II. Romantic Elements
Some of the romantic elements in the critical theory of the Pléiade have already been indicated. The new movement started, in Du Bellay's Défense, with a high conception of the poet's office. It emphasized the necessity, on the part of the poet, of profound and solitary study, of a refined and ascetic life, and of entire separation from vulgar people and pleasures. Du Bellay himself is romantic in that he decides against the traditions de règles,[405] deeming the good judgment of the poet sufficient in matters of taste; but the reason of this was that there were no rules which he would have been willing to accept. It took more than a century for the French mind to arrive at the conclusion that reason and rules, in matters of art, proceed from one and the same cause.
The feeling for nature and for natural beauty is very marked in all the members of the Pléiade. Pelletier speaks of war, love, agriculture, and pastoral life as the chief themes of poetry.[406] He warns the poet to observe nature and life itself, and not depend on books alone; and he dwells on the value of descriptions of landscapes, tempests, and sunrises, and similar natural scenes.[407] The feeling for nature is even more intense in Ronsard; and like Pelletier, he urges the poet to describe in verse the rivers, forests, mountains, winds, the sea, gods and goddesses, sunrise, night, and noon.[408] In another place the poet is advised to embellish his work with accounts of trees, flowers, and herbs, especially those dignified by some medicinal or magical virtues, and with descriptions of rivers, towns, forests, mountains, caverns, rocks, harbors, and forts. Here the appreciation of natural beauty as introduced into modern Europe by the Italian Renaissance—the feeling for nature in its wider aspects, the broad landscape, the distant prospect—first becomes visible in France. "In the painting or rather imitation of nature," says Ronsard, "consists the very soul of heroic poetry."
Ronsard also gives warning that ordinary speech is not to be banished from poetry, or too much evaded, for by doing so the poet is dealing a death-blow to "naïve and natural poetry."[409] This sympathy for the simple and popular forms of poetry as models for the poetic artist is characteristic of the Pléiade. There is a very interesting passage in Montaigne, in which the popular ballads of the peasantry are praised in a manner that recalls the famous words of Sir Philip Sidney concerning the old song of Percy and Douglas,[410] and which seems to anticipate the interest in popular poetry in England two centuries later:—
"Popular and purely natural and indigenous poetry has a certain native simplicity and grace by which it may be favorably compared with the principal beauty of perfect poetry composed according to the rules of art; as may be seen in the villanelles of Gascony, and in songs coming from nations that have no knowledge of any science, not even of writing. But mediocre poetry, which is neither perfect nor popular, is held in disdain by every one, and receives neither honor nor reward."[411]
The Pléiade, as has already been intimated, accepted without reserve the Platonic doctrine of inspiration. By 1560 a considerable number of the Platonic dialogues had already been translated into French. Dolet had translated two of the spurious dialogues; Duval, the Lysis in 1547; and Le Roy, the Phædo in 1553 and the Symposium in 1559. The thesis of Ramus in 1536 had started an anti-Aristotelian tendency in France, and the literature of the French Renaissance became impregnated with Platonism.[412] It received the royal favor of Marguerite de Navarre, and its influence became fixed in 1551, by the appointment of Ramus to a professorship in the Collège de France. Ronsard, Vauquelin, Du Bartas, all give expression to the Platonic theory of poetic inspiration. The poet must feel what he writes, as Horace says, or his reader will never be moved by his verses; and for the Pléiade, the excitement of high emotions in the reader or hearer was the test or touchstone of poetry.[413]
The national and Christian points of view never found expression in France during the sixteenth century in so marked a manner as in Italy. There are, indeed, traces of both a national and a Christian criticism, but they are hardly more than sporadic. Thus, it has been seen that Sibilet, as early as 1548, had clearly perceived the distinguishing characteristic of the French genius. He had noted that the French have only taken from foreign literature what they have deemed useful and of national advantage; and only the other day a distinguished French critic asserted in like manner that the high importance of French literature consists in the fact that it has taken from the other literatures of Europe the things of universal interest and disregarded the accidental picturesque details. Distinct traces of a national point of view may be found in the dramatic criticism of this period. Thus Grévin, in his Bref Discours (1562), attempts to justify the substitution of a crowd of Cæsar's soldiers for the singers of the ancient chorus, in one of his tragedies, on the following grounds:—
"If it be alleged that this practice was observed throughout antiquity by the Greeks and Latins, I reply that it is permitted to us to attempt some innovation of our own, especially when there is occasion for it, or when the grace of the poem is not diminished thereby. I know well that it will be answered that the ancients employed the chorus of singers to divert the audience, made gloomy perhaps by the cruelties represented in the play. To this I reply that diverse nations require diverse manners of doing things, and that among the French there are other means of doing this without interrupting the continuity of a story."[414]
The Christian point of view, on the other hand, is found in Vauquelin de la Fresnaye, who differs from Ronsard and Du Bellay in his preference for scriptural themes in poetry. The Pléiade was essentially pagan, Vauquelin essentially Christian. The employment of the pagan divinities in modern poetry seemed to him often odious, for the times had changed, and the Muses were governed by different laws. The poet should attempt Christian themes; and indeed the Greeks themselves, had they been Christians, would have sung the life and death of Christ. In this passage Vauquelin is evidently following Minturno, as the latter was afterward followed by Corneille:—
"Si les Grecs, comme vous, Chrestiens eussent escrit,
Ils eussent les hauts faits chanté de Iesus Christ....
Hé! quel plaisir seroit-ce à cette heure de voir
Nos poëtes Chrestiens, les façons recevoir
Du tragique ancien? Et voir à nos misteres
Les Payens asservis sous les loix salutaires
De nos Saints et Martyrs? et du vieux testament
Voir une tragedie extraite proprement?"[415]