PFSCL XLV, 89 (2018) ‘La Poésie sacrée et profane’: Poetry and Education in the Petites Écoles of Port-Royal C HRISTINE M C C ALL P ROBES (U NIVERSITY OF S OUTH F LORIDA ) Ces maîtres n’étaient pas des hommes ordinaires: [...] On peut juger de l’utilité de ces écoles par les hommes de mérite qui s’y sont formés. (Racine, Abrégé de l’histoire de Port-Royal) Racine was a student at the Petites Écoles de Port-Royal from 1649 to 1653, then at the collège of the city of Beauvais from 1653 to 1655, then for three years of “études libres” (1655-1658) at Port-Royal des Champs while the Petites Écoles were dispersed. In October 1658 he was sent for a year of philosophy or logic to the Collège d’Harcourt at Paris, known for its important connections to Port-Royal. Racine has provided a glimpse of these years in various writings: in his letters, in his Abrégé de l’histoire de Port-Royal, and most notably for our purpose here, in what we might term a poetic testimony—his odes on Le Paysage ou Promenade de Port-Royal-des-Champs and his Hymnes traduites du Bréviaire romain 1 . The first ode praises Port-Royal in general, while the following ones (II- VII) continue the praise, embroidering on various aspects of the natural surroundings—the landscape, the pond, the prairies, the gardens and in ode VI a combat of bulls. My previous research has demonstrated the important role of the senses in the poetic description of these “saintes demeures du 1 Scholars place the composition of this poetry, the Hymnes, or at least their first version, during the period of Racine’s studies, although they were not published until thirty years later. See, for example, chronologies such as the one furnished by Georges Forestier in Racine, Œuvres complètes, vol. I. (Paris: Gallimard. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1999) lxxiii. Subsequent references to Racine’s poetry will be to this edition and will be indicated in the text of my article. Christine McCall Probes 402 silence,/ Lieux pleins de charmes et d’attraits” (Ode I) 2 . The eyes, the ears and even the smell and taste are enchanted by the “merveilles”; jewel imagery renders the tableau as the poet addresses familiarly its essential and enduring abstract qualities, “[la] solitude féconde,” “la grâce et l’innocence”: L’on verra l’émail de tes champs Tant que la nuit, de diamants Sèmera l’hémisphère: Et tant que l’astre des saisons Dorera sa carrière, L’on verra l’or de tes moissons. (Ode I) The expected mythological allusion, to Flore, then to Pomone, broadens the descriptive impact of the odes as Port-Royal des Champs is identified metaphorically with “le palais de Flore”: Là, dis-je, des portes du Ciel, On voit de perles et de miel Choir une riche pluie, Et Flore, pour ce doux trésor, Ouvrir toute ravie, Cent petits bassins d’ambre et d’or. (Ode V) The poet’s ecstasy rivals that of Virgil in the Georgics and the Eclogues and that of the contemporary Saint-Amant (in “La Solitude,” “Le Melon,” and “L’Automne des Canaries”) as he is inspired by the physical beauty of the settings, “ce doux air, ces vives odeurs,/ Le pompeux éclat de ces fleurs,/ Dont l’herbe se colore” (Ode V) 3 . Comparing the fruits of this seemingly idyllic place to “les plus précieux/ Qu’ait cultivés Pomone,” the poet takes up again the jewel imagery: “Ils ont eu le lis pour berceau,/ L’émeraude est leur trône,/ L’or et la pourpre leur manteau” (Ode VII). If the description of nature occupies the place d’honneur in these odes, and nature itself though declared “inimitable” (Ode I) receives an abundant and varied treatment, the spiritual atmosphere is nevertheless profoundly present from the opening line evoking the “saintes demeures du silence” and most notably in Ode II. In true Augustinian fashion, the poet leads his readers from an admiration of God’s creation to the Creator himself: “L’on voit ce temple spacieux/ S’élevant dessus tous les lieux,/ Leur demander un 2 See my article “Dieu créateur et protecteur: lyrisme et spiritualité dans l’œuvre poétique de Racine”, Travaux de Littérature 21 (2008): 159-71. 3 Ibid. 164. I remind the reader of Jean Dubu’s article “Racine et les jardins” where he placed these odes in relation to Virgil and to St.