Gendered Lyric: Subjectivity and Difference in Nineteenth-Century French Poetry

Chapter Three Leconte de Lisle's Hardening Arteries

Chapter Three Leconte de Lisle's Hardening Arteries Charles de Leconte de Lisle (1818-94), the Pamassians' most distinguished and impassible elder, was a Creole (one of European descent born in the colonies) from the lIe Bourbon (now de la Reunion). In his article on Leconte de Lisle, Baudelaire calls the Creoles "des ames de femmes" who have nothing original to contribute to French poetry.! Attributing to them the characteristics offragility, physical delicacy, languor, kindness, and a natural faculty of imitation, Baudelaire appears to suggest that Creoles, regardless of their sex, make wonderful women but bad poets. In a rhetorical move characteristic of Baudelaire's love for antithesis, he then calls Leconte de Lisle "la premiere et l'unique exception" (2: 176) and describes him in this way: "Un front puissant, une tete ample et large, des yeux clairs et froids, foumissent tout d'abord I'image de la force" (2: 176). Baudelaire's interest in physiognomy was not peculiar to him; indeed, several of his contemporaries described Leconte de Lisle's physical features using a vocabulary also descriptive ofhis aesthetics ofpower, clarity, and coldness. Here is Mendes's portrait of Leconte de Lisle: "[Sa] tete est un reve de statuaire; la face, au large front, doriline; les yeux percent au loin; la levre, un peu mince, se plisse avec Ie dedain bienveillant qu'explique et qu'autorise la conscience de la force" (Figurines 24). Like Mendes, Adolphe Racot likens Le<;onte de Lisle to a statue, writing that "L'homme est de marbre" (Portraits-cartes 49). This imposing and manly figure,"le chef du Parnasse" (according to Maurice Souriau), would preside over a poetic tendency whose privileged metaphor was statuary. His first collections-Poemes antiques (1852), Poemes et poesies (1855),2 and Poemes barbares (1862)-prepared the terrain for younger poets who would emulate the impeccable composition 87 Chapter Three and detachment ofLeconte de Lisle's poetry. No less important for the elaboration of his aesthetic stance were the prefaces to his first two collections and a series ofarticles published in Le nain jaune entitled Les poetes contemporains (1864). These prefaces and articles consolidated his role as Parnassian leader and announced a poetic agenda that was later associated with the Parnassians as a group. Crystallized Criticism In the preface to the Poemes antiques, Leconte de Lisle set forth, with characteristic pessimism and defensiveness, poetic values countering all that had come to be associated with Romanticism . With equally characteristic precision and rigidity, he chisels an aesthetic program that includes the following facets : the importance of intellectual and formal rigor, the privileging of the past (its tradition, its poetic forms) over the present (the ephemerality ofcurrent events, politics, passions, and poetic fads), and the cultivation of an impersonal and neutral subject position. Leconte de Lisle elaborates upon his preference for "neutral" poetry and defends his "retour reflechi ades formes negligees ou peu connues" (Articles 108). The adjective "reflechi " signals a critique of Romantic effusion and sentimentality , for here Leconte de Lisle explains his return to ancient forms and standards by opposing them to qualities that define Romantic poetry. Thus, "l'impersonnalite et la neutralite de [s]es etudes" (l09) counter the "emotions personnelles" (108) and "les passions politiques" (109) of the "modem" (Romantic) poetry that he so abhors. Leconte de Lisle betrays his erudite bias with the word "etude," which suggests poetry is an intellectual and not evocative practice. His call for reasoned reflection and formal perfection ("de[s] formes plus nettes et plus precises" [110]) implies the thoughtless inspiration with which he characterizes Romanticism. He writes against "la vie instinctive, spontanee, aveuglement feconde de la jeunesse" and against the association of poetry with "les vertus sociales" (110). For Leconte de Lisle, Romantic poetry is the expression of "de mesquines impressions personnelles, envahie par les neologismes arbitraires , morcelee et profanee, esclave des caprices et des gouts individuels" (110). He proposes instead a learned, authoritative 88 Leconte de Lisle's Hardening Arteries approach to poetic production, looking toward a "generation savante" (110) that will raise poetic art to the realm of a SCIence. When Leconte de Lisle published his Poemes antiques, he offered the poetry-reading public a collection clearly in opposition to the prevailing current. But then his relation to this popu~ lation was consistently combative, given his outspoken contempt for the common reader and facile poetry. Leconte de Lisle's intellectual arrogance was one of his trademarks, and his unpopularity and proud disdain provide a leitmotif in his prose writings as in criticism of him, both positive and negative. This passage exemplifies Leconte de Lisle's antidemocratic intellectualism: L'Art, dont la Poesie est I'expression eclatante, intense et complete, est un luxe intellectuel accessible ade tres rares esprits. Toute multitude, inculte ou lettree, professe, on Ie sait, une passion sans frein pour la chimere inepte et envieuse de I'egalite absolue. Elle nie volontiers ou elle insulte ce qu'elle ne saurait posseder. De ce vice naturel de comprehensivite decoule I'horreur instinctive qu'elle eprouve pour l'Art. (Articles 156-57) Baudelaire concurred with such elitism, and his essay on Leconte de Lisle indicates an equal contempt for the French reading public. Moreover, it points to their shared belief in the incompatibility of popularity and poetic greatness. Le caractere distinctif de sa poesie est un sentiment d'aristocratie intellectuelle, qui suffirait, a lui seul, pour expliquer l'impopularite de I'auteur, si, d'un autre cote, nous ne savions pas que I'impopularite, en France, s'attache a tout ce qui tend vers n'importe queIgenre de perfection. [...] [Leconte de Lisle] s'eleve bien au-dessus de ces melancoliques de salon, de cesfabricants d'albums et de keepsakes ou tout, philosophie et poesie, est ajuste au sentiment des demoiselles. 