Poetry Archives - Page 10 of 12 - Los Cuadernos de Julia

Dejeuner du matin. La variation masculine

As you know, Jacques Prévert is one of my favourite poets. It has just occurred to me that his Déjeuner du matin could be retold by a man, and the idea has captivated me so that I decided to see if I could rewrite the poem in such way. This is what came about so far.

Déjeuner du matin (Jacques Prévert)

Il a mis le café
Dans la tasse
Il a mis le lait
Dans la tasse de café
Il a mis le sucre
Dans le café au lait
Avec la petite cuiller
Il a tourné
Il a bu le café au lait
Et il a reposé la tasse
Sans me parler

Il a allumé
Une cigarette
Il a fait des ronds
Avec la fumée
Il a mis les cendres
Dans le cendrier
Sans me parler
Sans me regarder

Il s’est levé
Il a mis
Son chapeau sur sa tête
Il a mis son manteau de pluie
Parce qu’il pleuvait
Et il est parti
Sous la pluie
Sans une parole
Sans me regarder

Et moi j’ai pris
Ma tête dans ma main
Et j’ai pleuré.

Déjeuner du matin. La variation masculine (Julia Shuvalova)

Elle a mis le café
Dans la tasse
Elle a mis le lait
Dans la tasse de café
Elle a mis le sucre
Dans le café au lait
Avec la petite cuiller
Elle a tourné
Elle a bu le café au lait
Et elle a reposé la tasse
Sans me parler

Après tout ça
Elle s’est levée
Elle est allée
Vers le miroir pour se peigner
Elle a rougi
Ses lèvres
Sans me parler
Sans me regarder

Elle a soupiré
Elle a mis
Son manteau long
Elle a pris son sac
Parce qu’elle travaillait
Et elle est partie
Avec le sac
Sans une parole
Sans me regarder

Et moi je suis rentré
Dans la cuisine
Et j’ai fumé.

As you will notice, I didn’t rewrite the first stanza of Prévert’s poem – I wanted to start with exactly the same mis-en-scene, and then just to make a female the object of our attention.

Image credits: Henri Matisse, Lorette à la tasse de café (1917) via Clarity. After After Coffee by m.mogall.

Exercises in Loneliness – VIII (Cafe and Music)

Taking Aim
Originally uploaded by Neil101

It shall be a good lesson to me, to take a picture of the place that featured in my work in one way or another. I quite liked Caffe Uno, located in the basement of Heron House in Manchester, opposite the Town Hall and the famous fountain with gargoyles. It never occurred to me that the day may come when this cafe would no longer be. Alas, as you will know if you live in Manchester, Caffe Uno has now been changed by Brasserie, and I was lucky enough to find this picture by Neil on Flickr.

The poem below was written on a small envelope. I don’t know why it was in my bag, but it was, otherwise I’d have to deploy a paper napkin. It was my first ever visit to CaffeUno, it was in January 2005, and the story of how I ended up there is quite trivial, I suppose. I was meant to meet up with the only Russian person I know in Manchester. We were actually going to meet at Mark Addy, then known as the Russian hub in this sunny city. Not only would this be our first meeting, it was also the Orthodox Christmas, January 7th. This lady and I decided to meet at about 9pm at Mark Addy, but I first needed to actually get to Manchester, so I took a bus and reached the city at 7pm.

The evening was incredibly cold and windy. I remember wearing a long coat and a trilby hat, and all the way I had to hold on to my headwear, otherwise it would fly away, surely. I somehow decided to kill time drinking coffee at Caffe Uno. I think one of the reasons may have been that I had wanted to go there for a while, and it now seemed like a perfect occasion to finally pay a visit. I sat in the bar, at the tall table near the window, and drank Irish coffee. The weather outside was getting worse. The Christmas decorations were already taken down, except perhaps for a few garlands left randomly on trees. The wind, however, was so strong, that the bollards at the cafe’s entrance were overturned a few times. The streetlamps were glowing in the ghostly fog which was becoming denser and denser as the evening advanced. And then there was this music: a strange collection of rockabilly, soul and Italian pop songs.

I have long noticed that when you write a love poem or a poem about love, the question that inevitably rises is – was there a protagonist? My answer is always “yes” and “no”. There may be a certain person involved, not necessarily on an intimate level. They may be a good friend of yours, but something they said or you said can suddenly acquire a totally different meaning. Or the person in question may be an amalgamation of several people, and therefore thoughts, experiences. What I enjoy the most about writing is the experiment, which is why I very rarely dedicate poems to anyone because, in the end of the day, the text will not be about them, even if it might allude to them.

