how beautiful you are

[japanesebaby]

as there's a thread for robert's other literal adaptation about 'adonaid and treasure', so why not for the probably most famous one of them.

robert's story of how he originally planned to write a similar sort of original story himself, only to realize that it had been done already. and done in such a marvelous fashion that instead he decided to adapt the prose poem by charles baudelaire:


The Eyes of the Poor

    Oh!  You want to know why I hate you today.  It will undoubtedly be less easy for you to understand than it will be for me to explain, for you are, I believe, the most beautiful example of feminine impermeability one could ever encounter.
    We had spent together a long day that had seemed short to me.  We had indeed promised that we would share all of our thoughts with one another, and that our two souls would henceforth be one -- a dream that isn't the least bit original, after all, if not that, dreamed of by all men, it has been realized by none.
    In the evening, a bit tired, we wanted to sit down in front of a new café that formed the corner of a new boulevard, still strewn with debris and already gloriously displaying its unfinished splendors.  The café was sparkling.  The gaslight itself sent forth all the ardor of a debut and lit with all its force walls blinding in their whiteness, dazzling sheets of mirrors, the gold of the rods and cornices, chubby-cheeked page-boys being dragged by dogs on leashes, laughing ladies with falcons perched on their wrist, nymphs and goddesses carrying on their heads fruits, pies, and poultry, Hebes and Ganymedes presenting in out-stretched arms little amphoras filled with Bavarian cream or bi-colored obelisks of ice cream -- all of history and all of mythology at the service of gluttony.
    Right in front of us, on the sidewalk, a worthy man in his forties was standing, with a tired face, a greying beard, and holding with one hand a little boy and carrying on the other arm a little being too weak to walk.  He was playing the role of nanny and had taken his children out for a walk in the night air.  All in rags.  The three faces were extraordinarily serious, and the six eyes contemplated fixedly the new café with an equal admiration, but shaded differently according to their age.
    The father's eyes said: "How beautiful it is!  How beautiful it is!  You'd think all the gold in this poor world was on its walls." -- The eyes of the little boy: "How beautiful it is!  How beautiful it is!  But it's a house only people who aren't like us can enter." -- As for the eyes of the smaller child, they were too fascinated to express anything other than a stupid and profound joy.
    Song-writers say that pleasure makes the soul good and softens the heart.  The song was right this evening, as regards me.  Not only was I moved by this family of eyes, but I also felt a little ashamed of our glasses and our carafes, which were larger than our thirst.  I turned my gaze toward your's, dear love, to read my thoughts there; I plunged into your so beautiful and so bizarrely gentle eyes, into your green eyes, inhabited by Caprice and inspired by the Moon, and then you said to me: "I can't stand those people over there, with their eyes wide open like carriage gates!  Can't you tell the head-waiter to send them away?"
    So difficult is it to understand one another, my dear angel, and so incommunicable is thought, even between people in love!
from a collection of prose boys 'spleen', written in 1869.


from http://www.piranesia.net/baudelaire/spleen/26yeux.html




you want to know why i hate you?
well i'll try and explain...

you remember that day in paris
when we wandered through the rain
and promised to each other
that we'd always think the same
and dreamed that dream
to be two souls as one

and stopped just as the sun set
and waited for the night
outside a glittering building
of glittering glass and burning light...

and in the road before us
stood a weary greyish man
who held a child upon his back
a small boy by the hand
the three of them were dressed in rags
and thinner than air
and all six eyes stared fixedly on you

the father's eyes said "beautiful!
how beautiful you are!"
the boy's eyes said
"how beautiful!
she shimmers like a star!"
the child's eyes uttered nothing
but a mute and utter joy
and filled my heart with shame for us
at the way we are

i turned to look at you
to read my thoughts upon your face
and gazed so deep into your eyes
so beautiful and strange
until you spoke
and showed me understanding is a dream
"i hate these people staring
make them go away from me!"

the father's eyes said "beautiful!
how beautiful you are!"
the boy's eyes said
"how beautiful! she glitters like a star!"
the child's eyes uttered nothing
but quiet and utter joy
and stilled my heart with sadness
for the way we are...

