Helen 2:75

Je m’en-fuy du combat, ma bataille est desfaite :

J’ay perdu contre Amour la force et la raison :

Ja dix lustres passez, et ja mon poil grison

M’appellent au logis, et sonnent la retraite.

 

Si comme je voulois ta gloire n’est parfaite,

N’en blasme point l’esprit, mais blasme la saison :

Je ne suis ny Pâris, ny desloyal Jason :

J’obeis à la loy que la Nature a faite.

 

Entre l’aigre et le doux, l’esperance et la peur,

Amour dedans ma forge a poly cest ouvrage.

Je ne me plains du mal, du temps ny du labeur,

 

Je me plains de moymesme et de ton faux courage.

Tu t’en repentiras, si tu as un bon cœur,

Mais le tard repentir n’amande le dommage.

 

 

 

                                                                            I flee from the fight, my battle is lost:

                                                                            I have lost, fighting Love, both strength and reason;

                                                                            Fifty years now gone, and now my grey hairs,

                                                                            All call me to rest, and sound the retreat.

 

                                                                            If your glory is not perfected as I wished,

                                                                            Don’t blame my spirit for it, but blame the season:

                                                                            I am neither Paris, nor disloyal Jason;

                                                                            I obey the law which Nature has made.

 

                                                                            Between sour and sweet, hope and fear,

                                                                            Love within my forge has polished this work.

                                                                            I do not complain of trouble, time and labour,

 

                                                                            I complain of myself and of your false courage.

                                                                            You will repent it, if you have a good heart,

                                                                            But late repenting does not mend the loss.

 

 

 

 

And so, the last sonnet to Helen: a mixture of reproach of her, reproach of self, and (inevitably) a claim that in the end it is Helen’s loss… Ronsard is not Paris (failing the original Helen) nor Jason (abandoning Medea) – he has put in the time and trouble, it is Helen who is abandoning him. ‘You will repent it’: I wonder if she did?

 

Of course not! The literary character Hélène might have done so, losing a lover. But the real Hélène had no reason to complain: she has been the centre of attention in two books of France’s finest sonnets; even if portrayed as distant and ungrateful she has been portrayed also as chaste and inaccessible, beautiful and virtuous; and, far from late repenting at the loss of the affair, she has got everything she needed from it – the poems, the fame, the immortality. In fact.as we saw elsewhere, her only complaint was that too many of the poems were recycled from earlier collections!

 

Blanchemain offers a small change in line 1: “Je m’en-fuy du combat, mon armée est desfaite” (‘I flee from the fight, my army is lost’).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Helen 2:74

Adieu cruelle adieu, je te suis ennuyeux :

C’est trop chanté d’Amour sans nulle recompense.

Te serve qui voudra, je m’en vais, et je pense

Qu’un autre serviteur ne te servira mieux.

 

Amour en quinze jours m’a fait ingenieux,

Me jettant au cerveau de ces vers la semence :

La Raison maintenant me r’appelle, et me tanse :

Je ne veux si long temps devenir furieux.

 

Il ne faut plus nourrir cest Enfant qui me ronge,

Qui les credules prend comme un poisson à l’hain,

Une plaisante farce, une belle mensonge,

 

Un plaisir pour cent maux qui s’en-vole soudain :

Mais il se faut resoudre; et tenir pour certain

Que l’homme est malheureux qui se repaist d’un songe.

 

 

 

 

                                                                            Farewell, cruel one, farewell : I irritate you.

                                                                            I’ve sung too much of Love without reward.

                                                                            Let he who wishes serve you, I’m going, and I think

                                                                            No other servant will serve you better.

 

                                                                            Love has in two weeks made me inventive,

                                                                            Throwing into my brain the seed of these lines:

                                                                            Reason now calls me back, and scolds me:

                                                                            I don’t wish to become mad for so long a time.

 

                                                                            I must no longer feed this Child who gnaws at me,

                                                                            Who catches the unwary like a fish on a hook,

                                                                            A pleasing joke, a pretty lie,

 

                                                                            A pleasure which suddenly flies away, replaced by a hundred troubles;

                                                                            But I must be resolute, and remain certain

                                                                            That the man is unhappy who feeds himself on a dream.