This poem, however, is about me. The question that I now must ask myself is – since I am the protagonist of this poem, is this me? My answer is “yes”. However, I was alone in Caffe Uno. I wasn’t looking at anybody in particular, although I probably wanted to look at somebody. The text dwells on the experience of that creative loneliness which is enhanced by the rather Gothic weather. There is no rhyme in the Russian text, but the rhythm, which I tried to replicate in the English translation, is in tune with that musical vinaigrette I described above. Having said that, the mood of the poem is closer to soul than to pop.

The poem does read like a romantic poem. But since I was looking at someone imaginary, it is rather likely than not that I was ultimately looking at myself. And little did I know, being at Caffe Uno and scribbling the lines on a tiny white envelope, that at Marc Addy I would also be on my own, and that this Russian friend wouldn’t turn up, and that, sitting in MA and gazing at the black bitter waves of the river, I would finally decide that I somehow belonged to England and wanted to stay here. The poem thus becomes Romanticist, rather than romantic, and indeed it marked yet another stage in the series of changes that started during my visit to London in April 2004.

CAFÉ AND MUSIC

Imagine this: the lights of night-time city
Are drawing me beguilingly to you.
I drink cognac which taste is blent in coffee,
And soul chords caress my ear fondly.
The cars are flying with the blowing wind;
The leaves, umbrellas, hats are flying after.
I’m thinking; in the rhythm of rockabilly
My recollections move; and I feel good.
You’re thinking too, but nothing do you know.
And so I gaze with a mysterious smile:
Imaginary flame ignites the lantern,
And all streetlamps are like the burning bushes.
And we don’t speak; sometimes an odd talk
Intrudes upon us from the corner table;
It’s ghostly; nightly; beautiful; and empty;
I drink cognac; I’m being drawn to you.

Manchester, Caffe Uno,
January 7, 2005

English translation © Julia Shuvalova 2007

(КАФЕ И МУЗЫКА

Вообрази: огни ночного города
Меня к тебе влекут неодолимо.
Я пью коньяк, чей вкус разбавлен кофе,
И блюза гаммы слух ласкают мне.
Летят автомобили ветру вслед,
Им вслед летят листва, зонты и шляпы,
Я думаю, и в ритме рокабилли
Воспоминанья движутся; мне хорошо.
Ты тоже думаешь, но ничего не знаешь.
С улыбкою загадочной смотрю:
Воображаемый огонь зажегся в лампе,
И кущами пылают фонари.
И мы молчим; случайный разговор
Доносится от столика в углу;
Все призрачно; ночно; красиво; пусто;
Я пью коньяк; меня к тебе влечет.

La Poesie: The Kiss

I’ve sometimes written poems that were inspired by a piece of music or by a painting. One may appropriately call such poems impressions, the consequences of reflection or meditation on a subject. But sometimes a poem was written “independently” from the influence of another work of art, yet it may still be possible to find a parallel to it in cinema or painting.

In the case with this poem, I didn’t have any work of art to inspire me. And I didn’t conspire to write a poem on the subject of a kiss. It was one of those occasions (quite usual with me) when the idea, together with the interpretations, has simply descended. On such occasions I usually don’t work on a poem – it arrives in the exact form.

One thing I was consciously trying to do was to write the poem “neutrally”. The beauty of the English language to me is in the fact that it generally doesn’t distinguish grammatically between the masculine and the feminine, which is the case of other European languages, including Russian. My love for this grammatical “neutrality” is naturally connected to my regular pounding on the necessity to shrug off the “categories” and “identities”. The story of an act of a kiss is told in the first person, and I wrote it in such way that it contains no indication of a gender, so both a man and a woman can read it. In this regard neither of the authors of playcasts for this poem succeeded at following my vision: both images have a male figure as an active partner, whereas my idea was to allow women, who evidently do kiss men, to play the leading part, providing they dare read the poem aloud. I don’t mention same-sex couples, since my idea was to write a poem that could be read by everyone and for everyone.

After I’ve written it, however, I read it over and over again, and suddenly I realised that, without actually planning to do so, I wrote a verbal illustration to Roland Penrose’s painting Winged Domino. Portrait of Valentine. At once a painting that can potentially instill someone with awe or even disgust has become romantic.

