Osip Mandelstam by Selected Essays (epub)

Author:Selected Essays (epub)
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Published: 1977-08-28T04:00:00+00:00

François Villon

Astronomers accurately predict the return of a comet after a long interval of time. For those who know Villon, the phenomenon of Verlaine presents just such an astronomic wonder. The vibrations of these two voices are strikingly similar. Yet, in addition to tone of voice and biography, the two poets are linked by an almost identical mission with regard to the literature contemporary to them. Both were fated to emerge in epochs of artificial hothouse poetry, and, just as Verlaine destroyed the serres chaudes of Symbolism, Villon flung his challenge to the powerful Rhetorical school, which could quite rightly be considered the Symbolism of the fifteenth century. The well-known Roman de la Rose built for the first time the impermeable wall within which that tepid atmosphere went on thickening, which the allegories created by this Romance needed in order to breathe. Love, Danger, Hatred, Perfidy are not dead abstractions. They are not fleshless. Medieval poetry lends these phantoms an astral body as it were and fusses tenderly over the artificial atmosphere so vital to the support of their fragile existence. The garden where these peculiar personages live is enclosed by a high wall. The lover, as the beginning of the Roman de la Rose narrates, has been wandering around this wall for a long time in a vain search for the elusive entry.

Poetry and life in the fifteenth century were two independent, hostile dimensions. It is difficult to believe that Maître Alain Chartier was subjected to real persecution and suffered mundane discomforts after having incensed the public opinion of his day by too stern a judgment on the Cruel Lady, whom he drowned in the well of tears, after a brilliant trial which observed all the niceties of medieval jurisprudence. Fifteenth-century poetry was autonomous: the place it occupied in the culture of its time resembled that of a state within the state. Let us recall the Court of Love of Charles VI: there were over seven hundred varied official ranks, beginning with the highest signory and ending with petty bourgeois and lower clercs. The exclusively literary nature of this institution explains its contempt for social partitioning. The hypnotic power of literature was so great that members of similar associations wandered about the streets adorned with green wreaths—the symbol of being in love—wishing to extend the literary dream into reality.

François de Montcorbier (de Loges) was born in Paris in 1431, during the time of English rule. The poverty that surrounded his cradle matched the misfortune of the people and, specifically, the misfortune of the capital. One might have expected that the literature of the time would be suffused with a patriotic pathos and a thirst for revenge for the offended dignity of the nation. However, neither in Villon nor in his contemporaries do we find such feelings. France, occupied by foreigners, showed herself a real woman. Like a woman in captivity, she devoted her main attention to the details of her customary and cultural toilette, sizing up the conquerors with curiosity.

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