In the morning, having gotten ready, I walked along the alley:
The sea sighs, the cicadas chatter.
And looking forward to a Sunday walk
At the intersection I slowed down.

A Subaru roared past,
The hot air washed over me.
I remember the number: seven, three... Lady?!
It's a pity that fate didn't deal me the ace.

Why, Countess, did you deceive me again?
I would sit at the card table, but, alas...
I smoothed my hair with my fingers,
He pulled on his jacket and adjusted his glasses.

Suddenly, unexpectedly before my eyes
An image arose - six twinkling stars...
The thought suggested itself: why a crossover?
Did Kenji Kita carry this sign?

Gathered together in the azure field
Mitsuraboshi merged to form FHI.
Not finding worthy options,
He named the car himself...

Before the advent of the human race
A series of ten-year battles,
Titanomachy that Hesiod
It was sung to us in theogony,

Completed. Zeus overthrew the Titans
To Tartarus, under the supervision of Hecatoncheires,
Their leader, the hardy Atlas
Doomed to hold the heavenly sphere.

Seven daughters: Keleno, Asterope,
Maya, Taygeta, Electra, Merope,
And Alcyone - the love of Poseidon -
The way for sailors will be illuminated from the sky.

Heavenly nymphs, Artemis' train,
Eternally running, driven by Orion,
Looking for peace. Turned into stars
(Zeus the Thunderer fulfilled their request)

The night is decorated with a timid radiance,
Only Merope in a distant constellation,
As if embarrassed by a mortal husband,
It shines weaker than the sisters... In the winter cold

Raising your eyes, will you pay attention?
An inconspicuous flicker:
Stozhary is visible to a clear eye,
People are promised the return of spring...

So, looking at the strange pattern,
I made a brief review of the myths.
Life is not that simple, believe me...
It’s even simpler – just be able to understand it.

=====
Founder and first president of Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd. (FHI), Kenji Kita, was personally involved in the creation of the first prototype of the P-1 passenger car in 1954.
When the P-1 was created, Kita, who believed that a Japanese car should have a Japanese name, announced a competition for the best name for the P-1. However, none of the competition names suited Kenji, and he eventually came up with it himself - “Subaru”.
The word "Subaru" is the Japanese name for the Pleiades star cluster in the constellation Taurus. About a dozen of its stars can be seen in the night sky with the naked eye, and about 250 more - with the help of a telescope. The original Japanese name for cluster comes from the verb subaru (to be gathered together). The brand and its logo also reference another ancient Japanese name for the Pleiades, Mitsuraboshi, alluding to the six companies that merged to form FHI.

A.S. Pushkin argued that the plot of his story “The Queen of Spades” is based on a real story from the life of Princess Golitsyna, who revealed to her lost grandson the secret of three true cards (“Three, seven and ace will win you in a row...”).

Titanomachy - in ancient Greek mythology, the battle of the Olympian Gods with the Titans, a series of battles over ten years long before the existence of the human race. The Titanomachy is also known as the Clash of the Titans or the Battle of the Gods.
Several poems about this war are known from Greek literature of the classical period. The dominant and only one that has survived to this day is the Theogony written by Hesiod.
Having defeated the Titans, Zeus threw them to Tartarus. On Atlas (Atlas), who was the leader of the Titans, he placed the vault of heaven and ordered him to forever support the sky on his shoulders. Atlas is a symbol of endurance and patience.
Hecatoncheires - in ancient Greek mythology, hundred-armed, fifty-headed giants, the personification of the elements. During the Titanomachy, they responded to the call of the Olympian Gods and opposed the Titans. Later they guard them in Tartarus.

The Pleiades - in ancient Greek mythology, a group of seven nymphs, daughters of Atlas: Alcyone, Keleno, Maia, Merope, Asterope, Taygeta and Electra.
The Pleiades are the companions of Artemis, her escort. Subsequently, they were turned by Zeus into stars - the constellation Pleiades and began to be considered as celestial nymphs.
According to the myth, the hunter Orion began to pursue the Pleiades sisters, who, fleeing his persecution, turned to the gods for protection. Zeus turned the Pleiades into stars and placed them in the sky in the form of an asterism of the same name in the constellation Taurus, and Orion, as punishment for his insolence, was also turned into a group of stars and placed in the sky in the form of a constellation, not far from the Pleiades. It turned out that Orion was now doomed to unsuccessfully pursue the Pleiades across the sky until the end of time.
All the Pleiades are connected by family ties with the gods, and only Merope was the only one who married a mortal, therefore in the constellation, ashamed of her act, she shines weaker than the others.

The Pleiades (astronomical designation M45; sometimes the proper name Seven Sisters is also used, the old Russian name is Stozhary or Volosozhary) - an open star cluster in the constellation Taurus; one of the closest star clusters to Earth and one of the most visible to the naked eye.
There are several different versions of the origin of the name "Pleiades". According to one of them, it comes from the Greek “to sail,” because the Pleiades asterism is observed at night in the Mediterranean region from mid-May to early November, that is, during the period of active trade travel in antiquity.
“Joyfully, Odysseus strained the sail and, with a fair wind,
Trusting, he swam. Sitting on the stern and with a mighty hand
Turning the steering wheel, he was awake; sleep did not descend on him
He never took his eyes off the Pleiades...”
Homer, "Odyssey".

For the ancient Greeks and Romans, the rising of the Pleiades in the morning before sunrise meant the return of spring.

Group of 7 French poets, headed by Pierre de Ronsard and existed from 1550 to 1585.

When creating the group, he took as a model the Alexandrian Pleiades, which included 7 famous Greek poets.

The group's manifesto was a treatise Joachena du Bellay 1549: Defense and glorification of the French language / La Defense et illustration de la langue francoyse.

7 poets were the first to write poetry in French, and not in Latin or Greek.

“Pleiades is a poetic school whose activity took place in the third quarter of the 16th century, and its influence remained predominant until the end of the century.

The Pleiades included the humanist scientist Jean Dora (1508-1588) and his students and followers - Pierre de Ronsard (1524-1585), Joachin Du Bellay(1522-1560), Jean Antoine de Baif (1532-1589), Etienne Jodel (1532-1573), Remy Bellot (1528-1577), Pontus de Thiard (1521-1605); Jacques Peletier du Man (1517-1582), Guillaume Desautels (1529-1581), Jean de La Peruse (1529-1554) and others also joined it.

The historical and literary role of the Pleiades was that it decisively introduced humanistic ideas and ideals into poetry. Without breaking with the traditionalist type of thinking as such, with super-personal values and ideals, the Pleiades - over the head of the established medieval poetic tradition - turned to the traditions of ancient culture and attempted its successful restoration on the basis of the culture of the 16th century. A comparison of the poetics of the Pleiades with the poetics of the “great rhetoricians” allows us to understand the innovative nature of the aesthetic principles of the school of Ronsard and Du Bellay.

The ancient imagery itself had long been firmly part of the arsenal of the poetic culture of the “great rhetoricians,” but it functioned in many ways differently than that of the Pleiades poets. It was no coincidence that the authors of the 15th century considered their work as a “second rhetoric”, for they saw the difference between an orator and a poet only in the means of expression (the poet uses poetic meter, but the orator does not) and in the material (the poet primarily thinks in allegorical and mythological images ), but by no means the goal. The goal was thought to be the same - to convince and instruct the audience in Christian truths, using all possible techniques from the rhetorical arsenal. Unlike the rhetorician, however, the poet had to put his teachings into figurative form, for which he used the richest reserve of ancient myths.

