DEDICATION
TO MADAME ELEONORE DE LABOUISSE

4th July 1807.

METASTASIO hymned Nike, Irene, Chloris,
and the throb of his deep, resounding lyre
imparted sweet, dissolving echoes to all quarters.
But I see inconstancy as worthless.
My heart being all yours, my dearest Eleonore,
why exalt Ismene or Lycoris?

No, it was all down to you. Timidly in Love,
at sight of you my soul was set alight,
and a Defense blurted from my impulsive mouth.
I wouldn't be unnerved by stern Advice.

Calling on Mnemosyne's daughters for guidance,
I composed The Obstacle, Fishing, Name,
and The Love Nest—small sparks from Anacreon's flame—
then the tale of my deity's triumph.²
Soon, my soul a trove of tenderest memories,
I added to the opus Spring and Storm,
and First Love, which your loveliness called into form,
and which your quality can but increase.
Eleonore, my wish is to impress you only.
I would be happy, without study or striving,
to emulate Leonardo's writings³
and show pastoral love in all its potency.
Remember the way those days were portrayed?
The god ensconced in a secluded, shady space,
spring roses around his forehead arrayed,
all simplicity, and no waywardness.
Beloved wife, confer your perfect approval
on this modest, so feeble endeavour.
Trembling, to the risk of wreckage I expose all.
If, in the end, it should win your gracious favour,
that flattering recognition
will rouse within its author sweet expectations,
and render him wild with pride and ardour.

PREFACE

FINE books are rarer than fine precepts; poets will always be outnumbered by rhetoricians and critics. I am not, therefore, like so many others, proposing a new poetry for my own convenience; but rather, as nobody seems so far to have established the precise difference between the eclogue and the elegy, I venture to put forward a few reflections on the subject.

Under the term ειδόλλιον⁴, the Latin equivalent being idyllium, meaning a light piece⁵, the Greeks included three forms of poetry: epithalamia, funeral songs and epitaphs.

Eclogue, to the Romans, simply meant a selected piece; so that those of Virgil are called eclogues, not because they are set in the countryside, but because they are works that have been preserved out of many, judged the worthiest to be published.

As for their elegy, here is what Horace had to say about it:

Irregular meters adopted in sadness
the Love-God makes use of to celebrate gladness;
but who can say which Muse had the temerity
to try to abridge the line of the elegy.

Some scholars claim that Theocles of Naxus is the inventor of these versus impariter juncti; others attribute it to Eretria, who, in a fit of despair, first produced this style of verse, the meter of which was then reserved for the elegy.

It follows from the preceding remarks, that the three forms we distinguish with the names of elegies, eclogues, and idylls, would have been called idylls by the Greeks; whereas the Romans would have named the first elegies, and the last two eclogues.

So it is we alone who have separated these three forms, as we separated the madrigal from the epigram, which the ancients were always conflating. The eclogue is a pastoral dialogue, the elegy a tender complaint of love or regret, and the idyll seems to me to be the link which binds these two forms, depicting as it does the gentle sadness of the one, with the rustic setting of the other.

New genres have been added, subdivided into pastorals or comedies, eclogues or dialogues, idylls or monologues, in great poems such as Astrée, and poetic novels such as Monte Mayor's Diane, Lopez de Vega's Arcadia, Figueroa's Amarillis, Cervantes' Galatea, and Florian's Estelle. —Can one do too much for a form that dates from the infancy of mankind, whose purity and innocence it portrays?

Theocritus is our oldest pastoral poet. I do not share the opinion of Pope, who faults him for having inserted harvestmen and fishermen into his eclogues. Anything to do with rural life may be included in these poems. Why should we set limits on what can be shown? Why deprive ourselves of an abundance of pleasant scenes, and deny pastoral poets the ability to vary sentiment, situation and setting? I do, however, agree with his criticism of Theocritus for having created such coarse characters, whose speeches land far from the graces of the golden age.

Bion, more sought-after, more showy, than Theocritus, failed to remain within reasonable bounds, like his disciple Moschus. Both are more concerned with intellectual amusement than the evocation of feeling. Neither of them depicts the toil of the land, the quarrels, strifes or jealousies of shepherd-swains; and their style can be judged too flamboyant. But Fontenelle, with good reason, finds excuses for them; and, questioning the partiality accorded to Theocritus, suggests that scholars have always been inclined to disdain the risqué and promiscuous.

