SOURCE: “Ronsard's Erotic Diptych: Le ravissement de Cephale and Le defloration de Lede,” in French Studies, Vol. XLVII, No. 4, October, 1993, pp. 385-403.

[In the following essay, Ford studies two odes by Ronsard that present erotic, mythological stories and draws allegorical and thematic parallels between both works.]

Throughout his poetic career, Ronsard seemed fascinated by the relationship between poetry and the visual arts. While art theorists at that time borrowed their vocabulary and approach to painting from the world of rhetoric, Ronsard often modelled his own literary technique on the mannerist works of art which proliferated under the Valois kings. Two early odes, “Le Ravissement de Cephale” (L. II. 133-47) and “La Defloration de Lede” (L. II. 67-79) offer an interesting example of a poetic diptych, worthy in its complexity of the frescoes at the palace of Fontainebleau.¹ First published in 1550 in the Quatre Premiers Livres des Odes, they share the same metre (heptasyllabic lines divided into huitains), the same basic structure, and the same theme (the love of a divinity for a mortal).

The dispositio of both these poems closely resembles the structure of Rosso's decorations in the Galerie François I^er, where a central narrative fresco is surrounded by an elaborate inquadratura which includes, amongst other elements, stucco or painted volets and cartouches. In the case of “Le Ravissement de Cephale,” the central narrative scene (lines 81-248, the seconde pose) presents the main events referred to in the title of the poem. The inquadratura (lines 1-80 and 249-88, the first and third poses) is concerned with preparations for the marriage of Peleus and Thetis, but within the first section, there is an ecphrasis, the equivalent, perhaps, of one of Rosso's cartouches, which depicts the storm scene on the cloak which is being prepared for Neptune by the nymphs. We shall see later that “La Defloration de Lede” follows a similar pattern.

Ronsard outlines the events of the Cephalus story in a series of little scenes which would not, in fact, be particularly explicit if we did not have Ovid's version of the story in mind (Metamorphoses VII. 694-VIII. 5).² According to the Roman poet, the story is as follows. Shortly after his marriage to Procris, Cephalus is abducted by Aurora who has fallen in love with him. He rejects the goddess's advances, but she persuades Cephalus to take on another form and test his wife's fidelity by trying to seduce her. He does so, offering Procris all kinds of gifts, and eventually, as she is wavering, he reveals his true identity. Procris, outraged, leaves and devotes herself to the pursuits of Diana, but Cephalus eventually apologizes and the couple are reconciled. A hound, and a javelin that always hits its target, gifts from Diana to Procris, are given by her to her husband. After years of happiness, Procris in turn becomes jealous of Cephalus when she is told that he may be having an affair with a nymph. She follows him early one morning, hiding in a bush as he lies on the ground after the exertions of the hunt and calling to the breeze, Aura, to come to him. A rustling betrays her presence, the javelin is hurled by Cephalus at what he suspects is a wild beast, and Procris dies in her husband's arms.

It is necessary to know these events for a complete understanding of Ronsard's reworking of the myth, even on a literal level. Procris is referred to only obliquely in an ambiguous latinate term of endearment (`Puis que j'ai tué ma vie …'; line 127),³ the javelin is mentioned, but not explained, in an apostrophe (line 129-32), and none of the events leading up to Procris's death are elaborated. At the same time, Ronsard rearranges the traditional story in order to place the relationship between Aurora and Cephalus in the best possible light. In Ovid, it is Aurora who sows the seeds of jealousy in Cephalus's mind after his rejection of her; with Ronsard, the goddess does not become enamoured of him until after his wife's death. In Ovid, Aurora's abduction of the mortal is of short duration, whereas Ronsard emphasizes its permanent nature:

Par force au ciel l'a monté,
Où avecques lui encores
Est maintenant à sejour,
Et bien peu se soucie ores
De nous allumer le jour.

(lines 244-48)

The subject of the myth is announced in the opening stanza of the seconde pose, and we are then presented with a picture of Amour, who overcomes Aurore as she prepares to light up the morning sky:

Elle qui a de coutume
D'allumer le jour, voulant
L'allumer, elle s'allume
D'un brandon plus violant:
Passant les portes decloses
Du ciel, elle alloit davant
Çà & là versant ses roses
Au sein du souleil levant.
Son teint de nacre, & d'ivoire
Le matin embellissoit,
Et du comble de sa gloire
L'Orient se remplissoit:
Mais Amour en son courage
N'endura de la voir là,
Ains surmonté de sa rage
Par ses roses se mella.

(lines 97-112)

The first of these two stanzas is a standard pictorial description of Aurora, but one which includes details which are more normally to be found together in paintings than in the classical poets. Ripa, in his Iconologia, describes Aurora as follows:⁴

nel braccio sinistro un cestullo pieno di varii fiori, & nella stessa mano tiene una facella accesa, & con la destra sparge fiori.

([She has] a basket full of different flowers on her left arm, and in the same hand she is holding a burning torch, and is scattering flowers with her right hand.)

Ronsard reinforces the word-play based on allumer in lines 98-99 by playing on the ambiguous nature of the visual imagery of the torch (traditionally an attribute of both Dawn and Cupid) and of the roses (a symbol of Dawn and Venus). It is therefore all the more appropriate that Amour, in the next stanza, should mingle with the roses, which as a result of this juxtaposition are confirmed in their double significance (line 112).

Amour then makes Aurore see what will become the object of her desires:

Elle vit dans un bocage
Cephale parmi les fleurs,
Faire un large marescage
De la pluie de ses pleurs.

(lines 117-20)

He is cursing the javelin and the impermanent nature of the human condition:

Ainsi disant il se pasme
Sur le cors qui trépassoit,
Et les reliques de l'ame
De ses levres amassoit.

(lines 133-36)

The love that Aurore feels for Céphale makes her forsake the heavens (`Ja le ciel elle déprise', line 149). Ronsard describes the effects of Aurore's passion at length in lines 137-208, borrowing many details from Virgil's description of the effects of love on Dido (Aeneid IV. 54-89).

