Why I chose Jacques Villon
as pseudonym (part 1)
Keywords: ballad, francois villon, till eulenspiegel, richard strauss, tone poem, seagull, don quixote,
jean d'arc, cello, spirituality, peace, dream, french huguenots, afrikaans
In 2001, when I made my first CD, Exodus, I decided to use a pseudonym as artist. Since childhood my French ancestry has intrigued me. The history of my surname, Viljoen, goes back to the French Huguenots who came to South Africa more than 300 years ago. The Dutch could not spell French surnames very well, so the double-"l" in Villon, which is normally pronounced as a soft "j"1, over the years became one of each: an "l" and a "j", rendering the name quite unpronounceable in any language, but Afrikaans2. Villon was the surname of the family who came from the southern part of France from whom I descend. My father always joked that there were two brothers Villon who came out to the Cape Colony back then: the one died unmarried and the other one went to prison! In later years I became very conscious of the significance of the French Huguenots coming to the Cape of Good Hope: they were Protestants, prosecuted for their faith, willing to sacrifice the comfort of home and their fatherland. This boldness to give up the comfort zone is the first reason why using the French version of my name as pseudonym made perfect sense.
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The second reason was because of a fascinating character called François Villon. The French poet, François de Montcorbier, was born in 1431 in Paris, in the same year that Jean d'Arc was executed. The adopted son of a priest called Guillaume de Villon, François studied Theology at the University of Paris. In those days the university was nearly a state in a state and because of its more liberal laws and hence less severe punishment of transgressors, it attracted criminals. François became a vagabond and a rogue3 - look at him standing in the corner with a mug of wine in the one hand and the other ready to draw a dagger, contemplating the next prank he is going to play. The prince of ballade-makers is regarded as a forerunner of modern literature especially of early 19th century French poetry like the work of Baudelaire, Rimbaud and Verlaine whose lives remind us in more than one way of Villon's own life. More than once François spent time in prison and it is after his release from prison that he locked himself up in a small room in Paris and wrote Le Grand Testament, a collection of stanzas and ballads4, unique in literature and after that he vanishes from history. The Villanelle (Villonelle)5 is named after him. |
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BALLADE OF THE LADIES OF BYGONE TIMES6
Tell me from where I could entice
Flora the famous Roman whore,
or Archipiada or Thaïs
who they say was just as fair;
or Echo answering everywhere
across stream and pool and mere,
whose beauty was like none before -
where are the snows of yesteryear?
Where is the learned Héloïse
for whose love Abelard became
a gelded monk at Saint-Denis,
yet still could not put out his flame?
And where now is that royal dame
who had men for three days with her
then had them cast into the Seine?
Where are the snows of yesteryear?
Queen Blanche who had a siren's voice,
white as a lily on the plain;
Big-Footed Bertha, by Heaven's choice
mother of great Charlemagne;
and Joan of Arc from proud Lorraine
the English burned from cruel fear -
where are they, where, O Mother of Men?
Where are the snows of yesteryear?
Don't ask, Prince, in one month again,
nor yet in twelve where they all are;
I'd only give you this refrain:
Where are the snows of yesteryear?
VILLON'S DIALOGUE WITH HIS HEART
Who's there? It's me. Who's "me"? Your heart,
that holds on by the merest thread;
I feel my blood ebb and my strength depart
when I see you hanging down your head
like some poor lurcher cringing in a shed.
And why is that? Because you live too fast.
So what? It's I who come off worst.
Why, you ask? I'll think about it. Let me be!
When will you start thinking? When my childhood's past.
I'll say no more. That's quite all right with me.
What do you want? To be a man of substance.
You're thirty now. No younger than a mule.
Is that still childhood? No. Then madness
has got hold of you/ Where? By the lapel?
You know nothing. Yes I do: I can tell
the difference between flies and milk. One's white,
one's black. Is that all? Is that too trite
for you? I'll start again. Let's see..
You're lost. Well, I'll put up a fight.
I'll say no more. That's quite all right with me.
From all this I get sorrow, you get pain.
If you had been some poor demented fool
I might have had some reason to complain,
but good and bad you wind from the same spool.
Either your head is filled with wool
or else you want damnation more than bliss.
Well, what is your reply to this?
I'll be above it when I pass away.
God, how comforting! What wisdom and what eloquence!
I'll say no more. That's quite all right with me.
Where do your defects come from? From ill-luck.
When Saturn packed my bag for me
he put them in. What rubbish! You're star-struck.
You are master yet think yourself unfree.
Solomon has written - you can see
it in the Bible - 'Men of sense
have power over planets and their influence'.
I don't believe it. As they made me, so I'll be.
What did you say? Just my kind of sense.
I'll say no more. That's quite all right with me.
You want to live? May God give me the power!
You must then... What?! Read every hour,
be penitent. Read what? Philosophy -
and leave your trivial friends. I'll see.
Now don't forget. Don't be perverse;
don't wait so long that things get even worse.
I'll say no more. That's quite all right with me.
Villon's dialog with his heart is for me an expression of the never-ending conflict between what some people would call the "higher self" and the "lower self" or, as I would prefer to say: the christ and the antichrist within. This poem also resonates the idea I have expressed before that the master of life chooses to take control of the destiny/cards he/she is dealt with in life and forges his/her own destiny.
1 In both French and Spanish "ll" is pronounced as a soft "j" like "y" in the English word "yes". The 2nd cello master class I ever attended was held in 1987 in a town called Llança [jansa], on the coast north of Barcelona. During my stay in Llança I visited the house of the surrealist painter, Salvador Dali in Figueras (more about surrealism, cubism, dadaism, Art Nouveau and other artistic styles in WRR005).
The "o" in Villon is pronounced like in "ordinary" and the "n" is silent.
2 Afrikaans developed quite recently out of Dutch. The first Afrikaans translation of the Bible was completed 1933. This makes Afrikaans, as far as I know, (one of) the youngest or newest language(s) on earth.
3 An anti-Robin Hood?
4 Isn't "ballad" a rather unorthodox palindrome?
5 A poem with 19 lines arranged in five tercets and one quatrain. The first and the third lines of the first tercet recur alternatively at the end of each subsequent tercet and both together at the end of the quatrain. www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villanelle
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