Fables and Parables: the Ineffable

12 Tuesday Jun 2018

Posted by michelinewalker in Fables, Jean de La Fontaine, Symbols

Tags

Brotherly love, Enemy Brothers, Homing Pigeons, La Fontaine's Two Pigeons, Pigeons & Doves, Précieuses, Sacred & Secular, Salons, the ineffable, The Parable of the Prodigal Son

The Return of the Prodigal Son by Pompeo Batoni, (1773) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Fables & Parables

When Jean de La Fontaine (8 July 1621 – 13 April 1695) published his first collection of fables, he drew his subject matter from Greek fabulist Æsop (c. 620 – 564 BCE). Interestingly, Æsop lived before Jesus of Nazareth (c. 4 BCE – c. CE/AD 30 / 33) and the prophet Mohammad (c. 570 CE – 8 June 632 CE). Yet, in the Préface to La Fontaine’s first collection of poems, 6 books, published in 1668, La Fontaine compared his fables to the parables of Jesus of Nazareth: “Truth has spoken to men in parables; and is the parable anything else than a fable? ”

And what I say is not altogether without foundation, since, if I may venture to speak of that which is most sacred in our eyes in the same breath with the errors of the ancients, we find that Truth has spoken to men in parables; and is the parable anything else than a fable? that is to say, a feigned example of some truth, which has by so much the more force and effect as it is the more common and familiar?

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/50316/50316-h/50316-h.htm

Ce que je dis n’est pas tout à fait sans fondement puisque, s’il m’est permis de mêler ce que nous avons de plus sacré parmi les erreurs du paganisme, nous voyons que la Vérité a parlé aux hommes par paraboles; et la parabole est-elle autre chose que l’apologue, c’est-à-dire un exemple fabuleux, et qui s’insinue avec d’autant plus de facilité et d’effet qu’il est plus commun et plus familier?

The Parable of the Prodigal Son does resemble a fable. Its narrative is “the more common and familiar.” However, despite a “more common and familiar,” exemplum, it tells the otherwise ineffable. How does one speak of love unconditional and forgiveness, which is at the core of Jesus of Nazareth’s teachings? In The Parable of the Prodigal Son, one of two brothers asks to be given his half of his father’s estate. This son then leaves home, squanders his money foolishly, and is reduced to starvation when a famine occurs. He therefore returns to his father’s home, saying that he has sinned.

When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.’

(Luke 15:11-32 NIV [New International Version])

A lay, or secular, reading of the Parable of the Prodigal Son does point to foolish and, therefore, relatively “common” human behaviour on the part of the prodigal son. From the very beginning of La Fontaine’s fable about the two pigeons, the pigeon who has fallen prey to wanderlust is called fool enough, “assez fou.”

Two doves once cherished for each other
The love that brother has for brother.
But one, of scenes domestic tiring,
To see the foreign world aspiring,
Was fool enough to undertake
A journey long, over land and lake.
The Two Doves

Deux Pigeons s’aimaient d’amour tendre.
L’un d’eux s’ennuyant au logis
Fut assez fou pour entreprendre
Un voyage en lointain pays.
Les Deux Pigeons

However, La Fontaine’s pigeon was merely tired of “scenes domestic,” which is not a sin. He suffers the consequences he was told he would suffer, except that the dreaded falcons are an eagle and that children are “pitiless” human beings who try to harm our traveler.

My heart forebodes the saddest lot
The falcons [faucons], nets Alas, it rains!
The Two Doves

Je ne songerai plus que rencontre funeste,
Que Faucons, que réseaux [nets]. Hélas, dirai-je, il pleut : …
Les Deux Pigeons

To a large extent, the moral of The Two Pigeons is embedded in the story or exemplum. Yet, early in his fable, La Fontaine inserts a proverb, a genre that does not require a narrative or exemplum. Proverbs are related to fables and parables, but they are short, as are maxims. La Rochefoucauld wrote maxims.

L’absence est le plus grand des maux :
Non pas pour vous, cruel. …
Les Deux Pigeons

This absence is the worst of ills;
Your heart may bear, but me it kills.
The Two Doves

Absence was a topic discussed in the French Salons of the first half of the 17^th century, by Précieuses and Précieux. Précieuses discussed “questions of love,” chaste love mostly. Although La Fontaine’s poem is not a disquisition on absence, he inserts a proverb in the early verses of Les Deux Pigeons: “L’absence est le plus cruel des maux [pl. of mal].” This proverb, the word “absence” in particular, introduces romantic love, which constitutes a discourse between human beings, mainly, and doves. Jean de La Fontaine’s fable is not altogether about two pigeons. Anthromorphism characterizes only one part of the fable, its beginning. (See Romance, Wikipedia.)

La Fontaine’s motto (devise) was:

Diversité c’est ma devise.
Pâté d’anguille, Contes de La Fontaine

and his fable features modulations and transpositions, as in music. He writes “variations” on the theme of love. The segment I quoted in my last post expresses romantic love.

Ah, happy lovers, would you roam?
Pray, let it not be far from home.
To each the other ought to be
A world of beauty ever new;
In each the other ought to see
The whole of what is good and true.
The Two Doves

Amants, heureux amants, voulez-vous voyager ?
Que ce soit aux rives prochaines ;
Soyez-vous l’un à l’autre un monde toujours beau,
Toujours divers, toujours nouveau ;
Tenez-vous lieu de tout, comptez pour rien le reste [.]
Les Deux Pigeons

Moreover, although both our pigeons and the prodigal son have been fools, the prodigal son has sinned: “I have sinned against heaven and against you” (Luke 15:11-32), which suggests a gradation among exempla (pl.). When both pigeons are reunited, they rejoice, pigeons are pigeons, but the prodigal son confesses: “I have sinned” (Luke 15:11-32).

The Parable of the Prodigal Son features two sons, one of whom, the “good” brother, is rather miffed because his father celebrates his prodigal brother’s (the “bad” brother) return. The parable has three figures, one of whom, the father, is a wise and Christic figure, and tells the ineffable.

‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’

(Luke 15:11-32 NIV [New International Version])

Given that one son is miffed, La Fontaine may have been inspired by the Biblical enemy brothers or Cain and Abel, sons born to Adam and Eve, one of whom, Cain, kills his brother, Abel. (See Cain and Abel, Sophocles’ Antigone, Jean Racine’s La Thébaïde, and Jean Anouilh’s Antigone, Wikipedia.) Were it not for a wise father, the prodigal son’s brother, or “good” son, may have harboured resentment. But La Fontaine’s fable’s dramatis personae consists of two, not three, figures: Les Deux Pigeons.

Peter_Paul_Rubens_-_Cain_slaying_Abel,_1608-1609

Cain slaying Abel by Peter Paul Rubens, 1608 (Photo Credit: Wikipedia)

The Exemplum: Sermons

Fables and parables also describes sermons. The word exemplum is usually associated with the sermons of the Middle Ages. Jacques de Vitry (Jacobus de Vitriaco c. 1160/70 – 1 May 1240), a French canon regular who rose to prominence, wrote hundreds of exempla (pl.). In the English language, John Donne (22 January 1572 – 31 March 1631) is the author of very fine sermons. But few preachers have empowered their words to the same extent as French bishop and theologian Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet.

The unexpected and suspicious death, perhaps poisoning, at the age of 26, of ‘Madame,’ Henriette d’Angleterre, 26 June 1644 – 30 June 1670, the wife of Louis XIV’s brother, called ‘Monsieur,’ was an exemplum few circumstances could equal. [1] In 17^th-century France, the age of Louis XIV, an absolute monarch, the memento mori (remember that you have to die), nearly supplanted the carped diem (seize the day) of Horatian Odes I.XI. [2] How does one keep an absolute monarch humble? One approach is to remind him of his mortality, but indirectly. Louis XIV attended Madame‘s funeral and heard Bossuet’s Oraison funèbre. Bossuet also wrote the funeral oration of Louis III, Prince de Condé, 10 November 1668 – 4 March 1710, a “prince of the blood” (un prince du sang). [3] There is a king greater than Louis XIV. Coincidentally, or ineffably, Jean de La Fontaine ends Les Deux Pigeons suggesting that he may be too old to love:

Ai-je passé le temps d’aimer ?
Les Deux Pigeons

Is love, to me, with things that were?
The Two Doves

The Rose

You may remember the vanitas, still lifes, created by artists who often used flowers to express the brevity of life. The Roman de la Rose is our best example. But who can forget François de Malherbe‘s [4] exquisite Consolation à M. Du Périer:

Et rose elle a vécu ce que vivent les roses,
L’espace d’un matin.
Consolation à M. Du Périer (1598) [5]
(See Consolatio.com, transl.)

Roses in a Glass Vase by Henri Fantin-Latour, 1873
(Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery, England) (Photo credit: Venetian Red)

Contrary to Horace’s precept, to inform and to delight, or blending l’utile et l’agréable, sermons may not provide delight or pleasure, which Horace (Ars Poetica) teaches. It remains that wrapped in a story, a message is easier to convey, and to remember, than non-fiction. Gustave Doré has ‘illustrated’ the anthropomorphic nature of The Two Pigeons, (Gutenberg [EBook #50516]).

