North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures

Nineteenth-Century French Fan Poetry

Erin E. Edgington

• Publisher: UNC Department of Romance Studies
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781469635781
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Poetry
• Index: Literature

Fashioned Texts and Painted Books examines the folding fan's multiple roles in fin-de-siecle and early twentieth-century French literature. Focusing on the fan's identity as a symbol of feminine sexuality, as a collectible art object, and, especially, as an alternative book form well suited to the reception of poetic texts, the study highlights the fan's suitability as a substrate for verse, deriving from its myriad associations with coquetry and sex, flight, air, and breath. Close readings of Stephane Mallarme's eventails of the 1880s and 1890s and Paul Claudel's Cent phrases pour eventails (1927) consider both text and paratext as they underscore the significant visual interest of this poetry. Works in prose and in verse by Octave Uzanne, Guy de Maupassant, and Marcel Proust, along with fan leaves by Edgar Degas, Edouard Manet, Berthe Morisot, and Paul Gauguin, serve as points of comparison that deepen our understanding of the complex interplay of text and image that characterizes this occasional subgenre. Through its interrogation of the correspondences between form and content in fan poetry, this study demonstrates that the fan was, in addition to being a ubiquitous fashion accessory, a significant literary and art historical object straddling the boundary between East and West, past and present, and high and low art.

PART ONE

THE FAN IN FIN-DE-SIÈCLE FRANCE

CHAPTER 1

FAN HISTORY: OCTAVE UZANNE AND OTHER HISTORIANS OF UBIQUITY AND (F)UTILITY

1.1. WEST MEETS EAST: A VERY BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO THE FAN

THE fan is an object with a centuries-long history that I have occasion to explore only briefly here. It has played many different roles and served a multitude of functions over the years and, unlike many fashion accessories, its usage has been widespread. It has adorned the bodies of the most important political figures of the world’s greatest empires and it has cooled their lowliest workers in the fields; it was the trendiest of fashion accessories carried by Europe’s upper crust only a century ago, but now it is sold in the West mainly as an inexpensive and kitschy souvenir. Although these remarks suggest the general pervasiveness of the fan in human society, it bears mentioning at the outset that to study the fan as a surface for writing or image making (or in any of its other capacities) is at the most fundamental level to study the interaction of East and West.

Conventional wisdom holds that the fan originated in the Far East, and logic suggests a warmer climate than any to be found in the Northern hemisphere as its source given the fan’s most basic utilitarian function of circulating cooling air. Because of this function, the fan has been linked throughout its long history with flight and with the wing. Several Asian languages provide support for the analogy. For example, according to Nancy Armstrong, “the Hindi generic term for a fan is pankha, from pankh meaning feather or bird’s wing. In China the archaic symbol for a fan looks like, and means, ‘a bird’s wing’, and the newer word shan means ‘feathers under a roof’” (19). The fan as a literary device, too, is inextricably linked with notions of flight and air, and so, in addition to the multiple social meanings the object would take on in nineteenth-century France, it will be useful to bear this association in mind.

Indeed, it is equally applicable to all three major groups of fans: the fixed-screen fan, the brisé fan, and the folding fan. Of these, the fixed-screen fan was probably the first to emerge as it is the simplest form and the one closest to nature’s other original model, the leaf; brisé and folding fans, which are both more complicated from a technological standpoint, are more easily traceable to China and Japan (Armstrong 21, 25), the cultures that remain the most closely associated with the fan in the Western cultural imagination. Another detail of the fan’s early history pertinent to this study is the idea that the brisé fan likely developed by analogy with the writing tablets of court officials. Comprised of thin slips of wood or ivory that were suited to the top to bottom writing order of both languages, a cord strung through a small hole in each strip may have been an early method for keeping them organized (Armstrong 21). The notion of the fan as an ideal surface for inscription introduced here is one to which I return throughout my analyses. The folding fan, on which the majority of my attention falls, while it represents a later stage in fan technology, is by no means a recent invention even if our cultural memory of it in the West spans only a few centuries (Armstrong 26). Having evoked both the fan’s association with the wing and with inscription, the majority of the object’s prehistory, which is in any event largely speculative, may be left to one side in favor of a brief rehearsal of some key points concerning the fan’s emergence in Europe in order to understand how it came to be such a fixture there.

