Another very Gainsbourgian enjambment: initially it seems like the meaning will be, "One cannot just take you / You have to surrender yourself" — but then it's not "se rendre" (surrender — which would have been a repeated verb anyway, which isn't allowed!) but "rendre compte" (account for, explain, or realize.)

The enjambed addition of "compte" really does change the meaning significantly.

One can't just take you, Lola, You have to give yourself up.

becomes

One can't take you — Seriously, Lola, you have to take this to heart — One can't just put things off indefinitely, Lola

It turns the first two lines of the stanza into a bit of a verbal hiccup, giving Serge a chance to start over.

Helpfully, there is a WordReference post devoted to this peculiar turn on a fairly common expression.

The expression is "dire quelque chose de but en blanc" — to say something point-blank. The origin of the expression is military: from the abutment, where you've got your cannon set up for target practice, to the white centre of the target.

Here, the cannon is aimed not at the white part of the target but rather... down below. You can fill in the... blank.

Can mean spread (like news of gossip, in the sense of disseminate or diffuse) — or spill (like wine from a glass).

I'm assuming a vulgar meaning here — but I'm a non-native speaker with a poor grasp of idioms, and perhaps am overcorrecting for Gainsbourg's vulgarity...

"Remettre quelque chose aux calendes grecques" is a French idiom for putting something off indefinitely.

"Calendes," by the way, are the first days of the month in the Greek calendar.

This serves to reinflect the opening lines of the stanza. See my English translation below to see what I mean...

"Return" in the sense of financial returns. How this will all pay off depends on you...

In this context, make amorous advances toward her.

Here, delicate in the sense of tricky.

To stretch oneself out or to lay down.

riverbank (I know you've heard of the "Rive gauche" or Left Bank!)

Let's assume he's saying, I'll only kiss you. (But let's also leave other possibilities open in the translation!)

Repeating "craintive" from above: fear.

drift, go off course

take fright

Another French water-phrase with a close English expression.

Literally, bed of the torrent (fast-flowing river).

Here: riverbed.

Expression with a close English equivalent: go with the flow.

In keeping with Serge's depiction of his addressee as wild and untamed, this means shy and fearful.

Literally, water to the mouth. Guess what it means in English? Yep: this is a song about mouthwatering.

I've always loved this word, even if I had no idea what it meant until I looked it up right now.

It has a range of meanings, from cruel, savage to shy, coy, to fierce, unfliching. All relate to a wildness, an untamedness.

An expression meaning let yourself go, relax, loosen up.

Unlike "avouer" — used above, meaning to confess — "vouer" means to devote yourself to something.

So, very inelegantly: "Alas, the springtime has failed to commit me to love."

This is an expression meaning just between the two of us, with the sense of confidentiality.

"Déplaire" means to dislike. So, "don't get upset."

This has the same meaning as in English: catch wind of.

The later Gainsbourg wouldn't be able to resist a pun here about farting — but somehow that just doesn't seem to fit here!

I know that French speakers like this line. Juliette Gréco, for whom this song was written, specifically said of this line " C'est superbe."

Which I'm sure it is. But — having spent weeks thinking about it — I'm still not sure what it's actually saying.

"J'avoue" — easy enough: I confess.

"J'en ai bavé" — literally, to dribble, to drool, to slobber, to drip, to foam at the mouth (makes me think of another great song of this era, "L'Eau à la bouche"!). But figuratively — clearly the sense here — to suffer, to fall on hard times, to have a rough go of it.

But "pas vous"? With no punctuation, it's pretty baffling. Like, "I admit, I had a hard time of things... but you didn't, you were fine!" Or is it in the sense, "pas vous?," like "didn't you also?"

Anyway, I think the idea is more just to get as many possible V sounds into the line as possible. So I will allow myself to stop thinking about it.

"Tarir" = to dry up.

Another word I like. It's a water-word: spurt, gush, spring forth. Just like tears...

There are some amusing mis-transcriptions of this lyric as "mer de mes douleurs" — sea of my woes. Obviously, it's "mère de mes douleurs," mother of my woes.

Another complex passage that 19th century translations helped me with. "My poor heart is so innocent that it was obviously super easy to abuse — but it would have been much nicer (if not easier) to just leave it alone."

Just so you don't have to go and look it up... that's dawn or daybreak.

"Douter" can mean either doubt ("douter de") or expect ("se douter de").

I needed to think hard about this one — and consult some 19th century translations of Musset — to figure out what's going on here. It's something like, "If I have started to doubt whether tears actually denote unhappiness, it's because I've seen you cry, and you're such a liar and a faker that obviously yours were false."

Another great word. It means curse, damn.

Amazing word. It means shroud, entomb, bury.

"Funeste" can mean disastrous, sad, or lethal. So — that kind of love.

I thought this might be a set expression, like "evil eye" or something — but apparently it just means dark eyed.

Shame on you!

Literally, wrecker — more specifically, people who set traps (like fake lighthouses) to cause ships to wreck against their shores, so that they can steal stuff from them.

"These creatures not denuded of reason." I guess the reason for this complicated double negative is that while Serge is telling us they're not de-nuded of reason, he imagines us thinking of them as themselves nude.

"Scruter" is to examine or scan. "Le zénith" is... the zenith, here likely just referring to the point in the sky directly above them. So: "they scan the skies."

"Détourné" is such a cool word here, doing so much work.

Literally it means diverted.

But it is also the French word for hijacked — a word that has already been employed, in English, in this song.

And the French legal phrase "mineure détournée" means corrupted minor, returning us to the Lolita theme.

