As literature is not a bundle of separate threads, but one fabric, it
is manifestly impossible to give an adequate account of any one of its
forms, as the lyric poem, by itself and aside from the larger web of
which it is a part. The following pages will attempt only to sketch
the main phases which the history of the lyric in France exhibits and
so to furnish a rough outline that may help the reader of these poems
to place them in the right historical relations. He should fill it out
at all points by study of some history of French literature.[1] No
account will be taken here of those kinds of verse that have only a
slight contact with serious poetry. Such are, for instance, the songs
of the _chansonniers_, mainly of vinous inspiration, which followed a
tradition of their own apart from that of the more sober lyric, though
some of the later writers, especially BÉRANGER and DUPONT, raised them
to a higher dignity. Such also are the songs so abundant in the modern
vaudevilles and light operas, many of which have enjoyed a very wide
circulation and great favor and have left couplets fixed in the memory
of the great public.
Neither will account be taken of the poems of oral tradition, the
_chansons populaires_, of which France possesses a rich treasure, but
which have never there, as so conspicuously in Germany, been brought
into fructifying contact with the literary lyric.[2]
The beginnings of the literary tradition of lyric poetry in France are
found in the poetry of the Troubadours. No doubt lyric expression was
no new discovery then; lyrics in the popular language had existed from
time immemorial. But it was in the twelfth century and in Provence
that it began to be cultivated by a considerable number of persons who
consciously treated it as an art and developed for it rules and forms.
These were the Troubadours. Though their poems did not, at least at
first, lack sincerity and spontaneity, their tendency to theorizing
about the ideals of courtly life, especially about the nature and
practice of love as the ideal form of refined conduct, was not
favorable to these qualities. As lyrical expression lost in directness
and spontaneity it was natural that more and more attention should
be paid to form. The external qualities of verse were industriously
cultivated. Great ingenuity was expended upon the invention of
intricate and elaborate forms. Beginning at the end of the eleventh
century, the poetry of the Troubadours had by the middle of the
twelfth become a highly artificial and studied product. It was then
that it began to awaken imitation in the north of France and thus
determine the beginnings of French lyric poetry.
An earlier native lyric had indeed existed in northern France, known
to us only by scanty fragments and allusions. It was a simple and
light accompaniment of dancing or of the monotonous household tasks
of sewing and spinning. Its theme was love and love-making. Its
characteristic outward feature was a recurring refrain. The manner and
frequency of repeating this refrain determined different forms, as
_rondets_, _ballettes_, and _virelis_ But there are few examples left
us of early French lyrics that have not already felt the influence
of the art of the Troubadours. Even those that are in a way the most
perfect and distinctive products of the earlier period, the fresh
and graceful _pastourelles_, with their constant theme of a pretty
shepherdess wooed by a knight, may have been imported from the south
and have pretty surely been touched by southern influence.
From the middle of the twelfth century the native lyric in the
north was entirely submerged under the flood of imitations of the
Troubadours. The marriage of Eleanor of Poitiers with Louis VII. in
1137 brought Provence and France together, and opened the north,
particularly about her court and that of her daughter Marie, Countess
of Champagne, at Troyes, to the ideas and manners of the south. The
first result was an eager and widespread imitation of the Provençal
models. Among these earliest cultivators of literary art in the French
language the most noteworthy were CONON DE BÉTHUNE (d. 1224), BLONDEL
DE NESLE, GACE BRÛLÉ, GUI DE COUCI (d. 1201), GAUTIER D'ESPINAUS, and
THIBAUT DE CHAMPAGNE, King of Navarre (d. 1253). There is in the work
of these poets a great sameness. Their one theme was love as the
essential principle of perfect courtly conduct, and their treatment
was made still more lifeless by the use of allegory which was
beginning to reveal its fascination for the mediaeval mind. From all
their work the note of individuality is almost completely absent.
Their art consisted in saying the same conventional commonplaces in
a form that was not just like any other previously devised. So the
predominance of the formal element was a matter of necessity. Some
variation from existing forms was the one thing required of a piece of
verse.
