Clement Marot

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Clément Marot (born November 23 (?) 1496 in Cahors , † September 12 (?) 1544 in Turin ) was a French poet. He is considered the most important French poet of the first half of the 16th century.

Life and work

Clément Marot was born the son of the merchant and respected poet Jean Marot . His father was from Normandy, his mother from Cahors in southern France. Here he spent his childhood, growing up bilingual, i. H. French and especially Occitan . In 1506 the family moved to Paris because the father had received a secretary post in the service of Queen Anne of Brittany . (Later he was promoted to valet for her husband Ludwig XII. And after his death in 1515 the new King Franz I took over.) Through his father, the young Marot got early contact with the court and got a job as a page with a high-ranking nobleman, the continued to patronize him and a little later gave him a clerk's post in the Chancellerie (quasi with the Minister of Justice). Apparently Marot did not enjoy a solid school education, but he did learn Latin and Italian and acquired a certain classical education.

From around 1511 he wrote, under the guidance of his father and his fellow poet and secretary Jean Lemaire de Belges . In addition, he trained his pen in transcribing the texts of Virgil and Lukian . In 1514 he went public for the first time with the verse (épître) Le Temple de Cupido , which he had written for the wedding of Claude de France, the elder daughter of Louis XII, and her cousin Franz von Angoulême, who due to the lack of a direct male Heir to the throne was the closest contender for the French crown. In the same year a first work was printed, the Épître de Maguelonne .

After Franz had succeeded his father-in-law on the throne in 1515, Marot managed to please him, who was only two years his senior, with further poems and to win his sympathy, e.g. B. a funny petite épître au roi . In 1519 Franz recommended him to his older sister, Margaret of Navarra , who accepted him as valet and secretary in her service.

This did not prevent Marot from accompanying Franz on campaigns against Emperor Charles V in Flanders and in Hainaut in 1521 and 22 . Most of the time, however, he lived as a poet and entertainer valued by the king at court in Paris. Here he wrote texts in all lyrical genres of the time on the most varied of occasions and occasions. A specialty of this early creative phase were, in addition to verse epistles , shorter poems on the subject of love, especially rondeaus and chansons . As a rule, he first disseminated his texts by reading or lecturing in front of his target audience, but copies of third parties also quickly circulated.

Under the influence of Margarete and her surroundings, Marot opened up to Martin Luther's Reformation ideas , which began to spread in France around 1520 as "Evangelism". This, but probably also a more relaxed way of life and a mocking tongue, earned him hostility and soon also problems. Obviously he enraged the conservative judges of the Paris Supreme Court, the Parliament , and the Orthodox theologians of the Sorbonne .

When King Franz was captured by Emperor Karl at the Battle of Pavia in 1525 and his sister Margarete traveled to Madrid for release negotiations, a vengeful woman accused Marot of eating bacon during Lent . His enemies and envious people used the absence of his princely patrons to arrest him in February 1526 and incarcerate him in the notorious Paris city prison Le Châtelet . Thanks to the intercession of a friend, however, the Bishop of Chartres intervened and had him transferred to his own, more humane prison. In May, Marot was released by a pardon from the king who had just returned. He described his unfortunate experiences in Châtelet very realistically and with biting humor in an epistle with the eloquent title L'Enfer (Hell). As a precaution, however, he did not publish it because it could all too easily be understood as an attack on the Parisian judiciary and its assistants.

Also in 1526, Marot was appointed to succeed his recently deceased father Jean in the valet. When he ended up in the dungeon again in 1527 because he had helped an acquaintance arrested by the police to escape, King Franz immediately freed him himself. The order in question and Marot's previous appeal for help have been preserved, as is a humorous poem of thanks.

The years after 1526 were very fruitful for Marot, first of all thanks to his infatuation with Anne d'Alençon, a young niece of Margarete's first husband, who inspired him to write many poems, especially rondeaus and chansons. Above all, however, as before, he acted as court poet with occasional poems of all kinds and on all possible occasions. a. developed the genus epigram , d. H. funny, often snappy, single-verse lyrics. He was also doing well financially, so that he was able to marry in 1529 (?) And supposedly had his three children, who were soon there, pray gratefully for the king every day.

After a first collection of his poems had appeared as a pirated print in Lyon in 1531 , Marot published an anthology himself for the first time in 1532 under the somewhat boyish title L'Adolescence (= youth) clémentine , to which he in 1534 a suite (= continuation) de l'adolescence clémentine followed.

As early as 1525 he had the idea of ​​publishing works from older French literature in print based on quasi-humanistic editing principles. He had in 1526 the Roman de la rose ( Rose Roman , 13th century) edited in a slightly modernized language. In 1533 he had an edition of the poems by François Villon (15th century) follow.

October 1534 brought a deep turning point in Marot's life. He was involved in the Affaire des Placards , a poster campaign by Protestant activists (but perhaps also Catholic agitators in disguise), which caused King Franz to give up his previously practiced religious tolerance or indifference, to take sides with the conservative forces of Catholicism and one gave free rein to the sharp repression of Protestantism, which led to a series of heretic trials in front of the parliament and numerous death sentences and executions, as well as triggered an initial wave of refugees (including Jean Calvin , for example ).