Thus, the poet could not simply say that the light of truth disperses the darkness of ignorance, he had to “poeticize” this thought, that is, he must personify it, say, in the form of a struggle Apollo with Python. “Poetic” stories were understood as mythological stories themselves, told in poetic form. The whole point, however, is that ancient myths seemed to the “great rhetoricians” to be deliberate “fictions”, pagan “fables”, which played the role of a very convenient, but completely conventional and decorative “packaging” for Christian content.

The poet was perceived as a kind of philosopher, a servant of moral truth - but precisely and only a servant, since truth is given by divine revelation and is objectively poured into the world.

According to this view, the poet, strictly speaking, does not create anything himself; he only opens, reads and deciphers the “book of the world”, in which everything is already written in advance, and communicates what he has read to his audience.

The poetry of the “great rhetoricians” had a purely rationalistic, utilitarian and educational orientation. These features in general were not alien to the Pleiades, however, she significantly rethought them, which was primarily manifested in the theoretical manifesto of the school, written Joachin Du Bellay, - in “Defense and Glorification of the French Language” (1549).

The main idea of the manifesto is that antiquity created eternal and universal aesthetic models, which are the absolute criterion for all subsequent times and peoples. Therefore, it is possible to create something worthy in poetry only by approaching these models, that is, by “imitating” the ancients and “competing” with them. The Italians followed this path back in the 14th century and were not mistaken, as evidenced by the brilliant literature they created. Therefore, one can imitate both ancient and Italian humanistic culture directly. This is a commonplace of French Renaissance thought. However, if the Neo-Latin poets preferred to compete with the Romans in their own language, then Du Bellay put at the forefront the conviction that through “cultivation” it is possible to raise the “French dialect” to the level of Latin, that is, to create a national poetry that can compare with the ancient one and even surpass it.

The reform of poetry concerned primarily two areas - lexical and genre. As for vocabulary enrichment, here Du Bellay suggested two main ways:

1) borrowings (both from ancient languages and from the languages of various modern professions) and
2) creation of neologisms (in particular, on an Italian basis).

As for genres, Du Bellay uncompromisingly rejected the entire medieval system of genres, and this applied to both lyrical (ballad, royal song, le, virele, dizen, etc.) and dramatic (morality play, farce, etc.) genres, which were to be replaced by the revived genres of ancient literature - ode, elegy, epigram, satire, epistle, eclogue (in lyric poetry), tragedy and comedy (in drama).

This reform, carried out by the Pleiades, was a turning point in French literature, defining its appearance not only in the 16th, but also in the 17th and 18th centuries, for it was about something much more than a simple change in “genre forms,” as we have seen , that in medieval poetry the genre was not a purely compositional formation, but presupposed its own theme, its own ways of interpreting it, its own system of visual means, etc., i.e., it acted as a predetermined semantic and figurative language, like that ready-made “prism” , through which the poet could only look at reality. We are talking about a fundamental feature of not only medieval, but also any (including ancient) traditionalist culture.

An author belonging to such a culture never relates to the object he depicts “directly,” relying exclusively on his individual experience, but, on the contrary, only indirectly, through an already existing word about this object, which is precisely fixed in the system of semantic and pictorial expressive clichés, which in their totality make up this culture.

When choosing a genre, the poet chose not only a strophic, etc. “form”, he chose a semantic language in which he had to talk about the world.”

Kosikov G.K. , The work of the Pleiades poets and the dramaturgy of the Renaissance / Collected works, Volume 1: French literature, M., Rudomino Book Center, 2011, p. 101-103.

“The quotation of the text is taken from the book: Centuries and the Renaissance” is, of course, a metaphor, but a metaphor, as we will try to show, that has a very real meaning. However, it was not invented by us, but is contained in explicit or hidden form by many domestic and French researchers of the 20th century, who saw that over the four centuries separating us from Ronsard, Du Bellay and their comrades in the poetic school, the poetry of the Pleiades remained constant " component" of French literature. As the history of French literature has shown, the works of Ronsard, Du Bellay, Baif, Jodelle and even the “minor” poets of the Pleiades contained much of what found its varied continuation in subsequent eras. The fables of La Fontaine, the comedies of Molière, the satires of Mathurin Regnier, the poems and epigrams of the freethinking poets of the 17th century, the elegies of Chenier, the poetry of the romantics, the war and post-war love and civil lyrics of France of the 20th century - these, in the most general form, are the main, clearly identified evidence of “eternal modernity” poetic heritage of the Pleiades1 “Text citation taken from the book: centuries and the Renaissance” aimed at creating truly national poetry that could compete with the best examples of ancient and contemporary Italian authors, poetry that would become evidence of the greatness and originality of French literature.

"Text citations taken from the book: Ages and the Renaissance" of the authors, and then felt able to challenge all modern poetry and offer it new and difficult roads. And their audacity, as shown first of all by their own poetic creativity, had weighty grounds, for with the names of Ronsard, Du Bellay, Baif, Bellot, Jodel and other poets of the Pleiades, as Yu. B. Vipper rightly notes, “a revolution equal in the historical significance of the shift that was then, already in the 17th century, made in the field of tragedy by Corneille, and later in the genre of comedy by Moliere"2.

The first theoretical manifesto of the new school was “Defense and glorification of the French language” by Du Bellay (La Deffe “Text quoted from the book: centuries and the Renaissance” 3 “Text quoted from the book: centuries and the Renaissance” “Pleiad” is nothing more than myth, and that it can hardly be said that the poets included in it constituted a single school. These doubts are associated with a number of circumstances. Firstly, the extreme individual originality of each of the poets of the new school is striking. Secondly, they are confusing and those by no means idyllic relationships that sometimes developed between its participants. However, the theoretical program of any literary school, if it unites writers gifted with true talent, never completely determines all possible individual phenomena. Belonging to one or another school “in no way ", - as L. Ya. Ginzburg writes, - does not cover the writer’s activity either in its entirety or throughout its entire duration. It only testifies to the fact that at a certain historical moment in the writer’s work signs appear that correspond to the theoretical provisions of one or another another group. These signs are sharpened in moments of struggle, gravitating towards collective forms, and are neutralized during periods of peaceful work, when everyone is responsible only for themselves. In any case, a literary historian should not be upset when he encounters a statement that cannot in any way be subsumed under the author’s group affiliation.”4

“Text citation taken from the book: Centuries and Renaissance” of the “new era” in the art of words, supporting each other in periods of struggle and equally alien to rigid normativity in prescribing rules and poetic regulation. Du Bellay and Ronsard, Jodelle and Tauro, Baif and Bellot could allow themselves and others, when the need arose, to enter into open polemics not only with literary opponents, but also with comrades in the literary struggle, and even with ourselves.

“The quotation of the text is taken from the book: Centuries and the Renaissance” - Ronsard, who gave his school this name and who, together with Joachin Du Bellay, determined both its “available composition” and the main directions of poetic reforms.

The name of the school did not arise immediately. In 1549, in one poem (published in 1552), describing the joint journey of Dore's disciples to Arcueil, Ronsard calls them the Brigade. Thus, at the beginning the Brigade is just Kokra's college brothers. But already in 1553 in his “Dithyrambs in honor of the goat Jodelle, the tragic poet”5 (Dithyrambesagrave; la pompe du bouc de Jodelle, poète tragique) and in the poem “The Blessed Islands” (Iles Fortu “Text quotation taken from the book: centuries and the Renaissance" "Elegy to Cretoflu de Choiseul" by Ronsard; the poetic Taurot opened with Baif's sonnet8 "Text quoted from the book: centuries and the Renaissance" in mutual understanding, but a feeling of urgent need to submit one's own creative quest to the judgment and verification of fellow poets, and sometimes the desire explain his own, special position, convince of its legitimacy and necessity. Thus, Ronsard, who began the renewal and “glorification of the French language” with Horatian and oratorically sublime odes in the style of the Greek poet Pindar, then turned to the simplicity and naturalness of the expression of earthly human emotions in the introductory poem to the “Second Book of Love Poems” (Le seco “Text citation taken from the book: centuries and the Renaissance” “climate” of France in the late 40s of the 16th century.

