Les paradoxes d’un poète: Piron et la postérité

Abstract

Once famous for his scandalous Ode to Priapus and quite forgotten thereafter, Piron is an author worth being read anew to gain an insight into how a poet could claim a place in the civil and literary society. Considering posterity with irony is a common demeanour among poets in his time. Some of them are aware that they are practising a fugitive form of art and self-mockery can merge with praise of their dignified vocation in their works. Resolute evanescence and wilful levity can lead to a complex conception of how they want to accede to or hide from posterity. Piron, as some other poets, yearns for an hic et nunc recognition, proclaiming: «Être c’est tout, avoir été n’est rien» (to be is everything, to have been is nothing). Still far from being a cursed poet, he cannot give up his desire to address the generations to come. Piron’s work shows an obsessive concern for poetic glory, usually seen as unachievable, regardless of all the efforts the poet can make. Sometimes he names and shames the vain desire of posterity and sometimes he proudly asks for his right to achieve literary immortality. There is a paradox inherent in being a self-declared “light poet”: conspicuous modesty does not prevent him from being conscious and proud of his talent. Piron is paradigmatic of this particular stance: arrogant humbleness is to be found throughout his work and makes him part of a poetical family that can be described by its will to reconcile an ideal of levity and an ambition to give literary dignity to a minor form of poetry. Still a young poet, Piron wrote an epitaph where he calls himself the «poète qui ne fut rien» (the poet who was nothing) only to end his life and career with an Apothéose de Binbin (his nickname), where he playfully claims for himself a well-deserved immortality. An accurate scrutiny of Piron’s work, presenting such an ambiguous sample of attitudes towards posterity, could lead to a useful reassessment of the Enlightenment poetry and poetics.