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Love Sonnets and Elegies
Louise Labé, one of the most original poets of the French Renaissance, published her complete Works around the age of thirty and then disappeared from history. Rediscovered in the nineteenth century, her incandescent love sonnets were later translated into German by Rilke and appear here in a revelatory new English version by the award-winning translator Richard Sieburth.
121 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2014
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About the author
Louise Labé
91 books21 followersThe precise date of Louise Labé's birth is unknown. She is born somewhere between 1516 (her parents marriage) and 1523 (her mother's death).
Both her father and her stepmother Antoinette Taillard (whom Pierre Charly married following Etiennette Roybet's death in 1523) were illiterate, but Labé received an education in Latin, Italian and music, perhaps in a convent school.
At the siege of Perpignan, or in a tournament there, she is said to have dressed in male clothing and fought on horseback in the ranks of the Dauphin, afterwards Henry II.
Between 1543 and 1545 she married Ennemond Perrin, a ropemaker.
She became active in a circle of Lyonnais poets and humanists grouped around the figure of Maurice Scève. Her Œuvres were printed in 1555, by the renowned Lyonnais printer Jean de Tournes.
In addition to her own writings, the volume contained twenty-four poems in her honor, authored by her male contemporaries and entitled Escriz de divers poetes, a la louenge de Louize Labe Lionnoize.
The authors of these praise poems (not all of whom can be reliably identified) include Maurice Scève, Pontus de Tyard, Claude de Taillemont, Clement Marot, Olivier de Magny, Jean-Antoine de Baif, Mellin de Saint-Gelais, Antoine du Moulin, and Antoine Fumee.
The poet Olivier de Magny, in his Odes of 1559, praised Labé (along with several other women) as his beloved; and from the nineteenth century onward, literary critics speculated that Magny was in fact Labé's lover. However, the male beloved in Labé's poetry is never identified by name, and may well represent a poetic fiction rather than a historical person.
Magny's Odes also contained a poem (A Sire Aymon) that mocked and belittled Labé's husband (who had died by 1557), and by extension Labé herself.
In 1564, the plague broke out in Lyon, taking the lives of some of Labé's friends. In 1565, suffering herself from bad health, she retired to the home of her friend Thomas Fortin, a banker from Florence, who witnessed her will (a document that is extant).
She died in 1566, and was buried on her country property close to Parcieux-en-Dombes, outside Lyon.
[edit:]Debated connection with "la Belle Cordière"
From 1584, the name of Louise Labé became associated with a courtesan called "la Belle Cordière" (first described by Philibert de Vienne in 1547; the association with Labé was solidified by Antoine Du Verdier in 1585).
This courtesan was a colorful and controversial figure during her own lifetime. In 1557 a popular song on the scandalous behavior of La Cordière was published in Lyon, and 1560 Jean Calvin referred to her cross-dressing and called her a plebeia meretrix or common whore.
Debate on whether or not Labé was or was not a courtesan began in the sixteenth century, and has continued up to the present day. However, in recent decades, critics have focused increasing attention on her literary works.
Her Œuvres include two prose works: a feminist preface, urging women to write, that is dedicated to a young noblewoman of Lyon, Clemence de Bourges; and a dramatic allegory in prose entitled Debat de Folie et d'Amour, which draws on Erasmus' Praise of Folly.
Her poetry consists of three elegies in the style of the Heroides of Ovid, and twenty-four sonnets that draw on the traditions of Neoplatonism and Petrarchism.
The Debat, the most popular of her works in the sixteenth century, inspired one of the fables of Jean de la Fontaine and was translated into English by Robert Greene in 1584.
The sonnets, remarkable for their frank eroticism, have been her most famous works following the early modern period, and were translated into German by Rainer Maria Rilke.
Both her father and her stepmother Antoinette Taillard (whom Pierre Charly married following Etiennette Roybet's death in 1523) were illiterate, but Labé received an education in Latin, Italian and music, perhaps in a convent school.
At the siege of Perpignan, or in a tournament there, she is said to have dressed in male clothing and fought on horseback in the ranks of the Dauphin, afterwards Henry II.
Between 1543 and 1545 she married Ennemond Perrin, a ropemaker.
