{"id":15899,"date":"2014-10-05T11:19:18","date_gmt":"2014-10-05T15:19:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/?p=15899"},"modified":"2014-10-05T11:19:18","modified_gmt":"2014-10-05T15:19:18","slug":"jacque-brels-been-lost-in-translation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/2014\/10\/05\/jacque-brels-been-lost-in-translation\/","title":{"rendered":"Jacque Brel&#8217;s been lost in &#8220;translation&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I always knew, in a general way, that &#8220;If You Go Away&#8221; was based on Jacque Brel&#8217;s &#8220;Ne me quite pas,&#8221; but I had no idea what a pale shadow it was until I was sent down the YouTube rabbit hole by the season finale of <em>The Leftovers<\/em>, which featured Nina Simone&#8217;s brilliant take on the original. (Note that the clip below containing moments of the bloody aftermath of a suicide, so <strong>trigger warning<\/strong>.)<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/5oke_FIF4z8\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>That led me to seek out a complete performance of Simone&#8217;s version &#8230;<!--more--><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/TI8F6DbB2cE\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&#8230; and eventually on to Brel&#8217;s own singing of the song he wrote in 1959 after a lover left him. (Based on my admittedly limited understanding of his actions, he seems to have deserved to have been left, and if that creates a subtext to the song which mars it for you, I&#8217;ll understand. Sometimes these things are hard to separate.)<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, here&#8217;s Brel singing it, with an English translation in subtitles &#8230; <\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/E7zgNye6HTE\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&#8230; after which I then gave a listen to Frank Sinatra singing &#8220;If You Go Away,&#8221; with lyrics by Rod McKuen.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/5SUn4JqUTsA\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d of course heard &#8220;If You Go Away&#8221; before, but it was only after listening to the two so closely together that I saw how the &#8220;translated&#8221; version had been drained of both passion and poetry.<\/p>\n<p>Brel&#8217;s lyrics are filled with beautiful metaphors, such as&#8212;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>We&#8217;ve often seen<br \/>\nthe fire erupt again<br \/>\nfrom the ancient volcano<br \/>\nthat was thought to be too old<br \/>\nThey say there are<br \/>\nscorched lands<br \/>\nthat yield more wheat<br \/>\nthan a best april<br \/>\nAnd when the evening comes<br \/>\nand the sky is on fire<br \/>\ndon&#8217;t the black and the red<br \/>\nblend  together<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>McKuen threw all that out and came up with lyrics that are almost entirely new, creating what, when compared to the original, suddenly seems little more than a Hallmark card.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>But if you stay, I&#8217;ll make you a night<br \/>\nLike no night has been, or will be again.<br \/>\nI&#8217;ll sail on your smile, I&#8217;ll ride on your touch,<br \/>\nI&#8217;ll talk to your eyes that I love so much. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And aside from the blanding of the lyrics, it occurs to me (and forgive me if I&#8217;m stating something everyone else already realized a long time ago) that the entire slant of the song has been changed. No longer does it tell the story of a person begging  a lover to stay with a desperation that&#8217;s nearly unbearable to hear. It&#8217;s been transformed into one about a lover imagining what it would be like <em>if<\/em> a lover left someday. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If you go away&#8221; is not the same thing as &#8220;don&#8217;t leave me.&#8221; Not the same thing at all.<\/p>\n<p>This makes me wish English singers performed a true translation of the original, rather than McKuen&#8217;s watered down version. I haven&#8217;t yet found anyone doing this, but it&#8217;s something that should exist, and which I hope already does. Because Rod McKuen shouldn&#8217;t make English speakers lose out on the magic of Jacque Brel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I always knew, in a general way, that &#8220;If You Go Away&#8221; was based on Jacque Brel&#8217;s &#8220;Ne me quite pas,&#8221; but I had no idea what a pale shadow it was until I was sent down the YouTube rabbit hole by the season finale of The Leftovers, which featured Nina Simone&#8217;s brilliant take on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[533,531,534,532],"class_list":["post-15899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-jacque-brel","tag-music","tag-nina-simone","tag-the-leftovers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15899"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15899\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15914,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15899\/revisions\/15914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}