Let's take a short excursion into Ronsard's love poetry so as not to dwell on this further.
Ronsard's real fame came from his lyric poetry - the collections "Love Poems" (Amours, 1552), "Continuations of Love Poems" (Continuations des Amours, 1555) and "Sonnets to Helen" (Sonnets pour Héline, 1578).
Ronsard's love poetry is dominated by themes of rapidly passing time, fading flowers and farewell to youth; the Horacean motif “carpe diem” is further developed. Carpe diem is a Latin expression meaning “enjoy the moment” or “be happy at this second” (literally “catch day"), often translated as "seize the moment."
This catchphrase is a call from Horace (Odes, I, 11, 7-8) to live every day with pleasure, looking for positive emotions in everything and not to postpone a full-blooded life for an indefinite, unknown future. (“seize the moment”)
In his poems, Ronsard sang many women. The names of three of them gained the greatest fame - Cassandra, Maria and Elena. “The image of Ronsard’s beloved,” noted Y. Vipper, “is first of all the embodiment of the poet’s ideal, his ideas about beauty and perfection. Of course, the basis of the poetic cycles dedicated to the three women praised by Ronsard is each time a real feeling for a real, and not a fictitious person. The intensity of this feeling should not be underestimated."
In Ronsard's work there are three sonnet cycles: three loves, three heroines, three eras of life.
The first is associated with the name of Cassandra, the heroine of “Love Poems”.
Cassandra Silviati came from a wealthy Italian family. She was fifteen when her first meeting with the young poet took place at the royal residence in Blois. Falling in love with this girl, whom he could not marry, became for Ronsard the source of creating a poetic image of a sublime and inaccessible lover, like Petrarch’s Laura.
Y. Vipper warns that “one should not, as was sometimes done, consider “The First Book of Love,” dedicated to Cassandra, as a kind of poetic diary, as if directly reproducing the vicissitudes of the love affair experienced by Ronsard. IN Lately The prevailing opinion is that this cycle of love poems was created primarily in 1551-1552, that is, five or six years after the poet met Cassandra Silviati and four or five years after she married Signor de Pre. And this significantly changes the angle from which the creative originality of the collection should be viewed.”
However, the prevailing opinion now is that the sonnets date from 1551-1552. In this case, they can be seen as the memory of a disconsolate lover or a poetic convention.
Ronsard was in love with the picturesque beauty of classical myths, the beauty of nature, earthly love and poetry. This love for life appears already in the first sonnet cycle, “Love for Cassandra” (1552-1553), written under the great influence of Petrarch.
The image of Cassandra appears on the pages of “The First Book of Love” through a haze of memories, in an aura of emotions awakened by dreams. This applies, for example, to erotic motifs, which at times burst through the contents of the collection. The sensual pleasures depicted by Ronsard could not have been given to him by Cassandra.
These sonnets also contain melancholic notes characteristic of Petrarchism and longing for an unattainable goal.
Unrequited love torments the poet's heart. He turns pale and falls silent in the presence of a proud beauty (“When alone, away from the noise”), only the midnight forest and the river wave listen to his complaints and foam (“All the pain that I endure in a hidden illness”). The poet seems to be entirely woven from hopeless contradictions (“I love, I swear, I dare, but I don’t dare”).
Ronsard dreams of Cassandra’s hot embrace (“Even death is welcome in your arms!”).
Ronsard differs from his colleagues in his greatest independence in relation to foreign sources. However, this book internally echoes the work of the Fontainebleau art school, which dominated in the middle of the 16th century. fine arts France. This roll call, in the words of Yu. Vipper, “is expressed primarily in the sophistication and sophistication that distinguish the female images of the “First Book of Love” and with which real life impressions are stylized and translated into a consciously elevated mythological plane.” An example is the sonnet “Oh if only, sparkling with yellowness.”
Ronsard maintained his “literary fidelity” to Cassandra for almost ten years - until the time when the collection “New Continuation of Love Poems” (1556) appeared.
In this collection of sonnets, Ronsard undoubtedly wants to capture the tone of a new genre for him. The presence of Petrarch is constantly felt, his techniques are echoed. However, immediately “the severity of the poet’s experience of the unattainability of his beloved is transferred from the plane of Platonic opposition of the heavenly to the earthly, as was the case with Petrarch, to the plane of purely human relations, colored by details, perhaps truly biographical” (I. Podgaetskaya).
Mythological realities are interrupted by French topography, sighs on the banks of Ilion echo on the banks of the Loire. And even among mythological images, the poet chooses that degree of sensuality, the very thought of which in relation to the divine Laura would seem blasphemous:
Oh, if only, sparkling with yellowness,
Received favorably by my Cassandra,
I poured golden rain into her womb,
Caressing the beauty at night.
Ronsard also remembers Cassandra in his second collection, “Continuation of Love Poems,” where he changes the patrician to a commoner, at the same time changing his style. There, one of the most indicative of Ronsard's sonnets is dedicated to Cassandra. The poet turns to the servant, under threat of punishment, ordering him to close the door, because the owner will be immersed in reading the Iliad for three days. Don’t let anyone in, but if a messenger from Cassandra suddenly appears, tell him to get dressed quickly:
I will immediately go to the messenger myself,
But even if God came to visit us,
Shut the door in front of Him, what do I need gods for!
(“I want to dream for three days while reading the Iliad...”).
In this sonnet, where love for Cassandra is raised unusually high, placed above love for Homer, the conversational ease of the syllable is especially striking. No figurative embellishment, no hint of Petrarch. The height of praise for Ronsard does not necessarily entail sublimity or sophistication of language, which remains prosaic.
In 1569, when Ronsard, after many years of separation, met again with the woman who illuminated his youth, he wrote the poem “To Cassandra.” Reading it, we believe Ronsard that his consciousness has forever preserved intact the appearance of a girl full of “childish charm” - the way she captivated the poet in his youth.
To depict love, Ronsard, as A. Smirnov rightly notes, “uses more diverse and richer means than Petrarch. We find in him a huge number of shades and transitions of feelings, situations, details. For Ronsard, love is always material, but at the same time tender and spiritual, like the image of the beloved woman.” His beloved is not only full of charm, but also spiritual.
A common feature of Ronsard’s love lyrics is “a bright, epicurean perception of life.” He revels in sensuality, and “life appears to him in the form of a luxurious garden full of beautiful flowers and fruits.”
Reviving the eight- and ten-syllable verse, Ronsard breathed new life in Alexandrian, or twelve-syllable, verse, almost unknown to the Middle Ages, he developed it and gave it greater sonority. Thanks to Ronsard, French poetry acquired musicality, harmony, variety, depth and scale. He introduced into it the themes of nature, sensual and at the same time platonic love, completely updated its content, form, pathos and vocabulary, so he can rightfully be considered the founder of lyric poetry in France.
Ronsard's merit lies in the development of the poetic form of the “French” sonnet, its rhymes and visual means.
Ronsard's line of poetic development cannot be taken into any specific direction. He always remains multifaceted, ready to change genre and update his style, following a new love, although without forgetting the old ones. Ronsard was keen on innovations in the field of spelling and word formation, and made extensive use of the absence of firmly established grammatical rules, believing that the poet was given the right to take liberties. He introduced extraordinary richness and variety of rhymes, stanzas, and metrics into French versification; widely used enjambement Enjambement (French enjambement, from enjamber, “to step over”) in versification - the discrepancy between a syntactic pause and a rhythmic one (the end of a verse, hemistich, stanza); the use of caesura within a group of words closely related in meaning., alliteration, boldly used meters with an odd number of syllables (9, 11); His great merit is the resurrection of Alexandrian verse, forgotten since the Middle Ages and subsequently becoming, for two centuries, the main meter of “false-classical” False-classicism is a literary movement based on the imitation of classical ancient forms, which originated in France in the 16th century. and dominant in Russia in the 18th century. poetry. At the same time, Ronsard is a wonderful stylist; his images are rich, rich, epithets are precise and fresh, the emotional side of his poetry is extremely diverse.
