In 1450, legendary Briton William Caxton (c. 1422 – c. 1491), a merchant, a diplomat, a writer, a translator and Britain’s first printer, moved to Bruges, Belgium. At that time in history, the Franco-Flemish lands were very rich and, as I have stated several times, they were the cultural hub of Europe. As a merchant, Caxton had joined the Company of Merchant Adventurers of London of which he would become the governor.
Caxton was interested in literature. He learned Flemish and translated the very popular Roman de Renart from the Flemish into English. Caxton had set up a printing press in 1476, at Westminster, England, where, in 1481, he printed his translation of the Roman de Renart, which he entitled The History ofReynard the Fox. Caxton also printed Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and he is the translator, in collaboration with Colard Mansion, of Raoul Lefèvre‘s the Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye, or Recueil des Histoires de Troy, printed in Bruges and the first book to be printed in the English language.
Although Le Roman de Renart is a masterpiece of French literature, it has Flemish, German and other roots. Renart was born as Reinardus in Nivardus of Ghent’s Ysengrimus, a Latin fabliau and mock epic, and his adventures were told in several languages. Its earliest “branches” were published in c. 1171.
German Translations of the Roman de Renart
Renart was first translated by Alsatian Heinrich der Glïchezäre as “Reinhart Fuchs ” (1180) almost as soon as its first branches were published in France. Glïchezäre’s Reinhart Fuchs is the first Beast epic in the German language and “branches” of Reynard’s adventures would be retold in the German-speaking lands until Wolfgang von Goethe as Reinecke FuchsDE during the French Revolution. Goethe’s Reynard is rooted in Johann Christoph Gottsched‘s Reineke der Fuchs.
Caxton’s The History of Reynard the Fox (click) is an internet publication. It was digitized by Canadian University of Victoria professor David Badke in 2003. It is a treasure as is professor Badke’s Medieval Bestiary, which includes Reynard. David Badke used an edition published by George Routledge and Sons, in 1889. Henry Morley wrote the introduction to Caxton’s 1889 Reynard the Fox. It is a concise but very informative introduction.
I have already mentioned Joan Acocella‘s “Fox News: What the stories of Reynard tell us about ourselves.”Joan Acocella used Caxton’s translation. Le Roman de Renart is also a Wikisource publication, in French. However, Wikisource used a shorter but superior reworking of Le Roman de Renart. It was rewritten by celebrated medievalist Paulin Paris. (See Paulin Paris, Wikipedia.)
Reynard: an Incunabulum
As for Caxton’s Reynard the Fox, it is an incunable, or a book printed between Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press and movable type, in c. 1439, and the year 1501. Incunables have also been called “fifteeners.” From time to time, patrons asked printers to leave blank areas so the book could be somewhat illuminated or rubricated, as shown below:
The above is not the article I wanted to post as Preface to Reynard the Fox: Motifs. That post was too long which required my dividing it into several more or less independent short posts. It may be published in its entirety, but I doubt it. It would be repetitive.
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 “unhomme 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.
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 tolead to a better grasp of their meaning. The doubling of functions,the intervention of a deus ex machina, ananagnorisis, 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.)
____________________ [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).
In Molière’s comedies, the one fault that dooms a marriage or a possible marriage is jealousy. In this regard, Molière’s École des femmes is our most celebrated example.It was first performed on 26 December 1662 at the Palais-Royal. Molière’s troupe was at the time la Troupe de Monsieur, frère unique du Roi, the company of the Duke of Orleans, the only brother of Louis XIV. It is une grande comédie and it created a controversy. Molière response was in the form of a short play entitled: La Critique de l’École des femmes.
In Molière’s theatre, jealousy affects most barbons, because its stems from the same flaw in character that blinds Orgon and allows Tartuffe to dispossess Orgon’s family. French scholarPaul Bénichou has labelled this flaw a vanité inquiète, vanity combined with insecurity.[1]Were it not for Tartuffe, it would be difficult for Orgon to force his daughter Mariane to marry Tartuffe. Yet, Orgon would not take Tartuffe into his home if he did not wish to be a tyrant with impunity.
