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Reading Philippe Desportes in Le Rencontre des
muses de France et d’Italie

Gabriella Scarlatta Eschrich

The Renaissance poet Philippe Desportes (1546–1606) was considerably
appreciated and admired during his lifetime.1 In 1573, while the poet was
leaving France for Poland in order to follow the Duke of Anjou (1551–89),
who was the newly crowned King of Poland and future Henri III of France, his
Premières Œuvres was published in Paris.2 From that year on, a new edition of
his poems would be published almost every year until 1602, with a total of
thirty-three editions in thirty years. His poetry, esteemed for its lyric and clear
qualities, met with great success and fulfilled the expectations of his readers,
patrons and fellow writers. Desportes succeeded Pierre de Ronsard as the
court poet of Henri III and he became the secretary of the king’s chancellery.
He was a favourite member of the salon of the Maréchale de Retz and an active
participant in the Palace Academy of Henri III. These two institutions per-
formed cultural, intellectual and social roles of great importance at the end of
the sixteenth century, and they shaped and contributed to Desportes’ writing
and success.3 As the favourite poet of Henri III, he wrote to order and tried to
respond to the demands and tastes of his public. Just before his death,
Desportes became the tutor of Henri IV’s son, the future Louis XIII. His

1 Two important studies dedicated to Desportes and his writings have recently been published: Bruno
Petey-Girard and François Rouget (eds.), Philippe Desportes. Poète profane, poète sacré. Actes du Colloque interna-
tional de Chartres (14–16 septembre 2006) (Paris: Champion, 2008), and Jean Balsamo (ed.), Philippe Desportes
(1546–1606). Un poète presque parfait entre Renaissance et Classicisme (Paris: Klincksieck, 2000). For an extensive
biography, see Jacques Lavaud, Un Poète de cour au temps des derniers Valois. Philippe Desportes (Paris: Droz, 1936).
My deep gratitude goes to my two colleagues Stéphane Spoiden and Jackie Vansant, as well as to the anonymous,
patient reader for their indispensable comments and help in the various stages of this article.

2 Les Premières Œuvres de Philippe Desportes au Roy de Pologne (Paris: Robert Estienne pour lui-même et Robert
le Mangnier, 1573). The first modern edition of Desportes’ poetry is by Alfred Michiels, Œuvres de Philippe
Desportes (Paris: Adolfe Delahais, 1858). A more recent edition of his work is by Victor Graham, Desportes, Philippe,
Premières Œuvres (Paris et Genève: Minard et Droz, 1958) in seven volumes. All references will be based on this
edition.

3 For Desportes’ role in Henri III’s Palace Academy, see ‘Desportes orateur à l’Académie du Palais’, in
Philippe Desportes. Poète Profane, poètesacré, 23–100; Daniela Costa, ‘Desportes et l’Académie du Palais’, in Philippe
Desportes (1546–1606), 163–72, and for his role in the Salon of the Maréchale de Retz, see Rosanna Gorris, ‘Je
veux chanter d’amour la tempeste et l’orage’: Desportes et les Imitations de l’Arioste’, in Philippe Desportes
(1546–1606), 173–211; Frances A. Yates, The French Academies of the Sixteenth Century (London: Warburg Institute,
1947); Robert J. Sealy, The Palace Academy of Henri III, (Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance, XI, 1971), 61–83;
Mark Greengrass, Governing Passions. Peace and Reform in the French Kingdom, 1576–1585 (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2007), 46–59.

Renaissance Studies Vol. 26 No. 3 DOI: 10.1111/j.1477-4658.2011.00729.x

© 2011 The Author
Renaissance Studies © 2011 The Society for Renaissance Studies, Blackwell Publishing Ltd



career flourished during the reign of three different kings, Charles IX, Henri
III, and Henri IV, in three courts and under two dynasties, the Valois and
Bourbons.

***

Desportes wrote extensively and in a variety of genres and styles.4 His poetry
has almost always been analysed in relation to its sources, mostly the Italian
Petrarchist and neo-Petrarchist poets of the Quattrocento and Cinquecento,
or in relation to some of his contemporaries.5 This trend started while the
poet was still alive when, in 1604, an anonymous editor published the pam-
phlet, Le Rencontre des Muses de France et d’Italie. The text was later attributed to
R. J. de Saint-Jorry,6 who was undoubtedly familiar with Desportes’ poetry and
with the many Italian anthologies circulating in France during the end of the
sixteenth century. This little-known volume, dedicated to the queen of France,
Marie de Medici, brought together forty-three poems by Desportes and, on
the facing page, forty-three Italian poems deemed to be his sources. The
Rencontre is the embodiment of a perfect example of the literary and critical
preoccupations of the Renaissance, and it raises several important questions
dealing with the tension between mimesis and creativity, individuality and
intertextuality, and, of course, language and Italianisms. Most importantly, I
will argue here that the Rencontre contributes to a better understanding of
Desportes and of how he read, adopted, and adapted his sources.

This study will focus on Le Rencontre des muses de France et d’Italie, a text that
is rarely discussed yet is crucially important in the reading and interpretation
of Desportes. It scrutinizes Saint- Jorry’s intentions and position toward
not only his ‘rencontre’ of two poetics, but also toward matters of imitation.
While this preface has been mostly ignored by literary critics, it constitutes an
important document because it eloquently sheds light on significant conven-
tions of Renaissance imitation. Moreover, through a close reading and textual
analysis of four paired sonnets from the Rencontre, I hope to identify some

4 His Premières Œuvres (1573) includes: Le premier livre des Amours, Le second livre des Amours, Diverses Amours et
autres œuvres meslées, les Amours d’Hippolyte; Elégies, a Latin play Ad Philipum Portaeum, and Imitations. For subse-
quent editions see Philippe Desportes (1546–1606), 513–34.

