No Regrets - Carolyn Burke [143]
16 “I suffered”: EP quoted in Noli, Edith, p. 204.
17 “I was happy”: Dumont interview with the author, June 28, 2008.
18 “They believe in reincarnation”: EP quoted in Noli, Edith, pp. 213–14.
19 “She goes from exaggerated”: Simone Margantin quoted in Noli, ibid., pp. 204–5.
20 “My dear”: EP quoted in Bonel and Bonel, p. 320.
21 rival accounts of her death: Danielle Bonel’s version of Piaf’s last days, given in Bonini, pp. 530–33, contradicts Margantin’s account, as quoted in Noli, Piaf, pp. 217–34; it emphasizes the role of the Bonels and devalues the role of the Noli-Vassal-Margantin clan. I have used elements from both when they seem compatible but have preferred Noli, as a source closer in time to the events.
22 “Edith Piaf burned herself”: Jean Cocteau quoted in Le Figaro, Oct. 12, 1963, p. 54.
23 “This tragedy”: Bonel and Bonel, p. 324.
24 “a public life”: L’Osservatore Romano quoted in Duclos and Martin, p. 449.
25 “A type of French song”: Jacques Enoch quoted in ibid., p. 450.
26 “She had a burial”: Quotations in this paragraph are from Noli, Edith, pp. 236, 239.
27 “The final curtain”: “Edith Piaf: Cette Fois le rideau est tombé,” Paris Match, Oct. 19, 1963, pp. 48, 55.
28 “Her Voice Will Never Die”: “Sa Voix ne mourra pas,” Paris Match, Oct. 26, 1963, pp. 51, 53.
29 “double loss”: Henry Giniger, “Double Loss to France,” New York Times, Oct. 12, 1963, p. 45.
30 “last confession”: EP letter published in France Dimanche, no. 896, Oct. 24, 1963. Piaf anticipated the language of this (apocryphal?) confession when dictating Ma vie: “What I would like is for those who have read my confession, who have heard everything, to say, as it was said of Mary Magdalene, ‘Her many sins will be forgiven, for she loved greatly’ ” (p. 9).
31 “that freed her”: Aznavour quoted in preface to Noli, Piaf secrète, p, 11.
CODA
1 “There could be no better”: Raymond de Becker, in Arts, June 1964, quoted in Bonini, p. 559.
2 “I wish Edith’s memory”: Sarapo to Le Parisien libéré [1970], quoted in ibid., pp. 572–73.
3 “It wasn’t Cotillard”: André Schoeller quoted in ibid., p. 551.
4 “Piaf has been our lucky star”: Nathalie Lhermitte quoted in “Piaf est un porte-bonheur,” L’Union, Nov. 27, 2009.
5 “Edith”—a moody ballad: “Elle hante un curieux music-hall / Les feuilles des arbres la bissent / … / Sais-tu comment font les artistes / Pour ne pas rendre la mort plus triste / Qu’un ‘au revoir’ … / … / Des millions d’amants anonymes / Viennent y planter leur bouquet / C’est tout au fond du Père-Lachaise / Dans la section quatre-vingt-seize / Qu’elle a trouvé son dernier nid / Madame Lamboukas Edith / Dite ‘Piaf’ …” Leprest changed the actual section number of Piaf’s grave, quatre-vingt-dix-sept (ninety-seven), to quatre-vingt-seize (ninety-six) to rhyme with “Père-Lachaise”—an invocation of poetic license that would have met with Piaf’s approval.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
A great many books have been written about Edith Piaf, most of them in French. To grasp her sense of her life, I began by reading everything that Piaf wrote—her correspondence, her song lyrics, and her memoirs, both dictated toward the end of her life: Au bal de la chance, published during her lifetime, and Ma vie, published after her death. Because Piaf had a storyteller’s feel for the presentation of facts, it was necessary to compare these versions of her life (which sometimes contradict each other) with other sources, including her unpublished correspondence, especially the little-known letters to Jacques Bourgeat, her mentor, held at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.
In the decades following Piaf’s death, dozens of memoirs by contemporaries began to appear. The best known, and the most lurid, is a special case: Piaf, by Simone Berteaut, her sidekick during her years as a street singer in Paris. Though picturesque, Berteaut’s account must be used with caution. It sensationalizes the dark side of Piaf’s life, depicting significant scenes as if Berteaut had witnessed them although she was not present, claiming knowledge that she could not have possessed,