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Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867)
Orphaned at age six, when his father a defrocked priest turned civil
servant died in his sixties, Charles Baudelaire took an aversion to his
stepfather Aupick, an officer who was later promoted to general in command
of the Paris area, that his mother married shortly after his father's death.
Bored at the boarding school he dreamed of becoming sometimes a pope,
sometimes a comedian.
After completion of high school he rejected a diplomatic career,
which his stepfather supported. He frequented the literary youth of the
Latin Quarter, and wanted to be a writer. A family council under General
Aupick's pressure decided to send him to India in 1841. Baudelaire, having
no taste for foreign adventure, jumped ship at the Isle of Reunion, and in
time returned to Paris, where now a major he claimed his part of his
father's estate.
He became involved with the actress Jeanne Duval, and through thick and
thin remained her lover and support for the rest of his life. With his
friends Théophile Gautier, Théodore de Banville, Sainte-Beuve et Gérard de
Nerval, he plunged headlong into the Romantic movement. He led a dandy's
life, and incurred heavy debts. His family was forced to put him under
Court's supervision to rein in his eccentric high living.
Destitute and humiliated, Baudelaire was constantly moving to keep one
step ahead of his creditors, hiding among his mistresses, and writing
furiously for a living while working on his poems.
After a blotched suicide attempt he temporarily reconciled with his
mother. In 1846 he discovered this other accursed and misunderstood kindred
soul across the Atlantic, Edgar Allen Poe, and for the next seventeen years
undertook to translate and reveal his works.
In the wake of the 1848 Revolution he worked as a journalist and critic.
The publication of Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil) in 1857,
which was quickly judged obscene, forced him to pay a heavy fine. In spite
of the support of Victor Hugo, Sainte-Beuve, Théophile Gautier and other
young admiring poets Baudelaire isolated himself in bitterness.
His health began to deteriorate. To alleviate the pain caused by gastric
problems, and the recurrence of syphilis after ten years, he smoked opium.
In his self-imposed exile, he received the homage of two as yet unknown
poets, Stéphane Mallarmé and Paul Verlaine. During his stay in Belgium in
1866 a stroke left him paralyzed and nearly speechless. For a year he hung
on tenuously to life while his friends came to his bedside to play him
Wagner to relieve his sufferings. In 1867 at age 46, Baudelaire expired in
his mother's arms.
With just one book, Baudelaire blazed a trail for modern poetry, by the
melody of his verse, the depth of his emotions, his response to the
universality of evil, which his proud spirit transcends.
In his song of autumn, Baudelaire reveals a gloomy mood
jaundiced by a presentiment of an impending departure from the world. The
long bright summer days are gone, yielding to the ominous steps of the
winter's death inexorably coming ever closer by the moment. He can hear it
in the echo on the paving of the courtyard. He can feel it entering his
being with all the force of anger, hatred, horrors to reduce his heart to an
insensate block of ice.
His spirit is crumbling under the relentless assault of the battering ram
of evil, and the monotonous blows seem like a hasty pounding of the nails
into someone's coffin signifying a voyage of no return.
Baudelaire desperately clings to the love of a woman, to the fast
disappearance of the summer sun, to the glorious but declining fall, even to
the setting sun because they are his only hope of salvation in the bitter
present that is slipping from his grasp. The end looms, and he wants to
savor the modest pleasure of resting for just a fleeting moment on the
sweet remaining rays of autumn.
Poignant lugubrious thoughts for a man who had ten years or so to live!
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Gérard de Nerval (1808-1855)
Born Gérard Labrunie in the Valois, Gérard de Nerval spent
his early years roaming the forests and listening to local folklore, which imbued him with the propensity toward
reverie. He adapted nimbly to life in Paris, where he studied with Théophile Gautier at the collège Charlemagne.
He was a very likable fellow, and as a dandy led a life filled with fun, balls, parties. His early works reflected this
carefree period.
Well versed in German culture, Gérard de Nerval translated Goethe's Faust in 1828. Enamored
of Hoffman's fantasies, he wrote a tale, La Main de gloire (The Hand of Glory) in 1832, in which magic
and humor dominate. His poetry showed delicate taste. In one of his early poems, a dame dressed in antique garb was conjured up, whom he seemed
to have known from a previous life, a fantasy that was to become the dominant theme of his later works.
In 1836, Gérard de Nerval fell in love with the singer-comedienne Jenny Colon, who was
touched by his advances, but who sacrificed romantic love to a prosaic but more rational union with an
Opera-Comique flutist. Though the painful experience entailed no immediate consequences, its effects
worked subliminally inside him. No longer within his ken, Jenny still remained the feminine ideal in his memory.
After reading the Second Faust, he was further confirmed in his mystical delusion. Like Faust, he believed
himself in love with the eternal feminine figure, who was incarnated in human form as Jenny. This psychotic
delusion led to his being institutionalized in 1841.
During his brief remission, Gérard de Nerval learned of Jenny Colon's death. In place of the
fading memory of her, a more brilliant image of a heavenly being emerged. In his 1843 travels to the Orient, he
studied the region's mythologies, including the Greek
Venus and the Egyptian Isis, who represented to him the paragon of feminine perfection. Back from his travels,
he immersed himself in esoteric research. A new crisis in 1851 required him to enter
an asylum for a time. With the premonition of impending madness Gérard de Nerval wrote furiously, and
produced La Bohème galante (The Loose Bohemian), Lorely, Les Nuits d'octobre
(October Nights) in 1852.
From 1853 until his death, he alternated between periods of relative calm and periods
of delirium. He entered Dr. Emile Blanche's health clinic until May 1854. After his release, he travelled in Germany,
but had to be readmitted on his return until October 1854. On 25 January 1855 he was found hanging in an
alley of Paris ending an existence of excruciating mental suffering.
His Voyages en Orient (Travels in the Orient) appeared in 1851, in which he related
for the first time the hauntings in his soul amidst details of customs he observed. His recurring
thought, however, was a familiar dream of equating the ephemeral charm of a beloved woman with
the eternal perfection of a virgin.
Among his most moving works, Sylvie (1853) stood as the best of novellas he
assembled in one volume titled Les Filles du feu (The Daughters of Fire). He wrote Sylvie during a
time when he genuinely sought to escape from his torments by evoking memories of his early life, in his misty
Valois, where his mysticism germinated during adolescence.
Les Chimères, a collection of sonnets also published in 1853, depicted Gerard's
early experiences and bookish reminiscences. The sonnet Artémis exalted
the female figure he named Aurélia, whom he glorified during the dark days of madness. In the tale Aurélia
he recounted the history of his internal life from his breakup with
Jenny Colon, with faithful details of his delirious dreams. In his final tale of Pandora (1853-1854),
he opposed the myth of Aurélia the deified female to the myth of Pandora the root of human
sufferings.
At the end of his life Gérard de Nerval had become disillusioned with the feminine ideal
and reached intellectual and emotional collapse. He had used poetry as a means to capture the images of his dreams.
