The "Ballade des dames du temps jadis" ("Ballade of Ladies of Time Gone By") is a Middle French poem by François Villon that celebrates famous women in history and mythology, and a prominent example of the ubi sunt? genre. It is written in the fixed-formballade format, and forms part of his collection Le Testament in which it is followed by the Ballade des seigneurs du temps jadis.
The section is simply labelled Ballade by Villon; the title des dames du temps jadis was added by Clément Marot in his 1533 edition of Villon's poems.
Particularly famous is its interrogative refrain, Mais où sont les neiges d'antan?, an example of the ubi sunt motif,[1] which was common in medieval poetry and particularly in Villon's ballads.[2]
This was translated into English by Dante Gabriel Rossetti as "Where are the snows of yesteryear?",[3] for which he popularized the word "yesteryear" to translate Villon's antan.[4] The French word was used in its original sense of "last year", although both antan and the English yesteryear have now taken on a wider meaning of "years gone by". The phrase has also been translated as "But where are last year's snows?".[5]
The text is from Clement Marot's Œuvres complètes de François Villon of 1533, in the Le Grand Testament pages 34 to 35.
Dictes moy où, n'en quel pays,
Est Flora, la belle Romaine ;
Archipiada, ne Thaïs,
Qui fut sa cousine germaine;
Echo, parlant quand bruyt on maine
Dessus rivière ou sus estan,
Qui beauté eut trop plus qu'humaine?
Mais où sont les neiges d'antan!
Où est la très sage Heloïs,
Pour qui fut chastré et puis moyne
Pierre Esbaillart à Sainct-Denys?
Pour son amour eut cest essoyne.
Semblablement, où est la royne
Qui commanda que Buridan
Fust jetté en ung sac en Seine?
Mais où sont les neiges d'antan!
La royne Blanche comme ung lys,
Qui chantoit à voix de sereine;
Berthe au grand pied, Bietris, Allys;
Harembourges qui tint le Mayne,
Et Jehanne, la bonne Lorraine,
Qu'Anglois bruslerent à Rouen;
Où sont-ilz, Vierge souveraine ?
Mais où sont les neiges d'antan!
Prince, n'enquerez de sepmaine
Où elles sont, ne de cest an,
Qu'à ce refrain ne vous remaine:
Mais où sont les neiges d'antan!
Tell me where, in which country
Is Flora, the beautiful Roman;
Archipiada,[a] or Thaïs
Who was her first cousin; Echo, speaking when one makes noise
Over river or on pond,
Who had a beauty too much more than human?
Oh, where are the snows of yesteryear!
Where is the very wise Héloïse,
For whom was castrated, and then made a monk, Peter Abelard in Saint-Denis?
For his love he suffered this sentence.
Similarly, where is the Queen
Who ordered that Buridan
Be thrown in a sack into the Seine?
Oh, where are the snows of yesteryear!
Prince, do not ask me in the whole week
Where they are - neither in this whole year,
Lest I bring you back to this refrain:
Oh, where are the snows of yesteryear!
In popular culture
The refrain Mais où sont les neiges d'antan? has been quoted or alluded to in numerous works.
In Der Rosenkavalier (1911), the opera by Richard Strauss to an original German libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, the Marschallin asks, in her monologue toward the end of Act 1 as she considers her own, younger self: “Wo ist die jetzt? Ja, such' dir den Schnee vom vergangenen Jahr!” (“Where is she now? Yes, look for the snow of yesteryear.”)
In Bertolt Brecht's 1936 play Die Rundköpfe und die Spitzköpfe (Round Heads and Pointed Heads), the line is quoted as "Wo sind die Tränen von gestern abend? / Wo is die Schnee vom vergangenen Jahr?" ("Where are the tears of yester evening? / Where are the snows of yesteryear?") in "Lied eines Freudenmädchens" (Nannas Lied) ("Song of a joy-maiden [prostitute]" (Nanna's song)); music originally by Hanns Eisler, alternative arrangement by Kurt Weill.[8]
The original 1945 manuscript of the play, “The Glass Menagerie” by Tennessee Williams, contains optional stage directions for projecting the legend “Où sont les neiges d’antan?” on a screen during Amanda's monologue in Scene One where she recounts her (likely exaggerated) past life as a popular Southern belle.
The poem was alluded to in Joseph Heller's novel Catch-22, when Yossarian asks "Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?" in both French and English, Snowden being the name of a character who dies despite the efforts of Yossarian to save him.[9]
James O'Barr wrote "Oú sont les neiges d'antan Villon" in his 1981 graphic novel The Crow" under an image of The Crow lying broken hearted and empty.[11]
In S2:E9 of Downton Abbey, the Dowager Countess of Grantham, played by Dame Maggie Smith, quotes the refrain "Mais où sont les neiges d'antan?" in its original French, when referring to the father of the present Lord "Jinks" Hepworth, who she knew in the 1860s.
^"Archipiada" is thought to be Villon’s misremembering of Alcibiades, a friend of Socrates who was reputed to be a model of beauty, and who in the Middle Ages was therefore assumed to be a woman.[7]
^Rossetti has been said to have coined this word, but the Oxford English Dictionary entry for 'yesteryear' cites a work published over two decades before Rossetti's translation, a citation which, furthermore, suggests the word was already in use.
^Woledge, Brian, ed. (1961). The Penguin Book of French Verse. Vol. 1. Harmondsworth: Penguin. p. 315.
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