Liksom en Herdinna, högtids klädd
"Liksom en Herdinna, högtids klädd" | |
---|---|
Art song | |
English | Like a Shepherdess, festively dressed |
Written | 1789 or 1790 |
Text | poem by Carl Michael Bellman |
Language | Swedish |
Melody | Unknown origin, perhaps Bellman himself |
Published | 1790 in Fredman's Epistles |
Scoring | voice and cittern |
Liksom en Herdinna, högtids klädd ("Like a Shepherdess, festively dressed"), is a song by the Swedish poet and performer Carl Michael Bellman from his 1790 collection, Fredman's Epistles, where it is No. 80. The Epistle is subtitled "Angående Ulla Winblads Lustresa til Första Torpet, utom Kattrumps Tullen" (Concerning Ulla Winblad's pleasure-trip to Första Torpet, outside Kattrump Tollgate). It is a pastorale, starting with a near-paraphrase of Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux's French guide to the construction of pastoral verse. That doesn't prevent the supposed shepherd and shepherdess from falling into bed drunk at the end of the song. It has been described as lovelier in Swedish than in Boileau's original French. The epistle's humorous depiction of the human condition has been praised by critics.
Context
Song
Music and verse form
Epistle 80 of
8 time and is marked pastorale.[13] The source melody is unknown.[14]
Lyrics
The song, written in 1789 or 1790,[15] starts with a near-paraphrase of the French poet and critic Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux's classic 1674 L'Art Poetique,[16] a guide on the construction of pastoral verse:[17]
Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux, 1674[16] | Prose translation |
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Telle qu'une bergère, au plus beau jour de fête, De superbes rubis ne charge point sa tête, Et, sans mêler à l'or l'éclat des diamants, Cueille en un champ voisin ses plus beaux ornements; |
As a shepherdess, on the finest feast day, Does not load her head with splendid rubies, And, without mixing her gold with the sparkle of diamonds, Picks in a nearby field its most beautiful ornaments; |
Carl Michael Bellman, 1790[1][13] | Prose translation | Hendrik Willem van Loon, 1939[18] | Paul Britten Austin, 1967[17] |
---|---|---|---|
Liksom en Herdinna, högtids klädd, |
She looks like a festive shepherdess, |
As festively garb'd a shepherdess |
The Epistle's tone soon departs from Boileau, as the nymph of verse 2 is a prostitute.
Reception and legacy
Bellman's biographer Paul Britten Austin describes the song "with its almost religious invocation of a shepherdess, 'clad for some solemn feast'" as "more lovely in Swedish" than in Boileau's French. He comments that in the Epistle, Bellman depicts the countryside just north of Stockholm like a John Constable painting, with "Mark how between meadows all awry/the Cot to the lake descends... Where farmer heavy on staggering wheel/Makes haste to his hearth and evening meal". However, he finds "quintessentially Swedish" the mood of high summer, with a swallow flying into the room, the cock crowing outside, and the bell of the village church ringing steadily. Everything is perfectly innocent until the last verse, when "Ulla, flat in the face of all Boileau-esque canons of what is permitted in a pastoral and forgetting all new-found respectability, falls into bed with her cavalier, both having drunk too much."[17]
Lönnroth writes that Bellman, who had begun to observe the human condition with nature's help in earlier Epistles, brought the approach to perfection with Epistles 71 and 80.[22] He notes that the description of the rural environment and Ulla Winblad's way of dressing both respond to the classical ideal of tasteful simplicity without frills.[23] The song perfectly fits Boileau's pastoral idyll, until the last two verses when the "shepherd" and his "shepherdess" throw aside their conventional masks and reveal themselves as "drunk, untidy, and not specially well-brought-up".[24]
Carina Burman comments in her biography of Bellman that Epistle 80 is one of six or seven new songs, in her view more classical in tone and better suited to print than Bellman's more strident Baroque verse of the 1770s.[25] The Epistle has been translated into English by Eva Toller.[26] It appears on the 1969 studio album Fred sjunger Bellman by the Bellman interpreter Fred Åkerström, re-released on CD in 1990,[27] and on Mikael Samuelsson's 1990 Sjunger Fredmans Epistlar.[28]
References
- ^ a b Bellman 1790.
- ^ Bellman Society. Archived from the originalon 10 August 2015. Retrieved 25 April 2015.
- ^ "Bellman in Mariefred". The Royal Palaces [of Sweden]. Archived from the original on 21 June 2022. Retrieved 19 September 2022.
- ISBN 978-0131369207.
- ^ Britten Austin 1967, pp. 60–61.
- ^ Britten Austin 1967, p. 39.
- ^ Britten Austin 1967, pp. 81–83, 108.
- ^ Britten Austin 1967, pp. 71–72 "In a tissue of dramatic antitheses—furious realism and graceful elegance, details of low-life and mythological embellishments, emotional immediacy and ironic detachment, humour and melancholy—the poet presents what might be called a fragmentary chronicle of the seedy fringe of Stockholm life in the 'sixties.".
- ^ Britten Austin 1967, p. 63.
- ^ a b Lönnroth 2005, pp. 325.
- ^ "Information om Fredman i Bellmans epistlar" [Information on Fredman in Bellman's Epistles] (in Swedish). Stockholm Gamla Stan. Retrieved 17 June 2021.
- ^ Burman 2019, p. 686.
- ^ a b Hassler & Dahl 1989, pp. 182–185.
- ^ Massengale 1979, p. 204.
- ^ "N:o 80 (Kommentar tab)". Bellman.net. Retrieved 3 February 2022.
- ^ a b Boileau-Despréaux 1837, p. 191.
- ^ a b c d Britten Austin 1967, pp. 153–155
- ^ Van Loon & Castagnetta 1939, pp. 80–81.
- ^ Burman 2019, pp. 462–463.
- ^ Burman 2019, pp. 463–464.
- ^ Burman 2019, p. 500.
- ^ Lönnroth 2005, p. 118.
- ^ Lönnroth 2005, p. 328.
- ^ Lönnroth 2005, pp. 324–330.
- ^ Burman 2019, p. 460.
- ^ Toller, Eva. "Liksom en herdinna - Epistel Nr 80". Eva Toller. Retrieved 9 March 2016.
- ^ "Fred sjunger Bellman". Svensk mediedatabas. Retrieved 23 March 2014.
- ^ Mikael Samuelson – Sjunger Fredmans Epistlar (CD). Polydor. 847 400-2.
Sources
- Bellman, Carl Michael (1790). Fredmans epistlar (in Swedish). Stockholm: By Royal Privilege.
- Boileau-Despréaux, Nicolas (1837). Œuvres complètes, avec des notes par m. Berriat-Saint-Prix [Complete Works, with Notes by Mr. Berriat-Saint-Prix] (in French). Vol. 2. Paris: Chez Philippe.
- ISBN 978-3-932759-00-0.
- ISBN 978-9100141790.
- Hassler, Göran; ISBN 91-7448-742-6. (contains the most popular Epistles and Songs, with sheet music)
- ISBN 91-7736-059-1. (with facsimiles of sheet music from first editions in 1790, 1791)
- OCLC 61881374.
- ISBN 91-554-0849-4.
- Van Loon, Hendrik Willem; Castagnetta, Grace (1939). The Last of the Troubadours. New York: Simon & Schuster.
External links
- Text of Epistle 80 on Bellman.net
- Text of Boileau's Telle qu'une bergere on Paradis des albatros