Tensions dynamiques: Le rapport sculpture/poétique en France, 1829-1859

Scott's study is the first of a group of essays in this volume that focus on the translation of sculpture into poetic form. He looks at the tensions between classical and Romantic ideals – stasis and movement, beauty and ugliness, impassibility and expressiveness – that began to manifest themselves in both sculpture and critical writing about sculpture during the transitional period following the Revolution. He argues that the opposition between sculpture/stasis and poetry/movement that was, thanks to Winckelmann and Lessing, æsthetic doxa at the beginning of the nineteenth century, undergoes a change between 1829-1859 in the works of writers who would set the terms for the movement that would later be called "Parnassianism." Sculpture is shown to become more animated in works by David d'Angers, Clésinger, or Pradier, amongst others, and writing to acquire the plastic attributes of sculpture in the poetry of Sainte-Beuve, Gautier, Banville, and Baudelaire. (In French)