Poésies choisies de André Chénier
Chapitre 7
L. 5. Par Cérès. Only women swore by Ceres. Spanheim in Callimachus, p. 655 (note of André Chénier).
L. 6. légère, slight.
L. 10. Me bêler les accents…. Cf. note to p. 41, l. 28.
L. 16. le sein. Sein is said of a woman, mamelle of an animal. The word pis (Lat. pectus, E. dug) would be the proper word here.
L. 17. Et sera…. This inversion following the conjunction et was very frequent in the older language. In the seventeenth century it is to be met with only, and but seldom, in Malherbe and La Fontaine. See Haase, § 153 B. André Chénier is right in reviving old forms of expression when they come in handy. And here it cannot be denied that there is a gain in solemnity. Cf. note to p. 64, IX, l. 17.
XXXIV. LES JARDINS.
L. 1. Secrets observateurs. Prying into the secrets of nature.
L. 7. les plaintives dryades. Is this mere poetic diction, as when Byron writes: ‘the palm, the loftiest dryad of the woods,’ Island, II, xi. 17. Though the garden described is one seen by a Frenchman of the eighteenth century, yet it is viewed with the eyes of a Greek pantheist.
L. 11. fidèle. True to nature.
L. 12. Loin du bois, comme si…. The uninverted order would be: ‘Comme si Philomèle allait, loin du bois, chercher.’
L. 15. dont le printemps s’honore, which Spring boasts.
XXXV. INVOCATION A LA POÉSIE.
L. 5. Où te faut-il chercher? Understand ‘Où faut-il te chercher?’ The construction is ambiguous, and the sentence might be misunderstood as: ‘where is it necessary for thee to seek?’
L. 5. la saison nouvelle. The renouveau, as our Old poets used to say, i. e. ‘Spring.’ So, in English, the ‘new moon’ (= F. la nouvelle lune), and Tennyson speaks of ‘the new sun’ (_Geraint_,
70).
Ll. 6-10. Petrarch, The Return of Spring, cclxix.
L. 11. gracieux. Not ‘graceful’ but ‘gracious‘—in my opini on at least.
L. 14. liquides. A very felicitous qualificative, apposite to both water and verse. Was Chénier the first of French poets to employ the phrase ‘vers liquides‘? Littré at least does not exemplify the use. It will hardly seem a novelty to the English student who has read of ‘liquid notes, cadences,’ &c.
Ll. 15, 16. Des vers… sont ce peuple de fleurs. An inversion in which the verb agrees with the predicate. See Ayer, § 212, 2.
XXXVI. A LA SANTÉ.
Ll. 1-3. Compare these opening lines with the envoy or concluding part of Hylas, p. 28, l. 43.
L. 9. jeunesse prudente. In the sense of Latin prudens, ‘wise.’ Prudence is generally considered as an attribute of old age. ‘La prudence est le fruit de la longue vie,’ says the French (Sacy’s) translation of the Bible, where the English Bible has: ‘In length of days (is) understanding,’ Job xii. 12.
L. 10. Pâlit. Pâlir sur des livres is a French idiom whose English equivalent would be ‘to pore over books.’
L. 23. caresses d’amours. The s in amours is for the rime.
ÉLÉGIES.
I.
Ll. 1-4. Horace, Od. iii, 12.
Ll. 7, 8. Tibulius, I. viii. 7.
L. 20. Le suit encor. This hyperbole, frequent in poetry, Chénier seems to have been particularly fond of. Cf. note to p. 62, l. 39.
L. 22. nymphes. Nymphe, as well as coursier (l. 24), belonging to the poetic diction of those days, strike us as blemishes. But if we were to demur at such details we could hardly read anything written in the now accepted style.
II.
Ll. 1-8. Imitated from Horace, Od. iii. 4.
L. 13. Seul Elliptical: ‘when I am alone.’
L. 19. distraits, diverted from their uneasy, anxious thoughts.
Ll. 21-28. Imitated from Horace, Od. III. iv.
