Mellin de Saint-Gelais

Mellin de Saint- Gelais (also Melin de Saint- Gelais Gelays or Sainct, * about 1491 in Angoulême, † October 1558 in Paris) was a French poet of the Renaissance and poet laureate Francis I (France).

Biography

Mellin de Saint- Gelais was probably born the illegitimate son of the landed gentry Jean de Saint- Gelais, Count of Montlieu, in the historical province of Angoumois westfanzösischen. The first name Mellin is a French -Norman corruption of the British magician Merlin. Rumors foisted his uncle Octavien de Saint- Gelais (1468-1502), poet, translator and Bishop of Angoulême, the paternity. Mellin probably grew in the Episcopal Palace on under the intellectual influence of his humanististsch - learned relatives. Other sources claim he was in Cognac at the court of Louise of Savoy (1476-1531), the mother of the French king Francis I (1494-1547), was brought up. He studied law at Poitiers from 1506 and moved in 1509 to the Sorbonne in Paris. To complete his knowledge he went in the same year to Bologna and Padua, where he came into contact with the receiving and processing of antiquity by the Italian High Renaissance. He met Petrarch's works know and when he returned to France in 1518, he brought his favorite poem, the sonnet, with the French court. There, for three years ruled the young King Francis I, who was enthusiastic about the Italian culture. Mellin de Saint- Gelais, who won the favor of the Valois ruler as a poet witty verses, took court offices, entered 1523, the clergy, and was chaplain of the Dauphin François ( 1518-1536 ). Later, he led the profitable abbeys La Fresnade and from 1532 Reclus in Champagne. However, he never neglected the courtly poetry and became an indispensable organizer of elaborate festivities at the court of the art-loving rulers. From 1536 to 1544 he served with the title " garde de la Librairie royale de Blois " as a librarian in the magnificent secondary residence Blois.

His artistic decline began in 1549 when Joachim du Bellay ( 1522-1560 ) in his literature patriotic pamphlet " La deffence et illustration de la langue françoyse " with his criticism of the previous year published "Art poétique Françoys " by Thomas Sébillet ( 1512-1583 ) the whole generation of poets Mellin de Saint- Gelais attack sharp. Du Bellay was among a group of young writers to Pierre de Ronsard (1524-1585), who called themselves the ancient model " La Pléiade ", and the more developed the general classicism to a decidedly French national literature. Nevertheless, Mellin de Saint- Gelais was in the favor of the court that since 1547 by Henry II ( 1519-1559 ) and his wife Catherine de Medici ( 1519-1589 ) was dominated. In 1554 he translated the tragedy Sfonisba the Italian playwright Gian Giorgio Trissino ( 1478-1550 ). Saint- Gelais organized the festive pleasures to the departure of the king of Saint- Germain -en- Laye in 1557, a year before his death. According to tradition, he composed, as he was also a good singer and lute player, his own farewell song (French Chant d' Adieu ) before he died. Among his friends he counted such diverse figures as the poet Clément Marot (1495-1544) and François Rabelais (1494-1553), the philosopher Erasmus of Rotterdam (1469-1536) and the Bible translators Jacques Lefèvre d'Etaples ( c. 1450 - 1536).

Quotes

• " Mieux vaut faire, et se repentir, Que se repentir, et rien faire". Quatrains, LXXVIII (Eng. "It is better to act and repent than to be sorry to have not acted. " )
• "Il n'est oiseau qui SUT voler - Si comme un coeur peut all skin ". Quatrains, LXXXIV (Eng. " No bird flies so skyward, like a dear heart, it can. " )
• " Amitié qui peut se finir / Ne fut jamais bien commencée. " Oeuvres poétiques (Eng. " A friendship that can end, never really began so well. " )
• " Ainsi vous doit -il souvenir / Que le temps finit la beauté. " Oeuvres poétiques (Eng. " So the time are always mindful / That ends the beauty. " )
• " Now then, gentlemen, ' said the king, what seems to you of this sermon? ' Sire ' called Mellin Saint Gelais, who saw that all were satisfied, I never heard a more excellent Pantagruel's Prophecy! ' All the courtiers applauded, and all praised Rabelais, who retired and was led out of the pages of many honors on special instructions of the king with flaming torches " (from: Honoré de Balzac: the sermon of the cheerful vicar of Meudon from the ". Toll Dreisten stories " in a translation by Otto Julius Bierbaum and Carl Theodor Ritter von Riba )