Aurore is guided by Love to Céphale, who is still lamenting, and she addresses him:

Pourquoi pers tu de ton age
Le printens à lamenter
Une froide & morte image
Qui ne peut te contenter?
Elle à la mort fut sugette,
Non pas moi le sang des Dieus,
Non pas moi Nimphe qui jette
Les premiers raions aus cieus:
Reçoi moi donques, Cephale,
Et ta basse qualité,
D'un étroit lien égalle
A mon immortalité.
(lines 221-32)

He scorns her love, but Aurore pursues him, carries him heavenwards (in a later variant, `comme un aigle qui serre / Un liévre en ses pieds donté') where, as we have already seen, they continue to live.

The way in which the myth is told raises a number of questions, as Ann Moss notes, referring to `the extraordinarily oblique angles from which [Ronsard] tells the tales'.⁵ Why is Procris never mentioned? Why are the Ovidian details passed over? In fact, the picture we are given of Cephalus is a highly ambiguous one. We see a young man, presumably beautiful, surrounded by flowers, and weeping into a pool. What do we have here other than a picture of Narcissus, weeping in frustration because he can never obtain the object of his love—himself?

Je hai de vivre l'envie,
Ce monde m'est odieus:
Puis que j'ai tué ma vie
A quoi me gardent les Dieus?

(lines 125-28)

Or as Ovid's Narcissus exclaims:

`nec mihi mors gravis est posituro morte dolores,
hic, qui diligitur, vellem diuturnior esset;
nunc duo concordes anima monemur in una.'
Dixit et ad faciem rediit male sanus eandem
et lacrimis turbavit aquas ….

(Metamorphoses, III. 471-75)

(`Death is unimportant to me, as death will put an end to my grief; I wish that he who is loved would live longer; as it is, we two shall die together in one breath.' He concluded, and madly turned back to the same face, and disturbed the waters with his tears ….)

Even the picture of the fainting Céphale is ambiguous in the way that his actions are almost literally reflected by the beloved's corpse. Later we are told that Céphale, when approached by Aurore, `Lui dedaignant sa priere / Fuit la supliante vois' (lines 233-34), or as Ovid writes of Narcissus and Echo:

ille fugit fugiensque `manus
complexibus aufer!
ante' ait `emoriar, quam sit tibi copia nostri';
rettulit illa nihil nisi `sit tibi copia nostri!'
spreta latet silvis …

(Metamorphoses II. 390-93)

(He flees, and as he is fleeing says: `Keep your hands from embracing me! I'd far sooner die, than I would give you power over me!' She replies simply: `I would give you power over me!' Spurned, she lies hidden in the woods.)

Similarly, when Ronsard has Aurore exclaim:

Pourquoi pers tu de ton age
Le printens à lamenter
Une froide & morte image
Qui ne peut te contenter?

(lines 221-24)

he surely has in mind the poet's exclamation to Narcissus in Metamorphoses III. 432-34:

credule, quid frustra simulacra fugacia captas?
quod petis, est nusquam; quod amas, avertere, perdes!
ista repercussae, quam cernis, imaginis umbra est.

(Credulous boy, why do you try in vain to clasp a fleeting image? What you are seeking is nowhere. Turn aside, you will lose what you love! What you look upon is the shadow of a reflected picture.)

In other words, Ronsard's Céphale is twin brother to Narcissus, the traditional symbol of philautia, self-love: `se cupit inprudens et, qui probat, ipse probatur' (`unwisely he desires himself and, in praising, he is himself what is praised').⁶ However, in Ronsard's version of the story the young hero is saved, despite himself, through the intervention of heavenly love. Thus the poet is exploiting here a kind of visual and literary ambiguity which is present in some of the Fontainebleau frescoes, where, for example, the dying Adonis in the Galerie François I^er resembles a pietà, and the fresco depicting the twins of Catania contains a configuration similar to the traditional depiction of Aeneas carrying his father Anchises away from Troy after its sack by the Greeks.

However, perhaps the allegory can be pursued a little further. For the name Céphale is, of course, derived from the Greek word κεϕαλη (= head). Thus, Cephalus, the rational mortal, deceived and disappointed by his earthly love of knowledge, is led to a blessed life of immortality in heaven by Love, through the agency of Dawn, a symbol of the onset of divine illumination. (In neo-Platonic terms, the beginnings of love are described by Ficino as rays of light emanating from the sun.⁷ This, of course, also fits in with the ambiguity of the torch/roses image in lines 97-112, discussed above.)⁸

But what of the inquadratura of our poem? The first two stanzas and the five stanzas of the tierce pose are devoted to a description of the preparations for the marriage of Peleus and Thetis, and the prophecy of Themis concerning the birth of Achilles. Superficially, there is an obvious connection in that both the Peleus and Thetis myth and the central story of the poem deal with the union of a female divinity with a mortal man. This link may be suggested in line 261 where Themis says to Thetis: `Bien qu'Inon soit ta compaigne.' Ino had leapt into the sea and drowned, but had been changed into the sea-goddess Leucothea by Neptune, at the request of Venus (Ovid, Metamorphoses IV. 531-42). Natalis Comes writes of Ino in his Mythologiae:

Haec Ino vocata fuit postea Leucothea, & Dea maris existimata, ut ait Home. lib. 4. Odyss …. Leucothea, quae Matuta dicta est a Latinis, Aurora est.⁹

(This Ino was subsequently called Leucothea, and considered a sea-goddess, as Homer says in book IV of the Odyssey [in fact, it is book V. 333-35]. Leucothea, who was called Matuta by the Romans, is Aurora.)

So, Ronsard appears to be emphasizing the links between Thetis and Ino/Aurora in his use of the periphrasis of line 261.