Ll. 23. Catile. Catilus and Tibur are one and the same place, now Tivoli (l. 26): Moenia Catile in Horace.
L. 24. Blandusie. Horace, Od. iii. 13, celebrates its fountain.
L. 26. Tivoli, i.e. Tibur, where Horace’s villa stood.
L. 27. Horace, Od. II. xix.
L. 35. Theocritus, Id. iii. 12. Bruyante abeille is of course a nominative in apposition to Je. So with rose, &c.
L. 36. les délices, the sweets.
Ll. 37. Anthol. v. 84.
L. 38. étamine. A. Chénier seems to have used étamine, properly the stamen or male organ of flowers, for the pollen or fecundating dust which is secreted by the stamen. Cf. note to p. 27, l. 30.
L. 47. Anacreon, Od. xx. The thought, as a lover’s wish, is hackneyed.
L. 61. périsse l’amant que satisfait la crainte! The meaning, not very obvious, but explained by the following lines, is: Beshrew that lover who is content to frighten his mistress into fidelity.
III. AUX FRÈRES DE PANGE.
The following desponding lines were written by Chénier just before undertaking a journey to Switzerland and Italy. His friends, finding him in a very bad state of health, prevailed upon him to accompany them. His spirits seem to have been very low at that time, as appears from the thoughts of death he gives expression to, and numerous are the passages in which the melancholy mind of Chénier gloats upon death.
L. 1. je suis prêt à descendre. Grammarians have long distinguished between près de and prêt à, but writers never did, until lately, when prêt à was restricted to expressing ‘ready to’ and près de ‘on the point of.’
L. 3. linceul. In the Dictionnaire des rimes françaises, by Jean Le Febvre, Paris, 1587, linceuil and linceul are given. Littré observes that both pronunciations are heard.
L. 13. reliques. The English student is likely to overlook this word, as English ‘relics’ means both (1) what remains as a memorial of a departed saint, martyr, or other holy person, and (2) the remains of a person, the body of one deceased. But this latter sense is of very rare occurrence in French, and Chénier uses it because, being seldom used, it is still all but novel. He thinks it ‘fine and sonorous,’ and proceeds to observe that Racine has it twice. Alfred de Musset, after him, employed reliques figuratively in; ‘Les morts dorment en paix dans le sein de la terre; Ainsi doivent dormir nos sentiments éteints; Ces reliques du coeur ont aussi leur poussière; Sur leurs restes sacrés ne portons pas les mains.’ Yet it is easy to see that in this instance both senses are implied.
L. 24. qu’il dut vivre longtemps. All editions, and our present selection after them, print dut without a circumflex accent. Dût is in fact the imperfect of the subjunctive used, as was usual in the older language and is still occasional in seventeenth-century French, for the pluperfect of the subjunctive, as in: ‘Mais puisque son dédain, au lieu de le guérir, Ranime ton amour qu’il dût faire mourir. Sers-toi de mon pouvoir,’ Corneille, Clit. II. iv. 484. So here dût stands for eût dû = aurait dû. See Haase, § 66 B.
L. 25. le meurtre jamais n’a souillé mon courage. Tibullus, iii. 5. 5 ff. When Chénier speaks of murder he has duelling in his mind, which he deprecated in his prose works. He also takes courage in its older sense, frequent in the great French classics, and the oldest sense, recorded in English, of ‘the heart as the seat of feeling, thought, &c.; spirit, mind, disposition, nature.’—N.E.D.
L. 44. et voilà que je meurs, and behold I die: a Biblical term.
L. 49. mes feux. An instance of the conventional language of love, now exploded, like F. flamme and E. flame.
L. 52. L’ennui. Ennui here says something more than its adoption into English would suggest. The English student, in order to realize its force, should refer to its earlier adoption represented by the form annoy. The word originated, according to Diez, in the Latin phrase est mihi in odio. For the weakened sense of ennui, see p. 57, l. 41.
L. 53. à, for.
L. 56. N’allument… un… trépas. A bold phrase. The passage is from ‘allumer une fièvre,’ through ‘allumer une fièvre mortelle,’ to ‘allumer une mort.’
