SOURCE: Magnan, Robert. “Eustache Deschamps and the Course of Life.” In Eustache Deschamps: French Courtier-Poet, His Work and His World, ed. Deborah M. Sinnreich-Levi, pp. 230-44. New York: AMS Press, Inc. 1998.

[In the essay below, Magnan outlines how Deschamps divides human life into different phases or periods in various poems.]

The course of life, the length and structure of human existence, is a neglected and misunderstood aspect of the work of Eustache Deschamps. The purpose of this article is to consider how Deschamps divides life into distinct periods in a half dozen poems, in an attempt to determine the nature of these divisions and to assess their meaning and value for the late fourteenth century. Study of these poems should show that Deschamps based his “course of life” poems not on his own life, as certain scholars have assumed, nor on any specific source, and that his purpose was not to define our physical and mental nature but to suggest a moral codification.

Deschamps sketches two basic divisions of life—one into periods of 10 or 20 years, the other into seasons. In the first pattern, the 60 years of life—a figure that Deschamps uses in 14 poems¹—are divided into four or five stages. This pattern is completely formed in five poems and partially in several others. The second pattern occurs in only one poem, with a life span of 64 years divided into four 16-year seasons.

Deschamps most succinctly divides life into decades and scores in the “Double Lay de la fragilité humaine” (II:264-65), a poetic commentary on the treatise De Miseria condicionis humane written in 1195 by Cardinal Lotario dei Segni, the future Pope Innocent III. In his chapter on the discomforts of old age and the brevity of life, Lotario cites Psalm 89:10—“Dies annorum nostrorum in ipsis.LXX. anni. Si autem in potentatibus octoginta anni, plurimi eorum labor est dolor.” (“The days of our lives are in themselves 70 years. If, however, they reach 80 years in the strong, many of them are toil and sorrow.”). He then adds that “pauci nunc ad quadraginta, paucissimi ad sexaginta annos perveniunt” (“few now reach 40 years, very few reach 60”). Deschamps uses only this last figure in his commentary:

A bien vous amesurez
Que.LX. ans ne durez,
—Pou passent oultre le sueil

(239-41)

(Measuring yourself properly,
You last only 60 years—
Few pass beyond the limit.)(2)

Deschamps then elaborates on this calculation to describe life as consisting of five stages: from birth to age 20, “you are ignorant” (“mescongnoissiez”); from 20 to 30, “you enjoy” (“esjouissiez”); from 30 to 40, “you say, ‘I gather material goods’” (“Dittes: ‘L'avoir cueil’”); from 40 to 50, “you say, ‘I suffer’” (“Dittes: ‘Je me dueil’”); and from 50 to 60, “you are senile and become less than a baby put into a cradle” (“Estes rassotez / Et moins qu'enfans devenez / Qu'on couche en un berseuil”) (242-48).

“Ballade 321” (III:14-15) and “Rondeau 675” (IV:134) present two minor variations on this scheme. First, the years between ages 20 and 40 are not divided into 10 years of enjoyment and 10 years of material acquisition, as in the “Double Lay”; in both “321” and “675,” Deschamps considers the 20 years as a single period of acquisition (“Vint ans avons pour avoir amasser” and “Vint ans tirons pour acquerir monnoye”—“We have 20 years to amass material goods” and “We take 20 years to acquire money”). Second, he does not describe the time from 40 to 50 as a period of suffering; in “Ballade 321” he describes these 10 years optimistically, as a time when “we rule whole” or “at our peak” (“Dix ans regnons enterin”), while in “Rondeau 675” his description (“Dix ans revons”) is either ambivalent (“We wander about as we like”) or pessimistic (“Our lives go awry” or even “we are delirious”), depending on our reading of the verb “rever.”³

His division of life in “Ballade 25” (I:104-105) is incomplete, in that the periods described total only 50 years, not the 60 that he uses elsewhere as the length of life. However, since the refrain voices the familiar theme of vanitas vanitatum—“C'est tout noiant, par ma foy, ce me semble” (“It is all nothing, I do believe”)—we may surmise that Deschamps is simply omitting here the 10 years that he considers, in the “Double Lay” and elsewhere, to be a period of enjoyment, the years between 20 and 30.⁴ If so, then the scheme in “Ballade 25” is basically in line with that proposed in “Ballade 321” and “Rondeau 675.”

