Category Archives: Antiquity

Rousseau on Molière

15 Thursday Dec 2016

Posted by in Antiquity, Comedy, French Literature, Molière

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Alceste by Edmond Geffroy

Lettre à M. D’Alembert sur les spectacles

In his 1758  Lettre à M. D’Alembert sur les spectacles, published by Jean le Rond d’Alembert  (1717 -1783), the co-editor, with Denis Diderot (1713 -1784), of the Encyclopédie, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) expressed reticence concerning the morality of theatre (les spectacles).[1] (See Letter to M. D’Alembert on Spectacles, Wikipedia and Lettre à M. D’Alembert sur les spectacles, an Internet Archive’s eText.)

Alceste: “l’homme de bien” & “l’homme emporté”

For instance, Rousseau criticized Molière’s Misanthrope, because the playwright had juxtaposed in one character, Alceste, “l’homme de bien” (the good man) and “l’homme emporté” (the angry man). Professor Jules Brody has described Alceste and Dom Juan as  “morally” in the right but “esthetically” in the wrong.[2] Alceste is right when he says about courtiers that they are not necessarily sincere. However, we also know that an angry Alceste criticizes courtiers because he cannot tell whether or not they are sincere when they pay him a compliment. This is the reason why Rousseau called him “un homme emporté [angry].” Alceste gets angry.

The faults Alceste found in courtiers were frequently very real, but a superficial reading of the Misanthrope or limited exposure to the play do not allow the reader or spectator to realize that Alceste himself needs to be validated to such an extent that genuine praise and compliments are as important to him as a seemingly devout Tartuffe is to Orgon (Tartuffe). Alceste threatens to leave Paris and live in a desert, a location outside Paris, and will not marry Célimène unless she follows him, which she cannot and will not do. After he has settled in a desert, Alceste will probably forever return to court, or, metaphorically, to Célimène. At the end of the Misanthrope, the curtain falls on an empty stage. Philinte, Le Misanthrope‘s raisonneur, and Éliante, a woman Alceste could have married but will marry Philinte, are leaving so they to can help Alceste.

François Boucher (dessins ) & Laurent Cars (gravures)
Le Tartuffe; L’Avare
L’École des femmes; La Critique de l’École des femmes

Le Tartuffe by François Boucher
L’Avare by François Boucher & Laurent Cars
L’École des femmes
La Critique de l’École des femmes

Children wishing their father were dead

In L’Avare, Molière also created characters wishing the death of Harpagon, a tyrannical miser. In the best of all possible worlds, children love their parents and parents love their children. Harpagon, however, loves his money more than he loves his children, Cléante and Élise. Before the anagnorisis, Mariane, who loves Cléante, Harpagon’s son, tells Frosine, a matchmaker, that she wishes Harpagon were dead, which she says is strange. Cléante also wishes his father were dead and tells his valet La Flèche. Yet, despite his cruelty, Harpagon remains a father and his children resent finding fault with him.

Mon Dieu, Frosine, c’est une étrange affaire, lorsque pour être heureuse, il faut souhaiter ou attendre le trépas de quelqu’un, et la mort ne suit pas tous les projets que nous faisons. (Mariane à Frosine, III. iv)
[Oh, Frosine! What a strange state of things that, in order to be happy, we must look forward to the death of another. Yet death will not fall in with all the projects we make.] [Mariane to Frosine, III. 8]

Que veux-tu que j’y fasse ? Voilà où les jeunes gens sont réduits par la maudite avarice des pères ; et on s’étonne après cela que les fils souhaitent qu’ils meurent. (Cléante à La Flèche, II. i)
[What would you have me do? It is to this that young men are reduced by the accursed avarice of their fathers; and people are astonished after that, that sons long for their death.] [Cléante to La Flèche, II. 1] [eBook #6923]

Rousseau is indignant:[3]

« C’est un grand vice assurément d’être avare et de prêter à usure, mais n’en est-ce pas un plus grand encore à un fils de voler son père, de lui manquer de respect, de lui faire les plus insultants reproches, et quand ce père irrité lui donne sa malédiction, de répondre d’un air goguenard, qu’il n’a que faire de ses dons ? Si la plaisanterie est excellente en est-elle moins punissable ? Et la pièce où l’on fait aimer le fils insolent qui l’a faite, en est-elle moins une école de mauvaises mœurs ?  »
[It is no doubt a fault to be a miser and a usurer, but isn’t it a greater fault for a son to rob his father and to be disrespectful towards him, to heap upon him insulting blame and, when this irritated father curses him, to answer mockingly that he has no use for his gifts? If the joke is witty, is it less punishable? And is the play where the father is depicted as a loving father, any less a school for vice?]