and this is why i hate you
and how i understand
that no-one ever knows or loves another
or loves another

[japanesebaby]

i've always found this story a very powerful and true one. something recently said in another thread made me think this further.
about the line:

"filled my heart with shame for us at the way we are"

It just doesn't seem psychologically believable, that anyone could get that sort of feeling only from the situation described. Unless the narrator had been more or else uncousciouly already hating the girl and was only really waiting for the faintest "reason" to let his hate come forward...

http://curefans.com/index.php/topic,5627.msg56827.html#msg56827

well, the line you quoted is uttered by the protagonist before the girl says anything about hating the poor. the man has no idea of the girl's mind at this point - he's describing his own feelings, when seeing the ragged poor people. and at least i find it perfectly believable that a person can feel shame watching the poor beggar family, being suddenly ashamed of his own good fortune in life, his own lion's share (compared to the poor). i've experienced this feeling myself sometimes. you can feel undefined guilt for being born in western europe instead of having been born in the streets of calcutta. sometimes some images/experiences can remind you of this and make the feeling sting...

then, it's only right after this when the girl utters his words full of hate towards the poor. and this shocking contrast makes the man realize the sheer impossibility of any true and real connection between two people, how we perhaps only always project ourselves on the other people, wanting to believe that what we see is "real", that other people are like we believe they are. 
so in all i'm not sure i understood what you meant. if anything, i myself especially find baudelaire's story psychologically believable (and therefore robert's lyrics too, as he does follow the plot of the original). for me, nothing in it is untrue.

yes, perhaps it portraits us the way we'd rather not want to see ourselves. we'd perhaps hope to be something better, something more noble. but i suppose that's because "the nature of the human species is to reject what is true but unpleasant and instead to embrace what is false but pleasant".


@revolt: i find it interesting that the exact same lines that you don't find believable are those that i think really make the lyrics so strikingly true. in its own way it actually makes baudelaire's story even more believable and true to me:
the fact that we here see this setting so differently, it only tells the same story again, in its own way. just like the protagonist in the story realizes that understanding is an illusion, i can see the same in action here. you were "shocked" that i rated 'how beautiful...' so high. i was surprised that you found the story psychologically unbelievable. so there it goes again, the same truth: the realization that "noone ever knows another". that we really cannot ever reach another person, we cannot ever really go out ourselves - and it can fill us with sadness, hopelessness, shame, anger.

[revolt]

i've always found this story a very powerful and true one. something recently said in another thread made me think this further.
about the line:

"filled my heart with shame for us at the way we are"

It just doesn't seem psychologically believable, that anyone could get that sort of feeling only from the situation described. Unless the narrator had been more or else uncousciouly already hating the girl and was only really waiting for the faintest "reason" to let his hate come forward...

http://curefans.com/index.php/topic,5627.msg56827.html#msg56827

well, the line you quoted is uttered by the protagonist before the girl says anything about hating the poor. the man has no idea of the girl's mind at this point - he's describing his own feelings, when seeing the ragged poor people. and at least i find it perfectly believable that a person can feel shame watching the poor beggar family, being suddenly ashamed of his own good fortune in life, his own lion's share (compared to the poor). i've experienced this feeling myself sometimes. you can feel undefined guilt for being born in western europe instead of having been born in the streets of calcutta. sometimes some images/experiences can remind you of this and make the feeling sting...

then, it's only right after this when the girl utters his words full of hate towards the poor. and this shocking contrast makes the man realize the sheer impossibility of any true and real connection between two people, how we perhaps only always project ourselves on the other people, wanting to believe that what we see is "real", that other people are like we believe they are. 
so in all i'm not sure i understood what you meant. if anything, i myself especially find baudelaire's story psychologically believable (and therefore robert's lyrics too, as he does follow the plot of the original). for me, nothing in it is untrue.

yes, perhaps it portraits us the way we'd rather not want to see ourselves. we'd perhaps hope to be something better, something more noble. but i suppose that's because "the nature of the human species is to reject what is true but unpleasant and instead to embrace what is false but pleasant".


