Poésies choisies de André Chénier
Chapter 17
L. 105. _une pourpre...._ The _purpureus pannus_ or purple patch of Horace, _Ars Poet._ 15.
L. 109. _brave_, bold.
L. 124. _fuit mes poétiques doigts._ Once transformed by the poet's hand, prose goes and dances and sings. An easy improvement would be to delete the ';' after _doigts_ and the ',' after _dansante_.
L. 130. _Les attache_, i.e. _les greffe_, grafts them.
L. 140. _Montaigne...._ 'Je veulx qu'ils donnent une nazarde à Plutarque sur mon nez,' _Ess._ I. x. 'I will have them wound Plutarch through my sides,' Cotton's translation.
POÈMES.
I. L'INVENTION.
L. 1. _fis du Mincius_: Virgil, born at Mantua, on the banks of the river Mincius (now Mincio).
L. 2. _peuple-roi_, Latin _populus-rex_, people-king.
L. 4. _l'onde Égée._ Tibullus' _Aegeas undas_, i. 3.
L. 7. A most happy line. Cf. Horace, _Ep. ad Pis._, 323.
L. 9. Pope, _Essay on Criticism_, 181.
Ll. 20, 21. Pope, _Essay on Criticism_, 715.
Ll. 25-34. Horace, _Ep. ad Pis._, 1 ff.
L. 37. _D'Ormus et d'Ariman._ Ahriman, the spirit of darkness or evil genius; Ormuzd, the spirit of light or good demon in Persian mythology.
L. 46. Cf. Boileau: 'Une pensée neuve est une pensée qui a dû venir à tout le monde et que quelqu'un s'avise le premier d'exprimer.'
L. 56. Xénophon, _Memorab._ iii. 10, makes Socrates set forth the same theory.
L. 62. _Marot._ Clément Marot, a French poet of the sixteenth century, who excelled in badinage.
Ll. 69. _Sophocle et Eschyle_--and Euripides, whom Chénier forgets.
L. 71. _Des hommes immortels_, Corneille and Racine.
L. 73. _instruits._ The _s_ of _instruits_ should be deleted.
L. 92. _pour nord._ _Nord_ here stands for _étoile du nord_ or _étoile polaire._ 'Perdre la tramontane (the Mediterranean name of the Pole Star), la boussole, le nord,' are familiar expressions, meaning 'to be puzzled, not to know which way to turn, to lose one's head.'
L. 95. _du plus lointain Nérée._ Poetical for _Océan_. Nereus, an ancient sea-god. Cf. _une Cybèle neuve_ below, p. 91, l. 133.
L. 100. Horace, _Ep. ad Pis._, 156.
L. 130. _Bailly_, a French astronomer (1736-1793). He wrote an _Histoire de l'Astronomie_.
Ll. 133. _Une Cybèle._ Poetical for the earth, like _Nérèe_ the sea, p. 90, l. 95.
L. 138. _Cusco_ was once the capital of Peru. This shows that Chénier was then meditating the poem _L'Amérique_, of which he wrote only fragments.
L. 143. _Négligeât._ In colloquial French this would be, 'Pensez-vous que leur main _négligerait_...?' In the same way, 'je ne pense pas qu'il vienne' or 'pensez-vous qu'il vienne' would be '... qu'il viendra.'
L. 163. All the following passage is imitated from Petronius, _Satyr_, v.
L. 170. _bassin pompeux._ See A. Rich, _Dict. of Roman and Greek Antiq._, under _Naumachia_.
L. 178. Lucian, _Quomod. hist. conser. sit_, i, speaks of a kind of summer-madness which seized the inhabitants of Abdera. After witnessing the exciting performance of an actor, named Archelaüs, in Euripides' _Andromede_, they went about shouting out this line from the play, 'O Love, thou tyrant both of men and gods.'
L. 184. _Sur des pensers nouveaux faisons des vers antiques_, i.e. let us express modern, personal thoughts in a form worthy of antiquity.
L. 221. _son vide_, his empty mind.
L. 223, _jette une rose._ See note to p. 27, l. 15.
L. 243, Cf. Martial, VI. xv.
L. 248. _ces larmes..._ Ovid, _Met._ ii. 584, explains the formation of amber by the tears the sisters of Phaeton shed.
L. 262. _et dressent tes cheveux._ G. de Chénier, in his edition, prints _et dresser tes cheveux_. But the correction is unnecessary, as the same transitive employment of the verb occurs in a fragment of Chénier: '[Il] verse une sueur froide et _dresse ses cheveux_.'
L. 272. _le docte ciseau._ _Docte_, meaning 'scholarly,' rather than 'skilful,' is, in my opinion at least, not very apposite here.