No exact date can be given for the folding fan’s introduction into Europe, and there is some disagreement among scholars of the fan on this point.¹ By the sixteenth century, however, the accessory was solidly entrenched in European fashion as its frequent and varied representation in visual art confirms.² One hypothesis that has gained some acceptance is that fans came to the French court in 1549 with Catherine de Médicis and then, under the influence of the court, the fashion ultimately spread to all levels of society (Bennett and Berson 6). Catherine’s original fans, though, would not have been of the folding variety; initially, they were likelier to have been fixed feather fans, although it would not be long before the folding fan would make inroads into the Valois court and the broader European market. Indeed, Catherine’s son, Henri III, was among the first proponents of the folding fan because its ability to open and close quickly apparently lent to it an element of surprise allowing it to fully impress itself on its viewer (Bennett 12).

In the wake of continued imperialist efforts in the Far East by the major European powers, by the late Renaissance the Orientalist vogue was already nascent. To give an indication of how integrated West and East had already become at the turn of the seventeenth century, it is interesting to note that the English and Dutch East India Companies were established in 1600 and 1602, respectively (Bennett 13). However, France’s engagement with the Far East and its fans (and other cultural artifacts) differed slightly from that of its Western counterparts because France was (at that time) relatively unsuccessful in such colonial ventures (Bennett and Berson 8). A fanciful, hyperbolic vision of the particular riches of the East had been present in the European consciousness since its earliest exploration in the Middle Ages; over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, this myth was further exaggerated in France resulting in the enormous class of objects we now term chinoiseries (Bennett and Berson 8). Jacques Dufwa offers additional information related to the Westernized character of the products the East India companies were responsible for importing to Europe; he writes, “[e]ven before Le Havre became the home port of the newly started French East India Company, chinoiseries had been produced, freely copied from Chinese patterns” (33). Copying authentic Chinese designs, however, was very quickly replaced by careful manipulation of them with an eye to the preferences of Western consumers. Indeed, this process likely began still earlier as one source notes that “[n]early all the Chinese and Japanese objects exported to Europe after the fifteenth century were so carefully designed to satisfy the western collector’s conception of oriental art that they reflected the European vision of Cathay” (cited in Dufwa 34, my emphasis) rather than Eastern aesthetics.

Anna Bennett and Ruth Berson echo these remarks in their introduction to the catalogue for the exhibition Fans in Fashion where they write that “[t]he balance of fact and fancy in chinoiserie art shifted from faithful imitation in the early years to free-wheeling invention in the mid-eighteenth century” (8). Fans were no exception to this rule. Indeed, many of the processes of traditional Chinese and Japanese fan making were either unknown to Europeans or impossible for them to replicate leading to fans produced in Europe that were at best pastiches (and more often parodies) of the originals (Bennett and Berson 8-9). Due to the enormous and continued interest in imports from the East (notably porcelain), fans, although less valuable than many other art objects making their way back to Europe over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, kept arriving, and, because of their relative inexpensiveness, in vast quantities (Bennett 13). These authentic Eastern exports were quickly absorbed into the Western market, where they were joined by both products of Eastern manufacture designed specifically for the Western market and European-made fans that simulated Eastern styles and motifs (Bennett 13).

So prevalent was this Orientalist vogue that “[b]y 1750 the Oriental motif dominated the decorative arts” in Europe, but this did not mean that it was equally common in all areas of society, at least not at first (Bennett 13). In Louis XIV’s court, such motifs were very slow to catch on primarily because of the rigidity with which that court’s dress code was designed and upheld. The influence of the East could be seen, though, in the context of masquerade, a prevalent form of leisure in the Sun King’s heyday; in this context, however, Western mythological motifs were much more common in the early decades of the reign given the parallels drawn at that time between Louis and Apollo (Bennett 14). Following Louis XIV’s long reign, though, the carefully elaborated system of mores that had developed quickly decayed. The rigidity of the court at Versailles was replaced by the sweeping voluptuousness of the Paris court where the rococo reigned supreme (Bennett 14). Indeed, because the godlike royal persona of Louis XIV found only a pale imitation of itself in Louis XV, the mythological motifs that had predominated in the previous century were soon forgotten; in their place appeared a variety of motifs inspired by nature, “and the engaging figures of the chinoiserie repertory [. . .] seemed at home among the rocks and shells of the full-blown rococo” (Bennett 14). In addition to Orientalist motifs, one genre that attained great popularity during the eighteenth century was the pastoral, which, in addition to its prominence as a decorative theme, enjoyed considerable success in high art where it was primarily known as the fête galante (Bennett 15). The quotidian, too, emerged as an inspirational domain; fans in particular were adorned with “the words and music of popular songs,” significant events such as battles, royal births and weddings, and even technological novelties like the hotair balloon, which unsurprisingly enjoyed some popularity as a fan motif (Bennett 15).

