Elsa la rose (1966) - full transcript
The story of a poet's (Louis Aragon) love for his wife, the writer Elsa Triolet.
Aragon...
I'm filled with the
deafening silence of loving
Deafening silence of loving
I'm filled with the
deafening silence of loving
I'm filled with the
deafening silence of loving
I'm filled with the
deafening silence of loving
Deafening
Silence
Of loving
- Do you know Elsa?
- I don't think so.
I keep thinking I know her well,
but Elsa keeps changing
the way I think about her,
so I'm always thinking
that Elsa is eluding me.
And yet I've been thinking this
for the past 37... 38 years.
It's strange that you think that.
I remember
Elsa's hat and fur coat
the day I met her.
But the rest cannot be pinned down.
Well, I have quite precise memories.
Louis looked like
a dance hall dancer.
His hair was incredibly dark,
which no one can believe now,
because he has blue eyes
and his hair has gone white,
so people think he was blond.
But he was ever so dark.
He was very thin...
and very handsome
- a little too handsome -
which made him look rather like
those young men
one would meet in dance halls.
The first time I saw Louis
from behind,
he was dressed in black
and his suit was all shiny...
like a piano.
I was sitting on this stool.
A friend said to me,
"You should meet that woman."
I was playing dice by myself.
I turned and saw the corner table
where the day before,
November 4th, 1928,
there'd been many people.
One of them had said,
"Mr. Aragon,
the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky
"would like you to sit
at his table."
A Mayakovsky like this.
And so, quite independently,
the next day, November 5th,
you came into the caf?
through this little swing door.
And from that day forward,
we were never apart.
What would I be without you
You who took the first step?
What would I be without you
But a heart turned to stone?
But time standing still
On this watch face?
What would I be without you
But this mumbling?
I learned everything from you
About matters human
And now I see the world your way
I learned everything from you
How to drink from fountains
How to read the distant stars
In the sky
How to take the song
From a singing passerby
I learned everything from you
The true meaning of a thrill
What would I be without you
You who took the first step?
What would I be without you
But a heart turned to stone?
But time standing still
On this watch face?
What would I be without you
But this mumbling?
You say in Le Grand Jamais
(The Big Never),
"In life you never know what
people think, you can only imagine."
I try to imagine your life.
Imagine you.
All I have left to do
is imagine you.
A little girl...
There was once in Russia
a little girl
called Zemlianichka,
meaning "Wild Strawberry".
It was the time
of Anton Pavlovich Chekhov.
And at school,
for a production of a Chekhov tale,
Wild Strawberry
had been given a major role.
A little girl wakes up pointing
at the floor and screaming,
"Oy krov sac!"
Which means
"Oh, a cockroach!"
That's all.
The little girl has grown.
She is sixteen.
She has Elsa's eyes.
Elsa's Eyes by Aragon
Your eyes are so deep
As I bent to drink
I saw every sun reflected in them
And desperate souls
jumping in to die
Your eyes are so deep
I lose my memory in them
Eyes and Memory
Shadows of birds, a murky ocean
Then the sun and your eyes change
Summer carves the street
The sky is as blue as on wheat
Enchanted by beauty
The child's eyes widen
When you open yours
Wild flowers fall from the heavens
Are there lightening bolts
In the lavender?
I'm caught in shooting stars
Like a sailor dying in August
O Paradise a hundred times
Lost and found
Your eyes are my Peru
My Golconda, my Indies
And so it happened
The Universe smashed
On the reefs
The wreckers set ablaze
But I saw shining above the sea
Elsa's eyes, Elsa's eyes, Elsa's eyes
That's when you introduced
to your parents a funny guy
who no one had noticed yet,
and who had decided
to deck himself out in a yellow coat,
Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky.
No, not that one,
not the one in that photo,
but a young man
who looked like Belmondo.
A 6 foot 4 Belmondo.
What are you thinking about?
One never knows
what you're thinking about.
How can one pretend
To trace in words your semblance?
You who are so different,
so fleeting
Always changing and transformed
You who nothing could fix
In my eyes
Neither passion nor the years
Always new and surprising
Love, love
Whose portrait escapes
The stroke of pen and brush
Like the indefinable form of laughter
As indefinable as a sob
Memory without recollection
And wound without dagger
Imagine you...
All I have left to do is imagine you.
One day,
you went to join that Frenchman
you had met back then.
There were Frenchmen
then in Russia.
He's the one who gave you
your pen name.
With this Frenchman
you went to Tahiti.
And to evoke distant Tahiti,
you later chose to use
a painting of it
in our strange
?uvres Romanesques Crois?es
which began coming out last year.
