The segment on gardens.
Those are the lines which Maurice Scève devoted to the pleasure garden in his poem Microcosme of 1562:
En sillons recouverts après être semée;
Les jardins agencer en maints lieux tournoyés
De promenoirs croisés de berceaux voutoyés,
D’herbes, plantes semés communes et satives,
Et odorantes fleurs de mille couleurs vives.
Fontaines par canaux et marbres décorantes
Embellissaient le lieu, plaisamment murmurantes;
Gentille invention et artifice beau,
De loin conduire en pente, et puis remonter l’eau,
Qui distillait un cours d’un doux bruit somnolent,
Toujours continuel en son gravement lent;
Lequel en maint endroit, par assidu office,
Apportait au jardin et plaisance et service.
The long encyclopaedic poem, Microcosme, treats of the whole world, in a total of three thousand and three lines. I shall first give the main meaning of this extract, line by line. Following which, I will try my hand at a translation into English. 7 (I shall refer to the lines with their last two digits).
The very first line (30) artfully evokes, without naming her explicitly, Earth as a feminine entity. After being seeded, she was tilled and furrowed. Which translates more or less as:
“In furrows covered after she was seeded” 8
In the second line (31), the poet starts his description of the contemporary gardens he was familiar with. “To design gardens which in many places are rounded.” The two verbs, agencer and tournoyer, contrast and reinforce one another.
Agencer, a cognate of English words such as “agent” and “agency,” has a meaning of “putting together, arranging”, hence my choice of the verb “to design” in translation. Tournoyer is a bit trickier and more problematic. Tourner has a primary meaning of “to turn.” It has also the technical meaning of rounding a pot on a potter’s wheel. But what Scève is really communicating here with “tournoyer” is a physical description of gardens which, in many of their spots, include a rounded element, be it a parterre, a fountain, or a group of trees.
Line 32 brings in garden alleys. It calls them promenoirs, i.e., walkways meant for strolling. These alleys intersect one another. They seem as if they were vaulted, in the architectural manner of the nave of a cathedral. The technical term, voûte en berceau, is directly referred to by the expression berceaux voutoyés. With the literal meaning of a “cradle vault”, it is rendered into English as a “barrel vault”. 9,10
We are to understand that the alleys are lined with trees. These are tall trees, their branches are cut and their growth is directed toward capping the alleys in the manner of a church roof. A plausible translation of 32 is thus:
“With crisscrossing alleys crowned with barrel vaults,”
Lines 33 and 34 proceed with the description of these alleys. They are bordered with grassy lawns, sown plants, both of common varieties, presumably wild, as well as sown varieties, offering both their smells and thousands of vivacious colours. These paired lines might be rendered into English as:
“Grassy, adorned with plants either common or sown,
With odoriferous flowers of multitudinous vivacious colours.”
The next pair of lines, 35 and 36, introduce fountains, this key feature of the Renaissance garden 11 together with streams, canals and waterfalls: 12
“Fountains, decorative by their canals and their marbles
Embellished the place, with their pleasurable whispering;”
This literal translation loses the power of the rhyme between the two present participles, décorantes and murmurantes; which, in English, correspond to the progressive form “decorating” and “whispering.” Hence an improved translation might be:
“Fountains, by canals and marbles decorating
Embellished the place with their pleasurable whispering;”
Another issue is how best to translate plaisamment, an adverb in the French original. Should it be rendered as the rather flat “pleasant” or as the slightly more elaborate “pleasurable?” The direct equivalent of plaisamment is “pleasing.” Hence, my third attempt at rendering 35-36:
“Fountains, by canals and marbles decorating
Embellished the place, pleasingly whispering;”
For the lines that follow, 37-40, my suggested rendering into English is:
“A lovely invention and a beautiful artifice,
Bringing from afar down a slope and then raising water,
That trickled into a stream of the soft somnolent noise,
Ever continual in its slow bass sound;”
The verb, distiller, had in the sixteenth century the meaning of a liquid condensing in a still, drop by drop or in a steady small flow. This explains my choice of “ to trickle” for translating it.
The last two lines of this excerpt, 41 and 42, continue the description of the little music from the running water:
“Which everywhere, in its assiduous office
Brought to the garden both agreement and service.”
If we finally put together those various segments, the following English translation results:
“In furrows covered after she was seeded
With crisscrossing alleys crowned with barrel vaults,
Grassy, adorned with plants either common or sown,
With odoriferous flowers of multitudinous vivacious colours.
Fountains, by canals and marbles decorating
Embellished the place, pleasingly whispering;
A lovely invention and a beautiful artifice,
Bringing from afar down a slope and then raising water,
That trickled into a stream of the soft somnolent noise,
Ever continual in its slow bass sound;
Which everywhere, in its assiduous office
Brought to the garden both agreement and service.”