-Amant’s “La Solitude”: CAIEF 34 (1982): 76. Poetry and Education in the Petites Écoles of Port-Royal 403 humble hommage 4 .” The reiterated particular (“je me plais,” “j’aperçois,” “je vois,” “mes yeux”) complements the general (“l’on voit,” “allons”) as the spiritual response is elaborated. Personal and poetic, the response is one of both reverence and action, of the contemplative and the active life. If later Racine will write of the many trials of Port-Royal in his Abrégé de l’histoire de Port-Royal and other texts, his resolve here is to adore: Non, ma plume n’entreprend pas De tracer ici vos combats, Vos jeûnes et vos veilles: Il faut, pour en bien révérer Les augustes merveilles, Et les taire et les adorer. (Ode II) Combining, then, sensory delight with a spiritual application reminiscent of devotional poets such as Jean-Baptiste Chassignet and Jean de La Ceppède, Racine exclaims: “Ô Dieu! que d’objets ravissants/ S’y viennent offrir à mes sens! ” and enumerates in a remarkable example of amplificatio the “prairies,” “plaines,” “coteaux,” and “vallons” which make up the “amas brillant et confus” before expressing his personal and poetic response: Je vois ce sacré sanctuaire, Ce grand temple, ce saint séjour Où Jésus encor chaque jour S’immole pour nous à son Père, Muse, c’est à ce doux Sauveur Que je dois consacrer mon cœur, Mes travaux et mes veilles: C’est lui de qui le puissant bras Fit toutes ces merveilles Qui nous fournissent tant d’appas. (Ode II) Writing of education received at Port-Royal, whether that of jeunes gens or his own, Racine persists in the laudatory emphatic mode. The “sainteté” and “innocence” of the odes is repeated in his Abrégé de l’histoire de Port- Royal as he insists on the dual purpose of the community’s instruction: “élever à la piété” and “former l’esprit et la raison.” The “combats” referred to obliquely in Ode II are fully elaborated in the Abrégé, with Racine attributing their cause—to some extent at least—to a jealousy of Port- Royal’s education: “Une des choses qui rendait cette maison plus recommandable, et qui peut-être aussi lui a attiré plus de jalousie, c’est l’excellente éducation qu’on y donnait à la jeunesse. Il n’y eut jamais d’asile où 4 See De Doctrina christiana I, iv, 4 (Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 1997) 80-81, where St. Augustine exposits Romans 1: 20. Christine McCall Probes 404 l’innocence et la pureté fussent plus à couvert de l’air contagieux du siècle, ni d’école où les vérités du christianisme fussent plus solidement enseignées 5 .” Racine’s emphatic admiration, “Quelle paix! quel silence! quelle charité” (56), extends to the Solitaires and the maîtres of the Petites Écoles, whether recalled as a body or particularly as in the verse portrait and the epitaph dedicated to “le grand Arnauld”: “Sublime en ses écrits, doux et simple de cœur, / Puisant la vérité jusqu’en son origine” (Œuvres complètes, éd. Picard, II: 185). As Racine explains in the Abrégé, it was to Arnauld that families came, concerned for the education of their children, concluding, “on leur avait donné des maîtres tels qu’ils les pouvaient souhaiter” (66). Assessing the utility of the instruction by its “product”, “les hommes de mérite qui s’y sont formés” and naming, among others, the historian Le Nain de Tillemont, Racine praises the instructors as a body: “Ces maîtres n’étaient pas des hommes ordinaires” and singles out Nicole, Lancelot and Arnauld, indicating titles of their pedagogical works (66). Philippe Sellier, in his preface to the remarkable work of Frédéric Delforge, Les Petites Écoles de Port-Royal, 1637-1660, notes the extensiveness of the pedagogical operation, often in the midst of persecution: “vingt-sept maîtres, et environ cent trente élèves 6 .” Jean Rohou has effectively distilled the essence of this education as it pertains to lettres: “Port-Royal a inculqué à Racine, avec une solide culture grecque, latine et biblique, une exigence de vérité dans l’analyse et dans l’expression, une connaissance raffinée du langage et de ses effets.” In his essay which focuses on the importance of Racine’s formation for the “principales bases” and vision of his theatre, Rotrou reminds us of the dual purpose of this formation—to assure “l’éducation de l’intelligence et du jugement à travers l’étude des grands textes littéraires,” or in the words of one of the maîtres, Pierre Nicole, “la vraie rhétorique [...] fondée sur la vraie morale 7 .” 