French poetry 101: François Villon
Apr. 8th, 2007 05:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
foudebassanIt’s poetry month over the pond and why not do it here too ? With a French twist of course, but it should all be intelligible to English-speakers.
So,
The first person reputed to have written in what is officially considered to be French is François Villon (1431-?) – before that, the multitude of dialects spoken in what is now France were derived either from low-Latin or Gallic dialects and are not all that intelligible to the modern eye; the official language was of course Church Latin.
François de Montcorbier was adopted, and most probably buggered senseless by Guillaume de Villon, from whom he also received an excellent education. He was bright, and was sent to study in Paris, where he did what students usually do – explore his sexuality (he was quite unashamedly and exclusively gay, though textbooks seem to omit that fact more often than not), write crude verses in slang and drink a lot. His killed a priest during one of those brawls, fled, came back, tried to make a living from his writing, failed, robbed a monastery to keep his gigolo lover in a style they would both love to become accustomed to, was eventually caught for it, went to prison, was tortured and his accomplices hung. He was, understandably, feeling a bit low by that point and thus wrote a poem to the King, La Ballade Des Pendus, pleading for mercy. Legend has it that he was literally standing under the gallows when news arrived that his sentence was commuted to 10 years of exile… and this is the last thing we know about him. Whether he died in abject poverty as textbooks say or changed his named and quietly eloped with his lover to a quiet little convent somewhere abroad is up to your imagination.
He is best remembered for his “Testament”, a long series of poems that are in part autobiographical, in part satirical, where he says he should have studied harder as a schoolboy instead of partying all the time (a stanza most primary school teachers in France have among their personal favourites, for some reason).
Today’s poem is a ballad from the Testament – note the prosody. Each stanza has eight verses of eight syllables, except the last one, “l’envoi”, that is only half the length. The last verse is the same in every stanza, giving an impression of endless repetition in the best of medieval traditions. The fact that the last stanza is shorter, and gives meaning to the whole poem, however denotes a first breach of the endless circle-like form medieval rondeaux are reminiscent of. We are not yet into the era of the sonnet (a poem broken in the middle, with the two last stanzas contrasting with the two first, marking the idea of a progress, of change): the ballad hangs between the two trends, a true testament to its period.
listen to it here!
Ballade des Dames du temps jadis
Dites-moi où, n'en quel pays,
Est Flora la belle Romaine,
Archipiades, ne Thaïs,
Qui fut sa cousine germaine,
Echo, parlant quant bruit on mène
Dessus rivière ou sur étang,
Qui beauté eut trop plus qu'humaine ?
Mais où sont les neiges d'antan ?
Où est la très sage Héloïs,
Pour qui fut châtré et puis moine
Pierre Esbaillart à Saint-Denis ?
Pour son amour eut cette essoine.
Semblablement, où est la roine
Qui commanda que Buridan
Fût jeté en un sac en Seine ?
Mais où sont les neiges d'antan ?
La roine Blanche comme un lis
Qui chantait à voix de sirène,
Berthe au grand pied, Bietrix, Aliz,
Haramburgis qui tint le Maine,
Et Jeanne, la bonne Lorraine
Qu'Anglais brûlèrent à Rouen ;
Où sont-ils, où, Vierge souvraine ?
Mais où sont les neiges d'antan ?
Prince, n'enquerrez de semaine
Où elles sont, ni de cet an,
Que ce refrain ne vous remaine :
Mais où sont les neiges d'antan ?
Prince, this week do not ask
Where they are, nor this year
Let this refrain not
But where is the snow of yore?
(Tell me, where, in which land
Is Flora the beautiful Roman
Archipiades or Thais
Who was her cousin
Echo, who talks as there is sound
Over rivers or ponds,
Who had more beauty than is human.
But where is the snow of yore?
Where is the stern Heloisa,
For whom Pierre Esbaillard in Saint Denis
Was first castrated and then made monk?
His love was so rewarded.
And where is the queen
Who had Buridan
Tied in a sack and thrown in the Seine?
But where is the snow of yore?
The Queen White as a lily
Who sung like a mermaid
Bertha with the big foot, Beatrix, Alix,
Haramburgis who held the Maine,
And Joan the good Lorraine
Whom the English burned in Rouen?
Where are they, Sovereign Lady?
But where is the snow of yore?
Prince, this week do not ask
Where they are, nor this year
Let this refrain not bring you back
But where is the snow of yore?)
