In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Nineteenth Century French Studies 32.1&2 (2003-2004) 181-182



[Access article in PDF]
Lavaud, Martine. Théophile Gautier: militant du romantisme. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2001. Pp. 640. ISBN 2-7453-0457-7

The aim of Martine Lavaud's thesis is to disprove the widely held view of Gautier as the youthful Romantic rebel turned dour Parnassian, vanquished by the need to earn a living and thus to conform to the ruling bourgeoisie or officialdom of the Second Empire. By examining numerous and diverse texts of Gautier, Lavaud seeks to demonstrate that Gautier remained a militant Romantic throughout his œuvre. The question to answer, she states, is not where he deploys his activism "puisqu'il s'infiltre partout, mais comment il s'écrit, avec quelle portée autocritique, et comment il accorde la 'pureté' poétique qu'il revendique avec l'utilitarisme de son discours" (23). She establishes three rhetorical modes in answering the question, modes which allow for a certain chronological development in Gautier's "romantisme polymorphe," and which serve to divide the book into three parts, each of which contains six chapters.

Her introduction appropriately provides several of her working definitions. In particular, she stipulates that "le romantisme vrai est une fête esthétique, un combat performatif" (26) and that "[l]e regard" is "ce qui échappe aux pièges du langage dischronique, dissociatif et dégradant," "ce qui ne se conceptualise pas, mais restitue l'impression de la Beauté" (24).

The first part, "Le Militantisme polémique[:] traquer le bourgeois" examines the young Gautier's attempts to wage open warfare on two fronts: against bourgeois culture and against Romantic imposture or (self)deception. Texts such as Les Jeunes-France, Les Grotesques, the prefaces to several of his poetic and fictional publications, and a variety of satiric articles written by Gautier on such topics as a medical lecture, obesity in people of letters, the military in peacetime, feminism, and the painter Delaroche reveal an irony and a humor that not only denounce bourgeoisisme, but undermine any ideological codification, or utilitarianism that would make Romantic militancy join forces with the enemy rather than maintain its essential fête-like [End Page 181] marginality. The concluding chapter of this first part focuses on the relationship between Gautier's distinct Romantic grotesque and hugolâtrie, that is, the codification or figuration of Romanticism in the person and writing of Hugo. Unlike Hugo who accepted to be a centre irradiant of Romanticism, Gautier was and stayed in the shadow wherein "un petit grotesque de 1830" could act, that is write texts that Lavaud characterizes as uniquely performative.

The transition from the confrontational and (self)deconstructive militancy of Gautier's earlier texts to a more complicit, or socially engaged Romanticism is the subject of the book's second part, entitled "Le Militantisme 'pédagogique'[:] Gautier et le monde moderne." Lavaud demonstrates the openness of Gautier to modernity in a variety of newspaper articles in which he argues for forms of patronage, of architecture, of technology, and of Orientalism that would allow a reconciliation of the modern world and the artist / poet. Gautier's journalism is thus represented as "le renoncement au divorce," and a kind of forced collaboration "sous peine d'extinction des artistes élus" (212).

The third stage of Gautier's militancy is named "Pour une poétique du regard ou le militantisme 'aboli.' " Lavaud discusses the sublimation or burying of polemic discourse in the profound layers of narrative, poetic, and descriptive texts such as Mademoiselle de Maupin, Le Capitaine Fracasse, Tableaux de siège, Symphonie en blanc majeur, and others. In these texts, Gautier's "show and tell" would constitute mostly a showing in an effort to silence the telling. Seeking "Hermaphrodite ou le rêve du troisième langage," the title of Lavaud's last chapter, the Romantic militant attempts to effect a certain whiteness of page by means of a "regard blanc." In the images produced by such a look, beauty is revealed to be so amorally free, or gratuitous, that it can encompass the "horrors" of Jewish stereotypes and post-Commune ruins, that...

pdf