Fascicules de textes de version

Fascicule de textes de version – Agrégation de Lettres Modernes – 2023-2024

Texte 1 :

Sebastian entered – dove-grey flannel, white crêpe de Chine, a Charvet tie, my tie as it happened, a pattern of postage stamps – “Charles – what in the world’s happening at your college? Is there a circus? I’ve seen everything except elephants. I must say the whole of Oxford has become most peculiar suddenly. Last night, it was pullulating with women. You’re to come away at once, out of danger. I’ve got a motor-car and a basket of strawberries and a bottle of Château Peyraguey – which isn’t a wine you’ve ever tasted, so don’t pretend. It’s heaven with strawberries.”

“Where are we going?”

“To see a friend.”

“Who?”

“Name of Hawkins. Bring some money in case we see anything we want to buy. The motor-car is the property of a man called Hardcastle. Return the bits to him if I kill myself; I’m not very good at driving.”

Beyond the gate, beyond the winter garden that was once the lodge, stood an open, two-seater Morris-Cowley. Sebastian’s teddy bear sat at the wheel. We put him between us – “Take care he’s not sick” – and drove off.

The bells of St Mary’s were chiming nine; we escaped collision with a clergyman, black-straw-hatted, white-bearded, pedalling quietly down the wrong side of the High Street, crossed Carfax, passed the station, and were soon in open country on the Botley Road; open country was easily reached in those days.

“Isn’t it early?” said Sebastian. The women are still doing whatever women do to themselves before they come downstairs. Sloth has undone them. We’re away. God bless Hardcastle.”

“Whoever he may be.”

“He thought he was coming with us. Sloth undid him too. Well, I did tell him ten. He’s a very gloomy man in my college. He leads a double life. At least I assume he does. He couldn’t go on being Hardcastle, day and night, always, could he? – or he’d die of it. He says he knows my father, which is impossible.”

“Why?”

“No one knows papa. He’s a social leper. Hadn’t you heard?”

“It’s a pity neither of us can sing,” I said.

At Swindon, we turned off the main road and, as the sun mounted high, we were among dry-stone walls and ashlar houses. It was about eleven when Sebastian, without warning, turned the car into a cart track and stopped. It was hot enough now to make us seek the shade. On a sheep-cropped knoll under a clump of elms we ate the strawberries and drank the wine – as Sebastian promised, they were delicious together – and we lit fat, Turkish cigarettes and lay on our backs, Sebastian’s eyes on the leaves above him, mine on his profile, while the blue-grey smoke rose, untroubled by any wind, to the blue-green shadows of foliage, and the sweet scent of the tobacco merged with the sweet summer scents around us and the fumes of the sweet, golden wine seemed to lift us a finger’s breath above the turf and hold us suspended.

“Just the place to bury a crock of gold,” said Sebastian. “I should like to bury something precious in every place where I’ve been happy and then, when I was old and ugly and miserable, I could come back and dig it up and remember.”

Waugh, Evelyn. Brideshead Revisited.

Texte 2 :

Since his ten years in the Amazon and even more since his delirious days afloat in a lifeboat in the Atlantic, William had come to see clean, soft English beds as the heart of some earthly Bower of Bliss^[a]. […]

Depuis qu’il avait passé / ses dix ans passés en Amazonie, et plus encore depuis ses jours de délire à flots, à bord d’un canoé de sauvetage sur l’Atlantique / ses journées passées à dériver sur l’Atlantique alors qu’il était en proie au délire /, William avait fini par y voir clair / il en était venu à considérer que les lits anglais propres et confortables comme la quintessence du boudoir de la béatitude (on garde l’allitération) le cœur de quelque berceau terrestre (en opposition au céleste et au marin ici) du bonheur.

His bedroom had a small carved bay window, with a stained-glass roundel depicting two white lilies. There were modern comforts within its Gothic walls^[b] – a mahogany bed, intricately carved with ivy leaves and holly berries, spread with goosefeather mattress, soft woollen blankets, and a snowy bedspread embroidered with Tudor roses. He did not, however, climb immediately between the sheets, but carried his candle to his desk and got out his journal.

Sa chambre possédait / une fenêtre en saillie / un petit oriel / dont l’encadrement était orné de sculpture avec une rosace en vitrail décorée de deux lys blancs / cette pièce de style gothique n’était pas dépourvu des conforts modernes, il y avait sculpté doté d’un médaillon en vitrail doté de deux lys blancs / un lit en acajou sur la paroi / les montants duquel des myriades des feuilles de lierre et de baies de houx sur lequel était disposé un / surmonté d’un matelas de plume d’oies de douces couvertures de laines brodés de roses des Tudor / de roses Tudor

Cependant il ne se faufila /faufilait pas directement sous les draps il porta une chandelle à son bureau pour en sortir son journal intime.

He had always kept a journal. When he was a young man, in a village outside Rotherham in Yorkshire, he had written a daily examination of his conscience. His father was a successful butcher and a devout Methodist^[c], who had sent his sons to a good local school, where they had learned Greek and Latin and some elementary Mathematics, and had required them to go to chapel. Butchers, William had observed, categorising even then, tend to be well-fleshed men, outward-looking and with strong opinions.

Il avait toujours tenu un journal. Quand il était jeune homme, dans un village / en dehors de / à l’extérieur de Rotherdam dans le Yorkshire, il avait mis par écrit l’examen quotidien de sa conscience / son examen de conscience quotidien /  son père était un boucher prospère et un fervent méthodiste / dévot /, il avait envoyé ses fils dans une bonne école locale / du coin ? / ils avaient appris le grec et le latin ainsi que quelques notions élémentaire de mathématique, et leur avait imposé d’aller à l’Église / il les avait obligé à assister régulièrement aux offices / aillent régulièrement à l’Église /.

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