The Two Doves by Gustave Doré, Gutenberg [EBook #50316]

La Fontaine: http://www.la-fontaine-ch-thierry.net/meunfils.htm FR
La Fontaine: http://www.la-fontaine-ch-thierry.net/nine1_2_3.htm EN

The Personal and the Pastoral

After “le reste” or “good and true,” La Fontaine speaks about himself and recalls a bergère, a shepherdess. Pastorals are a discourse on love. Salonniers and salonnières also compared themselves to shepherds and shepherdesses. The most famous bucolic or pastoral novel of 17^th-century France is Honoré d’Urfé‘s L’Astrée, written in the first quarter of the 17^thcentury and modelled on Guarini‘s Il Pastor Fido (1590). Having loved, La Fontaine writes:

J‘ai quelquefois aimé ! je n’aurais pas alors
Contre le Louvre et ses trésors,
Contre le firmament et sa voûte céleste,
Changé les bois, changé les lieux
Honorés par les pas, éclairés par les yeux
De l’aimable et jeune Bergère (shepherdess)
Pour qui, sous le fils de Cythère, (Kythira)
Je servis, engagé par mes premiers serments.
Les Deux Pigeons

Myself have loved; nor would I then,
For all the wealth of crowned men,
Or arch celestial, paved with gold,
The presence of those woods has sold,
And fields, and banks, and hillocks, which
Were by the joyful steps made rich,
And smiled beneath the charming eyes
Of her who made my heart a prize
To whom I pledged it, nothing loath,
And sealed the pledge with virgin oath.
The Two Doves

Pigeons, Doves and Turtledoves

Dove, and the symbology of love
Homing pigeons

The translator of La Fontaine’s Site officiel uses the word “dove,” not pigeon. Doves are colombes and tourtelles, turtledoves. In the symbology of love, one uses the word colombe. Doves, colombes and pigeons are columbidae, but they differ from one another. Therefore, the translator of the Musée de France introduces love, romantic love, by using the word colombe, in the title of his translation. As for Walter Thornbury [EBook #50316], he translated the French pigeons using the English pigeons. It is the same word in both languages. But it should be noted that we do not have homing doves, just homing pigeons. By using pigeons, Jean de La Fontaine suggests that his columbidae will return home. He describes the pigeon as a volatile (a bird, noun) FR and volatile (adjective) FR/EN.

Conclusion

There is a sense in which literature (non-fiction), speaking animals in particular, always tell, to a smaller or greater extent, that which cannot be told. Anthropomorphism and zoomorphism are effective recourses, but the exemplum, and various displacements (modulations or transpositions) may also be used. In the context of our two pigeons, “L’absence est le pire des maux” seems too elevated a moral. But La Fontaine raises the curtain only to let it fall again.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1997/12/18/the-fabulous-la-fontaine/

Very few of his poems are specifically lyrical in character, and those few are not among his most typical. It is clear, however, that the power of La Fontaine’s lyricism depends on its displacement into the most surprising contexts.[6]

Charles Gounod has set to music verses from Les Deux Pigeons, and so have I (shame on me). Charles Aznavour has composed a song based on La Fontaine’s Deux Pigeons.

RELATED ARTICLES

French, Malherbe (geudensherman.WordPress) FR
Consolatio.com (01 February 2005)
To Inform or Delight (29 March 2013)
Courtly Love or Fin’Amor (7 March 2013)
Anthropomorphism and Zoomorphism (6 March 2017)

Love to everyone ♥
____________________

[1] Oraison funèbre d’Henriette-Anne d’Angleterre is a Wikisource publication FR
The Funeral Oration of Henrietta of England is a Wikisource publication EN (Gordon Goodwin, transl.)
[2] Gather Ye Roses by Robert Louis Stevenson, 1875, is a Wikisource publication
[3] On the Death of the Great Condé is a Wikisource publication (Robert Turnbull, transl.) EN
Oraison funèbre du très haut et très puissant prince Louis de Condé is a Wikisource publication FR
[4] French, Malherbe (geudensherman.WordPress) EN ♥
[5] Consolatio.com (01 February 2005) EN ♥
[6] Charles Rosen, “The Fabulous La Fontaine,” The New York Review of Books, 18 December 1997. ♥

Charles Aznavour sings Les Deux Pigeons

Bruno Laplante sings Les Deux Pigeons by Charles Gounod

Picasso’s Dove of peace, 1949

Fêtes galantes & Galanterie

25 Monday Apr 2016

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

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Fêtes galantes, Gallantry, Madeleine de Scudéry, Map of Tendre, Marquise de Rambouillet, Salons

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, d uc 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.

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

Les Loix de la galanterie (Google e-book)
Les Lois de la galanterie (Molière 21)
Les Loix de la galanterie (Ludovic Lalanne)

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. ♥

RELATED ARTICLES

Galanterie & l’Honnête Homme (16 April 2016)
Le Chêne et le Roseau, the Oak Tree and the Reed: the Moral (28 September 2013)
A Few Words on Sprezzatura (21 June 2012)
Il Cortegiano, or l’Honnête Homme (3 September 2011)

Bergamo: Arlecchino & Brighella (23 July 2014)
The Figaro Trilogy (14 July 2014)
Picasso in Paris (9 July 2014)
Picasso’s Harlequin (3 July 2014)
Arlecchino, Arlequin, Harlequin (30 June 2014)
Pantalone: la Commedia dell’arte (20 June 2014)

Sources and Resources

Paul Verlaine: Fêtes galantes is a Wikisource publication FR
Jules Tellier: La Guirlande de Julie is an article FR
Pierre Louÿs: Les Chansons de Bilitis is a Wikisource publication FR
Charles Sorel: Le Berger extravagant is a Wikisource publication FR

____________________
[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

Molière’s Précieuses ridicules.2

20 Sunday Mar 2016

Posted by michelinewalker in Comedy, Love, Molière, Préciosité

≈ Comments Off on Molière’s Précieuses ridicules.2

Tags

Carte de Tendre, Clélie, farce, honnête homme, Jodelet, Mademoiselle de Scudéry, Mascarille, Molière, Préciosité, Salons

Portrait of Molière, by Nicolas Mignard

There came a point when Préciosité went too far. Playing shepherds and shepherdesses in a salon could not last forever. So by the time Molière, born Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, presented his Précieuses ridicules, préciosité had become what Jean-Claude Tournand[i] terms “une fuite poétique,” (a poetical flight).

However, it would be unfortunate to trivialise préciosité and especially salons. For one thing, they did have a civilising influence on members of Paris’ affluent upper middle-class and on aristocrats, many of whom made a point of becoming honnêtes hommes, in the worldly acceptation of honnêteté.

Molière‘s Précieuses ridicules were played for the first time on 18 November 1659. It is a farce and therefore resembles the Italian commedia dell’arte one-act or short improvised plays. These featured characters such as Pantalone, Dottore Gratiano, Il Capitano (mostly jealous characters), the occasional miles gloriosus (braggart-soldier), Arlecchino, Brighella, Pierrot, Pulcinella: lazzi, zanni (clever servants who help the lovers) vecchi (old and jealous characters), inamorate and inamorati (lover, lovers).

The plot of Les Précieuses ridicules shows the typical reversal of farces, that of the trompeur trompé (or deceiver deceived). Cathos and Magdelon have just moved to Paris and dream of becoming part of the beau monde (the elegant world, that of salons). However, Gorgibus, Cathos’s father and Magdelon’s uncle has different ideas concerning the fate of his daughter and his niece. He wants them to marry sensible and well-to-do young men, in which case “all [would be] well that ends well,” the final outcome of comedies.

Two perfectly suitable young men, Du Croisy and La Grange, come a-courting but they are immediately rejected by Cathos and Madgelon. They are not précieux and call a chair a chair rather than a commodité de la conversation (what is useful to conversation). In their attempt to give the French language a purer taste, the précieuses had indeed renamed many objects.

So the young men are shown the door, which infuriates Gorgibus. He pays a visit on his daughter and his niece as they are “greasing-up” their faces (se graisser le museau [muzzle]). They tell Gorgibus that courting should be as in the country of Tendre, the map of courting featured in Mademoiselle de Scudéry’s Clélie. They name the villages of Tendre: Billets-Doux (love letters), Petits-Soins (tender loving care), Jolis-Vers (pretty or lovely poems). Moreover, they complain because the young men did not wear feathered hats and designer clothes: “de la bonne faiseuse” (from the right maker or designer clothes). They then announce that they are changing their names. Cathos, Gorgibus’s daughter, wants to be called Polixène and her cousin Magdelon, Aminthe.

So the stage is set for a reversal: the deceiver deceived. The young men both decide that they will each clothe their laquais, or men servant, into garments worn in salons and send them to court our would-be salonnières.

Cathos and Magdelon are so blinded by their own wishes, that Mascarille’s entrance in a chair carried by porteurs is not viewed as inappropriate and ridiculous. Mascarille (played by Molière) is a marquis. He recites an inferior poem, an impromptu, he has written, pausing frequently to comment on the ingenuous manner in which he has worded his poem.

As for the other laquais, Jodelet (played by Jodelet FR), he plays the part of a vicomte and arrives later in the play (Scene xi). Jodelet is a famous but older French actor playing himself, a valet. His face is white because it is covered with flour (enfariné). The marquis and the vicomte start boasting about their life in various salons and about their abilities as poets and dancers.

The spectators are in stitches, but Cathos and Magdelon so wish to be précieuses that they admire the disguised laquais. A few unacceptable words and references are used, but Cathos and Madgelon do not know the difference. They are totally deceived.

The fantasy comes to an end during a dance. Violinists had been hired, etc. Du Croisy and La Grange come back and undress their valets so they can be seen for what they are. Earlier (Scene iv) Cathos had remarked that the thought of sleeping next to a naked man was repulsive.

Gorgibus returns and the violinists demand to be paid for their services. Gorgibus starts beating them up in the harmless fashion of comedy. So the farce has been played out to its bitter end, bitter for the would-be précieuses and salonnières, and bitter for Gorgibus.

