Video Casualties of the Eighties

There were a lot of them.

I love this song but could take or leave the video.

I never noticed before how the young Suzanne Vega looked a bit like Camille Paglia. With a little makeup she could pass in a skit.




I like the song "Night Vision" on her Solitude Standing album. She based that on Paul Eluard's poem on Juan Gris. I couldn't find her doing the song on YouTube. Only artists covering it.

Here's her adaptation in English (adaptation more than translation) and Eluard's poem.

Night Vision

By day give thanks
By night beware
Half the world in sweetness
The other in fear
When the darkness takes you

With her hand across your face
Don't give in too quickly
Find the thing she's erased
Find the line, find the shape
Through the grain

Find the outline, things will
Tell you their name
The table. the guitar
The empty glass
All will blend together when
Daylight has passed

Find the line, find the shape
Through the grain
Find the outline, things will
Tell you their name

Now I watch you falling into sleep
Watch your fist curl against the sheet
Watch your lips fall open and your eyes dim
In blind faith
I would shelter you
Keep you in light
But I can only teach you
Night vision
Night vision
Night vision

Lyrics : Suzanne Vega
Copyright : © 1987 AGF Music Ltd. & Waifersongs Ltd. (ASCAP)
Album : Solitude Standing
"Solitude Standing" - tracklist :

Tom's Diner
Luka
Ironbound Fancy Poultry
In The Eye
Night Vision
Solitude Standing
Calypso
Language
Gypsy
Wooden Horse (Caspar Houser's Song)
Tom's Diner (Reprise)


Notes:

[Suzanne's perspective is a parent that sings to his or her child]
"You'd like to protect people from the things that are out there, but you can't always, so it's better to teach them how to see the dangers and the bad things, and to deal with them and not pretend that they don't exist. That's a problem with a lot of people in America. You don't allow yourself to feel things as complexly as human beings can feel them." The Cutting Edge of Folk from Bullet In Flight, originally published in Clockwatch Review Volume 4, No. 2, 7-14-87/8-9-87 by Ronald J. Rindo and James Plath http://www.suzannevega.com/about/1987/clockwatch.htm


From the "Solitude Standing" album liner notes:
Inspired by the poem "Juan Gris" by Paul Eluard
Translation by Winifred Radford
Published in Francis Poulenc "The Man and his Songs" by Pierre Bernac/Editions Gallimard
W. W. Horton and Company Inc. (U.S.) 1978
Victor Gollancz Ltd. London (U.K.) 1978

The original Paul Eluard poem:
De jour merci de nuit prends garde
De douceur la moitié du monde
L'autre montrait rigueur aveugle

Aux veines se lisait un présent sans merci
Aux beautés des contours l'espace limité
Cimentait tous les joints des objets familiers

Table guitare et verre vide
Sur un arpent de terre pleine
De toile blanche d'air nocturne

Table devait se soutenir
Lampe rester pépin de l'ombre
Journal délassait sa moitié

Deux fois le jour deux fois la nuit
De deux objets un double objet
Un seul ensemble à tout jamais


Here's a more literal if stiff translation of the poem, much truer to the text but not satisfying...this almost reads like a computer translation, it's so mechanical and unfelt...and the word "pleine" was particularly poorly translated here, contextually...

I think Vega did a beautiful job getting something lyrically satisfying out of this.

I'm not really an Eluard fan. I've never admired his stinting form of lyricism. It always seemed such a safe, conventional form of surrealism. There are a few standout poems for me, but not much more than that.

I'll take a Breton or a Max Jacob anyday over the milquetoast form of surrealism Eluard represents.

JUAN GRIS*

By day give thanks by night beware
sweetness one half of the world
the other showed blind harshness
In the veins a merciless present was read
in the beauties of the contours limited space
cemented all the joinings of familiar objects
Table guitar and empty glass
on an acre of solid earth
of white canvas of nocturnal air
Table had to support itself
lamp to remain a pip of the shadow
newspaper abandoning half of itself
Twice the day twice the night
of two objects a double object
a single whole for ever and ever.

* By Paul Eluard. Translated by Winifred Radford. Published in “Poulenc: The Man & His Songs” by Pierre Bernac. Victor Gollancz Ltd., London. Translation @ Winifred Radford 1977.