février 20, 2009
Génération Obama
Une illustration du magazine New York du 18 août 2008, avant l’élection du nouveau président.
Hommes et femmes dans la France en guerre (1914-1945)
“L’arrivée des troupes américaines souligna la différence de pratique entre les forces alliées. Les mariages entre Françaises et soldats alliés, symbole de l’union des deux pays, est emblématique de la politisarion des corps. [...] C’est ainsi que le récit des amours entre un homme noir et une femme blanche, dévoilé dans la revue La vie parisienne en juillet 1918, fut jugé déplacé. L’affaire provoqua la colère de l’Etat-Major américain, qui voyqit là une remise en cause grave de la politique ségrégationniste pratiquée outre-Atlantique. La République Française sut ménager la susceptibilité de son allié en incitant officieusement ses cadres militaires à copier l’attitude des Américains vis-à-vis des Noirs. Cette décision fit scandale dans un pays qui mettait largement à contribution les forces de son empire colonial. Mais il n’en demeura pas moins que des instructions en ce sens furent données aux autorités civiles et militaires des régions dans lesquelles cantonnaient des troupes de couleur.”
Le général de division de Boissoudy, commandant la VIIème armée
à M. le Préfet des Vosges.
à M. le Préfet de Meurthe-et-Moselle
La 92ème division américaine, division composée entièrement d’hommes de couleur, est mise à la disposition de la VIIème armée à partir du 12 courant, date de son arrivée au camp d’Arches.
Cette D.I. destinée à entrer ultérieurement dans le secteur de Saint-Dié, va être appelée à stationner sur le territoire du département des Vosges et à proximité du département de Meurthe-et-Moselle, dans la partie nord du secteur (Raon-l’Étape – Thiaville). « La question nègre » revêt aux yeux de nos alliés un caractère tout spécial, qu’il ne nous appartient pas de discuter, mais qu’il nous faut admettre.
La mission française près de l’armée américaine a exposé au Général Commandant l’Armée la mesure dans laquelle nous devons adopter, vis-à-vis des troupes de couleur, l’attitude des blancs américains, tant dans le milieu militaire que dans les rapports de nos populations civiles avec les nègres.
Le Général Commandant l’Armée a l’honneur de communiquer les observations dont il s’agit à messieurs les préfets intéressés de manière à permettre à ces hauts fonctionnaires d’attirer l’attention des autorités locales civiles sur la réserve où il convient de se tenir vis-à-vis des troupes de couleur.
« Tâchez d’obtenir des populations des cantonnements qu’elles ne gâtent pas les nègres. Les Américains sont indignés de toute intimité publique de femmes blanches avec des noirs. Ils ont élevé récemment de véhémentes protestations contre une gravure de la « Vie parisienne » intitulée : « L’enfant du dessert » représentant une femme en cabinet particulier avec un nègre. »
« de plus, les troupes noires américaines en France ont donné lieu à elles seules à autant de plaintes pour tentative de viol que tout le reste de l’Armée et cependant on ne nous a envoyé qu’une élite du point de vue physique et moral ».
Signé : de Boissoudy
Sur cette affaire voir aussi : MICHEL, Marc, les africains et la grande guerre. Karthala, 2003
janvier 8, 2009
LA VIE THEODORE, Alain Souchon
On s’ennuie tellement
On s’ennuie tellement
On s’ennuie tellement
On s’ennuie tellement
Alors la nuit, quand je dors
Je pars avec Théodore
Dehors, dehors, dehors, dehors
Marcher dans le désert
Marcher dans les pierres
Marcher des journées entières
Marcher dans le désert
Dormir dehors
Couché sur le sable d’or
Les satellites et les météores
Dormir dehors
Il faut un minimum
Une bible, un cœur d’homme
Un petit gobelet d’aluminium
Il faut un minimum
Si loin de la nature ici
Mon cœur durcit
On est si loin de l’air
On est si loin du vent
Si loin du grand désert
Si loin de l’océan
Alors la nuit quand je dors
Je pars avec Théodore,
Dehors, dehors, dehors, dehors
Marcher dans le désert
Si loin de la nature ici
Mon cœur durcit
Chercheur de trésor
De brindilles et de phosphore
D’amours humaines et d’effort,
Chercheur de trésor
Il faut un minimum
Une bible, un cœur d’homme,
Un petit gobelet d’aluminium
On s’ennuie tellement,
On s’ennuie tellement,
On s’ennuie tellement,
On s’ennuie tellement…
juillet 18, 2008
Dite alla Giovine… qu’elle est trop bonne!