 

 

 

 

The last two sonnets – apart from the two on the king’s death – turn sharply towards the futility of love and the foolishness of wasting time on ‘a dream’. But this is Ronsard: while he can see love as ‘a pleasing joke, a pretty lie, / A pleasure which suddenly flies away’, in the next breath he has to remind himself that living this dream leads to unhappiness, and resolve (again) to reject it.

 

It’s very neat: rejection of the dream, but underlining just how seductive it is. A fine balancing act, bringing to an end a finely-balanced book.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stances de la Fontaine d’Hélène (Helen 2:72b)

Ronsard heads these ‘stanzas on Helen’s fountain’ with the stage-direction “Pour chanter ou reciter à trois personnes“, ‘for singing or reciting by three people’ – though in fact the third (the poet himself) only appears at the very end.

I. Ainsi que ceste eau coule et s’enfuyt parmy l’herbe, Ainsi puisse couler en ceste eau le souci, Que ma belle Maistresse, à mon mal trop superbe, Engrave dans mon cœur sans en avoir mercy.   II. Ainsi que dans ceste eau de l’eau mesme je verse, Ainsi de veine en veine Amour qui m’a blessé, Et qui tout à la fois son carquois me renverse, Un breuvage amoureux dans le cœur m’a versé.   I. Je voulois de ma peine esteindre la memoire : Mais Amour qui avoit en la fontaine beu, Y laissa son brandon, si bien qu’au lieu de boire De l’eau pour l’estancher, je n’ay beu que du feu.   II. Tantost ceste fontaine est froide comme glace, Et tantost elle jette une ardante liqueur. Deux contraires effects je sens quand elle passe, Froide dedans ma bouche, et chaude dans mon cœur.   I. Vous qui refraischissez ces belles fleurs vermeilles, Petits freres ailez, Favones et Zephyrs, Portez de ma Maistresse aux ingrates oreilles, En volant parmy l’air, quelcun de mes souspirs.   II. Vous enfans de l’Aurore, allez baiser ma Dame : Dites luy que je meurs, contez luy ma douleur, Et qu’Amour me transforme en un rocher sans ame, Et non comme Narcisse en une belle fleur.   I. Grenouilles qui jazez quand l’an se renouvelle, Vous Gressets qui servez aux charmes, comme on dit, Criez en autre part vostre antique querelle : Ce lieu sacré vous soit à jamais interdit.   II. Philomele en Avril ses plaintes y jargonne, Et tes bords sans chansons ne se puissent trouver : L’Arondelle l’Esté, le Ramier en Automne, Le Pinson en tout temps, la Gadille en Hyver.   I. Cesse tes pleurs, Hercule, et laisse ta Mysie, Tes pieds de trop courir sont ja foibles et las : Icy les Nymphes ont leur demeure choisie, Icy sont tes Amours, icy est ton Hylas.   II. Que ne suis-je ravy comme l’enfant Argive ? Pour revencher ma mort, je ne voudrois sinon Que le bord, le gravois, les herbes et la rive Fussent tousjours nommez d’Helene, et de mon nom !   I. Dryades, qui vivez sous les escorces sainctes, Venez et tesmoignez combien de fois le jour Ay-je troublé vos bois par le cry de mes plaintes, N’ayant autre plaisir qu’à souspirer d’Amour ?   II. Echo, fille de l’Air, hostesse solitaire Des rochers, où souvent tu me vois retirer, Dy quantes fois le jour lamentant ma misere, T’ay-je fait souspirer en m’oyant souspirer ?   I. Ny Cannes ny Roseaux ne bordent ton rivage, Mais le gay Poliot, des bergeres amy : Tousjours au chaud du jour le Dieu de ce bocage, Appuyé sur sa fleute, y puisse estre endormy.   II. Fontaine à tout jamais ta source soit pavée, Non de menus gravois de mousses ny d’herbis : Mais bien de mainte Perle à bouillons enlevée, De Diamans, Saphirs, Turquoises et Rubis.   I. Le Pasteur en tes eaux nulle branche ne jette, Le Bouc de son ergot ne te puisse fouler : Ains comme un beau Crystal, tousjours tranquille et nette, Puissees-tu par les fleurs eternelle couler.   II. Les Nymphes de ces eaux et les Hamadryades, Que l’amoureux Satyre entre les bois poursuit, Se tenans main à main, de sauts et de gambades, Aux rayons du Croissant y dansent toute nuit.   I. Si j’estois un grand Prince, un superbe edifice Je voudrois te bastir, où je ferois fumer Tous les ans à ta feste autels et sacrifice, Te nommant pour jamais la Fontaine d’aimer.   II. Il ne faut plus aller en la forest d’Ardeine Chercher l’eau, dont Regnaut estoit si desireux : Celuy qui boit à jeun trois fois ceste fonteine, Soit passant ou voisin il devient amoureux.   I. Lune qui as ta robbe en rayons estoillée, Garde ceste fonteine aux jours les plus ardans : Defen-la pour jamais de chaud et de gelée, Remply-la de rosée, et te mire dedans.   II. Advienne apres mille ans qu’un Pastoureau desgoise Mes amours, et qu’il conte aux Nymphes d’icy pres, Qu’un Vandomois mourut pour une Saintongeoise, Et qu’encores son ame erre entre ces forests.   Le Poete. Garsons ne chantez plus, ja Vesper nous commande De serrer nos troupeaux, les Loups sont ja dehors. Demain à la frescheur avec une autre bande Nous reviendrons danser à l’entour de tes bords.   Fontaine, ce-pendant de ceste tasse pleine Reçoy ce vin sacré que je renverse en toy : Sois ditte pour jamais la Fontaine d’Heleine, Et conserve en tes eaux mes amours et ma foy.

