Voiture, Vincent (1597-1648). Born in Amiens the son of a wine merchant, he became a founder member of the Académie Française and the animating spirit in Madame de Rambouillet's salon. As a poet, he perfected the art of witty, social verse, reviving outmoded forms and experimenting with new ones, combining flattery and impertinence, classical culture and frivolity in a manner reminiscent of Marot. His charming ‘Stance à la louange du soulier d'une dame’ elegantly deflates the traditional celebration of a lady's beauty, and his ‘Stances sur une dame dont la jupe fut retroussée’ show his typically skilful blend of boldness and disarming badinage.
Similar sophistication characterizes his letters, first published after his death. They were to become extremely popular in the course of the century and an alternative model to the more self-conscious eloquence of Guez de Balzac. Voiture's epistolary art is that of discreet control—of subject-matter, correspondent, and moment; in their multiple shadings of tone, they suggest his twin talents of judgement and linguistic flexibility. Around 1630 he wrote a nouvelle mauresque, the Histoire d'Alcidalis et Zélide, very popular in galant circles although never published in his life-time; its imaginative force reveals another side to a writer whose diverse skills are too easily dismissed as superficial.
[Jonathan Mallinson]
