SOURCE: Holmes, Peggy P. “Mlle de Gournay's Defence of Baroque Imagery.” French Studies 8, no. 2 (April 1954): 122-31.

[In the following essay, Holmes discusses de Gournay's study of the imagery and metaphors of baroque poets to illustrate the author's belief that language should be used to exhibit “the supreme expression of poetical originality.”]

The writings of Marie le Jars de Gournay¹ have added considerably to our knowledge of the French language during that confused transitional period between the decline of the Renaissance and the rise of Classicism. Brunot reaped a rich harvest from the laboriously compiled lists of words to which she claimed that both Malherbe and his followers had taken exception.² Yet these shrewd comments on the vocabulary of her day, valuable as they are for a study of the progress of Malherbe's ideas, do not form the most vital part of Marie de Gournay's literary articles. It is not generally realized that her remarks on poetic style, and particularly on the use of metaphor, show her to have been a critic of unusual sensibility. She believed that even more dangerous than the tyranny of Malherbe and the excesses of his disciples was their threat to the humanistic conception of poetry, and made repeated efforts to rekindle enthusiasm for the Pléiade doctrine of ‘fureur’ and for the pomp and dignity peculiar to heroic verse.

Such a belief in the magnificent and the heroic is clearly characteristic of the baroque age to which Marie de Gournay belonged. Her plea for grandiloquence and bold imagery seizes upon the very essence of that dynamic vigour which is apparent in all baroque writing. To describe the language of the Pléiade poets and of their successors, Mlle de Gournay made use of every superlative epithet which she could command. It is noble, rich, royal, celestial,³ opulent, generous,⁴ inventive, industrious, vigorous and delicious.⁵ She speaks of its ‘powerfully supple and agile dexterity’;⁶ of the affluence, vehemence and magnificence of its expressions, its images and its rhyme patterns.⁷

The force and vigour of sixteenth-century poetry, so Marie de Gournay tells us, threw into sharp relief the poverty of contemporary verse, its cloying sweetness or its utter insipidity. The ‘nouvelle Bande’ (that is to say, Malherbe and his followers), were used to such meagre poetic fare that a finely chased goblet filled with pure, clear water and served upon a white cloth sufficed to slake their thirst.⁸ But Marie de Gournay, like the true Frenchwoman that she was, had a taste for something stronger than water. She admitted preferring a long draught of Frontignan to a drink from the Maubuée fountain; a pinch of seasoning and a ‘poincte de sel friand’ to the soothing sweetness of honeyed words. The French language, she felt, lacked strength rather than sweetness, and in any case true ‘sweetness’ had nothing to do with inspidity. ‘La vraye douceur des langues, comme celle du vin, consiste en leur esprit et en leur vigueur’ (A, p. 445).

In Mlle de Gournay's opinion, the only way to achieve vigour of style was by a bold and informed use of imagery. An introduction to her ideas on metaphorical language is to be found in the article entitled De la Version des Poëtes Antiques ou des Metaphores.⁹ She believed that figurative language was the touchstone by which a poem's true worth might be tested, since poetic ‘fureur’ could only find its expression in terms that were far removed from the commonplace. The metaphor was thus not only a characteristic but an essential of heroic verse:

Car non seulement la principale richesse, la plus fine pierrerie du langage d'un poeme, surtout Heroïque, mais aussi sa principale necessité, git aux Métaphores ou translations; singulièrement en un langage si stérile que le nostre, de termes qui soient magnifiques ou puissans en leur propre signification

(A, p. 269)

The contemporary poets, she maintained, were hostile towards the use of figurative language in general and to the metaphor in particular. Only those figures which had become part and parcel of everyday speech and whose originality had long since been forgotten were likely to win their approval.¹⁰ What conclusion was to be drawn from this senseless hostility, demanded Marie de Gournay, save that the modern writer knew himself to be quite incapable of rising to the heights of rhetoric, and so condemned the use of metaphor rather than confess to a lack of talent? Metaphorical language is a proof of poetic genius, and the bolder the figure of speech, the greater the poet who has conceived it. Poverty of language, on the other hand, betrays a poverty of intellect.

