Fabrizio De André
Le Passanti

Antonie Pol fought in the First World War, seeking in poetry an escape from the disaster that surrounded him. He soon fell into oblivion, along with his pages, until a man named George Brassens found one of his collections at a stall in Paris. He took it, leafed through it, and decided to make it his own, although he reworked it years later in the form of a song. Fate had it that, just when he picked up the guitar for this purpose, he decided to contact and track down Antonie Pol for a matter of rights, but the latter died just before their meeting. He thus transformed those writings into a song capable of being rendered in any language it is sung, which saw in George a masterful interpreter, portraying him in the '77 video at the doorway, strumming his instrument and singing masterfully, with a tone of voice particularly suited to what he is singing. Around him, friends, including actor Pierre Luoki, stand motionless, immersed in the singing and interpretation of the French master.

It was in 1974 that Fabrizio De André interpreted it in Italian, allowing himself some freedom of translation, making it his own impeccably, to the point of not regretting the French version. He recorded it in the album 'Canzoni', in excellent company, along with songs like 'La ballata dell'amore perduto', based on a motif by Telemann, 'Suzanne', a translation of the famous song from Leonard Cohen's debut album, 'Via della povertà', directly from Bob Dylan, but also 'La ballata dell'amore cieco', or the depiction of 'Città vecchia'.
The idea of the passersby was not Fabrizio's idea, nor was it Antonie Pol's. Probably the first interpretation was made by Charles Baudelaire, with his 'To a Passerby', but in common parlance the meaning of the 'passerby' has taken on ever different contours, in which I find greater comfort and pleasure in that of Faber. Life seen as a blank sheet, the passerby seen as a drop of ink. The passersby, those who have crossed our days, the absent lips, and those that extend over time, those we miss, those we would have liked to hold close to us, despite being too far away. And everyone has their passersby, you listen to them in music and reproduce them in your mind, and each passerby is different, none is like the previous one, they are all there, in those scarce 4 minutes, they are the women of our lives.

For the one thought of as love, who having crossed the road of your life, is reduced to a distant point, making you a slave to an unexpressed desire, now too far to be reached, and transformed into one of the many longings of your past. To the barely known one, who put in the background by life's obstacles, makes the regret greater for not having found for that smile at least a century more, now lost in the world of memories.

For the one almost to be imagined, barely glimpsed but made an ideal, nurtured and grown among our ideas, transformed into an unreal goddess. And you like to imagine her smile, that she did not give you, but that you still see before your eyes, imprinted now in memory, as beautiful as the moment you looked at her. And the memory becomes faint, you lose it and chase it, you search and find it, you feel it and look at it, for a few seconds, provoking that bitter happiness that you so like and so hate.

For the travel companion, her eyes the most beautiful landscape, who sweetens the path with her presence, whom you look at again like the first time. And you are the only one to understand her, you don't need to say words, you only need a gesture, just a touch of the hand to evoke in you that sense of eternity that you so missed, which you have sought in vain in those absent lips, and that now you have there, before you.

But if life stops helping you, like in a refuge your thought falls on those who have left us, on missed opportunities, on those indelible regrets for those moments when you did not dare more, for those moments in which even a small gesture would have changed your life. For the passerby, the one who is there but is not seen, who gives strength to those who, like me, couldn't do without them.