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Micheline's Blog

~ Art, music, books, history & current events

Micheline's Blog

Tag Archives: Joachim du Bellay

Pietro Bembo by Titian, and the Vernacular

27 Wednesday Jan 2016

Posted by michelinewalker in Art, Vernacular

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Geoffrey Chaucer, Joachim du Bellay, Masterpiece, Pietro Bembo, portraits, Shakespeare, Titian, Vernacular

15bembo

Portrait of Pietro Bembo by Titian, 1540 (WikiArt.org.)

A few posts ago, I listed two old posts as related articles. One was about the Petrarchan Movement, the other, about Joachim du Bellay.

In 1525, Cardinal Pietro Bembo (20 May 1470 – either 11 January or 18 January 1547) wrote Prose della volgar lingua, a text in which he encouraged authors to write in Italian, the vernacular, rather than Latin. The vernacular was Italian as spoken in Florence and Tuscany. For Pietro Bembo, however, it was the Italian used by Francesco Petrarch (20 May 1470 – either 11 January or 18 January 1547), hence the Petrarchan Movement. I also mentioned authors Dante Alighieri (1625 – 1321) and Giovanni Boccaccio (c. 1313- 21 December 1375).

The Madrigal

As for musicians, they too were to set to music texts written in Italian, rather than Latin. In the area of music, Francesco Landini (c. 1325 or 1335 – 2 September 1397) was the first writer of madrigals, a word meaning in one’s mother tongue: madre in Spanish.

France: Du Bellay

A few years later, in 1549, French poet Joachim du Bellay (c. 1522 – 1 January 1560) published his Défense et illustration de la langue française. It became acceptable to write poetry in one’s native language. Du Bellay was a poet, not a composer.

England: Chaucer

As for England, Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343 – 25 October 1400), who took the Roman de la Rose to England, he had also advocated the use of English, rather than Latin or French, as a literary language. He translated part of the Roman de la Rose. You may recall that until the end of the Hundred Years’ War, French was spoken at the court of England and Edward VII felt he was a legitimate heir to the throne of France. He wasn’t by virtue of the Salic Law. A woman could not ascend the throne of France. Edward VII’s mother was French. Hence the fratricidal nature of the Hundred Years’ War, a war of succession.

sans-titre

Shakespeare, the Chandos Portrait, sometimes attributed to Titian (Photo credit: Art History Today)

Titian (Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio)

Portrayed about is William Shakespeare (c 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) the Chandos Portrait, is sometimes attributed to Titian. (See Art History Today.)

RELATED ARTICLES

  • Art History Today
  • The Hundred Year’s War: its Literary Legacy (24 January 2016)
  • The Petrarchan Movement (6 December 2011)

 

With warm greetings to all of you. ♥ 

Titian
Ennio Morricone (Deborah’s Theme)

Titian%20side%20profile

Self-portrait by Titian
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

© Micheline Walker
26 January 2016
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Belaud the Cat Writes a Post

22 Tuesday Oct 2013

Posted by michelinewalker in Sharing

≈ 22 Comments

Tags

Alix de France, art, Belaud, crises, Fantin-Latour, Joachim du Bellay, larkspur, lilacs, peonies, the United States

Lilas, by Fantin-Latour, 1872

Lilacs, by Fantin-Latour, 1872

Larkspur (1888)

Larkspur, 1888

Vase pf Peonies, 1902

Vase of Peonies, 1902

I am Belaud (pronounced ‘below’), the little fur person who shares Micheline’s life. She has asked me to write a note on her behalf. She somehow got interested in “The Fox and the Crow” and started writing a post she could not finish.  

She is lucky to be able to count on me when such “accidents” occur. The best remedy, I told her, is to slash and slash. She explained that there were times when one could not slash and slash. Since the Syrian crisis and the debt-ceiling crisis, one nearly overlapping the other, she has not been her usual self. What would she do without me?

Micheline is now returning to her post. The arrangement is that she will discuss the moral in one post and will provide additional information in a separate post. I explained that she may run out of pictures, but this does not appear to be the case.

About me, Belaud

I am a pure-bred chartreux and, as we will see, a celebrated cat, but Micheline does not take me to shows. The two of us stick to a humble lifestyle. She says class is irrelevant. After all, she is, on her maternal grandmother’s side, a descendant of Alix de France, one of Eleanor of Aquitaine‘s (1122 or 1124 – 1 April 1204) two daughters by King Louis VII.

During the years she spent in Nova Scotia, she didn’t know this and knowing has not improved her life. She cannot play a musical instrument in this apartment and selling it, the apartment that is, would not buy her a little house or a townhouse however humble.