Yet, after it is revealed that Anselme is Dom Thomas d’Alburcy, Valère and Mariane’s wealthy father, the miser is so happy to learn that his cassette will be returned to him that he abandons his project to remarry. His son Cléante will marry Mariane, Dom Thomas d’Alburcy’s daughter and the woman Harpagon wished to take as a wife.

89860644

Dom Juan:  le Grand Seigneur méchant homme

Dom Juan is a Grand Seigneur méchant homme, a great lord and a bad man who is felled by heaven itself. In his duality, Dom Juan resembles Le Misanthrope‘s Alceste, homme de bien and homme emporté (Rousseau). In fact, in Dom Juan, a masterful Molière created a dark version of his apparently virtuous Alceste, the misanthrope. Célimène, whom Alceste wishes to marry, belongs not to a corrupt as much as a frivolous court. Molière will not condemn court altogether. The courtiers Célimène’s portraits amuse have read Charles Sorel‘s Lois de la galanterie. Moreover, she knows that when age has tarnished her charm, she may well be a prude, a role, or function, played by the Misanthrope‘s Arsinoé. The world Arsinoé criticizes is the very world that had been sustenance to her in earlier and better years.

Il est une saison pour la galanterie,
Il en est une, aussi, propre à la pruderie ;
On peut, par politique, en prendre le parti,
Quand de nos jeunes ans, l’éclat est amorti ;
Cela sert à couvrir de fâcheuses disgrâces. (Célimène à Arsinoé, III. iii, 975 – 79)
[There is an age for love-affairs, methinks,
And there’s an age that’s fit for prudery.
It may be policy to choose the second
When youth is gone and all its glamour faded,
For that may serve to hide a sorry downfall.] [Célimène to Arsinoé, III. 3]

As for Dom Juan himself, he has redeeming features. He is not the demonic figure his valet Sganarelle describes to Dom Gusman, Elvira’s horseman, in the first act of Dom Juan:

[m]ais par précaution, je t’apprends (inter nos,) que tu vois en Dom Juan, mon maître, le plus grand scélérat que la terre ait jamais porté, un enragé, un chien, un diable, un Turc, un hérétique, qui ne croit ni Ciel, ni Enfer, ni loup-garou, qui passe cette vie en véritable bête brute, en pourceau d’Epicure, en vrai Sardanapale, qui ferme l’oreille à toutes les remontrances qu’on lui peut faire, et traite de billevesées tout ce que nous croyons.  (Sganarelle à Don Gusman, I. i)
[Still, as a warning, inter nos, I would teach you that you will find in Don Juan, my master, the greatest renegade that the earth has ever endured, a wild man, a dog, a devil, a Turk, a heretic, who does not believe in Heaven, Hell, or the Wolf-man, who disports in this life as a thoroughly brute beast, a pig of Epicurus, a true Sardanapalus, who closes his ears to all Christian remonstrances that one could make to him, and treats all that we believe as empty words.] [Sganarelle to Don Gusman, I. 1, p. 3]

However when Dom Juan enters, he asks Sganarelle if perhaps the person who was speaking to him could have been Done Elvire’s “good” Gusman:

Quel homme te parlait là, Il a bien de l’air ce me semble du bon Gusman de Done Elvire ? (I. ii)

Who were you just speaking to?  He looked a little like the good Gusman of Donna Elvira. [Dom Juan to Sganarelle, I. 2, p. 4]

Molière’s Dom Juan has left his home and his wife, so all is not lost.

His single crime, after all, consists not in having lured Done Elvire out of her convent, but, rather, in having married and abandoned her. (Brody, p. 568)

The difficulty lies in the fact that Dom Juan cannot love a person who loves him.[4] He must feel jealous. If he does not fear losing a woman he loves, he cannot love. Molière’s Dom Juan is more of a jaloux than he is a seducer.

