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Giorgio Vasari · 10 min read · SEASON 2
LE MERCVRE GALANT,
AN EARLY JOURNAL OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT.
SECONDE PARTIE.
Reports de la Guerre - Sociétes Academiques - La Guerre des Hommes et des Femmes - La mode dans le Mercure - Publicité dans le Mercure - Le nouveau Mercure.
I'm reading part one of this article at the moment. You totally should, if you haven't.
War Reporting, the Querelle, and the Birth of “Fact-Based” Journalism
War reporting was also among the most popular subjects found in de Visé’s Mercure—unsurprising, considering there was no shortage of wars in Louis XIV’s France. Indeed, it was so popular that de Visé fondly mentioned that, in a defiance of stereotype, even his heavily female audience found enjoyment in reading the war reports in the Mercure’s pages. Forty articles about military engagements appeared in 1696; there had been fifty-one just under twenty years earlier, in 1677. Then as now, war sold.
Similar to our contemporary Western Kulturkampf, however, even the King’s wars were subject to ideological interpretations and controversies. At the time, such ideological conflict revolved around the Querelle of Ancients and Moderns which found a home in de Visé’s Modern-leaning Mercure, much to the consternation and criticism of the pro-Ancient intelligentsia.
While the previous standard for glorifying military exploits had been found in the Classical epics of Homer, now, however, French poets were called upon to celebrate the victories Louis le Grand, the most powerful monarch in Europe, with their propaganda expressed as verse. Such efforts would, of course, ideally exceed the output of the poets of Antiquity. Not only this, but de Visé combined an emerging ideal of “fact-based” journalism with this poetical propaganda.
In this light, de Visé’s reporting on the Spanish wars managed to reflect the Modern paradigm. De Visé’s same impulse toward the Modern concept of empiricism found in La Devineresse is also manifested in his war reporting: he “boasts” of assembling multiple viewpoints in one place. He publishes lists of arrivals and departures of troops and military officers to and from the theatre of conflict, descriptions of campaigns, the content of peace treaties, and declarations of war; he also provides overviews of the affairs of foreign countries (Great Britain is a favorite). Many of these accurate, neutral, even dry reports were contributed to the Mercure by the best writers in France. Indeed, despite the gloire poet Jean Racine thought he ought to have felt while reporting on a muster of the King’s armies, he could only bring himself to feel boredom instead!
Academic Societies and their Rituals
One of the most curious features of the Mercure’s coverage of French cultural life was its descriptions of the French “provincial academies” and their rituals. These academies were societies ostensibly dedicated to discussing learned matters in imitation of the French Academy, but were often of a frivolous nature just as much a serious one. For instance, the Académie de Beaux-Espirits, founded in 1681, refused entrance to lovers. Another, only somewhat more serious academy of lawyers in Riom debated “whether love [was] stronger than eloquence,” and decided love the victor.
The Mercure devoted far more time, however, to covering the activities of the legitimate academies, those which had received royal licensure. These societies were composed of the leading learned men and women in a given French region. Besides carrying out their mission of advancing learning in the French provinces, these academies had a penchant for engaging in elaborate rituals. The December 1686 Mercure describes the first assembly of the Academy of Angers, consisting of a cannon salute, a pealing of church bells, addresses made by the city dignitaries, and an unveiling of a statue of Louis XIV. The October 1687 Mercure describes the chapel decorations given in honor of a departed member of the Academy of Arles, consisting of “realistic decorations” of “skeletons, skulls, bands of black velvet, silver tears, an emblem formed with two intertwined palm leaves...[and] forty tapers to represent the French Academy and thirty for the Academy of Arles.” These are but two depictions of French academic life toward the close of the seventeenth century; contemporary scholarship affirms the Mercure is the principal source of information about these societies and their events, a still relatively under-studied phenomenon of French history.