L. 61. amour… mutuelle. Amour in the feminine is an archaism. Amour, Lat. amor, was feminine in Old French, as all such derivatives were and still are: douleur, peur, &c. Littré, s.v., Rem. 2; cf. p. 61, l. 18.
IV. AU CHEVALIER DE PANGE.
L. 27. Tibullus, ii. 1. 67.
L. 28. Becq de Fouquières, in his notes, gives an epigram of Julianus (with the reference Anth., Pl. 588), which he observes has inspired this thought.
L. 35. Tout, mais surtout les champs sont restés. Tout and les champs really belong to different propositions and the verb agrees with les champs. Cf. ‘Somewhat, and in many cases a great deal, is put upon us.’—Butler, Analogy, Part I.
L. 44. L’astre, the sun, or Phoebus Apollo.
L. 92. De leur voix argentine. ‘The silvery voice of glasses’ is pretty. André Chénier is depicting a true heathenish paradise.
L. 98. ingrat à. We should rather say now ingrat envers. Many adjectives, Haase observes (§ 125 B), now followed by envers, pour, avec, de, &c., were constructed with à, e.g. ‘A moins que d’être ingrate à mon libérateur.’—Corneille, Andr. v. 2, 1573.
L. 97. Qu’à ton tour… May, in return for thy ingratitude, the fair one…
L. 102. Ne t’ait vu de sa vie. May she pretend that she never saw you before.
V.
M. Dezeimeris (_Leçons diverses et remarques sur le texte de divers auteurs_) has shown that Chénier, in this elegy, had borrowed not a few hints from Ausonius, Epistola X.
L. 1. solitaires divines. Which is the noun, which the adjective? Solitaire must be the noun (though certain critics have expressed the opinion that it is divine which is the noun). Firstly, there is the masculine noun ‘un solitaire,’ and it is hard to see why there should not be a feminine, ‘une solitaire.’ Secondly, the subsequent lines show that Chénier addresses the Muses as lovers of solitude, and it is more logical that the predominant idea should be embodied in the noun, not in the epithet.
L. 3. Nîme. Nîmes (earlier Nismes), in the dep. Gard. The final s has been dropped to admit the elision of the e. ‘Nîmes égare’ would have sounded most unnatural.
L. 5. aux bords de Loire. The omission of the definite article before Loire and Garonne is archaic. It was the current practice in the sixteenth century, and still occurs occasionally in the seventeenth.—Haase, § 3 B. It is to be noticed that in the next line Chénier writes ‘ces nymphes du Rhône,’ and, in fact, the omission of le before Rhône seems hardly possible. It is difficult to account for such anomalies. A few individual relics of former usage have thus survived. One of these is the phrase ‘entre Sambre et Meuse.’
L. 7. son flambeau vous luit. Such constructions, where à followed by an indirect object, or implicitly contained in the dative of the unstressed personal pronoun, where the present language uses pour, were quite current formerly, and, though uncommon, may still be used.—Haase, § 125 B.
L. 8. Dansantes. The predilection of Chénier for the inflected present participle has now been illustrated by many instances. See p. 24, l. 61; p. 25, ll. 70, 89; p. 42, XXIV, l. 1.
Ll. 9-12. Cf. Cowley (_Essays: Of Agriculture_): ‘One might as well undertake to dance in a crowd, as to make good verses in the midst of noise and tumult.’
‘As well might corn as verse in cities grow;
In vain the thankless glebe we plough and sow,
Against th’ unnatural soil in vain we strive,
‘Tis not a ground in which these plants will thrive.’
L. 15. les rapides chars. Conventionally poetical for carrosses, which, in those days, would have been the proper word. In the same way airain should have been fer (_cercles_ = tires).
L. 17. ne me soient point avares. See note to p. 56, l. 7.
L. 21. Dormir. The more modern construction would be de dormir. See Hasse, § 87. An echo of La Fontaine, who divided his life into two parts, spent ‘L’une à dormir, et l’autre à ne rien faire.’