Joachim du Bellay

Joachim du Bellay, by Jean Cousin

Joachim du Bellay  (c. 1522 – 1 January 1560; aged 37) was the first French author who felt French could be a literary language.  He was a member of the Pléiade, an informal academy.  He wrote their manifesto: Défense et illustration de la langue française (La Deffence, et Illustration de la Langue Francoyse, 1549.)

There is one poem Micheline loves: Heureux qui, comme Ulysse, a fait un beau voyage,… (Happy is he who, like Ulysses, has gone on a beautiful trip,…).  Du Bellay was in Rome, but missed la doulceur angevine, gentle Anjou.

Despite lineage, no great author has made Micheline into a celebrity. But Joachim du Bellay eulogized his cat Belaud, one of my ancestors: Sur la mort de Belaud. I don’t think anyone will eulogize Micheline, not even me, except modestly, if I’m still alive. Public speaking scares me.    

RELATED ARTICLES

La Pléiade: Du Bellay (michelinewalker.com)
Belaud the Cat (michelinewalker.com)
Belaud the Cat’s Suite (michelinewalker.com)
 

Henri Fantin-Latour (14 January 1836 – 25 August 1904)

Belaud

Belaud

 
© Micheline Walker
21 October 2013
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La Pléiade: Du Bellay

30 Friday Dec 2011

Posted by michelinewalker in Du Bellay, France, Literature, Vernacular

≈ 58 Comments

Tags

Défense et illustration..., Joachim du Bellay, La Pléiade, Les Regrets, Renaissance

 
Joachim du Bellay

Joachim du Bellay (1522 – 1560)

In a post entitled The Renaissance: Galileo & Galilei, I spoke about Count Bardi’s Florentine Camerata, an informal academy, and focussed on Vincenzo Galilei, a scholar, an advocate of the use of equal temperament in music, and Galileo’s father.  I also wrote about Giulio Caccini, a composer who favoured monody, or one voice.

* * *

France: La Pléiade

However, we are now moving to Renaissance France where both formal and informal academies were also founded. The foremost of these academies was the Pléiade[i], an informal 16th-century (the French Renaissance) académie.  It was comprised of seven members: Pierre de Ronsard, Joachim du Bellay, Jean-Antoine de Baïf, Rémy Belleau, Pontus de Tyard, Étienne Jodelle and Jean Dorat, their mentor.  But, with the exception of Antoine de Baïf, members of la Pléiade’s main interest was poetry, which is literature bordering on music.

A Word About Jean Dorat

As I wrote above, Jean Dorat (3 April 1508, in Limoges – 1st November 1588), a brilliant Hellenist, was the mentor among the seven members of the Pléiade.  He had in fact taught at the Collège de Coqueret and four of his pupils had been Pierre de Ronsard, Joachim du Bellay, Pontus de Tyard and Antoine de Baïf, all members of the Pléiade.

Compared to Pierre de Ronsard and Joachim du Bellay, Dorat was the lesser poet.  But his fame as a scholar and Hellenist spread beyond France and, in 1556, he was appointed to the Collège Royal [ii] (French link), founded by Francis I, king of France, in 1530.  An appointment to the Collège Royal remains a French scholar’s highest recognition.

—ooo—

Défense et illustration de la langue française

Défense et illustration de la langue française 

Joachim Du Bellay is the eloquent author of a manifesto in which he advocated the use of French instead of Latin, his Défense & Illustration de la langue française.  Had the Défense & illustration de la langue française been his only work, Du Bellay would occupy a prominent place in the history of French literature.  His sentiments with respect to the French language echoed those of all seven members of the Pléiade, which makes the Défense & illustration de la langue française the group’s manifesto.

I have mentioned Joachim du Bellay in my blog on the Petrarchan Movement. You may remember that, not unlike Du Bellay, Pietro Bembo had encouraged Italian-language composers to set their music to texts by Petrarch, Torquato Tasso, Dante, etc.  In his eyes, Italian had come of age.  In this respect, Pietro Bembo is a precursor to Joachim du Bellay, except that Du Bellay was and remains one of France’s most celebrated poets.

Poetry

Du Bellay’s poetry was influenced by Italian poetry.  He was especially fond of the Petrarchan sonnet and encouraged members of La Pléiade to model their poetry on the works produced in Italian-language lands: sonnets, odes, etc.  His most famous collection of poems, Les Regrets, was written between 1553 and 1557, during a long and unhappy stay in Rome.  In 1553, Joachim had travelled to Rome with his cousin Jean du Bellay, a cardinal and diplomat who was going on a mission to Rome.  The collection, Les Regrets, was published in 1558.

