De toy, Paschal, il me plaist que j’escriveQui de bien loin le peuple abandonnant,Vas des Romains les tresors moissonnant,Le long des bors où la Garonne arrive.Haut d’une langue éternellement vive,Son cher Paschal Tholose aille sonnant,Paschal, Paschal, Garonne resonnant,Rien que Paschal ne responde sa rive.Si ton Durban, l’honneur de nostre temps,Lit quelquefois ces vers par passe-temps,Di-luy, Paschal (ainsi l’aspre secousseQui m’a fait cheoir, ne te puisse émouvoir)Ce pauvre Amant estoit digne d’avoirUne Maistresse, ou moins belle, ou plus douce.Of you, Paschal, it pleases me to write You who far off, abandoning the common throng, Go harvesting the treasures of the Romans Along the banks where the Garonne runs. Loudly in a language eternally alive Toulouse goes on praising its dear Paschal; The Garonne replying ‘Paschal, Paschal’, Its banks echoing nothing but Paschal. If your Durban, the pride of our times, Sometimes reads these verses at leisure, Tell him, Paschal (for the harsh shock Which has made me fall cannot thus move you) That this poor lover was worthy of having A mistress either less beautiful or more gentle.We’ve met Paschal before and seen how Ronsard became less enchanted with him too. It’s not surprising that this sonnet ended up being withdrawn when that happened, naming him 6 times as it does! (And that’s even more obvious if you typeset the name in capitals each time, as is done by Marty-Laveaux, following some of the early sixteenth-century editions… But the story of how Paschal rose and fell is interesting, not principally to see Ronsard being duped by someone who didn’t have the same talent as he did, but rather for showing how it could have happened. It’s all about what was important at the time, and how values have changed; what is valued now, is not what was valued then. But first the contemporary notes on the sonnet written by Muret: Line 1: ‘He addresses this sonnet to Pierre Paschal, a gentleman native to Languedoc, a man who, beyond an understanding of the sciences worthy of a fine mind (in which he has few equals) is endowed with such eloquence in Latin that even the Venetian Senate was astonished several times by it.’Line 3: commenting on an earlier version of this line, which begins “Vas du Arpin…” (‘Go harvesting the treasures of the man from Arpinum’ – Cicero’s birthplace), Muret paraphrases “Go carefully gleaning the riches of Ciceronian eloquence”, and adds ‘he says that, because Paschal is one of those best-versed in Cicero who are alive today’Line 4: ‘River which passes through Toulouse, where Paschal has his residence’Line 9: ‘Michel-Pierre de Mauléon, protonotary of Durban, councillor in the Toulouse parliament, a very excellent fellow. Between him and Paschal is so great a friendship that effaces all those which are recommended by ancient authors.’ So, now to the story of Paschal’s rise and fall. It’s easy to forget – in an age when the ‘vulgar tongue’ has triumphed – that the Renaissance was not the re-birth of art, or of vernacular poetry, but pre-eminently was the re-birth of classical Latin & Greek literary style. All (or almost all) languages have a day-to-day form, and a higher style used in poetry and literature; and sometimes the gap between them is bigger, sometimes smaller. During the centuries since the fall of Rome, when Latin had remained the language of the church and of communication, the gap had become quite small – as it is today in English. But in the 1300s and 1400s, Italians rediscovered what the Golden Latin (& Silver Latin) poets and writers had done, and realised that the literary style could be much more refined than it was. And it was Latin, in particular, where their efforts were focused. Languages like French and Italian were, literally, secondary – and scholars even doubted whether anything good could be written in them. Ronsard and his peers were taking a risk by ‘renewing’ the French language as a language capable of birthing poetry of a quality comparable with the Greek and Roman ‘classics’.Petrarch in Italy, and now Ronsard in France, were determined to show that the local language could be used as stylishly as Latin; but they lived within a humanist world which still valued Latin higher. When you see one or more dedicatory poems in Latin at the beginning of one of Ronsard’s collections, it’s not an affectation: it is a statement that what follows is literature worthy of the name, and the Latin is there to prove it.It’s also important to realise that good style was valued enormously highly. In Florence, in the 1400s, reputations were made and lost on the turn of a (Latin) phrase. So Paschal’s Italian training in good classical Roman style was a strong weapon in his armoury. It’s worth noting that Paschal had published only the short book in 1548 (beautifully presented, of course – see it online here) containing his prosecution speech at a murder trial in Venice, and some Latin letters describing