des violons de l'automne
autumn is coming and with it a whole new host of challenges that at the moment i am shrinking from, and not in any manner that has, as of yet, proved successful. the challenges are still there, the fear is still nagging, and i'm tired: "des violons de l'automne blessent mon coeur". if my garret apartment was in paris, i would take myself to a café and proceed to drink far too much absinthe. an interesting linguistic note: the OED defines "garreteer" as "dweller in garret, esp. poor literary hack". ha!
as a way of rolling around in my pensive sadness, much like a dog rolls around in dead fish washed up on the beach, i've been listening a lot to this French song, "Verlaine", the lyrics of which are from the poem "chanson d'automne" by the 19th-century decadent French poet Paul Verlaine, a contemporary of Baudelaire. in this recording it is sung by the great Charles Trenant. one often hears the haunting melody in the soundtrack of any Hollywood movie that includes scenes in France. i now more fully appreciate the autumn that is often associated with twilight, decay, melancholy and a sense of approaching fin. my previous acquaintence with the season has always been tinged with optimism akin to that others feel at the new year, largely because of my life in the academy. this year my experience of spring was new -- it actually lived up to its fabled reputation and i could revel in it, free from the stresses that are usually affiliated with april (namely graduate student poverty, end of term deadlines and exams); perhaps this is the year in which i will discover another autumn as well. at the moment it feels too much like the discovery that a long-time friend is in no way the person you believed him/her to be.
Veraline (sung by Charles Trenant)
Les sanglots longs
Des violons
De l'automne,
Blessent mon coeur
D'une langueur monotone.
Tout suffocant
Et bleme, quand
Sonne l'heure,
Je me souviens
Des jours anciens et je pleure;
Et je m'en vais
Au vent mauvais
Qui m'emporte
Deca, dela
Pareil a la feuille morte
as a way of rolling around in my pensive sadness, much like a dog rolls around in dead fish washed up on the beach, i've been listening a lot to this French song, "Verlaine", the lyrics of which are from the poem "chanson d'automne" by the 19th-century decadent French poet Paul Verlaine, a contemporary of Baudelaire. in this recording it is sung by the great Charles Trenant. one often hears the haunting melody in the soundtrack of any Hollywood movie that includes scenes in France. i now more fully appreciate the autumn that is often associated with twilight, decay, melancholy and a sense of approaching fin. my previous acquaintence with the season has always been tinged with optimism akin to that others feel at the new year, largely because of my life in the academy. this year my experience of spring was new -- it actually lived up to its fabled reputation and i could revel in it, free from the stresses that are usually affiliated with april (namely graduate student poverty, end of term deadlines and exams); perhaps this is the year in which i will discover another autumn as well. at the moment it feels too much like the discovery that a long-time friend is in no way the person you believed him/her to be.
Veraline (sung by Charles Trenant)
Les sanglots longs
Des violons
De l'automne,
Blessent mon coeur
D'une langueur monotone.
Tout suffocant
Et bleme, quand
Sonne l'heure,
Je me souviens
Des jours anciens et je pleure;
Et je m'en vais
Au vent mauvais
Qui m'emporte
Deca, dela
Pareil a la feuille morte
posted by Amanda Bonner at 10:10 a.m.
1 Comments:
update: i found this interesting tidbit in the pages of the newsletter France Monthly:
As early as 1940, the BBC (Radio London) transmitted a daily series of coded messages to allow the Allies based in England to communicate with the Resistance in France, to ask them to plot various sabotages and, most importantly, to prepare for the upcoming landing in Normandy. A few days before D-Day, the commanding officers of the Resistance heard hundreds of messages, but only a few of them were really significant. When said twice, the first line of the poem by Verlaine, Chanson d'Automne, "Les sanglots longs des violons de l'automne" meant that the "day" was imminent, and when the second line "blesse mon coeur d'une langueur monotone" was also repeated, the Resistance knew that the invasion would take place within the next 48 hours.
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