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 2:71

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 2:53

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’.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Helen 2:33

Si la beauté se perd, fais-en part de bonne heure,

Tandis qu’en son printemps tu la vois fleuronner :

Si elle ne se perd, ne crain point de donner

A tes amis le bien qui tousjours te demeure.

 

Venus, tu devrois estre en mon endroit meilleure,

Et non dedans ton camp ainsi m’abandonner :

Tu me laisses toy-mesme esclave emprisonner

Es mains d’une cruelle où il faut que je meure.

 

Tu as changé mon aise et mon doux en amer :

Que devoy-je esperer de toy, germe de mer,

Sinon toute tempeste ? et de toy qui es femme

 

De Vulcan, que du feu ? de toy garce de Mars,

Que couteaux qui sans cesse environnent mon ame

D’orages amoureux de flames et de dars ?

 

 

 

 

                                                                            If beauty becomes lost, use it in good time,

                                                                            Since in its springtime you see it flowering;

                                                                            If it does not become lost, never fear to give

                                                                            To your friends that good thing which always remains with you.

 

                                                                            Venus, you ought to act better in this place where I am,

                                                                            And not abandon me thus within your camp:

                                                                            You yourself have left me a slave, imprisoned

                                                                            In the hands of a cruel woman, where I must die.

 

                                                                            You have changed my ease and my sweetness into bitterness:

                                                                            What should I hope for from you, born of the sea,

                                                                            Unless all kinds of storms? And from you who are wife

 

                                                                            Of Vulcan, what but fire? From you, Mars’s bitch,

                                                                            But knives which ceaselessly encircle my soul

                                                                            With love’s downpours of flames and darts?

 

 

 

 

It’s not often that Ronsard resorts to a ‘logical’ manoeuvre like this – if A, then you must, if not-A then you still must… But it’s neatly done. ‘Your beauty is a gift – use it while you’ve got it (whether it will fade or not)’. And there’s also of course the point-scoring value of suggesting that Helen’s beauty is such that it will never fade.

 

Line 5 is clear in meaning but surprisingly hard to translate – ‘in my place’ sounds like ‘instead of me’ (which it isn’t), but then in line 6 he is ‘in your camp’, so where is ‘his’ place? There’s a mixture of implicit meanings – ‘in the surroundings I am in’ might capture some of it.

 

And then the sestet, with its multiple references to the myths of Venus. Sea-born, as in the famous painting by Botticelli as she glides to land in her shell; wife of Vulcan, the fire-god and blacksmith of the gods; wife too of Mars, god of war. Or rather, not really the wife of Mars as she’s married to Vulcan … I see no reason to doubt that ‘bitch’ was as offensive in middle French as it is to us today.

 

Richelet tells us that Ronsard based this poem on an epigram of Meleager. This is at 5.180 in the Greek Anthology:

 

 

τί ξένον, εἰ βροτολοιγὸς Ἔρως τὰ πυρίπνοα τόξα
βάλλει, καὶ λαμυροῖς ὄμμασι πικρὰ γελᾷ;
οὐ μάτηρ στέργει μὲν Ἄρη γαμέτις δὲ τέτυκται
Ἁφαίστου, κοινὰ καὶ πυρὶ καὶ ξίφεσιν;
ματρὸς δ᾽ οὐ μάτηρ ἀνέμων μάστιξι Θάλασσα
τραχὺ βοᾷ; γενέτας δ᾽ οὔτε τις οὔτε τινός.

τοὔνεκεν Ἁφαίστου μὲν ἔχει φλόγα. κύμασι δ᾽ ὀργὰν
στέρξεν ἴσαν, Ἄρεως δ᾽ αἱματόφυρτα βέλη.

 

 

                             How is it strange, if murderous Love shoots his fire-breathing arrows,

                             And laughs bitterly with his cruel eyes?

                             Does his mother not love Ares [Mars], and was she not made the wife

                             Of Hephaestus [Vulcan], [is she not] shared by fire and swords?

