Papers on French Seventeenth Century Literature
pfscl
0343-0758
2941-086X
Narr Verlag Tübingen
121
2009
3671
Yvan Loskoutoff: Rome des Césars, Rome des papes: la propagande du cardinal Mazarin. Paris: Champion, 2007, 741 p.
121
2009
Orest Ranum
pfscl36710568
PFSCL XXXVI, 71 (2009) 568 fièvre continue, elle refuse la visite de sa bien-aimée pour se consacrer à ses devoirs religieux et remplit d’admiration son gendre comme « une femme forte » (p. 148). Pour éviter de tristes souvenirs, le couple Grignan s’installe à Marseille dans la maison de fonction du lieutenant gouverneur. Leur fils, guerroyant en Allemagne, atteint de petite vérole meurt sans descendance en 1703 à Thionville, son régiment passe à son lieutenant-colonel (p. 159). Sa mère, accablée de chagrin, meurt en août 1705. Le comte mourra, toujours au service du roi, fin décembre 1714 : fin d’une famille, fin d’un règne. La seule héritière Pauline de Grignan, marquise de Simiane doit accepter la vente de toutes les possessions de sa famille ; seules lui restent les malles contenant les lettres de sa grand’mère à sa mère, pieusement conservées par celle-ci. Pauline en comprend la valeur et les confie à son cousin Amé- Nicolas, fils de Bussy-Rabutin qui en publie une partie avec celles de son père (pp. 172-173) et fait faire une copie de l’ensemble. Tous les lecteurs et lectrices désireux de mieux connaître la société française du XVII e siècle et quelques-unes de ses grandes figures, trouveront dans cet ouvrage concis, bien documenté sans pédantisme, écrit dans un style vivant et élégant, un complément très appréciable à la Correspondance de Mme de Sévigné, des portraits pleins de verve et de sympathie pour le comte de Grignan et son entourage. Ils éprouveront pour le personnage central toute l’estime et l’admiration que l’auteur a su susciter en sa faveur. On aurait souhaité en annexe une chronologie détaillée par année, un index des noms de personnes et des lieux. (La situation économique explique sans doute ces omissions.) Marie-Odile Sweetser Yvan Loskoutoff : Rome des Césars, Rome des papes : la propagande du cardinal Mazarin. Paris : Champion, 2007. 741 p. In 1650 Gabriel Naudé published the Judgement de tout ce qui a esté imprimé contre le Cardinal Mazarin (s.l.s.d., but Paris, Imprimerie Royale, 1650), in 718 pages, an analytical and critical inventory of the works unfavorable to his patron, Cardinal Mazarin. In 2007, Ivan Loskoutoff published the book reviewed here, a 741-page inventory/ historical analysis of the texts, images, paintings and medals produced that were favorable to Mazarin. In both, there is clarity of presentation and a sympathetic awareness of Mazarin’s strengths; but Loskoutoff sets his analyses in the grand tradition of encomiastic literature in the Western world. Inventory-taking ought not be Comptes rendus 569 thought of as an inferior type of study, but as a “genre” appropriate for the task at hand, namely, the characterization of a very complex cultural phenomenon that was not only verbal but visual. Loskoutoff first approaches the literature of praise in its totality by considering the historical definitions of the encomiastic, the panegyric, the devise, the impresa, and so forth. Next he turns to the particularly salient features of Mazarin’s biography, his Roman origins, his coats of arms, his dramatic peace-making at Casale in 1630, and so forth, which were taken up and playfully praised in a remarkably large body of literary and artistic works. The distinctions between the genres are sometimes not too clear, but this only confirms Loskoutoff’s general point that variety is evidence of creative strength. These “higher regions” of literature were about the only ways the literary could fulfill the well-established roles of offering praise and gentle advice to the great, not only a major feature of Humanist culture but present in medieval mirrors of princes and antique Greek and Roman literary culture. Yvan Loskoutoff has the sensibility and learning to appreciate historically this special sphere of early-modern culture, and to communicate in a straightforward way the arcana on which it is founded. His work is most welcome, for it recovers what res litteraria were to those of us in the twenty-first century who restrict “literature” to fiction, poetry and the theater. The often unstated trend is also to create and extend laïcité, that is, totally value-free mental spaces, unlike the seventeenth century, when every effort was made to extend and represent sacred space where man and the divine could cohabit. I also admire his straightforward corrections of the errors in current scholarship, an endangered practice as a result of the rising tendency to take criticism personally. In this spirit, it would seem that Georges Dethan’s learned, mature and analytical biography of Mazarin (Paris, Imprimerie National, 1981) escaped Loskoutoff’s keen researcher’s eye. As a prelude to the work as a whole, there is a brief elucidation of how heraldry inspired encomiastic thought. With the ancient Roman fasces, stars and ax in his coat of arms, Mazarin had a direct appeal to writers who sought to praise him. All too little was inspired by the three red chevrons in Richelieu’s blazon! In Mazarin’s case, both historical and cosmological time could quickly be constructed from the glory of ancient Rome and the heavens, and as we shall learn, heaven as well. Yvan Loskoutoff also provides a quite brief but brilliant summary of the ordering of the virtues, not only in the prevailing Thomistic thought of the seventeenth-century, but in that of the latter-day Machiavellians, notably Gabriel Naudé and Guez de Balzac. An