Having become a single absolutist state in the first third of the 16th century (the last major duchy, Brittany, was annexed to the lands of the crown in 1532), France was one of the most centralized and powerful powers in Europe. Power was increasingly concentrated in the hands of the king, and the feudal aristocracy was replaced by a court aristocracy, whose influence was determined not so much by origin as by proximity to the person of the monarch. The principles of the Renaissance, established in Russian culture thanks to the first generation of French humanist scientists and writers (Rabelais, Marot, Deperriers, etc.), the ideals of unlimited freedom of spirit and “flesh,” the belief in the infinity of human possibilities, although they remained, so to speak, ideal perspective, no longer seemed so unconditional in their real application. The times of religious and political freethinking are left behind: the persecution of Protestants in France, which began under Francis I (1515 -1547), intensified under Henry II (1547 -1559) and became the harbinger of religious wars that raged for more than thirty years and brought France to the brink of a national catastrophe and state split. However, in those years when the Pleiades began its activities, the unity of the country had not yet been shaken. The centralization of French social life and its successes in foreign policy led to the formation and strengthening of national identity both in the sphere of state and in the sphere of culture. During the reign of Henry II, the royal court, stronger than the court of his father Francis I, began to determine the literary situation. The pomp and majesty with which the king surrounded himself, in order to ritualize his authoritarianism, required attracting to the court a huge number of sculptors, artists, musicians, organizers of festivals and, of course, poets, who were no longer allowed those familiar, sarcastic barbs and familiarity that he dared Clement Marot (1496 - 1544) in relation to his monarch. The court poets of Henry II and the most talented of them, the bishop-poet Medlen de Saint-Gelais (1491 -1558), composed elegant être “Quotation of the text taken from the book: centuries and the Renaissance” - these words of Du Bellay make us recall the one contained in Rabelais in The 2nd book of his epic “Gargantua and Pantagruel” provides a program for the humanistic education of man. Later, Du Bellay’s colleague in the Pleiades, the humanist Pelletier du Man, in his “Poetics” will add as a matter of course: “There is no need to say that our poets need knowledge of astrology, cosmography, geometry, physics. .."13. The program for educating the poet, set out in the “Defense”, and then repeatedly repeated and developed in the statements of other figures of the Pleiades14, reflected the idea of the poets of the new school about the high mission of art and its creators, capable of becoming involved in all spheres with their talent and work human activity and comprehend the secrets of nature and the universe. That is why Du Bellay calls the poetry of the “Marotists” “unscientific”, because they lack, from his point of view, “the basis of good writing, that is, knowledge.” In the “Defense” the principle of doctus is consistently affirmed poeta (scientific poet), once proclaimed by the Greek poet Pindar, a difficult and ascetic path is drawn on which a new poet must take, mastering the “doctrine”: “Whoever wants to fly around the whole world in his creations,” writes Du Bellay, “must remain for a long time in your room; and whoever wants to live in the memory of posterity must, as it were, die to himself." And, contrasting the doctus poeta with the court rhymers, he adds: "... and as much as our court poets drink, eat and sleep for their own pleasure, so must the poet endure hunger, thirst and long vigils."

In “Defense,” the cult of antiquity, common to the entire Renaissance, is theoretically fixed: Du Bellay puts forward the principle of imitation of the ancients as the main means of renewing national poetry.

"Text citation taken from the book: Centuries and the Renaissance" - Pietro Bembo, Girolamo Vida, Bartolomeo Ricci, Trissino and many others. However, Du Bellay, borrowing from his Italian predecessors arguments “in favor” of mastering the ancient heritage, immediately clarifies the meaning and direction of the future implementation of the “principle of imitation” on French soil. He believes that imitation is a forced and temporary path for Russian poetry15. Forced, because its current state did not withstand, from Du Bellay’s point of view, comparison with the greatest creations of the newly discovered, or rather through different eyes, seen during the Renaissance, the verbal culture of Greece and Rome. “I would very much like,” Du Bellay confidentially reports, “for our language to be rich enough in its own models, so that we do not need to resort to foreign models” (Book I, Chapter VIII). Du Bellay outlines the prospect that he sees for the modern poet who has been “trained” by the Ancients:

Create, dare and do it, Ronsard,

So that the Roman and the Greek bow before the Frenchman16.

And Ronsard, feeling the good burden of this difficult task on his shoulders, answered Du Bellay a few years later:

Having studied the ancients, I discovered my path,

He gave order to phrases, variety to syllables,

I found the structure of poetry - and by the will of the muses,

Like the Roman and the Greek, the Frenchman became great.

Translation by V. Levik

And another extremely “Renaissance” remark by Du Bellay is contained in his “Defense”: “First of all, it is necessary that he (the imitator - I.P.) be able to know his strengths and check what he can do; let him diligently explores her own nature and resorts to imitation of the one whom she feels closest to her, otherwise his imitation will be like the imitation of a monkey."17 Du Bellay does not provide a single model to follow in each genre, but according to the general postulate of the Renaissance figures, for whom man became the measure of all things, he also proceeds in literary theory from the Socratic principle “know thyself.” In other words, the very choice of a role model is both the disclosure of one’s own capabilities and the awareness of one’s own individual taste. In addition, the entire “Defense” and the first poetic experiments of the Pleiades are animated by the idea of the high purpose of the poet - “companion of the gods,” a person who should have “divine frenzy” (fureur divi “Text citation taken from the book: centuries and the Renaissance” “Handra” B Pasternak: Du Bellay's foreign language text becomes, first of all, a fact of national poetry, enriching it not only with a new lyrical theme, but also an individual way of revealing it.And one more remark regarding Du Bellay's sonnet.

Daniello writes his S "il viver "Quotation of the text taken from the book: centuries and the Renaissance" -1491, allowed reading, and therefore interpretation, in thirty-two different ways). That is why the old genres seemed to the leaders of the Pleiades incapable of containing that humanistic and highly intellectual content, which they sought to instill in national poetry. They began by throwing "from the ship of modernity" the old genres, which Du Bellay calls "spices that distort the taste of our language and serve only as evidence of our ignorance"23.

As a counterbalance to the old genres, based on the doctrine of doctus poeta and the principle of imitation of the ancients, the genres of ancient and Italian poetry - epic poem, ode, elegy, epistle, satire, eclogue and sonnet - became a counterbalance to the old genres. At the same time, Du Bellay did not at all try to accurately define their formal boundaries, bull; this is understandable, for he transferred the emphasis from the formal to the substantive side of poetry. Moreover, in “Defense” there is no differentiation of genres by topic. All genres are subject to the same requirements - poetic erudition, seriousness, a combination of “pleasant with useful,” sublimity of style.