This article was posted in 2011.To my knowledge, it is new to most if not all of you.

With kind regards to all of you. ♥

[i] Jean-Claude Tournand, Introduction à la vie littéraire du XVII^e siècle (Paris : Armand Colin, 1984 [1970]), pp. 47-75.

Les Précieuses ridicules de Molière
avec : M-M Lozac’h à la mise en scène et dans le rôle de magdelon Marie Moriette dans cathos – François Floris dans Mascarille
M-M Losac’h: Magdelon & producer
Marie Moriette: Cathos
François Floris: Mascarille

7 October 2011 (video added on 20 March 2016)

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The Salons: La Guirlande de Julie, revisited

30 Wednesday Jul 2014

Posted by michelinewalker in Art, French Literature, History, Italy, Love

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

62 Madrigals, courtly love, Honoré d'Urfée, Julie d'Angennes, la chambre bleue, Mme de Rambouillet, Salons

La Guirlande de Julie (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Salons are often looked upon as a French institution when in fact Italians brought salons to France. However, although the salon was imported, it became a French institution and it never fully disappeared. Gertrude Stein’s home: 28, rue de Fleurus, was a salon.

Madame de Rambouillet

“l’incomparable Arthénice” (Arthénice is an anagram of Catherine)

l’honnête homme

Born in Rome to Jean de Vivonne (marquis of Pisani [1530-1599]) and Giulia Savelli, Madame de Rambouillet (1588-1665), the wife of Charles d’Angennes, marquis de Rambouillet (1577–1652), opened the first famous seventeenth-century French salon. Salons were a gathering place for various distinguished persons: aristocrats of all ranks, cardinals (Richelieu), Louis XIII (at least once), and l’honnête homme, who could be a bourgeois. For the most part, habituées (regulars) were well-educated men and women who shared an interest in literature, philosophy and music. Moreover, they were witty. L’incomparable Arthénice, an anagram of Catherine, established the first and the best of salons and received her guests every Saturday. On fine summer days, they had a cadeau (literally a gift) which was an outing in the countryside: une fête champêtre.

L’Hôtel de Rambouillet

rue Saint-Honoré

rue Saint-Thomas-du-Louvre

la ruelle (the side of a bed)

Catherine de Vivonne, marquise de Rambouillet, lived in a private house, then called un hôtel particulier, l’Hôtel de Rambouillet, rue Saint-Honoré. But l’Hôtel relocated in 1618. Its new address was rue Saint-Thomas-du-Louvre. Arthénice received her guests in her blue room, la chambre bleue d’Arthénice. She usually sat in bed and her guests, la crème de la crème of French society, gathered in a ruelle (literally a narrow back street), one side of the bed. Bedrooms were very large in the best homes of the seventeenth century and beds were canopied beds featuring somptuous drapes that were drawn closed at night, especially on wintry days.

Salons are remembered as places where anything crude was quickly rejected. Only the purest French could be spoken in a salon and one’s manners had to be refined. A male guest was, at the very least, an honnête homme. French galanterie is a sturdy institution dating back to medieval courtly love. It reached a summit in seventeenth-century French salons.

Giovanni Battista Guarini & Honoré d’Urfée

Il Pastor fido

L’Astrée

However, seventeenth-century salons were not always as they had been at l’Hôtel de Rambouillet. Some salon habitué(e)s were people who made believe they were not what they seemed. The salonniers and salonnières, gave themselves new names and, at one point, the aficionados of salons were so influenced by Guarini’s Il Pastor fido, a pastoral set in Arcadia and published in Venice in 1590 and, later, by Honoré d’Urfée’s L’Astrée (1607-1627), that they played shepherds and shepherdesses (see Pastoral, Wikipedia). Fantasy took over.

As well, salons are one of the birthplaces of feminism. Medieval courtly love was revived and revised, and women started looking upon themselves as “précieuses.” They were précieuses, of course, everyone is, but not so précieuses that they could not call a chair a chair. Chairs became “commodités de la conversation.” A comfortable armchair does facilitate conversation, but… Préciosité, was not one of the better moments of la querelle des femmes, the woman question (the term “querelle des femmes” was first used in 1450).

In some cases, women kept suitors waiting for several years, before marrying. The Duc de Montausier (1610–1690), courted Julie d’Angennes (1607-1671), Madame de Rambouillet’s daughter, from 1631 until 1645, before she consented to marry him. She was 38 when she married Montausier. The couple had one daughter.

La Guirlande de Julie: a gift

62 madrigals (poems)

flowers representing facets of love (allegory)

Out of this courtship, a book emerged, entitled La Guirlande de Julie. It was given as a present to Julie in 1641 and contained sixty-two madrigals (poems not songs), each featuring a flower. The collection of poems is therefore allegorical, or symbolic. Montausier wrote sixteen of the madrigals (the poetic rather than musical form), but the preparation of the book was a bit of a contest disguised as a game. Among the authors are Racan, Tallemant des Réaux and others. The challenge consisted in finding the “pointe” or conceit, a clever and witty way of saving “little nothings.”

Only the finest authors contributed madrigaux to the collection. The Guirlande‘s calligraphist was famed Nicolas Jarry and each flower was painted by Nicolas Robert on vellum. It is an illuminated manuscript. The book is now housed at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) and can be read and looked at online at Gallica BnF. Many can also be seen at Bridgeman Images.

RELATED ARTICLES

Love in the Salons: a Glimpse (revised: 29 July 2014)
Molière’s Précieuses ridicules (7 October 2011)
Il Cortegiano, or “l’honnête homme” (3 October 2011)

Source and Resources

Bridgeman Images: illustrations of most of the flowers painted for Julie.
Gallica BnF: http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8451620k (the full text and illustrations.)
Photo credit: Gallica BnF
Hyppolyte Taine: La vie de salon

(Photo credit: Bridgeman and BnF, Paris)

My kindest regards to all of you.

—ooo—

Marie-Nicole Lemieux (b. 1975):
Mon cœur s’ouvre à ta voix, Camille Saint Saëns

Frain-Irene-La-Guirlande-De-Julie-Livre-836443603_ML

2 October 2011

WordPress

revised on 30 July 2014

(Photo credit: Google images)

Love in the Salons: a Glimpse

29 Tuesday Jul 2014

Posted by michelinewalker in Art, Comedy, French Literature, Literature, Love

≈ Comments Off on Love in the Salons: a Glimpse

Tags

Il Pastor Fido, la carte de Tendre, la Guirlande de Julie, Mademoiselle de Scudéry, Préciosité, Salons

Jean-Michel Moreau

Other than polite and witty conversation, the main activity of salonniers and salonnières (salonists) was writing. They had been influenced by Giovanni Battista Guarini’s (1538-1612) Il Pastor Fido (1590), a pastoral tragicomedy, and Honoré d’Urfé’s L’Astrée (1607-1628), a lengthy novel featuring shepherds and shepherdesses living in bucolic settings resembling Il Pastor Fido‘s Arcadia.

Salonniers and salonnières wrote abundantly and love was their favourite topic. Among the books they wrote, we know about La Guirlande de Julie. It was a gift to Julie d’Angennes, Madame de Rambouillet’s daughter, and contained sixty-two madrigals each of which compared Julie to a flower. According to the rules of Préciosité, a movement born in Salons, women looked upon themselves as precious or précieuses. Moreover, Préciosité had banished unrefined behaviour, in general, and unrefined courtship, in particular. So the Duc de Montausier courted Julie d’Angennes for fourteen years before she consented to marry him.

— Carte du Tendre (the map of love)

This map was included in Mademoiselle de Scudéry’s novel: Clélie.

Moreover, as we will now see, love was subjected to various rules. For instance, Madeleine de Scudéry (1607-1701) described the towns, villages and rivers of her Arcadia, called Tendre. A map of the pays de Tendre was actually designed. It was probably engraved by François Chauveau (1613-1676).

Madeleine de Scudéry (1607-1701) had been a member of l’Hôtel de Rambouillet, the first famous salon of seventeenth-century France. But as the Marquise de Rambouillet grew older, salonniers and salonnières started to gather every Saturday at the home of Madeleine de Scudéry whose pseudonym was Sappho. Thus was born the Société du samedi (Saturday Society). It flourished during the second half of the seventeenth century, called le Grand Siècle (the Great Century), the age of Louis XIV (1638-1715), the Sun King.

Sappho was well educated and a prolific writer. Madeleine de Scudéry’s longest work is Artamène, ou le Grand Cyrus (10 vols., 1648–53), but la Carte de Tendre was featured in Clélie (10 vols., 1654–61).

Clearly outlined on the Carte de Tendre are three forms of love each depicted as towns on the side of three rivers: Inclination (inclination), Estime (esteem) and Reconnaissance (gratitude). So love had three forms: inclination, estime, reconnaissance. There were villages along the way, all of which were allegorical: Jolis-vers (lovely poems), Billet-doux (love letter) and others.

If lovers allowed themselves to enter untamed passion, they sailed on a dangerous sea, called Mer dangeureuse. However, if passions were restrained, love could be a source of happiness. Interestingly, although she had a gentleman-friend, Paul Pelisson, Mademoiselle de Scudéry never married.

As may be expected, Mademoiselle de Scudéry’s Carte de Tendre was satirized. In fact, Molière (1622-1673) wrote his first Parisian play on the Précieuses: Les Précieuses ridicules (1659). By 1659, the Précieuses had much too high an opinion of themselves. Molière’s comedy was a slight blow to the movement, but the one-act play was a great success and Molière went on to bigger and better things, including a personal friendship with Louis XIV.

