Sonnet in Reds

The tonal prize of six guineas' was offered for a translation of La Ceppede's sonnet on the Passion: A a x monarques vainqueurs la rouge colic d'armes A ppailient justement.Ce roi victorieux Est justement vett, par ces moqueurs gens d'armes D'un manteau qui le marque et prince et glorieux. 0 pour pre, emplis mon let de ton Pis precieux, Et lid fais distiller mills pourprines twines, A rant que ineclitant ton .vens mysierieux, Du sang trait de tiles yeux lensanghmte ces carmes.

Ta sanglante couleur figure nos peches

dos de cet Agneau par le Pere attaches: Et ce Christ t'endossant se charge de nos crimes. 0 Christ, o saint.Agneau, daigne-toi de cacher Tons Ines rouges poetics, brindelles des abimes, Dans les sanglants replis du manteau de to chair.

THE poem was obviously considered difficult, and only half the usual number of entries arrived. The level of those, however, was extremely high, and several competitors asked for information about the poet, who was a provincial magistrate born at Marseilles about 1550 and dying at Avignon in 1623. His single book of poetry con- tains more than 500 sonnets on Biblical themes, the symbolism of which is often founded' on subtly worked out parallels between the Old and the New Testaments. These Theoremes stn• le sacre mystere de noire redemption appeared at Toulouse in 1613, but were completely forgotten until anthologists began to draw on them about fifteen years ago. There is .now, I believe, a modern edition of the Theoremes which contain many sonnets as fine as this one. One can think of the poet as the French counterpart of Donne, though his poetry is less personal and more con- cerned with theological complexities. Certainly for purposes of this competition hints could be -and were-taken by many entrants from the Holy Sonnets, and both the winners, Alberick and Margaret Bishop, attempted a. modified seventeenth-century spelling and capitalisation.

The sonnet presented one or two difficulties that I had not foreseen. Not everyone seems to have realised that the gens d'armes of line three were the Roman soldiers at the foot of the Cross, or that the invocation '0 pourpre' covers the first tercet despite the full stop after carmes. The word brindelles, too, though given in the Petit Larousse as brindilles-surely near enough !- was translated variously, J. A. Lindon actually justifying rags by reference to the Italian brindello. The word means brushwood, sins being thought of by the poet as the faggots on which hell. burns. No one remarked on the weak- ness of La Ceppede's rhyming, a blemish for which Malherbe, when he came to impose rules on French poetry, must have cast him relentlessly into the outer darkness.

The poem, as is pointed out by Odette' de Mourgues in Metaphysical, Baroque and Precieux Poetry (0.U.P., 1953), is built of three conceits all derived from the original red of the cloak flung over Christ's shoulders. Royal purple, scarlet sin and the blood-red of the Passion de- velop from this, to be fused in the last tercet, when the red of our sin, which would kindle the red tires of hell, will disappear in the red of Christ's blood, and the whole remain as white and spotless as the Lamb : a paradox of the kind that seventeenth-century poets practiSed in all countries.

La Ceppede's final effect was missed by Alberick, whose Humanitie conveyed some of the power though not the abrupt effect of the French monosyllable chair. Margaret Bishop's bleeding flesh was truer to the original. Her faulty rhyme doom, assume was forgivable in view of La Cep- pede's weakness in this respect, but the failure of both winners to catch the point of brindelles was disappointing.

They divide the prize equally, leaving for honourable mention P. A. T. O'Donnell, who missed the gens d'armes point and failed to catch some seventeenth-century echoes without which any translation of this sonnet must fail; also H. A. C. Evans, whose imbrue and imbue in lines five and seven seemed to me downright ugly, but who otherwise had a good claim to a share.

Many competitors still rule themselves out by the use of mock-poetic words and phrases. Dight, thy mystic meaning, While in my soul I see Thy Vision high, in the mystic presence, bear no re- lation to any poetry of higher quality than the, most banal hymns-and here good tunes often atone for bad words. La Ceppede uses words as toughly as Donne. Competitors who plead guilty to faults of this kind might submit themselves to the voluntary sentence of rereading his Goodfriday, 1613 Riding Westward, and follow- ing it with all the Holy Sonnets. Then taming! perhaps, to Keats's La Belle Dame sans Merch they might reflect on the number of, phrases it contains that, repeated today; would be unpal donable cliché.

PRIZES (ALBERICK) AN HOLY SONNET TO THE PRECIOUS BLOOD OF CHRIST Victorious Monarchs are of right array'd In crimson Surcoat. This all glorious King, Of right by mocking souldiers is display'd In princelie Robe that marks his Triumphing. O Purple, of thy precious tincture bring Myriad empurpled Teares, to fill my head, That on thy sacred Mysterie pondering. Mine eyes upon these Hymns bloud-gouts may shat Thy bloudie Hue oure sinnes doth signifie Which on the Lambe the Father will'd should lie; Christ to this load hath bowed his Backe submiss.

O Christ, 0 blessed Lambe, vouchsafe to mee

To enfold my scarlet sinnes, sprung from the Ab)75

In the bloud-stained Robe of thy Humanitie.

(MARGARET BISHOP)

A crimson surcoat is a Princes dresse

In conq'ring warre : soe when in mockery, Lord, thou wast robed by the rough soldiery, Thy rank and state they fitly did expresso.

O crimson tincture, soe induc my heddc That many teares stain'd with thy costly dye (The while 1 thinke what thou dost signifie) May falle upon my verse in droppes blood-red.

Our sinnes, laid on the Lamb by Gods owne doom.

Thou, robe insanguin'd, dost in figure Celle;

For, donning thee, Christ did our crimes assume.

O Lamb of God, in mercy hide afresh My many sinnes, those crimson shootes of helle, Within thy mantles folds-thy bleeding flesh.

SPECTATOR COMPETITION No. 402 Set by Allan M. Laing Both Donne and Marlowe wrote poems begib ning with the line: 'Come live with me and be my love.' For the usual prize of six guineas (DPI petitors are invited to bring this theme bang 1111 to date with another poem of four stanzas t1 four lines each, using their predecessors' opening line.

Entries, addressed 'Spectator Competition Nc 402,' 99 Gower Street, London, WC1, by Noveill ber 5. Results on November 15.