3 With this reference to those writing for "les demoiselles," Baudelaire implicitly attributes popular acclaim to a female audience. Like Leconte de Lisle, he repudiated women readers, 89 Chapter Three assuming that heedfulness of feminine tastes necessarily enfeebled poetry: "Ce n'est pas pour mes femmes, mes filles ou mes sreurs que ce livre [Lesfleurs du Mal] a ete ecrit" «(Euvres completes 1: 181). We. can conclude that both poets aimed not only to overturn poetic values, but also to reserve poetry as a genre addressed to an elite, male audience. Leconte de Lisle's poetry was as male as his salon, and his intended readers resembled his habitues, intellectual male poets such as himself. This, of course, represented an about-face from Lamartine's cultivation ofa female readership and encouragement ofwomen poets. In the context of his study on poetry in the industrial age, Walter Benjamin makes a case for the superfluity of the poet beginning with Baudelaire, stating that "les circonstances sont devenues plus defavorables au succes de la poesie lyrique" (Baudelaire 150). One might also say, conversely, that the climate for an inclusive audience had become increasingly inhospitable , and that the alienation of the modem Poet was in many senses aself-sought isolation. In his preface to Poemes et poesies, Leconte de Lisle defends himself against criticism of the earlier Poemes antiques. This preface, like the earlier one, is notable for its beleaguered tone and the author's stubborn pride in standing firm against criticism, which he describes as the lot of a poet devoted to artistic perfection and the cult of beauty. Claiming that "je hais mon temps" (Articles 127), Leconte de Lisle rails against industrial progress, bourgeois capitalism, and the mass market, which, he contends, lower the value and therefore the quality of poetry. Benjamin's critique of "the inhospitable, blinding age of big-scale industrialism" (Illuminations 157) echoes Leconte de Lisle's lament of the incompatibility of poetry and progress: "[l']alliance monstrueuse de la poesie et de l'industrie" (127). Here he elaborates upon his preference for the past and the value that antiquity holds for the arts. Calling for a renewal of the epic, which he believes has lost its currency with the deterioration of modem poetry, he touches once again on contemporary weakness and intellectual inferiority. Epics, "nobles recits qui se deroulaient atravers la vie d'un peuple, qui exprimaient son genie, sa destinee humaine et son ideal religieux" (134), are to be cultivated. And although Leconte de Lisle himself 90 Leconte de Lisle's Hardening Arteries exploits this genre in the Poemes antiques, he is pessimistic that it will regain its prominence during his day. The conditions necessary for the revitalization of the epic are telling: he believes that it is possible "que I'epopee renaisse un jour de la reconstitution et du choc herolque des nationalites oppressives et opprimees" (135). This is an uncharacteristic statement, inconsistent for suggesting that good, true poetry can spring from social movements or the movement of societies. At the same time it is highly characteristic in its association ofquality poetry with traditionally masculine values, such as armed combat and heroism. A common theme links together the various strands of Leconte de Lisle's preface, associating all that is durable, timetested , difficult, tempered, and aristocratic. Permanence and restraint counter the frivolity of the new and the passions of the day. This poetic confrontation pits objective erudition against spontaneity, restraint against effusion, exterior description against subjective feeling, the conservation oftraditional poetic forms against the prosodic rule-bending that began with Romanticism . In his prefatory remarks, Leconte de Lisle implicitly conceives of the former as masculine values, the latter as feminine and constitutive of weak poetry. We can draw some important conclusions regarding the status of lyric poetry at the midcentury from these prefaces. One involves the identity of the Poet, under Romanticism a benevolent and heroic intercessor between the reader and a higher insight. The construction of the Poet as Romantic hero underwent modification with the proto-Pamassians. While maintaining his prodigiousness, this figure appeared now as the austere and aristocratic predecessor to the Poet ofpoesie pure. Because of his intolerance for a mass readership, Leconte de Lisle (like Baudelaire and Mallarme) disdained the humanitarianism and didacticism evident in some Romantic works. The belief in imagination, divine insight, or inspiration attributable to a Muse was replaced by a work ethic that elevated erudition and science above the human emotions. Verlaine points to Baudelaire as the one who first freed the Poet from his dependency on the trope ofinspiration: "Ie poete [a ete] trop longtemps reduit, par d'absurdes· prejuges, ace role humiliant d'un instrument au service de la Muse" «(Euvres en prose 606). Baudelaire himself 91 Chapter Three writes of the necessity ofregular work as a means ofovercoming passivity and depression: "Pour guerir de tout, de la misere, de la maladie et de la melancolie, il ne manque absolument que Ie Gout du Travail" «(Euvres completes 1: 669). This reconsideration of the Poet's role nonetheless left intact his solitary stance. Before isolated as a priest or seer, now the Poet's exceptionality sprang from his elite intellect. Formerly the Poet ofelection, the Parnassian Poet was now cursed, misunderstood, unappreciated by the vulgar and uneducated. The aesthetics of the Parnasse were consequently more pessimistic than even the melancholic strain of Romanticism. An actively bitter defensiveness had replaced the passive depression of a Lamartine, just as the ivory tower of elitism had become the Poet's refuge when once he wandered, like Hugo, among the people. A second and more profound consequence of Leconte de Lisle's shift involves the abandonment of subjective for objective poetry, in essence the abandonment of lyricism itself. This went beyond a simple critique of "Ie moi halssable" and excessive "emotions personnelles," in fact replacing the exploration of interiority with the descriptive study of exteriors. Baudelaire and Gautier, among other allies of the Parnassian clan, also endorsed this impersonal stance, although none to the degree of Leconte de Lisle. Baudelaire, for example, admired Gautier's "regard sur Ie non-moi" «(Euvres compl.etes 2: 107). And Leconte de Lisle states that "seul est un vrai poete qui donne ases creations la diversite multiple de la vie, et devient, selon qu'ille veut, une Force impersonnelle" (Articles 182; emphasis mine). While Leconte de Lisle claims not to condemn "1'art individuel [et] la poesie intime et cordiale," his insistence on neutrality underlines his distaste for Romantic self-absorption: "Le romantisme [...] etait surtout egotiste" (Huret 284). The quest for impersonality thus presents a dra·· matic first step toward the separation of the Poet and the speaking subject. The self-conscious opacity of the lyric "I" is often taken as the hallmark of modem poetry. And yet this stance, in descriptive poetry, shares the same illusions ofrealist fiction; that is, a pretense of neutrality