This painting
by Le Douanier Rousseau,
who had never
travelled to tropical countries.
By 1923,
you had left your Frenchman.
You were in Berlin
where there were all kinds of people.
And in this caf? on
the Kurf?rstendamm when I came in,
you were going out at the same time
through that door.
We didn't meet.
There were Russians in Berlin,
all kinds.
Writers like Gorki, Remizov,
and Chklovski,
who was in love with you.
He showed his book to Maxim Gorki
and as there were six
of your letters in the book,
Gorki wanted to meet you
and persuade you to write.
In Russian, of course.
And this is the Elsa who,
in Moscow in 1925,
published In Tahiti.
You wrote a second book,
Wild Strawberry,
the story of this little girl.
But you had already
gone back to France,
intending to stay only a short while,
when, in this empty bar...
Caressed by kisses
The years race into the void
Avoid, avoid, avoid
Broken memories
The sun is the same
To the pale pianist
Who sang a few words
Always the same
Darling, do you remember
Those carefree days
When we lived together
In Montparnasse?
Life has slipped by
Without our noticing it
Evenings are already becoming cold
The heart runs late
Caressed by kisses
The years race into the void
Avoid, avoid, avoid
Broken memories
We lived here in Montparnasse.
We didn't have a penny.
How would we manage?
Elsa thought of making necklaces.
She told the story in her last book
in Russian, Busse.
As I did later in
Le Cantique ? Elsa.
You made jewelry for daytime
Or evening wear
Everything became a necklace
In your lyrical hands
Pieces of rags, pieces of mirrors
Necklaces as fine as glory
Unbelievably fine
Elsa waltzes and keeps on waltzing
Early in the morning,
I'd carry a suitcase
filled with your necklaces.
I sold to merchants
From New York and Berlin,
Rio, Milan, Ankara
The jewels
Your gold washer's hands created
These rocks which were like flowers
Bearing your colors
Elsa waltzes and keeps on waltzing
We lived like that
for two or three years.
We felt rich,
until the day you'd had enough.
So I became a journalist
for 1,300 francs a month.
That was in '33 or '34.
Berlin, the Reichstag Fire.
Paris, February 6th, 1934.
And then we lived here,
in the heart of Paris.
It was the time
of the Spanish Civil War.
"Writing a life story means going
beyond this life, beyond history."
We went to Madrid in a truck,
taking gifts
to the Republic's writers.
"Just as a train
speeds through the landscape.
"With its stops, switches, signals,
bridges, tunnels, catastrophes."
And around this time,
though you kept it from me,
you wrote in French.
A miracle! In French.
Who was Th?r?se?
A name heard on the radio
Between up and down
Which wasn't destined for us
Th?r?se...
As Max Ernst saw her
for our ?uvres Crois?es,
but who were you talking about?
For me,
Th?r?se is who you were then.
Your soft hand on your cheek.
"Good evening, Th?r?se."
Am I disturbing you?
Not at all. Come here.
You can give me a hand.
I've got myself all tangled up
in these proofs.
Of course, if I'd asked you
"Am I disturbing you?",
you'd have said "Yes,
"I'm writing a poem about Elsa."
I enter this country
She opens up to me
Where everything throbs
With her presence
And her hand opens the shutter
Overlooking the garden
Where there is the sound
Of invisible things
I'll invent for you my rose
As many roses
As there are jewels in the sea
As many roses as there are centuries
In celestial dust
As there are dreams
In a child's head
As there is light in a sob
I will invent for you the rose
I will invent for you the rose
You looked at me with your eyes
Of pure oblivion
You looked at me over memory
Over wandering choruses
Over faded roses
Over thwarted joys
Over abolished days
You looked at me with your eyes
Of blue oblivion
All the roses I sing of
All the roses I choose
All the roses I invent
I vaunt in vain with my voice
Before the rose I see before me
The readers of these poems
expect me
to be 20 years old forever.
As I cannot satisfy
this need for beauty and youth
that the readers have,
I feel guilty,
and it makes me unhappy.
That's what's terrible,
they're not just for me.
That's why I talk...
of other poems, other texts.
At least I know what they're about,
and all that
remains a secret to others.
Maybe I'm not very good at sharing.
Aragon always says he's a shadow
at your feet.
He's wrong.
He's doing me wrong.
He's always belittling himself,
compared to me.
It annoys people,
and they're right.
For thirty years I have been
This shadow at your feet
For thirty years my thought
Has been the shadow of your thought
You think all this is an allegory.
You don't hear me...
I know I've done a lot for Aragon.
I never meant to,
it just happened, because
we were made for one another.
I've greatly influenced his writing.