Une allée du Luxembourg
Gérard de Nerval
Elle a passé, la jeune fille,
Vive et preste comme un oiseau :
À la main une fleur qui brille,
À la bouche un refrain nouveau.
C’est peut-être la seule au monde
Dont le coeur au mien répondrait,
Qui, venant dans ma nuit profonde
D’un seul regard l’éclaircirait !
Mais non, ma jeunesse est finie…
Adieu, doux rayon qui m’as lui,
Parfum, jeune fille, harmonie…
Le bonheur passait, il a fui !
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Alfred de Musset (1810-1857)
Elegant, witty, and worldly-wise, admitted at barely age eighteen to the literary group
Le Cénacle de la rue de Notre-Dame-des-Champs, Alfred de Musset found his early verse wildly
acclaimed, and himself termed a wunderkind. He faced a future bright with promises. During these early years,
he published his first verse collection, Contes d'Espagne et d'Italie (The Tales of Spain and Italy, 1830),
in which he depicted these countries, which he never knew, with fictitious characters. The harsh land of
Spain came to life with its violent hidalgo character, and the love capital of Venice hosted an
impassioned Byronic hero, whose murderous hands wrought innocent death. It is a work
in which his rowdy romanticism did not sit well with the politicized romanticism of his contemporaries. His
independence soon led him, in 1831, to break free from the tutelage of Victor Hugo, whose virtuosity he
emulated, and with the Cenacle along with Alfred de Vigny, Nodier, and the others. Now he extolled
Greece as the mother of the arts as well as Renaissance Italy, both giving him inspiration for his romantic
musings and the eternal classical spirit.
Twelve years later, the broken, disillusioned, love-lorn maverick Musset had been through
it all. He had written plays, some unsuccessful such as La Nuit vénitienne (A Venitian Night, 1830),
others becoming chefs-d'oeuvre. In the work entitled Les Caprices de Marianne, Musset played
the dual role of the passionate romantic and of the romantic libertine. Fantasio's protagonist sparkled
with an admixture of frivolity, imagination, and melancholy. The tragic On ne badine pas avec l'amour
(Don't Trifle with Love, 1834), where a love triangle of one man and two women led to death, took the
audience from the light-heartedness of flirtation, through the pathos of a darkening plot, to the tragic demise
of a trusting female. Just as one should not trifle with love, so should one never trifle with debauchery,
as the prose drama Lorenzaccio (1834) reminds us.
Musset had written poetry, a semiautobiographical La Confession d'un enfant du
siècle (The Confession of a Child of the Century, 1836), where the libertine hero disillusioned with
pleasure, which he equated with happiness, finally reconciled to a loveless life. Then came the four most
celebrated of his poems, Les Nuits (The Nights, 1835-1837) stretching over thirty months: the Night of
May, the Night of December, the Night of August, and the Night of October are dialogues of the poet with his
Muse or his own alter ego in which he lost all inspiration in May, lived with solitude in December, regained
the illusions of bliss in love in August, and finally purged of the suffering of the past, indulged in the earthly
pleasure of living.
The crisis of Musset's life occurred during the years 1833-1837. Musset and his
mistress George Sand took a trip to Genoa and Pisa, where the first signs of trouble had begun to appear. But
it was at Venice that they broke up; George Sand being disillusioned with his flightiness left him for the
doctor Pagello. After he got back in Paris in 1834, Musset kept in touch with George Sand, and the two
erstwhile lovers continued their relationship through ardent letters until their final rupture in March 1835.
Although Musset tried to rebuild his life through worldly pursuits and further creations, he had been
forever broken by his Venice experience.
The remaining twenty years was marked by a steady decline in health and outlook. He
deliberately plunged into a dissolute existence. At the age of thirty, the former "enfant terrible" became a
spent force, tired, and exhausted. His inspiration, resurgent on occasions, was heading toward extinction. A
few more successes graced his waning years: sonnets, tales in prose, L'Espoir en Dieu (Hope in
God, 1838), Souvenir (1841) evoking his love adventure with George Sand, success of the
Caprice in Russia and Paris, and finally admission to the French Academy in 1852. A premature death
overtook him at forty-six.
Musset's poetic sensibility, imagination and inspiration manifest themselves with verve
in acrobatics of rhyme and rhythm, at least at the beginning of his career. Just as Musset is capable of
capricious musings and light-hearted bantering, he is equally moving in his poignant effusions that reflect
the struggle, the joys, the feelings, the tribulations and the torments of his life. Through the success of his
plays, which are just as lyrical as his poetry, Musset has invested drama, hitherto considered rather frivolous,
with an aura of credibility and even glory.
Nuit d’Août
Alfred de Musset (1810-1857)
O Muse! que m’importe ou la mort ou la vie ?
J’aime, et je veux pâlir; j’aime et je veux souffrir ;
J’aime, et pour un baiser je donne mon génie ;
J’aime, et je veux sentir sur ma joue amaigrie
Ruisseler une source impossible à tarir.
J’aime, et je veux chanter la joie et la paresse,
Ma folle experience et mes soucis d’un jour,
Et je veux raconter et répéter sans cesse
Qu’après avoir juré de vivre sans maîtresse,
J’ai fait serment de vivre et de mourir d’amour.
Dépouille devant tous l’orgueil qui te dévore,
Coeur gonflé d’amertume et qui t’es cru fermé.
Aime, et tu renaîtras; fais-toi fleur pour éclore.
Après avoir souffert, il faut souffrir encore ;
Il faut aimer sans cesse, après avoir aimé.
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Louise Labé (1524-1566)
Je vis, je meurs : je me brûle et me noie – I live, I die; I burn, I drown. (Sonnet VIII)
Does this Petrarchan verse aptly summarize the life and death of Louise
Labé, fictitious personage created by Maurice Scève and the Lyon humanists in his entourage?
Or is Louise, whoever she is (a courtesan, a bourgeoise, a poetess, an impostor, a paper invention), the most celebrated feminist in
French literature? Poor Louise, the experts do not agree. And why should they? In vain does she turn in her real or imagined grave, the
world of literature will spill countless amount of ink before the dust settles, if ever.
To believe Mireille Huchon1, professor of French at the Sorbonne-Paris IV and eminent scholar of
the 16th century, and her supporters, Louise Labé never existed as the author of Euvres de Louïze
Labé Lionnoize. In her much-admired book published by Droz in 2006, Louise
Labé, une créature de papier, Mireille Huchon revived an old thesis that the Belle
Cordière (the beautiful rope maker as Labé is also called) was no more a flesh-and-blood poetess than Petrarch's
Laura or Medusa was a person, with whom Louise Labé was associated and who figured in a portrait made of her by Pierre
Woeiriot in 1555.
This explosive debunking of the myth of the “French Sappho” with the erudition of a
seiziémiste of Mireille Huchon's caliber creates an uproar among the French academic establishment, especially after
Louise Labé was placed in the program for the competitive examination of Concours
d'agrégation de lettres modernes for the first time in 2005, four centuries and a half after the Euvres' publication.