Du Bellay's manifesto caused a scandal no less than three centuries later, in the 20s of the 19th century, the first speeches of the French romantics. The "Marotists", court poets, a few adherents of the medieval "great rhetoricians" and even some members of the "Lyon school" (that is, poets who also took the path of exalting poetic content) were united in their rejection of the "Defence". The “Crusade against Ignorance”24, announced in the Defense, immediately gathered the forces of opponents to repel it: the Lyon teacher of rhetoric Barthélemy Hanot issued a pamphlet in which he furiously attacked the program of borrowing new genres contained in the Defense and, at the same time, responded with great displeasure about Ronsard and his Brigade, who, it seemed to him, confused poets and oriented them towards creating, as he wrote, “sophisticated poetry” 25. Sibilet in his “Message to the Reader” (Au Lecteur) spoke about the ridiculousness of the claims of Du Bellay and his associates. Mellin de Saint-Gelais ridiculed the incomprehensibility of Ronsard's odes to the king, and Guillaume Desautels, who soon became an admirer and follower of the Pleiades, expressed doubts about the need for a radical restructuring of poetry and in “Response to a Fierce Defense...” (Réplique aux furieuses défe"Text quoted from the book: centuries and the Renaissance" "Pindarization" and turning to more familiar poetic themes. Apparently this is so, and even the sublime idealism of Ronsard's "Sonnets to Cassandra" began to be perceived by contemporaries as a kind of return to the national tradition of glorifying courtly love, so familiar from poetry troubadours and trouvères. The poets of the Pleiades seemed to have yielded to the tastes of the court public, but the courtly cult of the lady, the aestheticization of unrequited love, were clothed in the clear, elegant form of the sonnet, the sonnet about which Du Bellay wrote in “The Defense”: “Sing beautiful sonnets - this is as learned as it is a kind Italian invention... For the sonnet you also have several modern Italians."26 And if the Pindaric ode with its complex strophic alternation, abstract exaltation and excessive metaphorism quickly crashed, then the light and graceful ode in its Horatian form has firmly entered into French poetry. As for the sonnet, for him, too, the “Pindarism” of the Pleiades was not in vain, for from the heights of Pindar it was easier to move into the equally highly ideal world of Petrarch and open up the possibility for the French sonnet to become the focus of all the themes of the century. Unlike the medieval fixed genres (rondo, ballad or virele), the sonnet, not being bound by medieval canons, was a genre, so to speak, open to absorbing the high ideas of the Pleiades about the purpose of the poet, about poetry - evidence of the greatness of the spirit of the nation and the “mentor” of contemporaries. The poets of the Pleiades, primarily Du Bellay and Ronsard, limitlessly expanded the thematic scope of the sonnet: from the traditional love genre of lyricism, it turns into such a voluminous form that it can accommodate philosophical and elegiac motives, civil and satirical themes. It is enough to open "Regrets" and "Antiquities of Rome" by Du Bellay, "Sonnets to Helen" by Ronsard, "Sonnets against the Preachers of the New Faith" by Jodelle, "Sighs" by Magny to see how different the later sonnets of the Pleiades are from their original model - the sonnets of Petrarch and Italian "Petrarchists". And “by the grace” of the Pleiades, from the second half of the 16th century, the sonnet really became, as Aragon said, “a national way of speaking” (u “Text citation taken from the book: centuries and the Renaissance” “Defense” and the first books of Ronsard’s odes were not the only “poetic act" that amazed his contemporaries. The next no less strong shock was caused by the "Book of Pranks" (Livret de Folastries, 1553), as well as "The Grove" (Bocage, 1554) and "The Mixture" (Mesla."Text citation taken from the book: centuries and the Renaissance" "low" (style bas). It was no coincidence that "The Book of Pranks" appeared without the name of the author. In it, Ronsard largely turns to self-parody, debunking the cult of Homer and Petrarch, sublime platonic love and the pride of poetic self-indulgence, and most importantly, gives space cheerful "Gallic" spirit and "dangerous" free-thinking, which were so characteristic of Clement Marot and Rabelais. But, despite the fact that "Pranks" testified to the return of the Pleiades to the national tradition, the tradition itself appears in them transformed and "equipped" with motifs from Catullus, neo-Latin poets (Pontano, John Secundus, etc.), reminiscences from Horace and Ovid.

“The Grove” and “The Mixture” introduced into French poetry that powerful stream of cheerful and epicurean Anacreontic lyricism, which would then be so clearly felt in Parni and J.-B. Rousseau, Goethe and Beranger, and in Russia in Derzhavin, Batyushkov, and Pushkin28 “Text citation taken from the book: Centuries and Renaissance” “Pushkin notes” in Ronsard’s poems. And this is understandable, because in Pushkin’s lyrics, especially of the early period, not only does the name of Anacreon often appear (the poems “The Coffin of Anacreon”, “The Vial of Anacreon”), but also the as free and personal “appropriation” as it was in Ronsard clearly appears "Greek poet. By the way, the Horatian themes in the odes and sonnets of the Pleiades will also remind us of Pushkin, be it “Bellery Creek” or “When in the midst of the noise of being...” by Ronsard, Du Bellay’s friendly messages to his compatriots from Rome, poems glorifying rural solitude or stigmatizing “ vile mob", and much, much more. And this is natural, since Ronsard, Du Bellay and their comrades in the new school introduced the “eternal themes” of poetry into Russian literature, filled it with the depth of universal human content, be it love and death, civic and patriotic feelings, philosophical reflections on the world and man . And, developing these themes, they absorbed into their poetry that classical literary heritage, which was revived whenever the literature of different eras and different countries was faced with the task of creating a universally significant national literature.

“The quotation of the text is taken from the book: Centuries and the Renaissance” - 1555, we emphasize once again that the principle of imitation of the ancients and the assertion of the poet’s right to freely choose models for this imitation were not at all discarded. The appeal to previously rejected domestic genres, or rather their combination with the traditions of foreign language genres, gave the national tradition itself a new look. That is why, although in “Pranks” the influence of medieval farces, pastourels, poetic “disputes”, folk songs and the poetry of Clément Marot is clearly noticeable, the griviness, and sometimes very crude eroticism, sharp anti-clericalism in the spirit of the poets of the early Renaissance, sounding in Ronsard’s collection, They do not deprive this book of “scholarship,” they only transfer it “to another register.” Ronsard's colleague in the Pleiades, Olivier de Magny, very accurately called this work “a book of learned pranks”29.

The poets of the Pleiades, as unanimously as during the times of “Pindarization” and “Petrarchization,” turned to the “low style”30 - Magny in the collection “Fun” (Gaytez, 1554), Tayuro - in “Sonnets, Odes and Amenities... ". And, for example, for Baif, who even somewhat earlier than Ronsard turned to the search for a “low style,” the combination of the “Gallic spirit” and ancient tradition will retain its dominant significance for a long time.

This new stream of Pleiades poetry was greeted very favorably by the “Marotists,” which cannot be said about zealous Catholic and Huguenot poets, wide circles of moralizing-minded intelligentsia, who attacked Ronsard, accusing him of disrespect for morality and religion. Jean Macé in the pamphlet “Philippique against the French poets and rhymers of our time” (Philippique co “Text citation taken from the book: Centuries and the Renaissance” “vows” given to oneself at the very beginning of one’s creative path.

At the same time, it would be rash to discount the experience of sublime “Pindarization” and “Petrarchization.” Despite the fact that Du Bellay in the satire “Against the Petrarchists” (Co “Text citation taken from the book: Ages and Renaissance” History and Fate of Art. To this scale of themes and the greatness of the style - first of all and most powerfully present in Ronsard, - such works of the French romantics as “Reflections” (Méditatio “Text citation taken from the book: centuries and the Renaissance” go back to the “low”, and ultimately to the “middle” style of poetry - were not oblivion of the original principles of their first manifesto, but creative their development and rethinking. Without touching in detail on the individual appearance and originality of the Pleiades poets35 "Text citation taken from the book: Ages and Renaissance" "Defenses", "examined his own nature", "checked what he could handle" and chose his own path "on peaks of Parnassus."

“Quotation of the text taken from the book: centuries and the Renaissance” “Precious stones” is the main work of life, believed that it opens a new genre and, as he said, “the hidden Quotation of the text taken from the book” of poetry. Indeed, Bellot, called by Ronsard “the painter of Nature,” paved the way for descriptive poetry in the 17th and 18th centuries, and in the 16th century, perhaps more than others, sought to give a detailed description of “landscape in its natural simplicity”36 and made this his primary concern .