Marie thus lays particular stress upon the mental effort necessary both for the creation and for the comprehension of the ‘noblest’ kind of metaphor. But here a distinction must be made between the elementary and the complex figure of speech. In its simplest form, the metaphor or comparison is the juxtaposition of two similar objects, and the mind takes pleasure in drawing an analogy between them. There is, however, a higher and even more admirable type of metaphor:

C'est l'art de representer (deux objets) l'un par l'autre, bien que souvent ils soient esloignez d'une infinie distance; l'entendement de l'Escrivain semblant par son entremise, transformer les subjets en sa propre nature, soupple, volubile, appliquable à toutes choses

(A, pp. 279-80)

This significant passage, far-reaching in its implications, as we shall later suggest, forms both the climax and the abrupt conclusion to these remarks on figurative language in the essay De la Version des Poëtes Antiques … Mlle de Gournay does not pursue her idea further, and the reader is left wondering what metaphors she would choose to illustrate her definition.

The answer is found in another article,¹¹ where a section is devoted to a detailed analysis of several metaphors used by the poet Cardinal Du Perron.

The importance which Marie de Gournay herself attached to these extremely interesting pages may be judged from the mention which she makes of them in her Preface to the complete editions of 1634 and 1641. Her reader is invited to discover there for himself whether she can claim to understand the nature of poetry,

… si j'ay acquis quelque faculté de juger et d'anatomiser cét Art, ses secrets, et ses Ouvriers … De telles leçons, comme je sçay, se trouvent heteroclites et peu cogneuës en nostre siecle. C'est dequoy neantmoins je ne me soucie guere, cependant que je pourray me souvenir, que c'est aux lieux que je marque pour esclatans d'excellence particuliere, où … le Cardinal a voulu frapper ses coups de maistre.

(Discours à Sophrosine. Not paginated)

The passage to which Marie de Gournay refers begins with the quotation of some twenty metaphors which had earned the disapproval of the ‘nouvelle Bande’—‘metaphores peu digestibles au vulgaire’, as she calls them.¹² The greater number came from three poems which she particularly admired: Du Perron's fine paraphrase of the 183rd Psalm, Benedic anima mea Domino, his Tombeau de Daphnis and his Attentat de Chastel. Other examples were drawn from his translation of the Aeneid, mainly from the fourth book.

Her ‘anatomization’ of these metaphors takes various forms. Sometimes it is no more than a reference to the happy choice of a single word. She praises, for example, the epithet tragique as applied to moment, crainte and couteau.¹³ In another instance, she approves the use of sourd in the line ‘ce cœur de rocher, sourd aux alarmes’,¹⁴ inviting her reader to consider why Du Perron had preferred it to the adjective insensible. The translation of ‘umbra cava’ by ‘ombre vuide’ also won her admiration,¹⁵ as did the choice of the epithet timide in a line from the 183rd Psalm paraphrase—‘les timides flancs des vallons’, which earns the comment: ‘il n'appartient qu'à la digne main de ce Cardinal de trouver le secret de mettre timides, où les autres eussent mis, humbles’ (A, p. 754).

None of these remarks have any particular critical value, nor can we altogether share her enthusiasm for the metaphor ‘langes amoureux’ in a description of the Virgin Mother wrapping the Infant Jesus in swaddling clothes.¹⁶

Two further examples of Marie de Gournay's critical powers are, however, of quite exceptional interest. The first is a discussion of the metaphor ‘les plis du temps’ and deserves to be quoted in full. She writes:

Car qu'est-ce d'examiner l'audace si haute et si reiglée neantmoins, de dire ‘devider les plis du temps’ pour rouler et accomplir les ans? ou de mesler ces termes de plis et de devider, à la peinture qu'ils font du temps, affin d'exprimer sa traisnée, qui semble se plier et replier sur la rondeur des Cieux, dont la course le mesure? et pour representer à l'adventure encore, ses ombres, obscuritez ou cachettes sinueuses et abstruses à la cognoissance des hommes, tantost par l'impuissance de nos yeux à suyvre la fouls et la variété de ses accidents, tantost par l'imbecillité de nostre memoire à retenir les images des choses passées?¹⁷

This eloquent attempt to justify the representation of an abstract conception—time—by means of a concrete image brings us back to the ‘definition’ of a metaphor which has already been quoted.¹⁸ Here Mlle de Gournay has provided her reader with an example of the art of relating two apparently unconnected objects or ideas, ‘l'art de discerner une conformité dans les contraires’, as she describes it elsewhere (A, p. 757.)

