Helen

After the success of his first books of Amours, and the Odes and Hymns, Ronsard returned to the sonnet form in the 1570s with two books of Sonnets pour Hélène. Unlike the first two books of Amours, which recall real love affairs which Ronsard went through, Hélène appears (to me at least) to be more of an ‘imagined’ love – that is, an example of chivalric or courtly love. (It may be relevant to note that several of the poems – including the entire ‘run’ from 21-37 in book 2 – were taken from Ronsard’s earlier publication, the Amours diverses, and had appeared there as recently as the 1578 edition of his works, the year in which the first Helen set appeared!) Nevertheless Helen was real – Hélène de Fonsèque (1546 – 1618), who came from Surgères (see sonnet 7 of book 1) and was a demoiselle d’honneur to the Queen Catherine de Medici. There is a suggestion that Ronsard wrote the poems as a form of therapy for her after her husband was killed in the wars – possibly fulfilling a royal command.

The second book contains perhaps Ronsard’s most famous sonnet of all, “Quand vous serez bien vieille“. Poems from both books will appear here; I should also direct your attention to the attractive English verse translations of the whole two books by Humbert Wolfe. Second hand copies are easy to come by on the web!