June 26th, 2019 -- by Bacchus
Watching Him Get Dressed And Go
I believe we are to take this woman for a sex worker, watching her client (offstage, left) get dressed and go:
With the larger cartoon from Le Rire of which this is but a detail, there is both a caption and a title, in French; the Google Translate on the title is cryptic and on the caption, banal. Presumably a better understanding of them, and possibly of social signifiers in the artwork that I’m not equipped to see, would help me “get” the point of the cartoon. [Update: see the comments, where my erudite readers have taken a good whack at it.] But the room is simple, furnished only with a nice bed, booze, smokes, a wash basin, and a sponge in a basket. That much, even a century later, we understand.
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Shorter URL for sharing: http://www.erosblog.com/?p=23676
Shorter URL for sharing: http://www.erosblog.com/?p=23676
I used to visit a whore in the 1960s in her first floor apartment, one room, a bathroom, a small window that was covered up. Half an hour and ten dollars was all she charged. Had the best satisfying sex I ever had. I wrote of it in my book 100 Whores https://www.amazon.com/100-Whores-Memories-Mykola-Dementiuk/dp/0975858181
The Google translate version of the title that I got isn’t literally wrong: “The Young Class or Permission of Ten O’Clock”
However, I think the sense of it here is more something like “The New Private or Ten Hours Leave”, in a military usage.
The first line under the picture is fairly easy: “You’re leaving already?”, presumably her line.
The second line below the picture is something like “Yeah, now I need to go before I have to carry myself home.” Which I take to mean something like, “I have to go before I have to report myself AWOL.”
Seems to be a commentary on “this new bunch of soldiers / military police we have”. Perhaps implying they are upright, incorruptable, ethical beyond expectation? That a military or police private might turn themselves in for overstaying leave?
This idea for translation tends to rest on my translation of “permission” as “leave” or “pass” and the look of his cap – as a French military or civilian police kepi. I might be entirely off – translating topical cartoons is especially fraught; doubly so when one is in another era.
In fact, the second line means “I need to go and report that I’m back on duty” (after that 10 hours leave). Otherwise, next time, his boss or officer won’t let him go and visit that young lady. And yes, indeed, she’s the one saying “Are you already leaving”. She sure seems disappointed to see him go.
A subtle but significant point, “Tu me quittes déjà ?” means “You are leaving me already?”. Not just “leaving” but “leaving me”.
The two silhouettes decorating the wall on either side of the rather nice bamboo-framed mirror incline me to believe this is an independent young woman with a sparsely-furnished but tasteful flat as would be common in the young parisienne. The degree of support she received from her sex life would be a matter of French nuance.
It might help the viewer to understand the context if you gave the date it was published and the source where you found it online. The fact that it is from 1920 may help with the subtleties of the era. There is another cartoon in the same collection that makes it clear that “La jeune classe” is “the new recruit”. https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_J3JAAQAAMAAJ/page/n831
I think you meant “Le Rire” rather than “La Rire”?
It is so easy for attributions to get lost when images are shared online. Such a shame when that happens.
Thanks to everyone for your assistance with translations, and for pointing out my typo, which I have now fixed. I couldn’t make heads nor tails of the overliteral machine output, which is why I didn’t bother printing it.
Hug, I don’t know if you wanted your comments about attribution to come across as aggressively snarky, and we old internet hands know that text “tone” is a minefield, but man, I really rolled my eyes at the notion that you were lecturing me, of all people, about the merits of attribution. I am basically the biggest fanatic about attribution who you could ever hope to find on the adult internet. I linked the cartoon directly to my source, so I’m really not sure what more you want from me.
When I have a source, it’s either in the post, or there’s some fairly good reason why not. I don’t always spell out my attributions; sometimes I get tired after 5,935 posts, sometimes it seems editorially boring, sometimes it’s not clear to me why a detailed attribution might be more useful than a simple link to a stable and authoritative ur-text. But I do my attributive best.
That aside, I really do appreciate all the help puzzling out the cartoon. As Falbert says, translating topical cartoons from another era is “especially fraught” and that’s why I punted this one, deciding instead just to post a substantial detail of the art for its erotic merit. But I knew I could rely on y’all to do the heavy lifting in the comments, and you have not disappointed me!
Just a little addition to the erudite and accurate commente above. The young man is indeed a soldier. It might be interesting to understand why the caption mentions a « jeune class ». It’s an usage simular to the use of the word in English in a school context (« class of 2010 »). There was a military service in France in 1920 and young men were drafted by yearly « classes » (« class of 1913 »). « La jeune classe » in this context means « young draftees from the latest class of conscripts ».