Ivory Tower

A direct translation of the French "tour d'ivoire." The French literary critic Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve coined the phrase in 1837 to describe the poet Alfred de Vigny's retreat into private, art-for-art's-sake seclusion, in pointed contrast to the more socially and politically engaged Victor Hugo. The image itself likely draws on much older religious tradition: medieval Christian writers had long described the Virgin Mary using the phrase "tower of ivory" from the Song of Solomon. The English phrase entered the language via a 1911 translation of the French philosopher Henri Bergson's Laughter.