his Italian impressions, which would be his calling-card on being introduced to the poets; indeed, he would publish little else. That his reputation, on this basis, should equal Ronsard’s, looks crazy to us at this distance, but gives some idea of the importance the Renaissance attached to style rather than substance: what mattered was writing well, not necessarily the originality or substantive content of what you wrote. And Paschal did, indeed, write Latin well.Paschal’s career was traced at length by Pierre de Nolhac a century back – well worth a read. His rise really begins when he came back from Italy in 1553, fluent in the ‘Ciceronian’ style of oratorical Latin which was favoured by the Italian stylists, and was introduced to some of the Pleiade poets: Ronsard, along with Olivier de Magny, was his first and strongest supporter. For what it’s worth, Baif’s first published piece of poetry was a dedicatory sonnet in another little booklet publishing a French translation of that Venetian speech of Paschal’s.The promise of writing eulogies of France’s greatest poets in Latin had a strong appeal to all of them, even though they were wedded to the renewal of the French language, for they ‘knew’ instinctively that histories and eulogies written in Latin were longer-lasting and more significant than the equivalent in French. Publication in Latin would ensure that their reputation was Europe-wide, for a Latin eulogy would reach educated people across the whole of Europe. And Henri II ‘knew’ that it was more important that the history of his reign was undertaken by someone who could write high-quality Latin, than by someone who could handle sources etc with a historian’s insight.Which is why Paschal rose so quickly to the position of Historiographer of France, in 1554. He was – or presented himself as – the pre-eminent Italian-trained Ciceronian writer in France. Not until Muret went to Rome would he have a direct rival. But his fine Latin did not make him a good historian. Although Ronsard and others ridiculed him for not having managed to write any of his history, three volumes of drafts survive in manuscript, and show that he was good at writing speeches etc, but not at military history or the undercurrents of politics. So his history skimped on what we think of as ‘history’, and majored on long speeches and extended praises of the main characters. And when Henri II died in 1559, he fell from favour and was replaced, returned to the south, and died soon afterwards (in 1565, aged only 45) leaving his history unfinished.By 1554, then, Paschal was an important personage, and with the prospect of being immortalised in Latin, it was important that the poets continued to praise him. As late as 1558 Bellay placed him alongside Ronsard, he the master of prose, Ronsard the master of poetry; and in the mid-1550s Ronsard amended one of his 1550 odes so that it now said ‘Paschal will at some point make me immortal by his eloquence … It’s you who will make me eternal!’. To us, both the statement, and the breath-taking sycophantism of it, look unbelievable. And indeed back in 1555 Etienne Pasquier had already warned Ronsard that he was over-estimating and over-praising Paschal. (Further south, in Paschal’s home, people were less convinced by him: as early as 1551 a humanist poet and professor of law, Etienne Forcadel, had written: ‘Hear what his gilded eloquence actually says: that speech, however sweet, is empty’. So Ronsard’s line 5, about Toulouse praising Paschal, is not entirely true!)(Incidentally, Paschal’s dear friend Durban was, as Muret’s note explains, a member of the Mauléon family. Paschal’s printed speech from Venice was as prosecutor in a trial for the murder of a Mauléon; though it’s not clear if the family chose him for his known eloquence in Ciceronian-style prosecutions, or because of some prior connection in Toulouse. Ronsard, in his 1559 invective, later reproached Durban for having ‘imposed’ the mediocre Paschal on him and for over-praising him among the poets. In fact, of course, Ronsard did quite a lot of that himself!)Ronsard was not alone in preparing biographical material in French which Paschal could convert into a more significant publication, in Latin. But Paschal failed to deliver on his ‘hall of fame’ – though there is evidence that, again, he made some progress towards it: interestingly, there is a piece on Mellin de Saint-Gelais which survives – so perhaps his popularity with Ronsard’s set was affected by his taking a different view of just who was important to mention in this ‘hall of fame’!But then the Pleiade poets began to see through the ‘emperor’s clothes’ and realise that his talents were, in fact, limited. It is interesting that this happened in 1559, when the King his supporter died and he did not gain the new King’s support. Could Ronsard and his friends have been playing safe up to that point? But when the gloves came off they really did get