Passions were abundantly discussed in seventeenth-century France. Both Descartes and Pascal contributed a treatise on passion. Descartes wrote a treatise on the Passions de l’âme (The Passions of the Soul) and Pascal, a Discourse on the Passion of Love.

However, passionate love was never so dangerous than in Madame de La Fayette’s La Princesse de Clèves (1678), a psychological novel in which love is viewed as a source of endless pain. It feeds on jealousy as does Phèdre’s love for Hippolyte. Interestingly, dramatist Jean Racine‘s (1639-1699) Phèdre, a tragedy, was first performed in 1678, the year Madame de La Fayette (1634-1693) published, anonymously, La Princesse de Clèves.

RELATED ARTICLES

Molière’s “Précieuses ridicules” (7 October 2011)
The Salons: la Guirlande de Julie (2 October 2011)

Sources and Resources

Descartes’ Discourse on Method can be read online EN: http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/pdfs/descartes1637.pdf
Pascal can be read online EN: https://archive.org/stream/blaisepascal00newy/blaisepascal00newy_djvu.txt
Molière’s Précieuses ridicules can be read online FR: http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/5318/pg5318.html

—ooo—

Airs de Cour – French Court Music from the 17th Century

Antoine Boësset

4 October 2011

WordPress

(revised; 29 July 2014)

On Madame de Staël

12 Wednesday Mar 2014

Posted by michelinewalker in Literature, Salons, The Enlightenment, The French Revolution

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Benjamin Constant, Coppet, Exile, Jacques Necker, Madame de Staël, Napoleon's fears, Salons, Suzanne Curchod

: Le Château de Coppet, Madame de Staël’s residence on the shores of Lake Geneva (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

untitled

Madame de Staël, the daughter of Swiss-born Jacques Necker (30 September 1732 – 9 April 1804), Louis XVI’s Finance Minister, is a legendary figure. For one thing, Napoleon I was so afraid of her that he would not let her live in or near Paris. She was born in Paris, but, in 1784, her father had bought a lovely home in Switzerland, on the shores of Lake Geneva. When Germaine de Staël was exiled from France, by Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon I, she took refuge at Coppet.

Germaine de Staël

French-Swiss Anne Louise Germaine de Staël (22 April 1766 – 14 July 1817; aged 51), may well be the most prominent intellectual, and salonnière (salonist) of her era, an era that spans the French Revolution, Napoleon’s Empire (Napoléon I) and the beginning of the Bourbon restoration. After Napoleon’s defeat, France was a monarchy, but not an absolute monarchy. It had to be a Constitutional Monarchy, or a form of parliamentary Monarchy, as was the wish of the signatories of the Tennis Court Oath. Madame de Staël joined the National Assembly, constituted by members of the Third Estate, le tiers-état, from rich bourgeois to impoverished peasants still living on feudal seigneuries and paying taxes. The National Assembly (13, 1789 to July 9, 1789) was soon replaced by the Legislative Assembly, which takes us to 1792 and the National Convention. It lasted from 21 September 1792 to 26 October 1795, or 28 July 1794, when Robespierre and Saint-Just were guillotined. (See The French Revolution, Wikipedia.)

Suzanne Curchod and Jacques Necker

Madame de Staël is the daughter of Suzanne Curchod (1737 – 6 May 1794), a salonnière whose salon could be compared favorably to the salon where Madame Geoffrin (26 June 1699 – 6 October 1777), the daughter of a banker who had entertained and dined distinguished guests on Monday and on Wednesday. Salonnières had “days.” Madame Geoffrin, the finest hostess of the Age of Enlightenment, attracted to her salon the leading intellectual, literary, artistic and political figures of the Age of Enlightenment, and, among them, Voltaire, a Freemason, encyclopédistes Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d’Alembert and, to a significant degree, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (28 June 1712 – 2 July 1778), an encyclopédiste who challenged the reign of reason and is, therefore, a precursor, if not the founder, of Romanticism. Remember La Querelle des Bouffons.

Nearly a generation later, during the 1770s and 178Os, madame Necker’s salon du vendredi, the Friday salon, would attract exceptional figures, one of whom, Jean-François Marmontel, has been somewhat neglected by posterity. Marmontel was secretary-for-life (lifetime) of the Neuf Sœurs (The Nine Sisters), the leading Masonic Lodge of the Grand Orient of France. Moreover, from 1771 until 1793, Louis-Philippe II, Duke of Orleans (Philippe Égalité) was its Grand Master. France also had English-speaking lodges.

Madame Necker also entertained Swiss expatriates Madame Geoffrin and the Marquise du Deffand. When Madame Necker left Paris, in 1790, she missed her salon. Four years later, she died.

Suzanne Curchod Necker

Jacques Necker, by Joseph Duplessis (Château de Versailles) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As for Madame de Staël’s father, Swiss-born Jacques Necker (30 September 1732 – 9 April 1804), he was Louis XVI’s finance minister (1788–89, 1789–90). Jacques Necker had become extremely wealthy, richissime in fact, during the Seven Year’s War. He made savvy speculations, perhaps not altogether above-board, but speculations that earned him a fortune and put him in a position to lend money to the Crown, so to speack, In 1764, he married Suzanne Curchod (1739 – 1794) put him in a position to lend money to the “Crown,” so to speak. In 1764, he married Suzanne Curchod (1739 – 1794),the cultivated daughter of a Vaudois* pastor who was considering marrying historian Edward Gibbon. Suzanne Necker became a prominent salonnière or salonist.

*from the Swiss Canton (township) of Vaud

Jacques Necker, a Protestant, would not allow his beloved daughter Germaine to marry a Catholic. In 1786, Madame de Staël was therefore married to the Swedish ambassador in Paris, Baron Erik de Staël-Holstein. It was, of course, a marriage of convenience, ended formally in 1797, but Madame de Staël was now at court, meeting statesmen. Madame de Staël and Erik de Staël had four children, three of whom survived childhood: Auguste (b. 1790), who edited his mother’s complete works; Albert (b. 1792); and Albertine (b. 1796). Albertine married Victor de Broglie, 9th Prime Minister of France. Gustavine (b. 1887) died in 1789.

One of the children may have been fathered by Benjamin Constant (25 October 1767 – 8 December 1830), the author of Adolphe (1816) and, for some 14 years (1794 – 1809), Madame de Staël’s lover. He and Madame de Staël shared the same liberal views. Benjamin’s writings were influenced by Karl Wilhelm Friedrich von Schlegel and his brother August Wilhem Schlegel, who were leading “Romantics.” (See Romanticism, Wikipedia.)

Madame de Staël had a fifth child, Alphonse, born in 1812 when Germaine was 46. In all likelihood, he was fathered by Albert de Rocca who legitimated him as Louis- Alphonse Rocca. Albert was twenty-three years younger than madame de Staël’s. The couple married after Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo and lived in Paris. Although sources differ concerning the date on which the marriage took place, my best information is that Albert de Rocca and Germaine de Staël married on 10 October 1816. She had a seizure in early 1817 and died on July 14, 1817. Albert de Rocca suffered from tuberculosis. He died on 31 January 1818.

Madame de Staël & Napoleon

The coup d’état of 18 Brumaire (9 November 1799) had made Bonaparte the self-declared head of state, in France (see Napoleon, Wikipedia), a position he consolidated in 1804 by proclaiming himself and his Créole wife, Joséphine, Emperor and Empress of France, leaving no voice to the people. After the execution of Louis XVI, madame de Staël therefore switched to moderate Republicanism.

Having read her writings, I would suspect that, intellectually, Madame de Staël may have been Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord‘s equal, except that their roles differed. Madame de Staël was a political thinker, but Talleyrand, a shrewd politician, a survivor, and Napoleon’s éminence grise, to a point. However, although Napoleon Bonaparte proved quite an adroit statesman, he was, first and foremost, an extraordinary general, which brought both his rise and his demise. Moreover, he had taken possession of France, not to mention Europe.

At any rate, a rather cowardly Napoleon had madame de Staël chased throughout Europe and banished her. Her refuge was the Château de Coppet, on Lake Léman (Lake Geneva), the property purchased by Jacques Necker, Madame de Staël’s doting father, in 1784. Germaine spent approximately ten years, at Coppet which she described as her Dix années d’exil (Ten Years of Exile). Scholar Mona Ozouf[i] speaks of Madame de Staël’s inquiétude (worriness). Who would catch her when she fell: “descendre sans appui” (to fall without support)? She did not moan, except privately, and in her Dix années d’exil (published posthumously, in 1821, as were other works), but isolation was a major burden to a conversationalist, hence the title of her book on her banishment: Dix années d’exil. Madame de Staël was a woman, a wife, and a mother who dared to write. (Ozouf, p. 121)

Madame de Staël (1766 – 1817), Firmin Massot

Le Groupe de Coppet

However, unexpectedly, during the ten years (an approximate number) Madame de Staël spent at Coppet, Coppet, not Paris, was the appropriate destination for men of letters, intellectuals, writers and various dignitaries. Helen Phillio Jenkins[ii] quotes French novelist Stendhal, the pen name of Marie-Henri Beyle (23 January 1783 – 23 March, 1842. Stendhal is the author of Le Rouge et le Noir (1830) and many classics of 19th-century French literature. The Red and the Black is on my list of future posts. Stendhal describes a triumphant summer feast in 1816, Madame de Staël’s last summer.