Her meaning is made even clearer by a second example. Du Perron's description of a funeral cortège in the Tombeau de Daphnis contains a metaphor which had been strongly criticized.

Paris vid arriver les guerrieres escortes,
Qui leurs fronts desolez de Cyprez couronnoient,
Et leur Chef avec cris au sepulchre menoient,
Et que le chariot semé de larmes peintes
Qui portoit sa despoüille et ses cendres esteintes
D'un fleuve de flambeaux à longs flots précedé …(19)

The ‘Malherbiens’ had two charges to bring against the last line. They maintained that not only was it cacophonous but that its meaning was obscure. Mlle de Gournay was prepared to examine both these accusations.

Harmony and cacophony, she felt, were merely relative terms. An essential element of the Pléiade doctrine had been the insistence upon variety of tone. The Demoiselle saw even more clearly than the Pléiade theorists that one of the most valuable poetic devices was the skilful use of contrast. How dare these new ‘poetes raffinez’ criticize such a metaphor as being cacophonous?

Grands artistes qu'ils sont vrayement, de n'avoir pas appris que, selon la rencontre, il est par fois besoin de mesler aux vers la dureté, la rudesse, l'aspreté … et je dy y mesler encore la discordance, la turbulance et la confusion, ouymesme la laideur, et je ne sçay quoy du flicflac qu'ils reprochent à ce (vers): lequel n'en tient rien toutesfois, bien qu'il peust à l'adventure en tenir pertinemment quelque chose, pour representer le flottement, transferé de l'onde aux flammes …

(A, p. 755)

Marie de Gournay's ear was keener and more sensitive than those of her critics. The alliterative sequence to which the ‘nouveaux’ had objected cannot justly be accused of cacophony, for though alliteration, particularly in an initial syllable, easily lends itself to this charge, Du Perron has here avoided the temptation of overweighting his line by a skilful use of the adjective longs to break the heavy succession of ‘fl’ sounds.

The chief interest of Mlle de Gournay's comments, however, lies in her defence of cacophony as a legitimate means of achieving a heightened effect through contrast. The baroque writer endeavoured not only to fire the imagination of his readers, but also to astonish them by the daring of his rhetoric. Hence his use, at times, of discordant tones and fantastic imagery, which, as M. Raymond has remarked, is often comparable to the grotesque medieval figures of Church architecture. Thus, Marie de Gournay's insistence upon the latent dramatic possibilities in a juxtaposition of beauty and ugliness, of harmony and discord, proves once again her admiration for an important aspect of what we may call baroque style.

Turning to the second accusation, the Demoiselle maintained that the lack of sense was not so much in the metaphor itself as in those who failed to understand its beauty:

Ils ne peuvent enfin avaler une eau, representée par le feu son contraire. Tout beau, nous ne sommes pas au Royaume des grenouïlles, où le plus grand criard est Roy. Ces debiles esprits ne sçavent pas discerner, que cet illustre Poëte, et Cardinal, ne compare point ces deux choses par où elles sont différentes, mais par où elles sont égalles: sçavoir-est par la fluxion et le flottement, considerez avec ceste longueur resserrée, commune au fleuve et à cét ordre funebre de flambeau. Ny ne considerent aussi, que la parfaicte excellence d'une metaphore, consiste à viser du plus loin qu'elle peut, pourveu qu'elle frappe au blanc

(A, p. 757)

Once again, the poet has fused into a single image two seemingly unrelated objects by the selection of a quality which they both hold in common—their flickering movement. This is the meaning underlying Mlle de Gournay's phrase ‘l'art de representer deux objets l'un par l'autre’. The new image thus created is no longer a comparison of two objects, but a synthesis of both.

