Jean de Sponde (''Joanes Ezponda''; 1557 in
Basque – 18 March 1595) was a
Baroque
The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...
French
French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to France
** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents
** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
poet.
Biography
Born at
Mauléon, in what is now
Pyrénées-Atlantiques, Jean de Sponde was raised in an austere
Protestant family in the
Basque region of France (some critics believe his family had Spanish roots) with close relations with the royal court of
Navarre
Navarre (; es, Navarra ; eu, Nafarroa ), officially the Chartered Community of Navarre ( es, Comunidad Foral de Navarra, links=no ; eu, Nafarroako Foru Komunitatea, links=no ), is a foral autonomous community and province in northern Spain, ...
. A bright student at the College of Lascar (1569), he received funds for his education from
Jeanne d'Albret, the mother of
Henry de Navarre (the future Henry IV of France), and went on to learn
ancient Greek and Protestant
theology.
Despite his religious upbringing, in his early writings Jean de Sponde turned toward worldly literature: he produced an edition of
Homer accompanied by an extensive
Latin commentary which was printed in Basel in 1583, and wrote love poems (The ''Amours'', published posthumously in 1597 with ''Poésies posthumes'').
In 1580, with the help of a travel grant provided by Henry of Navarre, he moved to
Basel to study under
Théodore de Bèze. Sometime later, the king of Navarre gave him a position as
maître des requêtes.
In 1582, Jean de Sponde became profoundly moved after reading the
Psalms, and from this point on his writings took on a religious orientation, leaving the author to consider his early love poems as ''fadaises'' (worthless things).
[Schmidt, 879.] It is from this period that he wrote what are considered his most important works: ''Méditations sur les psaumes'' ("Meditations on the Psalms") and ''Essai de quelques poèmes chrétiens'' ("Essay of Several Christian Poems", 1588). In this last collection, Jean de Sponde explored the passage of time, the shortness of life and the presence of death in man's life.
He left Basel and returned to Navarre as royal counsellor and
maître des requêtes in 1583, and married. Upon a trip to Paris in 1589, Sponde was imprisoned by the
Catholic League for his religion. Upon his liberation, he became lieutenant-general of the appellate court (''sénéchaussée'') in
La Rochelle, but left the city in 1593 and returned to Tours. After a second imprisonment for his beliefs, he converted to
Catholicism in
Tours in 1593, following the example of Henry IV. This conversion however earned him the hatred of the Protestants (his friend
d'Aubigné became his personal enemy) and distanced him from the king (who sought to maintain his alliances with the huguenots). Sponde then moved to
Bordeaux and spent the last years of his life writing against Calvinist theology.
He died in Bordeaux in poverty in 1595.
Poetry
Jean de Sponde's youthful ''Amours'' comprise 26
sonnet
A sonnet is a poetic form that originated in the poetry composed at the Court of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in the Sicilian city of Palermo. The 13th-century poet and notary Giacomo da Lentini is credited with the sonnet's invention, ...
s in the manner of other love sonnet sequences of the period (as made fashionable by the members of
La Pléiade
La Pléiade () was a group of 16th-century French Renaissance poets whose principal members were Pierre de Ronsard, Joachim du Bellay and Jean-Antoine de Baïf. The name was a reference to another literary group, the original Alexandrian Pleiad ...
). His posthumous collection also includes various other long lyric poems (stances),
chansons and
elegies.
Jean de Sponde's later poetry is impregnated with the major themes of the so-called French "baroque" poetry of the period and with the moral concerns of the huguenots. His poetry is often placed alongside the works of
Agrippa d'Aubigné and
Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas
Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas (1544, in Monfort – July 1590, in Mauvezin) was a Gascon Huguenot courtier and poet. Trained as a doctor of law, he served in the court of Henri de Navarre for most of his career. Du Bartas was celebrated acro ...
as the major poetic works of the French Renaissance Protestants.
His ''Essai de quelques poèmes chrétiens'' comprise 12 sonnets and three long lyric poems (two on the
last supper and one on death). Sponde's writing paints the massiveness of the world, man's tortured destiny, and his lack of clarity. The author is obsessed with inconstancy, masks, appearances, and death, and this presence of death in the midst of man's life inspires man to seek eternity and to reach out to God.
References
:''This article is based in part on the article
Jean de Sponde
Jean de Sponde (''Joanes Ezponda''; 1557 in Basque – 18 March 1595) was a Baroque French poet.
Biography
Born at Mauléon, in what is now Pyrénées-Atlantiques, Jean de Sponde was raised in an austere Protestant family in the Basque region ...
on the
French Wikipedia, retrieved on October 5, 2006.''
* Albert-Marie Schmidt, ed. ''Poètes du XVIe siècle.''
Bibliothèque de la Pléiade. Paris: Gallimard, 1953.
External links
Selection of poems(in French)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sponde, Jean de
1557 births
1595 deaths
16th-century French poets
16th-century male writers
Baroque writers
Catholic poets
French Catholic poets
Converts to Roman Catholicism from Calvinism
French Roman Catholics
French male poets
Sonneteers
Translators of Homer