Robert J. Hudson BUCOLIC INFLUENCE: MAROT's GALLIC PASTORAL and MAURICE SCÈVE's ARION
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Robert J. Hudson BUCOLIC INFLUENCE: MAROT’S GALLIC PASTORAL AND MAURICE SCÈVE’S ARION n November 13, 1536, in response to the opportunistic impetus Oof Lyonnais poet Maurice Scève (ca. 1501–1564) and Renaissance venturer/editor Etienne Dolet (1509–1546), publisher François Juste released his Recueil de vers latins, et vulgaires de plusieurs Poëtes Françoys, composés sur le trespas de feu Monsieur le Daulphin in Lyon (Saulnier, “La mort” 56–57). Drawing from an impressive consortium of primarily neo- Latin poets gathered in this Renaissance hub of trade, print, and culture, Scève and Dolet included several of their own verses (four compositions equaling forty-fve verses for the latter and eight poems for a signifcant total of 283 verses credited to the former) alongside those composed by members of Lyon’s renowned Sodalitium lugdunense—including Jean Salmon Macrin, Nicolas Bourbon, Jean Visagier, and others of the “Olympiens” to whom Marot dedicated his Adolescence clementine (Febvre 32–38). Conceived, naturally, to commemorate the fallen dauphin François (1518–1536), who had tragically and suspiciously died that summer during a royal sojourn in Lyon, the volume likewise represents an effort to openly declare continued loyalty to the crown and exculpate Lyon’s intellectual elite of complicity in the crime: the Italian courtier Sébastien de Montecuculli, known by many of the poets, had recently been tortured and executed for purportedly poisoning the prince. The collection also represents an effort to mitigate the ire of the grieving king, François I (1494–1547), whose endorsement was necessary for the continuation of lucrative trade fairs in Lyon. More personally for the affuent Scève, one of the few native Lyonnais involved in the project, this collection of neo-Latin and French verse offered him the opportunity to build on recent literary successes and establish himself as the superlative vernacular poet in Lyon (Clément 31–34; Saulnier, “La mort” 80–86). To this end, Scève composed his 228-verse Arion, Églogue sur le trespas de feu Monsieur le Dauphin, the penultimate poem of the collection that dwarfs all other compositions, occupying roughly a quarter of the entire volume (228 of 881 total verses) and three-quarters of the 308 verses in French. Assuming a pastoral voice of bucolic complaint in an attempt to assert himself among France’s greatest poets, Scève aimed to The Romanic Review Volume 105 Numbers 3–4 © The Trustees of Columbia University Romanicv105n03-04.indb 253 12/22/15 3:18 PM 254 Robert J. Hudson seize the vernacular laurels at the culmination of this most memorable year in Lyon’s history.1 Scève’s assumed triumphant perch atop Lyon’s Mount Fourvière was, however, short-lived, as only weeks later, in early December 1536, the royal poet laureate and prince des poëtes françoys Clément Marot (1496–1544) returned from his two-year Italian exile, was exonerated upon public abjuration of his past heresies, and was lavishly received and celebrated among the Lyonnais literati (Déjean 283–89; Guy 240–43). Indeed, this brief visit of a mere few weeks only further anchored Marot’s well-established and profound poetic infuence in Renaissance Lyon. For his part, Scève certainly did not escape Marot’s vast reach—at least, not at this early juncture. In fact, while Marot had contributed a brief, twenty-four-verse epitaph to the Scève/Dolet tombeau, his presence is felt most palpably in the Arion, the very poem through which Scève hoped to assert his poetic prominence in Lyon. With Marot’s early 1515 translation of Virgil’s frst eclogue and Marot’s own original bucolic verse from 1531, composed to lament the death of another Valois noble, Queen Mother Louise de Savoie (1476–1531), Maistre Clement had already created a pastoral tradition in France—one informed by Virgil, Baptista Spagnolo (commonly known as “Mantuan” after his birthplace), and others in its naturalization into the French vernacular—that Scève needed to frst confront prior to establishing his own authority within the bucolic genre. Reading Scève’s Arion in the light of the Virgilian pastoral tradition of the Renaissance (Mantuan, Jacopo Sannazaro, Luigi Alamanni), paying particular attention to these two earliest, genre-establishing Marotic eclogues, the present article argues that through an apprehensive apprenticeship with the verse of his era’s archpoet, Scève eventually mobilizes Marot’s bucolic infuence to poetic ends and successfully carves a pastoral niche for himself, ultimately surpassing his French and Latin models. What is the Renaissance enterprise 1. By 1536 Renaissance Lyon had enjoyed cultural and fnancial distinction in the kingdom for nearly three decades, given the cosmopolitan city’s four annual commercial fairs and its advantageous position on major European trade routes, as well as being the fnal