Marguerite-Eléonore Clotilde of Small valley-Chalys

Marguerite-Éléonore Clotilde of Small valley-Chalys , Dame of Surville (born towards 1405 with Vallon-Pont-d'Arc, died towards 1498) is a French poetess. Its poetries, only published in the beginning of the 19th century, raised enthusiasm before being suspected of literary hoax.

Its life

Hardly eleven years old, it translated into worms, and with an early talent, an ode of Pétrarque. Misfortunes which followed the insanity of Charles VI having made leave the capital with a great number of families, they sought an asylum on banks of the the Rhone, the Isere and the Durance, where the Dauphin counted many partisans. Clotilde had as partners several Parisian, whose spirit and taste positively contributed to form to it his. In 1421, it knew and loved Bérenger de Surville, young man twenty-two year old, and married it the same year, in spite of the still recent loss of his/her mother. Hardly married, Bérenger was obliged to go to join the army of Charles VII, then Dauphin. It is during this absence that Clotilde composed her first Héroïde, in which one finds the violence of fires of Sapho. It is claimed that this part having been shown with famous the Alain Chartier, it says that the author the air of the court would never have . It is added that from this judgment was born the antipathy and the contempt from Clotilde for the royal poête.

During the seven years of its union with Berenger, it dealt with redesigning the great poem which it had begun under the title of Lygdamir and inserted it in the plan of its Phélypeïde . She undertook also the heroic and pastoral novel Chastel of love . Having lost its husband with the Head office of Orleans, an only son, still in low age, remained to him to comfort it. Very whole with the education of this child, it dealt with re-examining its first works and correcting them. One even believes that at that time it had to begin memories which are lost, and whose first books contained the history of the old French poetry.

Towards 1450, it Maria her son with Héloïse de Goyon de Vergy, which died in 1468. This wire followed closely his wife to the tomb, and Clotilde had then of consolation only in the company of her Camille grand-daughter, who never gave up it and renonça for it with the marriage. Camille died in forty-five years, and Clotilde, more than octogenarian, solved to pave to breathe for the last time the fresh air of the place of her birth. It is there that she learned the news from the victory of Fornoue and qu she composed her royal song addressed to Charles VIII. For this time, she has not written anything any more. Clotilde was old of more than 90 years when she died. It is believed that it was with Vessaux, and that one buried it there in the same tomb which contained ashes of his/her son, Héloïse and Camille.

The mystery of the authenticity of works

The manuscript of poetries of Clotilde would then have passed from generations in generations to the hands of Joseph Etienne, marquis de Surville who disappeared brutally on the scaffold in October 1798. In 1803, a writer, who formed part later of the Academy of the inscriptions, Charles Vanderbourg published a volume containing, after long and curious foreword, forty pieces of poetry, inspired the ones by a feeling tender and maternal filled of grace and softness, the others by patriotic thoughts and quarrelsome. Admiration was general, the praise was unanimous; but various authorized critics doubted the authenticity of these charming worms. According to them, one found in these poems of the modern ideas, of the always significant efforts, sometimes unhappy, to imitate the style of the 15th century, the similarities striking with modern works.

Mystification achieves to it quasi unanimity

The history told by Vanderbourg of discovered manuscripts of Clotilde was treated of fable; one saw in these compositions only recent productions all. Defenders rose; Vanderbourg maintained its assertions vigorously; it was supported by a clever, but too friendly writer of the paradox, Charles Nodier. But the most accredited scientists decided against the authenticity of work, while sometimes mingling with their judgments with the erroneous assertions due has what the true situation of the things was not well-known for them.

Raynouard put poetries of Clotilde de Surville at the same row as those which Chatterton had wanted to do to pass like the work of an old unknown poet named Bowley; he saw in these worms only one play of spirit, a skilful fraud, and without anything to specify, he gave to understand that it was in Vanderbourg which it was necessary to be caught of a quite excusable wrong, since it added new richnesses to French poetry.

A few years later, Villemain, taking again this question, in the course of literature which he professed, announced the volume published in 1803 like a skilful trickery, and he added: The monument is curious; but it is a small high Gothic construction with pleasure by a modern architect. he allotted the work to Joseph Etienne, marquis de Surville, a descendant of Clotilde. In 1839, the scientist and judicious Dannou, reading at the Institute a note on Vanderbourg (death since twelve years), discussed the things and decided to recognize in the former member of the Academy of the inscriptions the author of poetries of Clotilde: the best pieces of the collection had left its feather, and nobody could reproach him a fiction to which one owed a pleasant and sometimes advantageous reading .

