“Get up, crowd / Don’t look at the world collapsing…” Thus opens Barbara Pravi’s first book. The singer, revealed by her success at Eurovision, has just published “Get up”, at Julliard. A bilingual, Franco-Arabic poem, enriched with illustrations by his hand and which gave birth to a song. She explains to Le Figaro what art, writing and music mean to her.
LE FIGARO. – We know you as a singer, but this year you are publishing “Leve-toi”, your first book. For what?
Barbara PRAVI. – It is a somewhat special book, with its drawings and its translation. I’ve always wanted to write a novel and I hope I will. As a child, I wanted to be a writer before I wanted to be a singer. I had this text, I asked the publishing house Julliard if they wanted to accompany me on this project and they accepted. I wanted the text to be published as a manifesto. Originally, it was a text and a song – my song, of the same name, takes up the first lines of this poem. In my opinion, singing makes the words alive, it amplifies the words, it’s another way of reading them. In this book, too, I draw. I know absolutely nothing about pictorial art, but I have a science of color. Art is very intuitive to me, I don’t put up any barriers, it’s like a gush, an evidence.
How would you describe this book? Is it a poem? A song? A prayer?
It is all of these at once. When I started writing it, the war in Ukraine had just broken out and I imagine there was a resonance with me. But I basically had something on my heart since the Covid. The human relationship is falling apart, everything has become a war. And that’s how the text came to me very naturally, which is rather rare for me. Everyone can have their own opinion on this book, but for me, it’s a cry. A cry for freedom. This book is my ideal of humanity. More than a feminism, it is a humanism that I propose. Feminism is still compartmentalised, binary. There are differences between us and they are important. But I think that rather than opposing us, we must come together and ask ourselves what makes us human beings. How do we choose to be human? I think we live in a world that lacks humanity. Many people no longer have meaning in their daily lives. We have to find some, that’s what makes us lacking in humanity.
How did this desire to write come to you?
By a French teacher in Second. I wasn’t good at school, I didn’t understand essay outlines. At the end of a course, she came to see me, explaining to me that perhaps I did not function like the other students and she then offered to read certain books to enlighten me. I remember Bel-Ami de Maupassant and George Sand, whom I adored. It revealed me to myself.
We understand from reading this book that freedom is not something acquired but something that can be defended.
Absolutely. I am not the best placed to talk about freedom being myself a Parisian and a singer. I enjoy many freedoms, but right now in Iran, no woman could claim that. The fight for freedoms is everyday, but of course it differs depending on the country where you are. In Ukraine, in Iran, fundamental freedoms, such as going out in the street, dressing as one wishes or simply expressing oneself, are impossible, if not very complicated. Today, as a woman in France, you can serve your freedoms. We have a duty, it is to be aware of how lucky we are and to have a look at what is happening in the world. Singing is politics, writing is politics. This is how I view the art I make.
Can art save the world?
I don’t know if it should be saved. But art does us good, it saves us from the fear of death, the fear of suffering, the fear of oblivion. In this sense, yes, it is saving. The profession of artist is complementary to that of politics. As for me, I will never be able to do politics because I do not have the moral capacities. Politics gives a framework to a society, the artist goes into people’s homes, into people’s hearts. In my opinion, we should help children, as soon as they enter primary school, to find a taste: for flowers, colors, touch… We lack dreams, beauty, poetry. Learning to see, to look at the world is transmitted, but it still has to be taught.