vituperative. Adrien Tournebu published a vicious Latin satire, and Baif published a French translation; Ronsard wrote, but only circulated in manuscript, a vicious anti-eulogy of him – in Latin. In Latin, because that was Paschal’s home turf, and because it carried more weight. Incidentally, although Ronsard’s Latin is fine and even stylish, it’s not in the same league as Paschal’s. Each had their specialism, and each was excellent within it. Is it coincidental that Ronsard also prepared a first collected edition of his works very shortly afterwards in 1560, and removed Paschal’s name from all the poems and dedications he had given him? (He wanted to re-dedicate his Hymne de la Mort to Bellay – but Bellay refused ‘someone else’s leftovers’.) It was about the same time that Ronsard wrote, in his Elegie to Jérôme L’Huillier, of the way others, more adept than him but less deserving, won honours from kings while he struggled to make ends meet. As usual though, Ronsard’s anger was short-lived. His poem beginning “Je meurs Paschal” dates from about 1564, when Paschal had retired to the south; and Ronsard also mentioned him favourably in some of his anti-Calvinist poetry. By this time, though, Paschal was dead, so Ronsard’s cooling anger may have had as much to do with that early death and the sadness of potential unfulfilled, as with any genuine reconciliation.A minor detail of Ronsard history to close: in 1554 it was Paschal who, in Toulouse, persuaded the jury of the ‘Jeux Floraux’ to award the prize to Ronsard, and it was Paschal who accepted the award on his behalf. The silver flower never reached Ronsard, but the next year the committee had a silver statuette of Minerva made instead and sent that. Ronsard presented it to the King!
Le seul penser, qui me fait devenirBrave d’espoir, est si doulx que mon ameDesja gaignée, impuissante se pasme,Songeant au bien qui me doit advenir.Donc sans mourir pourray-je soustenirLe doux combat que me garde ma Dame,Puis qu’un penser si brusquement l’entameDu seul plaisir d’un si doulx souvenir ?Helas ! Venus, que l’escume féconde,Non loin de Cypre enfanta dessus l’onde,Si de fortune en ce combat je meurs ;Reçoy ma vie, ô Déesse, et la guidePar les odeurs de tes plus belles fleurs,Dans les vergers du Paradis de Gnide.The thought alone, which makes me becomeBold in hope, is so sweet that my soul Already defeated, faints weakened away Dreaming of the good which must come to me. Could I sustain, without dying, The sweet combat which my lady reserves for me, With just the pleasure of so sweet a memory, Since a thought begins it so suddenly? Alas, Venus, whom the fertile surf Bore upon the waves not far from Cyprus, If by chance I die in that combat, Receive my life, o goddess, and guide it Amongst the fragrances of your most beautiful flowers, In the orchards of the gardens of Cnidus. It’s relatively uncommon to have a sonnet with just the one theme all the way through. But this is a good one; I wonder why Ronsard withdrew it? The love-death is a fine romantic theme, but here of course it’s a more neo-Platonic love-death, more the anticipation than the reality of love. The second quatrain is one of those whose grammar is rather contorted: unusually, I’ve opted to re-organise the translation to prioritise sense over parallelism with Ronsard’s French. Taking it line by line it would go something like: Without dying, then, could I sustain The sweet combat which my lady reserves for me (Since a thought so suddenly launches it) With just the pleasure of so sweet a memory? We’ve met Venus as goddess of Cnidus before; and Cnidus as a place rich in agriculture (though, as noted before, its real wealth was apparently based more on trade than agriculture). There are plenty of changes in Blanchemain’s version, some of them minor re-orderings of word for euphony; here it is complete: Le seul penser, qui me fait devenirHaultain et brave, est si doulx que mon ameDesja desja impuissante, se pasme,Yvre du bien qui me doibt avenir.Sans mourir donq, pourray-je soustenirLe doux combat que me garde ma Dame,Puis qu’un penser si brusquement l’entameDu seul plaisir d’un si doulx souvenir ?Helas ! Venus, que l’escume féconde,Non loin de Cypre enfanta dessus l’onde,Si de fortune en ce combat je meurs ;Reçoy ma vie, ô Déesse, et la guideParmy l’odeur de tes plus belles fleurs,Dans les vergers du Paradis de Gnide.The thought alone, which makes me become Proud and bold, is so sweet that my soul Now already weakened, faints away Drunk on the good which must come to me. Could I sustain, without dying, The sweet combat which my lady reserves for me, With just the pleasure of so sweet a memory, Since a thought begins it so suddenly? Alas, Venus, whom the fertile surf Bore upon the waves not far from Cyprus, If by chance I die in that combat, Receive my life, o goddess, and guide it Amongst the fragrance of your most beautiful flowers, In the orchards of the gardens of Cnidus.