Virgil surpasses Theocritus, despite what Monsieur Montonnet de Clairfons has to say. He is more consistent, more concise—no mean achievement. Only perhaps he lacks the other's simplicity and truthfulness.⁶

Later Latin writers like Calpurnius, Nemesianus and Ausonius are sometimes mentioned, but strict critics prize only Theocritus and Virgil. Let us not follow their example: there are honourable tiers even below the first rank. The cognoscenti place Sannazar's poetry alongside that of the greatest poets of antiquity and Le Mantuan has, with less justification, long enjoyed the same distinction.

The Italians have produced three celebrated pastoral dramas: Tasso's Aminta, Guarini's The Faithful Shepherd, and Bonarelli's Phyllis of Scyros. Ménage, during his observations on Aminta, finds as many as eighty, but the characters in many of these plays are fishermen whom Ménage has included with the shepherds, something I know no other critic to have done.

Rapin asserts that the idea of this kind of play came from Euripides' Cyclops. It could be so. Has it not been said that drama came from Terence, and that narrative poetry came from Hesiod, Lucretia, and Ovid?

Pope wrote five eclogues. The last one, Messiah, is a simple devotional text, whose principal ideas are drawn from Scripture: it is almost entirely derived from the prophecies of Isaiah, and is as sublime as are they.⁷ The others depict the four seasons, the setting and theme of each perfectly apt to its title.

Morning, in a cool valley. Two shepherds vie for a prize in song, each celebrating the charms, graces and virtues of the one they love. Spring.

Raw to the burning rays of noon, wandering the banks of the Thames alone with his flute, Alexis is sighing, a victim of love. Summer.

The hour when the sun turns wan and fades from our sight (an image of life's decline). Two shepherds, sitting on a hill, complain by turns, one of his mistress' unkindness, the other of her absence. Autumn. Melancholy season of lamentation and regret.

Midnight. A valley by moonlight. Lycidas and Tyrcis are mourning the loss of Daphne. Winter. Or death.

I have lingered somewhat over this commentary on Pope, because his work is the most impeccable of modern works. Yes, he has borrowed considerably from the ancients, but so much the better: happy are they who can seize and assimilate artfully, like Boileau and Racine in their poetic imitations.

In the Pindus, as in Sparta, a theft is permissible if it is skilfully executed. (Monsieur BERENGER.)

And how extraordinary to think that Pope was only sixteen when he astonished England with the extent of his wisdom, knowledge and genius!⁸

His predecessor Spencer was less adept. His eclogues are too long, he too often resorts to allegory, and he mixes religious matter and secular love inappropriately. He can, too, be criticised for deploying the lyric meter in his Calendar, which is unsuited to the spontaneity, naturalness, and grace that the form demands. Like Pope, he compared human life to different seasons; but, unable to confine himself to the four principal metaphors, he is forced into the repetition or omission of essential elements. How could it be otherwise? There is not enough variation in a year for each month to be susceptible of particular description.⁹ It is one of the great faults of our poet Roucher, to have tried to extol them separately and minutely; there is more flair in treating them together, as did Tompson, Saint Lambert, Leonard, Bernis, and Monsieur Duault.

Philipps' pastorals were approved by Pope, his rival. I am not familiar with them. Nor do I know Sedley, of whom it is said he has the power to inspire desire in chastity itself.

But let us leave this pointless discussion, with its alien nomenclature, which has nothing new to teach educated readers and might be boring and irrelevant for others. I am far from claiming to promote, either by my remarks or by my example, a genre which the Abbé Desfontaines found cold, languid and insipid, although it seems to me that nothing could be less bland than the depiction of the liveliest of passions in the loveliest of bucolic forms. He declares somewhere that Madame Deshoulieres failed in a similar enterprise; and if that observation is true, what hope is there for me? But is not that critique unfounded? And have not the excellent idylls of Madame Deshoulieres won as much esteem as would flatter and satisfy the loftiest ambition? Am I deluding myself? If Segrais and Racan are no longer read, is it not rather because of their lazy, long-winded, prosaic versification, than because of any monotonous banality in the genre itself? Fontenelle is a mere boudoir popinjay, a court fop, an avid detractor of the ancients; and maybe Lamothe is so completely forgotten because in his works cleverness and gloss replace that delightful unselfconsciousness and sweet spontaneity which is the charm of pastorals.

