We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.
/

lyrics

« Que tu meures absous ou damné, marmottait Scarbo cette nuit à mon oreille, tu auras pour linceul une toile d’araignée, et j’ensevelirai l’araignée avec toi !
— Oh ! que du moins j’aie pour linceul, lui répondais-je, les yeux rouges d’avoir tant pleuré, — une feuille du tremble dans laquelle me bercera l’haleine du lac.
— Non ! — ricanait le nain railleur, — tu serais la pâture de l’escarbot qui chasse, le soir, aux moucherons aveuglés par le soleil couchant !
— Aimes-tu donc mieux, lui répliquai-je, larmoyant toujours, — aimes-tu donc mieux que je sois sucé d’une tarentule à trompe d’éléphant ?
— Eh bien, — ajouta-t-il, — console-toi, tu auras pour linceul les bandelettes tachetées d’or d’une peau de serpent, dont je t’emmailloterai comme une momie.
» Et de la crypte ténébreuse de Saint-Bénigne, où je te coucherai debout contre la muraille, tu entendras à loisir les petits enfants pleurer dans les limbes. »

Whether you die absolved or damned,” murmured Scarbo that night into my ear, “you will have for a shroud a cloth woven by a spider, and I shall enshroud the spider with you!”
“Oh! That I should have at least for a shroud,” I replied to him, my eyes red from having wept so much, “the leaf of an aspen tree in which the breath from the lake will soothe me.”
“No!” jeered the dwarf mocking me. “You would be food for the dung beetle that goes hunting, late in the afternoon, after the tiny flies blinded by the setting sun.”
“Then you would rather,” I responded, still weeping, “then you would rather that I should be drained by a tarantula with the trunk of an elephant?”
“Well then,” he added, “console yourself, you will have for a shroud the little bandages, flecked with gold, made from the skin of a serpent, with which I shall embellish you like a mummy. And from the darkened crypt of Saint-Bénigne, where I shall put you to bed standing up against the wall, you will hear at your leisure the children weeping in limbo.”

credits

from Gaspard de la Nuit (2019) for soprano and string quartet, released June 4, 2019

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

Thomas Oboe Lee image

Thomas Oboe Lee Cambridge, Massachusetts

Thomas Oboe Lee was born in China in 1945. He lived in São Paulo, Brazil, for six years before coming to the United States in 1966. After graduating from the University of Pittsburgh, he studied composition at the New England Conservatory and Harvard University. He has been a member of the music faculty at Boston College since 1990. ... more

contact / help

Contact Thomas Oboe Lee

Streaming and
Download help

Report this track or account

If you like Thomas Oboe Lee, you may also like:

Bandcamp Daily  your guide to the world of Bandcamp

On Bandcamp Radio

Featured guests are the golden-voiced Baby Rose and psyche soulsters Brainstory.
listen now