Litanic Verse III (Literary and Cultural Theory) 9783631756225, 9783631761595, 9783631761601, 9783631761618, 3631756224

Citation preview

Literar y and Cultural Theor y

Magdalena Kowalska

Litanic Verse III Francia

Despite the numerous famous examples of “les litanies” in French poetry, the manner in which the structures of this form of worship affect the versification strategies of poems has not previously been discussed thoroughly. Litanic verse, whose origins are as ancient as those of the litany genre, is recognized in works whose poetic diction, in whole or in part, includes the distinctive features of the litany, such as enumeration, parallelism, anaphora, and epiphora. The third volume describes the development of litanic verse from troubadour poetry and Old French religious verse up to World War II. This rich and multifaceted material is presented in chronological order and in the context of different literary genres.

Magdalena Kowalska holds a Ph.D. in Literature from the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun´. Having joined the University of Warsaw she carried out the research on French litanic verse. Her publications (in Polish, French and English) concern the romantic travel writing and French religious poetry. www.peterlang.com

Litanic Verse III

LITERARY AND CULTURAL THEORY General Editor: Wojciech H. Kalaga

Magdalena Kowalska

Litanic Verse III Francia

Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. This publication is financially supported by the grant from The National Science Centre of Poland (decision No. DEC-2012/07/E/HS2/00665).

Reviewed by Piotr Tylus and Władysław Witalisz Assistant editor: David Schauffler (University of Silesia) Printed by CPI books GmbH, Leck. ISSN 1434-0313 ISBN 978-3-631-75622-5 (Print) E-ISBN 978-3-631-76159-5 (E-PDF) E-ISBN 978-3-631-76160-1 (EPUB) E-ISBN 978-3-631-76161-8 (MOBI) DOI 10.3726/b14381 © Peter Lang GmbH Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften Berlin 2018 All rights reserved. Peter Lang – Berlin · Bern · Bruxelles · New York · Oxford · Warszawa · Wien All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems. This publication has been peer reviewed. www.peterlang.com

Contents Introduction............................................................................................................11 Part I:  Litanic Verse in Medieval France...................................................25 1. Preliminary Remarks..................................................................................27 1.1

Medievalists on Traces of Poetic Litanies.............................................27

1.2

Some Remarks on the Idea of Medieval Litanic Verse as Being More Common in Short Lines.....................................30

2. Litanic Verse in the Poetry of Troubadours.....................................33 2.1

Isometric Stanzas—Litany’s Over-regularity.......................................34

2.2

Heterometric Stanzas..............................................................................52

2.3 Conclusion................................................................................................60

3. Old French Litanic Verse..........................................................................61 3.1

The Marian Miracle Narratives of Gautier de Coincy........................62

3.2

Litany and Lyrical Lai..............................................................................66

3.3

Hélinand Stanza.......................................................................................74

3.4

Litanic Dit of Rutebeuf...........................................................................81

3.5

Refrain as a Factor in Litanic Verse.......................................................84

3.6

Chairetisms: “Ave” and “Benedicta”........................................................88

3.7

Litanic Love Verse....................................................................................93

3.8

Justice and Peace......................................................................................96

3.9

How to Be Constant in Prayer—The Endless Series of Invocations.......99

3.10 Litanic Pastiches.................................................................................... 105 3.11 Conclusion............................................................................................. 109 5

Part II:  Renaissance Litanic Verse............................................................. 111 4. Sonnets in the Service of Litanic Verse........................................... 115 5. Litanic Love Verse..................................................................................... 141 6. Devotional Poetry..................................................................................... 147 7. In a Bucolic Tone....................................................................................... 159 8. Cosmological Poetry................................................................................ 163 9. Litanic Verse in Chants Royaux—Exploring the Rules of Repetition............................................................................ 167 10. Litanic Verse in Narrative Prose......................................................... 173 10.1 Conclusion............................................................................................. 176

Part III:  The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century........................... 179 11. Baroque Poetry........................................................................................... 181 11.1 Sonnets................................................................................................... 182 11.2 Canticles................................................................................................. 191 11.3 Seeking Appropriate Names—Lists of Antonomasias..................... 194 11.4 Parodies of Litanies.............................................................................. 197 11.5 Conclusion............................................................................................. 198

6

12. Age of Classicism....................................................................................... 201 12.1 Litanic Verse in the Dramatic Genre.................................................. 201 12.1.1 Corneille and the Presence of the First and Second Person Singular Pronouns.......................................... 201 12.1.2 Racine between the Infinity of Anaphora and the Recurrence of Apostrophe................................................. 204 12.2 Love Sonnets, Descriptive Sonnets and Spiritual Sonnets.............. 206 12.3 Descriptive Poetry................................................................................ 212 12.4 Conclusion............................................................................................. 213

13. Age of Enlightenment............................................................................. 215 13.1 The Image of the World in the Eye of the Enlightened: Rousseau—Lebrun—Roucher............................................................ 215 13.2 Mythological World of Idyll and Elegy.............................................. 220 13.3 Parodies of Litany................................................................................. 222 13.4 Conclusion............................................................................................. 223

Part IV:  The Nineteenth Century.............................................................. 225 14. Romantic Movement toward Litanic Verse................................... 227 14.1 Lamartine—Litanic Verse Which Praises God’s Work of Creation in Its Entirety and All National Heroes......................... 228 14.2 Hugo—Human Affairs Discussed with God and Saints.................. 237 14.3 Musset—Speaking with One’s Polymorphous Self........................... 248 14.4 Other Romantic Poets—How to Capture the Proper Name of Phenomena............................................................... 255 14.5 Romantic Religious Poetry.................................................................. 260 14.6 Litanic Verse in a Litany Written in a Diary...................................... 264 14.7 Conclusion............................................................................................. 265

7

15. Around Parnassianism........................................................................... 267 15.1 Leconte de Lisle—The Broad Scope of Litanic Verse: Historical, Political, Intimate................................................... 268 15.2 Invoking Nature, Venus and Maia—Parnassian Interest in Ancient Mythology............................................................ 272 15.3 Théodore de Banville—A Poet’s Attitude toward His Predecessors, His Muse and the Richness of the World.................. 276 15.4 Baudelaire’s Litanies and Litanic Verse.............................................. 281 15.5 Fears and Hopes of Nineteenth-Century Man................................. 285 15.6 “C’est la revanche / Des prés, des ondes et des bois”—When Nature Replaces Gods.................................................. 287 15.7 Confessional Poetry.............................................................................. 291 15.8 Last Manifestations of Parnassianism—Litanies of Nonsense?......................................................................................... 296 15.9 Conclusion............................................................................................. 298

Part V:  The Growing Popularity of Litanic Verse from the Late Nineteenth Century up to World War II...................... 301 16. French fin de siècle Litanic Verse........................................................ 303 16.1 “And now these three remain”… “But the greatest of these is love!”—Nouveau’s and Verlaine’s Litanic Verse................... 303 16.2 Decadent Litanic Verse........................................................................ 312 16.3 Homage to the Author of the Passing Age........................................ 327 16.4 Conclusion............................................................................................. 329

17. The Félibrige................................................................................................ 331 18. Various Paths to Litanic Verse up to World War II: Jammes, Claudel and Others................................................ 343 8

18.1 The Last Manifestations of Decadent Litanic Verse......................... 343 18.2 One More Example of Litanic Verse Praising the Rose................... 347 18.3 A Small Image, a Huge Cathedral and a Tapestry as Material for Litanic Verse................................................ 350 18.4 Exoticism in Theme and Form............................................................ 361 18.5 War Traces in Litanic Verse................................................................. 365 18.6 Francis Jammes..................................................................................... 368 18.7 Claudel’s Litanic Verse of the Saints, of Holy Mary and of Sainte Bernadette Soubirous......................................... 376

Conclusion............................................................................................................ 385 Bibliography......................................................................................................... 389 Index of Subjects................................................................................................ 413 Index of Names.................................................................................................... 417

9

Introduction We share the conviction that a litany is a prayer that can be identified without any knowledge of the language in which it is said. Thanks to its perceptible rhythm, litany was recognized among other forms in the nineteenth century by writers who traveled to exotic places and heard it in foreign languages, as, for example, in these remarks by Alphonse de Lamartine: Tout à coup, comme une plainte douce et amoureuse, un murmure grave et accentué par la passion sortit des ruines, derrière ce grand mur percé d’ogives arabesques, et dont le toit nous avait paru écroulé sur lui-même: ce murmure vague et confus s’enfla, se prolongea, s’éleva plus fort et plus haut, et nous distinguâmes un chant nourri de plusieurs voix en chœur; un chant monotone, mélancolique et tendre, qui montait, qui baissait, qui mourait, qui renaissait alternativement, et qui se répondait à lui-même: c’était la prière du soir que l’évêque arabe faisait avec son petit troupeau, dans l’enceinte éboulée de ce qui avait été son église, monceaux de ruines entassés récemment par une tribu d’Arabes idolâtres. […] Nous fûmes frappés de saisissement, et nous accompagnâmes des élans de notre pensée, de notre prière et de toute notre poésie intérieure, les accents de cette poésie sainte, jusqu’à ce que les litanies chantées eussent accompli leur refrain monotone, et que les derniers soupirs de ces voix pieuses se fussent assoupis dans le silence accoutumé de ces vieux débris.1

One might ask whether these writers make the right choice; nevertheless, they do not hesitate to use the name of the genre for the composition they hear, which stands out by the fluctuation of tone, recurrence of formulae and the participation of at least two voices, which they deem to be monotonous: Lamartine uses this adjective twice in this one short passage of his Voyage en Orient. Contrary to what the title of this book suggests—it contains the relational adjective derived from the name of one of the oldest prayers—it is not devoted only to religious poetry. The difference between litany and litanic verse has been explained by Witold Sadowski in a monograph on the subject.2 Drawing upon examples from Polish literature, he defines litanic verse as a poem whose poetic diction, in whole or in part, includes distinctive features of litany, such as, most 1 Alphonse de Lamartine, Voyage en Orient (1832–1833) (Aleppo: Art & Ray Publishing, 2009), 341. 2 Witold Sadowski, Litania i poezja. Na materiale literatury polskiej od XI do XXI wieku [Litany and Poetry. On the Body of Material of Polish Literature from the Eleventh to the Twenty-First Century] (Warszawa: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, 2011), 16–21; 111–145.

11

importantly, repetitions, anaphoras, enumerations (of antonomasias), and series of apostrophes. There are few poetic works that contain all the structural components of litany (and these poems do not necessarily include the word “litany” in their titles): this is the case when each petition is of a different length and includes an element that distinguishes a given line from the preceding and following lines; a petition is followed by a one-line recurring formula; and the presence of introductory and concluding formulae is recognizable. In essence, what makes the subject matter discussed herein so unique is the wealth of poems which creatively modify the shape of litany. The most commonly employed devices in French litanic verse are as follows: reducing the number of lines containing a response to a petition to just one; splitting the content of the invocation and the supplication into stanzas of varying line-length; and removing repetitions from the series of invocations, thus focusing on enumerations.3 What may appear debatable to the reader is the choice of material. A book which purports to explore French litanic verse also contains two chapters on Occitan poetry. While there is need for a monograph on Occitan litanic verse in all literary periods, it can be argued that the panorama of French litanic verse would not be complete without Occitan poems, notably those written when this form began to infiltrate western Europe, namely the Middle Ages4 (interestingly, in that period Occitan litanic verses outnumbered those written in Old French), and when southern Europe saw the revival of literatures in regional languages at the turn of the nineteenth century.5 3 Witold Sadowski, “Le texte en dialogue avec son genre. Les litanies de Laforgue,” Poétique, vol. 179 (2016): 99: “Le genre de la litanie est bien plus libre qu’on ne croit à première vue. On peut réaliser des changements significatifs en agissant sur l’ordre de l’énumération. On peut opérer des déplacements dans le système de communication. On peut mettre en relief un gène et en atténuer un autre. On peut utiliser des formules traditionnelles ou les remplacer par ses propres formules, voire créer des relations entre les versions traditionnelle et personnelle de la formule. Il existe néanmoins un noyau du genre, une couche essentielle dont on ne peut se passer, sauf à le rendre méconnaissable.” 4 Occitan litanic verse belonged at the time to the cultural area that is explored by Marta Piłat Zuzankiewicz, “Praise, Litany and Cantigas: Catalonian, Galician-Portuguese, and Portuguese Poetry up to the End of the Seventeenth Century,” in Litanic Verse I. Origines, Iberia, Slavia et Europa Media, eds. Witold Sadowski, Magdalena Kowalska, and Magdalena Maria Kubas (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2016), 157–158. 5 Maria Judyta Woźniak analyzes the development of litanic verse during the Renaissance of the Catalan language: “On the Trail of Litany in Catalan, Galician, and Portuguese Poetry from the Eighteenth Century to the 1930s,” in Litanic Verse I, 197; and Galicianlanguage literature (ibid., 200).

12

In terms of the genres taken under consideration, the book focuses on poetry; however, there are also references to prose and drama works written during the periods when poetry was not the main field of literary activity. These two forms of literature are also analyzed when they include particularly interesting examples of litanic verse. The source material is presented in chronological order, that is, by literary periods, but within the chapters themselves, it is organized according to research problems, genres or authors. One feature of the book that we hope will prove particularly useful is that analyses of so many works are carried out in order to exemplify the general directions in which litanic verse in France evolved from the Middle Ages up to the start of World War II. In many cases, interpretations have entailed discussing a particular litanic verse against the background of the author’s entire literary output. Hence, it needs to be emphasized that this book contains more of an overview of examples of litanic verse and an analysis of selected works rather than a thorough discussion of all cases. Our approach is designed to stimulate further research into litanic verse which might result in new studies. The line of development of litanic verse is sketched out—and for the author of this work, it would be an honor if later scholars should decide to follow the framework proposed herein. It is our contention that a high proportion of French poems exhibit some features of litanic verse. Examples include poems written by world-renown poets as well as some whose authorship is disputed, which appear under different titles, and of which there are no critical editions or indeed any other editions, besides the original. Sometimes, the increased prominence of litanic verse in works by minor authors from a specific period says more about the direction of development than its presence in outstanding or exceptional works. The ecumenical approach to so many sources is not meant to call into question established hierarchies of authors from specific literary periods. It is intended, rather, to bring attention to the broad range of materials for study whose subject matter has not been exhausted in the present work. As has already been mentioned, litanic verse does not occur solely or most frequently in the genre of litany itself. One of the key objectives of the present work is to grasp the mechanisms for embedding litanic verse in various genre structures—well-known ones, such as ballades, elegies, and idylls, and more specific ones (dit, lai,6 miracle, etc.). An important theme is the presence of litanic

6 Cf. Magdalena Kowalska, “La forme de la litanie comme cadre: le cas du lai et d’autres genres littéraires médiévaux,” Zagadnienia Rodzajów Literackich, vol. 59 (2016): 31–49. This theme is also approached in the current study.

13

verse in the sonnet, especially during the Renaissance, but also in selected works written in later literary periods. It is obviously a simplification to assume that there is one universal model of liturgical litany. While exploring the topic, on many occasions we experienced several problems: we realized how useful it would be to determine which version of the litany a particular author drew on. Sometimes it was clear that the poet had primarily been inspired by the Latin text. If it was the French text, the question was: which book of hours, prayer book or contemporary version was consulted? Such detailed explorations went beyond the scope of the present work, but, given the status and importance of litanic verse in the works of particular authors, such research is well worth undertaking. Another issue is that in some cases a standard approved version of the litany did not exist before a particular work was written. The most spectacular example is the medieval Marian litanic verse, which occurs simultaneously with many versions of the Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary,7 and which was officially approved by the Catholic Church only in 1587. Yet another problem concerns the Huguenot Wars of the sixteenth century, which had an impact on the absorption of litanic verse. Some of the authors whose works are discussed in this book were Protestants. How can their choice of litanic verse be accounted for? Did they choose to use a convention that was designed to bring popularity to their poems? Or was it an unconscious choice, which may have been dictated by rhythmic values? A multitude of topics can be addressed in litany because of features of the litanic model such as the following: the monotony of semantic focus on a specific object or personality trait which is overcome by the creativity of subsequent petitions; the possibility of employing lines of varied lengths coupled with a rhythm that makes the reader expect to see a well-known and recurring formula; and the inclusion of sacred components in the text in various proportions, or their ostentatious absence against the context imposed by the poetic shape. In terms of the subject matter, many authors address religious topics, writing about God the Father, the Son of God, Holy Mary, and the saints. A high proportion of the works discussed herein are love poems, which provides additional support for the view of Western European society, including French society, taken by Denis de Rougemont.8 Other problems addressed in litanic verse include topical political events and scientific issues hotly debated at a particular time. The use of 7 Gilles Gérard Meersseman, Der Hymnos akathistos im Abendland, vol. 2 (Freiburg/ Schweiz: Universitätsverlag, 1960), 44–76. 8 Denis de Rougemont, L’Amour et l’Occident (Paris: Union générale d’éditions, 1962), 29 (the idea of “l’amour de l’amour”).

14

litanic verse can also be linked with the process of archaization (as in the case of Théodore de Banville). However, most frequently, the use of the litanic verse in a given text speaks volumes about the condition of contemporary society, its political situation, the way it perceives power relations, the ideal of urban life or country idyll, the borders of adoration and profanity in art and the properties of poetic meter in a given literary period. Research on litany in French literature has resulted in specific studies which, however, have tended to focus only on a particular period or work. The most extensive bibliographies, though they too are not exhaustive, concern medieval literature and works written after the publication of Charles Baudelaire’s “Les Litanies de Satan.” However, it should be stressed that many studies are restricted to identifying the structure of a litany and making a few remarks on the use of this kind of Christian prayer. This is not followed by any further detailed research. In addition to general discussion of the stylistic aspects of the litany, it is also worth investigating the metrical systems of different specific litanic petitions, which is a problem that has not been previously researched. This may be because there has been a general sense of the unimportance of litanic inspiration in French literature: […] l’assimilation de la litanie à une forme littéraire fait apparaître des sensibilités diverses: genre très développé dans l’Allemagne médiévale […] et en Espagne […], cultures où s’affirme une tradition de poésie mystique, utilisé également par le Baroque allemand et les « metaphysical poets », la litanie est considérée historiquement, dans ce pays, comme une des sources de l’écriture poétique; en France, en revanche, même s’il en existe des versions anciennes, elle ne semble pas reconnue comme « fait poétique » avant le XIXe siècle.9

The writer adds in the footnotes that: “Ceci semble d’ailleurs confirmé par la place accordée à la litanie dans les ouvrages récents de théorie littéraire: l’entrée est généralement absente des études françaises.” We hope that the current study may help to change this view. The question of why litanic verse should be studied can be answered with another question: is it possible to conduct similar research on “psalmic” verse,10 9 Isabelle Krzywkowski, “La litanie: une écriture sans fin de la fin,” in Anamorphoses décadentes. L’Art de la défiguration 1880–1914. Études offertes à Jean de Palacio, eds. Isabelle Krzywkowski and Sylvie Thorel-Cailleteau (Paris: P.U.P.S., 2002), 65. 10 Research on the psalms’ paraphrases is highly developed in French literature, which makes the contrast between it and litanic analysis quite plain. One scholar argues: “Psaumes, Cantique des Cantiques, Lamentations, Proverbes, Épîtres de saint Paul, autant de livres bibliques au titre générique. Toutefois, seul le mot de Psaumes a donné naissance à une activité recouvrant, par l’intermédiaire d’une pratique liturgique, une

15

“the Lord’s Prayer” verse or “the Angelus” verse? Even though the presence of these prayers in literature is not disputed, as many poets draw inspiration from them, it cannot be argued that they have shaped a model that is analogous to the one found in litanies. Their uniqueness rests in the meanings of words derived straight from the Bible, and their arrangement does not create a pattern. It would be more fruitful to apply the litanic verse research framework to studies of rosary verse or the hours office, that is, prayers in which a particular sequence recurs at a specific frequency rate. These prayers have also evolved over the centuries; new hours were added to the book of hours and luminous mysteries were added to the rosary. Just like the versions of litanies for private use, they originated in certain literary periods. The links between litanic verse, the rosary and the book of hours can be seen in the present work. Litanic verse occurs in works from different periods entitled “rosary” (Francis Jammes, Rosaire) or in works that clearly refer to the structure of the rosary or the book of hours (Christine de Pisan, Martial d’Auvergne). Of equal importance and interest in litany studies is the analysis of litany paraphrases and paratexts, such as introductions and commentaries. These texts can be addressed by the field of religious studies, as the present analysis employs tools from literary science and uses a poetics approach to investigate the genres, styles, and metrical systems that most frequently contain litanic verse. In the following subsection, I outline just a few key features of litany paraphrases (especially from the medieval period), which can be crucial—as source material or context—to the development of litanic verse. The Psalter with an inscription which refers to its date and place of origin, Conscripti Lutetie, anno Domini MCC, attests that litanic prayer was in use in Paris around 1150–1200. The text of the litany of Parisian origin is included only in the manuscripts that belong to the group of the Petites bibles historiales,11 a part of the

manière de parler: la psalmodie, caractérisée par une certaine monotonie, une unifor­ mité de ton” (Claire Fourquet-Gracieux, “La paraphrase en vers classique des Psaumes: le pastiche, le sacré et le profane,” Littératures classiques, vol. 74, no. 1 (2011): 71). Cf. Paulette Leblanc, Les Paraphrases françaises des psaumes à la fin de la période baroque (1610–1660) (Paris: P.U.F., 1960), 22–23; Audrey Duru, “L’écriture du rapport à soi dans les paraphrases des psaumes de pénitence de Marot à Lagrange (XVIe siècle–XVIIIe siècle), suivi de la bibliographie des psaumes de pénitence en vers français de Marot à la fin du XVIIIe siècle,” in Échos poétiques de la Bible, eds. Josiane Rieu, Béatrice Bonhomme, Hélène Baby, and Aude Préta-de Beaufort (Paris: Champion, 2012), 115–150 for further bibliographic references. 11 Samuel Berger, La Bible française au Moyen Âge: étude sur les plus anciennes versions de la Bible écrites en prose de langue d’oïl (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1884), 190–191.

16

collection of manuscripts called Bibles historiales complétées, traditionally divided into three groups, named petite, moyenne, and grande. The first translation of the Bible into French, which was made in prose, dates from 1295 and was done by Guyart des Moulins. We quote below a few stanzas of the litany to illustrate its form as it appeared in a manuscript from the beginning of the fourteenth century: Kyrie leyson, douz Diex, Souez nous soies et piteuz. Xpe leyson, biauz douz Sire, Ne noz demoustre mie t’ire. […] Sainte Marie, eure pour nouz A ton chier fil qui est si douz. Sainte mère Dieu, a ton filz prie Qu’il nous doinst pardurable vie. […] Prie pour nous, sire saint Pol, Qui pour Dieu estendi le col. Prie a Dieu pour nous, saint Andrieu, Qui crucefiez fus sanz gieu. Saint Jaque, prie pour nouz touz A Jhesucrist ton cousin douz . . . Prie por noz, saint Barnabé, Qui mieux vauz que prestre n’abbé… […] Filz Dieu, filz Dieu, ce te prionz, Que tu oies nos oroisons. Agniauz de Dieu, qui tout pechié Ostez, aies de nouz pitié.12

The text of this French litany differs considerably from the Latin one in the form known from the Missale Parisiense, created at the beginning of the thirteenth century. The frame of the composition matches the criteria of the litany, with the initial triple Kyrie eleison and Agnus Dei at the end. However, the supplication, constantly varying in form, is recurrently placed in first position of the line, before the invocation to the saints. The meaning of the petition is wider, as “pray for us” is replaced by “pray to God for us” or “pray for all of us.” At the same time, the position of the supplicatory components is changed for rhythmical reasons; for instance, we read “aies de nouz pitié.” The composition of the list of the saints 12 Pierre Rézeau, ed., Les Prières aux saints en français à la fin du Moyen Âge (Genève: Droz, 1982), 94.

17

also varies: apart from “Saint Andrew” and “the sire Saint Paul” we may encounter an additional line, describing acts of the saints with the anaphora on “qui.” The author apparently adjusts the meter of line taking into account the length of the saints’ names. For two-syllable names such as “Martin” and “Amant,” a longer supplication has been chosen: “Prie a Dieu por noz,” whereas longer ones like “Sainte Marie Magdelainne” and “Sainte Marie Egyptïenne” comprise an independent line in themselves. The irregularity of the placement of invocations and supplications in a line, along with their different coexisting forms, determine the contrast with Litaniae sanctorum omnium, which was composed of the short petitions and the same supplicatory formulae repeating in a specified order. The version of the litany quoted above might be considered a typical example of the French medieval paraphrases of litanic prayer13, as it represents the octosyllable with plain rhyme, a very common meter. The same meter is also used in La letanie en francois from manuscript 837 (dating from 1278) in The National Library of France (ms. Paris, BnF, fr. 837): Gloriex apostre saint Pere, Proiez por moi le vostre Père, que par sa grace me regart et de vilain pechié me gart.14

This example is characterized by a lack of stable supplicatory formulae. In fact, the status of French litany may be considered a challenge for medieval authors: “L’octosyllabe à rimes plates constitue une sorte de degré zéro de la versification […].”15 The simple imitation of litanic form does not ensure an interesting poetic effect. Furthermore, the choice of the above-mentioned versification pattern seems to be inimical to the immanent dynamic of the litanic prayer: 13 Cf. the Old French litanies mentioned in: Jean Sonet, Répertoire d’incipit de prières en ancien français (Genève: Droz, 1956), 181, 333, 360; Keith Val Sinclair, Prières en ancien français. Nouvelles références, renseignements complémentaires, indications biblio­ graphiques, corrections et tables des articles du ‘Répertoire’ de Sonet (Hamden: Archon Books, 1978); Pierre Rézeau, Répertoire d’incipit des prières françaises à la fin du Moyen Âge: addenda et corrigenda aux répertoires de Sonet et Sinclair (Genève: Droz, 1986), 359, 462, 485, 488; Pierre Rézeau, ed., Les Prières aux saints en français à la fin du Moyen Âge (Genève: Droz, 1982), 80–198 and litanies in prose mentioned in Keith Val Sinclair’s guide: Keith Val Sinclair, French devotional texts of the Middle Ages. A Bibliographic Manuscript Guide. Second Supplement (New York: Greenwood Press, 1988), 178, 337. 14 Ibid., 86. 15 Frank Lestringant, Michel Zink, eds., Histoire de la France littéraire. Moyen Âge–XVIe siècle (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2006), 749.

18

Le poème à rimes plates ou la strophe monorime est une négation de la faille qui affecte profondément l’être humain en le tiraillant entre deux pôles, […]. L’homme doit assumer et ordonner l’angoisse de cette bipolarité. Un dessin strophique régulier à deux rimes ne l’assume que s’il combine ces rimes dans des systèmes où l’écho se fait attendre, signe du tiraillement entre deux pôles; […].16

The Renaissance litanic verse, as we will see in the following chapters, in many cases demonstrates the secular use of the form. Therefore, these are probably not the paraphrases of prayers which influenced the writers. The situation changes in the Baroque period, when litanic verse becomes in turn the basis for a large number of spiritual works. In this chapter, we will mention two litanic paraphrases written by important authors of the era. The first one is Claude Hopil’s paraphrase entitled Litanie de la Glorieuse Vierge Marie, which does not aspire to present a litanic prayer in sophisticated poetic form—the structure of his text imitates the exact manner in which the ecclesiastical litanies are arranged. The length of lines varies, and they are not divided into stanzas; however, one may specify the demarcation into several parts, depending on the anaphoras. The first sequence of invocations, in which numerous Marian titles are contained, is occasionally joined with the anaphora on “Saint,” “Vierge,” “Mere,” “Femme,” or “Royne,” but it contains also individual titles: “Jardin fermé de tous cotes,” “Aduocate des Chrestiens.”17 To all of them the traditional formula is added: “Priez pour nous.” Two series of invocations follow: the first with the anaphora on “De” to which the response “Mere de Dieu gardez nous” is required, and the second with the anaphora on “Par” to which one responds: “Mere de Jesus secourez nous.” We also encounter expressions starting with “de”—“De peste, guerre & famine”— and the “Par” anaphora—“Par votre bien-heureux ventre qui a porté neuf mois le Sauveur du monde,” “Par le doux laict, duquel l’avez allaicté.” Before the end of this litany, a longer passage is dedicated to supplications beginning with “que,” and finishing with the formula, “Nous vous prions mere de Jesus.” We should also add that Hopil’s interest in the litanic form, as well as his familiarity with chiefly the Marian titles, is recognizable in other works of his, for instance, the prose works:

16 Jean Batany, “Un charme pour tuer la mort, la strophe d’Hélinant,” in Farai chansoneta novela. Essais sur la liberté créatrice au Moyen Âge. Hommage à Jean Charles Payen, ed. Huguette Legros (Caen: Centre de Publication de l’Université, 1989), 37. 17 Claude Hopil, La Couronne de la Vierge Marie composée de douze estoiles ou traité spiri­tuel, auquel sous les noms de douze belles vertus est parlé de toute la vie de la saincte Mere de Dieu (Paris: Sébastien Huré, 1629), 221.

19

Vous estes, ô saincte Vierge, le jardin fermé auquel le céleste Espoux entre luy seul pour y prendre ses délices […]. Vous estes la fontaine scelée qui a receu la plénitude des grâces divines et de la sapience éternelle. Vous estes la porte orientale d’Ézéchiel, par laquelle le roy seule devoit entrer et venir en ce monde pour le salut de tous.18

The accumulation process of this enumeration gains size and strength in the following lines, as the new Marian metaphors are not included in the single sentence with “qui” pronouns (“à qui,” “par qui”) but appear in succession without unnecessary conjunctives: “la verge de Moyse, la verge de Jessé, le lys entre les espines, le throsne de Salomon, la tour d’ivoire.”19 In contrast to the liturgical “free” form of Hopil’s litanies, Paraphrase des Litanies de la Vierge Marie by Martial de Brives participates in an endeavor to create a stanzaic version of prayer. It is composed of dizains with a rhyme scheme abbaccdede, each mooting one Latin invocation which determines the theme of the entire stanza. In fact, both the Latin invocations and supplications accompany the stanza, which is written in French, taking the shape of, for instance, Sedes Sapientiae, Ora. In the edition dating from 1655, they were put above the stanza,20 while in Le Parnasse seraphique (1660), they appear next to the column of text.21 Although the structure of the stanza is heterometric, it should be noted that though the finishing hendecasyllable may comprise part of the request, it may also continue the enumeration. The other lines of the dizain have shorter meters, such as heptasyllables and octosyllables. Another factor to consider is the presence of pauses in the dizains, which usually fall at the end of the fourth and seventh lines.22 The balance of invocations and supplications is, however, not stable, because the stanzas may include two or even more rather descriptive supplications: “Soyez notre porte auiourd’hui,” “Que votre oeil les regarde & qu’il ait pitié d’eux,” “Faites nous regner sur nous-mesmes,” “Benissez,” “Menez notre ame,” whereas in other cases after the sequence of antonomasias, only one precise sentence explains the intention of the person praying: “Faites que nous soyons des feüilles de ce lys.” Several longer supplications usually start at the eighth line,

18 Claude Hopil, Méditations sur le Cantique des cantiques, et Les Douces extases de l’âme spirituelle (Genève: Droz, 2000), 250. 19 Ibid., 251. 20 Martial de Brive, Les Œuvres poëtiques et sainctes (Lyon: Alexandre Fumeux, 1655), 1–19. 21 Martial de Brive, Le Parnasse seraphique, et les derniers souspirs de la muse (Lyon: Francois Demasso, 1680), 142–155. 22 Leblanc, Les Paraphrases françaises des Psaumes, 214.

20

but the urge to denominate still moves the author and he adds some additional metaphors, too. The characteristic feature is that this paraphrase does not contain a large number of repetitions, even the frequently used “qui” or “de” appear separated by a line, which does not contain them, and the highest number of anaphoras in successive lines is three repetitions of “où.” The inclination to enumeration is much more visible, not only of various Marian titles, but also of different groups known from the liturgical litanies: Apostres, Martyrs & Pasteurs, Vierges, Hermites & Docteurs, Patriarches, Prophetes, Anges; Grands Saincts de splendeur revestus.23

Applying the meter of the stanza widely used at the time, introduced by François de Malherbe,24 the author makes this paraphrase legible to the audience and poetically refined to all who were aware of literary conventions. Manuel de piété by François de Salignac de la Mothe Fénelon (published posthumously, after 1715) contains four litanies which vary in their status: the Litanies des Saints do not exhibit any important features distinct from those that are commonly approved in the litanies, but those that have “new” in the title, such as Nouvelles litanies du Saint Nom de Jésus et de la Sainte Vierge, are rather the paraphrases of ecclesiastical litanies and maintain their general form without any attempt to give them a poetic costume. Two aspects should be emphasized: in Nouvelles litanies the invocations are lengthy. Sometimes several antonomasias are set in one line, for instance: “Jésus, voie qui nous mène à la vérité, vérité qui nous promet la vie, vie dont nous vivons à jamais dans le sein du Père.”25 Furthermore, the narrative structure lets the author put an entire quotation into 23 Martial de Brive, Les Œuvres poétiques et saintes, 1653 (Grenoble: Jérôme Million, 2000), 59. 24 Henri Louis Chatelain, Recherches sur le vers français au 15e siècle; rimes, mètres et strophes (Paris: Champion, 1908), 138. Cf. Leblanc, Les Paraphrases françaises des Psaumes, 296. Philippe Martinon in Les Strophes: étude historique et critique sur les formes de la poésie lyrique en France depuis la renaissance (Paris: Champion, 1912), 379 indicates this rhyme scheme as “préférence de Colletet [Guillaume] et de toute sa génération.” The observations that Martial de Brive frees up the grand dizain was made in Henri Tuzet, “Structure et couleur baroques de la « canzone » chez Gianbattista Marino,” Baroque, vol. 3 (1969): 2. Available at : https://baroque.revues.org/278 (accessed April 15, 2018). 25 Le Livre de prières de M. de Fénélon avec ses réflexions pour tous les jours du mois ou Le fidèle adorateur: augmenté de beaucoup de prières (Besançon: Montarsolo, 1825), 8.

21

one of the invocations from the Nouvelles litanies de la Sainte Vierge: “Marie, qu’Elizabeth ne put recevoir sans s’écrier: D’où me vient que la mère de mon seigneur fasse des pas vers moi.”26 In the middle of the nineteenth century, the Litaniaire, ou Recueil complet de litanies et de divers exercices de piété en l’honneur de la Très-Sainte Trinité, de la Sainte Vierge et des saints (1857) was published for the first time, edited by Fr. Anicet de Sainte Suzanne. The work was issued during a time when the canon of approved litanies was being modified. The proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception made by Pope Pius IX on December 8, 1854 enriched the body of litanies to be found in private prayer books or works of tribute to Holy Mary with Litanies de l’Immaculée Conception, composed in 1839. The collection also contains the Litanies du Saint Nom de Jésus which were approbated later, partially in 1862 and then for the whole Holy Church in 1886 by Pope Leo XIII, as well as the Litanies du Sacré-Cœur de Jésus (1899, Leo XIII). This allows us to observe the innovative elements which potentially served as material for poets. The system of notation in the Litaniaire is similar to those used in the prayer books, because the supplication formulae are written vertically on the right-hand side of the page.27 In some cases, the initial part of the invocations is also inscribed crosswise on the left-hand side; like for instance, the element “Seigneur” in the Litanies des trois personnes divines.28 Considering the selection of litanies included in the Litaniaire, we realize that some of them are no longer encountered in the litanic canon, for example, Litanies des perfections de Dieu and Litanies pour honorer la sainte volonté de Dieu, which were common in the nineteenth century, and the Litanies des saints parents de Marie or Litanies des justes de l’ancienne loi. Other litanies were extended or even multiplied, as we find in the Litaniaire the litanies of the Holy Virgin for every day of the week, the Litany of the Saints for every month in the year and, for instance, the Litany of the Sacred Heart of Jesus—respectively, Jesus-Child, Jesus among men, Jesus dying, and Jesus resurrected. In the Litaniare, the form of the Litanies de l’Immaculée Conception differs from that of the one published one year earlier: there the invocations are much longer and contain a full sentence starting with the anaphora on “Sainte Marie”—an element which was omitted in the modern version of the Litanie de Lorette, (for instance: “Sainte Marie, que nous croyons avoir été préservée du péché originel, dès l’instant même de votre Conception, par une grâce toute spéciale du 26 Ibid., 19. 27 Litaniaire, ou Recueil complet de litanies par le frère Anicet de Ste Suzanne (Avignon: Aubanel Frères, 1879), passim. 28 Ibid., 34.

22

Saint Esprit”29), because in the Litaniaire the stable anaphora is based on the title: “Vierge immaculée.”30 Owing to the litanies introduced in the Litaniaire, even if only for private recitation, we may add to our list of litanic mainstays several new elements, which in fact had already been used by the poets of previous periods as an element of, for instance, anaphora or repetition, although previously they had appeared as the original idea of the individual author, whereas now they are sanctioned to a certain degree, as they are indeed used in a liturgical litany. Among such examples we should mention “C’est” in Litanies de l’amour de Dieu composed by Pope Pius VI.31 Litanies pour honorer la sainte volonté de Dieu also lead us to draw interesting conclusions, because they contain repetitive elements such as “en,” “dans,” “parce que” (this expression dominates especially in the Litanies de l’amour de Marie—more than thirty invocations start with it32), and “quand.”33 The anaphora on “ô” opens the invocations (“Ô Père,” “Ô vous”) in the Litanies en l’honneur du Père Éternel34 and “Bienheureux” in the Litanies de tous les saints de l’ordre de Saint Dominique.35 One particularly important fact regarding nineteenth-century litanies is that the reference of some supplications is reduced to one person, as in the Litanies pour honorer la sainte volonté de Dieu: “Régnez souverainement sur nous et particulièrement sur moi.”36

29 Nouvel office de l’Immaculée Conception (Paris: Librairie Catholique de P.-J. Camus, 1856), 317–319. 30 Litaniaire, 160–161. 31 Ibid., 54–55. 32 Ibid., 208–210. 33 Ibid., 60–61. 34 Ibid., 63–64. 35 Ibid., 374. 36 Ibid., 57.

23

Part I:  Litanic Verse in Medieval France The troubadour Peire Cardenal in his powerful sirventes “Tartarassa ni voutor”— written at the time of the Cathar Crusade when the Dominicans were settled in Toulouse—argues that the Franks and the clerks bear responsibility for the evil in the world: “Franses e clerc an lauzor / De mal.”1 The bringing of accusations against such authority by Cardenal, who was himself a clergyman and an inhabitant of the Auvergne region, seems to be a concise as well as a meaningful commentary on the complexity of political and religious divisions in medieval France. The troubadour spent his life in the lands of Provence and Languedoc, which at the time did not belong to the kingdom of France, and he worked for the counts of Toulouse, a town not under the authority of the French crown, while composing his poetry in the Occitan language, not in the Old French. By way of a reminder, it should be noted that the first king of the Franks who was baptized after his conversion to Christianity—Clovis—fought to control the territory of southern France with its Gallo-Roman population, which had come under the rule of Germanic peoples, such as the Visigoths, the Ostrogoths and the Burgundians, after the decline of Roman power. Firstly, in 534 Burgundy became a part of the Frankish Empire after attacks for which the Arianism of its inhabitants served as the motive, then in 536 the Ostrogoths gave Provence to the Franks. These lands were formally included in the Frankish Empire up until 843, but the Treaty of Verdun again separated them from the huge territory governed by Charles the Bald and left them as a part of the realm of Lothar. As a consequence, this period—when the frontiers of modern France were still being shaped, and when its ruler began to name himself Rex Franciae, not Rex Francorum—found Provence, as well as Burgundy and Lombardy, being incorporated

1 Peire Cardenal, “Tartarassa ni voutor,” in Poésies complètes du troubadour Peire Cardenal (1180–1278), ed. René Lavaud (Toulouse: É. Privat, 1957), 492. The English translation: “The Franks and the clergy get the praise / For evil” according to Lyrics of the Middle Ages: An Anthology, ed. James J. Wilhelm (New York & London: Garland, 1990), 110.

25

into Francia media. Before Provence’s attachment to France in 1486, various dynasties governed southern France, creating space for independent kingdoms like the Kingdom of Arles. At the end of the Middle Ages, Europe entered a new era and Provence finally became French. These factors impinge not only on the potential emergence and various modes of adoption of litanic verse respectively in Provençal and Old French culture, but also on the chronology of this phenomenon and its implications for the form of ecclesiastical litanies. The Latin litanies played an important role in demonstrating the influence of Carolingian kings as well as in contributing to the royal sacring.2 Their French paraphrases come from the second half of the twelfth century, whereas the Provençal versions are no older than the fourteenth. Nevertheless, the litanic verse appears firstly on a large scale in the Occitan poetry, usually in poems raising profane courtly themes, while it is more recent in the literature of the French language where its start is marked by praising Holy Mary’s glory. Therefore, the research on the history of litanic verse in the medieval period should be described in separate chapters devoted respectively to Occitan and French examples of this form.

2 Michel McCormick, “The Liturgy of War in the Early Middle Ages: Crisis, Litanies and the Carolingian Monarchy,” Viator, vol.  15 (1984): 2. Cf. about “les tentatives d’unification liturgique menées par les Carolingiens”: Jacques Berlioz, “Introduction,” in Le Pays cathare. Les religions médiévales et leurs expressions méridionales, ed. Jacques Berlioz (Paris: Seuil, 2000), 14.

26

1.  Preliminary Remarks 1.1  Medievalists on Traces of Poetic Litanies The issue of litany as a potential literary form is discussed by medievalists either in works presenting a highly general approach or, additionally, in interpretations of rarely represented poetic subgenres. A broader definition is given in the field of musicology, where the litany is considered as a type of chanson and can be characterized “principally by the repetition of a single melodic phrase set to assonanced or monorhymed verses,”3 which is a distinctive feature of this type in comparison with the sequence, the rondel and the hymn type. We encounter this type in a stanzaic unit of chanson de geste which is laisse, whose kinship was discussed by Georges Lote: La laisse n’a pas tous les caractères de la strophe, car elle n’est pas composée d’un groupe de vers strictement délimité. Mais elle a une unité marquée pour l’assonance sur laquelle elle est construite, ainsi que par la phrase musicale qui accompagne ses vers; elle prend fin lorsque changent l’assonance et la mélodie. […] C’est une création purement romane, dont la littérature latine syllabique ne nous présente aucun exemple, mais qui a sa source dans les litanies d’Église. Elle se manifeste pour la première fois dans le Boèce provençal, à l’époque environ où sont composées nos premières strophes. De là elle passe en français et devient la forme spécifique de nos anciennes Chansons de Geste, tandis qu’elle est extrêmement rare ailleurs. Elle est toujours isométrique, mais peut utiliser des mètres différents […].4

The second example of the hypothetical influence of the litanic liturgical pattern on the French poetic forms analyzed on a highly general level is related to the development of refrain: Il est admis que le refrain — c’est-à-dire la structure alternante couplet-refrain — trouve sa plus lointaine origine dans la litanie, […]. Il s’agit de cette forme que l’on nomme

3 Samuel N. Rosenberg, Margaret Switten, Gérard Le Vot, eds., Songs of the Troubadours and Trouvères: An Anthology of Poems and Melodies (London: Routledge, 2013), 10. This thesis was firstly formulated by Friedrich Gennrich in his works from 1918 and 1932 (Bewertung der Musik als Hilfswissenschaft der Romanischen Philologie and Grundriss einer Formenlehre des mittelalterlichen Liedes). 4 Georges Lote, Histoire du vers français, vol. II (Paris: Presses universitaires de Provence, 1951), 68.

27

chant responsarial, où l’on distingue des parties déstinées à un seul exécutant […] et des parties exécutées en réponse par la foule assemblée (fidèles, chœur).5

Maria Spyropoulou-Leclanche indicates that in the French translation of Navigatio sancti Brendani from 1118, the word refreiz was used as an equivalent to Latin responsio in a fragment representing how the heroes pray the Hours. At the other extreme, the term “litany” is used in the medievalists’ interpretations of a particular type of religious genre in French medieval poetry. In a well-known and highly appreciated work of Romanist scholar Pierre Bec, the poetic works named by him “litanies” are gathered in the chapter Le registre pieux.6 He assumes that there are three levels of this poetic register: “les chansons à la Vierge,” “des paraphrases de la chanson d’ami,” and “les chansons de croisade.” The litanic type is demonstrated among the songs of the first level, which itself can be divided into three subsections: a) Des imitations de pièces liturgiques en latin (forme: canso ou lai-des-corts) b) Des transpositions pieuses de la canso amoureuse (avec l’assimilation Dame / Vierge) c) Des transpositions pieuses de la chanson de femme popularisante, dans le cadre formel des ballettes ou des rotrouenges (type: plaintes de la Vierge).7

In subsection a), Bec mentions chiefly Ave Maria and the litanies. A tension within the components of litanic verse, such as “une énumération discontinue (la dénomination) et une structure répétitive, voire continue (l’imploration),”8 which we pointed out in the introduction, becomes highly significant when one takes into consideration the prevalence of the conviction

5 Maria Spyropoulou-Leclanche, Le Refrain dans la chanson française de Bruant à Renaud (Limoges: Presses Universitaires de Limoges et du Limousin, 1998), 5. 6 Pierre Bec, La Lyrique française au Moyen Âge XIIe–XIIIe s. Contribution à une typologie des genres poétiques médiévaux, vol. 1, (Paris: Picard, 1977), 143–144. 7 Ibid., 143. The presence of a similar hypothesis in a much older work by the French linguist Alfred Jeanroy is worth mentioning: “Les chansons à la Vierge. — Elles se répartissent en deux catégories: imitations de poésies liturgiques (Ave Maria, litanies, prières); décalques de poésies amoureuses” [Alfred Jeanroy, La Poésie lyrique des troubadours, vol. 2, (Toulouse: Didier, 1934), 140]. Cf. Joseph Salvat, “La Sainte Vierge dans la littérature occitane du moyen âge,” in Mélanges de linguistique et de littérature romanes à la mémoire d’István Frank (Saarbrücken: Universitàt des Saarlandes, 1957). The author points out a few poems which he names “poèmes-litanies” (617). 8 Isabelle Krzywkowski, “La litanie: une écriture sans fin de la fin,” in Anamorphoses décadentes. L’Art de la défiguration 1880–1914. Études offertes à Jean de Palacio, eds. Isabelle Krzywkowski, Sylvie Thorel-Cailleteau, (Paris: P.U.P.S., 2002), 82.

28

that the characteristics of French medieval literature are repetitiveness and parallelism.9 However, the mere prevalence of this conviction does not guarantee its validity. It is argued, for instance, that Gautier de Coincy uses: “[…] répétition fatigante et sans aucune espèce de mesure d’un même mot au début de chaque vers.”10 Furthermore, the French narrative romans are full of repetitions: “on atteint les limites de la litanie avec la répétition du verbe « donner », lorsque l’écrivain, qui est un clerc et non un jongleur, veut évoquer avec faste la générosité d’Arthur.”11 Regarding chansons de geste, Daniel Poirion points to “l’accumulation incantatoire, les répétitions, qui tassent le récit,” giving as an illustration the scene of La Chanson de Roland when Olivier urges Roland to blow his horn: Laisse 83: “Cumpaign Rollant, kar sunez vostre corn,/ Si l’orrat Carles, si returnerat l’ost!” Laisse 84: “Cumpainz Rollant, l’olifan car sunez,/ Si l’orrat Carles, ferat l’ost returner, […]” Laisse 85: “Cumpainz Rollanz, sunez vostre olifan,/ Si l’orrat Carles, ki est as porz passant!”12

Poirion claims, “L’esthétique de la chanson de geste vise à l’émotion par l’insistance,” and Gino Stefani notes, “L’insistance dans l’invocation donne lieu à la répétition, et la répétition d’une invocation donne lieu à la litanie.”13 Continuing this line of reasoning, we would be able to speak about an influence of the litany on the origins or the development of a greater part of medieval literary genres. In view of the large number of poems containing frequent repetitions, it is more appropriate in our current studies to use another criterion search, namely the criterion of an enumeration: not that which appears in the same words returning as an echo, but that which aims to a denomination, to more and more variable invocations appearing in series and creating the rhythmic effects. Nonetheless, we still should focus on the enumeration that apart from adding new elements, represents a thematic unity, and which helps to avoid the confusion of the

9 F. M. Warren, “Some Features of Style in Early French Narrative Poetry 1150–1170,” Modern Philology, vol. III (1905–1906): 179. 10 Albert Schinz, “L’art dans les Contes Dévots de Gautier de Coincy,” Publications of the Modern Language Association, vol. 22, no. 3 (1907): 503. 11 The remark regarding Roman de Brut is found in Frank Lestringant, Michel Zink, eds., Histoire de la France littéraire. Moyen Âge–XVIe siècle (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2006), 211. 12 Daniel Poirion, Précis de la littérature française du Moyen Âge (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1983), 65–66. 13 Gino Stefani, L’Acclamation de tout un peuple (Paris: Éditions Fleurus, 1967), 64–65.

29

litany with a list: “[…] litanie évoque répétition, insistance sur un thème unique, indéfiniment repris sous des aspects à peine différents.”14

1.2 Some Remarks on the Idea of Medieval Litanic Verse as Being More Common in Short Lines During the presentation of examples of the litanic verse we will test a hypothesis that it is more likely to occur in the shorter metrical forms. This expression refers to a division proposed by Paul Verrier for shorter—le petit vers: from three to eight syllables—and longer—le grand vers: from ten to sixteen—lines. This differentiation corresponds with the partition into simple (simple) and composed (composé) forms given in modern works, as in Jean-Michel Gouvard’s monograph: “Les vers simples (entre 1 et 8 syllabes) ne présentent qu’un seul accent métrique, sur leur dernière voyelle numéraire. Les vers composés présentent au moins deux accents métriques, et ils se subdivisent donc en au moins deux suites syllabiques.”15 As Benoît de Cornulier observed, “Grosso modo et généralement, les vers simples sont d’autant plus communes (comme mètre de base) qu’ils sont longs.”16 This statement takes into account the octosyllable, whereas we discover an inclination for forms even shorter, such as pentasyllable, hexasyllable and heptasyllable, in the medieval poetry that uses the litanic verse. This aspect can be related to the conventional length of litanic titles, and thus may be understood through an explanation made by Micheline de Combarieu. Regarding the periphrastic descriptions of Jesus like “li fiz Marie” or “li fiz Sainte Marie,” she indicated that their meter fitted the hemistich—in this case, of the epic decasyllable: “Le nombre des syllabes—4 ou 6—fait de cette expression une formule bien venue pour terminer un vers; encore faut-il qu’elle existe et choisir de l’utiliser en lieu et place d’une autre.”17 The analogous aspects were remarked upon by Agata Sobczyk in the frame of the interpretation of “Ballade pour prier notre 14 C. de Bourmont, “Fonction et expression des prières d’intercession,” La Maison-Dieu: cahiers de pastorale liturgique, vol. 105 (1971): 134. Madeleine Jeay admits as well that it was “un nombre défini de sujets qui semblent mieux que d’autres convenir à ce type d’énoncé” which helps her to distinguish the list from the litanies (Madeleine Jeay, Le Commerce des mots. L’usage des listes dans la littérature médiévale (XIIe–XVe siècles), (Genève: Droz, 2006), 9). 15 Jean-Michel Gouvard, La Versification (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1999), 91. 16 Benoît de Cornulier, Art Poëtique. Notions et problèmes de métrique (Lyon, Presses Universitaires de Lyon, 1995), 72. 17 Micheline de Combarieu, “Les prières à la Vierge dans l’épopée,” in La Prière au Moyen Âge (littérature et civilisation), (Aix-en-Provence: Université de Provence, 1981), 94.

30

dame”: “La mère de Villon parle longuement, occupant entièrement par sa parole l’espace de la ballade qui lui est attribué par son fils”; nevertheless, “la triple invocation est agencée très simplement et avec une précision mathématique en deux vers.” Without repetition, the initial decasyllabic lines become a list of Marian antonomasias: “Dame du ciel, régente terrïenne, / Emperière des infernaux palus.”18 In the above-cited examples, as well as in the forms other than short-line meters—forms which will be presented in the following chapters—one perceives that the litanic verse is also achievable in one hemistich or in one line, reinforcing in this manner the complex nature of litanic language, making the most either of one letter or of phrases excessive in length: La lettre unique n’est pas du sens, […]. Répétée cependant, dans certaines circonstances, la lettre devient incantatoire. [….] Cependant, même si une structure syntaxique arrive à se glisser dans de tels textes [pantogrammatiques—M.K.], il est évident que c’est l’énumération litanique qui prime ici; il n’y a plus de phrase […].19

On the other hand, we encounter examples of the litanic verse enclosed in the longer meters as well.

18 Agata Sobczyk, Les Jongleurs de Dieu. Sainte simplicité dans la littérature religieuse de la France médiévale (Łask: Oficyna wydawnicza Leksem, 2012), 109. Cf. ibid., 114–115. 19 Denis Hüe, Rémanences. Mémoire de la forme dans la littérature médiévale (Paris: Ho­ noré Champion), 201.

31

2.  Litanic Verse in the Poetry of Troubadours The litanic verse is not prevalent in the works of most prominent troubadours, such as William IX, Bertrand de Born, and Marcabru—it looks rather as if it slipped into the poetry of minor composers, awaiting the period when it would expose itself in the religious-oriented poems of the last representatives of Provençal medieval culture, such as Guiraut Riquier (1230–1292). Among the most famous personnages of the first phase we may mention Peire Vidal and Peire Cardenal (1180–1278). The exact dates of Vidal’s birth and death remain unknown, but it is affirmed that he was born in Toulouse, the son of a craftsman, and was raised in an urban setting. The troubadour had an association with the courtly environment of Raymond V, and undertook a voyage to the Holy Land and Cyprus. Peire Cardenal is not the most prolific medieval author; however, he composed throughout his long life. Born in Le Puy-en-Velay, an important center of Marian devotion, and educated in the school for canons, Cardenal began his career in his twenties at the court of Raymond VI in Toulouse, where he observed the most important political events of this era, such as preparations for the crusades to the Holy Land and the Albigensian crusade. His work consists of 96 songs altogether numbering 4393 lines,20 of which about 297 represent litanic verse—namely, six to seven percent. The examples of just these two poets supply sufficient evidence that Toulouse was a highly important center of the production of litanic verse in the Middle Ages. This conclusion may be strengthened by the studies on the poems presented during Jeux de floraux, the poetry tournaments in Occitan language which took place at Toulouse. The foundation of the poetic academy Gai Savoir, which functioned from 1324 to 1484, together with the turn—evident from the second half of the thirteenth century—toward religious themes in the poetry of troubadours, marked the actions aimed to revive this poetry’s spirit in the period after the Albigensian Crusade, which destroyed many castles of the aristocracy of southern France which had been sympathetic to troubadours. Blacasset, in turn, inherits his talent from his father, a famous troubadour named Blacatz from a noble family of one of the Provençal regions (Var). Peire de Corbiac, probably from the Médoc region, is known as the author of only two existing works, however, both are significant for our research on litanic 20 Dionisi Eissart, “Sommaire,” Pèire Cardenal, http://www.cardenal.org/sommaire.htm (accessed December 19, 2017).

33

verse. His only lyrical work, chanson mariale, will be analyzed below, but in Lo Thezaur—a kind of encyclopedia written in monorhymed alexandrines between approximately 1230 and 1250—we find an interesting enumeration of his skills, among others: “chantar […] triplar Sanctus et Agnus.”21 Also, not many of Guilhem d’Autpol’s compositions survive (active from 1231 to 1289), and they, too. were religious. Guiraut Riquier was born in Narbonne and spent a period of his life serving at the court there; however, the most significant period in his biography are the ten years during which he composed in Spain, where he made the acquaintance of the king of Castile, León and Galicia, Alfonso X.

2.1  Isometric Stanzas—Litany’s Over-regularity While the first stanza of the canso of Peire Vidal, “Be m’agrada la covinens sazos,” composed probably after 1180, may seem rather conventional, in that it takes an awakening nature with motifs of reverdie as its crucial theme: Be m’agrada la covinens sazos E m’agrada lo cortes temps d’estiu Et m’agradon l’auzel, quan chanton piu, Et m’agradon floretas per boissos Et m’agrada tot so qu’als adregz platz Et m’agrada mil tans lo bels solatz: Don per mon grat jauzirai lai breumen, On de bon grat paus mon cor e mon sen22

the second stanza already brings an individualistic approach to a greater extent, yet the form of it clearly anticipates the structure of the entire poem based on the anaphoras on the level of lines, changing their components in each stanza. Due to this composition, the poem may be compared with the Litany of Loreto in its modern version with the invocations alternating after a few lines: firstly, we meet the series of “Mother” invocations, then “Virgin,” then “Queen,” etc. This comparison leads to an anachronism, though attractive, regarding the fact that a model of ecclesiastical Marian litany was not yet established in the period when Vidal composed his canso. The question of the anaphoric use in “Be m’agrada la covinens sazos” has been raised several times in various studies, although not within the field of research on litanies. Occasionally the poem is listed in the 21 Catherine Léglu, Between Sequence and Sirventes: Aspects of Parody in the Troubadour Lyric (Oxford: Legenda), 11. 22 The Songs of Peire Vidal, trans. Veronica Mary Fraser (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2006), 31.

34

context of examples of coblas replicativas,23 but juxtaposing the shape of Vidal’s line with them, we recognize the crucial difference: they focus on the recurrence of words as frequently as possible: “e l’alegranz alegres qu’eu aten / m’alegrara per mon grat alegran, / pois serai plus alegrers qu’alegranssa”24; “e mon cor, domna, vos esgar, / c’ades mi vei, domna, estar / vostre bel nou cors covinen”25, creating the impression of juggling with the words, although there is no pattern to identify in the repetition. In Vidal’s poem, on the other hand, we may consider its clear elegance, with the repeating word always set out at the onset of lines. Even if the parts of the litany to the Holy Mary with the repeating invocation do not necessarily consist of the same number of lines or syllables in lines, in Vidal’s canso the division is strict: six stanzas with eight decasyllabic lines form coblas unisonans with the rhyme scheme remaining the same in each stanza. In the first of them, the verb agradar—meaning to please, to be attracted to, to take delight in—is repeated six times at the beginning of each line. The last pair of lines does not match the anaphoric scheme; however, the abbaccdd rhyme structure allows the poet to establish a delicate interruption in the rhythm of song rather than a clear line of demarcation. Additionally, the separate rhyming couplet includes the repetition of a different word than that which appears in the anaphora: grat. The impressive and strong repetition “m’agrada” becomes intensified in the sixth line, that is, in the semantic culmination of anaphora: “Et m’agrada mil tans” (“a thousand times I rejoice”). In the last couplet, the troubadour only suggests what is the nature of his joy: “where I willingly dispose my heart and my mind”; however, its source is revealed plainly to the reader in the second stanza—it is love: Amors mi te jauzent e deleitos, Amors mi ten en son dous recaliu, Amors mi ten galhart et esforsiu, Per amor sui pensius e consiros! Per amor sui ta fort enamoratz,

23 Paul Meyer, Les Derniers Troubadours de la Provence (Paris: Librairie A. Franck, 1871), 121. Cf. Nathaniel B. Smith, Figures of repetition in the old Provençal lyric. A study in the style of the troubadours (Chapel Hill: North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures, 1976), 81; Peire Vidal, 364.10, Rialto, http://www.rialto.unina. it/PVid/364.10(Avalle).htm [accessed December 19, 2017]. 24 Lanfranc Cigala, “Ioios d’amor farai de ioi senblan,” ed. Francesco Branciforti, Il canzoniere di Lanfranco Cigala (Firenze: Olshcki, 1954), 130. 25 Raimbaut d’Aurenga, “Ab nou cor et ab nou talen,” ed. Walter T. Pattison, The Life and Works of the Troubadour Raimbaut of Orange (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1952), 184.

35

Que d’amor son totas mas volontatz, Per amor am cortezi’e joven, Quar d’amor son mei fag e mei parven.

As a consequence, the troubadour becomes not only the eulogizer of his lady, but a man stunned and besotted by the emotion of love as well. He formulates the laudation using an enumeration which gives the idea of infinity: love makes him happy and joyful, brave and vigorous, keeps him “in sweet warmth.” However, the prevalence of anaphora does not emerge as clearly as in the previous stanza: “Amors mi” repeats thrice, so does “Per amor,” and the phrase: pronoun plus “d’amor” twice. Replacing the anaphora on “Amors mi ten” by “Per amor sui” involves a simultaneous change in meaning of love for human beings. Happiness and courage represent beyond a shadow of a doubt positive qualities of a man in love. But seldom do we reckon someone who is pensive and grave to be joyous. The harmony of this stanza is yet ensured by the anaphora which links the fourth line with the fifth one, while the fifth and sixth lines rhyme with each other, that is, the two last pairs of lines are parallel. The third stanza of Vidal’s canso returns semantically to the sentiments of the first one. The phrases beginning: “Bel m’es” appear in alternation with “E bel quan/ quar” which literally means: it seems so beautiful to me. A crucial moment in the poem is the invocation “bela domna” as it anticipates the repetition of “dona” in the first line of the fourth stanza and in the fifth when it becomes the anaphoric part of the line. Moreover, in the third stanza the vassal condition of the troubadour is stressed, which is likewise a source of joy: “E bel, quar sui en vostre senhoriu.” The lady, his feudal mistress, is the only object of his love, which is characterized by “finas beautatz”—perfect beauty. As we will see below, “la beauté affinée” in French litanic verse is frequently used to praise the Virgin Mary. This canso belongs to the category of secular poetry, but it does not mean that the religious perspective is entirely absent. In the fourth stanza, there are four supplications for God’s aid—supplications made in the name of the lady, the troubadour, chivalry and the nobles, and lovers. God appears in this passage as a righteous judge, and the polarization of His judgments is emphasized by the alternately repeating phrases: “Dieus sal” and “Mas ja no sal.” The supplication in the fifth stanza, directly addressed to the lady who is invoked several times, is made under one condition—“If you please”: Dona, tan sui de vos vezer cochos, dona, que d’als non ai mon cor pensiu, dona, quar vos mi podetz far caitiu,

36

domn’, e, si.us platz, plus rics que-l rei n’Anfos. Bona domna, tant fort m’apoderatz, domna, que d’als non es ma volontatz; domna, si.us platz, ajatz n’esgardamen, domna, de tan que n’ajatz chauzimen.

The word cauzimen placed precisely in the last line of the stanza appears as a substantial element of the litanic verse in this poem, and in fact, the final part of this stanza may even be called the litanic formula, similar to that which is present in paraphrases of ecclesiastical litanies, like “Aiac merce,” as “Le mot cauzimen s’emploie en association avec merce.”26 Nevertheless, the repetition of “donna” in the onset of lines may be more thought-provoking than the supplicative formula, which seems rather hidden, left at the end of the stanza and expressed in a risk-averse and cautious mode. It does not surprise us that in the poetry of troubadours the composer speaks directly to his addressee. Sarah Kay enumerates amongst the popular topoi “the spring opening […]; the reason for singing; apostrophes to Love, to the domna, lauzengiers, gardadors; […].”27 The troubadours could address their protectors and patrons, or God, or another troubadour as in tenso, or obviously their ladies—and they did it in, for instance, the tornada of their poems. Nonetheless, in the analyzed canso, the number of invocations is greater than usual and they are concentrated in one stanza of the poem which does not contain tornada, being unquestionably isometric. The form induces a litanic reading of the poem, which is intended to praise a mortal lady, not a holy personage, but it does this in a manner which is typically liturgical—by addressing repeatedly the person who is able to be merciful and by using the liturgical formula. The final stanza, on initial consideration, stands out from the above-mentioned parts of the canso due to the lack of anaphora. Nevertheless, even here we still detect one word which is repeated in a different position—in the second and the eighth line on the second syllable, in the others on the fourth—gaugz. It is to be supposed that in this notion was expressed the essential idea of Vidal’s 26 Glynnis M. Cropp, Le Vocabulaire courtois des troubadours de l’époque classique, vol. 1, (Genève: Libraire Droz, 1975), 178. Cf. Georges Lavis, L’Expression de l’affectivité dans la poésie lyrique française du Moyen Âge (XIIe–XIIIe s.). Étude sémantique et stylistique du réseau lexical « joie »-« dolor » (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1972), 129–130: “Cauzimen est souvent attesté dans les chansons des troubadours en coordination avec les termes principaux pitansa, pietat ou merce.” 27 Sarah Kay, Subjectivity in Troubadour Poetry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 33.

37

canso. Terms such as “gaug, joi, joia, jauzimen, jauzir” are derivatives of gaudium, gaudere.28 On the level of semantics the emotionally charged tone of the opening stanza is here reintroduced. The lady was identified with the prime mover; thus all natural phenomena which come to life in this period of time and are so admired by the troubadour in the first stanza happen by virtue of her: “Ab vos es gaugz per que totz bes reviu” and she is the sole cause of joy in the whole Creation: “E non a gaug el mon tan agradiu, / Que.l vostre gaugz fa.l segle tot joios.” It is an evident virtue of Vidal’s canso that even though the leading theme is constantly changing, this one motif, the topic most identifiable today with the troubadours, namely courtly love, hidden here under several names, still remains stable: amor-dona-gaugz becomes a unity—“The song ends where it has begun with the theme of joy; the verb jauzirai in line six of the first stanza is taken up and expanded in the final stanza, which becomes a veritable hymn to joy and to the lady who is the incarnation and fountainhead of joy.”29 Therefore, the series of anaphoras known from the Litany of Loreto may serve as a context for Vidal’s work, as they, too, are different titles offered to one person. The idea that the “Vera vergena Maria” (written 1220–1230) of Peire Cardenal had sprung from the litanic spirit has a long tradition in research.30 However, in the search for a decisive argument which would definitely support this hypothesis, we must note that various features were considered: the Marian theme leading to the trail of litanies of the Holy Virgin, the use of the refrain,31 and the captivating beginning established by alliteration.32 In our analysis, however, we focus on a role of stable epithet as the litanic verse’s marker, taking into account a tradition of its use on the basis of an adjective meaning “true.” “Vera vergena Maria” is composed of five stanzas with refrains. The litanic dimension of the poem is not evenly distributed—in the first stanza the invocations

28 Cropp, Le Vocabulaire courtois, 334. For instance, the Provençal literary works considering the joys of Mary were described as “los VII gaugz de la verge sancta Maria.” 29 Veronica Mary Fraser, Commentary, in The Songs of Peire Vidal, 34. 30 Joseph Anglade, Histoire sommaire de la littérature méridionale au Moyen Âge: des origines à la fin du XVe siècle (Genève: Slatkine, 1973), 163. Cf. C.-Antoine Maurin, Les Saluts d’amour (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1932–1935), 253: “M. Anglade se trompe au sujet des litanies qui n’existaient pas encore en tant que telles.” 31 Dmitri Scheludko, “Die Marienlieder in der altprovenzalischen Lyrik,” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, vol. 37 (1936): 30; Frederick Goldin, “The Law’s Homage to Grace: Peire Cardenal’s Vera vergena, Maria,” Romance Philology, vol. 20 (1967): 466–477. 32 Suzanne Méjean-Thiolier, L’Archet et le lutrin: Enseignement et foi dans la poésie médiévale d’Oc (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2008), 343: “litanie alliterée.”

38

manifest in every line using the adjective “vera,” usually twice in one line; in the second and the third “Tu” appears as the anaphora on the level of stanzas, while the fourth and the fifth stanzas have a more narrative character, profiting from full sentences instead of brief apostrophes. Cardenal’s song may be easily identified as regular and rhythmic, using coblas unisonas with the rhyme scheme ababababcc. The beginning introduces the adjective “vera,” which is repeated in the following six lines. Furthermore, the syllable ve- begins the words that follow “vera” three times: “vergena,” “vertatz,” “vertutz”: Vera vergena, María, Vera vida, vera fés, Vera vertatz, vera vía, Vera vertutz, vera rés, Vera maire, ver’ amía, Ver’ amors, vera mercés: Per ta vera merce sía Qu’eret en me tos herés.33

Imre Gábor Majorossy notes: Sans aucun doute c’est la première strophe qui exerce la plus grande influence sur nous, parce qu’elle contient de courtes phrases. La fréquence des vers est obsessionnelle, et, finalement, après un certain point, sert plutôt le rythme que le sens.34

The heptasyllable appears as being short enough to emphasize the regularity in which the adjective “vera” returns: Quant aux invocations, elles devront avant tout entrer dans le rythme de la prière litanique, dont le refrain demande à être répété à intervalles à peu près réguliers et pas trop prolongés. Elles contribueront à faire sentir ce rythme par leur brièveté, par une prosodie à peu près régulière (ce qui ne veut pas dire rigoureusement métrique), par des répétitions du texte ou des analogies de construction qui souligneront en même temps l’identité du thème.35

Apart from binding together the lines and forming the chain by which a reader can proceed, the alliteration leads to a hyperbolization in the portrait of Holy Mary, as one of her titles is “the true truth.” In the first stanza, she is called a way, a truth, a life, a virtue, a mother, a friend, a love, and a mercy. This last term is repeated in the sixth and seventh lines. The following refrain: “De patz,  s i - t   p l a i , 33 Poésies complètes du troubadour Peire Cardenal (1180–1278), 232. 34 Imre Gábor Majorossy, Amors es bona volontatz (Budapest: Akadémiai, 2006), 88. 35 Bourmont, “Fonction et expression des prières d’intercession,” 144.

39

d on a,  traita, / Qu’ab to filh me sia faita,” may be compared with the already analyzed couplet from Vidal’s song: “Doma,  s i . u s   p l at z,  ajatz n’esgardamen, / Doma, de tan que n’ajatz chauzimen” (emphasis is mine—M.K.). The troubadours both invoke their ladies and rely solely on their mercy. Nonetheless, the Cardenal’s prayer is to a greater degree an intercessory prayer: he introduces the personage of the Savior who brought peace on earth and gave his peace to the people (John 14:27). For Vidal, it is his lady and her will which may decide his fortune; he would invoke her as a last resort. Cardenal has another authority to submit to—he prays to Holy Mary to obtain the peace of her Son. This point may be useful in our research, as we should add a side comment about the choice of the epithet “vera.” The emphasis on the feature of being “true,” joined with the anaphoric usage of this word and alliteration, may be found in several other poems of this epoch, but it is worth noting that it is not related to Marian characteristics but to the qualities of God and Christ. To give an illustration, in the incipit of Peire d’Alvernhe’s song, which belongs to the genre of planctus poenitentia,36 we read: “Dieus, vera vida, verays”—the recurrence of the sound ve- becomes prominent. In Guiraut Riquier’s “Fortz guerra fai tot lo mon guerreiar,” one finds the alternation between “vers” and “vera” in an anaphoric chain: Vers paires Dieus, don nons podem pairar Vera via, vertatz et vera lutz Vers salvamens, per quens devem salvar Vera bontatz, don totz bes es vengutz;37

The second line of this quotation is analogous to the third line of Cardenal’s poem, apart from the fact that the order of “via” and “vertatz” is reversed and one use of “vera” has been omitted. Moreover, in the following fragment of the epic poem Ronsasvals: Bel senher Dieu, veraya trinitat, humils e francs e vera deÿtat, aissi com vos est veraya caritat, vera lumiera e vera veritat, vera drechura e veraya bontat, per merce vos quier que yeu non sia dampnatz,38

36 Gianluca Valenti, La liturgia del « trobar »: Assimilazione e riuso di elementi del rito cristiano nelle canzoni occitane medievali (Berlin/New York: De Gruyter, 2014), 96–97. 37 C. A. Friedrich Mahn, ed., Die Werke der Troubadours in provenzalisches Sprache, vol. IV (Berlin: Mahn, 1853), 64. 38 Ronsasvals, eds. and trans. Gérard Gouiran and Robert Lafont (Paris: Bourgois, 1991), 216–220.

40

we encounter expressions such as “vera veritat,” “per merce,” “humils” in the onset of lines, that is, elements in common with Cardenal’s poem. An example to illustrate the characteristic of Christ can be taken from an anonymous prayer from the Wolfenbüttel manuscript starting with the line “Santisme paire Jesus Christ”: Veira clartac e veira luc, Vers dieu, vers hom, veira saluc, Veira maiestac, veira vida, Veira graicas de ben complida, Veira maiestac e merceis.39

“Veira vida” and “veira merceis” are expressions which are replicated in “Vera vergena Maria.” The epithet “true” has been shown to be present in the numerous examples in Occitan poetry. The crucial question remains, what can we say about its source? The most often evoked commentary in this context is the Biblical sentence Ego sum via et veritas, et vita (John 14:6).40 Still, we are in the Christological area. Gianluca Valenti, after a meticulous study of the liturgical allusion in “Dieus, vera vida, verays,” finally reveals some difficulties in identifying the source of the characteristic included in the first line: “Il primo verso, infatti, ricalca altre formule liturgiche.”41 He insists, however, on the idea that it is the service of Commendationis animae which had the most influence: “Significavimente, numerose fra le formule che si trovano accomunate a tale incipit sono esclusive delle messe in onore di defunti o di morienti.” The examples which the critic gives are not quite persuasive, as “Deus, vitae dator” or “Deus vita viventium” do not contain the adjective “true,” only modest signs of alliteration. Apparently, the phenomenon of the popularity of this characteristic is not restricted to the Occitan domain, as we meet its adoption in Old French too, for instance, in Roland’s entreaty before his death, starting: “Veire Patene, ki unkes ne mentis,” which was recognized as rephrasing the ektenial formula Libera, Domine, animam servi tui,

39 Camille Chabaneau, “Paraphrase des litanies en vers provençaux,” Revue des Langues Romanes, vol. 29 (1886): 75. Another order of line is given in: Zeno Verlato, “II pretesto trobadorico della raccolta di poesie religiose del manoscritto di Wolfenbüttel,” in La lirica romanza del Medioevo. Storia, tradizioni, interpretazioni. Atti del VI convegno triennale della Società Italiana di Filologia Romanza, eds. Furio Brugnolo and Francesca Gambino (Padova: Unipress, 2009), 276. 40 I would like to express my gratitude to Witold Sadowski for this remark and for informing me about the De Beata Maria V. (inc. Nova venit genitura) trope. 41 Valenti, La liturgia del « trobar », 113.

41

of Ordo commendationis animae.42 Therefore, I reject, with Verlato, a hypothesis about Cathar inspiration for the attachment to the epithet “true.”43 He, too, analyzes the devotional poetry in the Wolfenbüttel manuscript and mentions songs of d’Alvernhe as well as of Cardenal and argues: la stessa poesia trobadorica attinge alla fonte liturgica come a un modello, imitandone formule o procedimenti retorici. Così, la seriazione dell’aggettivo vers presente nella nostra poesia, presente anche in alcune poesie religiose dei trovatori, ha un interme­ diario comune nella preghiera liturgica (nell’Articulus fidei e nelle litanie alla Vergine, in particolare nel Missus est Angelus).44

Reading through Latin texts of Marian litanies from the period before litanies were approved by Sixtus V for public worship, we encounter the adjective “vera”: “Sancta Maria, nostra lux vera / Sancta Maria, nostra spes vera,”45 as well as the nouns: “Virtus,” “Vita,” “Via vitae.”46 Nevertheless, we do not find them joined in a single invocation until the Arnolds Samstaglitanei which contains the title “Vera virgo,”47 repeated 22 times as the intial element of a series of invocations—this prayer, however, derives from a manuscript from the fifteenth century. Therefore, better results are yielded by the reading of Latin tropes, for not only are these two elements known from Cardenal’s song brought together in one Marian periphrasis, but also the analogous stylistic devices are represented in them, for instance, the lines “Vera vita, vera via” from De Beata Maria V. (inc. Nova venit genitura),48 “Via vitae, vera vitis” from De Beata Maria V. (inc. Sicut pratum picturatur)49 and 42 Eugène Vinaver, À la recherche d’une poétique médiévale (Paris: Nizet, 1970), 63. Cf. Arnoul Gréban, Le Mystère de la Passion (Paris: Vieweg, 1878), mainly referring to the Lord: “vraie sauveur,” “vraie fils de Dieu” (136), “O vray saulveur de tout le monde, vraye fontaine de clemence, / o vray redempteur pur et monde, / […]” (449) and God: “vraie Dieu, vraie félicité” (154). Cf. the definition of “ektenial gene” in: Witold Sadowski, “Some necessary preliminaries,” in Litanic Verse I: Origines, Iberia, Slavia et Europa Media, eds. Witold Sadowski, Magdalena Kowalska, Magdalena Maria Kubas (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2016), 11. 43 Verlato, “II pretesto trobadorico della raccolta di poesie religiose del manoscritto di Wolfenbüttel,” 279. 44 Ibid. 45 Venezianische Litanei, in Gilles Gérard Meersseman, Der Hymnos akathistos im Abendland, vol. 2 (Freiburg/Schweiz: Universitätsverlag, 1960), 215. 46 Mainzer Reimlitanei, in ibid., 253. 47 Arnolds Samstaglitanei, in ibid., 246–247. 48 Annalecta Hymnica Medii Aevi, XL: Sequentiae ineditae. Liturgische Prosen des Mittelalters (Leipzig: Reisland, 1902), 85. 49 Ibid., 104.

42

“Ave, vera vite via” from the trope Ave mitis, ave pia50 contain the reduplication of “ve-” in successive words. As was stated above, the character of the stanzas in Cardenal’s song changes over the course of the poem, but the presence of the litanic verse is preserved by the richness of the elements other than the anaphora on the level of lines and the stable epithet. The poet achieved his aims in the first stanza—he gained the favor of Holy Mary by his concern about the sound layer of his poem, by the insistency, by the titles at the same time noble and original, indicating the affinity of Mother and Son, and finally, he expressed the request for mercy and referred to her intercession. He achieved these acts in a sort of timelessness—in the impetuous enumeration of titles, no place for verbs was assured, except for these serving for the supplication. Majorossy notes: “Après une invocation introductive et émerveillante, une énumeration rappelle les mérites de la Vierge dans le passé historique, dans l’histoire du salut et dans le présent—qui est encore futur pour le troubadour.”51 In the second and third stanzas the troubadour summarizes poetically the history of Holy Mary by introducing her common titles by the use of anaphora, although not so frequent as in the first stanza, on “Tu”: in the second stanza: “Tu restauriest la follía,” “Tu iest l’estela que guía,” “tu iest l’alba del día,” and in the third stanza: “Tu fust nada de Suría.” In the third stanza, we also meet the enumeration of adjectives giving the impression of being epithets selected from the Marian litany and joined by a simple conjunction: “Gentils e paura d’arnes, / Umils e pura e pía.” However, there are some places in the same stanza where Cardenal reinforces an intellectual message of the song. His erudite references to the titles of Holy Mary are placed, for instance, in the first line of the third stanza: “Tu fust nada de Suría,” which can be compared with Maria inluminata siue stella maris, sed sermone Syro domina by Eucherius of Lyon and Sermone autem Syro Maria domina nuncupatur et pulchre, quia Dominum genuit of Isidore of Seville.52 This thread was popular during the medieval period due to the De laudibus B. M. V. of Ernaldus Bonnaevallis: Maria lingua syriaca domina dicitur.53 Another allusion worth mentioning was included in the fifth and sixth lines of the fifth stanza, which summarizes the image of the Queen of Virgins 50 Gilles Gérard Meersseman, Der Hymnos akathistos im Abendland, vol. 1 (Freiburg/ Schweiz: Universitätsverlag, 1958), 198. 51 Majorossy, Amors, 89–90. 52 Biblia. Les Bibles en latin au temps des Réformes, ed. Marie-Christine Gomez-Géraud, (Paris: Presses universitaires de Paris-Sorbonne, 2008), 213. 53 Ernaldus Bonnaevallis, De Laudibus B. Mariae Virginis, in Patrologiae cursus completus. Series Latina, ed. Jacques-Paul Migne, vol. 189 (Paris: Garnier Fratres, 1890), 1725.

43

from the 45th Psalm of David: “Una reÿna qu’avia / Vestirs de var e d’aurfres”— “Kings’ daughters were among thy honourable women: upon thy right hand did stand the queen in gold of Ophir. […] She shall be brought unto the king in raiment of needlework: the virgins her companions that follow her shall be brought unto thee”54 (Psalm 45:9 and 14). Considering the general structure of the stanzas following the famous beginning of “Vera vergena Maria,” we may venture a guess that from the second to the sixth stanza the troubadour retrieves the elements lacking in the first stanza: instead of the simplest sound effects, sophisticated allusions are employed; as a substitute for a title composed from the epithet and the noun—the structure of the subject and the predicate such as “Tu es / fus” is used; in place of “vera”—other adjectives appear. Several of the stylistic devices, already analyzed as markers of litanic verse are adopted in other isometric stanzas of Cardenal, representing the various themes and genres. However, the manner of introducing them in a text distinguishes them from the shape of “Vera vergena Maria,” and this distinction allows us to specify the features of litanic verse that distinguish it from simple adoption of an anaphora or an enumeration. In Cardenal’s work, when a parallelism is a sign of the litanic verse, it does not touch the majority of lines in a poem, but rather a selected stanza. Among the six stanzas of “Ricx homs que greu dis vertat e leu men,” three are marked by the syntactic parallelism of the seven lines out of eight. Furthermore, the repetition fades, decreasing, for instance, from the level of stanzas to the level of lines. Taking into account these two features, we should note that the poems applying the litanic verse are less monotonous—it is possible that a moralistic message imposes the highest degree of unambiguousness. Additionally, an alliteration emerges in the litanic verse, whereas it is less common in other examples. Instead of an opposition—recognizable in “De paraulas es gran mercatz”: “L’uns conseilla e l’autre brama; / L’uns menassa e l’autre clama,” “Can l’uns plora e l’autre ri; / Can l’uns quer aiga e l’autre vi,”55 or in “Ricx homs que greu dis vertat e leu men”: “E greu es bons e leu es mals als bós / E greu es francx e leu es erguelhós”56—in the litanic verse, we witness accumulation. Last, but not least, the refrain is also a sign of the use of litanic verse. The theme of joy was expressed in litanic verse as was the prayer for peace, and concurrently in the poetry of troubadours, we find works lauding warfare. 54 All translations to English of the Holy Scripture are from the King James Bible and are taken from the following edition: The Holy Bible Containing the Old and New Testament (Oxford: Wright and Gill, 1769). 55 Poésies complètes du troubadour Peire Cardenal, 288. 56 Ibid., 462.

44

Some of the latter were written by famous poets such as Bertrand de Born, and their composition may resemble Vidal’s canso by developing the topic of pleasure. In “Be·m platz lo gais temps de pascor,” the expressions “Be·m platz,” “E platz mi,” and “E platz me” appear seven times in a relatively long poem, consisting of sixty-three lines. The litanic verse is seemingly more represented in the sirventes “Guerra mi play quan la vey comensar” by Blacasset. This song is addressed to a lady, but the battle metaphors do not belong simply to the stylistic of courtly poetry, as their provenience relates to historical events from the war in 1228: Guerra mi play quan la vey comensar, Qar per guerra vey los pros enansar, E per guerra vey mantz destriers donar, E per guerra vey l’escas larc tornar, E per guerra vey tolre e donar, E per guerra vey las nueigz trasnuechar: Don guerra es drechuriera, so m par; E guerra m play ses jamais entreugar.57

The most frequent collocation established with the Provençal word “guerra” (“war”) is the preposition “per” which can be seen as an important litanic marker. Owing to the fact that a war begins, equality is achieved, because the same rules apply to every knight in the struggle. It is justice which is evidently praised in this litanic verse, but this message is rather masked by the repetitive element until the moment war and justice are directly juxtaposed: “guerra es drechuriera.” The sirventes is composed of thirty-nine decasyllabic lines and the anaphora appears exclusively in the first stanza, aside from the invocations repeated on the level of the last two stanzas, “Valenz domna” and “Gentils domna,” in which the lover declares his willingness to die for the lady. The freedom to express his devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary in the vernacular language was much appreciated by Pierre de Corbiac, who declared: “Segon que m’commanda sens / Cant de vos lenga Romana.” His poem “Domna dels angels regina” (composed around 1220–1250) comprises an apostrophe to Holy Mary repeated on the level of all seven stanzas, as well as of one tornada: “Domna.” In the first stanza, we find the invocation to the Queen of Angels and, additionally, she is called the hope of those who believe: “esperansa dels crezens.” The following stanzas, the second and the fifth in particular, are woven narrowly from the symbolic titles of Holy Mary:

57 Martín de Riquer, Los trovadores: historia, literaria y textos, vol. 3, (Barcelona: Editorial Planeta, 1975), 1290.

45

Domna, roza ses espina, sobre totas flors olens, Verga seca frug fazens Terra que ses labor grana, Estela del solelh maire Noirissa del vostre paire El mon nulha nous semelha Ni lontana ni vezina.58

This stanza is skillfully constructed with a series of traditional Marian metaphors that are inspired by nature, considering their floral motifs: “the rose without thorn, sweet above all flours,”59 the motif of the soil: “earth bringing forth fruit without toil” and that of the universe: “star, mother of the sun.” The line “Verga seca frug fazens” merits attention, as it represents the Holy Virgin as she who bears fruit without human semen, as we can hear in the hymn Veni, redemptor gentium: Non ex virili semine. Although in the following stanzas Corbiac uses antonomasias much less frequently—as a matter of fact, they appear only in the stanza-opening lines, for example, in the third stanza: “Dona, ioves enfantina,” the fourth: “Domna, verges pure e fina,” the sixth: “Dompna, estela marina,” the seventh: “Dona, metiess e metzina, / lectoaris et enguens,” and in the first tornada: “Don’, espoza, filh’e mayre”—one can note that in the fifth stanza, the manner of exposing them bears the mark of parallelism, and the first line of it the structure “you are” is added: Dompna, vos etz l’ayglentina que trobet vert Moysens entre las flamas ardens, e la toizos de la lana que·s mulhet dins la sec’ayre, don Gedeons fon proayre;

In the Marian litany, these scenes take the form of invocations: Rubus ardens incombustus and Vellus Gedeonis, coelesti rose perfusum. If we additionally observe the portrayal from the fourth stanza which illustrates the fact that “Jesus Christ our Savior received human flesh in thee, just as without causing harm, the fair ray enters through the window-pane when the sun shines:”60 “Si com, […], / Vai 58 Francisco J. Oroz Arizcuren, La lírica religiosa en la literatura provenzal antigua (Pamplona: Excma, 1972), 370. 59 Henry John Chaytor, The Troubadours (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1912), 93. 60 Ibid., 94.

46

e ven rais quan solelha / Per la fenestra vezina,” we can presume that for Corbiac, the most essential characteristic of Holy Mary is her virginal motherhood. The structure—“Dona” (the repetitive element) plus several other titles each depicting a new characteristic of Holy Mary—permits us to consider each entire stanza of Corbiac’s poem as an equivalent of one invocation from the old Marian litanies, in which the recurrent expression Sancta Maria opened the way to several antonomasias, as in Letania de beata virgine: “Sancta Maria, templum Spiritis sancti, celorum regina, imperatrix clarissima.”61 The litanic unit of Corbiac is extended in comparison with the previously analyzed Cardenal poem, where even a half of the line operates as one invocation, while also containing the stable element and a new one, that is, the epithet “vera” plus the noun. The meter is slightly shorter, as the poem uses the heptasyllable, but the stanzas are equal in length, as they number eight lines, but excluding the couplet of refrain in Cardenal’s poem. Therefore, it is important to note that the supplications are positioned in Corbiac’s sixth stanza: “mostra nos via sertana,” and seventh: “fai nos tost de mal estrayre,” and in both tornadas: “manda·l filh e prega·l payre”— this is particularly interesting due to the intercession—and “tu·ns esvelha.” As we can observe, the poet does not use the liturgical formulae to express his requests. The “Domna dels angels regina” stanzaic pattern also represents coblas unisonans, but the peculiarity of this poem is based on two isolated lines from the rhyme scheme abbcddea.62 Being aware of features of the alba genre such as the epiphoras and the series of apostrophes with a preference for the dialogue, one should expect more productive interaction with the litanic form. Nevertheless, apart from the hypothesis of interpreting the personage of the Holy Virgin as the “guettuer,” “protectrice,”63 there is only one poem that supports this expectation, and that is Guillaume d’Autpoul’s “Esperanza de totz ferms esperans” (the date of the composition is unknown). Though the theme of its litanic implications has been treated before,64 some useful comments have also been provided more recently in an article by 61 Meersseman, Der Hymnos akathistos im Abendland, vol. 2, 238. 62 Salvat, “La sainte Vierge,” 624. Thus, as we may see in Frank’s Répertoire, this is the only example of such rhyme scheme, cf. István Frank, Répertoire métrique de la poésie des troubadours. I: Introduction et répertoire (Paris: E. Champion, 1953), 160. 63 Margaret Louise Switten, “Modèle et variations: Saint-Martial de Limoges et les troubadours,” in Contacts de langues, de civilisations et intertextualité. IIIème Congrès international de l’Association internationale d’études occitanes, ed. Gérard Gouiran, vol. 2 (Montpellier: Gérard, 1990), 679. 64 Salvat, “La sainte Vierge,” 617.

47

Toribio Fuente Cornejo.65 He shows that throughout this alba its overtone fluctuates; whereas in the first and the second stanzas, the spirit of laudatory hymn dominates, the third and the fourth comprise a personal prayer to Holy Mary, a profoundly intimate one, and the content of the fifth stanza resembles a penitential act and the sixth begins with an apostrophe to God, not the Mother of Christ. While examining this poem, we will mainly pay attention to the manner in which the litanic verse fulfills the function of clarifying its metrical structure, established by the lyrical decasyllable. The stanzas are composed of eleven lines, and what strikes a reader from the very beginning of the poem is that the number of Marian invocations demonstrated in the enumeration mode in the first stanza alone is twenty-one. The predominating manner of disposing these invocations is to place them two to a line, which allows us to recognize a regular caesura after the fourth syllable: “Flums de plazers, fons de vera merce, / Cambra de Dieu, ort don naysso tug be.”66 In the first line, though, we note the single antonomasia: “Hope of all that hope truly indeed,”67 as well as in the fifth: “Consolation of the disconsolate faithful.” On the other hand, three are present in the eleventh line, in which the words “lums e clardatz et alba” provide the refrain obligatory in this genre. Amongst all of the titles, several easily recognizable as litanic can be discerned: “Fountain of true grace,” “Chamber of God,” “Gate of the saving pass,” “Lady of the firmament.” By the beginning of the second stanza, the enumeration reaches its end, leaving a place for an emotional,68 confessional laudation starting with the epithet “Gloriosa.” The litanic mode, however, continues to tempt the troubadour, as the last six lines of this stanza become another list:

65 Toribio Fuente Cornejo, “El alba religiosa en la lírica románica medieval,” in Lite­ratura y cristiandad: homenaje al profesor Jesús Montoya Martínez, eds. Antonio Rubio Flores, María Luisa Dañobeitia Fernández, Manuel José Alonso García (Granada: Universidad de Granada, 2001), 557–566 cited in Christophe Chaguinian, ed., (Paris: H. Champion, 2008), 80–81: “celui des compositions-litanies, composé des albas de Guilhem d’Autpol et de Guiraut Riquier (cette dernière ne s’ajustant qu’imparfaitement au ‘type’).” 66 Oroz Arizcuren, La lírica religiosa en la literatura provenzal antigua, 186. 67 Ezra Pound, The Spirit of Romance (London: P. Owen, 1952), 60. 68 Cf. Joseph Anglade, Le Troubadour Guiraut Riquier: étude sur la décadence de l’ancienne poésie (Paris: Féret et fils, 1905), 292: “Les deux premières strophes [de l’aube en l’honneur de la Vierge de Guillem d’Autpoul, contemporain de Riquier—M.K.] ne comprennent qu’une longue série de dénominations allégoriques conformes à l’esprit des litanies. Le reste de la pièce, quoique moins monotone, est aussi froid.”

48

Gaugz et honors, salutz e caritatz, Verdier d’amor, qu’el tieu pressios ort Dissendet frugz que destruys nostra mort, Verga seca fazen frug semen, Porta del ciel, via de salvamen, De totz fizels lums e clardatz et alba.

A few names from this poetic portrayal have already been analyzed above on the basis of other poems, for example, “gaugz” and “Verga seca fazen frug semen”; some others, for instance, Porta del ciel, may be inspired by the title common in the medieval period from Ave maris stella: Felix coeli porta. In this part of the second stanza, we recognize the various patterns of organizing the periphrastic description of the Virgin Mary in one line. As has been said before, the custom most often found in this poem is to place two titles in one line. However, one title may also occupy an entire line, when it is stretched by a relative clause with “que.” Moreover, in this stanza even four brief titles are placed on one line, being joined by a conjunction. Finally, in the last line we encounter three symbolic names, analogously to the first stanza. The litanic verse in this poem is embedded in the clear genre frames. The repetition is two-sided; apart from the above-mentioned epiphora on “alba” we may note two examples of anaphoric proceedings. The epithet “Gloriosa” used in the first line of the second stanza recurs unexpectedly in the third line of the third stanza and the fourth of the fourth, also in the onsets. Furthermore, the invocation “Plazens dompna” from the onset of the third stanza is repeated in the shape of “dompna” in the middle part of the sixth line of the fourth stanza and again as “Plazens dompna” in the fifth line of the fifth stanza. Seemingly starting from the third stanza, we may find an intention to express supplications, not only to praise in numerous titles. The requests do not use the liturgical formulae: “membre·t de me e de totz tos clamans,” “perduy me lay on es vida ses mort, / pres del tieu filh […]” (the third stanza); “no m’oblidetz, dompna, per mos peccatz” (the fourth); “que·m razonetz, plazens dompna, si·us platz” (the fifth)—except for the supplication directly adressed to God in the sixth stanza: “Poderos dieus, verays e merceyans, / Merce m’aiatz.” The composition gives the impression that the long prayer of intercession to Holy Mary gave the troubadour the strength to finally speak directly to God. To sum up this part of the analysis, we should say that of the poems interpreted so far, the alba is the most affected by unpredictability, despite the fact that it remains isometric—the reader cannot find the pattern that allows him to calculate how many titles to anticipate in one line or where the repetitive element

49

will occur, if at all. “Gloriosa” and “Plazens dompna” do not operate in the same manner as “Vera” or “Domna” in Cardenal’s and Corbiac’s poems, as their frequency is lower and they appear deeper within each stanza. The rhythm accelerates in the enumeration “Gaugz et honors, salutz e caritatz,” only to be decelerated by the phrase “Dissendet frugz que destruys nostra mort.” “Espe­ ranza de totz ferms esperans” brings some traits of diversity into the unity of metrical scheme. The Marian devotion, dominating in the examples analyzed above, reigns likewise over the poems presented during Jeux floraux. Regarding the structure of these poems Alfred Jeanroy commented on a certain litanic inspiration: […] ils [les candidats aux fleurs de mai—M.K.] énumèrent les vertus de la Vierge, lui rappellent son histoire, implorent son intercession; mais surtout — et c’est là une matière inépuisable, — ils se répandent en invocations, copient les litanies. […] Les chansons à la Vierge, banales paraphrases des Litanies, ne sont que monotones kyrielles de substantifs ronflants et d’épithètes souvent amphigouriques.69

The impression of sameness may be determined not only by the mode in which the thematic string is arranged, but also by the metrical pattern of Toulousian poems. Amongst the seventy-two included in the anthology, fewer than ten are not written in decasyllable. One example of this standard is the chanson named “canso de Nostra Dona, retrogradada,”70 composed by the Doctor of Laws Austorc de Galhac, who was honored for it in 1355. As a matter of fact, it does not contain any repetition: in five stanzas and the tornada the poet enumerates the many titles of Holy Mary, such as humble virgin, Mother of God, ray and light, fountain of sweetness, mirror of justice, fragrant flower, Rose of May, and Empress, as well as some that are less common: royal eagle, pearl, carbuncle. The antonomasias of Mary are contained alternately in the beginning of the line and in its final part, for instance, in the first stanza:  “May re s   d e D i e u ,  am resplended figura, / De vos nasque  l a   n o s t r a   m e d e c i n a”  and in the second:   “Fr u g   v e r t ou s ,  en vos floris e grana / Gaug senes fi, quar etz f ont z  d e  d o s s or.”71

69 Alfred Jeanroy, “Introduction,” in Les Joies du Gai savoir: recueil de poésies couronnées par le Consistoire de la gaie science (1324–1484) (Toulouse: Privat, 1914), XIV. 70 Cf. ibid., XXVI: “Je ne vois pas bien en quoi la pièce IV est retrogradada, sinon en ce qu’on peut lire chaque couplet en commençant par la fin, chaque vers formant un sens à peu près complet, ce qui s’explique par les apostrophes dont ils sont formés.” 71 Ibid., 13. The emphasis is mine.

50

The position of invocations in the line is thus variable, as is their metrical length. In the above-mentioned examples, they contain either three, four or seven syllables. Occasionally the poet includes three Marian titles in one line: “Alba luzentz, Dona, Verges mot casta.” Containing merely one supplication in the tornada: “Secoretz me,” the song has the character of a long, substantial and verbose poem lacking lyrical subtlety. The president of the tribunal of the Académie des Jeux floraux, Guilhem Molinier, composed an ars poetica of Occitan poetry entitled Leys d’Amour (the first version in 1341, the final one in 1356), which may be considered an important achievement in the period of decline. The composition rule of this poetic treatise is based on a short description of a given form followed by a poetic sample. In the explication of cobla retronchada, we find an example of litanic verse concealed under the Marian prayer. This poem marks a great leap forward in the process of its interpretation, as it demonstrates that a litany could be considered as a text which contains some fixed elements that may be combined in various manners. Particulary desirable is the exchange of the content of the first part of a line with the first part of another—to not eradicate the perfect epiphora created by the element of a supplicative formula: Fons de vertut, ajuda nos; Regina del Cel, deffen nos; Cambra de Dieu, empara nos; Verges humils, ensenya nos; Flors de purtats, deneja nos; Stela del Ciel, guida nos; Lums dels Sants, clarifica nos; Gauig de Paradis, salva nos; Mayres de Dieu, prega per nos; Lo tieu fill sant e glorios.72

The repetition of “nos” may be considered an effect of the phenomenon named “les récurrences de mots-rimes”73 and it is the only stable element in this prayer composed of an abundance of titles and various requests. It shows similarities to a medieval Latin prayer to Jesus, Anima Christi, in which the last line stands out from the rhythmical pattern as well. In this case, the renunciation is a consequence of the desire to make from this supplication a prayer of intercession 72 Joseph Anglade, Las Flors del gay Saber (Barcelona: Gamí, 1926), 34, ll. 2557–2566. 73 Dominique Billy, L’Architecture lyrique médiévale (Montpellier: Section française de l’Association internationale d’études occitanes, 1989), 205.

51

and thus, to evoke the Son of God. In comparison with the troubadour songs analyzed above, we may note that Molinier achieves the equipoise of two components of litanic prayer, that is, the praising enumeration and supplicative response, preserving for each its place in the line.

2.2  Heterometric Stanzas Vidal’s litanic verse may take, however, a more irregular shape as well, corresponding with the dynamic of litanic invocations destined in the liturgical texts to reach for the proper name of a deity and not to perfectly match a given number of syllables in a line. Hence, a poem in which lines of different length contain a repetitive phrase is worth mentioning, namely “Ben aja ieu, qar sai cobrir.” This poem represents a gap genre, in which is vaunted the puissance of the troubadour, so we retreat from the love themes of Vidal’s poetry. Nonetheless, we continue to find the motif of joy—the expression “Ben aja ieu, qar” (“I am happy”) is applied in the first, the third, the fourth, the fifth, and the sixth line of every five stanzas built from nine lines. This phrase was omitted in the hexasyllables, the shortest meter used in this poem: Ben aja ieu, qar sai cobrir Alegran ma dolor. Ben aja ieu, qar no.m acir, Sitot no.m jau d’amor. Bel aja ieu, qar sui ficels amaire, Ben aja ieu, qar non sui galiaire. Ben aja ieu, qar amei la gensor, Qi si’al mon e tota la meilhor, E mal aja cui pesa.74

Taking into account that the repeating phrase is the component of either a twoor a three-part sentence, we can undertake the comparison of a line from this poem with the litanic one. In this way, “Ben aja ieu” may correspond with the first element of a litanic invocation, for instance, “Heart of Jesus,” and as it is the repeating one that comprises an invariant number of syllables, in this case four. The second part, “qar sai cobrir,” “qar no.m acir,” “qar sui ficels amaire” etc., can be composed of either four or six syllables—it reminds us of parallel litanic fragments, such as “in whom the Father is well pleased” in the litany of the Church. Finally, the lines “Alegran ma dolor,” “Sitot no.m jau d’amor,” and “E mal aja cui pesa,” numbering six syllables, are the equivalents of the response “have mercy 74 Peire Vidal, Poesie, ed. D’Arco Silvio Avalle, vol. 1 (Milan: Ricciardi, 1960), 440.

52

on us.” It is not to be overlooked that the last line of the stanza is indeed repeated on the level of all stanzas and appears as a brief and rhythmically unexpected complement—as in the series a8b6a8b6c10’c10’b10b10, we finally achieve the hexasyllable with the isolated feminine d6’. The anaphora occurs only in alternate shorter lines, while it is regularly present in the longer lines. The alliteration in the isometric stanzas of Cardenal has already been defined as the distinctive feature of his litanic verse. To demonstrate its significance in the heterometric stanzas, we should discuss the satire “Aquesta gens, cant son en lur gaiéza,” written around 1205 and set amid the political realities of Provence. In the second stanza, the image of the English court of John Lackland emerges from the description based on the repetition of “ab” together with the adjective “court”—its function can be compared with the role of “vera” in the previously analyzed Marian song, as it dominates only in one selected stanza and accompanies the enumerated values, among them “merces,” associated with “Vera vergena Maria.” Nonetheless, in “Aquesta gens, cant son en lur gaiéza,” this stable epithet contributes to a negative depiction, as it diminishes the significance of features like love, honesty, and courtesy: Cort cug qu’ieu sai qu’es corta de largueza, Ab cortz servirs, ab cortz dos, ab cortz bes, Ab cort’ amor et ab corta franqueza, Ab cortz perdos et ab cortas merces; E cort ab corta cortezía E ab corta dousa paría, E quar son cort li joi e li plazer Per aquo deu lo nom de cort aver.75

The abrupt abridgement of the meter—from decasyllabic to octosyllabic—coincides with the accumulation of one sound starting the name of the object and its characteristic, namely the noun and the adjective: “cort ab corta cortezía,” like “ve-” in the Marian song. This vision may be contrasted with the ideal model of the court, based on the Toulousian court during the reign of Raymond VI, which is presented in the third stanza. The anaphoric “ab cort-” is no longer present, but “cort” as a noun is occasionally used, as are verbs containing this syllable: “descort,” “s’acort.” Therefore, the litanic verse in this poem does not serve to praise, but rather to appall the reader by the omnipresence of wickedness reigning over the English court—whenever we hear the cort-element these vices are evoked.

75 Poésies complètes du troubadour Peire Cardenal (1180–1278), 42.

53

Cardenal’s early song Dels quatre caps que a la crós is described as a crusade song (Chan de Crozada), although its nature, which is more peaceful than warlike, makes this delineation questionable: Sa chanson Dels quatre caps que a la crós est peut-être une chanson de croisade, mais bien plus sûrement une chanson à la croix […]. […] c’est l’idée d’évangelisation pacifique qui domine chez lui […]. Si Cardenal est ainsi amené à souligner qu’universalisme implique non tant conquête (pour lui la croisade est simplement la défense de Saint Sé­ pulcre) qu’évangelisation, c’est parce que l’Occitanie dans laquelle il vit est à ce momentlà une terre martyre.76

The second possible genre classification suggested in the remark cited here is a hymn in honor of the Cross. This song is composed of five stanzas of seven lines, mainly octosyllabic with the exception of the sixth line, with feminine rhyme and one tornada. The litanic verse is represented in a plainly unpretentious manner as the anaphoras dominate in the first, the third and the fifth stanzas, accordingly: “E l’autre,” “Et en cros” and “que.” The figure of the cross appears, indeed, at the end of the first line of the poem: Dels quatre caps que a la crós Ten l’us sus, vas lo fermamén, L’autre vas abis, selh de jós, E l’autre ten vas orién, E l’autre ten vas occidén;77

In the following stanzas, the theme is sustained, regarding the first line of the second stanza in which the cross is represented as the royal gonfalon: “La crotz es lo dreitz gofainos del rey.” This war metaphor may be valuable for comprehanding the third stanza, which is immersed in the religious repetition of the symbol of Christianity: Cristz mori en la cros per nos E destruis nostra mort moren. E en cros venset l’ergulhos El leinh on vensia la gen, Et en cros obret salvamen, Et en cros renhet e renha, Et en cros nos volc rezemer, […].

76 Dominique Urvoy, Penser l’islam: les présupposés islamiques de l’art de Lull (Paris: J. Vrin, 1980), 83–84. 77 Poésies complètes du troubadour Peire Cardenal (1180–1278), 178.

54

As we can see, until the third stanza, the cross has been proclaimed as the symbol of might and victory—from it we gain knowledge: “Que Cristz o a tot en podér.” However, in the above-cited passage, we detect the semantic downturn and the cross is assigned to the lexical field of martyrology, as the lexeme “death” appears thrice: in the verb “morir” (in the forms “mori” and “moren”) as well as in the noun “mort.” The third, fifth, sixth and seventh lines are linked by the anaphora “Et en cros,” while in the third and the fourth lines, the predicate “venset” / “vensia” is repeated, which seems to warrant the conviction that the cross symbolizes sacrifice and salvation, and affirms that death has been defeated. The fourth stanza reformulates the essential motif of Cardenal’s song. Although in the fifth line, we recognize the leading anaphora: “Et en cros,” a new variant of the same figure is introduced: the fruit—“En cros pot trobar veramen […] Lo frug del albre de saber”—that is, the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. From the last line of the fourth stanza, this figure passes smoothly to the initial line of the fifth stanza: “Ad aquest frug em tug somos / Que-l culham amorozamen / Que frugz es tan bels e tan bos […],” and then to the tornada, once again being repeated two times: “Lo dous frug cuelh qui la cros pren / E sec Crist vas on que tenha, / Que Critz es lo frugz de saber.” The cross has not been described with the use of epithets, but it has recurred many times in the body of the text due to the anaphora. Conversely, the fruit is well-defined by adjectives: “bels,” “bos,” “dous.” In the last line of the poem, these two symbols become identified with one another. The Holy Cross is the central theme of this poem, and the fruit is one of its most appealing titles. Regarding the fact that Cardenal places emphasis on the numerous acts that the Savior accomplished for the faithful—for “us” as the poet says: “Cristz mori en la cros per  n o s   / E destruis  n o s t r a   mort moren” (the emphasis is mine)—and does this through parallelism, we may argue that his litanic verse in this poem has an aim equally didactic as it is laudatory. Through its form, the poem explains calmly the significance of sacrifice and expresses some general rules about those who follow Christ and those who do not appreciate this faculty: “qui-l culhira ben ni gen / Tostemps aura vida valen.” One more example of Cardenal’s litanic verse does not count as devotional poetry and nor does it contain biting satire. The more sorrowful character of “Aissi com hom plainh son fill o son paire” (written around 1204–1208) is a reflection of its genre: planh.78 It is composed of five stanzas of fourteen lines: four decasyllables, nine pentasyllabes and one heptasyllable plus the shorter tornada. The

78 Beatrice Barbiellini Amidei, Non lasciare l’oro per il piombo: elementi di intertestualità trobadorica e di critica del testo (Milano: CUEM, 2003), 69.

55

conjugated verb plaindre (to regret) is repeated ten times in prominent places, such as in the initial lines of four stanzas, but its most frequent appearance is in the second stanza, where it is present in four decasyllabic lines. The troubadour feels sorrow for the liars, cheats, fornicators, robbers, thieves, and blasphemers already living on the earth—the enumeration of these personas dominates the first stanza of sirventes: Mensongier, truan, Cobes, de mal plan, Raubador, lairon, Jurador, tiran, Abric de trachors, […].79

The poet announces in the first line of the poem that he pities such people to the same extent as a man after the death of his son, father or friend. However, we may notice that although the intensity of these feelings is similar, which is emphasized in the series (the emphasis in the quotation is mine): Tot home plainh quant es glotz e raubaire, E plainh  l o   f or t   quan trop o a tengut, E plainh  l o   f or t   quar hom non l’a pendut; E plainh  l o   f or t   quar es trachers e laire,

a different reason lies at their base. Cardenal has compassion for these people, not by reason of their death, but because of the lives of the evildoers and their successors: Non plainh quar morran Mas quar vivon tan Li malvatz gloton, E plainh quar auran Heres sordeiors.

These two characteristics of the song—the enumeration and the syntactic parallelism—provide a thought-provoking example, as they are associated with a radical change of meter—the decasyllable becomes a pentasyllabe, and at the end of the stanza, is replaced by seven syllables. The shorter lines are rich in diversity, as they contribute to the list of malefactors representing the most widespread sins in the age of Cardenal, whereas the longer ones strike the recipient by the insistency of the sorrow those malefactors cause.

79 Poésies complètes du troubadour Peire Cardenal (1180–1278), 247.

56

This song may serve as an example of understanding the planh as a genre in which sorrow after historical events or disasters, the misfortune which afflicts the world, “the loss of value in the courtly world”80 is expressed. However, we do not find any historical fact as the precise reason for this pessimism, which may support the statement of Marianne Shapiro: “Even in those planhs that most frequently and closely approach the political discussions of the sirventes, the epic element tends strongly to be subordinated to a non-informational level of discourse.”81 In the ecclesiastical litany, the accumulation of names provokes the cry for salvation, but the troubadour is aware that the theme of his poem is not suitable for laudation: “d’avol fag bon plag no sai retraire.” The part traditionally devoted to praise of the person deceased appears in Cardenal’s planh as a negative version of the enumeration: it is not virtues that are listed but the types of evildoers living on the earth. Furthermore, Cardenal admits that his poetic activity is not so mighty as to change the world’s fate: “Ar m’es semblans que mos chanz non val gaire.” Nonetheless, once more, the moralistic aim is present, which is unveiled in the tornada “Mos chantars enseinha.” The “Canso que fes Guiraut Riquier de la maire de Dieu,” which is entitled “Aissi com es sobronada,” and was composed in 1263 is distinguished by its highly sophisticated structure. The poet confesses his intention to praise: “deu esser honran lauzada,” “devetz esser ab lauzor.” In spite of the fact that the numerous Marian titles are widely distributed, the anaphoras and the parallelism characteristic for litanic verse82 appear chiefly in the third stanza:

80 Marianne Shapiro, “The decline of Joi in Provençal planh,” in From the Critic’s Workbench: Essays in Literature and Semiotics, ed. Michael Shapiro (New York: P. Lang, 2005), 310. 81 Ibid., 309. 82 A litany as the source of inspiration was suggested in: Elizabeth Aubrey, “La langue musicale de dévotion: les cantigas de loor et les chansons de Guiraut Riquier,” in L’Espace lyrique méditerranéen au Moyen Âge: nouvelles approches, eds. Dominique Billy, François Clément, Annie Combes (Toulouse: Presses universitaires du Mirail, 2006), 219; Méjean-Thiolier, L’Archet et le lutrin, 342. On the other hand, Majorossy suggested that litanic traces may be found also in the “Yeu cuiaua souen d’amor chanter” of Riquier. His interpretation is interesting, as he focused on a process of listing the antonomasias of Holy Spirit in the poem representing the courtly theme and addressed to a love lady: “Ce qui paraît bien clair, c’est que l’énumération dans la cinquième strophe ressemble à une litanie. […] Dans ce cas concret, les traits sont plus « forts » et préparent les dernières strophes. Car deux noms, parmi ceux qui figurent là, son des attributs du Saint Esprit (sen, saber)” (Majorossy, 108). Nevertheless, the enumeration and the repetition

57

Tota flors don frutz s’aizina pert apres son frug bentat; vos remazes fresqu’e fina verges creyssens de rictat. Pus olens, pus plazens, pus clara Flors etz qu’el mon para e guara; flors de tot frug saboros, flors de gaug, redemptïos etz del mon; quar lo salvaire fon fils de vos, vostre paire, don etz sa mair’e sa filla.83

Regarding the number of lines with a specified metrical scheme, it is the heptasyllable that is predominant in this example; however, the three three-syllable lines and one pentasyllable which immediately follows them are the most visible, and thus imposing—anaphoras on “pus” and “flors” constitue the fundamental traits in a portrayal of the Mother of Christ. Every flower, of which the fruit is ripening, loses its beauty, the poet claims. By contrast, as the troubadour chants in three parallel lines, Holy Mary remains bright and pure; she becomes even more fragrant and beautiful as she is adorned by the fruit she brought into the world. The litanic Marian invocations are placed in the different parts of the stanza with a little inclination toward the initial line: “La maire del Salvador,” “Regina verge clamada,” “Dona, estela del mon,” but inside the stanzas we find, among others, “Port de gandida,” “Restaurans mezina,” “Fons de vera pietat.” In view of the forceful laudatory components of Riquier’s litanic verse, we must point out that the supplications are not obtrusive: the troubadour is persistent in them, particulary in the last stanza and tornada, but is much less eloquent in them, and he implores for intercession—“per que·us prec aiatz membransa / que·l denhetz per mi pregar,” “donc preguatz Dieu que de vana / vida nos gar e de braca,”—as we can see, both on behalf of the people and individually. The deficiencies of a simple, isometric enumeration of Marian titles in the poetry of Jeux de floraux were overcome, for example, in the song of Arnaut Vi­ dal, winner of a tournament in 1324. His sirventes “Mayres de Dieu, verges pura” is built from heptasyllabic lines, excluding every fifth line in the stanza—this do not condition the shape of the lines and we cannot speak about litanic verse in this example. 83 Die Werke der Troubadours in provenzalischer Sprache, IV, 16.

