Poetry

To be perfectly honest, I’m not really in the mood for writing about love as I’m no longer sure I know what it means. And anyway, I’ve already written about it here

So I’ve turned my thoughts to poetry. After all, most poets have written about love so it’s a fitting subject for le Saint Valentin. The problem is, it’s also a vast subject, so I’ve had to limit myself to a handful of famous French poets, most of whom were tortured, angst-ridden, debauched souls with a penchant for drugs, alcohol and infidelity. So they obviously knew what they were talking about…

I wanted to begin with a brief description of poetic form. However, after several hours reading articles about it in books and on the Internet, I am thoroughly confused. I understand that most French poetry is syllabic and I know what an Alexandrine is (a twelve-syllable line probably named after the twelfth century Alexandrine romances in which Alexander the Great was the hero). But my eyes begin to glaze over when I read of mute ‘e’s being elided and hypermetrical when followed by vowels, and the significance of caesura, hiatus and hémistiches…

So let’s stick to the poets. And I apologize in advance that half of my post seems to be an html link. I have no idea why but I am not going to stay up all night trying to put it right. Just don't click - it will get you nowhere...

Pierre de Ronsard (1524 - 1585) was called the Prince of Poets by his generation. He was an epicurean although as far as I know, he wasn't particulary debauched. However, he did fall madly in love with a thirteen-year-old girl after having met her just once. It can't have been a mid-life crisis as he was only twenty at the time but it was definitely a silly crush. His infatuation prompted him to write a collection of poetry dedicated to her, called Les Amours de Cassandre. Here is the first verse of one of his poems, which has been learnt by heart by generations of schoolchildren:

Mignonne, allons voir si la rose

Qui ce matin avait déclose

Sa robe de pourpre au Soleil,

A point perdu cette vêprée

Les plis de sa robe pourprée,

Et son teint au vôtre pareil.

Moving on to the next century, we have Pierre de Marbeuf (1596 – 1645). Unfortunately, I was unable to discover any salacious details about him but I wanted to share one of his wonderful love poems with you. So here’s the first verse:

Et la mer et l’amour ont l’amour pour partage,

Et la mer est amère, et l’amour est amer,

L’on s’abîme en l’amour aussi bien qu’en la mer,

Car la mer et l’amour ne sont point sans orage.

Because I’m a sucker for romance, my favourite poets – both English and French – are the Romantics. The Romantics were often Very Naughty Indeed and one wonders how they ever found the time to write poetry at all, as they were mostly stoned, drunk or dying of syphilis.

Alphonse de Lamartine (1790 – 1869) came from a wealthy family but his roving eye and his gambling habit eventually led to his downfall. He had an affair with a married woman called Julie but she died the following year and after that, everything went downhill. Lamartine expired in true Romantic fashion of apoplexy whilst crippled with debt. Serves him right, I say.

Here is an extract from his poem, L’isolement:

Que me font ces vallons, ces palais, ces chaumières,
Vains objets dont pour moi le charme est envolé ?
Fleuves, rochers, forêts, solitudes si chères,
Un seul être vous manque, et tout est dépeuplé !

Charles Baudelaire (1821 – 1867) sponged off his mother and squandered his money on prostitutes - from whom he caught syphilis and gonorrhoea - and clothes. He is best known for his masterpiece Les Fleurs du Mal for which he was prosecuted for impropriety. Fascinated by perversion and the macabre, he died Romantically, an alcoholic and opium addict.

From Les Fleurs du Mal:

Un coeur tendre, qui hait le néant vast et noir,

Du passé lumineux recueille tout vestige!

Le soleil s’est noyé dans son sang qui se fige…

Ton souvenir en moi luit comme un ostensoir!

Paul Verlaine (1844 – 1896) abandoned his wife and son to hook up with fellow poet, Arthur Rimbaud. When Rimbaud decided to leave him, Verlaine shot him in the wrist in a drunken rage. He found himself in prison and when he came out, he tried to join a monastery but for some reason, they wouldn’t have him. His Romantic Reputation was tarnished somewhat when he went to teach at a school in Bournemouth but he soon regained it by returning to Paris and descending into drug addiction, alcoholism and abject poverty. He spent the rest of his life drinking absinthe in Parisian cafés.

Perhaps his most famous poem – and one familiar to all French school children – is:

Les sanglots longs

Des violons

De l’automne

Blessent mon coeur

D’une langueur

Monotone.

Tout suffocant

Et blême, quand

Sonne l’heure,

Je me souviens

Des jours anciens

Et je pleure;

Et je m’en vais

Au vent mauvais

Qui m’emporte

Deça, delà,

Pareil à la

Feuille morte.

And finally, the verses of poet Jacques Prévert (1900 – 1977) sung by Yves Montand:

As an afterthought, I’d like to subject you to one of my own love poems. It’s not in the same league as the above but that’s because they don’t stock absinthe at Carrefour and I can’t get hold of opium for love nor money (of which I have neither).

Still, at least it rhymes.

First kiss

I shall remember this night, years from now,
when life has drifted, settled in the cracks,
covering our tracks. I shall think of how
the summer moon slipped from her shroud
and bowed to peep between the chimney stacks,
beamed softly as you said my name out loud
and stooped to press your mouth against my own;
of how wind moaned, stars clustered, rivers gushed
while Time, in eagerness to tell, had flown.
And when existence palls, I’ll think of how
one night the fretful universe fell hushed -
and blush when I remember, years from now…

Happy Saint Valentine’s Day…xxx