Mais lorsqu’on en est maître une fois, il n’y a plus rien à dire ni rien à souhaiter ; tout le beau de la passion est fini, et nous nous endormons dans la tranquillité d’un tel amour, si quelque objet nouveau ne vient réveiller nos désirs, et présenter à notre cœur les charmes. (I. ii)
[But let us be master once, nothing more is left to say or to wish; the beautiful part of passion is done, and we would sink into the tranquility of such a love, if some new object did not come to awaken our desires, and present to our heart the alluring charms of another conquest.] [I. 2, p. 6]

Conclusion

Rousseau questioned the morality of theatre and in particular Molière’s Misanthrope  and Miser, L’Avare (1668). Rousseau wrote to d’Alembert when a theatre was under construction in Geneva. It was a private letter, but d’Alembert published it. As noted above, a first or superficial reading of Molière’s plays, Le Misanthrope in particular, may bring confusion as to the morality of his comedies. So could attending one performance of both Dom Juan (1665) and Le Misanthrope (1666). The rapidity inherent to performances may condition a text.

Reading plays and examining such elements as their structure is more likely to lead to a better grasp of their meaning. The doubling of functions, the intervention of a deus ex machina, an anagnorisis, the use of a pharmakos (a scapegoat), incongruities, and other factors may be extremely revealing. A title, such as Dom Juan, may also condition a play. Dom Juan is a reputed seducer, but Molière’s Dom Juan is unconvincing in this regard (see II. 1-5, pp. 12-28). He is not as Sganarelle depicts him. Returning home to his wife could rehabilitate him. However, he has killed the commandeur and his name is Dom Juan. He is therefore invited to a festin de pierre, a feast of stones. Led by the Statue, he is engulfed into an abyss.

In short, Molière’s plays may skirt what is deemed unacceptable. He did have to rewrite his Tartuffe twice because it was considered an attack on devotion, rather than an attack on hypocrisy. However, hypocrisy was attacked and the hypocrite, Tartuffe, used casuistry shortly after the publication of Blaise Pascal‘s Lettres provinciales, written in 1656-1657.

As for L’Avare, Harpagon is forcing his daughter Élise to marry Anselme while he, the miser, marries Mariane, who loves Cléante, Harpagon’s son. Were it not for an anagnorisis and the kindness of Dom Thomas d’Alburcy, Valère and Mariane’s reportedly lost father, Élise and Mariane may have had to enter a forced marriage.

Yet, Rousseau’s critique of Molière is not to be trivialized. It had the benefit of introducing a very long discussion on an enigmatic Molière. In Dom Juan, the jeune premier, the young man who wishes to marry, Dom Juan himself, marries and leaves his wife before the play begins. He will not give money to the poor unless he swears (III. ii) [III. 2, p. 34] and he challenges God Himself. He will settle his dues with God.

Va, va, c’est une affaire entre le Ciel et moi, et nous la démêlerons bien ensemble, sans que tu t’en mettes en peine. (Dom Juan à Sganarelle, I. ii)
[That’s enough. It’s an issue between Heaven and me, and we get along just fine without bothering yourself about it.] [Dom Juan to Sganarelle. I. 2, p. 7]

In remote antiquity, the old king may have been put to death leaving room for a new generation, a younger society. This happened on the day of the longest night, the winter Solstice. French 17th-century comedies kept alive the spirit of the Kōmos, a “drunken procession” and the Saturnalia, an equinoctial reversal of roles. (See Wikipedia.)

Much has been omitted, but I must end this post.

Love to everyone ♥

RELATED ARTICLES

Sources and Resources

Entire eTexts

____________________
[1] Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Lettre à M. d’Alembert, in Du Contrat social (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 1962), p. 154.
[2] Jules Brody, “Don Juan” and “Le Misanthrope,” or The Esthetics of Individualism in Molière, PMLA 84 (1969), pp. 559 -576.
[3] See Jean-Jacques Rousseau, op. cit.
[4] Madame de La Fayette‘s La Princesse de Clèves (1678), a novel, is the finest French 17th- century portrayal of jealous love.
[5] Anne Ubersfeld, Lire le théâtre (Paris : Éditions sociales, 1978).

separateur_06

François Couperin – Pièces en concert for Cello and Strings

© Micheline Walker
15 December 2016
WordPress

The Four Seasons: from Darkness into Light

15 Tuesday Nov 2011

Posted by in Angels, Antiquity, Feasts, Sharing

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Running Warrior, by Colmar Painter

Running Warrior by Colmar painter

From time immemorial, seasons, or more precisely, darkness and light, have determined the days on which humankind placed its festivities, regardless of cultures and religions.  In fact, nature has always prevailed, bestowing unity upon diversity.  And it most certainly dictated the moments when festivities were held.

