Pierre de Ronsard's Odes and the Law of Poetic Space

8/2/2019 Pierre de Ronsard's Odes and the Law of Poetic Space

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Pierre de Ronsard's Odes and the Law of Poetic SpaceAuthor(s): Ehsan Ahmed

Reviewed work(s):Source: Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 44, No. 4 (Winter, 1991), pp. 757-775Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Renaissance Society of AmericaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2862486 .

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Pierrede Ronsard'sOdes and the Lawof PoeticSpaceby EHSAN AHMED

Et faictes que toujours j'espieD'oeil veillant les secretz des cieulx.(Odd a Michel de l'Hospital)

T HE desof 1550 and 1552 reveal Pierre de Ronsard's ambitionto gain entry into the court of Henri II. In the 1550 preface tothe Odes,Ronsard does not make the slightest effort to veil his lit-eraryand political objectives. He presents his Odesas a poetic chal-lenge to Clement Marot's psalm translationsof 1541 and 1543 withthe discovery of an equally ancient lyric source, pagan ratherthanHebraic, and he mounts an ad hominem attack on the court poetMellin de Saint-Gelais in order to win Henri's favor. The poetry,however, places in evidence other preoccupations. The Odes de-scribe and problematize the endless wanderings of a poetic subjectwho seeks to uncover the secrets not only of the ancient world butof the modern one as well.The young Vend6mois poet attempts to unify in his verse worldsfragmented by time and space. Tracing his patrons' history to an-cient Greece and Rome becomes, in part, a way of creating an of-ficial place for himself in France. Within the metaphorical space ofhis poetry, however, he alters received spatialrelationships so they.will conform not to myth but to anew, higher form of reality. Ron-sard's success comes from such asyncretic vision, but the legal ram-ifications weigh heavy upon his conscience-perhaps in light of theSorbonne's condemnation of Marot's 1541 translation of sacredtexts. Through his vernacularimitations, Ronsard relates his earlymodern world to an ancient poetic one that not only embraces anabsolute and divine authority but also contradicts Church belief.

'Particularlyn the Odea Micheldel'Hospital,one reads of the ancientpaganpoetsbeinginvested with the same divine authorityasprophets.Inspiredby Plato and Pin-dar,RonsardportraysJupiterassaying"Queles versviennent de Dieu, / Non de l'hu-maine puissance" (vv. 475-76); Ronsard 3: I45. In the Ode, Ronsard then proceeds toinvoke the Muses in a prayer to help him learn the secrets of the heavens (vv. 5I - 8).Also see his Abbrege e l'artpoetique 1565), where he defines this ancientperiod as a[757]


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RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY

Throughout the Odes, the poet makes continual reference to acertain law of propriety as he introduces ancient pagan elements inhis verse. Although he recognizes the moral sanctions against clas-sical paganism-revived, the poetic world of the Odes continuallydefies them and alludes to an unlimited possibility of creation. Onecan observe this conflict in the discursive, the historical, and thecosmological aspects of the Odes. Though these perspectives ofmeaning are analogous in structure and are often presented simul-taneously, for the sake of exposition I shall separatethem in orderto demonstrate how the Odes are bound to a novel and problematicview of spatialrelationshipsin sixteenth-century France.Ronsard'sspecific comments on the difficulty of combining ancient withmodern elements are directly related to a vision he is trying to de-scribe. Although Ronsard recognizes this need for propriety bothformally and contextually, I argue that he nonetheless transgressesit. In fact, he plants the seeds of apoetic philosophy of infinite spacewhich will resonate in the works of the Italian philosopher Gior-dano Bruno as he develops his own theory of the infinite whichcontributed directly to the scientific revolution at the end of the six-teenth century.2

THE LAW OF THE SONGThe Ode a Michel de l'Hospital,written in 1550 and published inI552, appropriately marks the beginning of Ronsard's career as acourt poet, while it recounts the origins of pagan poetry. The ode

is given in recognition of l'Hospital's defense of Ronsard and hispoetic reforms against the polemical attacks of Saint-Gelais.Through l'Hospital's efforts, Ronsard eventually was able to winthe favor of Henri II.3The symbolic deference paid to the "loy dela Chanson" at the end of this poem could signal Ronsard's accep-tance into the court, but the significance of this law in terms of dis-cursive order is still greater:

"theologie allegoricque": "La Poesie n'estoit au premier aage qu'un Theologie alle-goricque, pour faire entrer au cervau des hommes grossiers par fables plaisantes et co-lor6es les secretz qu'ilz ne pouvoyent comprendre, quand trop ouvertement on leurdescouvroit la verite" (Ronsard 14: 4). The first editions (I550 and I552) of Ronsard'sodes will be cited; references to later editions will be used wherever it seems pertinent.

2Koyre, 39, and passim.3For historical details of this event, see Nolhac, 178-87.

