EDMUND R. BROWN, ed.  The Book of Fran‡ois Villon.  Brookline
Village, MA:  Branden Press, reprint.


As it has been demonstrated many times before, the only
immortality is to leave artifact in place for posterity.  The
artifact can he sculpted, painted, built or written.  Evidence is
given here:  a tiny, private printing press in Massachusetts has
provided us with the thoughts of a man who live some five-hundred
years ago.
      Footnotes would definitely be appreciated for this work, as
none of the translations were done in this century.  Still, some
ideas are hard to miss:
      Item, to Baron de Grigny
      The ward and keeping of Nygeon
      ...
      Three strokes of a withy well laid on 
      And prison-lodging all his life (23)

      It is interesting to note that while Villon was an unsavory
fellow (murderer? robber? drunkard?) he knew, whether from text
or oral history, names to use in his lovely "The Ballad of Dead
Ladies."  This is perhaps his best work in this collection.  He
reminds us of our unavoidable mortality, and of the inherent
natural-ness of the impending event:
      Where is Echo, beheld of no man,
      Only heard on river and mere,--
      She whose beauty was more than human? . . .
      But where are the snows of yesteryear? (31)

He picks up this thread again in "The Complaint of the Fair
Armoress:"  
      Like fagots on a heap we be,
      Round fires soon lit, soon quenched and done;
      And we were so sweet, even we! (38)

Absolutely wonderful.   Here we have the awareness of our end,
and the knowledge of our own human value.  Still, Villon stays
out of the trap of syrupy sentimentality.  He prefers, and is
served well by his cool observation.   This observation allows
him to see that not all that follow his vices have a poet's
heart.  Of the players of dangerous games he writes:
      And even the winner, for his due,
      Hath not a Dido for his wife.
      Foolish and lewd I hold him who
      Doth for so little risk his life. (57)

Again, the acute awareness of the fleeting nature of life, the
sense of fragile gift of existence wherein even the roguish life,
lived with self-respect and self-awareness, can be full and
worthy of recording.


Jason Carr
http://www.mousetrap.net/~mouse/uta/