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Glossary entry

French term or phrase:

faire bouger le monde

English translation:

to move the world

Added to glossary by Charles Davis
Jan 23, 2019 17:33
5 yrs ago
2 viewers *
French term

faire bouger le monde

Non-PRO French to English Art/Literary General / Conversation / Greetings / Letters
Hello,

I have been searching for Nietzsche's quotes to see if I can find such a quote in English.

Here is the text I have:
"« Comme disait Friedrich Nietzsche « Il faut avoir une musique en soi pour faire bouger le monde » …. Le monde qui évolue et qui exige plus de respect, plus de responsabilité tant environnementale que sociétale. ..."


I'm not sure if my translation is accurate "one has to have music within to be able to move the world" (change the world?)

This is a paragraph about a company promoting "eco-awareness", selling recyclable products, Other than that, I don't really have that much context!

Any ideas are welcome!

Thank you
Proposed translations (English)
4 +1 to move the world
References
for those who have the time
Change log

Mar 31, 2019 21:03: Charles Davis Created KOG entry

Discussion

Louisa Tchaicha (asker) Jan 24, 2019:
@Charles, ah so it's falesely attributed to him, yet it's in all webpages of his "quotes", thank you for your help :)
As you said no one will really dwell on it. I know I wouldn't :p
Charles Davis Jan 23, 2019:
Final conclusion Fascinating though all this may be, to those of us who care about this sort of thing, and much as it goes against the grain, for me at least, to perpetuate phony quotations, I think you should just translate it as it stands. I very much doubt any potential reader will know or care whether Nietzsche actually wrote it.
Charles Davis Jan 23, 2019:
PPS And going back to Phil's research, "Ohne Musik ist das Leben ein Irrtum", which is genuine Nietzsche (or nearly: it's actually "Ohne Musik wäre das Leben ein Irrthum"), from Götzen-Dämmerung, is very probably in the mix too, I think.
Charles Davis Jan 23, 2019:
PS It turns out that dancing was originally involved ("to give birth to a dancing star"); hence, presumably, "faire danser le monde" in the variant version Eliza found, which is in this respect a little closer to Nietzsche's original. And chaos has turned into music possibly through recollection of the proverbial pseudo-Nietzsche quotation on seeing dancing but not hearing the music, which was apparently coined by Madame de Staël. With a bit of Archimedes thrown in. A veritable salad.
Charles Davis Jan 23, 2019:
Whether it would be prudent to replace the pseudo-quotation in your text with the genuine Nietzsche version is something you will have to judge for yourself. It changes the message somewhat.
philgoddard Jan 23, 2019:
Why are we talking about dancing?
Charles Davis Jan 23, 2019:
And those who were seen dancing... This very well known quotation, falsely attributed to Nietszche, actually goes back to Madame de Staël in De l'Allemagne (1813). The English translation is from 1814:

"sometimes even in the habitual course of life, the reality of this world disappears all at once, and we feel ourselves in the middle of its interests as we should at a ball, where we did not hear the music; the dancing that we saw there would appear insane."

It has been borrowed many times since. I owe this information to the following page, which quotes its sources:
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/06/05/dance-insane/#retur...

It also put me on the track of what must be the actual Nietzsche quotation which they're garbled here:

"One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star."

This is from Also sprach Zarathustra. In the original German it's as follows:

"Ich sage euch: man muss noch Chaos in sich haben, um einen tanzenden Stern gebären zu können. Ich sage euch: ihr habt noch Chaos in euch."
http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/7205/pg7205-images.html
Charles Davis Jan 23, 2019:
Archimedes? I may be way off track here, but "faire bouger le monde" immediately reminds me of a famous quotation: "Give me a lever and a place to stand and I will move the earth" (there are variants).
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Archimedes

Could it be possibly that Nietzsche has morphed into Archimedes in mid-sentence?
Eliza Hall Jan 23, 2019:
@ Philgoddard I agree that this quote is probably fake, because I couldn't find it despite several searches in English and French. I did find several French sites with an almost identical quote ("faire DANSER le monde" was the difference), but none of them said where in his work it allegedly came from.

But the "without music..." quote you posted is far from the only authentic Nietzsche quote about music. He talked about music a lot, apparently, so it's hard to figure out what real quote this is a distortion of.
Nesrine Echroudi Jan 23, 2019:
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music" is the only quote of Nietzsche that contains the music and the dance. That pushes me to think that the above-mentioned quote doesn't exist. I can't find it anywhere.
philgoddard Jan 23, 2019:
How's this for dedication? I actually looked at the book, and the correct version is "without music, life is a mistake". So the first half of your quote is real, and the second is made up.
philgoddard Jan 23, 2019:
I think this may be one of those made-up quotes without which no glossy corporate brochure is complete these days. I found a lot of hits for variations on "Ohne Musik ist das Leben ein Irrtum", without music life is a mistake, but no evidence that he actually said this.

I would just translate what the French says and be done with it, unless (for example) it's a big company's annual report where people might notice fake or incorrect quotes.
Tony M Jan 23, 2019:
@ Asker I strongly suspect that 'le monde' here means 'people' rather than 'the world'; and unless it's actually what Nietzsche himself said, I'd definitely avoid using 'one', which is over-used in FR compared to EN.

Proposed translations

+1
9 hrs
Selected

to move the world

As has been established in the discussion, this is not a quotation from Nietzsche, but it does seem (to me) to be based on one: "One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star", from Thus Spoke Zarathustra. I don't think it's a good idea to replace the false quotation with the original one, since the latter doesn't really convey the desired message. It's better to translate the false quotation more or less literally into English. For this last part (which, as I say, may be consciously or unconsciously based on what Archimedes said about moving the world with a lever), I would say "move the world" (or even literally "make the world move"), but if you prefer "change the world" I think that would be a permissible liberty. (I am quite sure that "monde" here means "world", not "people".)

It occurs to me that a way round the problem — the fact that Nietzsche did not say what this claims he said — would be to translate "Comme disait Friedrich Nietzsche" as "To paraphrase Friedrich Nietzsche". "Paraphrase" is perhaps stretching it a bit ("misquote" would be more accurate), but at least it would get you out of colluding in falsehood.

I also tend to agree with Tony's advice to avoid "one [...] oneself". I would be inclined to say:

'To paraphrase Friedrich Nietzsche, "you must have music in you to move the world"'.
Note from asker:
Thank you so much Charles !
Peer comment(s):
neutral writeaway : if a literal translation does the trick and if Nietzsche is left out of the equation./mention him to stick with the French text, but don't attribute this phrase to him. Asker can pick from any of Nietzsche's numerous references to music.
6 hrs
Hmm. I think the former is the case, but as for the latter, not mentioning Nietzsche at all is not really an option, in my view. // I think "to paraphrase" is a sufficient get-out: it is a (distant) paraphrase. And "world" is required by what follows.
agree philgoddard : I don't agree with your reference to chaos and dancing stars - it's clearly about music. And I don't think your "to paraphrase" idea works unless it's a famous quotation that everyone knows.
12 hrs
Thanks! I disagree with you on all those points :-) I'm quite sure it's ultimately derived from the chaos quote; it's not about music at all, it's about achieving something superhuman; and "to paraphrase" works regardless of how well known it is.
Something went wrong...
4 KudoZ points awarded for this answer. Comment: "Thank you so much Charles, I'm sorry that this has taken me so much time ! "

Reference comments

6 mins
Reference:

for those who have the time

Peer comments on this reference comment:
agree philgoddard
33 mins
agree with your comment. Any English would be a translation of a translation. If this really is a Nietzsche quote, the German original is needed
agree Verginia Ophof
20 hrs
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