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RONSARD'S ODES AND THE LAW OF POETIC SPACE 759Mais la loy de la ChansonOres ores me vient direQue par trop en long je tireLes repliz de sa facon.Ore donque je ne puisVanter la Fleur, tant je suisPris d'un ardeur nompareilleD'aller chez toy pour chanterCest Ode, affin d'enchanterTon soin charme par l'oreille. (vv. 807-16)

(But the law of the Song / Now, now comes to tell me / That I draw out toolong / The folds of its fashion. / Now I may no longer / Praise the Flower, somuch am I / Seized by a passion without equal / To go to you and sing / ThisOde, in order to captivate/ You charmed through the ear.)In spite of his much vaunted discovery of the ancient ode in hispreface, Ronsard defines the relationship between the ode and thechansonas one between poetic innovation ("ode"), and poetic au-thority ("loy de la Chanson"). In search for authority, the chansonbecomes the source of the ode, and the nature of poetic chronologybecomes problematic, indeed reversed, in apoem that claims to un-cover the pagan origin of poetry. Ronsard seems to submit his"ode" to the "loy de la Chanson"by syntactically placing it betweenthe rhyme "chanter:enchanter"n the last verses, because the rhymeemphasizes the vernacular function of this ancient form; it "natu-ralizes"it. Particularlyin light ofJoachim Du Bellay's rejection of

the term "chanson"in his DeffenceetIllustration e la languefran(oyse(I549), the use of it in this ode on lyric origins conveys a more am-bivalent attitude towards the Ancients than Du Bellay would liketo concede in the Pleiade's manifesto. The movement towards theAncients is coupled with a movement back to France and an iden-tification with its national lyric tradition. The expression, "the lawof the song," derives from Pindar (Nemian, IV, v. 33) where thelaw, tethmds, efersto thejust balance between a unified and yet di-verse poetic discourse. Ronsard worries somewhat belatedly abouttransgressing this law in his most lengthy of Pindaric odes (com-posed of 816 verses). The poet realizes at the closing of the poemthat he has surpassed the limits of this lyric form and that he canno longer develop the encomium of Marguerite ("la Fleur"), theduchess of Berry and sister of Henri II, which he startedin the pre-ceding stanzas. He has drawn out the folds of the "chanson" too far


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in his eagerness to praiseMichel de l'Hospital- so far thathe beginsto praise Marguerite as well. In view of this ancient law that pre-scribes an enclosed poetic field of diverse elements, the poet com-mits an act of impropriety by encompassing too many topics andoverstepping formal boundaries. Though Pindar admits to thesame infraction, his digressions are not so prolix as Ronsard's.4Similardiscursive improprieties recur earlier n the fifth epode ofthe Odea Michelde l'Hospital,when Jupiter commands his daugh-ters, the Muses, to perform "chansons"at a gathering of his divinecourt (v. 161et passim). Once the Muses have gathered, they beginto tell the battle of the gods and the giants, known as the "Assautdes Geans et des Dieux." This account occupies the center of thepoem and again emulates Pindarby embedding a digressive tale inan ode. While the Muses "accord" a discordant battle, Ronsard at-tempts to "accord"by means of imitation his chanson not with aPindaricode but with Hesiod's Theogonyon the battle between theTitans and the Olympians. 5Once the Muses have concluded theirsong, the poet, however, entones a discordant note:Juppiter qui tendoit l'oreille,La combloit d'un aize parfaict,Ravy de la voix nompareilleQui si bien l'avoit contrefait:Et retourne,rid en arriereDe Mars, qui tenoit l'oiel ferme,Ronflant sur sa lance guerriere,Tant la Chanson l'avoit charme. (vv. 319-26)(Jupiterwho was offering his ear,/ Filled it (his ear) with completejoy, /Ravishedby a voice beyond comparison which had so well counterfeited t(thesong):/ And having turned, laughedbehind him / At Mars, whose eyeswere closed, / Snoringon his warriorstaff, / So much the Song had pleasedhim.)

4Ronsard,I: 44: "Des le meme tens que Clement Marot (seullelumiere en ses ansde la vulgaire poesie) se travailloita lapoursuitede son Psautier,et osai le premierdesnostres,enrichermalanguede ce nom Ode ... affinquenul ne s'atribuece quelaveritecommandeestreamoi" ("Atthe same time thatClementMarot[theonly light in theseyearsof vernacularpoetry]was working diligentlyon his psalter,Idaredto be the firstamong ourpeopleto enrichmy languagewith this word Ode ... such thatnone mayattributeto himself what truth shows to belong to me").5DuBellay, 112-13, writes: "Chantemoy ces odes incongnuesencor'de la MuseFrancoyse,d'un luc, bien accordeau son de la lyre Grequeet Romaine."

