ix
Plato, for all his preoccupation with metaphysical
matters, was primarily interested in the acquisition of knowledge and wisdom,
and the transmission of these to others for the practical good of the state.
The Neoplatonists emphasized his metaphysical preoccupations, divorced
themselves from things of the world and affairs of state, and read into
what Plato had said about God and creation the idea that man is one with
God and that his mission is to find his way back to that oneness.
...in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, literature
in the vernacular in France was devoting itself more and more to matters
of love, and a new trend which owed something to Platonic doctrine was
developing with respect to the poet?s attitude vis-à-vis
his lady. ... the new attitude was one of idealization of both lady and
love. It was first manifest among the troubadours of Provence, and was
later fully rationalized at the courts of Eleanor of Poitou and of her
daughter, Marie of Champagne... In Italy, among the writers in the vernacular,
it was the poets of the dolce stil nuovo?including Dante?and later Petrarch
who refined to a high degree of perfection the Platonic, Neoplatonic,
Christian, and courtly concepts...
...Ficino...his disciple, Pico della Mirandola, and
such men as Cardinal Bembo, Castiglione, and Leone Ebreo. In their sonnet
sequences the Petrarchists of this age?including such poets as Lorenzo
de? Medici and Michelangelo?were continuing the poetic traditions
of Petrarch and adding to their verses the Platonic concepts newly discovered
or developed by Ficino and his followers.
It was of course not long before all the above-mentioned
activities of the Italians were known in France. Pico made an extended
stay there and did his bit toward acquainting a few French with the work
of Ficino and the Florentine Academy.
...Francois I and his sister Marguerite de Navarre?Platonic
doctrine entered into the theological precepts of ... Marguerite?s
spiritual advisers...
...Du Bellay published his sonnet sequence Olive,
in which Platonic doctrine played an important role.
xiv
... ?j?ai pris au sérieux? Desportes, and I
have found in the poet?s works repeated evidence of all the basic Platonic
teachings having to do with the Creation, the Soul, the Ideas, Love
and Beauty, the Lover and the Beloved, the Poet and Poetry, the Virtues
and the Vices. These are the basic concerns of literary Platonism.
...full of plotting, bitterness, civil wars, and massacres.
There is little wonder that the frivolities of the young Valois princes,
who succeeded each other on the throne during those years, were short lived
and that, ...they ...turned from their pleasures to seek the re-establishment
of harmony within their kingdom by giving attention to all sorts of ethical,
philosophical, and religious activities. The poets of the Pléiade...The
young Valois princes had become aware?not without the suggestions
of their courtiers?of the examples which had been set for them by their
ancestors, the Florentine Medici, who had fostered the Italian Renaissance
and had taken as their protégé the young Marsilio Ficino...
4
Timaeus (c. A.D. 350) enjoyed particular favor as
early as the twelfth century, and exerted a profound influence on the teachers.
In their commentaries on it they sought to reconcile Platonic and
Mosaic accounts of the creation.
The school was, then, almost certainly living under
this great tradition when Desportes was a scholar there...
From the liberal use which he made, at a later date,
of the works of the Italian Petrarchists, he must have spent considerable
time thoroughly familiarizing himself with them.
5
Thus we see the important consideration being given
philosophy and the moral effects of music and poetry by the men of this
age, and the role which was being assigned them during the reign of the
new king.
Henri was inclined to take his new duties seriously.
His first concern was to surround himself with men whom he could trust
...and to relegate the others to places of little importance. As Desportes
had been his favorite poet, addressing sonnets for him to Francoise d?Estrées,
Renée de Rieux (Mlle de Chateauneuf), and the princesse de
Clèves (Marie de C1èves), now he became a reader to the king...
The famous and learned Italian philosopher, Giordano
Bruno, spent about five years in Paris and was also a reader to the king
during a part of that time.
12
For medieval and Renaissance man there was no inconsistency
in seeking satisfaction for one?s sensual nature with one woman, allying
oneself through marriage with another to insure the continuity of one?s
line, and idealizing still another. Nor was it unusual for churchmen
to pursue at least the first and last mentioned of such loves.
Claude de Laubespine, had died in 1570 and his death was one of the great sorrows of the poet?s life. He lamented his friend?s passing in these verses:
J?avois un seul amy, sage, heureux et parfait,
La mort en son printans sans pitié l?a desfait,
Comblant mes yeux de pleurs et mon ame de rage. 48
Even during the reign of Charles IX those who were
concerned about the total lack of harmony in France were seeking some
means of pacifying the revolting elements within the kingdom...
The Orphic and the Pythagorean traditions had combined
to make of music one of the primary subjects of study in the schools. Pythagoras
had treated music as a part of universal harmony, and Plato had stressed
its importance in the ideal state.
19
...the Palace Academy?in which Ronsard and Desportes
debate on the active and contemplative lives, Pibrac discusses righteous
anger, and the aim of the debates seems to be to form Henri as the ideal
philosopher king.?68 Lavaud says that this academy ?sous l?impulsion de
Pibrac, tendit a se rapprocher des académies platoniciennes d?Italie.?69
Desportes occupied a very important place in it, being entrusted with the
Livre d?institution...
