X. fumant dans le cristal… – André Chénier

‘The idea of this long fragment,’ Chénier says, ‘has been supplied me by
a fine piece of Propertius, book iv, elegy 3;’ and he proceeds to state
that he has not servilely copied it, but, ‘according to his wont,’ mixed
in it passages from Virgil, Horace, and Ovid, and everything that came
to his hand, and frequently, too, ‘following only himself.’ He then
criticizes his own achievement, and we shall, in our notes, avail
ourselves of some of his remarks.

The first sketch of this piece was written on April 23, 1782, as appears
from a mention in the MS.

L. 3. Reine de mes banquets… Chénier had first ended this line
thus, ‘que ma déesse y vienne.’ He observes, ‘I know not whether the
arrangement of this line will be approved. To me it appears precise,
natural, and full of freedom.’

L. 4. Que des fleurs de sa tête elle pare la mienne. ‘The pleasant
image offered by this line, Chénier observes, is drawn from a distich of
Propertius in an… elegy which is the third of the first book.’ Here
it is: ‘Et modo solvebam nostra de fronte corollas, Ponebamque tuis,
Cynthia, temporibus.’

L. 9. l’heure fuit, ‘hora fugit.’ No thought has been more hackneyed.
Chénier himself observes: ‘The meaning of this piece is that of a
thousand passages in Ovid and Horace.’

L. 11. Un jour, tel est… This line and the following, Chénier
observes, are perhaps not, altogether, equal to the two lines of
Propertius: ‘Atque ubi iam Venerem gravis interceperit aetas,
Sparserit et nigras alba senecta comas.’

Ll. 15, 16. Chénier says on these two lines: ‘Voluptueux is not good.
There was needed an epithet to depict that fine palpitation which causes
a youthful breast to heave. Des lèvres demi-closes is scarcely better.
Unfortunately it is almost the only rhyme. The second line I think happy
on account of the breath ascribed to the palpitations of the breast. The
second hemistich of the first line makes this pass, for in poetry one
word will pass under favour of another.’

L. 17. Phryné. A Greek courtesan who sat to Praxiteles for his statues
of Venus.

Ll. 31, 32. ‘I have,’ Chénier observes, ‘imitated as best I could
these divine lines of Ovid: « … nee brachia longo… margine terrarum
porrexerat Amphitrite »‘ (Met. lib. i).

L. 31. sur soi. See note to p. 19, l. 38.

Ll. 37-42. Virgil, Georg. i. 204-207, 252, Chénier, mentioning these
sources, exclaims, ‘What verses! and how does one dare write any after
these! Mine, so petty and so inferior, have yet perhaps the advantage of
mentioning Euripus and Malea, places celebrated for shipwrecks.’

L. 40. Euripe… Malée. Euripus separates Euboea from the mainland;
Malea is a promontory in Laconia.

L. 46. jeune homme. It is the Latin puer (cf. obs. Eng. boy), a
servant.