Love Sonnets and Elegies
Page 6
Have (wrongly, I think) accorded me.
But who can count on lasting fame?
Not only am I flattered in France,
I’m also praised (more than I’d like to be)
In the land surrounded by the Pyrenees
And the Pillars of Hercules by the sea,
And by the rolling banks of the Rhine,
Where your travels now have taken you,
They’ve heard (so you’ve led me to believe)
That men of quality hold me in esteem.
Enjoy the prize so many men desire:
Remember the goal to which they aspire:
Look elsewhere: you’ll never find my like.
I’m not saying she won’t be fairer than me:
But no woman will love you more,
None will bring you higher honor.
Many great Lords have sought my heart,
Offering to please & serve me with their arts:
They’ve jousted & worn fine devices,
Trying to win my favor by their enterprises:
But for all this I’ve nothing but disdain,
I haven’t even thanked them for their pains.
My good & bad are all your doing:
With you, all: & sans you, nothing:
And having nothing to distract my mind,
Of every pleasure I find myself deprived:
The only pleasure I now know is ennui,
Sobs & sighs my only company,
So unable am I to find rest,
A thousand times I’ve wished for death.
So, my Friend, your two-month absence
Has only aggrieved my pain,
Not living, but dying of that Love
Which slays me ten thousand times a day.
So come back soon, should you desire
To see me again before I expire.
And should death strike before you arrive,
Depriving my body of its loving soul,
Try, at least, to appear in mourning
Clothes & circle my tomb one last time,
On which (God willing) you shall find,
Etched in white marble, these four lines:
LOVE, HERE LIES WHOM YOU SO SET ON FIRE
THAT SHE LANGUISHES WHILE BY FLAME CONSUMED.
HERE SHE BURNS ON THIS SMOULD’RING PYRE.
ONLY YOUR TEARS COULD EXTINGUISH HER DOOM.
Elegie III
Quand vous lirez, ô Dames Lionnoises,
Ces miens escrits pleins d’amoureuses noises,
Quand mes regrets, ennuis, despits et larmes
M’orrez chanter en pitoyables carmes,
Ne veuillez pas condamner ma simplesse,
Et jeune erreur de ma fole jeunesse,
Si c’est erreur: mais qui dessous les Cieus
Se peut vanter de n’estre vicieus?
L’un n’est content de sa sorte de vie,
Et tousjours porte à ses voisins envie:
L’un forcenant de voir la paix en terre,
Par tous moyens tache y mettre la guerre:
L’autre croyant povreté estre vice,
A autre Dieu qu’or, ne fait sacrifice:
L’autre sa foy parjure il emploira
A decevoir quelcun qui le croira:
L’un en mentant de sa langue lezarde
Mile brocars sur l’un et l’autre darde:
Je ne suis point sous ces planettes nee,
Qui m’ussent pù tant faire infortunee.
Onques ne fut mon œil marri, de voir
Chez mon voisin mieus que chez moy pleuvoir.
Onq ne mis noise ou discord entre amis:
A faire gain jamais ne me soumis.
Mentir, tromper, & abuser autrui,
Tant m’a desplu, que mesdire de lui.
Mais si en moy rien y ha d’imparfait,
Qu’on blame Amour: c’est lui seul qui l’a fait.
Sur mon verd aage en ses laqs il me prit,
Lors qu’exerçoi mon corps & mon esprit
En mile & mile euvres ingenieuses,
Qu’en peu de tems me rendit ennuieuses.
Pour bien savoir avec l’esguille peindre
J’eusse entrepris la renommee esteindre
De celle là, qui plus docte que sage,
Avec Pallas comparoit son ouvrage.
Qui m’ust vù lors en armes fiere aller,
Porter la lance & bois faire voler,
Le devoir faire en l’estour furieus,
Piquer, volter le cheval glorieus,
Pour Bradamante, ou la haute Marphise,
Seur de Roger, il m’ust, possible, prise.