The particularities of eighteenth-century French costume also had an impact on fan design. Specifically, the imposing silhouette achieved by the addition of paniers necessitated a larger fan for visual balance, and the larger size of the fan provided some of the impetus for expanding an already impressive repertoire of decorative motifs over the course of the eighteenth century (Bennett 15). However, in the second half of the century as the Revolution drew near, the popularity of the rococo style declined as simpler designs that reflected the intellectual and stylistic trends imported into France, notably from England, around the same time were increasingly favored (Bennett 16). Expectedly, it is with the Revolution that the history of the fan in nineteenth-century really France begins. Speaking purely in terms of production, the decline in fans produced by skilled craftsmen, coupled with an increase in mass-produced fans, may be linked with the service and deaths of many skilled workers over the course of revolutionary struggle (Alexander 47). Apart from a straightforward decline in numbers, though, fine craftsmanship like that displayed by the luxurious trappings of the aristocracy became suspect in the wake of the Revolution (Bennett 16). As industry standards of production fell, the size of fans decreased proportionately until, by the turn of the nineteenth century, women were carrying tiny fans that merited the name imperceptibles (Bennett 16). Until the folding fan again became popular in the 1820s and 1830s, the paradigmatic fan featuring a painted leaf was virtually absent (Bennett 16).

Importantly, shifting methods of production coincided with the changing market; in the absence of the aristocratic patron, fans had to be cheap enough and plentiful enough to accommodate the bourgeoisie (Alexander 47). Because the growing middle class had become the principal market for fans, a more typically industrial model superseded the former production schedule in which fan makers worked only seasonally (Alexander 49).³ In the Napoleonic era, brisé fans were popular and the best-quality examples were carved in Dieppe, a port city with constant access to English-imported horn (Alexander 49). However, folding fans were also fashionable in the early-nineteenth century, particularly those with fabric leaves, which of course required dedicated methods of production different from those used in the pleating and mounting of paper leaves (Alexander 50). In the first quarter of the nineteenth century, fans were comparatively small and largely reserved for fancy dress occasions; as early as the 1830s, though, the fan again began to assume ampler proportions (Alexander 52-53). Fans of this size and type, that is to say folding fans with paper leaves, are the substrate (or the intended substrate) for the majority of the texts I consider in what follows.

Suggestively, these larger fans were known as éventails chinois (Alexander 53). During the nineteenth century, imports from the East continued apace and, of course, most fans manufactured for the Western market continued to be inauthentic in their design. More traditionally styled and European-made fans produced in the first half of the century to mimic ancien régime styles, though, were often equally inauthentic; this is certainly the case for rococo-style fans produced for use at fancy dress balls during the Restoration and even afterwards (Alexander 57). In one sense, the distinction is artificial. For the European woman who carried one, the éventail chinois was an authentic “Oriental” object (Alexander 54). Likewise, the demand for ancien régime-style fans was such that high-quality forgeries were common and, although such fans were inauthentic in an absolute sense, today they are themselves valuable objects (Bennett 17, 21). Quite apart from concerns related to the authenticity of any particular fan, though, the key point is that the history of the nineteenth-century French fan may be summed up as the interplay of these two omnipresent and opposing currents that dominated the market throughout the period.

