Reykjavík Grapevine - 08.04.2005, Síða 36

We don’t get a lot of French up
here. We learn English and Danish
in primary school, and in secondary
school we get to choose between
French or German in addition. I
chose German and flunked it. Had
I picked French, as many guys do
because the French classes have more
girls, I would no doubt have flunked
that too. But German still seems a
more approachable language, being
more closely related to both Danish
and Icelandic. And we all grew up
watching the German cop show
Derrick on TV.
But we don’t get a lot of French up
here. So a lot of great French 20th
Century Music has passed us by.
Or come to us through English. I
stumbled upon one of my current
favourites, Jacques Brel, through
listening to David Bowie perform
his songs “My Death” and “Port of
Amsterdam” in English. I have since
sought out other English language
translations by Scott Walker and
Rod McKuen. There’s even a version
of “If You Go Away” by Icelandic
songstress Emiliana Torrini. Again,
of course, in English.
Getting within Inches of Piaf
But now the theatre is skipping the
middle man and translating some
of the French greats directly to
Icelandic. Last spring, the theatre
group “The Theatre on the Scene”
staged a production based on the
poetry of Jacques Prévert, some of
it in French, some of it in Icelandic,
but the title ironically in English.
The album is still available in record
stores.
The Icelandic translations of are by
a man named Sigurður Pálsson, who
translated Prévert’s poetry collection
Paroles in 1987. Pálsson studied
at Sorbonne and was president of
Alliance Française in the late 70’s.
He has translated numerous other
works from French and has written
plays of his own. His latest work is a
play on the life of Edith Piaf, which
premiered last spring at the National
Theatre and has been playing for a
full house ever since.
Again, the lyrics are partly in
French and partly in Icelandic.
Thanks to leading lady Brynhildur
Guðjónsdóttir, you can come within
inches of the French songstress’s
delivery, and for those of us better
versed in Icelandic than French, get
the lyrics as well. It’s about time we
got to appreciate one of the great
voices of the 20th Century up here.
But what is she singing about?
Love Everlasting
Born in the midst of World War 1
onto a policeman’s coat outside of
a house in Paris’ poor quarter and
raised in a brothel, Edith always sang
as if her life depended on it because
by and large it did.
The album starts with the French
language La vie en rose, before
moving onto Icelandic with
L’accordéoniste, The Accordion
Player. Deciphered, it is about the
sheer love of music, intertwined the
love of a man, the accordion player
who is sent off to war, leaving her all
alone.
But the song is not about love
everlasting, this is not music for
teenagers on the make. Who can
believe in love that lasts forever
anyway but those who are new to it?
As soon as her man is gone she finds
another who can do the things that
he did, and she is once again lost in
song. Nothing lasts forever, it is all
in the moment.
Love All-Consuming
The next song, Marguerite Monnot,
Love Psalm, is in both French and
Icelandic. This time, the subject
is love, all-consuming. Written by
Edith herself, it details the sacrifices
a woman is willing to make for love.
Like most poets, she offers the moon
to her lover if but only she could.
That’s of course an empty promise,
but in the next verse she promises
not to care if people laugh at her for
being with him, a much more potent
expression of love as it deals with real
sacrifice.
On the next track she does battle
with the faceless masses again.
Performed solely in Icelandic, La
foule (The Crowd), details being
swept through a maddening crowd
and into the arms of a stranger,
before the crowd sweeps her
away again. People go from being
strangers to being soul mates to
being strangers again, and you can
never clasp them close enough, at
least not for more than a moment.
Milord is again in Icelandic and
French. A girl from the harbour area
sees a man in
love and then proposes to comfort
him as the lover leaves. Touchingly,
she speaks of what he has lost. Has
rebound ever been better proposed?
Love Gone Away
But the moment will not, can not
last, and in Mon dieu she offers
a prayer to God himself for just
a little more time. But the prayer
goes unanswered, the years pass by,
and you’re left with nothing but the
memories and the pain, expressed in
Padam
Padam. A voice “whispers of youth
and love/ And threatens; now you
must suffer,” to the simpleton who
once believed. La ville inconnue (In a
Foreign City) continues the theme of
loneliness, but here it is unrelenting,
there is not even so much as a
moment to live for. Finally, we
reach some sort of acceptance, with
Non, je ne regrette rien (I Don’t
Regret a Thing). But the acceptance
is not found in comforting herself
with the memories, for what good
are memories of things that have
gone away? No, she banishes those
memories to begin anew.
For those who want to renew the
memories of one of the greats of
the 20th Century, the play Edith
Piaf is being performed in the
National Theatre and the album is
available in 12 Tónar record store on
Skólavörðustígur 15.
Edith Piaf, National Theatre,
Hverfisgata 19, 101 Reykjavík
The Pleasures of Lingua Franca
By Valur Gunnarsson
36