Marc-Antoine Girard de Saint-Amant

Antoine Girard de Saint-Amant (* 30th September 1594 in Rouen , † 29. September 1661 in Paris ) was a French poet of the Baroque .

life and work

Saint-Amand, who came from the upper bourgeoisie, was on the move all his life, on water and on land (also outside Europe), mostly in the service of some greats of his time (Adrien de Monluc-Montesquiou, comte de Cramail, 1571–1646; Henri II. De Montmorency ; François II d'Harcourt-Beuvron, 1598–1658; Henri de Gondi (1590-1659) , duc de Retz), often as a companion in arms and literary entertainer “d'encre et de sang” (in ink and Blood). He had success with his poetry, was court poet and (like his friends Nicolas Faret and François Le Métel de Boisrobert ) a founding member of the Académie française . Luisa Maria Gonzaga paid him a handsome pension.

With the poem La Solitude (The Solitude), written on the Breton island of Belle-Île in 1617 , Saint-Amant became famous in one fell swoop. In fact, it is far more expressive than the tenderness in the poem of the same name by his contemporary and friend Théophile de Viau . Other subjects of his poems are: rain, sunrise, spring near Paris, summer in Rome, autumn in the Canary Islands, winter in the Alps. The “ailes du silence” (wings of silence) were literally used in the poem Le Contemplateur (The viewer): J'écoute, à demi transporté, / Le bruit des ailes du silence / Qui vole dans l'obscurité (I'm listening, half ecstatic, the sound of the wings of silence flying in the darkness).

He is particularly modern with poems on everyday things such as melons, cheese or cider. Next to it are time-critical satire, e.g. B. in La Rome ridicule (The ridiculous Rome), or Spitzweg scenes as in Le poète crotté (The poet filthy from the street mud ). Saint-Amand's poetry wanted to please through variety and virtuosity. She avoided monotony and boredom. It embodied poetic freedom, was anti-puristic and unclassical and was therefore despised from the classical period onwards. Boileau mocked her. By Théophile Gautier she found while in the 19th century based on the romance more attention, was deported the same time in the stereotype of the grotesque and burlesque. Gustave Lanson showed little understanding for her. Only after the Second World War did a real rehabilitation take place, in which Jean Lagny (1911–2001) played a major role with his critical biography from 1964. In 1968, Jean-Pierre Chauveau (* 1931) called Saint-Amant “la plus puissante personnalité poétique de sa génération” (the most powerful poetic personality of his generation).

Works

• Oeuvres , critical edition in 5 volumes, ed. by Jacques Bailbé and Jean Lagny, Paris, Librairie Honoré Champion, 1967–1979 (Société des textes français modern).
• Les 100 plus belles pages de Saint-Amant , ed. by Jean Rousselot, Paris, Pierre Belfond, 1983.
• Oeuvres poétiques , ed. by Léon Vérane, Coeuvres, Ressouvenances, 2009 (with a study by Rémy de Gourmont ).

literature

• Hanns Heiß , the heyday and decline of French burlesque fashion poetry of the 17th century , Erlangen, Junge und Sohn, 1905.
• André Lagarde and Laurent Michard , XVIIe siècle. Les grands auteurs français. Anthologie et histoire littéraire , Paris, Bordas, 1985 (first 1951), pp. 46–53.
• Jean Lagny, Bibliography des éditions anciennes des œuvres de Saint-Amant , Paris, Librairie Giraud-Badin, 1960, 140 p.
• Françoise Gourier, Etude des œuvres poétiques de Saint-Amant , Geneva, Droz, 1961.
• Jean Lagny, Le poète Saint-Amant (1594-1661). Essai sur sa vie et ses œuvres , Paris, Nizet, 1964, 431 pp.
• Jean-Charles Payen and Jean-Pierre Chauveau , La poésie des origines à 1715 , Paris, Armand Colin, 1968, pp. 150–153 and 458–465.
• John D. Lyons, The Listening voice. An essay on the rhetoric of Saint-Amant , Lexington, French Forum, 1984.
• Dorothee Scholl, Moyse sauvé. Poétique et originalité de l'idylle héroïque de Saint-Amant , Paris / Seattle, Papers on French Seventeenth Century Literature, 1995.
• Alain Viala, “Saint-Amant”, in: Dictionnaire des écrivains de langue française , ed. by Jean-Pierre Beaumarchais, Daniel Couty and Alain Rey, Paris, Larousse, 2001, pp. 1671–1675.
• Guillaume Peureux, Le rendez-vous des enfans sans soucy. La poétique de Saint-Amant , Paris, Honoré Champion, 2002.
• Claude Le Roy, Ce bon monsieur de Saint-Amant , Milon-la-Chapelle, Éditions H & D, 2010.

Web links

• Literature by and about Marc-Antoine Girard de Saint-Amant in the SUDOC catalog (Association of French University Libraries)