Lyrics of the French Renaissance: Marot, Du Bellay, Ronsard,
English versions by Norman R. Shapiro, introduction by Hope
Glidden, notes by Hope Glidden and Norman R. Shapiro (New
Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002) 352 pp. ISBN 0300-08759-4
The present volume offers a selection of the writings of three of the
best known poets of the sixteenth century; the texts are given in French
with facing transposition into modern English. For each of the authors
Norman Shapiro has selected pieces across the range of their poetic
compositions. Thus for the rhétoriqueur Clément Marot, we have a
ballad, seven rondeaux, eleven chansons, two elegies, four verse epistles,
one hymn, and over thirty epigrams. For the “poet of exile”, Joachim
Du Bellay, the choice goes beyond the well-known Regrets, covering also
some sonnets from the Antiquitez de Rome and pieces drawn from Du
Bellay’s love sequences and mixed recueils. For Ronsard, the chief of the
trend-setting Pléiade, there are over fifty pieces including love sonnets,
but also several odes, epigrams, epitaphs and other pieces of occasional
poetry. In his English versions, Shapiro – an experienced translator of
French verse – endeavours to “transmit[] to the sensitive reader an
aesthetic mood similar to […] the one experienced by a reader of [the]
original” (p. xxiv). Preserving, as much as possible, text volume or form
and rhyme, the translator abandons any “slavish” renderings of the
French in favour of readable and accessible English. On the whole, this
strategy works, but on occasion the solemnity of a Bellayan sonnet or
Ronsardian ode has been sacrificed to the imperative of stylistic
modernity. Shapiro is at his best, however, in the epigrammatic mode:
his reworkings of some of Marot’s rondeaux and épigrammes, of Du
Bellay’s Jeux Rustiques or of Ronsard’s blasons – his “sexual body kept
good company with his writing hand” (p. 17)! – unlock the delights of
the French poetic language with wit and deceitful ease.
A sparing apparatus of explanatory notes compiled by Shapiro
and the author of the introduction, Hope Glidden, provides some
necessary enlightenment on persons, themes or significant textual
echoes. If, generally speaking, the lay-out of the poems is neat and airy,
it is regrettable that in the case of Du Bellay’s “Nouveau venu qui
cherches Rome en Rome” (p. 184), one of his most polished sonnets,
the notes have pushed the final tercet over the page (p. 186): for it is
one of the sonnet form’s great characteristics that it can (and should) be
taken in at a glance, inviting the reader to appreciate the construction of
the poem as a whole. Similary, a few illustrations, chosen mostly for
their picture value rather than their direct connection to the original
text, do embellish the book, but it would have been worth foregoing the
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illustration on p. 369, in order to have Ronsard’s “Imitation de Martial”
(p. 368) faced directly by Shapiro’s English (p. 371).
The introduction by Hope Glidden sketches the French literary
(poetic) scene of the sixteenth century. The lay reader will no doubt
find this overview helpful and, on the whole, factually informative. The
specialist will note a few lapses and, more importantly, the perpetuation
of a number of outdated ideas and interpretations. For instance, the
word illustration (meaning “exaltation” or “glorification”) in the title of
Du Bellay’s pamphlet Defense et illustration de la langue françoyse appears
misunderstood, and it is rather naïvely stated that “Du Bellay’s feelings
before the decay of Rome cannot be doubted” (p. 12). Yet research in
the field has clearly established the extent to which Du Bellay
constructed his exiliar persona, and how he was catering to French
expectations (including Ronsard’s). Though mention is made of Du
Bellay’s imitation of the Neo-Latin poet Andrea Navagero in the Divers
Jeux Rustiques (p. 13), there is a complete disregard for his Latin Poemata,
written in parallel to the “French” Roman collections, and for the
Angevin’s indebtedness to the Elegiae of Janus Vitalis, crucial for a
correct understanding of “Nouveau venu qui cherches Rome en Rome”
and (more broadly) of Du Bellay’s apparent melancholy.
Admittedly, it is all too easy, and no doubt greatly unfair, to judge
this volume just by specialist standards: it does not pretend to advance
seizièmiste scholarship, but, as the blurb on the dustjacket suggests, to
provide pleasure for many readers. Nor must we forget that for many
of the poems presented here, there are no other English translations
readily available. Students and general readers who take this handsome
volume to hand, will thus find that, for all its flaws, Shapiro’s collection
opens a new door onto the colourful field of French Renaissance
poetry.
Dr Ingrid de Smet, University of Warwick
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