[In this essay, Storme argues that in avenging his own domination, Villon—as the narrator of Le Testament—victimizes the women he writes about, particularly in ballades such as “Les regrets de la belle Heaulmière” and “Ballade de la Grosse Margot.”]

The strength of Villon's poetry comes not from conventional poetic forms or didacticism, but rather from the poet's presence in his art which engages him in a struggle to define and resolve his feelings about himself and his life. He reaches, however, neither definition nor resolution; the internal struggle remains and dominates, accounting for much of the poetry's dramatic tension. Villon is trapped in a never-ending dialectic between the poles of self-condemnation and self-justification. Not hesitating to pass negative judgment upon himself, he will freely admit to being a sinner: “Je suis pecheur, je le sçay bien” (XIV, 105);¹ his wasted and frivolous youth is seen as the foundation of his failures as an adult (XXVIII, 217-224). These self-evaluations, however, are never static, and he soon washes himself of guilt by refusing to accept moral responsibility for his past actions. He turns from sorrowful lament to a defensive tone, writing “Des miens le mendre, je dis voir, / De me desavouer s'avance, / Oubliant naturel devoir / Par faulte d'ung peu de chevance” (XXIII, 181-184). This is the voice of the “innocent” who blames circumstance rather than himself. His “apologie” gains credibility through the citation of supportive and respected authorities such as Le Roman de la Rose, making his innocence a matter of fact rather than a personal assessment. Ever dissatisfied with the strength of his own defense, he takes yet another step towards self-justification: he transforms himself into a victim. Every victim needs a villain, and villains are not lacking in Le Testament: poor or contradictory counsel (XXVII, 209-216), individuals (I, 1-6), circumstance (XXI, 161-168). This defensive structure absolves him of guilt by transferring the moral responsibility for his offenses to his victimizing villains.

The portrait of love in Le Testament embodies and reflects the struggle between Villon's sense of failure and his need to be exonerated. He admits to being a dismal failure at love; one woman rejects him (XCII, 928-931), while another, Katherine de Vauselles, betrays him (“Double Ballade,” 657-661). Known as “L'amans remys et regnyé”, he renounces all interest in love: “Amans je ne suyvray jamais: / Se jadis je fus de leur ranc, / Je desclare que n'en suis mais” (LXX, 718-720). The responsibility for his romantic failures is a burden too painful to bear for any great length of time and he soon finds someone else to blame. The list of culprits is long and familiar, beginning with misfortune; poverty prevents him from being a lover: “Bien est verté que j'ay amé / Et ameroie voulentiers; / Mais triste cuer, ventre affamé / Qui n'est rassasié au tiers / M'oste des amoureux sentiers” (XXV, 193-197). Love itself becomes a formidable and destructive force: “Folles amours font le gens bestes: / Salmon en ydolatria, / Samson en perdit ses lunetes” (“Double Ballade,” 629-631). By referring to the defeat of these heroes, Villon makes his own failures seem more forgivable and less significant while consoling himself with miserable company. The transformation into victim is complete; he writes of love, “De moy, povre, je vueil parler: / J'en fus batu comme a ru telles” (“Double Ballade,” 657-658). The sentiment of victimization appears throughout Le Testament.² Villon deserves pity rather than blame.

The tension, never resolved, renews itself in yet another attempt to diminish his sense of responsibility. Love and its tools, women, are portrayed as great deceivers. In “Ballade a s'amye,” love and woman converge into one, and are called “Faulse beauté” and “ypocrite doulceur” (942 and 943). The strongest complaint appears in the passage about Katherine de Vauselles: “Abusé m'a et fait entendre / Tousjours d'ung que ce fust ung aultre, / De farine que ce fust cendre, / D'ung mortier ung chappeau de faultre” (LXVII, 689-92). After compiling this list of her deceptive powers, he concludes: “Ainsi m'ont Amours abusé / Et pourmené de l'uys au pesle” (LXIX, 705-706). This provides a fortified defense; unable to perceive reality, robbed of his own power to judge, he unwittingly falls into love's clutches. The object of Villon's attraction, whoever she might be, does not enjoy such innocence; she is as deceitful as love itself: “Quoy que je luy voulisse dire, / Elle estoit preste d'escouter / Sans m'acorder ne contredire; / Qui plus, me souffroit acouter / Joignant d'elle, pres m'accouter, / Et ainsi m'aloit amusant, / Et me souffroit tout raconter, / Mais ce n'estoit qu'en m'abusant” (LXVI, 681-688).

There are no ready authorities to cite in support of the argument, but Villon remains undeterred in his efforts to elevate opinion to the ranks of fact. The personal aspect of his judgment dissolves into his creation of a universal system of which he is only one isolated element. The system itself is quite simple: all men are victims of love, and all women are villains of love. Any man can disavow his romantic failures because they originate in woman's deceitful and abusive character.

