Chapitre 95

Ll. 73-5. Od. i. 169-73. But Telemachus addresses Athene in more naïve words, saying: ‘I do not think thou couldst come to this island on foot.’

L. 74. Comment, et d’où viens-tu? Boldly elliptical for ‘comment es-tu venu ici et d’où viens-tu?’ l’onde maritime. A rare use of the adj. maritime. La Fontaine has an instance of it: Ce maritime empire, VIII, ix; cf. ‘la vague marine,’ p. 29, l. 16.

Ll. 81, 82. Mais pauvre… Ils m’ont… jeté: a bold ellipsis as in ‘Je t’aimais inconstant, qu’aurais-je fait fidèle!’—RACINE.

L. 88. âme ouverte à sentir. There are numerous instances in Chénier of the use of à in the sense of pour, a somewhat archaic feature which, no doubt, was one of the grounds on which his early critics based their reproach of incorrectness. But this is really racy French. The employment of à = pour may be traced throughout French literature: thirteenth century, ‘Les dismes furent establies et donées anciennement a sainte église soustenir‘; fourteenth century, ‘Amis leur sont nécessaires a leurs bonnes actions acomplir‘; sixteenth century, ‘Il le somma de partir à parlementer‘; seventeenth century, ‘La couronne n’a rien à me rendre content,’ Molière, D. Garc. V. vi; ‘A lui rendre service elle m’ouvre la voie,’ Corneille, Sertorius, II. v.; eighteenth century, ‘A faire d’un tel gentilhomme un Achille au pied léger, l’adresse de Chiron même eût eu de la peine à suffire,’ J.-J. Rousseau, Émile, ii.; nineteenth century, ‘Que cette place est bonne à le bien poignarder,’ V. Hugo, Cromwell, V. iii; ‘Il en faudrait un monde à faire un grain de sable,’ Lamartine, Jocelyn, quatrième époque (see the Jocelyn of this series, p. 75, l. 308). It is not strange that this should have been thought incorrect, when we see the French Academy, in their judgement on the Cid, and Voltaire, in his notes to Corneille, make the same mistake. See Haase, § 124, 2°, and F. Godefroy, Lexique comparé de la Langue de Corneille. For a similar instance see p. 6, l. 183.

L. 93. mobiles. The epithet will be more easily understood if we think of its contrary, ‘inert’.

L. 98. j’étais misérable… Misérable is here used in the sense ‘to be pitied,’ a sense frequent in the seventeenth century. j’étais, the imperfect of the indicative for the conditional past, as in ‘Hercule, ce dit-il, tu devois bien purger La terre de cette hydre,’ La Fontaine, Fables, VIII. v, or in ‘Sans vous, j’étais noyé.’

L. 100. N’eussiez. The more usual French construction would be, with repetition of the subject, ‘vous n’eussiez.’ armé… les pierres et les cris. A favourite phrase with Chénier (see p. 112, l. 105, and in Le Jeu de Paume, ‘La tyrannie… arme… ses cent yeux…’). Racine, Les Frères Ennemis, I. iii, speaks of ‘armer et le fer et la faim’ against someone. An old translation of the Bible has ‘J’armerai contre eux les dents des bêtes farouches,’ Deut. xxxii. 24. Thus in the Odyssey, when the ‘mastiffs’ fly at Ulysses, the herdsman runs up, and ‘his cry (with frequent stones flung at the dogs) repell’d this way and that their eager course they held.’—Chapman, Odyss. xiv. ll. 49-51.

L. 110. Ma bouche ne s’est point ouverte à leur répondre. See note to p. 3, l. 88.

L. 119. place is, of course, a subjunctive. The omission of que before subjunctives expressing a wish was the rule in Old French. The practice was still prevalent in seventeenth-century French. It is exceptional now, as in: Fasse le ciel! Puissiez-vous réussir! Vive la France!

Ll. 119-121. Un siège… sous la colonne. Cf. Odyss. (Chapman’s transl., viii. p. 365): ‘His place was given him in a chair all graced With silver studs, and ‘gainst a pillar placed;… The herald on a pin above his head His soundful harp hung.’

L. 123. Ingénieux, here, seems to be used, not in its French sense of ‘clever, having an aptitude for invention,’ which would be but a poor compliment paid to the great Homer, but with its Latin meaning of ‘gifted with genius.’

L. 135. vaillant. I take it to mean, not ‘courageous,’ but ‘vigorous in body, robust, able-bodied,’ a sense not recorded in Littré, though well known in everyday French, the sense of English valiant in ‘the sturdy and valiant beggars’ of the statute-book.

L. 140. douleurs, rheumatic pains.

Ll. 149-156. E. Faguet, in his Chénier, observes how like a picture this is composed. In the foreground the blind man sitting under a tree, with the shepherds and wayfarers pressing around him, while the background displays the deserted flocks and roads, and the intervening space is crowded with the attentive nymphs and sylvans enticed out of their abodes.

Ll. 149, 150. Virgil, Ecl. vi. 28 ‘tum rigidas motare cacumina quercus (videres).’

L. 157. Car en de longs détours… A long line. Its twelve syllables certainly take more time in the delivery than any other twelve. Hence the better adapted the line is to convey the poet’s meaning.

L. 158. Il enchaînait. The meaning is that he gave a connected account of….

L. 162. Les amours immortelles for les amours des immortels. Virgil, Georg. iv. 347.

L. 164. Iliad, i. 528: ‘He said; and his black eyebrows bent;… great heaven shook.’—CHAPMAN.

L. 166. The war of the Titans.

L. 167. The Trojan war is here entered upon.

L. 168. Cf, Homer, Iliad, iii. 13; xiii. 336; Virgil, Aeneid, ix,

63, 64.

L. 170. Iliad, ii, 455: ‘And as a fire upon a huge wood, on the heights of hills; that far off hurls his light; so the divine brass shined on these.’—CHAPMAN.

L. 172. Iliad, xix. 405, Xanthus, one of Achilles’ horses (‘twas Juno’s will to make vocal the palate of the one,’ to use Chapman’s words), answers his master’s charge to acquit himself well with a prediction that ‘not far hence the fatal minutes are Of his grave ruin.’

L. 177. mortels aux épouses… This must be an instance of those ‘régimes inusités donnés aux adjectifs’ which Raynouard censured in 1819. This is once more à in the sense of pour. ‘Rechercher un trépas si mortel à ma gloire,’ Corneille, Cid, I. ii. But compare the (perhaps) more modern construction: ‘Cette mode durera peu; elle est mortelle pour les dents.’—Madame de Sévigné, 4 avril 1671 (in LITTRÉ).

L. 179. Laetas segetes. Virgil, Georg. i. I.

L. 182. Homer. Iliad, xviii. 491; Hesiodus, The Shield of Hercules,