It was not for nothing that he visited the school of Petrarchism. Petrarch helped him look deeper into the world of human feelings and understand the essence of grace in poetry. But, having taken from Petrarchism everything that seemed valuable to him, Ronsard went his own special way. He stopped shunning the ordinary and the “low”. His Maria (discussed below) is not a noble lady, like Cassandra Silviati was, but a young, cheerful peasant woman. In order to tell readers about his love, he no longer needs the motley tinsel of Petrarchism.
The second collection - “Continuation of love poems” was dedicated to Mary and also consisted mainly of sonnets addressed not only to Cassandra, but also to other women, among whom was a simple peasant girl Marie from Bourgueil. Her image is devoid of aristocratic sophistication; it is warmer, simpler, more accessible than Cassandra’s appearance, more earthly. Marie for Ronsard is the embodiment of that pure and natural beauty of morals that is inherent in a person growing up in the lap of nature. The poet most often associates the image of Marie with spring, morning, dawn, and depicts it against the backdrop of blooming nature.
No flowers to be found in spring
Or in the fall - fruits,
In summer - scorching hot days,
In the cold - whirlwinds with an evil blizzard,
In the sea - schools of fish,
In Bose - stubble and sheaves,
Not in Brittany - sand dunes,
Not in Auvergne - fountain waters,
Not in the night - bright stars,
There are no tit nests in the forest,
More than in a sad soul
I'm sad for you, my dear.
The feelings sung in the poems addressed to Mary are not an obsession-like passion caused by Cassandra, but rather a heart-tugging love. The artistic structure of poems about Mary is dominated not by a rapid rhythm, as in “The First Book of Love,” but by a tendency toward smoothness and proportionality. The twelve-syllable Alexandrian verse corresponded to this, replacing the more impetuous ten-syllable sonnets to Cassandra and later becoming the main size of classicist drama and high poetry in France.
“The Second Book of Love,” according to the figurative expression of Y. Vipper, “is imbued with a worldview in which melancholic sadness and enlightened peace, bitterness caused by life’s failures and intoxication with the joys of life, spontaneity in the expression of emotions, and a tendency to reflection are harmoniously balanced. Before us is another reflection of the ideals of the high Renaissance."
The stylistic tone of the cycle also changes noticeably. In it, the role of reality grows as a source of poetic emotions, which entirely determines the atmosphere of individual poems (for example, “Spindle”).
Pallas's faithful friend, wordless confidant,
Go, spindle, hurry to my lovely one.
When you miss me and are separated from me,
Let him sit with a spinning wheel on the entrance stairs,
Will start the wheel, start a song, another,
He spins and drives away sadness, preparing a tight thread,
Please, spindle, be her faithful friend,
I don’t take Marie with me on a long journey...
Ronsard's departure in The Second Book of Love from the Platonic and Petrarchist deification of women also entails fundamental changes in his stylistic searches.
Ronsard himself admits, addressing Pontus de Thiard:
When I started, Tiar, they told me
That a simple person will not understand me,
That I'm too dark. Now it's the other way around:
I have become too simple, having appeared in a new style.
In this cycle, healthy sensuality and noble simplicity already reign entirely. Ronsard turns to developing a style that he himself defines as “low.”
The most important aesthetic criterion now becomes for the poet the naturalness of feelings, transparent clarity, grace and accessibility in their artistic embodiment. The decline in style leads Ronsard to bring poetic language closer to colloquial speech, to weaken the figurative overload of the syllable, its greater transparency. However, it would be naive to believe that the change in style occurred solely because of the low origin of the new lover. Rather, another thought arises: did Ronsard choose a peasant woman as the heroine of the new cycle in order to emphasize the changes taking place? Poetry could follow a feeling, but it could also color it in its own tones. And the paths of the heroines easily crossed even within the same poem: “I will honor my beauty, // Cassandra or Marie - does it matter which one?”
The image of the beloved, composed of individual strokes, arises from an all-encompassing feeling of spring purity and freshness; it is built without separation from pictures of joyful nature. Simplicity and naturalness are what attracts the poet to his beloved. The poet paints her without embellishment or tricks, just as he saw her one May morning.
Ronsard depicts Mary during her daily activities: with her family, in the forest, at work. Now the beloved does not live among the nymphs in a wonderful forest, but walks among the beds of lettuce or cabbage, among the flowers planted by her hand. The image of Marie is given in movement, whereas previously only the poet’s love was dynamic and her movements were the center of attention.
Ronsard intends to give Marie a Vendôme spindle, knowing that this gift will bring genuine joy to Mary: “After all, even a small gift, a guarantee of incorruptible love, is more valuable than all the crowns and scepters of the universe” (“Spindle”).
The concept of love as the culminating point of life, as the spring of a person, is organically included in the poet’s life philosophy.
“The Second Book of Love” embodies Ronsard’s new “poetic novel” - not in the spirit of the sublime Platonism of the sonnets to Cassandra, but in a completely different way: Maria is a simple Angevin girl, “the rose of the fields,” cheerful and crafty, and the poet’s love for her is simple , earthly and shared love; but in its very simplicity, Ronsard's style remains lofty and poetic.
And when Mary unexpectedly dies in the prime of her life, Ronsard mourns her untimely death in a series of heartfelt poems (“The Death of Mary” - 1578).
In the same year, the “Third Book of Love” was released, where the name of Ronsard’s new lover appears for the first time - “Sonnets to Helen,” “a touching song late love, full of restraint and platonism, but at the same time living, hidden passion." During this period of his life, i.e. after 1572, Ronsard, disillusioned with the royal court, plunged headlong into the world of personal life.
The recipient of the last love cycle was one of Catherine de Medici's young ladies-in-waiting, Helena de Surgères, known at court for her beauty and virtue, a quality not particularly characteristic of the queen's court ladies. They found out secrets, arranged intrigues, made peace and quarreled.
The image of Helen is more tangible and individualized than the image of Mary and Cassandra. We see the outlines of Elena's external appearance, the rhythm of her dance movements during a dazzling ball, we hear the intonations of her speech, and we get an idea of her inner world.
“Sonnets to Helen” stood out for its calm and majestic simplicity; after all, it was during these years that Ronsard came to a certain unified style in his poems, sublime and clear.
Glorifying Helen, Ronsard enters into competition with the new idol of the court - Philippe Deporte Philippe Deporte (1546-1606) - French poet of the 16th century.. In this collection there are many traces of neo-Petrarchism, manneristic sophistication introduced by this rivalry. The image of the beloved regains its aristocratic sophistication. But at its core there is something filled inner harmony, a self-confident dignity that constitutes an important feature of the Renaissance ideal of beauty. In “Sonnets to Helen,” sublime idealization, on the one hand, and psychological authenticity, on the other, are intertwined. The desire for accuracy and conciseness, a wonderful sense of proportion prevail here too. The poet still sings of the modest joys of life, but now his call to enjoy life as quickly as possible sometimes sounds not only elegiac, but also with hidden tragedy. With amazing charm, the image of a beloved is drawn, who is at the same time tangible, real, and infinitely distant.
Ronsard's latest passion is overshadowed, however, by the chosen object: Elena is capricious, arrogant, and in front of the court she is almost ashamed of the feelings of the aging poet, infuriating him.
The poet often complains about Elena’s excessive dependence on the prejudices of the court environment. He sees one of them in Elena’s commitment to Platonism - a teaching that, with its idealistic aspirations, caused increasing irritation to the poet, and which he criticized, contrasting it with a materialistic vision of the world. But the main thing in these verses is something else: a mocking contrast of one’s human frailty with a calm confidence in one’s poetic greatness:
When, as an old woman, you spin alone,
In the silence by the fireplace I while away my evening,
You will sing my stanza and you will say, dreaming:
“Ronsard sang me in the old days.”
In this sonnet, Ronsard again appears at ease talking. But the entire collection is not like that.