This school of direct imitation flourished for about a century. Then
it suddenly ceased and for another century there was almost no lyric
production of any sort. In the fourteenth century Guillaume de
Machault (1295- 1377) inaugurated a revival, hardly of lyric poetry,
but of the cultivation of lyric forms. He introduced a new style which
made the old conventional themes again presentable by refinement of
phrase and rhetorical embellishments, and he directed the pursuit
of form not to the invention of ever new variations, but to the
perfection of a few forms. And it is noticeable that these fixed forms
were not selected from those elaborated under Provençal influence, but
were the developments of the forms of the earlier _chansons à danser_,
the _rondets_, _ballettes_, and _virelis_. The new poetic art that
proceeded from Machault spent itself mainly in refining the phrase of
the old commonplaces, allegories, and reflections, and on turning them
out in _rondels_, _rondeaux_, _triolets_, _ballades_, _chants royaux_,
and _virelis_. The new fashion was followed by FROISSART (1337-1410),
EUSTACHE DESCHAMPS (approximately 1340-1407), who rhymed one thousand
four hundred and forty ballades, CHRISTINE DE PISAN (1363-_?_), and
CHARLES D'ORLÉANS (1391-1465), who marks the culmination of the
movement by the perfection of formal elegance and easy grace which his
rondels and ballades exhibit.
All this lyric poetry had been the product of an aristocratic and
polite society. But there existed at the same time in the north of
France a current of lyrical production in an entirely different social
region. The bourgeoisie, at least in the larger and industrial towns,
followed the example of the princely courts, and vied with them in
cultivating a formal lyric, and numerous societies, called _puis_,
arranged poetical competitions and offered prizes. Naturally in their
hands the courtly lyric only degenerated. But there were now and then
men of greater individuality who, if their verses lacked something
of the refinement and elaborateness of the courtly lyric, more than
atoned for it by the greater directness and sincerity of their
utterance, and by their closer contact with common life and real
experience. Here belong the farewell poems (_congés_) of JEAN BODEL
(twelfth century) and ADAM DE LA HALLE (about 1235-1285), of Arras;
here belong especially two Parisians who were real poets, RUTEBEUF
(d. about 1280) and FRANÇOIS VILLON (1431- 146?), who distinctly
announces the end of the old order of things and the beginning of
modern times, not by any renewal of the fixed forms, within which he
continued to move, but by cutting loose from the conventional round
of subjects and ideas, and by giving a strikingly direct and personal
expression to thoughts and feelings that he had the originality to
think and feel for himself.
But no one at once appeared to make VILLON'S example fruitful for
the development of lyric verse, and it went on its way of formal
refinement at the hands of the industrious school of rhetoricians,
becoming more and more dry and empty, more and more a matter of
intricate mechanism and ornament. No more signal proof of the
sterility of the school could be imagined than the triumphs of the art
of some of the grands _rhétoriqueurs_ like MESCHINOT (1415?-1491),
or MOLINET (d. 1507), the recognized leader of his day. The last
expiring effort of this essentially mediaeval lyric is seen in CLÉMENT
MAROT. He had already begun to catch the glow of the dawn of the
Renaissance, but he was rooted in the soil of the middle ages and
his real masters were his immediate predecessors. He avoided their
absurdities of alliteration and redundant rhyme and their pedantry;
but he appropriated the results of their efforts at perfecting the
verse structure and adhered to the traditional forms. The great stores
of the ancient literatures that were thrown open to France in the
course of the first half of the sixteenth century came too late to be
the main substance of MAROT'S culture.
But it was far otherwise with the next generation. It was nurtured on
the literatures of Greece, Rome, and Italy, which was also a classical
land for the France of that day; and it was almost beside itself with
enthusiasm for them. The traditions of the mediaeval lyric and all its
fixed forms were swept away with one breath as barbarous rubbish by
the proclamations of the young admirers of antiquity. The manifesto of
the new movement, the _Défense et Illustration de la langue française_
by JOACHIM DU BELLAY, bade the poet "leave to the Floral Games of
Toulouse and to the _puis_ of Rouen all those old French verses, such
as _Rondeaux_, _Ballades_, _Virelais_, _Chants royaux_, _Chansons_,
and other like vulgar trifles," and apply himself to rivaling the
ancients in epigrams, elegies, odes, satires, epistles, eclogues, and
the Italians in sonnets. But the transformation which this movement
effected for the lyric did not come from the substitution of different
forms as models. It had a deeper source.
Acquaintance with the ancients and the attendant great movement of
ideas of the Renaissance reopened the true springs of lyric poetry.