5 See Jean Balsamo, who notes: ‘En fait l’on n’a cessé d’opposer Desportes à Ronsard, Desportes à Malherbe
dans ces duels si caractéristiques de l’historiographie française.’ in Philippe Desportes (1546–1606), 8. A recent
article on Desportes’ imitation by Roberta Cavallini is also very compelling, ‘L’Amour entre le profane et le
sacré: échos pétrarquistes et nouvelles perspectives dans la poésie de Desportes’, in Philippe Desportes. Poète
profane, poète sacré, 167–80.

6 Le Rencontre des muses de France et d’Italie, (Lyon, Jacques Roussin, 1604). The volume also includes the
Dialogue de Minerve et Junon sur les nopces Royales du Treschrestien Henry de Bourbon, Roy de France & de Navarre et de
la Ser.me Marie de Medicis, Prince de Toscane by Guarini. Roussin also published Desportes’ work in Lyon in 1593.
For Saint-Jorry, see Jean-Pierre Niceron, Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire des hommes illustres dans la république des
lettres XXV (Paris: Briasson, 1734), 315; Francesco Flamini, Studi di storia letteraria italiana e straniera (Livorno:
Giusti, 1895), 348; and Roméo Arbour, Répertoire chronologique des éditions de texts littéraires: l’ère baroque en France
(Genève: Droz, 1977), 502.

386 Gabriella Scarlatta Eschrich



characteristics of Desportes’ imitative practices, his individual poetic skills and
specific contributions to early-modern French poetry, and mostly what distin-
guishes his poetry from his model texts.7 I will argue that this volume, possibly
compiled with the intention to denounce Desportes’ many Italianisms, in fact,
turned out to herald his work because it reunited, in a unique bilingual
collection, poetry that was well known in both Italy and France. After all,
this is precisely what many Italian anthologies had done for several early
modern poets.8

Philippe Desportes was an avid reader of the Italian anthologies of the
Quattrocento and Cinquecento, and of the work of many Italian writers, such
as Ludovico Ariosto, as his Imitations de quelques chans de l’Arioste (1572) attest.9

These translations and imitations helped the poet to perfect his lyrical skills
and linguistic erudition. They also further enhanced his apprenticeship of the
culture of Italian literature and of its major and minor authors. Indeed, one
of Desportes’ principal contributions to French literature is his pivotal role as
an intermediary between, and synthesizer of, French and Italian poetry. Later
on in his career, because of his contribution to the transmission of Italian
poetry through French translations, he became essential reading for the next
generation of French poets who took inspiration from his writings.10 His many
deviations from his Italian models enabled him to produce work that embod-
ies a poetic, linguistic, and cultural repository in which the writings of past,
present, and future French poets converge in a dynamic continuum.11

The original content and format of the Rencontre illustrates Desportes’
personal process of selection, imitation, and deviation from his sources, as
they reveal which models incited his imagination the most. The volume is also

7 Recent scholarship on Le Rencontre includes the work of JoAnn DellaNeva, ‘Reading Desportes through the
Italians: Two Early Modern Readers Responses’, Italique XI (Droz: Genève, 2008), 31–52; Philippe Desan,
‘Desportes devant la postérité: des premiers Tombeaux aux anthologies modernes’, in Philippe Desportes (1546–
1606), 495–510; Jean Balsamo, Les Rencontres des muses (Genève: Slatkine, 1992), 238. Le Rencontre is also
mentioned in Roméo Arbour, Répertoire chronologique des éditions de texts littéraires, 502; in Frédéric Lachèvre,
Bibliographie des recueils de poésies publiées de 1597 à 1700 (Paris: Henri Leclerc, 1901), 162; and, in more detail, in
Jean-Pierre Niceron, Mémoires: 309–10.

8 For a study of Italian anthologies, see Joseph Vianey, Le Pétrarquisme en France au XVIe siècle (Montpellier:
Coulet et Fils, 1909), and Louise George Clubb and William G. Clubb ‘Building a Lyric Canon: Gabriel Giolito
and the Rival Anthologists, 1545–1590’, Italica, 68 (1991), 332–44.

9 This volume also contains imitations by Saint-Gelais, Baïf, and Louis D’Orléans. As Rosanna Gorris remarks,
Desportes read Ariosto in order to take inspiration as a ‘roman-réservoir d’histoires amoureuses et de com-
plaintes’ carefully adopting only the images that suited his taste. ‘Je veux chanter l’amour la tempeste e l’orage’:
Desportes et les Imitations de l’Arioste,in Philippe Desportes (1546–1606), 209.

10 Most scholars referenced in this study remark on Desportes’ legacy to future French poets, see François
Rouget, ‘Philippe Desportes médiateur du pétrarquisme français’, in Jean Balsamo (ed.), Les Poètes français de la
Renaissance et Pétrarque (Genève: Droz, 2004), 341; Cecilia Rizza, ‘Persistance et transformation de l’influence
italienne dans la poésie lyrique française de la première moitié du XVIIe siècle’, XVIIe Siècle 66–7 (1965), 22–42.
See also Robert Burgess, who notes that: ‘Culturally, Philippe Desportes was the most celebrated French poet
of the tortured, tragic, final quarter of the sixteenth century. As a writer and as a man he is representative of his
age in that he reflects every aspect of it.’ ‘Mannerism in Philippe Desportes’, L’Esprit Créateur VI, 4 (1966), 272.

