Jean de la Lune (continued)
Aug. 3rd, 2005 10:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustMore about the strange charm of Jean de la Lune:
I've wimped out of translating the name: John of the Moon? John from the Moon? Both are possible translations, but the "particule" is so familiar as part of the construction of a name that it's pretty well opaque anyway. If it had just been the title of the poem, I might have opted for "Moon John", but not with all those repetitions (I hear it in a deep voice: "Moon John. Full Moon John.").
It's twee and Victorian, yet it has a certain appeal - and reminded me of this:
The picture is Timber!, designed in 1875 by Edward H. Fahey as one of a series of greeting cards. If I try to write that it is unredeemed ugliness, a voice in the back of my mind murmurs "But the pointy hats! The strange draperies..." There is something almost Nac Mac Feegle about them...
Jean de la Lune is also the title of a film; or rather, of a play by Marcel Achard which has been filmed three or four times. It sounds like an enjoyable but unremarkable piece of French boulevard theatre, a witty and slightly cynical romance, in which the title describes the naivety of the husband.
It's OK, it's safe to come back in, now: I've finally got it out of my system.
One warm night in spring,
A good hundred years ago,
Silently, under a sprig of parsley,
A tiny baby was born:
Jean de la Lune, Jean de la Lune.
He was just as big as a mushroom,
Frail, delicate, a little darling,
Green and yellow as a parrot
And talked like any parrot, too -
Jean de la Lune, Jean de la Lune.
His walking-stick was a toothpick
He winked his eye, and limped as he walked,
And lived all the year round
In a pumpkin:
Jean de la Lune, Jean de la Lune.
When he ventured out into the woods,
From far and near and every side
Blackbirds and bullfinches would play this round,
On their penny whistles, again and again:
Jean de la Lune, Jean de la Lune.
Sometimes you might see him drive by
In a carriage as big as a walnut,
Pulled along the flowering path
By two mice -
Jean de la Lune, Jean de la Lune.
If by chance he came to a stream,
Which stopped him dead on the spot,
Too small to leap across it,
He would bridge it with a blade of grass -
Jean de la Lune, Jean de la Lune.
When he died, everyone mourned him.
He was buried in his pumpkin,
And these words were inscribed
On his stone : here lies
Jean de la Lune, Jean de la Lune.
I've wimped out of translating the name: John of the Moon? John from the Moon? Both are possible translations, but the "particule" is so familiar as part of the construction of a name that it's pretty well opaque anyway. If it had just been the title of the poem, I might have opted for "Moon John", but not with all those repetitions (I hear it in a deep voice: "Moon John. Full Moon John.").
It's twee and Victorian, yet it has a certain appeal - and reminded me of this:
The picture is Timber!, designed in 1875 by Edward H. Fahey as one of a series of greeting cards. If I try to write that it is unredeemed ugliness, a voice in the back of my mind murmurs "But the pointy hats! The strange draperies..." There is something almost Nac Mac Feegle about them...
Jean de la Lune is also the title of a film; or rather, of a play by Marcel Achard which has been filmed three or four times. It sounds like an enjoyable but unremarkable piece of French boulevard theatre, a witty and slightly cynical romance, in which the title describes the naivety of the husband.
It's OK, it's safe to come back in, now: I've finally got it out of my system.