Mais quoy? Amour ne put longuement voir,
Mon cœur n’aymant que Mars & le savoir:
Et me voulant donner autre souci,
En souriant, il me disoit ainsi:
Tu penses donq, ô Lionnoise Dame,
Pouvoir fuir par ce moyen ma flame:
Mais non feras, j’ai subjugué les Dieus
Es bas Enfers, en la Mer & es Cieus.
Et penses tu que n’aye tel pouvoir
Sur les humeins, de leur faire savoir
Qu’il n’y ha rien qui de ma main eschape?
Plus fort se pense & plus tot je le frape.
De me blamer quelquefois tu n’as honte,
En te fiant en Mars, dont tu fais conte:
Mais meintenant, voy si pour persister
En le suivant me pourras resister.
Ainsi parloit, & tout eschaufé d’ire
Hors de sa trousse une sagette il tire,
Et decochant de son extreme force,
Droit la tira contre ma tendre escorce,
Foible harnois, pour bien couvrir le cœur,
Contre l’Archer qui tousjours est vainqueur.
La bresche faite, entre Amour en la place,
Dont le repos premierement il chasse:
Et de travail qui me donne sans cesse,
Boire, manger, & dormir ne me laisse.
Il ne me chaut de soleil ne d’ombrage:
Je n’ay qu’Amour & feu en mon courage,
Qui me desguise, & fait autre paroitre,
Tant que ne peu moymesme me connoitre.
Je n’avois vù encore seize Hivers,
Lors que j’entray en ces ennuis divers:
Et jà voici le treiziéme Esté
Que mon cœur fut par Amour arresté.
Le tems met fin aus hautes Pyramides,
Le tems met fin aus fonteines humides:
Il ne pardonne aus braves Colisees,
Il met à fin les viles plus prisees:
Finir aussi il ha acoutumé
Le feu d’Amour tant soit il allumé:
Mais, las! en moy il semble qu’il augmente
Avec le tems, & que plus me tourmente.
Paris ayma OEnone ardamment,
Mais son amour ne dura longuement:
Medee fut aymee de Jason,
Qui tot apres la mit hors sa maison.
Si meritoient elles estre estimees,
Et pour aymer leurs Amis, estre aymees.
S’estant aymé on peut Amour laisser
N’est il raison, ne l’estant, se lasser?
N’est il raison te prier de permettre,
Amour, que puisse à mes tourmens fin mettre?
Ne permets point que de Mort face espreuve,
Et plus que toy pitoyable la treuve:
Mais si tu veus que j’ayme jusqu’au bout,
Fay que celui que j’estime mon tout,
Qui seul me peut faire plorer & rire,
Et pour lequel si souvent je soupire,
Sente en ses os, en son sang, en son ame,
Ou plus ardente, ou bien egale flame.
Alors ton faix plus aisé me sera,
Quand avec moy quelcun le portera.
Elegy 3
When you come to read, O Ladies of Lyon,
My writings, filled with love’s discord,
When you hear me sing in heartbro
ken tones
Of my trials, troubles, tears & woes,
Please don’t condemn me as naïve,
Or the foolish errors of my youth,
If errors they be: for who can claim
Their virtue’s truly free from stain?
This one, wretched with his lot in life,
On his neighbor casts an envious eye:
That one, furious to see peace on earth,
Uses every means to stir up strife:
Another, thinking poverty a vice,
To no god but Gold makes sacrifice:
Another falsely swears & deceives
Those gullible enough to believe:
Another lies with his poisoned tongue,
Firing barbs by which countless are stung:
I wasn’t born beneath stars like these,
Which would’ve made me unfortunate indeed.
In no way did it trouble my eye
To see the grass greener on the other side.
I’ve never sown discord among friends
Or lowered myself to advance my ends.
To deceive or cheat my fellow man
Offends me as evil gossip can.
If you see any shortcomings in me,
Blame Love: he alone did this to me.
He caught me in his snares, young & green,
When I was still training body & mind
To execute numberless nimble feats,
Which he quickly showed a waste of time.
Eager to master the art of needlecraft,
I had decided to eclipse the fame
Of Arachne who, more cunning than wise,
Dared rival what Pallas had devised.