(Any time Serge uses the word "mineure," remember his famous self-assessment: "Je pratique un art mineur destiné aux mineures" — I practice a minor art enjoyed by minors.)

Ridiculous, trifling — worthy of derision.

Whereas the Western response to "cargo cults" is generally to find them ridiculous, sad, and worthy of derision — here it is Serge who presents his own loves as derisory, before himself engaging in the cargo cult...

"Agiter," literally shake, can also mean brandish, trouble, upset, debate.

"Hasard" is chance, fate. "Au hasard" means at random. The meaning here is, moving randomly at the mercy of the currents.

And here it's that other more prosaic, less attractive kind of siren: WEEE-ah! At least it's gone silent.

"Hanter" is to haunt; "peupler" is to inhabit.

And here, the siren is of the mythical variety — the kind that tries to drive sailors off course with their beautiful songs. Serge is our siren in this case (with a lot of help from Jean-Claude Vannier). You know you should probably put an earplug in — but will you?

Broken, mangled.

Blowpipe.

The Douglas DC4, an older, prop-based plane, in service 1942–1991. Widely in service during WWII, this is one of the planes that would have initiated the so-called "cargo cults."

The cavalcade of airplane models continues. Boeing is an American manufacturer (no Rolls engines). We know Melody was flying in a 707, Boeing's first commercial jetliner, in service 1958–2013 (long outlasting Gainsbourg's career).

The Vickers Viscount, the first turboprop airliner, in service from 1953-2009. A British-made plane, the engines were, of course, made by Rolls Royce.

The de Havilland Comet, the world's first commercial airliner, in service from 1952 to 1997. Most models had engines by Rolls Royce — though, notably, the pre-Rolls engines were called "Ghosts" (the Rolls engines were called Avons).

Although it sounds to an English ear like a word for avarice, in fact it means damage, as in to the hull of a ship. (The French word for avarice is in fact... "avarice"!)

Still, the connotation works: all those ships, laden down with goods, sating avarice, driving avarice... doing damage.

A literary term for thick clouds — and again picks up the ghost-word "nue," naked, which does not actually appear.

Papuans, the indigenous peoples of New Guinea.

i.e., the airplane mentioned in "En Melody" ("Mais le pilote automatique aux commandes / De l’appareil...")

The Coral Sea, setting of our scene.

Some big words to sort out first. "Convoiter" is to covet. "Le fret" is freight or cargo (awkward word in French, a borrowing from English.

There is a pun on "les guinées" — the main sense here is the English currency, the guinea, originally a gold coin worth one pound, then a unit of account worth a wee bit more than a pound (£1.05) and preferred by aristocrats for fancy transactions like purchases of art. It's a pun because we find ourselves in New Guinea, whereas the coin was named after the mining region of west Africa (Guinea) from which its constituent metal originated.

Serge tells us that he knows all about the so-called "cargo cults" of the South Pacific. But how much does he really know? And where did he learn about them? See the discussion below.

"Con" / "conne" / "connard" can be very offensive words in French. They can mean "asshole" (but worse than that now-overused word). Or apparently they can have both the meaning and impact of the English C-word (which I'm too shy to write out!).

This very offensive meaning is the one invoked in Serge's later song "Requiem pour un con," which couldn't be played on radio or TV — and which, on my 2021 vinyl pressing of a compilation of rarities, is spelled "C.." — they're too shy to write it out, too!

In gentler contexts, "conne" can mean something more like "idiot." Probably fair to say that the "amiable petite" (adorable little) pushes it into that gentler zone.

"Conne" picks up "connue" from the previous stanza.

Melody, as we'll see below, is 14, nearly 15 — so, she's young. And yet, this speaker (whose age we don't know — though he sounds middle-aged... and he's old enough to have his driver's license, at the very least!) seems to imagine that this listener — us — will be astonished that she has never been "taken in anyone else's arms." I wonder why he makes that assumption...

The album title is L'histoire de Melody Nelson. The song title is "La ballade de Melody Nelson." The first line of the "Ballade" refers to itself as an histoire...

A ballad is "a poem or song narrating a story in short stanzas." A history is "a continuous, typically chronological, record of important or public events or of a particular trend or institution."

Ballad is clearly the more appropriate term. Especially given the non-chronological narrative offered here — which, in the next stanza, jumps straight to end...

Every other stanza had an end-line rhyme with "Nelson" here (étonne, automnes, sine qua non) — but here Serge stretches "con-nue" across the line ending.

As in English, "connue" can mean "knew in the Biblical sense" — although, if so, brevity is hardly something to brag about.

Dragging "con-nue" across the line ending might suggest a "nude idiot" — a sentiment very much in character for the speaker here, and for Gainsbourg's personae generally. And, indeed, he does call her a "conne" in the next stanza.

We've barely met her — and we learn she's died. If she were still alive, Serge would say "sont comptés" — are numbered — but here her days were numbered.

A bit of Humbert Humbert-style fancy language, thrown in gratuitously. A sine qua non condition is an essential one. The narrator depended utterly on Melody for his sanity — despite knowing her for so brief a time, and encountering her in such a peculiar fashion...

"Délicieuse," applied to a person, can have the non-sexual meaning of "charming, fascinating." But here the connotations are clearly sexual and meant to evoke discomfort in the listener.

How do we know for sure that Gainsbourg intends the phrase to be controversial? He uses it again in "Lemon Incest," his most systematic attempt to provoke outrage of this type. ("Délicieuse enfant / Ma chair et mon sang / Oh mon bébé mon âme").

