French Lyrics | Page 3

influence, but were the
developments of the forms of the earlier _chansons à danser_, the
rondets_, _ballettes_, and _virelis. The new poetic art that proceeded
from Machault spent itself mainly in refining the phrase of the old
commonplaces, allegories, and reflections, and on turning them out in
rondels_, _rondeaux_, _triolets_, _ballades_, _chants royaux, and
virelis. The new fashion was followed by FROISSART (1337-1410),
EUSTACHE DESCHAMPS (approximately 1340-1407), who rhymed
one thousand four hundred and forty ballades, CHRISTINE DE PISAN
(1363-_?_), and CHARLES D'ORLÉANS (1391-1465), who marks the
culmination of the movement by the perfection of formal elegance and
easy grace which his rondels and ballades exhibit.
All this lyric poetry had been the product of an aristocratic and polite
society. But there existed at the same time in the north of France a
current of lyrical production in an entirely different social region. The
bourgeoisie, at least in the larger and industrial towns, followed the
example of the princely courts, and vied with them in cultivating a
formal lyric, and numerous societies, called puis, arranged poetical
competitions and offered prizes. Naturally in their hands the courtly
lyric only degenerated. But there were now and then men of greater
individuality who, if their verses lacked something of the refinement
and elaborateness of the courtly lyric, more than atoned for it by the
greater directness and sincerity of their utterance, and by their closer
contact with common life and real experience. Here belong the farewell
poems (_congés_) of JEAN BODEL (twelfth century) and ADAM DE
LA HALLE (about 1235-1285), of Arras; here belong especially two
Parisians who were real poets, RUTEBEUF (d. about 1280) and
FRANÇOIS VILLON (1431- 146?), who distinctly announces the end
of the old order of things and the beginning of modern times, not by
any renewal of the fixed forms, within which he continued to move, but
by cutting loose from the conventional round of subjects and ideas, and
by giving a strikingly direct and personal expression to thoughts and
feelings that he had the originality to think and feel for himself.

But no one at once appeared to make VILLON'S example fruitful for
the development of lyric verse, and it went on its way of formal
refinement at the hands of the industrious school of rhetoricians,
becoming more and more dry and empty, more and more a matter of
intricate mechanism and ornament. No more signal proof of the sterility
of the school could be imagined than the triumphs of the art of some of
the grands _rhétoriqueurs_ like MESCHINOT (1415?-1491), or
MOLINET (d. 1507), the recognized leader of his day. The last
expiring effort of this essentially mediaeval lyric is seen in CLÉMENT
MAROT. He had already begun to catch the glow of the dawn of the
Renaissance, but he was rooted in the soil of the middle ages and his
real masters were his immediate predecessors. He avoided their
absurdities of alliteration and redundant rhyme and their pedantry; but
he appropriated the results of their efforts at perfecting the verse
structure and adhered to the traditional forms. The great stores of the
ancient literatures that were thrown open to France in the course of the
first half of the sixteenth century came too late to be the main substance
of MAROT'S culture.
But it was far otherwise with the next generation. It was nurtured on the
literatures of Greece, Rome, and Italy, which was also a classical land
for the France of that day; and it was almost beside itself with
enthusiasm for them. The traditions of the mediaeval lyric and all its
fixed forms were swept away with one breath as barbarous rubbish by
the proclamations of the young admirers of antiquity. The manifesto of
the new movement, the _Défense et Illustration de la langue française_
by JOACHIM DU BELLAY, bade the poet "leave to the Floral Games
of Toulouse and to the puis of Rouen all those old French verses, such
as Rondeaux_, _Ballades_, _Virelais_, _Chants royaux_, _Chansons,
and other like vulgar trifles," and apply himself to rivaling the ancients
in epigrams, elegies, odes, satires, epistles, eclogues, and the Italians in
sonnets. But the transformation which this movement effected for the
lyric did not come from the substitution of different forms as models. It
had a deeper source.
Acquaintance with the ancients and the attendant great movement of
ideas of the Renaissance reopened the true springs of lyric poetry. The

old moulds of thought and feeling were broken. The human individual
had a new, more direct and more personal view of nature and of life.
That note of direct personal experience, almost of individual sensation,
that was possible to a VILLON only by virtue of a very strong
temperament and of a very exceptional social position, became the
privilege of a whole generation by reason