Joachim du Bellay

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Joachim Du Bellay

Joachim du Bellay [ / ʒoaʃɛ̃ dy bɛlɛ / ] or Joachim Du Bellay (* around 1522 in Liré near Angers ; † January 1, 1560 in Paris ) was a French author. Along with Pierre de Ronsard, he is considered to be the most important French poet of the mid-16th century.

Life and work

Entrance of the former residence of Joachim du Bellay in the Château de la Turmelière in Liré (Anjou) in the French department of Maine-et-Loire

Childhood and youth

Du Bellay was the younger son of a poorer line of an old noble family of the Anjou. Very little is known about his early years. Apparently he lost his mother at an early age, was orphaned at the age of 10 and, sickly from childhood, lived a joyless youth under the tutelage of his brother René, who was 15 years older. He allegedly did not receive a solid education, but he claims to have made verses early on. In 1540 he began to study law in Poitiers , no doubt with the intention of qualifying for a post in royal administration or jurisdiction that he could hope for thanks to the protection of a cousin of his father, the Bishop of Paris (and later cardinal), Jean Du Bellay .

In Poitiers he made contact with some literary men with a humanistic education , in particular Jacques Peletier du Mans (1517-82), and neo-Latin poets, among whom he wrote poems, some of them in Latin. At the latest here he also learned Italian and dealt with the authors of the Italian Renaissance, especially the poetry of Francesco Petrarca and his successors.

Du Bellay in Paris

Perhaps as early as 1543, at the funeral of a high-ranking relative, he had met Ronsard, a little younger fellow poet. When he met again in 1547, he allowed himself to be persuaded by him to come to Paris to study ancient Greek literature with the well-known Graecist Jean Dorat at the Collège de Coqueret. A little later he founded a group of poets with Ronsard and some other, now little-known authors, which was initially called "la brigade" (= troop, group) and which was later (1556?) Renamed by Ronsard as " La Pléiade " (= seven stars) has been.

Du Bellay's move to Paris soon bore fruit. As early as March 1549 he published two of his most important works: the programmatic text La Défense et illustration de la langue française (“Defense and Fame of the French Language”), which he was allowed to dedicate to his relative, the Cardinal, and the collection of poems L'Olive et quelques autres œuvres poétiques (“The olive and some other lyrical works”).

The Défense was a manifesto of the theories and future practice of the brigade authors and appeared ten years after the edict of Villers-Cotterêts , with which under King Francis I the French language was elevated to the sole legal and administrative language in France. In the first part of the Defense , French is proclaimed a language of the same dignity as Greek, Latin or Italian; however, his means of expression and thus his suitability as a literary language could still be improved by the poets, above all through the productive adaptation of important works in the languages ​​mentioned. The second part is a poetics (which owes much of the impetus to a poetics by the Paris lawyer Thomas Sébillet published the previous year ), i. H. a guide to poetry. What is new is that here, too, French literature, especially lyric poetry, is required to orient itself towards the themes and the treasure trove of forms of ancient as well as Italian literature, which is now considered exemplary, while consequently turning away from its own allegedly medieval French Tradition, as represented above all by Clément Marot and his students, who were one generation older . The Défense , which was briefly discussed in its time, but then received only moderate attention , was won in the 19th and 20th centuries. Century by patriotic literary historians, who liked the self-confident, quasi-nationalist tenor Du Bellays, stylized into a key text.

L'Olive was the first sonnet collection of the French. Literature and, in addition to the collection of poems Délie by Maurice Scève (1544), one of the first French collections of Petrarchist poetry. The extremely artistic sonnets in the volume, which to today's readers often seem mannered , are mainly inspired by Italian models and mostly revolve around an unreachable, ideal lover named Olive (whose identity is unknown, but also irrelevant). Here Du Bellay takes up ideas of Neoplatonism as well as occasionally Christian ideas. At the end of 1550 he brought out a second new edition, expanded from 50 to 115 pieces. He was allowed to donate these to Princess Marguerite, whom he had noticed the previous year with a poem of greeting to her brother, the new King Henry II , and who continued to be his patroness.

His humanistic interests following you operated Bellay at the same time as a mediator Latin classics, leaving 1552 a paraphrase of Book IV of the Aeneid of Virgil appear and other free transfers. In early 1553 he published another collection of poems, Recueil de poésie .

