Love is a Rebellious Bird

L’amour est un oiseau rebelle
que nul ne peut apprivois­er,
et c’est bien en vain qu’on l’ap­pelle,
s’il lui con­vient de refuser

Suddenly, he came upon the real­iza­tion that her beau­ty unin­ten­tion­al­ly entraps men, who are then led to their down­fall by their own mis­guid­ed ideas of love, and that he was sim­ply anoth­er one of many. Not that it mat­tered any­way; to force such things is futile.

So enough about love, he said, for love is often fick­le and unre­quit­ed.

Tu ne l’at­tends plus, il est là!

2 comments

  1. Just the word “apprivois­er” speaks such vol­umes. Looking at the eng­lish trans­la­tion leaves some­thing to be desired, though if you don’t speak french flu­ent­ly, you’d nev­er know. It is one of my favorite words. If you ever get a chance to read through Le Petit Prince in the chap­ter where the lit­tle prince speaks to the fox (chap­ter XXI, i think), you’ll see where from an ear­ly age the word found its way into my heart.

    I remem­ber study­ing that aria in school and think­ing at the ten­der age of 13 that i under­stood it. Because, after­all i had a boyfriend… so then i knew of love(pfft). Now 15 years lat­er i’m cer­tain i did­n’t then, and i’m not even sure i do now. But i under­stand myself a lot more and so i rec­og­nize my kind of love in the words.

    Thanks for bring­ing it back to my attention(o=

  2. I read Le Petit Prince in French class for grade 10, though I don’t remem­ber much of it. Only bits and pieces, like the draw­ing of Le Petit Prince him­self and a snake swal­low­ing an ele­phant.

    The first time I learned the words to the aria was when I saw Magnolia. None of it clicked in though. Not until recent­ly, at least, eight years after I watched it at the Rideau Centre dur­ing my first year of uni­ver­si­ty.

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