“Text citation taken from the book: Ages and the Renaissance” with restraint and asceticism, alien to the hedonism of the Pleiades, Jodel largely departs from the Renaissance, harmonious style characteristic of “Regrets” and “Antiquities of Rome” by Du Bellay or “Sonnets to Helen” by Ronsard. He develops his own special form of sonnet (which was later called the “Jodel sonnet”), saturated with metaphysical symbolism, the drama of contrasting emotions, anticipating future Baroque poetry.

Jacques Tayuro, as if knowing in advance about the short life span allotted to him, immediately began to develop a “middle style” and remained in the history of poetry primarily as a “light” poet. He, before others, felt the gap between the dream of spiritual freedom and reality and, having not so much a crowd of truly great writers, asked: “or is every people destined for an era in which a constellation of geniuses appears, shines and disappears?.." 37. And although Pushkin, believing Boileau, treated the poetry of Ronsard very strictly and had in mind primarily the 17th century of France, such an era of “truly great” poets was the “age of Ronsard” and his Pleiades, whose light is just as radiant in the 20th century. I. Yu. Podgaetskaya

“Text quoted from the book: Ages and the Renaissance” “Captive Cleopatra” (Cléopatre captive) Ronsard and his friends staged a solemn procession “in the manner of ancient festivals,” leading a goat entwined with flower garlands, which they presented as a gift to the poet.

6. Pontus de Thiard with the second book of “Love Delusions” (Les Erreurs amoureuses, 1550), Guillaume Desautels with the collection “Continuation of Relaxation from a More Serious Occupation” (Suite du Repos de plus gra “Text citation taken from the book: centuries and Renaissance” “imitations” ancient" first drew attention to 3. Gukovskaya in the book: "From the history of linguistic views of the Renaissance." Leningrad State University, 1940.

16. J. Du Bellay. Poésies fra "Text citation taken from the book: centuries and the Renaissance" ésie fra "Text citation taken from the book: centuries and the Renaissance" "Pranks" according to various collections, and "Pranks" was renamed into the more neutral "Fun" (Gaytez).

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Poetry of the Pleiades

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The famous manifesto “Defense and Glorification of the French Language” (hereinafter “Defense”) of 1549 was both an addition and a refutation of Sebile’s treatise. This book, inspired by the work of Sperone Speroni " Dialogue delle lingue"(On the Excessive Preference for Latin) of 1542, was an expression of the literary principles of the Pleiades as a whole. Although he was chosen as leader, the editorship of the manifesto was entrusted to du Bellay. To better understand the essence of the reforms that the Pleiades sought, the “Defense” should be further considered in conjunction with Ronsard’s work “A Brief Exposition of the Poetic Art” and his preface to the “Franciade”.

Views of du Bellay

He was of the opinion that the French language, in the form in which it was presented at that time, was too poor to serve as a means for expressing the highest forms of poetry. However, he insisted that with suitable cultivation, it could be raised to the same level as the classical languages. He condemned those who gave up on their native language and used Latin for more serious and ambitious works. In translations by ancient authors, he advised avoiding imitation, although he did not specify in the Defense exactly how to achieve this. It was necessary to adhere not only to the forms of classical poetry, but also to a separate poetic language and style, different from that used in prose. should have been enriched by developing its internal resources, resorting only in rare cases to borrowings from Italian, Latin and Greek. Both du Bellay and Ronsard emphasized the need for extreme caution in such borrowings, and both rejected the tendency to Latinize their mother tongue. Their manifesto was a rousing defense of poetry and the possibilities of the French language. It also came as a kind of declaration of war against those writers who held less advanced views.

Du Bellay's violent attacks on Marot and his followers, as well as on him, did not go unnoticed. Sebile responded in the preface to his translation of Euripides' Iphigenia. Guillaume Desautels, a Lyon poet, reproached du Bellay for being ungrateful to his predecessors and pointed out the weakness of his argument about imitation in contrast to the off-topic translation in his Commentary on the Fierce Defense of Louis Maigret (Lyon, 1550). A number of other notable authors of that time subjected him to their fierce criticism.

Du Bellay rebuffed his many opponents in the preface to his second publication (1550) of the collection of sonnets "Olive", with which he also published two polemical poems - " Musagnaeomachie"and an ode addressed to Ronsard "Against envious faces" ( Contre les envieux fioles). The collection of poems "Oliva" was a collection of sonnets imitating the poetry of Petrarch, Ariosto and modern Italian authors. It first saw the light of day in 1549 and was printed by the Italian publisher Gabriele Giolito de Ferrari. Along with it, 13 odes were published under the general title “Lyrical Poems” ( Vers lyriques).

According to its semantic meaning, the word “pleiad” implies a certain community of people of the same era and one direction of activity. The word originates in ancient Greek mythology. The Pleiades are the seven daughters of Atlas and Pleione, whom Zeus took to heaven and turned into a constellation. Six of them shine with bright light, and only one hides bashfully - after all, unlike her obedient sisters, she preferred a mortal lover to the gods. According to the same mythology, it was the

It is not surprising that this has become a favorite symbol for servants of the muses for many centuries and millennia. The constellation is especially vividly reflected in fine literature. Back in antiquity, in the 3rd century BC, the Alexandrian school of poetry was born. Seven poets who belonged to it - Homer the Younger, Apollonius, Nicander, Theocritus, Aramur, Lykotron and Filik - organized themselves into a separate circle and called themselves “Pleiades”. This movement has remained in history as an example of high poetry.

Millennia passed, history repeated itself. During the Renaissance, in 1540, new poets of the Pleiades declared themselves in France. This was the time of French romanticism, and also a craze for ancient poetics. A group of young poets led by unveiled a truly revolutionary program for the development of national literature. It is noteworthy that there were also seven of them, they called their community nothing more than “Pleiades”. It was an attempt to revive and give new breath to native literature, and at the same time there was a certain disdain for the centuries-old traditions of French poetry.

What was the program of the Pleiades poets based on? It was set out in a treatise by Joachin du Bellay and was a kind of manifesto not for revival, but rather for the creation of new literature. poets advocated for introducing the traditions of ancient Alexandrian verse into French literature. They explained such a wish by the fact that it was Hellenic, Alexandrian poetry that was close to perfection - both in syllable and in poetics in general. The frankly weak and controversial treatise made a subtle nod towards the native language: yes, the French language is wonderful, it has great potential, but it is not as developed as Greek or Latin, and therefore it needs to be developed. What development path did Pleiades advise you to take? This was nothing more than an imitation of the ancients.

The poetic community included five more - Etienne Jodel, Jean Antoine de Baif, Remy Bellot, Jean Dora, Pontus de Tiard. The legacy of the Pleiades, which has reached the present day, is better known for the poetry of Pierre de Ronsard, which became an example of true French romanticism and lyricism, than for the failed experiments of the Young Hellenists of the Renaissance. Already in the 70s, in his declining years, he wrote real masterpieces, in particular, “Sonnets to Helen”, which remain in the history of French literature - a dedication to his last hopeless love. And there is not a trace of imitation in them, there is no Alexandrian verse dear to his heart, but there is only the living, suffering soul of the poet.

In later periods in the history of literature, the word “Pleiades” was heard more than once in relation to poetry. This was, however, a purely defining designation of poets of one movement or one era. Thus, in modern literary criticism the term “poets of the Pushkin galaxy”, “galaxy of poets of the Silver Age” is often used.” But this is, as Goethe wrote, “a new age - different birds.”

