Marceline DESBORDES-VALMORE - Autograph manuscript – “Le Calvaire”.

Marceline DESBORDES-VALMORE (1786.1859)

Autograph manuscript – Calvary.

Three pages in-8° in brown ink.

Tiny miter mark.

Lyon. Undated [1829 or 1830]

 

Precious manuscript of his poem Le Calvaire, made up of forty-eight heptasyllabic verses written in six stanzas. The manuscript presents some corrections and erasures as well as several variations with the final text.

Le Calvaire is part of the Romances [1830] and was collected in the volume of Poésies, prefaced by Sainte-Beuve (Paris, Charpentier, 1842, pp. 209-210).

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The calvary.

 

Since you are going, Angélique

at the calvary of the reeds

bring me back for relic

a cold flower of the waters.

we no longer sleep under the hair;

at night you hear me moaning:

and the flowers of old Calvary,

I was told, make people sleep.

 

poor Angelique! at your age,

when you go alone, and barefoot,

for a long pilgrimage,

Do we only go there out of pity?

on the wild heather,

dove that will moan,

offer some prayer to God

so I can sleep.

 

but what potion, what drink,

falls asleep in the fire of lightning,

the woodpigeon in slavery,

when summer burns the air!

may the lightning descend,

on the bird born to moan,

because perhaps under the ashes

we'll let him sleep!

 

ah! if I dared, my companion,

steal away in your footsteps,

in the crisp mountain air,

I would forget… let’s talk further:

here, we die of our sorrows;

but we must not complain:

child, you have no chains;

you run away… but you can sleep!

 

do you believe that a great sacrifice,

can be pleasing to God?

hey! GOOD ! may it be favorable to me; …

I attach it to our farewell:

brings to Calvary an image,

whose every feature makes you moan;

because it’s her… what a shame!

that keeps me from sleeping!

 

you will throw into the holy water

this undone knot, this flower,

and this hyacinth ring

that I hid in my heart.

go away ! I no longer have to give back,

than a soul ardent to suffer.

blessed be he who must teach you

that God deigned to put him to sleep!

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Marceline Desbordes-Valmore was one of the first female poets of French romanticism. Great friend of Balzac, to whom she gave the idea for her play The Resources of Quinola , Sainte-Beuve and Baudelaire were among her first admirers, the first publishing a collection of his poetic works in 1842, preceded by an important notice, the second devoting a study to him in 1861 in La revue fantaisiste . But it was above all Verlaine, who borrowed the secret of her odd rhymes and who brought her into the pantheon of 19th century poets, by integrating her into his Poètes maudits (1888, second expanded edition). Verlaine, who had read Marceline extensively in the company of Rimbaud, in London, in 1873, wrote at the conclusion of his study: “ Marceline of genius and talent of this century and of all centuries, in the company of Sappho perhaps, and of Saint Desbordes-Valmore is quite simply, – with George Sand, so different, tough, not without charming indulgences, of high common sense, proud and, so to speak, of masculine appearance, – the only woman Thérèse. »