Monday, August 3, 2015

Georges Brassens' "La femme d'Hector"

In listening to my French music, I noticed something about the chorus of Georges Brassens' "La femme d'Hector."
C'est pas la femme de Bertrand
Pas la femme de Gontrand
Pas la femme de Pamphile
C'est pas la femme de Firmin
Pas la femme de Germain
Ni celle de Benjamin
C'est pas la femme d'Honoré
Ni celle de Désiré
Ni celle de Théophile
Encore moins la femme de Nestor
Non, c'est la femme d'Hector
The song is about particular qualities that Hector's wife has, and the choruses provide a list of other men's wives who don't compare:
It's not Betrand's wife
Not Gontrand's wife
Not Pamphile's wife
It's not Firmin's wife
Not Germain's wife
Nor that of Benjamin
It's not Honoré's wife
Nor that of Désiré
Nor that of Théophile
Still less Nestor's wife
No, it's Hector's wife
I must admit that my comprehension of French wasn't good enough to understand all of that, but I did notice "de Nestor" and "la femme d'Hector" while listening to the song, and that got me interested.  While I couldn't understand the sentiment, the lines in the chorus have audibly similar grammatical structures, and since I picked out "Nestor" and "Hector" - names from The Iliad - I started wondering whether this is an example of cataloguing.  That's when I looked up the lyrics on the internet.

Cataloguing is a structural feature of epic poems - such as The Iliad - where many things are just listed, especially divisions of troops in armies.  Brassens' song is indeed an example of this, as he explains that none of the wives of these other men is equal to that of Hector.  The names of the husbands don't seem very important, but I still found it interesting that two of them are from a work that sometimes exhibits the same structural organization.