The reaction did not take long to crystallize, ranging from the incredulous “how dared she?” to
the dismissive non-Parisian (who else?) who asserts that when Paris sneezes, France is not obligated to catch a cold, as well as
from serious academic apologists and detractors.
Fueling the debate is the enigma surrounding the sudden rise of Louise Labé,
a bourgeoise with presumably a good education in languages, literature, humanism, equestrian art, music, and even the handling of
arms, when her first and only work, Euvres de Louïze Labé Lionnoize, was published in 1555 by the celebrated Lyon
printer/publisher Jean de Tournes. This one-hundred-and-seventy-eight-page book consists of a dedicatory epistle to Mademoiselle
Clémence de Bourges Lyonnoise (a prominent aristocrat who died young), three elegies, the Débat
de Folie and d'Amour, and twenty-four sonnets. About one third of the tome, written in Greek, Latin, Italian, and French,
contains the Escriz de divers Poëtes, à la louenge de Louïze Labé Lionnoize, laudatory
poems by the School of Lyon poets: Maurice Scève, Olivier de Magny, Claude de Taillemont, Pontus de Tyard (also a member of
the Pleiades). These writings should be nothing more than éloge paradoxal (tongue-in-cheek praise). This is a program done,
according to Mireille Huchon, to heed Clement Marot's urging to louer Louise2
(praise Louise), a phrase that echoes Petrarch's laudare Laura, even though both beauties are likely to be pure literary
invention, i.e., scriptae puellae (written demoiselles, paper demoiselles). These imaginary females are not uncommon creations
among the Greek and Latin elegiac poets, who make them out of whole cloth as an excuse to sing their loves.
So mysterious is Louise Labé's sudden eclipse after the second edition the following year, leaving behind
no traces and no further mention in the literature, that the one plausible explanation might be that the hoax, once perpetrated, has served
its purpose and there is no longer need for a sequel.
Using internal analysis of texts, exegesis, comparison as well as external comparison and analysis of period sources,
Mireille Huchon argues that the Louise Labé oeuvres are the result of the collective work of the Lyon poets who congregated
around their chef de file Maurice Scève. Many of Olivier de Magny's sonnets have been attributed to Louise
Labé. The two quatrains of her Sonnet II are identical to those of Sonnet LV in his Soupirs. Maurice Scève is the
supposed author of the Debat, Claude de Taillemont that of the Epistle, and Olivier de Magny of the elegies and sonnets. How
such a collective work done in jest, or worse as a fraud, got a royal privilege (permission) to publish is anybody's guess.
Mireille Huchon's hypothesis spawned fierce debate among the literati, who align themselves among three camps:
the supporters, the skeptics, and the fence-sitters. Finding M. Huchon's proof irrefutable, historian and academician Marc Fumaroli
pronounces the final scene of the final act of the Louise Labé drama by announcing, “Exit Louise
Labé.”3 He further applauds M. Huchon for having buried exegetes and biographers, who in general do not question
the existence of the poetess Louise Labé. Already there is evidence that those supposed to be eight feet under
ground not only refuse to play dead, but fight back. Among the fence-sitters there is a spectrum of opinions. Emmanuel
Buron4, of Université Renne 2, agrees with some of M. Huchon's analyses, but remains unconvinced by her conclusions. Buron
found in his own research that some poems in the Escriz, written independently of Louise Labé by Jean-Antoine
de Baif, Pontus de Tyard, and Maurice Scève, were reused in Euvres. Did Scève write the Debat,
as alleged by M. Huchon? Buron does not think so. My thought is that at a time when borrowings, imitations, and even forgeries were
commonplace, it is almost pointless to pinpoint original authorship, since it does not prove or disprove current authorship. Great authors
have borrowed without much hindrance and will continue to do so. Shakespeare, Corneille, Racine, Molière, to name just a few, were
not above pilfering from older sources without in any way diminishing their own artistry or literary quality. Back to Euvres, Maurice Scève, reputed to be the
Mallarmé of the 16th century, is not exactly easy to decipher. Did the Debat attributed to him evince any of
the style, quality, and thoughts for which Scève is known to possess as his hallmark?
Professor François Rigolot5, of Princeton University, straddles the debate with a concession that
Euvres carries the signs of collective work. After all, from Rabelais to Ronsard, authors routinely borrowed, consulted, and imitated, from
Petrarch to neoplatonism. But the age reeks of Petrarchism and neoplatonism, especially in Lyon, which was among the first French cities
to be invaded by the Italian Renaissance. In the sixteenth-century Lyon was the French Renaissance center. From the learned to the
bourgeoisie, it would be improbable to find anyone with an education who is not aware of the intellectual movement or the modus
operandi of the writers of the day.
Daniel Martin6, of Université de Provence, also questions the attribution of Euvres
as alleged by M. Huchon. While conceding that there are some borrowings from existing authors, the conclusion that Louise
Labé was not the author of the work to him lacks convincing support. To M. Huchon there is a bundle of converging indices,
signs that should lead to the inescapable conclusion she advocates. Martin can only concede that at most it is a question mark, but
certainly not a definitive proof.
And so the debate continues. To provide a forum for this ongoing controversy,
the Société Internationale pour l'Étude des Femmes de l'Ancien Régime7
(SIEFAR, International Society for the Study of Women in the Ancien Regime) calls for contributions to the topic at its site.
There remains the question of how to associate Louise Labé the courtesan with Louise Labé the
poetess or the impostor. Her contemporaries were already vilifying her. A beautiful woman who writes sensual poetry and argues for
women the right to education and science invites controversy. The historian-magistrate-public prosecutor Claude de Rubys, on whom one of M. Huchon's major arguments rests, calls her the
most notorious of courtesans. Jean Calvin, founder of a reformed church, in his Pamphlet contre Gabriel de Sconay, précenteur
de l'Église de Lyon8 (1560) characterizes her as
« [...] plebeia meretrix, quam partim a propria venustate, partim
ab opificio mariti, Bellam Cordieram vocabant. » [cette prostituée de bas étage que l'on nommait, en
partie à cause de sa beauté, en partie à cause du métier de son mari, La Belle Cordière. This lowly
prostitute called in part for her beauty, in part for the occupation of her husband, La Belle Cordière].
Why would these eminent personages stoop to decry a plebeian prostitute, unless she was someone with the
intelligence and the achievement that command respect? And in fine why should they waste their time on a paper poetess? If the
erudite humanists were using the real but much-maligned Belle Cordière to play their pranks, a trick which was supposedly so
evident to their contemporaries, does not such an act redound on them for abusing a vulnerable human being? The purported
perpetrators of the hoax are not ordinary men in the street. Maurice Scève, the leader, is an échevin
(magistrate); all are members of the intellectual elite of their city. Again there are unanswered questions.
Let us now leave the controversy to present and future specialists and concentrate on Louise Labé, the
poetess.