However, the opening of the poem contains details that are only distantly related to the Peleus and Thetis story. As Laumonier indicates, we seem to be dealing with a contamination of Catullus 64 and Virgil, Georgics IV. 333 et seq. But is the motive for this simply diversity? The scene described in the Georgics is Cyrene's river palace, where Aristaeus, her son, has come to discover why he has lost all his bees:

At mater sonitum thalamo sub fluminis alti
sensit. eam circum Milesia vellera Nymphae
carpebant hyali saturo fucata colore, …
inter quas curam Clymene narrabat inanem
Volcani, Martisque dolos et dulcia furta,
aque Chao densos divum numerabat amores.

(Georgics IV. 333-35, 345-47)

(But his mother, in her chamber in the deep river, heard the sound. Around her, her nymphs were spinning Milesian fleeces, dyed in a rich sea-green hue …. Amongst them, Clymene was telling of the useless precautions of Vulcan, the tricks and stolen delights of Mars, and was numbering the many loves of the gods from Chaos onwards.)

The scene in Ronsard also recalls Odyssey XIII. 102 et seq., the cave of the Nymphs in Ithaca, to which the sleeping Odysseus is brought:

Now at the harbour's head is an olive tree with spreading leaves, and hard by is a pleasant cave and a shady, sacred to the nymphs, that are called the Naiads. And therein are mixing bowls and jars of stone, and there moreover do bees hive. And there are great looms of stone, whereon the nymphs weave raiment of purple stain, a marvel to behold. And waters are therein welling evermore, and there are two gates to the cave, the one set toward the North Wind whereby men go down, but the portals toward the South pertain rather to the gods, whereby men may not enter; it is the way of the immortals.¹⁰

However, there are differences of detail in Ronsard's version:

L'iver, lors que la nuit lente
Fait au ciel si long sejour,
Une vierge vigilente
S'éveilla davant le jour:
Et par les palais humides,
Où les Dieus dormoient enclos,
Hucha les seurs Neréides
Qui ronfloient au bruit des flots.

(lines 1-8)

(In a variant introduced in 1555, the `palais' of line 5 becomes `antres'.) Why does Ronsard insist on the fact that it is winter? In order to understand this section, we need to have in mind not only the Virgilian and Homeric texts, but also the allegorical explanations which concern them.

One of the most frequently published works of Homeric allegory in the sixteenth century was Porphyry's Cave of the Nymphs, and it seems more than likely that Ronsard has this work in mind in the ode under consideration.¹¹ Porphyry starts off by saying that since Homer's description is so full of obscurities, it must be allegorical, a notion that could equally be applied to Ronsard. The cave is both a symbol of the Cosmos and also a place of initiation into the mysteries of the Cosmos. The Naiads represent souls descending into corporeal generation, the stone looms stand for the bones on which they weave their own flesh and blood (the `raiment of purple stain'). Porphyry also refers to the ancients speaking of the heavens as a robe, as if they were the garment of the heavenly gods. He writes of the two entrances to the Cave of the Nymphs:

Taking the cave as an image and symbol of the Cosmos, Numenius and his pupil Cronius assert that there are two extremities in the heavens: the winter tropic than which nothing is more southern, and the summer tropic than which nothing is more northern. The summer tropic is in Cancer, the winter tropic is in Capricorn …. Of these Numenius and Cronius say that the gate through which souls descend is Cancer, but that they ascend through Capricorn.

Many of these details, then, could be applied to Ronsard's cave. His waking nymphs would symbolize waking souls, the robe they weave for Neptune quite explicitly represents the heavens and the seas, while the winter setting perhaps points towards the idea of the Tropic of Capricorn and the ascension of souls from corporeal existence to spiritual afterlife—the theme of the Cephalus story. It is also no coincidence that makes Ronsard choose the name Naïs (line 77) for the nymph who recounts this story, forming in this way a link with Homer's Naiads.

Turning now to the Georgics, we find one of the nymphs, Clymene, telling the story of the adultery of Ares and Aphrodite, `aque Chao densos divum … amores'. The Ares and Aphrodite story was perhaps the most notorious of all the Homeric myths for those who, in the ancient world, considered Homer immoral. However, it was frequently allegorized, by Heraclitus the Rhetor amongst others, who sees Ares as representing discord and Aphrodite love, and their union as giving rise to Harmony.¹² A sixteenth-century reader would almost certainly have read the Georgics passage with some such explanation in mind. There would thus be a parallel here with the song of Virgil's nymph, Clymene, and Ronsard's Naïs, in that both nymphs are revealing a divine mystery.

In the same way, the ecphrasis devoted to Neptune's cloak takes up this theme of the equilibrium between the warring elements of the universe. These are symbolized by the silk and the gold thread used to weave the cloth (`D'une soie non commune, / Et d'un or en Cypre eleu …', lines 17-18). The gold here is clearly associated with Venus through the allusion to Cyprus, the island which is sacred to her, while, later on, the silk seems to represents the forces of discord:

D'une soie & noire, & perse,
Cent nuës entrelassoient,
Qui d'une longue traverse
Tout le serein effaçoient ….

(lines 45-48)

The way in which these elements are inextricably woven together in the cloak symbolizes the eternal equilibrium between discord and love in the universe, with the god Neptune representing the forces of concord, both by his association with the gold—`Neptune i fut peint lui méme / Brodé d'or …'—and by his calming of the warring elements—`qui du danger / Tirant le marinier bléme / L'eau en l'eau faisoit ranger.' The rainbow which completes the cloak (lines 73-76) is both a biblical symbol of God's covenant with man after the Flood (Genesis 9. 12-17), and the goddess Iris who, according to Dorat, both announced and explained the secrets of the gods.¹³

Finally, there is the remaining part of our frame, the tierce pose, to consider. Themis, the goddess personifying Justice, predicts as she does in Pindar, Isthmian Ode 7, the birth of Achilles to Peleus and Thetis, `Un qui donnera matiere / Aus Poëtes de chanter'. In celebrating the fact that `Ses vertus reluiront comme / Les étoiles par les cieus', Ronsard mentions three particular deeds (all recalled by Pindar): the wounding of Telephus, the killing of Memnon, the son of Aurora and Tithonus, and the killing of Hector. Despite the apparently negative images of death introduced at the end of this poem, we are no doubt meant to have in mind the immortality won by all those, including Achilles, who, through their deeds of valour, achieve eternal fame by being celebrated in poetry.

