Comeille, Lasso and Modern Poetics
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Comeille, lasso and Modern Poetics CORNEILLE, TASSO AND MODERN POETICS A. Donald Sellstrom Ohio State University Press Columbus Copyright © 1986 by the Ohio State University Press All Rights Reserved. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Sellstrom, A. Donald Comeille, lasso, and modem poetics. Bibliography: Includes index. 1. Comeille, Pierre, 1606-1684—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Comeille, Pierre, 1606-1684— Knowledge— Literature. 3. Tasso, Torquato, 1544-1595—Influence—Comeille. 4. Poetics. 5. Epic poetry—History and criticism. 6. Classical poetry—History and criticism. I. Title. • PQ1779.S46 1986 842'.4 86-2539 ISBN 0-8142-0410-4 For Eleanor TABLE O F CONTENT S PAGEix Acknowledgments PAGE xi Introduction PAGE 3 Chapter I. Motives for Emulation: The Quarrel of the Cid PAGE 17 Chapter II. Polyeucte and Book Four of the Aeneid PAGE 35 Chapter III. Polyeucte: Vergil and Tasso PAGE 53 Chapter IV. The Roman Trilogy: Dante and Tasso PAGE 65 Chapter V. La Mort de Pompee: Lucan and Tasso PAGE 85 Chapter VI. Theodore and Heraclius: Tasso, the Playwright PAGE 103 Chapter VII. Views of Poetry and the Poet PAGE 131 Conclusion viii • CORNEILLE, TASSO AND MODERN POETICS PAGE 139 Notes PAGE 155 Bibliography PAGE 161 Index Acknowledgments THE IDEATHAT A SIGNIFICANT LINK MIGHT EXISTBETWEEN Torquato Tasso and Pierre Corneille came to me unexpectedly in the fall of 1978 as I was reading Mario Praz's book On Neoclassi cism. A sentence-long quotation from the Discorsi delpoema eroico jumped out at me: "Broken lines, entering one into the other . make the language magnificent and sublime." That this fine point in the theory of heroic style was not original with Tasso made no difference; I connected it immediately in my own mind with a number of audacious run-on lines in Cor- neille's fourth Roman play, La Mort de Pompee, lines that had long struck me as anomalous both in the playwright's own prac tice and in that of the French classicists in general. Thanks to being on leave at the time, I was free to follow up on the hunch and, accordingly, set about making a cursory first acquaintance with the great Italian poet and critic. In the end, the question of run-on lines would drop out of the picture entirely; in the pro cess of reading the Discorsi, however, I proved to have stum bled on a text that would shed new light not only on La Mort de Pompee but, eventually and in conjunction with other texts of a theoretical or poetical nature, on several other of the play- wright's best known works as well. The intuition, if that is what it was, that I experienced in happening on the sentence from Tasso was not quite like the "click" that Leo Spitzer spoke of in his famous essay on linguistics and literary history. It enabled me, nevertheless, to break into the hermeneutic circle—with what results it is now up to others to say. Since 1978,1 have incurred other debts both to individuals and to institutions. Among Corneille scholars, those whose works lay closest to my own line of inquiry were Marc Fumaroli and Marie-Odile Sweetser, both of whom at various times and in different ways lent encouragement. To Professor Sweetser I am grateful in particular for suggestions helping me, at an important juncture, to broaden the original focus of my study. The University Research Institute of the University of Texas X • CORNEILLE, TASSO AND MODERN POETICS supported my work with a typing grant and, later, a publication grant, for both of which I hereby express my appreciation. The continued support of colleagues, friends, and family in Austin has been of crucial importance throughout. I should like espe cially to thank: Michel Dassonville, for having offered good ad vice on organizational matters; Elisabeth Herrington and Karen Kelton, for typing the several versions of my work as it pro gressed toward its final form; and, not least, my wife, Eleanor, and our children, without whose moral support through the years it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to persevere. Parts of my argument concerning Tasso's influence on Cor neille have appeared elsewhere, most recently in two papers read in France and later published: one in connection with a symposium held in the Spring of 1983 on "Le Mecenat en France avant Colbert" ("La Theodore de Corneille ou le statut social de l'ecrivain"); the other in the context of the celebration in the fall of 1984 of the tercentenary of Corneille's death ("Corneille, emule du Tasse"). The subject matter of these papers has been entirely recast here, however. Chapter 5, on the other hand, incorporates virtually