I’ve never read the Ionesco play, but I always found the title intriguing, and Wikipedia provides a very satisfying explanation:
The idea for the play came to Ionesco while he was trying to learn English with the Assimil method. Impressed by the contents of the dialogues, often very sober and strange, he decided to write an absurd play named L’anglais sans peine (“English without toil”). Other possible titles which were considered included Il pleut des chiens et des chats, (“It’s raining cats and dogs”, translated in French literally); “L’heure anglaise” and “Big Ben Follies”.
Its actual title was the result of an error in rehearsal by actor Henri-Jacques Huet: the fire chief’s monologue initially included a mention of “l’institutrice blonde” (“the blonde schoolteacher”), but Huet said “la cantatrice chauve”, and Ionesco, who was present, decided to re-use the phrase.
Now, that’s what I call Theatre of the Absurd. I got there via Mark Liberman’s Log post, where you will find further absurdities, including James Thurber’s quotes from Collins’ Pocket Interpreters: France, such as:
There are no towels here.
The sheets on this bed are damp.
I have seen a mouse in the room.
These shoes are not mine.
The radiator doesn’t work.
This is not clean, bring me another.
I can’t eat this. Take it away!
The water is too hot, you are scalding me!
Thurber described it as a “melancholy narrative poem” and “a dramatic tragedy of an overwhelming and original kind.”
Comme c’est curieux, comme c’est bizarre, et quelle coïncidence!
Having The Bald Soprano on the curriculum in high school French really did…something to me, anyway. On the side trip to Paris as part of the exchange trip, we got to see it at the Théâtre de la Huchette. It certainly made an impression.
Have you ever been to Manchester?
My wife, who studied French and German at university, groans whenever I start up with this. Opportunities seem to arise surprisingly often …
(I’ve tried to get her to watch L’Année dernière à Marienbad, but she was too traumatised by Robbe-Grillet in her youth. This form of PTSD seems to be quite common among Modern Languages graduates.)
I have fond memories from childhood of The Bald Prima Donna (as we knew it), when my older brother coordinated a tape recording of the play with all of us reading the parts. The young woman who left the gas on and asphyxiated herself had not forgotten it: she just thought it was her comb:
We wept with mirth – and at the extended dispute over whether a doorbell indicates that there is someone or no one at the door. It consolidated our native appetite for the absurd.
someone or no one at the door.
Shurely already done to death by that master of the absurd, Lewis Carroll:
I only wish my institutrixes for French had been half as appreciative of the absurd. We had bloody Racine and Molière and a family with a pet monkey — presumably so we could practice nasals without (shock!) being able to mention alcohol.
Shurely already done to death by that master of the absurd, Lewis Carroll
No, the Dodgson content is different. And deeply derivative.
On entend sonner à la porte d’entrée.
M SMITH: Tiens, on sonne.
Mme SMITH: Il doit y avoir quelqu’un. Je vais voir. (Elle va voir. Elle ouvre et
revient.) Personne. (Elle se rassoit.)
M MARTIN: Je vais vous donner un autre exemple …
Sonnette.
M SMITH: Tiens, on sonne.
Mme SMITH: Ça doit être quelqu’un. Je vais voir. (Elle va voir. Elle ouvre et
revient.) Personne.
M MARTIN qui a oublié où il en est: Euh! …
Mme MARTIN: Tu disais que tu allais donner un autre exemple.
M MARTIN: Ah oui …
Sonnette.
M SMITH: Tiens, on sonne.
Mme SMITH: Je ne vais plus ouvrir.
M SMITH: Oui, mais il doit y avoir quelqu’un!
Mme SMITH: La première fois, il n’y avait personne. La deuxième fois, non plus.
Pourquoi crois-tu qu’il y aura quelqu’un maintenant?
M SMITH: Parce qu’on a sonné!
Mme MARTIN: Ce n’est pas une raison.
M MARTIN: Comment? Quand on entend quelqu’un sonner à la porte, c’est qu’il
y a quelqu’un à la porte, qui sonne pour qu’on lui ouvre la porte.
Mme MARTIN: Pas toujours. Vous avez vu tout à l’heure!
M MARTIN: La plupart du temps, si.
M SMITH: Moi, quand je vais chez quelqu’un, je sonne pour entrer. Je pense que
tout le monde fait pareil et que chaque fois qu’on sonne c’est qu’il y a quelqu’un.
Mme SMITH: Cela est vrai en théorie. Mais dans la réalité les choses se passent
autrement. Tu as bien vu tout à l’heure.