                             Doesn’t his mother’s mother the sea roar sharply

                             At the whip of the winds? [We know] neither who his father is, nor whose son [that father was].

                             Therefore he has Hephaestus’s fire, he loves anger equally

                             With the waves and [loves] Ares’ blood-stained weapons.

                             

 

As you can see, the ideas have been seamlessly adapted into Ronsard’s poem: most of Meleager is there, and yet Ronsard’s poem is completely different. It just goes to show why it’s worth looking at Ronsard’s inspirations: you get a very good feel for just how his genius works, but also for just how great that genius is.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Helen 2:67

Il ne faut s’esbahir, disoient ces bons vieillars

Dessus le mur Troyen, voyans passer Helene,

Si pour telle beauté nous souffrons tant de peine,

Nostre mal ne vaut pas un seul de ses regars.

 

Toutefois il vaut mieux pour n’irriter point Mars,

La rendre à son espoux afin qu’il la r’emmeine,

Que voir de tant de sang nostre campagne pleine,

Nostre havre gaigné, l’assaut à nos rampars.

 

Peres il ne falloit, à qui la force tremble,

Par un mauvais conseil les jeunes retarder :

Mais et jeunes et vieux vous deviez tous ensemble

 

Pour elle corps et biens et ville hazarder.

Menelas fut bien sage, et Pâris ce me semble :

L’un de la demander, l’autre de la garder.

 

 

 

 

                                                                            “We should not be astonished,” said those fine old men

                                                                            On the walls of Troy, seeing Helen pass,

                                                                            “If for such beauty we are suffering troubles:

                                                                            Our ills are not worth a single one of her glances.

 

                                                                            Even so, it would be better – so as not to upset Mars –

                                                                            To return her to her husband so that he can take her away,

                                                                            Rather than see our countryside filled with so much blood,

                                                                            Our harbour won, the assault at our very ramparts.”

 

                                                                            Fathers, you whose strength trembles and fails should not

                                                                            Hold back the young with your bad counsel:

                                                                            Instead you should, both young and old together,

 

                                                                            Risk for her your bodies, your goods, your town.

                                                                            Menelaus was very wise, Paris too seems so to me:

                                                                            The one to demand her back, the other to keep her.

 

 

 

We’re right back in the Homeric world here: nothing about Ronsard’s Helen, this is all about her famous antecedent. A reminder: Troy was besieged by the Greeks, who came supporting Menelaus’s claim to Helen, as her husband; Paris, prince of that city, has no claim to her other than that he is the one with whom she had fled to Troy.

 

Richelet’s commentary identifies the section of the Iliad Ronsard is thinking of: “This sonnet is based on these verses from Iliad 3 [lines 156ff]: Οὐ νέμεσις Τρῷας καὶ ἐυκνημιδας Αχαιοὺς …” I have borrowed the following translation from poetryintranslation.com:

 

There Priam sat with the city Elders, Panthous, Thymoetes, Lampus, Clytius, Hicetaon, scion of Ares, and the wise men Antenor and Ucalegon. Too old to fight, they were nevertheless fine speakers, perched on the wall like cicadas on a tree that pour out sound. Seeing Helen ascend the ramparts, they spoke soft winged words to each other: ‘Small wonder that Trojans and bronze-greaved Greeks have suffered for such a woman, she is so like an immortal goddess …”

 

Ronsard has his tongue in his cheek a bit at the end: the old men who could see both sides of every question and thus offered no useful advice at all, and who here decide that both suitors are ‘very wise’, are a bit of a classical stock-in-trade: despite the grand opening, and the clear conclusion of lines 7-8 (which is where the discussion in Homer ends), by the end it is clearly their un-Homeric indecision that comes through.

 

I almost didn’t comment on his use of the word ‘fathers’: it’s so common in the classics to hear the old referred to and honoured as ‘fathers’ (compare the Senate in Rome who were often so called), that I almost overlooked the fact that it is relatively unusual in Ronsard.