His health during these years was obviously precarious (tuberculosis?); u. a. he increasingly suffered from hearing loss, which, as a visibly depressed person, made his life even more dark. His material situation was also precarious, apparently he was forced to take lengthy lawsuits for property claims.

Du Bellay in Rome

In April 1553, since he had to look after a nephew after the death of his brother René, he accepted into the service of Cardinal du Bellay, a highly educated man who until recently had been a patron of François Rabelais . A little later he accompanied him to Rome, where as the envoy of the French. King the Pope, d. H. the Papal State, to the side of France in the fight against Emperor Charles V (who had just demonstrated his power to the Pope at the Council of Trent, which ended in 1551 ).

Du Bellay's stay in Rome lasted four years, during which time he acted as majordomo of the cardinal. Although the city offered him new horizons and he got in touch with literary circles, he made a friend in (the now little known) poet Olivier de Magny, the domestics of another cardinal; but his post apparently absorbed him more than expected, without opening up perspectives, as it seemed to him. He was also disaffected by his insights into the conditions at the papal court and the great politics that he received. In 1555 he witnessed two papal elections and their intrigues at first hand, especially since his employer Du Bellay was a brief candidate for the second; and in 1556 he was disappointed to see how the latter fell out of favor with King Heinrich, who, without regard to him and his allies, especially the Pope, surprisingly concluded an armistice with the Spanish King Philip II , the son of Emperor Charles, who took his Italian interests into account pursued further.

After all, he wrote numerous poems during these years and he had a real relationship with a not only ideal Faustina.

In the late summer of 1557 he returned with the cardinal to Paris, where he was provided with several benefices , whose income he had to share, as usual, with the priests who represented him on site.

Back in Paris

Back in Paris he made contact with his old and new literary colleagues. In addition, he tried to establish himself at the royal court with poems on various official and other occasions, just as his friend Ronsard, whom he visibly envied, had managed to do during his absence.

The time after the return was very fruitful. In January 1558, Du Bellay published his most important work, Les regrets (= complaints ), a collection of 191 sonnets, mostly written in Rome, on a diverse range of subjects, but with a common undertone of nostalgia, frustration and disillusionment. Many of the texts complain, surprisingly confessional, of his own existential and psychological needs, especially his homesickness and the disappointment of his career hopes. Others comment, often in comparison with the supposedly better conditions in France, current events and conditions of high and less high politics in Rome. Still others sarcastically caricature the courtiers there, but then also, after his return, those in Paris, which of course did little to gain him sympathy at the French court. The volume was novel and epoch-making in that it established the genre sonnet as a suitable medium not only for the topic of love, but for a wide range of topics. Many of the sonnets, like letters, are addressed to friends and acquaintances named by name (e.g. Ronsard).

Also in January he published the anthology Divers jeux rustiques (“Diverse rural games”). Similar to Ronsard's Folâtries of 1553, this contains poems of the most varied genres and subjects and, as the title suggests, shows a surprisingly cheerful, sometimes even witty Du Bellay.

Le premier livre des antiquités de Rome (“Book I of Roman Antiquities”), a small volume with 32 sonnets printed in March , offers the melancholy . The main theme of the poems, which were also composed mainly in Rome, are the ancient ruins scattered all over the city (which had shrunk considerably in late antiquity) and its surroundings, or the feeling of transience and futility that they evoked in Du Bellay. The same feeling is reflected in the 15 sonnets that are attached to the Antiquités under the collective title Songe (= dream) and describe a dream vision in 15 parts, where an initially glamorous appearance collapses ingloriously at the end.

A four-volume collection of the author's Latin poems was published at the same time as the Antiquités , some of which deal relatively openly with his relationship with Faustina. At the end of the year his broadcast of Plato's Symposium came out.

Also in 1558, Du Bellay was finally able to record the long-awaited career leap: He received a higher post in the administration of the Archdiocese of Paris. However, he hardly benefited from it, because he died, depressed and after a long period of illness, at 37 (?) Of a heartbeat on the night of January 1st to 2nd, 1560.