...bishopric of Bordeaux, which he refused, but was
soon ?conseiller du Roi en ses Conseils d?Etat et privé,?76
and in 1598 he was again lodged in the Enclos du Palais, quarters allocated
to him as canon of the Sainte-Chapelle. At his favorite home at Vanvres
he entertained and lodged his numerous friends. Henri IV brought his son,
the Dauphin, to visit him there. Shortly before the poet?s death in
1606 the king had decided to entrust the education of the Dauphin to him.
...when Henri finally ascended the throne in 1594,
Desportes had lost none of his universal prestige.
We shall see that sometimes?as when he defines Love?he
paraphrases Plato. At other times his Platonism is more a matter of
tone than of doctrine. His thoughts concerning the Creation and the Cosmos,
the nature of Love and Beauty, the Soul and the Ideas, the relationship
between the Lover and the Beloved, the divine inspiration of the poet and
the role of poetry, the consideration given to the Virtues and ?affections?
of the Soul, are all Platonic and stem directly from the dialogues, although
the words the poet uses to express his thoughts are not invariably traceable
to some exact passage in Plato.
Not only was the good abbé considered among
the first poets of France by the people of his own age, he was esteemed
and imitated by numerous English poets as well, such as Henry Constable,
Samuel Daniel, William Drummond, and Thomas Lodge.
We find Timaeus saying: ?Wherefore also God in the beginning of creation made the body of the universe to consist of fire and earth . . . God placed water and air in the mean between fire and earth.? He continues: ?And for these reasons, and out of such elements which are in number four, the body of the world was created, and it was harmonized by proportion, and therefore has the spirit of friendship...But when the world began to get into order, fire and water, and earth and air had only certain faint traces of themselves and God fashioned them by form and number . God made them as far as possible the fairest and best, out of things which were not fair and good.?2 In Desportes? poem, mentioned above, we find that he has incorporated all of these ideas, nearly word for word...
Durant le grand debat de la masse premiere,
Que l?air, le mer, la terre et la belle lumiere,
...confusement, faisoient un pesant corps,
Amour, qui fut marry de leur longue querelle,
De la matiere lourde en bastit une belle,
Rengeant les elemens en paissibles accords. 22
Further evidence that our poet conformed to the Platonic concept of Love as a creative force is found in these lines:
Car cet amour tousjours par la beauté l?attire;
En suivant la beauté, belle forme il desire;
Voila comme l?amour rend le monde accompli.26 (cf.
Daniel I)
65
...the great poetic powers of Dante, who carried the
ideals of the dolce stil nuovo to their most exalted level. His
lady Beatrice, not only became the earthly embodiment of the angelic but
was herself an angel and the guide of the poet through the realms of the
supernatural.
Dante finally clarified all the symbolism behind the
new concepts in his Convivio,8 which served as a handbook on philosophic
love for future poets because of the keenness of its reasoning and the
nobility of its sentiments.
Petrarch was the heir of this brilliant school of
poets. ...Petrarch obviously wanted to make his Laura a representation
as divine as Beatrice, but he expresses considerably more than the yearnings
of his immortal soul.
The advances of the poets of the dolce stil nuovo
and Petrarch in the idealization of love, the higher intellectualization
of their concepts of love, may have been due to the fact that they were
in possession of a greater accumulation of Platonic materials.
The foundation for the communion of the Florentine
Platonists was Ficino?s cult of love and friendship, which was based on
amor
divinis, the love of the soul for God, and was sharply opposed to the
vulgar concept of love.? Not satisfied to stop with Plato, the men of this
group studied the works of the Neoplatonists as well and thus absorbed
ideas of questionable orthodoxy...
66
...Paris he found it subjected to innumerable Italian
influences, as one might expect with a son of Catherine de? Medici on the
throne and with Catherine herself in the wings directing the court drama.
Charles IX and the young courtiers grouped around him were more interested
in the subtleties of the Petrarchists than in the idealism of the Platonists.Desportes,
however, soon found, in the salon of the marechale de Retz where he became
a favorite , the atmosphere favorable to his poetic temperament, an atmosphere
where love was idealized.
68
Desportes...full use of this definition in his verse. Whether he went back to the Symposium or merely repeated what his more recent predecessors had said, the following line is nearly word for word from Plato:
Aussi l?amour n?est rien qu?un desir de beauté.
40 [Diane]
70
...finding in one of the king?s mignons, Quélus,
the idea of love, beauty, and desire of man for man, which reflects something
of the relationship between Socrates and Alcibiades.
Love is a desire for the possession of beauty. It
has its inception in the contemplation of innumerable beautiful faces and
forms and mounts to the contemplation of innumerable beautiful things,
seeking behind them not the copies but their patterns?eternal beauties?and
learning that beauty is one with truth and goodness. One proceeds from
fair forms to fair practices, from fair practices to fair notions, and
from fair notions to the notion of absolute beauty.
