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Jake’s Isabella (his translation of Brassens’ Marinette) rather puzzlingly omits Brassens’ final verse:
Quand j’ai couru lugubre ?† l’enterr’ment de Marinette
La belle, la tra?Ætresse ?©tait d?©j?† ressuscit?©e
Avec ma p’tit’ couronn’, j’avais l’air d’un con, ma m?®re
Avec ma p’tit’ couronn’, j’avais l’air d’un conHere, for what it is worth (which is not much), is my meagre attempt:
When I went to her grave to say farewell to Isabella
I found that she’d revived and was alive for all to see
A right soft pillock I looked with a little wreath, so help me,
A right soft pillock I looked with my wilting wreath.Why did Jake omit this verse? I find it hard to believe that a writer of his quality couldn’t come up with a rendering. Is the song enhanced or diminished by finishing with her death, rather than her miraculous graveside resurrection? Views welcome!
Nice translation, Paul.
I prefer it without the resurrection.
I wonder whether Jake was influenced by his Catholic upbringing and couldn’t bring himself to include what might have seemed blasphemous, or whether, like me, he just thought it was one surrealistic episode too far.
I reckon that Jake’s translated version is a bit like a condensed version of "I Stayed Off Work Today" with an increasing level of intensity throughout the song (in ISOWToday, an increasing level of obstacles for the hero to surmount : in Isabella, the progressively peevish and cross reactions to the decline in their relationship) which make the songs funny by each successive verse topping the previous one.
And, given that the guy in "Isabella" has to turn up to try and cosh her before she can resurrect, I don’t think that turning up with a wreath is funnier or more peeved and cross than with a cosh. In fact, he’s turned up with a wreath and gone all sympathetic at the end, whereas for the rest of the song he’s been getting more and more ratty. The very definition of an anticlimax and Jake was right to leave it out. I reckon. :O)
Nice interpretation in a Jake mode Paul.
Like Keith and Malcy I assume that Jake left it out because he considered that it makes a better song in English without it. He also changed Le Gorille a bit and Je rejendrai ma belle a bit more, again to make them work better for him in English.
This is why Jake was a great interpreter of Brassens rather than a translator and I do think that the last verse is truer to the spirit of Georges than Jake. However on this one I incline towards Georges.
Ian
Post edited by: aliasmacalias, at: 2006/09/20 20:10
i offer
when i went round to dance around the tomb of isabella
my love the jezebel, i found, had risen from the grave
a right soft pillock i looked in me glitter suit, so help me
a right soft pillock i looked in me blue suede shoes.tg
terry grant wrote:
i offer
when i went round to dance around the tomb of isabella
my love the jezebel, i found, had risen from the grave
a right soft pillock i looked in me glitter suit, so help me
a right soft pillock i looked in me blue suede shoes.tg
I like that:)
A lot.
Ian
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