Poésies diverses

In-4 of 9 leaves, 405 pp.
Flexible ivory vellum, slight foxing inherent to the paper. Contemporary binding.

223 x 171 mm.

Brébeuf, G. de. Miscellaneous Poems.
Paris, A. de Sommaville, 1658.

Very rare first edition inscribed “To Monseigneur Foucquet” Superintendent of Finances.
Lachèvre, I, 170-171.

Brébeuf was not only a widely read precious poet, but also a highly regarded burlesque writer and, indeed, a genuine poet—certainly emphatic, but neither lacking in imagination, wit, nor vigor.

He was a friend of Conrart, Ménage, Chapelain, Mézeray, Corneille (whom he admired), Claude Auvry, Bishop of Coutances and later treasurer of the Sainte-Chapelle—the “Terrible Prelate” of the Lutrin—who was his protector. “Always ill and always unhappy,” Georges de Brébeuf began as a frequenter of salons and a paid poet, composing frivolous, lively, elegant, and ironic verses on commission. His Gageure—one hundred and fifty epigrams and madrigals against painted women—a literary tour de force—earned him the esteem of literary salons alongside Balzac and Voiture, yet his nature is livelier and more spontaneous than that of his rivals, and his melancholy already feels thoroughly modern to us. A society poet who handles free verse with more ease than any of his contemporaries, Brébeuf also became a burlesque author, often a successful rival to Scarron in L’Eneide travestie and—after La Pharsale—in a Lucan Parodied in Playful Verse. He established his reputation mainly with his translation of Lucan’s Pharsalia. Rather than a translation, his work is a free imitation, a paraphrase; his intent, he says, is “to equal” his model “in the excellent passages, to surpass in the mediocre.” There were natural affinities between his imagination and that of Lucan: moreover, the subject allowed him to satisfy his love of grandeur and his taste for emphasis, which is also evident in his Poetic Eulogies. These Eulogies are panegyrics in which Brébeuf celebrates the glory of Fouquet or Mazarin, the king’s exploits, the merits of Claude Auvry, or the victory at the Dunes; they abound in pompous embellishments but certain vigorous, well-metered lines reveal that the author deserved better than the feeble praise— “Despite his obscure jumble—At times Brébeuf sparkles”—that Boileau, after so much harsh criticism, granted him. “The author of the Pharsalia” dedicated to Mazarin, who had granted him a meager pension, his Solitary Conversations, which he wrote in the home of his younger brother, the parish priest of Venoix, near Caen, where he had come, at the end of a life beset by worries and turmoil, “Far from the world and its noise, to enjoy shade and coolness,” and which he did not have time to complete. There he says farewell to frivolous and worldly thoughts, seeking happiness in meditation and the contemplation of nature.

The work is animated by a noble lyricism, a sincere passion, which lift it above other contemporary works of the same inspiration, and by a language sometimes akin to that of Corneille.

Precious copy preserved in its period vellum binding from the Prunier de Saint-André family; Grenoblois parliamentarians of the 17th century, with their armorial bookplate. This bookplate was used by the grandsons of Artus II Prunier de Saint-André, and perhaps by his son Laurent II (1579‑1650).

The library preserved at the Château d'Uriage, by the Counts of Saint-Ferriol, was sold in Grenoble in three sessions in May 1937: Catalogue of the books of the château d'Uriage library, former library of the Prunier de Saint-André family, to be sold in Grenoble on 10, 11, and 12 May 1937, Grenoble, Repelin, 1937, 8vo, 63 pp, 423 items. Books from this library are rare on the market.