THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES: FRANCE
First Portion of Sixteenth Century: Poets: Marot, Saint-Gelais; Prose
Writers: Rabelais, Comines. Second Portion of Sixteenth Century: Poets:
"The Pleiade"; Prose Writers: Amyot, Montaigne. First Portion of
Seventeenth Century: Intellectual and Brilliant Poets: Malherbe,
Corneille. Great Prose Writers: Balzac, Descartes. Second Portion of
Seventeenth Century: Poets: Racine, Molière, Boileau, La Fontaine; Prose
Writers: Bossuet, Pascal, La Bruyère, Fénelon, etc.
THE RENAISSANCE OF LETTERS.--The sixteenth century was for France the
epoch of the Renaissance of letters. What is called the Renaissance of
letters is the result, to each race, of the closest contact of the
educated people with ancient literature, contact which sometimes
strengthened the national vein, sometimes weakened it, according to the
divergent temperaments of these races.
MAROT; SAINT-GELAIS.--The sixteenth century in France was ushered in by
Marot and Saint-Gelais. Marot was a gracious, fluent, and satiric singer.
He was infinitely witty without venom, or mannerism, or affectation; at
times he attained to a somewhat serious philosophic poesy and also to
eloquence. Saint-Gelais, because he was most emphatically court-poet of
all those who have ever been court-poets, was placed by his
contemporaries above Marot, and literary historians have left him for the
most part in that position. The truth is that his work is worthless. It
would be impossible, however, to rob him of the glory of having brought
the sonnet from Italy, where he long abode in youth.
COMINES.--In this first half of the sixteenth century must be noted
Comines, the historian of Louis XI, a political historian and a
historical statesman, remarkably subtle in perceiving the characters and
temperaments of prominent individuals, as well as a writer possessing
exactitude and limpidity rare in his generation.
RABELAIS.--Francis Rabelais, in his two epic romances, _Gargantua_
and _Pantagruel_, was erudite, capable of a certain philosophic
wisdom which has been greatly exaggerated, but above all was picturesque
to one's heart's content, and possessed the art of telling a tale as well
as any one in the wide world. He has been called "the buffoon Homer," and
the nickname may be legitimately granted to him.
THE PLEIADE.--The second half of the sixteenth century was in all
respects the more remarkable. In poetry there was the Pleiade:
that is, the true and complete "Renaissance," although Marot had already
been a good workman at its dawn. The Pleiade consisted of Ronsard, Du
Bellay, Pontus of Tyard, Remy Belleau, and others; that is, folk who
wished to give to France in French the equivalent of what the classics
had produced in nobility and beauty. They did not succeed, but they had
the honour of having undertaken the task, and they also, all said and
done, produced some fine things.
RONSARD; DU BELLAY.--If the truth must be written, Ronsard created an
epic poem which it is impossible to read, and some rather overpowering
odes after the Pindaric manner; but he wrote detached epic pieces which,
though always a trifle artificial, possess real beauty, and some
_odelettes_ which are enchanting in their grace and genuineness of
feeling, as well as sonnets that are in all respects marvellous. Joachim
du Bellay, on his part, wrote sonnets which must be numbered among the
most beautiful in the French tongue--the rest often had agreeable
inspirations.
DRAMATIC POETS.--Add to their group some dramatic poets who did not yet
grasp what constituted a living tragedy and who, even when they imitated
Euripides, belonged to the school of Seneca, but who knew how to write in
verse, to make a discourse, and, occasionally, a gentle elegy. To mention
only the chief, these were Jodelle, Robert Garnier, and Montchrestien.
PROSE WRITERS: AMYOT; CALVIN.--In prose, in this second half of the
sixteenth century, there were translators like Amyot, who set forth
Plutarch in a limpid French full of ease and geniality, as well as
somewhat careless. Religious writings such as those of Calvin, in a hard
style and "dreary," as Bossuet expressed it, exhibited vigour, power, and
sobriety. Among political writers was the eloquent La Boëtie, the friend
of Montaigne, who in his _Discourse on Voluntary Servitude_
vindicated the rights of the people against _One_, that is the
monarch. Among authors of _Memoirs_ were Montluc and Brantôme,
picturesque in divergent manners, but both inquisitive, well-informed,
very alert and furnishing important contributions to history.
MORALISTS: DU VAIR.--Finally, there were moralists such as Du Vair, too
long forgotten, and Montaigne. Du Vair was an eloquent orator who
exhibited plenty of courage during the troubles of the League; he left
some fine philosophical treatises: _The Moral Philosophy of the Stoics_,
_On Constancy and Consolation in Public Calamities_, etc.