In “Ballade 1450” (VIII:135-37), which again expresses the theme of brevitas vitae, Deschamps depicts the course of life through a series of “self-portraits” that mark the milestones of life. At age 20 the persona is in love, lively, hot-blooded, foolhardy, healthy, strong, presumptuous, caring only for dancing and singing; he remains so until age 30. Deschamps provides no description of the next decade, which would suggest that it is to be a continuation of the same life style, no doubt at a less feverish pace. At age 40, the persona realizes the folly of his ways and wisely begins acquiring land and money (“A acquerrir me mis terre et argent”); this arduous and painful period of establishing material power lasts 10 years (“A grant doleur, a paine et a tourment, / Tiray.X. ans pour avoir seignourie”—“With great sorrow, trouble, and suffering, I took 10 years to establish power”). At age 50, he is beset by a variety of physical woes and mishaps and by regrets over his lost youth. Finally, age 60 signals the approach of death.

We note that the periods marked by this series of portraits are almost the same as in the four poems just considered, with one significant difference. The behavior deemed appropriate for the years from 20 to 30 seems to extend to age 40; since the period from 40 to 50 must then be spent pursuing economic security, there is no time for enjoying these possessions before falling prey to the various ills of old age at 50.

In these five poems, Deschamps divides the course of life into four or five stages, marked by milestone ages—20, 30, 40, 50, and 60. He uses these significant ages in several other poems as well.

In “Ballade 297” (II:156-57) Deschamps suggests a “self-portrait” from two very different points in life, ages 20 and 40. At 20 his persona is capable of everything; all of life is lying before him. By 40 he feels that it is too late; the decline of life is already beginning. By age 50, it is all over. In “Rondeau 657” (IV:116) Deschamps announces, in mock celebration of his jubilee, that “my good time has all passed and my body is in ruin (“Tout mon bon temps est alé, / Mon corps est tout affolé”), and so he bids adieu to the world. In “Ballade 237” (II:67-68) he claims that beyond age 50 people become victims of ridicule and neglect and are of little use to society.

From these eight poems we can draw the following composite division of the 60 years of life. From birth to age 20 is a period of ignorance, passing quickly, wasted, and full of spiritual dangers. The years between 20 and 30 are spent either enjoying the pleasures of youth or acquiring possessions. Between 30 and 40 is a period of materialism, for the most part, although the pursuit of pleasure may continue. For the next period there is little agreement among these poems: the years from 40 to 50 may be spent suffering from physical ills, or wandering about, or ruling over life. During the final decade of life there is nothing good: the poems describe a time of foolishness, futility, loneliness, decrepitude, sickness, and suffering.

The other division of life formulated by Deschamps, according to the four seasons, is found only in “Ballade 128” (I:250-51). The springtime of life, “Enfance,” lasts until age 16, a period when even slight misfortunes are dangerous. During the summer of life, another 16 years, we grow to completion. Autumn is the time to harvest the fruits of our lives. After these three seasons of “Jeunesce,” ending around age 48, comes the winter of “Viellesce,” another 16 years, adding up to a life span of 64 years.⁵

The seasons of life outlined in “Ballade 128” are more fully developed in several other poems, including “Ballades 1077” (V:377-79) and “1449” (VIII:134-35). The seasonal descriptions provided in these poems are commonplace within the rhetorical and iconographic traditions of the Middle Ages. Of interest to us here is the length of the periods defined—16 years in the second scheme and either 10 or 20 in the first—and the ages used as milestones.

