Poésies choisies de André Chénier
II. Ami, Chez Nos Français.
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.
II. AMI, CHEZ NOS FRANÇAIS.
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.