and the repression of the self. How then does gender come to play in these modulations? Above all in the perception that the Romantics cultivated an effusive, feminine subjectivity, thus demeaning the nobility of 92 Leconte de Lisle's Hardening Arteries a restrained and masculine poetic voice. While Leconte de Lisle's defense of masculinity is only implied in his prefaces, his essays on the Romantic poets in Les poetes contemporains announce with resounding clarity his desire to protect poetry from the incursion of femininity (Articles 149-88). Leconte de Lisle studies five poets in this series of portraits, as follows: Pierre-Jean de Beranger, Lamartine, Hugo, Vigny, and Auguste Barbier. The essays on the three figures central to the Romantic poetic tradition convey clearly the gender bias that founds Leconte de·Lisle's literary program. Once again,·Lamartine stands as a ready scapegoat for those imputing feminine effusiveness to Romanticism. OfLamartine's "Jocelyn," for example, Leconte de Lisle writes: "il y a dans ce gemissement continu une telle absence de virilite et d'ardeur reelle, cette langue est tellement molle, effeminee et incorrecte, Ie vers manque ace point de muscles, de sang et de nerfs [...J" (Articles 170; emphasis mine). Leconte de Lisle's gender-laden vocabulary amplifies his already categoricalcondemnation. He assails not only the self-involvement of Lamartine's speaking subject ("ce gemissement continu"), but also casts doubt upon the poet's ability to forge a worthwhile poem and, indeed, upon his virility. Leconte de Lisle associates imprecise word choice at once with femininity and bad poetry ("cette langue [...] molle, effeminee et incorrecte"). Sloppy composition, too, renders the poem soft and shapeless ("Ie vers manque ace point de muscles"). Leconte de Lisle finally leaves Lamartine awash in aspersions of unmanliness. This condemnation takes aim at poetic evils ofwhich "Jocelyn" is only one manifestation. Lamartine represents a tendency whose weakness threatens not simply the state of poetry but, seemingly, of masculinity itself. Leconte de Lisle describes Les meditations as follows: [L]a melopee lyrique en elle-meme n'est plus qu'une longue lamentation musicale non rhythmee qui se noie finalement dans les larmes. On sait que les larmes sont d'un usage constant et oblige dans l'ecole Lamartinienne. Mais [...] l'hero 'ique bataillon des elegiaques verse moins de pleurs reels que de rimes insuffisantes. (Articles 170) The association of Lamartine with an elegiac school implicitly evokes and rejects a network of women poets, including 93 Chapter Three the elegiacs Desbordes-Valmore and Tastu. The profusion of tears suggests feminine sentimentality that, for Leconte de Lisle, demeans the restrained grandeur of masculine poetry. Similarly, his ironic reference to the elegy implies that this form, characteristically plaintive and, in its Romantic guise, highly subjective , holds no merit. Leconte de Lisle's hierarchy of values begins to emerge for us, at the top of which lies the historic masculine epic, and at the bottom, the subjective feminine elegy. He again accuses the rank: and file ofencouraging such poetry: "Le gout public encourage [les elegiaques] dans l'exercice de cette profession immorale dont Ie premier merite est d'etre ala portee de tous" (Articles 170). This does not surprise us, given our familiarity with the author's antidemocratic sentiment . And yet at one interesting moment, he places himself in the position of the reader, lamenting that Lamartine's poetry has the power to sicken those who read it: "il est impossible d'en poursuivre la lecture et l'etude sans un intolerable malaise " (170-71). What prompts this display of solicitude for the reading public, elsewhere worthy of the poet's greatest contempt ? Here he appears to step out of his role as elite poet, discovering himself to be a man threatened by the corrupting force of femininity. Effeminate poetry not only lacks vigor, but also threatens the health of the populace with an "intolerable malaise." Leconte de Lisle reasons in a cydical fashion on this point, regularly accusing a vapid public of sustaining vaporous and feminine poetic production, but here implying that it is the poetry itself that weakens or emasculates its reader.4 If exposure to feminine poetry provokes discomfort or sickness, then with it comes the danger of contagion. The vocabulary of disease that pervades Leconte de Lisle's descriptions of Romantic poetry suggests such infectiousness. This thoroughgoing physiological lexicon is one of the most remarkable aspects of his invective against feminine Romanticism . With this language, Leconte de Lisle not only condemns weak poetry, but also presents us with the image of a physical body in decay and a decomposing social body associated with a corrupt morality ("cette profession immorale"): [L]es premieres paroles [de Lamartine] ont emu les ames attentives et bienveillantes [...] al'heure precise ou illeur 94 Leconte de Lisle's Hardening Arteries a plu de s'attendrir sur elles-memes, oula phtisie intellectuelle , Ies vagues Iangueurs et Ie gout deprave d'une sorte de mysticisme mondain attendaient leur poete. [...] Les germes epidemiques de melancolie batarde [...] se reprenaient aIa vie [...]. (Articles 168) The metaphor is physical ("phtisie," "germes epidemiques"), and yet the real danger appears to be moral ("Ie gout deprave") and emotional ("[la] melancolie"). Above all, Leconte de Lisle associates the Romantic era with depressive self-pity: "al'heure precise ou illeur a plu de s'attendrir sur elles-memes." In the mirror ofhis horror ofself-involvement we can glimpse Leconte de Lisle's own repression, and in his fierce refusaL of selfcontemplation perhaps the denial of his own femininity. Moreover, he exhibits an anxiety of legitimacy that is not limited to this pa'ssage. Why "melancolie batarde"? Could it be that Leconte de Lisle perceives his own melancholy to be more authentic than the Romantic mal du siecle? His preoccupation with legitimacy undoubtedly relates to two issues, one sociopolitical and the other poetic, which find their nexus in the person of Lamartine. Leconte de Lisle began his writing career in journalism as a young follower of Fourier;5 disillusioned after the violence of 1848, he abandoned his socialist engagement and distanced himself from his earlier writings. This repudiation helps to explain the virulence of Leconte de Lisle's disdain for the angst and idealism of high French Romanticism . It sheds light as well on the mature persona of Leconte de Lisle as an alienated intellectual clinging to the straws of a mythically stable past. Poetically alienated as well, Leconte de Lisle far surpassed the Bloomian model of the anxiety of influence. While