In other contexts, "flapper." Here: "tomboy."

Melody is 14, not yet 15 — born either in winter, spring, or summer.

This is significant because the age of consent in France (in 1970, and today) is 15. She is nearly at the age of consent — closer than in many English-speaking countries, where it ranges from 16-18 — but not quite there. Thus, any sexual relations between the speaker and Melody would be illegal and punishable by imprisonment (though not, until 2021, automatically classified as rape) — though, a few months later, legal.

I can't find any evidence that "elle avait de l'amour" is a set expression. So just: "She had love — yeah, she had tonnes of it."

This "in between" age rhymes with that given to Melody in "Ballade de Melody Nelson": "ses jours étaient comptés / 14 automnes / Et 15 étés" — i.e., Melody is between 14 and 15. Jane B. is six years older...

Same exact age as Melody Nelson in the "Ballade," of course.

"Fleur de sang" = Scadoxus multiflorus = blood lily.

This is a set legal/official expression meaning literally "reported missing," but used more frequently to mean "officially considered be missing, as no body was ever discovered, but presumed dead."

Another particular that does not match Jane — but does match Serge.

All the particulars to this point match the real Jane Birkin — but not this one: she was never an art student.

Serge, however, had been an art student before becoming a professional musician and songwriter, and lamented his failure as an artist for his whole life.

Another thing that was not true of Jane in 1969, and had not been for some time. Serge, by contrast, often lived with his parents into middle age.

"Description," as in a missing persons report. I always though this was just a "reading out my passport" type of a song, until I read about the source in Nabokov (see Discussion below).

Since the lyrics are so brief, and since this is only word I need to annotate, I'll handle it in the "Discussion" section below...

"Taillé dans" means "cut in" or "engraved in" — so, cut in ebony.

See this page for a discussion of racist language in Gainsbourg (including an extended discussion of "nègre").

You probably don't require a footnote to associate Cleopatra with sexually dangerous decadence. Serge's audience wouldn't have, either. This film came out in 1963:

Here we can be pretty sure that Serge has in mind Oscar Wilde (author of Salomé). And through Wilde come all the further references. Wilde, who like Serge was obsessed with Huysmans (À rebours is the "yellow book" in Dorian Gray.) And Beardsley, who famously illustrated Wilde's play (Salomé frontispiece below) — and whose scandalous drawings were published in the Wilde-inspired periodical The Yellow Book.

Slightly more direct to aestheticism and decadence? He might have in mind the fact that Oscar Wilde was carrying a copy of Pierre Louys’s Aphrodite when he was arrested for "gross indecency." Or maybe he's thinking of Aubrey Beardsley's drawings of Aphrodite/Venus?

The sumptuous décor of the "Hôtel particulier" definitely gets us into the world of aestheticism and decadence. There is no actual reference to Gainsbourg's favourite book, Huysman's À rebours, but the setting definitely evokes it.

As for this Baroque bronze — maybe something like this?

"En faire une maladie" (literally, "make an illness") is a set expression meaning "make a huge fuss." Something more unhinged than that tame-sounding English is implied here... More like, "lose my mind."

Also: wow, that is some enjambment!

Literally, "daddy-style on my back" — which is the French way of saying, "piggyback."

A very colloquial word meaning something like "dumb shit."

Rather than tying myself in knots over this verb form — and having looked at a million translations of similar phrases, which generally ignore the actual verb tense of the French — I am going to simply assume that the intended meaning here is, "You're going to make me do" — like, "girl, you're going to be the ruin of me," said with a knowing smile.

I wondered if this was a set expression, but it seems it isn't really. It means, "everything moves," or "everything changes." Melody has brought unmoulded possibility into Serge's world...

"Entrouvrir" means "to half-open" or "to part (slightly)."

One of the few half-measures in this fully enchanted song.

"Égarer" means "get lost," or "mislead/deceive." The former seems to be the sense here: love loses its path, becomes lost, in the course of life...

Maybe we're meant to hear the car-word "garer" — to park — as well. With Melody in his life, Serge is truly égaré: unparked.

As a noun, "enceinte" means "an enclosure" or "a surrounding wall" — so, "murs d'enceinte" means literally "the walls of the enclosure." (The phrase "murs d'enceinte" seems to be used most often to describe the fortified walls of a medieval city). This is clearly the primary sense here.

As an adjective, however, "enceinte" means... "pregnant." Both forms have the same root word, the latin incingere, "to surround." I guess in the latter sense, we're imagining things from the baby's perspective, closed in in the womb — although it is the woman who is "enceinte," not the baby, so the locution is quite weird.

I'm not sure whether there is some suggestion here that Melody is pregnant — though I am positive that in this otherwise straightforwardly romantic/idealistic song, some sinister meaning exists in this... pregnant... phrase.

And I can tell you for sure that the woman on the cover of Histoire de Melody Nelson is pregnant! The strategically placed "poupée orangtuan" is there to hide the first evidence of Charlotte Gainsbourg, born on July 21, 1971, four months after the album's issue.

An "éclaireur" is a military scout (goes with the avant-postes at the end of the stanza, another military term).

It's a lovely and evocative word, holding within itself "éclair" (a flash of lightning... and the pastry, I suppose) and clarity itself.

The cyclist that Serge has hit lays on the road like a doll who has lost her balance, her skirt pulled up ("retroussée) so as to reveal her white underwear.

"A violent crash tore me suddenly from my reverie."