We will not talk about Ronsard and his Teutonic muse, nor the unsophisticated talents of Marot and Remi Belleau, nor the thousands of eclogues and idylls feted in Toulouse by the guardians of gladsome knowledge; but we shall say a word about Sarrazin. If Voiture's Funeral Pomp is far from deserving the praise it initially received, on the other hand we note in his works collected by Pélisson the following: The Defeat of Rhymed-Endings (a novel subject), two odes containing beautiful verses, a sonnet, some stanzas, songs and two eclogues, the first of which is worthy of Virgil.

We could do equal justice to our first lyric poet (J.B. Rousseau), and, further, cite: Father Mangenot's ingenious work; some of Baculard-d'Arnaud's idylls (full of feeling); Pannard's The Brook which, like De Chaulieu's ode on Fontenay, is a true idyll;¹⁰ a play by Count de Plelo on How to Catch Birds (a masterpiece of subtlety); and Monsieur Vigée's Acacia. Many good ladies have also given us various examples which do credit to their pens and their hearts. Madame de Bourdic-Viot translated some of Pope's eclogues, previously worked by Madame de Montegut. The idyll Madame Verdier wrote beside the Fountain of Vaucluse, Madame de Beaufort-d'Hautpoul's on Violets, the one on Flowers by Madame Monnet, all have been singled out and applauded by connoisseurs. But above all it is Leonard who has most captured their attention, and better exemplifies the overlap between the elegiac and the pastoral genres. A pupil of Gessner¹¹, like him he engenders a love for the countryside and for virtue: Berquin shows nowhere near the same grace and ease.

This, perhaps, is where I should conclude these remarks; but I cannot finish without saying something about the author, and warning my readers that this is not a translation. I know all too well the rigorous demands of translating. I had been reading Metastasio, and immensely enjoyed the short pieces. I selected one, tried to imitate it; then chose another, then another. Finally, like the sheep in Panurge's tale, they all sprang up, one after the other; and here they are.

Possibly I will be reproached for having turned these exquisite cantatas into idylls, and I do feel I should have kept their original rhythms and titles. The cantata is really a drama with a single character, well suited to lyric poetry; but its quick transitions, varied turns and lofty expressions awoke my sense of inadequacy; also, while the execution and arrangement of Metastasio's short pieces are similar to those of J.B. Rousseau, they differ enough in subject-matter and treatment that I felt it necessary to call them something else. So they are no longer cantatas, odes or chansons, but true idylls, small masterpieces that will live as long as Italian literature lives, and which alone would have been enough to secure Metastasio eternal glory¹²; these little poems shine with his beguiling, inimitable style. Indisputably it can be said that, like Virgil and Racine, his style is perfected to an extraordinary degree; and though he is not as powerful or prolific as Tasso or Ariosto, he is their equal in elegance, harmony, delicacy, and precision of expression.

How rich and accommodating is the Italian language!—arguably Europe's most abundant in melodious endings, and having the undeniable advantage that its love poetry or pastoral poetry has no equal for charming, innocent sweetness:¹³ this is its real triumph. Also, it has a facility for rhyme which greatly accelerates its composition. Abbreviations, ellipses, and inversions serve the poetry even better.¹⁴ Not that I mean to say it is superior to all other modern idioms. La bella lingua Toscana è la figlia primogenita del latino [The beautiful Tuscan language is Latin's first-born daughter]. “But,” adds Voltaire, writing to Monsieur Deodati of Tovazzi, “enjoy your birthright, and let your little sisters share in the inheritance.” Everything has its own particular distinguishing characteristics. Pascal's musings, Larochefoucault's maxims, Labruyère's moralisings, Buffon's natural histories, Montesquieu's inquiries, Bossuet's panegyrics, Bourdaloue's sermons—anything that has to be written in a serious, precise, authoritative, decided manner—is better suited to the French language than the Italian, which has been dubbed the language of women, because it seems especially suited to all that is sweet, yielding, witty and worthy of women.

