'As well might corn as verse in cities grow;
In vain the thankless glebe we plough and sow,
Against th' unnatural soil in vain we strive,
'Tis not a ground in which these plants will thrive.'
L. 15. les rapides chars. Conventionally poetical for carrosses, which, in those days, would have been the proper word. In the same way airain should have been fer (cercles = tires).
L. 17. ne me soient point avares. See note to p. 56, l. 7.
L. 21. Dormir. The more modern construction would be de dormir. See Hasse, § 87. An echo of La Fontaine, who divided his life into two parts, spent 'L'une à dormir, et l'autre à ne rien faire.'
L. 22. le doux oubli d'une vie. Horace's Oblivia vitae.
L. 31. dans Sichem. This is the wording of the older translation of the Bible. Ostervald's translation has 'à Sichem.'
L. 33. un amoureux courage. We here touch the point where courage = 'l'ensemble des passions qu'on rapporte au coeur' merges into courage = 'fermeté qui fait supporter ou braver le péril, la souffrance,' as Littré defines the two meanings.
L. 35. Horace's well-known wish (Sat. II. vi).
L. 42. aux champs. For the substitution of à for dans see note to p. 16, l. 308.
L. 45. Avoir amis, enfants, épouse. The omission of the indefinite article before épouse is quite normal in an enumeration. It is a feature of the old language. Besides 'avoir femme et enfant,' which is also an enumeration, we still say 'prendre femme.'
L. 49. aimable mensongère. Chénier avails himself of a source of derivation always open. He turns the adjective mensonger into a noun. This had already been done by Marot: 'De moi n'aura mensonger ne buveur Bien ne faveur,' iv. 308, in Littré, Hist.
Ll. 49-62. In this passage, a critic observes, we have, as it were, an earnest of the Lamartinian melancholy reverie.
L. 66. Julie. The heroine of Rousseau's Nouvelle Héloïse.
L. 67. Clarisse. Clarissa Harlowe in Richardson's novel of this name.
L. 70. Clémentine. The Lady Clementina in Richardson's novel, Sir Charles Grandison.
L. 1. couronnés de rose; rose for roses, for the sake of the rhyme.
L. 16. Montigny. An estate belonging to the brothers Trudaine, situated in Brie, eighteen leagues from Paris.
L. 17. où la Marne. At Maroeuil, where the family of his friend de Pange had an estate.
Ll. 19, 20. A reminiscence of an epigram in the Greek Anthology (Analecta, t. ii. p. 429, C. viii).
L. 22. Qu'il... les ménage. Let him humour them.
Ll. 23, 24. Qu'il plie... sa tête à la prière, et son âme aux affronts, is slovenly written, the preposition à having a different meaning in à la prière (for which see note to p. 1, l. 18) and in aux affronts.
Ll. 41-44. Amphis in Stobaeus, Florilegium, lx.
4L. 42. On pleure. This on where we should expect je must have been attracted by the on in the sentence immediately preceding, and there is a fine effect in its use instead of the invidious I. The avowal, in this generalized shape, gains in discretion.
L. 51. mon pinceau. Chénier tried his hand at painting.
L. 57. à, by. See note to p. 7, l. 211. Here is a thirteenth-century instance of à in the sense of by: 'Me gardez que ne soie prise à beste cuiverte,' Berte (in LITTRÉ). Also this: 'à tous se fit aimer,' Berte, where we find à constructed with a passive infinitive connected with se laisser or se faire, a feature still extant in the seventeenth century: 'Je me laissai conduire à cet aimable guide,' Racine, Iphig. II. i. 501. See Haase, § 125, Rem. ii. à = par has lived on in such phrases as: faire faire un habit à un tailleur, voir dire, voir faire, entendre dire à quelqu'un.
L. 71. lecteur. It was, in fact, with difficulty that Chénier was prevailed upon to read out his poems. See below, l. 80, and p. 85, ll. 64-74.
