Demain dès l'aube, Victor Hugo and Pierre Bensusan

[Jean Pierre]

Republished

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nK7IRXcuGlc

I had published the video and a version with a new mix in 2°20,...but the links have disappeared, probably due to the crash of my first channel on Youtube.
As I love both this poem by Victor Hugo and Pierre Bensusan's arrangement of it, in DADGAD tuning, I'm republishing it here
with a short explanatory document on the poem

Let me tell you (or remind you) the tragic story of the death of Leopoldine Hugo, Victor Hugo's eldest daughter.
Victor Hugo's poem "demain dès l'aube" (from his collection "Les Contemplations") was beautifully set to music by Pierre Bensusan.

Born on August 28, 1824 at 90 rue de Vaugirard, Paris, Léopoldine Hugo was the second child of Victor Hugo and Adèle Foucher. The eldest, Léopold, lived only a few months. Her father nicknamed her Didine or Didi.

Léopoldine met Charles Vacquerie  son of a shipowner from Le Havre, during a courtesy visit the Hugos made to the Vacqueries at their home in Villequier in 1838.

Léopoldine, who was 14, and Charles, who was 21, fell in love with each other, but Victor Hugo, who was very attached to his daughter, found her too young to consider marriage the following year. In addition, several bereavements in the Vacquerie family delayed this desire.

After waiting five years, Léopoldine married Charles Vacquerie on February 15, 1843 in the church of Saint-Paul in Paris, in the strictest privacy. On this occasion, Victor Hugo composed and recited the poem 15 février 1843, included in the Pauca meæ chapter of Contemplations.
On the following September 2, the couple arrived in Villequier. On Monday morning, September 4, at around ten o'clock, Charles Vacquerie embarked on the Seine in the company of his uncle, Pierre Vacquerie , a former sailor, and Vacquerie's eleven-year-old son, Arthur (1832-1843). They intended to visit Me Bazire, the notary in Caudebec, half a league from Villequier, where they had done business. They boarded a racing canoe that their uncle had just had built.

As they were about to leave, Charles asked his young wife if she would like to accompany them. She refused, as she was not yet dressed. The three travelers set off, promising to be back for lunch.

Moments later, Charles returns to pick up two heavy stones from the bottom of the house, because the canoe doesn't have enough ballast. As he puts them in the boat, his young wife cries out, "Since you're back, I'll go with you; just wait five minutes."

They wait for her, and she climbs into the dinghy. Madame Vacquerie, the mother, recommends returning for lunch, watches the dinghy go and thinks: "It's too calm, they won't be able to sail, we'll have lunch too late. Indeed, not a leaf trembles on the trees. From time to time, a light breeze puffs up the sail, and the boat moves forward very slowly

. They arrive in Caudebec, where they meet Me Bazire to discuss the estate of Charles's recently deceased father.

In Caudebec, the notary wants to persuade them not to return by river, as it's not windy and the journey would be too slow. So he offers them his carriage to take them back to Villequier. The travelers refuse and return to their canoe.

Uncle Vacquerie was at the helm, when all of a sudden, between two hills, a gust of wind2 blew in, unexpectedly knocking down the sail and causing the canoe to capsize. Peasants on the opposite shore saw Charles reappear on the water, shouting, then dive and disappear, again and again. The peasants think it's a game. In reality, Charles is trying to pull his wife from under the water, desperately clinging to the overturned canoe. Charles is an excellent swimmer, but Léopoldine, who can't swim, clings to the canoe with the energy of despair. Charles' desperate efforts were to no avail. He drowns alongside Léopoldine.

Meanwhile, Madame Vacquerie is waiting in the garden. She has taken a spyglass and is looking in the direction of Caudebec. Her eyes blurred, she called for a pilot and said, "Look quickly, I can't see clearly, it seems the boat is on its side." "The pilot looks and lies, "No, ma'am, that's not their boat," but, having seen the dinghy capsize, he runs in haste with his comrades. But he's too late. When four corpses are brought to Madame Vacquerie, on the same staircase from which they had left three hours earlier, she doesn't want to believe they're dead, but all care is useless. Léopoldine was only nineteen, her husband twenty-six, Uncle Pierre sixty-two and cousin Arthur barely eleven.

Léopoldine Hugo is buried in the Villequier (Seine-Maritime) cemetery, in the same vault as Charles Vacquerie.

The premature and tragic death of his daughter and son-in-law had a profound influence on Victor Hugo's work and personality6. He became a devotee of spiritualism and turntables. He ceased all literary publication for almost ten years, but not all production; Quand nous habitions tous ensemble was composed in 1844. It wasn't until Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte's coup d'état that Victor Hugo took up his pen again, publishing Napoléon le Petit (1852) and Les Châtiments (1853).

The writer, on his way back from a trip to Spain with his mistress Juliette Drouet, would not learn of his daughter's death until four days later, on September 9, 1843, when he read a copy of the newspaper Le Siècle7.on September 9, 1843. He was in Rochefort at the time, sitting with Juliette at the "Café de l'Europe" (now the "Café de la Paix") on Place Colbert. Arriving in Paris two days later, he was unable to visit his daughter's grave until September 1846, and dedicated many poems to her memory, including Demain, dès l'aube... and À Villequier in Pauca meae, the fourth book of Les Contemplations,

[Ted]

You don't have to speak French to know that this song tells a tragic story.

Very well played and expressed.

[the physics teacher]

I just listened to it now and it sounds real nice. The vocals are excellent did you use a voice doubler?

Gr Corné

[Jean Pierre]

Yes, Ted, it's a tragic story that marked Victor Hugo for the rest of his life.

In fact, this capsize took place on the Seine, a rather calm river, but on high tide days, a wave runs up the river against the current, more or less high depending on the tidal coefficient.

here's a video showing surfers on the Seine!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QM17H3JduHA

Yes, Corné, it seems to me that I doubled the voice by duplicating the voice track and shifting it by a few milliseconds, then adjusting the D/G balance.
...but I'm not sure...in fact I had done this chan, I wanted to do it again allson in 2020, the video having disappeared from my YT channel following a piracy (pornographic!) but I no longer found the Reaper sound files so I simply took the Render in MP3 and I passed it through a plug ins software (Ozone Elements 11) which gives quite spectacular results in mastering.

[ODH]

Beautiful song beautifully played. Extraordinary

[thetworegs]

You've created a beautiful ambiance with the guitar to express the tragic poem Bravo thank you for the translation on the video

[Ted]

on high tide days, a wave runs up the river against the current, more or less high depending on the tidal coefficient.

The last few days, Songcrafters has been like a science class. ODH is teaching us about Sharks, Avian Dinosaurs, and Tarantulas, and now I'm learning about tidal bores.

[Pete C]

Beautiful. Your recent posts have been excellent !

Pete

[StephenM]

I missed this earlier...

what a lovely and mesmerizing track

[Jean Pierre]

Yes, Stephen, it's one of my favourite songs in Pierre Bensusan's fabulous DADGAD tuning...and it's a must listen!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvbnS7zlhq8