Finally, the partial authenticity seems proven

At the end of the 19th century, Antonin Macé undertook to clear up this curious problem. It brought new elements, having between the hands what one had not had hitherto, a bulky correspondence where twenties and one appeared written letters by Vanderbourg in the widow of the unfortunate marquis de Surville. It established that Vanderbourg had been in good faith in all this business, that he was not the author of any trickery and that he had not composed only one of the parts of which he was the editor. In the first of the letters addressed to Madam de Surville, Vanderbourg says that he knew the marquis in Germany, that he obtained the communication of some of the pieces of poetry which the emigrated officer sometimes read like belonging to a volume of poetries composed by one of his grandmothers; it offers to Madam de Surville to be the editor of these poetries; she will preserve all the benefit which this publication will be able to give. Madam de Surville did not have any manuscript of her husband; but one found them at a lady of Puy which had given him an asylum. Three volumes of poetries, under the name of Clotilde, entirely written hand of the marquis, were given to his widow, who entrusted them to Vanderbourg. This one was occupied with activity and intelligence of their publication; it gave place to many difficulties, which were finally overcome and whose letters of the editor recall all the history.

One of the circumstances most curious about all this, it is that the printer Didot, finding passages which seemed to him impressed of royalism, feared to be compromised and it made ask the approval of the Minister of Interior Department Chaptal. This one, not daring to take on him to solve the difficulty, referred to the first consul about it, Napoleon Bonaparte but it was at the instant of the failure of the Paix of Amiens, and the Head of the State at the head had many other businesses. Joséphine de Beauharnais intervened, and poetries appeared without cuttings off. Success was complete but many voice rose to deny the authenticity of these worms.

Vanderbourg was strong piqué of these criticisms. It did not doubt the existence of Clotilde de Surville; but he admitted however that the marquis had put his in the collection which he had left in Puy. he saw there an excellent original table improved by skilful hands . Macé believes that it is there indeed the last word of the question. Its research showed how much one was mistaken by presenting Vanderbourg like the inventor Clotilde and he did not write only one of the worms published under this name. One could think that the marquis de Surville is the single author of the work which excites so many debates but two powerful arguments are opposed to this assumption: initially the nullity of the poetic talent of the marquis, noted too well by the tests that its family preserves and who are below the poor one; then by the letter which he wrote its death day before in which of Surville is worried, with sharpest solicitude, for the honor of its family, of immortal works of its grandmother.

According to Macé, it is not allowed any more to question the existence, at the 15th century, of a woman having composed of the worms inspired by the maternal love, the marital affection and of noble patriotic feelings; but one could not claim that these worms reached us in their originality, in their primitive roughness. They were improved, embellished, spoiled. De Surville sometimes renovated, sometimes aged. What did it preserve? what did it make disappear? Nobody could say it. A letter, written by one of his/her friends, of Brazais, which played a part in the publication of 1803, said that the marquis had informed him of his project of edition, had required of him to correct certain pieces, adds that Surville had lent has Clotilde of old unimportant words and had sometimes given him a too modern elegance.

A second collection of the worms of Clotilde was published, in 1828, by Charles Nodier and of Roujoux, under the title of new Poèsies and the assumption are manifest here. These are not only modern ideas that one lends to Clotilde, they are still perfectly foreign knowledge at the 15th century. In a poem on the Natural and the universe , one sees with surprised Clotilde taking the defense of the astronomical system of Copernic (it had hardly been born), to refute Lucrèce (of which work was printed only after the time when one makes live Clotilde), and, which is stronger, to mention the seven satellites of Saturn, which were discovered only well after the 15th century. The volume of 1826 is especially filled by notes with pure imagination on poetesses who did not exist. This unfortunate publication made the greatest wrong to the cause of Clotilde. Its right discredit struck of an annoying by-effect the volume of 1803. In spite of the efforts of Macé, one can say that the problem is not completely solved.

Vanderbourg is definitively excluded from any share in the composition of poetries of Clotilde; but the existence of this woman as a literary author, whose no writer of the 15th century and the 16th century did not pronounce the name, is not yet well shown. ----

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