In the case of Arnolphe, fear of being cuckoldedis an obsession and, as Chrysalde—the plays raisonneur—tells him, he should not laugh atthose whose wives are not faithful because humans are at the mercy of destiny. Molière lived in the century that opposed casuistes and Jansenists. In the eyes of Jansenists, humans could not ensure their salvation.
Another French scholar, René Bray[2] entitled one of the chapters of his Molière, homme de théâtre (1954) Molière pense-t-il ? Molière theatre is rooted, first and foremost, in comedy, including farces and his own comedies. In earlier days, biography was used to “explain” Molière’s plays.
We cannot dismiss Zeitgeist, but it is important to study Molière using other criteria such as the dramatic structure of his plays, its “types,” and other organizing principles. According to Northrop Frye, one should study a work of literature using a “conceptual framework.”[3] Moreover, there was a time when Molière’s plays were not read as plays but as texts. Molière thinks, but he does so within a genre, comedy, that constitutes, in and of itself, a “conceptual framework.”
The commedia dell’arte troupe of the Gelosi in a late 16th-century Flemish painting (Musée Carnavalet, Paris). The woman is usually identified as Isabella, after Isabella Andreini (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Arnolphe, or Monsieur de la Souche
Agnès,une ingénue, raised by Arnolphe
Horace, the jeune premier whose father is Oronte
Oronte, Horace’s father and a friend of Arnophe
Chrysalde, the raisonneur and Arnolphe’s friend
Enrique, Chrysalde’s brother-in-law
The dramatis personæ also includes a notary, a maid (Georgette), and a valet (Alain).
The Plot
At one level, the plot is that of farces: the trompeurtrompé. But, combined with the trompeur trompé, the plot of L’École des femmes is also the archetypal struggle between the eirôn(the young lovers) and the alazṓn(the blocking character or personnage-obstacle). Le blondin berne le barbon.
In this post, I am telling the plot of the School for Wives, l’École des femmes and write an analysis in a second post. The plot itself is significant. Genre is the starting-point.
Act I
Arnolphe adopted Agnès when she was four years old. He wants to marry her, but fearing he might be cuckolded, he had his ward raised in a convent where she was taught as little as possible about the ways of the world. He thinks that a wife who is sotte and bête, stupid or a beast, will be faithful. He is 42 years old and Agnès, 17.
As the curtain rises, Chrysalde is warning Arnolphe not to boast. Despite his precautions, he may be cocu and people would laugh at him outloud. A cocu is a man whose wife is unfaithful. It is best, expains Chrysalde not to make fun of others. If one does not laugh at others, their laughter will be hushed if destiny strikes a blow, which it often does (I, 1).
Arnophe returns from a trip (I, i). He tries to enter his house, but Georgette and Alain do not seem to know that they should open the door (I, 2).
Arnolphe talks to Agnès who has been sewing (I, 3). Arnolphe also meets Horace, the jeune premier, who tells Arnophe that his father will soon have a visitor, Enrique, and he asks for money which Arnolphe provides (I, 3).
Horace tells Arnolphe that he has met a lovely woman who is being kept in a house by some sort of senex iratus who is very jealous, Arnolphe is 42 (I, 4).
Horace does not know that Arnophe has changed his name to Monsieur de la Souche.
Act II
Arnolphe expresses his feelings. He is in pain (II, 1). He talks with his valet and maid who let a man enter the house (II, 2). Alain explains that Arnolphe is jealous and that Georgette would also be jealous if someone took the soup she is eating (II, 3).
Arnolphe is thinking (II, 4).
Our senex iratus confronts Agnès, thinking she can deny what Horace has said. She cannot. On the contrary, she has been polite, obedient and truthful, as she was taught. Horace waved at her and she waved back, not to be impolite. He waved again, and she waved back again. Agnès had been told not to see anyone, but she had also been taught civility. She did as she was taught.
Arnolphe is alarmed. He was to know if Horace touched Agnès. Again she tells the truth. He did. He caressed her hands and arms. Arnolphe wanders if he has caressed anything else. She hesitates, but says that she gave Horace the ribbon Arnolphe had given her (II, 3).
Arnolphe says she will marry that very evening. She thinks her spouse will be Horace, but Arnolphe’s intentions are different. He will be the spouse.
Act II ends with a famous verse, borrowed from Corneille’s Sertorius(V. 1867-1868):
Je suis maître, je parle : allez obéissez. [I am the Master, I speak : go obey.]
