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The Background and Sources of Remy Belleau's Pierres Précieuses
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
Remy Belleau, whom Ronsard himself once characterized as the seventh poet of the Pléiade, is a very familiar name to us, and indeed we continue to read certain of his poems with pleasure year after year. Yet, as Chamard has recently remarked in his Histoire de la Pléiade, “l'éclat radieux dont brille le chef de la Pléiade [Ronsard] a fait un peu perdre de vue ses compagnons: depuis quelques dix ou douze ans il semble qu'ils soient éclipsés.” Certainly little has been written on Belleau since the book by Alexandre Eckhardt and an article by Georges Prévot. These studies date from the time of the last war. In the pages which follow I shall try to reexamine some of the influences which could have affected Belleau's composition of his Amours et Nouveaux eschanges des Pierres Précieuses. From this we will turn to a brief survey of the sources of his lapidary material. This last was discussed in 1886 by R. Besser, but I feel that Besser did not always conduct his study systematically without parti pris. My own investigation of sources was made entirely independent of that of Besser, at the outset.
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1946
References
1 Marty-Laveaux, ed., Œuvres de Ronsard, v (Paris: Alphonse Lemerre, 1891), 185: “pour accomplir la septième Pléiade.”
2 Histoire de la Pléiade (Paris: Didier, 1939), i, 53.
3 Alexandre Eckhardt, Remy Belleau sa vie, sa Bergerie. Etude historique et critique (Budapest: Németh, 1917).
Georges Prévot in the RHLF, xxviii (1921), 321-339. Prévot demonstrates that Belleau derived his baisers sonnets from Jean Second.
See also A. Gouverneur, Œuvres complètes de Remy Belleau (Paris: Gouverneur, 1867), i, xi-xxxii. Adolphe Van Bever, Amours, échanges de pierres précieuses de Remy Belleau (Paris, 1909). Franz A. Wagner, Remy Belleau und seine Werke (Leipzig diss., 1890).
4 In ZfrSL, viii (1886), 185-250.
5 Ibid., 206.
6 Op. cit., 140-142. Eckhardt is at some pains to prove that the Pierres précieuses were composed long before publication. His arguments are not conclusive. The evidence of the Abbé de Pimpont would be worth examining. Unfortunately Eckhardt gives no reference for this.
7 Ibid., 92.
8 N. N. Tommaseo, ed., Relations des ambassadeurs vénitiens sur les affaires de France au XVIe siècle (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1838), ii, 204-268. (Collection des documents inédits.)
9 Pierre Champion, Ronsard et son temps (Paris: Champion, 1925), p. 338.
10 N. N. Tommaseo, op. cit., ii, 614.
11 Ed. Marty-Laveaux, ii, 256.
12 Aphorism 64.
13 Op. cit., p. 89.
14 On the subject of the Maréchale de Retz and her Salon, see Jacques Lavaud, Philippe Desportes (Paris: Droz, 1936), pp. 72-107.
15 Ibid., pp. 114-115.
16 Ed. Marty-Laveaux, i, 92, 97, 100, 115; ii, 122. The “Election de sa demeure” is in i, 79-83.
17 Op. cit., 149.
18 H. C. Lancaster in RHLF, xxxvi (1927), 574-576; also in Adventures of a Literary Historian (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1942), pp. 166-173. The Maréchale could be addressed then as Minerve.
19 Ed. Marty-Laveaux, i, 148.
20 The turquoise is not discussed at all by Marbode. In Pliny it may be identified with the callaina, but Belleau made no use of this material. This stone is handled very briefly by Vincent of Beauvais who mentions its color and place of origin (viii, 106) and then says of its virtues: “Et est virtus eius visuum conservare salvum, etiam a nocivis extrinsecis casibus … hilaritatem quoque inducit.” The Second Prose Lapidary also mentions the stone as Turchesia or Turquemaus. It remarks that a horse who has been touched with it will not founder, will not be afflicted by heat or cold and will not suffer from hoof disease. It preserves from poison and will keep one from drowning or from falling off a horse. (Studer and Evans, Anglo-Norman Lapidaries (Paris: 1924, p. 136). It is evident that Belleau has drawn upon his own knowledge in treating this stone. It does change color with use (from blue to green) and it will crack when subjected to heat. Perhaps the virtue of reflecting the feelings of its wearer may be due to a misunderstanding of the first part of Vincent of Beauvais' description of the stone.
21 Ed. Marty-Laveaux, ii, 221-224.
22 Ibid., i, 141.
23 A. Gouverneur, op. cit., xv.
24 Op. cit., 204.
25 I have used the edition of Godefredus Hermannus, Orphica (Leipzig: 1805), pp. 357-442.
26 The 1473 edition of Vincent of Beauvais, printed by Joannes Mentelin, has been my edition. The gems are treated in Book viii. For Marbode I have made use of the 1531 edition of George Pictor of Willingen. For Albertus Magnus I have used the 1582 edition of his De secretis mulierum, etc. which contains the herbal, lapidary and bestiary. This edition was printed in Lyon. It would be of little use to give page references to these editions.
27 Op. cit., 217.
28 P. 210.
29 Besser, p. 240.
30 R. V. Merrill in his article “Eros and Anteros,” Speculum, xix (1944), 265-284, is not aware of this passage in Pliny.
31 Besser, p. 224.
32 Met., iv, 256-270.