Alceste, Le Misanthrope by Edmond Geffroy

Problematical Comedies

• Tartuffe
• Dom Juan
• Le Misanthrope

Molière wrote several enigmatic comedies, but Tartuffe, Dom Juan, and Le Misanthrope are the better known. All three feature masks and all three could be described as  incongruous. They present daring juxtapositions.

Tartuffe

Tartuffe is our first case. Tartuffe feigns devotions to ruin a (barely) recoverable, but recoverable, father, Orgon, and his family. In Reynard the Fox, Reynard escapes a death sentence by claiming he has converted and will go to the Crusades. Feigned devotion is not a new mask. However, given Jansenism, Casuistry and Protestantism, in 17th-century France, devotion was too sensitive a subject, which imperiled Molière’s play. Tartuffe is a faux dévot and a casuiste.

Tartuffe was first performed in the summer of 1664 during Les Plaisirs de l’Isle enchantée, multi-day festivities held at the newly built Versailles. The play was banned by Louis XIV and Molière had to revise his comedy twice, in 1667 and in 1669, before it was considered as acceptable.

Dom Juan

Our second play is Molière’s Dom Juan, which premièred the following year, on 15 February 1665 and was promptly censored. Dom Juan’s valet, Sganarelle,[1] describes his master as a “grand seigneur méchant homme,” (“a great lord but a bad man”) and “un épouseur à toutes mains,” (“one who’ll marry anyone”) (I, 1). Given his rank, it seems unfitting on the part of Dom Juan to stoop to infidelities with peasant girls. Molière’s Dom Juan does not seduce Charlotte and Mathurine, but he has left his home and his wife, Done Elvire, and there was already a Dom Juan of legend. Tirso de Molina‘s (24 March 1579 – 12 March 1648) El Burlador de Sevilla lingered in the mind of spectators.

Most importantly, however, Dom Juan is calling for the wrath of God by trivializing unacceptable, sinful, behaviour. Molière’s Dom Juan will therefore suffer the fate awaiting the trompeur of all farces. The traditional plot of farces is that of the “deceiver deceived,” or “trompeur trompé,” (a reversal) and, in Dom Juan’s case, the trompé is heaven itself. Consequently, although Molière’s Dom Juan is less of a seducer than the audience might expect, he is engulfed into the earth, by a “machine,” a theatrical device, to which he is led by the hand of the dead-yet-alive stone guest, the commandeur he has killed.

Dom Juan’s father reminds his son that “noblesse oblige.” In other words, there is incongruity in Dom Juan’s behaviour and although he is a “grand seigneur,” it is arrogant on his part to ignore the commandments of a greater lord, our Lord.

Le Misanthrope

Our third case is The Misanthrope (4 June 1666). The play was not banned. However, in a letter to d’Alembert[2], a letter on theatre, Lettre à Monsieur d’Alembert sur les spectacles (1758),[3] Jean-Jacques Rousseau (28 June 1712 – 2 July 1778), who was an admirer of Molière, criticized the Misanthrope (4 June 1666) because Molière had ridiculed Alceste who is a good man. In Rousseau’s opinion, “l’homme de bien” should not be subjected to ridicule. Such a juxtaposition is incongruous, not to mention discourteous.

Where Alceste is concerned, gallantry is a factor. Alceste lives in the beau monde. However, no sooner does the curtain lift than Alceste pounces on gallants. In a world where everybody praises everybody, galanterie, good persons and scoundrels, “l’honnête et le fat,” how can he, Alceste, believe those who praise him and whose praise he needs?

“Quel avantage a-t-on qu’un homme vous caresse,
Vous jure amitié, foi, zèle, estime, tendresse,
Et vous fasse de vous un éloge éclatant,
Lorsqu’au premier faquin il court en faire autant ?”
Le Misanthrope, I. i, 49-52, p. 3
(www.toutmolière.net)

“But what advantage is it to you if a man courts you, swears friendship, faith, zeal, honor, tenderness, makes you some fulsome compliment, and than turn round to the first rascal he meets, and does the same.”
The Misanthrope, Internet Archive (pp. 4-5)

 Alceste likes compliments and must be praised.  He disgraces himself irredeemably.

Je veux qu’on me distingue, et pour le trancher net,
L’ami du genre humain n’est point du tout mon fait.
I. i, 61-62 (www.toutmolière.net)

[I must be singled out; to put it flatly,
The friend of all mankind’s no friend for me.]
I. 1, Wikisource

 

We are in Célimène’s home, the young widow with whom Alceste has fallen in love and who loves Alceste. In other words, we’re at court with the individuals, courtiers and gallants, Alceste despises, threatening to find a refuge in one of the many “deserts” of French 17th-century literature. They are the very people Célimène entertains by depicting their faults gracefully: “Les rieurs sont pour vous, Madame…”  (“The laughers are on your side, Madam…”) Yet, Célimène’s “portraits” match Alceste’s depictions of others. She makes fun of the very people Alceste criticizes. In short, the misanthrope and the mondaine are the opposite sides of the very same coin.

Alceste and Célimène differ however in that Célimène can survive at court. She is twenty, pretty and witty. He’s older, he growls, and he demands frankness, not on moral grounds, but because he wishes to be certain that compliments addressed to him are true. Alceste is not a misanthrope; he is vain and insecure.

Ironically, a little gallantry would benefit Alceste, morally and esthetically. As Philinte exclaims, one does not tell a woman that she is too old to wear the makeup she uses. Moreover, would that Alceste had not criticized Oronte’s poem (I, 2) but simply changed the subject while escorting him to the door.