Mon Page, Dieu te gard’, que fait nostre Maistresse ?Tu m’apportes tousjours ou mon mal ou mon bien:Quand je te voy je tremble, et je ne suis plus mien,Tantost chaud d’un espoir, tantost froid de tristesse.Ça baille moy la lettre, et pourtant ne me laisse,Contemple bien mon front par qui tu pourras bienCognoistre en le fronçant ou defronçant, combienLa lettre me contente ou donne de detresse.Mon page, que ne suis-je aussi riche qu’un Roy ?Je feroy de porphyre un beau temple pour toy,Tu serois tout semblable à ce Dieu des voyages:Je peindrois une table où l’on verroit pourtraitsNos sermens, nos accords, nos guerres et nos paix,Nos lettres, nos devis, tes tours et tes messages.Well page, God preserve you; what’s our mistress doing?You always bring something good or something bad for me;When I see you I tremble, and am no longer my own,Sometimes hot with hope, sometimes cold with sadness.Open the letter there for me, but don’t leave me,Watch my brow carefully, from which you’ll be well ableTo know, as I frown or un-frown, how muchThe letter pleases me or gives me distress.So lad, if I were as rich as a kingI’d make a fine temple of porphyry for you,And you’d be just like that god of travels:I’d paint a picture in which you could see portrayedOur words, our agreements, our fights and our making-up,Our letters, our plans, your journeys and your messages.
Sometimes, it seems obvious that one reason the ‘sonnets not before printed’ were not printed before, is that they can be inconsequential. And this is perhaps a case in point.
Yes, Ronsard rarely tells us how his messages and poems travelled between his mistress and himself; and here we meet the messenger who travels back and forth carrying them. But, that said, what do we learn? That the messenger travels back and forth, that he carries messages of disagreements and making-up, that he carries letters detailing their plans and hopes; and little else …
But, inconsequentiality apart, this is an attractive little poem, well-written and charming.
Blanchemain even offers a small alternative, at the beginning of line 8 – “Sa lettre” instead of “La lettre” (‘Her’, not ‘the’, letter).
Maistresse, embrasse-moy, baise-moy, serre-moyHaleine contre haleine, échauffe moy la vie,Mille et mille baizers donne moy je te prie,Amour veut tout sans nombre, amour n’a point de loy.Baize et rebaize moy; belle bouche pourquoyTe gardes tu là bas, quand tu seras blesmie,A baiser (de Pluton ou la femme ou l’amie),N’ayant plus ny couleur, ny rien semblable à toy?En vivant presse moy de tes levres de roses,Begaye, en me baisant, à levres demy-closesMille mots trançonnez, mourant entre mes bras.Je mourray dans les tiens, puis, toy resuscitee,Je resusciteray, allons ainsi là bas,Le jour tant soit il court vaut mieux que la nuitee.Mistress, embrace me, kiss me, hold meBreath against breath, warm up my life,Thousands and thousands of kisses give me, I beg;Love wants them all, numberless kisses: Love has no law.Kiss and re-kiss me! Fair mouth, whyAre you keeping yourself for kissing down below,When you’ll be pale, the wife or girlfriend of Pluto,No longer having colour or anything else which is like yourself?While you’re alive, press on me your rosy lips,Stammer as you kiss me with half-closed lipsA thousand chopped-up words, as you die in my arms.I shall die in yours, then when you are revivedI shall revive. Let’s go together down below:The day, however short it is, is worth more than the night-time.
