Becket
- Otherwise known as me finding another cool thing. It's from Becket (a play by Jean Anouilh if you didn't know), and I recommend that everyone read it - along with Antigone, and hell, might as well read all of his plays while you're at it. I haven't, but I aim to.
Anyway, this is a quote from Becket in the original French - if you don't speak or read it, I'll put up the quote from the English translation. I read it in English first, and it was in English that I fell in love with Jean Anouilh's plays for their themes and honesty - the way they spoke to the bottom of my soul - but now that I've been reading it in French I realise just how much the translation's lost.
BECKET: A vingt ans, avant d'avoir perdu ses dents et pris cet âge indéfinissable du peuple, celui-là a peut-être été beau. Il a peut-être une nuit d'amour, une minute où il a été roi lui aussi, oubliant sa peur.
(It's better if you know what happened right before - the themes of kingship and fear were brought up then. The quote makes more sense in context.)
English translation:
BECKET: At twenty, before he lost his age and took on that indeterminate age the common people have, that man may have been handsome. He may have had one night of love, one minute too when he was a King, and shed his fear.
And, well...in the French it's far more poetic, to me at least. That's what I liked about Anouilh - his trick for capturing me with an honesty no-one else wants to show.
Anyway, this is a quote from Becket in the original French - if you don't speak or read it, I'll put up the quote from the English translation. I read it in English first, and it was in English that I fell in love with Jean Anouilh's plays for their themes and honesty - the way they spoke to the bottom of my soul - but now that I've been reading it in French I realise just how much the translation's lost.
BECKET: A vingt ans, avant d'avoir perdu ses dents et pris cet âge indéfinissable du peuple, celui-là a peut-être été beau. Il a peut-être une nuit d'amour, une minute où il a été roi lui aussi, oubliant sa peur.
(It's better if you know what happened right before - the themes of kingship and fear were brought up then. The quote makes more sense in context.)
English translation:
BECKET: At twenty, before he lost his age and took on that indeterminate age the common people have, that man may have been handsome. He may have had one night of love, one minute too when he was a King, and shed his fear.
And, well...in the French it's far more poetic, to me at least. That's what I liked about Anouilh - his trick for capturing me with an honesty no-one else wants to show.
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