Aucun complexe.

One of my wife’s birthday presents was a CD of Saint-Saëns: Sonates & Trio, played by Renaud Capuçon, Bertrand Chamayou, and Edgar Moreau (a lovely recording it is, too); the blurb on the back says “Moins connue et jouée que celle de Fauré, Ravel ou Debussy, la musique de chambre de Saint-Saëns n’affiche aucun complexe face aux puissants chefs-d’œuvre du répertoire germanique,” immediately followed by a translation: “Less known or played than that of Fauré, Ravel and Debussy, the chamber music of Saint-Saëns stands on a par with the greatest masterpieces of the Germanic repertoire.” Afficher is ‘to display, show’ and complexe is ‘complex’; how do you get from ‘displays no complex in the face of’ to “stands on a par with”? What complexity am I missing?

Also, if you subscribe to the Criterion Channel and have any interest in African movies, I recommend Shaihu Umar, which is leaving the channel at the end of the month and which is one of the first movies in Hausa — it’s going to take me a few days to get through it because I keep pausing it to look things up (fortunately, I own Nicholas Awde’s useful little Hausa-English/English-Hausa Dictionary). I’ve already dug through the LH archives to find David Eddyshaw’s comment from last year about Hausa wuri ‘cowrie,’ plural kuɗi ‘money.’ And the start of the movie, which shows pilgrims arriving in a dusty Nigerian town to meet the famous Umar (who then tells them his life story in flashback), provides an excellent example of the prolonged formulaic exchanges of greetings so prevalent in West Africa.

Comments

  1. complexe here seems to be short for complexe d’infériorité.

  2. I thought of inferiority complex too. But could it mean that the music displays no less sophistication than the German stuff?

  3. complexe here seems to be short for complexe d’infériorité.

    Ah, that would makes sense, but then the English doesn’t represent it well: it means the S-S isn’t afraid of the Germans (subjectivity), not that it is on a par with them (objectivity).

  4. Googling “n’affiche aucun complexe” finds much sports journalism about competitors not overawed by higher-ranked opponents. Some extended use about business rivals, and humans in less explicitly competitive domains. Perhaps the oeuvre of Saint-Saëns is being personified, or perhaps the expression is semantically bleached enough to apply to things lacking a mind.

    I thought Françoise Hardy might have sung “complexe” in Comment te dire adieu but no.

  5. Mollymooly, are you thinking of Marie-Paul Belle, ‘La Parisienne’ (1976)?

  6. As ulr notes, this is from the jargon of psychoanalysis. TLFi:

    2. P. ext. dans la lang. cour. et p. méton.
    a) Trouble de caractère, et particulièrement inquiétude ou timidité. Avoir un, des complexe(s); faire, donner des complexes; être bourré de complexes; sans complexe(s); se guérir de ses complexes; des complexes affectifs, érotiques, psychologiques.
    Arg. Chatouille pas mes complexes (Éd. 1967).

    As the citation shows, such use is not particularly recent. Also see the results here.

  7. Thanks, my knowledge of French idiom is now improved!

  8. (Marie-Paule.C/P error.)

  9. Wow, you want to know when I’d have figured that out?

    Such personifications have occurred in English. Alexander Balloch Grosart wrote in the 1885–1900 Dictionary of National Biography of the 17th-century presbyterian clergyman Richard Baxter, “Regarded intrinsically and as literature, his books need fear no comparison with contemporaries.” I’m sure I’ve seen similar things elsewhere.

    However, is it possible that the French in the OP isn’t personification, but instead means that Saint-Saens’s chamber music displays no inferiority complex on his part? I’m out of my French depth here.

  10. I imagine stereotypical 1950s Jewish American mothers talking about this or that complex being given to people, usually by their parents; this from when pop-Freud was at its peak.

