- Pierre Béarn
Pierre Béarn (
15 June 1902 –October 27 2004 ) was a French writer. He was born Louis-Gabriel Besnard inBucharest ,Romania .He is known to Anglophones for his poem "Couleurs d'usine", which includes the line "Métro boulet bistrots mégots dodo zéro" (translation: "Subway work bars (cigarette) butts sleep nothing")
A multifaceted personality, at one time a journalist, novelist, poet, fabulist and humanist, at age 9 Béarn began writing in French slang, his "natural" language.
His father having died prematurely, at the age of 14 he became a mechanic in order to financially support his mother. This working life inspired the poem from which came one of the May 1968 protest slogans "métro-boulot-dodo" ("subway-work-sleep") that denounced the shocking workers' conditions at the time.
While commanding a trawler to aid the French evacuations in 1940, he was captured and was detained in the concentration camp at
Aintree . His poems from that point onwards centred on the sea and the war.After the war he took a post as a press attaché in Africa. In 1969, he created a quarterly magazine for himself alone: "Le Lien" (The Link). In 1975, he withdrew to
Montlhéry where the peace allowed him to write many fables.In 1998, the first volume of his complete works was published: "L'arc en ciel de ma vie" ("The rainbow of my life"). This was followed in 1999 by volume 2, "300 fables d'aujourd'hui" ("300 Fables of Today"). The third volume, "Couleurs charnelles" ("Carnal colours"), was released just months before his death on
October 27 ,2004 ; during his 103rd year.While generally ignored by the wider public, Béarn received a number of literary prizes such as the "Prix de Verlaine" (1940), the "Grand Prix International de Poésie" awarded by General de Gaulle in 1971, the "Grand prix de l'Académie française" in 1981 and again in 1995 for his fables.
He also received the
Médaille de la Résistance for his participation in the liberation of Paris in 1944 andLégion d'honneur in 1990 by François Mitterrand. He was also namedOfficier du Mérite national in 1995 by Jacques Chirac and Commander in the order of the Arts and Letters in 2000, by the minister of Culture, Catherine Tasca.External links
* [http://www.ville-montlhery.fr/article.php?id_article=120 Pierre Béarn] fr
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