Blues for M. Joachim du Bellay

 

“I was born for the muse, and they made me a manager.”

I can imagine this complaint issuing from the mouth of some proto-beat in NYC in 1952, but as a matter of fact it issued from the mouth of Joachim du Bellay in a letter written from Rome in the 1550s. Du Bellay came to Rome as a secretary to his uncle, the Cardinal Jean du Bellay, who was one of those legendary Renaissance prelates, a combo of humanist, Christian and pirate. The Cardinal was one of Rabelais’s patrons. Joachim du Bellay was at the center of the literary world in France. It was a small world: he met Ronsard, his companion in the revolution in poetic language he planned to bring about, at an inn at which he stopped on the way back from Poitiers to Paris. He was, typically, on a mission for his boss.

I think it is the urbanism of du Bellay that really impresses me. In the poems collected in the Antiquites, when he was in Rome, there are flashes that are surely on the same spiritual event horizon as Baudelaire’s in Paris.

Here’s the key poem in French. I like the conversational lilt and tilt of the poem, which at the same time takes up high themes from Italian and Latin poets. It is built so well that it stands as a sort of rebuke to the buildings, the remains, the relics of that city famous for building.  It is all paradox – existential paradox.

 

Nouveau venu, qui cherches Rome en Rome
Et rien de Rome en Rome n'aperçois,
Ces vieux palais, ces vieux arcs que tu vois,
Et ces vieux murs, c'est ce que Rome on nomme.

Vois quel orgueil, quelle ruine : et comme
Celle qui mit le monde sous ses lois,
Pour dompter tout, se dompta quelquefois,
Et devint proie au temps, qui tout consomme.

Rome de Rome est le seul monument,
Et Rome Rome a vaincu seulement.
Le Tibre seul, qui vers la mer s'enfuit,

Reste de Rome. O mondaine inconstance !
Ce qui est ferme, est par le temps détruit,
Et ce qui fuit, au temps fait résistance.

 

Which I’m gonna freely translate:

 

A newcomer who looks for Rome in Rome

Will find  of Rome in Rome nothing spared:

These old arcs and mansions at which you’ve stared

And these old walls  - this is what they call Rome.

 

Behold what pride, what ruin!  In spite

Of being that which governed the world with its laws

Conquering  - but conquered itself. Because

Time, swallowing all, has, claimed its right.

 

Rome is of Rome its sole monument

Its self-conquering fallen tegument.

The Tiber fleeing to the sea, only

 

Remains of Rome. Oh universal inconstancy!

The  solid is demolished temporally

While what flows remains – remains solely.