I was determined not to translate these fine idylls into prose. To translate a poet into prose is like turning a painting into an engraving: the line is there, but the colour is gone. On the other hand, if a good painter were to copy a Michelangelo or a Raphael, the original being lost, the copy would remain,¹⁵ to be valued by connoisseurs, and sought in preference to the finest engraving, even by Bartollozzi himself.

I could, at this point, risk a plea in defense of the liberties I have taken; but if those liberties have spoiled these little idylls, my plea will not improve them. However, if the new settings and particulars with which I have made them my own have not overly diluted the charm and interest of the originals, my plea will be superfluous and, without even entering it, I will be acquitted ..... May I be allowed to hope? I would like to, but dare not; for, as Horace said: I walk upon fires cloaked by treacherous ash.

Incedo per ignes
Suppositos cineri doloso.

MISCELLANEOUS PIECES

AFTER METASTASIO

The most accomplished translator
is one who seems to be less so,
the word-for-word replicator
being but his master's dresser.

(LEBRUN.)

LOVE CAPTIVE
_____________________

A PASTORAL

DIANA, CUPID, DIANA'S NYMPHS

DIANA.

YOU are wasting your time trying to get away;
you will never escape.

CUPID.

What a desolate fate!

DIANA.

Come Nymphs, and take a good long look at my quarry:
what hostage could ever win us so much glory?
Love is conquered.

CUPID.

Alas!

DIANA

Timely sleep had barely
set its seal on his unwary eyelids
when I struck. My victory was his reveille.

CUPID

Be merciful, I implore you, show some kindness!

DIANA

Since when did you extend the like to us?
What of your hapless victims, poor thwarted lovers?
What of treachery, perjury, malice?
Look everyone—the tyrant in shackles!
Now is your chance to exact full retribution:
he put you to the rack, may he be wracked in turn.

CUPID

Diana's youthful companions,
take pity on my suffering,
release me from these hateful chains,
and in payment for that blessing
know that jealousy's vile poison
will never afflict you again.
It is Love itself that swears it.

DIANA

Take care, do not fall for his promises.
Those who trust him founder: he betrays them always.
That meek, obsequious posture
is the traitor leading us on.
You want a peaceful life? Then give him no quarter.
The Love-God persecutes the heart that lets him in.

CUPID

If the goddess of the forest
is resistant to my weeping
I beg my sorrow might at least
rouse in you nymphs kinder feelings.
Child that I am, should I suffer
so cruelly for having fun?
Look at these cuts, where chains have scuffed
into my baby-tender skin.
You could just loosen them a bit,
nymphs, there would be no risk in that.
Remember the pleas and the sweet talk,
the sighs, flattery, devotion
of hearts my wiliness once caught
—gifts from me for your diversion.
Consider what it is you do!
If Love languishes in irons,
your sovereignty languishes too.
When the universe of humans
mutinies against my decree,
what will be the point of beauty?
And if beauty has no meaning,
who will tell you they adore you?¹⁶
Who will want to keep calling you
his all-in-all, his heart's darling?

DIANA

Fool! Do you think to beguile your bitterest foes?

CUPID

I would have bent them like my bow.

DIANA

Did you hear that? Avenge me, nymphs, avenge us all!
Shatter that bow, tear off those wings!
What is there to hinder you, my valiant friends?
I leave him to your fury and your gall.

CUPID smiling

Or, apparently, to their indulgence...

DIANA

What is going on? Why don't you rush to vengeance?
Why these embarrassed fidgets all of a sudden,
downcast faces, and gazes fixed upon the ground?

CUPID

Perhaps, you know, they have fallen under my sway.

DIANA

What have you to say, my nymphs? Your faces redden:
how am I to take this suspicious performance?

CUPID

Really? Blushing, shuffling, silence—
could their thoughts be more evident?

DIANA

What! Prissy Chloris, who is always deploring
the time and pains that Aigle takes over grooming...

