Guest on Friday in "Media culture" on Europe 1, singer Yves Duteil came to talk about his book "Paths of freedom", in which he mentions in particular the omerta within his family on Captain Dreyfus.
Yves Duteil is however his great-nephew.
"It's a very important imprint on my life which has long been a shadow," he says.
INTERVIEW
His song "
Take a child
" was voted song of the century by a survey in 1988. But it is in another title, "
Dreyfus
", that the singer Yves Duteil returned to what until then represented an omerta in his family: his link with Captain Dreyfus, as he explains in his
recently published
book "
Chemins de liberté
".
>> Find Philippe Vandel and Culture-Médias every day from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. on Europe 1 as well as in replay and podcast here
A family bond that has long remained in the shadows
In France, Captain Alfred Dreyfus remains particularly famous because of the affair that bears his name.
A case which was a major military and political crisis of the Third Republic.
"It's a very important imprint on my life which has long been a shadow", confides Yves Duteil, who is the grand-nephew of Captain Dreyfus, on Friday on Europe 1.
It is in his album "
Touché
" of 1997 that the singer had highlighted this heritage which "marks", in his words.
"One day, I decided that this shadow would pass in the light and that I will no longer be the bearer of this silence, but of something much brighter," he explains.
A song about "the heroism and incredible loyalty of Dreyfus"
Thanks to his song, Yves Duteil says he wanted to celebrate "the heroism and incredible loyalty of Dreyfus" but also "the fate of Zola".
In his letter "J
'accus ...!
" Published in 1898, the writer Emile Zola had proclaimed the innocence of Captain Dreyfus, wrongly accused of having transmitted documents to Germany.