SOURCE: Ronsard's `Hymnes': A Literary and Iconographical Study. Tempe, Ariz.: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1997, 337 p.

[In the following excerpt, Ford observes the sources, themes, and stylistic developments of Ronsard's early hymns.]

Les Hymnes sont des Grecs invention premiere.

(Ronsard, L. XVIII. 263. 1)

From our general discussion of iconographical aspects of Ronsard's poetry, it is clear that the prevailing philosophy of Neo-Platonism in humanist and artistic circles provided a strong unifying influence between the visual arts and poetry. It had a profound effect not only on the choice of subject, use of allegory, and interpretation of works of art, but also on their harmonious structure. Art aimed to please, move, and teach in line with the intentions of classical rhetoric, but perhaps more importantly, the harmony of art, albeit an imperfect copy of celestial harmony, could introduce peace and order into the frequently turbulent affairs of men.

Not all art, of course, was capable of achieving this end … In choosing to center this study on Ronsard's Hymnes, I was influenced by a number of considerations. Because these compositions are so varied in form and content, they offer a wide range of poetry, all written in the grand style, but spanning the whole of Ronsard's poetic career. By their very nature, they are likely to fall into the category of inspired poetry, and to embody some form of transcendent meaning. Their arrangement and rearrangement in successive editions of Ronsard's work offer evidence of the poet's ideas about dispositio. Finally, from the poetic point of view, they provide examples of his most successful poetry in the grand style. Dedicated usually to the influential and wealthy, they are in Ronsard's mind more abiding monuments than the decorated palaces to which many patrons devote their riches. This rivalry with the plastic arts leads Ronsard to attempt to produce his own poetic equivalents: temples, palaces, paintings and tapestries, gold and silver ware, etc.

With regard to inventio [in the Hymnes], we shall be concerned in general terms with the Neo-Platonic and mystic elements which were so important in grand poetry in the Renaissance. We shall consider the ways in which certain themes were treated by Ronsard, looking in particular at his exploitation of the pictorial imagery which helps to form his vision of the world. In investigating the structure of individual poems and their place in entire editions of Ronsard's works, we shall have regard to the organizational principles at work, and the ways in which structure, as in a decorated building or gallery, can be an aid to hermeneutics by establishing parallels and clarifying meaning. In the area of style, we shall be particularly interested in the extent to which Ronsard may have been influenced by Mannerism, and how far he diverged from some of its fundamental principles.

Before looking at Ronsard's early hymns, however, it will be useful to consider the literary antecedents on which he modelled his own poems, in order to determine what shaped his own approach to the genre. A number of classical models were at his disposal, of which the most important are the Homeric hymns, the hymns of Callimachus, and the Orphic hymns.¹ In his study and views of these collections, he would have been largely dependent on the erudition of humanist acquaintances, and particularly, no doubt, of his friend and mentor, Jean Dorat. For if by the middle of the sixteenth century there was no lack of annotated editions of Latin authors, this situation was very far from obtaining in the case of Greek literature. Generally, printers confined themselves to reproducing the text of a Greek writer, sometimes accompanied by the relevant scholia and, as the century progressed, by a Latin translation.² It is extremely rare to find introductory notes or a commentary even in the case of such an important poet as Homer, although to make up for this deficiency, editors sometimes included the lives or comments of ancient writers (in the case of Homer, for example, the lives attributed to Plutarch, Herodotus, and Dio Chrysostom, all contained in the 1504 Aldine edition of Homer). However, even this is rare, and the reader is usually presented only with the bare Greek text.

On the whole, humanists were concerned with producing as accurate a text as possible, and Dorat must have devoted much of his teaching to philological questions. This emerges, for example, in the verses sent by Dorat requesting a manuscript of the Homeric hymns:³

… fac Homeri
Hymnorum mihi codicem vetustum
Paulum commodites, sed ante primam
Horam, namque hodie poema graecum
Illud putre situque et ulcerosum
Mendis aggrediar meo labore;

(Have the ancient manuscript of Homer's Hymns sent to me shortly, but before the first hour, for today I shall tackle that Greek poem which is decaying with mould and disfigured with errors.)

However, as is apparent in the manuscript notes of Dorat's lectures on Homer, he was also interested in the allegorical meaning of the hymns.⁴

Praeterea aduertendum est quomodo quis se accingere debeat lectioni poetarum. Nam si fabulas meras legit nullam interpretationem uel moralem uel physicam ex his excerpens neque abstrusum sensum enucleet non minus profecto ineptus quam ille qui apud Aesopum murem cum Leone fabulantem solum legit interpretationem moralem negligit.

(Besides, we should point out how one ought to prepare to read the poets. For if one reads them as mere fables, without deriving any allegorical interpretation, be it moral or physical, or without laying open their hidden meaning, one is certainly no less foolish than someone who in Aesop only reads through the story of the mouse speaking to the lion, and neglects the moral interpretation.)

Ronsard was acquainted with all three of the Greek sources we have mentioned when he came to write his hymns, although he does not appear to have relied exclusively on any particular group in determining his own conception of the genre. Florent Chrestien, in a polemical poem concerning Ronsard, wrote:

D'Aurat t'a expliqué quelques livres d'Homere,
Quelques hymnes d'Orphee, ou bien de Callimach,
Et pource incontinent tu fais de l'Antimach,
Tu enfles ton gosier, pensant estre en la France
Seul à qui Apollon a vendu sa science.(5)

(Dorat explained to you a few books of Homer, a few hymns of Orpheus or Callimachus, and as a result you immediately write bombastic poetry like Antimachus; you puff out your throat, thinking you are alone in France to whom Apollo has sold his knowledge.)

