Paroles
Jacques Prévert's Paroles (1946) collects roughly ninety-five poems written between 1930 and 1945, assembled by his friend René Bertelé from cabaret songs, scraps, and notes scribbled on café tablecloths and the backs of envelopes. True to its title — "words," in the sense of the spoken word — the collection favors the rhythms and vocabulary of everyday speech over traditional literary French, which is part of why it became one of the best-selling poetry collections in French publishing history. Its range is wide: tender and playful poems of love and childhood ("Déjeuner du matin"), sharp satire aimed at school, church, and the army, and, in poems like "Barbara," unflinching anger at the destruction of war. Simple on the surface, endlessly quotable, and still taught in French schools today.
The addressee of the poem "Barbara" — a woman the narrator recalls meeting on Siam Street in Brest one rainy day, before the city was destroyed in WWII bombing raids.
The collection was not written as a single manuscript but was instead assembled by René Bertelé from various sources, including cabaret songs, scribblings on the backs of envelopes, and notes written on café tablecloths.
The first edition featured a photograph by Brassaï of a piece of urban graffiti, which served as a visual signal of the poet's desire to remain marginal and connected to the streets rather than the academic establishment.
The poems are designed with an emphasis on oral delivery, often incorporating the rhythms, hesitations, and informal vocabulary of everyday speech to ensure they function as spoken word pieces.
