La belle saison

Antiphrastic title – title contradicts the content of the poem

Prévert often uses this technique to capture his readers’attention

Pourquoi a-t-il écrit la date avec des majuscules ?

To show its importance.

Pourquoi a-t-il choisi cette date ?

It’s in the summer – relevant to the title but it is of religious significance to, especially in a Catholic
country. Assumption Day as important as Christmas and Easter. Bank holiday in France when
people enjoy time together with their family and when religious people celebrate Mary. Yet the
young girl is all alone, abandoned, cold and hungry. No one is there to help her, not even God.
Prévert gives us an insight into human suffering and highlights the absence of God on this very
religious day. It is his way of criticising religion which he sees as being so far away from men’s reality
of life.

Pourquoi n’y a-t-il pas de verbes dans le poème ?

Prévert art is often visual and some of his poems resemble paintings or photographs. No verbs
means no action. The scene depicted in the poem is fixed, immortalised in the moment, like a
picture. This Parisian scene expresses and fixes in our memory the distress of the world, the harsh
reality of life.

Le style cinématographique

Prévert worked for the cinema industry and you could read some of his poems like short films.

At the beginning of the story, the focus (eye / camera) is on the young girl and progressively moves
away from her. The first 2 verses give us personal and physical information about the girl but the
kind of information that only her could have passed on to us. We are feeling what she is feeling.
The next 2 verses are still centred on the girl but this time the information is more external. This
time we see the girl through the eyes of any passer-by could have looked at her, guessed her age
and seen that she is standing there, not moving. Finally, the last 2 verses are moving further away
from the girl. We are now looking at the whole square and not just at the girl. We finish with a time
and date which puts even more distance between us and the individual.

This is very much like a scene in a movie where the camera is zooming out.

Pourquoi n’y a-t-il pas de ponctuation dans le poème ?

Prévert’s style is very modern. He uses free verse, does not follow any strict and formal order and
there is often no or very little punctuation. It is spoken poetry. Prévert is leaving it to us to decide
where to pause. By the absence of punctuation, the reader is able to react in a personal way. We
can accelerate or slow down according to our own desire. We feel much more connected to what
we are reading. In this particular poem, the absence of punctuation also helps to mirror the
movement of the camera zooming out.