The seasonal division fits fairly well with the decennial-vicennial division at three ages: the end of youth, at 30 or 32; the beginning of the final decline, at 48 or 50; and the end of life, at 60 or 64. For the rest, however, the correlation is not very close. It would seem that Deschamps, however concerned about numerical precision, is unable to reconcile his sources—or that his intention goes beyond simply interweaving the sources.

Deschamps may not be consistent from poem to poem, but he is precise: he takes care to plot the course of life rather neatly. Why does he divide life into distinct stages? And why does he use these two patterns, with these particular, specific milestones that correspond only partially?

To answer these questions, scholars have been content either to accept these divisions as merely reflections of the poet's own life or to simply cite what they consider to be probable sources. But there are problems with both of these approaches.

The autobiographical is an attractive approach, especially since Deschamps is generally dismissed as deficient in creativity. Critics emphasize his prolific production—over 80,000 lines of poetry—and his interest in chronicling (as official historian and keeper of the Livre de mémoire for 32 years) and codifying (as author of the first known treatise on the art of poetry in the French language). They tend at least implicitly to accept the epithets (or perhaps “epitaphs”) used by Léon Gauthier and Louis Petit de Julleville—“verse journalist of the fourteenth century” (“journaliste en vers du XIVe siècle”).⁶ Moreover, enough remains unknown or uncertain about his life that we cannot lay to rest the assumption that the milestones used in his poems are roughly autobiographical.

Of course, there are a number of difficulties with the autobiographical approach. How can we know if Deschamps actually fell in love at age 16, as he suggests in “Ballade 1257” (VI:276-77)? How can we know if and how his education continued to age 30, as we read in “Ballade 225” (II:52-53), and why it ended at that point? We know that he did not stop working at age 40, as his divisions of life might lead us to believe, although he often expresses a desire to withdraw from court activities. How can we know if his body really began to deteriorate suddenly around age 48 or 50? Indeed, we are not even sure that he died at age 60, as is currently believed, in fulfillment of the threescore life span.⁷ It seems unlikely, at any rate, that the milestones in his life occurred only in years divisible by 10 and/or 16, even taking into account considerable poetic license.

One could make the autobiographical argument for perhaps only one of the milestones Deschamps uses in his poems—love at age 16. In “Ballade 1257” he writes of a 16-year-old in love with a 15-year-old. The evidence for the autobiographical argument would be simply that this use of 16 leads to an awkward misfit, as Deschamps uses the topos of the springtime of love and youth to arrive at a four-season total of 64 years, at odds with his scheme of 60 years. If Deschamps were to have simply chosen an age to associate with love, it would have been 15, a figure that would have resulted in a calculation of 60 for the life span, as he uses in 14 other poems (listed in note 1). So this one division of life, then, would appear to be generated by a common poetic construct based perhaps on an autobiographical detail. If so, we need not concern ourselves with attempting to reconcile this division with the decennial-vicennial patterns.⁸

Faced with the impossibility of finding a close correspondence between his life and his outlines of life, we turn to the possibility of literary and artistic influences.

Authors in the late Middle Ages had at their disposal a variety of attempts to define the course of life, dating at least back to classical Greece. The Bible encouraged this philosophical pursuit: if there is an appointed season for everything and a time for every purpose under heaven (Ecclesiastes 3:1) and if God has disposed all things by measure and number and weight (Wisdom 11:21), then life must be divided into certain periods, each with its particular nature and appropriate behavior.

When Dante quotes Cicero (“cursus est certus aetatis,” De Senectute 10.33) in Il Convivio (4.27.2), to affirm that human life has a certain course, that human nature has a single path to follow, and that in the each part of our lives certain things have their season, he is expressing a belief basic to medieval thought. From at least the sixth century b.c. into the sixteenth century, we find attempts to outline this fundamental truth of human life, often with precise chronological ages. As Philippe Ariès summarizes this tradition,

The “ages of life” occupy a considerable place in the pseudo-scientific treatises of the Middle Ages. … The “ages” … corresponded … to positive concepts … so commonplace that they passed from the realm of science to that of everyday experience

(6)

Did Deschamps borrow his schemes of life from within this rich tradition? It is certainly possible: indeed, the number and variety of schemes known to us would make it imprudent to rule out specific influences. But an examination of a wide range of divisions of life reveals no system closely resembling either of the two patterns used by Deschamps.

