Song of the Day 3/26: Leonard Cohen, “The Partisan”

The American resistance to the Trump/Musk fascist takeover has yet to get organized, but the torching of Tesla dealerships shows the will to sabotage already exists. What we don’t yet have is an anthem to rally around.

Don’t despair yet. These things take time. The French Resistance began soon after the Nazi takeover of the country in 1940, but it wasn’t until 1943 that Anna Marley composed the music and Emmanuel d’Astier de La Vigerie wrote the lyrics to “La Complainte du partisan.”

Sung by Marly and broadcast over BBC’s French-language service as an inspiration to the fighters in France, it became an anthem of the movement. Free French leader Gen. Charles de Gaulle called Marly “the troubadour of the Resistance,” and d’Astier – credited as “Bernard,” his nom de guerre, when the song was published in 1945 – was made a Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur.

Though the song was recorded by several French singers in the post-war period, it was nearly forgotten by the time Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen included it on his second album, “Songs From a Room,” in 1969. Cohen had learned it as a 15-year-old summer camper in 1950 in an English translation by Hy Zaret, best known as the lyricist of “Unchained Melody.” Though mostly faithful to the original, Zaret made a couple of changes to universalize the message, leaving out references to Germans and changing the last line so that the partisan is emerging from the shadows rather than fading back into them.

Cohen set the lyrics to a different and darker melody than Marly’s original. As a result, many of the folk musicians who covered it in his wake thought he had written the lyrics as well. Cohen thought the song wouldn’t be complete without part of it being sung in French, so he and his producer flew to Paris to record the female singers and the accordion accompaniment.

This is the original French version sung by Anna Marly.