Rediscovered after three centuries of obscurity by the Romantics, Louise
Labé emerges as a thoroughly modern poet, with a lyricism and a sensuality that rival those of any poets since her time, when she
made a great deal of stir among her contemporaries. "The sweetest pleasure after love itself is to talk about it." And
Labé has the gift of doing just that. Her sensual poetry resonates with an authenticity, a delicateness, and a sensibility that
endear and charm. Marceline Desbordes-Valmore found in this "nymph on the banks of the Rhône" a soul not unlike
her own.
Louise Labé was born between 1516 and 1524, on rue de L'Arbre-sec St., Lyon, the daughter of a rich rope maker
from Lyon, Pierre Charly and of Etiennette Roybet. The surname Labé came from an earlier marriage of her father with a widow
whose husband's name was Jacques Humbert, alias Labé (or L'Abbé, l'Abé, Labbé).
She seems to have received an excellent Italian-style education. By the liberty of her
behavior, she could rank among the feminists of our days. At 25, between 1543-1545, she married Ennemond Perrin, a merchant of ropes
twenty-five years her senior, hence her nickname "la Belle Cordière" (the pretty rope maker).
Her daring, lewd sonnets and amorous adventures earned her the aspersions and ill-will of her scandalized and
unsympathetic contemporaries. We have seen above that Jean Calvin called her plebeia meretrix (common whore). Whether
Louise Labé is a courtesan remains problematic as there is a historical figure by that name who was a courtesan, according to a
contemporary historian, Claude de Rubys. The story of how a courtesan is assimilated to a poet, the Belle Cordière, is a complex
one for the researchers, who ineluctably come to no consensus. Therein also lies one thorny issue in the ongoing debate over the existence of Louise
Labé as a poet.
[As a brief digression, this debate recalls one that centers on the great
18th-century Vietnamese poetess Ho Xuan Huong, whose daring poetry laced with not-so-hidden sexual innuendos written in a language
redolent of double entendre raised questions about her very own existence. How could a Confucian society, with its strictures on
male-female relationship and constraints on female expression of any kind, give rise to a thoroughly emancipated poet,
a “Vietnamese Sappho,” if you will? Surely there must be some male pranksters who took on female identity to titillate an audience
who was always ready to relish incursions into the taboo world of sex in literature with perfect anonymity and impunity. Although many
uncertainties surround the biography and work of Ho Xuan Huong, there seems to be consensus among scholars that such a personality
did exist, as well as her 49 or so poems written in the demotic script called Chu Nom.]
In spite of the brouhaha surrounding Louis Labé's identity and her undeserved stigma, she presided over a
refined society, and held court in her salon whose habitués included among others the very same Lyon poets that M.
Huchon claims wrote all her works. Extolling joie de vivre and singing of the torments of love, Labé possessed a sure
grasp of the verse rivaling the best of the poets in the Pleiades, and showed remarkable vivacity in her Euvres.
This work went through a second edition in Lyon in 1556 and the fifth edition
appeared in 1762. But it was not until the 19th century that the romantics rediscovered it.
She bequeathed her fortune to various individuals and liberally to the poor at her premature death probably in 1566.
In her testament, she wanted a simple funeral:
“veult estre enterrée sans pompe ni
superstitions, à sçavoir de nuict, à la lanterne, accompagnée de quatre prestres, outre les
porteurs de son corps” (to be interred without pomp and superstition, namely at night, in
lantern light, accompanied by four priests besides the pallbearers.)
Notes:
1. Mireille Huchon. Louise Labé, une créature de papier..
2. Clement Marot (1496-1544).Académie de Lyon.
3. Marc Fumaroli. Louise Labé, une géniale imposture.
4. Emmanuel Buron. Claude de Taillemont et les Escriz de divers Poëtes à la louenge de Louïze
Labé Lionnoize: Discussion critique de Louise Labé, une créature de papier de Mireille Huchon.
5. Edouard Launet. Louise Labé, femme trompeuse. Section Instrument de mystification.
6. Daniel Martin, Louise Labé est-elle « une créature de papier » ?
7. LouiseLabé attaquée!
8. Rumeurs à propos des moeurs de Louise.
Bibliography
Angard, Laurent. «Louer
Louise» ou l’énigme Louise Labé. Fabula – La recherche en littérature. 4
August 2007.
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Buron, Emmanuel. Claude de Taillemont et les Escrizde divers Poëtes à la louenge de Louïze Labé
Lionnoize: Discussion critique de Louise Labé, une créature de papier de Mireille Huchon. L'Information
littéraire 2, 2006, p. 38-46. 30 July 2007.
<http://www.siefar.org/RessourcesEtudes/Buron-Louise-Labe.pdf>
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<http://www.siefar.org/ActuSIEFAR-Labe.html#ancre%20Fumaroli>
Huchon, Mireille. Louise Labé, une créature de papier, Geneva: Editions de La librairie Droz, 2006.
Launet, Edouard. Lousie Labé, femme trompeuse. Libération, 16 June 2006, p. 38-46. 30 July 2007.
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<http://profshistoirelcl.canalblog.com/archives/2006/06/15/2130425.html >
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< http://www2.ac-lyon.fr/enseigne/lettres/louise/lyon/biolab.html>
Louise Labé a-t-elle vraiment existé ? (2007-02-27 12:21:15). Lyoncapitale.fr.
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<http://www2.ac-lyon.fr/enseigne/lettres/louise/lyon/marot.html >
Martin, Daniel. Louise Labé, est-elle « une créature de papier » ?
RHR (Réforme, Humanisme, Renaissance) 63, déc. 2006, p. 7-37. 30 July 2007.
<http://www.siefar.org/RessourcesEtudes/Martin-Louise-Labe.pdf >
Paoli, Angèle. Carte Blanche à Angèle Paoli : le mystère Louise Labé.
4 August 2007.
<http://poezibao.typepad.com/poezibao/2006/05/carte_blanche_a_1.html >
Résumé- Oeuvres - Choix
bibliographique - Jugements. Société Internationale pour l'Étude des Femmes de l'Ancien
Régime. 30 July 2007.
<http://www.siefar.org/DictionnaireSIEFAR/SFLabe.html>
Rumeurs à propos des moeurs de Louise. Académie de Lyon. 4 August 2007.
<http://www2.ac-lyon.fr/enseigne/lettres/louise/lyon/legende.html >
11 August 2007
Baise m’encor'
Louise Labé (1526-1566)
Baise m’encor, rebaise-moi et baise :
Donne-m’en un de tes plus savoureux ,
Donne m’en un de tes plus amoureux ;
Je t’en rendrai quatre plus chauds que braise.
Las, te plains-tu ? ça, que ce mal j’apaise
En t’en donnant dix autres doucereux
Ainsi mêlant nos baisers tant heureux ,
Jouissons-nous l’un de l’autre à notre aise.
Lors, double vie à chacun en suivra,
Chacun en soi et son ami vivra
Permets m’Amour penser quelque folie ;
Toujours suis mal, vivant discrètement
Et ne puis donner contentement,
Si hors de moi ne fais quelque saillie.
