Visual Itineraries of a Literary Form: Dutch Baroque Printmaking, a Source of the French Prose Poem

Abstract

This article examines the role of baroque printmaking techniques in Aloysius Bertrand's Gaspard de la Nuit, the text that in 1841 launched the prose poem genre in France. In his work, Bertrand relates the prose poem to the visual arts and references Rembrandt van Rijn and Jacques Callot as his direct sources. While scholarship on the prose poem has acknowledged the presence of visual elements within the prose poem genre, less has been said about the nature of such visual elements. Indeed, the majority of studies have based their approach to the visual components of the prose poem genre on methodological standpoints introduced by the Enlightenment. In this article, I turn to seventeenth-century printmaking in order to argue that the dual reference to Rembrandt and Callot serves to reinforce Bertrand's emphasis on the printmaking technique itself. That is, through a turn to Rembrandt and Callot, Bertrand's prose poems highlight the etching technique specifically. My analysis of the use of line and tonality in prints by Rembrandt and Callot highlights the developments in etching that the two artists introduced. I conclude that the distinction between the échoppe and the chiaroscuro techniques provides Bertrand with a model for joining together elements of prose and poetry in Gaspard de la Nuit.