I. Just as this water flows and runs off amidst the grass, So let flow in this water the care Which my fair mistress, to my too magnificent harm, Engraves in my heart without any mercy.   II Just as in this water I pour some of the same water, So from vein to vein Love who has hurt me, And who all at once overturns his quiver for me, Has poured into my heart his drink of love.   I I wished to extinguish the memory of my pain: But Love who had drunk in the fountain Left there his brand so firmly that, instead of drinking Of the water to quench it, I have drunk only fire.   II Sometimes this fountain is cold as ice, And sometimes it throws up a burning liquid: Two opposite effects I feel as it passes, Cold within my mouth, and warm in my heart.   I You who refresh these fair crimson flowers, Little winged brothers, Fauns and Zephyrs, Bear to the ungrateful ears of my mistress, Flying through the air, some one of my sighs.   II You children of the Dawn, go and kiss my lady: Tell her that I am dying, recount my sadness to her, And how Love is transforming me into a soul-less rock, Not, like Narcissus, into a fair flower.   I You frogs who gossip as the year renews itself, You tree-frogs who act as charms, as they say, Shout your ancient quarrels in some other place: May this sacred place be forbidden to you forever.   II Let Philomela [the nightingale] in April chatter her lament there, Let your banks never be found song-less: The swallow in summer, the pigeon in autumn, The chaffinch at all times, the robin in winter.   I Stop weeping, Hercules, leave your Mysia, Your feet from too much running are now week and tired: Here the nymphs have chosen their home, Here are your Loves, here is your Hylas.   II Why am I not in love like the Argive child? To avenge my death, I would wish only That the shore, the gravel, the grass and the banks Should always be named after Helen and my own name!   I Dryads who live beneath the holy bark, Come and bear witness, how many times a day Have I troubled your woods with the cry of my laments, Having no other pleasure than to sign of Love?   II Echo, daughter of the Air, solitary inhabitant Of the rocks, where often you see me retiring, Say how many times a day, lamenting my wretchedness, Have I made you sigh as you see me sigh?   I Neither sticks nor reeds border your banks, But rather the gay iris, friend of shepherdesses; Always in the heat of the day the god of this wood, Playing on his flute, can sleep there.   II Fountain, may your spring be forever paved Not with small gravel-stones from the foaming water, nor grass; But rather with many a pearl lifted by the waves, With diamonds, sapphires, turquoises and rubies.   I May the shepherd throw no branches in your waters, May the buck not be able to tread in you with his spurs; So, like a fine crystal, always calm and clear, May you be able to flow eternal among the flowers.   II The Nymphs of these waters and the Hamadryads Whom the amorous Satyr pursues in the woods, Holding one another’s hands, in leaps and gambols Dance all night in the rays of the crescent moon.   I If I were a great prince, I would want to build you A proud edifice, where I would make every year Altars and sacrifices smoke at your festival, Naming you forever the Fountain of Love.   II We need no longer go to the forest of Ardenne To seek the water for which Rinaldo was so eager: He who when young drinks thrice from this fountain, Be he passer-by or neighbour, will fall in love.   I O moon, who have your robe spangled in moonbeams, Protect this fountain in the hottest days; Defend it forever from heat and ice, Fill it with dew, and admire yourself in it.   II May it happen that, after a thousand years , a shepherd acts out My love-affairs, and recount to the Nymphs nearby How a man of Vendôme died for a lady from Saintonge, And how still his soul wanders in these forests.   The Poet Boys, sing no more, already the Evening Star commands us To draw up our troop, the wolves are now out. Tomorrow in the freshness [of morning], with another band We shall return to dance around your banks.   Fountain, now from this full glass Receive this sacred wine which I pour into you; Be called forever the Fountain of Helen, And preserve in your waters my love and my faithfulness.

