LITMIR.BIZ

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of the Golden AgeGolden Age announced by the odes imagines a spiritual transformation on the grandest scale. The symbolic death of France during the armed struggle of the civil war and its symbolic rebirth under the heroic leadership of Henri, Marie, and Louis reproduces the cosmogonic cycle of dissolution and renewal (CampbellCampbell, Joseph 224). Such a transformation is total and presupposes the harmonious reintegration of the individual in society and the cosmos. For this reason, it is correct to call the nationnational myth of the royal odes universal, that is, all-encompassing.

      Whether or not the Golden AgeGolden Age returns in fact, the odes present the questhero cyclequest as both collective and individual, requiring not just the goodwill and cooperation of the nationnation’s subjects, but the watchfulness of God, the action of the king, and the service of the great nobilitynobilitygreat nobles in particular. The new Golden AgeGolden Age is a “second coming,” so to speak, and most important, its imminent arrival demands a change in the reader to bring it about: the move from a partisan point of view to a collective national sentimentnationnational sentiment. In a nationnation fractured by religious dispute, the odes’ mythological allusions serve as a kind of substitute liturgy. Echoes from classical poetry, the PsalmOld TestamentPsalmss, and the ProphetOld TestamentProphetss become the common glue to hold together the various constituencies of the nationnation, but also the means by which the reader will undergo the necessary change. “It has always been the prime function of mythologymythology and rite to supply the symbols that carry the human spirit forward, in counteraction to those human fantasies that tend to hold it back” (Campbell 7). The odes certainly set out to persuade with argument, to move the reader with admiration, with fear, with emulation, etc., but their highly allusive composition also requires the reader’s active understanding. Most fascinating in this regard is Malherbe’s use of figures of thoughtfigures of thought—significatiofigures of thoughtsignificatio [suggestion, allusion], emphasisfigures of thoughtemphasis [hinting], and ratiocinatiofigures of thoughtratiocinatio [inference]—which early modern rhetorical theorists, Catholic and ProtestantProtestant, developed from their reading of HellenisticstyleHellenistic rhetorical treatises to create an alternative conception of the grandstylegrand style that could include the Bible as one of its models.19 Such figuresfigures of thought occur in the odes primarily with reference to classical myth, but also encompass biblical allusions, suggesting that a “veiled spiritual meaning” attaches to specific images, a reading practice that one also finds in contemporary books of Ignatian spirituality.20 The literate constituencies targeted by the odes are implicated in the imaginary political adventurehero cycleadventure by having to work out the meaning of the odes for themselves, thereby undergoing the desired cognitive and affective modifications. Malherbe’s odes work with the reader to bring about the change of heart and motivation of will necessary to unite the nationnation on a new mythical foundation, the ship of stateship of state en route to utopia (cf. HoraceHorace, “Epode 16”). Reworking the famous slogan of Guillaume Postel (“one faith, one law, one king”), the royal odes propose what Jean de Serres could write in 1597: “one king, one law, one nationnation [patrienationla patrie].”21 Their aim is to propagate and to eternalize the ideology of this new national communitynationnational community.

      The pillar of Malherbe’s patriotismpatriotism is magnanimitymagnanimity, the virtuevirtue for which the odes so highly praise the Bourbons. According to AristotleAristotle, magnanimitymagnanimity is the greatest of the virtuevirtues, implying the presence and perfection of all the others (NEAristotleNicomachean Ethics (NE) 4.3 1123b30-1124a). For the generations of Frenchmen born and raised in civil strife, the idea of virtuevirtue was key in the justification of power and privilege. Political elites wanted to believe that virtuevirtue entitled them to rule. But magnanimitymagnanimity was especially appropriate to the Bourbons because the new regime needed its subjects, both greater and lesser, to believe that Bourbon authority was deserved as well as legitimate. Malherbe consistently asserts that Henri IV and Louis XIII deserve to be king—and Marie de Médicis, to be regent—thanks to their extraordinary achievements, but most of all, because they have the right concern with honor, putting the general welfarecommonwealthgeneral welfare of the nationnation ahead of all else. On that basis, the odes un-self-consciously celebrate Henri IV and Louis XIII as quasi-divine heroes of superlative virtuevirtue (or in Marie de Médicis’ case, a great-souled goddess), anticipating the vogue for the idealized aspirations and superhuman individuals observed in theater and the heroic novel after 1630.22

