Les Larmes et Les Pétales

Paul Eluard, poet.

As some of my readers may know, but many of you probably don't, I studied French and International Relations in college.  I found the political science aspect of this degree fascinating, but the language component entranced me, as it always has.  I have fallen in love with language over all the years I have studied.  In my final year at school, I submitted and was accepted to present research in a school-wide abstract competition called SOURCE (Symposium on University Research and Creative Expression).  My abstract was in conjunction to the differences in languages and how meaning can be lost in translation.  My study focused, more specifically, on the poetry and English translations of Paul Eluard.  I loved his poem "La terre est bleue comme une orange" (The Earth is blue like an orange) specifically for the title.  How can someone say such a statement?  It doesn't make sense.

Well, in short, I won the competition in my category.  I really enjoyed that research.  Perhaps I will expand on it if I ever attend graduate school.  The reason I bring this up?  Since school, I subscribe to a thrice-weekly blog written by an American woman who is married to a Frenchman and lives in France.  She uses this blog as a means to define and grow vocabulary for anyone who is interested in learning French or expanding on their French.  On Friday, I got one of my mailing from this blog.  And the phrase which used the vocabulary of the day hit close to home.

"Les larmes sont les pétales du coeur." --Paul Eluard

"Tears are the petals of the heart."  Or, more plainly, Tears are the heart's petals.  But what can it mean?  What is behind the phrase?  If you think about what petals are, they are the decorative expression of the flower.  So it can be congruent to the tears being the outward expression of an inward pain, love, desire or other emotions.  As well as considering the meaning of the the language itself and the deeper meaning, what emotion may be lost in the translation?  In French, there seems to be lilt, a pattern to the language.  It is similar to the idea that when you translate a poem that is originally in a foreign language to your mother tongue.  You lose the rhyme and rhythm that was put into that poem for a reason, a purpose.  If any of you have ever studied poetry, you know everything is deliberately put or not put in the words.  The symbolism, the rhyming pattern, the language used, the lack or presence of punctuation.

The next time you pick up a piece of literature, I invite you to read about the author.  I was taught in school to learn about the author because that way, you can learn what the author may have want to achieve or why they wrote this piece of work.  You can also discover if it may have been transliterated for ease of reading and review.  At that point, you consider what may have been lost.

Until next time, I bid you adieu.  I am sure not many of you missed me over the weekend but it was hectic and hairy!  Now, I move forward, propelling ever more subtly to the goal, into the night.  And remember..."Do not go gently into that good night."