L. 73. Abel. Abel-Louis-François de Malartic, Chevalier de Fondat, 1760-1804.
L. 76. nous présentions la main. Juvenal, Sat. i. 15.
L. 77. Et mon frère et Lebrun. Marie-Joseph Chénier, 1764-1811, adopted, like André, the military career, which he left after two years, and wrote tragedies, lyrical poems, epistles and satires, and also a few prose works, the most esteemed of which is his Tableau de la littérature française depuis 1789, a posthumous work, published in 1815. He was but an indifferent poet.
Pierre-Denis-Écouchard Lebrun, called the French Pindar by his admirers, 1729-1807, a versifier of talent, wrote odes (in which he successively sang Louis XVI, the Republic, and the Empire), elegies, epistles, epigrams (in which he really excelled), and a poem on Nature.
L. 78. fugitif de. Becq de Fouquières sees a Latinism here, while quoting two instances from Rousseau and Lebrun. But as Descartes, Bossuet, and Voltaire might be adduced too (see LITTRÉ), it is difficult to accept his statement.
L. 2. Cf. Boileau: 'C'est peu d'être poète; il faut être amoureux'; and Musset: 'Tu te frappais le front en lisant Lamartine. Ah! frappe-toi le coeur; c'est là qu'est le génie.' Cf. also Milton: 'Poetry should be simple, sensuous, and passionate.'
L. 18. une amour. See note to p. 53, l. 61.
L. 19. De sables douloureux... Chénier suffered from gravel. Cf. p. 66, l. 34.
Ll. 21, 22. Theognis in Stobaeus, Florilegium, cxx.
This elegy is imitated from Tibullus, III. vi, with perhaps a few reminiscences of Propertius, III. xvii.
L. 15. ne trouve plus des armes. Why des armes instead of ne... plus d'armes? Because, says Ayer (p. 407), the negation does not bear on the verb, while Haase (§ 119 B., Rem. 1) will have it that it is in order to mark that the negation falls more on the verb than on the object. The latter explanation seems to us to be the correct one. The idea here is: Camille no longer finds in my heart what she was wont to find there, namely, 'des armes.'
L. 19. Pleurante. One of those inflected present participles for using which Chénier was censured by his early critics. Were they aware that this particular one occurs twice in Racine? 'Pleurante, après son char voulez-vous qu'on me voie,' Androm. IV. v. 54; 'Que la veuve d'Hector pleurante à vos genoux,' ibid. III. iv. 3. Cf. p. 24, l. 61; p. 25, ll. 70, 89;p. 42, XXIV, l. 1; p. 56, l. 8.
L. 26. le liège tenace. One of those periphrases so much in vogue in the eighteenth century. Yet, here, there might be an excuse in the playful tone adopted by the poet. And certainly what follows is in the same humorously dignified diction.
L. 30. aux pressoirs. See note to p. 16, l. 308.
L. 37. je la voi. See note to p. 17, l. 317.
L. 39. Son nom, sa voix absente errent dans mon oreille. Chénier had put the verb in the singular, as is his constant practice (see note to p. 25, l. 74), and the correction was not necessary. This metaphor Chénier seems to have delighted in. He repeats it in Hermès: 'Autour du demi-dieu, les princes immobiles Aux accents de sa voix demeuraient suspendus, Et l'écoutaient encore quand il ne chantait plus.' Cf. Milton, Par. Lost, viii, 1-3.
L. 48, à ses lèvres saisie, snatched from her lips.
L. 58. longtemps. Longuement would be clearer, or lentement, as below, l. 74.
L. 66. n'aimer plus. With an infinitive, the expletives pas, point, and plus come immediately after ne: ne plus aimer. Yet the construction we find here is also to be met with, though not so frequent: 'ils s'enveloppaient là-dedans, bien décidés à ne penser plus.'—MICHELET. Ayer, p. 563; Haase, § 156, Rem, ii.
