LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

justicevirtuejustice” (BodinBodin, Jean 575), an early modern version of distributive justicevirtuejustice that “gently mixes nobles and commoners, rich and poor, with discretion, however, so that the nobles retain some advantage over the common people” (BodinBodin, Jean 575). It is not simply that such an arrangement prevents the masses from becoming embittered and trying to overthrow the state (BodinBodin, Jean 574). Rather, the harmonious distribution of honors and offices is considered the best and most just because, like AristotleAristotle’s golden mean, it incorporates and balances the extremes, that is, the partial and imperfect justicevirtuejustice of democratic and of aristocratic regimes (BodinBodin, Jean 570). A commoner, then, provided he contributes to the goodcommonwealththe good of the state, belongs by right to the civic community of the nationnation. He may not necessarily perform the same functions, nor share in honor to the same degree, as a nobleman, for whom the highest offices of the state were typically reserved. But we know in fact that French kings often promoted talented men from below.

      2. Quasi-divine virtuevirtue. Closely bound up with the superlative, this second predicate elevates the monarch above and beyond all subjects and gives the scope of his (or her) rule a theoretically universal reach, while at the same time fostering a universal patriotic ethospatriotismpatriotic ethos that encompasses all subjects in a new civic community. In Chapter 13, Book 3, of the PoliticsAristotlePolitics, AristotleAristotle says of the one best man: “a person of this order may very well be like a god among men” (3.13 1284a10). The royal odes unapologetically compare Henri IV and Louis XIII to gods (JupiterJupiter, MarsMars) and demi-gods (HerculesHercules, AchillesAchilles) and Marie de Médicis to goddesses (AthenaAthena, AphroditeAphrodite, AstraeaAstraea). Such comparisoncomparison usually underscores a particular quality—e.g. couragevirtuecourage, phronēsisphronēsis, beautyvirtuebeauty, justicevirtuejustice—which the Bourbon protagonists share with their more illustrious models. But the implicit hyperbole of such a comparisoncomparison is directly linked to the superlative degree of virtuevirtue (aretē huperbolē). What makes the hyperbole apt is the near identity of the one best man with God. In a brilliant article, Stephen Menn shows that “AristotleAristotle takes both ‘the Goodcommonwealththe good’ and ‘nous’ to be names of the essence of God” (Menn 546), identifying the Greek concept nous [mind, thought, intention, rationality] with the virtuevirtue of reason that exists itself-by-itself and orders the universe (Menn 561 & 566). Menn argues that our intellectual perception of this virtuevirtue, that is, our knowledge of it, is identical with the object of knowledge—which is just this virtuevirtue (“its pure immaterial being is pure energeia,” Menn 568). In other words, AristotleAristotle, according to Menn, does not posit an identity of knower with object, but an identity of the activity of knowing with the self-subsisting rational activity that orders the universe (Menn 569). To paraphrase Menn, human beings may possess the virtuevirtue of reason which God possesses, but God possesses it “in a stronger way, by being it” (Menn 569). Human beings possess it “though a nonidentity relation, by perceiving it, since the virtuevirtue we possess is the same as the object we perceive” (Menn 569). Against this backdrop, one can see why quasi-divinity would be predicated of a monarch, that is, the one best man whose virtuevirtue is superlative. On the sliding scale of virtuevirtue, the monarch is not identical with God but participates as fully as any human can. A monarch’s virtuevirtue participates so fully in the self-subsisting virtuevirtue that orders all things as to suggest identity. Hyperbole is the appropriate figure of thought to convey the feelings of wonderwonder evoked by a being nearly identical with God. Rhetorical manuals of antiquity and the Renaissance favored hyperbole for its capacity to strike the imagination, “making speech lively [by] leaving something for the audience to figure out” (BiesterBiester, James 107). Hence Malherbe’s persistent use of hyperbole to praise the virtuevirtue of the Bourbons is not mere exaggeration. The audience is supposed to infer the monarch’s divinity from the superlative degree of his (or her) natural virtuevirtue, although such an identity is logically denied. That is why the royal odes treat the Bourbons as demi-gods.

      3. Heroic virtuevirtue. This predicate is likely due to the historical role that Henri played as the savior of the nationnation. Myriam YardeniYardeni, Myriam writes: “Henri IV is the most national king which France had known up to that period. Never had any king been so obligated to base his reign on his French characterethoscharacter. His victory marks the triumph of a reinvigorated national sentimentnationnational sentiment that enters upon its full maturity” (YardeniYardeni, Myriam 317). However, any careful reading of the royal odes that takes into account their classical and biblical intertexts is bound to acknowledge that Henri, Marie, and Louis are all portrayed as heroes in the mythological sense of the term. “The hero,” writes Joseph CampbellCampbell, Joseph, “is the man or woman who has been able to battle past his personal and local historical limitations to the generally valid, normally human forms. Such a one’s visions, ideas, and inspirations come pristine from the primary springs of human life and thought. Hence they are eloquent, not of the present, disintegrating society and psyche, but of the unquenched source through which society is reborn” (CampbellCampbell, Joseph 14).

      When Malherbe’s poetic sequence opens, Henri IV, the HerculesHercules of France, has saved the kingdom from destruction and set sail aboard the ship of stateship of state on a political questhero cyclequest to usher in a utopia of peace, justicevirtuejustice and prosperity at home and French hegemony abroad. As royal consort, Marie de Médicis incarnates the dual aspect of love and justicevirtuejustice—VenusVenus and AstraeaAstraea, respectively—as she will secure the regime by providing a legitimate heir and facilitate the transition from war to peace, from disorder to governance. In the language of CampbellCampbell, Joseph, either she herself is the boon which the hero seeks on his adventurehero cycleadventure and brings back to renew society, or the birth of her son is the magic gift, or both (CampbellCampbell, Joseph 29, 148-165, 211). Later in the sequence, when the hero dies and Marie becomes queen regent, the odes depict her displaying the same magnanimitymagnanimity as Henri in service to the nationnation. Louis XIII, the son, for his part, will be portrayed as completing the unfinished labors of the father, fulfilling the conditions for the return of the Golden AgeGolden Age.

      From a mythological perspective, although such heroes maintain contact with the nationnation’s supernatural powers (i.e. God, the fates, and the daemondaemon of France), they do not personify the grand cosmic forces of creation and destruction. Nor do they resemble the archetypal religious hero—like Moses, JesusJesus, or Muhammed—who, as CampbellCampbell, Joseph writes, “found and opened the road to the light beyond the dark” (Campbell 222). Rather, through an act of repetition, that is, by re-founding the monarchy and re-uniting the nationnation, the Bourbons reincarnate the greatest heroes of antiquity, who were also the first kings. In his analysis of the politypolity, and of monarchypolitymonarchy in particular, AristotleAristotle acknowledges such mythological founders and benefactors, situating their kingships in what he calls the “Heroic Age” (PoliticsAristotlePolitics 1.2 1253a30; 3.14 1285b5-15).

      The heroism found in Malherbe’s royal odes does not fit the evolution of the conception charted by Mark Bannister in the heroic novels of the 1640s and 1650s. Banister shows quite well how the notion evolves from an emphasis on physical prowessprowess and moral autonomy (underscoring the sort of personal glory that elevates the hero to a realm beyond the human community) toward a more altruistic understanding of these concepts with an emphasis on service to the community (Bannister, Privileged Mortals 36-49). In the royal odes, both poles are already present. On the one hand, Henri’s quasi-divine attributes raise him above the nationnation, as though he were a demi-god or a special being chosen by God or destiny. On the other, despite this glory, he voluntarily serves the nationnation, pursuing the common goodcommonwealthcommon good and conferring the greatest benefits on the national communitynationnational community, while his exampleexample is intended to encourage all his subjects, both greater and lesser, to do the same.

      At the same time, independent of the internal design of the royal odes, these three attributes of magnanimitymagnanimity also conform to Henri’s absolutist political agenda. J. Russell Major has argued that Henri’s and Sully’s suppression of the estates of Guyenne in 1603, and their imposition of royal officials who levied and collected taxes directly for the king, should be interpreted as a failed attempt to undermine the traditional rights and privileges of the provincial estates

Скачать книгу