unchanged most of the text of an article published in 1982 in PMLA ("La Mort de Pompee: Roman History and Tasso's Theory of Christian Epic")-1 am indebted to the editors of PMLA for permission to republish that material here. Introduction THE 1653 INVENTORY OF ART OBJECTS AND FINE FURNITURE belonging to Cardinal Mazarin contains the description of some twenty-two cabinets. One of these is said to have been decorated with "dix tableaux de mignature" depicting Apollo and the nine Muses and with "les portraicts de deux poetes anciens, et deux modernes" (d'Aumale, p. 252). In all probability this is the same cabinet as the one to which Charles Perrault referred at the end of the century in a biographical article on Corneille (in Les Hommes illustres qui ontparu en France pendant ce siecle): Tout Paris a vu un cabinet de pierres de rapport fait a Florence, et dont on avait fait present au cardinal Mazarin, ou, entre les divers ornements dont il est enrichi, on avait mis aux quatre coins les medailles ou les portraits des quatre plus grands poetes qui aient jamais paru dans le monde, savoir Homere, Virgile, Le Tasse et Corneille. (Mongredien, p. 356) The iconographical message of this cabinet is not hard to read up to a point. The cabinet very clearly not only celebrates the accomplishments of Corneille, it proposes a view of the his tory of poetry itself. This history is one of the transfer of poetic hegemony, as represented in each case by a single preeminent poet, from Greece, to Rome, to Italy, and finally to France. Cor neille and French literature in general are seen as both inheriting a rich legacy from the past and reaffirming the highest sanctions of poetry for the present. The history of poetry is seen also to entail transference from the ancient world to the modern era, each world being represented by a pair of poets. This arrange ment acknowledges the success of Renaissance efforts to rees tablish a literary tradition rooted in antiquity. Because of its per fect symmetry, the decoration on the cabinet may also imply closure and retrospection, as if a divine equation had been com pleted and history had arrived at its full term. If this much is clear, the rest is not. And what is most prob lematical of all is Corneille's relationship to the other three poets. Vergil won renown in large part by emulating Homer, and xii • CORNEILLE, TASSO AND MODERN POETICS Tasso in turn by emulating Vergil. Does the cabinet imply that Corneille has extended the line by emulation of Tasso? And Tas- so's modernity rested above all on the fact that he had Christian ized the Vergilian epic. Are we to assume by extrapolation that Corneille is a "modern" in the same sense as Tasso, that his plays somehow embody a decorum or ethic opposed to an earlier decorum or ethic? Finally, there is the question why Corneille, a playwright, is compared to three epic poets. Is this anomaly ac cidental and therefore of little interest, or does it perhaps point to something that for the time being escapes understanding? The core of the argument I develop in this study is that Corneille did in fact set out to emulate Tasso (and secondarily Vergil also), although he never acknowledges the fact and in deed never even mentions the Italian poet's name. I intend to show, moreover, that he emulated Tasso in such a way as to enable us to read a number of his most important works (not restricted just to Polyeucte and Theodore) as "modern" in the Tassoan sense and, moreover, that he had a very conscious pur pose in crossing a generic frontier in order to join forces with the epic tradition in poetry. This thesis is new, but it draws on previous scholarship in three well-established fields. Two of these are Franco-Italian lit erary and cultural relations in the decades leading up to the Quarrel of the Cid and the Christian or providential dimensions of Corneille's theater. The scholars to whom I am indebted in these areas include Marc Fumaroli, Bernard Weinberg, Chandler B. Beall, and Joyce G. Simpson, on the one hand; Marie-Odile Sweetser, Jacques Maurens, Andre Stegmann, and Germain Poi rier on the other. What I add to their work lies in the nature of specifying Italian influence as it exerts itself on Corneille and linking the playwright's "modernism" with a particular Italian source, Tasso. Corneille's emulation of Tasso begins in the Quarrel of the Cid and is reflected above all in the tragedies he wrote from Horace to Heraclius. I pay special attention to four of these plays—Polyeucte, La Mort de Pompee, Theodore, and Hera- clius—because they mark the most important stages of the devel opment of that emulation; but I try to integrate the intervening plays into the argument as well.