The maidservants rush off singing | The maidservants rush off singing

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by Eugène Émile Paul Grindel (1895 - 1952), as Paul Éluard

Translation © by Grant Hicks

En chantant les servantes s’élancent

Language: French (Français)

Our translations: ENG

En chantant les servantes s’élancent
Pour rafraîchir la place où l’on tuait
Petites filles en poudres vite agenouillées
Leurs mains aux soupiraux de la fraîcheur
Sont bleues comme une expérience
Un grand matin joyeux
Faites face à leurs mains les morts
Faites face à leurs yeux liquides
C’est la toilette des éphémères
La dernière toilette de la vie
Les pierres descendent disparaissent
Dans l’eau vaste essentielle
La dernière toilette des heures
A peine un souvenir ému
Aux puits taris de la vertu
Aux longues absences encombrantes
Et l’on s’abandonne à la chair très tendre
Aux prestiges de la faiblesse.

Text Authorship:

by Eugène Émile Paul Grindel (1895 - 1952), as Paul Éluard [author's text not yet checked 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), "En chantant les servantes s’élancent", FP 120 no. 2 (1943), first performed 1946 [ chorus ], from cantata Figure humaine, no. 2, Éditions Salabert [sung text checked 1 time]

Research team for this page: Emily Ezust [Administrator] , Grant Hicks [Guest Editor]

This text was added to the website: 2021-01-22
Line count: 18
Word count: 99

The maidservants rush off singing

Language: English after the French (Français)

The maidservants rush off singing
To refresh the killing square
Little powdered girls quickly kneeling
Their hands at the fresh air vents
Are blue like an experiment
A great joyous morning
Face their hands you dead
Face their liquid eyes
It is the bathing of the mayflies
The final bathing of one's life
Stones tumble disappear
Into the vast essential waters
The final bathing of the hours
Barely a fond memory
To wells drained of virtue
To long troublesome absences
And one gives oneself over to the too tender flesh
To the seductions of weakness.

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:

a text in French (Français) by Eugène Émile Paul Grindel (1895 - 1952), as Paul Éluard
- Go to the text page.

This text was added to the website: 2026-04-18
Line count: 18
Word count: 95