L. 71. en riant, deriding me.
L. 1. et tel... See note to p. 40, l. 15.
L. 2. Quand ma main... A quaint periphrasis for 'When I am out of cash.'
L. 4. m'a fermé le seuil. Chénier had first written, 'Je vois qu'on m'a fermé la porte inexorable.' On reconsidering it, he must have thought fermer le seuil a more novel alliance of words, giving more force to the whole group fermer le seuil inexorable. Cf. élever sa langue for élever la voix, p. 14, l. 203.
L. 7. O soins... Persius, Sat. i. 'O curas hominum! O quantum est in rebus inane.'
Ll. 11-14. Persius, Sat. iii. 109-111; Horace, Od. i. 9. 21.
L. 15. les grands discours. Big words.
L. 16. Et le sage Lycée, et l'auguste Portique: the Lyceum, i.e. the Aristotelian philosophy; the Porticus, i.e. the Stoic school.
L. 17. Et reviennent... See note to p. 46, l. 17.
L. 17. et soupirs et billets... This departure from current usage in omitting the definite article, which gives more rapidity to an enumeration, cannot be imitated in English. It is a feature of the older syntax which has been most fortunately preserved. The use of the definite article in Old and Middle French was much the same as in modern English. It was often omitted (as also the indefinite article) before homme, chose, femme, before nouns taken in a general sense and abstract nouns. The English student knows that Old English said se mann for man (in general), tha godan menn for good men (in general), seo gesceadwisnes for wisdom (even when personified). Is it not likely that the present usage in English, established in the Middle English period, was much influenced by contemporary French usage?
'The idea of this long fragment,' Chénier says, 'has been supplied me by a fine piece of Propertius, book iv, elegy 3;' and he proceeds to state that he has not servilely copied it, but, 'according to his wont,' mixed in it passages from Virgil, Horace, and Ovid, and everything that came to his hand, and frequently, too, 'following only himself.' He then criticizes his own achievement, and we shall, in our notes, avail ourselves of some of his remarks.
The first sketch of this piece was written on April 23, 1782, as appears from a mention in the MS.
L. 3. Reine de mes banquets... Chénier had first ended this line thus, 'que ma déesse y vienne.' He observes, 'I know not whether the arrangement of this line will be approved. To me it appears precise, natural, and full of freedom.'
L. 4. Que des fleurs de sa tête elle pare la mienne. 'The pleasant image offered by this line, Chénier observes, is drawn from a distich of Propertius in an... elegy which is the third of the first book.' Here it is: 'Et modo solvebam nostra de fronte corollas, Ponebamque tuis, Cynthia, temporibus.'
L. 9. l'heure fuit, 'hora fugit.' No thought has been more hackneyed. Chénier himself observes: 'The meaning of this piece is that of a thousand passages in Ovid and Horace.'
L. 11. Un jour, tel est... This line and the following, Chénier observes, are perhaps not, altogether, equal to the two lines of Propertius: 'Atque ubi iam Venerem gravis interceperit aetas, Sparserit et nigras alba senecta comas.'
Ll. 15, 16. Chénier says on these two lines: 'Voluptueux is not good. There was needed an epithet to depict that fine palpitation which causes a youthful breast to heave. Des lèvres demi-closes is scarcely better. Unfortunately it is almost the only rhyme. The second line I think happy on account of the breath ascribed to the palpitations of the breast. The second hemistich of the first line makes this pass, for in poetry one word will pass under favour of another.'
L. 17. Phryné. A Greek courtesan who sat to Praxiteles for his statues of Venus.
Ll. 31, 32. 'I have,' Chénier observes, 'imitated as best I could these divine lines of Ovid: "... nee brachia longo... margine terrarum porrexerat Amphitrite" ' (Met. lib. i).
L. 31. sur soi. See note to p. 19, l. 38.
Ll. 37-42. Virgil, Georg. i. 204-207, 252, Chénier, mentioning these sources, exclaims, 'What verses! and how does one dare write any after these! Mine, so petty and so inferior, have yet perhaps the advantage of mentioning Euripus and Malea, places celebrated for shipwrecks.'
