First French Reader: A Beginner's Dual-Language Book (Dover Dual Language French) by A Beginner's Dual-Language Book

Author:A Beginner's Dual-Language Book
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dover Publications
Published: 2012-08-31T00:00:00+00:00

on the frothing foam of the torrents of the Arven, slowly thicken, and seem to grow larger as they rise, swelling with an innumerable throng of phantoms tormented and twisted by the winds. They’re warriors who are still dreaming, their helmets resting on their hands, and whose tears and blood fall drop by drop into the black waters of the crags; they’re pale beauties whose hair billows out behind them like the rays of a distant comet and melts into the damp bosom of the moon: they pass quickly, and their feet vanish, shrouded in the vaporous folds of their white gowns; they have no wings, yet they fly. As they fly they hold harps, they fly with downcast eyes and their lips slightly parted in their innocence; they utter a cry as they pass and, rising, are lost in the soft light which calls to them. They’re airships that seem to jostle against somber shores and sink into the dense waters; the mountains bend down to lament them, and the black mastiffs raise their misshapen heads and utter long howls, gazing at the disk trembling in the sky, while the sea shakes the white columns of the Orkneys that are aligned like the pipes of a gigantic organ and spread across the ocean a wrenching harmony prolonged a thousand times in the cavern where the waves are imprisoned.

The music was thus translated into somber images in my soul, which was still very young, open to every sympathetic note, and as if enamored of its fictional sorrows.

Besides, to listen in that way to those sad, powerful songs was to return to the thought of the man who had created them. The happy family itself was feeling the strong emotion it was fueling, and a profound vibration made the three voices tremble at times.

The song ended, and was followed by a long silence. The young lady, as if fatigued, had leaned against her father’s shoulder; she was tall and a little stooped, as if by weakness; she was thin and seemed to have grown too quickly, and her bosom, a little scrawny, seemed affected by this. She was kissing her father’s bald, wide, wrinkled forehead, and abandoning her hand to the young noncom, who was pressing it to his lips.

Since, out of self-esteem, I would never have admitted my inner dreams out loud, I contented myself with saying coolly:

“May heaven grant length of days and all sorts of blessings to those who have the gift to translate music literally! I cannot too much marvel at a man who finds in one symphony the fault of being too Cartesian, and, in another, that of inclining toward Spinoza’s system; who exclaims about the pantheism of a trio or the usefulness of an overture in improving the most numerous class. If I were so lucky as

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.