Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0011219, Tue, 15 Mar 2005 21:20:13 -0800

Subject
TT-1 3" Fascination" Text, music, lyrics
Date
Body
A belated addendum to the earlier Transpartent Things thread. I notice there is a "fascination" motif in the brief chapter. The word occurs nowhere else in the novella. The song (circa 1900 was resurrected in the 1952 film "Moulin Rouge" (Zsa Zsa Gabor & Mel Ferrer)--musical bio-pic re Toulouse Lautrec, an artist much admired by VN. T-L figures in ADA. The song reference is apparently triggered by the recurring "fascination". If anyone has more explicit ideas, I'd like to hear them.

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TRANSPARENT THINGS XIII.



"Now we have to bring into focus the main street of Witt as it was on Thursday,...... "



[Hugh wanders the main street and encounters Armande (his future wife) with her old friend Julia Moore (Mr. R's step-daughter with whom H. had an unsatisfactory one-nighter in New York). DBJ]



"The dreadful fascination of meeting an old flame in public! Armande had nothing to fear, naturally. She was in a totally different class, beyond competition. Hugh recalled R.'s famous novella Three Tenses.

"There was something else we didn't quite settle, Armande, or did we?"

"Well, we spent two hours at it," remarked Armande, rather grumpily - not realizing, perhaps, that she had nothing to fear. The fascination was of a totally different, purely intellectual or artistic order, as brought out so well in Three Tenses: a fashionable man in a night-blue tuxedo is supping on a lighted veranda with three bare-shouldered beauties, Alice, Beata, and Claire, who have never seen one another before. A. is a former love, B. is his present mistress, C. is his future wife."

............................................................

"The charm of the Past Tense lay in its secrecy. Knowing Julia, he was quite sure she would not have told a chance friend about their affair - one sip among dozens of swallows. Thus, at this precious and brittle instant, Julia and he (alias Alice and the narrator) formed a pact of the past, an impalpable pact directed against reality as represented by the voluble street corner, with its swish-passing automobiles, and trees, and strangers. The B. of the trio was Busy Witt, while the main stranger - and this touched off another thrill - was his sweetheart of the morrow, Armande, and Armande was as little aware of the future (which the author, of course, knew in every detail) as she was of the past that Hugh now retasted with his brown-dusted milk. Hugh, a sentimental simpleton, and somehow not a very good Person (good ones are above that, he was merely a rather dear one), was sorry that no music accompanied the scene, no Rumanian fiddler dipped heartward for two monogram-entangled sakes. There was not even a mechanical rendition of Fascination " (a waltz) by the cafe's loudplayer. Still there did exist a kind of supporting rhythm formed by the voices of foot passengers, the clink of crockery, the mountain wind in the venerable mass of the corner chestnut. "

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MUSIC

Fascination

Paroles de Maurice de FĂ©raudy, musique de Fermo Marchetti



Si l'on demandait à cent personnes le titre de la chanson qui leur fait le plus penser à 1900, il est fort à parier que cette valse surannée viendrait en premier .......Chantée par toutes les divas et demi-divas de l'opérette depuis bientôt cent ans, cette chanson demeure parmi les plus populaires du répertoire français .................... La voici, quoique créée par Paulette Darty, interprétée par Florelle (Odette Rousseau dite), celle qui avait plus de voix que la Miss mais pas nécessairement sa présence en scène.- En 1932:



Fascination - Florelle - 1932 - format MP3 :








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LYRICS

Fascination

1905

Paroles: Maurice de FĂ©raudy. Musique: Fermo Marchetti


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Paroles :

Refrain :

Je t'ai rencontré simplement
Et tu n'as rien fait pour chercher Ă  me plaire
Je t'aime pourtant
D'un amour ardent
Dont rien, je le sens, ne pourra me défaire.
Tu seras toujours mon amant
Et je crois en toi comme au bonheur suprĂŞme.
Je te fuis parfois, mais je reviens quand mĂŞme
C'est plus fort que moi... je t'aime !

Lorsque je souffre, il me faut tes yeux
Profonds et joyeux
Afin que j'y meure,
Et j'ai besoin pour revivre, amour,
De t'avoir un jour
Moins qu'un jour, une heure,
De me bercer un peu dans tes bras
Quand mon cœur est las,
Quand parfois je pleure.
Ah ! crois-le bien, mon chéri, mon aimé, mon Roi,
Je n'ai de bonheur qu'avec toi.

(Au refrain)


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