According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, when in Rome, Du Bellay “had started to write on religious themes, but his experience of court life in the Vatican seems to have disillusioned him.”[iii]  He therefore turned to meditative poetry and to the sonnet.  He was home sick.  In fact, Du Bellay so missed his country, “la douceur angevine,” (the softness of Anjou), and his “petit Lyré,” his small castle, that he wrote his celebrated “Heureux qui comme Ulysse a fait un beau voyage,” (click to read poem, in French [Wikipedia]), a sonnet known to every student of French literature.

Earlier, in 1549, Du Bellay had written a collection of 50 sonnets entitled l’Olive.  However, when l’Olive was published by Corrozet et L’Angelier, in 1550, 100 sonnets had been added to the original collection.  During his stay in Rome, he also wrote Les Antiquités de Rome, a collection of 32 sonnets edited in 1558.  And he is  the author of long “consolation” or “déploration” (a eulogy) on the death of his cat Belaud, a chartreux.  “Sur la mort de Belaud” is a beautiful poem in which Du Bellay reveals his exceptional mastery of the French language.

Du Bellay’s health was fragile.  He suffered bouts of deafness and died of apoplexie, a cardio-vascular accident, on 1 January 1660.

So let this blog be a “déploration” or “tombeau” on the premature death, at the age of 37, of Joachim du Bellay.

I wish to thank Wikipedia for including in its entry on Du Bellay, the complete list of his works and the text of Du Bellay’s “Heureux qui comme Ulysse.”  The music (below) is Josquin des Prez‘s Déploration sur la mort d’Ockeghem, a very famous late fifteenth-century piece.

  • Défense et illustration de la langue française (1549)
  • L’Olive (1549)
  • Vers lyriques (1549)
  • Recueil de poesie, presente à tres illustre princesse Madame Marguerite, seur unique du Roy […] (1549)
  • Le Quatriesme livre de l’Eneide, traduict en vers françoys (1552)
  • La Complainte de Didon à Enée, prince d’Ovide (1552)
  • Œuvres de l’invention de l’Auteur (1552)
  • Divers Jeux Rustiques (1558)
  • Les Regrets (1558) dont
  • Les Antiquités de Rome (1558)
  • Poésies latines, (1558)
  • Le Poète courtisan (1559)

Josquin des Prez: Déploration sur la mort de Johannes Ockeghem (just click on title)

 _________________________

[i] “La Pléiade.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2011. Web. 30 Dec. 2011.             <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/464546/La-Pleiade>.

[ii] Wikipedia

[iii] “Joachim du Bellay.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2011. Web. 30 Dec. 2011.             <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/59760/Joachim-du-Bellay>.

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Belaud

31 Sunday Jul 2011

Posted by michelinewalker in Sharing

≈ 17 Comments

Tags

Chartreux, Joachim du Bellay, Micheline's cat

Alllow me to introduce Belaud (as in “down below”).  He is a chartreux, France’s blue cats.  Poet Joachim du Bellay (1522-1560), a member of La Pléiade wrote an exquisite poem on the death of his cat Belaud:  Sur la mort de Belaud (on the internet).

I have been Belaud’s happy hostage for three years.

Belaud is a rather large cat, a big potato on four toothpicks.  This is a borrowed description now firmly entrenched in both oral and learned (i.e. written) tradition.

Tis Summertime (my thanks to Gershwin) so, on sunny but somewhat breezy days, Belaud spends time sitting or lying on the balcony, surrounded by large pots of flowers.  I keep the door ajar so he may run back to the safety of the indoors when he senses danger.

Can he run!  If I have been absent for several hours or a night, no sooner do I enter the apartment that he turns into an arrow, run towards me, and starts climbing.  I quickly pick up this furry person and sit him on my left shoulder.  I tell him that he is a beau Belaud , the prince of éviers (kichen sinks) and lavabos (bathroom sinks).

Belaud enjoys curling up inside various sinks and, at night, he plays hockey in one of the bathtubs, using Gertrude, a rubber ducky, as hockey puck.

Belaud also loves the sight and sound of gently dripping water.  The best we can hope for, says he, are small pleasures.  As you can see, that Belaud is quite the philosopher and a nosy one.

His hero is Agatha Christy’s Hercule Poirot.   The two have a lot in common, including accent and boastfulness.

By the way, Belaud is a musician whose favourite work is Rhapsody in Blue.  As a blue cat, he relates to anything blue.  Once again, I we have Gerschwin to thank.

You may have guessed that Belaud is also a writer.  You are absolutely right.  He even has an email address given to him by John.  He can be reached at lordbrokentail@snoro.com. “Snoro” is North-American French, perhaps Ameridian, for beloved “rascal.”

Write to him, but please do not mention the current debt-ceiling crisis.  Belaud is forbidden exposure to any and all x-rated material.  He is a child.

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