The Great Testament by François Villon

First published:La Grand Testament, 1489 (English translation, 1878)

Type of work: Poetry

The Work:

François Villon was a poet of the first order. In his themes and poetic forms, his poetry is characteristically medieval, although many critics consider that the personal element in his poetry gives it a timeless quality. In The Great Testament, Villon’s art reaches its full maturity. His mastery of conventional medieval versification is evident in the use of complex rhyme schemes and verse forms that include the ballade, the rondeau, and the octave (an eight-line stanza). Octaves form the central body of the poem. The ballade, which demands considerable skill in the use of both rhyme and meter, consists of eight to ten lines grouped into three stanzas, each ending with a refrain and followed by a closing stanza (an envoy) of four to seven lines that concludes with the same refrain. Most of Villon’s ballades contain twenty-eight lines, and he uses the same three rhymes in the ballades and the octaves.

In structure, The Great Testament follows the plan of a testamentary will of the period. A brief preamble is followed by a declaration of the poet’s mental and physical state, a statement of his religious faith, the details of how his property is to be distributed to friends, relatives, acquaintances, and even strangers, and instructions as to how and where he is to be buried. This formal device establishes the framework, within which Villon provides a rich body of material interspersed with frequent displays of technical virtuosity.

Villon ranges through a wide variety of moods and subjects without losing the thread of his discourse or the personal focus of his poem. Whatever the subject under discussion, whether harlot, prelate, or profligate, the reader never loses sight of the poem’s central figure, the poet himself, who refers throughout the poem to his own poverty, premature aging, and skirmishes with the law. Much of what is known of Villon’s life, in fact, is taken from these personal references. His poem evokes pity because he is a self-confessed sinner and because he is remorseful and presently suffering the consequences of his former follies. His subject is also universal because he is preoccupied with death throughout the poem. When he is most intensely personal, his appeal is most intense, touching the feelings and sentiments of readers across language barriers and across the ages.

Throughout the poem, a playful, mocking spirit mingles with serious reflection, self-pity, remorse, crude jokes, jibes, and satirical attacks on civil servants, figures of authority, and the clergy. There is also a shift from one subject to another, and the shift is sometimes abrupt. The poet’s mood is always mercurial, but the poem’s unity is sustained by his ever-present voice and his continual references to himself. In the poem, for example, he offers a justification for his criminal activities by relating a story from antiquity in which a pirate explains to Alexander the Great that bad luck, not his own nature, has made him a thief, whereupon Alexander improves the thief’s fortune, and the man is reformed. Villon sees reflected in this tale his own ill-spent life, and he regrets not having an Alexander of his own to help him reform.

Transitions in mood and subject can be seen in the way Villon follows this tale with references to his lost youth and his current poverty, the result, in part, of too little studying and too much pleasure-seeking. A sense of loss runs through the poem, with allusions to great lords and masters, beggars and mendicants; this sense of loss culminates in the ballade whose poignant refrain—“Where are the snows of yesteryear?”—is both particular and universal. Two ballades that follow continue the theme of the uncertainty of fortune and the brevity of life, both subjects often found in medieval literature. In one of the ballades, Villon lists the names of famous rulers who have been carried away by “the wind”—time, death. The fate of these rulers, he continues, serves as a reminder that the exalted and the powerful and those who have “stuffed their faces well” die. His thoughts turn to the plight of women who lose their former beauty to old age. Another ballade portrays these creatures as nothing more than devalued coins.

The thought of female beauty shifts the poet’s attention to the dangers of loving women, for he thinks that they prefer many men to one, and his personal experience with a certain woman is painful proof of this. His ill treatment at the hands of other people is enlarged to include the Bishop of Orleans, who is responsible for much of his suffering.

Wishing, he says, ironically, to defame no one, the poet returns to his main business, the writing of his will. He commences with a serious ballade, bequeathed to his mother, in which he again declares his religious faith. This section, including the ballade, reiterates one of the poem’s major themes: the poet’s relationship with women. At the same time, the tone shifts from the seriousness of Villon’s reference to his “poor mother” to the jocular and to the bawdy. In high spirits, he achieves one of the more impressive technical feats in the poem, a ballade to love in which he not only ends each line with the letter r but also forms an acrostic of the names Francois and Marthe in the first two stanzas (the acrostic of “Villon” is included in the envoy of the previous ballade). The subject of love continues to inspire his technical skills—and his sarcastic playfulness—as he bequeaths to an acquaintance a “lay” (actually, a rondeau), in which he complains that death has deprived him of his beloved.

The mood becomes harsher and the subjects coarser as Villon continues to dispose of his earthly belongings, real or imaginary. He gives to the wife of a wealthy official a “red ass,” he gives wine to someone else, and to others he gives a cheese tart, dice, and a deck of cards. Each item reflects Villon’s feelings of respect or disrespect. The emphasis on food in the bequests—cloves, hams, and milk, for example—befits the portrait of Villon as a poor, starving sinner making peace with the world, and this sustains the poem’s principal undercurrent: the poet’s pathetic condition. At the same time, many of these items have been given a symbolic meaning that pokes fun at the legatees. The more degraded the bequest, the greater the insult, playful or not. In his bequest to the Keeper of the Seals, Villon turns hostile and ironic, and he gives the “worthy man” an official seal that has been “spat upon.”