E. Podgaetskaya notes the poetic wit manifested here in Ronsard. “Either secular love, or a changing style, increasingly fascinated by mannerism in imitation of new Italian trends, forces the poet to demonstrate that he also masters a witty metaphor - concetti.” . As proof, Ronsard builds a love sonnet, playing on the appeal to the mosquito. First, the poet asks him not to disturb the peaceful sleep of his beloved and is ready to sacrifice a drop of his blood in return; then he himself dreams of “flying into her like a mosquito and staring straight into her eyes, // So that she won’t dare not notice love in the future!” (translated by G. Kruzhkov)
This kind of poetic wit would soon become commonplace in European poetry and much more sophisticated than that of Ronsard.
Thus, the typical Ronsard lyric theme of unsatisfied love feelings runs through “Sonnets to Helen”.
"Sonnets to Helen" was the last major event in Ronsard's literary life. He appears at court less and less often, his health is poor. He lives in his abbeys, moving from one to another, spending time among books and flower beds.
Y. Vipper, recognizing the role of three women in the poet’s life and the creation of love lyrics, rightly notes that “the feeling of love experienced by the poet serves him, first of all, as a powerful impetus for the flight of fantasy, playing the role of a kind of catalyst that accumulates around itself and leads to movement of various attractions and desires, and often experiences generated by other persons. Attempts to restore, on the basis of the three mentioned cycles, a detailed biographical outline of the love affairs Ronsard experienced are doomed to failure” [4, p.17].
Perhaps some readers will be surprised
The subject of these lines, thinking from above,
That singing love is not the job of an old man.
Alas, even under the ashes there lives a grain of fire.A green branch in the oven will not immediately flare up,
But the heat of a dry log is reliable.
Gray clouds always suit the moon,
And the young dawn of Typhon is not ashamed.Let Plato incline us to virtue -
You can't fool me with false wisdom.
Oh no, I am not Icarus, not the daring Phaeton,I do not strive for the zenith, forgetting about mortal flesh;
But even the snows of the years have not cooled me at all,
I burn and drown of my own accord.
To bloom for centuries that perfect friendship -
The love that gray-haired Ronsard had for you,
Whose mind was shocked by your beauty,
Whose free spirit was subjugated to you, arrogant one,So that from generation to generation and to the end of the universe
I remembered the world that you commanded me,
That my blood and life served you alone,
I now bring you this imperishable laurel,Its foliage will remain bright for hundreds of years, -
Having sung all the virtues in Helen alone,
The faithful poet's omnipotent handYou will be kept alive for thousands of generations,
You, like Laura, will live and delight for centuries,
As long as hearts honor the genius living in the word.
I plant a Cybele tree in your honor,
Pine tree so that everyone knows about you;
I lovingly carved our names
And their rough outline will grow with the bark.You, who inhabited my native lands,
Loire playful chorus, you tribes of Fauns!
With your care let the pine tree grow,
Let the branches be intact both in summer and winter.Shepherd, you will drive your cattle here,
With a reed, hum the eclogue in this canopy;
You hang a board on a pine tree every year, -Let a passerby read my love and penance,
And blood will be shed along with the lamb's milk,
Having said, “The pine tree is holy. That is the memory of Helen.”
Cassandra and Marie, it's time to leave you!
Beauties, I served my time for you.
One is alive, the other was given only a short hour -
Mourned by earth, loved by heaven.In the April of life, drunk with love dreams,
I gave my heart to you, but I was proud of your refusal,
I have bothered you more than once with sorrowful prayers,
But Parka weaves my century with careless fingers.In the autumn of my days, not yet healed,
Born amorous, I am in love like spring.
And my life flows in unchanging sadness,And although it’s high time for me to shed my shell,
Cupid, as before, drives me into battle with a scourge -
Take proud Ilion to take possession of Helen.
How strong you are, Cupid, treacherous sorcerer!
And how weak and blind you are, my darkened mind!
No, you can't become a reliable defense
For my foolish heart and gray hair, -All Philosophy will not be of use to her.
Only you can help me, merry son of Tiona:
Come, God of Nisei, come, twice-born,
And pour your antidote into my cup.Competing with an immortal is a difficult lot for a mortal,
But against witchcraft there is, fortunately, witchcraft;
And if the Ganges pacifier is wonderful for me,Then run, Cupid, from my sight!
To fight love with reason is reckless.
To get along with a deity, a deity is needed.
Mosquito, fierce gnome, winged bloodsucker
With a squeaky voice and an elephant's face,
Please, don’t hurt the one who hurts with love, -
Let the Lady slumber in the power of sweet dreams.But if you are hungry for prey, like a dog,
Trying to get enough of her priceless blood,
Here's my blood in return, bite to your health,
I will bear this pain - I have endured more agony.But no, Mosquito, fly to my tyrant
And get me a drop from an invisible wound -
Taste what's in her blood.Oh, if only I could do it myself under the cover of darkness
Fly into her like a mosquito and stare right into her eyes,
So that you don’t dare to ignore love in the future!
To the Indian merchant, who will take it out of the bale
Scented resin, wrists, necklaces,
To go and not buy an overseas product, -
How to leave the flower garden without an armful of roses,Or, without moistening your lips, stand by the spring,
That runs like a sunny stream from the dungeon,
Or enter the circle of lovely ladies without joy,
Without feeling the arrows of the winged god.Why self-deception? A fool - and he will judge:
The flame burns our flesh, and the ice chills our body.
Cupid may not be able to blow up the braziers,But beware of it: taking up your dangerous torch,
To you, my love, so young and beautiful,
At least he manages to plant a spark in his chest!
Leave me, Cupid, give me a little respite;
Believe me, I have no desire to go to your class again,
Where I destroyed my mind and shook my strength,
I learned first-hand where the torments of hell are.It was in vain that I trusted the deceitful boy,
Which color of life secretly steals from us,
Now beckoning with caresses, now with the gentle sparkle of the eyes, -
Playing cat and mouse with a tormented soul.It is nourished by the blood of hot young veins,
Idleness nurtures and crazy ardor
Immodest dreams of love. All this is familiar to me;I was a prisoner of Cassandra and Marie,
Now another passion tells me: “Burn!”
And I flare up like old straw.
Extolling love is a fool's business,
But it's hard to cope with a half-mad singer,
Although in times of unbelief there are no cunning lawsuits,
There is no end to the destructive battles.Cupid is the fiend of evil! I turned gray and fell off my face.
Blindfolded, crazy boy
He makes me a reasonable husband
But he became a pitiful copy of the treacherous youth.Really, having seen banners with someone else’s coat of arms
In his native land - under the rule of Amur's law
Am I, to my shame, carelessly falling for it?No! I will hasten to Paris to seek justice there!
Among the Muses, among the old witches, I do not at all agree
To be at your beck and call!
I'm defeated by you! Kneeling,
I give you this ivy. He, node by node,
Ring in ring, squeezed, entwined trees, house,
He clung to him, hugging the cornice, entangling the trunk captive.This ivy should rightfully be your crown, -
Oh, if only every moment was like this - at night, during the day,
A wondrous column, a hundredfold all around
I could wrap myself around you, frenzied lover!Will the sweet hour come when in a secluded grotto
Through the greenery the golden Aurora will splash towards us,
And the birds will sing and the sky will burn.And I will wake you up to the ringing chirp of May,
Kissing your half-open mouth greedily,
Without taking your hands away from lilies and roses.
The beauty of a fragrant wreath is not eternal!
You, by wasting time, will let her go to waste!
But if you have some charm
Stayed and share the desired gift with your friends.Cyprida, I curse your fickle temper.
Why did you, like a slave, give me over to power?
To the tormentor who loves me to her heart's content
I had my fun until I fell, lifeless.Foolishness is submissive to the restless shafts.
Child of the abyss, you will send me many storms!
What other bliss can we expect, Cytheraeus?Rolls of thunder and tongues of fire
You saved it, Vulcan's wife, for me.
Passions, knives and arrows - Ares' mistress.
