François Villon


François Villon is the best known French poet of the Late Middle Ages. A ne'er-do-well who was involved in criminal behavior and had multiple encounters with law enforcement authorities, Villon wrote about some of these experiences in his poems.

Biography

Birth

Villon was born in Paris in 1431. One source gives the date as .

Early life

Villon's real name may have been François de Montcorbier or François des Loges: both of these names appear in official documents drawn up in Villon's lifetime. In his own work, however, Villon is the only name the poet used, and he mentions it frequently in his work. His two collections of poems, especially "Le Testament", have traditionally been read as if they were autobiographical. Other details of his life are known from court or other civil documents.
From what the sources tell us, it appears that Villon was born in poverty and raised by a foster father, but that his mother was still living when her son was thirty years old. The surname "Villon," the poet tells us, is the name he adopted from his foster father, Guillaume de Villon, chaplain in the collegiate church of Saint-Benoît-le-Bétourné and a professor of canon law, who took Villon into his house. François describes Guillaume de Villon as "more than a father to me".

Student life

Villon became a student in arts, perhaps at about twelve years of age. He received a bachelor's degree from the University of Paris in 1449 and a master's degree in 1452. Between this year and 1455, nothing is known of his activities. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, "Attempts have been made, in the usual fashion of conjectural biography, to fill up the gap with what a young graduate of Bohemian tendencies would, could, or might have done, but they are mainly futile."

Alleged criminal activities

On 5 June 1455, the first major recorded incident of his life occurred. While in the Rue Saint-Jacques in the company of a priest named Giles and a girl named Isabeau, he met a Breton named Jean le Hardi, a master of arts, who was also with a priest, Philippe Chermoye. A scuffle broke out and daggers were drawn. Sermaise, who is accused of having threatened and attacked Villon and drawn the first blood, not only received a dagger-thrust in return, but a blow from a stone, which struck him down. He died of his wounds. Villon fled, and was sentenced to banishment – a sentence which was remitted in January 1456 by a pardon from King Charles VII after he received the second of two petitions which made the claim that Sermoise had forgiven Villon before he died. Two different versions of the formal pardon exist; in one, the culprit is identified as "François des Loges, autrement dit Villon", in the other as "François de Montcorbier." He is also said to have named himself to the barber-surgeon who dressed his wounds as "Michel Mouton." The documents of this affair at least confirm the date of his birth, by presenting him as twenty-six years old or thereabouts.
Around Christmas 1456, the chapel of the Collège de Navarre was broken open and five hundred gold crowns stolen. Villon was involved in the robbery. Many scholars believe that he fled from Paris soon afterward and that this is when he composed what is now known as the Le Petit Testament or Le Lais. The robbery was not discovered until March of the next year, and it was not until May that the police came on the track of a gang of student-robbers, owing to the indiscretion of one of them, Guy Tabarie. A year more passed, when Tabarie, after being arrested, turned king's evidence and accused the absent Villon of being the ringleader, and of having gone to Angers, partly at least, to arrange similar burglaries there. Villon, for either this or another crime, was sentenced to banishment; he did not attempt to return to Paris. For four years, he was a wanderer. He may have been, as his friends Regnier de Montigny and Colin des Cayeux were, a member of a wandering gang of thieves.

''Le Testament'', 1461

The next date for which there are recorded whereabouts for Villon is the summer of 1461; Villon wrote that he spent that summer in the bishop's prison at Meung-sur-Loire. His crime is not known, but in Le Testament dated that year he inveighs bitterly against Bishop Thibault d'Aussigny, who held the See of Orléans. Villon may have been released as part of a general jail-delivery at the accession of King Louis XI and became a free man again on 2 October 1461.
In 1461, he wrote his most famous work, Le Testament.
In the autumn of 1462, he was once more living in the cloisters of Saint-Benoît.

Banishment and disappearance

In November 1462, Villon was imprisoned for theft. He was taken to the fortress that stood at what is now Place du Châtelet in Paris. In default of evidence, the old charge of burgling the College of Navarre was revived. No royal pardon arrived to counter the demand for restitution, but bail was accepted and Villon was released. However, he fell promptly into a street quarrel. He was arrested, tortured and condemned to be hanged, although the sentence was commuted to banishment by the parlement on 5 January 1463.
Villon's fate after January 1463 is unknown. Rabelais retells two stories about him which are usually dismissed as without any basis in fact. Anthony Bonner speculated that the poet, as he left Paris, was "broken in health and spirit." Bonner writes further:

Works

Le Petit Testament, also known as Le Lais, was written in late 1456. The work is an ironic, comic poem that serves as Villon's will, listing bequests to his friends and acquaintances.
In 1461, at the age of thirty, Villon composed the longer work which came to be known as Le grand testament. This has generally been judged Villon's greatest work, and there is evidence in the work itself that Villon felt the same.
Besides Le Lais and Le grand testament, Villon's surviving works include multiple poems. Sixteen of these shorter poems vary from the serious to the light-hearted. An additional eleven poems in thieves' jargon were attributed to Villon from a very early time, but many scholars now believe them to be the work of other poets imitating Villon.