“There was here on the coast of Lake Geneva last autumn the most astonishing reunion. It was the states general of European opinion. The phenomenon rises even to political importance. There were here six hundred persons, the most distinguished of Europe. Men of intellect, of wealth, of the greatest titles–all came here to seek pleasure in the salon of the illustrious woman for whom France weeps today.” The Review Politique, 1880, says: “It was a parliament whence came forth political doctrines, a race [breed] of statesmen, a school of thinkers, which have filled with their combats, their triumphs or their defeats, more than half a century of our history.”[iii]

Romanticism

No, although she grieved, Germaine did not moan. She learned German and took an interest in German Romanticism. She met Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) known as Goethe, and Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (10 November 1759 – 9 May 1805), known as Friedrich Schiller. She is therefore associated with Sturm und Drang (late 1760s to early 1780s).

However, Madame de Staël’s knowledge of Geneva-born Jean-Jacques Rousseau‘s (28 June 1712 – 2 July 1778) works had fully prepared her to understand and to contribute to the development of European Romanticism. Madame de Staël had studied Rousseau and written about his works: 1) Letters on the Works and the Character of J.-J. Rousseau (1788). Although Madame de Staël had published two works before she was 21, she entered the world of letters when she started writing analytical works: political theory, literary theory, thoughts on various subjects, sociology avant la lettre:

Lettres sur les ouvrages et le caractère de Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1788) ;
De l’influence des passions sur le bonheur des individus et des nations (1796) ;
De la littérature considérée dans ses rapports avec les institutions sociales (1800).

Jean-Jacques had rehabilitated sentiment, a subject debated from the day René Descartes published, in French, his Discours de la Méthode (1637). By and large, seminal ideas stem from intuition, but are then examined methodically.

As for Madame de Staël, she wrote 2) A Treatise on the Influence of the Passions upon the Happiness of Individuals and of Nations, published in 1796. French-Swiss Benjamin Constant, the author of Adolphe (1816) and Madame de Staël’s lover, also studied sentiment.

Madame de Staël is also the author of 3) The Influence of Literature upon Society (1800). It’s a fascinating topic. However, Madame de Staël’s De l’Allemagne (Germany), written between 1810 and 1813, is her magnum opus. Yet, her novel entitled Delphine (1802), is also a classic.

Conclusion

In this post, we have seen Germaine de Staël as an intellectual and a salonnière, but a salonnière who played an active role in the conversation and was a thinker. She was in fact, both hostess and guest, and her guests included such individuals as Lord Byron, the Duke of Wellington, Madame Récamier.

She was a novelist, Delphine (1802)and Corinne (1807), but, first and foremost a thinker. Philosopher Auguste Comte, the father of sociology, included her in his “Calender of Great Men.”

In literature, she helped create a new hero well-exemplified by Chateaubriand‘s René, a French Werther, Goethe’s Werther. Our new hero suffers from le mal du siècle and le vague des passions. He stands tall compared to the rest of humanity, but he lives in a garret, his genius unrecognized. Reason had not been crushed, but it had been carefully circumscribed.

Politically, moderation guided her thinking. After the execution of Louis XVI, she was a moderate Republican. In fact, she was always a moderate.

And then comes Coppet, the unrivalled meeting-place of Europe’s intellectual elite. Whenever I think of Madame de Staël, she is in Coppet.

—ooo—

Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, revisited

Sources:

Descartes: The Discourse on Method, Project Gutenberg [EBook #59]EN
Benjamin Constant: Adolphe, Project Gutenberg [EBook #13861]EN
Staël Delphine (1802), Project Gutenberg [EBook #7812]EN
Madame de Staël: Corinne, or Italy (1807)EN
De l’Allemagne (1810-1803) may be read online (a 1852 edition).FR
De l’Allemagne, edited by Henri Heine, is an online publication.FR
Madame de Staël: De l’Allemagne, translated by Heinrich Heine (Amazon)EN
Considerations on the Principal Events of the French Revolution (1818) (Amazon)EN
Paul Gautier: Chateaubriand et madame de Staël (Revue des Deux Mondes, Tome 17, 1903 Chateaubriand et madame de Staël d’après les lettres inédites de Chateaubriand (1903)FR
Paul Gautier: Madame de Staël et Napoléon (1904)
Édouard Hérriot (1872 – 1957): Madame Récamier et ses amis
Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2gmVKMvBV0 (Michel Winock sur Madame de Staël)FR
art: Varvara Ivanovna Narishkine, by Vigée Le Brun, 1801

Please accept my apologies for the long absence. I was not feeling well. Kind regards to all of you.

_________________________

[i] Mona Ozouf, Les Mots des femmes ; essai sur la singularité française (Paris : Fayard, 1995), p. 113.

[ii] Helen Philleo Jenkins, “Madame de Stael,” in Mary Kavanaugh Oldham, ed. The Congress of Women: Held in the Woman’s Buiding, World’s Columbia Exposition, Chicago, U. S. A. 1893 (Chicago: Monarch Book Company, 1894), pp. 686-690).

Johann Baptist Vanhal, (12 May 1739 – 20 August 1813)

Symphony in G minor, II Adagio

12 March 2014

WordPress

Madame de Staël as Corinne,

Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Salons & Cafés survive “la Terreur”

19 Wednesday Feb 2014

Posted by michelinewalker in French Literature, History

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

Cafés, Chateaubriand, De l'Allemagne, Le Café Procope, Madame de Staël, Romanticism, Salons, Staël theorist, The French Revolution, Victor Hugo

Corbeille de fleurs by Eugène Delacroix (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“A Basket of Flowers” by Eugène Delacroix (26 April 1798 – 13 August 1863)

The Salon

The world that followed the French Revolution was a new world, but it had kept many of the institutions of the Old World, or l’Ancien Régime. One of these institutions was the salon. The first known French salon was seventeenth-century Catherine de Rambouillet’s Chambre Bleue. Guests enjoyed making believe they were shepherds and shepherdesses and they wrote poems, at times very tricky ones. La Chambre bleue was a magnet. Even Richelieu was inspired to visit.

In the middle of the seventeenth century, Catherine de Rambouillet‘s salon was replaced by Mademoiselle de Scudéry‘s. Mademoiselle de Scudéry was a prolific writer and her favourite subject was love. She drew the map of Tendre, Tendre being the land of love.

In the eighteenth century, the Golden Age of the salon, the most famous was Madame Geoffrin‘s (June 1699 – 6 October 1777). Dignitaries visiting Paris were infinitely grateful for being invited. It was such a privilege, but salons were not as they had been in the seventeenth century. The French eighteenth century was the Age of Enlightenment, so ideas were discussed.

On Monday, Madame Geoffrin received artists and, on Wednesday, men of letters. Ideas were discussed, but never too seriously. That would have been a breach of etiquette. L’honnête homme and the Encyclopédistes were a witty group. All were treated to a fine meal. However, even at Madame Geoffrin‘s salon, love remained a favourite subject.

Madame Geoffrin‘s salon in 1755 by Anicet Charles Gabriel Lemonnier. Château de Malmaison, Rueil-Malmaison (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

madame Récamier and Chateaubriand

Madame Récamier (4 December 1777 – 11 May 1849)

After and even during the French Revolution, except for the “Reign of Terror,” people, gentlemen mainly, flocked to salons such as Madame Récamier’s and Madame de Staël‘s. It is also at that time that François-René de Chateaubriand and Madame de Staël (22 April 1766 – 14 July 1817) inaugurated French Romanticism, a literary movement that gave primacy to sentiment.

Goethe‘s Sorrows of Young Werther (Die Leiden des jungen Werthers) was published in 1774, so France lagged behind both German and English Romanticism. François-René de Chateaubriand would soon publish René and Atala, novellas included in his Génie du christianisme, or Genius of Christianity (1802). It fact, although he is not included in David’s portrait of Madame Récamier, chances are Chateaubriand is looking at the “divine” Madame Récamier. In the early 1800’s, Chateaubriand was the most prominent author in France and Madame Récamier’s finest guest, but as he grew older, he lived like a recluse in a Paris apartment and visited one person only, Madame Récamier, Juliette.

François-René de Chateaubriand by Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson.

Chateaubriand by Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Germaine de Staël (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As for Germaine de Staël, a prominent theorist of Romanticism, Napoleon often banished her from France, causing her to spend several years at Coppet, her family’s Swiss residence. She was the French-born daughter of Swiss and Protestant banker James Necker, Louis XVI’s director of finance. Finding a husband for Germaine was not easy. Her father did not want her to marry a Catholic. Although she lived in the company of men who were fascinated by her extraordinary intellectual gifts and charm, most could not be serious candidates because Frenchmen are Catholics. She therefore married baron Erik Magnus Staël von Holstein, a Swedish diplomat.

Victor Hugo & Romanticism

Victor Hugo (26 February 1802 – 22 May 1885)

It could be said that Chateaubriand and Madame de Staël founded French Romanticism, a literary movement that spread to the fine arts and music. She is the author, among several books and treatises, of Delphine (1802) and Corinne (1807), novels. But her most fascinating work is De l’Allemagne, or Germany (1810-1813). It is, to a large extent, a manifesto of Western European Romanticism. She discussed L’Allemagne with her excellent friend and lover, Swiss-born novelist Benjamin Constant, or Henri-Benjamin Constant de Rebecque (25 October 1767 – 8 December 1830), a descendant of Huguenots (French Protestant Calvinists).

However, if French Romanticism has a manifesto, it is Victor Hugo‘s Préface de “Cromwell,” a play published in 1827. The 12-syllable noble verse, called l’alexandrin, had long been broken into two hémistiches of 6 syllables, or “pieds.” Victor Hugo used such alexandrins, but he also divided the 12-syllable verse into 3 groups of 4 syllables or “pieds.”

