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 It’s not surprising that this sonnet ended up being withdrawn when that happened, naming him 6 times as it does!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.
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 grisonM’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’).
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 penseQu’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 certainQue 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.
Dialogue de l’autheur et du MondainEst-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.
Il ne suffit de boire en l’eau que j’ay sacréeA 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 vœuxAu Pere sainct Germain qui garde la contrée.Cela fait, quand un cœur seroit un froid glaçon,Il sentira le feu d’une estrange façonEnflamer 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.
Ceste fleur de Vertu, pour qui cent mille larmesJe 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.
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.)
(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 …
Seule sans compagnie en une grande salleTu logeois l’autre jour pleine de majesté,Cœur vrayment genereux, dont la brave beautéSans 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 voutéJupiter 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.
Oeuvres de Ronsard 