Helen 2:65

Je ne serois marry si tu contois ma peine,

De conter tes degrez recontez tant de fois :

Tu loges au sommet du Palais de nos Rois :

Olympe n’avoit pas la cyme si hautaine.

 

Je pers à chaque marche et le pouls et l’haleine :

J’ay la sueur au front, j’ay l’estomac penthois,

Pour ouyr un nenny un refus une vois

De desdain de froideur et d’orgueil toute pleine.

 

Tu es comme Deesse assise en tres-haut lieu.

Pour monter en ton ciel je ne suis pas un Dieu.

Je feray de la court ma plainte coustumiere

 

T’envoyant jusqu’en haut mon cœur devotieux.

Ainsi les hommes font à Jupiter priere :

Les hommes sont en terre, et Jupiter aux cieux.

 

 

 

 

                                                                            I would not be upset if you took account of my pain,

                                                                            Of accounting for your honours you have recounted so often:

                                                                            You live at the very top of the palace of our kings:

                                                                            Olympus had no summit so high.

 

                                                                            At each step my pulse and breath both weaken:

                                                                            I have sweat on my brow, my stomach is upset,

                                                                            At hearing a nothing, a refusal, a voice

                                                                            Full of disdain, of coldness, of pride.

 

                                                                            You are like a goddess sat in a very high place.

                                                                            I am no god to mount up to your heaven.

                                                                            I shall make my complaint known around the court

 

                                                                            Sending you on high my devoted heart.

                                                                            Thus men make their prayers to Jupiter:

                                                                            Men are on the earth, Jupiter in the heavens.

 

 

 

A simple enough poem. The Blanchemain version prints the first two lines as

 

Je ne serois marry si tu comptois ma peine,

De compter tes degrez recomptez tant de fois

 

It might seem that “conter” (–> ‘recount’) and “compter” (–> ‘count’) are different, but as the English words I’ve used here suggest, they are in fact used indifferently – just different spellings of the same word.

 

Other variants: in line 7 Blanchemain prints “Pour ouyr un ennuy un refus une vois …”, (‘At hearing an irritant, a refusal, a voice…’); and line 11, “Je feray des degrez ma plainte coustumiere” (‘By degrees I shall make my complaint known’) – which. let’s face it, is neither more nor less meaningful than the version Marty-Laveaux prints, and in both cases the syllables are just fillers!

 

What fascinates me, is how even this (in the Renaissance) ‘needs’ its classical roots, its exemplar. In this case the exemplar pointed to is a poem by Martial, the Roman poet.

 

That poem is Epigram 5.22 – below; it’s similar only in that it talks about the distance between the two characters and how unbridgeable it is. Is it really another poem ‘on this subject’, an exemplar?

 

 

Mane domi nisi te volui meruitque videre,

sint mihi, Paule, tuae longiu Esquiliae.

Sed Tiburtinae sum proximus accola pilae,

Qua videt anticum rustica Flora Iovem:

alta Suburani vincenda est semita clivi

et numquam sicco sordida saxa gradu,

vixque datur longas mulorum rumpere mandras

quaeque trahi multo marmora fune vides.

Illud adhuc gravius quod te post mille labores,

Paule, negat lasso ianitor esse domi.

Exitus hic operis vani togulaeque madentis:

Vix tanti Paulum mane videre fuit.

Semper inhumanos habet officiosus amicos:

Rex, nisi dormieris, non potes esse meus.

 

 

                                     If I did not wish and deserve to see you at home this morning,

                                     May your Esquiline [home] be [still] further from me, Paulus.

                                     But I am living nearest to the Tiburtine column,

                                     Where rustic Flora looks on ancient Jupiter:

                                     The steep path of the Subura [hill] must be overcome

                                     And its dirty stones with a footway that’s never dry,

                                     And it’s scarcely possible to break through the long trains of mules

                                     And the marble blocks which you see dragged with ropes.

                                     What is still worse, after a thousand labours,

                                     Paulus, your doorman tells me, worn out as I am, that you are not at home!

                                     This is the end of my vain work and my soaked mini-toga:

                                     It was scarcely worth this much to see Paulus in the morning,

                                     The most dutiful man always has the most heartless friends:

                                     You cannot be my king [=patron] unless you sleep longer.

