Two Poems by Mellin de Saint Gelais

The French texts are appended.

 

     While great work may occur at any stage of literary history, often the first practitioners of a form possess a fresh richness and ingenuity that soon vanishes.  I find this “early morning” quality in William IX among Troubadours, for instance, and in the greatness of the first generation of Mississippi Delta blues.  A similar glow is perceptible in the poetry of Thomas Wyatt who imported Continental verse forms to English poetry, most significantly the sonnet, a generation or two after their introduction in France.    

    Mellin de Saint-Gelais (c. 1491-1558) played a significant role in the process of adapting Italian models into French poetry.  He is said to have mocked Ronsard and was in turn attacked by du Bellay, but these quarrels have little relevance to the pleasure of a modern reader coming across the wit and ingenuity that first brought the author into favor with Francis I whom he served as court poet,  chaplain, and librarian. 

     I use the text from the 1873 edition Oeuvres complètes de Melin de Sainct-Gelays edited by Prosper Blanchemain which prints as a note another version with many variations, the most significant of which are the substitution of English trickery and Lombard usurers for African monsters and “opinions en une republique” in the penultimate triplet.  This poem was set to music by André Jolivet using the title “Sonnet à une lunaticque” (1951).

 

There aren’t in Venice near as many boats,

Or Bourgian oysters,  or Champagne’s fine hares,

Fewer Breton calves, Savoyard bears

Or white swans up and down the Thames afloat,

 

Or liaisons that were begun at mass,

Or fighting among petty German states,

Or Spanish grandees thinking they are great,

Or courtly lies told by the highest class,

 

Or  prodigies in Africa’s hot clime,

Opinions in a democratic time,

Or Papal pardons on each feast day signed,

 

Not so much greed among men of affairs

Or academic quarrels splitting hairs,

As my beloved’s notions in  her mind.

 

      I like the unpredictable catalogue, reminiscent of Sei Shonagon’s Pillow Book,  of “things of which there are many,” which holds the reader in  suspense until the punch line, an affectionate (if patronizing and misogynistic) remark.  The author begins with the reputations of various regions that would be immediately recognizable to readers, but, in the second stanza, moves to scattershot social satire: the supposedly pious are really cruising for lovers in church, the Germans are a somewhat absurd collection of petty principalities, the Spanish lords are egotistical, and everyone lies in court.  The third stanza mixes these two elements with every characteristic having a satirical edge.  The last tercet moves to matters of the mind, first the rapacious avarice of economic life, then the fierce rivalries in the Sorbonne (mentioned by name in the original), to subtly prepare the way for the vagaries of thought of the lover.  Surely here the lover has proven his imagination as whimsical and wandering as that of his beloved.

     He may have written the first French sonnets, but the form was at the time fluid.  Here is a poem with  thirteen lines

 

Thirteener

 

In sea’s wide waters, far from any port,

lascivious sirens swim about and sport,

and there they comb their long and golden hair.

Their voices of serene and pleasant sort

can grab the mast and seize the hull’s support,

and then make mighty waves halt in the air.

So stormy tempests sink ships they have snared.

No different is the case with life so dear.

A fickle mermaid may make disappear

quite all our joy, the sweetness of life’s stream.

When death brings shipwreck and a watery bier,

we’re nothing but a rumor one might hear, 

less than a wind or shadow, smoke, or dream

 

      The poem begins with what might seem a romantic literary reference to mermaids, but this is a magician’s move to distract the reader.  The initial references reproduce the sirens’ allure by mentioning their “lasciviousness” and the beauty of their hair and voices, but, in a volta with a vengeance, their charms are revealed as treacherous and deadly.  The conclusion, with its wistful list of insubstantial things, recalls the dramatic conclusion of the Diamond Sutra.

 

Like a tiny drop of dew, or a bubble floating in a stream;

Like a flash of lightning in a summer cloud,

Or a flickering lamp, an illusion, a phantom, or a dream.

                                                                           (tr. Alex Johnson)

 

 

  

Il n'est point tant de barques à Venize,

D'huystres à Bourg, de festuz en Champagne,

De differentz aux peuples d'Allemagne,

De cygnes blancz au long de la Tamise;

 

Ne tant d'amours se traictent en l'eglise,

Ne tant de veaux se treuvent en Bretagne,

Ne tant de gloire en un signor d'Espagne,

Ny en la Court tant y a de faintise;

 

N'en ces Anglois a tant de cornardise,

Ne de pardons à Rome un jour de feste,

Ny d'usuriers en toute Lombardie;

 

Ny de travaulx à vaincre femme honneste,

Ne dans Auvergne animaulx d'Arcadie,

Que vous avez de lunes en la teste.

 

 

 

Treizain

 

Par l'ample mer, loin des ports et arènes

S'en vont nageant les lascives sirènes

En déployant leurs chevelures blondes,

Et de leurs voix plaisantes et sereines,

Les plus hauts mâts et plus basses carènes

Font arrêter aux plus mobiles ondes,

Et souvent perdre en tempêtes profondes;

Ainsi la vie, à nous si délectable,

Comme sirène affectée et muable,

En ses douceurs nous enveloppe et plonge,

Tant que la Mort rompe aviron et câble,

Et puis de nous ne reste qu'une fable,

Un moins que vent, ombre, fumée et songe.