She became active in a circle of Lyonnais poets and humanists grouped around the figure of Maurice Scève. Her Œuvres were printed in 1555, by the renowned Lyonnais printer Jean de Tournes.
In addition to her own writings, the volume contained twenty-four poems in her honor, authored by her male contemporaries and entitled Escriz de divers poetes, a la louenge de Louize Labe Lionnoize.
The authors of these praise poems (not all of whom can be reliably identified) include Maurice Scève, Pontus de Tyard, Claude de Taillemont, Clement Marot, Olivier de Magny, Jean-Antoine de Baif, Mellin de Saint-Gelais, Antoine du Moulin, and Antoine Fumee.
The poet Olivier de Magny, in his Odes of 1559, praised Labé (along with several other women) as his beloved; and from the nineteenth century onward, literary critics speculated that Magny was in fact Labé's lover. However, the male beloved in Labé's poetry is never identified by name, and may well represent a poetic fiction rather than a historical person.
Magny's Odes also contained a poem (A Sire Aymon) that mocked and belittled Labé's husband (who had died by 1557), and by extension Labé herself.
In 1564, the plague broke out in Lyon, taking the lives of some of Labé's friends. In 1565, suffering herself from bad health, she retired to the home of her friend Thomas Fortin, a banker from Florence, who witnessed her will (a document that is extant).
She died in 1566, and was buried on her country property close to Parcieux-en-Dombes, outside Lyon.
[edit:]Debated connection with "la Belle Cordière"
From 1584, the name of Louise Labé became associated with a courtesan called "la Belle Cordière" (first described by Philibert de Vienne in 1547; the association with Labé was solidified by Antoine Du Verdier in 1585).
This courtesan was a colorful and controversial figure during her own lifetime. In 1557 a popular song on the scandalous behavior of La Cordière was published in Lyon, and 1560 Jean Calvin referred to her cross-dressing and called her a plebeia meretrix or common whore.
Debate on whether or not Labé was or was not a courtesan began in the sixteenth century, and has continued up to the present day. However, in recent decades, critics have focused increasing attention on her literary works.
Her Œuvres include two prose works: a feminist preface, urging women to write, that is dedicated to a young noblewoman of Lyon, Clemence de Bourges; and a dramatic allegory in prose entitled Debat de Folie et d'Amour, which draws on Erasmus' Praise of Folly.
Her poetry consists of three elegies in the style of the Heroides of Ovid, and twenty-four sonnets that draw on the traditions of Neoplatonism and Petrarchism.
The Debat, the most popular of her works in the sixteenth century, inspired one of the fables of Jean de la Fontaine and was translated into English by Robert Greene in 1584.
The sonnets, remarkable for their frank eroticism, have been her most famous works following the early modern period, and were translated into German by Rainer Maria Rilke.
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
May 2, 2015
If I might just be swept into his breast,
He for whom my life plays out its death:
If I might just live out my brief quest
On earth with him, unenvious of the rest:
If he might just enfold me once and say:
Love, such is the delight we take together,
The floodtides of Euripus or angry weather
Could never intrude upon our embrace:
If in my arms I might just hold him tight
As Ivy clings to tree & intertwines,
Death would draw nigh, jealous of my ease:
And if he plied me with another thirsty kiss,
Until my spirit fled away upon his lips,
Then surely I’d die, far happier than I breathed.
This collection of 24 sonnets and three elegies is a subset of Louise Labe’s single original volume, which also included the prose piece “Debate between Folly and Love” and the encomiums of 24 men of Lyons on her poetry. The translator Richard Sieburth’s afterword considers the assertion, made by scholar Mireille Huchon in 2006, that the 1555 book was a hoax perpetrated by Maurice Sceve, with the connivance of the publisher and the ‘local literati’ who wrote the encomiums. Sieburth ultimately dismisses the claim, based on an analysis of style and the unlikelihood that the hoax could have been sustained undetected for centuries with that many participants.
Labe was the daughter of a rope maker who had married multiple times to financial advantage. She was schooled in a convent, learning several languages. She reputedly hosted the most eminent writers who passed through Lyons, and was renowned as a fine hostess who sometimes extended hospitality as far as her bed, to the chosen few. This led to her two sided reputation, as an ‘honorable courtesan' (Philibert de Vienne) and ‘a common whore' (Calvin).