Return to Featured Authors
Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891)
Rimbaud, who had shown precocious gifts as a poet, had the mindset and temperament of a maverick.
He was full of violent wrath: against the social order, against Emperor Napoleon III, against the
Prussians, against the humiliating war with Germany (1870), against the Catholic religion . He felt
deeply for the Parisian uprising and for the downtrodden, but conceived unmitigated hostility to
modern society as he saw it through the smugness of those people who represented the establishment.
Impatient with the confines of his small town, where he indulged in reveries and escapades, he skipped
the Baccalaureate exam, then embarked on misadventures that took him briefly to Paris and Belgium,
only to return to Charleville, bitter with his brief prison stint in Paris and unsuccessful job search in
Belgium.
For all this experience, his poetic career, though brief and not lasting beyond 1875, was remarkably
influential, made all the more remarkable for a short life that was punctuated by adventures of all sorts.
Born in Charleville in 1854, Rimbaud was early a rebel against a stern, unyielding mother. He
evinced this rebelliousness in his fractious behavior, and his hatred of social conformism. Encouraged
by his rhetoric professor Georges Izambard, Rimbaud manifested a mastery of the poetic art, wrote with
sensuality, vivid imagination and intimacy while not being above castigating the petty bourgeoisie of
his home town for its complacent obtuseness.
Like Baudelaire, he set out to discover a world of dream. With the poem in prose Le Bateau ivre
(The Drunken Boat, 1871), he gave free rein to a frenetic imagination and depicted with bold, bizarre
images his own self perceived as the boat navigating exotic waters. ("I have dreamed the green
night with blinded snows, slowly kissing the seas, welling in its eyes the flow of astonishing sap, and
the yellow and blue awakenings of singing phosphors.") It is this poem that prompted Verlaine to
invite him to live together. Thus, for a few adolescent years (1871-1873), Rimbaud was the
young companion of Verlaine, leading a bohemian life in Paris, in Belgium, then in England. It was
in Brussels (1873) that Verlaine shot Rimbaud in the arm with a revolver in a fit of passion, and served
two years for the crime.
Already into alcohol, Rimbaud sank deeper into dissoluteness and debauchery in Paris while living with
Verlaine. At long last, disillusioned by the bitter experience with Verlaine, Rimbaud left him for good,
and wrote Une Saison en enfer (A Season in Hell, 1873), in which the remorseful Rimbaud
expressed his regrets over a wayward existence, and was now heading toward self-redemption. Gone
were the days of wanderings, of rebellion, of living on the edge. When Une Saison en enfer met
with an indifferent public, it was about time to turn his back on literature. And after one last attempt,
Les Illuminations, another work of poetic prose, written in London in 1874, in which Rimbaud
was at once illunimator and enlightened in his invention of a universe sometimes like the real one,
sometimes unlike anything known, in a language moulded to express the startling revelations of his
imagination, he was ready to call it quits.
After the Illustrations Rimbaud turned his back to poetry, and opened a new chapter in his
life, which he filled with overseas endeavors. He traveled through Europe, enlisted in the Dutch army,
ended in desertion. At age 23, he left Charleville to reappear in Africa, Cyprus, Aden,
now a manager in a trading company, now an arms dealer in Ethiopia. Leading an ascetic life, he
genuinely wanted to live honorably. A tumor in the knee brought him back to France for treatment.
After his amputation, he wanted to return to Ethiopia, but died in Marseille in 1891.
Rimbaud's poetry distinguished itself with a dazzling virtuosity, and though emulating the
romantics and the Parnassians, he soon exhausted their craft and looked beyond. In an escape from
despair, he employed the resources of his genius, threw himself headlong into delirium in an attempt to
make himself into a seer, and produced some of his weirdest poems. His senses escaped all constraints
to be free to mingle, intersect, fuse in all sorts of impossible combinations that translated into
chimerical sensations and thoughts. To express such phatasm, he invented a transcendental poetic
language, by which symbolists and surrealists recognize him as a precursor. It is to this legacy that
modern and contemporary poetry owes so much of its distinctive character.
Sensation
Arthur Rimbaud
Par les soirs bleus d’été, j’irais dans les sentiers,
Picoté par les blés, fouler l’herbe menue:
Rêveur, j’en sentirai la fraîcheur à mes pieds.
Je laisserai le vent baigner ma tête nue.
Je ne parlerai pas, je ne penserai rien:
Mais l’amour infini me montera dans l’âme,
Et j’irai loin, bien loin, comme un bohémien,
Par la Nature, heureux comme avec une femme.
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Chiều xanh mùa hạ lối mòn
Lúa vàng nhẹ xót cỏ lòn dưới chân
Mộng hồn bay bổng lâng lâng
Gió lùa tóc rối mát chân người về.
Lặng im tôi chẳng nghĩ suy
Tình dâng man mác hồn si ngập trời
Rồi như lãng tử xa xôi
Hẹn cùng non nước yêu đời lứa đôi.
Traduit par Lý Lãng Nhân
Madison, AL., 20 May 2004
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Of the blue summer eves, I'll walk along the paths
Slashed by the wheat blades, trampling upon the fine grass,
Dreaming, I will smell the freshness at my feet
And I will let the wind bathe my uncovered head.
I'll say nothing at all, nor will I think at all,
Yet this infinite love will rise to fill my soul.
Then I'll go so far away, like a bohemian
Amidst nature, happy as if with a woman.
Translated by Thomas D. Le
10 February 2005
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Première soirée
Arthur Rimbaud
Elle était fort déshabillée
Et de grands arbres indiscrets
Aux vitres jetaient leur feuillée
Malinement, tout près, tout près.
Assise sur ma grande chaise,
Mi-nue, elle joignait les mains,
Sur le plancher frissonnaient d’aise
Ses petits pieds si fins, si fins.
Je regardai, couleur de cire,
Un petit rayon buissonnier
Papillonner dans son sourire
Et sur son sein, mouche au rosier.
Je baisai ses fines chevilles.
Elle eut un doux rire brutal
Qui s’égrenait en claires trilles,
Un joli rire de crystal.
Les petits pieds sous la chemise
Se sauvèrent: “Veux-tu finir!”
La première audace permise,
Le rire feignait de punir!
Pauvrets palpitants sous ma lèvre,
Je baisai doucement ses yeux:
Elle jeta sa tête mièvre
En arrière: “Oh! C’est encor mieux!…
Monsieur, j’ai deux mots à te dire…”
Je lui jetai le reste au sein
Dans un baiser, qui la fait rire
D’un bon rire qui voulait bien…
Elle était fort déshabillée
Et de grands arbres indiscrets
Aux vitres jetaient leur feuillée
Malinement, tout près, tout près.
