Is I Dreamed a Dream based at all on text from Victor Hugo

[Leadingplayer]

Posted: 3/2/13 at 11:38pm

I guess I mean are there any passages in the book where Fantine expresses similar ideas? Any direct quotes?

[SporkGoddess]

Posted: 3/3/13 at 12:21am

Not really. The novel does chronicle her time with Cosette's father, though.

[sergio_27]

Posted: 3/3/13 at 12:43am

The story is told by a narrator, so we don't get to know Fantine's feelings directly from her as in the song.

"At the point in this melancholy drama which we have now reached, nothing is left to Fantine of that which she had formerly been."

[DEClarke]

Posted: 3/3/13 at 1:36pm

"I Dreamed a Dream" correlates to the information given in Part One: Fantine, Book III: In The Year 1817. It basically summarizes her summer with Tholomyès, Cosette's Father.

[MTVMANN]

Posted: 3/3/13 at 2:17pm

Although Fantine was with the father for more than a summer, I think it was about 2 years and that was the age that he left her.

In the novel, she had two friends that were involved with the friends of Tholomyes. The three men took the women on a picnic and ended their relationships there.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 3/3/13 at 9:45pm

Does anyone else find the reference to "tigers" odd? A mid-19th century Frenchwoman would probably know what a tiger is and would have seen paintings and perhaps a live one in an exhibition or circus.

But it doesn't strike me as the symbol she would use for all the bad things that invade her nightmares. I'd expect "demons" or "wolves" or something more traditionally European. Even "lions", since Europe once had lions and they persist as common symbols in Western European culture.

Is the lyric the same in French? Is it a French colloquialism?



Updated On: 3/3/13 at 09:45 PM

[LizzieCurry]

Posted: 3/3/13 at 9:56pm

In the Edward Behr book, Herbert Kretzmer said he was inspired by William Blake's "The Tiger," but you bring up some good points.

[givesmevoice]

Posted: 3/3/13 at 10:02pm

The original French lyrics are very different, although I'm relying on Google translate. But, the rough translation includes passages like:

But my first prince charming
Was the murderer of my childhood
I paid all my tears
The ransom of a little happiness
In a society that disarms
The victim, not the thief
J'avais rêvé d'une autre vie lyrics

[sergio_27]

Posted: 3/3/13 at 10:26pm

The 1991 Paris recording has different lyrics than those in the website.

The song says "mais les loups rôdent dans la nuit, et l'un d'eux flairait ma trace" ("but the wolves wander at night, and one of them would smell my track".)

[AEA AGMA SM]

Posted: 3/3/13 at 10:47pm

I have heard that the 1991 Paris recording did not go back to the original French lyrics from the concept album but were a new translation of the English lyrics as we know them, which would, of course, account for the difference between what is on that recording and the lyrics that givesmevoice posted from the 1980 recording.

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 3/3/13 at 11:39pm

Yeah, that recording is based on the translation that was done initially for Quebec. I haven't compared--so some of the lyrics may be the Boubil originals, but for the most part they're all new. With all the changes and additions, it wouldn't make lyrical sense to shoe-horn in the original French lyrics and new ones--they wouldn't correspond properly. (Partly because the original Boubil lyrics are often much less specific, having been done for a concept/pop album that was made with the understanding that the audience would know the basic plot already.)

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 3/3/13 at 11:41pm

"In the Edward Behr book, Herbert Kretzmer said he was inspired by William Blake's "The Tiger," but you bring up some good points."

If true, then Kretzmer shows that he has no understanding of that poem, or the point of Blake's Songs of Experience... Not that I expect too much from Kretzmer (I did feel bad for him in the recent New Yorker piece pointing out--quite rightly--that he deserves a much bigger credit than "adapted by" in small type.)