emblem or motto could immediately be “read” by those who understand that prudence had to be placed before PFSCL XXXVI, 71 (2009) 570 justice: Machiavelli’s casuistry about prudence and the forcible displacement of justice was still influential in the 1630's, prompting dévot writers such as Silhon and Pierre Corneille to restate the Thomistic ordering, but not always with reason as the mental instrument to assure moral action. A suggestion that love displaced reason does not surprise, given the new works on the passions that appeared during Mazarin’s ministry. And not surprisingly, either, is the newer historical (historicist? ) direct reading of ancient philosophy, Plato in particular, which prompted some to place justice before providence. The encomiastic literature and art that Yvan Loskoutoff interprets in the rest of the book is much more understandable to the reader as a result of these introductions to heraldry and the ordering of the virtues, but they are also valuable in their own right. The writers and painters of encomia expressed no doubts about Mazarin’s descent from an ancient Roman patrician family, though no family with that name could be found in the sources. They also explicitly lauded him for being born in Rome, something he himself dodged when questioned. His courage at Casale in 1630, between the two armies about to charge, became a favorite theme and provided a foundation for praising him, after the Peace of the Pyrenees of 1659, as the great European peacemaker. Yvan Loskoutoff finds that Mazarin was as concerned about his public image as Richelieu was, and he unrelentingly patronized works praising himself in every genre. Neither Richelieu nor Mazarin would be shy about the pleasure they received from reading and deciphering encomia. The religious traditions about the dangers of vanity went unheeded during decades when Augustinian thought was very influential on other questions. Descartes’ thought about the importance of admiration suggests that Mazarin’s decades fostered not just a heroism à la Rodrigue and Condé, but also a radical Individualism that is apparent in the lives of François Mansart, Richelieu, Mazarin, Desargues, Mlle de Montpensier, Fermat and Descartes, to mention only a few examples. While prizes awarded by such institutions as the Collège de Navarre are noted, the general pedagogical and academic influences on behalf of the literature of praise might have been pulled together for comment. Mazarin’s and Richelieu’s conduct, and that of the writers and artists who praised them, were atypical only in the quantity of works produced; but it would be unfair to ask for more from a scholar who accomplishes so much. In his Patrons and Painters (I shall return to characterize this work), Francis Haskell found that Mazarin supported the artists whose works he and his patrons came to admire in Rome, Romanelli being a prime example, but that Mazarin did not regularly support either young artists from Italy or France during his years as minister. As a result, the coherences between Comptes rendus 571 encomiastic texts and visual representations very probably became stronger and inevitably more foreign for the Parisian elite. Though the “Sturm und Drang” anxieties about the superiority of Italian culture in the sixteenth century had diminished, there remained a critical creative distance among the younger artists in Paris that would not only contribute to the failure, in France, of Roman Baroque (Bernini) but also stimulate the distinct French classicism that would develop. Though it is obviously anachronistic to ask whether the creators of mottos (devises) incorporated the newer concepts from Baconian, Harveyian and Cartesian natural philosophy, or simply reworked the splendid corpus elaborated in the sixteenth century, such probably cultural disjunctions shed light on the increasing divide between northernand southern-European ways of viewing the self and the world. Yvan Loskoutoff finds continuities across the centuries in numerous literary and artistic currents, despite the ascetic and censuring effects of the Catholic Reformation; but has he not concentrated his work on precisely those cultural elements, notably the literature and artistry of praise, where continuities were strong? The Cardinal appears throughout the book in quite specific connections to the works discussed, and he seems less inscrutable than in most biographies about him. Encomia are songs, in this case, addressed to him. Did he have a program that extended to music his particular glorifying of sacred Christian space, in fact a coherent spiritual, cultural synthesis? The Jesuit Collegio Germanico in Rome supported the great Carissimi. Mazarin’s death may have come too early for a full project to have developed at the Collège des Quatre Nations, but when he died, the less-than-sacred operatic works and encomia would be remembered. Yvan Loskoutoff does not find that the Mazarinades were written as parodies of the works of praise sponsored by Mazarin. Attacked as a foreigner, but not as a Roman, Mazarin’s Roman and Jesuit experiences left him poorly prepared for ad hominem attacks. Gabriel Naudé would exhort his master to reply, but Mazarin seems to have counted on lofty verse and encomia to be effective eventually in calming the over-heated scribblers, particularly those supported by Condé. Yvan Loskoutoff has some very pointed observations about just how Pierre Corneille’s, the young Racine’s and La Fontaine’s writings echo the clash between order and disorder just beyond the mid-century. The final three chapters of the book explore what Johann Huizinga referred to as “historical