French poetry 101: Louise Labé

[foudebassan]

There are not many French poetesses, and even less good ones. The reason is that French as a language started to emerge when female power started to decrease. In the Middle Ages, art was an endless variation on the same, known themes, and women had an equal access to knowledge, making their playing with those themes easy. But Renaissance poets are different, they create their own, modern forms of art, inspired from the Antiquity: they need, at the very least, a classic education, a fluency in Latin and Greek, a sufficient side income to live on, and enough freedom to travel and get inspiration from various contemporary sources.

But the Renaissance also means laws change, making it much harder for women to own or transmit property – so they do not have an income of their own. This also means that girls from wealthy families are married younger, which makes the period of time devoted to their education shorter, early deaths during childbirth more likely, and travel close to impossible.

Unsurprisingly, this means a sharp decrease in the number of influential women writers, and huge public phantasms and myths on those very few who did manage to get published.

It is the case for Louise Labé (15??-1566).

We know next to nothing of her life. She was born in a family of wealthy rope-makers in Lyon. Her mother died when she was probably still very young; her father remarried and it is not unlikely that she should have been sent to a convent to be educated and kept out of her stepmother’s way. This was not the custom for daughters of the lower bourgeoisie, but would explain how she came to meet the people whose influence later made it possible for her to get her book published (people from her social rank did not write books, much less poetry books). She must have been an extraordinarily gifted child, and probably did learn Italian and Latin there, together with womanly arts. Given the scope of her work, she must’ve been an autodidact as well…

Legend says she took part in the siege of Perpignan with her elder brother, under men’s clothes.

Legend says she took plenty of lovers, who had to pay for her favours.

In nearby Geneva, Calvin took her as an example of everything women shouldn’t be.

Sonnets were written to or about her, usually demanding sexual favours. The nickname “Belle cordière” or “belle cordière de Lyon” (beautiful rope-maker from Lyon) can then and has stayed to this day.

What we know for sure is that she did marry another rope-maker, and was widowed some years after. She bought some land in the suburbs of Lyon.

In 1565, the Plague arrived in Lyon. She fell ill and made a will that was not witnessed by some member of her family, but by a Thomas Fortin, which makes it likely for them to have been romantically involved for some time before that. She bequeathed her estate to her nephews, on condition that they let Fortin use and administer it during his lifetime.

Her works were published in one single book. It includes a letter of thanks to Clémence de Bourges (noblewoman, possible convent-mate, who had the connections necessary to make the publication possible), a philosophical tale, elegies (versified fictitious love letters), love sonnets, and sonnets allegedly written for her. Today’s poem is love sonnet #XVIII.


Baise m'encor, rebaise moy et baise
Donne m'en un de tes plus savoureus,
Donne m'en un de tes plus amoureus :
Je t'en rendray quatre plus chaus que braise

Las, te plains-tu ? ça que ce doux mal j'apaise,
En t'en donnant dix autres doucereus.
Ainsi meslans nos baisers tant heureus
Jouissons nous l'un de l'autre à notre aise.

Lors double vie à chacun en suivra.
Chacun en soy et son ami vivra.
Permets m'Amour penser quelque folie :

Tousjours suis mal, vivant discrettement
Et ne me puis donner contentement,
Si hors de moy ne fay quelque saillie.



(Kiss me again, and again, and kiss
Give me one of your most savoury
Give me one of your most amorous
I shall give you ten back, hotter than embers.

Alas, are you complaining? Here, I shall allay your soft pain
By giving you ten more smooth kisses.
There, mingling our kisses, we shall be
Happy and enjoy each other at ease.

Then double life for each of us will follow.
Each of us will live for ourselves and for the other.
Let me, my Love, think of such a folly:

Living inconspicuously, I am always unwell
And cannot find satisfaction
If I do not sally out of myself.)

(ETA: the last stanza has been ameliorated by alienor77310)

Please bear in mind that English is not my first language and it has been several years since I’ve last tried to translate poetry. This attempt does not do justice to the original, and if you speak a little French please try to look at the real thing.

The main appeal of the poem is that it is a joke between chaste feelings (kisses, merging of their souls so that they carry a part of each other with them at all times) and more earthly sentiments. The word “kiss” also means “to screw” and the last word of the poem, “saillie” can mean several different things – the coupling of two animals, a joke, or a military offensive. “Folly”, in this context, can also be interpreted as the madness that befalls people as they first fall in love and in lust, as opposed to the more rational feelings of tenderness and fondness older, wiser couples experience. Labé never crosses the line into the obscene, but the innuendo is there all right.

No soundtrack today, and I couldn’t find pictures of pretty men she might or might not have slept with, so there’s one of Labé herself:





Tomorrow’s options are a bit limited, it’s either Ronsard or the 17th century. Unless you’d rather have some militant religion-war propaganda stanzas?