Les paons nonchalants, les paons blancs ont fui,
Les paons blancs ont fui l'ennui du réveil;
Je vois les paons blancs, les paons d'aujourd'hui,
Les paons en allés pendant mon sommeil,
Les paons nonchalants, les paons d'aujourd'hui,
Atteindre indolents l'étang sans soleil,
J'entends les paons blancs, les paons de l'ennui,
Attendre indolents les temps sans soleil.

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View text with all available footnotes
¹ Cogni: "Je ne vois"
² Cogni: "sont"

Text Authorship:

• by Maurice Maeterlinck (1862 - 1949), "Ennui", appears in Serres chaudes, first published 1889 [author's text checked 1 time against a primary source]

Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):

• by Adolfo Cogni , "Les paons nonchalants", copyright © 1977 [ voice and piano ], BMG Ricordi Music Publishing [sung text checked 1 time]
• by Thomas Oboe Lee (b. 1945), "Ennui", 2020 [ soprano and piano ], from Chansons de Maeterlinck, no. 8, SMP Press [sung text not yet checked]

Settings in other languages, adaptations, or excerpts:

• Also set in Russian (Русский), a translation by Valery Yakovlevich Bryusov (1873 - 1924) , "Уныние" ; composed by Aleksandr Matveyevich Zhitomirsky.
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Researcher for this page: Andrew Schneider [Guest Editor]

This text was added to the website: 2017-05-10
Line count: 8
Word count: 56