III. aux frères de pange. – André Chénier

The following desponding lines were written by Chénier just before
undertaking a journey to Switzerland and Italy. His friends, finding him
in a very bad state of health, prevailed upon him to accompany them.
His spirits seem to have been very low at that time, as appears from the
thoughts of death he gives expression to, and numerous are the passages
in which the melancholy mind of Chénier gloats upon death.

L. 1. je suis prêt à descendre. Grammarians have long distinguished
between près de and prêt à, but writers never did, until lately,
when prêt à was restricted to expressing ‘ready to’ and près de ‘on
the point of.’

L. 3. linceul. In the Dictionnaire des rimes françaises, by Jean Le
Febvre, Paris, 1587, linceuil and linceul are given. Littré observes
that both pronunciations are heard.

L. 13. reliques. The English student is likely to overlook this word,
as English ‘relics’ means both (1) what remains as a memorial of a
departed saint, martyr, or other holy person, and (2) the remains of a
person, the body of one deceased. But this latter sense is of very rare
occurrence in French, and Chénier uses it because, being seldom used, it
is still all but novel. He thinks it ‘fine and sonorous,’ and proceeds
to observe that Racine has it twice. Alfred de Musset, after him,
employed reliques figuratively in; ‘Les morts dorment en paix dans
le sein de la terre; Ainsi doivent dormir nos sentiments éteints; Ces
reliques du coeur ont aussi leur poussière; Sur leurs restes sacrés ne
portons pas les mains.’ Yet it is easy to see that in this instance both
senses are implied.

L. 24. qu’il dut vivre longtemps. All editions, and our present
selection after them, print dut without a circumflex accent. Dût is
in fact the imperfect of the subjunctive used, as was usual in the older
language and is still occasional in seventeenth-century French, for the
pluperfect of the subjunctive, as in: ‘Mais puisque son dédain, au lieu
de le guérir, Ranime ton amour qu’il dût faire mourir. Sers-toi de mon
pouvoir,’ Corneille, Clit. II. iv. 484. So here dût stands for eût
dû = aurait dû. See Haase, § 66 B.

L. 25. le meurtre jamais n’a souillé mon courage. Tibullus, iii. 5. 5
ff. When Chénier speaks of murder he has duelling in his mind, which
he deprecated in his prose works. He also takes courage in its older
sense, frequent in the great French classics, and the oldest sense,
recorded in English, of ‘the heart as the seat of feeling, thought, &c.;
spirit, mind, disposition, nature.’–N.E.D.

L. 44. et voilà que je meurs, and behold I die: a Biblical term.

L. 49. mes feux. An instance of the conventional language of love, now
exploded, like F. flamme and E. flame.

L. 52. L’ennui. Ennui here says something more than its adoption
into English would suggest. The English student, in order to realize
its force, should refer to its earlier adoption represented by the form
annoy. The word originated, according to Diez, in the Latin phrase
est mihi in odio. For the weakened sense of ennui, see p. 57, l. 41.

L. 53. à, for.

L. 56. N’allument… un… trépas. A bold phrase. The passage is from
‘allumer une fièvre,’ through ‘allumer une fièvre mortelle,’ to ‘allumer
une mort.’

L. 61. amour… mutuelle. Amour in the feminine is an archaism.
Amour, Lat. amor, was feminine in Old French, as all such
derivatives were and still are: douleur, peur, &c. Littré, s.v.,
Rem. 2; cf. p. 61, l. 18.