 

One question: why would Mars (Ares), god of war, be upset if the Trojans did not return Helen? Helen is (loosely) his sister – they share Zeus/Jupiter as father – so maybe the suggestion is that he is concerned for her honour as a married lady who has run away from her husband. Yet, in Homer, Ares fights on the Trojans’ side; so this doesn’t make a lot of sense. If he was driven by this sort of concern, he’d not have supported the Trojans in the war… So, for me, this is a Ronsardian loose end: an allusion I cannot tie in with his awareness of his classical sources. Ideas welcome…

 

—–

 

I was just reading Gilbert Gadoffre and came across this note on Ronsard’s use of mythology, which I think is worth sharing here:

 

Myths in Ronsard are not decorative but functional. References to mythology, to mysteries, to the cosmos, to prophecy, to demons, to music united with poetry, to love sacred linked with love profane, are inseparable from a mental universe in which poetry, considered as a means of understanding, is integral to a certain kind of interior life, a certain kind of wisdom.

 

I think this is an important point I haven’t emphasised above: the Homeric theme does not make this poem unconnected to, or irrelevant to, the modern Helen or to the France of Ronsard’s day; in the world of Ronsard, Homeric themes are as real and relevant as ‘modern’ ones, and representative of the unchanging realities of human life. In fact, I think we would be wrong to think of Ronsard approaching Homer as myth: in an extension of Gadoffre’s point, essentially in Ronsard ‘myth’ is simply a substitute for today’s reality, another way of seeing life (life writ large, perhaps, in primary colours).

 

I suppose it is in some ways like the way we use the events of films, of soap operas, of Harry Potter, as sharper, clearer examples of the conflicts and uncertainties we deal with daily. No-one thinks any of them are in the final analysis real, but they provide enough of reality to be shared examples we can all refer to to explain or colour our own commentary on life experiences.

 

—–   

 

A final note of Ronsard trivia: why do so few poems begin with the letter ‘I’ ?!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Helen 2:68

Ah, belle liberté, qui me servois d’escorte,

Quand le pied me portoit où libre je voulois !

Ah, que je te regrette ! helas, combien de fois

Ay-je rompu le joug, que malgré moy je porte !

 

Puis je l’ay rattaché, estant nay de la sorte,

Que sans aimer je suis et du plomb et du bois,

Quand je suis amoureux j’ay l’esprit et la vois,

L’invention meilleure et la Muse plus forte.

 

Il me faut donc aimer pour avoir bon esprit,

Afin de concevoir des enfans par escrit,

Pour allonger mon nom aux despens de ma peine.

 

Quel sujet plus fertil sçauroy-je mieux choisir

Que le sujet qui fut d’Homere le plaisir,

Ceste toute divine et vertueuse Helene?

 

 

 

 

                                                                            Oh fair liberty, which acted as my escort

                                                                            When my feet would carry me where I wanted to be free!

                                                                            Oh how I regret it, oh the number of times

                                                                            I have broken the yoke which despite myself I bear!

 

                                                                            But then I have put it on again, being born with the fate

                                                                            That, without loving, I am like lead or wood,

                                                                            But when in love I have spirit and voice,

                                                                            Finer invention and a stronger Muse.

 

                                                                            I must, then, love to be in good spirits,

                                                                            To conceive my children in writing,

                                                                            To make my fame greater at the expense of my pain.

 

                                                                            What subject more fertile could I better choose

                                                                            Than the subject which was Homer’s pleasure,

                                                                            The totally divine and virtuous Helen?

 

 

 

What a terrific poem! One of my favourites, I think. If anything could be said to sum up Ronsard’s creed as a poet, this might be it: without the inspiration of love, invention is weak; without the pain of love, he cannot conceive children (poems) – what a great image that is, since real children come from the pain of love (i.e. the resulting childbirth) too…  More than a little disingenuous of course, as Ronsard was perfectly able to write fine poetry about other topics too, and no doubt wrote better about being in love when he wasn’t actually in love: both things he knew well himself.