reJecting nearly the entire tradition of French poetry and seeking legitimacy in the ancient past, he saved his harshest invective for his immediate predecessors. Lamartine, political loser to Louis-Napoleon in the 1848 presidential elections, suffered an equally humiliating disavowal, as we have seen, in the poetic arena. Not simply an effeminate poet or an impotent liberal humanitarian, Lamartine was a failure as a father, as a leader of any kind: "M. de Lamartine laissera derriere lui, comme une expiation, cette multitude d'esprits avortes, loquaces et steriles, 95 Chapter Three qu'il a engendres et con~us, pleureurs selon la fonnule, cervelles liquefiees et creurs de pierre, miserable famille d'un pere illustre" (Articles 172). The unnatural father of a degenerate and sterile family, Lamartine presided over a panoply ofelegiac poets, thus debasing the poetic patrimony of France. Leconte de Lisle posits, contrary to this "miserable famille" of sentimental Romantics, another, intellectually rich family nonetheless deprived of recognition. In the avant-propos to his series of portraits, Leconte de Lisle writes that "Les grands poetes [...] appartiennent aunefamille spirituelle que [Ie peupIe] n'a jamais reconnue et qu'il a sans cesse maudite et persecutee" (157; emphasis mine). Although consistently suspicious of affiliation and affirmation, Leconte de Lisle here evokes a family to which he would give all to belong and in which he would position himself as leader (father) rather than admirer (son). In his portraits of Vigny and Hugo, Leconte de Lisle abandons his hostile tone and consequently provides a more rea':' soned critique of'a Romanticism that strikes him as more virile. These literary appraisals are consistently hierarchical. Edgard Pich has suggested that "Leconte de Lisle ~istingue Ie grand public qui se plait aux chansons aboire de Beranger, Ie public cultive qui goute 'Jocelyn' et l'elite restreinte qui apprecie les poetes comme Vigny" (Articles 170nI2). Corresponding to this hierarchy of taste, ranging from low culture to high, is Leconte de Lisle's hierarchy of poets ranging from effeminate to manly. Thus Vigny belongs to "Ie monde des vrais poetes" (Articles 178) whose "Lamort du loup" is "un cri de douleur autrement fier et viril que les lamentations elegiaques acclamees par la foule contemporaine" (182). His poetic voice escapes selfindulgence ; his poems are epic rather than elegiac: "toujours eleves., graves et polis comme I'homme lui-meme" (179). If Vigny's virility emerges from his noble reserve, as from his refusal to pander to the masses, Leconte de Lisle nonetheless finds signs of weakness ("faiblesse") in his work. Tooinspirational , Vigny's poems do not exhibit "la certitude constante de la langue, la solidite de vers et la precision vigoureuse de l'image" (179). Moreover, he fails to adopt the neutral stance so valued by Leconte de Lisle: Vigny does not "degager nettement l'artiste de I'homme" (182). Leconte de Lisle concludes that "il est visible que la timidite de I'expression ne rend pas, tres frequemment, la virilite de la 96 Leconte de Lisle's Hardening Arteries pensee" (Articles 181), finding fault above all in Vigny's excessive delicacy. Of "Eloa," for example, he writes: "Cette conception est tres indecise; l'execution en est d'une elegance un peu molle et onctueuse. [...] Vne sOrte de vapeur rose et lactee enveloppe, du premier vers au dernier, les peripeties gracieuses du poeme [...]" (180-81). Leconte de Lisle's adjectives ("indecise," "molle," "onctueuse," "rose," "lactee," "gracieuses"), grammatically feminine, evoke a world offeminine languor and inactivity. Although vaporousness appears in some of Baudelaire's most daring representations of undecidable subjectivity, and indecision would become the hallmark of Verlaine's contribution to Symbolism, for Leconte de Lisle these are negative characteristics offlawed poetry. What is more, they threaten the constitution of a solid subject, for they lack "une armature de vigueur et de passion contenues" (181). We seem to have come upon the secret of Leconte de Lisle's unyielding position against the vagaries of vaporous femininity, be that in the voice or composition of the poem: that which is floating rather than fixed and solid risks evaporation. The danger of uncertainty or impermanence is perhaps most real for the alienated subject clinging defensively to a fortified identity.' The vigor, solidity, and certainty that Leconte de Lisle finds lacking in Vigny's work attract his praise in Hugo's, which "nous offre Ie spectacle d'un esprit tres male et tres individuel" (Articles 174). Leconte de Lisle seems ready to overlook the democratic stance of Hugo's engaged poetry for the vision of healthy masculinity that it projects. Indeed, the vocabulary of robustness , which Leconte de Lisle draws upon to describe Hugo and his work, appears in stark contrast to the sickliness evoked to describe Lamartine's poetry. Hugo's oeuvre is "immense [...] et sans cesse en voie d'accroissement, [...] embrassant d'annee en annee une plus large sphere par Ie debordement magnifique de ses qualites natives [...]." Leconte de Lisle fairly gushes at the size of Hugo's oeuvre, whose scope pays tribute to the author's voraciousness and omnipotence. While our critic alludes to certain faults, which in Hugo are "defauts" and never "faiblesses," these too are "extraordinaires [... et] commandent encore une sorte de veneration" (174). Although Hugo's work lacks the objectivity, neutrality, and perhaps even the erudition constitutive of Leconte de Lisle's poetic values, the latter nonetheless defends him ardently against 97 Chapter Three all attackers. Strikingly, the poet of constraint praises the excessiveness (never effusion or verbosity) of Hugo: "C'est un esprit excessif, qui Ie nie?" (Articles 175). Hugo's forcefulness, likened to "eruptions volcaniques," is perhaps incompatible with Leconte de Lisle's formalist requirements: "J'avoue volontiers que les saines doctrines academiques s'en accommodent peu" (175). But what matter, concludes Leconte de Lisle, since "h6Ias! la poesie est un exces dont nous ne nous rendrons jamais coupables" (175). The guilty pleasure that Leconte de Lisle takes from Hugo's enormous eruptions is one of the only manifestations of unbridled sexuality present in hiswork. Let us note, moreover, that this article is less specific and analytic than the others, and that here Leconte de Lisle's voice is more impassioned than critical. His vociferousness subsides before Hugo's vitality and robustness. Leconte de Lisle even explains away Hugo's sentimentality and delicacy, elsewhere subject to ridicule as the mark of effeminate poetry: "Les sentiments tendres, les delicatesses meme subtiles, acquierent en passant par