Joachim du Bellay

French poet

  • Born: 1522
  • Birthplace: Château de la Turmelière, Liré, Anjou, France
  • Died: January 1, 1560
  • Place of death: Paris, France

Du Bellay is best known for his work The Defence and Illustration of the French Language, the theoretical manifesto of an ambitious group of poets known as La Pléiade. Despite his short career, du Bellay’s poetic production ranks among the richest and most diverse of La Pléiade’s approach, marking the beginnings of a modern, aesthetic conception of poetry.

Early Life

Joachim du Bellay (zhoh-ah-keem dew bay-leh) was part of one of the most influential French families of the period. He lost his parents at a rather early age, by 1533, and was put in the care of his brother, René du Bellay, bishop of Le Mans.

His poetry relates that his literary education was quite neglected in his early years, despite his profound love of letters. He did learn Latin, however, as he left for Poitiers in 1545 to study law. It was in Poitiers that du Bellay entered the literary circles that would determine his career.

First, he encountered the neo-Latin poets Marc-Antoine Muret and Salmon Macrin, and in 1546, he met Jacques Peletier du Mans, who would introduce him in 1547 to Pierre de Ronsard and Jean-Antoine de Baïf, students of the Hellenist Jean Dorat. In fact, du Bellay and Ronsard published their respective first poems in Peletier’s Œuvres poétiques (1547). Having found his calling, du Bellay abandoned his study of law and followed Dorat to Paris, where he and Ronsard and Baïf would study Greco-Latin and Italian culture under Dorat at the Collège de Coqueret. The Brigade, predecessor of the La Pléiade, was born.

Life’s Work

The publication of Thomas Sébillet’s Art poétique français (1548; the art of French poetry), the first original treatise in French that defined poetry as a genre independent from rhetoric, stirred the future La Pléiade into action. Du Bellay became the fledgling movement’s official theoretician and published in 1549 his La Défense et illustration de la langue française (The Defence and Illustration of the French Language , 1939). Whereas both treatises stressed the central importance of the imitation of literary models for the project of ennobling the French language and letters, the main discrepancy consisted in determining which models were worthy of such attention.

Sébillet, an advocate of Clément Marot, the foremost early modern French poet prior to La Pléiade, and his followers, exalted the marotiques (named after Marot) and the French medieval heritage. Du Bellay, on the other hand, dismissed what he considered an inferior French literary heritage and recommended an exclusive concentration on Greek, Latin, and Italian models. Large parts of his text imitate Sperone Speroni’s Dialogo delle lingue (1542).

Du Bellay’s treatise thus sets the tone for the ambitious group’s main objective: to establish themselves as the first true French poets in a direct line from the venerated classical and Italian predecessors. This objective was somewhat paradoxical, however, as it advocated the creation of new and original poetry by means of imitation. It must be stressed that The Defence and Illustration of the French Language was actually conceived as a mere introduction to three collections of poems that were originally published with it in 1549, including L’Olive , the first French collection of Neoplatonic sonnets in the tradition of Petrarch, the invective L’Antérotique , and the Vers lyriques (thirteen odes, also a first in French), demonstrating the highly prized Renaissance concept of varietas (diversity) by dealing with a wide array of subjects and poetic genres. In general, du Bellay’s poetic œuvre has long been underestimated, overshadowed by his groundbreaking treatise as well as by Ronsard’s imposing work.

On a larger scale, it is not difficult to discern in this promotion of a great national literature in the vernacular an effort to establish France’s cultural supremacy by means of the common concept of the transfer of learning and power from nation to nation (translatio studii et imperii). The close link between La Pléiade’s cultural, ideological, and political ambitions became even clearer in the summer of 1549. Their great rival, Thomas Sébillet, had been chosen to compose the official poems celebrating the entry of King Henry II into Paris on June 16, a highly prestigious appointment. Du Bellay (as well as Ronsard) was quick to offer his own composition for the occasion, the “Prosphonématique au roy treschrestien Henry II” (English translation, 2000). The campaign for such essential political recognition and, even more important, royal sponsorship seemed to progress well, as du Bellay and Ronsard were introduced to Marguerite de France, Francis I’s daughter and King Henry II’s sister, who agreed to take them under her wing in November. Du Bellay immediately dedicated a collection of sixteen new odes, the Recueil de poésie (1549), to her and the expanded second edition of L’Olive (1549).

