Jean-Baptiste Clément wrote more than two hundred songs and lived by his pen, between cabarets and opposition newspapers. Le Temps des cerises dates from 1866, five years before the Commune: it was only a song of love and of the season, and events gave it its second meaning. He later dedicated it to an ambulance nurse killed on a barricade, on 28 May 1871.
The story
Jean-Baptiste Clément was born at Boulogne-sur-Seine on 31 May 1836. A songwriter and journalist, he wrote more than two hundred songs and lived by his pen in the cabarets and the opposition press of the Second Empire.
He wrote “Le Temps des cerises” in 1866, five years before the Commune: it is a love song and a spring song first. Events gave it its other meaning.
Elected to the Paris Commune in 1871, he fought on the barricades through Bloody Week and got across to England. He would later dedicate the song to Louise, a nurse he met on a barricade in the rue Fontaine-au-Roi on 28 May 1871, and who was killed there.
Amnestied, he came home to Paris in 1880 and carried on as a socialist organiser in the countryside and the outer districts, without ever leaving the song behind.
He died in Paris on 26 February 1903; more than four thousand people followed the coffin. He lies in Division 76, the Division of the Communards' Wall — and his song is now the anthem of the Commune.
The grave
A stele adorned with a coloured ceramic bas-relief — a material rare in Père-Lachaise, whose maker is not known. The inscription is brief to the point of being a choice: “J. B. Clément, 1836-1903. Author of ‘Le temps des cerises’”. Two hundred other songs, a seat in the Commune, exile and twenty years of socialist activism fit into that single mention. The grave is a few steps from the Communards' Wall, in the same Division 76: of all the Communards in the cemetery, he is the one whose location says the most.
On site, do not miss
The coloured ceramic bas-relief, rare in the cemetery, and the second line of the inscription: “author of Le Temps des cerises”.
Visitors' questions
Where is Jean-Baptiste Clément's grave?
In Division 76, Avenue Circulaire, second row, a few steps from the Communards' Wall. The stele bears a bas-relief in coloured ceramic, rare at Père-Lachaise, and the inscription mentions “Le Temps des cerises”.
The Communards' WallTo whom is “Le Temps des cerises” dedicated?
To Louise, a volunteer nurse whom Clément had met on 28 May 1871 on a barricade in the Rue Fontaine-au-Roi, and who was killed there. The song had been written five years earlier, in 1866, as a love song.
Charles AmourouxWhat was his role in the Commune?
Elected to the Paris Commune in 1871, he fought on the barricades during Bloody Week and then went into exile in England. Back after the amnesty of 1880, he carried on his work as a socialist propagandist until his death.
Auguste BlanquiWhat is engraved on his grave?
Two lines only: “J. B. Clément, 1836-1903” and “auteur du Temps des cerises” — author of Le Temps des cerises. Two hundred other songs, a seat in the Commune, exile and twenty years of socialist activism go unmentioned.
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