L. 40. Euripe... Malée. Euripus separates Euboea from the mainland; Malea is a promontory in Laconia.
L. 46. jeune homme. It is the Latin puer (cf. obs. Eng. boy), a servant.
L. 2. L'axe, the wheel. Thus Homer, Il. xvi. 378, uses [Greek: axôn] for [Greek: trochos], Chénier was particularly fond of this word, and a note of his lets us into the secret of his affection for it. Having written, in a sketch of another piece, 'Si d'un axe brûlant le soleil nous éclaire,' he observes, 'I like axe better than char. It is less trivial. The Latins say it everywhere: "Volat vi fervidus axis," Virg. (Georg. iii. 107); "Spoliis onerato Caesaris axe" Propert. (ii. 3. 13).' Anacreon, Od. iv, compares human life to a wheel. Cf. BUCOLICS, XIV, p. 35, l. 5.
L. 4. Horace, Od. ii. 9: a reminiscence already met with, see p. 14, l. 209.
Ll. 17, 18. Moi qui...mon réveil. Cf. this other instance occurring in Chénier, 'Moi, l'espérance amie est bien loin de mon coeur.' As we say, 'mon coeur à moi,' for the sake of emphasis, we can also, somewhat more disconnectedly; say 'moi, mon coeur est sans espoir,' 'elle, son coeur est libre.' The thought expressed here is a reminiscence of La Fontaine, Fabl. VII. xii.
L. 20. Le nocher... Nocher (from Lat. nauclerus, Greek [Greek: nauklêros]), formerly a master's mate or a skipper, is, with nautonier, a poetic word for pilote.
L. 21. d'esclaves abondant. Abondant en esclaves would be more accordant with modern usage. La Bruyère writes, 'Si les hommes abondent de biens' (in LITTRÉ), and Haase, § 114, illustrates the construction with a quotation from a letter of La Fontaine.
L. 23. du Potose. Cerro de Potosi, a mountain of Bolivia, rich in metallic ores.
L. 28. libre de chaîne. Chaîne ought to have taken an s. But then it would not have rhymed for the eye.
L. 34, les sables brûlants. See note to p. 61 l. 19.
L. 37. nonchalant du terme. This use of nonchalant de shows Chénier to have been familiar with Montaigne, in whose writings it occurs frequently, e.g. 'Je veux... que la mort me trouve plantant mes choulx, mais nonchalant d'elle,' I. xix. Nonchalant = non + chalant, pres. part. of chaloir (Lat. calere, to be hot, hence, desire ardently), an obsolescent verb now only used impersonally in the third person singular of the present indicative: 'Il ne me chaut de cela.'
Ll. 5-8. Tibullus, II. iv. 13 ff.
L. 9. Voilà donc comme on aime! This use of the indefinite on, at the same time familiar and poetical, occurs in Corneille, Pol. II. i: 'Est-ce là comme on aime?' And in Molière, Tart. II. iv: 'C'est donc ainsi qu'on aime?' The nuance cannot pass into English.
L. 13. Tibullus, I. v. 21.
Ll. 14, 15. Ignorés et contents... notre asile.... This abridged construction, with the past participle or the adjective before which étant is understood, is neat when not equivocal, that is, when the past participle or the adjective are clearly connected with a noun or pronoun in the principal clause (notre, in the present case). Ayer, § 278, 3.
L. 30. Le vent.... Tibul. I. v. 36. A frequent image in Latin writers. In French many are the variations on this original theme: 'Autant en emporte le vent' (= so much breath is wasted). 'Ses paroles miellées S'en étant aux vents envolées,' writes La Fontaine, Fab. X. xi, and Bertin, Am. II. i, imitating the passage of Tibullus, has 'Les vents, hélas! en tourbillons fougueux Sur l'océan ont emporté mes voeux' (a sentence, by the bye, in which it is difficult to see the logic of 'en tourbillons fougueux' and 'sur l'océan').