I must admit that I still couldn’t translate the poem, so as to give the full idea of its meter and rhythm; I will include the English verbatim translation in the parentheses for the time being.

Поцелуй. Winged Domino. Portrait of Valentine (R. Penrose).

Как бабочка порхает над цветком,
Его бесценной красотой любуясь,
Так я касаюсь робко языком
Губ-лепестков твоих; а ты, волнуясь,

Мне отдаешь божественный нектар;
И, превозмогши головокруженье,
Я вижу сквозь пыльцу цветочных чар
В твоих глазах – мое изображенье.

(The Kiss. Winged Domino. Portrait of Valentine (R. Penrose)

Just like the butterfly flutters around the flower
Adoring its precious beauty,
So I hesitantly touch your lips
With my tongue; and you, excited,

Return to me a divine nectar;
And, having overcome my vertigo,
I see, through the pollen of flowery charms,
My reflection – in your eyes.

Vladimir Solovyov: A Parody on Russian Symbolists

Vladimir Solovyov A Parody on Russian Symbolists mocks an affected, indulgent style of young Symbolist poets and their love for opulent imagery

Russian Symbolism was a branch of European artistic movement under the same name. I first discovered Russian Symbolist poets more than 10 years ago, when I was still at school (Alexander Blok and Konstantine Balmont were my favourite). I suspect, however, that outside Russia Russian symbolism may be primarily associated with theatre, especially the names of Diaghilev and Meyerhold.

Russian Symbolism was occasionally criticised for its superfluous imagery, and the poem that I translated highlights just this sort of criticism. It was composed by Vladimir Solovyov, a Russian philosopher, who was close enough to the Russian literary circles to be able to smile at these sarcastically. The Parodies on Russian Symbolists were printed in 1895 and consist of three parodies, but my favourite has always been the one I have just translated from Russian. It is very much an impromptu, completed chiefly on the bus on my way home. As you may see, Solovyov’s poem is more of a parody on symbolism per se: he generously fills every line with a “symbol”, to create a hilarious image of a jealous lover. So, please welcome, Vladimir Solovyov A Parody on Russian Symbolists, in Russian and English.

Vladimir Solovyov – A Parody on Russian Symbolists

The skies are burning with the lanterns’ fire –
Dark is the Earth!
So, have you been with him, oh woeful liar?
Let truth shine forth!

But tease not the hyena of misgiving
And mice of gloom!
Or else the leopards of revenge come bringing
In teeth your doom!

And call you not the owl of discretion
This fateful night!
The mokes of poise and elephants of question
Have taken flight!

You bore yourself the monstrous crocodile,
Which is your fate!
Oh let the skies burn with the lanterns’ fire –
Dark is the grave!

© Julie Delvaux 2007

Владимир Соловьев, Пародии на русских символистов (1895)

На небесах горят паникадила,
А снизу – тьма!
Ходила ты к нему иль не ходила?
Скажи сама!

Но не дразни гиену подозренья,
Мышей тоски!
Не то смотри, как леопарды мщенья
Острят клыки!

И не зови сову благоразумья
Ты в эту ночь!
Ослы терпенья и слоны раздумья
Бежали прочь!

Своей судьбы родила крокодила
Ты здесь сама!
Пусть в небесах горят паникадила,
В могиле – тьма!

More posts on Vladimir Solovyov, Alexander Blok, Translation.

Loch na Garr (George Gordon Byron)

It’s raining. Yesterday it was sunny. Today it’s raining again. I feel this is the return of the summer of five years ago.

I’ve always loved rain, like I’ve always loved the sky before the rain or thunder. Both to me symbolise all that is hidden, buried of fear to appear weak. We don’t like rain because we’re afraid to admit that we don’t know how to deal with it, that we don’t want to deal with it. Umbrellas are cumbersome, we can’t wear the clothes and shoes that we like because they may be damaged by rain, we have to be twice as careful when driving in the rain. On a sunny day we may go out and enjoy people and places, and to only talk about things that are plesant, sunny. Rain forces us inside our homes, inside ourselves where we have no choice but to look at that which is hidden, and think and talk about it.

