Poiesis and Modernity in the Old and New Worlds

11. How to Reconquer Poiesis? Florian's Gonzalve de Cordoue, ou Grenade reconquise (1791)

225 u 11 How to Reconquer Poiesis? Florian’s Gonzalve de Cordoue, ou Grenade reconquise (1791) Fabienne Moore The newly drawn tree of knowledge in D’Alembert and Diderot’s Encyclopédie raisonnée des sciences, des arts et des techniques (1751–1772) divided human understanding into three realms, Memory, Reason, and Imagination, leading to three branches of knowledge, History, Philosophy, and Poetry, respectively. Inspired by Francis Bacon, the tree encompassed and attempted to classify all fields in a systematic, logical manner. The most radical intervention in the encyclopedic enterprise was to position theology as a scientific sub­ category of philosophy, shifting the weight of inquiry away from God and toward a science of man—a reordering illustrated in Cochin’s celebrated allegorical frontispiece of the quest for Truth unveiled. This mapping of knowledge helped visualize l’enchaînement (the interconnectedness) of the various fields of thought, which individual articles sought to demonstrate. But an obvious though seldom-noted fact is how off-balance the tree really is, with a very thin and light poetry branch compared to the long, heavy branches of philosophy and history. Hence the question, could it be that the philosophes meant to displace not only God but poetry as well? Not only the divinity but the vates? The diminished importance of poetry within the tree of knowledge contrasts with the pervasive presence of poetry in the eighteenth century, not only as an aesthetic category but also as a widespread social practice—both an aspiration for men and women 226 FABIENNE MOORE of letters and a social link connecting the educated who enjoyed hearing and composing verses on all occasions. This question of the articulation between the Enlightenment and poiesis remains a fruitful but under-researched domain of inquiry. As it ushered in a new world of knowledge and values, the French Enlightenment debated the definition, role, place, and “sacredness” of poetry, but this questioning has seldom been an object of study. The first reason for this lack is that we tend to emphasize the philosophes’ analytical, critical enterprise and the plays and fictions born of their imagination as a better match to the modern spirit of the Enlightenment than the admittedly flawed poetic experiments beholden to neoclassicism.1 Secondly, romanticism effectively devalued non-lyrical poetry , therefore consigning to obscurity the vast majority of verses (epic, didactic , biblical, descriptive, pastoral, satirical, etc.) written during the French Enlightenment, regardless of their eclecticism or poetic ambition. Yet the poetic production of the French Enlightenment, far from the desert to which it is almost always compared,2 raises, in fine, doubts similar to those broached in the (prose) philosophical writings of the period, for instance in the domains of gender, nature, and power. Epic poetry suggested nostalgia for a virile world of action in contradistinction to the world of thought and conversation that confined men to their cabinets and to salons within a feminizing culture. Pastoral poetry hearkened back to a utopian world where nature engendered innocence, unlike the corrupting influence of hypersocialized, urban settings. And a nascent poetry in prose sought liberty and equality of genres, thereby condemning aesthetic as much as political absolutism. This essay focuses on the epic poem in prose, Gonzalve de Cordoue, ou Grenade reconquise (1791) by Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian (1755–1794) as emblematic of the struggle to define poetry independently from versification during the French Enlightenment. The composition and reception of Gonzalve de Cordoue reflected the Enlightenment’s ambivalent perspective on poetry: in a review of the book for the Mercure français (January 1792), the influential critic Jean-François de la Harpe ruled that poiesis could not exist without versification . Prose being “mere language” and not art, composing fiction in prose involved no creative process. La Harpe, a fellow academician, became Florian ’s most vocal critic: his sharply worded condemnation of Gonzalve de Cordoue in Le Mercure was later reprinted in his influential Lycée, ou Cours de litt érature ancienne et moderne (1822). La Harpe’s insurmountable aversion for a genre he considered too easy, “ce genre faux et radicalement vicieux” (Lycée 287) (this false and radically flawed genre), namely poetic prose and poems in prose, strongly echoes early detractors of the phenomenon, most clearly the HOW TO RECONQUER POIESIS? 227 abbé Fraguier and Voltaire. In 1719 the French academician l’abbé Fraguier presented a discourse, “Qu’il ne peut y avoir de poëmes...