ABOUT LEONARD COHEN, LORCA, AND THE LITTLE VIENNESE WALZ
(Leonard Cohen)
Side by side you have here my fairly literal translation of Lorca's LITTLE VIENNESE WALZ and Cohen's free translation for his song TAKE THIS WALZ.
Following that, there are a handful of quotes in which Cohen explains the importance of Lorca in his life, and the genesis of his song.
LITTLE VIENNESE WALZ
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TAKE THIS WALZ
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In Vienna, there are ten girls, a shoulder for death to sob on and a wood for stuffed pidgeons. There’s a fragment of the morning in the museum of frost. There’s a drawing room with a thousand windows. |
Now in Vienna there’s ten pretty women There’s a shoulder where Death comes to cry There’s a lobby with 900 windows There’s a tree where the doves go to die There’s a piece that was torn from the morning And it hangs in the Gallery of Frost |
Ay ,ay, ay, ay! Take this walz with the closed mouth.
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Ay, ay, ay, ay Take this walz, take this walz Take this walz with the clamp on its jaws |
This walz, this walz, this walz, of its own self, of death, and of brandy dipping its tail in the sea.
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I love you, I love you, I love you, with the armchair and the dead book, down the melancholy hallway, in the dark attic of the lily, on our bed of the moon and in the dance the turtle dreams.
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Oh, I want you, I want you, I want you On a chair with a dead magazine In the cave at the tip of the lily In some hallway where love’s never been On a bed where the moon has been sweating In a cry filled with footsteps and sand
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Ay, ay, ay, ay! Take this walz with the broken waist.
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Ay, ay, ay, ay Take this walz, take this walz Take its broken waist in your hand
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This walz, this walz, this walz, this walz With its very own breath of brandy and death Dragging its tail in the sea
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In Vienna there are four mirrors where your mouth and the echoes play. There’s a death for piano that paints the boys blue. There are beggars on the rooftops. There are fresh garlands of tears.
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There’s a concert hall in Vienna Where your mouth had a thousand reviews there’s a bar where the boys have stopped talking They’ve been sentenced to death by the blues Ah, but who is it climbs to your picture With a garland of freshly cut tears?
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Ay, ay, ay, ay! Take this walz which is dying in my arms.
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For I love you, I love you, love of mine, in the attic where the children play, dreaming old lights of Hungary through the buzz of the cool afternoon, seeing sheep and lilies of snow through the dark silence of your forehead.
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Ay, ay, ay, ay! Take this “I’ll love you forever” walz.
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Ay, ay, ay, ay Take this walz, take this walz With its “I’ll never forget you, you know” This walz, this walz, etc
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In Vienna I’ll dance with you with a head of the river disguise. Look at the banks I have of hyacinths. I will leave my mouth between your legs, my soul in photographs and tiger lilies, and in the dark waves of your walk I want, love of mine, love of mine, to leave, violin and grave, the ribbons of the walz.
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And I’ll dance with you in Vienna I’ll be wearing a river’s disguise The hyacinth wild on my shoulder My mouth on the dew of your thighs And I’ll bury my soul in a scrapbook, with the photographs there, and the moss And I’ll yield to the flood of your beauty My cheap violin and my cross
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And you’ll carry me down on your dancing To the pools that you lift on your wrist Oh my love, oh my love Take this walz, take this walz It’s yours now. It’s all that there is
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"With the Lorca poem, the translation took 150 hours,
just to get it into English that resembled - I would never presume to say
duplicated - the greatness of Lorca's poem. It was a long, drawn-out
affair, and the only reason I would
even attempt it is my love for Lorca. I loved him as a kid; I named my
daughter Lorca, so you can see this is not a casual figure in my life."
L. Cohen, Interview "Your Flesh" Magazine, 1992
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/pilgraeme/take_this_waltz.htm
Vienna
11/05/88 |
Last
year I had the great honour to translate into English a poem by the
Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca,a man who effectively ruined my life
when I was fifteen. I found a book of his in a secondhand bookstore. I
read the lines, "I want to pass through the arches of Elvira to see
your thighs and begin weeping." And for the next thirty years, I
was looking for the arches of Elvira, I was looking for those thighs, I
was looking for my tears. I'm glad I've forgotten all that and I could
revenge him with this act of homage, by translating one of his great
poems into clumsy English. Take this Waltz,take this waltz. |
Reijkavik
24/06/88 |
Here
of all places I don't have to explain how I fell in love with the
poet Federico Garcia Lorca. I was 15 years old and I was wandering
through the bookstores of Montreal and I fell upon one of his books,and I
opened it,and my eyes saw those lines "I want to pass through the
Arches of Elvira,to see her thighs and begin weeping". I thought
"This is where I want to be"... I read alone "Green I
want you green "I turned another page "The morning threw
fistfulls of ants in your face" I turned another page "Her
thighs slipped away like school of silver minnows". I knew that I
have had come home. So it is with a great sense of gratitude that I
am able to repay my debt to Federico Garcia, at least a corner, a
fragment, a crumb, a hair, an electron of my debt by dedicating this
song, this translation of his great poem "Little Viennese Waltz",
"Take This Waltz". |
London
May 1993 |
Thank
you very much friends for this very warm reception this evening, we
really appreciate it. You know, I named my daughter Lorca, after the
great Spanish poet. I was really pleased when she put a ring in her nose.
I was delighted at the age of 18 when she dyed her hair blue. Later on
it was.... you can understand a father's pride....when she put a stud
through her tongue.....(laughs)...She lives within the true spirit of
the poet. and I love her for it. It was with a great sense of anxiety
and trepidation that I began to translate one of the great poems of
Federico Garcia Lorca and it has been a great source of pleasure to me
to receive a letter from his sister congratulating me on my tiny hommage
to this great poet's work. Take This Waltz. |