Title: "Fantastiquant Mille Monstres Bossus": Poetic Incongruities, Poetic Epiphanies, and the Writerly Semiosis of Pierre De Ronsard
Abstract: In his latest study on an intriguing subject that was for him both exhilarating and exasperating, Murray Krieger defines ekphrasis in these terms: literary representation of visual art, or The kind of ekphrasis that deals with the real is of course the art of mimesis, what Krieger calls I, that is, the sensible or sense-oriented perception and portrayal of the mimetic real. Ekphrasis which strives to capture the a writer's art of semiosis, Krieger discusses as II, that is, the or mind-oriented perception and portrayal of the semiotic imaginary. My discussion of Pierre de Ronsard will consider only one side of his captivating poetic of ekphrasis, namely, his verbally semiotic presentations of the visual imaginary, his intelligible perceptions and creations of enargeia II. Other studies have already explored Ronsard's debt to the ekphrastic principle of imitation as it relates to and attempts to portray the mimetic real.(2) What remains is to examine this other discourse and level of meaning in Ronsard, his writerly semiosis of seeing and of showing which truly became a poetic obsession for him just as it did for Joachim Du Bellay and Maurice Sceve, as I have written on elsewhere.(3) Exhilarating and exasperating are indeed perfect ways to describe the writerly as well as readerly activity involved in the literary phenomenology of ekphrasis. This is especially the case when a poet is concerned with coming to terms with the imaginary real, with what another contemporary critic of Poetics, Michael Riffaterre, calls the fictional truth and triumph of semiosis over mimesis.(4) The exasperating side of Ronsard's poetic project can be seen in the many failure-poems one encounters in his Amours, such as the eye-defeating and thus art-defeating impasse which the poet acknowledges and describes early on in Cassandre XIX.(5) In addition to failure in love, the familiar thematics of unrequited love, this poem is also a statement about poetic sterility and poetic failure, and it is the beloved Cassandre herself in her Trojan role as prophetess who conveys this to the poet. His rewards and legacy, she tells him in the first two stanzas, can only be an early death and unaccomplished life, lackluster writings, and scorn and ridicule by his readers in the future. In sum, as Cassandre it: Tu bastiras sur l'incertain du sable, /Et vainement tu peindras dans les cieulx. Worse still, Cassandre's dire and defeating predictions on the poet's failure and future seem to be confirmed by the ultimate sign of divine authority, as the poem's closural image seals the matter once and for all (i.e., the image of a lightning flash as an ill-fated omen which the poet sees on his right hand): Ainsi disoit la Nymphe qui m'afolle, Lors que le ciel pour seeller sa parolle D'un dextre esclair fut presage a mes yeulx. Two other early poems are also about artistic failure: Cassandre XXVIII and XXIX. The reader does not have to wait until the Marie-cycle of love poems to find confirmation of such a failure in poetic seeing and feeling and showing, contrary to what most critics, and especially Olivier Pot most recently, have argued.(6) Cassandre XXVIII is very revealing to show the poet showing the writing of mimesis as failure, or, to be more precise, to show the poet recognizing a failure in the sensible, sense-satisfying purpose of the mimetic vision and its writing. At first, the poet seems to be telling us that this ineffable beauty of Cassandre that has so enslaved him and caused his to trouble his reason is to be found in the many objects or entities of nature itself. This beauty the poet does see and feel through the perceiving senses of the body painted in them: Je ne voy pre, fleur, antre, ny rivage, Champ, roc, ny boys, ny flotz dedans le Loyr, Que, peite en eulx, il ne me semble voyr Ceste beaulte qui me tient en servage. …
Publication Year: 1993
Publication Date: 1993-03-01
Language: en
Type: article
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