This fusion of identities was, of course, carried to its furthest limits by the Symbolists. When Baudelaire, for example, in his poem La Chevelure, takes the separate images of a woman's hair and the heaving sea, playing one against the other until they become merged in the single line: ‘Fortes tresses, soyez la houle qui m'enlève!’ he has raised to its supreme height the art of fused images. Du Perron was groping unconsciously towards the full realization of his symbol. His metaphor can bear no comparison with those of Baudelaire, because in it the fusion is not complete. But to Mlle de Gournay must be allowed the credit not only of realizing its originality, but also of perceiving, however imperfectly, the opportunities latent in Du Perron's image.

Not that this kind of analytical discussion of metaphorical language was entirely without precedent in the first half of the seventeenth century. Both Deimier's Académie de l'Art Poétique (1610), with which she was well acquainted, and Esprit Aubert's Marguerites Poétiques (1613) devote a section to the examination of Du Bartas's use of imagery. But since the intention of these writers was to censure rather than to analyse, their comments are more remarkable for sarcasm than for critical judgment, and they may well have suggested to Marie de Gournay the possibility of submitting Du Perron's verse to a more subtle and positive kind of analysis.

It is surely remarkable that, almost without exception, the importance of her observations has been ignored by modern criticism. For Brunot, she was merely the valiant but misguided champion of the Pléiade's linguistic innovations, and he implied that, like her predecessors, she attached greater value to originality of language than to originality of style.²⁰ A similar emphasis upon the significance of her linguistic observations over and above her remarks on poetic style has been made by Léon Feugère and by Charles Livet.²¹ Even Du Perron's biographer, the Abbé Féret, failed to take full advantage of Mlle de Gournay's chapter on the Cardinal's use of imagery and had no comments to offer concerning her choice and examination of his metaphors.²² Only Paul Stapfer seems to have realized the full significance of these pages, describing them as the culminating point of her study of poetry:

Elle sent avec une profonde justesse qu'en discourant sur les images, des considérations qui semblent purement verbales et superficielles à des juges superficiels eux mêmes, embrassent, en réalité un sujet ‘d'une merveilleuse étendue’ et touchent ‘aux extremes limites’ du plus divin de tous les arts.²³

Perhaps the silence of other critics may be explained in part by a tendency to consult the first edition of Mlle de Gournay's collected works in preference to the later editions. It has been generally believed that the Ombre … represents the most vivid expression of her ideas and that in the Advis she often distorted her argument by unnecessary additions and alterations. This is a misrepresentation of the actual facts. It is true that her alterations were not always successful. Nevertheless, Mlle de Gournay remained astonishingly active in mind all through her long life. Her critical faculties were in no way impaired as she grew older; if anything, they seem rather to have become more acute with the passage of the years. The editions of the Advis represent the most complete expression of her study of Du Perron's poetry, and many a telling comment is added to the 1626 text, as was the case in the discussion of the metaphor ‘devider les plis du temps’.²⁴ However, a failure to consult all available editions ought not to have prevented any critic from sensing the value of her work, since all Marie's essential ideas on imagery are already firmly sketched in the Ombre, and the additional comments in the later editions merely serve to give them greater emphasis.

The most satisfying explanation has, without doubt, to be traced to far deeper sources. It is only of recent years that the literature of Du Perron's day has gradually come to be regarded in a new and more positive light. Nineteenth-century criticism saw in the hyperbolic and antithetic imagery of the period merely the manifestation of poetic ‘irregularity’ or of anti-classical tendencies, soon to be swept away by the wise dictates of Malherbe's reform. Modern scholarship has substituted for this negative view a positive reassessment which has been the result of continued research into the baroque element in French literature.

