Demain dès l'aube translation (Victor Hugo, via Pierre Bensusan)

Hi all,

well today's Christmas Eve and we're on the brink of another New Year. In anticipation of some of the changes I'm looking forward to, and in reflection of years gone by, I stumbled upon another translation I did a couple of years ago. The text that I have translated is the song lyrics for Pierre Bensusan's track "Demain dès l'aube", which is composed of lines from Victor Hugo's poem of the same name as well as lines from another poem "A Villequier".

I'm pretty happy with the translation, although the penultimate stanza was a bit harder to render (I'll have to spend some more time thinking of suitable words that rhyme with Harfleur!), so if anyone has any helpful suggestions or comments I'd be glad to hear them!


DEMAIN DES L'AUBE / A VILLEQUIER
(Texte: Victor Hugo, Musique: Pierre Bensusan)

Demain, dès l'aube, à l'heure où blanchit la campagne,
Je partirai. Je sais que tu m'attends.
J'irai par la forêt, j'irai par la montagne,
Je ne puis demeurer loin de toi plus longtemps.

Tomorrow, at dawn, when the sun bleaches the land,
I will leave, I know you wait for me.
I’ll go by the forest, I’ll go through the mountains.
No longer can I bear to be away from thee.


Je marcherai les yeux fixés sur mes pensées,
Sans rien voir au dehors, sans entendre aucun bruit.
Seul, inconnu, le dos courbé, les mains croisées,
Et le jour pour moi sera comme la nuit.


I will walk in a world of my own,
Hearing no sounds, without sight,
Alone, back bent, hands crossed, unknown,
And the day for me will be as night.


Maintenant que Paris, ses pavés et ses marbres,
Et sa brume et ses toits sont bien loin de mes yeux;
Maintenant que je suis sous les branches des arbres,
Et que je puis songer à la beauté des cieux.

Now that Paris, with her marble and streets,
Her mist and her roofs are so far from my eyes,
Now that I am beneath the branches of trees,
And I can dream of the beauty of the skies.


Maintenant qu'attendri par ces divins spectacles
Plaines, rochers, forêts, vallons, fleuves argentés,
Voyant ma petitesse et voyant vos miracles,
Je reprends ma raison devant l'immensité.


Now I am moved by these divine spectacles,
Field, crag, forest, valley, silver stream,
Seeing how small I am, seeing your miracles,
I come to my senses before your creation supreme


Nous ne voyons jamais qu'un seul côté des choses;
L'autre plonge en la nuit d'un mystère effrayant.
L'homme subit le joug sans connaître les causes.
Tout ce qu'il voit est court, inutile et fuyant.


We only ever see one side of life;
The rest is shrouded in terrifying mystery.
Man bears his burdens without knowing why.
All he sees is short, useless, and fleeting.


Je ne regarderai ni l'or du soir qui tombe,
Ni les voiles au loin descendant vers Harfleur,
Et, quand j'arriverai, je mettrai sur ta tombe
Un bouquet de houx et de bruyère en fleur.

I will not watch the gold of the evening rays,
Nor the distant sails of journeys resumed.
And once I have arrived, I will place on your grave,
A bouquet of holly and heather in bloom.


Nous ne voyons jamais qu'un seul côté des choses;
L'autre plonge en la nuit d'un mystère effrayant.
L'homme subit le joug sans connaître les causes.
Tout ce qu'il voit est court, inutile et fuyant.


We only ever see one side of life;
The rest is shrouded in terrifying mystery.
Man bears his burdens without knowing why.
All he sees is short, useless, and fleeting.

photo.ortho.free.fr

Le Vieil Amant/The Old Lover, by Emilie Simon (translation)

I've wanted for quite a while to transfer a lot of my old translation attempts away from Facebook, so after my translation of the Georges Brassens song 'Les Passantes', the next obvious choice is Emilie Simon's music.

If you've not heard of Emilie Simon, she's one of my favourite musicians/singer/songwriters, not just in French, but EVER. I suppose you could say she comes under the electronic category as she does use an amazing array of weird and wonderful gadgets to create her music, including some strange contraption that attaches to her arm like something out of a Tim Burton film and which modulates the quality of her voice in real time, a bit like the Talk Box favoured by Richie Sambora of Bon Jovi, so she can get that strange auto-tune effect, add echoes, or make her voice 'stutter', amongst other things - anyway it's very cool.

But when anyone says electronic music it might suggest something more techno than what it actually is - Emilie's voice is towards the higher end of the range, clear and crisp and times, then soft, breathy and delicate at others, and at times innocent like a young girl (especially when she sings in English on tracks like 'Flowers'), though she can belt it out as well (e.g. on tracks like 'Song of the Storm') - so thinking about it, she's actually quite similar to Kate Bush - and a few of her albums are themed around the natural world like Végétal, Flower Book, and La Marche de L'Empereur which won the 2006 Victoire de la Musique award for a film soundtrack for the French documentary of the same name about the Emperor penguins. 