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RONSARD'S ODES AND THE LAW OF POETIC SPACE 761

the song have been reduced to one and impersonalized by the def-inite article. Moreover, this one voice did not sing the chanson butimitated it or more specifically parodied or counterfeited it ("con-trefait").6 Isidore Silver has remarked on the originality of thisstanza but nonetheless queries: "How justify the tone of the pas-sage?"7Could this be a reference to the imitator's own voice un-willing to efface itself behind the Muses, much less behind Hesiod?The battle song that causes Mars to snore ("ronflant")delights Ju-piter. Ironically, Hesiod's poem on the origin of the world givesRonsard the opportunity to render the identity of the originalmakerproblematic;Jupiter'sacknowledgement ofRonsard's pleas-ing distortion creates the impression of his actual presence at thegod's court where he displays his ability to enchant even the great-est of divinities. The shifts that occur among the subjects and ob-jects truly complicate the spatial order ("trop en long je tire/ Lesrepliz")as Ronsard attempts to create a place for himself. From theperspective of Renaissancemodes of intertextuality, one could saythat Ronsard curries Henri's favor primarily through his heuristicimitations of the classical Greek poets Pindar and Hesiod.8 Butfrom a purely intrinsic point of view, one can analyze the shift asthe displacement of the ancient and absolute center of poetic cre-ation from the pagandivinities (i.e., the Muses) to the poet himself,so that their other worldliness assumes a relative value for the per-son speaking.Du Bellay insists in the Deffencethat young French poets com-pose French odes based on Latin and Greek examples and do so ina "consonant"manner. Ronsard ironizes that accord in his seminalode on poetic origins. Margaret Ferguson writes that Du Bellaydoes not allow in his Deffence or "thepossibility of an imitation thatnot only changes the ancient source but plays ironically on the

6Huguetdefines "contrefaire" s to imitate;Huguet, 2:497. Cotgrave, however,not only sees it as meaningto imitate but also to disfigureand to adulterate-that is,to alter.

7Silver, 1937, 55.8Greene,40, writes: "Heuristic mitations come to us advertisingtheir derivationfromthe subtextsthey carrywith them, but havingdone that, they proceedto distancethemselvesrom the subtextsand forceus to recognizethepoeticdistance raversed...The informed readernotes the allusion but he notes simultaneouslythe gulf in lan-guage, in sensibility, in cultural context, in world view, and in moral style." (The italicsare mine.)


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change."9 This feature distinguishes Ronsard's practice in his odesfrom Du Bellay's theoretical stance. While Du Bellay seeks a uni-fied accord with Horace, Ronsard combines the voices of many. Heeven manages to distinguish his own voice among the divine onesby superimposing his voice on the Muses and wins the praise ofJu-piter. His singularity becomes apparent when he draws attentionto his own ability to write a counter-version of pagan history-again, "la voix qui le contrefait." He appropriates their authorityin order to display his own creative power, and he identifies withthe divine Ancients not as their epigone but as their equal. He re-writes their poetry, altering it, and indeed reversing the imagery inorder to make a place for himself.He transgresses the law of poetic space and propriety as he makesroom for himself at the expense of his patrons, human and divine.In the opening verses of the Ode a Michel de l'Hospital, the themeof poetic space is foremost in Ronsard's thoughts as he wandersthrough fields of the Graces gathering flowers into crowns. In histravels, the first-person subject fashions a crown metaphorically bythe joining verses:Errantpar les champs de la GraceQui peint mes vers de ses couleursSus les bords Dirceansj'amasseLe tresor des plus richesfleurs,Affin qu'en pillantje faconneD'une laborieusemain,La rondeur de ceste couronne. (vv. I-7)(Wanderingin the fields of the Grace/ Who paints my verse with hercolors/ By theside of theDircean[fountain]Icollect / Treasure rom therich-est flowers, / So that while culling I may fashion/With a skilled hand,/ Theroundnessof this crown.)

The repeated deviations from the triadic pattern heightened bythe initial placement of the word "errant" in the first verse can betaken as an assertion by the poet of his role as the wandering dis-coverer. He inserts himself in the discourse at the risk of displacinghis patron;10 he fashions an oddly shaped crown around himself,

9Ferguson, 285.'IAs Cave, 230-3I, mentions, Ronsard paradoxically displaces Pindar and Michelde l'Hospital in order to portray himself as the wandering poet: "In a single syntacticalmovement, the initial metaphor of flower gathering (the figure of how the poem ismade) is elaborated by successive layers of metonymy and periphrasis, introducing byallusion first the model-poet and then the patron. Neither is named. Pindar is displaced

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symbolically marking a royal space protected from the "vulgaire."Ronsard leads the reader to believe the poet follows a pattern, butthe Odea Micheldel'Hospitalrepresentsa counter example to a uni-fied discourse and provides counter histories to the ones he claimsto imitate. Readersmay be correct who view the poet's "errors"asill-fashioned imitations of Pindar," but Ronsard's deviations alsoarticulate a novel and complex relationship-one which is notstrictly an intertextual problem of imitation but more generally thequest for a poetic center in a world of unlimited diversity. Thecrown symbolized by the composition of the verses must be ampleenough to give the poet freedom to wander endlesslyand yet todefineaplace within the recognized bounds of the royal court. Froma discursive point of view, herein lies the fundamental conflict ofthe Odes.In his Ode de la Paix, Ronsard deprecates an abundant use ofwords and lauds brevity, but he will again disregard the law:

Tousjours un propos deplaistAus oreilles attendantes,Si plein outre reigle il estDe parolles abondantes.Celui qui en peu de versEtraint un sujet divers,Se met au chef la couronne:De cette fleur que voici,Et de celle, et celle aussi,La mouche son miel faconneDiversement. (vv. 29-301))

(Always a subject is unpleasing / To the awaiting ears / If it surpasses the rule /With abundant words. / He who can contain in a few verses diverse subjects /May place the crown upon his head: /With this flower here / And there, andalso there, / The bee fashions its honey / In a diverse manner.)The plurality of voices and texts becomes central to the creationof an ode; Ronsard describes his craft ironically as that of a modestbee that "borrows" its honey from diverse sources-a theme devel-

oped in Horace's ode IV, ii, which Horace in turn borrows fromPindar'sPythia, X, vv. 53-54. The relationshipbetween unity and

so thatthe poeticje canappropriatehis topoi ... L'Hospital s the pretext, anemptyplaceto be skirtedby myths, narrations,and incrustationsof elocutio.""Silver'sthesisattemptsto show Ronsard'semulation of Pindarto be anutterfail-ure. Silver, I937.