58

exception to the rule appears as the most interesting in the stanza dominated by the anaphora, which touches almost all the lines, that is, except for the fifth one: Flors de paradis, ondrada Per los Arcangels ondratz, Flors sus els tros aut montada, Flors que vostr’ amic montatz, Flors de patz, Flors on gaugz s’es encastratz, Flors en purtat encastrada, Flors que no fo desflorada Pel frug, ans remas floratz Vostre cors, quan Dieus fo natz De vos, Verges ses par nada, Prec vos que merse m’aiatz, Tan que.m n’an ab los salvatz.84

This repetitive floristic motif has been previously analyzed in Riquier’s canso which was also in the Marian context. Arnaut Vidal, apart from profiting from the floristic metaphor, invokes Holy Mary mainly as the Virgin—two times in the first stanza, in the onsets of the second and the fourth, once in the fifth and in the tornada. The use of other titles is rare, for example, “Regina dels sels,” “fons aondans.” The change of meter reveals the truth that the longer lines contain a sort of overcapacity: why should two titles, as in the incipit, be placed in one line? Does the title “Flower of Paradise” unquestionably require the epithet? Seemingly, “Flower of Peace” is sufficiently noble. Nonetheless, the rhyme scheme a7’b7a7’b 7b3b7a7’a7’b7b7a7’b7b7, with its alternation of feminine and masculine rhymes of the derivatives in the final part of lines, composes an analogy between the anaphora and the epiphoras to a certain degree: seven repetitions on the level of lines to five couplets of nearly identical endings. The supplication of litanic spirit is established near the end of the stanza: “Prec vos que merse m’aiatz”—it is not to be overlooked that the poem is a prayer ending with Amen. The author not only does not recite the formulae heeding their propriety in the whole poem, he harmonizes the words, selecting those which may enrich the sonorous aspects of the poem: “Verges, ab dreyta mezura, / Prec preguetz Dieu no.m mezur,” “De totz bes, vostr’amparansa / Requier, que.m si’amparans / Vostre filhs […].” Hence, his song becomes more instinctive. The above-cited stanza is the last before the tornada. In contrast to, for instance, Cardenal, Arnaut Vidal treats the litanic verse as a perfect accomplishment rather than using it to introduce his readers to the poem. 84 Les Joies du Gai Savoir, 4–5.

59

2.3 Conclusion The primary theme of the litanic verse in the Provençal poems is Marian devotion. In second place, we find a topic which is not religious at all, but important for troubadour poetry—the expression of feelings of the lyrical “I” who appears as often in the anaphoric parts of litanic verse as the Marian antonomasias: “Be m’agrada,” “Amors mi,” “Guerra mi play,” “Ben aja ieu” etc. It is only after this that we can enumerate the other fundamental themes of social and political affairs of the medieval period and the Christological theme. Apart from the anaphora, among the most important devices of litanic verse we indicated are the stable epithet and alliteration. The division into isometric and heterometric stanzas is meant to be a litmus test for the strength of the effect of litanic pattern. It is worth noting that among the heterometric stanzas, only a small number of lines do not fit into the regular scheme, as in the poems of Arnaut Vidal or Guiraut Riquier—the effect of surprise created by the unpredictable abbreviation of a title distracts the reader, allowing him to focus on the meaning of this name itself, and not on the monotony resulting from its constant recurrence. The isometric stanzas of the Provençal poetry, built with long lines and comprehensive anaphoric structure, leave the reader helpless in a situation when any sort of response is not possible, and there is no interruption in the anaphoric flow. Patrick S. Diehl, arguing that “vernacular litanies […] are rarely of any poetic value,” points out that “The aesthetic weakness of these poems is precisely the lack of anything to resist and qualify the headlong but predictable unfolding of their catalogues. One needs the contrast between list and nonlist to create the possibility of surprise.”85 Even if there is a two-sided repetition, the modest quantity of responsive element—like the anaphora on “Domna” or the epiphora on “alba”—does not allow us to find the real regularity of the invocations and the responses. The shorter meter in the heterometric stanzas allows one to recognize the pattern, as the recurrence has a higher frequency.

85 Patrick S. Diehl, The Medieval European Religious Lyric. An Ars Poetica (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 109.

60

3.  Old French Litanic Verse Unlike the situation described in relation to the Provençal material, the representatives of litanic verse in Old French literature include some of the most recognizable poets, such as Rutebeuf, Christine de Pisan, and Eustache Deschamps, along with many others. Among the representatives of the clergy, we should list a Cistercian monk named Hélinand of Froidmont, born in 1160, the author of Les Vers de la Mort and a few other texts in Latin such as Chronicon and Sermones. Another clergyman, Gautier de Coincy, was a Benedictine monk, born around 1177, probably in Coinci (between Soissons and Chateau-Thierry) in Picardy, thus in the same area as Hélinand of Froidmont, who was born in what is now the departmenent of Oise. Gautier de Coincy became prior in Vic-sur-Aisne in 1214, then the same position was granted him in Soissons in 1233; he died three years later. Due to the allegorical construction of the works of le Reclus de Molliens— probably abbé Barthélemy of the Abbey of Saint-Fuscien-au-Bois—we may presume that this Picardian monk living at the end of the twelfth and beginning of the thirteenth century was well-educated. Arras was the birthplace of Robert le Clerc d’Arras, the author of two longer poems, Li Loenge Nostre Dame and Les Vers de la mort. In the same century, the trouvère from Amiens, Thibaut d’Amiens, composed his only known song, the prayer to Holy Mary. Litanic verse in the literary work of Rutebeuf (1240–1285) is represented not only in the dramatic plays (miracles), but also in the dit genre, as well as in the hagiographic poems. Later, among authors connected to the Church, we find Guillaume de Di­ gulleville (approximately 1295–1380), another Cistercian monk born in Normandy, but working in Picardy. We do not have much information about Coudrette’s life apart from his profession, which was chaplain. Jean Froissart (1337–1410) was a canon, born in Valenciennes, who served on the royal court of Philippa of Hainault and Edward III. His works include the most favored genres of his time—ballades, lais, chants royaux, dits, and virelais—but his most important achievements are the Chroniques, a famous medieval historiographical work presenting the conflicts of Western Europe, known to Froissart from his numerous voyages. Northern France also had its Marian poetic tournaments, Puys marials, organized by the local literary societies of religious confraternities, for instance, in Amiens, Rouen and Dieppe. For instance, if La Confrérie de la Conception de Notre-Dame organized a tournament, the theme of poems presented was also 61

the Immaculate Conception.86 The first known poem is dated to 1316.87 The form of these poems is the deacasyllable in five stanzas with envoi. In contrast to the Provençal tournaments, litanic verse is rare in the Puys marials, appearing mostly in the palinodic line, where the Marian antonomasias were placed, for example: “le beau mirouer sans aucune macule.”88 Othon III de Grandson (1345–1397), a trouvère from the Vaud region who fought during the Hundred Years’ War, devoted his litanic verse to chants to the beloved. Two of the most prolific authors of litanic verse from the later phase of the Middle Ages were Eustache Deschamps (1346–1406), the bailiff and advisor of Louis I of Orléans, and Christine de Pisan (1365–1430), who lived at the royal court during the reign of Charles VI. The litanic verse in the work of the Duke of Orléans, the prominent poet Charles (1394–1465), is represented by the ballade, which reflects his sentiments as a prisoner of the English after the battle of Agincourt. The Chronique des ducs de Bourgogne of Georges Chastellain (1415– 1475) does not exhaust his poetic works, which are represented by the genre of ballade as well. Martial d’Auvergne (1430–1508) was a Parisian poet. The school of “Grands Rhétoriqueurs” which flourished in several French regions has representatives in all of them, among which we should mention the Burgundian poet Jean Molinet and the Breton Jean Meschinot.

3.1  The Marian Miracle Narratives of Gautier de Coincy The anthology of Les miracles de Nostre Dame (composed between 1214 and 1236), which numbers more than 12,000 lines, is made up of four volumes, each of which begins with a prologue in which the author presents the devotional chansons (Chansons pieuses) and then the proper content follows—examples of the miracles performed by the Mother of God. It is worth mentioning that the literary work of Coincy represents a well-known theme in medieval society, but in a different genre, namely a narrative one—rather than the dramatic one which was the most common—it is called contes pieux or récits de miracles. Selecting and analyzing the litanic verse in Les miracles de Nostre Dame should be an exercise in caution, as the examples of intercession of Our Lady in the lives 86 Gérard Gros, “Histoire littéraire et Puy poétique: la poésie mariale de concours au Moyen Âge,” in L’Ecrivain et ses institutions, ed. Roger Marchal (Genève: Droz, 2006), 39. 87 Diehl, The Medieval European Religious Lyric, 248. 88 Gérard Gros, “D’un Puy marial à l’autre. Amiens et Rouen: Variations sur l’allégorie du miroir,” in Marie et la « Fête aux Normands », ed. Françoise Thelamon (Rouen: Publications de l’Université de Rouen, 2011), 148–149.

62

of saints as well as of ordinary people have a didactic message, and their role is to demonstrate the power of repentance and of the prayer for mercy to Holy Mary. Some of the stylistic devices applied by Gautier may be merely rhetorical. Undoubtedly, in the period of his clerical formation, the author acquired some patterns which may have contributed to the frequent use of the litanic verse: L’énumération est un moyen naturel en rhétorique, nous l’avons dit. Cependant il semble que Gautier n’en eût pas fait un usage si fréquent s’il n’avait pas trouvé tant d’exemples dans la poésie latine religieuse qui constituait ses lectures ordinaires. […] Il faut voir dans ces différents procédés [la répétition et l’énumération—M.K.], surtout dans le dernier, croyons-nous, des essais grossiers de la part de Gautier d’introduire dans sa poésie le système des litanies. La litanie n’est que le procédé de la répétition dont il a été question plus haut, mais fortement systématisé et qu’on souligne par le moyen du son.89

The litanic verse is found primarily in the confessions of heroes, such as a sacrist, to whom the Mother of God spoke, or an abbess saved from great trouble by Holy Mary. In The Miracle of Theophilus, which among the entire collection stands out for its frequent use of litanic verse, two main prayers of the protagonist consist of one hundred and sixty and of ninety lines, respectively. The use of one anaphora is limited to three successive lines, but the titles of Holy Mary, created by the noun and the epithet, emerge in series, usually two per line. The most frequent adjectives are “douce” (associated with the nouns “Dame,” “Mère,” and “pucele”) and “haute” (“Virge,” “pucele,” and “Royne”). Gautier de Coincy is remarkably resourceful in constructing parallelism and the repetition: the adjective “douce” is once used in a function of the attributive, but afterward it becomes an element of the lexical unit “Douce Virge.” Similarly, “haute” occurs in the expression “à haute voix” (meaning “loudly”), but furthermore it is a component of the antonomasia: “Haute Royne.” In fact, the poet was deeply taken by the charm of the collocability of words, which is testified by his various associations: Clarté du ciel, clarté du mont, Clarté d’aval, clarté d’amont, Dame du ciel, dame de terre, Porte de paradis et serre, Dame et Royne des archanges, Dame qui siez desus les anges.90

89 Schinz, “L’art dans les Contes Dévots,” 505–506. 90 Gautier de Coinci, Les Miracles de Nostre Dame, ed. Frédéric Koenig (Genève: Droz, 1955), 112.

63

The juxtaposition of “Clarté du ciel” and “Dame du ciel” demonstrates that sometimes not only is the first segment of antonomasia the repetitive part, as in the litanic invocations “Mère,” “Vierge” and “Reine,” but contrarily—so is the second one. Translating this litanic verse into the lines of Marian litanies, we would obtain a non-anaphoric composition, but one which is still parallel: “Mère de la divine grâce / Vierge de la divine grâce / Reine de la divine grâce” etc. In the part De la doutance de la mort et de la brièveté de la vie, twenty-three successive lines are composed of the repeated antonomasia: “Notre Dame,” accompanied by the countless properties of Holy Mary and the functions which she fills for humanity: Nostre Dame est nostre deffense En toutes nos beneurtez; Nostre Dame est nos seurtez; Nostre Dame est nostre fiance; Nostre Dame est nos soutenance.91

Taking into account this structure, one would say that the traditional litanic partition for the component, each time varying and each time repeated, is maintained. Nonetheless, this composition deviates significantly in one point from the structure of the litanies of the Church, that is, the presence of the predicate that influences the mode of the phrase, which becomes the constative, not the vocative. We have discussed some independent Marian titles which include the repetitive element, but the last quotation manifests the presence of different litanic verse structures, that is to say, the symbolic titles which are introduced in the anaphoric way. This tendency is less frequent than the aforementioned, but also contributes to the laudation. In the Prologue of the volume of miracles, we encounter two examples, both unsophisticated: “qui” from the subordinate clause which precedes either the enumeration of epithets, the title or a short description, such as “Qui l’esmeraude est et la jemme, / Qui tan test pure et clere et fine,” and “C’est”: C’est la douceurs, c’est la roussée Donc toute riens est arousée; C’est la dame, c’est la pucèle […] C’est la fontaine, c’est le doiz […] C’est li tuyans, c’est li conduiz

91 Ibid., 134.

64

Par où tout bien est aconduiz: C’est la royne des archanges; C’est la pucèle […].92

Other titles which go beyond the simple description and intensify the panegyric intention belong to the same category: “Loons tuit la Douce sainte. / Loons tuit la dame puissant. / Loons tuit la virge aidant.” etc., and on “Sus toutes riens” which accumulate epithets: “Sus toutes riens es gracieuse, / Sus toutes riens es déliteuse, / Sus toutes riens es bèle et sage.”93 In addition to examples in which the invocations part dominates clearly over the supplications, litanic verse in which the division into these two components is more or less balanced is also represented in the work of Gautier de Coincy. The invocation and the supplication may be put in one sequence, as in the cry of Leocadia in Le Miracle de S. Hyldefonse: En souspirant le dist: „O! qu’a de Douceur, douce pucèle, en toi! Douce Virge, prie por moi. A ton ami, a ton espous, Douce Virge, prie pour nous.94

or of Gondrée in Les Miracles de Nostre-Dame de Soissons: A haute voiz s’est escriée: “Haute Royne Couronnée, Douce Dame Sainte Marie! Aie! Aie! Aie! Aie! Douce Dame Sainte Marie! Aie! Aie! Aie! Aie!” Par troiz foiz s’escria ainsi, Puis a dit: “Merci! Merci! […].”95

As can be seen, the prayer of Leocadia is formed from the repetitive intercessory invocations and the supplicative formulae that vary slightly, like “pray for me,” “pray for us”; however, the most fascinating passage here is the prayer from the second quotation composed of the repeated invocation to Holy Mary, the sweet lady, and the supplication expressed by the exclamation “aie.”

92 93 94 95

Ibid., 5. Ibid., 167. Ibid., 158. Ibid., 111.

65

Nonetheless, the position of the supplication is weaker in the work of Gautier de Coincy than that of the invocation, and oftentimes the place of the supplicative formula is filled by other components, such as the repetitive apostrophe, that is to say, by the grouping of noun plus adjective. The octosyllable with plain rhyme is the proper form for this symmetry.

3.2  Litany and Lyrical Lai Among the seven Chansons Pieuses of Gautier de Coincy representing typical chansons with a refrain, one poem representing the lai genre may be identified. As Gros claims, “c’est une anti-chanson […] en effet chacune de ses strophes a sa formule métrique et mélodique propre, tandis que dans la chanson contemporaine, tous les couplets ont en principe un même schéma métrique et mélodique.”96 An attempt to define the lai is complicated by the existence of two variants of the genre in the medieval French culture: the lyrical and the narrative. Robert Lafont, commenting on the origins of the lyrical genre, reminds us that the stanzas of the lai have a distinct rhyme pattern: Vers la fin du XII siècle apparaît au contraire la dissolution de cette unité répétitive qui date des séquences ecclésiastiques. Ainsi naît en occitan le genre qu’on appelle descort ou lai. Les strophes sont toujours rimées mais le système de rimes change avec chacune d’elles […] et le poète ne s’interdit pas de répéter les mots qui les soutiennent. Intérieurement la mesure des vers se fait libre, elle comporte sans règle fixe de 2 à 13 syllabes.97

Lafont assesses the process which led to the creation of the lai as a kind of liberation, a new concept of a lyrical work, approaching this accentual structure which is found in the recitative or in the litanies: “L’effet de cet art lyrique libéré le rapproche du récitatif d’opéra ou de la litanie.”98 John Stevens also raised the subject of how meaningful the autonomy of lais is: It is only the first kind, the independent lais, which resemble the sequence. They are independent in the sense that they are not given a literary context; the vernacular lais survive as individual items in major trouvère channsoniers […]. They are also “independent” in the sense suggested by the word descort—that is formally independent. […]

96 Gérard Gros and Marie-Madeleine Fragonard, Les Formes poétiques du Moyen Âge à la Renaissance (Paris: Nathan, 1995), 40. 97 Rober Lafont, Les Prémices de l’Europe (Cabris: Éd. Sulliver, 2007), 185. 98 Ibid., 186.

66

The discordia may be the effect produced by the perpetual change of the form of the strophe; it is a defining feature of the lai as it is of the sequence […].99

Furthermore, Stevens remarks that a repetition, usually of a short part of a text, occurs in a lai irregularly. This may be examined in analyzing a lai of Gautier de Coincy. It is composed of three stanzas of thirty-six lines. The lines vary in metrical pattern, but all of them are short, at most octosyllables. In the twenty-first and twenty-second lines, one sees a parallel structure of chairetisms with two initial lines: Roӱne celestre, Buer fusses tu née, […] Royne ennouree, Buer fusses engenree.100

The topic of a blessing which flowed into the world with the nascence of Holy Mary returns at the end of the first stanza unexpectedly: Mes qui te sert, Dieu en sert. Que buer fusses tu nee!

Therefore, the initial stanza appears as the achieved construction—as the frame which encloses the content structuralized according to the recurrence of certain motifs whose rules are not strictly defined. For now, we can recognize only the theme that is crucial for the beginning, the middle and the ending of the stanza. Then we should note that throughout this stanza a few other invocations are dispersed, usually well-known ones from the material of Les miracles de Nostre Dame, such as “Pucele sacree,” “Haute damoisele,” “Virge beneüree,” and “Haute pucele, pure et monde” — all contained in the first part of the stanza, that is to say, between the two above-cited couplets, each with “Roӱne” in the first line and “buer” in the second. In the second part of the first stanza, as well as in the second stanza, the poet seemingly abandons the intention to call upon Holy Mary, apart from the time he does it to commence the stanza with a pair of invocations: “Fontaine de grace / Mere Dieu, Marie”—he will do the same at the beginning John Stevens, Words and Music in the Middle Ages: Song, Narrative, Dance and Drama, 1050–1350, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 141–142. Cf. Ann Buckley, “Lyrical lais and the use of formulae,” Musica Antiqua Europae Orientalis, 8, vol. 1, (1988): 193. 100 Daniel E. O’Sullivan, Marian Devotion in Thirteenth-century French Lyric (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), 127.

99

67

of the third stanza: “Rose fresche et clere.” The parallelism of the second stanza is shaped by the declined form of the pronoun addressed to Holy Mary, which appears chiefly as the third syllable: Enbasmée rousée, De nouvel espiniée, Touz li nom t’alose Et vers toi s’umilie; Quar en toi se repose Et en toi se recrie […]. Por ce t’enclin Por ce m’aclin A toi, virge Marie.

This passage is marked by the certainty that those who fulfilled the act of entrustment to Holy Mary have already achieved what they have been asking for. After the laudatory passage, representing the Mother of Christ by many names, and another, emphasizing her service to the whole world, the personal supplications come in the third stanza, specifically in lines 85 and 86: “Oies ma complainte / Et envers moi t’apite.” The last eight lines can be called the crowning achievement of the sophisticated construction of this lai,101 as they have the features of the entirety but reflect them in miniature; for instance, the Marian titles appear in the beginning, in the middle and at the end of the passage (lines: 1, 4 and 8), just like the repetitive construction in the first stanza. Moreover, the supplications emerge: Mère de concorde Fai ma pais et ma corde. Pechiez m’a tout tain et nerci. Doiz de douceur, merci, merci. A ton douz fil me racorde. Maint descorde As recordé, Fonz de miséricorde…

101 Pierre Kunstmann, “L’annominatio chez Gautier,” in Gautier de Coinci: Miracles, Music, and Manuscripts, eds. Kathy M. Krause and Alison Stones, (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), 112: “Pour ma part, cette figure [l’annominatio] constitue essentiellement un ornement, […] un exercice, un tour de virtuosité, […] une vocalise jubilatoire— l’inverse de la séquence (paroles sur les vocalises de l’Alléluia) […].” Cf. ibidem, Robert L.A. Clark, Gautier’s wordplay as devotional ecstasy, 113–125.

68

It is an individual request, although put forward in the perspective of all sinners to whom Holy Mary has demonstrated her mercy, and only with this knowledge does he dare to ask for mercy. Six lines out of eight are submitted to the rhyme scheme with the morpheme—corde, which is recognized as “evoking the harmony and conciliation.”102 The form here is totally harmonized with the content of the prayer, directed to the “Mother of conciliation” and calling for peace, even if, paradoxically, it derives from the example of the irregular lai. In the collection of lais and descorts from the thirteenth century, in the section Lais pieux, a captivating example of another lai devoted to Holy Mary was included, an anonymous one. It is composed of seventeen stanzas. The first five are built with five lines, stanzas six to ten contain seven lines, the eleventh and the twelfth again five, the thirteenth eight, the fourteenth six, the fifteenth five, the sixteenth six, and the seventeenth four. In the first stanza, a response to the invocation “Virge glorieuse” is the supplication “mon cuer purge et monde / des griés maus de cest monde” with a homonymic rhyme. The second stanza contains the apostrophe “Dame gracieuse,” and at the same time it dispenses with the supplication. The third and the fourth stanzas are begun by the “Tu es” structure— and in them the Holy Virgin is depicted with floristic motifs, like a multicolored rose, as well as a lily and a violet. From the fifth stanza to the end of the lai, “Tu es” always appears two times in each stanza, and from the seventh stanza such an anaphora encompasses two initial lines. Therefore, the formula “Tu es” remains a key determinant of the litanic verse in this lai and is aided by the grammatical rhymes, creating the phonetic similarity of the final parts of the lines: Tu es basmes naturés, […] Tu es pieumens savorés. (V) Tu es flours […] Tu es fruis (VI) Tu es li pors […] Tu es confors (VII) Tu es solaus, Tu es journaus (VIII) Tu es rosiers, Tu es vergiers (IX) Tu es clartés, Tu es purtés, Tu es li savereus osteus (X)

102 Tony Hunt, Miraculous Rhymes: The Writing of Gautier de Coinci (Cambridge: Brewer, 2007), 39.

69

Tu es sacraires enbasmés, Tu es celiers enpieumentés (XI) Tu es la verge Aaron, Tu es li temples Salomon, Tu es la maison d’ourison (XII).103

If one approaches these passages with regard to the litanic form, our first commentary will refer to the reverse order of components in a line: the common invocations are placed at the end of the lines, and the traditional repeated supplicative formula is in fact absent (apart from rare examples like “Nos cuers purge et esclaire” in the fifth stanza and “nos cuers tous enlumine, bele douce roine” in the eighth). The statement “Tu es” in some manner reestablishes the recurrent element. However, the Marian titles are again, as in the lai of Gautier de Coincy, the elements that decide its frame: this lai concludes with the exclamation “Dame sainte Marie!,” corresponding to “Bele douce roïne” from the final part of the eighth stanza. As a consequence, in the analyzed lai several arguments may be recognized in favor of the hypothesis that the litanic verse in French literature pulsates in the changing titles rather than appearing in strongly marked repetitions. The fifteenth stanza gives further evidence: Douce dame ki Dieu portas, Ki de ton saint lait l’alaitas, Virge fus & virge enfantas; Par ta misericorde A Jhesus nous racorde.

The first three lines are octosyllabic, whereas the last two are hexasyllabic. It is a constant feature of this lai that the last line in a stanza has six syllables—among the seventeen stanzas, we find only one exception to this pattern. The lines which contain eight syllables could be easily split into two separate lines of four syllables each, like “Douce dame / ki Dieu portas,” becoming similar to the relative clause with the pronoun “qui,” such as in the sixth stanza: “Tu es li fruis / ki nous conduis.” It would also be possible to break the third line of the above-cited passage, creating in this manner an anaphora on “Virge.” Thus, we may assume that the connections between the stanzas may be discovered as a result of a multifaceted overview rather than being repetitions recognizable at a first glance. The final stanza is distinguished by its brevity: there are only four lines and three of them rhyme with “Marie,” which appears in the final part of the fourth line.

103 Alfred Jeanroy, ed., Lais et descorts français du XIIIe siècle (Paris: H. Welter, 1901), 70.

70

The Mélusine tale was written in prose by Jean of Arras in the late fourteenth century, while Coudrette presented a rhymed version in the fifteenth century—it was completed in 1401. This text may be defined as a genealogical novel. Cou­ drette was a senior chaplain of the Guillaume Larchevêque family of the house of Parthenay. The litany which concludes his work is included in fifteen of the twenty manuscripts of Mélusine, and according to the intendment of the whole roman, the supreme aim of this prayer is to gain blessing for this lineage: “secours cette lignee si noble et belle, celle de Parthenay.” The structure of this passage— undoubtedly a prayer which may be performed in a personal mode—contains the essential elements of the litany like the enumeration of saints, adopting the anaphora on “saint” and syntactic parallelism with a great use of formulae. Furthermore, Coudrette’s litany is delimited by the paraphrase of the triple Agnus Dei built from extended expressions containing the phrase “Doux Dieux.” Additionally, the order of personages known from the liturgical Litany of the Saints was maintained, as the addressees of invocations are respectively “Glorieuse Trinite,” “glorieuse Vierge pucelle,” Michael the Archangel, John, Peter, Paul, Andrew, the apostles, Mary Magdalene, Agnes, and Catherine. The construction of the supplications emphasizes the presence of the person praying: “Je vous supplie,” “Je vous requier à haulte aleine.” As we may note, they are neither short nor impersonal, like, for example, ora pro nobis. They are prolonged mainly by phrases with subordinate clauses, which reinforces the parallelism: Touz amys de Dieu, sains et sainctes, Humblement vous pri à mains jointes Que vous facez Tant que noz pechez effacez Et que de Dieu soyons acointez, Tant que d’enfer n’ayons les pointez, […].104

It is worth mentioning that the content of this litany has already been analyzed in relation to the motifs of the legend of Mélusine, such as the juxtapositions of the Holy Trinity to three daughters, the Holy Virgin and the theme of matrimony of Mélusine, the Archangel Michael who fought against the dragon, and Mélusine as a snake-lady.105

104 Couldrette, Mélusine: Roman de Parthenay ou Roman de Lusignan, eds. Matthew W. Morris and Jean-Jacques Vincensini, (New York: E. Mellen Press, 2009), 530. 105 Patrizia Romagnoli: “«Vostre est toute la journee»: les temps du clerc, du seigneur et de la fée dans le Roman de Mélusine de Coudrette,” in 550 ans de Mélusine allemande—Coudrette et Thüring von Ringoltingen, eds. André Schnyder and Jean-Claude

71

The most intriguing moment is not the litany in the roman itself, but the manner in which it is announced. In the preceding lines, the author expresses his satisfaction that he was able to finish his work. In addition, he clarifies that if someone asks what title should be given to this roman, the reply will be, Roman de Parthenay or Roman de Lusignan. As the title to his work has been given, this will mark the end of the roman, and in his last words, Coudrette composes the litanic prayer in the lai genre, which can be a sufficient sign of the accomplishment: Tantoust Couldrette ce taira, Mais qu’il ait faicte s’oraison, Qu’il fist, pour la dicte maison, Mise en forme de letanie Pour toute la noble lignye De Parthenay davant nommee. Et quant elle sera finee Et en façon de lay comprise, Dont la taille souvent on prise, Toute l’ouvrage sera faicte. Adont se taira Couldrette.106

This fragment animates the discussion of the importance of metrical pattern applied to the litany in Coudrette’s text. The whole roman was written in octosyllabic lines creating rhyming couplets, which constitute, as was noted in the introduction, the common meter of paraphrases of litanies in the vernacular languages in the Middle Ages. However, it is uniquely the litany in Roman of Melusine which is not composed with this metrical structure, which seems to be a surprising choice: Si c’est un descort religieux qui clôt le tout, est-ce qu’il a voulu nous faire comprendre que les parties de son roman ne sauraient pas concorder, comme on serait tenté de le dire en recourant à une paronomase très en vogue depuis Rutebeuf? Ça serait probablement aller trop loin. Mais si le lay, lui aussi, érige des traits métriques tels que l’anisosyllabisme, l’hétérogénie et la dissymétrie en principe, il n’en serait peut-être pas moins légitime d’y voir un signal poétologique et idéologique à la fois.107

Mühlethaler, (Bern: Peter Lang, 2008), 234: “C’est le trame même de la légende de Mélusine qui conduit la progression de cette prière.” 106 Mélusine, 522. 107 Friedrich Wolfzettel, “«Songe» et/ou «histoire». Le roman de Mélusine de Coudrette ou le roman conte de fées au carrefour du système générique du Moyen Âge tardif,” in 550 ans de Mélusine allemande, 393.

72

From Coudrette’s point of view, though, he did nothing extraordinary, considering that as we have read in the above-cited stanza, “la taille” of the lai is “souvent” (often) acquired by the litany. The contemporary analyzer of litanic verse should agree with the medieval author, bearing in mind the Miracles de Notre Dame and the anonymous lai. Trying to enumerate what these three lais have in common, we should start from the fact they are built with lines of irregular meter. Furthermore, we can note the absence of liturgical formulae of supplication, which are replaced by more descriptive requests—hence they are not repetitive. To give an illustration, we cite some excerpts: Faictez que nous soyons compris Finablement Ou regne le Pere et le Filz, Ou ciel, et le Saint Esperilz, Et sera pardurablement. Saint Souvestre, Saint Augustin, Saint Mor et saint Severin, Saint Martin, Saint Nycholas Et tous confesseurs par compass Je vous supplie, n’oubliez pas […] Sainte Marie Magdeleine, Je vous requier à haulte aleine […] Vous, amis de Dieu, sains et saintes, Humblement vous pry à mains jointes […].108

The differences between Coudrette’s lai and the two previous examples result from the fact that these poems are based on different litanic patterns: the thirteenth-century lais are the result of Marian devotion, but here the poet recites the Litany of the Saints. The multifarious apostrophes to the Holy Virgin are replaced by simple enumeration in the canonical form: the ascription “saint” plus the proper name. We may agree with the common view that Coudrette’s use of the lai should be seen as a compositional procedure which trims his work,109 but 108 Mélusine, 528. 109 Catherine M. Müller, “Pour une poétique de la dénomination dans Mélusine de Jean d’Arras et de Coudrette,” Le Moyen Age, vol. 1, (2001): 42: “Cette litanie de noms divins a pour but de couronner la noble lignie de son commanditaire et assurer la perfection de son œuvre […]. La litanie en tant que lai, c’est-à-dire comme poème lyrique et musical, se fait signe d’une nomination autre, que le roman ne parvient

73

it should not be taken out of context as a separate composition whose goal is to fortify the poetical value of the entire roman.110

3.3  Hélinand Stanza The Marian theme is raised in a prayer which concludes one of the poetic works of Reclus de Molliens: Li Roman de Carité et Miserere, dated to the years 1183– 1187. Analysts argue that this prayerful component gives the poem the lyrical force of a series of symbolic expressions, rather unusual in the context of the moralistic poem: “[…] il épuise tout le vocabulaire des épithètes et des titres que l’Église accorde à la mère de Dieu, ainsi que tous les trésors de ses rimes; le poème moral se termine ainsi par un puissant élan de lyrisme religieux.”111 The litanic verse is present in a passage containing fifteen stanzas (stanzas 259–273) which can be characterized as a stream of Marian titles: O plaine de grace devine, O ame sainte, o cars virgine, O soule mere virginaus, O soule sans pareil voisine, O arkele de medechine, O espeche medichinaus, O essemplaires doctrinaus, O resplendans aube jornaus, O tres clere estoile marine, Entre les perius marinaus, En ches tenebres noctumaus Governe nous et enlumine!112

pas à enclore en son langage habituel. Au seuil de l’ineffable que représentent les noms divins, le roman se tait pour laisser résonner le chant qui mieux que la parole humaine traduit le mystérieux pouvoir du Verbe créateur.” Cf. Romagnoli, “«Vostre est toute la journee»”, 234: “Cet exercise difficile se veut manifester couronnement […] de l’entreprise de Melusine.” 110 Wolfzettel, “«Songe» et/ou «histoire»”, 384: “[…] il se pourrait peut-être que Coudrette rêve d’une espèce de littérarisation de son histoire en vue de conférer à cette dernière une valeur propre—comme si la vérité historique avait besoin d’être soutenue et revalorisée par une forme littéraire prestigieuse.” 111 A.-G. Van Hamel, “Introduction,” ed. Renclus de Moiliens, Li Romans de Carité et Miserere (Paris: F. Vieweg, 1885), CLXXVI. 112 Renclus de Moiliens, Li Romans de Carité et Miserere, 277.

74

The initial “O” gets the reader’s attention, while the rest of each line is appealing firstly due to the rhyme scheme, which is analyzed below. Secondly, even if one notices that the final parts of two successive lines are not rhyming pairs, such as “medechine-medichinaus” or “marine-marinaus,” the polyptoton created by a noun and an adjective of the same etymology draws attention to them, creating an illusion of their being identical. As a consequence, the depiction of Holy Mary, on the one hand, presents her as powerful, comparing her with natural phenomena such as the moon, “enluminée-enluminans,” and the dew of heaven, “aroséearosans,” while on the other hand, she is entangled in contradictions and they are even lurking within her: “femme forte-non feminine”—evoking “Réjouistoi Épouse inépousée!”—“honoree-honorans,” “desirrée-desirans,” and “O Dieu donée-o Dieu donans.” In the above-cited stanza the anaphora on “O” is found throughout nearly the entire passage, that is, in nine out of twelve successive lines. Curiously, this repetition is gradually reduced, due to the supplicative component which becomes more developed and occupies more place in the stanza. The initial three stanzas each contain only one litanic supplication in the shape of one line, for instance, “Governe nous et enlumine!” usually placed at the end of a series of nine (first stanza), six (second stanza) and eight (third stanza) parallel lines constructed in the following mode: “O” plus an antonomasia of Holy Mary plus, alternatively, the pronoun “qui”—the octosyllable comprising these elements does not permit inclusion of more invocations in one line. In the following stanzas, the supplications become longer; for instance, in the fourth stanza after the apostrophe of four lines there is a two-line petition, then three lines with the invocations and one line of supplicative response, and then, again, a one-line invocation with a one-line supplication. In the next stanzas, the alternation occurs irregularly, and the development of composition becomes more varied, including syntactic structures other than the enumeration: “Tu ies,” “cui tu,” “por cui tu,” “por tes.” As before, the anaphora on “O” remains the fundamental sign of the litanic verse, though its presence is restricted in the following lines to between two and six instances. The type of stanzaic unit which was introduced in the literary work of Reclus de Moiliens was named the Hélinand stanza—while discussion continues about which of the two poets was the first to use it. This poetic form is composed of twelve octosyllabic lines with the rhyme scheme aabaabbbabba. It is supposed to have been recited, not chanted.113 The poem of Hélinand entitled Vers de la mort

113 Gérard Gros and Marie-Madeleine Fragonard, Les Formes poétiques du Moyen Age à la Renaissance, 18.

75

(1193–1197) consists of fifty stanzas, thirty-five of which have the word “Mort” at the onset. The anaphoras occasionally are on other words like “qui,” “que,” “por,” “ne,” “tu,” or “et.” In the third stanza, the syntactic parallelism is supported by inversion, as the pronoun following “Mort”—“qui”—precedes the nouns in the plural and the article repeats as well: Qui les riches desnuer, Qui les levez en haut adentes, Qui les plus poissanz acraventes, Qui les honneurs sés remuer Qui les plus forz fais tressure.114

Considering the intensity of litanic verse in Vers de la Mort, it should be noted that the stanzas are notably composed of statements, in contrast to the apostrophic manner of litanies. This manifests itself in stanzas such as XXXI and XXXIII, where the anaphora on “Mort” is linked with the verb in the active voice: “mort est,” “mort fait,” “mort rent” etc. As an experiment, we may find that changing, for instance, the phrases: “Morz fait faillir la guerre as rois, / Morz fait garder decrez et lois, / Mortz fait laissier usure et crois”115 into the passive: “La guerre as rois faillie par Morz,” “Decrez et lois gardes par Morz,” “Usure et crois laissies par Mortz” makes them to a greater extent litanic, such as in the modern Litany of the Sacred Heart of Jesus: “Jesus mal logé, mal habillé, mal nourri,” “Jesus reputé fol et endiable.” Arthur Långfors claims that the rhyme scheme of the Priere a Notre Dame of Thibaut d’Amiens, which was written at the turn of the thirteenth century, may be associated with the Hélinand stanza, as both exploit the doubled sizains, rhyming aabaab or aabccb.116 However, the line of Thibaut d’Amiens is considerably shorter as it consists of merely five syllables. Långfors was seeking reference to the versus dactylicus tripertitus caudatus known in Latin poetry. This hypothesis was further tested by Catherine Léglu: This was a series of three-line versicles, independent units made up of a rhyming couplet followed by a tail-rhyme which linked one versicle to the next. The versicle aab could be followed either by aab, or by ccb. These individual versicles gradually joined up and

114 Hélinant de Froidmont, Les Vers de la Mort, texte original en ancien français et traduction par Nathalie Desgrugillers-Billard, (Clermont-Ferrand: Paléo, 2008), 2. 115 Ibid., 16. 116 Arthur Långfors, “La Prière de Thibaut d’Amiens,” Studies in Romance Philology and French Literature Presented to John Orr by Pupils, Colleagues and Friends (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1953), 145.

76

formed parallel groups, which eventually came to be regarded as stanzaic units. From aab, ccb, these became aabccb. The parallel groups created by fusion of pairing of threeline versicles may be seen in the archaic form of the liturgical sequence, also known as the Notkerian or irregular sequence.117

As in medieval manuscripts, the division into lines was marked only by dots,118 and other suppositions have been made. For instance, Bec argues that this chanson can represent the zadjal form, provided that the stanzas of twelve lines are divided into four tercets. The laudation in the poem of Thibaut d’Amiens is dominated by the accumulation of metaphors,119 predominantly arboreal and floral ones, whereas the supplications are provided in the last three lines and contain only a slight reference to the litanic formulae: Tres noble palmiers, Tres douz oliviers Pleinz de medecine, Tres gentils rosers, Et soefs eglentiers Ki n’ad nule espine. Delitous ciprès, Que loins gete et près Odour si tres fine, Purgez m’alme adés Et la tenez prés De vostre doctrine.120

When comparing these lines with stanza 261 from Li Romans de Carité et Mi­ serere, which includes the corresponding motifs:

117 Léglu, Between Sequence and Sirventes, 35. 118 Paul Meyer, “Prières et poésies religieuses tirées d’un manuscrit lorrain (Arsenal 570)”, Bulletin de la Société des anciens textes français (1901): 82–83. 119 Maria Laura Arcangeli Marenzi, Aspetti del tema della vergine nella letteratura francese del Medioevo (Venezia: Libreria universitaria editrice, 1968), 213: “Il linguaggio cortese della classica esaltazione mariana si trova qui, in parte, coperto dal linguaggio litanico di tono quasi liturgico. Le metafore della lode che scaturiscano dal sottofondo scritturale, scorrono e scivolano via come grani di un rosario, senza neppure lasciare al lettore il tempo di afferrarle.” 120 Pierre Bec, La Lyrique française au Moyen Âge (XIIe-XIIIe siècle) (Paris: A. et J. Picard, 1978), vol. 2, 83.

77

O rose tres delicieuse, O lis de blancour delitouse, O paumiers tous tans verdoians, O olive fructefians, […],121

one may notice that the octosyllabic line containing the litanic invocation requires the use of supplementary elements, such as exclamations or adjectives preferably of feminine gender (generally longer than masculine forms) and, for example, adverbs. On the contrary, the penstasyllabic lines are suitable for apostrophes, which can be seen on the basis of another example of Marian devotion in medieval France, the poem Loenge Nostre Dame (which dates from the midthirteenth century) of Robert le Clerc d’Arras, built from stanzas of twelve pentasyllables with the rhyme scheme aabaabbbabba. Every line contains one title of Holy Mary: “Mere de pitie,” “Rius d’umilité,” “Rose en jor de mai,” “Vaissiaus d’odeur plains,” “Cambre de haut fruit,” “Fontaine de foi.”122 From the third stanza on, the frequency of the pronouns “qui / que / cui” becomes significant—they appear, for instance, in four successive lines, but one cannot assume that a repetitive practice is dominating in this example. The rhythmical correspondence which remains most clearly expressed is “Biautés afinee, / Bontés alosee.”123 In Le pelerinage de vie humaine (written 1330–1331) of Guillaume de Di­ gulleville, a few elements of litanic prayer are recognized in a passage composed of nineteen stanzas with twelve lines beginning from the invocation in the form of douzain d’Hélinand: “Glorieuse Vierge Marie.” However, Marian invocations are not so frequent.124 Another, more intriguing, example of enumeration of Marian titles and antonomasias125 can be found in the fragment of Le pelerinage de l’âme, (1355–1358) named Complainte piteuse de la Vierge Marie pour la mort et passion de son filz. The stanzas, with a varying number of lines—the mark of division between them is the interjection “He” signalizing distress—present the following sequence of names of personages: “Dieu le pere,” “Saint Esperit,”

121 Li Romans de Carité et Miserere, 278. 122 Robert le Clerc d’Arras, Li Loenge Nostre Dame, ed. Annette Brasseur (Genève: Droz, 2013), 3–11. 123 Ibid., 8. 124 Guillaume de Deguileville, Le Pelerinage de l’âme. ed. J. J. Stürzinger, (London: Nichols and sons, 1893), 341–344. 125 Recognized as litanic by Denis Hüe, “L’apprentisage de la louange: pour une typologie de la prière dans les Pèlerinages de Guillaume de Digulleville,” in Guillaume de Di­ gulleville. Les pèlerinages allégoriques, eds. Frédéric Duval and Fabienne Pomel, (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2008), 164: “un écho de la formule litanique.”

78

Gabriel, “Helisabeth cousine,” “femme,” “Symeon,” “Joachin, mon chier pere, / Et Sainte Anne, chiere mere,” “douls fils,” “mort,” and natural phenomena: moon, stars, firmament, sun, earth, and “arbre sec.” The latter invocation, addressed to the Holy Cross, finishes the enumeration and notably is not preceded by “He.”126 The rhyme scheme of the Hélinand stanza sometimes becomes entangled in the other metrical pattern. In Le Miracle de Théophile (written around 1263 or 1264) by Rutebeuf, the plot of the Hélinand stanza reappears. The protagonist, Theophilus, says a prayer built from litanic verse. It does not consist of octosyllabic lines as in the model of the Hélinand stanza; those of Rutebeuf are longer than those of Robert le Clerc d’Arras or Thibaut d’Amiens, which are hexasyllabic. It is claimed to be the unique example of this meter appearing in the Hélinand stanza.127 The use of this form implies a variation within the metrical pattern of the play. The reflections of Theophilus on his sins—the hesitations between the spark of hope for salvation and the depths of hopelessness—are written in alexandrine quatrains, whereas the intercession is expressed in nine stanzas, each consisting of twelve lines with the rhyme scheme aabaabbbabba. The excerpt given below serves as an illustration of the stylistic doings of Rutebeuf: Je n’os Dieu ne ses saintes ne ses sainz reclamer, Ne la tres douce Dame que chascuns doit amer. Més por ce qu’en li n’a felonie n’amer, Se je li cri merci nus ne m’en doit blasmer. Sainte roïne bele, Glorieuse pucele, Dame de grace plaine Par qui toz biens revele, Qu’au besoing vous apele Delivres est de paine; Qu’a vous son cuer amaine Ou pardurable raine Avra joie novele. Arousable fontaine Et delitable et saine, A ton Filz me rapele!128

126 Guillaume de Digulleville, Le Pèlerinage de l’âme, 209–218. 127 Gérard Gros and Marie-Madeleine Fragonard, Les Formes poétiques du Moyen Age à la Renaissance, 20. 128 Rutebeuf, Œuvres complètes, ed. Michel Zink (Paris: Librairie générale française, 2001), 568.

79

In a passage of approximately one hundred lines, Holy Mary is several times invoked by Theophilus. She is consistently referred to as a lady: “Dame de grace plaine/ Par qui toz biens revele,” “Dame sainte Marie,” “Dame, je te salu!” “Dame, or te faz homage,” “Dame, je toi ne place,” “Dame, ton chier Filz proie,” and less frequently as a queen: “Sainte roïne bele,” “Roïne debonaire,” “Roïne nete et pure.” In addition, it is worth noting that in this prayer a metaphor appears which is characteristic for the notion of Mary in works of Rutebeuf: she is depicted as a glass window, on which falls and through which passes a ray of light without changing its nature: Si comme en la verriere Entre et reva arriere Li solaus que n’entame, Ainsinc fus virge entiere Quant Diex, qui es ciex iere, Fist de toi mere et dame.

This well-known image, which was presented in the discussion of Corbiac’s song in the chapter on Provençal litanic verse, becomes common for Rutebeuf, as it appears also in his song C’est de Nostre Dame ou une chanson de Nostre Dame (composed before 1265), which is composed of stanzas constructed from four decasyllabic and five pentasyllabic lines. The metaphor is included in the first part of the stanza, whereas the litanic anaphora belongs to the passage with shorter lines: Si comme hom voit le soleil toute jor Qu’en la verrière entre et ist et s’en va, Ne l’enpire, tant i fière à séjor, Ausi vos di que onques n’empira La vierge Marie. Vierge fu norrie, Vierge Dieu porta, Vierge l’aleta, Vierge fu sa vie.129

In both mentioned examples, that is to say in The Miracle of the Theophile and in C’est de Nostre Dame ou une chanson de Nostre Dame, the full exposure of the litanic verse is carried out simultaneously with the shortening of the meter. It is revealed in the enumerative or in the anaphoric mode. The list is much more variable in form, as it leaves space for the intercession, while “Vierge” in the onset of the following lines conditions the description. 129 Daniel E. O’Sullivan, Marian Devotion in Thirteenth-century French Lyric, 201.

80

3.4  Litanic Dit of Rutebeuf A common ground for two genres, the dit and the litany, may be a procedure which Alice Planche describes as “Enoncer, décompter, accumuler mots et actes et objets, c’est une des faces du Dit.”130 For a researcher, one of the significant poetic incorporations of this pattern is Rutebeuf ’s version of dit. It should be, however, mentioned that the authorship of Le dit des propriétés de Notre Dame, with the subtitle Les IX joies Nostre Dame (composed around the mid-thirteenth century), is uncertain. The term which gave the name to the genre manifests a noteworthy change in the reception of poetic works. They are no longer sung as chansons, and moreover, they represent the beliefs and the experiences of the author rather than the imaginary worlds and the events of roman and fabliau: “[…] on peut se demander si le dit n’est pas à concevoir comme […] l’issue d’un compromis entre le traité didactique, lourd, long, qui peut difficilement assumer un art lyrique consommée et la poésie courtoise.”131 It is worth mentioning that the number of nine joys of Mary is exceptional, as more works refer to five joys, others to seven or even fifteen.132 Rutebeuf ’s dit contains the following: the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Nativity, the Epiphany, the Finding in the Temple, the Resurrection, the Ascension, the Annunciation (the so-called “second Annunciation,” existing in the apocryphal tradition: the angel who visits Mary ten years before her death), and the Assumption of Our Lady. The text is composed of twenty-seven stanzas, and it is in the last five stanzas where the theme of joy is examined. Another notable topic is that the properties of Mary are introduced by the anaphora “Tu es.” In the first stanza, beginning with the litanic invocation: “Roïne de pitie,” only one statement starting with “Tu es” can be noted, while in the second stanza there are three assertions of this kind: Tu iez suers, espouze et amie Au Roi qui toz jors fu et ère; Tu iez vierge sèche et florie, Doulz remèdes de mort amère; Tu iez Hester qui s’umelie.133

130 Alice Planche, “Aux marges du dit. Un type de parenthèse, l’énumération,” in Narrations brèves. Mélanges de littérature ancienne offerts à Krystyna Kasprzyk, eds. Piotr Salwa and Ewa Dorota Żółkiewska (Warszawa: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, 1993), 63. 131 Bernard Ribemont, “Avant-propos,” in Ecrire pour dire. Etudes sur le dit medieval, ed. Bernard Ribemont (Paris: Klincksieck, 1990), 7. 132 Cf. Diehl, The Medieval European Religious Lyric, 114. 133 Rutebeuf, 1018.

81

The well-known conventions of the representation of Holy Mary analyzed in the previous part of this chapter are included in this example, such as her simultaneous condition as sister, spouse and friend—sometimes one finds daughter, mother and spouse, instead—and the image of the virgin who gave birth to a child, without being dishonored by human semen, which is known from Corbiac’s and Autpols’ songs. Contrary to the formerly cited examples, Rutebeuf ’s work does not, in fact, take advantage of simple enumeration, concentrating on the sophisticated titles which he created. They are not a demonstration of his powerful poetic abilities—he rather wants to ensure the complete identification of Holy Mary with these names, and as a consequence, he uses the assertions. Furthermore, the real name of the personage is absent—the invocation is addressed to the second person singular which then is confronted with the ascription. As Gros noted: Nous sommes par conséquent assez loin d’un inutile jeu verbal, et étuvons l’esthétique du poème de louange du XIII siècle, comme dans les IX Joies attribuées à Rutebeuf (par exemple), l’action de grâces prend son temps et crée, par l’accumulation, la multiplication, le foisonnement, une sorte de magie de langage. […] On aboutit à une sorte de liturgie onomastique: l’appel à Marie épelle son nom.134

In the third stanza, “Tu es” is repeated twice, with “qui” repeated three times. The parallelism communicates the universality of the personage of Holy Mary, as she represents heaven, which gives light to the world, the soil that offers life, and the wave which cleanses away the sins. Other comparisons are rooted in Biblical stories, such as those to Rachel, Sarah, Gideon’s fleece, and the burning bush.135 Stanzas X, XI, XIII and XIV maintain the anaphora on “Tu es” only at the stanzaic level. The stanza directly preceding the description of the nine joys of Mary presents her through the well-known motif of glass: Lors fus aussi com la verrière Par où li raiz dou soleil passe: Elle n’est pas por ce mainz entière, Qu’il ne la perce, ne ne quasse.136

134 Gérard Gros, Le Poète marial et l’art graphique: étude sur les jeux de lettres dans les poèmes pieux du Moyen Âge (Caen: Paradigme, 1993), 42. 135 Cf. Gérard Gros, “« Pour qui chanter vraiment. » Étude sur le thème religieux et marial dans les Règles de la seconde rhétorique (premier tiers du XVe siècle),” in Littérature et religion au Moyen Âge et à la Renaissance, ed. Jean-Claude Vallecalle (Lyon: Presses universitaires de Lyon, 1997), 157: “une accumulation qui rend expressive la figure de l’anaphore (« Tu es… »).” 136 Rutebeuf, 1032.

82

So far, we have presented a few important features of Rutebeuf ’s variant of the litanic verse. They all appear in short lines: pentasyllabic, hexasyllabic and octosyllabic. The anaphoric mode, recognized in the already analyzed dit and the previously mentioned chanson of Our Lady, gives the idea of being destined to praise; neither the long series from the dit on “Tu es” nor the brief enumeration on “Vierge” contain the slightest sign of the petitionary attitude. It is Theophilus who needs help, and he cries several times to achieve it, but he manages to do it without the clearly stated anaphora. In his prayer of intercession, he returns several times to one title, for instance, “Dame,” but this recurrence is not imposing, taking into account the length of stanza. This observation may be made about other of Rutebeuf ’s works in which the litanic verse occurs, like La vie de sainte Marie l’Égyptienne. In this poem, which numbers more than one thousand lines, seventy-two are devoted to the prayer of Mary of Egypt. The reader learns from Rutebeuf that she shed tears while calling to Holy Mary, and the composition of this fragment reflects her state, as the phrases are excessive in length, contain few invocations, and the analogous expressions, which are rather rare, are chaotically repeated. Another, ten-line passage from the same work recalls the acts of the Lord for the sake of Mary—the miracles, the salvation and the overcoming of death. The polyonymic137 anaphora on “Por toi” is repeated both at the beginning and in the middle of the lines, and is thus easily recognizable: Por toi, portière et por toi porte, Por toi brisa d’enfer la porte, Por toi et por t’umilité, Por toi, por ta bénignité, […].

Dufournet claims that this multiplication of one expression emphasizes Mary’s participation in the process of salvation: Toutefois, chez Rutebeuf, la Vierge garde sa place. Ce n’est pas elle qui sauve, elle n’est que l’agent, l’intermédiaire. Dans la priére que Marie l’Egyptienne adresse à Notre Dame, por toi revient huit fois en sept vers. Incontestablement, l’auteur a voulu insister sur ce rôle d’agent de la Vierge puisque chaque fois la préposition est placée au début du vers.138

137 “Per” is one of the components of the litanic gene which “is responsible for enumerative lists,” Witold Sadowski, “Some necessary preliminaries,” 11. 138 Jean Dufournet, “Rutebeuf et la Vierge,” in Du Roman de Renart à Rutebeuf (Caen: Paradigme, 1993), 282. Cf. Micheline de Combarieu, “Les prières à la Vierge dans l’épopée,” 111: “A la même époque, la réserve [non seulement une sorte de partage des pouvoirs entre Dieu et la Vierge mais une subordination de sa part à elle— M.K.] était-elle encore la même chez Gautier de Coincy et, à plus forte raison, chez Rutebeuf?”

83

In fact, the Holy Virgin is present in this passage in two dimensions, as firstly she is invoked with the pronoun “toi,” and then a selected feature is mentioned, for instance, her humility and graciousness, suggesting that, in a way, she may be a paragon of these virtues. The identical rule—of the anaphoric manner being utilized in the laudatory part, while on the other hand, the less anaphoric and more enumerative mode is used to express the supplications—governs Rutebeuf ’s L’Ave Maria, which commences with the invocation: “Ave, roïne coronée” and contains the anaphora on “Tu es,” but does not include the petition. One more fragment of La vie de sainte Marie l’Égyptienne, a testimony of devotion to Jesus, demonstrates that the anaphoric mode in a panegyric enumeration of acts may be reinforced by a less frequent, but still captivating, epiphora: C’est cil qui nasqui sanz péchié; C’est cil qui soufri atachié Son cors en la crois et cloé; C’est cil qui nasqui au noé; C’est cil de qui est nostre lois, C’est cil qui conduist les III rois […]; C’est cil qui por nous reçut mort; C’est li sires qui la mort mort, C’est cil par qui la mors est morte Et qui d’enfer brisa la porte;139

The story of salvation is given in a noticeably rhythmical manner, and the alliteration effects are of greater value than the order of events, as the Crucifixion precedes the nascence of Christ. Nevertheless, the accumulation of “mort” ends the anaphoric mode and it anticipates the conviction that the eternal sphere, too, is reigned over by Christ.

3.5  Refrain as a Factor in Litanic Verse The anonymous Marian roman, Li Romans dou Lis (written between 1275 and 1322),140 dedicated to the daughter of Louis IX, demonstrates that the litanic verse in Old French literature may contribute to the division of lines, a consequence of which is a refrain, a repetitive line appearing at predetermined line intervals. The work consists of four hundred lines, of which litanic verse comprises lines 139 Rutebeuf, Œuvres complètes, ed. Michel Zink (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 1989), 430. 140 Li Romans dou Lis, ed. F. C. Ostrander (New York: Columbia University Press, 1915), 20.

84

404–504, separating the description of Nazareth from the scene of Annunciation. Therefore, it is the laudation which dominates. According to Ferdinand Castets, this passage represents the canticle or the hymn genre: “[…] l’auteur prend le nom de Marie pour sujet d’un cantique, sorte de paraphrase de l’Ave Maris Stella.”141 In the structure of this fragment, we recognize the alternation of the antonomasias of Holy Mary—each time varied—and of the one-line responses to them, having nearly always the same shape: “C’est le nom Marie.” To be more precise, starting from the line 444, it is “Ou nom de Marie,” and in addition there are two lines similar to “Le nom de Marie,” and isolated cases of the lines “Par le nom Marie” and “Prent ou nom Marie” occur as well. In the preface by the editor, it can be read that this passage is composed of tercets of pentasyllabic lines: Estoile marine / Qui point ne s’encline, C’est le nom Marie. Estoile dou main / Dou regart serain, C’est le nom Marie. Plus enluminée / Que lune rondee, C’est le nom Marie. Souveraine dame, / Douce et de fame, C’est le nom Marie. L’amer de la mer, / Par son fin amer, C’est le nom Marie.142

If we apply this rule, it should be admitted that this structure, along with the rhyme scheme aabccbddb etc., entails the theme of versus tripertitus caudatus. As has been already mentioned, since it is the panegyric approach which dominates, the blank space of the repetitive supplicative formula is filled with the explanation, which is the subject of the symbolic images contained in the first line of each tercet. Without this addition, the passage would even more resemble a simple list. It is the first line of the tercet that contains the proper name: “Chastiaus de refuge,” “Tours de refrigere,” “Cités de secours,” etc, whereas the second line provides some additional information, starting with: “qui,” “quand,” “et,” “si,” “dou” etc. However, the third line, appearing primarily as rather an ornamental line, from line 448 starts to play a more significant role. From that point on, the strands known from the Litany of the Saints step into the passage patterned on the Marian litanies:

141 Ferdinand Castets, “Li Roman dou lis, panégyrique de la Vierge en vers du XIIIe siècle,” Revue des langues romanes, vol. 60 (1918–1920): 16. 142 Li Romans dou Lis, 35–37.

85

Li Peres envoie, / Li Filz fait la voie Ou nom de Marie. Sains Esperis oevre / Si exellent oevre Ou nom de Marie. […] Patriarche joie / Mainent de lor proie Ou nom de Marie. Li prophete voient / Ce qu’il premetoient Ou nom de Marie. […] Li evvangelistre / Conferment lor titre Par le nom Marie. Soffrent li martyr / Lor arme partir Ou nom de Marie.143

All personages mentioned in the order from the Litany of the Saints perform some action in the name of Holy Mary. In the same work, we found a passage built in a parallel way in which, however, the name of Jesus is glorified. But the repetitions are not present in the directly succeeding lines: l. 812: Jhesus, c’est nom de grant valor […]. l. 816: Jhesus est li nom de salut […]. l. 825: Jhesus, ce est nom de confort […]. l. 830: Jhesus est nom de medecine […]. l. 834: Jhesus, c’est le nom de pitié, l. 835: Jhesus, c’est le nom d’amitié […].144

The values enumerated in the final parts of the lines, such as salvation, consolation, healing, mercy, and friendship, have been frequently cited in this chapter as Marian attributes, which permits us to say that, as in the case of antonomasias like “vera vida,” they were used interchangeably with the Holy Trinity’s personages and the Holy Mother of God. The anaphora and the parallelism in Christine de Pisan’s work oftentimes has an emotional appearance, as in the ballade “Seulette suis,” composed of twenty-five lines, in which at the beinning of twenty-four lines was put the expression “Seullete suis.” Instead of the frequent repetitions, we would rather say that the chief characteristic of her litanic verse is the dichotomy between the stanza and the refrain, which appears in several works, most notably in L’Oroyson de Nostre Dame, Les XV Joies Nostre-Dame and Une Oroyson de Nostre Seigneur (all

143 Ibid., 36–37. 144 Ibid., 47–48.

86

composed in the period 1402–1403). The first two have an Ave Maria refrain, whereas the Pater Noster follows each stanza of Une Oroyson de Nostre Seigneur. In the Marian poems of Pisan, the most numerous antonomasias contain the noun “Vierge” in phrases like “Vierge pure,” “Vierge precieuse,” “Vierge sacrée, pure et feme,” “O tu Vierge predestinée,” and “Vierge mere de Dieu ancelle,” and also “Dame”: “Dame des angelz très courtoise,” “Dame de grace la droite ente.” However, we likewise find symbolic images of Holy Mary: “Fontaine, pleine de pitié,” “O Lumiere celestielle,” “Coulombe simple, sade et blanche.”145 The stanzas of L’Oroyson de Nostre Dame are composed of twelve octosyllabic lines, and it is notable that in the seventh or in the eighth line, although not in every stanza and not always in the same formula, the supplication appears: in the third stanza: “Je te pri”; the fourth: “te pri”; the fifth: “te pry”; the seventh: “priere te fais”; the eighth: “te pry”; the ninth: “Je te vueil et mercy crier”; the eleventh: “te suppli”; the twelfth: “je te pri”; and in the fifteenth, the sixteenth and the seventeenth: “te pri.” The constant repetition pointing to the addressee of the prayer: “te” as well as to the first person singular—the personal pronoun plus the verb—signifies that L’Oroyson de Nostre Dame is not a common litanic prayer, in which neither an indication of who is supplicating may be found, nor the repetition of “you,” as the addressee is periphrastically hidden under a symbolic name or an approved title. The liturgical sources of this work are the mentioned litanies and sequences, moreover, the literary tradition of the Hélinand stanza is evident here as well.146 The response Ave Maria in Les XV Joies Nostre-Dame is highly visible, as each stanza numbers merely four lines. As in the previously discussed example, the favored invocations contain “Dame”: “Glorieuse Dame” (at the the beginning), “Doulce Dame” (stanzas III, VI, XI, XII, XIV, although not in a constant position in the stanza, sometimes at the beginning of the first line, sometimes in the second) and “Vierge”: “Digne Vierge,” “Vierge Pucelle.”147 The work is not assumed to be a prayer, but considering the title, rather as a biography of Holy Mary with an

145 Christine de Pisan, Œuvres poétiques (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1896). 146 Earl Jeffrey Richards, “Les enjeux du culte marial chez Christine de Pizan,” in Desireuse de plus avant enquerre… Actes du VIe Colloque international sur Christine de Pizan, Paris, 20–24 juillet 2006. Volume en hommage à James Laidlaw, eds. Liliane Dulac et al. (Paris: Champion, 2008), 152: “L’opuscule, avec Ave Maria comme refrain, fait penser immédiatement à une litanie. Somme toute, l’emploi du serventoys chez Christine suivait l’usage des cisterciens, et il soulève la question de l’influence de la dévotion mariale de ces derniers […].” 147 Christine de Pizan, Les XV Joyes nostre Dame rimees, ed. Jean-François Kosta-Théfaine (Clermont-Ferrand: Paleo, 2010), 21–26.

87

emphasis of her joys; indeed, a smaller number of supplications are visible here in comparison with the previous example, although this work contains the delimitation mark of Amen. Jean-Francois Kosta-Thefaine uses the term of “prayer,” indicating that: Cette prière pourrait, grâce à la présence du syntagme Ave Maria après chacune des strophes, avoir été composée dans le dessein d’être récitée à haute voix, voire même, comme l’envisageait Marie-Josèphe Pinet, “chantée alternativement avec des prières liturgiques.”148

One more element which repeats, although also not regularly, is the expression “Pour ycelle grant joye” (IV), “Pour la joye” (V, VIII, XI, XIII), “Pour la grant joye” (VI), “Pour ycelle joye” (VII). In the tenth stanza, we read “Pries ton filz” and in the thirteenth, “vueilles pitié avoir”; these fragments are the only indications of a prayerful character. The frequency of the use of litanic verse is lowest in Une Oroyson de Nostre Seigneur, which contains sixty quatrains. One finds a few invocations such as “O bon Jhesus,” “Doulx Jhesu Crist,” and “Mon Doulz Sauveur,” and one litanic supplication: “ayes mercy de moy par ta pitie,” amongst many other requests, often introduced by “par” or “pour”: “Par les larmes qu’a ta mort geta maintes,” “pour celle sainte cene.”149

3.6  Chairetisms: “Ave” and “Benedicta” A particular kind of litanic verse is established, as Gros claims,150 by the anaphora on the initial part of the apostrophe directed to Holy Mary by Elizabeth: Bene­ dicta tu in mulieribus. It is frequently represented in Li Romans dou Lis and in the literary works contemporary with it that have been mentioned by the present author. In this chapter, I will observe the anaphoras on “ave” as well as on the French equivalents of “benedicta.” They both belong to the litanic gene which “is responsible for the anaphoric benedictions and greetings, as well as other forms of laudation or acclamation […].”151

148 Marie-Josèphe Pinet, Chrisitne de Pizan 1364–1430: Étude biographique et littéraire (Paris: H. Champion, 1927). 149 Christine de Pizan, Une Oroison de la vie et passion de nostre Seigneur, ed. JeanFrançois Kosta-Théfaine (Clermont-Ferrand: Paleo, 2010), 21–50. 150 Gérard Gros, Martial d’Auvergne et les « Matines de la Vierge »: études sur les formes de la dévotion mariale au temps de Louis IX (Paris: les Belles lettres, 1994), 102. 151 Witold Sadowski, “Some necessary preliminaries,” 11.

88

The manuscript 12483 from the Dominican Convent in Poissy near Paris and held in the National Library in Paris, with terminus ad quem 1328,152 is a prayerlike text entitled Un ditté et priere a Nostre Dame consisting of fifty-five quatrains: Dans les manuscrits Lambeth [London] et Digby [Oxford], le poème a pour titre: Les aves Nostre Dame. Le manuscrit Bodley porte en tète du poème: De rechef le[s]cinq joies Nostre Dama (sic); […]. Ce titre: Les cinq joies Nostre Dame est répété un peu plus loin, en tète de la strophe xxxi (Ma dame, pour celle joie), où il est mieux à sa place. La présence de cette rubrique au milieu du poème pourrait justifier l’hypothèse qu’il s’agit non pas d’un seul poème, mais de deux, qui auraient été copiés l’un après l’autre. M. Stengel [Digby] a même voulu y voir trois poèmes différents: en tète de la strophe: Gloriousc reine, heiez de moi merci, il inscrit le titre: [Letania sanctorum]. Nous serions porté à y voir un seul poème, mais où l’on peut distinguer trois parties, dont la première est un simple salut à la Vierge, la deuxième a pour sujet les cinq joies, et la troisième est une invocation à divers saints.153

Initially, it is the chairetismic gene which is most perceptible: Ave, la tour David, ave, sainte Marie, De vous issi la pierre par quoy morut Goulie, La parenté d’Adan de mort remit a vie; Aiez merci de moy, qui estes Dieu amie. Ave sainte Marie, le temple Salemon, Diex vous tranmist son angre, Gabriel ot a non; En vous descendi, dame de grant dilection, Et pour sauver son pueple de l’anemi félon.154

The anaphora on “Ave, sainte Marie” is associated with an enumeration of Mary’s other titles, each time a new one, throughout the passage. The litanic supplication is given in its canonical form: the formula “have mercy on me” is repeated most frequently, consistently in the last line of a stanza, and often in the first hemistich, while the second one is devoted to an additional segment, such as the further invocations: “Aiez merci de moy, roÿne coronnee” in the twenty-third stanza and “Aiez merci de moy, glorieuse roÿne” in the twenty-fifth, or the polyonymic expressions: “Aiez merci de moy par ta grande pitié” in the seventh, “Aiez merci de moy, par vostre grande doucour” in the twelfth, the twenty-fourth, and

152 Arthur Långfors, “Notice du manuscrit français 12483 de la Bibliothèque Nationale,” Notices et extraits des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque nationale et autres bibliothèques, vol. 39, no. 2 (1916): 505. 153 Ibid., 643. 154 Ibid., 664.

89

the thirtieth. The eighth stanza contains “Ave” twice in a row in the structure: Ave, Mary’s title, ave, plus “très” plus an epithet: Ave, sainte Marie, ave très glorieuse, Ave, royne du ciel, ave très précieuse, Ave, mère Jhesu, ave mere joieuse, [A]mendez, douce dame, [m]a vie doulereuse.

According to the editor, the description of the five joys of Mary begins from stanza XXXI, and the textual sign of the demarcation is the launch of the anaphora: “Ma dame, pour celle joie,” while in the thirty-eighth stanza the Litany of the Saints is exposed, with the passage starting with the supplication to the Holy Father: “Je vous requier, saint Pere, que vous priez pour moy.” The mystery of Divine incarnation is contemplated in a litanic way in a passage of Li Romans dou Lis which exceeds twenty lines (622–640). The poet blesses Holy Mary as a human being, enumerating her body parts: Benoite en tout et en partie, Benoite d’arme et de corps, Benoite dedens et dehors, […] Benoit li flans qui le porterent Et mameles qui le latterent, Et les oreilles qui l’oÿrent.155

In the next stanza, metrically unchanged, comprising nine octosyllabic lines with rhymes abbaacddc, the blessing of Mary is awarded on the basis of her services to the Son of God, whom she hugged, played with, carried, and accompanied. This type of litany of benediction progressively gained in importance throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, as we can see another example in the Louenge à la tres glorieuse Vierge (from a manuscript dated 1493) of Georges Chastellain. Undeniably, it is the laudation which is emphasized here by proceedings like the anaphora and the enumeration, as Gros noted: “son Oraison se distingue en ce sens que jamais elle ne devient une «supplication de Notre Dame» […]. C’est la nature même de l’interlocutrice qui lui mérite cette louange, et non la fonction qu’elle s’est acquise auprès des hommes.”156 The entire poem numbers seven hundred lines, grouped in stanzas of fourteen lines. The anaphora on “Benoit” is contained mainly in two stanzas:

155 Li Romans dou Lis, 41. 156 Gérard Gros, “Querant l’un oeil envers les cieulx estendre… Étude sur la Louenge mariale de George Chastelain,” Le Moyen Âge, vol. 98 (1992): 440.

90

O très-saintie et benoite influence, Benoit préau, benoite corpulence, Benoit portail, benoit cloistre éviterne, […]. Benoit ton coeur, benoit ton saint corps digne; Benoit ton œil, benoit ton front bénigne; Benoit ton ventre en sa pure innocence; […] Benoit tes yeulx qui songneux le gardèrent; Benit tes bras trétis qui l’embracèrent […].157

The anaphoric usage in Chastellain’s work includes other components, such as “O,” “Tout / toute / tous” (at most seven repetitions in successive lines), “Venez”158 (almost all stanzas containing also an enumeration of the flowers that adore Holy Mary: “un beau mouvement qu’anime l’insistance persuasive de l’anaphore”159), and “Tu es” (repeated five or six times in the stanza, although not in successive lines). The anaphoras seem to be particularly significant in a poem which is considered by medievalists as a reflection of its heroine, who is held to be immaculate: La pièce frappe d’emblée par son ampleur: cinquante strophes de quatorze vers décasyllabiques chacune, suivant le schéma aabaaabbbabbba, amplifiant la strophe d’Hélinand, […] L’écrivain bourguignon, rompant avec les thématiques traditionnelles, choisissait en effet de rêver la Vierge, non pas comme objet d’amour sublimé, mais comme la source même de sa rhétorique. Il voit en elle un modèle idéal de son projet d’écriture.160

This reference to the Holy Virgin and the works devoted to her may be investigated on several levels of understanding, taking into account, also, the passage about the benediction—it is both the spiritual interior of the protagonist and her earthly body which are praised. Applying this metaphor to the work, we see how its form was crucial to creating the proper understanding. Although the meter of Martial d’Auvergne’s “Matines de la Vierge” (published 1492) varies frequently, the predominating length of the line is the octosyllable. The beginning of the work, which has the intention to “saluer” and “prier” “en disant Ave Maria,” contains ninety-two octosyllables with the anaphora on “Ave”—either alone or with a supplement noun repeated as well—in approximately twenty lines: 157 158 159 160

Œuvres de Georges Chastellain (Genève: Slatkine, 1971), 281. Ibid., 277. Gérard Gros, “Querant l’un oeil envers les cieulx estendre…”, 439. Marie Jennequin, “Magnifier de ma voix corporelle. Le Magnificat des indiciaires de Bourgogne?,” in Quant l’ung amy pour l’autre veille. Mélanges de moyen français offerts à Claude Thiry, eds. Tania Van Hemelryck and Maria Colombo Timelli (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008), 323–324.

91

Ave, Vierge tresglorieuse, Ave, Vierge doulce, plaisante, Ave, Vierge tresprecieuse, Ave, Vierge tresexellante. […] Ave, des vierges la plus belle, Rencofort des jeunes et vieulx, Ave, Marie, vierge pucelle, Ave, Marie, royne des cieulx. […] Ave Maria, la plus parfaicte, Où tout bien et honneur habonde, Ave, la plus pure et plus necte Qui fut oncques jamais au monde. […] Ave, dame de humilité, Ave, dame de reverance, Ave, dame de chasteté Ave, dame de recouvrance.161

One more litanic component of the anaphora from Martial’s repertoire is “louez” and “loués” in the section of “Les laudes” of about fifty lines composed in quatrains.162 To sum up the chapter by presenting the chairetismic gene formed in litanic verse, we should compare the scale of the use of two anaphoras indicated in the beginning. The longest meter evoked here is the alexandrine of Un ditté et priere a Nostre Dame. It leads to the internal repetition of the major component within the line, “ave,” as well as the setting of the supplicative formula in the line with another element, for instance, one more invocation. The decasyllable appears as the second meter too long for simple litanic verse composed of one repetitive element and a new one, which may be seen with regard to the use of “benoit” by Chastellain—it must also be repeated twice in one line, and if not, it requires the introduction of a person other than the addressee of the litany, for example, Jesus, who is protected by Holy Mary: “Benoit tes yeulx qui songneux le gardèrent.” By contrast, the octosyllable may comprise the chairetismic anaphora and one chosen title; if the expression following the anaphora is developed it can even be omitted and replaced by a conjunction: “Benoit li flans qui le porterent / Et mameles qui le latterent.” 161 Martial d’Auvergne, Matines de la Vierge (Genève: Droz, 1970), 1–2. 162 Ibid., 167–169.

92

3.7  Litanic Love Verse The profane themes of the ballades of Othon de Grandson submit to the form of litanic verse principally thanks to the topic of love they evoke, which we may analyze on the basis of two examples, both written in decasyllabic lines with the caesura after the fourth syllable. The one with the incipit “Je vous mercie, des bellez la plus belle” is composed of three stanzas of ten lines each, while the anaphora contains exclusively five initial lines: Je vous mercie, dez bones la meilleur, Je vous mercie, jeune, freche, nouvelle, Je vous mercie, trop plus blanche que flour, Je vous mercie, quant par vo grant doulceur.163

The poem begins with a thanksgiving, the effect of which is intensified by the exact repetition on the onset of lines, while the second hemistich expresses the acclamation. The laudation is built primarily on the basis of epithets; these are comparative and superlative adjectives, revealing the gentleness and the purity of a lady. This piece is a very courtly litany, and, compared with the order of elements in Church litanies, the sequence is reversed. In the latter, we meet a new invocation each time, through which we gain the favor of God and the saints, and the apostrophe is followed by a supplicative formula, while in the former, the speaker desires nothing—above all else, he expresses gratitude. The dimension of his appreciation is represented by the magnificence of the lady. The identical final line of each stanza concludes that not only is she a charming woman, but also a friend of the speaker: “Ma belle dame et ma Loial amie.” Nonetheless, the phrases including “par,” like the one cited above, and “par ma foy,” together with “Pour ce, Pitié,” which opens the third stanza, convert the courtly tone to a religious one, which is accentuated in the supplicative formulae: “Veuillez tantost venir a mon secours,” “s’il vous plaist que soie conforté,” and “vous saulverez ma vie.” They remind us of prayers to Holy Mary, when a plea for salvation is made. In “Ballade amoureuse,”164 the anaphoric mode of the litanic verse took over twenty lines out of twenty-four. The repetitive segment is slightly different than before: “Je vous choisi,” whereas in the second hemistich we may encounter either the noun plus the epithet or the expressions starting with “pour” or “sans,” which reveal the reason for choosing the addressee of the poem, which is stated

163 Oton de Granson, Poésies, ed. Joan Grenier-Winther (Paris: Champion, 2010), 174. 164 Entitled “Balade de saint Valentin,” ed. Arthur Piaget, Oton de Grandson, sa vie et ses poésies (Lausanne: Payot, 1941), 226–227.

93

constantly in the first hemistich. The addressee of the ballade is not illustrated extensively; we would rather say that she is disguised under some symbolic titles, usually the name of an emotion or a character trait together with an epithet: Je vous choisi, noble loial amour, Je vous choysy, souverainne plaisance, Je vous choisy, gracieuse doulcour, Je vous choisy, tresdoulce souffisance.165

The reader does not presume any religious connotation, and in fact, the only sacred figure in this ballade is the god of love: “dieu d’Amours,” invoked to be a witness to the man’s oath. In this act, he promises that the choice he made is irrevocable: Je vous choisy, confort de ma langour, Je vous choisy pour avoir alegence, Je vous choisy pour guarir ma doulour, Je vous choisy pour saner ma grevance.

Taking into account that the litanic verse of Grandson is not a part of the prayer, but a love poem, we should anyway notice the substantial difference of the status of the addressee between these poetic examples and the devotional pieces. The deity exists and is praised—this happens by itself. The profane poetry emphasizes the driving force of the person who makes a free choice and a utilitarian attitude, as he reveals the state of mind which leads him to express his feelings. In ballade XVII (inc. “Par elle ne povez avoir”) from the first group of ballades in the collection Trésor amoureux (from the late fourteenth century) of Jean Froissart, one may recognize a specific type of litanic verse in which five responses fall for every invocation. The poem consists of three stanzas of ten octosyllabic lines. We can interpret eighteen lines out of the total number of thirty as being litanic ones: Amours est la vraie lumiere Pour tous amans enluminer, Pour tous amans leurs maulx miner, Pour tous amans en bien deduire, Pour tous amans examiner Et pour tous amans introduire.166

165 Oton de Granson, Poésies, 213. 166 Œuvres de Froissart. Poésies, ed. Auguste Scheler, vol. 3, (Genève: Slatkine, 1977), 92–93.

94

Therefore, the anaphora on “Amours” is repeated three times on the level of stanzas, and “Pour tous amans” twelve times, while “Et pour tous amans introduire” can be considered a one-line refrain, as this phrase remains in this unvaried form throughout the entire ballade. However, the shape of “invocations” as well as “supplications” does not represent entirely the structure of ecclesiastical litanies. First of all, the invocation contains the verb in the indicative. Hypothetically speaking, if we drop the verb, it will have the shape: “Amours, noble baniere,” “Amours, sente droituriere,” “Amours, vraie lumiere.” When it comes to the question of what action should be taken by the invoked addressee and for whom, we may illustrate the conclusion in a scheme which juxtaposes Froissart’s line and a line from the Litany of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which was composed a couple of centuries later: A B C D [Heart of Jesus], [patient and rich in mercy], [have mercy] [on us]. A ? B D C [Amours] [est] [la vraie lumiere], [pour tous amans] [enluminer].

The imperative of the supplication from the modern litany (C) in Froissart’s ballade is given by the unsophisticated predicate: “est.” Froissart was known as the poet of courtly love and he associated this emotion with “plaisir” (pleasure) as well as “noble” and “humble” conduct: “en bien conduire.” This may suggest that, as in another poem of his with the adjective “amoureuse” in the title, he not only meant to praise the emotion of loving, but also managed to evoke some rules and to educate the reader on the true image of this sentiment.167 Nevertheless, approaching the vision of love in the integral Tresor amoureux, we feel provoked to remove the religious curtain of meaningful metaphors; for instance, in Froissart’s rondeau we read: “Amours est le pain qui repaist,” “Amours est le vin qui tant plaist.”168 Thus the presence of the Creator, beneath the appearances of bread and wine in the litanic lines formed as assertions, argues for the vision of love as a gift and as an ally for everyone who shares it (D), and moreover as an intercessor (A). In this confidence, revealed, among others, in the poem being discussed, we 167 Peter F. Dembowski, “Ancien et moderne dans L’Orloge amoureus de Froissart,” in Froissart dans sa forge. Actes du colloque réuni à Paris, du 4 au 6 novembre 2004 par M. Michel Zink, ed. Odile Bombarde (Paris: Académie des inscriptions et belles lettres, 2006), 106: “L’Orloge amoureus s’insère dans la tradition de l’amour courtois en général et, plus spécifiquement, dans celle des arts d’amour. La courtoisie et l’enseignement poétique de la courtoisie constituent donc l’aspect traditionnel de l’Orloge.” 168 Œuvres de Froissart. Poésies, 162.

95

may recognize the inspiration of the last words from The Divine Comedy which are reflected in the description of love as “movement et cause premiere,”—the prime mover of the world. While in the litanies of the Church, it is parts C and D which form the repetitive element, in Froissart’s litanic verse it is only D, and it should not be neglected that the quadruple repetition of this part is per each invocation. Therefore, we may notice the reversed proportions in comparison with the majority of the analyzed examples; as usual after a long series of invocations occupying the greater part of the stanza, one supplication succeds.

3.8  Justice and Peace The litanic verse in fifteenth-century ballades built from a stanza with a high number of lines may emerge not only due to the large scale of repetition, as we have already seen in Grandson’s ballades, but due to the use of formulae as well. We analyze this tendency on the basis of poems representing themes other than love and reflecting the social affairs of the period. The religious horizon of the works of Charles d’Orléans coincides with that of litanic prayer: “The Virgin Mary also speaks, interceding with her Son for mercy, an intercession quoted to urge mercy for the defendant.”169 “Ballade pour la paix,” written while the poet was a prisoner of the English, has a refrain which, when constantly repeated, may ensure the successful hearing of the petition by the whole congregation: “Pour le poète captive, « qui passe temps en Esperance, » l’appel à une prière collective, fervente, est un moyen d’éveiller « la paix qui trop longuement dort »: « Priez pour paix le vrai tresor de joye! » lance-t-il dans le refrain de la ballade.”170 As Marenzi noted, this is a unique feature in the poetry of the time: “Inoltre notavamo nell’Oroyson che Christine si rivolgeva alla Vergine per gli altri. Charles invece si rivolge dirrettamente alla Vergine una sola volta, mentre rivolge agli altri l’invito alla preghiera.”171 The rhetorical structures in this example have also been analyzed:

169 Norma Lorre Goodrich, Charles of Orléans: A Study of Themes in His French and in His English Poetry (Genève: Droz, 1967), 187. Cf. ibid., 158: “Orléans had been careful, while he was in England, not to translate Ballade LXXVI—not to let the English know how ardently he argued for peace in French.” 170 Isabelle Bétemps, “Guerre et paix dans la poésie lyrique du XVe siècle: Alain Chartier, Pierre de Nesson, Charles d’Orléans,” in Images de la Guerre de Cent Ans, ed. Daniel Couty et al. (Paris: P.U.F., 2002), 118. 171 Marenzi, Aspetti del tema della vergine, 263.

96

On a dit que l’effet de la rhétorique sur le style est d’en révéler la dignité et de faciliter l’évocation d’un sentiment contrôle. Dans l’ensemble, cela est vrai, bien qu’il soit possible en fait d’élaborer des œuvres totalement différentes selon les principes de la rhétorique. Dans le cas de Charles d’Orléans cette affirmation concerne non pas tant les poèmes dans lesquels il s’est servi de l’apostrophe pour s’adresser à quelque aspect allégorisé de sa propre nature, mais ceux dans lesquels l’intérêt est dirigé vers l’extérieur, vers d’autres personnes ou vers une abstraction comme la France.172

Repetitiveness is not a fundamental feature of the ballade of Charles d’Orléans. It is composed of five stanzas, plus an envoi, of ten lines and contains the anaphora on the imperative of “prier” in the first hemistich on the level of stanzas. Occasionally, this formula appears also in other lines of the stanza than the first one. We have already mentioned that the final line of each stanza also contains litanic verse: “Priez pour paix, le vray tresor de joye!” The litanic order is reversed, as once again, we see the supplication in the first place, followed by an elaborate invocation: Priés pour paix, doulce Vierge Marie, Royne des cieulx, et du monde maistresse, Faictes prier, par vostre courtoisie, Saints et saintes, et prenés vostre adresse Vers vostre filz […] Priez, prelas et gens de sainte vie, […] Priez, maistres et tous suivans clergie, […]. Priez si forte que briefment Dieu vous oye; Priez, princes qui avez seigneurie, Roys, ducs, contes, barons plains de noblesse, Gentilz hommes avec chevalerie, […]. Priez, peuple qui souffrez tirannie, […]. Priez, galans joyeux en compaignie, […]. Priez, amans, qui voulez en liesse Servir amours, […]. Dieu tout puissant nous vueille conforter Toutes choses en terre, ciel et mer; Priez vers lui qui brief en tout pourvoye;173

172 John Fox, La Poésie lyrique de Charles d’Orléans (Paris: Nizet, 1971), 126. 173 Charles d’Orléans, Ballades et rondeaux (Paris: Librairie générale française, 1992), 420.

97

We recognize in this ballade the hierarchy of addressees, which confirms that we cannot arbitrarily modify the order of stanzas, though each of them conveys the changeless message of the need for peace in the world. Here, Holy Mary, Our Lady of Peace, is the person of reconciliation, and all the addressees of litanies—“saints” and “saintes”—unite in the call to her174 that should be heard by her son. When we change the perspective, and from heaven’s height contemplate the earth, “requerant sa haultesse qu’il lui plaise son peuple regarder,” we see the world immersed in the waging of wars. Amongst the representatives of medieval society, the author names first the clergy, then persons in authority (the nobility), the people, and finally, the young nobles who seek amorous conquest and enjoy a sumptuous life. The envoi comprises the direct supplication to God. For the first time, we may analyze not only the litanic verse itself, but the theme of its performance which is so prominent in this ballade. The reader notes the variety of adressees and the purpose of the supplication, while the nature of litany emerges in the autothematic reflection. An expression such as “De prieres ne vous vueillez lasser” indicates that the prayer should be said eagerly and continuously and is meant to be fervent and intense: “Priez si fort que briefement Dieu vous oye.” The latter phrase suggests that a desirable (undeniably for the person who says the prayer) litanic feature would be that it is urgently answered: “Priez vers lui que brief en tout pourvoye.” The manner of disposing the litanic formulae remains analogous in the monologue of Justice in the work of Jean Molinet, La ressource du petit peuple (1481), which is composed of six stanzas. They could be divided into three parts, each containing two stanzas—at the beginning of every part, as well at the end of it, the constant supplication returns: “Prenez pitié du sang humain.” The three addressees are invoked in the following lines: Prenez pitié du sang humain, Vray Dieu, souverain roy des roix; […]

174 Gros, who recognizes the intercessory and the collective aspect of this poetic prayer, emphasizes the fact that the Holy Virgin is invited to this act for the reason of “sa place hiérarchique et de son pouvoir dans l’administration du ciel et de la terre” (Gérard Gros, Le Poète, la vierge et le prince: étude sur la poésie mariale en milieu de cour aux XIVe et XVe siècles, Saint-Étienne: Publications de l’Université de Saint-Étienne, 1994, 101). Thus, the initial lines of the poem of Charles d’Orléans fit into the tendency of searching for the name of Holy Mary among those attributed to the terrestrial rulers, which has been seen in the widespread example of the “reine” title, in Li Romans dou Lis: “souveraine dame,” and in the works of Martial d’Auvergne (“des vierges empereuse”) and of Villon (“Emperière des infernaux palus”).

98

Prenez pitié du sang humain, Noble roy, Loÿs de Valois; Vous nous tourmentez soir et main, Par guerres et piteux exploits. […] Prenez pitié du sang humain, Noble Édouard, roy des Angloix, Mon espoir, mon frère germain, Qui gardez mes drois et mes loix.175

The similarities with the poem of Charles d’Orléans are as follows: first, the addressees are not only those of divine nature, but also medieval lords, nobles and warriors; also, both authors share the conviction that one title is not enough to demonstrate the glory of the central addressee—Holy Mary for Charles d’Orléans and God for Jean Molinet. As the fundamental position in the stanzas involves the supplication, the use of the litanic formula of “praying” and “having mercy” as a figure of delimitation—in Charles d’Orléans’ case, at the beginning and end of every stanza, and in Jean Molinet’s, in every two stanzas—repeats the shape of ecclesiastical litanies in which one calls “Père du Ciel, Seigneur Dieu, prends pitié de nous” at the beginning of the prayer and “Agneau de Dieu qui enlèves les péchés du monde, prends pitié de nous” at the end of it.

3.9 How to Be Constant in Prayer—The Endless Series of Invocations In a repetitive type of litanic verse, in Deschamps’s works we may distinguish two tendencies: the anaphora on “par” is frequent in the ballades and the lais directed against a social group, for instance, in “Contre ceux qui jurent Dieu,”176 “Contre les femmes”177 and “Malédictions contre ses ennemis qui sont à la cour,” as it identifies the imperfection of humankind: “Par convoiter se perdit Mede / Par orgueil finerent Gregois, / Par trop grans estas li Tragede / Par pechié de char Sodomois,”178 etc. On the other hand, the anaphora on “C’est (celle qui)” prevails in the laudatory attitude of Deschamps’ works, for example, in “Ci commence le lay de department” and in “Alleluia d’amour.” Nevertheless, the example that 175 Jean Molinet, Faictz et dictz, ed. Noël Dupire, vol. 1 (Paris: S.A.T.F., 1936), 224. 176 Eustache Deschamps, Œuvres complètes, ed. Marquis de Queux de Saint-Hilaire, vol. 1 (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1878), 271. 177 Ibid., vol. 2, 36. 178 Ibid., vol. 5, 155.

99

permits us to unveil one more tendency of litanic verse in the late Middle Ages is Balade IX from Balades de moralitez. The poem, which expresses the Marian devotion, is not anaphoric at all, and is repetitive only to the degree that ballades usually are, for each of the three stanzas concludes with the line-refrain: Virginite, Beaute, Bonte, Saincte, Amoureuse, precieuse, agreable, Humilite, Pitie, Eternite, Glorieuse, piteuse, charitable, Vertueuse, doucereuse, honourable, Tressainctement pour nous tous destinee, Divinite, Verite inmuable, Certainement le sieele ains ordenee.179

The first line consists exclusively of nouns, the second of adjectives, and the following couplet repeats the structure. When in the same peculiar manner the political themes are presented in other works of Deschamps, for example, in “Tour de force poétique contre la Flandre,”180 the enumeration process has been recognized as the effect of the influence of the historiography of this period: “L’énumération […] est un moyen stylistique important de l’historiographie des XIVème et XVème siècles, utilisée surtout dans un but propagandiste.”181 However, in this case, the lexis used by the poet evokes the spirit of the Marian litanies,182 and consequently, plenty of examples cited in this chapter, as it glorifies again the value of virginity, beauty, goodness, holiness, humility, compassion, eternity and love, and uses epithets such as noble, kind, glorious, merciful and gracious. Can we say with high confidence that the form of this ballade alludes to litanies, too? The poem is accompanied by advice on how it may be read, added by the editor of the complete works of Deschamps, Marquis de Queux de Saint-Hilaire. He demonstrates the potential ways of reading the poem, “tout par bonnes rimes et toujours revenans a une meisme sentence et conclusion.”183 According to these 179 Eustache Deschamps, Anthologie, ed. and trans. Clotilde Dauphant (Paris: Librairie générale française, 2014), 56. 180 Deschamps, Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, 95. 181 Alexandra Kathrin Stanislav-Kemenah, “Sur quelques ballades historiographiques d’Eustache Deschamps,” in Autour d’Eustache Deschamps, ed. Danielle Buschinger (Amiens: Presses du Centre d’études médiévales, 2000), 249. 182 Cf. the commentary of Madeleine Jeay under the transcription of this poem: “Litanies de la Vierge. Énumération d’allégories la représentant au premier vers de chaque strophe. Suivie d’énumération d’adjectifs.” POLIMA. Le Pouvoir des listes au Moyen Âge, http://polima.huma-num.fr/wiki/List:22 [accessed December 19, 2016]. 183 Deschamps, Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, 82.

100

guides, the order of elements is not strictly defined; we may read the poem starting from its last word and going up, or, for instance, beginning from the right end of the first line and going down. We should also add that in the second and third stanzas, other elements emerge, hence, the stanzas are not so homogenously built with only nouns and adjectives; we encounter a sentence preceded by the exclamation “O! tu es remerciable” and other structures with a predicate. We can cautiously assume that the form of this ballade reflects some features of litanic pattern, as one of the methods employed in the liturgical litanies is to join the various adjectives with the same title, for instance, “Vierge clémente, Vierge fidèle,” etc. Thanks to this, the order of lines may be changed, but only to some extent, since an isolated line with a title starting with “Vierge” would be considered incoherent when placed in the part of litanies where “Reine” dominates. This caution is visible in Deschamps’ litanic verse in the third stanza of the ballade where three proper names become allusions to Biblical events that need to be described in chronological order: Gabriel, God, Mary—“Gabriel parcreable,” “Humanité prinst Dieux en ton costé,” “Redempteuse Marie.” The enumeration of symbolic images of Holy Mary containing neither repetition nor verbs is visible in the beginning of Martial d’Auvergne’s work, La première leçon, this time without the anaphora known from the chairetismic part: Royne des cieulx, misericordieuse, Cité de Dieu, des Viergez l’empereuse, […] Ruby luisant, ymaige fructeuse, Liz spendissant, jaspis, roze vermeille184

as well as in Chastellain’s work: Clos virginal, cyboire précieuse, Vergier flory de beaulté spécieuse […]. Loy d’Abraham, vision mosayque, Harpe à David, palais salomonique, Construit d’azur, de fin or et d’ivière, […]. Forte Judith, humble Ester figurée, […]. O voix mirable, ô démonstrance sainte Faite à Achas […].185

184 Martial d’Auvergne, Matines de la Vierge, 38. 185 Œuvres de Georges Chastellain, 273–275.

101

As there is no clear signal for their cessation, these structures seem to be endless, as was also the case in the analyzed example of Deschamps with reference to the line-refrain delimitating the structure. The second edition of Jean Meschinot’s Lunettes des princes (first printed in 1493) is followed by twenty-five ballades and ends with “Oraison à la Vierge.” The author included instruction resembling that which was written by the editor of Deschamps’ works for the reader as well in its subtitle: “Oraison qui se peult dire par huit ou seize vers, tant en rétrogradant que aultrement, tellement qu’elle se peult lire en trente-deux manières differentes et plus, et à chascune y aura sens et rime, et commencera tousjours par motz differentz qui veult.” The poem “Oraison à la Vierge” is quoted in full below: D’honneur sentier, confort sûr et parfait, Rubis chéri, saphir très précieux, Cœur doux et cher, support bon en tout fait, Infini prix, plaisir mélodieux, Éjouis ris, souvenir gracieux, Dame de sens, mère de Dieu très nette, Appuis rassis, désir humble joyeux, M’âme défends, très chère pucelette.186

This prayer is composed of eight decasyllabic lines with a caesura placed after the fourth syllable, and as a consequence, each line contains two hemistiches with the internal rhymes, which means there are four possibilities of obtaining the rhyme. In the version presented above, the rhyme scheme of the entire poem is ababbcbc. Thus, eight lines separated after the caesura give the number of sixteen segments, eight tetrasyllabic and eight hexasyllabic. However, according to the author’s instruction from the subtitle, there is another way of saying the prayer—by replacing the second hemistich of the first line with that of the third. Similarly, one can replace the initial hemistich of the second line with that of the fourth. Other possibilities of permutations are found in actions as simple as saying the prayer backwards as well as in more complex treatments that involve transforming not only the order of words in the line, but in the hemistiches too. For instance, one can propose the line: “De Dieu très nette mère, de sens Dame.” While the author suggested thirty-two combinations in the subtitle, succeeding generations of poets were more generous; Borderie, who republished the text in

186 Édouard Le Marant de Kerdaniel, Un soldat-poète du XVe siècle. Jehan Meschinot (Paris: Jouve et cie, 1917), 112–113.

102

1895, gives the number 254, Paul Zumthor, in 1973 suggests 365, and Jacques Roubaud in 1975, 36,864.187 The above-cited calculations are based on the process of combining elements arbitrarily, so that it hardly follows any logical necessity, except for the metric rules. The line “Rubis chéri, saphir très précieux”188 separated into two hemistiches, which will be put in other parts of the poem, certainly ruins the description, which consisted primarily of metaphors adopted from mineralogy (lapidary). However, according to Isabelle Krzywkowski, it is not at this point that we notice the great distance from the Church litanies: “il arrive un moment où le texte de Lorette semble échapper à toute logique et à toute mesure.”189 We should emphasize the dominance of invocations in the analysis of Meschinot’s prayer. Despite this, Leonard W. Johnson considers it a litany and claims that “the form corresponds not to any fixed poetic genre, but rather to the liturgical form of the litany and it has the two elements present in this form, praise and entreaty,”190 indicating that “the verb in the last line is the only one in the poem.”191 The petition for mercy should not be understood as an element added to the litany—an element which may be occasionally omitted in a private and silent prayer, for it is certainly essential here. As Alphonsus Liguori reported in his meditations, Puisque dans les litanies de Notre-Dame, l’Eglise nous apprend à répéter tant de fois la demande de prier pour nous, ora pro nobis, il convient, avant de méditer les titres sous lesquels on invoque la Sainte Vierge, de considérer combien les prières de Marie sont puissantes auprès de Dieu.192

This Doctor of the Church stressed the importance of repeating the supplication many times. So did Micheline de Combarieu: “La formulation la plus brève est la simple mention du nom sous la forme exclamative: Sainte. Marie ou Dame Sainte Marie  / Sainte Marie Dame. Mais s’agit-il à proprement parler d’une prière? On peut en douter lorsqu’aucune demande, fût-elle vague, n’est exprimée.”193 187 Gros, Le Poète marial et l’art graphique, 95. 188 Cf. Jean Froissart, Le Joli buisson de Jonece, ed. Anthime Fourrier (Genève: Droz, 1975), 68: “Rubis, saphirs ne dyamans, / Escarboucles ne aymans.” 189 Isabelle Krzywkowski, “La litanie: une écriture sans fin de la fin,” 83. 190 Leonard W. Johnson, Poets as Players. Theme and Variation in Late Medieval French Poetry (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), 99. 191 Ibid., 98. 192 Livre de prieres et de méditations, tirées de S. Alphonse-Marie de Liguori (Paris: Gaume Frères, 1841), 484. 193 Cf. Micheline de Combarieu, “Les prières à la Vierge dans l’épopée,” 98.

103

Searching for the reason why Meschinot reaches for only one supplication, we have a variety of possibilities to investigate. The first and most evident reason is that it is more simple to plan the permutations with the use of nouns and adjectives, not verbs—which are rare in Deschamps’ ballade, too. Secondly, the medieval tradition analyzed in this chapter demonstrated the frequent use of one supplication at the end of a long stanza. Thirdly, we may seek inspiration from the graphic form of the Book of Hours in which we find the abbreviated forms of supplication, for instance, ora. Moreover, we should consider the hypothesis that the author attempts to avoid repetitiveness and to show the virtuosity of his literary work—which may illustrate the same stylistic treatment as in Coudrette’s choice of the genre of lai. It is conceivable that Meschinot also insists on using a different pattern for the work of devotion than in his secular poems. In fact, we can admit that repetitions are frequent in Lunettes des princes and even more visible in the four love ballades in which another perspective of Meschinot’s litanic verse is revealed—the constant anaphora of decasyllabic lines. The poems bear the following subtitles: “Amour sodale,” “Amour vertueuse,” “Amour folle,” and “Amour vicieuse.” Each of these parts contains forty-two lines The statements considering the love theme are all parallelly constructed—the anaphora “Amour” plus the predicate—while the second part of the sentence takes different forms, for example, direct objects, direct objects plus indirect objects, and subordinate clauses. The anaphora of the first four lines in all four ballades contains not only the word “Amour” but also the same verb—they all begin with sentences that start: “Amour commande,” “Amour defend,” “Amour acquiert,” and “Amour blasme.” Each line is divided into two hemistiches of four and six syllables: Amour portë haute chiere a pleins yeux. Amour punit qui d’orgueil n’est farci. Amour chassë les bonnes gens et vieux. Amour requiert avoir esbats aussi.194

The anaphoric mode used by Meschinot is correlated in his stylistics with the status of the line other than that which occurs in the lists. The example of Meschinot’s litanies may also serve as an argument in the discussion of the litany as a textual form which does not involve the sequence of events ordered in time or the succession of causes and effects. The primary version of Meschinot’s prayer established that first we encounter Holy Mary as the Mother of Jesus Christ, “mère de Dieu très nette,” and it is not until the last 194 Arthur de la Borderie, “Jean Meschinot, sa vie et ses œuvres, ses satires contre Louis XI,” Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes, vol. 56 (1895), 621.

104

line that we see her as a young girl: “très chère pucelette.” However, in the process of permutation, the order may be reversed several times. Does this mean that in Meschinot’s prayer the meditation on the life and virtues of Holy Mary is not the fundamental aim of litany? God’s plan of salvation is still more transparently presented in ecclesiastical litanies, like the second part of the Litany of the Saints, where we present to Christ all that He has done for us through the mystery of the Incarnation, through His coming, nativity, baptism: Per adventum tuum, Per nativitatem tuam, Per baptismum, etc. In order to “defend” in some way the prayerful nature of the text, it would be useful to evoke, once again, the tradition well-recognized by the poet. In the literary works of Gautier de Coincy and Rutebeuf, we analyzed the portrait of Holy Mary as simultaneously the mother, the daughter and the spouse, or the spouse, the sister and the friend. As we may see, Meschinot was both innovative and traditional in composing his prayer. A precursor of combinatory poetry or potential poetry, he still shows a preference for the decasyllabic line with the regular caesura after the fourth syllable, one of the most popular lines in the medieval period and characteristic for poetic litanies as well, found, for example, in the religious Provençal alba, the poems from the concourse in Toulouse and some of Rutebeuf ’s works. Finally, addressing the theme of the frame of a prayer with interchangeable elements, we should agree with Gros: “Intermittente que ce soit la prière, les éléments interchangeables de la pièce invitent l’esprit à l’oraison interrompue.”195

3.10  Litanic Pastiches In the medieval pastiches of litanies, one aspect certainly draws our attention— they all have recourse to Latin formulae which were rarely evoked in the examples we have looked at so far. It could be a sign that the main intention of the authors was to parody the liturgy, the language of the Church, and among it the litanies.196 The bilingualism of such compositions shelters in the dramatic genres as well as in short lyrical works. Beside the Goliard poetry, in which Latin dominates, we may cite examples in which, as Eero Ilmari Ilvonenn noted, “[…] c’est

195 Gros, Le Poète marial et l’art graphique, 96–96. 196 Jelle Koopmans, “La parodie en situation. Approches du texte festif de la fin du Moyen Âge,” Cahiers de recherches médiévales, vol. 15 (2008): 91, http://crm.revues.org/5603 [accessed December 19, 2017].

105

maintenant le latin qui forme la farciture.”197 The first example we present comes from fatrasies d’Arras from the thirteenth century: Demi mui d’avaine Ce sainoit de vaine Pour aqueillir los, Une quarantaine Grant joie demaine Par-derier son dos; Se ne fust li ris d’un coc Qu’entre Pentecouste et Braine Dont la char ronga les os, Pendus fust en la semaine Te rogamus, audi nos.198

Crucial for the definition of fatrasie is its form, which is that of the eleven-line stanza rhyming aabaab (pentasyllabic) and babab (heptasyllabic).199 The original litanic formula is put in the second part. A farce called Des XXIII manières de vilains contains numerous supplications for pains which should be delivered in every kind and for every part of the human body: “mal au bouche et mal aux dents, mal dehors et dedans” which is already highly repetitive. As noted by Madeleine Jeay, this part reverses the benediction into a list of misfortunes wished upon everybody.200 Next, the protagonist says the exact litanic prayer—“une letanie”—in which firstly, the Latin words are accompanied by the titles known from the vernacular paraphrases of litanies: Kyrieleyson, biax sire Diex, Envoiés-lor hontes et diex. Christeleyson, biax sire Cris, Metés-les hors de vos escris. Christe, audi nos, oés nos; Qu’il aient brisié les genous!201

197 Eero Ilmari Ilvonen, Parodies de thèmes pieux dans la poésie française du Moyen Âge. Pater-Credo-Ave Maria-Laetabundus (Helsingfors: Impr. de la Société de littérature finnoise, 1914), 27. 198 Lambert C. Porterp, La Fatrasie et le Fatras: essai sur la poésie irrationnelle en France au Moyen Âge (Genève: Droz, 1960), 129. 199 Ibid., 22. 200 Jeay, Le Commerce des mots, 194–196. 201 Des XXIII manières de vilains (XIIIe siècle), ed. Francisque Michel (Paris: Silvestre, 1833), 14.

106

After the mixed initial lines, the author decided to continue his prayer without the Latin intercalations but still with inspiration from litanic form: Sains Gabriel et sains Michiel, Par vous leur soient li chiel. Vous, sire sains Baptiste-Jehan Et tout li IIII évangéliste, Male honte lor envoiés Et en infer les convoiés.202

Addressing the saints in mixed Latin and the vernacular is a more consistently used stylistic device in Farce des trois nouveaux martyrs, the heros of which are “martir marié,” “martir en procès,” and “martir en mesnaige.”203 They come on the stage with the invocation Christe audi nos! And they use the Kyrie eleison mark at the end of the farce: Mais qu’on n’ennuye des assistens De ce procès long charié On faisoit fin sur kyrie Eleyson.204

We may say that the compositional frame is, again, a noticeably strong signal of reference to the litany. Furthermore, the content does not disappoint these expectations. The main part of the prayers and lamentations of the martyrs consists of calling to all saints with a ludicrous French form of the name followed by a conventional Latin supplication: Sainct Debet-testu, ora pro nobis. Sainct Congne-festu ora pro nobis. Sainct Jouan cocu, ora pro nobis.205

Phrases that are concurrently anaphoric and epiphoric are used in a similar passage of Le pèlerinage de mariage, which is known from the text of a spectacle performed in 1556 in Rouen: Sancta Quaqueta, ne parlés de nobis. Sancta Fachossa, ne faschés point nobis. Sancta Grondina, ne touchés nobis.

202 Ibid., 14–15. 203 Gustave Cohen, Recueil de farces françaises inédites du XVe siècle (Cambridge: the Mediaeval Academy of America, 1949), 309. 204 Ibid., 315. 205 Ibid., 310.

107

Sancta Fumeta, ne mesprissés nobis. Sancta Tempestata, ne tempestés pas nobis. […] Omnes sancti Frenastises, libéra nos, Domine.

The choice of the addressee is important also in the Litanie de bons compagnons (dating from the fifteenth century) in which Oremus encourages the prayer to “Dieu Bacchus.”206 Interestingly, regarding the balance between two parts of the litanic prayer, the examples of the parodic dimension of the litany manifest the same tendency which was recognized in the mainstream poetry of the time. The supplication traditionally performed by the faithful is much briefer and unornamented, whereas the invocatio part is built not of one modest phrase like Ab omni malo, but of detailed and lengthy sentences: Des ribaulx et paillars, maintenans jeunes femmes, Dont battant les maris appellent infâmes Quant à leur despens ont beu et choppiné, Libera nos domine!207

The same model of quatrain and the use of Latin in the last line was adopted in La letanie des bons compagnons: Donnez-nous grand foison de vin, Pour mieux boire soir et matin, Et puis argent à tout propos, Te rogamus, audi nos.208

It appears also in Le pèlerinage de mariage: De femme plaine de tempeste, Qui a une mauvaisse teste Et le cerveau contaminé, Libéra nos, Domine.

To sum up, the two-sided repetition, both anaphoric and epiphoric, is visible only in one example, and the frequency of this repetition is high, as it appears on the level of individual lines. We must add that both components come from Latin. By contrast, the majority of examples represents the repetition on the level of stanzas, predominantly also of Latin formulae, but the anaphora on (for instance) 206 Ibid., 69. 207 Ibid. 208 Ibid., 68.

108

“De” is employed as well. It seems that the litanic verse is more useful in those parodic examples that do not need any longer enunciation. Otherwise it loses its rhythm in elaborate descriptions.

3.11 Conclusion We have seen the history of litanic verse from the works of the medieval Marian eulogist to the poets who attach importance to wordplay. Albert Schinz, in an article about the miracles of Gautier de Coincy, recalling his most frequent treatments, such as rimes équivoques, traductio, polyptoton209 and others, wrote: Ce n’est plus qu’un jeu qui annonce les grands rhétoriqueurs. […] Nous ne nous connaissons pas la compétence nécessaire pour affirmer positivement que Gautier de Coin­ cy lanca ce procédé de rhétorique. II parait probable que les grands Rhétoriqueurs y seraient arrivés naturellement.210

The conclusion of my reflections on medieval litanic verse may be analogous—as the presentation of the litanic verse’s history goes back to the lai in the Chanson Pieuses of Gautier de Coincy and comes to an end with Meschinot’s and Molinet’s prayers. Like Schinz, instead of an examination of the potential influence of one poet on another, we proposed a study of the transmission of certain manners and formulae. The dominance of invocation-inspired lines over the supplication-inspired is undeniable from the very beginning of the history of litanic verse.211 The most frequent components of the repetition in this period are the anaphoras existing in the apostrophes: “Dame,” the epithet “glorieux, glorieuse,” and the construction “Tu es…, qui.” The apostrophe from Provençal courtly poetry “Domna” in the literary works of trouvers is always a definite noun: “Douce dame,” “Nostre Dame,” “Dame Sainte Marie.” If the element of repetition is the litanic title, its repetition appears chiefly on the level of stanzas, but “Tu es” mostly on the level of lines. The density of enumeration of Marian titles, although still recognizable in fourteenth-century Occitan religious poetry, leading to long octo- and decasyllabic lines, is dispersed in a genre such as the lai, where invocations of 209 Hunt, Miraculous Rhymes, 80. 210 Schinz, 513–516. 211 Bourmont, “Fonction et expression des prières d’intercession,” 134: “litanie évoque aussi un quasi monologue, au cours duquel l’interlocuteur à grande peine à pla­ cer un mot.” Cf. 136: “Nous nous approchons ainsi de la litanie — monologue ou l’interlocuteur n’a guère la ressource que d’écouter (ce qui est parfois son rôle) et de répondre Amen.”