Marcel Raymond, in two remarkable articles,²⁵ has touched upon the stylistic procedures characteristic of baroque writing, and in particular upon what he calls ‘les métaphores « prises de loin » ou « forcées … en profondeur »’.²⁶ These he defines as metaphors which bring together two contrasting elements, ‘qui assimilent de préférence l'une à l'autre des réalités distantes, disparates, ou des aspects du réel qui appartiennent à des degrés ou des ordres différents, dans une création encore hiérarchisée’.²⁷ Baroque images of this kind, he states, often draw comparisons between fluid and flame, or air and light.²⁸

It is obvious that Marie de Gournay's definition of the metaphor as ‘l'art de discerner une conformité dans les contraires’ applies perfectly to the type of imagery which M. Raymond has in mind. It was precisely because Du Perron's metaphors departed from the ordinary and the conventional in their daring comparisons between water and flame, or between time and a winding spool, that she was prepared to defend them so warmly. Her preference for the ‘métaphore hardie’ can no longer be dismissed as a proof of her negative or anti-classical tastes, and therefore ignored. It is rather but one of several manifestations of a positive belief in an essential element of what is now commonly called baroque poetry.

Let it not be imagined, however, that Mlle de Gournay was a systematic propounder of theories. Her literary articles are in no sense an apology for any one particular ‘style’, but rather a vindication of complete poetic liberty. It would, moreover, be foolish to claim anything approaching an identity of aim and purpose between Marie de Gournay and the poets of the baroque era in France. She was no wholehearted admirer of her contemporaries Du Bartas and d'Aubigné. In all her writings there is only one guarded word of praise for Du Bartas²⁹ and no mention at all of d'Aubigné. Nor does she appear to have had any interest in the theatre of her day, since she makes not so much as a passing reference to Hardy or to Garnier. On the other hand, Mlle de Gournay was a product of the baroque age just as much as her more illustrious contemporaries. Unconsciously and instinctively she reflected in her writings the temper of that age, with all its exuberance and its unbridled enthusiasm. She shared to the full the baroque writer's love of the unexpected, his ‘goût du rare, du neuf, du subtil’ in the realm of metaphorical language. But she felt that the supreme expression of poetical originality was to be found not in the writings of Du Bartas's generation but in those of Du Perron, who, in her view, was himself steeped in the great traditions of the Pléiade.

Mlle de Gournay saw very clearly that Ronsard and his disciples had not confined their activities to a linguistic reform. The greatest innovation which they offered to a generation wearied by the metrical devices of the Rhétoriqueurs was a conception of poetry as the dynamic, unfettered creation of genius. In other words, she admired in the work of the Pléiade those specifically ‘baroque’ elements which have been so extensively studied during recent years. To read the works of Marie de Gournay in this light is to form a new and more balanced judgment of a writer whose undoubted talents as a critic have been too long ignored.

Notes

1. Almost the whole of Mlle de Gournay's work is contained in her ‘volume de mélanges’: L'Ombre de la Demoiselle de Gournay, Paris, Jean Libert, 1626. By this title she intended to convey both the insignificance of the work, ‘sa neantise’, and also its faithful representation of her own views; ‘ce livre … est d'ailleurs … mon ombre et mon image, d'autant qu'il exprime la figure de mon esprit, maistresse piece de mon estre’. Somewhat reluctantly, she was persuaded by her publishers to choose a less pretentious title for the second edition, viz. Les Advis ou les Présens de la Demoiselle de Gournay, Paris, Toussaint du Bray, 1634. The third edition was published by Toussaint du Bray in 1641 under the same title.

2. F. Brunot, La Doctrine de Malherbe d'après son Commentaire sur Desportes, Paris, 1891 and the Histoire de la Langue française, Paris, 1909, vol. III.

3. Les Advis … third edition, Paris, 1641, p. 406 (Hereafter abbreviated to ‘A’).

4. A, p. 747.

5. A, p. 81.

6. A, p. 448.

7. A, p. 419.

8. A, p. 284.

9. A, pp. 268-80.

10. Chapelain, in his 1657 Preface to the long awaited Pucelle, admirably reflects the attitude of mind to which Mlle de Gournay referred. ‘Je ne crois pas nos langues modernes capables jusqu'ici de ces fortes figures, soit de sens, soit de diction, qui règnent si heureusement dans les anciennes … Les vieux siècles … recevoient ces hardiesses, non seulement sans peine mais encore avec plaisir … au lieu que le génie du nostre rejette avec dégoût dans le style, la moindre figure hardie, et, dans les termes, ce qui s'écarte le moins du monde des façons de parler qui ont cours parmi ceux que l'on appelle honnêtes gens’ (Opuscules Critiques, ed. A. Hunter, Paris, 1936, pp. 276-77).