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diversity is central, because an overabundance of words is a trans-gression of the poetic law, "outrereigle," the same "loy de la Chan-son" which Ronsard claims to observe in order to preserve thesong's unity. He nonetheless abandons the encomiastic pattern ina blatantly immodest way to create a new history as he simulta-neously admonishes one against such transgression. In the prefaceto the Odes he seeks the reader's praise for having traced an un-known path, having freely surmounted territorial boundaries:Si les hommes tant des siecles passes que du nostre, ont merite quelque louangepour avoir pique diligentement apres les traces de ceus qui courant par la car-riere de leurs inventions, ont de bien loin franchi la borne: combien davantagedoit on vanter le coureur qui galopant librement par les campaignes Attiques,& Romaines osa tracer un sentier inconnu pour aller a l'immortalite?(If men many centuries before ours merited some praise for having spurred[their horses] diligently after the traces of those who, racing on the career ofdiscoveries, went well beyond the border: how much must one praise the racerwho, galloping freely among the Attic and Roman countryside, dared to tracean unknown path to gain immortality?)12It is the spirit of the unbound traveller which he tries to capture inhis poetry but which unfailingly complicates the poetic discourse.

HISTORY AND PROPHECYWhen Ronsard attempts to portray Henri II, Michel de l'Hospi-tal, Marguerite de Valois, and others according to Pindar's exam-ple, he creates anachronistic settings for his sixteenth-century pa-

trons. He tries to superimpose a national political patron onto aforeign poetic pattern, "un patron," and by doing so, he con-sciously crosses spatialboundaries. His identity becomes defined asthe mediator between two worlds. To the extent that he attemptsto reconcile pagan poetry with sixteenth-century court life, he re-sembles Marot's David who, as adivine prophet, mediates betweenthe two spheres of heaven and earth. Moreover, as Christians un-cover figures in the Old Testament to prophesy Christ's comingandto align the histories of the two peoples, Ronsard invents paganprophesies of the founding of Parisin order to make the two worlds

'2Ronsardborrows this topos of the poet-wandererdirectlyfrom Horace (Epist.I,xix, 21-22). SeealsoI, iii, vv. I-12, addressed o Margueritede Valois,whereRonsardexplainsthat he has to wanderin order to find a new way to sing of hervirtue whichhasbeen taintedby the Marotiques.For furtherstudyof this formulation,see Ahmed,587-96.

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appear consecutive. In the preface to his translations, Marot ex-plains David's experiences in terms of Christ. One can view Ron-sard'sprophetic history as an attempt to place an air of divine sanc-tion over his verse. He regardsit as venerable as the psalms. Marotestablishes prophetic connections between the "Hebraiques" andthe "Galliques"and between David and Francois I, whereas Ron-sardcreates an alternativehistory from Greece to Rome to France,from pagan gods to Henri II. To advance the parallelone more step,Ronsard wills into being concordant spiritualexperiences betweenthe pagan heros and the French through reviving ancient verse andmythologizing the birth of Franceas a modern and imperial state.In the Odedela Paix, Ronsard inserts a complex sequence of nar-ratives in the middle of the ode; Vergil's Aeneidprovides the mainsource of inspiration for this translatiomperii.The praise of HenriII which opens the poem leads quickly to the unfolding of a Fran-ciadeepyllion that traces a movement from the Creation to the Fallof Troy andto the founding of Paris (vv. 37-286). Issuing from thisgenealogical digression in an exaggerated Pindaric manner is theglorious descendant of Troy, Henri II. Ronsardjustifies a place forhimself at the French court, as if it were his natural right, by cre-ating a similar place in history for his king; indeed, both were fatedfrom the beginning of time. This victory ode marking the signingof the treaty between Henri II and Edward VI of England overFrance'sreacquisition of Boulogne serves as a pretext for Ronsardto establish a place in Francewithout limit for his poetic imagina-tion.Henri II is the prophesied heir from the Greek world. Throughthe voices of Cassandra and Andromache, Ronsard blends past,present, and future in an effort to surmount his historical limita-tions and yet to align his art with the prophetic arts of those twowomen.'3 Cassandra prophesies that Astyanax will found a newTroy on the Danube from which will emerge a group of settlers tofound the city of Paris, 4 and Andromache foretells both of Parisbecoming the eternal city, like Vergil's Rome, and of Henri's pre-eminence. Through these pagan prophets, Ronsard will charta tra-

'3See also ode I, xvi, where Ronsard explicitly considers himself and his poetfriends:"Comme profettesdes dieus" (v. 2).'4Inallsubsequenteditions of the ode andin the Franciade, rancushimself foundsParis, and not his descendants.


