II. le mendiant. – André Chénier
In this piece, illustrative of the rites of hospitality in ancient
Greece, Chénier has drawn much of his inspiration from the arrival
of Ulysses in Phaeacia; as it is described in the sixth book of the
Odyssey. The reader will also notice, from the gaps in the text and
unfinished lines, that the poem had not reached the stage of completion.
Chénier, who himself published none but two of his poems, was prevented
by death from giving the finishing touch to this and many other pieces.
L. 8. Od. 127, 137; Aen. iii. 590.
L. 15. Aspect, in the sense of ‘apparition, ghost,’ is a Latinism. Yet
it is quite an allowable concretisation of the word, as in French and
English ‘apparition, vision,’ in English ‘sight’ and in English ‘aspect’
itself, which we find used with the meaning of ‘a thing seen’ in the
N.E.D.
L. 21. Od. vi. 150.
Ll. 23, 24. les voeux des… humains Ouvrent des immortels les
bienfaisantes mains. If the maid is a goddess indeed, the beggar
entertains some hopes of her mercy, for, says he, ‘oftentimes have
the prayers of the unfortunate opened the bountiful hands of the
immortals–obtained of those hands that they should « open their bounty »
(Henry VIII, iii. 2. 184) to them.’
Ll. 25, 26. quelque front… qui te nomme, one of those incoherent
metaphors which our (in this respect) delicate taste demurs at,
but which the old writers–Shakespeare being among the greatest
sinners–indulged in freely.
These two lines display imperfect rimes, the o in couronne being
short, whilst the o in trône is long.
L. 34. Tremblante. The ‘rejet’ helps the meaning. The reader’s voice,
arrested by the unavoidable pause at the end of the preceding line, is
forced into imitating the hesitation that he is told was discernible
in the maid’s utterance. But perhaps this is more perceptible to a
Frenchman used to more rigidity in the rimed versification of his great
classics than to an Englishman with the freedom of blank verse in his
ear.
L. 35. quand la nuit descend, the present for the future. See Haase, §
67, Remark I; Ayer, p. 466.
L. 42. il pleure aux pleurs… This is neatly said. Notice the use of
the preposition à expressing a relation of cause, as in ‘A l’orgueil
de ce traître, De mes ressentiments je n’ai pas été maître’ (Molière,
Tartufe, v. 3. 1709). See Haase, § 123. Cf. p. 7, l. 211.
Ll. 51, 52. au devoir… Rangent… Ranger à = soumettre à, réduire
à.
L. 54. ses mains sur ce visage. This was one of the rites observed by
suppliants. See Euripides, Hecuba, 344.
L. 55. Indulgente. Becq de Fouquières remarks that the adjective is
used in its Latin sense of complaisant. This is the English meaning:
‘disposed to gratify by compliance with desire or humour,’ whilst the
French meaning is restricted to that of being ‘ready to overlook or
forgive faults or failings.’
L. 58. sur l’autre bord. Across the bridge.
L. 62. n’insulte à sa misère. Insulter à, still in use by the side
of transitive insulter, is the equivalent of obsolete English ‘insult
over, on, at.’
L. 66. mon élève, not my ‘pupil,’ but my ‘foster-child.’ A farmer or a
nurseryman speaking of the cattle he breeds or the plants he raises will
say mes élèves. But the term is here exceptionally applied to a human
being.
L. 74. Le toit s’égaye et rit. This line, criticized by Ponsard
(Études antiques) as non-Homeric, is a translation of Catullus,
lxiv. 285 ‘queis permulsa domus iocundo risit odore.’ In fact, the
attribution of feelings to inanimate things is as old as poetry itself.
Countless instances in all languages might be adduced. For this use of
laugh in English see N.E.D., s.v. laugh 1 c., and notice that Pope,
in translating the Odyssey, has made Homer say, ‘In the dazzling
goblet laughs the wine,’ iii. 601.
L. 75. au loin circule, i.e. forms a long circle.
L. 77. animées, appearing alive, of course, like the ‘animated marble’
of Pope, Temple of Fame, 73.
Ll. 77, 78. Od. vii. 100, ‘Youths forged of gold, at every table
there, Stood holding flaming torches.’–CHAPMAN. Cf. Lucretius, ii. 24.
L. 84. lits teints. Aen. i. 708, which Dryden translates ‘The
painted couches.’
L. 86. Est admise: exceptionally, for women, as a rule, did not sit at
the same table with the men.
L. 89. Et déjà vins, &c. The ellipsis of the verb imparts greater
vivacity to the narrative. The unexpected interruption is therefore made
more abrupt.
L. 93. s’assied parmi la cendre. Od., vii. 153: ‘[Ulysses] went to
the hearth, and in the ashes sat,’ CHAPMAN; ‘as the custom was in those
days when any would make a petition to the throne,’ adds Lamb by way of
commentary, Adventures of Ulysses, vi.
L. 94. Od. vii, 144, 145. ‘…His view With silence and with
admiration strook The court quite through.’–CHAPMAN.
