I’ve always wondered why English-speakers have such a hard time using the various verb forms when learning how to speak about past events in French. In my opinion, part of the explanation lies in a quirky aspect of French grammar, the existence of the passé simple that I call a zombie verb form.
If you’ve read any French literature, you’ve certainly come across the passé simple. It’s sometimes referred to as the literary past tense because it is used only in written French and particularly in works of fiction.
This is really intriguing when you consider that in English the equivalent verb form called the simple past is the number one verb form used when both talking and writing about the past.
What does the passé simple look like?
Here is the passé simple form of our four power verbs in the following layout:
Infinitive: je, tu, il/elle/on, nous, vous, ils/elles
Être: fus, fus, fut, fûmes, fûtes, furent
Avoir: eus, eus, eut, eûmes, eûtes, eurent
Faire: fis, fis, fit, fîmes, fîtes, firent
Aller: allai, allas, alla, allâmes, allâtes, allèrent
Here is the passé simple of some very common verbs:
Voir: vis, vis, vit, vîmes, vîtes, virent
Venir: vins, vins, vint, vînmes, vîntes, vinrent
Donner: donnai, donnas, donna, donnâmes, donnâtes, donnèrent
Écrire: écrivis, écrivis, écrivit, écrivîmes, écrivîtes, écrivèrent
Lire: lus, lus, lut, lûmes, lûtes, lurent
Devoir: dus, dus, dut, dûmes, dûtes, durent
Pretty intimidating stuff. And a nightmare to pronounce.
Let’s see how all this is used. Here is a typical passage in English using the simple past:
(1) I got up early this morning and left the house around 8 am. I took the bus to school. I dropped by the library, picked up two books and then met some friends. We spent the day studying together.
In French we would spontaneously use the passé composé to say or write:
(2) Je me suis levé/e tôt ce matin et j’ai quitté la maison vers 8 heures. J’ai pris le bus pour l’école. Je suis passé/e par la bibliothèque où j’ai emprunté deux livres. Ensuite j’ai retrouvé des amis. Nous avons passé la journée ensemble à étudier.
Here is the same passage written in the passé simple:
(3) Je me levai tôt ce matin et je quittai la maison vers 8 heures. Je pris le bus pour l’école. Je passai par la bibliothèque où j’empruntai deux livres. Ensuite je retrouvai des amis. Nous passâmes la journée ensemble à étudier.
As we can see, the French passé simple resembles the English simple past in that the verb form uses one word, i.e. no auxiliary verb is used. In fact, the French passé composé resembles the English verb form called the present perfect that uses the auxiliary verb “to have”. Using the present perfect in English we would say: I have gotten up, I have left, I have dropped by, etc.
This is where things get complicated for speakers of English learning French. English-speakers have a hard time getting their heads around the fact that the French passé composé is the equivalent of both the English simple past and the present perfect.
To make things even more complicated in the passé composé, we know that a small number of verbs use the auxiliary être instead of avoir. We also know that all pronominal or reflexive verbs use the auxiliary être.
The passé simple adds another layer of complexity to an already complicated system.
When is the passé simple used in modern French?
First of all, in contemporary spoken French, the passé simple is not used at all except for few special cases I’ll look at later. The only time you would have to speak the passé simple is when reading a written text aloud.
As for written French, I have shown in previous posts (1,2) that you can speak and write about past events using the passé composé, the présent, the imparfait de l’indicatif and the futur plus a couple of less common compound tenses. In fact there is absolutely no need to use the passé simple.
