Louis XIII and Napoleon Bonaparte must be turning in their graves. The Académie Française, France’s oldest and grandest cultural institution, has just elected to its midst a writer of pop lyrics.

Jean-Loup Dabadie, 69, who has penned hits for two generations of singers as well as successful screenplays, is the first saltimbanque (popular entertainer) to join the hallowed guardians of the French language and soul. For four centuries only literary stars and distinguished elders of the Establishment have been elevated to the status of “immortal”, as the 40 members are known.

Decades ago the Académie rejected Charles Trenet, the top crooner of the Second World War era. Four years ago die-hards made a vain attempt to block the election of Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, the former President, on the ground that he had produced only one second-rate novel.

In a sign of changing times, there has been little protest over the arrival of the man who turned out hits for Michel Polnareff and Julien Clerc, 1960s popsters who are still going, and the soulful balladeer Serge Reggiani. Dabadie was responsible for Polnareff’s smash On ira tous au Paradis (We’ll All Go to Heaven), and his L’Italien was the late Reggiani’s signature song.

The illustrious Académie, founded in 1635 by Cardinal Richelieu, Louis XIII’s regent, is living through rough times. Seven members have died in two years and the surviving immortals, whose average age is 79, have rejected a string of literary contenders as unworthy. Six of the numbered chairs remain empty and there are not enough volunteers to attend the Thursday meetings to edit the dictionary. Work on the latest one began in 1935 and they have reached the letter R. The Second World War is blamed for the slow pace.

In February the immortals, who wear green and gold ceremonial uniforms with swords, refused Michael Edwards, 69, a university professor and poet. He would have become the first Briton and native English speaker to join.

Hélène Carrère d’Encausse, 79, an historian who is the Perpetual Secretary — head — of the academy, welcomed Dabadie as worthy. He hailed from France’s great tradition of boulevard culture, she said, adding: “His election shows a desire to move with the times.”

However, Ms Carrère d’Encausse regrets that feuding among writers has thinned the ranks of the Académie in recent years. More academics, politicians, doctors and scientists than novelists now sit under the Académie’s 17th-century gold dome on the Left Bank. The writers keep rejecting candidates from their trade, as they did in the past with some greats, such as Emile Zola.

Sniffing at the Académie is fashionable among the writers who made their names in the 1960s. Philippe Sollers, one of the biggest current names to decline membership, said: “Membership is now reserved only for the mediocre; those who will leave no trace behind.”

Ms Carrère d’Encausse, who is one of only five women to have been anointed, wants to rejuvenate and feminise the august body. Academicians were not always so old. Victor Hugo was elected at the age of 39, and young men were appointed in the days when Napoleon relaunched the royal institution, adding his much-loved bicorn hat to its uniform.

However, modern life expectancy is a problem. “If we elect someone in their 40s, they risk spending 60 to 70 years at the Académie. Is that healthy?” Ms Carrère d’Encausse asked in L’Express magazine. The need to get along for decades in such a small club means that much consideration is given to candidates’ conviviality. “We look for people who are good company,” she said.

Jean-Marie Rouart, another novelist immortal, recalled that the Académie had always been a club of France’s greatest and best from all professions rather than a literary body. Dabadie, a debonair former journalist, fits the bill as excellent company. His wit is well known to the French from his screenplay for Un éléphant ça trompe énormément (a pun meaning an elephant is very deceiving or an elephant trumpets a lot) one of the most popular comedies of the 1970s. Few remember, but he also published a novel — at the age of 19.

CHANGING TIMES

On ira tous au paradis, mêm'moi

Ou'on soit béni ou qu'on soit maudit, on ira

Avec les saints et les assassins

Les femmes du monde et puis les putains

On ira tous au paradis

We're all going to heaven, even me

Whether cursed or blessed, we're going

With the saints and the assassins

Women of the world and then the whores

We're all going to heaven

Jean-Loup Dabadie, On ira tous au Paradis (1972)

Peut-être le récit d'un amour si sauvage

Vous fait, en m'écoutant, rougir de votre ouvrage.

D'un coeur qui s'offre à vous quel farouch entretien!

Quel étrange captif pour si beau lien!

Mais l'offrande à vos yeux en doit être plus chère.

Songez que je vous parle une langue étrangere;

Et ne rejetez pas des voeux mal exprimés,

Qu'Hippolyte sans vous n'aurait jamais formés.

Hearing this tale

Of passion so uncouth, you blush perchance

At your own handiwork. With what wild words

I offer you my heart, strange captive held

By silken jess! But dearer in your eyes

Should be the offering, that this language comes

Strange to my lips; reject not vows express'd

So ill, which but for you had ne'er been form'd

Racine, Phèdre (1677; trans. Robert Bruce Boswell)

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