BALLADE DES DAMES DU TEMPS JADIS
Created on 18/02/2021Latest update on 20/05/2023
Artist: François Villon
Author: François Villon
Year: 1461
Central octosyllabic poem in his bundle Le Testament. Ballad in the same vein as Testament by Boudewijn de Groot (1965). The youngest of twelve women mentioned, Jeanne d'Arc, was executed in Rouen the year Villon was born (1431). Most famous line Mais où sont les neiges d'antan has been borrowed through the ages: by François Rabelais in Pantagruel (1532), in the French translation of Don Quichotte (1773), by Victor Hugo in Les Misérables (1862), by Guy de Maupassant (1884), by D.H. Lawrence in Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928) and in Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (1961).
Covers:
- 1953:
Georges Brassens [who turned it into a song and who used the most famous line in his own poem Les Amours d'antan]
- 1964:
Bob Dylan [in Outlined Epitaphs, the eleventh song on The Times They Are A Changin'; only the lyrics are reproduced on the backsleeve; Dylan cites Villon as source of inspiration (Where are the forces of yesteryear?)]