Act III
In Act III, Arnolphe instructs Agnès on how to be a good wife: she must be docile because the husband is in charge, etc. L’une est moitié suprême, et l’autre subalterne[.] (III, 2.) [The one half is supreme, and the other subordinate.] (The School for Wives) He describes the boiling cauldrons of hell.
Et qu’il est aux enfers des chaudières bouillantes Où l’on plonge à jamais les femmes mal vivantes. (III, 2.)
[There are boiling cauldrons in hell, into which wives who live wickedly are thrown for evermore.]
He then has her repeat:
« Les Maximes du Mariage ou les devoirs de la femme mariée, avec son exercice journalier. » [The Maxims of Marriage ; or the Duties of a Wife ; together with her Daily Exercise.] (III, 2).
Arnolphe speaks alone, a soliloquy (III, 3). Soliloquies are frequent in L’École des femmes.
Horace tells Arnolphe that Agnès has managed to attach a message to a rock she was to thrown at him. (III, 4).
Arnolphe speaks alone (III, 5: a soliloquy).
Act IV
Arnolphe cannot believe that Horace should be confiding in him. Horace is doing very well. He tells Arnolphe that Agnès has seen him and let him into her room. When she heard Arnolphe, she put Horace in a closet. They will be meeting that evening (IV, 7).
Chrysalde visits. There will be no supper, i.e. no wedding (IV, 8).
Act V
In Act V, Arnolphe thinks that Georgette and Alain have killed Horace, but they haven’t. In fact, Horace is quite well and Agnès is with him. To protect her reputation, he wishes for Arnolphe to look after her. Agnès thinks he loves her less than she loves him (dépit amoureux).Ironically she is being returned to Arnolphe.
Anagnorisis
Enrique is Agnès’ father. Her real name is Angélique. He has made arrangements to marry her to Oronte’s son. Oronte’s reaction is the following:
(…) Si son cœur a quelque répugnance, Je tiens qu’on ne doit pas lui faire résistance. (V, 7.)
[If it is repugnant to him, I think we ought not to force him. I think my brother will be of my mind.]
Horace learns that Arnolphe is now called Monsieur de la Souche, which is why he told him about Agnès. It turns out, however, that Enrique would like Oronte’s son Horace to marry Agnès. Arnolphe leaves.
Nature claimed its “rights.” Horace intended to marry the woman who happens to be Enrique’s daughter. So, all’s well that ends well.
Conclusion
I will break here, without a conclusion. It is too long to be posted with the plot. Moreover, this play was controversial.
[1] Paul Bénichou, Morales du Grand Siècle (Paris : Gallimard, 1948), p. 295-296. [2] René Bray is the author of La Formation de la doctrine classique en France. [3] Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1971 [1957]), p. 6.
Étude pour La Critique de l’École des femmes by François Boucher, sanguine
“Tendre Amour” (Jean-Philippe Rameau) – YouTube
Jean-Philippe Rameau by Carmontelle(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
MADAME PERNELLE, mother of Orgon ORGON, husband of Elmire ELMIRE, wife of Orgon DAMIS, son of Orgon MARIANE, daughter of Orgon, in love with Valère CLÉANTE, brother-in-law (beau-frère) of Orgon TARTUFFE, a hypocrite DORINE, Mariane’s maid M. LOYAL, a bailiff (l’huissier) A Police Officer (l’Exempt) FLIPOTTE, Madame Pernelle’s servant
Le Tartuffe is a five-act comedy in verse. It was first performed in 1664 and banned. It was rewritten and performed in 1667, but remained banned until 1669.
In the Misanthrope, Molière combines in one character, Alceste, the blondin and the barbon, or the young man who wishes to marry and the person(s) who oppose(s) the blondin‘s marriage. In other words, in Le Tartuffe, the eirôn and the alazṓn, or the blondin andthe barbon,are separate characters, but Molière seems to have doubled his alazṓn, or barbon. Both Orgon and Tartuffe are blocking characters, or the alazṓn. They are so close to one another that one could suggest a symbiosis.
ORGON to CLÉANTE, Tartuffe (I, 5)
Dear brother, you’d be charmed to know him;
Your raptures over him would have no end.
