Cassandra

Cassandra is the first English translation of the full sonnet sequence Les Amours de Cassandre, written in 1552 by French poet Pierre de Ronsard. This edition, translated and edited by Clive Lawrence, was published by Carcanet Press in 2015. Ronsard, known in France as the "poet of princes, the prince of poets," abandoned the poetry style and structure popular at the time, reverting to a more classical approach. His subject was the eponymous Cassandra, and his lyrical tribute details his passionate and enduring love for her and her unattainable status as a beauty beyond compare.

Lawrence opens the volume with a detailed introduction in which he investigates whether Cassandra was a real person or just a creative figment of Ronsard's poetic imagination. For centuries, scholars considered Cassandra an actual historical person, a woman named Cassandra Salviati, with whom Ronsard had a relationship. However, more recent examinations have called this into question. Before Les Amours de Cassandre, Ronsard wrote poetry to another woman of the same name, who did not bear a physical likeness to Salviati. Also, Ronsard painted his relationship with this other Cassandra as more of a relaxed and genial one. By contrast, Ronsard describes the Cassandra in Les Amours as a legendary beauty for the ages, and his love for her borders on the obsessive. Indeed, a biographer and contemporary of Ronsard asserted that the poet fell in love with numerous women named Cassandra in his life.

Throughout the course of Les Amours, Lawrence notes, Ronsard even varies his physical descriptions of Cassandra, which has led some to believe that she was not one woman but a composite of several different people in Ronsard's life. On the other hand, following another possibility, Ronsard used the term Cassandra to describe any woman of notable beauty or any woman who captured his fancy at any given moment in time.



All of this evidence leads Lawrence to believe that Ronsard's love affair with Cassandra was not, in fact, real—at least not as portrayed in the poem cycle bearing her name. Instead, Cassandra was simply "a locus upon which the various literary conventions he would use and subvert could concenter." In other words, Ronsard utilized the idea of Cassandra in his work as a way to challenge the accepted poetry standards of sixteenth-century France.

And challenge standards he did. Ronsard's poetic voice and structure in Les Amours harken back to the classics that had fallen out of favor in the literary world around him. He relied heavily on the style of Petrarch, legendary poet of the Italian Renaissance who lived two centuries before Ronsard. There are striking similarities between Ronsard's sonnet form and rhyme schemes and those favored by Petrarch.

Les Amours examines eternal themes poets have been grappling with since time began. Love and loss. Desire and dejection. Fulfillment and emptiness. The deeply human need for connection and comfort.



Much of Ronsard's tribute to his love (or loves, depending on which school of thought you fall into based on Lawrence's findings) draws inspiration from classical mythology. The name Cassandra is also the name of a Trojan War figure cursed to utter prophecies that no one would heed. This could describe Ronsard's own love for his Cassandra: cursed to uttering his undying affection and devotion for a woman who neither hears him nor returns his feelings. The mythological creations of Homer and Ovid also inspire Ronsard's poems to Cassandra.

Like many poets before and after him, Ronsard imbues his work with a strong sense of nature. The countryside around his native Vendome offers a vibrant backdrop to his odes. The Loire River symbolizes Ronsard's endlessly flowing love for Cassandra, while the changing seasons of Vendome mirror the changing moods Ronsard undergoes as he struggles with his feelings of unrequited love.

While many of the sonnets are beautiful songlike tributes to a comely love object, a few also touch upon the darker aspects of Ronsard's affections. At one point, he poses this disturbing question to Cassandra: Does she not see that her refusal to return his feelings "is to smear blood and murder on your hands?"



Viewing Les Amours as a whole, it chronicles both the crushing pain and the thrilling possibility of a one-sided love. Ronsard recognizes that "love has neither right nor reason" and to love requires "the self-delusion of a fool"—at least to some extent. Nevertheless, still, there is the hope that the spark might ignite, a hope nourished by Ronsard's occasional intimate interactions with Cassandra. They talk. He has sensual dreams about her. At one point, they even kiss. These moments fuel Ronsard and course throughout his epic homage to Cassandra.

Cassandra contains 228 sonnets, three songs, and three elegies. Also included are a few other Ronsard poems, also about unconsummated love affairs. For Cassandra, Lawrence won the John Dryden Translation Prize.