{"id":2272,"date":"2012-09-21T22:30:00","date_gmt":"2012-09-21T20:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tale-of-tales.com\/bientotlete\/blog\/?p=2272"},"modified":"2012-09-21T23:15:26","modified_gmt":"2012-09-21T21:15:26","slug":"in-duras-footsteps-cafe-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tale-of-tales.com\/bientotlete\/blog\/in-duras-footsteps-cafe-music\/","title":{"rendered":"In Duras’ footsteps. Caf\u00e9 music."},"content":{"rendered":"

Someone playing the piano<\/a> is a recurring theme in Duras’ work. Several of her novels have a particular song that keeps being heard. Either a classical tune, or a dance, or a mysterious droning and chanting.<\/p>\n

There’s a virtual jukebox in the caf\u00e9 in Bient\u00f4t l’\u00e9t\u00e9<\/em> and one of the songs it plays is Herv\u00e9 Vilard’s Capri c’est fini<\/em><\/a>. This was apparently one of Duras’ favorite songs. She mentions it in her novel Yann Andr\u00e9a Steiner<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Quelquefois c’est au bord de la mer. Quand la plage se vide, \u00e0 la tomb\u00e9e de la nuit. Apr\u00e8s le d\u00e9part des colonies d’enfants. Sur toute l’\u00e9tendue des sables tout \u00e0 coup, \u00e7a hurle que Capri c’est fini. Que C’\u00c9TAIT LA VILLE DE NOTRE PREMIER AMOUR mais que maintenant c’est fini. FINI.
\n Que c’est terrible tout \u00e0 coup. Terrible. Chaque fois \u00e0 pleurer, \u00e0 fuir, \u00e0 mourir parce que Capri a tourn\u00e9 avec la terre, vers l’oubli de l’amour.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Other music that comes straight out of Duras’ work is India Song<\/em>. It appears as an instrumental in several of her novels and films. But she also wrote lyrics for it, sung by Jeanne Moreau<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Chanson,
\nToi qui ne veux rien dire
\nToi qui me parles d’elle
\nEt toi qui me dis tout
\n\u00d4, toi,
\nQue nous dansions ensemble
\nToi qui me parlais d’elle
\nD’elle qui te chantait
\nToi qui me parlais d’elle
\nDe son nom oubli\u00e9
\nDe son corps, de mon corps
\nDe cet amour l\u00e0
\nDe cet amour mort<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The remaining songs in the jukebox come in part from my own childhood memories of my parents’ fondness for French chanson. And from Bient\u00f4t l’\u00e9t\u00e9<\/em> composer Walter Hus’ suggestion, whose idea it was to play this kind of music in this scene in the first place. They are just wonderfully sentimental songs. Sometimes I wonder what pop culture would have been like of not the Anglo-Saxon but the French had dominated it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Someone playing the piano is a recurring theme in Duras’ work. Several of her novels have a particular song that keeps being heard. Either a classical tune, or a dance, or a mysterious droning and chanting. There’s a virtual jukebox in the caf\u00e9 in Bient\u00f4t l’\u00e9t\u00e9 and one of the songs it plays is Herv\u00e9 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tale-of-tales.com\/bientotlete\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tale-of-tales.com\/bientotlete\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tale-of-tales.com\/bientotlete\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tale-of-tales.com\/bientotlete\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tale-of-tales.com\/bientotlete\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2272"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/tale-of-tales.com\/bientotlete\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2272\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2376,"href":"https:\/\/tale-of-tales.com\/bientotlete\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2272\/revisions\/2376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tale-of-tales.com\/bientotlete\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tale-of-tales.com\/bientotlete\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tale-of-tales.com\/bientotlete\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}