Kisses, Contradictions, and the Prince of Poets

 

Imagine walking through the gardens of the Loire in spring. Roses climb the stone walls, the air smells of damp earth and lilac, and in the great houses of France, poets are writing about love — the kind that burns and freezes at the same time.

It is the middle of the sixteenth century, and Europe is drunk on an Italian invention: Petrarchism. Born two hundred years earlier in the verses of Francesco Petrarca, it’s more than just poetry. It’s a whole way of thinking about love — a finely tuned language of sighs and sonnets, in which the beloved is beautiful, unreachable, and the cause of exquisite pain. To write a love poem is to join a game with strict rules: the woman is angelic yet cruel, the poet a willing sufferer, and the emotions twist themselves into neat antitheses — “I burn, yet I am made of ice.”

The Renaissance adored such games. Imitating great masters — the imitatio — was a mark of skill, and surpassing them — aemulatio — the highest ambition. Petrarch, with his blend of antique elegance and modern sensitivity, became a model as revered as Homer or Virgil. In Italy, Pietro Bembo even declared Petrarch’s style the gold standard for poetry, a kind of linguistic compass all poets should follow.

And then came Pierre de Ronsard.

The Prince of Poets

Born in 1524, Ronsard was the darling of French letters, the “Prince of Poets.” His first major collection, Les Amours (1552–53), seemed at first a perfect homage to Petrarch. There was Cassandre, his Laura — dazzling, distant, and crowned with all the classic superlatives of beauty. There were sonnets that sparkled with mythological allusions, oxymorons, and the polite torments of desire.

But Ronsard couldn’t resist bending the rules.

Where Petrarch kept Laura forever unattainable, Ronsard allowed himself not one beloved, but two. After Cassandre came Marie — warmer, more earthy. Where Petrarch’s love stayed in the realm of dreams, Ronsard let his poems hint at kisses, embraces, the fullness of physical joy. It was a gentle rebellion: still playing the Petrarchan game, but slipping new cards into the deck.

Love and the Temple of the Muses

The opening poem of Les Amours, Vœu (“Vow”), reads like a miniature Renaissance fresco. The poet invokes the Muses, as an epic writer might, and imagines offering them his book like a sacred object in their temple. Alongside it lies the image of his beloved — love and poetry bound together on the altar. Here is Ronsard’s self-portrait: a chosen poet, confident that his verses will live beyond his own time, joining the immortals of literature.

This sense of timelessness was very much of the age. Renaissance poets thought in centuries, not seasons. A good sonnet was not just for a lover’s eyes, but for the admiration of generations to come.

Playing with Contradictions

One of Ronsard’s most playful borrowings comes from Petrarch’s famous Sonetti dei contrari, where love’s paradoxes are stacked line upon line: burning ice, sweet pain, joyful grief. Ronsard keeps the contradictions but loosens the knot — no direct address to the lady, no tortured confessions. It becomes a game of imagery, an art for art’s sake. The rules are still there, but the stakes are lighter.

The Wider Conversation

Not everyone in France adored Petrarch’s elaborate style. Joachim du Bellay, Ronsard’s friend and fellow member of the Pléiade, teased the “painted” Petrarchists and championed a more physical, Ovidian love. Still, even the critics couldn’t escape the system entirely. In the Renaissance, to write about love at all was, in some way, to answer Petrarch.

A Living Tradition

Petrarchism didn’t die with the Renaissance. Shakespeare played with it, German Baroque poets like Martin Opitz transformed it. But in Ronsard’s hands, it was more than a tradition: it was a living language, flexible enough to hold both reverence and mischief, moonlight sighs and sunlit embraces.

Next time you walk in a French garden and see the roses tangled in the stone, think of Ronsard. He learned from the Italians how to tend the trellis — and then let the flowers grow a little wild.

Documentaries on Pierre de Ronsard

Pierre de Ronsard, gentilhomme vendômois (1970)A television film directed by Georges Lacombe, depicting Ronsard’s memories of love amid the landscapes of the Loire—featuring Cassandre, Marie d’Angevine, and Hélène de Surgères 

Pierre de Ronsard (2024/2025 documentary by Patrick Bazin)
Produced for the 500th anniversary of Ronsard’s birth, this colorful portrait (by the CELLF) celebrates the “Prince of Poets” and his enduring influence