5 Œuvres complètes, vol. II, éd. Raymond Picard (Paris: Gallimard. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1960) 58. Subsequent citations will be made in the text of my article. 6 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1985) 8. Subsequent references will appear in the text of my article. Delforge’s massive treatment both expands and corrects the accounts found in Sainte-Beuve’s Port-Royal and in Henri Bremond’s Histoire littéraire du sentiment religieux en France depuis la fin des guerres de religion jusqu’à nos jours, notably in vol. 4. See also, among others, Jean Mesnard, “Bremond et Port-Royal” in his La Culture du XVII e siècle (Paris: PUF, 1992) 609-19; Tony Gheeraert, “La Poésie à Port-Royal: le chant de la grâce” in Recherches des jeunes dixseptiémistes, éd. Charles Mazouer (Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 2000) Biblio 17, 321-31; and Tony Gheeraert, Le Chant de la Grâce: Port-Royal et la poésie d’Arnauld d’Andilly à Racine (Paris: Champion, 2003). 7 “Racine à Port-Royal: Hypothèses sur la formation d’un auteur” in Le Rayonnement de Port-Royal, Mélanges en l’honneur de Philippe Sellier, éds. Dominique Descotes, Poetry and Education in the Petites Écoles of Port-Royal 405 Claude Lancelot, who published in 1655 his Nouvelle Méthode pour apprendre facilement la langue grecque, was among those who galvanized both the study of Greek and the cultivation of poetry “dans toutes les langues” so that the students would be able to “aimer et révérer dans nos vers français ces mêmes vérités saintes que nous admirons et révérons dans la poésie sacrée de l’Écriture et des Pères 8 .” Delforge has established that the Greek authors undertaken included Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Pindar, Plutarch, Basil the Great, Heliodorus, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Menander, Diogenes Laërtius, and texts on the Essenes (134, 259). The pupils studied Greek literature, explicating it and translating directly into French without the customary intermediate Latin, using instead Lancelot’s Méthode which included, for the learning of Greek, rules written in French octosyllabic verse (Delforge 305). The Solitaires and the maîtres wrote and published extensively on their theories. Antoine Arnauld advised both the composition of poetry and its criticism in his Mémoire sur le règlement des études dans les lettres humaines, counseling the usefulness of learning “tout entiers” Virgil and Horace while Pierre Nicole had the students read Horace’s Art Poétique, with attention to rhetorical figures, rules and the imitation of “la belle nature”; Sacy collaborated with Nicole and Lancelot to render the Latin poets “utile sans être nuisible 9 .” In addition to Virgil and Horace, the Latin authors on the program included: Cicero, Pliny the Elder and Pliny the Younger, Quintilian, Tacitus, Philo, Quentus Curtius Rufus (Quinte-Curce), Seneca and Flavius Josephus (Delforge 134, 259). Composition and translation or version were en vigueur, with an emphasis on the latter. The testimony offered by a pupil, Pierre Thomas du Fossé, allows us to glimpse the attentiveness of the pedagogical corps to “des instructions très solides, tant pour l’étude que pour la piété.” Writing in particular of Antoine Le Maître, Antony McKenna and Laurent Thirouin (Paris: Champion, 2001) 401-14, here 403, 406. Nicole, De l’éducation d’un prince (1670) II, 37, cited in Rotrou 402, n. 5. 8 Quoted by William McCausland Stewart, “L’Éducation de Racine: le poète et ses maîtres”, CAIEF 3-5 (1953): 55-71, here 60. 