ideals of life,” that is, the heroic lives and actions of such figures as Julius Caesar (with the inevitable play on first names), Augustus, Pompey, in a style more abstract and less intimate than Plutarch’s parallels. Pagan figures, notably Atlas, Hercules and Apollo, were also used PFSCL XXXVI, 71 (2009) 572 as exempla for Mazarin. If there are no surprises, their sheer quantity and variety pose questions. As paedeia, these works prompted writers as well as major spiritual and political worthies, to emulate, excel and, in a sense, over-achieve. A case in point is young Nantouillet, Mazarin’s nephew, who was killed while making a reckless charge at the battle of the Porte Saint- Antoine (1652). Did he have in mind his uncle’s historic recklessness at Casale, or was his mind’s eye seeing the heroic gestae of Alexander, Charles the Bold and Condé, in a blinding impresa? Writers could versify about Mazarin the peace-maker, but the literature of praise functioned the same way as the literature of peace. What were the different moral implications for writers and artists? At its most thoughtful, the literature of praise could state moral-philosophical views, on prudence, for example; but as in Pierre Corneille’s synthesis of divine sanction and might-makes-right, doubts come to mind about the dévot answers to Machiavelli’s reflections about the political in the guise of the religious. In the end, Mazarin’s mind remains inscrutable, and the minds of the poets and artists who praised him remain obvious and sophistic. Instead of being perceived as insensitive to opinions during the Fronde, Mazarin should be considered a redoubtable cultural imperialist who was sure of himself and eager to “uplift” the French by imposing his culture on them. The concetti that placed the Cardinal among the angels as a divine gift to humanity, seem not to have stirred up opposition from the more outrés among the Catholics, largely because the paths of divine-semidivine status had many sign posts, accepted if not placed by the Catholic Reformation. And Mazarin could always count on support from the Jesuits, an order that was certainly not monolithic but whose ability to recognize one of their own, possessed of great political power, rarely faltered. The 102 (sic) illustrations in the book permit the reader to follow the author’s interpretation, indeed often his decoding, of what are magnificent works of art in typography and oil. Many are unique copies presented to Mazarin and preserved ever since at the Bibliothèque Mazarine. In the welter of magnificence, the reader may lose sight of just how many printings and editions some of these works went through during Cardinal Mazarin’s era. Yvan Loskoutoff’s historical and analytical inventory of the encomia dedicated to Mazarin is a profoundly valuable work about entire spheres of creative and artistic activity in the seventeenth century that have too long been ignored. His book merits being put on the shelf alongside the other great, pivotal works on the translatio of Roman culture, ancient and modern, to France - for example, beside Francis Haskell’s Patrons and Painters, a Study in Relations between Italian Art and Society in the Age of the Baroque Comptes rendus 573 (New York, 1987); Marc Fumaroli’s L’Âge de l’Éloquence: rhétorique et ‘res litteraria’ de la Renaissance au seuil de l’époque classique (Geneva, 1980); and Françoise Waquet’s Le Modèle français et l’Italie savante; conscience de soi et perception de l’autre dans la République des Lettres (Rome, 1987). Orest Ranum Larry Riggs: Molière and Modernity: Absent Mothers and Masculine Births. Charlottesville, VA: Rookwood Press, 2005. 234 p. In this interesting and persuasive study, Larry Riggs revisits Molière’s plays in the context of emerging modernist univocalist culture. He views Molière’s theater as a response to the tensions within modernity, e.g., as a critical answer to pretensions to power and secure knowledge and to the antinomies and hierarchical binary master models of “modernity: ” the mind/ body dichotomy, the division between man/ woman, and culture/ nature. Through a reading that is inspired by postmodernist criticism, and that incorporates ecologically oriented thought and ecofeminism, the author advocates a pluralistic, polyvocal reading of Molière’s comedies. Riggs’ main preoccupation lies with cultural and intellectual issues but he also broaches questions of genre and perceptively examines comedy with regards to its subversive function. In advocating plurality, Molière’s comedies debunk paradigms and definite versions of order, in accordance with Jean Duvignaud’s conception of comedy. Overall, readers of this fine and complex study will profit from a combination of insightful and persuasive readings of major comedies, as well as insightful borrowings from cultural material, performance theory, postmodern theory, and even Lacanian psychoanalysis. The extensive introduction outlines much of the conceptual groundwork that will reappear in the following chapters, and the emphasis is placed on the early modern context. Addressing the “cultural and political trends and tensions that produced what we call ‘modernity’” (ii), Riggs wants to show how Molière is “anti-modern.” For the playwright critically examines the ideology of “progress,” aspirations of mastery and autonomy, the mind/ body antinomy, the rational “production” of culture, and the exclusion of emotion along with the body and nature, as well as the gendering of mastery or autonomy. In his reading of the early modern context, Riggs juxtaposes many of the tensions of modernity that so far have been analyzed individually by scholars.