You should have seen me in the lists,
Jousting away, with my lance held high,
Dutifully unhorsing all who rode by,
Spurring on & wheeling my glorious steed.
You’d have taken me for Bradamante,
Or Roger’s sister, the great Marphise.
So what! Love could not abide the sight
Of a heart so besotted with Mars & books:
To show me this wasn’t worth my while,
He addressed me as follows, with a smile:
So you really think, O Lady of Lyon,
You can flee my flame of your own accord?
You’ll never manage: I’ve subdued the gods
In Hell below, in the Seas & the Skies.
This is the same power I exercise
Over mortals. I force them to understand
There is nothing that can escape my hand.
The stronger they stand, the sooner I strike.
You have not been ashamed to defy me,
Mad about Mars, on whom you so rely:
Now let’s see if you’re able to persist
In his pursuit. Let’s see if you resist.
Thus he spoke. And, boiling with rage,
He drew forth an arrow from his case
And let it fly with superhuman force,
Directed right at my tender armor,
A shield too flimsy to defend my heart
Against that Archer ever bound to win.
The breach once made, Love drives in
And, first thing, deprives me of rest:
At my wit’s end, knowing no redress,
He won’t let me eat or drink or sleep.
Sunshine or shade, I no longer care:
Deep inside, all I feel is Love & fire,
And go about disguised, a stranger,
A figure I barely recognize.
I hadn’t seen sixteen Winters pass
When I found myself in this awful plight:
And here it is, the thirteenth Summer
Since Love stunned me to the core.
Time brings an end to lofty Pyramids,
Time dries up every fountain’s mist:
It does not spare the Coliseum’s pride,
It robs the grandest cities of their life:
It has also been known to snuff
The fire of Love, however it burned:
But in me the fire grows more intense
With time, leaving me without defense.
Paris was enamored of Oenone,
But his love was quick to cool:
Medea was adored by Jason,
Who soon threw her from his home.
Those women deserved the love they earned,
And, loving, to have been loved in return.
When you’re loved, you can set Love aside,
But if you’re unloved, won’t you grow tired
Of him, won’t you ask him to cease,
To please leave you at last in peace?
Don’t let me face the test of Death,
Lest I find it more merciful than you:
You want me to love to the bitter end?
Then make him who’s the world to me,
Who alone can make me laugh or weep,
For whom I sigh & lose my sleep,
Feel in his bones, in his blood, in his soul,
A flame more searing, or equal to my own.
Your burden, thus, shall be lighter to me
When borne by two, in reciprocity.
Notes
DEDICATORY EPISTLE
Mademoiselle Clémence de Bourges Lyonnaise (1535?–1561?), ten to fifteen years younger than Labé, was the daughter of a powerful magistrate in Lyon. Convinced that this young poet and musician (none of whose works survive) had died of heartbreak after the death of her fiancé, Rilke wrote in his 1910 Malte Laurids Brigge: “Her girlhood was of so high a resolve that a woman in love, in full flood, could dedicate to this young swelling heart a book of sonnets in which every line was unrequited. Louise Labé was not afraid of frightening the child with her own long-suffering love. She revealed to her the nightly mountings of desire; she promised her pain as if it were a more spacious world; and sensed intuitively that she, with all the grief she herself had experienced, fell short of that obscure expectation that gave this young woman her beauty” (Hulse translation, modified). Rilke included this Widmungsbrief (“Dedicatory Epistle”) in his 1917 translation of Die vierundzwanzig Sonette der Louïze Labé Lyoneserin.
SONNETS
Labé’s sonnets were written within a form imported relatively recently into France from Italy: du Bellay publishes his first sonnet cycle, L’Olive, in 1549; Ronsard follows with his Amours in 1552. (Wyatt’s and Surrey’s English sonnets appear in 1556.) Although Labé’s twenty-four sonnet cycle is fairly short by contemporary standards, it nonetheless observes some of the same principles of thematic and narrative organization that characterize the traditional Petrarchan canzoniere. Formally, she adheres to the Italian abba envelope rhymes for the quatrains, but follows French practice in the handling of the tercets, typically deploying a cc couplet at the volta of lines nine and ten, followed either by deed or dede. The first sonnet of her sequence, written in Italian hendecasyllabics, pays homage to its “Tuscan” origins. The rest are composed in decasyllabics, the most traditional of all French meters until its gradual displacement by the alexandrin roughly around the same time that Labé was writing.
