Sir Edmund Gosse and the Revival of the French Fixed Forms in the Age of Transition

191 SIR EDMUND GOSSE AND THE REVIVAL OF THE FRENCH FIXED FORMS IN THE AGE OF TRANSITION By Frank M. Tierney (University of Ottawa) The revival and widespread use of the French fixed poetic forms in England from the 1880's through 1920 is generally considered to have been given impetus and direction by a similar revival in France which began in the 1830*s. A major influence on the revival in England, however, was Sir Edmund Gosse who published a manifesto in July, 1877, under the title "A Flea for Certain Exotic Forms of Verse."! This manifesto coordinated the revival and provided the leadership it needed. Gosse believed that the French fixed forms would help to eliminate the inferior poetry being produced by many English poets who slavishly imitated the blank verse of Tennyson and Browning. The forms he advocated were the ballade, sestina, villanelle, chant royal, triolet, rondel and rondeau. A brief analysis of his essay will reveal the importance of this "plea" to the revival in Fngland. Gosse concerned himself particularly with the function of the poet, the technical characteristics of English poetry at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the reaction to the early nineteenth century by the poets of the latter half of the century, the beginning of the revival, and the need for significant subject to be expressed through the rondeau form. Gosse begins his "plea" with some consideration of the function of the poet: When the poetess Louise Bertin put to Alfred de Musset the still unanswered question "What is poetry?" she received a celebrated rejoinder, the last and perhaps the happiest clause of which is: D'un sourire, d'un mot, d'un soupir, d'un regard Faire un travail exquis. The answer was far from satisfying the demand of Mdlle. Bertin, but as a definition of, not poetry indeed, but the function of a poet, it left little to be desired. To make immortal art out of transient feeling, to give the impression of a finite mind infinite expansion, to chisel material beauty out of passing thoughts and emotions, - this is the labour of the poet; and it is on account of this conscious artifice and exercise of constructive power that he properly 2 takes his place beside the sculptor and the painter. This repeats Théophile Gautier*s emphasis on the supremacy of form3 in the creative process in the making of "immortal art out 192 of transient feeling ..." It reiterates the concept of aestheticism or Parnassianism urged by Gautier, doing so in the same general stylistic manner and using even Gautier*s striking images for presenting the creative act or process. Austin Dobson presented the same concept of Parnassianism in his poem "Ars Victrix" in I876, the year before Gosse issued his manifesto for the English Parnassians. Dobson*s "Ars Victrix" is a faithful imitation or free translation of Gautier*s poem "L'Art," which is considered Gautier*s manifesto for the French Parnassians . Dobson did not call his poem a manifesto, but the poem's substance is a reiteration of the substance of Gautier's "L'Art," and so it does bring Gautier's concepts of art to an English audience . Gosse repeats Gautier's essential principles of art, taking them from the full range of Gautier's expressions of artistic theory and description of the creative process. Gosse more specifically than Dobson urges Gautier's concepts for adoption by English writers. He does so in what he presents as the manifesto, the public declaration and exhortation to action; and he presents this manifesto as a plea persuasively urgent in appeal. Similarities of substance and style may be aimed at directing readers to Gautier and the part he played in the French revival of fixed forms. Quite clearly Gosse (and perhaps Dobson too) attempted seriously to transplant the French "Aesthetic Movement" into England and tried zealously to promote the use of fixed forms in English poetry . Gosse argues that poetry is one of the fine arts, that the poet's work is essentially plastic, and that the great poets of the past are noted for their production of poetry, and not merely for their ability to reflect, and...