“A Quarter of an Hour before his Death, He Was Still Alive”: The Literary Character Image of La Palice and the Phenomenon of Nizy Style

Abstract

La Palis is a literary character that appeared in anonymous couplets The Death of La Palis published in the early 18th century. The image of La Palis in songs is ambiguous: he is both a naive simpleton and a parodic counterpart of the panegyric image of Marshal Jacques de La Palice (1470–1525). The irony of these early verses about La Palis is usually explained by the simplicity of the soldiers who allegedly composed them in 1525 or by the further distortion of the original text. In reality, this irony bears the imprint of the 17th century burlesque poetry. In 1715, the literary image of La Palis was canonized by Bernard La Monnoy, the author of the term nizy style. The nizy style, also called the Lapalissade, is a special kind of tautology that, as Clement Rosset aptly put it, “for a moment causes a hallucination of difference.” In the 19th century, the typically Lapalissian formula “if they did not die, then they are still alive” is recorded in the tales of various peoples of Europe; the relationship between these national formulas remains unclear. The article also examines the mastering the nizy style by O. Goldsmith and Russian translators from the 18th century to the present day.

Keywords

• burlesque literature
• lapalissade
• formulas of the fairy tale folklore
• the nizy style
• j. de la palice
• b. la monnoy
• o. goldsmith
• v.a. zhukovsky
• brothers grimm.