I serve the robber, her galley slave. You will twist and spin in the evening hour, -
Having sung my poems, you will say, marveling:
“In my youth I was glorified by Ronsard!”
The outstanding poet of the Renaissance, Pierre de Ronsard, who was called the prince of French poets, was, among other things, a wonderful dancer and fencer, deafness did not in any way limit the manifestation of his talents, historical data conveyed through the centuries his wonderful phrase - “There is nothing to do with poor hearing in the palace.” We remember with gratitude a historical figure who left his mark on the development of mankind.
Pierre de Ronsard. Portrait by an unknown artist. Around 1620. Blois, Museum of Fine Arts
Chateau La Poissoniere, where Ronsard was born
“THE FUTURE DOES NOT DECEIVE THE WORTHY”
Pierre Ronsard was born on September 11, 1524 in the estate of Poissonnière, in the castle of La Possonnière, in the Loire River valley (province of Vendomois), in a house remodeled in a new taste by his father, Louis de Ronsard, in a house with large windows, decorated with bas-reliefs with Latin inscriptions; one of them was repeated several times - Non fallunt futura merentem (The future does not deceive the worthy). All around lay green meadows running down to the Loire, hills covered with vineyards, forests adjacent to the royal forest of Gastin -
...old forest, Zefirov's free friend!
I entrusted the first sound of the lyre to you,
And my first delight...
Pierre was the youngest, sixth child in the family. Since this child later became the “King of French Poets,” rumor covered the first days of his childhood with poetic stories: “When he was carried to the local church to be baptized, the one who carried him, crossing the meadow, accidentally dropped him, but there was thick grass all around and flowers that gently received him... and it so happened that another girl, who carried a vessel with rose water, helping to raise the child, spilled a little fragrant water on his head, and this was a harbinger of those aromas and flowers with which he was to fill France in his learned poems."
When Pierre was ten years old, his father took him to the Navarre College, a privileged school where the children of dukes and princes studied. But the boy, who grew up in freedom, hated the harsh rules of the school and six months later begged his father to take him out of college. Soon Pierre becomes a page at the court of the princes. As a twelve-year-old boy, he goes on a long journey to the north, to Scotland, in the retinue of Princess Madeleine, who married King James Stuart of Scotland, and spends more than two years in Scotland and England. Returning to France, to the retinue of Charles of Orleans, youngest son king, he travels on behalf of the prince to Flanders and Holland, and soon then goes to Scotland again and almost dies during a sea storm that rocked the ship for three days. At the age of sixteen, no longer a page, but in the retinue of a diplomatic mission headed by the learned Hellenist Lazarus de Baif, Ronsard went to Germany; a few months later he was already in Italy, in Piedmont, in the retinue of the Viceroy of Piedmont, Lange du Bellay.
Francis I (24th King of France). Portrait by Jean Clouet, 1525, Louvre
At the age of 16, Pierre de Ronsard was a handsome, slender young man, dexterous in all forms physical exercise which he learned at court, with graceful bearing. His horizons were developed by travel and early life experiences; he read a lot and mastered several European languages. A court and diplomatic career opened up before him; sometimes he himself dreamed of a military career. He also had other dreams, which he hid from those around him: from the age of 12 he began writing poetry, first in Latin, then in his native language. Every time Pierre came to his native estate, he spent days wandering through the forests and fields, and here poems, inspired by the murmur of a stream, the chirping of birds and the rustling of leaves, formed themselves:
I was not yet twelve when
In the depths of valleys or in high forests,
In secret caves, far from all people,
Forgetting about the world, I composed poems,
And the Echo sounded in response to me, and the Dryads,
And Fauns, and Satyrs, and Pan, and Oreads...
Every year this voice of the forest echo, calling to nature and to poetry, to books and creativity, became more audible. However, young Pierre was ambitious, and a successfully started career, tiring, but giving so many impressions, had its charming sides. At the age of 16, Pierre stood at a crossroads. And then fate intervened in his life.
At the seventeenth year of his life, Pierre fell seriously ill (syphilis); illness kept him away from the court for a long time. He recovered, but as a result of his illness he became semi-deaf: it became clear that a court and diplomatic career was closed to him.
The illness confused all the plans that Louis Ronsard had made for his son. Deafness was a hindrance even for the more modest profession of a lawyer or doctor, meanwhile Pierre was the youngest in the family and could not be provided with his father's inheritance. Deafness increases his craving for loneliness and develops melancholy in him; but, pushing away from him the noise of everyday life, she seemed to intensify the sound of that inner voice that had previously sounded in his soul with the rhythms of verse. Pierre Ronsard decides to devote himself entirely to poetry. He is no longer satisfied with Marot's poems: he wants to write like Horace, like Virgil. He wants to learn: Lazarus de Banff, in free time who translated Sophocles, told Pierre about the incomparable beauty of Greek poetry. With all the passion characteristic of him, Ronsard builds new plan own life.
Returning to Paris, for some time he combined service at court with classes with Jean Dore, who taught the Greek language to the son of Lazarus de Baif, Jean Antoine.
Jean Dora then lived in the house of Lazarus de Baif in the university quarter. When Poncapa's father died in 1544, twenty-year-old Pierre completely left the court and devoted himself entirely to his studies. He studied Greek with the passion of a gold miner who has found a gold mine. He was not ashamed to turn to the help of young Baif, who was barely fifteen years old, but who had been taught Greek since childhood. When Lazarus de Baif died, and Dora was appointed principal of the Cocret College, Pierre Ronsard and Jean Baif, following the teacher, moved to the student cell of the college. Dora gave lectures in the college premises: they were devoted mainly to the philological and philosophical interpretation of texts; This is how the works of Homer and Hesiod, Pindar and Aeschylus, Plato and other Greek writers were revealed to Ronsard, in which a world of sublime ideas and immortal beauty appeared to Pierre and his friends.
COMMONWEALTH OF POETS
At the Cocra College, Ronsard found like-minded people; some of them became his lifelong friends. Here his friendship began with Remy Bello, whom he, like Baifa, later included in his “Pleiades”, with Marc Antoine Muret and others. His tirelessness in work, the passion burning in him, attracted to him those who were older than him, and especially those who already saw in him the leader, the beloved favorite of the muses. Everyone knew about his plans for the reform of French poetry, that he wrote poetry, imitating the art of the ancients, learning at the same time from Pindar and Homer, Horace and Callimachus. This is how a young “brigade” arose around Ronsard, of which he was the recognized leader. Soon its composition was replenished with a new member, who became Ronsard's closest friend and a herald of the ideas of the new poetic school, which made a huge contribution to the development of French poetry.
In 1547, during a trip to Poitiers, Ronsard met at a roadside inn with a young man in a modest suit, with a face that spoke of nobility and spiritual culture; dark eyes looked straight and seriously, half-closed with heavy eyelids, full of intelligence and hidden strength. It was Joachim Du Bellay. The conversation between the two young people soon turned into a meeting of two brothers who had found each other, brothers according to that chosen affinity that is created by the commonality of the most important interests in life, the unity of spiritual aspirations. They spent the whole night talking, quoting Latin and Italian poets to each other, reading their own poems, and at dawn they parted as lifelong friends. Du Bellay gave Poncapy a sworn promise to move to Paris and join the “brigade” of enthusiasts at the Cocray College. Soon Dor's students were already raising happy cups to their new friend.
The arrival of Du Bellay excited the circle: in this melancholy young man there was a determination that Ronsard had hitherto lacked. Du Bellay brought poems with him and intended to publish them. Thus, he encouraged Ronsard to reveal to the world what had accumulated in the treasured chest and that Pierre had until now jealously hidden from human eyes, only occasionally reading to friends, either a small poem or a passage of several stanzas.
