Description
EPISTRE DU BON FRERE QUI REND LES ARMES DAMOURS a sa seur damoyselle en Syonnoys. Et le dit des pays. Small booklet in-8, red jansenist maroquin, 5-rib spine, interior lace, gilt edges ( Trautz-Bauzonnet). Bechtel, 267/E-147 // Brunet, Supplément II-455 // USTC, 53688. (8f.) // A8 / 28 lines, gothic car / 89 x 135 mm. Unique edition of this versified lament, one of only three known copies. Composed of 263 verses in decasyllables, this long poem is the desperate song of a good brother who, tired of suffering for love, chooses not to devote himself to it any longer: Que tay ie faict; en quoy ay ie failly Mon cueur, ou langue, ont ilz point defailly, Je scay que non... Convinced of the dangers of love: Pour ung que en ce trouveres contentz / En cognoistres mille de malcontentz, he tries to warn his friends, and if, as proof of what he's saying, he summons the great biblical female figures (Jezabel, Dalila and Jael), he's only after the object of his own love: Lon holds the woman so dangerous beast That whoever haunts her never returns without temptation We say it is a plain of iniquity Inconstance and fallacite. Quoy que lon die, ne vouldrois faire blasme (...) Si Bocace, Petrarque lon descript (...) Quant à moi: ia ne plainctz ni mesdictz Si non de toy ou diriges mes dictz The publisher, who has remained anonymous, chose to follow this courtly lament with a piece in a completely different register. Le Dit des pays, which begins on folio A6, is a facetious composition of 92 octosyllabic verses on the charms of all countries. Local culinary specialties and industries are interwoven with the supposed qualities of the inhabitants of these places, in a tasty, gently saucy, even vulgar language. We reproduce below a sober extract from this poem, and refrain from transcribing what censors would have condemned: Les bons pastes are in Paris Ordes trippes a sainct Denis (...) A londres escarlates fines Et bons draps vermeilz malines (...) A bourges sont les fourteresses A saint quantin les grosses fesse (...) Good salt is in Salins Femmes bien faictes a prouvins... L' Epistre du bon frère is known only from this Gothic edition, of which only the BnF (RES. YE-3972) and the Biblioteca Capitular Y Colombina in Seville possess another copy. It was on the BnF copy that Anatole de Montaiglon was able to reprint it in 1855 in his Recueil de poésies françoises des XVe et XVIe siècles (t. XI, p.207 et seq.). A very fine copy of this bibliographical rarity. 3 corners skilfully restored. Provenance: Comte Raoul de Lignerolles (II, March 5-17, 1894, no. 1125) and Baron Jérôme Pichon (I, May 3-14, 1897, no. 784).
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EPISTRE DU BON FRERE QUI REND LES ARMES DAMOURS a sa seur damoyselle en Syonnoys. Et le dit des pays. Small booklet in-8, red jansenist maroquin, 5-rib spine, interior lace, gilt edges ( Trautz-Bauzonnet). Bechtel, 267/E-147 // Brunet, Supplément II-455 // USTC, 53688. (8f.) // A8 / 28 lines, gothic car / 89 x 135 mm. Unique edition of this versified lament, one of only three known copies. Composed of 263 verses in decasyllables, this long poem is the desperate song of a good brother who, tired of suffering for love, chooses not to devote himself to it any longer: Que tay ie faict; en quoy ay ie failly Mon cueur, ou langue, ont ilz point defailly, Je scay que non... Convinced of the dangers of love: Pour ung que en ce trouveres contentz / En cognoistres mille de malcontentz, he tries to warn his friends, and if, as proof of what he's saying, he summons the great biblical female figures (Jezabel, Dalila and Jael), he's only after the object of his own love: Lon holds the woman so dangerous beast That whoever haunts her never returns without temptation We say it is a plain of iniquity Inconstance and fallacite. Quoy que lon die, ne vouldrois faire blasme (...) Si Bocace, Petrarque lon descript (...) Quant à moi: ia ne plainctz ni mesdictz Si non de toy ou diriges mes dictz The publisher, who has remained anonymous, chose to follow this courtly lament with a piece in a completely different register. Le Dit des pays, which begins on folio A6, is a facetious composition of 92 octosyllabic verses on the charms of all countries. Local culinary specialties and industries are interwoven with the supposed qualities of the inhabitants of these places, in a tasty, gently saucy, even vulgar language. We reproduce below a sober extract from this poem, and refrain from transcribing what censors would have condemned: Les bons pastes are in Paris Ordes trippes a sainct Denis (...) A londres escarlates fines Et bons draps vermeilz malines (...) A bourges sont les fourteresses A saint quantin les grosses fesse (...) Good salt is in Salins Femmes bien faictes a prouvins... L' Epistre du bon frère is known only from this Gothic edition, of which only the BnF (RES. YE-3972) and the Biblioteca Capitular Y Colombina in Seville possess another copy. It was on the BnF copy that Anatole de Montaiglon was able to reprint it in 1855 in his Recueil de poésies françoises des XVe et XVIe siècles (t. XI, p.207 et seq.). A very fine copy of this bibliographical rarity. 3 corners skilfully restored. Provenance: Comte Raoul de Lignerolles (II, March 5-17, 1894, no. 1125) and Baron Jérôme Pichon (I, May 3-14, 1897, no. 784).
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