The songs of Georges Brassens with English translation

This is Georges Brassens at his most serious, putting into a song six verses written by one of France’s very greatest poets, Alphonse de Lamartine, who was born in 1790 in Mâcon and died in 1869 in Paris.
Lamartine was one of the leading figures of the 19th century Romantic Movement, which brought a consciousness of nature into literature and the arts.

On choosing this post, I had a memory of a Brassens version of Lamartine, which conveyed the idea of the consolation that those separated by death could gain in the presence of nature – the voice whispered in the wind - the flower representing the continuity of beauty shared. As I worked through the following lines, however, I realised that either my memory was defective or I had chosen the wrong poem.

In my interpretation of these verses, I see an awareness not of the presence of dead people we have loved, but an awareness of their absence. This view may seem bleak, like the view of nature in the first and last stanza, but it is, perhaps, a more realistic depiction. The other signs from nature, the summer breeze, the flower would seem trivial by comparison. The great sense of emptiness and the feeling of impatience are a positive restatement of the survival of an experience of love shared across death.

We can understand Brassens’ mood when he recorded this song in 1969. His mother had died in 1962 and his father three years later. He suffered a very great blow on the 24th October 1967, when his Jeanne died and it seemed to him that his world had fallen apart.




Voilà les feuilles sans sève
See yonder the sapless leaves
Qui tombent sur le gazon,
Falling on the grass beneath
Voilà le vent qui s'élève
See too how the wind is rising
Et gémit dans le vallon,
And moans along the valley
Voilà l'errante hirondelle
There is the one stray swallow
Qui rase du bout de l'aile
Whose wing tip skims the surface
L'eau dormante des marais,
Of the still water of the marsh
Voilà l'enfant des chaumières
There is the child from the cottage
Qui glane sur les bruyères
Who gathers up from the heathland
Le bois tombé des forêts.
Wood fallen from the forests

C'est la saison où tout tombe
It is the season when all things fall
Aux coups redoublés des vents ;
To the onslaught of the winds
Un vent qui vient de la tombe
A wind which blows out from the tomb
Moissonne aussi les vivants:
Harvests also the living
Ils tombent alors par mille,
They fall down then in their thousands
Comme la plume inutile
Like the feather of no more use
Que l'aigle abandonne aux airs,
Which eagles cast off to the skies
Lorsque des plumes nouvelles
When feathers newly grown
Viennent réchauffer ses ailes
Come and bring new warmth to their wings
À l'approche des hivers.
At the approach of winter

C'est alors que ma paupière
It was at this time that my eye
Vous vit pâlir et mourir,
Saw you grow pale and then die
Tendres fruits qu'à la lumière
Tender fruit, which in the light of day
Dieu n'a pas laissé mûrir!
God has not allowed to ripen
Quoique jeune sur la terre
Though a young man on this earth
Je suis déjà solitaire
I already feel great loneliness
Parmi ceux de ma saison,
Among those of my season
Et quand je dis en moi-même :
And when I say within myself
"Où sont ceux que ton coeur aime ?"
« Where are those whom your heart doth love »
Je regarde le gazon.
It is at the grass I look

C'est un ami de l'enfance
He was a childhood friend of mine
Qu'aux jours sombres du malheur
That in dark days of trial
Nous prêta la Providence
Was to us our help and saviour
Pour appuyer notre coeur ;
To support our flagging hearts
Il n'est plus : notre âme est veuve
He is no more : our soul is widowed
Il nous suit dans notre épreuve
He follows us in our ordeal
Et nous dit avec pitié :
And he says to us with pity
"Ami si ton âme est pleine,
“My friend, if your soul is so filled
De ta joie ou de ta peine
With your joy and with your pain
Qui portera la moitié ?"
Who will then bear the half share?”

