Les Passantes
"Les Passantes" is the song that achieves the most hits on my Brassens website.
The poetic words of Antoine Pol say that most of the romantic experiences of life prove to be incomplete and unsatisfactory. Yet the song itself reminds us that, in spite all this, life has its own melancholic music.
Biographical Note
Brassens tells us that when he wrote this verse, he had in his thoughts his partner Joha Heiman, who was enduring a loveless marriage when he first met her.
Je veux dédier ce poème
A toutes les femmes qu'on aime
Pendant quelques instants secrets
A celles qu'on connait à peine
Qu'un destin différent entraîne
Et qu'on ne retrouve jamais
A celle qu'on voit apparaître
Une seconde à sa fenêtre
Et qui, preste, s'évanouit
Mais dont la svelte silhouette
Est si gracieuse et fluette
Qu'on en demeure épanoui
.
A la fine et souple valseuse
Qui vous sembla triste et nerveuse
Par une nuit de carnaval
Qui voulut rester inconnue
Et qui n'est jamais revenue
Tournoyer dans un autre bal
A la compagne de voyage
Dont les yeux, charmant paysage
Font paraître court le chemin
Qu'on est seul, peut-être, à comprendre
Et qu'on laisse pourtant descendre
Sans avoir effleuré sa main.
A celles qui sont déjà prises
Et qui, vivant des heures grises
Près d'un être trop différent (1)
Vous ont, inutile folie,
Laissé voir la mélancolie
D'un avenir désespérant
Chères images aperçues
Espérances d'un jour déçues
Vous serez dans l'oubli demain
Pour peu que le bonheur survienne
Il est rare qu'on se souvienne
Des épisodes du chemin
Mais si l'on a manqué sa vie
On songe avec un peu d'envie
A tous ces bonheurs entrevus
Aux baisers qu'on n'osa pas prendre
Aux cœurs qui doivent vous attendre
Aux yeux qu'on n'a jamais revus.
Alors, aux soirs de lassitude
Tout en peuplant sa solitude
Des fantômes du souvenir
On pleure les lèvres absentes
De toutes ces belles passantes
Que l'on n'a pas su retenir
|
I
wish to dedicate this poem
To
all of the women that one loves
For
just a few secret moments
To those
whom you scarcely know
Whom
a different fate bears away
And
whom you see never again.
To
the one whom you saw appear
For
a brief second at her window
And
who, straightway, is lost from sight
And
yet whose slender silhouette
Is so graceful and alluring
That
you stay tingling with her glow.
To
the lithe girl of a stylish waltz
Who
seemed to you nervous and sad
Creature of Carnival night
Who
wished to remain a stranger
And
who never came back to join
In
the whirl of another ball.
To
the girl who shared your journey,
Whose
eyes, charming to look upon ,
Make
the route you travelled seem short
Whom
just you, p’rhaps could understand
Yet
whom you allow to go off
Without
the mere touch of her hand.
To
those women already taken
Who,
living long and dull hours
With
a person too different
Let you see, pointless folly
The depth of the melancholy
Of
a future deprived of hope.
Dear
images only half seen
Disappointed
hopes of just one day
You’ll
be quite forgotten the next
If only good fortune prevails.
It's unusual that one retains
Trivial events on life’s way.
But
if you have missed out on life
You
ponder with tinges of envy,
All
those moments of bliss you glimpsed
The
kisses you did not dare take
The
hearts which must be left waiting
The
eyes that were not seen again.
And
so, on wearisome evenings,
While
peopling your loneliness
With
the phantoms of memory
One weeps for lips, sadly absent
Of
all those beaut’ful passers-by
Whom
you knew not how to keep hold.
|
Comment
:Oxzen said...
I've been looking for a good
translation of "Les Passantes" for years, so many thanks for this,
David. Very well laid out and displayed. Particularly liked the way you
incorporated the excellent video. Have you seen the version sung by Francis Cabrel?http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C27QQXWle6c
It has some nice bluesy guitar work and a fantastic blues harmonica solo in the
middle. 5 minutes of real bliss.
Not surprising that a fellow Libran should have such a love of
this beautiful piece of work, and of Brassens generally.
11 April 2008 at 15:03
Here is Francis Cabrel's recording:
I am always amazed by the expressiveness of a single guitar in the hands of a virtuoso, such as the following by Michel Sadanowsky (2013):
