Beyond this point in the manuscript we detect no such direct parallels. It is possible
that Quentin Durward was one of the sources for the gypsy episodes in L'Excommunie, but they belong to the part of the novel which was almost certainly written by
Belloy. As we suggested earlier (see note 6), it is conceivable that Belloy knew
Balzac had used Quentin Durward for the novel's exposition.
The textual parallels we have pointed to remain amongst the most striking
borrowings from Scott we have so far discovered in the rotnans dejeunesse.
1
See J.-P. Galvan, 'Documents nouveaux sur quelques ceuvres de Balzac', L'Annee Balzacienne,
1985, nouvelle serie 6,7-18; R. Guise,'Les enseignements du manuscrit de L'Excommunie", ibid.,
19-29; 'Manuscrit de L'Excommunie de Balzac. Texte gtabli, avec releve de variantes, par R.
Guise', ibid., 31-101.
2
See the excellent mise au point of this project by Ducourneau in the CEuvres completes deM.de
Balzac, edited by J.-A. Ducourneau, 25 vols (Paris, 1965-73), xxiv (1972), 594-97. Further
references to Ducourneau's notes are indicated by page references within the text of the present
article. In this same volume he published the other fragments: La Fille de la reine, 255-59; Le Roi
des merciers, 260-65; Le Capitaine des Boutefeux, 266. He also reproduced here the text of the 1837
Souverain edition of L'Excommunie which was earlier published by R. Chollet in the 'Cercle du
Bibliophile' edition of Balzac's works, 37 vols (Paris, 1966-69), Les Romans dejeunesse, xxxvn.
This edition is a reprint of the original Les CEuvres de Balzac, 'Notices et Notes de Roland Chollet',
30 vols (Lausanne, 1958-62).
3
See H. J. Garnand, The Influence of Walter Scott on the Works of Balzac (New York, 1926);
A. Prioult, Balzac avant 'La Comedie Humaine' (Paris, 1936); R. Guise, 'Le probleme de
Falthurne', L'Annee Balzacienne, 1972, 3-42; R. Guise, 'Balzac et le roman historique', RHLF,
75, nos. 2-3 (March-June 1975), 353-72.
4
CEuvres de Walter Scott, traduction Defauconpret, twentieth edition, 30 vols (Paris, 1848-72), xv
(1851), 29. Further references to Quentin Durward are to this edition and are indicated by page
numbers within the text of the present article. The first edition was published in France in May
1823: Quentin Durward, ou I'Ecossais a la cour de Louis XI, par Sir Walter Scott, traduit de Panglais
par le traducteur des.romans historiques de Sir Walter Scott [J.-B. Defauconpret], 4 vols, in-12
(Paris, 1823).
s
Our page reference is to the edition of the manuscript cited in note 1. Further references are
likewise indicated by page numbers within the text of the present article. In our quotations we have
followed the spelling and accents of this edition.
6
We note that Belloy who was almost certainly responsible for the 1837 edition of L'Excommunie
here alters Balzac's 'les grands princes' to 'les grands feudataires' (p. 32, variant 15) which are the
exact words in the Defauconpret translation of Scott. This is probably coincidental, but it is
conceivable that Belloy knew of Balzac's use of Quentin Durward.
7
Belloy tones down Balzac's passage considerably. See variants 26,27,28 (p. 33).
8
Guise, 'Balzac et le roman historique', p. 359.
