Perez Hilton in the 16th century?

I've always loved Faure's Pavane, hadn't heard it in a long time, maybe even years.  I knew there were two versions, the original orchestral setting and another with chorus. The first time I heard the less-often-performed choral version, I was shocked. Here were these two groups of singers, men and women, alternating lines, obviously singing of aching, longing, yearning, thwarted desire, mortality, grief, loss, and - well, that's what I thought for the longest time. It laid the piece bare, gave it a stunningly human voice and changed it for me forever. 

There's something a little heavy and sad about the beauty of that chorus and the call-and-response structure of the song, reminding me of wilting roses and lilies in a hot room in which a pale dead girl lies in state. In her waterfall of black hair is a gardenia placed there by her lover, who sneaked into her bier at midnight in a last act of tender devotion before stabbing himself through the heart and (etc., etc., etc.).

Every once in a while I wondered what the words meant - but no I didn't, because I thought I knew already. "Observez la misere!" could only be "See, see what misery we are in!" "Mon coeur" was repeated and repeated: o, my heart! The way the sad elongated phrases were looped and draped upon the sombre, pensive melody was elegiac and even a bit funereal. Wasn't the meaning pretty obvious?

I also thought I knew the meaning of "pavane": surely it meant a threnody, a song of mourning. Ravel's Pavane for a Dead Princess seemed to be a potent example.

I have no idea why TODAY, when I was busy, when I had to make a milk-run trip in to Vancouver, when I spent the day kind of turning in circles and eating too much, why TODAY was the day I actively began to wonder what the lyrics meant. I wanted to do a particularly poetic post on it, illustrating those shining, tear-dripping, grief-stricken lines.

When I finally found a YouTube version I could live with, on perhaps the 19th or 20th try, I thought Wikipedia might give me some help on the meaning of the words. I was a little disappointed, nay, taken aback,  to find out that the choral version was just an add-on to impress a girl:

Fauré composed the orchestral version at Le Vésinet in the summer of 1887.^[5] He envisaged a purely orchestral composition, using modest forces, to be played at a series of light summer concerts conducted by Jules Danbé.^[5] After Fauré opted to dedicate the work to his patron, Elisabeth, comtesse Greffulhe,^[6] he felt compelled to stage a grander affair and at her recommendation he added an invisible chorus to accompany the orchestra (with additional allowance for dancers). The choral lyrics were based on some inconsequential verses, à la Verlaine, on the romantic helplessness of man, which had been contributed by the Countess's cousin, Robert de Montesquiou.^[7]

Wiki was good enough to provide the French version of the lyrics, which looked so peculiar that at first I thought they must have made a mistake:

C'est Lindor, c'est Tircis et c'est tous nos vainqueurs!
C'est Myrtille, c'est Lydé! Les reines de nos coeurs!
Comme ils sont provocants! Comme ils sont fiers toujours!
Comme on ose régner sur nos sorts et nos jours!

Faites attention! Observez la mesure!

Ô la mortelle injure! La cadence est moins lente!
Et la chute plus sûre! Nous rabattrons bien leur caquets!
Nous serons bientôt leurs laquais!
Qu'ils sont laids! Chers minois!
Qu'ils sont fols! (Airs coquets!)

Et c'est toujours de même, et c'est ainsi toujours!
On s'adore! On se hait! On maudit ses amours!
Adieu Myrtille, Eglé, Chloé, démons moqueurs!
Adieu donc et bons jours aux tyrans de nos coeurs!
Et bons jours!

So where was all that grief, l'angoisse, wilting flowers, etc.? This just sounded like a bunch of people babbling, even gossiping. "Observez la mesure" merely meant "keep time", as in following an elaborate dance step. The pavane, far from being a song of mourning, turned out to be a formal, courtly dance from the 1500s: 

The pavane, pavan, paven, pavin, pavian, pavine, or pavyn
(It. pavana, padovana; Ger. Paduana) is a slow processional dance common in Europe during the 16th century (Renaissance).

They couldn't even figure out how to spell it!

But it got even worse than that when I found the English translation.

It’s Lindor! it’s Tircis! 

and all our conquerors! 
It’s Myrtil! it’s Lydé! the queens of our hearts! 
How provocative they are, 
how forever proud! 
How they dare reign over our destinies 
and our lives! 
Watch out! Keep to the measure! 
O the mortal injury! 
The cadence is not so slow! 
And the fall more certain! 
We’ll tone down their chatter! 
Soon we’ll be their lackeys! 
How ugly they are! Sweet faces! 
How madcap they are! Coquettish airs! 
And it’s always the same! And will be so 
always! 
They adore one another! They hate one another! 
They curse their loves! 
Farewell, Myrtil! Eglé! Chloe! Mocking demons! 
Farewell and good days 
to the tyrants of our hearts! 

—Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac 

(1855–1921)

Who's Lindor? Who's Tircis? Why this list of meaningless-sounding names? It begins to resemble some Perez Hilton screed about the latest tits-and-ass starlet, But it sounded so wonderful! It sighs, it even seethes a little. Bosoms heave, the men and women sing as across a huge gulf, the vast abyss separating male and female, etc. etc. But it's nothing like that at all. 

Faure had a great tune and just needed a few verses; this Montesq-whatever knocked them out for a price.  All calculated to please his "patron" the Countess, and if he wasn't boinking her I don't know who was, because this is just going to too much trouble for someone you're NOT boinking. And Faure was no fool - he knew full well that no one listens to the words anyway.

 

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book

    It took me years to write, will you take a look

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Just a bunch of funny signs. . .

(This one is so gorgeous that I must transcribe it: "Do not fuck the gum, defend the false trademark,PP ,PE,PVC...etc.packing bag,Honored guest's card,the card of gold,copper,aluminum quality mark card,gift box,laser,have no the spinning cloth etc.Handbag." Got it!

La Chanson des Vieux Amants ( Judy Collins )

"La Chanson De Vieux Amants" (The Song of Old Lovers) 

by Jacques Brel

Of course, we have had our storms

Lovers for 20 years, it is a crazy love

A thousand times you have packed your bags

A thousand times, I have taken flight

And each piece of furniture remembers

in this room without a cradle

the claps of old thunderstorms

Nothing is the same anymore

You have even lost the taste for water

And me only the taste for conquest

But my love

My sweet, my tender, my marvelous love

from the clear dawn until the end of the day

I love you still, you know I love you

Me, I know all your sorceries

You know all my magic tricks

you have kept me safe from trap to trap

I have lost you from time to time

Of course, you have taken a few lovers

You surely have to pass the time

The body must know rapture

Finally finally

It took us a lot of talent

To become old without becoming adults

Oh my love

My sweet, my tender, my marvelous love

from the clear dawn until the end of the day

I love you still, you know I love you

And the more time marches on

The more time torments us

but isn't it the worst trap

for lovers to live in peace?

Of course you cry a little less easily 

I tear myself apart a little more slowly

We protect our secrets less and less 

We take fewer chances

we don't trust the stream of water

but it is always a tender war

Oh my love

My sweet, my tender, my marvelous love

from the clear dawn until the end of the day

I love you still, you know I love you

Something about this song broke me open today, left me not just weeping but sobbing, in the way that tears can open the soul, creating a kind of wonderment. Floods of pain, raw and reeling, though I can't determine whether it's the sheer pulsing beauty of the cello arrangement, the melancholy sweetness of Collins' voice, or just how I feel today, full of contradiction.

It's not true, you know, that you "get old", though the body wears down, the mind may work a little slower, and it's easy to feel that you are falling hopelessly behind and don't particularly want to catch up. I heard it said, many times, when I was younger, "oh, but you stay young inside," and I regarded those words with the special contempt I reserved for "old people". Now I find I am on a collision course with time, that the wall seems to hurtle towards me and that there is little I can do to make it stop. I certainly can't run away.

But the old woman, the "vieux amant" who spoke to me, she was right. We don't get old. Emotions only deepen, despair becomes unbearable, funny things make you feel happy and dizzy, moments of awe are heartstopping. And sex, desire, that whole province, no, it most surely does not go away. It changes. The hideous stereotype of a randy old lady putting on her army boots and chasing after repulsed young men is a lie, an insulting, life-hating lie. Because it isn't like that at all.

When I first heard this recording, I think I cried, maybe even sobbed as I did tonight, and I was only fifteen years old. God knows what I was going through then, but the terrifying thing is, much of it I am STILL going through, things I know I will never resolve. I thought the song was tender, wistful and very beautiful. I knew enough French to string together meaning: "Finalement", "tourment", "tendre", "toujours", "je t'aime" - and the rest was made evident just by phrasing, that this was an "old" couple (and in my fifteen-year-old mind, they certainly must have been old) who had been together TWENTY YEARS. I don't know how old Brel was when he wrote this - didn't he die young? - but his perceptions of age were probably similar to mine.

