LITMIR.BIZ

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of thoughtemphasis, QuintilianQuintilian 8.3.83), sending an erudite and diligent reader to a classical or biblical intertext where an illuminating story is being told, recalls the contemporary practice of Jesuit books of spirituality which used a mystical version of peinture [vivid description] to unlock the veiled meaning of engraved images that referred back to passages in the Bible.33 This similarity of intertextual reading practices suggests that Malherbe could have invested his odes’ rhetorical images with spiritual meaning, and that the royal odes contain a deeper or hidden message which may be accessed only by reflection, provided the intertext has been dug up. If such a reading is plausible, and I don’t see why it is not, then the presence of Joseph CampbellCampbell, Joseph’s hero cyclehero cycle in the odes looks much less ahistorical.

      What does seem clear in retrospect is that Malherbe’s contemporaries, when reflecting on the poetic achievement of the odes, could not see the forest for the trees. The relatively uneducated members of the royal courtroyal court, which constituted Malherbe’s captive audience, could hardly have been expected to pick up on such veiled allusions, while rivalry and caste loyalty probably blocked the royal odes’ reception among the more erudite members of the Church and the ParlementParlement. Malherbe was after all contesting their self-appointed magistracy of royaleloquenceroyal eloquenceeloquence. The myopic reading of the odes by erudite belle-lettrists like Chapelain, Godeau, or Guez de Balzac was perhaps the fault, at least in part, of Malherbe himself. His infamous critique of Ronsard, his rude snubbing of Desportes, and his exclusive poetry atelier (where his epigones gathered to discuss the mechanics of verse) fit two ready-made narratives: the petulant modern rejecting the humanist legacy, and the grammarian demanding clarity, logic, and coherence at the expense of inspiration. My aim in refocusing the lens on the royal odes is to widen and to deepen the reader’s gaze in such a way as to recover the big picture while not losing sight of tactics and tools. The approach I have taken, however, has little to say about the actual reception of the royal odes. That would have required writing an altogether different book.34

      The early seventeenth century was certainly no Golden AgeGolden Age of poetry. Malherbe did not, as a result of his odes, wield any political authority, although that did not stop him from pursuing pleasure, privilege, and fame alongside his social superiors. Already in 1630, the year Malherbe’s complete works were posthumously published, the elevated themes and style of the odes had started to look tiresome, and their attempt to reimagine the nationnation was not taken seriously—if readers were even aware of it. “If the writing of encomiasticencomiumencomiastic poetry odes quickly turns to repetitive formulas and to academic exercise, becoming a pretext for essays and polemics among specialists, this is surely because its finality is increasingly less perceptible, and because a divide opens up between the means of expression handed down by literary tradition and the real aspirations of the social group at whom this literature is aimed” (Chauveau 66). Chauveau and others have noted how lyriclyric poetry poems of the early seventeenth century turn away from the implicit comparisoncomparisons anchored in classical and biblical poetry that inform the royal odes. Poetry was migrating away from courtcourt (royal) to aristocratic salonsalonss, where poets and poetasters composed lyriclyric poetrys exploring the refinements of honnêtehonnête hommehonnêtetété [nobilitynobility] and galanterie [flirtatiousness]. Malherbe frequented the Hôtel de Rambouillet [the Rambouillet Townhouse] as early as 1615, but “between Malherbe and the other poets of the seventeenth century [i.e. Voiture, Sarasin, Corneille, etc.], there existed little personal contact at the Hôtel” (Abraham, “Malherbe et l’Hôtel” 84). What is more, a new political and cultural climate was emerging in the 1630s, shaped by such momentous events as the siege of La RochelleLa Rochelle (1627-1628), France’s entry into the Thirty Years War (1635), and La Querelle du Cid [The Quarrel of the Cid] (1637) which led to the publication of Chapelain’s Sentiments de l’Académie sur le ‘Cid’ [The Academy’s Opinions on the ‘Cid’] (1638). Heroic novels, the tragedies of Corneille, literary criticism, conversation, and light verse now preoccupied the literati. Aristocratic taste had moved on.