The Solstices

The Winter solstice (December 21/22 for the Northern Hemisphere; June 20/21, for the Southern Hemisphere)

Humankind has always celebrated the longest night and the longest day.  In ancient Greece, comedies and satires were associated with the winter solstice:  Kômos, or Cômos, and Satyrs.  And in the Rome of antiquity, Saturnaliæ occurred on the day of the longest night.  On that day, the universe was upside down.  Therefore, in certain cultures, the master was suddenly slave.  In more ancient cultures, an old king was replaced and, at times, sacrificed, so a new king could be enthroned.  The old king was the pharmakos or scapegoat.

Judaism placed Hanukkah very close to the longest night as did Christianity.  In fact, Christianity celebrated the twelve days Christmas.  In the Western Church, Christmas, the birth of Christ, has been celebrated on December 25th, but in the Eastern Church, January 6th, Epiphany, is the day on which the birth of Christ has been celebrated.

—ooo—

Julius Cesar (the Julian Calendar) situated the winter solstice on December 25th, but in time, Christmas was celebrated several days before December 25th.  See Winter solstice.  Consequently, in 1582, Pope Gregory XIII (the Gregorian Calendar) brought the winter solstice back to December 22nd and, as per the directives of Council of Nicea of 325, in the Western Church, Christmas has since been celebrated on December 25th.

  • The Summer  Solstice (June 20/21, for the northern hemisphere; December 21/22, for the Southern Hemisphere)

As for the longest day, for Christians, it is la Saint-Jean, St John’s Day, and various other feasts.

Ring Sundial

The Equinoxes, or equinoctial points

  • The Vernal Equinox (March 20/21, for the Northern Hemisphere; September 22/23, in the Southern Hemisphere)

The day on which darkness and light are of more or less equal length (equi =equal), Judaism celebrates Passover and Christians, Easter.  Easter is the day of the resurrection of Christ.  Consequently, the night before Easter Sunday, a mass is celebrated during which the Church is momentarily in complete darkness and gradually lit a candle at a time.  In earlier times, a lamb was sacrificed:  the sacrificial lamb.

When Julius Caesar established his calendar in 45 BC, he fixed the Spring equinox on March 25th, but the Council of Nicea of 325 corrected that date.  In Western cultures, we use the Gregorian calendar (Gregory XIII, 1582) which is based on the determinations of the Council of Nicea.

As for the Autumnal equinox, it is the Judaic Rosh Hashanah.  In Christianity, the day is marked by la Saint-Michel, on September 29th or the now nearly-forgotten Michaelmas.  In the Roman Catholic Church, Michael is one of three archangels, the other two are Gabriel (March 24th) and Raphael (October 24th).  But Christianity also has its archangel of death, or Esdras, the “avenging angel,” or archangel of death, named Azrael in Hebrew culture.

In Islamic culture, the four archangels are Gabriel, Michael, Raphael and Azrael.  There are slight variations in the spelling of Azrael, variations that are consistent with national languages.  The Greek Orthodox Church honours the archangels on November 8th.

The solstices and the equinoxes do not occur on a fixed and permanent day.  However, nations have situated official feasts on fixed dates.

—ooo—

For the moment, my purpose is

  • first to provide a background, vague as it may be, for liturgical and secular Books of Hours.  Liturgical Books of Hours are, among other texts, the Breviary and the Liber Usualis.  Moreover Benedictine monks and other monks observe the Canonical Hours during which psalms are recited.  Secular Books of Hours, such as Les Très Riches Heures de Jean de France, duc de Berry, are exquisitely-decorated books, books with enluminures or illuminations.  As we have seen, Bestiaries are also richly-decorated manuscripts, a pleasure to the eye.
  • Second, it seemed important to write about humanity’s universal observance of feasts that are embedded in the seasons, or in the degree of darkness and light.  Nature is the template.

In short, seasons and feasts correspond to natural phenomena, i. e. the degree of darkness and light.  All cultures have let the cycles of nature dictate the dates of their feasts and, as trivial as it may seem Calendars are a cultural monument.  They resemble Books of Hours and are, generally, illustrated or “illuminated.”

In other words, as humankind progressed through milennia, it amassed traditions we must never forget.  They shape our lives and inhabit the imagination of all human beings, climbing every mountain and crossing every border.

For information on ancient practices perpetuated through religious rituals, tales, and literature in general, one’s best source is Sir James George Frazer’s (1 January 1854, Glasgow – 7 May 1941, Cambridge) The Golden Bough, A Study in Magic and Religion, published between 1890 and 1915.  The Golden Bough is a Project Gutenberg‘s publication.

