Of Clairac origins, the poet Théophile de Viau was a black star of French literature. Coming from a Protestant family, close to the powerful, sometimes to the king himself, he was also chased by the bigots. Forced to flee to England in 1619, he was nevertheless entrusted with a secret mission by the young king Louis XIII during the siege of Clairac in 1621; siege where – besieging – he finds himself confronted with his brother Paul, Huguenot captain – besieged. A year later, denounced by the Jesuits following the publication of the Parnasse satyrique, he was condemned to be burned alive; arrested while trying to flee France, he was imprisoned for nearly two years at the Châtelet. It was there that he wrote - among other things - the deeply moving Letter to his brother, a long poem composed of 33 decasyllabic verses.
“This letter, rightly famous for the stanzas where the poet evokes with nostalgia the marvelous nature of his childhood and adolescence, is inspired, in reality, not only by this theme, but also by that of the fraternal affection that he deeply felt at the time of his disgrace and a feeling of resentment against those who, by their maneuvers, made him precipitate in the miserable condition where he is now. One can even say that, quantitatively, the main part of this Letter has all the characteristics of a pamphlet: the feeling of anger and hatred against the Jesuits, his implacable persecutors, reaches accents of such violence that one does not find the equivalent of it in any other of his texts.” (Théophile de Viau pamphleteer, communication of Guido Saba to the XXXVth congress of the International Association of French Studies, 1984).
Let's find the 4 dizains where he evokes the land of the confluence and its richness, whose flavors continue to inebriate us…
Encore une fois à ma vie
Je paîtrai ma dent et mes yeux
Du rouge éclat de la pavie ;
Encore ce brugnon muscat
Dont le pourpre est plus délicat
Que le teint uni de Caliste,
Me fera d’un œil ménager
Étudier dessus la piste
Qui me l’est venu ravager.
Les fraises à couleur de flammes
Où nos bergers font des écots
Qui seraient ici bons aux dames,
Et ces figues et ces melons
Dont la bouche des aquilons
N’a jamais su baiser l’écorce,
Et ces jaunes muscats si chers
Que jamais la grêle ne force
Dans l’asile de nos rochers.
Leurs rouges pommes entrouvertes,
Où le ciel comme à ses lauriers
Garde toujours des feuilles vertes ;
Je verrai ce touffu jasmin
Qui fait ombre à tout le chemin
D’une assez spacieuse allée,
Et la parfume d’une fleur
Qui conserve dans la gelée
Son odorat et sa couleur.
Je leur verrai couper les herbes ;
Je verrai quelque temps après
Le paysan couché sur les gerbes ;
Et comme ce climat divin
Nous est très libéral de vin,
Après avoir rempli la grange
Je verrai du matin au soir
Comme les flots de la vendange
Écumeront dans le pressoir.
