Sonnets for Helen by Pierre de Ronsard

First published:Sonnets pour Hélène, 1578 (English translation, 1932)

Type of work: Poetry

The Work:

Hélène de Surgères was the third woman to provide major inspiration for Pierre de Ronsard’s poetry. His first poetic love, Cassandre Saviati, whom he met when he was twenty and she only thirteen, married someone else soon after. Marie Dupin, the peasant girl who was the love of his middle years, was separated from him by death. In his late forties, Ronsard took Hélène as his muse. Much younger than the poet, she was a member of the court of Catherine de Médicis (1519-1589). Hélène’s fiancé was killed at war in 1570, so Ronsard addressed his poems to her in order to comfort her as well as to tell her of his love.

A dualism of the personal and the conventional pervades the poetry. Ronsard expresses passionate emotions to Hélène, but he writes in the newly popular sonnet form, which he and his fellow poets of the Pléiade established as a major French verse form. The Petrarchan sonnet, following the model established by Francesco Petrarca, regularly divides its fourteen lines into an introductory octave and a concluding sestet on distinct but complementary themes. Sonnets were frequently composed in sequences devoted to a single subject. In a sense the entire work may be seen as a sonnet sequence, extremely varied in its details but drawn together by the overriding theme of Ronsard’s passion.

The collection is divided into two books that show little progression or distinction between them. There are approximately 130 poems, all sonnets except for an occasional song or elegy (the exact number of poems varies among modern editions). Ronsard varies his subject matter but provides an overall thematic continuity by frequent returns to favored subjects.

The opening sonnet, “Le premier jour de mai, Helene, je vous jure” (The first day of May, Hélène, I swear to you), begins with the appropriate declaration of love on the first of May, a day linked with amorous endeavors. Ronsard swears not only by the vines, the elm trees, and the verdant woods but also by Castor and Pollux, mythological brothers who according to legend became the constellation Gemini. While the June constellation of the zodiac nearly coincides with the springtime setting, Ronsard more likely invokes the brothers because they are also related to the classical Helen of Troy. In appropriate Renaissance tradition, Ronsard invokes the heroes and gods of antiquity, and especially those of Troy because of the analogy of Helen’s name. The idea to which Ronsard swears in the octave—his love for Hélène—remains dominated by the images of nature and spring. The sestet turns specifically to his love with another major theme of the work, that of fate. Ronsard calls himself here author of his own fate because he willingly accepts love’s dominion.

The second sonnet, “Quand à longs traits je boy l’amoureuse etincelle” (When I drink deeply of the spark of love), continues the documentation of love’s effects on the lover in conventionally physical terms. The first focus is on Hélène’s eyes, whose light dazzles Ronsard and troubles his reason so that he staggers as if drunk with love. His heart beats so hard that he fears the experience will kill him, but Hélène remains aloof, unaware of the pain she causes him. The themes of physical enumeration of love’s effects and of the lover’s suffering, both common in poetry of the time, recur throughout the work.

The third sonnet, “Ma douce Hélène, non, mais bien ma douce haleine” (My sweet Hélène, no, but rather my sweet breath), combines the poet’s suffering with the legend of Troy. Ronsard finds himself fortunate to suffer the pains of love for one with such a name of destiny. She is both his Penelope and his Helen, combining the virtue of Ulysses’ faithful wife with the fascination Helen exerts on all the men around her.

Ronsard reinforces the link between classical precedents and his modern love in “Amour, abandonant les vergers de Cytheres” (Cupid, abandoning the orchards of Cythera), in which Cupid comes personally to France to strike him with his light wings so as to implant the feverish need in his heart. The need is that of the poet as much as that of the lover. Ronsard must sing of Hélène’s beauty, and when he protests his inability to treat such a heavenly subject, Cupid assures him that he will have exceptional and divine inspiration. The theme of the poet’s vocation enters the work, a theme that will recur, especially in the second book, as a gift that love bestows upon the poet and also as a form of immortality with which that poet promises to reward his beloved if she will share his passion.

Just as Cupid’s visit drew Ronsard into the classical tradition of poetry, Hélène’s beauty links her to classical goddesses. “Deux Venus en avril, puissante Deité” (Two Venuses in April, powerful goddess) compares two figures of Venus, one from Cyprus and the other from the Saintonge region of southwestern France where Hélène was born. Ronsard describes both as born in April but finds the French Venus to be truer than the “Greek lie” that can no longer equal her. He feels fortunate to live at the time of his true Venus, even though she imprisons his spirit as one might catch a fish.

Many devices throughout the poems vary the similarities and contrasts that depict the richness of love. Just as the haughty figure of Venus may trap her admirer with an everyday image of fishing, parallel structures bracket opposing feelings. “Tant de fois s’appointer, tant de fois se fascher” (So often drawn to each other, so often angry with each other) lists the stark contrasts of lovers’ emotions. They break up only to reconcile, blame love but then praise it, flee each other but then seek each other again. Each of these pairings contains in a single poetic line echoes of the frenzied activities leading nowhere from which the lover seems incapable of escape. Thus Ronsard concludes with a wry paradox that inconstancy becomes the sign of constant love.

Toward the end of the first volume, however, Ronsard worries that, even though his love for Hélène persists, she is turning away from him. In “Ma fiéve croist tousjours, la vostre diminue” (My fever still grows, yours diminishes) Ronsard underlines this contrast and continues his use of parallelism when he writes that Hélène “remains cold leaving the heat” to him. Passion is still portrayed in physical terms, and the lovers are still linked by parallel language, but the emotions reflect their separation. Now Cupid takes on the role of fate. Ronsard says that he can never free himself from Hélène’s domination because Cupid’s arrows engraved her portrait on his heart.