I am sympathetic to Sieburth's conclusion that these are a woman’s poems. Since Lyons was a busy trading city, she had access to the burgeoning of new poetic techniques of the time. In the years leading up to her book, the world of letters saw publication of Clement Marot, Castiglione, Vittoria Colonna, Maurice Sceve, Pernette du Guillet, Marsilio Ficino, du Bellay, Ronsard, and new fragments of Sappho (per this volume’s useful chronology); these works explored the potential of the sonnet and other forms, and expanded the world of vernacular literature.
These are lovely poems. Labe wrote about the love of her youth, not the husband twenty years older than she was. While pain and longing are her subject, the art keeps them a bit at arm’s length, a classic style which I find much more agreeable than passionate romanticism. In one of the elegies she reflects on Amor as one of the gods, the agent of her troubles; in another she chides a long-absent lover. A final selection from a sonnet:
Or was it all a cruel ruse on your part
To pretend to serve me, enslaving my heart?
Forgive me Love, if I speak so free,
For I’m beside myself with rage and grief:
But I’d like to think , wherever you might be,
You’re every bit as miserable as me.
He for whom my life plays out its death:
If I might just live out my brief quest
On earth with him, unenvious of the rest:
If he might just enfold me once and say:
Love, such is the delight we take together,
The floodtides of Euripus or angry weather
Could never intrude upon our embrace:
If in my arms I might just hold him tight
As Ivy clings to tree & intertwines,
Death would draw nigh, jealous of my ease:
And if he plied me with another thirsty kiss,
Until my spirit fled away upon his lips,
Then surely I’d die, far happier than I breathed.
This collection of 24 sonnets and three elegies is a subset of Louise Labe’s single original volume, which also included the prose piece “Debate between Folly and Love” and the encomiums of 24 men of Lyons on her poetry. The translator Richard Sieburth’s afterword considers the assertion, made by scholar Mireille Huchon in 2006, that the 1555 book was a hoax perpetrated by Maurice Sceve, with the connivance of the publisher and the ‘local literati’ who wrote the encomiums. Sieburth ultimately dismisses the claim, based on an analysis of style and the unlikelihood that the hoax could have been sustained undetected for centuries with that many participants.
Labe was the daughter of a rope maker who had married multiple times to financial advantage. She was schooled in a convent, learning several languages. She reputedly hosted the most eminent writers who passed through Lyons, and was renowned as a fine hostess who sometimes extended hospitality as far as her bed, to the chosen few. This led to her two sided reputation, as an ‘honorable courtesan' (Philibert de Vienne) and ‘a common whore' (Calvin).
I am sympathetic to Sieburth's conclusion that these are a woman’s poems. Since Lyons was a busy trading city, she had access to the burgeoning of new poetic techniques of the time. In the years leading up to her book, the world of letters saw publication of Clement Marot, Castiglione, Vittoria Colonna, Maurice Sceve, Pernette du Guillet, Marsilio Ficino, du Bellay, Ronsard, and new fragments of Sappho (per this volume’s useful chronology); these works explored the potential of the sonnet and other forms, and expanded the world of vernacular literature.
These are lovely poems. Labe wrote about the love of her youth, not the husband twenty years older than she was. While pain and longing are her subject, the art keeps them a bit at arm’s length, a classic style which I find much more agreeable than passionate romanticism. In one of the elegies she reflects on Amor as one of the gods, the agent of her troubles; in another she chides a long-absent lover. A final selection from a sonnet:
Or was it all a cruel ruse on your part
To pretend to serve me, enslaving my heart?
Forgive me Love, if I speak so free,
For I’m beside myself with rage and grief:
But I’d like to think , wherever you might be,
You’re every bit as miserable as me.
July 3, 2015
As followers of my reviews know, I've read and enjoyed many of NYRB's fiction titles over the past few years: Memoirs of Hecate County, The Outward Room, In Love, Sleepless Nights, and Turtle Diary stand out in my mind as some of the finest novels and novellas I have ever consumed. Experience has taught me that a fictional work with the words "NYRB Classic" printed on its spine is virtually guaranteed to be an amazing read, the literary equivalent of, say, a chocolate eclair procured from a top-notch bakery.
