Jacques Brel (pictured) was a celebrated French chanteur with a lean, well-lived-in face, best known for the sad songs he wrote about people who were unfulfilled in love and life. He was a romantic figure, a drinker and a smoker, who died of lung cancer at the age of 49 and was buried in Polynesia within a few yards of Paul Gauguin's grave. The flavour of his work is well captured by the lyrics of one of his best-known songs, called "Amsterdam": "In the port of Amsterdam/ there are sailors who weep/ who weep without making tears/ who cry inside themselves". David Bowie, an English rock singer, liked the song well enough to record it.

Next week in Paris, Sotheby's is auctioning the manuscript of "Amsterdam". It is expected to be the most expensive lot--estimated at €50,000-70,000 ($79,500-112,000)--in a remarkably comprehensive sale of Brel's manuscripts, recordings, photographs and personal belongings, which include his pilots' licence, his wallet, and his pipe. Sotheby's refuses to identify the seller, but it is clearly an intimate of Brel's who believed that his reputation would last a lot longer than that of an ephemeral pop singer.

Sotheby's thinks so too. Frédérique Parent, the specialist involved, says that for once they do not know who the buyers will be, but she is hoping to interest institutions such as the Musée de la Musique in Paris's Parc de la Villette, maybe even the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. This is not an example of an auction house whipping up curiosity before an auction. The Brel sale is not directed entirely at his fans; the processes of popular music have become a subject for academic study.

Auction houses in London and New York are not strangers to this kind of sale, though very few popular performers are potent enough to support an auction dedicated to a single artist. Elton John has pulled it off however, not once but twice. This is to be the first sale of its kind in Paris, where manuscripts more often have been from literary legends, such as Marcel Proust, than from popular musicians, such as Jacques Brel. Ms Parent says "It's something new for us. A real happening."

Brel was Flemish, born in Brussels, and selections from the auction have been exhibited in Belgium and Holland. To drum up business, Sotheby's stayed open until midnight on its nuit blanche, held in Paris on October 4th. The fascination of the best of this material is not so much visual. The first 32 lots are handwritten manuscripts of Brel's lyrics, many of them scribbled in scuffed school notebooks. Reading them enables a student of his work to see how an idea develops. "You can see the story building, one word becoming ten. It's fascinating," says Miss Parent.

The notebooks are expected to fetch between €15,000 and €25,000, but there is expected to be plenty of memorabilia left over for the fans. Colourful posters from early performances at the Montmartre music hall "3 Baudets"--one reads "La réalité dépasse la fiction"--are estimated to go for €1,000-1,500. The poster for his first Carnegie Hall concert, which comes with photographs and telegrams--"Jamais a new york on a vu telle reception pour un artiste," one of them reads--is estimated at €1,200-1,500.

But when sentiment has a role in the saleroom, estimates are necessarily speculative, and there is no question about the power of this legacy. As Ms Parent puts it, "For my generation, our ideas of love were shaped by Brel."

The Jacques Brel auction will be held on October 8th at Sotheby's rooms on the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré.

Picture credit: Sotheby's

(The Art.view column appears every week on Economist.com.)