Les Oeuvres poétiques […]
This important posthumous edition contains 337 poems and one play; it was published at the initiative of the poet's friends shortly after his death on 6 March 1577. The first volume opens with Les Amours et nouveaux eschanges des pierres précieuses, considered the poet's masterpiece and the finest work of the Pléiade group after Ronsard and du Bellay.
From the library of Jean-Paul Barbier Muller (bookplate).
Each poem is devoted to a semi-precious or precious stone: “Belleau had drawn extensively on both ancient and modern literature to produce a kind of gem-studded epic: animated by an almost tellurian energy, this work by a poet turned mineralogist (or jeweler) ranks among the most fundamental achievements of scientific poetry” (Ducimetière).
The wording of the notice at the head of the volume suggests that its author was the printer Robert Estienne, whose device appears on the title page.
After Les Amours et nouveaux eschanges des pierres précieuses come the two “days” of the Bergerie, a celebrated poem marking the birth of the pastoral genre, in which Belleau describes various scenes of nature with meticulous delicacy, followed by the “Apparences célestes d’Arat poëte Grec.”
The second volume contains a translation of the pastoral poems of Anacreon of Teos, his Odes, then the “Petites inventions, et autres poésies de Remy Belleau,” considerably expanded from the 1574 edition. There follows a comedy, La Reconnue, Belleau’s only play, a bourgeois comedy recounting the rollicking adventures of a young nun from Poitou converted to the Reformed faith and taken as spoils of war by a Catholic captain.
This five-act play appears never to have been performed and is printed here for the first time.
Finally, two original pieces to which Ronsard contributed: the Élégie à Jules Gassot secrétaire du roi and, above all, the “Tombeau de Remy Belleau,” comprising six leaves gathering Greek, Latin and French epitaphs by Dorat, Ronsard, Baïf and Desportes.
The prose is printed in roman type, while the verse is set in italics.
An attractive copy with very generous margins, the leaf height (144 mm) matching that of the Hector de Backer copy, which retained its original limp vellum binding.
The Barbier-Muller copy, with bookplate.