Re: After me the deluge

mb a écrit :
John Dean wrote:
After me the deluge follows
After me comes the deluge

Though Mme de Pompadour is reputed to have said, in 1757, "Après nous le
déluge" which would be "After us the deluge" or "The deluge follows / will
follow us"

It isn't clear whether she meant the Biblical flood, any old flood or even
just a heavy dose of rain. But she was speaking metaphorically anyway and
suggesting that disaster would come after she and the King had passed on.
She wasn't wrong.

Is that how this is interpreted in England?

In French, it just means "I don't care what happens when I'm no more
there" or better "don't care what the consequences are".
Never seen any other meaning to it.

That's what it might mean for me too, when you, I, or other ordinary mortals say it.

Or any different interpretation of
the original coiner's meaning.

Madame de Pompadour's original meaning might well have been that as well, but when that sentence is specifically attributed to her, I'd say that it's fairly commonly seen as a sort of prophecy --whether conscious or unconscious-- of the French Revolution.

Fabre d'Églantine's /Il pleut, il pleut bergère/, with its mentions of thunder, lightning, and "water coming down with a great noise", can also be --and has been-- interpreted in that portentous light, the "bergère" here being Marie-Antoinette.

--
Isabelle Cecchini
.

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