Archipiades = Alcibiades, thought to have been a girl during the Middle Ages
Thais = one of Alexander’s mistresses
Echo: the Greek nymph who fell in love with Narcisse
Heloisa and Abélard = hottest love story in the Middle Ages. He was a monk and her teacher, they feel in love and slept with each other. Her uncle cut off his, ahem, manly attributes and locked them both up in separate convents until she came to reason. They decided not to let such insignificant considerations come into account and carried on with their (epistolary) love story until death parted them. True story, we still have the letters.
Joan of Burgundy, Philippe V’s wife, was said to have lovers she entertained in a tower over the Seine river. The King eventually realised something was going on, had her followed, and the poor lady had to cut her lovers’ throats and throw them in the river to eliminate the evidence. Maurice Druon wrote a novel set in that period, Les Rois Maudits.
Queen Blanche is a wordplay, as Blanche means White and white is also the royal colour, and the colour of white lilies (another symbol of the monarchy). It is also a reference to Blanche de Castille, the first Queen mother to rule France as an interim monarch, waiting for her son to be old enough to take over.
ETA, thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
alienor77310: Bertha (aka Bertrade) Greatfoot was Charlemagne's mother.
Beatrix is probably Dante's muse, and Alis, Queen Alice (aka Adélaïde) de Savoie, wife of Louis VI.
Haramburgis = feudal sovereign.
Joan of Arc, self-explanatory
Sovereign Lady = the virgin Mary.
The poem can be interpreted as a love song to all these beautiful, powerful ladies of yore. It can also be seen as a homosexual pamphlet – ladies are dangerous, don’t be deceived by their sweet appearance, sleep with men instead.
Next time: poetry as a militant way to defend the use of the French language. Défense et illustration de la langue française: les poètes de la Pléiade.
So,
The first person reputed to have written in what is officially considered to be French is François Villon (1431-?) – before that, the multitude of dialects spoken in what is now France were derived either from low-Latin or Gallic dialects and are not all that intelligible to the modern eye; the official language was of course Church Latin.
François de Montcorbier was adopted, and most probably buggered senseless by Guillaume de Villon, from whom he also received an excellent education. He was bright, and was sent to study in Paris, where he did what students usually do – explore his sexuality (he was quite unashamedly and exclusively gay, though textbooks seem to omit that fact more often than not), write crude verses in slang and drink a lot. His killed a priest during one of those brawls, fled, came back, tried to make a living from his writing, failed, robbed a monastery to keep his gigolo lover in a style they would both love to become accustomed to, was eventually caught for it, went to prison, was tortured and his accomplices hung. He was, understandably, feeling a bit low by that point and thus wrote a poem to the King, La Ballade Des Pendus, pleading for mercy. Legend has it that he was literally standing under the gallows when news arrived that his sentence was commuted to 10 years of exile… and this is the last thing we know about him. Whether he died in abject poverty as textbooks say or changed his named and quietly eloped with his lover to a quiet little convent somewhere abroad is up to your imagination.
He is best remembered for his “Testament”, a long series of poems that are in part autobiographical, in part satirical, where he says he should have studied harder as a schoolboy instead of partying all the time (a stanza most primary school teachers in France have among their personal favourites, for some reason).
Today’s poem is a ballad from the Testament – note the prosody. Each stanza has eight verses of eight syllables, except the last one, “l’envoi”, that is only half the length. The last verse is the same in every stanza, giving an impression of endless repetition in the best of medieval traditions. The fact that the last stanza is shorter, and gives meaning to the whole poem, however denotes a first breach of the endless circle-like form medieval rondeaux are reminiscent of. We are not yet into the era of the sonnet (a poem broken in the middle, with the two last stanzas contrasting with the two first, marking the idea of a progress, of change): the ballad hangs between the two trends, a true testament to its period.
listen to it here!
Dites-moi où, n'en quel pays,
Est Flora la belle Romaine,
Archipiades, ne Thaïs,
Qui fut sa cousine germaine,
Echo, parlant quant bruit on mène
Dessus rivière ou sur étang,
Qui beauté eut trop plus qu'humaine ?
Mais où sont les neiges d'antan ?
Où est la très sage Héloïs,
Pour qui fut châtré et puis moine
Pierre Esbaillart à Saint-Denis ?
Pour son amour eut cette essoine.
Semblablement, où est la roine
Qui commanda que Buridan
Fût jeté en un sac en Seine ?