L. 277. _flanes invaincus aux travaux_, i.e. _dans les_ travaux. See note to p. 16, l. 308. An allusion to Hercules.
L. 282. Apollo Belvedere.
L. 283. The Farnese Hercules.
L. 284. The Laocoon group.
L. 285. Michael Angelo's Moses.
L. 294. _Ce qu'eux-même._ See note to p. 42, l. 15.
L. 298. Bailly, _Hist. de l'Astronomie_: 'On ajoute qu'Épicure croyait que le soleil s'allumait le matin et s'éteignait le soir dans les eaux de l'Océan.'
Ll. 302. Bailly, _Hist. de l'Astronomie_: 'La poésie, que nous appelons le langage des Dieux, était jadis la langue consacrée aux merveilles de la nature.'
Is it not illustrative of the force of habit that Chénier should denounce the exploitation of Fable and gods by poets in the very conventional language he might be expected to object to? In reading l. 297 one would think that he purposed to drop Tethys for ever, but then come Apollo, Calliope, Urania!
L. 307. _Ou si._ A very quaint interrogative turn which one is surprised to see Voltaire condemn in this line of Corneille: 'Tombé-je dans l'erreur, _ou si_ j'en vais sortir?' _Heracl._ IV. iv. See LITTRÉ _Si_, 17°.
L. 309. _Il n'est sot traducteur..._ This is a feature of old syntax still extant in modern French. La Fontaine, in the seventeenth century, still writes, in accordance with older usage, '_Fille_ se coiffe volontiers,' _Fabl._ IV. i. 39. We still omit the definite article after _jamais_: 'Jamais _homme_ ne reçut plus d'hommages.' Haase, § 57.
L. 311. _ambré._ Perfumed with ambergris--in a figurative sense, of course._... à la glace..._ '_Être à la glace_, LITTRÉ (s.v. 5°), is said of such productions of the mind as the spectator or the reader, fail to move him.' 'Si Corneille avait dans le Cid le plan de l'Académie, le Cid était _à la glace_.' Voltaire, _Lettre d'Argental_, 4 oct. 1760.
L. 313. _d'abord._ Synonyms: _au premier abord_, _de prime abord_, _dès l'abord_. The original meaning is, 'as soon as you accost him or it, at the first contact.' _D'abordée_ is thus explained by Cotgrave: 'At first, at first sight; as soon as they touched, incountred, or came, together.' A synonymous expression _d'arrivée_, somewhat archaic.
L. 320. _contraint d'être._ See note to p. 102, l. 146.
L. 322. _abuser._ Deceive, disappoint, baffle.
L. 323. _infidèle_, an unfaithful interpreter of their meaning.
L. 327. _Creusant dans les détours._ In a figurative sense, as in 'Les Anglais pensent profondément; Leur esprit, en cela, suit leur tempérament; _Creusant dans_ les sujets et forts d'expériences, Ils étendent partout l'empire des sciences.' La Fontaine, _Fabl._ xii. 23.
L. 329. Cf. Horace, _Ep. ad Pis._, 40, 311; Boileau, _Art poét._, i. 147-154. _voit partout un nuage._ So Montaigne: 'Mes conceptions et mon jugement ne marchent qu'à tastons...; je veois encores du païs au delà, mais d'une veue trouble et _en nuage_, que je ne puis desmesler.'--_Essais_, I. xxv.
L. 338. _l'embrasse._ The whole thought is wrapped or clasped by the adequate expression.
L. 343. _D'eux-même._ See note to p. 42, l. 15.
L. 346. _Io._ The daughter of the river Inachus. Zeus, having fallen in no French reader of to-day would notice the word. It is a good old French word. We are thus made aware that it had been falling into disuse in the seventeenth century (when it occurs several times in La Fontaine and others), and especially in the eighteenth. E. _reserene_ occurs in Temple.
FRAGMENT II. This was to be an episode. Alonzo d'Ercilla was a Spanish poet of the sixteenth century who, in a poem entitled _Araucania_, sang the conquest, achieved by the Spaniards, of the country south of Chili.
Ll. 24. _aréneuse_, an old, somewhat out-of-the-way word. It occurs in Rabelais.
L. 28. A climax inspired by Virgil, _Aen._ v. 319.
L. 52. _le Dauphin._ The Dolphin, a northern constellation, _Delphinius_.
L, 53. _la Couronne._ The crown, _Corona borealis_.
