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Sanjay Sircar Florian's Song' 3 translations, awaiting Occitan (29) RE: 'Florian's Song'; 'new version'/originals 24 Jan 13


If M C Gillington's "new English version", which is now about the shepherdess and not in her voice, and takes out any sorrow of separation, dates back to at least 1888, then it is quite possible that it is a direct source for the line in "The Man Who Owned Broadway" (it could also be a common cliche, or anidependently generated one). I wonder whether the melody of the last line in "Florian's Song" is echoed in "The Man Who Owned Broadway". How would one get to the sheetmusic for the latter. I can manage searching for ordinary texts, but not "words and music".

I still feel that anything comic in the original French/Occitan might be potential or inherent in the "affectation", as Monique so felicitously puts it), of the genre as a whole (because it is emphastically not a mirror to life), not particularly in this song itself. (What this does for "pastoral tragedy", which does exist, e.g "The Sad Shepherd", I do not know, though.) But I can only go by the English translation in the sheetmusic.

[It is apparently a mark of "realism" in Shakespeare that his shepherd says "Our hands are greasy" in "As You Like It", though it doesn't strike me as all *that* realistic, myself.]

Affected sounding French (then and/or now) and ordiary sounding Occitian, in parallel versions of the same text, is most interesting.   

Sanjay Sircar


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