So yes: he was daydreaming while fixated on the Spirit of Ecstasy — not paying attention to the road. And now he's hit someone...

Drifted. Also a popular Serge word in its figurative sense of drifting spiritually, drifting through life. The opening line of his song "La Noyée" (the drowned woman) is "Tu t'en va à la dérive."

"Déconnais" means "fool around" — or, more appropriate to the context, "horse around"! (It looks like it has to do with the verb "connaître" (to know), but it doesn't...

"Thus was I horsing around when I lost control of the Rolls..."

The description of the badass figurine, with her indifferent heart, continues.

Indeed, she is now the one driving: it it she who holds the bit ("le mors") of his 26 "vapour-horses" ("chevaux-vapeurs" is the lovely French equivalent of "horsepower").

A real 1910 Silver Ghost has more like 40/50 hp — indeed, that's the model name — but the French formula for calculating "tax horsepower" was different from the one used in Britain... and I'm going to give Serge the benefit of the doubt and assume that the French called this one 26 CV.

Yes, that's correct: the Rolls-Royce hood ornament is officially named Spirit of Ecstasy. See longer note above.

As good as time as ever to implore you to watch the clip from the film version of Melody (top of this post), in which the Spirit of Ecstasy is both literally present and also interpreted by a human actor. Thrilling.

A somewhat more fitting description, at least. A "modern style" (that's English he's speaking) Amazon — as in, the tribe of legendary female hunters and warriors, popular subjects of classical statuary. Note also the echo of "zone," above — with "ama" added, close enough to "amant" (lover) to be interesting...

The description of the figure continues! (I'm sure most English speakers assume he's saying unfathomably dirty stuff about Melody in this song — not so!)

Becoming increasingly unhinged and hyperbolic, Serge compares her to the Prince of Darkness, the Damned Archangel. You know, the devil.

The journey continues through alleys ("ruelles"), dead-end streets where parking is forbidden by the law...

Are we supposed to be impressed, Serge — ooh, you're driving on a street so dangerous that parking is forbidden by law!

A lovely phrase — it just sounds great. The figurine is stoically fixed on the horizon, paying no mind to his unsteady driving, his accosting of sidewalks.

A strange image. "Poste de radio" is a radio station — with the enjambment making us linger on "poste," perhaps, in the sense of a message ("poste" = mail)... or just or those posts at the side of the road.

The radio, in any case, is yelling ("hurler") so loudly that it is covering... not the noise of the engine, as we would expect and as would make sense, but the silence of the engine.

Again, I think these lines tell us less about what's actually happening in this case than they do about the mental state of the driver — which is clearly disturbed.

Much of this opening track is dedicated to a description and celebration of... the Rolls-Royce radiator cap. Not a Venus so much as a Nike, as you'll see in the long description below the image...

Darran Anderson has a lengthy and fascinating description of this famous little radiator cap in his 33 1/3 book on Melody Nelson:

On [the Rolls's] bonnet is the enigmatically named ‘Spirit of Ecstasy’, a silver-plated Art Deco miniature sculpture of a woman with her arms outstretched backwards like wings in the illusion of flight. She is placed there like a figurehead at the prow of a ship to ward off disaster and the evil eye. She was once a real person, a commission of the sculptor Charles Sykes by Baron Montagu of Beaulieu, who asked that it be based on his mistress Eleanor Thornton. Initially, the statue had a finger over her lips and was called The Whisperer in reference to their clandestine love affair. Although it was later modified to represent the more dynamic Nike, the winged Greek goddess of victory, the symbol would come to have a tragic personal resonance. Thornton and Montagu had set off together for India, on the liner SS Persia, when the ship was torpedoed off the coast of Crete by a German U-boat in the winter of 1915. Within ten minutes, the colossal ship sank, taking its cargo of precious jewels, bullion and 343 souls to the sea-floor, including the ‘Flying Lady’ Eleanor.

The figurine is also haughty and contemptuous. I think we're supposed to imagine at this point that the narrator is becoming distracted at the wheel in contemplation of this silver Venus.

An "avant-poste" is an outpost. The light sails of the brave figurine are flying to the far reaches...

As far as I can tell, this is what a 1910 Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost (AX201) looks like. Which is to say — quite a bit different from the 1926 model that Serge Gainsbourg owned.

Darran Anderson sees this as a reference to Apollinaire's longish poem "Zone" — and the knowing way that Serge pronounces the word does suggest something is up here. And there are certainly lots of similarities: a confused narrative with a confused speaker taking an uncertain journey. Also, there is a mention of automobiles near the start... and lots of talk of prostitution.

Now there's some syntax!

"Égaré" means "lost" (a tourist, a purse) or "distraught" (in spirit). Clearly both at work here.

"Quand m'étant malgré moi égaré"? Let's say something like, "When, despite myself, having lost my way..." (in both the spiritual and the locational senses).

There's possible a car pun at work here: "garé" means "parked," which Serge most definitely is not as he rolls through the unknown street. (Indeed, the French prefix "é-" means "outside" — so, "outside of being parked" — another way of saying, "lost"!)

Serge purchased a 1928 (not 1911, as below) Rolls Royce in 1970, using proceeds from three films he had appeared in that year with Jane Birkin: Pierre Koralnik's Cannabis, Milutin Kosovac’s Le Traître, and Abraham Polonsky's Romance of a Horsethief.

The "wings" of the Rolls presumably belong to the hood ornament angel we'll meet in a moment. But they could also be the big wheel wells possessed by the pre-war Rolls.