Gender Politics and Relations in the Mercure
De Visé’s Modern sympathies extended to his portrayal of gender relations in the Mercure. Despite its early reputation as a female-oriented magazine, de Visé consciously sought to expand his readership to an enlightened audience of both sexes, an audience he wished to have transcend popular stereotype. To this end, de Visé imagined “Madame”—the anonymous “everywoman” to whom each issue of the Mercure was addressed as a letter—as the bourgeois, progressive ideal of the “emancipated” woman.
The aforementioned “Histoire de Marquise- Marquis de Banneville” undoubtedly falls toward the avant-garde end of the Mercure’s portrayal of gender roles. A more conventional example is found in “Si une femme doit se marier” and “Se un homme doit se marier,” a pair of articles appearing in the April 1679 issue, which discuss the benefits and drawbacks of marriage for both sexes. In a similar fashion to how he publicized the extraordinary talents of the young Jacquet de la Guerre, de Visé describes the talents and activities of both a boy and a girl genius in succession in a September 1684 Mercure article. Not only the positive aspects of each sex were highlighted, but the negative as well: de Visé is an equal-opportunity employer in every sense of the word. Throughout the issues of the Mercure, he provides several nouvelles about not only the dreadful fates of unfaithful husbands, but also wives thrown into alarming episodes of vengeful bloodlust:
»You have blamed with much justice the furious outburst of the Cavalier d’Arles, who so cruelly avenged himself on the alleged infidelity of his Mistress. Beautiful women are not exempt from these sorts of furies. Here is the proof.«
De Visé’s progressive stance on gender relations ultimately veers toward viewing both men and women fundamentally as individuals existing beyond general categorization; as scholar Deborah Steinberger remarks, “The Mercure seems to suggest that the passions of men and women are indistinguishable.”
With a value system that appears strikingly contemporary, de Visé gently reminds his audience that appearances can deceive, and to not rush to judgement over matters of others’ taste despite their outward appearances or gender attribution. While the proudly Modern de Visé undoubtedly believed in the messages he preached in the Mercure, his doing so also contained the ulterior motive of wishing to expand his circle of readership and, of course, increase his profits.
Fashion, Class, and Conformity
The aforementioned difference of perspective on fashion between de Visé and Antoine de La Roque that helped define the Mercure in its earlier and later manifestations is testament to de Visé’s own comfort within, and influence upon, courtly social circles. To some extent La Roque, a former soldier and failed playwright, would have doubtlessly felt out of place in high Parisian society and its perceptibly “frivolous” behavior; his dismissal of women and their fashion- oriented pursuits stands in stark contrast to de Visé’s more than willing accommodation of the “fairer sex.” It was de Visé who took great pains to ensure the French devotion to fashion was upheld; even more importantly, his aspirations to serve the monarch began to reflect the absolutist norms of the Sun King’s style of governance.
De Visé also served as a “lifestyle” ambassador—something of a seventeenth-century “influencer.” In the July 1677 issue of the Mercure, de Visé writes in the character of a “Parisian narrator” to Madame from the most fashionable salons in the capital. Like a contemporary travel vlogger, de Visé transports his readers to the salons in which individual fashions are evaluated, and social status thereby ascertained.
But these pastimes weren’t only for the ladies: in the same way he promoted women’s eager readership of war reports, de Visé also understood men have every right to be as interested in fashion as women. Sumptuary laws, regulating what types of clothes can be worn by each social class, complicated the French fashion scene: even as the Mercure actively promoted the popularization of elite dress, it concurrently seeks to differentiate between the distinct levels of the strongly class-oriented French society of the time.
In this light, de Visé’s friend and contributor Molière poked fun at social strivers—who believed their imitation of noble dress and mannerisms integrated them into society’s highest castes—in his famous 1670 musical comedy Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme. Ultimately, the nascent capitalist framework of the time allowed the general public to mirror the mode of the highest classes even as class status was rigidly maintained throughout French society. Through its fashion coverage, the Mercure actively participated in and negotiated this emerging, increasingly democratized paradigm.
