Pierre de Ronsard (French: Pierre de Ronsard; September 11, 1524, La Possoniere castle, Vendomois - December 27, 1585, Saint-Côme Abbey, near Tours) - famous French poet XVI century. He headed the Pleiades association, which preached the enrichment of national poetry by the study of Greek and Roman literature.
Ronsard comes from a noble family. Son of Louis de Ronsard, courtier of Francis I, participant in the Battle of Pavia. He served as a page to Francis I, then at the Scottish court. From 1540 he began to lose his hearing (possibly due to syphilis). From 1542 he composed poetry; Ronsard's first poem was published in 1547.
Without the wealth of centuries, you will stagnate in place,
But it’s worse if there is it - and there is no honor!
Ronsard Pierre de
Received a humanist education in Paris; studied philosophy and ancient languages under the guidance of Jean Dore. In 1549, he developed - together with du Bellay and Baif - a plan for an extensive poetic reform, set out in du Bellay's "Defense and Glorification of the French Language". From 1554 court poet of Henry II. After the death of Charles IX (1574), he fell out of favor and finally left the court.
"Odes" (1550) was the first practical application Ronsard's doctrine. They were greeted with jubilation. Other works include: “Love Poems” and “Odes” (1552), “Hymns” (1555-1556), “Eclogues” and “Love of Mary” (1560), “Discourse on the Disasters of Our Time” (1562), “ A brief summary of the art of poetry" (1565), an unfinished poem "Franciade" (1572).
During his lifetime, Ronsard was surrounded by the same fame and honor as V. Hugo was later. In the 17th century Ronsard was denounced by Boileau in The Poetic Art and from then on was completely unknown until the beginning of the 19th century, when Sainte-Beuve Romantics restored the glory of his lyrics.
Ronsard is primarily a lyricist. The conventionality of the doctrine he developed encouraged him to compose artificial “Pindaric odes” in which poetry is suppressed by learning; but his verse in this difficult school acquired greater flexibility.
Discarding the antistrophe and epod, Ronsard introduced lyrical forms of high beauty and sonority. He introduced an endless variety of poetic meters into French poetry and created the harmony of verse.
He did not borrow external forms from antiquity, but was imbued with the ancient spirit, which was reflected in all his work. A significant amount of Italian influence is also noticeable in his lyrics. In his songs and sonnets (about 600), Petrarchism is combined with sensuality and tender sadness, depicting love, death, and the life of nature.
This is truly a royal variety, bred in France by "Mielland".
Biological features
Rose "Pierre de Ronsard" is a climbing variety and is remontant. An adult can reach 3 meters in height, growing up to 2 meters in width.
The plant reaches this size at the age of 3-4 years, as it does not differ in growth intensity. The flowers are large, 8-10 cm in diameter, full (60-70 petals per bud).
They have a color from cream to pale pink, often the color is richer in the center of the bud. The leaves are hard, dense, shiny. The aroma is unexpressed, barely perceptible. The variety "Pierre de Ronsard" has such advantages:
- abundant and long flowering;
- high immunity;
- frost resistance.
When purchasing seedlings, you should pay attention to the following aspects:
- Seedlings are grafted and have their own root system. Check the type of rootstock, as some can only be grown in greenhouses.
- Seedling age: give preference to two to three years old.
- Pay attention to the condition of the roots, the presence of spots on the leaves and stems.
Choosing a landing site
Preparation of seedlings
Now let's talk directly about how. Planted in open ground in spring. The seedlings are carefully inspected, damaged shoots are removed and... All sections are processed special means, for example, “Rannet” or regular brilliant green. Before planting, the roots of the seedlings are dipped into water with a root formation stimulator.
The process and scheme of planting rose seedlings
The climbing rose "Pierre de Ronsard" does not require much space; a plot will be sufficient 50x50 cm. However, the crown of the bush is very large, so you can increase the planting scheme to 2x2 m.
Humus is added to the holes or watered with water containing magranium acid. Fertilizers are sprinkled with a layer of soil to avoid contact with the roots.
Important!After planting, the above-ground part of the seedling is cut to 20 cm: this activates growth and promotes vigorous flowering in the future.
Care and subtleties of growing
Caring for “Pierre de Ronsard” is practically no different from caring for other roses, except that the variety requires a garter. 
Watering, loosening and weeding
Fertilizer application
In the question of how to care for roses, you should not forget about, especially since this culture loves additional. 
In the spring it is introduced, before flowering it can be fed, and towards the end of flowering - with potassium and phosphorus. During flowering periods they add.
Did you know? This rose bush is namedin 1985in honor of the French poet Pierre de Ronsard–this marks the four hundredth anniversary of his death.
The role of mulch
Prevention of diseases and pests
For prevention, lashes are treated in the spring and before sheltering for the winter. Treatment is carried out with a 1% solution.