Du Bellay’s health had been fragile since his childhood and was deteriorating dramatically in 1551 and 1552. Severe tuberculosis resulted in near-deafness and confined him to his bed almost for the entire period. Consequently, his literary production slowed down considerably. His main accomplishment during that period was a curious collection that consisted of two parts. The first part was a version of the fourth book of Vergil’s Aeneid (1552), a translation that showcased one of du Bellay’s trademark radical changes of heart. In reacting against Sébillet’s praise of translations, he had severely criticized that exercise in The Defence and Illustration of the French Language as an inappropriate way to help French culture to advance. In 1552, however, a more mature du Bellay reconciled with Sébillet, published his translation of Vergil, and justified his new attitude in the book’s preface.

The second part of the collection featured more translations and a number of solemn religious poems that underlined du Bellay’s transformation accelerated by his health problems from a young, ambitious, and arrogant upstart in 1549 into someone more patient and pessimistic. He even announced the end of his literary career in those pages but, as was so often the case, changed his mind.

In April of 1553, du Bellay accompanied his cousin, Cardinal Jean du Bellay, to Rome, where the latter acted as ambassador to the Vatican. The trip to Rome was virtually a rite of passage for every Humanist of the time. Passing through Lyons, he met the eminent literary figures Maurice Scève, Pontus de Tyard, and Guillaume des Autels. He would spend four years in the eternal city, from June of 1553 until August of 1557. It was there that he decided to become a bilingual poet, composing in Latin and French, despite his prior condemnation of neo-Latin poets. One of the four main collections that grew out of his Roman experience was entirely in Latin: the Poemata (1558). The other three were the Divers jeux rustiques (1558), and his two most famous collections: Les Regrets (1558; The Regrets , 1984) and Les Antiquités de Rome (1558; partial translation as Ruines of Rome , 1591), followed by Songe: Ou, Vision sur le mesme suject (1558; Visions of Bellay , 1994).

The Divers jeux rustiques contained his famous satire “Contre les Pétrarquistes,” in which he criticized the abundance of mediocre poets, or “versifiers,” who tried to profit from the popularity of the form. As if to provide a model to follow, many of the collection’s poems were actually in the Petrarchist vein. Les Antiquités de Rome, dedicated to Henry II, meant to furnish a “general description of Rome’s grandeur and a lamentation of its ruins.” This highly ambiguous text seems to waver between a pessimistic and an optimistic vision of the possibility of achieving national grandeur, a nuanced approach that illustrates the extent to which du Bellay’s thinking had matured in less than ten years. The Regrets also proposes a diverse mixture, as Robert Melançon has observed: The Regrets is a travel journal, a satire of Roman manners and customs, an Ovidian elegiac meditation, and a panegyric of the French court, thus capping du Bellay’s profound transformation as an individual and an artist, first visible in 1552 and strongly influenced by his pivotal time in Rome. This prolific and diverse output showed him at the summit of his art, which made his premature death, striking him in the evening of January 1, 1560, at his desk, all the more deplorable.

Significance

Du Bellay was one of the most authentic poets of La Pléiade, as his career was limited to the group’s most dynamic period, the 1550’s. Six editions of his complete works by 1597 underline his status. His poetry, particularly the The Regrets and the Les Antiquités de Rome, remain canonical and have influenced countless poets, the nineteenth century Romantics being the most obvious example.

The Defence and Illustration of the French Language remains his most influential work, as it laid the groundwork not only for future poetic treatises but also for a modern perception of poetry and the poet, based on the notion of divine inspiration.

Du Bellay’s Major Works

1549

  • Vers lyriques

1549

  • Recueil de poésies

1549

  • L’Olive

1549

  • L’Antérotique

1549

  • La défense et illustration de la langue française (The Defence and Illustration of the French Language, 1939)

1550

  • La musagnoeomachie

1552

  • XIII Sonnets de l’honnête amour

1558

  • Poemata

1558

  • Les regrets (The Regrets, 1984)

1558

  • Les antiquités de Rome (partial translation as Ruines of Rome, 1591)

1559

  • Le poète courtisan

Bibliography

Castor, Grahame. Pléiade Poetics: A Study of Sixteenth Century Thought and Terminology. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1964. Still the authoritative study in English on La Pléiade’s innovative approach to poetry.

Coleman, Dorothy G. The Chaste Muse: A Study of Joachim du Bellay’s Poetry. Leiden, the Netherlands: Brill, 1980. One of the most solid studies of du Bellay’s poetry as a whole.

Shapiro, Norman R. Lyrics of the French Renaissance: Marot, du Bellay, Ronsard. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2002. The preface and notes provide a critical background to the three poets; puts du Bellay’s achievements in a larger context. Good complement to Willett’s edition. In French with parallel English translation.

Willett, Laura, trans. Poetry and Language in Sixteenth Century France: Du Bellay, Ronsard, Sébillet. Toronto, Canada: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2004. Useful introduction and notes complement the translations of three theoretical texts at the heart of the quarrel between marotiques and the La Pléiade.