une arne forte une expression souveraine, parce qu'elle est plus juste. C'est pour cela que La sensibilite des poetes virUs est La seuLe vraie" (Articles 176; emphasis mine). Thus even a subjective and impassioned "I" is redeemed by the perceived virility of the poetry of Hugo, "un genie male" (206). Poesis perfecta One would expect to find in Leconte de Lisle's finely wrought poetry the extension and illustration of his objectivist aesthetics . But does his verse confirm the values and biases ofhis prose? In his oeuvre, as in the work of other poets, the poetic text inevitably exhibits greater complexity than the critical essay, often displaying perplexing contradictions. Leconte de Lisle offers a particularly posed critical discourse, possessed of a fairly consistent voice, which is often polemical, sometimes provocatively oppositional. Although such provocation is not absent from his poetry, the voice of his poetic texts differs in its intensity and subjectivity. While Leconte de Lisle remains firmly opposed to emotive lyricism in his critical works, traces ofaffect come to light in his poetry. His two pre-Pamassian collections, Poemes antiques and Poemes barbares, betray curious fissures 98 Leconte de Lisle's Hardening Arteries in his poetic dogma. They play out struggles with femininity that are masked by the dismissive gestures of his masculinist criticism. In particular, the author works through issues of self and otherness by placing a male speaking subject in proximity with a variety of female figures. Leconte de Lisle's poetry is no more popular today than during his lifetime, perhaps appearing pedantic and at times arcane in its historical references.6 The Poemes antiques contain several cycles, beginning with a set of Hindu poems and followed by a more substantial group devoted to ancient Greece and Rome. These poems reflect the antiquarian tendency of Parnassian poetry, representing historic and mythic figures from ancient cultures. Leconte de Lisle, an avid orthographist, gave many of his poems phonetically and semantically cryptic titles, such as "Surya," "~unacepa," and "Kybele." The erudite vocabulary accompanying these and other unfamiliar proper nouns most likely won the author no new readers among the French masses he disdained as uncultivated. The collection ends incongruously with six "Chansons ecossaises," inspired by the poetry of Robert Burns, which have feminine voices ("Jane," "Nanny," "Nell," etc.). These light, lyrical songs contrast sharply with the rest of the collection in voice, subject matter, and composition. If the "Chansons ecossaises" unmistakably mark an intrusion of the lyrical and personal in Leconte de Lisle's manifesto collection of impersonal verse, one wonders whether the antique poems stand up under scrutiny to the detached objectivity promised by their preface. Many of these are long narrative or dialogue poems, often with epic qualities. But the epic is not the only classical form exploited by Leconte de Lisle in this collection whose preface, let us recall, labels it "un retour reflechi ades formes negligees ou peu connues." Its "studies" include as well the ode ("Odes anacreontiques"), hymn ("Surya, hymne vedique"), eclogue ("Eglogue"), the bucolic genre ("Les bucoliastes"), and several dramatic dialogues, some complete with antique chorus ("Helene," among others). While Leconte de Lisle's poetic genres vary widely, his prosody is more stable; with few exceptions he limits himself to the tragic alexandrine. Such long narrative poems, Leconte de Lisle's preferred venue in the Poemes antiques, p~rmit the author to pursue his 99 Chapter Three interest in character description and development. Indeed, he elaborates on poetic character representation in several critical texts,7 where he establishes a distinction between real (or individualized) and ideal (general, typical,or symbolic) figures . Not surprisingly, Leconte de Lisle privileges the universal over the particular, and pursues an abstract ideal in his poetry. He follows the model of the Greeks, believing that they had the unsurpassed ability to capture something essential and eternal , and to distill it into a character. In the modern era, he finds only a few examples of successful epic characterization ("a la fois si vivante et si ideale" [Articles 132]). He names Hamlet, expresses an interest in Byron's female characters, and praises "la creation des types plutot que I'analyse des caracteres individuels" (213) in Hugo's novels. Leconte de Lisle betrays a particular interest in the articulation of female figures, as his article on Byron ("Les femmes de Byron") indicates. Moreover, his discussion of feminine character types often revolves around the inadequacy of existing models. Claiming that "Ie monde moderne ne reussit a concevoir des types feminins, qu'a la condition d'alterer leur essence meme [...]" (Articles 132), he goes on to name two ways that modern writers fail to capture the feminine "essence" of their characters. Their first error consists "en leur attribuant un caractere viril, comme a lady Macbeth ou a Julie," and their second "en les releguant dans une sphere nebuletise et fantastique , comme pour Beatrice" (132). It is difficult to know what for Leconte de Lisle would constitute "Ie symbole special [...] des forces feminines" (132), for he rejects not only those too manly or too imaginary, but occasionally some quite traditionally feminine ones as well, such as the Virgin Mary. Although she is a "symbole de purete, de grace et surtout de bonte," she nonetheless leaves Leconte de Lisle unsatisfied: "mais cette protestation du sentiment feminin ne tient plus a la terre, et fait maintenant partie du dogme" (131). He aspires to a realistic (tangible) and yet idealized character, a fully rounded one exhibiting the qualities of a people or a type. Leconte de Lisle's studies in female characters both pose the riddle of femininity and seem to promise us his answer to it. While many male heros and warriors people the antique poems, Leconte de Lisle also uses the collection as a work100 Leconte de Lisle's Hardening Arteries shop in the representation of femininity, foregrounding female characters in numerous pieces, including "Hypatie," "Thyone," "Glauce," "Helene," "Kybele," "Klytie," "Venus de Milo," and "Niobe." The latter two poems focus on female statues, and are therefore thoroughly consistent with the Pamassian trope ofthe immobile woman, and with the Parnassian recuperation of Hellenist statuary as a model for ideal beauty. Theodore de Banville was among the first to exploit this figure in his collection Les cariatides (1842), named for architectural supporting columns sculpted in the form of a woman. Gautier, as we shall see, brought the study of the feminine statue to its culmination in Emaux et camees. The mythical Niobe, upon the slaughter of her seven sons and seven daughters by the gods she defied, wept until she turned to stone. In the conclusion to his lengthy poem (of nearly 500 lines), Leconte de Lisle describes the petrifaction of the queen ("Niobe," Poemes antiques 156-70). Comme un grand corps taille par une main habile, Le marbre te saisit d'une etreinte immobile: Des pleurs marmoreens ruissellent de tes yeux; La neige du Paros ceint ton front soucieux [...]