Ll. 33-54. Tibullus, i. 9. 17.
L. 33. Garde d'être. For garde-toi d'être. In the older language the pronoun object of reflexive verbs was frequently omitted. A trace of this ellipsis is still extant with faire followed by a reflexive verb in the infinitive (faire taire = faire se taire). Haase, § 61. We still say dépêchons, arrêtez, for dépêchons-nous, arrêtez-vous.
L. 38. J'allais couvrant. See note to p. 27, l. 29.
L. 42. Qui font jeu de..., a simplification of the phrase 'se faire un jeu de.'
L. 48. avec le lin. Mouchoir would have appeared too prosaic in those days.
Ll. 52. a monté ma lyre avec ma voix. Another instance of 'one word passing under favour of another,' for a voice can hardly be said to be strung. See note to p. 64, X, ll. 15, 16.
Ll. 53, 54. Vulcan, the god of fire, for 'fire'. L'onde où tout s'oublie is misleading as suggesting Lethe. Consumer, though representing chiefly the action of fire, originally means 'to use up destructively,' and so can apply to the action of water. (Cf. this English instance: 'The horses were partly (the ships being broken) consumed in the sea.'—Usher, Aun. vi. 424, in N.E.D.) The verb is moreover in the singular according to Chénier's practice (see note to p. 25, l. 74).
L. 3. tissus. See note to p. 15, l. 260.
L. 7. Voltaire, Mérope, II. ii: 'Il souffre le mépris qui suit la pauvreté.'
Ll. 14, 15. Mes parents,... Mes écrits imparfaits. Elliptically expressed, the thought understood being obviously: 'such are the objections raised by my heart.' Imparfaits, of course, means unfinished.'
Ll. 21. aveugle d'espérance, blinded by hope.
Ll. 7, 8. Autant que l'univers... autant il a.... Autant que... autant... was displaced by autant... autant... only lately. See Haase, § 139, 4°, and Littré. s.v., 4°.
L. 9. sais-je voir. Sais-je is here more expressive than puis-je would be.
Ll. 15, 16. Qu'une bouche... peut cacher un serpent à l'ombre d'un sourire. An incoherent metaphor.
L. 26. vague. Vague, in the sense of Lat. vagus, 'wandering,' seems to have been of rare occurrence in French. There is only one instance of it in Littré: '[Moïse] qui, sage, commanda au vague peuple hébreu.'—RONSARD.
Ll. 37. ce lac enchanté. The Lake of Lucerne or the Vierwaldstättersee (the lake of the four forest cantons).
L. 38. trois pâtres—Stauffacher, Walther Fürst, and Arnold von Melchthal.
L. 39. leurs neveux. Their descendants a sense which the English 'nephew' retained till the end of the seventeenth century.
L. 43. Hasly. A valley in Switzerland, to the S.E. of the canton of Berne, through which the Aar runs.
L. 49. ce trésor indulgent, i.e. which she indulges them with: a Latinism.
L. 52. presser l'herbe. One would vainly look for another instance of the phrase in Littré, whereas the English 'press a couch, a bed,' is very common (cf. bed-presser), which illustrates the difficulty of realizing what is novel and invented in a foreign writer.
L. 53. Virgil, Ecl. i. 83.
L. 54. Ma conque. A wrong extension of the sense of 'conch,' the shell given by mythology to the Tritons as a trumpet, to that of 'horn.'
L. 55. cet air, the Ranz-des-Vaches.
L. 62 ff. Cf. Horace, Epod. ii. 39 ff.
l. 73. aux lieux amers. England; where Chénier made a stay as Secretary to the French Embassy. For aux = en les see note to p. 16, l. 308.
L. 79. Arve. The Arve (noisy water), a river in Haute-Savoie, waters the valley of Chamouni and falls into the Rhône near Geneva. For the omission of the article see note to p. 56, l. 5.