Since the three sources represent very different ways of approaching the genre, it will be useful to consider briefly their differences.

In the collection of the Homeric hymns known to the sixteenth century, the fragmentary first hymn to Dionysus and the important hymn to Demeter were both missing, while the collection ended with the epigram ειs ξενουs. The hymns are all devoted to divinities, are written in hexameters, and make use of the Homeric epic dialect, but apart from this, they extend in range from the three-line hymn 13 to December to the 580-line hymn to Hermes (hymn 4). The essential elements consist of an exordium (mentioning the particular qualities of the divinity) and a farewell formula, often encompassing a prayer. The longer hymns also contain a central narrative section of varying length, and it is possible that the shorter hymns which lack this are merely extracts, an opinion held by at least one editor of the hymns, F. Càssola.⁶

The Callimachean hymn is largely modelled on the Homeric, although it does present certain differences. While the poems are generally written in the epic language associated with Homer, two of the six hymns (5 and 6) are in the Doric dialect, and hymn 5 is in elegiac couplets and not hexameters. Moreover, gods are not invariably the dedicatees of the hymns (as is the case in hymn 4 to Delos and hymn 5 on the bath of Pallas). In structure, they broadly follow the Homeric model, although they tend to dispense with the formal and formulaic nature of the latter. While the Homeric hymn generally begins with a formal announcement of the subject of the poem (“I shall recall and not forget Apollo …” “Muse, sing of Hermes,” etc.), Callimachus often chooses a more dramatic opening, especially, for example, in the second hymn, to Apollo:

How Apollo's laurel is shaking! how the whole temple is shaking! Be off, be off, all you profane. Already Phoebus has touched with his divine foot the door's threshold.

The tone of Callimachus' hymns also differs considerably from that of his model, being more deliberately witty, and making a great display of recondite details concerning the gods, coupled with a tongue-in-cheek, deliberative treatment of popularly-held beliefs. Thus, in a section which Ronsard would imitate in his Hinne de Bacus (L. VI. 177. 7-16), he hesitates in the first hymn between Mount Ida and Arcadia as Zeus's birthplace:

… which of the two, father, was lying? “The Cretans were alway liars.” The Cretans even erected a tomb for you, lord; you who cannot die, who are eternal.

(1. 7-9)

Moreover, Callimachus, in his Hellenistic erudition, piles up epithets and brief allusions to events connected with the divinity's life.

There is none of Callimachus' witty badinage in the third important group of hymns, traditionally attributed to Orpheus. Their time and place of composition have long intrigued scholars, but in his edition, Quandt agrees with Wilamowitz in attributing them to a single poet “not before the end of the second century ad, but before Nonnus [the fifth-century author of the Dionysiaca].”⁷ As well as being addressed to divinities, these hymns are also dedicated to deified natural phenomena such as the Stars (7), the Sea (22), Death (87), Victory (33), Night (3), Fortune (72), and Nature (10). Generally speaking, they consist of an opening in which the subject is addressed in the first line. This is followed by a list, of varying length, of epithets, adjectival phrases, and relative clauses defining the divinity in all its various manifestations, and the hymn usually ends with a prayer. It is not infrequent for the same, at times apparently non-transferable epithets, to be attributed to different deities, and for a single deity to be given apparently contradictory properties. There is no narrative content in these hymns which, like most of the others we have considered, are written in hexameters in the Homeric dialect.

In his lectures on Homer, Dorat discusses the three collections as well as the Odes of Pindar. He is in no doubt that the Homeric hymns were written by Homer:

Inscribuntur autem Homero. nonnulli tamen adhuc dubitant sitne germanum et legitimum opus illius: siquidem in isto opere quaedam uocabula singularia id est semel usurpata reperiuntur quae in alijs operibus minime usurpantur. Sed haec obiectio leuis est. sic Poetarum propria sunt quaedam uocabula ut apud Ouid. camella in fastis et apud Virgil. in culice et moreto et epigrammatis quae nusquam alijs in operibus inueniuntur.

(fol. 19^r)

(Now, they are attributed to Homer. Nevertheless, some people are still in doubt as to whether this is a genuine, authentic work of his, since there are to be found in it a number of unique words, that is hapax legomena, which are not at all used in his other works. But this is an unimportant objection. Thus, some words are particular to poets, such as camella [“bowl”] in Ovid's Fasti, and in Virgil's Culex, Moretum, and Epigrams, which are not to be found elsewhere in their works.)

From the literary point of view, he is quite clear in his mind that the Homeric hymns are superior in quality, even to the works of Pindar, which both he and Ronsard admired:

Quemadmodum uero inter tragicos tres palmam obtinere dicuntur Aeschylus augustus et magniloquens atque archaeus id est antiquus tum Euripides popularis forensis familiarior 3.us Sophocles intermedius unde duobus reliquis perfectior est habitus. Nam ut ait Gallus: “In medijs rebus gratia maior inest.” Ita Homerus medium stylum tenuit inter Callimachum et Pindarum et proinde utrique praeponitur.