Je-mar-che-rai//les-yeux-fi-xés//sur-mes-pen-sées, 4 x 3 (3 trimètres)

Sans-rien-voir-au de-hors,//sans-en-ten-dr’ au-cun-bruit, 6 x 2 (2 hémistiches)
Seul,-in-con-nu,//le-dos-cour-bé,//les-mains-croi-sées, 4 x 3
Trist’,-et-le-jour//pour-moi-se-ra//com-me-la-nuit. 4 x 3

from Hugo’s “Demain, dès l’aube…”

Hugo also brought back things medieval, which he did with Notre-Dame de Paris or The Hunch Back of Notre-Dame. Chateaubriand felt seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French literature was somewhat borrowed, which it was. French authors emulated the Anciens or Greco-Roman literature.

At Café Procope at rear, from left to right: Condorcet, La Harpe, Voltaire (with his arm raised) and Diderot*

*our characters may not be at Café Procope, but they could have been

The Cafés

In cafés, however, men of letters discussed more freely. Cafés had become popular in the seventeenth century. Le Café Procope, established in 1686, has never closed shop except for occasional renovations.

Conclusion

During the French Revolution, Chateaubriand spent 10 years outside France. For one year he was in the United States and then joined an émigré army at Coblenz, Germany. By and large, years émigrés spent abroad were disruptive.

Madame de Staël enjoyed diplomatic immunity in Paris as the wife of Sweden’s ambassador to France. However she lived in England in 1893-1894 with her lover Louis de Narbonne, an émigré. She returned to Paris, via Coppet, her family’s Swiss residence, as soon as the Terreur was over, in the summer of 1794.

She was a successful salonnière under the Directoire (1795-1799), a government toppled by Napoleon’s 18 Brumaire, Year VIII (9 November 1799) coup d’État. She fared poorly under the Consulat, with Napoleon as first Consul. He banished her for nearly a decade but could not prevent her from thinking and writing. Coppet was a beehive. I still enjoy reading Madame de Staël’s De l’Allemagne.

The French Revolution deprived France of tens of thousands of its citizens. But, somehow, tens of thousands survived as did the institutions, salons and cafés, where they congregated to discuss such ideas as liberté, égalité, fraternité.

—ooo—

Sources:

Aurelian Craiutu: Faces of Moderation: Mme de Staël’s Politics during the Directory
EuropeanHistory.about.com
The Encyclopædia Britannica

Cafés

Vangélis

(Voltaire had a desk at le Café Procope)

Germaine de Staël (Google images)

19 February 2014

WordPress

Donkey-Skin: a Tale Labelled “Unnatural Love”

23 Thursday May 2013

Posted by michelinewalker in Fairy Tales, Literature

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Abraham Bosse, Adrienne Ségur, AT type 50, AT type 510, Charles Perrault, Donkey-Skin, fairy tale, l'honnête homme, Nadezhda Illarionova, Peau d'Âne, Philippe Lallemand, Salons

Nadezhda Illarionova (Photo credit: Google Images)

Donkey-Skin

Donkey-Skin (Peau d’Âne) was written by Charles Perrault, in 1694. But it is also dated 1697 as Histoires ou contes du temps passé, (Stories or Fairy Tales from Past Times with Morals or Mother Goose Tales). So doubt lingers as to the year it was written. I will date it c. 1695. Moreover, “unnatural love” seems a type rather than a motif. Type is the broader classification.

Summary of the Plot

A dying queen asks her husband to seek another spouse as beautiful as she is. The widowed king falls in love with his daughter who is as beautiful as her mother, hence the fairy tale‘s classification as “unnatural love.” However, Donkey-Skin seeks supernatural help provided by a fairy godmother. The princess is told that she must ask her father to provide her with lavish gowns, three as it turns out, and to kill his gold-defecating donkey. The father obliges and Donkey-Skin flees covered in the skin of the dead donkey.

After she escapes, Donkey-Skin starts working as a peasant. But a prince sees her through a key-hole when she is trying on one the lavish gowns her father has given her. This is an example of kairos, which means that the prince sees Donkey-Skin at the opportune moment. He falls in love to the point of being sick. In literature, French 17th-century literature in particular, writers have often depicted love as an illness.

The remedy that will heal the prince is not the skin of a wolf Isengrin’s age, but a cake Donkey-Skin has baked. She therefore bakes the cake and inserts her ring into the batter. So we now remember the foot-that-fits-the-shoe motif, Cinderella’s foot. The prince goes in search of the woman whose finger fits the ring and finds her. Donkey-Skin is returned to her regal self.

Réunion de dames by Abraham Bosse 17th century (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Salons and Préciosité

At the time Perrault wrote his Tales of Mother Goose (Contes de ma mère l’Oye), children’s literature was in its infancy. Charles Perrault was an habitué (a regular) of Salons and fairy tales are associated with Préciosité‘s main objectives: the refinement of language and manners, and the “Querelle des Femmes,”the 17th-century debate about women. Woman considered themselves as “précieuses.” At first sight, it therefore seems puzzling that the story of a princess resisting the incestuous advances of her father should be accepted in literature befitting fine gathering places. But such is not the case.

The Debate about women and Perrault’s Style

According to the Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales, Donkey-Skin is, indeed, part of the “Querelle des femmes,” the debate about women. Donkey-Skin exposes an abuse against women, which may explain its acceptability. Salonniers and salonnières also enjoyed the suspense. Finally, the tale might owe its acceptability to the rules governing fairy tales. Fairy tales have a happy ending so readers know that Donkey-Skin’s plight will end. However, I should think that the manner in which the tale is told is its subject matter. Peau d’Âne is an exquisite versified tale. It is Salon literature.

On Charles Perrault, honnête homme and a “Moderne”

In other words, although Donkey-Skin is pursued by an incestuous father, the tale is told by an excellent writer. Perrault (12 January 1628 – 16 May 1703) was born to a wealthy bourgeois family and elected to the Académie française, in 1671. For two decades, he worked at court as Jean-Baptiste Colbert’s secretary. He mingled in Salons with other honnêtes hommes,[i] gentlemen who, by and large, were as they seem[ii], quite an achievement in 17th-century France. Finally, at the close of the 17th century, Perrault would lead the Modernes in the famous Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes.[iii]

Donkey-Skin by Adrienne Ségur

Unnatural Love

Yet, in the Aarne-Thompson-Üther classification system, Donkey-Skin is listed as type AT 510B, [iv] i.e. unnatural love, rather than a type that could be called the flayed animal, such as The Lion, the Fox and the Wolf (AT type 50). The incestuous love of a father for his daughter does not seem appropriate entertainment for small children or the audience of Salons. We have seen, however, that it is acceptable. Moreover, it mirrors other motifs and types style redeems it.

The Flayed Wolf

Let’s recall Reynard the Fox, rooted in the Sick Lion tale or The Lion, the Fox and the Wolf (AT type 50). Reynard has overheard Ysengrin the wolf tell the king that Reynard has failed to join other courtiers who are at their sick king’s, the Lion, bedside. Reynard visits the king later and tells Noble that he has travelled everywhere in search of a cure. To be cured the king must wrap himself into the skin of a wolf, the age of Ysengrin.

It would therefore seems reasonable to link tales where a character is covered in the skin of another animal with the tale Aarne-Thompson have listed as AT type 50: curing a sick lion. Tales intersect and may border on other types. Although the Aarne-Thompson index classifies Donkey-Skin under its unnatural love category, Peau d’Âne does mirror the flayed-animal type, under any name. In fact Peau d’Âne also mirrors Goose who laid golden eggs (Æsop’ Fables, Perry Index 87) and Jean de La Fontaine‘s “La Poule aux œufs d’or” (V.13). Like the goose, the king’s donkey is aurifère, an endless source of gold.

Traditions populaires

Also at play is tradition. Perrault’s Donkey-Skin is perhaps ageless. It was probably transmitted through an oral tradition and too widely known to be left aside. Before Peau d’Âne entered a learned tradition, i.e. a written form, a fairy tale was sometimes referred to as a “Peau d’Âne.”[v] Moreover, Jean de La Fontaine expressed his love of Peau d’Âne (VIII. 4) in his second recueil or collection of fables:

Si Peau d’Âne m’était conté,

J’y prendrais un plaisir extrême.

Le Pouvoir des Fables (VIII. 4)

If one should tell that tale so queer
Ycleped, I think, “The Ass’s Skin,”
I should not mind my work a pin.
The world is old, they say; I don’t deny it;
But, infant still
In taste and will,
Whoever would teach, must gratify it.

The Power of Fables (VIII.4)

According to Marc Soriano,[vi] Perrault used many sources before writing his Peau d’Âne in perfect verse. The tale is not altogether a rewriting of Giambattista Basile‘s (c. 1575 – 23 February 1632) l‘Orsa IT (The Bear), (Il cunto de li cunti overo le trattemiento de peccerille [The Tale of Tales or Entertaiment for Little Ones]) or Pentamerone. Nor is it a polished version of a tale by Giovanni Francesco Straparola (c. 1575 – 23 February 1632), the author of the Facetious Nights or Piacevoli Notti. It is Perrault‘s Donkey-Skin and one of the first fairy tales belonging to children’s literature. Perrault’s tales has set the tone. He has become the model.

Conclusion

So, eloquence and tradition have redeemed unnatural love. That would be my first conclusion. As suggested above, folktales enjoy a degree of immunity, not only as fiction but as part of a cultural heritage that has profound roots and crosses borders. Peau d’Âne is not altogether cleansed: the donkey is still “aurifère,” i.e. it defecates gold, and Peau d’Âne‘s father’s love remains a transgression. However, even in the most refined social circles, one does indulge, occasionally, i.e. a tad, in scatological humour, told correctly. Moreover, by the time Perrault wrote his fairy tales, Préciosité was no longer the ridiculous fashion depicted in Molière‘s Les Précieuses ridicules (1659). Finally, not only does Perrault’s Donkey-Skin mirror many texts, but it is pared down and presented in verses, not the easier prose. Style transcends “unnatural love.”