The final sonnet of the first book, “Si j’ay bien ou mal dit en ces Sonnets, Madame” (If I have spoken well or poorly in these sonnets, my lady), abandons the idea of abstract fate to say that neither it nor Ronsard can be fully responsible for the love his poetry expresses. Hélène is his inspiration, and his voice becomes mournful or joyful as she rejects or accepts his love. Ronsard concludes with an image unusual for an author to whom poetic creativity is so important. He is, he says, like a mirror that “always represents what is shown in front of it.” This may be true, of course, in the alternations of happy and of sad love, without denying the importance of the poet’s artistic skill.

The poet’s special vocation gains importance in the second book. The opening sonnet, “Soit qu’un sage amoureux ou soit qu’un sot me lise” (Whether a wise lover or a foolish one reads me), links it to Ronsard’s preoccupation with his advanced age. The reader, he says, may be astonished by the passion that remains beneath his gray hair as a spark remains under ashes. He notes, however, that dry wood burns more readily than that which is too young and green. Still, Ronsard cautions that he must avoid being like Icarus or Phaeton, two classical figures linked to inappropriate and unsuccessful attempts to rise to heaven.

Images of death multiply as Ronsard expresses fears of his own advancing years and of the possible end of his love. After a sonnet depicting Hélène surrounded by the gaiety of carnival, “N’oubliez, mon Hélène, aujourd’huy qu’il faut prendre” (Don’t forget, my Hélène, that today one must take) focuses on Ash Wednesday, a day when she should make atonement for killing him with her eyes. Amid despair, positive images always offer new hope for happiness. In “Laisse de Pharaon la terre Egyptienne” (Leave the Egyptian land of Pharoah) Ronsard returns to a classical analogy to suggest that they leave Egypt, a land emblematic of the life of the court, to take refuge in the more bucolic lands on the banks of the Jordan where “I will be your Orpheus, and you my Euridice.”

The invocation of Orpheus, whose musical skills offered him the possibility of saving Euridice from hell, leads to what is probably Ronsard’s most famous sonnet, “Quand vous serez bien vieille, au soir à la chandelle” (When you are very old, in the evening by candle light). This poem, on which William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) based his adaptation “When You are Old” (1892), combines the ideas of age and death with those of immortality and the power of both love and poetry. Here not only Ronsard but also Hélène becomes old. Even though he may be long dead, Ronsard flourishes in a classical paradise among myrtle bushes while Hélène remains an “old woman stooped” by the fireside. The reversal underlines the importance of their roles, for it is through Ronsard that both will attain immortality. At this future time, both will be remembered because of the beauty of Ronsard’s art.

The graceful moral Ronsard attaches to this poem leaves intact Hélène’s superiority. In the usual tone of the Renaissance carpe diem, he urges her to love him in the present lest she be sad in the future that she has not taken advantage of this possibility. The poet retains the capacity to create immortality but, because of his deference to the woman he loves, he lays his talent at her disposal and allows her to control their actual fate. This appropriately sums up Ronsard’s diverse sonnets for Hélène. He offers her the varied aspects of love, from the physical suffering through the immortality of lovers, and allows her to accept what she will in accepting him.

Bibliography

Bishop, Morris. Ronsard: Prince of Poets. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1959. A general biography of Ronsard. Chapter 12, “Hélène,” gives a detailed description of Hélène de Surgères, the circumstances in which Ronsard met her, and the surrounding atmosphere of court intrigue. Includes limited references to the sonnets.

Cave, Terence, ed. Ronsard the Poet. London: Methuen, 1973. Contains eight essays by various authors presenting a largely thematic approach to Ronsard’s work. In chapter 2, Grahame Castor discusses Petrarchism and the quest for beauty in the Sonnets pour Hélène; chapter 7, by Odette de Mourgues, on Ronsard’s later poetry, contains references to Hélène. The index lists references in other essays.

Fallon, Jean M. Voice and Vision in Ronsard’s “Les Sonnets pour Helene.” New York: Peter Lang, 1993. Examines the 1584 edition of the sonnets, the last edition published in Ronsard’s lifetime. Analyzes the work as a text about poetry rather than about love, describing its duality between the voices of the lover and the poet. Points out other unifying elements in the work as a whole

Jones, K. R. W. Pierre de Ronsard. New York: Twayne, 1970. This standard introductory overview to Ronsard’s life and work discusses Hélène chiefly in chapter 9, “Ronsard’s Private World.”

Lewis, D. B. Wyndham. Ronsard. New York: Sheed and Ward, 1944. Chapter 9, “Hélène,” begins with a description of Hélène as Ronsard saw her. A subsequent analysis takes a thematic approach and quotes extensively from the sonnets.

Lewis, John. “Helen on Lesbos: A Sapphic Echo in Ronsard’s Sonnets Pour Helene?” French Studies 48, no. 1 (January, 1994): 4. Discusses Ronsard’s interest in the Greek poet Sappho and points out similarities between Sappho’s poetry and Ronsard’s Sonnets for Helen. Describes how fragments of Sappho’s poetry are adapted to Ronsard’s images and how the work of both poets confers immortality on the poets and their subjects.

Ronsard, Pierre de. Sonnets for Helen. Translated by Humbert Wolfe. London: Allen and Unwin, 1972. Provides both English and French texts for a majority of the sonnets. An introductory essay details the circumstances in which the poems were written and their importance to Ronsard’s literary reputation.