      Undoubtedly, the audience for Malherbe’s royal odes had always been select, and the scope of their impact limited, but Malherbe, despite his sardonic quips, never conceived his work as a minor art. On the contrary, the odes fearlessly engage the issues that most concerned ruling elites in the early seventeenth century: the proper functions of kingship, the political stability and economic prosperity of the kingdom, the crisis of noble identitynobilityidentity, the political authority of women, and the imperial ambitions of the Habsburgs. The odes’ highest purpose is to reimagine the nationnation—indeed, to call into being a new national communitynationnational community. To say that they are ideological is to insist that they make claims about the way things are, affirm the values and beliefs of a dominant social group, and present a patriotic vision of the nationnation risen from the ashes of the civil war. Much more is at stake in Malherbe’s odes than questions of style, but those stakes are always filtered through style.

      Although this book is a work of historical criticism in French literature, I have tried to make it accessible to anyone who might take a comparatist’s interest in early modern poetry. I have generously quoted and translated the odes and the critical literature whenever it was appropriate. Indeed, I hope that anyone who loves poetry will be fascinated by the pomp and elegance of Malherbe’s royal odes, their profound erudition, wild flights of imagination, and direct engagement with the powerful. Malherbe is the consummate craftcraftsman, and his odes generously repay detailed analysis. But the path to appreciation requires that we understand how the odes work, and for that one cannot lose sight of their political, cultural, and rhetorical contexts. The imposition of historically alien values and expectations, whether of the later seventeenth century, or of our own era, merely ends up obscuring what is most astonishing in this poetry. These odes indeed have the power to astonish—that was one of their goals—if only we will deign to learn their language and to dream their dreams.

      Part I Praising the Great Soul

      This section of the book resuscitates the historical conventions, cultural assumptions, and critical terms necessary to appreciate the unique achievement of Malherbe’s royal odes. Its focal point is the megalopsychosmagnanimitymegalopsychos, the Aristotelian great soulmagnanimitygreat soul (NE 4.3), because it is both an ethosethos and a virtuevirtue, and because it was considered the wellspring of la grande éloquence [the grandstylegrand style]. Chapter 1 examines how the ethosethos of magnanimitymagnanimity, modeled on Henri IV, encompasses and defines the members of the body politicbody politic. Chapter 2 asks how the virtuevirtue of magnanimitymagnanimity shapes the conceptions of monarchypolitymonarchy and the national communitynationnational community. Chapter 3, the longest of these three, investigates the rhetorical climate and the hybrid genus dicendi of the royal odes to contextualize their version of the grandstylegrand style. There was no way to define and to develop the notions of ethosethos, virtuevirtue, and eloquenceeloquence, to relate them to the historical context, and to show how they organize the composition—one might say, the enunciation—of the royal odes, while at the same time explicating in a clear and coherent way such highly complex poems. Such a division allows the concepts and arguments presented in Part I to be used without excessive comment in the close reading of the royal odes in Part II.

      Chapter 1. Literary Patronage

      Although, technically speaking, Malherbe was the client of Roger de Saint-Lary de Termes, seigneur de BellegardeBellegarde, Roger de Saint-Lary de Termes, seigneur de (1562-1646), Grand Écuyer de France [Master of the Horse], in whose service the poet received a cash stipend, table and board, horse and valet (Adam, Poésies 263), it was understood that Malherbe was the king’s “man.” In addition to “écuyer du roi” [equerry of the king], Malherbe was named “gentilhomme ordinaire de la chambre” [official gentleman of the royal bedchamber] (Adam, Poésies 223). BellegardeBellegarde, Roger de Saint-Lary de Termes, seigneur de, a great lord from a powerful military family, was himself a loyal client of Henri IV. When the mortally-wounded Henri III recognized Henri of Navarre as his successor in 1589, BellegardeBellegarde, Roger de Saint-Lary de Termes, seigneur de without hesitation transferred his allegiances to the new king and valiantly fought by his side to help him secure control of the monarchy. After the death

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