LECTURE 9

Poetry of the Pleiades: the richness and beauty of human feelings. P. Ronsard. J. Du Bellay. Literature of the period of civil wars. A. d'Aubigne: crisis of humanistic ideals.

In the middle of the 16th century. Several young humanist poets from noble families, who jointly studied ancient, mainly Hellenic, literature, formed a circle, or “Brigade,” as they called themselves. When their number increased to seven in 1556, they began to solemnly call themselves the Pleiades (seven stars), having adopted this name from the circle of ancient Greek poets led by Theocritus. New bright stars began to shine in the sky of French poetry. Of course, not all Pleiades poets were equally gifted. The most talented of them were Ronsard and Du Bellay. These were stars of the first magnitude. But even such less brilliant talents as Baif, Bellot or Jodelle still belong to the most attractive writers of the French Renaissance. In the work of the Pleiades, French humanistic poetry reached great heights. We have the right to talk about the second intensive flowering of Renaissance literature in France. At first, prose led the way (Deperrier, Margaret of Navarre, Rabelais). It was the first and at the same time vigorous flowering. Then came the turn of poetry. The palm went to the Pleiades, which had a huge influence on all modern French poetry and in some ways anticipated the literature of classicism.

It should, however, be borne in mind that the activities of the Pleiades took place under more difficult conditions. The Catholic reaction was advancing rapidly. The country was torn apart by deep contradictions. Humanism recoiled from the Reformation. In 1562, a religious war began, which lasted with short interruptions until the end of the century. All this led to the fact that humanistic freethinking has largely lost its former scope. The giants of Rabelais turned into ordinary people. Their deafening laughter fell silent. The spirit of Rabelaisianism flew away from French literature. The poets of the new school did not encroach on Catholicism and its dogmas. Their religion was that of the king, in whom they saw the embodiment of national unity. But they were still not as infinitely far from Rabelais as it might seem at first glance. Like Rabelais, they worshiped the great heritage of classical antiquity and passionately loved their homeland.

The main concern of the Pleiades poets was to create poetry worthy of the new France. Joachin Du Bellay writes about what exactly the new humanistic poetry should be in his treatise “The Defense and Glorification of the French Language” (1549), which became the manifesto of the Pleiades. The young poet calls on his contemporaries to decisively reject all outdated poetic forms: rondos, ballads, whirls, royal songs “and other spices that spoil the style of our language and serve only as evidence of our ignorance” (II, 4). Directing his blow against the court rhymers who compose gallant trinkets, Du Bellay declares that he “has always considered our French poetry capable of a higher and better style than that with which we have been content for so long (II, 1).

Court poetry seems to him old-fashioned, petty and trivial. He dreams of poetry, the “higher” style of which would correspond to its higher nature and purpose. What we are talking about here is essentially the content of poetry, or, as the author puts it, about doctrine, which would serve as a solid basis for the work (II, 3). Without denying that “one must be born a poet,” Du Bellay does not separate inspiration from reason, or reason from work. “Whoever wants to fly around the world in his works,” the author declares, “must stay in his room for a long time; and whoever wants to live in the memory of posterity must, as if dying to himself, become covered in sweat and tremble more than once, and how many of our court poets drink, eat and sleep at their pleasure - the poet must endure hunger, thirst and long vigils for the same amount of time. These are the wings on which the writings of people fly to the sky" (II, 3).

Poetry should not be an elegant rattle, a thoughtless social pastime. According to Du Bellay, she does not even have the right to be mediocre (II, 2).

After all, by “amusing” with the beauty of words, it is so easy to lose the “power of things” (I, 8), and without great internal content, poetry ceases to be what it should be. A real poet must captivate the reader and ignite his heart. And for this he must know the truth of human feelings. According to Du Bellay, "only he will be a real poet... who will make me indignant, calm down, rejoice, be upset, love, hate, admire, be surprised..." (II, 11). Such a poet is no longer a pathetic entertainer of the secular mob, but a priest crowned by the gods. He owns the hearts of people, and he must remember his noble mission.

But where can one find worthy examples of poetry? Du Bellay points to a reliable source. This is classical antiquity. He calls on his compatriots to “turn to the imitation of the best authors of Greek and Latin, directing the edge of their style to their greatest merits, as to the right goal; for there is no doubt that the greatest part of skill lies in imitation” (II, 8). By putting forward the principle of imitation here, Du Bellay does not at all mean blind copying of foreign models. He even severely condemns those imitators who, without penetrating “the most hidden and inner aspects of the author taken as a model,” grasp only the external features (I, 8). By imitation Du Bellay means creative competition.

“So, first of all,” declares Du Bellay, “read and reread, O future poet, leaf through the Greek and Latin samples night and day!” Having rejected outdated French forms, let the poet turn to such classical genres as the epigram and elegy, and at the same time not shy away from “ancient myths, which are a considerable adornment of poetry.” “Sing odes,” he continues, “still unknown to the French Muse: to a lute tuned in tune with the Greek and Roman lyre. And the content will be the praise of the gods and valiant people, the fatal transience of worldly things, youthful worries - love, wine, loosening tongues, and all sorts of feasts. Try most of all to ensure that this type of poem is far from ordinary language, enriched and exalted with proper names and non-idle epithets, decorated with all sorts of sayings and varied in all kinds of colors and poetic decorations." Next Du Bellay speaks of epistles, Horatian satyrs, rural eclogues in the style of Theocritus. “As for comedies and tragedies, if kings and the state wanted to restore them to the ancient dignity stolen from them by farces and morality plays, I would be of the opinion that you should take up them.”

One should also not, according to Du Bellay, ignore the achievements of Italian Renaissance literature. He speaks with particular warmth of the sonnet, “as learned as it is a amiable Italian invention,” glorified by Petrarch and several modern Italian poets (II, 4).

Du Bellay devotes a separate chapter to the epic. Pointing to the example of Ariosto, who, in his opinion, equaled Homer and Virgil, he believes that epic poetry could shine brightly in France. After all, if Ariosto successfully turned to ancient French stories, then why don’t French poets turn to such “beautiful old French novels” as “Lancelot” or “Tristan”, or use “the great eloquence collected in old French chronicles, just as Titus Livy used the annals and other ancient Roman chronicles": "Such work will undoubtedly serve to the immortal glory of its founders, to the honor of France and to the great glorification of our language" (II, 5).

Meanwhile, there are learned pedants in France who disdain their native language, consider it poor, barbaric, and cannot be compared with the famous languages of classical antiquity. These people “with the arrogance of the Stoics reject everything written in French,” believing that the French vernacular language “is not suitable for writing or learning” (I, 1).

And Du Bellay passionately defends the rights of the French language. He is convinced that the French are “in no way inferior to the Greeks and Romans” (I, 2). And if the French language is “not so rich in comparison with Greek and Latin,” then the ancient languages were not always rich. “If the ancient Romans had been as careless in cultivating their tongue when it first began to sprout, it probably would not have become so great in such a short time.” And Du Bellay already foresees the time when the French language, “which has just taken root, will emerge from the earth, rise to such a height and achieve such greatness that it will be able to equal the languages of the Greeks and Romans themselves, giving birth, like them, to Homers, Demosthenes, Virgils and Ciceros, just as France sometimes gave birth to its Pericles, Alcibiades, Themistocles, Caesars and Scipios" (I, 3).

However, even now, according to Du Bellay, the French language is not at all poor. During the reign of Francis I, in connection with the general rise of French culture, he achieved significant successes (I, 4). And it will become even richer and more elegant if French writers work tirelessly to improve it. To do this, it is necessary to enrich its vocabulary in every possible way and diversify its forms.