 

 

 I find the ‘tone’ of this poem a little hard to read: yes, it is obviously another nature poem, or rather one of those ‘nature filled with myth’ poems, where everything is imbued with the flavour of classical mythology. Yet overall it seems to jar slightly with the surrounding love poems, at least to me.

 

We begin with the familiar lovers’ opposites – pain and happiness together, hot and cold, ice and fire. The ungrateful mistress is invoked (and mythological messengers sent to visit her). But by the end this is a fountain sanctified to Helen, rather than simply reflecting the opposites.

 

The tale of Narcissus is beautifully transformed – Helen’s obduracy makes her lover a hard rock, rather than a soft flower. But then the nature poetry takes over – oddly, at first, with frogs, but then with a large cast of carefully-identified birds appropriate to the seasons. Then suddenly Hercules is invoked (he is presumably also the ‘Argive child’, being a native of that city), and we’re back to the spurned lover – though quite why his death should be memorialised by naming the fountain after Helen is not obvious.

 

Echo, of course, is also known for laments: but then the context suddenly shifts to the sanctification of the fountain – its rocks replaced by precious jewels, its waters undisturbed by sticks or animals. The reference to Rinaldo (Regnaut in the French version) recalls the entire plot of ‘Orlando furioso’, which opens with Rinaldo drinking from an enchanted fountain and falling in love with Angelica, and ends with the spell lifted by drinking from another magic fountain. (As Richelet explains, ‘Ariosto in his first canto says that in this forest there are two fountains so different in effect that whoever drinks from the one falls in love, and from the other loses his love’.) And then the heavens are called on to protect the newly-sanctified spring, before the poet sacrifices wine as a sign of its holiness.

 

Something of a developing train of thought, then …

 

Gilbert Gadoffre makes the point that Ronsard is not like the seventeenth-century poets, ‘mathematicians and logicians’ who structure their poems accordingly; he is a poet of nature, whose poems grow like nature, developing almost in random directions as the moment takes them. I think this is a helpful way to look at this poem and it’s shifting focus. 

 

Worth adding, too, that for Gadoffre this is the high point of French poetry before about 1650: “With this poem he gives us the most miraculously beautiful stanzas before Racine in the French repertoire.”

 

Blanchemain has a number of variants, beginning with the title: “Stances sur la fontaine…” (though it has no impact on the translation). In the first stanza of the third pair, we have “Portez vers ma Maistresse aux ingrates oreilles”, so that instead of carrying sighs ‘to the ungrateful ears of my mistress’ they are to be carried ‘to my mistress with her ungrateful ears’. In the second stanza of the next pair, “Et ses bords …” seems odd: Helen’s fountain has been ‘you’ so far, so whose are ‘her banks’? Presumably still the same fountain?

 

No such problem at the start of the pair of stanzas featuring Rinaldo: “Si j’estois grand monarque …”, a ‘great monarch’ instead of a great prince. And then in the second of these stanzas, “Celuy qui boit à jeun trois fois à la fonteine”, ‘He who when young drinks thrice at the fountain’. 

