K Samka

This recitation for two voices –male and female– is dedicated to Aragon’s writings on love and the couple. And foremost on the couple he formed with Elsa Triolet. Abundant titles: Les Yeux d’Elsa, Elsa, Le Fou d’Elsa... Poems which delighxully inspired musicians and famous singers and became everyday tunes on everybody’s lips, are plenty. A myriad of verses which demonstrate without a doubt that Elsa Triolet was definitely his "muse", his inspiration and his creative fervor as it is sometimes said.
However, the "real" Elsa was much more than just "the muse of…" or the "wife of…"! She was a talented writer (the first woman to receive the Goncourt prize), a brave fighter – she received a medal for her role during the resistance after the victory over the nazis. She and Aragon formed a creative couple united by their writing, referring to each other’s works, and for that reason, neither one ever tried to hide what their personal works owed to the other. Since they could not envisage living shut away in an ivory tower, they both took an active part in the battles, hopes and struggles of the men and women of the 20th century.

The reading transcends the conventional clichés and snapshots by depicting the realities of their life together through little known texts. It also deals with the couple and love, Aragon’s central themes, using the famous phrase in Jean Ferrat’s song: "Woman is the future of man", a distortion of Aragon’s original verse "the future of man is woman". Indeed, love is a universal fact in human societies and falling in love, as everyone knows, can happen without warning thus disturbing and changing the course of an existence. Love is what makes an individual step outside him/herself and away from the sole calculation of his own interests in order to experience life as a couple, in a disinterested, reciprocal, shared and respectful way.

These human traits that keep the individual away from his consumer routine and the sluggishness of "the law of supply and demand"! Theseexperiences reinforce the idea of what could be called a "twosome communism", for "two lovers are enough to change life and its rules" as Aragon put it. The couple that "gives birth to the world’s beauty and the beauty of the day" can thus blossom in the sublime metaphor of a humanity of the future, going beyond its everlasting wars, making its peace with itself and sharing harmoniously its diversities. A prestigious couple incarnated by the voices and talent of great actors, to celebrate and share Aragon’s blazing prose and lyricism and letting us hear once and for all Elsa’s voice. Aragon speaks again, this time Ariane Ascaride and Didier Bezace on his behalf.
Bernard Vasseur, February 2015
View tour dates