✕
Μετάφραση
He who went astray
It had been ages and ages
since I'd made use of my teeth1,
or put any wine in my water2
or any coal in my stove.3
All the undertakers, covertly,
had their rapacious eyes on me already:
My last hour was going to sound
that's when I went astray.
Not to beat around the bush4,
At a stroke I clobbered 5,
with an excessively strong blow with a log
a night-time merry-maker with masses of money.
The furry cats6, when they learnt of this
came down on me pretty hard7,
and sent me down to Santé prison8
to make me back into an honest man.
Thingummy, Whosit, so and so, Mrs so and so,
every ordinary sort of person,
were of the opinion that, with true justice
I should have been hung
from a lamp post9 on the spot.
They saw themselves already cutting up to share,
fairly and unreservedly, the rope I was hung with
each piece a token of good luck.10.
Many years later11 they threw me
out of the door of the santé prison.
As I'm a sentimental type,
I go back to the district where I was born,
keeping my head down, staying close to the walls,
with trembling knees12
expecting to see any human beings
turn away from my path.13.
There's one of them who said "Hello!
Seeing you again, we weren't counting on that..."
There's one who asked me
how I was14
Then, I realised that there were still people,
and lovely people, remaining on earth,
and I put my backside on the ground
and cried my eyes out15.
- 1. hadn't eaten for a long time
- 2. couldn't afford any wine
- 3. couldn't afford fuel
- 4. not to go by four ways
- 5. "estourbis" is definitely "beating around the bush" - it isn't clear that the victim was killed until the end of the next line
- 6. judges in ermine
- 7. literally: put their paws on top of me
- 8. prison in Paris, entrance on Rue de la Santé about 100 metres south of Boulevard Arago; the Paris Marriot Rive Gauche less than 5 minutes walk away on Bolevard St Jacques reputedly provides more comfortable accomodation
- 9. in the early days of the French revolution "À la lanterne!" was a cry that meant "String him up"; here it just means "from a lamp post" but is obviously a reference to that revolutionary cry
- 10. a piece of a hangmans used rope was regarded as lucky in France
- 11. lit:"At the end of a century"
- 12. literally "Ill at ease on my femurs"'I guess Brassens employs this weird phrase for startling effect (it's maybe accurate anatomically - I don't actually know whether it is or not, but the trembling could be movement of the condyles of the femur against the meniscuses of the knee-joint and I have the impression that Brassens liked getting things like this right and using them to startle people)
- 13. To me the use of "les" rather than "des" means that he thinks his crime has banished him from the human race
- 14. literally: "asked me for news about my health", and of course the word "santé" meaning health is the same word as "Santé", the name of the prison he's just been released from, so when you hear it you dont know which is intended - news about his prison or about his health
- 15. literally: "cried all the tears of my body"
| Ευχαριστώ! ❤ |  |  |
| thanked 5 times | ||
Υποβλήθηκε από 
michealt στις 2017-04-26
michealt στις 2017-04-26Προστέθηκε προς απάντηση στο αίτημα του 
Sophia_
Sophia_ Επεξεργάστηκε τελευταία φορά από το χρήστη michealt στις 2018-01-04
michealt στις 2018-01-04✕
Georges Brassens: Κορυφαία 3
| 1. | Je me suis fait tout petit |
| 2. | Les passantes |
| 3. | La mauvaise réputation |
Idioms from "Celui qui a mal ..."
| 1. | Beat around the bush |
| 2. | Beating around the bush |
| 3. | en tout bien tout honneur |
| 4. | sur-le-champ |
| 5. | To close down |
Σχόλια
michealt
Σάβ, 29/04/2017 - 18:10
dévoraient - yes, a bit stronger is a good idea. So I've changed "eyes" to "rapacious eyes". Thought about "avaricious" but that is used only of people, where as "rapacious" can be used of things and of people's body parts as well as of people; also considered "voracious" (it goes well with dévorer) but it doesn't really work, so "rfapascious" it is.
fixed the typo.
fémurs - he seemed to have a habit of making a choice of word that was at first sight bizarre but on closer study made sense. It's sometimes very difficult to get the feeling across in English, I find it hard to mix weird word choices, archaisms, and 1950s slang effectively - but then I've no claim to be a poet.
PaotrLaouen
Σάβ, 29/02/2020 - 22:49
A nice translation, indeed. Just one detail: "coup de bûche" is a slang expression which doesn't mean anything more than "a heavy blow".
Russia is waging a disgraceful war on Ukraine. Σταθείτε με την Ουκρανία!
Περίληψη μεταφραστή
Translations in this website are protected by copyright law. Don't claim any of my translations as your own, and please if you publish them anywhere attribute them to me.
Some translations I post will have been provided by someone other than me, and when that is the case it will be made clear on the pages containing those translations; if you want to copy those translations you must first obtain permission from the people who provided them, as I don't have the right to give you such permissions, and please carefully observe the rights of the authors of the original material that has been translated.