François de Malherbe
born 1555, in or near Caen, Fr.
died Oct. 16, 1628, Paris
French poet who described himself as
un excellent arrangeur de syllabes and
theoretician whose insistence upon
strict form, restraint, and purity of
diction prepared the way for French
Classicism.
Malherbe received a Protestant education
at Caen and Paris and later at the
universities of Basel (1571) and
Heidelberg (1573) but was shortly
converted to a lukewarm Catholicism.
In 1577 he went to Provence as
secretary to the governor, Henri
d’Angoulême. His first published poem
was Les Larmes de Saint Pierre (1587;
“The Tears of St. Peter”), a florid
imitation of Luigi Tansillo’s Lagrime di
San Pietro. His friendship with two
lawyers of Aix, the Stoic philosopher
Guillaume du Vair and the
extraordinarily learned Nicolas-Claude
Fabri de Peiresc, developed his
character and allowed his genius to
mature. In 1600 an ode to the new queen,
Marie de Médicis, made his name more
widely known.
In 1605 Malherbe went to Paris,
supported by his friends Peiresc and du
Vair and by Cardinal Duperron. Henry IV
was neither greatly interested in poetry
nor notably generous, but Malherbe
attained the position of court poet and
a modest living from court patronage. He
gathered a group of disciples, of whom
Honorat de Bueil Racan and François
Maynard are the best known, and much of
his critical influence was exercised in
the form of sharp verbal thrusts, some
of them preserved in Racan’s life of him
and in the pages devoted to him in
Gédéon Tallemant des Réaux’s
Historiettes (c. 1659; published 1834).
Malherbe’s prose writings consist of
translations of Livy and Seneca; about
200 letters to Peiresc, of interest for
their picture of court life; and his
commentary on the works of the poet
Philippe Desportes. These notes are
detailed and entirely negative,
fastening critically on minute points of
workmanship. Nevertheless, certain
positive principles emerge by
implication: verbal harmony, propriety,
intelligibility, and, above all, the
conception of the poet as craftsman
rather than prophet.
Malherbe’s own poetic work shows
poverty of imagination; he wrote little
and slowly, repeating his ideas, images,
and rhymes. But there is a dignity and
even grandeur in the harmony and
strength of his best poems. In
essentials, French verse retained the
characteristics stamped on it by
Malherbe up to the Romantic period and
beyond.