If we do not agree to accept the scheme suggested in “Ballades 128” (I:250-51), “297” (II:156-57), and “1257” (VI:276-77) as a poetic construct based on an autobiographical detail—divisions according to the four seasons are certainly not rare. But the distributions of the years are quite different from the periods of sixteen years found in “Ballade 128.”

The most similar seems to be a system we find outlined in a diagram from Byrthferth's Manual, written in 1011. Here we find the following division of life:

birth-14		pueritia
	spring		air	hot, moist	blood
14-28		adolescentia
	summer		fire	hot, dry	choler
28-48		juventus
	autumn		earth	cold, dry	melancholy
48-70/80		senectus
	winter		water	cold, moist	phlegm

Although in this system, as in that of “Ballade 128,” youth ends at age 48, the other numbers do not suggest that Deschamps borrowed from this system. The system is asymmetric, even if we allow for the fact that the life span of 70/80 is taken from Psalm 89 and grafted, rather clumsily, onto a system where the “seasons” last 14 or 20 years, resulting in a “winter” of 22 to 32 years.

Divisions by decades, on the other hand, seem unusual. Apparently popular in origin, they generally suppose a life span of 100 years, the square of the significant number 10. Although one could pick and choose milestones among such systems and argue that Deschamps borrowed from almost any one of these systems, it seems improbable.

Joseph Morawski claims that Deschamps seems to have borrowed from a poem entitled “Douze mois figurez” for “Ballades 128” and “1450” (355). Unfortunately, he does not elaborate on this possible connection. Yet, if we examine these two versions of the “Douze mois figurez,” as well as a shorter form mentioned (in Cahier 281), we find little real similarity.

In these three versions of “Douze mois figurez,” a month is calculated to be equivalent to six years of life, for a life span of 72 years, roughly the threescore-and-ten of Psalm 89, and not the 60 or 64 years used by Deschamps.

The structures, the divisions of life by ages, are fundamentally incompatible. There is no general correlation between the 12 ages assigned to the months and either the four ages marking the 16-year seasons or the four or five ages that Deschamps uses in the other patterns; there is only the insignificant mathematical coincidence of 30, 48, and 60.

Age 30 in “Douze mois figurez” is the peak of physical strength and beauty, a figure common in medieval literature as the ideal age of youth for men.

Two of these three versions of the “Douze mois figurez” advise that at age 48 one ought to begin establishing material security for the later years, whereas Deschamps has the age of acquisition end at that age. The second version of the “Douze mois figurez” (Morawski 361, 130-34) concurs on this point with Deschamps, but it also declares this age to be a time of giving advice to younger people, a characteristic not found in any of Deschamps's patterns, although he expresses in other poems the value of such advice.

Last of all, old age, which for Deschamps begins at 48 or 50, begins at 60 in the “Douze mois figurez” (Morawski 358, 78-93). In the Cahier version there is one age that is not a product of six, age 50, in the September of life, marking the end of productivity (231, 33-34). However, this similarity with Deschamps's use of 50 seems insignificant: 50 as a milestone was well established in the Middle Ages, dating back to Leviticus and to the Greeks.

The “Douze mois figurez” ends with an interesting calculation of the years lost in sleeping, ignorance, illness, and imprisonment; life is thus reduced from 72 years to only 15 or 16. It is striking that Deschamps, despite his frequent emphasis on the theme of brevitas vitae, nowhere makes use of this clever means of further stressing the brevity of the time actually spent enjoying life. It seems highly improbable that he would have borrowed from the “Douze mois figurez” without also borrowing this final calculation.

