5 - ‘Compasser les rimes’

Summary

Although the work of Gautier displays an ample range of rhetorical devices, his preferred vehicle of virtuosity is, as we have seen, paronomasia (annominatio). This love of wordplay reaches its culmination in his rhymes, yet no systematic study of his rhyming techniques has been made, thus leaving a serious gap in the history of French versification. I have tried to remedy this neglect in the present chapter. Given the amplitude of the Miracles, in which a clear perception of Gautier's rhyming techniques is easily lost, I have extracted all the most characteristic examples, classified them according to a fairly pragmatic taxonomy, and listed them as a sort of catalogue, which, I hope, will form a fitting conclusion to this study by furnishing a powerful affirmation of Gautier's truly extraordinary virtuosity.

The paradoxical combination of his sincere humility and an apparently unrestrainable passion for rich rhyme, which we shall attempt to explain in our final chapter, occasionally leads to disclaimers which are most likely ironic. In the First Prologue to Book 2, as we have seen, Gautier seems to distance himself from the literary practices of secular poets:

Vous grant signeur, vous damoysel,

Qui a compas et a cisel

Tailliez et compassez les rimes

‘arrange’

Equivoques et leonimes,

Les biauz ditiez et les biaus contes

Por conter as roys et as contes,

Por Dieu, ne m'escharnissiez pas

Se je ne di tot a compas.

N'ai pas les mos toz compassez.

Se de biau dire me passez,

‘surpass’

Avoir n'i doi honte ne blasme.

(2 Pr 1 89–99)

We might be tempted to read this passage as a disingenuous use of a humility formula, found in many Old French writers: an expression of humility because Gautier is not seeking the approval of secular writers, but of his one counsellor, Our Lady, to whom he directs, exclusively, ‘ma povre cogitation’ (103); a display of disingenuousness because Gautier thereby draws attention to his verbal skill which he knows is in no way inferior to that of worldly writers and which is indeed called for by the exalted status of the dedicatee, ‘la virge monde / par cui Diex a mondé le monde’ (123–4). The word compasser in the passage above has the basic sense of Latin disponere ‘to arrange’, but a number of other senses subsist, whilst passer (98), more unusually, here seems to have the sense of ‘surpass’.