Poésies choisies de André Chénier
III. La Jeune Captive.
This celebrated poem was written in the prison de Saint-Lazare. La Jeune Captive was a Mademoiselle de Coigny. She had, at the age of fifteen, married the Marquis de Rosset, later on Duc de Fleury. She was twenty-five at the time of her imprisonment. She was set free after the 9th of Thermidor. This poem first appeared in the Décade philosophique, hardly six months after the death of Chénier.
L. 11. Pindar, Nem. vii. 77.
Ll. 28-30. Cf. p. 52, ll. 43, 44.
Ll. 34, 35. Cf. p. 52, l. 42.
L. 36. Cf. p. 52, l. 41.
L. 39. dévore. For the verb in the singular see note to p. 25, l. 74.
L. 40. Palès. The goddess of shepherds. This mythological allusion strangely mars this fine poem.
L. 43. triste et captif. A kind of ablative absolute.
Ll. 53, 54. This madrigal winding up this pathetic lyric is in poor taste indeed.
ÏAMBES.
I. HYMNE SUR L'ENTRÉE TRIOMPHALE DES SUISSES DE
CHATEAUVIEUX.
This poem first appeared in the Journal de Paris, on April 15, 1792, the day of the festival. In 1790 the Swiss Regiment of Chateauvieux at Nancy had mutinied, seized the military chest, and killed heroic young Desilles, captain of the Régiment du Roi, who was attempting to prevent fratricide bloodshed. For these misdeeds they were condemned to the galleys. In 1792 they were amnestied by a decree of the National Assembly, and Collot d'Herbois, at the Club des Jacobins, carried a motion that they should make a triumphal entry into Paris. See Carlyle, French Revol., pt. ii, bk. ii, ch. vi, and bk. vi, ch. x.
Against this disgraceful resolution Chénier rose indignantly in several letters to the editors of the Journal de Paris, in an address to the National Assembly, and in the present poem.
L. 3. Désille. See the above introductory notice.
L. 6. The body of Mirabeau was transferred to the Pantheon on April 5, 1791.
L. 10. Voltaire died in Paris in 1778, but as the clergy had not been called upon to assist him at his last moments his body was denied sepulture in Paris, and was buried at the Abbey of Scellières, of which a nephew of his was commendator. His remains, however, re-entered Paris solemnly on July 11 of the same year, where they lie in the crypt of the Pantheon.
L. 15. tu conduiras Jourdan. Tu refers to divin triomphe. Jourdan, nicknamed Coupe-tête, was at the head of the brigands of Vaucluse during the disturbances in the South of France in October, 1791.
L. 17. Coblentz. The general quarters of the Émigrés.
L. 27. An allusion to a meal taken in common by Pétion and his colleagues of the Commune of Paris at a tavern, at La Râpée-Bercy, which they had caused to be mentioned in newspapers belonging to their party as something to be proud of.
L. 34. Persans. The appellation Persans is generally reserved for the Persians of to-day, the ancient Persians being designated as les Perses.