He's very grateful to me, I think.
Because in the end,
it went the way he wanted it to go.
There was a time
when he was having
trouble finding himself.
He had completely
lost his way as a writer.
And having me by his side,
without any false modesty,
probably made him feel
like his path was mapped out.
He's always thanking me for that.
He never stops thanking me.
What a miracle to be together
The light on your cheek
The wind playing around you
When I see you, I still tremble
Like on his first date
A young man who looks like me
Blame me if I cannot adjust
Can one adjust to flames?
They've killed before
The soul's eyes gouged
Adjusting to dark clouds
For the first time
Your mouth, your voice
From wing to mountain top
The tree trembles
Always the first time
When your dress touches me
Take this heavy fruit
Discard the rotten half
Bite the happy half
Thirty lost years
Sink your teeth in
I give my life to you
My life truly began
The day I met you
Your arms barred the path
Of my insanity
Showed me a land
Where bounty is sown
In the confusion
You cooled my fevers
And I ignited
Like gin at Christmas
I was born of your lip
My life begins with you
All these poems are for you.
Do they make you feel loved?
Oh, no! They aren't
what makes me feel loved.
Not the poetry.
It's the rest. Life.
Writing a life story,
with its stops,
switches, signals, bridges,
tunnels, catastrophes...
Here ends only this world,
and this film.
Here we are separated,
but here begins Elsa's second life
for which she is Elsa Triolet.
The Elsa Triolet of today,
who has written some 17 books.
Not the woman who I imagine,
but the woman who imagines,
who has given life to dreams
and characters among whom
I have lived for a quarter century,
watching them be born,
being one of them.
A long story
that I'll tell you some other time.
For now, take this fairytale
with its artificial resolutions.
They married
and lived happily together.
As in every fairy tale.
When I knew in your arms
I was a human being
When I stopped pretending
And became myself at your touch
Take these books from my soul
Open them everywhere
Break them to better understand
Their perfume and secret
Brutally rip open the pages
Crumple and tear them
You will retain but one thing
A single murmur, a single chorus
A long thank you babbling
This happiness like a meadow
Child-God, my idolatry
The endless Ave of the litanies
My blossoming, my growing beauty
O my reason, O my folly
My month of May, my melody
My paradise, my blazing fire
My universe, Elsa, my life
My universe, Elsa, my life.
Subtitles by John Miller
Subtitling Titra Film Paris
I'm filled with the
deafening silence of loving
Deafening silence of loving
I'm filled with the
deafening silence of loving
I'm filled with the
deafening silence of loving
I'm filled with the
deafening silence of loving
Deafening
Silence
Of loving
- Do you know Elsa?
- I don't think so.
I keep thinking I know her well,
but Elsa keeps changing
the way I think about her,
so I'm always thinking
that Elsa is eluding me.
And yet I've been thinking this
for the past 37... 38 years.
It's strange that you think that.
I remember
Elsa's hat and fur coat
the day I met her.
But the rest cannot be pinned down.
Well, I have quite precise memories.
Louis looked like
a dance hall dancer.
His hair was incredibly dark,
which no one can believe now,
because he has blue eyes
and his hair has gone white,
so people think he was blond.
But he was ever so dark.
He was very thin...
and very handsome
- a little too handsome -
which made him look rather like
those young men
one would meet in dance halls.
The first time I saw Louis
from behind,
he was dressed in black
and his suit was all shiny...
like a piano.
I was sitting on this stool.
A friend said to me,
"You should meet that woman."
I was playing dice by myself.
I turned and saw the corner table
where the day before,
November 4th, 1928,
there'd been many people.
One of them had said,
"Mr. Aragon,
the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky
"would like you to sit
at his table."
A Mayakovsky like this.
And so, quite independently,
the next day, November 5th,
you came into the caf?
through this little swing door.
And from that day forward,
we were never apart.
What would I be without you
You who took the first step?
What would I be without you
But a heart turned to stone?
But time standing still
On this watch face?
What would I be without you
But this mumbling?
I learned everything from you
About matters human
And now I see the world your way
I learned everything from you
How to drink from fountains
How to read the distant stars
In the sky
How to take the song
From a singing passerby
I learned everything from you
The true meaning of a thrill
What would I be without you
You who took the first step?
What would I be without you
But a heart turned to stone?
But time standing still
On this watch face?
What would I be without you
But this mumbling?
You say in Le Grand Jamais
(The Big Never),
"In life you never know what
people think, you can only imagine."
I try to imagine your life.
Imagine you.
All I have left to do
is imagine you.
A little girl...
There was once in Russia
a little girl
called Zemlianichka,
meaning "Wild Strawberry".