In real life, Serge didn't have a license, so he didn't drive his Rolls — he just likes to sit in it and smoke.

But here, the Serge character is at the wheel — though not driving very well, as his vehicle is brushing against ("effleurer") the posts at the sides of the road.

At least that's how I'm interpreting "pylônes" (literally, pylons) — I suppose they could be construction pylons, but I assume they're the little metal posts that separate the roadway from the sidewalk on Parisian streets — for instance, right in front of Serge's own home at 5 bis rue de Verneuil.

Literally, in English, "unconscious" — in all the senses from "etherized upon a table" to Freud and Jung.

But here, I assume what is intended is a sense that isn't present in the English "unconscious": thoughtless, careless.

"But don't you sometimes feel that you are a little bit thoughtless?"

William James proposed four basic emotions: fear, grief, love, and rage. Various others are sometimes added: happiness, sadness, surprise, etc.

Serge is saying that the emotions evoked on a rollercoaster are... the easy ones. (Clearly he's more interested in love and its cognates.)

"Ouais," a key word in this song, is a casual version of "oui": "Yeah" rather than "yes."

In my translation, as you'll see, I'm rendering it "Whatever."

"It's not only machines that can send you into the air."

Initially I wondered if this was a brag ("I'll send you to the skies, baby") — or a threat of physical violence.

Given the previous stanza, it's got to be closer to a brag. I think he's just saying something like "You seem to think the only way to get your thrills is on this roller coaster — but I can give you thrills, too." Not quite a brag, then, given its doleful edge...

A pretty complex little stanza, though I think it boils down to a fairly simple image and idea.

Hey, at least on that rollercoaster, I'll finally be able to have you the way I want: cruelly gripping onto my arm with broken fingernails. Obviously it's a sexual image — and obviously, poor Serge is sexually frustrated.

Some tricky bits:

"Je t'y verrai": I'll see you there (on the rollercoaster).

"Je te veux cruelle": "Je te veux" has the same sexual connotations as in English. As Bobby D would sing just a few years later, "I want you / I want you / I want you / So bad[ly]." But I don't think Serge is saying "I want you / So cruel[ly]": he really is saying he want her to be cruel, no adverbs intended or implied.

French has the best words for "sulking," and Serge uses them all. (See "morfondre" in "Initials B. B.")

There is quite a bit of disagreement on what Serge is actually saying here — but this is what I hear, and it makes the most sense (as I write this, I don't yet have a proper copy of Serge's official lyrics).

I think Serge is being a little self-pitying here: someday, my dear, you will understand what loving really means — putting up with absurd inanities like going on a rollercoaster.

A "scenic railway" is a rollercoaster — known in French, somewhat oddly, as a "montagne russe" (Russian mountain) or "grand huit" (big eight).

Maybe residents of the UK call rollercoasters "scenic railways" — but we don't here in Canada. So it took some research to me to get the bottom of what Serge is actually talking about.

It would seem that a "scenic railway" is now considered a type of early rollercoaster: wooden, propelled by gravity, incapable of sharp turns, generally with a brakeman in the car to control the speed.

Serge may have had a particular "scenic railway" in mind: the Scenic Railway) in Margate, England. Built in 1920, it was the first roller coaster in England. It is still operational today, and is protected by historical status — though (and maybe it's just me) it looks a little sad in this picture:

Maybe it's the concrete housing block in the background. Or maybe it's the echo of The Waste Land:

“On Margate Sands. / I can connect / Nothing with nothing. / The broken fingernails of dirty hands. / My people humble people who expect / Nothing.”

This one confused me at first. An écrou is a nut, like the ones you attach to a bolt, metal pieces of hardware. What could that have to do with Paco Rabanne, the Spanish-born bad-boy/lunatic icon of French 60s fashion?

Well, it turns out he was famous for making "unwearable dresses" in that period, including some made of metal and held together with nuts and bolts. One such dress was featured in the 1968 Roger Vadim movie Barbarella, with which Serge was obsessed. Another, from 1967, is held in the collection of the Met:

So either Serge or his companion is wearing one of these unwearable dresses — and a screw has come loose.

Also: yes, Paco Rabanne is Spanish but living in Paris. Is that why the song opens with an expression borrowed from Spanish?

Perhaps this one? (In which Marilyn closely resembles the Rolls hood ornament that is a major character in Melody Nelson...)

Superman, October 1968:

1968 Zippo lighter:

Perhaps this collection, traduction de Charles Baudelaire?

1968 Coca-Cola ad:

Kool ad from 1968:

Browning manufactured a lot of stuff in 1968, but I guarantee that's gun.

Perhaps this Browning Automatic Rifle from the 1968 catalogue?

1968 Ford Mustang

..

These are the plane trees that line many roads in France. The narrator and his companion are driving their Mustang down such a road. Fast.

Plane trees were widely used in France in the early and mid-19th century, first planted along roadsides on the orders Napoleon to provide shade for troops and travellers moving through the country, and by country estate owners to create green cathedral-like grand allées through their landscaped parks Ref

Since these plane trees are completely familiar to people in France and other parts of Europe but totally unfamiliar to people elsewhere, I've been very literal in my translation below.

I always heard "BIG" initials, not "The." I'm sure "the" is right, but I still like BIG... because those initials, B. B., are about as big as it gets. (And no one would ever say in English, "The initials B. B."!)

This image deserves some attention, as there's a strange redundancy. Both "clochettes" and "grelots" mean "bells." So the silver bells on her wrists shake her bells? Gainsbourg is too good a writer to produce such a clumsy phrase.

