A Renaissance Man in the 20th Century
BY KARDELEN KALA (TRIN/I)
kala@ug.bilkent.edu.tr
While I was in France last August, I spent a substantial amount of my budget on two things: food -- which, while expensive, was, I was assured, still considerably cheaper than in Switzerland; and books -- lots and lots of books that accumulated over the course of our stay without my realizing it. I would usually drop by one of the three bookstores in town after school and inevitably return home with one or two paperbacks -- sometimes from a discount bin with prices comparable to what I would pay for secondhand books back home, although usually I wasn't so lucky.
However, between the books that were already waiting for me at home and the amazing library here, I barely managed to make a dent in that mountain of books en français, as you may imagine. Which is why today is the first time I took a look at one of the books since bringing it home from the bookstore: it's a collection of quotes, song lyrics and musings from one of the most influential artists of the last century, Serge Gainsbourg.
By his own definition, Gainsbourg was an ugly old man who was a misanthrope, and by extension a misogynist, who preferred solitude to company, and physical love to friendship (he found the former easier and less hurtful, though I suspect some of his lovers may have disagreed). On the back cover of the book, he lists his favorite pastime as watching his beard grow. He created some of the wittiest and most controversial songs of the entire chanson française genre. And he was, of course, famous for his amorous conquests, including Brigitte Bardot, Catherine Deneuve and Jane Birkin, with whom he had a daughter, Charlotte Gainsbourg, who is now a famous actress in her own right.
According to him, God smoked Cuban cigars, but he himself preferred Gitanes. He was unapologetically unkempt and unglamorous, yet fully conscious of his inescapable charm. From his very first beginnings as a painter, jazz singer and poet in the early 1950s to his well-publicized descent into alcoholism in the 80s, he remained original and forever did as he pleased. In fact, I have always thought of him as a less subtle, French version of Leonard Cohen. They share the ugly charm and the penchant for poetry, as well as a deep, impressive voice, but one thing Serge loved was to shock and scandalize people: something he did very well through most of his career, though he did at times risk turning into a caricature of his early self, especially during his later years. He was, after all, the one who lit a cigarette with a 500 franc note, insulted his old friend Catherine Deneuve and rather obscenely hit on a clueless and unsuspecting Whitney Houston, all on national television. However, he was also the one who created "Je t'aime moi…non plus," a song so explicitly erotic that it remained banned in the UK for more than two decades; rearranged "La Marseillaise" in reggae form; and wrote and composed a rather controversial album, "Charlotte Forever," for his 13-year-old daughter.
There are some people whom I think of as Renaissance men -- people who are capable of doing many things, and doing them well. Serge Gainsbourg is certainly one of them. I don't know how I would feel about him if I were to actually meet him and spend some time with him, but isn't that part of the charm of a true artist anyway? An artist isn't supposed to be nice, he's supposed to be cocky. He's supposed to have vision. And he's supposed to be cynical. I once wrote somewhere that I like rock stars and rogue writers because I like the illusion that there are cool people in the world. Serge Gainsbourg is one of the people I'll always be grateful to for keeping the illusion going.