Perhaps thinking of his own upbringing, the poet expresses a fatherly regard for “his” three orphans—they are to be well schooled, taught manners, and not harshly punished. The poet’s thoughts continue to run in the direction of family as he offers to a newlywed a ballade on the subject of procreation, graciously including an acrostic of the bride’s name. This graceful ballade is counterpointed by a ballade on “spiteful tongues,” which are to be fried in the most repugnant things imaginable, among them feces, blood, ulcers, and sores. In a later ballade, the poet argues that it is better to live at one’s ease than like the fat canon who gorges himself on food and lives sumptuously with “a naked woman.” In another ballade, he praises the ability of Parisian women to speak well. After bequeathing a nearby hill to Montmartre, he is reminded of the chambermaids and the other women of Paris, including Fat Margot, to whom he offers a ballade celebrating the events in a brothel.

In the bequests that follow, Villon returns again to the pleasures to be found where women, food, and drink are plentiful; however, he remains preoccupied with death. He reminds his “comrades in pleasure” that one day they will all die. A ballade emphasizes his point that everything one has will go to the taverns and the girls. Those in power will one day be heaped together in death, which levels high and low alike. Thinking of his own death, the poet offers a song in which he speaks of returning from prison, and he asks whether Fortune is right or wrong if she bears him ill will.

Turning to the disposition of his remains, the poet directs that he be buried in Saint Avoye. The mood, again, is not entirely serious, for the name refers to a convent of nuns, and there is a play on the word avoier, which means “to put on the right road.” The rondeau that follows contains the words that the poet wishes to be spoken over his grave. The words are a plea for eternal rest, and the tone remains playful, thereby undercutting the sincerity of Villon’s final peacemaking gesture, expressed in one of the poem’s final ballades; the ballade has a roll call of the people from whom the poet asks for a pardon. These are, for the most part, people from the poet’s world of the brothel, the jail, and the tavern. He excludes from this group those who have caused him suffering; instead, he wishes them harsh punishment. The final ballade dwells on his difficulties with love. He dies a martyr to it, having been an active participant in love’s battles. His final gesture of raising a glass of dark red wine can be seen as a gesture of defiance or as a salute to the final victor, love.

The fact that Villon disappeared from historical view soon after composing The Great Testament may color the reading of it. Whether or not Villon was actually on the verge of dying while composing the poem will probably never be known. The references to his suffering, ill-spent youth, troubles with the law, and periods of imprisonment take on greater poignancy if the reader believes that they reflect the poet’s actual condition. The Great Testament gains in emotional power and significance if the reader believes it expresses the thoughts of a poet who is about to die.

The Great Testament may be considered from several perspectives: as a lyric poem of considerable power; as a mock will that the poet offers with both irony and sincerity to his audience; and as a masterful display of technical virtuosity in a variety of verse forms. Villon combines all of these strains into a poem that is serious, mocking, rebellious, ribald, self-pitying, sardonic, accusatory, and, for many, unforgettable.

Bibliography

Armstrong, Adrian. “The Testament of François Villon.” In The Cambridge Companion to Medieval French Literature, edited by Simon Gaunt and Sarah Kay. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Provides a detailed analysis of the poem.

Burl, Aubrey. Danse Macabre: François Villon—Poetry and Murder in Medieval France. Stroud, England: Sutton, 2000. Well-received biography of Villon, focusing on the contrast between his sad, tragic life and the genius of his poetry. The extracts from Villon’s work are presented in French, with uncensored English translation.

Fein, David A. François Villon and His Reader. Detroit, Mich.: Wayne State University Press, 1989. Approaches The Great Testament as a reader-oriented work. Seeks to identify the work’s original audience and to compare that audience with later readers. Focuses on the aspects of The Great Testament that call for reader interaction.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. François Villon Revisited. New York: Twayne, 1997. Provides a biographical sketch of Villon and explication of his poetry, devoting three chapters to the sites, characters, and ballades in The Great Testament. Points out patterns of language, themes, changing voices, and other elements of Villon’s poetry.

Freeman, Michael. François Villon in His Works: The Villain’s Tale. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000. Examines Villon’s life and poetry, placing them in the social and historical context of his age. Demonstrates how Villon created his own image in his poetry, manipulating his readers to believe that the former villain had reformed and was deserving of their sympathy and understanding.

Peckham, Robert D. François Villon: A Bibliography. New York: Garland, 1990. A thorough listing of the manuscripts of Villon’s poetry from as early as 1489; identifies the editions that offer some of the best, most detailed, and complete commentaries on Villon’s poetry, including works that examine specific lines.

Taylor, Jane H. M. The Poetry of François Villon: Text and Context. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Analyzes Villon’s poetry, concentrating on its originality and its dialogue with his contemporaries. Argues that Villon’s literary environment was characterized by pleasure in debate and competition, and points out Villon’s place in this milieu. Chapter 2 focuses on The Great Testament.

Villon, François. Complete Poems of François Villon. Translated by Beram Saklatvala. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1968. Attempts to render Villon’s poetry in rhyme and meter. Saklatvala gives a literal, line-by-line translation of the French, following Villon’s rhyme schemes and even using true and slant rhymes when Villon does. Provides a useful introduction and explanatory index by John Fox.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. François Villon: Complete Poems. Edited and translated by Barbara N. Sargent-Baur. Toronto, Ont.: University of Toronto Press, 1994. Original French text alongside the translation, which employs unrhymed stanzas. Provides variant readings of the original text at the bottom of each page. Excellent commentary, as well as extensive notes that not only explain Villon’s meanings and allusions but connect lines and passages to other critical studies.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. The Poems of François Villon. Translated by Galway Kinnell. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977. The original text alongside Kinnell’s translation. Includes textual notes and a critical introduction. The bibliography lists editions, translations, and critical studies of Villon’s poetry.