. (lines 434-37) Although immobilized as a statue, her motherly attributes remain intact: Tes larges flarics, si beaux dans leur splendeur royale Qu'ils brillaient atravers la pourpre orientale, Et tes seins jaillissants, ces futurs nourriciers Des vengeurs de leur mere et des Dieux justiciers, Tout est marbre! [...]. (442-46; emphasis mine) In fact, her pathos and beauty, even her vitality, appear enhanced by her frozen attitude: Que ta douleur est belle, 0 marbre sans pareil! On dirait, ate voir, 0 marbre desole, Que du ciseau sculpteur des larmes ont coule. Tu vis, tu vis encor! [...] (448,460-62) 101 Chapter Three Frozen by the excess of her emotions, Niobe offers a fitting and idealized image of both maternal devotion and the incapacitation of femininity. "Venus de Milo," an apostrophe to the ancient statue, presents another curious admixture·ofimmobility and femininity. Ostensibly representing the goddess of love, this statue and Leconte de Lisle's verse description of it embody all the hard and cold attributes of marble. This poem's relative concision allows us to read it in its entirety and to follow the narrative movement from its descriptive beginnings to the subject's emergence in its concluding stanzas. In doing' so, we cannot fail to notice that the author couples his pursuit of feminine characterization with an unannounced inquiry into lyric subjectivity. Marbresacre, vetu de force et de genie, Deesse irresistible au port victorieux, Pure comme un eclair et comme une harmonie, 6 Venus, 0 beaute, blanche mere des Dieux! 4 Tu n'es pas Aphrodite, au bercement de l'onde, Sur ta conque d'azur posant un pied neigeux, Tandis qu'autour de toi, vision rose et blonde, Volent les Rires d'or avec l'essaim des Jeux. 8 Tu n'es pas Kytheree, en ta pose assouplie, Parfumant de baisers I'Adonis bienheureux, Et n'ayant pour temoins sur Ie rameau qui plie Que colombes d'albatre et ramiers amoureux. . 12 Et tu n'es pas la Muse aux levres eloquentes, La pudique Ven~s, ni la molle Astarte . Qui, Ie front couI-onne de roses et d'acanthes, Sur un lit de lotus se meurt de volupte. 16 Non! les Rires, les Jeux, les Graces enlacees, Rougissantes d'amour, ne t'accompagnent pas. Ton cortege est forme d'etoiles cadencees, Et les globes en chreur s'enchainent sur tes pas. 20 Dubonheur.impassible 0 symbole adorable, Calme comme la Mer en sa serenite, Nul sanglot n'a brise ton sein inalterable, Jamais les pleurs humains n'ont terni ta beaute. 24 102 Leconte de Lisle's Hardening Arteries Salut! A. ton aspect Ie creur se precipite. Un ftot marmoreen inonde tes pieds blancs; Tu marches, fiere et nue, et Ie monde palpite, Et Ie monde est atoi,. Deesse aux larges ftancs! 28 lIes, sejour des Dieux! Hellas, mere sacree! Oh! que ~e suis-je ne dans Ie saint Archipel, Aux siecles glorieux oil la Terre inspiree Voyait Ie Ciel descendre ason premier appel! 32 Si mon berceau, ftottant sur la Thetis antique, Ne fut point caresse de son tiede cristal; . Si je n'ai point prie sous Ie fronton attique, Beaute victorieuse, aton autel natal; 36 Allume dans mon sein la sublime etincelle, N'enferme point rna gloire au tombeau soucieux; Et fais que rna pensee en rythmes d'or ruisselle, Comme un divin metal au moule harmonieux. 40 (Poemes antiques 151.,..52) Leconte de Lisle proposes the Greek statue to his reader as an ideal poetic symbol: she exudes her Hellenist origins, is pure, white, and impassible. Her impassivity suggests physical inalterability , thanks to the hardness of the marble from which she isfashioned. But it evokes as well an interior passionlessness characterized by her calm serenity. These attributes are all in keeping with Leconte de Lisle's aesthetic agenda represented in his prose writings. Additionally let us observe that, as in his prose, here his language is largely negative. "Venus de Milo" might be called a program piece, which focuses on the "symbole adorable" that is the statue it describes, and yet its author holds fast to an oppositional stance from which to expose his views. Once again we find reaction to lie at the heart of Leconte de Lisle's poetic agenda. . The poem's first half (in particular the second through fifth quatrains) lists several female figures to whom the poet com~ pares his Venus de Milo: she is neither the light-hearted Aphrodite, nor the supple Kytheree smothering Adonis with kisses, .nor the soft Astarte, the Phoenician goddess oflove and fertility. Venus, the goddess of love and beauty, is clearly not herself: Leconte.de Lisle has stripped her of all accoutrements of love and sexuality. Indeed, this Venus de Milo is concerned 103 Chapter Three neither with her sexual fulfillment nor her modesty: "tu n'es pas [...] la pudique Venus." Rather than pliant and ready for love, she is fitted out for war ("Marbre sacre, vetu de force et de genie") and triumphs over others: "Tu marches, fiere et nue, [...] et Ie monde est atoi [...] Beaute victorieuse." Here, as elsewhere, Leconte de Lisle englobes with opposites: his Venus is neither voluptuous nor chaste, both clothed and nude. She retains her identity as the goddess of beauty, for even in her impassive permanence, Venus remains an "irresistible" love, object who provokes the emotion of her admirers: "A ton aspect Ie creur se precipite [...] et Ie monde palpite." And yet her armor renders her inappropriate for love, as her masculine characteristics (heroism, unyieldingness, force) negate the docility and elasticity of her sex. If not given to the comportment of a lover, Venus de Milo appears as a mother ("mere des Dieux") whose body, like Niobe's, emphasizes maternal attributes: "Deesse aux larges fiancs." Indeed, maternal figures and a concern for generation pervade this poem, reminding us of the poetic families evoked in Leconte de Lisle's essays. But although his critical discourse focuses on paternity and avoids matrilineage entirely, in this poem he does not shrink from such representations. In addition to the maternal Venus, we encounter the personified "Hellas, mere sacree" and Thetis, protecting mother of Achilles. The reader will perhaps even discover a Romantic pun in the comparison of stanza 6: Venus is "calme comme la Mer [la mere] en sa serenite." Just as indicative of Leconte de Lisle's obsession with origins is the emergence of the