Villon left Paris shortly after the incident to find sanctuary in the provinces. Meanwhile, some of his criminal compatriots formed a small gang and conducted a crime spree throughout the north of France. When the authorities began arresting and hanging his friends, Villon was also accused and banished from Paris. He wandered for several years, and sought refuge with the Duke of Orleans, a fellow poet and admirer of his work, who eventually helped secure Villon's pardon.
And then in , after being once again imprisoned for a minor crime and then pardoned by the newly crowned King Charles VII, Villon composed what is considered his masterpiece, Le Testament. The over two thousand verses are propelled by the immediate possibility of a death sentence for Villon by hanging and balance the extremes of anger and religious fervor. But, Villon's luck finally seemed to have run out when he was once again arrested for brawling; this time he was sentenced to the gallows.
At the time, Villon was only 34 years old. He left the city and was never heard from again. National Poetry Month. Materials for Teachers Teach This Poem. Poems for Kids. Poetry for Teens. Villon became a student in arts, perhaps at about twelve years of age. Little is known about his life for the next few years, but on June 5, , the first major recorded incident of his life occurred.
In the company of a priest and a girl, he met a Breton, Jean le Hardi, a master of arts, who was also with a priest, Philippe Sermoise. A scuffle broke out, daggers were drawn and Sermaise, who is accused of having threatened and attacked Villon and drawn the first blood, not only received a dagger-thrust in return, but a blow from a stone, which struck him down deadly.
Villon fled, and was sentenced to banishment — a sentence which was remitted in January by a pardon from King Charles VII after he received the second of two petitions which made the claim that Sermoise had forgiven Villon before he died.
Villon claimed to have finished the poem at Christmas, while at the same time he met up with a number of acquaintances and later stole gold crowns from a coffer at the College of Navarre, where the community kept their funds. In Le Lais , Villon shows himself composing the poem during the same hours he was orchestrating the robbery. At some later time, Villon is known to have been in Bourges and in the Bourbonnais, where he possibly stayed at Moulins.
But throughout the summer of he was once more in prison. He was not released until October 2, when the prisons were emptied because King Louis XI was passing through. Kungliga biblioteket in Stockholm, Sweden. Now, Villon composed what is considered his masterpiece, Le Testament. The over two thousand verses are propelled by the immediate possibility of a death sentence for Villon by hanging and balance the extremes of anger and religious fervor.
At the time, Villon was only 34 years old. A complete English translation of Villon's surviving works, with extensive notes, was published by Anthony Bonner in Translations of three other poems by Villon, plus translations of two into rhyming cant by William Ernest Henley can be read on Anthony Weir 's "Beyond-the-Pale" website [1]. Villon's work enjoyed substantial popularity in the decades after they were written.
In , a printed volume of his poems was published by Pierre Levet. This edition was almost immediately followed by several others. The most commonly featured motifs that can be found in Villon's poetry are " carpe diem ", " ubi sunt ", " memento mori " and " danse macabre ".
See also Ezra Pound 's musical setting of Villon's Le Testament as a work of literary criticism concerning the relationship of words and music in next category below, under Depictions. Though largely fictitious there is no evidence Villon and Louis even met , this proved to be a long-running success for the actor Sir George Alexander and a perennial on stage and screen for the next several decades.
Though not officially based on the McCarthy play, it draws on the same fictitious notions of relations between Villon and Louis. In the operetta, however, Villon is appointed king for twenty-four hours, and must solve all of Louis XI's political problems in that amount of time. Bertolt Brecht 's Baal was written from to Some of the lyrics Brecht wrote for "Threepenny Opera" are translations or paraphrases of poems by Villon.
Ezra Pound 's opera Le Testament takes passages from Villon's Le Testament for its libretto to demonstrate radical changes in the relationship of words and music under Villon's pen, changes that Pound believed profoundly influenced English poetry. The opera was first composed by the poet in London, —, with the help of pianist Agnes Bedford. It underwent many revisions to better notate the rhythmic relationships between words and music.
These included a concert version for the Salle Pleyel in Paris in , a rhythmically complicated score edited by George Antheil in , a hybrid version of these earlier scores for broadcast by the BBC in , and a final version fully edited by Pound in In a short story by Robert Louis Stevenson , A lodging for the night , Francis Villon anglicized spelling , searching for shelter on a freezing winter night, knocks randomly at the door of an old nobleman.
Invited in, they talk long into the night. Villon openly admits to being a thief and a scoundrel, but argues that the chivalric values upheld by the old man are no better. The story appears in the collection New Arabian Nights He writes "He found in that poet's many works the 'beautiful male'" and states he feels like he is waiting to be hanged like Villon, unable to keep fighting in life. In Osamu Dazai 's "Villon's Wife" a young woman who is married to a dilletante comes to understand his destitute ways when she takes on the duty of paying off his debts.
The ne'er-do-well is a womanizing writer who is unsuccessful. The setting is occupation period Japan. He is a minor character in Tim Powers ' The Stress of Her Regard , having lived into the 19th century through his association with the vampiric Lamia of the novel.
Later she reads a few lines of " Ballad for a Bridegroom " to Leslie Howard's character, and in the final scene she again quotes " Ballad for a Bridegroom.
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