Support
For climbing varieties, the presence of support is a prerequisite. It must be arranged before planting the bush. 
Form the support in such a way that it does not create a shadow for the bush. You can use existing trees on the site or build supports from bamboo branches.
Trimming
Carry out after the end of flowering, as well as in the spring. At autumn pruning Old shoots are removed, and young shoots are shortened by a quarter. Spring pruning involves removing damaged shoots.
Important!For the Pierre de Ronsard rose, pruning the vines is also important. This will help the formation of the bush and enhance flowering.
Shelter for the winter
The question of how to care for roses will not be fully answered if we do not talk about shelter for the winter. Although this variety is considered frost-resistant, to ensure the preservation of the bush it is still better to protect it from frost. 
For "Pierre de Ronsard" this process is not easy, since it has very rigid shoots that are almost impossible to bend. They cover the bush mainly vertical way, after tying the bush with spruce branches.
The outstanding poet of the Renaissance, Pierre de Ronsard, who was called the prince of French poets, was, among other things, a wonderful dancer and fencer, deafness did not in any way limit the manifestation of his talents, historical data conveyed through the centuries his wonderful phrase - “There is nothing to do with poor hearing in the palace.” We remember with gratitude a historical figure who left his mark on the development of mankind.
Pierre de Ronsard. Portrait by an unknown artist. Around 1620. Blois, Museum of Fine Arts
Chateau La Poissoniere, where Ronsard was born
“THE FUTURE DOES NOT DECEIVE THE WORTHY”
Pierre Ronsard was born on September 11, 1524 in the Poissonnière estate, in the castle of La Possonnière, in the Loire River valley (Vendomois province), in a house remodeled in a new taste by his father, Louis de Ronsard, in a house with large windows, decorated with bas-reliefs with Latin inscriptions; one of them was repeated several times - Non fallunt futura merentem (The future does not deceive the worthy). All around lay green meadows running down to the Loire, hills covered with vineyards, forests adjacent to the royal forest of Gastin -
...old forest, Zefirov's free friend!
I entrusted the first sound of the lyre to you,
And my first delight...
Pierre was the youngest, sixth child in the family. Since this child later became the “king of the French poets,” rumor covered the first days of his childhood with poetic stories: “When he was carried to the local church to be baptized, the one who carried him, crossing the meadow, accidentally dropped him, but there was thick grass all around and flowers that gently received him... and it so happened that another girl, who carried a vessel with rose water, helping to raise the child, spilled a little fragrant water on his head, and this was a harbinger of those aromas and flowers with which he was to fill France in his learned poems."
When Pierre was ten years old, his father took him to the Navarre College, a privileged school where the children of dukes and princes studied. But the boy, who grew up in freedom, hated the harsh rules of the school and six months later begged his father to take him out of college. Soon Pierre becomes a page at the court of the princes. As a twelve-year-old boy, he goes on a long journey to the north, to Scotland, in the retinue of Princess Madeleine, who married King James Stuart of Scotland, and spends more than two years in Scotland and England. Returning to France, to the retinue of Charles of Orleans, the youngest son of the king, he travels on behalf of the prince to Flanders and Holland, and soon then goes again to Scotland and almost dies during a sea storm that rocked the ship for three days. At the age of sixteen, no longer a page, but in the retinue of a diplomatic mission headed by the learned Hellenist Lazarus de Baif, Ronsard went to Germany; a few months later he was already in Italy, in Piedmont, in the retinue of the Viceroy of Piedmont, Lange du Bellay.
Francis I (24th King of France). Portrait by Jean Clouet, 1525, Louvre
At the age of 16, Pierre de Ronsard was a handsome, slender young man, dexterous in all forms physical exercise which he learned at court, with graceful bearing. His horizons were developed by travel and early life experiences; he read a lot and mastered several European languages. A court and diplomatic career opened up before him; sometimes he himself dreamed of a military career. He also had other dreams, which he hid from those around him: from the age of 12 he began writing poetry, first in Latin, then in native language. Every time Pierre came to his native estate, he spent days wandering through the forests and fields, and here poems, inspired by the murmur of a stream, the chirping of birds and the rustling of leaves, formed themselves:
I was not yet twelve when
In the depths of valleys or in high forests,
In secret caves, far from all people,
Forgetting about the world, I composed poems,
And the Echo sounded in response to me, and the Dryads,
And Fauns, and Satyrs, and Pan, and Oreads...
Every year this voice of the forest echo, calling to nature and to poetry, to books and creativity, became more audible. However, young Pierre was ambitious, and a successfully started career, tiring, but giving so many impressions, had its charming sides. At the age of 16, Pierre stood at a crossroads. And then fate intervened in his life.
At the seventeenth year of his life, Pierre fell seriously ill (syphilis); illness kept him away from the court for a long time. He recovered, but as a result of his illness he became semi-deaf: it became clear that a court and diplomatic career was closed to him.