“La Defloration de Lede” is addressed to Cassandre, and takes as its subject a fable which had already proved popular with painters, notably Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo.¹⁴ The story may seem at first sight an odd one to dedicate to a mistress.¹⁵ However, thanks to Proclus and other ancient thinkers, educated sixteenth-century readers would have been prepared to look for a mystical meaning behind the most shocking myths.¹⁶

As in the case of the Cephalus poem, the structure of this ode can be seen to resemble that of the Fontainebleau decoration. The central picture is made up of the rape of Leda (lines 137-200, the tierce pose). An important ecphrasis, describing the scenes of Leda's flower-basket, precedes this (lines 73-136, the seconde pose), and fulfils a function similar to that of Neptune's cloak in “Le Ravissement de Cephale.” Lines 25-72 present us with the view of Jupiter, transformed into a swan through the effects of love, while in lines 201-32 the god prophesies the results of this love. The first 24 lines act as an introduction to the whole, and associate the poet with Jupiter. Our inquadratura is thus a little more complex than was the case with the Cephalus ode, while the specific parallel drawn between the poet and Jupiter adds a further dimension to the poem.

The central scene which depicts the rape of Leda is, indeed, quite brutal. Having caught sight of the swan, she outstrips her companions in her eagerness to reach him (lines 137-44), and they frolic together beside the water (lines 145-52). Ronsard plays with the ambiguous nature of the bird in this section. Despite his animal appearance, he acts like a human (`Et l'oiseau qui tresaut d'aise, / S'en aproche tout humain', lines 146-47), and yet he is, of course, a god. It is the swan's beautiful singing that seduces Leda, and causes her to feel the stirrings of passion in her innermost being:

Puis d'une gaie façon
Courbe au dos l'une & l'autre aile,
Et au bruit de sa chançon
Il apprivoise la belle:
La nicette en son giron
Reçoit les flammes segrettes,
Faisant tout à l'environ
Du Cigne un lit de fleurettes.

(lines 153-60)

The picture of the rape itself resembles very closely the Michelangelo painting, copied by Rosso Fiorentino for Fontainebleau. As in the painting, the swan's neck touches Leda's breasts (lines 165-66); his beak enters her mouth (lines 167-68), while he presses her body beneath his own (lines 171-72). Leda, both in the painting and the poem, is blushing (lines 177-78). After her deflowering, she immediately upbraids the bird, not so much, it seems, for committing the act itself as for being beneath her station:

D'où viens tu, qui as l'audace
D'aller ainsi violant
Les filles de noble race?

(lines 182-84)

The picture Ronsard presents is a highly graphic one: the white of the swan is contrasted with the green of the grass and the redness of Leda's lips and face, while the ground is strewn around with the plucked flowers, symbols of Leda's own lost virginity (cf. lines 191-92). However, the fable may be construed as containing a mystery, as Edgar Wind argued in connection with the Michelangelo painting; Ronsard perhaps intended something similar in the framing sections of the poem.¹⁷

In lines 25-64, having likened himself to Jupiter, Ronsard goes on to describe the god's metamorphosis into a swan. The link between swans and the arts of music and poetry was well established long before the sixteenth century. Boccaccio in the Genealogiae deorum gentilium somewhat prosaically explains Jupiter's sexual conquest of Leda in terms of his beautifully seductive voice:

The ancients may have invented the story of Jupiter's transformation into a swan because the swan sings sweetly. It is possible Jupiter too did this, and by the sweetness of his singing, as we have often seen occur, caused Leda to love and desire him.¹⁸

A rather more spiritual explanation may be found in Plato's Phaedrus, 251, where Socrates describes how, when someone sees an object of beauty, `the stump of each feather under the whole surface of the soul swells and strives to grow from its root: for in its original state the soul was feathered all over'. In this image of Jupiter turning into a swan, we can see the union of poetry and music on the one hand with the effects of the erotic frenzy on the other, where the whiteness of the swan's feathers only emphasizes the purity of his soul.

Iconographically, the swan had been linked with music before the Leda ode, for example in a painting by Filippino Lippi dating from c. 1500, and entitled Allegory of Music. In this composition, Erato, the muse of music, is looking at an Apollonian swan with which two Cupids are playing. This painting is said to have links with Leonardo's own version of the Leda story.¹⁹

Lines 41-48 describe the carcan and gold and enamel chain which the swan wears around its neck:

En son col meit un carcan,
Avec une cheine, où l'Œuvre
Du laborieus Vulcan
Merveillable se déqueuvre.
D'or en étoient les cerçeaus,
Piolés d'aimail ensemble,
A l'arc qui verse les eaus
Ce bel ouvrage ressemble.

Laumonier suggests, not altogether convincingly, that this is `soit pour faire croire à Léda qu'il est un cygne domestique et l'approcher plus aisément …, soit pour se parer par coquetterie et mieux séduire Léda' (L. II.70. n. 2). Although Ronsard uses the word `carcan' a number of times in his poetry, it is generally in the sense of necklace, and there is never any chain attached. Lines 47-48 compare the chain to the rainbow. Now, there would be little point in the chain if it were not intended to be held by Leda, thus establishing a direct, physical connection between her and the swan. It seems likely, therefore, that the chain is an allusion to the famous passage in Plato's Io concerning the magnet-like workings of inspiration:

This [magnet] not only attracts iron rings, but induces in the rings the power to do the same themselves in turn—namely to attract other rings, so that sometimes a long chain of iron rings is formed, suspended from one another, all having the force derived from the stone. Thus the Muse herself makes people possessed, and from these possessed persons there hangs a chain of others, possessed with the same enthusiasm.²⁰

(Io, 533)

