A Perfect 10

I just finished my tenth book by Marcel Pagnol.  Ok, it took me five years but hey, the books were all in French.

Pagnol is perhaps the greatest chronicler of life in Provence and is one of the finest French authors of the 20^th century.  He is a great storyteller and many of his books are hilarious – Val often looks at me while I am reading and wonders why I am laughing so hard.  At the same time they can be quite moving.  And always, they are wonderfully written.

But it’s not easy French, at least for me.  You can tell when I’m reading Pagnol because I have the book in one hand and my dictionary in the other. I often skip over words I don’t know because I can still understand the general meaning.  But sometimes he writes an especially lyrical passage.  That’s when I check every word - I want to make sure I really understand because it is just so beautiful. 

Here’s an example, and a favorite passage.  It is my own translation so it’s not great but you will get the idea.  It is from Pagnol’s memoir and takes place in 1907 when he is 12 years old.  He has never heard much music except for the occasional military band – this is before radio and when phonographs were expensive.  A new neighbor moves in and invites him to listen to her play the piano.  He sits on the floor and leans against the piano…

“It was all new to me and I was burning with curiosity.  I closed my eyes. Suddenly, I heard the powerful ringing of bronze bells. First a little spaced apart, like the first drops of a summer rain, then they approached each other and united in triple and quadruple harmonies that fell in cascades, one over the other, and then streamed together and widened into resonating layers, suddenly pierced by a bouncing hail of quick notes, while the thunder roared far off in a dark bass that resonated to the depths of my chest.

“A tender melody wandered under this storm: it sprang at times toward the sky and climbed to the top of the keyboard; it made the night tremble with white sparks of music.

“At first I was stunned, then overwhelmed, then intoxicated. With my head vibrating and my heart pounding, I was flying, arms outstretched above the green waters of a mysterious lake: I fell into holes of silence and then suddenly flew up, pushed by the wind of broad harmonies that carried me towards the red clouds of sunset.

“I don’t know how long this magic lasted. Finally, on the edge of a cliff, four harmonies, one after another, slowly opened their wings, flew away and disappeared in a golden haze, while the echoes of the ebony faded but would not die.”

KVS