Collected together after Ronsard’s death were a number of “Sonnets du feu P. de Ronsard, pour Heleine de Surgeres, non encor imprimez” (‘Sonnets of the late P. de Ronsard for Helen de Surgeres, not printed before’). Blanchemain printed 9, Marty-Laveaux appears to have 15 – though several certainly were ‘encor imprimez’ as they had appeared among the ‘Sonnets for Astrée’!
The quality is, as with many of the poems which Ronsard withdrew from his other books of Amours, generally hard to separate from that of the other poems which did get printed! Here, I think he may have kept it back only because the theme is one he had used elsewhere – though (as often) the detail is different: I don’t recall another one in which he marries Helen (or another lover) to Pluto! Another reason might be that the ending has something of the feel of a random collection of thoughts, rather than tying the poem up neatly.
Las ! Pleust à Dieu n’avoir jamais tastéSi follement le tetin de m’amie!Sans ce malheur, l’autre plus grande envieJamais, helas! ne m’eust le coeur tenté.Comme un poisson, pour s’estre trop hastéPar un appast, suit la fin de sa vie,Ainsi je vais où la mort me convie,D’un beau tetin doucement apasté.Qui eust pensé que le cruel destinEust enfermé sous un si beau tetinUn si grand feu, pour m’en faire la proye?Avisez donc quel seroit le coucherEntre ses bras, puis qu’un simple toucherDe mille morts innocent me foudroye!Alas, would to God I’d never nibbled So madly my lady’s nipple! Without that mistake, the other still greater desire Would never, alas, have entered my heart. Like a fish, which too hasty For the bait hurries to the end of its life, So I am going where death takes me Sweetly baited by that lovely nipple. Who would have thought that cruel fate Would have enclosed beneath so lovely a nipple So great a fire to make me its prey? Beware, then, what would happen when lying her arms, since one little touch Obliterates me, innocent as I am, with a thousand deaths. Cheating really: I can’t find this in Marty-Laveaux’s edition, but it comes first in Blanchemain’s list of the poems removed from the Amours. So, a bit like numbering Bruckner symphonies, it becomes no. 0… Another version of the text crops up regularly in song settings, with variants mainly at the beginning. Here are the first 8 lines: Pleut-il à Dieu n’avoir jamais tâtéSi follement le tétin de m’amie !Sans lui vraiment l’autre plus grande envie,Hélas ! ne m’eût, ne m’eût jamais tenté.Comme un poisson, pour s’être trop hâtéPar un appât, suit la fin de sa vie,Ainsi je vois où la mort me convie,D’un beau tétin doucement apâté. Would to God I’d never nibbled So madly my lady’s nipple! Without it truly the other still greater desire Would never, alas, would never have tempted me. Like a fish, which too hasty For the bait hurries to the end of its life, So I see where death takes me Sweetly baited by that lovely nipple.
A pas mornes et lente seulet je me promeine,
Nonchalant de moy-mesme, et quelque part que j’aille
Un penser importun me livre la bataille,
Et ma fiere ennemie au devant me rameine.
Penser ! un peu de treve, hé permets que ma peine
Se soulage un petit, et tousjours ne me baille
Argument de pleurer pour une qui travaille
Sans relasche mon cœur, tant elle est inhumaine.
Or si tu ne le fais, je te tromperay bien,
Je t’asseure, Penser, que tu perdras ta place
Bien-tost, car je mourray pour abatre ton fort :
Puis quand je seray mort, plus ne sentiray rien
(Tu m’auras beau navrer) que ta rigueur me face,
Ma Dame, ny Amour, car rien ne sent un mort.
With grieving and slow steps I wander alone,
Caring nothing for myself, and wherever I go
A nagging thought propels me to battle
And my proud foe drags me to the fore.
O thoughts, a short truce! Allow my pain
To find a little relief, do not always open for me
Cause for tears, for one who troubles
My heart without slackening, so inhuman is she.
If you will not, I shall really outwit you;
I assure you, my thoughts, that you’ll lose your place
Very soon, for I shall die to destroy your fortress;
Then, when I am dead, I shall feel nothing more
That your harshness does to me (you’ll have saddened me in vain)
My Lady, nor Love: for a dead man feels nothing.