De Visé as Marketing Guru: Advertising in the Mercure
Returning to de Visé’s play and short story of the same title, La Devineresse, their creation and promotion reveal a great deal about how de Visé used the Mercure as a marketing platform. Indicative of the Mercure’s humorous, self-aware style which flowed seamlessly from genre to genre without interruption, the play was promoted in a cunning advertisement tacked on the end of the short story (addressed, of course, to Madame). It promises Madame further thrills in the same style as found in the nouvelle; judging from the audience reaction to the onstage version of La Devineresse, it can be ascertained that de Visé’s ploy was successful. This success can also be seen in the immense profits de Visé reaped from the play’s many performances. Indeed, de Visé may have been a victim of his own success: many years later, toward the end of his life, he seems to have deliberately obfuscated his role in capitalizing on the most shocking and disturbing court scandal to erupt in Christian Europe to date.
La Devineresse was only the tip of the iceberg of de Visé’s aggressive marketing campaigns. Steinberger calls de Visé “one of the first great publicists, a forefather of advertising,” and de Visé liberally encouraged merchants to advertise in his publication. For example, an advertisement for a wigmaker appears at the end of “Histoire des Faux Cheveux,” and a resulting debate among readers about the merits of abundant hair lasted several months. Finally, as mentioned previously, de Visé capitalized on his own Modern tendencies to change the perception of the Mercure from a female-oriented publication concerned with stereotypically “female” concerns, to one with a unisex appeal that transcended what he believed to be outdated social mores.
That said, de Visé’s generally successful public relations campaigns for the Mercure did not always fare well. In the same way he had lampooned the works of Cornielle and Molière many years earlier, de Visé’s own publication was the subject of a mocking play by Emile Boursault. When de Visé discovered the existence of this play, he demanded the authorities intervene; while Boursault’s work was still published, it was renamed La comédie sans titre by the author, presumably to avoid a charge of libel while still commenting on de Visé’s censorious tendencies.
The Mercure in Later Years
In 1724, during the reign of Louis XV and well after de Visé’s death, the Mercure was renamed the Mercure de France under the editorship of Anton La Roque. The magazine continued its illustrious career through the course of the eighteenth century. In 1734, the word “Baroque,” now referring to the dominant movement in Western art between approximately 1600 and 1750, was first applied in the Mercure as a pejorative term describing an opera composed by Jean-Philippe Rameau—perhaps ironic, considering the heavy promotion of Baroque musical composition that had previously occurred in its pages. Perhaps miraculously, the Mercure managed to survive the French Revolution before finally ceasing publication in 1825.
However, a new magazine under the same title was resumed by a group of French intellectuals of the Symbolist movement in the late nineteenth century. This new Mercure de France served as a literary review and writers’ platform. Like its predecessor two hundred years previously, the Mercure allowed women to speak freely on a wide variety of subjects, some considered scandalous. The January 1890 issue contains a variety of poems and plays in its first several pages: “Tears of Autumn,” “The Night without Night,” and, true to the form of its seventeenth-century predecessor, a “Sonnet.” A short play, “The Demand,” is also included. A postwar issue from January 1950 contains an essay on the ethics of glory in the seventeenth century; a “letter to a friend,” and a poem entitled “Written from Babylon.” A keen awareness of its own past as well as a forward-thinking aesthetic defined the new Mercure’s content. It was in the early twentieth century that the Mercure also began its forays into book publishing; it was the first publishing house to print Nietzsche’s works in French. Acquired by Editions Gallimard in 1958, the Mercure de France continues to serve as one of the most innovative French-language publishers.
De Visé’s far-reaching and visionary stance ultimately allowed Le Mercure Galant to portray miniature slices of life in all their variety and interest. It is this same innovative and avant-garde spirit that has defined the Mercure publications up to the present. The Mercure Galant of the Grand Siècle thus directly foreshadowed the contemporary media apparatus in its diversity of forms, and can be considered “Modern” both ideologically and practically. As Steinberger remarks, de Visé’s Mercure “purports to portray life as it is—as befits a news publication.”
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