 

The idea of throwing off the yoke of love – Cassandra, then Marie, and the others – but then voluntarily putting it back on to gain the consequent inspiration is fine too. Even the Homeric reference is sharp and clear, rather than obscure and demanding thought. And the way the poem moves from Liberty at the start of line 1 to Helen at the end of line 14 neatly encapsulates the tension between freedom and invention.

 

Richelet offers two thoughts in his commentary: on line 8 he adds that “Plato in his Banquet [Symposion] says that Love is a very fine poet” (a completely unnecessary classical source for the idea, I think!); and on line 10 he explains that the ‘children’ are “his books, his spiritual offspring”…

 

More interestingly, but a little sadly, Blanchemain offers an entirely different (and in my view inferior) version of the last 4 lines:

 

 

… Prolongeant ma memoire aux despens de ma vie.

 

Je ne veux m’enquerir s’on sent après la mort ;

Je le croy, je perdroy d’escrire toute envie :

Le bon nom qui nous suit est nostre reconfort.

 

                                                                            Prolonging memory of me at the expense of my life.

 

                                                                            I do not want to enquire if we feel after our death;

                                                                            I believe it, I shall lose all desire to write:

                                                                            The good name which follows us is our comfort.

 

 

Sadly, after the neat ‘paragraph’ about Homer and Helen, this reads a bit like a miscellany of proverbial thoughts – several disconnected musings, rather than a substantive conclusion to the poem with that link back to the beginning.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Helen 2:47

Lettre, je te reçoy, que ma Deesse en terre

M’envoye pour me faire ou joyeux, ou transi,

Ou tous les deux ensemble : ô Lettre, tout ainsi

Que tu m’apportes seule ou la paix, ou la guerre,

 

Amour en te lisant de mille traits m’enferre,

Touche mon sein, à fin qu’en retournant d’ici

Tu contes à ma dame en quel piteux souci

Je vy pour sa beauté, tant j’ay le cœur en serre !

 

Touche mon estomac pour sentir mes chaleurs,

Approche de mes yeux pour recevoir mes pleurs,

Que larme dessus larme amour tousjours m’assemble :

 

Puis voyant les effects d’un si contraire esmoy,

Dy que Deucalion et Phaëthon chez moy,

L’un au cœur l’autre aux yeux se sont logez ensemble.

 

 

 

 

                                                                            Letter, I have received you : my earthly goddess

                                                                            Sent you to me to make me happy, or dead,

                                                                            Or both together. O letter, just as

                                                                            You alone bring me peace or war,

 

                                                                            Love, reading you, tangles me in a thousand blows,

                                                                            Wounds my breast, so that returning from here

                                                                            You can tell my lady in what pitiful trouble

                                                                            I am living because of her beauty, so deeply I have its talons in my heart.

 

                                                                            Touch my stomach to feel my fever,

                                                                            Come near my eyes to catch my tears,

                                                                            How love continuously brings me tear upon tear :

 

                                                                            Then, seeing the effects of such contrary emotions,

                                                                            Tell her how Deucalion and Phaethon are with me

                                                                            Living together, the one in my heart, the other in my eyes.

 

 

 

 

Oddly, Ronsard doesn’t talk about letters very often, for one who writes so much. Perhaps he wasn’t a correspondent; perhaps his poems are his letters.

 

He neatly uses two mythological figures in the second tercet to parallel the fever and tears of the first tercet: as Richelet comments, “By Deucalion, who was saved from the flood, and Phaeton, who steered so poorly the sun’s chariot, he means water and fire.” I think this is the first time we’ve met them in the Amours – rather oddly, considering their fame.

 

Blanchemain reports two variant versions of the first tercet. He prints line 11 as “Que torrent sur torrent ce faux amour assemble” (‘How this false love brings torrent upon torrent’); but he also prints the version above in a footnote, this time changing line 10 to read “pour voir tomber mes pleurs” (‘to see my tears fall’).

 

 

 

 

 

 

Helen 2:57

De Myrte et de Laurier fueille à fueille enserrez

Helene entrelassant une belle Couronne,

M’appella par mon nom : Voyla que je vous donne,

De moy seule, Ronsard, l’escrivain vous serez.

