Friday, April 21, 2017

Songs About People # 354 Gerard De Nerval


Gerard De Nerval, nineteenth century writer, poet and essayist much beloved by Proust, the Surrealists and Tom Verlaine and Richard Hell among others. Famously, he had a pet lobster which he used to walk on the end of a ribbon in the Palais-Royal in Paris. 

'Why should a lobster be any more ridiculous than a dog?...or a cat, or a gazelle, or a lion, or any other animal that one chooses to take for a walk? I have a liking for lobsters. They are peaceful, serious creatures. They know the secrets of the sea, they don't bark, and they don't gnaw on one's nomadic privacy like dogs do.'

Each to their own! Here, Serge Gainsbourg sets a poem of his, Piquillo, to music on his 1961 album L'Etonant Serge Gainsbourg.



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