THE POTENTIAL SONNET IN BAUDELAIRE
P. W. M. COGMAN,
Southampton
In its early days, Frangois Le Lyonnais divided the activities of the OuLiPo (the
Ouvroir de Literature Potentielle, whose membership included Queneau and
Perec) into two complementary branches. The 'analytique' aimed to discover
'potential' new works in existing works, of which their authors had been aware, by
manipulating these texts: isolating certain elements, using mathematical or other
formulae to transform them (e.g. S + 7),1 or imposing further (e.g. lipogrammatic)
constraints upon them. The 'synthetique' branch was concerned with the invention of new formal constraints, for the creation of new works: 'une aide a la
creativite'.2 The difference between the two branches is of course not absolute: a
work like La Vie mode d'emploi both builds on new constraints, and also recycles
pre-existing works to construct a new one.3 More attention has (understandably)
10 [37]
been accorded to the more 'creative' synthetic activities. But the analytical is of
interest, not merely as a way of manipulating pre-existing works, but as a way of
discovering or highlighting some of their inherent characteristics. The way the
rhyme-words of certain sonnets of Mallarme can be isolated to create new and
(fairly) coherent independent mini-sonnets4 shows the crucial function of rhyme in
the architecture of his poems (the more so as the formula is not equally successful
with other poets).
Baudelaire's well-known predilection for the sonnet (half the poems of Les
Flews du Mai are in the sonnet form) is characteri2ed by variety, innovation, and
(in traditional terms) irregularity: sonnets with lines of different length ('La
Musique'); inverted sonnets ('Bien loin d'ici'); irregular rhyme schemes; and even,
in 'L'Avertisseur', a 'sonnet' where the quatrains frame the tercets. But behind
this variety lies (as Jean Prevost suggests) an attraction to its formal constraints and
its structure which can 'servir une opposition ou un retournement de pensee',5 an
ideal form for someone seeking to explore 'the dualism of experience'.6 A key
feature of the sonnet is its proportions. It combines two different systems: the
octave with its rhyme scheme based on pairs, reversal, and symmetrical internal
structure; the sestet with its different pattern, and as it were different rhythm. Its
structural identity lies in this 'imbalance'.7 'A poem in two parts', 8 the change or
'turn' from octave to sestet has always been significant. These features: the
proportions (8 + 6 can also appear as 4 + 3 and 16 + 12), the imbalance, the sense
of complementarity, of contrast but unity, can be preserved in other poems whose
proportions remain those of the sonnet — potential sonnets. (When I use a term
like 'octave' or 'sestet' in quotation marks it is a sign that it is being used in its
potential, rather than strict, sense.)
The best example is 'Chant d'automne'. 9 With its two distinct sections (4 and 3
stanzas) it is characterized by duality and unity. The poet opposes two attitudes to
the same theme: in the 'octave' autumn as destructive and cold, looking forward to
the winter ('va rentrer', 'sera', 'void', 'depart'), and dominated by a sense of
rapidly passing time ('trop courts', 'en grande hate'); in the 'sestet' autumn as
looking backwards, a sense of lingering enjoyment, a season (and a woman) that is
comforting and consoling. The two halves are complementary, taking the same
elements (prospect of winter/ageing; the sun) and treating them from opposing
angles; shifting from horror ('en fremissant', 1.9) and passivity, to a yearning or
striving back against the bleak prospect of solitude/cold. The 'octave' (with
'j'entends' (1.3), 'j'ecoute' (1.9) symmetrically sited in stanzas 1 and 3) evokes a
chain of associations triggered by sounds (wood being chopped, leading to
scaffolds, battering rams, coffin nails); the 'sestet' has a series of visual associations
(eyes, light, sun, sea, autumn sunset), and complicates the bleak uniformity of the
'octave' with the introduction of new elements (woman, sea). Whereas the first
four stanzas are characterized by categorical statements ('Adieu', 1.1; 'tout', 1.5;
'ne . . . plus', 11.8, 10; 'chaque', 1.9; 'infatigable', 1.12), a sense of time as
relentless, of destruction, death, and an attribution of consistently negative values
to the winter and the poet's heart, the 'tercets' are marked by shifts (11.18-20, from
'douce' to 'amer', from woman to sea), statements no sooner said than attenuated
('J'aime . . . mais . . . ' , 11.17-18; 'Et pourtant', 1.21; 'meme . . . meme . . . ' , 1.22;
'ou', I.24; in I.26, 'Ah!' implies something like: 'But yet'). This 'et pourtant'
element is characteristic of Baudelaire's sonnets, where the sestet can function as a
'reassessment'10 of the experience of the octave.
