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Now in Vienna there are ten pretty women
There's a shoulder where Death comes to cry
There's a lobby with nine hundred windows
There's a tree where the doves go to die
There's a piece that was torn from the morning,
And it hangs in the Gallery of Frost
Take this waltz, take this waltz
Take this waltz with the clamp on its jaws
I want you, I want you, I want you
On a chair with a dead magazine
In the cave at the tip of the lilly,
In some hallway where love's never been
On a bed where the moon has been sweating,
In a cry filled with footsteps and sand
Take this waltz, take this waltz
Take its broken waist in your hand
This waltz, this waltz, this waltz, this waltz
With its very own breath of brandy and Death
Dragging its tail in the sea
There's a concert hall in Vienna
Where your mouth had a thousand reviews
There's a bar where the boys have stopped talking
They've been sentenced to death by the blues
Ah, but who is it climbs to your picture
With a garland of freshly cut tears?
Take this waltz, take this waltz
Take this waltz, it's been dying for years
There's an attic where children are playing,
Where I've got to lie down with you soon,
In a dream of Hungarian lanterns,
In the mist of some sweet afternoon
And I'll see what you've chained to your sorrow,
All your sheep and your lillies of snow
Take this waltz, take this waltz
With its "I'll never forget you, you know!"
This waltz, this waltz, this waltz, this waltz
With its very own breath of brandy and Death
Dragging its tail in the sea
And I'll dance with you in Vienna
I'll be wearing a river's disguise
The hyacinth wild on my shoulder,
My mouth on the dew of your thighs
And I'll bury my soul in a scrapbook,
With the photographs there, and the moss
And I'll yield to the flood of your beauty
My cheap violin and my cross
And you'll carry me down on your dancing
To the pools that you lift on your wrist
O my love, o my love
Take this waltz, take this waltz
It's yours now. It's all that there is
There's a shoulder where Death comes to cry
There's a lobby with nine hundred windows
There's a tree where the doves go to die
There's a piece that was torn from the morning,
And it hangs in the Gallery of Frost
Take this waltz, take this waltz
Take this waltz with the clamp on its jaws
I want you, I want you, I want you
On a chair with a dead magazine
In the cave at the tip of the lilly,
In some hallway where love's never been
On a bed where the moon has been sweating,
In a cry filled with footsteps and sand
Take this waltz, take this waltz
Take its broken waist in your hand
This waltz, this waltz, this waltz, this waltz
With its very own breath of brandy and Death
Dragging its tail in the sea
There's a concert hall in Vienna
Where your mouth had a thousand reviews
There's a bar where the boys have stopped talking
They've been sentenced to death by the blues
Ah, but who is it climbs to your picture
With a garland of freshly cut tears?
Take this waltz, take this waltz
Take this waltz, it's been dying for years
There's an attic where children are playing,
Where I've got to lie down with you soon,
In a dream of Hungarian lanterns,
In the mist of some sweet afternoon
And I'll see what you've chained to your sorrow,
All your sheep and your lillies of snow
Take this waltz, take this waltz
With its "I'll never forget you, you know!"
This waltz, this waltz, this waltz, this waltz
With its very own breath of brandy and Death
Dragging its tail in the sea
And I'll dance with you in Vienna
I'll be wearing a river's disguise
The hyacinth wild on my shoulder,
My mouth on the dew of your thighs
And I'll bury my soul in a scrapbook,
With the photographs there, and the moss
And I'll yield to the flood of your beauty
My cheap violin and my cross
And you'll carry me down on your dancing
To the pools that you lift on your wrist
O my love, o my love
Take this waltz, take this waltz
It's yours now. It's all that there is
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there's a bar where the boys have stopped talking
they've been sentenced to death by the blues
is a brilliant addition of Cohens, and relates to an anecdote about the night Lorca was introduced to fellow (doomed) gay poet Hart Crane by a mutual bilingual friend. Crane suggested they go out to this gay speakeasy he liked, and their friend walked along with them, translating as they chatted about their mutual love of Walt Whitman. When they got to the bar, their translating friend, who was straight, felt really uncomfortable so said he'd come back later to pick up Lorca. Unfortunately, Crane spoke no Spanish, and Lorca spoke no English, so they split up, and when their friend returned a few hours later, he found the crowd of sailors in the bar split fairly evenly with half surrounding Crane as he told dirty jokes, and half trying to follow Lorca as he played old flamenco songs on the piano and led (something of a) drunken sing-along.