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ditional "Catholic" succession of empires and letters from Greeceto Rome and then to France. While the "timeless" evangelism ofthe psalms is preserved in Marot's reverential translation, Ronsardneeds to amend mythological history to createan equally immortalimage of Paris and Henri II. 5Once Ronsard has established the connection between Francusand Henri II and between Troy and Paris, he breaks the narrativeline and banishes Francus from his ode:

Fui donc Troien, toi et ta bande,Si ton Neveu me le commandeJ'irai bien tost pour te trouver. (vv. 284-86)

(Take flight Trojan, you and your troops, / If your Nephew commissions me[to write the epic] / I will come soon to find you.)Again, as he did in the Odea Michelde l'Hospital,the poet inter-venes in the world which he is trying to represent. He exerts hisinfluence over the descendantsof Francusandin doing so advertiseshis ability to write a French epic for which he seeks Henri's com-mission: "Si ton Neveu me le commande."I6 Similar to the ode to

l'Hospital, the center comes to representthe place of flight, anopenspacethat canonly be circumscribedby Henri's patronage. This di-vine history of Henri whose closure is alluded to remains nonethe-less incomplete. This history is constructed in the ode through theinfraction of the poetic law of unity which would be guaranteed,in this context, by the verisimilitude of events; yet the more diversethe events become, the less plausible they appear.The lyric subjectunites the two peoples through a fictionalized account that he at-tempts to pass off as prophecy. Moreover, he hopes that his readerwill accept this history as revealed truth. But later, in the "Epistreaulecteur"to his incomplete epic the FranciadeI 572), RonsardwillcriticizeAriosto for departingtoo far from the law of verisimilitudeand for creating marvelous fables in the OrlandoFurioso. Ronsard

'5The Franciadepyllion functions as a means of founding a differentliterarytra-dition underHenri II. The epic that Ronsard was to write underCharlesIX was in-tended to give a unifiedhistoryto a Francerentasunderby religiousstrife, while herethe epyllion must be seen a contrarioo widen those differencesof spiritualandpoeticidentitybetweenMarotand his school on the one handandthe young Ronsardon theother. The same story functionsin opposing manners at two differenthistoricalmo-ments. See Menager, 277 and passim.'6SeeLaumonier,I46-50, forbackground iteraryhistoryof Ronsard's iteraryepicthe Franciade.

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falls victim to his own judgment both in the Ode de la Paix and theFranciade s his efforts to posit unity between historically diversecultures prove to be an impossibility.I7Adherence to this law of unity or verisimilitude has strong moralfoundations. In the epyllion, Ronsard disregards the moral state-ment he makes at the opening of the ode as if it does not apply tohim. There he observes, following Pindar'sexample, how aimless-ness stems from royal pride (vv. 4-5, "De son heur outrecuidee/Court vague, sans estre guidee"; "From his proud happiness/ Hewanders, without being guided." Cf. PindarPythia V, str. I). Mo-ralityis defined in spatialterms. Realizing toward the end of the odethat this poetic history has led himself astray, he invokes the Musein a Pindaric manner to keep him from going farther adrift:

Muse, repren l'aviron,Et racle la prochaine ondeQui nous baigne a 1'environSans estre ainsi vagabonde. (vv. 287-90)(Muse, resume the oar / And scrape the next wave / Which bathes our sides /Without thus being vagabond.)

Again, does the poet consider himself above moral reproach forhis lack of proportion? In these verses the poet explains that hiscourse is not self-determined but governed by a divine force, theMuse. Although he violates his own injunction against humanpride-pride being an unsanctioned and indeed unlimited explora-tion of space-he looks to the Muse to authorize such a lofty un-dertaking. This problem of closure is recurrent;rather than seekthis infinite space away from the court, he does so from the verycenter, as if again shaping a royal crown that gains him recognitionas an epic poet and that sanctions his endless wandering among di-verse topics. While the poetic andpolitical crowns symbolically im-

'7Ronsardborrows Aristotle's distinction between the historianand the poet; theformer tells things as they are, and the latter relates them as they could be. Ronsardcautionsagainstpoetic excess in the prefaceto the Franciade,6:4, though he is slowto heed his own advice:"J'oseseulement dire (si mon opinion a quelque poix) que lePoetequi escritles choses comme elles sont ne meritetantque celuy qui les feint et serecule e plus qu'il luy est possiblede l'historien:non toutefoispourfeindre une Poesiefantastiquecomme celle de l'Ariosto" ("I dare say only-if my opinion carriesanyweight-that the Poet who writes aboutthings as they are does not merit so much asone who fictionalizes hem andremoves himself as faras possible from the historian:not so much, however, to create a Poetry so fantasticas Ariosto").