In 1549, the quiet student cells of Cocre College buzzed like beehives in spring. The entire “brigade” is embraced by the spirit of poetry; young Bello and Baif write poems, carried away by the enthusiasm of their elders. Ronsard and Du Bellay read poetry in the houses of their acquaintances; some of these educated people hold positions at court; The leaders of the new school are groping for sympathizers and possible patrons: with all their enthusiasm, they know that the debut will not be easy. They have many friends, but they are going to go against the accepted tradition; Maro died five years ago; in poetry, the main role has so far been played by poets who call themselves his students; at the court reigns Mellen de Saint-Gelais, an elegant wit, the author of gallant madrigals and caustic epigrams, the organizer of festivals and carnivals, while writing sonnets and terzas in the Italian taste, the “sweet-mouthed” Mellen, who made poetry one of the elements of court entertainment; dozens of poets in Paris and in the provinces imitate Marot to the best of their ability - pale and boring.
Meanwhile, although Ronsard knows in advance that his poetry is not created for the “crowd”, that those whom Calliope chooses as her priest are often laughed at by the public, not immediately comprehending the high structure of thoughts and the difficult art of poetic speech, he is not at all happy with the prospect to become an academic, armchair poet, whom only a few can appreciate.
For seven years he prepared himself for the destiny of a poet, remembering the high goal - to glorify the French language and poetry, to serve France and the king, and to serve not as an entertainer, but as a teacher, revealing to the reader the treasures of poetic art, showing the beauty of the world, speaking about the essence of human life. If he enters the open arena with weapons of a new art, forged according to the model of the ancients, then only to win: “the future does not deceive the worthy.”
They talk about this with Du Bellay, preparing to go out into the world; During his year of stay with Dor, Du Bellay could not master the treasures of the Greeks, but he knew the Roman poets well: Horace, Virgil, the elegics, Ovid's Tristia, and he was more read in Italian literature than Ronsard. He volunteered to formulate the thoughts that Ronsard had long nurtured during his nightly vigils and which Du Bellay himself shared. Ronsard does not like to write in prose - Du Bellay is good at oratory, it is not for nothing that he was preparing to become a lawyer, he studied Quintilian and knows a lot about eloquence. It was necessary to convince the reader that the reform of poetry is necessary for the glory of France, that the creation of a new poetic style is a merit to the native language, to the homeland; it was necessary to infect the reader with the enthusiasm of the “brigade”. This is how a small book was published, signed with the initials of Du Bellay, which became the manifesto of the new school - “Defense and glorification of the French language.” At the same time, Du Bellay published a cycle of love sonnets in the spirit of Italian Petrarchism (“Olive”) and several “Lyrical Odes” as examples of new poetry. Thus, he challenged Ronsard to a competition - after all, it was Ronsard who considered the ode to be the highest kind of poetry and wrote odes, imitating Pindar and Horace.
Now Ronsard could put it off no longer. From morning until late at night, he sits locked up, revising, correcting, rewriting poems accumulated over several years, selecting the best for his first collection. He works feverishly and intently.
IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF PINDAR AND HORACE
In 1550, Ronsard's first collection finally appeared, “Four Books of Odes.” From this moment on, the poet leaves the quiet walls of the academic college into the wide world. From now on, his life is the story of his creativity and his poetic destiny.
The first books of Du Bellay and Ronsard were a turning point not only in their lives, but - as history has shown - in the life of French literature. For the first time in the history of European literature, a group of like-minded poets appeared, closely united by unity of goals and bonds of friendship; For the first time, the work of a group of poets was opened with a manifesto: Du Bellay’s “Defense” heads the order of all subsequent manifestos of literary schools in Europe.
The “Defense” stated that the path to creating new poetry is imitation of the ancients, imitation, which should become a creative competition with ancient poetry, a creative assimilation of the literary culture of antiquity, its ideological content and poetic forms. The very name of Ronsard's collection - "Odes" - a word not previously used in French poetry - pointed simultaneously to both Horace and Pindar. At the beginning of the book, Ronsard placed large “Pindaric” odes: they were written in a high, elevated style, in a tone of inspiration and enthusiasm, full of “lyrical disorder,” mythological images, refined tropes and epithets. They were dedicated to the praise of “remarkable men” - high figures of this world, but also the poet’s friends: next to the ode dedicated to the great nobleman, Charles of Lorraine or de Chatillon, there were odes dedicated to the modest Jean Dora or the young Jean Baif. Most of the odes in the collection were odes of the “Horatian” style; these were small lyric poems, clearer and simpler in language, more intimate in tone; friendship, love, nature, poetry, philosophical reflections on life and death constitute the themes of these odes; their figurative fabric is built not on mythological scholarship, but on specific images of the earthly world. Diverse in metrical form, Ronsard's odes demonstrated the unity of worldview and style, a worldview nurtured by the philosophy of antiquity. They talked about the transience of human life and its earthly charm, about the immortal beauty of nature and art. In French poetry, everything in these poems was new: their themes - the themes of friendship, nature, creative immortality, and the lyrical appearance of the poet, and the system of images, and the poetic language, and the poetic form.
It was necessary to update the language of French poetry. Ronsard recounted how he did this in a later elegy written in the sixties:
As soon as Kamena opened her source to me
And inspired with sweet zeal for heroic deeds,
Proud fun warmed my blood
And noble love kindled in me.
Captivated at the age of twenty by a carefree beauty,
I decided to pour out my heartfelt in poetry,
But, the French language agrees with the feelings,
I saw how rude, unclear, and ugly he was.
Then for France, for the native language,
I began to work bravely and sternly,
I multiplied, resurrected, invented words,
And what was created was glorified by rumor.
Having studied the ancients, I discovered my path,
He gave order to phrases, variety to syllables,
I found the structure of poetry - and by the will of the muses,
Like the Roman and the Greek, the Frenchman became great. 
Henry III (28th King of France). Unknown author.
From the collection of the Versailles Museum
The months following the publication of the Four Books of Odes were for Ronsard a time of great hope, joy and anguish. “Odes” won him success in Paris and the provinces: Ronsard was immediately recognized as the best poet in France.
But, despite the dedication of flattering odes to the king and queen, the official recognition of Ronsard as “the poet of the king and France” was long in coming. Secular court circles, accustomed to the elegant trifles of Saint-Gelais, accustomed to viewing poetry on French As a kind of amusement created for their amusement, the works of Ronsard were coldly greeted, frightening them with their erudition; King Henry II himself, who knew Ronsard from childhood and loved to play ball with him, did not inherit his love of poetry and the arts from his father, Francis I. For Ronsard, in whom the publication of his first book awakened his characteristic ambition from his youth, it was painful to learn that Mellin de Saint-Gelais, in the presence of the king, parodied his Pindaric style - and the king laughed! Victory nevertheless came to Ronsard and his friends and came, in general, quickly, although the theme of “non-recognition” by his contemporaries and hopes for a just trial by his descendants will appear every now and then in Ronsard’s work even in the years when his glory in France will reign supreme.
He continues to work with the same feverish intensity as during the years of his apprenticeship with Dor; in 1552 he published his “First Book of Love Poems” (later called “Love Poems to Cassandra”) along with a fifth book of odes. The young poet fell in love with Cassandra Salviati in the early 40s, having met her at the court in Blois. Even then, falling in love with this girl, whom he could not marry, became for Ronsard the source of creating a poetic image of a sublime and inaccessible lover, like Petrarch’s Laura.
The ranks of Ronsard's admirers and students are expanding, and the chorus of praise in Latin and French verse is growing. Thiard called Ronsard in his poems “the lord of the nine ancient muses,” Du Bellay called him “the French Terpander.” “The First Book of Love Poems” was a great success, including at court, where, under the influence of Queen Catherine de’ Medici, they became more and more interested in everything Italian. Even Saint-Gelais is not averse to making reconciliation with the proud young man. Ronsard's fame is growing, and the number of adherents of the new school is multiplying not only in Paris, but also in the provinces. He is already called everywhere the king of French poetry. The young “brigade” is being reorganized, now there is a whole school behind Ronsard; at the head of this school is a group of seven poets, friends of Ronsard, who called it “Pleiades”, named after the constellation; The Pléiade includes Ronsard, Du Bellay, Baif, Bellot, Thiard, Jodel, the author of the first classical tragedy, and Ronsard's teacher Dora.