Thus, the swan, representing the Apollonian art of music, would inspire Leda through the chain. A similar image was used in the triumphal entry of Henri II into Paris in 1549, where the first arch was surmounted by a statue of the Gallic Hercules, bearing the features of François I^er:

de sa bouche partoyent quatre chaisnettes, deux d'or, & deux d'argent, qui s'alloyent attacher aux oreilles des personnages dessus nommez: mais elles estoyent si treslaches, que chacun les pouuoit iuger ne seruir de contraincte: ains qu'ils estoyent voluntairement tirez par l'eloquence du nouuel Hercules, lequel a faict fleurir en ce Royaume les langues Hebraique, Grecque, Latine, & autres, beaucoup plus qu'elles n'ont iamais faict par le passé.²¹

An even closer iconographic parallel exists between this stanza and the Lippi Allegory of Music, already mentioned. In the painting, the swan is indeed wearing a `carcan' attached to which is a curious ribbon with metal circles, held at one end by the Muse Erato, at the other by one of the putti. A sprig of laurel passes through the carcan, emphasizing the Apollonian connections. But what of the rainbow comparison in Ronsard? Iris, called periphrastically `l'arc qui verse les eaus' (cf. Horace, Ars poetica 18, `pluvius arcus'), was, as we have already noted, the female messenger of the gods, and acted as psychopomp. As such, she represents another link between heaven and earth, like the divine chain of the Muses itself.

The opening four lines of the next stanza (lines 49-52), describing the gold shining on the white feathers, might seem gratuitously decorative at first sight:

L'or sus la plume reluit
D'une semblable lumiere,
Que le clair œil de la nuit
Desus la nege premiere.

The gold here is compared to the moon (`le clair œil de la nuit'), the plumage to freshly-fallen snow (`la nege premiere'). The image is, visually, an extremely effective one, yet there is something wrong. Traditionally, it is the sun that is described in terms of gold, the moon in terms of silver; feathers, which are light and, as we have seen, signify the soul's ascent heavenwards, are here compared to snow, which is associated with coldness and downward movement towards the earth. What we have in this image, then, is a sacred marriage between sun and moon, gold and silver, heaven and earth, resulting in the portrayal of a perfect union between divine and mortal.

Jupiter's descent (lines 53-56) is then likened to that of an eagle falling upon a snake which is sloughing off its old skin (lines 57-60). Laumonier (L. II 71. n. I) points to the literary sources of eagles falling on snakes (Ovid, Metamorphoses IV. 714-15) and snakes casting off their skins (Virgil, Aeneid II. 471-73 = Georgics III. 437-39); but he does not comment on the combination and consequent significance of these separate images. The eagle (called in the Ovid passage `Iovis praepes') clearly represents Jupiter, the snake Leda.²² Traditionally, the image of the eagle snatching up the serpent is a symbol of the spiritual victory of man's higher nature over his lower nature, of the union of spirit and matter. The snake sloughing off its skin, on the other hand, is a symbol of eternal youth, rejuvenation, resurrection of the soul, foreshadowing what Leda is about to gain as a result of Jupiter's attentions. The stanza, and this section, ends with the swan arriving by Leda's side as she plays at the water's edge.

What is prefigured in this section, with its multiplicity of images, is borne out in the quatrième pose by Jupiter's words to Leda. Revealing his true identity, the god tells her that, because of his love, she is becoming part of an illustrious family: `Tu seras incontinant / La belle seur de Neptune.'

The poem ends with two stanzas foretelling the outcome of the affair: Leda will produce two eggs, one containing Castor and Pollux, the other Helen, `La beauté au ciel choisie'. Unlike other versions of the myth where Helen is joined by Clytemnestra, Ronsard chooses only to concentrate on the positive results of this story. The Dioscuri, tutelary gods who also act as psychopomps, were considered to be symbols of heavenly concord. Thus, harmony is one of the results of Jupiter's love for a mortal. The other result is heavenly beauty, in the shape of Helen.²³

In his commentary on the Symposium, Ficino speaks of the workings of love. For him, beauty, harmony, and good are all synonymous. Earthly beauty is derived from a ray of light from the divine Sun, which creates an image of God in a beautiful mortal. There is a circular process when someone falls in love, a converting triad. Beauty leads to Love, which leads to a transcendent Pleasure, which in turn leads back to heavenly Beauty:

[It is] a circle … inasmuch as it begins in God and attracts to Him, it is Beauty; inasmuch as, going across into the world, it captivates the world, we call it Love; and inasmuch as it returns to its source and with Him joins its labours, then we call it Pleasure. In this way, Love begins in Beauty and ends in Pleasure.²⁴

This is precisely what happens in the Leda myth as recounted by Ronsard, where Leda's god-given beauty leads to the love of Jupiter, which in turn leads to divine pleasure, of which the result is beauty and harmony. Thus, the mystery of the central picture of the rape is to some extent explained by the narrative framework.

But what of the seconde pose devoted to the flower-basket and the list of flowers which Leda and her companions were collecting? Ronsard's immediate model is Moschus who, in his poem on the rape of Europa, includes a description of her flower-basket (Moschus 2. 37-62) and the scenes depicted on it. These themes concern Io, who had been changed into a heifer by Zeus, thus providing a neat bovine parallel to the events which form the main narrative of the poem, where Zeus changes himself into a bull.

Lines 65-72 in Ronsard's poem introduce Leda collecting flowers with her companions, and include a Horatian allusion to Odes III. 27. 29, as Laumonier indicates (L. II. 71. n. 3). Lines 73-96 describe a scene on the basket concerning the orbit of the sun. In a scene which resembles the description of Dawn in the Cephalus ode (L. II. 138. 97-108), Aurora is depicted, amidst golden clouds, strewing flowers across the sky, her unbound hair blown by the nostrils of the horses drawing the chariot of the Sun, which is hard on her heels.²⁵ As the sun orbits the earth, the muscles of the horses can be seen to stand out and `leur puissance indontée / Se lasse sous les travaux / De la pénible montée' (lines 86-88). In the evening, the sun sinks into the sea, `Jusqu'au fond de ce grand ventre'.

