This song is the lament of an
adulterous lover, whose free-spirited lady friend has dramatically turned the
tables on him.
As Georges Brassens often played this
same role, we might at first assume that the song is based on a personal experience. However, we would be doing Brassens a great
injustice, as the attitudes to love and women shown by this deserted lover
would seem to be very different from those we would associate with Brassens.
(I talk about Brassens’ love life at
greater length at the end of this post)
LA TRAÎTRESSE
J'en appelle à (1) la mort; je l'attends
sans frayeur ;
Je n' tiens plus à la vie ; je cherche
un fossoyeur
Qui aurait un' tombe à vendre à n'importe
quel prix :
J'ai surpris ma maîtresse au bras de son
mari,
Ma maîtresse, la traîtresse !
J' croyais tenir l'amour au bout de mon
harpon,
Mon p'tit drapeau flottait(2) au coeur d'
madam' Dupont,
Mais tout est consommé : hier soir, au coin
d'un bois,
J'ai surpris ma maîtresse avec son mari,
pouah !
Ma maîtresse, la traîtresse !
Trouverai-je les noms, trouverai-je les
mots,
Pour noter d'infamie cet enfant de chameau(3)
Qui a choisi son époux pour tromper son
amant,
Qui a conduit l'adultère à son point
culminant ?
Ma maîtresse, la traîtresse !
Où donc avais-j' les yeux ? Quoi donc
avais-j' dedans ?
Pour n' pas m'être aperçu depuis un certain
temps
Que, quand ell' m'embrassait , ell' semblait
moins goulue(4)
Et faisait des enfants qui n' me
ressemblaient plus.
Ma maîtresse, la traîtresse !
Et pour bien m'enfoncer la corne(5) dans le
coeur,
Par un raffinement satanique, moqueur,
La perfide, à voix haute, a dit à mon
endroit :
"Le plus cornard(6) des deux n'est point
celui qu'on croit."
Ma maîtresse, la traîtresse !
J'ai surpris les Dupont, ce couple de
marauds(7),
En train d' recommencer leur hymen à zéro,
J'ai surpris ma maîtresse équivoque(8),
ambiguë,
En train d'intervertir l'ordre de ses cocus(9).
Ma maîtresse, la traîtresse !
(1960
– Album - Le mécréant,)
|
THE TRAITRESS
I am calling on death – which I await calmly;
I care no more for life; I seek a
gravedigger
Who has a tomb for sale at no matter what price:
I’ve just caught my mistress, upon her husband’s
arm,
My mistress, the traitress!
I thought that I held love firm upon my harpoon,
My little flag fluttered o’er Mme Dupont’s
heart,
But all that’s at an end: last night down in
the woods,
I surprised my mistress with her husband. Sick'ning!
My mistress, the traitress!
How shall I find the names, how shall I find
the words,
To brand with infamy this degenerate child
Who has chosen husband to cheat upon lover,
Who has brought adultery to its utter limit
My mistress, the traitress!
Where had I been looking? What had got in my
eyes
For not having noticed, that for a certain
time,
When she was kissing me, she seemed less voracious
And she bore babies who, no longer looked like me.
My mistress, the traitress!
And to drive the dagger deep in my foolish heart,
With diabolical refinement, to mock me,
The perfidious one said loudly to my face:
“The worst dupe of the two isn’t the one thought
to be”
My mistress, the traitress!
I surprised the Duponts, this couple of dropouts,
Absorbed in restarting their marriage from
scratch.
I surprised my devious, two-faced mistress
Busy reversing the order of her cuckolds
My mistress, the traitress!
|
Translation notes
(1)
J'en appelle à la
mort means I call on death to strike me-
an expression of total despair
(2)
Mon p'tit drapeau flottait au coeur d' madam' Dupont. When an army conquers territory, a flag is raised over
it to show possession. This Don Juan
sees himself as a conqueror, as his later image of catching and holding a woman with
a harpoon implies. Brassens
would have been appalled by the idea of one human being possessing another.
(3) Cet enfant de chameau.
“Chameau” is the word for camel but, in French, it is used as an insult , to say
that some-one is a low kind of beast.
(4)
ell' semblait
moins goulue –voracious, greedy, in this
case greedy for love.
(5)
m'enfoncer la
corne dans le cœur – la corne is the horn of an animal. « Porter des cornes » is a common
expression in France to denote a man who is being deceived by his wife, as he
wears horns of humiliation that everyone else but the husband can see. Brassens
uses the word in the singular to make it a dagger of sexual deceit.
(6) Le plus cornard des deux – « Cornard » is
the adjective from the usage of “cornes” explained in note 5 above. It means therefore “cuckold”
(7) Ce couple de marauds-
un maraud is a scoundrel or a rogue – someone who stretches the social
code to the limit.
(8) ma maîtresse équivoque to translate the word « équivoque » my dictionary gives
me : equivocal / ambiguous or (with a sense of deception): dubious
/questionable.
(9) En train d'intervertir l'ordre –” - The chauvinist male is ironically the one who
comes off worst. In this and in other
songs, e.g. “95%”, Les croquants” Brassens takes pleasure in the idea of women being
the controller in the game of love.
The
irregular love life of Georges Brassens.
Some of Georges
Brassens' devoted followers are disinclined to talk about his irregular love
life. However Brassens himself had no
such inhibitions. In the biographical
film : “Regard de Georges Brassens" he tells us
unashamedly that he never knows love except through adultery. He explains that this is a necessary
consequence of lifestyle. He had chosen
never to marry because he wanted to write songs and not be distracted by the
domestic concerns of wife and children. (These sentiments are expressed in his song: “La
Non-demande en Mariage”.) He goes on to
say that his policy was to choose women who already had a husband but who had
got fed up with them. He says that there is a plentiful supply of them in Paris and indeed in the provinces.
In the same film,
his friends comment on the number of women who made themselves available to
him, mentioning the legal outcome when they were found out. The name of Georges Brassens was often cited
as the third party in divorce cases heard in French courts one friend claims.
However at the
same time as he knew all these girls and women, he retained his great undying love for his
Jeanne and asserted his strong devotion to his Puppchen, Joha Heiman, both of which relationships were, true to form, adulterous. We note that in the biographical film it is said that Brassens felt pangs of conscience with regard to Jeanne's husband, Marcel.
Brassens' unconventional attitude to marriage and sexual relationships should not surprise us as he was always
the outsider to polite society. He tells us this in many of his songs - very forcefully for example in: “Je suis la mauvaise herbe.”
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