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Áo nàng trể xuống làn hông
Cây cao vươn lá ngoài song thầm thì
Xuyên qua khung kính nhòm chi
Bóng cây sàm sỡ đã ghì sát nhau
Nàng ngồi trên ghế dựa cao
Nữa thân để lộ biết bao nhiêu tình
Hai tay khẻ chắp bên mình
Hai bàn chân nhỏ hữu tình làm sao
Mầu da sáp mịn ngọt ngào
Lung linh tia sáng dọi vào cành tươi
Chập chờn cánh bướm môi cuời
Trên bồng ngực đó lả lơi nụ hồng
Tôi hôn chân nhỏ tình nồng
Tiếng cuời nàng chợt vở tung mãnh tình
Tiếng cuời thánh thót xinh xinh
Thủy tinh trong vắt giọng tình véo von
Đôi bàn chân nhỏ thon thon
Dấu trong vạt áo như còn thiết tha
Buớc đầu bạo dạn đã qua
Giọng cười như thể phạt vờ đấy thôi
Đôi mi chớp mở dưới môi
Tôi hôn đôi mắt lả lơi sóng tình
Ngã đầu nàng nũng nịu xin:
“Thế ni còn thích hơn mình đã yêu…
Nầy anh! Thôi, chẳng nói nhiều…”
Ngực nàng chữa dứt lời yêu nồng nàn
Nụ hôn tôi đã rộn ràng
Nàng cười quyến rũ ngập tràn ái ân.
Áo nàng trể xuống làn hông
Cây cao vươn lá ngoài song thầm thì
Xuyên qua khung kính nhòm chi
Bóng cây sàm sỡ đã ghì sát nhau
Traduit par Lý Lãng Nhân
Madison, AL., 20 May 2004
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She was fully undressed
And the tall indiscreet trees
Cast off their leaves against the panes
Maliciously closely, closely.
Sitting in my large chair,
Half-naked, she clasped her hands,
On the floor shivered with ease
Her little feet, so fine, so fine.
I beheld, wax-colored,
A little wayward ray
Fluttering in her smile
And on her breast, a fly in the rosebush.
Then I would kiss her fine ankles
In spite of her sweet laugh brutal
Which ticked away in its clear trills
A pretty, clear laugh of crystal.
The little feet burrowed under the shirt
Flitted away, "Will you stop now?"
The first daring step was thus allowed,
Yet the smile still feigned to avert.
Throbbing gently under my lips
Her eyes batting I softly kiss,
Throwing her delicate head
Backward, "Oh, 'tis even better!
Monsieur, let me tell you something..."
I threw all the rest to her breast
That made her laugh in just one kiss
Such a good laugh so well-meaning.
She was fully undressed
And the tall indiscreet trees
Cast off their leaves against the panes
Maliciously closely, closely.
Translated by Thomas D. Le
10 February 2005
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Ophélie
Arthur Rimbaud
I
Sur l'onde calme et noire où dorment les étoiles
La blanche Ophélia flotte comme un grand lys,
Flotte très lentement, couchée en ses longs voiles...
- On entend dans les bois lointains des hallalis.
Voici plus de mille ans que la triste Ophélie
Passe, fantôme blanc, sur le long fleuve noir,
Voici plus de mille ans que sa douce folie
Murmure sa romance à la brise du soir.
Le vent baise ses seins et déploie en corolle
Ses grands voiles bercés mollement par les eaux;
Les saules frissonnants pleurent sur son épaule,
Sur son grand front rêveur s'inclinent les roseaux.
Les nénuphars froissés soupirent autour d'elle;
Elle éveille parfois, dans un aune qui dort,
Quelque nid, d'où s'échappe un petit frisson d'aile
- Un chant mystérieux tombe des astres d'or.
II
O pâle Ophélia! belle comme la neige!
Oui tu mourus, enfant, par un fleuve emporté!
- C'est que les vents tombant des grands monts de Norwège
T'avaient parlé tout bas de l'âpre liberté;
C'est qu'un souffle, tordant ta grande chevelure,
A ton esprit rêveur portait d'étranges bruits;
Que ton coeur écoutait le chant de la Nature
Dans les plaintes de l'arbre et les soupirs des nuits;
C'est que la voix des mers folles, immense râle,
Brisait ton sein d'enfant, trop humain et trop doux;
C'est qu'un matin d'avril, un beau cavalier pâle,
Un pauvre fou, s'assit muet à tes genoux!
Ciel! Amour! Liberté! Quel rêve, ô pauvre Folle!
Tu te fondais à lui comme une neige au feu:
Tes grandes visions étranglaient ta parole
- Et l'Infini terrible effara ton oeil bleu!
III
- Et le Poète dit qu'aux rayons des étoiles
Tu viens chercher, la nuit, les fleurs que tu cueillis;
Et qu'il a vu sur l'eau, couchée en ses longs voiles,
La blanche Ophélia flotter, comme un grand lys.
15 mai 1870.
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I
Trên sóng nước huyền im sao lặng ngủ
Trôi bồng bềnh hoa huệ trắng Ô-Phê-Ly
Khăn sô dài che phủ dáng lâm ly
Nghe tiếng vọng mơ hồ rừng xa gọi
Ngàn năm qua Ô-Phê-Ly nàng hỡi
Bóng ma buồn lãng đãng nuớc sông huyền
Đây ngàn năm còn ngây dại, đảo-điên
Lời ân ái gởi gió chiều thỏ thẻ
Hôn ngực nàng gió tung từng cánh nhẹ
Buờm căng phồng theo sóng sẽ lắc lư
Liễu rũ buồn sướt mướt khóc vai bờ
Trên trán mộng trúc la-đà gục xuống
Sen thở dài quanh mình nàng lá cuốn
Tỉnh giấc nồng đôi lúc dưới cội cây
Tổ chim nào run cánh chập chờn bay
Tiếng hát mật từ sao vàng rụng xuống
II
Ô-Phê-Ly nàng đẹp như tuyết trắng
Đã qua đời tuổi trẻ dưới giòng sông
Từ núi cao Na-Úy trận cuồng phong
Đã quyến rũ nàng tự do siêu thoát
Cơn gió lốc thổi tóc nàng bay dạt
Vọng tiếng đồng trong cơn mộng triền miên
Để tim nàng nghe giọng hát Thiên nhiên
Đêm thở dài, quyện lời than cây cỏ
Biển cuồng điên thét gào theo sóng vỗ
Vỡ tan rồi tim trẻ dịu thơ ngây
Một sáng Xuân nguời dũng sĩ đẹp trai
Im lặng duới chân nàng như ngây dại
Trời hỡi! Yêu! Tự do! Ôi cuồng mộng!
Yêu chàng như tuyết rã truớc lửa hồng
Lời nghẹn ngào khi cảm xúc đuợm nồng
Hư vô đó mắt xanh đầy kinh dị
III
Thi sĩ bảo duới ánh sao huyền bí
Nguời đi tìm hoa đã hái trong đêm
Đã thấy nàng trên nuớc phủ khăn im
Ô-Phê-Ly trắng bồng bềnh như hoa huệ
Traduit par David Lý Lãng Nhân
Madison, 6 June 2005
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I
Upon the dark, calm waves where sleep the stars
Fair Ophelia floats, lissome lily
Slowly drifting veiled for eternal hours
While faint howlings echo through woods moody.