He is a man … who … ah! … in fact … a man
Whoever does his will, knows perfect peace,
And counts the whole world else, as so much dung.
His converse has transformed me quite; he weans
My heart from every friendship, teaches me
To have no love for anything on earth;
And I could see my brother, children, mother,
And wife, all die, and never care—a snap.
CLÉANTE
Your feelings are humane, I must say, brother!
The Plot
This is how the plot unfolds. Orgon has taken into his home a man feigning devotion, Tartuffe. Tartuffe is also a casuiste, a person who can take sin out of sinning. Because Tartuffe is a deft casuiste, he allows Orgon to act as a tyrannical father, and to do so with impunity. Orgon is so delighted he cannot see that he is being fooled. Yet, without Tartuffe, Orgon could not be a tyrannical father. For instance, when Orgon’s daughter Mariane begs her father to be spared a marriage to Tartuffe, Orgon has to brace himself, because he is at heart a compassionate individual:
MARIANE to ORGON, Tartuffe (IV, 3)
(…) I beg you Upon my knees, oh, save me from the torment Of being possessed by one whom I abhor!
ORGON to himself, Tartuffe (IV, 3)
Allons, ferme, mon cœur point de faiblesse humaine !
[Come, come, my heart, be firm! no human weakness!]
Mariane then asks to be allowed to enter a convent
MARIANE, Tartuffe (IV, 3) Oh, rather let a convent’s rigid rule Wear out the wretched days that Heaven allots me.
But Orgon has a good directeur de conscience under whose guidance, he is learning to turn inhumanity into a virtue, which it is not. Knowing the role Tartuffe teaches, Orgon preaches mortification:
ORGON to MARIANE, Tartuffe (IV, 3) So, mortify your senses by this marriage, And don’t vex me about it anymore.
Orgon is therefore beguiled. With the exception of his mother, Madame Pernelle, Orgon is the only member of the society of the play not to see that Tartuffe is a faux dévot who does not mortify his senses. However, Orgon so needs Tartuffe, who fits him like a glove, that he cannot see what everyone sees, which is both a recipe for disaster (Orgon is blind) and a source of comic relief (everyone knows and laughs).
‘Gros et gras, le teint et la bouche vermeille’
[stout, fat, fair, rosy-lipped]
Gaston Hall writes that “‘Gros et gras, le teint et la bouche vermeille’ [stout, fat, fair, rosy-lipped], Tartuffe is quite unfitted to play the part of the saintly ascetic. No rascal with the slightest talent for hypocrisy would have dared sit down to dine upon ‘… deux perdrix Avec une moitié de gigot en hachis’ [two partridges, As well as half a leg o’ mutton, deviled]” (Gaston Hall, p. 14).[1]
For instance, in Act 1, Scene 4, Orgon has just returned from a trip to the country and wants to know what has happened during his absence. However, he is so “tartuffié” that he cannot hear that his wife Elmire has been sick. He asks “Et Tartuffe” [And what about Tartuffe?] four times, and says “Le pauvre homme” [The poor man] four times, whatever he hears.
This scene also contains a second source of comic relief: the word “tartuffié” instead of possessed. Given the devastation visited upon Orgon’s family, the word “tartuffié” is incongruous but it minimizes the degree to which Tartuffe has seduced Orgon. In fact, Orgon is besotted and has begun to twist reality as did 17th-century casuists. Casuistry constitutes a form of moral jurisprudence, a practice that led Blaise Pascal (19 June 1623 – 19 August 1662) to write his famous Lettres Provinciales (1656-57) and also exerted influence on Molière who mocked it in Tartuffe.
In short, in Molière’s Tartuffe, the character who opposes Mariane’s marriage to Valère is not Tartuffe, it is Orgon, the pater familias of most comedies.
However, as Orgon enjoys threatening his daughter into a mésalliance, which is the normal plot of comedies, Tartuffe is coveting Orgon’s wife and appropriating all of Orgon’s belongings, including a cassette containing incriminating documents. Tartuffe knows about the cassette and urges Orgon not to keep it in his, Orgon’s, possession. If Orgon gives the cassette to Tartuffe, he will be able to deny having this cassette if asked about it, which frees him. He would not have to sin. One of the methods of casuistry is restriction mentale. One says: “I don’t have it.” It may be an incomplete statement, but it isn’t an outright lie. Orgon does not want to sin.
