Sarah Brightman -- How fare this spot | How fair this place
It is beautiful here
It is beautiful here ...
Look, in the distance
The river sparkles like fire,
The meadows strech out like a coloured carpet,
The clouds are growing white.
There are no people here ...
There is just silence here ...
Only God and I are here.
Flowers, and an old pine tree,
And you, my daydream!
And you, my daydream!
Music and lyrics: Sergei Rachmaninov (1873-1943)
Lyrics: G. Galina
From: La Luna (2000)
and from: La Luna: non-European version (2000)
For remarks on the title of the song, see below.
Thanks to Christian Wallenborg (christian.wallenborg@mensa.se) for informing me
that one G. Galina wrote the lyrics -- this is not mentioned in the CD-booklet
-- and number of the work: Op. 21, no. 7.
Source of the lyrics: the CD-booklet, converted via TeX into the above inlined
image, including the fact that Sarah repeats the last line. In the booklet the
words are printed with hyphens between the syllables, but there seems to be no
good reason to do that, so I have omitted the hyphens above. The lyrics as
scanned from the booklet look like this:
JPEG version of the lyrics (27.1 kb)
The CD-booklet of the European version of La Luna does not give a translation,
but with my limited knowledge of Russian and a good Russian-English dictionary I
had a go at it myself.
The CD-booklet of the non-European version of La Luna give the following
translation (thanks to Loo Jiaming for sending me this).
That translation is a little different from the one I came up, but not too
different. Personally I think the above translation is more in agreement with
the original, and I do not like the words "the soul of my dream" very much, and
so stick to my translation. What I did adapt there, though, is "streched out" in
the fourth line: I had "are lying", but sounds not so nice, even though it is
more correct.
It's so nice here ...
It's so nice here ...
Look, over there in the distance
A river is sparkling with fire,
Meadows stretch out like a multicolored carpet,
And clouds are white.
There are no people here ...
There is silence ...
There is only God and I.
There are flowers and an old pine,
And you, the soul of my dream!
About the title of the song
Actually, the title in Russian in its simplest translation is "Here good", or
"Here it is good". But that sounds too plain to me, so I use "It is beautiful
here".
The English title "How fare this spot" used on the CD was a mystery to me, that
is the use of the word "fare" in it: "fare" means the price for a trip by bus
and such, or "to get on, to succeed; to experience treatment in a stated way"
[Longman's Dictionary of Contemporary English, 1987] and there is no indication
that "fare" is an old or poetic spelling of "fair", which would have made sense
to me.
Geoffrey Kidd (sehlat@uclink4.berkeley.edu) explained the meaning of "fare" in
the English title when he wrote:
"Fare" as "to get on" is also used to refer to a journey. We say "Fare you
well" or "Farewell" as a wish for a good journey. I've seen "How fare you,
stranger?" in a novel, as a way of asking where the addressed party is going
and how the journey has been.
In this case, "How fare this spot" (Note, should be "How fares this spot"
(present tense of "fare") is asking "How are things here?" or "How are things
going here?" It's a very poetic way of asking the question. The *long*
translation "How is this place's journey through time going?" wouldn't work
nearly as well.
That explains "fare" in the English title: it is has nothing to do with
"fair". But this makes the English title as a whole a strange translation of
the original Russian.
All in all I think the title as printed on the CD-cover and in the CD-booklet
is simply a printing error and that it ought to have been How fair this spot.
This idea is strengthened by the fact that on the non-European version of La
Luna the song is called How fair this place -- also replacing "spot" by a
better word.
On the Philips released CD (no. 446 666-2) Russia Cast Adrift, with Dmitri
Hvorostovsky (baritone) and Mikhail Arkadiev (piano) this song is called 'Tis
Pleasant Here", as Christian Wallenborg pointed out to me.
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