Over a millenium sad Ophelia
Sleeps through ghost white upon the dark river
Over a millenium mad Ophelia
Whispers romance to the breeze's vesper.
Kissing her breasts the wind unfurls a crown
Of veils that are gently rocked by the wave.
Shivering willows weep on her shoulders down;
On her dreamy broad brow the bent reeds lave.
The bruised water lilies around her sigh;
Sometimes she wakes by the sleeping alder.
A nesting fledgling beats its wings well nigh
From golden stars the secret songs bestir.
II
O pale Ophelia! lovely as snow!
You died a child and soon was river-born,
Because the Norwegian mountain winds blow,
Tempt you with rugged freedom in their bourn.
It is a wind that teases your great hair,
Your mind of dream that sounds its strange delight
That your heart hears the song of nature fair
In yonder trees' laments, the sobs of night.
The mad seas' billows roar deep-throated howl
Shatter your child's human and tender heart.
One April morn a shining knight goes on the prowl
Silly poor guy, at your knees sits apart.
Gosh! Love! Liberty! What a dream, poor Fool!
You rush to him as snow dashing towards fire:
Your great visions stifling your wise words cool,
Boundless terror fills your blue eyes with ire.
III
And the poet said in the starlight
You came at night to seek the flower tote,
He saw her on the water in veils bright
The white Ophelia, a lily float.
Translated by Thomas D. Le
19 May 2005
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Return to Featured Authors
François Villon (ca. 1431 - after 1463)
A master of arts, a ruffian, a gang leader, a robber, a killer, a gallows bird, a poet.
If ever there was a highly educated man, whose life rarely rose above the most sordid layer of society,
whose fortune was tied to crime and poverty, whose genius won the admiration of contempaneous poets and eminent personalities,
such as the Duke of Orleans, and whose immortal fame rested on about 3000 verses of stark realism, it is this unusual man about
whom we know little except through his unsavory judicial records and his own poems: François Villon.
From the meager records available, François Villon was born ca. 1431 to a poor family in Paris in one of the
most turbulent periods of French history. The Black Death of the thirteenth century had decimated French population. Then came
The Hundred Years War with England. which had by the time of Villon's birth dragged on for almost a hundred years. Joan of Arc,
the Maid of Domremy, had delivered Orleans thereby saving the country, but was captured by the Burgundians in 1430, who sold her
to the English for 10,000 livres. She was burned at the stake at Rouen for heresy, a sentence pronounced by the court of Bishop
Pierre Cauchon of Beauvais the year Villon burst into the world . France was wallowing in economic and social shambles, prostrated
by this fitful war of succession and economic ambition, which had another quarter century to run its course, brigandage, and
lawlessness. The University of Paris was churning out graduates with degress but no jobs. Criminal behavior was rampant from the
riffraff.to the nobles, and public hangings abounded..
Also known as François de Montcorbier and François des Loges, Villon took his surname from
Guillaume de Villon, chanoine and chaplain of the Church of Saint-Benoît-le-Bétourné and professor of canon law, who sent him to
the University of Paris, where he obtained the Bachelor of Arts degree in 1449 and the Master's degree in 1452. Little is known of
Villon's life from this date to 1455, when he killed the priest Philippe Chermoye or Sermoise in a barroom fight, after the latter had
drawn a dagger and injured him. Villon fled and was banished from Paris. In January 1456 he obtained a pardon from King Charles VII
acting on exculpatory evidence that the priest Sermoise had forgiven Villon on his deathbed.
According to Pierre Jannet1, Villon
got into trouble with the law for the first time after a love affair that turned bad. He fell in love with a woman of easy morals, whom he
called variously Denise, Rose, Katherine de Vauzelles, who at first encouraged him then rejected him. Stung, he wrote a few biting
ballads and rondeaus; she complained; and the ecclesiastical court condemned him to lashing. In the aftermath of this incident Villon
decided to leave Paris, but not until after he had written in 1456 the Lais or Legs (Legacy), which became known as the Petit
Testament. In this work, he facetiously bequeathed various imaginary possessions to equally imaginary friends and foes.
Then in December 1456 Villon and other members of a group of thieves known as the Coquille stole 500 gold coins
from the chapel of the College of Navarre. A year later, one of the accomplices accused him of being the leader, and
he was again banished from Paris. Now a wanderer, he was taken in for a period (in 1457) by the Duke of Orléans, an admirer
and a poet in his own right, at his court in Chateau Blois. Here Villon wrote the Épître à Marie d'Orléans to celebrate the birth
of the Duke's daughter Marie d'Orléans, then disappeared from view shortly afterwards. When he next reappeared in 1461, he
was in the prison of Meung for rather obscure reasons, condemned to be hanged. Thanks to a general amnesty accorded during King
Louis XI's visit in company of Charles d'Orléans to this city, he was released. And after an unsuccessful attempt to regain the
good graces of the Duke with Requeste au prince and to gain favor of the King with the Ballade contre les ennemis de la
France (Ballad against the enemies of France), Villon went to Paris, where he composed his most important work, Le
Testament. (known as Le Grand testament), which included some ballads he had written earlier.
In November 1462, Villon was again arrested for petit larceny and detained in the Chatelet. Then the old charge
of the College of Navarre was revived, from which he was released for a promise of restitution. It wasn't long before Villon was again
enmeshed in another street brawl involving the pontifical official Ferrebouc, who had been involved in the interrogation of Guy
Tabarie, former member who.testified against La Coquille. This time recidivist Villon was incarcerated, tortured, and condemned to the gallows.
He appealed the sentence, and while waiting in jail, he was believed to have written the Ballade des pendus (Ballad of the Hanged), full of touching
realism about death and humanity. Finally, in January 1463, the parliament of Paris commuted his sentence to a ten-year banishment
from the city. From this time on, Villon disappeared from history, feeding the emergence of the Villon legend.
Villon is the first poet to break with his medieval environment to herald the future in forms and themes not generally encountered in the courtly poetry of the day while
reintroducing the realistic and personal tradition of the minstrels of the 13th century. In place of the courtly love and chivalric
ideals of aristocratic poetry, his works.reflect the lives of criminals, including his own, regrets over his youthful misbehavior, the
haunting of death, and remorse. Above all Villon rose beyond the abjection of his life to evince lofty sentiments such as filial piety,
patriotism, human love, religious charity, all great timeless lyrical themes. Future generations, including the Romantics, recognized in him the first
lyrical genius of French literature.
Yet rather than giving in to excessive sentimentality, Villon turned his irony upon himself, coloring his macabre
obsession with death and his horrifying vision of the gallows. This criminal elicited sympathy by his candor, his utter humanity,
and his direct appeal to our heart. His is a cri du coeur, which is at once touching and sobering in its invocation of the
wretchedness of the human condition. His too is the tragic reality of a wasted youth and of a path to perdition and ruination of no
return. His simple yet forceful language and the realism of his images pack a remarkable evocative
power. From the brutality of the Ballad of the Hanged to the gracefulness of the Ballad of the Ladies of Yore,
Villon exhibited a masterly grasp of the verse and his themes, to which later generations did not take long to render justice.
