MOI... LOLITA ME... LOLITA

[Andrew Alexandre Owie]

MOI... LOLITA ME... LOLITA

 

"Moi... Lolita" (I am... Lolita) sung by Alizée Jacotey. Music by Laurent Boutonnat. Lyrics by Mylène Farmer.

 

By Mylène Farmer (Gautier)
MOI… LOLITA
Moi je m'appelle Lolita
Lo ou bien Lola
Du pareil au même
Moi je m'appelle Lolita (1)
Quand je rêve aux loups (2)
C'est Lola qui saigne
Quand fourche ma langue, (3)
J'ai là un fou rire aussi fou
Qu'un phénomène
Je m'appelle Lolita
Lo de vie, Lo aux amours diluviennes.

 

 

I AM... LOLITA
My name is plain Lolita
Either Lo or simply Lola
It's all the same for me.
My name is plain Lolita. (1)
If I learn the barbers' secret (2)
I'm Lola who is bleeding.
When my tongue gets forked (3)
I laugh as if I'm wicked,
I am a perfect idiot

My name is plain Lolita
I'm Lo of life, the flood of love for folks. (4)

 

C'est pas ma faute
Et quand je donne ma langue aux chats (5)
Je vois les autres
Tout prêts à se jeter sur moi (6)
C'est pas ma faute à moi
Si j'entends tout autour de moi
L-O-L-I-T-A
Moi Lolita (7)

 

It's not my fault
If I put out tongue of mine to tomcats
I desperately feel that all
Are ready just to come and take me.
It's not my fault
That I can hear from all
It's a(or: my) LO-LI-TA! (7)
I am Lolita.

 

Moi je m'appelle Lolita
Collégienne aux bas (8)
Bleus de méthylène
Moi je m'appelle Lolita
Coléreuse et pas
Mi-coton, mi-laine. (9)

 

My name's Lolita
A schoolgirl that below belt (8)
Wears the blue socks
My name's Lolita
Now hot, now reticent,
I'm semi-cotton, semi-line. (9)

 

Motus et bouche qui n'dis pas
А maman que je suis un phénomène
Je m'appelle Lolita
Lo de vie, lo aux amours diluviennes

 

I keep still tongue in head of mine
I don't tell mommy who I'm for all.
My name's Lolita
I'm Lo of life, the flood of love for folks.
(Translated by Andrew Alexandre Owie)

 

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Mylène Farmer (Gautier) and Laurent Boutonnat. They are the excellent francophone authors. Mylène is not only an outstanding singer, but also a poetess, andher video clips are full of cultural allusions of the classical and modern French writers and poets.

 

LITERARY REMARKS

 

 

(1) Allusion of Vladimir Nabokov's text of the novel "Lolita": "Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.
She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita". 

 

(2) In French literally "quand je rêve aux loups, c'est Lola qui saigne" (when I see in my dreams the wolves, I am Lolita who is bleeding). The author is playing on words using the French idiom avoir vu le loup (to be deflowered, to lose virginity), besides it's an allusion of Charles Perrault's fairy tale about Red Hat and Wolf. Mind dichotomy, Lolita as a lyrical heroine of the lyrics is innocent, wolves in her night dreams of a child are wolves for her, they attack, blood, etc. As to the author she knows more than Lolita, she sees her among wolves that can make her vulva bleed. In my translation I used the English idiom of every barber knows that (this is a common secret) and I stress that she's innocent (If I learn the barbers' secret). It's not her who tell us that, but the author describes her situation of unawareness. Lolita just dances, she's an attraction for males, she likes that attention, but not as an adult woman, she does not understand all the way they are hunters for her young body. If she learns the barbers' secret, she'll lose innocence.
 

(3) Quand fourche ma langue, … I made the literal translation When my tongue gets forked, so as not to lose the metaphor. Lolita has got forked language not because she's the Serpent from the Bible, but because she sometimes says things that she does not understand, at the least to the full extent, something that sounds ambiguously. Everybody laughs, she laughs feeling herself a village fool all right, an innocent vice fool. The author of lyrics uses French idiom sa langue a fourché (to say something wrong, ridiculous), to have (literally) a tongue of a snake. She's a temptation, a symbol of Original Sin. That's why this very "forked" in my translation sounds close to "fucked".

 

(4) Lo de vie - I'm Lo of life … Another play on words is Lo de vie (Lola-Life). It sounds in French as l'eau-de-vie literally water of life (spirits, vodka), in English it sounds as Law of Life; … Lo aux amours diluviennes – Lola of the flood of love for folks. The village girl drove mad the whole city. Love for her body and young genitals flooded it. None of males is sober, when the village girl arrives by bus to a city's nightclub.
 

(5) French idiom donner sa langue aux chats means to stop trying (usually) to guess smth, or literally to give one's toungue to cats, that's, in its turn, is an allusion of oral sex in the context of the lyrics. I changed cats for tomcats to keep the meaning and underlying message of the author. Lolita as the lyrical heroine feels that males would like to grasp her, but can't guess the the nitty-gritty of their desire. But the author can, and she uses the animal idioms to stress the dichotomy of childhood and adulthood. Still, the verse is written in the first person and with pure understanding of the desires of Lolita's mileu in a nightclub, etc. She wants to dance, they want to fuck. But it's their problems, and it's no Lolita's fault.

 

(6) French verb se jeter means attack, assault and spill out, eject, and I expressed the combined meaning by the ambiguous verb "to come" that has got a sexual subtext.