Mme MARTIN: Votre femme a raison.
M MARTIN: Oh! Vous les femmes, vous vous défendez toujours l’une l’autre.
Mme SMITH: Eh bien, je vais aller voir. Tu ne diras pas que je suis entêtée, mais
tu verras qu’il n’y a personne! (Elle va voir. Elle ouvre la porte et la referme.)
Tu vois, il n’y a personne. (Elle revient à sa place.)
Mme SMITH: Ah! Ces hommes qui veulent toujours avoir raison et qui ont
toujours tort!
On entend de nouveau sonner.
M SMITH: Tiens, on sonne, il doit y avoir quelqu’un.
Mme SMITH qui fait une crise de colère: Ne m’envoie plus ouvrir la porte. Tu
as vu que c’était inutile. L’expérience nous apprend que lorsqu’on entend sonner
à la porte, c’est qu’il n’y a jamais personne.
Mme MARTIN: Jamais.
M MARTIN: Ce n’est pas sûr.
M SMITH: C’est même faux. La plupart du temps, quand on entend sonner à la
porte, c’est qu’il y a quelqu’un.
Mme SMITH: Il ne veut pas en démordre.
Mme MARTIN: Mon mari aussi est très têtu.
M MARTIN: Ce n’est pas impossible.
M SMITH: Il y a quelqu’un.
Mme SMITH à son mari: Non.
M SMITH: Si.
Mme SMITH: Je te dis que non. En tout cas, tu ne me dérangeras plus pour rien.
Si tu veux aller voir, vas-y toi-même!
M SMITH: J’y vais.
Mme SMITH hausse les épaules. Mme Martin hoche la tête.
M. SMITH va ouvrir: Ah! How do you do! (il jette un regard à Mme Smith et
aux époux Martin qui sont tous surpris.) C’est le Capitaine des Pompiers!
Allons gifler Ulysse!
Heureux qui, comme Personne et comme Ulysse, n’a jamais peur de personne d’autre …
Operatic adaptations? Of course! (One with music by Gérald Calvi, appropriately.)
In the 1960s and 1970s, several compilations of funny misprints and weird bits from newspapers and other sources were put together by Denys Parsons (but credited within to Gobfrey Shrdlu). We had a couple around the house when I was a young one. One bit from one collection, Funny Ha Ha and Funny Peculiar (here) has stuck in my mind ever since I could read English. It is credited to an unnamed “English phrase book for Portuguese students”:
We must beware of pickpockets
Ui masst bi-uer ov pik-poketss
What did you say?
Uot did iu sei?
Look at those placards
Luk et douzz pla-kerdz
You are right; there are several placards saying: beware of pickpockets and card-sharpers
Iu ar rait; der ar plakardz sei-ing: bi-uer ov pik-poketss ennd kard-xarparz
Who is that man?
Hu izz det menn?
That man is a pickpocket. It is not the first time I have been robbed.
Det menn is a pik-poket. It Izz not de farst taimm ai hev binn robbd
What a rascal! What a scoundrel! What an arrant knave! What a scamp!
Uot a rass-kal! Uot a skaunn-drel! Uot enn er-rant neiv! Uot a skemp!
He is a coward, Ill-bred fellow
He izz a kau-ard, il-bred fellou
(Denys Parsons’s name appears on the cover, but he credits the collection to Gobfrey Shrdlu.)
The “Portuguese” spellings remind me that I was in the (still largely Catalan/Valencian-speaking) town of Xàtiva a few days ago, and was struck by the way that the Castilian-speakers I eavesdropped on all called it “Sátiva” (or even “Sativa.”) Made me feel quite hippyish. I was a bit surprised not to hear anyone call the place “Játiva.”
I’d’ve thought some would say Chátiva.
Yes, that seems closer than s does to the Catalan /ʃ/ to me as well; but apparently that is a perception rooted in a L1 English-speaker’s intuitions, and it is not shared by L1 Spanish speakers.
(It was a pretty small sample, though.)
Incidentally, WP informed me that Xàtiva actually turns up in one of Catullus’ hendecasyllables; I actually knew the poem, but would never have made the connection. I’d thought that the name looked vaguely Arabic, but it’s not so.
I guess it’s the appropriate place to link to Mark Rosenfelder’s They Thought You’d Say This (Level of absurdity varies. I assume DE will be able to tell us wether the Welsh phrases are in everyday use.)
Absolutely. I use all of them every day.
Whence:
Let’s take a walk around the botanical garden.
Låt oss ta en promenad i botaniska trädgården.