Some of the most exquisite fans produced in France in the European style would have been made by Duvelleroy, a firm whose name, following its success at the Exposition Internationale of 1851, was up until the First World War synonymous with quality (Alexander 59). Indeed, by midcentury, the French fan, like most French fashions, had again come to be understood as the best quality product the Western market had to offer, and continued stylistic and technological innovation among French producers ensured that more fans than ever before were available to the fashionable woman of means (Alexander 61). Records of the numerous expositions over the course of the second half of the century make clear the significance of the fan as an industrial product and, moreover, as a luxury good (Alexander 61-63); I will have more to say about such displays in the second part of this chapter. In addition to its commercial importance, the dazzling variety of materials being used in fan production in the 1860s and afterwards led, predictably, to still larger proportioned fans until, in the 1880s, the exaggerated size of the fashionable fan began to attract ridicule in the form of caricature (Alexander 66, 71).

With the emergence of the department store around the same time, the fan was truly as readily available as any other fashion accessory; importantly, the fans available for purchase at department store counters were often produced by the same upscale companies (Duvelleroy et al.) that maintained dedicated shops, and certainly something must be said of the hierarchy that inevitably developed to divide boutique purchases from those made at the grandes surfaces (Alexander 69). Indeed, apart from the social connotations of purchasing goods from the big box purveyors of the day rather than from the specialty retailer, it should be noted that the widespread commercialism of the later nineteenth century led to the emergence of yet another type of fan not seen previously in the object’s long history, namely, the advertising fan. Even as elite a firm as Duvelleroy participated in the production and issue of numerous models designed specifically with an eye toward selling.

The fan as advertising aid would continue to be popular into the twentieth century, even following World War I when the fan’s popularity had waned. During the Belle Époque, exquisitely produced fans continued to circulate, mainly between the clients of certain high-end firms (Alexander 76), and, as in the previous century, an astonishing variety of styles existed during the twentieth century. Many of these, also like their nineteenth-century counterparts, were nostalgic in design while others incorporated elements of more modern styles, for instance art nouveau (Alexander 76). The graphic quality of the latter style, and eventually of the nascent art-deco mode, made it an ideal choice for printed advertising fans at the time (Alexander 76, 79). With the outbreak of World War I, these were virtually the only fans in wide circulation as more formal fans were essentially relegated to the realm of court dress (Alexander 81). Indeed, an expensive fan during wartime could be more a liability than an asset socially (as was the case earlier during the Revolution) and many valuable fans were sold in order to raise funds (Alexander 81). Although there have at times been efforts to revive the fashion for fans since the early twentieth century, the fan has, for the most part, become a collectible rather than a fashionable object.

This is not to suggest that collectors did not appreciate the fan during the nineteenth century, quite the opposite. Fans were not only collected in the nineteenth century, but, like any collectible, they were also the basis of a large body of texts devoted to the study of fans including their production, use, value, and, especially, their history. Indeed, a number of lengthy histories of the fan were written from the mid-nineteenth century on. These histories represent a crucial segment of the literature of the fan and, importantly, one that is today virtually unknown. In what follows, I focus on one particular fan history by Octave Uzanne while also making reference to several other contemporary accounts of the object in French and English and paying special attention to the ways in which this particular history anticipates the fan poetry analyzed in parts two and three.

1.2. OCTAVE UZANNE AND THE FAN

Uzanne, although a marginal figure within contemporary nineteenth-century French studies, was a prolific writer whose body of work includes journalism, art and literary criticism, and history. An enthusiast of Parisiennes, he authored a two-volume work on women’s fashion accessories of which the entire first volume, L’Éventail (1882), is dedicated to the fan. As is the case for some of his other works, in this volume Uzanne fully assumes the identity of the fin-de-siècle bibliophile and aesthete; he rehearses many of the stereotypes associated with bygone nineteenth-century generations and recommends adopting the “artistic” lifestyle that had been brought to its zenith around the same time by Edmond de Goncourt whose La Maison d’un artiste had appeared only a year previously in 1881. Like Goncourt, Uzanne was also fascinated by the art of the eighteenth century, a preoccupation linked with the prevailing nostalgia for the presumed elegance of the ancien régime, and one that made the fan a natural choice of subject.

In L’Éventail, though, it is not only Uzanne’s bibliophilia and nostalgia that are brought into focus, but also his stereotypical misogyny; indeed, he maintains a (euphemistically) ambivalent attitude toward women ev...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface: Why Fans?
• Part One: The Fan in Fin-De-Siècle France
• Part Two: Mallarmé
• Part Three: Claudel
• Bibliography
• Index