 

 

(That last line, of course, simply means ‘unless you stay home later in the morning’.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Helen 2:34

Amour, seul artizan de mes propres malheurs,

Contre qui sans repos au combat je m’essaye,

M’a fait dedans le cœur une mauvaise playe,

Laquelle en lieu de sang ne verse que des pleurs.

 

Le meschant m’a fait pis, choisissant les meilleurs

De ses traits ja trempez aux veines de mon faye :

La langue m’a navrée à fin que je begaye

En lieu de raconter à chacun mes douleurs.

 

Phebus, qui sur Parnasse aux Muses sers de guide,

Pren l’arc, revenge moy contre mon homicide :

J’ay la langue et le cœur percez t’ayant suivy.

 

Voy comme l’un et l’autre en begayant me saigne.

Phebus, dés le berceau j’ay suivy ton enseigne,

Conserve les outils qui t’ont si bien servi.

 

 

 

 

                                                                            Love, sole creator of  these misfortunes of mine,

                                                                            Against whom without rest I try myself in combat,

                                                                            Has given me a terrible wound in my heart,

                                                                            Which instead of blood pours out nothing but tears.

 

                                                                            The wicked lad has done me the worst harm, choosing the best

                                                                            Of his arrows now soaked in the veins of my liver:

                                                                            My tongue has destroyed me, so that I stammer

                                                                            Instead of telling everyone of my sadness.

 

                                                                            Phoebus, you who act as guide to the Muses on Parnassus,

                                                                            Take your bow, revenge me against my murderer:

                                                                            My tongue and heart are pierced from having followed you.

 

                                                                            See how the one and the other as they stammer bleed me dry.

                                                                            Phoebus, from the very cradle I have followed your standard,

                                                                            Preserve those tools which have served you well.

 

 

 

There is a lovely balance here between love and art, between the reality of love and the artistic representation of it. The key phrase is in line 11 – it is, in the end, Apollo and the Muses whom Ronsard follows, not love …

 

I’m not sure that ‘veins of my liver’ is really meaningful, but that’s what Ronsard says (no doubt partly driven by the metre). 

 

Blanchemain offers a couple of variants in the last 4 lines:

 

 

… J’ay la langue et le cœur percés de part en part.

 

Voy comme l’un et l’autre en begayant me saigne.

Phebus, dés le berceau j’ay suivy ton enseigne,

Le capitaine doit defendre son soudart.

 

                                                                            … My tongue and heart are pierced from side to side.

 

                                                                            See how the one and the other as they stammer bleed me dry.

                                                                            Phoebus, from the very cradle I have followed your standard,

                                                                            The captain ought to defend his soldier.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Verdonck – Nous ne tenons

Title

Nous ne tenons en nostre main

Composer

Cornelius Verdonck  (1563-1625)

Source

Chansons Françoyses … mises en musique par Sévérin Cornet, Christophe Plantin, 1581

(text on Lieder.net here)
(blog entry here)
(no recording available)

First, a claim. I believe this is the first time that this song has been attributed to Verdonck, rather than Cornet. It appears in the standard bibliographies as a song by Cornet, as it is printed in his Chansons Françoyses, where it is the last song in the book. Thibault & Perceau’s classic bibliography, the online Catalogue de la Chanson Française à la Renaissance (CESR-University of Tours), and Jeanice Brooks’ thesis on Ronsard song all give it to Cornet.

Some of the books print Cornet’s name at the top – like the one above. But most attribute it instead to “Cornelius Verdonck, disciple de l’Aucteur” (below). Here, ‘the Author’ must mean the author of the book, as Verdonck is clearly claiming the song. While the Cornet attriobution could be a careless slip (the same heading as all the other songs in the book), the ascription to verdonck must have been intentional – it can hardly have got there by accident – so that I feel confident in changing the accepted attribution and publishing this as a work by Verdonck.

It’s ambitious for a young man: Verdonck had only moved back to Antwerp to become Cornet’s pupil the year before, shortly after his voice broke, so it is obviously one of his early compositions. In 8 voices, Verdonck mostly uses them as two antiphonal choirs of 4 voices each, as you can see just by glancing at the page layout.  Sometimes he joins a 5th voice to whichever quartet is singing at the moment. But all 8 voices join together in quite riotous polyphony quite regularly, and this is a joy to listen to (or would be – no recording is available).

The song itself is an attractive piece in the polyphonic style – full of imitation, even syncopation. Not particularly madrigalian in style, and with a limited palette of accidentals, it is really quite conservative for its time – which is consistent with what we know of Verdonck, who ignored the new ‘baroque’ style of Monteverdi even though he lives well into the 1600s.

Note too how attractive the books are; Plantin in Antwerp ues a clearer font than most of the French printers, and has (most obviously) chosen a ‘portrai’ rather than ‘landscape’ page orientation.

Although most of the part-books survive in the Bibliothèque nationale de France and are available on the Gallica website, the Quinta partbook (also containing the 2nd Superius of this song) exists in only a single copy in the Biblioteca Universitaria, Salamanca. I am extremely grateful to Oscar Lilao Franca at the library for providing me very efficiently and very cordially with a copy of the relevant pages of their unique copy.

 

 

 

 

 

A letter about the Helen sonnets

A little of Ronsard’s prose for a change – and ‘natural’ prose rather than literary prose. I mentioned recently that a lot of the Helen sonnets had already appeared in print before the Helen books – sonnets 18-25 and 41 in book one, and sonnets 21-37 and 61-64 in book two (at least) had been printed in the ‘Amours diverses’. That’s about 30 from 140, just over 20% – though nearly a third of the sonnets in book two …

 

It seems that Hélène complained! (Perhaps that’s not a surprise.) Whether she was irritated simply that they were not new, or that they were not written expressly for her, or that they had been addressed to other ladies, we do not know. But she apparently asked for them to be removed and/or alternative poems added. Ronsard responds dismissively: his point, in a nutshell, is that a book of poems is literature first of all, not a historical record, and art not literal historical truth is what must shape the contents.

 

Monsieur mon antien amy, c’est, disoit Aristophane, un faix insuportable de servir un maistre qui radoute. Parodizant la dessus, c’est un grand malheur de servir une maistresse, qui n’a jugement ny raison en nostre poësie, qui ne sçait pas que les poëtes, principallement en petis et menus fatras come elegies, epigrames et sonnetz, ne gardent ny ordre ny temps, c’est affaire aux historiographes qui escrivent tout de fil en eguille. Je vous suplie, Monsieur, ne vouloir croire en cela Mademoiselle de Surgeres et n’ajouter ny diminuer rien de mes sonnetz, s’il vous plait. Si elle ne les trouve bons, qu’elle les laisse, je n’ay la teste rompue d’autre chose. On dit que le Roy vient à Blois et à Tours, et pour cela je m’enfuy à Paris et y seray en bref, car je hay la court comme la mort. Si elle veult faire quelque dessaing de marbre sur la fonteine, elle le pourra faire, mais ce sont délibérations de femmes, qui ne durent qu’un jour, qui de leurs natures sont si avares qu’elles ne voudroyent pas despendre un escu pour un beau fait. Faittes luy voir cette lettre si vous le trouvez bon. Je vous baize les mains de toute affection. De vostre Croixval, ce cinquiesme de juillet. Vostre humble et antien amy à vous servir.

 

— Sir, my old friend : it is, said Aristophanes, an unbearable thing to serve a master who fears [everything]. Pastiching the above, it is a great misfortune to serve a mistress who has neither judgement nor understanding of our poetry, who does not realise that poets, principally in small, unimportant stuff like elegies, epigrams and sonnets, have no regard for order or time: that’s a matter for writers of history, who write everything as if threaded with a needle. I beg you, Sir, not to believe Madame de Surgeres in that matter, and not to add or take away anything from my sonnets, please. If she does not find them good, then let her ignore them, it’s no skin off my nose. They say the King is coming to Blois and Tours, and for that reason I am running off to Paris and will be there very shortly, for I hate the court like death itself. If she wants to create some design in marble for the fountain, she may do so, but these are the plans of women which last but a day, who by their nature are so miserly that they don’t want to spend a penny on some good deed. Let her see this letter if you think that’s a good idea. I kiss your hands in all affection. From your Croixval, the fifth of July. Your humble old friend, at your service.

 

 

 

 

I do like seeing how Ronsard wrote when he was, simply, writing. This is not for publication or print, just a letter to a friend. The letter was found and first printed in 1923 by Nolhac, as one of “Deux lettres retrouvées de Ronsard”, ‘Two re-discovered letter of Ronsard’.

 

The connections in the thought jump around rather more – though we occasionally see that in the sonnets! – and so it’s not entirely obvious whether the second half of the letter is further insulting Hélène, or whether his barbs are aimed at someone else. (Grammatically, but not logically, the ‘she’ could even be the royal court (“la court”, which he hates in the previous sentence). It is nevertheless surprising to see quite so dismissive and insulting a tone in Ronsard’s references to Hélène, after reading all those love poems: a salutary reminder that the poems are, indeed, literature and we should not read too much biography into them.

 

The reference to hating court life also needs to be taken in context – though knowing the date of the letter would help in that regard. It is certainly late, as most of Ronsard’s Croixval letters seem to date from 1582-1584, in the few years before his death. But Gadoffre dates this one 1577, without explanation. It could be from just before publication of the Helen sonnets in 1578, but perhaps is more likely to be at a time when a new edition is being prepared. Whether in the 1570s or the 1580s, Ronsard was by then old, ill, and out of favour at court, hence perhaps the bitterness. 

 

Knowing who the letter is addressed to might also be relevant. It’s addressed Sainte-Marthe is probably Scévole de Sainte-Marthe, the poet (born 1536) not the historian & philosopher, born 1571 and of course far too young to be a correspondent of Ronsard’s). The letter seems to imply that Sainte-Marthe may have been preparing an edition, hence able to add or delete poems. Unfortunately there is no evidence, as far as I know, that he was: it was Gabriel Buon who published the collected works in 1584 and subsequently (as well as the 1578 set), and they contain no commentary on the Helen sonnets like that of Muret on Cassandre which might evidence the input of Sainte-Marthe. So, in the end, this doesn’t help to date the letter to the first or a subsequent edition.

 

(Incidentally, why ‘your Croixval’? Croixval is near Ronsard’s favourite Gastine forest, and the Loir valley. His links with the priory at Croix-Val or Croixval date to 1566 when he acquired it, after his brother inherited the family home at La Poissonnière. He spent much of the years 1578-1583 in retirement there. The building still stands: images are here. All this links Croixval to Ronsard; but not to Sainte-Marthe. I have not seen the original letter, but I would postulate that this is a mis-reading of a ‘v’ for an ‘n’, and that Ronsard wrote “nostre Croixval”, ‘my Croixval’.)

 

Finally, just to note that reference to his sonnets etc as ‘small, unimportant stuff’. Self-deprecation is something Ronsard does well; and he uses it here (of course) as part of his weaponry in the attack on Hélène. He doesn’t really think they’re unimportant; but she appears to, even while being upset that some of them are recycled…

 

 

 

 

 

 

Helen 2:66

Mon ame mille fois m’a predit mon dommage :

Mais la sotte qu’elle est, apres l’avoir predit,

Maintenant s’en repent, maintenant s’en desdit,

Et voyant ma Maistresse elle aime d’avantage.

 

Si l’ame si l’esprit qui sont de Dieu l’ouvrage,

Deviennent amoureux, à grand tort on mesdit

Du corps qui suit les Sens, non brutal comme on dit

S’il se trouve esblouy des raiz d’un beau visage.

 

Le corps ne languiroit d’un amoureux souci,

Si l’ame si l’esprit ne le vouloient ainsi.

Mais du premier assaut l’ame est toute esperdue,

 

Conseillant, comme Royne, au corps d’en faire autant.

Ainsi le Citoyen trahy du combattant

Se rend aux ennemis, quand la ville est perdue.

 

 

 

 

                                                                            My soul has a thousand times predicted my ills:

                                                                            But, fool that it is, after predicting it

                                                                            It now recants, now denies it,

                                                                            And seeing my mistress loves all the more!

 

                                                                            If the soul, if the spirit – both works of God –

                                                                            Fall in love, it’s very wrong of us to curse

                                                                            The body which follows the senses, it’s not a brute as we say

                                                                            If it finds itself dazzled by the rays shining from a fair face.

 

                                                                            The body will not grow weak with love’s worries

                                                                            If the soul, if the spirit do not also wish it.

                                                                            At the first assault the soul completely loses its senses,

 

                                                                            Advising the body, like its King, to do just the same.

                                                                            Just so the citizen, betrayed by the troops,

                                                                            Gives himself up to the enemy when the town is lost.

 

 

 

It’s typical of Ronsard to link his own assessment of his soul’s relationship with the body to that of king to citizen: not aggrandizing himself, but thinking politically.

 

A couple of minor variants in Blanchemain: in line 11, which in his version ends:

 

 

Mais du premier assaut l’ame se tent rendue

                                                                            At the first assault the soul considers itself lost

 

 

and then, although his main text is as above, he footnotes an alternate version of line 13 – interesting for the way Ronsard re-thinks the grammar completely – “combattant” no longer a noun, now a participle form of the verb:

 

 

Ainsi le Citoyen sans soldars combattant

                                                                            Just so the citizen, fighting without soldiers

 

 

 

 

 

 

Helen 2:74a – Elégie

It’s nice after all the love sonnets to get an extended nature-lyric to enjoy!

Six ans estoient coulez, et la septiesme annee Estoit presques entiere en ses pas retournee, Quand loin d’affection, de desir et d’amour, En pure liberté je passois tout le jour, Et franc de tout soucy qui les ames devore, Je dormois dés le soir jusqu’au point de l’aurore. Car seul maistre de moy j’allois plein de loisir, Où le pied me portoit, conduit de mon desir, Ayant tousjours és mains pour me servir de guide Aristote ou Platon, ou le docte Euripide, Mes bons hostes muets, qui ne faschent jamais : Ainsi que je les prens, ainsi je les remais. O douce compagnie et utile et honneste! Un autre en caquetant m’estourdiroit la teste.   Puis du livre ennuyé, je regardois les fleurs, Fueilles tiges rameaux especes et couleurs, Et l’entrecoupement de leurs formes diverses, Peintes de cent façons, jaunes rouges et perses, Ne me pouvant saouler, ainsi qu’en un tableau, D’admirer la Nature, et ce qu’elle a de beau : Et de dire en parlant aux fleurettes escloses, “Celuy est presque Dieu qui cognoist toutes choses, Esloigné du vulgaire, et loin des courtizans, De fraude et de malice impudens artizans.”   Tantost j’errois seulet par les forests sauvages Sur les bords enjonchez des peinturez rivages, Tantost par les rochers reculez et deserts, Tantost par les taillis, verte maison des cerfs.   ’aimois le cours suivy d’une longue riviere, Et voir onde sur onde allonger sa carriere, Et flot à l’autre flot en roulant s’attacher, Et pendu sur le bord me plaisoit d’y pescher, Estant plus resjouy d’une chasse muette Troubler des escaillez la demeure secrette, Tirer avecq’ la ligne en tremblant emporté Le credule poisson prins à l’haim apasté, Qu’un grand Prince n’est aise ayant prins à la chasse Un cerf qu’en haletant tout un jour il pourchasse. Heureux, si vous eussiez d’un mutuel esmoy Prins l’apast amoureux aussi bien comme moy, Que tout seul j’avallay, quand par trop desireuse Mon ame en vos yeux beut la poison amoureuse.   Puis alors que Vesper vient embrunir nos yeux, Attaché dans le ciel je contemple les cieux, En qui Dieu nous escrit en notes non obscures Les sorts et les destins de toutes creatures. Car luy, en desdaignant (comme font les humains) D’avoir encre et papier et plume entre les mains, Par les astres du ciel qui sont ses characteres, Les choses nous predit et bonnes et contraires : Mais les hommes chargez de terre et du trespas Mesprisent tel escrit, et ne le lisent pas. Or le plus de mon bien pour decevoir ma peine, C’est de boire à longs traits les eaux de la fontaine Qui de vostre beau nom se brave**, et en courant Par les prez vos honneurs va tousjours murmurant, Et la Royne se dit des eaux de la contree : Tant vault le gentil soin d’une Muse sacree, Qui peult vaincre la mort, et les sorts inconstans, Sinon pour tout jamais, au moins pour un long temps. Là couché dessus l’herbe en mes discours je pense Que pour aimer beaucoup j’ay peu de recompense, Et que mettre son cœur aux Dames si avant, C’est vouloir peindre en l’onde, et arrester le vent : M’asseurant toutefois qu’alors que le vieil âge Aura comme un sorcier changé vostre visage, Et lors que vos cheveux deviendront argentez, Et que vos yeux, d’amour ne seront plus hantez, Que tousjours vous aurez, si quelque soin vous touche, En l’esprit mes escrits, mon nom en vostre bouche.   Maintenant que voicy l’an septiéme venir, Ne pensez plus Helene en vos laqs me tenir. La raison m’en delivre, et vostre rigueur dure, Puis il fault que mon age obeysse à Nature.

Six years have passed, and the seventh year Had returned almost entire to the beginning, When far from affection, desire and love, I spent the whole day in pure liberty And free of all worry which devours the soul I slept from evening to the very moment of dawn, For sole master of myself I wandered at leisure Wherever my feet took me, led by my desire, Having always at hand to act as my guide Aristotle or Plato or learned Euripides, My good mute hosts, who never get annoyed: As [often as] I take them up, just so I put them back. O sweet, useful, honest company! Any other, chattering on, would make my head whirl.   Then, bored of my book, I look at the flowers, Leaves, stems, branches, their kinds and colours, And the intersections of their varying forms Painted a hundred ways, yellow, red, violet, Unable to sate myself – just as in a picture – With admiring Nature and her beauties; And with saying, as I talk to the blooming flowers, “He is almost an all-knowing God, Far from the common horde, far from courtiers, Traders in fraud and impudent malice.”   Now I wandered alone through wild forests, On the flower-strewn borders of painted river-banks, Now by far-off deserted rocks Now by coppices, green houses of the deer.   I liked the course followed by a long river, And seeing wave upon wave lengthening its journey, And one stream attaching itself to another as it rolled on, And draped on the bank I was happy fishing there, Enjoying more the quiet hunt As I disturbed the hidden homes of shellfish, Or drew in trembling with a line the quicksilver Trusting fish, taken with a baited hook, Than might a great prince be pleased having taken in the hunt A stag which he has pursued, panting, all day. Happy you if you had with mutual excitement Swallowed the bait of love as well as I, Whicb I alone swallowed when, all too eagerly, My soul drank in your eyes the poison of love.   Now that Evening has come and darkened our eyes, Fastened in the sky, I contemplate the heavens, In which God writes for us in no osbcure way The fates and destinies of all creatures. For he, unwilling (as men do) To have ink and paper and pen in hand, Through the stars in heaven which are his writing He predicts events for us, both good and bad; But men, laden with earthly matter and with death Mistake these writings, or don’t read them. So the greatest good for me, to deceive my pain, Is to drink long draughts of the waters of the spring Which competes with your fair name , and running Through the meadows flows always murmuring your honours And calls itself the queen of streams in the country: Such is worth the gentle care of a sacred Muse Who can overcome death and inconstant fate If not forever, at least for a long time. There, laid on the grass, as I reason I think That for loving much I have little return, And that putting one’s heart before the ladies so much Is like wanting to paint the sea or stop the wind: Telling myself all the while that once old age Has like a wizard changed your appearance, And when your hair has become silvered, And your eyes are no longer haunted by love, Then still you will have, even if care touches you, My words in your soul, my name in your mouth.   Now that here has come this seventh year, Think not, Helen, to hold me in your snares. Reason has freed me from them – that and your harshness, And then too my age must obey Nature.

 

A few notes. In stanza 1 it is a little odd that Euripides, rather than Aristotle or Plato, is ‘learned’ – for beside the 2 philosophers, he is merely a playwright and poet. But isn’t that Ronsard’s point … ? But also note that Ronsard puts down his classics and enjoys Nature instead: literature has its place, but here we are invited to pretend with Ronsard that this is unadorned naturerather than a literary picture of it.

 

In stanza 3, the word “enjonchez” is a Ronsardian coinage – ‘be-flowered’ might be a more exact transaltion.

 

At ** in stanza 5 Marty-Laveaux prints “se brave” – the waters of the spring ‘challenge’ Helen’s fair name? He might mean that the spring is named after Helen – but I wonder if this could have been instead “s’abreuve”, ‘flow from’ her fair name?

 

And Ronsard ends as I began at the top of this post: farewell to sonnets, hello to nature poetry!

 

 

 

 

 

Clereau – D’un gosier machelaurier

Title

D’un gosier mache-laurier

Composer

Pierre Clereau (or Cler’eau)  (c.1520-c.1567)

Source

Premier Livre de Chansons, Le Roy & Ballard 1559

(text on Lieder.net here)
(blog entry here)
(no recording available)

We round off the set of chansons in Clereau’s 1st book with this setting of what Ronsard himself called a chanson. To me, it’s a bizarre text to set: very complex references and words – after all, how many readers/singers of Clereau’s book knew what a ‘laurel-chewing throat’ was? Or who Lycophron was, how he related to Cassandra – or yet how he related to Ronsard’s reading in the Alexandrian Pleiad? [See blog entry for more discussion!] 

Bizarre text or not, it was also set by Costeley – so was clearly well-known. And Clereau’s setting is rather neat, like the one of De peu de bien, a mix of the homophonic and the gently polyphonic, finding a nice balance between the old and the new, the French (Parisian) and the international styles.

When the songs from the 1st book were later collected into Clereau’s Odes of Ronsard, they ended up in a group in the middle of the book. Mostly the sequence was unchanged: but for some reason this song was transferred from the end of the group to the beginning. Why might that have been? I suspect it is precisely that factor: the bridge between styles. In this structure, with D’un gosier first and De peu de bien last, the repeated  songs are neatly book-ended by songs which bridge the styles, ensuring that singers know both styles are represented.

As another short setting (Ronsard’s stanza-from is also short), this is another song for which additionl verses are printed:

At least the text of these is slightly less specialised: the Trojan was being – hopefully! – sufficiently known to supply adequate context for its early singers.

 

 

 

Helen 2:77

Je chantois ces Sonnets amoureux d’une Helene,

En ce funeste mois que mon Prince mourut :

Son sceptre, tant fust grand, Charles ne secourut,

Qu’il ne payast la debte à la Nature humaine.

 

La Mort fut d’un costé, et l’Amour qui me meine,

Estoit de l’autre part, dont le traict me ferut,

Et si bien la poison par les veines courut,

Que j’oubliay mon maistre, attaint d’une autre peine.

 

Je senty dans le cœur deux diverses douleurs,

La rigueur de ma Dame, et la tristesse enclose

Du Roy, que j’adorois pour ses rares valeurs.

 

La vivante et le mort tout malheur me propose :

L’une aime les regrets, et l’autre aime les pleurs :

Car l’Amour et la Mort n’est qu’une mesme chose.

 

 

 

 

                                                                            I sang these sonnets of love for a Helen

                                                                            In the baleful month when my Prince died:

                                                                            His sceptre [power], though great, did not prevent Charles

                                                                            From paying the debt of human nature.

 

                                                                            Death stood on one side, and Love which has led me

                                                                            Was on the other, whose dart had wounded me;

                                                                            And the poison ran in my veins so well

                                                                            That I forgot my master, struck by other pain.

 

                                                                            I felt in my heart two different sorrows,

                                                                            My Lady’s harshness and the stifling sadness

                                                                            For my King, whom I adored for his rare merits.

 

                                                                            The living lady and the dead man set out for me every misfortune:

                                                                            She offers regrets, he offers tears:

                                                                            For Love and Death are but the same thing.

 

 

 

 

The second of the two closing sonnets of book 2, this one is more successful in integrating the themes of the King’s death and love for Helen, not lesat because it does just that: it integrates them, or aletrnates them throughout, rather than devoting half the poem to each in turn.

 

It again strikes the epic note, opposing Love and Death as great mythic figures, one on each side of the poet competing to cause the greater pain. This time there is no Fate, nothing abstract of that kind: just the two simple but powerful figures – opposites like black and white.

 

And the final tercet brings it all ogether so neatly, so powerfully: magnificent.

 

Would you believe, though, that Ronsard even tinkered with that? Blanchemain offers a small but very significant variant in line 13, so that his version inverts the position of King and lover: in this version,

 

 

L’un aime les regrets, et l’autre aime les pleurs

                                                                            He offers regrets, she offers tears

 

 

It works both ways, of course, the opposition is still there – and we can debate whether tears or regrets for the lost King are more appropriate, whether regrets or tears better suit the un-returned love…

 

There is one other minor change in Blanchemain’s version, back at line 5: it doesn’t really change the meaning, though I have found a different word to reflect Ronsard’s choice of a different word:

 

 

La Mort fut d’une part, et l’Amour …

                                                                            Death was on the one hand, and Love …

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Helen 2:76

Helas ! voicy le jour que mon maistre on enterre,

Muses, accompagnez son funeste convoy :

Je voy son effigie, et au dessus je voy

La Mort qui de ses yeux la lumiere luy serre.

 

Voila comme Atropos les Majestez atterre

Sans respect de jeunesse ou d’empire ou de foy.

CHARLES qui fleurissoit nagueres un grand Roy,

Est maintenant vestu d’une robbe de terre.

 

Hé ! tu me fais languir par cruauté d’amour :

Je suis ton Promethée, et tu es mon Vautour.

La vengeance du Ciel n’oublira tes malices.

 

Un mal au mien pareil puisse un jour t’avenir,

Quand tu voudras mourir, que mourir tu ne puisses.

Si justes sont les Dieux, je t’en verray punir.

 

 

 

 

                                                                            Alas ! Today is the day they are burying my master.

                                                                            Muses, accompany the procession of death;

                                                                            I see his effigy, and above it I see

                                                                            Death, who shut off from his eyes the light.

 

                                                                            That’s how Atropos brings to earth great Majesties,

                                                                            Without respect for youth or power or faithfulness.

                                                                            Charles who till recently flourished as a great king

                                                                            Is now clothed in a robe of soil.

 

                                                                            Ah, you make me weep with the cruelty of love;

                                                                            I am your Prometheus, and you my vulture.

                                                                            The vengeance of Heaven will not forget your malice.

 

                                                                            May troubles equal to mine come your way one day,

                                                                            When you will wish to die but be unable to die.

                                                                            So just are the gods; I shall see you punished.

 

 

 

 

At the end of the two books of Helen poems stand two sonnets in which Ronsard recalls his duty as ‘court poet’ and laments the death of the King. It’s clearly not an afterthought; though behind the apology for writing about love when more important things were going on there is no doubt a bit of real feeling: after all, Ronsard’s attempt at an epic poem, the Franciade, had not been the great success he wanted and, now ageing, he was perhaps a little uncomfortable still at being recognised principally as a specialist in love sonnets.

 

This one is the less successful of the two: not because it is poorly written, because clearly it isn’t; but because of the lurching transition between octet and sestet, between King and Helen, which is not ‘signalled’ in any way. From the cruelty of fate we lurch suddenly to the cruelty of love and of Helen.

 

But the writing is marvellous. The octet is full of sonorous poetry, of stark images in mythic style: Atropos (one of the Greek Fates – the one with the scissors who actually ended mortals’ lives) is there with her remorselessness, Charles IX is conveyed in a sombre procession and buried, like all mortals, in a ‘robe of earth’ – a powerful image.

 

And then we are in the world of love again, of remorseless Helen who will not respond, and Ronsard’s troubles are no longer at the epic, mythic level of seeing his King buried, but at the very personal, trivial level of not getting a response from his beloved. Of course, poetically his point (as a love poet) is that the latter is just as great a cause of despair as the former.

 

He does his best to dress it up as mythic – Prometheus chained to the rock ebing savaged daily by the vulture, a vengeance designed by Heaven, dying and not-dying daily. But somehow the epic qualities seem strained and less significant than those of the first half.

 

Incidentally, if we believe line 1 literally, then we can date the poem to the very beginning of June 1574. Charles IX died on 30 May 1574, aged only 23. I don’t know the date of the funeral service & burial at St-Denis, but it must be known, so we might go so far as to date the poem exactly to that date. In fact it’s highly unlikely that “Voicy le jour…” (More literally ‘Here’s the day of the king’s burial’) is really an assertion that the poem was written on that very day. So let’s stick with a date probably in early June 1574. At that point, Ronsard would not have fnished the Helen poems; but he is his own editor as well, and clearly took the view (rightly) that these poems belonged at the end of the book, as an apologia and farewell.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Clereau – De peu de bien

Title

De peu de bien on vit honnestement

Composer

Pierre Clereau (or Cler’eau)  (c.1520-c.1567)

Source

Premier Livre de Chansons, Le Roy & Ballard 1559

(text on Lieder.net here)
(no blog entry yet)
(no recording available)

This one jogs along at a fairly consistent pace, all minims and semibreves: but although the opening is very homophopnic, and despite the even paving, the piece gradually introduces a more imitative style of real polyphony, with overlapping entries and little running figures. A neat balance between the two forms.