11 See Gisèle Mathieu Castellani, who explains that a Renaissance poetic text becomes a repository in which
several traditions converge and flourish, and mimesis becomes the proof of perfectly assimilated conventions
and taste, Mythes de l’éros baroque (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1981), 15–16.

Le Rencontre des muses de France et d’Italie 387



a product of its time and culture, and its reception is extremely indicative of
Desportes’ fortune and fame. Although Le Rencontre has not received much
scrutiny yet, several critics have referred to it and the tongue-in-cheek tone of
its preface, but mostly as a denunciation of the various misconceptions that
this volume created throughout the centuries.12

The poems by Desportes included in this text originate from his Premières
Œuvres and Sonnets Spirituels, whereas the Italian authors’ poems are repre-
sentative of the many sixteenth-century Italian anthologies that were circulat-
ing in France at the time, thereby promoting the fame and fortune of the
Italian poets. They are listed on Page 5 of the Rencontre as follows:

Les Italiens [sonnets] de Angelo di Costanzo. Antonio Tibaldeo. Bernardo
Tasso. Bernardino Tomitano. Dominico Veniero. Francesco Maria Molza.
Giovan Mozzarello. Giacomo Sanazaro. Gio. Bat Amaltheo. Gio. Andrea Gesu-
aldo. Gio. Iacomo Dal Pero. Girolamo Parabosco. Luigi Tansillo. L’Amanio.
Remigio Fiorentino.13

More precisely, with the exception of Antonio Tebaldeo, whose poems came
from his Opera d’amore di Messer Antonio Tebaldeo (Venezia, Bindoni, 1550), all
of the other Italian poems are taken from the four following anthologies: I fiori
de’ poeti illustri, nuovamente raccolti et ordinati da Girolamo Ruscelli (Venezia: G. B.
e Melchior Sessa, 1558); Rime di diversi nobili huomini et eccellenti poeti nella lingua
thoscana, Libro Secondo (Venezia: Giolito, 1547); Rime di diversi eccellentiss. Auttori
nuovamente raccolte libro primo con nuova additione ristampato (Venezia: Giolito,
1549); and Delle rime di diversi nobili huomini et eccellenti poeti nella lingua thos-
cana. Nuovamente ristampate, libro secondo (Venezia: Giolito, 1948).14 The variety
of authors and texts reveals Desportes’ diverse range of inspiration in addition
to the breadth of his reading and writing experiences.

The Rencontre embodies an original and unique idea in early modern litera-
ture, because it can be considered a resourceful and concise bilingual anthol-

12 Michiels, for example, reports the following anecdote: ‘Vers la fin de sa carrière, on lui joua le mauvais tour
de publier quarante-trois de ses sonnets, en regard desquels on avait imprimé les sonnets italiens qu’il avait mis
à contribution, sans avertir le lecteur. Le poète ne s’émut aucunement de cette révélation.’ Lxix. Philippe
Desan, on the other hand, sees in this pamphlet the very beginning of serious criticism against Desportes’
Italianisms: ‘Ces mignardises italiennes lui seront reprochées durant tous les siècles.’ ‘Desportes devant la
postérité: des premiers Tombeaux aux anthologies modernes’, in Philippe Desportes (1546–1606), 507. See also
Jacques Lavaud, in Le Pétrarquisme en France au XVI siècle (Montpellier: Coulet et Fils, 1909), 225; Flamini; Vianey,
‘Une rencontre des muses de France et d’Italie demeurée inédite’, Revue d’Histoire littéraire de la France, XIII
(1906), 92–100, 92; Balsamo, and Gorris.

13 For an extensive study of the fortune of the Italian anthologies in France, see Balsamo, ‘Les Poètes français
et les anthologies lyriques italiennes’, Italique V (Genève: Droz, 2002), 11–32; DellaNeva, ‘Variation in a Minor
Key: Du Bellay’s Imitations of the Giolito Anthology Poets’, French Forum 14, 2 (1989), 133–46; and Marie-
Françoise Piéjus, ‘Lecture et écriture selon des anthologies poétiques au XVIe siècle en Italie’, in Charles Adelin
Fiorardo et J.-C. Margolin (eds.), L’Ecrivain face à son public en France et en Italie à la Renaissance (Paris: Librairie
Philosophique J. Vrin, 1989), 337–58.

14 See Flamini, Studi di storia letteraria italiana e straniera, 433–9, and DellaNeva, ‘Reading Desportes through
the Italians’, 51.

388 Gabriella Scarlatta Eschrich



ogy in which tradition and originality mix, thereby reflecting Desportes’
poems themselves. In fact, the Rencontre possesses some distinct characteristics
of the same widespread sixteenth-century Italian anthologies that were the
source of his inspiration. The anthologies immediately became an editorial
phenomenon between 1540 and 1560, and remained a successful literary
genre throughout the sixteenth century.15

These many collections can be seen as an irreplaceable and dynamic text
that documents the cultural and intellectual climate of the period. They also
represent the single most important book genre through which to connect the
Italian poets of the Quattrocento and Cinquecento to the French poets of the
sixteenth century, from the School of Lyon to the Pléiade, to neo-Petrarchism
and Baroque.16 Moreover, because of their widespread circulation in France,
they allowed readers in literary circles to become very familiar with the Italian
poems. Poets such as Desportes often relied on their patrons’ and
readers’ability to recognize the source-poems, which in turn established an
additional connection and continuity between writer and reader.17

