Les Œuvres du sieur Théophile

Copy preserved in its contemporary vellum binding.

Octavo, (11) leaves, (1) blank leaf, 280 pp., (6) leaves, 134 pp. (misnumbered 114), 172 pp. (misnumbered 137). Full ivory vellum, smooth spine, calligraphed title on spine, foxing, marginal dampstains, scattered browning. Binding of the period.

174 x 103 mm.

Viau, Théophile de. The Works of Sieur Théophile, Divided into Three Parts. The first contains the Immortality of the Soul, with several other pieces. The Second, the Tragedies. The Third is the Collection of all the pieces he composed during his imprisonment until his death. Arranged in order, as you will see in the following Table. In addition, it is augmented with the Letter against Balzac, along with the solitude of Sieur S. Amant. Dedicated to the bright Minds of this time. Lyon, Claude Chastellard, 1632.

Rare edition of the Works of Théophile de Viau (1590-1626).Tchemerzine, V, 866.

“Théophile de Viau is the most read poet of his time, a poet passionate about freedom, eager to live as he wishes and to write as he pleases, driven by his temperament and not constrained by rules.”(Lagarde and Michard – Hatier).

Théophile, once at the height of favor, would follow his king to Languedoc, witness the siege of Clairac, his hometown, and in 1622 abjure the religion of his childhood. In vain. He would escape neither the scandal, worsened still in 1623 by the publication of the second collection of his works and especially of the Parnasse satyrique, nor its most dire consequences: Théophile, on the run, is tried in absentia and condemned to the stake.

On August 19, the poet's effigy and his works are burned in Place de Grève. Arrested in September, taken to the prison of Châtelet, he would live there from 1623 to 1625 and write some of his most lasting pieces: the “Letter from Théophile to his Brother” and the “House of Sylvie,” a series of ten odes begun at Chantilly, at the home of his protector, Henri de Montmorency.

Thanks to the intervention of his beloved friend des Barreaux, and the clumsiness of his adversaries, Théophile would escape the stake. Banished, then pardoned, he would die as a result of his captivity, a year after his release, at the age of 36.

“His ‘Poetic Works’ would gain such success in the 17^th century that the glory of even Malherbe would pale in comparison. Does the best of Théophile lie in the stripped-down prose of the letters, the ‘Apology to the King’, the Latin novella ‘Larissa’, the ‘Fragments of a Comic History’, or in the flamboyant lyricism of his tragedies, ‘Pasiphae’ and ‘Pyramus and Thisbe’? More musical than Racan, more robust than Tristan, the bird Théophile passes more fortunately through the centuries than he did through his own time.” (Dictionary of Authors, A. Duminaret).

Several of his admirers did not hesitate to use hyperbolic epithets to define him: “Apollo of our age,” “King of minds,” “Light of French bards,” “Immortal spirit”... Saint-Amant, especially in the piece placed at the head of the Works of Théophile de Viau from 1621, speaks of his friend in the following terms: “This great and divine Oracle, / Who shows in all he says / The effects of some miracle,” while the young Tristan L’Hermite, in a letter from autumn 1625, shows he considered him a true master: “You complain of Apollo with such grace that it seems you have no reason to complain. All your writings shine so strongly with his divine gifts that you will have trouble convincing him of ingratitude, no matter how long you have followed him. If all those whose hair has turned white from watching over Parnassus were as favored by the Muses as you, great Writers like you would not be so rare, and many of the great minds of this century would wish to have earned your glory at the cost of all the persecutions you have endured and the fever that torments you.” Georges de Scudéry, undoubtedly the most fervent to praise him, in an ode written while he was confined in the Conciergerie, designates him with periphrases such as: “Phoebus in prison,” “God of verse,” “great Immortal Spirit [whose] fame all of France / Could not confine.” In the Tomb of Théophile that he placed at the beginning of his 1632 edition of the poet’s complete works, the same Scudéry imagines Malherbe and Ronsard paying him homage, adding that his renown will be eternal because there is nothing to criticize in his work. A few years later, in his edition of a selection of Théophile’s French and Latin letters, after stating in the dedication to Cardinal Richelieu that his friend and master is “one of the foremost Minds of our age,” Jean Mairet finishes his Notice to the reader by asserting that “Montaigne and he are the two Senecas of our age and our language.” (G. Saba, Théophile de Viau, a Rebellious Poet).

Provenance: Manuscript ex-libris “Guyon 1700” and “1704” on the blank leaf.