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Joachim du Bellay

French poet, critic, and member of the Pléiade

Joachim du Bellay (c. 1522 – 1 January 1560) was a French poet, literary critic, and a founder of La Pléiade. He notably wrote the manifesto of the group: Défense et illustration de la langue française, which aimed at promoting French as an artistic language, equal to Greek and Latin.

Quotes

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  • Rome de Rome est le seul monument
    Et Rome Rome a vaincu seulement.
    • Rome as Rome's only monument is seen,
      And Rome by Rome alone has conquered been.
    • Les Antiquités de Rome (1558), st. III. Tr. T. B. Harbottle; P. H. Dalbiac, Dictionary of Quotations (French and Italian) (1904), p. 203. Cp. Jean Racine, Mithridate (1673), III, 1: Jamais on ne vaincra les Romains que dans Rome.—"Never will the Romans be conquered but in Rome."
  • Vois quel orgueil, quelle ruine: et comme
    Celle qui mit le monde sous ses lois,
    Pour dompter tout, se dompta quelquefois,
    Et devint proie au temps, qui tout consomme.
    Rome de Rome est le seul monument,
    Et Rome Rome a vaincu seulement.
    Le Tibre seul, qui vers la mer s'enfuit,
    Reste de Rome. O mondaine inconstance!
    Ce qui est ferme, est par le temps détruit,
    Et ce qui fuit, au temps fait résistance.
    • Behold what wreake, what ruine, and what wast,
      And how that she, which with her mightie powre
      Tam'd all the world, hath tam'd herselfe at last,
      The pray of time, which all things doth deuowre.
      Rome now of Rome is th' onely funerall,
      And onely Rome of Rome hath victorie;
      Ne ought saue Tyber hastning to his fall
      Remaines of all: O worlds inconstancie.
      That which is firme doth flit and fall away,
      And that is flitting, doth abide and stay.
    • Les Regrets (1559), V. Tr. Edmund Spenser, The Ruines of Rome (1591)
  • Sacrés coteaux, et vous saintes ruines,
    Qui le seul nom de Rome retenez,
    Vieux monuments, qui encor soutenez
    L'honneur poudreux de tant d'âmes divines.
    * * *
    Et bien qu'au temps pour un temps fassent guerre
    Les bâtiments, si est-ce que le temps
    Oeuvres et noms finablement atterre.
    Tristes désirs, vivez doncques contents:
    Car si le temps finit chose si dure,
    Il finira la peine que j'endure.
    • Ye sacred ruines, and ye tragick sights,
      Which onely doo the name of Rome retaine,
      Olde moniments, which of so famous sprights
      The honour yet in ashes doo maintaine.
      * * *
      And though your frames do for a time make warre
      Gainst time, yet time in time shall ruinate
      Your workes and names, and your last reliques marre.
      My sad desires, rest therefore moderate:
      For if that time make ende of things so sure,
      It als will end the paine, which I endure.
    • Les Regrets (1559), VII. Tr. Edmund Spenser, The Ruines of Rome (1591)
  • France, mère des arts, des armes et des lois ...
  • Heureux qui, comme Ulysse, a fait un beau voyage,
    Ou comme cestui là qui conquit la toison,
    Et puis est retourné, plein d’usage et raison,
    Vivre entre ses parents le reste de son âge!
    Quand reverrai-je, hélas, de mon petit village
    Fumer la cheminée, et en quelle saison
    Reverrai-je le clos de ma pauvre maison,
    Qui m'est une province, et beaucoup davantage?
    • Happy who, like Ulysses or that lord
        Who raped the fleece, returning full and sage,
      With usage and the world's wide reason stored,
        With his own kin can wait the end of age.
      When shall I see, when shall I see, God knows!
        My little village smoke; or pass the door,
      The old, dear door of that unhappy house
        That is to me a kingdom and much more?
    • Les Regrets (1559), XXXI. Tr. G. K. Chesterton, A Chesterton Calendar (1911), p. 208
  • Languages do not spring up like plants, some weak and sickly, others healthy and robust. All their virtue lies in the will and determination of mortals. To condemn a language as being struck with impotence is to adopt a tone of arrogance and temerity; as certain of our fellow-countrymen do to-day, who, being nothing less than Greeks or Latins, regard with a more than stoical superciliousness everything written in French. If our language is poorer than the Greek or Latin, this is not attributable to our own inability, but to the ignorance of our own predecessors who have bequeathed it to us in so meagre and so bare a form that it stands in need of ornament, and, so to speak, of plumage from other sources.
  • When you pass from the text to the translation, you seem to travel from the burning mountain of Etna to the icy summit of Caucasus.
    • Défense et illustration de la langue françoise (1549). Qtd. by Irma Dreyfus, Lectures on French Literature, Tr. James Smith (1896), p. 97
  • The Romans well knew how to enrich their language without applying themselves to the labour of translation. They imitated the best Greek authors, transforming themselves into them, devouring them, and after having well digested them, converting them into blood and tissue. In like manner we must imitate the Greeks and Latins.
    • Défense et illustration de la langue françoise (1549). Qtd. by Irma Dreyfus, Lectures on French Literature, Tr. James Smith (1896), p. 97
  • Thou, then, who devotest thyself to the service of the Muses, turn thee to the Greek, Latin, and even Spanish and Italian authors, from whence thou mayest derive a more exquisite form of poetry than from our French authors. In no way trust to the examples of such of our own as have acquired a great renown, with little or no science; and do not allege that poets are born, for this would be too easy a method of achieving immortality. Therefore read and re-read day and night Greek and Latin models, and leave to me all those old French poems for the Floral Games of Toulouse and the Puy de Rouen, such as rondeaux, ballads, virelays, chants royal, chansons, and other suchlike sweetmeats, which corrupt the taste of our language, and only serve to testify to our ignorance.
    • Défense et illustration de la langue françoise (1549). Qtd. by Irma Dreyfus, Lectures on French Literature, Tr. James Smith (1896), pp. 97–8
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