Philothée O'Neddy and the Poetics of the petit cénacle

The petit cénacle has traditionally been viewed as a short-term, loosely organized group of young poets and artists, marginally interesting to the historian of romanticism in terms of its excesses and barren of any coherent approach to poetry. The article demonstrates, I hope, the probability of a mutually-held, although perhaps incipient, poetics. I focus on two texts that summarize this poetics: the "Avant-propos" to Philothée O'Neddy's Feu et Flamme (1833) and the opening poem of that volume, "Pandaemonium." These texts show that the origins of the artistic destinies of the two most famous members of the petit cénacle, Gérard de Nerval and Théophile Gautier, however dissimilar these destinies became, can be found in the same set of beliefs about the nature of Art. Moreover, O'Neddy himself illustrates the poetic possibilities inherent in these ideas in the poetry of Feu et Flamme. (JBH)