 

 

 

 

Helen 2:(75b)

Dialogue de l’autheur et du Mondain

 

Est-ce tant que la mort ? est-ce si grand mal-heur

Que le vulgaire croit ? Comme l’heure première

Nous faict naistre sans peine, ainsi l’heure dernière,

Qui acheve la trame, arrive sans douleur.

 

— Mais tu ne seras plus ! — Et puis ? quand la palleur

Qui blesmit nostre corps sans chaleur ne lumiere

Nous perd le sentiment ! quand la main filandiere

Nous oste le desir, perdans nostre chaleur !

 

— Tu ne mangeras plus. — Je n’auray plus envie

De boire ne manger : c’est le corps qui sa vie

Par la viande allonge et par refection :

 

L’esprit n’en a besoin. — Venus, qui nous appelle

Aux plaisirs, te fuira. — Je n’auray soucy d’elle :

Qui ne desire plus n’a plus d’affection.

 

 

 

 

                                                                            Dialogue of the author and the Worldly Man

 

                                                                            Is that all death is? Is it so great a misfortune

                                                                            As the common folk believe? As our first hour

                                                                            Has us born without pain, so our last hour

                                                                            Which finishes the drama comes without sadness.

 

                                                                            — But you will exist no more!  — So what? When the pallor

                                                                            Which blanches our body, without heat or light,

                                                                            Makes us lose all our sensation? When the hand that weaves the thread

                                                                            Removes all desire from us, as we lose our warmth?

 

                                                                            — You won’t eat any more.  – I shall no longer need

                                                                            To drink or eat: it’s the body which lengthens

                                                                            Its life with food and eating;

 

                                                                            The spirit has no need of it.  – Venus, who calls us

                                                                            To pleasure, will flee from you.  – I shall have no care of her;

                                                                            He who desires nothing more, has no more feelings of love.

 

 

 

 

Here’s the last of those poems added by Blanchemain from posthumous editions. It’s an odd one, seemingly rather out of place . After all, Helen is not dying, and the book is concluding with the light of love still flickering if not strong. (Its dialogue format is also uncommon, but hardly unprecedented in these books.)

 

But on the other hand there are those last two poems mourning the king’s death, and there is the continual worrying in Ronsard’s love poetry about immortality, whether of the written word or of the lovers’ souls. Indeed, while the immortality of the former is often asserted, he seems rather less sure about the latter: in these poems death often means a transition to Hades, bleak, dark, forgetful of life and lonely, rather than a passage to the Christian heaven. Compare also his famous ‘last’ poem to his soul:

 

                        You are going down below weak,

                        Pale, small, thin and lonely,

                        Into the cold kingdom of the dead

 

So it’s not very surprising to find Ronsard musing on death, and a state after death. Here he is, perhaps, a little less fatalistic than elsewhere – but this is still hardly a vision of lovers re-united in death. Even if his vision of desiring nothing more after death is put in the context of classical mythology, with the Fates weaving & cutting the thread of life, I think it is just compatible with the Christian heaven – – a heaven where the soul will spend eternity focused on & praising God rather than focused on its past loves. But might we have expected some sign of comfort that the soul might be re-united with its loved ones even while focusing its praises on God … ? In the end, Ronsard’s fatalism about death being the end, rather than a transition to eternity, still comes through.

 

How all this fits with Ronsard’s official position in the church – he took minor orders, after all – or with his professed Catholic faith is not obvious. In some ways he feels like many an Enlightenment-period priest, performing religious duties while maintaining a personal scepticism: though of course we are a century or so before that time. Perhaps we’ll explore Ronsard’s faith and his relationship with orthodox Catholicism another time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Helen 2:73

Il ne suffit de boire en l’eau que j’ay sacrée

A ceste belle Helene, afin d’estre amoureux :

Il faut aussi dormir dedans un antre ombreux,

Qui a joignant sa rive en un mont son entrée.

 

Il faut d’un pied dispos danser dessus la prée,

Et tourner par neuf fois autour d’un saule creux :

Il faut passer la planche, il faut faire des vœux

Au Pere sainct Germain qui garde la contrée.