(fol. 19^v)

(But just as amongst the tragic poets three are said to receive the victor's palm: Aeschylus, majestic, sublime, and “archaios” or ancient; then Euripides, popular, persuasive, more familiar; and thirdly Sophocles, between the other two, so that he was considered more perfect; for as Gallus says: “There is greater enjoyment in the golden mean”; in the same way, Homer maintained an intermediate style between Callimachus and Pindar, and consequently he outdoes both of them.)

Thus, these three collections of hymns represent very different types of poem. The Romans handed down little to the Renaissance in the way of hymns, apart from the invocations of Lucretius to Venus and the Earth (1. 1-43); the Catullan hymn to Diana (34); the Horatian Carmen saeculare and odes such as 1. 10 to Mercury, 1. 21 to Diana and Apollo, and 1. 35 to Fortune; Virgil's eulogy to Italy (Georgics 2. 136-76); and a number of Claudian's compositions. However, it is the neo-Latin poet Marullus who seems to have exercised the most influence, after the Greeks, on Ronsard's concept of the hymn.

Marullus' Hymni naturales are much more varied in intention, tone, and meter than any of the previous collections of hymns.⁸ Meters range from the hexameter (1. 1 and 5, 3. 1, and 4. 5), through the lyric meters, to the unusual galliambic meter (in 1. 6, the hymn to Bacchus), while the openings vary between direct invocations to the gods (e.g., “Te te, suprema maximi proles Iovis, / Innupta Pallas, invoco,” 1. 2) and more meditative or dramatic beginnings, inspired by Callimachus (“Quis novus hic animis furor incidit? unde repente / Mens fremit horrentique sonant praecordia motu?,” 3. 1).

Marullus is far more eclectic with regard to his sources than many previous critics have indicated. Ivo Bruns mentions the influence of Lucretius on the style, if not the philosophical content of the hymns, some of which he rightly claims are inspired by Neo-Platonism, and more specifically the works of Proclus.⁹ Ciceri also sees Lucretian influences as well as Ovidian elements,¹⁰ while Sainati, acknowledging the importance of Neo-Platonism on the philosophical content of the hymns, sees stylistic borrowings ranging from the Homeric hymns and Callimachus to Lucretius, Catullus, and Claudian.¹¹ These scholars also see the influence of Italian poets like Pontano, Sannazzaro, and thinkers such as Pico della Mirandola in Marullus' hymns, but none of them refers to the collection of the Orphic hymns and its influence on both the style and content of many of Marullus' poems. This is not the place to produce a detailed comparison of the hymns of Orpheus and Marullus, but a few indications of the areas where this influence is most important will be useful in characterizing Marullus' hymns, and hence the general concept of the hymn form which Ronsard ultimately took over.

In the first place, it is predominantly to the Orphic hymns that the Renaissance looked for models for the hymn of nature, the hymnus naturalis. The Homeric hymns had sung of deities or deified heroes, as had the hymns of Callimachus for the most part. The Orphic hymns constituted the only important collection handed down to the Renaissance of poems dedicated to natural phenomena: the Heavens, the Stars, the Sun, the Aether, etc., and of Marullus' hymns, only 1. 5, the Hymnus Aeternitati, does not have a corresponding hymn in the Orphic collection. Of course, Marullus does not simply reproduce the Orphic hymn in Latin guise: his poems are generally longer and stylistically more varied. However, he does incorporate aspects of the Orphic hymns into his own compositions: the list of epithets and short descriptions attributed to the divinity being celebrated, the direct address at the start of the hymn, the prayer at the end, and the apparent inconsistency of attributing unique characteristics to more than one deity, or mutually exclusive properties to the same deity.

Such were the models available to Ronsard. In addition, he would have had at his disposal the theoretical writings of Menander the Rhetor in the Pερι επιδεικτικων. It was a section of this work (On Hymns to the Gods) which provided J. C. Scaliger with the material for his section on hymns in the Poetices libri septem of 1561.¹² Menander divides hymns into nine categories: invocatory hymns; valedictory hymns; hymns of nature; mythical hymns; genealogical hymns; fictitious hymns; votive hymns; deprecatory hymns; and, inevitably, mixed hymns, combining different aspects of the other categories. Menander had many more examples of hymns from a variety of authors than have survived to this day, including Sappho, Anacreon, Bacchylides, Parmenides, Empedocles, Simonides, but he does mention Orpheus as being one of the principal exponents of the hymns of nature or scientific hymn:

Scientific hymns are such as were composed by Parmenides and Empedocles, expounding the nature of Apollo or of Zeus. Most of the hymns of Orpheus are of this kind.

(1. 333)

Menander's editors, Russell and Wilson, doubt, however, that he is referring to the extant collection of Orphic hymns.

Menander devotes separate chapters to all these categories, providing a definition for each kind, discussing specific examples from verse and prose authors, and giving advice concerning their appropriateness for particular subjects and audiences, their length, and the poetic diction suitable for them. The categories most relevant to Ronsard's hymns are probably the natural hymns and the mythological hymns, though Ronsard does have examples of invocatory and fictitious hymns. Of the first kind, Menander says that it is most suitable for vivid, grandiose subjects (“The first point to be made is that this form does not suit the simpler writers, but does suit very well those with vigor and grandeur of conception,” 1. 336), in which deities are considered as forces of nature:

Such hymns are found, for example, when, in delivering a hymn to Apollo, we identify him with the sun, and discuss the nature of the sun, or when we identify Hera with air or Zeus with heat.