Opéra en plein air à Central Park : la Traviata de Verdi avec une Violetta éblouissante de beauté (mais ça on s’en fout) avec un timbre, une élégance et une justesse d’interprétation qui la placent déjà parmi les grands noms de ce rôle. Elle fut desservie par quasiment l’ensemble de la distribution, à l’exception de Annina, la femme de chambre de Violetta (Lucia Palmieri) et, éventuellement, de Germont-père…
Bref ne retenons qu’un nom et une jolie manière : Marsha Thompson.
Le vrai problème reste que l’opéra fait des femmes… des oblations vivantes…
mais allons bon! réécoutons la version Callas 1958
PS: Lucia Palmieri me fait la gentillesse de préciser que Frederick Redd n’était pas de la partie ce soir-là mais qu’il s’agissait de Constantinos Yiannoudes dans le rôle du Père d’Alfredo. J’en profite pour la féliciter encore pour sa jolie performance en Annina… Merci Lucia!
Léo Ferré : il est six heures ici et midi à New-York
Il est six heures ici et midi à New York
Dans une rue de Manhattan j’ai fait la manche
Et c’est un nègre bleu qui m’a ouvert les yeux
Ce nègre je l’entends encore
Comme un doux remorqueur dans le port
Il était tout salé
Comme à Paris où j’étais sur la scène
A m’époumoner de rien, de tout
J’ai du nègre par là sous la peau qui se tend
Comme une ombre du Sud
Et c’est un nègre jaune qui m’a ouvert la lampe
Une bonne lampée de ce vernis horaire
Et qui n’en finit plus de se chercher
Dans une rue de Manhattan j’ai joui ce matin
Et Paris me lançait des mouchoirs de satin
Pour m’essorer
Quand je trique à Paris je la monte à New York
Le sperme des poètes ça devrait se ficher dans des ampoules
A la Préfectance de la Madame
Et l’on ne perdrait rien, en connaissance de cause
Il est cinq heures ici
Et vingt-deux heures dans le Caucase
Tu cases tu cases
Et puis tu causes
Je suis malade comme un chien de Moscou
Qui ne serait pas socialiste
La Madame m’a questionné
Elle avait la dégaine de ce flic de Milan qu’on a assassiné
Il est cinq heures ici et cinq heures à Milan
Il est la Mort ici et la Mort à Milan
La Joconde est rentrée dans le poing de Vinci
Les phonos lisent Armstrong dans le texte à Paris
Je connais une femme qui se dit sumérienne
Elle me ronge dans le texte et je lui rends toute sa monnaie
Je me traduis sans me trahir
Et tout est tout mouillé
De ma détresse passagère
Passagère…
Les phonos me liront dans le slang à New York
S’ils ne me lisent pas
Qu’est-ce que ça peut nous foutre…
Quand Ferré dirige l’Orchestre Symphonique de Milan
juillet 1, 2008
Frederick Douglass, What to the Slave is the 4th of July?
“For the present it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. Is it not astonishing that, while we are plowing, planting, and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, iron, copper, silver, and gold; that while we are reading, writing, and cyphering, acting as clerks, merchants, and secretaries, having among us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators, and teachers; that while we are engaged in all the enterprises common to other men—digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hillside, living, moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives, and children and above all, confessing and worshiping the Christian God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave—we are called upon to prove that we are men?
[...]
We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be denounced.
What to the American slave is your Fourth of July? I answer, a day that reveals to him more than all other days of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all the religious parade and solemnity, are to him mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation of this earth guilty of practice more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour.
Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the every-day practices of this nation, and you will say with me that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.”
extract from: What, to the Slave, Is the Fourth of July?