In order for Villon to establish the system's universality, he must have all men share a common destiny in the face of love. Indeed they do: “Je croy qu'homme n'est si rusé, / Fust fin comme argent de coepelle, / Qui n'y laissast linge, drappelle, / Mais qu'il fust ainsi manyé / Comme moy, qui partout m'appelle / L'amant remys et regnyé” (LXIX, 707-712). That men should lose in love is a natural law: “Or ont ces folz amans le bont / Et les dames prins la vollee; / C'est le droit loyer qu'amans ont: / Tout foy y est viollee, / Quelque doulx baisier n'acollee. / ‘De chiens, d'oyseaulx, d'armes, d'amours,' / Chascun le dit a la vollee / ‘Pour ung plaisir mille doulours’” (LXIV, 617-624). The “Double Ballade” makes the point that even the most noble and celebrated men suffer this destiny, including Orpheus (633-640), Sardana, a “preux chevalier” (641-644), David (645-648), as well as Samson and Solomon (629-632) in its list of defeated lovers.

One must not forget the other side of the coin: women are love's villains. Villon is emphatic on this point; he even manipulates myth so that a non-existent female villain materializes. Narcissus, who fell in love with his own image, becomes her victim in the “Double Ballade” (637-639). There's no such thing as a good mistress. This is a major point in the “Ballade des dames du temps jadis.” The entire ballad is a lament for the absent heroine. The refrain “Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan” takes on additional significance if the “neiges d'antan” are taken to mean “les dames du temps jadis.” The fact that Villon uses the image of snow, which typically represents purity and innocence, particularly when serving as a referent to women, suggests that he cannot find any woman who is innocent. The futility of the search is conveyed by the ballad's envoi, “Prince, n'enquerez de sepmaine / Ou elles sont, ne de cest an, / Qu'a ce reffrain ne vous remaine: / Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan?” (353-356). Even the romantic heroines of the past lack innocence in their involvements with men; in the second strophe where the heroines are seen as castrators and murderers of their lovers, the perspective is clearly that of a victimized male: “Ou est la tres sage Helloïs, / Pour qui chastré fut et puis moyne / Pierre Esbaillart a Saint Denis? / Pour son amour ot ceste essoyne. / Semblablement, ou est la royne / Qui commanda que Buridan / Fust geté en ung sac en Saine? / Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan?” (337-344). Woman's inclination to abuse men is fundamental to her femininity. Woman's incessant desire for many lovers is part of her nature: “Qui les meut a ce? J'ymagine, / Sans l'onneur des dames blasmer, / Que c'est nature femenine / Qui tout vivement veult amer. / Autre chose n'y sçay rimer / Fors qu'on dit a Rains et a Troys, / Voire a l'Isle et a Saint Omer, / Que six ouvriers font plus que trois” (LXIII, 609-616). The charge is made, only to be refuted, that he finds no decent women because he speaks only of those with poor reputations:

Je prens qu'aucun dye cecy,
Si ne me contente il en rien.
En effect il conclut ainsy,
Et je le cuide entendre bien
Qu'on doit amer en lieu de bien:
Assavoir mon se ces filletes
Qu'en parolles toute jour tien
Ne furent ilz femmes honnestes?
Honnestes si furent vraiement,
Sans avoir reproches ne blasmes.
Si est vray qu'au commencement
Une chascune de ces femmes
Lors prindrent, ains qu'eussent diffames,
L'une ung clerc, ung lay, l'autre ung moine,
Pour estaindre d'amours les flammes
Plus chauldes que feu saint Antoine

(LX-LXI, 585-600).

Good women, women beyond reproach and blame, exist only in a romantic vacuum, separated from men and love; the moment they love they become villains. By “relinquishing” the role of critic to la belle Heaulmière, Villon lends “objectivity” to his accusation. What more credible testimony than having a woman preach the female ethic: victimize and exploit men through love? She cries “Or est il temps de vous congnoistre. / Prenez a destre et a senestre; / N'espargnez homme, je vous prie” (“Ballade au filles de joie,” 536-538).

The argument has come full circle; the condemnation of women in the final analysis is personal and abusive. Epithets such as “Orde paillarde” (XCIII, 941), and “mauvaise ordure” (CXXII, 1213) are not uncommon. The hostility is thus an essential element of his defensive strategy: women deserve ill-treatment and Villon takes it upon himself to punish them. He is not satisfied, however, with the severity of this treatment; the “poetic” justice is to strip her of her power over men, that is to say of her physical beauty.