The old moulds of thought and feeling were broken. The human
individual had a new, more direct and more personal view of nature and
of life. That note of direct personal experience, almost of individual
sensation, that was possible to a VILLON only by virtue of a very
strong temperament and of a very exceptional social position, became
the privilege of a whole generation by reason of the new aspect in
which the world appeared. The Renaissance transformed indeed the whole
of French literature, but the first branch to blossom at its breath
was the lyric. Of the famous seven, RONSARD, DU BELLAY, BAÏF, BELLEAU,
PONTUS DE THYARD, JODELLE, and DAURAT, self-styled the _Pléiade_,
who were the champions of classical letters, all except JODELLE were
principally lyric poets, and RONSARD and DU BELLAY have a real claim
to greatness. This new lyric strove consciously to be different from
the older one. Instead of _ballades_ and _rondeaux_, it produced odes,
elegies, sonnets, and satires. It condemned the common language and
familiar style of VILLON and MAROT as vulgar, and sought nobility,
elevation, and distinction. To this end it renewed its vocabulary by
wholesale borrowing and adaptation from the Latin, much enriching the
language, though giving color to the charge of Boileau that RONSARD'S
muse "_en français parlait grec et latin_".
Of this constellation of poets RONSARD was the bright particular star.
The others hailed him as master, and he enjoyed for the time an almost
unexampled fame. To him were addressed the well known lines attributed
to Charles IX.:
Tous deux également nous portons des couronnes:
Mais, roi, je la reçus: poète, tu la donnes.
His example must be reckoned high for his younger contemporaries
beside the ancient writers to whom he pointed them.
But his authority was of short duration. RÉGNIER and D'AUBIGNÉ, who
lived into the seventeenth century, could still be counted of his
school. But they had already fallen upon times which began to be
dissatisfied with the work of RONSARD and his disciples, to find
their language crude and undigested, their grammar disordered,
their expression too exuberant, lacking in dignity, sobriety, and
reasonableness. There was a growing disposition to exalt the claims of
regularity, order, and a recognized standard. A strict censorship was
exercised over an author's vocabulary, grammar, and versification.
Individual freedom was brought under the curb of rule. The man who
voiced especially this growing temper of the times was MALHERBE
(1555-1628). No doubt his service was great to French letters as a
whole, since the movement that he stood for prepared those qualities
which give French literature of the classic period its distinction.
But these qualities are those of a highly objective and impersonal
expression, seeking perfection in conformity to the general consensus
of reasonable and intelligent minds, not of an intensely subjective
expression, concerned in the first place with being true to the
promptings of an individual temperament; and lyric expression is
essentially of the latter kind. MALHERBE, therefore, in repressing the
liberty of the individual temperament, sealed the springs of lyric
poetry, which the Renaissance had opened, and they were not again set
running till a new emancipation of the individual had come with the
Revolution. Between MALHERBE and CHATEAUBRIAND, that is for almost
two hundred years, poetry that breathes the true lyric spirit is
practically absent from French literature. There were indeed the
_chansonniers_, who produced a good deal of bacchanalian verse, but
they hardly ever struck a serious note. Almost the most genuinely
lyric productions of this long period are those which proceed more
or less directly from a reading of Hebrew poetry, like the numerous
paraphrases of the Psalms or the choruses of RACINE'S biblical plays.
The typical lyric product of the time was the ode, trite, pompous, and
frigid. Even ANDRÉ CHÉNIER, who came on the eve of the Revolution
and freed himself largely from the narrow restraint of the literary
tradition by imbibing directly the spirit of the Greek poets, hardly
yielded to a real lyric impulse till he felt the shadow of the
guillotine. It is significant of the difficulty that the whole
poetical theory put in the way of the lyric that perhaps the most
intensely lyrical temperament of these two hundred years, JEAN JACQUES
ROUSSEAU, did not write in verse at all.
That which again unsealed the lyric fountains was Romanticism.
