Chapitre 218

L. 21. à la flamme lustrale. By the lustral or purificatory flame.

 

IX. PANNYCHIS.

This idyll is imitated from Gessner’s Clymene and Damon (or Daphne and Micon in some editions): ‘Tell me, love, what wilt thou do with this little altar?… Dost thou not remember that in the days of our childhood it was our favourite resort? Then were we no taller than this young columbine. About the altar will I plant myrtle and rose bushes. If Pan protect them, their branches will soon overarch the altar and form a small temple of verdure…. Dost thou see these bushes? they still grow in the shape of an arbour, though untrimmed now; they were our bower. We built the vault as high as we could reach…. Had I not planted a little garden before the bower? Had we not hedged it in with rush? A sheep might have browsed off the hedge in a moment, it was so large…. Thou wast lucky to find a small mutilated image of Cupid. As a fond mother, thou wouldst lavish care and caresses on him; a nutshell was his cradle, where, lulled by thy songs, he would lie on rose leaves.’ A cicada is also mentioned, which gets hurt in flying away. Then Damon: ‘Thus passed the days of our childhood, when in our games thou wast my wife and I was thy husband.’

L. 5. As in Ovid, Met. xiii. 841, the giant Polyphemus compares himself to Jupiter, so here the child compares himself to his young goat.

Ll. 19-24. A translation of the fourteenth epigram of Anytus, p. 200, vol. i. [of the Anthology]. See also the twenty-ninth of Argentarius, vol. ii, p. 273. (_Note of A. Chénier._) Anytus of Tegea lived 300 years before the Christian era.

L. 20. verte cigale. The cicada is brown. Chénier is here thinking of the large green grasshopper (_Locusta viridissima_).

L. 21. les honneurs. The honours of this tomb, that is, this tomb and its adjuncts destined to honour thy memory.

 

X. DRYAS.

André Chénier had purposed to write sea-bucolics or idylls, which his notes, in which he indicates the genre of his poems by Greek abbreviations, designate as [Greek: Bouk. enal.] (that is, [Greek: Boukolika enalia]), [Greek: Eid. enal.] (i.e. [Greek: Eidullia enalia]). Dryas is one of them. It appeared for the first time in G. de Chénier’s edition, 1874.

L. 4. aux mains. See note to p. 16, l. 308.

L. 6. tout se jette. Tout, i.e. tout le monde, as in ‘Femmes, moines, vieillards, tout était descendu.’—La Fontaine, Fables, VIII. ix. 4. The verb agrees with tout, which sums up the enumeration. Ayer, §217, 3 b.

L. 8. Il remplit et couronne. Not of course in the sense in which Milton writes: ‘Eve… their flowing cups With pleasant liquors crown’d’ (_Paradise Lost_, v. 444). This sense is unknown in French. But see Rich, Dict. of Roman and Greek Antiq., s.v. ‘coronatus.’

L. 19. dieux humides, water-gods. Thus Boileau: ‘Il [le Rhin] voit fuir à grands pas ses naïades craintives Qui toutes accourant vers leur humide roi…’—_Ep._ iv. This invocation is taken from Propertius, III. vii. 57.

L. 23. les ondes avares. The greedy waves.

Ll. 29. et ses efforts nombreux… The sentence has been left unfinished.

L. 36. Virgil, Aen. iv. 304.

 

XI. BACCHUS.

This piece is imitated from Ovid, Met. iv. II ff. It also contains reminiscences of Ovid, De Arte Am. i. 541; Catullus, lxiv. 225.

L. 1. Thyonée Thyoneus, i.e. son of Thyone, another name of Semele.

L. 2. Dionysius, Evan, Iacchus, Lenaeus, names of Bacchus. The origin of the first three is obscure, while Lenaeus is from [Greek: lêmos], a wine-press.

L. 9. étoilé. The fur of the lynx is spotted.

L. 11. aux axes de tes chars. Lat. axis (Fr. axe) is properly Fr. essieu (from Lat. axiculus), Eng. axle which has also been sometimes replaced by axis. (The O. E. word was ax (_æx_), related to Lat. axis.) But here axe is used, as in Latin, for roue, i.e. ‘wheel.’ See also note p. 65, XI, l. 2.