109

various metrical lengths—built from three to five or six syllables—appear in a chaotic rhythm. The invocations to Holy Mary, extracted from the liturgical version in which they are followed by the supplications, become a list. Their order in the enumeration is dictated by metrical exigencies, as in the songs of Thibaut d’Amiens and Meschinot’s poem. The dialogue of expressions of equal metrical length is notably rare, but it occurs, for instance, in Li Romans dou Lis, and the response emerges in a specified rhythm in Christine de Pisan’s works. The analyses carried out above permit a conclusion which takes into account the hypothetical endlessness of litany suggested by Maraud. The status of litanic verse in literary genres, such as roman and dit, when it encloses a larger or smaller part of a text, gives the impression of being clear—in this circumstance, it replicates the metrical pattern of the baseline poem. Formally remaining the same, at the level of semantics, it introduces some added values, into the didactic literary work as well, like lyrism in Li Romans de Carité et Miserere, a meditation on the mystery of the attributes of Holy Mary in the history of the Nine Joys of Mary (Rutebeuf), and the expression of grief in the allegorical poems with deeper moral meaning (Digulleville). There are some exceptions, though, when litanic verse is applied as part of a larger work, but its versification is different from that used in the entire poem. For instance, the formal frame of lai was adopted in Gautier de Coincy’s poem and Coudrette’s roman, while the prayer of Theophile to the Virgin Mary compressed the alexandrine to the heptasyllabic line. When the meter ceases, the litany does the same. It is not possible to keep it going in another metrical scheme; the sign of the end of this form is perfect. That is what Coudrette wanted to do—to finish his work well with the presence of litany: “Et quant elle [la letanie] sera finee […] Toute l’ouvrage sera faicte.” We have analyzed literary works which were homogeneous thematically, as their primary aim was to praise Holy Mary, but the metrical pattern constantly changed. The greatest inspiration may be found in recognizing that the litanic element in these works never disappears completely, but emerges in different guises, according to the needs of the works themselves and the intentions of their authors.

110

Part II:  Renaissance Litanic Verse In one of the songs of the Huguenots, one finds an explication of how to recognize the Catholic priests and monks who are the main object of this satire: S’on crye: Saincte Marie! Et si plusieurs sainctz on prie Qui sont mortz y a long temps, C’est la prestraille, etc. […] S’on chante la Letanie Et mainte aultre chanterie […] C’est la prestraille, etc.1

The litanic verse endures in the Renaissance, not only in the works of Catholic writers, but also in poems testifying to the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre, like Les Tragiques of Agrippa d’Aubigné, or, for instance, in the psalms that contributed to the Huguenot psalter, paraphrased by Clément Marot and Louis Des Masures. At the same time, litanic verse is still present in the courtly poetry of Flaminio de Birague, Victor Brodeau and Mellin de Saint-Gelais, who composed in the service of Henry III and Francis I, who was the author of a few love poems himself. Jean Marot and his son are the significant personages of this period, who belonged to various poetic movements—for the father, the notion of poetry shaped in the school of Grands rhétoriqueurs was valued, while Clément adopted some elements of litanic verse to his translation of psalms, done in the service of Reformation. Amongst the authors of litanic verse in Renaissance France, we must list nearly all La Plèiade poets—apart from the two most appreciated ones, we may also name Olivier de Magny, Étienne Jodelle, Rémy Belleau and JeanAntoine de Baïf. The legacy of women’s writing—mainly sonnetary—must not

1 Eustorg de Beaulieu, “Chanson [contre les prêtres et moines],” in Le Chansonnier huguenot du XVIe siècle, ed. Henri-Léonard Bordier (Paris: Librairie Tross, 1870), 171.

111

be omitted, either, and we should mention Gabrielle de Coignard, Louise Labé and Anne de Marquets, who mark an influential moment in the development of litanic verse (as the addressee of the sonnets written with the use of this structure is a man), both in their devotional poetry as well as in their profane works. The women poets mentioned were born and raised in various social environments, but their attention to a gradation of repetitive structure is enormous, regardless of whether they came from the house of Dominicaines in Poissy, like de Marquets, or from prosperous towns such as Toulouse, the home of Coignard, or Lyon, where Labé was born. Moreover, Coignard’s œuvre should be acclaimed for employing an exceptionally high density of litanic verse factors within the limited scope provided by the form of the sonnet. The end of the Renaissance also brought works of scientific interest, for instance, the poetry of Guillaume de Saluste Du Bartas and Guy Le Fèvre de La Boderie. According to the guidance of Joachim du Bellay from Défense et illustration de la langue française (1549), the ballades and the chants should be excluded from the domain of contemporary French poetry and should seek refuge in the medieval Marian poetry tournaments—“toutes ces vieilles poésies françaises aux Jeux Floraux de Toulouse et au Puy de Rouen: comme rondeaux, ballades, virelais, chants royaux, chansons et autres telles épiceries,”2—so that the modern authors can calmly create in the genres of ancient provenance. While litanic verse sheltered in the Middle Ages in the ballade of Charles of Orléans or, showed itself in the Marian periphrases of chant royal, it would become clear that at this moment, in the middle of the sixteenth century, it is to be searched for in odes or eclogues. Indeed, these genres, as well as, for instance, tragedy, are represented in this chapter. Nevertheless, two observations need to be made. Firstly, we shall take into consideration the works of some representatives of poetry before the year 1550, like Jean Marot, whose main domain of poetic activities were still in genres like chant royal, rondeau, and ballades. Secondly, we should also address the question of whether or not there was any Toulousian school of litanic verse in the Renaissance. Emphasizing Coignard’s participation, I have just said that there was; although her sonnetary writing resonates with another remark by du Bellay: “Sonne-moi ces beaux sonnets, non moins docte que plaisante invention italienne, conforme de nom à l’ode, et différente d’elle seulement, pour ce que le sonnet a certains vers réglés et limités et l’ode peut courir par toutes manières de

2 Joachim Du Bellay, Œuvres, Editions La Bibliothèque digitale, 2012.

112

vers librement […].”3 It is worth noting that, besides the sonnets, it is in chants where the highest volume of litanic verse can be found—this can suggest that this form is still associated with the setting of poetry and music in the first half of the sixteenth century, as it was in the case of the sonnet (which has been pointed out by several critics4) and obviously in the case of the chants as well.

3 Ibid. 4 François Rigolot, “Qu’est-ce qu’un sonnet? Perspectives sur les origines d’une forme poétique,” Revue d’Histoire littéraire de la France, vol. 84. no. 1 (1984): 14: “une mémoire intertextuelle qui va des « Sones et chançonetes » de Renaud de Montauban au sonnet-psaume de Marguerite de Navarre, en passant par les « Sons et sonnetz » de Jean Molinet et les « Sonnetz, chansons » de Jean Bouchet.” Cf. Michel Jourde, “L’imaginaire et l’histoire: sur la situation du sonnet en France vers 1550,” in Histoire et littérature au siècle de Montaigne: mélanges offerts à Claude-Gilbert Dubois, ed. Françoise ArgodDutard (Genève: Droz, 2001), 318.

113

4.  Sonnets in the Service of Litanic Verse Pierre de Ronsard and Joachim du Bellay must be indicated as authors of sonnets with the highest frequency of litanic verse. The use of litanic verse in Ronsard’s sonnets differs in the volumes devoted to various women. One “livre des amours” is particularly litanic: the sonnets for Helen. This collection begins with the clear anaphora on “par” in six lines, and in the following poems, the use of anaphora on various words is excessive—in Premier livre: IV, “tout” appears in three initial lines; in XIX, “tant de fois” is repeated seven times in the entire sonnet; in XLV, “doux” / “douce,” together with the homonymic word “douter,” are repeated twice in the last tercet; in Second livre: III, “Voy” is repeated six times alternately with “qui.” As for du Bellay, litanic verse is represented in all the collections of his sonnets, but its prominence in Les Regrets (1558) is tremendous—“Je ne veux” as the anaphora in the first sonnet and the fourth; “Ceux qui” in the fifth; “Bien que” in the eleventh; “Ainsi” in the twelfth; “si,” “Les vers,” “Je hais,” “Ici,” “Ô,” “Heureux qui”—the majority of these words are placed at the onset of all fourteen lines of the sonnet. The studies about the use of anaphora in Renaissance sonnets do not provide a comprehensive answer to the question on its function. We agree that its role is “presque toujours rythmique” and that it can be considered as “moyen principal, qu’il emploie à maintes reprises au cours des Amours pour faire vibrer la force de sa passion.”5 Nevertheless, the observation of its function as a support for the parallel invocations directed both to a deity and to a human being allows us to see in the anaphora an important factor of the litanic verse. When considering a sonnet as a space hosting litanic verse, we should distinguish two thematic groups: the sonnets included in a collection whose title already reveals their Christian message, and those which form a volume of poems devoted to one beloved lady and whose intellectual horizon is more terrestrial than chrétien. On the other hand, their formal virtuosity does not allow us to make such a clear division, as the sonnets profit from a wide range of litanic 5 Alex L. Gordon, Ronsard et la rhétorique (Genève: Droz, 1970), 116, 118. The author notes the frequency of anaphoras, pointing out that in Ronsard’s sonnets: “En général le mot anaphorique ne se répète que deux ou trois fois, d’habitude dans les quatrains” and in du Bellay’s even thirteen times in one sonnet (117). An important study of du Bellay’s anaphoras is Françoise Argod-Dutard’s, L’Ecriture de Joachim du Bellay: le discours poétique dans « Les Regrets », l’orthographe et la syntaxe dans les lettres de l’auteur (Genève: Droz, 2002), where statistics are provided; for instance, in 362 we learn that a pronominal anaphora is the most frequent in Les Regrets.

115

devices and they are arranged diversely, for instance, anaphora dominates in the quatrains or in the tercets or even takes an entire sonnet into possession. Research on the specific types of sonnets produced, like, for instance, amours, which are, according to Cécile Alduy, repetitive in various senses, has been made: La réécriture inlassable des mêmes épisodes […] et l’identité formelle des poèmes […]. — Ce principe de répétition […] unifie la texture d’un recueil pourtant fragmenté en moments séparés, les poèmes: ensemble, ils permettent que le tout soit dans la partie […] en vertu d’un rapport paradigmatique où chaque sonnet est une parcelle mais aussi une image de tout par synecdoque, de même que chaque seconde, unique mais semblable à tout autre, est un reflet diffracté du Temps.6

The sonnets of Ronsard and Baïf, composed into Amours, testify that the anaphoric mode cannot be treated solely as a rhetorical device. The difference between a second and the “time” evoked above is appealing due to the fact that the contrast between these two partitions is rather great, in the same way as is the discrepancy between the one-syllable element shaping an anaphora and the entirety of a sonnet subordinated to the requirements of the litanic verse, such as a parallelism. The French Renaissance sonnets, both in general and also regarding only their litanic form, bear Italian traces which are noticeable, for instance, in the paraphrasing of some Petrarchan stylistic devices in enumerative sonnets like “Benedetto sia’l giorno e’l mese e l’anno” and others. In this part of the chapter, I will analyze the sonnets in which one type of anaphora is used nearly in all lines, such as: “ô,” “bienheureux,” “là,” “ceux qui,” or “ni.” François Jost describes this type as “sonnets descriptifs, accumulatifs ou énumératifs dans lesquels ces schémas [rimiques—M.K.] cessent d’être fonctionnels et ne servent donc point à structurer un contenu, […],”7 and emphasizes their “structure linéaire.”8 André Gendre, in turn, diagnoses “sonnets-litanies” among Ronsard’s poems, in which we find the following order: a demonstrative pronoun, a noun and its epithets, and a verb which is placed late, for example, in the last line of the sonnet.9 6 Cécile Alduy, Politique des « amours »: poétique et genèse d’un genre français nouveau (1544–1560) (Genève: Droz, 2007), 12. 7 François Jost, Le Sonnet de Pétrarque à Baudelaire: modes et modulations (Berne, Peter Lang, 1989), 131 8 Ibid., 125. 9 André Gendre, “Pierre de Ronsard”, in Les Poètes français de la Renaissance et Pétrarque, ed. Jean Balsamo (Genève: Droz, 2004), 232: “Chaque vers y est constitué d’un sujet introduit par un démonstratif suivi de quelques épithètes. Quant au verbe […], il se fait longuement attendre et participe ainsi d’une syntaxe transstrophique.”

116

Regarding the anaphora on “ô” and its origin and frequency, we observe that it implies the mode of invocations.10 Sometimes they are raised to finally express a request, but just as frequently, we encounter a series of apostrophes whose main aim is to evoke lost happiness, as in Jean Antoine de Baïf ’s sonnet “Ô beaux yeux azurins, ô regards de douceur!” (1555), which is composed of the anaphora on “ô” and the enumeration of body parts, as well as actions which may be achieved by their use, as in the cited first line: eyes–look. The “ô” element begins seven lines and in two cases, also the second hemistich. The repetition of the same characteristic in the succeeding lines supports the hypothesis about its connection with the litanic form, as there the identical object is called upon several times: Ô ris doux et serein, qui me fondait le cœur, Doux ris qui son beau teint modestement colore! Ô chant, qui me ravit quand je le remémore, Chant, qui du plus cruel pourrait être vainqueur!11

Here the limited form of the repetition may be explained by the short form of the sonnet and also by the fact that semantic synonymy is obtained throughout the whole sonnet by emphasizing mainly one feature, the sweetness of kisses. “Doux ris” and “chant” become addressees of the call of the enamored man, and these invocations are reinforced by “ô” or the additional epithet: “serein.” Nevertheless, the most significant difference from the litanic pattern is the missing supplication, which is replaced by the question in the last line marked by a longing for the past. The faint shadow of the sacral perspective appears in the mention of the jealousy that will be felt by “les dieux au céleste séjour.” This remark suggests that the gods are not a fundamental part of the poetic vision, but rather that their personages serve as reference points for the status of the person speaking, which may be described as plunging into remembrance of the paradise which is now no longer possible for him. The second, most frequently chosen, option by the Renaissance poets is to praise not a human being, but nature and possibly its deities. The anaphora on “ô” predominates in sonnet XVIII of Flaminio de Birague, starting with the line “Ô

10 Jean Vignes, “Appropriation et restitution de Pétrarque dans la poésie de Jean-Antoine de Baïf,” in Les Poètes français de la Renaissance et Pétrarque, ed. Jean Balsamo (Genève: Droz, 2004), 270–271. 11 Jean-Antoine de Baïf, “Sonnet [102],” Secondes livres de l’Amour de Francine, in Euvres en rimes. Deuxième partie. Les amours, vol. 1, ed. Jean Vignes (Paris: H. Champion, 2010), 380.

117

cristallins ruisseaux, ô bois delicieux” (1585).12 It governs two quatrains and the first tercet, though it is represented diversely. In the first quatrain, we encounter the repetition of “ô” inside the line, whereas in the second, the “ô” element appears only at the start of lines, and in the first tercet, it recurs even four times, turning the discourse into uncomplicated enumeration: “O Pasteurs, ô troupeaux, ô Faunes, ô Driades. / O Satyres, ô Pans, ô Sylvains, ô Nayades, […].”13 Therefore, the closer to the end of the sonnets, the more the rhythm is accelerating, as the reason for this desperate call is unveiled—the person speaking seeks to be heard. If his lady love is not touched by his insistency, he will rely on the forest creatures, or ultimately— which seems to be a vital point in his state—will appeal to hell. The second sonnet of Flaminio de Birague formed from this anaphora is the poem numbered XLIV with the first line: “Ô Desers sablonneux, ô plages blondoyantes,”14 based similarly on the enumeration of natural elements and their deities. This one, however, represents an extremely regular model with the caesura after the sixth syllable, the phrase divisions 3+3 // 3+3 and the predominance of “ô” in the onset of thirteen lines. Such a long series serves as the setting for the final confession unveiling the status of the speaking person—“Amant miserable.” Two invocations introduced by “ô” can be found in one line of Louise Labé’s sonnet, “Ô beaux yeux bruns, ô regards détournés” (1555), in which this anaphora appears in two quatrains and two lines of the first tercet. The most captivating lines are: “Ô noires nuits vainement attendues, / Ô jours luisants vainement retournée!”15—in which the anaphora on “ô” and the repetition of the adverb permit division of the line into two pieces, each one beginning with the same word, which appears in this position in the preceding line.16 This sonnet, which is apparently the confession of a woman in love whose feelings were betrayed, 12 Flaminio de Birague, Les Premieres Œuvres poétiques (1585) (Genève: Droz, 1998), 57. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid., 119. 15 Mireille Huchon, Louise Labé: une créature de papier (Genève: Droz, 2006), 229. 16 I omit less “captivating” lines where the element “ô” appears twice in one line: “Ô tristes plaints, ô désirs obstinés, / Ô temps perdu, ô peines dépendues.” The characteristic of the decasyllable used by Labé not only in this sonnet is presented in the article of Jean-Michel Gouvard: “Le vers de Louise Labé,” L’Information Grammaticale, vol. 103 (2004). The author discusses the main formal features recognizable also in the quoted sonnet, such as “l’apostrophe, sous la forme d’un syntagme nominal,” “la coupe entre les quatrième et cinquième syllabe […] nettement dessinée,” “les énumérations à modalité vocative” (44), and he observes that “Dans ces constructions, la poétesse tend à reproduire le même schéma syntaxique dans les deux constituants successif ” (45), which is clearly visible in the analyzed example.

118

blends the motifs of the enumeration of parts of the body—“yeux bruns,” “front, cheveux, bras, mains et doigts”—with the evocation of more general categories, such as day and night, evil, desire and others, remaining at the crossroads of the two tendencies represented by these examples, that is, natural and human phenomena. This sonnet also contains the explicitly expressed emotion which lies behind the use of the multiplied “ô” element and the parallel construction in the poems of the two authors cited above: when the woman poet exclaims: “Ô temps perdu” it becomes clear that this is the experience of loss, of the vain brooding over the happiness that is no longer shared with the one or with the place we love. The sonnet of Baïf is much more light in tone, and the dimension of the past is disclosed mainly in the use of past tenses, both passé composé and imparfait, contrasted with the question about the future memory, which may appear only “une fois.” The person speaking in Flaminio de Birague’s sonnet XLIV invokes many creatures just to make them confirm that there is hardly a more miserable lover on earth than he is. This singularity, in its broadest sense—of the act of recollection and of the unhappiness felt by the man—is replaced in the sonnet of Labé by the prolongation of time, which was described by Gisèle Mathieu-Castellani as “Temps discontinu, certes, puisqu’il est perçu comme divisé, éclaté, et pourtant continu car il est vécu comme trame. […] temps immobilisé dans sa mobilité répétitive, où le renouvellement dit à la fois changement et constance.”17 We have already discussed in the introduction the characteristics of constancy and variation as the fundamental notions for the form of litany, and their importance for the shape of litanic verse in Labé’s work is also crucial. The anaphora on “ô” disappears when the statement is made in the present tense and the emotion is unveiled: “De toi me plains,” thereafter, it is no longer possible with the use of the repetition to “retourner, revenir à un temps antérieur.”18 For a poem which strikes a balance between the series of invocations and any sort of response to them, we may cite Coignard’s sonnet XXV, “O de tous mes labeurs, le repos desirable” (published in 1594), which proposes different solutions for including litanic verse in the quatrains and tercets than those found in the sonnets discussed above. Furthermore, it stands out for its unequivocally prayerful character and for the fact that the use of the anaphora on “ô” here determines a laudatory tone, not a plaintive one. Firstly, Coignard adopts a regular composition of lines: 17 Gisèle Mathieu-Castellani, “Les marques du féminin dans la parole amoureuse de Louise Labé,” in: Louise Labé, les voix du lyrisme, ed. Guy Demerson (Saint-Etienne: Editions du CNRS, 1990), 197. 18 Ibid., 196.

119

O de tous mes labeurs, le repos desirable, O de tous mes desirs, le desiré bon-heur, O de tout mon espoir, et le comble et l’honneur, O de tous mes plaisirs, la joye perdurable. O de tout mon pouvoir, la force secourable, O de tous mes biensfaits, le liberal donneur, O de tous mes desseins, le sage gouverneur, O de tous mes dangers, le Sauveur favorable,19

The anaphora on “ô” refers to the title of Jesus in the second hemistich. However, the stable element was inserted between them in the form, “de tous mes  / de tout mon” + noun. The periphrases listed are not autonomous in the way that the invocations in litanies are: here, Jesus does not simply offer happiness for his Church, but this joy is mentioned as being the among many experienced by the lyrical “I,” and obviously the most durable and complete. The perspective of individual emotions is crucial, as it is signalized by the repetition of the personal pronoun. Two possibilities of understanding the litanic pattern in this sonnet are evoked in this manner. The first hemistich fulfils the function of a supplication by reason of its regularity, and it bears witness to the fears and the needs of the contemporary woman, from which usually emerges the cry ora pro nobis. Or should we, as an alternative, rather analyze the first hemistich as a prolonged epithet—like Sanctus, also changeless—preparing the reader for the real name of the Holy Savior? This option seems preferable because of the direction in which this sonnet develops in the tercets: O le tout de mon tout, ô ma fin et mon but, O celuy qui conduis mon ame à son salut, O pere liberal à qui je dois mon estre. O humain Redempteur qui as souffert pour nous, O tres-haut Fils de Dieu qui t’es fait nostre espous, O seul bien souverain, à toy seul je veux estre.20

The tercets are still constructed with the frequent use of the anaphora on “ô” and the parallelism but are less repetitive. The order of parts of the sentence is reversed, and the various names of Jesus appear after the anaphora, whereas the second hemistich often encloses subordinate clauses starting with “qui” or “à qui.” Once again, we observe how the poetic litany abstains from supplication. Although the congregation of the faithful is finally mentioned, “pour nous,” 19 Gabrielle de Coignard, Œuvres chrétiennes (Genève: Droz, 1995), 170. 20 Ibid., 171.

120

“nostre espous,” it is not in the petition for “us,” but in remembrance of acts done by the Lord and as an expression of final devotion. Coignard’s sonnet concludes with the confession of what the person praying desires, but she does not even formulate it as a request. At the other extreme of the use of the brief “ô” as component of the anaphora in Renaissance sonnets, we may find a long adjective used to express attention to a named object: “bienheurex” or “heureux” in the example of Baïf ’s sonnet “Heureux les pignes chers, qui ces cheveux pignerent.”21 To give an illustration, we may cite Olivier de Magny, who composed sonnet XIX from the collection Les Souspirs (1557) by using the expression “bienheurex” in the first line, and this is done only once in the first quatrain. In the second one, it is repeated three times in the same position, and in both tercets two times. Thus, the dominant rule is that “bienheurex” appears in the onset of stanzas with accompanying use in other lines. The first quatrain turns into an enumeration of periods of time: “Bienheureux soit le jour, et le mois, et l’année, / La saison, et le tens, et l’heure, et le moment,” imitating exactly the Petrarchan order from “Benedetto sia’l giorno e’l mese e l’anno,” in which it is difficult to establish the balance between the isolated epithet and many of the nouns listed. The same pattern was also applied in the lines paraphrasing the Italian poet, where “Bienheureux” was joined with objects like “l’arc, le traict et le tourment / Et la playe.” The most visible difference between the French sonnet and its Italian prototype is the replacement of “Amor” by “l’astre au ciel d’où vient [sa] destinée.” In this manner, the anaphoric epithet and accompanying objects gently suggest some of the intriguing litanic titles. The lines in which the division into hemistiches is more clearly distinguished by the introduction of subordinate clauses starting with “qui / que,” as in the final tercet, are also thought-provoking: “Bienheureux le papier que j’emplis de son loz, / Bienheureux mon esprit qui n’a point de repos, / Et mon penser aussi qui n’est d’autre que d’elle.”22 The word “elle” which ends the sonnet emphasizes once again who inspires the theme of the poem, and in research on litanic verse, it is important to note that the person speaking confesses affection for her name, called many times: “Le nom de ma maistresse appellant si souvent.” The anaphora on “là”—as it uses the adverb and refers to the place, not to persons who are the addressees of praying people’s petitions and objects of panegyrics, as in the case of “ô” and “bienheureux”—is not present in the litanies of 21 Jean-Antoine de Baïf, “Sonnet [92]”, Premier livre de l’amour de Francine in: Euvres en rimes. Deuxième partie, Les amours, 313. 22 Olivier de Magny, “Sonnet XIX,” Souspirs amoureux in Œuvres poétiques, vol. II, ed. François Rouget (Paris: H. Champion, 2006), 50.

121

the Church and is rarely encountered in the examples cited in our study. Marc de Papillon’s sonnet CXV, “Là une monde sorcier abondamment habite” (1597), which contains this anaphora in all its lines, allows us to recognize some weak features of litanic verse. In three of them, the inversion in the quatrains makes the shape of the line intriguing: “Là une monde sorcier abondamment habite […]. / Là une opinion la revolte a induicte. / Là la simplicité la fière audace incite.”23 The doubling of noun in the part of line succeeding the anaphora and the removal of the verb to the final part of the line fortifies the litanic impression. It happens exclusively in these places, and these lines are in a vulnerable spot, that is, the beginning of the sonnet and the transition between two quatrains—the above-cited lines are the first, fourth and fifth ones. There is no final catechresis in this sonnet and the listing manner could be developed infinitely. The theme touches on religious acts—“Là l’on n’adore point le Dieu porte-flambeau”—and it is presumed that the community described is the Reformed Church.24 In two of du Bellay’s sonnets which are placed far from each other in the collection (both are from Les Regrets), but are based on the analogous idea of the influence of the state of mind and soul on the acts of a person, two anaphoric flows appear. Firstly the anaphora on “Ceux qui” emerges: “Ceux qui sont amoureux, leurs amours chanteront, / Ceux qui aiment l’honneur, chanteront de la gloire, […].” The perspective of the person speaking is adopted vaguely in the last line of this sonnet, which as a whole could serve as an example of proverbe sonnetique. Confessing, “Moi, qui suis malheureux, je plaindrai mon Malheur,”25 the lyrical “I” admits that this set of general rules may be applied to his situation. The second significant sonnet uses the opposition “Je n’écris point”–“n’étant point.” The incipit, “Je n’écris point d’amour, n’étant point amoureux,” introduces the reader into the lyrical world of the single person, revealing his own mystery of creating poems: “Je n’écris point d’amour, n’étant point amoureux, / Je n’écris de beauté, n’ayant belle maîtresse.” In the first hemistich, the person speaking discloses the failure to start the act of writing, while in the second, the spiritual condition which is the main reason for the emptiness of the feeling of absence and the need, the sentimental longing. The anaphora in this sonnet does not change, even in the last line; however, we should there note the less self-evident correspondence between the first and second hemistich: “Je n’écris de savoir, entre les gens 23 Marc de Papillon (seigneur de Lasphrise), “Sonnet CXV,” Diverses poésies, ed. Nerina Clerici Balmas (Genève: Droz, 1988), 182–183. Cf. J. du Bellay, L’Olive, sonnet LXXXI, in which the anaphora “Là” occurs in the second quatrain and the second tercet. 24 Papillon (seigneur de Lasphrise), Diverses poésies, 183. 25 Les Regrets, V.

122

d’Église,”26 which obviously unveils the satirical message of du Bellay’s work. In all the lines, the value mentioned in the first part of the line finds its echo in the second. For instance, in the first stanza, the nouns “amour” and “beauté” return as adjectives: “amoureux,” “belle.” Due to the change of negation into affirmation, we meet the antonyms “bonheur-malheureux,” “France-étrange province,” etc. Another example may be seen in Guy de Tours’ sonnet “Puisque mon amitié te vient à desplaisir.” The anaphoric “Puisque” in all fourteen lines introduces the opposition between the emotions of the person speaking and the reaction of his adversary: “Puisque mon amitié te vient à desplaisir. […] Puisque à me tourmenter tu mets tout ton plaisir.”27 The delimitation mark is rather abrupt: “Puisque tu n’aymes point, je te veux dire adieu.” For a systematic and conscientious analysis of sonnets with the “ni” anaphora we must stipulate that the shape of this anaphora is at times extended to “ni par,” “ni de tant” or “ni” plus article version. The part of the line that directly follows the mentioned element commonly describes the components of nature and human belongings, and its aim is to reflect the beauty of terrestrial creation.28 For that reason, it can in some way be compared to the usage of “ô,” even if semantically these words are different—while “ô” is used to distinguish the object to which it refers, “ni” rather devaluates it. The last line in this type of sonnet discloses a feature which cannot be obscured by the previously listed characteristics. In two sonnets, du Bellay’s “Ny par les bois les Driades courantes” and de Tours’ “Ni par le ciel les étoiles errantes,” the structure of each line is as follows: Ni par + noun1 + noun2 + participe présent / passé. On the one hand, the doubling of nouns beginning invariably after the anaphora turns these sonnets into static chains of images. On the other, the substance of the last word in the hemistich, a derivative of the verb, modifies our view, showing that the universe runs, illuminates, vivifies: “Ny par les bois les Driades courantes,” “Ny sur les fleurs les abeilles errantes,” “Ny de la nuit les flambeaux allumez”29 (du Bellay); “Ni par le ciel les étoiles errantes,” “Ni par les bois les fères bien courantes,” “Ni par les prés

26 Ibid., LXXIX. 27 Guy de Tours, “Sonnet XXVII,” Le troisième livre des souspirs amoureux in Premières œuvres poétiques et souspirs amoureux (Genève: Droz, 1969), 96. 28 Regarding the anaphora on “ni,” a sonnet which presents a vision of the world not only by the representation of its parts at a very general level, but also indicating its aspects by the proper nouns, is “Il n’est point tant de barques à Venise” (1574) by Mellin de Saint-Gelais. 29 L’Olive, XCVI.

123

les fleurettes riantes,” “Ni les ruisseaux de murmure animez”30 (de Tours). Du Bellay continues this enumeration up to the point at which he reveals the sun as the object whose luminescence surmounts the other enumerated substances, such as “les flambeaux,” “temples dorez,” “l’or” itself and “la perle.” Guy de Tours, in turn, chants the beauty of his land, Touraine. An artistically less refined example is the sonnet of Olivier de Magny starting with the line “Ni voir d’un pan le plumage herissé,” in which one finds also the participe passé, but distributed irregularly between two nouns: “Ni les chatons enflés de pierrerie, / Ni les habits tissus en broderie,” or at the end of lines: “Ni la roideur d’un laurier élancé,  / Ni le tresor d’un bouquet agensé.”31 The last tercet exposes the purpose of the sonnet: contemplating the absence of the speaker’s lady love. It also replaces the anaphora on “ni” by the repetition of “Non.” Other examples of “ni” appearing as the anaphora in sonnets which do not demonstrate other litanic features are Flaminio de Birague’s “Ny de mes yeux les rivieres coulantes”32 and Baïf ’s “Ni tant de fruits l’Automne aux arbres ne desserre, / Ni tant de fleurs aux prés le printemps ne produit. // Ni de tant de flambeaux la nuit claire ne luit,” in which the majority of verbs are used in the active voice—which in du Bellay’s sonnet occurs only in the final tercet! An enumeration of parts of the female body with words of praise was a constant element of medieval Marian devotion expressed in litanic verse. Furthermore, we have already seen how it works with the use of the anaphora on “ô” in a Renaissance sonnet. Ronsard’s sonnet VIII in the second edition of Les Amours (1553), with the anaphora in eight lines allocated in both quatrains and one tercet, allows us to see how this stylistic device works in reference to a terrestrial lady using the “ni”33 element: Ny de son chef le tresor crespelu, Ny de son ris l’une et l’autre fossette, Ny le reply de sa gorge grassette, Ny son menton rondement fosselu,

30 Guy de Tours, “Sonnet III,” Le troisième livre des souspirs amoureux. 31 Olivier de Magny, Sonnet VIII: “A madame Marie de Launay” in Œuvres poétiques, vol. I, 237. 32 Flaminio de Birague, “Sonnet XXIV”, Les Premieres Œuvres poétiques (1585), 71. 33 Another anaphora useful in the enumeration of body parts in the love poem is “par,” for instance, in Guy de Tours’ sonnet: “Par vos beaux yeux où la délicatesse” in nine lines: “Par vos cheveux brunettement menus,” “Par vos beaux doigts légèrement charnus,” “Par vostre bouche où la mignarde abeille” (Guy de Tours, Sonnet XXIV. Sonnets en faveur de son Ente in Premières œuvres poétiques et souspirs amoureux).

124

Ni son bel œil que les miens ont voulu Choisir pour prince à mon ame sugette, Ny son beau sein, dont l’Archerot me gette Le plus agu de son trait esmoulu, Ny son beau corps le logis des Charites, Ny ses beautez en mille cœurs escrites, N’ont asservi ma jeune affection. Seul son esprit […], Me fait mourir pour sa perfection.34

As was presented in the chapter on medieval verse, the perfection of Holy Mary’s body was assured by the role which it played during the life of her Son, for instance: “Benoit tes yeulx qui songneux le gardèrent.” In this Renaissance example, the worthiness of the eyes of the lady lies rather in their acts toward the person speaking: “son bel œil que les miens ont voulu  / Choisir pour prince,” who is apparently this man who loves her. The little archer, “Archerot,” coexists in this sonnet with “Charites,” whose eyes were the source from which “flows the passion of love.”35 One more contrast is that a declaration that the main cause of the admiration is the soul, not the ideal body, operates in this sonnet as the way to surprise the reader, whereas in the medieval hagiography the description of Mary’s anatomy served rather as the additional and unusual part of the laudation of her spiritual values.

34 Pierre de Ronsard, “Sonnet XLVIII,” Le premier livre des amours. Amours de Cas­ sandre, in Œuvres complètes, ed. Gustave Cohen (Paris: Gallimard, 1958), 22. In some Ronsard sonnets, we do not see the main thematic line, as the objects accumulated derive from different areas of human activity, as in “Ny voir flamber au point du jour les roses,” ibid., 26–27, while others present more limited space, as in “Ny les desdains d’une Nymphe si belle,” ibid., 76, in which the emotion and characteristics are listed: “le plaisir, la fierté, le desir.” Nonetheless, it is this sonnet which, according to Marc Carnel, may take the name of a litany: “la litanie incantatoire des anaphores negatives que [le sonnet CXLIII—M.K.] scande, dans une phrase unique […].” (Le Sang embaumé des roses: sang et passion dans la poésie amoureuse de Pierre de Ronsard, Genève: Droz, 2004: 239). The critic emphasizes the acoustic values but demonstrates also that even if it is the state of mind which is described, the sonnet is composed as if it were a description of the world. Ronsard sonnets with “ô” and “ni” anaphora are recognized as testimonies to Italian influence, particularly that of Andrea Gesualdo (Gordon, Ronsard et la rhétorique, 117). 35 Willem Jacob Verdenius, Commentaries on Pindar, vol. 1, (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1987), 104.

125

The last example in this part of the chapter, where sonnets with one type of anaphora are analyzed, belongs to devotional poetry. The anaphora used in it is not a popular one, like “ni,” but it is also applied to demonstrate the countlessness of some categories of objects. Robert Angot’s sonnet XIV from Sonnets spirituels (in the collection Les Nouveaux Satires published in 1637) which commences with “Qui veut conter, Seigneur, le nombre de mes peines / Et l’incroyable excez de mes peches cuisans” contains the anaphora “Qu’il conte” in nine lines. The confession of sins, which are large in number, metamorphoses into praise of creation, since the objects enumerated are partly those mentioned in Genesis: the greenery, the fish, “les animaux de l’air, les humains de la terre.” There is no formula which sums up the enumeration, but in the last tercet, the thematic plot changes from being religious and bucolic into being patriotic: “un tas de lous qui dignes de l’Enfer / Ont chancre jusqu’aux os les membres de la France.”36 In the next part of this chapter, we analyze sonnets in which the domination of one type of anaphora is no longer found, although litanic verse still evidently dominates their entirety. In the below-cited Ronsard sonnet from Les Amours de Cassandre, the litanic verse’s defining feature changes in nearly every stanza. Intermingling the polyonymic elements with chairetismic, the idea of the sonnet lies in the profoundly visible anaphora on “ni” on the level of lines of the first quatrain as well as the less noticeable anaphora on the level of tercets. The internal system of repetitions is less apparent but not less significant. As the sonnet does not contain a surprising confession at the end or any sort of punchline which would unveil the mysterious object, the recurrence inside the lines may play a role of counterpoint with the anaphoric beginning: Ny les combats des  a m ou re u s e s   nuits, Ny les plaisirs que les  a m ou r s   conçoivent, Ny les faveurs que les  a m a n s   reçoivent, Ne valent pas un seul de mes ennuis. Heureux espoir,  p a r   ta faveur je puis Trouver repos des maux qui me deçoivent, Et  p a r   toy seul mes passions reçoivent Le  d ou x   oubly des tourmens où je suis. Bienheureux soit mon tourment qui r’empire, Et le  d ou x   joug, sous qui je ne respire: Bienheureux soit mon penser soucieux:

36 Robert Angot de L’Éperonnière, Les Nouveaux Satires et Exercices gaillards (Paris: Lemerre, 1877), 34.

126

Bienheureux soit le  d ou x   souvenir d’elle, Et plus heureux le foudre de ses yeux, Qui cuist ma vie en un feu qui me gelle.37

A broad catalogue of litanic expressions is represented here: the anaphora on “ni,” functional uniquely in the depiction of erotic pleasure in the first quatrain; the apostrophe to hope, enriched by the double repetition of what may be reached thanks to her (“par”); and the chairetismic “Bienheureux soit.” Apart from these devices, emerging as rather conventional in the use of litanic verse in this period, one discovers less obvious litanic factors concealed inside the stanzas, such as the introduction of derivatives of the word “amour” in three following lines in the second hemistich, which makes them effortlessly divisible into two parts (4+6), both containing the repetition. In the second quatrain, the juxtaposition of “je puis”–“je suis” is interesting, as it ends a line totally lacking in verbs and offers an astounding context for the litanic formula ora pro nobis. While in the act of litanic prayer, we invoke the merits of our addressee and through them we dare to ask for her or his favor, here the speaker places in this position a short and concrete assertion. The repetition that everything which is so gladly greeted has a sweet relish—“doux” mentioned three times: just before the first tercet, in the middle of it, and right after it—keeps the temperature of this sonnet rather moderate in its central parts, while in the beginning and concluding lines it approaches extremes. Religious themes also give the reader evidence that the litanic verse may show continuity throughout a poem, even if it is affected by changes in a crucial factor. In Coignard’s sonnet CXX, the anaphora seems to dominate over the quatrains, but the tercets maintain the litanic rule of invocations of apostles, virgins, and martyrs, etc. The meter is longer than in the previous example, and the persons speaking are the faithful and the personages invoked—that is, the saints: Nous sommes viateurs, vous estes en repos, Nous bataillons icy, vous avez la victoire, Nous sommes en travail, vous estes en la gloire, Vous estes dans le port, nous ramons sur les flots. Nous sommes revestus de sang, de chair et d’os, Vous avez despouillé ce qui est transitoire, O vous, saints bien-heureux dont l’antique memoire Consacre à l’Eternel l’honneur de vostre los,

37 Pierre de Ronsard, “Sonnet LXXVI,” Le premier livre des amours. Amours de Cassandre, 33. The emphasis in the quotation is mine.

127

Vous, Apostres, avez les chaires ordonnées Pour juger à la fin les douze grands lignées, Vous, Vierges et Martirs, Prophetes, Confesseurs, Portez la palme en main, […]38.

The ecclesiastical litanies are not sources of information about the people praying—the condensed formula pro nobis does not reflect the condition of human beings at the moment of worship, nor does it demonstrate the type of supplication expressed, as they are universal and are part of the established form. When we enumerate, “from a sudden and unprovided death,” “from lightning and tempest,” “from the scourge of earthquake,” “from plague, famine, and war,” etc., it does not mean that we are indeed threatened by these calamities in this moment; rather, we want to avoid them in the future, even if we know that they are elements of human life on earth. The litany of Coignard puts it differently: the one who beseeches and the one who receives the prayer are equal—the fact that the line “Nous bataillons icy, vous avez la victoire” and others parallel to it may be divided 6+6 only emphasizes this. Each value enumerated on the side of earthly people has been overcome by the saints, and it is a kind of response to the efforts of those who do not yet enjoy eternal glory. The enumeration in the first tercet is the introduction to the final statement of their victory. In considering Sonnet LX of Coignard’s Œuvres chrétiennes, we are persuaded not only of the presence of litanic verse in her sonnets, but also of this poem being litany itself, noticeably in the first quatrain. This is clear for Colette H. Winn, who prepared the critical edition: “Accent sur le pro nobis, qui devient pro mihi, témoin d’une spiritualité qui s’individualise.”39 Vous estes mort pour moy, ô Sauveur de ma vie, Vous estes mort pour moy, ô desir de mon cœur, Vous estes mort pour moy, de la mort le vainqueur, Vous estes mort pour moy d’une amour infinie.40

The Litany of the Holy Name of Jesus transcribed by Coignard presents to the reader a reverse order: the supplication which traditionally is repeated without change comes to the fore, and after the caesura, we meet the invocation which was concretized as well—Jesus became the Savior of her individual life and her heart longs for him. Furthermore, he is named the conqueror of death in a general sense, although in the first line, it is insisted that he died for her. In the last 38 Gabriele de Coignard, Œuvres chrétiennes, 284. 39 Ibid., 224. 40 Ibid.

128

line, as well, the value put in the second hemistich does not have a particular object, as we do not know who is mentioned there; it is only the beginning of the line which suggests the answer. In the second quatrain, the participe passé form, in which the last syllable is stressed, just before the caesura, together with the anaphoric onset of the line: Vous avez surmonté toute force ennemie, Vous avez triomphé, ô parfaicte valeur, Vous nous avez sauvez du gouffre de douleur, Vous avez accablé l’inique tyrannie,

allows the poet to give one more example of changing the passive voice known from traditional litany to the active voice in poetic litany: “Jésus chargé du lourd fardeau de la Croix sur vos épaules déchirées, Jésus cloué avec d’horribles douleurs à la Croix” etc. The intimate relation of the lyrical “I” with the Savior has been supplanted, giving way to the voice of the community. In the tercets, the accumulation of epithets brings the sonnet closer to the enumerative model of litanic verse. In place of the supplication, one finds the chairetismic expression about the special capability of those people who keep praying and adoring Jesus, and whose merits were so ardently listed before: Voudrions nous bien aymer jamais autre que vous, Vous estes si benin, si gratieux et doux, Vous ne cessez jamais de nous faire largesse: Vous estes tout clement, piteux et liberal, Vous nous donnez du bien et nous gardez de mal. Heureux qui hait le vice et vous ayme cesse.

The final line switches the focus from the object of worship to the person praying—while previously it was the Lord who was showered with qualities, now in the onset of the line we encounter an adjective describing a human being. Jesus never stopped being generous to people; here we learn that happy is the one who has never stopped loving him. Analyzing the litanic verse recognizable only in the quatrains of sonnets in an anaphoric model, we notice both that the new anaphoras occur and that the traditional ones are also used. One more sonnet by Coignard, XL, serves to witness a tendency to enumerate with the use of “ni” element: Ni des vers prez les fleurettes riantes, Ny d’un ruisseau le doux flot argentin, Ny le long cours d’un fleuve serpentin, Ny les rameaux des forests verdoyantes,

129

Ny de Ceres les pleines blondoyantes, Ny ce beau ciel, d’où vient nostre destin, Ny la fraischeur du soir et du matin, Ny du printemps les beautez differentes.41

The role of parallel quatrains conventionally depicting nature seems to be subordinate to the confession of the speaker that the admiration of the beauty of the creation, “cest ouvrage admirable, ses beaux objects,” contributed to an examination of her conscience, in which all sins have come to light: “Forfaits, l’horreur de mon ame.”42 This is included in tercets which have no litanic verse determinators. The Ronsard sonnet contains the apostrophes and the requests in the quatrains; however, their order is reversed in comparison with the traditional invocations and supplications. Moreover, they are rather brief and immediately follow one another: Ren moy mon cœur, ren moy mon cœur, mignarde Que tu retiens dans ton sein arresté: Ren moy, ren moy ma douce liberté, Qu’à tes beaux yeux, mal-caut, je mis en garde: Ren moy ma vie, ou bien la mort retarde, Qui me poursuit en aimant ta beauté Par ne sçay quelle honneste cruauté, Et de plus pres mes angoisses regarde.43

The expression “ren moy” might be complemented by two elements—what should be given to the person speaking and who should give it. The response where we find the first component is disposed all through these stanzas; we start with the heart, but soon the poet adds liberty, his life and postponement of the moment of death. The vision of the end of life pursues the person speaking and triggers a feeling of injustice and even a sort of confusion. The addressee is revealed in the first line of the sonnet—it is his lady love, and the kind of prayer directed to her bears the mark of a prayer of intercession. The repetition of the demand also gives the impression of insistency. Contrary to the litanic pattern, the author is rather sparing in the use of laudatory titles.

41 Ibid., 50. 42 Another Coignard sonnet built with the use of the “Ni” anaphora is sonnet VI, “Ni les desirs d’une jeunesse tendre.” 43 Pierre de Ronsard, “Sonnet CXCVII,” Le Premier Livre des amours. Amours de Cassandre, 85.

130

The erudite opening of the first Ronsard sonnet from the collection devoted to Helen seems perfectly appropriate for the descriptive nature of quatrains of sonnets: Le premier jour de may, Helene, je vous jure Par Castor, par Pollux, vos deux freres jumeaux, Par la vigne enlassee à l’entour des ormeaux, Par les prez, par les bois herissez de verdure, Par le nouveau Printemps sacré, fils aisné de Nature, Par le cristal qui roule au giron des ruisseaux, Par tous les rossignols, miracle des oiseaux, Que seule vous serez ma derniere aventure44.

The apostrophe in the first line of the stanza combines the time of the solemn act and its main actors, the Dioskouroi and their sister Helen. Through the anaphoric mode, all these plots are developed: the provenance, so noble and ancient, of his Helen, the various aspects of the nature, the witness of his oath, and the content of his assertion. The litanic enumeration with the use of anaphora may also disarrange the clear division into quatrains and tercets in the sonnets. In sonnet XXIV of the Second livre of Sonnets pour Helene, it is apparently one subject of the defamation in each quatrain to which three parallel lines refer: Amour, je pren congé de ta menteuse ecole, Où j’ay perdu l’esprit, la raison et le sens, Où je me suis trompé, où j’ay gasté mes ans, Où j’ay mal employé ma jeunesse trop folle. Malheureux qui se fie en un enfant qui volle, Qui a l’esprit soudain, les effets inconstans, Qui moissonne nos fleurs avant nostre printans, Qui nous paist de creance et d’un songe frivole.

In the first stanza of the second example, the apostrophe attracts the reader’s attention as an incentive which gives impulse to the enumeration; in the second, there is the epithet describing the disciple of the emotion invoked at first. The series of parallelisms becomes more visible when it is separated by one line indicating the addressee and her or his properties. The division into three is also essential in Jodelle’s sonnet,“Pour le jour que tout le camp partit pour aller trouver l’ennemy,” which stands out in its originality, as

44 Ibid., sonnet I, Sonnets pour Helene, 215.

131

it represents patriotic poetry that discusses contemporary events. It was written, together with seven other sonnets, to commemorate the Treaty of Longjumeau in 1568. The first quatrain strengthens the division into three and prepares the reader for the triple anaphora in the second quatrain: Vous Charles, Catherine, et Henry, qui tenez Nostre fortune en main: Charles les loix nous donne, Catherine maintient de son fils la couronne, Et par Henry les camps fraternels sont menez. Vous tous qui aux conseils, et aux combats prenez A cœur la foy d’un Dieu, qui vostre ame éguillonne, A cœur le droict d’un Roy que Dieu sur vous ordonne, A cœur l’amour de France en qui vous estes nés.45

Three addressees—Charles IX of France, his younger brother Henry, and their mother Catherine de’ Medici—are addressed, first as a group, by the poet saying to them “you” and listing their names; secondly, they are each named individually in separate lines. Finally, in the first line of the second quatrain they are again addressed with “vous.” The introduction is litanic in the way that prayers usually are, as they begin by the remembrance of one God who eternally exists in three Persons—the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The first quatrain presents to the reader three actors on the historical stage and shows what function each of them plays for contemporary people. In the second quatrain, the role of saints to whom we appeal in the litanies is taken over by three values, each of them with its own possessor—God, the king and France. These latter, in addition, are clarified by a subordinate clause beginning with the relative pronoun “qui / que.” Nearly the whole line in this way resembles the invocation from the final part of litanies, such as Agnus Dei, which is likewise repeated three times. The element which does not seem to appear in the traditional order is the repetition “A cœur.” We cannot analyze it without noticing the enjambment: “prenez a cœur.” One may say that up to this point of our research, we have uncovered many literary examples in which the components of litanic invocation, such as names and epithets, were detached from each other and put in different lines. However, rarely do we find a poetic supplicatory formula whose elements were separated. For instance, in one of the medieval paraphrases we read: “Pere du ciel, aiez pitié / De nous par ta sainte amistié.” Nevertheless, we should mention that the expression “prenez a cœur” in this sonnet is not a petition—it is a statement of fact. 45 Étienne Jodelle, “Pour le jour que tout le camp partit pour aller trouver l’ennemy,” in Œuvres complètes, ed. Enea Balmas (Paris: Gallimard, 1965), 290–291.

132

Sonnet CCIII, “Pour le jour de Pasques,” by Anne de Marquets, begins with a description of events from the Book of Numbers. The quatrains are composed as an exemplum—the fulfillment of promises for the people of Israel in the history of Old Testament is intended to persuade contemporary people that God’s grace is meant for them, too. The verbs montrer que and noter even introduce a moralistic tone. In both quatrains, two out of four lines incorporate the anaphora: Les bannis d’Israel rentroyent selon la loy Pa r   l a   m or t   du grand prestre en leur propre heritage, Monstrant que nous aurions un pareil avantage Pa r   l a   m or t   de Jesus, souverain prestre et Roy. Notons aussi, pour mieux solider nostre foy, Qu’apres la mort d’Aaron, le peuple eut en partage L a   t e r re   decoulant de miel et de laictage. L a   t e r re   tant promise, ayant tous bien en soy.46

Here the reason for this discourse is given. The recurrence of the crucial motifs of the death of Christ and the promised land supports the consolidation of the message of people as the inheritors of the Son of God. In other cases, it is only the tercets that represent the anaphoric mode of litanic verse. In the quatrains of the Ronsard sonnet “Las! force m’est qu’en bruslant je me taise,” the lyrical “I” balances between the need for silence and for human speech, the lighting of a flame and its dying, being happy and suffering. Words once said are negated in the next line: “[…] d’endurer le mal dont je me deulx. / Je me deulx? non, mais dont je suis bien aise.” In the tercets, however, the object of this modest litany is well recognized—it is the “sweet pain” which becomes praised. We may even say that the emotion described in the quatrains, which is rather bothersome, metamorphoses into a more pleasant one and enables return to the litanic mode: Par ce doux mal j’adoroy la beauté Qui me liant d’une humble cruauté, Me desnoüa les liens d’ignorance. Par luy j’appris les mysteres d’Amour, Par luy j’appris que pouvoit l’esperance, Par luy mon ame au ciel fit son retour.47

46 Anne de Marquets, Sonets spirituels, ed. Gary Ferguson (Genève: Droz, 1997), 207. The emphasis in the quoation is mine. 47 Pierre de Ronsard, “Sonnet CLXXIX,” Le premier livre des amours. Amours de Cassandre, 78.

133

The antithetic passion which fills the speaker is mitigated by the litanic verse. The anaphoric “par” introduces calmness into this rather dynamic poem from the very beginning, for the reason that a kind of certainty is achieved. The anaphoric shape becomes more and more strict, as we reach the end of the sonnet. It provokes, as well, one to reflect on the final part of lines in which six nouns find a place. While the first tercet describes the weaknesses and the imperfections that the speaker should repel with the help of sweet pain, and thus cruelty and ignorance attract the reader’s attention in the final part of lines, the second tercet concludes with what he gains thanks to this—love, hope and a kind of “ascension,” namely the soul returning to heaven. In this miniaturized form, these tercets imitate the structure of the Invocatio ad Christum part of the Litany of the Saints; first we pray there for the liberation from “all evil,” “all sin,” “the deceits of the devil,” and “all ill will,” and as in Ronsard’s sonnet, we perceive the effort for liberating ourselves from our attachment to ignorance. Afterwards, the liturgical litany enumerates the merits of Jesus Christ, thanks to which we may call for His aid. In Ronsard’s sonnet, these lines emphasize the knowledge which was brought by the presence of the lady. However, we shall notice one significant difference: in the ecclesiastical litany, the change of anaphoric element occurs—it is ab and then par, whereas in our poetic example, we note the anaphora “par” without interruption. We must suppose that the continuity concerning the anaphora was proposed, because without it, the litanic structure would not be so easily identifiable in the situation when we would see three identical words repeated in the first tercet and three others repeated in the second tercet. The regular use of the verb in the first person singular and the subject “I” after “Par” repeated from line to line demonstrates the fact that all the blessings for which the man in love could ask have just been given to him, as the forms of the verb are in passé simple. The enumeration of proper nouns seems unavoidable for liturgical litany, such as the Litany of the Saints, if they appear at the beginning of the line, sometimes preceded by an epithet, or if at times they swap places with the supplication and are put in the second hemistich. In one of Ronsard’s sonnets to Helen, which in its entirety represents the enumerative model, one cannot observe any kind of repetition, although the list of names of gods (and goddess) is quite long: J’appris en tes vertus n’avoir la bouche close, J’appris tous les secrets des Latins et des Grecs: Tu me fis un Oracle, et m’esveillant apres Je devins un Démon sçavant en toute chose. J’appris que c’est Amour, du Ciel le fils aisné. O bon Endymion, je ne suis estonné Si dormant pres la Lune en son sommeil extrème

134

La Lune te fist Dieu! Tu es un froid amy. Si j’avois pres ma Dame un quart d’heure dormy, Je serois, non pas Dieu: je ferois les Dieux mesme.48

In the ending of the first hemistich of this poem, the proper names occur, occasionally repeated or even multiplied, like “Dieu” and “Dieux” in the second hemistich. The weakness of the repetition reveals that the author is struggling with the litanic pattern rather than that he wants to demonstrate it visibly. The poet also mixes personas from the Catholic religion and the mythology of the ancients and he contests their uniqueness in the last sentence of the poem. Nevertheless, the litanic mode is still valid for him, which may be seen in the use of periphrases for “gods” to which he directs his prayer; for instance, he calls the god of love the eldest son of Heaven, and Endymion is named simply the god. Distinguishing some prevailing themes in the sonnets employing the enumerative mode of the litanic verse is not so clear as in the previously analyzed poems with anaphora, since a variety of motifs are evoked. We will concentrate on two poems with Marian stylization and a third one, which represents a sort of meta-litany, as it focuses on the action of naming, not the abundance of names itself. Accordingly, litanic verse appears in the epitaph genre in the sonnetary form of Ronsard’s “Epitaphe de Marie.” The sonnet begins with the conventional signature for an epitaph: “Cy reposent les oz de la belle Marie.” The panegyric character of this genre is emphasized in various ways—through the anaphora on “qui” in three lines of the first quatrain and the enumeration of values which Mary embodies: “honneur et courtoisie,” “la jeune beauté” in the second. In the first tercet, the moment to invoke the lady has come: “Tu es, belle Angevine, un bel astre des cieux: / Les Anges tous ravis se paissent de tes yeux, / La terre te regrette, O beauté sans seconde!”49 The addressee is the young lady Marie, so Marian titles may help to observe the lyrical portrait of her as, for instance, a star in the heavens, but in the fabric of this text a rather profane topic prevails, which is developed with the evocation of the god of love, Amour. The emotion just now unveiled, regret, emerges as the dominant one in the final tercet: “Maintenant tu es vive, et je suis mort d’ennuy. / Malheureux qui se fie en l’attente d’autruy! / Trois amis m’ont deceu, toy, l’Amour, et le monde.” Among the objects mentioned in the last line, it is the addressee of the sonnet who has been previously paraphrased by the poet. Nonetheless, we could characterize two others as well on

48 Pierre de Ronsard, “Sonnet XXIII,” Sonnets pour Helene, 225. 49 Pierre de Ronsard, “Epitaphe de Marie (sonnet XIII),” Le second livre des amours, Sur la mort de Marie, 192.

135

the basis of the vision depicted in the poem. If the features enumerated in the second quatrain disappear from the world with her death, and we read “La terre te regretted,” we must note the pessimistic portrayal of that period. Moreover, if the man who regrets to this extent the death of the lady confesses that it is for that reason that he is now dying from boredom, this testifies to the loss of love in the contemporary world as well. In Sonnet XXIII of Coignard, the litanic model imposed on the form of the sonnet interferes with the division into descriptive quatrains which are devoted to a list of Marian metaphors and the expressive tercets. Two stanzas are wrapped in the enumeration, while in the last two, the lyrical situation is described with affirmative sentences: Douce virginité, nourrice d’innocence, Mignonne du haut Dieu, tresoriere des cieux, Qui portes le laurier pris du victorieux, Et l’habillement blanc, marque de continence. […], O parfaicte vertu, ô tresor precieux, Qui rapportes le cent de ton humble semence.50

One pattern is based on the alexandrines which appear as adjusted to two antonomasias of Holy Mary per line, provided that they are composed of three (“mignonne”) or four syllables (“virginité”) and complemented by an epithet or possessive nouns. The assonance in the first line on -ou- must not be overlooked. The second possibility, visible above is to construct the line from subordinate clauses. Apart from the enumeration, the author introduces other litanic signals, like the anaphora “ô” and the repetition of the pronoun “qui.” In contrast, the tercets demonstrate a greater density of verbs than the quatrains and, in fact, they are more narrative, as they describe metaphorically the choice of asceticism, indicating all the obstacles and rewards foreseeable in this model of living: Bien-heureux sont ceux-là qui  f orç a nt   leurs desirs, Q u itt e nt   joyeusement du monde les plaisirs, Pour  av oi r   les vertus de celuy qui les donne. Leurs lampes  br u s l e ront   d’un feu continuel, Att e n d a nt   le retour de l’espoux eternel, R e c e v a nt   pour loyer une riche couronne.51

50 Gabriele de Coignard, Œuvres chrétiennes, 168. 51 Ibid., 168–169. The emphasis is mine.

136

The quatrains were more symbolical, less informative, bursting out with series of Marian titles. In turn, the tercets explicate the meaning with the use of affirmative statements and show their moral message. Ronsard’s sonnet III from the collection devoted to Helen, cited below, begins conventionally with the apostrophe to a lady of this name: Ma douce Helene, non, mais bien ma douce haleine, Qui froide rafraischis la chaleur de mon cœur, Je prens de ta vertu cognoissance et vigueur, Et ton œil, comme il veut, à son plaisir me meine. Heureux celuy qui souffre une amoureuse peine Pour un nom si fatal: heureuse la douleur, Bien-heureux le torment, qui vient pour la valeur Des yeux, non pas des yeux, mais des flames d’Helene.52

The poet effects here the negation of a word just enounced and the comparison of adjectives: “douce Helene” is transfigured into “douce haleine,” the eyes metamorphoses into “flames,” the sorrow is “heureuse,” while the torment “bien-heureux.” These elements are important, although they are not the most substantial litanic factors in this sonnet. The corrections “non, mais bien” and “non pas” involve the repetition of several words, like “ma douce” and “heureux,” but the tercets open a new litanic plot: the anaphora “nom” repeats on the level of stanzas, while the parallelism becomes visible in the “nom” plus “qui” construction: Nom, malheur des Troyens, sujet de mon souci, Ma sage Penelope, et mon Helene aussi, Qui d’un soin amoureux tout le cœur m’envelope: Nom, qui m’a jusqu’au ciel de la terre enlevé, Qui eust jamais pensé que j’eusse retrouvé En une mesme Helene une autre Penelope?

Can we imagine the litany to the Virgin Mary in a prayer book in which under the title, Litanies de la Vierge Marie, we see a series such as this: “Nom, Eve nouvelle,” “Nom, Fille de Sion,” “Nom, Demeure de la Sagesse”? In point of fact, this is exactly the realization of Ronsard’s poetic litany: “Nom, malheur des Troyens,” “Nom, Ma sage Penelope.” We obviously know the name of the loved one from the title of this sonnet cycle, and it is also repeated four times in the text of the poem, but each time it is interwoven with the mythological Helen. When the speaker says at the beginning of the sonnet: “Ma douce Helene” we assume that 52 Pierre de Ronsard, “Sonnet III,” Sonnets pour Helene, Premier livre, 216.

137

the referent of the word “Helene” is his lady, contemporary with him, and that he addresses that expression to her. On the other hand, “mon Helene” from the tenth line of the sonnet gives the impression that it designates the mythological one of Troy who becomes the “malheur des Troyens.” Thus, with the addition of the personal pronoun “my,” she appears as “his” most beautiful woman in the world, chosen by Paris, as she is at the same time “his” wise Penelope, who knows how to deceive the candidates for her hand. The most intriguing part of this sonnet’s playing with names is the last line, combining “une mesme Helene une autre Penelope.” The difficulties with its suitably literal translation illustrates its poetic potential. The version “Who would have thought that I would have found / Even in Helen another Penelope?”53 may lead one to a conclusion regarding “the confusion of identity”54 with which I do not agree, while “who would ever have thought that I would have encountered in one and the same Helen, a second Penelope?”55 emphasizes the integrality of the vision in which the poet’s contemporary Helen appears in the multiplicity of creation. To sum up this chapter referring exclusively to the litanic verse in sonnets, we should note that a few patterns have been revealed. The most common is undoubtedly that in which a high number of lines starting with the same word— we have already enumerated the most popular anaphoras—is succeeded by a final line or a final hemistich which concerns the content of all of them. Such an approach is not foreign to Church litanies; the only difference is that a sort of response in our poetic examples is recited once and not added after every line. We also encountered some defective examples where there is no effect of surprise, and the litanic verse becomes simply a list or, a description, to be exact. The research has shown that the most interesting strategies were chosen by Coignard and Ronsard—both various, both not conforming to any defined model, yet both displaying conscious use of the structure. The first one, applied by Coignard, included the equal division—the symmetry of hemistiches is intensified by the meter, the alexandrine 6+6—but at some point, the poet proceeds to stretching one of the parts. For instance, sonnet XVII comprises only one quatrain with such a clear caesura: “Vous estes mort pour moy, ô Sauveur de ma vie.” The following stanzas of this sonnet develop the ideas and the construction of 53 Matthew Gumpert, Grafting Helen: The Abduction of the Classical Past (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2001), 181. 54 Ibid. 55 Tania Demetriou, “Periphrōn. Penelope and her early modern translations,” in The Culture of Translation in Early Modern England and France, 1500–1660, eds. Tania Demetriou, Rowan Tomlinson (London: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2015), 86.

138

the first hemistich, but extending it to the entire line, they maintain the anaphora on “vous” plus participe passé and add another element which permits the construction of the line: “Vous avez accablé l’inique tyrannie.” A similar pattern was introduced in the sonnet XXV, “O de tous mes labeurs, le repos desirable,” but the reader needs to wait till the second line of the first tercet, “O celuy qui conduis mon ame à son salut,” before the clear division becomes blurred. Furthermore, in the final line, the previous clearness of the division returns, which makes the concluding confession appealing: “O seul bien souverain, à toy seul je veux estre” an effect also due to the epithet “seul” twice ascribed to the Lord. Sonnet CXX, on the other hand, expands the structure of each hemistich into the line. From the first line “Nous sommes viateurs, vous estes en repos,” we obtain two lines: “Nous sommes revestus de sang, de chair et d’os, / Vous avez despouillé ce qui est transitoire.” Moving on to Ronsard’s examples, we must note that his strategy is more complicated, and its features are more difficult to identify, particularly in the two sonnets, III for Helen and LXXVI to Cassandra. Their common characteristics are that the word “Heureux” begins the second stanzas and that the onsets of the third and the fourth stanzas contain the same words “Nom” in the first example and “Bienheureux” in the second. In fact, in nearly every stanza of these sonnets, another addressee of the message appears than that which was indicated in the title—for instance, in place of “Ma douce Helene” we encounter “Heureux celuy qui […]” and twice “nom.” Similarly, the location and length of the invocations vary—they may occupy an entire line, like “Heureux celuy qui souffre une amoureuse peine” or “Bienheureux soit mon penser soucieux,” but also, only the first: “Heureux espoir” or the second hemistich: “heureuse la douleur,” and several may be put in one line. The process of searching out many objects to invoke as well as using many different names are both practices of liturgical litanies. Nonetheless, usually only one tendency prevails, for instance, in the Litany of the Saints, the numerous addressees, and in the Marian litanies, the variety of her titles. In the rigid frame of the sonnet, both techniques were applied.

139

5.  Litanic Love Verse The presence of litanic verse in the sixteenth-century chansons is symbolically attested to by its use in the poem of a king who influenced the development of literature and fine arts during the period. However, chanson 11 (inc. “Ma fin sera d’eternel fondement”56) of Francis I does not belong to the large group of his poems for which music was composed,57 and litanic verse is clearly manifested only in a part of this work. The motifs of finality and imprisonment frequently recur in the confession of the lyrical “I” through the repetition of words such as the noun “fin” with the verbs “finer” and “definer,” the noun “fermeté,” and the adjective “ferme.” Additionally, the sense of lacking is expressed by the frequent recurrence of the preposition “sans.” A tension between a smaller length of time such as “un tel heur” and infinity, twice signalized by the adjective “eternal,” is also recognizable. It suggests that the experience of time is sorely onerous to the person speaking. All these characteristics might be considered to be Petrarchan commonplaces— a depiction of love as a suffering and captivity—though the information that the poems of Francis I were written during his imprisonment after his defeat at the battle of Pavia (1525)58 provides a new context for the feelings described. 56 This chanson is known under different incipits and numbers. The citations in the text come from François Ier, Œuvres poétiques, ed. J. E. Kane (Genève: Slatkine, 1984), 141. In the edition of Aimé Champollion-Figeac, this chanson has the number 15, and the incipit is the same as in the edition of Kane, yet the poem is seven lines longer (Poésies du Roi François Ier, Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1847, 115). Cf. another incipit: “La fin sera d’éternel fondement” in Chantilly. Le cabinet des livres. Manuscrits, vol. 2, (Paris: Plon-Nourrit, 1900), 139. 57 Christelle Cazaux argues that the fact that “Les auteurs des chansons sur des vers du roi sont principalement des musiciens de sa cour […] incite à penser que les manuscrits des poèmes du roi ne furent guère diffusés au-delà des cercles proches de la cour.” (La Musique à la cour de François Ier, Paris, École Nationale des chartes, 2002, 154). JeanMax Colard admits this: “Tout d’abord et de toute évidence, François Ier pratique une poésie à usage privé, simple divertissement […]. L’absence, de son vivant, d’un recueil imprimé de son œuvre poétique confirme qu’il s’agit là d’un exercice frivole […].” (Jean-Max Colard, “Le courage: la « veine royale » de François Ier poète,” in Devenir roi: essais sur la littérature adressée au prince, eds. Isabelle Cogitore and Francis Goyet, Grenoble: ELLUG, 2001, 121). 58 Aimé-Louis Champollion-Figeac, “Introduction,” in Poésies du Roi François Ier, i: “Durant les longues journées de sa captivité, la littérature fut encore sa principale distrac-

141

The supplication, in the form “Je te supplye,” is signalled in the onset of the third stanza, which is devoted to the laudation of the emotions that are felt by the speaker and his addressee: “amour et seureté.” In the following lines, a demonstration of the mood of the lyrical “I” is developed in a repetitive manner; various adjectives (in the form of participe passé) are jammed into the space between the anaphora on “non moins” and the final parts of lines built on the pattern of “sans” plus a noun; a rhythm for such endings is given in the preceding stanza which concludes, “sans jamais abaisser”: Non moins ferme que sans esperance, Non moins vaincu que sans deffence, Non moins contant que sans effect, Non moins tourmenté que deffaict.

Considering the litanic verse in this poem, we should note not only an opposition between two parts of line, expressing “I am not less […] than,” but also a kind of synonymy referring to a single person—“vaincu,”—which is a property of someone who did not manage to defend himself or was left without adequate defense. Undoubtedly, the litanic verse forms the most dynamic stanza in this poem with this series of expressions describing the state in which the speaker finds himself. Nevertheless, as in the whole chanson, the manner of speaking remains restrained, revealing the courtly universal tone.59 What attracts the reader’s attention is a reiteration of formulae of certainty and the attempts to make the addressee believe what is obvious for the person speaking: “de cela je t’asseure,” “dont je suis seur,” “bien estant seur.” Although in the poem we find statements about will and promises, and thus about an unpredictable future, it is chiefly the fixity of beliefs that is manifested in the content of the poem and in this inspiring stability of structure. Jean-Max Colard, whose aim is to demonstrate “si ses écrits personnels [of Francis I—M.K.] rejoignent l’image publique que l’on dresse de lui,” points out three such images: “Roi tres-Chrétien, celle de l’imperator, celle enfin de l’amant courtois.”60 Analyzing the latter, Colard argues that the manner in which the love plot is employed has a clear political tion; à l’imitation de son grand-oncle Charles d’Orléans, il chercha un adoucissement à son infortune dans son gout déjà bien connu pour les belles-lettres.” The identity of the addressee of the love confession is also unveiled, ibid., vi. 59 Cf. particularly chanson 33 of Marguerite de Navarre, “Si Dieu m’a Christ pour chef donné,” which is a “chanson spirituelle,” and it operates in the second stanza on the identical motifs of “espérance,” “assurance,” “sûreté,” “fermeté,” etc. (Chansons Spirituelles, Genève: Droz, 1971, 87). 60 Colard, “Le courage: la « veine royale » de François Ier poète,” 120.

142

reference: “Les deux thématiques, celle privée et intime, du sentiment amoureux, celle éminemment publique de sa captivité se trouvent ainsi jointes et aboutissent à la victoire de l’amant-Roi sur le vicissitudes de sa destinée.”61 Analyzing the litanic verse in this chanson, we should ask to which of these semantic levels does it provide a greater contribution—does it serve equally the political and the love message? Even if the person speaking in the above-cited stanza initially puts aside the idea of being vanquished, finally, in the last word, he admits it. This surrendering may be more a cause of pride for the lover than it is for the ruler. On the other hand, the insistency and clarity of the message betrays the firmness of the king’s attitude. We hypothesize that what we are witnessing in this poem is the common division of the litanic verse into two segments, each containing the repetitive element—in this case “non moins” and “sans”—and that the idea explained in the first segment is crucial for the image of Francis I as the ruler, whereas that in the second pertains to the lover. “Non moins” allows us to distance ourselves further from the feature of being, for instance, “vaincu,” and is relative. On the contrary, “sans” does not permit other interpretations. In each dimension, political and intimate, the person speaking possesses an ally. As is disclosed in the first stanza, he is not left alone in his prison as it is “[la] fermeté qui avec moy demeure,” and this property may be a source of joy for his lady love: “par fermeté […] / Dont je suis seur que auras contentement,” and, additionally, it is a coveted attribute of the wise ruler.62 The love plot is continued in the examples of litanic verse in three poems entitled respectively, “Marques de fol amour,” “Marques d’amour honneste,” and “Marques d’amour divin” of the lesser-known poet and lawyer François Bérenger de La Tour d’Albenas. They were published in Le Siècle d’or (1551), his first volume of poetry.63 La Tour d’Albenas reaches for the auxiliary construction “C’est” in the onset of his stanzas—sometimes it also opens other lines than the first, usually the third, which is followed by various periphrases about love. The poems count from twenty-nine to more than thirty quatrains each, and the number of stanzas with the anaphora on “C’est” occupies more than 80% of the lines in the second and third poems, while in the first more than 60%. From these statistics, 61 Ibid., 136. 62 Ibid., 121: “La prison qui suit Pavie parle encore de courage, mais celui de l’amant ferme dans son amour, sans mélancolie,” 121. 63 As Guillaume De Sauza mentions, a poem by La Tour d’Albenas devoted to the death of Francis I was published in 1547 in Toulouse [“Appendice 1” in “Bérenger de La Tour et son œuvre poétique: essai de mise au point,” Réforme, Humanisme, Renaissance, vol. 65 (2007), 88].

143

we can draw the conclusion that the litanic verse is more suited to laudation and to illustrating a good example than it is to indicating a danger. The poet stops here: “Bref c’est un cas que je ne puis nommer,” yet there is also a clear signal that l’amour divin should be praised unceasingly: “C’est l’Amour saint, qui noz coeurs vault attraire / Pour luy donner louange incessament”64 (MAD). Nevertheless, the formal frame is given to all three poems: each of them begins and concludes with the repetitive line, “Qui veut connaitre Amour et sa nature.” The models for the periphrases are analogous in each poem; for instance, love is often personified: “un agresseur marchant par voie obscure,” “un autheur d’amitiee simulee,” “un pirate en mer haulse et enflee,” “un tiran”65 (MFA), “un grand Roy,” “empereur”66 (MAH), “vainquer”67 (MAD). However, abstract nouns are used as well: “un accord, tres douce harmonie,” “charite ardente et enflame”68 (MAH), and the last poem especially offers a catalogue of values, such as “piété,” “charité,” “amitié,” “unite,” and “bonté.”69 The symbolic images are also significant and sometimes they refer to analogous motifs in the different poems; for instance, “un feu sans flame” and “un champs rendant moins qu’on n’y seme”70 (MAF) correspond to “un feu chaud,” “la semence en terre tresfeconde”71 (MAH). Furthermore, lists of mythological personages in the conclusions of MAF and MAH demonstrate the danger of “fol amour,” whereas Biblical personages are indicated in MAD, for instance, Madeleine, Martha, and Margaret. All titles are not listed in a vacuum—they reflect the experience of the community in which the person speaking lives, which is indicated by the pronouns in the expressions “nous sommes,” “nostre couer,” “nostre humaine vie.”72

64 François Bérenger de La Tour d’Albenas, Le Siècle d’or: et autres vers divers, vol. 2 (Lyon: Tournes, 1551), 204, 209. None of the volumes of his poetry have been republished since the sixteenth century (De Sauza, “Bérenger de La Tour et son œuvre poétique: essai de mise au point,” 65). A reference to the poems in the text will be identified by abbreviations in capital letters; i.e., “Marques de fol amour” will be cited as MFA, “Marques d’amour honneste” as MAH, and “Marques d’amour divin” as MAD. 65 La Tour d’Albenas, Le Siècle d’or, 198. 66 Ibid., 202. 67 Ibid., 206. 68 Ibid., 201–202. 69 Ibid., 208. 70 Ibid., 196. 71 Ibid., 200, 202. 72 With exceptions such as “C’est une grace ou mon salut ie fonde” (MAD, 207).

144

We notice in this Renaissance example a correspondence with the love ballade of Meschinot, analyzed in the medieval chapter, which depicts the properties of “Amour sodale,” “Amour vertueuse,” “Amour folle,” and “Amour vicieuse.” Only “Amour folle” appears in the title of the MFA of La Tour d’Albenas, yet the formal analogy is based on the same meter, the decasyllable, and the constancy of the anaphora as the main factor of the litanic verse. However, the content and frequency of anaphoras are various. While Meschinot repeated the word “Amour” in the onset of his lines and treated it as the subject of the sentence, La Tour d’Albenas, in turn, uses the structure “C’est” at regular intervals to keep the reader’s attention by the constantly recurring introductory element. Le Siècle d’Or is not amongst the most often commented works of La Tour d’Albenas,73 and the three poems discussed here are not mentioned in the rare interpretations, as if they do not determine the message of the volume. According to De Sauza: “[…] si l’inspiration amoureuse n’est pas absente dans Le Siècle d’Or, elle est toutefois loin d’être prépondérante. En fait, il semble que l’évocation des « jeunes erreurs » ait ici fondamentalement pour fonction de construire la persona d’un auteur débutant, encore non expert en poésie.”74 The plot of “jeunes erreurs” mentioned by the critic refers to the expression used by La Tour d’Albenas in the dedicatory letter, put in the beginning of Le Siècle d’Or, addressed to the bishop of Viviers. Although De Sauza recalls the motif of Petrarchan giovenile errore, he seems to reject the idea that it is the recollection of passionate love that lies behind the confession of La Tour d’Albenas, and he focuses on the aspect of poetic modesty which prevented the poet from putting his name above the title of the volume. This, however, is easily disproven in respect to these poems, which form a triptych progressing from the love “fol,” which is described simply as “C’est le Dieu propre ou l’honneur est blasmé,”75 to one to which the epithet “divin” may be applied.

73 De Sauza, “Bérenger de La Tour et son œuvre poétique: essai de mise au point,” 66. 74 Ibid., 73. 75 La Tour d’Albenas, 196.

145

6.  Devotional Poetry Six poems whose common feature is a religious theme are analyzed in this chapter. Among their authors are two poets of the Pléiade group, Ronsard and Jean Bastier de La Péruse; two famous Protestant authors, Du Bartas and Aubigné; Jacques Davy du Perron, best known as a powerful cardinal of this period; and finally, Victor Brodeau, who practiced many genres of occasional poetry at the court of Francis I before turning to religious poetry. The poems are analyzed in chronological order, although it is significant that our interpretation starts with two examples representing a similar pattern of one title used as a component of anaphora, namely “Verbe” and “Dieu.” In a long, 756-line poem written in decasyllable and arranged in seven-line stanzas, Victor Brodeau ruminated on a laudation of Jesus. This aim and the object of praise is already revealed in the title: Les Louanges de Jesus-Christ, nostre Sauveur (1540). The first and second stanzas return to the metaphorical title of Jesus, that is, “Verbe”—a title which does not appear in any of the litanies devoted to him: Verbe eternel des le commencement, Mis en secret dedans le pensement De Dieu puissant, de toy, et de nous père: Verbe divin, Dieu veritablement; Verbe par qui fut faict le firmament: Verbe faict chair pour nous divinement, Dedans le corps chaste de vierge mere. Verbe sans qui n’a estre aulcune chose, O verbe en qui nostre vie est enclose! O verbe vie, à qui te considere! Verbe par qui le pere tout propose, Tout veult, tout faict, tout ordonne, et dispose, Et ses vertus, et ses graces depose Aux siens, qui sont en ce val de misere.76

The “Word” as a title is amplified by the epithets, by the exclamation “ô,” and by the succeeding phrases beginning with “par qui,” “à qui,” “en qui,” etc. One title in which two nouns directly follow should be distinguished: “verbe vie.” In both stanzas, we may observe that the first, shorter hemistich contains the briefer words, whereas the second contains a smaller number of longer words, 76 Victor Brodeau, Poésies, ed. Hilary M. Tomlinson (Genève: Droz, 1982), 136.

147

which gives the effect of chanting in the onset of the line and a more drawling and reflective tone in its second part. This phenomenon is chiefly visible in the lines containing nouns or adverbs in their final parts: “le commencement,” “le pensement,” “veritablement,” “le firmament,” “divinement.”77 The attention to the phonic aspects of this oration is apparent also in alliterative connections, such as “Verbe divin, Dieu veritablement,” in which the words in the external positions begin with “ve-,” and those in the internal positions with “di-.” Regarding these features, it can be reasonably assumed that the litanic verse has been introduced in the form of the anaphora to achieve strong sound effects. The poet is also familiar with the process of seeking an adequate name for a deity, but in the following stanzas he uses simply the word “name”: “Nom de tout temps au ciel preordonné, / […] / Ce nom JESUS,” “O nom pensé, dict et parfaict pour nous,” “O digne nom, tresamyable, et doulx.” Additionally, he mentions “[…] Les Psalmes, les Canticques, / La Loy Moyse et Prophetes antiques / […] sont composes des noms à toy unicques.”78 Oraison pour avoir santé79 of La Péruse is less focused on laudation and more on entreaty, a feature which is absent in the previously analyzed example. The prayer is directed to God and contains the repetition of His name, “Dieu,” mainly in the onset of several lines, while a few times it recurs also inside them: Dieu, vrai Dieu, Dieu seigneur de nous pauvres humains, Dieu qui nous baillas être, et nous fis de tes mains, Dieu, Dieu qui est seul Dieu, Dieu de qui la facture C’est la Terre et le Ciel, c’est toute creature, C’est tout, tout ce qui est, et tout ce qui sera.80

The second component of the litanic verse is the formula of supplication, also including the repetitive element, which appears in the end of each section. The aim of this prayer is healing. The litanic verse is limited to the opening section of the poem, which is characterized by its length (twenty-four lines as compared 77 The anaphora, which returns in the tenth stanza in the shape of “par toi,” follows the rule of brief and dense elements in the onset of lines and of long nouns (with a repeated epithet) in their final parts: “Par toy avons nostre creation, / Par toy avons nostre redemption, / Par ta mort, vie, et gloyre par ta honte” (ibid., 137–138). 78 Ibid., 145. 79 Written during his illness in the year of his death, 1554, cf. Nicolas Banachévitch, Jean Bastier de la Péruse (1529–1554): étude biographique et littéraire (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1923), 59. 80 Jean de la Péruse, Poésies complètes, ed. James A. Coleman (Exeter: University of Exeter, 1992), 62.

148

with over a dozen in other sections) and by the fact that the formula is included twice—in the sixteenth line and in lines 23–24. Firstly, it emerges in the shape “Gueri moi, ô Seigneur, de céte maladie,” and secondly, the first hemistich is maintained, and the formula is prolonged to two lines: “Gueri moi, ô Seigneur, et de ton Ciel m’envoie / Le jour tant desire que sain je me revoie.” In this form, it is repeated another five times after each section. This expression may suggest that the prayer is rather personal; nonetheless, as we have seen above, God is depicted with the use of second person plural pronouns. In the second series of anaphora on “Dieu,” “Dieu seigneur de nous pauvres humains” transfigures into “Dieu, mon roi, Dieu, mon tout,” and the lyrical “I” stops invoking the God of the entire community and establishes a more intimate relation with Him: Dieu, que seul Dieu je tien, Dieu en qui seul j’espere, Dieu, que je recognoi pour mon Seigneur et père, Dieu mon Roi, Dieu mon tout, Dieu en qui j’ai ma foi, Dieu en qui je m’atten, Dieu en qui seul je croi.

The repetition of such a small-scale unit as the word “Dieu” in the alexandrine is fortified by the fact that in each “title” the reference to the lyrical “I” appears as “mon” or “je.” The prayer of La Péruse has been assessed as “une des rares poésies de l’époque qu’inspire un vrai sentiment chrétien,” “une prière touchante.”81 Nicolas Banachévitch claims that “l’humilité chrétienne dont il a imprégné quelques passages de cette pièce, contraste avec l’orgueil affecté que dénotent ses odes.”82 These remarks may be easily applied to the analyzed lines in which the devotion of God, the Creator of all things, has been demonstrated. However, the following sections provide an attitude opposite to the first impression. The person speaking not only uses sophisticated stylistic means to demonstrate his poetic abilities, but also admits clearly that he is a poet and that he may express gratitude for his healing through his poems. We cannot help but feel as though he exploits his potential healing as a condition which should be fulfilled: […] s’il te plait me remettre en sante Le bien que m’auras fait fera par moi chanté, […] Je ferai par mes vers ta grand’bonte savoir. […] Ainsi, ô bon Seigneur, pour n’avoir gueri qu’un Tu feras honoré de la voix d’un chacun.

81 Nicolas Banachévitch, Jean Bastier de la Péruse (1529–1554), 214. 82 Ibid., 216.

149

We can put forward the hypothesis that this meaningful example of litanic verse from the beginning of the poem serves as an illustration, a sort of sample, of how this laudation might be composed. La Muse Chrestienne of Du Bartas contains four chants of “Triomphe de foy” (1574), and in the last, comprising more than 200 lines, one finds the litanic verse whose main component is the anaphora on “Par foy.” Occasionally, probably in order to prolong this relatively short element of alexandrine, it is presented with an additional element, such as “Icy par Foy” or “Vraiement c’est par la Foy”: Par la foy d’Isaye est deffait sans bataille, Icy par Foy Moyse arme d’ire & de rage […] Icy sainct Paul par Foy ne craint point dans une Isle […] Moyse rend par Foy ladre sa sœur Marie. Elizee par Foy fat ladre en un moment Son avare valet, […]. Par foy Paul aveugla le grand sorcier Elime. Par Foy Pierre enflammé d’un tres-juste courraux Fit mourir […].83

The repetition from line to line, which is refined by the enumeration of names of Biblical personages, may imply that this litanic verse is modelled on the polyonymic gene. Nevertheless, the personage of Moses appears seven times, Paul is mentioned five times, and Elisha is mentioned four times in various parts of the text. As a consequence, the work resembles a collection of litanies of modest length or a part of a larger work, as opposed to a continuous text. Apparently, faith is the main object of laudation; the epithet “l’invincible” is often applied to it, and in the introduction to the chant, we learn that it describes “certaines nobles victoire.” This triumphalistic vision is concluded with a component important for litanic verse, namely the supplication directed to God. The entreaty does not use a formula, yet focuses on another victory of the faith: “Fai que la vive Foy de ma raison triomphe.” An interesting aspect deserving of commentary is the manner in which the litanic verse is framed within la poétique du songe of Du Bartas, and how it is 83 Guillaume De Salluste Du Bartas, The works of Guillaume De Salluste Sieur Du Bartas, eds. Urban Tigner Holmes, John Coriden Lyons and Robert White Linker (Genève: Slatkine, 1977), 164. This structure may also be used inside a line or even close to the final part of a line: “He Dieu! qui pourra faire a la Foi resistance, / Si le fer donte-tout est par la Foy donté? / Si sur l’onde le fer est par la Foy porté?”

150

linked with the motif of “tableaux celestes”84 which is clearly introduced at the beginning of the analyzed chant: “[…] grands tables / Où d’un peintre divin les veritables mains / Ont peinte, […] / De l’invincible Foy les victoires notables.” The status of the litanic verse must be associated with the use of tableaux, as in this chant the topic is reopened several times: “en un autre tableau,” “et autre part je vois le peintre pendus.” Since the verbal repetition does not describe a physical thing, is it rather a sign of some pictorial motifs recurring in each of the “tableaux”? One should not ignore the fact that the poet claims to describe a phenomenon which cannot be seized, not only by human sight, but by the human senses in general: “le sens rien n’y cognoit.” Therefore, we should agree with the critic who argues that the use of “tableaux” in sixteenth-century poetry “has little to do with the pictorial.”85 Considering some fundamental functions, firstly, we may notice that a smooth transition between the images is ensured by the repetition of the same expression, the element which causes a movement in the static series of images.86 Secondly, a common aim for using both “tableaux” and repetition is the didactic message.87 Last, but not least, the significance of the temporal dimension should be interpreted. The events, the victories of faith, are described in the present tenses: “évocation de faits passés en tant que présents et intrusion du lecteur ou du scripteur dans le texte (comme lorsque le poète se décrit comme témoin visuel et acteur des scènes rapportées).”88 To put it more precisely, the described events signal the presence of God’s existence: “Le tableau abolit le temps.

84 The inspiration of Amorosa Visione of Boccaccio (S. Bokdam, “La forme du « songe » dans la poésie religieuse au seizième siècle,” in Le Songe à la Renaissance, ed. Françoise Charpentier, Saint-Étienne: Institut d’Études de la Renaissance et de l’Âge classique, 1990, 144) and Titian’s Triumph of Faith (Henri Busson, Le Rationalisme dans la littérature française de la Renaissance (1533–1601), Paris: Vrin, 1971, 598) are suggested. 85 K. Maynard, “Writing Martyrdom: Agrippa d’Aubigné Reconstruction of Sixteenthcentury Martyrology,” Renaissance and Reformation/Renaissance et Réforme, vol. 30, no. 3 (2007): 47. 86 Busson, Le Rationalisme dans la littérature française de la Renaissance (1533–1601), 598: “un rêve qui se déroule en quatre tableaux.” 87 Cf. M. Jeanneret, “Les tableaux spirituels d’Agrippa d’Aubigné,” Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance, vol. 35 (1973): 236: “« tableau » et « peinture » apparaissent fréquemment dans la littérature didactique, […] moins pour représenter que pour transmettre un sens édifiant.” 88 Olivier Pot, “Les tableaux de Tragiques ou le paradoxe d’image,” in Poétiques d’Aubigné, ed. Olivier Pot (Genève: Droz, 1999), 107.

151

Les actes de l’histoire […] prennent ainsi leur place dans le présent absolu de Dieu […]. […] ils se côtoient dans l’atemporalité divine.”89 Pierre de Ronsard’s Hynne des peres de famille à Monsieur S. Blaise (published posthumously in 1587) contains “a series of prayers for the protection of a rural community” addressed to the saint who “was the patron of the parish of Montrouveau near Ronsard’s priory at Croixval.”90 The connection of this poetic prayer with the litanies is emphasized in two ways: through the information that the poem is destined to be sung “sur le chant Te rogamus, audi nos”91 and by the remark of Nicolas Richelet, author of the commentary on the hymn in the edition of 1618: “Je te prie, escoute nous c’est une imitation de la fin de chaque article de prière de nos letanies.”92 The re-writing of the litanic prayer by Ronsard indeed maintains the repetitive formula of supplications, yet it uses the first person singular pronoun. It is chiefly a form of invocation which manifests an innovation. The poem contains twenty-two stanzas and is characterized by frame composition, as identical stanzas begin and conclude the work. There are unique places in which the name of the saint is given. All stanzas are built of six sevensyllable lines with the plain rhyme and in such a manner that the prayer has a dynamic rhythm. The main component of the litanic verse in the invocations are anaphoras— mainly on “Garde” but also on “Chasse,” “Que” and “De”—appearing on the level of stanzas. In comparison with the litanies of the Church, in this poetic example, each invocation occupies a part of a stanza or an entire stanza rather than one line. “Garde” invokes the listing of persons and objects who should be protected, whereas “Chasse” introduces an enumeration of misfortunes that people wish to avoid, from the very general to specific everyday accidents: “toute peste et tout meschef,”93 “la guerre bien loing,” “blessure de congnée,” “morseure de chiens enragez et fous,” “terreur,” “illusion estrange.”94 As we can see, these undetailed invocations are close to the Latin originals, such as A peste, fame et bello. The

89 Jeanneret, “Les tableaux spirituels d’Agrippa d’Aubigné,” 239. 90 Philip Ford, Ronsard’s Hymnes: A Literary and Iconographical Study (Tempe: Binghamton University, 1997), 287–288. 91 Pierre de Ronsard, “Hynne des peres de famille à Monsieur S. Blaise,” in Œuvres complètes, vol. 2, 658. It is also clearly stated in the second stanza that the celebration involves both “oraisons / Et processions sacrées.” 92 Pierre de Ronsard, “L’hymne des pères de famille à S. Blaise,” commented by Nicolas Richelet (Paris: Buon, 1618), 7. 93 Ronsard, “Hynne des peres de famille à Monsieur S. Blaise,” 658. 94 Ibid., 660.

152

transition between the spiritual and prosaic demands which directly adjoin each other causes the surprise. However, when analyzing them all, the reader notices that even these specific requests are inscribed in the plan of life’s course, when night follows day, and autumn replaces summer. The components of this world vision are the happiness of families guaranteed by, for instance, a good marriage (“Enfans, et femmes, et filles, / Et leur donne bons espous”), as well as protection from “sorciers” and “poison,” the safety of farm and domestic animals, visible in the series of stanzas starting with the lines “Garde nos petits troupeaux” and “Garde poulles et poussins,” and the prosperity of the harvest. As Anne-Pascale Pouey-Mounou points out, “Ces vers correspondent à une réalité autant qu’à un topos. Toutefois leur rapprochement montre que l’évocation de l’abondance se lie aisément à celle des menaces.”95 Regarding these supplications, fundamental for the community, we note that the use of the first person singular “je” in the beginning of the formula may not seem justified. However, it is possible that the person speaking demonstrates in this way that he wants to lead the community. Jacques Davy Du Perron’s Cantique de la Vierge Marie,96 consisting of twentythree quatrains rhyming abab, includes an abundance of Marian motifs. Therefore, in order to demonstrate in which context the litanic verse is more likely to appear, I categorize them in thematic units. The first part that we may distinguish consists of two stanzas, describing the Assumption of Mary with the use of verbs in passé. The second part, composed of one stanza and a single line of the following stanza, is a portrait of Holy Mary. Nevertheless, this portrait is not a static one—it profits from the use of verbs whose role may be demonstrated through comparison of the 95 Anne-Pascale Pouey-Mounou, L’Imaginaire cosmologique de Ronsard (Genève: Droz, 2002), 332. It is worth noting that Ford also mentions this hymn in the chapter of his study entitled “The Seasons,” where “the changing face of the countryside” is described as the inspiration for poets (Ford, Ronsard’s Hymnes, 245). 96 The musical version was published in 1610 in Les Meslanges de la Musique (Paris: Pierre Ballard, 1610). The literary source for this composition was the first edition of the poem in Recueil de diverses poésies tant du feu sieur de Sponde, que des sieurs du Perron, de Bertaud, de Porcheres, et autres non encore imprimées (Rouen: Du Petit Val, 1597 ou 1598, et Paris: N. et P. de Bonfons, 1598). The text was changed in the edition of 1622, the posthumous one: Recueil des poésies de Monsieur Du Perron (Paris: Actes Sud-Papiers, 1988), 17–20. The place of this author in the history of literature may be defined according to Marcel Simon: between “derniers Renaissants” and “l’aube du classicisme” (“Du Perron à l’aube du classicisme,” Cahier des Annales de Normandie, vol. 9, no. 1, 1977: 121). Cf. the remarks of including Perron in “La seconde bande” with d’Aubigné, Jamyn, and Du Bartas [Marie Madeleine Fragonard, “Une « Volée de poètes »: Génération, mouvement, esthétique?,” Albineana. Cahiers d’Aubigné, vol. 22 (2010): 56].

153

expressions from the poem with the Biblical passage (Rev. 12:1) that apparently served as its inspiration: “une Femme! le soleil  l’e nv e l opp e,  la lune  e s t   sous ses pieds et douze étoiles  c ou ron n e nt   sa tête.”97 The figure of the Sun in the Biblical citation does operate as an agent, and astronomical objects are also mentioned in consideration of their position toward the woman. Moreover, in The Book of Revelation the sign appeared in heaven, whereas Perron develops the vision in which Holy Mary “va paroissant” and the celestial bodies honor her, like the angels and seraphim did during her Assumption, which was mentioned in the initial stanzas. The third thematic unit of Cantique de la Vierge Marie enriches the image of Holy Mary, focusing on her intercessions: in four lines the author describes how many services she does for the people, regarding “nos clameurs” and “nos desirs,” and emphasizes that she does this constantly, “sans cesse.” As the fourth part, I distinguish the larger part of the poem, that is, eleven stanzas which are devoted to recalling “tous les actes passez / Qui le peuvent toucher de joye ou de tristesse.” These lines evoke the motif of the joys and sorrows of Holy Mary already mentioned in our previous chapter. There is a large disproportion between the joys and sorrows, as only the birth of Christ is mentioned as being among the “joys,” which forms a foundation for the praising of Marian body parts as she carried and nursed our Savior. By contrast, few stanzas are devoted to the passion of Christ. Then the narration glides smoothly using the motif of faith as the main attribute of the Mother of Christ in the litanic verse: C’est celle dont la foy dure eternellement, C’est celle dont la foy n’eut jamais de pareille, C’est celle dont la foy pour notre sauvement Creut à la voix de l’Ange et conceut par l’oreille.98

We first note that the content of the first hemistich is repeated from line to line.99 Then the common Marian antonomasias are enumerated with “C’est” in the onset of the stanzas and sometimes within them, too: C’est l’astre lumineux qui jamais ne s’estaint, […];

97 All translations to French of the Holy Scripture are from the Bible de Jérusalem and are taken from the following edition: La Bible de Jérusalem: la sainte Bible traduite en français sous la direction de l’École biblique de Jérusalem, nouvelle édition revue et augmentée (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1973). The emphasis in the citation is mine. 98 Recueil des poésies de Monsieur Du Perron, 19. 99 Cf. Simon, “Du Perron à l’aube du classicisme,” 123: “Les parallélismes, les redoublements d’expression que souligne la syntaxe régulière de l’alexandrin.”

154

C’est le palais royal tout remply de clarté, […]. C’est le beau Paradis vers l’Orient planté […] C’est la myrrhe et la fleur et le baume odorant […]; C’est le jardin reclus suavement fleurant, C’est la rose des champs et le lys des vallées. C’est le rameau qui garde en tout temps sa couleur, La branche de Jessé, la tige pure et saincte, Qui rapporte son fruict et ne perd point sa fleur, Qui demeure pucelle et qui se void enceincte. C’est l’Aube du matin qui produit le Soleil […], L’Astre des navigans, le Fare nompareil,

Fernand Hallyn argues that this enumeration forms “un ensemble qui se ferme en cercle, comme une couronne de gloire,” and he points out that “l’astre lumineux” corresponds to the image of “l’astre des navigans.”100 Moreover, he demonstrates that the thematic flow introduces first spatial metaphors, then floral, and finally astronomical ones. We should add that many of them, from all thematic areas, involve the role of Holy Mary in the work of salvation as the Mother of Christ, who is also symbolically evoked: “C’est le palais royal tout remply de clarté,” “la tige pure et saincte,  / Qui rapporte son fruict et ne perd point sa fleur,” “C’est l’Aube du matin qui produit le Soleil.” We have ended the citation with the penultimate stanza to emphasize the inequality between the part of the poem devoted to expressing praise, consisting of six stanzas, and the single quatrain that has a supplicatory character. The difference between them is based also on the fact that the last stanza does not continue the anaphoric mode, developing instead a marinist metaphor: Estoille de la mer, nostre seul reconfort, Sauve-nous des rochers, du vent et du naufrage. Ayde-nous de tes vœux pour nous conduire au port, Et nous monstre ton Fils sur le bord du rivage.

The role of Mary as the intercessor has been once again accentuated.

100 Fernand Hallyn, Formes métaphoriques dans la poésie lyrique de l’âge baroque en France (Genève: Droz, 1975), 73.

155

We have devoted several lines to representing the range of themes explored by Perron. To conclude, we should point out that the analyzed poem is not a unique example of the coexistence of litanic verse with the topic of joys and sorrows. It is significant that in all examples of this nature the enumeration of joys is not a decisive factor in the litanic verse: the joys and the litanic verse dominate in different parts of the same work—here we should recall Rutebeuf ’s Le dit des propriétés de Notre Dame—and where they exist alongside each other, as in Les XV Joies Nostre-Dame of Christine de Pisan, they are expressed by distinct means, such as the variants of the phrase “Pour la joye” on the side of “joys,” and the invocations to Holy Mary and the refrain Ave Maria on the side of the litanic verse. The poem of Perron bears a resemblance to Rutebeuf ’s dit because, as in the medieval example, the structure “tu es” has been used to introduce various Marian titles, similar to “C’est.” However, the incorporation of the litanic verse into these works distinguishes these two authors. Rutebeuf first introduces the metaphors and then proceeds to the joys; for Perron it is suitable to finish the poem with the litanic verse. In Aubigné’s Les Tragiques, many repetitive passages commenting on political events, alliances and the rulers of the world101 are descriptive, among them, we find the prayer in Misères, which is distinguished by the enumeration of titles addressed to God:102 Tout -Puissant,  t out -voyant, qui du haut des hauts cieux Fends les cœurs plus serrés par l’éclair de tes yeux, Qui fis  t out,  et connus  t out   ce que tu fis être: Tout  p a r f a it  en ouvrant, t out  p a r f a it  en connaître, De qui l’œil  t out   courant, et  t out   voyant aussi, De qui le soin sans soin prend de  t out   le souci, De qui la main forma exemplaires et causes, Qui préveus les effets dès le naître des choses;103

101 Cf. for instance, the fragment devoted to Catherine de’ Medici, also from Misères: Théodore Agrippa d’Aubigné, Les Tragiques (Paris: Gallimard, 1995), 98. Some of them are analyzed by Malcolm Quainton, who studies “une accumulation de structures répétitives et anaphoriques […], moments où les mots et les séquences syn­taxiques deviennent des centres d’énergie” (“Vers une lecture graphique des Tragiques,” in Poétiques d’Aubigné, 185). 102 The theme of God as the main addressee of “les procédés de nomination litaniques” has been raised in: Marie Madeleine Fragonard, La Pensée religieuse d’Agrippa d’Aubigné et son expression (Lille: Atelier National de Reproduction des thèses, 1986), 75. 103 D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, 78. The emphasis in the citation is mine.

156

The prefix “tout” might be used not only as in the first line, where it operates as the subject, but also to express other characteristics of God: “Qui fis tout, et conneus tout,” and the properties of His abilities, as His eyes are “tout courant” and “tout voyant.” It is, thus, much more useful than the litanic anaphora Sanctus, which usually is not applied in the middle of a line and does not have such collocability.104 The supplications are dispersed and are not repetitive, as they are subordinated to the content of God’s metaphorical name which accompanies them. The prayer is done for others, for those who are characterized by hardness of heart, that God may cut this hardness with the clearness of His eyes. Apart from that, two expressions, “de ton amour” and “de ton feu pur,” are used to pray for the poet himself, in order to warm and cleanse his soul.

104 However, by scattering about the key word “tout,” the poet does not achieve the effect that will be analyzed in the excerpt about the use of “porte-” by Du Bartas, that is, a word as a sort of flywheel to further enumeration.

157

7.  In a Bucolic Tone The litanic verse in Remy Belleau’s Chant pastoral de la paix (1559) occupies a passage numbering eighteen stanzas which represents a different metrical scheme compared to the main versification of the poem. The pattern is much shorter, as instead of ten alexandrines, the reader finds a stanza of eight octosyllables. The chant in general is established through a dialogue105 between three shepherds: Bellin, Thoinet and Perrot. However, the litanic verse is recited only by Thoinet, whose prototype is the poet Baïf. According to Virginia Scott and Sara Sturm-Maddox, this is because “[Baïf—M.K.] had written a famous poem on the theme of peace in 1550.” Scott and Sturm-Maddox also draw our attention to the point that “the good news is announced by Perrot,” who may be compared to the personage of Ronsard, who “played a major role” during “the literary celebrations of the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis of 1559.”106 The indubitably prayerful character of the chant is revealed when we read about Thoinet: “[il] alloit ainsi priant.” The main element of litanic verse is the chairetismic expression put in the onset of the first stanza:

105 Cf. the definition of Belleau: “l’Eglogue à la façon de Théocrite est brève et courte, où les pasteurs ordinairement parlent et correspondent en vers alternatifs: le chant pastoral est plus long et presque se suit toujours d’un propos continuel” (Pierre de Laudun d’Aigaliers, L’Art poétique françois, Paris: Société des Textes Français Modernes, 2000, 70). Virginia Scott and Sara Sturm-Maddox describe the analyzed passage as “the hymn to Peace set within a pastoral frame” (Performance, Poetry and Politics on the Queen’s Day: Catherine de Médicis and Pierre de Ronsard at Fontainbleau, Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2007, 64). About the possible source of ancient inspiration from Tibullus, Johannes Secundus and Latinlanguage poet Andrea Navagero cf. Alexandre Eckhardt, Remy Belleau. Sa vie — sa « Bergerie ». Étude historique et critique (Budapest: Librairie Joseph Németh, 1917), 127–128. 106 Scott and Sturm-Maddox, Performance, Poetry and Politics on the Queen’s Day, 64. The mentioned poem of Baïf is entitled “Sur la paix avec les Anglois”; however, it is worth mentioning that another of Baïf ’s works on the same subject, L’Hymne de la Paix. A la Royne de Navarre, written in 1572, does not avoid litanic verse (l. 176–186) and it ends with the supplication to God who assures “la concorde & la paix.”

159

Je te salue, O paix fille de Dieu, Fille de Dieu, tu sois la bien venüe,107

while the second stanza brings the same formula: Je te salue, O repos Eternel, De l’Univers l’alliance premiere,

and the third one contains this anaphora, as well: Je te salue, ô paix, souverain bien Du peuple bas, sûr appui des provinces. Je te salue, ô garde de nos princes, Et des cités le fidèle entretien.

The beginning of each stanza is composed of the repetitive formula of salutation, the recurrent “ô” and the titles, some of them repeating, like “fille” and “paix.” In the onset of some second lines, possessive nouns are placed—“de Dieu,” “de l’Univers,” “du people bas,” “des cites”—which demonstrate the integrality of the world’s hierarchical vision, of both the celestial and terrestrial world, where peace dwells. It is not only the Christian universe that is recalled, but the mythological one as well; for instance, in the third line of the first stanza, Astraea and her mother Themis are mentioned as those who gracefully return to the world. The cosmos is completely settled and perfectly finalized in an atemporal moment: “un éternel printemps.” The second component of the litanic verse in Chant pastoral de la paix is introduced in the sixth and seventh stanzas, in which peace is praised, but not in such an appealing way as in the previously mentioned formula. In the onset of these stanzas, we encounter the expression “C’est toy qui” which recurs in the polyonymic anaphora: Par toy chacun vit et libre et gaillard, Par toy l’on fait tournois et mariages, Par toy Venus allume noz courages D’un feu segret […]108.

The ninth stanza brings a sort of conclusion to this plot, as “C’est toy” returns twice. As we have said before, the prayer is directed to peace, yet praise of life close to nature is evident under the layer of laudation: peace is desirable for the 107 Remy Belleau, “Chant pastoral de la paix,” in Œuvres poétiques, vol. I: Petites inventions. Odes d’Anacréon. Œuvres diverses 1554–1561, ed. Guy Demerson (Paris: H. Champion, 1995), 231–232. 108 Ibid., 233.

160

reason that the harvest may be gathered without obstacles, and the supply of food ensured, while war is depicted as the destruction of order. There is no description of the marching of armies or of the ravages of war; the theme of crops being seized from the people is introduced, instead: “Guerre qui fait que le fruit de la terre / S’evanouist si tost de notre main.” Therefore, we may conclude that it is peace which ensures the ontic stability of the litanic worldview, even if this stability is naturally modulated by, for instance, the changing of the seasons.109

109 Cf. Witold Sadowski, “A Generic Worldview. The Case of the Chronotope of Litany,” in Literarische Form. Geschichte und Kultur ästhetischer Modellbildung, ed. Robert Matthias Erdbeer, Florian Kläger, and Klaus Stierstorfer (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2017), 365: “The chronotope of litanic verse implies a radical negation of agrarian assumptions about the reversibility of positions in the world. The world of litany may be complicated, it may abound in dynamic transformations, but within the chronotopic framework the litanic reality appears to be ontologically stable.”

161

8.  Cosmological Poetry The use of litanic verse in Renaissance cosmological poetry is not significant in scale. La Sepmaine ou Creation du Monde of Du Bartas numbers more than 6000 lines,110 and Christophe de Gamon’s La Semaine, ou Création du monde, du sieur Christofle de Gamon, contre celle du sieur Bartas is of similar length, yet litanic verse occurs in only a little over ten lines. However, the presence of this form in these two works by Protestant authors—of which the second was written in response to the first, and which are devoted to various objects yet use the same popular alexandrine meter—deserves a commentary. In the part of Du Bartas’s La Sepmaine ou Creation du Monde111 called Le Troisième Jour, the litanic verse starts with the formula of salutation and is addressed to the Earth:112 Je te salue, ô terre, ô terre porte-grains, Porte-or, porte-santé, porte-habits, porte-humains, Porte-fruits, porte-tours, ronde, belle, immobile, Patiente, diverse, odorante, fertile, Vestue d’un manteau tout damassé de fleurs, Passementé de flots, bigarré de couleurs.

It seems that the author uses words such as “terre” and “porte-” (porte- acts in a manner as if this word provides propulsion for the series of repetitive expressions), repeats them and then suddenly ends it. As a consequence, beginning halfway through the third line, other adjectives are then simply enumerated. This repetition of porte- has a semantic basis: “Cultivating admiration by correlating seven adjectives with seven tasks […] that the earth accomplishes as porteur, Du

110 Yvonne Bellenger, “Quelques mots sur La Sepmaine de Du Bartas”, L’Information littéraire, vol. 57, no. 1 (2005): 40. 111 The work was published in 1578, but the version quoted here is the edition of 1585. A note in the margin of this edition describes it as “l’hymne et louange de la terre.” This refrerence to the hymnic genre is often mentioned by modern critics, cf. Violaine Giacomotto-Charra cited in the main text and Yvonne Bellenger, “Quelques mots sur La Sepmaine de Du Bartas,” 43: “Le poète fait de cette Journée un hymne à la terre.” 112 Yvonne Bellenger, “La répétition dans la poésie du XVIe siècle,” in Écrire et conter: mélanges de rhétorique et d’histoire littéraire du XVIe siècle offerts à Jean-Claude Moisan, eds. Marie-Claude Malenfant, Sabrina Vervacke (Québec: Presses Université Laval, 2003), 64.

163

Bartas portrays an ordered, providential globe.”113 When it comes to the term “porte-tours,” which refers to the mythological Purtophoros and is represented by a woman whose head is crowned with towers, the next step is the use of an adjective evoking the shape both of a tower and of a crown, “round.” Violaine Gia­ comotto-Charra finds in this fragment of La Sepmaine “la structure de l’hymne, qui rassemble l’intégralité des qualificatifs peu à peu destillés par le poète et les développe chacun à nouveau en termes synonymes ou parents.”114 Apart from “ronde” we should particularly make note of the adjectives “diverse” and “fertile,” which are in some manner anticipated by the enumeration of “porte-”—the Earth undoubtedly is marked by diversity, as humans, plants and animals inhabit it, and is fruitful, as it is characterized as “porte-grains.” The repetition of the porte- element, as Bellenger suggests, may be a reference to Genesis, in which “portant” is used a few times.115 Du Bartas’s depiction already bears some Marian characteristics regarding the selection of epithets and the motif of the robe, resembling a passage from the Psalms (45:15). Another piece of evidence to support our hypothesis of the influence of Marian descriptions on this portrayal of the Earth is provided in the next lines of Le Troisième Jour, in which the chairetismic “Je te salue” occurs twice. The importance of this influence is expressed in the selection of titles, like, for instance, the names of family relations such as “chaste espouse du Ciel,” “ô soeur, mere, nourrice, hôtesse,” or of the hierarchy of rulers, such as “grande princesse,” all common in Marian poetry. Other key words refer to the view of the shape of the Earth through the ages. The poet does not acknowledge the theory of Copernicus,116 which is manifested in the lines following the litanic verse; as discussed by Françoise Joukovsky: “La terre par exemple s’anime quand Du Bartas l’entoure d’un réseau de lignes lumineuses ou liquides […]: « Tant de cieux tournoyans […] ».”117 It is the sources of light that are in movement, not the Earth, which is depicted with the adjective

113 Christopher D. Johnson, “N+2, or a Late Renaissance Poetics of Enumeration,” MLN, vol. 127, no. 5 (2012): 1119. 114 Violaine Giacomotto-Charra, La Forme des choses: poésie et savoirs dans la « Sepmaine » de Du Bartas (Toulouse: Presses Universitaires du Mirail, 2009), 263. 115 Bellenger, “Quelques mots sur La Sepmaine de Du Bartas,” 43. 116 Cf. for instance, Michel Jeanneret: Perpetual Motion: Transforming Shapes in the Renaissance from Da Vinci to Montaigne (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 24. 117 Françoise Joukovsky, Paysages de la Renaissance (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1974), 105. Cf. Giacomotto-Charra, La Forme des choses, 266.