  11. In German you can say about someone er hat (da) keine Komplexe meaning “he’s not ashamed / embarrassed / intimidated (in that area / matter)”; er braucht keine Komplexe zu haben (“he doesn’t need to have any complexes” = “he doesn’t need to feel ashamed / embarrassed / intimidated / inferior”). It would be a bit unusual to extend the latter to someone’s work / creations, but not too much of a stretch.

  12. Stu Clayton says

    Er hat keine Komplexe wegen seiner Komplexität.

    Who of us would (not?) be proud to have earned that compliment ? If it is taken as a compliment.

  13. Lars Skovlund says

    …it could be the complement of a compliment.

  14. Wagnérisme = der Wagnerkomplex (in French music). It was an inferiority complex, a love-hate towards German music and especially revered superstar Wagner who disparaged French music as decadent and Jewish. A complex that apparently Saint-Saëns did not suffer of, or overcame.

    https://www.radiofrance.fr/francemusique/wagner-et-le-wagnerisme-en-france-entre-adulation-et-haine-4696586
    http://wolfgang-grandjean.de/wagnerisme-zur-wagner-rezeption-in-paris

  15. My Oxford French dictionary actually defines the idiom under its entry for complexe: tu n’as aucun complexe à avoir: “there’s no need to feel inferior.”

    I note that Saint-Saëns’ Violin Sonata No. 1 is thought by many to have been the inspiration from Proust’s fictional Vinteuil Sonata. Might have to give the new recording a whirl.

  16. It really is excellent — the sonata may now be my favorite piece by Saint-Saëns (whose name we discussed here).

  17. I note that Saint-Saëns’ Violin Sonata No. 1 is thought by many to have been the inspiration from Proust’s fictional Vinteuil Sonata.

    Hmm? wp seems to think anything but. But see the following section wrt Santeuil.

    I do recommend the mentioned Franck, especially its wistful last movement.

  18. Stu Clayton says
  19. It reads as intended from Russian: kompleksovat’ is a common verb (be disturbed by something which you think is your flaw (e.g. about a girl with small breast), or by lack of achivements or whatever).

    “Without complexes” is common in classifieds in the sense… hm. I’m not sure. I think “not prudish” (willing to engage in sex, undress, etc., perhaps is a prostitute, perhaps no), but they can easily mean “without psychological issues” and I’m not a specialist.

    Colloquially (outside of classifieds) either not prudish (won’t blush when someone make’s an obscene joke), or agian, about sexual preferences.

    Is it uncommon in English?

  20. ‘The second can be used as reassurance: “ой, извини” “да ничего, у меня нет по этому поводу особых комплексов”.
    The first often about oneself. “чё-то я начинаю комплексовать”. I would do it here if I were not shameless.

  21. I haven’t looked at those classifieds for many years, but I think “uninhibited” would be the word, and that or something like “no inhibitions” would be used in conversation.

    “I’m starting to get a complex” (Google Translate’s version of your second sentence) seems possible, and was probably more possible when popular Freudianism was more popular.

  22. Trond Engen says

    Fordomsfri “unprejudiced” used to be the Norwegian code for whatever it was code for.

    When did the newspapers stop printing classifieds? I think I didn’t notice at the time, because they were first drowned in ads for all sorts of humbug phone services, and when that business moved to the Internet, the classifieds were gone.

  23. I think “complex” as a vague term in popular English was replaced by “hang-up” some time in the 1960s. This did not extend to specific types, like Oedipus c. or inferiority c.

  24. We just listened to the piano trio that ends the CD and were blown away — his harmonic developments are like nobody else’s, and his rhythms are amazing, sometimes seeming to anticipate jazz syncopations. He never goes where you think he’s going to. It’s changed my whole view of Saint-Saëns (I used to think of him as that guy who wrote some pleasing piano music and bombastic orchestral music), and I intend to play it often. Why is his chamber music so little known?

  25. @languagehat: There are two piano trios by Saint-Saëns (so far as I know). Which one was on your CD?

  26. Sorry, it’s #2 in E minor (Op. 92).

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