 

Cela fait, quand un cœur seroit un froid glaçon,

Il sentira le feu d’une estrange façon

Enflamer sa froideur. Croyez ceste escriture.

 

Amour du rouge sang des Geans tout souillé,

Essuyant en ceste eau son beau corps despouillé,

Y laissa pour jamais ses feux et sa teinture.

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                            It’s not enough to drink from the water that I’ve consecrated

                                                                            To that fair Helen, in order to be in love:

                                                                            You must also sleep in a shaded cave

                                                                            Which has, adjoining a riverbank, its entry in a hillside.

 

                                                                            You must with eager foot dance over the meadow,

                                                                            And turn nine times around a hollow willow-tree;

                                                                            You must walk the plank, you must make vows

                                                                            To the Father St. Germain who watches over the countryside.

 

                                                                            That done, when her heart is a frozen icicle,

                                                                            It will feel fire, in some strange way,

                                                                            Inflaming its coldness. Believe this writing!

 

                                                                            Love, stained with the red blood of the Giants,

                                                                            Making clean in this water his fair body stripped bare,

                                                                            Left there forever his fires and his colour.

 

 

 

 

A spell with which to win your beloved, apparently. St. Germain is the patron saint of Paris (no surprise to football fans), and I guess by extension France. Love, in the final tercet, is Cupid again.

 

Blanchemain offers a variant in line 2, “A ceste belle Grecque …” (‘To that fair Greek…’), obviously still pointing to Helen.

 

A tiny detail: only the 8th poem on the blog whose first line begins with an ‘I’; however bizarre that seems.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

 

 

Helen 2:(75a)

Vous ruisseaux, vous rochers, vous antres solitaires,

Vous chesnes, heritiers du silence des bois,

Entendez les souspirs de ma derniere vois,

Et de mon testament soyez presents notaires.

 

Soyez de mon mal-heur fideles secretaires,

Gravez-le en vostre escorce, à fin que tous les mois

Il croisse comme vous ; cependant je m’en vois

Là bas privé de sens, de veines, et d’artères.

 

Je meurs pour la rigueur d’une fiere beauté,

Qui vit sans foy, sans loy, amour ne loyauté,

Qui me succe le sang comme un tigre sauvage.

 

Adieu, forests, adieu ! Adieu le verd sejour

De vos arbres, heureux pour ne cognoistre Amour

Ny sa mère, qui tourne en fureur le plus sage.

 

 

 

 

                                                                            You rivers, you rocks, you solitary caves,

                                                                            You oaks, inheritors of the silence of the woods,

                                                                            Hear the sighs of my last words,

                                                                            And be present as notaries of my will and testament.

 

                                                                            Be the faithful secretaries of my misfortune,

                                                                            Write of it in your bark, that every month

                                                                            It may grow like you: I, however, am going away

                                                                            Down below, deprived of sense, of veins, of arteries.

 

                                                                            I am dying because of the harshness of a proud beauty

                                                                            Who lives without faith, without law, love or loyalty,

                                                                            Who sucks out my blood like a savage tiger.

 

                                                                            Farewell, forests, farewell! Farewell green rest

                                                                            In your trees, happy for not knowing Love

                                                                            Nor his mother, who turns to madness the most wise.

 

 

 

 

This is another of those poems added by Blanchemain which seem to have arrived late at the party, being present only in posthumous editions. Again, familiar tropes, but beautifully done.

 

The opening with its sensitive nature poetry gives way to to the inhabitants of Ronsard’s other world, the Court, with its notaries and secretaries recording everything. Then we are off ‘down below’ to the world of the dead – have you noticed how Ronsard’s (poetic) concept of the afterlife is not ‘up’ in the Christian heaven but ‘down’ in the shades of the classical Hades? – and then back to savage nature with the image of the tiger before returning full circle to the woods and trees we began with. 

 

It’s all beautifully unbalanced too – the thoughts occupying less than, or more than, one section of the poem at a time: very un-rational, but a neatly-balanced, artistically-rendered version of un-balance.

 

To state the obvious, the last line is of course speaking of Cupid and Venus. (I note in passing – since my son was doing his Latin vocabulary last night – that Cupid is not the god of love, but of desire: it’s a rather different thing.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Helen 2:(72a)

(This one is printed only by Blanchemain – it is a late sonnet added in, perhaps, a posthumous edition, so not part of Marty-Laveaux’s sequence. I think it is nevertheless worth including in this collection.)

