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.