The illness confused all the plans that Louis Ronsard had made for his son. Deafness was a hindrance even for the more modest profession of a lawyer or doctor, meanwhile Pierre was the youngest in the family and could not be provided with his father's inheritance. Deafness increases his craving for loneliness and develops melancholy in him; but, pushing the noise away from him Everyday life, she seemed to intensify the sound of that inner voice that had previously sounded in his soul with the rhythms of verse. Pierre Ronsard decides to devote himself entirely to poetry. He is no longer satisfied with Marot's poems: he wants to write like Horace, like Virgil. He wants to learn: Lazarus de Banff, who translated Sophocles in his free time, told Pierre about the incomparable beauty of Greek poetry. With all the passion characteristic of him, Ronsard builds new plan own life.
Returning to Paris, for some time he combined service at court with classes with Jean Dore, who taught the Greek language to the son of Lazarus de Baif, Jean Antoine.
Jean Dora then lived in the house of Lazarus de Baif in the university quarter. When Poncapa's father died in 1544, twenty-year-old Pierre completely left the court and devoted himself entirely to his studies. He studied Greek with the passion of a gold miner who has found a gold mine. He was not ashamed to turn to the help of young Baif, who was barely fifteen years old, but who had been taught Greek since childhood. When Lazarus de Baif died, and Dora was appointed principal of the Cocret College, Pierre Ronsard and Jean Baif, following the teacher, moved to the student cell of the college. Dora gave lectures in the college premises: they were devoted mainly to the philological and philosophical interpretation of texts; This is how the works of Homer and Hesiod, Pindar and Aeschylus, Plato and other Greek writers were revealed to Ronsard, in which a world of sublime ideas and immortal beauty appeared to Pierre and his friends.
COMMONWEALTH OF POETS
At the Cocra College, Ronsard found like-minded people; some of them became his lifelong friends. Here his friendship began with Remy Bello, whom he, like Baifa, later included in his “Pleiades”, with Marc Antoine Muret and others. His tirelessness in work, the passion burning in him, attracted to him those who were older than him, and especially those who already saw in him the leader, the beloved favorite of the muses. Everyone knew about his plans for the reform of French poetry, that he wrote poetry, imitating the art of the ancients, learning at the same time from Pindar and Homer, Horace and Callimachus. This is how a young “brigade” arose around Ronsard, of which he was the recognized leader. Soon its composition was replenished with a new member, who became Ronsard's closest friend and a herald of the ideas of the new poetic school, which made a huge contribution to the development of French poetry.
In 1547, during a trip to Poitiers, Ronsard met a water roadside hotels with a young man in a modest suit, with a face that spoke of nobility and spiritual culture; dark eyes looked straight and seriously, half-closed with heavy eyelids, full of intelligence and hidden strength. It was Joachim Du Bellay. The conversation between the two young people soon turned into a meeting of two brothers who had found each other, brothers according to that chosen affinity that is created by the commonality of the most important interests in life, the unity of spiritual aspirations. They spent the whole night talking, quoting Latin and Italian poets to each other, reading their own poems, and at dawn they parted as lifelong friends. Du Bellay gave Poncapy a sworn promise to move to Paris and join the “brigade” of enthusiasts at the Cocray College. Soon Dor's students were already raising happy cups to their new friend.
The arrival of Du Bellay excited the circle: in this melancholy young man there was a determination that Ronsard had hitherto lacked. Du Bellay brought poems with him and intended to publish them. Thus, he encouraged Ronsard to reveal to the world what had accumulated in the treasured chest and that Pierre had until now jealously hidden from human eyes, only occasionally reading to friends, either a small poem or a passage of several stanzas.
In 1549, the quiet student cells of Cocre College buzzed like beehives in spring. The entire “brigade” is embraced by the spirit of poetry; young Bello and Baif write poems, carried away by the enthusiasm of their elders. Ronsard and Du Bellay read poetry in the houses of their acquaintances; some of these educated people hold positions at court; The leaders of the new school are groping for sympathizers and possible patrons: with all their enthusiasm, they know that the debut will not be easy. They have many friends, but they are going to go against the accepted tradition; Maro died five years ago; in poetry main role so far the poets who called themselves his students were playing; at the court reigns Mellen de Saint-Gelais, an elegant wit, the author of gallant madrigals and caustic epigrams, the organizer of festivals and carnivals, while writing sonnets and terzas in the Italian taste, the “sweet-mouthed” Mellen, who made poetry one of the elements of court entertainment; dozens of poets in Paris and in the provinces imitate Marot to the best of their ability - pale and boring.