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pose spatial order, the tethmos, hey embody as well a prophecy ofvast expansion for both Henri's empire and Ronsard's imagination.One can see at this point that the Odesboth discursively and his-torically surpassthe law of unity and tend to the realm of the mar-velous as they attempt to encompass a myriad of seemingly dis-jointed concerns-be it the Ode a Michel de l'Hospitalwith topicsranging from the Battle of the Gods andthe Giants to the genealogyof poets and the praise of too many patrons or the Ode de la Paixwith the diverse and illustrious genealogy of Henri II. This sameacceptance of the marvelous precedes a poetic belief in a world ofinfinite dimension.'8

POETIC FLIGHTRonsardopens the Quatrepremiersivresdesodes n awork entitledAu Roiwherein he requestspatronagefrom Henri in a twenty-verseprologue. If Henri gratifies Ronsard's mundane interests, the poetwill place the king at the center of the ever-expanding poetic uni-

verse: L'aiant pour ma guide, SIRE,Autre bien je ne desire,Que d'apparoistre a tes yeuxLe saint Harpeur de ta gloire,Et l'archer de ta memoirePour la tirer dans les cieus. (vv. I5-20)

(Having you for my guide, Sir / I desire no other good / Than to appear beforeyour eyes/ As the holy Harpist of your glory/ And the archer of yourmemory/ In order to launch it into the heavens.)

Ronsard informs Henri II in this liminal ode that he, as poet, canperpetuatehis king's memory as if he had the power to deify mor-tals, "Pour la tirer dans les cieus." Since the genealogy he createsfor Henri is fictitious, glory is not equated with real acts but withthe conservation of one's name for posterity, as suggested by therhyme "gloire:memoire." If Henri II consents to be Ronsard's pa-tron "ma guide" and secure for him a place as court poet, Ronsard

'8Cf. Hathaway, I60-6I, who writes: "Many Renaissance writers were willing tosay that the masterful solving of artistic problems was one of the chief sources of ad-miration or the marvelous. Hence they also stressed unity, or the reconciliation of unityand variety as a cause of the marvelous." For Ronsard, it is precisely the unsolved prob-lem of unity and diversity which leads him to a poetic conception of infinite space.

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will preserve the Valois king's name in the heavens. Memory be-comes an explicit function of politics.As Ronsard proceeds, he reveals a sense of poetic strength thatappearsto flourish quite independently of his king. The poet turnsto his Muse and deliberates over whom he will glorify:

Muse, bande ton arc dous,Muse ma douce esperance,Quel Princefraperonsnous,L'enfoncantparmi la France?Sera-cepas nostre ROI,Duquel la divine oreilleHumera cette merveilleQui n'obeist qu'a ma loi? (vv. 21-28)

(Muse, armyour sweet bow / Muse my sweet hope / Which Princewill westrike Sendinghim throughoutFrance? Will it not be our KING, / Whosedivine ear/ Will drinkup this marvel/ Which only obeys my law?)Ronsard describes his ability to glorify his king in an imperiousmanner because he views divine poetry as a sovereign would hiskingdom: "Cette merveille / Qui n'obeist qu'a ma loi."9I This"merveille"is the poetic space where familiarity is lost among ob-jects of superhuman proportion. Here Ronsard explicitly abandonsPindar's law of poetic proportion. One can sense the poet's attemptto articulatethis new law of poetry through his infractions of spatialand moral codes. Marsilio Ficino, in his commentary on Plato'sPhaedrus,considers poetry to be ruled by one of the four divine

madnesses in which the poet, as he composes, undergoes a state ofraptureor alienation and holds a position outside the "customs ofmen"--a claim that Ronsard makes repeatedly for himself.20 Thisalienated state is not only mirrored in the endlessly digressive formof the verses but can be understood only by one equally outside thelaw of mortals as the rhyme "divine oreille:merveille" suggests.It is noteworthy that a sixteenth-century definition of the"merveille"in terms of spatial law can be found in the writings of'9It is perhapsnoteworthy that the poet's law comes into directconflictwith thepower of the king whom Ronsarddescribesin the opening stanza as "Leplus grandRoi qui se treuve, / Soit en armesou en lois" (vv. 9-I o). Under the pretenseof servinghis patron,Ronsardfeels that his poetic strengthis even greaterthanits former self.20Allen ites Ficino's Commentariumn PhedrumFlorence, 1496),chap.4, iii: "Qui-cumquenumine quomodolibet occupatur .. et mores humanos excedit. Itaqueoc-cupatiohec sive raptusuror quidamet alienatio on iniurianominatur"(italicsmine).


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Michel de Montaigne. When writing about the divine nature ofVergil's poetry, Montaigne states that the "merveille" transcendsthe laws of human space:Au dernier [a Vergile], premier de quelque espace, mais laquelle espace il [unetudiant de poesie] jurera ne pouvoir estre remplie par nul espirit humain, ils'estonnera, il se transira .... Voicy merveille ... la bonne, l'excessive, ladivine [qui] est au dessus des regles et de la raison.(Regarding the latter [Vergil] -who is first by quite a distance, by a space thatour student will swear no human mind can fill-he will be stunned and speech-less .... Here is a wonder ... the good, the supreme, the divine [which]is above rules and reason.)21As Todorov observes in a recent work on the marvelous: "Thefunction of the supernatural is to remove the text from the actionof law and by the same token to transgress the very law."22Todorov uses the word "law" here also to mean the rule of veri-similitude. This rule is applicable to Ronsard's poetics in the Odeswith the exception that this poet wants nonetheless to remainwithin the legal bounds of the royal court. Ronsard elevates his pa-tron into the celestial orb through the transgression of the receivedlaws of nature and of poetic history. The poet alone can transportHenri to the heavens with his winged words conveyed later in therhyme "vers:univers" (vv. 53 and 56). He evenjustifies the extrem-ity of his position in the preface (p. 48): "C'est le vrai but d'un poeteLiriq de celebrer jusques a l'extremite celui qu'il entreprend delouer" ("It is the true goal of a lyric poet to celebrate in extremis theone he undertakes to praise"). In the second strophe, Ronsard thuspasses from Henri II's glorification to his apotheosis:

De Jupiter les antiquesLeurs ecris embellissoient,Par lui leurs chants poetiquesCommencoient, et finnissoient,Prenant plaisir d'ouir direSes louanges a la lire:Mais Henri sera le DieuQui commencera mon mettreEt que j'ai voue de mettreA la fin et au meilieu. (vv. 29-38)

2IMontaigne, "Du eune Caton," I: 289-90; Frame, I: 171.22Todorov, I67.

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(WithJupiter, the ancients / Used to adorn their writings, / With him their po-etic chants / They used to begin and finish, / Reaping pleasure from hearing /His praises sung on the lyre: / But Henri will be the God / Who will begin mymeter / And who I vow to place / At the end and in the middle.)Henri's deification is modeled on the invocation ofJupiter in an-cient songs; Henri's presence in Ronsard's collection of songs offersa modern variation on this ancient formula. Ronsard needs to sur-

pass the Ancients; whereas Jupiter occupies the beginning and theend, Henri will appear even in the middle. The poet controls thepresence of his king in his verse and enables Henri to excel evenJu-piter. The poet not only memorializes his patron but also deifieshim. The poetic image of deification recurs throughout the odesand reinforces the idea of a place beyond spatial and temporal mea-sure.

The process of deification is Ronsard's innovation and an explicitdeviation from Pindar.23 In fact, Pindar emphasizes the differencebetween mortals and immortals and admonishes humans to respecttheir place. In Pythia III, v. 59f, he states: "With our mortal mindswe should seek from the gods that which becomes us, knowingwhere we belong, and what lies before our feet. Dear soul of mine,never urge a life beyond mortality." Propriety is again based uponhuman measure. The pervasive attitude both in pagan and Chris-tian morality prior to the scientific revolution was that the godswere the sole beings to partake in the infinite. Ronsard opposes thelaw of unity governed by verisimilitude only to uncover a higherlaw, like the one Montaigne conceived for Vergil. As Ronsardstates in his address to Henri's deceased brother, Charles de Valois(II, iii, vv. 25-26): "Et nouvelles lois lui imposes / Nouveau citoiende la haut" ("And new laws you place upon him [Henri] / New cit-izen of the heavens"). Different rules apply in the marvelous spaceof the heavens- new rules that Ronsard tries to voice in his Odes.Though the gods may embody the infinite, the poet, according toRonsard, also can find himself in a world of infinite proportions-the experience of which he attempts to share.When Henri made his entry into Paris inJune, 1549, he was por-trayed as Hercules by the humanist organizers, Jean Martin and

23Joukovsky, 207, explains how Ronsard uses Pindaric imagery to deify mortals.However, Ronsard transforms Pindar's "foreign" images to create apotheotic scenes,and Pindar makes no explicit claims to possess deifying powers.


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Thomas Sebillet. Moreover, the organizing committee (which didnot include any members from the Brigade or early Pleiade poets)focused on Hercules' divinization upon his death.24Shortly after theentry, Ronsardportrays the king asJupiter, a living divinity, ratherthan as the apotheosized mortal; he creates a setting for the kingmore colossal than the streets of Paris.Ronsard's desire to explore the unknown remainssteadfastin theOdes,andit is voiced most defiantly in an ode toJoachim Du Bellay(I,ix) where he asserts that human nature has not limited his poeticflight. Although Horace claims in his celebrated ode IV,ii, "Pin-darumquisquis studet aemulari," that anyone who attempts to im-itate Pindar will share the fate of Icarus, Ronsard responds:

Par une cheute subiteEncor je n'ai fait nommerDu nom de Ronsard la merBien que Pindare j'imite. (vv. I65-I68)

(With a sudden fall / Still I have not given the name / Ronsard to the sea/Although I imitate Pindar.)

The imitation of Pindar loses its literal, intertextual significancein the Odes and comes to mean for Ronsard to attempt themarvelous-hence, his defiance of Horace's caveat. Ronsard's vul-garization of Pindar demystifies the claims of this ancient lyricistwithout having to reduce himself to a humble creature; he writesa version of Icarus' success story, implying a new confidence in hu-man powers which enables him to ascend to the heavens wheretruth is uncovered paradoxically through the "sins" of pagan hubrisor Christian pride. In the later part of the century, Giordano Bruno(1548-I600) developed his revolutionary, metaphysical theory ofinfinite space which profoundly influenced the thinking of bothphilosophers and astronomers of the scientific revolution. At thecentury's midpoint, one can see such concepts trying to find an ear-lier poetic expression in Ronsard's odes. Ernst Cassirer notes thatBruno's belief in the infinite receives its strongest formulation in asonnet inspired by Luigi Tansillo (I 5 o-68) which Bruno rewritesin his third dialogue of his Degl'eroicifurori (I585) in order to haveTansillo recite it as a personage of the dialogue. Like Ronsard,Bruno assumes a defiant Icarian stance:

24McFarlane, 58.

