The Partisan

1943 song by Anna Marly and Emmanuel d'Astier, popularised by Leonard Cohen in 1969

"The Partisan" is an anti fascist anthem about the French Resistance in World War II. The song was composed in 1943 by Russian born Anna Marly (1917–2006), with lyrics by French Resistance leader Emmanuel d'Astier de La Vigerie (1900–1969), and originally titled "La Complainte du partisan" (English: "The lament of the partisan"). Marly performed it and other songs on the BBC's French service, through which she and her songs were an inspiration to the Resistance. A number of French artists have recorded and released versions of the song since, but it is better recognised globally in its significantly, both musically and in the meaning of its lyrics, different English adaptation by Hy Zaret (1907–2007), best known as the lyricist of "Unchained Melody". Canadian singer songwriter Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) recorded his version, using Zaret's adaptation, and released it on his 1969 album Songs from a Room, and as a 7 inch single in Europe. Cohen's version re popularised the song and is responsible for the common misconception that the song was written by Cohen. It has inspired many other artists to perform, record and release versions of the song, including American Joan Baez (born 1941), on her 1972 album Come from the Shadows, and with the title "Song of the French Partisan", Canadian Buffy Sainte Marie (born c. (circa) 1941) and Israeli Esther Ofarim (born 1941).

Anna Marly was born in Petrograd on October 30, 1917, and after her father was murdered by the Bolsheviks, she escaped with her mother and sister to a Russian colony in Menton, south eastern France. Her artistic talents were encouraged from an early age; she was taught guitar by Sergei Prokofiev, and by age sixteen, was dancing in the Ballets Russes in Paris. Becoming refugees upon the outbreak of World War II, her Dutch aristocrat husband and she travelled to London, arriving in 1941. Emmanuel d'Astier de La Vigerie was born in Paris on January 6, 1900, and after studying at the private high school Sainte Geneviève in Versailles, he joined the École Navale (the French naval academy, in charge of the education of the officers of the French Navy) in 1919. Resigning the navy in 1931, d'Astier began a career in journalism, writing for Marianne and VU. With the outbreak of World War II in 1939, he was mobilised to work at the centre de renseignements maritimes de Lorient (English: maritime information center of Lorient) in north western France, until the Fall of France in 1940. Refusing the armistice with Germany, he co founded the Resistance movement La Dernière Colonne (English: the Last Column), publishing counter propaganda against cooperation with Germany, and worked as an editor of the newspaper La Montagne. After the Last Column was decimated by arrests in 1941, he went into hiding under the pseudonym Bernard. By 1943, after meetings in London with Charles de Gaulle, and in Washington with the United States' President Roosevelt, to secure the formation and recognition of the Free French Forces, he again visited London as the Commissioner for Political Affairs of le Directoire des Mouvements unis de Résistance (English: the Directory of United Resistance Movements). Jonathan H. King wrote, of d'Astier, in his article "Emmanuel d'Astier and the Nature of the French Resistance" for the Journal of Contemporary History:
Few men were at the centre of the Resistance, for the reason that its centre could rarely be defined and was rarely stable. Even fewer would have the necessary literary and verbal self consciousness to achieve the goals [of subjectively documenting historical reality]. One who was at the centre and who did have this self consciousness was Emmanuel d'Astier. and that, in his efforts to organise the Resistance, in his own words, d'Astier was seeking the strength of "popular forces, those forces which alone can change our dreams into reality, adventure into history, aesthetics into politics". It was in London, in 1943, while Marly ran a hostel for French exiles, that she wrote the anti fascist anthem "La Complainte du partisan", with lyrics by d'Astier, going on to perform it and her other songs on Radio Londres (English: Radio London), the French Resistance radio operated by the Free French Forces, through the British Broadcasting Corporation. It was at this time that she also wrote "The March of the Partisans", with English lyrics by the Russian ambassador's daughter, Louba Krassine. The French exiles, Joseph Kessel and Maurice Druon, also resident in London, translated it into French for play on Radio Londres and it became "Le Chant des Partisans" (English: "Song of the Partisans"), an unofficial French anthem towards the end of the war. Marly's songs, singing and whistling on Radio Londres, were an inspiration to the French Resistance and earned her the credit "troubadour of the Resistance" from General de Gaulle, leader of the French Free Forces. D'Astier was to become a Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur (English: Knight of the Legion of Honour), Compagnon de la Libération (English: Companion of the Liberation) and awarded the Croix de Guerre 1939–1945. In Paris, 1945, Raoul Breton published the "La Complainte du partisan" sheet music with lyrics by d'Astier credited to Bernard, his Resistance code name.