This isn’t one of Ronsard’s great poems; but still worth a look. The idea is a bit obvious, the metaphors not strong, and the phrase-structure gets a bit tortured by the needs of the metre – especially in the wholesale reorganisation of the sentence in the last tercet, which would in prose terms read ‘when I am dead, I shall feel no more of the harsh things you, my Lady, or Love himself, do to me; you’ll have made me sad in vain; for a dead man feels nothing’.
Note that it’s in 12-syllable Alexandrines, one of the rarer forms for Ronsard’s sonnets.
Gentil Barbier, enfant de Podalire,
Je te supply, saigne bien ma Maistresse,
Et qu’en ce mois, en saignant, elle laisse
Le sang gelé dont elle me martire.
Encore un peu dans la palette tire
De ce sang froid, ains cette glace espesse,
Afin qu’apres en sa place renaisse
Un sang plus chaud qui de m’aimer l’inspire.
Ha ! comme il sort: c’estoit ce sang si noir
Que je n’ay peu de mon chant émouvoir
En souspirant pour elle mainte année.
Ha ! c’est assez, cesse, gentil Barbier,
Ha je me pasme ! et mon ame estonnée
S’évanoüist, en voyant son meurtrier.
Noble barber, child of Podalirius,
I beg you bleed my Mistress well,
That in this month as she is bled she might lose
That frozen blood with which she tortures me.
Draw still a little more into your bowl
Of that cold blood, or rather that slow-moving ice,
So that afterwards in its place may be re-born
A hotter blood which will inspire her to love me.
Ah, how it flows ; it was that blood so dark
Which I could not move with my singing
As I sighed for her for so many years.
Ah, that’s enough, stop, noble barber,
Ah, I swoon ! and my amazed soul
Faints as it sees its murderer.
We don’t bleed poeple these days so the image here will be unfamiliar to many. The use of leeches (or simple cutting) to draw off blood was managed by barbers acting as surgeons – the title ‘barber-surgeon’ was common – because doctors didn’t do things like touching and cutting, they left that to the less-qualified surgeons. (Note how the situation has been reversed in modern times, and surgeons get the higher professional ranking. But surgeons are still generally ‘Mr’ while doctors are ‘Dr’.) And it was for many rich people a routine thing, like going to the gym or the physio today. Hence, Ronsard’s muse is having a monthly ‘blood-letting’; it would be going too far to link this with the monthly bleeding she’d be doing anyway.
Podalirius was one of the doctor-sons of Aesculapius (we met his other son Machaon recently).
Blanchemain offers minor variants in line 6 only: “De son sang froid, ains de sa glace espesse” (‘Of her cold blood, or rather her slow-moving ice’).
Dame, je meurs pour vous, je meurs pour vous, Madame,
Dame, je meurs pour vous, et si ne vous en chaut:
Je sens pour vous au Coeur un brasier si treschaut,
Que pour le refroidir, je veux bien rendre l’ame.
Vous aurez pour jamais un scandaleux diffame
Si vous me meurdrissez sans vous faire un defaut.
Ha que voulez-vous dire? est-ce ainsi comme il faut
Par une cruauté vous honnorer d’un blasme ?
Non, vous ne me pouvez reprocher que je sois
Un effronté menteur: car mon teint et ma vois,
Et mon chef ja grison vous servent d’asseurance,
Et mes yeux trop enflez, et mon coeur plein d’émoy.
Hé que feray-je plus! puis que nulle creance
Il ne vous plaist donner aux témoins de ma foy.
My Lady, I am dying for you, I am dying for you my Lady,
My Lady I am dying for you, and yet you do not care:
I feel for you in my heart a furnace so hot
That to cool it down I would happily hand over my soul.
You will forever have scandalous infamy
If you murder me though I’ve done you no wrong.
Ah, what are you trying to say? Is it thus as it should be,
Honouring you with blame for your cruelty?
No, you cannot reproach me that I am
Some brazen liar: for my colour and my voice,
And my already-grey hairs give you assurance,
As do my eyes all puffy, and my heart full of anguish.
Oh, what more can I do? For no trust
Are you pleased to place in the testimony of my loyalty.
