BELLEAU, Remy

(c. 1528-1577)

Pierre de Ronsard's* designation of Remy Belleau as a "painter of nature" secured his membership in the group of French poets known as the Pleiade, whose other members were Jean-Antoine de Baïf,* Joachim Du Bellay,* Etienne Jodelle,* Jacques Peletier Du Mans, Pierre de Ronsard, and Pontus de Tyard. Little is known of Belleau's childhood, apart from his birth in Nogent-le-Routrou and the patronage he received from Chretophle de Choiseul, abbot of Mureaux, who helped further his education at the College de Boncourt in Paris. His studies in Greek under Marc-Antoine Muret,* Ronsard's celebrated com­mentator, culminated in Belleau's translation of Anacreon's Odes (1556), which was followed by Petites hymnes de son invention, poems about various abstract or concrete objects—the glowworm, snails, shadows, time—evoking a cosmic lyricism. If these works elicited Ronsard's praise and secured his membership in the Pleiade, others became jealous of the attention Ronsard showed him. After a period of interest in the Reformation, Belleau left for the French campaign against Naples with Rene de Lorraine in 1557, returning to France to write occasional poetry at the court of Charles IX and later Henri III, dividing his time among Champagne, Lorraine, and Paris. His stay in Joinville-en-Bassigny from 1563 to 1566 was the most calm, studious part of his life, thanks to the marquis of Elbeuf. During this period Belleau wrote a pastoral composition in verse and prose, which he published as La Bergerie (1565), later reediting it in 1572. His volume of lapidary poems, Les amours et nouveaux eschanges des pierres precieuses, verius et proprietez d'icelles (1576), demonstrates Belleau's talent for precise description as he renders in minute detail a portrait of each different kind of gem and its origins, influences, and properties. Like many of his contemporaries, Belleau was convinced that each gem represented a different celestial element, the mastery of which can give man a happy and healthy life. Before his death in the Hotel de Guise during one of his brief trips to Paris in 1577, Belleau completed an adaptation of Ecclesiaste and a paraphrase of the Cantique des cantiques. His sole dramatic work, La reconnue, an unfinished comedy, was published posthumously in 1578. Ronsard's epitaph of his friend Belleau is perhaps most telling: "Don't engrave, industrious hands, stones to cover Belleau, for he himself has built his tomb in his Pierres precieuses."

Bibliography

J. Braybrook, "Science and Myth in the Poetry of Remy Belleau," Renaissance Studies 5, no. 3 (September 1991): 277-87.

Nancy Erickson Bouzrara