164

“immobile” and expressions such as “base,” “racine,” “fondement,” all denoting stability. Furthermore, the expression “pied du grand animal qu’on appellee le Monde” does not evoke the scientific interests of this period, but rather some archaic concepts about the Earth being borne up by animals. Lastly, we may again mention the epithet “fertile,” which sums up the final result of the creation of the third day in the Biblical story and is also present in the characterization of the Earth. It is the aspect of the Earth’s role in the Universe which divides Du Bartas and Gamon;118 however, the main theme of the litanic verse in La Semaine, ou Création du monde, du sieur Christofle de Gamon, contre celle du sieur Bartas (1609), in a passage numbering more than twenty lines in the Sixième jour, is a laudatory image of the human soul. Gamon’s use of litanic verse is less innovative than the form of attributes with the same component porte- noted in Du Bartas’s work. In the beginning, Gamon introduces a series of various metaphorical titles: Source des facultes, des choses le milieu, Singe de la Nature et truchement de Dieu, Plant divin, grand tresor qu’un petit vase enferre, Qui mezures le Ciel sans bouger de la Terre.119

he also establishes the anaphora: Par qui l’homme peut voir son invincible Autheur, Par qui parle aux humains de Dieu l’Ambassadeur Par qui des bonnes mœurs se plante la racine, Par qui le Magistrat ses sentences fulmine, Par qui l’homme disert meut les rocs cyrrhéans, Par qui les Arions charment l’onde et les vents, Par qui domtent nos maux les enfants d’Esculape.

The presence of the lyrical “I” in this work is quite prominent, as the poet confesses to the reader his poetic difficulty, which is lack of time needed for finishing his work: “il reste peu de jours.”120 This may mean that a reason for introducing 118 Gilles Banderier, “L’intégration des sciences naturelles dans la poésie encyclopédique du XVIe siècle,” in Pour une littérature savante: les médiations littéraires du savoir, ed. Nella Arambasin (Paris: Presses Universitaires Franc-Comtoises, 2002), 26: “Il est exact que les poètes encyclopédiques dans leur ensemble — à l’exception remarquable de Gamon — ont ignoré Copernic et la scienza nuova en train de se constituer.” 119 Christophe de Gamon, La Semaine, ou Création du monde (Lyon: Morillon, 1609), 205. 120 In the remark in the margin we read: “Louanges de l’ame ou le temps ne luy permet s’etendre” (ibid.).

165

this clear parallel structure is the need to employ a pattern which is less timeconsuming than inventing antonomasias which fit into the meter. This enumeration also permits him to introduce other deities and personages into the poem. Their selection indicates that we cannot assume without doubt that it is the soul which is being praised—in its antonomasias we notice the epithet “divin” and God is mentioned a few times in the anaphoric fragment.

166

9. Litanic Verse in Chants Royaux—Exploring the Rules of Repetition Two examples of chant royal, one which reflects on the Passion of Christ and the other a Marian poem, will allow us to investigate the similarities between this genre, whose attributes may be described as “laudative,” “ambitieux,” “sérieux officiel et conventionnel,”121 and litanic verse. According to Daniel Poirion, chant royal is positioned particularly close to prayer: “[…] le chant royal, non calqué sur une amoureuse, servira normalement de cadre à la prière, non seulement dans les puys de Dieppe et de Rouen, mais aussi dans la poésie de cour […]. Le thème religieux reste donc normalement associé à cette forme.”122 However, a refrain in the last line of each stanza and an envoi does not provide sufficient evidence to recognize in it a litanic prayer. Moreover, Poirion argues that one of the principles of the genre is “un principe de rayonnement” and he suggests another type of prayer as a potential equivalent: “les éléments du poème sont en quelque sort disposés autour d’un centre virtuel, comme en une rosace.”123 The general scheme of chant royal consists of five stanzas and an envoi—both examples analyzed in this chapter are modelled on this. They are also analogous to each other due to their use of eleven decasyllables in one stanza and five in the envoi. However, Jean Marot’s poem entitled “Chant Royal digne d’estre escript en tableau soubz la pourtraicture de IESUCHRIST ayant la couronne d’espines sur la teste, tenant un roseau en sa main, et assis tout nud sur sa croix”124 represents an intermediary between the chant royal and the rondeau parfait genre,125 in which the line-refrain also appears in the beginning of each stanza, and so thus the scale of repetition is great. The recurrence encompasses in this manner the addressees of the call—the Christians who are invoked as hardened hearts and

121 Daniel Poirion, Le Poète et le Prince: l’évolution du lyrisme courtois de Guillaume de Machaut à Charles d’Orléans (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1965), 362, 368. 122 Ibid., 364. 123 Ibid., 361. 124 Published posthumously in 1536. 125 Jean Marot, Les deux recueils Jehan Marot de Caen, poëte et escripvain de la royne Anne de Bretagne, et depuis valet de chambre du treschretien roy François premier, eds. Gérard Defaux, Thierry Mantovani (Genève: Droz, 1999), 326. Cf. T. Mantovani, “Sur le rondeau dit « parfait » de Clément Marot,” Loxias 15 (2006), http://revel.unice.fr/ loxias/index.html?id=1414 [accessed January 12, 2017].

167

as “Tous Chrestiens” in the envoi and who, by contemplation of the image of the crucified Christ, should be led to examine their conscience. The litanic verse attaches to this kind of repetition an insistence in the repetition of imperatives such as “voyez” and “allez”: Cueurs endurcis par obstination, Voyez JESUS tout nud, sans couverture, […] Cueurs endurcis par obstination, Princes regnans, et gens de prelature, Voyez le chef de toute nation, Roys sur tous Roys, qui domination Vous a donne sur toute creature, Battu, soillé de crachatz et ordure. […] Allez vers luy qui tout mal lave et cure Et lors pourrez par supplication Luy requerir que grace vous procure. Allez, allez, de vous il n’aura cure, Cueurs endurcis par obstination.126

The immediate alternation of invocations and supplications brings to mind the litanies, and this impression is intensified by the presence of several Christological antonomasias apart from those cited above: “le Verbe en humaine facture,” “l’arbre portant fruict de vie,” “Pain vif gardant l’ame de pourriture, / Fontaine et puys d’eaue de remission.” Nevertheless, we should note that the scheme of communicative functions is enriched by the presence of one more addressor when compared with the litanies. While in the Church prayers a deity or a saint is called upon to intercede for the people, in this case the people are called upon to start praying to Jesus. The question arises, who is making this summons? There is only one passage in the poem in which the lyrical “I” uses form in the first person singular, namely the end of the fourth stanza: “par mort seure / Sommes gueriz, de ce je vous assure.” In the rest of the poem, the person speaking is distanced from the sins for which the Savior suffered, saying consistently, “pour vous seuffre,” “vos pechez.” In this example, although the litanic verse of didactic character serves to call all Christians to conversion, in fact, only two groups are mentioned directly: princes127 and the prelates. It is possible that they are evoked not because 126 Marot, Les deux recueils, 57, 59. 127 The call to princes in an envoi is common in Machaut’s poems, Poirion, Le Poète et le Prince, 362.

168

of the profusion of sins of which they might be guilty, but for the reason that they attain power through God’s grace and should wield it wisely. The crucial title of Holy Mary appears in the title of Catherine d’Amboise’s poem devoted to the Mother of God, “Chant royal de l a  p lu s  b e l l e  qu i j a m a i s   f ut   au   m on d e ,”128  and also constitutes the refrain of this poem. The speaker declares a sense of belonging to the community by saying, for instance, “nous est administrée,” “pour nous fonde”; however, there is one moment in this poem in which an individual confession is made, as Holy Mary is called “ma maitresse.”129 This may be a weak allusion to the fact that this chant royal derives from a letter (from the collection Les Dévotes Épistres of d’Amboise) which was written as an intimate confession in the first person. At the end of it, the poet anticipates the poem, using “un topos de modestie,”130 that is, describing it as “un petit chant royal” composed in “langaige rural.”131 D’Amboise also expresses the conviction that although she is not worthy to make this laudation of Holy Mary, no one else is, either: “Les saincts docteurs et orateurs ensemble / Mesmes les cieulx ne saroient, ca me semble / Toy hault louer a tant que peust suffire.”132 Although the poem stems from the spirit of Marian laudation, it is not formally based on the Marian litanies, as the main characteristic of the litanic verse here concentrates on the enumeration of various personages, similarly to Litaniae Sanctorum, and not on Holy Mary’s merits.133 The list of communities that

128 Written between 1516 and 1530. The emphasis in the title is mine. 129 Catherine d’Amboise, Poésies (Montréal: CERES, 2002), 71. 130 Catherine M. Müller, “« Par amoureux et gracïeulx accordz ». La parole mystique de Catherine d’Amboise comme don de miséricorde et poésie en acte,” in De l’écriture mystique au féminin, ed. Geneviève James (Sainte-Foy-Paris: Presses universitaires de Laval-L’Harmattan, 2005), 31. 131 Catherine d’Amboise, Les Dévotes Épistres, ed. Yves Giraud (Fribourg: Editions Universitaires Fribourg, 2002), 40. 132 Ibid., 41. 133 Catherine M. Müller claims that “le chant royal qui suit [la missive—M.K.] sera centré sur le thème de l’Immaculée Conception” (“« Par amoureux et gracïeulx accordz »”, 32), which could be valuable for the litanic verse scholar; however, there is no strong evidence for this assumption. In the beginning of the poem, the Immaculate Conception, named twice as “le saint concept,” is praised, yet only as a part of history which goes back to Holy Mary’s parents. This motif has no supremacy over other Marian commonplaces such as, for instance, the care of the Son of God. In the end of the third stanza, the depiction of Mary is made with a list of epithets: “Toute belle pour le tout beau des beaux, / Toute clère, necte, pudique et monde, / Toute pure par dessus tous vesseaulx.” We must not overlook the fact, that, as we have defined a chant royal

169

are summoned to praise Holy Mary is hierarchical. In the first stanza, these are partially the groups typical for litanies, such as the angels and archangels, the celestial beings: Anges, Trônes et Dominations, Principautés, Archanges, Chérubins, Inclinez-vous aux basses régions Avec Vertus, Potestats, Séraphins, Transvolitez des hauts cieux cristallins Pour décorer la triomphante entrée [de cette Vierge—M.K.]

In the second stanza they are replaced by human beings: monks and various civilizations: Faites sermons et prédications, Carmes dévots, Cordeliers, Augustins; Du saint concept portez relation, Chaldéens, Hébrieux et Latins; Romains, chantez sur les monts palatins.

The fourth stanza is the culmination of efforts to appeal to the whole of creation, as the mythical and Biblical personages are summoned to go onstage and play the preparatory role for the advent of Holy Mary: Muses, venez en jubilations Et transmigrez vos ruisseaux cristallins, Viens, Aurora, par lucidations, En précursant les beaux jours matutins; Viens, Orpheus, sonner harpe et clarins, Viens, Amphion, de la belle contrée, Viens, Musique, plaisamment accoutrée, Viens, reine Esther, parée de joyaux, Venez, Judith, Rachel et Florimonde, Accompagnez par honneurs spéciaux La plus belle qui jamais fût au monde.

The theme is continued in the fifth stanza with the evocation of “tres doulx ze­ phirs,” “nimphes,” “Apolo,” and “Panna.” Each of these groups is invoked for the same reason—laudation—yet their tasks are various, adjusted to their potential, so there is no repetitive formula

in the beginning, it is the refrain that suggests the central idea. In d’Amboise’s poem, this line emphasizes the compliment demonstrating the womanhood of Holy Mary and not her maternity.

170

which could react with the enumeration, apart from “Viens” in the last-cited excerpt. Several imperatives describe musical effects:134 “chantez,” “viens sonner harpe et clarins,” “viens, Musique,” “Sonnez des cors, violes, tabourins,” “Viens, Apolo, jouer des chalumeaux,” “Sonne, Panna,” so that the celebration metamorphoses into a kind of musical feast. The envoi from this chant royal is directed to the faithful, like Marot’s “esprits devotz,” and its aim is to persuade us that Holy Mary is already waiting for her devotees, preparing for them a place by her side in God’s palaces. What makes a striking impression in this poem is the certitude about the glory and mercy of the Mother of Christ, and perhaps this is the reason why no supplication is included. The prayer for intercession is instead contained in the letter, with the poem intended as the well-deserved celebration of divine union, achieved after a few stages: C’est au cœur de l’écriture que s’opère le miracle des épousailles entre l’humain et le divin. Le langage poétique va littéralement faire advenir la confession puis la rémission des péchés et conjoindre les fiancés. Cette conjointure […] se tissera […] par un seul mot […]: miséricorde. […] La miséricorde […] donnera véritablement naissance à une « chanson spirituelle », un chant royal […].135

134 Müller (“« Par amoureux et gracïeulx accordz »,” 29–30) traces the musical plots in the works of d’Amboise; however, she omits in her valuable interpretation of Christian spirituality in the chant royal this enumeration of the ancient mythological deities (she refers generally to “nombreuses figures historiques et légendaires,” 32), which in my opinion are linked with these musical references. 135 Ibid., 26.

171

10.  Litanic Verse in Narrative Prose To encounter a litany in the work of a well-known satirical author may provoke suspicion that it is a parody. However, the formal aspect of Rabelais’s “litanies” has also been discussed in studies whose main object is to analyze the enumerative practices recognizable, for instance, in the series of epithets in Le Tiers livre des faicts et dicts héroïques du bon Pantagruel.136 In this chapter, I will focus on the studies interpreting the list of sixty-one names that occurs in the parallel structure in the first chapter of Le Second livre des faicts et dicts héroïques du bon Pantagruel, entitled De l’origine et antiquite du grand Pantagruel. The text is based on the constant anaphora on “qui engendra” and various names of progenitors in Pantagruel’s family: “Qui engendra Adamastor, / Qui engendra Antée,” etc. Occasionally, the name is defined in some manner, for instance: “Qui engendra Pore, contre lequel batailla Alexandre le Grand, […] Qui engendra Gabbara, qui premier inventa de boire d’autant.”137 Mentioning two separate traditions will ensure that we take account of a range of attitudes toward the possible pattern of the enumeration of Pantagruel’s ancestors: the Biblical genealogies and French medieval chronicles.138 Discussing the first model, we could make a distinction between the genealogies of the Old and the New Testaments, as the most clearly evoked passages in Rabelais are

136 Cf. William F. Smith, “Lists, blazons and litanies,” in Rabelais in his writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1918), 203–211; Françoise Charpentier, “Va­ riations sur les litanies: à propos du Tiers livre de Pantagruel,” Revue des Sciences Humaines, vol. 33 (1968): 335–353. I omit from the analysis the part of chapter XXVII of Rabelais’s La vie très horrifique du grand Gargantua, père de Pantagruel in which one scene describes the people’s reaction to approaching death. Each of them invokes various saints. The lack of supplication which traditionally follows the series of saints fortifies the impression of tormenting silence in which no response to the cries of murdered people is given and no supplication can help them. Françoise Rabelais, Œuvres complètes, eds. Jacques Boulenger and Lucien Scheler (Paris: Gallimard, 1970), 86. 137 Ibid., 175. 138 Some scholars indicate these two sources jointly and discuss the indirect inspiration: W.F. Smith, Rabelais in his writings, 200: “In the first chapter of Pantagruel we find the pedigree of Pantagruel adapted from the Genealogies of the Kings of France composed by his friend Jean Bouchet, the Poitevin jurist. The form in which it is put is clearly an imitation of the genealogies of our Lord in St Matthew and St Luke, […].”

173

those of Matthew and Luke presenting the genealogy of Christ. However, arguments for the influence of Genesis can be made as well: […] his own [Rabelais’s—M.K.] list of names does not primarily recall those of Matthew and Luke. […] In the two Gospels the genealogies are both crisp lists of names: they contain none of descriptive asides found in Pantagruel. On the other hand just such asides are a feature of some of the genealogies in the Old Testament. […] It distinguished tribes; it justified levitical claims; it ministered to a certain pride. Rabelais’s genealogies hark back to these lists, not those of the New Testament.139

Referring to the influence of the historiography, we must note that it is not for the first time that we may consider the intersection of historical writing with litanic verse.140 Paul J. Smith argues that it is the habit of emphasizing a long history of noble ancestors that is parodied by Rabelais: “On the one hand, Rabelais parodies some French nationalistic historiographers […]. While Jean Lemaire traces the genealogy of the French kings up to Noah, Rabelais succeeds in ‘outdoing’ him in a hyperbolic and burlesque way by making the genealogy of his giants literally antediluvian […].”141 Barbara C. Bowen also emphasizes that such annalistic proceedings were in the spirit of the epoch when Rabelais composed his work: “Given this proliferation of ‘chronicles’ around the time Rabelais was writing Pantagruel, it is not surprising that his first two books are much preoccupied with the term.”142 In view of the rich tradition of interpretations, the question arises whether the analysis of Pantagruel’s genealogy in light of litanic verse reveals any new senses? It has already been stated that this enumeration has a laudatory purpose; it has been derived on the basis of epideictic oratory.143 Furthermore, the 139 Michael A. Screech, The Rabelaisian Marriage. Aspects of Rabelais’s Religion, Ethics & Comic Philosophy (London: Edward Arnold, 1958), 54–55. Other arguments include the repetition of “qui” both in the Latin version of the Bible and in Rabelais’ text, and “the inclusion of the names of a few Old Testament giants” (ibid., 55). 140 Cf. page 141 of the current book about Deschamps. 141 Paul J. Smith, ‘Dispositio’: Problematic Ordering in French Renaissance Literature (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 28. 142 Barbara C. Bowen, Enter Rabelais, Laughing (Nashville and London: Vanderbilt University Press, 1998), 41. 143 Paul J. Smith, “Fable ésopique et dispositio épidictique: pour une approche rhétorique du Pantagruel,” in Études rabelaisiennes, vol. 33: Rabelais pour le XXIe siècle. Actes du colloque du Centre d’Études Supérieures de la Renaissance (Chinon-Tours, 1994), ed. Michel Simonin (Genève: Droz, 1998), 97–99: “La généalogie démesurée pourrait indiquer que le texte qu’on va lire ne constitue pas l’éloge d’un simple mortel, mais un hymne fait à la louange d’un dieu ou un demi-dieu.”

174

denomination has also been commented on, and in this aspect the sacral connotation is also recognizable.144 Regarding the textual component of the anaphora “qui engendra,” we should note that it has no exact equivalent in the litanies of the Church, for which reason the Biblical genealogies should be considered instead. More important than those from Genesis, in which “engendra” is followed by a name or by the expression “des fils et des filles,” are the genealogies from Premier livre des Chroniques, where we, indeed, encounter additional information, whose importance has been remarked upon by Michael A. Screech: “Koush engendra Nemrod qui fut sur la terre le premier héros” (1:10), “Ram engendra Amminadab, Amminadab engendra Nashone, chef des fils de Juda” (2:10), “Segoub engendra Yaïr qui posséda vingt-trois villes dans le pays de Galaad” (2:22). Nor do the New Testament genealogies provide an exact equivalent for “qui engen­ dra”: for example, with “Salomon engendra Roboam, Roboam engendra Abia, Abia engendra Asa” (Matthew 1:7), we note that the name is repeated and not replaced by “qui.”145 Assuming that Rabelais’s passage is an example of litanic verse, we should observe that it is not fully represented. The order of the enumeration of saints in the litanies of the Church is based on their hierarchy, whereas here there is a chronological succession, which supports the chronicle hypothesis. In the chronicles, additional information about, for instance, the primacy of family members in some field is usually described, as may be seen in the Grandes Chroniques de France de Charles V.146 We may also hypothesize that les genealogies en vers (in which “qui engendra” is more common than in the prose works) were a source of inspiration, as they contain information about the character and merits of the members of the lineage.147

144 Anne Lombard-Jourdan, Aux origines de carnaval (Paris: Odile Jacob, 2005), 58: “Leur pouvoir [des rois-géants, Grandgousier, Gargantua i Pantagruel—M.K.] est héréditaire et « la perpétuation du nom est un souci dont le caractère sacre est maintes fois rappelé »“ (the quotation refers to Guy Demerson, Rabelais, une vie, une œuvre, une époque, Paris: Balland, 1986, 47). 145 Cf. a French Bible from this period, La Bible qui est toute la saincte escriture en laquelle sont contenus, le Vieil Testament et le Nouveau, translatez en Francoys, par Olivétan (1535), in which the conjunction “Et” is given in each line before a name in Matt. In La Saincte Bible en françoys, translatée selon la pure et entière traduction de Sainct Hierome (1530) of Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples, “Et” is rare, but also present. 146 Paulin Paris, ed., Le Ier volume des grandes chronique de France (Paris: Techener, 1836), 824–825. 147 Histoire de Bretagne, avec les chroniques des maisons de Vitre et de Laval (Paris: Gervais Alliot, 1638), 155.

175

Nevertheless, in my opinion, a crucial point supporting the argument for the use of litanic verse in the analyzed passage of Rabelais has been several times suggested by Monique D. Cusset, although she has not described it as deriving from the litanic worldview: “Pantagruel n’est pas issu du chaos comme son père mais le domine comme lui. Toutefois, dans le mythe adamique, c’est le langage qui compte, c’est sur le plan du langage que le chaos se manifeste. C’est donc sur ce plan que Pantagruel introduit l’ordre, […].”148 The arrangement of the text in the passage under consideration is extraordinary; each parallel sentence is a component of history—a history being not only linear, but also branching out into many domains. To give an illustration, Polypheme begat Cace and Cace begat Etien, who was the first one to have the pox. Other ancestors of Pantagruel were also first to have some other experience or were the inventors of something. Therefore, in addition to the activity which is mentioned in the context of all forebears, that is, procreation, which is fundamental for maintaining the continuity of the family line and for the transmission of power or abilities, other, parallel acts are enumerated, though less frequently: “qui premier inventa de boire autant,” “qui fut inventeur des souliers à poulaine,” etc. Each member of Pantagruel’s family offered something to the world, even if this world had carnivalesque features and his name has its chief place in the enumeration of Pantagruel’s ancestors.

10.1 Conclusion The litanic verse of the French Renaissance can be distinguished from the medieval by the choice of diverse addressees. While the oldest examples of litanic verse represented chiefly the cult of Holy Mary, the smaller number of Marian examples now reflects an increase in number of other addressees. The fundamental innovation in the Renaissance is the prayer to mythological deities, although this does not imply the disappearance of the Christian God and the saints from poetic works. On the contrary, sometimes Christian and pagan deities coexist within one poetic vision and are invoked on the base of the same pattern. Astronomical

148 Monique D. Cusset, Mythe et histoire. Le pouvoir de la transgression dans l’œuvre de Rabelais (Paris: Guy Trédaniel, 1992), 172. Gérard Defaux describes the moment of the birth of Pantagruel as emancipation from chaos: “le Cosmos lui-même, encore quelque peu chaotique, témoigne à sa manière de la grandeur exceptionnelle de l’évènement qui constitue la naissance de Pantagruel […]” (Pantagruel et les sophistes: Contribution à l’histoire de l’humanisme chrétien au XVIème siècle, La Haye: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973, 45–46).

176

bodies, like the Earth, or the human soul, may be mentioned as comparatively uncommon addressees. By means of their laudation, God is praised, hence the Catholic tradition remains a source of inspiration. One might also consider the manifested Christianization of genres by the adding of epithets to the titles of literary works: Œuvres chrétiennes, Sonnets spirituels, etc. Nevertheless, we notice a slight attenuation of the solemn tone of some genres. To give an illustration, the chant glorifying peace, which could be a hymn, is represented in a rustic vision, and the themes of Ronsard’s hymn incline to the longings of the rural community. The tradition of chants royaux must be emphasized, as this genre demonstrates a resistance to the influence of Renaissance forms like the sonnets and odes. The lyrical “I” occupies a prominent position in the chairetismic and supplicatory formulae in many works. This should not surprise us in the period of humanism, however, such prominence appears in a specific context: the “I” is the voice of a poet, as in Chant pastoral de la paix and Oraison pour avoir santé, or of a ruler (“Je te supplye” of Francis I). Furthermore, the use of “I” may be occasionally subject to varied interpretations, for instance, in Ronsard’s hymn or in La Sepmaine of Du Bartas, in which the salutation crosses the cosmos to reach the Earth. The distinct disproportion between the noticeably long passages of antonomasias or periphrases and the supplications remains, as it was in the Middle Ages, a fundamental feature of Renaissance litanic verse. Most of the analyzed examples were written in the alexandrine, which argues against the hypothesis of the occurrence of litanic verse in shorter lines. A highly thought-provoking effect was achieved by two Protestant authors who obsessively employ a single word as a component of an epithet and then, when the reader recognizes this pattern, abandon this repetitive movement and focus on the enumeration of other features. It is the anaphora, however, that dominates over other litanic verse factors in this period, as it had earlier. In the longer meter, for instance, the decasyllable and the alexandrine, short, one-word components such as “Dieu” or “Verbe” are sometimes repeated within one line.

177

Part III:  The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century

11.  Baroque Poetry “La Contre-Réforme litanise, si j’ose encore dire, avec passion,” Henri Brémond claimed, describing a phenomenon which he called “la ferveur litanistique.”1 While French paraphrases of litanies in the first half of the seventeenth century were multiplying, the number of litanic verses significantly declined. The form found shelter in one poetic current, namely catholic poetry and the poetry of meditation, as well as in chansons—a form that which was accessible to a wider audience and was meant to “tarir ce fleuve honteux dont parle saint Augustin, qui roule avec un nombre infini des chansons profanes, tant d’impuretés, de mensonges, d’ivrognerie, qui flattent l’oreille, et blessent le cœur.”2 We observe that the litanic verse in this period did not propose its own unique forms; instead, it willingly continued the former tendencies, owing to the fact that it was present in sonnets, canticles and longer poems. Additionally, its enervation may be seen in the biographies of poets, such as, for instance, Jean Auvray—the author of several chants royaux, the genre of medieval tradition—“commença sa carrière poétique au Puy de la Conception de la Vierge.”3 A characteristic of the writing of litanic verse during the Baroque period is that only a few poets, chiefly Jean de La Ceppède, Lazare de Selve, and Auvray, used this form in their works, yet not even they used it on a large scale, and apart from the output of these authors, we may list only isolated examples of litanic verse in the poems of several friars: the Capuchin Martial de Brives, the Jesuit Jean-Jospeh Surin, and the Carmelite Pierre de Saint-Louis. Profane poetry, which in this period descended into stylistic devices such as accumulation, “structures voyantes privilégiées, parallélismes, symétries, périphrase,”4 while concurrent with litanic verse, does not admit easily to kinship with it.5

1 Henri Brémond, Histoire littéraire du sentiment religieux en France, vol. X: La Prière et les prières de l’Ancien Régime (Paris: Bloud et Gay, 1932), 185. 2 Jean-Joseph Surin, Cantiques spirituels de l’amour divin (Florence: Olschki, 1996), 44. 3 In Rouen, where all the works of Auvray were published. Sandra Cureau, “Jean Auvray (1580?–1624): les écarts du poète furieux,” Albineana, Cahiers d’Aubigné, vol. 22 (2010), 350. 4 Bernard Chedozeau, Le Baroque (Paris, Nathan: 1989), 23. 5 A few examples of litanic verse can be noted in Baroque profane poetry, chiefly in the above-mentioned forms, for instance, the sonnets: Théophile de Viau, “Où rien de plus courtois qu’un loup ne m’avoisine,” (LX), in Œuvres poétiques (Genève: Droz, 1951),

181

11.1 Sonnets The two common features of two collections of spiritual sonnets containing litanic verse—Sonnets spirituels sur les Evangiles du Caresme (1607) of de Selve and Les Théorèmes de messire Jean de La Ceppède, seigneur d’Aigalades, sur le sacré mystère de nostre redemption (1613, 1621)—are the Christological theme and alexandrine meter.6 At the same time, the authors are meticulous in pointing out which passage of the Holy Scripture a text refers to. The presence of notes is an element absent from the Christian sonnets analyzed in the Renaissance chapter; for instance, Anne de Marquets explains only in the subtitles of her sonnets on which Sundays of the liturgical year they are useful, and Gabrielle de Coignard does not use any notes. Here we can observe a similarity of the Baroque sonnetary litanic verse with the litanic paraphrases of that time, whose titles often finish with the ending: “tiré de l’Écriture Sainte.” As Brémond put it, “Ici paraissent déjà les traits les plus caractéristiques de nos litanies: elles emploient, autant que possible, les propres paroles de l’Écriture sainte.” He also noted that “« les lieux » sont marqués.”7 The methods to “mark the place” in the two volumes of sonnets mentioned above were different. Lazare de Selve used subtitles—for instance, “Sur l’Evangile de la belle mere de sainct Pierre. En sainct Luc. Chap. 4”—and provided footnotes at the bottom of each sonnet, whereas Jean de La Ceppède used only footnotes, although they are exceedingly detailed. Lance K. Donaldson-Evans discusses the purpose of these references: Ce n’est pas pour montrer son érudition théologique que Selve donne en tête de chaque sonnet une référence plus ou moins précise au passage évangélique qui lui sert de point de départ […]. C’est tout simplement que les sonnets spirituels ont pour but principal de pousser le lecteur à entreprendre et à poursuivre ses propres exercices spirituels.8

The analogous aim of strongly encouraging the public to read and contemplate the Bible is emphasized in Julien Gœury’s interpretation of Théorèmes, and, crucially, this goal justifies the strong presence of stylistic devices such as repetition, anaphora, and epiphora: 155; Abraham de Vermeil: “Un jour mon beau Soleil mirait sa tresse blonde,” (VI), in Poésies (Paris-Genève: Droz, 1976), 42. 6 Not to mention the fact that the authors were politicians: La Ceppède was a member of the Parliament of Aix-en-Provence, and de Selve was the royal mayor of Metz. 7 Brémond, Histoire littéraire du sentiment religieux en France, 187–188. 8 Lance K. Donaldson-Evans, Introduction, ed. Lazare de Selve, Les Œuvres spirituelles sur les évangiles des jours de caresme et sur les festes de l’année (Genève: Droz, 1983), 24–25.

182

La répétition ne vient pas de ce corps à corps de l’écrivain avec une réalité qu’il chercherait à rendre mais avec le texte chrétien qu’il manipule à des fins strictement contemplatives. […] L’hypnose du delectare devient dans les Théorèmes une condition nécessaire de la contemplation poétique. Elle n’est en aucun cas exclusive de la leçon du docere. Il ne s’agit ni de condamner ni de rédimer l’artifice mais de le domestiquer dans le cadre de la méditation.9

However, in the current analysis, we omit some of the most famous sonnets from Théorèmes, which were composed with a series of anaphora, such as sonnet LIV from Seconde livre (inc. “Blanc est le vêtement du grand Père sans âge”)10 and XX from Troisième livre (inc. “Amour l’a de l’Olympe icy bas fait descendre”). To give an illustration of a more ambiguous composition of litanic verse,11 we start from an example in which its dominant factor is recognizable in the entire sonnet. Sonnet XII from Premier Livre (inc. “Pour les mauvais enfants, voir saisir le bon Père”)12 is addressed to the Apostles; however, this information may be obtained only in the final two lines. Nevertheless, this sonnet bears the mark of the continuation of the plot started in sonnet IX beginning with the apostrophe: “O vous qu’un saint amour à mon amour marie.” Additionally, in sonnet XI, the “Apostres” are invoked directly, while Jesus is called their “Capitaine.” The theme, encompassing all five sonnets devoted to the relationship of the Apostles to Christ and their moment of truth, ends before sonnet XIV which is only addressed to one of them, namely Peter. In sonnet XII, a list of acts which the Disciples will witness during the Passion is compiled. It serves as an admonition on the promises

9 Julien Gœury, L’Autopsie et le théorème. Poétique des « Théorèmes » spirituels (1616– 1622) de Jean de La Ceppède (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2001), 397. 10 Cf. Lance K. Donaldson-Evans, Poésie et méditation chez Jean de La Ceppède (Genève: Droz, 1969), 28 about the application of “un procédé de répétition qui rappelle les litanies d’Eglise.” Donaldson-Evans argues, “Ce sonnet ne suit pas l’évolution normale du sonnet régulier. Il n’y a pas de vraie division entre les quatrains et les tercets, il s’agit plutôt d’une ligne continue qui monte jusqu’au point culminant du dernier tercet.” 11 Gœury a few times suggests litanic influence on the shape of La Ceppède’s sonnets, but he does not develop this interpretation, cf. remarks about the “ressassement litanique” in Table alphabétique des matières (L’Autopsie et le théorème, 53), as well as “une mélodie litanique” created by “les rimes « continues »” (ibid., 370). A more interesting conclusion is found in the part interpreting “duplication dédoublée des mots-rimes dans les quatrains”: “elle provoque une véritable litanie épiphorique mâtinée d’anaphore […] d’une grande puissance émotive où le chrétien en prière trouve le moyen d’effectuer un véritable morceau de bravoure pathétique” (ibid., 337). 12 Jean de La Ceppède, Les Théorèmes sur le sacré mystère de notre rédemption (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1996), 83.

183

which they easily made, however, without self-recognition, which is summarized in sonnet XIII: “Comme donc osez-vous ainsi legerement / A ce coup vous promettre un courage indomptable?” In sonnet XII, La Ceppède operates chiefly on three repeated units—two adjectives (“mauvais” and “bon”) and an infinitive verb (“voir”) which separates the adjectives. They are the core of the structure, which occupies either one line or one line and the first hemistich of a following line: Pour les mauvais enfants, voir saisir le bon Père; Pour les mauvais valets, le bon Maître attacher; Voir le bon Capitaine en tres grand-vitupere, Pour les mauvais soldats, sous les fers tresbucher.13

The elements that succeed the constant epithet “bon” are the various titles of Christ, apart from the above-quoted “Père,” “Maître,” and “Capitaine”: “Roy,” “Pontife,” “Pasteur,” “Averne.”14 These titles are to a certain degree analogous to the litanic, as they refer to authority and its hierarchy. By way of illustration, “bon Pasteur” is an exact repetition from Litanies du Saint Nom de Jésus, while other titles imitate only a nominative part of traditional invocations, such as “roi de gloire,” “roi des Patriarches,” “père du siècle à venir,” “père des pauvres,” “maître des Apôtres.” Nevertheless, we should note two significant differences between the portrayal of Christ in the litanies and in the analyzed sonnet. Firstly, the group of people for whom Jesus is called the good Father or the good Lord is not described in an axiologically neutral manner, as the epithet “mauvais” is applied to them. Secondly, the glory of the Savior is constantly negated in the course of the sonnet, and he is deprived of his royal attributes, as in the expression: “le Sceptre arracher.” The expression—“livrer à la mort”—in the first line of tercets constitutes a culminating point. It is a vision of obscurity which invariably follows— in accordance with the Biblical passage (Luke 23:44). Yet, a surprising element in this scene is the mythological river Cocytus, one of the rivers surrounding Hades: “voir le ravageant desbort / Du Cocyte inonder les pleines estoillées.” In the final tercet, all the acts mentioned in the sonnet—“saisir le bon Père,” “le bon Maître attacher,” etc.—are subjects of reification as “objets furieux” which may threaten the souls of the Apostles, which in conjunction with the representation of the river Cocytus, brings to mind an orphic plot. The Orpheus–Christ

13 Ibid., 82. 14 Yvette Quenot demonstrates the source of this enumeration, namely the third sermon of François Panigarole, (Les Lectures de La Ceppède, Genève: Droz, 1986, 113–114).

184

analogy in litanic verse15 should be looked at in the light of its Renaissance interpretation. In Ronsard’s poem, Orpheus, and likewise Eumolpus, “du vouloir de Dieu estoyent les interpretes, / Furent prestres sacrez, pontifes et prophetes.”16 Orpheus was a poet, and in another poem Ronsard emphasizes that poets should be honored as “profettes de dieus.”17 The conclusion may be drawn that the words directed to the Apostles in La Ceppède’s sonnet can be useful as self-recognition of the poet himself. Furthermore, the use of the future tense in the last sentence of the sonnet seems to turn the expression into a prophecy. The following two examples also show litanic verse informing an entire sonnet. Nevertheless, a principal element of litanic verse is changed once in the course of a sonnet. The incipit of sonnet XXXVI of La Ceppède, “Un Ange avoit predit le temps de sa venue,”18 immediately switches the focus from an angel of indeterminate status to the Savior awaited by the whole world, hiding in this first sentence under a simple possessive adjective. However, once again we should note that the theme of this sonnet develops the plot suggested before, that is, in sonnet XXXV, in which the Holy Savior is presented as one receiving “Angelique confort” and he is “conforté par un Ange.”19 When we encounter in the following lines the anaphora built from the noun “angel” (in the singular or plural), it persuades us that various manners exist through which God introduces people to the mystery of salvation: Par un Ange il rendit les pensers affermis Qui troubloient de Joseph la vieillesse chenuë. Les Anges ont chanté sa creche dans la nuë. Un Ange l’enleva d’emmy ses ennemis. Par l’Ange les pasteurs sa naissance entendirent. Les Anges au desert à ses pieds se rendirent, Un Ange maintenant conforte ses esprits.

15 Several researchers have already raised the theme of the importance of Orpheus for La Ceppède’s vision of Christ, for instance, R. Ganim, “Rewriting for Redemption: Adapting the Epic in La Ceppède’s Théorèmes,” French Language and Literature (2002): 62–63; Donaldson-Evans, Poésie et méditation chez Jean de La Ceppède, 106–107. 16 Pierre de Ronsard, Response de Pierre de Ronsard aux injures et calomnies de je ne scay quels predicantereaux et ministreaux de Genéve, in Œuvres complètes, vol. 2 (Paris: Gallimard, 1958), 597. 17 Cf. ode XVI “À Joachim du Bellay, Angevin, poète excellent” ibid., 117. 18 La Ceppède, Les Théorèmes sur le sacré mystère de notre rédemption, 98. 19 Cf. Brémond, Histoire littéraire du sentiment religieux en France, 188: “la dévotion aux saints Anges était alors des plus florissantes.”

185

The structure of intercession in this sonnet is thus more multileveled than in the ecclesiastic litanies in which the saints or Holy Mary are invoked by the people to implore God’s mercy. Here, the numerous services performed by the angels show that their activities are targeted at the Son of God: “sa venue,” “son empire,” “sa crèche,” “ses ennemis,” “sa naissance,” “ses pieds,” “ses esprits.” While the angels are evoked until the last tercet only as a part of a description, the apostrophe: “Ô Truchements du ciel, combien de benefices / Nous apportent vos faits: vous nous avez apris / Qu’il estoit homme et Dieu, par vos divers offices” is directly addressed to them. The reasons for using the invocation in the final stanza may be various. Donaldson-Evans notes that this tercet “est à la fois une apostrophe aux anges, un résumé de la question de la divinité et de l’humanité du Christ, et une introduction au poème suivant” (sonnet XXXVII in which “ces offices divers” are mentioned).20 The expression “combien de benefices” in this tercet lays emphasis on the fact that this list of the angels’ merits could be prolonged, for they are nearly uncountable. To sum up the analysis of La Ceppède’s litanic verse, we should mention that the poet identifies with the people to whom he speaks in sonnet XXXVI; in the last line of the sonnet addressed to the Apostles, the poet points out “vos ames desoles,” whereas here twice he unveils his sense of belonging to the community by “nous.” These two examples manifest the position of the author, […] depicting his poet as a mediator between humanity and God and one who embodies human emotion and doubt, while echoing the divine word. Accordingly, La Ceppède’s poet comes to resemble a demiurge who, despite his sin and other shortcomings, does possess a creative skill that shows an entire people, as well as a single individual, how literary endeavor can lead to salvation. In the manner of Christ, La Ceppède’s narrator guides his people toward redemption by serving as an avatar of the mental and affective experience necessary to attain grace.21

In Gœury’s typology of the poet’s role in Théorèmes, the remarks concerning the apostrophes used by “le compilateur” are the most valuable for our interpretation of the litanic verse: Le recours constant à l’apostrophe permet en particulier d’effacer toutes les frontières spatio-temporelles. […] Car l’apostrophe ne sert plus ici à créer une illusion de présence. Il y a là plus qu’une diversion soudaine de la part du locuteur: il s’adresse ainsi brusquement à son interlocuteur, opérant du coup un retrait brutal hors de l’histoire dans

20 Donaldson-Evans, Poésie et méditation chez Jean de La Ceppède, 46–47. 21 Ganim, “Rewriting for Redemption,” 48.

186

laquelle il était engagé. Le sujet lyrique dispose en effet d’une faculté de convocation immédiate des différents témoins dont il peut avoir besoin afin d’élaborer et de représenter son propre commentaire interprétatif.22

The “immediate” apostrophes are used in the last tercets of both of the analyzed sonnets. The anaphoric movement from the beginning of the poems serves different purposes. In the sonnets depicting the role of angels, it plays chiefly the function of the laudation of personages who finally are invoked; however, their presence testifies to advent of the Savior. In the first analyzed sonnet by La Ceppède, the anaphora introduces the representation of a scene witnessed by the Apostles, but whose main personage is Jesus. The general scheme of de Selve’s sonnet LVI, “Adoration de Jesus Christ attaché à la Croix,” is common to the litanic verse in the sonnets, as it concerns a series of invocations with the anaphora on “ô”23 in the quatrains and a supplication occupying the last tercet. A smooth transition between the invocatory and supplicatory part is ensured by the antonomasia “O Verbe” in the ninth line, which is the last time the structure “ô” plus an antonomasia is used in the sonnet. Such a compression of exclamations could have produced monotonous effects. Yet the author’s concern for poetical composition can be appreciated when we take into account the process of the selection of epithets, each different, even if only taking the comparative form: “sacré-sainct-tressaincte,” “vray,” “precieux,” “grand.”24 The theme suggested by the title is the adoration of Christ, but the addressee alternates in each line. Although when considering the metaphors in the following lines: l. 1 O bel arbre de vie, ô bois tout precieux, l. 8 O throsne du grand Roy de la terre, & des cieux,

one can positively identify the object invoked as the Holy Cross, other lines suggest that the addressee is rather the Savior himself, hidden beneath Biblical symbols: l. 3 O vray serpent d’airain qui guerit tout ulcere l. 7 O Agneau sans macule, […] l. 9 O Verbe r’accourcy, […]

22 Gœury, L’Autopsie et le théorème, 424. 23 Cf. sonnet LXVII of Jean de La Ceppède, incl. “Ô royauté tragique! ô vêtement infâme!” 24 de Selve, Les Œuvres spirituelles, 95.

187

The supplication which precedes appears only once and does not profit from the litanic formula, ingenuously saying “Fay que…,” and being as modest as the confession of an individual person praying: “je ne cherche de gloire.” Moreover, as it lacks anaphora, we could say that it is not so ostensibly repetitive, compared to the previous stanzas. Nevertheless, the center of gravity of the recurrence has shifted in the supplicatory passage to the middle part of the line: Fay que sentant le fruict de ta grande victoire En rien fors qu’en la Croix je ne cherche de gloire, Aussi bien sans la Croix tout le monde, n’est rien.

The reappearance of the figure of the cross on the sixth syllable is striking; however, the word “monde” occurs even more often, namely four times in the last six lines of the sonnet, including three times in the position before two syllables from the final part of the line. The accumulation of this noun—represented both in the positive context (“abregé qui assemble  / Et le monde archetype, & tout ce monde ensemble,” “tout ce que l’on trouve en ce monde de bien”) and facing nihilism (“sans la Croix tout le monde, n’est rien”)—encourages the reader to search for another option, another equivalent for the most fundamental category of the cross. It is not hard to find it, as the word “fruict” is placed in the same metrical position. A rapprochement of the symbols of the cross and a fruit has already been analyzed in the medieval chapter—that is, with reference to the medieval song of Pèire Cardenal. The similarity between these two poems—which is not only thematic—strikes the reader because their final units consist of three lines—sonnetary tercet and tornada—and the manner of placement of the key words is comparable.25 The Holy Cross evoked with the anaphora on “en cros” has not been ornamented by epithets in Cardenal’s poem, whereas “frug” is always accompanied by them. By contrast, although de Selve does not avoid rich description, in the end he uses the simplest form of article and noun, “le fruict,” “la Croix,” shifting them to the central positions in the line. The energy outlined in the onset of each line in this final tercet is aimed to the sixth syllable and there accumulated in the crucial notions, to which all antonomasias refer, all converging on this point. This transition has been anticipated in an imprecise manner by the repetition of “ô,” not only at the beginning of a line, but also on the first syllable after the caesura in the quatrains. Moreover, this device takes on particular importance when we consider the length of the meter, because in Cardenal’s poem with the shorter metrical pattern, the difference between the stanzas and

25 Cf. page 54 of the current book.

188

tornada, as well as between the fundamental notions located in the third or second syllable, is imperceptible, or even absent entirely. The last element which should be commented on in this sonnet is a significant chord of individuality in the supplication. We raise the theme of its unique importance not because of the use of the singular first person pronoun, which is fairly common for poetic litanies, but because of other possessive forms employed in the text. In the beginning of the second quatrain, “nos,” used twice, captures the reader’s attention: “O tableau de nos loix, ô miroir de nos yeux.” However, the gradation between the first person singular and plural pronoun is not as suggestive as the emphasis laid on Christ, the King reigning over each element: “qui guerit tout ulcere,” “tout ce monde ensemble, / Et tout ce que l’on trouve en ce monde de bien.” To conclude discussion of the sonnetary aspect of litanic verse, the sonnet of de Selve, “Sur l’Evangile de la transfiguration” (XI), needs to be looked at. The main factor of this litanic verse—that is, the enumeration with the repetitive element “de”26 is located in the tercets. It is rare that litanic verse dominates in the tercets: Christ, Helie, & Moyse, employans leur scavoir A discourir entr’eux de l’excez du pouvoir, De l’excez de sa mort, & de sa grand’ victoire, De l’excez de vertu, de l’excez de bonté, De l’excez de l’amour, de l’excez de beauté, De l’excez de la grace, & de l’excez de gloire.27

As this recurrence of “de” is introduced at the very end of the sonnet, we do not obtain any sort of response to it of the kind common for litanies in which each invocation, such as “De tout péché et de tout mal,” “De la mort éternelle,” is followed by the formula “délivre-nous, Seigneur!” To explain the function of the

26 A bond with blason is signalled several times in the interpretation proposed by Ganim, e.g., “the sestet reflects this sense of culmination with the blasonnesque anaphore «De l’excez»” (Russell Ganim, Renaissance Resonance: Lyric Modality in La Ceppède’s Theoremes, Amsterdam-Atlanta: Rodopi, 1998, 283). Cf. ibid., 282. On the one hand, what most interests the author is the manner in which “departure and transformation become part of the adaptive process, especially in a text where the poet attempts to convert an often profane form into sacred matter” (ibid., 5). On the other hand, he discusses the idea of the devotional forms which “provide a sense of external structure to the blazon,” such as “litany and kyrielle” (ibid., 18–19). 27 de Selve, Les Œuvres spirituelles, 50.

189

sequence of “de” we should note that this series is a sort of response—a response to the values described in the beginning of the poem, in which the poet tries to sketch the appearance of the Son of God. The enumeration in the tercets with its conciseness represents the opposite feature to the descriptiveness of the quatrains. Firstly, the constantly evoked value of beauty is either followed in the first quatrain by the epithets—“ces beautez mortelles,” “les beautez immortelles”—or itself becomes the epithet: “un beau traict.” On the contrary, when the “beauté” returns in the tercets as late as in the thirteenth line, it is not enriched by any other expressions. However, the coexistence in one line of “amour” and “beauté” becomes perplexing as it immediately evokes terrestrial beauty. With reference to the tendency of depicting Christ as “parfait Amant,”28 the juxtaposition of “mort” and “victoire” seems to persuade us that the manner of depicting the Holy Savior within the horizon of terrestrial categories has been overcome by the poet. The litanic verse in the tercets, providing condensed and parallel expressions, demonstrates that proper praise may be expressed by simple and unpretentious construction. This is more captivating than the longer quatrains in which the narrative mode is used together with conventional comparisons like “les neiges de blancheur” that seem to be rather too loquacious. Russell Ganim interprets this division into quatrains and tercets as “Shifting from the domain of the body to the domain of the spirit”29; however, to be more precise, we should say that from the very beginning of the sonnet the terrestrial body is perceived as a reflection of spiritual beauty.

28 The theme of Petrarchan inspiration for the spiritual sonnets in the seventeenth century has been raised chiefly with reference to Théorèmes [cf. Robert Melançon, “Le pétrarquisme pieux: la conversion de la poésie amoureuse chez Jean de La Ceppède,” Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme, vol. 11, no. 1 (1987): 141–146; Jacqueline Rieu, “Le langage pétrarquiste de la poésie spirituelle: quelques recueils catholiques,” Studia Litteraria Universitatis Iagellonicae Cracoviensis, vol. 7 (2012), 69– 84]. The remarks of Gœury may contribute to our analysis of de Selve’s sonnet, as he describes “la double figure du Christ-amant,” pointing out that it “oscille en effet entre une représentation du Christ-amant, qui emprunte largement à un modèle féminin affranchi de toutes les imperfections humaines, et une représentation strictement contraire, ramenée de la perfection idéale à la déchéance physique,” and he adds that La Ceppède aims to “associer le miel de la topique pétrarquiste (front majestueux, yeux étincelants) à l’amertume de la topique théologique (grave royauté, pouvoir redoutable, jugement épouvantable)” (Gœury, L’Autopsie et le théorème, 118–119). 29 Ganim, Renaissance Resonance, 282.

190

11.2 Canticles Two types of Marian litanic verse can be found in de Selve’s Cantiques spirituels (1618), the first of which has been already noted with reference to the previously discussed periods, and the second of which is more characteristic for the Baroque period. In this collection, we encounter various verse patterns, yet the two canticles to which we refer are composed of quatrains of alexandrines with crossed rhymes. Cantique XLVIII De la conception de Nostre Dame includes the element “Vous estes” as the introductory structure for the enumeration of antonomasias30 repeated three times in the onset of stanzas and two times inside the stanzas. The repetitive phrase introduces numerous titles of Our Lady: “ceste belle & relysante aurore,” “le beau lys en vostre candeur pure,” “le Buisson verd & incombustible,” “le jardin tout fermé de closture,” “ceste terre exempte & salutaire.”31 The litanic verse affects four out of eleven quatrains. Additionally, the frame composition of this canticle operates as a factor of the litanic verse, mainly in the evocation of the Holy Trinity at the end of the poem: “La gloire en soit à luy, qui est vostre vray Pere, / Et vostre fils unique, & vostre sainct Espoux.”32 An inclination to shape a suitable metaphor and an impulse to surpass it in order to achieve an even more glorifying message is perceptible in Cantique XXV De saincte Anne of de Selve, the main components of which are two units of a compound sentence33 used in one line or line after line, as in the examples: “Si la Vierge est lys, la Mere est la racine” and “Si ceste Vierge sainte est la rose fleurie, /

30 In addition to “Tu es” in sonnet XXXI “Sur ces paroles, je suis la lumiere du monde,” addressed to Jesus, this structure may be considered to be the crucial factor of de Selve’s litanic verse. 31 de Selve, Les Œuvres spirituelles, 198. 32 Ibid., 199. The first and the last stanzas are the only stanzas which do not refer directly to Holy Mary. In the beginning of the poem, a question, a sign of poetic modesty, is introduced: “qu’elle voix pourroit dignement les [merveilles de Notre Dame—M.K.] chanter?” The laudation of Holy Mary is looming as a challenge, not only for a poet who is intimidated by the glory of his addressee—“je n’advance rien à chanter vos loüanges, / Où ma langue beguaye, & mes efforts sont vains”—but, according to him, also for celestial beings like the angels. 33 Cf. a similar composition only in one sestet in Autres graces rendues en l’Anné 1608, luy étant resident en Holande by Auvray in which he adduces the opposition of the claim of “je” and of “les ennemis de la Mere de Dieu”: “Si je dis que tu es Vierge perpetuelle, / Ils disent qu’a Joseph tu fus femme charnelle” etc. (Jean Auvray, Les œuvres sainctes du sr Auvray: desquelles la plus grande partie n’ont encor esté veuës ny imprimées, Rouen: David Ferrand, 1634, 61).

191

La Mere est le rosier en Jerico planté.”34 This model dominates the entire chanson, being absent from only two quatrains out of ten. As a consequence, this canticle has two protagonists—Mary and her mother, Anne. The abundance of titles that imitate those from the Marian litanies pertains to Holy Mary, while the titles assigned to Anne are, to a certain degree, poetic innovations: Si la Vierge est un puits d’eau vive & souveraine, La Mere est le terroir, où ce puits fut construit; […] Si l’une est un jardin tout fermé de closture, La Mere est le beau champ fertile d’alentour; […] Si ceste saincte Vierge est la Tour davidique, La Mere est de la Tour l’enclos & le chasteau, […] Si ceste saincte Vierge est l’Arche d’alliance, L’autre est le sanctuaire estoffé richement, […] Si l’une est une estoile, ou reluisante aurore, La Mere est de cét Astre & le ciel & le lieu; […].35

According to de Selve, poetic freedom has its limits, and its place and is expressed around traditional depiction—the well is built on the territory, the tower is a part of the castle, the star is located in the sky, etc. The titles of Anne are for the most part not autonomous and cannot be recited separately from the first part of the sentence.36 Their dependence is manifested by the use of “l’autre” instead of a name or by the presence of a nominal group complementing a name, for instance, “de ceste verge,” “de la sorce,” “de la Tour,” etc. In this manner, some of the key words continually recur, such as “verge,” “arbre,” “toison,” “puits,” “Tour,” and, in the final stanza, “Dieu.” The alternation of the titles “Mere” and “Vierge,” present also in the Marian litanies, can give the false impression that in the poem they both refer to God’s mother. However, in order to avoid this mistake, the poet does not use both these titles in the same line, except for the final one: “La Mere de la Vierge est l’ayeule de Dieu.” In this line,

34 de Selve, Les Œuvres spirituelles, 155. 35 Ibid., 156. 36 The exceptions are phrases such as “La Mere est le rosier en Jerico planté,” “La Mere est le sainct Temple orné divinement.”

192

the praise of Anne is accomplished by all titles attributed to Mary, reassembled in one expression: “de la Vierge.” The title of a long, nearly 200-line work of Surin reads Cantique XXIV où l’Ame unie à Dieu s’entretient avec les Saints de son incomparable Sainteté (written by 1640, first published in Cantiques spirituels, 1655). This title already gives an idea of the potential object of praise: “sainteté,” that is, holiness. Indeed, the principal component representing litanic verse is the repetition of the adjective “saint,” including in its feminine and plural forms. The first apostrophe is directed to God, who is characterized as “la source de sainteté.”37 Moreover, the title suggests that the message of the poem will be conveyed by celestial beings, and this remark needs further explanation. The second group of addressees are the Seraphim; to them, the poet directs a supplication for a talent for expression in two significant parts of the poem, namely the beginning and the ending. Firstly, the speaker notes that a task he wants to undertake, that is, “louer en tout honneur,” is the duty of the Seraphim: “c’est le seul exercise / qu’ils font dedans l’Eternité.” For this reason, his request is to “emprunter vos rimes, vos phrases / pour pouvoir un peu bégayer / le saint motet qu’en vos extases / vous chantez […].” The concluding stanza of the canticle expresses gratitude for the “discours seraphique” and the supplication: “Faites que nous puissons un jour / Dans la gloire beatifique  / louer l’objet de votre amour.”38 These expressions, together with other signals, such as the numerous apostrophes to humans— “pauvres humains,” “Hommes, femmes, jeunes enfans,  / Pauvres, riches, petits & grands”—lead one to believe that the main part of the poem should be treated as being the work of the Seraphim. Nonetheless, a more accurate view is that the people, to a certain degree, participate in this chant of praise, which is implied in the imperatives: “Disons donc ensemble Sanctus,” “Nous vous y suivrons mot à mot, / Tout en langage Seraphique.” As becomes evident toward the end of the poem, there is one main characteristic of this language: “Nous n’avons que ce mot à dire, / […] / À toujours chanter et redire, / Sanctus, Sanctus, en verité.” With this constant feature of Surin’s litanic verse in mind, we proceed to a presentation of several objects of praise in the poem. God is the theme of the longest litanic verse in this canticle, as three sestets are devoted to his praise:

37 Jean-Joseph Surin, Cantiques spirituels de l’amour divin (Paris: Pepie, 1655), 398. This canticle was not republished in the edition of 1996. 38 Ibid., 404.

193

Dieu tres-saint en son unité, Dieu tres-saint en sa Trinité, Dieu saint en son amour suprême, Dieu saint en son bras tout-puissant, Dieu saint en son essence même, Dieu seul le seul se connoissant.39

This series, developing in a way that emphasizes the holiness of God as the Creator, ruler and judge, ends with two phrases containing the predicate “Dieu saint vous est un saint exemple / Dieu saint rend saint le Paradise,” in which the adjective “saint” is repeated twice in the octosyllable, that is, a meter relatively modest in length. The section of two stanzas describing the significance of the Holy Church, in which the litanic verse is founded on adjective anaphora, is longer. The Holy Church is the object of worship mainly for its sacraments and services: Si nous retournons ici-bas, La sainte Eglise est-elle pas Sainte dans son saint Sacrifice, Sainte par ses saints Sacremens, Sainte chantant le saint Office, Sainte en ses saints Commandemens.40

The third object of laudation is the Holy Savior. Nonetheless, the scale of repetitions in this case is weaker, and they do not contain the main component— “saint”—which is replaced by an enumeration containing the structure “nom de”: “Nom de salut, Nom d’esperance,”41 etc. The supplication concluding the entire canticle is surprising for its humbleness, touching not only the poetical realization mentioned before, which is described as the activity of “un peu begayer,” but also the relation between God and the faithful. God is called in this part “l’objet de votre amour,” as if a man were not perfect enough to address his love to God; first he should have to attain the status of Seraph.

11.3  Seeking Appropriate Names—Lists of Antonomasias Taking into account the number of lines devoted to the lists of metaphorical titles, it is Marian piety which dominates in longer poems. To give as illustrations, we should mention, among other examples, Auvray’s laudatory work about Holy 39 Ibid., 400. 40 Ibid., 402. 41 Ibid., 403.

194

Mary, Graces rendues à la Vierge & au Prince du Puy, par le dit sieur Auvray, pour les Prix à lui adiugez annee 1621, in which the phrase “Je te nommerai donc” is followed by an enumeration of Marian titles: “Rose de Ierico, Estoille de la Mer,” “Le Puits des vives eaux, la Fontaine seellee,” etc.;42 and Martial de Brives’ Les noms principaux de la glorieuse Vierge Marie, using the introductory component “Vous êtes”: “Vous estes la Reyne des Cieux, / Soubs Dieu vous estes souveraine.”43 This popular pattern is enriched by one more female saint who is praised with an abundance of metaphorical names—Magdalene, in Pierre de Saint-Louis’ Madeleine au désert de la Ste-Baume. The concepts for the titles are acquired both from mythology and from the traditional Marian metaphors: “La colomne de feu, la volante Amazone,” “L’escarboucle embrazé, la perle orientale.”44 In spite of the abundance of Marian examples, I will focus on a work representing another theme popular in sonnetary production, namely devotion to the Holy Cross. Le triomphe de la Croix dedié aux ames catholiques (1622) of Auvray, in thirty-eight sestets, uses both the repetitive and enumerative mode of litanic verse. The longer part of the poem is occupied by laudation of the Holy Cross; however, in the few final sestets, the poet proceeds to the supplications. The speaker emphasizes from the very beginning that it is an ardent faith which inspires him; he does not stand in the ranks of poets chanting about love or war, or praising rulers, as it is “un feu plus sainct”45 that inflames him. Nevertheless, the initial lines reveal an intention to astonish the reader rather than to pray: “Je veux triompher de bien dire / Sur le Triomphe de la Croix.” The first signal of the litanic verse is in the predominant manner of exposing various antonomasias—each title in a new line, each being a sophisticated metaphor: “Siege de Justice & de Grace,” “Le lit de l’Epoux Immortel,” “Le Cube de la vraie Eglise,” “L’autel de Agneau sans maculé.”46 It is in these expressions that the poet is more willing to reveal a sense of belonging to the community, as he reaches for the pronoun “nostre”: “Notre colomne de franchise,” “Le drapeau de notre Monarque.”

42 Jean Auvray, Les Œuvres sainctes du sr Auvray, 56. Holy Mary as the crucial figure of intercession in the work of Auvray appears in Le cri de l’innocent. Calomnie, ibid., 118. 43 Martial de Brive, Le Parnasse seraphique, et les derniers souspirs de la muse (Lyon: Francois Demasso, 1680), 154–155. 44 Pierre de Saint-Louis, Madeleine au désert de la Ste-Baume (Lyon: Jean-Baptsite & Nicolas de Ville, 1700), 5. 45 Jean Auvray, La Pourmenade de l’âme dévote accompagnant son Sauveur depuis les ruës de Jérusalem jusques au tombeau (Rouen: David Ferrand, 1633), 96. 46 Ibid., 97.

195

Nonetheless, in the following lines he once again speaks for himself: “O Croix tout misterieuse / En toy mon ame curieuse / […] beau secret apperceu.”47 In the two following passages, the author does not abandon the use of repetition. In the first section, we are witnesses of an illustration of the Holy Cross which unifies the four elements that everything is made of—earth, water, fire and air,48 and we are told that the figure of the cross may be inscribed in each object. To demonstrate the omnipotence of the Holy Cross, the author uses a small-scale anaphora on “En croix,” introducing various beings, such as people, fish, birds and others, and concludes: “Bref, ô saincte Croix je vous chante, / Le tableau de tout l’univers.”49 The second anaphoric passage plays a different role, as the element “la croix” introduces numerous antonomasias of the same object, that is, the Holy Cross: La Croix est un vrai Sacrifice, La Croix un jardin de delice, La Croix Paradis de tout bien, La Croix une belle victoire, La Croix le triompha & la gloire, De Dieu, de l’Ange, & du Chretien,50

The first cited line contains the predicate, and the rest of them do not. To enable the reader to feel the litanic spirit, the author excludes from the text any unnecessary ornament, presenting the figure of the Cross in its metaphoric significance. The next stanza, using the same anaphora, concerns the opposite, terrestrial weight of the Cross. Huguenots, according to the author, understand it uniquely in this dimension. The poet’s utterance sounds like the voice of a national bard51 when he describes the difference between Catholics and Huguenots. However, close to the end of the poem, he returns to the self-referential theme of the form of his giving thanks to and adoring the Cross:

47 Ibid., 98. 48 Accumulation as the main stylistic device in Auvray’s work has been noted by Christophe Bourgeois, who also indicates that in this tendency, as well as in some detailed choices of antonomasias—for instance, “le vray Serpent d’airain”—the poet was similar to de Selve [Christiophe Bourgeois, “Figures baroques de la Croix: une poétique de l’énigme,” Dix-septième siècle, vol. 1, no. 222 (2004): 80 www.cairn.info/revue-dixseptieme-siecle-2004-1-page-75.htm, accessed December 19, 2017]. 49 Ibid., 99. 50 Ibid., 101. 51 Cureau, “Jean Auvray (1580?–1624),” 350: “mener une guerre (de mots) sans merci aux Hugenots.”

196

Mais ô venerable Colomne Ces éloges que je vous donne (Enflamé de sainctes ardeurs) Ne sont qu’esbaucher vos loüanges Il faudroit tous les chouers des Anges Pour bien entonner vos honneurs.52

The following supplications do not use the formulae and are also intimate: “Que votre ombrage me recrée,” “Que mes saints baisers vous entament  / Que mes chauds soupirs vous enflament.” The laudation of the Holy Cross at the end of the poem emerges as an inevitable part of the poet’s existence, as it is inscribed in his heart and even after his death can be found there. Although Martine Debaisieux argues that “triompher” from the initial stanza announces “le projet d’une gloire personnelle, loin de toute visée apologétique ou de devotion,”53 we should add that this project is not finally realized in the poem. On the contrary, a rhetorical question in one of the concluding stanzas asks which force is sufficiently powerful to “separer a jamais mon ame / Du crucifix de Jesus Christ,” and the poet claims, “Pour moy je ne me glorifie / Qu’en la croix de mon redempteur.”54 We may presume that a work which functions as an incentive to maintain the unity of the country and defeat religious enemies cannot successfully serve at the same time as a personal plea for artistic glory. All things considered, it seems apparent that the poet gives various answers as to why he reaches for litanic verse and what its function is in the poem. Among them, we may list the affection with which he speaks—which makes him use the same word constantly—as well as a wish to follow the simple pattern as in “esbaucher,” and to shape fundamental statements in a direct manner, as in a motto which may be followed during one’s lifetime.

11.4  Parodies of Litanies We cannot conclude this chapter without mentioning that the litanic formulae are present in Le Parnasse satyrique, a famous collection published in 1622. Three works draw their inspiration from the litanic response Libera nos Domine. The poem entitled simply Quatrains numbers eighteen stanzas separated by

52 Auvray, La Pourmenade de l’âme dévote, 103. 53 Martine Debaisieux, “La Pourmenade de l’Ame devote de Jean Auvray, du « triomphe de la croix » au triomphe de l’écrivain,” Travaux de la littérature, vol. X (1997): 125. 54 Auvray, La Pourmenade de l’âme dévote, 104.

197

the response: “Délivre moy Seigneur.”55 Another element of litanic verse is the anaphora on “De,” which may take the shape of: “De celle qui,” “De celle-la qui,” at the onset of stanzas. The themes are the imperfection of women and their hypocrisy, particularly in the domains of faith and morality. The Quatrains contre les hommes also uses the anaphora on “De”: “De celuy-qui,” “De celuy-la qui,” and in it men are accused of being full of malice, liars and murderers.56 The third example, Regrets faits sur un fascheux logis, profits from placing the supplicatory formula within the stanza; thus, this time the anaphora, visible on the level of quatrains, occupies the larger part of the alexandrine: “Délivre moy Seigneur de […].”57 The blade of irony is aimed at the conditions of life on a journey, and the need to accept inconveniences, such as the company, the chambers, the odors: “Bref, je te prie Seigneur, […] que je n’y revienne.”58

11.5 Conclusion Baroque litanic verse glorifying Christ draws attention, above all, to the significance of his passion. In this moment of Jesus’s life, the poets saw a noteworthy contrast between terrestrial death and the soul’s eternity. Other addressees of litanic verse are from the canon of the saints, chiefly, Holy Mary, as well as God the Father, the Apostles, prophets, Mary Magdalene, and angels. The mythological deities vanish from the purview of the poets at this time and are mentioned only as a component in antonomasias such as “Le grand cimeterre d’Hector” in Le Triomphe de la Croix, “L’Arethuse son sainte” in Madeleine au désert de la SteBaume, or as anticipations of the Christian God in Théorèmes. The interpretation of litanic verse has brought to light a rather inconspicuous feature of La Ceppède’s sonnets. The critics unanimously agree on their Christological theme, and we cannot deny that the story of Christ is presented there. At the same time, it is not the Savior who is invoked directly in these litanic sonnets, as one is addressed to the Apostles and the second to angels. It is the names 55 Le Parnasse satyrique du sieur Théophile, avec le recueil des plus excellens vers satyrique de ce temps (Paris: Gand Duquesne, 1861), 28. Cf. other singular examples of parodical usage, notably a prayer addressed to Bacchus with the anaphora on “par” which occurs in the first part of Marc-Antoine Girard de Saint-Amant’s Raillerie à part entitled La Débauche, and which ironically adapts the motifs known from the prayers of intercession: “Par la splendeur de ce grand verre,” “Par le tambour et la cymbal,” etc. (MarcAntoine Girard Saint-Amant, Œuvres Paris: Didier, 1967, 205). 56 Le Parnasse satyrique du sieur Théophile, 50–53. 57 Ibid., 31. 58 Ibid., 33.

198

of angels, and not of Christ, that are constantly repeated and the antonomasias of the Savior appear with the same frequency as those of the Apostles. La Ceppède’s use of litanic verse resembles the litanies addressed to the particular saints, such as Joseph and Faustine, and their “offices,” as La Ceppède would describe their roles, are the themes of invocations: “Chaste gardien de la Vierge,” “secrétaire fidèle des paroles de Jésus Miséricordieux,” “grande apôtre de la Miséricorde Divine,” etc. The alexandrine is established as the primary meter of the litanic verse, and in this aspect conclusions about Baroque poetry in its entirety reflect the situation of litanic verse: […] il est notable d’abord que les baroques répugnent à tout ce qui déséquilibre le vers, généralement l’alexandrin: ils fuient l’enjambement et le rejet, les coupes dissymétriques et en général — sauf quelques allitérations concertées, […] — tout ce qui ressemblerait à une fantaisie verbale.59

Nonetheless, the example of the most frequent use of repetitions is the octosyllable of Surin. The poets’ concern for the perfection of their poetry and the uniqueness of their expression of faith has been emphasized in several examples. An ambition to praise God and the saints with accurate words and “« la vanité » que manifeste l’écrivain dans son désir d’assurer le succès de son œuvre,”60 as Debaisieux commented on Auvray’s Le Triomphe de la Croix dedié aux ames catholiques, have accompanied the litanic verse from the Middle Ages, since the genealogical roman of Coudrette. As long as the poets deny that they are seeking poetical glory, ask who is deserving enough to praise God and confess that they are not flawless enough to do this,61 the reader is persuaded of their sense of belonging to the Christian community. This Baroque manifestation of the lyrical “I” is important, as it brings to a close a certain phase in the development of litanic verse, the phase preceding the period of its use in the dramas, when it approached universal themes more readily than an intimate relation with the Lord.

59 André Stegmann, “Recherches de critères stylistiques dans la poésie française baroque (1600–1640),” in Renaissance, Maniérisme et Baroque, ed. Manuel Ballesteros-Gaibros (Paris: Vrin, 1972), 67. 60 Debaisieux, “La Pourmenade de l’Ame devote de Jean Auvray,” 121. 61 Cf. this action in de Selve’s poems: “je ne cherche de gloire”–“Qui dira […]?”–“Mere du Verbe qu’on ne peut raconter.”

199

12.  Age of Classicism Use of litanic verse decreases during the seventeenth century, including its use in sonnets, which during this period became increasingly dedicated to secular subjects. Nonetheless, the works of two dramatists, Pierre Corneille and Jean Racine, are crucial for the development of the litanic verse in this period. Certainly, litanic verse is not frequently used by them, but the scenes in which it is introduced intrigue us because of their originality. The authors cited in this chapter reflect the religious diversity of the French society of this period. Besides the many fervent Catholics and Racine, a pupil of the Jansenist school at Port-Royal, there is a Protestant, Laurent Drelincourt. The greatest number of examples of litanic verse are found in the works of several prolific and famous authors of the epoch: Charles de Vion d’Alibray, Georges de Scudéry and Drelincourt.

12.1  Litanic Verse in the Dramatic Genre 12.1.1 Corneille and the Presence of the First and Second Person Singular Pronouns The figure of God is evoked in Corneille’s drama Théodore, vierge et martyre: tragédie chrestienne (published in 1647) both by those who believe in Him with all their strength and by those who, within the profane horizon of their thought, value love most of all. The words of Placide with their anaphoric “Non par” and the following “Par” alone illustrate the condition of a protagonist wrecked by his emotions,62 but at the same time they suggest rejection of the idea that these passions influence his behavior (“Non par”!). In this state of furor, Placide’s act of supplication (“je vous conjure”) is made: Non par ce zèle ardent d’un cœur qui  v ou s   adore, Non par ce vain éclat de tant de dignités, Trop au-dessous du sang des Rois dont  v ou s   sortez, Non par ce désespoir où  v ou s   poussez ma vie; Mais par la sainte horreur que  v ou s   fait l’infamie,

62 Marc Fumaroli, Héros et orateurs: Rhétorique et dramaturgie cornéliennes (Genève: Droz, 1996), 240: “[…] Placide, obsédé jusqu’à la folie par invincible pureté de Théodore, n’est coupable d’autre crime que d’aimer Théodore, ce qui suffit à le perdre et à la perdre.”

201

Par ce Dieu que j’ignore, et pour qui  v ou s   vivez, Et par ce même bien que  v ou s   lui conservez.63

The range of Placide’s feelings is constantly exposed to an addressee, which is emphasized by presence of the personal pronouns in almost every second hemistich. The presence of “you” is essential in the use of litanic verse in Placide’s tirade, as the response to the anaphora is the parallelism of the final part of the lines, built with vous plus a verb. A recurrence of words in the ecclesiastical litanies at the end of a line is caused by the repetition of a supplicatory formula. By contrast, in the above-cited passage there is no sign of repetition of the same phrase. However, when searching for similarities between this litanic verse and the texts of the liturgical litanies, we can point out the shape of invocations in, for instance, Litanies du Sacré Cœur de Jésus: “Cœur de Jésus, riche à l’égard de  t ou s   c e u x   qui t’invoquent, / Cœur de Jésus, salut de  c e u x   qui espèrent en toi, / Cœur de Jésus, espérance de  c e u x   qui meurent en toi.”64 Trying to gain the favor of God, Christians express how important He is for them—not to limit the potential group of those, who are affected by Him, but to remind them of the feelings and the acts experienced for Him. Placide, instead, cites the loving heart, full of affection for the addressee, and mentions the despair in which he was left, just as the people who pray in litanies evoke the hope they feel, even when they sacrifice their lives in the name of Christ. The words of Théodore immediately following this passage function as a commentary on the spiritual formation of Placide, as she firmly declares: “Vous n’êtes pas celui dont Dieu s’y veut server; / Il saura bien sans vous en susciter un autre, / Dont le bras moins puissant, mais plus saint que le vôtre, / Par un zèle plus pur se fera mon appui,  / […].”65 She evokes the analogous emotions to those that Placide has enumerated, but at the same time she replaces the epithet “ardent” with “plus pur.” A situation in which the words of one of the protagonists find an echo in the speech of another is demonstrated in Pertharite, roi des Lombards (1651) by Corneille as well; however, this example is more intriguing, as it contains the correspondence between two passages which are litanic. The parts are spoken by Rodelinde and Grimoald. The passages which I cite occur in different acts, not in close proximity, as in the previous example. Nonetheless, the protagonists

63 Pierre Corneille, Théâtre complet, vol. 2 (Paris: Gallimard, 1968), 47–48. The emphasis is mine. 64 The emphasis is mine. 65 Ibid., 48.

202

speak about each other, touching on the same characteristics, such as justice and bravery. Here Rodelinde describes Grimoald: Il est vaillant, il règne, et comme il faut régner; Mais toutes ses vertus me le font dédaigner. Je hais dans sa valeur l’effort qui le couronne; Je hais dans sa bonté les cœurs qu’elle lui donne; Je hais dans sa prudence un grand peuple charmé; Je hais dans sa justice un tyran trop aimé; Je hais ce grand secret d’assurer sa conquête, […]; Et le hais d’autant plus que je vois moins de jour A détruire un vainqueur qui règne avec amour.66

Rodelinde’s speech is awash in the present, and the hate she affects and the goodwill of people toward Grimoald are happening in that moment. By contrast, Grimoald’s speech below describes the reputation he has already acquired. He claims to be worthy of Rodelinde, saying that it is to the crimes that he has committed that he owes many honors, experiences and awards: Par eux seuls j’ai vaincu, par eux seuls j’ai régné, Par eux seuls ma justice a tant de cœurs gagné, Par eux seuls j’ai paru digne du diadème, Par eux seuls je vous vois, par eux seuls je vous aime, Et par eux seuls enfin mon amour tout parfait Ose faire pour vous ce qu’on n’a jamais fait.67

In both speeches we can distinguish three parts of a line: A Je hais dans Par eux seuls

B sa bonté ma justice

C les cœurs qu’elle lui donne a tant de cœurs gagné

The initial two segments, A plus B, occupy the first hemistich of the alexandrine. This is the part that is significantly repetitive, as A is the recurrent element, and B appears with certain alternation. In Rodelinde’s monologue, it is partly stable, as it introduces the possessive pronouns with the name of the feature. In Grimoald’s speech, in turn, we may find two possibilities: either the pronoun “I” and the participe passé of various verbs, or the pronoun “my” and the name of the feature.

66 Ibid., 476. 67 Ibid., 494.

203

Each second hemistich contains differing elements, though sometimes its structure and position shows some parallelism—for example, the repetition “par eux seuls” in Grimoald’s speech. When interpreting the function of this global composition, we may note that the constant recurrence of the words in the onset of lines causes the reader to stop paying attention to their meaning, as it is possible to catch only their form. As a result, we might suggest that the anaphora is used to dull the reader’s vigilance—that disgraceful acts and thoughts are hidden behind this curtain, and that the message in its entirety leaves a positive impression, attracting attention by evoking love, justice, victory and rightness.

12.1.2 Racine between the Infinity of Anaphora and the Recurrence of Apostrophe The question of the presence of litanic verse in the dramatic genre permits us to reexamine the theme raised previously in the medieval chapter, that is, the aspect of infinity in the enumerative procedure, which in ecclesiastical litanies is negated by formulae like the triple supplication to the Trinity to have mercy on us in the beginning and the invocation to the Lamb of God in the conclusion. Such a strong delimiting frame is occasionally found in the poetic works as well. In the dialogues, a natural way of ending is a moment when another protagonist starts to speak. However, we are encouraged to consider a situation when the voice of a person speaking litanic verse is interrupted by another protagonist, which prevents him from concluding his speech, and thus from adding new elements to the litanic verse. In Les Plaideurs (1668) by Racine, this act of breaking up a train of words68 is the theme of the conversation and a cause for further humorous discussion. “Quand je vois” is used by Petit Jean eight times, including six times in the onset of lines. A string of proper nouns follows the anaphora: “les Césars,” “le soleil,” “les Etats des Babiboniens,” “les Lorrains” and the periphrases “parmi tant d’hommes différents, / Pas d’une étoile fixe, et tant d’astres errants.”69 After the words “Quand je vois le Japon,” a protagonist named L’Intimé intervenes: “Quand aura-t-il tout vu?” Later, Petit Jean attempts to find words with which to continue: “Quand… je vois… Quand… je vois…,” but cannot, causing him to expostulate “Oh! pourquoi celui-là m’a-t-il interrompu? Je ne dirai plus rien.”70 Nonetheless, 68 Cf. ibid., 435, in Nicomède, the scene in which Arsinoé glorifies God. The list of invocations pronounced has four uses of the anaphora “Grâce à” before Nicomède asks: “De quoi, Madame?” 69 Jean Racine, Œuvres complètes, vol. 1: Théâtre–Poésies (Paris: Gallimard, 1969), 356. 70 Ibid., 357.

204

this fragment presents to the reader a rather one-sided litany, recognizable due to the three-part repetition and the parallelism of seven lines. Although the comedy of Racine is said to be largely based on “acrobaties verbales,” for “Racine use des rimes rares et inattendues, et renforce l’effet de surprise par l’enjambement; il emploie les rimes intérieures […],”71 we should note that the course of alexandrine in this passage is clear. Therefore, the main domain of parodic effects is the lexis (for instance, the choice of the epithet “dépotique” in the place of “despotique”), not the versification. Certainly, the caesura is stable, even if it comes when a line breaks into two ripostes, as in the cited example: “Quand je vois le Japon… // Quand aura-t-il tout vu?” Returning to the point of the discontinuity of poetic litanies that has been mentioned, I should note that Robert Garrette went so far as to say that the lack of continuity in the speech of Petit Jean reveals his status in the drama: “L’élan oratoire se poursuit à travers neuf propositions subordonnées par quand ou par lorsque; mais brusquement interrompu par une réflexion ironique de l’Intimé, il s’arrête pour rester à jamais suspendu entre protase et apodoses.”72 I would add that the litany in this example is simply suspended, of which an evident sign appears in the words of Petit Jean: “Je ne dirai plus rien.” A chanted litanic verse in Esther (1689) by Racine represents another “tragédie sacrée” in our litanic corpus. The words of an Israelite who is called “Une autre” express the certitude of a unique source of happiness, that is, the peace of innocence: “Ne cherchons pas la félicité / Que dans la paix de l’innocence.” This theme is raised by another Israelite (“La même avec une autre” as we read in the stage direction) and they chant together: O douce paix! O lumière éternelle! Beauté toujours nouvelle! Heureux le cœur épris de tes attraits! O douce paix! O lumière éternelle! Heureux le cœur qui ne te perd jamais!73

71 In comparison with Molière, whose “La principale vertu de la versification […] est de se faire oublier” [Philip Butler, Classicisme et baroque dans l’œuvre de Racine (Paris: Librairie Nizet, 1959), 124]. 72 Robert Garrette, La Phrase de Racine: étude stylistique et stylométrique (Toulouse: Presses universitaires du Mirail, 1995), 73. 73 Racine, 844.

205

Five lines from this stanza are echoed immediately by the chorus—the message about an innocent heart is conveyed once, at the end of the stanza, but the exclamation “O douce paix!” is repeated two times, emphasizing the significance of the leading idea. Two phrases, the invocation and the wish, are recalled at the end of the scene, which concludes the second act. Some scholars have emphasized the quasi-liturgical character of this section,74 although, it is not litany itself which provides a basis for imitation, considering the fact that we do not encounter here the strict division of roles, but rather a situation where the expressions are repeated by the voices merging together with the choir. Other critics, though, have stressed the importance of analyzing the function of lyricism in interrupting the dramatic action.75 The theme of merging the interspecific elements, and the role which the litanic verse plays in it, has already been raised in the medieval chapter. For instance, some fragments of the didactic poems are devoted to chanting the praise of Holy Mary. Nevertheless, there the meter of all parts is maintained. In the Racine example, the alexandrine is replaced by heterometric stanzas, which illustrate the fading of the litanic spirit. Does this scene, without the celebrated litany whose main aim is to praise peace, appear to lack some kind of rite? Undoubtedly the chant performed by the Israelites belongs to the group of three prayers which are sung in the preceding and following scenes. Firstly, before the litanic verse appears, the Israelites chanted the glory of God who poured mildness into the royal heart; later, in the third scene of the third act, they praise the blessed state in which the people live when their king is righteous and good. This triad, comprising a reflection on God and a terrestrial king, demonstrates the importance of “la supreme autorité,” that affects human life.

12.2  Love Sonnets, Descriptive Sonnets and Spiritual Sonnets To introduce the love theme, we can begin with two sonnets by different authors, Denis Sanguin de Saint-Pavin and Charles de Vion d’Alibray, both applying an impersonal mode recognizable in the use of the pronoun “on.” That notwithstanding, the sonnets achieve a mood of intimacy, as their endings bring a confession directed only to the speaker’s lady love. Sonnet II of Saint-Pavin, in

74 John Campbell, “The politics of Esther,” Seventeenth-Century French Studies, vol. 31 (2009), eprints.gla.ac.uk/24360/ [accessed December 19, 2017], 13. 75 Pierre Giuliani, “Esther et la douceur: une gageure dramatique,” L’Information littéraire, vol. 56 (2004): 8–9.

206

which the word “quand” serves as an anaphora in six lines,76 persuades us that the sentiment described should be called love under the stated conditions: Quand on n’eut jamais de secret Dont on se soit fait un mystère, Quand on ne songe qu’à se plaire. Quand on se quitte avec regret.

An analogous aim—to present all features which consist in one omnipotence of love—is revealed in d’Alibray’s sonnet XXV from the collection Vers moraux, in which the expression “on aime”77 appears nine times taking into account only the quatrains. The first quatrain of this sonnet, in particular, benefits from the parallelism formed by “on aime” followed by the nouns signifying emotions, such as pleasure, desire, hope and sorrow. The ideas that these two authors have for ending the sonnets are different, however. Saint-Pavin finally adds another pronoun: “Entre n ou s  deux, cela s’appelle / s’aimer bien plus que l’on ne croit” (the emphasis is mine). D’Alibray in turn finishes with a rhetorical question: “Mais comment pourrait-on d’amour se mieux défendre / Si l’on trouve par tout des appas en amour?” without abandoning the tone of universal truth. A sonnet by Georges de Scudéry with the incipit “Voir des sceptres rompus, des Couronnes brisées”78 is the last in a group of three sonnets devoted to the death of a lady. The first from this cycle is entitled “Sur la mort d’une Dame,” the second, “Sur le mesme suiet, en epitaph,” and the one to be discussed here contains only the notation “Sur le mesme suiet.” The fact that such a fugitive topic is correlated with the use of litanic verse in a sonnet has previously been noted in regard to Ronsard’s “Epitaphe de Marie.” Ronsard had enumerated the spiritual values that the lady could boast and regretted that they disappeared from the world with her death. De Scudéry also explores the theme of the death of an individual person in the global sense, but he rather emphasizes how easily worldly things are destroyed. An anaphora on “voir”—fluctuating in the sonnet, because it opens the poem, yet does not repeat in the first stanza, and gains strength only in the second quatrain—and the enumeration of objects subject to annihilation

76 Denis Sanguin de Saint-Pavin, Poésies (Paris: Garnier, 2012), 49. 77 Charles de Vion, Vers moraux: Sonnet XXV in: Les Œuvres poétiques du Dalibray, divisées en vers bachiques, satyriques, héroïques, amoureux, moraux et chrestiens (Paris: A. de Sommaville, 1653), 30. This sonnet was not republished in the edition from 1906 by Adolphe van Bever. 78 Georges de Scudéry, Poésies diverses, vol. 1 (Paris: Nizet, 1983), 87.

207

(symbols of profane and sacral power: “thrones,” “autels,” “palais”) are the main litanic verse characteristic in this poem. The description of place is also an important sonnetary theme in Classicism, but in a different fashion than in the Renaissance sonnets. We may take as an illustration Joachim du Bellay’s sonnet with the anaphora on “ny,” which sketches an indefinite landscape thanks to the use of general nouns like “forest,” “sun,” “birds,” “flowers” etc., whereas in the examples analyzed in this chapter, we encounter a famous place existing in reality and belonging to the European heritage, namely Fontaine-de-Vaucluse. The description of the locus amoenus in Sonnet II of Georges de Scudéry (incipit: “Mille, & mille bouillons, l’un sur l’autre poussés”) is composed with the anaphora on “là.” The poem is part of a cycle entitled Description de la fameuse fontaine de Vaucluse en douze sonnets. The litanic verse can be recognized here both in the quatrains and the tercets, but its frequency varies. The anaphora on “Mille & mille”79 in the onset repeats on the level of the quatrains, whereas that on “ici” is repeated on the level of nearly all the lines of the tercets. Before the mental pause in this sonnet occurs, the world depicted is in movement. The choice of verbs assures this: pousser, tomber, verser, s’élancer, retomber, entasser. Stability is reached in the first tercet, not only due to the above-mentioned repetition of “ici” in the onset of two lines, but mainly by introducing a state (the verb “est”), in which imitation (“imite”) or comparison (“comme”) are visible. The second tercet returns to the action of portraying the world in its synesthetic aspect, by enumerating processes of painting and speaking: se confondre, peindre, murmurer, répondre. The colors green, azure, and white—described through the metaphor: “la neige ou le Cigne en sa plume”—are joined in the initial line of the final tercet. The Vaucluse is also chanted in Sonnet XII of the same cycle by de Scudéry: “O Beaux lieux consacrez par la plume immortelle,”80 which evokes the glory of Petrarch from its first line. The poem is written with an unassuming use of litanic verse. The conjugated verb pouvoir in the form “puisse” or “puissent,” which appears here as an anaphora six times, may express a wish in a kind of benediction. It is a desire to ensure eternity which is clearly manifested twice: “Puisse malgré le Temps […] / Votre gloire être extreme […],” “Puisse le haut renom de ces illustres Morts, / Rendre enfin […] votre gloire éternelle.” In the tercets, appreciation is expressed through an unchangeable element placed at the beginning of a line and the enumeration of various components in the next part of the line:

79 Georges de Scudéry, Poésies diverses, 43. 80 Ibid.

208

“Puissent tomber sur vous, et la Manne, et le Miel; / Puissent pleuvoir sur vous, mille graces du Ciel, / Et les fleurs, et les fruits, […].” The act of deprecation which abruptly ends the sonnet is the only private confession of the lyrical “I.” Ève Du­ perray argues that “Georges de Scudéry invite chacun d’entre nous au devoir de mémoire en ce lieu de conservation,”81 and this interpretation would be inspiring from the point of view of scholars of litanic verse; however, we do not find in the text evidence of such an invitation to all readers. The apostrophe is directed to the poetized place and to persons from whom he wishes to get testimony of the grandeur of this Petrarchan temple—that is, to writers. With the Sonnets chrétiens (1680) by Laurent Drelincourt, we introduce the religious theme of sonnetary production that profited from the litanic verse. The subtitle of this part of Drelincourt’s work reads: “sur diverses graces et divers etats.” Indeed, litanic verse praises many phenomena and it is present in sonnets XV “Sur les Arbres et les Plantes,” XVII “Sur le Soleil,” and XXIV “Sur les Vents.” In all of these, the litanic element chiefly emerges in the simple list of antonomasias. A detailed analysis is provided for Sonnet II of Livre quatrième which is more inherently varied. The title of the sonnet, “Sur la Parole de Dieu,”82 indicates that we may expect a litany of the Word of God, which has been encountered before in our research, for instance, in Louanges de Jesus-Christ, nostre Sauveur of Brodeau. There, the noun “verbe” served as the component of Christological titles and was multiplied, whereas here, the Word of God is the main motif, described under many names. Nevertheless, a common feature of the Renaissance example and Drelincourt’s sonnet is their laudatory character. “Qui peut assez louer, ô grand Dieu!, ta Parole?” asks the author in the first sentence of the sonnet, who then proceeds to the enumeration of titles addressed to the Word of God introduced by the anaphora on “c’est,” and dominating in all stanzas except for the last tercet: “C’est un Glaive trenchant, un Trésor précieux,” “Un Miroir de ta Face, un Rayon de tes yeux,” “C’est le lait des enfans; c’est le vin des plus vieux,” “C’est la douce Rosée et la riche Semence.” These titles are familiar to a litanic verse scholar,83 yet not in 81 Ève Duperray, L’Or des mots: une lecture de Pétrarque et du mythe littéraire de Vaucluse des origines à l’orée du XXe siècle: histoire du pétrarquisme en France (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1997), 106. 82 Laurent Drelincourt, Sonnets chrétiens sur divers sujets (Paris: Champion, 2004), 246. 83 The poet admits that the vision of the Word of God is not autonomous, as he evokes the story in the footnotes to this poem: “On dit qu’un Peintre, fameus dans l’Antiquité, voulant peindre une Beauté Céleste, emprunta, pour ce Dessein, les Traits & les Graces de plusieurs Objets. Icy l’on emprunte, de même, diverses Images & diverses Idées, pour

209

reference to the Word of God. A short overview persuades us that it is the Marian context which comes to the fore—through “trésor precieux” Holy Mary was invoked in Sonnet XXIII of Gabrielle de Coignard; a mirror was a component of Marian titles in the chanson of Austorc de Galhac: “mirals d’onor”; the ray of sun served as a symbol of the nascence of Jesus in the body of the Virgin, for instance, in Rutebeuf ’s works. Additionally, the mention of mother’s milk resembles “mameles qui le latterent” from Li Romans dou lis, the significance of dew (e.g., dew of heaven) is underlined in Li Romans de Carité et Miserere, and of the seed, for instance, in Guiraut Riquier’s alba. The maritime metaphor in the lines “C’est aux pauvres Mortels le Phare et la Boussole, / Qui conduit surement leur Vaisseau vers les Cieux” also has a strong a Marian connotation. The question that now arises is that of why the Marian context is crucial in Drelincourt’s work devoted to the Word of God. Searching for an answer, we may reach for other examples of Marian piety in Sonnets chrétiens that are, however, rare. There is only one sonnet which in its entirety concerns Holy Mary—“Sur la Sainte Vierge” (Sonnet II of Livre troisieme)—and there are a few mentions of her in, for instance, “Sur la Paix” and “Sur l’Aparition de l’Ange aus Bergers.” In fact, “Sur la Sainte Vierge” may suggest a possible answer: the figure of the Mother of Christ is involved in the process of creation, as it is she who brought into the world “the Author” of the eternal light—“Tu mets au Jour l’Auteur des Clartez éternelles”—and thanks to her, the Son of God became a man: “Par Toy, le Créateur veut être Créature.”84 The paradoxes contained in these statements, for instance, the fact that the light which is eternal has shone one day, and infinity has inhabited the human body, are concurrent with the image of the “Word [which] became flesh.” Fernand Hallyn analyzes the structure of this sonnet as having a quality of endlessness: “Au lieu de nier la convenance des images, on peut aussi les accumuler

représenter les Perfections & les Propriétez diverses de la Parole de Dieu.” However, he does not suggest the Marian idea, emphasizing only the accumulation of many various symbols. An interesting context for this analysis of Marian motifs in Drelincourt’s sonnet are the remarks of his father, Charles Drelincourt, a Protestant pastor, about devotion to Holy Mary: “Nous ne l’appelons pas la Reine des cieux, la Porte du Paradis, l’Échelle de Jacob, […] et la Redemptrice du genre humain.” At the same time, he fought against the conviction that Protestants dishonor the Holy Virgin (Georges Bavaud, “Quel honneur rendre à La Vierge Marie? Une controverse entre le Pasteur Charles Drelincourt et Mgr. Jean-Pierre Camus, Évêque de Belley,” Marian Library Studies, vol. 17 (1985): 322). 84 Drelincourt, Sonnets chrétiens sur divers sujets, 188.

210

dans une énumération apparemment sans fin, qui suggère le caractère inépui­ sable du comparé.”85 However, the distinctiveness of the last tercet evidently signifies the end of the theme of the universal, collective prayer (“nous” used in the eleventh line), as it gives way to a private confession in which the Word of the God, apart from all titles offered previously to it, plays another peculiar role. It is the fundamental principle in the life of the person speaking in the sonnet—je lyrique unveils: “[…] je ne périrai pas, / Puis que j’ai dans mon cœur ce Principe de Vie.” In this manner, this sonnet concludes without any supplications. The role of such an introductory element as “C’est” is important also in Sonnet XV of d’Alibray’s collection Sur le movement de la terre, which was composed less than twenty years before the Sonnets chretiens of Drelincourt. It is the Sun which is the object of praise. In the first quatrain, after three antonomasias: “Lumière qui voids tout, Flambeau du Firmament, Cœur du Monde,”86 there follows the supplication which reveals a desire to address the Sun in the most appropriate way: “apprends nous de quels mots assez dignes  / Nous te reconnoistrons […].” Strangely, the continuation of the poem does not include the series of titles, but the author takes advantage of the repetition rather than the enumeration. He uses variants of the structure: “Toi,” “qui,” “C’est toi qui”: C’est toy qui fais meurir et nos bleds et nos vignes, Toy dont nous empruntons et jour et mouvement, Toy qui donnes la force à notre entendement, Toy qui conduis la main qui va traçant ces lignes.

The tercets neither utilize repetition nor do they list objects, trying to explain through the dynamic, declarative sentences the idea of the Earth’s journey around the Sun. It is the concepts of universality and permanence which are progressively unveiled in the sonnet: “Lumiere qui voids tout,” “ces faveurs insignes que l’homme de ta part recoit incessament.” Presenting the Sun in images full of paradoxes (“Tu te reposes, toy par qui tout est mobile”) corresponds with the way in which God, the Creator, is commonly illustrated. The world seen from the cosmic perspective with its human inhabitants does not have to be depicted as a soulless machine. The author argues this, adding comparisons which are not obvious in this context. Torn between the scientific explanation which he finally offers and delighted to find “la raison,” in the last line (and through the last word) he returns to one of the antonomasias listed in the first stanza: “Tu te 85 Fernand Hallyn, Formes métaphoriques dans la poésie lyrique de l’âge baroque en France (Genève: Droz, 1975), 71. 86 Charles de Vion, Les Œuvres poétiques, 91.

211

reposes, toy par qui tout est mobile, / Au moins à la facon que repose le cœur.” This comparison—one more element of the conviction that the Sun is the center of the Universe—demonstrates how litanic verse is applied while the poet is addressing the scientific87 themes of that period, and the conclusion surprises us by its evocation of the heart, and not reason.

12.3  Descriptive Poetry In a poem by Scudéry that numbers more than 120 lines, Description de la belle maison de Monsieur de Balzac, the expected object of praise is the residence mentioned in the title, which is the country house of Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac, located in the region of Charente. Nonetheless, this expectation is only partly accurate. Although the essential passage of the poem is devoted to a list of all the wonders which may be found in this area, it is the owner himself who is lauded: C’est luy qui dans ces lieux concoit ces grandes choses, Plus riches que ces Champs; plus belles que ces Roses: C’est luy de qui le Stile, à nul autre pareil, Paroist plus lumineux, que l’esclat du Soleil: C’est luy dont le discours qui charme tout le monde, A plus de pureté que n’en fait voir cette onde: C’est luy de qui l’esprit s’élève glorieux, Comme un superbe Mont qui s’approche des Cieux.88

The repetition is accepted willingly in the dense alexandrine. The enumeration starting with “C’est lui qui / de qui” in every second line continues another seven times. The applicable rule of composition in this passage is that in the line succeeding the anaphora, one finds a statement emphasizing the perfection of certain objects which exceeds that of all other components of the Universe. Three main devices are applied to convey these features. Firstly, there is the use of comparative and superlative adjectives: “plus riche que,” “plus belle que,” “des plus scavans oiseaux,” “les plus scavans concerts,” “les plus amiable fleurs.” Secondly, there is the expressed confidence that we cannot compare it with anything else— a characteristic fitting both the house as well as its owner (“à nul autre pareil, sans égal puissance”), as they are both so formidable and close to the celestial beings. 87 Alain Génetiot calls it rather “une forme de poésie para-scientifique courante au XVIe siècle […] mais parasitée par le badinage et le caprice” [Les Genres lyriques mondains (1630–1660). Étude des poésies de Voiture, Vion d’Alibray, Sarasin et Scarron (Genève: Droz, 1990), 35]. 88 Georges de Scudéry, Poésies diverses, vol. 2, 124.

212

Finally, the author creates the impression of a multitude, which is shown in the expressions “cent rayons” and “l’abondance.”

12.4 Conclusion The examples of litanic verse in drama persuade us that not only were the medieval mystery and miracle plays prone to taking advantage of litanic verse’s characteristics, litanic verse’s inherent dualism, which in that period emerges chiefly as a division into two hemistiches of alexandrine containing longer or shorter repetitive elements, proved to be a suitable form for conveying the emotions natural to tragic conflicts. The multiplication of one phrase, accompanied by the evocation of antinomic feelings, such as love and hate, makes litanic verse a noticeably dynamic structure. This repetition may be a substantial part of a one person’s speech, but it can also be employed by a chorus. The alexandrine remained in its position as the favorite meter of litanic verse, applied not only in the dramatic genre, but also in the sonnetary form, which is the second main domain of the use of litanic verse in the period of Classicism. Nonetheless, in a few cases, it should be noted that it is no longer alexandrine classique. The enjambments are more frequent in Racine’s works, and Claudine Nédélec discusses the “traitement burlesque de l’alexandrin” in Les Plaideurs. Concluding the relatively wide thematic range exemplified mainly by sonnets, we must note that the addressee most often invoked in this period is God, as both the possessor of the potency of the creative word and the Creator of the world. The themes raised emphasize rather a public message conveyed by the poets, who praise the elements of the Universe and famous personages, whereas the private tone is subdued.

213

13.  Age of Enlightenment The Age of Enlightenment witnessed a continuing decline in litanic verse. The rare examples of its use are provided by the most important names associated with the achievements of the Enlightenment period, names such as JeanJacques Rousseau and André Chénier. The tendency to employ litanic verse to describe the richness of the world and the regions of the Earth and the Universe responds to the Renaissance cosmological poetry and the Baroque’s interest in extraterrestrial reality. The works of two authors, Jean-Antoine Roucher and Ponce-Denis Écouchard-Lebrun, demonstrate the potential of litanic verse in descriptive poetry in which it is used more to depict the variety of creation than to “apaiser la colère de Dieu, pour détourner quelque calamité dont on est menace,” as was stated in a definition of litanies in the great work of the French Enlightenment, Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers.89 The second important trend of litanic verse at the time is the turn toward mythology. Politics also left its mark on poetry, which is visible chiefly in the parodies of litanies that do not ridicule human vices but depict the political reality instead.

13.1 The Image of the World in the Eye of the Enlightened: Rousseau—Lebrun—Roucher A poem by Rousseau, L’Allée de Silvie, dating from 1746, contains a personal description of the author promenading in Chenonceaux on one of the paths around the castle. The calmness of nature charms him, but his heart is seized by bitterness: “De ma triste & lente carrier / Rien n’adouciroit la misere,” “Fuyez […] Vains & tumultueux projets.” In the beginning of the poem, the emotions of the lyrical “I” are confessed in a desperate manner, exclamations compete with questions and the chaotic course of the narration features examples of parallelism. After a few lines, the speaker addresses the desires, saying: Passions, sources de délices, Passions, sources de supplices; Cruels tyrans, doux séducteurs,

89 “Litanies,” in Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, vol. 9 (Neufchastel: Faulche, 1765), 586.

215

Sans vos fureurs impétueuses, Sans vos amorces dangereuses, La paix seroit dans tous les cœurs.90

Three following passages strengthen the impression that the poem was inspired by the form of litany, as one more anaphora on “Malheur à” is introduced. The rhyme scheme aabccb provokes us to recognize the partition into three-line units; however, the doubling is also excessively manifested. The form is uncomplicated and the octosyllables in this fragment develop in a gentle way. Indeed, critics have argued that the salient features of this poem are “la légèreté et la vivacité”; however, it is also claimed that “le style reste abstrait, dépourvu d’images, et la penseé est parfois aussi banale que les adjectifs sont plats.”91 In the litanies of the Church, the stability of the vision of the person whom we address is convincing due to the anaphora and the use of synonyms in the description: “Cœur de Jésus, temple saint du Seigneur, / Cœur de Jésus, tabernacle du Très-Haut, / Cœur de Jésus, maison de Dieu.” In Rousseau’s poem, we do not find this coherence, and his opinion about the passions fluctuates, as he uses antonyms such as “sources de délices” and “sources de supplices.” The aim of this poetic litany is not to call to the passions, nor to evoke them, but rather to persuade the reader that the evangelic values of peace and mercy will only be achieved when these dramatic emotions are banished from people’s hearts. Human beings are not condemned to eternal struggle with their sentiments, and this is the reason why the text concludes with “hommage pur & tendre, / Que tous les cœurs auroient du rendre / Aux grandeurs, aux bienfaits de Dieu.” Close to the spirit of Rousseau’s promenade, during which the author meditated on the source of human happiness, is the title of Lebrun’s poem—La nature ou le bonheur philosophique et champêtre, composed about 1760. The speaker uses the apostrophe to describe Nature which he calls his mother, the daughter of gods, and later he claims that man is the work of her breath.92 This conviction, evoking the passage from Job 33:4 (“the breath of the Almighty gives me life”), serves as a conclusion to the entire description of the world emerging from chaos—it is Nature herself who plays the role of the author. However, Lebrun’s portrayal of this process is based on the traditional vision of God’s creation, as, for instance, he evokes the cosmic harmony:

90 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Œuvres complètes: La nouvelle Héloise. Théatre. Poésies. Essais littéraires (Paris: Gallimard, 1961), 1147. 91 Jean-Louis Lecercle, Rousseau et l’art du roman (Genève: Droz, 1979), 43. 92 Ponce-Denis Écouchard-Lebrun, Œuvres, vol. 2 (Paris: Warée, 1811), 291.

216

Tu sortis de toi-même, et ta main sûre et libre Au sein des mouvements balança l’équilibre, Vers un centre commun fit peser tous les corps, Des éléments rivaux assembla les accords, Alluma les soleils, suspendit les planètes Et crayonna leur route aux rapides comètes.93

If all the prerogatives of Providence have been transposed onto Nature, we should ask about the vision of God in this poem. Is He in any way present in La nature? Much in the spirit of the epoch is this expression of the lyrical “I”: “Je pense: ma pensée atteste plus un dieu.”94 Chant second, entitled La Liberté, gives the definitive answer to our question: Ce Dieu, si différent du Dieu que nous formons, N’a jamais contre l’Homme armé de noirs Démons. Il n’a point confié sa vengeance au Tonnerre; Il n’a point dit aux Cieux: Vous instruirez la Terre; Mais de la Conscience il a dicté la voix; Mais dans le cœur de l’homme il a gravé ses Loix; Mais il a fait rougir la timide innocence; Mais il a fait pâlir la coupable Licence; Mais au lieu de l’Enfer, il créa le Remord, Et n’éternise point la Douleur et la Mort.95

The anaphoras are not so numerous in this passage, nor are the examples of parallelism. Nonetheless, the repetitive element “Mais” is fundamental for the emphasis of the contrast between the God of Christian history and god, the protagonist of the poem. In the same Chant, it becomes clear that Nature is the object which appropriates the metaphors integrated with the Biblical message: “Il est; tout est par Lui […] / En Lui tout est vertu […].”96 The two poems discussed above, of Rousseau and Lebrun, introduce the theme of nature—in the sense of the forces at work in the universe—of beautiful scenery and of the condition of the man—as well as of innocence and sin. The litanic verse in these two examples seems to be in accord, respecting divine responsibility for human failures. Accordingly, in Rousseau’s poem, a man’s heart is eager to satisfy sinful desires, and the heavens enable these torments rather than

93 Ibid., 290. 94 Ibid., 304. 95 Ibid., 305. 96 Ibid.

217

peace: “Pourquoi de ces penchans aimables / Le Ciel nous fait-il un tourment?” On this matter, Lebrun goes even further than Rousseau when he emphasizes that the Christian God is “contre l’Homme.” The importance of the notion of innocence in these two messages is worth emphasizing, as both poets find it in Nature. Nevertheless, the main idea of Rousseau’s vision is that God, the Creator of this charming Sylvie’s alley, about which he declares, “Qu’a m’égarer dans ces bocages / Mon cœur goûte de voluptés!” is not responsible for the world in which civilization has imposed its rules and passions—that is the fundamental reason for the ambitious man’s sufferings. The soul of a man who desires riches and cares only about himself is always shown as being unhappy. On the contrary, Lebrun assures the reader that a man with his reason can better make laws than God, who is envious and cruel. An evident enthusiast of the God who created the world and made the laws can be seen in Jean-Antoine Roucher. He is the author of Les Mois (1779) where litanic verse is found particularly in two parts of the fifth chant, entitled Juillet, which is the second in the part called L’Été. The main factors of litanic verse in Rocher’s work are the anaphoras on “que” and “de,” which are allied with enumeration. In the beginning of the poem, the sentence with the predicate vouloir que anticipates the frequent use of the pronoun “que.”97 This passage describes how the dispatcher of the will is God, while the objects in His power are the works of the Creation—the sun, the heavens, the rivers and all the phenomena that confirm the richness and variety of the world: Que l’ambre hérissât la bruyante Baltique; Que l’ébène ombrageât la rive asiatique; Que le sol des Incas d’un or pur s’enrichît; Que dans les flots d’Ormus la perle se blanchit; Qu’aux veines des rochers une chaleur féconde Changeât en diamant le sable de Golconde.98

97 If one insists that litany means monotony, this “litanic” feature was discovered early by Jean-François de La Harpe: “Quand on aurait pris à tâche de rassembler en vers tout ce qui peut former la plus assoupissante monotonie, je ne crois pas qu’il fût possible d’y mieux réussir. Que dites-vous de cette mortelle période reprise quatorze fois par le même que? […] de tous ces vers la plupart symétrisés un à un, ou deux à deux, […]? de ces rimes uniformes de Baltique, d’asiatique, de Finlande, d’Islande […]?” (Cours de littérature ancienne et moderne, 2, Paris: Firmin, 1840, 179). 98 Jean-Antoine Roucher, Les Mois, poème en douze chants (Paris: Froment, 1825), 104.

218

On the one hand, this anaphora cooperates in creating the impression of l’ordre99 which is the crucial role of this passage. As we read at the beginning, “à ce grand tout un Dieu donna des lois, / […] destinant chaque être à d’éternels emplois, / Lui marqua son séjour, son rang et sa durée.” On the other hand, the elements which are introduced by the anaphora do not intensify this effect; on the contrary, their enumeration is characterized by the flow of exotic images. This is the first feature which distinguishes the poem from the enumeration in, for instance, the Litany of the Saints. The objects in Roucher’s œuvre are not categorized, the wood is invoked after the amber, then followed by some animal species. Furthermore, the places, mentioned occasionally at the end of a line, are not enumerated in any specific order—the geographical names start with the Baltic Sea and then come India and Egypt, yet Northern places are invoked again, namely Finland and Iceland. The second difference between the litanic verse in the poem and the lines of litanies is the presence of the predicate in each line. While the fragment with the anaphora on “que” numbers twenty-four lines, there is later another anaphoric passage of more than ten lines. The main difference between them is the status of the enumeration introduced in the text. While in the previous example it demonstrated the multiplicity of the world in its general idea, now it is the landscape seen from the Swiss mountain village of Grindelwald, described in a highly clear, parallel manner: De verdure, de fleurs, des moissons ondoyantes, De paisible ruisseaux, de cascades bruyantes, De fontaines, de lacs, de fleuves, de torrens, D’hommes et de troupeaux sur les plaines errans.100

The lines, dense in their message and long in their shape, correspond with the way in which the scenery extends what is communicated through the expressions: “Dieu! quel pompeux spectacle étalé devant moi!”, “Sous mes yeux enchantés la nature rassemble / Tout ce qu’elle a […],” “un monde entier s’étend.” Jean Gaudon noted the presence of a chiasmus which contains an antithesis,101 for instance, in the lines: “De paisible ruisseaux, de cascades bruyantes” (in one of the following lines—“D’abimes ténébreux, de cimes éclairées”—only the antithesis remained). 99

Cf. the succeeding lines: “En désordre d’abord répandus sur l’arène, / Ils s’y rangent en cercle, ils attaquent un frène,” where the idea and images of regrouping are manifested. 100 Ibid., 108. 101 Jean Gaudon, “‘Magnifiques horreurs’. De la présence ou de l’absence d’une figure de rhétorique,” in Le Préromantisme: hypothèque ou hypothèse? ed. Paul Viallaneix (Paris: Klincksieck, 1975), 507.

219

However, this feature would be difficult to harness for a litanic researcher’s purposes. In both examples from Roucher’s poem, we see how the anaphora prevents the frequent use of enjambment and restores the majestic course of the alexandrine. The previously mentioned manner of enumeration starting with “Que” aimed to impress the reader with a riot of objects and places, whereas in the depiction of an actually existing landscape, the method is simplified.

13.2  Mythological World of Idyll and Elegy The litany in its ancient costume is introduced at the beginning of André Chénier’s idyll Le Jeune Malade, though some anaphoras also appear later, always in two lines, which seems to be the main feature of the litanic verse of this author: Apollon, dieu sauveur, dieu des savants mystères, Dieu de la vie, et dieu des plantes salutaires, Dieu vainqueur de Python, dieu jeune et triomphant, Prends pitié de mon fils, de mon unique enfant! Prends pitié de sa mère aux larmes condamnée, Qui ne vit que pour lui, qui meurt abandonnée, Qui n’a pas dû rester pour voir mourir son fils! Dieu jeune, viens aider sa jeunesse. Assoupis, Assoupis dans son sein cette fièvre brûlante Qui dévore la fleur de sa vie innocente.102

The word “Dieu” certainly operates here as a stable element of litanic invocation, while the other antonomasias accompany it. The supplications are postponed to the following lines. The recurrence of “Prends” plays an ambiguous role, as it is a component of the formula “prends pitié” which explains what the person asks for, whereas in other examples, like “Prends notre Amour d’ivoire, honneur de ces hameaux;  / Prends la coupe d’onyx à Corinthe ravie;  / Prends mes jeunes chevreaux, prends mon coeur, prends ma vie,” it indicates what should be taken, not given. This imploration is addressed to Apollo, yet the anaphora on “qui” refers to the person speaking. Edouard Guitton claimed that “[…] l’état de fièvre du personnage qui parle, l’insistance des exclamations et des répétitions créent le rythme à sauts et saccades: nous entendons encore des alexandrins, mais nous entendons aussi des mètres scandés, et notamment des dactyles.”103 Nevertheless,

102 André Chénier, Œuvres complètes (Paris: Gallimard, 1989), 33. 103 Édouard Guitton, “Les tentatives de libération du vers français dans la poésie de 1760 à la Révolution,” Cahiers de l’Association internationale des études françaises, vol. 21 (1969): 23.

