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Le Bal Des Ardents

for Joe Salemi

On 28th January 1393 in Paris, Queen Isabeau of
Bavaria, wife of the mad King Charles VI of France,
held a ball which became the scene of a terrible
tragedy when four members of the nobility,
masquerading as “wild men,” were burned to death
when Louis I, Duke of Orléans, brought a flaming
torch to the proceedings. The king, who had been
secretly among their number, narrowly escaped
injury.

Now comes the savage dance of desperate men.
Cavorting in foul suits of feathered flax,
Like men divorced from God’s good grace, like men
Whose mothers laid with beasts, they hoot and howl
In compliment to rough and ribald music,
All to the merriment of those who watch.
Do any recognize their poor deranged
Nebuchadnezzar in that wild host’s number,
Or, in the sad delight of drunkenness,
Have they forgot they have a king at all?

I fear I must be going mad, or else
I am in Hell, condemned to play the queen
To high-born brutes in this sick masquerade.
Behind their garish masks these goblins smirk;
They say I stole our young king’s wits by witchcraft,
That I am Satan’s proud and eager slave
In love with incest or, much worse: the English.
God knows my sins; I am no worse than any
Who would denounce me, yet it seems that we
All dance to our destruction, dizzily,

And to the tenor of our monarch’s song;
That shrill, insistent, idiotic piping
Which serenades a kingdom in collapse
And suffocates all thought, all hope, all prayer.
If only I’d been born a peasant girl
Who hearkened to the quiet country air
I might still hear the voice of angels speak,
So, in cool armour of virginity,
I could, despite my sex, break ardour’s siege
And then restore this realm it rent in sunder.

But now here comes my awful Orléans,
Hale, drunk and holding high a dripping torch
In blithe defiance of all sense of caution.
He pushes through the crowd, possessed of purpose
Perhaps, perhaps to dance with me, and though
His brother is my husband and our King,
All sanity is soon incinerated
By music’s sordid spell, and I’ll pretend
That by our madness, madness might be mended
To dance with Orléans though I be damned.

The grim exertions of the monstrous men
Grow manic as the music swells in discord.
They caterwaul and flail their long-haired limbs
Until the frenzied crowd takes up the dance,
That moment Orléans’ cool eyes find mine,
And jostle him toward the savage circle.
He stops before one—might it be his king?
Perhaps to search the face, he lifts his light
And drops upon the figure’s flaxen cheek
One tear of flame which sparks a wild inferno.

.

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Shaun C. Duncan is a picture framer and fine art printer who lives in Adelaide, South Australia.

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20 Responses

  1. Paul Freeman

    A chilling (and educative) narrative poem. The teller of the tale is well drawn, too. We’re in her head the whole time.

    Thanks for the read, Shuan.

    Reply
    • Shaun C. Duncan

      Thank you for taking the time to read it, Paul. I’m glad you enjoyed it.

      Reply
  2. Allegra Silberstein

    Great poem…love “we dance to our destruction dizzily”.

    Reply
  3. Roy Eugene Peterson

    Wow! Such a fiery bacchanalian event with transgender-type travesty turned into a wicked temporal tragedy. Transposing the time to the present, I would applaud such an outcome. There truly is great imagery and glaring warnings in an such an awesome classical poem.

    Reply
    • Shaun C. Duncan

      Thank you, Roy. It was truly a hellish scene which seemed to be a great allegory for our current state of affairs.

      Reply
  4. Margaret Coats

    The monstrous tale reads very smoothly, Shaun, which enables us to appreciate your incendiary choice of words and images. You surprise us with making Queen Isabeau the speaker. She fully understands the foul and fiery nature of the event at which she is hostess–although the thoughts in these five stanzas precede the inferno itself. You seem to reserve it (rather than describe it) as retribution for the state of affairs that makes it possible.

    The foreshadowing of Joan of Arc in stanza 3 is amazing. Saint Joan (born about 20 years after Le Bal des Ardents) is everything you make Isabeau wish to be. I recall that there was some prophecy about France being betrayed by a crone and rescued by a maid. Years after the event you describe here, the older Isabeau was one of those responsible for the treaty delivering the French crown to descendants of Henry V of England (who had married a daughter of Isabeau and Charles) in preference to her own son Charles VII, ultimately crowned as a result of Joan’s victories.

    As an inveterate numerologist, I have to say that your stanzas would have been considered, in France at the time of which you write, square stanzas (10 lines of 10 syllables per line). The extra syllable in feminine endings does not count, nor does any elision or substitution. The entire perfect pattern is what matters, and with five 10-line stanzas, the entire poem presents the jubilee number. If you recall the Biblical jubilee year, that was when things should return to original order.

    Please excuse me for ending my comment with a translation of mine, of a poem by the Louis d’Orleans, who set the fire going at Le Bal des Ardents. This is a single stanza of a 50-line octosyllabic poem in which he castigates defenders of falsity in love.

