IV. au chevalier de pange. – André Chénier
L. 27. Tibullus, ii. 1. 67.
L. 28. Becq de Fouquières, in his notes, gives an epigram of Julianus
(with the reference Anth., Pl. 588), which he observes has inspired
this thought.
L. 35. Tout, mais surtout les champs sont restés. Tout and les
champs really belong to different propositions and the verb agrees with
les champs. Cf. ‘Somewhat, and in many cases a great deal, is put
upon us.’–Butler, Analogy, Part I.
L. 44. L’astre, the sun, or Phoebus Apollo.
L. 92. De leur voix argentine. ‘The silvery voice of glasses’ is
pretty. André Chénier is depicting a true heathenish paradise.
L. 98. ingrat à. We should rather say now ingrat envers. Many
adjectives, Haase observes (§ 125 B), now followed by envers, pour,
avec, de, &c., were constructed with à, e.g. ‘A moins que d’être
ingrate à mon libérateur.’–Corneille, Andr. v. 2, 1573.
L. 97. Qu’à ton tour… May, in return for thy ingratitude, the fair
one…
L. 102. Ne t’ait vu de sa vie. May she pretend that she never saw you
before.
V.
M. Dezeimeris (Leçons diverses et remarques sur le texte de divers
auteurs) has shown that Chénier, in this elegy, had borrowed not a few
hints from Ausonius, Epistola X.
L. 1. solitaires divines. Which is the noun, which the adjective?
Solitaire must be the noun (though certain critics have expressed the
opinion that it is divine which is the noun). Firstly, there is the
masculine noun ‘un solitaire,’ and it is hard to see why there should
not be a feminine, ‘une solitaire.’ Secondly, the subsequent lines show
that Chénier addresses the Muses as lovers of solitude, and it is more
logical that the predominant idea should be embodied in the noun, not in
the epithet.
L. 3. Nîme. Nîmes (earlier Nismes), in the dep. Gard. The final s
has been dropped to admit the elision of the e. ‘Nîmes égare’ would
have sounded most unnatural.
L. 5. aux bords de Loire. The omission of the definite article
before Loire and Garonne is archaic. It was the current practice in
the sixteenth century, and still occurs occasionally in the
seventeenth.–Haase, § 3 B. It is to be noticed that in the next line
Chénier writes ‘ces nymphes du Rhône,’ and, in fact, the omission of
le before Rhône seems hardly possible. It is difficult to account
for such anomalies. A few individual relics of former usage have thus
survived. One of these is the phrase ‘entre Sambre et Meuse.’
L. 7. son flambeau vous luit. Such constructions, where à followed
by an indirect object, or implicitly contained in the dative of the
unstressed personal pronoun, where the present language uses pour,
were quite current formerly, and, though uncommon, may still be
used.–Haase, § 125 B.
L. 8. Dansantes. The predilection of Chénier for the inflected present
participle has now been illustrated by many instances. See p. 24, l. 61;
p. 25, ll. 70, 89; p. 42, XXIV, l. 1.
Ll. 9-12. Cf. Cowley (Essays: Of Agriculture): ‘One might as well
undertake to dance in a crowd, as to make good verses in the midst of
noise and tumult.’
‘As well might corn as verse in cities grow;
In vain the thankless glebe we plough and sow,
Against th’ unnatural soil in vain we strive,
‘Tis not a ground in which these plants will thrive.’
L. 15. les rapides chars. Conventionally poetical for carrosses,
which, in those days, would have been the proper word. In the same way
airain should have been fer (cercles = tires).
L. 17. ne me soient point avares. See note to p. 56, l. 7.
L. 21. Dormir. The more modern construction would be de dormir.
See Hasse, § 87. An echo of La Fontaine, who divided his life into two
parts, spent ‘L’une à dormir, et l’autre à ne rien faire.’
L. 22. le doux oubli d’une vie. Horace’s Oblivia vitae.
L. 31. dans Sichem. This is the wording of the older translation of
the Bible. Ostervald’s translation has ‘à Sichem.’
L. 33. un amoureux courage. We here touch the point where courage =
‘l’ensemble des passions qu’on rapporte au coeur’ merges into courage
= ‘fermeté qui fait supporter ou braver le péril, la souffrance,’ as
Littré defines the two meanings.
L. 35. Horace’s well-known wish (Sat. II. vi).
L. 42. aux champs. For the substitution of à for dans see note to
p. 16, l. 308.
L. 45. Avoir amis, enfants, épouse. The omission of the indefinite
article before épouse is quite normal in an enumeration. It is a
feature of the old language. Besides ‘avoir femme et enfant,’ which is
also an enumeration, we still say ‘prendre femme.’
L. 49. aimable mensongère. Chénier avails himself of a source of
derivation always open. He turns the adjective mensonger into a noun.
This had already been done by Marot: ‘De moi n’aura mensonger ne
buveur Bien ne faveur,’ iv. 308, in Littré, Hist.
Ll. 49-62. In this passage, a critic observes, we have, as it were, an
earnest of the Lamartinian melancholy reverie.
L. 66. Julie. The heroine of Rousseau’s Nouvelle Héloïse.
L. 67. Clarisse. Clarissa Harlowe in Richardson’s novel of this name.
L. 70. Clémentine. The Lady Clementina in Richardson’s novel, Sir
Charles Grandison.