Meanwhile, although Ronsard knows in advance that his poetry is not created for the “crowd”, that those whom Calliope chooses as her priest are often laughed at by the public, not immediately comprehending the high structure of thoughts and the difficult art of poetic speech, he is not at all happy with the prospect to become an academic, armchair poet, whom only a few can appreciate.
For seven years he prepared himself for the destiny of a poet, remembering the high goal - to glorify the French language and poetry, to serve France and the king, and to serve not as an entertainer, but as a teacher, revealing to the reader the treasures of poetic art, showing the beauty of the world, speaking about the essence of human life. If he enters the open arena with weapons of a new art, forged according to the model of the ancients, then only to win: “the future does not deceive the worthy.”
They talk about this with Du Bellay, preparing to go out into the world; During his year of stay with Dor, Du Bellay could not master the treasures of the Greeks, but he knew the Roman poets well: Horace, Virgil, the elegics, Ovid's Tristia, and he was more read in Italian literature than Ronsard. He volunteered to formulate the thoughts that Ronsard had long nurtured during his nightly vigils and which Du Bellay himself shared. Ronsard does not like to write in prose - Du Bellay is good at oratory, it is not for nothing that he was preparing to become a lawyer, he studied Quintilian and knows a lot about eloquence. It was necessary to convince the reader that the reform of poetry is necessary for the glory of France, that the creation of a new poetic style is a merit to the native language, to the homeland; it was necessary to infect the reader with the enthusiasm of the “brigade”. This is how a small book was published, signed with the initials of Du Bellay, which became the manifesto of the new school - “Defense and glorification of the French language.” At the same time, Du Bellay published a cycle of love sonnets in the spirit of Italian Petrarchism (“Olive”) and several “Lyrical Odes” as examples of new poetry. Thus, he challenged Ronsard to a competition - after all, it was Ronsard who considered the ode to be the highest kind of poetry and wrote odes, imitating Pindar and Horace.
Now Ronsard could put it off no longer. From morning until late at night, he sits locked up, revising, correcting, rewriting poems accumulated over several years, selecting the best for his first collection. He works feverishly and intently.
IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF PINDAR AND HORACE
In 1550, Ronsard's first collection finally appeared, “Four Books of Odes.” From this moment on, the poet leaves the quiet walls of the academic college into the wide world. From now on, his life is the story of his creativity and his poetic destiny.
The first books of Du Bellay and Ronsard were a turning point not only in their lives, but - as history has shown - in the life of French literature. For the first time in the history of European literature, a group of like-minded poets appeared, closely united by unity of goals and bonds of friendship; For the first time, the work of a group of poets was opened with a manifesto: Du Bellay’s “Defense” heads the order of all subsequent manifestos of literary schools in Europe.
The “Defense” said that the path to creating new poetry is imitation of the ancients, imitation, which should become a creative competition with ancient poetry, the creative assimilation of the literary culture of antiquity, its ideological content and poetic forms. The very name of Ronsard's collection - "Odes" - a word not previously used in French poetry - pointed simultaneously to both Horace and Pindar. At the beginning of the book, Ronsard placed large “Pindaric” odes: they were written in a high, elevated style, in a tone of inspiration and enthusiasm, full of “lyrical disorder,” mythological images, refined tropes and epithets. They were dedicated to the praise of “remarkable men” - high figures of this world, but also the poet’s friends: next to the ode dedicated to the great nobleman, Charles of Lorraine or de Chatillon, there were odes dedicated to the modest Jean Dora or the young Jean Baif. Most of the odes in the collection were odes of the “Horatian” style; these were small lyric poems, clearer and simpler in language, more intimate in tone; friendship, love, nature, poetry, philosophical reflections on life and death constitute the themes of these odes; their figurative fabric is built not on mythological scholarship, but on specific images of the earthly world. Diverse in metrical form, Ronsard's odes demonstrated the unity of worldview and style, a worldview nurtured by the philosophy of antiquity. They talked about the transience of human life and its earthly charm, about the immortal beauty of nature and art. In French poetry, everything in these poems was new: their themes - the themes of friendship, nature, creative immortality, and the lyrical appearance of the poet, and the system of images, and poetic language, and poetic form.
It was necessary to update the language of French poetry. Ronsard recounted how he did this in a later elegy written in the sixties:
As soon as Kamena opened her source to me
And inspired with sweet zeal for heroic deeds,
Proud fun warmed my blood
And noble love kindled in me.
Captivated at the age of twenty by a carefree beauty,
I decided to pour out my heartfelt in poetry,
But, the French language agrees with the feelings,
I saw how rude, unclear, and ugly he was.
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. 
Henry III (28th King of France). Unknown author.
From the collection of the Versailles Museum
The months following the publication of the Four Books of Odes were for Ronsard a time of great hope, joy and anguish. “Odes” won him success in Paris and the provinces: Ronsard was immediately recognized as the best poet in France.