It was the time
of Anton Pavlovich Chekhov.
And at school,
for a production of a Chekhov tale,
Wild Strawberry
had been given a major role.
A little girl wakes up pointing
at the floor and screaming,
"Oy krov sac!"
Which means
"Oh, a cockroach!"
That's all.
The little girl has grown.
She is sixteen.
She has Elsa's eyes.
Elsa's Eyes by Aragon
Your eyes are so deep
As I bent to drink
I saw every sun reflected in them
And desperate souls
jumping in to die
Your eyes are so deep
I lose my memory in them
Eyes and Memory
Shadows of birds, a murky ocean
Then the sun and your eyes change
Summer carves the street
The sky is as blue as on wheat
Enchanted by beauty
The child's eyes widen
When you open yours
Wild flowers fall from the heavens
Are there lightening bolts
In the lavender?
I'm caught in shooting stars
Like a sailor dying in August
O Paradise a hundred times
Lost and found
Your eyes are my Peru
My Golconda, my Indies
And so it happened
The Universe smashed
On the reefs
The wreckers set ablaze
But I saw shining above the sea
Elsa's eyes, Elsa's eyes, Elsa's eyes
That's when you introduced
to your parents a funny guy
who no one had noticed yet,
and who had decided
to deck himself out in a yellow coat,
Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky.
No, not that one,
not the one in that photo,
but a young man
who looked like Belmondo.
A 6 foot 4 Belmondo.
What are you thinking about?
One never knows
what you're thinking about.
How can one pretend
To trace in words your semblance?
You who are so different,
so fleeting
Always changing and transformed
You who nothing could fix
In my eyes
Neither passion nor the years
Always new and surprising
Love, love
Whose portrait escapes
The stroke of pen and brush
Like the indefinable form of laughter
As indefinable as a sob
Memory without recollection
And wound without dagger
Imagine you...
All I have left to do is imagine you.
One day,
you went to join that Frenchman
you had met back then.
There were Frenchmen
then in Russia.
He's the one who gave you
your pen name.
With this Frenchman
you went to Tahiti.
And to evoke distant Tahiti,
you later chose to use
a painting of it
in our strange
?uvres Romanesques Crois?es
which began coming out last year.
This painting
by Le Douanier Rousseau,
who had never
travelled to tropical countries.
By 1923,
you had left your Frenchman.
You were in Berlin
where there were all kinds of people.
And in this caf? on
the Kurf?rstendamm when I came in,
you were going out at the same time
through that door.
We didn't meet.
There were Russians in Berlin,
all kinds.
Writers like Gorki, Remizov,
and Chklovski,
who was in love with you.
He showed his book to Maxim Gorki
and as there were six
of your letters in the book,
Gorki wanted to meet you
and persuade you to write.
In Russian, of course.
And this is the Elsa who,
in Moscow in 1925,
published In Tahiti.
You wrote a second book,
Wild Strawberry,
the story of this little girl.
But you had already
gone back to France,
intending to stay only a short while,
when, in this empty bar...
Caressed by kisses
The years race into the void
Avoid, avoid, avoid
Broken memories
The sun is the same
To the pale pianist
Who sang a few words
Always the same
Darling, do you remember
Those carefree days
When we lived together
In Montparnasse?
Life has slipped by
Without our noticing it
Evenings are already becoming cold
The heart runs late
Caressed by kisses
The years race into the void
Avoid, avoid, avoid
Broken memories
We lived here in Montparnasse.
We didn't have a penny.
How would we manage?
Elsa thought of making necklaces.
She told the story in her last book
in Russian, Busse.
As I did later in
Le Cantique ? Elsa.
You made jewelry for daytime
Or evening wear
Everything became a necklace
In your lyrical hands
Pieces of rags, pieces of mirrors
Necklaces as fine as glory
Unbelievably fine
Elsa waltzes and keeps on waltzing
Early in the morning,
I'd carry a suitcase
filled with your necklaces.
I sold to merchants
From New York and Berlin,
Rio, Milan, Ankara
The jewels
Your gold washer's hands created
These rocks which were like flowers
Bearing your colors
Elsa waltzes and keeps on waltzing
We lived like that
for two or three years.
We felt rich,
until the day you'd had enough.
So I became a journalist
for 1,300 francs a month.
That was in '33 or '34.
Berlin, the Reichstag Fire.
Paris, February 6th, 1934.
And then we lived here,
in the heart of Paris.
It was the time
of the Spanish Civil War.
"Writing a life story means going
beyond this life, beyond history."
We went to Madrid in a truck,
taking gifts
to the Republic's writers.