When I learned last year that this lofty publishing house had begun producing poetry books as well, I admit I was initially dubious. Though my taste in poetry tends toward underrated international gems, I feared NYRB's poetry titles might be too erudite and obscure even for me. When I came across NYRB's bilingual edition of 16th-century French poet Louise Labe's Love Sonnets & Elegies at McNally Jackson Bookstore, however, I could not resist sinking my teeth in.
Labe is a poet whom I first encountered in the anthologies of classic French poetry on whose dandelion-scented pages I picnicked away much of my youth. She was literally the only female writer to be included in many of these anthologies; historically, it would appear that the French poetry scene has been even more overwhelmingly male-dominated than its British and American counterparts.
As a teen, I liked Labe for being the sole woman in a man's world, for writing sonnets, and for writing about erotic love in the tradition of Sappho and Catullus. Love sonnets were the first poems I ever wrote, the first poems I ever wanted to write. My teenage dream was to write a great love sonnet sequence and thereby follow in the footsteps of Shakespeare and Sidney, Labe and Barrett Browning, Rossetti and Millay. (Years later, I was introduced to the poetry of yet another great erotic sonneteer, the Spanish nun Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, but she had not yet crossed my radar in the era I am speaking of.)
Not much is known about the biographical details of Labe's life. As a consequence, her legacy, like Shakespeare's, has been marred by accusations that the writings attributed to her name may have actually been authored by another person or group of persons, in a sort of elaborate literary hoax. Translator Richard Sieburth addresses this authorship controversy in his afterword as satisfactorily as one could hope for, using his robust erudition to muster persuasive textual evidence in defense of Labe's authenticity. Reading the afterword gave me a greater appreciation for Sieburth's talents and for the immense care he put into preserving Labe's idiosyncratic verbal mannerisms in his translations.
"Don't reproach me, ladies, for having loved:
For having suffered a thousand flames,
A thousand sorrows, a thousand biting pains:
If I wasted my time crying over my beloved,
Why treat my name with any less respect?
If I did wrong, I am now paying my dues,
Don't insist on tightening the screws:
But beware, Love strikes when you least expect..."
Labe's mix of peevishness and defiance, plaintiveness and pride, sagacity and spite, in this famous poem is unique.
When so few facts about a historical figure are known, it is inevitable that myths and rumors will start swirling above their headstones like smoke. According to one well-known myth, Labe was a courtesan, licentious and debased, entertaining her visitors with sex as well as poetry. According to another myth (one whose roots can be found in Labe's bravado-inflected self-presentation in her own writings), she was a tomboy who disguised herself as a male, a la Britomart, to participate in jousts. While translator Sieburth and preface writer Karin Lessing treat the courtesan myth with the skepticism it deserves, they are strangely unquestioning toward the jousting myth, which I personally find brazenly implausible. On the whole, though, this book is a reliable, respectful introduction to Labe's life and works.
When I learned last year that this lofty publishing house had begun producing poetry books as well, I admit I was initially dubious. Though my taste in poetry tends toward underrated international gems, I feared NYRB's poetry titles might be too erudite and obscure even for me. When I came across NYRB's bilingual edition of 16th-century French poet Louise Labe's Love Sonnets & Elegies at McNally Jackson Bookstore, however, I could not resist sinking my teeth in.
Labe is a poet whom I first encountered in the anthologies of classic French poetry on whose dandelion-scented pages I picnicked away much of my youth. She was literally the only female writer to be included in many of these anthologies; historically, it would appear that the French poetry scene has been even more overwhelmingly male-dominated than its British and American counterparts.
As a teen, I liked Labe for being the sole woman in a man's world, for writing sonnets, and for writing about erotic love in the tradition of Sappho and Catullus. Love sonnets were the first poems I ever wrote, the first poems I ever wanted to write. My teenage dream was to write a great love sonnet sequence and thereby follow in the footsteps of Shakespeare and Sidney, Labe and Barrett Browning, Rossetti and Millay. (Years later, I was introduced to the poetry of yet another great erotic sonneteer, the Spanish nun Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, but she had not yet crossed my radar in the era I am speaking of.)
