Sev, Maurice

In connection with the loss (in the flames of religious wars ) of archival documents and parochial books, it is quite difficult to restore the biography of Sav. The version of its Italian origin is not true. Sev belonged to a well-to-do Lyon family; his father served as a town counselor. It is possible that Maurice received his home education according to the humanistic model, and in the period from 1530 to 1533 he attended lectures on literature and archeology at the University of Avignon . Returning to Lyon, he rotated in a literary environment dominated by Neolatin poets ( Etienne Dole , Nicola Bourbon ) and followers of Clement Marot (Estorg de Beaulieu, Bonaventure Deperier ). After a visit to Lyon by King Francis I in 1536 and the unexpected death of his eldest son, the dauphin of France, Francis III, Sev took part in the compilation of the mourning collective collection. Apparently, in the same 1536, Sev met the poet Pernetta Duguitet ; experienced an unrequited passion for her that lasted until her death ( 1545 ). The acquaintance of Maro and Seva dates back to November 1536. In 1537 he led the festivities on the occasion of the ceremonial entry into Lyon of Cardinal of Ferrara and the Archbishop of Lyon Ippolito II d'Este . In 1548, Sev led celebrations on the occasion of the ceremonial entry into King Henry II of Lyon; since then he has been considered the official poet. After 1555 his tracks are lost. According to different versions, Sav could go to Germany , turn into Protestantism, or die from the plague epidemic ^[2] .

Sev and Laura's Tomb

In 1533, Sev turned to the study of the genealogy of Laura , the beloved who lived in the vicinity of Avignon Petrarch (previously the commentator of Petrarch Velutello indicated that Laura belonged to the genus De Sadows , whose castle was located near the village of Vaucluse ). In the chapel of the Holy Cross of the Minorite Church, he managed to find ashes with a medallion, where the letters MLMJ could be disassembled, which Sev interpreted as “Madonna Laura Morta Jace”, Here lies the dust of Madonna Laura ; a fragment of the manuscript was kept nearby with the half-erased text of the sonnet , which Sav attributed to Petrarch (although Italian researchers of different times had a different opinion and, moreover, considered Sav himself himself the true author). Thus, Sav attributed to himself the honor of opening the grave of Laura. The whole story is known from the words of Jean de Turn , who worked with Sav of the Lyon publisher, and its credibility raises doubts ^[3] .

In 1535, Sev met the publisher and poet Etienne Dole; He published his first essay - a translation from Spanish of the book by Juan de Flores “The Sorrowful End of Flameta” ( La déplourable fin de Flamete , based on the novel by J. Boccaccio “Fiametmet”). For a compilation to the death of Dauphin, Recueil de vers latins et de vulgaires pluséurs poëtes françoys composés sur leresres de feu Monsieur le Daulphin (along with Sav, Joel , Jean Salmon Macrin , Nicola Bourbon, Mellen de Saint Gele , Marot and other poets participated) , Sev wrote five Latin epigrams and three poems in French, including the lengthy (228 verses) ecologue " Arion ".

Blazones

At the end of 1535, at the initiative of Clement Marot, who was at that time in Ferrara, there was held a contest of blazons about the female body - poetic fragments dedicated to one or another part of the body of a beautiful lady. “The impetus for the organization of this competition was the blues-like epigram -“ blason ”Maro“ About the beautiful nipple. ”” ^[4] Following Marot, according to M. M. Bakhtin ,

“Poets of the epoch began to blink various parts of the female body in vain: mouth, ear, tongue, tooth, eye, eyebrow, etc .; they produced a literal anatomical fissure of the female body. ”

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Sav composed the eyebrows ( Sourcil ) and Tear ( Larme ); it was they who preferred the patroness Maro, the wife of Ercole II d'Este Rene French . Along with the writings of Antoine Hérôé , Claude Chappuis, and other poets, they were included in the collection Anatomic Blasons on the Female Body ( Les Blasons Anatomiques Du Corps Féminin , 1536 ). Later, Sev composed three more blazons: “Chelo” ( Front ), “Percy” ( Gorge ) and “Vozdyanie” ( Soupir ).

Delia's Poem

The work on the lengthy poem “Delia, the subject of the highest virtue” ( Délie object de plus haute vertu ) began in 1536 ; the first edition was published in 1544 by the Lyon publisher Antoine Constantin; the second edition was published twenty years later in Paris, after which the poem was forgotten for a long time (until the second half of the XIX century).

The poem is inspired by love for Pernett Duguitet, however, according to A. D. Mikhailov , “traces of a real love affair are found in 449 decimals (dizens) with difficulty” ^[6] . Unlike Petrarch’s “Book of Songs,” the death of a lady does not open the second part of the book; completes her death of the beloved.

In the poem, a variety of poetic influences intersected - from the Provencal troubadours ( Arnaut Daniel , Jofre Rüdel ) to the school of great rhetoric of the 15th century. But first of all “Delia” is an original synthesis of Petrarch’s poetic tradition (the book of Seva is usually considered the first structural analogue of “Kantsoner” in France) and the Renaissance emblematic tradition - which after the publication of several French editions of the Alchiati book (the first of them dates from 1536 ) already established in Paris , but in Lyon was not developed; The fashion for the relevant publications in this region was introduced by SeV. The first edition of Delia included 50 engraved emblems, with every nine poems interrupted by motto vignette ; The motto text, more or less corrected in accordance with the poetic size, appeared in the last line of the next dizen). This extremely sophisticated and at the same time strict architectonics was put at the service of deliberately hindered philosophical and aesthetic reflection, which undoubtedly links the poem with Mannerism . The emblems of "Delia" used various mythological images ( Phoenix , Orpheus , Narcissus , a lady with a unicorn ).