The writer has the right to “invent, assimilate and compose, in imitation of the Greeks, certain French words.” After all, new phenomena of life, new concepts require new words, and the poet cannot do without them (I, 6). He must, without limiting himself to a narrow court circle, carefully look at the life of the country and draw from it a wide variety of information, so that his poetry is abundant and wide-ranging (I, 11). Archaisms and dialectisms should also not be neglected. Anything can go to the advantage of a skilled poet.

But we have already seen something similar in Rabelais’s verbal workshop. But doesn’t Du Bellay’s assertion that the types of verse, “although rhetoric strives to limit them,” are as “varied as the human imagination and like nature itself” (I, 9), make us once again recall Rabelais’s novel, unusually diverse in its genre composition? All this indicates that Du Bellay’s poetics has not yet become normative, that this is the poetics of the Renaissance, and not of classicism, although tendencies characteristic of classicism are already appearing in it. In particular, this is reflected in Du Bellay’s attraction to rhetorical grandeur, so beloved by classicists. For example, he advises poets to “more often use the figure of antonomasia, which is as common among ancient poets as it is little used and even unknown among the French. Its elegance is that the name of an object is indicated through its property, such as: father striking with lightning - instead Jupiter, the god, twice born instead of Bacchus, the Virgin Huntress - instead of Diana "... (II, 9).

The reform proposed by Du Bellay very soon proved its fruitfulness. Already in the early 50s, La Boesie could write in his “Discourse on Voluntary Slavery”: “... French poetry, currently not pretentious, but as if completely updated by our Ronsard, our Baif, our Du Bellay. owe the enormous successes of the French language, and I flatter myself that the Greeks and Romans will soon have no other advantages over us in this respect, except the rights of seniority."

It should still be noted that the creative practice of the Pleiades, which initially closely followed the theoretical principles of Du Bellay, later followed a broader path. The poets of the new school did not stop at imitating ancient authors and Petrarchists. Over the years, their poetry became more and more original and national. Classical features merged with folk features. Du Bellay wanted to see the pinnacle of future French poetry in a solemn epic. But the Pleiades never put forward a second Virgil. But in the field of lyric poetry she achieved truly remarkable results.

The recognized head of the galaxy was Pierre de Ronsard (1524-1585). He was born into the family of a poor nobleman in the province of Vandome. The father of the future poet was no stranger to literature. A participant in the Italian campaigns, he brought many books from the country of Petrarch to his ancestral castle and willingly wrote poetry. Proximity to Francis I made it possible to send his son to the court, and young Ronsard for a number of years served as a page to the king's children. He visited England, Scotland, Flanders, Denmark, Germany and Italy. Getting to know different countries and meeting educated people was not in vain for the inquisitive young man. Ronsard begins to be increasingly attracted to the culture of humanism. Tempting prospects opened up for the young, handsome, brilliant aristocrat, but debilitating malaria suddenly struck him (1542), depriving him of his hearing, and interrupted the court career that had so successfully begun. Now Ronsard could devote himself entirely to literary works. True, he still had to act as a court poet, creating scripts for ballets or madrigals for masquerades, but in his declining years he appeared at court less and less, preferring rural solitude to the bustle of high society, where “only glitter and lies” reign. At the same time, Ronsard was by no means indifferent to the fate of his beloved homeland. He was plunged into despondency by the increasingly intensified struggle of religious parties, which threatened to destroy the political unity of France. He called on his enemies for reconciliation, and when civil war broke out, he resolutely opposed the Huguenots, seeing them as the culprits of the disasters that had begun. At the same time, the religious side of the conflict occupied Ronsard the least. It was not about God, but about France that he thought when creating his poetic “Discourses”.

In his worldview, Ronsard was rather a pagan, in love with the picturesque charm of classical myths, the beauty of nature, earthly love and sonorous poetry. This love for life is spread throughout all his poetry collections. It appears already in the first sonnet cycle “Love for Cassandra” (1552-1553), written under the great influence of Petrarch and his students.

These sonnets by Ronsard also contain melancholic notes characteristic of Petrarchism and longing for an unattainable goal. Unrequited love torments the poet's heart. He turns pale and falls silent in the presence of a proud beauty (“When alone, away from the noise”), only the midnight forest and the river wave listen to his complaints and foam (“All the pain that I endure in a hidden illness”). The poet seems to be entirely woven from hopeless contradictions (“I love, I swear, I dare, but I don’t dare”). At the same time, the sonnets of this cycle have a bright sensual element. It is much more palpable here than in the refined, but very conventional and therefore coldish poetry of the Petrarchists. Cassandra does not become a poetic fiction. This is a living woman, and everything around her is alive. Ronsard dreams of her hot embrace (“Even death is welcome in your arms!”), and revels in the spectacle of beauty:

When you, having risen from sleep as a benevolent goddess,

Dressed only in a golden tunic,

Either you curl them gently, then, whipping up a thick chignon,

You will spread it down to your knees with an unconstrained wave...

And then, lying on the green moss among the centuries-old forest, Ronsard gazes without stopping at the portrait of the beauty, in which the poet and artist Denizot managed to capture “The whole world of delights in a living image” (“Granite peak over a bare steepness”). Blooming, fragrant nature seems to testify to the poet’s love, and he immerses himself in leaves and flowers, “Wrapping his hand around a bouquet of fragrant May” (“When, like hops, hugging a branch”).

Subsequently, Ronsard finally moved away from the affected Platonism of the Petrarchists and their precise mannerisms. In the sonnet cycle “Love for Mary,” healthy sensuality and noble simplicity already reign entirely. Ronsard himself points out this in a sonnet addressed to the participant of the Pleiades, the poet Pontus de Thiard:

When I started, Tiar, they told me

That a simple person will not understand me,

That I am too dark. Now it's the other way around:

I have become too simple, having appeared in a new style...

However, it was not for nothing that Ronsard visited the school of Petrarchism. He became an outstanding master of the sonnet. Petrarch helped him look deeper into the world of human feelings and understand what is graceful in poetry. But, having taken from Petrarchism everything that seemed valuable to him, Ronsard went his own special way. He stopped shunning the ordinary and the “low”. His Maria is not a noble lady, like Cassandra Salviati was, but a young, cheerful peasant woman. In order to tell readers about his love, he no longer needs the motley tinsel of Petrarchism. He talks about love shared, healthy and therefore beautiful. And he talks about her with a joyful, sometimes sly smile. There is so much real tenderness in the famous sonnet “Marie the Sloth! It’s time to get out of bed!” And how the poet loves to chat alone with Maria about this and that! The appearance of a guest makes him tongue-tied. But the guest leaves, and again Ronsard makes jokes, jokes, laughs, easily finding the right words (“Love is a magician. I could do it for a whole year”). He writes about his happiness to Joachin Du Bellay in Rome (“Meanwhile you live on the ancient Palatine”). With ancient frankness, he sometimes talks about the pleasures he experiences in Mary’s arms. Either he is jealous of her doctor, who for the hundredth time wants to see a young woman without a shirt (“Oh, that damn doctor! He’s coming here again!”), then he forgives her for a fleeting betrayal (“Having found out that his beloved is close to someone else”). Ronsard is pleased that his girlfriend is not an empty social coquette, languishing from idleness. She

Spins or sews all day, winds a ball, knits,

With two sisters getting up at dawn, -

In winter by the fireplace, and in summer in the yard...

He intends to give her a Vendôme spindle, knowing that this gift will bring genuine joy to Mary: “After all, even a small gift, a guarantee of incorruptible love, is more valuable than all the crowns and scepters of the universe” (“Spindle”). And when Mary unexpectedly died in the prime of life, Ronsard mourned her untimely death in a number of heartfelt poems (“The Death of Mary”, etc.).

