existence, this understanding includes the utter emptiness of life. Several verses in the stanzas
which follow continue to sketch the barren internal landscape which connotes the poet’s misery.
The body of this 36-line poem references several details about Ardouin’s life, especially
concerning the death of an older sister the very day of his own birth: “ Car tu me réprouveras,
mon juge, ô Providence,/ Car un papillon noir, le jour de ma naissance,/ Posa sur mon berceau”
(16-18). Throughout the poem, this curse of suffering which has been present since birth is part
of the human experience, but the specific details make it particular to Ardouin. The details cited
about family deaths and personal illness make this the most autobiographical of Ardouin’s
poems, and the pervasive despair is certainly more characteristic of Ardouin’s than Nau’s poetry.
It is no wonder that the turbulence in Ardouin’s life, the sickness and tragedy, bred an attraction
to the melancholy and elegiac expression of Romanticism.
Interestingly, however, all of these traits could also be situated within a biblicaluniversalism of the human condition. Preceding the poem’s beginning, for example, is a quote
from Job, the Old Testament book which recounts the suffering of a righteous man who is
unable, despite his faith in God’s providence, to understand the reasons for the physical and
mental anguish which plague his life. Job is unaware that Satan has asked permission from God
to test Job’s faith by inflicting physical and emotion pain. He is also unaware that God has
agreed to allow Satan to do anything to Job except take his life. The subject in Ardouin’s poem,
like Job, hopes for a death to alleviate his suffering, but this wish is not fulfilled within the space
of the text. The poem ends with a wish for death, equated with happiness. The subject declares
that no angel will come to rescue him and then concludes:
Non, de tout cela rien! Vivre ou mourir, qu’importe
Vivre jusques au jour où la tombe l’emporte [sic]
Jusqu’à ce que le cœur
Plonge sans remonter et se noie et s’abîme,