But, despite the dedication of flattering odes to the king and queen, the official recognition of Ronsard as “the poet of the king and France” was long in coming. Secular court circles, accustomed to the elegant trifles of Saint-Gelais, accustomed to viewing poetry on French As a kind of amusement created for their amusement, the works of Ronsard were coldly greeted, frightening them with their erudition; King Henry II himself, who knew Ronsard from childhood and loved to play ball with him, did not inherit his love of poetry and the arts from his father, Francis I. For Ronsard, in whom the publication of his first book awakened his characteristic ambition from his youth, it was painful to learn that Mellin de Saint-Gelais, in the presence of the king, parodied his Pindaric style - and the king laughed! Victory nevertheless came to Ronsard and his friends and came, in general, quickly, although the theme of “non-recognition” by his contemporaries and hopes for a just trial by his descendants will appear every now and then in Ronsard’s work even in the years when his glory in France will reign supreme.
He continues to work with the same feverish intensity as during the years of his apprenticeship with Dor; in 1552 he published his “First Book of Love Poems” (later called “Love Poems to Cassandra”) along with a fifth book of odes. The young poet fell in love with Cassandra Salviati in the early 40s, having met her at the court in Blois. Even then, falling in love with this girl, whom he could not marry, became for Ronsard the source of creating a poetic image of a sublime and inaccessible lover, like Petrarch’s Laura.
The ranks of Ronsard's admirers and students are expanding, and the chorus of praise in Latin and French verse is growing. Thiard called Ronsard in his poems “the lord of the nine ancient muses,” Du Bellay called him “the French Terpander.” “The First Book of Love Poems” was a great success, including at court, where, under the influence of Queen Catherine de’ Medici, they became more and more interested in everything Italian. Even Saint-Gelais is not averse to making reconciliation with the proud young man. Ronsard's fame is growing, and the number of adherents of the new school is multiplying not only in Paris, but also in the provinces. He is already called everywhere the king of French poetry. The young “brigade” is being reorganized, now there is a whole school behind Ronsard; at the head of this school is a group of seven poets, friends of Ronsard, who called it “Pleiades”, named after the constellation; The Pléiade includes Ronsard, Du Bellay, Baif, Bellot, Thiard, Jodel, the author of the first classical tragedy, and Ronsard's teacher Dora.
Despite the victorious course of events, despite the flourishing of Ronsard's creative powers, notes of melancholy appeared for the first time in his poems of the mid-50s. He is already 30 years old, and has ten years of intense poetic work behind him. The tragic discord between ideal and reality, between the harmony of nature and the chaos of the social life of his era, between the forces contained in the human personality and the limited possibility of realizing these forces in society becomes increasingly clear to him. But a deep conviction in the immortality of nature, reason and art, in the “kindness of wisdom”, which he will retain until the end of his days, saves him from skepticism and pessimism. In the field of creativity, these years for Ronsard were years of searching for new forms of poetry. He abandons the Pindaric ode, seeks new forms of high lyricism, writes poems of the elegiac type, which he calls either odes, or elegies, or poems. He creates a new genre of lyric-epic poetry - “Hymns”. A number of his collections have been published: “The Grove” (“Silvae”), “Various Poems”, “Continuation of Love Poems” (“The Second Book of Love Poems”, or “Love Poems to Mary”), two books of “Hymns”. “The Second Book of Love” embodies Ronsard’s new “poetic novel” - not in the spirit of the sublime Platonism of the sonnets to Cassandra, but in a completely different way: Maria is a simple Angevin girl, “the rose of the fields,” cheerful and crafty, and the poet’s love for her is simple , earthly and shared love; and the stylistic tonality of these sonnets is devoid of the conventions of Petrarchism, but in its very simplicity Ronsard's style remains lofty and poetic.
"KING OF POETS"
The mid-50s were the time of greatest poetic flowering for Ronsard. His great talent has reached full maturity. At the same time, he achieves full recognition: all of France unanimously considers him its greatest poet. The universality of this success also affected the king: he gives Ronsard small benefices (the right to use income from church estates), and after the death of Saint-Gelais in 1558, Ronsard receives the position of “royal adviser and chaplain,” immediately strengthening his position as an officially recognized poet. Hopes for further benefits and pensions are becoming more and more realistic. Poncap has been poor all these years; literary work did not generate income: the poet, deprived of his fortune, could only exist with the material support of patrons-seigniers or the king. The tragedy was that Ronsard wanted to serve the king as a symbol of the nation, and the king needed a “court poet,” a courtesan poet, upon whom both Ronsard and Du Bellay had so wrathfully rained down their arrows from a young age. Becoming, following Saint-Gelais, a royal entertainer, writing “cartels” and “masquerades”, official pastorals for court festivities, was a difficult and humiliating task for Ronsard. Ronsard admitted that it was difficult for him to write poems “to order”, and he was not successful in them. 
