on the whole, I think the translations/adaptations of the Big Ballads in Les Mis are really strong, or at least understandable, but I will say that revisiting French On My Own/Mon Histoire– it does a much better job of conveying that Eponine…. isn’t really talking about Marius, and knows it
To explain… If anyone hasn’t heard it, it’s here (with lyrics).
I think it’s great throughout, but the key difference is really the setup:
Mon histoire
C'est un rêve qui commence
Dans les pages
D'un conte de mon enfance
Les yeux fermés
Mon prince enfin m'enlace…(my story
is a dream that begins
in the pages
of a tale from my childhood
eyes closed,
my prince finally takes me in his arms…)Having these as the opening lines makes it so much clearer that it’s not really Marius she’s fantasizing about, as such. Obviously “On My Own” never says his name, but there’s no other person or idea introduced for us to associate the song’s “him” with. But by introducing the idea of the prince, that’s what the rest of the fantasy gets linked to– that becomes who we picture when she refers to the unnamed “him”– and that makes it clearer that the point is the fantasy, not the man it’s about. The idea of a prince, of someone to hold her and walk with her, a role that even she recognizes she has assigned to Marius only because he’s the person she’s got to hand.