Frederick Douglass, July 4, 1852
Rochester Antislavery Sewing Society
ci-dessous, le texte intégral :
Fellow citizens: pardon me and allow me to ask why am I called upon to speak here today? What have I or those I represent to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in the Declaration of Independence, extended to us? And am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits, and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?
Would to God, both of your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions. Then would my task be light, and my burden easy and delightful. For whom is there so cold that a nation’s sympathy could not warm him? Who so obdurate and dead to the claims of gratitude, that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? Who so stolid and selfish that would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nation’s jubilee, when the chains of servitude had been torn from his limbs? I am not that man. In a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak, and the “lame man leap like a hare.”
But such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you this day rejoice are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence bequeathed by your fathers is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you has brought stripes and death to me. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak today? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. And let me warn you, that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation whose crimes, towering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrecoverable ruin. I can today take up the lament of a peeled and woe-smitten people.
“By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Yes! We wept when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there that carried us away captive, required of us a song; and they who wasted us, required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.”
Fellow citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mourning wail of millions, whose chains, heavy, and grievous yesterday, are today rendered more intolerable by the jubilant shouts that reach them.
If I do forget, if I do not remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, “may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!” To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular themes, would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world. My subject, then, fellow citizens, is “American Slavery.” I shall see this day and its popular characteristics from the slave’s point of view. Standing here, identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this Fourth of July. Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will in the name of humanity, which is outraged, in the name of liberty, which is fettered, in the name of the Constitution and the Bible, which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call into question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery — the great sin and shame of America! “I will not equivocate; I will not excuse”; I will use the severest language I can command, and yet not one word shall escape me that any man, whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart a slave-holder, shall not confess to be right and just.
But I fancy I hear some of my audience say it is just in this circumstance that you and your brother Abolitionists fail to make a favorable impression on the public mind. Would you argue more or denounce less, would you persuade more and rebuke less, your cause would be much more likely to succeed? But, I submit, where all is plain there is nothing to be argued. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light? Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? That point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it. The slave-holders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. There are seventy-two crimes in the State of Virginia, which if committed by a black man (no matter how ignorant he be), subject him to the punishment of death; while only two of these same crimes will subject a white man to like punishment. What is this but the acknowledgment that the slave is a moral, intellectual, and responsible being? The manhood of the slave is conceded. It is admitted in the fact that Southern statute-books are covered with enactments, forbidding, under severe fine and penalties, the teaching of the slave to read and write. When you can point to any such laws in reference to the beasts of the fields, then I may consent to argue the manhood of the slave. When the dogs in your streets, when the fowls of the air, when the cattle on your hills, when the fish of the sea, and the reptiles that crawl, shall be unable to distinguish the slave from a brute, then I will argue with you that the slave is a man!
For the present it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. Is it not astonishing that, while we are plowing, planting, and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, iron, copper, silver, and gold; that while we are reading, writing, and cyphering, acting as clerks, merchants, and secretaries, having among us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators, and teachers; that while we are engaged in all the enterprises common to other men—digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hillside, living, moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives, and children and above all, confessing and worshiping the Christian God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave—we are called upon to prove that we are men?
Would you have me argue that a man is entitled to liberty? That he is the rightful owner of his own body? You have already declared it. Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? Is that a question for republicans? Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation, as a matter beset with great difficulty, involving a doubtful application of the principle of justice, hard to understand? How should I look today in the presence of Americans, dividing and subdividing a discourse, to show that men have a natural right to freedom, speaking of it relatively and positively, negatively and affirmatively? To do so would be to make myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your understanding. There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven who does not know that slavery is wrong for him.
What! Am I to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them ignorant of their relations to their fellow man, to beat them with sticks, to flay their flesh with the last, to load their limbs with irons, to hunt them with dogs, to sell their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their masters? Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood and stained with pollution is wrong? No; I will not. I have better employment for my time and strength that such arguments would imply.
What, then, remains to be argued? Is it that slavery is not divine; that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? There is blasphemy in the thought. That which is inhuman cannot be divine. Who can reason on such a proposition? They that can, may; I cannot. The time for such argument is past.
At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. Oh! had I the ability, and could I reach the nation’s ear, I would today pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder.