C'est une jeune fiancée
She was a young girl, new betrothed
Qui, le front ceint du bandeau,
Who with a band round her head
N'emporta qu'une pensée
Took away with her just one thought
De sa jeunesse au tombeau ;
Of her youthful days to the tomb
Triste, hélas ! dans le ciel même,
Sad alas ! Within heaven itself
Pour revoir celui qu'elle aime
To see once more the one she loves
Elle revient sur ses pas,
She traces back her steps
Et lui dit : "Ma tombe est verte !
And says to him : « My tomb is green !
Sur cette terre déserte
Upon this deserted land
Qu'attends-tu ? Je n'y suis pas !"
Why await ? I am not here ! »

C'est l'ombre pâle d'un père
It’s the pale shade of a father
Qui mourut en nous nommant ;
Who called our names in death
C'est une soeur, c'est un frère
It’s a sister, it’s a brother
Qui nous devance un moment,
Who precede us by a moment
Tous ceux enfin dont la vie
All those, in the end, whose life
Un jour où l'autre ravie,
Snatched on one day or another
Emporte une part de nous,
Takes away a portion of us
Semblent dire sous la pierre :
They seem to say beneath the stone
"Vous qui voyez la lumière,
« You who can see the light of day
De nous vous souvenez vous ?"
Are we in your memories still ? »

Voilà les feuilles sans sève
See yonder the sapless leaves
Qui tombent sur le gazon,
Falling on the grass beneath
Voilà le vent qui s'élève
See too how the wind is rising
Et gémit dans le vallon,
And moans along the valley
Voilà l'errante hirondelle
There is the one stray swallow
Qui rase du bout de l'aile
Whose wing tip skims the surface
L'eau dormante des marais,
Of the still water of the marsh
Voilà l'enfant des chaumières
There is the child from the cottage
Qui glane sur les bruyères
Who gathers up from the heathland
Le bois tombé des forêts.
Wood fallen from the forests
Alphonse De Lamartine
(1969 - La religieuse)


Translation comments



When I studied some poems of Lamartine for my « A » level, fifty years ago, my French teacher taught me something that I have never questioned or revised since. He said that, if you ask English people to quote a poem they know, they will recite the first verse of Wordsworth’s “Daffodils”- “I wandered lonely as a cloud…. . If you ask French people, he said, they will recite the first verse of Lamartine’s poem: “Le Lac” (1820). As I learned these verses at the age of 16, it is absolutely impossible for me to forget them. Here is the first verse:

Ainsi, toujours poussés vers de nouveaux rivages,
Always driven as we are to ever changing shores
dans la nuit éternelle emportés sans retour,
Into night eternal borne off with no return
ne pourrons-nous jamais sur l’océan des âges
Can we never ever on the ocean of time
jeter l’ancre un seul jour?
Cast anchor for one single day?

The lake in the poem was at Aix-les-Bains. In 1816, he had gone there for convalescence and had fallen deeply in love with a fellow patient, Julie Charles. She was a married lady and was suffering from tuberculosis. They planned to meet up at Lake Bourget again, a year later, but by that time, she was seriously ill and was unable to leave Paris, where she died a few months later.

Lamartine married Mary-Ann Birch, an English-woman, in June 1820. He wrote the poem, “Pensées des morts” in 1826 and it is perhaps unlikely that the young fiancée, mourned in it is Julie Charles. The bandeau that he recalls was probably a favourite headband in which he pictures some other young girlfriend, but I gave some idle thought whether I should put down “bandage”, which is an alternative translation.

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A reminder to myself of a touching English poem on the emptiness when a deeply loved person is gone.

The great 17th century poet, John Donne, who dearly loved his wife said that if he lost her he could not bear to look at another woman. CS Lewis disagrees. It is in the small things formerly shared together that the pain lies. His lost love for his wife. Joy Gresham, was the subject of the film “Shadowlands”

Joys that Sting by C S Lewis

“Oh doe not die,” says Donne, “for I shall hate
All women so”. How false the sentence rings.
Women? But in a life made desolate
It is the joys once shared that have the stings.

To take the old walks alone, or not at all,
To order one pint where I ordered two,
To think of, and then not to make, the small
Time-honoured joke (senseless to all but-you);

To laugh (oh, one'll laugh), to talk upon
Themes that we talked upon when you were there,
To make some poor pretence of going on,
Be kind to one's old friends, and seem to care,

While no one (O God) through the years will say
The simplest, common word just your way.

Taken from Poems by C S Lewis 1964

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Labels: Memories of people you loved