Tag Archives: Gallantry

La Princesse de Clèves, 3

22 Tuesday Dec 2020

Posted by in 17th-century France, Love

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The Princess of Cleves
Published by G. Kearly No. 46 Fleet Street Augt. 1, 1777. (Wikisource)

We are at the court of Henri II (1519-1559) of France, a Valois king. He and Catherine de’ Medici have three sons, which should have ensured the House of Valois’s survival. The video I showed in an earlier post mentions a second François. This second François is François de France (1555-1584). He was the last child born to Henri II and Catherine de’ Medici. He died of tuberculosis in 1584, five years before Henri III’s assassination, King of Poland and France, the last of Henri II’s three heirs. As you know, French King Henri III’s death ended the rule of the House of Valois, a cadet branch of the House of Bourbon. Henri and Catherine de’ Medici had daughters. One of their daughters is Marguerite de Valois. She marries Henri III of Navarre, whose father is a Bourbon. Henri III de Navarre is the future Henri IV of France. However, the Salic Law prevented a woman from ascending the throne of France. Marguerite de Valois is Alexandre Dumas père‘s Reine Margot. Her marriage to Henri IV was annulled. She could not have children. Henri II’s mistress is Diane de Poitiers also called Madame de Valentinois or Duchesse de Valentinois.

La Magnificence et la Galanterie

Henri II of France
Henri II of France (Wikipedia)
Diane de Poitiers, Henri II’s mistress.

The novel begins with a praise of Henri II’s court. It is described as magnificent and is also characterized by galanterie. This is where Madame de Chartres has taken her 16-year old daughter who has reached an age when, in 17th-century France, a young woman looked for a husband.

La magnificence et la galanterie n’ont jamais paru en France avec tant d’éclat que dans les dernières années du règne de Henri second. Ce prince était galant, bien fait et amoureux ; quoique sa passion pour Diane de Poitiers, duchesse de Valentinois, eût commencé il y avait plus de vingt ans, elle n’en était pas moins violente, et il n’en donnait pas des témoignages moins éclatants. (Gutenberg’s eBook #18797)
[Grandeur and gallantry never appeared with more lustre in France, than in the last years of Henry the Second’s reign. This Prince was amorous and handsome, and though his passion for Diana of Poictiers [sic], duchess of Valentinois, was of above twenty years standing, it was not the less violent, nor did he give less distinguishing proofs of it.] (Wikisource, first line)

La Princesse de Clèves

  • le Prince de Clèves falls in love with Mademoiselle de Chartres
  • le Chevalier or Duc de Guise is his rival
  • ambition

The Prince of Cleves first meets Mademoiselle de Chartres at an Italian jeweller’s. He has never seen her. However, the King’s sister, Madame sœur du roi, guesses that he has met Mlle de Chartres and invites him to return in the morning. Mademoiselle de Chartres is a young woman he has met. He is delighted to realize that her beauty matches her rank.

Meeting her was le coup de foudre, love at first sight. Le Prince de Clèves wishes to marry Mlle de Chartres, but his father will not agree to this union. He is not the first-born son, which constitutes a disadvantage. As well, the Prince has a rival. The Duc de Guise has also fallen in love with Mademoiselle de Chartres, but his brother, le Cardinal de Lorraine, will not let him marry Mlle de Chartres. Once again, not being the firstborn is an obstacle. Therefore, it occurs to Madame de Chartres that her daughter should marry a prince of the blood. She would be above the Prince de Clèves and the chevalier de Guise. The Prince de Montpensier shows interest in such an alliance, but Diane de Poitiers, the King’s mistress, tells the King to forbid a marriage between Mlle de Chartres and the Prince de Montpensier.

Deceptive Appearances

The court may scintillate, but ambition and galanterie undermine all relationships. Rank is often put into the service of ambition and not so noble galanterie. Diane de Poitiers is very ambitious.

L’ambition et la galanterie étaient l’âme de cette cour, et occupaient également les hommes et les femmes. Il y avait tant d’intérêts et tant de cabales différentes, et les dames y avaient tant de part, que l’amour était toujours mêlé aux affaires, et les affaires à l’amour. Personne n’était tranquille, ni indifférent; on songeait à s’élever, à plaire, à servir ou à nuire; on ne connaissait ni l’ennui, ni l’oisiveté, et on était toujours occupé des plaisirs ou des intrigues. (Gutenberg’s eBook #18797)
[Ambition and gallantry were the soul of the court, and employed both sexes equally; there were so many different interests and so many cabals, and the ladies had so great a share in them, that love was always mixed with business, and business with love.] (Wikisource [12])

Although the Prince of Cleves is very much in love with Mlle de Chartres, having a private conversation with her is difficult. Mlle de Chartres has entered a court teeming with courtiers. But the Prince de Clèves is so enamoured that he succeeds in speaking with her. He tells her not to marry him simply to obey her mother.