L. 17. Et le rauque tambour. Et does duty for ainsi que.

L. 18. Les hautbois tortueux—‘tibia curva’ Tibul, ii. I. 86.—_les doubles crotales_:, crotals, or crotala, are a sort of castanets. They are called doubles because they consisted of two little brass plates, or rods.

 

XII. LE CHÈNE DE CÉRÈS.

This short fragment is taken from Ovid, Met. viii. 743.

L. 3. porte un immense ombrage. I am under the impression that this happy use of porter has been suggested to Chénier by the term used in painting of ombre portée, defined by Littré (s.v. porté), ‘ombre qu’un corps projette sur une surface.’ Chénier frequented painters, and himself painted.

L. 5. bandeaux, fillets. See vittae in Rich, Dict. of Roman and Greek Antiq.

 

XIII. HERCULE.

Ll. 2-4. Imprudent in being too credulous, Dejanira became the innocent cause of Hercules’ death; for, fearing his infidelity, she sent her husband a robe or shirt that the Centaur Nessas had given her, and which he had said would preserve her husband’s love to her. No sooner had Hercules put on the garment his wife gave him than he suffered terrible agony, under which he ordered a funeral pile to be kindled, and placed himself in its flames, thus falling a victim to the Centaur, Nessus, whom he had slain. Hercules killed Nessus because, carrying Dejanira over a river, he attempted to run away with her.

Ll. 5, 6. ta cime… amoncelle. Literally, ‘thy top heaps up,’ for ‘thy top is heaped up with.’

L. 9. du vieux lion, the Nemean lion.

 

XIV. ÉRICHTHON.

L. 2. Érichthon. Erichtonius, fourth king of Athens, son of Vulcan and the Earth, was a cripple, invented chariots, and, after his death, became the constellation of Auriga, or the Waggoner.

L. 5. axe, for char. See note to p. 65, XI, l. 2. For this line and the following see Virgil, Georg. iii. 113 ff.

Ll. 11-14. Virgil, Georg. iii. 191, 192.

L. 14. Agiter… leurs pas. Hurry (cf. agitato, in music=hurried) their pace, in opposition to mesurer, ‘compose, moderate.’

 

XV. NÉÈRE.

L. 1…. Mais… This beginning shows that the piece is only a fragment. For this comparison see Ovid, Heroid. vii. 1, 2.

L. 7. Sébéthus. The river Sebetus runs through Campania. It is often mentioned by Sannazaro in his elegies, from which Chénier has borrowed the idea.

Ll. 9, 10. moi, celle qui te plus, moi, celle qui t’aimai. In this instance the agreement of the verbs with moi is condemned by modern grammarians. It would occur in the older language, and Bossuet himself has said, speaking of God, ‘Je suis celui qui suis’ (Lat. sum qui sum, Eng. ‘I am that am,’ Wyclif, Ex. iii. 14). See Littré, s.v. ‘celui,’ Rem. 4.

L. 16. A reminiscence of Catullus, lxiv. 117 ff.

L. 19. l’astre pur des deux frères d’Hélène. It is the ‘fratres Helenae, lucida sidera’ of Horace (Od. i. 3), namely Castor and Pollux. The constellation was said to be propitious to seafarers.

L. 21. Pæstum. A town in Lucania famous for its roses. See Virgil, Georg. iv. 118, 119.

 

L. 29. du sein de la mer. Il. i. 359-361. Thetis ‘instantly appeared up from the grey sea like a cloud.’—CHAPMAN.

L. 30. comme un songe. In the Odyssey (xi. 207) the soul of Ulysses’ mother vanishes (like a dream). Also Aen. vi. 702.

 

XVII.

L. 1. Song of Solomon, i. 6.

Ll. 7-10. Song of Solomon, i. 7.

 

XVIII.

L. 8. le mol et doux coton. Cf., in N.E.D., Cotton. ‘Down or soft hair growing on the body.’ Obs. rare so F. coton=_poil_, 1615, Crooke, Body of man, 65: ‘Pubes doeth more properly signifie the Downe or cotton when it ariseth about those parts.’

L. 11. Ovid, Heroid. xv. 93-95.

L. 22. ce jeune Troyen, Ganymede.

 

L. 23. Adonis, whose mother, Myrrha, had before his birth been turned into a tree that distilled myrrh.

 

XIX.

Ll. 1-8. Shakespeare, I Henry IV. iii. l. 214-222. That Chénier was sensible to the magic of this passage argues that, in spite of prejudices, he would recognize beauty wherever he found it.

L. 11. Car le… Becq de Fouquières conjectures that the poet would have written ‘car le bel Endymion…,’ or rather ‘car le dieu d’amour…,’ but was prevented by the metre.

L. 13. The song at the beginning of the fourth act of Measure for Measure gave Chénier the idea of these lines.

 

XX.

Ll. 11-20. An imitation of Bion, Idyll iv.

L. 15. et sa voix… Et here introduces a consequence, as in: ‘Plus je vous envisage, Et moins je me remets, monsieur, votre visage,’ Racine, Plaideurs, II, iv; or in ‘give him an inch, and he take an ell.’ Cf. p. 63, IX, l. 1.

L. 20. tu fais mes amours. Faire here is synonymous with être as in ‘faire l’admiration de tous.’

L. 28. Te bêler mes amours. For another instance of this transitive use of bêler see p. 46, XXXIII, l. 10.

L. 32, Plutôt que te laisser. After que following a comparative, modern visage prefers de before the infinitive. See Haase, § 88.

 

XXIII. LE SATYRE ET LA FLÛTE.

L. 1. Toi, de Mopsus ami! Ironical. ‘That thou never wast!’ This beginning shows that these lines were meant as part of an eclogue: the subject to be two shepherds disputing the prize of singing. Mopsus is an excellent singer and poet mentioned in Virgil, Ecl. v. Berecynthus is a mountain in Phrygia on which the mysteries of Cybele were celebrated.

L. 3. Hyagnis. According to Apuleius, Flor. iii, Hyagnis was the father and teacher of Marsyas, the flute-player.

L. 4. énervé, emasculate. ‘Semiviro Cybeles cum grege iunxit iter,’ Martial, iii. 91.

L. 7. dans ce bui. Bui is spelt thus in order to rhyme for the eye with lui. ‘Buis’ for ‘flute’; a metonymy.

L. 15. des chiens même. In poetry the adjective même often remains uninflected. ‘Les immortels eux-même en sont persécutés,’ Malherbe, i. 279, 26, Éd. des Grands Écrivains. ‘Un éclat qui le rend respectable aux dieux même,’ Racine, Esther, II. vii. 678, same edition. Haase, § 53, C.

 

XXIV.

This fragment is taken from the twenty-third idyll of Gessner.

L. 1. errante à travers. This inflected present participle is an archaism. See Haase, § 91. See also note to p. 25, l. 70, as well as p. 24, l. 61; p. 56, l. 8; p. 62, l. 19.

L. 4. Le pied-de-chèvre. The poets of the Pléiade used the compound chèvre-pied.

L. 6. leur risée. But only one nymph has been mentioned. It is understood that she meant to provide sport for her companions.

 

XXV.

L. 1. L’impur et fier époux. Becq de Fouquières remarks that the he-goat is frequently designated by a periphrasis in Greek and Latin literature.

L. 3. averti de, aware of.

 

XXVI.

This fragment is a translation of the first idyll of Gessner.

 

XXVII.

L. 6. La source aux pieds d’argent. Cf. ‘La nymphe aux pieds d’argent,’ p. 59, l. 47. Cf. also Milton’s ‘silver-buskined Nymphs,’ Arcades, 33.

 

XXIX. A L’HIRONDELLE.

These lines are imitated from an epigram of Evenus of Paras.

L. 1. Fille de Pandion. Pandion, son of and king of Athens, had two daughters, Procne and Philomela. Procne was ultimately turned into a swallow and Philomela into a nightingale. See Ovid, Met. vi. 412 ff.

L. 10. A ton nid. Nid for nichée: ‘Et portant à son bec son modeste butin, De son nid babillard revient calmer la faim.’—Delille, En. xii (in LITTRÉ). In the same way ‘nest,’ in English, is used for ‘brood.’ Cf. Virgil, Georg. iv. 17, and La Font., Fables, X. vii.