IV. L'ART D'AIMER.
Ll. 6, 7. _Et qui pense... Il pense..._ This is a feature of old syntax. Instances of the construction occur in the seventeenth century: 'Qui dit prude, _il_ dit laide,' LA FONTAINE. Sometimes the repetition may be made with a demonstrative pronoun: 'Qui ne mourrait pour conserver son honneur, celui-là serait infâme, PASCAL.
L. 8. _un durable sillon._ Cf. '... having driven his plough through a morass which must close again behind it.' Froude, _Oceana_, iii.
Ll. 29-34. Alpheus, in Elis (Peloponnesus), 'that renowned flood, so often sung, Divine Alpheus, who, by secret sluice, Stole under seas to meet his Arethuse.'--Milton, _Arcades_, 29 ff. The nymph Arethusa, one of Diana's nymphs, was by the goddess changed into a fountain, to save her from the pursuit of Alpheus, a hunter, while Alpheus himself became a river. Enna is a town in Sicily. The fact that the river Alpheus ran in a subterranean channel at several points in its course probably gave rise to the myth.
L. 34. _amer_, an obvious misprint for _amère_. Besides, with _amer_ the line is deficient by one foot.
L. 44. _ils s'écrivent des fleurs._ This is as happy as it is bold. As much may be said of: 'Lit en bouquet la lettre...,' l. 50. All this fragment is gracefully ingenious.
L. 46. _sa durée._ The duration of the 'flame,' of course.
V. LA RÉPUBLIQUE DES LETTRES.
L. 1. _Il n'est que de = le mieux est de..._ _'Il n'est que de_ jouer d'adresse en ce monde,' Molière, _Mal. Imag._, interm, l. sc. vi. _être roi_, king _over oneself_... as is explained at l. 4. Cf. Horace, _Sat._ 1. iii. 132, and _Epist._ I. i. 106.
L. 5. _Mon Louvre._ Racan, _Stances_: '_Roy_ de passions,... Sa cabane est _son Louvre_...'
L. 15. _engagé_, having engaged in (as Thackeray writes: 'Mr. B.,... engaging in a labyrinth of stables,' _Newcomes_, i. 127), i.e. having penetrated into.
POÉSIES DIVERSES.
I. HYMNE A LA JUSTICE.
L. 5. Virgil, _Georg._ ii. 150 ff.
L. 14. _les hauts Pyrénées_, generally feminine, e.g. 'Pyrénées _Orientales_.' But Chénier thinks of them as '_les Monts_ Pyrénées.'
L. 18. _Respire_, breathes (forth).
L. 19. _couvrant_, goes with _la Provence_.
L. 36. _Incertaine._ Because it shifts its channel.
L. 44. _Que visite Phoebus le soir ou le matin._ A poetic translation of _Orient_ and _Occident_.
L. 47. _l'une et l'autre Téthys._ Catullus, 'Uterque Neptunus,' xxxi. 3. Cf. notes to Nérée, p. 90, l. 95, and Cybèle, p. 91, l. 133.
L. 50. _Trudaine._ The grandfather of Chénier's friend, who was Director of Public Works under Louis XV, and laid out the fine roads of France.
L. 54. _impie._ Not, of course, irreligious, but sacrilegious, as invading the (to a Frenchman) sacred territory of France--in the course of what Charles Lamb ironically calls 'the long, steady, deep-rooted, _rational_ antipathies of the great French and English nations.'--_Mrs. Battle's Opinions on Whist._ See another use of _impie_, p. 112, l. 107.
L. 83. _Le sel._ An allusion to the gabelle or salt-tax imposed before the Revolution. This was written before 1789.
L. 85. _Mille brigands_, the _partisans_ or men who constituted _partis_ or societies for the levy of certain taxes.
L. 97. _Malesherbes, Turgot._ These Ministers retired in 1776, but Malesherbes resumed office, only for a few months, in 1787.
L. 105. _armer d'injustes plaintes._ Cf. note to p. 4, l. 100.
Ll. 107. _impie._ Offending honour, considered as a religion. Cf. p. 110, l. 54.
Ll. 131, 132. _le libre encens d'une lyre au coeur chaste._ An incoherent metaphor.
II. TERRE, TERRE CHÉRIE....
L. 3. _Romans_, a town in the department of Drôme where the States General of Dauphiné were held in 1788 as a prelude to the Revolution.
III. LE RAT DE VILLE ET LE RAT DES CHAMPS.
Translated from Horace, _Sat._ II. vi. 80. Compare the much freer imitation or rather adaptation of Pope, p. 444 of Globe edition.
L. 10. _une dent dédaigneuse._ Horace's 'Dente superbo.'
L. 16. _ici près_, a feature of colloquialism very much in place. In the same way does Molière use 'ici dessous, _L'Êt._, I. iv., 'ici dedans,' _Pré._ vii., 'ici autour,' _D. Juan_, III. ii.
