French poetry 101 – Pierre de Ronsard

[foudebassan]

Some authors leave such an imprint upon their time that no recollection of the period is complete without them. Pierre de Ronsard (1524-1585) is one of them.

The “Prince of Poets”, as his contemporaries nicknamed him, came from a penniless provincial noble family. He took orders to secure his financial future, and studied Greek and Latin with Du Bellay. His ambition was to be the first French lyric poet (lyric meaning, poems in the first person featuring the author’s real or imagined feelings).

And, lo and behold, he soon gets a glimpse of Cassandre Salviati, a beautiful young woman from an Italian banking family related to the Medici. She has the looks to be a Muse – check. The social standing to make any real love story between them impossible – check. The family connections to make sonnets written to her glory extremely profitable to the writer – check. And a nice Greek name that just begs for some erudite allusions scattered among the verses – check. And so he writes the first tome of verse called ‘Amours’ (loves), usually referred to nowadays as “Amours de Cassandre”. The young lady also inspired poems that aren’t sonnets; the best known being, without the shadow of a doubt, the incipit Mignonne, allons voir si la rose…. Female beauty is compared to a rose: it will only remain so for a short time, and should thus be plucked while there is still time (Ronsard volunteers to do the plucking).

The book is a success, and Ronsard is thus free to turn to a younger, less-well connected muse. A young peasant girl from the country, named “Marie” for simplicity, does the trick, and he takes the opportunity to trade the complex rhetoric to Cassandre’s beauty for a simpler, pastoral inspiration that today’s poem illustrates well.

(No soundtrack today, and no pictures either because he was really ugly)


Marie, qui voudrait votre beau nom tourner,
Il trouverait Aimer : aimez-moi donc, Marie,
Faites cela vers moi dont votre nom vous prie,
Votre amour ne se peut en meilleur lieu donner.

S'il vous plaît pour jamais un plaisir demener,
Aimez-moi, nous prendrons les plaisirs de la vie,
Pendus l'un l'autre au col, et jamais nulle envie
D'aimer en autre lieu ne nous pourra mener.

Si faut-il bien aimer au monde quelque chose :
Celui qui n'aime point, celui-là se propose
Une vie d'un Scythe, et ses jours veut passer

Sans goûter la douceur des douceurs la meilleure.
Eh, qu'est-il rien de doux sans Vénus ? las ! à l'heure
Que je n'aimerai point, puissé-je trépasser !



(Marie, should one turn your beautiful name
One would find “to love”: so love me, Marie,
Your name begs it, do it to me,
Your love could not be given to a better man.

If it pleases you to take some pleasure,
Love me, we shall take life’s pleasures,
Hanging to each other’s necks, we shall never feel
Like loving in some other place.

As something in the world must be loved:
Him who does not love, he marks himself for
The life of a Scyth, and can spend his days

Without tasting the best of sweetness’ sweetness.
Eh, what is sweet without Venus? Alas, when the hour comes
For me not to love any more, may I pass away!)

Notes:
• “To love” (aimer) is the anagram of “Marie”.
• Marie wasn’t pronounced as it is now, the mute –e wasn’t mute then… so that gives us “Mari-euh, qui voudrait”, otherwise the alexandrine would be incorrect.
• Scyths were presumed to be barbarians


Ronsard eventually grew tired of this Marie and composed several songs to the memory of Henry the IIIrd’s late mistress, Marie de Clèves. Then he found yet another young, beautiful muse with a nice Greek name, Hélène de Surgères, around whom his last main book, the “Amours d’Hélène”, was written.

Ronsard was recognised as a genius in his lifetime. It is he who made the sonnet popular, and he who introduced Petrarchian influences in French poetry, albeit modifying them into what was to become typical of him and his time – an ode to life, to love, to the simplicity of the setting and to the new French language itself.

He was also the first to have transposed the medieval ideal of “amour courtois” – a lover pining away in verse for his faraway, married-to-someone-else, from-a-higher-social-standing feminine ideal – into what it is to this day: an active, all-talented lover courting a passive woman, the breathing equivalent of a fragile, short-lived flower, who doesn’t exist outside from her lover’s gaze.



Next time (only, perhaps not tomorrow): the 17th century.

Comments

[zafania.livejournal.com]

he had a lot of muses, did he post help wanted ads or something?

[foudebassan.livejournal.com]

Perhaps, he's the kind of person who wouldn've enjoyed giving out job interviews

[zafania.livejournal.com]

casting couch "i'm ready for my miniature portrait now, monsieur ronsard!"

[foudebassan.livejournal.com]

"Nothing is miniature about me!"

[17catherines.livejournal.com]

Hmm... following on from our discussion yesterday, do you think that perhaps the relative stability of written French is responsible for the difference between pronunciation and spelling (all those infamous silent letters at the ends of words)? I was going to comment in reply to your other comment, but given your notes on the pronunciation of Marie (which is, I think, also the way you would pronounce it if it were a song lyric), it seemed appropriate to do so here...

Catherine, who notes that English still has no excuse for its insane differences between spelling and pronunciation...

[foudebassan.livejournal.com]

I honestly don't know. In the South we do pronounce more letters than in the "correct" northern French, but the -e in Marie is still mute and saying it aloud sounds pretty weird.

English still has no excuse for its insane differences between spelling and pronunciation...

If there weren't any differences, it would be too easy for us to learn it, they needed an added difficulty somewhere!

[17catherines.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I love speculating about these things!

As for English, I just feel that it's rather hypocritical for an English speaker to complain of the inconsistencies in anyone else's languages, so I always feel bound to acknowledge it's superior level of randomness.

[foudebassan.livejournal.com]

No need to apologise! Discussion is always welcome, and there are bonus points for obscure subjects :)