The Years of Darkness 1939–1944

This chapter focuses on Francis Poulenc's military service during the Second World War, in which his creativity, in sympathy, became muted and would remain so for at least three years. It analyzes Louise Lévêque de Vilmorin's departure with her husband for his castle in Hungary that became Poulenc's emotional motivation behind Fiançailles pour rire. It analyzes Poulenc's first musical recognition of war in the song Bleuet and to a poem by Apollinaire that records the imagined thoughts of a squaddy who is to “go over the top.” The chapter analyzes Mélancolie as one of Poulenc's most touching piano pieces, which Wilfrid Mellers observed that it has a mood of resignation and fragility that is immanent in its continual modulations. It also describes how Poulenc tried to take Maurice Ravel's belief in making the different departments of the orchestra as far as possible self-sufficient into his score of Les Animaux modèles.