So I went looking for double meanings. It seems that "avoir des grelots" means "tremble with fears" ("grelotter" has the same meaning). So there's no redundancy: it's just that the literal bells she wears act out the literal meaning behind the expression "avoid des grelots" — she advances with trepidation to pronounce the words that ends her relationship with Serge. Whether out of nervousness or out of cowardice — out of sympathy for Serge, or fear of leaving her rich husband — I'll leave to you...

"Emperor's medallion." I assume this stanza refers to some famous costume worn by Bardot in a film set in Roman times — but I have no idea which one, and I could definitely be wrong. In any case, this stanza contrasts the beautiful finery that she wears around her waist with... (see next annotation!)

Oh man I love this conclusion. The end of Serge's relationship with B. B. came when she set off to Almeria, the city in Spain, to film Shalako (a western) with Sean Connery. But Serge pronounces the word like a spell — abracadabra, and the fling is over, the charmed world collapses, Serge is spat out of the fantasy, and lands back in the drudgery of the real... (Well, it wasn't so bad as that; Jane B. would be by soon enough.)

Serge is reading Louis Pauwels's 1954 novel L'amour montre (monstrous love) — a novel recommended to Gainsbourg IRL by none other than B.B. Her recommendation apparently went as follows:

Lis ça ! Tu pourrais le méditer, c'est un ouvrage tout à fait pour toi ! Il est écrit à coups de fouet : ça claque à chaque page !

"Read this! Lots to dig into, it's exactly your kind of thing. It's written with a whip — the lash strikes on every page!"

According to Wikipedia,

It is set in the 16th century and tells the story of a possibly bewitched love affair between a doctor and a young woman sent to a monastery. The novel was the runner-up for the 1955 Prix Goncourt. Ingmar Bergman was at one point attached to direct a film adaptation, but the project was not realised.

Each of those thigh-high boots is like a chalice — a sacred vase — to her beauty. Great image, Serge!

Serge is no doubt thinking of the famous thigh-high boots B. B. wore in her TV special performance of his song "Harley Davidson." That was the first song she asked Serge to perform for the 1967 Bardot Show (she did a bunch more), and that was the beginning of their fling...

Aside from those boots, B. B. is wearing nothing but some perfume in her hair.

So yes, her waist is encircled with Roman finery. But her fingers? Each one is bound with with a little shackle, a mini manacle, a tiny old-timey handcuff. Surely this represents the rings she wears on her fingers — more specifically, the wedding ring signifying her marriage to Gunther Sachs, still her husband during the fling with Gainsbourg — but not for much longer. (He's the one who objected to the release of the Bardot version of "Je t'aims ... mon non plus." No wonder Serge bore a grudge!)

Gunther and B. B.:

A funny word I'd not encountered before. It means "mope." Serge is moping around in an English pub in the heart of London...

A "malle" is a suitcase. "Faire la malle" (make the suitcase) means to (pack your bags and) take off, split, flee.

Double entendre false alarm (?) "Malle" sounds exactly the same as "mal" (harm), leading someone like myself with a shaky grasp of French to wonder, "Might he be saying, 'I need to decide one day to harm myself"? But if that were the case, he would say, "me faire du mal (à moi même)" — not "me faire la mal" (ungrammatical).

i.e., "et quand j'aurai assez de toi" — another matching English expression, "when I've had enough of you."

Another expression that is exactly the same in English as in French — well, pretty much. "To have guts" (not "stomach") i.e., to be brave and audacious.

"Laisser faire" is another expression that English speakers shouldn't need too much help with. Serge can't decide what to do, or whether to leave his goonish lover — so he just throws up his hands.

A French brand of barbiturates — a common drug on which to overdose and commit suicide. See the note in "En Relisant ta lettre" where Gardénal is also mentioned, also in connection with suicide.

Not, apparently, a set phrase — it just means, "it's not necessary to say anything" (when you're... horizontal).

The expression "filer à l'anglaise" (run away English-style) means "leave without warning, without saying goodbye, without looking back." So "tailler à l'anglaise" must mean the same thing!

There seems to be no firm reason why the French associate the English with such thoughtless and absolute departures. Indeed, it seems to be a case of old-fashioned mutual antipathy — for in England there is an exactly parallel expression, "take a French leave," which means exactly the same thing.

This expression — also used in Le Poinçonneur des Lilas — means leave, take off, split.

This time, don't be fooled by the easy English equivalent. This is not a bunch of people singing together (that's a chœur).

"Choir" means "fall" (somehow this is a word I never learned — I guess "tomber" was all I needed!

"Laisser choir" (like "laisser tomber") means drop, ditch, abandon.

This expression is the same in French as in English: "step by step." Ennui is tracking Serge step for step...

Taking only one tablet ("cachet") of phenobarbital could be beneficial to the ex-lover: it can help reduce anxiety (he's right when he says it might calm her).

But overdosing on phenobarbital is a well-known way to commit suicide. Among the famous people to have ended their lives thus are English actress Phyllis Barry (who shares a surname with Jane Birkin's first husband and first daughter), American activist Abbie Hoffman, and thirty-nine members of the Heaven's Gate cult.

So the key question becomes: Is he encouraging her to calm herself, or to kill herself?

We get a hint when he says "au plus" (at most), rather "au moins" (at least). It's a telling slip: she should really be taking one at most if she wants to be calmed, not killed...

Another hint is that when Gardénal is mentioned in Serge's classic song "Ce mortel ennui," it is clearly in connection with suicide, not mere calming.

