Pierre-Jean de Béranger

Pierre-Jean de Béranger (19 August 1780 – 16 July 1857) was a prolific French poet and chansonnier (songwriter), who enjoyed great popularity and influence in France during his lifetime, but faded into obscurity in the decades following his death. He has been described as "the most popular French songwriter of all time" and "the first superstar of French popular music".

De Béranger was born at his grandfather's house on the Rue Montorgueil in Paris, which he later described as "one of the dirtiest and most turbulent streets of Paris". He was not actually of noble blood, despite the use of an appended "de" in the family name by his father, who had vainly assumed the name of Béranger de Mersix. He was, in fact, descended from more humble stock, a country innkeeper on one side of the family and a tailor on the other - the latter was later celebrated in a song, "Le tailleur et la fée" (The tailor and the fairy). He made much of his humble origins in "Le Villain" (The Plebeian):

« Moi, noble ? oh ! vraiment, messieurs, non.
Non, d'aucune chevalerie
Je n'ai le brevet sur vélin.
Je ne sais qu'aimer ma patrie... (bis.)
Je suis vilain et très-vilain... (bis.)
Je suis vilain,
Vilain, vilain. »

"I noble? no, sirs, I confess.
No—none, for me, of knightly race
The patent did on vellum trace;
To love my country's all I know…(twice.)
I'm of a breed that's low indeed…(twice.)
Yes, low, sirs, very low!"

As a child he was shy and sickly, but skilful with his hands and learnt to carve cherry stones. He was sent to school in the faubourg St. Antoine, and from its roof witnessed the storming of the Bastille in 1789, which was commemorated in his poem, "Le quatorze juillet" (The 14th of July). His father had been a business agent, but his royalist sympathies meant that he had to go into hiding after the French Revolution. Pierre-Jean was therefore sent to live with an aunt in Péronne, in Somme, who ran an auberge (boarding house). His aunt apparently taught him republican principles, and from her doorstep he heard the guns at Valenciennes (during the War of the First Coalition); he also developed a passionate love of France and distaste for all things foreign.

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