However, I will end this post by introducing a new element. Let me quote Donkey-Skin’s fairy godmother who suggests that Donkey-Skin not contradict her father while nevertheless refusing his advances: “Mais sans le contredire on peut le refuser,” (“[b]ut you can avoir the necessity without displeasing him”) which is what Donkey-Skin does, thereby displaying that, with a little advice, the worldly wisdom of fables, she can negotiate her way out of her father’s incestuous requests. Her fairy godmother tells Peau d’Âne that incest, without naming it, is a “great sin,” (une faute bien grande), but her entire statement reads as follows:

Écouter sa folle demande

Serait une faute bien grande,

Mais sans le contredire on peut le refuser.
Peau d’Âne

“For, my dear child,” she said to her, “it would be a great sin to submit to your father’s wishes, but you can avoid the necessity without displeasing him.”
(Gutenberg [29021])

One is therefore reminded of Puss in Boots, a fairy tale in which a very clever cat takes his master from rags to riches using his savoir-faire, a more natural recourse than magic. Donkey-Skin will oppose her father “sans le contredire,” (without contradicting him), which is also savoir-faire, not to mention empowerment.

Sources and Resources

Neuf Contes de Perrault, PDF FR
The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault (Gutenberg [29021]) EN

_________________________

[i] The term sprezzatura used by Baldassare Castiglione in the Cortegiano (c. 1528) conveys behaviour that does not necessarily go beyond mere appearances. It suggests nonchalance.

“Partly because of the influence of the salons and partly as a result of disillusionment at the failure of the Fronde, the heroic ideal was gradually replaced in the 1650s by the concept of honnêteté. The word does not connote “honesty” in its modern sense but refers rather to an ideal aristocratic moral and social mode of behaviour, a sincere refinement of tastes and manners.” (honnête homme, Britannica)

[ii] “honnête homme”. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2013. Web. 23 May. 2013
<http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/271056/honnete-homme>.
[iii] According to the Modernes, the literature of France had reached an apex and could now serve as a model. The Anciens, led by Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux, who, with François de Malherbe, shaped French classicism, versification in particular, did not share this view.[iv] Christine Goldberg, “The Donkey-Skin Folktale Cycle (AT 510B),” The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 110, No. 435 (Winter, 1997), pp. 28-46.
[v] See G. Rouger, ed. Contes de Perrault (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 1967), p. 153.
[vi] Marc Soriano, Les Contes de Perrault, culture savante et traditions populaires (Paris : Gallimard, coll. ‘Tel’, 1977 [1968]), 113-124.

composer: Jean-Philippe Rameau (25 September 1683 – 12 September 1764)

piece: Tambourins and Chaconne from “Dardanus” (1739)

performers: Musica Pacifica, at the Berkeley Early Music Festival main stage, June 2012.

Portrait (detail) by Philippe Lallemand, 1672

A Few Words on Sprezzatura

21 Thursday Jun 2012

Posted by michelinewalker in French Literature, Salons

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Baldassare Castiglione, Book of the Courtier, Cicero, France, honnête homme, Pascal, Plato, Salons

Sprezzatura

In The Aristocrat as Art,[i] Domna Stanton states that “the quintessential prototype of the honnête homme was the Greek philosopher, the incarnation of virtue, of the golden mean, and the source of such fundamental notions as human sociability. It was only as eminently social beings, devoid of pedantry, that Greek philosophers earned the label honnête: ‘People can only imagine Plato and Aristotle in the long robes of pedants,’ protested Pascal.”

The Music Party (1738) Jean-André Portail, J Paul Getty Museum

In seventeenth-century France, l’honnête homme practiced a degree of sprezzatura, an art that did not seem to have been learned or “art that does not seem to be art.” For instance, as François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac (15 Septembre 1613 – 17 March 1680) wrote « L’honnête homme ne se pique de rien. » Maximes 203 (L’honnête homme [the courtier] never boasts [or is never “piqued”] about anything).[ii] We can therefore assume that, conversely, l’honnête homme is also capable of containing his anger: un peu de retenue (take it easy).

In this respect, Molière‘s Philinthe (Le Misanthrope) is the embodiment of honnêteté. At court or in one of the salons of seventeenth-century France, he would not tell a woman that she has applied too much makeup. This would be the truth, or what Alceste the misanthrope calls sincerity, but it would also be offensive. In such cases, l’honnête homme practices a morally acceptable form of mental reservation, so as not to hurt another human being, in which he is behaving according not only to the dictates of honnêteté, but also according to a moral or ethical code. « Le style c’est l’homme même. » (Georges-Louis Leclerc, comte de Buffon)

There can therefore be communion between galant behaviour and the respect due every human being, whatever his or her place in society. It is called charity and there cannot be grace, grazia, sprezzatura, honnêteté, where there is no charity or compassion. In seventeenth-century France, deceptive appearances, Pascal’s puissances trompeuses, were considered the greatest of ills. It remains however that honnêteté, cannot be altogether superficial. One cannot play honnête homme no more than one can feign devotion.

In Molière‘s Tartuffe, no one is fooled by the falsely devout Tartuffe, except Orgon, a pater familias who needs to be tyrannical with impunity and his mother. Everyone else knows that Tartuffe is a faux-dévot (falsely devout) except Orgon who needs a casuiste under his roof so he can sin with impunity while Tartuffe eats heartily and coveits his wife. He tells her that he knows how to lift scruples; that if she fears offending God (le Ciel [heaven]), this is an obstacle he can remove. (IV.5)

If every member of Orgon’s family, other than Orgon himself, can detect hypocrisy where hypocrisy there is, l’honnête homme will quickly see affectation in a would-be honnête homme, which would exclude this would-be honnête homme from the state of grace he would like to achieve. Grace has to be natural or internalized in the manner most of us internalize what we are taught as children. L’honnête homme is an honest man and among his virtues, we find a sense of justice and the realization that one has duties or obligations.

Virtus, humanitas, justice, and obligations

Baldassare Castiglione himself, the author of El Libro del Cortegiano (1528), quotes Quintilian‘s De Oratore (95 CE) who in turn quotes Plato‘s Phædrus:

“In Book II, Quintilian sides with Plato’s assertion in the Phædrus that the rhetorician must be just: ‘In the Phædrus, Plato makes it even clearer that the complete attainment of this art is even impossible without the knowledge of justice,’ an opinion in which I heartily concur.” (Quintilian 2.15.29, quoted in Wikipedia)

Castiglione had also read Cicero‘s (January 3, 106 BC – December 7, 43 BC) recently translated (1511) De Officiis (On Duties or On Obligations). According to Cicero, our courtier has duties or obligations.

Noble Birth and sprezzatura: inneism (adjective: innate)

In Italy, the common belief was that the courtier had to be an aristocrat. Yet Castiglione notes that honnêteté coud be innate, but that one could also be innately incapable of honnêteté:

Truth it is, whether it be through the favour of the starres or of nature, some there are borne endowed wyth suche graces, that they seeme not to have bene borne, but rather facioned with the verye hand of some God, and abounde in all goodnesse bothe of bodye and mynde. As againe we see some so unapte and dull, that a man wyl not beleve, but nature hath brought them into the worlde for a spite and mockerie. (First Book of The Book of the Courtier)[iii]

Consequently, noble birth did not guarantee sprezzatura. It is altogether possible to be “borne endowed wyth suche graces” just as it was entirely possible for nature to deny an individual the possibility to acquire sprezzatura. “As againe we see some so unapte and dull, that a man wyl not beleve, but nature hath brought them into the worlde for a spite and mockerie.” (quoted above)

Seventeenth-Century French salons

In this respect, it should be noted that one of the goals of French seventeenth-century salons, before and after runaway préciosité consisted in teaching aristocrat good manners. One does not clean one’s teeth at table using a hunting knife as a toothpick. Many aristocrats were soldiers whose manners left a great deal to be to be desired.

In fact, when Catherine de Rambouillet, “l’incomparable Arthénice (an anagram of Catherine),” (1588 [Rome] – 2 December 1665), opened her salon, rue Saint-Thomas- du-Louvre (between the Louvre, the King’s castle before Versailles was built, and the Tuileries), she provided a meeting-place for individuals who wanted to be in refined surroundings and speak well. Court had yet to be courtly. For instance, Marie de’ Medici, Henri IV’s wife, was not the sort of person well-mannered individuals would invite to dinner. For one thing, she spoke atrocious French.

So both aristocrats and bourgeois found their way to la chambre blue d’Arthénice, Madame de Rambouillet’s blue room, and mingled with one another. Pascal, La Fontaine, Charles Perrault, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, etc. were honnêtes hommes, but not aristocrats. There is an aristocracy above aristocracy: an aristocracy of the mind and of the soul.

Speech: l’Âge de l’éloquence

Speaking well, éloquence, was central to honnêteté.[iv] Quintilian (c. 35 – c. 100) was the author of Institutio oratoria (95 CE) and Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BC – 43 BC) De Oratore (55 BCE). L’honnête homme, practiced contenance, réserve, retenue, discrétion, sagesse, modération, but above all he spoke and wrote well. Buffon was elected to the Académie française (1753) mostly one the basis of his Discours sur le style (“Discourse on Style”), which he had pronounced before the Académie française. Let us hear him speak about writing: “Writing well consists of thinking, feeling and expressing well, of clarity of mind, soul and taste…. The style is the man himself” (“Le style c’est l’homme même”). Buffon had detractors, but if one cannot express a thought, does the thought exist… Thoughts have to be formulated.

