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Jansy: am I mistook? The singular imperative of Prendre is Prends, not
Prend! 'Prends garde à toi' is how I recall it. Or am I missing some
idiomatic quirk?
And the meaning is NOT really "Keep guard of yourself." More like
BEWARE! Or RUN FOR COVER! In that wonderful US Army update, Carmen
Jones, the African-American translation (and I honestly type this from
memory sans google, sans wiki, sans yahoo and sans search)
"Dat's love, dat's love ...
"You go for me and I'm taboo,
"But if you're hard-to-get, I go for you;
"And if I do, den you are through
"O baby that's the END OF YOU ..."
Did you notice that Shade was not only "corrupted" and "terrified,"
but, blow me, ALLURED by the "forced" attentions? Lines 161-2.
What
happened and with whom is obscure: JS uses the simile, "_Like_ some
little lad forced by a wench ..."
Shade is a real weedy, whingeing poet-taster! No self-respecting
Scouse lad would begrudge a lonely Aunt a few hours of fun on the side.
Let's face it, it all leaves a nasty taste in the mouth. Yet James
Twigg sees a contradiction with lines 103-4, where JS relishes the
"half-fish, half-honey of that golden paste."
PS: not "_in_ Pasadeen," JM. "Pasadeen" is an _adjective_.
CTaH
EDNote: to my ear, this passage resonates eerily --why?--with the following from
Lolita: "My mother's elder sister, Sybil, whom a cousin of my father's had married and then neglected, served in my immediate family as a kind of unpaid governess and housekeeper. [. . . .] I was extremely fond of her, despite the rigidity--the fatal rigidity--of some of her rules. Perhaps she wanted to make of me, in the fullness of
time, a better widower than my father" (10). Why "fatal rigidity"? ~SB
Quoting jansymello
<jansy@AETERN.US>:
All private editorial communications, without exception, are read by both co-editors.