 

 

 

Maistresse quand je pense aux traverses d’Amour,

Qu’ore chaude, ore froide, en aimant tu me donnes ;

Comme sans passion mon cœur tu passionnes,

Qui n’a contre son mal ny tréve ny sejour,

 

Je souspire la nuict, je me complains le jour

Contre toy, ma Raison, qui mon fort abandonnes,

Et, pleine de discours, confuse, tu t’estonnes

Dés le premier assaut sans defendre ma tour.

 

Non, si forts ennemis n’assaillent notre place

Qu’ils ne fussent vaincus si tu tournois la face,

Encores que mon cœur trahist ce qui est mien.

 

Une œillade, une main, un petit ris, me tue ;

Des trois foibles soudars ta force est combattue ;

Qui te dira divine il ne dira pas bien.

 

 

 

 

                                                                            My Lady, when I think of the encounters in love

                                                                            Which, now hot, now cold, you give me as I love you;

                                                                            How, passionless, you impassion my heart,

                                                                            Which has no truce or rest in its troubles,

 

                                                                            I sigh all night, I complain all day,

                                                                            Against you, my reason, who have abandoned my defence

                                                                            And, overwhelmed by argument and confused, have been stunned

                                                                            Since the first assault and not defended my tower.

 

                                                                            No, the enemies attacking our place are not so powerful

                                                                            That they could not be beaten if you turned to face them,

                                                                            Though my heart still betrays what is mine.

 

                                                                            A glance, a touch, a little smile and you kill me:

                                                                            By those three weak soldiers your strength is defeated:

                                                                            If someone called you godlike, he’d be lying.
 

 

 

 

A re-combination of familiar tropes, but neatly packaged with each section of the poem as distinct thought.

 

The first quatrain spoken to the passionless mistress; the second to his own mind which has surrendered ‘since the first assault’; the first tercet focused on the ‘enemies’ who have overwhelmed his reason; and the last identifying three of the mistress’s most powerful weapons (or ‘soldiers’), weak in themselves but strong in their effect on his reason – her glance, her touch, her smile … 

 

And a wonderful last line: so much for the humanist vision of a man’s godlike reason!

 

Richelet offers us a word of wisdom on line 8, concerning the ‘tower’: ‘he means that faculty of the soul [or perhaps mind], of which reason is the first and principal [example], which controls the intelligence and the will’. I think you’d figured that out …

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Helen 2:58

Seule sans compagnie en une grande salle

Tu logeois l’autre jour pleine de majesté,

Cœur vrayment genereux, dont la brave beauté

Sans pareille ne treuve une autre qui l’égalle.

 

Ainsi seul en son ciel le Soleil se devalle,

Sans autre compagnon en son char emporté :

Ainsi loin de ses Dieux en son Palais vouté

Jupiter a choisi sa demeure royale.

 

Une ame vertueuse a tousjours un bon cœur :

Le Liévre fuyt tousjours, la Biche a tousjours peur,

Le Lyon de soymesme asseuré se hazarde.

 

La peur qui sert au peuple et de frein et de Loy,

Ne sçauroit estonner ny ta vertu ny toy :

La Loy ne sert de rien, quand la vertu nous garde.

 

 

 

                                                                            Alone without company in a grand hall

                                                                            You waited the other day, full of majesty,

                                                                            A truly generous heart whose worthy beauty

                                                                            Without parallel can find no other to equal it.

 

                                                                            Thus alone in his heaven the Sun runs along

                                                                            Without other companion borne in his chariot;

                                                                            Thus, far from the gods in his vaulted palace,

                                                                            Jupiter has chosen his royal residence.

 

                                                                            A virtuous soul always has a good heart;

                                                                            The hare always runs away, the doe is always afraid,

                                                                            The lion, sure of himself, takes risks.

 

                                                                            The fear which acts for the people as a restraint and as law

                                                                            Could not take either your virtue or yourself by surprise;

                                                                            There’s no need for the Law, when virtue protects us.