Due to the fact that the forty-three poems in the Rencontre and their paired
sonnets were collected and placed side by side, the volume also served as a
source book that poets in search of new inspiration could consult and exploit
as a tool to enhance their own imitation. Thus, as such, the Rencontre is a
compelling and precious example of Desportes’ role as both a reader and
writer of the Italian lyric tradition.18 As Terence Cave notes, in imitation ‘the
activities of reading and writing become virtually identified’.19 Thus, as the
close textual examination of two of his sonnets will reveal, the book repro-
duces Desportes’ imitative process and demonstrates the crucial role of the
Italian anthologies as a source of innumerable poetic possibilities. This
process binds his poetry tightly to the poetry of the Italian neo-Petrarchan
poets and is an indication of both his literary taste and methodical assimilation
of the lyric tradition.20 By extension, the Rencontre itself becomes a poetic
sourcebook and a keepsake for its dedicatee Marie de Medici, and for
Desportes’ successors, and it conforms to the purposes and merits of an
anthology, which were to bring together poets who represented a well-
established literary hegemony and whose work was well worth reading, circu-
lating, and most importantly, imitating.

15 See Clubb and Clubb, ‘Building a Lyric Canon’, 332–44.
16 See Vianey, Le Pétrarquisme en France, 378–85.
17 See DellaNeva, ‘Variation in a Minor Key’, 144.
18 See DellaNeva, ‘Reading Desportes through the Italians.’ 43. By tracing the narrative trend and sequence

of the Rencontre’s poems, suggestive of Petrarch’s Rime Sparse, DellaNeva also argues that the Rencontre can be
considered a bilingual canzoniere.

19 Terence Cave, The Cornucopian Text Problems of Writing in the French Renaissance (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1979), 37.

20 On imitation and cultural assimilation, see Gisèle Mathieu-Castellani, Mythes de l’éros baroque (Paris: PUF,
1981), 15–16.

Le Rencontre des muses de France et d’Italie 389



Let us now examine in detail the volume and its two-page dedicatory
preface, which holds the key to some of its editor’s intentions. As men-
tioned, the volume was offered by Saint-Jorry to Marie de Medici as a pre-
sentation copy. He was undoubtedly a passionate connoisseur of French and
Italian poetry, because he was able to assemble what he deemed to be the
forty-three exact sources of Desportes’ sonnets, as well as put together a
bilingual collection of poetry for the queen of France. In simple and unpre-
tentious language the editor explains how this volume came to be: ‘Le
fortune rencontre que i’ay descouvert entre les plus fameux Poëtes Italiens,
& un Cigne François, sur le subject qu’Amour luy-mesme leur avoit dicté’
(3). From the outset, the choice of the title ‘Le Rencontre’ indicates a volun-
tary action, a meeting of the poetry from two countries, two languages and
two cultures, and a mutual and reciprocal union, which will undoubtedly be
fruitful. This meeting is also a metaphor for the union of Henri IV and
Marie, who are portrayed together in an elaborate image on the second
page of the Rencontre.21

Furthermore, the volume is offered as a practical guide to imitation,
because it is crafted as a carefully selected compilation of famous Italian
poems on the right side, with the best imitation, version or interpretation in
French on the facing side. Since the latter are placed on the left page, directly
before their Italian counterparts, their position suggests a rather privileged
space in the volume. This unique bilingual setting readily provides poets with
a wide range of imitative possibilities and concrete examples. In fact, the
editor explains that, because these poems describe the same things and the
same concepts they are the product of admirable poetical and linguistic
labour, but mostly, of similar talents and muses from both sides of the Alps:
‘Madame, ceux qui s’entendent en la difference & condition des esprits,
s’esmerveillent que plusieurs à l’insceu l’un de l’autre ayent descript mesmes
choses en mesmes conceptions, & le plus souvent avec semblables paroles, &
n’en trouvent autre occasion, sinon qu’ils estoyent conduits de mesme Genie,
& mesme enthousiasme’ (2). The repetition of the words ‘mesme’ and ‘sem-
blables’ expresses Saint-Jorry’s viewpoint on the equality and on the many
similarities of the poems. According to Cave, though, sameness may also be
preserved by emphasizing the necessity of difference, which I hope the close
reading of the poems will exemplify.22 Furthermore, as Thomas Greene notes
‘each imitative literary work contains by definition what might be called a
revivalist initiative, a gesture that signals the intent of reanimating an earlier
text or texts on the far side of a rupture.’23 The French poems, therefore, are
Desportes’ best version of imitation and of revivalist efforts that the editor
could find, otherwise he would have not bothered collecting and offering

21 The text is located in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris (Rés. Ye 585) as well as at gallica.bnf.fr
22 Cave, The Cornucopian Text, 37.
23 Thomas Greene, The Light in Troy: Imitation and Discovery in Renaissance Poetry (New Haven: Yale University

Press, 1982), 37.

390 Gabriella Scarlatta Eschrich



them as a keepsake to the queen of his country. Thus, this precious donation,
compiled and packaged for the monarch, Italian-born now living in a foreign
land, crucially emphasizes similarities in themes and tastes between the two
poetics, thereby underscoring Renaissance conventions of imitation. By claim-
ing that the French and Italian poets reach the same perfection (4), Saint-
Jorry becomes the custodian of this intertextual dialogue. Moreover, he not
only stresses the quality and harmony accomplished in this dialogue, but also
justifies the literary merit achieved by all sixteen celebrated authors.