This is why, perhaps, as much as I like rain, I also love the idea of travelling in the rain. By car or by train, or even by bus. As long as I go somewhere I’m happy. I don’t mind walking, but for that I need an umbrella: rain doesn’t go well with my specs. I must be afraid, too, of what I have hidden inside me, or maybe I just find it easier to think when I’m on the move? I don’t know.

Or maybe I like rain because it’s so natural to be happy in sunny weather and melancholic on a rainy day, and I want to smile on a rainy day, just to change this routine?

Rain to me is the past; like snow. It dates back to the times when I was reading Byron’s Loch na Gar, which has become one of my favourite poems. Maybe I was a Scot in one of my previous lives; I don’t think about such things, but who knows, after all?

Away ye gay landscapes, ye Garrdens of roses
In you let the minions of luxury rove
Restore me the rocks where the snowflake reposes
Though still they are sacred to freedom and love.
Yet Caledonia, beloved are thy mountains
Round their white summits though elements war
Thorough cataracts foam 'stead of smooth-flowing fountains
I sigh for the valley of dark Loch na Garr.


Ah! there my young footsteps in infancy wander'd
My cap was the bonnet, my coat was the plaid
On chieftains long perish'd my memory ponder'd
As daily I strode through the pine-cover'd glade.
I sought not my home till the day's dying glory
Gave place to the rays of the bright polar star
For fancy was cheered by traditional story
Disclosed by the natives of dark Loch na Garr.


'Shades of the dead! have I not heard your voices
Rise on the night-rolling breath of the gale?'
Surely the soul of the hero rejoices
And rides on the wind o'er his own Highland vale.
Round Loch na Garr, while the stormy mist gathers
Winter presides in his cold icy car:
Clouds there encircle the forms of my fathers;
They dwell in the tempests of dark Loch na Garr.


'Ill-starr'd, though brave, did no visions foreboding
Tell you that fate had forsaken your cause?'
Ah! were you destin'd to die at Culloden,
Victory rown'd not you fall with applause:
Still were you happy in death's earthly slumber
You rest with your clan in the caves of Braemar'
The pibroch resounds to the pipers loud number,
Your deeds on the echos of dark Loch na Garr.


Years have roll'd on, Loch na Garr, since I left you
Years must elapse ere I see you again
Nature of verdure and flowers has bereft you
Yet still thou art dearer than Albion's plain.
England! thy beauties are tame and domestic
To one who has roved o'er the mountains afar
Oh for the crags that are wild and magestic!
The steep frowning glories of dark Loch na Garr

The image is taken from Ensis Ltd.

Explanation of an Antique Gem (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

A young fig-tree its form lifts high

Within a beauteous garden;And see, a goat is sitting by,As if he were its warden.
The tree is guarded badly;
For round the other side there whirrs
And hums a beetle madly.
Nibbles the branches tall so;
A mighty longing feels the goat
Gently to climb up also.
The tree all leafless standing;
It looks a type of misery,
Help of the gods demanding.
Who hold wise saws respected:
From he-goat and from beetle’s-tooth
A tree should be protected!

But oh, Quirites, how one errs!

The hero with his well-mail’d coat

And so, my friends, ere long ye see

Then listen, ye ingenuous youth,

1815

The Legend of Pygmalion

There is a legend of Pygmalion, a Cypriot sculptor who abhorred all women for their lasciviousness, but fell in love with an ivory female statue that he carved. Eventually he pleaded to Aphrodite to animate his Galatea, – and gods did not refuse him his bit of happiness.

The Wikipedia article draws quite a full picture of various interpretations of this legend in the centuries that followed since Ovid had narrated the story in his Metamorphoses. An extract from Ovid is also published online. The legend was an inspiration for many painters and sculptors, as we can see from the images displayed.

For my part, I particularly like Paul Delvaux’s interpretation. Delvaux revisits the legend and broadens the context in which one can think of Pygmalion’s story. Sculpture has long stopped being a “masculine” type of art, hence it can be a woman who creates the statue of a man and falls for it.

The context can be broadened further: Galatea is Pygmalion’s ideal woman, but I often like to disregard any restrictions or conventions implied by gender. Therefore, I accept any gender combination, when rereading this legend, and, as a consequence, I allow for a possibility that love which Pygmalion expects his statue to share can never emanate from his creation.