MONTAIGNE.--Montaigne, less grave and stoical, a far better writer, and
one of the two or three greatest masters of prose France ever produced,
possessed excellent sense sharpened with wit and enriched with a charming
imagination. According to his humour--now stoic, next epicurean, then
sceptic--always wise and refined and also always the sincere admirer of
greatness of soul and of courage, he is the best of advisers and of
companions through life, and of him more than of anyone else it ought to
be said: "To have found pleasure in him is to have profited by him." The
sole reproach could be that he wrote a little too much of himself,
that is, in entering into personal details that could well have been
spared.
COMMENCEMENT OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.--The first half of the
seventeenth century in France was only the corollary of the sixteenth,
though naturally with some distinctive personalities and with one,
practically isolated, effort of reaction against that sixteenth century.
At that period could be found writing men, like Agrippa d'Aubigné, who
were absolutely in the spirit of the previous century; d'Aubigné,
amiable, gracious, and also fairly often witty, which is too frequently
forgotten, was ardent, passionate, a rough and violent fighter more
particularly in his _tragedies_, which are baldly crude satires,
illumined with astonishingly beautiful passages fairly frequent in
recurrence, against the Catholics and their leaders. Others of very
different temperament displayed yet more than the poets of the sixteenth
century that liberty, that fantasy, that disorder which were
characteristic of the times of Ronsard. So far as poets were concerned,
that generation must be regarded as entering on a first romanticism.
Theophilus de Vian, a fine but over-prodigal poet, without ballast, did
not live long enough to grow wise and acquire self-mastery: Cyrano
de Bergerac was a brilliant madman, sometimes sparkling with wit and
imagination, but often dirty and ridiculous. Saint-Amant possessed plenty
of imagination and capacity for exquisite poetical feeling, but he lacked
taste and too often was puerile. Wiser than they, yet themselves verbose,
long-winded, slow, and spun out, Desportes translated into French verse
Italian poetry of the sixteenth century, often with very happy turns of
expression, and Bertaut, melancholy and graceful, lacked brilliance even
if he possessed poetic emotion.
REGNIER.--Regnier the satirist, pupil of Horace and Juvenal, also assumed
the mental attitude of the sixteenth century owing to his viridity, his
crudity, his lack of avoidance of obscenity, even though he was a true
poet, vigorous, powerful, oratorical, and epigrammatical, as well as a
witty and mordant caricaturist.
PRÉCIEUX AND BURLESQUES.--Then succeeded the _précieux_ and the
_burlesques_, who resembled each other, the _précieux_ seeking
wit and believing that all literary art consisted in saying it did not
matter what in a dainty and unexpected fashion; the _burlesques_
also sought wit but on a lower plane, desiring to be "droll," buffoons,
prone to cock-and-bull stories or crude pranks in thought, style, and
parody. Voiture is the most brilliant representative of the
_préieux_ and Scarron the most prominent of the _burlesques_.
MALHERBE.--In the midst of this unrestrained literature one man attempted
to impose reason, accuracy of mind, taste, and conciseness. This was
Malherbe, who was also a powerful lyric poet, a stylist with an ear for
melody. His influence was considerable, but forty years after his own
time; for it was the poets of 1660 who were formed of him and proclaimed
themselves his disciples. In his own day he had only Maynard and Racan
as pupils, or rather as partisans, for their work but little resembled
his.
THE THEATRE.--On the stage the first portion of the seventeenth century,
certainly as far as 1636, was only the corollary of the sixteenth. Hardy,
writing without method or rule, being in addition a very weak poet,
presided in the theatre whilst Mairet, in imitation of the Italians and
in imitation too of the bulk of the dramatists of the sixteenth century,
essayed to establish formal tragedy, but without creating much effect
because his talent was of an inferior description.
At last Corneille arose and, after feeling his way a little, created
French tragedy; but as this was only in 1636, and as in the course of his
long career he came into the second half of the century, he will be dealt
with a little later.
PROSE: BALZAC; DESCARTES.--In prose, the first half of the seventeenth
century was fruitful in important works. Cardinal de Perron, who began as
an amiable elegant poetaster, became a great orator and formidable
controversialist. Guez de Balzac, a little lacking in ideas yet an
extremely good writer, though but little detached from preciosity, as
Voltaire observed, imparted harmony to his phrases both in his letters
and in his _Socrates a Christian_. Vaugelas arranged the code of
the language founded on custom. Descartes, with whose philosophic ideas
we have here nothing to do, in his broad, ample periods, well delivered
and powerfully articulated, reproduced the Ciceronian phrase though
without its rather weak grace, and in great measure formed the mould
whence later was to flow the eloquence of Bossuet. The important works of
Descartes are his _Discourses on Method_, his _Meditation_, and
his _Treatise on the Passions_.