The editor is also attempting to champion his Rencontre by highlighting its
linguistic value. Since the queen is well versed in poetry and speaks French
fluently,24 he asks her to judge the quality and grace of the poems: ‘Le
iugement en est à bon droit deferé à vostre Majesté, qui possede parfaicte-
ment la cognoissance de l’une [langue], & s’acquiert tous les iours les graces
parfaictes de l’autre’(4). Moreover, with the presentation copy of a bilingual
anthology, Saint-Jorry also intended to make Marie de Medici feel at home by
showing, perhaps, how much the French poet was indebted to the poets of her
native country, and thus, how his work was not really all that foreign after all.
By collecting and offering the eighty-six sonnets, Saint-Jorry brought together
two national poetics. After all, the monarch herself embodies the same
meeting of two cultures or muses, as the title suggests, and the union of two
countries that share very similar literary interests, traditions, cultures, and
languages. The volume is also a product of the culture of collecting in vogue
during the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries, meant as a treasured
keepsake to be added to the queen’s collections, with its content of the best
Franco-Italian poetry had to offer.

The Rencontre is a concrete bilingual and intercultural compendium, a
personal canzoniere offered to the queen as a ‘trésor poétique’, and as a cultural
‘outil d’acclimatisation’. This is not inconsistent with the idea that the editor
intended to reveal Desportes’ sources, but this revelation does not seem to be
the primary motivation for assembling the collection.25

In fact, although the tone of the beginning of the dedication appears to
insinuate that the editor gathered these sonnets in order to expose Desportes
to ridicule by revealing forty-three unequivocal sources of his work,26 the
repetition of the adjectives ‘same’ and ‘similar’ (‘mesmes’ and ‘semblables’),

24 See Philippe Delorme, who notes: ‘Son français devient vite correct au point qu’elle finira par affirmer,
dans une lettre du 24.10.1618: “Io non so più scrivere l’italiano.” ’ Histoire des reines de France. Marie de Médicis
(Paris: Pygmalion, 1998), 84.

25 Balsamo remarks that: ‘L’ouvrage cependant, si on veut bien le lire, ne présente pas une dénonciation
ironique de ‘plagiats’ de Desportes. Dédié à la reine Marie de Médicis, vivant symbole de la rencontre des Etats
qui présidait à la rencontre des Muses, il évoquait l’heureuse émulation entre les deux langues sœurs. S’il
rappelait les similitudes, il insistait sur les écarts entre des poèmes semblables et d’une même excellence.’ Les
Rencontres des muses, 237–8.

26 This part reads: ‘Ceux qui s’entendent en la difference & condition des esprits, s’esmerveillent que
plusieurs à l’insceu l’un de l’autre ayent descript mesmes choses en mesmes conceptions, & le plus souvent avec
semblables paroles, & n’en trouvent autre occasion, sinon qu’ils estoyent conduits de mesme Genie, & poussez
d’un mesme enthousiasme,’ 3.

Le Rencontre des muses de France et d’Italie 391



instead calls attention to the editor’s main intention, which was to bring
together analogous concepts in poetry. Of course, he also indirectly praises his
own contribution to the literatures of France and Italy in assembling a pre-
cious sourcebook of eminent poetry.

Furthermore, despite the differences in style and language, Saint-Jorry
claims that the authors in the Rencontre: ‘conviennent tous neanmoins à ceste
perfection’ (4), thereby praising in equal measure the linguistic and lyric
perfection achieved by both Desportes and the Italian poets. His main crit-
erion for selection is that the source poems should bear similarities to
Desportes’ texts. In some cases, these sources constitute the exact models,
because the French poet followed Renaissance practices of imitation and
abided by the Petrarchist tradition whose characteristics enabled the monarch
and other readers to better appreciate and value the small collection.

A key statement in the preface: ‘sur le suiect qu’Amour luy-mesme leur avoit
dicté’(3) identifies love as the main topic that gives inspiration to both groups
of poets and binds them together. The poems not only share the same
Petrarchan code and language, they also follow the Canzoniere’s trajectory, in
that the last six poems’ content is entirely spiritual. For Desportes, as reader
and writer, the Rencontre is an affirmation of his lyrical skills in choosing his
models and adapting them to the French language and style, and a testimony
to his ability to create poems that subsequently acquire a life of their own, with
a distinct tone and sensibility that, in turn, inspired his contemporaries and
successors.

***

The following analysis of the paired poems will show exactly how Desportes
deviated from his Italian sources, thereby distinguishing himself and his style
from them. Although he was initially inspired by the images of the Italian
sonnets, the choice and control of vocabulary, his lyric attitude and themes,
undeniably produced poetry that is both distinctive and inventive.

The first sonnet is paired with a poem by Luigi Tansillo (1510–68), a
well-known Italian poet from Naples, who was widely represented in the Italian
anthologies. Just like Desportes, Tansillo was an experienced and admired
court poet whose writings were one of the main attractions at the balls and
social events of Vicerè Pietro Toledo and his son Garzia.27 Petrarch’s intertext
is always apparent in Tansillo’s lyrics, thereby producing a remarkable conti-
nuity between the multi-layered Italian tradition, from Petrarch to Tansillo,
and French tradition, from the Pléiade to neo-Petrarchism.

27 For Tansillo’s life and work, see Il Canzoniere edito ed inedito, Erasmo Pèrcopo (ed.), Vol. I, (Napoli:
Tipografia degli Artigianelli, 1926), and the most recent critical study by Erika Milburn, Luigi Tansillo and Lyric
Poetry in Sixteenth-Century Naples (Leeds: Maney Publishing, 2003).