Ll. 97-100. Hesiod, Theog. 84. De l’Olympe envoyé, ibid. 97.
L. 98. Semblent d’un roi. Elliptical for semblent être d’un roi.
Être de itself is elliptical for de être celui, ceux. The French
idiom has its English equivalent in ‘My kingdom is not of this
world.’
L. 100. Od. xiv. 205; Hesiod, Theog. 97.
L. 102. la main hospitalière, with the definite article, not ‘ta
main…,’ as has sometimes been printed, nor, as the more current
phrase runs, ‘une main.’ The beggar is then made to use, as it were,
a technical phrase, to name a well-known rite. In the same way we say
‘the kiss of peace,’ ‘the stirrup-cup.’
L. 104. Od. xvii 347: ‘Bashful behaviour fits no needy man.’–CHAPMAN.
L. 110. Theognis, 649.
Ll. 111, 112. This seems to owe something to an extract from Menander
in the Florilegium of Stobaeus, xcvi, which, together with a line
of Theognis, quoted under the same heading, has partly inspired the
following lines of Chénier, ll. 113, 114.
L. 115. plus que l’enfer, more than the gates of hell, is the phrase,
Il. ix. 312; Od. xiv. 156.
L. 116. Le public ennemi, i.e. l’ennemi public. The inversion is
awkward, as the collocation of the words is precisely that which would
express ‘the hostile public.’
Ll. 122-4. Od. xvii. 485.
L. 123. traînés, of course, goes with haillons.
L. 125. Il. l. 22.
L. 127. et que puissent. The more modern phrase would be puissent tes
voeux. Malherbe: ‘que puisses-tu, grand soleil de nos jours, Faire
sans fin le même cours.’ See Haase, 73 B.
Ll. 127, 128. Od. xvii. 354.
L. 134. For these details see Od. iv. 290.
L. 139. nourrit un long amour: a very happy phrase, recalling La
Fontaine’s ‘quittez le long espoir et les vastes pensées,’ Fables,
XL viii. In Shakespeare’s ‘A long farewell to all my greatness.’
Henry VIII, iii. 2. 351, we have a similar use of ‘long’. Such
epithets stand in lieu of a whole phrase.
L. 143. Od. vii. 174, 175: ‘And there was spread A table, which the
butler set with bread,’–CHAPMAN.
L. 144. Sieds-toi. Se seoir, for instances of which we must go to
the seventeenth century, its uses being confined to the present of the
indicative, the imperative, and the infinitive, is an archaism. Such
archaisms, like que puissent above, give more solemnity to the tone,
make the scene recede, as it were, into the past.
L. 150. l’éponge. Od. i. 111: ‘Some… With porous sponges
cleansing tables.’–CHAPMAN.
L. 151. S’approche, i.e. ‘is brought by the servants.’ The stranger
does not sit at the common table, but, as when Ulysses is entertained by
Alcinous, a table is spread for him.
L. 152. le disque: discus, platter for meat, whence O.E. ‘disc,’ E.
‘dish,’ and German Tisch, a table. d’airain; cf. Il. xi. 630: ‘a
brass fruit-dish.’–CHAPMAN.
L. 153. l’amphore vineuse. An epithet of nature. Chénier, it will be
noticed, used them freely, as the ancients did.
L. 155. leur lendemain… A thought akin to that in Homer, Od. xv.
400: ‘Betwixt his sorrows every humane joys.’–CHAPMAN.
Ll. 156-159. Od. vii. 178: ‘… command That instantly your heralds
fill in wine, That to the god that doth in lightnings shine We may
do sacrifice: for he is there Where these his reverend suppliants
appear.’–CHAPMAN.
L. 158. Pour boire. An unexpected passage from indirect to direct
speech, as in Homer, Il. xv. 348. The abrupt break in construction
is more telling in French than in English, where it is a more common
device.
L. 160. For this rite see Od. iii. 45.
L. 163, 164. Od. vii. 192.
L. 169. De sourire et de plainte would be de sourires et de plaintes
in prose. But the two s’s of the plural would prevent the two e’s
from being elided and so give two syllables more.
L. 170. tes nobles toits. The plural for the singular, that the
form of the word, riming with abois, may satisfy the eye. A Latinism
besides.
Ll. 174-179. Od. xiv. 462. I cannot refrain from giving here Chapman’s
quaint equivalent for ce que… il eût mieux valu taire: ‘strong
wine,’ he makes Ulysses say, ‘moves the wise to… prefer a speech to
that were better in.’
L. 184. See Od. viii. 136.
L. 185. n’ai point passé l’âge ‘où l’on est robuste’ is understood.
L. 186. La force et le travail, que je n’ai point perdus, a hendyadis
for ‘la force de travailler.’
Ll. 188 ff. In the same way Ulysses (Od. xv. 317) declares to Eumaeus
that he is ready to do all kind of menial work to earn a livelihood.
L. 194. diriger, train.
L. 195. Et le cep et la treille. The low vine-plant, such as is seen
in the vine-growing parts of France, and the espalier or trellis vine.
L. 196. la faux recourbée. One of those descriptive epithets so
frequent in primitive poetry.
Ll. 199-201. Hesiod, Op. et Dies, 307, 303-5.
L. 201. à rien faire. Some purists censure the use of rien without
ne on the ground that rien of itself means quelque chose
(Lat. rem), as in: ‘Pourquoi consentez-vous à rien prendre de
lui?’–Molière, Tartufe, V. vii; but the abuse, if it is really to be
considered as one, is authorized by the best writers, Molière, Racine,
&c. In answers rien is used by itself with the sense of ‘nothing.’ Add
to this the phrases pour rien, réduire à rien, venir à rien, un
homme de rien, rien que cela, si peu que rien, moins que rien,
where rien actually means ‘nothing’. Also the substantive: un rien,
des riens. Also un vaurien (=’un homme qui ne vaut rien’). The
objection to rien in the present sentence would be just if the
omission of the negation ne entailed the least ambiguity, but such is
not the case.
L. 202. Od. xix. 253 and 322.
L. 203. élever sa langue for élever la voix is decidedly
indefensible. But Chénier carefully avoids obvious alliances of words.
See note to p. 64, l. 4.
L. 205. Sans craindre qu’un affront ne trouble. The second negative
ne had better have been left out. The strict rule is to omit it after
sans. Yet several instances of sans que… ne and even sans que…
ne… point occur in the seventeenth century, namely in Mme de Sévigné.
See Haase, § 103 B.
L. 206. L’indigent se méfie. Menander in Stobaeus, Florilegium,
xcvi. Od. vii. 307.
L. 209. A reminiscence of Horace, Od. ii. 9. The same thought occurs
again at p. 66, l. 4.
L. 210. Propertius, ii. 28. 31; Theocritus, Idyll. iv. 4.
L. 211. Et tel pleure. Cf. ‘Tel qui rit vendredi, dimanche
pleurera.’–Racine, Plaideurs, i. I. Observe the fitness of those two
forms of the same proverb to their several contexts. The vendredi and
dimanche, humorous precisions, would never do here.
L. 212. en tes discours préside–not ‘à tes discours.’ Chénier
means, not ‘wisdom presides over thy discourses,’ but ‘wisdom rules,
bears sway, prevails, is paramount in thy discourses,’ Cf. Od. xix.
352; xx. 37.
Ll. 228-231. Aen. i. 628.
Ll. 229, 230. n’a point à l’indigence fait…, ‘has not caused
indigence to envy the destiny of the wealthy Lycus,’ The object of
faire, which is at the same time the subject of the infinitive
envier, is in the dative. See Littré, Dict., s. v. ‘Faire,’
Remarques 1-5; also Haase, 390.
L. 235. et te souviens. This peculiar form of the imperative is used
only when another imperative goes before. Whereas in the ordinary form,
souviens-toi, the stressed form of the pronoun is used (as is the
rule when the pronoun is the object of an imperative or a prepositional
object: écris-moi, nous avons songé à lui), in this construction
the pronoun preceding the verb follows the rule of all pronouns placed
before verbs and is in the unstressed form.
Ll. 250, 251. Hesiod, Op. et Dies, 285.
L. 260. qu’avait tissus l’Euphrate. Tissu is the past participle of
the obsolete verb tistre, now replaced by tisser.
L. 264. Seul maintenant–a sort of ablative absolute.
L. 275. Et sans que nul mortel. Nul, though of itself a negative,
occurs after sans: ‘Sans nuls égards pour les petits.’–La Bruyère,
xiv. True it is that La Bruyère might have said, with Malherbe and La
Fontaine, ‘sans point d’égards…,’ which nobody would think of using
at the present day. ‘Sans qu’aucun mortel’–aucun=aliquis unus,
and so is no negative–would have been more logical, but harsh.
L. 282. By the device of concluding the long period with these three sad
syllables, the pathos of the statement is heightened.
L. 284. a tombé. Tomber, generally used with the auxiliary être,
also admits of the auxiliary avoir. Littré, Dict., s.v. ‘Tomber,’
61°.
L. 287. je ne revois. The present used instead of the future tense
imparts more emphasis to the asseveration. See Ayer, p. 466.
L. 289. vapeurs, fumes.
L. 291. Od. xiv. 42.
L. 308. au même précipice. In Old French ou (=en le) got confused
with au (=à le), whence a constant substitution of au for ou in
the masculine, and, by extension, of à la for en la in the feminine.
See Meyer-Lübke, § 417, and Haase, § 120, and cf. p. 33, l. 4.
L. 317. je revoi. The Old French spelling (voi from video) has
been retained in versification for rhyming purposes.
L. 323. J’ai honte à ma fortune, instead of: ‘J’ai honte de ma
fortune’; as Molière writes: ‘J’aurais honte à la prendre.’–Le Dépit
amoureux, I. ii.
L. 331. So Nausicaa does to Ulysses (Od. viii. 461).
