Vincent Voiture

Vincent Voiture

Vincent Voiture (born February 23, 1598 in Amiens , † May 26, 1648 in Paris ) was a French prince servant and man of letters.

Life

Voiture grew up as the son of a wealthy wine merchant who had moved his business from Amiens to Paris and supplied the farm here. He enjoyed a good education and, through a noble school friend, came into contact early on with high-ranking people, especially the younger brother of Ludwig XIII. , Duke Gaston d'Orléans , to whom he introduced himself at the age of sixteen with a poem. At an early age he also had a noble lifestyle with mistresses, games and duels.

In order to give his social ambition a solid basis, he bought the office of a royal council (conseiller du Roi) in 1626 , which hardly implied duties, but raised its owner to the nobility after a certain period . In the same year he was given access to the “precious” aesthetic salon of the Marquise de Rambouillet , whose high time became the following two decades, during which he set the tone there with his elegant conversation and his entertaining ideas as well as his verses and letters.

Also in 1626 he was accepted into his staff by Duke Gaston as a "gentilhomme ordinaire" and soon entrusted with the protocol task of introducing the ambassadors of foreign princes to him. Because Gaston was due to the long childlessness of Louis XIII, which lasted until 1638. for many years potential heir to the throne and as such was not only drawn into nobility plots against the almighty minister Cardinal Richelieu , but also courted by foreign powers who were involved with or against France in the Thirty Years War (1618-48).

When Duke Gaston was exiled for the first time in 1628, Voiture followed him into exile in Lorraine , which was still part of the German Empire; In 1631 he followed him to Brussels, which was then hostile to Spain. In 1633 he traveled for him, because he apparently had some knowledge of Spanish, on a diplomatic mission to Madrid, where he made a detour to Ceuta , North Africa , and returned via Lisbon and England. The letters and epistles that he sent from afar to friends at the Hôtel de Rambouillet were always an event there and, in his absence, kept his place as a central figure.

Naturally , Voiture had made contact with Parisian literary circles through the Hôtel de Rambouillet . In particular, he was a member of the circle around Valentin Conrart and was one of its first members when Richelieu made him the founding core of the Académie française in 1634 .

In spite of his closeness to Duke Gaston, he entered into a closer relationship with Richelieu, to whom he recommended himself in 1636 through a poem about the happy reconquest of Corbie , which had been captured by Spanish troops.

In 1638 Voiture, who also had some knowledge of Italian, traveled on a diplomatic mission from the king to the Grand Duke of Toscana . During a trip to Rome, he took care of a trial of the Italian Marquise de Rambouillet, associated with writers and was accepted into an “Academy of Humorists”.

Back in Paris he reached the climax of his courtier career when he was in 1639 by Louis XIII. was appointed royal court master ( maître d'hôtel du Roi ), an almost sinecure with a gratifying salary, which was increased by an annual pension payment of 1000 Écus , which the Queen granted him from her box. When in 1642 his old school friend, who was active in tax collection, turned him into a kind of office manager with 4,000 Écus annual income, Voiture was more than just wealthy.

After the death of Richelieu in 1642 and Louis XIII. In 1643 he also managed to gain the favor of the new powerful man, Cardinal Mazarin .

He still stayed at the Hôtel de Rambouillet . In 1645 he was the protagonist of a literary duel in sonnets to which a certain Claude de Malleville challenged him and which sparked long discussions. And around 1650, after his death, he was the subject of conversation when Isaac de Benserade , who was mainly a playwright , tried to outdo one of his sonnets with a poem on the same topic.

Create

Due to his existence as an amateur author, Voiture mainly wrote short texts such as sonnets , ballads , rondeaus , epistles and letters. The trademarks of these texts are courtesy, esprit and lightness with formal perfection. The poems are quite artistic in terms of metrics and language, as well as in their metaphor and thought, but rarely appear exhausted or even artificial. In accordance with the ideal of a “middle” style in salon literature, they avoid pathos and emphasis, as well as erudition, coarseness, or sloppiness. Voiture's poems are mostly devoted to the themes of women's beauty and love, which - in the style of Clément Marot - are treated in a playful and gallant manner, and to prince praise , which, however, comes across as unobtrusive and humorous. Without denying their character as sophisticated works of art, the letters are not written for an overly impressive anonymous audience, but are always addressed to specific recipients. With their focus on the cultivated spoken language of the salons, their humor and their discreet private allusions, they should have a spontaneous and, above all, personal effect, even though they were clearly intended to be read and appreciated by third parties, especially mutual acquaintances.

Since the applause of a closer audience and readership of connoisseurs was enough for him, Voiture did not try to distribute his texts by print. He became known to a larger audience only posthumously thanks to a one-volume collective edition of his poems and letters, which a nephew published in 1650 under the title Œuvres . It was frequently reissued until 1745 and influenced many later authors, for example Jean de La Fontaine , Nicolas Boileau and Madame de Sévigné .

Works

Rour (1856), Ubicini (1856) and Uzanne (“Lettres”, 1880, 2 volumes) were responsible for more recent editions of Voitures' works with annotations etc. The latest edition contains only the poems: Poésies (2 vols., Édition posthume établie par H. Lafay, 1971)

Web links

• Publications by and about Vincent Voiture in VD 17 .
• Short biography and list of works of the Académie française (French)
• Article in "Names, Titles and Dates of French Literature" (main source of the article)