EXPRESSION ET CONSTRUCTION DE SOI

Annales

• Thème « Expression et construction de soi »

   

  1^re partie - Synthèse

  Prenez connaissance de la thématique ci-dessus et du dossier composé des documents A, B et C et traitez en anglais la consigne suivante (500 mots environ) :

  Taking into account the specificities of the documents, analyse the role of music and how it impacts people’s lives.

   

  2^e partie - Traduction

  Translate the following passage from Document A into French. L’usage du dictionnaire unilingue non encyclopédique est autorisé.

  “When I sang with them, my whole history fell away. There was no past, no promised future, only the present of one sustained note. When we sang together, we three stood in a round so that we could see one another's faces — and it was almost unbearable, to sing a song and watch Louisa's face change slightly and Experience's voice respond, and then my own, struggling for just a minute to reach theirs.

  When I sang with them, I entered something greater than my sorry, bitter self.” 

   

  Document A 

  When I sang with Experience and Louisa, it was as if my very self merged with them. I was, I learned, a mezzo-soprano, and they each took pains to teach me how to make my voice stronger.

  “You draw in air here,” Louisa said, pointing.

  When I sang with them, my whole history fell away. There was no past, no promised future, only the present of one sustained note. When we sang together, we three stood in a round so that we could see one another's faces—and it was almost unbearable, to sing a song and watch Louisa's face change slightly and Experience's voice respond, and then my own, struggling for just a minute to reach theirs.

  When I sang with them, I entered something greater than my sorry, bitter self.

  I thought that anyone with a voice as powerful as that could teach me how to bend my anger to my will. I sat on that riverbank, and I thought that I had finally found my ambition. It was not to set bones right or to become my mother's double. It was to befriend the both of them, to make them love me and sing to me for the rest of my life. I knew this was a silly wish, but in my discombobulation¹ at Cunningham College, I did not stop to question it. I knew enough to keep it quiet, to not speak it outright—not to Experience or Louisa, whom I did not wish to scare away, and not to Mrs. Grady, and certainly not to Mama. I spent the rest of the semester doing the bare minimum of work so I would not fail out of class and so I could keep meeting the two girls and have them sing to me.

  Mama had told me freedom would come by following her, and I had known it was not true for a long time. Now I had someone else to follow, I was sure, and the thrill of having a new direction filled me up, blushed my cheeks, almost made me like the place. I put away my sticky journal to my imagined woman in the water and delighted in these real women, in front of me, made flesh.

  “I wish my Mama could hear you,” I said one afternoon. “I wish she could hear how fine you are.”

  “I bet you wish your mama could do it,” Experience said, and though she was smiling slightly when she said it, I felt the sting in her words and I saw the bitterness in her eyes. I turned away, ashamed. I had said something wrong again.

  Louisa took my arm in hers and walked with me a little farther down the riverbank. “You sure do talk about your mama a lot,” she said.

  “Do I?”

  “Yes.”

  I looked down at my shoes. “I'm sorry,” I said.

   

  1 discombobulation: feeling of confusion

  Kaitlyn Greenidge, Libertie, 2021

   

  Document B

  Vukani was doing homework in his bedroom when voices in the living room slowly filtered into his mind. He lifted his head to look up, as if to focus his ears. No. He could not recognise the voices. Now and again the hum of conversation was punctuated with laughter. Then he grew apprehensive, the continuing conversation suddenly filling him with dread. He tried to concentrate on his work: ‘Answer the following questions: How did the coming of whites lead to the establishment of prosperity and peace among the various Bantu tribes?...’ But the peace had gone from his mind. The questions had become a meaningless task. Instinctively, he turned round to look at his music stand at the foot of his bed. Yesterday he had practised some Mozart. Then he saw the violin leaning against the wall next to the stand. Would they come to interrupt him? He felt certain they would. He stood up, thinking of a way to escape. [...]

  Then he saw his violin again and felt the sensation of fear deep in his breast. He looked at the violin with dread: something that could bring both pain and pleasure at once. [...]

  Vukani tried to brace himself for the coming of visitors. It was like that. Every visitor was brought to his room, where he was required to be doing his school work or practising on the violin.

  Then he had to entertain these visitors with violin music. It was always an agonizing nuisance to be an unwilling entertainer. What would happen if he should refuse to play that night? He knew what his mother would say. It was the same thing all the time. [...] His mother never tired of telling him how lucky he was.

  Najbulo Ndebele, The Music of the Violin in Staffrider, Volume 3, September/October 1980

   

  Document C - Film poster of Blinded by the Light, Gurinder Chadha, 2019

  

  Afficher la correction

  ---