We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be denounced.
What to the American slave is your Fourth of July? I answer, a day that reveals to him more than all other days of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all the religious parade and solemnity, are to him mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation of this earth guilty of practice more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour.
Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the every-day practices of this nation, and you will say with me that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.
Urlicht, Mahler
O Röschen rot !
Der Mensch liegt in grösster Not!
Der Mensch liegt in grösster Pein!
Je lieber möcht’ ich im Himmel sein!
Da kam Ich auf einen breiten Weg.
Da kam ich Eingelein.
Und wollt’ mich abweisen.
Ach nein, ich liess mich nicht abweisen!
Ich bin von Gott, und will wieder zu Gott!
Der liebe Gott, der liebe Gott,
Wird mir ein Lichtchen geben,
Wird leuchten mir bis in das ewig selig Leben!
juin 26, 2008
Arthur Cravan
Prospectus
VENEZ VOIR – Salle des Sociétés savantes- 8, rue Danton – Le Poète – ARTHUR CRAVAN- (neveu d’Oscar Wilde)- champion de boxe, poids 125kg. taille 2 m – LE CRITIQUE BRUTAL – PARLERA – BOXERA – DANSERA – la nouvelle “Boxing-Dance” – LA VERY BOXE – avec le concours du sculpteur MAC ADAMS – autres numéros excentriques – NEGRE. BOXEUR. DANSEUR – dimanche 5 juillet 9h; du soir – prix des places : 5 fr., 3 fr., 2 fr.
Compte rendu paru dans Paris-Midi, lundi 6 juillet 1914
Cet Arthur Cravan, qui ne manque jamais de faire suivre son nom de ces mots : neveu d’Oscar Wilde, s’est donné hier soir aux Sociétés savantes en spectacle à quelques centaines d’Anglais, d’Américains et d’Allemands, parmi lesquels deux ou trois Français s’étaient fourvoyés.
Cet Arthur Cravan est un grand jeune homme blond, imberbe qui, vêtu d’une chemise de flanelle largement échancrée, d’une ceinture rouge, d’un pantalon noir et de légers escarpins, a parlé, dansé, boxé.
Avant de parler, il a tiré quelques coups de pistolet puis a débité, tantôt riant, tantôt sérieux, les plus énormes insanités contre l’art et la vie. Il a fait l’éloge des gens de sport, supérieurs aux artistes, des homosexuels, des voleurs du Louvre, des fous, etc. Il lisait debout en se dandinant, et, de temps à autre, lançait à la salle d’énergiques injures.
Dans la salle, on paraissait goûter cette façon saugrenue de conférencier.
Les choses, cependant ont failli se gâter quand cet Arthur Cravan (sic) a éprouvé le besoin d’envoyer à toute volée sur le premier rang des spectateurs un carton à dessins qui, par hasard, n’atteignit personne.
Quelques amis du danseur, boxeur et conférencier, ont achevé de donner à cette soirée son caractère de grosse plaisanterie anglo-américaine en dansant, boxant et conférenciant à leur tour.
Cette manifestation burlesque, cette farce d’atelier laborieusement annoncée et montée manqua d’esprit, et sa gaieté fut bien lourde. Nos rapins font mieux.
« déserteur de 11 pays. Il BOXERA – DANSERA - CONFERENCIERA. Il sera irrésistible de séduction. » Dans ces spectacles, il se présentera, affirme-il, simplement vêtu d’un cache-sexe, et il se suicidera à la fin.”
voir le portait détaillé de Cravan sur Les excentriques
sa revue littéraire Maintenant
juin 22, 2008
Basquiat
“I thought I was going to be a bum the rest of my life.” JMB
“I wanted to be a star, not a gallery mascot.” JMB
” No matter how successful he got, Basquiat always feared failure – as if he felt that any minute the approval he had finally won would be suddenly withdrawn. ”He would say, do you think I’m going out of fashion, do you think I’m washed up? That was his favorite expression,” says Torton. But he couldn’t stand being a success either. His real heroes ended up bums, bankrupt, dead “.
from : Phoebe Hoban. Basquiat. A quick Killing in Art. 1998.
