Odes a Pasithee.

Jean Tagaut. Ed. Franco Giacone. (Textes Litteraires Francais, 457.) Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1995. liii + 313 pp. n.p. ISBN: 2-6000-0088-7.

This edition of the "exemplaire de travail" of the Odes a Pasithee by the Protestant author-physician Jean Tagaut (ca. 1517-1560) brings to light a long-neglected French literary achievement that might well stand as a "missing link" between the paganistic verses of the Pleiade laureates and the Christianized rhymes of the reformer poets. As we learn in the 147-page introduction, Giacone first discovered this erst while Pleiade associate in 1978, while studying the Genevan Huguenot writers Tagaut joined in 1554. The Odes he has edited comprise two books. The 1550 Livre premier presents fourteen poems of varying metrical designs, including a tour de force of 1112 hexasyllabic verses (Ode I), a Pindaric piece in strophes, antistrophes, and epodes (Ode X), and three works in Marotic "pauses" (Odes II, XI and XIII). The 1552 Second livre offers five additional pieces of similar formal diversity. The combined nineteen odes stage the Petrarchan-style love tribulations of a poet (presumably Tagaut himself) in amorous pursuit of an unattainable lady named "Pasithee." From the Greek denoting either "celle qui est universellement divine" or "la propriete des Dieux" (CX), this appellation simultaneously evokes the most splendid of the mythological Graces and Tagaut's real-life beloved, the Benedictine nun (literally a "property" of God), Claude Bernard.

Giacone unquestionably renders an invaluable service in making this transitional opus available. Nevertheless, his copious introduction and textual glosses leave much to be desired. Besides the numerous copyediting lapses, there are many stylistic infelicities (e.g., a tendency to reiterate entire phrases, like "alias Pasithee," slavishly appended to occurrences of Claude's name [IX, XXVIII, LVI, and passim]) and incongruous uses of certain terms (e.g., "canzoniere," repeatedly employed to designate Petrarch's Rime despite his admonition against that practice [LXXX-LXXX]).

The editor's unclear sense of his primary audience - scholars and students of early modern poetry - is also a source of troubles. It fosters disturbing inconsistencies throughout his commentaries. For example, the introductory "Analyses des Odes" often notes verse parallels among the odes, yet they consistently disappoint by failing to remark on the significance of those coincidences. Likewise, the textual glosses frequently swing from the redundant to the overly technical. The first fault is typified by the superfluous translation of the substantive "sorcier," which requires no expertise in middle French - and certainly no gloss - to be understood as "magicien, ensorceleur" (168, 199). The second problem looms large in the egregiously lavish explanations of "la chaste Levone" (31-33), "mon doux grave Amelin" (126-28), and "La pervence" (130-31).

The failure to identify important intertextual affinities creates further frustrations. Nothing is said, for example, about Tagaut's prominent Pasithea-Minerva analogies and the one proposed by Des Autelz at the end of Tyard's Erreurs III; or again, about the author's recurrent appeals to the myths of Diana, Cephalus, and Medea and those appearing, with comparable distinction, in Jodelle's Amours and Contr'Amours. Nor does Giacone adequately acknowledge the Ronsardjan flavor of the Pasithee portraits and the reprises of the immortality-through-poetry theme: this despite admissions of Tagaut's strong links to the Pleiade leader.

Finally, there is Giacone's unreasonable insistence that the Second livre manuscript is fundamentally defective. At issue are Odes III-V, which slightly predate Odes I-II and abruptly cease all discussion of Pasithee to announce the poet-lover's revitalized devotion to God. The editor complains that this chronological violation and shift away from the beloved create a "queue de poisson" structure (CXXXVIII) that Tagaut would have corrected in a subsequent (though never attempted) edition. His analysis therefore considers the spiritual poems before the first two odes, where Pasithee emerges ready to reciprocate her admirer's affection. Unfortunately, that maneuver not only accords a structural relevance to composition dates they rarely assume in the ordering of most contemporary canzionere, but it also dismisses the poet-lover's well prepared critical evolution from eros to agape.

ROBERTO E. CAMPO University of North Carolina, Greensboro