Nothing is beautiful but the truth: the truth alone is…

The line comes from Boileau’s Epistle IX, addressed to the Marquis de Seignelay, Colbert’s son. The poet has just imagined a flatterer who, to court the minister, would lend him “the virtues of Alexander or of Mars”: Colbert would recognise in it the portrait of Louis XIV and silence the poet. What use is it for an admirer to praise my plumpness “if I feel ill”? Hence the maxim, at once extended to fiction: the truth “must reign everywhere, even in fable”, for fiction serves only to make truth shine.

Boileau, who had just published The Art of Poetry, makes truth the foundation of praise as of beauty. His epistle, dated 1675, is a lesson in sincerity to a young grandee: flatteries are worth nothing; only what is true touches us.

The line became the motto of classical aesthetics, then of all those who wanted to found art on truth. It is often quoted only in its first half: “Nothing is beautiful but the truth.”

Epistles, Epistle IX, 1675

Original text checked word for word in the work; the translation is by quotesay.

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