In sum, it would have been simple for Deschamps to make each month in his analogy equivalent to only five years, to scale it down slightly to fit his life span of 60 years and his divisions of 10 and 20 years. We must conclude, therefore, that Deschamps reveals no influence of the “Douze mois figurez.”

What, then, can we establish with any certainty about the origins of the courses of life outlined by Deschamps? Very little. Although we cannot accurately assess the extent to which these divisions reflect his own life, it seems doubtful that the correspondence between his life and these outlines is very close. And whatever he may have borrowed was most likely not from any one particular source, but from a number of sources, with little concern for consistency or traditional natural correspondences.⁹

It seems significant that Deschamps does not attribute to the periods of life any of the planetary influences, humoral dominances, numerical significances, or ages of the world so important to other medieval divisions of life. Although in “Ballade 1077” (V:377-79) he reiterates the conventional belief that human life follows certain natural patterns, proceeding

Selon les temps et les douces saisons,
Selon les ans et aages de nature,
Selon aussi.IIII. complexions.

(1-3)

(According to time and the twelve months,
According to the years and ages of nature,
According also to the four temperaments).

and although he makes occasional references in his poetry to planetary influences, humoral dominances, and numerical significances, and the ages of the world,¹⁰ Deschamps shows no interest in pursuing these correspondences in his “course of life” poems. In this respect he stands apart from his contemporaries, including Dante, Gervais du Bus, Jean Froissart, and Jean le Fèvre.¹¹43

It also seems significant that Deschamps does not divide life into six or seven stages, in accordance with his apocalyptic use of the conventional ages of the world.¹² That he neglects this obvious potential for numerical significance and a correspondence between the macrocosm of the universe and the microcosm of the human body is further evidence that Deschamps is leaving behind the tradition of the division of life as a fundamental scientific truth.

The patterns of life that Deschamps sketches seem to suggest a purpose that would set him apart from his contemporaries and the long scientific tradition of the ages of life.

What Deschamps provides in his courses of life, we might conclude, are moral maps—maps drawn to indicate the manner of making one's way through the threescore years of life. The differences that we have noted among his variant decennial-vicennial patterns are not inconsistencies; they form part of the lesson of his maps.

These “course of life” poems constitute brief guides, codes of behavior. As such, these poems are akin to the various didactic codifications popular in the later Middle Ages, in a literary current that includes the arts of living and dying well. Such codifications tended to moderate strict religious dictates—the rules of God—with behavioral relativity—the structures of society. We find evidence for this interpretation throughout Deschamps's poetry.

It seems that in his patterns of life Deschamps is not concerned with divine order and scientific “truths”; he is promoting a behavioral code for living within the realities of his time. Certainly he and his contemporaries knew that not all people died by age 60. But they could well accept the affirmation that life after that age was quite exceptional. Moreover, these poems warn that one could not expect any real happiness or good health past age 50, a fair assessment of aging in the late fourteenth century. In his divisions of life, Deschamps expresses his practicality, his concern for psychological, socioeconomic, and physiological realities.

Although he expresses concern about the state of the soul, and many of his poems seem to thunder from the pulpit of a fire-and-brimstone preacher, he is realistic about human development. He recognizes the power of nature in youth and age, yet understands the moral and socioeconomic imperatives of “middle age.”

We can see this moral relativity perhaps most clearly in a ballade warning against encouraging the young to be unnaturally virtuous (“1295” VII:46-47). Here he uses as his refrain, “Qui jeu[s]ne sain[c]tist, vie[ul]z enrrage” (“Whoever is holy in youth goes crazy when old”), a variation of the proverb, “Young saint, old devil,” folk wisdom generally much criticized by more conventional moralists of his time.¹³

Deschamps focuses on the 20 or 30 years between helpless, wasted youth and the inevitable miseries of old age, years in which he believes that people can and should control the course of their lives. For these years, three patterns emerge.