9 Œuvres de messire Antoine Arnauld, éds. Hautefage, Du Parc de Bellegarde and Larrière (Lausanne, 1775-1783) 43 vols., here vol. 41: 85-98. Delforge remarks that the editors of the 1780 volume believe that the Mémoire was composed in the last years of the Petites Écoles, 1658-1660. Although Arnauld’s programme seems conceived for more advanced students, his principles are often corroborated in the works of other maîtres (Delforge 287-88). Sacy’s collaboration on Nicole and Lancelot’s Epigrammatum delectus (Paris, 1659) is attested by Nicolas Fontaine in his Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de Port-Royal (Utrecht, 1736) 2 vols., here I: 326. Delforge also cites, with regard to Nicole, the manuscript of Henri-Charles Beaubrun, Vie de Nicole, Bnf. fonds français 13898. Christine McCall Probes 406 du Fossé notes his “voix charmante” and his sharing of “plusieurs règles pour bien traduire, me faisant sentir combien l’art d’une traduction fidèle, noble et élégante, était difficile et important 10 .” If Le Maître would, in his first rule, insist on fidelity in translation, “C’est à dire d’exprimer en notre langue tout ce qui est dans le latin,” he would as well allow a certain liberty and require elegance: “il faut que nos traductions [...] paraissent comme d’autres originaux [...] et qu’elles fassent demander aux lecteurs si les ouvrages qu’on a traduits sont aussi beaux que ces traductions 11 .” A brief examination of Racine’s translations of Latin hymns will serve to test the principle of liberty advocated by his maîtres. While a first version of these hymns was composed during the poet’s adolescence, reflecting therefore immediately his instruction, a second, revised version was published in 1687 in Le Bréviaire romain en latin et en français (éd. Le Tourneux) along with translations by D’Aubigny and Sacy among others 12 . Forestier underscores the liberty of Racine’s expression in the poet’s rendering of “Le mardi à matines” where the Latin “Aufer tenebras mentium; / Fuga catervas daemonum” is adapted freely with the insertion of “grâce invincible” which drew the attention of censors: “Répands sur nous le feu de ta grâce invincible; / Que tout l’enfer fuie au son de ta voix” (931 and 1672, n. 2). In my article “Dieu créateur et protecteur: lyrisme et spiritualité dans l’œuvre poétique de Racine,” I have indicated other modifications by Racine that would have drawn the attention of the censors, most notably his reiterated emphasis on the heart’s response to God’s love, a response that would have placed him in league with the contritionnaires 13 . Racine’s liberty of expression is also evident in word choice, periphrasis, sensorial imagery and a general fleshing out of the succinct Latin, the latter to be sure necessitated by the French verse form adopted, the alexandrine 10 See Le Maître’s Règles de traduction française in Nicolas Fontaine, Memoires pour servir à l’histoire de Port-Royal, see above note 9, here II: 176-78. For the relation of Du Fossé, see his Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de Port-Royal (Cologne, 1739) I: 291-92 and appendix XI: 329-31. 11 Du Fossé, see note 10 above. See also Antoine Le Maistre, “Préface”, Sermons de saint Bernard et saint Augustin (1658), cited in Rotrou 405, see above note 7. 12 For a reprise of the important research on the dating and revision of Racine’s hymns as well as the condemnation and the authorization of the recueil, see Forestier, éd. Œuvres complètes 1: notes at 1669-72. My references to the hymns (I: 929-42) will indicate title in the text of this article. 13 See note 2 here. In that article (167, n. 29), I remind the reader of the long and contentious controversy between the contritionnaires who held that the regret of sins should be based on love for God versus the attritionnaires who emphasized the fear of Hell. See Pascal’s X e Provinciale, Boileau’s Epître XII “Sur l’Amour de Dieu” for further testimony from the period. Poetry and Education in the Petites Écoles of Port-Royal 407 alternating with the hemistich, the octosyllable or the decasyllable. In “Le lundi à matines,” for example, the polysemic Latin “mentis” is rendered by “cœur” and “Te mentis ardor ambiat” is transformed to the prayer to God, “Qu’à te chercher notre cœur empressé/ T’offre ses premiers vœux.” Elsewhere “cœur” is freely inserted into the French as the desire is expressed, “Que l’eau d’une foi vive abreuve notre cœur,” replacing the sober “Potusque noster sit fides” (“Le lundi à laudis”). There are sufficient instances of substitutions, additions and free interpretations pertaining to “cœur” to warrant a study in itself. Examples of periphrasis abound and may combine with the poet’s accent on the emotions or with a mythological allusion, both features of early modern