Jean-Antoine de BAÏF. Complainte Sur le Trespas... Lot 60

Jean-Antoine de BAÏF. Complainte Sur le Trespas du feu Roy Charles IX. Booklet in-4, red half-chagrin, 5-ribbed spine ( Binding from the second half of the 19th century). Brunet, I-613 // De Backer, 428 // Tchemerzine-Scheler, I-285. (6 f.) / A4, B2 / 157 x 216 mm. First edition. Far removed from his poetic innovations and his work on the French language, Baïf sacrifices himself in this lament to the work of the court on the occasion of the death of Charles IX, who died on May 30, 1574, shortly before his twenty-fourth birthday. Nevertheless, his poetry takes on accents of great sincerity. On the death of his father Lazare de Baïf, the sixteen-year-old Jean-Antoine de Baïf had been appointed secretary to the Chamber of the future Charles IX, whose benevolent interest he retained until the latter's death. Throughout the thirty-three octosyllabic sixains that make up this Complainte, which is very classic if we consider the poet's other productions, he evokes Henry II, François II and Catherine de Médicis, without evading the violent deaths and civil unrest of this period of religious wars. The lament ends with a plea to Poland: D'une absence trop eloignee / ne tien nostre Prince Henry: / Sa douce terre le demande. Large margins, ruled in red ink. Minor rubbing to corners.