Member Since: 18/09/2006
Band Website: http://www.hymn.ru/internationale/index-en.html
Band Members: As of tomorrow, le genre humain. See: refrain.
Influences:
Anarchism, communism, socialism, syndicalism; the 1789 Jacobin revolution in France, the 1830 French Republican revolution, the 1848 socialist revolutions in France, Germany, Italy, the Paris Commune, 1871. The First International (International Workingmens Association).
Later versions, the Jura Federation for the Internationale Anarchiste, the FAI of the Spanish Revolution for the Internacional Anarquista and numerous translations until recently (Billy Bragg's English version of 1990) thanks to various socialist and communist movements in their respective countries (China, Vietnam, Bulgaria, etc.).
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COPYRIGHT NOTICE:
From Wikipedia :
The music of the Internationale may be copyrighted in France until 2014. While the duration of copyright in France is 70 years following the death of the author, it was extended for about 5 years and 8.5 years to compensate for the First World War and the Second World War respectively; however, whether these clauses apply is a matter of current litigation. In 2005, a movie producer was asked to pay 1000 for the use of the song by the corporation administering the authors' rights.
However, as the Internationale music was published in the late 19th century (before 1 July 1909) outside the USA, it is in the public domain in the USA.
[see: Public Domain Law ]
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Anarchist International, lyrics 1897 by Louise Michel
(INTERNATIONALE ANARCHISTE)
This original anarchist version of 1897 was sung to the tune of Wacht Am Rhein, a patriotic German folk tune about fears of France annexing the Rhineland in the 1840s.
While seemingly bizarre that French anarchists should take the tune of a patriotic German folk song and put their own words to it, apparently such was the case. The lyrics first appeared in l'Almanach du Père Peinard in 1897, a journal of anarchist thought that included lyrics to many of the old revolutionary songs.
There is often confusion because the lyrics also fit the melody of the Marseillaise. Many anarchists of the time knew the Marseillaise by heart and sang it often: the Haymarket Martyrs reputedly sang the Marseillaise as they were hanged in 1887. There are numerous other instances of anarchist meetings concluding with the singing of the Marseillaise and the Internationale.
Further, Louise Michel herself, author of the Internationale Anarchiste, "during the Siege of Paris...untiringly preached resistance to the Prussians. On the establishment of the Commune, she joined the National Guard. She offered to shoot Thiers, and suggested the destruction of Paris by way of vengeance for its surrender." [source: Wikipedia.] It was quite hard to believe that, as a radical French woman, Louise Michel would have chosen as the foundation for her words the militaristic hymn that Prussians sang as they marched into Paris.
Perhaps this was a form of reclamation, or maybe, it was just another tune that was well known and appropriated for revolutionary purposes, as were many others. In the United States, for instance, many IWW songs were adapted to the tune of familiar religious hymns.
In later years, Wacht Am Rhein was used by the Nazi party. Co-optation is more common than one might think: by the 1950's and 1960's, the Marseillaise was itself co-opted by right wing deGaullists and fascists in France -- at one point during the clashes outside the Sorbonne in Paris in May 1968, opposing sides sang dueling choruses of the Marseillaise and l'Internationale at each other, while l'Internationale itself was almost ironically kept as the official song of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union after 1943, while replaced with the Hymn of the Soviet Union as the national anthem.
Wacht Am Rhein is also, practically, a very difficult melody and also one that tends to conjure political emotions other than anarchist liberation; a famous scene in the movie Casablanca has German soldiers and officers patriotically singing Wacht Am Rhein drowned out by a chorus of French singing the Marseillaise. The 1897 Louise Michel version of the Chant Internationale, or Internationale Anarchiste, is therefore perhaps best left to historical reflection, rather than contemporary practice. Events of the 20th century have so thoroughly tainted many cultural signifiers with German nationalism and fascism that it will be centuries before they can be approached again, like so much cultural nuclear fallout.
Internationale Anarchiste, lyrics: 1897 by Louise Michel.
Sung to the tune of Wacht Am Rhein.
Debout les damnés de la terre !
Les despotes épouvantés
Sentant sous leurs pas un cratère,
Au passé se sont acculés.