I've been with my vieux amant for FORTY years and counting now, twice what it says in that song, and I swear to God I do not feel "old" (though HE is an old coot, of course). Maybe it's just that sixty is the new "whatever", the new 59 or something. When I Googled the song title to look for images, what I saw just horrified me: there were all these embarrassingly whimsical pictures of toothless people in their 90s, coyly kissing or wobbling down the street together. "Old lovers". If they had been together 20 years, they must have met in the nursing home at age 75.

Time is weird, life is strange, a mixed bag for me who has a dark personality, something you really can't change, and a feeling of always being on the outside, partly by choice, but also by dislocation and a kind of chronic square-peg syndrome. I hate it, and it goes by so fast. I have thrown myself at my goals, and largely fallen short. I am bullheaded enough not to stop, don't even know how to stop, to give up. I want to. I want to let it go, forget about making any sort of mark, because if I've come this far and haven't, I won't. 

So I tell myself. The war goes on. I want this! I want someone to read my story, be grabbed and moved by it. I see it slowly sinking into the quagmire it seems to have arisen from. I have no idea what to do. Fretting, emotional, I find music triggers floods of weeping, which a part of me secretly enjoys. I realize I have had bits and pieces of success, just enough to keep me writing but never enough to feel satisfied or worthy. So the battle never ends: toujours, c'est la guerre.

BLOGGER'S NOTE.  OK, so I've had a few more thoughts about all this. Writers necessarily tear themselves apart in the service of their work, so I must analyze. 

I think one of the reasons the song affected me so wrenchingly is that I hadn't heard it in 35 years. That's a lot of heartache, a lot of gain and loss, richness as well as periods of abject wretchedness. And golden gifts, sometimes unrecognized. Isn't that kind of like the song of the "vieux amants"? When  I looked at it more closely, I realized that this was hardly a song of tragedy. It was all about a couple who are devoted to each other even after some fierce storms, including infidelity and deception (thus, all the references to trickery, sorcery, not the kind of "magic" we associate with romance).

In other words, this ain't such a bad deal. This is a couple, still passionate about each other, never indifferent, together because they still want to be. There are poignant references, almost disguised (the "room without a cradle", which implies a childlessness they may nor may not have chosen), and the casual affairs which help pass the time, but such biting sarcasm almost borders on the humorous. 

I'm reminded of a Catholic priest I used to know who was ticked off because people constantly referred to the sufferings of Jesus. "He had a bad week at the end," he liked to say, "but aside from that, he had a pretty good time!". I feel this way about the old lovers (who, if they're really old, must have met when they were well into their 50s). There is a richness here that is in contrast to the tragic, sobbing tune, which seems to be talking about death rather than devotion.

I can't really listen to Brel sing his own stuff. I just made an attempt to watch him sing this on YouTube, and the problem isn't his voice. The arrangement is pure elevator music, sudsy, with those high cheesy strings I haven't heard since I threw out my old Ferrante and Teicher albums .I don't know why a legend like Brel would allow such fromage, and I will admit Collins' version is far superior, but OH is it mournful, funereal almost, whereas Brel's is just oversentimental, and a little sad.

Another thing that popped into my head: the more I listen to this tune, the more I realize it's actually a tango. Just change the tempo, the rhythm, and you can see the "vieux amants" in black silk and spangles, performing the oddly jerky eroticism of old Argentina on the dance floor.

It's all too strange for words.

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Νάνα Μούσχουρη - ΚΑΘΕ ΤΡΕΛΟ ΠΑΙΔΙ

This has a history, too, a very long one. I loved this song for years, at least since the late '70s, but had no idea what the words meant. On the British Concert Album, Nana Mouskouri announced the title as "Wilderness", so I assumed it was about a long, lonely walk through a barren landscape, or perhaps through a dark forest full of frightening sounds. Turns out it has nothing to do with any of that! 

Since I am having trouble seeing the subtitles, I assume you will too, so I will transcribe:

That daybreak
I said good morning to him, oh, oh.
That daybreak
I said good morning to him, oh, oh.

Every madcap young man
is holding in his hand
a kiss given by Virgin Mary
and a knife

and his mother doesn't sing
and his mother doesn't sing.

When someone's slaughtering two doves
the night is burning in his two hands
and the girl doesn't speak

and the girl doesn't speak.


It's a strange, spare, paradoxical and somewhat frightening poem about the duality of humankind, the beauty and the violence of youth, and the ways in which people are silenced by fear - or does it mean something else? What's a madcap young man, anyway? Now that I finally have the English lyrics, it's more mysterious than ever. (I did find the composer's name - Manos Hadjidakis - vaguely familiar, though I don't know if he also wrote these incredible words.) 


http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.com/2012/01/synopsis-glass-character-novel-by.html

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm