Helen 2:71

Ceste fleur de Vertu, pour qui cent mille larmes

Je verse nuict et jour sans m’en pouvoir souler,

Peut bien sa destinée à ce Grec egaler,

A ce fils de Thetis, à l’autre fleur des armes.

 

Le Ciel malin borna ses jours de peu de termes:

Il eut courte la vie ailée à s’en-aller :

Mais son nom qui a fait tant de bouches parler,

Luy sert contre la mort de pilliers et de termes.

 

Il eut pour sa prouësse un excellent sonneur:

Tu as pour tes vertus en mes vers un honneur,

Qui malgré le tombeau suivra ta renommee.

 

Les Dames de ce temps n’envient ta beauté,

Mais ton nom tant de fois par les Muses chanté,

Qui languiroit d’oubly, si je ne t’eusse aimée.

 

 

 

 

                                                                            That flower of virtue, for which I pour night and day

                                                                            A hundred thousand tears without being able to sate myself,

                                                                            Could easily achieve an equal destiny with that Greek,

                                                                            That son of Thetis, the other flower of arms.

 

                                                                            Malign heaven limited his days to a short term;

                                                                            His winged life was quick to run away;

                                                                            But his name which made so many tongues speak

                                                                            Served him as a pillar and column against death.

 

                                                                            He had an excellent singer of his prowess;

                                                                            You have honour for your virtues in my verse,

                                                                            Which will preserve your renown despite the tomb.

 

                                                                            The Ladies of today do not envy your beauty

                                                                            But your name, sung so often by the Muses,

                                                                            Which would languish in oblivion if I had not loved you.

 

 

 

 

What sort of Valentine would Ronsard send? In all honesty, probably something like Sonnet 58 – but it’s fun to think he might have sent this instead. Yes, it says Helen is very desirable, very unapproachable, and her name will go down in history (it has). Yes it praises her virtues, even if it’s a little diffident about her beauty. But the real praise here is reserved for Ronsard himself – without whom, whatever short-term fame she might have (and that comment about her beauty suggests even that would be limited), she would not gain immortality.

 

A few notes. The opening octet is about Achilles, son of Thetis, immortalised by Homer in the Iliad. (Blanchemain, or Richelet, explains – does it need this? – that the phrase ‘winged to run away’ in line 6 means that his life was ‘ready to flee [or fly]’.)

A word that probably does need a word or two is the last one in lines 5 & 8 – “termes”. Surprisingly, perhaps, we can use the same word in English both times, as Ronsard did – but I haven’t, for clarity. The ‘term’ in line 8 is a Greek word, interchangeable with ‘herm’. The ‘herm’ was a statue – perhaps originally associated with Hermes the messenger-god – set up in the streets of Greek cities to turn aside misfortune. Hence it can be a ‘column against death’, an apotropaic to turn away death.

 

Only the upper body was carved as a statue, with the remainder being a four-sided pillar narrowing towards the foot. Many – as was often the case with classical apotropaics, had male genitals carved on the flat face of the pedestal at the appropriate height. In effect, a bust on a pedestal, except that it was all one continuous piece of work. (Richelet says, ‘Terms, or rather Herms, are statues of men or women without arms or legs, ending in a downwards point’.)

 

The herms are most famous for causing the downfall of one Athenian politician, Alcibiades, who famously got very drunk with his friends and went out knocking the genitals off a whole lot of the statues. As this damaged their effectiveness as preventers of trouble, and as this was at a critical state of the war between Athens and Sparta, Alcibiades was exiled and eventually condemned to death. [There is of course the possibility that he had nothing to do with this act of ‘sabotage’ and the accusation was politically convenient for his enemies.]

 

All that aside, and back to Ronsard’s main point – yes, it’s a proud poem, ‘Helen without me you will be forgotten’, but it is also a very accurate poem. But maybe not the ideal Valentine wish.