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RONSARD'S ODES AND THE LAW OF POETIC SPACE 773Poi che spiegat'ho l'ali al bel desioQuanto piu sott'il pie l'aria mi scorgo,Piu le veloci penne al vento porgo,E spreggio il mondo, e verso il ciel m'invio.Ne del figliuol di Dedalo il fin rioFa che giu pieghi, anzi via piu risorgo. (vv. I-6)

(Now that I have given wings to that beautiful desire / the more I see the airunder my feet / the more do I set my speedy feathers to the wind / and, dis-daining the world, move toward the heavens. / Nor does the cruel end of theson of Daedalus / induce me to come down; in fact I climb higher.)25

Giordano Bruno posits in 1584 a theory of an unlimited corporealuniverse in his metaphysical dialogue La Cena de le ceneri.26Resem-bling Ronsard's poetic world of unlimited space occupied by manhimself, Bruno develops his notion of infinite space from a prin-ciple of plenitude. He uses the term "copia" not so much as asixteenth-century generative principle of writing, as Terence Cavehas demonstrated, but rather as a fundamental rule of cosmology. 27Referring directly to Democritus and Epicurus, Bruno expresseshis conviction in De l'infinito, universo et mondi (I584):Non sono fini, termini, margini, muraglia che ne defrodino e suttragano lainfinita copia de la cose. Indi feconde e la terra ed il suo mare; indi perpetuoe il vampo del sole, summinstrandosi eternamente esca a gli voraci fuochi edumori a gli attenuati mari; perche dall'infinito sempre nova copia di materiasottonasce.(There are no ends, boundaries, limits or walls which can defraud or decreasethe infinite copia of things. Therefore the earth and the ocean arefecund; there-fore the sun's blaze is perpetual, so that eternally there is fuel for the voraciousfires, and moisture for the attenuated sea. For from infinity an ever new copiaof matter is born.)28Both Koyre and Cassirer see the foundations of Bruno's infinite inpoetics and not in mathematics or astronomy; yet his beliefs influ-

25Cited in Cassirer,189-90.26"None possibile giamaidi trovarraggione semiprobabileperlaqualesiamarginedi questouniversocorporale; perconseguenzaancora i astrichenel suo spaciosi con-

tengono, siino di numero finito" ("It is never possible to find a half-probable reason,why there may be a limit to this corporeal universe, and still by consequence, why thestars which are contained in its space, may be of finite number"); Bruno, 150.27Different from Bruno, who sees only the positive side of the infinite as a plenitude,Cave, 223-70, notes Ronsard's awareness of an emptiness undermining this ever-expanding plenitude.28Cave, 361.


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enced modern science and philosophy as the works of Galileo andDescartes attest.29 The notion of the poet's unlimited flight con-veyed by the defiant Icarusrepresentsa fundamental shift in worldview; humankind should test the limits of its condition. Bruno's be-lief that the marvels of the infinite were not exclusive to the Chris-tian God led to his burning at the stake in Rome in I600; the Churchfound the idea too dangerous, once the poetic veil was lifted.30Unlike Bruno, Ronsard safely returns from celestial space to ad-dress mundane matters-namely, to reformulate the concept of hu-man love. In a potent ode to Cassandre, he writes: "Amour n'apoint de loi, / A sa grand' deite / Convient l'infinite" (II,v, vv. Io-12). ("Love has no longer any law / For her great divinity / Is suitedthe infinite.") The subsequent collections of Amoursaresuggestiveof Bruno's copia, of a love without end and without a fixed per-spective; they describe a universe where the poet no longer investshis beloved with an absolute value but rather a relative, transfer-rableone. Ronsard rejectsthe petrarchanmode to become the pro-tean lyric subject who undergoes metamorphoses adinfinitumas hediscovers new beloveds.3I The relative and ever-changing status ofJanne, Cassandre, Marie, and Helene replaces the unequivocal po-sition of Laura. Ronsard the poet inaugurates the modern age notonly with novel forms of discourse, historicalconsciousness, worldview, but also with a new poetics of amorous relations.When Henri IIfinally accepted Ronsardinto his court, Henri tac-itly granted a privilege for the publication of a theory of infinitespacewhich was not founded on astronomy but on poetry. Withinthe walls of the Louvre, Ronsard could become truly a marvelouspoet and question the laws of nature sinefine.SAN FRANCISCO

29Koyre, 54; Cassirer, I88-9I.30SeeHathaway, 133-51, for debate with Church authorities on the usage of paganmarvels in Renaissance Italy.3'For an explication of this continually altering subjectivity in Ronsard's Amours,see Rigolot, 187.

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Documents

Pierre de Ronsard's Odes and the Law of Poetic Space