Pierre Patrix
Pierre Patrix, seigneur de Sainte-Marie, Norman gentleman (1583 – 6 October 1671), was a French poet.
Patrix was born in 1583 at
Patrix's father had envisioned a career in law for his son. However, after defending his thesis before the
The prince's bright and cheerful court in residence at
Patrix always followed his employer's fortunes, and after his demise, in 1660, he attached his fate to that his widow, Marguerite of Lorraine, becoming her first squire. All Patrix got for his long and loyal service of Gaston of Orléans was the government of the county and castle of Limours, Montlhéry, with an accommodation at the palace of Orléans and some rather insignificant pension. He even had to serve a local member of the aristocracy who was trying to deprive him of his command to benefit one of hits own cronies, with the divine commandment, "You shall not set your desire on your neighbor's house or land."
Patrix was gifted with a very natural and markedly pleasant spirit. He loved nothing more than don that air of silliness, which he had brought from his native Caen where it was very much in vogue. This, added to a Norman accent he never could shake off, made for a brilliant conversation, and this perhaps was no little part of his reputation. Huet reported hearing Patrix boast he had taught Voiture how to be silly, something for which Voiture indeed was known.
Patrix was renowned for his witty repartees, many of which have been preserved. For instance, when people would talk about science in gatherings, he would tell those around him, he was going to taste their wine. After he suffered a severe illness at the age of eighty, his friends rejoiced at his recovery, and urged him to get back up: "Alas! gentlemen, he replied, I need not bother to get dressed."
As he was on the end of his life, and concerned about death, he wrote, a few days before his end, those famous lines:
Je songeais cette nuit, que de mal consumé
Côte à côte d'un pauvre on m'avait inhumé ;
Mais ne pouvant souffrir ce fâcheux voisinage.
En mort de qualité, je lui tins ce langage.
Retire toi, Coquin, va pourrir loin d'ici,
Il ne t'appartient pas de m'approcher ainsi.
Coquin! ce m'a-t-il dit, d'une arrogance extrême,
Va chercher tes coquins ailleurs, coquin toi même.
Ici tous sont égaux, je ne te dois plus rien,
Je suis sur mon fumier, comme toi sur le tien.[2]
Patrix is mentioned in one of Scarron's poems:
Et Patrix,
Quoique Normand, homme de prix.[3]
Patrix left a La Miséricorde de Dieu sur la conduite d'un pécheur pénitent, avec quelques autres pieces chrestiennes, le tout composé et mis en lumiere par luy-mesme, en réparation du passé,[4] a collection he dedicated to the Duke of Orléans. "Ce recueil", Huet wrote in his Les Origines de Caen, "mérite d'être conservé pour sa singularité; car encore que les vers soient sort négligés, languissants, sentent le terroir Normand et le déclin de l'âge, l'on y voit néanmoins briller cet esprit original d'où ils sont partis, et l'on y reconnait un cœur touché d'une piété sincère. (p. 384).[5] Some of Patrix's songs and other poems were collected in the Fourth volume of the Barbin's Compendium. Two pieces by him on the Maid of Orléans, in a Recueil d'inscriptions et vers on this subject, were published in Paris in 1628, in-4°.
A friend of his fellow denizen Malherbe, Patrix had committed several gallant, even quite licentious pieces,[6] in his youth, but at a later age, when the spirit of devotion took him over, he conducted a painstaking search, and burned the most he could, thereafter writing only on spiritual topics.
He died at Paris on 6 October 1671 at age 88, and was buried in the church of the nuns of the Calvaire.
Notes
- ^ "Grand Council of Scoundrelism".
- ^ "I was thinking last night that once illness had gotten the best of me / I had been buried side by side with a pauper. / Unwilling to put up with this inconvenient neighbor, / I spoke thus, like the high-ranking dead that I was: / Go away, you rascal, go and rot away from here / It is not for you to come near me. / Scoundrel! he retorted with an extreme arrogance, / Go get your rogues elsewhere, rogue yourself. / All are equal here, and I owe you nothing, / To each their muck."
- ^ "And Patrix, / Though a Norman, is a worthy man."
- ^ God's mercy on the conduct of a penitent sinner, with a few other Christian pieces, all composed and brought to light her by himself, in atonement for the past, etc.
- ^ "This collection deserves to be preserved for its uniqueness, because although the rhyme is quite neglected, languid, redolent with the Norman tongue and old age, one detects the original spirit that produced it, and one can recognize a heart touched by sincere piety."
- ^ Huet commented that "His poetry is quite original and almost inimitable, of an exquisite flavor."
Sources
- Auguis, Pierre René (1824). Les Poètes françois, depuis le XVIIe jusqu'à Malherbe. Vol. 6. Paris: Crapelet. Retrieved 2010-10-22.
- Niceron, Jean-Pierre (1733). Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire des hommes illustres dans la république des lettres. Vol. 24. Paris: Briasson. Retrieved 2010-10-22.