Lot n° 104
Estimation :
2500 - 3000
EUR
GUEZ DE BALZAC Jean-Louis (1597-1654) litterateur et epistol - Lot 104
GUEZ DE BALZAC Jean-Louis (1597-1654) litterateur et epistolier, membre fondateur de l'Academie francaise.
MANUSCRIT (period copy) of the Discourse to the Queen By Sr. de Balzac 1643; folio with title-cover and 22 leaves, i.e. 43 pages in-4 (ca. 22 x 175 cm), enlarged at the time and set in folio format (31 x 21 cm), paginated 26-[48] (the last numbers hidden by the margins; wormholes in the inner margin).
Unknown full version, before the censorship, of this plea for peace addressed to the Queen Regent Anne of Austria. The Discours à la Reyne was first published in 1649 by Toussaint Quinet under the title of Harangue faite à la Reyne sur sa Régence, but in a censored version. Five years before the Fronde, Guez de Balzac writes this magnificent plea for peace, and addresses it to the Queen Regent ANNE D'AUTRICHE. The political poet implores the Regent to apply herself to preserve peace, which will destroy abuses. He begins: " Madam We will not despair any more of the salvation of our State. We no longer believe that the evils of our century are incurable. If the first day of your Regency taught us to hope for a very happy future: And if the Christian people chased so long and so exemplarily by the Justice of Heaven must finally have the Grace of God irritated, truly it will receive it by hands so pure and so innocent as yours".... And he concludes: "I would never finish if I wanted to count all the advantages that must come from this blessed Peace. We must conclude with the greatest and most considerable one, Madame, that it will provide your Majesty with peaceful days and a beautiful leisure time to use for the good nourishment of the King your Son. Your thoughts, which are now divided into as many places as Christendom needs, and which embrace at the same time several Provinces and several Kingdoms, will then all be gathered together and focused on this one object. After having given us a Prince, your Majesty will make us a second gift of this same Prince, and by an excellent Institution, she will give him back to us the best and most virtuous of his century ". In 1643, when this manuscript was written, Richelieu had been dead for a few months, Louis XIII died on May 14, Louis XIV was a minor and Anne of Austria reigned in his place. MAZARIN dominates. Guez de Balzac sides with the royal power: he supports the legitimate power against "the foreign bodies". If he advances with prudence when he mentions the "abuses of the authority", he advises courageously the re-establishment of the Parliament, and denounces the "domesticated" favorites from which France had already to suffer. The Princes are a danger, however to remove them all would be a disaster. Balzac makes in particular, among the Princes, the praise of GASTON, duke of Orleans, who "will make forever silence the calumny". He also draws a beautiful portrait of the Great CONDÉ which will be deleted before the publication of his Harangue. This manuscript gives the original version of the text with the plea for Condé: the Peace "will know how to separate from all those who call themselves Princes Monseigneur the Prince of Condé, and to recognize by singular marks, and chosen honors, the sacred character of his birth, his affection to the good of the State, the assiduity, the merit and the necessity of the Lord"... In 1649, when the text was published for the first time, under the title of Harangue faite à la Reyne sur sa Régence, this beautiful recommendation will have disappeared: if the Great Condé was in this year 1643 the victor of Rocroi, after a few years in the service of Mazarin, he took the head of the Fronde of the Princes against the omnipotence of the minister, and is since then in disgrace; it is only in 1659 that Condé will rally to Louis XIV Only one other manuscript of this plea is known. It is preserved in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, in a collection of mixtures from the Du Bouchet family and bequeathed to the abbey of Saint-Victor (Ms Français 23024, fol. 271). In 1651, at the height of the Fronde, the Discourse is not published in the Œuvres diverses de Guez de Balzac printed by the Elzevier. It appears in the second edition that they give of the Œuvres diverses, in 1658, but amputated of the eulogy of Condé, as in the Quinet edition of 1649. It will be necessary to wait for the in-folio edition of Billaine in 1665, to finally read the eulogistic portrait of Condé (volume II, p. 466-482), rallied since with the King.
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