Il ne la voyait que chez les reines, ou aux assemblées; il était difficile d’avoir une conversation particulière. Il en trouva pourtant les moyens, et il lui parla de son dessein et de sa passion avec tout le respect imaginable; il la pressa de lui faire connaître quels étaient les sentiments qu’elle avait pour lui, et il lui dit que ceux qu’il avait pour elle étaient d’une nature qui le rendrait éternellement malheureux, si elle n’obéissait que par devoir aux volontés de madame sa mère. (Gutenberg’s eBook #18797)
([…) he had no opportunity of seeing her but at court or public assemblies, so that it was very difficult for him to get a private conversation with her; at last he found means to do it, and informed her of his intention and of his love, with all the respect imaginable.] (Wikisource [14])

Mlle de Chartres is grateful for the manner in which he has spoken to her and he dares to hope that she loves him.

Comme mademoiselle de Chartres avait le cœur très noble et très bien fait, elle fut véritablement touchée de reconnaissance du procédé du prince de Clèves. Cette reconnaissance donna à ses réponses et à ses paroles un certain air de douceur qui suffisait pour donner de l’espérance à un homme aussi éperdument amoureux que l’était ce prince: de sorte qu’il se flatta d’une partie de ce qu’il souhaitait. (Gutenberg’s eBook #18797)
[As Mademoiselle de Chartres had a noble and generous heart, she was sincerely touched with gratitude for the prince of Cleves’s behaviour; this gratitude gave a certain sweetness to her words and answers, sufficient to furnish hopes to a man so desperately enamoured as the prince was so that he flattered himself in some measure that he should succeed in what he so much wished for.] (Wikisource [14])

La Princesse reports the Prince de Clèves’ words to her mother. Madame de Chartres tells her daughter that if she is inclined to marry the Prince of Cleves, she would consent to this marriage. However, in no way does she press her daughter to marry the prince.

Elle rendit compte à sa mère de cette conversation, et madame de Chartres lui dit qu’il y avait tant de grandeur et de bonnes qualités dans monsieur de Clèves, et qu’il faisait paraître tant de sagesse pour son âge, que, si elle sentait son inclination portée à l’épouser, elle y consentirait avec joie. Mademoiselle de Chartres répondit qu’elle lui remarquait les mêmes bonnes qualités, qu’elle l’épouserait même avec moins de répugnance qu’un autre, mais qu’elle n’avait aucune inclination particulière pour sa personne.
[She gave her mother an account of this conversation; and Madam de Chartres told her, that the prince of Cleves had so many good qualities, and discovered a discretion so much above his years, that if her inclination led her to marry him, she would consent to it with pleasure. (Wikisource [14])

Mlle de Chartres response is baffling. She decides to marry the prince “with less reluctance” than another man and having “no particular affection to his person.”

Mademoiselle de Chartres répondit qu’elle lui remarquait les mêmes bonnes qualités, qu’elle l’épouserait même avec moins de répugnance qu’un autre, mais qu’elle n’avait aucune inclination particulière pour sa personne. (Gutenberg’s eBook #18797)
[Mademoiselle de Chartres made answer, that she observed in him the same good qualities; that she should have less reluctance in marrying him than any other man, but that she had no particular affection to his person.] (Wikisource [17])

So Mlle de Chartres marries the prince willingly, but she remains as she was before the wedding: cold. Madame de La Fayette writes that the Prince the Clèves will continue to love the Princesse because he has something to wish for.

Cela fit aussi que pour être son mari, il ne laissa pas d’être son amant, parce qu’il avait toujours quelque chose à souhaiter au-delà de sa possession; et, quoiqu’elle vécût parfaitement bien avec lui, il n’était pas entièrement heureux. (Gutenberg’s eBook #18797)
[(…) hence it was, that though he was her husband, he did not cease to be her lover, because he had always something to wish beyond what he possessed; and though she lived perfectly easy with him, yet he was not perfectly happy.] Wikisource [17]

Read more: A Lost Post, but … (La Princesse de Clèves meets the Duc de Nemours.)

I must break here. The stage is set as in a comedy or tragedy. Depending on the context, répugnance can mean disgust. The next articles will be brief.

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Love to everyone 💕
I am no longer the only author of my posts. Rebuilding posts has led to mental fatigue. I will not post for a few days.

