The Gorko Gazette

For Raging Jealousy in a Novel

Show me, destinies, a town glow, candid—
Where frightful bloodshed’s raging stridently
And one proud army’s inhumanity,
Disdainful boots, step on defeated country.

Let me see a fleet again laid waste
By the roughest temper from a storm,
Where screaming just before the break of morn
Ring skyward for God’s mercy, all misplaced.

Open all of hell to me, the God-damned ranks—
Ruins by the hundreds scorched and blood-soaked banks.
Strike the whole with lightning for my mirth.

Show me visions of such treach’rous stuff.
Burn the seas and powderize the earth.
Such demands, you lots, are not enough.

Pour une jalousie enragée dans un roman

Destins, faites-moi voir une ville allumée,
Toute pleine d’horreur, de carnage et de bruit,
Où l’inhumanité d’une orgueilleuse armée
Triomphe insolemment d’un empire détruit.

Faites-moi voir encore une flotte abîmée
Par le plus fâcheux temps que l’orage ait produit,
Où de cent mille voix, dans la plus noire nuit,
La clémence du Ciel soit en vain réclamée.

Ouvrez-moi les enfers ; montrez-moi tout de rang
Cent ravages de flammes et cent fleuves de sang,
Et pour me contenter lancez partout la foudre.

Faites-moi voir partout l’image du trépas,
Mettez la mer en feu, mettez la terre en poudre,
Et tout cela, Destins, ne me suffira pas

(a sonnet from the collection Les Vers héroïques, first published 1648) https://www.bonjourpoesie.fr/lesgrandsclassiques/Poemes/françois_tristan_l_hermite/pour_une_jalousie_enragee_dans_un_roman

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To Some Graveyards: A Sonnet

Doleful sojourn, where these plaintive shadows
All bewail each night how they have struggled—
All of them still whisper of the trouble
They feel compelled to take about the grave rows.

Crowded bone piles and you conversant stones,
Who remark upon these names unto the future
Speak of life whose frailty is no longer
To condemn these souls who boast and moan.

Tombs, who palely witness fate’s exactitude,
Where secretly I come preserve a doomed
Love that time intensely failed to compensate,

You scare all those abiding in Creation—
But the sweetest object I now contemplate
Is grimmer, sadder than you stone constructions.

À DES CIMETIERES.
SONNET.

SEIOVR melancolique, où les ombres dolentes
Se pleignent chaque nuict de leur aduerſité,
Et murmurent touſiours de la neceßité
Qui les contraint d’errer par les tombes relantes.

Oſſemens entaſſez, & vous pierres parlantes
Qui conſeruez les noms à la poſterité ;
Repreſentans la vie & la fragilité,
Pour cenſurer l’orgueil des Ames inſolentes.

Tombeaux, paſles teſmoins de la rigueur du Sort,
Où ie viens en ſecret entretenir la mort
D’vne Amour que ie voy ſi mal recompenſee :

Vous donnez de la crainte & de l’horreur à tous :
Mais le plus doux obiect qui s’offre à ma penſee
Est beaucoup plus funeſte & plus triſte que vous.

(First published in Les Amours de Tristan, 1638) https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Les_Amours_de_Tristan/À_des_cimetières

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Orpheus to Pluto

Pluto, dreaded monarch reigning over shadow,
It wasn’t to these deep, dark shores I sought to go
To place myself, royal staff in hand, at the helm
Of this, your frightful realm.

It’s my only weapon amongst my pious goals,
The shuddering, sighing and sobbing that one soul,
Beneath the total burden of one lover’s bind,
Now suffers in this mine.

My importunate love and its laments of doom,
Its flame illuminating in this gloom
‘Midst your covert prompting has led me way down here
To tell you of my fear.

You’re familiar with the power of her secret spark:
If the rumor’s not a lie, she set aflame your heart
Back in Sicily, a miracle of the skies
Appeared before your eyes.

You noticed her, that peerless graceful show, it’s said
And shook in your chaise with loving awe, tail to head
It’s claimed you’ve only ravished such a sprightly summer
After having been her.

If now you still remember all your sweet affronts
Take pity on the woefulness of my laments
And, Hell, you may now conclude my every sorrow
And these sighing, tearful throes.