CLÉANTE to ORGON, Tartuffe (V, 1) How could you trust them to another’s hands?
ORGON By reason of a conscientious scruple. I went straight to my traitor, to confide In him; his sophistry made me believe That I must give the box to him to keep, So that, in case of search, I might deny My having it at all, and still, by favour Of this evasion, keep my conscience clear Even in taking oath against the truth.
The above is information we are not given until late in the play, but Dorine mentions “late unpleasantness” at the very beginning of the play (I, 2). Dorine, Mariane’s maid, creates tension. Dorine is our zanni, the astute servant of thecommedia dell’arte.
DORINE to CLÉANTE, Tartuffe (I, 2) His conduct in our late unpleasantness Had won him much esteem, and proved his courage In service of his king; but now he’s like A man besotted, since he’s been so taken With this Tartuffe. He calls him brother, loves him A hundred times as much as mother, son, Daughter, and wife…
At any rate, it seems we have two alazṓn: a reticent pater familias and a man who can make arrangements with heaven.
Tartuffe’s Confession
The truth as lie
At this point, Act III, matters start to turn around. Molière however treats us to a confession that is a truth as lie.
Hidden in a closet (III, 3), Damis, Orgon’s son, has seen Tartuffe attempting to seduce Elmire, Orgon’s wife, and tells his father. Although he is “tartuffié,” Orgon nevertheless confronts Tartuffe, but no sooner does he address him than the faux dévot confesses. Il s’accuse pour s’excuser.
TARTUFFE to ORGON, Tartuffe (III, 6) Oui mon frère, je suis un méchant, un coupable, Un malheureux pécheur, tout pain d’iniquité, Le plus grand scélérat qui jamais ait été.
[Yes, brother, I am wicked, I am guilty,
A miserable sinner, steeped in evil,
The greatest criminal that ever lived.]
Such defence is consistent with devotion and it is, therefore, very effective. In the Catholic Church, the devout confess. After confession, the sinner may have to make amends, but he or she is absolved. However, blind as he is, Orgon does not see a swindler in Tartuffe, but a genuinely devout man. In fact, Orgon is the one who makes amends (penance). To show to what extent he believes him, Orgon asks Tartuffe to keep his wife company at all times (III, 7).
Consequences
However, the plot has thickened. Elmire had asked Damis not to tell Orgon (III, 5). This warming was prudent on her part as Tartuffe’s confession only serves to convince Orgon that Tartuffe is a holy man, which he isn’t. So the results are catastrophic. As quoted above (IV, 6), Orgon presses the marriage of Mariane to Tartuffe and he disinherits his son Damis.
All else having failed, members of Orgon’s family resort to a theatrical device: a-play-within-a-play. Elmire tells her husband to crouch underneath a table behind a tablecloth, a form of curtain (IV, 4). From an actor Orgon is transformed into a spectator. He will see and seeing is believing.
According to Molière scholar Georges Forestier, the play-within-a-play is not a mise en abyme (see Related Articles). It is part of the action dramatique, the plot.[2] In the present case, Professor Forestier is absolutely right. Orgon is a doubting Thomas and so tartuffié, possessed, that his family has little choice but to conceal him under a table, which may not be a play-within-a-play, but constitutes a theatrical recourse. Orgon is stunned and slow to come to Elmire’s rescue. She has coughed repeatedly, as arranged, without Orgon emerging from under the table.
Yet Tartuffe does not take from Orgon much more than Orgon gives him. However, there is a difference. Tartuffe is an extortionist and Orgon, a potential family tyrant, but un hommede bien (a good man) at heart. He has truly been besotted. Orgon so needs Tartuffe, a casuist, that not only does he give his daughter to Tartuffe, disinherit his son Damis, foolishly sign himself away to Tartuffe, but he also entrusts to Tartuffe a cassette that contains incriminating papers and which we do not hear about until Act V.
