VI.4.4. ROOTED

THE SONG "CHERRYTIME" THAT ALL FRENCH PEOPLE KNOW EVOKES THE COMMUNARDS' BRIEF HOPE...

and one of its last lines its blood-soaked end.  

But how short is the season of cherries  
When people, dreaming two by two, 
 gather earrings...  

Le Temps des Cerises ("Cherry Time") by Jean-Baptiste Clément and Philip Dumas, 1990

Cherries of love with dresses

That fall under the leaves like drops of blood

But how short is the season of cherries

When dreamers gather earrings 

Traditional recording by Yves Montand, 1960's
A recent recording by Noir Désir, 2008

Communard Jean-Baptiste Clément wrote the melancholy song about lost love before La Commune. After it he added the line about drops of blood and dedicated the song to "Louise," an ambulance driver met on the last barricade that she refused to leave. He would always reject royalties.

The sound of that barricade's explosion carried as far as Versailles. When Communards imprisoned there heard it, they knew that La Commune was over.

-- Louise Michel

A graphic novel tells its story. It was put to music:
.

     Le Cri du peuple by Jacques Tardi (Castermann, 4 vols. 2001-04), after the novel by Jean Vautrin

La Commune represents the hope of an egalitarian and just democracy and is a major landmark for the left:

Communist Ball, July 13, place de la Commune 
For that site, please read on

           Cergy-Pontoise insoumise

An important leftist party (La France insoumise, "Unbowed France") chose March 18, the day the Commune broke out, to launch its presidential campaign in 2017.

# # #

Commemorating the 150th anniversary

• On walls where La Commune was strongest and that still lean left:

In the 20th

In the 13th

• At the church of the Sacré Coeur 

   Ma Commune de Paris

An evocation of the carnage that that the church's builders approved.

# # #

More testimonies:

• The theater "La Commune:" The name suggests productions that are innovative and thoughtful.

  Zoom

In Aubervilliers, a working-class suburb in the north. Founded in 1965, the first permanent theater in an outskirt announces the evolution these pages describe. 

• Annual commemorations since 1883, at the wall where the last combattants were shot.

The Mur des Fédérés, in the Père Lachaise cemetery

• A fresco with figures that are six feet tall near the site of the last barricade...

By QMRK, 2021 / Irina Zwerger

...chosen by popular vote* in 2019

*The participatory budget, Parisians' vote to finance urban projects.

*    *    *

Next,

6.4.5. 

"Friends of the Paris Commune"