[37] 11
The division of the poem into two pans only appears in the second edition of Les
Fleurs du Mai (1861), and not in its earlier publication (La Revue contemporaine,
!
859); but, as Henri Meschonnic notes, 11 this division 'est structurellement
inscrite dans le poeme'. Comments on the poem's structure find it curious, and
then seek to justify it, in terms that would be very unsurprising if applied to a
sonnet: for instance Robert T. Cargo, viewing the two 'at first... unrelated' halves
of the poem as an event experienced and reflection on that experience.12 The poem
also shows the use of eyes at the transition to the 'sestet' which D. H. T. Scott has
noted as so characteristic of Baudelaire's sonnets, in which 'the key words [viz.
ame, yeux] tend to appear precisely at the pivotal point in the poem which marks
the division of octave from sestet, that is, 1.9'.13 'Chant d'automne' shows most
clearly the proportions of the sonnet, and the shift in tempo and feeling that
commentators have always seen, albeit differently defined:14 seeing the same
subject or theme from a different angle, in a different light.
'Hymne a la Beaute' (OC, 1, 24-25) is composed of 7 stanzas dividing 4 + 3, in
which stanzas 1-2 form the first 'quatrain' and are clearly parallel to 3-4 (second
'quatrain'), each opening with a question ('Viens-tu.. .?';'Sors-tu...?') and being
followed by a statement (Tu contiens . . . ' ; 'Tu marches . . . ' ) . The 'octave'
(stanzas 1-4) moves to close with an increasingly specific image of Beauty/woman
('regard', 'parfums', 'baisers', 'jupons', 'ventre', 'breloques') as an oriental dancer; then the poem jumps (in the 'sestet') initially to a very different set of images.
When the 'sestet' does take up the images of the 'octave': the eye ('regard', 1.2, 'ton
ceil', 1. 5), motion ('tu marches', 'danse'), as 'ton ceil', 'ton pied' (1.23), these are
now seen in a different light; not in terms of a celestial/infernal antithesis, but in
terms of indifference to this antithesis and openness to new experience. There is a
shift from something seen increasingly as destructive, ending up with the coupling
of 'meurtre' at the end of the 'octave' with 'amoureusement', to images of
se//-destruction and suicide that lead up to the possibility of positive action (the
door open for the poet to go through, 1.23) on the part of the poet. These aspects
are more forcefully present once one starts to read the poem in terms of two
complementary parts.
The seven stanzas of 'L'Heautontimoroum6nos' (OC, 1,78-79) can likewise be
divided 4 + 3, with notably in the final three a link established by the insistent 'Je
suis..." and a shift from description to analysis. A plausible case can be made for
dividing up other poems whose lines are multiples of 14 in the proportions 8 + 6.
'La Voix' (OC, I, 170), 28 lines, is in effect 7 quatrains rhyming abab written
continuously; the key shift, from the initial evocation of 'deux voix' of his
bibliotheque and what they say, to subsequent experiences and the intensification of
the idea of suffering, occurs just before the start of the fifth 'stanza' (i.e. at the end
of the 'octave'); with, in 'stanza' 5, the action of looking: 'Je vois . . . ' ; 'ma
clairvoyance'. 'A une Malabaraise' (OC, I, 173-74), 2& lines, divides 16 + 12,
contrasting life in the tropics in the 'octave' with possible life in 'notre France' in
the 'sestet', and shifting from statements to questions and exclamations. Jean
Prevost has shown how 'Une Gravure fantastique' (OC, I, 69-70) could be
convincingly 'decoupfe] en sonnet',1S highlighting by so doing the break after
line 8.
If a 'bad' sonnet is 'tout juste encore une piece de poesie qui s'arrete apres
quatorze vers', 16 could not a good potential one be a poem that has the sonnet's
structural and oppositional qualities, even though it does not have fourteen lines?