speaking subject in the poem's second half. The "je" appears explicitly in the final three stanzas to bemoan his unworthy birth ("que ne suis~je ne dans Ie saint Archipel"). This evocation of ancient Greece as the birthplace ofbeauty ("[l']autel natal [de la] beaute victorieuse") and the origin of poetic glory recalls Leconte de Lisle's repudiation of the French poetic tradition. It also points to the speaking subject as a double for the poet in search ofaffiliation. While admitting his poetic illegitimacy ("si mon berceau [...] ne fut point caresse" by the waters of the Grecian islands), the "je" implores the statue, as representative ofancient beauty, to touch him with her eminence and animate within him the poetic gifts 104 Leconte de Lisle's Hardening Arteries of the past. If the statuesque and silent Venus de Milo "n'es[t] pas la Muse aux levres eloquentes," she nonetheless has the ability to inspire poetic eloquence in the speaking subject, as witnessed in the final stanza: "Allume dans mon sein la sublime etincelle, [...] Et fais que rna pensee en rythmes d'or ruisselle." At the heart of "Venus de Milo" lie several contradictions. First of all, the poem is not so antilyrical as the inscrutability that it praises might suggest. The speaking subject pleads to a symbol ofimpassivity ("nul sanglot n'a brise ton sein inalterable") for the passion he condemns: "Allume dans man sein la sublime etincelle." Read in the context ofthe author's prose, whose obsessions it confirms, this poem nonetheless carries some of the subjective markers ofthe Romantic texts he abhors. Its own speaking subject, at first veiled by his invocation of the other (Venus de Milo, "tu"), reveals himself finally as an imploring creature whose passionate entreaties betray ambition as much as despair ("N'enferme point rna gloire au tombeau soucieux"). Although aiming for an objective, chiseled poem that would double for the statue it describes, Leconte de Lisle leaves his readers with one that climaxes with the drama of the subject. Secondly, this poem offers a vision of sexual difference strikingly inconsistent with the stark oppositions of Leconte de Lisle's prose essays. His Venus is all-powerful and robust, a far cry from the soft and vapid femininity he associates with feeble Romantic poetry. Her exceptional characteristics, such as strength and genius, are elsewhere associated with masculinity by Leconte de Lisle. While in his essays he repudiates poetic fathers, here he eagerly beseeches a phallic mother, thus erring according to his own stipulations for characterization by attributing a "caractere viril" to Venus. Rather than following the rigid lines ofhis criticism and solving the riddle offemininity , Leconte de Lisle betrays an ambivalence in this poem that takes two directions in his oeuvre as a whole. He first questions paternal authority and secondly feminine weakness, leaving only the uncertain position ofdependence on virile maternity for his lyric subject. While not about fathers, this poem is ultimately less concerned with mothers even than it is with its emerging poetic subject who does battle with the same contradiction exhibited 105 Chapter Three in the article on Hugo. That is, how can virility (or impassivity ) and affect coexist? Let us recall Leconte de Lisle's refrain, which might also serve as his motto: "La sensibilite du poete viril est la seule vraie." It sheds light on the author's conundrum by suggesting that his desire for impassivity coincides with the rejection ofonly those passions that are deemed frivolous ("les Rires, les Jeux") and soft ("molle"). Femininity is ultimately aligned with love. Thus Leconte de Lisle's speaking subject repudiates an association with the lover Adonis, but aligns himself with the warrior Achilles, son of Thetis. Love is therefore denied, and glory coveted. So if Leconte de Lisle's poetry does not live up to his own strict ideal of impassivity, his speaking subject nonetheless clings to a virile sensitivity associated with the epic values of excellence and triumph (the Latin vir gives us both virtue and virility). At question, finally, is the acclaim sought by the speaking subject for these qualities. Would Leconte de Lisle have a greater interest in the reading public than he admits? Ultimately, this poem is as much about its subject's poetic aspirations as it is the projection of masculine values onto a female figure or the petrifaction of traits perceived as feminine. These concerns coalesce in the author's ambivalence about the gender of recognition . Whether it be the confirmation of insipid talent by a feminized readership or the crowning moment ofpoetic achievement for the virile poet, Leconte de Lisle remains uncertain. A consideration of his Poemes barbares further illustrates this hesitation between the desire for renown and the cultivation of obscurity. Poemes barbares (1862) brings us closer to the Parnassian moment and contains a good deal of metapoetic commentary that helps clarify Leconte de Lisle's battle with affect. As do the Poemes antiques, the Poemes barbares contain many pieces ofepic quality. But here Leconte de Lisle draws from non-Greek and non-Roman ("barbaric") sources, employing his titular adjective in its most specific etymological sense offoreignness. The sources alien to ancient culture include the Bible ("Qaln," "L'ecclesiaste"), Norse mythology ("La legende des Nornes," "L'epee d'Angantyr") and Celtic legends ("Le barde de Temrah ," "Le jugement de Komor"). While such legends dominate the collection's first half, it then wanders far from its Germanic 106 Leconte de Lisle's Hardening Arteries and Celtic beginnings to inClude poems colonial and contemporary in setting. Leconte de Lisle's birthplace, the lIe Bourbon , provides the backdrop for a number of those exuding a foreign exoticism ("La fontaine aux lianes," "La ravine SaintGilles "), while others travel as far as South America. Numerous animal poems ("Les elephants," "La panthere noire," "Le jaguar," "Le colibri") contribute to the volume's exploration of alterity and savagery. By teasing out some associations to Leconte de Lisle's program in each collection we encounter a striking confirmation of the author's alienation, both literary and generalized. With the Poemes antiques, Leconte de Lisle yearned for a Greek poetic heritage that was not his own, while much that is "foreign " or "uncivilized" in the Poemes barbares was, for the poet, very close to home, his native lIe Bourbon. In fact, he reserved much of his animosity for that which was closest to him, and this becomes evident in the contemporary pieces. Thanks to the currency of these poems, the Poemes barbares is more accessible in its language and its subjects. This collection also contains more short lyric forms and therefore greater concision , a Pamassian trait that countered Romantic excess. Leconte de Lisle embraces the sonnet with a dozen pieces, most of which depart from the form's Petrarchan antecedent as a poetic structure devoted to the subject of love. Instead; the sonnet often provides Leconte de Lisle with a self-reflexive frame in which to ruminate upon poetic values and renown. With "Les montreurs," Leconte de Lisle takes aim at the proponents of subjective poetry: Tel qu'un morne animal, meurtri, plein de poussiere, La chaine au cou, hurlant au chaud soleil d'ete, Promene qui voudra son·creur ensanglante Sur ton pave cynique, 0 plebe carnassiere! 