Discussion

Villon was a great innovator in terms of the themes of poetry and, through these themes, a great renovator of the forms. He understood perfectly the medieval courtly ideal, but he often chose to write against the grain, reversing the values and celebrating the lowlifes destined for the gallows, falling happily into parody or lewd jokes, and constantly innovating in his diction and vocabulary; a few minor poems make extensive use of Parisian thieves' slang. Still Villon's verse is mostly about his own life, a record of poverty, trouble, and trial which was certainly shared by his poems' intended audience.
Villon's poems are sprinkled with mysteries and hidden jokes. They are peppered with the slang of the time and the underworld subculture in which Villon moved. His works are also replete with private jokes and full of the names of real people – rich men, royal officials, lawyers, prostitutes, and policemen – from medieval Paris.

Translations

Complete works

John Herron Lepper published a fine translation in 1926. Another fine translation is one by Anthony Bonner, published in 1960. One drawback common to these English older translations is that they are all based on old editions of Villon's texts: that is, the French text that they translate is a text established by scholars some 80 years ago.
A translation by the American poet Galway Kinnell contains most of Villon's works but lacks the shorter poems. Peter Dale's ingenious verse translation follows the poet's rhyme scheme faithfully, though the necessity of finding rhymes requires him to frequently stray from literal faithfulness.
For the complete works, another option is Barbara Sargent-Baur's very literal translation. It also includes 11 poems long attributed to Villon but possibly the work of a medieval imitator.
A new English translation by David Georgi came out in 2013. The book also includes Villon's French, printed across from the English. Notes in the back provide a wealth of information about the poems and about medieval Paris. "More than any translation, Georgi's emphasizes Villon's famous gallows humor...his word play, jokes, and puns".

Selections

Translations of three Villon poems were made in 1867 by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. These three poems were "central texts" to Rossetti's 1870 book of Poems, which explored themes from the far past, mid-past, and modern time. Rossetti used "The Ballad of Dead Ladies"; "To Death, of his Lady"; and "His Mother's Service to Our Lady".
American poet Richard Wilbur, whose translations from French poetry and plays were widely acclaimed, also translated many of Villon's most famous ballades in Collected Poems: 1943–2004.

Where are the snows of yesteryear?

The phrase "Where are the snows of ?" is one of the most famous lines of translated poetry in the English-speaking world. It is the refrain in The Ballad of Dead Ladies, Dante Gabriel Rossetti's translation of Villon's 1461 Ballade des dames du temps jadis. In the original the line is: "Mais où sont les neiges d'antan?" .
Richard Wilbur published his translation of the same poem, which he titled "Ballade of the Ladies of Time Past", in his Collected Poems: 1943–2004. In his translation, the refrain is rendered as "But where shall last year's snow be found?"

Critical views

Villon's poems enjoyed substantial popularity in the decades after they were written. In 1489, a printed volume of his poems was published by Pierre Levet. This edition was almost immediately followed by several others. In 1533, poet and humanist scholar Clément Marot published an important edition, in which he recognized Villon as one of the most significant poets in French literature and sought to correct mistakes that had been introduced to the poetry by earlier and less careful printers.

In popular culture

Stage

Die Dreigroschenoper , from 1928, by Kurt Weill and Bertold Brecht, contains several songs that are loosely based on poems by Villon. These poems include "Les Contredits de Franc Gontier", "La Ballade de la Grosse Margot", and "L'Epitaphe Villon". Brecht used German translations of Villon's poems that had been prepared by , although Klammer was uncredited.
Daniela Fischerová wrote a play in Czech that focused on Villon's trial called Hodina mezi psem a vlkem— translated to "Dog and Wolf" but literally translates as "The Hour Between Dog and Wolf". The Juilliard School in New York City mounted a 1994 production of the play, directed by Michael Mayer with music by Michael Philip Ward.

Film and television

Villon's life has been portrayed multiple times in film. If I Were King is a silent film from 1920, starring William Farnum. The 1938 version of If I Were King was adapted by Preston Sturges from Justin Huntly McCarthy's 1901 play and novel; the film was directed by Frank Lloyd and starred Basil Rathbone and Frances Dee. McCarthy's play was adapted again in 1945 with François Villon, a French historical drama film directed by André Zwoboda and starring Serge Reggiani, Jean-Roger Caussimon, and Henri Crémieux. The television biography François Villon was made in 1981 in West Germany, with Jörg Pleva in the title role.
Villon's work figures in the 1936 movie The Petrified Forest. The main character, Gabby, a roadside diner waitress played by Bette Davis, longs for expanded horizons; she reads Villon and also recites one of his poems to a wandering hobo "intellectual" played by Leslie Howard.
During the television series Downton Abbey's Christmas Special, the Dowager countess uses the line "Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan", to refer to Lord Hepworth's father whom she met in the late 1860s.

Publications

Villon's poem "Tout aux tavernes et aux filles" was translated into English by 19th-century poet William Ernest Henley as "Villon’s Straight Tip To All Cross Coves". Another of Henley's attributed poems – written in thieves' slang – is "Villon’s Good-Night".
In Antonio Skármeta's novel, El cartero de Neruda, Villon is mentioned as having been hanged for crimes much less serious than seducing the daughter of the local bar owner.
Valentyn Sokolovsky's poem "The night in the city of cherries or Waiting for François" reflects François Villon’s life. It takes the form of a person’s memories who knew the poet and whose name one can find in the lines of The Testament.
Italian author Luigi Critone wrote and illustrated a graphic novel based on Villon's life and works. The 2017 book was entitled Je, François Villon .

Music

Villon was an influence on American musician Bob Dylan.
The Swiss composer Frank Martin's Poèmes de la Mort is based on three Villon poems. The work is for the unusual combination of three tenors and three electric guitars.