by Tsao Chang Ling (1719 - 1763)
Translation by Franz Toussaint (1879 - 1955)
Souvenirs
Language: French (Français) after the Chinese (中文)
Our translations: ENG
Cette nuit, il neigeait dans le jardin Liang. J’avais froid, et tu ne t’en doutais pas. Je regardais les arbres de jade sous lesquels, autrefois, je t’attendais.
Confirmed with Franz Toussaint, La flûte de jade : poésies chinoises, Paris: H. Piazza, 1922, page 33.
Note: later editions have the following changes to the text:
Line 3 is "Je regardais les grands arbres"
There is a second stanza as follows:
Toute cette neige qui tombait sur notre passé…
Text Authorship:
- by Franz Toussaint (1879 - 1955), "Souvenirs", appears in La flûte de jade, Paris, Éd. H. Piazza, first published 1920 [author's text checked 1 time against a primary source]
Based on:
- a text in Chinese (中文) by Tsao Chang Ling (1719 - 1763) [text unavailable]
Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):
- by Raymond Moulaert (1875 - 1962), "Souvenirs", 1917, published 1922 [ voice and piano ], from Quatre poèmes chinois extraits de La Flûte de Jade de Franz Toussaint, no. 3, Paris, Éd. Maurice Sénart
Score: IMSLP [external link] [sung text checked 1 time]
Available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):
- ENG English (Grant Hicks) , "Memories", copyright © 2026, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
Research team for this page: Emily Ezust [Administrator] , Grant Hicks [Guest Editor]
This text was added to the website: 2020-10-14
Line count: 4
Word count: 27