(1. 337)

He writes in the same section that these hymns need not be explicitly about natural phenomena: “Some are written enigmatically, others in an overt manner.” However, hymns of the first type, not being didactic, would generally be shorter than those of the second type. Menander also includes here a warning against the vulgarization of these hymns: “Such hymns should be carefully preserved and not published to the multitude or the people, because they look too unconvincing and ridiculous to the masses.”

After discussing possible similarities between the mythical and genealogical hymns, Menander considers the former category more closely. These poems tend to be of greater length and complexity than some of the other kinds of hymn: “They are appropriate in a higher degree to the poet, since in his case the licence to speak at leisure and wrap up the subject in poetical ornament and elaboration produces no satiety or disgust” (1. 338). Menander particularly stresses the need for the skilful arrangement of the details of the myth, which should be spread out and not expounded straight away:

Antidotes need to be applied, for the sake of brevity and charm; e.g., not introducing every detail in a direct form, but omitting some points, conceding some, introducing some by combination, sometimes claiming to give explanations, or not committing oneself to belief or disbelief.

(1. 339)

Ronsard's concept of the hymn would have been influenced by the various sources and related theoretical writings discussed above, whether through the teachings of Dorat or as a result of his own reading. As is the case with so many literary notions in the Renaissance, this concept would almost certainly have been a somewhat complex one, an uneasy synthesis of the highly disparate elements which had survived from the ancient world. As Michel Dassonville remarks on the subject of Ronsard's early attempts at the genre:

Attracted by numerous models, captivated by sources of inspiration which were Christian and pagan in turn, his mind clouded perhaps by the ode, which was still the only ancient genre which he had cultivated, influenced by, above all else, Pindar's sumptuous lyricism, Ronsard experienced some difficulty, it seems, in distinguishing the hymn from the ode.¹³

In the light of Dorat's discussion of the relative merits of Homer, Callimachus, and Pindar, this is not surprising. Dassonville rejects the attempts of Laumonier, Gustave Cohen, Chamard, and Schmidt to define and categorize the Ronsardian hymn, and prefers himself to provide a structural definition: the hymn is a tripartite poem consisting of a proem “souvent suivi d'un retour lyrique sur soi”; a central development; and a final wish, greeting, praise, or prayer for the poet or the dedicatee of the poem.¹⁴ However, as it stands, this definition does not really differentiate between the Ronsardian hymn and the examples of the hymn form to be found amongst the ancients, and in particular the longer Homeric hymns. This can be done perhaps more effectively by considering the function of Ronsard's hymns, but in order to do this, it will be necessary to determine the poet's attitude towards the subjects with which he deals and the significance he attaches to the mythological content. It will also be useful to consider Ronsard's attitudes towards his models, in particular the three Greek collections of hymns, and Marullus.

It would, however, be dangerous to try to impose an uneasy unity on all those poems which Ronsard designates as hymnes, and still more so to criticize him for a lack of unity in them. As Francis Cairns remarks:

“Hymn” therefore is not a genre in the sense in which propemptikon or komos is a genre. Nor is it a genre in the other common sense of the word, in which it is used to refer to kinds of literature like epic, elegy, or lyric; for these kinds of literature are each characterized by meter and length, and more important they are mutually exclusive. “Hymn” is not characterized by meter or by length, and hymns can be found in epic, elegy, lyric, etc.¹⁵

In fact, there is a gradual development in Ronsard's approach to the hymn, and his early examples tend to be based quite closely on one or more identifiable sources.

In dealing with Ronsard's hymns, we shall be looking at them not in isolation but in the context of their place in the various editions of the poet's works. We shall particularly concentrate on those poems which form part of the books of hymns. However, to start with, we shall consider briefly the five compositions which pre-date the first book of hymns, published in 1555.

Ronsard's interest in the hymn appears to begin in the autumn of 1549, when he published L'Hymne de France (L. I. 24-25), a poem which would remain in the collected books of hymns until the edition of 1572-73. The short “Hinne à Saint Gervaise, et Protaise” (L. II. 5-7), first published in the Quatre premiers livres des Odes of 1550, did not enjoy the same success, but the “Hinne à la nuit,” which first appeared in the same collection, disappeared from the 1560 collection of hymns, only to be included in the fourth book of hymns in the editions of 1567, 1571, and 1572-73. The “Hymne triumphal sur le trépas de Marguerite de Valois, Royne de Navarre” of 1551 (L. III. 54-78) was destined to take its place in the fifth book of Odes, but the Hinne de Bacus of 1555 appears in all the collective editions from 1560.

The fate of these early examples of the hymn underlines as much as anything else Ronsard's uncertainty about the nature of the genre at this time, particularly with regard to its form. Three of them were clearly considered by their author to be odes, while the Hymne de France and the Hinne de Bacus, written in decasyllables and alexandrines respectively, would provide the model for all subsequent examples of the genre. Before considering the 1555 collection of Les Hymnes, it will be useful to consider the three early hymns which survived in later collections.