Which reminds me of a recent cheerful earworm, Anna Erhard’s song Botanical Garden, whose lyrics seem to be all taken from a bad Yelp review of a botanical garden somewhere.
@DE: Absolutely. I use all of them every day.
Ahem. Not all the Welsh ones, I do trust?
(Gruffudd’s Get By In Welsh is here.)
The Greek for “I am knackered” is quite useful, should one happen to be walking around lost in 40+ degree heat without shade, water or (signal for) one’s mobile telephone. It gives one something to say as one lies down and closes one’s eyes for the last time.
For a lot of us younger folk „The Bald Soprano” sounds like a a lost David Chase screenplay about Corrado Soprano Jr. In German the title is „Die kahle Sängerin”. Is there any reason why „Cantatrice” should be translated as „soprano”? Is it established in the play that the singer is not an alto? Or did the translator see „Soprano” as a convenient way to gender the singer as female?
I guess it’s the appropriate place to link to Mark Rosenfelder’s They Thought You’d Say This
Several of the phrases are in no way absurd, and their selection just shows Rosenfelder wasn’t all that cosmopolitan. Best example is the Russian „ Here’s to future cooperation between our organizations! Za nashe budushchee sotrudnichestvo!. That would have been a very bog standard toast if you were visiting the USSR in 1973, most likely as part of some delegation.
I also imagine that plenty of foreign tourists to Sylt would appreciate the German phrase for renting a deck-chair.
I can only assume the Chechen phrasebook was created with war correspondents in mind. Sad but not absurd.
@David Eddyshaw: that’s interesting. In the standard Valencian pronunciation word-initial <x> is [t͡ʃ], and [ˈt͡ʃa.ti.βa] is what I seem to remember my L1 Valencian colleagues saying.
[ˈxa.ti.βa], reflecting the Castilian pronunciation, would signal the wrong politics. Despite a recent rightward shift, Xativa is a pretty progressive town by País Valencià standards, and that entails shaking your fist at anything that smacks of Borbonic centralism.
According to online rumors, [X/J]ativa in Valencia was Saetabis (or Saetabis Augustanorum) to the Romans and then Shatiba (okay, transliterations will vary …) to the Moors. Couldn’t immediately find an etymology for the Latin morpheme, but it resembles “sativus/-a/-um,” which Linneaeus used to name e.g. Cannabis sativa, rather less than the modern spellings do.
Several of the phrases are in no way absurd, and their selection just shows Rosenfelder wasn’t all that cosmopolitan.
He’s still alive and active 🙂
Best example is the Russian „ Here’s to future cooperation between our organizations! Za nashe budushchee sotrudnichestvo!. That would have been a very bog standard toast if you were visiting the USSR in 1973, most likely as part of some delegation.
I actually pointed that out to him on a previous incarnation of his message board; toasts like that were still a staple of business banquets when I was working in the former SU in the 90s. One culture’s absurd can be another culture’s normal.
“Gêm ddwl yw criced” is my new motto.
Several of the phrases are in no way absurd, and their selection just shows Rosenfelder wasn’t all that cosmopolitan.
Or it could show that humor is not science, and examining every example for possible lack of compliance with real-world standards is a mug’s game. I found the Russian ones funny even while recognizing how they came to be there.
My favorite Welsh sentence from Duolingo was “Does dim pannas yn uffern” (There are no parsnips in hell).
@Keith. That’s not necessarily what I would have expected, although to be fair I think the patristic tradition is generally silent/non-committal on the matter. Is this some distinctive eschatological teaching of the Calvinistic Methodists?
Or it could show that humor is not science, and examining every example for possible lack of compliance with real-world standards is a mug’s game.
Fair enough in general. Who doesn’t enjoy laughing at Germans? Still, the Chechen examples I thought were aggressively unfunny if you actually think about why those phrases might have been useful in 1997.
For German I remember the Duolingo sentence “Der Präsident hat kleine Hände”, though it may have been discarded in subsequent revisions to the course.
The sentence was not true for 4 years, so was retired. It should be reinstated soon.
My favorite Welsh sentence from Duolingo was “Does dim pannas yn uffern” (There are no parsnips in hell).
#
Good motives butter no parsnips, and hell is paved with buttered parsnips.
# [Irvin S. Cobb]
This version seems to have a more Calvinist spirit, if only because to understand it both the mental and moral faculties must be exercised.
In German the title is „Die kahle Sängerin”. Is there any reason why „Cantatrice” should be translated as „soprano”? Is it established in the play that the singer is not an alto? Or did the translator see „Soprano” as a convenient way to gender the singer as female?