Alceste does combine, in himself, not only “l’homme de bien” (the good man) and “le personnage ridicule,” (the ridiculous character) but also the young lover of comedy, le blondin, barely out of boyhood, but whose marriage is awaited, and the barbon, the bearded older man who opposes the blondin‘s legitimate wishes. Alceste combines two functions, a most incongruous juxtaposition.

Célimène doesn’t feel she can follow Alceste into a “desert,” not at the age of twenty, but she will marry him.

Moi, renoncer au monde, avant que de vieillir!
Et dans votre désert aller m’ensevelir!
Célimène à Alceste, V. scène dernière, p. 69

La solitude effraye une âme de vingt ans;
Je ne sens point la mienne assez grande, assez forte,
Pour me résoudre à prendre un dessein de la sorte.
Si le don de ma main peut contenter vos vœux,
Je pourrai me résoudre à serrer de tels nœuds:
Et l’hymen . . .
Célimène à Alceste, V, scène dernière,

But solitude has terrors for a soul
Of twenty; mine’s not great and firm enough,
I fear, to let me take that high resolve.
But if my hand can satisfy your wishes,
I’ll bring myself to suffer such a bond,
And marriage . . .
Célimène to Alceste, V, last scene, The Misanthrope
Célimène to Alceste, V, last scene, The Misanthrope)

However, he insists on taking her to a “desert” and rejects her because she can’t follow him:

 “Non ; mon cœur à présent vous déteste,
Et ce refus lui seul fait plus que tout le reste. ”
(Alceste to Célimène, V, scène dernière. vv 1777-78, p. 70)
No; my heart detests you now.
This one rebuff does more than all the rest.
(Alceste to Célimène, V, last scene, The Misanthrope)

 

 

Comedy: all’s well that ends well

• Dom Juan
• Tartuffe
• the use of a “deus ex machina”
• Le Misanthrope

The above-mentioned plays may seem and are problematical, but Molière is writing comedies. In comedies, the Shakespearean “all’s well that ends well” prevails. God punishes Dom Juan. As for Tartuffe, a prince who hates fraudulent activities, “un prince ennemi de la fraude,” sees that Tartuffe is in the process of defrauding Orgon and strikes. Monsieur Loyal, the bailiff pictured above, is about to take Orgon’s belongings away, when an “Exempt” arrives and arrests the faux dévot.

But it’s a close call, too close a call. A comedy ends well, but a prince, a “deus ex machina,” should not have to intervene so that Orgon’s family is freed of its faux dévot. Nor should Molière have to use une machine. Dom Juan is led to eternal perdition by the dead-yet-alive commandeur whom he has killed. The earth rises and swallows him.

Such remedies are too drastic. A guilty finger is therefore pointed at society. It cannot remove Dom Juan, but should do so. In Tartuffe’s case, Orgon, the pater familias, has empowered Tartuffe. Therefore, Tartuffe seems a scapegoat, the pharmakós of ancient Greek comedy.

In The Misanthrope, no machine is required. Alceste is precisely as Célimène describes him in the portrait scene (II, 4): “Il prend contre lui-même assez souvent les armes[.]” (“He often takes up arms against himself[.]”).
(see Wikisource, The Misanthrope)

Conclusion

In an insightful analysis of Dom Juan and The Misanthrope, Professor Jules Brody[4]  described, as follows, the problematic of both plays. In Dom Juan and, especially, the Misanthrope, we witness the victory of the esthetically right over the morally wrong. Célimène makes people laugh by mocking them in her portraits, which is esthetically right, but morally wrong. Alceste’s behaviour, he gets angry, is esthetically wrong, but morally right. As for Dom Juan, he is un grand seigneur.

I will simply add that, in Dom Juan and Le Misanthrope, Molière pushes comedy as a genre to its very limits. In the Misanthrope, by virtue of the play’s structure, le blondin (the young lover) is le barbon (the blocking character, or the eirôn)  is the alazṓn (Greek comedy).[5] In The Misanthrope, Molière may have replaced the forgiving “All’s well that ends well” by comedy’s other schéma: the farcical deceiver deceived.

Love to everyone. ♥

RELATED ARTICLES

• Charles Sorel’s “Laws of Gallantry” (1  May 2016)
• “Galanterie” & “L’Honnête Homme” (16 April 2016)
• Jesuits & Jansenists (2 April 2015)
• Jansenism: a Church Divided (24 March 2015)
• Casuistry, or how to sin without sinning (5 March 2012)

Sources and Resources

The Misanthrope is an Internet Archive publication
The Misanthrope is a Wikisource publication, translated by Curtis Hidden Page
http://fresques.ina.fr/jalons/fiche-media/InaEdu05426/le-misanthrope-de-moliere.html (the portrait scene [II, 4], video) FR

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[1] Sganarelle was Molière’s mask. (He was Brighella)

[2] Jean Le Rond d’Alembert and Denis Diderot were the co-founders of L‘Encyclopédie.

[3] Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Du Contrat social (Paris : Classiques Garnier, 1962), p. 150.

[4] Jules Brody, “Don Juan” and “Le Misanthrope,” or The Esthetics of Individualism in Molière,” PMLA, 84 (May 1969), p. 559 – 575.

[5] Micheline Bourbeau-Walker, “Le Misanthrope, ou la comédie éclatée,” in ed. David Trott & Nicole Boursier. L’Âge du Théâtre en France /The Age of Theater in France (Edmonton, Alberta, Canada: Academic Printing and Publishing, 1988), p. 53 – 61.

Handel‘s Sarabande
« Concerts royaux, Quatrième concert: Sarabanda »
Armonie Symphony Orchestra, Stefano Seghedoni

© Micheline Walker
6 May 2016
(revised: 6 May 2016)
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