When Marot found out that he was on a list of suspects, he too fled, first to Margarete in Nérac im Béarn , which served as the capital of the small kingdom of (remainder) Navarre , whose titular king, Henri d'Albret, she had meanwhile married. After being condemned in absentia by the Paris Parliament in 1535, he went to Ferrara on Margaret's advice to the court of Duchess Renée d'Este , the younger daughter of Louis XII who sympathized with Luther's teachings and who had already hosted other French refugees.

From there he addressed an epistle of supplication to King Franz, in which he tried to refute the accusation that he was “Luthériste” and complained sarcastically about his enemies in the Parisian judiciary and at the Sorbonne. But he got no answer, so he wrote another epistle, now to the Dauphin (Crown Prince).

When he was harassed by the Inquisition a little later in Ferrara with the tolerance of the duke, who was de jure fiefdom of the Pope , he fled to Venice in 1536 . It was here in 1537 that the news reached him that he had been granted amnesty, and after he had renounced Protestantism in Lyon and had something celebrated by Lyonese sympathizers, he returned to Paris and to his family. Re-accepted at court, he was initially involved in a feud with poems by an old rival by the name of François de Sagon, who now saw himself as the top dog. However, Marot prevailed and thereafter reached the peak of his recognition.

In 1538 he had a first complete edition of his works published by the famous printer Étienne Dolet in Lyon under the simple title Les Œuvres . In the same year he transmitted poems by Francesco Petrarch , including six sonnets.

In 1539 he received a house in Paris as a gift from the king. His position as the best poet of his time seemed secure.

As early as 1533 he had translated a Bible psalm in the form of a poem. After his return from exile, at the suggestion of the king, he had resumed and continued this work. In 1541 he published the result under the title Trente psaumes de David mis en français and was even allowed to dedicate the book to Emperor Karl, who was passing through Paris during a break in the war.

After the Trente Psaumes had earned him a lot of praise as the first successful attempt at an artistically adequate copy of the Psalms in French verses and stanzas, they were surprisingly banned in 1542 at the instigation of the Sorbonne. One reason was that the now clearly proprotestant Dolet had just published his L'Enfer without Marot's permission ; Another was the fact that the reformer Calvin, who had just come to power in Geneva, also praised the psalm adaptation and recommended it to his followers.

Marot fled once more from Paris and went to Geneva, where he transmitted another 20 psalms, so that in 1543 he was able to bring out a new edition with now 50 psalms. Shortly afterwards, however, he left Geneva because he had problems with Calvin and his fundamentalist, strict regime. He moved on to the Duchy of Savoy , which was occupied by French troops , from where he tried in vain to contact King Francis. After brief stays in Annecy and Chambéry , he died bitterly in Turin in 1544 . Shortly after his death (the exact date of which is just as unknown as that of his birth), a new edition of the oeuvres appeared .

It is not known whether Marot also composed, but it is unlikely. In his epigram To Maurice Scève , he writes that the latter praised his singing voice and regretted not teaching it. But he has no desire to become a "musician" and learn notes.

Significance and aftermath

Marot's literary historical significance lies in the fact that on the one hand he continued the rich independent French lyrical tradition with its diverse range of forms (in the sense of his two teachers), but on the other hand, as one of the first French authors, he was also inspired by the Italian poetry, which was at the fore at the time. Perhaps it was he who introduced the sonnet in France. He especially cultivated the genre verse epistle, often including very personal passages. Above all, however, he is considered a first master, if not the inventor of the short form epigram. In total, he wrote 65 epistles, 80 rondeaus, 15 ballads, 300 epigrams, 27 elegies.

Many of his poems, especially the elegies, rondeaus and chansons, deal with the subject of love (see the Huitain Epigramme de soy mesme as an example ), whereby he uses the terminology and imagination of traditional courtly poetry in a highly artistic, sometimes serious, sometimes joking manner absorbs and varies.

His trademark, especially of the poems that are aimed at the lighter muse, is formal and stylistic diversity with simultaneous elegance and playful, often playful ease of expression: the proverbial "style marotique".

The assessment of Marot in France was not always free of anti-Protestant motives. Nevertheless, his aftermath was great (in the 16th century alone the oeuvres were reprinted well over two hundred times), and he remained a poet who was highly valued and loved by many readers and authors, and who was fond of pastiche ( jokingly imitated), who was considered prototypical until the 19th century applied to the supposedly good old days.

His Cinquante psaumes became the core of the Geneva Psalter (Huguenot Psalter) .

Marot's son Michel, who became the page of Margaret of Angoulême, also tried his hand at being a poet, but did not even remotely achieve the meaning of his father or grandfather.

Douglas R. Hofstadter published 88 translations of Marot's A une Damoyselle malade in his book Le Ton beau de Marot and used these texts as examples to discuss the problem of the (in) translatability of poems.

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personal data
SURNAME Marot, Clement
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French poet
DATE OF BIRTH November 23, 1496
PLACE OF BIRTH Cahors
DATE OF DEATH September 12, 1544
Place of death Turin