A multi-faceted creator, novelist, essayist, art critic, polemicist and poet, the author of "L'Affiche rouge" inspired a host of singers, from Georges Brassens ("Il n'y a pas d'amour heureux") to Léo Ferré (an album of ten songs, including "L'Affiche rouge" and "Est-ce ainsi que les hommes vivent? "), André Claveau ("les Yeux d'Elsa", with music by Maurice Vander and Jean Ferrat), Hélène Martin ("Ainsi Prague", "Musée Grévin"), Jacques Douai ("Maintenant que la jeunesse"), Catherine Sauvage, Francesca Solleville ("Un homme passe sous la fenêtre et chante") and Jean Ferrat ("Que serais-je sans toi?", "Nous dormirons ensemble"). Aragon began his writing career in 1919, founding the magazine Littérature with André Breton. Involved with the Dadaist movement, he broke away in 1921 to found the Surrealist movement, before becoming "a poet in the service of revolution". His involvement with the Communist Party and his role in the French Resistance influenced his return to writing occasional poetry. It also gave him the opportunity to reveal himself as a great popular poet. At the Liberation, he was one of those who intervened to save the day for Maurice Chevalier, who was then under serious threat because of his artistic and ideological complacency towards the Collaboration..
Going beyond the old debate on the relationship between song and poetry, Aragon, presenting Ferré's album devoted to his poems, wrote: "To my mind, putting a poem into song is a superior form of poetic criticism It's true that Aragon's poems lend themselves particularly well to being set to song: they are based on a rigorous metrical structure, rich rhymes and a well-defined rhythm; above all, they contain simple, vigorous images, whose symbols, both clear and evocative, are expressed in striking formulas for the listener: "Nous étions faits pour être libres" ("We were made to be free"), "Que serais-je sans toi qui vins à ma rencontre" ("What would I be without you who came to meet me"), "Que cette heure oubliée au cadran d'une montre" ("That forgotten hour on a watch face")..