L. 80. la cime. Engelberg; in Unterwalden.
L. 85. monts chevelus. Dubellay has 'forêts chevelues' and J.-B. Rousseau 'monts chevelus,' Cf. Virgil, Ecl. v. 63.
Ll. 86. Qui contenez. In the sense which E. contain formerly had, of 'to confine.'
L. 93. grotte.... The Trou de Saint Béat or Saint Bat by the Lake of Thun, famous for its stalactites, where an English gentleman is said to have ended his days in abstinence.
In the editions by G. de Chénier and Moland this piece appears among the Élégies italiennes, under the title Éloge de la vieillesse. A. Chénier had marked it [Greek: Eleg. ital]. His design is here, as we are told in one of his notes, to 'contredire pied à pied l'élégie contre la vieillesse.' The poem has been left unfinished.
L. 5. Rome d'amours.... If we are to take this as a genuine confession, A. Chénier would have been as sensible to the charms of the Roman beauties as he is known to have been to those of the Parisian belles.
L. 3. L'Allobroge, the country of the Allobroges, now Savoy.
This fragment Becq de Fouquières thought was meant as part of the Art d'aimer, but G. de Chénier says that it is, in the MS., marked with the sign El. (elegy).
L. 6. qui ne font qu'un. These words are struck out in the MS. No doubt Chénier thought the phrase too hackneyed.
L. 14. infidèles. Not to be trusted, treacherous, perfidious, as in this line: 'Je n'ai que trop connu leurs larmes infidèles,' Voltaire, Orph. III. i.
L. 3. ennui. See note to p. 52, l. 52.
L. 10 ff. Cf. La Fontaine, Fables, VI. xi.
L. 1. Ainsi.... This beginning shows that the fragment was meant as a comparison to be used in some future piece.
Ll. 2. Douvre. Dover is, in French, Douvres, with an s, which has been left out for the requirements of the metre.
L. 3. noir, dark.
L. 12. This periphrastic line is a blemish amidst the precision of the rest. Tapis did very well as a Latinism in the BUCOLICS. It is quite out of place here.
L. 17. sa main faible et lente.... I should take lente here as meaning 'limp' in the same Latin sense in which we found it before. See note to p. 45, XXXI, l. 8.
L. 4. sur ma bouche.... The current phrase is à la bouche, sometimes dans la bouche. Sur is used in sur les lèvres, sur la langue, and in avoir le sourire sur la bouche.
L. 5. noir, dark, melancholy.
L. 1. L'innocente victime. A child of Mme Laurent Lecoulteux, who, living at Lucienne, was often visited by André Chénier during his stay at Versailles in 1793, and sung by him under the name of Fanny; only a fragment of the elegy is here given.
L. 6. Adieu, dans la maison d'où l'on ne revient pas. There is here a bold ellipsis: 'Adieu, toi qui es dans la maison....' Maison is Biblical; John xiv. 2. D'où l'on ne revient pas, cf. Job vii, 9.
L. 13. L'axe de l'humble char. For axe see note to p. 65, xi, l. 2. The phrasing now seems very old-fashioned indeed.
L. 22. Où ta mère... She died, in fact, an untimely death, after having lost her children.
Becq de Fouquières' edition places this piece in the Art d'aimer.
This fragment, given by G. de Chénier and Moland under the heading Élégie italienne, was meant for the concluding lines of a poem.
L. 1. je me confie en vous. Se confier is constructed with en, dans, à, sur.
L. 4. vous admette... à sa présence. En sa présence is generally said.
L. 6. Hier, a dissyllable. It was a monosyllable in the older language, as indeed, etymologically, it should be.
L. 3. Brazais. André Chénier, at the time he wrote this epistle, was serving as cadet gentilhomme in a regiment of infantry quartered at Strasbourg, and the Marquis de Brazais was a cavalry officer in the same garrison. The piece, elegant and delicate as it is, is therefore to be ranked among the poet's juvenilia.