While living at a rented farm in Franklin, Tennessee, Leonard Cohen worked on his second album Songs from a Room with Bob Johnston, its producer. In the candlelit Columbia Studio A on Music Row, Nashville, Johnston created a relaxed atmosphere for, what Mike Evans, in his book Leonard Cohen: An Illustrated Record, calls "suitable, and non intrusive, backing" by the assembled session musicians: Charlie Daniels on bass, fiddle and guitar, Ron Cornelius on guitars, Bubba Fowler on banjo, bass, fiddle and guitar, and Johnston himself playing keyboards. Ten songs were recorded in one eight hour session, half of which ended up on the album. The recording of "The Partisan" utilized only a classical guitar, double bass, and accordion along with vocals by Cohen and female voices. Bottà states, of Cohen's recording of Zaret's adaptation, that "the melody and chord structure is considerably different from the original" by Marly. Both writing for the Guardian, Adam Sweeting, in Cohen's obituary, and Dorian Lynskey, in his music blog article, refer to Songs from a Room as being bleak. Sweeting states that it is "another powerful but bleak collection", while Lynskey calls it "sparser and bleaker than the debut", Songs of Leonard Cohen. Cohen first learned "La Complainte du partisan" from The People's Songbook as a fifteen year old boy at summer camp in 1950. Using Zaret's predominantly English adaptation to record the song, with the title "The Partisan", left Cohen dissatisfied, and he suggested to Johnston that French voices were needed on the track. Johnston reportedly arranged to fly with Cohen to Paris, for "authenticity" according to Maurice Ratcliff, to record a trio of female singers and an accordion player, whose work was overdubbed on to the track. The song fades into an intro, followed by nine verses and an outro that fades out; the first five verses are sung from Zaret's English, followed by verses six, seven and eight being sung in French, and the final verse nine being a repeat of the English verse five. In May 1969, CBS released the album track, "The Partisan", in Europe as a 7 inch single with, in the initial format, "Bird on the Wire", and in a later format, "Suzanne" on the B side. "The Partisan" was to be Cohen's first commercial recording of a song he did not write; writing about Cohen's cover versions of other's songs, in his article for Pitchfork, published soon after Cohen's death, Marc Hogan refers to Cohen's "The Partisan" as a "wonderfully affecting haunting version", and Josh Jones, writing for Open Culture, describes it as having a "folk melody and melancholy lyricism", with what Ratcliff calls a "plodding bass line underpinning the simply strummed guitar and an occasional accordion" and "a rare excursion into political territory". Tim Nelson, in his BBC review of Cohen's albums, also refers to the song's "biting political commentary".

Alex Young writes that "[Cohen] is often incorrectly credited as the composer of the [original] song – although he is certainly responsible for its survival", Douglas Martin states that The Partisan' gained popularity" in the United States thanks to Cohen's recording, and Josh Jones writes that the song "[has] become so closely associated with Cohen that it has often been credited to him", with Cohen reportedly remarking, "I kind of re introduced ['The Partisan'] into the world of popular music. I feel I wrote it, but I actually didn't" (bracketed content in source). Hogan writes that Cohen's version "became one of his signature songs, leading to renditions by Joan Baez, Buffy Sainte Marie, Electrelane, First Aid Kit, and many others." Evans writes about a Polish translation of Cohen's—Zaret's—song being adopted as an unofficial anthem of the Solidarity movement for democracy in the detention camps of communist Poland, one of the countries in which Cohen performed while on the Various Positions Tour in 1985, supporting his album that spawned "Hallelujah", Various Positions.

Luke Reilly, reporting for an article in IGN about the creation of Australian composer Mick Gordon's version of "The Partisan" for the closing credits of the 2015 video game Wolfenstein: The Old Blood, a game in a series depicting the events of a fictionalised World War II, refers to Cohen's "The Partisan" as being "perhaps" the most famous, and reports that the audio director on Wolfenstein, Nicholas Raynor, also called Cohen's version "a famous one"; according to Gordon, it was Raynor's idea to do a cover for the game. The Australian singer songwriter Tex Perkins was Gordon's first choice to sing his version. Reilly says "the song itself is poignant and heartrending, yet incredibly stirring and motivational. A song that simultaneously mourns what's been lost and steels listeners for a fight to come" and that Gordon and Perkin's version "begins with a softly haunting acoustic intro before escalating to stomping blasts of distorted guitar and heaving drumming". Recording their 2005 album Axes live in the studio, English group Electrelane included a version of "The Partisan" on the release. Andy Gill, reviewing the album for the Independent, described their style as "a sort of cross between Krautrock, klezmer and free jazz that thrives on the enthusiasm of performance", and that their version is "still recognisable despite the churning thrash they give it". Canadian group Po' Girl included a version on their 2007 album, Home to You, which Sue Keogh described, in her review for the BBC, as an "acoustic mix of guitars, banjos and violin, plus a couple of moments of clarinet and trumpet or wry comments from performance poet CV Avery to keep you on your toes", having a "gentle acoustic sound" with a "bright and breezy yet intimate and charming atmosphere". David Jeffries called the album a "layered, insightful, and achingly poignant triumph" in his review for AllMusic. Betty Clarke, for the Guardian, reviewed a live show at the Village Underground, London by American group Other Lives in 2012, where they performed a cover of "The Partisan". Clarke says the band create "indie pop with the scope, precision and polish of Fleetwood Mac's Rumours" (emphasis added), and that their performance of "The Partisan" "encompass[ed] all the elements of Other Lives' sound". Versions of "The Partisan" have been performed, recorded and released by many other artists, with none being so widely referenced as that by Joan Baez in 1972, on her album Come from the Shadows, the name of which is derived from Zaret's English lyrics.

In 1970, Canadian singer songwriter Buffy Sainte Marie provided the title song for the film Soldier Blue, first released as a 7 inch single in France in 1970 by Vanguard Records with the title "Soldat Bleu", and elsewhere in 1971 by RCA Victor as "Soldier Blue", all releases featuring "Song of the French Partisan", the title as published by Zaret, a "folk tune she learned from Leonard Cohen" according to Andrea Warner in her book, Buffy Sainte Marie: The Authorized Biography, on the B side. Both songs were included on her 1971 album She Used to Wanna Be a Ballerina. The RCA release of "Soldier Blue" was a top 10 hit in the United Kingdom in 1971, spending eighteen weeks on the singles chart, four in the top 10, two at number seven. Another version to be produced by Bob Johnston was recorded by Israeli singer Esther Ofarim, who had previously taken second place for Switzerland in the 1963 Eurovision Song Contest and had, with her then husband Abi Ofarim, a British number one hit with the novelty song "Cinderella Rockefella" in 1968. She released the cover on her eponymous 1972 album Esther Ofarim; in his review for AllMusic, Richie Unterberger calls Ofarim's recording of the song one of the highlights, awarding the album three of a possible five stars.