"Just as a train
speeds through the landscape.
"With its stops, switches, signals,
bridges, tunnels, catastrophes."
And around this time,
though you kept it from me,
you wrote in French.
A miracle! In French.
Who was Th?r?se?
A name heard on the radio
Between up and down
Which wasn't destined for us
Th?r?se...
As Max Ernst saw her
for our ?uvres Crois?es,
but who were you talking about?
For me,
Th?r?se is who you were then.
Your soft hand on your cheek.
"Good evening, Th?r?se."
Am I disturbing you?
Not at all. Come here.
You can give me a hand.
I've got myself all tangled up
in these proofs.
Of course, if I'd asked you
"Am I disturbing you?",
you'd have said "Yes,
"I'm writing a poem about Elsa."
I enter this country
She opens up to me
Where everything throbs
With her presence
And her hand opens the shutter
Overlooking the garden
Where there is the sound
Of invisible things
I'll invent for you my rose
As many roses
As there are jewels in the sea
As many roses as there are centuries
In celestial dust
As there are dreams
In a child's head
As there is light in a sob
I will invent for you the rose
I will invent for you the rose
You looked at me with your eyes
Of pure oblivion
You looked at me over memory
Over wandering choruses
Over faded roses
Over thwarted joys
Over abolished days
You looked at me with your eyes
Of blue oblivion
All the roses I sing of
All the roses I choose
All the roses I invent
I vaunt in vain with my voice
Before the rose I see before me
The readers of these poems
expect me
to be 20 years old forever.
As I cannot satisfy
this need for beauty and youth
that the readers have,
I feel guilty,
and it makes me unhappy.
That's what's terrible,
they're not just for me.
That's why I talk...
of other poems, other texts.
At least I know what they're about,
and all that
remains a secret to others.
Maybe I'm not very good at sharing.
Aragon always says he's a shadow
at your feet.
He's wrong.
He's doing me wrong.
He's always belittling himself,
compared to me.
It annoys people,
and they're right.
For thirty years I have been
This shadow at your feet
For thirty years my thought
Has been the shadow of your thought
You think all this is an allegory.
You don't hear me...
I know I've done a lot for Aragon.
I never meant to,
it just happened, because
we were made for one another.
I've greatly influenced his writing.
He's very grateful to me, I think.
Because in the end,
it went the way he wanted it to go.
There was a time
when he was having
trouble finding himself.
He had completely
lost his way as a writer.
And having me by his side,
without any false modesty,
probably made him feel
like his path was mapped out.
He's always thanking me for that.
He never stops thanking me.
What a miracle to be together
The light on your cheek
The wind playing around you
When I see you, I still tremble
Like on his first date
A young man who looks like me
Blame me if I cannot adjust
Can one adjust to flames?
They've killed before
The soul's eyes gouged
Adjusting to dark clouds
For the first time
Your mouth, your voice
From wing to mountain top
The tree trembles
Always the first time
When your dress touches me
Take this heavy fruit
Discard the rotten half
Bite the happy half
Thirty lost years
Sink your teeth in
I give my life to you
My life truly began
The day I met you
Your arms barred the path
Of my insanity
Showed me a land
Where bounty is sown
In the confusion
You cooled my fevers
And I ignited
Like gin at Christmas
I was born of your lip
My life begins with you
All these poems are for you.
Do they make you feel loved?
Oh, no! They aren't
what makes me feel loved.
Not the poetry.
It's the rest. Life.
Writing a life story,
with its stops,
switches, signals, bridges,
tunnels, catastrophes...
Here ends only this world,
and this film.
Here we are separated,
but here begins Elsa's second life
for which she is Elsa Triolet.
The Elsa Triolet of today,
who has written some 17 books.
Not the woman who I imagine,
but the woman who imagines,
who has given life to dreams
and characters among whom
I have lived for a quarter century,
watching them be born,
being one of them.
A long story
that I'll tell you some other time.
For now, take this fairytale
with its artificial resolutions.
They married
and lived happily together.
As in every fairy tale.
When I knew in your arms
I was a human being
When I stopped pretending
And became myself at your touch
Take these books from my soul
Open them everywhere
Break them to better understand
Their perfume and secret
Brutally rip open the pages
Crumple and tear them
You will retain but one thing
A single murmur, a single chorus
A long thank you babbling
This happiness like a meadow
Child-God, my idolatry
The endless Ave of the litanies
My blossoming, my growing beauty
O my reason, O my folly
My month of May, my melody
My paradise, my blazing fire
My universe, Elsa, my life
My universe, Elsa, my life.
Subtitles by John Miller
Subtitling Titra Film Paris