L'Hymne de France is in fact more of a panegyric than a hymn, being modelled, as Laumonier indicates, on Virgil's eulogy of Italy in Georgics 2. 136-76, though it incorporates a number of other sources as well. In the opening lines (1-16), the poet makes an address to his lyre, which is imbued with Orphic powers. For example, he writes:

Tu peuz tirer les forez de leur place,
Fleschir l'enfer, mouvoir les monts de Thrace,
Voire appaiser le feu, qu'il ne saccaige
Les verds cheveux d'un violé boucaige. …

(lines 9-12)

(You can draw forests from their spot, move the Underworld, displace the mountains of Thrace, and even calm fire so that it does not destroy the green tresses of a profaned grove. …)

Line 17 then introduces the main theme, the praise of France, in comparison with other parts of the world. Ronsard ends the poem with a short valediction (lines 215-24), recommending to France his lyre, and thus providing a circular pattern to the hymn.

If the Hymne de France is something of a contaminatio of classical sources, the “Hinne à la nuit,” first published in the Troisième Livre des Odes of 1550, is, as Laumonier says, “d'un bout à l'autre la paraphrase d'une ode saphique du napolitain Pontano” (L. II. 21, n. 1). In many ways, it is curious that this poem was placed in the 1567 collection of hymns, having been treated more appropriately as an ode in 1560. It is certainly addressed to the Night, and contains a prayer at the end:

Mai, si te plaist déesse une fin à ma peine,
Et donte sous mes braz celle qui est tant pleine
De menasses cruelles. …

(L. II. 22. 25-27)

(Please, goddess, put an end to my pain, and tame beneath my arms the lady who is so full of cruel threats. …)

Yet the tone of the poem is sensual, and reminiscent of Latin and neo-Latin amatory verse, as well as certain aspects of the Pléiade's own “style mignard,” as is evident from the following lines:

Lors que l'amie main court par la cuisse, & ores
Par les tetins, ausquels ne s'acompare encores
Nul ivoire qu'on voie,
Et la langue en errant sur la joüe, & la face,
Plus d'odeurs, & de fleurs, là naissantes, amasse
Que l'Orient n'envoie.

(lines 13-18)

(When the lover's hand runs over the thigh, and now over the breasts, which remain unparalleled by any ivory one can see, and the tongue, in wandering over the cheek and the face, collects more fragrances and flowers, budding there, than the Orient sends forth.)

When it comes to the Hinne de Bacus of 1554, however, Ronsard seems to have a far clearer idea of what for him constitutes a hymn, and, not surprisingly, this poem appears in all the later collective editions of the hymns. By this time, it is clear from textual evidence that Ronsard has read and assimilated the full range of classical models: the Homeric hymns, Callimachus' hymns, the Orphic hymns, and Marullus' Hymni naturales. The Hinne de Bacus bears the marks of all of these collections: the wit of Callimachus, as evidenced in lines 7-16 on the birthplace of Bacchus, inspired by Callimachus 1. 7-9 on Zeus's birthplace, cited above; the lists of epithets and attributes which are typical of the Orphic hymns and of Marullus (see, for example, lines 165ff. and 231ff.); and the valediction which is normal in the Homeric hymns. For the first time, as we shall see, Ronsard brings together the elements that would contribute to the success of the later hymns.

Terence Cave has already considered this early hymn in some detail, and pointed to the popularity of the theme in the visual arts of the Renaissance, amongst which Titian's painting, is one of the finest examples.¹⁶ Concentrating on the triumphal procession described in lines 109-32, he shows how the god's ambiguous nature is suggested visually by the juxtaposition of opposing forces—the regal qualities of the god suggested by the “manteau Tyrian” (line 113) contrasted with the violence of the lynxes who draw his chariot, for example. Other qualities are suggested by the composition of the crown he wears:

Un chapelet de liz mellés de roses franches,
Et de feuille de vigne, et de lhierre espars,
Voltigeant, umbrageoit ton chef de toutes pars.

(L. VI. 182. 114-16)

(A wreath of lilies mixed with red roses, scattered with vine leaves and ivy, tumbling about, shaded your head on all sides.)

Here, the various plants and flowers are traditional symbols of love (roses), immortality (the evergreen ivy and the lily), and fecundity (the vine). Bacchus and his train, then, represent a discordia concors, not only on a human but also on a cosmic level, as becomes clear in the final section of the poem where Bacchus is seen leading the cosmic dance (lines 274-76).

On the other hand, Cave does not discuss the first part of the poem in which Ronsard deals with the circumstances surrounding Bacchus' birth and nurture. A unique aspect of this concerns Juno's wish, in the course of her attempts to kill the young god, to feed him to her bitch:

Junon n'attendit point, tant elle fut irée,
Que sa charette à Paons par le ciel fust tirée,
Ains faisant le plongeon se laisse toute aller
A l'abandon du vent, qui la guidoit par l'ær
Toujours fondant en bas sur la terre Indienne:
Beante à ses talons la suivoit une chienne,
Qu'expres elle amenoit, à fin de se venger
Et faire ce bastard à sa chienne manger.
Mais Inon qui previt par augures l'ambuche,
Pour tromper la deesse, Athamante elle huche,
Et lui conta comment Junon venoit charcher
L'anfançon pour le faire en pieces detrancher:
Athamante soudain le tapit contre terre,
Et couvrit le berceau de fueilles de lhierre,
De creinte que Junon en charchant ne le vist,
Et qu'englotir tout vif à son chien ne le fist
Ou de peur qu'autrement ne lui fist quelque offence.

(L. VI. 179-80. 57-73)

(Juno was so enraged that she did not wait for her peacock chariot to be drawn through the sky, but, plunging down, she surrendered entirely to the wind, which guided her through the air as she sank down onto the land of India. Hard on her heels she was followed by a gaping she-dog which she brought on purpose to avenge herself and feed this bastard-child to her dog. But Ino, who through augury foresaw the ambush, in order to trick the goddess, called out to Athamas, and told him how Juno was coming to seek out the baby to have him hacked to pieces. Athamas at once conceals him on the ground and covers the cradle with ivy leaves, lest Juno see him in her search and have him swallowed alive by her dog, or harm him in some other way.)

Other elements in Ronsard's account of the birth of Bacchus are more traditional. Jupiter causes his mortal beloved, Semele, to become pregnant, whereupon Juno, in the shape of Semele's nurse, Beroë, persuades her rival to ask Jupiter to appear before her in all his splendor (lines 17-21), as a result of which Semele is killed by her lover's lightning bolts, and Bacchus is born prematurely. Jupiter hides his son in his thigh until it is time for him to be born (lines 27-30) and then transfers Bacchus to Nysa to be nurtured by Hippe (or Hipta), Ino and Athamas (lines 23-24, 31-48), or by nymphs (line 45).

There is some confusion in Ronsard's account, at times increased by later variants. For example, in lines 23-25:

… ton pere marri
A Nyse t'envoia pour y estre nourri
Des mains d'Ippe, & d'Inon, d'Athame & Melicharse.

(… your distraught father sent you to Nysa to be nurtured by the hands of Hippe, Ino, Athamas, and Melicharses.)

Dorat's translation sheds both light and darkness on these lines:

… iam tum genitor Nysam te misit alendum
Hippaeque Inonique Athamantique & Meticharsae [sic].

(Dorat, Poematia [1586], 376)

(… then your father sent you to Nysa to be nurtured by Hippe, Ino, Athamas, and Meticharses.)

“Ippe,” then, is the Orphic goddess Hippa or Hipta, and “Athame,” despite the 1584-1587 variant “la vieille Athame,” is the husband of Ino, Athamas. “Melicharse” is presumably Melicertes, their son (see line 81 of this poem). The form “Melicharse” appears nowhere else in Ronsard's works, and is not found in ancient accounts of the myth, although according to Robert Graves, “Ino's younger son Melicertes is the Canaanite Heracles Melkarth (`protector of the city'), alias Moloch. …”¹⁷ Dorat's “Meticharsae” is probably a typographical error.

The allegorical significance of the birth, as recounted by Ronsard, almost certainly represents the growth of the vine, an explanation frequent in the Renaissance mythographers. Natalis Comes would write, for example (fol. 155^v, Mythologiae):

He is said to have been sewn into Jupiter's thigh, because the vine is extremely greedy for warmth. … Nymphs are said to have nurtured him after receiving him from his mother's ashes because the vine is of all trees the dampest, and its fruit, if properly watered, is much healthier and grows at the same time. He is said to have been transferred to Egypt because of the warmth of the region and the fertility of the soil, and the vine needs something similar to this region.

Finally, the details concerning Juno and her bitch must involve a physical interpretation like the other elements surrounding Bacchus' birth. Juno, as the lower air surrounding the earth, is accompanied late in summer by the dog-star which heralds excessive heat. Elsewhere, in Les Bacchanales, ou le folatrissime voyage d'Hercueil pres Paris (L. III. 184-217), Ronsard refers to “l'ardente Canicule” (line 148) as “la chienne” (line 155). In order to protect the vine from this heat, an ivy covering is used to shelter it, suggested by Athamas's covering of the cradle with ivy leaves.

Bacchus' growth (lines 83-92) and discovery of wine (lines 93-104) follow on logically from this, as does the spread of the use of wine, suggested by the triumphal procession of lines 105-32. Renaissance mythographers such as Conti emphasize the fact that in moderation, wine is a force for good (“quia cum moderatione sumptus utilis sit & bonus potus,” fol. 150^v), but drunk in excess, it leads to evil:

For in conformity with the very nature of drunkards, lynxes, tigers, leopards, and panthers are said to follow him, and to pull his chariot. For wine marks those who drink immoderately with the characteristics and cruelty of these wild beasts, and renders them insane.

(fol. 155^v)

As Cave indicates, this is suggested by the various forces present in Bacchus' retinue.

The ecstatic side of Bacchus is also, of course, emphasized by Ronsard, particularly since the Bacchic or mystic frenzy could inspire the poet. In the dithyrambic section of the hymn (lines 179ff.), this is applied by the poet to himself in terms reminiscent of poetic frenzy; [consider] lines 187-88:

Je sen mon coeur trambler, tant il est agité
Des poignans aiguillons de ta divinité

(I can feel my heart tremble, so excited is it by the piercing goads of your godhead). …

The final main section of the poem sees Bacchus at work on a cosmic scale. As well as providing mankind with music, law, religion, etc., he also causes the rebirth of the world at springtime:

Tu fais germer la terre, & d'estranges couleurs
Tu revests les vers prés orguillis de leurs fleurs,
Tu dedaignes l'enfer, tu restaures le monde
De ta longue jeunesse, & la machine ronde
Tu poises justement, & moderes le bal
(Toy balant le premier) de ce grand animal.

(lines 271-76)

(You cause the earth to sprout and you cloak with unwonted colors the green meadows, grown proud with their flowers; you disdain the Underworld, you restore the world with your long-lived youthfulness, and you balance exactly the round universe and control the dance of this great creature, with you being the first to dance.)

Although Bacchus is more normally associated with autumn, it is the Orphic god that Ronsard, following Marullus, has in mind here, as we can see from the Hymnus Baccho 50-54:

Tibi ager viret almus, tu florea prata tepentibus
Zephyris coloras, tu dissona semina ligas,
In saecla mundo semper fugientia reparas
Longa iuventa, tu libras pondera machinae
Medioque terram suspendis in aere stabilem. …

(For you the bountiful field grows green, you give color to the flowery meadows through the warm west winds, you bind together different breeds, you restore the ever-fleeting generations in the universe with long-lasting youth, you balance the cosmic forces and hold the earth, unmoving, in mid air. …)

Marullus gives Bacchus, in other words, attributes similar to those of the Orphic god Amor who, as the creative principle in the universe, was variously referred to by the Orphics as Phanes, Protogonos, Dionysus, Eros, Metis, and Erikepaios; it is this form that Ronsard also appears to have in mind.¹⁸

Thus, there is a progress in the hymn from Bacchus as the earthly vine, through Bacchus as the god of wine and of mystic frenzy in the sublunar world, to Bacchus as the moving principle in the translunar world.

Although there is a certain coherence in this hymn, it is nevertheless slightly marred by confusing and confused ideas. In the first place, Ronsard has not worked out in his own mind the exact nature of his Bacchus. True, he wishes to emphasize the positive aspects of the god, as Cave points out, and to that end suppresses details concerning the ritual slaughter of animals (lines 93-104), the death of the god at the hands of the Giants (lines 151-64), and Bacchus' androgynous appearance (lines 85-92). Later on, however, he would restore some of these details in “A Monsieur de Belot” … and in the “Hymne de l'Autonne” … where the bisexual nature of Bacchus is an important element in the explanation of the various changes the earth undergoes throughout the year. Moreover, the confusion over the nymphs who raise Bacchus, and where they live (India or Arabia), along with an excessive reliance at times on Marullus lead to a less than clear idea of what Ronsard has in mind. This is typified by lines 282-83:

Je te salüe à droit le Lychnite admirable
Des homes & des Dieus …

(I salute you in a fitting way, wondrous Lychnites of men and gods …)

which is Ronsard's version of: “Salve, benigne lychnita, deum et pater hominum” (Marullus, Hymni Naturales 1. 6. 58). Later, Marullus corrected “lychnita” to “licnita,” but Ronsard, as Laumonier notes, has taken the word lychnita (in Greek λυχνιτηs) in the sense of “lamp” and as such follows it with the two dependent objective genitives “des homes & des Dieus,” whereas Marullus uses the word as an epithet of Bacchus (“bearing the sacred λικνον,” or fan-shaped basket, carried on the head at the feast of Bacchus and containing mystical objects).

Despite these reservations, the hymn represents a turning point, for in it, Ronsard has developed the poetic voice which would form the basis of his style in the important 1555 collection of hymns. As Cave remarks:

… the movement away from allegory in the strict [i.e., medieval] sense and towards metaphor has been brought about in part at least by this exploitation on a visual, decorative and rhythmic level of images which had earlier been treated schematically. … Ronsard clearly perceived the enduring value of myth as a means of embodying profound insights into man and the universe.

He is using here the principle of the “voile bien subtil” to conceal the various layers of meaning in the poem, as he would do in subsequent mythological hymns. On the stylistic level, the fertility associated with Bacchus is paralleled by a mannerist lexical profusion, notably in the epithets attributed to the god (e.g., lines 231-36), which add little to the meaning of the text but which contribute to the mystic, incantatory tone of the poem. The inspirational Dionysus had set him on the right path.

.....

The later hymns would witness a refinement of the qualities which are apparent in the first of Ronsard's important mythological hymns. With the 1555 collection, he appears to develop a more unified vision, which is further modified in 1556 with the two largely narrative poems, “L'Hymne de Calaïs, et de Zetes” and “L'Hymne de Pollux et de Castor.” With these changes comes an increasing appeal to the visual. As Albert Py remarks in his introduction to the Hymnes: ¹⁹

We shall allow ourselves to base on such indications the impression that, in Ronsard, the characterization of the subject of the hymn, through the aesthetic openings to which it invites us, tends to cause the language of the hymns to slip from the aural to the visual level. The voice sparks off images which present themselves to the sight more boldly than the voice makes itself heard. The song is matched with increasing insistence by a picture.

Notes

1. The first editions of these poems were all printed in Florence in 1488, 1494, and 1500 respectively. The Homeric hymns, generally appearing in editions of the complete works of Homer, were frequently reprinted in the first half of the sixteenth century, and the first Latin translation by Iodocus Velareus Verbrobanus appeared in Antwerp as early as 1528, while a later version is due to the work of Georgius Dartona (Venice, 1537). Most editions after 1542 include a Latin translation. French editions include those of Sebastianus Gryphius, Lyon, 1541 (reprinted 1542) and the Dartona translation, printed in Paris and Lyon in 1538. The Orphic hymns also appeared in several sixteenth-century editions, while the first Latin translation was prepared by Renatus Perdrierius (Bâle, 1555). Apart from a Latin version of the Hymn to Artemis, Callimachus does not seem to have been translated until relatively late, although a French edition of the original text appeared in Paris in 1549, at the Vascosan press. The information here is largely derived from the Inni omerici, edited by Filippo Cássola (Verona: Fondazione Lorenzo Valla, 1975); Ruth Bunker, A Bibliographical Study of the Greek Works and Translations Published in France During the Renaissance: the Decade 1540-1550 (New York, 1939); Orphei Hymni, ed. Guilelmus Quandt (Berlin: Weidmann, 1955); and the Loeb edition of Callimachus.

2. See, for example, Homeri omnia quae quidem extant opera, graece, adiecta versione latina ad uerbum (Bâle: Brylingerus & Calybaeus, 1551).

3. Cited in Pierre de Nolhac, Ronsard et l'humanisme (Paris, 1921), 77, quoting from BN MS. lat. 8139, fols. 103-4.

4. MS. A 184, fols. 2-21 in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan. See my article, “Ronsard and Homeric Allegory” in Ronsard in Cambridge, and the two articles by Geneviève Demerson, “Qui peuvent être les Lestrygons?”, Vita Latina 70 (1978), 36-42, and “Dorat, commentateur d'Homère,” in Etudes seiziémistes offertes à M. le professeur V.-L. Saulnier, THR 177 (Geneva: Droz, 1980), 223-34, as well as her book Dorat en son temps: culture classique et présence au monde (Clermont-Ferrand: Adosa, 1983), 181-86.

5. Taken from Seconde Response de F. de la Baronie à Messire Pierre de Ronsard, Prestre-Gentihomme Vandomois, Evesque futur. Plus le Temple de Ronsard où la Legende de sa vie est briefvement descrite (n.p., 1563), fol. Aiiii^r, cited in Isidore Silver, Ronsard and the Hellenic Renaissance in France, vol. 1, Ronsard and the Greek Epic (St. Louis: Washington University, 1961), 39.

6. Càssola, Inni omerici, p. xvii: “Gl'inni minori, che vengono considerati proemi allo stesso titolo degli altri, e più spesso si giudicano gli unici veri proemi, sono in generale estratti, e più precisamente esordi e congedi, di opere più estese.”

7. Quandt, Orphei hymni, 44.

8. They may conveniently be consulted in Alessandro Perosa's edition of Michaelis Marulli carmina (Zürich: Thesaurus Mundi, 1951).

9. Ivo Bruns, “Michael Marullus: ein Dichterleben der Renaissance,” Preußische Jahrbücher 74 (1893): 122ff. For other articles on Marullus' hymns, see Pier Luigi Ciceri, “Michele Marullo e i suoi `Hymni naturales',” Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 64 (1914): 289-357; Dionysios A. Zakythenos, “Μιχαηλ Μαρουλλοs Ταρχανιωτηs Ελλην ποιητηs των χρονων τηs Αναγεννηsεωs”, Επετηριs Εταιρειαs Βυζαντινων Σπουδων 5 (1928): 200-42; Benedetto Croce, “Michele Marullo Tarcaniota,” in Poeti e scrittori del pieno e del tardo Rinascimento, 3 vols. (Bari: Laterza, 1945), 2: 267-380; and my article, “The Hymni naturales of Michael Marullus,” in Acta conventus neo-latini Bononiensis: Proceedings of the Fourth International Congress of Neo-Latin Studies, ed. R. J. Schoeck, Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, vol. 37 (Binghamton: MRTS, 1985), 475-82.

10. Ciceri, “Michele Marullo,” pp. 323 and 329.

11. A. Sainati, “Michele Marullo,” in Studi di letteratura latina medievale e umanistica raccolti in occasione del suo ottantacinquesimo compleanno (Padua: Antenore, 1972), 150.

12. Scaliger's remarks on the hymn are to be found in Poetices libri septem (Lyon: Antonius Vincentius, 1561), 1. 45 (p. 49), and 3. 92-95 (pp. 162-63). There is a modern edition of Menander by D. A. Russell and N. G. Wilson: Menander Rhetor: Edited with Translation and Commentary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981). English quotations in this chapter are taken from this edition.

13. Michel Dassonville, “Éléments pour une définition de l'hymne ronsardien,” BHR 24 (1962): 64. This article has subsequently been printed in Autour des “Hymnes” de Ronsard, ed. Madeleine Lazard (Geneva: Slatkine, 1984), 1-32.

14. “Éléments pour une définition,” pp. 61-63 and 71.

15. Francis Cairns, Generic Composition in Greek and Roman Poetry (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1972), 92.

16. See “The Triumph of Bacchus and its Interpretation in the French Renaissance: Ronsard's `Hinne de Bacus.'”

17. Robert Graves, The Greek Myths, 2 vols. (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1955, reprinted 1964), 1: 230.

18. Cf. my paper on Marullus' Hymni naturales, 478.

19. Published in Geneva, 1978, TLF 251. See p. 29.