“Souffrir non souffrir” [Suffer not Suffer] is the enigmatic, antithetical motto with which Maurice Scève both opens and closes his Délie, object de plus haulte vertu (1544), the volume of lyrical verse upon which his literary fame is founded. Claiming the widely-held distinction as the first poet to produce a Petrarchan canzoniere in the French tradition, Scève employs this evocative, paradoxical insignia to illustrate the bipolar tension experienced by the desiring poetic subject and, in so doing, follows the lead of the superlative Tuscan sonneteer, whose unrequited love for Laura was cultivated in verse to similar contradictory effects. Like Petrarch, Scève also locates the origin of his doulce souffrance (sweet suffering) in a scene of innamoramento (the loaded Italian term roughly meaning “love at first sight”) born of giovanile errore (youthful error/wanderings); however, while borrowing...
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Citation: Hudson, Robert J.. "Maurice Scève". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 13 October 2009 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=12445, accessed 09 June 2026.]