As Laumonier points out (L. II. 72. n. I), the description of the sun's orbit owes much to Ovid, Metamorphoses II. 63 et'seq.:

ardua prima via est et qua vix mane recentes
enituntur equi; medio est altissima caelo,
unde mare et terras ipsi mihi saepe videre
fit timor et pavida trepidat formidine pectus;
ultima prona via est et eget moderamine certo:
tunc etiam quae me subiectis excipit undis,
ne ferar in praeceps, Tethys solet ipsa vereri.

(The first part of the course is steep, and here the horses, fresh as they are in the early morning, can hardly make their way. In mid heaven it is extremely high, and to look down from there at the sea and land often causes even me to be afraid, and my heart quakes with trembling dread. The last part of the course is downhill and wants an assured control. Then even Tethys herself, who welcomes me in her waters below, fears that I may be carried down headlong.)

In this passage, we have the words of Apollo to his son Phaethon, describing the dangers of the course of the sun's chariot. As Panofsky points out, `there is only one allegorical explanation of the myth of Phaethon: the fate of the daring mortal who had tried to defy human limitations was held to symbolize the fate of every temerarius, presumptuous enough to overstep the bounds of his allotted “state and situation”'.²⁶ However, the opposite is true of Apollo's description of his own journey, as well as of Ronsard's description, where the sun's course is, literally, a golden mean. However, Ronsard's use of the myth may well have a more specifically erotic significance.

In a famous passage, Socrates speaks, again in the Phaedrus, 247, of the soul's being like a charioteer drawn by two horses. When an individual falls in love with a beautiful person, the charioteer steers his course, being pulled towards vice by one horse, towards virtue by the other. The perfect course is that of the gods. Ronsard refers explicitly to the soul as charioteer, and to the ability of love to lead to knowledge, in Les Amours of 1552; thus, for example, L. IV. 24. 9-14:

Le cheval noir qui ma Royne conduit
Par le sentier où ma Chair la seduit,
A tant erré d'une vaine traverse,
Que j'ay grand peur, (si le blanc ne contraint
Sa course vague, & ses pas ne refraint
Dessoubz le joug) que ma raison ne verse.

and also:

Par ce doulx mal j'adoray la beaulté,
Qui me liant d'une humble cruaulté
Me desnoua les liens d'ignorance.
Par luy me vint ce vertueux penser,
Qui jusqu'au ciel fit mon cuœur eslancer,
Aillé de foy, d'amour & d'esperance.

(L. IV. 140-41. 9-14)

Thus, celestial love leads to knowledge. The mention of Aurora at the beginning of this description reinforces the idea. Ronsard emphasizes the arduous nature of the sun's course (lines 85-88) because the path of virtuous love is also hard. But the sun is rewarded when it returns to the sea, for it is commonly considered to be returning to its mistress Tethys (cf. Scève, Délie II).

By contrast, the descriptions in the remaining three stanzas present the other side of the coin, as we are shown here images of earthly love. The first one is the least obvious (lines 97-104). A shepherd sees a wolf approaching his sheep but is more intent on watching a snail climbing up a lily. Here, we have a symbol of purity and chastity, for lilies sprang up from the milk of Hera and are the attribute of Hera/Juno and Diana, as well as of the Virgin Mary. The snail, however, represents lust, both because of its association with mud (limax/limus) and because it was believed to be the only animal of its species to copulate.²⁷ Thus, the shepherd, intent on watching this scene of chastity outraged, is about to be punished by the loss of his sheep.

The picture of the satyrs in the next stanza (lines 105-12) is clearer. Satyrs are traditional symbols of lechery and of the lower instincts in general, for the lower halves of their bodies consist of the hind quarters of a goat. In `folatrant', both satyrs lose what they were squabbling over, the milk, and hence, like the shepherd, are punished for their base instincts. Perhaps too there is an allusion to seminal fluid in the reference to the spilling of the milk, since satyrs are not generally associated with dairy products. The two fighting rams of the next stanza (lines 113-16) are yet another symbol of virility and procreation in a stanza which ends with an allusion to Leda's loss of virginity.

Thus, the details of the description of the basket appear to have unity of theme, dealing with sacred and earthly love. They echo and reinforce the main theme of the painting, and indeed, help to throw light on it, while at the same time having a decorative function. The final two stanzas of the seconde pose present what had become in the classical world quite a common prelude to a scene of abduction: a picture of Leda with her companions picking flowers (cf. Ovid, Fasti VI. 425-44; Moschus, 2; and Claudian, De raptu Proserpinae II. 118-36). As we have seen, this too can be read allegorically: the plucking of flowers prefigures Leda's loss of virginity (unlike other accounts of the myth where Leda was already married to Tyndareus): compare, for example, Catullus, 62. 39-47 for a beautiful working of this theme, and lines 191-92 of this poem. Ronsard chooses a number of flowers with mythological connections. Those in lines 121-28, the narcissus, the hyacinth (`la lettre teinte au sang / Du Grec marri pour les armes'), and the heliotrope (or Clytie) all have amorous connotations, whether they be of self-love, homosexual love, or heterosexual love. The scarlet carnation also, of course, is a traditional symbol of passionate love.

Ronsard seems to have hesitated a great deal over the next stanza and to have been somewhat dissatisfied with his various versions. In 1587, `bascinets' (line 131) becomes `Coquerets'; but there is more doubt about the last three lines:

1550
(Jettant sa charge odorante
Et la rouge fueille aussi
De l'immortel Amaranthe.)
1555-60
(Jettant des fleurs l'odorante
Moisson, & la fueille aussi
De l'immortel Amaranthe.)
1567-84
(Laissant la rose odorente
Et la belle fueille aussy
De l'immortel Amaranthe.)
1587
De son Destin ignorante:
De tant de fleurs que voicy
Laisson la proye odorante.

Should we see anything allegorical in Leda's casting aside her flowers (or her rose) along with her amarant leaves (a symbol of immortality)? If our reading of the poem has been correct, she is far from losing a chance of immortality. Perhaps this is the reason why Ronsard attenuated the early `Jettant' by replacing it with `Laissant', and then finally abandoned any reference to leaving these plants behind.

