Lâchant Le Temps Perdu

One of the books we read for French A-level exams at high school was Marcel Proust's A La Récherche Du Temps Perdu. The title is usually translated as In Remembrance Of Lost Time, but that isn't quite right, is it? Réchercher means looking for something again, and implies trying to find again, get back to, the old time, the lost days — of youth, or other times remembered.

It's a very famous book.

Also very famous is François Villon's poem, Ballade Des Dames Du Temps Jadis — Ballad Of Ladies Of Time Gone By — which Wikipedia describes as "a prominent example of the ubi sunt genre". Ubi sunt is Latin and means "Where are . . . ?" (I think. I never learned Latin).

So Villon's poem, like Proust's book, is steeped in nostalgia. The times we lost.

In Villon's famous poem Ballade Des Dames Du Temps Jadis, there's a very famous line: 
      Ou sont les neiges d'antan?
You could translate it as "Where are the snows of yesteryear?"

When my father was still alive (he was a linguist, among other things), whenever we went to eat out at a restaurant, he'd look for — and ask for if he couldn't find any — toothpicks. He refused to go to the dentist and had problems with his teeth. Indeed when one fell out he stuck it back in again, adhering it to its adjacent tooth with superglue. Yes. So food got stuck in his teeth.

These days, restaurants don't much bother with providing tooth picks (called cure-dents in French). So he'd look round restlessly, murmuring sorrowfully for no one's amusement but his own, "Ou sont les cure-dents d'antan?" 

I think he stole a march on François Villon, actually. I mean, it's better poetry, isn't it?

So, all this French nostalgia came to mind because I was trying to fix up a roister for our chapel this autumn coming. The idea I had was of an open mic night (without actual microphones because we don't have any) where we sat round tables and brought snacks and soft drinks, and people took turns to sing folk songs they liked. 

I love folk songs, and I know quite a few off by heart. When I lived in community as a young woman (when I was about 20), I absolutely loved our roisters (as we called them), when we all sat round in the kitchen and sang just about every folk song we knew — Jug of Punch, Martin Said To His Man, Ellen Vannin, and all the rest. I've tried unsuccessfully to get back to it all my life, but the nearest I ever got was the privilege of singing all the songs I knew to my children while they were in bed falling asleep, to prevent them getting up and romping about before they actually dropped off.

And I've always wanted to reclaim those lost times, have back again the delight of sitting round and singing together, being part of it instead of just listening and applauding.

So I started with the members of my family I actually live with, and they said they'd be very busy at that time of year and couldn't commit to attending — they might or might not come. Of course other people would come and I could put an evening together, but my secret dream had been to join in and sing with people who know the same songs as I know because I sang them to them when they were little. My other daughters also sing — but one is a professional musician and I'm not really up to her standard, one sings with other people, and the other has a voice like an angel but has moved away.

I sulked about this for a while and felt mournful. But eventually I came to see it's no damned good attempting a récherche of temps perdu (or even Peru as my auto-correct would prefer I said). You just have to let it go. I had it, it was lovely, and it's gone. Someone else can organise the roister and maybe I'll go and maybe I won't. Time to forget it, the récherche is over. Okay then, je vais lâcher all the temps perdu. Let it go. Release it into the wild and learn a new tune.

Les neiges, les cure-dents, le temps, and the whole damned antan. It's over, and it's time to move on. Eat your heart out, Villon.

Say that last paragraph out loud to yourself. I think you'll find it's a seriously fine piece of prose poetry.

Now all I've got to do is wait for some bright spark, some sainted Clever Dick, to come along and tell me I've got my French all wrong. Oh. Do I sound a little sour to you? Just a tad acide?