Charles IX (27th King of France)
Meanwhile, clouds are gathering on the political horizon of France. The Calvinist movements, which intensified under Henry II, provoked active resistance from the persecuted: the threat of civil war loomed over France. In 1560, Henry II dies, wounded (apparently accidentally) during tournament competitions. His eldest son, Francis II, a sickly young man unable to rule the country, ascends the throne of France. The other younger princes are all physically handicapped and degenerate; the Valois family, most fully embodied in Francis I, is deteriorating, and this is understood both in the country and outside it. At court, the Guises, who lead the party of extreme Catholic reaction, are seizing more and more power; At the same time, the majority Calvinistic party of the “princes of the blood”, the Bourbons, is strengthening, the closest contenders to the throne in the event of the extinction of the House of Valois and therefore hated by Queen Catherine, who actually rules the country for her son.
The struggle of these court political parties involves their adherents from the nobility and the bourgeoisie, and ultimately it responds most heavily to the mass of the people, to the peasantry, burdened with huge taxes and ruined by the military actions of both Catholics and Huguenots.
Ronsard had a hard time experiencing the religious and political internecine strife in the country. He was, in essence, indifferent from his youth to the religious side of this struggle: his worldview was fed by ancient sources. For some time, he, who had friends among both Catholics and Calvinists, tried to stay aloof. He regrets the collapse of humanistic circles, destroyed by disagreement. In the poem “Happy Islands,” written by him during these years and addressed to his old friend, the humanist Muret, Ronsard calls him to leave France: “Let's run, Muret, run to look for better skies and better fields in other places. Let's leave these unfortunate lands to wild tigers and lions so that they never return to France..."
But the Happy Islands, where in Ronsard’s dreams he takes all the poets of the Pleiades, where “far from Europe and its battles”, among the ever-blooming and kind nature, people are eternally young and happy, is just a dream. Here in France, one misfortune follows another: Du Bellay dies, another friend of Ronsard, also a poet, Olivier de Magny, dies. Pontus de Tiard no longer writes poetry. He himself, Ronsard, although he is not yet forty, is already half gray. And yet Ronsard continues his work. Revising all his previous works for the collected works of 1560, Ronsard sadly recalls his stormy youth, full of hope and the passionate pathos of creativity, “like wine fermenting in the barrels of Anjou.” Sometimes it seems to him that the wine of poetry has dried up in him. In one of his elegies, he compared himself to a silent nightingale. This was wrong, the muses did not leave Ronsard. But the previous boil was no longer there. The former amazing wealth of strophic forms and stylistic tonality is replaced by elegiac or oratorical Alexandrian verse, which Ronsard himself considered “prosaic.”
Ronsard presented his collection of poems to the young Queen Mary Stuart, who married a sixteen-year-old boy, Francis. Maria, who captivated Ronsard with her beauty and grace, was a great admirer of the poet. When Mary returned to Scotland the following year after Francis' death, she did not forget the poet; Subsequently, by her order, a precious carved group depicting Pegasus on Parnassus was sent to Ronsard, with the inscription: “To Ronsard, to Apollo the source of the Muses.” In the Tower, awaiting execution, Mary consoled herself by singing his poems.
“WITH AN IRON PEN ON PAPER OF STEEL”
After the death of Francis, ten-year-old Charles IX became king, for whom the queen regent continued to rule. The struggle between hostile religious and political parties intensified even more. The queen's chancellor, the respected Michel d'Hôpital, to whom Ronsard once dedicated the best of his great Pindaric odes, “Ode to the Muses,” tried to pursue a policy of compromise between parties in the name of maintaining peace in the state. Ronsard also sympathized with this policy with all his heart; but during the crisis of the 60s it encountered insurmountable difficulties. Already in 1562, open hostilities began. The initiative belonged to the Huguenots, who, however, were provoked by the Catholics. In the midst of the military struggle, Ronsard published a number of poetic “Speeches” (“Speech about the misfortunes of our time”, “Admonition to the French people”, etc.). In these poems, full of oratorical pathos and high tragedy, the poet acted primarily as a patriot, mourning France, which has lost its former unity and strength, torn apart by “its children,” France, in which “brother rebels against brother, and son against father,” where “the farmer is ruined,” where “everything goes to decay without order and law.” The monster “Opinion” (disagreement) has taken possession of everyone:
And so the craftsman left his settlement,
The shepherd is his sheep, the clients are the lawyer,
The sailor is his sailboat,
merchant - his trade...
In an atmosphere of intense political passions, Ronsard wanted to appeal to national consciousness and tolerance. He wrote these poems during the onslaught of the Huguenot army on Paris, reinforced German soldiers, who were sent by the Lutheran princes of Germany: “When the war came to the suburbs of Paris and one could see helmets and swords shining in the surrounding fields, when I saw peasants carrying their children and their belongings, crying leading their cows by the horns, I wrote these poems in three days about the troubles and misfortunes of our years...”
His position as a humanist above fanaticism religious war and seeing in it, first of all, a threat to the integrity of his homeland, he tried to preserve it in the following years, despite the ongoing civil war and despite the fact that during these years he was already officially becoming the main court poet.
Since 1563, he finally receives a permanent pension from the royal treasury, the boy king, Charles IX, calls him “his Ronsard”, showers him with favors; Ronsard receives three abbeys as a gift from the king, located near his native places. The young crown-bearer, degenerate and sickly, now falling into fits of frenzied rage, now suffering from attacks of acute sadness, but, like all Valois, inclined towards the arts and poetry, was drawn to Ronsard, although he showed his favor to the poet with a rather tactless familiarity. Ronsard still managed to maintain his dignity and a certain independence in relation to his patron. In “Instructions to King Charles IX,” he tries to teach the young king virtue, paints him the image of an enlightened and humane monarch: “a king without valor wears a crown in vain...”, “You should not insult your subjects like a tyrant, because, like everyone else, your the body is made of dust, and Fortune plays with big people as well as with little ones..."
But the king’s petty duties and the official pension obliged the poet to carry out the duties of court service: to write poems “for the occasion”, compliments to “strong” people at court, to participate in court festivities, to compose pastorals (eclogues), “inscriptions” and mottos for them. Staying at court as the official entertainer of the golden youth irritates and tires the poet. He is looking for opportunities to leave the yard more often. There is an excellent excuse for this - the need to concentrate on working on the heroic poem “Franciade”, with which he is obliged to thank the king for all his mercies.
AWAY FROM THE COURTY BULLSHIT
The idea of a large poem, modeled on Virgil's Aeneid, arose from Ronsard at the very beginning of his literary career. This was required by the Pleiades program: in the system of ancient genres, the heroic poem occupied first place, and the poet, who went to compete with Pindar and Horace, was called upon to compete with Virgil. The plot and title of the poem were chosen long ago: “Franciade” was supposed to glorify the founding of France by the “Trojan prince Francus,” like Aeneas in Italy, a legend that flattered French patriotism in an era of admiration for antiquity. Ronsard kept putting off work on the poem; a pure lyricist in his poetic temperament, he felt that it would be a work devoid of inspiration. But now it was no longer inconvenient to postpone: Karl became interested in the poem, discussed its plan with Ronsard, and now it gave the poet the opportunity to decently retire from the court: such work required solitude. In addition, his health also deteriorated: in 1566 he fell so seriously ill that there were rumors of his death. He lives in his new abbeys, works on the Franciade and writes poetry for himself, finding solace in poetry, while he is increasingly oppressed by illness, ongoing political unrest and the disappointments of life.
He writes elegiac poems in which mature wisdom, surrounded by high sadness, is expressed in a simple and sublime style. This is the beautiful “Hymn of Autumn,” dedicated to poetry and the poetic vocation:
Walking timidly along the path of forest nymphs,
I knew that I was following my lucky star,
That on the paths where their light round dance was going on,
My soul will immediately gain wealth.
Poetry and nature were the main themes for Ronsard from his youth, the “great love” of his life. For him, they were the main values, the religion of his soul, to which he remained faithful from the days of his cheerful youth until the last years of his life. When Ronsard learned that Charles IX had sold the Gastin Forest for felling in order to pay the debts of the court, the Gastin Forest, beloved by the poet since childhood, sung by him in one of his early odes, he wrote an elegy that belongs to his best poems:
O temple of birds, forest! Your dead canopy
Neither light goats nor proud deer
They won't visit. Cool leaves
You will not provide protection from the sun in the summer heat...
And this spectacle of the destruction of the forest at the hands of ungrateful people leads the poet to a conclusion in the spirit of the philosophy that he once developed in “Hymns”:
Unhappy is the man born into the world!
Oh, the philosopher and poet are right, a hundred times right,
That everything that exists strives towards death or the end,
To lose its form and be reborn in a new one.
Where the valley of Tampei was, a mountain will rise,
Tomorrow the steppe will lie where the volcano was yesterday,
And the grain will rustle in the place of waves and foam.
Matter is immortal, only forms are perishable.
Staying away from the court, solitary studies in the middle of his native nature gave Ronsard the opportunity, along with work on the poem (difficult work that never brought him satisfaction), to write many beautiful poems, which were included in the collection of Poems in 1569 and in the new edition of his works in 1571. At the same time, he prepared the first four songs of the Franciade for publication.
