the ambiguities and the allegories. It pays homage to the popular speech to some extent”.

Its sometimes violent anticlericalism, is often occulted by the public, with the profit of its topics on childhood and nature. Jacques Prévert is born with 19 from the street from Chartres to Neuilly-sur-Seine (act. Hauts-de-Seine) on February 4th, 1900. It passes there its childhood in a family of small devout middle-class men to the sides of his father André Prévert, critical dramatic, who often brings it to the theater, and of Suzanne Catusse, his mother, who initiates it with the reading. It is bored at the school, and as of 15 years, after its certificate of studies, it leaves the school and fact of the odd jobs, it works in particular with the department store " Bon Marché ". Initially mobilized in 1918, its military service continues with Saint-Nicolas-of-Port where it meets Yves Tanguy before being sent to Istanbul where it will become acquainted with Marcel Duhamel.

In 1925, it takes part in the surrealist movement , within the group of the street of the Castle, in fact a housing " collectif" where Marcel Duhamel, Raymond Queneau and Yves Tanguy live. They invent the play of the exquisite Cadavre there drawn. Prévert is however too independent of spirit to form truly part of a group made up, whatever it is. He is the scenario writer and dialogist of largest French films of the years 1935-1945 whose Drôle of drama , the Quay of the fogs , Hôtel of North , the Day rises , the Children of the paradise of Marcel Carné. In 1932, he writes texts for what will be later the Groupe October . Its poems are put in music by Joseph Kosma since 1933 ( dead Sheets ). He writes plays. The publication of its collection Paroles in 1946 obtains a sharp success. It enters then to the Collège of 'Pataphysique of which it becomes Transcendant Satrap in 1953. (“The College not taking into account transformations as not very important as the death, it remains there president memorial of the Sub-commission of the Paraphrases. ”, Lucien Small box, in " The littéraire" Fortnight; , n° 945 of May 1st, 2007, page 16).

His/her Michele daughter is born in 1946.

He marries Janine Tricotet in 1947.

October 12th, 1948, it falls from a French window. There remain several days in the coma.

Following the cancellation of its lease by the owner who wished to recover the apartment of the ramparts of Antibes and not having been able to find the support of the mayor of the time to remain in this apartment that he liked much he leaves constrained and forced Antibes and on the councils of the decorator Alexandre Trauner, he buys a Omonville-the-Small house in 1971 with , in the Manche. He dies there of the continuations of a lung cancer, him which always had the cigarette in mouth. He was 77 years old.

He is buried with the cemetery of Omonville-the-Small, where one can also visit his house. Not far from there, with Saint-Germain-of-Be worth, his/her friends arranged a garden dedicated to the poet.

Its style

Prévert makes burst the conventional character of the speech by the word games. Its poetry is constantly made plays on the language (Calembour S, inventions Burlesque S, Néologisme S, voluntary Lapsus…) whose poet draws from the unexpected comic effects (a sometimes black humor!), of the double significances or of the strange images.

In the same way its poems swarm with sets of sounds, of combinations for the ear (Allitération varied S, Rime S and rates/rhythms) which appear easy but of which Prévert made an erudite use. Lastly, one should not neglect the contributions of the Surréalisme which one finds the traces: inventories, heteroclite enumerations of objects and individuals, additions of substantives or adjectives, etc It is fond of delicacies processes of the image, metaphor and personification (animal, object, human).

; Its principal word games:

play of procession: descriptive development, enumeration of objects and/or individuals.
ambiguity: plays on the double meaning of a word, with the clean direction and the illustrated direction, current direction or slang direction.
Zeugma : process which grammatically attaches terms which logically do not refer one to the other.
Pun S: based on a similarity of sounds or direction.
Neologism: creation of new words.
words taken with the letter: plays on the direction first of the words.
logical of the absurdity: all that is contrary with the reason.
Alliteration: repetition of consonants
Rhyme and Rate/rhythm: interior and outside.
Aphorism S of imagination: maxim S and Proverb S of its imagination.
the Syllepse is the stylistic device which it uses with predilection: it consists in operating slips between the clean direction and the illustrated direction of the words. For example, in a text of Words , entitled “the Detergent”, Prévert plays with a popular expression “to wash its dirty linen in family”, (which indicates the fact of keeping in the family circle possible “the ashamed secrecies” that one can have to hide) and has fun to take it literally, by representing the family around a bucket, scouring the girl of the house which made a fault which sows the discord in the family circle.

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