Philistins

Song Meaning

The lyrics paint a stark picture of bourgeois complacency, contrasting the predictable, material desires of the "Philistins" with the unexpected emergence of their offspring as artists. The narrator directly addresses these "grocers" who are preoccupied with their wives and the progeny their "coarse appetites" will produce. This initial scene sets up a world of rigid expectations, where the future is envisioned as a carbon copy of the present, embodied by the image of a "shaved chin, round belly" destined for the notary profession.