Whatever the significance of individual details, Ronsard's general message is clear: inspired by the love of beauty, poetry and music themselves produce harmony and beauty. It is but a short step to relate this to the poet himself, and Ronsard had done so in the opening lines of the ode (1-24). Through an allusion to Horace, Ronsard compares himself to Orpheus (lines 9-10):

Mon luc qui des bois oiants
Souloit alleger les peines

compare Odes I. 12. 9-12:

arte materna rapidos morantem
fluminum lapsus celerisque ventos,
blandum et auritas fidibus canoris
ducere quercus.

(through his mother's skill delaying the swift flowing of rivers and the rapid winds, persuasive too to draw after him with his harmonious strings the listening oaks.)

There is also an allusion to Orpheus in lines 13-16:

Et le souleil ne peut voir
Soit quand le jour il apporte,
Ou quand il se couche au soir
Une autre douleur plus forte.

As Laumonier indicates (L. II. 68. n. 3), Ronsard has in mind here Virgil, Georgics IV. 465-66: `te, dulcis coniunx, te solo in litore secum, / te veniente die, te decedente canebat' (`all alone on the lonely shore, he would sing of you, sweet wife, of you at the dawning of the day, of you at its setting'). We have already seen that Ronsard had this section of the Georgics in mind in the Cephalus ode.

Ronsard/Orpheus soon becomes Ronsard/Jupiter, however, in lines 25-32:

Juppiter époinçonné
De telle amoureuse rage,
A le ciel abandonné,
Son tonnerre, & son orage,
Car l'Œil qui son cueur étraint
Comme étraints ores nous sommes,
Ce grand seigneur a contraint
De tenter l'amour des hommes.

If, as we have already said seems likely, “La Defloration de Lede” and “Le Ravissement de Cephale” are companion pieces, what is the relationship between them? Clearly, like a diptych, they present different aspects of the same basic theme, the ravishment of a mortal by an immortal. On a more detailed level, there are further connections and parallels. Aurore, the protagonist of the Cephalus ode, figures in the flower-basket ecphrasis of the Leda poem; two descriptions of works of art, the swan's gold chain and Neptune's robe, conclude with an allusion to the rainbow; the sea, which on the flower-basket is presented with few details, takes up a good part of the description of Neptune's robe; Narcissus appears obliquely in both poems; and the Trojan war provides the background for the prophecies of both Jupiter and Themis. Similarly, both the ravished mortals fall into a deathlike swoon:

Ses membres tombent peu forts,
Et dedans la mort voisine
Ses yeus ja nouoient ….

(L. II. 78. 197-99)

Ainsi disant il se pasme
Sur le cors qui trépassoit.

(L. II. 140. 133-34)

Both, however, are promised immortality.

It seems likely, therefore, that Ronsard is exploring various aspects of the experience of love and its inspirational properties in the two poems. In the Leda ode, the poet is represented as Jupiter, who through his plumage and swan's appearance is in turn associated with poetry. Inspired by the beauty of Leda/Cassandre, his love for her can ultimately produce the beauty and harmony of poetry, which will thus immortalize her. In the Cephalus ode, we see the same experience from a slightly different angle. This time, the mortal and rational Ronsard/Cephalus needs the divine inspiration of Cassandre/Aurore in order to achieve the rapture (ravissement) necessary to produce truly inspired poetry.

A number of conclusions can be drawn from this examination of the two odes. In the first place, we can see the importance of the individual details which go to make up the overall picture that Ronsard is creating. Apparently irrelevant items of decoration can have a symbolic value, acting as a parallel or a contrast to the main theme, or they can evoke in a concise form other mythological events. Secondly, we have seen that the structure of individual narrative poems, with a central theme surrounded by other, connected themes, builds up a picture which is complex but essentially unified. And finally, the connections between the two odes on both the thematic and the decorative level exemplify the way in which a consideration of the overall architecture of much of Ronsard's poetry can produce something more than simply the sum of the individual parts.²⁸

To what extent would Ronsard's readers have appreciated the allegorical significance and thematic parallels of these two poems? Certainly, by placing them in different books of Odes even when they were first published, the poet is not going out of his way to draw attention to their similarities. And while some of the imagery would have been relatively accessible through its popularization in contemporary poetry and its use in the visual arts (Leda as the immortalized human soul, the swan as a symbol of music and poetry), other allusions would depend far more on the reader's ability to recognize specific allusions to classical texts, and to be aware of their allegorical meaning. The discovery of a unifying significance in a work of art may be an intellectually satisfying experience, but it is just one of a number of pleasures offered by Ronsard's poetry, It may well be, as Margaret McGowan has argued was the case with Renaissance poetry and music, that the harmony of the work itself was meant to create instinctively a corresponding sense of harmony in the reader.²⁹ And clearly, the poetry is there to be enjoyed on a purely aesthetic level. As with the frescoes of the Galerie François I^er, the sensuous beauty, wit, and harmony of Ronsard's work would have been appreciated by many more readers than those who would have grasped the intricacies of its thematic structure and allegorical significance.

Notes

1. References to Ronsard's works are to the (Œuvres complètes, edited by Paul Laumonier, and revised and completed by Isidore Silver and Raymond Lebègue, 20 vols (Paris, Hachette, Droz, Didier, 1914-75), abbreviated as L., and followed by volume number, page number, and line number. All references to Laumonier's commentary on the text are taken from his notes and will be indicated by bracketed page and note numbers.

2. Ovid also recounts or alludes to the story in the Ars amatoria III. 686-746, and Amores I. 13, 39-40.

3. The term vita mea, to refer to a poet's beloved, was used by Propertius (e.g. I. 2. I), but subsequently became very popular with neo-Latin poets.

4. Cesare Ripa, Iconologia (Padua, P. P. Tozzi, 1611), p. 36 (also available in a facsimile edition (New York and London, Garland Publishing, Inc., 1976)). The editio princeps was published in Rome in 1593.