I come to you to swear upon your smoking home
On burning niter, asphalt, and your rank brimstone
In these blackened swamps and in these scorching rivers
Traveled down no longer—

On the three grim sisters, your malice-minded peers
Who bring with them sheer horror and profound despair
who always keep their hair coiffed in the shape of spears
woven through with adders—

On your greying gristle, augustly long
Upon your crimson crown, still glowing not so strong
And on your old and stately scepter forged of steel
with which you govern Hell.

Orphée
(Orphée à Pluton)

‘Monarque redouté qui regnes sur les Ombres,
Je ne suis pas venu dessus ces rives sombres
Pour enlever ton Septre et me faire Empereur
De ces lieux plains d’horreur.

En mon pieux dessein je n’ay point d’autres armes
Que les gemissemens, les souspirs et les larmes,
Avec tous les ennuys dont peut estre chargé
Un Amant affligé.

…Amour importuné de mes plaintes funebres
M’esclairant de sa flame à travers des tenebres,
Par ton secret avis m’a fait venir icy
Te conter mon soucy.

Tu cognois le pouvoir de sa secrette flame ;
Si le bruit n’est menteur, elle embrasa ton ame
Lorsque dans la Sicile, un Miracle des Cieux
Parut devant tes yeux.

On dit qu’en observant sa grace nompareille,
Tu frémis dans ton char d’amour et de merveille
Et que tu n’as ravy cette jeune Beauté
Qu’apres l’avoir esté.

S’il te souvient encor de ces douces atteintes,
Pren pitié de mes maux, pren pitié de mes plaintes
Et fay bien tost cesser avecque mes douleurs,
Mes soûpirs et mes pleurs.

Je t’en viens conjurer par ton Palais qui fume
Par le nytre embrasé, le souffre et le bitume
De ces fleuves bruslans et de ces noirs Palus
Qu’on ne repasse plus.

Par les trois noires Soeurs, ces Compagnes cruelles
Qui portent l’espouvente et l’horreur avec elles ;
Et qui tiennent tousjours leurs cheveux herissez
D’Aspics entrelacez.

Par l’auguste longueur de ton poil qui grisonne,
Par l’esclat incertain de ta rouge Couronne
Et par la Majesté du vieux Sceptre de fer
Dont tu regis l’Enfer… ‘

published in 1641 in Le Lyre

https://archive.org/details/lesamourslalyrel00trisuoft/page/25/mode/1up

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François Tristan L’Hermite (c. 1601–1655)

François Tristan L’Hermite (c. 1601–1655) wrote poetry, fiction, and dramas shortly before the heyday of Molière, Racine, and Corneille. He both wrote a wild drama about the suicide of Emperor Nero’s tutor, the philosopher Seneca, but one character in another François Tristan L’Hermite play, a farce, gives a speech that sees him swearing he could eat the hair off the top of another character’s head. 

François Tristan L’Hermite seems to have claimed to have killed a man in a duel when he was young. He also took the name of an important French military leader from over a century prior who may have been his ancestor, Tristan L’Hermite—kind of like an artist going by the name Ulysses S. Grant—all the better to get in the mood to write an early novel about a disgraced page. 

And François ‘Tristan’ wrote poetry—a lot of love poetry in particular—perhaps more than most can tolerate. 

As someone who has taught literature, my guess as to why this guy is somewhat sidelined in literary history, especially in the English-speaking world, is that the convoluted system of etiquette at the Palace of Versailles is very teachable at the university level; it bears a likeness to the manneredness and classical constraint of Molière, Corneille, and Racine that an etiquette-oriented king summoned into being. The pairing sounds orderly—it sounds as though you’re hitting the highlights of history—like a good survey class should. (‘We should learn about the times of Versailles!’) But François Tristan L’Hermite had a less constrained style than those three and died of consumption before the heyday of that palace culture. 

One Frenchman’s criticism of him long ago that was meant to be quite disparaging was that L’Hermite was another ‘Shakespeare.’

You may hear intense baroque music playing from an unknown source as one of François ‘Tristan’s’ extended metaphors or apostrophes launches.

About the artist

Stephan Crown-Weber is a writer/translator from Central Kentucky. He is at work on a novel about a widespread Kentucky mummy crisis. Website: www.crownweber.com.

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