Not a great (or even a very good) poem today, I’m afraid. A reminder that even the best can sometimes end up falling back on formulas… From the weakness of the repeat in the opening line, via the string of half-line ‘formulas’ in the middle… In some ways it reminds me of that little game Mozart put together: ‘here’s a string of short (musical) phrases, throw a die and put them together in the random sequence it indicates’! At last: one of the withdrawn poems that fully deserves its fate 🙂
Dame, je ne vous puis offrir à mon depart
Sinon mon pauvre coeur, prenez-le je vous prie
Si vous ne le prenez, autre nouvelle amie
(J’en jure par vos yeux) jamais n’y aura part.
Je le sens déjà bien, comme joyeux il part
Hors de mon estomach, peu soigneux de ma vie,
Pour vous aller servir, et rien ne le convie
D’y aller (ce dit-il) que vostre doux regard.
Or si vous le chassez, je ne veux qu’il revienne
Dedans mon estomach en sa place ancienne,
Comme celuy qui hait ce qui vous desplaira.
Il m’aura beau conter sa peine et son malaise,
Car bien qu’il soit à moy, plus mien il ne sera,
Pour ne voir rien chez-moy (Dame) qui vous desplaise.
My Lady, I can offer you as I leave
Only my poor heart; take it I beg you.
If you do not take it, another new beloved
Will never (I swear it by your eyes) share it.
I can already feel it strongly, as it joyously leaves
From my breast, caring little for my life,
To go and serve you, and nothing urges it
To go there (so it says) but your sweet glance.
Now if you chase it away, I want only for it to come back
Into my breast in its old place
As one who hates whatever will displease you.
It will in vain have told me of its pain and unhappiness
For although it is mine it won’t be any more
On seeing nothing here, my Lady, which might displease you.
In his efforts to describe a paradox (in the sestet), Ronsard ends up rather confused – in my view. Enough, at least, to have withdrawn the poem later. What he means is more or less clear: ‘my heart can come back, but only to take up watch for anything displeasing to you; it will remain yours, and as it will see nothing here to displease you it won’t need to change its loyalty’.
No variants to report from Blanchemain.
D’une belle Marie, en une autre Marie,
Belleau, je suis tombé, et dire ne te puis
De laquelle des deux plus amoureux je suis,
Car j’en aime bien l’une, et l’autre est bien m’amie.
Plus mon affection en amour est demie
Et plus ceste moitié me consomme d’ennuis,
Car au lieu d’une à part, deux au coup j’en poursuis,
Et pour en aimer une, une autre je n’oublie.
« Or tousjours l’amitié plus est enracinée,
« Plus long-temps elle est ferme et plus est obstinée
« A souffrir de l’amour l’orage vehement.
« Hé ! sçais-tu pas, Belleau, que deux ancres jettées,
« Quand les vents ont plus fort les ondes agitées,
« Tiennent mieux une nef, qu’une ancre seulement?
From one fair Marie to another Marie,
Belleau, have I fallen [in love], and I cannot say
With which of the two I am more in love,
For I love one of them indeed, and the other is indeed my beloved.
The more my affection is halved in love
The more that half consumes me with pain,
For instead of one alone, two at a time I’m chasing,
And while making love to one of them I can’t forget the other.
“Love is always more deeply rooted
The longer it is fixed and the more it persists
In suffering the violent storm of love.
Ah, don’t you know, Belleau, that two anchors thrown out
When the winds have strongly stirred the waves
Hold a ship better than one anchor alone.”
Today, Ronsard in playful mood. And a reminder how common the name ‘Marie’ was in the 16th century! The opening is a little awkward in the translation: I’m trying to catch the way the meaning shifts subtly after the end of line 1, as the meaning of “de” is influenced not by “en” (‘from … to’) but by “tombé” (“tombé de” = ‘fall in love with‘). It is clear from lines 3 onwards that Ronsard isn’t saying he’s fallen out of love with one, as the opening line might imply; rather, that he’s in love with both.
Marty-Laveaux marks the whole sestet with quote marks – though it’s not obvious how this section is direct speech any more than the octet before it; had he marked only the first tercet that could (just) have been quoting a proverb, but the final tercet clearly isn’t. Blanchemain (as usual) sidesteps the question by not using quote marks at all …
Oeuvres de Ronsard 