Whatever else this much discussed but ill defined word
involves--sympathy with the middle ages, new perception of the world
of nature, interest in the foreign and the unusual--it certainly
suggests a radically new estimate of the importance and of the
authority of the individual. It was to the profit of the individual
that the old social and political forms had been broken up and
melted in the Revolution. It could seem for a moment as if, with the
proclamation of the freedom and independence of the individual, all
the barriers were down that hemmed in his free motion, as if there
were no limits to his self-assertion. His separate personal life got a
new amplitude, its possibilities expanded infinitely, and its interest
was vastly increased. The whole new world of ideas and impulses urged
the individual to pursue and to express his own personal experience of
the world. CHATEAUBRIAND made the great revelation of the change that
had taken place, and in spite of the fact that his instrument is
prose, the lyric quality of many a passage of René was as unmistakable
as it was new. But the lyric impulse could not at once shake off
literary tradition. It needed to learn a new language, one more
direct and personal, one less stiff with the starch of propriety and
elegance. The more spontaneous and genuine it became, the closer
it approached this language. DELAVIGNE won great applause by his
_Messéniennes_ (1815-19), but the lyric impulse was not strong enough
in him to make him independent of the traditional rhetoric. MME.
DESBORDES-VALMORE, less influenced by literary training and more
mastered by the emotion that prompted her, found the real lyric note.
But it was especially LAMARTINE whose poetic utterance was most
spontaneous and who recovered for France the gift of lyric expression.
His _Méditations poétiques_ (1820) were greeted with extraordinary
enthusiasm and marked the dawn of a new era in French poetry.
But other influences making for a poetic revival were multiplied.
A very important one was the spreading knowledge of other modern
literatures, particularly those of England and Germany with their
lyric treasures. Presently there began to be a union of efforts for
a literary reform, as in the Renaissance, and the Romantic movement
began to be defined. Its watchword was freedom in art, and as a reform
it was naturally considerably determined by the classicism against
which it rebelled. The qualities that it strove to possess were
sharply in contrast with those that had distinguished French poetry
for two hundred years, if they were not in direct opposition to them:
in its matter, breadth and infinite variety took the place of a narrow
and sterile nobility--"everything that is in nature is in art"; in its
language, directness, strength, vigor, freshness, color, brilliancy,
picturesqueness, replaced cold propriety, conventional elegance and
trite periphrasis; in its form, melody, variety of rhythm, richness
and sonority of rhyme, diversity of stanza structure and flexibility
of line were sought and achieved, sometimes at the expense of the
old rules. By 1830 the young poets, who were now fairly swarming,
exhibited the general romantic coloring very clearly. Almost from the
first VICTOR HUGO had been their leader. His earliest volume indeed
contained little promise of a literary revolution. But the volume of
_Orientales_ (1828) was more than a promise; it held a large measure
of fulfilment, and is a landmark in the history of French poetry. The
technical qualities of these lyrics were a revelation. They distinctly
enlarged the capacity of the language for lyrical expression.
There are three other great lyric poets in the generation of 1830: DE
VIGNY, DE MUSSET, and GAUTIER. De Vigny annexed to the domain of lyric
poetry the province of intellectual passion and a more impersonal and
reflecting emotion. De Musset gave to the lyric the most intense and
direct accent of personal feeling and made his muse the faithful and
responsive echo of his heart. Gautier was an artist in words and laid
especial stress on the perfection of form (cf. _l'Art_, p. 190); and
it was he especially that the younger poets followed.
By the middle of the century the main springs of Romanticism began to
show symptoms of exhaustion. The subjective and personal character of
its lyric verse provoked protest. It seemed to have no other theme but
self, to be a universal confession or self-glorification, immodest and
egotistical. And it began to be increasingly out of harmony with the
intellectual temper, which was determined more and more by positive
philosophy and the scientific spirit. LECONTE DE LISLE voiced this
protest most clearly (cf. _les Montreurs_, p. 199), and set forth the
claims of an art that should find its whole aim in the achievement
of an objective beauty and should demand of the artist perfect
self-control and self-repression. For such an art personal emotion was
proclaimed a hindrance, as it might dim the artist's vision or make
his hand unsteady. Those who viewed art in this way, while they turned
frankly away from the earlier Romanticists, yet agreed with them in
their concern for form, and applied themselves to carrying still
farther the technical mastery over it which they had achieved. Their
standpoint greatly emphasized the importance of good workmanship, and
the stress laid upon form was revealed, among other ways, by a revival
of the old fixed forms. The young generation of poets that began to
write just after the middle of the century, generally recognized
LECONTE DE LISLE as their master, and were called _Parnassiens_ from
_le Parnasse contemporain_, a collection of verse to which they
contributed. They produced a surprising amount of work distinguished
by exquisite finish, and making up for a certain lack of spontaneity
by intellectual fervor and strong repressed emotion.
