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The Partisan, orig­i­nally titled “La Complainte du par­ti­san” in French, has always been one of my favourite Leonard Cohen songs. The lyrics are from the point of view of a sole par­ti­san secretly fight­ing an occu­py­ing force in his coun­try, but I had no idea it was specif­i­cally about the French resis­tance to Nazi occu­pa­tion dur­ing WWII, as the only ref­er­ences to this are in the French verses.

You hear of sol­diers nowa­days with iPods and their mur­der mixes; playlists of heavy metal, used to keep them moti­vated (or, in some cases, inhu­man so they can com­mit inhu­mane acts). I’ve long held the belief that if I was ever fight­ing in a war, this would be my song — the only one I’d lis­ten to, and on repeat — because the nar­ra­tor is so cold and stoic in his purpose.

Members_of_the_Maquis_in_La_Tresorerie

A group of par­ti­sans join­ing forces with the Canadian army at Boulogne, in September 1944.

Fédéric has been telling me bits of French his­tory here and there; it’s given me even more of an appre­ci­a­tion for the song, and I couldn’t think of a bet­ter time or place to be learn­ing this than here in France. The Coles Notes ver­sion of the French Résistance goes some­thing like this:

In the German blitzkrieg, the French lost the whole of the north and west of their coun­try in about six weeks and were forced to become a client state to the ger­mans. Philippe Pétain, head of the French gov­ern­ment at the time, sub­mit­ted and col­lab­o­rated with the new occu­py­ing German forces1. Some French peo­ple also coop­er­ated with the Nazis by giv­ing them shel­ter, telling them where Jews were hid­ing, or pro­tect­ing cer­tain infra­struc­ture points. But there were also those who didn’t agree with what Hitler was doing, nor with the dra­con­ian rules that were even­tu­ally imple­mented on the French peo­ple. Initially, the mem­bers of the Résistance were scat­tered, but even­tu­ally a speech by Charles du Gaulle (who had escaped to Britain), planted the seed that would rally the coun­try to side with the Résistance over Germany and their French col­lab­o­ra­tors. The Résistance not only fought with guer­rilla tac­tics, they would also hide friendly sol­diers who were downed behind enemy lines, sab­o­tage strate­gic Axis points, pub­lish under­ground news­pa­pers, and pro­vide infor­ma­tion to the Allies, even­tu­ally help­ing them speed through France after D-Day. The cause of the Résistance inspired peo­ple of all polit­i­cal lean­ings and social classes to fight side-by-side with an equal fer­vor against the Germans, and played an impor­tant role in the cre­ation of the mod­ern idea of the arche­typal French patriot.

As much as I’d like to say that Cohen wrote the song, I know the tune was writ­ten by Anna Marly, with the lyrics being a trans­la­tion of a French poem writ­ten by resis­tance fighter, Emmanuel d’Astier de La Vigerie. But Cohen totally sells the song, with his numb voice, and dron­ing arpeg­gios that give it an unre­lent­ing momen­tum, rem­i­nis­cent of a slow mil­i­tary march. Even the English rhyme scheme remains some­what faith­ful to the orig­i­nal in French.

Lyrics:

When they poured across the bor­der
I was cau­tioned to sur­ren­der,
this I could not do;
I took my gun and vanished.

I have changed my name so often,
I’ve lost my wife and chil­dren
but I have many friends,
and some of them are with me.

An old woman gave us shel­ter,
kept us hid­den in the gar­ret,
then the sol­diers came;
she died with­out a whisper.

There were three of us this morn­ing
I’m the only one this evening
but I must go on;
the fron­tiers are my prison.

Oh, the wind, the wind is blow­ing,
through the graves the wind is blow­ing,
free­dom soon will come;
then we’ll come from the shadows.

Les Allemands étaient chez moi,
ils me dis­ent, “résigne toi”,
mais je n’ai pas peur;
j’ai repris mon arme.

J’ai changé cent fois de nom,
j’ai perdu femme et enfants
mais j’ai tant d’amis;
j’ai la France entière.

Un vieil homme dans un gre­nier
pour la nuit nous a caché,
les Allemands l’ont pris;
il est mort sans surprise.

Oh, the wind, the wind is blow­ing,
through the graves the wind is blow­ing,
free­dom soon will come;
then we’ll come from the shadows.

Europe 2010 travel diaries

  1. There’s a famous pic­ture of him shak­ing hands with Hitler. Obviously, he’s not very well regarded by the French today. [↑]