...Neoplatonists universal love is contained in the
All-Soul. As the single soul is embraced in the All-Soul, so the single
love holds to the All-Love. ?Good men have no other love than for the Absolute
and Authentic Good and never follow random loves of a different kind.?
...little evidence that Ficino himself was interested
in the ideal state or the training of statesmen as Plato had been. However,
this aspect of Platonism is emphasized in the works of Bembo and of Castiglione...
73
When the poet speaks of ?aimer hautement? he is obviously
referring to the two kinds of love which we find treated by Pausanias
in the Symposium when he says: ?For we all know that Love is inseparable
from Aphrodite, and if there were only one Aphrodite there would be only
one Love; but there are two goddesses and there must be two Loves
. . . . The elder one is the daughter of Uranus; the younger, who is the
daughter of Zeus and Dione?her we call common; and the Love who is her
fellow-worker is rightly named common, and the other Love is called heavenly.?
78
We learn in the Symposium that ?love is of the immortal
. . . . the mortal nature is seeking as far as possible to be everlasting
and immortal; and this is only to be attained by generation, because generation
always leaves behind a new existence in place of the old . . . . Those
who are pregnant in the body only, betake themselves to women and beget
children . . . but souls which are pregnant . . . conceive that which is
proper for the soul to conceive or contain.?And what are these conceptions??wisdom
and virtue in general.?
94
The real significance of Plato?s Eros is that he brings
harmony out of disorder and oneness from multiplicity. When he is
made to take part in the world of the senses, the abstract world of the
intelligible takes on the concrete form of life. As Raphael Demos says
in his article on Eros: Eros is the primordial attraction of the actual
by the ideal. Eros is desire.
...the goddess being older, there is nothing of wantonness
in her. Those who are inspired by this love turn to the male, and delight
in him who is the more valiant and intelligent nature.. .For they love
not boys, but intelligent beings whose reason is beginning to be developed,
much about the time at which their beards begin to grow.?8
95
There is no evidence that Desportes derives his implication of a plurality of little Love gods from Plato when he asks:
Amours, qui voleties et l?entour de nos flames,
Comme gay papillons, ou sont deux autres ames
Qui redoutent si peu les efforts envieux? 46
nor when he says:
O beaux cheveux chatains d?une qui ce nom porte,
Ondez, crespes et longs, ou les Jeux inconstans
Et les petits Amours, comme oiseux voletans,
S?emprisonnent l?un l?autre en mainte et mainte sorte.47
99
Most of the powers Desportes attributes to the god
are those found attributed to him by the various speakers in the Symposium.
He is represented as the first of the gods and as having entered into
the creation as an ordering force.
100
As a result of the work of Ficino and of the prose
writers, such as Castiglione, who helped to popularize the efficacies of
intellectual beauties, there was grafted on the amatory poetic stock, already
composed of Greek, Latin, troubadour, dolce stil nuovist, Dantesque,
and Petrarchan elements, a whole new world of poetic conceits.
?Transcendental beauty, so far as the ancient Greeks
were concerned, had its earthly form in the handsome youth. Such beauty
scarcely existed for the poets of antiquity, and when the medieval poets
began the development which led to the idealization of love in their
verse, the earthly beauty which inspired that love was embodied in the
lady rather than in a youth
101
Few Renaissance poets followed Ficino in his emphasis
on male beauty in the rationalization of love. Like the earlier Italian
poets?Dante, Petrarch, and the Petrarchists?they limited their attentions
to the beauty of their ladies. Two outstanding exceptions were Michelangelo
in Italy and Shakespeare in England. As for our poet, Desportes, his
sonnet sequences are dedicated to ladies bearing the names of Diane,
Cléonice, and Hippolyte.
105
Desportes? own preoccupations with such considerations are evidenced by his activities in the Académie du Palais, of which the purpose was the pursuit of philosophic truth by the
promising youths; and by the fact that the king, Henri
IV, had chosen the poet, shortly before the latter?s death, to be the tutor
of the Dauphin.
125
It was to make the lives of the people more harmonious
and gracious, and to implant in their souls true conceptions of good
and evil. Music was a gift of the gods and was not intended for idle pleasure.
...This emphasis which the Greeks had placed on the ethical values of music
was not lost on the scholars of the Renaissance. Ficino, in his Commentary,
spoke of the effects of music... close connection with music but considers
poetry as superior, for words speak not only to the ear but also to the
mind.45
132
Plato and the Greeks had tended to unify and interrelate all knowledge and the arts, with poetry and music occupying most important places. The men of Desportes? age followed the same tendency, as did he himself. After Plato decided it was best to exile the poets from his Republic and to censor poetry, he still proposed to give a place to the poets of mature age who glorified the national heroes and to those who sang the praises of the gods. Even in Desportes? profane poetry we find some elegies and epitaphs in celebration of men and women whom he considered worthy subjects of the king. In his more mature years, after he became an abbé, he gave up profane verse entirely and devoted his poetic talents to his Oeuvres chrestiennes and to the translation of the Psalms. He, like Plato, and like his contemporary Baïf, hoped that the cultivation of the harmony of music and of verse might restore concord among the people of France.