Votre âme est un paysage choisi
My limited French didn't fail me this day. This single line by Paul Verlaine was the spark of magic.
Your Soul is a chosen landscape
When Claude Debussy read these very first lines of the poem, he was 28. Something about the poem must have had a shot at his soul, and quite well it did hit. For the poetry in each of his note - right from the whimsical headiness, to the turmoil that measures oh-so well much like some unexplainable pain and end that carries some sort of melancholy in it- could move even a tone-deaf person.
Well, so me thinks. Not so selfish a look on it has been the song's interpretation in popular culture. Like the adorable Seven year in Tibet, where the 14th Dalai Lama, then a 10-year-old God child, is said to have found a sense of solace every time he hears the melody of the first lines
The song has reinvented countless times. You wouldn't have missed hearing it in Drama flicks like Frankie and Johnny, Ocean's Eleven & Ocean's Thirteen, Atonement, Man On Fire, and many others (& call me a prejudice,'sadly' in Twilight series too).
It is perhaps the many revisits to Debussy which none of the classic masters could revel in, that has made his 151st born day anniversary, memorable. When Google proudly doodled their respects, people knew who they were talking about. A sense of connection with a man, disconnected by time, yet united in one dreamy landscape of music, that makes his work impassable without indulging in a smile; keeping this tune tucked away in one warm corner of your own heart.
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