 

Amour qui l’escoutoit, de ses traicts acerez

Me pousse Helene au cœur, et son Chantre m’ordonne :

Qu’un sujet si fertil vostre plume n’estonne :

Plus l’argument est grand, plus Cygne vous mourrez.

 

Ainsi me dist Amour, me frappant de ses ailes :

Son arc fist un grand bruit, les fueilles eternelles

Du Myrte je senty sur mon chef tressaillir.

 

Adieu Muses adieu, vostre faveur me laisse :

Helene est mon Parnasse : ayant telle Maistresse,

Le Laurier est à moy je ne sçaurois faillir.

 

 

 

 

                                                                            With myrtle and laurel closely twined leaf by leaf

                                                                            Helen was weaving a fair crown,

                                                                            And she called me by my name : « This is what I give you:

                                                                            Of me alone, Ronsard, you shall write.”

 

                                                                            Love, who heard her, with his sharp blows

                                                                            Drives Helen into my heart, and ordains me her Singer;

                                                                            “May a subject so fertile not silence your pen:

                                                                            The greater the topic, the greater the swan you will die as.”

 

                                                                            So said Love to me, striking me with his wings;

                                                                            His bow made a great noise, the eternal leaves

                                                                            Of myrtle I felt rustling on my head.

 

                                                                            Farewell Muses, farewell, your favour has left me.

                                                                            Helen is my Parnassus; having such a mistress,

                                                                            The Laurel is mine and I cannot fail.

 

 

 

Here Ronsard takes one metaphor, that of the Muses on Parnassus, and twists it into another metaphor we are quite familiar with – though rarely this literally – the beloved as the poet’s muse. Here Helen weaves him a crown of myrtle, representing poetry, and laurel, representing victory; and crowning him her ‘champion’ insists he look to her, not the Muses, for inspiration. And in the last lines that is what he does, encouraged by Love (Cupid) who endorses the choice emphatically. Parnassus does not just represent the home of the Muses (hence Helen is the ‘home’ of his new muse), Ronsard also wants us to think of how poets sought inspiration: as Richelet tells us, “those who wished to become poets would go and sleep on this mountain”, and I have no doubt Ronsard wants us (and Helen) to get the message about sleeping together…

 

I suspect “calling me by my name” in line 2 is significant, the kind of magic spell which is more potent for naming names specifically. In line 8 the ‘swan’ who dies is of course the poet – “you will die the greater poet for singing of Helen”.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Helen 2:18

Je voyois me couchant, s’esteindre une chandelle,

Et je disois au lict bassement à-par-moy,

Pleust à Dieu que le soin, que la peine et l’esmoy,

Qu’Amour m’engrave au cœur, s’esteignissent comme elle.

 

Un mastin enragé, qui de sa dent cruelle

Mord un homme, il luy laisse une image de soy

Qu’il voit tousjours en l’eau : Ainsi tousjours je voy,

Soit veillant ou dormant, le portrait de ma belle.

 

Mon sang chaud en est cause. Or comme on voit souvent

L’Esté moins boüillonner que l’Automne suivant,

Mon Septembre est plus chaud que mon Juin de fortune.

 

Helas ! pour vivre trop, j’ay trop d’impression.

Tu es mort une fois bien-heureux Ixion,

Et je meurs mille fois pour n’en mourir pas une.

 

 

 

 

                                                                            I saw, as I was lying down, my candle go out

                                                                            And on my bed I said quietly to myself,

                                                                            ‘Would to God that the care, pain and agitation

                                                                            Which love engraves on my heart, could be extinguished like that. »

 

                                                                            A mad mastiff, which with its cruel teeth

                                                                            Bites a man, leaves him an image of itself

                                                                            Which he sees always as he sees water. And thus I always see,

                                                                            Waking or sleeping, the portrait of my fair one.

 

                                                                            My hot blood is the reason for it. Just as we often see

                                                                            The summer less boiling than the autumn which follows,

                                                                            So it chances my September is hotter than my June.

