Sonnet XXIV by Louise Labé

Sonnet XXIV

by Louise Labé

Do not blame me, ladies, if I have loved,

If I have felt a thousand burning torches,

A thousand labors, a thousand biting pains.

If I have worn out my days in weeping,

Alas! let my name not be insulted by you.

If I have erred, my penalties are at hand;

Do not embitter their violent barbs,

But consider that love, coming at the right moment,

Without offering Vulcan as an excuse for your ardor,

Without accusing the beauty of Adonis,

Will be able, if he wishes, to plunge you even more deeply in love.

With less justification than I have,

And with a stranger and stronger passion.

And take care not to be even more unhappy!

Il bacio, Francesco Hayez (1859, Milan, Italy)

Yes, I have paired an Italian painting from the 1800s with a French poet writing in the 1500s. But come on--this painting? That poem? A match made in sexy heaven.

I found this poem in a 1969 anthology of French poets, and Labé is the only woman in the book. The first sentence of her biography begins by calling her beautiful, and then mentions that she was a scholar, a linguist, a horsewoman, a feminist, a literary hostess, and "a touching poet." She only published one book of poetry, and that collection is mostly sonnets.

These poems focus on her "dissatifaction with women's ordinary domestic duties" and the speaker's love of men. Although married to a much older man, as per her father's will, and then widowed when she was young, Labé had at least one affair while she was married and was also not one to sit at home much after her husband died.

Hence this poem, her admonishment of the women who judge her. In French, it follows the traditional pattern of Italian sonnets of the time. Translated, it of course loses the rhyme scheme and (I assume) some of the meter.

No matter. Its message is the same: don't judge me, my punishment for sinning is coming, but I enjoyed falling in love and having sex with beautiful men. There's mention of two mythological gods--Vulcan (the god of fire in Roman mythology) and Adonis (in Greek mythology, the god of beauty and desire). Very apt references.

Since women are still judged for their sexual behavior (it does not seem to matter what that behavior is--lots of sex, none at all, enjoying it, hating it, lesbian, bisexual, boring, kinky, etc.), this poem remains relevant. To have been written in the early 1500s is remarkable. Not that women were ticked off about being judged (this not not remarkable at all), but that a woman expressed her anger about it in a published book, a permanent testament to her reaction.

The book I found this poem in is Introduction to French Poetry: A Dual-Language Book, edited by Stanley Appelbaum (no translator is mentioned, so I assume it was Appelbaum), published by Dover. There is not much out there about Labé, and much is contested, but you can head to Wikipedia for a bit more on the poet.