The sonnet, with its demanding rhyme scheme, provided an ideal vehicle for the Parnassian craftsmen. They found paragons of formal perfection in the jeweled miniatures of Théophile Gautier’s Émaux et camées (1852). Gautier’s concluding poem, “L’Art,” distills the formalist creed:
| Les dieux eux-mêmes meurent. | The gods themselves die, |
| Mais les vers souverains | But the sovereign verses |
| Demeurent | Endure |
| Plus forts que les airains. | Stronger than bronze. |
| Sculpte, lime, ciselle; | Sculpt, file, chisel; |
| Que ton rêve flottant | Let your floating dream |
| Se scelle | Be sealed |
| Dans le bloc résistant! | In the resisting block! |
The Parnassians emulated Gautier’s chiseled verse as they rejected the negligent flow of Romantic poetry in favor of more concentrated structures. Characteristic, too, is Gautier’s dense rhyming—both the rich rhyme of “meurent”/“demeurent” (three shared sounds instead of the normal two) and the sonorous near rhyme of “ciselle”/“Se scelle.” So highly did the Parnassians value rhyme that scholar Jean Martino could speak of a “cult of rich rhyme.”11 Théodore de Banville emphatically gave rhyme pride of place in his Petit traité de poésie française (1891), the bible of Parnassian poetics: “In every poem, the good construction of the phrase is in direct proportion to the richness of the rhyme.”12 An anonymous parody of the Parnassian school, Le Parnassiculet contemporain (1867), included a droll lampoon of their compact and fastidiously rhymed verse:
LE MARTYRE DE SAINT LABRE
SONNET EXTRÊMEMENT RYTHMIQUE
Labre,
Saint
Glabre,
Teint
Maint
Sabre,
S’cabre,
Geint!
Pince,
Fer
Clair!
Grince,
Chair
Mince!13
The rigid structures of Parnassian poetry were a rebuke to the fluidity and emotionalism of Romanticism. Sculpture was the dominant artistic metaphor for the Parnassians, and their verse abounds with female statues, especially the Venus de Milo. As Gretchen Schultz explained, “Behind the Parnassian quest for formal stasis, then, lies a desperate attempt to reclaim the poetic act for masculinity and to render poetry, as a metaphor for femininity, unchanging and fixed beyond time.”14 The Parnassian ethic demanded that poets cleanse their work of emotion and sublimate personal experience in objective form.
This aesthetic had particular relevance for Fauré in 1878 following his broken engagement to Marianne Viardot, the daughter of his famous patroness, opera diva Pauline Viardot. Marianne accepted his proposal in July 1877, and the composer’s letters overflow with an extravagant, almost manic enthusiasm. As he wrote on August 19: “I am anxious for your assurance that you have forgotten how turbulent and touchy my love for you has been these last few days. The more I carry on, the less clearly do I understand this inexplicable agitation that comes from deep within me! I can no longer sleep because of it!”15 Or in a letter of August 26: “You cannot suspect that it is all I can do to prevent myself sobbing fit to split the rocks open every time I write to you.”16 Daunted by this onslaught, Marianne broke off the engagement after only three months, leaving Fauré devastated. Poème d’un jour undoubtedly responded to that trauma, as Nectoux and others have suggested, yet the work transcends autobiographical confession.17 As the poet-protagonist passes from unbridled passion to philosophical resignation, he realizes the Parnassian ideal of impassivity. The song cycle not only sublimates personal tragedy but also grants that experience an enduring artistic form.
Fauré’s sympathy with the Parnassian aesthetic appears fully blown in his first Leconte de Lisle setting, “Lydia.” This exquisite mélodie, written around 1870, haunted Fauré’s music till the end of his career and even appears as a leitmotive in La bonne chanson.18 “Lydia” also provided the direct model for “Adieu,” the final song of Poème d’un jour. A close reading of poem and song will illuminate Fauré’s affinity with the Parnassian poets, which lies, above all, in a shared historical vision.
“LYDIA” AND THE LIVING PAST
Fauré found “Lydia” in the Poèmes antiques at the end of the “Études latines,” eighteen poems inspired by Horace’s odes. Leconte de Lisle based the first sixteen études on specific odes; only “Lydia” and the concluding “Envoi” were freely composed.19 The sixth étude, “Vile potabis,” gives the flavor of these exercises. Leconte de Lisle modeled his poem on the twentieth ode from Horace’s first book:
Vile potabis modicis Sabinum
cantharis, Graeca quod ego ipse testa
conditum levi, datus in theatro
cum tibi plausus,
clare Maecenas eques, ut paterni
fluminis ripae simul et iocosa
redderet laudes tibi Vaticani
montis imago.
Caecubum et prelo domitam Caleno
tu bibes uvam: mea nec Falernae
temperant vites neque Formiani
pocula colles.
You will drink from modest cups a cheap Sabine wine that I stored away in a Greek jar and sealed with my own hand on the day when you, Maecenas, illustrious knight, were given such applause in the theater that the banks of your fathers’ river, yes, and the playful echo from the Vatican Hill, repeated your praises. At home you can drink Caecuban and the grape that is crushed in the presses of Cales; my cups are not mellowed by the vines of Falernum or Formian hillsides.20
The French poet preserved Horace’s opening words and his basic content. But he transformed the Sapphic stanzas and quantitative meter into a modern form, a single dizain of rhyming octosyllables. Moreover, he gave the ode an aestheticist slant, emphasizing the role of the Parnassian muses:
En mes coupes d’un prix modique
Veux-tu tenter mon humble vin?
Je l’ai scellé dans l’urne Attique
Au sortir du pressoir Sabin.
Il est un peu rude et moderne:
Cécube, Calès ni Falerne
Ne mûrissent dans mon cellier;
Mais les Muses me sont amies,
Et les muses font oublier
Ta vigne dorée, ô Formies!
In my cups of modest worth
Would you try my humble wine?
I sealed it in the Attic urn
As soon as it left the Sabine press.
It is a bit crude and new:
Wines of Cecuba, Cales, and Falernum
Are not aging in my cellar;
But I am a friend to the muses,
And the muses will make us forget
Your golden vine, o Formia!
Leconte