      But the odes do not just point to magnanimitymagnanimity and the other virtuevirtues. They also illustrate them, exemplifying what they assert. The odes assume, as does AristotleAristotle, that virtuevirtue is learned by the imitation of exampleexample, and similar to Montaigne’s “De l’institution des enfans” [On the Education of Children] (Essais 1.26), they presuppose that intimate acquaintance with exampleexamples of magnanimitymagnanimity, by exercising the reader’s judgment, inculcates the same virtuevirtue.23 If their praise of magnanimitymagnanimity aims to elicit, on behalf of the Bourbons, the admiration of the nationnation’s subjects, the royal odes also model the acts of loyalty, service, and emulation which they seek to inspire. As paradoxical as it might sound to anyone familiar with AristotleAristotle’s discussion of monarchypolitymonarchy in the PoliticsAristotlePolitics, it is the virtuevirtue of magnanimitymagnanimity in the royal odes that fosters the creation of a civic community under a monarch. Malherbe’s praise for the magnanimous monarch whose patriotismpatriotism is a model for his subjects evokes a monarchypolitymonarchy that mixes aristocratic and democratic elements in a manner that recalls the “harmonic justice” of the perfect politypolity that BodinBodin, Jean envisions in Les Six Livres de la République (1576). Such praise and inculcation of magnanimitymagnanimity are supposed to foster in French subjects the corresponding moral ethosethos, the kind of person defined by this all-important virtuevirtue. Modeled on the Bourbon commitment to the nationnation, this moral characterethoscharacter becomes the patriotic idealpatriotismpatriotic ideal for the greater and lesser subjects of the new national communitynationnational community. Aimed at the nobilitynobility and, indeed, offered to the whole nationnation, it is embodied and performed by the odes’ rational modes of argument, particularly exampleexample. By contrast, the sequence’s overarching myth and recurrent mythological motifs perform a different function, transporting these magnanimous subjects “beyond logical demonstration” to implicate them in a political adventurehero cycleadventure bigger than themselves.

      The unstated premise that allows the odes to exemplify the virtuevirtues they praise is the conception of action and eloquenceeloquence as complementary activities of practical wisdomphronēsispractical wisdom (phronēsisphronēsis).24 Such a premise rescues the odes from being no more than sophistical mystifications of power. Although Malherbe was literally a “poète à gages” [salaried poet], the royal odes aspire to do more than simply satisfy the poet’s professional obligation or merely persuade their target audience. The emphasis they place on virtuevirtue, and the rhetorical effort they make to establish a close relation between poet and reader, in other words, subjects of the Bourbons, suggest that they partake of what Eugene GarverGarver, Eugene calls a civic rhetoric, “one in which more than the external goal is at stake. The audience is not an enemy, and the civic rhetorician must construct a civic relation between himself and his audience” (GarverGarver, Eugene 46; see also 6-12). “Civic rhetoric aims at an identity between the speaker making the arguments and the audience receiving them” (GarverGarver, Eugene 47). Although the royal odes, being a species of poetry, approach the delicate balance of civic rhetoric from the side of pure craftcraft, that is, a skill or knack in which there is no guiding end, their integration of argumentative reasoning (logosprooflogos, Rhet.AristotleRhetoric 1.2.3) makes them a technēcrafttechnē in the full sense of the term, while their celebration of virtuevirtue assimilates them to a civic activity, orienting them toward the goodcommonwealththe good (GarverGarver, Eugene 7). Although a highly ornamented and emotionally charged discourse like encomiasticencomiumencomiastic poetry poetry, consigned to a professional poet, would seem to be incompatible with, or at least irrelevant to, the speaker’s virtuevirtue, the quality most essential for a good citizencommonwealthcitizen (GarverGarver, Eugene 6-7),25 it is my contention that the odes partake of rhetoric in the noblest sense of the term, integrating “the apparently opposed properties of citizencommonwealthcitizenship and artfulness” and exhibiting “a harmony between reason and characterethoscharacter,

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