THE GOLDEN AGE: CORNEILLE.--The second half of the seventeenth century is
in all respects the golden age of French literature. Great poets and
great prose writers were then crowded in serried ranks. To begin with the
dramatic poets, who furnished the most vivid glory of the epoch, there
was Corneille, who, from 1636, with _The Cid_, was in full splendour
and who before 1650 had produced his most beautiful works, _Cinna_, _The
Horaces_, _Polyeucte_, continued for twenty-four years after 1650 to
furnish the stage with dramas that often possessed many fine qualities,
among which must be cited _Don Sancho of Aragon_, _Nicomedes_, _Oedipus_,
_Sertorius_, _Sophonisba_, _Titus and Berenice_, _Psyche_ (with Molière),
_Rodogune Heraclius_, _Pulcheria_. Corneille must be regarded as the
real creator of _all_ the French drama, because he wrote comedies,
tragedies, operas, melodramas. It was therein, apart from his universal
virtuosity, that he more particularly made his mark, and in his best work
he was the delineator of the human will overcoming passions and, as it
were, intoxicated with this victory and his own power, so that he has
become a great advocate of energy and a prominent apostle of duty.
RACINE.--Racine, altogether different, without being opposed to duty,
loved to depict passions victorious over man and man the victim of his
passions and of the over-powering misfortunes therefrom resulting, thus
furnishing a moral lesson. He was a more penetrating psychologist than
Corneille, although the latter knew the human heart well, and he showed
himself infallibly wise in composition and dramatic disposition, as well
as an absolutely incomparable master of verse. His tragedies, especially
_Andromache_, _Britannicus_, _Berenice_, _Bajazet_, _Phèdre_, and
_Athalie_ will always enchant mankind.
MOLIÈRE.--Molière who was admirably gifted to seize the ridiculous with
its causes and consequences, very quick and penetrating in insight, armed
with somewhat narrow but solid common-sense calculated to please the
middle classes of all time, possessed prodigious comic humour, and who
never gave the spectator leisure to reflect or breathe--in short, a great
writer although hasty and careless--created a whole répertoire of comedy
(_The School of Women_, _Don Juan_, _Tartufe_, _The Misanthrope_,
_Learned Ladies_) which left all known comedy far behind, which
eliminated all rivalry in his own time, knew eclipse only in the middle
of the eighteenth century, and for the last hundred and forty years has
proved the delight of Europe. He remains the master of universal comedy.
BOILEAU.--Boileau was only a man of good sense, of ability, and of
excellent taste, who wrote verse industriously. This was not enough to
constitute a great poet but enough to make him what he was, a diverting
and acute satirist, an agreeable moralist and critic in verse--which his
master Horace had been so often--expert, dexterous, and possessing much
authority. His _Poetic Art_ for long was the tables of the law of
Parnassus, and even now can be read not only with pleasure but even with
profit.
LA FONTAINE.--La Fontaine was one of the greatest poets of any epoch. He
had a profound sentiment for nature, a fine and penetrating knowledge of
the character of men he depicted under the names of animals; he was free
and fantastic as a philosopher but well instructed and sometimes
profound; he had a gentle and smiling sensibility capable at times of
melancholy and also now and again of a delicious elegiac; above all, he
was endowed with incomparable artistic sense, which rendered him the
safest and most dexterous manipulator of verse, of rhythms, and of
musical sonorities, who appeared in France prior to Victor Hugo. It is
much more difficult to state what he lacked than to enumerate the
multiple and miraculous gifts with which he was endowed. His complete
lack of morality or his ingenuous carelessness in this respect formed the
only subject for regret.
SECONDARY ABILITY.--Near such great geniuses, it is only possible to
mention those of secondary talent; but no compunction need be felt at
alluding to Segrais, a graceful manufacturer of eclogues, and Benserade,
who rhymed delightfully for masquerades and was capable, on occasions, of
being wittily but also tenderly elegiac.
GREAT PROSE WRITERS.--The writers in prose of the second half of the
seventeenth century are legion and but few fail to attain greatness. La
Rochefoucauld, in his little volume of _Maxims_, enshrined thoughts
that were often profound in a highly accurate and delicate setting.
Cardinal de Retz narrated his tumultuous career in his _Memoirs_,
which are strangely animated, vivid, and representative of what occurred.
Arnauld and Nicole have explained their rigid Catholicism, which was
Jansenism, in solid and luminous volumes; the latter, more especially,
merits consideration and in his _Moral Essays_ proved an excellent
writer. Mezeray, conscientious, laborious, circumstantial as well as
capable writer, should be reckoned as the earliest French historian.
