LOVE REGRETTING NOTHING...

EDITH PIAF AND MARCEL CERDAN

Edith Piaf with her lover, the boxer Marcel Cerdan, 1949.

           Less than five feet tall and weighing only ninety pounds, Edith Piaf never allowed her size,  ill-health or personal tragedy to curb her determination. Her songs project a sense of indomitable will. Stirred by the insistent pulse of the orchestra and the tremolo of her voice, a performance of her signature anthem Non, Je ne regrette Rien brought even the most stoic of audiences to its feet. “A voice rises up from deep within,” wrote Jean Cocteau, “a voice that inhabits her from head to toe, unfolding like a wave of warm black velvet to submerge us, piercing through us, getting right inside us. The illusion is complete. Edith Piaf, like an invisible nightingale on her branch, herself becomes invisible. There is just her gaze, her pale hands, her waxed forehead catching the light, and the voice that swells, mounts up, and gradually replaces her.”

           Boxer Marcel Cerdan, known as Le bombardier marocain/The Moroccan Bomber and L'homme aux mains d'argile/The Man With Hands of Clay, was a familiar figure around Paris as France recovered from four years of war. In 1949, he replaced young singer Yves Montand as Piaf’s companion, just as Montand had succeeded actor Paul Meurisse.

Cerdan towered over her and weighed twice as much. This was how she preferred her men. A childhood and adolescence marked by privation attracted her to brutes whom she could cosset and spoil in return for a sense of protection and safety. Her entourage had long since ceased referring to them by name, simply labeling the latest incumbent “Monsieur Piaf”. Each received the same inaugural gifts: a gold wrist watch, a set of diamond cuff links, shoes of alligator skin and a snugly tailored blue suit.

She loved Cerdan as she loved every “Monsieur Piaf”, in a sort of self-regarding delirium. “I throw myself into your arms that I adore,” she wrote him. “I belong to you, little adored one that I love. Hold me tight against your heart, prevent me from breathing and tell yourself that nothing in the world matters to me but you, I swear it to you on my voice, my life, my eyes.” 

           Both Piaf and Cerdan were headed for the United States in October 1949, she for a series of concerts, he to fight Jake LaMotta for the world title. He intended to cross the Atlantic by ship but she urged him to arrive sooner, so he took a plane. On 28th October it crashed while attempting to land on the archipelago of the Azores. Everyone was killed.

           A distraught Piaf insisted on performing the following night, announcing to the audience “Tonight I’m singing for Marcel Cerdan.”  She held it together until Hymne à l'amour. At the line “Dieu réunit, ceux qui s’aiment!”/”God reunites those who love one another,” she stopped singing, grabbed the curtain, and collapsed. She was carried off to tumultuous applause.

 Hymne à l’Amour  became that year’s biggest hit. Although it also achieved huge popularity in England, sung by Vera Lynn, the syrupy English lyrics with their references to skies falling and stars fading smothered the original’s immediacy and physicality, with its sense of desire and the flesh which, in Piaf’s piercing voice, said it all.

Tant qu'mon corps frémira sous tes mains…     So long as my body shivers under your hands…

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