Leur ligue folle et meurtrière
Voudrait à l'horizon vermeil
Eteindre l'ardente lumière
Que verse le nouveau soleil.
Refrain :
Debout, debout, les damnés de la terre!
Ceux qu'on écrase en les charniers humains,
Debout, debout, les forçats de misère!
Unissons-nous, Latins, Slaves, Germains.
Que la troisième République
Se prostitue au tsar pendeur;
Qu'une foule extralunatique
Adore l'exterminateur!
Puisqu'il faut que tout disparaisse,
Peu nous importe! C'est la fin,
Partout les peuples en détresse
S'éveillent se donnant la main,
Bons bourgeois que César vous garde,
César aux grands ou petits bras:
Pape, République batarde;
les tocsins sonnent votre glas
Rois de l'or hideux et féroces.
Les fiancés que vous tuez
Demain auront de rouges noces.
Tocsins, tocsins, sonnez, sonnez.
Les potentats veulent la guerre
Afin d'égorger leurs troupeaux :
Pour cimenter chaque frontière
Comme on consacrait les tombeaux.
Mais il vient le temps d'Anarchie
Où, dans l'immense apaisement,
Loups de France et de Sibérie,
Loups humains jeûneront de sang.
Incidentally, while looking up l'Almanach du Père Peinard and lyrics to many other songs either lost or forgotten, I came across Le Chant de l'Internationale, or Song of the International, dating from 1871. This is not the Pottier version and seems to either pre-date it, as an influence, or to follow or parallel it. It was found here in .rtf format.
Chant de l'Internationale
Fils du travail obscur, farouche,
Debout à la face du ciel !
Viens que ton coeur et que ta bouche
Proclament ton droit immortel.
Plus de parias, plus d'ilotes,
Regarde l'avenir prochain
Plus de tyrans, plus de despotes,
Devant le peuple souverain.
REFRAIN
Le drapeau de l'Internationale
Sur l'univers est déployé
C'est la révolution sociale,
C'est la révolution sociale,
Par le travail et la fraternité.
C'est la révolution sociale,
C'est la révolution sociale,
Par le travail et la fraternité.
Que veut dire ce mot : Patrie
Que veut dire ce mot : soldat,
La guerre n'est qu'une infamie,
La gloire un grand assassinat.
Avec l'enclume et la charrue
II faut combattre désormais :
Que l'univers entier se rue
Sous la bannière du progrès.
Le travail, c'est la loi commune,
Le devoir : aimer son prochain.
Que la misère ou la fortune
N'arment plus le bras d'un caïn !
Le hasard fait le prolétaire,
La richesse est un bien d'en-haut
Il faut citoyen sur la terre,
L'égalité pour seul niveau.
Religion, divine flamme,
Des mondes sublime flambeau,
Partout c'est l'ignorance infâme
Qui s'abrite sous ton drapeau ;
Tes ministres qu'on doit maudire,
Peuvent dérober la clarté,
Les peuples apprendront à lire
Au livre de la liberté.
Rois vous élevez des frontières
Séparant peuples et pays,
Et de tous les peuples, des frères,
Vous avez fait des ennemis ;
Ce n'est plus la bête de somme
Des tyrans subissant des lois
Le peuple avec les droits de l'homme
Va briser le sceptre des rois.
Laboureur, paysan, la terre
C'est ton outillage, ton pain ;
L'ouvrier des villes ton frère
Ne demande pas d'autre bien.
Le travail ne veut plus d'entrave
Plus de veau d'or, plus d'exploiteur,
Le Capital n'est qu'un esclave
Le vrai roi, c'est le travailleur.
Remarks :
1871
Lyrics : Paul Burani et Isch-Wall
Music : Antonin Louis
"Ne pas confondre avec l'Internationale de Pottier et Degeyter." (Not to be confused with l'Internationale of Pottier and Degeyter.)
"Selon une remarque des auteurs, on peut ne pas bisser les trois derniers vers du refrain." (According to the remarks of the authors, one cannot encore the last three lines of the refrain. -- It was often practice to repeat the refrain twice in a song; apparently, this refrain would repeat one and a half times instead.)
Sounds Like: Along with the Marseillaise, probably one of the most moving and recognizable anthems in world history.
Record Label: Unsigned