    Most humbly, with my little art
    I ask those who have defended
    This pestilent stance to depart
    From a position attended
    By evils base and unbounded.
    Do not desire the hatred bought
    By those with cold, hard hearts distraught.
    Regnault, Chambrillac, most unfit
    For knights is that game of love’s rot,
    Because no good can come of it.

    Reply
    • Shaun C. Duncan

      I’m glad I was able to surprise you! Joe suggested the topic in a comment on my previous poem about Charles VI and I vowed to take it on without giving the matter much thought. After a brief meditation on the subject, Isabeau seemed the most logical choice of narrator, particularly given her personal and symbolic connections to Joan of Arc. It often seems that history truly is written in rhyme.

      I always love to hear your musings on numerology in poetry. In my Nero poem, published last year, I chose to confine the monolgue to 66 lines divied into 6 stanzas for obvious reasons, but in this case I hadn’t given the matter much thought beyond the fact that I wanted it to be the same as my poem on Charles VI.

      I didn’t know Orleans was a poet, so thank you for including the translation. I’d considered writing a third monologue from his perspective but I think that’ll go on the backburner for now.

      Reply
  5. Joseph S. Salemi

    Shaun, thank you for the dedication. I am honored.

    This incident of the burning dancers is one of those historical events that by sheer strangeness and unexpectedness lends itself to intensely descriptive narration. As Margaret says, you have an “incendiary choice of words and images,” which is exactly what is required by the subject.

    What stands out is the palpable anger of the Queen — hatred of the spectacle and the brutish dancers, contempt for her inept husband, resentment at the rumors against herself, fury over the political condition of France, and finally a highly focused rage against the Duke of Orleans, whom she seems to see as a deliberate agent of trouble and treason. We are given the story not so much of the fiery event, but rather of one silently infuriated woman who knows much more about the context of the conflagration than anyone else does.

    Her words about “dancing” with Orleans (a thought? a temptation? an act?) add a touch of Machiavellian intrigue to the poem. Will she take him as a dance partner, despite her revulsion? If her husband is killed in the fire, will his brother become king or regent, and will it be in her interest to suck up to him? These are the kinds of questions which very likely would go through the mind of a member of the royal family in the cutthroat world of medieval politics. According to the poem’s speaker, Orleans deliberately started the blaze by letting a flame from his torch fall upon a dancer. An act of treason disguised as an accident? Not an uncommon occurrence, to be sure.

    To me this is a poem about hard, cold politics, and how a Queen would have to be on her guard at every moment, watching everyone around her.

    Reply
    • Shaun C. Duncan

      Since you suggested the subject I felt the dedication was only fair so you might share any praise or blame which might follow its publication. I must thank you for the suggestion as it was an enjoyable and valuable exercise to commit to writing about a subject without any idea of how I was going to tackle it.

      My understanding is that Isabeau is still reviled in France so I wanted to write something of an apology for her. She can see clearer than those around her exactly what is going on but can feel herself being drawn into the insanity. Some sort of alliance with Orleans would be extremely dangerous but her only hope of survival. Plus, since she’s in her late teens and her husband has gone insane, she’s feeling sexually frustrated – hence the repetition of the word “men” three times in the opening lines.

      Reply
  6. Monika Cooper

    It is a wonderful poem, Shaun, and like Margaret, I especially loved the queen’s prophetic unnamed interior vision of Joan of Arc. Wish I knew more history, better.

    Public figures are always contending with their own images, often false images, set up against them by enemies.

    Reply
    • Shaun C. Duncan

      Thank you, Monika. Her prophetic fantasy of herself as Joan was the lynch-pin of the entire poem for me. That Isabeau found herself in an environment so hellishly corrupt that she could not hear the voices of the angels and felt herself succumbing to the same madness she saw in those around her seemed to resonate with the current era.

      Reply
  7. Joseph S. Salemi

    Isabeau is reviled in France the same way that Dermot MacMurrough is still hated in Ireland for having invited the Anglo-Normans to enter and interfere. But her later acceptance of English rule (and the disinheriting of her son) may have been the only feasible political move at the time. There are no permanent loyalties in politics — only permanent interests.

    Reply
    • Shaun C. Duncan

      I did the best I could to meet the challenge Joe set me. It was a good learning exercise to work with a subject someone else suggested.

      Reply
  9. Adam Sedia

    Wow. This is a wonderful achievement, among the best works I’ve read here. You’ve managed to transform a historical event into an astute analysis of not only our current situation, but of the human condition more generally. And your craftsmanship is remarkable, not only for the richness of your language, but your deft and subtle use of meter. This was both insightful and delightful, to paraphrase Horace’s maxim.

    Reply
  10. Shaun C. Duncan

    Thank you for being so generous with your praise, Adam. I find historical monologues like this to be a rich source of inspiration and a great way to approach universal or contemporary concerns. History is definitely written in rhyme.

    I’m still trying to catch up on SCP-related matters at the moment, but I’m looking forward to listening to your recent interview with Andrew Benson Brown.

    Reply
  11. David Whippman

    Presumably this event was the inspiration for Poe’s tale “Hop Frog,” in which the king and his courtiers, disguised as apes, were burned.

    Reply

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