Xanthe | Oeuvres de Ronsard

Pour la douleur qu’Amour veut que je sente,

Ainsi que moy Phebus tu lamentois,

Quand amoureux et banny tu chantois

Pres d’Ilion sur les rives de Xante.

Pinçant en vain ta lyre blandissante,

Fleuves et fleurs et bois tu enchantois,

Non la beauté qu’en l’ame tu sentois,

Qui te navroit d’une playe aigrissante.

Là de ton teint tu pallissois les fleurs,

Là les ruisseaux s’augmentoyent de tes pleurs,

Là tu vivois d’une esperance vaine.

Pour mesme nom Amour me fait douloir

Pres de Vandôme au rivage du Loir,

Comme un Phenis renaissant de ma peine.

With the sadness which Love wants me to feel

You too, Phoebus, just like me lamented

When, a banished lover, you sang

By Ilium on the banks of the Xanthe.

Vainly gripping your beguiling lyre

You enchanted rivers, flowers, woods,

But not the beauty whom your soul desired

Who hurt you with a bitter wound.

There, you made the flowers pale with your hue;

There, the rivers grew deeper with your tears;

There, you lived in empty hope.

Now, Love makes me weep for the same name

Near Vendôme on the banks of the Loir,

Like a phoenix reborn from my pain.

Another mythological sequence: Ronsard once again creates a parallel between ‘his’ Cassandre and her Trojan namesake. Phoebus (Apollo) was believed to have fallen in love with Cassandra of Troy (Ilium) but been rejected by her. The river Xanthe is one of the Trojan plain’s rivers. The phoenix is the legendary bird reborn through fire – so that Ronsard evokes the burning pain he feels without actually having to use that phrase. Note that the Loir is not the Loire – it’s further north in Eure-et-Loir.

I’ve translated line 7 rather loosely: strictly, it’s “But not the beauty whom you feel [or, ‘which you feel’] in your soul“; beauty may be the abstract or it may mean ‘her beauty’ or it may just mean Cassandra! But I think Apollo is meant to feel the desire (or the wound), rather than just ‘sense her beauty’; so I’ve tried to convey that intent rather than translate the words directly.

Blanchemain’s version has (in my view) some improvements on this one – and some awkwardnesses missing here! In line 3 he has “Quand, amoureux, loin du ciel, tu chantois” (‘When, in love but far from heaven, you sang’); but the major differences, for better and worse, are in the final sestet. Here it is in his version:

Là de ton teint se pallissoient les fleurs,

Et l’eau, croissant du dégout de tes pleurs,

Portoit tes cris, dont elle rouloit pleine.

Pour mesme nom les fleurettes du Loir,

Pres de Vendôme, ont daigné me douloir,

Et l’eau se plaindre aux souspirs de ma peine.

There, the flowers grew pale with your hue,

And the waters, growing deeper as they tasted your tears,

Carried your cries, as they flowed filled with them.

Now, for the same name, the little flowers of the Loir

Near Vendôme have seen fit to grieve with me,

And the waters to weep at my pain’s sighs.

For better, Ronsard avoids the slightly approximate rhyme of ‘vaine – peine’ and uses a stricter rhyme instead; and he mirrors the flowers and waters of the first tercet in the second. But for worse, he loses the linking theme of Love’s intent, and the image of the phoenix.