La Pléiade arrives... in Pléiade

Three yellow armchairs. A small round table and on it, a Pléiade. But not just any, the Pléiade des Pléiades. This Thursday, April 25, there was a large gathering to attend the presentation of the 671st volume of the prestigious Gallimard collection in the auditorium of the international city of Villers-Cotterêts. A perfect place to speak of poetry and a living language, as presented by Paul Rondin, the director of the castle which opened its doors in October last year.

“This international city is neither a museum nor a language conservatory. However, with the Pléiade, we are at the very place of poetry, of a language that invents. » Alongside Paul Rondin, Antoine Gallimard himself recalled this link which unites the castle, where the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts was signed in 1539 “prescribing that judgments, rulings or judicial acts would henceforth be in French” and poetry of the 16th century. Let us recall here, from 1547 to 1559, the Pléiade designates the first group of poets in the French language, made up of Ronsard, Du Bellay, Tyard, Baïf, Des Autels, Jodelle and La Péruse. At least, that's how it's presented. Because this name of movement was given retrospectively and it was not limited to these seven authors. But we'll come back to that.

“This order, which was a political gesture for the unity of the language as well as an administrative and cultural gesture, did not escape the poets during the reign of Henry II,” continued Antoine Gallimard. At that time, poets indeed had a political role. “They therefore understood the usefulness of illustrating the French language, by enriching it with Antiquity, from neighboring Italy, in order to allow a strengthening of the State and therefore, of the king. » Yes, but that was without taking into account that Henry II was “not very sensitive to poetry. Henri II owned hunting lodges, he loved Villers-Cotterêts for the quality of the deer meat. He was more sporting than literary. »

Also, this volume of La Pléiade constitutes an unpublished chronicle of the poets of La Pléiade under the reign of Henri II, as Mireille Huchon wrote in the introduction to the said work which she edited. In 1547, the first poems of Ronsard and Du Bellay appeared in the edition of the Poetic Works of Peletier du Mans. Very quickly followed by La Deffence, and illustrations of the French language, by Du Bellay, which passed for the "manifesto" of La Pléiade, L'Olive, which constituted the first collection of sonnets and original lyric verses in French as well as the Odes, in French by Ronsard.

“It’s a series of first moments,” explains Mireille Huchon. We are witnessing the first grammar of French, dictionaries appear and we see how much the language has enriched. » Between 1549 and 1552, collections of love poetry were born from the pen of Pontus de Tyard and Guillaume Des Autels, his cousin, while Les Amours de Baïf followed. “We witness the birth of Fouquelin's rhetoric in 1555, which founded French rhetoric and elocution, the first ancient tragedy, La Cleopatra captive, by Etienne Jodelle, the scandal of the Folastries and the first collections of French sonnets. » Poets experiment with genres, language, stanzas and verses, doing “neolatin”, like Du Bellay who composes in Latin and translates into French.

Is it fascinating that in this bustling period a group like that of La Pléiade was created. But, immediately tempers Hugues Pradier, medievalist historian and director of La Pléiade, the movement was retrospective. “Certainly, Ronsard used the term Pléiade once, but it was witnesses in the second part of the century who popularized the name. » In addition to this late designation, the Pléiade evolved and was not limited to the seven poets. “There were entries and exits. » When Ronsard used it in 1555, La Péruse was already dead. As for Des Altels, it was deleted for “political reasons.” Peletier gives way to Dorat, then re-enters the list, Belleau joins her. Surprisingly, we do not know if all these poets knew each other and if they ever saw each other. Ronsard and Du Bellay, “probably” met in 1547, but for the rest?

In any case, the Pléiade did not survive the end of the reign of Henry II and the death of Du Bellay in 1560. The fact remains that this decade greatly marked the century and those that followed. Also, this volume of La Pléiade is interesting, because, constructed in three parts, first an anthology of extracts of texts taken from fifty-one collections, then a poetic section bringing together the first French poetic arts, it also shows the controversies and testimonies that these “foolish” people from Pléiade aroused with their “poetic fury”.

The texts are given in their original form, we warn in a note at the beginning of the book. We then see the great upheavals in the Seizemist language, while a little less than a century before the birth of the French Academy, French and its spelling were free and wild. “This is a key moment in the history of the language and its codification,” exclaims Mireille Huchon. Poets played a major role. » The “i” also served as “j” in the 16th century (here the vowel and the consonant were distinguished). “The vowel u and the consonant v were used interchangeably, with often v at the initial of the word and u inside (pouuoir, vsage). » Here again, for the sake of readability, the u and the v have been distinguished.

Already in the 16th century, debates were heated around language and the status of spelling. The spellings differ. Opposed are those in favor of eliminating superfluous letters, with no effect on pronunciation and therefore in favor of phonetic spelling, and those in favor of customary spelling. “It is in relation to the Lyon grammarian Louis Meigret, a pioneer in the field of spelling reform, that Peletier positions themselves on the one hand, in a courteous controversy on the modalities of the reform and, on the other hand, Du Bellay , Ronsard and Des Autels.”

Du Bellay prefers to rely on “common, and antiq’ usage”. His works, writes Mireille Huchon, “are an excellent example of a fairly common spelling, left to the care of the printer: numerous y for i (celuy, traduyre), z in the end for plurals (petiz virtues)”. Ronsard, for his part, goes further than his friend and rival. In his Odes of 1550 eliminates the final “From Bellai”. However, he alternates between a common writing in Amours, (1552) and a modified writing like that of his Odes, in another edition of Amours a year later, but always choosing ultimately to avoid "all superfluous spelling".

Nearly a quarter of a millennium later, the French language still gives rise to just as many disputes. We saw this with the spelling corrections of 1990, which popular usage rarely applied, the feminization of professional names, should we write “author”, “auteure”, “autrice” and more recently with the writing inclusive, which some feverish activists are trying to impose, but which has so far barely crossed the border of political leaflets and advertising messages.