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Songs

Songs

Les chemins de l'amour (1940) FP 106

Les chemins de l'amour

Jean Anouilh

Les chemins qui vont à la mer
Ont gardé de notre passage
Des fleurs effeuillées
Et l’écho sous leurs arbres
De nos deux rires clairs.
Hélas! des jours de bonheur,
Radieuses joies envolées,
Je vais sans retrouver traces
Dans mon coeur.
Chemins de mon amour,
Je vous cherche toujours,
Chemins perdus, vous n’êtes plus
Et vos échos sont sourds.
Chemins du désespoir,
Chemins du souvenir,
Chemins du premier jour,
Divins chemins d’amour.
Si je dois l’oublier un jour,
La vie effaçant toute chose,
Je veux dans mon coeur qu’un souvenir
Repose plus fort que l’autre amour.
Le souvenir du chemin,
Où tremblante et toute éperdue,
Un jour j’ai senti sur moi brûler tes mains.

The Paths of Love

English Translation © Richard Stokes

The paths that lead to the sea
Have retained from our passing
The flowers that shed their petals
And the echo beneath their trees
Of our clear laughter.
Alas! no trace of those happy days,
Those radiant joys now flown,
Can I find again
In my heart.
Paths of my love,
I search for you ceaselessly,
Lost paths, you are no more
And your echoes are muted.
Paths of despair,
Paths of memory,
Paths of our first day,
Divine paths of love.
If one day I must forget,
Since life obliterates everything,
I wish for my heart to remember one thing,
More vivid than the other love,
To remember the path
Where trembling and quite distracted,
I one day felt on me your passionate hands.
Translation © Richard Stokes, author of A French Song Companion (Oxford, 2000)

Composer

Francis Poulenc

Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc (F7 January 1899 – 30 January 1963) was a French composer and pianist. His compositions include mélodies, solo piano works, chamber music, choral pieces, operas, ballets, and orchestral concert music.

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Poet

Jean Anouilh

Jean Marie Lucien Pierre Anouilh was a French dramatist whose career spanned five decades. Though his work ranged from high drama to absurdist farce, Anouilh is best known for his 1944 play Antigone, an adaptation of Sophocles' classical drama, that was seen as an attack on Marshal Pétain's Vichy government.


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