Marceline DESBORDES-VALMORE – Autograph manuscript – “The Calvary”.

Marceline DESBORDES-VALMORE (1786.1859)

Autograph manuscript – Calvary.

Three octavo pages in brown ink.

Tiny trace of a tab.

Lyon. Undated [1829 or 1830]

A precious manuscript of his poem "Le Calvaire," consisting of forty-eight heptasyllabic lines written in six stanzas. The manuscript contains some corrections and erasures, as well as several variants from the final text.

The Calvary 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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Calvary.

Since you're going, Angélique

at the Calvary of the Reeds

bring me back a relic

a cold water flower.

we no longer sleep under the hair shirt;

At night they hear me moaning:

and the flowers of the old Calvary,

I've been told they make you sleepy.

Poor Angélique! At your age,

when you go out alone, and barefoot,

for a long pilgrimage,

Do we only go there out of pity?

on the wild heath,

dove that will moan,

offer God some prayer

so that I can sleep.

But what potion, what brew,

put to sleep by the fire of lightning

the wood pigeon in slavery,

when summer burns the air!

May the lightning strike,

on the bird born to moan,

because perhaps under the ashes

We'll let him sleep!

Ah! If I dared, my partner,

to hide behind your footsteps,

in the crisp mountain air,

I almost forgot… let's talk more quietly:

Here, people die from their troubles;

But there's no need to complain about it:

child, you have no chains;

You're running away... but you can sleep!

Do you believe that a great sacrifice,

may it be pleasing to God?

Well then! May it be favorable to me; …

I include it in our farewell:

an image is brought to Calvary,

each feature of which makes one groan;

Because it's her… what a shame!

which is keeping me awake!

you will throw into the holy water

this untied knot, this flower,

and this hyacinth ring

that I was hiding close to my heart.

Go away! I don't have to pay anything back

than a soul eager 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. A close friend of Balzac, to whom she gave the idea for his play * Les ressources de Quinola *, Sainte-Beuve and Baudelaire were among her earliest admirers. Sainte-Beuve published a collection of her poetry in 1842, preceded by a substantial introduction, while Baudelaire devoted a study to her in 1861 in * La revue fantaisiste *. But it was above all Verlaine who borrowed from her the secret of her odd-numbered rhymes and who secured her place in the pantheon of 19th-century poets by including her in his * Poètes maudits* (1888, second expanded edition). Verlaine, who had read Marceline extensively in the company of Rimbaud in London in 1873, wrote in conclusion to his study: " Marceline, of genius and talent of this century and of all centuries, perhaps in the company of Sappho and Saint Desbordes-Valmore, is quite simply—along with George Sand, so different, harsh, not without charming indulgences, of high common sense, of proud and, so to speak, masculine bearing—the only Thérèse woman. "