The passé simple in written fiction
The 19th century is often called the Golden Age of the French Novel. If you read any of the great authors of the 19th century such as Maupassant, Zola, Hugo, Stendhal and Verne you will observe that the passé simple is systematically used to describe actions or events in the past. Here is an excerpt from a famous Jules Verne novel published in 1873 :
Cela dit, Phileas Fogg se leva, prit son chapeau de la main gauche, le plaça sur sa tête avec un mouvement d’automate et disparut sans ajouter une parole. (Jules Verne, Le tour du monde en 80 jours, 1873)
Now let’s jump ahead to 1943 and look at a passage from one of the most famous works of French literature:
Il me fallut longtemps pour comprendre d’où il venait. Le petit prince, qui me posait beaucoup de questions, ne semblait jamais entendre les miennes. Ce sont des mots prononcés par hasard qui, peu à peu, m’ont tout révélé. Ainsi, quand il aperçut pour la première fois mon avion (je ne dessinerai pas mon avion, c’est un dessin beaucoup trop compliqué pour moi) il me demanda : (Antoine St-Exupéry, Le petit prince, 1943)
Finally, here is something very contemporary:
Le matériel était remisé dans un hangar fermé à double tour, surveillé par des soldats. La Touffe déverrouilla la porte et la fit glisser sur son rail. (Jean-Chistophe Grange, Congo Requiem, 2016)
Notice that all the examples here are all in the third person singular (il/elle/on). This is very typical of the literary use of the passé simple. Its primary use is to narrate specific actions that have taken place in the past. For this reason the forms with tu and vous are extremely rare.
I think the passé simple has a compactness and simplicity about it that goes well with the meaning of clearly delineated actions in the past.
It’s interesting to note that you could replace all of the instances of passé simple above with either a passé composé or a présent and the results would sound quite good to modern ears.
The passé simple is thus alive and well in modern French literature. With the passé composé and the imparfait de l’indicatif, the passé simple makes up the basic arsenal for describing things past.
The passé simple in current French non-fiction
In non-fiction written French, the passé simple is still around but it is certainly becoming rare. My observation is that the passé simple has all but disappeared from newspapers, advertising, magazines and websites. In my own areas of interest, history, linguistics and the social sciences, the passé simpleis in steep decline especially since the turn of this century.
A major shift seems to have taken place. The présent tense form, strangely enough, has basically replaced the passé simple. Here is an excerpt from the back cover blurb of a 2005 book on the music manuscripts of Mozart:
1756: un petit garçon naît à Salzbourg, qui va bouleverser la musique de tous les temps. Sous la houlette d’un père aussi sévère qu’attentionné, voyageur de l’Europe, Mozart visite l’Italie, la France, l’Angleterre, la Belgique, les Pays-Bas, l’Allemagne, l’Autriche, la Tchécoslavaquie. Sans cesse, il interprète, investit, et recrée la musique de son siècle. Sur son clavier, sous son archet, se déploie l’Europe des lumières dans ses élans, ses refus et ses certitudes. Vient le temps des sublimes folies, des génies encensés, des mécènes exigeants et comblés, des fraternités universelles. Mozart a trente-cinq ans lorsqu’il s’éteint en 1791 au plus haut de son art. (Gilles Cantagrel, Les plus beaux manuscrits de Mozart, 2005)
Compare this with an excerpt from a 1969 publication on the life of Beethoven:
La vie de Beethoven fut peu jalonnée d’événements extérieurs et ceux-ci ne le marquèrent guère; le charme de voyages lointains lui demeura inconnu. La résidence du Prince-Électeur et la ville impériale au bord du Danube furent les seuls paysages que le maître ait connus. (Joseph Schmidt-Görg. Beethoven, 1969)
The passé simple has become stuffy, old-fashioned, awkward and kind of archaic looking and sounding. This is why I’ve called it a zombie tense.
I would say that the written language has been playing catch-up with the spoken language. I also suspect that the Internet may have played a role in this because the Internet and the mobile phone platform have emphasized a mode of communication much closer to the spoken language.
Remnants of the passé simple in spoken French
Despite the nearly complete disappearance of the passé simple from spoken French, you might hear expressions around the form fut of the verb être or fit from the verb faire, as in:
Tel ne fut pas le cas (such was not the case),
Il fut un temps (there was once a time),
Ainsi fut-il (so it happened),
Et la lumière fut (and then there was light)
Mais rien n’y fit (It was all in vain)
I should emphasize that this is very sophisticated stuff that most people never use.
Of course, since the passé simple has a literary connotation it will often be used to make fun of pretentious language. Be careful!
Conclusion: Don’t bother with the passé simple
Given the possibilities of using a wide variety of other verb forms, there would seem to be no need to complicate the study of French verb conjugations with a tense that is so narrowly used today. I agree but I feel that some familiarity is necessary because it is so important in the history of French literature.
But the real takeaway here is that speakers of English must concentrate on the passé composé and its many complexities else because this tense can do everything that the English simple past and present perfect can do.