But the rights of subjective personal emotion could not long be
denied in lyric poetry. Even LECONTE DE LISLE had not succeeded in
obliterating its traces entirely, and if he achieved a calm that
justifies the epithet _impassible_, given so freely to him and to his
followers, it is at the cost of a struggle that still vibrates beneath
the surface of his lines. Presently emotion asserted its authority
again, more discreetly and under the restraint of an imperious
intellect in SULLY PRUDHOMME, readily taking the form of sympathy with
the humble, in FRANÇOIS COPPÉE, or returning to the old communicative
frankness of self-revelation with VERLAINE. With VERLAINE we reach
a conscious reaction from the objective and impersonal art of the
_Parnassiens_. That art found its end in the perfect rendering
of objective reality. The reaction sought to get at the inner
significance and spiritual meaning of things, and looked at the
objective reality as a veil behind which a deeper sense lies hidden,
as a symbol which it is the poet's business to penetrate and illumine.
It also moved away from the clear images, precise contours, and
firm lines by which the _Parnassiens_ had given such an effect of
plasticity to their verse, and sought rather vague, shadowy, and
nebulous impressions and the charm of music and melody (cf. VERLAINE'S
poem, _Art poétique_, p. 288). This is in general the direction taken
by the latest generation of poets, symbolists, decadents, or however
otherwise they are styled, for whom VERLAINE'S influence has been
conspicuous. They make up rather an incoherent body, whose aims and
aspirations, more or less vague, are by no means adequately indicated
by this brief statement of their tendency. They have by no means said
their last word. But the accomplishment of their movement hitherto has
been marred, and its promise for the future is still threatened, by a
fatal and seemingly irresistible tendency toward unintelligibility.
Notes:
[1] Special commendation may be given to the large work by various
scholars under the direction of Petit de Julleville now in process
of publication, and also to the shorter histories, in one volume, of
Gustave Lanson (1895) and F. Brunetière (1897). An English translation
of the latter is published by T. Y. Crowell & Co., New York.]
[2] A large number of the _chansonniers_ are represented in the
collection by Dumersan and Noel Ségur, _Chansons nationales et
populaires de France_, 2 vols., 1566, to which an account of the
French _chanson_ is prefixed. Specimens of the _chanson populaire_ may
be read in T.F. Cranes _Chansons populaires de la France_, New York,
Putnam, 1891: an excellent historical sketch and a bibliography make
this little volume a good introduction to the reading of French
popular poetry.
Anthologies and collections : Crépet, _les Poètes Français_, 4 vols.,
1887; G. Masson, _la Lyre française_, London (Golden Treasury Series);
G. Saintsbury, _French Lyrics_, New York, 1883; P. Paris, _le
Romancero français_, 1833; K. Bartsch, _Romanzen und Pastourellen_,
Leipzig, 1870; Bartsch and Horning, _la Langue et la Littérature
françaises depuis le IXe jusqu'au XIVe siècle_, 1887; L. Constans,
_Chrestomathie de l'ancien français à l'usage des classes_, 1884;
_Histoire littéraire de la France_, vol. xxiii; Darmesteter and
Hatzfeld, _le Seizième siècle en France_, 1878; F. Godefroy, _Histoire
de la littérature française depuis le XVIe siècle jusqu'à nos jours_,
6 vols., 1867; Lemerre, _Anthologie des poètes du XIXe siècle_,
1887-88; _le Parnasse contemporain_, 3 series, 1866, 1869, 1876.
For reference: Good historical and critical notices may be found in
several of the above, especially in Crépet, Darmesteter and Hatzfeld,
and the _Histoire littéraire_; Jeanroy, _Origines de la poésie lyrique
en France_, 1889; G. Paris, _Origines de la poésie lyrique en France_,
Journal des Savants, 1891, 1892; G. Paris, _la Poésie française au XVe
siècle_ (leçon d'ouverture), 1886; Sainte-Beuve, _Tableau historique
et critique de la poésie au XVIe siècle_; F. Brunetière, _l'Évolution
des genres_, vol. i, 1890; Villemain, _Tableau de la littérature
française au XVIIIe siècle, passim_; Th. Gautier, _Étude sur les
progrès de la poésie depuis 1830_ (in _Histoire du romantisme_); C.
Mendès, _Légende du Parnasse contemporain_, 1884; F. Brunetière,
_Évolution de la poésie lyrique au XIXe siècle_, 2 vols., 1894; J.
Tellier, _Nos poètes_, 1888.