#queer rereadings in the french renaissance

[chicot-premier]

Compared to those of Ronsard, the verses of the other court poets are considerably more expansive and expressive, so that they can be considered as constituting a literary equivalent of the grand funeral rites and tombs. Like the latter, they represent first of all the personal grief of the king, yet, destined also for circulation and eventually to be published, they give that grief and the lives of the favourites public commemoration. Jamyn, Passerat, and Desportes portray the mignons primarily in terms of the characteristics of courage and physical beauty; they also emphasise the intense emotional masculine bravery is not unexpected in this kind of eulogy, descriptions of male beauty and love between men are much less common in Renaissance poetry. Cleophon/Henri speaks, for example, not only of his friendship for his deceased favourites, but also of his love, the words ‘amour’ and ‘aimer’ [‘love’/‘to love’] occurring considerably more frequently than ‘ami(s)’ and ‘amitié’ [‘friend(s)/‘friendship’]. In Jamyn’s poems, Cleophon refers to the mignons as ‘mon tout et ma partie’, ‘une part de mon ame’, his ‘moitié’, ‘le Printemps de mon ame’, ‘ceux que plus j’aimois’, ‘ceux qui m’estoient plus chers’, ‘ceux que j’aime tant’, and so on. Evoking conventional metaphors of amorous passion, he speaks also of his ‘dolente ardeur’, his ‘feu’, and even, in one instance, of his ‘feu d’amour’. In the poems of Passerat, we find the same and similar expressions, including ‘trop ardent Amour’, ‘Amour loyale, et plus que fraternelle’, and ‘amoureuse flame’. Stressing the love that united the two mignons in their common devotion to Henri, Desportes also has recourse to the vocabulary of passion, one friend addressing the other through such ‘cris enflammez’ as ‘mon plus cher soucy’, ‘ce qui m’est plus cher’, ‘mon plus doux penser’, ‘doux feu de ma vie’, and ‘seul jour de mes yeux’. Desportes, in particular, recuperates the gratuity of the multiple deaths caused by the duel by insisting on the inseparability of the two men: Maugiron is unable to see Caylus fight without coming to his aid; having succumbed first, his spirit waits for that of his friend so they might journey together to the Elysian fields. Caylus, for his part, has no desire to live once Maugiron is dead. At the same time, the relationship of the two favourites with the king is not neglected: the waters of Lethe will be for them a love-draught (‘breuvage amoureux’), effacing all earthly memories except that of their beloved Henri. The inseparability of Caylus and Maugiron also figures as a prominent theme in the sonnets recorded by L’Estoile. According to the poet, Caylus even allowed himself to be wounded intentionally when he saw that his friend was dying, calling out: ‘« Mon malheur me console: / Si je meurs, pour le moins je mourrai sur ton sein! / Mort, je t’embrasserai! »’.[Translation from chapter endnotes: 'My misfortune is my consolation: / If I die, at least I shall die on your breast! / In death I will embrace you!'] In the following sonnet, Caylus addresses his friend again: « Chere ame, chere teste, helas! tu es donc morte, Qui fut seulle mon tout, ma vie et mon confort! … Helas! cher compagnon, comme nous soulions faire, Nous n’irons plus ensemble en un lieu solitaire, Discourir, deviser et parler de l’amour (Passion de l’amour à tels ans necessaire). Apres ton jour fini, dequoi me sert mon jour! Le nœud que l’amour fait, la mort ne peult deffaire. » [Translation from chapter endnotes: 'Dear soul, dear head, alas! so you are dead, Who alone were my all, my life, and my comfort! … Alas! dear companion, as we were wont to do, Nevermore shall we go together to a deserted place, To discourse, converse, and talk of love (The passion of love needful to tender years). With your light gone, of what use to me is my light! The knot tied by love, death cannot undo.’]

Gary Ferguson, Queer (Re)Readings in the French Renaissance: Homosexuality, Gender, Culture (pp. 146-148)