Mais où sont les neiges d'antan ?
La roine Blanche comme un lis
Qui chantait à voix de sirène,
Berthe au grand pied, Bietrix, Aliz,
Haramburgis qui tint le Maine,
Et Jeanne, la bonne Lorraine
Qu'Anglais brûlèrent à Rouen ;
Où sont-ils, où, Vierge souvraine ?
Mais où sont les neiges d'antan ?
Prince, n'enquerrez de semaine
Où elles sont, ni de cet an,
Que ce refrain ne vous remaine :
Mais où sont les neiges d'antan ?
Prince, this week do not ask
Where they are, nor this year
Let this refrain not
But where is the snow of yore?
(Tell me, where, in which land
Is Flora the beautiful Roman
Archipiades or Thais
Who was her cousin
Echo, who talks as there is sound
Over rivers or ponds,
Who had more beauty than is human.
But where is the snow of yore?
Where is the stern Heloisa,
For whom Pierre Esbaillard in Saint Denis
Was first castrated and then made monk?
His love was so rewarded.
And where is the queen
Who had Buridan
Tied in a sack and thrown in the Seine?
But where is the snow of yore?
The Queen White as a lily
Who sung like a mermaid
Bertha with the big foot, Beatrix, Alix,
Haramburgis who held the Maine,
And Joan the good Lorraine
Whom the English burned in Rouen?
Where are they, Sovereign Lady?
But where is the snow of yore?
Prince, this week do not ask
Where they are, nor this year
Let this refrain not bring you back
But where is the snow of yore?)
Archipiades = Alcibiades, thought to have been a girl during the Middle Ages
Thais = one of Alexander’s mistresses
Echo: the Greek nymph who fell in love with Narcisse
Heloisa and Abélard = hottest love story in the Middle Ages. He was a monk and her teacher, they feel in love and slept with each other. Her uncle cut off his, ahem, manly attributes and locked them both up in separate convents until she came to reason. They decided not to let such insignificant considerations come into account and carried on with their (epistolary) love story until death parted them. True story, we still have the letters.
Joan of Burgundy, Philippe V’s wife, was said to have lovers she entertained in a tower over the Seine river. The King eventually realised something was going on, had her followed, and the poor lady had to cut her lovers’ throats and throw them in the river to eliminate the evidence. Maurice Druon wrote a novel set in that period, Les Rois Maudits.
Queen Blanche is a wordplay, as Blanche means White and white is also the royal colour, and the colour of white lilies (another symbol of the monarchy). It is also a reference to Blanche de Castille, the first Queen mother to rule France as an interim monarch, waiting for her son to be old enough to take over.
ETA, thanks to
alienor77310: Bertha (aka Bertrade) Greatfoot was Charlemagne's mother.Beatrix is probably Dante's muse, and Alis, Queen Alice (aka Adélaïde) de Savoie, wife of Louis VI.
Haramburgis = feudal sovereign.
Joan of Arc, self-explanatory
Sovereign Lady = the virgin Mary.
The poem can be interpreted as a love song to all these beautiful, powerful ladies of yore. It can also be seen as a homosexual pamphlet – ladies are dangerous, don’t be deceived by their sweet appearance, sleep with men instead.
Next time: poetry as a militant way to defend the use of the French language. Défense et illustration de la langue française: les poètes de la Pléiade.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-04-08 05:33 pm (UTC)Beatrix is probably Dante's muse, and Alis, Queen Alice (aka Adélaïde) de Savoie, wife of Louis VI.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-08 05:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-09 05:25 am (UTC)The reference to Heloisa and Abélard reminded me of the book, 'I Capture the Castle.' They have named their dog Heloise and their cat Abélard after this couple of course.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-09 08:23 am (UTC)(My mind is indeed in the gutter, sorry)
no subject
Date: 2007-04-09 07:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-09 06:18 am (UTC)Catherine
no subject
Date: 2007-04-09 08:19 am (UTC)Dorothy Sayers sounds like someone I'd like to read :D
no subject
Date: 2007-04-09 08:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-09 08:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-10 01:27 am (UTC)Ah - excuse me. I can't continue in this vein, as I have a cat requiring my immediate attention and affection...
no subject
Date: 2007-04-13 07:13 pm (UTC)You should definitely take a look at Dorothy Sayers. I've read all her mysteries (my favourite might be The Nine Tailors). She also translated Dante....
no subject
Date: 2007-04-13 09:01 pm (UTC)