12 [37]
G. M. Hopkins thought so, and essayed 'curtal [i.e. curtailed] sonnets' of 6 + 4%
lines (Tied Beauty', 'Peace'). In these poems, 'the formal disproportion of their
two parts' arguably does not correspond to 'an action of complication and
resolution, or of something like it'. 17 In the case of Baudelaire we can find both the
proportions and the opposition of the sonnet, its 'characteristic argument',18
observation and conclusion, statement and counterstatement. To read such poems
ax sonnets can enhance awareness of these qualities. The structure is not necessarily intentional; like the anagrams that Saussure detected in the works of Latin
poets, it is better explained as an unconscious19 process, a product of habit: a way
of building poems,20 — of balancing their parts, of constructing feelings.
1
Oulipo, La Litterature potentielle (Paris, 1973), p. 146.
Raymond Queneau, Batons, chiffres et lettres, (Paris, 1965), p. 321.
3
See notably David Bellos, 'Literary Quotations in Perec's La Vie mode d'emploi', FS, 41 (1987),
181-94.
4
Raymond Queneau, 'La Redundance chez Phane Arme', La Litterature potentielle, pp. 185-89.
5
Jean Prevost, Baudelaire (Paris, 1964), p. 19.
6
David H. T. Scott,SonnetTheory and Practice in Nineteenth-century France: Sonnets on the Sonnet
(Hull, 1977), P-457
Paul Fussell Jr., Poetic Meter and Poetic Form (New York, 1965), p. 119.
8
D. H. T. Scott, p. 12.
9
Quotations from Baudelaire are from CEuvres completes, edited by Claude Pichois, Bibliotheque
de la Pleiade, 2 vols (Paris, 1975): hereinafter OC.
10
D. H . T . S c o t t , p. 47.
11
Pour la poetique HI (Paris, 1973), p. 299.
12
Robert T. Cargo, 'Baudelaire's Chant d'automne', in Studies in Honour of Alfred G. Engstrom
(Chapel Hill, 1972), pp. 27-43 (P- 29)13
D. H. T. Scott, pp. 47-48.
14
For a range of examples, see Scott, pp. 31-32.
15
Prevost, pp. 264-65.
16
Ruth Moser, L'Impressionismefrancais (Geneva, 1952), p. 242, quoted by D. H. T. Scott, p. 74.
See also John Fuller, The Sonnet, The Critical Idiom, 26 (London, 1972), p. 2: 'Not every
quatorzain is a sonnet.'
17
Fussell, p. 132.
18
Fuller, p. 2.
19
Jean Starobinski, Les Mots sous les mots: les anagrammes de F. de Saussure (Paris, 1971), p. 40:
2
' u n gout de l'echo, tres p e u conscient et quasi instinctif'.
20
See also Prevost, p . 2 6 3 , on Baudelaire's tendency to build in stanzaic units even w h e n
composing in rimes plates.
OTHER VOICES: IN DEFENCE OF FEMINIST LITERARY CRITICISM
PHIL POWRIE, Newcastle upon Tyne
In a recent number of Paragraph devoted to feminism, Naomi Schor says that
'there is no new French feminist literary-critical practice to speak of to accompany
the new French feminist theories'.1 The effect is the minimization of women's
writing in the wake of the women's movement. The reasons are specific institutional pressures which exert a kind of intellectual tyranny. The tyranny used to be
just that of the canon. This has now been joined by literary theory.
Canon formation used to mean weeding the garden to let either the obligatory
'great' male writers, or the male-dominated 'movements' flower. A more recent,
and more invidious, canonical procedure is sociological reductionism. Women
writers do figure on A-level courses, but rarely because they are women writers.
Their texts 'service' cultural or area studies courses.
There is resistance to the canon, as one might expect. A recent Yale French
Studies is devoted to the exclusion of women from the French canon. One of the
[37] 13