L. 5. Pandore. The fable of Pandora's box is too well known to need relating.
L. 6. trésor de misère. A Biblical expression. Cf. Prov. x. 2 and Jas. v. 3. In the latter passage the French translation by de Saci has: 'C'est là le trésor de colère que vous amassez pour les derniers jours,' where the English Bible has: 'Ye have heaped treasure together.'
L. 13 ff. Imitated from Horace, Od. I. v.
L. 15. d'un pouvoir... dominé, i.e. dominé par un pouvoir. Haase, § 113.
L. 18. A cette mer trompeuse et se livre et s'engage. The preposition à required by se livrer, is an archaism after s'engager. For à=sur see Haase, § 130 B, and cf. note to p. 97, l. 383. It would seem, at first sight, that s'engager sur says less than se livrer à, but it makes the step more irretrievable.
Ll. 25 ff. heureux dont le zèle... Elliptical for 'heureux celui dont le zèle,' on the analogy of 'heureux qui...'
L. 27. ses flancs. The shipwrecked man's sides.
Ll. 28. Réchauffer dans son sein. The rescuer's bosom.
L. 29. Et de soit fol amour. The shipwrecked man's love. There is throughout these lines a sad confusion due to a loose use of the possessive, besides which le zèle (l. 25) is awkwardly made the subject of the whole sentence.—Étouffer la semence. The same metaphor occurs in La Fontaine, Ode pour la paix: 'Étouffe tous ces travaux et leurs semences mortelles,' and in Racine, Alexandre, VI. iii: 'Étouffe dans mon sang ces semences de guerre.'
L. 33. Plaindre... l'occasion ravie. Plaindre = 'to lament, regret,' as in 'Ce triste et fier honneur m'émeut sans m'ébranler; J'aime ce qu'il me donne et je plains ce qu'il m'ôte,' Corneille, Hor. II. iii.
Ll. 35 ff. Tibullus, III. iii.
L. 38. l'or du Pactole. The river Pactolus, in Lydia, was famed for its golden sands.
L. 40. mon coeur... prosterné. An incoherent metaphor.
L. 60. See Horace, Od. I. xxxiii.
Ll. 61. Lesbie, Lesbia, Catullus' mistress.
L. 62. Cynthie, Cynthia, Propertius' mistress.
L. 64. See Virgil, Ecl. x.
L. 66. Ovid was an exile at Tomi, in Scythia, whence he addressed much base flattery to the emperor, and where he wrote his Tristia.
L. 73. un tel foudre. According to French grammars, foudre is generally feminine in its proper sense and masculine in its figurative sense, when it designates a man: La foudre a éclaté. C'est un foudre de guerre. Ayer, § 69. But see LITTRÉ, where foudre, poetic for 'catastrophe, destruction,' appears as a masculine noun in two quotations from Corneille (Hor. IV. v. and Héracl. I. iv.), and as a feminine noun in Bossuet, Mar.-Thér.
L. 93. Castor, son of Jupiter, was immortal. When his brother Pollux died, Castor prayed Jupiter that Pollux might be made immortal. As the prayer could not be granted entirely, immortality was divided among the two, so that they lived and died alternately.
Ll. 95, 96. Virgil has celebrated them in his Églogues. For the episode of Nisus see Aen. ix.
L. 99. Le Brun. 'Son of the author of the poem La Religion, and grandson of the great Racine; he died at Cadiz, at the time of the disaster which destroyed Lisbon and shook all the coast of Portugal and Spain.' (Note of A. Chénier.)
L. 102. leçons d'Ascra, Ascraean lessons. Hesiod was born at Ascra in Boeotia. Hence Virgil calls his poem Ascraeum carmen, Georg. ii. 176.
L. 103. Accompagnant l'année en ses douze palais. Chénier, in another epistle, has written 'Si je vis, le soleil aura passé deux fois Dans les douze palais où résident les mois.' The twelve mansions or houses into which astrologers divided the sky. Chaucer uses 'palace' in the same sense: 'Mars shal entre as fast as he may glyde In-to his next paleys to abyde,' Compl. Mars, 53. See N.E.D. Brazais had written a poem, L'Année, which never appeared in print.
