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’.