ABSTRACT
Early on in Banville’s career, critics began to conflate formal verse techniques with a vague notion of musicality. This has continued until the present day, its most damaging symptom being the assumption that poetry, for him, is a purely sonorous phenomenon which justifies the sacrifice of semantic content. The situation has been exacerbated by the fact that the application of the term ‘musical’ to Banville’s poetry has often been meant as a compliment, denoting technical mastery. In an essay of 1923, for example, G. Jean-Aubry claims this musicality was present in the poet’s very first volume:
A l’époque où Banville publiait Les Cariatides, en 1842, on ne trouvait un pareil sens musical du vers, une pareille application à tirer du vers toutes ses ressources complexes, chez aucun des poètes d’âge mûr, se nommassent-ils Hugo, Lamartine, Vigny ou Musset. 1
