The Regrets followed by The Antiquities of Rome and The Dream, Joachim du Bellay

In June 1553, Du Bellay arrived in Rome, which Charles V's troops had sacked twenty-six years earlier; he accompanied his father's cousin, Cardinal Jean Du Bellay, as steward. King Henry II had just entrusted the Cardinal with the mission of negotiating an alliance with the Pope against Charles V. And it was during this stay in Rome that he composed – in addition to Latin poems – most of the Regrets, the Antiquités, and the Songe, which he published in 1558, after his return to Paris. The sonnets of Les Regrets express the lament of an exile in Rome – at the same time as the soul's pilgrimage on earth accompanies the theme of travel; but the elegy is also accompanied by a satire against the papal court. After this, it is no longer the exile that matters in Les Antiquités, but the City itself, its illustrious past as well as its present decay. A vision of a destiny where the sack of 1527 announces a greater punishment: after a reflection on the slow degradation of Rome. Le Songe can then offer the nightmare of a brutal destruction.

Edited by François Roudaut.