Surely the latter—the same reason the British translation is called The Bald Prima Donna. Standard English has no word like cantatrice or Sängerin, and any of The Bald Female/Woman/Lady/Girl Singer would be absurd in the wrong way. There were slang terms such as “canary” and “warbler”, but without context those wouldn’t have suggested a singer.
However, I’d have needed a lot of willpower to reject The Bald Chanteuse.
There were slang terms such as “canary” and “warbler”, but without context those wouldn’t have suggested a singer.
The Bald Tit.
There were slang terms such as “canary” and “warbler”, but without context those wouldn’t have suggested a singer.
Jazz lovers might have enjoyed chirp.
https://forum.wordreference.com/threads/chirp.1644184/
Wales is certainly full of little trains, although I think it currently has its road signs.
My duolingo is currently all about not hitting parrots.
Is this some distinctive eschatological teaching of the Calvinistic Methodists?
This is not a matter of theology, but of simple logic: if there were parsnips in Hell, it wouldn’t be Hell, now, would it? QED.
I think “chanteuse” in English usually implies a chick singer who sings in a certain style and doesn’t necessarily generalize beyond that. It is frankly only recently if at all that the crusade against oppressive patriarchal lexemes has reached the more pragmatic quarters of the music biz, in which I’m pretty sure both “girl singer” and “chick singer” have retained some currency. Not a single-word lexeme, but it’s pedantic to get hung up on that. And you need a lexical solution to pick out the referent, not so much for translating Ionesco but for the same reason you need to be able to distinguish between an alto sax and a bass clarinet. As a general matter female vocalists and male vocalists (if adults and not too unusual) systematically differ in pitch range and to some extent timbre, so they’re not interchangeable when you’re figuring out who you need for a particular gig or recording session even if you’ve belatedly come to accept that e.g. a girl drummer can in principle play the same role just as well as a “regular” unmarked-for-sex drummer.
@David E.: De gustibus pastinacarum non est disputandum. Or should that be “gustibus pro pastinacas”?
I was trying to remember why Xàtiva rang a bell – it was home to a key figure in the study of Quran readings, al-Shāṭibī (12th c.)
Saetabis doesn’t look very Latin, nor Phoenician for that matter. Iberian? Tartessian?
Xàtiva was also where the Borgias originated from.
@J. W.: I agree with everything you wrote, and I’m glad you noted that you weren’t talking about translating Ionesco’s play, which was the only thing I was talking about.
After reading Stu’s remarkably apposite quotation, I’m less worried about parsnips than about butter, since another canonical text assures us that there’ll be no butter in Hell.
“Standard English has no word like cantatrice or Sängerin.”
How about songstress (obsolete and politically wrong today but maybe not so when La Cantatrice chauve was first being translated into English)?
That would not be understood except literally; I only learned “what they say about men with small hands” from Marco Rubio. There is an analogous saying somewhere in German, but it’s about a man’s nose.
I think we’re back at Dæmonomania.
@M: Good one. I overlooked “songstress”. I feel that it wouldn’t have worked as a title, though, maybe because at the time “songstress” wasn’t a normal word but a synonym used in entertainment journalism (and the name of one or more noteworthy cows), according to what I see at Google Books.
“Does dim pannas yn uffern”
uffern > inferno ?
another canonical text assures us that there’ll be no butter in Hell.
Towards the end of p. 120. A worthy companion to the locus classicus.
I suppose there are only so many ways to film a sermon, but the one from the film of Cold Comfort Farm seems to appropriately have that one in mind.
locus classicus.
I do indeed remember that searing sermon from that classic.
I’ve never imagined a posh Brit voice delivering it. Gielgud in Shakespearean declamation seems all wrong. (Irish priests — pref Jesuit — do a far better job at terrorising sermons IMO.)
Gielgud in Shakespearean declamation seems all wrong.
I have to agree.
uffern > inferno?
Uffern is indeed a loan from Latin inferna. We didn’t know what Hell was before those pesky Romans came.
I haven’t seen that one. Gielgud’s sermon in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man was nicely terrifying when I saw it, even though I’d read the book and knew what was coming.
My understanding is that ‘cantatrice’ specifically means a classical or opera singer – female of course – so translators have to find a way of conveying that idea in one or two words.
That’s my understanding as well.
since another canonical text assures us that there’ll be no butter in Hell
Obviously related to Xàtiva as well, cf. “Ubc Xongman Stortes of XauQbter”.