Sonnet I
Ulysses: An unusual figure in Renaissance love poetry. Here, not the nostalgic exile of du Bellay’s Regrets nor the heroic overreacher of Dante, but a master of guile—and survivor of shipwreck. Cf. Sonnet XX.
Your eyes drove through me like a blade: Conventional imagery for the moment of Petrarchan innamoramento—the trauma of love at first sight. The entire poem echoes the first sonnet of Petrarch’s Rime and the opening dizain of Scève’s Délie.
Without this lack, I might as well be dead: Behind Labé’s Italian mancar one may hear what Leone Ebreo in his Dialogues of Love calls il mancamento—the lack at the heart of all desire.
Sonnet II
O fair brown eyes, O averted gaze: An example of sixteenth-century blason poetry—in which (male) poets offer erotic declensions of isolated parts of the female body. The first two quatrains
are identical to those of a sonnet published two years later in Les Souspirs d’Olivier de Magny. Cf. Sonnet XXI for a further “queering” of the male blason genre. A fuller discussion of Sonnet II is contained in the translator’s afterword.
Sonnet III
O hopes held in vain, O endless desires: An imitation (or pastiche?) of a 1530 Petrarchan sonnet by Jacopo Sannazaro (“Interditte speranze e van desio”).
Sonnet VI
Flora: Roman goddess of plants and flowers.
Sonnet VII
I am the body, you my better part: A reprise of Scève’s dizain 376 (“You the Body, Lady, & I your Shadow”).
Sonnet VIII
I live, I die: The rhetoric of antithesis reaches back to Catullus’s “Odi et amo” (“I hate and love”) and reaches its fullest—and most machinic—development in the Petrarchan practice of oxymoron.
Sonnet IX
Send me this same dream every night: Ovid’s Sappho similarly declares to Phaon: “Obsessed as I am, you visit me by night, Phaon, in dreams more candid than daylight. I meet you there wherever else you are, / But sleep’s delights are too short-lived by far” (from Daryl Hine’s translation of Ovid’s Heroides).
Sonnet X
As could easily constrain / Tree or rock to follow you: Like Orpheus, whose lyre had the power to tame all the brute beasts and natural elements of the world.
Sonnet XI
My heart & eyes are so out of measure: See Shakespeare’s Sonnet 46 (“Mine eye and heart are at mortal war”).
Sonnet XII
Lute, my companion in calamity: In sympathetic vibration with dizain 344 of Scève’s Délie: “Leuth resonnant & le doulx son des cordes” (“Resounding lute & sweet pluck of strings”).
Toning the major into minor scale: The original French, “feignant le ton que plein avoit chanté,” refers not specifically to major and minor scales (not yet invented in the modern sense), but to whole tones and semitones—in short to that practice of musica ficta which involved the “feigning” of pitches that lay outside the strict theoretical norms of musica recta.
Sonnet XIII
Euripus: A storm-tossed strait between the Greek island of Euboea and the mainland region of Boeotia where Aristotle is said to have drowned, unable to solve the mystery of its currents.
Until my spirit fled away upon his lips: Here, at the very center of the sonnet sequence, the mors osculi: the ecstatic death-in-life experience contained in a single, eternal kiss.
Sonnet XV
Zephyr: God of the gentle west wind.
Sonnet XVI
The Caucasian heights: Site of Prometheus’s martyrdom.
Sonnet XVII
I search these woods for the loneliest grove: Cf. Sappho’s solitary retreat into nature in the Heroides: “Forthwith to grove and grotto I repair In hopes of finding consolation there, For grove and grotto formerly had been / Our pleasures’ secret, sympathetic scene” (Hine). Petrarch’s Rime 35 stages the same topos.