220

to put it correctly, we should indicate that in this idyll of more than one hundred lines, nearly half of them consist of the speech of the mother of the sick boy, so the rhythm of some passages should not be treated as a sign of the condition of the patient. We may see that the enjambment in the alexandrine occasionally destroys the potential for anaphoric construction, making from the call “Assoupis, Assoupis” not a double, insistent supplication, but rather one chaotic sentence. The eighth section of the third elegy of Lebrun, from the third book of his elegies dating from 1762, directs the laudation to Venus: Vierge aimable! quels biens sont dus à tes faveurs! Tu couronnes Cybèle et de Fruits et de Fleurs; Tu parfumes la Grappe au penchant des Collines; Tu dores nos Moissons dans les Plaines voisines; Aux Loups, aux noirs Brigands tu dérobes l’Agneau; Tu permets au Pasteur d’enfler son chalumeau; Tu diriges la danse au pied de l’Orme antique Où bondit à pas lourds l’allégresse rustique: Toi seule oses de Mars briser les Étendards, Et tu forges le Soc du débris de ses Dards.104

Venus invoked as “you” operates as the grammatical agent who causes a change of state of personages, fauna and flora. The enumerated actions offer a description rich in epithets and appealing to all senses. This depiction, with one syllable out of twelve repeated, allows the poet to mitigate the run of the speech in the poem, which in other sections of this elegy (twelve of them, each counting a different number of lines—from four to twenty) relies on frequent appeals, exclamations and demands as well as short, clipped sentences, as, for instance: l. 4: Il ouvrit à la Mort des routes plus rapides… l. 7: L’Or seul fut le criminel! l’Or enfante la Guerre105 l. 63: O Paix! divine Paix! que tes mains fortunées […]106 l. 79: Frappez, jeunes Amans! tombez, Portes rebelles!107

Putting forward one stanza, which encloses the sentences and keeps the stable order of their parts (a subject and a predicate, a direct and an indirect object complement), long enough to occupy one entire line or even two, and also developed enough to give the details, may soothe the emotion that had been evoked

104 Lebrun, Œuvres, 2, 71. 105 Ibid., 69. 106 Ibid., 71. 107 Ibid., 72.

221

previously by the message about the possible—or maybe just imaginary?—danger of war. Apart from the easily visible anaphora on “tu,” the eighth section distinguishes itself by the complete erasure of the lyrical “I,” as the only sign of the status of the speaker is the pronoun “nos” placed before “moissons.” However, the person speaking has been manifested clearly in other sections—for example, “Que disje?” in the first, “mon Enfance” in the second, and “moi, je vous offrirai,” in the third.

13.3  Parodies of Litany Among many offices which were treated parodically during the Revolutionary period, that is, Credo, Pater, Te Deum and Magnificat, we also find litanies. Those entitled Litanies du tiers état, published anonymously and copied frequently in an epoch of turmoil, imitate the structure of the Litany of the Saints. The idea of desacralizing the message involves the replacement of canonical personages with contemporary men of power. In the first part, copying the Invocatio sanctorum passage, the persons evoked reflect the hierarchy of the human, terrestrial world. Marie Antoinette is listed first, then follow the princes and princesses, the dukes, etc., and their estates are also indicated, for instance, “Nobles du Dauphiné.” The next category of persons is the clergy, beginning with archbishops and bishops. Here the traditional supplication formula changes into “intercédez pour nous” and “parlez pour nous,” because the following list of persons mentions the lawyers and the presidents of local parliaments. The next section starts in the same manner as Invocatio ad Christum, that is, with a supplication to the Lord to deliver the faithful from evil. However, the following invocations are more itemized. There are arrests, violence, despotism and the lengthy procedures from which the praying people beseech deliverance. This part, containing the anaphora on “De,” is the longest one, and the next one the most parallel: Par votre amour pour votre peuple, écoutez-nous. Par votre économie, soulagez-nous. Par votre justice, protégez-nous. Par votre popularité, soutenez-nous. Par votre probité, consolez-nous.108

The statement “Corps de la Nation, nous vous prions” opens the passage including the anaphora “pour que.” In place of the triple Agnus Dei, close to the end we 108 Litanies du Tiers-État [s.l.; s.n.].

222

find the exclamations, “Necker! Necker! qui faites l’espoir de la France, Necker! Necker! qui soutenez le crédit de la France, Necker! Necker! qui réparez les malheurs de France.”

13.4 Conclusion Undoubtedly the most highly praised phenomenon in these poetic litanies is the natural world itself, with its stars, continents and landscapes, as well as its small and cozy nooks. The desire to live in a peaceful world and have harmony in one’s heart is not a highly sophisticated wish for men in the era of scientific discoveries and inventions; however, disquietude is introduced along with the question— who is the Creator of all things of the world and of the human mind? For this type of poetical treatise, usually in long poems, the meter of alexandrine is the most appropriate. The Rousseauian example distinguishes itself by its tunefulness with its shorter meter and the repetition that encompasses a large part of a line. It is interesting that even if the litanic verse of the time is devoted to the description of the external world, it betrays the processes unfolding in man’s psyche—hell can be created by remorse and peace needs to be guaranteed not only in history, but also by calming human emotions.

223

Part IV:  The Nineteenth Century

14.  Romantic Movement toward Litanic Verse A revival of interest in litanies at the beginning of the nineteenth century can be seen in many forms: prayers of intercession are evoked in the treatises and essays of important Christian thinkers, such as François-René de Chateaubriand;1 in works of travel writing, Oriental litanies are mentioned;2 the notion of litany is even used in an article caricaturing the romantic salons.3 An affirmative answer should be given to the question of whether the romantic poetry reflects this interest, as the material gathered in this chapter convinces us that the litany was an important source of inspiration. However, litanic verse in Romantic literature did not appear at the start of the era; it was first observed when the Méditations poétiques (1820) of Alphonse de Lamartine were followed by Nouvelles méditations poétiques (1823) and the Odes et Ballades of Victor Hugo were published with a fifth preface in 1828. This suggests that a special place was reserved for litanic verse once writers had rediscovered its possibilities. The works that we will analyze in this chapter were created chiefly by some of the key figures of the Romantic movement, namely Lamartine, Hugo and Alfred de Musset. Poems by representatives of the so-called petits romantiques are also taken into consideration to demonstrate the consistency of themes suited to litanic verse in that period: “les passions et les faits contemporains,” as Leconte de Lisle describes the motifs in romantic poetry in his preface to Poèmes antiques. By contrast, the poetic circle of la bohème including Gérard de Nerval

1 Chateaubriand in Génie du christianisme, published at the dawn of the nineteenth century, in 1802, included litanies among the Christian prayers that “présentaient des convenances parfaites, des sentiments élevés, de grands souvenirs et un style à la fois simple et magnifique” (Paris: Gallimard, 1978, 901). Cf. the remarks of Victor de Laprade, who also emphasized the spontaneity and at the same time the completeness of the primary form of litany: “Le type fondamental de l’hymne, de toute poésie lyrique, tel qu’il s’est conservé dans plusieurs de nos prières chrétiennes, c’est la litanie. […] La simple émission du nom des choses avant même d’y joindre leurs attributs fut d’abord l’acte intellectuel par excellence, le véritable hommage rendu à l’auteur des choses, la première science, la première poésie, le premier culte.” (“Introduction,” in Le Sentiment de la nature avant le christianisme, Paris: Didier, 1866, xx). 2 Cf. the diaries and memoires from a trip to the Orient by Lamartine, Gérard de Nerval and Théophile Gautier. 3 Honoré de Balzac, “Les litanies romantiques” published in La Caricature on December 9, 1830.

227

and Théophile Gautier does not draw upon litanic verse, either in fantastic or in impersonal literature. The absence of litanic verse in, for instance, Les Chimères makes one wonder why litanic verse disappears from the sonnet, which had hosted it so often in previous periods.4 First of all, the major poets—who, as has already been stated, are the chief authors of litanic verse in this period—did not prefer the manner of expression it offers: “[…] ni Lamartine, ni Vigny, ni Hugo ne pratiquent le sonnet, à des rarissimes et marginales exceptions près pour ces deux derniers. Il était contraire à l’ampleur naturelle de leur discours et de leurs vues; comment auraient-ils pu accepter l’enfermement dans les quatorze vers?”5 Secondly, we may hypothesize that the Romantic litanic verse has a tendency to release the structure of a poem by making it open to several voices—this strategy is crucial in the works of Lamartine, Musset and Alphonse Esquiros—and it rarely appears in finished, closed structures. This is argued on the basis of the fact that a greater part of the poems analyzed below contain litanic verse only in certain passages, and, which is important, these are poems with internally variable metrical patterns—they consist of sections of different numbers of lines, and of lines of different metrical length. Hugo, the author whose litanic verse stands out the most, primarily depicts the richness of the world with the use of catalogues of objects and lists of personages. We will also discuss the presence of the litany— where it occurs as verse interpolation in prose work.

14.1 Lamartine—Litanic Verse Which Praises God’s Work of Creation in Its Entirety and All National Heroes As Alphonse de Lamartine has been given the title of “le poète déiste le plus caractéristique du XIX siècle”6 it does not astonish the reader that the two main litanic verses in his poetry speak both of God and to God, even if they find 4 The sonnets of several romantic authors, for instance Victor de Laprade (“Aix”) and Émile Péhant (“Amours,” “Bonheur”) contain anaphoric series, but the poems do not demonstrate any of the litanic genes, as a repetition in the onset of lines plays, for instance, a demonstrative role or is aimed to delay a moment of unveiling crucial information. 5 Patrick Berthier and Michel Jarrety, Histoire de la France littéraire, vol. 3: Modernités XIXe et XXe siècles (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2006), 252. Cf. François Jost, Le Sonnet de Pétrarque à Baudelaire: modes et modulations (Berne, Peter Lang, 1989), 48: “Comment, du reste, l’âme romantique se serait-elle laissée enfermer dans une cage à quatorze barreaux?” 6 Jean-Pierre Jossua, Pour une histoire religieuse de l’expérience littéraire, vol. 3 (Paris: Beauchesne, 1994), 44.

228

shelter in lyrical genres the author calls “a meditation” or “a harmony” rather than prayers. As a matter of fact, Lamartine’s adoration of the Creator emerges from a state of cogitation and calm. Furthermore, his litanic verse has a reflective mode, which emphasizes a certitude about God’s existence and His characteristics. The third example analyzed in this chapter will serve as a contrast to the religiously focused poems, as it refers to the consecration of Charles X of France (1825)7 and rhythmically is more variable than the other two works. In “Dix-neuvième méditation. Stances” from Nouvelles méditations poétiques (1823), the prayer which bears the mark of litanic verse occurs in the second part of the poem and includes the five last quatrains out of a total number of eleven. The litanic verse is delimited by two similar expressions of the lyrical “I,” as it occurs between “Pour moi, je chanterai le maître que j’adore” and “Je chanterai pour lui, jusqu’à ce qu’il me brise…”8 These statements already indicate the laudatory character of the prayer. In order to identify the object of celebration, we must examine the content of the initial stanzas. They represent the speaker’s reflections about the significance of human life on the basis of the observation of people’s activities. The scenes from people’s lives serve as an enunciation of the argument that most human beings follow the path of their antecedents and perform the daily tasks that were imposed on them. This conviction is symbolized, for instance, by the image of a lamb walking behind its mother and a leaf flying in the wind, but also by an alliteration used in the phrases denoting the motif of thoughtless imitation and repetition: “Comme l’agneau qui  p a s s e   où sa mère a p a s s é , / I m i ter des mortels l ’ i m mortelle folie?”9 In such a senseless manner—the poem suggests—countless generations have been born, lived and died. As the speaker notes, sometimes people competed with each other, but in the end, time conquered them all, even their shadows. In this moment—we could say the moment of unappeasable despair—the celebration of God is introduced as the answer to the question the Earth asks about the identity of the Creator: La terre m’a crié: Qui donc est le Seigneur? Celui dont l’âme immense est partout répandue, Celui dont un seul pas mesure l’étendue, Celui dont le soleil emprunte sa splendeur;

7 In the same year Lamartine received the croix de la Légion d’honneur; the poem is sometimes considered an acknowledgement of the honor. 8 Alphonse de Lamartine, Méditations poétiques: Première méditations. Nouvelles meditations (Paris: Garnier, 1956), 184. 9 The emphasis in this and in all following quotations from “Dix-neuvième méditation. Stances” is mine—M.K.

229

Celui qui du néant a tiré la matière, Celui qui sur le vide a fondé l’univers, Celui qui sans rivage a renfermé les mers, Celui qui d’un regard a lancé la lumière; Celui qui ne connaît ni jour ni lendemain, Celui qui de tout temps de soi-même s’enfante, Qui vit dans l’avenir comme à l’heure présente, Et rappelle les temps échappés de sa main: C’est lui! c’est le Seigneur: […].10

The closer we get to the end, the more suggestive does this speech illustrating the power and omnipotence of God become, particularly in comparison with the previous stanzas depicting the typical human way of life. The human perception of temporal categories has been annihilated in the divine perspective, and the fear of vanishing meaninglessly in the procession of human generations is abated. Moreover, the speaker seems to find a solution to the problem troubling him from the outset of poem: “Que faire de la vie?” The mention of the recapitulation of God’s glory in a hundred names brings to mind the medieval treatises devoted to the enumeration of the names of holy personages. Nevertheless, it is not titles, strictly speaking, that appear in the above-cited lines in the anaphoric way: instead of different names, the stable element—“Celui qui”11—occurs, and it is the descriptions of the actions of God, analogous to the previous list of people’s employments, that comprise the main part of a line. The regularity of the metrical pattern—the alexandrine with envelope rhyme—argues that the speaker’s certitude about God’s existence and His power is comparable to that with which he previously described the actions seen with his own eyes. Two important questions should be raised about the status of the litanic verse. The first concerns the relation between private and public. Secondly, and in consequence, we are given to wonder whether God is the only intended recipient of this laudatory prayer or whether other people are also to be witnesses of the call. The poem seems to offer a range of possible answers. As we read in the 10 Ibid. 11 This is one of the most common anaphoric elements in Lamartine’s œuvre, as it appears also on the level of stanzas, for instance, in Ischia. This kind of anaphora is present in an analogous litanic fragment included in Anaïs Ségalas’ volume Les Oiseaux de Passage (1837), in which we can find another application of the structure “Celui qui”—a mother explains the world to her child, joining God’s act with the characteristic of its image (Paris: Moutardier, 1837), 150–151.

230

first and last phrases, the lyrical “I” deliberates as an individual person: “je chanterai.” Additionally, the incipit of the poem states, “Et j’ai dit dans mon cœur.” Nevertheless, the speaker changes his point of view to collective when in one moment he confesses, “Avec nos passions formant sa vaste trame.” Furthermore, another voice joins the internal dialogue: “La terre m’a crié.” A response is undoubtedly given to the Earth’s question, but who it is that gives this response is not clear—possibly it is the lyrical “I,” as it is to him that the question had been directed—“m’a crié”—and the possessive adjective of the first person singular appears as well in the expression that ends the litanic verse: “C’est lui! c’est le Seigneur: que  m a   langue redise.” What is interesting is that “C’est lui,” which is phonetically similar to the anaphora in the previous stanza, “Celui,” operates here as the last manifestation of the litanic verse. Therefore, we may conclude that the prayer is recited in a sort of temple created by the universe, and it is not only God who hears it; in the last stanza, the presence of other addressees is unveiled: “je chanterai  p ou r   lu i”—“que ma langue redise / Les cent noms de sa gloire  au x e n f a nt s   d e s   m or t e l s .” Considering that there are five questions in the poem, the litanic verse plays a function of soothing the inquietude of the person speaking, who poses questions four times in his heart, as well as of the Earth, which cannot solve the mystery of the status of the Savior. There is no more persuasive way in which to provide a compelling answer than the simple repetitive form which imposes a rhythm. The vision evoked in the last stanza of the poem—the poet as a golden harp which is totally devoted to God (“pendue à ses autels”) and may be even destroyed by Him (“jusqu’à ce qu’il me brise”) —operates as a closure of the plot initiated in the first stanza: a symbolic representation of the speaker, which is introduced by the word “Comme” in the third line of the stanzas. However, in contrast to the depiction of himself in the initial stanza as careless and infantile, in the last one, he seeks to be an instrument of God. Regarding the spiritual horizon of the poem, we should recognize in the image of a harp the Biblical symbol most importantly resembling the instrument from Revelation. In it, harps and golden bowls are attributes of the servants who offer intercession for people (5:8); moreover, seven angels (15:2) are represented as “having the harps of God” and singing, “Great and marvellous are thy works, Lord God Almighty; […] Who shall not fear thee, O Lord, and glorify thy name?” (15:3–4). The announced act of the harp’s destruction in Lamartine’s poem could be a sign to stop the vision of seven plagues, which is presented in the verses of Revelation, but also may be interpreted in the context of “Trentième Méditation. La Poésie sacrée” from Méditations poétiques, in which the final appeal to become silent, directed to various instruments, harps among them, is dictated by the mood of awaiting 231

the day when a voice will sound: “Paix à la terre, et gloire aux cieux!” To sum up, the litanic verse in the poem is inserted in a dual frame: a wider one, extending from the question “Que faire de la vie?”—that is, from the search for an aim and from the fear of annihilation in meaningless activities, to the act of reconciliation with the fact that God is the owner of human life; and a narrower one, encircling strictly the content of the act of chanter. “Poésie, ou Paysage dans le golfe de Gênes” (“Dixième harmonie” from Harmonies poétiques et religieuses, 1830) presents a few features in common with the poem that has been presented above: the litanic verse contains the characteristic of God emerging in nature, whose elements were proclaimed and named by Him, thus the form constitutes a prayer of praise and it is delimited in a similar manner. It stems from the following question: « Mais où donc est ton Dieu? » me demandent les sages. Mais où donc est mon Dieu? Dans toutes ces images, Dans ces ondes, dans ces nuages, Dans ces sons, ces parfums, ces silences des deux,

and it concludes with the issue of naming God: De toi, Seigneur, être de l’être! Vérité, vie, espoir, amour! De toi que la nuit veut connaître, De toi que demande le jour, De toi que chaque son murmure, De toi que l’immense nature Dévoile et n’a pas défini, De toi que ce néant proclame, Source, abîme, océan de l’âme, Et qui n’as qu’un nom: l’Infini!12

Even individual expressions are strikingly analogous to passages of the previously analyzed poem; for instance, the line, “De toi que ce néant proclame” can be compared to “Celui qui du néant a tiré la matière”; the words “l’immense nature” to “l’âme immense,” etc. Nevertheless, just by looking at two passages at the beginning and at the end of the litanic verse, we discover the variability of the metrical structures. As in “Dix-neuvième méditation. Stances,” the litanic verse in “Poésie, ou Paysage dans le golfe de Gênes” encompasses only a part of the poem which numbers more than three hundred lines in all. Here and there, the octosyllable replaces the alexandrine. However, while the repetitive component has 12 Alphonse De Lamartine, Œuvres poétiques complètes (Paris: Gallimard, 1963), 330.

232

an equal number of syllables as in “Dix-neuvième méditation. Stances” (three), it is built from a greater number of words (three instead of two in “Stances”: “Celui qui”-“De toi que”), and as a consequence, the effect of scanning is more visible. Two lines which lack anaphora profit from the same structure—the simplest enumeration of brief words, which also influences the dynamic quality of the entire litanic form. Although the anaphora is the most easily recognizable litanic factor in this poem, another crucial feature which contributes to the litanic verse is an accumulation of metaphorical names revealed in various passages. For instance, in the above-cited octosyllabic part, the nouns listed in the beginning are common Biblical titles of Jesus, used also in litanies: the Lord is the way and truth, the hope and source of true love. By comparison, the objects that appear closer to the end of the part are less conventional, but proper for the kind of descriptive poetry to which the poem belongs, as they denote the natural elements. This assemblage may resemble some Marian metaphorical titles from medieval litanic verse, mainly due to the popularity of cosmological and arboreal motifs—“l’astre endormi sur la vallée,” “le frémissement des cyprès”—and to the similarity of metrical pattern: short lines in long stanzas. Nonetheless, in Lamartine’s poem, the natural elements are not enumerated as metaphorical titles, but it is their language that “parle de toi! // De toi, Seigneur, […],” so they are listed so as to capture the plenitude of objects celebrating God. Praise yearns in this poem for an intermediary level. The poet receives the language of nature which is devoted to its Creator and indirectly communicates his own message: Luis donc, astre pieux, devant ton Créateur! Et si tu vois Celui d’où coule ta splendeur, Dis-lui que, sur un point de ces globes funèbres […], Un atome perdu dans son immensité Murmurait dans la nuit son nom à ta clarté!13

The question of God’s name is gradually developed in “Poésie, ou Paysage dans le golfe de Gênes.” Firstly, the Creator is described as “Celui dont le nom n’est pas encor trouvé,” and in the end of the litanic verse an epiphany is reached— only one name is proper for God. We recall that in the previous example from

13 In the beginning of the poem, the apostrophes to the star bear the mark of the prayerful character of the text, but the litanic aspect is not developed to its full extent, as the scale of repetition is weak and rarely is the star given metaphorical names like “Astre ami du repos, des songes, du silence.”

233

Lamartine, the person speaking seeks to glorify God in a hundred names. The principal reason for this difference could be that “Stances” are composed by a strong individualist who is looking for a separation and channels his poetic abilities into praising God, while many critics suggest the provenance of the passage from “Poésie, ou Paysage dans le golfe de Gênes” which is considered to be litanic verse to lie in the words of nature.14 The relation between nature, the poet and God in the poem was commented on by Christian Croisille on the basis of its title: Par l’intermédiaire de la nature, l’âme du poète, par degrés, s’élance jusqu’à Dieu. Poésie, ou Paysage dans le golfe de Gênes, tel sera le titre définitif du poème; il ne faut voir aucune désinvolture dans cette formulation alternative, mais l’expression d’une évidence: dans la mesure où le paysage est une création divine, une construction harmonieuse, un langage, il est poésie.15

However, the proportion of use of the first person singular and plural pronouns is similar in the two analyzed poems In “Stances,” the poet gives vain affection to the title of “nos passions,” but he insists on the fact that he specifically chants praise to God. Here he mentions, for instance, “notre humble paupière,” yet in the twice-repeated questions from the beginning, God is described as “his” God. The wise men ask him: “Mais où donc est ton Dieu?” He then asks himself: “Mais où donc est mon Dieu?” At the beginning of the chapter, we indicated the distinctiveness of the third example of Lamartine’s litanic verse. This work, too, touches the theme of God, although this time His manifestation emerges not in the entire creation, but

14 Jean-Pierre Jossua, Pour une histoire religieuse de l’expérience littéraire, vol. 3, 50: “[…] le poète déploie le chant du monde à son Dieu. […] Là, une langue inconnue, proférée par chaque élément, parle de Dieu: […]”; Roger Pearson, Unacknowledged Legislators: The Poet as Lawgiver in Post-Revolutionary France (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 338: “In Poésie, ou Paysage dans le golfe de Gênes the language of nature remains as eloquent as ever, revealing God in ‘une langue inconnue’ (l. 230) that is fluently spoken by wind and storm, wave and star. But compared with this divine music human language is just embarrassing noise.” Cf. Roland Mortier, La Poétique des ruines en France: ses origines, ses variations, de la Renaissance à Victor Hugo (Genève: Droz, 1974), 209 about the spatial motifs in the passage here discussed. 15 Christian Croisille, “Du tarissement à la plénitude: regards sur la genèse des Harmonies de Lamartine à la lumière de sa correspondance,” in La lettre et l’œuvre: perspectives épistolaires sur la création littéraire et picturale au XIXe siècle, eds. Pascale Auraix-Jonchière, Christian Croisille and Éric Francalanza (Clermont-Ferrand: Presses Universitaires Blaise Pascal, 2009), 38.

234

through historical events.16 Chant du sacre ou la veille des armes refers to the ceremony described by the author in the preface: “cérémonies guerrières qui, dans les temps chevaleresques, accompagnaient cette auguste consécration.”17 The poem starts with a description of the Cathedral of Reims, where the pontiff is waiting for the sacred hour. When midnight comes, the prince enters the church with the knights. After a dialogue between the prince and the archbishop, the presentation of peers is made. In the speech of the archbishop, recited while the prince kneels before him and bows his head, we may recognize—apart from the compelling correspondences with the form of sermon—the influence of the type of text which nowadays is known as a part of the celebration of Remembrance Day—the solemn evoking of soldiers and individual heroes who died for their country, to keep their acts alive in the collective memory.18 However, this is not an appeal to the dead, but a call to battle, as the orders are given in a clear and abrupt manner. The fact that this litanic verse is recited by a man of the cloth does not prevent us from saying that this is a patriotic litany, rather than a truly liturgical one: Viens donc! élu du ciel que sa force accompagne; Viens! Par la majesté du divin Charlemagne! La valeur de Martel ou du soldat d’Ivri! Par la vertu du roi qu’a couronné l’Église! Par la noble franchise Du quatrième Henri!

16 Henri Guillemin, Le Jocelyn de Lamartine: étude historique et critique avec des documents inédits (Paris: Boivin, 1936), 109: “Les évènements, Lamartine s’est accoutumé […] à les tenir pour des signes par lesquels Dieu se manifeste, en indiquant sa volonté. Dans le Chant du Sacre […] Lamartine avait écrit ce vers capital: « Les grands évènements, voilà les grands prestiges […] ». Les manifestations les plus authentiques de Dieu, c’est dans les « évènements » qu’il faut les voir.” 17 Alphonse de Lamartine, Œuvres, vol. 1 (Paris: J. Claye, 1855), 440. 18 This ceremony had not been yet established in 1825, but the motif of surgite mortui is widely exploited in the Romantic period. A well-known similar passage is found in Le Congrès de Vérone (1838) of Chateaubriand. Cf. Pierre Riberette, “Mémoires par lettres,” in: Chateaubriand mémorialiste. Colloque du cent cinquantenaire (1848–1998), eds. J-C. Berchet and Philippe Berthier (Genève: Droz, 2000), 57: “il convoque de préférence, parmi ses contemporains, ceux qui ont occupé en France ou à l’étranger les plus hautes fonctions ou ceux qui ont joui la plus grande considération, de sorte que leur liste pourrait s’apparenter à cet Appel des morts que lui ont inspiré ses souvenirs du congrès de Vérone.” Cf. Agnès Verlet, Les Vanités de Chateaubriand (Genève: Droz, 2001), 315 for the correspondence of this “rituel du souvenir” and “rituels de la religion catholique,” for instance, the litanies.

235

Par les brillants surnoms de cette race auguste: Le Sage, le Vainqueur, le Bon, le Saint, le Juste; La grâce de Philippe ou de François premier! Par l’éclat de ce roi dont l’ascendant suprême Imposa son nom même Au siècle tout entier! Par ce martyr des rois qui mourut pour nos crimes! Par le sang consacré de cent mille victimes! Par ce pacte éternel qui rajeunit tes droits! Par le nom de Celui dont fout sceptre relève! Par l’amour qui t’élève Sur ce nouveau pavois!19

The appeal is composed of quatrains of alexandrines and two six-syllable lines with the rhyming scheme 12a12a12b12c6c6b, which brings a variability to a poem built mainly from alexandrines. The absolute anaphoric structure is achieved gradually; it culminates in the stanza with “Par” repeated in five lines. This polyonymic expression introduces the real names of famous people from French history, but at one point, that is, in the second stanza, the enumeration of surnames takes precedence. The importance of denomination is noticeable once again in this stanza, as the archbishop recalls the fact that the name of a king gave the whole period its descriptor: “Par l’éclat de ce roi […].” We may assume that each stanza is intended to be a unit thematically focused on one aspect, for instance, in the first quoted stanza these are the values that are particularly commemorated: majesty, virtue, nobility, etc. In the second stanza, as we have already mentioned, the status of surnames is considered, but we should also appreciate how this theme aptly refers to the preceding stanza— each surname reflects the ruler’s characteristic, which, again, is positive: sagacity, victory, goodness, holiness and justice. In what way then, does the next stanza react with the motifs already presented? The key theme is sacrification, which is represented in the character of the martyr and in the vision of shed blood, as well as in the motivation for this act—love—but the topic of “le nom” is introduced as well. The beginning of the above-cited passage contains a repeated supplication— an appeal to come—but the lines which contain many of the supplications come later. The invocations and supplications are well-separated by the participation of transition elements such as a stanza also affected by parallelism:

19 Lamartine, Œuvres, vol. 1, 457–458.

236

Au nom du seul puissant, du seul saint, du seul sage, Dont l’espace et le temps sont le vaste héritage, Dont le regard s’étend à tout siècle, à tout lieu! Sois sacré! tu deviens, par ce royal mystère, Le maître de la terre, Le serviteur de Dieu!20

The epithet corresponding here to the litanic Sancte is “seul.” The name of the executor of the act is given—both in the terrestrial and celestial perspective: “de la terre”–“de Dieu”—and the litanic flow of the supplications, sharp and abrupt, is released: Règne! juge! combats! venge! punis! pardonne! Conduis! règle! soutiens! commande! impose! ordonne! Par la vertu d’en haut sois couronné! sois Roi! Ta main, dès cet instant, peut frapper, peut absoudre; Ton regard est la foudre, Ta parole est la loi!21

The series of supplications is abbreviated to the point that each sentence is deprived of direct and indirect objects—the information about who should be judged and punished, as well as whose faults need to be forgiven is not given. The stanza concludes with the repetition of personal pronouns and the suggestion of what names could be used to describe the king. We recognize also in these last two stanzas the polyonymic expressions “par ce royal mystère” and “par la vertu d’en haut,” which withdraw from the dominating position but still focus on positive values.

14.2  Hugo—Human Affairs Discussed with God and Saints The enumeration combined with the anaphoric mode is a rhetorical device common in Victor Hugo’s works. Henri Peyre admits this inclination: “Hugo, dans A Villequier ou dans Paroles sur la dune, obsédait le lecteur de son chagrin avec des « maintenant que ».”22 A large number of other works could be listed in which the anaphora plays a different role than composing a factor of litanic

20 Ibid., 457. 21 Ibid., 458. 22 Henri Peyre, Qu’est-ce que le romantisme (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1971), 200.

237

verse. For instance, it supports description in “Lazzara” from Les Orientales,23 and becomes part of a humoristic wordplay with the name of the addressee in the short “Impromptu à Mr Félix.”24 From the significant number of works containing similar stylistic devices, we distinguish the litanic verse as a form consistently focused on the receiver. The first occurrence of the litanic verse in Hugo’s work is in the first section of “Ode vingt-cinquième. Rêves” (1828),25 starting from the apostrophe to friends. Hugo uses litanic verse also in the intimate confessions directed to women and family, as well as when he speaks to God. Furthermore, it should be mentioned that the poet does not refrain from taking part in the current political and social debate using litanic verse, but we leave this theme aside in this book.26 The litanic inspiration becomes revealed in different parts of the verbose poem, La Prière pour tous (written in 1830 and published in 1831, Les Feuilles d’automnes). Apart from the title itself, the motto of the poem discloses what the reader can expect—a prayer of intercession—as it reads Ora pro nobis. The significance of the exigency to pray for the community, not only “us” but also others, is explained in the fifth section (this cycle contains ten poems in all), when the lyrical “I” reveals that for his sins he would have prayed by himself, but to beg for mercy for others, his blameworthy soul is not the perfect mediator: Ce n’est pas moi, dont l’âme est vaine, Pleine d’erreurs, vide de foi, Qui prierais pour la race humaine, Puisque ma voix suffit à peine, Seigneur, à vous prier pour moi!27

23 Victor Hugo, Œuvres poétiques, vol. 1 (Paris: Gallimard, 1964), 642–643, the use of word “par” repeated seven times, indicating the environment through which the protagonist runs, is joined with the less frequent repetition of “elle” and “donné.” 24 Ibid., 1, 32. Cf. also “Ode première. À mes odes,” poem XXVI from Les Feuilles d’automne, “La Pitié Suprême.” 25 Ibid., 1, 490. 26 Cf. mainly Hugo’s poem “À des journalistes de robe courte” (written on September 1850) from Les Châtiments (1853) which numbers more than one hundred lines and may be divided into three parts: the litanic verse occurs in the first one, which is constructed with the dominant use of the anaphora on “Parce que,” present in the litanies known in this period, cf. Litanies pour honorer la sainte volonté de Dieu or Litanies de l’amour de Marie. 27 Ibid., 1, 796.

238

The litanic verse is scattered throughout different sections of the poem; more­ over, the various components of the litanic formula Ora pro nobis become developed in distantly separated passages. The first poem from the cycle starts with the appeal “Ma fille! va prier.” and this urging plea recurs with only a slightly different stress in the first line of the second poem: “Ma fille, va prier!” We may identify up to this moment the person who plays an intercessory role and the action which is needed—the element of the traditional litanic formula which is lacking is the indication of persons seeking grace. The first suggestions regarding this theme are made in the second poem in the formulae containing the word “prier,” presented in a shape which suits a hemistich of alexandrine: “Va donc prier pour moi!,” “Va prier pour ton père!,” “Pour celle qui” repeated two times, and “Puis ensuite pour moi!” The litanic verse is fully developed in the third poem, containing the more frequent anaphoras on “pour.” To compare the division of tasks and the roles of individual factors in a litany of the Church and in Hugo’s poem, a part of the third stanza of the third section can be illustrative: Enfant! Pour les vierges voilées! Pour le prisonnier dans sa tour! Pour les femmes échevelées Qui vendent le doux nom d’amour! Pour l’esprit qui rêve et médite! Pour l’impie à la voix maudite Qui blasphème la sainte loi! — 28

The prevailing pattern of shaping a line in the liturgical litanies consists of the name of the addressee of the invocations repeated in every line (for instance, “Jésus,” “Coeur de Jésus,” “Saint Joseph,” “Reine”), of a metaphorical unique title (such as “bon Pasteur,” “roi et centre de tous les cœurs,” “homme angélique”), and finally the oft-repeated formula of supplications, among which, the most frequent are “priez pour nous” and “ayez pitié de nous.” Comparing the passage quoted above with this model, we note an imbalance of the components. The proper name of the person addressed is unknown and only some antonomasias appear, for instance, “Ma fille,” “Enfant,” “ma colombe,” “ô mon bonheur, / O mon enfant!” More interesting examples in the ninth poem depict symbolically the speaker’s daughter in a manner similar to litanic titles: “O ma fille, âme heureuse! / O lac de pureté / […] Lac que le ciel parfume!”29 Furthermore, children in general,

28 Ibid., 1, 794. 29 Ibid., 1, 802.

239

not only the girl, awaited their periphrases: “Ce sont des fleurs qui le parfument, / Ce sont des encensoirs qui fument, / Ce sont des voix qui vont à Dieu!”30 Passing to the supplicatory part of the formula, we occasionally (as has already been shown) encounter the fundamental part of the supplication, the imperative “prie” or “va prier.” We read instead the largely developed part indicating for whom the prayer should be performed—thus, the poetic paraphrase of the litany concentrates on the element which in the original pattern is on a smaller scale (“pour nous”) and repetitive. The meter of the third section of La Prière pour tous is one of the shortest in the poem, as it uses the octosyllable—the alexandrine dominates in this cycle, but the seventh and ninth sections31 are shorter in this respect. If we seek the reason for unveiling the identity of those who seek the Lord’s mercy and for not focusing on the main “deity,” we should remember

30 Ibid., 1, 797. Cf. another example of a father addressing his poem to a child and using the prayer of intercession: Charles Brugnot, “A une enfant pour son premier anniversaire” (published posthumously in 1833, contained in La lyre de Marie ou vie glorifiée de la Ste Vierge composée de 81 cantiques nouveaux à la gloire de la Mère de Dieu accompagnés de Pensées et d’Elévations, et mis nouvellement en musique, par l’abbé C. M. le Guillou, Paris: Perisse, 1841, 506). However, the litanic convention of denomination is present here in the enumerative mode, lacking any sort of recurrence. In place of using formulae, we obtain rather the recapitulation of the act of the family who prays around the cradle. The prayer includes allusion to the name of daughter, the same as the name of the Mother of God:

Nous prions tous les saints, les vierges et les anges, Et les esprits enfants échappés à leurs langes, Surtout la mère du Sauveur, Celle qui porte aux cieux la plus belle couronne, Marie, au nom plein de douceur, La Reine des élus, ta divine patrone;

31 It is this section, built from five-syllable lines, which Alfred Glauser was inclined to see as the litanic one: “[…] dans la suite énumérative conçue comme une contrepartie négative, interviennent les parfums désignés sur le mode exclamatif et qui pourraient tous être des métaphores de la prière, telles qu’elles apparaissent dans les litanies, dont Hugo pourrait faire ici la parodie poétique. L’exaltation est un leurre, car elle convient plus à la prière qu’aux parfums” (La Poétique de Hugo, Paris: Nizet, 1978, 332). However, this catalogue of various scents cannot be analyzed as litanic verse, as it serves only as the illustration—a greatly fabulous lyrical interruption—for the demand expressed in the final lines of the poem: the person speaking gives the indication to his daughter for the celebration of moment when the Savior approaches: “Verse, comme autrefois Marthe, sœur de Marie, / Verse tout ton parfum sur les pieds du Seigneur!” (Hugo, Œuvres poétiques, 1, 798).

240

its status, assessed as being powerful and innocent enough to intercede on their behalf, but still childish. Although the multitude of offenses seems to be overwhelming for the emotions of the little girl, the catalogue of all kinds of people who need God’s help persuades the reader of the need to engage the child for the prayer. The sharp ending of the third section applies the notion of mercy— a notion fundamental for the prayers—and the person speaking invokes once again the help of the child (“Enfant! regardons sur la terre! / Il faut avoir pitié des morts!”) who is the only person who may recite such a prayer amongst many sinners to which the poet refers in the last stanza of the fifth poem: “Pécheurs! nous avons tous nos crimes, / Nous penchons tous sur les abîmes, / L’enfance doit prier pour tous!”32 The community of people hidden under the word “tous,” exposed in the title, is emphasized not only by the enumeration with the anaphora on “Pour,” but also by the indication of behaviors at opposite poles: “Pour qui­conque souffre et travaille, / Qu’il s’en revienne ou qu’il s’en aille, / Qu’il fasse le bien ou le mal!”33 Amongst them, this heterogeneous mass of people, the Son of God is also mentioned, as the father teaches his daughter that He is “Un bon Pasteur […] Un pèlerin qui va de contrée en contrée. / Ce passant, ce Pasteur, ce pèlerin, c’est Dieu!”34 The presence of litanic verse in the poem “Pan” (written in 1831 and published the same year in Les Feuilles d’automne) should not surprise us, as we cannot imagine a more convenient manner in which to praise the god of nature and wilderness than by the enumeration of elements of place, depicted in the convention of a vision of paradise, with the use of anaphoras like the prepositions of place or the adverbs “Sur,” “Où” and “Partout où.” The composition of the poem resembles the structure from the first litanic verse of Hugo—a short apostrophe, the repeated formula of supplications and the description of place occupying the majority of lines35—but develops it on a broader scale, as the substantial, middle part of the poem, numbering less than eighty lines, contains litanic verse elements. Instead of among his friends, the poet finds an audience in the community of 32 33 34 35



Ibid., 1, 797. Ibid., 1, 794. Ibid., 1, 798. Cf. ibid., 1, 490:

Amis, loin de la ville, Loin des palais de roi, Loin de la cour servile, Loin de la foule vile, Trouvez-moi, trouvez-moi,

241

poets, referred to as “poètes sacrés, échevelés, sublimes,” “frères de l’aigle!” and “poètes saints.” The enumeration is used as substantiation for an appeal to poets to seek in nature not only refuge, but also inspiration. The stanzaic pattern allows the poet to prolong the listing and to shorten the request: 12a12a12b12c12c6b, but rarely does the shorter line actually contain an appeal: Partout où le couchant grandit l’ombre des chênes, Partout où les couteaux croisent leurs molles chaînes, Partout où sont des champs, des moissons, des cités, Partout où pend un fruit à la branche épuisée, Partout où l’oiseau boit des gouttes de rosée, Allez, voyez, chantez!36

Moreover, this structure alternates with six-line stanzas built entirely from the alexandrines. In fact, verbs in the imperative are not frequent, but usually they introduce a series of anaphoras. “Allez, et répandez vos âmes sur les cimes,” gives the green light to the enumeration of the elements of the landscape with the use of the anaphora on “Sur,” while in turn “Enivrez vous de tout! enivrez-vous, poètes,” opens the anaphoric enumeration on the forms of “de.” The nature which is praised in Hugo’s poem is multifaceted. It may be seen in a bucolic mode indicating the abundance of the harvest and the cohabitation of various beings, but also in a romantic, impassioned vision. Nonetheless, the landscape is in particular contrasted with the ambiance of the nineteenthcentury salon evoked in the first stanza of “Pan.” Therefore, the message of this poem is relevant to the legacy mentioned in the shorter meter of “Rêves,” taking into account that there it is a personal conviction expressed in the message to confidants, while the idea from “Pan” becomes a manifesto for the romantic poets. A catalogue of the most favored romantic spaces, like “les sommets de neige en butte aux aquilons,” “les déserts pieux où l’esprit se recueille,” and “Où chante un pâtre assis sous une antique arcade,” is presented only to finally reveal the idea that the title Pan unveils its referent as God. The seventh stanza, which sums up the most litanic parts of the poem, reads: “C’est Dieu qui remplit tout. Le monde, c’est son temple. / Œuvre vivante, où tout l’écoute et le contemple! / Tout lui parle et le chante. Il est seul, il est un.”37 Now the significance of the motto to this poem can be explained—it is a modified quote from Clement of Alexandria: “tout entier esprit, tout entier lumière, tout entier œil.”38 Similarly to Lamartine’s

36 Ibid., 1, 804. 37 Ibid., 1, 804. 38 Ibid., 1, 1411.

242

idea, nature, “tout,”39 has its own language which is used to praise God.40 The worldview of this poem, like that of Lamartine, can be considered the starting point for the conviction in the nineteenth century that “the visible forms of the universe are signs of an invisible spiritual reality”;41 the theme of nature as a temple opens the “Correspondances” of Baudelaire. Comparing the Romantic litanic verse in descriptive poetry using cosmological motifs with, for instance, the litanic verse of Renaissance cosmological poetry, we should agree with Carol E. Harrison: “As God’s creation, nature was certainly grandiose and awe-inspiring, but its sublimity rather than its rational order was the starting point for an individual’s search for God.”42 Poets undertake this search, as Hugo argues: “l’art est le son sublime, / […] Redit par un écho dans toute créature, / Que sous vos doigts puissants exhale la nature […].” Donald Geoffrey Charlton points out, “the most natural poetry arises from the interchange between the visible universe and the mental world of the poet.”43 The intimate atmosphere from the beginning of poem XXI in Les Chants du crépuscule, with the incipit: “Hier, la nuit d’été, qui nous prêtait ses voiles”44 (written in 1833 and published in 1835), does not signal the likelihood of the recitation of litany, which is associated, rather, with public ceremonies. The summer night and stars are all properties of this scene—the lovers are masked by 39 Jean-Michel Gouvard, Critique du vers (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2000), 152: “la volonté de mise en valeur de « tout » par son placement antécésural dans deux vers successifs est évidente.” 40 We agree with Glauser that “tout” is one of the most important litanic factors in Hugo’s work (La Poétique de Hugo, 73): “Il suffit au poète d’accumuler des allusions à « tout » dans des suites anaphoriques pour que le texte s’articule en litanies; […].” Glauser indicates the value of “les colonnes énumératives” in “Pan” (ibid., 75) and argues that, “Si Hugo envisage un univers où « tout est égal à tout » (Dieu), où « tout se confond dans tout » (Dieu), c’est qu’il croit à l’égalité des êtres dans la création, mais essentiellement à une vision poétique fondée sur des ressemblances universelles, […]” (ibid., 73). He also puts forward the hypothesis that “Le mot répété ne provient pas d’une complaisance naïve de la part de l’auteur, mais surgit comme le désir entretenu de l’œuvre totale” (ibid., 74). 41 Jonathan Culler, “Interpretations: Data or Goals,” in The Rhetoric of Interpretation and the Interpretation of Rhetoric, ed. Paul Hernandi (Durham/London: Duke University Press, 1989), 28. 42 Carol E. Harrison, Romantic Catholics: France’s Postrevolutionary Generation in Search of a Modern Faith (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014), 8. 43 Donald Geoffrey Charlton, The French Romantics, vol. 1 (London: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 135. 44 Hugo, Œuvres poétiques, 1, 873.

243

the darkness of night: “la nuit d’été, qui nous prêtait ses voiles.” The reader can observe the woman from the perspective of the man in love who stays close to her—“Moi, j’étais devant toi”—due to the exposure of her facial features which are visible only when one looks straight into her eyes—“J’admirais la beauté dont ton front se revêt”—and to the evocation of sounds heard nearby—“murmures.” The implied spiritual understanding is also applied to the sphere of thought: “Et sans même qu’un mot révélât ta pensée, / La tendre rêverie en ton cœur commencée / Dans mon cœur s’achevait!” The first suggestion of a religious perspective is not made until the third stanza, in which the expression “Et je bénissais Dieu” appears. It is at this point, nearly in the middle of the poem (which numbers nine stanzas in all), in which the litanic verse manifests its laudatory aim. It gains importance when it is strengthened by the participation of another person in this act, so their voices are combined in the initial line of the fourth stanza: “Oh oui, bénissons Dieu dans notre foi profonde!” The litanic verse in the following two stanzas is established by the anaphora on “C’est” plus “lui / Dieu” and the reasons for the previously mentioned celebration of God are pondered: C’est lui qui fit ton âme et qui créa le monde! Lui qui charme mon cœur! lui qui ravit mes yeux! C’est lui que je retrouve au fond de tout mystère! C’est lui qui fait briller ton regard sur la terre Comme l’étoile aux cieux! C’est Dieu qui mit l’amour au bout de toute chose, L’amour en qui tout vit, l’amour sur qui tout pose! C’est Dieu qui fait la nuit plus belle que le jour. C’est Dieu qui sur ton corps, ma jeune souveraine, A versé la beauté, comme une coupe pleine, Et dans mon cœur l’amour!45

We may see that the reflection of the just-past intimacy is looming on the passus about God’s work of creation and does not leave any room for more general statements—the speech revolves around the already enumerated objects: the woman, her looks and her beauty, the man, his love from all his heart, the night and the stars. As in the poems discussed above, God is praised as the Creator, but here the explication is concrete—the fact of the creation of the universe arranges the creation of the soul of the beloved. Similar features are generously offered to the elements of nature and to the partner of the person speaking: “dont [de 45 Ibid., 1, 873–874.

244

Dieu—M.K.] la grâce infinite / Sur la nuit et sur toi jeta tant d’harmonie.” The reason for the well-worn comparison of the eyes of the lady to the stars in the sky is not a resemblance noticed by the poet, but an analogy present already in the moment of creation, as was stated in the previous stanza: “Vous fit, la nuit et toi, si belles et si pures, / Si pleines de rayons, de parfums, de murmures, / Si douces toutes deux!” In the anaphoric series featured in the above-cited stanzas, the metrical pattern of 12a12a12b12c12c6b does not profit from the possibility to put a certain response in the shorter line. In fact, the poet rarely exploits any variability of versification in the poem. The two instances in which he insists “Laisse-toi donc aimer!” and “Laisse-toi couronner!” are the only examples of supplications composed into the six-syllable lines. The litanic verse in the ninth section of “Regard jeté dans une mansarde” (1839), counting nine six-line stanzas, includes the common elements of the litanic formula in a disturbed order—that is, a supplication (an appeal), the intercessory component introduced by “Par” and the invocation, for instance, l. 3: “Laisse-toi conseiller I par elle, I ange tenté!”46 Nevertheless, the specificity of the use of litanic verse in this poem is based on the fact that occasionally all three elements are put in one line, and rarely do these lines appear in repetitive series. A more frequent manner is to select one element from the litanic formula and treat it as the nucleus of an entire line, for instance: “Laisse-toi conseiller, guider, sauver peut-être,” or even one stanza: Par toute ombre qui passe en baissant la paupière! Par les vieux saints rangés sous le portail de pierre! Par la blanche colombe aux rapides adieux! Par l’orgue ardent dont l’hymne en longs sanglots se brise!

As we can see, not all elements of litanic formula tend to repetition to the same degree. We identify this tendency in the detailed analysis of each component of litanic formula, starting from a vision of the protagonist hidden under the name of “ange tenté.” This protagonist is an orphan girl, a peasant who lives in a modest chamber. Her faith is emphasized by the description of her surroundings (a Bible in her room, the cross and holy images) and it emanates from her figure: “tant son front est tranquille, / De voir distinctement la face du Seigneur.” In fact she is represented as the potential addressee of intercession for others: “Cette âme, en vous priant pour ceux dont la nef sombre, / Peut monter chaque soir vers vous sans 46 The division is mine.

245

faire d’ombre / Dans la sérénité de votre firmament!”47 Surprisingly, the litanic call finds in this poem another medium, but the young woman just portrayed is the addressee of the message, and a struggle is conducted throughout the course of the poem for the soul of the girl. As in a morality play, good and evil are personified, the name of Voltaire serves as the symbol of eighteenth-century thought,48 while a Napoleonic plot inspires charity. The remarkably transparent beginning indicates the object of reflection—“la croix” —with the word repeated in the two initial lines, and it affirms the atmosphere in which it will be presented. This is the perspective of admiration— regarding the exclamation “Oh!” which is the starting point of the poem, and the fact that the two initial lines end with an exclamation mark—and of ancient values: “La croix du vieux soldat mort dans la vieille garde!” also with a highly individual trait: “la croix de ton père est là qui te regarde.”49 The vision of the cross, called respectively, “croix d’honneur,” “Croix d’un soldat, tombé comme tout héros tombe,” “Croix de Napoléon,” “la croix de ton père,” and “La croix du vieux soldat mort dans la vieille garde!” constitute the first value through which the consolation of the girl is supplicated. The others are “ce lys fraternel penché sur ta fenêtre, / Qui mêle son parfum à ta virginité!” and four elements listed in the above-cited stanza: a shadow, the images of saints, a white dove, an organ, and “la pensive église, le ciel radieux and l’aiguille ouvrière, / Présente à ton labeur, présente à ta prière.” As we may recognize, these are objects evoking purity, but they are also symbols of royal and ecclesiastical power. Light and darkness are evoked in a particularly subtle way, which underlines their affinity and not their opposition: eyelids serve to open and to close the eyes, thus allowing them to remain in darkness. The sky is bright when the clouds do not cover the source of light. This passage unifies the antagonism between the human household and the temple of God which has been outlined in the initial part of the poem. As we have stated at the outset, all elements of litanic formula have undergone a transformation: supplicatory expressions are not repetitive and take the form of an appeal, for instance “Laisse-toi,” and in the fourth stanza we encounter the

47 Ibid., 1, 1040. 48 Cf. the passage of Lamartine’s Rolla analyzed below:

Dors-tu content, Voltaire, et ton hideux sourire Voltige-t-il encor sur tes os décharnés? Ton siècle était, dit-on, trop jeune pour te lire; Le nôtre doit te plaire, et tes hommes sont nés.

49 Hugo, Œuvres poétiques, 1, 1042.

246

suggestion “Entends ces mille voix.” In the following part, it is revealed that these voices: Te disent à la fois: Sois pure sous les cieux! Sois pure sous les cieux! comme l’onde et l’aurore, Comme le joyeux nid, comme la tour sonore, Comme la gerbe blonde, amour du moissonneur, Comme l’astre incliné, comme la fleur penchante, Comme tout ce qui rit, comme tout ce qui chante, Comme tout ce qui dort dans la paix du Seigneur!50

The illustration of the virtue of purity is significantly abundant in the repetitive expressions containing the motifs of dawn, tower, star and flower which resemble the elements of litanic Marian titles.51 However, the repetitive component here is only one element of the supplicatory formula “comme,” absent from the liturgical formulae as it establishes comparison, not identification—Holy Mary is not “as pure as,” for instance, “tour d’ivoire,” but instead she simply is an ivory tower; that is the way the faithful invoke her. The reason for this change lies in the intention of the speaker: the Church uses the Marian names to celebrate Mary and beg for her intercession, but in the poem the calls to the young girl are a kind of guide for her. In the next stanza, the formulae are shortened and the repetitiveness is limited to the first element: “Sois calme,” “Sois joyeuese,” “Sois bonne.” The element “comme” is lacking, but each trait is characterized in the following lines of the respective stanzas. The name of a feature evoked by an epithet appears in a substantive form and is repeated, like “la joie” or “la bonté,” which occur three times. The author also gives periphrases of these values, for instance, after the indication “Sois calme,” the sentence “Le repos va du cœur au visage” succeeds in the same line, and joy is represented symbolically: “La joie est la chaleur que jette dans les âmes / Cette clarté d’en haut qu’on nomme Vérité.” We also encounter two sentences about kindness: “La bonté contient les autres choses” (succeeding the wish “Sois bonne” in the same line) and “La bonté, c’est le fond des natures augustes.” As a consequence, the visible rhythm of alexandrine, recognizable at least in the above-cited stanza, is weakened by the syntactic break after the third syllable and, by extension, by the lack of a clear caesura after the sixth syllable. 50 Ibid., 1, 1043. 51 Cf. the description from the second section: “L’âme de l’humble vierge a toute sa lumière.”

247

“Regard jeté dans une mansarde” is concluded with the confession of the poet that he has taken on the responsibility to “répandre chant religieux,” “plonger Dieu dans les cœurs” and “jetter dans chaque âme / Un mot révélateur, propre à ce qu’elle sent.” All these activities determine the shape of the litanic verse, but chiefly the adjustment to the addressee, who is urged to maintain the purity of her soul with an abundance of religious, gentle motifs, proper for her spiritual development. The general structure of litanic verse in this poem bears a strong resemblance to La Prière pour tous for three reasons: the absence of the addressee’s (the young girl’s) name and the few metaphorical titles included; the presence of anaphoric enumeration starting with “Par”—this element, however, changes the meaning of the entire section, as the action should be done not through something, but for someone; and the presence of incitement—repeated “Sois” as repeated forms of “Va prier.”

14.3  Musset—Speaking with One’s Polymorphous Self Critics make various attempts to demonstrate the resemblance of Musset’s poetry to the litanic form, but the arguments are not strictly defined: “Avec ses innombrables répétitions, l’art de Musset se rapproche de la chanson ou de la litanie, […].”52 Furthermore, Jacques-Philippe Saint-Gérand points to litany as one of the types of repetition present in the ensemble of four Musset poems Les Nuits, and we will also focus on them, as they represent the specificity of Musset’s litanic verse. Nonetheless, first we will consider another crucial poem for Musset’s criticism of his era, Rolla (1833). The first section of Rolla—nearly one hundred lines—is not narrative, as it serves as a contemplative introduction to the plot represented in the following sections, the history of a protagonist whose name is not presented to the reader until the second part. The litanic verse formula takes the shape of the question “Regrettez-vous le temps où […],” however, in this fully developed form it appears four times, whereas the anaphora of more than twenty lines is constituted by “où.” The series of demands is concluded by a kind of anti-confession of faith, addressed to Christ.

52 Alain Vaillant, La Crise de la littérature: romantisme et modernité (Grenoble: ELLUG, 2005), 296.

248

The below-cited lines support the interpretation of the worldview of Musset’s litanic verse. The question that arises at this point is the identity of the speaker of this litany of regret, as it was called by Jean-Pierre Bertrand and Pascal Durand53: Regrettez-vous le temps où le ciel sur la terre Marchait et respirait dans un peuple de dieux? Où Vénus Astarté, fille de l’onde amère, Secouait, vierge encor, les larmes de sa mère, Et fécondait le monde en tordant ses cheveux? Regrettez-vous le temps où les Nymphes lascives Ondoyaient au soleil parmi les fleurs des eaux, Et d’un éclat de rire agaçaient sur les rives Les Faunes indolents couchés dans les roseaux? Où les sources tremblaient des baisers de Narcisse? […] Où tout était divin, jusqu’aux douleurs humaines, Où le monde adorait ce qu’il tue aujourd’hui, Où quatre mille dieux n’avaient pas un athée, Où tout était heureux, excepté Prométhée, Frère aîné de Satan, qui tomba comme lui?54

The first key point is to acknowledge that this enumerative flow does not give the impression of plenitude only because every singular event is listed using the same element in the onset of the lines. On the contrary, every single line already expresses the multiplicity, and the action of joining them with the anaphora only intensifies this perception. It is not a single god or even the entire pantheon of Olympus that is evoked, but a massive group of deities, which is suggested by the expressions “un peuple de dieux,” “le monde,” and “quatre mille dieux,” and by the repeated word “tout.” The activities described also manifest the exuberance which accompanies the gods, the heroes and the men to render the world populous: “feconder,” “tremble des baiseirs,” “agacer” and the accompanying epithet, “lascive.” We touch on a paradox in the statement “tout était divin, jusqu’aux douleurs humaines,” but it is powerful enough to represent the structure of the ancient world and the status of the poet as “naïve”: he lived in a harmony that was managed by the perfect coordination of gods and humans, which is suggested by the statement of the absence of atheists in the ancient world because there was no barrier between humans, nature and gods; they all lived in a world whose limits

53 Pascal Durand and Jean-Pierre Bertrand, La Modernité romantique: de Lamartine à Nerval (Bruxelles: Les Impressions Nouvelles, 2006), 166. 54 Alfred de Musset, Œuvres complètes (Paris: Seuil, 1966), 139.

249

were established. This vision of ancient man and his environment is consonant with the philosophical ideas widespread in that period mainly owing to Friedrich von Schiller (Über naive und sentimentalische Dichtung). This scene allows us to make a supposition that the speaker is a “sentimental” poet, who seeks the epoch of a triumph of religion and of the perfect reconciliation of the artist with the time in which he lived. Two funeral motifs evoked in the end of the first part, “le cercueil” and “le linceul,” persuade us that the gap between the contemporary epoch and the one left is an elementary one. Hard as it is to imagine, the next era in the world’s history is supposed to be more “fertile”: Regrettez-vous le temps où d’un siècle barbare Naquit un siècle d’or, plus fertile et plus beau? Où le vieil univers fendit avec Lazare De son front rajeuni la pierre du tombeau? Regrettez-vous le temps où nos vieilles romances Ouvraient leurs ailes d’or vers leur monde enchanté? Où tous nos monuments et toutes nos croyances Portaient le manteau blanc de leur virginité? Où, sous la main du Christ, tout venait de renaître? Où le palais du prince, et la maison du prêtre, Portant la même croix sur leur front radieux.55

This fecundity, however, is characterized differently than the ancient licentiousness—the white robe of virginity and the symbolism of renaissance characterize a Christian vision (“tout venait de renaître,” “le vieil univers fendit […] / De son front rajeuni la pierre du tombeau,” “des siècles nouveau-nés”). Posing the previous question about the possible identity of the speaker of these demands from another, more formal perspective, we should note that undoubtedly the speaker discloses more in the second part of the first section than in the first one, as the pronouns “our” and “us” are used for the first time. The enumeration of “nos vieilles romances,” “tous nos monuments et toutes nos croyances” indicates that the person speaking belongs to the same group as the people to whom he speaks—to the heirs of the European culture formed in early Christian times. This is then a collective litany of people who have grown up in the same cultural patterns, who recognize the classical tradition and bear in mind the complexity of the visions of medieval time—its universalism and fairy-tale-like quality. Each element indicated with the anaphora on “où” serves as an evocation of certain images to which the person speaking has only one 55 Ibid.

250

response—the question whether his listeners regret that past. It is not repeated after each call, but in the beginning of the block of enumeration which evokes a story consisting of several stages. This litany owes its rhythm not only to the anaphora, but also to the rhyme scheme, which approaches homonymy: “amèremère,” “athée-Prométhée,” “beau-tombeau,” “Saint-Pierre-pierre,” etc. The lyrical “I” remains silent about his own experience of time. Indeed, he rather suggests what asses his contemporaries may be—probably he would not launch such a plaintive text only to unquestionably admire his own epoch. The passage which immediately follows the litanic episode quoted above consists of more a personal than a collective apostrophe to Christ—he is not invoked with many names, the exclamations “ô Christ,” “mon Dieu” and “Jésus” are used only a few times. The Savior is called instead as a witness to the spiritual impoverishment of the generation of young romantics, and particularly as a witness to the speaker’s rejection of faith: “je ne suis pas de ceux que la prière / […] amène,” “Je ne suis pas de ceux qui vont à ton Calvaire,” “Je ne crois pas, ô Christ! à ta parole sainte.”56 He calls himself “enfant de ce siècle sans foi.” The reason for such separation is that he does not belong to the time of youth; while regretting the epoch “Où la Vie était jeune,—où la Mort espérait,” he confesses at the same time “Je suis venu trop tard dans un monde trop vieux.” The situation of a poet who is alienated from the contemporary time and does not find his place in the religious community indicates definitely that he is that of a “sentimental nature.” He, living in a present time, is desperate, whereas formerly “tout était heureux.” The only moment in the poem when the speaker once again capitulates in front of the imposing series of questions starting from “où,” is the description of the search for the new Messiah who could redeem the world with his blood, as pure as Christ: “Où donc est le Sauveur pour entr’ouvrir nos tombes? / […] / Qui de nous, qui de nous va devenir un Dieu?”57 Observing the impotence of the existence of God the Savior, he notes that it is fortune which governs the world and he depicts a scene in which “L’esprit des temps passés, […], / Jette au gouffre éternel tes anges mutilés.” Considering that this “esprit” has been evoked with the use of litanic verse, we can state that this form is used by Musset to “reveiller les mondes” in which no longer are the deities praised, as no one believes in them. Therefore, the possibility of use of litanic verse in a prayer has been eliminated, and in fact, in

56 Paul Bénichou, L’Ecole du désenchantement. Sainte-Beuve, Nodier, Musset, Nerval, Gautier (Paris: Gallimard, 1992), 165: “le christianisme semble toujours actuel, mais sa vertu vitalisante est épuisée.” 57 Musset, Œuvres complètes, 139.

251

this poem the litanic verse is directed only to people. In the following analysis, we observe how it can be applied in the speeches to personified visions. The litanic verse in two poems from Les Nuits is used in dialogues with interlocutors identified only as “La Vision” and “La Muse.” The dialogue in La nuit d’octobre is extended, and the meter is changed with every shift of the voice, which happens seven times. Some of the longer speeches contain more than forty lines. Such irregularity may be explained by the emotional state of both the man and the muse—she is hesitating over the reason for him remaining silent for such a long time and cares about him as his mother or a friend, while he initially does not want to confess the justification of his disappearance, not out of fear, but because he is ashamed. The illness that touched him is common to all human beings—it was suffering from love that in his mind seemed innocent, but proved to be traitorous. It was the eponymous autumnal night that broke this illusion. Now he has recovered and is ready to both thank God for his return to poetic activities and to bid his final adieu to his lady, as he blames her for his faults: it was she who taught him to swear falsely. Toward the end of the poem, the poet asks the muse for a hearing, classifying his oration as an oath: Par les yeux bleus de ma maîtresse, Et par l’azur du firmament; Par cette étincelle brillante Qui de Vénus porte le nom, Et, comme une perle tremblante, Scintille au loin sur l’horizon; Par la grandeur de la nature, Par la bonté du Créateur, Par la clarté tranquille et pure De l’astre cher au voyageur. Par les herbes de la prairie, Par les forêts, par les prés verts, Par la puissance de la vie, Par la sève de l’univers, Je te bannis de ma mémoire.58

The muse does not intercede but is rather a kind of witness to the poet’s oath. The main objects evoked by the lyrical “I” are those that are the source of light: the stars in particular, for instance, “l’astre cher au voyageur,” but also the eyes and light itself. Apart from that, the heavens, green territories, life and the Creator— the entire universe is the element of the scenery of this breaking. After this act, 58 Ibid., 77–78.

252

several apostrophes follow, addressed both to the lady—“je romps le charme / Qui nous unissait devant Dieu”—and to the muse—“Dis-moi quelque chanson joyeuse.” The dialogue of the muse and the poet concludes with the perfect union of them—they return to the activities that bring them joy. The story of a young poet in La Nuit de décembre can only be considered sinister due to the fact that in every moment of the speaker’s life, as in the initiation, there is someone who accompanies him—a man truly similar to him, wearing black and remaining silent. The statements describing his presence are placed in the last two lines in every second six-line stanza in the first nine stanzas: […] Un pauvre enfant vêtu de noir, Qui me ressemblait comme un frère. […] Un jeune homme vêtu de noir, Qui me ressemblait comme un frère. […] Un étranger vêtu de noir, Qui me ressemblait comme un frère. […] Un convive vêtu de noir, Qui me ressemblait comme un frère. […] Un orphelin vêtu de noir, Qui me ressemblait comme un frère.59

The various names of the same being are followed by the formula of his resemblance to the speaker. When the poet starts his journey—the motivation for which is vague and desperate to the degree motives for romantic journeys often were—“chercher / Les vestiges d’une espérance”—this pattern is interrupted, but the rhythm determined by the parallelism is maintained. The person speaking names many places common for the European voyages of young men in the nineteenth century, such as Germany, Italy, Switzerland and towns along the European Mediterranean coast, such as Nice and Genoa: “A Pise, au pied de l’Apennin; / A Cologne, en face du Rhin; / A Nice, au penchant des vallées.”60 However, when this simple parallelism, such as the one formed by the anaphora

59 Ibid., 51–53. 60 Ibid., 53–54.

253

on “partout,” is rescinded, the final formula of the presence of the mysterious companion emerges after a long pause—“Un malheureux vêtu de noir, / Qui me ressemblait comme un frère.”61 An investigation into the existence of the specter is established by a question which is repeated eight times—“Qui donc es-tu?”—and an indication of its possible name plays an important role in the shaping of the litanic verse in the poem. Before we reveal the specter’s identity—this is done in the last line of La Nuit de décembre—we should consider the possibilities that are gradually introduced in the poem. Similarly to the status of many romantic protagonists, it is ambiguous; the poet hesitates—“ange ou demon.” Its presence prompts him to contemplate Providence, as he seeks the sacral connotations of this figure: “Qui donc es-tu, si c’est Dieu qui t’envoie?” Moreover, it has some features and properties of Christ: “Il était couronné d’épine” but also of the poet—ancient, medieval or contemporary—“Son luth à terre était gisant.” The specter offers relief and mercy: “Ton doux sourire a trop de patience,  / Tes larmes ont trop de pitié.” The distance between the two personages in La Nuit de décembre has lessened in comparison to La Nuit d’octobre, as a possible interpretation of the specter is that it is the double of the poet, since the speech emerges as a monologue.62 When the phantom finally addresses the poet, it claims to be solitude and confesses its unbreakable bond with the poet—in fact, it can be called by many names: “Et tu m’as nommé par mon nom / Quand tu m’as appelé ton frère.”63 The denomination is the crucial component of the litanic verse structures in La Nuit de décembre, such as the parallel couplets that end the stanzas and the question about the identity of the specter. The recurrence of the single word and of the whole description is motivated throughout the poem by the reappearance of the same phantom—the element of the message of the poem is correlated with its formal structure. Each

61 Ibid., 54–55. 62 Alain Heyvaert, La Transparence et l’indicible dans l’œuvre d’Alfred de Musset (Paris: Klincksieck, 1994), 276–277. Cf. Magdalena Siwiec, who argues that the octosyllable of La Nuit de décembre is the continuation of the final speech of the poet in La Nuit d’octobre (Romantyczne koncepcje poezji. Poeta i Muza — relacja w stanie kryzysu. Alfred de Musset i Juliusz Słowacki, Kraków: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, 2012, 182–183). 63 Ibid., 58. Cf. Heyvaert, La Transparence et l’indicible, 130: “La Vision commence par dire ce qu’elle n’est pas (« ange gardien », « mauvais destin », « dieu », « démon »), instances qui introduiraient une distance favorable à l’objectivation, la détachant ainsi du « moi ».” However, Bénichou argues that the specter is a “donnée constante de son être, depuis l’enfance jusqu’au jour du poème” (L’Ecole du désenchantement, 130).

254

time there is a different element in the parallel couplets, an element that consists of a varying name— “convive,” “orphelin,” etc.—which conveys the essence of the poem: the impossibility of total identification with the person who appears to be analogous, but lives in a parallel reality, so the communication process cannot be initiated.64 Drawing upon Alain Vaillant, who indicates three principal elements of Musset’s style, “l’apostrophe, l’anaphore, le schéma dialogique,”65 we can argue that all of them consist of litanic verse. However, they appear in the analyzed examples in a combination in which none of the factors dominates clearly. Amongst the litanic elements most common in Musset, we should point to the relatively short pronouns—“où,” “par,” “à,” “partout”—which occur quite frequently (from line to line) and some longer structures like “Regrettez-vous le temps où” or the couplet from La Nuit de décembre, which appears in a less regular manner. Therefore, our conclusions are different from those of Jacques-Philippe Saint-Gérand, for whom the litany-like repetitions in Musset’s works consist of the entire line repeated, for instance, on the level of longer units.66 Consequently, he considers, for example, the line “Poète, prends ton luth et me donne un baiser,” which is gradually modified and chiefly abbreviated when repeated by the muse, to be litanic.

14.4 Other Romantic Poets—How to Capture the Proper Name of Phenomena In “Un homme de moins,” from the collection of poems which constitutes Alphonse Esquiros’ literary debut, Les Hirondelles (1834), the author continues the theme introduced in his well-known poem “L’aigle,” fundamental for his interpretation of Napoleon. In “L’aigle,” Bonaparte describes himself as the new Christ and “Images of the Crucifixion are applied to the fate of the defeated emperor.”67 In four stanzas of “Un homme de moins,” which, indeed, roughly inherits the metrical pattern of “L’aigle,” possessing a 12a12a6b12c12c6b structure, compared

64 A. Loiseleur, “Spectres de Musset,” in Poétique de Musset, eds. Sylvain Ledda, Frank Lestringant, Gisèle Séginger (Mont-Saint-Aignan: Presses Universitaires de Rouen et du Havre, 2013), 272. 65 Vaillant, La Crise de la littérature, 296. 66 J.-P. Saint-Gérand, “« Je rimaille par boutade, je baise par désœuvrement, je bois et fume avec volupté. — et voilà! »: Métrique, rhétorique et identité du sujet dans Les Nuits de Musset,” L’Information Grammaticale, vol. 69 (1996): 37. 67 Anthony Zielonka, Alphonse Esquiros (1812–1876): a study of his works (Paris: Champion/Genève: Slatkine, 1985), 170.

255

with the previous 12a12a8b12c12c8b, it is France which is represented as the tormented body. Not only is it the use of the name “France” that makes it clear who is represented as a new Messiah in this poem, but also the image of “les flancs estropiés” similar to the depiction of “la nation crucifiée, trouée au flanc par la lance du cosak” in the future work of the author, L’Évangile du peuple (1840).68 In three stanzas out of four, an apostrophe directed to earth is repeated. This expresses not praise or supplication, but a question, with the clearly dominating from the second stanza “pour que”: Terre, que fallut-il, si longtemps oppressée, Pour reposer enfin ta surface lassée Du poids des combattans; Pour que le monde entier rentrât dans son orbite, Pour qu’une main foulât ces flots dans leur limite. De peuples haletants? Pour que sur leurs pavois les grands se replaçassent, Pour que les gouverneurs et les rois ramassassent La couronne à leurs pieds; Pour que la France même, activée et féconde, Reposât, d’avoir tant produit de rois au monde, Ses flancs estropiés?69

In the final line, the response to the questions asked is given in a short, abrupt and indirect manner: Terre, que fallut-il pour qu’au peuple qui tombe Ton sein engloutissant n’entrouvrît plus de tombe Au milieu du combat? Que fallut-il pour perdre une nouvelle Rome Qui vivait et pensait dans l’âme d’un seul homme? — Que cet homme tombât!

The allusion to “new Rome” has steered us to the right answer before the name of the person whose fall is desirable is expressed—it is the Sun King, Louis XIV. Assuming that this response applies to every question asked, we should say that instead of a poem, we are dealing with a political manifesto, proper for public gatherings. One phrase in response follows this series of questions, but it is difficult not to recognize the acoustic anticipation of “tombât.” 68 Alponse Esquiros, L’Evangile du peuple (Paris: Le Gallois, 1840), 300 (in a part written in prose and the sentence: “Un dur cosak au flanc la perca d’une lance” in a poetic passage, 301). 69 Alponse Esquiros, Les Hirondelles (Paris: Renduel, 1834), 61–62.

256

The vision of the universe sketched in these micro-scenes with the use of parallelism is correlated with the litanic worldview in this regard: that it aims—with its brief response to all the miseries of the political and economic situation of France under the reign of Louis XIV enumerated, such as the pathetic vision of war and a time of scarcity connected to natural disasters—for a status in which every object mentioned is placed in the right order, like the planets moving in their orbits. The French territory should reposer (“stay in peace,” an expression which is repeated twice in this short poem) instead of witnessing battles, and the people should be respected by their authorities. Therefore, this example continues the tradition of litanic verse praising peace and those wise rulers who are able to ensure it (like Belleau’s Chant pastoral de la paix, which uses a similar depiction of fields), demonstrating, however, a counterexample. The apostrophes are directed to a not strictly defined “terre,” but other expressions contain suggestions about more emotional relations to the addressee. France is depicted with the symbols of both royal power and state dignity— “drapeaux,” “les trônes des rois,” “la couronne”—and with words betraying an attachment to the motherland: “nos champs,” “nos drapeaux.” The land carries the burden of suffering, it must endure the calamities and battles—“ta surface lassée / Du poids des combattants”—and it has a “sein engloutissant.” The homonymy in the final parts of two lines in the last stanza, “tombe-tombe,” dangerously draws a parallel between the fall and the grave. The vision in which the heritage of the nation, which ensures the existence of generations, provides the answer to all woe means that the response assumes the traits of a fundamental answer. Passing to more intimate themes, in the preface to Vapeurs, ni vers, ni prose (1838) of Xavier Forneret we discover the crucial romantic categories: “Dieu, c’est tout sur la terre et au ciel. La femme, c’est tout sur la terre. Le cœur humain n’est presque rien nulle part.”70 But the form of certain poems is rather unusual for this period. The most popular stanzaic patterns coexist here with the more flexible compositions, resembling the form of an everyday dialogue or even a one-line poem. Each poem in this volume is represented as a unit of the general composition, which is emphasized by the title, composed of the word “vapeur” plus a number, and finally the proper title. In the case of the litanic verse found 70 Xavier Forneret, Vapeurs: ni vers, ni prose (Paris: E. Duverger, 1838), vi. Zielonka remarks that it is only Forneret amongst les petits romantiques who does not seem to be “revolutionary,” as he does not reject the idea of God and the positive influence of society (“Les préfaces, prologues et manifestes des « Petits Romantiques»” Romantisme, vol. 59, 1988: 76).

257

in this collection, namely “Vapeur VII,” the mark of redundancy is even more visible, as its proper title, “Elle,” is the title of three other poems in the volume. It can be said that it does not have an outstanding metrics and its shape may be called one of the most traditional in the collection, regarding the parallelism of alexandrines and the rhyming couplets. At the very beginning of the poem, the question that is asked allows us to recognize the litanic convention of enumerating different titles of one person: “Vous ne savez son nom?”71 The act of the dedication of his work is emphasized mainly in two places: the first and last lines of poem (assumed to be outside the metrical scheme): “Celle pour qui je chante”; and at the end: “Pour toi.” We may note that first he indicates the addressee to the audience and then he speaks directly to her. However, there is no smooth transition ensured inside the poem, in which “elle” is constantly described in the third person singular: “son pied,” “ses cheveaux,” “ses baisers,” etc., and no direct apostrophe to her is expressed. The scheme of communicative functions becomes more refined and ambiguous from the perspective of the person speaking, a trait that can be recognized in the ecclesiastical litanies. While the people praying profit from intercession and, in lauding Holy Mary, insist on her praying for them (the faithful to Holy Mary and Holy Mary to God), the author of this litanic verse presents a situation in which the speaker addresses some unidentified recipients, glorifying the lady, while at the same time pointing at her, confessing that she is the addressee (the intercessor between “other” believers and the main deity). This allows us to see in this poem a work of laudation which is eventually set at the feet of the lady as a gift. Considering the message of the entire volume, we may note that the author intends to create a confession of the soul, a soul which he does not doubt that he has, but “il n’afficherait pas cette croyance [d’avoir une âme—M.K.] s’il n’était permis de se glorifier de ce qui nous vient de Dieu.”72 This plot from the preface is developed especially in the first poem, in which he states directly: “Prier, c’est adorer tout ce que la nature, / […] peut nous montrer de beau.”73 A celebration of the works of creation is a prayer itself. Therefore, we can recognize the prayerful character of “Elle,” even if a supplication is absent. It is the anaphoric “C’est” which is the main factor of litanic verse in this poem74 and it is followed by many metaphorical titles. The body of material for 71 Forneret, Vapeurs: ni vers, ni prose, 69. 72 Ibid., viii. 73 Ibid., 18. 74 The statement about its lamartinienne inspiration would not be unfounded as the poet directly refers to the words of Lamartine in “Vapeur I” (ibid., 17): “Prions, prions

258

the antonomasias is taken both from nature and from the human world, and it touches upon emotional states as well. Surprisingly, the eponymous female is not called queen, as, for instance, Holy Mary in the litanies is, but king: “C’est le roi des lions dégarni de sa cage,” not a mother but a child: “C’est l’enfant qui se roule et qui est tout en pleurs,” not the morning star but a sunburst: “un soleil en éclats.” Her vision is much more sensuous than the images of saints: “C’est une nuit de rose ou languissants ébats,” “un amant qui caresse.” Everything she is exists in full bloom: “C’est un arbre en verdeur,” “c’est la richesse en fleurs.” Most of all, in the line in which she is named by universal categories such as “la mort, désespoir, deuil, bonheur, allégresse,” we note how ambiguous her character is, which is immediately explained by the fact that another characteristic of the lady love is the possession of two hearts—one which is responsible for the process of living and the other, hidden and wounded. In fact, she is represented as a person both tender and firm, demanding care and capable of forming others. Reading this poem in the light of the preface, we should say that the lady is poetry herself, as the author’s vision of poetical creation becomes equivocal: “grande, élevé, sublime, naïve, […] toute de jour, toute de nuit, brillante ou noire.”75 The prevalence of violent phenomena—“C’est un torrent jeté par un trou de nuage,” “C’est la terre qui tremble et la foudre qui tonne”—is counterbalanced by the naming of “le calme du soir.” As for the form of these titles, we admit that they are not aristocratic, as the simplest constructions are used: “le soupir  qu i   meurt,” “un arbre  e n   verdeur”—and the same remark may obviously refer to the anaphoric expression. However, the flow of denomination is not entirely formally homogenous. The rhythm accelerates close to the end of the litanic part: C’est un choc qui renverse en tuant de frayeur, Puis un pauvre qui donne, — ou le soupir qui meurt. C’est un maître qui gronde, — un amant qui caresse; C’est la mort, désespoir, deuil, bonheur, allégresse.76

In the second part of “Elle” the adverb of quantity attempts to fulfill the function played previously by the structure “C’est”: “Ses cheveux sont si beaux […] si épais,” “Si petite est la place où l’entoure un corset” and the laudatory attitude becomes clear. The proportion of litanic and non-litanic parts of this

encore!—Ainsi dit Lamartine.” “C’est” is also the important component of “Vapeur II,” however, the repetition numbers only five lines. 75 Ibid., vii. 76 Ibid., 70.

259

poem is comparatively stable: in twenty-eight lines, fourteen are marked by the anaphora.

14.5  Romantic Religious Poetry The popularity of paraphrases of Marian litanies in the first half of the nineteenth century was great, both in treatises and in poetry; however, only occasionally do these paraphrases have formal virtuosity. Some of them were intended for musical performance, which imposes a rather simple, easy to catch rhythm. That is a case of “Madonae Lorettanae,” which contains quatrains including Marian titles and a three-line supplication which is here repeated by the choir: O doux parfum des cœurs, rose toujours fleurie, Tour sainte d’Israël, blanche de pureté, Arche de l’alliance, ô porte de la vie, O maison qu’embellit l’or de la charité! Marie, Marie, Priez pour nous! Chœur: Marie, Marie, Priez pour nous!77

A similar structure of unrestricted enumeration of titles followed by a repetitive supplicatory formula is found in Édouard Turquety’s78 poem with the incipit “O Vierge immaculé” (Poésie catholique, 1836): Fontaine où l’on s’abreuve Comme aux vagues du fleuve Où l’on boit chaque jour L’eau pure de l’amour Arche de l’alliance Aurore d’innocence Nous sommes à genoux Priez, priez pour nous.79

77 Lyres catholiques: la Lyre pieuse, la Lyre de Jésus, la lyre de Marie, ou Recueil général de cantiques, au nombre de quatre cent cinquante par l’abbé C. M. Le Guillou (Paris: Sagnier et Bray, 1848), 589. 78 (1807–1867), a poet whose poetry is uniquely devoted to spiritual themes, which may be seen in the titles of his volumes: Amour et Foi, Hymnes sacrés, Fleurs à Marie. 79 La lyre de Marie, 296.

260

Other poems consist simply of long enumerations of titles without any repetitive elements and one final formula, like some works of Gustave de La Noue,80 differing from the examples mentioned above for having a longer meter, the alexandrine, which requires more developed metaphors: “Lys que dans le vallon nulle main n’a touché”; “Mère pleine de grâce et pleine de beauté.”81 We turn now to one example of paraphrases of Marian litany intended for musical performance, which is interesting due to the ingenious idea for a poetic costume of litanies: the genre of ode sacrée. This is considered to be allied to the hymnical genre and is filled with “le sentiment d’admiration.”82 As the first creations of this genre, writers have listed examples from the Old Testament: “Les cantiques de Moise et des prophètes, les psaumes de David, les plaintes sublimes de Job, sont des odes sacrées dont la perfection démontre leur céleste origine […].”83 The penchant of the author, Marie-Louis-Auguste Demartin du Tyrac Marcellus, for this form is shown in many testimonies of paraphrases of other religious forms, such as the psalms and canticles. The litanies, as he confesses in a preface for three paraphrases, “du saint nom de Jésus, de la sainte Vierge et des saints,” charmed him during a trip to Rome: “j’entendis les litanies de la sainte Vierge, sur l’air plus mélodieux […]. Jamais aucun concert ne m’a fait une telle impression.”84 The reason for our selection of the paraphrase of Marian litany as the basis for the interpretation is that in its isometric stanzas—quatrains of alexandrines rhyming abab—we recognize a variety of the litanic verse’s structures. This form appears as even more inspiring than a frequent modification of the metrical pattern in one poem.85 80 Ibid., 26 and 109. (1812–1838), a poet and member of charity organizations and pious associations. He published mainly in the Catholic press, but he also left one independent work: Enosh, prologue (1834). 81 Ibid., 109. 82 Alexandre Émile Lefranc, Traité de littérature, vol. 1 (Bruxelles: Société belge de Librairie, 1844), 46. 83 Ibid. 84 Marie-Louis-Auguste Demartin du Tyrac Marcellus, Vêpres et complies lyriques, selon le rit romain, suivies des trois Litanies et de Psaumes traduits en vers français (Lyon/Paris: Perisse, 1840), 113. In the edition in Tablettes du chrétien (Paris: Librairie ecclésiastique et d’éducation, 1839), 605, we find a footnote: “Cette ode peut se chanter. On trouve des airs sur ce mètre dans le recueil des cantiques de Saint-Sulpice; tels par exemple que l’air sur l’ode de L. Racine: « grâce, grâce, » etc.” 85 In Litanies du Saint Nom de Jésus the quatrains of alexandrines with the anaphora on “ayez pitié de nous” change into six-line stanza of octosyllables with the formula: “Jésus, délivrez-nous de […]” and the six-line stanza 12-12-6-12-12-6 with the anaphora on

261

What is noticeable at a glance in Litanies de la très-sainte vierge, traduites en vers, et paraphrasés en forme d’ode sacrée. Hommage à Notre Dame de Verdelais (1837, published in 1839) is that conversely to the order in ecclesiastical prayers, here the supplication formula precedes the litanic title; the anaphora on the level of stanzas is on “Priez pour nous,” while the invocations appear either in the second hemistich or in the succeeding lines. Furthermore, we should emphasize the litanic frame—the initial stanza contains the invocations to the Holy Trinity, whereas the last one contains an equivalent of the Agnus Dei. As we have already said, these stanzas do not stand out by their metrical pattern, but the marks of their separation from the main part of the poetic prayer are strong. The first stanza starts with the formula, “Ayez pitié de nous,” which occurs also in its last hemistich, whereas in the central part, the supplicatory formula takes the shape of “Priez pour nous.” In turn, the last stanza begins with the apostrophe to “Agneau de Dieu”—the preceding stanzas were dominated by Marian invocations— and the formula “Ayez pitié de nous” ends the stanza and the poem. The series of titles is taken directly from the Marian litanies: Priez pour nous, Marie, auguste tabernacle, Vaisseau d’élection, Séjour du Saint des Saints: Arche d’Alliance où réside l’oracle Qui promet le Salut aux malheureux humains. Priez pour nous, ô vous, Rose mystérieuse Dont l’éclat embellit le printemps éternel; Noble Tour de David, Temple d’or, Porte heureuse Qui nous ferma l’abîme, et nous ouvrit le ciel.86

Nonetheless, the litanic formula is too brief to occupy the whole of the first hemistich by itself, so two-syllable elements, such as “Seigneur,” “ô Mère” or epithets are added and contribute to the invocations. The titles in turn may be condensed with three in one line: “Vierge, Fille d’Adam, Mère du Créateur,” or be paraphrased elaborately in such a way as to exceed the limits of the hemistich: “Source pour les Chrétiens d’une sainte allégresse.” In the above-cited stanzas, we may note that the sign of adherence to community is contained not only in the formula, but also in other elements, for instance, the statements describing the act of praise: “vous pouvez tout pour nous,” “ô vous “Au nom de.” In turn, in Litanies des saints the repetitive formulae are almost unidentifiable, as in the variety of stanzaic patterns we recognize merely the repetitive longer and shorter elements: “Delivrez nous,” “Par.” 86 Tablettes du chrétien, 605.

262

qu’on chérit, qu’on admire.” In this way, the laudatory, as well as supplicatory, aim of the litanic verse is revealed, according to the rule of the genre. The community that recites this prayer is remarkably humble, as it proclaims: “Le poids du crime / Accable des pécheurs qui tremblent devant vous.” The submissive attitude forces one to doubt: “Peut-on assez louer votre douce puissance / Puisqu’un Dieu né de vous, mit le monde à vos pieds?” “Agneau de Dieu, mourant pour les péchés du monde, / Ne pourrons-nous fléchir votre juste courroux?” Nonetheless, sometimes the message is more objectified, as the author mentions other groups celebrating Holy Mary or uses more general expressions: “ô vous que le monde révère,” “Les Prophètes louaient dans leurs divins cantiques / Le Rédempteur du monde, et la Reine des saints.” Another feature that reveals litanic associations is the frequent mention of denomination: “Vous dont le nom puissant assure la victoire,” “Priez pour nous, ô vous […] / Dont le nom retentit, en tout temps, en tout lieu.” The investigation of the origins and sources of names leads to the procedure of anticipating the titles. To give an illustration, the sentence “Vierge sainte, qu’un Dieu voulut nommer sa Mère” imposes the invocation “ô Mère” on the following stanza. The remark, “Les Patriarches saints, les Apostres, les Anges, / Vous proclament leur Reine […]” is located between two stanzas which, exceptionally, do not follow the pattern of the formula in the onset of the stanza, but introduce in this place the element “Reine.” To conclude, we break the homogeneity of the Marian inspiration to present a litanic verse established on the basis of repetition constituted by a word already presented in the previous and current chapters as a component of litanic verse. There is a canticle that was published repeatedly, in differing forms, during the nineteenth century, sometimes anonymously and sometimes signed only with initials (C. J. M. J.). Because of the variations in the printed editions, it is difficult to definitively assess the scale of litanic verse in it. The characteristic that first draws the attention of the researcher is that once again the word “seul” replaces the traditional epithets; it appears seventeen times in the work, which numbers twenty-four lines, and is exclusively attached to the word “Dieu”: Il n’est pour moi qu’un seul bien sur la terre; Et c’est Dieu seul; Dieu seul est mon trésor; Dieu seul, Dieu seul allège ma misère, Et vers Dieu seul mon cœur prendra l’essor. Je bénis sa tendresse, Et répète sans cesse Ce cri d’amour, ce cantique du cœur; Dieu seul, Dieu seul, voilà le vrai bonheur!

263

Dieu seul, Dieu seul guérit toute blessure; Dieu seul, Dieu seul est un puissant secours; Dieu seul suffit à l’âme droite et pure, Et c’est Dieu seul qu’elle cherche toujours.87

In some versions, the two final lines of the first stanza are treated as the refrain— in some way, the mention of the person speaking “sans cesse” suggests this repetition. In the above-cited edition, the litanic flow ceases as we near the end of the poem, but the part presented here is sufficient to analyze the principal features of litanic verse in this example: it is the anaphoric duplication of the name of the deity—“Dieu seul.” The second part of the line contains either personal antonomasias like “mon trésor,” “le vrai Bonheur” or a verb that introduces the object of the action of God—“allége ma misère,” “guérit toute blessure.”

14.6  Litanic Verse in a Litany Written in a Diary The litanic verse included in Eugénie de Guérin’s Journal was entitled “les litanies de la tristesse”88 by the author and entered in her diary in a passage without an exact date (the year is 1840), although it precedes an inscription made on Palm Sunday. A source for the twenty-four invocations of different lengths may be identified as the litanies of the Passion or of Christ’s sufferings.89 Apart from the fact that in place of the most often met repetitive part of the invocation, “Jésus” or “ô Jésus,” we find “ô Christ,” we may note that several expressions are patterned on the ecclesiastical invocations, for example, “Ô Christ, qui avez été méconnu,” “Ô Christ, qui avez été triste à la mort,” “Ô Christ, qui avez été abandonné de vos disciples,” and the most popular: “Ô Christ, qui avez été couronné d’épines.” Two key points draw the reader’s attention: the individualization of the formula of supplication repeated in the unchanged form “ayez pitié de ma tristesse”90—“me” is in fact a commonly encountered replacement for “us” in poetic litanies—and the consistent adoption of past tenses in the second part of the 87 Lyres catholiques, 108. 88 Eugénie de Guérin, Journal et fragments (Paris: Didier, 1865), 364. Cf. other signals of great interest for the litanies in this journal: 133–134. 89 Cf. Litaniae vitae et passionis Domini nostri Iesu Christi in Sacrae Litaniae Variae cum brevi piaque quotidiana exercitatione (Antverpiae: ex officina Plantiniana, 1618), 57. In French nineteenth-century writings we find, for instance, Litanies à l’honneur de Jésus Christ souffrant, modèle et soutien des âmes affligées (1830) of Ferdinand Géramb and Litanies de Jésus souffrant included in Litaniaire, ou Recueil complet de litanies par le frère Anicet de Ste Suzanne (Avignon: Aubanel Frères, 1879), 86. 90 Guérin, Journal et fragments, 364–365.

264

invocation. The supplication does not even say “have mercy on me” but “on my sorrow,” and in this respect, it approaches the theme of the grief which affected the various events from Jesus’s life—not only that associated with the Passion, but at every stage of His life from the Nativity. The verb souffrir appears four times in different contexts in the invocations: “Ô Christ, qui êtes venu pour souffrir,” “Ô Christ, qui avez souffert les contradictions,” “Ô Christ, qui avez souffert les tentations,” “Ô Christ, qui avez tant souffert pour les pécheurs.” Nevertheless, the perspective of community is still present in the litany, as in the second invocation the author states, “Ô Christ, qui avez pris sur vous nos douleurs.” The emphasis on the past dimension of these acts should also be commented on, as this structure is not commonly used in the litanies of the Church. Presumably, the person speaking distinguishes the experiences already suffered by Jesus and the fact that he conquered them, but this path of interpretation is not followed in the text of the prayer, as none of the motifs anticipate the Resurrection. Another reason could be that repeated passé composé forms of voix passive prevent use of the attributive function, as it occurs as a subordinate attributive clause.

14.7 Conclusion The polyphony remarked on in the introduction is correlated with the interrogative mode of litanic verse in Lamartine, Musset and Esquiros, and also partially in Forneret and Hugo (“Entends ces mille voix” in “Regard jeté dans une mansarde”). Nevertheless, the authors’ strategy assumes the reader’s incertitude about the existence of these several voices only in the speaker’s mind; the case of Musset is the most convincing. In fact, Romantic litanic verse is highly individualistic, as the aspect of intercession is found only in those poems intended for musical performance and in the ode. Considering the religious addressees, God undoubtedly is celebrated most widely. Marian litanic devotion fell by the wayside, to find shelter in the rhythmical works of minor poets. In turn, the Jesus of the Romantics is no longer represented as “the way, the truth, and the life,” as he is invoked as a weakened ruler of a fallen kingdom. The forms of the Romantic litanic verse are highly traditional. Litanic verse does not contribute broadly to the liberation of the versification, as even Forneret, who in his Vapeurs, ni vers ni prose searches for new strategies, applies the litanic verse in the poem with rhymes such as “pleurs-fleurs” and the anaphoric

265

usage of “C’est.”91 The favorite meter of Romantic litanic verse is the alexandrine mixed with the octosyllable or six-syllable line. We do not recognize trimètre romantique even in Hugo’s works, which may be partly explained by the disappearance of litanic verse from his late poetry. The components of the anaphoric series are unrefined: we may enumerate the already mentioned “C’est” (known from medieval litanic verse and occasionally present in the liturgical litanies92) and “Celui qui.” This conservative use of litanic verse generates the solemn tone of celebration present in a majority of the examples we have discussed. It is worth noting that this dignified mood also suffuses the poems that depict private, intimate situations. In fact, various plots are undertaken using litanic verse, including political, self-referential, and romantic, but instead of sophisticated antonomasias of the body, for enumeration and repetition there are descriptions of natural elements, personages, and objects known from daily life.

91 Michèle Aquien and Jean-Paul Honoré, Le Renouvellement des formes poétiques au XIXe siècle (Paris: Nathan, 1997), 62. 92 For instance, Litanies de l’amour de Dieu included in Litaniaire, 54–55.

266

15.  Around Parnassianism A revalorization of Christian values in the nineteenth century is described in Théophile Gautier’s famous preface to Mademoiselle de Maupin, in which the idea “Art for art’s sake” is sown. When he wrote in 1834: Mais c’est la mode maintenant d’être vertueux et chrétien, c’est une tournure qu’on se donne; on se pose en saint Jérôme comme autrefois en don Juan; […] — Alors on est chrétien, on parle de la sainteté de l’art, de la haute mission de l’artiste, de la poésie du catholicisme, de M. de Lamennais, des peintres de l’école angélique, du concile de Trente, de l’humanité progressive et de mille autres belles choses. […] Le christianisme est tellement en vogue par la tartuferie qui court que le néo-christianisme lui-même jouit d’une certaine faveur,93

he referred to themes discussed in the previous chapter, such as the Romantic conviction that there is a strong bond between poetry and religion. Nonetheless, other words of Gautier—“Il n’y a de vraiment beau que ce qui ne peut servir à rien; tout ce qui est utile est laid, car c’est l’expression de quelque besoin, et ceux de l’homme sont ignobles et dégoûtants, comme sa pauvre et infirme nature”94— remind a scholar of litanic verse that the litanies are indeed an expression of certain needs, which Remy de Gourmont describes in this way: “les litanies, ces implorations multipliées de bouches jamais lasses, de cœurs toujours en peurs et en pleurs, […]. […] des désirs sont exprimés soit de généralité, soit particuliers à l’état, aux besoins des orants: alors les litanies sont complètes.”95 The concurrence of poetry and religion already at the dawn of human existence has been questioned by Louis Ménard in Catéchisme religieux des libres-penseurs: C’est à tort qu’on a regardé l’art comme un produit de la religion; […]. Les hommes ont construit des habitations pour eux et leurs familles avant d’élever des temples à leurs Dieux. […] Ce n’est pas à ses débuts que l’art présente un caractère religieux, c’est à son apogée; il commence et finit par la réalité; l’idéal est au sommet.96

In fact, according to him, some important religious phenomena would not have arisen if they had not been supported by achievements in the domain of art: 93 Théophile Gautier, Œuvres complètes: Romans, contes et nouvelles (Paris: Champion, 2004), 77. 94 Ibid., 102. 95 Remy de Gourmont, Le Latin mystique: les poètes de l’antiphonaire et la symbolique au Moyen Âge (Paris: Crès, 1922), 143. 96 Louis Ménard, Catéchisme religieux des libres-penseurs (Paris: Hurtau, 1875), 10.

267

Le culte de la Vierge n’est pas sorti tout entier de quelques versets de l’Evangile: à l’idéal féminine qui flottait confusément dans la pensée du Moyen Âge, il fallait une forme définitive; l’art de la Renaissance la lui a donnée, et le véritable apôtre de la Mère de Dieu, c’est Raphaël.97

In what direction, then, could litanic verse in the second half of the nineteenth century be developed, if poets preferred to keep their poetry from being a ground upon which supplications are expressed, and instead values like liberty and love of one’s native land were to be preached? Considering the multifarious interests of the Parnassian movement, we may suggest the most fruitful themes: poetry and poets are to be the center of the focus, and the objects celebrated can be the artists and their works themselves; exoticism may be evoked through archaic or oriental prayers; due to the Romantic reinterpretation of the Savior, perceptible, for instance, in Musset’s litanic verse, the role of Christ could be replaced by other personages of diabolical provenance. The distribution of litanic verse in the poetry of the second half of the nineteenth century varies slightly from that of the romantic period, as now more poets practice the form, although not in terms of the large number of their works; sometimes they would produce only one poem, as is the case with several works published in one of three volumes of Le Parnasse contemporain. Leconte de Lisle’s and Théodore de Banville’s poems contain many traits representative of litanic verse, so separate subchapters are devoted to their analysis. Another poem which can be ascribed to the period and which has entered world literature is “Les Litanies de Satan” by Charles Baudelaire.

15.1 Leconte de Lisle—The Broad Scope of Litanic Verse: Historical, Political, Intimate “Ma richesse” by Leconte de Lisle, with its unsophisticated structure of four quatrains with alternate rhyme, betrays the features of juvenile poems. The only message of the poem is to praise the clearness of eye of an unknown addressee— “C’est ton regard, rayon des cieux”98 —but the reader gains this insight only at the very end of the text. Therefore, the formal devices used in the poem, such as the anaphora on the level of two stanzas on the title expression “Ma richesse” succeeded by the structure “C’est” plus object plus relative pronoun, along with the anaphora “plus que” in two other stanzas, serve as a way to intrigue the reader

97 Ibid., 11. 98 Leconte de Lisle, Œuvres, vol. 4: Œuvres diverses (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1978), 67.

268

and to achieve the proper reception for the laudation. The single more refined element in this poetic imagery is that while depicting “my” richness, the lyrical “I” first enumerates natural elements—such as a leaf, an evening in a valley and an azure sky—that are later degraded only to finally serve as the components of the comparison. This strategy is correlated with an interesting pattern which covers the repetition of the formulas’ elements: a final word of a component, which in the initial two stanzas may be considered the variable one—“Ma richesse, c’est  l a   f e u i l l é e   / Q u’ a r g e nt e nt   l e s   p l e u r s   du  m at i n”  (the emphasis is mine)—recurs, in fact, in the final parts of other lines: “Plus que les parfums  du   m at i n ,”  being framed by a different repetitive component (previously “Ma richesse, c’est,” in this line “plus que”). The anaphoric and epiphoric tendencies interweave and the central message of the poem—the conjunction of “Ma richesse, c’est” and the objects mentioned in the words that follow—is maintained. However, between the first and last stanza this crucial idea is advanced: “Mais, plus que,” but through the participation of “plus que” and the mentioned epiphoras the coherence of the stanzas is maintained. The litanic spirit is undoubtedly concealed in de Lisle’s poem “À l’Italie” (Poèmes barbares, 1862), as a penchant for naming reigns over the lines and the anaphoric practice begins several times, only to be quickly interrupted. A few litanic verse components may be found in more than one hundred lines of the poem. Firstly, we can note the series of antonomasias of Italy, such as “O fille du soleil, mère d’enfants sublimes!”; “ô nourrice des braves!”; “ô Vierge”; “Abeille!” and “Reine!”;99 occasionally reinforced by direct apostrophes: “toi qui.” Secondly, there is the recurrence of the pronoun “Où,” which is a part of the questions about the memory of the addressee. In fact, this passage bears a resemblance to Musset’s investigation in Rolla, because the description of the manner in which the Italian land and culture were so rich for their predecessors and the chief influences—Hellas and the Orient—has one leading theme, namely intensity and impetus: “la vie ample et forte,” “tu faisais jaillir,” “éclatantes cités écloses sous tes mains,” “baigné par ton aurore,” “tu courais, versant ta lumière en tout lieu.” Thirdly, another mark of litanic verse in the poem is the anaphora on “comme” which maintains a stable laudatory overtone. The last litanic verse component used by the poet in the appeal to Italy is, in fact, an entire structure, composed of a single antonomasia, used at the end of the passage—a repeated call and a section with the anaphoric polyonymic “par”:

99

Leconte de Lisle, Œuvres, vol. 2: Poèmes barbares (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1976), 217, 219–220.

269

Ah! par ton propre sang, ton noble sang qui fume, Par tes siècles d’opprobre et d’angoisses sans fin, Par tant de honte bue avec tant d’amertume; Par pitié pour tes fils suppliciés en vain, Par ta chair maculée et ton âme avilie, Par respect pour l’histoire et ton passé divin; Si tu ne peux revivre, et si le ciel t’oublie, Donne à la liberté ton suprême soupir: Lève-toi, lève-toi, magnanime Italie!100

The alexandrine of the poem seems to be the meter best suited to the antonomasias,101 but the short supplications cited above do not match it perfectly, as they need to be repeated. In the same poem, we note other similar examples: “Debout! debout! Agis! Sois vivante, sois libre!” Italy is depicted as being predestined to be the addressee of the litany; her past is called divine—“l’histoire et ton passé divin,” “jours sacrés de ton histoire”—as she shed her noble blood and suffered shame and humiliation. Her vision in the poem contains many motifs recognizable as Christological. To give an illustration, the story of the veneration of Italy resembles an event from the life of the Son of God depicted in the Mysteries of the Rosary: Jesus was found in the temple discussing the Law of Moses and he astonished the elders by his insight into the Law: Les peuples abondaient autour de ta beauté, Pleins d’amour, allumant leur pensée à tes flammes, Emportant ton parfum qui leur était resté! Comme ils ont écouté tes mille épithalames! Comme ils ont salué ce long enfantement, Cet essaim glorieux de magnifiques âmes!102

Furthermore, Italy is called a martyr—“Martyre au sein meurtri, qui palpites encore”—and also the Old Testament dove—“Colombe, tu portais sur l’onde universelle / Le rameau d’olivier à l’univers ancien!”103

100 Ibid., 220. 101 Cf. “L’aurore,” also included in Poèmes barbares, in which the objects, the elements of nature invoked by the speaker, have in most cases a name suited for a hemistich of alexandrine: “Aube d’un jour divin, chant des mers fortunes,” etc. This litanic verse is a rather plaintive one: “Hélas! j’ai désappris les hymnes d’autrefois, / Et que mes dieux trahis n’entendent plus ma voix.” 102 Lisle, Œuvres, vol. 2, 218. 103 Ibid., 219.

270

The consistent sacralization of the addressee developed by the poet does not prevent him from using the appeal of this poem for contemporary political purposes. “À l’Italie” was written in 1859 at the time of the Second War of Italian Unification. The commentaries of critics regarding the anticlerical character of de Lisle’s poem have varied—in the past they aimed to emphasize that this tendency was absent from the poem,104 whereas in current research they are more likely to argue that, in fact, it is present. Caroline De Mulder writes that “le poète donne à son Italie une aura christique car « l’épine à [s]on front s’épanouit en fleurs »”105 but she also points out that the notion of slavery is the binding one for the theme of the submission of Italy to the Papal States.106 Our interpretation of the litanic verse may suggest that it is a political message which dominates, as the appeal described above as the litanic structure is composed in view of the necessity of revenge: “voir […] / De ton dernier regard la vengeance accourir,” which is not a component of the litanic worldview. Due to the uninterrupted anaphora and the simple rhyming scheme, the litany of malediction recited by Kasandra in Les Érinnyes (a tragedy staged in 1873, the text of which is included in Poèmes tragiques, 1884) draws our attention to the pulsating rhythm, though the more ambiguous aspect of the poem is its content: Par la foi violée et les serments rompus, Par l’affreuse vengeance et le Festin impie, Par les yeux vigilants de la Ruse accroupie, Par le morne Royaume où roulent les vivants, Par la terreur des nuits, par le râle des vents, Par le gémissement qui monte de l’abîme, Par les Dieux haletants sur la piste du crime, Par ma Ville enflammée et mon peuple abattu, Sois éternellement maudit! Maudit sois-tu!107

Do we know who may be the addressee of such a tirade? Faith, vengeance, and the violation of an oath are supposed to be the actions and properties of human beings; however, the last anaphoric line, along with preceding expressions such as “l’abîme,” suggest that these lines are addressed to a physical object. In fact, the 104 Joseph Vianey, “Leconte de Lisle et l’unité italienne,” in Mélanges de philologie d’histoire et de littérature offerts à Henri Hauvette, (Genève: Slatkine, 1972), 725: “Puis, oubliant cette fois (ce ne fut pas la seule) son hostilité contre le christianisme, […].” 105 Caroline De Mulder, Leconte de Lisle, entre utopie et république (Amsterdam-New York: Faux titre, 2005), 121. 106 Ibid., 121–122. 107 Leconte de Lisle, Poèmes tragiques (Paris: Lemerre, 1884), 281.

271

speaker asserts clearly in the passage preceding the one we have quoted that the object of his curse is the palace, and he gives it several metaphorical titles, among others, “Nid d’oiseaux carnassiers gorgés, mais non repus.”

15.2 Invoking Nature, Venus and Maia—Parnassian Interest in Ancient Mythology Two works which were in vogue in the period before the publication of Louis Ménard’s “Empédocle” (published 1855), namely Friedrich Hölderlin’s play Der Tod des Empedokles and Matthew Arnold’s poem Empedocles on Etna—with details of his legendary death, such as the sandal that erupted from the volcano—are examples of artistic treatments of the ancient philosopher’s life. These details also inspired Ménard. Of the twelve stanzas of his poem “Empédocle,” ten are written in the voice of the title character, who utters litanic verse in three of them. The structure of these stanzas is fairly simple, as they contain a series of apostrophes and the verbs do not occur earlier than in the subordinate clauses, which adds new significance to the object of praise. That Empedocles’ main purpose is to glorify becomes obvious after the words of introduction—“Empédocle adora la nature et chanta”—and his own confession: “Je viens t’adorer.” The response to the question of who is celebrated is less clear, at least regarding the first stanza of litanic verse: Miroir de l’Infini, flots de la mer divine, Gouffre inviolé, grand horizon bleu! Lampes du ciel profond dont la nuit s’illumine, Peuples de l’espace, étoiles de Dieu!108

Does this segment constitute the enumeration of various types of objects, or is it rather a series of different names given to one person? We should also ask whether the question just posed is justified, considering that in the ecclesiastical litanies we seek the mercy of one God in three persons: God, the Father of heaven; God the Son, Redeemer of the world; and God the Holy Spirit. The fact is that the analogous titles in this poem denote various forces, for example, the nouns “flame” and “éther” refer to nature—“Ton temple est l’éther,” “Ta flamme, d’où jaillit l’étincellle éphémère”—but they are mentioned also as the attributes of Zeus—“éther créateur, flame.” The idea of metempsychosis must not be discounted here. Who, then, is Empedocles himself? Certainly, some effort has been made to present him as a divine creature (or near to it) from the beginning, where he is compared to Heracles, to the end, when we read “Du sage qui meurt tu vas 108 Louis Ménard, Poëmes (Paris: Dentu, 1855), 134.

272

faire un dieu!” This “trial by fire” will be made in the lava of Mount Etna, and the idea of purgatory is also introduced—“Des souillures de sens l’âme humaine se lave.”109 However, the crucial point is that the protagonist re-enters the elements from which everything is made—“Terre, je te rends le corps que tu m’as donné.” In Euphorion (written in 1845–1847, and published in 1855) by the same author, the son of Achilles and Helen is leaving Rome. This action is dictated both by a desire to free himself from the authority of nature—“Je ne puis m’atteler à ton char triomphal”110—and by an eagerness to explore the ideal pattern of things—“Je veux prendre mon vol vers le monde idéal.” The litanic verse appears in the chants which are sung during the night—Euphorion’s departure occurs when the temples are being closed in the evening (when the songs ended, he finally left the town in the light of dawn). Alternately two voices are raised: that of the worshippers of Venus, the love goddess, and that of the Christian people gathered in the catacombs. Both chants are characterized by a limited degree of litanic verse, but the resulting effect of two enumerative prayers addressed to the ancient goddess and to the Christian god is intriguing. The pairs of stanzas contain the following titles which occur in the onset: “Vénus!”; “Dieu mort pour nous”; “O Vénus!”; “ô Christ!”; “Larmes de volupté”; “Larmes du repentir”; “Plaisir!”; “Douleur”111 and one more, which is cited below. Venus is presented as cheerful, and her venerators are overjoyed and befuddled with love, whereas the Son of God is described as he who dies for the people, and they dedicate their suffering in His name. The second pair of stanzas demonstrates this contradistinction through the elements used for the description of the deities: roses decorate the ancient temple and barren rocks are blessed by Christ. The third pair contains the titles of deities invoked by the people: I O Beauté divine, ô reine suprême, O mère de l’amour et de la volupté! Appelle, on te suit; souris, et l’on t’aime, O parure des dieux, ô divine Beauté! II Virginité sainte, ô blanche couronne! Vêtement de lumière aux anges emprunté, Que l’homme n’eût pas conquis, que Dieu donne, Parfum des lis du ciel, sainte Virginité!112

109 110 111 112

Ibid., 136. Ibid., 155. Ibid., 174–177. Ibid., 175.

273

The first peculiar feature of these stanzas is that while their addressee, Venus, remains the same for the pagans, the Christians now pray to Holy Mary after having evoked the merits of Christ. Although both addressees are female, and the titles used are among the most common for litanic addressees (queen, mother and virgin), the distinction is clear—each feature which may be ascribed to Venus is revealed and there is no hidden meaning in the titles; they focus on the values of profane love and beauty. On the contrary, the Marian titles are suffused in symbolism, mainly of the color white, but the trait which is denoted by it is not expressed directly. Secondly, the order of the titles’ components (noun plus epithet) in the onset of the stanzas is reversed in the final part of the last line. Therefore, each unit appears as a perfectly framed structure. Other litanic verse factors, such as apostrophes starting with a repetitive “ô” or two titles equally dividing the line, do not introduce new elements to the study of the form. The Christian worship in this poem may be seen as a prayer of intercession, especially at the hour of death, which can be deduced from the nature of the addressees, among whom the last is the angel of death: “Ange de la mort, prendsnous sous ton aile,  / Quand on s’endort en Dieu, le réveil est si beau!”113 The Christians pray not only with the aim of prolonging their earthly lives, as do the pagans, who do not know any other dimension of life, but also in order to sleep in God and await the moment of awakening. In turn, Euphorion’s intention is to liberate himself from an existence which does not bring peace. The words sung by the choruses recapitulate his past life and suggest a future plan for him. He has already celebrated the rituals proper to ancient men—we find these activities listed in a long passage: J’ai souvent invoqué (the choir of the Muses—M.K.) J’ai chanté l’amour […]. J’ai souvent adoré (the images of heavens and gods) J’ai demandé l’oubli des heures fugitives […].114

He performed these rituals until the time when he felt that he wanted to reject this hedonism, and his heart was besieged by other emotions: “Et mon cœur s’est rempli d’une immense pitié.” When he recognized the sufferings, he started to pray “Pour le faible, l’enfant, l’esclave qu’on oublie.”

