Circles of Love: Platonism in Clément Marot's Temple de Cupido

Temple de Cupido, composed by Clément Marot in 1513-14, narrates a quest for love that is not susceptible to change – Ferme Amour. Some scholars consider this poem too artificial, imitative or immature (Pierre Jourda and C. A. Mayer).¹ Other critics examine only one meaning of love: the agapè of the Christians (Edwin Duval, Cynthia Skenazi, Gérard Defaux). In my reading, I would like to show that the poem brings out all the possible meanings of the world love, the classical and the Christian. Lustful erotic love morphs into individualistic artistic creativity, artistic creativity changes into the selfless love of God. The critics failed to acknowledge and to explain how the various meanings of love, belonging to different philosophical systems, coexist peacefully in one allegorical domicile – the temple of Cupid. Is it not surprising that the narrator (the Pilgrim) sets out to find, and finds, perfect love after falling in love with a woman? And is it not surprising that the Pilgrim leaves on a quest for a nobler love to flee Cupid (or Eros in Greek), but finds this superior love in Cupid's own home? Finally, how to explain that Cupid's worshippers are poets?

I would like to read Marot's poem as a map of Plato's conception of love, accompanied by a Christian legend (or commentary). Diotima, the character of Plato's Symposium identifies love as the springboard to individual progress: for outstanding individuals, love for the beautiful person can grow into artistic creativity and into longing for the divine and absolute beauty. While in Plato the meanings of love can be represented hierarchically, as a ladder, in Marot these meanings become the three concentric spheres, which compose the Temple de Cupido. Erotic love is the outer sphere of the temple. As the hero penetrates deeper into the temple, he observes that Cupid also awakens in his worshipers the love of art. In the choir (cueur), the central point of the temple located between the nave and the altar, the hero discovers a yet nobler love – Christian agape. The voyage ends in a yet deeper sanctuary: Cupid's temple reveals itself to be the poet's own cueur, or heart.

The poem is narrated in the first person and is composed of 539 lines. The imaginary voyage of the hero, who calls himself the Pilgrim, can be divided in five stages.

1. 1. Pilgrim, escaping Cupid, sets out to find Ferme Amour, or true love vv. 1-98

2. 2. Pilgrim enters Cupid's temple and describes its rituals as the love of art vv. 99-408

3. 3. Pilgrim describes the rituals of Cupid's temple as anxiety and madness vv. 409-484

4. 4. Pilgrim finds true love together with the royal couple in the temple's choir vv. 485-535

5. 5. Pilgrim discovers that true love is found in his own heart vv. 536-539

The poem opens to show Nature awakening from sleep and Cupid surveying his obedient subjects. Taking notice of the hero, Cupid wounds him with his arrow. To spite Cupid and the beautiful lady who did not reciprocate his feelings, the hero flees. He sets out to find the divine lady, "une haulte Deesse" (60) which he calls Ferme Amour: "la chaste colombelle, / Fille de la paix" (77-78). He searches high and low, but Ferme Amour is nowhere to be found. The people he asks on his way respond that true love was last seen here on earth a thousand years or more ago ("Mille ans, ou plus, y a" v. 82).

Surprisingly, the hero (who calls himself the Pilgrim) conceives a plan to find true love in the abode of the same perfidious god of erotic love, Cupid, whom he had chosen to flee.

. . . Et si deliberayPour rencontrer celle Dame pudique,De m'en aller au Temple CupidiqueEn m'esbatant: car j'euz en esperanceQue là dedans faisoit sa demeurance.

(90-95)

What gives the Pilgrim the hope that he will find true love in the citadel of Cupid, or erotic love? Time and...