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The Mating Palm Trees in Du Bartas' ‘ Seconde Sepmaine’
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
Extract
In his ‘Préface sur la Franciade, touchant le Poëme Heroïque’ Ronsard summed up his theories on the epic for the ‘lecteur apprentif’ about to undertake the arduous task of reading his Franciade and asserted that the epic poet should be a walking encyclopedia of philosophical, medical, botanical, anatomical, and juridical knowledge. Furthermore, he advised the prospective reader or budding poet not to neglect any fact or story pertaining to the nature and properties of trees, flowers, plants, and roots. None of Ronsard's admirers heeded more fully this ancient conception of poetry, which was to have as its aim the popularization of all human knowledge, than did Du Bartas, whose catalogs of plants, animals, and precious gems remind us of classical and medieval bestiaries, herbals, and lapidaires.
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- Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1964
References
1 ‘ … tantost il est Philosophe, tantost Medecin, Arboriste, Anatomiste, & Jurisconsulte, se servant de l'opinion de toutes sectes, selon que son argument le demande.’ Ronsard, , Oeuvres complètes, crit. ed. of Laumonier, P., xvi, 336.Google Scholar
2 ‘Souvienne toy Lecteur, de ne laisser passer soubs silence l'histoire ny la fable appartenant à la matiere, & la nature, force, & proprietez des arbres, fleurs, plantes & racines, principalement si elles sont anoblies de quelques vertus non vulgaires, & si elles servent à la medecine, aux incantations & magies, & en dire un mot en passant par quelque Epithete, ou pour le moins par un demi-vers.’ Ronsard, , op. cit., p. 340.Google Scholar
3 Works of Guillaume de Salluste, sieur Du Bartas, edited by U. T. Holmes, Jr., J. C. Lyons, and R. W. Linker (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1935-40), I, 219-220.
4 Works, op. cit., III, 17.
5 See Figure 1. Copperplate engraving of the mating palms in a seventeenth-century French edition of Philostratus’ Eiχóvεs: Les Images ou Tableaux de Platte Peinture des deux Philostrates Sophistes Grecs et les Statues de Callistrate mis en Francois par Blaise de Vigenere Bourbonnais Enrichis d'Arguments et Annotations, etc. (Paris, 1615), p. 67.
6 Philostratus, Eiχóvεs (Loeb Library), tr. Arthur Fairbanks, Bk. I, 9, 11. 22 ff.
7 Pliny, , Historia Naturalis (Loeb Library), tr. Rackham, H., iv, Bk. xiii, vii.Google Scholar
8 Works, op. tit., II, 432.
9 Commentaires et Annotations sur la Sepmaine, de la Création du Monde, de G. de Saluste, Seigneur du Bartas (Paris, 1583), p. 338.
10 There appears to be a discrepancy between the title of the poem and the first line of the text. Palma Bitontina places the tree in Bitonto in the Terra di Bari, while Brundusii locates it in Brindisi, fifty miles from Otranto. If we accept the reading of the title, the male palm would be much farther than fifty miles from its ‘bride.’
11 That is, a palm tree. In antiquity and in the Renaissance the palm became the emblem of Judea, not only because the country abounded in palms but also because the Jews used its leaves in their religious ceremonies. Valeriano Bolzani in his Hieroglyphica sive de sacris Aegyptiorum literis commentarii (Basle, 1556) states that this is the reason why several Roman coins depict a palm tree with a weeping maiden sitting underneath and bear the inscription IVDAEA CAPTA. See Bk. LX, Ch. xxxix. Likewise, Pietro Aretino, in describing the vegetation of the Garden of Eden, makes this association when he speaks of ‘la palma dono di Giudea.’ See Il Genesi di M. Pietro Aretino con la Visione di Noe Ne La Quale vede i Misterii del Testamento Vecchio e del nuovo, diviso in tre libri (s.l., 1539), p. 9.
12 Giovanni Pontano, Eridani, Liber I, Opera (Basle, 1556), iv, 3582-83.
13 It is interesting to note that Du Bartas inspired several of the scenes depicted on the triumphal arches and porticos erected to welcome the new queen to France. In connection with the same visit of Marie de' Medici to Lyons, there was, in addition to the tableau of the mating palm trees, a scene in which two Cupids were fishing for black sea breams (canthares) and for grey mullets (muges). In the Premiere Sepmaine Du Bartas contrasted the weird lasciviousness of the sargue, whose passion, he claimed, impelled the fish to leave the water in order to mate with she-goats on the shore, with the purported chastity of the black sea bream, model of virtue. The fidelity of the mullet is compared by Du Bartas to that of the widows of Thrace who threw themselves on their husbands' funeral pyres in order to remain eternally faithful (Works, op. cit., II, 343). Du Bartas' first sonnet of the Neuf Muses Pyrénées also served as inspiration for a statue of Marie's husband, Henri IV, in the guise of Hercules, erected in honor of the queen's visits both to Lyons and to Avignon. See my recent article, ‘Two Contemporary Commentaries on Du Bartas's First Sonnet of the Neuf Muses Pyrénées,’ Romance Notes III (1962), no. 2, pp. 1-6.
14 See Matthieu, Pierre, L'Entrée de tres-grande, tres-chrestienne, et tres-auguste Princesse Marie de Medicis, etc. (Lyon, 1600), pp. 71–72.Google Scholar A second edition of this work appeared in Rouen a year later.
15 For a comprehensive study of the symbolism of the palm tree in the iconography of ancient Western Asia see the interesting work of Danthine, Hélène: Le Palmier-Dattier et les arbres sacrés (Paris: Librairie orientaliste Paul Geuthner, 1937).Google Scholar Of particular interest to this study is her discussion of the stylized representation of palms ‘coupled by four’ found on ancient Assyrian ivory plaques (p. 72, fig. vii [5]) and the theme of ‘artificial insemination.’ Renaissance beliefs about the symbolism of the palm may be found in Valeriano Bolzani's Hieroglyphica, op. cit., Bk. L, Ch. x, and Bk. LX, Ch. xxxviii.