Clément Marot edited his works in the 16th century; Boileau discussed Villon in his "Art Poétique" in the 17th;
and the Romantics recognized Villon as their precursor. Villon is to us one of the greatest poets in French literature (Lagarde &
Michard).
Note:
1. Oeuvres Complètes de François Villon, p.viii.
Bibliography
Jannet, Pierre. Oeuvres Complètes de François Villon, 3rd ed.. Paris: Alphonse Lemerre. 1873.
Lagarde & Michard. La Poésie de François Villon. 1 December 2007.
< http://www.ac-strasbourg.fr/pedago/lettres/lecture/Villonpresent.htm >
Lagarde & Michard. Poésies diverses de François Villon : notes, 1 December 2007.
< http://www.ac-strasbourg.fr/pedago/lettres/lecture/Nvillon.htm >
Prompsault, J.H.R. (ed.) Oeuvres de Maistre François Villon, ed. Paris: Ebrard. 1835.
Ballade des Dames du Temps Jadis
François Villon (ca. 1431 - after 1463)
Dictes moy ou, n'en quel pays,
Est Flora la belle Rommaine,1
Archipiades ne Thaïs,2
Qui fut sa cousine germaine,
Echo parlant quant bruyt on maine
Dessus riviere ou sus estan,
Qui beaulté ot trop plus q'humaine.
Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan?
Ou est la tres sage Helloïs,3
Pour qui chastré fut et puis moyne
Pierre Esbaillart a Saint Denis?4
Pour son amour ot ceste essoyne.
Semblablement, ou est la royne5
Qui commanda que Buridan
Fust geté en ung sac en Saine?
Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan?
La royne Blanche comme lis6
Qui chantoit a voix de seraine,
Berte au grand pié, Beatris, Alis,7
Haremburgis qui tint le Maine8,
Et Jehanne la bonne Lorraine9
Qu'Englois brulerent a Rouan;
Ou sont ilz, ou, Vierge souvraine?
Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan?
Prince, n'enquerez de sepmaine
Ou elles sont, ne de cest an,
Qu'a ce reffrain ne vous remaine:
Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan?
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| Ca
Khúc Những Vương Nữ Thời Xưa |
I
Anh có biết, xứ nào đang nương náo
Nàng Flo-Ra, người mỹ nữ Rô-manh,
Á-chi-nương và nàng Thái đẹp xinh,
Nét kiều diễm hai chị em đồng họ;
Nữ thần nào than vãn bên sông đó
Sắc hương còn trội hẳn những cơn mơ.
Nhưng tìm đâu tuyết trắng của năm xưa?
II
Tìm thấy đâu, nàng Hĩ-Lộ tài hoa
Yêu tha thiết chàng Pier Ê-bay-giã
Để chàng chịu đọa đầy thân tàn tạ
Cho khối tình mãi sống suốt ngàn năm;
Như chuyện tình Hòang hậu “Mạt” đa dâm
Mưu hạ sát tình nhân Bồ-Di-Đặng,
Chàng đã thóat khỏi Sông Sen tối vắng
Nhưng tìm đâu tuyết trắng của năm xưa?
III
Bạch Nữ Hòang đẹp như hoa huệ trắng
Tiếng ca ngân thánh thót tựa Ngư nhân
Nàng Bạc-thê, Bĩ-tích với Ái-ly
Đời còn nhớ quận Maine người kế vị;
Nhớ nàng Jeanne, hiệp nữ xứ Lô-ranh
Bị hỏa thiêu đến thác tại Ru-anh
Ôi, Đức Mẹ Đồng Trinh xin chứng giám.
Nhưng tìm đâu tuyết trắng của năm xưa?
Điệp khúc
Này Hòang tử, năm nay xin chớ hỏi
Các Nũ vương tôi nào biết ở mô;
Điệp khúc nầy lòng tôi còn mãi nhớ:
Nhưng tìm đâu tuyết trắng của năm xưa?
Traduit par Lý Lãng Nhân
Madison, AL., Juillet, 2007
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| Ballad of the Ladies of Yore |
I
Tell me where, or in what country,
Is Flora, the lovely Roman,1
Archipiada or Thaïs,2
Who was her rival in beauty?
Or Echo whose voice remains
Over rivers and over ponds
With beauty beyond human reach?
But where are the snows of yesteryear?
II
Where is the learned Heloise3
For whom suffered mutilation
Pierre Esbailard at Saint Denis4
Who endured love's tribulation?
And likewise where is the Queen5
Who ordered that Buridan
Be thrown in a bag into the Seine?
But where are the snows of yesteryear?
III
The Queen as white as a lily6
Whose songs are suchlike a siren's.
Bertha the tall, Beatrix, and Alice7
Haremburgis, who held the Maine8
And Joan the maid of Lorraine9
Whom the English burned at Rouen.
Where are they, our sovereign Virgin?
But where are the snows of yesteryear?
Envoi
Prince, inquire not this very week
Where they are, nor this very year
Lest you should get this refrain here:
But where are the snows of yesteryear?
Translated by Thomas D. Le
1 December 2007
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Notes:
1. Flora: a famous courtesan loved by Pompey.
2. Archipiada and Thais are equally famous courtesans. Thais arrived in Athens in the middle of the fourth century while
Archipiada, likely to be Archippa, was Sophocles' mistress.
3. Heloïse (1101-1164), niece of Chanoine Fulbert, whose secret love of her tutor Abelard resulted in a child. Upon their
separation she entered a convent, where she maintained a correspondance in Latin with Abelard, which was translated in 1870.
4. Pierre Esbailard or Abelard (1079-1172), philosopher and theologian, whose passion for Heloïse and resulting
emasculation gained notoriety. He taught theology and logic in Paris.
5. This is Marguerite de Bourgogne, Queen of Navarre then Queen of France, first wife of Louis X Le Hutin, who ordered her
death by strangulation for adultery in 1315. She would have relations with students, and would order them thrown in the Seine when
they became exhausted. One of them, Buridan, escaped and fled to Vienna, where he later founded a university.
6. It could be the Queen Blanche de Bourbon, married to Peter the Cruel in 1352. This princess is as beautiful as she is
intellectual. Here the word "blanche" (white) seems to serve double duty as name and as quality.
7. Berthe ou Bertrade, daughter of Caribert, the Count of Laon, married to Pepin the Short. She is the mother of
Charlemagne. Beatrice of Provence was married in 1245 to Charles of France, son of Louis VIII. Alice of Champagne was married
the French King Louis The Young in 1160. She died in 1206.
8. Haremburgis or Eremburges, fille and sole heir of Elie de La Fleche, Count of Maine, died in 1110.
9. Joan of Arc was born in Dom Remy, Duchy of Bar, considered as part of Lorraine.