392 Gabriella Scarlatta Eschrich



Desportes:
Espouventable Nuict, qui tes cheveux noircis
Couvres du voile obscur des tenebres humides,
Et des antres sortant par tes couleurs livides,
De ce grand Univers les beautez obscurcis.
Las! Si tous les travaux par toy sont addoucis,
Au ciel, en terre, en l’air, sous les marbres liquides,
Or que dedans ton char le silence tu guides,
Un de tes cours entiers enchante mes soucis.
Je diray que tu es du Ciel la fille aisnee,
Que d’astres flamboyans ta teste est couronnee,
Que tu caches au sein les plaisirs gracieux.
Des amours & des ieux la ministre fidele,
Des mortels le repos: bref tu seras si belle,
Que les plus luisans iours en seront envieux.

(XXVII 58, Hippolyte71)

Tansillo:
Orrida notte, che rinchiusa il negro
Crin, sotto’l vel de l’umide tenebre,
Da sotterra esci, e di color funebre,
Ammanti il mondo, e spoglilo d’allegro.
Io, che i tuoi freddi induggi irato, & egro,
Biasmo non men, che la mia ardente febre,
Quanto ti loderei, se le palpebre,
Queto chiudessi un de’tuoi corsi integro.
Direi, ch’esci dal cielo, e’ c’hai di stelle
Mille corone, onde fa’l mondo adorno,
Che ne chiami al riposo, e ne rapelle,
Da le fatiche, e ch’al tuo sen soggiorno,
Fanno i diletti, e tante cose belle,
Che se n’andria tinto d’invidia il giorno.

(XXVII 59)

The close textual reading demonstrates the ways in which the French sonnet
differs from its model with simple adaptations or, at times, deep-rooted trans-
formations. Desportes’ sonnet is evidently inspired by Tansillo’s, but is by no
means a translation. A linguistic and thematic analysis will prove very useful in
determining Desportes’ creative vein: the main common trait is the lyrical
expression and powerful imagery of the night and its personification.

Both poets address an intimate and erotic monologue to the frightful
(‘Espouvantable’) or horrid (‘Orrida’) night. Tansillo’s choice of the first word
sounds exceedingly harsh with its double ‘rr’ whereas Desportes’ choice is
mitigated and appeased by its nasal sound. Both images evoke the night’s
powers to form dreams and peace, enveloping the sleepy world with shiny stars
(Desportes’ ‘astres flamboyans’ and Tansillo’s‘di stelle/ Mille corone’). While bor-
rowing this opening image, the French poet transforms the frightful night,

Le Rencontre des muses de France et d’Italie 393



‘Espouvantable Nuict’, into an idyllic phenomenon that extends to the entire
universe. The night is likened to an irresistible woman, with her appealing
hair, breasts, and beauty. The striking similitude of the night and the dark hair
(Desportes’‘cheveux noircis’ and Tansillo’s‘il negro/Crin’) dominates both first
quatrains, but the French one is also governed by the power of the night to
obscure the beauty of the entire universe (‘De ce grand Univers les beautez
obscurcis’). This image does not appear to be as dominant in the Italian poem,
because Tansillo brings into play the world (‘Ammanti il mondo’), rather than
the greatness of the universe, which in the French poem is given a capital
letter (‘De ce grand Univers’). The intensity of this image has already been
foreshadowed by the choice of the French word ‘astres’, a more appropriate
macrocosmic element than the Italian word, ‘stelle’. Since both astri and stelle
exist in Italian, as well as astres and étoiles in French, Desportes’ preference for
astres magnifies even further his suggestive portrait of the night. Moreover,
this universal vision is also intensified in the second quatrain of the French
sonnet with a typical Petrarchan enumeration of the elements: ‘Au ciel, en terre,
en l’air, sous les marbres liquides’ so as to further empower the night in the sky,
on earth, in the air, and in the seas; nothing can escape its darkness and
magnitude. Both first tercets bring the poets back to their personal reflections
with an immediate and upfront urgency to personalize their poems:
Desportes’ ‘Je diray’, and Tansillo’s ‘Direi’. If both poets were lost in the
contemplation and admiration of the night, they now refocus and look
inward. Here again, Desportes departs from the model by bestowing upon his
night the privileged status as the sky’s firstborn child: ‘tu es du Ciel la fille
aisnee’, yet another tactic to empower and venerate night-time. Both poets
evoke darkness’s erotic and influential properties (Desportes: ‘Que tu caches
au sein les plaisirs gracieux/ Des amours et des ieux la ministre fidele,’ and
Tansillo: ‘e ch’al tuo sen soggiorno,/ Fanno i diletti, e tante cose belle’). In
this lyrical representation of the night and its obscure dimensions, the two
paired sonnets conclude with earnest praise, whereby the poets express, in
similar terms, their fascination with this magic night of dreams: Desportes:
‘bref tu seras si belle,/ Que les plus luisans jours en seront envieux’; Tansillo:
‘Che se n’andria tinto d’invidia il giorno.’ The days are envious of the beauty
of the night. However, by adding a superlative adjective, ‘les plus luisans’ the
French narrator stresses once more the power of darkness over light, thereby
crafting his final verse more persuasively.