In the poem below I wanted to entwine the theme of unrequited feeling with the legend of Pygmalion. Furthermore, since Galatea embodied a certain ideal, I suggest that a statue needs not to be seen as a piece of sculpture. “Statue” can be understood as something “static”, that which is immovable, either physically or emotionally; hence “stone” is not exactly the marble, but anything cold or distant which is unlikely to liven up. Like Pygmalion is not necessarily male, so Galatea can be drawn on canvas, or described in words, or exist merely as a dream. Whichever interpretation we may prefer, Galatea is the symbol of Beauty which Pygmalion doesn’t want to give up, but whose cold demeanor drives him to despair.

ПИГМАЛИОН

Когда владеешь тем, что бы отдал,
Впредь никогда об этом не жалея;
Или скорбишь о том, что потерял,
Едва ль по-настоящему имея, –
Все блекнет, если ты, Пигмалион,
Дни проводя перед твореньем милым,
Любви ответ найти желаешь в нем, –
Но жизнь вдохнуть и богу не по силам.

(PYGMALION

When you possess that which you would refuse
And never have the outcome bemoaned;
Or when you mourn the loss of what you used
To think was yours but hardly ever owned, –
All this is vain, if, like Pygmalion,
Your spending days with the adored creation,
You wait to see how love ignites the stone, –
But no god can liven your possession.

Links and references:

Wikipedia entry on Pygmalion

An extract from Ovid’s Metamorphoses from The Internet Classics Archive

Images used (from top, from left to right):

Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson, Pygmalion et Galatée (1819) – courtesy of La Tribune de l’Art

Jean-Léon Gérôme, Pygmalion and Galatea (1890) – courtesy of Wikipedia

Etienne Maurice Falconet, Pygmalion et Galatée (1763) – as above

Paul Delvaux, Pygmalion (1939) – courtesy of CGFA

Jean-Michel Moreau, Pygmalion (1806) – courtesy of Pygmalion Design

Edward Byrne-Jones, Soul Attains from Pygmalion and the Image series (1878) – courtesy of Mark Harden’s Artchive

Visiting London-5 (London Book Fair)

Three years ago, during my first visit to London, I was researching in the day and writing at night. This April I went there for the annual London Book Fair. I will not write about it more than you could already have found at the LBF official website.
My main impressions are:

meeting with my old University friend (yes, this world is really small!);
buying an English translation of Vladimir Mayakovsky’s My Discovery of America (I’ll be writing about this later);
attending three very interesting presentations;
spending about half an hour with a very interesting multilingual lady, who recently wrote a book about a cultured cat.

I’ll leave the third one out till later. Meeting my old friend was one of the biggest surprises in my entire life. I wrote somewhere on the blog about the new website that aims at bringing together current and former students from all Russian high education institutions. So this girl has finally registered there in early April, we exchanged a couple of messages, and then we found out that both of us were going to London for the Book Fair. Naturally, we decided to meet, which occurred in the form of stumbling into each other in the foyer. Soon after we sat outside chatting about each other and our unimates.

Strange things come out in these conversations. We had a girl in our year, who was a dedicated student of German medieval monasticism. Although a devoted Russian Orthodox, she was once very seriously discussing with another girl, whether they should attend the Christmas service at a Catholic or a Protestant church in Moscow on December 25th. Ultimately, she went to study in Germany for a year, where she’d met her present husband, a Muslim, for whom – reportedly – she’d converted into Islam. On one of the photographs we saw she was wearing a burqa.

Buying an English translation of Mayakovsky’s digest of visiting America was another huge surprise. When I saw the book on the stand, it didn’t even occur to me that I may not be able to buy it. So I just asked how much it cost. I bagged it with no problem whatsoever. Yet believe it or not I still haven’t read D. H. Lawrence, so when I saw several of his books on Wordsworth Classics stand, I asked if I could purchase Sons and Lovers. Turned out, they weren’t actually allowed to sell books. This was confirmed at another stand where I saw a book on successful blogging.

And the lady I spoke to is Brigitte Downey – a multilingual, cultured, well-travelled, exuberant person who spent years making documentaries and loving opera, and who had some wonderful recollections of Russia and Russian ballet. Half an hour that we spent chatting after I shared with Brigitte my knowledge of search marketing by explaining the difference between organic and sponsored results is the time to remember. And Chapter One of Diaries of a Cultured Cat is generally reminiscent of my experience of Moscow and Manchester that I have mentioned in chapters 1 and 4 of Visiting London.