While the poem was being printed, events occurred in Paris against the background of which the appearance of the book went almost unnoticed. Four songs of the Franciade were published twenty days after the terrible Night of St. Bartholomew. Ronsard, along with everyone the best people France was shocked. Coligny, brother of Audet de Chatillon (who had died the year before), was killed. D'Hopital, hated by the Guises, forced to retreat from the court back in 1568 and not killed by fanatics only thanks to a special order from the king, did not leave his home, immersed in grief. Charles, tormented by fear or remorse, hid in the depths of the Louvre.
“Franciade,” long awaited by the poet’s fans, went unnoticed. But Ronsard didn’t care about that now. He maintains a deep and meaningful silence, living almost all the time in his abbeys.
"SONNETS TO HELENA"
Only after the death of Charles IX, when Henry III ascended the throne, the poet again appears at court, tries to enter the atmosphere of social life, and visits fashionable salons. But he already feels like a stranger in this environment, where the new king loves to appear at balls in costumes of unheard-of luxury, and sometimes even in women's attire. The king surrounded himself with young favorites - “minions”. At court there is a passion for Italian; the courtiers speak some mixture of French and Italian languages, which outraged Ronsard. Henry III has his favorite poet, who came from the Pleiades school, a talented and graceful poet, but shallow and mannered, Philippe Deporte. True, Ronsard’s old friend Jean Baif organized an “Academy of Music” at court, in which poets, musicians and courtiers meet at concerts; Ronsard goes there too, his works are sometimes performed, but he feels more and more like a man of another generation among these people. If Deporte becomes his rival at court, then Du Bartas, who also came from the school of Ronsard and composed “The Week of Creation,” a biblical poem in a deliberately learned and solemn style, enjoys success among Protestants; his fans spread rumors that Ronsard himself recognized his superiority.
But Ronsard, even in these years, when he entered his sixth decade, showed the French the perfection of his great gift. He creates the “Third Book of Love” - a new cycle of love sonnets, “Sonnets to Helen”. Their addressee was one of Catherine de Medici’s young ladies-in-waiting, Helena de Surgères, known at court for her beauty and virtue, a quality that was not particularly characteristic of the queen’s “flying squadron.” This tall, black-haired and stern beauty (she was half Spanish) attracted the attention of the aging poet. “Sonnets to Helen” is the third and last cycle of Ronsard’s lyrical sonnets, covered in the sad charm of the love of an almost old man for a young and proud girl. Next to the exquisite and slightly cutesy sonnets of Deporte, Ronsard's sonnets, published in the Collected Works of the poet in 1578, stood out for their calm and majestic simplicity; after all, it was during these years that Ronsard came to a certain unified style in his poems, sublime and clear:
Neither too low nor too curvy styles:
Horace wrote so, and Virgil wrote so.
"Sonnets to Helen" was the last major event in Ronsard's literary life. He appears at court less and less often, his health is poor, and he is tormented by severe attacks of gout. He lives in his abbeys, moving from one to another, spending time surrounded by books and flower beds - he loved to work in the garden. But even there he does not always find peace: Civil War continues to tear France apart, devastated by war and unbearable taxes. The sight of the beggars sitting next to the luxury of the court of Henry III outraged the poet. He loved painting and architecture and always encouraged kings to be generous to all muses. But the construction of the Tuileries, which absorbed a lot of money from the meager royal treasury, replenished by robbing the people, now seemed to him a challenge to these people. When he came to Paris, he stayed with Jean Galland, the principal of the Boncourt College, and almost did not appear in court and secular circles. In the year of his sixtieth birthday, he is preparing a new edition of his works, a deluxe folio edition (the first for which he received royalties from the publisher). Working on this edition, corrections, reading proofs, and the trips to Paris caused by all this undermined his health. At the very end of 1585, on December 27, Ronsard died at the Abbey of Croix-Val. He died fully conscious and before last day dictated poetry to his young secretary and friend Amadis Jamin
From “THE FIRST BOOK ABOUT LOVE”
I want to burn and under the heavenly roof
From under the bark of squalor and decay
To fly forever, like one whose mother is Alcmene,
Engulfed in fire, seated among the gods.
The veil of flesh already weighs me down,
The spirit is restless and rushes upward from captivity,
And so that your gaze burns me instantly,
My sacrificial pyre is ready.
O pure flame, oh sacred ardor,
Light in me a fire of such wondrous powers,
So that, having renounced the close shell,
I soared, free, pure and straight,
Above the stars, to praise there forever
Your beauty is a prototype above heaven.
Nature has given everyone a weapon...
Nature has given everyone a weapon:
The eagle has a humpbacked beak and powerful wings,
The bull has his horns, the horse his hooves,
The hare runs fast, the viper is poisonous,
Her tooth is poisoned. Fish have fins
And finally, the lion has claws and fangs.
She knew how to instill a wise mind in a man,
Nature had no wisdom for women
And, having exhausted his power on us,
She gave them beauty - not a sword or a spear.
We have all become powerless before female beauty.
She stronger than the gods, people, fire and steel.