The second sonnet is an additional example of the underlying tensions in
the process of imitation and creation. It is undoubtedly inspired by the Italian
model. However, Desportes’ poem departs from it almost immediately. It is
paired with a sonnet by Angelo di Costanzo (1507–91).28 A poet and magis-
trate from a noble family in Naples, Costanzo was principally known as one of

28 Angelo di Costanzo, Rime (Bologna: Barbiroli, 1709). See also Vianey, ‘Desportes et Angelo di Costanzo’,
Révue d’Histoire littéraire de la France, XV (1908), 330–41.

394 Gabriella Scarlatta Eschrich



the most original imitated Petrarchists in both Italy and France through his
inclusion in the sixteenth-century Italian anthologies.29

Desportes:
Cent fois tout courroucé de veoir que mes escrits,30

N’ont peu rendre à m’aimer vostre coeur plus facile,
Jettons (ce di-je) au feu cet ouvrage inutile,
Aux destins de son maistre il doibt estre comprins.
Puisque tant de labeurs, de souspirs, & de cris,
Ont esté tous semez en terroir infertile,
J’en veux brusler l’histoire, & suyvre un autre style,
Ce n’est que trop chanté d’Amour & de Cypris.
Vostre injuste rigueur me pousse à cet outrage:
Mais de les mettre au feu je n’ay pas le courage,
Voyant vostre beau nom en mille endroits semé.
Donc qu’ils restent vivans, puisque ta mesme flamme
Feroit aussi mourir les honneurs de Madame,
Il suffit que sans eux je sois seul consommé.

(XXX, 64, Cléonice 63)

Costanzo:
S’alcuna volta avien, ch’io d’arder tente
Le rime mie; che senza haver giovato
A porre in voi pietà, v’hanno acquistato
Più che fama futura, odio presente.
De la giust’ira sua tosto si pente
Il cor, vedendo il bel nome segnato,
In lor sì spesso, e pargli (ahi duro fato!)
Por le viscere sue nel foco ardente.
E grida: Restin pur’ eterne, e viva
Con lor Madonna, e non sia’n questa etate,
Ch’il mio morire à crudeltà le ascriva.
Ch’io non vuò c’habbia mai di me pietate,
Con scemar di sua gloria anima viva,
Nè macchi il sangue mio la sua beltate.

(XXX, 65)

The paired sonnets start with a similar image. In both, the narrator struggles
with the desire to burn the pages in which he writes about and celebrates his
beloved, because they fail to make her fall in love with him. Constanzo writes
wittily that, rather than resulting in his future fame, his verses produced hate.
Desportes, on the other hand, simplifies the stanza, and in a single verse, he

29 See Vianey, Le Pétrarquisme en France, 194, and Marius Piéri, Pétrarque et Ronsard ou de l’influence de Pétrarque
sur la Pléiade française (New York: Burt Franklin, 1968), 25.

30 I correct from ‘esprits,’ as modern editors of Desportes’ work have done. See Graham, Cléonice; dernières
amours, 91.

Le Rencontre des muses de France et d’Italie 395



clearly and forthrightly states that his art of writing poetry did not gain him his
lady’s love: ‘N’ont peu rendre à m’aimer vostre cœur plus facile’. Both poets
are conscious of the power of their writings: Desportes extends the image into
the following quatrain, where, again with a Petrarchan enumeration (‘Puisque
tant de labeurs, de souspirs, & de cris’), he stresses his work’s infertility and
completely forgoes the second image developed by Costanzo (‘Il cor, vedendo
il bel nome segnato’). However, the French poet creatively weaves together
the destiny of his useless writings (‘ouvrage inutile’) with his own destiny: ‘Aux
destins de son maistre il doibt estre comprins.’ While powerfully closing the
first quatrain, this original verse seals the poet-persona’s fate with the fate of
his creation, and both seem condemned to end.

Desportes’ sonnet appears less elaborate because he does not make use of
Costanzo’s concettos, such as: ‘v’hanno acquistato/ Più che fama futura, odio
presente.’ This is the major difference between the two sonnets: Desportes
prefers a more lyric and traditional approach to facing unrequited love,
without drawing on strong and sometimes fierce words and images. Rather, he
maintains an attitude of relative tolerance, expressed simply in the following
verse: ‘So that they may continue to live’ (‘Donc qu’ils restent vivans’).

Costanzo persists with the personification of his screaming heart in the first
tercet: ‘E grida’, thereby extending a second concetto, and actually articulating
it even more vividly with the verse: ‘Ch’il mio morire à crudeltà le ascriva.’
Desportes, on the other hand, does not become this dramatic; rather, he
continues with an acquiescent attitude toward his gloomy destiny: ‘Vostre
injuste rigueur me pousse à cet outrage’ and again, in the last tercet: ‘Donc
qu’ils restent vivans’. This milder mind-set is also reflected in the language,
which, as we have seen, never becomes violent or grotesque, as in Costanzo’s
poem: ‘Por le viscere sue nel foco ardente’ and ‘Nè macchi il sangue mio la
sua beltate’, where, literally, the lover-persona’s blood would stain his
beloved’s beauty.

Desportes concludes with a completely different image, bestowing upon his
reader a more serene stance toward unrequited love: ‘Il suffit que sans eux je
sois seul consommé.’ The pride of the Italian narrator in the last tercet: ‘Ch’io
non vuò c’habbia mai di me pietate’ is completely absent in the French
sonnet, demonstrating that, if at the beginning, Desportes took inspiration
from the Italian model, he crafts his own narrative and departs significantly
from it, in imagery, language, and lyric tone throughout the poem, until the
very end. In fact, Desportes tones down Costanzo’s violent images and lan-
guage, and this is characteristic of his style, which has been labelled ‘doux
coulant’, fluid, and elegant, and which privileges a more measured, elegant,
and gracious approach to lyric themes.31

31 See, for example, Graham, who claims that Desportes’ main characteristics are: ‘la fluidité, l’élégance, la
grâce légère,’ and claims that: ‘ses contemporains admiraient ses vers ‘doux coulants.’ In ‘Le Rôle de Desportes
dans la poésie française’, Revue de l’Université d’Ottawa (1965), 54.