La Fronde: uprisings
We will not discuss la Fronde except to note that under Italian-born Cardinal Mazarin, ChiefMinister of the French King from 1642 until his death, there were uprisings called La Fronde. These occurred between 1648 – 1653 and consisted in two campaigns: the Fronde of the parlementsand the Fronde of the nobles. Absolutism gave no voice to France’s parlements and it’s aristocrats, including princes of the blood, possible heirs to the Kingdom of France who played no role in governing France. Moreover, the nobles refused to pay a tax. The war against Spain was costing a fortune. In the end, peasants and members of the bourgeoisie had to foot the bill.
Both Orgon and Argas were involved in these uprisings. When finally, Orgon realizes that he’s been a fool, he tells Cléante, the raisonneur, and starts running upstairs in the hope of retrieving the cassette, but it’s too late. Monsieur Loyal, the bailiff, is already at the door to collect all of Orgon’s possessions. We soon learn from Valère, who must have friends in high places and is in love with Mariane, Orgon’s daughter, that Tartuffe has already used the cassette alleging, later, that his first duty is to serve the king: “Mais l’intérêt du Prince est mon premier devoir” (V, scène dernière).
ORGON to TARTUFFE, Tartuffe (V, scène dernière)
Ungrateful wretch, do you forget ’twas I
That rescued you from utter misery?
TARTUFFE
[I’ve not forgot some help you may have given;
But my first duty now is toward my prince.
The higher power of that most sacred claim
Must stifle in my heart all gratitude;
And to such puissant ties I’d sacrifice
My friend, my wife, my kindred, and myself.]
How ironic. However Valère has made arrangements for the family to flee (V, 6) because Orgon will be arrested, but in true comic fashion, Tartuffe is arrested.
The tendency of comedy is to include as many people as possible in its final society: the blocking characters are form often reconciled or converted than simply repudiated. (Frye, p. 165)
In Act V, scene 3, Cléante remains optimistic. Tartuffe may prove more merciful than we expect.
CLÉANTE to ORGON, Tartuffe(V, 3) Je voudrais de bon cœur, qu’on pût entre vous deux De quelque ombre de paix raccommoder les nœuds.
[I wish with all my heart that some pretence
Of peace could be patched up between you two.]
Yet, in both Dom Juan and Tartuffe, salvation does not come from a ruse on the part of the society of the play. In Dom Juan a machine engulfs le méchanthomme. In Tartuffe, unPrince ennemi de la fraude saves the family. Molière uses a deus ex machina. We have reached what Northrop Frye calls the “point of ritual death” (p. 179). The eirôn cannot recover.
As noted above, Tartuffe takes little more than what he has been given by Orgon, but Orgon has given everything, which was foolish. Moreover, Tartuffe does not have to accept marrying Mariane. Nor does he have to take possession of what Orgon has handed over to him. Moreover, were Tartuffe humane, he would not run to the Prince carrying the incriminating cassette.
Therefore, although Orgon is forcing Mariane to marry Tartuffe and gives all he has to Tartuffe, including the incriminating cassette, “[t]he pharmakós is neither innocent nor guilty,” writes Frye (p. 41). By doubling the alazṓn (the blocking character), Molière has allowed, on the one hand, greater vilification of Tartuffe, who becomes the pharmakós, and, on the other hand, he has facilitated Orgon’s rehabilitation, as comedy wills. Tartuffe is Molière’s most convincing pharmakós.
Moreover, Tartuffe is the classic alazṓn: a miles gloriosus (Plautus, c. 254–184 BCE; Latin comedy), in which he resembles Dom Juan. (See Alazṓn, Wikipedia.) Elmire resists Tartuffe’s advances by telling him that she may offend heaven: le Ciel. However,in Tartuffe’s eyes, the eyes of a casuist, it is possible to sin without sinning, which is preposterous and leads Tartuffe to hoist his own petard. There is a farcical element in Tartuffe, just as there is a farcical element in the Misanthrope. Let us hear Tartuffe impersonating God, which is casuistry.
TARTUFFE à ELMIRE, Tartuffe (IV, 4) Si ce n’est que le Ciel qu’à mes vœux on oppose, Lever un tel obstacle est à moi peu de chose, Et cela ne doit pas retenir votre cœur.
[If Heaven is all that stands now in my way,
I’ll easily remove that little hindrance;
Your heart need not hold back for such a trifle.]