L. 105. A paraphrase of a line of Brazais' unpublished poem: 'Vierge, qui t'embellis par les rides du temps.' Friendship, of course, is meant.
L. 111. tableaux fardés. Counterfeit, spurious. See the obs. verb fard in N.E.D.
L. 128. L'ami religieux. The following quotation (from the N.E.D.) may serve for an explanation: 'A man devoted to a man, Loyal, religious in love's hallowed vows.' Porter, Angry wom. Abingd. (Percy Soc.), 37.
L. 130. Bavius, a Latin poetaster; see Virgil, Ecl. iii, 90. Zoilus, the detractor of Homer. Gacou, a French satiric poet of the seventeenth century, the libellous detractor of Boileau and J.-B. Rousseau. Linière, another French satiric poet of the seventeenth century, the declared enemy of Chapelain. (See Boileau, Sat. ix. 237.)
L. 147. Plutarch relates that Scipio would always take Lelius' advice, which made him say that Lelius was the poet and Scipio the actor. Plutarch, An seni sit ger. resp. xxvii.
L. 148. When Phocion, sentenced to death, was on the point of drinking the hemlock, Nicocles besought the favour of drinking first, which request his friend granted. Plutarch, Phoc. xxxvi.
L. 168. faisceaux, the fasces.
L. 201. âme mutuelle. A new alliance of words, on the analogy of affection mutuelle.
L. 202. Cf. Theocritus, Idyll. xii. 18.
Ll. 207, 208. ils s'attendent... d'être. S'attendre de is now of rarer occurrence than s'attendre à, but it was not so formerly. 'On ne s'attendait guère De voir Ulysse en cette affaire.' La Fontaine, Fab. X. iii. See LITTRÉ.
L. 16. Sans aller refers to me, the object in the principal clause. Sans que j'aille would be better syntax. But the prepositional infinitive was used in older French in a still more disconnected manner. 'Rends-le-moi sans te fouiller,' writes Molière, L'Avare I. iii., could easily be more explicit, with: 'without me or my searching you,' See Haase, § 85 D.
Ll. 16-19. See Boileau, Sat. ix. 221-5, who is here excellently satirized.
L. 28. An allusion to the fable of the Fox and the Grapes. La Fontaine, Fab. III. xi.
L. 41. Non d'aller. An abrupt change in the construction. The meaning is: 'But it is not useful to go...'
Ll. 47-60. The germ of all this development is in a letter of Chénier to his friend de Pange: 'Tu sais combien mes muses sont vagabondes. Elles ne peuvent achever promptement un seul projet; elles en font marcher cent à la fois (a general marshalling his troops, ll. 49, 50). Elles font un pied à ce poème et une épaule à celui-là. Ils boitent tous et ils seront sur pieds tous ensemble (The image of the sculptor, ll. 51-6). Elles les couvent tous à la fois; ils sortiront tous à la fois' (the simile of incubation, ll. 57-60).
L. 59. Sauront. This use of savoir, as also that of pouvoir, so frequent in French, in sentences where the English translation is fain to omit them, is a French idiom, especially noticeable in the language of the seventeenth century. An Englishman cannot help being made aware of this feature when reading Molière, for instance.
L. 71. des traits. Whatever there is that is salient, striking, brilliant, in a literary composition, LITTRÉ says, s.v. 31°: fine touches.
Ll. 73. inspire. For the verb in the singular see note to p. 25, l. 74.
Ll. 79-92. Here the simile of the founder has displaced that of the potter in the letter quoted above: 'L'argile que j'avais amollie et humectée pour en faire un pot à l'eau, sous mon doigt capricieux, devient une tasse ou une théière.'
L. 94. Cf. La Fontaine, Épître à Mgr de Soissons.
L. 96. et je crée avec eux. Thus happily does Chénier characterize his attempt at original imitation. Another important declaration will be found at ll. 117-9.
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.
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.
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.
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.