396 Gabriella Scarlatta Eschrich



***

In conclusion, by intentionally placing the poems side by side, Saint-Jorry
undoubtedly brings out the few similarities and the significant deviations
between the two texts. In the first poem, where the initial imagery remains the
same, Desportes adds intensity and grandeur by his careful choice of vocabu-
lary. In the second, he transforms the rebellion of the Italian model into
acceptance; the entire sonnet is tempered by simpler and less violent lan-
guage. Both French sonnets follow French versification, they are independent
and original, thus demonstrating the author’s own creativity in deviating from
their Italian sources. The analysis of the dedication and of the four sonnets
enables us to reflect on Desportes’ imitative style and his vibrant approach to
intertextuality, and suggests several important conclusions about the mimesis
and creative process intrinsic to his work.

First, both examples show that, while the French poet at first took inspira-
tion from his Italian sources, he almost immediately departed from them, and
produced instead separate and distinct texts, with unique and imaginative
characteristics, and with a language that is inventive, resourceful, and repre-
sentative of his own style. If at first the images and themes of the source deeply
inspired Desportes, a distinct and quite different progression unfolds into an
independent new poem in which changes, additions, omissions, and most
importantly, deviations unfold in order to create an individual work.

Second, linguistically, the skilled French poet does not use Italianisms, but
rather, a vocabulary springs from his own native vernacular, which he had the
opportunity to develop and refine through his many translations and adapta-
tions. As Balsamo notes, Desportes’ role in the development of the French
language is of primary importance, precisely as a result of these painstaking
exercises.32 As an avid reader of Petrarch and of the Petrarchist poets, an
assiduous member of the salons and of the Palace Academy, and of the
Italianate court of Henri III, and also as a result of his sojourns in Italy,
Desportes did not perceive Italian as an entirely foreign language.33 With his
disciplined linguistic exercises and fruitful imitations, the French poet sought
to make the Italian authors of the Quattrocento and Cinquecento more
contemporaneous and less foreign, bringing their language and style closer to
new French linguistic structures and possibilities.34

Third, with his work, Desportes enriched the French language itself. His
linguistic and stylistic preferences persisted with the next generation of

32 ‘Traduire de l’italien. Ambitions sociales et contraintes éditoriales à la fin du XVIe siècle’, in Dominique
de Courcelles (ed.), Traduire et Adapter à la Renaissance (Paris: Ecoles des Chartes, 1998), 89–98.

33 His private library was considerably furnished with various genres of Italian books, as Isabelle de Conihout
notes in ‘Du nouveau sur la bibliothèque de Desportes et sur sa dispersion’, in Philippe Desportes (1546–1606),
121–60.

34 For more detail about Desportes’ readings of sixteenth-century Italian anthologies, see Vianey, Le Pétrar-
quisme en France, 232–44; Lavaud, 274–81; and Rouget’s more recent article, ‘Philippe Desportes et la logique
des recueils poétiques’, in Réforme, Humanisme et Renaissance, 62 ( June 2006), 99–110.

Le Rencontre des muses de France et d’Italie 397



French poets, thereby establishing a new phase of imitatio.35 In his preface,
Saint-Jorry addressed precisely the issue of linguistic competence and aptitude
of the French and Italian poets, thereby stressing the effort that all of them
undertook in order to represent best their own vernacular: ‘car chacun d’eux
taschant à son possible de representer l’excellence de la pureté de sa langue,
& de la merveilleuse fecondité de son style’ (3–4). In borrowing only the
elements that better corresponded to his personal tastes and poetic vein,
Desportes weaved his sources into his writings through a conscientious process
of self-inscription within the lyric traditions of France and Italy, of Petrarchism
and neo-Petrarchism, while skilfully crafting his personal poetic identity.

Finally, Desportes and the purported editor seem to have shared similar
goals in their endeavours: to bring together two parallel literatures and cul-
tures, to respond to their readers’ tastes and expectations, and to fit with the
literary conventions and tradition of their time. If Le Rencontre des muses de
France et d’Italie was at first a gift to Marie de Medici, carefully crafted as a
bilingual anthology and a personal canzoniere, it also came to mark an impor-
tant moment in the literatures of France and Italy of the early modern period.
Moreover, it remains a compelling text today. This little volume, after all,
turned out to be yet another avenue through which Desportes’ work was
circulated and became known, thus turning out to be a publication which
furthered his career and reputation, and which connected his poetry more
meaningfully to the poetry of well-known Italian authors.

The University of Michigan-Dearborn

35 Several scholars have remarked on Desportes’ significant role in establishing a clearly distinct phase in
French poetry, thus serving future generations of French poets. See, for example, Rouget, who notes that
Desportes distances himself from the previous generation of poets while guiding his contemporaries toward a
new phase, ‘Philippe Desportes et les inflexions métriques de la voix lyrique’, in Philippe Desportes (1546–1606),
297, and Balsamo, who points out that Desportes’ language had a significant impact on sixteenth- and
seventeenth-century French, Les Rencontres des Muses, 45.

398 Gabriella Scarlatta Eschrich