5. Ann Moss, Poetry and Fable: Studies in Mythological Narrative in Sixteenth-Century France (Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 126. The author considers the ode at length, pp. 125-32. See too her analysis of the Leda ode in `New Myths for Old?', in Ronsard in Cambridge: Proceedings of the Cambridge Ronsard Colloquium, 10-12 April 1985, ed. by Philip Ford and Gillian Jondorf (Cambridge French Colloquia, 1986), pp. 55-66, (pp. 57-60).

6. Metamorphoses III. 425.

7. See especially Ficino's commentary on the Symposium, 2.3. For a modern edition of the work, see Marsilio Ficino's Commentary on Plato's `Symposium', edited by Sears Reynolds Jayne, University of Missouri Studies, 19 (Columbia, University of Missouri, 1944).

8. Another, this time euhemeristic, explanation of the myth is offered by Heraclitus the Rhetor, commenting on the loves of Aurora and Orion (Odyssey v. 121). He explains the abduction as follows: `When a young man of both noble birth and outstanding beauty died, they euphemistically called the early morning funeral cortège the abduction of Hemera [Day or Dawn], as if he had not died, but been snatched up through an amorous yearning.' See Allégories d'Homère, edited by Félix Buffière (Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1962), 68, 5-6.

9. See Mythologiae, sive explicationis fabularum libri decem, first published in 1551. This explanation, which is probably based on Ovid, Fasti VI. 479, is cited from the 1584 edition of the Mythologiae, published in Frankfurt, f.241^r.

10. The translation is that of S. H. Butcher and A. Lang, The Odyssey of Homer (London, Macmillan, 1879), p. 210.

11. On the Cave of the Nymphs, see Félix Buffière, Les Mythes d'Homère et la pensée grecque (Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1956), pp. 419-57 and appendix, and my articles `Conrad Gesner et le fabuleux manteau', Bibliothèque d'Humanisme et Renaissance, 47 (1985), 305-20, and `Ronsard and Homeric Allegory', in Ronsard in Cambridge, pp. 40-54. The text itself may be consulted in The Cave of the Nymphs in the Odyssey: A Revised Text with Translation, Arethusa Monographs, I (Buffalo, NY, Arethusa, 1969), whose translation is used here.

12. See Buffière edition of Heraclitus, ch. 69. The subject of the adultery of Mars and Venus was a very popular one with Renaissance artists; see, for example, Botticelli's treatment in the National Gallery, London.

13. On Iris, see my article `Conrad Gesner et le fabuleux manteau', p. 316.

14. Leonardo's version, now surviving only in copies, hung in the palace of Fontainebleau (see Carlo Pedretti, Leonardo: A Study in Chronology and Style (Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1973), p. 97), as did a copy of Michelangelo's version, probably executed by Rosso Fiorentino, which is now in the National Gallery, London (see Cecil Gould, National Gallery Catalogues: The Sixteenth-Century Italian Schools (London, The National Gallery, 1975), pp. 150-52).

15. Compare the remarks of Michel Dassonville, Ronsard: Étude historique et littéraire, I. Les Enfances Ronsard (1536-1545) (Geneva, Droz, 1968), p. 244.

16. See my paper `Ronsard and Homeric Allegory', p. 53.

17. See Edgar Wind, Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance, revised edition (Oxford University Press, 1980), pp. 152-70.

18. Genealogie deorum gentilium libri, edited by Vincenzo Romano, 2 vols (Bari, Gius. Laterza & figli, 1951), p. 547.

19. See Wind, op. cit., and K. B. Neilson, Filippino Lippi (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1938), pp. 176 sq. This connection is disputed, however, by E. Panofsky, Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art (New York-San Francisco-London, Harper & Row, 1972), p. 203, n. 3. The painting is in the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum, Berlin.

20. The translation is that of D. A. Russell, from Ancient Literary Criticism: The Principal Texts, in New Translations, edited by D. A. Russell and M. Winterbottom (Oxford University Press, 1972), p. 43.

21. See The Entry of Henri II into Paris 16 June 1549, edited by I. D. McFarlane (Binghamton, NY, Center for Medieval & Early Renaissance Studies, 1982), ff. 3^r-4^r.

22. On snake symbolism, see Jane M. Drake-Brockman, `Scève, the Snake and the Herb', FS, XXXIII (1979), 129-36, (p. 132). In the `Ode sur les miseres des hommes' (L. v. 192-96), Ronsard alludes to the eternal youth of the snake in a section (lines 57-60) that recalls the Jeunesse perdue fresco in the Galerie François I^er at Fontainebleau: `Ah, que maudite soit l'Anesse / Qui, las! pour sa soif etancher / Au serpent donna la jeunesse / Que garder on devoit tant cher.'

23. For a discussion of the significance in Ronsard of Castor and Pollux, see my article `Ronsard et l'emploi de l'allégorie dans Le Second Livre des Hymnes', Bibliothèque d'Humanisme et Renaissance, 48 (1981), 89-106, (pp. 99-104).

24. See Ficino, ed. cit., 2.2 (pp. 43 and 134).

25. Although Aurora is frequently spoken of by the ancients in terms of flowers to indicate her colour (rosea, crocea), she is never depicted as strewing flowers across the sky. However, both Ripa, as we have already seen, and Cartari portray her in this way, an obvious iconographic extension of the classical epithets, which in turn can be exploited in poetry.

26. Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance (New York—San Francisco—London, Harper & Row, 1972), p. 219.

27. See Varro, De lingua latina 7. 64 (`limax ab limo, quod ibi vivit'), and Aristotle, Generation of Animals 762.a.31. Ronsard used similar images of negligence being punished elsewhere, for example in the Bergerie of 1564 (L. XIII. 89. 259-70).

28. Cf. Doranne Fenoaltea, Du palais au jardin: L'Architecture des Odes de Ronsard, Travaux d'Humanisme et Renaissance, 241 (Geneva, Droz, 1990).

29. See Margaret M. McGowan, Ideal Forms in the Age of Ronsard (Berkeley—Los Angeles—London, University of California Press, 1985), pp. 230-31.