Serge GAINSBOURG – The opening interview of “Au pays des malices”.

Serge Gainsbourg (1928.1991)

Partly handwritten typescript.

Five pages in quarto.

[Paris. 1980]

« I will put in my last will and testament: smash my piano. »

Precious proofs, heavily crossed out, annotated and corrected by Serge Gainsbourg, preparatory to the long introductory interview of the book Gainsbourg. Au pays des Malices published by Le Temps singulier, at the initiative of Franck Lhomeau and Alain Coelho, in October 1980.

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This first major anthology dedicated to the artist offers a fascinating glimpse into his world. Literary, musical, and personal themes are explored in turn, from Evguenie Sokolov to his lost love affair with Jane Birkin.

Have you ever felt, at least once, that you were revealing yourself in your writing?

– No, … maybe in “Initials BB” and “Je t’aime moi non plus””, it’s a bit organic… organic… it’s graphic.

Gainsbourg looks back, with introspection, on his cult of beauty:

Perhaps it is my physical ugliness that has driven me to pursue aesthetics, beauty, and the arrangement of objects in space in such a frantic way. A mental illness that I cultivate with care.

Also on his literary loves:

I read and reread Baudelaire. I'm past the age of reading because I don't have time to waste on missteps. So I reread. "The Journal of the Plague Year" by Daniel Defoe, Huysmans, "Là-bas," "À rebours," Poe translated by Baudelaire, and Baudelaire and Rimbaud, that's all. I also reread, for the sheer pleasure of the book because I have the original edition, Madame Bovary, in two volumes. Very beautiful. I'm rereading "Adolphe" too.

The interview concludes with a discussion of her romantic suffering and death:

Nietzsche said somewhere that the greatest risk for man, for man and his work, is woman, is encountering his living work. Is Jane Birkin a work of art for you?

NO COMMENT

Are you thinking about your death?

I can perfectly well see the lacquer on my piano shining for another two or three hundred years. I will put in my last will and testament: smash my piano.

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Bibliography: Gainsbourg, Au pays des Malices – pages 7 to 15 (Éd. Le Temps singulier).