Axar.az presents the article "Every January" by John Samuel Tieman.

Every January, I wonder where Francois Villon went. I am a historian and a poet. I have a great love for history's poetic rascals. Villon was a thief, murderer, pimp, and poet.

Francois Villon is the best known for his “Testament” and his “Legacy”, long poems written in the form of wills. Historians are much taken by the short lyrics written in gang jargon. (Think of a medieval Nelly rapping “Pimp Juice”.) At his finest, many of Villon's lyrics evoke a wistful melancholy, as in his “Ballad Of The Ladies Of Bygone Times”, which contains his most quoted line, “But where are the snows of bygone years?”

Aside from the poems, for centuries almost nothing else was known of his life. Then, in the 1870s, historians found the poet's police and court records. Villon was born in Paris about 1431. He earned his bachelor's degree from the University Of Paris. He was a Catholic cleric in minor orders, although there is no indication that he was a sub-deacon, deacon, or priest. As a student, he engaged in rowdy, if relatively harmless, mischief. (Anyone, who has been an undergraduate, needs no further explanation of such behaviour.) In 1452, he got his M. A. also from the University Of Paris. We know little of the next few years after his graduate studies. Perhaps Villon lived a life we today describe as bohemian.

Beginning on the 5th of June, 1455, the police and the courts started to record brawls, homicide, robbery, imprisonments, banishments, tortures, two death sentences and fortuitous pardons. He was water-boarded. In the “Ballad To Fat Margot”, he described how he made his living as a pimp. On 5 January 1463, he was banished from Paris. This was a commutation. Villon originally was to be “strangled and hanged on the gallows of Paris.”

All the primary sources, the poetry, the police records, the court records, these all date from 1455 to 1463. Nothing more is known.

But every January, I wonder. I think Villon was a sociopath and a narcissist. While he was deeply religious, he never showed any sign of a fully formed conscience. Crimes and criminal associations, which he freely admitted in his poems, were described with a poetic wink and a smart-aleck rhyme. He had empathy, in that he was aware of the pain of others, but he seldom showed compassion. He mourned the fact that his mother was poor and alone, but he didn't do anything about it. When he was a pimp, he beat his harlot, Fat Margot, with a club. Pity he reserved for himself. I also imagine him to be charming.

I imagine that cold January morning in 1463. I watch him walk to the gates of Paris. He's got only what he can carry, his manuscripts, his degrees, a rosary, a loaf of bread. I imagine him dressed as a cleric. He is thirty-two. He's been imprisoned, tortured, beaten, stabbed. He looks much older than thirty-two. He has considerable skills. He can be a scribe, do parish work, teach. He is educated, indeed sophisticated. He is not without hope. He's also a criminal and more than just a little bit scary.

I am a historian, so, in a sense, I have to part with him here. I want to understand the psyche of Villon. But I'll never really know his mind. I want Francois Villon redeemed. But I'll never really know his soul either. I can go no further with him than the gates of Paris. Did he end his days as a village priest? Or did he hang from the gallows of a village? I borrow for my purposes the famous line by Ludwig Wittgenstein, "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." Which leads me to wonder, as I do every January, whatever happened to this thief, murderer, pimp, and poet?