Philippe Desportes

Desportes, Philippe (1546-1606). French poet. He was born in Chartres, the son of a well-to-do mercer. By 1566 he was in Paris, working as a member of the royal secretariat. When the duc d'Anjou was elected king of Poland, Desportes went with him to Cracow, but was glad to return on his master's accession to the French throne as Henri III. His continuing services to the crown were rewarded with four abbacies in commendam (he took only minor orders). Now very wealthy, and his peace made with Henri IV after some involvement in the Ligue, he built up an impressive library and was a generous patron to scholars and writers, including his nephew Mathurin Régnier.

Most of Desportes's poetry had been written by 1573, for the Italianate high society of Charles IX's reign, particularly the salon of the maréchale de Retz. For such a public, poetry was no longer a cultural adventure, as it had been with the Pléiade, but current coin for social, and especially amorous, exchanges. His sonnets and stances draw on the hackneyed material of the neo- Petrarchan manner, and on a fund of recurring images, conceits, and allusions, the whole forming as it were a data-bank and a programme for unlimited variations within very narrow limits overall. Thematic analysis of his univers poétique remains unconvincing because of this restricted range and the derivative nature of the texts (many of his poems are closely modelled on Italian originals), but even more because very many were written with the purely practical aim of furthering the amorous pursuits of other people. Such is the degree of socially imposed abstraction, however, that it is often hard to discern which poems were written to whom and in whose name—the poet himself included: the arrangement into sequences is to a considerable extent artificial. At its best, this sophisticated yet undemanding poetry, with its langorous music, conveys a mood of entranced adoration; elsewhere, paradox and metaphor lose their virtue through excessive elaboration. In some of his elegies, however, freed from the conventions of his chosen milieu, he strikes sharper and livelier notes. He also wrote some devotional poems, and his translation of the Psalter proved popular throughout the Catholic revival, thanks to the approval of François de Sales.

From about 1570 Desportes's prestige grew until eventually it eclipsed that of Ronsard; but a major revolution in taste is foreshadowed by the highly critical marginal notes made by Malherbe in his copy of the 1600 edition of the Œuvres.

[Alan Steele]

Bibliography

• J. Lavaud, Philippe Desportes (1936)
• G. Mathieu-Castellani, Les Thèmes amoureux dans la poésie française, 1570-1600 (1975)

Bas-relief of Philippe Desportes.

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Philippe Desportes (1546 – 5 October 1606) was a French poet.

Biography

Philippe Desportes was born in Chartres. While serving as secretary to the bishop of Le Puy he visited Italy, where he learned Italian poetry. This experience became a good account. On his return to France he attached himself to the duke of Anjou, and followed him to Cracow on his election as king of Poland. Nine months in Poland satisfied the civilized Desportes, but in 1574 his patron became king of France as Henry III. He showered favours on the poet, who received, in reward for the skill with which he wrote occasional poems at the royal request, the abbey of Tiron and four other valuable benefices.

A good example of the light and dainty verse in which Desportes excelled is furnished by the well-known villanelle with the refrain "Qui premier s'en repentira," which was on the lips of Henry, duke of Guise, just before his death. Desportes was above all an imitator. He imitated Petrarch, Ariosto, Sannazaro, and still more closely the minor Italian poets, and in 1604 a number Of his plagiarisms were exposed in the Rencontres des Muses de France et d'Italie. As a sonneteer he showed much grace and sweetness, and English poets borrowed freely from him.

In his old age Desportes acknowledged his ecclesiastical preferment by a translation of the Psalms remembered chiefly for the brutal mot of Malherbe: "Votre potage vaut mieux que vos psaumes." He published in 1573 an edition of his works including Diane, Les Amours d'Hippolyte, Elegies, Bergeries, Œuvres chrêtiennes, etc.

An edition of his Œuvres, by Alfred Michiels, appeared in 1858.

References

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

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