L. 22. le doux oubli d’une vie. Horace’s Oblivia vitae.
L. 31. dans Sichem. This is the wording of the older translation of the Bible. Ostervald’s translation has ‘à Sichem.’
L. 33. un amoureux courage. We here touch the point where courage = ‘l’ensemble des passions qu’on rapporte au coeur’ merges into courage = ‘fermeté qui fait supporter ou braver le péril, la souffrance,’ as Littré defines the two meanings.
L. 35. Horace’s well-known wish (Sat. II. vi).
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.
L. 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.
Pierre-Denis-Écouchard Lebrun, called the French Pindar by his admirers, 1729-1807, a versifier of talent, wrote odes (in which he successively sang Louis XVI, the Republic, and the Empire), elegies, epistles, epigrams (in which he really excelled), and a poem on Nature.
L. 78. fugitif de. Becq de Fouquières sees a Latinism here, while quoting two instances from Rousseau and Lebrun. But as Descartes, Bossuet, and Voltaire might be adduced too (see LITTRÉ), it is difficult to accept his statement.
VII. L’ART, DES TRANSPORTS DE L’ÂME…
L. 2. Cf. Boileau: ‘C’est peu d’être poète; il faut être amoureux’; and Musset: ‘Tu te frappais le front en lisant Lamartine. Ah! frappe-toi le coeur; c’est là qu’est le génie.’ Cf. also Milton: ‘Poetry should be simple, sensuous, and passionate.’
L. 18. une amour. See note to p. 53, l. 61.
L. 19. De sables douloureux… Chénier suffered from gravel. Cf. p. 66, l. 34.
Ll. 21, 22. Theognis in Stobaeus, Florilegium, cxx.
VIII. RESTE, RESTE AVEC NOUS…
This elegy is imitated from Tibullus, III. vi, with perhaps a few reminiscences of Propertius, III. xvii.
L. 15. ne trouve plus des armes. Why des armes instead of ne… plus d’armes? Because, says Ayer (p. 407), the negation does not bear on the verb, while Haase (§ 119 B., Rem. 1) will have it that it is in order to mark that the negation falls more on the verb than on the object. The latter explanation seems to us to be the correct one. The idea here is: Camille no longer finds in my heart what she was wont to find there, namely, ‘des armes.’
L. 19. Pleurante. One of those inflected present participles for using which Chénier was censured by his early critics. Were they aware that this particular one occurs twice in Racine? ‘Pleurante, après son char voulez-vous qu’on me voie,’ Androm. IV. v. 54; ‘Que la veuve d’Hector pleurante à vos genoux,’ ibid. III. iv. 3. Cf. p. 24, l. 61; p. 25, ll. 70, 89; p. 42, XXIV, l. 1; p. 56, l. 8.
L. 26. le liège tenace. One of those periphrases so much in vogue in the eighteenth century. Yet, here, there might be an excuse in the playful tone adopted by the poet. And certainly what follows is in the same humorously dignified diction.
L. 30. aux pressoirs. See note to p. 16, l. 308.
L. 37. je la voi. See note to p. 17, l. 317.
L. 39. Son nom, sa voix absente errent dans mon oreille. Chénier had put the verb in the singular, as is his constant practice (see note to p. 25, l. 74), and the correction was not necessary. This metaphor Chénier seems to have delighted in. He repeats it in Hermès: ‘Autour du demi-dieu, les princes immobiles Aux accents de sa voix demeuraient suspendus, Et l’écoutaient encore quand il ne chantait plus.’ Cf. Milton, Par. Lost, viii, 1-3.
L. 48, à ses lèvres saisie, snatched from her lips.
L. 58. longtemps. Longuement would be clearer, or lentement, as below, l. 74.
L. 66. n’aimer plus. With an infinitive, the expletives pas, point, and plus come immediately after ne: ne plus aimer. Yet the construction we find here is also to be met with, though not so frequent: ‘ils s’enveloppaient là-dedans, bien décidés à ne penser plus.’—MICHELET. Ayer, p. 563; Haase, § 156, Rem, ii.
L. 71, en riant, deriding me.
IX. TEL J’ÉTAIS AUTREFOIS…
L. 1. et tel… See note to p. 40, l. 15.
L. 2. Quand ma main… A quaint periphrasis for ‘When I am out of cash.’
L. 4. m’a fermé le seuil. Chénier had first written, ‘Je vois qu’on m’a fermé la porte inexorable.’ On reconsidering it, he must have thought fermer le seuil a more novel alliance of words, giving more force to the whole group fermer le seuil inexorable. Cf. élever sa langue for élever la voix, p. 14, l. 203.
L. 7. O soins… Persius, Sat. i. ‘O curas hominum! O quantum est in rebus inane.’
Ll. 11-14. Persius, Sat. iii. 109-111; Horace, Od. i. 9. 21.
L. 15. les grands discours. Big words.
L. 16. Et le sage Lycée, et l’auguste Portique: the Lyceum, i.e. the Aristotelian philosophy; the Porticus, i.e. the Stoic school.
L. 17. Et reviennent… See note to p. 46, l. 17.
L. 17. et soupirs et billets… This departure from current usage in omitting the definite article, which gives more rapidity to an enumeration, cannot be imitated in English. It is a feature of the older syntax which has been most fortunately preserved. The use of the definite article in Old and Middle French was much the same as in modern English. It was often omitted (as also the indefinite article) before homme, chose, femme, before nouns taken in a general sense and abstract nouns. The English student knows that Old English said se mann for man (in general), tha godan menn for good men (in general), seo gesceadwisnes for wisdom (even when personified). Is it not likely that the present usage in English, established in the Middle English period, was much influenced by contemporary French usage?
X. FUMANT DANS LE CRISTAL…
‘The idea of this long fragment,’ Chénier says, ‘has been supplied me by a fine piece of Propertius, book iv, elegy 3;’ and he proceeds to state that he has not servilely copied it, but, ‘according to his wont,’ mixed in it passages from Virgil, Horace, and Ovid, and everything that came to his hand, and frequently, too, ‘following only himself.’ He then criticizes his own achievement, and we shall, in our notes, avail ourselves of some of his remarks.
The first sketch of this piece was written on April 23, 1782, as appears from a mention in the MS.
L. 3. Reine de mes banquets… Chénier had first ended this line thus, ‘que ma déesse y vienne.’ He observes, ‘I know not whether the arrangement of this line will be approved. To me it appears precise, natural, and full of freedom.’
L. 4. Que des fleurs de sa tête elle pare la mienne. ‘The pleasant image offered by this line, Chénier observes, is drawn from a distich of Propertius in an… elegy which is the third of the first book.’ Here it is: ‘Et modo solvebam nostra de fronte corollas, Ponebamque tuis, Cynthia, temporibus.’
L. 9. l’heure fuit, ‘hora fugit.’ No thought has been more hackneyed. Chénier himself observes: ‘The meaning of this piece is that of a thousand passages in Ovid and Horace.’
L. 11. Un jour, tel est… This line and the following, Chénier observes, are perhaps not, altogether, equal to the two lines of Propertius: ‘Atque ubi iam Venerem gravis interceperit aetas, Sparserit et nigras alba senecta comas.’
Ll. 15, 16. Chénier says on these two lines: ‘Voluptueux is not good. There was needed an epithet to depict that fine palpitation which causes a youthful breast to heave. Des lèvres demi-closes is scarcely better. Unfortunately it is almost the only rhyme. The second line I think happy on account of the breath ascribed to the palpitations of the breast. The second hemistich of the first line makes this pass, for in poetry one word will pass under favour of another.’
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.
Ll. 17, 18. Moi qui…mon réveil. Cf. this other instance occurring in Chénier, ‘Moi, l’espérance amie est bien loin de mon coeur.’ As we say, ‘mon coeur à moi,’ for the sake of emphasis, we can also, somewhat more disconnectedly; say ‘moi, mon coeur est sans espoir,’ ‘elle, son coeur est libre.’ The thought expressed here is a reminiscence of La Fontaine, Fabl. VII. xii.
L. 20. Le nocher… Nocher (from Lat. nauclerus, Greek [Greek: nauklêros]), formerly a master’s mate or a skipper, is, with nautonier, a poetic word for pilote.
L. 21. d’esclaves abondant. Abondant en esclaves would be more accordant with modern usage. La Bruyère writes, ‘Si les hommes abondent de biens’ (in LITTRÉ), and Haase, § 114, illustrates the construction with a quotation from a letter of La Fontaine.
L. 23. du Potose. Cerro de Potosi, a mountain of Bolivia, rich in metallic ores.
L. 28. libre de chaîne. Chaîne ought to have taken an s. But then it would not have rhymed for the eye.
L. 34, les sables brûlants. See note to p. 61 l. 19.
L. 37. nonchalant du terme. This use of nonchalant de shows Chénier to have been familiar with Montaigne, in whose writings it occurs frequently, e.g. ‘Je veux… que la mort me trouve plantant mes choulx, mais nonchalant d’elle,’ I. xix. Nonchalant = non + chalant, pres. part. of chaloir (Lat. calere, to be hot, hence, desire ardently), an obsolescent verb now only used impersonally in the third person singular of the present indicative: ‘Il ne me chaut de cela.’
XII. NON, JE NE L’AIME PLUS…
Ll. 5-8. Tibullus, II. iv. 13 ff.
L. 9. Voilà donc comme on aime! This use of the indefinite on, at the same time familiar and poetical, occurs in Corneille, Pol. II. i: ‘Est-ce là comme on aime?’ And in Molière, Tart. II. iv: ‘C’est donc ainsi qu’on aime?’ The nuance cannot pass into English.
L. 13. Tibullus, I. v. 21.
Ll. 14, 15. Ignorés et contents… notre asile…. This abridged construction, with the past participle or the adjective before which étant is understood, is neat when not equivocal, that is, when the past participle or the adjective are clearly connected with a noun or pronoun in the principal clause (_notre_, in the present case). Ayer, §
278, 3.
L. 30. Le vent…. Tibul. I. v. 36. A frequent image in Latin writers. In French many are the variations on this original theme: ‘Autant en emporte le vent’ (= so much breath is wasted). ‘Ses paroles miellées S’en étant aux vents envolées,’ writes La Fontaine, Fab. X. xi, and Bertin, Am. II. i, imitating the passage of Tibullus, has ‘Les vents, hélas! en tourbillons fougueux Sur l’océan ont emporté mes voeux’ (a sentence, by the bye, in which it is difficult to see the logic of ‘en tourbillons fougueux’ and ‘sur l’océan’).
Ll. 33-54. Tibullus, i. 9. 17.
L. 33. Garde d’être. For garde-toi d’être. In the older language the pronoun object of reflexive verbs was frequently omitted. A trace of this ellipsis is still extant with faire followed by a reflexive verb in the infinitive (_faire taire_ = faire se taire). Haase, § 61. We still say dépêchons, arrêtez, for dépêchons-nous, arrêtez-vous.
L. 38. J’allais couvrant. See note to p. 27, l. 29.
L. 42. Qui font jeu de…, a simplification of the phrase ‘se faire un jeu de.’
L. 48. avec le lin. Mouchoir would have appeared too prosaic in those days.
Ll. 52. a monté ma lyre avec ma voix. Another instance of ‘one word passing under favour of another,’ for a voice can hardly be said to be strung. See note to p. 64, X, ll. 15, 16.
Ll. 53, 54. Vulcan, the god of fire, for ‘fire’. L’onde où tout s’oublie is misleading as suggesting Lethe. Consumer, though representing chiefly the action of fire, originally means ‘to use up destructively,’ and so can apply to the action of water. (Cf. this English instance: ‘The horses were partly (the ships being broken) consumed in the sea.’—Usher, Aun. vi. 424, in N.E.D.) The verb is moreover in the singular according to Chénier’s practice (see note to p. 25, l. 74).
XIII. O NÉCESSITÉ DURE!…
L. 3. tissus. See note to p. 15, l. 260.
L. 7. Voltaire, Mérope, II. ii: ‘Il souffre le mépris qui suit la pauvreté.’
Ll. 14, 15. Mes parents,… Mes écrits imparfaits. Elliptically expressed, the thought understood being obviously: ‘such are the objections raised by my heart.’ Imparfaits, of course, means unfinished.’
Ll. 21. aveugle d’espérance, blinded by hope.
XIV. AUX DEUX FRÈRES TRUDAINE.
Ll. 7, 8. Autant que l’univers… autant il a…. Autant que… autant… was displaced by autant… autant… only lately. See Haase, § 139, 4°, and Littré. s.v., 4°.
L. 9. sais-je voir. Sais-je is here more expressive than puis-je would be.
Ll. 15, 16. Qu’une bouche… peut cacher un serpent à l’ombre d’un sourire. An incoherent metaphor.
L. 26. vague. Vague, in the sense of Lat. vagus, ‘wandering,’ seems to have been of rare occurrence in French. There is only one instance of it in Littré: ‘[Moïse] qui, sage, commanda au vague peuple hébreu.’—RONSARD.
Ll. 37. ce lac enchanté. The Lake of Lucerne or the Vierwaldstättersee (the lake of the four forest cantons).
L. 38. trois pâtres—Stauffacher, Walther Fürst, and Arnold von Melchthal.
L. 39. leurs neveux. Their descendants a sense which the English ‘nephew’ retained till the end of the seventeenth century.
L. 43. Hasly. A valley in Switzerland, to the S.E. of the canton of Berne, through which the Aar runs.
L. 49. ce trésor indulgent, i.e. which she indulges them with: a Latinism.
L. 52. presser l’herbe. One would vainly look for another instance of the phrase in Littré, whereas the English ‘press a couch, a bed,’ is very common (cf. bed-presser), which illustrates the difficulty of realizing what is novel and invented in a foreign writer.
L. 53. Virgil, Ecl. i. 83.
L. 54. Ma conque. A wrong extension of the sense of ‘conch,’ the shell given by mythology to the Tritons as a trumpet, to that of ‘horn.’
L. 55. cet air, the Ranz-des-Vaches.
L. 62 ff. Cf. Horace, Epod. ii. 39 ff.
L. 73. aux lieux amers. England; where Chénier made a stay as Secretary to the French Embassy. For aux = en les see note to p. 16, l. 308.
L. 79. Arve. The Arve (noisy water), a river in Haute-Savoie, waters the valley of Chamouni and falls into the Rhône near Geneva. For the omission of the article see note to p. 56, l. 5.
L. 80. la cime. Engelberg; in Unterwalden.
L. 85. monts chevelus. Dubellay has ‘forêts chevelues’ and J.-B. Rousseau ‘monts chevelus,’ Cf. Virgil, Ecl. v. 63.
Ll. 86. Qui contenez. In the sense which E. contain formerly had, of ‘to confine.’
L. 93. grotte…. The Trou de Saint Béat or Saint Bat by the Lake of Thun, famous for its stalactites, where an English gentleman is said to have ended his days in abstinence.
XV. O DÉLICES D’AMOUR!…
In the editions by G. de Chénier and Moland this piece appears among the Élégies italiennes, under the title Éloge de la vieillesse. A. Chénier had marked it [Greek: Eleg. ital]. His design is here, as we are told in one of his notes, to ‘contredire pied à pied l’élégie contre la vieillesse.’ The poem has been left unfinished.
L. 5. Rome d’amours…. If we are to take this as a genuine confession, A. Chénier would have been as sensible to the charms of the Roman beauties as he is known to have been to those of the Parisian belles.
XVI. SOUVENT LE MALHEUREUX SOURIT….
L. 3. L’Allobroge, the country of the Allobroges, now Savoy.
XVII. JE T’INDIQUE LE FRUIT….
This fragment Becq de Fouquières thought was meant as part of the Art d’aimer, but G. de Chénier says that it is, in the MS., marked with the sign El. (elegy).
L. 6. qui ne font qu’un. These words are struck out in the MS. No doubt Chénier thought the phrase too hackneyed.
L. 14. infidèles. Not to be trusted, treacherous, perfidious, as in this line: ‘Je n’ai que trop connu leurs larmes infidèles,’ Voltaire, Orph. III. i.
XVIII. TOUT HOMME A SES DOULEURS….
L. 3. ennui. See note to p. 52, l. 52.
L. 10 ff. Cf. La Fontaine, Fables, VI. xi.
XIX. AINSI, LORSQUE SOUVENT….
L. 1. Ainsi…. This beginning shows that the fragment was meant as a comparison to be used in some future piece.
Ll. 2. Douvre. Dover is, in French, Douvres, with an s, which has been left out for the requirements of the metre.
L. 3. noir, dark.
L. 12. This periphrastic line is a blemish amidst the precision of the rest. Tapis did very well as a Latinism in the BUCOLICS. It is quite out of place here.
L. 17. sa main faible et lente…. I should take lente here as meaning ‘limp’ in the same Latin sense in which we found it before. See note to p. 45, XXXI, l. 8.
XX. SANS PARENTS, SANS AMIS….
L. 4. sur ma bouche…. The current phrase is à la bouche, sometimes dans la bouche. Sur is used in sur les lèvres, sur la langue, and in avoir le sourire sur la bouche.
L. 5. noir, dark, melancholy.
XXII. SUR LA MORT D’UN ENFANT.
L. 1. L’innocente victime. A child of Mme Laurent Lecoulteux, who, living at Lucienne, was often visited by André Chénier during his stay at Versailles in 1793, and sung by him under the name of Fanny; only a fragment of the elegy is here given.
L. 6. Adieu, dans la maison d’où l’on ne revient pas. There is here a bold ellipsis: ‘Adieu, toi qui es dans la maison….’ Maison is Biblical; John xiv. 2. D’où l’on ne revient pas, cf. Job vii, 9.
L. 13. L’axe de l’humble char. For axe see note to p. 65, xi, l. 2. The phrasing now seems very old-fashioned indeed.
L. 22. Où ta mère… She died, in fact, an untimely death, after having lost her children.
XXIII. LE COURROUX D’UN AMANT…
Becq de Fouquières’ edition places this piece in the Art d’aimer.
XXIV. ALLEZ, MES VERS, ALLEZ..
This fragment, given by G. de Chénier and Moland under the heading Élégie italienne, was meant for the concluding lines of a poem.
L. 1. je me confie en vous. Se confier is constructed with en, dans, à, sur.
L. 4. vous admette… à sa présence. En sa présence is generally said.
XXV. EH BIEN! JE LE VOULAIS…
L. 6. Hier, a dissyllable. It was a monosyllable in the older language, as indeed, etymologically, it should be.
ÉPITRES.
I. A LE BRUN ET AU MARQUIS DE BRAZAIS.
L. 3._Brazais._ André Chénier, at the time he wrote this epistle, was serving as cadet gentilhomme in a regiment of infantry quartered at Strasbourg, and the Marquis de Brazais was a cavalry officer in the same garrison. The piece, elegant and delicate as it is, is therefore to be ranked among the poet’s juvenilia.
L. 5. Pandore. The fable of Pandora’s box is too well known to need relating.
L. 6. trésor de misère. A Biblical expression. Cf. Prov. x. 2 and Jas. v. 3. In the latter passage the French translation by de Saci has: ‘C’est là le trésor de colère que vous amassez pour les derniers jours,’ where the English Bible has: ‘Ye have heaped treasure together.’
L. 13 ff. Imitated from Horace, Od. I. v.
L. 15. d’un pouvoir… dominé, i.e. dominé par un pouvoir. Haase, §