Sonnet 82

Je meurs, Paschal, quand je la voy si belle,

Le front si beau, et la bouche et les yeux,

Yeux le logis d’Amour victorieux,

Qui m’a blessé d’une fleche nouvelle.

 

Je n’ay ny sang, ny veine, ny moüelle,

Qui ne se change :  et me semble qu’aux cieux

Je suis ravy, assis entre les Dieux,

Quand le bon-heur me conduit aupres d’elle.

 

Ha ! que ne suis-je en ce monde un grand Roy ?

Elle seroit ma Royne aupres de moy :

Mais n’estant rien il faut que je m’absente

 

De sa beauté dont je n’ose approcher,

Que d’un regard transformer je ne sente

Mes yeux en fleuve, et mon cœur en rocher.

 

 

                                                                                             I die Paschal when I see her looking so lovely

                                                                                             Her brow so fine, her lips and eyes,

                                                                                             Her eyes the home of conquering love

                                                                                             Who has wounded me with a new arrow.

 

                                                                                             I have neither blood nor vein nor marrow

                                                                                             Which is not changed, and it seems that to heaven

                                                                                             I’ve been swept up, sat between the gods,

                                                                                             When good fortune brings me near to her.

 

                                                                                             O, how am I not a great king in this world?

                                                                                             She should be my queen beside me –

                                                                                             But being nothing I have to take myself away

 

                                                                                             From her beauty which I dare not approach,

                                                                                             Which with a glance I feel change

                                                                                             My eyes into rivers, my heart into stone.

 

 

Blanchemain acknowledges here that (as with several other poems in his edition) he is cheating! His version comes from 1564 – after the 1560 edition he uses – because it wasn’t yet written in 1560; yet he prefers to include it than to stay strictly with the contents of that ‘first edition’. Nevertheless he preserves ‘first thoughts’ which Marty-Laveaux replaces with later thoughts…

 

In this case, though, the differences are minor:  in line 3, her eyes are “le sejour d’Amour” (‘the resting place of Love’); and in line 10 “Elle seroit toujours aupres de moy” – ‘She should be always beside me’ (implicitly, rather than explicitly, as queen).

 

Another variant sometimes encountered does away with the troublesome ‘Paschal’ of line one:  “Je meurs helas…” (‘I die, alas, …’). Paschal is Pierre de Paschal, royal historian, (1522-1565). Now there’s a history.

 

Paschal appeared soon after the Pleaide (or the Brigade, as it then was) burst to fame: fresh from Italy he promised them a long Latin poem enshrining them all in a literary temple of fame. Incidentally, Paschal like Ronsard probably added the ‘de’ into his name (signifying nobility) on his own initiative and with no legal right. As Wyndham-Lewis writes, “In anticipation of favours to come, the Brigade kept up such a chorus of praise that the very highest quarters took note of Paschal, and before long the Gascon climbed nimbly on [their] shoulders into one of the most enviable literary posts in France, and became Historiographer to the King.” And of course the long Latin eulogy never did appear …

 

Ronsard took his revenge by deleting Paschal from later editions (as in the alternative opening above) and by writing a Latin ‘eulogium Petri Paschalii’ of his own, which was anything but a eulogy – more of an invective. Interestingly, Ronsard’s anger with Paschal wore off: this sonnet was written somewhere between 1564-1567, five years or so after the invective.

 

There is, incidentally, good reason to think that Ronsard’s long autobiographical ode addressed to Paschal was intended as, in effect, the raw material for Paschal’s Latin eulogy …

 

If you’re interested, I’ve written much more about Pierre de Paschal here.