A Brief Discussion on the Villanelle

INTRODUCTION
Constraint-based writing involves a series of rules that imposes a pattern on the writing. With our conversations starting with Oulipo, the French experimental constraint-based writing group, it seemed fitting to explore potential influences on that group. Considering Oulipo’s French history, I wondered which historical writing forms not only influenced the birth of Oulipo-inspired writing, but which ones may still be a living component of the compendium.

After all, Oulipo is designed to inspire writing through compulsory rules, i.e. constraints.

What better way to do so than to look at a long-standing French poetic form, the villanelle. The villanelle, a fixed poetic form sheds light on the adherence to patterns, rhyme, meter, and style of French constraint-based writing, as a starting point for the development of constraint-based writing. Does it? Maybe, maybe not, but it is worth exploring.

Is a villanelle a form of potential literature? Does the strict form free the content? Does it create spontaneous self-discovery of writing that would otherwise go unwritten? How can we discuss the historical poetic forms as the potential birth of contemporary experimental writing? I don’t have the answers to these questions, but in my exploration of the villanelle, I seek to find woven strands.

HISTORY
The villanelle originates from the French and bears a rich historical development. Originally, the villanelle stood as a ballad to imitate the songs of French oral tradition. The fixed poetic form became standard during the 17th century upon the publication of Jean Passerat’s poem “Villanelle” published in 1606. And while the villanelle has its origin in French literature, a majority of villanelles have been written by English-writing poets. Poets such as Oscar Wilde, Andrew Lang, Dylan Thomas, and Elizabeth Bishop are known for using the villanelle. The original form was often used to write pastoral poems, but contemporary poets such as Sylvia Plath and Seamus Heaney have used the villanelle to write outside of the original usage.

“Villanelle” by Jean Passerat
J’AI perdu ma tourterelle;
Est-ce point celle que j’oy?
Je veux aller après elle.
Tu regrettes ta femelle,
Hélas! aussi fais-je moy.
J’ai perdu ma tourterelle.
Si ton amour est fidelle,
Aussi est ferme ma foy;
Je veux aller après elle.
Ta plainte se renouvelle,
Toujours plaindre je me doy;
J’ai perdu ma tourterelle.
En ne voyant plus la belle,
Plus rien de beau je ne voy;
Je veux aller après elle.
Mort, que tant de fois j’appelle,
Prends ce qui se donne à toy!
J’ai perdu ma tourterelle;
Je veux aller après elle.

FORM
The villanelle consists nineteen lines outlined as five tercets followed by a final quatrain. The rhyme structure holds the form in place. Two repeating rhymes and two refrains exist throughout the poem. The first line of the first stanza acts as the last line of the second and fourth stanzas. The third line of the first stanza is positioned as the last lines of the third and fifth stanzas. The rhyme scheme is noted on the layout below as the lowercase letters:

Tercet 1:
Line 1 – refrain 1 (rhyme a)
Line 2 (rhyme b)
Line 3 – refrain 2 (rhyme a)

Tercet 2:
Line 4 (rhyme a)
Line 5 (rhyme b)
Line 6 – refrain 1

Tercet 3:
Line 7 (rhyme a)
Line 8 (rhyme b)
Line 9 – refrain 2

Tercet 4:
Line 10 (rhyme a)
Line 11 (rhyme b)
Line 12 – refrain 1

Tercet 5:
Line 13 (rhyme a)
Line 14 (rhyme b)
Line 15 – refrain 2

Quatrain:
Line 16 (rhyme a)
Line 17 (rhyme b)
Line 18 – refrain 1
Line 19 – refrain 2

No established meter exists in the villanelle. However, many 19th century villanelles used trimeter or tetrameter. Gary Kent Spain posted On the Plains, a trimeter villanelle to All Poetry. The poet deviates from the original form, an explains the reasoning as a rebellion against the way a villanelle ends. The clinamen permits a small freedom from an otherwise stringent adherence to form.

On the other hand, 20th century, poets used pentameter. Giorgio Venetopoulos wrote a villanelle in iambic pentamete to exhibit the strictness that can be applied to the form. The content discusses the process of writing, and more importantly, the villanelle. Since the villanelle has no set meter, I see this as the writer further constraining oneself … although, poets such as Elizabeth Bishop took took many liberties in her villanelle, which allows the individual aesthetics to come through, as a shadow.

FORM AND CONTENT
The rigid form of the villanelle evokes a sense of obsession and compulsion as the refrains interact with the remaining lines. The form give way to a feeling of dislocation within the content. Moreover, the strict form requires the writer to focus on the form, thus freeing the content within the form.

The sense of obsessions and compulsions, even mental dislocation is apparent in Sylvia Plath’s “Mad Girl’s Love Song” :::

Mad Girl’s Love Song
“I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
God topples from the sky, hell’s fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan’s men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I fancied you’d return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)”

As I see it here, the constraints of the villanelle allow for generative distraction. In order to liberate a poem of pure intellectual thought and marry together both feeling and thought, one must force the mind into distraction. In this case, the distractions are the required rhymes and refrains. This notion falls in line with the mission statement of the Oulipio Compendium. By applying rules to the writing, the content takes its own shape, its own misgivings, its own liberties to become literature.

T.S. Eliot called this the theory of dissociation of sensibility. Spontaneity.  The villanelle requires labor on the form, but in doing so, it allows the writer to release the anxiety of creating a “good” poem, thus allowing the poem self-discovery.

Thus, established poetry forms such as the villanelle, the sestina, and the sonnet act as the framework for the birth of true poems. By true poems, I refer to a poem’s content that is freed from the external stresses that come with writing non-structured, free form poetry. The content delivers without the worry of line count, rhythm, etc… poems pressured into a form are afforded creative liberties that may not come about without the constraints.
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I view poetic forms as a starting point for the current status of experimental and conceptual writing outlined via Oulipo and our contemporary view of constraint-based writing.