Comedy is a forgiving. By virtue of comedy’s ancient laws, there will be a happy ending, which, in the case of Molière’s Tartuffe, is brought about by the timely intervention of “un Prince ennemi de la fraude,” a “deus ex machina.” At the end of the play, as we are sitting on the edge of our seats, expecting the Exempt (a police officer) to arrest Orgon, the Exempt arrests Tartuffe.
Tartuffe is made into the guilty and punished half, the scapegoat, or pharmakós, of a doubled alazṓn. Doubling the alazṓn benefits the play. Orgon is part of the play’s final society, which he must deserve, or Elmire would not be his wife and his family so loyal. Nor would a servant, Dorine, speak to Orgon so openly. Orgon cannot re-enter society without redeemable features. We are not in fairyland.
The Truth as Truth
As for Tartuffe, he is as he describes himself when Damis, Orgon’s son, tells his father that he saw Tartuffe trying to seduce Elmire. His confession “gets him off the hook:” il se tire d’affaire. As Will Moore writes, “Tartuffe is sure of Orgon, and Molière is sure of his public” (Will G. Moore, p. 64).[4] But the truth as lie is a reprieve. The truth as lie turns out to be the truth, which is comic irony.
TARTUFFE to ORGON, Tartuffe (III, 6) Non, non, vous vous laissez tromper à l’apparence, Et je ne suis rien moins, hélas, que ce qu’on pense. Tout le monde me prend pour un homme de bien; Mais la vérité pure est que je ne vaux rien.
[No, no; you let appearances deceive you;
I’m anything but what I’m thought to be,
Alas! and though all men believe me godly,
The simple truth is, I’m a worthless creature.]
As the curtain falls, all are on their way to the wedding of Valère and Mariane.
All’s well that ends well.
(Tout est bien qui finit bien.)
Love to everyone ♥
Gouache (XVIIIe siècle) de Fesch et Whirsker. (Photo credit: Larousse)
I have already written that Tartuffe is the punished half of a blocking character. In this post, I have taken this thought further by suggesting a doubling of the alazṓn.
Micheline Bourbeau-Walker, “Tartuffe: masques, machines et machinations,” in Clive Thomson (ed), Proceedings of the 1981 Meeting of the Canadian Association of University and College Teachers of French (Kingston: Signum, 1981), p. 491-509.
ISSN 0700-1525
My PhD dissertation was a study of the pharmakós in Molière:
Micheline Walker, “L’Impossible Entreprise : une étude sur le pharmakós dans le théâtre de Molière,” DAI, 36 (1976) 8103A (Université de la Colombie britannique).
[1] H. Gaston Hall, Tartuffe, Molière (W. G. Moore, General Editor, Barron’s Studies in French Literature: 1960). [2] Georges Forestier, Le Théâtre dans le théâtre (Genève: Droz, 1996). [3] Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, Four Essays (Princeton University Press, 1973) (online) [4] W. G. Moore, Molière, A New Criticism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1949).
—ooo—
GEORG MATTHIAS MONN (1717-1750)
Concerto for cello, strings and basso continuo in G minor (2. Adagio)
Performed by the Freiburger Barockorchester
Featuring Jean-Guihen Queyras, cello
Conducted by Petra Mullejans
Getty Images has a fine selection of prints featuring farceurs. Farceurs are comédiens who are featured in burlesque plays. Molière was called the “premier farceur de France.” The farce is a comic genre in which the tables are turned on a person or persons. Molière’s Précieuses ridicules (18 November 1659) is a farce. Farces are short plays, one to three acts, and Molière’s used prose instead of verses (12-syllable alexandrins). Molière wrote both farces and “grandes comédies.” Grandes comédie are five-act plays and are usually written using alexandrins.
During the years he spent touring the provinces, we assume Molière’s troupe (his company) performed several farces. At any rate, we have no text of plays produced in the provinces, with the possible exception of one farce La Jalousie du barbouillé. A barbouillé is someone whose face is smeared.
Farce is an od genre, going back to the Atellane Farce/Fable, called Fabulae atelanae in Latin. These farces contain some of the masks of the Commedia dell’arte, a product of 16th-century Italy. Italian comedians were given sketches or scenarios and improvised on these canevas. Troupes were poor and had to make do with costumes only, rather than elaborate stagecraft, such as machines. Some farceurs, however, were supported by noblemen during carnivals such as the Carnival of Venice. Carnival season ended with Mardi Gras, the day before Lent began, Ash Wednesday.