 

                                                                            Alas! From living too long, I have felt too much:

                                                                            Happily you died just once, Ixion,

                                                                            While I die a thousand times so as not to die of it once.

 

 

 

 

 

Here Ronsard provides three finely-drawn images one after another. First, the candle at his bedside, so easily extinguished – unlike the flame of love. Second, quite a shocking image suggesting that love’s madness is very like the most deadly madness of all – rabies, or hydrophobia, a real killer disease now as then. (Richelet, Ronsard’s commentator here, tells us of line 7, that “this illness is called ‘pathos hydrophobikon’, because those who are affected by this illness fear water, because water always represents to them a dog.” That might not be quite how it is, but clearly there is a similar image in Ronsard’s mind as he talks of the infected man seeing an image of the mad dog when he sees water.)

 

Then, third, in the sestet, Ronsard alludes to the heat of the dog-days (generally, August-September), carefully leaving us to make the link with the heated madness of  the ‘mad dog’ of the previous four lines. It is a lovely image linking the unusual sultry heat of the post-summer months, with the unusual heat of his love now that he is past his youth. 

 

Then finally a mythological reference, of course. Usually Ixion is represented as bound to a burning wheel for eternity – hardly dying just once! (Though I suppose, with typical romantic hyperbole, Ronsard could be saying “Ixion’s post-death pains aside, he did in fact die just once; whereas I the poet die hundreds of times – how much worse that is!”) Ixion in any case has other resonances: Ixion, guilty of murdering his father-in-law, is another example of madness, perhaps even love’s madness; and some sources make Ixion’s father Phlegyas – a name meaning ‘fiery’. Hence, Ronsard is making a multi-layered reference here, and perhaps he did have in mind some version of the story where Ixion did indeed die a single, simple death – though the way he writes “even Ixion…” suggests the hyperbole above instead.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Helen 2:60

Passant dessus la tombe où Lucrece repose,

Tu versas dessus elle une moisson de fleurs :

L’eschaufant de souspirs, et l’arrosant de pleurs,

Tu monstras qu’une mort tenoit ta vie enclose.

 

Si tu aimes le corps dont la terre dispose,

Imagine ta force et conçoy tes rigueurs :

Tu me verras cruelle entre mille langueurs

Mourir puis que la mort te plaist sur toute chose.

 

C’est acte de pitié d’honorer un cercueil,

Mespriser les vivans est un signe d’orgueil.

Puis que ton naturel les fantômes embrasse,

 

Et que rien n’est de toy, s’il n’est mort, estimé,

Sans languir tant de fois, esconduit de ta grace,

Je veux du tout mourir pour estre mieux aimé.

 

 

 

 

                                                                            Passing over the tomb where Lucrece lies,

                                                                            You poured upon her a harvest of flowers :

                                                                            Warming her with your sighs, wetting her with your tears,

                                                                            You showed that the dead girl held your life prisoner.

 

                                                                            If you love the body which belongs to the earth,

                                                                            Imagine your power and consider your harshness ;

                                                                            Cruel one, you will see me among a thousand sufferings

                                                                            Dying – since death pleases you above all.

 

                                                                            It is an act of pity to honour a coffin,

                                                                            But despising the living is a sign of pride.

                                                                            Since your nature is to caress ghosts,

 

                                                                            And nothing is esteemed by you unless it is dead,

                                                                            Suffering no more by being dismissed from your favour,

                                                                            I’d prefer to die, that I might be better loved.

 

 

 

It sometimes seems that you can hear real irritation in Ronsard. To me, this is one of those places: ‘yes, Helene, it’s all very well remembering the dead, but remember the living too’. Note that, in line 3, ‘eschauffer’ carries an implied meaning of ‘arousing’ as well as ‘warming’ – as if Helen could raise Lucrece from the dead.

 

Richelet informs us that “this Lucrece was a girl from Bacqueville [Normandy], young, fair, learned, among the most perfect at Court, who was among Helen’s best friends”.