Songs
Coquetterie posthume
(1883)
L39
Coquetterie posthume
Quand je mourrai, que l’on me mette,Avant que de clouer mon cercueil,Un peu de rouge à la pommette,Un peu de noir au bord de l’œil.Car je veux, dans ma bière close,Comme le soir de son aveu,Rester éternellement roseAvec du khol sous mon œil bleu.Posez-moi sans jaune immortelle,Sans coussin de larmes brodé,Sur mon oreiller de dentelleDe ma chevelure inondé.Cet oreiller, dans les nuits folles,A vu dormir nos fronts unis,Et sous le drap noir des gondolesCompté nos baisers infinis.Entre mes mains de cire pâle,Que la prière réunit,Tournez ce chapelet d’opalePar le pape à Rome bénit.Je l’égrènerai dans la coucheD’où nul encor ne s’est levé.Sa bouche en a dit sur ma boucheChaque Pater et chaque Ave.Quand je mourrai, que l’on me mette,Avant que de clouer mon cercueil,Un peu de rouge à la pommetteUn peu de noir au bord de l’œil.
Posthumous flirtation
When I die, before my coffin isnailed shut, let a little rougebe dabbed on my cheeks,a touch of black around my eyes.For in my closed coffin I want to beas I was when he made me his vows,to blush with pink for ever more,with kohl beneath my blue eyes.Without yellow immortelles,without a tear-embroidered cushion,lay me on my lace pillow,engulfed in my own tresses.This pillow, on nights of passion,saw us asleep, brow to brow,and counted our endless kissesbeneath the gondola’s black sheet.Between my pale waxen handsjoined in prayer,rotate this opal rosary,blessed by the Pope in Rome.I shall tell the beads on the couchfrom which no one has yet risen;his mouth against my mouthhas said each Pater and each Ave.When I die, before my coffin isnailed shut, let a little rougebe dabbed on my cheeks,a touch of black around my eyes.
Translation © Richard Stokes, author of A French Song Companion (Oxford, 2000)
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Composer
(Achille) Claude Debussy was a French composer. He is sometimes seen as the first Impressionist composer, although he vigorously rejected the term. He was among the most influential composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
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Poet
Pierre Jules Théophile Gautier was a French poet, dramatist, novelist, journalist, and art and literary critic.
While Gautier was an ardent defender of Romanticism, his work is difficult to classify and remains a point of reference for many subsequent literary traditions such as Parnassianism, Symbolism, Decadence and Modernism. He was widely esteemed by writers as diverse as Balzac, Baudelaire, the Goncourt brothers, Flaubert, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, Henry James, Proust and Oscar Wilde.
Taken from Wikipedia. To view the full article, please click here.
See Full Entry
Sorry, no further description available.
Previously performed at:
- 13 Oct 2018: Debussy: A Life in Song
-
Coquetterie posthume
Posthumous flirtation
If you would like to use our texts and translations, please click here for more information.
Composer
(Achille) Claude Debussy was a French composer. He is sometimes seen as the first Impressionist composer, although he vigorously rejected the term. He was among the most influential composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Please click here for the full Wikipedia article.
See Full Entry
Poet
Pierre Jules Théophile Gautier was a French poet, dramatist, novelist, journalist, and art and literary critic.
While Gautier was an ardent defender of Romanticism, his work is difficult to classify and remains a point of reference for many subsequent literary traditions such as Parnassianism, Symbolism, Decadence and Modernism. He was widely esteemed by writers as diverse as Balzac, Baudelaire, the Goncourt brothers, Flaubert, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, Henry James, Proust and Oscar Wilde.
Taken from Wikipedia. To view the full article, please click here.
See Full Entry
Sorry, no further description available.
Previously performed at:
- 13 Oct 2018: Debussy: A Life in Song
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