 

 

 

A poem which is so consistently positive, so unbendingly in praise of his mistress’s virtues, is something of a rarity towards the end of the book. So let’s celebrate this occasion!

 

As so often, we begin with reality and then there is a mythological parallel; and then the sestet takes us in another (but parallel) direction. Helen, alone in glory in a grand hall (it could just be a large room, but let’s think grand hall instead), is like the Sun alone in the sky or Jupiter ruling alone in heaven. She sits ‘in majesty’, a ruler like them. She is like a lion, so full of virtue that virtue alone, unaided by law, protects her.

 

We might argue the toss about the lion’s virtue, in an age where power and strength need to be wedded with mercy and tolerance; but the sixteenth century was less subtle in these matters – especially in the midst of the Wars of Religion, effectively a French civil war. Which is where, too, the fear comes in – a fear which Helen’s virtue protects her from.

 

And it’s lovely poetry too: hear those long, slow, noble syllables pile up at the beginning; the assonance in the opening line repeated at the start of the second quatrain, and then on into the two halves of the sestet; the carefully-balanced lines, either in words (“tousjours .. tousjours”) or in weight.

 

Of course, Ronsard didn’t arrive here without effort: Blanchemain has an alternative version of the final tercet – same sense, different words:

 

 

Cela qu’au peuple fait la crainte de la loy,

La naïfve vertu sans peur le fait en toy.

La Loy ne sert de rien, quand la vertu nous garde.

 

 

                                                                            That which among the people creates fear of the law

                                                                            Naive virtue, fearless, creates in you.

                                                                            There’s no need for the Law, when virtue protects us.

 

 

It is, let’s say, a more difficult sense to unravel; but I think it has a weight about it that the simpler revision lacks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Helen 2:53

Belle gorge d’albastre, et vous chaste poictrine,

Qui les Muses cachez en un rond verdelet :

Tertres d’Agathe blanc, petits gazons de laict,

Des Graces le sejour, d’Amour et de Cyprine :

 

Sein de couleur de lis et de couleur rosine,

De veines marqueté, je vous vy par souhait

Lever l’autre matin, comme l’Aurore fait

Quand vermeille elle sort de sa chambre marine.

 

Je vy de tous costez le Plaisir et le Jeu,

Venus, Amour, la Grace armez d’un petit feu,

Voler ainsi qu’enfans, par vos coustaux d’yvoire,

 

M’esblouyr, m’assaillir et surprendre mon fort :

Je vy tant de beautez que je ne les veux croire.

Un homme ne doit croire aux tesmoins de sa mort.

 

 

 

 

                                                                            Fair throat of alabaster, and chaste breast

                                                                            Which the Muses hide in that swelling roundness;

                                                                            Breasts of white agate, small lawns of milky-white,

                                                                            The resting-place of the Graces, of Love and of Cyprian Venus:

 

                                                                            Breasts the colour of lilies and of roses,

                                                                            Inlaid with veins, I saw you, as I wished,

                                                                            Arise the other morning, like Dawn does

                                                                            When she redly leaves her watery bed.

 

                                                                            I saw on all sides Pleasure and Joy

                                                                            And Venus, Love, Grace, armed with their little fires

                                                                            Flying like children through those ivory hills of yours,

 

                                                                            To stun me, to assail me, to surprise my defences:

                                                                            I saw so much beauty that I could not believe it.

                                                                            A man should not believe in the presages of his death.

 

 

 

This time we have Cyprian Venus – the place she landed after birth at sea – and others in a poem absorbed with Helen’s breasts! Lawns and hills, neither are white… Interestingly, Ronsard’s use of “coustaux” tells us something of his origins: the usual word is “coteaux”, but the pronunciation is that of central France.

 

The last line seems to come out of nowhere: in what way are Helen’s breasts “presages of his death”? The point, simply, is that so much beauty is enough to kill someone.

 

Richelet offers a number of notes: on line 2, he suggests that the ‘swelling’ roundness means that her breasts are ‘not yet ripe’ (or ‘mature’ if you prefer); on the opening lines, he adds ‘that is the perfection of the breast, to be round, mid-size, firm and white’; and on line 6, he remarks that “marqueté” (inlaid) indicates ‘mixed with little purplish streams which can be seen through the delicate skin’.