Sexuality thus pervades and dominates his female portrait. In the lament over the loss of her “Petiz tetins, hanches charnues, / Eslevees, propres, faictisses / A tenir amoureuses lisses; / Ces larges rains, ce sadinet / Assis sur grosses fermes cuisses, / Dedens son petit jardinet” (LIII “Les regrets de la belle Heaulmière,” 503-508), la belle Heaulmière shows woman's “virtue” to be fundamentally sexual. Men were the pawns of her sexual power: “Tollu m'as la haulte franchise / Que beaulté m'avoit ordonné / Sur clers, marchans et gens d'Eglise: / Car lors il n'estoit homme né / Qui tout le sien ne m'eust donné, / Quoy qu'il en fust des repentailles” (XLVIII “Les regrets de la belle Heaulmière,” 461-466). As the belle Heaulmière knows, such sexual beauty is soon lost and with it the power women have over men. The loss of the latter is suggested by the refrain “Ne que monnoye qu'on descrie” in the “Ballade aux filles de joie.” The force of the punishment comes in the knowledge of this loss; the narrator suffers tremendously as she contemplates the decayed state of her beauty: “Quant je pense, lasse! au bon temps, / Quelle fus, quelle devenue! / Quant me regarde toute nue, / Et je me voy si tres changiee, / Povre, seiche, megre, menue, / Je suis presque tout enragiee” (“Les regrets de la belle Heaulmière,” 487-492).

Villon has created his villain, condemned her through her own testimony, and properly punished her, but his assumption of the role of victim leaves his vengeance uneasy and dissatisfied. This situation is rectified in two very different portraits of love: love as described in the “Ballade pour Robert d'Estouteville” and the “love” shared by la grosse Margot and her pimp.

The “Ballade pour Robert d'Estouteville” is a positive portrait, that is to say it depicts a happy love free of sin. Even sinless love is fundamentally physical in nature; the first stanza of the ballad defines the coupling of animals as “noble coustume” (1379), noble, given its purpose. Procreation, not lust, provides the motivation. Such is the moral message of the poem's refrain “Et c'est la fin pour quoy nous sommes ensemble.” The religious sanction permits physical love to be free of sin. The procreative purpose is made very clear through the metaphor of planting: “Dieu m'ordonne que le fouÿsse et fume” (1400).

This portrait of love compensates Villon and all men because the woman no longer victimizes the man, but instead supports and comforts him. The persona calls his wife “Lorier souef qui pour mon droit combat, / Olivier franc m'ostant toute amertume” (1388-1389). This woman's worthiness, however, is quickly tempered by Villon's animosity as revealed in “Si ne pers pas la graine que je sume / En vostre champ, quant le fruit me ressemble” (1398-1399). Even the most worthy of women do not merit man's total trust. Furthermore, we are carefully reminded that good love, or rather, a good woman, is a rarity. Villon prefaces the poem by writing of Robert d'Estouteville “Auquel ceste ballade donne / Pour sa dame, qui tous biens a; / S'Amour ainsi tous ne guerdonne, / Je ne m'esbaÿs de cela / Car au pas conquester l'ala / Que tint Regnier, roy de Cecille, / Ou si bien fist et peu parla / Qu'onques Hector fist ne Troïlle” (CXXXIX, 1370-1377). To portray love as good is only wishful thinking.

Villon's ultimate misogyny produces the “Ballade de la Grosse Margot”:

Puix paix se fait, et me fait ung gros pet,
Plus enflee qu'ung vlimeux escharbot.
Riant, m'assiet son poing sur mon sommet,
Gogo me dit, et me fiert le jambot.
Tous deux yvres, dormons comme ung sabot.
Et, au resveil, quant le ventre luy bruit,
Monte sur moy, que ne gaste son fruit.
Soubz elle geins, plus qu'un aiz me fait plat;
De paillarder tout elle me destruit

(1611-1619).

Unlike the couple in “Ballade pour Robert d'Estouteville,” these lovers revel in sin and filth. If one interprets line 1617 to mean that Margot is pregnant, the sinful nature of the love is amplified, because her pregnancy destroys the possibility that this sexual act will lead to procreation. Despite these obvious differences, this portrait of filthy love also functions as part of Villon's revenge against women. In reversing the universal system so carefully developed, he creates a male persona cruel and indifferent to women, a man who beats his “love” when she doesn't bring him enough money (1601-1610).

Notes

1. All citations refer to the 1977 Champion edition of Villon's Œuvres edited by Auguste Longnon and revised by Lucien Foulet. Arabic numerals designate lines.

2. See LXV, 673-680; “Ballade a s'amye,” 945-957; “Ballade et Oroison,” 1240-1243; “Autre Ballade,” 2012-2019.