 

 

(7) It may sound in a stream of the French speech as "Hi, my Lolita!" or "It's my Lolita". There may be an allusion of Serge Gainsbourg's song "Elaeudanla Teïtéïa":

 

"Sur ma Remington portative//J'ai écrit ton nom Lætitia://Elaeudanla Teïtéïa" (I've typed on my portable "Remington"//Your name of "Laetitia"://El-e in the a-t-a-t-i-a). 

 

(8) Collégienne aux bas means both wearing knee-length socks and a girl from below, i.e., a virgin, innocent girl. I tried to combine both meanings (A schoolgirl that below belt,//Wears the blue socks).

 

 

(9) Mi-coton, mi-laine (semi-cotton, semi-line in my translation) contains author's signature – Mi-Laine sounds in French as Mylène, name of the poetess Mylène Farmer, the inner narrator and observer of awakening sensualty of the young heroine of her poem. 

 

 

I rendered it into English as "semi-line", so to say "close but no cigar", yet close.

 

 

The prototype of the title hero of the novel written by Vladimir Nabokov in 1958 was Charles Spencer «Charlie» Chaplin, the great British and American film director and actor. 

 

 

Charlie (Charlot) liked to pick up easy-going girls in the yards of American high schools, but neither he had anything in common with the murky personage of the novel, nor they, those girls, were Lolitas. They belonged to the different psychological types.

 

Nor had, though by the different reasons, anything to do with the hero of Nabokov's novel Roman Polanski, Jack Nicholson, Ireneusz Iredyński and Alexandre Porokhovshchikov.

 

 

They are and were all the characters of the different novels, if to compare their bios with novels. 

 

 

Serial Charlie and occasional Nicholson-Polanski … ah! They met the girls who had been involved in love affairs with the adult, including their own fathers, long before them. Charlie had changed hundreds of girl highschoolers for certain, before he had met his true love who was 16. She was not a Lolita!

 

 

In Russia, actor Porokhovshchikov, then about 40, fell in love with a girl of 15, they'd lived a long life, one for two, and died on the same date. She was no Lolita. It was just a little crazy thing called love. 

 

 

The same can be said about the Macrons. It doesn`t matter whom you love, it only matters, if both of you are happy or not!

 

TESTIMONIUM PAUPERTATIS
Pan Bóg jest moim świadkiem, że próbowałem przetłumaczyć ten trudny tekst na język polski, ale nie mogłem, tutaj potrzebna jest osoba, która naprawdę zna ten trudny dla mnie język, poeta, tłumacz. Ale czy to ja?! Krótko mówiąc, poddaję się. Opuszczam ten post, uciekam, jak Amerykanie z Afganistanu.

 

***

 

Skoro tak się bawimy, to kroimy ostatni ogórek. Tekst w języku angielskim oparty na nieprzetłumaczalnej grze słownej.

 

YOU AND I
Some time ago I was hired to teach a little girl to read and write. She was just four and a half years old, and she was very smart. It took us just three days to reach the letter "I" . But as soon as we began to learn it there appeared an unexpected problem.
As usual, I showed little Irene the new letter "I" . Having heard "I", the little girl looked shy at it and asked me very carefully:
-You?!
-No, Irene! It's "I".
-Letter "You", aren't you kidding?
-No, letter "I".
-I understand that it's not you, it's this letter that's called "you".
-No and yes! It's really not me, but it's really a letter, but it's called "I" rather than "You". Now tell me what letter is this?
-This is letter "You". 
I felt I was boiling inside. I came to Irene and pointed out my finger to her.
-Who's this?
-It's me. I! I! I! I!
-So is that damn letter! It's also "I"! Have you grasped it?
-Yes! It's the letter "You"! "You!" "You!" "You!" "You!" How can't you understand it? I am I, and the letter is "You"!
-Oh no! It's you!
-Not me, but you! And that letter is "You" too!
-No! "I"! Repeat it, be so kind!
-You!!!
Well, well, well! What to do? How to explain her that letter in a right way? And I had a sudden brave wave, I made up my mind to make her read the words containing that letter "I".
Irene, dear! Read me this sentence, please!
-Youke has got an youPhone!
-What Youke? A new phone?!
-Not a new phone, but a youPhone!
I looked into the ABC book and read "Ike has got his iPhone!" 
I roared with laughter. I coudn't help it. If you only were in my place …
-But this is just the iPhone, after all!
She got surprised and asked me, 
-So, is this really letter "I"?
I was about to pronounce "Yes, it is!" But then I checked myself, and I said with a cunning smile:
-Indeed, it's letter "You"! I swear!
-You should have said it at once. Now I understand that this letter is not "You" , but "I".
At last! At last she learned that crafty letter, and since that moment she'll have managed to avoid of speaking and reading "youdea" for "idea", "youcon" for "icon" and, by the way, "Yourene" for "Irene". Now that she sometimes sends me her messages, I see that everything's all right, and my efforts were not wasted!

 

 

 

Edytowane 7 Kwietnia 2022 przez Andrew Alexandre Owie (wyświetl historię edycji)

[Andrew Alexandre Owie]

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edytowane 6 Kwietnia 2022 przez Andrew Alexandre Owie (wyświetl historię edycji)

[Andrew Alexandre Owie]

J'adore Madame Macron, elle est magnifique! 

Kocham Madame Macron, jest piękna!