The association of feather and sword goes back to Renaissance France and Italy, and the introduction of real iron feathers, first in England, then in France around 1830, gave the metaphor a particular power. But it was perhaps17th-century France that gave it its first great moment. Gabriel Tarde, author of a sociological study on Le Duel, points out that it was then part of the writer's identity: Malherbe, Scudéry, Voiture, Cyrano often wielded swords, and Le Cid is a play celebrating the duel.
Gautier, author of Capitaine Fracasse, modeled his character on Scudéry, Corneille's great opponent during the Cid quarrel, and the embodiment of the spadassin writer. He is the soldier turned poet, who can become a soldier again at any moment. Portraying him in Les Grotesques (1853), Gautier celebrates the "matamore, detestable poet, detestable prose writer", but who is a fascinating and entirely acceptable type. In his preface to Ligdamon et Lydie, Scudéry said that he knew "how to quarry his battles better than his verses", and that he always wrote as a soldier rather than a writer, like Caesar. Gautier describes himself as being at ease "rather on the battlefield than on the white paper meadow", this time borrowing a line from Saint-Amant, another matamore of the Grand Siècle.
In addition to Scudéry and Cyrano, both avatars of the demon of bravery, of the boastful soldier - miles gloriosus, as we've already seen in Le blagueur - it's the contemporary Granier de Cassagnac (1806-1880) who feeds the trope most abundantly, followed by Courier, Cormenin, Lamennais, Proudhon and Veuillot. His particle and his second name are additions he gave himself to sound Gascon, like Cyrano de Bergerac; in reality, he was from Toulouse, but had moved to Paris. He soon met Hugo, to whom he devoted himself, and Bertin, director of the Journal des Débats, in which he published his first scathing article. It was an article defending Hugo against Dumas, in which the latter was described for the first time as a professional plagiarist. The violence of Granier's comments forced Bertin to dismiss him. Shortly afterwards, he went on a rampage against Racine in the columns of La Presse, then became a supporter of the cause of slavery.