The first, found in “Ballades 297” and “1450,” depicts inappropriate behavior and its consequences, using the first person singular to heighten the pathos of the situation. At age 20 life is great. At age 40 reality sets in: the persona realizes that he has acted foolishly and is wretched, poor, and sorrowful. He begins to acquire material security, but it is too late—“Ce fut tart” (297, 25)—or too difficult—“A grant doleur, a paine et a tourment” (1450, 15). The miseries of age prevent him from enjoying any material comforts. The refrains of these two ballades drive home the lessons—he who lives by presumption is a fool (“Pour ce est trop foulz qui en cuidier se fonde”) and nobody can stop the movement of time (“Mais je n'ay peu demourer en ce point”).

The second pattern, in “Ballades 25” and “321,” seems to recommend a pragmatic approach to life. The latter states that we have the years from 20 to 40 to acquire possessions, while the former allows only 10 years for that purpose, probably the decade between 30 and 40. The result: 10 years to “rule”—“regner” (25, 15) and “regnons enterin” (321, 32)—before the decrepitude of old age.

The third pattern of behavior is like the second, differing only in the consequences. In the “Double Lay de la fragilité humaine,” Deschamps designates the years from 30 to 40 for gathering wealth, but then marks the following decade as a time of suffering—“Dittes: ‘Je me dueil’” (245). There is no time for enjoying the fruits of our labors, as we might well expect in a poem about the fragility of life. In “Rondeau 675” Deschamps designates 20 years to acquire money, but then the years from 40 to 50 are spent ambiguously, as we “revons”—wander about or lose our minds.

The lesson that Deschamps conveys for the people of his time in these six poems seems to be that it is natural to enjoy being young and carefree, but that at 20 or 30 it is time for responsible maturity, for conversion from the pursuit of pleasures to the pursuit of possessions, from feelings of the present to thoughts for the future—the time to build material security. Then—if one is fortunate—the years from 40 to 50 can be spent in comfort. After 50 life declines quickly.

Throughout his work, Deschamps depicts the later years of life in dark, discomforting terms: there is no “golden age.” His focus is not simply natural, on the physical decline. He stresses as well the socioeconomic condition. He reminds his contemporaries that those in power can be fickle, using in “Ballade 177” (I: 311-312) the fable of the ant and the cricket to stress material preparation. In “Ballade 1296” the warning is very clear:

Vous, curiaulx, que juenesse demaine,
Aiez regart a voz predecessours;
Ils menerent la vie c'om vous maine,
Par certain temps eurent biens et honours:
Envie après leur fist trop de dolours,
Et aussi tost que viellesce leur vint,
De leurs bienfaiz a la court nee souvint:
Raiez furent et reboutez du tout,
Et ne sceut on que leur estat devint.

(1-9)

(You, courtiers, who are governed by youth,
Consider the experiences of your predecessors.
They led the life that others have you leading:
For a certain time they had wealth and honors,
Then envy caused them great suffering,
And as soon as age came upon them,
The court forgot about the good they had done.
They were turned out and completely pushed away,
And nobody knew what became of their position.)

Old age is a liability not only in court circles, but in society in general, where Deschamps shows the later years to be a time of neglect and scorn. To everything there is a season, Deschamps reminds his contemporaries, as in “Ballade 225”:

Saiges est donc qui en son temps pratique,
Que povreté ne le puisse sousprandre.
Car qui vieulx est, chascun lui fait la nique,
Chascun le veult arguer et reprandre.
Il est a chascun chargens.

(19-23)

(He is wise, therefore, who behaves according to his age,
So that poverty cannot catch him by surprise,
Because whoever is old finds that everybody mocks him,
Everybody wants to reproach and criticize him.
Everybody considers him a burden.)

The ideal, Deschamps suggests in “Ballade 237” (II:67-68), is the quinquagenarian

                                                                      qui puet bien repairier
En son hostel, car vignes a et champs,
Bonne maison, rente pour lui aisier.