Name Interpretations

Already in the XVI century, the name "Delia" ( (fr.) Délie ) was attempted to be interpreted as the anagram "Ideas" ( (fr.) L'Idée ); this corresponds to the spirit of the neo-Platonic component of Sev's philosophy, although its non-Platonism has its own characteristics - Delia is presented in the poem as an embodiment of the perfection of the world, and not as a reflection of Divine beauty and a subject of spiritual austerity (as it should be in accordance with the ideas of Marsilio Ficino ). Another possible interpretation is mythological in nature: Delia - a native of the island of Delos Artemis , sister of Apollo,; it emits a cold light that fills the beloved with substance — perhaps a pernicious one; purity is combined in her with the hard -heartedness of Diana the Huntress . She is endowed with mysterious cosmic power; the goddess of the moon , she is distinguished by impermanence and variability.

As G. K. Kosikov pointed out,

“In general, the concept of Seva in the poem is as follows: among the perfect creations of God, Delia is the most perfect; her adoration is the adoration of the personified Virtue, and the path of the hero appears as the search for the Ideal, passing through three successive stages: Beauty - Grace - Virtue; moreover, this search is not devoid of torment and drama, since it requires overcoming and sublimation of sensual passion ”

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Eclogue Ivnyak

In the lengthy allegorical poem “The Willow, an eclogue about solitary life” ( La Saulsaye, Eglogue de la vie solitaire , 1547 ), Sev follows the tradition of the bucolic poetry of antiquity ( Horace , Virgil ) and Renaissance ( Jacopo Sannadzaro ). At the same time, the place of action of the eclogue is quite realistic and is localized in the vicinity of Lyon. “Ivnyak” is interesting with a special experience of nature, which “turns out to be the last and only stronghold of a man defending his spiritual dignity” ^[8] , as well as the musicality of the poetic system, the use of almost impressionistic means of expression.

Poem "Microcosm"

"Willow" ends with the theme of the fall of Adam and exile from Paradise ; Adam and Eve reappear in the pages of the last essay of Sav, the religious and philosophical poem of the encyclopedic content Microcosm ( Le Microcosme ). She was published posthumously in 1562 ; there is reason to say that the work on the poem was completed in 1559 ^[9] . The poem consists of three books on a thousand verses in each and the final tercet (thus, in total, 3003 verses; as in Delia, Sev here pays tribute to esoteric numerology ). In Microcosm, the acts of the human race from Adam to the 16th century are glorified. In the poem, which absorbs a variety of influences - from the “ State ” of Plato and “Sleep of Scipio” Macrobius to Nikolay Kuzansky and the “Praise of Folly” by Erasmus of Rotterdam - the motive of human dignity characteristic of Renaissance humanism ( dignitas hominis ) sounds. In the text, there are arguments rich in modern sevu with scientific vocabulary. “Sometimes the Microcosm turns into a dry, versioned encyclopedia, where the compressed material leads to a bizarre heap of technical terms” ^[10] . The question of the influence on the “Microcosm” of the ideas of Gnosticism remains open.

• Hunkeler Th. Le vif du sens: corps et poésie selon Maurice Scève. Genève: Droz, 2003.

• Rimsky-Korsakov V. А. Pleiades and Renaissance dramaturgy // History of French literature. Vol. 1. M.-L., USSR Academy of Sciences, 1946. — ​​pp. 270-271.
• Vipper Yu. B. Poetry of the first half of the XVI century. // The history of world literature. Volume 3. M., Science, 1985. - p. 239.
• (eng.) Richard Sieburth . Emblems of Desire. Selections from the "Délie" of Maurice Scève.
• (fr.) WJA Bots . Maurice Scève, Pernette du Guillet, ou la victoire deux voix sur les escarpements de la syntaxe
• (fr.) Albert Baur . Maurice Scève et la renaissance lyonnaise: étude d'histoire littéraire P., Champion, 1906
• (fr.) Hans Staub . Le thème de la lumière chez maurice scève
• (fr.) Hans Staub . Scève, poète hermétique?
• (fr.) Brosse, Jacques . Scève, Maurice // Dictionnaire encyclopédique de la littérature française. P., Robert Laffont, 1999. - P. 948-949.
• (fr.) Charpentier, Francoise. Délie objet de la plus haute vertu // Ibidem, p. 262-263.
• (fr.) James Helgeson . Harmonie divine et subjectivité littéraire chez Maurice Scève
• (fr.) Andrzej Dziedzic . La dimension médicale de l'oeuvre poètique de mauice scève
• (ital.) Silvia Riva . "Le basilisque et le miroir". Riflessioni attorno ad alcuni emblemi della Délie, object de plus haute vertu di Maurice Scève (1544)

Texts

• (fr.) Délie object de plus haulte vertu. Genève, Droz, 2004.
• (fr.) Microcosme. Lyon, Jean de Tournes, 1562