My latest discovery is Radio3's Inside Music. In it a leading musician discusses an eclectic range of music, and their approach to it. Ten days ago I was listening to Aylish Tynan's edition, and she was talking about the importance of text. She sang a Fauré piece, which I heard as Les roses disparantes. In her introduction there was no mention of the author of the poem, so in my subsequent search for the poem I drew a blank.
So, without being able to check the text I assumed that disparantes in the context meant dying or fading, or just no longer being in season. There was the remote possibility that the piece was referring to shades of pink (as the masculine rose is not a flower but a colour) in which case the disparants would refer in context to fading or disappearing. But, as the only other word I could make out was jasmin, I felt safe enough to assume the piece was talking about flowers and bunged off this flippant tweet
<tangent>
On Word of Mouth this week I heard an extraordinary statistic about misunderstood texts; the figure was "50%", but I don't see how they could measure it in any meaningful way.
<autobiographical-note>
This reminded me of a misunderstood mail I sent in the early '90s, involving the wordsI could be wrong; there are recorded instances.
(I often used this line, so it may be familiar to some of you.)
I might have known that this wouldn't have the intended cheeky-chappy effect in a trans-atlantic mail, and it made for difficult professional relations over the following few months. The recipient probably still thinks I'm an arrogant prig (if she remembers the incident at all; she seemed to me to be a more or-less inveterate taker of umbrage at perceived male slights, so I imagine her memories of this sort of thing must be quite crowded).
</autobiographical-note></tangent>
But with relief I saw this response The "thoughtful insights" might have been ironic, but anyway I deserved it
Les roses d’Ispahan dans leur gaine de mousse,Les jasmins de Mossoul, les fleurs de l’orangerOnt un parfum moins frais, ont une odeur moins douce,Ô blanche Leïlah! que ton souffle léger.
So my disparant was (not inappropriately) a fantasm. And to make matters worse, the poem I had misheard was one I had met...
<autobiographical-note>
(I wouldn't use the word "studied" – it was more a matter of scanning two or three poems by Leconte de Lisle (the author of Les roses d'Ispahan) and deciding that Baudelaire was more fun .)
</autobiographical-note>
<philological-observation>
(and the p of the French Ispahan is a small mitigation of my invention of disparant. I suspect that the fricative in question is neither the French p (a bilabial plosive) nor the English f (a labio-dental fricative) but /ɸ/ – a bit of both, a bilabial fricative ("you just put your lips together and blow")
<inline-ps>
(Nearly all the "ph" spellings in English words – probably all, in words that are pronounced with an /f/ sound – represent the Greek ɸ.)
</inline-ps>
</philological-observation>
Update 2022.01.18.15:00 – Added PPS
Last year's Update was over-hasty....
<correction>
(in two ways:
- in intention (I meant this page – which lists 50-odd possibilities, actual and fictional, in a range of spellings)
- in fact (I got the link wrong)
)
</correction>
...and I now think the reference is fairly obvious:
Meaning & History
Means "night" in Arabic. Layla was the love interest of the poet Qays (called Majnun) in an old Arab tale, notably retold by the 12th-century Persian poet Nizami Ganjavi in his poem Layla and Majnun. This story was a popular romance in medieval Arabia and Persia. The name became used in the English-speaking world after the 1970 release of the song Layla by Derek and the Dominos, the title of which was inspired by the medieval story.
Source
"Derek
and the Dominos" is the well-known/thinly-veiled pseudonym of Eric Clapton, who was
naturally inspired by a story of devotion to a married woman (in his
case, Pattie Boyd):
The story of Qays and Layla or Layla and Majnun is based on the romantic poems of Qais Ibn Al-Mulawwah (Arabic: قيس بن الملوح) in 7th century Arabia, who was nicknamed Majnoon Layla (مجنون ليلى), Arabic for "madly in love with Layla", referring to his cousin Layla Al-Amiriah (ليلى العامرية).[3] His poems are considered the paragon of unrequited chaste love. They later became a popular romance in medieval Iran,[4] and use of the name spread accordingly.
Source
Whether, in the case of Clapton and Boyd, the love was either "unrequited" or "chaste" – to use Wikipedias's words – is none of our business (though there is no doubt speculation in circles that concern themselves with that sort of thing).
<inline_ppps>
This isn't the only case of Clapton taking inspiration from other art forms in this context. I mentioned here the similarity between Handel's Silent Worship and Wonderful Tonight.
<parenthesis type="pppps">While we're on (i.e. off) the subject, why not go even further? I was struck recently by the formal similarity between the first of Bartók's Roumanian Folk Dances and the early Beatles song All My Lovin' (though it would of course be fanciful to suggest that Bartók actually pinched it from Lennon and McCartney).
</parenthesis>
</inline_ppps>Returning to Les Roses d'Ispahan, presumably Leconte de Lisle was following the many other poets who took their inspiration from this medieval romance.
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