@revolt: i find it interesting that the exact same lines that you don't find believable are those that i think really make the lyrics so strikingly true. in its own way it actually makes baudelaire's story even more believable and true to me:
the fact that we here see this setting so differently, it only tells the same story again, in its own way. just like the protagonist in the story realizes that understanding is an illusion, i can see the same in action here. you were "shocked" that i rated 'how beautiful...' so high. i was surprised that you found the story psychologically unbelievable. so there it goes again, the same truth: the realization that "noone ever knows another". that we really cannot ever reach another person, we cannot ever really go out ourselves - and it can fill us with sadness, hopelessness, shame, anger.

OK, now that I know the Baudelaire original story, I think I can make a better comment on all this.

In the Baudelaire story the poor are not staring AT THE GIRL, they are staring at the cafe. So the situation is not nearly as embarassing for the girl as it is in the Cure story. In the Baudelaire situation, then, it is more believable that the narrator gets hating feelings towards the girl. Even if the presence of beggars is always kind of embarrasing for those who have to stand it (a famous philosopher once said more or less this: one feels embarassed to give them money and one feels embarassed not to give them money - it's a no-win situation). However, I find it abusive that from this one incident one can conclude that it "so difficult to understand one another". Maybe he just chose the wrong girl? But maybe also the narrator is a little "obtuse"? I mean, the way he describes it it sounds like this poor people are just a part of his confortable environment, something to make his evening more pleasurable...

Now, the Robert Smith version is a different thing, because he changed it to have the poor staring directly AT THE GIRL. And this makes a whole difference. As I said before, almost anyone hates being stared at, specially by strangers, because it is the most unconfortable of things. It is only natural that the girl wants them to go away and for the narrator/Robert to hate her because of this is just, well, plain stupid. Like I said, only if he was already hating her in secrecy and waiting for the faintest opportunity to let this hate come forth... And then, of couse, it is even more ridiculous here to generalise and say that "no one ever knows or loves another". It may even be true that "no one ever knows or loves another", I don't have a definitive answer for that, all I know is that it certainly is not a conclusion that can honestly be taken from small incidents like this.

I hope I've made myself clearer this time.

[revolt]

about the line:

"filled my heart with shame for us at the way we are"

It just doesn't seem psychologically believable, that anyone could get that sort of feeling only from the situation described. Unless the narrator had been more or else uncousciouly already hating the girl and was only really waiting for the faintest "reason" to let his hate come forward...

http://curefans.com/index.php/topic,5627.msg56827.html#msg56827

well, the line you quoted is uttered by the protagonist before the girl says anything about hating the poor. the man has no idea of the girl's mind at this point - he's describing his own feelings, when seeing the ragged poor people. and at least i find it perfectly believable that a person can feel shame watching the poor beggar family, being suddenly ashamed of his own good fortune in life, his own lion's share (compared to the poor). i've experienced this feeling myself sometimes. you can feel undefined guilt for being born in western europe instead of having been born in the streets of calcutta. sometimes some images/experiences can remind you of this and make the feeling sting...

then, it's only right after this when the girl utters his words full of hate towards the poor. and this shocking contrast makes the man realize the sheer impossibility of any true and real connection between two people, how we perhaps only always project ourselves on the other people, wanting to believe that what we see is "real", that other people are like we believe they are. 
so in all i'm not sure i understood what you meant. if anything, i myself especially find baudelaire's story psychologically believable (and therefore robert's lyrics too, as he does follow the plot of the original). for me, nothing in it is untrue.

I think I already made my point, but just to clear any possible misunderstanding: I agree that the verse "filled my heart with shame for us at the way we are" is believable in the way you explain it... I still think, though, that it sounds corny, a line that I would maybe expect from a 40 or 50 year old pious lady and not from a young man who once exclaimed "it doesn't matter if we all die". What is not believable in the Cure song is the hate the narrator shows towards the girl just because she wants the beggars to stop staring at her... But I've already explained that.

[MeltingMan]

As I said before, almost anyone hates being stared at, specially by strangers, because it is the most unconfortable of things.

This is true,but I think the behavior of the girl in that situation was somewhat unsuitable.
There's nothing wrong to avoid somebody's eye and turn away or the other way round,a bit
more attentiveness would have saved the moment.

[Sodoura]

this has changed my POV of this song