outpost for aristocratic soldiers and diplomats en route to or from the Valois campaigns in Italy (1494–1559). Indeed, with the prospects of the arrival of the highly proftable silk trade (cf. Tassinari 14) and the summertime sojourn of the royal court (cf. Bourgeois 153–59), the year 1536 was poised to further solidify Lyon’s standing in terms of wealth and prestige. However, the year would be indelibly marked by the suspicious death of the dauphin and its grisly aftermath—a trend Scève was desperate to curb. Additionally, this year would see the return from Rome of native Lyonnais and royal architect Philibert de l’Orme and the doctor François Rabelais, as well as the arrivals of the Toulousian humanist Jean de Boysonné, the famed Nostradamus, and other important humanists, including, most importantly to this study, Clément Marot (cf. Le Marguet). Romanicv105n03-04.indb 254 12/22/15 3:18 PM Scève and the Marotic Eclogue 255 of translatio studii, after all, but a negotiation of literary ambivalence that ultimately gives way to appropriation, assimilation, and an eventual eclipsing of one’s predecessors (Carron 270)? All the same, even with this idea of poetic evolution and literary ambivalence in mind, unlike the vast majority of critics who have previously analyzed Scève’s Arion in light of Marot’s bucolic infuence, this article does not wish to dismiss Scève’s work as either an entirely derivative poetic failure or merely a glib formal exercise in favor of his later verse. On the contrary, this eclogue stands as fertile textual ground to examine Scève’s developing poetic creativity—one that manifested itself in its lyrical maturity in the Délie (1544) and again in his bucolic masterpiece, La Saulsaye (1547). With the pastoral lament as a generic ground zero in the French tradition, the pronounced regional rusticity of Marotic Gallicism butts up quite tellingly against the subdued urbane and maritime Italianism of Scevian Neoplatonism, revealing both innovation/invention in Marot’s translatio as well as early manifestations of Scève’s distinctive poetic voice. I. Maurice Scève, Lyonnais: Petrarchism, Neoplatonism, and the Opportunism of 1536 Neither Scève’s literary career nor his awareness of Marot’s grandeur origi- nated in 1536. Nearly four years before Marot traversed the Alps, returned to grace in the kingdom, and was received into the bosom of France’s intel- lectual and poetic elite as Maro Gallicus Ille (the Great Gallic Virgil), Scève had already carefully carved a niche for himself in the literary circles of Lyon (Saulnier, Scève I: 106–7; Marot/Defaux I: cxlv–clvi).2 In May 1533 and in response to the royal charge of François I, whose Petrarchan obsession was then at its peak (Balsamo 35–51), the burgeoning Italianist and dilettante archaeologist Scève, then studying in Avignon, was said to have discovered the tomb of the woman believed to be Petrarch’s Laura (Saulnier, Scève I: 38–48; Sieburth 9–16). With this apparent marvel of Renaissance philology, the myth of Scève was born (although it would not gain signifcant traction until 1545, after the Délie). In the preface to his frst literary publication, La Déplourable fn de Flamete (1535),3 Scève seizes on this connection with the Italian quattrocento and casts himself as a victim of Petrarchan giovenile 2. Since the present article references two editions of Marot’s complete works, the following designations will be used: Marot/Defaux (for the Garnier edition of 1990– 93) and Marot/Rigolot (for the Flammarion edition of 2007–9). Likewise, when citing Scève, the designations Scève/Guégan and Scève/Defaux (see works cited) are used. 3. This Spanish-to-French prose translation of Juan de Flores’s recent Grimalte y Gradissa was written as a conclusion to the psychological love novel Fiamette (1481), by Petrarch’s famed contemporary Boccaccio. Romanicv105n03-04.indb 255 12/22/15 3:18 PM 256 Robert J. Hudson errore. Adopting the position of a “bon et expert marinier en la naufrageuse mer d’amour,” Scève speaks of this “périlleux guay, où les meilleurs ans de ma vie ont passé” (quoted in Saulnier, Scève I: 56) as the impetus for his decision to translate Juan de Flores’s cautionary tale into French. Whatever the determining factor, with his discussion of this “perilous ford” of love (Sie- burth 14), Scève successfully establishes a Petrarchan mythology to be feshed out a decade later with his Délie—although hints of this literary posturing are already present in his earlier work, as seen in the following discussion of Arion. Scève’s initial exchange with Marot also dates to 1535 and the Concours des blasons, launched by the latter while in exile in Ferrara and with which the former founded his earliest poetic fame. In Scève’s blasons—to the forehead, eyebrow, tear, sigh, and chest, respectively—one notices, not without irony, a pronounced Neoplatonic bent, as his offerings to this most objectifying genre appeal to female intelligence, grace, sensitivity, and intuition.