Jean de Sponde

Jean de Sponde , born in 1557 with Mauléon (Yrénées-Atlantiques) and dead the March 18th 1595 with Bordeaux, is a poet Baroque French.

Biography

Born in a family related to the court from Navarre, raised in a medium Protesting and austere, brilliance raises, he receives Jeanne d' Albret, mother of Henri IV, a grant. He acquires a perfect knowledge of the Greek , and learns the Théologie reformed.

Nevertheless, it turns to the profane literature: it translates Latin Homère into and composes of the erotic Poésie S. With Basle as from 1580, he studies under the direction of Theodore de Bèze. Henri de Navarre gives him a station at its court.

In 1582, it reads the Psaumes and is deeply marked by it. Its life takes a religious orientation and it writes its major works: Meditations on the psalms and Test of some Christian poems .

In this last collection, it evokes death with work in the world which surrounds the man:

But if is necessary it to die, and the proud life,

Which faces death, will feel its furies;

the Suns will tan these day laborers flowers,

And time will burst ceste windy bulb,

This beautiful torch which launches a smoky flame,

On the verd of wax will esteindra its heats;

the oil of this Table will tarnish its colors,

And its floods will break with the bank escumeuse.

Returned in Navarre, it Marie in 1583. As of 1585, it works as political agent for the future Henri IV with which it will continue his political career. Imprisoned with Paris, then, after being released, with Turns, it converts with the Catholicisme, while following the example of Henri IV. This conversion is worth the hatred of the Protestants to him and of Aubigné becomes its personal enemy. He then publishes writings of controversist to defend his conversion. He dies in Bordeaux in poverty.

Its books will be destroyed by the Protestants by hatred of their author; its writings, marked by the Calvinism, will be rejected by the catholics. Its work thus misses disappearing. Three centuries later it is redécouverte by Alan Boase which returns to the literature a large poet.

Topics of work and writing

One finds in his work the main themes of the Littérature baroque: obsession of inconstancy, masks and appearance, the Dead. Death within the Vie expresses the aspiration towards the Au-delà, and causes the need to call some with God.

Its writing seeks to paint the thickness of the world, the complications of the destiny of the man, his darkness. This sensitivity baroque is expressed by research of imbalance, of the irregular pearl , strange and the excessive richness of the forms. The world which is reflected in this poetry is thus a world which ceased being clear and univocal, and the style of Sponde makes this complexity palpable.

Works

the Loves
Meditations on the psalms 1588
Essay of some Christian poems with the stanzas and sonnets of death.
Stanzas on death
Warning with the king 1589

Bibliography

Jean de Sponde, Poetries , To curdle, treasures of the French literature, Geneva, 1949.
Alan Boase, Life of Jean de Sponde , Droz, Geneva, 1977.
Jean de Sponde, Literary works , published by Alan Boase, Droz, Geneva, 1978.

External bonds

Choice of poems
Article on '' sonnets of love ''

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