Song of the most ascerbic social criticism from his fifth album recorded in1961, Les Singes indicts civilization for the ruin of human life. Starting with a loss of natural freedom, proceeding through religious intolerance and persecution, the corruption and commercialization of physical love, the perversion of the reason by the power of the state, it all ends up instruments of torture and murderous weapons of war on a massive scale, making this planet of the apes not a very nice place to live in. Around that time (early '60's) people were still thinking Freudian which recalls a book named"Civilization and its Discontents" which echoed with some of the same ideas. Brel eventually left civilization to live in the wilds of the Marquesas islands, proving he practiced what he preached as well as left us this great, and unfortunately timeless song of protest. Thanks once again to philipchek of YouTube and Paris for his help with this translation.