Once
in a while our table conversation might
concern
the perception of the sea in Charles Trénet’s “La Mer”
which
was recorded in the mid-forties.
I
myself had grown up by an entirely different sea
but
seemed to share
a
sea which was not mine but yours:
I
suggested that our perception
was
determined by “a certain way of filming the sea”
which
we associate with the forties –
black-and-white,
of course, but above all
with
slow, almost dawdling reflections of the sun,
single,
slowly twinkling silver flashes
in
the sea shot looking south,
in
the sea at noon.
Black
shadows in the foreground –
they
make the soundless play of the sun
seem
even more dazzling out at sea.
It
is as if these dawdling reflections had given me access
to
a world which was not mine –
for
a moment I really believe
that
communication is possible,
that
the images have an inner life to convey,
see
you on the Mediterranean beach:
the
periphery is blurred but in the middle of the picture
the
definition is so strong
that
I see the glitter in the little girl’s eyes
where
she stands in the glittering waves,
where
she is overcome by the sea today,
by
merely existing near a summer sea,
where
without a doubt she hears voices shouting
though
she cannot make out what they are saying in the surge
– while
the clouds imperceptibly have come to a halt
in
the depth of the clearest of bays.
Jesper
Svenbro
©
Translation by John Matthias & Lars-Håkan Svensson
