talktooloose (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
talktooloose) wrote2003-09-24 10:58 am
talktooloose) wrote2003-09-24 10:58 am
C'est déjà moi qui suis en retard
One way I have of diminishing the stress of one project is to distract myself with another. I'm beginning to translate my next Jacques Brel song. This time it's "J'arrive" which I mistook for a love song and turns out to be about death again.
Fernand was a bitch because it is really long and has a complex rhyme scheme which I was determined to adhere to. J'arrive has different problems. Number one, I'm not exactly sure what the fuck it's saying, especially the first verse:
De chrysanthèmes en chrysanthèmes
Nos amitiés sont en partance
De chrysanthèmes en chrysanthèmes
La mort potence nos dulcinées
De chrysanthèmes en chrysanthèmes
Les autres fleurs font ce qu'elles peuvent
De chrysanthèmes en chrysanthèmes
Les hommes pleurent les femmes pleuvent
Okay, chrysanthemum is a funeral flower. But whose friendship? They're just embarking? To where? At a funeral? Death shores up (gives strength to -- also means "gallows") our symbolic woman of romantic love? Do the women "pleuvent" where the men "pleurent" because they're just more into the whole grief thing or just because it rhymes?
The song gets easier after that, but I need that context to understand the whole thing.
Next problem. The chorus builds up over and over again to a dramatic: "J'arrive!" which means "I'm coming!" It is an eighth pickup and a strong downbeat answered by martial trumpets. ba-DA! How the hell am I going to translate that? It's the key to the whole song. It can't be "I'm coming!" which is awkward and stressed oddly. It can't be "I come!" which is pretentious and misses the idea that he is being called and is hesitating, like being called to dinner before you've finished a round of a PS2 game.
When I didn't understand the song at all, I had thought to expand it into "I am coming, my love!" with the stress on "com-". That worked musically and dramatically, but now I don't think he is going to meet a particular lover in death. I think it is death itself that is calling him.
The whole translation is worth it though, for the line:
Mais qu'est-ce que j'aurais bien aimé
Encore une fois remplir d'étoile
Un corps qui tremble et tomber mort
Brûlé d'amour le cœur en cendres
But really, what I'd rather do is
Fill once more with stars
A body that trembles and then falls dead
Burning with love, the heart in ashes
Fernand was a bitch because it is really long and has a complex rhyme scheme which I was determined to adhere to. J'arrive has different problems. Number one, I'm not exactly sure what the fuck it's saying, especially the first verse:
De chrysanthèmes en chrysanthèmes
Nos amitiés sont en partance
De chrysanthèmes en chrysanthèmes
La mort potence nos dulcinées
De chrysanthèmes en chrysanthèmes
Les autres fleurs font ce qu'elles peuvent
De chrysanthèmes en chrysanthèmes
Les hommes pleurent les femmes pleuvent
Okay, chrysanthemum is a funeral flower. But whose friendship? They're just embarking? To where? At a funeral? Death shores up (gives strength to -- also means "gallows") our symbolic woman of romantic love? Do the women "pleuvent" where the men "pleurent" because they're just more into the whole grief thing or just because it rhymes?
The song gets easier after that, but I need that context to understand the whole thing.
Next problem. The chorus builds up over and over again to a dramatic: "J'arrive!" which means "I'm coming!" It is an eighth pickup and a strong downbeat answered by martial trumpets. ba-DA! How the hell am I going to translate that? It's the key to the whole song. It can't be "I'm coming!" which is awkward and stressed oddly. It can't be "I come!" which is pretentious and misses the idea that he is being called and is hesitating, like being called to dinner before you've finished a round of a PS2 game.
When I didn't understand the song at all, I had thought to expand it into "I am coming, my love!" with the stress on "com-". That worked musically and dramatically, but now I don't think he is going to meet a particular lover in death. I think it is death itself that is calling him.
The whole translation is worth it though, for the line:
Mais qu'est-ce que j'aurais bien aimé
Encore une fois remplir d'étoile
Un corps qui tremble et tomber mort
Brûlé d'amour le cœur en cendres
But really, what I'd rather do is
Fill once more with stars
A body that trembles and then falls dead
Burning with love, the heart in ashes
no subject
De chrysanthèmes en chrysanthèmes
-- definitely a funeral flower. "from" and "in"? i'm not sure.
Nos amitiés sont en partance
-- our friends/loved ones are in the process of leaving?
De chrysanthèmes en chrysanthèmes
La mort potence nos dulcinées
-- potence also means "bracket", i think. death brackets our songs?
De chrysanthèmes en chrysanthèmes
Les autres fleurs font ce qu'elles peuvent
De chrysanthèmes en chrysanthèmes
Les hommes pleurent les femmes pleuvent
-- the men cry, the women rain: maybe the women rain because women stereotypically cried more at funerals? a huge downpour of wailing womens' tears?
translation is fun!
Thanks for your efforts!
From chrysanthemum to chrysanthemum, I'd say. Is this flower used in funerals in North America?
"our friends/loved ones are in the process of leaving?"
Huh, that's straightforward. I will check with French consultant on that. I think I'm overcomplicating it by connecting it in my head to the image of a train that occurs later in the song.
Why are you translating "dulcinées" as songs? Do you know something I don't? I think he's saying that death is the secret fuel of romance.
I think you're right about the weeping women. I just can't help thinking he means something more than volume of liquid, but perhaps not.
Full lyrics can be found here (http://www.paroles.net/chansons/16335.htm).
no subject
no subject
Encore une fois remplir d'étoile
Un corps qui tremble et tomber mort
Brûlé d'amour le cœur en cendres
Oh, it is indeed worth it just for that line! Its heart-renderingly beautiful. Thank you for posting it!
no subject