L. 19. _Les grands ni les petits._ Grammarians find fault with sentences in which _ni_ is not repeated before each of the subjects or objects, but usage is against them. Haase, § 140, Rem. iii. Ayer, § 263, 3. LITTRÉ, _ni_, 1°, observes that the instances he quotes are in verse, but that they might be imitated in prose.
L. 22. _et d'aller._ For the French historic infinitive see Meyer-Lübke, t, iii. p. 592, who does not think it a continuance of the Latin historic infinitive, but a new thing, as the various Romance languages follow in this sensibly different ways. Italian, Spanish, Portuguese using the infinitive with the preposition _à_ (which occurs in quite isolated cases in French: 'et bon prestre _à_ soy-retirer,' _Cent Nouvelles nouvelles_) Is the verb 'to begin' understood? Meyer-Lübke thinks that the infinitive with _de_ is used only because it was more generally employed, at the time when this turn of phrase originated, than the simple infinitive.
L. 31. _S'empresse de servir, ordonner, disposer._ Observe the rapidity imparted to the sentence by the omission of _de_ before the last two infinitives, a departure from the more common and regular practice.
L. 32. _excuser._ Used absolutely = 'be indulgent.'
L. 35. _La tristesse...._ This rapid review of the Country Rat's grievances--all nouns and no verb--reminds one of a similar turn in La Fontaine's _La Mort et le Bûcheron_, when the poor wood-cutter sees at a glance all his past life: 'Point de pain quelquefois, et jamais de repos.'
L. 38, _et de rire._ See note to l. 22.
IV. LA FRIVOLITÉ.
L. 5. _la glace inquiète._ The restless looking-glass, whose reflection flits about.
L. 10. _fluide_, evanescent.
V. LE POÈTE.
This short fragment was first published in the edition of G. de Chénier, 1874, among a few others under the general heading of 'Satires.'
ODES.
I. A VERSAILLES.
L. 9. _Mes pénates secrets._ Chénier, in 1792, after the death of the king, in whose defence he had written, almost despairing of the future of his country, fallen into the hands of Robespierre, Collot d'Herbois and Saint-Just, left Paris for Versailles, where his grief was somewhat alleviated by his love for Fanny, Mme Laurent Lecoulteux. See note to p. 75, _Sur la mort d'un enfant_, l. 1.
Ll. 11. _Vont dirigeant._ See note to p. 27, l. 29.
L. 13. _Les chars._ See note to p. 56, l. 15.
L. 37. _rivage._ Not in the precise sense 'shore,' but, more vaguely, 'country,' 'place.' Thus F. _climat_ and E. _climate_ (or _clime_) have had their meaning extended to that of 'region.'
L. 48. _Langage d'amour si des dieux._ Expressed archaically for _langage de l'amour_.
L. 60. An allusion to the massacres of prisoners at Versailles in September, 1792.
II. A MARIE-ANNE-CHARLOTTE CORDAY.
L. 6. _hymne infâme._ Many poems were written on the occasion of Marat's death, among which one by Audouin, a deputy.
L. 9. _Dérobe..._ Robs, frustrates, glorious deeds of their due praise.
Ll. 27-30. Aristophanes, _Thesmophoriazusae_, 667.
L. 32. _Paros._ One of the Cyclades, famed for its white marble (Parian marble).
L. 33. _Harmodius... son ami._ Harmodius and Aristogiton, who conspired with a few others to murder Hipparchus, younger brother of the tyrant Hippias, and Hipparchus himself, but succeeded in slaying Hipparchus alone. Harmodius was cut down on the spot by the guards, and Aristogiton was soon captured and tortured to death. When Hippias was expelled, Harmodius and Aristogiton became the most popular of Athenian heroes (_Encyclopaedia Britannica_).
L. 57. Like Dido, when she has resolved to die. Virgil, _Aen._ iv. 475.
III. LA JEUNE CAPTIVE.
This celebrated poem was written in the _prison de Saint-Lazare_. _La Jeune Captive_ was a Mademoiselle de Coigny. She had, at the age of fifteen, married the Marquis de Rosset, later on Duc de Fleury. She was twenty-five at the time of her imprisonment. She was set free after the 9th of Thermidor. This poem first appeared in the _Décade philosophique_, hardly six months after the death of Chénier.
L. 11. Pindar, _Nem._ vii. 77.
Ll. 28-30. Cf. p. 52, ll. 43, 44.
Ll. 34, 35. Cf. p. 52, l. 42.
