Poésies choisies de André Chénier
XI. Souffre un Moment Encor...
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.
XI. SOUFFRE UN MOMENT ENCOR...
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.