113 Ibid., 177. 114 Ibid., 170.

274

Considering its title, Joséphin Soulary’s “Le Magnificat d’avril” (1866) does not correspond obviously with any other form of the Magnificat. However, the shape of the poem is that of a dialogic canticle—“un beau cantique”115—between two deities; it is composed of short stanzas, namely quatrains of octosyllables. Several expressions and the overall tone of the poem serve as a lead which helps to identify other devotional genres, like the hymn or ave (“Je t’adore, pleine de grâce”116), that occur in the poem. The last line of each stanza includes the short refrain, “Phoebus évohé,” alternating with “Ave Maïa,” which is the main litanic component in this work. In the mystery of the return of spring, two objects participate: the earth, which always calls to Phoebus, and the sun, constantly greeting Maia. The element that brings the poem closest to the Magnificat is the presence of doxology, though in a changed form, in the final stanza—“Gloire au Très-Haut, et paix sur l’homme! / Je renais Amour, moi, qu’on nomme / Le Christ, le mort, le paria!”117 The chairetismic gene— “O gentil Soleil! sois loué!”118—is present from the very beginning and is applied also to the era of the renewal that will come with the advent of Christ—“Saluons l’époux enjoué!”119 Usually the text of the stanzas, apart from the refrains, dispenses with the repetitive element; however, in two stanzas we note the clear anaphora followed by antonomasias that are full of the Christian and Marian images: C’est toi, l’Esprit de la semence Par qui le fini recommence En qui l’être est continué. Phœbus évohé! — C’est toi, ma succube sacrée, Vierge et mère, dont le sein crée Et reprend tout ce qu’il créa. Ave Maïa!120

As all the passages cited above demonstrate, there is some dissonance in the substantially sketched mythological aura, such as the presence of the Christian God along with the goddess of nature and god of light.

115 116 117 118 119 120

Joséphin Soulary, Œuvres poétiques, vol. 2 (Paris: Lemerre, 1872), 101. Ibid., 103. Ibid., 104. Ibid., 101. Ibid., 104. Ibid., 102.

275

15.3 Théodore de Banville—A Poet’s Attitude toward His Predecessors, His Muse and the Richness of the World The form of “Amours d’Élise” (IV), which is included in Les Cariatides (1842), is very simple: quatrains composed of octosyllables with alternate rhyme. This choice may be surprising, as, in fact, the poem celebrates the sources of inspiration for poets, a topic which could be thought to require a more developed structure, but the dynamic rhythm is appropriate for the enthusiastic attitude of the speaker. A leading litanic verse factor changes from line to line. Two quatrains are devoted to the antonomasias of the poet’s soul: some are unsophisticated— “Mon astre, mon rêve étoilé! // Mon amour, ma blanche sirène,”121—and several use cosmological and floral motifs and expressions that emphasize the status of the addressee, though these are oftentimes ambiguous: “esclave”–“reine.” The universe is just to be swept by our vision, and the enumeration that follows these quatrains is divided into three parts, equally anaphoric, although two of them represent direct speech, while the last contains the words of the poet in his own voice. The component of the anaphora is firstly “À vous,” and then “À nous”; it is followed by an enumeration of the landscape’s elements in the part announcing nature’s speech: “À vous mes ruisseaux et mes prés, / À vous mon ciel bleu sur vos têtes, / À vous mes jardins diaprés!”122 The declamation of the art has one more stanza which gives emphasis to the one-syllable repetition of the pronoun “mes”: À vous mes splendides trophées, Mes Ovides, mes Camoëns, Mes Glucks, mes Mozarts, mes Orphées, Mes Cimarosas, mes Rubens!123

121 Théodore de Banville, Œuvres poétiques complètes, vol. 1 (Paris: Champion, 2000), 98. 122 The scenery offered to the poets in this poem is very similar to the elements listed in the litanic verse of Claudius Popelin in “Flos ultimus” (Le Parnasse contemporain, vol. III, 1876). The poem discusses the conditions conducive to poetic creation:





C’est ainsi qu’est fait le cœur du poëte, Il ne peut s’ouvrir au souffle glacé; Mais qu’un doux regard d’azur le revête Et dans le bonheur le tienne enlacé.

The main litanic factor is the anaphora on “Comme,” used in a series of comparisons made by the poet. 123 Ibid., 100.

276

The wordplay with the names deserves our attention, as the proper names act here as would any other nouns; for instance, they can be plural, and we do not find an equivalent for this treatment in the litanies, even in the invocations in parts of the Litany of Saints, such as Omnes sancti Angeli et Archangeli, etc. A spirit of confirmation reigns over the third part: À nous les horizons sans voiles, À nous l’éclat bruyant du jour, À nous les nuits pleines d’étoiles, À nous les nuits pleines d’amour! À nous le zéphyr dans la plaine, À nous la brise sur les monts Et tout ce dont la vie est pleine. Et les cieux, puisque nous aimons!

Something like a litanic response (“puisque nous aimons” appears as an abbreviated version of litanic verse in, for instance, Litanies de l’amour de Marie: “Parce que vous êtes notre souveraine, nous vous aimons, ô Marie”) is given only once, in the last, sixteenth stanza, to satisfy the curiosity of readers excited by the long wait and who can only guess why all these offerings are the property of poets. In fact, the spirit of love emanates from the poem from the very beginning, and the apostrophe “Mon amour” recurs often, so the astonishing aspect of this confession is that love is the reason for the generosity of the universe. “Ce que je veux de toi” (written in 1857) consists of thirty-six lines, of which seven contain the fundamental litanic element in this poem: the imperative “Chante.” This request is not surprising if we take into account that the addressee is the muse. This poem seems to be one more complaint of a romantic nature to the muse who leaves the poet forceless—for three months, as he points out—and an appeal to her to maintain the rules of the game, because she is “muse rebelle,” as the poet calls her in the first line. The poem also contains—also similarly to romantic visions of the muse—humorous scenes at some points: “C’est pour moi seule, hélas!, que tu veux être belle, / Notre amour, je le sais, doit rester ignoré.”124 Regarding the fact that after this anaphoric passage the poet concludes “Tiens! voilà mes douleurs et voilà mes misères, / Les unes petitesse et les autres grandeur!” we might expect a catalogue of misfortunes. However, the reason for the enumeration is to persuade the muse that she may freely select from a range of emotions: 124 Théodore de Banville, Poésies. Occidentales–Rimes dorées–Rondels (Paris: Lemerre, 1875), 47.

277

Chante l’épi qui se flétrit en herbe, Chante la fleur qu’un matin voit faner, Chante l’amer regret ou, plus amers encore, La honte, le remords qui craignent le soleil; Chante l’âpre bonheur qui passe et qui dévore, Ou le rêve si beau que l’on hait le réveil. Chante le vague ennui qui flétrit toute chose, Chante le mal sans nom que rien ne peut guérir, Chante le ver maudit caché dans toute rose, La cendre amère au cœur du fruit qui doit nourrir…125

These are not misfortunes—objectively, these lines describe common human experiences, which we sometimes do not pay attention to, as they represent, so to speak, the laws of nature. However, for the lyrical “I” they become an occasion to show the complexity of the essence of things, which always appears ambiguous. This is seen, for instance, in the multiple use of “amer,” the oxymoron “l’âpre bonheur,” as well as in the image of Dead Sea fruit, the so-called apple of Sodom, which was mentioned many times in the works of many figures marked by the spirit of Romanticism, such as Chateaubriand, Byron, and many others, including Thomas Moore in Lalla Rookh: “With joys that vanish while he sips / Like Dead Sea fruits that tempt the eye, / But turn to ashes on the lips.”126 Banville indicates that all these feelings can compose prayer, or weeping, or harmony—no matter what the status of this creation is, it is something which will lull him in the muse’s arms. The last lines of the poem concentrate on the longings of the lyrical “I”: Ce que je veux de toi, c’est un souffIe de vie, C’est la flamme au foyer, c’est la jeunesse au cœur. C’est le rêve enchanté, c’est l’heure où l’on oublie… Ce que je veux de toi, muse, c’est du bonheur.127

All things considered, the speaker here presents other developments to the sentence starting with “Ce que je veux de toi,” from that which occurs in the lines with the anaphora on “Chante.” Figuratively, while the previously cited passage evoked an autumnal aura with its fading flowers, the conclusion of the poem is like the breath of spring. The somber-souled landscape of regret, remorse and bitter happiness is replaced by pure happiness. The final lines are also less pictorial—they describe non-physical objects, while in the previous part plenty of 125 Ibid. 126 Thomas Moore, Lalla Rookh (London: Longman, 1842), 207. 127 Ibid., 48.

278

meaningful images are recognizable: a rose, a worm, a covered sun. It seems as if the poet means to give the muse an idea, for developing and illustrating the themes he wants to express. The time when he does it is “l’heure attristée,” thus happiness seems to be the main object of desire. The dialogue between epochs, such as between the Middle Ages and Parnassianism, informs the micro-correspondences of the litanic verse of these periods. The earlier-analyzed “Ballade pour prier Notre Dame” of François Villon includes only a two-line triple invocation, but this poem was a source of inspiration to “Ballade à la Sainte Vierge” (1869) by Banville, which is contained in the collection Trente-six ballades joyeuses (1873). The same metrical pattern was maintained—a decasyllable with the rhyming scheme ababbccdcd—and, whether fortunately or not, the scale of the litanic verse in the poem as well. Nevertheless, we might deem the element of litanic verse to be stronger in Banville’s ballade because in it a group expresses the supplications, while Villon’s work represents only the individual prayer of his mother. However, the first stanza of Banville’s poem serves as the personal expression of the poet: “Je chanterai ton règne et ta victoire.”128 In three stanzas and the envoi only the first part of the second stanza—following the combination of rhymes a and b—contains Marian antonomasias (accompanied by supplications) introduced by the final couplet of the first stanza, “Tu resplendis, ô Lys de pureté / Dame des Cieux, dans l’azur pleine d’étoiles”: Mère sans tache, entends notre clameur Et sauve-nous du mirage illusoire! Vierge, à travers le monde et sa rumeur Guide nos pas tremblants dans la nuit noire. Luis, Porte d’Or! Apparais, Tour d’Ivoire!129

The coupling of invocation and supplication may be divided into two lines or into two hemistiches, but we find here also a combination of two such pairs in one line containing litanic titles of Holy Mary like “Tower of Ivory.” Apart from “Mère sans tache” and “Tour d’Ivoire,” other Marian titles presented here do not have their origins in the litanies of the Church. The supplications, of which we find several throughout the poem, are also rather original and do not use specific formulae: “[…] entends notre clameur  / Et sauve-nous […]”; “Guide nos pas […]”; “Aide-nous,” “Conduis le faible! Éveille le dormeur!”; “Fais que notre 128 Cf. Bertrand Degott, Ballade n’est pas morte: étude sur la pratique de la ballade médiévale depuis 1850 (Besançon: Presses Univ. Franche-Comté, 1996), 252–253. 129 Théodore de Banville, Trente-six ballades joyeuses (Paris: Lemerre, 1873), 130.

279

âme arrive en liberté.” This poem allows us to draw an interesting conclusion about the metrics of French litanic titles set in the decasyllable 4+6: of nine Marian antonomasias, four number four syllables, obviously including those that are introduced in the first hemistich—“Vierge Marie,” “Dame des Cieux,” “Mère sans tache” and “Reine de Grace” (“e” élidé at the end). Two others, which are longer (six-syllabic), are accompanied by short particles or conjunctions like “ô” and “et.” Three syllables may also be suitable for the common litanic title: “Porte d’Or,” “Tour d’Ivoire” and the one syllable (with “e” élidé) “Vierge.” This analysis helps us understand the tone and character of this piece and, surprisingly, it does not fit the perception commonly given to Trente-six ballades joyeuses. While critics argue that Banville turned to the forme fixe of medieval provenance to ridicule the message, Banville était conscient du fait que ces vieilles formes ne convenaient pas à la sensibilité moderne, du moins pour la poésie sérieuse. Mais il sentait, instinctivement peut-être, qu’elles s’adaptaient fort bien à la poésie burlesque. […] Quand il s’agit de caricaturer un personnage, […] la rime ouvre de multiples possibilités qui peuvent produire les effets les plus surprenants, sinon les plus grotesques. De même, l’air vétuste et démodé d’un vieux genre peut être habilement mis en rapport avec le sujet de la caricature […].130

we should admit that apart from the irony whose object is Villon himself (“qui jadis, malgré sa folle humeur,  / Fit sa ballade immortelle à ta gloire,” as he is described in the beginning of the poem), this ballade may be seen as absolutely serious and anxious, describing the fears of the person speaking who uses the exclamation, but also as even pathetic due to the refined metrical pattern. This tone dominates the last poems of the ballades volume in which the sincere confession is the most often-used type of expression; the last ballade bears the title, “Ballade au lecteur, pour finir.” The author addresses himself in these two last poems to Holy Mary and to the reader, praising himself because he is able to offer to the world something more distinct and valuable than “le fait d’un cœur transi”; “Ces diamants inconnus à notre âge,” but above all, glorifying God and the poetic muse: “J’ai vu briller le front vermeil du Dieu”—“j’ai suivi ce mirage, / Et c’est pourquoi je te donne ceci. […] Grâce à la Muse, et je lui dis merci, / J’ai composé mes trente-six ballades.”131

130 Peter J. Edwards, “Les Odes funambulesques et les poèmes à forme fixe,” Bulletin d’Études parnassiennes et symbolistes: Théodore de Banville en son temps: actes du colloque de Moulins, 16–18 mai 1991, vol. 9–10, (1992): 54. 131 Banville, Trente-six ballades joyeuses, 132–133.

280

15.4  Baudelaire’s Litanies and Litanic Verse Martine Bercot, in her study titled Baudelaire: poésie et prière, raises the subject of laudatory prayer and supplications, pointing out the anaphoric tendency132 of the poet, but does not apply the category of the litany in cases other than the interpretation of “Les Litanies de Satan.” The approach of Julia Kristeva, recalled by Pierre Dufour, signalized several forms which may be associated with the litany: Autre symptôme énonciatif souligné par Kristeva: la litanie. Thématisée dans “Les Litanies de Satan”, cette forme renforce la stratégie de “demande” paroxystique (“J’implore ta pitié, Toi, l’unique…”), en même temps qu’elle illustrera relation connue entre discours mélancolique et discours religieux. Un riche éventail va de la litanie au refrain […], à la reprise encadrant la strophe […], à la strophe répétée [….] ou pantoum […].133

The issue of repetition is of vital importance to Jean Pellegrin, who analyzes chiefly “Réversibilité,” but also other poems with a similar structure, including “Le Balcon,” “Réversibilité,” “l’Irréparable,” “Moesta et errabunda,” “Lesbos,” and “Le Monstre.”134 However, it seems that the category of the litany is introduced by him due to its semantic, not its formal, characteristics. The pattern of “strophe encadrée”135 has been called litany on the grounds that the word repeated is “angel”: “Le même mot « ange » commence les premier et dernier vers des cinq strophes successives: d’où l’effet lancinant d’une litanie.”136 The type of addressee may decide whether the text is a prayer, but it does not determine the category of litanic verse. Nevertheless, we should admit that Pellegrin takes note of the parallelism of notions (qualities) placed in the final parts of lines—in fact, he calls this system “l’équivalence” (in Jakobson’s sense)—and he argues that the poem may be read in the order of lines, but also as if stanzas are superimposed on each other, and finally, he observes, “le passage d’un « vous » mondain à un «

132 Martine Bercot, “Baudelaire: poésie et prière,” in Poésie et liturgie: XIXe–XXe siècles, eds. Martine Bercot and Catherine Mayaux (Bern: Peter Lang, 2006) 5, 7, 13. 133 Pierre Dufour, “Les Fleurs du Mal: dictionnaire de mélancolie,” Littérature, vol. 72 (1988): 47–48. 134 The same works of Baudelaire were listed in an older work: Albert Cassagne, Versification et métrique de Charles Baudelaire (Genève–Paris: Slatkine Reprints, 1982), 107–108, in which the author presents a rather contrived hypothesis about the Baudelaire being inspired by triolets when composing these works (the triolets in which three lines from eight were omitted, maintaining the repetition of the first and last one). 135 Jean Pellegrin, Réversibilité de Baudelaire (Paris: Aux Amateurs de Livres, 1988), 11. 136 Ibid., 12.

281

tu » religieux.”137 This interpretation may be enriched by recognition of the significance of the litanic frame for Baudelaire: the structure of “Réversibilité” to a certain degree corresponds to that of “Les Litanies de Satan,” in which the litanic flow is interrupted by a stanza with the subtitle “Prière.” Here this division is less clear, but still recognizable, not only due to the change in manner of the address to the recipient, now invoked in the second person singular, but chiefly because of the grammatical mood. We demonstrate this difference with the first and last stanzas: Ange plein de gaieté, connaissez-vous l’angoisse, La honte, les remords, les sanglots, les ennuis, Et les vagues terreurs de ces affreuses nuits Qui compriment le cœur comme un papier qu’on froisse? Ange plein de gaieté, connaissez-vous l’angoisse? […] Ange plein de bonheur, de joie et de lumières, David mourant aurait demandé la santé Aux émanations de ton corps enchanté; Mais de toi je n’implore, ange, que tes prières, Ange plein de bonheur, de joie et de lumières!138

The four stanzas from the beginning of the poem each end with two sentences that form questions, whereas in the last one there is a place only for an exclamation point. Furthermore, a supplication emerges in the last lines of the poem (implorer), clearly constituting one of the characteristics of litanic prayer139— previously, the angel had been asked for an answer (“connaissez-vous”), not for mercy. As for the metrics, we should distinguish the clear caesura in these four stanzas. The first hemistich operates as a perfectly crafted litanic invocation formed with the unchanged title “Ange” and is characterized also by the repetitive element: “plein de” plus gaieté / bonté / santé / beauté. The second hemistich opens the way to the use of inversion in the question. In the last stanza, however, the entire first line should be treated as a unity—it is shaped from the title “Ange” and the attributes which are now listed several to a line. The structure of “Les Litanies de Satan” gives a strong impression of the imitation of ecclesiastical prayer, even regarded at only a general level. The poem contains two parts: the main part, consisting of two-line invocations along with 137 Ibid., 12–13. 138 Charles Baudelaire, Œuvres complètes, vol. 1 (Paris: Gallimard, 1975), 44–45. 139 Namely intercession, which has been noted by Marcel A. Ruff, Baudelaire (New York: New York University Press, 1966), 95.

282

a one-line repetitive response containing the litanic formula, and the second, shorter part, consisting of the concluding prayer, separated from the previous part by the simple title “Prière.” The place for poetic originality is thus found in two aspects: the formal—the manner of arranging the text of invocations in the rhyming couplets; and the thematic—the reinterpretation of addressees and the aims of the litanies of the Church. The anaphora on the level of stanzas contains principally the elements “Toi qui,” sometimes replaced by variants starting with “ô” (which corresponds with the beginning of the refrain) or “Toi dont.”140 This series ends two stanzas before the end of the main part of the poem and can be interpreted as a breather before the final prayer, which clearly states the function of the laudatory prayer to Satan. No one rule governs the division of the content into two lines of invocation: the title may be placed in the first line, for example, “Prince de l’exil,” “grand roi des choses souterraines,” or “complice subtil,” or in the second—“Guérisseur familier des angoisses humaines.” However, most often the second line contains the descriptions of the direct and indirect objects or the predicate: “Toi dont la large main cache les précipices  / Au somnambule errant au bord des édifices,” “Toi qui mets dans les yeux et dans le cœur des filles / Le culte de la plaie et l’amour des guenilles,” “Toi qui, pour consoler l’homme frêle qui souffre, / Nous appris à mêler le salpêtre et le soufre.” Therefore, we cannot firmly declare that the form of couplets is modelled on such litanic invocations as “Jésus, qui chérissez la chasteté.” In point of fact, the formula of Baudelaire’s poem may correspond to them, but the proportion between the repetitive part and the other is too unequal. Nor does the text employ the metaphorical titles of Satan, which appear rather rarely, and are generally replaced by more descriptive visions. The second part of the poem could not be considered similar to the ecclesiastical litanies Collecta and Oremus, because of the undertone of the supplicatory formula, “Ô Satan, prends pitié de  m a   longue misère!”; it contains a prayer only for the lyrical “I”—“Fais que mon âme […].” We encounter examples of enjambments in the lines of the prayer: “Gloire et louange à toi, Satan, dans les hauteurs / Du Ciel, où tu régnas, et dans les profondeurs / De l’Enfer, où, vaincu, tu rêves en silence!”; which may be interpreted as a weak allusion to the part of the litany written in prose in the official version, as the limits of the line may be established arbitrarily. Before this prière is launched, there is yet one more sign that the poem is coming to an end, which has been identified by André Maraud: “Le

140 Baudelaire, Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, 123–125.

283

vers-refrain, traité jusq’alors comme un corps étranger, est incorporé à la suite des distiques par le moyen de la rime.”141 Omitting the apostrophes to Satan that employ his real name, we may say that the poem does not include from the very beginning any content that is inappropriate for litanies—the addressee is “le plus savant,” just as Jesus is entitled “Sagesse éternelle”; he is also represented as someone who was betrayed, exiled and defeated, and Christ in this period was depicted similarly. He is a “guérisseur” and works among lepers; defeated, he returns stronger than before. Therefore, this litany should not be treated as the effect of an exercise to rewrite the litany by addressing it to the devil. Behind this textual layer lies the conviction that Satan is a personage empowered to have mercy on people. This diminution of the potential of Christ was made possible by the romantic visions of the Son of God in which the existence of his Father and the role of his sufferings were questioned, for instance, in Gérard de Nerval’s “Le Christ aux Oliviers,” and such views were to be aired later, too, among other works, in “Le Nazaréen” of de Lisle. In some way, Jesus, who had lived among people on earth, could be thought of as one of the believers reciting this Baudelaire litany—he needs the mercy of the “Bâton des exilés” and “Père adoptif de ceux qu’en sa noire colère / Du paradis terrestre a chassés Dieu le Père.” Therefore, we reject the interpretation of this poem as a parody;142 the prayer itself is recited here, we may suppose, with true devotion, and the fact that the addressee is the antagonist of the proper addressee does not testify to parodic intent. The speaker mentions in the beginning of the poem that Satan is “privé de louanges.” Reciting this fifteen-stanza litany and praying at the end of it, “Gloire et louange à toi, Satan,” the lyrical “I” satisfies the needs of the Prince of Darkness. Satan has all the attributes that men want to possess; the human being is described as “l’homme frêle qui souffre,” while Satan “toujours redresse plus forte,” and that is why in the supplication the lyrical “I” calls for the end of his long misery. Furthermore, the examples of people mentioned suggest that they do not behave in a wise manner, while Satan is smart—and in the final prayer we hear

141 A. Maraud, “Litanies, rimes, refrain,” in La Répétition, eds. Slaheddine Chaouachi and Alain Montadon, (Clermont-Ferrand: Université de Clermont-Ferrand, 1994), 184. 142 That was presented categorically in Maraud’s interpretation: “Baudelaire est fidèle au modèle qu’il parodie. […] Parce qu’il est parodique, le texte de Baudelaire, formellement achevé, se présente au contraire d’abord comme une réussite littéraire.” (185) Cf. Myriam Robic, Hellénismes de Banville: mythe et modernité (Paris: Champion, 2010), 272: “manière parodique.”

284

the supplication, “Fais que mon âme un jour, sous l’Arbre de Science, / Près de toi se repose.”

15.5  Fears and Hopes of Nineteenth-Century Man Gustave Le Vavasseur’s “Kyrielles” from Poésies fugitives (1846) contains several litanic formulae in the canonical shape. They are used as the refrain, repeated twice in each stanza, numbering eight octosyllables rhymed aabbccbb. Nonetheless, the scheme of intercession diverges from the one present in the litanies of the Church and, in fact, it takes a different shape in each stanza. The initial one is as follows: De tous ceux qui vers vous s’écrient, Et qui vous donnent, quand ils prient, De leur cœur la bonne moitié, Seigneur, Seigneur, ayez pitié: De fous qui chantent et qui rient Et dont les âmes se marient Aux saints flambeaux de l’amitié. Seigneur, Seigneur, ayez pitié.143

Lines 1–3 and 5–7 with their recurring “De” replace in a more elaborate way the element which in the litanic response—“Seigneur, ayez pitié de nous”—is much shorter, as it contains only “nous.” Instead of praying for himself, the speaker indicates that both those who pray fervently and those who are insane give their whole hearts in their worship. The part of the litany that serves to gain the favor of the deity is omitted. The third stanza widens the circle of addressees of the prayer, as the formula indicates: “Priez, Saints et Saintes du ciel.” As before, the element “pour nous” is transcribed throughout the lines preceding the repetitive line and in place of “nous” we find other objects. The intentions are more symbolical than the previous ones, and rather pointed—the image of a bee producing honey and lips approaching a blooming flower is followed by the description of the scent of virginity and simplicity of the heart. All these human features return in the fourth stanza in which lips are mentioned three times and a heart twice: De la lèvre blasée et blâme, De la lèvre qui vous blasphême, De la lèvre au miel aigre-doux, Seigneur, Seigneur, délivrez-nous: Du cœur trempé de flamme impure

143 Gustave Le Vavasseur, Poésies fugitives (Paris: Dentu, 1846), 133.

285

Qui resta toujours sans blessure, Du cœur lâche et du cœur jaloux, Seigneur, Seigneur, délivrez-nous.144

The image of physical wounds is replaced by the description of a more intense hurt, one which afflicts the heart and thought. Maintaining chastity of the soul is on the same level as avoiding injury to the body—such coexistence of the different dimensions does not bother the reader, as the supplications in ecclesiastical litanies touch the perspective of eternal life (A morte perpetua) and earthly life (A peste, fame et bello). What actually seems strange is the manner in which the poet hides the lyrical message of the evangelical spirit between stanzas which contain mainly unassociated wordplays, as in the last one, the parallelism does not leave place for any speculation about the meaning: it is the clear opposition of those who turn pale from fear and blush with shame. Therefore, the poem does not develop in the way it announces; starting from the enumeration of curious personages, it approaches a parodic treatment of litanies, but soon it becomes clear that in the center there is a deep conviction about the aigre-doux vision of existence in which misfortune may be encountered, for which repetitive supplications may be helpful. Jules Forni’s “Souhait” was published in 1866 in the first volume of Parnasse contemporain. The litanic stream of the anaphoric “dernier,” repeated three times in two quatrains, is interrupted by the sentence starting with “Toi qui,” also anaphoric to some extent, but on the level of stanzas. In fact, three lines of the second quatrain are squeezed between this clarification of the one to whom the poem is addressed, as “Toi qui baisseras le rideau” opens this quatrain and “Toi qui viendras au dernier rang” the following one: Dernier rameau d’un tronc pourri, Dernier feuillet d’un vilain livre, Dernière injure, dernier cri Que poussera l’univers ivre; Toi qui baisseras le rideau, Dernier acteur du noir théâtre, Dernier torturé du bourreau, Dernier enfant de la marâtre; Toi qui viendras au dernier rang Dans la procession humaine.145

144 Ibid., 134. 145 Le Parnasse contemporain 1866, 229.

286

Every line tugs at the reader with its point and concreteness. The repetition of the epithet “dernier” evokes nostalgia even when we do not yet know the reason for it, although the poem offers numerous possibilities. The circumstances are barely sketched, with almost no words, but they are significant: “Dernier rameau d’un tronc pourri”; “Dernier torturé du bourreau.” This kind of description, touching on details rather than using an abstract noun, fades in concert with the decrease in repetitiveness. Firstly, we read statements about a book and a tree, but in the second stanza for a moment we are forced to immerse ourselves in the world of theatre. From the third stanza, the argument acquires the characteristic of generality and maintains it until the end of the poem; the passage cited above anticipates the conclusion: “ô dernier homme!” The vision of this character is total, both from the point of view of time—“Toi qui dois […] / Voir passé, présent, avenir”—and of spatial categories, as “un grand globe qui se balance” is the only element this last man leaves behind. The nature of the title “wish” is unveiled in the last couplet of the poem: “Ah! je voudrais, ah! je voudrais / Être à ta place, ô dernier homme!” The reason for wanting to be in the place of the last man in the world is that the vision of life on earth is not favorable; it appears that it is ruled “Sans âme, sans vie et sans loi.” This desire is also emphasized with the aid of the homonymy of “tombe” as a conjugated form of the verb tomber and the noun tombe—the grave.

15.6 “C’est la revanche / Des prés, des ondes et des bois”—When Nature Replaces Gods The titular expression of Léon Dierx’s “L’Invisible lien” from Les Lèvres closes (1867) begins each stanza and leaves a place in the second hemistich to expose its dimensions: in the first stanza, “partout dans la nature, / Va des sens à l’esprit et des âmes aux corps”; in the second, “va des êtres aux choses, / Unissant à jamais ces ennemis mortels”; in the third, “dans les ténèbres denses, / Dans le scintillement lumineux des couleurs, / Eveille les rapports et les correspondances / De l’espoir au regret, et du sourire aux pleurs”; in the fourth, “des racines aux sèves, / Des sèves aux parfums, et des parfums aux sons, / Monte”; in the fifth, “de la terre aux étoiles, / Porte le bruit”; and in the sixth and last, “de la mort à la vie, / Fait refluer sans cesse […] / La séculaire angoisse en notre âme assouvie.”146 We may note that in three of six stanzas, the construction “de … à” is applied immediately

146 Léon Dierx, Poèmes et poésies. Les Lèvres closes (Paris: Lemerre, 1900), 130.

287

after the caesura and in yet another, is preceded by the predicate “va,” which in other cases is moved to the following lines. As we have observed some formal similarities to the litanies—not impressive, however, because of the brevity of the repetitive part and the dominance of long declarative sentences in the alexandrine without the use of any supplications— we should ask if the litanic spirit is visible in the characteristic of “l’invisible lien,” and explore what is hidden in this expression. To do this, we should recall briefly that the representations of Holy Mary or Jesus in litanic invocations seek to explain their omnipotence: “Cœur de Jésus, d’une infinie majesté,” “Cœur de Jésus, abîme de toutes les vertus,” “Cœur de Jésus, très digne de toutes louanges,” “Cœur de Jésus, roi et centre de tous les cœurs,” “Cœur de Jésus, en qui se trouvent tous les trésors de la sagesse et de la science.” Furthermore, the power of the Mother of Christ is emphasized also by the enumeration of different beings for which she is supreme: “Reine des Anges, Reine des Patriarches, Reine des Prophètes,” etc.; she is likewise named the Mother of God, Christ and the whole Church. In Dierx’s poem, this invisible bond joins the opposite actions and emotions in the act of transition between them. The anaphora here does not work as in the litanies, in which Holy Mary is at the same time “Reine des Anges” and “Reine des Patriarches,” as the stability of the anaphora has been disrupted by the description of the movement “de … à.” The characteristics of value in Dierx’s poem usually appear in the last line, as follows, in the order of the stanzas: “Le soupir des vaincus ou l’insulte des forts,” “de regards craintifs ou solennels,” “De l’espoir au regret, et du sourire aux pleurs,” “Parfois pleins de sanglots et parfois de chansons”; but in the final two stanzas these are extended to couplets: Léger comme les cœurs purs de honte et sans voiles, Profond comme les cœurs pleins des feux de l’enfer. […] La séculaire angoisse en notre âme assouvie Et l’amour du néant malgré tout repoussé.147

When interpreting the status of the titular force, we should note that it needs the different objects in the world to absorb and combine but is itself neutral and its nature cannot be easily discerned, whether profane or mystic,148 yet it clearly

147 Ibid., 131. 148 In pursuance of the conviction expressed in the preface to Les Lèvres closes: “La poésie n’a pas d’autre but que la poésie. […] Un beau poème peut contenir un enseignement moral. Mais alors ce poème est beau malgré cet enseignement, non à cause de lui” (“Preface,” in Léon Dierx, Les Lèvres closes, Paris: Lemerre, 1867, 14–15).

288

touches the spiritual and the material world. Its activity is an inevitable part of human existence, marked by the anxiety which appeases it and the nihilism that it discourages. The common truth is expressed as the view of the community, which is suggested in the plural forms of pronouns: “en nous les sources de nos rêves,” “notre âme.” The momentum given to l’invisible lien presumably resembles the description from the “Correspondances” of Baudelaire (“profonde unité,  / Vaste comme la nuit et comme la clarté,” “l’expansion des choses infinies”) as well as the theme of a kind of relay which allows one to reach for the other world: “les transports de l’esprit et des sens.”149 A litany to the sea in Armand Silvestre’s poem entitled simply “La Mer” (Les Renaissances, 1870), consisting of six quatrains, is marked by inquisitiveness, because after three stanzas of remarkably regular litanic pattern, two stanzas of questions follow, only to give rise to one more litanic exclamation. In the first part, the name of the main object and its descriptors establishes a stable relation with the lines beginning “Ô Mer, sinistre mer” and “Ô Mer, joyeuse mer,” alternately. What is interesting is that the rhyme scheme does not support this alternation, as the poem profits from envelope rhymes. The two titles may be followed by a subordinate clause starting with “qui / que”(“que la bise d’automne / Secoue et fait claquer ainsi qu’un vain lambeau,” “qui, pour bercer les rêves,  / As des bruits de baisers et [de chuchotements]”) or directly go into periphrases (“magnifique manteau / Qu’agraffe le soleil aux flancs nus de Latone”150), although the predicate is always transferred to the following alexandrine. We may note that the reverberation of the opposition in these two fundamental titles is found in a further vision, as the sea is characterized by sinister lament as well as by kisses and whispers. Two lines—“Ô Mer, sinistre mer, pleine de funérailles! / Ô Mer, joyeuse mer, qui peuple un flot vivant!”—start the third stanza and end the entire poem with an unchanged structure. The space between this repeated couplet has been used to sketch the images which evoke a sacral perspective. In one of the questions, the speaker hesitates as if the sea were a glass—“le philtre sacré / Des renouvellements opère son mystère”; in another, the theme raised is that of doubt—“Es-tu le temple obscur de nos métamorphoses?” And we cannot neglect the importance of the confession, “La vie avec la mort en toi semblent souvent / S’unir pour féconder tes profondes entrailles,”151 which presents the determination of those

149 Baudelaire, Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, 11. 150 Armand Silvestre, Les Renaissances (Paris: Lemerre, 1879), 17. 151 Ibid., 18.

289

who want to live and die in Christ. The vision of the sea itself perfectly unites the oppositions, even—or rather, most of all—those from such universal categories as life and death, sun and earth. The titular “sea” is repeated two times in the first hemistich, and the second time it is placed just before the caesura, to show the prodigious possibilities of internal rhyming: “Mer”—“clacquer,” “Mer”— “baisers,” “lasser”—“Mer,” etc. Louis Bouilhet reaches for litanic verse in “L’Abbaye” (Dernières chansons, 1872), section IV, at the moment when the vague and mystic dream described comes to its end. The interior of the abbey makes any statement about the present day uncertain. The motifs of the slabs and the sandals of the monk, the naves and candlelight, create an atmosphere of gloom and lifelessness, which is cut by the appeal of the speaker to stop the lie that has endured two thousand years. The call is addressed mainly to nature, which is destined to invade the sacral space. The lyrical “I” invokes the birds and the wind: “Pousse, au fond des noires chapelles, / Ton air libre où meurent les dieux!”152 The constant changes of dynamicity in this poem are considered to be its main feature, because after the uncanny beginning and the frightening incitement, the mood calms and the rest of the poem is dedicated to a litany based on the anaphora on the level of stanzas, the periphrases of nature and some elements of the polyonymic gene (“par”): Et toi, la mère universelle; Toi, la nourrice aux larges flancs, Dont le lait pur à flots ruisselle Du haut des cieux étincelants; Toi, qui marches fière et sans voiles Sur les cultes abandonnés, Et, par pitié, dans tes étoiles Caches les dieux découronnés; Toi, qui réponds aux calomnies Des aveugles niant le jour, Par des tonnerres d’harmonies Et des cataclysmes d’amour; Toi, qui proposes dès l’enfance, À notre faible humanité, Pour symbole ta confiance, Pour évangile ta beauté.153

152 Louis Bouilhet, Dernières chansons (Paris: Charpentier, 1874), 207. 153 Ibid., 207–208.

290

The image of a breastfeeding mother is common in litanic verse in the medieval spirit, and the theme of the advent of a deity who is descending to Earth after the fall of the previous gods is not surprising, either. We can only admire the originality and elegance of the idea of fallen gods represented as a star seeking refuge in the sky. The cult of Nature has its ceremonies, thundering and violent, its symbols and its gospel—thus, the litany directed to her in a Christian pattern does not astonish us, since there have been many other examples of this. The last stanza contains the final invitation to the spectacle of Nature—sunny and lively—to destroy the space as a symbol of the decayed gods: “Entre, ô nature, avec ta joie, / Ton soleil et ton movement.” The aggressiveness of this act may be mitigated by the fact that in the first part of the poem, the abbey had been presented as already ruined, with its God humiliated—“Un grand Christ oublié des masses”—even if some ceremonies were still performed.

15.7  Confessional Poetry Three elements of litanic verse recur in Henri Murger’s dedicatory poem from Les Nuits d’hiver, “A G.D.” (written in 1841 and published in 1861), with varying frequency: firstly, the apostrophe to a friend, constituting the anaphora on the level of stanzas; secondly, the conjunction “puisque” which appears soon after and is repeated twice in the initial stanzas; and thirdly, the synonymy of doubleness: Ami, — puisqu’à ton front l’art a mis  d e u x   é t oi l e s , Puisqu’  u n   d ou b l e   r a m e au fleurit entre tes mains, Du  c oup l e   f r at e r n e l   va soulever les voiles, Et marche rayonnant dans les sentiers humains. Ami, — puisque le temple a pour toi  d e u x   i d o l e s , Sur l e s  aut e l s  j u m e au x  allume l’encensoir; Puisque sur ton blason Dieu grava  deux  s y mb o l e s , Prends le pinceau le jour, et la lyre le soir.154

The importance of biformity is emphasized not only by the proliferation of words, but also by the construction of the entire poem, which contains four stanzas and can be easily divided into two equal parts because twice the imperative mood of verb is used—in the eighth line, where it marks the end of the first part, and in the fourteenth, the last line of the poem:

154 Henry Murger, Les Nuits d’hiver: poésies complètes (Paris: Michel Lévy frères, 1876), 113. The emphasis is mine.

291

Ami, — puisque ta sphère est  d e u x   f oi s   c on s t e l l é e , Que de ton cœur sans cesse émane  u n   d ou b l e   a c c ord , Par d e u x  d i v i n it é s , ton espérance ailée Dans un ciel lumineux doit prendre  u n   d ou b l e   e s s or. Ami, — peintre et poète, âme  d e u x   f oi s   s a c ré e , Partage ton amour entre  l e s   d e u x   s i l l on s ; Palette harmonieuse et lyre colorée, Répands tes deux parfums, jette tes deux rayons. Novembre 1841.155

Furthermore, the alexandrine 6 + 6 effectively cooperates with this division: firstly, by the caesura which in some cases functions as a line of demarcation that separates two attributes in sensitive places such as in lines 8 and 14, but also in 13, in which two domains of activity are mentioned, poetry and painting; secondly, for the placement of the expressions demonstrating the duplications, “deux” and “double,” which always take a position at the end of lines or—less often—just before the caesura. The sacral perspective, gently introduced from the very beginning with sacral terminology, justifies in a way the litany addressed to a friend who represents the world of art and who, multi-talented as he is, not only is a believer in this “temple” but also was chosen by God to be one of the stars in this firmament. Rayons perdus (1868) is the first collection of Louisa Siefert and contains the poem “Quand même.” In this depiction of the emotional state of a woman who was abandoned and whose beloved’s only advice for her was to forget (oublier), the author does not employ her talent to the full. In long, emotional lines, usually composed of questions or exclamations, several plots appear: firstly, the characteristics of the man in a stream of nouns, for instance, “Patience, douceur, délicate bonté, / Esprit étincelant, charme, attachante grâce.”;156 secondly, a dialogue with God and with herself. Here we quote a fragment with litanic verse: Oublier!… il l’a dit ce mot du désespoir, Il l’a dit en parlant de vertu, de devoir, Il l’a dit froidement, avec insouciance, Au nom de la raison & de l’expérience; Et lui, dont j’ai connu la sensibilité, Lui, qui voit la pâleur de mon front révolté, Lui, qui sait les tourments d’une douleur si vraie, Lui, dont une parole aurait guéri ma plaie,

155 Ibid., 114. 156 Louisa Siefert, Rayons perdus (Paris: Lemerre, 1868), 45.

292

Lui, quand j’ai crié grâce à ce mot redouté, Lui, qui voit & sait tout, il me l’a répété!…157

This serves as preparation for the words directed to the heavens—the grief is more convincing when repeated so many times. The above-cited section also contains a sort of frame: one episode—one word given in the beginning of the passage—pronounced by the man was subjected by him to the act of repetition, which is mentioned in the end: “il me l’a répété!” Here another possible explication for the choice of litanic verse arises; the repetition of the structure “Lui” plus pronoun serves as a representation of the recurrence of the insistence of the man that she forget. What has been said returns as multiplied, each time connected with one of the experiences in this relation, as if the scene when he describes it needed to be replayed many times to be understood clearly, and to present the sorrow to all addressees who may be invoked. Among three octaves in Auguste Laucassade’s “La Pensée” (Insania. Poème, XV in Les Épaves, 1876), two—the first and last—contain anaphoras in the longer lines, the alexandrine rhyming accordingly aaa and ccc, whereas the six-syllable lines constitute the rhyme b. The main content of anaphoric passages in the first stanza is assured by the desire to draw comparisons—“Plus prompte que” and “Comme une”—which introduce the objects (chiefly elements of the landscape) and their description. However, the relation developed throughout the lines is that between “you” and “me”—the first shorter line in the stanza relates to “you” while the second shorter one relates to “me.” The image of the heart evoked in the last longer line of the first stanza is a sign of the interiorization of the vision: Plus prompte que la vague aux perfides caresses, Plus prompte que l’aurore aux menteuses promesses, Plus prompte que la nuit aux brûlantes ivresses, Tu vins et t’en allas! Comme une terre nue et par l’hiver mouillée, Comme une nuit sans rêve et d’astres dépouillée, Comme un cœur dont la joie au vent s’est effeuillée, Je suis seul, seul, hélas!158

The scenery evoked to demonstrate the affinity between the two persons, which evaporates so quickly, embraces the entire universe, “l’aurore” and “une terre,” and also the seasons, such as spring and summer—chiefly in the second octave— but it is winter that is predominant, as is the night. This word is repeated three 157 Ibid., 47. 158 Le Parnasse contemporain, vol. 3 (Paris: Lemerre, 1876), 212.

293

times in the lines of two stanzas from the beginning: “Plus prompte que la nuit aux brûlantes ivresses,” “Comme une nuit sans rêve et d’astres dépouillée,” “La nuit retrouve au bois le rossignol fidèle.” The dominance of nocturnal imagery corresponds to the dark side of life which is fully developed in this poem; for example, in the first stanza, promises are false and caresses are perfidious, while in the second, the images of the bare earth and of a sleepless, starless night evoke the solitude of the lyrical “I.” The second stanza, coming right after the captivating repetitive beginning, seems to interrupt this plot by introducing a vision of spring and birds, but this is immediately destroyed by the escape of the heroine (“Tu m’as fui sans retour!”), and this shortness is concluded by the lyrical “I”: “Ainsi que mon printemps ta fragile tendresse / N’aura duré qu’un jour!” In this way the second part of the second octave and of the third stanza unite in funereal symbolism, mentioning “le deuil de ma jeunesse,” “la tombe vivante,” and the beginning of the third stanza brings the fresh breeze in which floral symbolism is adopted: A toi le lis sans tache, ô blanche fiancée! A toi, femme, la rose entre tes doigts bercée! A toi la violette, ô vierge trépassée! La pensée est ma fleur:159

This poem manages a series of images that relate mainly to the speaker’s beloved and the emotions of love and despair. The title thought is presented as a flower, this “symbole sans parfum d’une amour décevante,” which is multifaceted and modifies its type according to the vision of the woman. She might be the representative of femininity when she holds a rose in her hands, but she is also wreathed in an aura of innocence and characterized as the Holy Virgin with a violet or as a personification of a future bride with a lily. Moreover, she is also like a swan: “ton emblème à toi, c’est le cygnet.” Do we know which image would be closest to the mood of the speaker? His thought died in his heart. Significantly, we must note that either litanic verse or the litany itself are associated by Lacaussade with floral motifs. In the same collection, Insania, poem XII is entitled “Litanie,” but it cannot be considered to be litanic verse due to the lack of repetition; in six quatrains of alexandrines rhyming abab, the speaker initially calls to nature, to the peace of the wild forest, the blue silence under the sky, but also, “Rosée, urnes des lys aux perles virginals,” addressing to them many requests which do not have specific formulae: “Rendez-moi le repos que mon âme a perdu!,” “Sur ma tempe embrasée épandez vos fraîcheurs!” etc. 159 Ibid., 213.

294

Léon Dierx’s “Sérénade” (published in the third tome of Parnasse contemporain in 1876) first makes a reader think about the previously analyzed albas, for which the serenade serves as a counterpoint. Each couplet of alexandrine responds here to the litanic invocation and supplication. The object—varying throughout the poem from a chalice to a pedestal to the entire universe, which, in fact, was suggested in its spatial and temporal dimension, such as still life and living creatures (flower, bird, wind), hour and night—is specified at the onset of the first line. The second line always starts with the anaphoric demand “reste,” and the exclamation point at the end reveals how fervent this desire is. The action between “you” and “me” forms part of this division; the event in which one person participated recurs, displaying its importance to the second person: “L’oiseau mélodieux que tu n’écoutes plus / Reste le rossignol des jours où je te plus!”160 Therefore, the difference between the kind of illustration found in this poem and the litanic manner is that, while during the litanic services each response is the same and does not depend on the form of invocation, in this case, except for the repetitive element “Reste,” the shape is different and dictated by the content of the first line. Undertaking an experiment to see how it could look in the ecclesiastical litanies, we would obtain supplications that repeat the idea of the invocations: “Morning star, remain the light which we seek in darkness,” or “Cause of our joy, remain a hope for others.” We have used synonyms or periphrases of the invoked object, and this is the most frequent manner in Dierx’s poem: “nuit-ombre étoilée,” “ventmessager,” “oiseau-rossignol,” “le socle-le piédestal,” “chanson-écho.” However, we may also find exact repetition in two cases: La coupe où sans regret tu versas l’affreux vin Reste la coupe d’or d’un échanson divin!

and L’heure qui vainement sonne dans ma détresse Reste l’heure sacrée où venait la maîtresse!

The identical rhymes “séparâmes-âmes,” “plus-plus” create an exception, considering that in the litanies, no correlation between the end of the invocation and supplication can be seen, but they undoubtedly fortify the rhythmic values of the serenade. We should ask if there is any sacral perspective in a poem so immersed in the theme of love and juggling epicurean motifs, and paradoxically, the religious lexis is also present in “Sérénade” (“la coupe d’or d’un échanson divin,” “l’œillet 160 Ibid., 101.

295

béni”), although the meaning of the words is modified, for instance, the “sacred” hour came when the mistress arrived. The question that troubles the lovers is eternity, which is demonstrated in the vision of the ascending souls and “une image immortelle.” The problem of faith in paradise is raised in the last line of the poem—his lover made the speaker certain of his existence.

15.8 Last Manifestations of Parnassianism—Litanies of Nonsense? When considering “Le Hareng saur” (1872) by Charles Cros from the litanic perspective, we see a text which gains strength when someone recites it and whose composition is bisected and partly repetitive. The first part consists of seven syllables with the information proper, and then there is triple repetition of the same word. The triad in a few cases has the same content in successive lines, turning into a response. However, we cannot argue that the response is universal to the degree that the litanic ora pro nobis or miserere nobis are. The adjectives used are fixed epithets; thus, “un hareng saur” is always accompanied by “sec, sec, sec,” “une échelle” by “haute, haute, haute,” “un grand mur blanc” by “nu, nu, nu,” “la ficelle” by “longue, longue, longue.” On the other hand, “un grand clou” which is accompanied by “pointu, pointu, pointu” in the following stanza is involved in the expression “le clou pointu”—“toc, toc, toc”; and not only adjectives are used in the second part of the line, there are also adverbs or subordinate clauses. It is also interesting to note the clash of symbolism of the number three—repeating twice does not assure the effect and thrice does not lengthen the lines excessively. The litanic worldview cannot be claimed to be the ground for composing such poems—the author reveals a humorous intention in the last stanza: “J’ai composé cette histoire—simple, simple, simple, / Pour mettre en fureur les gens—graves, graves, graves, / Et amuser les enfants—petits, petits, petits.”161 This is the moment in this poem when the litanic convention should be rejected as a context: the self-referential remarks are not recognizable in ecclesiastical litanies, there is no criterion of whom it is intended for or what type of form it is, as it is the community that is praying. However, because litanies do not fulfill an informative function, an analogous situation is recognizable here—there is no purpose to

161 Françoise Dubor, L’Art de parler pour ne rien dire: Le monologue fumiste fin de siècle (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2004), 171.

296

repeating the same words three times apart from the performative, such as to put to sleep or to amuse: “il s’agit véritablement de prendre conscience du langage poétique comme objet.”162 In the thinking of Tristan Corbière, the litany is taken to be a long, even endless form. “Sérénade jamais finie,”163 as it is said in the octosyllabic sonnet entitled simply “Litanie” (contained in the part Sérénade des sérénades of Les Amours jaunes, 1873). It is also connected with sleep and nighttime, which is suggested in expressions like “La berceuse litanie / Sérénade.” It is additionally language full of fantastic images which require decoding to reveal their spiritual force: “je sais les répons mystiques.” From all the titles mentioned in the first tercet of “Litanie” only one, “Tour d’ivoire,” is directly extracted from the ecclesiastical litany. Litanic verse is used in another Corbière poem from the same collection, but in the section, Raccrocs. Regarding the sequence of the invocation—“Sommeil!”— its various periphrases and supplications are introduced in different shapes; sometimes the titles are deprived of the stable element such as “Sommeil,” occasionally the supplications follow: “Sommeil!—Triste Araignée, étends sur moi ta toile,” “Ô viens changer de patte au cormoran pensif!” Frequently, perfect litanic fragments do without supplications: Sommeil! — Râtelier du Pégase fringant! Sommeil! — Petite pluie abattant l’ouragan! Sommeil! — Dédale vague où vient le revenant! Sommeil! — Long corridor où plangore le vent!164

The structure reflects the continuum of dream states rather than a recitation made intentionally to pray for favors from the deity. Occasionally, the litanic verse is promoted by the structure “toi qui” twice repeated in the following lines. In fact, repetitiveness is not the selling point of this poem, though some fragments are ruled by the parallelism: Sommeil! — Loup-Garou gris! Sommeil Noir de fumée! Sommeil! — Loup de velours, de dentelle embaumée! Baiser de l’Inconnue, et Baiser de l’Aimée! […] Tourelle où ma sœur Anne allait voir rien venir! Tour où dame Malbrouck voyait page courir…

162 Michèle Aquien and Jean-Paul Honoré, Le Renouvellement des formes poétiques au XIXe siècle (Paris: Nathan, 1997), 111. 163 Valérie Laurent, ed., Tristan Corbière (Paris: Seuil, 2004), 70. 164 Charles Cros and Tristan Corbière, Œuvres complètes (Paris: Gallimard, 1970), 774.

297

Où Femme Barbe-Bleue oyait l’heure mourir!… Où Belle au-Bois-Dormant dormait dans un soupir! […] Parque qui met un peu d’huile à ses ciseaux! Parque qui met un peu de chanvre à ses fuseaux!165

As in the sonnet “Litanie,” we may admit that some titles have counterparts in the ecclesiastical version, for instance, “Refuge du pêcheur, de l’innocent qui n’ose!” and “Arche où le hère et le boa changent de peaux!”—the first noun in the line is maintained compared with the litanies of the Church, metaphors with the word “Tour” or expressions whose tradition dates back to the medieval panegyrics of Holy Mary, such as “Fontaine de Jouvence.” Other passages are also devoted to sleep which takes divine, not Marian, shape: “Grand Dieu, Maître de tout! Maître de ma Maîtresse.”

15.9 Conclusion The litanic verse of the Parnassianism movement perfectly reflects the spirit of the epoch, echoing the themes in vogue in this period, which has been suggested in the analysis of “L’Invisible lien,” a poem in which the ideas of “Correspondances” are presented in the litanic mode. Similarly, the figures of Euphorion and Empedocles met with greater interest in the nineteenth century, if we consider the romantic movement and, for example, Nietzsche’s writings in the first case, and “Les Sandales d’Empédocle” by de Lisle in the second. In “Architecture” by de Lisle, we learn that architecture “chantera, […] / Dans le concert de Pan le Verbe universel!”166 and we are not surprised by nature’s invasion of the abbey in another of the poems analyzed in the present chapter. “Sérénade” was among the most common titles in the second half of nineteenth century, even if these poems did not use litanic verse, as in the case of Gautier’s and Paul Verlaine’s works. All these parallels do not indicate that one poem influenced another one, but they do show that litanic verse contained themes crucial for the culture of the time, even if religious services were not its primary interest. Passing from the concrete correspondences to a more general overview, we may observe that the spirit of decay, fear of abandonment and visions of destruction, recognizable, for instance, in “Souhait,” “La Mer” and a few examples of confessional poetry, dominate the litanic verse of that period and interestingly, correspond with it, although as a counterbalance, we may point to the lively poetry of Banville. Other 165 Ibid., 773. 166 de Lisle, Œuvres, vol. 4, 133.

298

leading themes are reflection about the sources and properties of poetry and debates with the poetic muse. The mythological themes in the litanic verse of this period are explored with a greater intensity.167 Only the descriptive and decorative tendencies of the Parnassianism movement seem to be incongruous with or even contradictory to the use of litanic verse. The litanic verse of the major poets is improving during their lives: both de Lisle and Banville use it in their early poems, written with quatrains of octosyllable. This stanza pattern is well known from the medieval paraphrases of litanies and treated as a transparent form rather than a sophisticated one. More advanced structures appear later, mainly in Banville’s works. We have already mentioned the weakness of religious inspiration a few times, but, in fact, forms of prayer are occasionally met with, such as litanies, kyrielle, Magnificat and hymns. The favorite meter remains the alexandrine, but the use of the decasyllable and octosyllable is also prominent. We should note the disappearance of Christian personages from the list of addressees of litanic calls. The list, which, in fact, is an extended one, now includes true loves, friends, country, muses, mythological deities, Satan, angels, nature, the sea and many others—all are more likely to be invoked in these litanies than, for instance, God and Holy Mary, who appear as well, but in a specific context, like that of archaisation.

167 Cf. Robic, Hellénismes de Banville: mythe et modernité, 20 and the remarks about possible Hugolian inspiration, 42.

299

Part V:  The Growing Popularity of Litanic Verse from the Late Nineteenth Century up to World War II The last quarter of the nineteenth century presents an unprecedented situation for the scholar of litanic verse. For the first time, we encounter a large number of works that contain the word “litany” in their titles, and, more importantly, we have a list of poetic litanies of the period which accompanies an important attempt to define the priorities in the development of litany-inspired poems.1 The reasons for the increased interest in the form of litany are many; undoubtedly Baudelaire’s inspiration played a similar role in litanic creation to that of Marot’s paraphrases in the domain of psalms: “Marot crée un précédent poétique dont vont s’autoriser les poètes de la génération suivante”; “les Psaumes de Marot […] donnent le branle, sur le plan formel, à un nouveau lyrisme qui doit ses attributs à la spécificité de la parole psalmique”; “reconfigurer le paysage poétique de la seconde moitié du XVIe siècle,”2 etc. The litanic form, once validated in works of simple elegance and tremendous power, enters into poetry of all different themes, appearing to be relevant to a decadent vision of the world and its inhabitants who seek mercy, or to those who, seeing no hope for the world, pray only for advancing depravation. Furthermore, the symbolism which was also present in the French literary landscape during the second half of the nineteenth century favors certain features that are crucial for the litanic pattern: Ennemie de l’enseignement, la déclamation, la fausse sensibilité, la description objective, la poésie symbolique cherche à vêtir l’Idée d’une forme sensible […]. Ainsi, dans

1 Isabelle Krzywkowski, “La litanie: une écriture sans fin de la fin,” in Anamorphoses décadentes. L’Art de la défiguration 1880–1914. Études offertes à Jean de Palacio, eds. Isabelle Krzywkowski, Sylvie Thorel-Cailleteau, (Paris: P.U.P.S., 2002), 88–90. 2 Véronique Ferrer, “Pour un nouveau lyrisme: les paraphrases de psaumes en vers mesurés,” Albineana, Cahiers d’Aubigné, vol. 17 (2000): 45.

301

cet art, les tableaux de la nature, les actions des humains, tous les phénomènes concrets ne sauraient se manifester eux-mêmes; ce sont là des apparences sensibles destinées à représenter leurs affinités ésotériques avec des Idées primordiales.3

The fundamental postulates of symbolism contain many of the litanic characteristics—juxtapositions of words which in conventional communication would never accompany each other; a refusal to give the proper name of a phenomenon and an inclination to suggest its presence through symbols which work as a way of grasping it; a specific tone which is to create the poem’s ambiance; the disintegration of description. We should also emphasize that, although the thematic range leads the poems considered herein to be called “litanies inversées” or “litanies à rebours” and to be viewed as non-religious, their form is, to put it cautiously, outmoded; they embody the model of liturgical litany, as for instance, in maintaining the repetitiveness of responses after each line or after more a developed unit from the series of apostrophes. We will discuss the other signals of this “liturgical” and “old” patterning in detail in the following chapters.

3 Jean Moréas, “Le Symbolisme,” Le Figaro, 18.09.1886, http://www.berlol.net/chrono/ chr1886a.htm (accessed August 31, 2017).

302

16. French fin de siècle Litanic Verse 16.1 “And now these three remain”… “But the greatest of these is love!”—Nouveau’s and Verlaine’s Litanic Verse “Invocation,” the opening poem of the collection La Doctrine de l’Amour of Germain Nouveau, which was composed in 1879–1881, through the use of monorhymed tercets, introduces the regularity of a litanic structure4 whose main components are an anaphora on the apostrophes to the Lord at the onset of all seven stanzas, various antonomasias of Jesus in the second hemistich of each first line of the tercet, and the presence of laudatory and supplicatory elements in the two remaining lines which do not have a common compositional pattern. However, several signs of parallelism can also be detected, for instance, the conjunction “car” appears at the beginning of the third lines of the two initial stanzas in the construction “Car vous êtes,”5 the relative pronoun “qui” starts the second lines of the fifth and sixth stanzas, and “que” opens, in turn, the third lines of the two final stanzas. The invocations are directed to the Lord, to whom the speaker refers to as his own: “Ô mon Seigneur Jésus.” This expression perfectly fits the first hemistich of the alexandrine, and the constant repetition of this unit gives the impression that the glory of Jesus is recognized only by the person speaking, and it is mainly his emotions which are brought to the fore: “Je vous aime et vous crains petit et mi­ serable,” “Mon âme vous contemple avec humilité.” The individuality emphasized in the act of praising Jesus is at first glance the most crucial deviation from the form of liturgical litanies. On the one hand, we find signs of inspiration flowing from the litanies of the Church in the selection of epithets in “Invocation,” for instance, “chaste et doux” resembles the call, “Jésus, doux et humble de cœur”; likewise, “le fils de l’amour adorable” recalls the atmosphere of the invocations like “Jésus amiable,” “Jésus admirable”, etc. On the other hand, epithets such as “petit et misérable” introduce a remarkably intimate tone, correlated with the presence of the possessive adjective in the first person singular.

4 This poem was called “prière litanique” by Philippe Sellier, Regards sur Jésus-Christ: textes français (1450–1960) (Paris: Cerf, 1964), 150. Previously the link between this poem and litany was recognized by Albert Béguin (“Notes sur la litanie,” Fontaine, no. 19–20 [1942]). 5 Lautréamont, Germain Nouveau, Œuvres complètes (Paris: Gallimard, 1970), 485.

303

Another issue demanding comment is the order of events mentioned in the litanic invocations. In the first tercet, Jesus is called “enfance venerable,” which may suggest that the structure imitates the succession of time and its description in Litanies du Saint Nom de Jésus, in which one invocation says, “Par votre Enfance.” That is only partly true. The description of the Son of God’s path to adulthood contains the antonomasia “adolescent fêté”; in the next and third stanzas the colors of his robe recall his humanity (red) and divinity (blue). However, after the evocation of the Resurrection and after calling Jesus “ô convive divin,” the speaker returns to the events of the Passion: “Qui versez votre sang.” The last stanza is devoted to an explanation of the Christian view of death. The suggestion in the title stresses the supremacy of the invocatory form in Nouveau’s poem. Nevertheless, the goals and forms of the invocations allow for the isolation of three parts. Needless to say, in the first stanza the focus is on the emotions of the speaker: “Je vous aime et vous crains petit et misérable”; however, we recognize in this statement the respect that enjoins the use of “vous” rather than “te” (“vous êtes” in the following line), juxtaposed with the direct “mon Seigneur Jesus.” There is a similar emphasis on the act of personal adoration in the second stanza: “Mon âme vous contemple avec humilité.” The third stanza, which ends with an exclamation, leads to the climax of glorification and is rather symbolical. First, some suggestions about colors are made—“Couleur de la mer calme et couleur de l’aurore”—and only then are the colors actually named: “le rouge et le bleu.” The casual raiment mentioned in the first stanza becomes at the end of it an object which “flowers.” The following three stanzas contain supplications expressing the needs of the lyrical “I”: “Enseignez-moi la paix,” “Prenez mes vers de cuivre,” “Que ma faim et ma soif n’appellent pas en vain!” Nevertheless, in the last line, as often happens in these poems when the perspective has been established as individual, a collective spirit is now invoked: “Que votre vérité s’allume au cœur de l’homme.” The balance has been achieved with the presence of three stanzas of veneration, three of individual supplication, and a final one which contains a universal wish. Moving on to the analysis of the Lord’s titles in this work, we suggest that those that occur in the first lines of the stanzas provide the leading significance of those stanzas. To give an illustration, when in the first line Jesus is called “enfance venerable,” the third line adds: “Car vous êtes le fils de l’amour adorable.” The Savior’s characteristic of being “fêté” is first juxtaposed with the humbleness of the person speaking and then emerges in the statement, “vous êtes la Grâce en étant la Beauté.” When in the course of prayer Jesus is called “chaste et doux travailleur,” two professions are mentioned in the third line of the same stanza: 304

“Celui du charpentier ou celui du tailleur.” Even more significantly, the self-referential plot of the poet’s own work has begun: “Enseignez-moi la paix du travail le meilleur”—which finds its complement in the following stanza: “Ô mon Seigneur Jésus, semeur de paraboles / Qui contiennent l’or clair et vivant des symboles, / Prenez mes vers de cuivre ainsi que des oboles.” Interpreting this stanza literally, we encounter the first surprising element in the expression “semeur de paraboles,” as the Biblical motif more likely to be met with is “la parabole du semeur.” However, we can explain this modification by the fact that the sower of parables appears as a compelling metaphor of the poetic vocation, chiefly in the contemporary era. The juxtaposition of the “or” that Jesus owns and “cuivre,” the only means of the poet, makes this stanza another respectful confession of a person who symbolically pays with the use of his works. Nonetheless, it is also worth recalling that in the period under discussion this motif may also characterize the omnipotence of Satan. “Le Semeur de paraboles” is the title of a work by Félicien Rops, created in about 1875 and published in L’Artiste, depicting miserable men as sowers. Among the contemporary public, Rops’s name was associated with numerous similar images of Satan sowing. The use of these words may appear as a manifestation that for Nouveau, in this intimate prayer, there is only one personage who could bear this title. The following stanza brings up the theme of feasting, calling to Jesus “ô convive divin” and introducing a highly meaningful simile of the Lord shedding blood the way people pour wine. Love and truth emerge as the key words of the poem, appearing in the last stanza in which “le fils de l’amour” turns into “Mort d’amour, dont la mort sans cesse se consommé.” The verbs “brûler” and “s’allumer” betray how ardent this prayer is, even if its heat hides within a poem with a sedate rhythm. The title of another Nouveau poem from the same volume not only names the emotion that is glorified in it, but exceeds it, as it reads: “L’amour de l’amour.” The work consists of two sections, one of which numbers fourteen quatrains, while the other has but one. The general message of the poem—numerous appeals to love the feeling of love and to even adore it, as the poet states in the last stanza—is composed in litanic verse, whose main markers are anaphoras, firstly on “Aimez l’amour,” secondly on “Amour dans la / les / tous les,” plus different nouns.6 Their frequency varies; the imperative appears ten times only in the onset of lines and occasionally it opens the second hemistich. In the beginning of the poem, the anaphora appears on the level of stanzas, but it gradually gains strength, and from the fourth stanza emerges from line to line. The anaphora on

6 Ibid., 538–539.

305

“amour” is even more impressive as it reigns over thirteen lines, noticeably close to the end of the poem: over the last three stanzas of the first section. Such an eye-catching recurrence of one word designating an emotion requires the analysis of the nature of love. In general, love is not named in specific independent antonomasias, but rather through the use of epithets describing its qualities and the places in which it should reign, according to the poet. It would be a simple truism to say that the poem represents the various types of love. In some parts, such as the first stanza, what is revealed is its profane dimension, which becomes modified with the passage of time. These initial sentences are very sensual; they describe “[…] l’amour qui rêve / Une rose à la lèvre […]” and indicate that it is the perfume that remains from this experience in old age. The religious perspective is not imposed from the very beginning in “L’Amour de l’Amour,” as the second stanza also starts with an emphasis on the beauty of world and nature: “Aimez l’amour qui joue au soleil des peintures, / Sous l’azur de la Grèce […].” Along with this mention of Greece, we observe new ideas: not only the sky, but also the temples of this region are evoked. However, the expression of “un carquois sur des cœurs immortels” leaves the impression of the human experience of love. From ancient Greece, the reader is transported to the center of Christian culture: Aimez l’amour qui parle avec la lenteur basse Des Ave Maria chuchotés sous l’arceau; C’est lui que vous priez quand votre tête est lasse, Lui dont la voix vous rend le rythme du berceau.7

Like the previously mentioned love that plays under the azure sky of Greece, the one described above is also strongly linked to a period of beginning: this time not of the world, but of human existence, one’s infancy. The following stanza continues the mode of profiting from important Christian symbols: Aimez l’amour que Dieu souffla sur notre fange, Aimez l’amour aveugle, allumant son flambeau, Aimez l’amour rêvé qui ressemble à notre ange, Aimez l’amour promis aux cendres du tombeau!8

After this moving passage, we note the reappearance of the ancient scenery: “Aimez l’antique amour du règne de Saturne,” which plays the role of a setting for the omnipotence of the love god, recognizable by the act of Cupid’s kiss reviving 7 Ibid., 538. It is interesting that it is the Marian prayer which is mentioned, as Nouveau’s litanic verse does not exhibit the Marian inspiration, apart from the short excerpt of Ave Maris Stella, ibid., 756. 8 Ibid.

306

Psyche, described in an expanded manner in seven stanzas. This change in the landscape suppresses at the same time the use of litanic verse. The poet profits from the echo motif (“Et que l’écho des bois s’éveille dans la roche”) to introduce the second type of anaphora: simple and enthusiastic appeals which appear as a joyful chant of the return of the love god. Firstly a spatial impetus is emphasized: Amour dans les déserts, amour dans les cités! Amour sur l’Océan, amour sur les collines! Amour dans les grands lys qui montent des vallons! Amour dans la parole et les brises câlines! Amour dans la prière et sur les violons!9

The universality of love is then particularized in the human body by the enumeration of its parts and signals of its activity: Amour dans tous les cœurs et sur toutes les lèvres! Amour dans tous les bras, amour dans tous les doigts! Amour dans tous les seins et dans toutes les fièvres! Amour dans tous les yeux et dans toutes les voix!10

Finally, the pattern of line is modified into a division between the localization of the emotion and the demands addressed to human beings, as well as celestial or material objects, to change their status: Amour dans chaque ville: ouvrez-vous, citadelles! Amour dans les chantiers: travailleurs, à genoux! Amour dans les couvents: anges, battez des ailes! Amour dans les prisons: murs noirs, écroulez-vous!11

The repetitive part of the lines demonstrates the desire to unveil the imaginary place of love in the future, while the current state of affairs is represented by the enumeration of objects that should be subject to the change. The imperatives are moved from the onset of the lines to the second part. The notably simple pattern of alexandrine quatrains rhyming abab allows us to call this example of Nouveau’s litanic verse an uncompromising manifesto rather than the humble and fervent prayer conveyed by the previously analyzed poem.

9 Ibid., 538–539. 10 Ibid., 539. 11 Ibid.

307

If the poem ended with the quoted stanzas, we could definitely say that the litanic verse was used to adore the love god and to wait for his coming in a prayerlike mood, animated by the preparations to receive him. Nonetheless, the second modest section of “L’Amour de l’Amour” evokes crucial Biblical motifs: Mais adorez l’Amour terrible qui demeure Dans l’éblouissement des futures Sions, Et dont la plaie, ouverte encor, saigne à toute heure Sur la croix, dont les bras s’ouvrent aux nations.12

The concluding vision of love does not represent it in a pleasant way; its dimension is also open to the future, but it is “terrible,” not joyful. We observe how the emotion full of cheerful excitement is remodeled as an apocalyptic vision. This metamorphosis mirrors the concluding stanza of “Invocation,” as “le fils de l’amour adorable” is transformed into “Mort d’amour.” The open wound still bleeds continuously—we could ask if it even bleeds at the time of the lighthearted feasts organized for the coming of the ancient love god. But the enjambment “saigne à toute heure / Sur la croix” leaves the reader with the certitude of being loved, as the open arms of the cross can embrace the various nations. The poem “Fraternité” from the volume under consideration has, like “Invocation,” a single addressee—the figure of a friar, who may also be understood to be a lay brother.13 In each first line of the eight couplets that make up the entire work, he is invoked with the general apostrophe “Frère,” and he is described more precisely in subordinate clauses starting with “qui”: “qui fais le vin du sang des raisins d’or,” “qui fais le pain, croute dorée et mie,” including the gérondif: “poussant les bœufs dans les mottes de terre” or by antonomasias: “ô doux mendiant qui chantes en plein vent,” “joueur de luth, gai marieur de sons.”14 All these methods are used to represent him during daily activities that are on the one hand, simple and elementary tasks, like the production of food and beverages or the weaving of fabric and clothes, and on the other, artistic pursuits (lute playing) and actions on the margin of society (begging). The second line of each couplet begins with the imperative “Aime-toi”—what else could we expect within the frame of this litanic verse whose main theme is love—and the remaining part

12 Ibid. 13 In fact, this kind of naming the addressee of the poem is related to its forming with three others a cycle considering the virtues, cf. Alexandre L. Amprimoz, L’Inspiration religieuse des symbolistes: le cas de la Doctrine de l’Amour de Germain Noveau (Stanford: Anma Libri, 1989), 30. 14 Nouveau, Œuvres complètes, 516–517.

308

of the line is filled by comparisons introduced by “comme,” usually derived from the domain of nature or domestic work. The analogy is exploited to represent the degree and intensity of the feeling of love, for instance: Frère, poussant les bœufs dans les mottes de terre, Aime-toi, comme aux champs la glèbe aime la terre. Frère, qui fais le vin du sang des raisins d’or, Aime-toi, comme un cep aime ses grappes d’or.

As we can see, each second line corresponds thematically to the first, with its mention of rural conditions, productive labor, etc. The quoted lines reflect also the essential formal feature of the poem: the alternation of anaphoras is accompanied by epiphora. At first glance, we are led to think that each couplet contains the invocations and the response, too. It is more correct to say that for each of these small-scale supplications, there is a universal response provided in the last couplet: “Mais, en Dieu, Frère, sache aimer comme toi-même / Ton frère, et, quel qu’il soit comme toi-même.” It is also a fundamental feature of Nouveau’s litanic verse that although there is no specific formula in its beginning, the middle part consists of realistic description, and the last unit of the poem often brings the reader an unexpected step further, revealing the core message—here we note even the same conjunction marking the contrast (“mais”) that was used in “L’Amour de l’Amour.” This appeal may be of course settled in the spirit of the Great Commandment: “And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself,” but regarding the shape of the couplet it is also important that for the first time in the poem, the repetition of “frère” is established in two immediately following lines, and paradoxically it is also the only stanza in which there is no strict anaphora and in which we find enjambment. Not only love, but also the virtues of faith and hope are mentioned in “Kyrie eleison” (Liturgies intimes, 1892) by Verlaine. The persistence of requests in the poem gives rise to an imbalance between the invocations and the supplications. The delimiting lines introduce the supplication in the first place; the formula “Ayez pitié de nous, Seigneur!” which stands at the beginning of the poem is followed by a second line expressing the same idea: “Christ, ayez pitié de nous!”15 and recurs at the end. These two expressions play alternately the function of a response in other stanzas, namely the tercets. Therefore, we may say that one of the basic units of Verlaine’s poem has been torn apart to compose an introduction

15 Paul Verlaine, Œuvres poétiques complètes (Paris: Gallimard, 1962), 740.

309

and conclusion.16 The title in Latin, which contains an expression that is not further repeated in this language version, functions as a mark of closing the link with the liturgical office and offers to the poem the charm of archaism. In each stanza, the formulae are preceded by a descriptive two-line passage explaining the manner of praying and specifying the object of prayer. The sole addressee is invoked in an unsophisticated manner, usually by the names of “Seigneur” and “Christ.” The proportion is then slightly changed in comparison with the liturgical litanies: we may divide a line of, for instance, Litanies du Saint Nom de Jésus into three units—the proper name, the antonomasia and the repetitive formula. Here only the name is recited, and instead of paraphrasing it, the poet paraphrases the petition by adding new elements that further clarify it. Therefore, we must conclude that the theme of petition outweighs that of laudation. The language is steeped in Christian symbolism, which is recognizable in the depiction of Christ the Sower and the mention of the virtues of faith, hope and love. The proper name of the main adversary of the Lord is not used, and he is described periphrastically as “l’Ennemi de nous tous” in a way which emphasizes that a prayer for mercy is imperative in the face of this danger. The content of all the supplications of a collective character reveals that it is zealous Christians who are imploring; their moral horizon is crystalized, their enemy identified, and they desire simply to be “plus croyant” and “plus doux,” thus to fortify the attributes they already have. Furthermore, they also demonstrate their eagerness to pray in their body posture: the twice-repeated “à genoux” brings to mind the medieval litanic verse in which great respect is shown to the addressee.17 The desired graces are in the beginning victory and privilege, but approaching the end, they are replaced with happiness. What strikes the reader is the diversity of composition within the confines of the condensed poem. Like the lines of liturgical litanies, the various parts of this litanic verse are also characterized by differing lengths: the supplications can be

16 André Maraud, “Litanies, rimes, refrain,” in La Répétition, eds. Slaheddine Chaouachi, Alain Montadon, (Clermont-Ferrand: Université de Clermont-Ferrand, 1994), 187: “Ces deux versets, qui diffèrent à la fois par la rime et par la mesure, ne sont incorporés au poème que dans la suite. Ils ne se deviennent à proprement parler des vers que quand d’autres leur répondent.” 17 Tony Hunt, Miraculous Rhymes: The Writing of Gautier de Coinci (Cambridge: Brewer, 2007), 49–50: “The poet’s subservience to Our Lady, hands clasped (‘a jointes mains’, 5), an ubiquitous [sic] emblematic gesture in the Miracles, plays on both religious and feudal connotations.” Hunt gives in footnotes numerous examples of the expressions, ‘a jointes mains’ and “a nus genolz’.”

310

nine- and seven-syllable lines (the most common pattern), nine and nine, or nine plus eight. Although the means used are not diverse, they give the impression of patterning the entire litany, which is a Christian prayer of considerable length. The changes are on a small scale; for instance, instead of a group of three invocations (Kyrie, eleison, Christe, eleison, Kyrie, eleison) we find them separated, which is suggested by the rhythmic pattern: the initial ab couplet is complemented by the final single line a, creating a coherence with the aba bab pattern of the middle stanzas.18 Furthermore, in one of the canonical litanies, such as the Litany of the Saints, as well as in the litanies addressed to Christ, such as the Litany of the Holy Name of Jesus, we remark a change in the pattern: from an anaphora on the name of saints or Jesus to anaphora on the various prepositions ab/a, per, ut, etc. In Verlaine’s poem this passage is also visible.19 Firstly, in three initial tercets, we observe that supplications of a different shape are foregrounded: “Donnez-nous,” “Rendez-nous,” “Criblez-nous.” In the last three stanzas, one supplicatory formula gains prominence: that which contains the request “ouvrez-nous” and which appears in the onset of lines in two stanzas and twice in successive invocations. It is important to note that it is allied with the polyonymic expressions “par la Foi et le Bonheur” and “par l’Amour le Bonheur” in the final part of the line and “par l’Espérance” in the middle.20 The very fine ending of the poem is composed of 18 Jean-Louis Aroui, “Les tercets verlainiens,” in Verlaine à la loupe, eds. Jean-Michel Gouvard, Steve Murphy (Paris: Champion, 2000), 233, suggests that the form is similar to la vilanelle. 19 Maraud analyzes the first poem from the second section of “Sagesse” by Verlaine as an example of litany, slightly distancing himself from this opinion: “Notre deuxième texte ne se présente comme une litanie […]” (Maraud, “Litanies, rimes, refrain,” 184); “Verlaine en imite plutôt l’esprit que la forme” (ibid., 185). From our point of view, litanic verse cannot be detected in this poem as it is not the specific components of litany that are the main verse-making factors: the repetition of the entire first line in the third position in the tercet, on which the poem is established, is not characteristic of litany. Paradoxically, as Maraud notes, it is rather essential in the liturgical Kyrie eleison, which is not present in Verlaine’s “Kyrie eleison” (ibid.). However, these two poems have some common features, for instance, the presence of “un vers isolé” (ibid., 184) in the end, the changing anaphoras which allow a division of the poem into sections: “Ô mon Dieu,” “Voici,” “Vous, Dieu de,” etc. 20 These types of expressions are rare in the period under discussion, so their presence needs to be emphasized. Paradoxically, in the “Litanies de l’amour” of Jean Lahor, the series of anaphoras on “par” ending with chairetismic exclamations, for instance, “Sois béni, Dieu charmant des caresses sans nombre!” are the only markers of litanic verse, as in general it is difficult in this poem to recognize the structure of litany (L’Illusion, Paris: Lemerre, 1888, 5).

311

the tercet with three names of the addressee in the onset of the lines and a single line with an appeal to the Lord as its last word. It seems that this prayer, its series of developed supplications, is exhausting for the speaker, because close to the end, the order of elements is significantly changed. In the last tercet, for the very first time in the poem, the title “Seigneur” is used in the beginning of the line, whereas in the formula it is always at the end of it. Furthermore, the expression starting on “Par” is placed before the verb and the entire phrase is divided in such a way as to suggest a pause or search for the proper words. The recurrence of the one-syllable “Christ” and the single line concluding the poem are also signs of a certain spiritual weakness.21 The last stanza uses the shortest line-length in the poem, because a nine-syllable line is followed by two heptasyllables.

16.2  Decadent Litanic Verse We begin the presentation of decadent litanic verse in a most appropriate way, with the poem most commonly considered to be an imitation of “Les Litanies de Satan”22—at the same time the theme of the parodic use of the Catholic Church offices in this context has been raised23—and with an author whose interest in the litanies is clear, but unstraightforward. It is a paradox, that in the only work of Jules Laforgue in which the word “litany” appears in the title itself, and which at the same time addresses calls to the Lord (Litanies nocturnes, 1880), litanic verse is not actually employed. In other Laforgue works bearing the name of litany, litanic verse is used but the themes raised are not religious; the sacral motifs are chiefly inverted or treated as components of the enumeration of an unspecified thematic line.

21 Our interpretation differs at this point from the view of Maraud, for whom “Kyrie eleison” “présente, sous une apparence de désordre, une forme plus accomplie: c’est une « litanie », si l’on veut, mais sinueuse, pour ne pas dire sinusoïdale” (Maraud, “Litanies, rimes, refrain,” 190). 22 James Andrew Hiddleston, Essai sur Laforgue et les Derniers vers (Lexington: French Forum, 1980), 79. This opinion is widely shared by modern critics: Anne Holmes, Jules Laforgue and poetic innovation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 22. 23 Jean-Pierre Bertrand, Les «Complaintes» de Jules Laforgue: ironie et désenchantement (Paris: Klincksieck, 1997), 352: “[…] le recueil entier ne se donne-t-il pas comme une espèce de paroissien profane qui n’aurait gardé du culte le cérémonial et les formes avec ses litanies, ses prières, ses messes, ses complies et ses antiennes.”

312

Our intention is to analyze whether the link with the Litanies du Sacré-Cœur de Jésus, invoked in the title, is also the compositional rule of the poem.24 The Complainte-litanies de mon Sacré-Cœur (written in 1880–1881, published in 1885) represent the repetitive type of Laforgue’s litanic verse, as the main marker of this form is the anaphora on “Mon Cœur est,”25 supplemented by various antonomasias. However, this structure is not present from the very beginning of the poem. The first couplet brings the motif of “le vautour de Prométhée” which justifies the affirmation in the second line: “Mon Cœur, cancer sans cœur, se grignote lui-même.” In fact, the clear formula of the ending is also present in the poem in a kind of summing up of the predominant recurrence:  “Et   t ouj ou r s ,  mon Cœur, ayant ainsi déclamé, / En  re v i e nt   à sa complainte: Aimer, être aimé!” (the emphasis is mine). It reveals the main object of plaint—the need for love. The frequent motif in Litanies du Sacré-Cœur de Jésus of “temple,” “tabernacle,” “maison,” “fournaise,” “sanctuaire,” “abîme” is evoked in the first line of Laforgue’s Complainte-litanies: “Mon Cœur est une urne où j’ai mis certains défunts.” We should also note that in the liturgical litanies devoted to Jesus, the invocations (which occur after the repetitive element) are among the longest compared to other litanies and are also remarkably descriptive. They usually contain subordinate clauses starting with in quo, de cuius, etc. The alexandrine of the poem corresponds with this property, as does the syntax: “Mon Cœur est un lexique  où   cent littératures”; “Mon Cœur est le terrestre Histoire-Corbillard, / Q u e   […]”; “Mon Cœur est une horloge oubliée à demeure,  / Q u i ,  […].” Nevertheless, because the Lord is represented as the authority in the liturgical litany, the source of life and consolation, the speaker does not aspire to ascribe to himself such virtues. Occasionally, common points may be recognized, such as the affinity of the expression, “un lexique où cent littératures  / Se lardent sans répit de divines ratures” with the invocation, “Cœur de Jésus, uni substantiellement au Verbe de Dieu.” Usually the opposition of the powers of life and death are emphasized: “Mon Cœur est un noyé vidé d’âme et d’essors, / Qu’étreint la pieuvre spleen en ses ventouses d’or.” To sum up this part, we shall indicate that the poem is not a series of apostrophes directed to the heart; but it is the heart which should, instead of contemplating its losses and misfortunes, repeat supplications for love—but to whom? To this question the poem does not provide a full answer.26 24 These litanies were approved in 1899, but their first versions date to the seventeenth century (around 1686, Dijon). 25 Jules Laforgue, Œuvres complètes, vol. 1 (Lausanne: L’Age d’homme, 1986), 612. 26 Witold Sadowski, “Le texte en dialogue avec son genre. Les litanies de Laforgue,” Poétique, vol. 179 (2016): 96: “[…] en disant « mon Sacré-Coeur », le poète semble suggérer

313

However, to better understand the nuances of this work, we should recall one point: in the title the author makes a second attribution of genre for this poem, and that is the complaint. The relation between these genres and the degree to which they are explored in the poem needs to be further investigated. In the entire volume of Les Complaintes, there are only a few poems with this mixed attribution: “Complainte-Placet,” “Complainte-Variations” and “Complainte-Épitaphe.”The “Complainte-Litanies de mon Sacré-Cœur” that we analyze here dispose of a regular stanzaic pattern and a particular density of repetition, which is unusual when compared to the other poems from the collection. Could these be the signs of the litanic form for Laforgue, which are not included in the specifications of the genre of complaint? As we observe in the following analysis, the poems he simply called “litanies” do not contain even slight signs of repetition, but are indeed regular, if of short meter. As Catherine Détrie notes, “Complainte-Litanies de mon Sacré-Cœur” is also one of six “complaintes” in which the word designating this genre appears inside the poem, and in which the lyrical “I” is present in the poem’s title.27 Can the litany then be understood by Laforgue as a private prayer? In the traditional, liturgical use of litany, a place for private confessions of the state of the heart (or for some nonchalant inclusions such as “Oh! chut, refrains de leurs berceaux! et vous, parfums…”) is not provided. Perhaps the solution can be found in Détrie’s general observation on the composition of titles in Laforgue’s volume: L’intention répétitive (qu’on retrouve à tous les niveaux de la grammaire des titres des Complaintes: syntaxique, sémantique, lexical) doit être rapportée au genre complainte qui se définit structurellement par la répétition. Le titre rejoue à un niveau macro-structurel cette reprise, le titre de l’œuvre étant alors totalement explicite: le –s du pluriel est chargé d’annoncer, de programmer chaque complainte dans sa spécificité, chaque poème, présenté comme une complainte, validant le cadre défini par le titre global de l’œuvre.28

Therefore, considering the title, we obtain four elements of different nature: firstly, “complainte” which guarantees the repetition of the poem—the reflection of the macro-structure of the titles’ list in the micro-structure of the represented world—which is nevertheless a unique poem; secondly, “litanies” which are once que la position du destinataire est soit vide, soit insignifiante, car la figure du Christ est passée de la position de destinataire à celle d’énonciateur du texte, ce qui correspond également au manque de réplique responsoriale à la liste d’« invocations ».” 27 Catherine Détrie, “« Les Complaintes » de J. Laforgue: petite grammaire des titres,” L’Information Grammaticale, vol. 89 (2001): 28–29. 28 Ibid., 31.

314

mentioned in the titles’ list and play an analogous function: to ensure the link with the litanic shape;29 thirdly, “mon” also for the first time revealed in the title of this specific poem; and fourthly, “Sacré-Cœur,” which is joined with “mon” but correlated also with the titles’ list through the presence of the title of the preceding work—“Complainte des Mounis du Mont-Martre.” In the opening poem of L’Imitation de Notre-Dame la Lune (1886), “Un mot au soleil pour commencer,” we encounter the first metaphorical title of the moon, the main addressee of the volume, “la rosace de l’Unique Cathédrale,”30 and learn that it is she who enjoys the highest reputation, higher than “Soleil” which is despised by creatures such as “les Pierrots, phalènes des dolmens / Et des nymphéas blancs des lacs où dort Gomorrhe.” The following “Litanies des premiers quartiers de la Lune” are composed of fourteen monorhymed couplets of short, four-syllable lines. They are not pairs of invocation–supplication which have been divided into two lines, but in twelve stanzas the invocation occupies the entire stanza, and in two, the supplication. The rhythm of the poem and the motif of the moon are the only elements of the work that provide uniformity, since different sources were used to compose the metaphorical titles of the moon. Both historical and mythological personages are mentioned, for instance, Endymion and Salammbô, and Christian symbolism is also evident (“Rosace et dome / Des derniers psaumes”) though it is not dominant. This type of enumeration, governed by rhythmical values, describes a paradox in the stanza: “Madone et miss / Diane-Artémis.” It is difficult to assess whether the titles are sufficiently laudatory—they could be more developed, as is shown in passages of “Clair de lune” from the same volume, which contain antonomasias like “Astre atteint de cécité, fatal phare / Des vols migrateurs des plaintifs Icares!”31—but undoubtedly, a relation between the addressee of the litany and its lyrical “we” is emphasized: “Sainte Vigie / De nos orgies”; “Dame très-lasse / De nos terrasses”; “Bel œil-de-chat / De nos rachats.” They also could be more linked with the crucial motif of the moon.

29 Sadowski, “Le texte en dialogue avec son genre,” 92: “Dans un recueil ainsi organisé, le poème « Complainte-litanies de mon Sacré-Cœur », qui se trouve à la fin, à la quarante-cinquième place sur cinquante, et qui reprend de façon fractale (car à un niveau inférieur) la structure énumérative du niveau supérieur, doit être considéré comme le moment où la tonalité constituant le fond de tous les autres poèmes du cycle est mise au premier plan. […] Elle apparaît ici ouvertement, faisant de notre poème le point culminant du recueil.” 30 Laforgue, Œuvres complètes, vol. 2, 14. 31 The moon is also called “ô Lune d’Immaculée Conception” in this volume (“Climat, faune et flore de la lune”), “O Lune, Ave Paris stella!” (“Locutions des Pierrots,” XI)

315

In this version, only a few invocations have references to its shape (“Blanc médaillon”), its nature (“Astre fossile”) and its characteristics (“œil-de-chat”). Regarding only one use of the proper name of the addressee (“Lune bénie” in the first line), one epithet (“sainte”) and a few other expressions such as “Dame,” we may hypothesize that it is the Marian litanies that provide the model for the poem, which may seem obvious in view of its title. The only two supplications, Sois l’Ambulance De nos croyances! Sois l’édredon Du Grand-Pardon!

leave an ambiguous impression. On the one hand, they assert the presence of some beliefs and the need for Atonement, but on the other, their content resembles more of a humorous rhyme than a petition. “Litanies des derniers quartiers de la Lune,” the next-to-last poem of the volume, is written according to an analogous rule—short lines containing the invocations, and the supplication moved to the last position in the poem. The short meter, used consistently in the two poems called “litanies of the quarters of the moon” may imply that it reflects the incompleteness of man’s observation of the moon. However, the “Litanies des derniers quartiers” is more clearly inspired by Christian motifs, although they are inverted: “Eucharistie / De l’Arcadie”; “Fonts baptismaux  / Des blancs pierrots”; “Dernier ciboire  / De notre histoire”; “Miroir et Bible / Des Impassibles”; “Ô Chanaan / Du bon Néant.”32 There is only one supplication, and it is quoted from the liturgical litanies: “Exhaudi nos.” Our potential hypothesis that the poem is modelled on the Marian litanies is thus excluded by the fact that such formula is not present in Litaniae Lauretanae in relation to Holy Mary. Another possibility is that it is a sign of conclusion as it is an element of the initial and concluding formula in the liturgical litanies: Christe, exhaudi nos. Although in the title of Remy de Gourmont’s poem Litanies de la rose (1892) it is made clear that the litany is directed to one rose (for otherwise we could expect the title “Litanies des roses”), his prayer can be said to have numerous addressees. Each rose mentioned is distinguished from the others by its color—speaking frankly, the color scale is imposing—or by a unique description, for instance, a white rose is mentioned in the invocations to “Rose toute blanche, innocente et

32 Laforgue, Œuvres complètes, vol. 2, 120.

316

couleur de lait” and “Rose neigeuse, couleur de la neige et des plumes du cygnet,”33 but these depictions bring to mind other semantic fields. The compositional frame of the work is provided by invocations to “Fleur hypocrite, Fleur de silence”—the initial and ending lines are the shortest in the poem. They reveal the main theme of the poem: the hypocrisy of the rose that is praised. Furthermore, these are petitions whose principal concern is to learn the art of perfect deception from it. The reasons why the appeals are directed to the rose are clear; it is “encensoir,” it has a power and it is unconquerable in its hypocrisy, “plus frauduleuse.” It is perfectly false and vain: “dis-nous le secret de ton orgueil.” If she could be called an angel, even her wings would be false. “Fleur hypocrite, Fleur de silence” changes its role in the main part of the work, where it functions as the repetitive component closing each line of invocations. A more enigmatic side of the repetitive concluding element is its second part, “Fleur de silence,” the significance of which requires interpretation. The beginning of each litanic unit is composed of an apostrophe to the rose whose characteristic is immediately described, the repetition of the first part of the invocation, and a supplication which is each time different. Therefore, “rose” is repeated at least twice in one unit, but this word can be also part of the description of the nature of the rose: R o s e   au front pourpre, colère des femmes dédaignées,  ro s e   au front pourpre, disnous le secret de ton orgueil, fleur hypocrite, fleur du silence. […] R o s e   incarnate,  ro s e   stupide et pleine de santé,  ro s e   incarnate, tu nous abreuves et tu nous leurres d’un vin très rouge et très bénin, fleur hypocrite, fleur du silence. [my emphasis—M.K.]

The rose is personified, for example, her eyes are mentioned a few times: “ouvre les rets de tes yeux clairs”; “rose aux yeux noirs”; “rose violette, tes yeux sont plus grands que le reste”; “rose bleue, lève un peu tes paupières: as-tu peur qu’on te regarde, les yeux dans les yeux”; “tu nous regardes avec des yeux rogues”—as are her lips: “rose aux lèvres de sang” and her forehead: “rose au front pourpre; rose au front d’ivoire jaune.” There is likewise mention of other parts of the body: “donne-nous la clef de ton ventre.” The depiction of roses is sensual to a high degree. The names of colors always appear with an illustrative object, often fruit: “Rose couleur de pêche, fruit velouté de fard, rose sournoise, rose couleur de pêche, empoisonne nos dents.” The act of eating merges

33 Remy de Gourmont, Litanies de la rose (La Rochelle: Rumeur des âges, 2006), 6, 8.

317

with amorous caresses, which is emphasized by the following phrase: “Rose couleur de chair, déesse de la bonne volonté, rose couleur de chair, fais-nous baiser la tristesse de ta peau fraîche et fade.” The speaker experiences the rose by touching it with the lips and recognizing its skin texture, which gives pleasure and demands a requital: “nos morsures te font sourire et nos baisers te font pleurer”; “Rose en satin cerise, munificence exquise des lèvres triomphales, rose en satin cerise, ta bouche enluminée a posé sur nos chairs le sceau de pourpre de son mirage.” Its scent yields a dubious pleasure: “Rose des tombes, fraîcheur émanée des charognes, rose des tombes, toute mignonne et rose, adorable parfum des fines pourritures.” The enumeration of the body parts of the addressee of the poem is not meant as the kind of benediction as is often encountered in works devoted to the Holy Virgin, but expresses the range of sensation that characterizes the affinity with the rose. An issue which should be resolved is the adaptation of the titles of the rose to the antonomasias most frequently appearing in the litanies—and the question arises from which litany they are imitated. The prevailing floristic and feminine motifs lead us to believe that it is the Marian litanies that provide the pattern. In point of fact, many of the invocations resemble the common antonomasias of Holy Mary or their reformulation (to give an illustration, “ô vierge des futures trahisons”). Apart from the revolting juxtaposition of the words “vierge des trahisons,” we should stress the determination of the temporal aspect: “future”—as in the same invocation the rose is called “innocente,” so should we presume that it is on the road to depravity? When the speaker addresses the white rose, he admits that “tant de candeur nous épouvante,” and we also encounter the title, “Rose ardoise, grisaille des vertus vaporeuses.” Other common expressions for Marian depictions are also used: “ô coffre-fort de l’idéal,” “miroir de ton néant,” “pucelle au cœur désordonné,” “vase rouge,” “Rose améthyste, étoile matinale,” “rose arrosée.” Other sources of inspiration have been used as well, for instance, mythological ones: “ô sourire du Sphinx,” “monstre couleur des yeux de la Chimère.” In general, these portray the same values of the rose: one of these examples—“Hylas est mort d’avoir aimé tes yeux”—suggests that the rose represents sensual and delusory love, but drawing metaphors from so many different contexts serves to emphasize the universality of vice. The sin of hypocrisy is not the only one mentioned in the work. The second sin, analyzed below, demonstrates how productive the inverted image of the Holy Virgin can be. The obsessive harping on the theme of virginity—“tes nuits virgi­ nals,” “rose au cœur virginal” and at the same time the repeated representations

318

of sexual offences and licentiousness—“rose au cœur prostitué”;34 “colère des femmes dédaignées”; “Rose groseille, honte et rougeur des péchés ridicules, rose groseille, on a trop chiffonné ta robe”; “bergère enamourée couchée dans les sillons”; “Rose opale, ô sultane endormie dans l’odeur du harem, rose opale, langueur des constantes caresses, ton cœur connaît la paix profonde des vices satisfaits”—unmask the second important aspect: the sin of impurity. This is connected with the previously described hypocrisy as the property of the rose in its “illusoire virginité” (and, as has already been said, “ô vierge des futures trahisons”). The speaker uses first person plural pronouns to describe his own properties and feelings as well as to express pleas: “donne-nous,” “prends notre cœur,” etc., but this community is not concretized. We may say that the collective character of the poem arises from a desire to represent human vices of a general nature: “nos joies,” “nos rêves,” “nos baisers.” The supplications strengthen the speaker in his hypocrisy. This is not prayer for redemption, as much Christian prayer is; the conviction of the dominance of the rose is so strong that it permits the speaker to consider the possibility of annihilation: “Rose aux lèvres de sang, ô mangeuse de 34 Cf. Alfred Mortier, “Laudes à la courtisane” (Le temple sans idoles, Paris: Mercure de France, 1909), one of several poems of similar themes: “Vers pour une courtisane célèbre,” “Eternel féminin.” The metaphorical expressions of the courtesan are grouped in three lines of each stanza and the fourth line is regularly occupied by the salutation, “Je te salue.” The clearest references to Christian prayers, which the text perversely rewrites, are located in the first and final stanzas, so we recognize the delimitative frame in the poem:



Vierge à la débauche immolée, Pleine de grâce calculée, Vierge trois fois maculée, Je te salue. […] Et je dis, malgré la huée Qui te poursuit, prostituée: C’est Dieu qui t’a instituée. Je te salue.

The quoted first stanza introduces the singular perspective with the chairetismic expression and in the last one, the speaker clearly manifests his presence and demonstrates the dominance in the represented world as he has the authority to share God’s word. In the other thirteen stanzas, the imagination of the author is more focused on describing the reality of the prostitute’s life than on creating metaphorical titles, which appear only occasionally: “Très hospitalière matrice,” “o noble creature,” “bienfaisante et toujours pure.”

319

chair, rose aux lèvres de sang, si tu veux notre sang, qu’en ferions-nous? bois-le, fleur hypocrite, fleur du silence.” In the question, the spirit of frightened disciples may be heard: “Hommes frères, que ferons-nous?” (Acts 2:37). However, we should mention that the rose is not only petitioned in the poem but also simply adored: “nous t’aimerons, car tu mens.” In the three final invocations, direct references to Christian personages, such as Holy Mary and Christ, as well as to the Roman Catholic Church, can be found. Through them, the poet judges not only himself but the state of the Christian world, which is tainted by all the vices that the rose symbolizes: “tu dors sur des poitrines dévotes et douillettes, gemme offerte à Marie.” The symbol of power (and part of a flower), the corolla, is made of the tears of the Savior and is possessed by “des mains qui bénissent le monde”—these are also the hands which make the rose grow and flourish. However, the glory of the rose, as well as its true nature are revealed in the voice of the speaker: “ton cœur d’or est en cuivre.” In the end of the analysis we return to the already posed question about the meaning of the invocation “Fleur de silence.” As we can see, all abominations are set in complete silence, the sounds are generally not evoked in the poem (with a few exceptions, for instance, the request “dis-nous”). The rose remains silent and her voice is not expected: “tu n’as rien à nous dire.” Another work by Gourmont, “Les Saintes du paradis” (partially published in “L’Ymagier” in 1895 and “La Province nouvelle” in 1896; a separate complete publication took place in 1898), is composed of three parts. The first, “Hommage,”35 a quatrain addressed to the painter Charles Filiger, anticipates the depiction of the saints in the other sections, as Filiger is represented as the one who “rêve en silence aux saintes.” “Dédicace,”36 in turn, contains invocations to pilgrims: in the description of their dreams, toil and journey the author revives the unique atmosphere of old pilgrimages, during which the physical mastering of the road was the main experience, but it was also a time when humans were exposed to natural features, such as sunlight, shade, odors and lack of water. The essential instruction for pilgrims is “suivez la voix qui vous appellee au ciel.” The third part, entitled “Les Saintes du paradis” follows. Regarding two such distant contexts, it may be asked whether the following prayer is a poetic response to the painter’s imagination, a sort of colorful and diversified mosaic to the extent the various saints are different, or whether it is an intercession for pilgrims. A detailed analysis of the content of the supplications and the description of saints can provide the answer. 35 Remy de Gourmont, Divertissements: poèmes en vers (Paris: Mercure de France, 1914), 55. 36 Ibid., 57–58.

320

Gourmont’s work is undoubtedly litanic verse, but a feature which distinguishes it from liturgical litanies, strictly speaking, is that it is a list of twenty female saints (not all present in Litaniae sanctorum) whose names appear in alphabetical order. Indeed, the text contains invocations, metaphorical titles and supplications—all of these elements appear in sections of approximately six to ten lines devoted to each particular saint. There is no specific pattern of disposing the various elements in the sections; the only common points are that the repetition is evident on the level of the names occupying the majority of the onset of lines and that the last line includes a supplication, each time different, preceded by the adjective “sainte” (with two exceptions) and the name of the personage. Usually the first line contains neither adjective nor name, permitting the reader to focus entirely on the originality of the image: “Joyau trouvé parmi les pierres de Sicile” (Agathe), “Abbesse insigne à la crosse d’ivoire” (Gertrude), “Pétale d’or pale au front des dames romaines” (Marcelle), “Amertume des baisers sur les barques de Nil” (Marie).37 Rarely do other adjectives than “sainte” accompany the name, but they are equivalent in meaning, for instance, “Blanche Agnès.” Sometimes the description is developed into a full sentence with a predicate, while in other sections the enumeration of single nouns or the series of meaningful expressions play a symbolic role, reminding one about the qualities of the Holy Virgin: “Brebis, Toison, Manteau” (Agnès); “Catherine pleine de larmes, pleine de charmes, pleine de songes”; “Marie des sables, Marie des palmes, Marie des lions.” The details from the saints’ lives impose a leading motif in each section; for instance, in the invocations to Agatha, it is fire and the color red which inform the supplication “Sainte Agathe, mettez du feu dans notre sang.” The possessive adjectives of the first person plural in the supplications betray the correlation with the form of liturgical petitions. Some of the graces for which the community asks are not Christian virtues: “Jeanne d’Arc, mettez beacoup de colère dans nos cœurs,” which makes the reader wonder about the message of the work. In fact, some features of “Les Saintes du paradis” lead us to understand it as a fabulous and vivid image of the past and its heroes rather than as a prayer,38 and even if it were a prayer for those pilgrims described in the “Dédicace,” it is because they would need strength and persistence on their way, and also courage. The voice which appeals to them is that which flows from the acts of brave women saints. The work is rich in examples of enemies of Christian people: “Catherine que le démon battait comme 37 Ibid., 59–68. 38 According to Krzywkowski, “Gourmont reste dans le registre religieux […], sa sélection pervertit cependant les Litanies des Saints” (“La litanie: une écriture sans fin de la fin,” 74).

321

la mer”—and the presence of clearly sketched dark forces is one of the characteristics of fairy tales. There are other features which bring “Les Saintes du paradis” close to being a kind of legendary story: its exoticism, which is noticeable in the motifs of precious stones and spices and words for sweetness (“Miel fondu dans le vin douloureux de la vie / Cinnamome jeté dans le prison de l’encensoir”) and in the constant evocation of geographical names from the Holy Land, southern Europe and Egypt, the presence of magical powers (“sept rubis magiques et des trois pierres de lune” [Agathe]; “Agnès, plus forte que la magie des jeunes cheveux”), and the variegation of the represented world (“Ursule, flocon de neige bu par les lèvres de Jésus / Ursule, étoile rouge vers la tulipe de pourpre”). The Marian titles used in Jean Richepin’s Les Litanies de la mer (1894) are in the most cases directly quoted from the Litanie de Lorette. Therefore, if we are seeking poetic originality, apart from assessing the degree of the assimilation of these titles, we should focus on the following methods aimed at destabilizing the text of the litany and creating from it a particularly interesting litanic verse in terms of stanzaic pattern and theme (as well as one which is exceptionally long: five hundred lines): the order of titles and their placement in the lines, the manner of their repetition, and the object to which the Marian titles are transposed. It is, as the title suggests, the sea which listens to the long laudatory series of invocations that were traditionally directed to the Mother of Our Savior. A few self-referential remarks, grouped mainly at the beginning and end of the poem, explain the choice of the form of poem. It is the soul of a blasphemer (who later calls himself “le tueur de Dieu”39) who now recites the litanies: “Au livre des chrétiens j’ai choisi le même air, / Les mêmes oraisons et les mêmes paroles / Qu’ils exhalent vers la Mère de leur Sauveur.” The identification with the community of the faithful is not complete; it is only a sort of flash of poetic inspiration: “du vin du dévot j’ai goûté la sauveur.” In conclusion, once again the theme of creation is raised: Déesse, pour louer tes charmes souverains, J’ai voulu de mes vers t’édifier ce temple; […] Et chantant de mon mieux en syllabes bénies Ta grâce et tes fiertés, ta force et tes douceurs, J’ai répandu mon cœur d’athée en litanies Pour confesser ta foi, Reine des confesseurs.40

39 Jean Richepin, La Mer (Paris: G. Charpentier et E. Fasquelle, 1896), 16. 40 Ibid., 47.

322

The main goals of the poem have been recognized as laudation and making a clear stand for the deity. The Marian title is here placed at the end of the line, one of many locations and functions showing borrowings from the liturgical litany. We should emphasize that repetitiveness is a crucial feature of Les Litanies de la mer; however, it is not the supplicatory formula which recurs, but titles that conventionally appear once that are repeated. We discuss them in detail in the following part of the chapter. The poem opens with the Latin invocation— Sancta Maria! This choice of language in all likelihood anticipates the frequent use of expressions resembling the Latin versions of invocations more than their French translations. “Sainte mère de Dieu” is the first traditional Marian invocation made in French and it gives the idea of the entire poem: the sea as the homeland of man, and God arising from his dreams and contemplation of the sea. Additionally, the order of the metaphorical representations and their appearance is dictated by the will of the sea: “Ô mer, déroule ici tes flux avec lenteur, / Et fais voir à mes yeux d’autres allégories / Que Mère du Sauveur, Mère du Créateur.”41 The initial stanza in the part devoted to Mater purissima intrigues the reader with the contrast between the content of the invocation and the description of the marine environment: “Mère très-pure, ô mer où les algues flétries. / Les éléments dissous, les corps décomposés, / Les putréfactions et les pouacreries.”42 However, one of the following stanzas depicts the sea as the mother of chastening metamorphoses: “Mère très-pure en qui la mort devient naissance. / Mère très-pure en qui l’immonde s’abolit, / Mère très-pure en qui l’impur change d’essence!”43 As we can see, the invocations may be also collated to create an anaphoric effect. However, this strategy is rather rare. The use of the next invocation—“Mère trèschaste”—reveals the most often met compositional rule: the litanic titles operate as the markers of the beginning and end of certain plots and the same title is put at the onset of the first line and in the final part of the concluding stanza: Mère très-chaste, nul ne partage ton lit, Ni le soleil royal l’embrasant de son faste, Ni l’homme qui de sa vermine le salit, Ni le vent qui s’y vautre en rut et le dévaste. Dans ce lit tout ouvert ton corps s’offre tout nu; Mais il reste à jamais sacré, Mère très-chaste.44

41 Ibid., 18. 42 Ibid. 43 Ibid., 19. 44 Ibid.

323

This composition may attract a reader with the beauty of the perfect closure, but we should suggest that in this way the role of clear change in thematic dominant is taken over by the form, as if the change of image is not enough. Indeed, for instance, the invocations to “Mère très-chaste,” “Mère toujours vierge” and “Mère sans tache” consider one and the same theme, that of amorous conflict: the sea comes away unscathed from the efforts of “Tous tes amants,” “vainqueurs qui comptaient par milliers leurs maîtresses, / Eux, don Juans au désir sans relâche excite.” Nonetheless, it is also possible that in the final lines, the litanic title opens a line, rather than ending it (for instance, in the case of “Mère admirable”). It is also an example in which we observe the anaphora, but not on the level of each line: the title may appear arbitrary in the onset of all three lines of the stanza. It is not only the Christian imagination that informs the sea’s titles. Two of them, taken from the proper names of stars (“Couche d’Aldébaran et lit de Bételgeuse”), evoke the Marian antonomasias “la verge d’Aaron or toison de Gédéon.” The invocation to “Cause de notre joie” is interpreted in a mythological context, as its main protagonist is Aphrodite. Furthermore, close to the end of the poem, in the moment when an ambiance of long-awaited reunion is created (“O Reine, ô Mer, j’irai!”), the speaker enumerates the goddesses appearing before him: Isis, Aphrodite, and Nature. We should admit that in some parts of the poem, the image of the sea that is created is cleverly correlated with the meaning of the litanic title. The part devoted to “Mère admirable” is focused on the poetic description of the esthetic values of the sea observed mainly in crucial moments like sunrise and sunset: “Mère admirable ayant chaque jour deux printemps!” The line that refers to “Vierge vénérable” emphasizes antiquity, to which traditionally this epithet could be ascribed: her synonyms are “Bonne aïeule,” “Toi qui connus le globe encor sans habitants,” “O mer qui reflétas l’aube des premiers jours / Et qui dois refléter le dernier crépuscule!” “Vierge puissante” is, in turn, introduced with the image of a storm at sea and the personification of the sea itself: “Qui de tes ongles verts te lacères le sein / En crachant jusqu’au ciel ta bave jaillissante. / Avec des gestes fous et des yeux d’assassin.” “Vierge clémente,” on the other hand, has more the character of a micro-history about a sailor, who thanks to the grace and munificence of the sea can support his family. The symbol of the Holy Spirit is the wind, and as it is crucial also for the maritime imagination, the invocation to “Vase rempli des dons du Saint-Esprit” represents the sea tossed by the waves, as “Le rut des éléments en marche vers le rien / Se cherchant dans la nuit pour engendrer l’atome.” The sea may be interpreted as a Throne of Wisdom because through the sea man gains knowledge about his own origins and destiny: “Trône de la sagesse où 324

l’homme va s’asseoir!” Apart from the reference to “Vas honorabile,” a long passage is devoted to “Vase insigne,” which is depicted with the sumptuousness of the herbs, precious stones and symbols of fertility: “Ton breuvage est doré […], / Vert comme l’émeraude et bleu comme le ciel,  / Plein d’étranges fraîcheurs et d’étranges brûlures. // Mieux fleurant que la menthe et l’anis et le miel.” “Maison d’or,” to which several invocations are directed, is described as the place of the reunion of man and nature, called “Dernière déité du dernier sanctuaire!” of which no statue could adequately reflect its size and splendor. The Marian titles are not, however, imitated without reservation. The significance of one of the most frequent titles in poetry is modified by the epithet “Étoile du matin trompeuse.” The notion of justice attributed to the sea with the invocation “Miroir de la justice” is a specific one: Miroir où l’infini regarde sa pensée, Pèse le mal, le bien, et, les équilibrant, La trouve aux deux plateaux strictement balancée. Miroir de la justice, où l’homme injuste apprend Que ce mal et ce bien ne sont rien qu’apparences: Car ce que prend un jour, un autre nous le rend.45

It is subjected to sea tides and the passage of time. However, the comparison to a mirror, in reference to the sea, also has other potential meanings: the calm face of the water may function as a reflecting surface. In the poetic vision, it reflects not only the clearness of sky, but also the past acts of man and his future destiny. The juxtaposition of the “Miroir de la justice” and “l’homme injuste” betrays that the judgment has not been auspicious. A similar annihilation of moral judgment is described in the invocations directed to Porta caeli: “Porte du ciel ouvrant ce radieux domaine / Où tous seront élus, nuls ne seront maudits.” There are also other parts of the poem in which the virtues of Holy Mary represented in the litanies are inverted or negated. It may not surprise the reader that the part labelled “devotionis” of the invocation Vas insigne devotionis is omitted and, in fact, there is no “devout” content in this part, as it is fully immersed in the spirit of the joy of life: “La chair des fruits, le sang du vin, l’or du blé mûr.” The part of the poem devoted to “Rose mystique” demonstrates the spatial imagination of the author, because the rose seems to appear in the sea that is illuminated by the sun: “Rose rose au couchant et rose à l’Orient,” “quand sur lui [la mer] le soleil en brasier / Verse à tes flots sa pourpre et les change en petals.” Another

45 Ibid., 28.

325

important aspect of the rose is not “formelle,” but “idéale”: it gives us a chance to perceive the infinite. Although the speaker says that these “rêves d’infini” could be called “splendeurs mensongères” and calls the influence of the sea-mystique rose “divin poison,” he confesses, “O rose, malgré tout ton mystère me touche.” The rose offers moments, fleeting indeed, of appeasing “le vieux mal de douter.” Another example of sea titles, the “Tour d’ivoire,” is one of invocations most often repeated. Its symbolism in the poem switches the focus from purity to stability, as it is associated with “tranquille foi,” the “Tour de la certitude” of the faithful. It is also called “tour blanche aux solides murailles” and “redoute aux remparts sans crevasse.” Being high, impregnable and a “lieu saint,” it emerges as a point of contention between believers and nonbelievers, between “Croyants dont rien n’abat la croyance vivace” and those who, as the speaker does, reject the “délice promis” and call themselves “Volontaire exilé des fausses Palestines!” “La science obscure” turns out to be more amiable than faith. The appeal to the Consolatrix afflictorum is paraphrased as an appeal to “Consolatrice // Des affligés” (the French liturgical version reads “Consolatrice des malheureux”). Apart from the interesting enjambment between the stanzas,46 the appeal is also later repeated with the significant remark: “Consolatrice des affligés en effet,” as if this role needs supplementary confirmation. The last antonomasias are established on the “Reine” element. In some of these lines, it comes close to personages mentioned in the liturgical litanies, and various objects known from everyday life: “O Reine des martyrs et Reine des apôtres” associates the word with canonical groups, but “Reine douce aux vieillards, Reine des patriarches” and “Reine de poésie et Reine des prophètes” combine various experiences, diminishing the distance between saints and humans. The Litanies de la mer of Saint-Pol-Roux (1899) are modelled on a litany understood as a public prayer, in which recitation is taken in turns by the leader (Le Patron) and the choir (l’Équipage). It contains two kinds of supplicatory formulae which are repeated several times and the anaphora on “Mer” in each line of invocation. The sea is not addressed with metaphorical titles, and the apostrophes use the name of the sea. The realities of the danger and beauty of the sea are described in the lines: “Mer des courants et des derives,” “Mer des grains blancs qui couchant,” “Mer des sautes de vent qui coulent,” “Mer des éclairs et de la foudre,” “Mer des vagues hautes autant que des montagnes,” and “Mer canaille

46 This is one of ways of composing the titles in the work: to divide them between different lines and even stanzas: “Santé // Des infirmes.”