In Egypt, as we know, cats were worshipped. And in 1932 T. S. Eliot wrote Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats that was adapted for the stage by Andrew Lloyd Webber. You can browse the chapters from Old Possum’s Book here, but this is an extract most relevant to us:

You’ve read of several kinds of Cat,
And my opinion now is that
You should need no interpreter
to understand their character.
You now have learned enough to see
That Cats are much like you and me
And other people whome we find
Possessed of various types of mind.
For some are sane and some are mad
And some are good and some are bad
And some are better, some are worse –
But all may be described in verse.

Brigitte Downey is describing this in prose, but even after one chapter I feel her knowledge and style will make this book an insightful reading.

Links:

Vladimir Mayakovsky, My Discovery of America
Brigitte Downey, Diaries of a Cultured Cat
T. S. Eliot, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats
London Book Fair
Wordsworth Classics
Brigitte Downey’s website

Visiting London-4

During my first ever visit to England I didn’t even go to London, to the great subsequent surprise of my Russian friends. It must indeed be surprising, but in truth it simply manifests this unconscious arrogance of capital citizens for whom no life exists outside the central city of a country. I also noted that some Mancunians were not particularly eager to go “down south”. I suppose with some of them it was the arrogance of somebody who lives well outside the country’s central city and thus wants to downplay the capital’s importance. So I joked: ‘when you’ve got Pall Mall and Albert Sq in your own city, what’s the point of visiting them elsewhere?’

In spring 2004 I went to London to research in the British Library and the National Archives. Since September 2003 I’d been living in Manchester, and by April 2004 the differences in lifestyles and perceptions (that would inevitably come to surface eventually) began to take the best out of me. Most frustratingly, I felt like I couldn’t write. It wasn’t quite true. I’ve always been writing wherever I had an idea or a line to build upon. During the day, this could happen at the lecture, on the bus, on the tube, in the cafe, in the park. At night I usually worked in the kitchen.

What happened when I arrived to England is hard to boil down in one or two sentences, however long. After all these years I realise that the main difference wasn’t so much between England and Russia, but between the “contexts” in which I lived here and there. The context in which I lived for the first seven months since my arrival to England was stiffening for me as a writer.

The context into which I migrated for two weeks in April 2004 was liberating. In every sense of the word (except strictly geographical), it was my homecoming. I no longer felt unfitting or dreamy. I understood that I was losing time and strength trying to adopt values and habits I didn’t want to have, or trying to persuade others to make changes.

Understanding this didn’t make my life easier, but the burden of feeling oneself strangely different was left behind for good. Spending a fortnight in London made me crave for space, motion and freedom in Manchester, which I was able to find.

I lived in LSE’s Carr-Saunders Hall, in a small room on the 4th floor. I took a bus to the British Library, or a tube to Kew. In the weekends I did a lot of walking. On my first Sunday in London I took a wrong turn from Fitzroy St and ended up in Soho instead of the British Museum. During Easter, I walked in the early morning from my hotel through Holborn to the Tower.

And at night I wrote. In those two weeks I perhaps wrote more than in the previous seven months. One of the poems has already appeared in Notebooks; because there is no actual rhyme, it was easy to translate. The very first one I wrote in London is called ‘Looking for You’. Despite the title and content, it is not actually dedicated to anybody, even obliquely. I interpret it as a poem about the search for somebody who shares your views, ideas; somebody inspiring; yet somebody who is very difficult to recognise.

Я ищу тебя в городе этом,
Не надеясь когда-то найти.
Ты, как Муза, бросаешь Поэта,
И расходятся наши пути.

Я ищу тебя в книгах старинных,
Где виньетка – разгадка судьбы.
В переулках, на улицах длинных
Чутко слушаю чьи-то шаги.

Я ищу… я ищу тебя всюду,
Даже там, где не стоит искать,
Но я верю, я верю и буду,
Не надеясь, но все-таки ждать,

Чтобы в день, когда ты будешь рядом,
Не заметив, пройти. И тогда
Снова ждать и искать тебя взглядом…
Я искать тебя буду всегда.

04-05 апреля 2004 г.

(I am looking for you in this town
With no hope to ever find you.
Like a Muse, you abandon the Poet,
And our roads part.

I am looking for you in the old books,
Where a vignette unveils the fate.
In the lanes and in the long streets
I am heeding somebody’s pace.