Ancient literature played a major role in Ronsard’s creative development. Ronsard walked in the direction indicated by Du Bellay, and in the poem “As soon as Kamena opened her source to me,” he proudly noted his services to French Renaissance poetry:

Then for France, for the native language,

I began to work bravely and sternly,

I multiplied, resurrected, invented words,

And what was created was glorified by rumor.

Having studied the ancients, I discovered my path,

He gave order to phrases, variety to syllables,

I found the structure of poetry - and by the will of the muses,

Like the Roman and the Greek, the Frenchman became great.

Du Bellay advised French poets, following the example of the ancients, to “sing odes dedicated to the praise of the gods and valiant people” or to “youthful amusements” - love, wine and all kinds of feasts. Ronsard became the first French ode-writer. He was temporarily carried away by Pindar. However, the magnificent grandiloquence of the Pindaric odes , which subsequently attracted classicists so much, did not enter the literary use of Renaissance France, and Ronsard himself soon preferred a more natural and simple manner.

He is much closer to Horace and the Greek Anacreontics, discovered and published in 1554 by Henri Etienne. His small intimate odes (odolettes) are imbued with Renaissance love of life. There is a lot of light and a lot of joy in the poetic world of Ronsard. Ronsard is attracted by love pleasures, merry feasts, friendly meetings, good books, and blooming nature. Together with his friends, he wants to feast while the lyre sings until dawn and raises the first toast to Henri Etienne, who returned Anacreon to the people (“We do not hold in our hand”). He is captivated by the singing of a cheerful lark (“Lark”) or the babbling of a stream over which shady willows bend (“Bellery Creek”). Ronsard writes very willingly about nature. The Gastinsky forest, with which his youth is connected ("Gastinsky forest"), is dear to him, and he sincerely regrets its death. He asks the loggers why they are destroying his forest? Don't they see that the blood of a young nymph who lived under the bark of the tree is flowing from the trunk? (Elegy to the Gastin Forest). For Ronsard this is real sacrilege. After all, nature is not dead. She is filled with life. The pagan gods have not died; the poet sees and hears them clearly. As in the legendary times of Orpheus, he talks with nature, listens to its voices, it is all filled with echoes of ancient myths for him. The muses lead their round dance for him, Apollo descends from a transcendental height, and nymphs inhabit forests and river streams. And we are not at all surprised that we are not talking about fabulous Arcadia, but about France in the 16th century, that nymphs are hiding in the Bellerie stream, and Phoebus is frolicking on the banks of the Loire (“To the Source of the Loire”).

Ronsard's poetry is very specific and flexible. He has the eye of an experienced sculptor. In one of the eclogues, he very accurately describes the chased images on the bowl, and his poems acquire weight and relief, as if they were cast from silver. At the same time, Ronsard's poems are surprisingly melodic. Many of them became popular songs, and in spirit they are very close to the folk songs that the young Du Bellay looked down on.

But the wonderful world of Ronsard's poetry is not so cloudless. Ronsard is haunted by the thought of the transience of life. The fragrance of flowers in his poems is often mixed with the smell of decay (“Stanzas”). But Ronsard does not talk about all this in order to inspire disgust for life and its joys. On the contrary, following Horace, he calls for “seizing the coming day” and not missing out on anything that can give life to a person. Is a rose less beautiful because it must soon wither? Addressing the poet Adamis Jamin, he writes:

So, Jamen, seize, seize the day that has come!

He will quickly flash, elusive, like a shadow,

Invite your friends to a feast and let the cups ring!

Only once, my friend, today we are given,

So let's sing love, fun and wine,

To drive away war, and time, and sorrows.

And yet there is something unsettling about all this. Apparently, a purely personal moment also had significance here. After all, Ronsard was overcome by a debilitating illness, and over the years its power was felt more and more (“I’m dry to the bones...”). In addition, everything around was becoming more and more alarming; no one knew what tomorrow would bring.

One should not, however, see the true content of Ronsard's life in the pursuit of the moment. Ronsard loved poetry, women, friends, but his greatest love was France. In one of his first printed works, in the “Hymn of France” (1549), he sang of his beautiful fatherland. Desperate for the glory of France, he took up his pen. In 1564, he even began to write the monumental epic "Franciade", which was supposed to become the French "Aeneid", but could not cope with this enormous task. By the nature of his talent he was not an epicist; Moreover, he could not help but feel all the precariousness of the modern position of France. He was worried about religious strife, which turned into open civil war, and the increased power of gold (“Hymn to Gold”), and the fact that hypocrisy, denunciations, and big lies reigned at the royal court (“Leave the country of slaves, the power of the pharaohs”).

Ronsard contrasted this spoiled, agitated world with the Horatian preaching of quiet joys in the lap of nature. Only far from the vicious bustle of palaces can a person breathe deeply. Only there can he feel free. In this regard, Ronsard waxes poetic about the working life of a simple plowman:

Blessed is he who walks his way across the field,

Doesn't see senators dressed in red toga,

He sees neither kings, nor princes, nor nobles,

No lush courtyard, where there is only glitter and lies...

("To Cardinal de Coligny")

However, the rural idyll depicted by Ronsard did not have a solid basis in life, as indeed did all the idyllic literature of that time. Her soul was a dream of a golden age, which in Rabelais took the outline of the Theleme monastery, and in Ronsard it appeared in the form of either an idyll, or a fairy tale about the blessed islands (“Blissful Islands”), or a mythical Elysium, in which a harmony reigns, unknown on earth (“ How grapes climb, hugging trees."

Ronsard's poetry did not lose its artistic power in his later years. This is clearly evidenced by the excellent “Sonnets to Helen,” written by the aging poet in the late 70s. Among them we find the famous sonnet “When, as an old woman, you spin alone,” which is one of the most remarkable creations of French Renaissance lyric poetry

The poetry of the Pleiades was sometimes called aristocratic and courtly, not paying attention to the fact that it went far beyond the narrow confines of the court, becoming the most important phenomenon of national French culture of the 16th century. Ronsard was proud that “all the people sing his songs.” He makes an imaginary shepherd say over his grave mound:

He was not seduced by the absurd

The bustle of the courtier

And noble praises

I didn't look for it.

He gave it to the melodious lyre

Many new harmonies

The father's land raised

("To choose your tomb")

Ronsard was not only an excellent lyricist, worthy to stand on a par with Petrarch and Shakespeare. In his creative heritage, a prominent place is occupied by poetic messages, odes, and hymns, in which he appears to us as a thinker and a master of oratory, sometimes pathetic, sometimes sarcastic, sometimes close to colloquial speech.

Among the best examples of this poetic type is the lengthy “Hymn to Gold” mentioned above. It contains reflections on the destinies of people and one’s own destiny. Seeing how the world is gripped by the “spirit of profit,” Ronsard is at the same time not inclined to extol poverty. He does not intend to challenge history, which is subject to the power of gold. According to the poet, “God does not give gold so that we / Provide it to flatterers, corrupt girls of darkness” ... “The treasures of the earth are for life and goodness.”

In “Speech against Fortune,” dedicated to de Coligny, Cardinal of Chatillon, Ronsard, complaining about the machinations of evil fortune, angrily denounces the vices of the surrounding world, which has lost its noble straightforwardness and the ability to appreciate true talent.

But to gain recognition in our time,

You need to throw away honor and shame like a burden.

Shamelessness is the idol to whom one is subordinate

Everything, from top to bottom, estates and ranks...

(Translated by G. Kruzhkov)

And in a poetic letter to Henry II, eloquently condemning the belligerence of kings, Ronsard dreams of the time when blessed peace will finally reign in France (“Peace”).