devotional poetry. Thus the Latin “Et ore te canentium/ Lauderis in perpetuum” is modified to “Fais que, t’ayant chanté dans ce séjour de larmes,/ Nous te chantions dans le repos des cieux” (“Le lundi à matines”). Requirements of rime enter into the transformations as “larmes” rimes with the “armes” of another addition, here a metaphor, “tes bontés sont nos armes.” In his joining of mythological allusions to Christian hymns (“Olympe” to represent the reverence of all for God, for example, in “Le mercredi à laudes” and “Le vendredi à laudes”), Racine was following a practice common to authors of both adaptations and original compositions. As a student in the Petites Écoles he may have read devotional poets such as Jean de La Ceppède who theorized: “Nous usons licitement des noms et des comparaisons des choses prophanes visibles, parce que c’est par elles que nous sommes portez à la cognoissance des invisibles 14 .” In any case he would have been familiar with Ronsard’s Hymnes which are furnished with mythological beings such as Hercules as a prefiguration of Christ. For the use of nature, mythology and the senses in praise of God, the maîtres and their pupils needed to look no further than to Saint Augustine who in his exposition of Romans 1: 20 (“For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse [...]”) authorized the use of “choses crées”, pagan vessels or riches, in advocating the “juste usage” of culture and the sensorial as crucial in transporting images to the “sanctuaire immense” of memory 15 . Poetry pervaded the life, the spirit and the education of Port-Royal and the Petites Écoles. For Madeleine de Scudéry, in the idyllic portrait she paints in Clélie of “la douceur de la vie” of this “lieu [...] extraordinaire,” poetry is 14 Les Théorèmes sur le sacré mystère de nostre redemption (Geneva: Droz, 1966, reproduction of the Toulouse edition, 1613-1622) II, 499. 15 De Doctrina christiana I, iv, 4 and II, xl, 60 (Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 1997) and Confessions II, X, viii. 12-x.17 (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1994). Christine McCall Probes 408 among the admirable occupations of the “illustres solitaires”: “Les uns s’adonnent à la connoissance des choses purement celestes, les autres à la morale, quelques autres encore à la poësie, & tous ensemble à des choses vertueuses & utiles.” Depicting one of the “sages” and “admirables” as Timante, Robert Arnauld d’Andilly, who, as Delforge reminds us, was “[l’] animateur de Port-Royal des Champs à partir de 1645, [et] suit de très près tout ce qui se passe aux Petites Écoles” (196), Madeleine de Scudéry includes in his moral portrait his poetic talent: “Timante a [...] un esprit d’une tres grand estenduë, [...] il est né avec un grand genie pour les vers, & il en fait qu’Hesiode ou Homere pourroient advoüer sans honte s’ils ressuscitoient 16 .” The poetry that so infused the spirit of Port-Royal and the Petites Écoles and which inspired numerous publications pedagogical, theoretical and theological, is receiving today wide attention as the scholarly community rediscovers works such as those of Arnauld d’Andilly, analyzed perceptively by Anne Mantero and Tony Gheeraert 17 . I hope that the present study of “le cas Racine” will contribute modestly to a better understanding of poetry as an important educative tool extending to the pupils’ character and religious devotion as well as to their literary formation. As “le bon élève” des Petites Écoles, Racine would write in Ode II: “Muse, c’est à ce doux Sauveur/ Que je dois consacrer mon cœur,/ Mes travaux et mes veilles.” 16 (Paris: Courbé, 1657) 10 vols. Troisième partie. Livre second. 1138, 1139, 1149, 1141-1142. Jean Mesnard demonstrates the reality of this “poétisation de Port- Royal des Champs” in his remarkable essay “Du Réel au romanesque: Port-Royal dans la Clélie de Madeleine de Scudéry” in Aspects du classicisme et de la spiritualité, Mélanges en l’honneur de Jacques Hennequin, éd. Alain Cullière (Metz: Centre Michel Baude, U de Metz, 1996) 353-72. 17 For Gheeraert, see note 6 above. For Mantero, see her fine analysis “Arnauld d’Andilly, entre ‘liberté de la poésie’ et classicisme” in Le Rayonnement de Port- Royal, see note 7 above, here 237-55.