Despite the victorious course of events, despite the flourishing of Ronsard's creative powers, notes of melancholy appeared for the first time in his poems of the mid-50s. He is already 30 years old, and has ten years of intense poetic work behind him. The tragic discord between ideal and reality, between the harmony of nature and the chaos of the social life of his era, between the forces contained in the human personality and the limited possibility of realizing these forces in society becomes increasingly clear to him. But a deep conviction in the immortality of nature, reason and art, in the “kindness of wisdom”, which he will retain until the end of his days, saves him from skepticism and pessimism. In the field of creativity, these years for Ronsard were years of searching for new forms of poetry. He abandons the Pindaric ode, seeks new forms of high lyricism, writes poems of the elegiac type, which he calls either odes, or elegies, or poems. He creates a new genre of lyric-epic poetry - “Hymns”. A number of his collections have been published: “The Grove” (“Silvae”), “Various Poems”, “Continuation of Love Poems” (“The Second Book of Love Poems”, or “Love Poems to Mary”), two books of “Hymns”. “The Second Book of Love” embodies Ronsard’s new “poetic novel” - not in the spirit of the sublime Platonism of the sonnets to Cassandra, but in a completely different way: Maria is a simple Angevin girl, “the rose of the fields,” cheerful and crafty, and the poet’s love for her is simple , earthly and shared love; and the stylistic tonality of these sonnets is devoid of the conventions of Petrarchism, but in its very simplicity Ronsard's style remains lofty and poetic.
"KING OF POETS"
The mid-50s were the time of greatest poetic flowering for Ronsard. His great talent has reached full maturity. At the same time, he achieves full recognition: all of France unanimously considers him its greatest poet. The universality of this success also affected the king: he gives Ronsard small benefices (the right to use income from church estates), and after the death of Saint-Gelais in 1558, Ronsard receives the position of “royal adviser and chaplain,” immediately strengthening his position as an officially recognized poet. Hopes for further benefits and pensions are becoming more and more realistic. Poncap has been poor all these years; literary work did not generate income: the poet, deprived of his fortune, could only exist with the material support of patrons-seigniers or the king. The tragedy was that Ronsard wanted to serve the king as a symbol of the nation, and the king needed a “court poet,” a courtesan poet, upon whom both Ronsard and Du Bellay had so wrathfully rained down their arrows from a young age. Becoming, following Saint-Gelais, a royal entertainer, writing “cartels” and “masquerades”, official pastorals for court festivities, was a difficult and humiliating task for Ronsard. Ronsard admitted that it was difficult for him to write poems “to order”, and he was not successful in them. 
Charles IX (27th King of France)
Meanwhile, clouds are gathering on the political horizon of France. The Calvinist movements, which intensified under Henry II, provoked active resistance from the persecuted: the threat of civil war loomed over France. In 1560, Henry II dies, wounded (apparently accidentally) during tournament competitions. His eldest son, Francis II, a sickly young man unable to rule the country, ascends the throne of France. The other younger princes are all physically handicapped and degenerate; the Valois family, most fully embodied in Francis I, is deteriorating, and this is understood both in the country and outside it. At court, the Guises, who lead the party of extreme Catholic reaction, are seizing more and more power; At the same time, the majority Calvinistic party of the “princes of the blood”, the Bourbons, is strengthening, the closest contenders to the throne in the event of the extinction of the House of Valois and therefore hated by Queen Catherine, who actually rules the country for her son.
The struggle of these court political parties involves their adherents from the nobility and the bourgeoisie, and ultimately it responds most heavily to the mass of the people, to the peasantry, burdened with huge taxes and ruined by the military actions of both Catholics and Huguenots.
Ronsard had a hard time experiencing the religious and political internecine strife in the country. He was, in essence, indifferent from his youth to the religious side of this struggle: his worldview was fed by ancient sources. For some time, he, who had friends among both Catholics and Calvinists, tried to stay aloof. He regrets the collapse of humanistic circles, destroyed by disagreement. In the poem “Happy Islands,” written by him during these years and addressed to his old friend, the humanist Muret, Ronsard calls him to leave France: “Let's run, Muret, run to look for better skies and better fields in other places. Let's leave these unfortunate lands to wild tigers and lions so that they never return to France..."
But the Happy Islands, where in Ronsard’s dreams he takes all the poets of the Pleiades, where “far from Europe and its battles”, among the ever-blooming and kind nature, people are eternally young and happy, is just a dream. Here in France, one misfortune follows another: Du Bellay dies, another friend of Ronsard, also a poet, Olivier de Magny, dies. Pontus de Tiard no longer writes poetry. He himself, Ronsard, although he is not yet forty, is already half gray. And yet Ronsard continues his work. Revising all his previous works for the collected works of 1560, Ronsard recalls with sadness stormy youth, full of hope and the hot pathos of creativity, “like wine fermenting in the barrels of Anjou.” Sometimes it seems to him that the wine of poetry has dried up in him. In one of his elegies, he compared himself to a silent nightingale. This was wrong, the muses did not leave Ronsard. But the previous boil was no longer there. The former amazing wealth of strophic forms and stylistic tonality is replaced by elegiac or oratorical Alexandrian verse, which Ronsard himself considered “prosaic.”
Ronsard presented his collection of poems to the young Queen Mary Stuart, who married a sixteen-year-old boy, Francis. Maria, who captivated Ronsard with her beauty and grace, was a great admirer of the poet. When Mary returned to Scotland the following year after Francis' death, she did not forget the poet; Subsequently, by her order, a precious carved group depicting Pegasus on Parnassus was sent to Ronsard, with the inscription: “To Ronsard, to Apollo the source of the Muses.” In the Tower, awaiting execution, Mary consoled herself by singing his poems.
“WITH AN IRON PEN ON PAPER OF STEEL”
After the death of Francis, ten-year-old Charles IX became king, for whom the queen regent continued to rule. The struggle between hostile religious and political parties intensified even more. The queen's chancellor, the respected Michel d'Hôpital, to whom Ronsard once dedicated the best of his great Pindaric odes, “Ode to the Muses,” tried to pursue a policy of compromise between parties in the name of maintaining peace in the state. Ronsard also sympathized with this policy with all his heart; but during the crisis of the 60s it encountered insurmountable difficulties. Already in 1562, open hostilities began. The initiative belonged to the Huguenots, who, however, were provoked by the Catholics. In the midst of the military struggle, Ronsard published a number of poetic “Speeches” (“Speech about the misfortunes of our time”, “Admonition to the French people”, etc.). In these poems, full of oratorical pathos and high tragedy, the poet acted primarily as a patriot, mourning France, which has lost its former unity and strength, torn apart by “its children,” France, in which “brother rebels against brother, and son against father,” where “the farmer is ruined,” where “everything goes to decay without order and law.” The monster “Opinion” (disagreement) has taken possession of everyone:
And so the craftsman left his settlement,
The shepherd is his sheep, the clients are the lawyer,
The sailor is his sailboat,
merchant - his trade...
In an atmosphere of intense political passions, Ronsard wanted to appeal to national consciousness and tolerance. He wrote these verses during the onslaught of the Huguenot army on Paris, reinforced by German soldiers sent by the Lutheran princes of Germany: “When the war came to the suburbs of Paris and one could see helmets and swords shining in the surrounding fields, when I saw peasants carrying for myself, my children and my belongings, leading my cows by the horns with tears, in three days I wrote these poems about the troubles and misfortunes of our years ... "
He tried to maintain his position as a humanist, standing above the fanaticism of religious war and seeing it primarily as a threat to the integrity of his homeland, in the following years, despite the ongoing civil war and despite the fact that during these years he was already officially becoming the main court poet.