(17-19)

                                                                      (who can well retire
To his estate, who has vineyards and fields,
A good house, rental income to keep him comfortable.)

Even in family there is no social security: in “Ballade 297” Deschamps depicts a man who at age 40 notes woefully that his heirs already wish that he were dead (“ma mort desirent ja mi hoir,” 26). In view of such dismal prospects, it would make good sense indeed to build up the only security possible, material goods.

If Deschamps seems to belong to a long scientific tradition in his interest in defining the course of life with distinct divisions at precise ages, he stands apart from that tradition in his use of the course of life. His divisions are few, and the years are not reckoned according to any planetary, humoral, or numerical schemes; the measurements of 10 and 20 are simply the units basic to the decimal and vigesimal mathematical system of his world.

We cannot ascertain to what extent these patterns may have reflected the experiences of his life, nor can we prove that he did not borrow from literary or iconographic sources. But it would seem that Deschamps intended to go beyond traditional calculations of life, with their “scientific truths,” to use his divisions to form a moral map, a summary guide to life for his contemporaries. To the epithet “verse journalist,” then, we may add another, as a footnote—“cartographer of the course of life.”

Notes

1. The life span of 60 years is found in the following poems: Ballades 25 (I:104-105), 79 (I:181-82), 134 (I:258), 198 (II:17-18), 293 (II:150-151), 321 (III:14-15), 330 (III:33-35), 1081 (V:385-86), 1266 (VII:3-4), and 1450 (VIII:135-37); the “Double Lay de la fragilité humaine” (II:264-265); Virelai 565 (IV:23-24); Rondeau 675 (IV:134); and “La Fiction du lyon” (1495, VIII: 291, 1423-1425). All references are to the Oeuvres complètes.

2. Deschamps uses a more generous figure, 70, in “La Dolente et piteuse complainte de l'église,” in which he writes that the “aige meur … a paine puet passer.lx. et.x. ans, au mieulx venir, sanz doleur de corps et affliction d'esperit” (“maturity can scarcely surpass 70 years, at best, without physical pain and mental anguish”) (VII:296). But this is the lower of the two figures found in Psalm 89, and this is the only work in which Deschamps uses a life span of 70.

3. Gaston Raynaud glosses “rever” as “errer pour son plaisir,” citing this poem as the sole occurrence of this meaning of “rever” in the complete works (X:110). This reading seems improbable, however. As the refrain of this rondeau reminds us three times in these 13 lines, “Pour soixante ans ne doit nulz avoir joye” (“For 60 years no one should be happy”). It seems likely that Deschamps intends a less pleasant meaning for “revons.”

4. Another possibility seems less likely. We may wonder if the missing decade is childhood, a period much neglected in the Middle Ages. If so, then the 20 years of youth would extend from age 10 to age 30, a calculation in line with that suggested in Ballade 1077 (V:377-79), where youth would end around 30, after two “seasons.” Yet this interpretation is at odds with the complete patterns that Deschamps outlines in the “Double Lay,” Ballade 321, and Rondeau 675.

5. We note in passing that Raynaud, taking this poem to be autobiographical, simply—and perhaps probably—assumes that Deschamps wrote it in 1384, when he would have been 46.

6. Gauthier entitled his short study of Deschamps “Un Journaliste au XIVe siècle.” Petit de Julleville wrote in his Histoire de la langue et de la littérature française des origines à 1900, that Deschamps is “le journaliste en vers du XIVe siècle” (349).

7. The dates most commonly accepted are 1346?-1406, with the year of birth simply backdated 60 years from the probable year of death.

8. Raynaud implicitly attributes autobiographical significance to this apparently rhetorical pattern when, in his biography of Deschamps, he uses age 48 as the line of demarcation between “âge mûr” and “viellesse” (XI:74), as if Deschamps actually bid farewell to his youth at age 48. However, Raynaud makes no such interpretive use of the other “milestone ages” of 16 and 32.