I am looking… I look everywhere,
In the places you’re never to be.
A believer, I’m waiting forever,
Without hope, to find you here,

So that once when you’re only near,
I would then pass you by. And again
I’ll start looking for you everywhere…
I will always be looking for you
© Julia Shuvalova, 4-5 April 2004).

[The English text is an almost verbatim translation; however, the second and third stanzas give a very good idea of the poem’s original foot and rhythm].

Histoire de Melody Nelson (Serge Gainsbourg)

As you might have noticed from the Links section in my side bar, as well as from my profile, I’m a fan of Serge Gainsbourg. The first time I heard him, I was just as innocent as France Gall (who reportedly didn’t have a clue about the sexual innuendos in the song ‘Les Sucettes‘ (The Lollipops)). In fact, I was younger than Gall because my discovery of Gainsbourg’s music started with the notorious ‘Je T’Aime Moi Non Plus‘, with me having no idea about the meaning of some specific sounds on the record.

For years, Gainsbourg has been hovering over the French music scene. His versatility at both music and lyrics, as well as his lifestyle, not only turned him into a monumental figure of European music, but in later years also inspired many *interpretations*. As someone noted on YouTube, Kate Moss and Pete Doherty look strangely similar to Birkin-Gainsbourg duet, except that Doherty’s influence on modern music is not as decisive, as was Gainsbourg’s. Then again, as Philip Sweeney remarked a year ago in The Independent, “Gainsbourg was an enthralled recycler of English and American trends, themes and phrases“, which may signal to somebody that Gainsbourg was not necessarily original.

This, however, is not the case, as Sweeney notes himself, because Gainsbourg’s songs are extremely difficult to translate into English and, in fact, into any other language. Consider this passage from his song ‘Variations sur Marilou‘:

Dans son regard absent
Et son iris absinthe
Tandis que Marilou s’amuse à faire des vol
Utes de sèches au menthol
Entre deux bulles de comic-strip
Tout en jouant avec le zip
De ses Levi’s
Je lis le vice
Et je pense à Caroll Lewis

It makes sense in English, if translated, but, as often happens, the difference in pronunciation takes away this lingering quality of original French lyrics. Furthermore, because of this difference the last three lines don’t produce the same effect. The emphasis on ‘-iss’ in the French text reminds one of a gentle murmur, of mussitation; the English version would never capture this effect.

So, on to Histoire de Melody Nelson. It was Gainsbourg’s 1972 conceptual album, which cover you may see on the right. Containing 7 songs, “Melody Nelson is a weirdly jewel-like micro-opera featuring a vintage Rolls-Royce, a male obsession for the eponymous 14-year-old garçonne, and demise via New Guinean cargo-cult, rendered by Gainsbourg’s voluptuous drawl and Birkin’s Lolita whisper, and a richly idiosyncratic instrumentation by Gainsbourg’s close collaborator Jean-Claude Vannier, owing as much to Abbey Road, George Martin and the film soundtracks of John Barry as to anything from Paris“. (Philip Sweeney, The Independent, 16 April 2006).

You can obviously find the album on Amazon.com, where the featured cover comes from. You can browse the links below, to read more about the album and/or Serge Gainsbourg. But on YouTube you can also find the videos to the songs. The videos, like the songs, are psychedelic, and feature the paintings of Max Ernst, Paul Delvaux, Salvador Dali, Felix Labisse, René Magritte, Henri Rousseau, which makes Gainsbourg’s album even dearer to my heart because I’ve been a devouted student of French surrealism for years.

The video I’m putting up here is the 5th part of the album. It is called ‘L’hôtel particulier‘, and uses predominantly the works of Paul Delvaux, with a few glimpses of Felix Labisse’s images. If you want to read the lyrics to the song, follow the link to Alex Chabot’s translation.

Links:

Serge Gainsbourg’s site – in French. Very informative – be careful if you’re a serious Serge’s fan and didn’t know about this site: you may very well spend the entire night reading the story of a remarkable talent.

Alex Chabot’s translations of Gainsbourg’s texts.

Specifically L’hôtel particulier (from the above).

Philip Sweeney, Serge Gainsbourg: Filthy French (The Independent, 16 April 2006). Also: LookSmart’s FindArticles – Filthy French

Notes on Histoire de Melody Nelson – some interesting and somewhat sentimental facts about the making of this album from Movie Grooves.

Histoire de Melody Nelson on Amazon.com

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29	30