This probably makes her sound a bit like Bjork, but she does also play the guitar so many of her tracks have a punky-rock feel (like 'Roses Never Fall In Love') and she's covered a few rock tracks like Nirvana's Come As You Are, and Iggy Pop's I Wanna Be Your Dog. But what is awesome about Emilie's music is her amazing ear for music so her and her very talented sound engineer Cyrille Brissot (he built the arm gadget) come up with some awesome ideas to make the sounds they're after - like striking the strings of a piano from under the lid while Emilie is playing a melody, splashing out and looping a rhythm in a giant bowl of water, or just tapping and knocking a rhythm on the piano lid. Although I love Emilie's tracks as they are on the album, I think she really comes into her own when she and her team perform live, especially if it's been recorded on film so you can see all the cool gadgets, and inventive sound-makers they use on stage.

But it's really the lyrics and sounds of the words that are my favourite part of her music, which is why I wanted to try to translate them so non-French speakers could in some way access her music, although I have to hold my hands up and admit, it's nowhere near perfect. Poetry/music is one of the hardest things to translate, partly because of trying to get the rhythm of the words right, but also the sonority and rhyme is extremely difficult to replicate if you're trying to keep the meaning of the words. At times I've had to adapt the words to keep the sonority whilst still trying to communicate the overall meaning - it's definitely good exercise for the brain! But anyway, this is my best shot, so I hope you like it :)

Here's a video of the track I've translated Le Vieil Amant which is an acoustic version (so not so many gadgets this time), but I think its simplicity really makes the beauty and melancholy of the song stand out.  The original text and my translation are both below:

PS I know 'muguet' is not the same as lily, but it fits better :0)

Mon amour j'ai pensé
Avec naïveté
Qu'un brin seul de muguet
Pouvait te ramener
Alors j'ai retrouvé
Un ou deux vieux sonnets
Pour te rappeler
Pour te rappeler
A moi mon amour
A travers ce beau jour
De printemps j'ai laissé
Près de tes pieds tomber
Un brin seul de muguet
Mais il s'est désséché
Attendant ce baiser
Qui ne viendra jamais

I thought, my sweet,
Quite naïvely,
That one single lily,
Could bring you back to me
And so I found
Some old poetry,
To call you back,
To call you back
To me. My sweet,
On this lovely day
Of spring did I
Let fall at your feet
One little lily
That has since dried
Awaiting that kiss
That will never arrive

Le mois de mai
S'est joué de moi
Cette année
J'ai laissé couler trop d'emois
Cette fois le mois mai
S'est moqué de moi
Cette année
J'ai laissé couler trop d'emois
Cette fois
Cette fois

The month of May,
Has toyed with me
This year,
I’ve been too melancholy,
This time the month of May,
Has mocked me terribly,
This year,
I’ve been too melancholy,
This time
This time

Il est parti le temps
Il n'a pas pris son temps
Me voilà qui t'attends
Comme un vieux prétendant
Me voilà qui regrette
Devant ces quelques miettes
Une vielle amourette
Qui n'a ni queue ni tête

He left on that day,
He did not hesitate,
And here I am, I wait,
Like an old candidate,
Here I am, I regret,
I cannot forget,
An infatuated brunette,
The lonely half of a duet

Mon amour j'ai pensé
Avec naïveté
Qu'un brin seul de muguet
Pouvait te ramener
Alors j'ai retrouvé
Un ou deux vieux sonnets
Que tu n'as jamais aimé

I thought, my sweet,
Quite naïvely,
That one single lily,
Could bring you back to me
And so I found
Some old poetry,
You never liked it anyway

The month of May,
Has toyed with me
This year,
I’ve been too melancholy,
This time the month of May,
Has mocked me terribly,
This year,
I’ve been too melancholy,
This time
This time

Je voulais je l'avoue
Danser joue contre joue
Je l'avoue je rêvais
De te faire tournoyer
Respirer cet air frais
Regarder rayonner
Le visage d'un amour
Qui n'a pas vu le jour

I did want, I admit,
To dance cheek to cheek,
I admit, I did dream,
Of our dancing feet,
The fresh air we’d breathe,
Basking in the gleam,
Of the face of a love,
That was never to be.

Mon amour j'ai pensé
Avec naïveté
Qu'un brin seul de muguet
Pouvait te ramener
Alors j'ai retrouvé
Un ou deux vieux sonnets
Je sais tu n'aimes pas les sonnets
Je sais

I thought, my sweet,
Quite naïvely,
That one single lily,
Could bring you back to me
And so I found
Some old poetry,
I know, you don’t like poetry,
I know

The month of May,
Has toyed with me
This year,
I’ve been too melancholy,
This time the month of May,
Has mocked me terribly,
This year,
I’ve been too melancholy,
This time
This time

Just love Emilie's style....