Gardénal is a brand name for phenobarbital, a barbiturate. In English-speaking countries, it's called Gardenal, without the é. But despite that confession to the French language, the lack of a terminal E in Gardénal looks weird to French eyes, thus the narrator's reminder to his ex-lover.

Gardénal is also mentioned in "Ce mortel ennui."

The expression "tomber à l'eau" is generally translated as "fall through" in English. At first glance, you'd think that what Serge is saying here is, "You'll get over this in the end — it won't seem like such a big deal once you've calmed down." But that doesn't agree with the notion of "falling through" as "come to nothing" or "fail absolutely." What he really seems to be saying is that she'll be better off dead, because none of the items he's about to list — hypocrites, tears, heartache, spelling-obsessed pedants — exist in the afterlife.

This whole ending section is really weird. It can only be in Serge's voice — because this voice knows how to spell, and seems to be addressing a distraught person. But weirdly, he sings it in the maudlin, mocking tones with which he reads the letter, not in his own mean, biting, sarcastic editor voice. I'm going to guess that this confusion is deliberate.

She says, "It will be your fault," and he replies "Well, there is no fault/mistake in that." But course, he's only talking about grammar. He's not accepting the truth of the statement's substance, i.e., admitting guilt.

"Ne me dis point" means "don't tell me." But "point" also means "point" or "period." Focusing on orthography or grammar, Serge cruelly jumps on this. Maybe there's a dot missing on an i? There's no period here, so it wouldn't be that — unless Serge has a loose grasp on grammar himself.

There's that "point" again. Definitely a dot on the I this time. Sadly I can't replicate that with computer fonts, which just can't miss dots on the i...

So maybe she didn't spell "cœur" correctly up there after all...

Expression: "Partir les pieds devant" (leaving feet-forward) means... dying. I gotta say, I find this expression a bit odd. I guess the idea is that if you're alive, your feet are under you, and if you're dead, they're out in front?

Anyway: so much for the Ticket-Puncher's optimism! "And if I run out of time... I'll just die."

Double meaning alert. Most obviously, "correspondances" as in "transfers," changes of station: to get to Invalides, "faite correspondance à" / "transfer at" Opéra. Poor Hole-Puncher, stuck underground, with his imagination stunted, can only think about transfers.

But also, Baudelaire's poem "Correspondances," the fourth in the "Spleen et Idéal" section of the 1857 Fleurs du mal. This poem is about the weird correspondences that form between neutral phenomena and human perceptions of them — the way some smells can seem to us good and naive, while others seem corrupt, evil... and how the latter can seem to transport us to another realm. (It's an amazing poem: go read it.)

Poor Hole-Puncher, stuck underground, isn't exposed to any of these sense-triggers. There's no natural light, no natural smells, no nature at all.

"Strange crossing" — as in, bizarre journey in a boat. The Hole-Puncher will repeatedly contrast travelling on a subway to travelling by boat, making a distinction between the lightless, unnatural, cloistered underground and the free, bright, adventurous sea.

Yes, Serge was a fan of Rimbaud and his "Bateau ivre" ("The Drunken Boat").

He dreams of leaving his ticker-puncher's hat in his locker...

The poor speaker is trying to "kill his ennui" with Reader's Digest books tucked into his jacket pocket — not a strategy likely to succeed. (Yes, Reader's Digest did publish in French in 1958 — and yes, Serge does drop the possessive in his pronunciation).

Expression: the boat is "taking off." "Tailler" means to cut or trim. "Se tailler," as used here, has a similar sense to the English "cut school."

Anyway, the boat is leaving without him...

And the final hole, for the Hole-Puncher as for us all: the grave.

The second-last meaning of "trou": a hole in one's head, made with the "flingue."

Colloquial term for a gun.

Expression: at all costs, at whatever cost.

In a moment of unusual confidence, the Ticket-Puncher expresses his faith that the day will come when he's able to hit the open road, head off into nature...

The reference is not to the literal cloaca, the "common chamber and outlet into which the intestinal, urinary, and genital tracts open" in amphibians and birds.

The Latin root of the word means "sewer," and it's that more extended sense that is meant here. Indeed, in French, "cloaque" generally means "cesspool" — a filthy, stinky place. Which is what is meant here.

A "claque" (favourite Gainsbourg word) is a slap. But in this expression it meant, "to be fed up" — "to have had it up to here."

Expression: "I'm fed up."

I love it, because it sounds exactly like the name of the greatest guitar player of all time...

Another station, another terminus.

Back from boat imagery to train imagery: the Hole-Puncher is "derailing" mentally.

So many meanings of "hole"! Here, the hole in the ground where he works; the holes he punches in tickets. Soon, the holes he threatens to put in his own head...

If this was the Gainsbarre of the late 70s and 80s, there would be other kinds of holes — but not in 1958.

"To wander to and fro." The rhyme with "vaugue" gets us back to our nautical theme... so "meander," like a river, might be the best word here.

In the next few lines, the Hole-Puncher imagines waves, and a boat coming to pick him up at the end of a foggy dock. Once again, he's waiting for Rimbaud's Bateau ivre...

An expression meaning something like "go on the lam" — or just run away from one's troubles.

It has funny origin story. It literally means "play the air-girl" — a bit perplexing. But the explanation is simple enough. La Fille de l'air is an 1837 play by the Cogniard brothers and Raymond. It takes place in an imaginary world, telling the story of Azurine, daughter to the king of the fairies. She's sent to Earth to convalesce after an illness, then falls in love with a peasant, loses her wings, and must remain on Earth. She gets homesick, however, and wants to return to her father — and with the help of a magical talisman procured from a friend, is indeed able to sneak back to her home planet — to "joue la fille de l'air."

