by
Franz Toussaint (1879 - 1955)
Sur ma flûte d'ébène, j'ai joué, pour...
Language: French (Français) after the Chinese (中文)
Our translations: ENG GER
Sur ma flûte d'ébène, j'ai joué, pour toi,
l'air le plus passionné que je connaissais,
mais tu regardais les pivoines, sans m'écouter.
[Je]1 t'ai donné une poésie
où j'avais célébré ta beauté,
mais tu l'as déchirée
et tu en as jeté les morceaux dans le lac,
parce qu'il n'avait pas de nénuphars, m'as-tu dit.
Je voulais te donner un merveilleux saphir,
limpide et froid comme une nuit d'hiver,
mais je l'ai gardé pour qu'il me rapelle ton cœur.
Available sung texts: (what is this?)
• H. Badings About the headline (FAQ)
View text without footnotes
Confirmed with Franz Toussaint, La flûte de jade : poésies chinoises, Paris: H. Piazza, 1920, pages 97-98.
1 Badings: "Puis je"
Text Authorship:
Based on:
- a text in Chinese (中文) by Wan-Tsi [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 Henk Badings (1907 - 1987), "L'indifférente", from Chansons orientales, no. 1 [sung text checked 1 time]
- by Pierre, Baron de Maurice (1868 - 1936), "Indifférente", op. 36 no. 5 (1925-1926), published [1927] [ voice and piano ], from La flûte de jade: Sept Poésies chinoises traduites par Franz Toussaint, no. 5, London, Oxford University Press [sung text not yet checked]
- by Max d'Ollone (1875 - 1959), "L'indifférente", published 2002 [ medium voice and piano ], from Les chants d'ailleurs, no. 3, Paris : Heugel : A. Leduc [sung text not yet checked]
- by Pierre Paubon (1910 - 1995), "L'indifférente", published 1949 [ voice, flute and piano ], from Sept mélodies, no. 6 [sung text not yet checked]
Available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):
- ENG English (Grant Hicks) , copyright © 2026, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
- GER German (Deutsch) (Bertram Kottmann) , copyright © 2015, (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: 2003-11-06
Line count: 11
Word count: 79
On my ebony flute, I played for you
Language: English after the French (Français)
On my ebony flute, I played for you
the most passionate tune I knew,
but you looked at the peonies without listening to me.
[I]1 gave you a poem
in which I'd praised your beauty,
but you tore it up
and tossed its fragments into the lake,
because, you said, it had no lily pads.
I wanted to give you a marvelous sapphire,
clear and cold as a winter's night,
but I kept it because it reminds me of your heart.
About the headline (FAQ)
View text without footnotes
Translations of titles:
"Indifférente" = "Indifferent One"
"L'indifférente" = "The Indifferent One"
1 Badings: "Then I"
Text Authorship:
- Translation from French (Français) to English copyright © 2026 by Grant Hicks, (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:
Based on:
- a text in Chinese (中文) by Wan-Tsi [text unavailable]
This text was added to the website: 2026-04-07
Line count: 11
Word count: 82