CUPID

What's so surprising about that?
They are rivals…

DIANA

Oh heavens! Even meek Irene
who everywhere shuns the odious sight of men
the way, in the woods, we flee a deadly serpent—

CUPID

It's on the orders of Phylene.

DIANA

So! Not a single one of you stays true to me?

CUPID

Not one.

DIANA

Oh you gods! What a cruel thought!
The nerve of it! To betray me, to abuse me!
For such an outrage I will make revenge my sport.

CUPID

Never mind her impotent squall.
If love were to be called a crime
where would you find one honest soul?
The seed of all new life is mine.
On land, and in the sea and sky,
all that is rooted, all that breathes,
surrenders, in the end, to me.
Mortals I enthral; the gods on high I subdue;
and this goddess, here, Diana,
so proud to be cold and clever,
is burning now. I made it so.

DIANA

Reckless Cupid! Where do you get such impudence?

CUPID

From simple truth.

DIANA

Hush!

CUPID

No. You have trashed me enough.

DIANA

Very well, I shall free you, Love.
There you go. Now shut up.

CUPID

I will not be silenced.

DIANA

Oh god

CUPID

I have to expose that false front.
I saw your secret liaisons
on Lemnos. You thought the island
was the solitary witness,
but I will make it my business
to tell the whole of creation.
All will know your conqueror's name
—the stranger who tamed your wildness—
and see that passion is your game
though you act as if all coolness.

DIANA

Enough, Cupid! No more! Leave me alone.
In tears and in remorse I yield you victory.
I shall obey you from now on,
place in your hands my honour and prosperity.

CUPID

A kinder god you will not find:
one single word of entreaty
and my fury is at an end.
I cannot punish the guilty
when they implore mercy of me.
You wish for peace? At your behest
I restore friendly harmony.
Come, and in my court be finest.

DIANA

I confined to your court! who am used to ranging
the rugged, desolate heights and the wild forests!
I, an utter stranger to your laws and mores!
I would be a laughing stock, the joke of ages.

CUPID

Let go of this baseless worry.
I shall become your instructor
and, no, you will not be sorry
to be my latest follower.
Soon you will attain mastery
over any heart you desire
and learn from a consummate guide
how, by turns, we have to impress
courage on a love that is shy,
caution on love that is reckless.

DIANA

So be it, then. I become your zealot.
Nymphs, a contest: which of you will be the quickest
at learning these lessons?

CUPID

I am needed elsewhere—
I shall be back.

DIANA

Oh no, you are not leaving us
until you have—

CUPID

What! How dare you hinder
Love, in his ministering flight!
Do you really think all this time
I've only you to consider?
that no-one else is on my mind?

DIANA

He is right, let him go. Lord of Love, be content
and do exactly as you please.
Stay, go, return—so long as your rage is appeased.

CUPID

Now that is the way I like you,
yielding. You are all enchantment

DIANA

I shall do everything you say, to stay with you.
Nymphs, who have resisted Love's mighty commandments,
the way to pacify him you can learn from me:
his wrath is softened as we bow to his decree.

CUPID

I am forced to play the tyrant
to the beauty that stands apart.
Love is cruel to defiance:
kindness it bestows upon the submissive heart.

---

GLORY'S TRIUMPH
_____________________
POEM

ON Skyros, delicious island of idleness,
Achilles, the jealous love-god's prize, languishes.
Cupid, conceited and greedy of his victim,
revels in the champion's utter vanquishing.