Not much is known about the biographical details of Labe's life. As a consequence, her legacy, like Shakespeare's, has been marred by accusations that the writings attributed to her name may have actually been authored by another person or group of persons, in a sort of elaborate literary hoax. Translator Richard Sieburth addresses this authorship controversy in his afterword as satisfactorily as one could hope for, using his robust erudition to muster persuasive textual evidence in defense of Labe's authenticity. Reading the afterword gave me a greater appreciation for Sieburth's talents and for the immense care he put into preserving Labe's idiosyncratic verbal mannerisms in his translations.
"Don't reproach me, ladies, for having loved:
For having suffered a thousand flames,
A thousand sorrows, a thousand biting pains:
If I wasted my time crying over my beloved,
Why treat my name with any less respect?
If I did wrong, I am now paying my dues,
Don't insist on tightening the screws:
But beware, Love strikes when you least expect..."
Labe's mix of peevishness and defiance, plaintiveness and pride, sagacity and spite, in this famous poem is unique.
When so few facts about a historical figure are known, it is inevitable that myths and rumors will start swirling above their headstones like smoke. According to one well-known myth, Labe was a courtesan, licentious and debased, entertaining her visitors with sex as well as poetry. According to another myth (one whose roots can be found in Labe's bravado-inflected self-presentation in her own writings), she was a tomboy who disguised herself as a male, a la Britomart, to participate in jousts. While translator Sieburth and preface writer Karin Lessing treat the courtesan myth with the skepticism it deserves, they are strangely unquestioning toward the jousting myth, which I personally find brazenly implausible. On the whole, though, this book is a reliable, respectful introduction to Labe's life and works.
May 26, 2019
"If there is something beyond fame & honor to recommend the study of letters, the pleasure that it commonly affords should incite every one of us to engage in it: this pleasure is distinct from other diversions: in cases of the latter, once one has taken from them as much enjoyment as one wants, one cannot boast of anything except having passed the time. But study rewards us with a sense of self-contentment, which remains with us far longer. For we take delight in the past, & it is of greater service to us than the present: yet the pleasures of the sentiments swiftly vanish, never to return, & sometimes the memory of them is as deficient as the acts were delectable. And as for other pleasures of a more sensual kind, though memories of them may arise, we can no longer place ourselves back in the same disposition: & however powerful the image imprinted in our minds, we know only too well that it is but a shadow of the past which deceives & misleads us. But when we manage to set down our conceptions in writing, no matter how much our minds, ever restless, might subsequently get caught up in other distractions, once we take up what we have written, even if this be long after the fact, we return to the same point & same disposition as before. Our delight is thus redoubled: for we rediscover the past pleasure that we took in what we were writing, or in mastering the fields of knowledge we were then studying. Furthermore, the judgment that our fertile second conceptions provide of our first ones offers us a singular satisfaction."
November 19, 2024
These poems become much more interesting and amusing if we adopt Huchon’s view that they’re a hoax.
February 20, 2018
Love Sonnet III
O hopes held in vain, O endless desires,
Sighs of sadness, tears day after day,
Engendering rivers of dismay
Whose source & fountain lies in my eyes:
O cruelties, so harsh, O so inhumane,
Pitiful stares, stars that tear you apart:
O first signs of love in this startled heart,
Do you reckon you could heighten my pain?
Let Love draw his bow against me once more,
Let new arrows, new fires seek me out:
Let him flare & do his very worst:
For I am so wounded within & without,
And my new scars are so very sore,
There’s no place in me he could further hurt.
Louise Labe 1524? - 1566?
*
April 14, 2025
"Don’t think that they are to blame,
Those women whom Eros has inflamed.
Despite their high rank, others before us
Also fell victim to Love’s blunt blows.
Neither their beauty nor lineage
Nor haughty heart could save them
From his harsh command: the nobler the soul
The more swiftly it is taken by force."
Those women whom Eros has inflamed.
Despite their high rank, others before us
Also fell victim to Love’s blunt blows.
Neither their beauty nor lineage
Nor haughty heart could save them
From his harsh command: the nobler the soul
The more swiftly it is taken by force."
