Pour un tombeau de Merlin: Du barde celte à la poésie moderne (review)

Yves Vadé has chosen to resurrect the Renaissance tradition of the ‘tombeau,’ a literary homage to a late figure—in this case, somewhat paradoxically, Merlin, whose survival is in fact averred by Vadé’s detailed and clever analysis. The study, informed by mythological and anthropological readings of the Merlin corpus, guides the reader from the ‘birth’ of the eponym character to his most recent reincarnations in modern French poetry. Lautréamont’s Maldoror appears as an echo of Merlin, as does, of course, Apollinaire’s ‘Enchanteur pourrissant,’ but Breton, and also, more surprisingly, Michaux do belong to the Merlinian constellation, the signs of which Vadé discovers and interprets with great subtlety in a wide range of texts.

For medievalists, the first two chapters (‘Naissance d’un personage’ and ‘Des hommes sauvages et des oiseaux’) are both the most interesting and the most convincing. Vadé’s analyses takes into account all the textual traces pertaining to Merlin, or his Welsh homologue Myrddin. He underlines the connection between Merlin and the old metamorphic god, Proteus, both being gifted with exceptional oracular abilities. He addresses the sensitive issue of Merlin’s duality, as a Wild Man and as a prince, or—later—as a ‘Devil’s son.’ Vadé is also very attentive to the information provided by the names and linguistic roots that contribute to the formation of the Merlin myth: while he does not bring in any new insight to the puzzling change from ‘Myrddin’ to ‘Merlin,’ he elaborates upon the traditional identification between Merlin, the seer, and the merlin, a small falcon used for hunting.

It is through this metaphoric association that Vadé introduces his somewhat provocative idea of a splitting of the poetic field in two families: the sons of Merlin, as it were, and those of Orpheus. Tracing the two theoretically opposing, but sometimes complementary poetic traditions throughout French literature, Vadé brings new, enlightening insights to old texts (‘Merlin versus Orphée’).

While the second part of the book is less immediately interesting from a medievalist point of view, one cannot but be impressed by the quality of Vadé’s analysis. To read Maldoror as a rebellious avatar of Merlin is a challenge, but a rewarding one. Apollinaire’s interest and investment in Medieval lore, as well as in the figure of Merlin, are of course well documented and have often been studied, but Vadé is able to suggest new readings of some revealing passages. The gap between the critic’s theory and the reality of the works he studies becomes wider, however, in the last two chapters, ‘André Breton et l’ombre de Merlin,’ and, most of all, ‘Henri Michaux dans l’esplumoir.’ At least, Breton does have a ambiguous relationship to the Middle Ages that he knows well and refuses to acknowledge; Michaux, on the other hand, does not seem to have any connection to anything medieval—his imaginary sources are completely different. In that case, the ‘shadow of Merlin’ is tenuous at best, even though the analysis of Michaux’s texts remains convincing.

On the whole, Vadé has given an original essay that sums up long years of devoted scholarship spent looking for the elusive and Protean enchanter. While the author is not so much focusing on Merlin per se as using him as a filter to interpret poetic endeavors by various French poets, his book nevertheless fully belongs in the library of Merlinian studies.