Lovely Deidamia, jewel of Skyros,
he turns into a device to break the hero,
honing her to keen edges, like his own weapons,
plating her simple grace with the bane of sirens.
Just one of her gestures, a word, a smile, a gaze,
becomes an attack and a trap for Achilles.
The cunning god of love assails him everywhere,
his breached heart, at each step, beset with sudden snares.
As he leaves the palace to wander the island
every spot is a summons to sweet abandon:¹⁷
the woods he roves in, where complicit shadows cast
propitious veils over lovers' illicit trysts,
Zephyr the seducer's delicate caresses,
the birds' clear carols as they pay their addresses,
the murmuring of an errant river current
that ends by expending itself along the strand
—everything calls to him, all throbs with his own ache.
Now the son of Thetis, his grooming a disgrace,
wastes in idleness hours that Glory should have owned:
action, battle, mettle that wins the victor's crown,
have lost every purchase on his enfeebled heart.
The hero is consigned to the ignoble lot
of lovey-dovey converse, endless avowals,
Sorries, preceded and succeeded by quarrels;
apathetic sighs and infinite sweet-nothings
—trifles to the wise, a universe to lovers.
You alone, he purrs, are all I dream and live for,
heaving a deep sigh it seems will last forever.
My existence is all yours and will be always,
pressing against his heart the object he adores.
But he is still just a mere lover, and Glory,
seeing the God of Love usurping victory,
indignant, sets an image before Achilles
of Ulysses, alight with martial brilliance.
This vision stuns Achilles, brings stark clarity.
He blushes, whitens, shudders with shame and fury,
dons full armour in place of those unfit garments
and, eager to atone for his long debasement,
makes to leave—but encounters the lady, grieving.
She, breathless, pale, desperate, worn out with weeping,
tries three times to speak, but speech has forsaken her,
sobs and sighs the only accents that escape her.
If the poor creature could only make her voice heard
surely her lover would at once be recaptured?
Your grief is a delusion, he says, banish it:
Love cannot be served by a craven acolyte.
And how easy it will be to make good your loss.
All you have to do is let go of Achilles
and believe this, truly, once he has left Skyros,
you will see him both your lover and your hero.
Yes, you will be the woman I love for ever.
Goodbye. The brutal word breaks Deidamia.
Already martyrdom is fastening his heart:
will it be Love or Glory that wins at last?
Glory offers the gilded palm of victory,
Love the pang of his mistress's wasting away.
One calls him a coward, the other a killer.
Within his own breast the hero and the lover
are waging a deadly, internecine campaign.
He sighs, he trembles, he is for leaving, he stays,
he steps away, he returns. At last the hero
overrules the lover, remarshals his virtue,
and the scales are tilted back in Glory's favour.
There is a grim silence. The moment is torture
for Achilles. He collects himself and departs.
He is crying, but Glory finishes her work,
braces him up, hardens him with a single glance,
tightens the final nerve to split him from his curse.

Thus the nature of this treacherous deity:
fight him and you lose, flee and you win mastery.

IL BIASIMO

TU sei gelosa, è vero;
Mà ti conosco, Irene;
E jalosia d'impero,
Non ami il prigioniero,
Ami le sue catene,
Spiace al tuo genio altiero
Che altra t'usurpi un cuor.

Saria più fida, Irene,
Sequante volte inganna,
Scemasse di bestà.
Ma che esperar conviene!
Se quanta è più tiranna
Più bella Ognor si fà

This lovely madrigal appears nowhere in the works of Metastasio, so I thought I should revive it here in the original. La Fontaine, in whose posthumous works one finds several letters that show grace, verve and ease, all worthy of our best fabulist, produced a piece very like it:

If all my pining and complaints
set my mistress at a distance
I can, with charm or chemistry,
sweeten off that cruel temper.
But when I see her laughing at my misery
I am more smitten than ever.

REPROACH

NO, forget jealousy, Irene.
It's all too plain to see your heart
cares only for its angry grasp.
It isn't love that brings you pain.
Chains are the objects you cherish,
not the prisoner they contain.
The one who comes to smash their grip
will deal your haughty soul a blain.
If each new infidelity
were to lessen your loveliness,
you might demonstrate faithfulness
just to please your own vanity;
but what must loftiness decree
when you seem only more gorgeous
after every inconstancy!

This sweet madrigal appears to be an imitation of Horace's Ode Ulla si juris tibi, and perhaps it was by imitating Horace and La Fontaine that Metastasio came to write his Reproach. I frequently had occasion to note, while translating his Cantatas, that the Racine of Italy often makes use of a model: Spring is a reworking of Tibullus' first elegy; the Love Nest is a paraphrase of one of Anacreon's verses, so well translated by Mr. Anson; the Triumph of Glory is an episode from Boileau, refined. Too late I noticed these correspondences; if I had done so earlier, I would have avoided the risk of comparison.

<< Against Satire Idylls pages 14-44 >>