Vivaldi, The Four Seasons, Winter, Largo

Satyr, Colmar Painter

Satyr, by Colmar painter

© Micheline Walker
15 Novembre 2011
WordPress

 

 

Metamorphism: Apuleius’s Cupid and Psyche

03 Thursday Nov 2011

Posted by in Antiquity, Literature

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love-and-psyche-1899

Cupid and Psyche

William-Adolphe Bouguereau, 1889
www.wikipaintings.org
 

We associate metamorphism with Ovid (20 March 43 BCE –  17/18 CE) and Apuleius (c. 125 – c. 180 CE), but metamorphism is also frequent in fairy tales and has a dark side in lycanthropy, or werewolf stories.

Ovid’s Metamorphoses is our fundamental text on this subject.  There were Greek stories of metamorphoses, but Greece did not have an Ovid.  Nor did it have an Apuleius.  For the time being, I will leave Ovid’s Metamorphoses aside and take a peak at Apuleius’s version of the myth of Cupid and Psyche. That story is a ‘digression’ in Apuleius’s The Golden Ass, a novel in which a man becomes a donkey, at least temporarily.

Apuleius:  The Golden Ass

Apuleius’s Golden Ass is the only complete novel we have inherited from Greco-Roman antiquity.  It was written in the 2nd century AD.  Its structure resembles that of Ibn Al-Muqaffa’s Tales of Kalilah wa Dimna.  There is a main story in which are inserted many stories or ‘digressions.’  For this reason, it could be labelled a picaresque novel, except that an old woman tells the myth of Psyche and Cupid, as a digression, which seems very odd, given the outer narrative and other inner stories.

The Outer Story

In the outer story, the protagonist is Lucius who wishes to become a witch so he can transform himself into a bird.  He is told my his friend Milo that Milo’s wife is a witch who can transform herself into a bird.  Lucius watches her turning herself into a bird and, accidentally transforms himself into a donkey.  At the end of the novel, after all sorts of trials and tribulations, Lucius retrieves his human self, assisted by Isis, a goddess and a magician.

The Inner Stories

As for the inner stories, they too are lewd, except for the beautiful myth of Cupid and Psyche, the last of the inner stories.  It is told by an old woman through several books and it resembles fairy tales.

As the story goes, Venus (Aphrodite), the goddess of love, is jealous of a human who is the most beautiful woman in the world, Psyche, and claims to be more beautiful than Venus.

Venus is jealous and therefore sends her son Cupid (Eros) to kill Psyche with one of his arrows.  However, Cupid, who has made himself invisible to perform his dastardly deed, falls in love with Psyche and takes her to a castle.  They become man and wife, but he only visits with her in the night.  Moreover, she is directed not to look at him during his nightly visits.  One night she is fooled by her sisters into carrying a candle and killing Cupid who, they claim, is a monstrous serpent. She does as her sisters suggest, sees that her husband is Cupid and burns him with her candle.  She falls in love, but Cupid leaves her as he had warned.

After she has been abandoned, Psyche goes to Venus to request help.  Venus tells her to perform four impossible tasks, three of which she performs through the mediation of ants, a river god and an eagle.  But the fourth task is truly impossible.  Venus asks Psyche to fetch beauty from Proserpina (Persephone), Queen of the Underworld, which means that Psyche must die.  So she climbs to the top of a tower and is about to throw herself down when the tower starts to speak.  She is told how to go to the Underworld.  However, the box she is given does not contain beauty;  it contains infernal sleep.  She therefore falls into a coma.

By then, Cupid (Eros), who has wings has forgiven her and flies to rescue her.  He goes to Jupiter (Zeus) to ask the gods’s permission to transform Psyche into a goddess.  Jupiter and the other gods deliberate and end up granting Cupid’s request.  Psyche is therefore transformed into a goddess by drinking ambrosia.  She has escaped the human condition:  mortality.

* * *

Questions

In Greek mythology, Psyche is the soul.  Her role in the myth we have just glimpsed is therefore quite different.  In fact, she is a human being, but a human being promoted to the state of godliness, which is the reverse of most myths.  Usually, gods lose their godliness though sexual contact with a human.

The myth of Cupid and Psyche is part of mythology and does not seem to belong to folklore.  As in The Golden Ass, the narrative seems once again out of place, yet is not.  Could this be an early manifestion of magical realism?  I must investigate further.

There is definitely more to metamorphism than meets the eye.

* * *

November 2, 2011