Reception

France

Studies Étienne Wolff, ‘Quelques jalons dans l’histoire de la réception de Sidoine Apollinaire’, in Marco Formisano and Therese Fuhrer (eds), Décadence. ‘Decline and Fall’ or ‘Other Antiquity’?, Heidelberg: Winter, 2014, pp. 249-62. Remy de Gourmont (1858-1915), Le Latin mystique: les poètes de l'antiphonaire et la symbolique au moyen âge, preface by J.-K. Huysmans [replaced by Gourmont’s own in later editions; as to Sidonius, he did not want him to be dubbed a decadent], Paris: Mercure de France, 1892. Pp. 57-60 (edition 1922) about Sidonius: ‘… Sidoine n’est pas un triste; il est gouailleur plutôt que mélancolique; il aime l’éclat des joies extérieures, même s’il doit souffrir de leur grossièreté …’ The blurb on the Les Belles Lettres website reads: ‘Non pas tant une anthologie qu'un sublimé de poésie spirituelle délicieusement décadente. Un « liseur » invétéré, un « créateur de valeurs » découvre dans les fleurs nouvelles germées de la décomposition de l'empire et simultanément de la langue et des normes classiques et arrosées par la foi chrétienne, des accents accordés aux aspirations de l'âme moderne malade d'infini et une écriture inédite, parente des recherches les plus exquises d'un Jules Laforgue ou d'un Albert Samain. Cet essai, qui fut une révélation pour Léon Bloy et Blaise Cendrars, reste encore aujourd'hui l'initiation la plus passionnante à la poésie religieuse de la latinité tardive et du Moyen Âge.’ Sébastien Baudoin, ‘Présence-absence de Sidoine Apollinaire dans l’oeuvre de Chateaubriand’, in Rémy Poignault and Annick Stoehr-Monjou (eds), Présence de Sidoine Apollinaire, Clermont-Ferrand, 2014, pp. 513-24. Often quoted by Chateaubriand as an historian, Sidonius Apollinaris stands at the same time in and outside the text of l’Enchanteur. Taken as a reference legitimizing the comment, he also gives rise to a rewriting: the description of the Francs in Book 6 of Les Martyrs is thus, as Chataubriand himself admits, a free adaptation of Sidonius’ poetry in the Panegyric of Majorian. Between influence and inspiration, Sidonius Apollinaris figures as a revealing shadow which unveils complex processes of rewriting. It’s within this distance between unfaithful translation and rewriting that we analyze the creative poetic of our author. Marie-France de Palacio, ‘Mechanemata fin-de-siècle: Sidoine Apollinaire et la “décadence”’, in Rémy Poignault and Annick Stoehr-Monjou (eds), Présence de Sidoine Apollinaire, Clermont-Ferrand, 2014, pp. 525-35. After 1870, Sidonius Apollinaris makes a forcible entry into French literature. The fin de siècle fashions him into an intriguing paragon of decadence. A keen observer keeping aloof, acting as the last fence against the Barbarians, he conceals his uneasiness of mind under a dandiacal attitude. His poetry bears witness to some excessive stylistic elaboration, which made him worthy of serving as a pattern of Alexandrian affectedness, and led some critics to compare him to Stéphane Mallarmé or Jean Lombard. Translations Véronique Bedin and Julien Feydy, La Bourgogne dans les beaux textes. Petite anthologie historique et littéraire, vol. 1, Messigny-et-Vantoux: Éditions de Bourgogne, 2008. Contains a fresh translation of Sidonius’ poem 12 on the Burgundians. catalogue publisher Forgery Lupus’ congratulation letter to Sidonius on his consecration as a bishop (Migne PL 58, cols 63-65) is thought to be a forgery ever since Julien Havet, ‘Questions mérovingiennes II, Les découvertes de Jérôme Vignier’, Bibliothèque de l’école des chartes 46 (1885) 205-71, adduced proofs for the inauthenticity of a group of fifth-century documents to which it belongs, which were published by Jérôme Vignier (d. 1661), probably inspired by recent publications from Du Chesne and Sirmond, among others. See, e.g., Ralph Mathisen, ‘PLRE II: Suggested Addenda and Corrigenda’, Historia 31 (1982) 377- 78, and Frank-Michael Kaufmann, Studien zu Sidonius Apollinaris, Frankfurt am Main 1995, pp. 321-22. Fiction Jean Anglade (1915-), Sidoine Apollinaire, with a preface by Rector Pierre Louis, Clermont-Ferrand: Volcans, 1963 (repr. in Auvergne encore, Paris: Omnibus, 2000). Elisabeth Szwarc (text), Jean-Michel Payet (illustrations), Sidoine Apollinaire. Un Gaulois contre les barbares, Paris: Épigones, 1993. Guy Azaïs (1942-), Sidoine Apollinaire, mémoires imaginaires. Récit, Paris: Thélès, 