326

et vilaine des requins et des baleines.”47 Near the end of the poem, the metaphorical manner of representing the sea’s components prevails for a moment: “Mer de toutes les larmes de l’humanité.” Whether the sea is being represented as an element friendly to mankind is not clear. The depiction of the eeriness of the sea brings to mind the popular idea of beasts that are a threat to humans: “Mer des grands trous qui s’ouvrent à la façon des griffes et des gueules.” Nevertheless, sometimes the character of the sea is presented in a vaguer manner, as in the first line—“Mer des beaux rêves en partance”—which may provoke regret for something that has passed, but just as with the sea’s ebbs and flows, consolation is brought by the second invocation: “Mer des retours de joie, de triomphe et de gloire.” The closer we come to the end of the work, the more the sea is depicted as a ghastly spectacle, by which pain comes to people in an irreversible way: “Mer des péris sans cierge et sans cercueil,” “Mer des cadavres verts qui roulent dans la houle, yeux ouverts,” “Mer des navires perdus qui ne reviendront plus,” “Mer des vieux sans soutien, des veuves et des orphelins,” “Mer des blasphèmes, des adieux, des épouvantes et de la mort.” Now every element of the seaside landscape is associated with death: “Mer des goëmons sinistres comme des linceuls.” The imbalance between the supplications “Aime-nous!” and “Epargne-nous!” demonstrates that the main aim of the worshipper is to seek a protector in the face of the sea’s might rather than to emphasize his relation to the sea. It should be asked whether the sea, to which supplications are directed, entirely replaces the presence of sacrum, or whether its presence can be spotted in the fiber of the text. In fact, several sacral motifs are present, such as the funeral motifs and the invocation to “Mer des calvaires impuissants sur le mole” which disconcertingly brings to mind the idea that God needs to humble himself in the face of the sea’s power. There is only one invocation in which the element “mer” could be omitted and the metaphorical title could be presented separately, namely the last: “Mer qu’on dirait une vengeance lâche du bon Dieu.” This seems somehow to restore the order of the world, presenting God as a stern father.

16.3  Homage to the Author of the Passing Age Les Litanies de Victor Hugo by Émile Blémont, with their subtitle which indicates the genre, “poème dramatique” (staged in 1902), maintains the pattern of the litanic prayer in a sense that the work is a kind of public prayer—for Hugo, who

47 Saint-Pol-Roux, Litanies de la mer (Mortemart: Rougerie, 2010), 8.

327

had died in 1885.48 Although this work introduces us to the new century, there are two reasons why we consider it proper to analyze it within the nineteenthcentury framework of the current chapter: firstly, the author’s close links with the Parnassianist movement, and secondly, the spirit of the work itself, which is devoted to an important personage of the literary world who had then passed away, and who had himself been the author of many litanic verses. In the structure of the prayer, more than one person has a voice. What is more, the poem has stanzas delimitating the proper part of a prayer and it also uses a repetitive formula. The series of invocations is not long; it contains only seven metaphorical titles for Hugo and it is interrupted by six-line stanzas which in a more descriptive way praise the character of the author and his works. Already in the first line, the reader becomes acquainted with the most often repeated expression of the work; the chairetismic “Gloire à Victor Hugo”49 starts a four-line speech by Le Coryphée and also constitutes its last line. In turn, the final statement of Le Coryphée represents a modified shape of the initial line and includes exact repetition of other lines from the beginning of work. Therefore, “Gloire à Victor Hugo” opens and closes the poem and also plays the role of a recurring response by the choir. Apart from Le Coryphée and the choir, eight personifications take the floor: “La poésie de l’enfance, / l’amour, / l’héroïsme, / la vieillesse, / La Pitié, / La France, / L’Humanité, / La Nature.” Their role is to commemorate the praiseworthy acts of the writer and they describe in a figurative way his services to poetry. They are invoked in unspecified order, but it seems that in the first part, the path of life rules—that first speaks the poetry of infancy, then that of the attributes of adulthood, such as love and struggle, and finally that of old age. It is difficult to assess the role of the remaining four. Each personification introduces a different field of Hugo’s activity, but they have one feature in common, namely pathos. For instance, in the stanza recited by “France” we get the image of the author devoted to his motherland: “A la France il crie: « O ma mère! » / […] Il l’exalte, il est son Homère,” and La Pitié confesses fiercely, “Il dit, plein de pitié suprême, / A tout ce qui souffre: « Je t’aime ».” Moreover, several of the personifications imbue Hugo’s poetry with a sacred character. To 48 The trend for praising famous authors in litanic verse is seen also in Flamma tenax, 1922–1928 by Henri de Régnier, in which part of the poem “À Théodore de Banville” uses a chairetismic gene: “Salut” plus the repetition of “toi,” “en tes,” etc. The formula is anticipated by the quotation from Banville’s work with the incipit: “Vous en qui je salue une nouvelle aurore.” The poet is depicted nearly as the king of poetry: “en ta pourpre lyrique,” the voice of entire generation and its genius. 49 Émile Blémont, Les Litanies de Victor Hugo (Paris: Lemerre, 1902), 1.

328

give an illustration, “La poésie de l’enfance” calls infancy in the eyes of Hugo “une source pure et fleurie / de poésie et de bonheur,” comparing this power to Holy Mary’s bearing a fragile child who becomes the vanquisher of death. In the passage evoking Hugo’s love poetry, we read in the apostrophe to women that “il sacre d’un chant triomphal / Votre argile où luit l’idéal,” and according to another personification, “il ressuscite immortel.” In the invocations, the only repetitive element is Hugo’s name. In the metaphorical titles, none of the elements repeat, but a common feature is that these are most often abstract nouns: “bonté paternelle et féconde,” “foyer d’amour divinatoire,” “clarté sur l’océan qui gronde.” The portrait drawn of Hugo lacks originality and symbolic detail, and even the epithets are not concrete: “voix libre, éclatante et profonde.” The declaration made by “Nature” is not followed by the antonomasia of Hugo, as had been those of the other personifications, but in part, this role is taken by the first line of the last stanza of the speech of Le Coryphée which immediately follows. As I have noted above, it has a different shape than in the analogous stanza at the beginning, for instead of “Gloire à Victor Hugo dans la France et le monde!” we read, “Victor Hugo, génie illuminant le monde!”

16.4 Conclusion In the different types of litanic verse written during the closing years of the nineteenth century, we have observed several prayers directed to the Lord. It is an important change, in comparison with Romanticism, during which His person was thought too weak to be an addressee of human supplications. A visible general tendency is the choice of addressees other than those of the liturgical litanies, for instance, fallen women or evil powers, represented sometimes in the guise of natural phenomena. The authors of this period draw inspiration from various cultural areas and integrate different motifs into single works,50 which indicates a rather relaxed attitude toward the Christian contexts of the litanies, as they treat this heritage as one possible source out of many. A good illustration of this attitude can be found in the Litanies de la mer: in Richepin’s execution, a litany seems to be understood as a kind of reservoir of particularly symbolic images which can be associated with various phenomena. The form of litany is often deconstructed: the 50 Krzywkowski, “La litanie: une écriture sans fin de la fin,” 72: “le syncrétisme et l’humanisation de la figure féminine deviennent des éléments récurrents de la litanie littéraire.”

329

invocations are repeated rather arbitrarily, and the function of this self-governing repetition is to maintain the integrality of the theme of particular passages. The traditional verse pattern is used by many authors; the alexandrine again becomes one of the most popular meters. However, a concurrent form is the free composition of different line-lengths, which refers directly to the liturgical litanies. Another sign of this inclination is the often-met procedure of combining at least one Latin expression into the structure of the poem, including the title; it is probably a testimony of a particular taste for “latin mystique,” which at the turn of century was seen as an attractively symbolic language. Only Jules Laforgue managed to compose short-line litanic verse, and he did so with visible ironic intention. The litanic verse of this period does not describe modern reality or the changes in sociological and urban structures at the end of the nineteenth century. Litanic verse emerges in this period as a meter suitable for the evocation of the past—even its use at the start of the new century by Blémont has a nostalgic tint.

330

17.  The Félibrige The revival of the Occitan language in nineteenth-century Europe cannot be overlooked in the history of litanic verse, as we have observed in the medieval chapter how the poetry of the Occitan region contributed to the prevalence of this form. Nevertheless, we should not argue that the presence of Occitan litanic verse in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—important, both in number and in quality—should be explicated only as a consequence of the heritage of the troubadours.51 Undoubtedly, some of the motifs evoked by nineteenth-century Occitan authors from the Félibrige group of poets, who wanted to revive the poetry of this language and regulate its rules, look troubadour esque at first glance. In a poem from the collection La Viradona by Alexandre Langlade, the anaphora on the level of stanzas is focused on a confession of love—“T’aime quand”52—and is followed by a description of the season—the middle of the hot summer (August)—and its connotations (the sun, the landscape shimmering in the heat). This work corresponds closely with the litanic verse of Peire Vidal: “agrada·m lo cortes temps d’estiu.” However, the nineteenth-century work is less courtly and more fervent—the lady love crosses the fields and hangs out the laundry, and all of these actions provide occasions to express praise. The rural scenery is central to Occitan works of the Félibrige movement, but the litanic verse of this period is primarily used for prayer-like texts. The proportion between profane and religious litanic verse in the ninetheenth century is more unequal than in the troubadours’ poetry. Nevertheless, it was not the Académie des Jeux floraux53 that

51 Jacques De Caluwé, “La richesse des formes strophiques dans la poésie lyrique de Frédéric Mistral,” Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire, vol. 47, no. 3 (1969): 873–884. 52 Alexandre Langlade, La Viradona (Montpellier: Hamelin Ricateau, 1873), 26–28. Cf. also Marius Girard, “L’amour. A Mademoiselle X***” 53 The poetic tournaments in Toulouse were no longer the breeding ground for Marian poetry using litanic verse—it is significant that when Pierre-Joseph-Jude Patissié wanted to employ laudatory lines to the Mother of Christ in “La Vision. Hymne,” he put them in quotation marks, as if their unmediated use was somehow alien to the forms of contemporary poetry: “Pour chanter les bienfaits de la Reine des Cieux / Il venait d’accorder sa lyre. / Il lui disait: […] Espérance des malheureux” (Recueil de l’Académie des Jeux Floraux, Toulouse: Douladoure, 1842, 81).

331

was the centre of the renaissance of Occitan litanic verse, as Occitan was only just reborn in 1895 as the language of the tournament alongside French.54 When assessing the scale of formula, we should remember, that while French litanic paraphrases sometimes profit from preserving invocations in Latin, the Occitan works reflect not bi-linguisme but multilinguisme.55 The Provençal version of the Marian litany Li Letanio de la Santo Vierge56 was published in Armana prouvençau, the official magazine of the Félibrige, in 1872. Moussu dé Gibloux, in his short (twenty-eight line) poem “Préga pér naoutrés” from the volume Flurétas (1844), utilizes the anaphora on “Pér,” which accompanies the enumeration of people for whom the prayer should be recited. In this way, the title and general pattern of the litanic verse of this work remind one of Hugo’s poem, which we have analyzed in the previous chapter: Pér l’homé qué tgémis din l’affrusa présoun, Pér l’énfan qu’a pas vi lou boun Diou din soun âma, Pér l’énfantét qu’a pas éncara sa rasoun, Pér lou tjouïne home énfin qu’atén sa douça flama; Pér lou péra qu’a pa counougut soun énfan, Pér la méra surtout qué né mouris, péccaïré!57

The request for the prayer of intercession is directed to a beloved woman who is presented traditionally as pure and beautiful as an angel. The horizon of those who need help and peace in their hearts is wide: the prayer should be said for those who are innocent and for those who are unhappy in love and marriage. The author combines the collective and individual perspective, as according to the text it is “his” God (“A moun Diou”) to whom he calls, but he also confesses “our” faults: “Nostras pénas.” In “Lou Régard,” Moussu dé Gibloux once again presents the woman he adores as possessing an innocent heart and pure gaze. The main aim of the litanic verse is to express the wish of the speaker to guard and maintain the emotion that reigns over the lovers:

54 In the preceding century, according to Émile Ripert, the Académie de Jeux Floraux “vit au XVII siècle changer sa destinée et devint un agent de la propagande française et royale” (Émile Ripert, Le Félibrige, Paris: Armand Colin, 1948, 165). 55 Régis Bertrand, “Usages religieux du provençal aux XVIIIe et XIXe siècles,” in Les Parlers de la foi: Religion et langues régionales, ed. Michel Lagrée (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 1995), 113. 56 Armana prouvençau (1872): 24–25. Cf. three years later publication: Letanio di sant, poésie romane du xiv siècle, publiée par V. Lieutaud (Marseille: Boy et Lebon, 1875). 57 Moussu dé Gibloux, Louisa (Mounpéié: Ménagé, 1850), 144.

332

Aïmén-nous pér dooura lous lâguis dé la vida, Aïmén-nous pér tapa nostras grandas doulous, Aïmén-nous pér qué Diou, din nostra âma passida, Ague un témple à sa glouéra étérnéla, infinida, Aïmén-nous pér trouba dé tcharmas as poutous; Aïmén-nous pér çabal savoura lou ciél mêma; Aïmén-nous pér tasta lou bounhur étérnél.58

The religious perspective does not vanish from this love poem, the emotion is the reflection of God’s protection. It can serve as a temple for the glory of the Lord, and the lovers’ feelings anticipate eternal happiness. The repetitive elements— three words—occur in the onset of lines, but each of them can be divided into two segments: a kind of recommendation precedes the enumeration of the reason why love should be managed. Among Théodore Aubanel’s works, we can distinguish two that represent analogous tendencies: one example is a prayer and the other can be considered confessional poetry. Unlike the foregoing works, Aubanel’s prayer concentrates on the addressee, not on the addresser. Paradoxically, the perspective is wider in Aubanel’s works—their scale reaches from one person to the whole community and is not restricted to a single pair in love, as in dé Gibloux’s poems. A mere glance at the shape and the motto of poem XXIV of Aubanel’s La Mióugrano entre duberto (1860), reveals the sacral connotations—firstly, because of the anaphoric sequence with the alternate regularity of the lines that evokes the litanies, and secondly, on the grounds that the epigraph “Planh sobre planh! dolor sobre dolor!” is derived from the Martiroulògi de la Glèizo de-z-Ais, the fourteenth-century manuscript containing the offices of the diocese of Aix. The analysis of the content of both the repetitive and variable parts will allow us to assess the sacral tendency: I’a long-tèms que moun cor acampo, — Tant de fueio an toumba qu’escoundon li camin; — I’a long-tèms que moun cor acampo, I’a long-tèms que moun cor acampo un grand charpin; I’a long-tèms que moun cor acampo, — Rèsto plus dins li bos que li brancage mort; — I’a long-tèms que moun cor acampo Lou charpin de l’amour, e qu’espère la mort; — La Mort, davans iéu, toujour lampo!59

58 Ibid., 162. 59 Théodore Aubanel, Œuvres complètes, vol. 1 (Avignon: Aubanel, 1973), 70.

333

The first person singular lyrical “I” speaks of the passage of time, which contributed to the entanglement in his heart—this message is the one most often conveyed in this poem, and constitutes a recurrent element. Instead of having revealed to us the individual emotions, we get a depiction of a forest landscape that conveys decay and confusion: the leafs have fallen, the roads are covered, the boughs are dead and dry. In some way these lines which vary metrically are semantically parallel, as we may call each second line a mental landscape—the disorientation reflects both the emotions of the speaker and the paths covered with leaves. There exist, however, two exceptions to this division: the fourth and eighth lines, which continue the thought expressed in the main statement. In the first case, the phrase, “I’a long-tèms que moun cor acampo,” repeats the entire repetitive line and adds a new element, “un grand charpin,” while in the second, this component is specified—it is “Lou charpin de l’amour”—and the line finishes with the touching epiphora of “mort.” Therefore, we should note that two fundamental categories in this poem, anxiety (the great sorrow suggested in the motto) and death, recur in the final part of lines and in the onset (“charpin”), or twice in the final part of a line as well as in the onset (“mort”). This construction creates a cumulative effect of suffering, and at the same time, of pursuit: the speaker seeks death, but it eludes him. “Nostro Damo d’Africo” by Aubanel, from the same collection, contains several characteristics of litanic verse, as it is a prayer using a repetitive formula and the enumeration of antonomasias. The delimitative frame can also be recognized: the first stanza directly invokes Africa, giving it several names: “Vièio Africo,” “O roso roujo, o bello roso”; and exploring its martyrdom. Additionally, the last stanza contains the act of final dedication to Jesus Christ, who is the life, hope and love. Nevertheless, the lyrical “I” in this moment is not the voice of an indefinite person, speaking in the name of the community, but the poet himself, the member of the Félibrige: “L’obro proumiero dóu felibre.” The main function of the poem is to adore Holy Mary, the patron of Africa, and beg for her intercession, as well as to sustain the faithful. The stanzas of the middle part of work are all devoted to the Holy Virgin and her cult, but the pattern changes—the first stanza of this part contains the repetitive component: Roso d’Africo, Nostro-Damo, Pieta, pieta de nòstis amo! Nosto terro éi cremado, o roso! mando-nous, Cuome uno douço plueio, L’eigagno de ti fueio, Lou prefum de ta flous.60

60 Ibid., 166.

334

The brief and defined titles with short and expressive calls from the stanzarefrain appear as if they have been uttered in a single breath. The concentration of invocations, immediately succeeded by the litanic supplication, is followed by a more descriptive demand, examining the features of the rose of Africa—this structure is repeated four times in the poem. Between these stanzas we encounter a description of the planned chapel, an appeal to travelers to seek repose under the rose tree of Holy Mary and to motivate them to build this place of worship. The most poetically refined stanza is the last, which is located between two that are repetitive; it is marked by parallelism and reflects the personal experience of the speaker: Vierge, ai paga ma redevènço: Mis amour an brula dins toun encensié d’or… Vierge, refresco-me lou cor! E’ntre l’Africo e la Prouvènço, Que touto velo ane à bon port!61

As we can see in this passage, not only is the stanza-refrain dynamic, but it also profits from the acceleration of the rhythm (through, for instance, exclamations) as well as the moments of hesitation. The changes of tone are quick and marked by good wishes by a person who has suffered greatly. Remaining with the genre of prayer-like poems, we pass to another poet, Mèste Eisseto, who is known mainly for his devotion to Saint Mary of the Sea, who features in the litanic verse in “I Santo” (1874). The chant contains a refrain which is a prayer for intercession: Gràndi Santo Tout s’aplanto Quand vous cantan E qu’escoutan. A nòsti cant Venès douna la man62

Since the supplications are repeated many times in the form of the refrain, the content of the stanzas could be devoted to another litanic feature: a stream of antonomasias introduced by a repetitive, though not regular, structure: “You are” or “you are…, who…” As these are the quatrains which are used in the poem, the pattern is easily recognizable in these few lines:

61 Ibid., 168. 62 Mèste Eisseto, Li Saladello (Marsiho: Rual, 1901), 15.

335

Vàutri sias li dous bèus astre Qu’an lou Rose pèr mirau; Sias lis ensigne di pastre, Sias lou soulas di malaut. Gràndi santo etc… Sias li flour apoustoulico Que la mar nous aduguè; Prefum de fe catoulico Que tant liuen s’espandiguè.

Other names are found in the following expressions: “li dos estello / Que lou crist faguè veni,” “Sias lou rai, bèlli princesso,” “Vàutri sias li bèlli Rèino,” “Sias amigo di pescaire.” Lis Isclo d’or by Frederic Mistral, which is the most important litanic verse in Félibrige, is a collection in which litanic features are mainly present in the religious texts, as devotion—chiefly Marian, regarding the paraphrase of Luc (L’Anounciado), and poems such as “Pèr Nosto-Damo d’Africo,” “Pèr NostoDamo de Moust-Serrat” and several others cited below—is one of the great themes of this work. Among the litanically marked Marian pieces found in the Li Cantico section of Lis Isclo d’or, we should cite “Pèr Nosto-Damo de Roumigié” (1858), in which the refrain contains both invocations and one supplication: O Rèino bello De la capello De Roumigié. O Nosto-Damo, Sauvas nosto amo De tout dangié!63

Closer to the end of the poem, other stanzas contain Marian titles with the anaphora on “o”: “O Vierge bruno,” “O casto Roso,  / Que Diéu arroso.” The pattern of “Pèr Nosto-Damo de Lumiero” is similar, but the features that are most interesting from the point of view of litanic verse are concentrated in the refrains: Nosto-Damo de Lumiero, Tiras-nous de la sourniero Que rènd nòsti jour amar,

63 Frédéric Mistral, Lis Isclo d’or: recuei de pouesio diverso (Avignon: Roumanille, 1876), 464.

336

Bello estello matiniero, Bello estello de la mar!64

“A Dono Blanco” (from the Li Sirventés section) is not a Marian poem, but it employs Marian metaphors and attracts our attention mainly for its structural frame; it begins and ends with seven-line stanzas with irregular lines, while the main part contains quatrains with an anaphora on the level of stanzas. The longer stanzas, which are nearly identical, explain the urgent need to chant the glory of Maria das Neves, wife of Alfonso Carlos of Bourbon, who was the youngest brother of the pretender to the throne of Spain, Carlos VII—the chanson should be disseminated from Provence to Catalonia and the people (like the author) are ashamed by her courage. “Dono Blanco” (as she is addressed) is anaphoric for twelve instances, and is in every stanza followed in the same line by other titles: “douço luno,” “jouino rèino,” “amo guerriero,” “claro espaso,” “santo femo,” “chivaliero / De la Glèiso que soufris,” “digno espouse.”65 As we can see, two main thematic circles enclose the antonomasias. Firstly, emphasis is placed on Maria das Neves’ participation in the military campaign of the Third Carlist War (“dins li nivo / Vas luchant”). Secondly, the author employs common titles, suitable for young women, that accentuate the status of lady, wife and queen. The litanic verse used in this context enriches the vision of the “Doña Blanca” who is “battling for her God” in a world driven crazy by the Antichrist—thus the Marian language seems appropriate for this laudation. Reading through Mistral’s volume in search of themes other than the adoration of Our Lady, we encounter “Pèr la crous de Prouvènço” and the paraphrase of Pater Noster, “Lou Pater,” but the litanic verse is evident in paraphrases of the psalms: “Lou Saume de la penitènci” appears in the section Li Sirventés. The anaphora on “Segnour” is used 24 times, that is, the same as the number of stanzas of the poem divided into four parts. Such predominance is enriched by another characteristic of litanic verse, namely parallelism in expressions following the invocation to the Lord (also on the level of stanzas), and the supplicatory character of this prayer of intercession. The repetitions are formed by the first plural form of the verb (“aven”) in the second part and the expression “au noum de tant de” in the third one. The poem was written in November 1870, and the landscape of the battlefield is evoked from its first lines, where the front is mentioned.66 The first subsection identifies the penalty imposed by God and introduces a vision of the

64 Ibid., 474. 65 Ibid., 136–138. 66 Frédéric Mistral, Les Îles d’or (Paris: Lemerre, 1943), 199.

337

world plunged into chaos, of the collision of past and present, of the sins committed by the community in “lou mau passa”: “E i’a plus res que nous enveje, / Nàutri qu’aièr / Fasian li fièr!”67 The premonition of what may happen “senso ta misericòrdi” anticipates the object of the prayer, which is the Lord’s mercy. The second subsection identifies the sins that should be confessed: the ancient virtues and natal traditions have been lost, the temples have been closed, the Bible scoffed at and the people have become the slaves of progress. The litanic verse applied clearly in the following section, the third, is a sign to pass from repentance to action—to implore favors: Segnour, au noum de la pauriho. Au noum di fort, Au noum di mort Qu’auran peri pèr la patrio, Pèr soun devé E pèr sa fe! Segnour, pèr tant de revirado, Pèr tant de plour E de doulour; Pèr tant de vilo desoundrado, Pèr tant de sang Valènt e sant! Segnour, pèr tant de maluranço, De chaplamen. De hrulamen; Pèr tant de dòu sus nosto Franco, Pèr tant d’afront Sus noste front.68

The rhythm of six-line stanza combining the octosyllable with two couplets of four-syllable lines, together with the changing anaphora, all prevent readers from being wearied by the repetition and let them test if the same formulae work when they are applied in the various meters. For instance, the last two lines, even if they are not coherent for the reason of the anaphora, they are joined by exact rhyme. Until now, we have not addressed the content of the supplications, as there are three special stanzas devoted to them, which are not directly consecutive:

67 Ibid., 200. 68 Ibid., 206.

338

Segnour, desarmo ta justiço! Regardo un pau Pereiçavau; E ’scouto enfin la cridadisso Di matrassa E di blessa!69

The others also lack formulae and are not anaphoric, and continue the theme of regret for the past: “Perdouno-nous nòstis óufenso, / Car regretan / Lou mau d’autan,” “Mando eiçabas / Un rai de pas! / Segnour, ajudo nosto Causo.” This is the prayer of the patriot who speaks mainly for the community and evokes the “Gallo-Roman” identity. To earn the mercy of the Savior, he invokes ordinary people—it is not saints or famous heroes, but his compatriots who have suffered, and this is the reason for the elevation of their status. The second volume of Lis Isclo d’or is much less litanic—the sole example of the use in it of litanic verse is, however, original to Mistral in the sense that it does not appear in a work of devotion. The history of Tarascon’s castle and the fairy imprisoned in it is poetically transposed in “L’Amiradou” (1877), and this poem is not totally without a sacral perspective. There is one mention of God, but the author primarily seeks to impress the reader with the form of the poem and nature of the events presented, invoking personages that recall the fabled and troubadouresque Provence. In each one of the twenty-two tercets, the second line is an exact repetition of the first hemistich of the first line. The impression of the identity of these lines (despite the clear metrical difference) is increased by the fact that the third line is of the same length as the second, and often starts with the same words that begin the second hemistich of the first line. In fact, this structure may suggest that for the repetitive content of first hemistich of the first line, the response is prepared. However, it may succeed it directly (as the second hemistich) or be moved to the next line (the second and third lines resemble the two pieces of a fourteen-syllable line that has been broken up). Nevertheless, not all stanzas harmonize with the pattern in which the beginning of the second hemistich corresponds with the onset of the third line; among those that do, we may quote the initial stanza: “Au castèu de Tarascoun i’ a ‘no rèino, i’ a ‘no fado, / Au castèu de Tarascoun / I’a ‘no fado que s’escound,”70 and two others in which an additional factor of parallelism can be seen—the final parts of the first and third lines are correlated on the layer of meaning:

69 Ibid., 208. 70 Ibid., 94.

339

Sa mandorro dins la man, es vengu ‘n pichot troubaire, Sa mandorro dins la man, Es vengu coume un amant. A canta tout lou matin li prouësso de si paire, A canta tout lou matin Lou trelus dóu sang latin.71

Others maintain the rhythmical values of trochaic meter.72 The correlations between the troubadour and the lover as well as the prowess of the ancestors with Latin blood allow us to continue the line of interpretation that thematically, as has already been said, Mistral returns to the “proud” Provence, the land of troubadours and the heirs of Latin civilization. It is this troubadour who wins the heart of the fairy as well as—just as in the fables—the land: because he cannot boast of his wealth, he distinguishes himself by his love for the native land. The fairy presents the landscape to the troubadour, explaining that everything belongs to him, because whoever is capable of reading in the book of creation will possess all that he looks upon. The litanic theme in Occitan poetry is also evident in its other renaissance in the 1930s and 40s, as can be demonstrated on the examples of two works, one composed shortly before the Second World War and the other near its end, by two poets born in the nineteenth century and in various ways showing their affinity with the Félibrige movement, Valèri Bernard and Marcelle Drutel. Letanìo (1934) by Bernard was written shortly before his death (which occurred in 1936) and published posthumously in 1946. It contains seventeen Latin Marian invocations which form the titles of sections of varied stanzaic pattern. The litanic convention germinates in a few initial depictions of litanic titles, but it is not fully developed. The most interesting part for us is the series of meditations above three invocations: Mater Cristi, Mater Divinae Gratiae and Mater purissima. All three sections are composed of three five-line stanzas in which the presence of a refrain can be recognized. It contains two exclamations: the first one is the Marian invocation mentioned in the title, translated into Occitan—therefore it is an innovative element of litanic verse, changing in each stanza—and the second is repeated in all three sections as it raises a call, “O Rèino dins lou cèu!” The content of the stanzas meditates, in a descriptive manner, on the mystery of Christ’s

71 Ibid., 96. 72 Charles Alfred Downer, Frédéric Mistral, poet and leader in Provence (New York: The Columbia University Press, 1901), 77.

340

birth, the qualities of the Holy Virgin and her blessings for people, expressing gratitude without making supplications. The Cinq Prègo (1944) of Drutel are inspired, in turn, by the litanies to Christ, and elements of litanic verse occur throughout these five prayers, mainly in the first, second and fifth. First, in “Prègo dóu matin,” the repetitive thanksgiving formula is brought to the fore: “Segnour, vous rènde gràci” is succeeded in each couplet by the specification of the object of grace: Segnour, vous rènde gràci Pèr la vido soubrado encaro aquesto niue! Segnour, vous rènde gràci De la som sènso esfrai que nous avès garda. […] Segnour, vous rènde gràci De nous agué sousta, mau despié noste ourguei. Segnour, vous rènde gràci Pèr li mort, qu’aurés mes en glòri aquesto niue.73

As we can see, the collective experience of being under the Savior’s protection and of the recognition of one’s own vices is juxtaposed in this poem with the highly personal enumeration of the values that are most important for the speaker. After this part, several petitions are presented in a humble and parallel manner: “Vous demandan” repeated four times; “Alunchas, O Segnour”; “Esvartes, O Segnour”; “Escalas, O Segnour”; etc. A strong litanic marker is the final supplication: “Agués pieta pèr nautre e paras nous la man!” In the second prayer, “Prègo de miejour,” litanic verse does not appear from the very beginning, and when it does, we note that it brings calm and regularity into the poem, comprising various stanzaic forms (couplets, quatrains and even single line) and line patterns (from six to twelve syllable lines): Pèr li libre d’elèi que sauvon la pensado, Segnour, Vous suplican! Pèr la Musico Santo e li glèiso soulenno, Segnour, Vous suplican! Pèr li veiriau pourpau que canton vòsti glòri, Segnour, Vous suplican!

73 Marcelle Drutel, Plang e sirventés: pouèmo: 1933–1967 (Cavaillon: Impr. Mistral, 1969), 44–45.

341

Pèr tóuti li mounumen, frucho de la Sagesso, Segnour, Vous suplican! Pèr lis obro d’amour que renègon lis ome, Segnour, Vous suplican!74

The scheme is comparable to the previously analyzed thanksgiving section: one shorter line containing the simple invocation and a repetitive formula (respectively of grace and supplication). The only difference is that the litanic passage is much longer, as it contains fifteen such couplets and the order of lines is changed, which is natural, however, as the object of intercession is given before the petition. Even the enumerated objects, notions and emotions correspond to the morning prayer, which includes, for instance, the expression “Pèr vosto obro d’amour.” Nonetheless, these enumerations are not exact imitations of the invocations from the section devoted to the life of Jesus Christ in Litaniae Sanctorum or Litaniae Sanctissimi Nominis Iesu which start with the analogous anaphora: “Per.” Even if some key words are included in the morning prayer, such as “la vido” and “li mort,” they do not refer to Jesus’ acts, but to human experience. The midday prayer is thematically congruent, because instead of the Savior’s life and passion, for instance, there are mentiones of the soldiers’ sacrifices and the achievements of human thought (the fruits of Wisdom) from many domains: “Pèr tout ço qu’an sounja li pouèto e li pastre,” “Pèr tout ço que fasié lou mounde à voste image.” The fifth poem does not exhibit new tendencies in Drutel’s litanic verse; it is wholly addressed to Jesus Christ and is distinguished by the regularity of its metrical pattern—the couplets (this is a short stanza in comparison with the other poems in Cinq Prègo, which contain, for instance, five-line or fourteenline stanza). The main difference is that the call to our “Seigneur” and the repetitive formula—this time chairetismic: “vous saludan”75—and also the expression starting with “pèr,” all occur on one line. The second line contains a detailed landscape description—the fact that each second line is not characterized by any kind of anaphoric beginning is, in fact, a more efficient way of depicting the richness of “la bèuta moundo” and “la terro bello.” In turn, the use of the anaphoric “pèr” in the two previously discussed prayers enhances the effect of insistence of the petitions.

74 Ibid., 47. 75 Ibid., 55.

342

18. Various Paths to Litanic Verse up to World War II: Jammes, Claudel and Others Litanic verse entered the twentieth century reinforced by its frequent use in the last decades of the previous century. At the same time, a polarization which had become clear in that period marked the distinct formal and thematic determinants of litanic verse: we have observed that some poets reached for the most popular meter while others preferred not to lock this form into any of the established stanzaic or line patterns. Regarding the themes that were addressed, either litanic verse was employed for earnest and devotional prayers, or it was used to expose the sinfulness of the contemporary world and petitions were made only to enter this state of sin in a more profound and sophisticated way. With the exception of Francis Jammes and Paul Claudel, in the twentieth century litanic verse was used by authors sparingly and as exceptional cases in their overall output. The present chapter will discuss a few paths that litanic verse would follow in modern poetry, and depict the tension it revealed between those poems that sought to create an ambiance of private conversation with the deities, and those in which a flow of anaphoric series was meant to create abstract effects in an ambiance of secular imagery.

18.1  The Last Manifestations of Decadent Litanic Verse The “Litanie de la Haine” (La Vénus des aveugles, 1904) by Renée Vivien should be read as a kind of litanies de l’amour à rebours; the first line of the poem suggests such a reading: “La Haine nous unit, plus forte que l’Amour.”76 The use of litanic verse is in this poem dictated by a desire to capture the reader’s attention, as it dominates the first part of the work. At the same time, it is this part of the poem in which there is a collective perspective. In turn, the conclusions are mainly the confession of an individual and lack litanic features. The repetitive formula does not resemble the typical litanic type, but it corresponds with the shape of the Litanies de l’amour de Dieu and Litanies de l’amour de Marie. As in the litanies of the Church, the responses are, “Que nous vous aimons, ô mon Dieu,” “Nous vous aimerons toujours, ô mon Dieu,” “Nous vous aimons, ô Marie” etc., but here we encounter the phrase “Nous haïssons,” which is placed at the beginning of lines, and later the identity of the object of hate. A 76 Renée Vivien, Poésies completes (Paris: Deforges, 1986), 200.

343

characteristic of the community represented by the speaker, for instance, in the line “Amantes sans amant, épouses sans époux,” can be thought to allude to the paradoxical Marian qualities described in litanic invocations such as “Mère toujours vierge.” In general, the poem is an expression of women—women who are strong with the experiences of many female generations and diabolic in their acts and nature. The emotion of hate is directed chiefly toward manifestations of life, creation and renewal: “Nous haïssons le rire et le rythme du jour, / Le regard du printemps au néfaste retour; […] l’immonde soupir / D’où naîtront les douleurs des êtres à venir.” The atmosphere is deadly: “Les odeurs monteront vers moi, sombres et fortes, / Avec le souvenir diaphane des Mortes.” Then, human desire and the battle between the sexes are excoriated; one of the lines could almost be used as a motto for anarchists: “Nous haïssons la Foule et les Lois et le Monde.” The revolutionary attitude toward the world includes religious offices: “Nous renierons les pleurs mystiques de jadis / Et l’expiation des cierges et des lys.” The elements that are lacking in this litany compared to similar litanies of the Church, such as the explanation of types of love or its motivation—“C’est de tout notre esprit,” “C’est plus que tous les biens et tous les honneurs,” “C’est parce que vous êtes le souverain bien,” “Dans la pauvreté comme dans l’abondance”—testify to the total vision of hate, which has no specific reason or kinds, only many addressees. The reason why the message of the litanic verse is devoted to hatred is revealed in two lines—it is more beautiful than love: “Plus belle que l’Amour, la Haine est ma maîtresse,  / Et je convoite en toi la cruelle prêtresse.” The motif of surpassing the forces of darkness looks as if it may have been directly taken from Baudelaire’s “Les Litanies de Satan,” in which Satan is called “le plus beau des Anges.” Marie Huot’s “Les Litanies des bêtes” (Missel de Notre-Dame des Solitudes, 1908) bears the subtitle “Selon le rituel du Grand-Prêtre Baudelaire,” which indicates that the primary source of paraphrase could be the “Les Litanies de Satan” rather than the litanies used in the Catholic Church. Indeed, the structure of “Les Litanies des bêtes” is copied from Baudelaire—the couplets are followed by one-line refrains mentioning the addressees of prayer (plural, however, rather than singular as in the “Les Litanies de Satan”) and containing the supplicatory formula in an unchanged form. The couplets describe the addressees in descriptive form, using structures with predicates, and with an anaphora on the level of the stanzas: “Vous qui”77 (parallel to “toi, qui” in Baudelaire’s poem). Nevertheless,

77 Alphonse Séché, ed., Les Muses françaises; anthologie des femmes-poètes (Paris: Michaud, 1908), 166–167.

344

the poem differs in tone from Baudelaire’s litanies, because it is a desperate appeal more than a plea for mercy. However, the fact that the poem is a prayer is clearly stated; instead of their being a supplementary “Prière” as in Baudelaire’s poem, Huot integrates the prayer into the course of the text: “Vous, pour qui j’ai prié, mains jointes.” The opening and closing stanzas of “Les Litanies des bêtes” have distinct meaning—only in the initial stanza are the addressees defined as “doux anges”78 and only in the final call does the supplicatory formula take shape: “Chères bêtes, buvez et mangez tout mon cœur!” in place of “Chères bêtes, buvez et mangez dans mon cœur!” These two modifications are crucial for an analysis of the poem regarding the identity of the addressees and the character of the repeated exclamation. Considering the addressees, the content of the initial stanza suggests that for “doux anges” another proper name could be “anges déchus”: “Doux anges, que l’Archange a sous sa dépendance, / Que sur terre entraîna sa sombre déchéance.” This suggestion is based on the comparison with “Les Litanies de Satan,” whose first line describes “le plus savant et le plus beau des Anges.” In the poem of Huot, under the name of Archangel might there in fact be an archfiend hidden? Additionally, a remark from the eighth stanza—“Vous, qui savez […] / L’enfer de la luxure et le ciel du silence”—may be read as an allusion to the condition of Satan in Baudelaire’s text: “Gloire et louange à toi, Satan, dans les hauteurs / Du Ciel, où tu régnas, et dans les profondeurs / De l’Enfer, où, vaincu, tu rêves en silence!” However, it bears noting that the angels’ knowledge of heaven and hell is described as being present, whereas the participation of the Prince of Darkness in the glory of heaven has passed. Now his realm is that of silence. The ironic title in the refrain, “chères bêtes,” stands in opposition to the previously used name of “doux anges,” neutral or even positive. This opposition is visible also in the next stanzas, in which the addressees are represented either as highly moral beings: Vous, dont l’instinct est droit et clair comme une lance. Et qu’un Dieu de bonté fit à sa ressemblance. […] Vous, qui nous apprenez le pardon des offenses Et nous initiez à la reconnaissance.

or as the opposite: Vous, qui dormez en paix avec la Conscience Où Bien et Mal ont la même insignifiance.

78 Ibid., 164.

345

[…] Vous, qui savez d’Eros les affres et les transes. L’enfer de la luxure et le ciel du silence,

Undoubtedly, the addressees are conceived as powerful, unearthly creatures (“qui gardez du ciel l’obscure souvenance / Et reflétez son jour dans votre Transparence”) who rule over the person speaking by virtue of their powers: “Vous, qui sentez dans l’air le Malheur qui s’avance  / Et voyez de la Mort l’invisible présence”; “Vous, avec qui je suis en tendre confidence, / En adoration et en intelligence.” Nevertheless, it is worth noting that the self-portrait of the speaker contains elements similar to the attributes of the poem’s addressees: “L’enfer de la luxure et le ciel du silence” is juxtaposed with “Mes limbes, mon aurore.” We can also question whether “ma sainte ignorance” recalls the angels’ sleeping in peace, which blurs the distinction between good and evil. The speaker, on the one hand, treats the angels with respect and pledges in the present tense total obedience to them—“Vous, devant qui je suis pleine d’obéissance, / Ainsi qu’une servante, une humble providence”—yet on the other, there is an overtone of regret for acts she has done in her devotion to them: Vous, pour qui j’ai vêtu la toge, pris la lance, Réveillé, des aïeux la fougue et la vaillance, Chères bêtes, buvez et mangez dans mon cœur! Vous, pour qui j’ai rampé, renié mes décences, Egorgé mes orgueils, fouaillé mes répugnances, Chères bêtes, buvez et mangez dans mon cœur! […] Vous, pour qui j’ai souffert de la Grande Souffrance Et devant qui je suis toujours en repentance, Chères bêtes, buvez et mangez tout mon cœur!

The interpretation of the refrain is important for shedding light upon the reason for the state of her soul. The supplicatory formula is an imprecise paraphrase of Jesus’ words during the Last Supper: “Prenez, mangez, ceci est mon corps. […] Buvez-en tous; car ceci est mon sang.” Instead of the body and blood, Huot names the heart, which seems to harmonize with the nature of the speech in which the emotions, the throbbing of the heart and the sudden decisions determine the behavior of the speaker more than rational choices. Most of the poem’s refrains speak about the desire to wreak devastation  i n s i d e   the heart of the lyrical “I.” It may signify that the struggle mentioned above, the distressing conflict between desired pleasure and the need to repent—“les affres,” as it is called in the 346

poem—takes place in the heart of the speaker and makes for its destruction. The various mutually contradictory attitudes of the speaker toward the temptations mentioned in the poem—“des aïeux la fougue et la vaillance” and the oppositional confession “[j’ai] pleuré des minuits sous mes poings d’impuissance”— reveal the severity of the internal battle. The desirable state is the one described above: when good and evil are no longer burdens, “ont la même insignificance.” The modification of the formula (not “dans” but “tout mon cœur”) could be understood as the final call for annihilation which puts a stop to this contest—sin cannot be ingrained in a heart that does not exist. Conceivably, the presentiment of the approaching end of existence also lies behind the expression of the final request—taken, as we have mentioned above, from the words of Jesus on the eve of his Passion. The last manifestations of litanies à rebours that have been briefly analyzed in this chapter based on two examples—strictly speaking, on two female examples—show that the imitative treatments of Baudelaire’s famous poem or of Gourmont’s pomp, which include, for instance, a fierce rejection of values (not only Christian values, but also civil laws and the rules of middle-class life), an exaggerated despair and many attempts to surpass one’s predecessors in the range of diabolic motifs, are not conducive to poetic achievement, and sooner or later are likely to generate weariness. In the following chapter, we will analyze one more example of women’s poetry, whose ambiance is, however, different — more open to brightness, life and even to the sacral sphere.

18.2  One More Example of Litanic Verse Praising the Rose The title of Anna de Noailles’ poem “Éloge de la rose” (Les Éblouissements, 1907) anticipates the eulogistic aim of the work,79 but does not reveal that this aim is to be achieved through the presence of a series of laudatory names. This is the main litanic trait in the poem; the metaphorical titles of the rose are introduced in the quatrains with the invocation “Rose” in their onset. The question is: what values are introduced with the use of litanic device in a poem of non-sacral character, whose ambiance from the very beginning is one of stuffiness and ponderousness? The addressee is also indicated in the title: as in Gourmont’s work, one rose 79 The prayerful character is strictly defined in another poem from the same volume, “Prière devant le soleil”: “Je reviens devant vous, ignorante, priante” [Anna de Noailles, Les Éblouissements (Paris: Lévy, 1907), 86], whose simple pattern of an anaphora on “Soleil” which is not balanced by any kind of response does not make it a very interesting example for research on litanic verse.

347

is mentioned, but over the course of the poem, we come to see that the poet refers to “Roses de toute sorte.”80 There is anaphora on the level of stanzas: “Rose” is followed each time by a new characteristic of the flower. First, many of them represent certain real qualities of roses, such as time and place of flowering, their presence in the images of saints, etc. Second, it is the last stanza which fully unveils the discrepancy between identification and resemblance: the rose is presented here as “pareille” to natural phenomena. Some of these phenomena appear to a scholar of litanic verse as capable of standing as independent titles, for instance, “lac pur.” Third, independent titles may also be found. To discover their significance, we should first analyze the message of the poem. The sacral perspective in this, as we called it previously, non-sacral poem, which is devoted to a charming feature of the botanical world, opens up in a few points to a religious perspective, but this perspective is not linked with one singular confession or culture. Sometimes an unspecified land of plenty is evoked: “Rose faite de miel, et faite d’un azur,” “Rose, fête divine au reflet argentin.” Gods such as Pan and Eros are also mentioned. The Christian connotations of the rose are recalled, among others, in the passage devoted to Saint Francis of Assisi. Meanwhile, at one point, the time related to the creation of the rose is inscribed in the time of Genesis: “Vous qui fûtes créée avant Ève, au matin / De la plus jeune aurore.” The invocation “ô vase balance,”81 apart from the Marian context, evokes the image of a shelter that becomes a mortal danger, along with the mild fragrance—the soul of the hornet which evaporates. The motif of “un parfum tendre” is one of the most crucial in the poem (it also appears in the form “tant votre odeur est forte”), as it is claimed that thanks to this property, the rose creates the “douceur des jardins” and makes from them a place where the universe meets infinity. As “tunique insaissable,” the rose cannot be touched even by the lips of Pan, and the act of its creation is earlier than original sin: is it not then the “rose au cœur prostitué” which we know from the litanies of Gourmont? We may recognize some traces of its “illusoire virginité” as well as its dangerous seductiveness. The images of “la rose charmante […] / Si mollement ouverte, / Et qui semble la bouche au souffle extasié” and “petit Éros joufflu / Armé de courtes flèches, / 80 Ibid., 298. 81 Cf. “Minuit” from the later volume Les Forces éternelles (1920), which begins with the conviction of the symbolical power of traditional litanic Marian invocations: “Tour d’ébène, miroir d’argent, rose des nuits.” [Anne de Noailles, Les Forces éternelles (Paris: Fayard, 1920), 234].

348

A qui les papillons font un manteau velu / Quand les nuits sont plus fraîches” charge the atmosphere with erotic associations.82 In the first stanza, we learn that the birds are “amoureux de la rose,” but mention of them seems to be only pars pro toto of the universe that admires the flower. Use of the comparative adjective (“plus fraîches”) means that the fresh evening air does not dominate this time of day. The dense aura influences the movements of various objects: “lentement,” “indolent” and the general reigning “tranquilité.” The rose creates an atmosphere of dreaming and inertness: “Rose dont la langueur s’élève,” it is called “rêveuse.” These qualities are emphasized by the alternate rhyme of lines of different length: the alexandrine combined with the six-syllable line. The scene that is described takes place at dawn, when “toute la maison dort” and the flowers drink up the dew. However, a few other characteristics of time in the poem create the impression of omnipresence: the frequent mention of shadows and of various kinds of repose (“à l’ombre du rosier,” “faire un bercement”) bring to mind midday—which is evoked directly in the line “sous le soleil tout ouvert de midi.” Other expressions however, like the above-mentioned concerning night, recall a nocturnal scene: “Rose des soirs d’avril, rose des nuits de mai.” The universality of the rose is reflected also on the axis of space: “Fleurs des parcs écossais, des blanc cloîtres latins, / Des luisantes Açores.” A final question arises whether any element equipoises the series of rose images and plays the function of a litanic response. In the spirit of most of the poems we have analyzed in this work, the response is made only once, in the closing words: “Rose […] / Qui est rose, ma rose!” One of the fundamental features of litanies is reversed: instead of collectivity we obtain an appropriation; in place of supplications—a simple exclamatory sentence. At one point, this final short exclamation converges with litanic petitions: in its plainness, in being much more modest than the ornamented invocations.

82 This feature brings “Prière devant le soleil” closer to the analyzed poem: “In her writings, it is desire above all that manifests this will [to power—M.K.]; as a fundamental drive that endlessly projects itself onto one object after another, desire appropriates the perceived characteristic of these objects. […] Prière devant le soleil simultaneously praises the sun and, in an erotic embrace, encloses it wholly within the self ” [Catherine Perry, Persephone Unbound: Dionysian Aesthetics in the Works of Anna de Noailles (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2003), 85]. In the analyzed “Éloge de la rose,” this act of self-appropriation is not built gradually throughout the poem, but it spurts out abruptly in the end: “ma rose!”

349

18.3 A Small Image, a Huge Cathedral and a Tapestry as Material for Litanic Verse The “Petites Litanies de Jésus” (written 1900–1903, published in Le Valet de cœur, 1908) by Tristan Klingsor imitate the pattern of litanies of Holy Jesus, maintaining the repetitive element in the beginning of the invocations “Jésus” and the repetitive formula “Souriez-moi.”83 The effect of the anaphoric “Jésus” on the level of stanzas is bolstered not only by the unchanging supplication, but also by the epiphora created by the second line of each stanza on “bois.” The remaining, longer part of the formula—four of the five stanzas are quatrains consisting of lines of various length—provides additional information alternately either to the addressee of the prayer or to the speaker. This feature already reveals the breadth of innovation, but the deviation from the litanic standard, in fact, occurs gradually and almost unnoticeably, concluding in the five-line stanza in which the stable pattern described above becomes disrupted. The use of the word “bois” as material for epiphora on the level of stanzas is the result of the special function of wood in the poem: “croix de bois” is an infrequent periphrasis of the Holy Cross, since the expression “l’arbre de la croix” is more common. Nonetheless, it corresponds chiefly with “peinte de bois” which refers to a “petite image,” undoubtedly of Holy Jesus, probably of Jesus’ passion or agony. We have observed in the Renaissance chapter an example of litanic verse flowing from such adoration of images: its author was Jean Marot. In the work of Klingsor, however, we do not encounter other references to this image, such as the self-referential expressions, for instance, “voyez,” found in the Renaissance example. Nonetheless, the mention of the painting allows us to imagine the situation of reciting the prayer. The initial line representing “Jésus des anges et des Maries” may suggest that the principal pattern of depiction of Holy Jesus in the poem is the imititation of litanic titles like “Jésus, joie des anges,” “Jésus, roi des patriarches,” “Jésus, maître des apôtres,” and “Jésus, docteur des évangélistes.” The poem is indeed rich in the use of attributive genitives, but in composing the Savior’s titles, this form is used in two significant parts: in the first stanza, as we have already mentioned, and in the last one, in which this structure is repeated: Jésus des carrefours et des chemins, Pendu comme un oiseau mort aux croix de bois, Avec les roses des clous aux mains,

83 Tristan Klingsor, Le Valet de cœur (Paris: Société du Mercure de France, 1908), 107–108.

350

Jésus des gueux et des rois, Souriez-moi.

This stanza has one more line than the others in the poem and we cannot help but get the impression that this redundancy has been created by the line “Jésus des gueux et des rois.” The parallel lines placed in the first and fourth positions operate as a frame, but they also allow the poet to emphasize the significant opposition: the representation of Jesus as a path is widely known, but Klingsor complicates this vision by depicting the Savior as the crossroads. Declining the proper name of Holy Mary like any other noun—“Jésus des anges et des Maries”—he symbolically touches the experience of every human—the poet himself and the readers—but only one of them was destined to be the Mother of the Savior. Other elements in which the use of attributive genitives is highly visible are the motifs related to the depiction of the Passion, particularly the crowning with thorns: “Les épines des roseraies,” “la couronne de ronces des bois,” “croix de bois,” “les roses des clous.” The passion is described in the poem in words which resound strongly, but it is also embellished. The image in the first stanza of a flowery dress from the stars does not anticipate the cruelty of the floristic motifs in the stanzas that follow to the satisfactory degree. To give an illustration, “les épines des roseraies” and “la couronne adorable de fleurs” metamorphose into “la couronne de ronces des bois” and “les roses des clous.” Furthermore, it is said in the poem that Jesus suffered from “le doux malheur”; this expression corresponds with the text of a hymn from the liturgy of hours, Dulce lignum, dulces clavos, / dulce pondus sustinet. Also, the concluding image mitigates the cruelty through the representation of Jesus as a bird nailed to a tree, with roses serving as nails. The condition of the speaker is described solely through negative emotions: “ma pauvre âme s’effraie,” “mon cœur est miserable.”84 Nevertheless, a modest change in the speaker’s attitude can be noted: in the second stanza, he compares himself to the lamb of God. The representation of the speaker’s mood, like the above-mentioned depiction of the passion of Christ, contains an animal comparison: “un agneau divin qui broute au bois.” In the fourth stanza, in turn, the speaker compares himself to a murderer with a knife. However, the gravity of this image is immediately negated by a remark about the knife being replaced by a wooden stick. The adoration of the icon and the reflection about his own sins 84 Cf. the invocations “La protection des misérables” and “La consolation des pauvres” from Litanies de la Sainte Croix.

351

undoubtedly leads the lyrical “I” to think about human offences. The places mentioned in the last stanza, roads and crossroads, suggest the state of the speaker: is it the beginning of a new way of life or maybe the decisive moment in which he dares to ask Jesus for an encouraging smile? Regarding the supplication, which we have not yet analyzed, it needs to be emphasized that paradoxically it plays two distinct roles: it corresponds with the tendency to represent the Passion of Christ as a kind of performance or an adaptation in which the real objects—the thorns, the knife, the nails—are replaced by natural, delicate elements (roses and stick), and the most holy body is compared to the bird nailed to the tree. Concerning the adjective “petite” in the poem’s title, we can provide several explanations: firstly, it may describe the brevity of the poem—there are, in fact, only five invocations. Secondly, it may refer to the size of the icon mentioned in the first stanza. Thirdly, in some parts the work uses imagery which can be assessed as childlike: Jesus finally reveals himself to be the Lord, not of angels and patriarchs, as in the litanies, but of kings and paupers, just as in the fables. Furthermore, many of the scenes are set in the forest—“bois” is one of the key words of the poem—in which the animal encounters both shelter and danger, and in this magical world, the meadow turns out to be a rose garden, while the nails turn out to be roses. Even the supplication is untroubled, as the speaker asks only for a smile, rather than (for instance) salvation. The power of creating fantastic images hiding in the Marian litanies has been established by the numerous poetic examples of litanic verse. Not many demonstrated the possibility of describing real features (dimension, height, etc.) of existing objects. “Litanies de Notre-Dame” (La Figure de proue, 1908) by Lucie Delarue-Mardrus bear the mark of a poetic representation of the cathedral, but the constitutive feature of poem is its prayerful character. It is one more poem in this volume (which contains “Premier salut” and “Angèlus,” both dedicated to Our Lady of Paris) that shows the poet’s ability to paraphrase prayers.85 The poem is for the most part composed of invocations following one another in fifteen couplets. They are not of equal length, as the first line is alexandrine and the second an octosyllable, and usually these invocations contain six or four syllables,

85 Lucie Delarue-Mardrus, La Figure de proue (Paris: E. Fasquelle, 1908), 141: “Angélus” imitates the prayer “Je vous salue, Marie” in such a way that some of the crucial nouns are replaced by others; for instance, instead of “Le Seigneur est avec vous” we read “Le ferveur est avec vous,” “pauvres pécheurs” become “les artisans au cœur subtil” etc.

352

although occasionally the invocation occupies the entire line. The only stanzas that do not exhibit the mode of catalogue are the three at the end in which the invocation is followed by the supplication, then two supplications are made until finally we find an invocation and supplication in one stanza. Repetitiveness is not the prevailing feature of the poem, as there is no stable supplicatory formula: of the four included, two start with “Garde-nous,” and in the invocations, there are at most three repetitions of the elements: “Mère,” “Notre-Dame” and “Ô.”86 The rhythm of the poem is pulsating, as two stanzas introduce the ab ab pattern, two others are imperfect rhymes, and the rest of the poem consists of monorhymed couplets of different values, including exact rhymes: “ignoble”–“noble.” The crucial point in our analysis is the manner in which the metaphorical titles of Holy Mary are modified to reflect the details of Notre Dame’s architecture and sculpture, while still maintaining a high degree of poeticism. Our Lady, in the vision of Mardrus, merges with the cathedral of whom she is patron. Therefore, various appeals are made: occasionally simply “Notre Dame,” but also metaphorical titles referring to the cathedral in its entirety and pars pro toto, like “rose ardente de pierre,” “double tour,” etc. In some of the invocations, the reflection descends from the level of symbolical names to geographical concretion and the crucial role of the cathedral and its patron in the life of the city and its inhabitants (“Cœur de Paris, cœur de la France”) is emphasized. Expressions like “notre race,” “notre foule” reveal that the prayer is raised in the name of the community and this community can be easily defined: the devotion of Our Lady is a part of Parisians’ and the French people’s spiritual condition, and the image of the cathedral is part of the urban landscape: “Ô française, ô parisienne!” The edifice of Notre Dame is “pensif de l’espérance” as might be a mother who was concerned about her children. This fundamental role of devotion to Holy Mary for national identity is visible also in one of the supplications: “Garde-nous de l’âme étrangère.” The image of the antiquity of the cathedral is built relentlessly from the beginning of the poem, as in the invocations we read “Floraison du passé,” “Squelette compliqué du défunt moyen âge.” Several of them contain metaphors through which the significance of the treasure of the past for the new generations is communicated: “Témoin resté de son ouvrage,” “Coffret géant où sont les secrets de l’histoire, / Berceau de notre foule noire,” “Châsse que se sculpta notre race ancienne.” This kind of message for the successors is summarized in the invocation

86 Ibid., 147–149.

353

“Ô passée, ô présente, ô future,” which expresses an unwavering certainty about the stability of the invocation’s object. The durability of the cathedral—and its patron—is also expressed through the use of the juxtaposition with the image of flowing water: “Immobile vaisseau sur le flot de la ville.”87 The invocation to “Rocher pensif de l’espérance” likens Notre Dame to a rock, standing high out of the water. Three invocations to Our Lady as “Mère de l’idéal,” “mère de la prière,” and “mère de poésie” are significant, as Holy Mary becomes the patron of prayer and poetry, two domains linked in the text. Moving on to examples in which the ambiguity—concerning the architectural shape and the spiritual significance of Notre Dame—of the invocations can be observed, firstly we note the title that is brought to the fore (to the initial line): “rose ardente de pierre,” which is particularly impressive as “rose de pierre” refers directly to the rose window in the western façade of the cathedral and introduces the theme of petrification, while the epithet “ardente” animates this depiction. We believe that an interpretation which sees “rose de pierre” as touching the exterior of the rose and “ardente” as referring to the play of colors in the cathedral’s interior is also possible. Then, “Double tour de silence et de battements d’ailes” changes the focus of the metaphor from the material from which the tower is built to its acoustic impressions (and obviously refers also to the architecture of the cathedral). This invocation leaves the reader with an uncertain impression of transience, as she/he could sense the recent presence of creatures whose fluttering is noticeable and whose voice is fading. The second line of the couplet explains the identity of the inhabitants of the cathedral tower: “Nid des saints et des hirondelles.” There is no need to add that these saints, “saints de pierre,” are quiet ones. The first part of the invocation—“Monstre séquanien miré dans les eaux basses”—brings to mind the famous gargoyles of Notre Dame, but its end, “Et dont les yeux sont des rosaces,” persuades the reader that it is rather the entire cathedral that is seen as a creature of the fantastic age. Two invocations, “Flèche au cœur obscur de la nue” and “Découpure du ciel,” evoke the same idea of the cathedral being so close to sky that it could touch it.

87 This name was widespread in the medieval devotion to Holy Mary and appeared in our research on litanic verse, for instance, in Loenge Nostre Dame of Robert le Clerc d’Arras, in which it has the meaning of a vessel (container) and not a ship as in the poem being considered here (cf. also medieval songs, such as “Canso à la Vierge” by Guilaume le Vinier, “Douce vierge, roïne nete et pure” by Perrot de Nesle, and the anonymous “Mere au douc roi de cui vient toute joie”).

354

The word “âme,” which is repeated twice in the supplications, allows us to see in these litanies a prayer for the salvation of souls and the purification of numerous vices: “du mesquin,” “du banal,” “de l’ignoble,” “de l’Hérésie.” Litanic verse encroaches on a particular passage of La Tapisserie de sainte Geneviève et de Jeanne d’Arc by Charles Péguy, which is composed in the framework of novena. The relations from days preceding the eighth day, January 10th, 1913, are made up of short descriptions forming a sonnet, and possessing to some degree a repetitive character (for instance, the analogous opening lines of stanzas). In turn, this section is more developed—it contains 300 lines arranged in tercets—and devolves the repetition onto a more dense level. The main litanic factor is established by the line, “Les armes de Jésus c’est sa croix équarrie.”88 The structure “les armes de” plus the names of two protagonists (Jesus and Satan), plus “c’est” plus more or less metaphorical names of types of armaments, repeats in a non-regular, but highly visible manner.89 The representative function of the text shaped in such a way is justified by the adherence of the poem to the genre of “la tapisserie poétique” which is distinguished by “une composition en vers réguliers et rimés, à une époque où domine le vers libre” and “un type de poésie essentiellement répétitif.”90 It should also be emphasized that the word “la prière,” suggesting that the poem may be read as a prayer of praise91 and not just as a description of the conflagration that engulfed Paris and which is represented on the tapestry, appears in a passage clearly indicating the responsibility of the worker preparing the tapestry:

88 Charles Péguy, Œuvres poétiques complètes (Paris: Gallimard, 1957), 846. 89 The lines following the quoted excerpt show that the accumulation of similar sounds and structures is the fundamental characteristic of this part of the poem: “Voilà son armement, voilà son armoirie, / Voilà son armature et son armurerie.” 90 Alessandra Marangoni, “Le genre de la tapisserie. Jarry, Péguy et leurs devanciers,” Poétique, vol. 1, no. 177 (2015): 43, 45. The litanic traces can also be seen in another Péguy tapestry, La Tapisserie de Notre-Dame. The part entitled Les Cinq Prières dans la cathédrale de Chartres is undoubtedly the most repetitive, but the link with the litanies is created chiefly by Marian titles which also appear elsewhere, traditional and also modified, but which do not appear in the series “Étoile de la mer,” “Tour de David,” “ô reine des prophètes,” “Arche du seul salut, reine des patriarches.” (Péguy, Œuvres poétiques complètes, 898). 91 Throughout the poem, various types of prayers are mentioned, though not litanic prayer: “Les armes de Jésus c’est la double prière, / […]/ Comme lui vespérale et vers lui journalière; Les armes de Jésus c’est l’angélus du soir.” (ibid., 856).

355

une ouvrière, / […] Jetant toute une armée aux pieds de la prière Arborant l’étendard semé de broderie Où le nom de Jésus vient en argenterie, Et les armes du même en même orfèvrerie;92

One might expect that in the enumeration beginning “les armes de,” the main objects listed would refer to military affairs. However, while such metaphors are present in the poem, they are not dominant: “Les armes de Jésus c’est cette barbarie, / Et le décurion menant la décurie, / Et le centurion menant la centurie.”93 Among the modified elements of the structure “Les armes de Jésus c’est…,” we most often encounter the physiognomy or behavior of the Savior: “[…] c’est sa face maigrie, / Et les pleurs et le sang dans sa barbe meurtrie.” The enumeration of body parts of the Savior and his Mother are common features of litanic verse, mainly with the participation of chairetismic expressions like “benoit soit.” In Péguy’s poem, however, we find only declarative sentences: Les armes de Jésus c’est sa tête penchée, Son coude, son genou, son épaule écorchée. Son estomac, ses reins, sa hanche démanchée Sa barbe, ses cheveux, ses habits arrachés, Sa poitrine, ses bras, ses poignets attachés. Les plus savants ressorts à l’instant décrochés.94

The circumstances of Jesus’s nativity are also mentioned—“Les armes de Jésus c’est la paille et l’étable / Et le pain et le vin et la nappe et la table,”—but undoubtedly, the most fully developed parts are related to the Passion: Les armes de Jésus c’est la foule en furie Acclamant Barabbas […], Les armes de Jésus c’est l’interrogatoire. Et les lanciers romains debout dans le prétoire, Et les dérisions fusant dans l’auditoire;

92 Ibid., 898. References to forms of tapestry, to acts of embroidery or other forms of decoration are not frequent, but do occur (ibid., 852):

« Les armes de Jésus c’est la belle jacinthe Posée en un tapis dans une belle enceinte, Plus douce que la laine et plus souple et mieux teinte; »

93 Ibid., 847. 94 Ibid., 857.

356

Les armes de Jésus c’est cette pénurie. Et sa chair exposée à toute intempérie, […]; Les armes de Jésus c’est ce frêle roseau, Et le sang de son flanc coulant comme un ruisseau, Et le licteur antique et l’antique faisceau; Les armes de Jésus c’est cette raillerie Jusqu’au pied de la croix, c’est cette moquerie Jusqu’au pied de la mort et c’est la brusquerie Du bourreau, […]95

As we may see, apart from the simplest manner of adding new elements to the enumeration with the conjunction “et” and bringing only “c’est” to the onset of a line (“C’est le froid du sépulcre et c’est l’enterrement”), the poet uses different means with contrary intent, that is, to create an effect of surprise, like the enjambment that prepares the reader for a paradoxical statement: “Les armes de Jésus c’est le désarmement.” Occasionally, and also unexpectedly, the second part of a line, commonly containing the new elements, carries the echo of previously expressed statements: “Les armes de Jésus c’est ce frêle roseau,” “Les armes de Jésus c’est le souple arbrisseau / Tressé sur son beau front comme un frêle réseau.” “Un frêle roseau” is the French equivalent of the calamum ventosum that is found in De imitatione Christi, in which it is rather the opposite to the power of Christ and a symbol of weakness which cannot be the basis for our life and deeds. Repeated a few lines later in a phrase in which only one syllable differs, it still symbolizes the mocking of Christ’s royalty, but one element changes its significance: “comme” indicates not identification, but merely comparison. The following lines, which also regard the “armes” of Jesus, but among which for the first time in the poem the expression “Les armes de Satan” occurs, introduce the analogous motifs of face, front, and flower, but here metaphorically modified. It may lead to the conclusion that in the juxtaposition of the powers of good and evil, new and more complex images are forged: Les armes de Jésus c’est la poignante épine, C’est la fleur de son sang sur la blanche aubépine, Et les fleurs de ses pleurs sur la rouge églantine; La perle qui descend sur sa joue attendrie, Et la perle qu’il boit sur sa lèvre appauvrie, Voilà ses beaux cristaux et sa joaillerie;

95 Ibid., 847.

357

Les armes de Jésus c’est la verte couronne, C’est ce front que l’amour et la grâce environne, Et l’éternelle fleur qui sur sa peau fleuronne; La perle qui descend sur sa face amoindrie Et qui vient humecter sa langue rabougrie, Voilà son coffre-fort et sa bijouterie;96

In this fragment, the expression “Les armes de Jésus” serves only as an introduction to the enumeration in which the leading motifs may be discovered, such as “fleur” and “perle,” but we recognize the stability of the response, too, which starts with “Voilà” and uses synonyms of the elements listed above. In such a long work so rich in images, this response is not sustained. The images of Christ’s suffering appear almost obsessive and also emerge later in the poem: “Les armes de Jésus ce sont les deux mains jointes. / Et l’épine et la rose et les clous et les pointes.” As we have seen, they are rich in detail. Although common values are also evoked in the context of Christ—“La beauté du plus pur, le juste dans son fort”—it is the titles of Satan’s “armes” which are most commonly represented by these images: “Les armes de Satan c’est la jobarderie. / C’est le scientificisme et c’est l’artisterie,  / C’est le laboratoire et la flagornerie”; “Le carcan, le garrot, l’entrave, la menotte.”97 The author also uses animal symbolism: “C’est le loup dans la ferme et dans la bergerie, / C’est le renard feutré dans la poulaillerie.” Besides being the simplest way to introduce two protagonists in obvious opposition, pairings such as “Les armes de Jésus c’est l’amour et la peine, / Les armes de Satan c’est l’envie et la haine” sometimes create acoustic similarities. To give an illustration, in a passage in which humankind is presented as trying to meet its needs, and in which Satan, therefore, by promising power and satisfaction, easily gains control over people, we read:

96 Ibid., 849. 97 This feature has been noted by Frantisek Laichter: “[…] Péguy évoque, en une interminable litanie antithétique, « les armes de Jésus » et « les armes de Satan », se laissant entrainer dans une énumération à la fois trop longue et trop schématique des vertus chrétiennes et des vices du monde et du temps. En outre cette évocation alternée se déroule presque sans images concrètes. La notion abstraite suffit, le plus souvent” (Péguy et ses Cahiers de la Quinzaine, Paris: Edition de la Maison des sciences de l’homme, 242). However, we emphasize that in the parts related to Jesus, the objects are enumerated in abundance, especially the instruments of torture used by soldiers on the way of the Cross.

358

Les armes de Satan c’est notre quiétude Et c’est le théorème et c’est la certitude, Le pouvoir, le savoir et la décrépitude; […] Les armes de Jésus c’est notre inquiétude. L’axiome, la règle et notre incertitude, Le devoir, le pouvoir et la vicissitude […] Les armes de Jésus c’est sa sollicitude. Et notre ingratitude […].98

In other parts, the stanzas depicting Jesus and Satan correspond with each other in a more sophisticated and surprising manner: Les armes de Jésus c’est notre forfaiture, Les clous et le marteau, la robe sans couture, L’homme, l’ange et la bête et la double nature; […] Les armes de Satan c’est notre forfaiture. C’est d’avoir dispersé la robe sans couture, C’est la bête sous l’ange et la double nature; […] Les armes de Jésus c’est la croix de Lorraine, Et le sang dans l’artère et le sang dans la veine, Et la source de grâce et la claire fontaine; Les armes de Satan c’est la croix de Lorraine, Et c’est la même artère et c’est la même veine Et c’est le même sang et la trouble fontaine;99

The presence of nearly the same sentences describing “les armes de Jésus” and “les armes de Satan” with remarkably subtle modifications (for instance, a change of epithet: “trouble” instead of “claire”; the object and the deed done with this object: “la robe sans couture”–“d’avoir dispersé la robe sans couture”) distinguishes Péguy’s poem from the litanic verse of Jean Auvray, which has been analyzed in a previous chapter. La Tapisserie de sainte Geneviève et de Jeanne d’Arc and Le Triomphe de la Croix have some common features: the importance of the theme of crucifixion and a similar rule of composition, which implies the repetition of name of the object—respectively “les armes” and the Holy Cross—and its

98 Péguy, Œuvres poétiques complètes, 848. 99 Ibid., 850.

359

new metaphorical depictions in the second part of the line. Both authors refer this object to two oppositional personages (groups), “les armes de Jésus / de Satan,” while Auvray further stresses the significance of the adoration of the Holy Cross for Catholics and for Huguenots. Auvray emphasizes this difference in a clear manner: “La Croix est un vrai Sacrifice, / La Croix un jardin de delice, / La Croix Paradis de tout bien contra / Mais la Croix n’est que idolatrie, / La Croix n’est qu’une tromperie, / La Croix qu’un Enfers sans repos.” He uses the names of overarching values, making the difference unambiguous, not barely distinguishable, as Péguy does. This “absence de clair-obscur” can also be seen in the frame of “tapisserie poétique.”100 Looking at the above-quoted lines, we should also note that in this litanic verse the marks of repetition are pronounced: the author returns many times to the same ideas and does not follow the succession of events.101 Apart from the Passion motifs, another that is characteristic of litanic verse and is widely used in Péguy’s poem is marine imagery: “Les armes de Jésus c’est la vie et la mort, / C’est un heureux naufrage en plein milieu du port”; “C’est un solide ancrage au beau milieu du port”; “C’est un heureux mouillage en plein milieu du port”; “C’est le bon voisinage en plein milieu du port”; “Les armes de Jésus c’est la barque de Pierre”; “Les armes de Satan […], / C’est le péril de mer, […].” We can also point out several descriptions that depict the beauty of the natural landscape or still life: “Les armes de Jésus c’est le calme du soir,” “C’est le fruit qui mûrit aux planches du dressoir,” “C’est l’étang répandu dessus le déversoir. / C’est l’encens balancé dans le lourd encensoir.” As a supporting factor of litanic verse in La Tapisserie de sainte Geneviève et de Jeanne d’Arc, we may note an epiphora, sometimes creating a series in which it is difficult to recognize the differences between lines: Les armes de Jésus c’est le vallon fleuri. Mais plus que le printemps incessamment fleuri, Et plus que le printemps insolemment fleuri,

100 Marangoni, “Le genre de la tapisserie,” 56. 101 This feature distinguishes the analyzed Tapisserie from Péguy’s other works in which litanic traces are recognizable: Yves-Alain Favre, “Poésie et liturgie dans les trois Mystères de Péguy,” Revue d’Histoire littéraire de la France, vol. 2–3 (1973): 447: “La litanie comporte répétition et progression. La reprise de certains termes permet une lente imprégnation de l’esprit et crée une sorte d’envoûtement qui favorise la contemplation. La progression permet évidemment à la contemplation de suivre lentement son cours et de s’approfondir.”

360

Et plus que le printemps impudemment fleuri. Et plus que le printemps effrontément fleuri, C’est le pudique automne à jamais défleuri102

In other parts, the epiphora replaces the lack of anaphora and emphasizes the collective perspective recognizable in the entirety of the poem, for instance, in the expression “Les armes de Jésus c’est notre forfeiture”: Les armes de Jésus c’est qu’il nous réconforte En notre déconfort et c’est qu’il nous reporte Au premier paradis et c’est qu’il nous apporte103

18.4  Exoticism in Theme and Form Victor Segalen’s “Contemplation” (composed 1912–1913, published in Odes, 1925) is a part of the Cycle chinois, which describes, among other things, the experience of a voyage to Tibet. The poem comprises the third section of an ode entitled “Prière au ciel sur l’esplanade nue.” The prayerful aspect of the poem is heralded in the title, as is the fact that it is related to admiration of the landscape. Apart from these two elements, the litanic verse elements of this work can be assessed as exotic: not only due to the thematic aspect, but also because the repetitive element is found in stanzas other than the innovative one, yet they could still form one logical phrase. The repetition of “tu es”—a structure that has already been analyzed in this work as a key factor in litanic verse—mainly in the medieval chapter—is followed by epithets that describe the mountain. The point is that the recurrence dominates the two initial quatrains, and the enumeration of single epithets is the principal building material for two concluding quatrains. This creates the impression of the recitation of a chaotic litany, in which the qualities of the praised object are listed after the sources of the repetition have been exhausted; or—a second, no less important possibility—the impression of a litany whose litanic worldview is marked by separation, by the detachment of things from their qualities. The titles, features and values evoked in the poem, in contrast to the form of litanic verse, do not surprise us. In fact, the motifs of emerging from chaos, of the power of primitiveness and the prime mover, and the paradoxes of “[…] Diviné.

102 Péguy, Œuvres poétiques complètes, 857. 103 Ibid., 853.

361

Divinateur. / […] Contemplé. Contemplateur”104 have appeared many times in litanic verse of various periods. The divine presence is evoked clearly in the line, “Double. Dôme et Dieu. Temple formé de ta voûte.” Like many representations of the nature of the gods, it is entangled in contradictions: “Tu es lourd de science et plus léger que fumée.” It is wise and experienced, as his only name in the first part of the poem is: “ô Premier né du Chaos.” In turn, in the only title made explicit in the second, enumerative part—“Père soucieux de tous les êtres […]”—the vision resembles the Christian representations of God the Father. The shortness of the poem as well as its syntax—the use of nominal sentences, sometimes composed from one word—allow us to speak about a certain reticence: in “Contemplation” we encounter neither a confession of the lyrical “I” about his mood and attitude nor expressions describing the path to the mountain peak: both themes, in turn, are raised in other parts of “Prière au ciel sur l’esplanade nue.” All lines from the poem seem to converge at one point determined in the first stanza: “voici tout ce que tu es.” The qualities then listed give an exact response and are formed into one block which does not reveal an emotional attitude, but rather concentration and reflection: Glacial. Confortant. Diviné. Divinateur. Un. Exorbitant. Contemplé. Contemplateur. En qui tout s’anime. En qui tout revient et meurt. Entendu. Nombreux. Parfum, musique et couleur. Double. Dôme et Dieu. Temple formé de ta voûte. Triple, Centuplé du lieu des Dix-mille routes.

As Samuel Thévoz argues, this stylistic choice is justified by the character of the natural landscape being described: “Le Tibet se pose naturellement comme un défi à la science (il représente un ultime « blanc » de la carte) et les descriptions soulignent l’aridité, l’hostilité de ce qui apparaît comme la nature à l’état brut (un désert de montagnes).”105 The selection of epithets is dictated by the rhythmic values, as the series of internal rhymes is recognizable in the two initial lines of the quotation: -tant, -é, -ateur. The words comprising the list do not evoke any special litanic invocations, but—probably due to the emphasis on sound effects, as in other parts of the cycle which are not characterized by original meter—the

104 Victor Segalen, Voyages au pays du réel: œuvres littéraires (Paris: Editions Complexe, 1995), 863. 105 Samuel Thévoz, “Victor Segalen et les explorateurs du Tibet: le « pays au-delà » et la crise du paysage,” Revue d’histoire littéraire de la France, vol. 4 (2011): 937.

362

scale of comparison is wider, as in ode 31 from “Thibet”: “Ton nom se faisant litanie:  / Excessif, Exaltant, Inhumain, Inhabitable, Masse de Gloire et Palais Accablant.”106 Joining each of the enumerated characteristics with the “tu es” element, we can obtain lines of various length. In the present version, the rhythm is appeased by a caesura after the fifth syllable.107 The title “Contemplation” indicates that no fervent petition is being expressed, but that, rather, an attentive observer desires to penetrate the secrets of nature and its gods and reflect on them. The act of naming the properties may be understood as the gesture of a “co-créateur [et—M.K.] son désir d’imprimer une marque personnelle sur l’objet d’élection.”108 Benjamin Péret’s “Babord pour tous” (Le Passager du Transatlantique, 1921) is one of the poems from the movement that started surrealism in French poetry. The anaphoric structure is frequent in Péret’s works,109 including those in this volume, but it is used in various forms: of description, of series of maxims, of emotional exclamations. The reasons for including this poem in a discussion of litanic verse are that it is an utterance invoking one object, invoked many times with the use of the same name and various behests: Babord détachez mon cerveau bleu Babord éloignez mon voisin de gauche Babord donnez-moi de l’eau potable Babord prenez garde aux montagnes Babord songez à l’arsenic Babord changez l’encre qui est jaune Babord protégez-moi des courants d’air Babord souvenez-vous de la chaleur Babord souvenez-vous des promeneurs de cactus car nous passons

106 Segalen, Voyages au pays du réel, 1079. 107 Yvonne Ying Hsieh, From Occupation to Revolution. China Through the Eyes of Loti, Claudel, Segalen and Malraux (1895–1933) (Birmingham: Summa Publications, 1996), 78: “This loosely imitates Chinese classical prosody in which regulated verse generally takes the form of either five-syllable or seven-syllable lines, grouped into one or more quatrains. In Chinese classical quatrains, the first, second and fourth lines also rhyme, except that the unrhymed line is either the first or the fourth instead of the third.” 108 Dominique Gournay, Pour une poétique de Thibet de Victor Segalen (Besançon: Presses Univ. Franche-Comté, 2004), 197. 109 As well as in the succeeding works of surrealists, cf. famous André Breton’s poem “L’Union libre,” corresponding with a blazon form.

363

nous passons et les hirondelles passent avec nous mais nous crachons en l’air et les hirondelles crachent sur nous110

The poem is composed of a series of requests of different lengths, chiefly describing the reality of a sea voyage: the rocks and gusts of wind, the sight of birds above peoples’ heads, etc. Not all of these elements seem directly related to seafaring; for instance, a reference to arsenic is rather unexpected. The beginning, which is marked by parallelism, is followed by a more descriptive passage explaining the circumstance of the scene. A sense of danger lurks under prosaic requests such as “donnez-moi de l’eau potable” and other remarks resembling informal conversation (“souvenez-vous de la chaleur”). The motif of drinking water, which occurs in other poems from the volume (“Il y a de l’eau qu’on ne boit pas / c’est de l’eau potable” and “Alarme mal calculée,” in which the series of assertions leads to the idea, “vous voyez bien que nous allons mourir”), and a remark about heat, can be seen as referring to mortal danger. The reference to a cactus might also evoke the idea of the scarcity of water. This atmosphere of vague anxiety culminates in the last lines of the poem. First, we read a line expressing the simple truth of evanescence: “car nous passons”; then, the nature of the expected accident is revealed. It introduces new forces of nature like air and moisture—this time, saliva. While it provokes a laugh and may surprise us by its absurdity, this enumeration, which anticipates various misfortunes and threats, justifies the choice of the form of the poem: a litany-like mode turns into a prayer, recited at sea for saints like Our Lady of the Guard or Saint Mary Star of the Sea. In this example, the addressee is a part of the ship, a larboard. The tragicomic effect in this litanic verse is created by the presence of the invoked object (the larboard) and the request to “éloigner voisin de gauche.” Although the title expression directs our attention to some unidentified “tous,” the speech passes from the first person singular to plural, reminding us of the juxtaposition of Hugo’s title La Prière pour tous and its motto: Ora pro nobis. A sea voyage condemns the ship’s passengers to the role of bystanders; their words mingle and begin to spill beyond the borders of meaning. The number of verbs used in the imperative implies a need for security, and these verbs seem to be those used to address the deity: “prenez garde,” “protégezmoi” or those by means of which we ask for some particular grace: “donnezmoi.” The demands are expressed simply, which in social conversation could be 110 Benjamin Péret, Œuvres complètes, vol. 1 (Paris: Eric Losfeld, 1969), 23.

364

thought impolite, but at the same time they possess the straightforwardness of litanic formulae. In their entirety, however, they resemble chiefly the medieval parodic use of litanic formulae, for instance, in Le Pèlerinage de marriage: “Sancta Gloriosa, alés loing de nobis, Sancta Merencolia, n’aprochés de nobis.”

18.5  War Traces in Litanic Verse The text of “Litanies de la Sainte Vierge” by Max Jacob (Le Laboratoire central, 1921) deviates from liturgical litanies in its lack of repetitive supplicatory formulae after each invocation, but all other characteristics seem to be congruent with the form of litanic verse and litany as well. The poem is a prayer to the Holy Virgin and it contains various types of repetition, which appear in the series of apostrophes to Holy Mary, who is titled with an abundance of intriguing metaphors. In the poem, we may recognize a certain delimited frame, which is, however, distant from the traditional Kyrie eleison and Agnus Dei. Fragmentariness is the main feature that creates a kind of enclosure in Jacob’s work. The first line is the longest in the poem and it contains information which gives the impression of being a continuation of a preceding part which does not exist: “Vierge si merveilleusement chatoyante qu’elle reflète les lumières du Saint-Esprit.”111 The mention of the Holy Spirit is not unusual at the beginning of a litany; however, in this example it is evoked only in relation to the Holy Virgin, who remains the only addressee of petitions in the work. A link with the Holy Trinity, is also established in the second line in a more enigmatic way: “Vierge si uniquement pareille au ciel que le Ciel l’épousa.” Both initial lines depict the Holy Virgin’s values as exceeding the normal scale: she is not only in the image and likeness of God, but “so uniquely” like the Heavens. The last invocations, in turn, are composed in a way that suggests the interruption of the text in a final moment: Ô jeune fille pour toujours Ô jeune mère pour toujours Ô pureté pour toujours Ô beauté.

We may interpret the absence of the element “pour toujours” as a kind of pause to prepare the reader for another essential part of the poem that is remarkably shorter and plays a different role: the supplicatory part.

111 Max Jacob, Le Laboratoire central (Paris: Gallimard, 1960), 182.

365

Jacob’s litany evokes various stages of Holy Mary’s life and recalls many of her roles, but one of her vocations is described particularly often—her motherhood. In the parts of the poem devoted to this experience, we can clearly observe the subtle use of the chronological order of time which appears in a micro-series: Vierge si uniquement pareille au ciel que le Ciel l’épousa Seule mère possible pour le seigneur Enfant de quinze ans qui a parlé à l’Ange Honorée d’un mariage avec Dieu Honorée de la maternité de Dieu Mère et épouse du ciel […] Mère qui a vu grandir l’Homme Mère qui a vu souffrir l’Homme Mère qui a vu mourir l’Homme […] Ô jeune fille pour toujours Ô jeune mère pour toujours.

The separation of invocations and supplications mentioned above does not influence the repetitiveness, which is not restricted solely to the onset of lines. The invocations are composed in such a way that the epiphoras compensate for the lack of repetitive formulae after each invocation. In parts, such as “Honorée d’un mariage avec Dieu / Honorée de la maternité de Dieu,” the anaphoric and epiphoric repetitiveness allow us to extract the key words of the prayer. These invocations could turn out to be even more touching with the use of the element “Vierge” in the onsets of the line—which could focus our attention on the mystery of the immaculate conception—but excluding it from them severs the link with the initial invocations. Holy Mary’s way of life is already presented at the beginning of poem, in the sequence of marriage and motherhood, and then our attention is taken back to the moment of the Annunciation, and again the pair “marriage”— “maternité” appears. The analogous juxtaposition returns near the end of the poem in an exclamation which, in fact, is meant to halt the flow of time—Holy Mary remains a pure, beautiful young woman and mother forever. The repetition of the same acts of the Mother of Christ seems to celebrate the timelessness of her qualities. Without the abrupt interruption, which has been mentioned above, another series of three-part micro-histories of the Mother of Christ could begin. The title “Mère” is the only one in the poem which is found throughout, by itself or in a series of repetitions. The longest break between its occurrences can be found between the invocations “Mère confiante, mère émerveillée” and “Mère du Verbe.” In the flow of invocations to Holy Mary, the stages of the life of Jesus are 366

also mentioned in a chronological order. The disquieting absence of any mention of the moment of Resurrection is mitigated by the invocation: “Mère confidante.” The lines of Jacob’s litany, like those of liturgical litanies, have different lengths. We may even observe that the poet intentionally shapes a visible contrast between adjacent lines: Impératrice humble Impératrice intangible, attentive, sensible, juste, savante et pure.

The qualities contained in the second quoted line refer to various domains: “humble” is kept to a separate invocation, and therefore perhaps the same should be done with, for instance, “juste.” As the quoted lines are the last ones from three-part series of anaphoric “Impératrice,” we can assume that all the epithets that occurred to the poet have been enumerated here to allow a transition to the next series. It is also possible that this line marks the middle of the poem, as it is nearly as long as the initial one. The line “Providence de Dieu, Providence des homes” also combines two titles. The separation of these two titles would create a two-part anaphoric series, similar to others present in the poem. The decision to put them on one line makes the crucial point of reflection not the fact that Holy Mary is named Providence, but the total scope of her care: “de Dieu”–“des homes.” The motifs for the symbolic titles of Holy Mary are taken from the Christian tradition of praise. To give an illustration, Jacob uses the image of precious stones to create the invocations “Émeraude du ciel  / Diamant des nuits  / Topaze des jours.” The line “Miraculée, miraculeuse” brings to mind the word-play of medieval litanic verse. An interesting image, not often encountered in other litanic verse, is that of La Divine Bergère: “Bergère de l’Agneau pascal.” In turn, the lines “Escalier de la Perfection / Trône de la Perfection” are linked not only by epiphora, but also by architectural motifs. The presence of only one supplication, appearing like an orphan in the last line, by virtue of its harshness creates a clear contrast with the preceding section, which was focused on creating charming images. Its principal aim is to declare the reason for reciting this prayer: “Sauvez les âmes de mes amis morts à la guerre.” The power of the supplication lies in its contemporary quality, which contrasts with the invocations imitating the traditional Marian depictions in the liturgical prayers, and the fact that it is the only such passage in this poem. Nonetheless, this final supplication has also another crucial function: it allows the lyrical “I” to speak with his own voice, to express his private supplication after several apostrophes in which he has emphasized the significance of the Holy Mother for the community: “Présidente de nos assemblées  / Infirmière de nos faiblesses.” 367

The signal that this kind of awakening may take place before the poem ends is the invocation that occurs near the end of the poem: “Mère du Verbe, force du génie, muse des arts,” in which the Holy Mother becomes a patron of poets. The patronage of Holy Mary over poets and poetry has also been asserted in another twentieth-century poem by Joseph-Charles Mardrus.

18.6  Francis Jammes The poem by Francis Jammes with the incipit “O mon Ange gardien, toi que j’ai laissé là” (Clairières dans le Ciel, 1902–1906) is a prayer containing four tercets of alexandrines and addressed, as we see in the opening line, to a guardian angel. The litanic verse factor in this poem is the repetitiveness of the invocations and supplicatory formula. Each stanza begins with the line of the title, and each final hemistich contains the petition: “Tiens ma main dans ta main.”112 Already these two expressions demonstrate the straightforward attitude of the speaker toward his angel. The repetition of “toi que j’ai laissé là” at every moment when the angel is evoked makes this abandonment the stable attribute of the spiritual guardian. Their separation had to last long. The second line of the first stanza explains the reason for the separation, and the first hemistich of the following stanza depicts the present condition of the speaker: “[…] toi que j’ai laissé là / pour ce beau corps blanc comme un tapis de lilas: / Je suis seul aujourd’hui. […].” Through vague and symbolic expressions (appropriate for litanic verse—the comparison used for the description of a woman’s body is convincing), the poet gradually reveals the event that lies behind the abandonment of the angel: it was a love affair. We have already encountered such themes in litanic verse, for example, in Musset’s La nuit d’octobre, and, as we found there, the state of the lyrical “I” in Jammes’ work shows that the emotion has passed, as do the seasons, which is reflected through such expressions as “l’Eté de ma joie,” “l’or des bois,” “la neige sur les toits.” The prayer does not bring consolation—the speaker admits that: “Je ne sais plus rêver.” Litanic verse is found on a small scale in Chant VI of Jammes’s Les Géorgiques chrétiennes (1912). The intercessors are the deceased, and to them the litanic formula “Priez pour nous” is addressed exactly seven times as anaphora on the level of alexandrine couplets, when the author enumerates seven different social

112 Francis Jammes, Œuvre poétique complète, vol. 1 (Biarritz: J&D Editions, 1995), 210.

368

groups of village life: servant and lord, parents, forefathers, the abbot, bakers, smiths and stonemasons. It is an unadorned litany, and instead of many metaphorical titles, we find simply evocations of people’s occupations and personality traits. The people gain sacral status mainly through their toil and their natural kindness, which attracts the poor to them: Priez pour nous, parents aujourd’hui inconnus, Qui dans la ferme avez  h on n ê t e m e nt   vécu. Priez pour nous, aïeux qui cultiviez les vignes, Faces où l a  s u e u r  s a c ré e  traçait des lignes. Priez pour nous, abbés dont le cœur était  pu r C om m e   l e pu it s   profond du presbytère obscur.113

As we may recognize in the above lines, there is only a modest similarity to litanic titles, such as the purity of the well. The crucial motif in this litanic verse is the idea of rebirth: “[…] vous, père du maître, / En allés au moment que tout vient à renaître”; “[…] maçons qui fîtes la demeure / Où l’homme vit afin que pour renaître il meure.” The self-referential frame that introduces the prayer in the work and ends it also refers to the time of reawakening: the supplications to the deceased are made after the description of November time and are followed by a glimmer of hope: Mais cependant le front tourné vers l’avenir Je ne veux dans la mort laisser ce chant finir. […] Déjà sur le tombeau de la servante usée Avait frémi le flanc de la jeune épousée.

In Les Géorgiques chrétiennes, Jammes created a real litanic verse from a concept which has been of significant value for him in earlier works.114 In one of them, 113 Ibid., 457. The emphasis is mine. 114 Jammes appears as a glorifier of rural space and its inhabitants from his early works. Verse published in 1894 contains a long (almost thirty quatrains) poem with the incipit: “Les villages brillent au soleil dans les plaines,” in which the components of villages, their buildings and their people and the sounds accompanying their daily life are listed with a recurring “avec” at the beginnings of lines. It is a landscape steeped in the Christian worldview: “des sons d’angélus,” “avec des chants de vêpres,” “avec des églises calmes,” “le mois de Marie sonnant, / et puis les vieux curés des tristes presbytères / qui lisent près des roses, le soir, leur bréviaire.” Any movement in the poem is simulated—the series are interrupted twice by the phrases designating the revival of the narration: “Ainsi vont, dans les larges plaines, les villages / éparpillés

369

however, he has not developed it in full, coming to a standstill with anaphoric enumeration: the poem with the incipit “Ce sont les travaux de l’homme qui sont grands” also presents various types of laborers, and the anaphora is created by the structure “celui qui” in most lines. The laudatory purpose of the emphasis on people’s occupations is evident from the statement in the incipit. However, no supplication is expressed in this poem, and it is much more monotonous, as the beginning and end are always subjected to the same rule. It appears thus as descriptive miniature more than the intentional use of litanic verse. Maintaining the thematic line of rural litanic verse, we move on to another example of Jammes’s work from the same volume, this time with the incipit “Amie, souviens-toi de ce jour où les prairies étaient de pierre.” This is also a poem in which comparison with Musset’s work can prove fruitful. The Romantic “Rolla” describes the landscapes and the structure of the past world but is also exhaustive in its evaluation of the conditions of contemporary society. Musset’s poem starts with an invocation of recollective character, as does Jammes’s poem. However, Musset employs a repetition of “où,” whereas Jammes, in “Amie, souvienstoi de ce jour où les prairies étaient de pierre” uses “vers,” a word with which he introduces the various elements of the landscape. The path that Jammes leads us along could seem monotonous on the textual level (on the descriptive level, the variety of highland and pastoral scenes, and the sublimity and beauty of nature, do not admit monotony), but the enjambments break up this tedium, separating the epithets and subordinate clauses from the nouns: où les montagnes avaient les teintes de ces liqueurs balsamiques fabriquées par des religieux. […] vers les chèvres et les chiens gardiens et les flûtes de buis que les mains calleuses rendent luisantes, […] vers les presbytères doux, vers les gamins qui suivaient en chantant les conscrits qui chantaient,115

This kind of poetic movement also has well-defined starting and finishing points, and the range between them may suggest that through the text a reader is guided into the depths— mainly on the spatial platform, but also temporally: from one day of the indefinite past, to a particular evening marked by excitement, to the […],” “Ainsi vont les doux villages éparpillés”—it is in fact a highly stable work protecting from oblivion the humble people and animals and at the same time creating a bucolic spirit. 115 Ibid., 680.

370

state of infancy: “pays de mon enfance,” “j’étais un petit garcon.” Considering the expressions relating to movement, the reader traces initially the rising motion, physically leading to the summits, but recognizable also symbolically in the human body’s reactions to emotion: “[…] je sentais que s’é l a r g i s s a it   mon cœur / vers la neige des  h aut s   pi c s   dorés, verts, et des pleurs / m ont a i e nt   à   mes yeux […].” At that moment, the motion of falling and the process of enumerating details begins: là-bas, vers l’air pur et froid, vers les neiges denses, vers les montagnards, vers les bergers, vers les brebis, vers les chèvres et les chiens gardiens et les flûtes de buis […]

Repetition is an auxiliary means to the contemplation of the nature, but chiefly it performs the function of celebrating the rite of a return to youth. The trance-like process of listing, recalling to mind the different elements, brings this memory full circle. In the poem, balance is achieved, in spite of the fact that in its middle section torment has been introduced. The speaker, who is represented in the beginning as someone recollecting scenery from the past, is just as “triste et sage” as the boy whom we see at the end in a similar setting: the line “vers la fontaine de la place du village” depicts the combination of natural (water) and urban environment (the fountain that subjugates the power of aquatic movement), whereas in the first line of the poem we have been told of “ce jour où les prairies étaient de pierre,” an image which also merges stony and natural elements. The descriptive type of litanic verse in Jammes’s works also makes an appearance in reference to foreign landscapes. The poem “La vallée d’Alméria” (De l’Angélus de l’aube à l’Angélus du soir: 1888–1897) contains four quatrains. The redundancy of the proper name is more evident in this poem than in liturgical litanies, as the identical name is repeated twice,116 though it is clear that it is 116 Cf. the similar use on a small scale of litanic verse in the works of Lucie DelarueMardrus, especially in “Encore juillet” (Horizons, 1905), in which each quatrain begins with a repeated invocation to July followed by various types of personal confessions: “je sais,” “je vois” etc. The laudatory character of the poem is marked by the nostalgic attitude of the speaker, who interiorizes her experience of July naming it “le cri tragique de l’été” which “montait en moi.” More interesting, but even more modest in scale, is another “month” poem of the author, “Ier décembrale” (Ferveur, 1902) in which the litanic resemblance of the name of the month appearing in the onset of each quatrain is increased by the same word at the end of the first and fourth lines. The winter landscape described in the active voice is a means to express pain: “O la douleur des arbres morts / Dans cette nuit qui vient si vite!”

371

a geographical rather than personal name. The power of the first evocation is inhibited in all the quatrains by the end of the sentence: “La vallée d’Alméria.”117 The second evocation starts a new sentence whose predicate is moved to the next line, for instance: “[…] La vallée d’Alméria / doit être une vallée […].” The four quatrains reflect the four qualities of the place, whose status changes throughout the poem. The first two stanzas represent conviction, as they use the forms “doit être,” but they refer to physical reality. The first stanza is focused on the natural environment of the valley: “[…] une vallée en tubéreuse aux eaux d’argent / et aux montagnes claires et bleues et aux torrents / pleins de fleurs claires, de grenadiers rouges et luisants,” and the second portrays the customs of the natives: “une vallée où est un château clair, / des histoires d’amour pleines de seringas, / de jardins en sommeil et de belladones.” In the second half of the poem, the composition changes; the phrases use the predicate “est” and the description metamorphoses into a kind of comparison with “comme.” However, the “title” of Almeria is much shortened, as instead of three lines it occupies one: “est comme une guitare aux fleurs des citronniers,” “c’est un rêve clair comme le silence des vallées,” and is more metaphorical, as it leads to symbolic representation profiting from the features already mentioned—both the “fleurs” and the epithet “clair/e” have been evoked in the first stanza.118 The third and fourth lines of two last stanzas consist of independent sentences. From the first stanza, in which appeared an astonishing image, to the last, which repeats three times the noun “vallée” but does not characterize the region in any way, the poem metamorphoses from portrayal into a testimony of calm contemplation through which the valley becomes detached from its characteristics which gain independence and make it unreal— the poet no longer says “Almeria is,” but “Almeria, this is.” Jammes’s Rosaire is a multipart work: each of three types of mysteries—joyful, sorrowful and glorious—are deliberated on in two sections: the first, shorter,

117 Jammes, Œuvre poétique complète, 853. 118 The inclination to compare is a feature of Jammes’s poetry which interferes with the use of litanic verse from the period of his early works. In the long poem Un jour (1895), we note three such series, each recited by “L’âme du poète,” two of which use the structure “pareil/lle à” and one “comme.” The series are long, of about ten lines, and they depict the mood of the protagonists in a manner metaphorical and precise at the same time: instead of the simple use of adjectives like “triste” or “gaie,” we find: “Il est pareil à l’eau qui est claire et qui est grave. / Il est pareil à la pierre qu’un gave lave. / Il est pareil au verger doux rempli de pommes”; “Elle est pareille aux agneaux blancs qui bondissent. / […] / Elle est pareille au lys. Elle est pareille au miel. / Elle est pareille à l’air. Elle est pareille à l’âme.”

372

containing several lines, and the second, composed of five stanzas bearing titles corresponding to the mysteries. A strong link with the rosary form is also established by the last lines of each stanza which always have the same wording, as they quote the initial phrase from the prayer traditionally recited ten times after each mystery. The main factor of litanic verse is, in turn, the anaphora on “Par” in almost all the lines of the stanza, excluding the repetitive “Je vous salue, Marie.” Comparing Jammes’s work to previously analyzed litanic verse, we may observe that the formal resemblance is greatest to Christine de Pisan’s works: there, the line Ave Maria following the stanzas of L’Oroyson de Nostre Dame and Les XV Joies Nostre-Dame is a Latin equivalent of Jammes’s formula. However, other fundamental features separate these two authors. Jammes is consistent in his admiration and does not introduce any petition, whereas Pisan begs Holy Mary to pray for her; at the same time, she does not use expressions staring with “Par” in these two poems. The repetition is, instead, shaped by the forms of the Marian titles, and “Par” is present in Pisan’s Une Oroyson de Nostre Seigneur, which uses another Latin repetitive formula: Pater Noster. Indeed, the expressions with the “Par” element are most numerous, not in the Marian litanies, but in the Christological litanies. The degree of imitation in Jammes’s work of the litanies of Church will be assessed below. In the introductory poem to each part of the mysteries, certain scenes are sketched that present the speaker in each type of mystery. They are, respectively, a child in joyful mysteries, a poet plagued by illness in sorrowful mystery and the author of Rosaire himself in glorious mystery. Although the introduction distinguishes the character of each prayer (for instance, we learn that the child recites his prayer “avec ferveur” and the author is “la brebis qui tremble au milieu des œillets”), this distinctness is not reflected in the form of the texts. The parallelism of lines and calm rhythm of alexandrines characterize each part,119 and the type of imagination is the same. The anaphoric “Par” is often followed by metaphorical expressions referring to circumstances (like natural phenomena or accompanying personages) of the event mentioned in the mystery, but mostly to

119 There is only one significant exception in sorrowful mysteries:

Par la vieille qui, trébuchant sous trop de poids, s’écrie « Mon Dieu! » Par le malheureux dont les bras ne purent s’appuyer sur une amour humaine comme la Croix du Fils sur Simon de Cyrène The exclamation whose presence moves “Par” inside the line may operate as the equivalent of: “Mon Dieu, mon Dieu, pourquoi m’as-tu abandonné?”

373

the qualities of saints through which grace is achieved. However, the dominant theme evolves in each part. We quote the first stanza, describing Annonciation: Par l’arc-en-ciel sur l’averse des roses blanches, par le jeune frisson qui court de branche en branche et qui a fait fleurir la tige de Jessé; par les Annonciations riant dans les rosées, et par les cils baissés des graves fiancées: Je vous salue, Marie.

The motif of the tree of Jesse together with the floral elements creates an ambiance of expectancy by focusing on details that are not easily detectable, for instance, the shivering of a sprig, which is also a highly sensual motif. These details, such as the eyelashes, are listed between other lines in which the crucial figures of the Holy Virgin’s history are mentioned: “par Elisabeth, treille où frémit un fruit”; “par le vieux Siméon pleurant devant l’autel, / par la prophétesse Anne et par votre mère Anne.” It is the anaphoric “par” that integrates these diverse motifs, making from each stanza a litany recalling important facts and others, less important but no less figurative: “Par l’âne et par le bœuf, par l’ombre et par la paille” (Nativité). Many stanzas demonstrate attempts to transpose the act indicated in the title of the mystery to casual human experience; for instance, in the stanza considering the Invention de Notre-Seigneur au Temple, we read the invocations “par le baiser perdu par l’amour redonné, / et par le mendiant retrouvant sa monnaie.” This tendency, which began in the last of the joyful mysteries, particularly gains strength in the sorrowful mysteries, nearly all of whose lines represent a kind of comparison to the acts of Jesus. The scenes from human, animal and floral life illustrate even Agonie: Par le petit garçon qui meurt près de sa mère tandis que des enfants s’amusent au parterre; et par l’oiseau blessé qui ne sait pas comment son aile tout à coup s’ensanglante et descend; par la soif et la faim et le délire ardent: Je vous salue, Marie.

We may say that the character of the message changes in the scenes whose main protagonist is the Savior, where the emphasis is laid on the enumeration of creatures who suffer on earth and for whose sins He was sacrificed. The line of the adoration of the Holy Cross is an exception: “Par les quatre horizons qui crucifient le Monde.” Very significant lines correspond with the personage of the poet, who was first mentioned in the introduction to the sorrowful mysteries: “Par

374

le poète dont saigne le front qui est ceint / Des ronces des désirs que jamais il n’atteint”—one of only a few in which the enjambment can be recognized. The glorious mysteries are bathed in light: this is the main motif which is broached in the first line—“Par la nuit qui s’en va”—and which anticipates the conflict between light and darkness (suggested already in the introductory poem: “lorsque l’on voit le jour succéder à la nuit […] Renais, soleil! Du fond des cirques ténébreux, / renaissez, renaissez, Mystères glorieux”) and which manifests itself in many sights: “le cœur de l’aurore,” “l’aube du ciel,” “l’ascension du glorieux soleil,” “Par les feux pastoraux qui descendent, la nuit,” “par la flamme qui cuit le souper noir,” “par l’éclair dont l’Esprit allume,” “par la colombe dont le vol à la lumière / se fond si bien qu’il n’est bientôt qu’une prière.” This part is, as the quoted lines help demonstrate, most focused on the depiction of the world and its landscapes: “la bouche des vallées,” “Par le gravissement escarpé de l’ermite / Vers les sommets que les perdrix blanches habitent,” “le front des coteaux,” etc. These are not still images, movement is a frequent theme of these stanzas and they are subjected to rippling motion: “vers les sommets”-“escaladant”-“l’Ascension”-“descendre.” The medium between the separated spheres is the prayer that is symbolized by the ray of light that leads an earthly creature, the dove, directly into the sun to become one with it. The last stanza, related to Couronnement de la Sainte Vierge, concludes the rosary with a vision corresponding to the initial stanza. The fiancée becomes the queen, but her body posture betrays an unchanged attitude of humility: “les cils baissés” depict a pose like that of “la vierge dont penche le front.” As in the first stanza, it is “l’averse des roses blanches” which comprises the setting of the scene, but now it is stars that decorate the brow with the crown and the wreathed roses. “Le lys d’un vieux jardin” probably refers to “les lys de vos bras joints vers le SaintEsprit” from Visitation. However, this change of status does not influence the stable qualities of the Holy Virgin. The linking motif of the first and last stanza of Rosaire is whiteness: that of roses in the initial stanza and of the lily in the last one. The vivid floral image of “le jeune frisson qui court de branche en branche / et qui a fait fleurir la tige de Jessé,” symbolizing the sudden change of life for Holy Mary, is replaced by the tranquility and expectation of the rose garland: “ceint des roses des désirs que son amour attaint.” This line evokes a previous image used by the poet. Looking into the details, we should compare these two couplets: Par le poète dont saigne le front qui est ceint Des ronces des désirs que jamais il n’atteint: Par la vierge dont penche le front qui est ceint Des roses des désirs que son amour atteint:

375

The emotion that the poet tried to achieve emerges as perfectly accomplished in the life work of Holy Mary, which appears to be the greatest reward. The repeated expressions with “Par” that make up the main body of Jammes’s Rosaire are an important link between this work and litanic form, but their content, as the above-cited lines would indicate, is not taken directly from litanic invocations. Even if they are congruent, this is only in part. For instance, the line “Par votre soif, vos larmes et votre nudité” from Litanies de la vie de NotreSeigneur Jésus-Christ is paraphrased in the mystery of Agonie: “Par la soif et la faim et le délire ardent.” “Par votre pauvreté,” from Litanies du Saint Enfant Jésus in Nativité, appears to be an inspiration for “par la pauvresse à qui l’on dit qu’elle s’en aille.” In summary, it is worth mentioning that the expressions used commonly in the invocations of liturgical litanies starting with “Par” are the nouns that in Jammes’s work appear as the titles of each mystery: “Par votre heureuese Nativité,” “Par votre admirable Annonciation,” “Par votre glorieuse Assomption,” which creates a litanic effect on the macro-scale. Successively throughout the text of the poem, some of these nouns become interestingly modified, for instance, by being used in the plural, which leads to a change in meaning (“Par les Annonciations riant dans les rosées”), or by being introduced in another context (“Par l’ascension du glorieux soleil”); the innovative element can then be used in more or less common titles. Jammes wants to communicate through use of litanic verse with readers who are sensitive to the rustic word order, while at the same time, presenting in this way his own susceptibility to the beauty of the landscape and human sufferings and misfortunes. Occasionally, the poet speaks about his intimate experiences (“O mon Ange gardien, toi que j’ai laissé là,” “Amie, souviens-toi de ce jour où les prairies étaient de pierre”), but regardless of the theme, his litanic verse may be considered placid, changing the scale of emotions only with the use of smooth transitions.

