Songs
La vie antérieure
(1884)
La vie antérieure
J'ai longtemps habité sous de vastes portiquesQue les soleils marins teignaient de mille feux,Et que leurs grands piliers, droits et majestueux,Rendaient pareils, le soir, aux grottes basaltiques.Les houles, en roulant les images des cieux,Mêlaient d'une façon solennelle et mystiqueLes tout-puissants accords de leur riche musiqueAux couleurs du couchant reflété par mes yeux.C'est là que j'ai vécu dans les voluptés calmesAu milieu de l'azur, des vagues, des splendeurs,Et des esclaves nus, tout imprégnés d'odeurs,Qui me rafraîchissaient le front avec des palmes,Et dont l'unique soin était d'approfondirLe secret douloureux qui me faisait languir.
A previous life
For long I lived beneath vast colonnadesTinged with a thousand fires by ocean suns,Whose giant pillars, straight and majestic,Made them look, at evening, like basalt caves. The sea-swells, mingling the mirrored skies,Solemnly and mystically interwoveThe mighty chords of their mellow musicWith the colours of sunset reflected in my eyes.It is there that I have lived in sensuous repose,With blue sky about me and brightness and wavesAnd naked slaves all drenched in perfume.Who fanned my brow with fronds of palm,And whose only care was to fathomThe secret grief which made me languish.
Translation © Richard Stokes, from A French Song Companion (Oxford, 2000)
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Composer
Eugène Marie Henri Fouques Duparc (21 January 1848 – 12 February 1933) was a French composer of the late Romantic period.
Read more here.
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Poet
Charles Pierre Baudelaire was a French poet who also produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe.
His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil), expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the 19th century. Baudelaire's highly original style of prose-poetry influenced a whole generation of poets including Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud and Stéphane Mallarmé among many others. He is credited with coining the term "modernity" (modernité) to designate the fleeting, ephemeral experience of life in an urban metropolis, and the responsibility art has to capture that experience.
Read Les Fleurs du mal here.
See Full Entry
Sorry, no further description available.
Previously performed at:
- 19 Mar 2022: Mary Bevan & Anna Tilbrook: Voyages (dans la lumière)
-
- 22 Oct 2021: 95. Baudelaire in Song
-
- 24 Oct 2018: A French Songbook: Véronique Gens & Susan Manoff
-
La vie antérieure
A previous life
If you would like to use our texts and translations, please click here for more information.
Composer
Eugène Marie Henri Fouques Duparc (21 January 1848 – 12 February 1933) was a French composer of the late Romantic period.
Read more here.
See Full Entry
Poet
Charles Pierre Baudelaire was a French poet who also produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe.
His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil), expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the 19th century. Baudelaire's highly original style of prose-poetry influenced a whole generation of poets including Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud and Stéphane Mallarmé among many others. He is credited with coining the term "modernity" (modernité) to designate the fleeting, ephemeral experience of life in an urban metropolis, and the responsibility art has to capture that experience.
Read Les Fleurs du mal here.
See Full Entry
Sorry, no further description available.
Previously performed at:
- 19 Mar 2022: Mary Bevan & Anna Tilbrook: Voyages (dans la lumière)
- 22 Oct 2021: 95. Baudelaire in Song
- 24 Oct 2018: A French Songbook: Véronique Gens & Susan Manoff