Deciphering Lyrics
Shatter Me With Hope~
“The girl who cried love, won’t you come and play with me?
You can be Cassandra, underneath the sword of Damocles
We’ll tear this baby apart wise like Salomon”
Cassandra- Greek myth ‘she who entangles men’, she had the gift of foresight.
Solomon- Biblical, he was the king who said to cut the baby in half. There was two women who were fighting over who was the real mother of a child, and when he said cut the baby in half so they can each have it the real mother said no, the other woman could have the child. Thus, that’s how they found out who the real mother was.
Canticles of ecstacy- medieval style music from the 12 century by Hildegard.
Sword of damocles- The famed “sword of Damocles” dates back to an ancient moral parable popularized by the Roman philosopher Cicero in his 45 B.C. book “Tusculan Disputations.” Cicero’s version of the tale centers on Dionysius II, a tyrannical king who once ruled over the Sicilian city of Syracuse during the fourth and fifth centuries B.C. Though rich and powerful, Dionysius was supremely unhappy. His iron-fisted rule had made him many enemies, and he was tormented by fears of assassination—so much so that he slept in a bedchamber surrounded by a moat and only trusted his daughters to shave his beard with a razor.
As Cicero tells it, the king’s dissatisfaction came to a head one day after a court flatterer named Damocles showered him with compliments and remarked how blissful his life must be. “Since this life delights you,” an annoyed Dionysius replied, “do you wish to taste it yourself and make a trial of my good fortune?” When Damocles agreed, Dionysius seated him on a golden couch and ordered a host of servants wait on him. He was treated to succulent cuts of meat and lavished with scented perfumes and ointments. Damocles couldn’t believe his luck, but just as he was starting to enjoy the life of a king, he noticed that Dionysius had also hung a razor-sharp sword from the ceiling. It was positioned over Damocles’ head, suspended only by a single strand of horsehair. From then on, the courtier’s fear for his life made it impossible for him to savor the opulence of the feast or enjoy the servants. After casting several nervous glances at the blade dangling above him, he asked to be excused, saying he no longer wished to be so fortunate.
For Cicero, the tale of Dionysius and Damocles represented the idea that those in power always labor under the specter of anxiety and death, and that “there can be no happiness for one who is under constant apprehensions.” The parable later became a common motif in medieval literature, and the phrase “sword of Damocles” is now commonly used as a catchall term to describe a looming danger. Likewise, the saying “hanging by a thread” has become shorthand for a fraught or precarious situation.
“She’ll be the witness to the repose of Evelyn
Push the needles into the of canticles of ecstasy
Turn to page forty three
And you’ll know how I feel”
Page 43- The clue Ville put into the song. It refers to a 1947 issue of “Life Magazine”, on the page 43 of which was a photo of Evelyn McHale in death. Evelyn leaped from the top of the Epire State building shortly after meeting with her fiancé. She fell on top of a limousine and moments after had her body immortalized by a photography student. The picture was later featured on page 43 of Life Magazine. It was later reported that Miss McHale had a scribbled note in her pocket which said that her fiancé was “better off without her and she’d "never make a good wife to anyone.”
This reveals how Ville himself is feeling when instructing us to turn to page 43 - that try as he might, he would make the one he loved unhappy. In a sense unworthy of love.