Madame de La Fayette (Wikipepia)

© Micheline Walker
22 December 2020
WordPress

Fêtes galantes & Galanterie

25 Monday Apr 2016

Posted by in Art, Commedia dell'arte, Courtly Love, Dance, French Literature

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L'Embarquement pour Cythère

Embarquement pour Cythère by Jean-Antoine Watteau (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Despite the use of the word “for” (pour), it would appear that Jean-Antoine Watteau‘s (10 October 1684 – 18 July 1721) The Embarkation for Cythera (Louvre version)[1] depicts “a departure” from the island of Cythera, the birthplace of Venus. According to Wikipedia, whose sites dealing with our subject have just been maintained, it symbolises “the temporary nature of human happiness.” (See Fêtes galantes, Wikipedia).

Consequently, the characters portrayed in The Embarkation for Cythera are not leaving our imperfect world to travel to the land of love, a land resembling Madeleine de Scudéry‘s (15 November 1607 – 2 June 1701), famous carte de Tendre, or map of Tendre. They are returning from Cythera.

Rosalba_Carriera_Portrait_Antoine_Watteau

Antoine Watteau by Rosalba Carriera, 1721 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Fêtes galantes: a Definition

The term fêtes galantes was adopted by the French Academy in 1717 when Watteau handed in his reception piece to the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture. It refers to a “courtship party,” such as a masquerade ball that borrowed from the commedia dell’arte. In particular, the term Fêtes galantes refers to the paintings of Jean-Antoine Watteau who died of tuberculosis at the age of 36, in 1721. There had never been paintings such as Jean-Antoine Watteau’s. (See Fêtes galantes, Wikipedia.) Watteau therefore set a trend. Jean-Honoré Fragonard, François Boucher, Nicolas Lancret and other 18th-century artists also depicted Fêtes galantes. It became a favourite subject matter and it fits the reign of Louis XV (Louis quinze).

Pierrot (Gilles)
Mezzetin
L’Enseigne de Gersaint

Paintings, texts and Music

The Embarkation for Cythera is a painting rather than a text.  After Watteau, however, Fêtes galantes re-entered literary works and music. The best-known literary Fêtes galantes is a collection of poems by Paul Verlaine, published in 1869. The theme also suffuses Pierre Louÿs’ Les Chansons de Bilitis.

Verlaine’s Fêtes galantes were a source of inspiration to composers Gabriel Fauré,  Claude Debussy, and Reynaldo Hahn, among others.

The 17th Century

  • galant homme vs homme galant
  • the salons

The term Fêtes galantes has roots in both 17th-century honnêteté and préciosité. As mentioned above, there was, on the one hand, a galant  homme. He was an honnête homme and at times a précieux. On the other hand, there was un homme galant or a womanizer. The homme galant, was unlikely to be invited to salons, with the possible exception of persons such as Giacomo Casanova (2 April 1725 – 4 June 1798).

The préciosité Molière mocked in his Précieuses ridicules (1659) developed in salons and promoted  Platonic love.  In Les Précieuses ridicules, Cathos expresses disdain for a man’s body. She tells her uncle Gorgibus:

Comment est-ce qu’on peut souffrir la pensée de coucher contre un homme vraiment nu ? (Les Précieuses ridicules, I, 4)
(How can one suffer the thought of sleeping next to a truly naked man?)

Salon Literature

  • word games
  • pastoral and heroic romances
  • la carte de Tendre

In early salons, the main activity of salonniers and salonnières was literature, witty literature. Salonniers and salonnières engaged in “word games,” or the creation of ingenuous little poems. For instance, they would be given the end of lines of poetry to which they had to attach a beginning. These bouts-rimés (rhymed ends), as they were called, demanded inventiveness and substantial linguistic skills. A main characteristic of salon literature, poems mainly, is the use of the conceit (la pointe).

However, salonniers and salonnières savoured pastoral romances such as Honoré d’Urfée‘s L’Astrée and heroic romances. Occasionally, they played shepherds and shepherdesses, which were flights from reality, as would be, to a certain extent Paul Verlaine‘s hedonistic and somewhat decadent fin de siècle Fêtes galantes. In other words, despite préciosité, love was a main interest in salons.

In fact, to be understood, galanterie must be contextualized. Paul Verlaine’s poems were hedonistic, but they were poems and therefore fictional. There is a Cythera, but Venus is a mythological figure. Madeleine de Scudéry‘s (15 November 1607 – 2 June 1701), carte de Tendre, or map of Tendre, published in Clélie, histoire romaine, is a product of the imagination. Yet, préciosité is a moment in the history of love. Précieuses were real women.