Within a couple of years, both of them would be dead, indirectly "sentenced to death by the blues." Hart found the closet incredibly stressful and spiraled down into alcoholism and depression, eventually jumping overboard to his death following a brutal gay-bashing onboard a ship in the Caribbean, whereas Lorca's post-Dali depression led to a sense of drive and purpose in stretching the boundaries of theatre as a means of activism to better the lot of women and gays in profoundly misogynistic/homophobic Spain, which ultimately led to his assassination by the fascists (who it so happened wore blue uniforms).
As a Spanish speaking Argentine, I've always been captivated by Lorca’s poetry. But I must admit I never really tried before to decipher the deep meaning of some of them. You seem to go a long way in helping understand Pequeño Vals Vienes.
Your reading of the blue boys as being sailors, for ex., makes lots of sense, as the Spanish word for ‘blue’ does not mean sad at all, contrary to what someone else has suggested here.
Was wondering if you’d be willing to share some more of your knowledge. Also: is there any bibliography/author you can recommend about it?
In this particular case, I find Cohen’s Take this Waltz of amazing beauty. True, he took some artistic licenses, but I think he absolutely grasped the overall meaning/feeling of Lorca’s poem.
Tons of imagery in here is drawn straight from their letters one to the other, but all in all, this is a song of frustrated, closeted love that ends in a prophecy of martyrdom (re: the myth of Hyacinth, and Lorca's obsession with the archetype of queer martyrdom in St. Sebastian and his frequent predictions that he would end up so martyred, as he did when he was shot by one of Franco's "black squads" at the outset of the Spanish Civil War).
"J.S. - What has Garcia Lorca meant in your life?
L.C. - I've already talked about that from the stage. He has been a man of extraordinary influence on both my political and personal work. I admire him. At fourteen years of age, I realized that in order to define the words "purity" and "poetry," I could go to Lorca."
My interpretation is that the writer dated a singer and she died.
The ten pretty women (possibly part of her family), the shoulder where Death comes to cry, the lobby with nine hundred windows and the tree where the doves go to die are all in the chapel; the piece that was torn from the morning as it hangs in the Gallery of Frost is apparently a flower wreath.
He still wants her of course and the chair with a dead magazine could be a memory or as he is sitting in the funeral home. I believe the 'cave at the tip of the lily' is the entrance to where they put her to rest (mausoleum), and the hallways where love's never been, is its halls.
Not sure how "on a bed where the moon has been sweating" ties in, but in a cry filled with footsteps and sand, are people walking with the casket and crying.
With its very own breath of brandy and Death Dragging its tail in the sea (he's drowning in drink).
There's a concert hall in Vienna Where your mouth had a thousand reviews is the part that makes me think she was a singer. And it ties with the bar where the boys have stopped talking as they are all sad (blue).
Mostly though it is the next verse, the: “Ah, but who is it climbs to your picture with a garland of freshly cut tears?”, because this depicts him visiting her resting place and taking flowers.
Finally, the attic where children are playing, I think is heaven, where he must go to be with her soon and as another poster said, the sheep and the lilies are a reference to the Book of Solomon.
This link might interest you.
Regards!
fcom.us.es/blogs/vazquezmedel/2009/09/03/2433/
The bit of my own that I have to add is that, after having this song looping in my head for two days, the still-mysterious last verse kind of slapped me upside the head. If all of the above is where you go with the song's meaning, I'm pretty sure that in the last verse, the singer drowns himself.
He says he will dance with his (dead!) lover wearing a disguise, like at a masquerade ball--and he's going as a river. He'll "bury his soul" with "the moss", and "yield to the flood of your beauty." And to speak of laying down or giving up one's cross is sometimes used to mean giving up the world's difficulties and ugliness for the rest at the end of life. Then to top it all off, she will "carry [him] down"? I dunno, guys, I'm pretty convinced! XD
Looking at all that, it makes me think the "waltz" he's offering her throughout is the broken (probably drunken--"breath of brandy and death") remainder of his life now that she's gone.
They've been sentenced to death by the blues"
This line got stuck in my head today.
"Oh I want you, I want you, I want you
On a chair with a dead magazine
In the cave at the tip of the lily
In some hallways where love's never been"
Seems to me to be about taking a girl's virginity.
The song as a whole seems to be about love and lust, entropy and decay. The very last verse evokes images of the singer and the girl he's singing to withdrawing into each other and into nature.
1:7 Tell me, you whom I love, where you graze your flock and where you rest your sheep at midday.
2:1 I am a rose of Sharon, a lily of the valleys.
There's nothing about snow in Song of Solomon, but the reference could have been representing the purity described in the book.