Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 The problem of the dark side of a love poet: an introduction and reassessment
- 2 In search of love's epistemology: affirming the role of the creative imagination
- 3 Embodying the sacred and ineffable: poetic forms of transcendence and paradise
- 4 Becoming what one sees: the unity and identity of poetic self
- 5 Struggle, light, and love's “sainct lieu”
- 6 “De mes trauaulx me bienheurantz ma peine”: love poetry as therapy
- Epilogue Scève, Mallarmé, and the art of transcendence
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Cambridge Studies in French
2 - In search of love's epistemology: affirming the role of the creative imagination
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 August 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 The problem of the dark side of a love poet: an introduction and reassessment
- 2 In search of love's epistemology: affirming the role of the creative imagination
- 3 Embodying the sacred and ineffable: poetic forms of transcendence and paradise
- 4 Becoming what one sees: the unity and identity of poetic self
- 5 Struggle, light, and love's “sainct lieu”
- 6 “De mes trauaulx me bienheurantz ma peine”: love poetry as therapy
- Epilogue Scève, Mallarmé, and the art of transcendence
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Cambridge Studies in French
Summary
In his desire to give a higher meaning to the experience of love and to express the sublime effect it can have on his judgment and feelings, Scève was confronted by a fundamental artistic problem which he had to overcome. When he tried with the critical precision usually afforded by logic and reason to translate the wonderful infinity of love and its ability to transcend a whole world of human measurements, he did indeed end up frustrated and disappointed. There are many reasons for this impasse and they all seem to point in the same direction: Scève's higher poetic meaning, aesthetically centered on the beauty and infinite mystery of the sacred that is Délie, relies less on the brain than on the imagination for its ultimate portrayal and value. A central lesson that the poet is forced to learn is that Délie's “haulte value” (D275) – her “deité,” her “diuine beaulté” her “beaulté esmerueillable Idée” – cannot adequately be measured by human logic:
Tout iugement de celle infinité,
Ou tout concept se trouue superflus,
Et tout aigu de perspicuité
Ne pourroyent ioindre au sommet de son plus.
Car seulement l'apparent du surplus,
Premiere neige en son blanc souueraine,
Au pur des mains delicatement saine,
Ahontiroyt le nud de Bersabée:
Et le flagrant de sa suaue alaine
Apouriroyt l'odorante Sabée.
(D166)Délie's ineffable qualities – her sacred beauty, perfection, and infinity – go beyond the limits of the poet's intellectual comprehension.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Love Aesthetics of Maurice ScèvePoetry and Struggle, pp. 29 - 64Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1991