La Guirlande de Julie

One instance of précieux love is the fourteen-year courtship Julie d’Angennes FR (1607 – 15 novembre 1671), Madame de Rambouillet‘s daughter, imposed on the Charles de Saint-Maure, duc de Montausier. Here, however, one senses genuine apprehensions: pregnancy, childbirth, and infant mortality. On her 35th birthday, Montausier gave Julie the exquisite Guirlande de Julie[2] a collection of 62 madrigals,[3] but Julie made the Duke wait five more years. This is how “precious” and perhaps frightened she was. They married on 15 July 1645 and, although the Duc de Montausier was an honnête homme and a galant homme, he was un homme. Julie got pregnant and gave birth to a daughter.

Préciosité, as mocked in Molière’s Précieuses ridicules (1659), was short-lived. However, as noted above, préciosité or  disembodied love is a milestone in the history of love. It belongs to the querelle des femmes, the woman question. It therefore differs from chivalry and the Roman de la Rose, which promoted courtly love without rejecting sexual intimacy.

Madame de Rambouillet

Catherine de Vivonne, Marquise de Rambouillet (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

La Chambre bleue d’Arthénice

Italian-born Catherine de Vivonne, Marquise de Rambouillet (1588 – 2 December 1665) opened the first salon: L’Hôtel de Rambouillet, rue Saint-Thomas-du-Louvre. Its Catherine de Vivonne called herself Arthénice, an anagram of Catherine. Hôtels were private residences (un hôtel particulier) and salon hostesses received once or twice a week. The hostess usually sat in bed and her guests were in a ruelle, literally and alley way, on a side of the bed. Madame de Rambouillet received in her blue room, la chambre bleue. Occasionally, salonniers and salonnières went on a picnic. That outing was called un cadeau, a gift. When the Marquise closed her salon, Madeleine de Scudéry (15 November 1607 – 2 June 1701) opened hers. Mademoiselle de Scudéry never married.

Fêtes galantes

Let us return to Watteau’s 18th-century Fêtes galantes, Jean-Antoine Watteau’s paintings depicting “courtship parties.” (See Fêtes galantes, Wikipedia).

In Fêtes galantes personal sentiment is masked by delicately clever evocations of scenes and characters from the Italian commedia dell’arte and from the sophisticated pastorals of 18th-century painters, such as Watteau and Nicolas Lancret, and perhaps also from the contemporary mood-evoking paintings of Adolphe Monticelli.[4]

Fêtes galantes are associated with the commedia dell’arte. Actors were, as in ‘to be,’ “masks.” As well, the sad clown is an archetype. Masquerade balls have survived. Balls go back to the ballet de cour. They are courtly and have a counterpart in festivals and carnavals.

The Laws of Gallantry

Charles Sorel, who was named the historiographer of France in 1635, wrote Les Loix de la galanterie, first published in 1644, but galants met and discussed the rules of gallantry.

We have several e-copies of Sorel’s Loix or lois de la galanterie. However, despite repeated attempts, I have not found a translation into English of Charles Sorel‘s (c. 1602 – 7 March 1674) Loix de la galanterie. I presume there is a translation, but it is not on the internet. In my next post, I will therefore provide not a translation, but a summary of Les Loix de la galanterie, using Ludovic Lalanne’s text.

Conclusion

The terms honnête homme and galant homme are no longer used, nor is the term gentilhomme. The honnête homme is now called a gentleman in both French and English. The word gallant has survived and is used to describe men who still open the door of a car to help a woman out or hold a heavy door when a fragile individual enters or leaves a building or are very polite. The term “grande dame” is used to describe particularly accomplished women, including women who had a salon.

Fêtes galantes now belong to the discourse on love refined or “galant,” but love as depicted in Watteau’s ethereal Fêtes galantes.

With kind regards to everyone. ♥

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Sources and Resources

____________________
[1]  Another version is housed at the Charlottenburg, in Berlin.
[2] Calligraphy by Nicolas Jaret. Paintings by Nicolas Robert.
[3]  A madrigal could be either a song and a poem.
[4] “Paul Verlaine”. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2016. Web. 22 Apr. 2016 <http://www.britannica.com/biography/Verlaine-Paul>.

Jean-Léon_Gérôme_-_Duel_After_a_Masquerade_Ball

Duel after a Masquerade Ball by Jean-Léon Gérôme (Photo credit: Wikipedia)[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93DDyW8kiGQ&w=591&h=360%5D

©  Micheline Walker
25 April 2016
WordPress