2008. Second edition entitled Que le jour recommence. Mémoires, Paris: Société des écrivains, 2010. Denis Montebello (1951-), Au dernier des Romains, Paris: Fayard, 1999. Influence Sidonius is among the poets quoted by Mico of Saint-Riquier (d. c. 853) in his Opus prosodiacum, a poetic florilegium to help learning words of difficult prosody. See David Butterfield, ‘Unidentified and misattributed verses in the Opus prosodiacum Miconis’, Museum Helveticum 66 (2009) 155-62. online André Thevet, Vrais Pourtraits et Vies des Hommes Illustres, Paris 1584, vol. 3,  book 6, chap. 85, pp. 486v-487v. Praises Sidonius for his subventions to impoverished intellectuals (’Sidoine amoureux des gens doctes’) and prefers to remain neutral in the stylistic debate on Cicero’s presumed normativity (’Langage de Sidoine, dequoy taxé’). The Dukes of Polignac boasted a lineage which went all the way back to Sidonius. The first known history of the Polignac family is L’Histoire généalogique de la Maison de Polignac, by Gaspard Chabron (1570-after 1638), written towards 1625 (discussion and download here). It frames Sidonius’ grandfather as ‘le premier de la lignée de Messieurs de Polignac’ (p. 12), ‘le grand St Sidoine Apollinaire’ as the first to bear the title of count (p. 11), and the Castle of Polignac at Le Puy-en-Velay as their ancestral domain (p. 10). To support his claim, Chabron adduces Savaron’s authority in his comment on Ep. 4.6.2 solidae domus ad hoc aevi inconcussa securitas, ‘the security of the solid house, unshaken up to the present’ (which Sidonius is afraid might be disturbed by the enemy raids), Savaron says that this is the ancient home of the Apollinaris family in Velay, safely perched on the hill, and still visible in his day in all its age-old splendour. (Sirmond, however, saw the correct interpretation of domus: ‘family’.) Legend has it that there is a Temple of Apollo under its ruins. Sons could be baptized ‘Sidoine-Apollinaire’ or ‘Apollinaire’, for instance Sidoine-Apollinaire-Gaspard-Scipion-Armand de Polignac (1660-1739), who made a military career, and Camille-Louis-Apollinaire de Polignac (1745-1821), bishop of Meaux. The family’s fairy-tale past made it to the gossip columns of the New York Times, 3 Dec. 1882. See Christian Settipani, ‘Apollinaires et Polignac: état actuel d’une légende’, Héraldique et Genéalogie 106 (1988) 32-35, and ‘Les Polignac: quelques orientations pour la recherche historique et généalogique’, in Studies in Genealogy and Family History in Tribute to Charles Evans on the Occasion of His Eightieth Birthday, London: Lindsay Brook, 1989, 327-53. For the castle, see Mélinda Bizri, ‘Polignac en Velay, relecture de l’origine et de l’évolution du site. Entre tradition, célébrité et réalité archéologique’, in Anne-Marie Cocula and Michel Combet (eds), Château, naissance et métamorphoses, Bordeaux, 2011, 93-107. > download Pierre Bayle (1647-1706), freethinking Huguenot, whose Dictionnaire historique et critique (1697, 2 1702, 5 1740, English translation 2 1734) was among the most popular works of the eighteenth century, repeatedly resorted to his Savaron copy of Sidonius to cite, and, if needs, criticize him. In volume 1 alone (A-Bi, in the English edition), Sidonius is referred to in the lemmata on Achilles, Anaxagoras, Apollonius, Apuleius, Arcesilas, Athenaeum, and Balbus. Sidonius is criticized for his sloppy treatment of philosophy concerning Anaxagoras and Arcesilas in Carm. 15.79-98, and Savaron for not noticing these errors. The figure of Apollonius of Tyana is attractive to Bayle for his unconventionality and being a challenge to authorities. Here Sidonius’ opinion of Apollonius comes in, with a quotation from Ep. 8.3. Bayle comments: ‘Sidonius Apollinaris has given us a description of Apollonius, which represents him as the greatest of heroes in philosophy. The author of this description does not forget to make his excuses to the Catholic church’ (p. 383). (Bayle thought that Sidonius had written Apollonius’ Life.) Jean-Baptiste Du Bos (1670-1742), Histoire critique de l’établissement de la monarchie française dans les Gaules, vol. 1 (1734, 2 1742), is a sustained reading, cum extensive translations, of Sidonius’ Panegyrics and Letters, guided by Duchesne and Sirmond. Another sign of the importance Du Bos attached to Sidonius is the unexpected link he sees between Sidonius’ picture