The Poetry of Marot by Clément Marot
"The Poetry of Marot" by Clément Marot presents a significant body of work that marks a transition in French literature from medieval traditions to a more modern poetic form. Marot, active in the early 16th century, is noted for his innovative approach, which often blended the lyrical with the satirical, enabling him to influence subsequent poets, including the Pleiade group. His poetry showcases a variety of genres, including rondeaux, ballades, and satirical verses, where he adeptly employed wit and a playful style to address themes like love, politics, and social commentary.
Marot's background as the son of a poet and his experiences at the courts of François I enriched his literary output, allowing him to draw from both classical and medieval influences. His works reflect a spirit of the Renaissance, characterized by a blend of fantasy and reality, which he skillfully used to critique societal norms. Notably, Marot's "L'Enfer" exemplifies his satirical prowess, where he provides a vivid allegorical comparison of imprisonment to Hades.
Despite some criticism, such as being labeled as merely rhymed prose, Marot's contributions helped lay the groundwork for later developments in French poetry, establishing him as a pivotal figure in literary history. His exploration of themes related to personal identity and societal issues resonates through his humorous and sometimes biting commentary, ensuring his relevance and appeal in both his time and beyond.
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The Poetry of Marot by Clément Marot
First published:L’Adolescence Clementine, 1532; La Suite de l’adolescence Clementine, 1533-1534; Le Premier livre de la metamorphose d’ovide, 1534; Oeuvres, 1538 (one edition printed by Dolet, one by Gryphius)
Critical Evaluation:
Superficially, unjustly criticized by Du Bellay as being nothing but rhymed prose, the poetry of Clément Marot, by its conscious innovations clearly anticipated and facilitated the work of the Pleiade poets in the renewal of French poetry. By reason of its naturalness and freedom, the best part of Marot’s work has indeed aged less than the poetry of his illustrious successor, Pierre de Ronsard. Marot’s witty, elliptical manner, imitated in epigrams and narrative poetry, appears in the work of no less figures than La Fontaine in the seventeenth century, Voltaire in the eighteenth, while through his sense of fantasy, Marot has been linked with the modern French “chansonniers.”
A page to Francois I’s secretary of finance in 1515, Marot, under the tutelage of his poet father, daily practiced the techniques of the largely formalistic Rhetoriqueur poetry. His verses between 1515 and 1526 show the influence of this school of the expiring Middle Ages. Yet there are exceptions.
The “Temple de Cupido” by its subject and by its allegorical form is related to the part-lyrical, part-didactic poetry of the Middle Ages. Marot follows the Rhetoriqueurs here, yet he manages to avoid their excesses, as had Jean Lemaire de Belges, whom he sought to emulate. At the other end of this period is the satirical poem “L’Enfer.” Having been imprisoned on the heretical charge of eating “lard en careme” (meat during Lent), Marot here attacks the magistrates and their “justice.” In this, his first major poem, Marot begins to free himself from Rhetoriqueur traditions. Allegory is presented through the simple procedure of comparing the Chatelet prison to Hades, its officials to a Rhadamanthus, a Cerberus and so on; introducing his victims and satirizing them without benefit of the familiar medieval dream sequence, Marot makes a weapon of allegory in which fantasy and reality mixed produce comic and satiric effects.
Youthful works composed mainly between these two longer poems include the Rondeaux, Ballades, Chants royaux, Chansons (a variety of genres set to music). Marot succeeded in giving literary respectability to these latter poems without losing their simple, popular character. The Ballades, personal, political, satirical, show characteristics of Marot’s mature manner: the expressive refrain, delicate development of an emotion; wit, caustic gibes, as in the “Chant de Mai,” “Ballade a la Duchesse d’Alencon,” and “De Frere Lubin.” Longfellow translated the last as “Friar Lubin”:
To gallop off to town post-haste,
Leigh Hunt was another of Marot’s translators. “Madame D’Albert’s Laugh” is as follows:
Yes! that fair neck, too beautiful by
The Rondeaux, more personal, express fleeting moments of love, joy, anger, irony (“De sa grande amie,” “De l’amour du siecle antique”). The Chants royaux, a kind of double ballade, deal with topoi such as the Virginity of Mary, the pleasures and miseries of love.
It was through satire that Marot most quickly and clearly discarded Rhetoriqueur techniques and found his personal manner after 1527, though he continued to compose some official poetry in the old manner. The Coqs-a-l’ane, a genre created by Marot in or about 1531, contain his most personal thoughts, are his preferred satirical medium in attacks against the Church, priests, and his personal enemies. Exuberant fantasy beneath a consciously obscure, incoherent form characterize the coq-a-l’ane, the genre being related, Professor C. A. Mayer believes, to the medieval, didactic “sottie.” The old expression “sauter du coq a l’ane” (literally to “jump from Rooster to Ass”), meaning to talk incoherently, suggests the title of this genre. Despite his light “poesie de circonstance,” official, command performances (instant poetry?), Marot’s work is fundamentally satiric; in contemporary eyes he was a bold fighter attacking the abuses of his time, sharing that revolutionary Renaissance spirit which found expression in Erasmus or Rabelais. Marot has been linked with medieval tradition through his irreverent “esprit gaulois,” yet this connection is somewhat tenuous, to be seen in pieces of lesser importance, the fixed-form ballades and rondeaux.
In large measure, to Marot belongs the honor of breaking with the Rhetoriqueur tradition, of beginning a renewal of French poetry. If one thinks of the Pleiade’s work in terms of translation, imitation, emulation of the Greek and Latin poets, Marot has his place here too, before them. In his formally serious lyric poetry he best practices the imitation and contamination of classical models recommended by Du Bellay. This would include the EPITHALAMES, the EGLOGUES, the ELEGIES (the least successful), and the CANTIQUES. Professor C. A. Mayer has pointed out how Marot’s hesitation in classifying and defining such forms as these show his preoccupation with finding, not always successfully, a vehicle for grave and official lyricism, with reorienting French poetry by re-creating classical forms ten years before Ronsard’s ODES. (See the CANTIQUE “Le Dieu Gard de Marot a la Cour de France”; the EGLOGUE “L’Avant-Naissance du troisieme enfant de Madame la Duchesse de Ferrare,” with its praise of Renaissance values and confidence in Man; the EGLOGUE “De Marot au Rou, sous les noms de Pan et Robin.”)
During the middle and late 1530’s the topoi of predecessors are thus replaced by intelligent imitation and emulation: the Horatian metaphor of the boatman describing Marot’s flight into exile (EPITRE “Au Rou du temps de son exile a Ferrare”); the theme of Ulysses (borrowed from Ovid) anticipating the poetry of nostalgia of Du Bellay (EPITRE “Au tresvertueux prince, Francois, Dauphin de France”). There is the comment on the poet’s function (EPITRE “Au Dauphin”) where, anticipating the doctrine of the Pleiade, Marot promises the King and the Dauphin immortality through his verses. His concern with the judgment of posterity appears in lines like: “Maint vivront peu, moi eternellement.” He is read universally; people say “C’est Clément.” This pride of being what he is is surely no less than that of Ronsard himself.
Marot owes his transformation to the Courts of Francois I and Marguerite d’Angouleme, Italianate and humanizing. In exile at Ferrare, he was influenced by neo-Petrarchan poetry and sentiments, wrote the first sonnet in French, launched the fashion of the BLASONS DU CORPS FEMININ, and began putting the Psalms into verse. Here he wrote some of his best EPITRES, unexcelled vehicle of his genius. Difficult to define by reason of their variety of tone and subject, the EPITRES, letters in verse, free in form, personal, contain Marot’s sharpest wit and satire, his bitterest reflections, highest lyricism. (See EPITRES mentioned above, also “Au Roi pour avoir ete derobe.”)
One aspect of Marot’s art, defined by Boileau as “elegant badinage,” consists of self-mockery, obvious affirmation, specious denial, jesting (sometimes tense with emotion) through feigned naivete and reticence. The other principal aspect, Marot’s narrative style, is characterized by vividness and picturesqueness deriving from concrete imagery, an elliptical turn of phrase. Fantasy, mixed with reality, results in a satiric weapon of considerable force (light-hearted, sly in “Au Roi pour avoir ete derobe”; direct, indignant in the “Epitre de Frippelippes”). As with fantasy, the incoherence of the coqs-a-l’ane is not gratuitous, but directed by satiric intent, which gives a unity to apparently unconnected allusions, rapidly passed in review, as in the second COQ-A-L’ANE.
Reflected in important parts of his work, Marot’s religious faith requires some comment. Introduced to the ideas of the early Reformation at Marguerite’s court, he would seem to have adopted the lessons of Evangelism in spirit if not in precept. He went into exile twice, in 1534 and again in 1542, because of his reputed Lutheranism. In 1534 he had written: “. . . Point ne suis Lutheriste/ Ne zwinglien, encore moins piste.” This was before the AFFAIRE DES PLACARDS. In 1538 (a less relaxed moment) when putting together his edition of the OEUVRES, Marot had emended the line: “Ne Zwinglien, et moins Anabaptiste.” His protestations to the king, while in exile in 1535 were moving oratory, but ambiguous. Was Marot fickle? Or a coward? It seems likely that his position was in fact dictated more by an independent spirit, rebelling against the stupidity of the Sorbonne, the persecutions of the Papacy, than by any deep religious conviction. He did not remain long with Calvin either, though perhaps he ran out of money and work.
The traditional portrait of Marot as light-hearted, unstable, cowardly seems false. He was impulsive, compromising himself on occasion; independent in spirit, unable to keep his sharp tongue in cheek; obliged by circumstance to flatter; no martyr, but no coward either. In his own age, with Montaigne, he protested against torture in “L’Enfer,” read the poem to Francois himself. Above all, he should be remembered as one of the most gifted and delightful poets of the sixteenth century.