Poésies choisies de André Chénier
VI. O Jours de Mon Printemps...
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.
VI. O JOURS DE MON PRINTEMPS...
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.