Writing Against the Reader: Poetry and Readership in France 1840-1880
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Writing Against the Reader: Poetry and Readership in France 1840-1880 Jacqueline Michelle Lerescu Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2015 © 2015 Jacqueline Michelle Lerescu All rights reserved ABSTRACT Writing Against the Reader: Poetry and Readership 1840-1880 Jacqueline Michelle Lerescu This dissertation examines the changing ways in which nineteenth-century French poets addressed readers and constructed relationships with them from the late Romantic period through the rise of the Symbolist movement. While poetry’s increased isolation from the public is recognized as an important facet of the evolution of nineteenth-century poetry, the specific reasons for this have not been broadly studied. This dissertation first examines the poet-reader relationship in prefaces to poetic works, examining the shift from Romantic poets such as Victor Hugo and Alphonse de Lamartine, who considered addressing humanity an important part of their vocation, to mid-century poets such as Charles Baudelaire, Lautréamont and Charles Cros, who used prefaces to criticize and chase away readers, to later poets such as Stéphane Mallarmé and Arthur Rimbaud, who abstained from addressing readers by not writing prefaces or publishing their poetry. In order to understand the reasons for this shift, this dissertation examines new media and new readers which these poets rejected as the antithesis of poetry: the press, women and working-class readers. This dissertation studies poetry and critical articles in the mainstream press, women’s publications and publications by and for workers to reveal the models of the poet-reader relationship they presented. In so doing, it creates a broader view of poetic practices and readership in this period, which remain understudied in literary history. The models of the poet-reader relationship evident there demonstrate that rather than ignoring or rejecting them, elite poets defined poetry and readership in direct relation to these other practices and audiences. Table of Contents List of Illustrations iv Acknowledgments v Introduction 1 Previous Scholarship 8 Description of Chapters 13 1 – From “homo sum” to “Hypocrite lecteur”: Addressing Poetry Readers in the Preface in the Mid- to Late Nineteenth Century 20 Introduction 20 I. Preface Practices 22 1. Romantic and Jeune-France Preface Practices 24 2. Baudelaire’s Preface Practices: Late(r) Romantic and Old Jeune- France 34 II. “Préface” and “Au lecteur” 37 1. Hugo and Baudelaire in the Literary Field, 1856-1857 38 2. Functions of the Preface in the “Préface” to LC and “Au lecteur” 40 3. Positioning the Poet-Reader Relationship in Pronouns 43 4. The Culpable Reader: “Insensé” and “Hypocrite” 47 5. Hugo and the Reader: Macrocosm and Microcosm 49 6. Baudelaire and the Reader: Aggression and Self-Incrimination 52 III. 1857 and After: Redefining the Poet-Reader Relationship in Negative 59 1. Aborted Prefaces: From Anger to Silence 59 2. Late Nineteenth-Century Prefaces: Insulting and Chasing Away the Reader 63 3. No Prefaces, No Books: Ignoring the Reader 67 Conclusion 69 2 – Media and Audience: Poetry and Poets in the Press 71 Introduction 71 I. The Rise of the Newspaper and the Feuilleton 74 i II. Poetry versus the Press 78 1. Material Forms: Mass-Produced Texts versus Luxury Literature 79 2. Readers and Practices: the Corporeal Cuisinière versus the Disembodied Elite 85 3. Authors and Motives: The Prostituted Journalist versus the Pure Poet 89 III. Poets in the Press 93 1. Cultural Criticism in the Feuilleton 94 2. Poetry in the Feuilleton 101 IV. The Slow Extinction of the Poet-Journalist 114 1. Reviews and Self-Publication 118 2. Poetry as Anti-Publication 120 Conclusion 123 3 – “Catechism” and “Good Actions”: Women Readers and Poets 125 Introduction 125 I. Women Readers in Society and Literature 128 1. Women’s Education and Its Consequences for Readership 129 2. Masculine Bas-Bleus and Women Readers 131 3. Effeminate Romantic Poets and Women Readers 134 4. Gender and Genre on Trial 136 II. Women’s Poetry in the Press 140 1. The Development of the Women’s Press 141 2. Poetry as Prescriptive Moral Lesson 144 3. Poetry as an Exhortation to Action 152 4. The Woman Reader in Elite Publications 158 III. Women Readers beyond the Bourgeois Consensus 164 1. Women’s Poetry as a Critique of Women’s Social Condition 165 2. Women Poets’ Prefaces: Stretching the Boundaries the Poet-Reader Relationship 168 3. Redefining the Poet-Reader Relationship as a Community of Women 171 Conclusion 177 4 – The Politics of Audience: Poetry and the Popular Reader 181 Introduction 181 ii I. Poésie populaire 1830-1850: Media and Forms 184 II. Models of the Poet-Reader Relationship 1830-1852 190 1. Trials, Censorship and the Popular Reader as Criminal 190 2. The Poet-Reader Rapport in Worker Newspapers 195 3. Hugo, the Popular Poet and the “Multitude” 203 4. Lamartine and the Popular (Prose) Reader 208 5. Baudelaire in 1850: the Fusion of the Poet and the People 212 6. From Democracy to Aristocracy 221 III. Poetry and the Popular Reader 1852 and beyond: Hugo, Baudelaire, Mallarmé 224 1. L’Art and le Beau versus le Vrai and l’Utile 225 2. Poetry and the Education of the Masses 227 3. Poetry and Progress 230 4. Mallarmé, Baudelaire and the Paradox of the Popular Reader 232 Conclusion 236 Conclusion 239 Bibliography 244 iii List of Illustrations Yves Vadé Le sujet lyrique et ses allocutaires 61 Front page of La Presse, August 4, 1851 81 “Nostalgie d’obélisques” from Gautier’s Émaux et camées (1852) 81 Gautier’s “Contralto” in the Revue des deux mondes (December 1849) 84 J.J. Grandville The cuisinière and the feuilleton in Reybaud’s Jérôme Paturot à la recherche d’une position sociale (1846) 86 Jules Vernier The bas-bleu and the cuisinière in Soulié’s Physiologie du Bas-Bleu (1841) 132 iv Acknowledgements First and foremost, I would like to thank my advisor, Vincent Debaene, for his tremendous encouragement, patience and generosity with his time and reflections. I would also like to thank Elisabeth Ladenson and Emanuelle Saada, whose guidance has been central in shaping this project from its earliest conception and who have been formative in my own intellectual journey. Thank you also to Rachel Mesch and Seth Whidden for generously agreeing to serve on my dissertation committee. Thank you to all those in the Columbia French Department who have made my years here intellectually exciting and fun: Pascale, Benita, Meritza, Isabelle, and all the talented and kind professors in the Department. I will think of you all and my time here with great fondness. Finally, I want to thank my wonderful family and friends for their love and support. Words cannot express my gratitude for all they have given me. v Introduction In the mid- to late nineteenth century, the relationship between poets and their readers was profoundly changing. Victor Hugo (1802-1885) argued throughout his long career that it was their role to enlighten mankind, calling them “les premiers éducateurs du peuple” (William Shakespeare 238). But by the mid-nineteenth century, young poets rejected this Romantic conception of the poet as a voice for humanity. In 1857, Charles Baudelaire (1821- 1867) famously addressed his reader in the preface to Les Fleurs du mal1 as “hypocrite lecteur, mon semblable mon frère;” as Claude Pichois notes in his introduction to LFDM, from this point on “[l]a poésie est devenue agression” (LFDM 27). Following his conviction for immorality in the trial against LFDM, Baudelaire reflected bitterly on the fundamental “malentendu” between poet and reader (idem 246). Instead, he and his successors hardened their positions on readership considerably, defining poetry as an elite practice isolated from the public’s gaze. In this dissertation, I examine the context of this shift in the poet-reader relationship to show why and how poets increasingly defined their work against the reader. As Baudelaire noted in an 1859 article on his mentor Théophile Gautier, aptly published in the elite periodical L’Artiste, “la France n’est pas poëte, elle éprouve même, pour tout dire, une horreur congéniale de la poésie. […O]n peut dire que dans tous les genres d’invention le grand homme ici est un monstre. Aimons donc nos poètes secrètement et en cachette” (OC 1961, 696-97).2 This notion that the average reader was unappreciative or even hostile to poetry led poets like Baudelaire to attck them and increasingly argue that “real” poetry should keep them away. In so doing, he helped shape a younger generation of poets beginning in the 1860s, who largely defined their relationship to readers – or more precisely, 1 I will refer to Les Fleurs du mal from here on as LFDM. 2 I quote from two collections of Baudelaire’s Œuvres complètes, and distinguish between them by their date of publication: OC 1961 refers to the 1961 Pléiade edition; OC 1975 refers to a two-volume Pléiade edition, whose second volume features some of Baudelaire’s critical works on Poe not included in the earlier edition. I also quote from the 2004 Gallimard edition of Les Fleurs du mal (LFDM) which contains Baudelaire’s notes for later prefaces which were never published. I similarly refer to the Œuvres complètes of other authors with the abbreviation OC and their Œuvres poétiques as OP. 1 the lack thereof – as based on the poet’s fundamental abstention from public life and any interaction with the common reader. The leader of the reclusive Symbolist group, Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-1898), typifies this position in the famous 1891 Enquête Huret, defining the poet-reader relationship through the poet’s refusal to engage with the public: “L’attitude d’un poète dans une époque comme celle-ci, où il est en grève devant la société, est de mettre de côté tous les moyens viciés qui peuvent s’offrir à lui.