18.7 Claudel’s Litanic Verse of the Saints, of Holy Mary and of Sainte Bernadette Soubirous Processional (1907), the poem that concludes the Cinq grandes odes, is, according to Aidan Nichols, the piece that initiates “the petitionary mode” in Claudel’s work,120 so we consider it crucial for our present research. Processional opens with the concluding formulae of the Catholic mass. Kyrie eleison, in turn, introduces 120 Aidan Nichols, The Poet as Believer: A Theological Study of Paul Claudel (Burlington: Ashgate, 2011), 96. Cf. Xavier Tilliette, “Les Cinq Grandes Odes: une poésie

376

the litanic verse, but long before the proper beginning of the series of invocations. Even the typographical choice emphasizes the special character of the excerpts selected for our analysis: the use of italics suggests that the passage cited was not written by Claudel: Sainte Mère de Dieu, priez pour nous! Tous les saints Anges et Archanges, priez pour nous! Tous les saints Apôtres et Evangélistes, priez pour nous! Tous les saints Martyrs, priez pour nous! Tous les saints Docteurs et Confesseurs, priez pour nous! Toutes les saintes Vierges et Veuves, priez pour nous! Tous les Saints et Saintes, priez pour nous!121

This sort of abbreviated version of the litany has two essential features which distinguish this work from the liturgical version of prayer. Here, only the Holy Mother is mentioned as an individual addressee and the invocations selected for the main part are those encompassing the totality of angels, patriarchs etc. — traditionally these invocations appear after the series enumerating particular personages, which in this example is lacking. Their shape is also slightly modified. Regarding the first point, we cannot draw decisive conclusions from the fact that the presence of God and Jesus Christ is omitted in the introductory part of the litanic verse, as extensive parts of the discourse preceding the prayer are devoted to God as Creator, Judge and Savior. The aspects of insistence and ardor, common in litanic prayers, are emphasized by the fact that the invocations are composed as exclamations. Furthermore, it creates the impression that the speaker does not have time or patience to enumerate individuals: he instead intends to make of his appeal the shortest and most convincing plea addressed to all of the saints without exception. The invocations lack the element “Vous” present in some French versions of liturgical litanies at the beginning of the line, which allows the direct addressing of the one who is being called. Regarding the content of the litanic series, we find that the author closely follows the Latin invocations from Litaniae Sanctorum. However, he eliminates some of the traditional addressees, for instance, the sancti Pon­ tifices. Although the best way to analyze this part of Processional is to focus on the lack of particular invocations, we may also see in it the ambition to profit from the less popular litanic anaphora, that is, not Sanct/a/e/i but Omnes.

théologique,” in Paul Claudel: les odes: poésie, rhétorique, théologie, ed. Sergio Villani (Woodbridge: Les Editions Albion Press, 1994), 33–43. 121 Paul Claudel, Œuvres complètes: Poésie (Paris: Gallimard, 1950), 159.

377

It is interesting that the anaphora mainly on “Tous” corresponds phonically with the name of God offered in the succeeding part of Processional, that is, at the end of the section of litanic verse, which is rather abrupt. The exclamations are followed by the question, “Ne craignons donc rien ici-bas, car que nous feront les hommes alors que le Tout-Puissant est avec nous?” As we can see, this remark harmonizes with the prayer, not only in the recurrence of the crucial syllable, but also in the importance of the collective dimension. The action of praying for the community is finally juxtaposed with that of guarding it. It is worth emphasizing the similarity of the supplicatory formula to the liturgical versions, as before the series of invocations begins, the prayer approaches a level of intimacy rather uncommon for litanies: Seigneur, faites que  j e   sois placé à votre droite et non point à votre gauche! Ce n’est point  m on   affaire de comprendre, mais de prier dans l’amour et le tremblement. Faites que  j e   vous voie, Seigneur Jésus, […] Venez, les bien-aimés de  m on   père et que celui qui a faim et soif boive et mange!

The use of the first person singular possessive pronoun in the last-cited line is particularly important, as it manifests the special affinity of the speaker in comparison with others and the distance between the speaker and those for whom he appeals: he does not call God “notre père.” The mention of “chacune des trois Rogations”122 allows us to identify the type of procession that the author wants to imitate and which he evokes in the title of the works—it is important to note that he does not mean to take possession of the feast—“Comme le clergé et les fidèles […]. S’en vont de bonne heure à travers la campagne en procession.”123 The work is rich in expressions signifying various movements: “Marchons,” “allons-nous au nom de Dieu,” and finally, after the Kyrie eleison, “Ainsi nous, en ce saint jour de l’Assomption, / Avançons-nous […],” “Avançons-nous.” This motion can, however, also be understood metaphorically, as it is associated with “a sending” and “departure on a journey,” not only the motion of the procession. The sudden break in the flow of invocation, as has already been said, seems unexpected to the reader; however, it is important to accentuate the vision of the saints’ procession in the following part of the text, which has a more descriptive 122 Ibid., 158. 123 The word “la campagne” explains why Nichols mentions the rural parishes (The Poet as Believer, 44) when speaking about the possible feast to which Claudel refers in Processional.

378

than beseeching character: “Voici devant moi depuis le commencement du monde jusqu’à nos jours en une procession / Tous les patriarches et les saints suivant l’ordre de leurs générations. […] Voici Saint Pierre crucifié et voici Saint Paul mon patron, […]”; “Voici tous les Saints du calendrier”; “Elles marchent devant moi avec une assurance modeste. […] Anastasie et Apolline, Perpétue et Félicité, […].”124 In “La Vierge à midi” (Poèmes de guerre, 1914–1916), litanic verse also comprises only a small part of the poem, namely the second part of the work which consists entirely of a section of different numbers of lines. Before the rhythm becomes identifiable, the introduction of the scene is made; at noon the lyrical “I” enters the church. His first words are directed to Holy Mary, but the following passage serves ostentatiously to distance him from a desire to pray: “je ne viens pas prier. / Je n’ai rien à offrir et rien à demander. / Je viens seulement, […] pour vous regarder”; “pleurer de bonheur”; “Ne rien dire, mais seulement chanter.”125 However, this type of statement is repeated too many times to be considered honest.126 In fact, a prayer undoubtedly is recited, a prayer of thanksgiving whose intention is revealed in the last line of poem through the chairetismic exclamation, “Mère de Jésus-Christ, soyez remerciée!” The main litanic factor in the poem is the repetition of “Parce que” (occasionally bearing a mark of anaphoric use as well), while the enumeration includes mainly variable epithets and titles of Holy Mary: Parce que vous êtes belle, parce que vous êtes immaculée, L a   f e m m e   d a n s   l a   G r â c e   e n f i n   re s t itu é e , L a  cré ature  dans  s on   h on n e u r   pre m i e r   et  d ans   s on   é p an ou i s s e m e nt  final, Te l l e   q u ’e l l e   e s t   s o r t i e   d e   D i e u   a u   m a t i n   d e   s a   s p l e n d e u r   o r i g i nale. Intacte ineffablement parce que vous êtes  l a   Mè re   d e   Jé s u s -C h r i s t , Q u i   e s t   l a   v é r i t é   e n t r e   v o s   b r a s ,  e t   l a   s e u l e   e s p é r a n c e  e t   l e   s e u l   f r u it . Parce que vous êtes la femme,  l’ E d e n   d e   l’ a n c i e n n e   t e n d re s s e   ou b l i é e , Dont le regard trouve le cœur tout-à-coup et fait jaillir les larmes accumulées, […]

124 Claudel, Œuvres complètes: Poésie, 162. 125 Paul Claudel, Œuvre poétique (Paris: Gallimard, 1957), 531. 126 The enigmatic phrase “Il faut entrer” provokes the question whether the speaker wants to enter or feels obliged to do this. The spirit of individual conversation with God is detectable in an interesting work: Blaise Cendrars, Les Pâques à New York (1912). It is a much longer poem and its rule of repetition of many expressions (including the invocations to “Seigneur”) is non-identifiable.

379

Parce qu’il est midi, parce que nous sommes en ce jour d’aujourd’hui, Parce que vous êtes là pour toujours, simplement parce que vous êtes  Ma r i e ,  simplement parce que vous existez.

The various lengths of line and the distension of this passage contrasts with the single line of the response. In some liturgical litanies containing the element “Parce que,” such as the Litanies de l’amour de Marie, the expression “Parce que vous êtes” serves as a prolonged introduction to common Marian titles, for instance: “Parce que vous êtes un vase d’élection,” “Parce que vous êtes l’Arche de la nouvelle alliance,” etc. It may lead one to assess this expression in a framework of circumlocution. In “La Vierge à midi,” however, “Parce que vous êtes” fills the gap of expectancy for the Marian characteristic named by the speaker. In fact, this depiction is rather ordinary: the expressions directly succeeding “parce que vous êtes” are “belle,” “immaculée,” “la Mère de Jésus-Christ,” “la femme.” Moreover, the very spare language of the work can be seen in the nature of other explanations. One of them reads “Parce qu’il est midi,” thus providing information that has been already conveyed at the beginning of the poem. Nonetheless, more refined and rich language also plays a certain role in the poem: the more complex vision of Holy Mary is incarnated in phrases that lack anaphoric “parce que” (cf. the emphasis in the quotation). Reading them in order, we may note a slight resemblance to the key words of “Je vous salue Marie”: “grâce,” “fruit,” “mère.” By means of interpretation, we may come to understand the role of the initiatory confession: the words used by the speaker seem to be too basic to constitute a prayer. In fact, he does not demand anything, and thus supplication is not his main goal. We could rather call this prayer a prayer of thanksgiving, as what he offers is only gratitude for elementary experiences such as existence and the day itself. It seems also that the speaker has a tender spirit and is affectionate and sensitive about the divinity’s presence: “Parce qu’on a le cœur trop plein”; “le regard trouve le coeur tout à coup et fait jaillir / Les larmes accumulées.” This emotional state is revealed in expressions which seem slightly chaotic, for instance, in comparison with the regular anaphoric position of “Parce que” in the liturgical litanies: here it is omitted in some lines or is moved to a position in the middle or at the end of the line: “[…] parce que vous êtes immaculée,” “[…] parce que vous êtes la Mère de Jésus-Christ.”127 Furthermore, it is exactly this tenderness 127 Cf. the poem “Tant que vous voudrez, mon Général!” from the same volume, in which the anaphoric use of “Tant que” in part of poem is more consistent, but this stems from the general character of the work: instead of an intimate and simple prayer whose words sound only in the soul of the speaker, in “Tant que vous voudrez, mon Général!” the expression bears the mark of a firm answer in a military tone. Cf. also

380

and sensitivity to the divine, the lack of which he diagnoses in the contemporary world, referring to “l’ancienne tendresse oubliée.” The aspect of time is the one about which the speaker is the most concerned. In the poem, nearly all the verbs are in the present tense apart from the third sentence, which describes the moment of entering the church, and one phrase describing the Marian qualities. We find in the poem various expressions for times of day, such as “matin” and “midi,” even to the point of redundance: “en ce jour d’aujourd’hui.” It is the present moment which needs to be held onto and it stops itself: “Rien que pour un moment pendant que tout s’arrête. Midi!” The only future perspective in the poem refers to the Mother of Christ and is found in the words: “Parce que vous êtes là pour toujours” which continues the line from the beginning of the poem: “Je viens seulement, Mère, pour […] / […] savoir cela / Que je suis votre fils et que vous êtes là.” One remark should be added about the section preceding the litanic enumeration of the Marian titles. This section also contains the element “Parce que” but it refers to the speaker rather than the addressee: Ne rien dire, mais seulement chanter Parce qu’on a le cœur trop plein, Comme le merle qui suit son idée En ces espèces de couplets soudains.

The blackbird is the motif of another Claudel poem from the same war collection as “La Vierge à Midi,” and in which it directly precedes it: “Aux Morts des Armées de la République.” In this poem, the blackbird functions as a sign of hope: “Après le corbeau affreux et le sifflement de la bise gémissante, / J’entends le merle qui chante!”128 Here, it acts as a representation of the author. A similar comparison of a person praying with the use of litanic verse to a representative of the natural world is included in chapter XXIII of Paroles d’un croyant by Lamennais, which has already been discussed: Comme la colombe que saisit le vautour, Nous crions vers vous, Seigneur. Comme l’oiseau blessé que le chien poursuit, Nous crions vers vous, Seigneur. Comme l’hirondelle tombée de lassitude en traversant les mers, et se débattant sur la vague, Nous crions vers vous, Seigneur.

one section of “Aux Algériens” from the collection by Jean Richepin also related to First World War experience: Poèmes durant la guerre (1914–1918) with the anaphora on “De l’Or” plus “pour que.” 128 Claudel, Œuvre poétique, 529.

381

Nevertheless, Claudel, instead of depicting the helplessness of the faithful, illustrates the power of the poetic word which serves in a more comprehensive manner to adore Holy Mary than “saying,” “praying” or “watching.” Apart from the interpretation of the poem in isolation, we can use this example in a kind of post scriptum to our analysis of Claudel’s work in order to make one more remark about the previously analyzed “Éloge de la rose.” The conclusions about the overall form of this poem may underline our previous statements about the Marian connotations of the title rose from de Noailles’ work. The juxtaposition of these two poets may be surprising, but their poems have a few common features. Firstly, there is the adoration of one object by means of a series of more or less repetitive invocations and only one concluding response. Secondly, there is the insistence on the present moment and circumstances: “le temps / Est là qui se repose; Et des oiseaux sont là” (de Noailles), compared with the twice repeated “Parce que vous êtes là.” Claudel descends from the individual perspective to the collective, whereas in de Noailles’ work, we are surprised by the final invocation to “ma rose,” that is, the rose thanks to which power may be exercised over the entire universe: “Régnez sur l’univers par la force et l’odeur / De la limpide rose.” The atmosphere of immobility in Claudel’s poem “un moment pendant que tout s’arrête” reflects the “tranquilité” pervading the garden in de Noailles’ poem. Moving on to more significant details, we quote the expressions that attract our attention, deriving from two different sources: Vous qui fûtes créée avant Ève, au matin De la plus jeune aurore Telle quelle est sortie de Dieu au matin De sa splendeur originale.

This short comparative analysis has shown that the means used by Claudel are not the most innovative ones: a synonym of the litanic marker used in this poem, “puisque,” is also found in de Noailles. In her “L’Honneur de souffrir” (1927), the love poem (IV) is dominated by this anaphora.129 A timidity and the confessions of laudative epithets like “belle,” emphasizing the brightness of the praised personage—these kinds of stylistic devices are universal. The power of the message lies in the syntactic division, which shifts the reader’s attention in parallel with the movements of the “parce que” element in the line. The last of the Claudel examples, a regular poem with a catchy rhythm, demonstrates an oppositional tendency in litanic verse.

129 Anna de Noailles, L’Honneur de souffrir (Paris: Grasset, 1927), 16.

382

The poem “Les Litanies de Bernadette” (1937) fulfills the condition of the litanic prayer whose addressee is individual, as the poet invokes the saint with her proper name and in the following invocations, uses metaphorical titles. However, one feature betrays the fact that the text is above all a poetic work, as all the lines—the lines containing invocations and each of them followed by the repetitive formula—have a similar number of syllables, namely five or six. The short meter creates an impression of expeditiousness and the double appearance of the imperative in the supplicatory formula—probably also dictated by metrical exigencies—intensifies it: “Priez, priez pour nous!”130 The invocations mostly lack anaphoras, apart from the twice repeated “Pour contempler.” There is no particular delimitative frame, but we may distinguish several parts in this regular composition (the form of the poem corresponds to that of the invocation “[Parfaite] En régularité”): the part in which the invocations are constituted by the names of Bernadette, starting with her own first name; the part describing in each invocation the circumstances, aims and reasons for the intercession; and the final six-line part, containing a concluding call and a kind of quotation, duplicating the message with a self-referential remark. In creating the metaphorical titles of Bernadette, the poet chiefly draws inspiration from the world of nature: the saint is represented as a bird, a flower, a drop of water. The represented world is animated as in the time of renewal, and thus, Witold Sadowski detects in the poem Eastertime connotations.131 The inclination to represent the saint in a tender manner is readily apparent, as if the message were directed to a younger audience, and the tone of voice needed to draw a child’s attention: “Petite paquerette,” “Enfant au cœur suave.” Bernadette is sweet, pure, fearless, and patient. She is a perfect intercessor, as the titles used by the speaker indicate that she opens up ways that seem to be barred: “Servante de l’azur,” “Trouveuse de ressources,” “Ouvreuse d’une source.” The second part opens with this statement: “Puisque Dieu vous choisit.” The third part is remarkable for its simplicity, reminding the reader of the pious medieval works of Gautier de Coincy: La Mère de l’Amour Priez, priez pour nous!

130 Paul Claudel, Supplement aux Œuvres Complètes, vol. 1 (Lausanne: L’Age d’Homme, 1990), 181. 131 Witold Sadowski, “Prosodic Memory: Claudel − Eliot—Liebert,” Prace Filologiczne. Literaturoznawstwo, vol. 3 (2013): 19.

383

Nous disons à genoux: Priez, priez pour nous! Bernadette Soubirous Priez, priez pour nous!

The end of the poem emphasizes the triumph of the direct message over the poetic motifs: after a passage of many stylistic tactics like the use of diminutives and parallelism, there come no other words than the saint’s first name and surname. The three poems of Paul Claudel that we have discussed here demonstrate his particular devotion to female saints who are invoked individually or whose presence is manifested at the beginning of the litanic verse. Apart from this common feature, the works vary greatly. Processional corresponds with “Les Litanies de Bernadette” due to the repetitive supplicatory formula. Nonetheless, while this formula is put in the same line as the invocations in Processional, in “Les Litanies de Bernadette” it is moved to following line: in this manner the lines are made shorter, the rhythm more lively, and the unique content of Bernadette’s titles are fully exposed. It may also mean that a moment of contemplation is needed after each poetic invocation to the saint, whereas the imitation of the invocations from the liturgical litanies may be recited automatically. “La Vierge à midi” is, in turn, the most verbose litanic verse of Claudel, and the absent repetitive formula is there replaced by the “parce que” element.

384

Conclusion The observation of Isabelle Krzywkowski that we quoted in the introduction— “en France, en revanche, […] elle [litanie—M.K.] ne semble pas reconnue comme « fait poétique » avant le XIXe siècle”1—can be considered pertinent to our research in the sense that litanic verse in the genre of litany appears at the end of the nineteenth century—and this presence is maintained in the first decades of the twentieth century. But we cannot ignore the fact that it did fine on its own in the earlier centuries, appearing in other genres and forms. These are not only solemn genres: in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, several litanic verses recall the registration of intimate conversations with God, with the Lord or with the Holy Virgin. Many manifestations of litanic verse appear in alexandrine meter, which has always been so significant a form for French poetry. On the one hand, it should not surprise us that the most frequent examples are found in the most frequently used meter. On the other hand, the rising popularity of the alexandrine in the Renaissance undoubtedly dampened the inclination to use litanic verse forms in lines of up to eight syllables. In fact, this tendency to a gradual extension of linelength is recognizable already by the end of the Middle Ages, the period during which the use of the decasyllable becomes popular. Furthermore, an essential feature of French litanic verse is the repetition of auxiliary expressions which paradoxically are not present in liturgical litanies, for instance, “Tu es,” “C’est,” “Celui qui”—these are characteristic for some periods (Middle Ages) and certain authors (Lamartine). If we examine the alexandrine: “Priez pour nous, Marie, auguste tabernacle,” we will observe how all components of the liturgical litany’s formulae compose the poetic message: proper name, metaphorical name and supplication. The line “Priés pour paix, doulce Vierge Marie,” in turn, is shorter, but it contains only one apostrophe to the saint. If a modification is introduced in the supplicatory formula and it involves abridgement, another structure of line can be used: “Ave, la tour David, ave, sainte Marie.” This example shows that the longer line demands a certain redundancy or prolixity, both in the name of the invoked person or object and in the response. To mention only a few examples from the poems analyzed in our research: the repetition of the same names of 1

Isabelle Krzywkowski, “La litanie: une écriture sans fin de la fin,” in Anamorphoses décadentes. L’Art de la défiguration 1880–1914. Études offertes à Jean de Palacio, eds. Isabelle Krzywkowski, Sylvie Thorel-Cailleteau, (Paris: P.U.P.S., 2002), 65.

385

roses in one line in Gourmont’s Litanies de la rose; “Dieu seul, Dieu seul est un puissant secours” (C. J. M. J.); and “Seigneur, Seigneur, ayez pitié” (Gustave Le Vavasseur). The short lines, as in many medieval litanic verses, are also important, for instance, in the works adapted for musical performance: the chanson of Francis I, canticles of Surin, etc. The shorter lines, particularly those composing a small stanza, usually subvert the grandeur of litanic themes, which may be seen in Laforgue’s litanies. The oldest litany, the Litany of the Saints, does not surpass in number the other litanies in being a source of inspiration. The anaphora on the equivalents of “sancte/a/i” or the enumeration of various objects are not the most popular litanic verse markers in French poetry, though in some periods they prevail. Lists of saints appear in parodies, in passages referring to parts of the liturgy or in the poetic legends of saints, like Les Saintes du Paradis of Gourmont. The enumeration of various elements of the landscape or components of the joy of life are characteristic for the Renaissance works and, for instance, of Banville’s poems. Speaking globally, the French litanic verse is more focused on the actions of bénir, saluer, gloire à, louer, and ave recognizable in the Marian contexts of litany. One caveat should be expressed to the previous remark about the lesser importance of the Litaniae Sanctorum pattern: the anaphoric “Per” from Invocatio ad Christum is one of the most widespread components of anaphora on the level of lines. The inclination to represent the Savior and the saints in their moments of suffering (e.g., the popularity of the Passion motifs) seems to suggest that the saints and the Holy Lord are no longer some alien and distant objects of adoration: they are represented on tapestries or icons; they may be called upon to give us their hands or just to smile on us. This may be also a result of the attitude of the speaker: the litanic verse is recited not only in time of need, which is obvious, but in moments when the meaning of loss and despair has been fully recognized. Therefore, we should assume that there are many signals that litanic verse is not natural or composed as natural to the same degree that the litanies are; for instance, it often employs line-length and sometimes uses the stanzaic unit, not line unit, to express both invocations and supplications. As the history of contemporary litanic verse shows—and this history demands the analysis of many works which have been published after the editorial limit for this volume of approximately the beginning of the Second World War—several paths open up for poets for the future: the path of reformulating the ancient litanic verse, as in Jacques Roubaud’s “Secondes litanies de la Vierge,” which combines the lines of medieval Marian chant royal in free order; the path 386

of writing litanic verse without revealing this convention from the very beginning and developing it gradually before the eyes of readers (Claudel in his “La Vierge à Midi” started this trend, visible today in Jacques Rebotier’s litanies); and the opposite path, of establishing clearly the litanic form but at the same time replacing, for instance, the qualities of saints with the description of prosaic experiences and details (“Liberté” by Paul Éluard and “Dévotion” by Yves Bonnefoy).

387

Bibliography Primary Sources Albenas, François Bérenger de La Tour d’. Le Siècle d’or: et autres vers divers. Vol. 2. Lyon: Tournes, 1551. Amboise, Catherine d’. Les dévotes épistres. Edited by Yves Giraud. Fribourg: Editions Universitaires Fribourg, 2002. Amboise, Catherine d’. Poésies. Montréal: CERES, 2002. Anglade, Joseph. Las Flors del gay Saber. Barcelona: Gamí, 1926. Angot, Robert. Les Nouveaux Satires et Exercices gaillards. Paris: Lemerre, 1877. Annalecta Hymnica Medii Aevi, 40: Sequentiae ineditae. Liturgische Prosen des Mittelalters. Edited by Clemens Blume. Leipzig: Reisland, 1902. Aubanel, Théodore. Œuvres complètes. Vol. 1. Avignon: Aubanel, 1973. Aubigné, Théodore Agrippa d’. Les Tragiques. Québec: éd. numérique établie par Samizdat, 2013. Auvergne, Martial de. Matines de la Vierge. Genève: Droz, 1970. Auvray, Jean. La Pourmenade de l’âme dévote accompagnant son Sauveur depuis les ruës de Jérusalem jusques au tombeau. Rouen: David Ferrand, 1633. Auvray, Jean. Les Œuvres sainctes du sr Auvray: desquelles la plus grande partie n’ont encor esté veuës ny imprimées. Rouen: David Ferrand, 1634. Baïf, Jean-Antoine de. Euvres en rimes. Deuxième partie. Les amours. Vol. 1. Edited by Jean Vignes. Paris: H. Champion, 2010. Balzac, Honoré de. “Les litanies romantiques.” La Caricature. December 9, 1830. Banville, Théodore de. Œuvres poétiques complètes. Vol. 1. Paris: Champion, 2000. Banville, Théodore de. Poésies. Occidentales–Rimes dorées–Rondels. Paris: Lemerre, 1875. Banville, Théodore de. Trente-six ballades joyeuses. Paris: Lemerre, 1873. Bartas, Guillaume De Salluste Du. The works of Guillaume De Salluste Sieur Du Bartas. Edited by Urban Tigner Holmes, John Coriden Lyons, and Robert White Linker. Genève: Slatkine, 1977. Baudelaire, Charles. Œuvres complètes. Vol. 1. Paris: Gallimard, 1975. Bellay, Joachim Du. Œuvres. Paris : Editions La Bibliothèque digitale, 2012. Belleau, Remy. Œuvres poétiques. Vol.  1. Petites inventions. Odes d’Anacréon. Œuvres diverses 1554–1561. Edited by Guy Demerson. Paris: H. Champion, 1995. 389

Birague, Flaminio de. Les Premières Œuvres poétiques (1585). Genève: Droz, 1998. Blémont, Émile. Les Litanies de Victor Hugo. Paris: Lemerre, 1902. Bouilhet, Louis. Dernières chansons. Paris: Charpentier, 1874. Brive, Martial de. Le Parnasse seraphique, et les derniers souspirs de la muse. Lyon: Francois Demasso, 1680. Brive, Martial de. Les Œuvres poëtiques et sainctes. Lyon: Alexandre Fumeux, 1655. Brive, Martial de. Les Œuvres poétiques et saintes, 1653. Grenoble: Jérôme Million, 2000. Brodeau, Victor, Poésies. Edited by Hilary M. Tomlinson. Genève: Droz, 1982. Brugnot, Charles. La lyre de Marie ou vie glorifiée de la Ste Vierge composée de 81 cantiques nouveaux à la gloire de la Mère de Dieu accompagnés de Pensées et d’Elévations, et mis nouvellement en musique, par l’abbé C. M. le Guillou. Paris: Perisse, 1841. Cardenal, Peire. Poésies complètes du troubadour Peire Cardenal (1180–1278). Edited by René Lavaud. Toulouse: É. Privat, 1957. Chabaneau, Camille. “Paraphrase des litanies en vers provençaux.” Revue des Langues Romanes, 29 (1886): 209–255. Charles, d’Orléans. Ballades et rondeaux. Paris: Librairie générale française, 1992. Chastellain, Georges. Œuvres. Genève: Slatkine, 1971. Chénier, André. Œuvres complètes. Paris: Gallimard, 1989. Claudel, Paul. Œuvre poétique. Paris: Gallimard, 1957. Claudel, Paul. Œuvres complètes: Poésie. Paris: Gallimard, 1950. Cohen, Gustave. Recueil de farces françaises inédites du XVe siècle. Cambridge: the Mediaeval Academy of America, 1949. Coignard, Gabrielle de. Œuvres chrétiennes. Genève: Droz, 1995. Coinci, Gautier de. Les Miracles de Nostre Dame. Edited by Frédéric Koenig. Genève: Droz, 1955. Couldrette. Mélusine: Roman de Parthenay ou Roman de Lusignan. Edited by Matthew W. Morris and Jean-Jacques Vincensini. New York: E. Mellen Press, 2009. Deguileville, Guillaume de. Le Pelerinage de vie humaine. Edited by J. J. Stürzinger. London: Nichols and sons, 1893. Delarue-Mardrus, Lucie. La Figure de proue. Paris: E. Fasquelle, 1908. Des XXIII manières de vilains. XIIIe siècle. Edited by Francisque Michel. Paris: Silvestre, 1833.

390

Deschamps, Eustache. Anthologie. Edited and translated by Clotilde Dauphant. Paris: Librairie générale française, 2014. Deschamps, Eustache. Œuvres complètes. Edited by Marquis de Queux de SaintHilaire. Vol. 1. Paris: Firmin Didot, 1878. Dierx, Léon. Les Lèvres closes. Paris: Lemerre, 1867. Dierx, Léon. Poèmes et poésies. Les Lèvres closes. Paris: Lemerre, 1900. Drelincourt, Laurent. Sonnets chrétiens sur divers sujets. Paris: Champion, 2004. Drutel, Marcelle. Plang e sirventés: pouèmo: 1933–1967. Cavaillon: Impr. Mistral, 1969. Écouchard-Lebrun, Ponce-Denis, Œuvres. Vol. 2. Paris: Warée, 1811. Eisseto, Mèste. Li Saladello. Marsiho: Rual, 1901. Esquiros, Alponse. L’Évangile du peuple. Paris: Le Gallois, 1840. Esquiros, Alponse. Les Hirondelles. Paris: Renduel, 1834. Fénelon, François de Salignac de la Mothe. Le Livre de prières de M. de Fénélon avec ses réflexions pour tous les jours du mois ou Le fidèle adorateur: augmenté de beaucoup de prières. Besançon: Montarsolo, 1825. Forneret, Xavier. Vapeurs: ni vers, ni prose. Paris: E. Duverger, 1838. François Ier. Œuvres poétiques. Edited by J. E. Kane. Genève: Slatkine, 1984. François Ier. Poésies. Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1847. Froidmont, Hélinant de. Les Vers de la Mort. Texte original en ancien français et traduction par Nathalie Desgrugillers-Billard. Clermont-Ferrand: Paléo, 2008. Froissart, Jean. Le Joli buisson de Jonece. Edited by Anthime Fourrier. Genève: Droz, 1975. Froissart, Jean. Œuvres de Froissart. Poésies. Edited by Auguste Scheler. Vol.  3. Genève: Slatkine, 1977. Gamon, Christophe de. La Semaine, ou Création du monde. Lyon: Morillon, 1609. Gautier, Théophile. Œuvres complètes: Romans, contes et nouvelles. Paris: Champion, 2004. Gibloux, Moussu dé. Louisa. Mounpéié: Ménagé, 1850. Gourmont, Remy de. Divertissements: poèmes en vers. Paris: Mercure de France, 1914. Granson, Oton de. Poésies. Edited by Joan Grenier-Winther. Paris: Champion, 2010. Gréban, Arnoul. Le Mystère de la Passion. Paris: Vieweg, 1878. Guérin, Eugénie de. Journal et fragments. Paris: Didier, 1865.

391

Guillou, Corentin-Marie Le. Lyres catholiques: la Lyre pieuse, la Lyre de Jésus, la lyre de Marie, ou Recueil général de cantiques, au nombre de quatre cent cinquante. Paris: Sagnier et Bray, 1848. Hopil, Claude. La Couronne de la Vierge Marie composée de douze estoiles ou traité spirituel, auquel sous les noms de douze belles vertus est parlé de toute la vie de la saincte Mere de Dieu. Paris: Sébastien Huré, 1629. Hopil, Claude. Méditations sur le Cantique des cantiques, et Les Douces extases de l’âme spirituelle. Genève: Droz, 2000. Hugo, Victor. Œuvres poétiques. Vol. 1. Paris: Gallimard, 1964. Jacob, Max. Le Laboratoire central. Paris: Gallimard, 1960. Jammes, Francis. Œuvre poétique complète. Vol. 1. Biarritz: J&D Editions, 1995. Jeanroy, Alfred, ed., Lais et descorts français du XIIIe siècle. Paris: H. Welter, 1901. Jeanroy, Alfred, ed., Les Joies du Gai savoir: recueil de poésies couronnées par le Consistoire de la gaie science. (1324–1484). Toulouse: Privat, 1914. Jodelle, Étienne. Œuvres complètes. Edited by Enea Balmas. Paris: Gallimard, 1965. Klingsor, Tristan. Le Valet de cœur. Paris: Société du Mercure de France, 1908. La Ceppède, Jean de. Les Théorèmes sur le sacré mystère de notre rédemption. Paris: Honoré Champion, 1996. Laforgue, Jules. Œuvres complètes. Vol. 1. Lausanne: L’Age d’homme, 1986. Lamartine, Alphonse de. Méditations poétiques: Première méditations. Nouvelles meditations. Paris: Garnier, 1956. Lamartine, Alphonse de. Œuvres poétiques complètes. Paris: Gallimard, 1963. Lamartine, Alphonse de. Voyage en Orient (1832–1833). Aleppo: Art & Ray Publishing, 2009. Langlade, Alexandre. La Viradona. Montpellier: Hamelin Ricateau, 1873. Lautréamont and Germain Nouveau. Œuvres complètes. Paris: Gallimard, 1970. Le Chansonnier huguenot du XVIe siècle. Edited by Henri-Léonard Bordier. Paris: Librairie Tross, 1870. Le Parnasse contemporain. Vol. 3. Paris: Lemerre, 1876. Li Romans dou Lis. Edited by F. C. Ostrander. New York: Columbia University Press, 1915. Lieutaud, Victor, ed., Letanio di sant, poésie romane du xiv siècle. Marseille: Boy et Lebon, 1875. Lisle, Leconte de. Œuvres. Vol. 2: Poèmes barbares, vol. 4: Œuvres diverses. Paris: Belles Lettres, 1976–1978. 392

Lisle, Leconte de. Poèmes tragiques. Paris: Lemerre, 1884. Magny, Olivier de. Œuvres poétiques. Vol.  2. Edited by François Rouget. Paris: H. Champion, 2006. Mahn, Carl August Friedrich, ed., Die Werke der Troubadours in provenzalisches Sprache. Vol. 4. Berlin: Mahn, 1853. Marcellus, Marie-Louis-Auguste Demartin du Tyrac. Vêpres et complies lyriques, selon le rit romain, suivies des trois Litanies et de Psaumes traduits en vers français. Lyon and Paris: Perisse, 1840. Marot, Jean. Les Deux recueils Jehan Marot de Caen, poëte et escripvain de la royne Anne de Bretagne, et depuis valet de chambre du treschretien roy François premier. Edited by Gérard Defaux and Thierry Mantovani. Genève: Droz, 1999. Marquets, Anne de. Sonets spirituels. Edited by Gary Ferguson. Genève: Droz, 1997. Ménard, Louis. Poëmes. Paris: Dentu, 1855. Mistral, Frédéric. Les Îles d’or. Paris: Lemerre, 1943. Mistral, Frédéric. Lis Isclo d’or: recuei de pouesio diverso. Avignon: Roumanille, 1876. Moiliens, Renclus de. Li Romans de Carité et Miserere. Paris: F. Vieweg, 1885. Molinet, Jean. Faictz et dictz. Edited by Noël Dupire. Vol. 1. Paris: S.A.T.F., 1936. Moore, Thomas. Lalla Rookh. London: Longman, 1842. Murger, Henry. Les Nuits d’hiver: poésies complètes. Paris: Michel Lévy frères, 1876. Musset, Alfred de. Œuvres complètes. Paris: Seuil, 1966. Navarre, Marguerite de. Chansons Spirituelles. Genève: Droz, 1971. Noailles, Anna de. L’Honneur de souffrir. Paris: Grasset, 1927. Noailles, Anna de. Les Éblouissements. Paris: Lévy, 1907. Noailles, Anna de. Les Forces éternelles. Paris: Fayard, 1920. Papillon, Marc de. Diverses poésies. Edited by Nerina Clerici Balmas. Genève: Droz, 1988. Patrologiae cursus completus. Series Latina. Edited by Jacques-Paul Migne. Vol. 189. Paris: Garnier Fratres, 1890. Péguy, Charles. Œuvres poétiques complètes. Paris: Gallimard, 1957. Péruse, Jean de la. Poésies complètes. Edited by James A. Coleman. Exeter: University of Exeter, 1992. Pisan, Christine de. Œuvres poétiques. Paris: Firmin Didot, 1896. Pizan, Christine de. Les XV Joyes nostre Dame rimees. Edited by Jean-François Kosta-Théfaine. Clermont-Ferrand: Paleo, 2010. 393

Pizan, Christine de. Une Oroison de la vie et passion de nostre Seigneur. Edited by Jean-François Kosta-Théfaine. Clermont-Ferrand: Paleo, 2010. Rabelais. Œuvres complètes. Edited by Jacques Boulenger and Lucien Scheler. Paris: Gallimard, 1970. Racine, Jean. Œuvres complètes. Vol. 1: Théâtre–Poésies. Paris: Gallimard, 1969. Rézeau, Pierre, ed., Les Prières aux saints en français à la fin du Moyen Âge. Genève: Droz, 1982. Richepin, Jean. La Mer. Paris: G. Charpentier et E. Fasquelle, 1896. Riquer, Martín de. Los trovadores: historia, literaria y textos. Vol.  3. Barcelona: Editorial Planeta, 1975. Ronsard, Pierre de. Œuvres complètes. Edited by Gustave Cohen. Vol. 1–2. Paris: Gallimard, 1958. Rosenberg, Samuel N., Margaret Switten, and Gérard Le Vot, eds., Songs of the Troubadours and Trouvères: An Anthology of Poems and Melodies. London: Routledge, 2013. Roucher, Jean-Antoine. Les Mois, poème en douze chants. Paris: Froment, 1825. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Œuvres complètes: La nouvelle Héloise. Théatre. Poésies. Essais littéraires. Paris: Gallimard, 1961. Rutebeuf. Œuvres complètes. Edited by Michel Zink. Paris: Librairie générale française, 2001. Saint-Amant, Marc-Antoine Girard. Œuvres. Paris: Didier, 1967. Sainte Suzanne, Anicet de. Litaniaire, ou Recueil complet de litanies par le frère Anicet de Ste Suzanne. Avignon: Aubanel Frères, 1879. Saint-Louis, Pierre de. Madeleine au désert de la Ste-Baume. Lyon: Jean-Baptsite & Nicolas de Ville, 1700. Saint-Pavin, Denis Sanguin de. Poésies. Paris: Garnier, 2012. Saint-Pol-Roux. Litanies de la mer. Mortemart: Rougerie, 2010. Scudéry, Georges de. Poésies diverses. Vol. 1. Paris: Nizet, 1983. Ségalas, Anaïs. Les Oiseaux de Passage. Paris: Moutardier, 1837. Segalen, Victor. Voyages au pays du réel: œuvres littéraires. Paris: Editions Complexe, 1995. Selve, Lazare de. Les Œuvres spirituelles sur les évangiles des jours de caresme et sur les festes de l’année. Genève: Droz, 1983. Siefert, Louisa. Rayons perdus. Paris: Lemerre, 1868. Silvestre, Armand. Les Renaissances. Paris: Lemerre, 1879. Soulary, Joséphin. Œuvres poétiques. Vol. 2. Paris: Lemerre, 1872. 394

Surin, Jean-Joseph. Cantiques spirituels de l’amour divin. Florence: Olschki, 1996. Surin, Jean-Joseph. Cantiques spirituels de l’amour divin. Paris: Pepie, 1655. Tablettes du chrétien. Paris: Librairie ecclésiastique et d’éducation, 1839. Tours, Guy de. Premières OEuvres poétiques et souspirs amoureux. Genève: Droz, 1969. Viau, Théophile de. Le parnasse satyrique du sieur Théophile, avec le recueil des plus excellens vers satyrique de ce temps. Paris: Gand Duquesne, 1861. Verlaine, Paul. Œuvres poétiques complètes. Paris: Gallimard, 1962. Vermeil, Abraham de. Poésies. Parisa and Genève: Droz, 1976. Viau, Théophile de. Œuvres poétiques. Genève: Droz, 1951. Vidal, Peire. Poesie. Edited by D’Arco Silvio Avalle. Vol. 1. Milan: Ricciardi, 1960. Vidal, Peire. The Songs of Peire Vidal. Translated by Veronica Mary Fraser. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2006. Vion, Charles de. Les OEuvres poétiques du Dalibray, divisées en vers bachiques, satyriques, héroïques, amoureux, moraux et chrestiens. Paris: A. de Sommaville, 1653. Vivien, Renée. Poésies completes. Paris: Deforges, 1986. Wilhelm, James J., ed., Lyrics of the Middle Ages: An Anthology. New York and London: Garland, 1990.

Editions of the Holy Bible Biblia. Les Bibles en latin au temps des Réformes. Edited by Marie-Christine Gomez-Géraud. Paris: Presses universitaires de Paris-Sorbonne, 2008. Biblia Sacra iuxta Vulgatam versionem. Edited by Robert Weber and Roger Gry­ son. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2007. La Bible de Jérusalem: la sainte Bible traduite en français sous la direction de l’École biblique de Jérusalem, nouvelle édition revue et augmentée. Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1973. La Bible qui est toute la saincte escriture en laquelle sont contenus, le Vieil Testament et le Nouveau, translatez en Francoys, par Olivétan. 1535. The Holy Bible Containing the Old and New Testament. Oxford: Wright and Gill, 1769. La Saincte Bible en françoys, translatée selon la pure et entière traduction de Sainct Hierome. 1530.

395

Online Data Bases Pèire Cardenal, http://www.cardenal.org/sommaire.htm (accessed December 19, 2017). POLIMA. Le Pouvoir des listes au Moyen Âge, http://polima.huma-num.fr/ (accessed December 19, 2017). Rialto, http://www.rialto.unina.it (accessed December 29, 2017).

Secondary Sources Alduy, Cécile. Politique des « amours »: poétique et genèse d’un genre français nouveau (1544–1560). Genève: Droz, 2007. Amprimoz, Alexandre L. L’Inspiration religieuse des symbolistes: le cas de la Doctrine de l’Amour de Germain Noveau. Stanford: Anma Libri, 1989. Anglade, Joseph. Histoire sommaire de la littérature méridionale au Moyen Âge: des origines à la fin du XVe siècle. Genève: Slatkine, 1973. Anglade, Joseph. Le Troubadour Guiraut Riquier: étude sur la décadence de l’ancienne poésie. Paris: Féret et fils, 1905. Aquien, Michèle and Jean-Paul Honoré. Le Renouvellement des formes poétiques au XIXe siècle. Paris: Nathan, 1997. Arcangeli Marenzi, Maria Laura. Aspetti del tema della vergine nella letteratura francese del Medioevo. Venezia: Libreria universitaria editrice, 1968. Argod-Dutard, Françoise. L’écriture de Joachim du Bellay: le discours poétique dans « Les Regrets », l’orthographe et la syntaxe dans les lettres de l’auteur. Genève: Droz, 2002. Arizcuren, Francisco J. Oroz. La lírica religiosa en la literatura provenzal antigua. Pamplona: Excma, 1972. Aroui, Jean-Louis. “Les tercets verlainiens.” In Verlaine à la loupe, edited by JeanMichel Gouvard and Steve Murphy. Paris: Champion, 2000. Arras, Robert le Clerc de. Li Loenge Nostre Dame. Edited by Annette Brasseur. Genève: Droz, 2013. Aubrey, Elizabeth. “La langue musicale de dévotion: les cantigas de loor et les chansons de Guiraut Riquier.” In L’Espace lyrique méditerranéen au Moyen Âge: nouvelles approches, edited by Dominique Billy, François Clément, and Annie Combes. Toulouse: Presses universitaires du Mirail, 2006. Banachévitch, Nicolas. Jean Bastier de la Péruse (1529–1554): étude biographique et littéraire. Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1923.

396

Banderier, Gilles. “L’intégration des sciences naturelles dans la poésie encyclopédique du XVIe siècle.” In Pour une littérature savante: les médiations littéraires du savoir, edited by Nella Arambasin. Paris: Presses Universitaires Franc-Comtoises, 2002. Barbiellini Amidei, Beatrice. Non lasciare l’oro per il piombo: elementi di intertestualità trobadorica e di critica del testo. Milano: CUEM, 2003. Batany, Jean. “Un charme pour tuer la mort, la strophe d’Hélinant.” In Farai chansoneta novela. Essais sur la liberté créatrice au Moyen Âge. Hommage à Jean Charles Payen, edited by Huguette Legros. Caen: Centre de Publication de l’Université, 1989. Baud, Pierre Le. Histoire de Bretagne, avec les chroniques des maisons de Vitre et de Laval. Paris: Gervais Alliot, 1638. Bavaud, Georges. “Quel honneur rendre à La Vierge Marie? Une controverse entre le Pasteur Charles Drelincourt et Mgr. Jean-Pierre Camus, Évêque de Belley,” Marian Library Studies, 17 (1985): 319–329. Bec, Pierre. La Lyrique française au Moyen Âge. XIIe–XIIIe s. Vol. 1–2. Paris: Pi­ card, 1977–1978. Béguin, Albert. “Notes sur la litanie.” Fontaine, 19–20 (1942). Bellenger, Yvonne. “Quelques mots sur La Sepmaine de Du Bartas.” L’Information littéraire, 57, no. 1 (2005): 40–44. Bellenger, Yvonne. “La répétition dans la poésie du XVIe siècle.” In Écrire et conter: mélanges de rhétorique et d’histoire littéraire du XVIe siècle offerts à Jean-Claude Moisan, edited by Marie-Claude Malenfant, Sabrina Vervacke. Québec: Presses Université Laval, 2003. Bénichou, Paul. L’École du désenchantement. Sainte-Beuve, Nodier, Musset, Nerval, Gautier. Paris: Gallimard, 1992. Bercot, Martine. “Baudelaire: poésie et prière.” In Poésie et liturgie: XIXe–XXe siècles, edited by Martine Bercot and Catherine Mayaux. Bern: Peter Lang, 2006. Berger, Samuel. La Bible française au Moyen Âge: étude sur les plus anciennes versions de la Bible écrites en prose de langue d’oïl. Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1884. Berlioz, Jacques, ed., Le Pays cathare. Les religions médiévales et leurs expressions méridionales. Paris: Seuil, 2000. Berthier, Patrick and Michel Jarrety, Histoire de la France littéraire. Vol. 3: Modernités XIXe et XXe siècles. Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2006. Bertrand, Jean-Pierre. Les «Complaintes» de Jules Laforgue: ironie et désenchantement. Paris: Klincksieck, 1997.

397

Bertrand, Régis. “Usages religieux du provençal aux xviiie et xixe siècles.” In Les parlers de la foi: Religion et langues régionales, edited by Michel Lagrée. Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 1995. Bétemps, Isabelle. “Guerre et paix dans la poésie lyrique du XVe siècle: Alain Chartier, Pierre de Nesson, Charles d’Orléans.” In Images de la Guerre de Cent Ans, edited by Daniel Couty et al. Paris: P.U.F., 2002. Billy, Dominique. L’Architecture lyrique medievale. Montpellier: Section française de l’Association internationale d’études occitanes, 1989. Bokdam, Sylviaine. “La forme du « songe » dans la poésie religieuse au seizième siècle.” In Le Songe à la Renaissance, edited by Françoise Charpentier. SaintÉtienne: Institut d’Études de la Renaissance et de l’Âge classique, 1990. Borderie, Arthur de la. “Jean Meschinot, sa vie et ses œuvres, ses satires contre Louis XI.” Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes, 56 (1895): 99–140. Bourgeois, Christophe. “Figures baroques de la Croix: une poétique de l’énigme.” Dix-septième siècle, 1, no. 222 (2004), 80, www.cairn.info/revue-dix-septiemesiecle-2004-1-page-75.htm (accessed April 15, 2018). Bourmont, Claude de. “Fonction et expression des prières d’intercession.” La Maison-Dieu: cahiers de pastorale liturgique, 105 (1971): 134–149. Bowen, Barbara C. Enter Rabelais, Laughing. Nashville and London: Vanderbilt University Press, 1998. Branciforti, Francesco. Il canzoniere di Lanfranco Cigala. Firenze: Olshcki, 1954. Brémond, Henri. Histoire littéraire du sentiment religieux en France. Vol. 10: La Prière et les prières de l’Ancien Régime. Paris: Bloud et Gay, 1932. Buckley, Ann. “Lyrical lais and the use of formulae.” Musica Antiqua Europae Orientalis, 8, 1 (1988). Busson, Henri. Le Rationalisme dans la littérature française de la Renaissance. 1533–1601. Paris: Vrin, 1971. Butler, Philip. Classicisme et baroque dans l’œuvre de Racine. Paris: Librairie Nizet, 1959. Campbell, John. “The politics of Esther.” Seventeenth-Century French Studies, 31 (2009), eprints.gla.ac.uk/24360/ (accessed December 29, 2017). Carnel, Marc. Le Sang embaumé des roses: sang et passion dans la poésie amoureuse de Pierre de Ronsard. Genève: Droz, 2004. Cassagne, Albert. Versification et métrique de Charles Baudelaire. Genève and Paris: Slatkine Reprints, 1982. Castets, Ferdinand. “Li Roman dou lis, panégyrique de la Vierge en vers du XIIIe siècle.” Revue des langues romanes, 60 (1918–1920): 5–56.

398

Cazaux, Christelle. La Musique à la cour de François Ier. Paris: École Nationale des chartes, 2002. Chantilly. Le Cabinet des livres. Manuscrits. Introduction de Henri d’Orléans. Vol. 2. Paris: Plon-Nourrit, 1900. Charlton, Donald Geoffrey. The French Romantics. Vol.  1. London: Cambridge University Press, 1984. Charpentier, François. “Variations sur les litanies: à propos du Tiers livre de Pantagruel.” Revue des Sciences Humaines, 33 (1968): 335–353. Chateaubriand, François-René. Génie du christianisme. Paris: Gallimard, 1978. Chatelain, Henri Louis. Recherches sur le vers français au 15e siècle; rimes, mètres et strophes. Paris: Champion, 1908. Chaytor, Henry John. The Troubadours. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1912. Chedozeau, Bernard. Le Baroque. Paris: Nathan, 1989. Colard, Jean-Max. “Le courage: la « veine royale » de François Ier poète.” In Devenir roi: essais sur la littérature adressée au prince, edited by Isabelle Cogitore and Francis Goyet. Grenoble: ELLUG, 2001. Combarieu, Micheline de. “Les prières à la Vierge dans l’épopée.” In La Prière au Moyen Âge (littérature et civilisation), edited by Centre universitaire d’études et de recherches médiévales. Aix-en-Provence: Université de Provence, 1981. Corneille, Pierre. Théâtre complet. Vol. 2. Paris: Gallimard, 1968. Cornejo, Toribio Fuente. “El alba religiosa en la lírica románica medieval.” In Li­ teratura y cristiandad: homenaje al profesor Jesús Montoya Martínez, edited by Antonio Rubio Flores, María Luisa Dañobeitia Fernández, and Manuel José Alonso García. Granada: Universidad de Granada, 2001. Cornulier, Benoît de. Art Poëtique. Notions et problèmes de métrique. Lyon: Presses Universitaires de Lyon, 1995. Croisille, Christian. “Du tarissement à la plénitude: regards sur la genèse des Harmonies de Lamartine à la lumière de sa correspondance.” In La Lettre et l’œuvre: perspectives épistolaires sur la création littéraire et picturale au XIXe siècle, edited by Pascale Auraix-Jonchière, Christian Croisille, and Éric Francalanza. Clermont-Ferrand: Presses Universitaires Blaise Pascal, 2009. Cropp, Glynnis M. Le Vocabulaire courtois des troubadours de l’époque classique. Vol. 1. Genève: Libraire Droz, 1975. Cros, Charles and Tristan Corbière. Œuvres complètes. Paris: Gallimard, 1970. Culler, Jonathan. “Interpretations: Data or Goals.” In The Rhetoric of Interpretation and the Interpretation of Rhetoric, edited by Paul Hernandi. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1989. 399

Cureau, Sandra. “Jean Auvray (1580?–1624): les écarts du poète furieux.” Albi­ neana, Cahiers d’Aubigné, 22 (2010): 347–362. Cusset, Monique D. Mythe et histoire. Le pouvoir de la transgression dans l’œuvre de Rabelais. Paris: Guy Trédaniel, 1992. De Caluwé, Jacques. “La richesse des formes strophiques dans la poésie lyrique de Frédéric Mistral.” Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire, 47, no. 3 (1969): 873–884. Debaisieux, Martine. “La Pourmenade de l’Ame devote de Jean Auvray, du « triomphe de la croix » au triomphe de l’écrivain.” Travaux de la littérature, X (1997): 119–133. Defaux, Gérard. Pantagruel et les sophistes: Contribution à l’histoire de l’humanisme chrétien au XVIème siècle. La Haye: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973. Degott, Bertrand. Ballade n’est pas morte: étude sur la pratique de la ballade médiévale depuis 1850. Besançon: Presses Univ. Franche-Comté, 1996. Dembowski, Peter F. “Ancien et moderne dans L’Orloge amoureus de Froissart.” In Froissart dans sa forge. Actes du colloque réuni à Paris, du 4 au 6 novembre 2004 par M. Michel Zink, edited by Odile Bombarde. Paris: Académie des inscriptions et belles lettres, 2006. Demetriou, Tania. “Periphrōn. Penelope and her early modern translations.” In The Culture of Translation in Early Modern England and France, 1500–1660, edited by Tania Demetriou and Rowan Tomlinson. London: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2015. Détrie, Catherine. “« Les Complaintes » de J. Laforgue: petite grammaire des titres.” L’Information Grammaticale, 89 (2001): 27–31. Diehl, Patrick S. The Medieval European Religious Lyric. An Ars Poetica. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985. Donaldson-Evans, Lance K. Poésie et méditation chez Jean de La Ceppède. Genève: Droz, 1969. Downer, Charles Alfred. Frédéric Mistral, poet and leader in Provence. New York: The Columbia University Press, 1901. Dubor, Françoise. L’Art de parler pour ne rien dire: Le monologue fumiste fin de siècle. Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2004. Dufour, Pierre. “Les Fleurs du Mal: dictionnaire de mélancolie.” Littérature, 72 (1988): 30–54. Dufournet, Jean. Du Roman de Renart à Rutebeuf. Caen: Paradigme, 1993. Duperray, Ève. L’Or des mots: une lecture de Pétrarque et du mythe littéraire de Vaucluse des origines à l’orée du XXe siècle: histoire du pétrarquisme en France. Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1997. 400

Durand, Pascal and Jean-Pierre Bertrand. La Modernité romantique: de Lamartine à Nerval. Bruxelles: Les Impressions Nouvelles, 2006. Duru, Audrey. “L’écriture du rapport à soi dans les paraphrases des psaumes de pénitence de Marot à Lagrange. XVIe siècle–XVIIIe siècle. suivi de la biblio­ graphie des psaumes de pénitence en vers français de Marot à la fin du XVIIIe siècle.” In Échos poétiques de la Bible, edited by Josiane Rieu, Béatrice Bonhomme, Hélène Baby, and Aude Préta-de Beaufort. Paris: Champion, 2012. Eckhardt, Alexandre. Remy Belleau. Sa vie — sa « Bergerie ». Étude historique et critique. Budapest: Librairie Joseph Németh, 1917. Edwards, Peter J. “Les Odes funambulesques et les poèmes à forme fixe.” Bulletin d’Études parnassiennes et symbolistes: Théodore de Banville en son temps: actes du colloque de Moulins, 16–18 mai 1991, 9–10 (1992): 45–63. Favre, Yves-Alain. “Poésie et liturgie dans les trois Mystères de Péguy.” Revue d’Histoire littéraire de la France, 2–3 (1973): 441–448. Ferrer, Véronique. “Pour un nouveau lyrisme: les paraphrases de psaumes en vers mesurés.” Albineana, Cahiers d’Aubigné, 17 (2000): 45–57. Ford, Philip. Ronsard’s Hymnes: A Literary and Iconographical Study. Tempe: Binghamton University, 1997. Fourquet-Gracieux, Claire. “La paraphrase en vers classique des Psaumes: le pastiche, le sacré et le profane.” Littératures classiques, 74, no. 1 (2011): 71–89. Fox, John. La Poésie lyrique de Charles d’Orléans. Paris: Nizet, 1971. Fragonard, Marie Madeleine. “Une « Volée de poètes »: Génération, mouvement, esthétique?” Albineana. Cahiers d’Aubigné, 22 (2010): 49–71. Fragonard, Marie Madeleine. La Pensée religieuse d’Agrippa d’Aubigné et son expression. Lille: Atelier National de Reproduction des thèses, 1986. Frank, István. Répertoire métrique de la poésie des troubadours. I: Introduction et répertoire. Paris: E. Champion, 1953. Fumaroli, Marc. Héros et orateurs: Rhétorique et dramaturgie cornéliennes. Genève: Droz, 1996. Ganim, Russell. “Rewriting for Redemption: Adapting the Epic in La Ceppède’s Théorèmes.” French Language and Literature, 22 (2002): 43–73. Ganim, Russell. Renaissance Resonance: Lyric Modality in La Ceppède’s Theoremes. Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, 1998. Garrette, Robert. La Phrase de Racine: étude stylistique et stylométrique. Toulouse: Presses universitaires du Mirail, 1995. Gaudon, Jean. “‘Magnifiques horreurs’. De la présence ou de l’absence d’une fi­ gure de rhétorique.” In Le Préromantisme: hypothèque ou hypothèse?, edited by Paul Viallaneix. Paris: Klincksieck, 1975. 401

Gendre, André. “Pierre de Ronsard.” In Les Poètes français de la Renaissance et Pétrarque, edited by Jean Balsamo. Genève: Droz, 2004. Génetiot, Alain. Les Genres lyriques mondains (1630–1660). Étude des poésies de Voiture, Vion d’Alibray, Sarasin et Scarron. Genève: Droz, 1990. Giacomotto-Charra, Violaine. La Forme des choses: poésie et savoirs dans la « Sepmaine » de Du Bartas. Toulouse: Presses Universitaires du Mirail, 2009. Giuliani, Pierre. “Esther et la douceur: une gageure dramatique.” L’Information littéraire, 56 (2004): 3–11. Glauser, Alfred. La Poétique de Hugo. Paris: Nizet, 1978. Gœury, Julien. L’Autopsie et le théorème. Poétique des « Théorèmes » spirituels (1616–1622) de Jean de La Ceppède. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2001. Goldin, Frederick. “The Law’s Homage to Grace: Peire Cardenal’s Vera vergena, Maria.” Romance Philology, 20 (1967): 466–477. Goodrich, Norma Lorre. Charles of Orléans: A Study of Themes in His French and in His English Poetry. Genève: Droz, 1967. Gordon, Alex L. Ronsard et la rhétorique. Genève: Droz, 1970. Gourmont, Remy de. Le Latin mystique: les poètes de l’antiphonaire et la symbo­ lique au Moyen Âge. Paris: Crès, 1922. Gourmont, Remy de. Litanies de la rose. La Rochelle: Rumeur des âges, 2006. Gournay, Dominique. Pour une poétique de Thibet de Victor Segalen. Besançon: Presses Univ. Franche-Comté, 2004. Gouvard, Jean-Michel. Critique du vers. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2000. Gouvard, Jean-Michel. La Versification. Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1999. Gros, Gérard. “Querant l’un oeil envers les cieulx estendre… Étude sur la Louenge mariale de George Chastelain.” Le Moyen Âge, 98 (1992): 429–445. Gros, Gérard. “« Pour qui chanter vraiment. » Étude sur le thème religieux et marial dans les Règles de la seconde rhétorique. Premier tiers du XVe siècle.” In Littérature et religion au Moyen Âge et à la Renaissance, edited by JeanClaude Vallecalle. Lyon: Presses universitaires de Lyon, 1997. Gros, Gérard. “D’un Puy marial à l’autre. Amiens et Rouen: Variations sur l’allégorie du miroir.” In Marie et la « Fête aux Normands », edited by Françoise Thelamon. Rouen: Publications de l’Université de Rouen, 2011. Gros, Gérard. “Histoire littéraire et Puy poétique: la poésie mariale de concours au Moyen Âge.” In L’Ecrivain et ses institutions, edited by Roger Marchal. Genève: Droz, 2006.

402

Gros, Gérard and Marie-Madeleine Fragonard. Les Formes poétiques du Moyen Âge à la Renaissance. Paris: Nathan, 1995. Gros, Gérard. Le Poète marial et l’art graphique: étude sur les jeux de lettres dans les poèmes pieux du Moyen Âge. Caen: Paradigme, 1993. Gros, Gérard. Le Poète, la vierge et le prince: étude sur la poésie mariale en milieu de cour aux XIVe et XVe siècles. Saint-Étienne: Publications de l’Université de Saint-Étienne, 1994. Gros, Gérard. Martial d’Auvergne et les « Matines de la Vierge »: études sur les formes de la dévotion mariale au temps de Louis IX. Paris: les Belles lettres, 1994. Guillemin, Henri. Le Jocelyn de Lamartine: étude historique et critique avec des documents inédits. Paris: Boivin, 1936. Guitton, Édouard. “Les tentatives de libération du vers français dans la poésie de 1760 à la Révolution.” Cahiers de l’Association internationale des études françaises, 21 (1969): 21–35. Gumpert, Matthew. Grafting Helen: The Abduction of the Classical Past. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2001. Hallyn, Fernand. Formes métaphoriques dans la poésie lyrique de l’âge baroque en France. Genève: Droz, 1975. Harrison, Carol E. Romantic Catholics: France’s Postrevolutionary Generation in Search of a Modern Faith. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014. Heyvaert, Alain. La Transparence et l’indicible dans l’œuvre d’Alfred de Musset. Paris: Klincksieck, 1994. Hiddleston, James Andrew. Essai sur Laforgue et les Derniers vers. Lexington: French Forum, 1980. Holmes, Anne. Jules Laforgue and poetic innovation. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. Huchon, Mireille. Louise Labé: une créature de papier. Genève: Droz, 2006. Hüe, Denis. “L’apprentisage de la louange: pour une typologie de la prière dans les Pèlerinages de Guillaume de Digulleville.” In Guillaume de Digulleville. Les pèlerinages allégoriques, edited by Frédéric Duval and Fabienne Pomel. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2008. Hüe, Denis. Rémanences. Mémoire de la forme dans la littérature médiévale. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2010. Hunt, Tony. Miraculous Rhymes: The Writing of Gautier de Coinci. Cambridge: Brewer, 2007.

403

Ilvonen, Eero Ilmari. Parodies de thèmes pieux dans la poésie française du Moyen Âge. Pater-Credo-Ave Maria-Laetabundus. Helsingfors: Impr. de la Société de littérature finnoise, 1914. Jeanneret, Michel. “Les tableaux spirituels d’Agrippa d’Aubigné.” Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance, 35 (1973): 234–245. Jeanneret, Michel. Perpetual Motion: Transforming Shapes in the Renaissance from Da Vinci to Montaigne. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. Jeanroy, Alfred. La Poésie lyrique des troubadours. Vol. 2. Toulouse: Didier, 1934. Jeay, Madeleine. Le Commerce des mots. L’usage des listes dans la littérature médiévale. XIIe–XVe siècles. Genève: Droz, 2006. Jennequin, Marie. “Magnifier de ma voix corporelle. Le Magnificat des indiciaires de Bourgogne?” In Quant l’ung amy pour l’autre veille. Mélanges de moyen français offerts à Claude Thiry, edited by Tania Van Hemelryck and Maria Colombo Timelli. Turnhout: Brepols, 2008. Johnson, Christopher D. “N+2, or a Late Renaissance Poetics of Enumeration.” MLN, 127, no. 5 (2012): 1096–1143. Johnson, Leonard W. Poets as Players. Theme and Variation in Late Medieval French Poetry. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990. Jossua, Jean-Pierre. Pour une histoire religieuse de l’expérience littéraire. Vol.  3. Paris: Beauchesne, 1994. Jost, François. Le Sonnet de Pétrarque à Baudelaire: modes et modulations. Berne: Peter Lang, 1989. Joukovsky, Françoise. Paysages de la Renaissance. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1974. Jourde, Michel. “L’imaginaire et l’histoire: sur la situation du sonnet en France vers 1550.” In Histoire et littérature au siècle de Montaigne: mélanges offerts à Claude-Gilbert Dubois, edited by Françoise Argod-Dutard. Genève: Droz, 2001. Kay, Sarah. Subjectivity in Troubadour Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Kerdaniel, Édouard Le Marant de. Un soldat-poète du XVe siècle. Jehan Meschinot. Paris: Jouve et cie, 1917. Koopmans, Jelle. “La parodie en situation. Approches du texte festif de la fin du Moyen Âge.” Cahiers de recherches médiévales, 15 (2008): 87–98. Kowalska, Magdalena. “La forme de la litanie comme cadre: le cas du lai et d’autres genres littéraires médiévaux.” Zagadnienia Rodzajów Literackich, 59 (2016): 31–49. 404

Krzywkowski, Isabelle. “La litanie: une écriture sans fin de la fin.” In Anamorphoses décadentes. L’Art de la défiguration 1880–1914. Études offertes à Jean de Palacio, edited by Isabelle Krzywkowski and Sylvie Thorel-Cailleteau. Paris: P.U.P.S., 2002. Kunstmann, Pierre. “L’annominatio chez Gautier.” In Gautier de Coinci: Miracles, Music, and Manuscripts, edited by Kathy M. Krause and Alison Stones. Turnhout: Brepols, 2006. Lafont, Robert. Les Prémices de l’Europe. Cabris: Éd. Sulliver, 2007. Långfors, Arthur. “La Prière de Thibaut d’Amiens.” In Studies in Romance Philology and French Literature Presented to John Orr by Pupils, Colleagues and Friends. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1953. Långfors, Arthur. “Notice du manuscrit français 12483 de la Bibliothèque Nationale.” Notices et extraits des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque nationale et autres bibliothèques, 39, part 2 (1916). Laprade, Victor de. Le Sentiment de la nature avant le christianisme. Paris: Didier, 1866. Lavis, Georges. L’Expression de l’affectivité dans la poésie lyrique française du Moyen Âge (XIIe–XIIIe s.). Étude sémantique et stylistique du réseau lexical « joie »-« dolor ». Paris: Belles Lettres, 1972. Leblanc, Paulette. Les Paraphrases françaises des psaumes à la fin de la période baroque (1610–1660). Paris: P.U.F., 1960. Lecercle, Jean-Louis. Rousseau et l’art du roman. Genève: Droz, 1979. Léglu, Catherine. Between Sequence and Sirventes: Aspects of Parody in the Troubadour Lyric. Oxford: Legenda, 2000. Lestringant, Frank and Michel Zink, eds., Histoire de la France littéraire. Moyen Âge–XVIe siècle. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2006. Ligouri, Alphonse-Marie. Livre de prieres et de méditations, tirées de S. AlphonseMarie de Liguori. Paris: Gaume Frères, 1841. “Litanies.” In Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, vol. 9. Neufchastel: Faulche, 1765. Loiseleur, Aurélie. “Spectres de Musset.” In Poétique de Musset, edited by Sylvain Ledda, Frank Lestringant, and Gisèle Séginger. Mont-Saint-Aignan: Presses Universitaires de Rouen et du Havre, 2013. Lombard-Jourdan, Anne. Aux origines de carnaval. Paris: Odile Jacob, 2005. Lote, Georges. Histoire du vers français. Vol. II. Paris: Presses universitaires de Provence, 1951. Majorossy, Imre Gábor. Amors es bona volontatz. Budapest: Akadémiai, 2006.

405

Mantovani, Thierry. “Sur le rondeau dit « parfait » de Clément Marot.” Loxias, 15 (2006), http://revel.unice.fr/loxias/index.html?id=1414 (accessed January 12, 2017). Marangoni, Alessandra. “Le genre de la tapisserie. Jarry, Péguy et leurs devanciers.” Poétique, 1, no. 177 (2015): 43–56. Maraud, André. “Litanies, rimes, refrain.” In La répétition, edited by S. Chaouachi and A. Montadon. Clermont-Ferrand: Université de Clermont-Ferrand, 1994. Marcel, Simon. “Du Perron à l’aube du classicisme.” Cahier des Annales de Normandie, 9, no. 1 (1977): 121–130. Martinon, Philippe. Les Strophes: étude historique et critique sur les formes de la poésie lyrique en France depuis la renaissance. Paris: Champion, 1912. Mathieu-Castellani, Gisèle. “Les marques du féminin dans la parole amoureuse de Louise Labé.” In Louise Labé, les voix du lyrisme, edited by Guy Demerson. Saint-Etienne: Editions du CNRS, 1990. Maurin, C.-Antoine. Les Saluts d’amour. Paris: Honoré Champion, 1932–1935. Maynard, Katherine. “Writing Martyrdom: Agrippa d’Aubigné Reconstruction of Sixteenth-century Martyrology.” Renaissance and Reformation/Renaissance et Réforme, 30, no. 3 (2007): 29–50. McCormick, Michel. “The Liturgy of War in the Early Middle Ages: Crisis, Litanies and the Carolingian Monarchy.” Viator, 15 (1984): 1–24. Meersseman, Gilles Gérard. Der Hymnos akathistos im Abendland. Vol.  1–2. Freiburg and Schweiz: Universitätsverlag, 1958–1960. Méjean-Thiolier, Suzanne. L’Archet et le lutrin: Enseignement et foi dans la poésie médiévale d’Oc. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2008. Melançon, Robert. “Le pétrarquisme pieux: la conversion de la poésie amoureuse chez Jean de La Ceppède.” Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme, 11, no. 1 (1987): 135–147. Meyer, Paul. “Prières et poésies religieuses tirées d’un manuscrit lorrain (Arsenal 570).” Bulletin de la Société des anciens textes français, 27 (1901): 43–83. Meyer, Paul. Les Derniers Troubadours de la Provence. Paris: Librairie A. Franck, 1871. Moréas, Jean. “Le symbolisme.” Le Figaro, 18.09.1886. Mortier, Alfred. Le Temple sans idoles. Paris: Mercure de France, 1909. Mortier, Roland. La Poétique des ruines en France: ses origines, ses variations, de la Renaissance à Victor Hugo. Genève: Droz, 1974. Mulder, Caroline De. Leconte de Lisle, entre utopie et république. Amsterdam and New York: Faux titre, 2005. 406

Müller, Catherine M. “« Par amoureux et gracïeulx accordz ». La parole mystique de Catherine d’Amboise comme don de miséricorde et poésie en acte.” In De l’écriture mystique au féminin, edited by Geneviève James. Sainte-Foy-Paris: Presses universitaires de Laval-L’Harmattan, 2005. Müller, Catherine M. “Pour une poétique de la dénomination dans Mélusine de Jean d’Arras et de Coudrette.” Le Moyen Age, 1 (2001): 29–48. Myriam Robic. Hellénismes de Banville: mythe et modernité. Paris: Champion, 2010. Nichols, Aidan. The Poet as Believer: A Theological Study of Paul Claudel. Burlington: Ashgate, 2011. O’Sullivan, Daniel E. Marian Devotion in Thirteenth-century French Lyric. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005. Pattison, Walter T. The Life and Works of the Troubadour Raimbaut of Orange. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1952. Pearson, Roger. Unacknowledged Legislators: The Poet as Lawgiver in Post-Revolutionary France. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Pellegrin, Jean. Réversibilité de Baudelaire. Paris: Aux Amateurs de Livres, 1988. Péret, Benjamin. Œuvres complètes. Vol. 1. Paris: Eric Losfeld, 1969. Perry, Catherine. Persephone Unbound: Dionysian Aesthetics in the Works of Anna de Noailles. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2003. Peyre, Henri. Qu’est-ce que le romantisme. Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1971. Piaget, Arthur. Oton de Grandson, sa vie et ses poésies. Lausanne: Payot, 1941. Laudun d’Aigaliers, Pierre de. L’Art poétique françois. Paris: Société des Textes Français Modernes, 2000, 70. Pinet, Marie-Josèphe. Christine de Pizan 1364–1430: Étude biographique et litté­ raire. Paris: H. Champion, 1927. Planche, Alice. “Aux marges du dit. Un type de parenthèse, l’énumération.” In Narrations brèves. Mélanges de littérature ancienne offerts à Krystyna Kasprzyk, edited by Piotr Salwa and Ewa Dorota Żółkiewska. Warszawa: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, 1993. Poirion, Daniel. Le Poète et le prince: l’évolution du lyrisme courtois de Guillaume de Machaut à Charles d’Orléans. Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1965. Poirion, Daniel. Précis de la littérature française du Moyen Âge. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1983.

407

Porterp, Lambert C. La Fatrasie et le Fatras: essai sur la poesie irrationnelle en France au Moyen Âge. Genève: Droz, 1960. Pot, Olivier. “Les tableaux de Tragiques ou le paradoxe d’image.” In Poétiques d’Aubigné, edited by Olivier Pot. Genève: Droz, 1999. Pouey-Mounou, Anne-Pascale. L’Imaginaire cosmologique de Ronsard. Genève: Droz, 2002. Pound, Ezra. The Spirit of Romance. London: P. Owen, 1952. Quenot, Yvette. Les lectures de La Ceppède. Genève: Droz, 1986. Rézeau, Pierre. Répertoire d’incipit des prières françaises à la fin du Moyen Âge: addenda et corrigenda aux répertoires de Sonet et Sinclair. Genève: Droz, 1986. Ribemont, Bernard, ed., Ecrire pour dire. Etudes sur le dit medieval. Paris: Klincksieck, 1990. Riberette, Pierre. “Mémoires par lettres.” In Chateaubriand mémorialiste. Colloque du cent cinquantenaire. 1848–1998, edited by J-C. Berchet and Philippe Berthier. Genève: Droz, 2000. Richards, Earl Jeffrey. “Les enjeux du culte marial chez Christine de Pizan.” In Desireuse de plus avant enquerre… Actes du VIe Colloque international sur Christine de Pizan, Paris, 20–24 juillet 2006. Volume en hommage à James Laidlaw, edited by Liliane Dulac et al. Paris: Champion, 2008. Rieu, Jacqueline. “Le langage pétrarquiste de la poésie spirituelle: quelques recueils catholiques.” Studia Litteraria Universitatis Iagellonicae Cracoviensis, 7 (2012): 69–84. Rigolot, François. “Qu’est-ce qu’un sonnet? Perspectives sur les origines d’une forme poétique.” Revue d’Histoire littéraire de la France, 84, no. 1 (1984): 3–18. Ripert, Émile. Le Félibrige. Paris: Armand Colin, 1948. Romagnoli, Patrizia. “«Vostre est toute la journee»: les temps du clerc, du seigneur et de la fée dans le Roman de Mélusine de Coudrette.” In 550 ans de Mélusine allemande—Coudrette et Thüring von Ringoltingen, edited by André Schnyder and Jean-Claude Mühlethaler. Bern: Peter Lang, 2008. Rougemont, Denis de. L’Amour et l’Occident. Paris: Union générale d’éditions, 1962. Ruff, Marcel A. Baudelaire. New York: New York University Press, 1966. Sadowski, Witold. “Le texte en dialogue avec son genre. Les litanies de Laforgue.” Poétique, 179 (2016): 89–107. Sadowski, Witold. “Prosodic Memory: Claudel − Eliot—Liebert.” Prace Filolo­ giczne. Literaturoznawstwo, 3 (2013): 11–30. Sadowski, Witold. Litania i poezja. Na materiale literatury polskiej od XI do XXI wieku. Warszawa: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, 2011. 408

Sadowski, Witold. “A Generic Worldview. The Case of the Chronotope of Litany.” In Literarische Form. Geschichte und Kultur ästhetischer Modellbildung, edited by Robert Matthias Erdbeer, Florian Kläger, and Klaus Stierstorfer. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2017. Sadowski, Witold, Magdalena Kowalska, and Magdalena Maria Kubas, eds., Litanic Verse I. Origines, Iberia, Slavia et Europa Media. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2016. Saint-Gérand, Jacques-Philippe. “« Je rimaille par boutade, je baise par désœuvrement, je bois et fume avec volupté. — et voilà! »: Métrique, rhétorique et identité du sujet dans Les Nuits de Musset.” L’Information Grammaticale, 69 (1996): 36–41. Salvat, Joseph. “La sainte Vierge dans la littérature occitane du moyen âge.” In Mélanges de linguistique et de littérature romanes à la mémoire d’István Frank : offerts par ses anciens maîtres, ses amis et ses collègues de France et de l’étranger. Saarbrücken: Universitàt des Saarlandes, 1957. Sauza, Guillaume De. “Bérenger de La Tour et son œuvre poétique: essai de mise au point.” Réforme, Humanisme, Renaissance, 65 (2007): 65–92. Scheludko, Dmitri. “Die Marienlieder in der altprovenzalischen Lyrik.” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 37 (1936): 15–42. Schinz, Albert. “L’art dans les Contes Dévots de Gautier de Coincy.” Publications of the Modern Language Association, 22, no. 3 (1907): 465–520. Scott, Virginia and Sara Sturm-Maddox. Performance, Poetry and Politics on the Queen’s Day: Catherine de Médicis and Pierre de Ronsard at Fontainbleau. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2007. Screech, Michael A. The Rabelaisian Marriage. Aspects of Rabelais’s Religion, Ethics & Comic Philosophy. London: Edward Arnold, 1958. Séché, Alphonse, ed., Les Muses françaises; anthologie des femmes-poètes. Paris: Michaud, 1908. Sellier, Philippe. Regards sur Jésus-Christ: textes français (1450–1960). Paris: Cerf, 1964. Shapiro, Marianne. “The decline of Joi in Provençal planh.” In From the Critic’s Workbench: Essays in Literature and Semiotics, edited by Michael Shapiro. New York: Peter Lang, 2005. Sinclair, Keith Val. French Devotional Texts of the Middle Ages. A Bibliographic Manuscript Guide. Second Supplement. New York: Greenwood Press, 1988. Sinclair, Keith Val. Prières en ancien français. Nouvelles références, renseignements complémentaires, indications bibliographiques, corrections et tables des articles du ‘Répertoire’ de Sonet. Hamden: Archon Books, 1978. 409

Siwiec, Magdalena. Romantyczne koncepcje poezji. Poeta i Muza — relacja w sta­ nie kryzysu. Alfred de Musset i Juliusz Słowacki. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, 2012. Smith, Nathaniel B. Figures of repetition in the old Provençal lyric. A study in the style of the troubadours. Chapel Hill: North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures, 1976. Smith, Paul J. “Fable ésopique et dispositio épidictique: pour une approche rhétorique du Pantagruel.” In Études rabelaisiennes, 33: Rabelais pour le XXIe siècle. Actes du colloque du Centre d’Études Supérieures de la Renaissance. ChinonTours, 1994, edited by Michel Simonin. Genève: Droz, 1998. Smith, Paul J. ‘Dispositio’: Problematic Ordering in French Renaissance Literature. Leiden: Brill, 2007. Smith, William F. Rabelais in his writings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1918. Sobczyk, Agata. Les Jongleurs de Dieu. Sainte simplicité dans la littérature religieuse de la France médiévale. Łask: Oficyna wydawnicza Leksem, 2012. Sonet, Jean. Répertoire d’incipit de prières en ancien français. Genève: Droz, 1956. Spyropoulou-Leclanche, Maria. Le Refrain dans la chanson française de Bruant à Renaud. Limoges: Presses Universitaires de Limoges et du Limousin, 1998. Stanislav-Kemenah, Alexandra Kathrin. “Sur quelques ballades historiogra­ phiques d’Eustache Deschamps.” In Autour d’Eustache Deschamps, edited by Danielle Buschinger. Amiens: Presses du Centre d’études médiévales, 2000. Stefani, Gino. L’Acclamation de tout un peuple. Paris: Éditions Fleurus, 1967. Stegmann, André. “Recherches de critères stylistiques dans la poésie française baroque. 1600–1640.” In Renaissance, Maniérisme et Baroque, edited by Manuel Ballesteros-Gaibros. Paris: Vrin, 1972. Stevens, John. Words and Music in the Middle Ages: Song, Narrative, Dance and Drama, 1050–1350. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Switten, Margaret Louise. “Modèle et variations: Saint-Martial de Limoges et les troubadours.” In Contacts de langues, de civilisations et intertextualité. IIIème Congrès international de l’Association internationale d’études occitanes, edited by Gérard Gouiran, vol. 2. Montpellier: Gérard, 1990. Thévoz, Samuel. “Victor Segalen et les explorateurs du Tibet: le « pays au-delà » et la crise du paysage.” Revue d’histoire littéraire de la France, 4 (2011): 923–952. Tilliette, Xavier. “Les Cinq Grandes Odes: une poésie théologique.” In Paul Claudel: les odes: poésie, rhétorique, théologie, edited by Sergio Villani. Woodbridge: Les Editions Albion Press, 1994.

410

Tuzet, Henri. “Structure et couleur baroques de la « canzone » chez Gianbattista Marino.” Baroque, 3 (1969), https://baroque.revues.org/278 (accessed December 29, 2017). Urvoy, Dominique. Penser l’islam: les présupposés islamiques de l’art de Lull. Paris: J. Vrin, 1980. Vaillant, Alain. La Crise de la littérature: romantisme et modernité. Grenoble: ELLUG, 2005. Valenti, Gianluca. La liturgia del « trobar »: Assimilazione e riuso di elementi del rito cristiano nelle canzoni occitane medievali. Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 2014. Valérie Laurent, ed., Tristan Corbière. Paris: Seuil, 2004. Vavasseur, Gustave Le. Poésies fugitives. Paris: Dentu, 1846. Verlato, Zeno. “II pretesto trobadorico della raccolta di poesie religiose del manoscritto di Wolfenbüttel.” In La lirica romanza del Medioevo. Storia, tradizioni, interpretazioni. Atti del VI convegno triennale della Società Italiana di Filologia Romanza, edited by Furio Brugnolo and Francesca Gambino. Padova: Unipress, 2009. Verlet, Agnès. Les Vanités de Chateaubriand. Genève: Droz, 2001. Vianey, Joseph. “Leconte de Lisle et l’unité italienne.” In Mélanges de philologie d’histoire et de littérature offerts à Henri Hauvette. Genève: Slatkine, 1972. Vignes, Jean. “Appropriation et restitution de Pétrarque dans la poésie de JeanAntoine de Baïf.” In Les poètes français de la Renaissance et Pétrarque, edited by Jean Balsamo. Genève: Droz, 2004. Vinaver, Eugèn. À la recherche d’une poétique médiévale. Paris: Nizet, 1970. Warren, F. M. “Some Features of Style in Early French Narrative Poetry 1150– 1170.” Modern Philology, 3 (1905–1906): 179–209. Wolfzettel, Friedrich. “«Songe» et/ou «histoire». Le roman de Mélusine de Cou­ drette ou le roman conte de fées au carrefour du système générique du Moyen Âge tardif.” In 550 ans de Mélusine allemande—Coudrette et Thüring von Ringoltingen, edited by André Schnyder and Jean-Claude Mühlethaler. Bern: Peter Lang, 2008. Ying Hsieh, Yvonne. From Occupation to Revolution. China Through the Eyes of Loti, Claudel, Segalen and Malraux. 1895–1933). Birmingham: Summa Publications, 1996. Zielonka, Anthony. “Les préfaces, prologues et manifestes des « Petits Romantiques».” Romantisme, 59 (1988): 71–81. Zielonka, Anthony. Alphonse Esquiros (1812–1876): a study of his works. Paris and Genève: Champion and Slatkine, 1985. 411

Index of Subjects A Agnus Dei 17, 71, 132, 222, 262, 365 alba 47–9, 105, 210, 295 alexandrine 34, 79, 92, 110, 136, 138, 149–50, 159, 163, 177, 182, 191, 198–9, 203, 205–6, 212–13, 220–1, 223, 230, 232, 236, 239–40, 242, 247, 258, 261, 266, 270, 288–9, 292–5, 299, 303, 307, 313, 330, 349, 352, 368, 373, 385 alliteration 38–41, 44, 53, 60, 84, 199, 229 amours 116 anaphora 12, 18–9, 21–3, 34–9, 43–5, 53–5, 57–60, 63, 69–71, 75–6, 80–4, 86, 88–93, 95, 97, 99, 101, 104, 108–9, 115–124, 126–7, 129, 131–9, 142–3, 145, 147–50, 152, 157, 160, 165, 173, 175, 177, 182–3, 185, 187–8, 194, 196, 198, 202, 204, 207, 208–9, 212, 216–20, 222, 231, 233, 237, 239, 241–2, 244, 248–51, 253, 260, 262, 268–9, 271, 275–6, 278, 283, 288, 290–1, 293, 303, 305, 307, 309, 311, 313, 324, 326, 331–2, 336–8, 342, 344, 348, 361, 368, 370, 373, 377–8, 382–3, 386 Angelus 16, 352, 369, 371 antonomasia 12, 20–1, 46–8, 50, 63–4, 75, 78, 85–7, 136, 166, 177, 187–8, 191, 194–6, 198–9, 209, 211, 220, 239, 259, 264, 266, 269–70, 275–6, 303–4, 306, 308, 310, 313, 315, 318, 326, 329, 334–5, 337 apostrophe 12, 37, 39, 45, 47–8, 66, 69, 73, 75, 78, 88, 93, 109, 117, 127, 130–1, 137, 183, 186–7, 193, 204, 209, 216, 238, 241, 251, 253, 256–8,

262, 269, 272, 274, 277, 284, 291, 302–3, 308, 313, 317, 326, 329, 365, 367, 385 assonance 27, 136 Ave Maria 28, 84, 87–8, 91, 156, 306, 373 Ave maris stella 49, 85, 306 B Bible 16–7, 43–4, 174–5, 182, 245, 338 Genesis 126, 164, 174–5, 348 Job 216, 261 John 40–1 Luke 173–4, 184 Matthew 173–5 Psalms 164 blason 189 C canso 28, 34–8, 45, 50, 57, 59, 354 chaire, ave, hail 88–92, 352, 373–4, 380 chairetismic gene 89, 92, 275 chanson de croisade 28, 54 chanson de geste 27 chanson mariale 34 chant royal 61, 112, 167–71, 177, 181, 386 choir 206, 260, 274, 326, 328 D dialogue 47, 159, 231, 235, 252–3, 257 dit 10, 13, 81–4, 110 drama 13, 61, 105, 199, 201–6, 213 E eclogue 112 ektenial gene 42 413

elegy 220–1 enumeration 12, 20–1, 28–9, 31, 34, 36, 43–4, 48, 50, 52, 56–8, 63–4, 71, 73, 75, 78–9, 81–4, 89–91, 100–1, 109–10, 117–9, 121, 124, 126, 128, 131, 134–6, 150, 152, 155–7, 164, 166, 169, 171, 173–7, 184, 189–91, 194–5, 207–9, 211–2, 218–20, 230, 233, 236–7, 241–2, 248, 250–1, 260–1, 266, 272, 276–7, 286, 288, 307, 312, 315, 318, 321, 332–4, 341–2, 356–8, 361, 364, 370, 374, 379, 381, 386 envoi 62, 97–8, 167–8, 171, 279 epiphora 309, 334, 350, 360–1, 366–7 epitaph 135, 207, 314 epithet 45, 47, 49–50, 52–3, 58, 61–2, 68, 77–8, 84, 125, 131, 155, 164, 169–70, 186, 191, 194, 198, 207, 209, 213, 232–3, 249, 255–6, 264, 282, 286, 329, 345, 348, 386, 406 F farce 106–7 fatrasie 106 formula 7, 11, 18–9, 42–3, 50, 65, 87, 93, 118, 120, 124, 129–30, 135, 139, 150, 178, 180–1, 188, 210–11, 214, 216, 218, 226–7, 229, 240, 261, 264, 277, 281, 308, 311, 332–4, 336, 342, 344–5, 347, 354–5, 365–6, 368–70, 372, 400–1, 404 G gap 52 H hymn 27, 38, 46, 48, 54, 85, 152–3, 159, 163–4, 174, 177, 227, 261, 275, 299, 311, 331, 351

414

I idyll 13, 220–1 imperative 95, 97, 168, 171, 193, 240, 242, 277, 291, 305, 307–8, 310, 364, 383 intercession 52, 58, 62, 66, 76, 83, 108, 110, 114, 134, 185, 219, 241, 258, 313, 320, 331, 343, 345, 362, 373, 386, 403 invocation 7, 16, 32, 34, 39, 41, 51–2, 56, 58, 62, 67, 86–7, 92, 102, 106–8, 112–3, 116, 129–30, 132, 134, 136, 151, 182, 188, 216–17, 258, 264, 285, 287, 308, 342, 370, 372–3, 394–5, 399–400 J joys of Mary 81–2, 86–7, 89, 110, 154, 156, 373 K Kyrie eleison, Lord have mercy 17, 107, 309, 311–2, 365, 376, 378 kyrielle 50, 189, 285, 299 L lai 13, 66–74, 109 laisse 27, 29 Litany of Loreto 22, 34, 38, 103, 322 Litany of the Holy Name of Jesus 128, 311 Litany of the Sacred Heart of Jesus 22, 76, 95, 104, 132 Litany of the Saints 18, 22, 71, 73, 85–6, 89–90, 105, 134, 139, 169, 219, 222, 311, 321, 342, 377, 386 M Magnificat 222, 275, 299 miracle 62–6, 73, 79–80, 109, 213, 310

O ode 112, 149, 160, 177, 227, 238, 261, 280, 361, 376–7 ora pro nobis, pray for us 71, 103, 107, 120, 127, 238–9, 364 oxymoron 278 P paradox 210–1, 249, 315, 344, 361–2 parallelism 29, 44, 46, 55–7, 63, 68, 71, 76, 82, 86, 116, 120, 131, 137, 154, 181, 202, 204–5, 207, 215, 236, 253, 257–8, 281, 286, 297, 303, 335, 337, 339, 364, 373, 384 parody 105, 173, 284 Pater Noster, Lord’s Prayer 337 patriotic poetry 126, 132, 235 planh, planctus 55, 57, 333 polyonymic gene 83, 150, 290 procession 376–9, 384 prose 13, 17–9, 71, 173–6, 228, 257, 283 psalm 15–6, 41, 111 R refrain 27–8, 38–9, 44, 47–8, 66, 84–88, 95–6, 100, 102, 156, 167, 169–70, 238, 264, 275, 281, 283–5, 335–6, 340, 345–6 rhyme 39, 47, 54, 59, 66, 69–72, 75–9, 85, 90–1, 102, 106, 152–3, 191, 216, 230, 236, 251, 258, 261, 265, 268, 271, 276, 279, 283, 285, 289–90, 293–5, 303, 307, 311, 315–6, 349, 353, 362–3 roman 29, 71–4, 76–8, 81, 83–4, 88, 90, 98, 110, 199, 210 rondeau 95, 112, 167 rosary 16, 270, 372–3, 375–6

S serenade 295, 297–8 sirventes 25, 45, 56–8, 337 sonnet 14, 111–3, 115–141, 177, 181–91, 195–8, 201, 206–13, 228, 297–8, 355 stanza, cobla 6-line stanza 242, 245, 253, 261, 328, 338, 383 coblas retronchadas 51 coblas replicativas 35 coblas unisonans 35, 39, 47 supplication 12, 17–20, 22–3, 36, 43, 47, 49, 51, 58–9, 65–6, 68–9, 71, 73, 75, 77, 84, 87–90, 95–9, 103–4, 106, 108–10, 118, 120, 128–30, 142, 148, 150, 152–3, 157, 159, 168, 171, 173, 177, 187–9, 193–5, 197, 201, 204, 211, 220–2, 236–7, 239–41, 245, 256, 258, 260, 262, 264–5, 268, 270, 279, 281–2, 284–6, 288, 295, 297, 304, 309, 310–3, 315–7, 319–21, 327, 329, 335–6, 338, 341–2, 349–50, 352–3, 355, 366–7, 369–70, 380, 385–6 T tornada 37, 45–7, 50–1, 54–5, 57–9, 188–9 trope 41–3 V vers libre 355 virelais 61, 112 W worldview 161, 176, 243, 249, 257, 271, 296, 361, 369

415

Index of Names A Albenas François Bérenger de La Tour d’ 143, 145 Alduy Cécile 116 Alfonso X 34 Alibray Charles de Vion d’ 201, 206–7, 211 Alvernhe Peire d’ 40, 42 Amboise Catherine d’ 169 Arnold Matthew 272 Arras Robert le Clerc de 61, 78–9, 354 Aubanel Théodore 333–4 Aubigné Théodore Agrippa d’ 111, 147, 156 Autpol Guilhem d’ 34, 82 Auvergne Martial d’ 16, 62, 91, 101 Auvray Jean 181, 359 B Baïf Jean-Antoine de 111, 116–7, 119, 121, 124, 159 Balzac Jean-Louis Guez de 212 Banachévitch Nicolas 149 Banville Théodore de 15, 268, 276–80, 298–9, 386 Bartas Guillaume De Salluste Du 112, 147, 150, 163–5, 177 Baudelaire Charles 15, 243, 268, 281–4, 289, 301, 344–5, 347 Bec Pierre 28 Bellay Joachim du 112, 115, 122–4, 208 Belleau Rémy 111, 159–60, 257 Bellenger Yvonne 164 Bercot Martine 281 Bernard Valèri 340 Bertrand Jean-Pierre 249 Birague Flaminio de 111, 117–9, 124

Blacasset 33, 45 Blémont Émile 327, 330 Boderie Guy Le Fèvre de La 112 Bonnaevallis Ernaldus 43 Bonnefoy Yves 387 Borderie Arthur 102 Born Bertrand de 33, 45 Bouilhet Louis 290 Bowen Barbara C. 174 Brémond Henri 181–2 Brives Martial de 20, 181, 195 Brodeau Victor 111, 147, 209 C Cardenal Peire 25, 33, 38, 40–4, 47, 53, 55–7, 59, 188 Castets Ferdinand 85 Catherine de’ Medici 132 Ceppède Jean de La 181–7, 189, 198–9 Charles d’Orléans 96–7, 99 Charles IX of France 132 Charles X of France 229 Charlton Donald Geoffrey 243 Chastellain Georges 62, 90–2, 101 Chateaubriand François-René 227, 278 Chénier André 215, 220 Claudel Paul 343, 376–84, 387 Clement of Alexandria 242 Clovis I 25 Coignard Gabrielle de 112, 119, 127–9, 136, 138, 182, 210 Colard Jean-Max 142 Combarieu Micheline de 30, 103 Corbiac Peire de 33, 45–7, 50, 80, 82 Corbière Tristan 297 Corneille Pierre 201–2 Cornejo Toribio Fuente 48 Cornulier Benoît de 30 417

Coudrette 61, 71–3, 104, 110, 199 Croisille Christian 234 Cros Charles 296 Cusset Monique D. 176 D Debaisieux Martine 197, 199 Deguileville Guillaume de 61, 78 Delarue-Mardrus Lucie 352 Deschamps Eustache 61-2, 99–102, 104 Détrie Catherine 314 Diehl Patrick S. 60 Dierx Léon 287–8, 295 Donaldson-Evans Lance K. 182, 186 Drelincourt Laurent 201, 209–11 Drutel Marcelle 340–2 Dufour Pierre 281 Dufournet Jean 83 Duperray Ève 209 Durand Pascal 249 E Écouchard-Lebrun Ponce-Denis 215–8, 221 Edward III 61 Eisseto Mèste 335 Éluard Paul 387 Esquiros Alphonse 228, 255–6, 265 Eucherius of Lyon 43 F Fénelon François de Salignac de la Mothe 21 Filiger Charles 320 Forneret Xavier 257–8, 265 Forni Jules 286 Francis I 111, 141–3, 147, 177, 386 Francis of Assisi 348 Froidmont Hélinand of 61, 75 Froissart Jean 61, 94–6

418

G Galhac Austorc de 50, 210 Gamon Christophe de 163, 165 Ganim Russell 190 Garrette Robert 205 Gaudon Jean 219 Gautier de Coincy 29, 61–70, 105, 109–10, 383 Gautier Théophile 267, 298 Gendre André 116 Giacomotto-Charra Violaine 164 Gibloux Moussu dé 332-3 Gœury Julien 182, 186 Gourmont Remy de 267, 316, 320, 347–8, 386 Gouvard Jean-Michel 30 Grandson Othon III de 93–4, 96 Gros Gérard 66, 82, 88, 90, 105 Guérin Eugénie de 264 Guitton Edouard 220 H Hallyn Fernand 155, 210 Harrison Carol E. 243 Henry III 111 Hölderlin Friedrich 272 Hopil Claude 19–20 Hugo Victor 227–8, 237–48, 265–6, 327–9, 332, 364 Huot Marie 344–6 I Ilvonen Eero Ilmari 105 Isidore of Seville 43 J Jacob Max 365, 367 Jammes Francis 16, 368–76 Jean of Arras 71 Jeanroy Alfred 50 Jeay Madeleine 106

Jodelle Étienne 111, 131 John Lackland 53 Johnson Leonard W. 103 Joukovsky Françoise 164 K Kay Sarah 37 Klingsor Tristan 350–1 Kristeva Julia 281 Krzywkowski Isabelle 103, 385 L Labé Louise 112, 118–9 Lafont Robert 66 Laforgue Jules 312–4, 330, 386 Lamartine Alphonse de 11, 227–37, 242–3, 265, 385 Lamennais Hugues-Félicité Robert de 267, 381 Långfors Arthur 76 Langlade Alexandre 331 Larchevêque Guillaume 71 Laucassade Auguste 293 Léglu Catherine 76 Leo XIII 22 Lisle Leconte de 227, 268–71, 284, 298–9 Lote Georges 27 Louis XIV 256-7 M Magny Olivier de 111, 121, 124 Majorossy Imre Gábor 39, 43 Malherbe François de 21 Maraud André 110, 283 Marcabru 33 Marcellus, Marie-Louis-Auguste Demartin du Tyrac 261 Mardrus Joseph-Charles 368 Maria das Neves 337 Marie Antoinette 222 Marot Clément 111, 301

Marot Jean 111–2, 167, 171, 350 Marquets Anne de 112, 133, 182 Masures Louis Des 111 Mathieu-Castellani Gisèle 119 Ménard Louis 267, 272 Meschinot Jean 62, 102–5, 109–10, 145 Mistral Frédéric 336–7, 339, 340 Moiliens Renclus de 61, 74–5 Molinet Jean 62, 98–9, 109 Molinier Guilhem 51–2 Moore Thomas 278 Moulins Guyart des 17 Mulder Caroline De 271 Murger Henri 291 Musset Alfred de 227–8, 248–55, 265, 268–9, 368, 370 N Napoleon Bonaparte 246, 255 Nédélec Claudine 213 Nerval Gérard de 227, 284 Nichols Aidan 376 Nietzsche Friedrich 298 Noailles Anna de 347, 382 Noue Gustave de La 261 Nouveau Germain 303–11 P Papillon Marc de 122 Péguy Charles 355–6, 359, 360 Pellegrin Jean 281 Péret Benjamin 363 Perron Jacques Davy du 147, 153–4, 156 Péruse Jean de la 147–9 Peyre Henri 237 Philippa of Hainault 61 Pinet Marie-Josèphe 88 Pisan Christine de 16, 61–2, 86–7, 110, 156, 373 Pius VI 23 419

Pius IX 22 Planche Alice 81 Poirion Daniel 29, 167 Pouey-Mounou Anne-Pascale 153 R Rabelais François 173–176 Racine Jean 201, 204–6, 213 Raymond V 33 Raymond VI 33, 53 Rebotier Jacques 387 Richepin Jean 322, 329 Riquier Guiraut 33–4, 40, 57–60, 210 Ronsard Pierre de 115–6, 124–6, 130–1, 133–5, 137–8, 147, 152, 159, 177, 185, 207 Roubaud Jacques 103, 386 Roucher Jean-Antoine 215, 218–20, 220 Rougemont Denis de 14 Rousseau Jean-Jacques 215–8, 223 Rutebeuf 61, 72, 79–84, 105, 110, 156, 210 S Sadowski Witold 11, 383 Sainte Suzanne Anicet de 22 Saint-Gelais Mellin de 111 Saint-Gérand Jacques-Philippe 248, 255 Saint-Louis Pierre de 181, 195 Saint-Pavin Denis Sanguin de 206–7 Saint-Pol-Roux 326 Sauza Guillaume De 145 Schiller Friedrich von 250 Schinz Albert 109 Scott Virginia 159 Screech Michael A. 175 Scudéry Georges de 201, 207–9, 212 Segalen Victor 361

420

Selve Lazare de 181–2, 187–9, 191–2 Shapiro Marianne 57 Siefert Louisa 292 Silvestre Armand 289 Sixtus V 42 Smith Paul J. 174 Sobczyk Agata 30 Soubirous Bernadette 376, 383–4 Soulary Joséphin 275 Spyropoulou-Leclanche Maria 28 Stefani Gino 29 Stevens John 66-7 Sturm-Maddox Sara 159 Surin Jean-Joseph 181, 193, 199, 386 T Thévoz Samuel 362 Thibaut d’Amiens 61, 76–7, 79, 110 Tours Guy de 123–4 Turquety Édouard 260 V Vaillant Alain 255 Valenti Gianluca 41 Vavasseur Gustave Le 285, 386 Verlaine Paul 298, 303, 309, 311 Verlato Zeno 42 Verrier Paul 30 Vidal Arnaut 58–60 Vidal Peire 33–8, 40, 45, 52, 331 Villon François 31, 279–80 Vion Charles de 201, 206 Vivien Renée 343 Voltaire 246 W William IX 33 Z Zumthor Paul 103

Literary and Cultural Theory General editor: Wojciech H. Kalaga Vol.

1

Wojciech H. Kalaga: Nebulae of Discourse. Interpretation, Textuality, and the Subject. 1997.

Vol.

2

Wojciech H. Kalaga / Tadeusz Rachwał (eds.): Memory – Remembering – Forgetting. 1999.

Vol.

3

Piotr Fast: Ideology, Aesthetics, Literary History. Socialist Realism and its Others. 1999.

Vol.

4

Ewa Rewers: Language and Space: The Poststructuralist Turn in the Philosophy of Culture. 1999.

Vol.

5

Floyd Merrell: Tasking Textuality. 2000.

Vol.

6

Tadeusz Rachwał / Tadeusz Slawek (eds.): Organs, Organisms, Organisations. Organic Form in 19th-Century Discourse. 2000.

Vol.

7

Wojciech H. Kalaga / Tadeusz Rachwał: Signs of Culture: Simulacra and the Real. 2000.

Vol.

8

Tadeusz Rachwal: Labours of the Mind. Labour in the Culture of Production. 2001.

Vol.

9

Rita Wilson / Carlotta von Maltzan (eds.): Spaces and Crossings. Essays on Literature and Culture in Africa and Beyond. 2001.

Vol.

10

Leszek Drong: Masks and Icons. Subjectivity in Post-Nietzschean Autobiography. 2001.

Vol.

11

Wojciech H. Kalaga / Tadeusz Rachwał (eds.): Exile. Displacements and Misplacements. 2001.

Vol.

12

Marta Zajac: The Feminine of Difference. Gilles Deleuze, Hélène Cixous and Contempora-ry Critique of the Marquis de Sade. 2002.

Vol.

13

Zbigniew Bialas / Krzysztof Kowalczyk-Twarowski (eds.): Alchemization of the Mind. Literature and Dissociation. 2003.

Vol.

14

Tadeusz Slawek: Revelations of Gloucester. Charles Olsen, Fitz Hugh Lane, and Writing of the Place. 2003.

Vol.

15

Carlotta von Maltzan (ed.): Africa and Europe: En/Countering Myths. Essays on Literature and Cultural Politics. 2003.

Vol.

16

Marzena Kubisz: Strategies of Resistance. Body, Identity and Representation in Western Culture. 2003.

Vol.

17

Ewa Rychter: (Un)Saying the Other. Allegory and Irony in Emmanuel Levinas’s Ethical Language. 2004.

Vol.

18

Ewa Borkowska: At the Threshold of Mystery: Poetic Encounters with Other(ness). 2005.

Vol.

19

Wojciech H. Kalaga / Tadeusz Rachwał (eds.): Feeding Culture: The Pleasures and Perils of Appetite. 2005.

Vol.

20

Wojciech H. Kalaga / Tadeusz Rachwał (eds.): Spoiling the Cannibals’ Fun? Cannibalism and Cannibalisation in Culture and Elsewhere. 2005.

Vol.

21

Katarzyna Ancuta: Where Angels Fear to Hover. Between the Gothic Disease and the Meataphysics of Horror. 2005.

Vol.

22

Piotr Wilczek: (Mis)translation and (Mis)interpretation: Polish Literature in the Context of Cross-Cultural Communication. 2005.

Vol.

23

Krzysztof Kowalczyk-Twarowski: Glebae Adscripti. Troping Place, Region and Nature in America. 2005.

Vol.

24

Zbigniew Białas: The Body Wall. Somatics of Travelling and Discursive Practices. 2006.

Vol.

25

Katarzyna Nowak: Melancholic Travelers. Autonomy, Hybridity and the Maternal. 2007.

Vol.

26

Leszek Drong: Disciplining the New Pragmatism. Theory, Rhetoric, and the Ends of Literary Study. 2007.

Vol.

27

Katarzyna Smyczyńska: The World According to Bridget Jones. Discourses of Identity in Chicklit Fictions. 2007.

Vol.

28

Wojciech H. Kalaga / Marzena Kubisz (eds.): Multicultural Dilemmas. Identity, Difference, Otherness. 2008.

Vol.

29

Maria Plochocki: Body, Letter, and Voice. Construction Knowledge in Detective Fiction. 2010.

Vol.

30

Rossitsa Terzieva-Artemis: Stories of the Unconscious: Sub-Versions in Freud, Lacan and Kristeva. 2009.

Vol.

31

Sonia Front: Transgressing Boundaries in Jeanette Winterson’s Fiction. 2009.

Vol.

32

Wojciech Kalaga / Jacek Mydla / Katarzyna Ancuta (eds.): Political Correctness. Mouth Wide Shut? 2009.

Vol.

33

Paweł Marcinkiewicz: The Rhetoric of the City: Robinson Jeffers and A. R. Ammons. 2009.

Vol.

34

Wojciech Małecki: Embodying Pragmatism. Richard Shusterman’s Philosophy and Literary Theory. 2010.

Vol.

35

Wojciech Kalaga / Marzena Kubisz (eds.): Cartographies of Culture. Memory, Space, Representation. 2010.

Vol.

36

Bożena Shallcross / Ryszard Nycz (eds.): The Effect of Pamplisest. Culture, Literature, History. 2011.

Vol.

37

Wojciech Kalaga / Marzena Kubisz / Jacek Mydla (eds.): A Culture of Recycling / Recycling Culture? 2011.

Vol.

38

Anna Chromik: Disruptive Fluidity. The Poetics of the Pop Cogito. 2012.

Vol.

39

Paweł Wojtas: Translating Gombrowicz´s Liminal Aesthetics. 2014.

Vol.

40

Marcin Mazurek: A Sense of Apocalypse. Technology, Textuality, Identity. 2014.

Vol.

41

Charles Russell / Arne Melberg / Jarosław Płuciennik / Michał Wróblewski (eds.): Critical Theory and Critical Genres. Contemporary Perspectives from Poland. 2014.

Vol.

42

Marzena Kubisz: Resistance in the Deceleration Lane. Velocentrism, Slow Culture and Everyday Practice. 2014.

Vol.

43

Bohumil Fořt: An Introduction to Fictional Worlds Theory. 2016.

Mutual Misconstrual. 2016. Vol.

48

Manyaka Toko Djockoua: Cross-Cultural Affinities. Emersonian Transcendentalism and Senghorian Negritude. 2016.

Vol.

49

Vol. Vol.

44 50

Ryszard Nycz: The Language of Polish Modernism. Translated by Tul'si Bhambry. 2017. Agata Wilczek: Beyond the Limits of Language. Apophasis Transgression in Alina Silvana Felea: Aspects of Reference in Literary Theory. and Poetics, Rhetoric and Contemporary Discourse. 2016. Literary History.Theoretical 2017.

Vol. Vol.

45 51

Vol. Vol.

52 46

Vol. Vol.

53 47

Vol. Vol.

54 48

Witold Sadowski Magdalena / Magdalena Maria Kubas2017. (eds.): Litanic Jerry Xie: Mo Yan/Thought. Six Kowalska Critiques of Hallucinatory Realism. Verse I. Origines, Iberia, Slavia et Europa Media. 2016. Paweł Stachura / Piotr Śniedziewski / Krzysztof Trybuś (eds.): Approaches to Witold Benjamin’s Sadowski / Magdalena / Magdalena Maria Kubas (eds.): Litanic Walter The ArcadesKowalska Project. 2017. Verse II. Britannia, Germania et Scandinavia. 2016. Ricardo Namora: Before the Trenches. A Mapping of Problems in Literary InterJulia Szołtysek: pretation. 2017. A Mosaic of Misunderstanding: Occident, Orient, and Facets of Mutual Misconstrual. 2016. Kerstin Eksell / Gunilla Lindberg-Wada (eds.): Studies of Imagery in Early MediManyaka Toko Djockoua: Cross-Cultural Affinities. Emersonian Transcendentalterranean and East Asian Poetry. 2017. ism and Senghorian Negritude. 2016.

Vol. 49 Ryszard Nycz: The Language of Polish Modernism. Translated by Tul'si Bhambry. Die folgenden 2017.Bände erscheinen als Reihe „Litanic Verse“ in der Reihe „Literary and Cultural Theory“: Vol. 50 Alina Silvana Felea: Aspects of Reference in Literary Theory. Poetics, Rhetoric and Literary History. 2017. Sadowski, Litanic I: Origines, Iberia, Slavia et Europa Vol. 51 Kowalska, Jerry Xie: Kubas, Mo Yaneds., Thought. SixVerse Critiques of Hallucinatory Realism. 2017.Media (ISBN: 978-3-631-66350-9) Vol. 52 Paweł Stachura / Piotr Śniedziewski / Krzysztof Trybuś (eds.): Approaches to Walter Benjamin’s TheLitanic Arcades Project. 2017. Sadowski, Kowalska, Kubas, eds., Verse II: Britannia, Germania et Scandinavia

Vol. 53 Ricardo Namora: Before the Trenches. A Mapping of Problems in Literary Inter(ISBN: 978-3-631-66349-3). pretation. 2017. Kowalska, Litanic Verse III: Francia (ISBN: 978-3-631-75622-5). Vol. 54 Kerstin Eksell / Gunilla Lindberg-Wada (eds.): Studies of Imagery in Early MediKubas, Litanic Verse IV: Italia (978-3-631-74805-3). terranean and East Asian Poetry. 2017. Sadowski, European Litanic Verse. A Different Space-Time (ISBN: 978-3-631-75624-9). www.peterlang.com Die folgenden Bände erscheinen als Reihe „Litanic Verse“ in der Reihe „Literary and Cultural Theory“: Sadowski, Kowalska, Kubas, eds., Litanic Verse I: Origines, Iberia, Slavia et Europa Media (ISBN: 978-3-631-66350-9) Sadowski, Kowalska, Kubas, eds., Litanic Verse II: Britannia, Germania et Scandinavia (ISBN: 978-3-631-66349-3). Kowalska, Litanic Verse III: Francia (ISBN: 978-3-631-75622-5). Kubas, Litanic Verse IV: Italia (978-3-631-74805-3). Sadowski, European Litanic Verse. A Different Space-Time (ISBN: 978-3-631-75624-9). www.peterlang.com

Vol.

53

Ricardo Namora: Before the Trenches. A Mapping of Problems in Literary Interpretation. 2017.

Vol.

54

Kerstin Eksell / Gunilla Lindberg-Wada (eds.): Studies of Imagery in Early Mediterranean and East Asian Poetry. 2017.

Die folgenden Bände erscheinen als Reihe „Litanic Verse“ in der Reihe „Literary and Cultural Theory“: Sadowski, Kowalska, Kubas, eds., Litanic Verse I: Origines, Iberia, Slavia et Europa Media (ISBN: 978-3-631-66350-9). Sadowski, Kowalska, Kubas, eds., Litanic Verse II: Britannia, Germania et Scandinavia (ISBN: 978-3-631-66349-3). Kowalska, Litanic Verse III: Francia (ISBN: 978-3-631-75622-5). Kubas, Litanic Verse IV: Italia (ISBN: 978-3-631-74805-3). Sadowski, European Litanic Verse. A Different Space-Time (ISBN: 978-3-631-75624-9).