9. For example, a case may be made for Aristotle as an influence for two major milestones in the Deschamps's course of life, age 30 as the peak and age 50 as the beginning of the final decline, as Aristotle states that the body is most fully developed from 30 to 35, the mind at about 49 (Rhetoric II:14.4). But age 30 is also the ideal age of rejuvenation in stories about the fountain of youth and other such marvels. This age was established in Christian thought as the age of perfection; Peter Lombard, for example, writes that good Christians will be resurrected in perfect form “at the age that Christ attained, that is, youth, or about 30 years.” Age 30 is also used to mark the end of youth in some Arabic scientific works, such as the Masa'il Fi al Tibb lil Muta'allimin of Hunayn Ibn Ishaq (74-75) and the Liber Canonis of Avicenna (I.i.III.3), as well as by Albertus Magnus (De Animalibus XII.i.5, and De Aetate I.2-6) and Gervais du Bus (Le Roman de Fauvel II:3032). For age 50 as the onset of old age, there are numerous authorities: Isidore of Seville (Differentiae II.19, and Etymologiae XI.2), Rabanus Maurus (De Rerum naturis VII.1), Hugh of Saint-Victor (De Bestiis et aliis rebus III.61), Honorius of Autun (De Imagine mundi III.ii.75), Romuald of Salerno (Chronicon), Albertus Magnus (De Animalibus XII.i.5, and De Aetate I.2-6), and Thomas Aquinas (Commentum in quattuor libros sententiarum IX.xl.i, expositio textus).

10. For example, planetary influences in Chanson royale 372 (III:123-24), Ballades 814 (IV:322) and 1468 (VIII:167-68), and the Art de dictier (VII:268); humoral dominances in Ballade 1493 (VIII: 208-209); numerical significances in Chanson royale 375 (III: 131-132); and ages of the world in Ballades 126 (I:247-48), 979 (V:221-22), and 1072 (V:370-371) and Chansons royales 365 (III:107-108), 961 (V:188-91), and 1464 (VIII:159-61).

11. Dante, Il Convivio IV:23-24 (ca 1308):

    adolescenza	birth-25	hot, moist	spring
    gioventute	25-45	hot, dry	summer
    senettute	45-70	cold, dry	autumn
    senio	70-death (80)	cold, moist	winter

    Gervais du Bus, Le Roman de fauvel I:2993-3044 (1314):

    birth-15	phlegm	moist, cold
    15-30	blood	moist, hot
    30-60	bile	dry, hot
    60-death	melancholy	dry, cold

    Jean Froissart, Le Joli buisson de jonesce 1596-1707 (1373):

    birth-4	Moon
    4-14	Mercury
    14-24	Venus
    24-34	Sun
    34-46	Mars
    46-58	Jupiter
    58-death	Saturn

    Jean le Fèvre, Le Livre de leesce 463-485 (ca 1373):

    birth-20	jeunesce	printemps	hot, moist
    20-40	beauté, force	esté	hot, dry
    40-60	raison, sagesse	automne	cold, dry
    60-death	vieillesce	yver	cold, moist

12. Ballades 365 (III:107-108), 961 (V:188-91), 979 (V:221-22), 1072 (V:370-71), and Chanson Royale 1464 (VIII:159-61).

13. J. A. Burrows discusses this conflict in his article, “‘Young Saint, Old Devil’: Reflections on a Medieval Proverb.” Although Burrows does not mention Deschamps, the poet would be a proponent, in Burrows's terms, of the “nature ideal” rather than the “transcendence ideal.” In his sole reference to Ballade 1295, a brief footnote (XI:363), Raynaud classifies this poem among the “pièces badines,” without giving his reasons for so easily dismissing this poem as written in jest.

Works Cited

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———. Etymologiae sive Originum. Ed. Jacques-Paul Migne. Patrologiae cursus completus, Series latina. Vol. 82, col. 415. Paris: Garnier, 1850.

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