French Lyrics
French Lyrics is an anthology assembled to introduce English-speaking readers to the lyric poetry of France. Rather than offering a single narrative, the editor gathers representative poems across the centuries, prefacing them with an introduction that traces the lyric's development from the Troubadours of twelfth-century Provence, through the courtly forms of the medieval north, and onward into the modern era. Explanatory notes accompany the selections, and a bibliography points the curious reader toward fuller editions and further study, so that each acquaintance begun in these pages might be pursued at greater length elsewhere.
The volume argues, gently but firmly, against the habit of dismissing French verse for lacking the qualities prized in English poetry. Its theme is the recognition of a different excellence: French lyric beauty resides in form, craft, and refinement of spirit rather than in familiar charms. It matters because it teaches that literature is one fabric, not separate threads, and that unfamiliarity is no proof of inferiority. The book invites attentive, sympathetic reading and rewards it with a wealth of beauty long undervalued.
How it begins
This book is intended as an introduction to the reading and study of French lyric poetry. If it contributes toward making that poetry more widely known and more justly appreciated its purpose will have been fulfilled. It is rather usual among English-speaking people to think slightingly of the poetry of France, especially of her lyrics. This is not unnatural. The qualities that give French verse its distinction are very different from those that make the strength and the charm of our English lyrics. But we must guard ourselves against the conclusion that because a work is unlike those that we are accustomed to admire it is necessarily bad. There are many kinds of excellence. And this little book must have been poorly put together indeed if it fail to suggest to the reader that France possesses a wealth of lyric verse which, whatever be its shortcomings in those qualities that characterize our English lyrics, has others quite its own, both of form and of spirit, that give it a high and serious interest and no small measure of beauty and charm. The editor has sought to keep the purpose of the volume constantly in view in preparing the introduction and notes. He has hoped to supply such information as would be most helpful, if not indispensable, to the reader.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain.