And, indeed, I will ask on my own account here, an idle question: which is better—cheap happiness or exalted sufferings? Well, which is better?---Fyodor Dostoevsky ---Notes from Underground Fyodor Dostoevsky ---Notes from Underground Even now, so many years later, all this is somehow a very evil memory. I have many evil memories now, but ... hadn’t I better end my “Notes” here? I believe I made a mistake in beginning to write them, anyway I have felt ashamed all the time I’ve been writing this story; so it’s hardly literature so much as a corrective punishment. Why, to tell long stories, showing how I have spoiled my life through morally rotting in my corner, through lack of fitting environment, through divorce from real life, and rankling spite in my underground world, would certainly not be interesting; a novel needs a hero, and all the traits for an anti-hero are expressly gathered together here, and what matters most, it all produces an unpleasant impression, for we are...
Hope
To be human is to be a miracle of evolution conscious of its own miraculousness — a consciousness beautiful and bittersweet, for we have paid for it with a parallel awareness not only of our fundamental improbability but of our staggering fragility, of how physiologically precarious our survival is and how psychologically vulnerable our sanity. To make that awareness bearable, we have evolved a singular faculty that might just be the crowning miracle of our consciousness: hope.--
Erich Fromm
Noir Désir was a seminal French alternative rock band formed in Bordeaux in 1980. Known for their powerful, politically charged lyrics, post-punk energy, and poetic sensibility, they became one of the most influential and commercially successful rock acts in French music history.
Key Members
Bertrand Cantat– Lead vocals, rhythm guitar
Serge Teyssot-Gay– Lead guitar, backing vocals
Denis Barthe – Drums, backing vocals
Frédéric Vidalenc (1980–1996) / Jean-Paul Roy (1996–2010) – Bass
Musical Style & Legacy
Drawing inspiration from Anglo-American post-punk, garage rock, and classic literature, Noir Désir bridged the gap between underground alternative grit and mainstream stadium appeal. Frontman Bertrand Cantat's intense, charismatic stage presence and husky vocal delivery became a defining signature of the band.
Over a career spanning three decades, they released six core studio albums that charted the evolution of French rock:
Où veux-tu qu'je r'garde ?(1987)
Veuillez rendre l'âme (à qui elle appartient) (1989) — featuring their breakout hit "Aux sombres héros de l'amer"
Du ciment sous les plaines (1991)
Tostaky (1992) — a critically acclaimed, harder alternative-rock record
666.667 Club (1996) — featuring hits like "Un jour en France" and "À ton étoile"
Des visages, des figures (2001) — their final, highly polished masterpiece which included the iconic, melancholic smash hit "Le vent nous portera"
Dissolution
The band's trajectory came to an abrupt halt in 2003 when frontman Bertrand Cantat was arrested and subsequently convicted for the manslaughter of his partner, actress Marie Trintignant, in Vilnius, Lithuania.Cantat was sentenced to prison and was later released on parole in 2007.
Though brief attempts at a reunion were floated following Cantat's release, internal tensions led guitarist Serge Teyssot-Gay to officially quit the group in November 2010, prompting the definitive breakup of Noir Désir.