July 24, 2016
I don't think I had read a real sonnet since high school. And I had definitely not heard of Labé before. But her poetry is mindblowing. A 16th century poet who was widely admired in the Lyon literary scene at the time—Mauricen Scève is the star but there are others floating around—there has been controversy over the authorship and biography of this very famous poet (reading her poetry is mandatory in French high schools). And I can see why. She is a proto-feminist, lamenting the fickleness and power of men over women, their deceit and abandonment, and the betrayal that they so often commit. Unrequited love is the topic of these poems, but Labé is not so much writing them to shame the male lover, but to solicit sympathy and understand from the readership of women (and attack the cruelty of the god l'Amour). The structure will quickly be remembered and noted by any who took even the most cursory study of poetry in high school—and the old vernacular French is surprisingly easy to read—and the translation keeps the rhyming scheme as much as possible and makes the poems both modern but holds on to the strick ancient (or at least historic) forms. There's much more to say about Labé herself but one should read the translators informative afterword for that. And though her life is astounding—rope maker? cross-dressing warrior? courtesan? a poet at least or perhaps doesn't exist at all—one can really simply read the poems to fall in love with them. I was able to mostly make out the French, but I don't think you even need to do that. Who would have thought a Renaissance love poet could be so much fun?
December 17, 2022
Good selection of poetry and supplemental material. The translation was clear and beautiful - I don't know if the original feels as modern as the translation does, but I believe Sieburt was matching the intention. Even though I don't know French, I liked having the original facing and kept looking at it for syllables and rhymes and seeing how the English compared.
I had no idea about Louise Labé before picking this up and just grabbed it because it showed up on a keyword search for Sappho, but I really enjoyed it, and really enjoyed learning about Labé.
I had no idea about Louise Labé before picking this up and just grabbed it because it showed up on a keyword search for Sappho, but I really enjoyed it, and really enjoyed learning about Labé.
September 5, 2017
I LOVED this! Labés poetry sings across the ages about the dysfunctional heart plagued by unrequited and betrayed passion and love. The fact that she was somewhat of a warrior bard appeals to me personally.
May 29, 2025
Louise’s lyre labia plucks lips nimbly out-dancing Petrarchan tunes. For in her heart stirred imagery that far surpassed the melodies of men’s exhaustive fumes. To this day it is claimed she was feigned. What’s next? Sappho too?
February 3, 2019
"Inconstant Love is my most constant guide"
January 3, 2023
Beautiful poetry that charms you from line to line. She is expressive without the trite analogy of her male predecessors.
Read
July 5, 2023I think it was Hell that decreed this storm,
Devising my shipwreck from afar.
Devising my shipwreck from afar.
October 5, 2023
so beautiful! sonnets 18 and 24 and elegies 1 and 3 were my favorites
March 5, 2024
3.5
this was just good. i’m happy uni made me read this though
this was just good. i’m happy uni made me read this though
October 6, 2016
Loiuse Labe's biography and the speculation surrounding her identity and the authorship of her work is just as fascinating and fantastical as her poetry - what an intriguing, inspiring and enigmatic woman. Her spirited sonnets range from entertaining to devastating, brimming with the lust and longing associated with often unrequited love. I want to know more about The Fair Roper...
February 25, 2025
I was introduced to Louise Labé last year - a site on FaceBook posted one of her poems (Sonnet 18, "Kiss me, rekiss me, & kiss me again") on Valentines Day, as a promotion for a reissue of their English translation. I was hooked. A 16th-century quasi-feminist (I could imagine her penning "A Room of One's Own" 300 years before Woolf), Labé was also a romantic, and her vividly sensual writing is remarkable, especially so given her lifetime and experience. Her works were published in her lifetime as well - in French, obviously, hence the need for a translation. This slim volume of sonnets and elegies represents nearly her entire works (there is one other essay about the folly of love, but I couldn't find it in English), and so is a quick read, but very stirring and lively. The footnotes and other academic bits are interesting but not required - the poems really speak for themselves.
May 7, 2014
Don't let my four star rating fool you, it just means that it's no Dante's Devine Comedy, but these poems are not to be missed! If you like Sappho, Edna St. Vincent Millay, or sonnets and elegies this book is an endless source of enjoyment.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews