Postcard | The ghost of the very sweet one is evoked here

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by Wilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki (1880 - 1918), as Guillaume Apollinaire

Translation © by Laura Prichard

L'ombre de la très douce est évoquée ici

Language: French (Français)

Our translations: ENG ENG

L'ombre de la très douce est évoquée ici,
Indolente, et jouant un air dolent aussi :
Nocturne ou lied mineur qui fait pâmer son âme
Dans l'ombre où ses longs doigts font mourir une gamme
Au piano qui geint comme une pauvre femme.

About the headline (FAQ)

Note: this poem is an acrostic on the word "Linda". It was originally written in a postcard to Linda Molina da Silva dated May 19, 1901.

Text Authorship:

by Wilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki (1880 - 1918), as Guillaume Apollinaire, no title, written 1901, appears in Il y a, in Les Dicts d’Amour à Linda, no. 2, first published 1925 [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 Francis Poulenc (1899 - 1963), "Carte-Postale", FP 58 no. 2 (1931) [ medium voice and piano ], from Quatre Poèmes de Guillaume Apollinaire, no. 2 [sung text checked 1 time]
by Jean Rivier (1896 - 1987), "Linda", 1925-1926, published 1929 [ high voice and piano or orchestra ], from Huit poèmes, no. 6, Éd. Maurice Sénart (Salabert) [sung text not yet checked]

Available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):

ENG English (Derek Welton) , "Postcard", copyright © 2007, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
ENG English (Laura Prichard) , "Postcard", copyright © 2016, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

This text was added to the website between May 1995 and September 2003.
Line count: 5
Word count: 42

Postcard

Language: English after the French (Français)

The ghost of the very sweet [one] is evoked here,
Idle, and playing a doleful air: 
A nocturne or Lied in a minor key that makes her soul swoon
In the shadow, where under her long fingers a scale is dying away
On the piano, that groans like a poor woman.

Translator's note: This song describes a painting by Bonnard of Ms. Misia Sert, the friend of Sergei Diaghilev and social butterfly on the early modern scene in Paris. The first letter of each line of the French poem spells the name “Linda,” the younger (16-year-old) sister of his friend Fernand Molina da Silva, to whom Apollinaire sent several postcards. The song was also dedicated to another Linda: Linda Lee Lewis AKA Mrs. Cole Porter (1883-1954).

Text Authorship:

Translation from French (Français) to English copyright © 2016 by Laura Prichard, (re)printed on this website with kind permission. To reprint and distribute this author's work for concert programs, CD booklets, etc., you may ask the copyright-holder(s) directly or ask us; we are authorized to grant permission on their behalf. Please provide the translator's name when contacting us.
Contact: licenses@email.lieder.example.net

Based on:

a text in French (Français) by Wilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki (1880 - 1918), as Guillaume Apollinaire, no title, written 1901, appears in Il y a, in Les Dicts d’Amour à Linda, no. 2, first published 1925
- Go to the text page.

This text was added to the website: 2016-04-10
Line count: 5
Word count: 51