Bourdaloue, sound logician and good moralist, from his pulpit as a
preacher uttered discourses that were admirable, though too dogmatically
composed, and painted word-pictures that piously satirised the types and
the eccentrics of his day. Malebranche, reconsidering what Descartes had
thought and revitalising his conclusions, arranged in his _Research
after Truth_ a complete system of spiritualist and idealistic
philosophy which he rendered clear, in spite of its depth,
and extremely attractive owing to the merits of his powerful and
facile imagination and of his rich, copious, and elastic style, that
attained the happy mean between conversation and instruction. But five
writers of the highest rank came into the perennial forefront, attracting
and retaining general attention: Pascal, Bossuet, Mme. de Sévigné,
La Bruyère, and Fénelon.
PASCAL.--Pascal, a scholar and also by scientific education
mathematician, geometrician, physician, turned, not to letters
which he scorned, but to the exposition of those religious ideas which at
the age of thirty-three were precious to him. To defend his friends the
Jansenists against their foes the Jesuits, he wrote _The Provincial
Letters_ (1656), which have often been regarded as the foremost
monument of classic French prose; such is not our view, but they
certainly form a masterpiece of argument, of dialectics, of irony, of
humour, of eloquence, and are throughout couched in a magnificent style.
Dying whilst still young, he left notes on various subjects, more
particularly religion, philosophy, and morality, which have been
collected under the title of _Thoughts_ and are the product of a
great Christian philosopher, of a profound moralist, of a marvellously
concise orator, and also of a poet who lacked neither acute sensitiveness
nor vast and imposing imagination.
BOSSUET.--Bossuet is universally admitted to be the king of French
orators; all his life he preached with a serious, imposing, vast,
copious, and sonorous eloquence, fed from recollections of Holy Writ and
of the Fathers, being insistent, convincing, and persuasive. His few
funeral orations (on Henrietta of France, Henrietta of England, the
Prince de Condé) are prose poems of glory, grief, and piety. He wrote
against all those he regarded as enemies of true religion (_History
of Variations_, _Quarrels of Quietness_), controversial works sparkling
with irony and exalted eloquence. He traced in his _Universal
History_ the great design in all its stages of God towards humanity
and the world. He knew all the resources of the French language and of
French style, and in his hands they were expanded. Despite his errors,
which were those of his epoch, his date counts in the history of France
as a great date, the date in which the religion to which he belonged
reached its apogee and when the grand style of French prose was in its
zenith.
MADAME DE SÉVIGNÉ.--Madame de Sévigné only wrote letters to her friends;
but they were so witty, lively, picturesque, admirable in aptly
recounting the anecdotes of her day and in depicting the scenes and
those concerned in them, written in a style so brisk and seductive,
uniting the promise of 1630 with the harvest of 1670, that her work still
remains one of the greatest favourites with people of literary taste.
She was the friend of M. de la Rochefoucauld, of Cardinal de Retz, and of
that amiable, refined, and gentle Mme. de la Fayette, whose novel, _The
Princess of Cleves_, is still read with interest and emotion.
LA BRUYÈRE.--La Bruyère translated and continued Theophrastus; he was a
moralist, or rather a depicter of morals. He described the court, the
town, and (very rarely) the village and the country. He was on the
lookout for fools in order to be their scourge. He painted, or, better
still, he engraved in an incisive way that was sharp, like aqua-fortis.
Almost invariably bitter to an extreme, he sometimes had flashes of quite
unexpected and very singular sensibility which make him beloved. Somewhat
in imitation of La Rochefoucauld, but more particularly in conformity
with his own nature, he developed a brief, concise, brusque style which
became that of the moralist and even of the general author for the next
fifty years, a style which was that of Montesquieu and Voltaire, and
superseded the broad, sustained, balanced, harmonious, and measured style
of the majority of the writers of the eighteenth century. In the field of
ridicule, wherein he sowed copiously, more so even than Molière, the
comic poets of the eighteenth century came to glean copiously, which did
them less credit (for it is better to observe than to read) than it
conferred on the wise and ingenious author of the _Characters_.
FÉNELON.--Fénelon, extremely individual and original, having on every
subject ideas of his own which were sometimes daring, often practical,
always generous and noble, was a preacher like Bossuet; also like
Bossuet, he was a dexterous, skilled, and formidable controversialist,
whilst, for the instruction of the Duke of Burgundy, which had been
confided to him, he became a fabulist, an author of dialogues, in some
degree a romancer or epic poet in prose in his famous _Telemachus_,
overadmired, then overdepreciated, and which, despite weaknesses, remains
replete with strength and dazzling brilliance. Nowadays there is a marked
return to this prince of the Church and of literature, whose brain was
complex and even complicated, but whose heart was quite pure and his
reasoning on a high level.