Paul BLANCHET

Paul BLANCHET, dit Le Sauvage. (St Rémy de Provence 1865 – St Rémy de Provence 1947).

Paul Blanchet, known as le Sauvage, lived in Maussane les Alpilles. He was an insurgent poet who returned transformed from his colonial experience in Africa.

A singer, gardener, sundial maker and film actor without a hat or any other hierarchical sign, he sang odes to spiders in wild Provençal, thundered away on his bicycle with 35 bells, denounced the cult of progress, caused a sensation at Carnival, invented the word anthropomule, quoted Flammarion’s L’Astronomie populaire (Popular Astronomy), composed frescoes with his tax forms, taught children to love nettles and signed his business cards: Chevalier d’aucun Mérite, même pas d’industrie.

Questioned by the gendarmerie for not having a horn, Paul went round all the shepherds and brought back bells that he fixed to the front of his bike. From then on, his bike was instantly recognisable, heard long before it was seen. Bike, texts and portraits on display at the Musée des Alpilles in St Rémy de Pce.

Thanks to the commune of Saint-Remy de Provence.

The Musée des Alpilles in Saint Rémy de Provence honours this legendary figure, whose eccentricities barely mask the seriousness of a man who, through the colonial experience and in the face of political oppression, wrote a piece of poetic and fraternal defiance: his life!

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