Jean de Sponde's Meditation on Mortality

Extract

[...] It will be a question of a direct confrontation with death. The poet begins with an interjection typical of elegiac poetry, of the poetry of regret: "Alas" with an exclamation mark. With this interjection, the poet expresses his suffering. The poet then addresses the reader directly in a sort of confidential dialogue. He uses the imperative as if to express, rather than a real order, a piece of advice: "count" (verse 1). The author invites the reader to consider the number of days he has left to live, undoubtedly to become aware that we are only passing through the earth, one of the important themes of Baroque literature. [...]

[...] The two verbs are relatively synonymous: 'you wait', 'you spy'. This hour, this moment is personified and participates in the tragic intensity of the passage. This hour and this moment are repeated through the formula: 'executioners corrupted by your own life'. 'Corrupted' perhaps because men act against themselves, against the vital impulse according to the poet Jean de Sponde. The poet accuses men and women of lacking wisdom and not taking enough distance from the vanity of existence. The final verse presents itself once again as a proverbial sentence. [...]

[...] In the second quatrain, the poet seems to focus on what can evoke vanity. To this end, he uses deictics: 'these proud desires'. It is quite classical among the authors of Baroque literature to denounce vanity in men. In painting, one can also evoke the famous 'vanities', these paintings that could represent, among other things, what could evoke the vanity of men and women. In a logic of 'ut pictura poesis », the poet shows us what he writes and the term 'pêle-mêle' evokes the 'désordre' dear to Baroque literature. [...]

[...] Jean de Sponde thinks that most men are not wise enough to know rest before death, before the last hour, before the last moment. This poem thus presents itself as a consideration of the brevity of time, a typically baroque theme. Through powerful figures of style, the poet makes us feel just how brief life is, how we are concerned by finitude. It is then the opportunity for Jean de Sponde to denounce the vanity with which we attach importance to earthly things while we are only passing on Earth. [...]

[...] In other words, these obstacles that we will have managed to cross will ultimately have the last word on us. On the stylistic level, we can again find this chiasmatic structure already present in the second quatrain. Here, the chiasmus is expressed with exactly the repetition of the same terms: 'waves' and 'reefs'. The term 'waves' is mentioned through the figure of hyperbaton, that is to say that the sentence could end with 'reefs' but that it takes up again in a slightly surprising way and can also evoke in a mimetic way the backwash of the sea. [...]