4 Pour mettre un feu sterile en ton reil hebete, Pour mendier ton rire ou ta pitie grossiere, Dechire qui voudra la robe de lumiere De la pudeur divine et de la volupte. 8 Dans mon orgueil muet, dans rna tombe sans gloire, Dusse-je m'engloutir pour l'eternite noire, Je ne vendrai pas mon ivresse ou mon mal, 107 Chapter Three Je ne livrerai pas rna vie ates huees, 12 Je ne danserai pas sur ton treteau banal Avec tes histrions et tes prostituees. (Poemes barbares 192) We can read this sonnet as a complement to "Venus de Milo," indeed as its modern, disdainful face whose voice is equal in its passion. While the former conjures up a family romance by appealing fervently to an ancient figure as model and guide, "Les montreurs" addresses a contemporary public with the greatest of contempt ("plebe carnassiere"). Rather than extolling the virtues of the Greek precedent, here Leconte de Lisle catalogues the trespasses of modern poetry, cheapened by its excessive emotion and its pandering to a thrill-seeking public. In the quatrains, Leconte de Lisle alludes to the Romantic Poet, who wears his heart on his sleeve ("Promene qui voudra son creur ensanglante") for public acclaim ("Pour mendier ton rire ou ta pitie grossiere"). The first-person subject appears in the tercets to distance himself from the frothy sentiment and facile confession of those criticized in the quatrains. Opposing the exhibitionist roars with his own "orgueil muet," the "je" disdains a cheap public forum ("ton pave cynique," "ton treteau banal"). He would rather retire into nothingness ("Dusse-je m'engloutir pour l'eternite noire") than model himself after his contemporaries. Although this poem differs from "Venus" in form, tone, and setting, the two poems share certain stylistic and semantic consistencies . Like "Venus," "Les montreurs" is overwhelmingly negative, here signaled both grammatically ("Ie ne vendrai pas [...] Ie ne livrerai pas [...] Ie ne danserai pas") and through condemning epithets ("tes histrions et tes prostituees"). The poem's worldview is once again oppositional, but its subject seizes upon his solitude born of difference with contemptuous pride. Leconte de Lisle repeats some of the vocabulary of "Venus," as well as the use of antithesis to roundly reject the object of the speaking subject's contempt. Once again, therepudiation of "pudeur" and "volupte" go hand in hand. And the oppositional clauses, "ton rire ou ta pitre" and "mon ivresse ou mon mal," likewise are coupled to the same effect of denouncing conspicuous affect, regardless of its form. 108 Leconte de Lisle's Hardening Arteries Although Leconte de Lisle never names the poetic enterprise explicitly in this sonnet, its two primary lexical groupings, evoking first the street ("ton pave") and secondly the theater ("ton treteau"), suggest metaphorically the author's contempt for self-exposure and populism in verse. We are clearly not on the Champs-Elysees or in the Comedie fran~aise ("Avec tes histrions et tes prostituees"), but rather among the unwashed masses in search of a cheap thrill. This negative view of public display is opposed by the silent and forgotten grave, "rna tombe sans gloire," to which the speaking subject threatens to retreat. The verb s'engloutir, one appearing throughout this collection, opposes public, outward-reaching expression to interiority and submersion. Better to bury oneself than show oneself , to sublimate than to dramatize, to write epics than elegies. Let us recall that, contrary to the voice of"Les montreurs," the speaking subject in "Venus de Milo" invoked the goddess to assure his glory beyond the grave: "N'enferme point rna gloire au tombeau soucieux." Although contradictory, the preoccupation with acclaim in these poems indicates an investment in the reading public greater than what Leconte de Lisle admitted . While the poetic aspirations present in "Venus" are expressed openly, in this sonnet both the author and the speaking subject aspire covertly for recognition while threatening to retreat from it. Leconte de Lisle courts the sonnet tradition and meditates on poetic values, and his speaking subject solicits reaction through provocation. In both poems, the call for affectlessness is set forth in a highly subjective language with forceful images. While one might expect such prevarication from the alTIbiguous discourse that is poetry, in Leconte de Lisle's case it points to the subtle contradictions of his self-fashioned poetic identity . As ifto confirm his circumlocution, Leconte de Lisle makes a spectacle of his restraint: "Ie ne vendrai pas mon ivresse ou mon mal." The speaking subject offers a classic example of preterition by performing exactly what he claims not to do. Such coy indirection perhaps counters the tenets ofLeconte de Lisle's objective poetics, and yet this contradiction (like the author's oppositional rhetoric more generally) is surely due to ambivalence rather than insincerity. We can ascribe Leconte de Lisle's dance between reticence and vehemence (whether condemning 109 Chapter Three or laudatory), like the fissures in his poetics of containment, to an all-too subjective irresolution in the face ofacclaim, which he defines in consistently gendered terms. Let us not forget that women and Romantics are condemned, like Leconte de Lisle's "Montreurs," when they show too much of themselves. The speaking subject hangs onto his masculinity by refusing to parade himself in the public arena, "avec [...] tes prostituees." Etymologically, prostitution signifies no more than to "place oneself forward" (pro-statuere), although for Leconte de Lisle as for Baudelaire any movement toward the other signals weakness and femininity.8. Thus rather than sharing the fate ofhis emasculated contemporaries, whom Leconte de Lisle describes in "Les modernes" as "chatres des Ie berceau par Ie siecle assassin" (Poemes barbares 290), he retreats into antiquity or veils himself modestly in "la robe de lumiere." His austerity is no more than a cover for contained desire, and his poetics of immobility are perhaps no more than a reaction, like Niobe's, to excessive emotion. 110 ...