Since 1563, he finally receives a permanent pension from the royal treasury, the boy king, Charles IX, calls him “his Ronsard”, showers him with favors; Ronsard receives three abbeys as a gift from the king, located near his native places. The young crown-bearer, degenerate and sickly, sometimes falling into fits of furious rage, sometimes suffering from attacks of acute sadness, but, like all Valois, inclined towards the arts and poetry, was drawn to Ronsard, although he showed his favor to the poet with a rather tactless familiarity. Ronsard still managed to maintain his dignity and a certain independence in relation to his patron. In “Instructions to King Charles IX,” he tries to teach the young king virtue, paints him the image of an enlightened and humane monarch: “a king without valor wears a crown in vain...”, “You should not insult your subjects like a tyrant, because, like everyone else, your the body is made of dust, and Fortune plays with big people as well as with little ones..."
But the king’s petty duties and the official pension obliged the poet to carry out the duties of court service: to write poems “for the occasion”, compliments to “strong” people at court, to participate in court festivities, to compose pastorals (eclogues), “inscriptions” and mottos for them. Staying at court as the official entertainer of the golden youth irritates and tires the poet. He is looking for opportunities to leave the yard more often. There is an excellent excuse for this - the need to concentrate on working on the heroic poem “Franciade”, with which he is obliged to thank the king for all his mercies.
AWAY FROM THE COURTY BULLSHIT
The idea of a large poem, modeled on Virgil's Aeneid, arose from Ronsard at the very beginning of his literary career. This was required by the Pleiades program: in the system of ancient genres, the heroic poem occupied first place, and the poet, who went to compete with Pindar and Horace, was called upon to compete with Virgil. The plot and title of the poem were chosen long ago: “Franciade” was supposed to glorify the founding of France by the “Trojan prince Francus,” like Aeneas in Italy, a legend that flattered French patriotism in an era of admiration for antiquity. Ronsard kept putting off work on the poem; a pure lyricist in his poetic temperament, he felt that it would be a work devoid of inspiration. But now it was no longer inconvenient to postpone: Karl became interested in the poem, discussed its plan with Ronsard, and now it gave the poet the opportunity to decently retire from the court: such work required solitude. In addition, his health also deteriorated: in 1566 he fell so seriously ill that there were rumors of his death. He lives in his new abbeys, works on the Franciade and writes poetry for himself, finding solace in poetry, while he is increasingly oppressed by illness, ongoing political unrest and the disappointments of life.
He writes elegiac poems in which mature wisdom, surrounded by high sadness, is expressed in a simple and sublime style. This is the beautiful “Hymn of Autumn,” dedicated to poetry and the poetic vocation:
Walking timidly along the path of forest nymphs,
I knew that I was following my lucky star,
That on the paths where their light round dance was going on,
My soul will immediately gain wealth.
Poetry and nature were the main themes for Ronsard from his youth, the “great love” of his life. For him they were the main values, the religion of his soul, to which he remained faithful from the days of his cheerful youth to recent years life. When Ronsard learned that Charles IX had sold the Gastin Forest for felling in order to pay the debts of the court, the Gastin Forest, beloved by the poet since childhood, sung by him in one of his early odes, he wrote an elegy that belongs to his best poems:
O temple of birds, forest! Your dead canopy
Neither light goats nor proud deer
They won't visit. Cool leaves
You will not provide protection from the sun in the summer heat...
And this spectacle of the destruction of the forest at the hands of ungrateful people leads the poet to a conclusion in the spirit of the philosophy that he once developed in “Hymns”:
Unhappy is the man born into the world!
Oh, the philosopher and poet are right, a hundred times right,
That everything that exists strives towards death or the end,
To lose its form and be reborn in a new one.
Where the valley of Tampei was, a mountain will rise,
Tomorrow the steppe will lie where the volcano was yesterday,
And the grain will rustle in the place of waves and foam.
Matter is immortal, only forms are perishable.
Staying away from the court, solitary studies in the middle of his native nature gave Ronsard the opportunity, along with work on the poem (difficult work that never brought him satisfaction), to write many beautiful poems, which were included in the collection of Poems in 1569 and in the new edition of his works in 1571. At the same time, he prepared the first four songs of the Franciade for publication.
While the poem was being printed, events occurred in Paris against the background of which the appearance of the book went almost unnoticed. Four songs of the Franciade were published twenty days after the terrible Night of St. Bartholomew. Ronsard, along with all the best people in France, was shocked. Coligny, brother of Audet de Chatillon (who had died the year before), was killed. D'Hopital, hated by the Guises, forced to retreat from the court back in 1568 and not killed by fanatics only thanks to a special order from the king, did not leave his home, immersed in grief. Charles, tormented by fear or remorse, hid in the depths of the Louvre.
“Franciade,” long awaited by the poet’s fans, went unnoticed. But Ronsard didn’t care about that now. He maintains a deep and meaningful silence, living almost all the time in his abbeys.
"SONNETS TO HELENA"
Only after the death of Charles IX, when Henry III ascended the throne, the poet again appears at court, tries to enter the atmosphere of social life, and visits fashionable salons. But he already feels like a stranger in this environment, where the new king loves to appear at balls in costumes of unheard-of luxury, and sometimes even in women's attire. The king surrounded himself with young favorites - “minions”. At court there is a passion for Italian; the courtiers speak some mixture of French and Italian languages, which outraged Ronsard. Henry III has his favorite poet, who came from the Pleiades school, a talented and graceful poet, but shallow and mannered, Philippe Deporte. True, Ronsard’s old friend Jean Baif organized an “Academy of Music” at court, in which poets, musicians and courtiers meet at concerts; Ronsard goes there too, his works are sometimes performed, but he feels more and more like a man of another generation among these people. If Deporte becomes his rival at court, then Du Bartas, who also came from the school of Ronsard and composed “The Week of Creation,” a biblical poem in a deliberately learned and solemn style, enjoys success among Protestants; his fans spread rumors that Ronsard himself recognized his superiority.
But Ronsard, even in these years, when he entered his sixth decade, showed the French the perfection of his great gift. He creates the “Third Book of Love” - a new cycle of love sonnets, “Sonnets to Helen”. Their addressee was one of Catherine de Medici’s young ladies-in-waiting, Helena de Surgères, known at court for her beauty and virtue, a quality that was not particularly characteristic of the queen’s “flying squadron.” This tall, black-haired and stern beauty (she was half Spanish) attracted the attention of the aging poet. “Sonnets to Helen” is the third and last cycle of Ronsard’s lyrical sonnets, covered in the sad charm of the love of an almost old man for a young and proud girl. Next to the exquisite and slightly cutesy sonnets of Deporte, Ronsard's sonnets, published in the Collected Works of the poet in 1578, stood out for their calm and majestic simplicity; after all, it was during these years that Ronsard came to a certain unified style in his poems, sublime and clear:
Neither too low nor too curvy styles:
Horace wrote so, and Virgil wrote so.
"Sonnets to Helen" was the last major event in Ronsard's literary life. He appears at court less and less often, his health is poor, and he is tormented by severe attacks of gout. He lives in his abbeys, moving from one to another, spending time surrounded by books and flower beds - he loved to work in the garden. But even there he does not always find peace: Civil War continues to tear France apart, devastated by war and unbearable taxes. The sight of the beggars sitting next to the luxury of the court of Henry III outraged the poet. He loved painting and architecture and always encouraged kings to be generous to all muses. But the construction of the Tuileries, which absorbed a lot of money from the meager royal treasury, replenished by robbing the people, now seemed to him a challenge to these people. When he came to Paris, he stayed with Jean Galland, the principal of the Boncourt College, and almost did not appear in court and secular circles. In the year of his sixtieth birthday, he is preparing a new edition of his works, a deluxe folio edition (the first for which he received royalties from the publisher). Working on this edition, corrections, reading proofs, and the trips to Paris caused by all this undermined his health. At the very end of 1585, on December 27, Ronsard died at the Abbey of Croix-Val. He died fully conscious and before last day dictated poetry to his young secretary and friend Amadis Jamin
From “THE FIRST BOOK ABOUT LOVE”
I want to burn and under the heavenly roof
From under the bark of squalor and decay
To fly forever, like one whose mother is Alcmene,
Engulfed in fire, seated among the gods.