11. De la façon d'escrire de Messieurs l'Eminentissime Cardinal Du Perron et Bertaut, Illustrissime Evesque de Sées. A, p. 733.

12. The metaphors in question, as listed by Mlle de Gournay, read:

    Se plaindre en longs flots de langage
    Elle vest une ame favorable envers les Troyens
    Elle vest le carquois
    La peste ardente de l'amour se conçoit en son sein
    Le vent semond les vagues
    Un autel riche de doüaire
    Devider les plis du temps
    La nuict marche à pas muets
    Dieu faict couler les tenebres humides
    La Vierge Mere enveloppe et serre son Enfant de langes amoureux
    Le flot armé
    Un cœur de rocher sourd aux alarmes
    Un long rayon de paix luit au Peuple
    Les plumes de Dedale estrangeres aux humains
    La nuict serre et cueille en naissant les reliques du jour
    Le decours des saisons
    Les foins, ondes d'émail tremblantes
    Un fleuve de flambeaux
    Tragique moment, tragique crainte, tragique couteau
    Divine ombre vuide
    Timides flancs des vallons

    (A, pp. 752-4).

13. The expression ‘tragique moment’ occurs in the Tombeau de Daphnis:—‘un tragique moment les a tous mis à bas’. (Œuvres, Paris, 1622, p. 26). The other two examples are from the Attentat de Chastel:—‘L'ange qui détourna le tragique couteau’ (ibid., p. 42) and ‘Dieu, combien de frayeurs, et de tragiques craintes’ (ibid., p. 44).

14. ‘Mais quel cœur de rocher, sourd aux plus durs alarmes’, Tombeau de Daphnis, ed. cit., p. 26.

15. ‘Il y a un grand art à traduire vuide pour cava’ (A, p. 754).

16. ‘Comment appellerons-nous la delicieuse hardiesse de nommer les langes bandez, amoureux à cause que l'amour les serre et les estreind tendrement autour de ce corps chery par le soin de le conserver?’ (A, p. 753).

17. A, p. 753. Cf. the original, much less highly developed version of this passage in the Ombre, p. 969: ‘Car qu'est-ce d'examiner l'audace si haute et si puissante pour estre si saine, de chanter ces « plis du temps » afin d'exprimer sa traisnée, ses ombres ou obscuritez, ses oublis et cachettes? et de dire « devider les plis du temps » pour rouler et accomplir les ans?’

18. See p. 123 above.

19. ‘Tombeau de Daphnis’, Œuvres, ed. cit., p. 24.

20. F. Brunot, Histoire de la Langue française, II, p. 173.

21. Cf. L. Feugère, Les Femmes Poètes au 16^e Siècle, Paris, 1853 and 1860, pp. 187-99; C. Livet, Précieux et Précieuses, Paris, 1859, pp. 289-91. J. Dappen's thesis, Marie de Gournay, die Wahltochter Montaignes, Cologne, 1927, follows the same line of argument.

22. P. Féret, Le Cardinal du Perron …, Paris, 1877, pp. 61-5. He contents himself with detailing certain of the redundant paraphrases and pretentious images contained in her list, and refers only in general terms to the Cardinal's ‘trouvailles’—his arresting images, delicate phrasing, etc.

23. P. Stapfer, La Famille et les Amis de Montaigne, Paris, 1896, p. 218.

24. Cf. note 17 above.

25. ‘Propositions sur le Baroque et la littérature française’, Revue des Sciences Humaines, Lille, 1949, pp. 133-43; and ‘Du Baroquisme et de la Littérature en France au 16^e et 17^e siècle’, in ‘La Profondeur et le Rythme’, Cahiers du Collège Philosophique, 1938, pp. 139-204.

26. ‘Propositions …’, p. 143.

27. Ibid.

28. ‘Du Baroquisme …’, p. 160.

29. A, p. 395: ‘Quelque mal particulier que ces mesdisans veuillent au dernier de ces quatre il [Du Bartas] a plus de vertu qu'il n'en faut à couvrir ses vices.’