Hélie Poirier (ca. 1600- ca. 1650).

Les soupirs salutaires.

Amsterdam, Jean Blaeu, 1646.

12° (6,9 x 12 cm). 120 pp. Collation: A–E¹².

Slightly later speckled calf, spine gilt in compartments with four raised bands, red edges, marbled pastedowns. Inserted manuscript note concerning the work by Jean Bourdel, with his loose ex-libris.

               A remarkably rare production from the Blaeu press and an unusual example of mid-17th-century French Protestant exile literature printed in Amsterdam.

Hélie Poirier, born in Paris around 1600, is believed to have been a Catholic priest before converting to the Reformed faith and settling in the Dutch Republic, probably during the late 1630s. He may have spent some time at the court of Queen Christina of Sweden, to whom his poetic collection Les Soupirs salutaires is dedicated.

The first part of Les Soupirs salutaires consists of devotional meditations and paraphrases in verse and prose. A second section, introduced by the divisional half-title L’Illustre berger, contains pastoral poems, chansons, sonnets, and other baroque poetic forms. This is followed by several poetic praises to Dutch people and places, including the princes of Orange, Harald Appelboom, Guillaume de Lyre d’Oosterwijk, Matthias Dögen, the city of Amsterdam, and, most interestingly, a poem in praise of Blaeu: “Sur son incomparable Atlas, et les neuf Muzes, dont chacune prézide à l’une des neuf presses de son Imprimerie” (p. 115), celebrating Blaeu’s famed Amsterdam printing house.

Particularly notable is Poirier’s unusual spelling, apparently meant to reflect spoken French of the time. Spellings such as “Meditacion,” “Profecie,” “preffes,” and “Muzes” appear throughout the text and are clearly intentional rather than printing errors. The inserted manuscript note by Jean Bourdel already observed that Poirier “wrote as people then pronounced words.” The book therefore also has linguistic interest as a rare example of phonetic French printed in a finely produced Blaeu edition.

The Short Title Catalogue Netherlands does not record this publication, but it does list another work by Poirier, Devs harangves panégyriqves, l’une de la pais, l’autre de la concorde (Amsterdam, J. Blaeu, 1648). Poirier also translated Matthias Dögen’s L’architectvre militaire moderne, ou Fortification (Amsterdam, L. Elzevier, 1648), as well as De l’Union et réconciliation des Eglises euangéliques de l’Europe, ou des moyens d’établir entre elles une tolérance en charité (Amsterdam, Blaeu, 1647) [not in STCN?].

Condition: spine slightly worn with old restorations to the caps; label on front pastedown; title-page through p. 17 somewhat soiled, rest of pages good; faint marginal staining to title-page; stamp of P. Duputel on blank verso of leaf A2.

References: Brunet IV, 773; Cioranescu 55261; Rahir, Elzevier, 1981; Willems III, 1643. Not in STCN, not in Gallica BnF.