Forever in Love...

Can love last a lifetime?  

 

I don't know why but I woke up this morning humming the melody of 'Nous dormirons ensemble', in my opinion one of the most beautiful declarations of love ever written, and have been feeling all romantic and nostalgic ever since...

 A poem by surrealist poet Louis Aragon, 'Nous dormirons ensemble' was set to music and by Jean Ferrat in the 1960s.

 

Louis Aragon in 1925

Aragon wrote it for his lover, wife and muse Elsa Triolet, among many other poems, and it was published in 1963 in the collection 'Le fou d'Elsa'.

Elsa was a Russian writer and poet, and the sister of Mayakovsky's lover Lili Brik. She left Russia at the outset of the Revolution after marrying a French cavalry officer she later divorced. After travelling to London and Berlin, she met Aragon in 1928 in Paris' Café de la Coupole, a famous haunt for artists at the time. Although they lived together straight away, they only married in 1939. They fought in the Résistance during the Second World War, travelled extensively after the war and stayed together until her death in 1970.

 

Elsa Triolet (she always kept the name of her first husband) was also the first woman to win the prestigious literary award Prix Goncourt in 1945 (when, by the way, women had just been granted the right to vote for the first time in France) for a collection of short stories 'Le premier accroc coute 200 Francs'.

Elsa Triolet

 I was unable to find an English translation for the poem. Sorry...

Nous dormirons ensemble

by Louis Aragon

 

Que ce soit dimanche ou lundi

Soir ou matin minuit midi
Dans l'enfer ou le paradis
Les amours aux amours ressemblent
C'était hier que je t'ai dit
Nous dormirons ensemble

C'était hier et c'est demain
Je n'ai plus que toi de chemin
J'ai mis mon cœur entre tes mains
Avec le tien comme il va l'amble
Tout ce qu'il a de temps humain
Nous dormirons ensemble

Mon amour ce qui fut sera
Le ciel est sur nous comme un drap
J'ai refermé sur toi mes bras
Et tant je t'aime que j'en tremble
Aussi longtemps que tu voudras
Nous dormirons ensemble.


Jean Ferrat

Jean Ferrat set many of Aragon's poems to music. He is one of my all time favourite French singers. And on a lighter note, what a moustache! I always thought he looked like a Mousquetaire!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ejvg0hDhYkQ












I can't resist including an extract of poem Aragon wrote after Elsa's death of a heart attack in 1970.

L’adieu à Elsa

Son cœur a cessé de battre, foudroyé
Au milieu de l’allée du Moulin et de ses rosiers
Te laissant seul, éploré
Par le départ de ta bien-aimée

La fulgurance inouïe de la douleur
La déchirure d’un esprit qui se meurt
Aragon, tu as su malgré tout
Relever la tête et rester debout

Cette main qui ne se posera plus sur la tienne
Avec ce doux accent lorsqu’elle parlait…
Comme elle a dû être grande ta peine
De perdre celle que tu aimais

Tous ces mots jadis murmurés
Aux frontières d’une autre contrée
S’envolent avec elle, cher amour
S’envolent malgré toi pour toujours

They loved each other for over forty years, and he wrote beautiful poetry for her. They are one of my most romantic, most inspiring couples.

Who is your most romantic couple?

Elsa and Aragon

The perfumes of an imperial couple

Still on the topic of fragrances…

The perfumes of an imperial couple

I have just finished reading the letters Napoleon wrote to Josephine when they were lovers after they met in 1795 and before their marriage in March 1796. He wrote to her constantly whilst on campaign, long, passionate letters, testimony to his love and obsession for her.

‘I awake full of you. Your image and the memory of last night’s intoxicating pleasures left no rest to my senses.’

‘Without your love, there’s nothing left for me on this earth and I’ll have to die.’

And  ‘There wasn’t a day when I didn’t love you, a night when I didn’t think of holding you in my arms. I curse glory and ambition for keeping me away from the woman who is the soul of my life. As I carry on with my work, head the troops, inspect the camp, my adorable Josephine is the only one in my heart.’

Along with these burning declarations of love, he sent her precious gifts from Italy, where he was fighting the Piedmont’s and Austrian armies, among which perfumes and colognes. It was indeed in Italy that ‘eau de cologne’ was invented.

Napoléon Bonaparte and Joséphine were both very fond of colognes and perfumes, so fond that before his coronation in December 1802, Napoleon asked perfume maker François Rancé to create perfumes for himself and Josephine. He gave Rancé specific instructions. His own perfume should not overpower Josephine’s but when the couple were together their scents should merge into a harmonious and unique scent. Rancé created ‘Le Vainqueur’ (the Victor) and ‘L’Impératrice’ (the Empress), which by the way you can still find today. ‘L’Impératrice’ has since been renamed ‘Joséphine’.

It wasn’t the first time that Rancé, a fervent admirer of Napoleon Bonaparte, created a fragrance in his honour. He had already dedicated ‘L’Eau d’Austerliz’ and ‘La Gloire à l’Aigle Français’ (Napoleon liked to be compared to a majestic, powerful eagle) to him.

Napoleon also liked eau de cologne. His favourite cologne was a very light blend of citrus fruit, ‘Eau de Cologne’ by Houbigant. He loved it so much he used up to 60 bottles every month, pouring it into his very hot baths and rubbing it into his skin.

However, during his exile at Longwood House on the island of St Helena, he couldn’t get his beloved cologne any longer. His servant, Louis-Etienne Saint-Denis - aka ‘Ali le Mamolouk’ worked very hard to try and recreate it for him. He wrote down the composition of the cologne and his ‘recipe’ based on lemon, bergamot, rosemary and citron essences, was found in family papers in 1990.

This cologne called ‘Napoleon 1er à Sainte-Hélène’ is available from a French perfume house. So if you want to experience what the emperor smelled like, you can!

Joséphine loved perfumes too. A native of the Martinique in the West Indies she had a predilection for exotic scents such as vanilla, cinnamon and clove, but her all time favourites were musk, violet and rose. She grew more than 250 varieties of roses in the garden at her Malmaison estate near Paris and created several new varieties including ‘La Malmaison’, ‘l’Aimable Rouge’ and, of course, ‘Joséphine.’

 

As well as indulging in baths perfumed with Houbigant’s floral cologne ‘Quelques Fleurs’ , she was passionate about musk. She wore so much musk she started a fashion for it and was even nicknamed ‘La Folle du musc’.  Her bathtub at the Tuileries palace is said to have retained the scent, almost 200 years after her death. In December 1809, after Napoleon told her he was divorcing her because she had failed to produce an heir, it is said that she poured great quantities of musk all over the imperial apartments so that he would never forget her and Marie-Louise of Austria, his new wife, would feel always ‘smell’ her presence.

She needn’t have bothered. Napoleon never forgot her, never ceased to love her. The last words he said before dying at Saint-Helena were ‘France, the army, the Head of the Army, Josephine.’

Don't you just...?

Don’t you just love it when...

Ideas seem to spring into your mind from nowhere and problems in the plot or the characterisation get solved without you having to work hard at it?

You find a great song or a piece of music which helps you bring characters or feelings to life?This becomes the only music you listen to when writing your story (and who cares if everybody at home moan and complain that they are really bored with it?)

You can see your characters as clearly as if they were standing in front of you? They have the power to make you happy or sad (yes, really!). You even talk about your hero or heroin as if they were real people, friends ask you for the latest news and you don’t even notice that they are joking. 

Your characters start talking to one another and all you have to do is jot down what they are saying? They take a life of their own and force you into a completely new direction.

Breathless, blushing and feeling rather pleased with yourself, you put the last touches to what is surely the best, the ‘hottest’ love scene of the story? You never knew you had it in you to be so inventive.

Don’t you just hate it when...

You read your manuscript for the hundredth time after a few weeks or months and you find embarrassing errors or clumsy sentences or things you now wish you'd never written? This is particularly bad if you have already sent it to a publisher or an agent, because a few weeks or months ago it seemed so perfect you just couldn’t wait a minute longer to share it with the world!

You saved some fantastic new work on a stick or on the hard drive of your computer and you forget in which file you saved it in and you spend hours trying to find it? And when you finally find it, it wasn’t so great after all.

You re-read the ‘hot’ scene which you were so proud of when you typed it up last night and think, ‘Oh my God, did I really write that? What will my boss, neighbour, my children’s teacher or the butcher take me for?’ (That’s if they ever read the story, of course).

A great new novel has just come out featuring a plot, setting or character you KNOW you had thought of FIRST, that you had practically invented and believed to be unique. How dare the author have the same ideas as you (and get her / his book published when you are still languishing in the aspiring writer's world)?

However...

This lovely picture of a rose made me think of ‘Mon amie la rose’ (My friend the rose), a beautiful but very sad song Françoise Hardy sang in the 1960s. Here are the words with the  (English translation below).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQGNpRnFNgM

Mon amie la rose

My friend the rose, a beautiful song Françoise Hardy used to sing in the 1960s.

On est bien peu de chose

Et mon amie la rose

Me l'a dit ce matin

A l'aurore je suis née

Baptisée de rosée

Je me suis épanouie

Heureuse et amoureuse

Aux rayons du soleil

Me suis fermée la nuit

Me suis réveillée vieille

Pourtant j'étais très belle

Oui j'étais la plus belle

Des fleurs de ton jardin

On est bien peu de chose

Et mon amie la rose

Me l'a dit ce matin

Vois le dieu qui m'a faite

Me fait courber la tête

Et je sens que je tombe

Et je sens que je tombe

Mon cœur est presque nu

J'ai le pied dans la tombe

Déjà je ne suis plus

Tu m'admirais hier

Et je serai poussière

Pour toujours demain.

On est bien peu de chose

Et mon amie la rose

Est morte ce matin

La lune cette nuit

A veillé mon amie

Moi en rêve j'ai vu

Eblouissante et nue

Son âme qui dansait

Bien au-delà des nues

Et qui me souriait

Crois celui qui peut croire

Moi, j'ai besoin d'espoir

Sinon je ne suis rien

Ou bien si peu de chose

C'est mon amie la rose

Qui l'a dit hier matin

And now for the English translation...

We are truly insignificant
And that's what my friend the rose
Told me this morning
I was born at dawn
Baptised in dew
I blossomed
In the rays of the sun
Happy and in love
I closed my petals at night
And when I awoke I was old.

Yet I had been beautiful
Yes, I was the most beautiful
Of all the flowers in your garden

See, the God that made me
Now makes me bow my head
And I feel I'm falling
And I feel I'm falling
My heart is almost bare
A foot in the grave
Already, I am nothing
Only yesterday you admired me
And I shall be dust
Forever, tomorrow

We are truly nothing
And my friend the rose
Died this morning

Last night the moon
Kept vigil over my friend
And in a dream I saw
Her soul, dancing
Dazzling and naked,
Above the heavens,
Smiling on me.
Let those who can, believe,
But I need Hope
Or else I am nothing.