CLASSIC AND ROMANTIC ELEMENTS IN FRENCH CRITICISM DURING THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
The principle for which the Pléiade stood was, like that of humanism, the imitation of the classics; and the Pléiade was the first to introduce this as a literary principle into France. This means, as regards French literature, in the first place, the substitution of the classical instead of its own national tradition; and, secondly, the substitution of the imitation of the classics for the imitation of nature itself. In making these vital substitutions, Du Bellay and his school have been accused of creating once and for all the gulf that separates French poetry from the national life.[381] This accusation is perhaps unfair to the Pléiade, which insisted on the poet's going directly to nature, which emphasized most strongly the sentiment for natural scenery and beauty, and which first declared the importance of the artisan and the peasant as subjects for poetry. But there can be but little doubt that the separation of poetry from the national life was the logical outcome of the doctrines of the Pléiade. In disregarding the older French poets and the evolution of indigenous poetry, in formulating an ideal of the poet as an unsociable and ascetic character, it separated itself from the natural tendencies of French life and letters, and helped to effect the final separation between poetry and the national development.
I. Classical Elements
It was to Du Bellay (1549) that France owes the introduction of classical ideas into French literature. He was the first to regard the imitation of the classics as a literary principle, and to advise the poet, after the manner of Vida, to purloin all the treasures of Greek and Latin literature for the benefit of French poetry. Moreover, he first formulated the aristocratic conception of the poet held by the Pléiade. The poet was advised to flee from the ignorant people, to bury himself in the solitude of his own chamber, to dream and to ponder, and to content himself with few readers. "Beyond everything," says Du Bellay, "the poet should have one or more learned friends to whom he can show all his verses; he should converse not only with learned men, but with all sorts of workmen, mechanics, artists, and others, in order to learn the technical terms of their arts, for use in beautiful descriptions."[382] This was a favorite theory of the Pléiade, which like some of our own contemporary writers regarded the technical arts as important subjects of inspiration. But the essential point at the bottom of all these discussions is a high contempt for the opinion of the vulgar in matters of art.
The Quintil Horatian (1550) represents, as has already been seen, a natural reaction against the foreign and classical innovations of the Pléiade. Du Bellay's advice, "Prens garde que ce poëme soit eslogné du vulgaire,"—advice insisted upon by many of the rhetoricians of the Italian Renaissance,—receives considerable censure; on the contrary, says the author of the Quintil, the poet must be understood and appreciated by all, unlearned as well as learned, just as Marot was. The Quintil was, in fact, the first work to insist on definiteness and clearness in poetry, as these were afterward insisted on by Malherbe and Boileau. Like Malherbe, and his disciple Deimier, the author of the Académie de l'Art Poétique (1610), in which the influence of the Quintil is fully acknowledged, the author of the Quintil objects to all forms of poetic license, to all useless metaphors that obscure the sense, to all Latinisms and foreign terms and locutions.[383] Du Bellay had dwelt on the importance of a knowledge of the classical and Italian tongues, and had strongly advised the French poet to naturalize as many Latin, Greek, and even Spanish and Italian terms as he could. The Quintil is particularly bitter against all such foreign innovations. The poet need not know foreign tongues at all; without this knowledge he can be as good a poet as any of the græcaniseurs, latiniseurs, et italianiseurs en françoys. This protest availed little, and Du Bellay's advice in regard to the use of Italian terms was so well followed that several years later, in 1578, Henri Estienne vigorously protested against the practice in his Dialogues du Nouveau Langage françois italianisé. As Ronsard and Du Bellay represent the foreign elements that went to make up classicism in France, so the author of the Quintil Horatian may be said to represent in his humble way certain enduring elements of the esprit gaulois. He represents the national traditions, and he prepares the way for the two great bourgeois poets of France,—Boileau, with his "Tout doit tendre au bon sens," and Molière, with his bluff cry, "Je suis pour le bon sens."
According to Pelletier (1555), French poetry is too much like colloquial speech; in order to equal classical literature, the poets of France must be more daring and less popular.[384] Pelletier's point of view is here that of the Pléiade, which aimed at a distinct poetic language, diverse from ordinary prose speech. But he is thoroughly French, and in complete accord with the author of the Quintil Horatian, in his insistence on perfect clearness in poetry. "Clearness," he says, "is the first and worthiest virtue of a poem."[385] Obscurity is the chief fault of poetry, "for there is no difference between not speaking at all and not being understood."[386] For these reasons he is against all unnecessary and bombastic ornament; the true use of metaphors and comparisons of all sorts is "to explain and represent things as they really are." Similarly, Ronsard, while recognizing the value of comparisons, rightfully used, as the very nerves and tendons of poetry, declares that if instead of perfecting and clarifying, they obscure or confuse the idea, they are ridiculous.[387] Obscurity was the chief danger, and indeed the chief fault, of the Pléiade; and it is no small merit that both Ronsard and Pelletier perceived this fact.
The Pléiade exhibits the classic temper in its insistence on study and art as essential to poetry; but it was not in keeping with the doctrines of later French classicists in so far as it regarded the poetic labors as of an unsociable and even ascetic character. In this, as has been seen, Ronsard is a true exponent of the doctrines of the new school. But on the whole the classic spirit was strong in him. He declares that the poet's ideas should be high and noble, but not fantastic. "They should be well ordered and disposed; and while they seem to transcend those of the vulgar, they should always appear to be easily conceived and understood by any one."[388] Here Du Bellay's aristocratic conception of poetry is modified so as to become a very typical statement of the principle underlying French classicism. Again, Ronsard points out, as Vida and other Italian critics had done before, that the great classical poets seldom speak of things by their bare and naked names. Virgil does not, for example, say, "It was night," or "It was day," but he uses some such circumlocution as this:—
"Postera Phœbea lustrabat lampade terras."