The Commedia dell’arte features types or masks as characters. Pantalone was always a jealous older man and jealousy is the main ‘sin’ in Molière comedies. It’s a terrible sin because through one’s own behaviour one alienates the person one loves. Molière’s finest play on this subject is L’École des femmes, The School for Wives (26 December 1662). It created a controversy.
The Italians always played the same role. The blocking character, the character hindering the innamorati‘s marriage, coud be Pantalone, Il Dottore, Il Capitano, etc. Their roles were function, or masks, in which they followed in the footsteps of the oldest comédiens, Attic (Greek) comedy and ancient rituals. These functions are often called archetypes. (See Northrop Frye, Sources and Resources).
Les Italiens
As a child, Molière (1622 – 1673) was influenced by Italian comedy. The Italians performed at the Pont-Neuf (still standing and called the Pont-Neuf [the new bridge]).
Molière’s father, Jean Poquelin, had bought a position from Louis XIII in 1631. It should have provided Moière with a good income. In 1641, Jean-Baptiste Poquelin became “valent of the King’s chamber and keeper of carpets and upholstery” (“valet de chambre ordinaire et tapissier du roi”), but in 1643, he founded l’Illustre Théâtre with Madeleine Béjart. The troupe went bankrupt and Molière was jailed. After his release, he and his comédiens left Paris.
Upon his return to Paris, Molière had a successful but relatively short career, about fifteen years. On 17th February 1673, while playing Argan, the Imaginary Invalid, Molière collapsed. He remained on stage performing his role, but died shortly after the comedy was over. The Imaginary Invalid is a three-act comédie-ballet, set to music by Marc-Antoine Charpentier and choreographed by Pierre Beauchamp.
Medieval Farces
Farces were common entertainment during the Middle Ages. They were performed to amuse spectators between scenes during long plays, such as Passion plays. Passion plays were reenactments of the Passion of Christ. These lasted for days and farces provided the “comic relief.” Passion plays have survived. The most acclaimed has been performed at Oberammergau (Bavaria), since 1634.
La Farce de Maître Pathelin, court scene(Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)
The Medieval Farce: La Farce de Maître Pathelin
The most famous French medieval farce is La Farce de Maître Pierre Pathelin, TheFarce of Master Pierre Pathelin (1457). We do not know the name of its author, but the farce features a legal battle. Maître is the title given lawyers. A lawyer, Maître Pathelin, has purchased fabric on credit from a clothier named Guillaume Joceaulme. Pierre Pathelin is hired to defend a shepherd named Thibaut l’Aignelet (from agneau, sheep) who stands accused of stealing a sheep (un agneau) from the cloth merchant.
In previous centuries, lawyers had not been trained, but they now learned their profession. Consequently, Maître Pierre Pathelin had fewer and fewer customers, so there were holes in his clothes and in wife Guillemette’s clothes. His not having money explains why he has bought fabric on credit. When the cloth merchant comes to his house to be paid, Pathelin make believe he is sick to escape paying.
During the trial, Guillaume Joceaulme, the cloth merchant, recognizes Maître Pathelin. So the trial takes on new dimensions. Pathelin has instructed his client to say nothing but “Baaa” when he is asked a question, which he does. Pathelin rules against Joceaulme because of the incoherence the case presents. When Maître Pathelin asks to be paid, Thibault l’Aignelet does as he was told. He says “Baaa.” Consequently, Pathelin is “hoisted with his own petard” (trompeur trompé) as in Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
La Farce de Maître Pierre Pathelin was so famous that speakers of French still say “Revenons à nos moutons,” (Let’s get back to our sheep, i.e. Let’s get back to our topic) when the conversation is drifting to another topic.
The French farce is therefore rooted in the medieval French farces (entertainment between scenes) and in the irreverent fabliau. But it also borrows from the commedia dell’arte, Latin comedy (Plautus and Terrence), the farces of Antiquity and Greek comedy. Molière had to write down his comedies, beginning with Les Précieuses ridicules (18 November 1659) to avoid theft of his material. But when he was touring in the provinces, members of his troupe would write their part using a canevas, a sketch (see Commedia dell’arte).
The picture below depicts French as well as Italian “masks.” