The Latin Ronsard the Pléiade's Poetic Programme, As Set out in The

Chapter six

The Latin Ronsard

The Pléiade’s poetic programme, as set out in the Deffence et illustration, focused on introducing into the vernacular a form of poetry inspired by the greatest works of the Greco-Roman tradition, an ambition which was certainly shared by Ronsard. Unlike his fellow poets, he himself produced few compositions in Latin,1 yet he appears to have had no objection to his works being translated into that language. Indeed, it is his teacher, Jean Dorat, who is responsible for some of the earliest translations, including the Latin version of the Hinne de Bacus, published alongside the French text in a plaquette of 1555. This chapter will explore the success of these translations, as well as the motivation that underlies them.2 Relatively early on in his poetic career, Ronsard appears to have ben- efited from a movement to enshrine him as a classical poet. In particular, the 1553 edition of the Amours de P. de Ronsard Vandomois, nouvellement augmentées par lui, & commentées par Marc Antoine de Muret (Paris: veuve Maurice de la Porte) presents him as a learned writer, whose meaning needs in many cases to be elucidated by a scholar who not only has access to the sources on which the poet is drawing, but who in some cases must have recourse to the author himself or his friends in order fully to understand his meaning. As Muret writes in his Preface:3

1 As in many fields of French Renaissance studies, Ian McFarlane carried out pioneer work in this area, notably in his article ‘Pierre de Ronsard and the Neo-Latin Poetry of his Time’, Res Publica Litterarum: Studies in the Classical Tradition, 1 (1978), 177–205. In Appendix A, p. 199, he lists only seven short Latin pieces that can be safely attributed to Ronsard, all to be found in the Laumonier edition. 2 McFarlane’s article also contains in Appendix C (pp. 203–5) a list of 41 Latin translations of Ronsard in print, and a further 32 poems in manuscript, all produced during the sixteenth century. Malcolm C. Smith adds to this number in his article ‘Latin Translations of Ronsard’, in Malcom Smith, Renaissance Studies: Articles 1966–1994 (Geneva: Droz, 1999), pp. 212–18, where he writes: ‘I shall be mentioning eighteen more translations of poems or parts of poems which I have seen in six separate publications, another publication (which I have not seen) containing a number of translations of passages of the Franciade, an unknown manuscript translation, and finally two more translations which could well have been printed but which no-one seems to have located.’ 3 For a modern edition of the text, see Ronsard & Muret, Les Amours, leurs Commen- taires, texte de 1553, ed. Christine de Buzon and Pierre Martin (Paris: Didier Erudition, 1999); the quotation is taken from p. 9. 160 chapter six

Je pense qu’il ne m’est ja besoin de repondre à ceus, qui pourroient trouver étrange que je me suis mis à commenter un livre François, & composé par un homme, qui est encores en vie. Car s’il n’i avoit dans ce livre aucune erudition qui ne se peust prendre dans les livres écris en nôtre langue, j’estimeroi bien ma peine asses maigrement emploiée. Mais veu qu’il i a beaucoup de choses non jamais traitées mesmes des Latins, qui me pourra reprendre de les avoir communiquées aus François? [. . .] Et pleust à dieu, que du tans d’Homere, de Vergile, & autres anciens, quelqu’un de leurs plus familiers eut emploié quelques heures à nous eclaircir leurs conceptions. (I think it is unnecessary for me to respond to those who might find it odd that I have undertaken a commentary on a book in French, written by someone who is still alive. For if there were no other erudition in this book than could be drawn from books written in our language, I would think that my efforts were quite poorly deployed. But given that there are many things here which have not even been dealt with by Latin writers, who can blame me for revealing them to the French? [. . .] And would that, in the time of Homer, Virgil, and other ancients, someone very close to them had spent a few hours in explaining to us their ideas.) Like Virgil and Homer, Ronsard cannot be fully understand without the aid of an intermediary, who is as well read as he is and who has access to his intimate thoughts.

Jean Dorat as a Translator of Ronsard

For his fellow-countrymen, a French commentary is thought to fit the bill, but if Ronsard is to be elevated to the status of an internationally recog- nised poet, Latin is the language to use, and this is precisely what Dorat is doing when he sets out to translate the Hinne de Bacus.4 A good poetic translation ought to serve the purpose both of making Ronsard known beyond the confines of his native country and of clarifying the meaning of the text where necessary, a role that Dorat was eminently suited to carrying out. In fact, Dorat is responsible in total for five of the translations identified by McFarlane: a sonnet from the Continuation des Amours (‘Le sang fut bien maudit de ceste horrible face’) included in the 1555 edition of the collection; the Hinne de Bacus, also of 1555; the translation of the ‘Exhortation au camp du Roy pour bien combattre le jour de la

4 Ian McFarlane muses: ‘Why did he go to this trouble? was he associating himself with Ronsard’s rising star? or was it because he believed that elevated subjects were best treated in Latin? More weightily, he realised that, if France’s achievements were to receive their due recognition abroad, Latin remained the lingua franca of cultured men’ (‘Pierre de Ronsard and the Neo-Latin Poetry of his Time’, p. 190).