L. 36. Cf. p. 52, l. 41.
L. 39. _dévore._ For the verb in the singular see note to p. 25, l. 74.
L. 40. _Palès._ The goddess of shepherds. This mythological allusion strangely mars this fine poem.
L. 43. _triste et captif._ A kind of ablative absolute.
Ll. 53, 54. This madrigal winding up this pathetic lyric is in poor taste indeed.
ÏAMBES.
I. HYMNE SUR L'ENTRÉE TRIOMPHALE DES SUISSES DE CHATEAUVIEUX.
This poem first appeared in the _Journal de Paris_, on April 15, 1792, the day of the festival. In 1790 the Swiss Regiment of Chateauvieux at Nancy had mutinied, seized the military chest, and killed heroic young Desilles, captain of the _Régiment du Roi_, who was attempting to prevent fratricide bloodshed. For these misdeeds they were condemned to the galleys. In 1792 they were amnestied by a decree of the National Assembly, and Collot d'Herbois, at the _Club des Jacobins_, carried a motion that they should make a triumphal entry into Paris. See Carlyle, _French Revol._, pt. ii, bk. ii, ch. vi, and bk. vi, ch. x.
Against this disgraceful resolution Chénier rose indignantly in several letters to the editors of the _Journal de Paris_, in an _address_ to the National Assembly, and in the present poem.
L. 8. _Désille._ See the above introductory notice.
L. 6. The body of Mirabeau was transferred to the Pantheon on April 5, 1791.
L. 10. Voltaire died in Paris in 1778, but as the clergy had not been called upon to assist him at his last moments his body was denied sepulture in Paris, and was buried at the Abbey of Scellières, of which a nephew of his was commendator. His remains, however, re-entered Paris solemnly on July 11 of the same year, where they lie in the crypt of the Pantheon.
L. 15, _tu conduiras Jourdan._ _Tu_ refers to _divin triomphe_. Jourdan, nicknamed _Coupe-tête_, was at the head of the brigands of Vaucluse during the disturbances in the South of France in October, 1791.
L. 17. _Coblentz._ The general quarters of the Émigrés.
L. 27. An allusion to a meal taken in common by Pétion and his colleagues of the Commune of Paris at a tavern, at La Râpée-Bercy, which they had caused to be mentioned in newspapers belonging to their party as something to be proud of.
L. 34. _Persans._ The appellation _Persans_ is generally reserved for the Persians of to-day, the ancient Persians being designated as _les Perses_.
L. 45. Eudoxus and Hipparchus, two celebrated ancient astronomers.
Ll. 46-8. Berenice's hair, a small northern constellation near the tail of Leo. Berenice was the wife of Ptolemy Energetes, king of Egypt, _c._ 248 B. C.
L. 49. Argo, a constellation in the Southern Hemisphere.
L. 55. _en leur galère._ 'The forty Swiss,' writes Carlyle, 'were mounted into a triumphal car resembling a ship,' _Fr. Rev._ II. iii, x.
II. QUAND AU MOUTON BÊLANT....
The two following pieces, dated from St.-Lazare, were written in the prison in a minute handwriting on small slips of paper concealed by Chénier in the linen that was fetched home to wash.
L. 23. _Fouquier_. A blank in the MS. Fouquier-Tinville, the president of the Revolutionary Tribunal.
III. COMME UN DERNIER RAVON....
Ll. 5-8. 'L'habitude est une seconde nature,' says a French proverb. This elaborate periphrasis verifies it. And no doubt but Chénier composed these lines in terrible earnest when he was daily expecting death. How can we say after this that the far-fetched conceits of Richard II in his prison (_K. Rich. II_, V. v.) are not what it was likely he should indulge in, in his desperate situation?
L. 15. In the first edition the poem here came to an abrupt end. In that of 1826 the fifteen lines were given as having been written by Chénier but few moments before being taken to execution. The following nine lines were altogether omitted, and the rest of the piece given as a separate poem.
L. 35. Var.: _La bassesse, la feinte_--le _désespoir_, la _honte_.
L. 58. _Mourir...!_ The infinitive used absolutely as an exclamation (or interrogation) in order to express surprise or indignation: 'Moi, me _taire_!' 'A qui _se fier_ à présent?' '_Offenser_ de la sorte une sainte personne!'--MOLIÈRE. See Ayer, § 209, 4: Mever-Lübke, § 528.
L. 81. _noirs de leur ressemblance._ Black with their likeness energetically expressed.
L. 83. _fouet._ A monosyllable, pronounced _fouè_, and not _foi_, as some will do.--LITTRÉ.
L. 85. _cracher sur leurs noms._ Chénier does not mince it in these _ïambes_.
End of Project Gutenberg's Poésies choisies de André Chénier, by André Chénier