Posthumously in 1561 another volume of poetry and a number of other texts were published. Below are some politically intended discours (= speeches) in verse with which Du Bellay responded to the escalation of domestic political tensions in the late 1550s. He did not live to see the cruel punishment of the mostly Protestant conspirators of Amboise (1560) and the outbreak of the wars of religion in 1562.

In 1568/69, during a pause for peace between the Second and Third Religious Wars, the first complete edition of his works appeared, which was reprinted several times in the following period.

Works by Du Bellay

  • La Deffence et illustration de la langue francoyse , Paris 1549.
  • Phosphoneumatique au roy tres chrestien Henry II: le jour de son entrée à Paris 16 de juin 1549 . Paris, 1549.
  • L'Olive et autres oeuvres poétiques de Joachim du Bellay , Paris 1550.
  • Docte et singulier discours sur les quatre estats du Royaume de France, déploration et calamité du temps présent , Lyon 1557.
  • Discours au Roy sur la trefve de l'an 1555 , Paris 1558.
  • Epithalame sur le mariage de tresillustre prince Philibert Emanuel, duc de Savoie, et tresillustre princesse Marguerite de France, soeur unique du Roy et duchesse de Berry , Paris 1558.
  • Hymn au Roy sur la prinse de Calais avec quelques autres oeuvres du mesme autheur sur le mesme subject , Paris 1558.
  • Poematum libri quatuor, quibus continentur elegiae, amores, varia epigr., Tumuli , Paris 1558.
  • Le premier livre des antiquitez de Rome: contenant une générale description de sa grandeur et comme une déploration de sa ruine. Plus Un songe ou vision sur le mesme subject , Paris 1558.
  • Discours sur le sacre du très chrestien roy Françoys II, avec la forme de bien régner accommodée aux moeurs de ce royaume, faict premièrement en vers latins par Michel de L'Hospital, ... et mis en vers françoys par Joach. Du Bellay , Paris 1560.
  • Divers jeux rustiques , Paris 1561.
  • Ode sur la naissance du petit duc de Beaumont, fils de Monseign. de Vandosme, roy de Navarre , Paris 1561.
  • La Monomachie de David et de Goliath, ensemble plusieurs autres oeuvres poétiques .
  • Les Regrets et autres oeuvres poétiques .

literature

  • Henri Chamard: Joachim Du Bellay. Slatkine reprints, Genève 1969.
  • Klaus Ley: Neo-Platonic Poetics and National Reality. Overcoming Petrarchism in Du Bellay's work. Carl Winter University Press, Heidelberg 1975.
  • Du Bellay et ses sonnets romains. Études sur les "Regrets" et les "Antiquitez de Rome". réunies by Yvonne Bellenger, avec la collab. de Jean Balsamo, Hélène Charpentier ... Collection Unichamp. Champion, Paris 1994, ISBN 2-85203-712-2 .
  • Du Bellay devant la critique, de 1550 à nos jours. Oeuvres & Critiques 20.1. Yvonne Bellenger (ed.). Narr, Tübingen 1995.
  • Josiane Rieu: L'Esthétique de Du Bellay. SEDES, Paris 1995, ISBN 2-7181-1257-3 .
  • Barbara Vinken: Du Bellay and Petrarca. Renaissance Rome. Niemeyer, Tübingen 2001, ISBN 3-484-55037-6 .
  • Reinhard Krüger: The French Renaissance - Literature, Society and Culture of the 14th to 16th Century. Klett, Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 3-12-939594-6 .
  • Françoise Argod-Dutard: L'écriture de Joachim Du Bellay: le discours poétique dans “Les Regrets”, l'orthographe et la syntaxe dans les lettres de l'auteur. Cahiers d'humanisme et Renaissance 62.Droz, Genève 2002, ISBN 2-600-00613-3
  • Du Bellay, une révolution poétique ?: “La deffence et illustration de la langue françoyse” & “L'Olive”, 1549–1550. Ouvrage coordonné by Bruno Roger-Vasselin. PUF, Paris 2007, ISBN 978-2-13-056463-8
  • Tomasz Rozycki: Poems as a life chronicle. About Joachim Du Bellay . In: Sinn und Form , pp. 247–255

Web links

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personal data
SURNAME Bellay, Joachim you
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French author
DATE OF BIRTH around 1522
PLACE OF BIRTH Liré , Anjou
DATE OF DEATH January 1, 1560
Place of death Paris