The Zouaves were a highly decorated French light infantry regiment in North Africa (still active in 1958, they were disbanded in 1962).

Despite their being held in high repute, the expression "faire le Zouave" means "act like an idiot" — or more specifically, "behave like a clown." It's a derogatory expression, as you can see by Professor Tournesol's reaction when Captain Haddock makes this accusation:

The somewhat perplexing origins of this expression — would someone take such direct offence if they were called a Marine? — are explained in various ways. The most compelling, to me, is simply that their outfit was quite garish and clownlike in colour. See van Gogh's painting of a Zouave:

"Se couler douce" is an expression meaning "live the good life" — like the more famous Italian "dolce vita." So in his sad Reader's Digest books, he's reading about dudes living the dolce vita in Miami while he's stuck underground.

A kind of ceramic. We can assume he's referring to the subway-tiled ceiling of his subway station.

Nothing too tricky from a linguistic perspective, just wanted to highlight this fun image: "carnival of confetti," all those punched holes, that stick to his clothes like sand in your shoes after a day at the beach...

But why is it in his head? He's not imagining it — it's quite literal. Is it that his brain has been reduced to little fragmented, meaningless bits by his boring, repetitive job?

I try to not to make obvious annotations... but just in case. These are two Parisian Métro stations, and this is the kind of thing the Poinçonneur finds himself saying all day to the customers boarding at Mairie des Lilas. "Looking to go to Ivalides? Change at Opéra."

Just wanted to show off this picture of a "poinçon," a hole punch of the kind used by the Poinçonneur:

French expression: "Il n’y a pas de sot métier, il n’y a que de sottes gens" — "There are no stupid jobs, only stupid people."

This can be taken various ways: does it imply that all jobs are inherently dignified — or that the idiots who work unpleasant jobs have only themselves to blame? The Poinçonneur is leaning toward the latter, blaming himself for his shitty life underground.

Les Lilas is a suburb of Paris. The station Mairie des Lilas is the northern terminus of Line 11 of the Métro. It is presumably there that the Puncher plies his trade.

But there's a double-meaning at work. "Les Lilas" literally means "the lilacs" — and Parisian Métro tickets are notably lilac-coloured (at least they were when I last handled one — my cursory research on late-50s ticket colour schemes has come up empty). So he is both "The ticket puncher of Les Lilas" and "the puncher of lilac-coloured tickets."

(No, Métro tickets were not delivered in the form of X-Wing origami.)

The speaker is a ticket-puncher in the Parisian subway system, the Métro. (The verb "poinçonner" means "to punch" — as in, to punch a hole, with a hole-punch).

To whom does this refer? Is it Mr, Hyde, in his heart (i.e., secretly)? Or is it that Mr. Hyde exists within Dr. Jekyll's heart? The latter would agree with the "avait en lui" above, suggesting containment within — that Hyde exists within Jekyll. By the end of the song, it will be the other way around: the parasite has nearly consumed the host, with all that's left of Jekyll a complaining, defeated, disembodied voice.

A terrific expression that I learned from this song. Literally, "make the skin of" — but the French expression "faire la peau de quelqu'un" means "murder someone in cold blood."

An important line. Taking notes for the doctor — for his benefit — on taking notes on the doctor — for his own personal benefit, to the detriment of Dr Jekyll? It can really only be the latter, given the ensuing murder...

"N'en penser pas moins" is a tricky and ambiguous expression in French — and I think it's one of the most important lyrics in the song. It means something along the lines of "holding one's tongue": not saying anything despite wanting to say something, or having something significant to say. There's also an element of tactical deception: choosing to say nothing because silence will get you what you want. See here and here.

Very tempting to read this as "evil genius" (so Serge!), but it's more like "evil spirit." The primary meaning here is contained in the French expression "être le mauvais génie de quelqu'un," which means "being a bad influence on somebody."

A "cafard" is a snitch or a hypocrite.

Rather than noticing that the lover is threatening to kill herself, Serge focusses on a misspelling of "I'll die"

Obviously I'm struggling here to see how the lover might have misspelled a word a simple as "vie"!

Impressively, the distraught lover correctly uses the subjunctive voice — something that I have never been able to learn how to do myself...

Throughout, I'm trying to imagine the misspellings or grammatical errors in the letter that Serge is responding to. Since he's reading the letter aloud, though, it's often impossible to know for certain what's on the page. In this case, though — it's obviously "j'aimme" with two Ms.

There's no English equivalent for this French expression. In French, you might say, "Le sport et moi, ça fait deux," meaning, "Sports are not my cup of tea." See this discussion.

I mean, I think this is just a bottle of liquid makeup. I love the way it sounds, though, so it's the name of my blog.

Notably, there is now (Dec 2021) a cosmetics company called "We Are Fluide" (as in, gender-fluid) but this song long predates it.

A very inelegant translation. The more literal translation would be "we embrace the plane trees" — but I wanted non-European non-native speakers to really understand the situation being described. "Smash" has none of the personal intimacy of "embrace" — but "embrace" just doesn't work in English, conveys none of the violence of the strike. I could have said "hug the sides of the road," but I wanted people to know that these trees are linear, are planted.

I'm pretty sure this is supposed to be an onomatopoeia, like Bang, Zip, Zoom, Whizz (see "Comic Strip" from this same album). "Tang" works better than "Mus" in this regard.