Richelieu and the French Academy

It is in no way surprising that the first French academy was l’Académie française, established in 1635 by le Cardinal Richelieu. The French Academy, the first of the five academies, ruled over matters pertaining to language. Richelieu could not let language be didacted by salonniers and salonnières, people who attended seventeenth-century Salons (see Catherine de Rambouillet), where Préciosité flourished. A calamity!

With respect to language, see The Book of the Courtier.

However, the points I want to make are

that, it all likelihood, sprezzatura, in France, went beneath the surface. If the courtier had put on an act, everyone would have known, and he would have fallen from grace, so to speak.
I also wish to state that some people had the ability to learn grace, honnêteté, sprezzatura, while others didn’t: nature played a role;
that one’s aristocratic lineage did not guarantee the possibility of attaining elegance and sociability, i.e. some aristocrats were rotten apples from, perhaps, the moment of conception;
that, conversely, as the French believed, a bourgeois could become an honnête homme, honnêteté being independent of lineage;
that humanitas and virtus are linked to honnêteté;
that the good orator (language) was an honnête homme;
that nonchalance (the term is misleading) is a form of reserve, retenue and often appropriately-applied restriction mentale, as mentioned above;
that the idea of courtly behaviour evolved as it travelled from Italy to its various destinations, and, finally,
that courtly behaviour predates The Book of the Courtier. It belongs to a tradition. It is chevaleresque behaviour: chivalry and it dates back to Græco-Roman Antiquity.

I will therefore close by quoting, once again, Wikipedia’s entry on Baldassare Castiglione.

[t]he perfect gentleman had to win the respect and friendship of his peers and of a ruler, i.e., be a courtier, so as to be able to offer valuable assistance and advice on how to rule the city. To do this, he must be accomplished—in sports, telling jokes, fighting, poetry, music, drawing, and dancing—but not too much. To his moral elegance (his personal goodness) must be added the spiritual elegance conferred by familiarity with good literature (i.e., the humanities, including history). He must excel in all without apparent effort and make everything look easy.

[i] Domna C. Stanton, The Aristocrat as Art (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980), p. 14.

[ii] # 203: He is really wise who is nettled at nothing. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/9105/9105-h/9105-h.htm

[iii] Baldassare Castiglione, Sir Thomas Hoby (tr.) and Sir Walter Raleigh (ed.), The Book of the Courtier (London: David Nutt Publisher, 1900[1561]). http://www.luminarium.org/renascence-editions/courtier/courtier1.html

[iv] Marc Fumaroli, L’Âge de l’éloquence (Paris: Albin Michel 1994 [1980]).

—ooo—

Scarlatti, Domenico (26 October 1685 – 23 July 1757)

Sonatas K1, K2, K3, for harpsichord

21 June 2012

WordPress

Domenico Scarlatti

by Domingo, Antonio Velasco, 1738

Magical Cats: “Puss in Boots”

09 Wednesday Nov 2011

Posted by michelinewalker in Fairy Tales, French Literature

≈ 35 Comments

Tags

Basile, Fred Marcellino, kairos, learned tradition, oral tradition, Perrault, Salons, Straparola

Puss in boots by Fred Marcellino

Animals play many roles in literature. We have seen them in fables, beast epics, bestiaries, and high fantasy literary works, but we haven’t looked at animals inhabiting fairy tales.

By and large, in animal fairy tales, a witch, or a fairy godmother has transformed a prince or a princess into a frog or a toad. Usually, if three conditions are met, the curse is lifted and there appears a prince or a princess. There are exceptions to this scenario, yet it remains a common narrative.

Magical cats

However there are other narratives. For instance, we have magical cats, and our best example is Charles Perrault’s Puss in Boots. In Puss in Boots, the protagonist, or main character, is the third son of a miller. One of his brothers has inherited the mill, the other a donkey, but Puss’ master has inherited a mere cat, nothing more. His fate could be worse. He’s not a prince who has been turned into a frog or toad, but he feels he has been cheated. However, proud Puss does not consider himself an inferior inheritance and sets about to take his master from rags to riches.

ANTECEDENTS

Puss in Boots has made earlier appearances in Giovanni Francesco Straparola (c. 1480 – c. 1557). Straparola is considered the father of the literary form of the fairy tale in Europe, but fairy tales constituting Charles Perrault‘s Tales of Mother Goose (1697) are the versions we know and belong to literature. Between 1550-1555, Straparola wrote Le piacevoli notti or The Facetious nights.

Charles Perrault also drew his content from Giambattista Basile (c. 1575 – 23 February 1632), the author of Lo cunto de li cunti overo lo trattenemiento de peccerille (Neapolitan for “The Tale of Tales, or Entertainment for Little Ones”), a work also known as the Il Pentamerone, published posthumously in two volumes, in 1634 and 1636. But this is a story that may date back a thousand years or more and has been transmitted orally. A fairy tale enters literature, or the “learned tradition,” when it is presented in writing.[i]

Fairy tales and seventeenth-century French salons

To recapitulate, although Puss in Boots may date back thousands of year, the immediate known sources of French 17th-century fairy tales are Italian. However, these fairy tales could not be told to children, unless they had been translated and refined to meet the expectations of salonniers and salonnières (see Salons, Wikipedia).

Charles Perrault’s Puss in Boots is a well-written Puss in Boots, a product of late seventeenth-century French salons. As we know from earlier blogs, Charles Perrault had worked at Versailles, he was an habitué of salons and a member of the French Academy.

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Summary of the story

The third son of a miller is disappointed because all he has received as his inheritance is a cat. However, he will soon know otherwise. First, Puss asks the third son to provide him with a sack and with boots.

Deep within the human psyche lies the wish to travel quickly and, particularly, to fly. In Puss in Boots, no one has wings. But fairy tales also feature magical boots called bottes de sept lieues, or seven-league boots. They allow extraordinary mobility. It could be therefore that Puss has been provided with bottes de sept lieues, but I doubt it. The boots seem a prop befitting the genre, a signature. Puss does not need them, except to appear human.

The Marquis de Carabas

Yet, Puss does put on the boots, but what he shows is exceptional ingenuity, which is a characteristic of Reynard the Fox who succeeds in talking himself out of a death sentence. As for Perrault’s Puss in Boots, he starts killing game, putting it in his sack, and offering it to the King on behalf of a his renamed master.

Puss has therefore transformed the third son a miller into the Marquis de Carabas. But this is not an instance of metamorphism, but one of ingenuity. It is Puss, a clever cat, and not a fairy godmother, who has turned the third son of a miller into an aristocrat.

Puss in Boots, by Fred Marcellino

The River

Next, when Puss in Boots hears that the King and his daughter will ride along a river, he asks the new Marquis to get into the water. He then screams out that the Marquis is drowning. So the King stops, the Marquis de Carabas is saved, he is given appropriate clothes, and the King’s daughter falls in love with him. Clothes make the man.

The Land

Puss then reflects that a Marquis has to be a landowner. He sees peasants mowing a meadow and does so at the right moment: kairos – explained further down – and asks them to tell the King, when he passes by, that these fertile fields are the property of the Marquis de Carabas. Puss uses a ruse worthy of Reynard, the cunning fox.

The Ogre’s Castle

Puss in Boots and the Marquis de Carabas then come to a castle, kairos as opposed to chronos. In this castle, resides the landowner: an Ogre. This Ogre claims he can transform himself into other animals and, to prove it, he turns himself into a lion. Puss being very clever quickly asks the Ogre to turn himself into a mouse. The Ogre, who is not very clever, does as he is asked and Puss in Boots eats him up.

The Banquet

Just then, at the opportune moment, kairos, the King happens to come to the beautiful castle. The moment is in fact all the more opportune since the Ogre has a banquet ready for guests. When the Ogre’s guests arrive and see the King’s carriage, they flee. Consequently, a banquet is ready for the King. The King is so delighted with the events of the day that he tells the Marquis de Carabas that if he, the Marquis, says the word, he, the King, will take him for his son-in-law.

So, after renaming his master and three ruses: the river, the land, the castle, the third son of the miller has become a rich landowner who lives in a beautiful castle, and will marry the King’s daughter. Fairy tales end as comedies do. There is a marriage. The banquet is the dénouement or outcome.

A few comments

Note that the number three is important. The miller has three sons. As for events, the first could be the river, the second, the ruse concerning ownership of the land, and the third, the acquisition of the castle. But the first could also be renaming the third son of the miller, except that renaming his master perhaps encompasses the three events, or the name of the strategy.

Moreover, it should be pointed out that, in Ancient Greece, time was seen in both its vertical, kairos, and chronological, chronos, dimensions. Æon (Latin for the Greek word koine) was time eternal, which was sometimes represented by the same figure as chronos. In Buss in Boots, as in most fairy tales, things are there when they are needed and events happen at the opportune moment. That is kairos, time in its vertical dimension and time which could be called magical. We have finally shed light on the word kairos.

It is also true that the Ogre can transform himself, which is the stuff of fairy tales. But Puss in boots can’t. Puss is not an Ogre, he is simply very smart and resourceful. And it is because of these qualities that Puss can be considered a magic wand or fairy godmother, which gives this one fairy tale a lovely new twist.

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[i] I am using Malcolm Arthur’s translation of Le Chat botté, illustrated by Fred Marcellino (Farrar Straus Giroux, 1990).

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Domenico Scarlatti (26 October 1685 – 23 July 1757)

Sonata L.366/K.1

Ivo Pogorelić (born 20 October 1958)