Les Passantes by Georges Brassens, translated by me

Yesterday I was driving to work alone and although the commute can be a bit of a drag (it's about 50min each way on a good day), going alone does mean I can listen to whatever music I like and sing along to my heart's content. As I was driving up one of the hills outside of Whittington, I went up through a little village called Welshfrankton, and the view of the valley below was absolutely breathtaking. The valley floor was covered in fluffy low clouds, with a few autumn trees and telegraph lines poking out, and the sun was shining brilliantly on it all (I was running late so couldn't stop to take a photo, but one day I will, I promise!).

To top it off one of my favourite French songs came on my iPod. It's called Les Passantes and it was written by a poet Antoine Pol, but the singer Georges Brassens made it famous through setting it to some absolutely brilliant music. The video below is of the song performed in duet with Maxime LeForestier (with some additional verses in which I didn't have on my copy of the track) on a show aired in 1979.

What I love about this song, is that a lot of Brassens' music is about rogue-ish men who are on the look out for a bit of fun with the ladies, watching them bathe naked in a fountain for example, and generally being 'lads' or even 'cons' (politely translated as a**holes, but it's generally quite a crude word), and his lyrics are funny, intelligent, and often vulgar explorations of these fun-loving characters and their antics. But this song (or poem rather) is so beautiful and gentle, and the melancholy, longing, and loneliness of these lyrics, especially when sung by such a rogue as Georges Brassens, who even called himself a 'voyou' (French for thug) gives a striking contrast to his usual style and tone.

Here is the original French with a translation (that I wrote a few years ago and have tweaked a bit since) after each verse. I've tried to keep some sort of rhyme, but it's nowhere near perfect - although I am quite proud of the last stanza. I hope you enjoy it. I haven't yet figured out a title that is as fitting as the original, but it literally means "The women who pass you by". Chapeau bas Monsieur Brassens! Hats off :)

Je veux dédier ce poème,
A toutes les femmes qu'on aime,
Pendant quelques instants secrets,
A celles qu'on connaît à peine,
Qu'un destin différent entraîne,
Et qu'on ne retrouve jamais.

I want to dedicate this poem
To all the women we love
For just a few secret moments,
To those you scarcely know,
Snatched away by a different fate
And who you'll never find again.

A celles qu'on voit apparaître,
Une seconde à sa fenêtre,
Et qui, presque, s'évanouit,
Mais dont la svelte silhouette
Est si gracieuse et fluette
Qu'on en demeure épanoui.

To those women that you see
Appear at her window,
For one second, fleetingly
Whose slender silhouette,
Is so graceful and delicate,
That you're overwhelmed, completely

A la compagne de voyage,
Dont les yeux, charmant paysage,
Font paraître court le chemin;
Qu'on est seul peut-être à comprendre,
Et qu'on laisse pourtant descendre
Sans avoir effleuré sa main.

To the travelling companion;
The world reflected in her eyes,
Makes the journey fly by;
Who, perhaps, only you understand,
And yet, you let her go,
Without even brushing her hand.

A celles qui sont déjà prises,
Et qui, vivant des heures grises,
Près d'un être trop différent,
Vous ont, inutile folie,
Laissé voir la mélancolie
D'un avenir désespérant.

To those who are not free,
And who live unhappily,
In an ill-suited pair,
They have, useless folly,
Let you see the melancholy,
Of a future of despair.

Chères images aperçues,
Espérances d'un jour déçues,
Vous serez dans l'oubli demain;
Pour peu que le bonheur survienne,
Il est rare qu'on se souvienne,
Des épisodes du chemin.

Cherished images seen but once,
One day's hopes all lost,
And tomorrow will be forgot;
Though joy may surprise us all,
It is rare that we can recall,
These moments from our travels.

Mais si l'on à manqué sa vie,
On songe; avec un peu d'envie
A tous ces bonheurs entrevus,
Aux baisers qu'on n'osa pas prendre,
Aux cœurs qui doivent vous attendre,
Aux yeux qu'on n'a jamais revus.

But if you have wasted your life,
You dream, with some regret,
Of all those pleasures glimpsed,
Of the kisses you dared not take,
Of the hearts that have to wait,
Of the eyes never seen since.

Alors, aux soirs de lassitude,
Tout en peuplant sa solitude
Des fantômes du souvenir,
On pleure les lèvres absentes
De toutes ces belles passantes
Que l'on n'a pas su retenir.

So, the evenings when you are weary,
You try to fill a life that is lonely,
With ghosts from your memory,
For the absent lips, you do cry,
Of those beauties who passed you by,
Those who you let slip away.