Louise Labé

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Louise Labé. Engraving by Pierre Woeiriot de Bouzey (1555).

Louise Labé , also Louize Labé (* approx. 1524 in Lyon , † April 25, 1566 in Parcieux-en-Dombes near Lyon) was a French author. Known above all as the emancipated woman avant la lettre during her lifetime , she has been one of the most important French poets since her rediscovery at the end of the 18th century.

life and work

Louise Labé was the daughter of the second marriage of the wealthy rope manufacturer Pierre Charly, known as L'abbé or Labé, and grew up in Lyon, which was then economically and intellectually prosperous. She received an excellent and varied education for a young bourgeoisie of the time and learned not only to play several languages ​​and to play the lute, but also - if you believe her third elegy - to skillfully embroider, ride and even fence. She was married at a very young age to a much older, rich rope manufacturer and was henceforth called "la Belle Cordière", the beautiful rope woman.

In her salon she gathered the Lyonesian beauties and writers, e. B. the well-known lyric poet Maurice Scève , was adored by them and encouraged them to discuss and write about all aspects of love and, last but not least, about the position and role of women in poetry and society. She wrote herself at least occasionally. After her early widowhood, she put together an anthology in 1555 and published it with the famous Lyonesian printer Jean de Tournes under the title Œuvres de Louise Labé, Lyonnaise .

In addition to 24 poems by friendly authors, the narrow volume contains three complexes: the prose text Le Débat d'Amour et de Folie , one, as the title suggests, an irrelevant dispute between Amor and folly, including the pleadings of Apollo and Mercury and Jupiter's arbitration , and three more shorter elegies in the style of Clément Marot and above all the famous 24 sonnets , the three or four of the most beautiful of which are counted among the best poems in French. They are about the passion of a female self, suggested to be identical to the author herself, for a distant lover who in turn appears to be rather tepid - behind whose figure hides the now practically unknown writer Olivier de Magny, who was on his way from Paris to Rome for a while had stayed in Lyon. Although formally and ideally they completely correspond to the Petrarkist poetry conventions of the epoch, the sonnets, as in some places the elegies, appear unusually confessional and authentic, so that they can also appeal to modern readers.

Around 1560 Labé retired to an estate near Lyon, where she died relatively young. Her will is one of the few documents that have survived from her life.

Afterlife

After the oeuvres had been reprinted several times soon after their publication, also in other places, Labé was already forgotten in the late 16th century. One cause was certainly the long-lasting religious wars that broke out in 1562 and the confusion that went with them. Another reason was perhaps that the reformer Calvin , who had probably heard of her in nearby Geneva, had reviled her around 1560 as an “ordinary whore” ( plebeia meretrix ) because of her unconventional and independent way of life, which was easily perceived as improper for a woman . Their rediscovery was initiated by a new edition of their work around 1760. Since then, alongside Maurice Scève, she has been considered the most important representative of the so-called Lyonesian poetry school that flourished around 1550 .

In Germany she is not unknown thanks to the quite free transcriptions of her sonnets by Rilke in 1917. Two more recent German transcriptions with competent afterwords and foreword are currently available. Paul Zech's posthumous poetry (posthumously 1947 etc.) is based on Rilke's translation. The 12-part cycle Sonnets of a Spurned Woman by Rudolf G. Binding is also not a transcription, but rather obviously inspired by the Labé figure of Rilke. A bilingual edition of the work published in 2019 contains the argument between Folie and Amor in German translation for the first time .

The Labés sonnets were also translated into other languages ​​in the 19th and 20th centuries. Transferred surprisingly often in the 19th century.

In 2006, the Parisian literary historian Mireille Huchon put forward the thesis that the works printed under Labé's name were not actually written by herself, but by other Lyonesian authors (e.g. the Débat of Scève and the Sonnets of Magny). In view of the lack of relevant documents or certificates, however, the thesis is just as difficult to substantiate as it is to refute. It does not lead to an adequate understanding of the texts.

expenditure

  • The twenty-four sonnets . Transferred from Rainer Maria Rilke. Insel-Bücherei , 222. Leipzig 1917 and more often. The bilingual edition also contains the original texts in the 1555 version.
  • Louize Labé's sonnets. Transferred to Emmy Wolff, in this. (Ed.): Generations of women in pictures. Herbig, Berlin 1928, pp. 11-14 (only No. 2, 6, 8, 13, 14 and 18)
  • The sonnets of the beautiful rope woman . Translated from Marcel B. Schmitt. Yin Verlag, Munich 1951
  • The sonnets and elegies of Louïze Labé . Transfer and introduction by Max Rieple . Steinklopfer, Fürstenfeldbruck 1957 a. ö.
  • Sonnets and elegies . Translated by Monika Fahrenbach-Wachendorff. Afterword and remarks by Elisabeth Schulze-Witzenrath. French-German edition. Narr, Tübingen 1981 a. ö. ISBN 978-3-87808-964-3
  • "... so many torches for me that I already burn." The 24 sonnets of Louise Labé (1555) . Übers. Ingeborg Vetter. Foreword by Ursula Hennigfeld. Edition Signathur, Dozwil 2012, ISBN 978-3-908141-72-3
  • Folly and love. The works of Louise Labé . Translated from Central French by Monika Fahrenbach-Wachendorff. Secession Verlag für Literatur , Zurich 2019, ISBN 978-3-906910-68-0

Settings

  • Marc-André Dalbavie (6) Sonnets de Louise Labé pour contreténor et orchestra, 2008
  • Michel Decoust 7 Chansons Erotiques for soprano and piano after Louise Labé a. a., 1986
  • Walther Prokop O Venus in the Heavens six sonnets for three-part female choir, 2002
  • Wolfgang Schoor Lyoneser Concerto for soprano, string quartet and piano based on sonnets by the beautiful rope woman, 1981
  • Aribert Reimann Nine sonnets by Louïze Labé for mezzo-soprano and piano, 1986
  • Tilo Medek The love story of a beautiful Lyonese rope woman named Louize Labe . Ten chansons with guitar accompaniment, 1967–1970
  • Viktor Ullmann Six Sonnets de Louïze Labé op.34 for soprano and piano, 1941
  • Max Baumann Die Schöne Seilerin , 5 sonnets by Louize Labé for soprano, flute, clarinet, violin and double bass, 1984

literature

Web links

Commons : Louise Labé  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Niklas Bender: Four times, as hot as coal, I kiss you. in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of November 27, 2019, p. 10
  2. ↑ Mireille Huchon, Louise Labé. Une créature de paper . Droz, Geneva 2006, ISBN 978-2-600-00534-0
personal data
SURNAME Labé, Louise
ALTERNATIVE NAMES the beautiful rope woman; Labé, Louize
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French poet
DATE OF BIRTH around 1524
PLACE OF BIRTH Lyon
DATE OF DEATH April 25, 1566
Place of death Parcieux