The veil of flesh already weighs me down,
The spirit is restless and rushes upward from captivity,
And so that your gaze burns me instantly,
My sacrificial pyre is ready.
O pure flame, oh sacred ardor,
Light in me a fire of such wondrous powers,
So that, having renounced the close shell,
I soared, free, pure and straight,
Above the stars, to praise there forever
Your beauty is a prototype above heaven.
Nature has given everyone a weapon...
Nature has given everyone a weapon:
The eagle has a humpbacked beak and powerful wings,
The bull has his horns, the horse his hooves,
The hare runs fast, the viper is poisonous,
Her tooth is poisoned. Fish have fins
And finally, the lion has claws and fangs.
She knew how to instill a wise mind in a man,
Nature had no wisdom for women
And, having exhausted his power on us,
She gave them beauty - not a sword or a spear.
We have all become powerless before female beauty.
She is stronger than gods, people, fire and steel.
In the middle of the 16th century. Several young humanist poets from noble families formed a circle. When their number increased to seven in 1556, they began to solemnly call themselves the Pleiades (seven stars). The most talented of them were Ronsard and Du Bellay. In the work of the Pleiades, French humanistic poetry reached great heights. The main concern of the Pleiades poets was to create poetry worthy of the new France. Joachin Du Bellay writes about what exactly the new humanistic poetry should be like in his treatise “Defense and Glorification of the French Language” (1549), which became the manifesto of the Pleiades, inspired by Ronsant. The poet calls on his contemporaries to reject all outdated poetic forms: rondos, ballads, whirls, royal songs. He dreams of poetry, the “higher” style of which would correspond to its higher nature and purpose. According to Du Bellay, poetry does not even have the right to be mediocre. He calls for turning to ancient models. Calls for the development of the French language.
The recognized head of the galaxy was Pierre de Ronsard (1524-1585). He belonged to a noble family and was a page to the king's sons. Participated in various diplomatic missions. Almost complete deafness interrupted his career. Falling in love with life is spread throughout all his poetry collections. It appears already in the first sonnet cycle, “Love for Cassandra” (1552-1553). Ronsard became an outstanding master of the sonnet. Ronsard became the first French odographer. Ronsard's poetry is very specific and flexible. At the same time, Ronsard's poems are surprisingly melodic. Many of them have become popular songs, and in spirit they are very close to folk songs. The poetry of the Pleiades was sometimes called aristocratic and courtly, not paying attention to the fact that it went far beyond the narrow confines of the court, becoming the most important phenomenon of national French culture of the 16th century. Ronsard was proud that “all the people sing his songs.”
A year after the publication of the Pleiades manifesto, Ronsard made his debut as a poet with his first collection of Odes (1550). Fame did not leave Ronsard until the end of his life. Foreign princes and sovereigns showered him with signs of friendship and respect. Several periods can be distinguished in Ronsard's work. 1. (1550 – 1560). He started with one. The goal was to glorify contemporary France and glorify absolutism. At the same time, he began to cultivate love poetry (the collections “Love for Cassandra”, “Love for Mary”), using the sonnet form. The strong influence of Petrarch is felt here. 2. (1560 – 1572). Ronsard becomes a court poet. He composes a large number of madrigals, epigrams, and small poems for the occasion. At the same time, he is working on the huge national epic "Franciade". The poem is based on a scientific legend about the origin of modern European nations and states from the ancient Trojans. Ronsard writes "Elegies", a series of poetic "Discourses" on political topics. 3. (after 1572). Ronsard retreats into the world of his personal life. The poetic masterpiece “Sonnets to Helen” belongs to these years - songs of touching late love, full of restraint and platonism. Ronsard's work has great internal unity. His common feature is a bright, epicurean perception of life. Life appears to Ronsard in the form of a luxurious garden full of beautiful flowers and fruits. Ronsard is one of the greatest singers of love. His love is always material, but at the same time tender and spiritual, like the image of his beloved woman. In addition to love, Ronsard sings of other sensual joys of life (“The Blessed Islands”, poem). Nature for Ronsard is a source of life and a great mentor. She is full of sensual charm, spiritualized. In the ode “To the Hawthorn,” he glorifies the ideal of a peaceful life, free from great turmoil and struggle. Ronsard affirms the ideal of a free, comprehensively developed personality. He is a supporter of Catholicism, but notes the corruption of the Catholic Church and preaches humanity. Ronsard did not solve the main tasks he set for himself. He did not create poetry with great national themes, poetry that would have social significance. But nevertheless, Ronsard reformed French poetry, introducing ideal and at the same time realistic content into it.
Pierre de Ronsard is a famous French poet who is considered the founder of lyrical national poetry. Thanks to him, French poetry received a huge amount of poetic sizes, has become more musical, harmonious, large-scale and deep. Ronsard introduced the theme of nature and love into poetry, which simultaneously combined Platonism and sensuality. Refusing the medieval tradition and choosing a role model classic literature Greece and Rome, he had a decisive influence on the development of French poetry in the next two centuries.
Ronsard's artistic heritage is quite extensive. This includes philosophical, religious and political poems, unfinished and considered unsuccessful heroic epic poem“Fronciade” (nevertheless, it allowed Ronsard to be considered the founder of a new genre), numerous sonnets, and the theoretical work “A Summary of Poetic Art.” However, it was the lyrics that made Ronsard a famous poet, allowed him to gain universal respect and surround himself with the honor that Hugo would later surround. The collections “Love Poems”, “Continuation of Love Poems”, “Sonnets to Helen” made him famous outside his homeland - in Holland, Germany, Sweden, Italy, Poland. His works significantly influenced the further development of not only French, but also European poetry, in particular, such poets as Herrick, Sidney, Shakespeare, and Spencer.
Ronsard's work is uneven. Affected and artificial Odes(Odes, 1550–1553) were clear imitation of Pindar and Horace. An epic poem never completed Franciade (La Franciade, 1572) was unsuccessful. Ronsard's lyric poetry - collections - brought him real fame Love poems (Amours, 1552), Continuation of love poems(Continuations des Amours, 1555) and Sonnets to Helen (Sonnets pour Hélène, 1578). Ronsard's love poetry is dominated by the themes of rapidly passing time, fading flowers and farewell to youth, and the Horacean motif of “carpe diem” (“seize the moment”) is further developed. Ronsard is also a great singer of nature - rivers, forests, waterfalls. IN Reflections on the disasters of our time (Discours des misères de ce temps, OK. 1562), created during the period religious wars, Ronsard proved himself to be a master of political satire and a poet of patriotic bent. He also owns many poems “on occasion”. His fame reached Germany, Holland, Italy, Sweden and Poland. He was imitated or influenced by many English poets - Wyeth, Sidney, Herrick, Spenser and Shakespeare.
By reviving eight- and ten-syllable verse, Ronsard breathed new life into Alexandrian, or twelve-syllable, verse, almost unknown to the Middle Ages, developed it and gave it greater sonority. Thanks to Ronsard, French poetry acquired musicality, harmony, variety, depth and scale. He introduced into it the themes of nature, sensual and at the same time platonic love, completely updated its content, form, pathos and vocabulary, so he can rightfully be considered the founder of lyric poetry in France.
J. Chaucer - short story poet
"The Canterbury Tales" (1386 - 1389) is Chaucer's main work. Like The Decameron, The Canterbury Tales was intended to be a collection of verse short stories united by a frame novella. For some unknown reason, Chaucer wrote only 24 short stories without finishing the story. Particularly significant in the book is the frame novella, which overshadows the subsequent stories with its multicolored colors, the vitality of the portraits of characters, including the valiant Knight and the meek Abbess, the rich Merchant and the Student who spends all his money on books, the clever Lawyer and the Doctor, skilled in medicine, etc.
Chaucer demonstrates an amazing love of life; the sacred goals of the pilgrims do not prevent them from indulging in earthly joys. Chaucer's humor rarely develops into satire. Chaucer is characterized by such features of the aesthetics of the Pre-Renaissance as paradox and parody.
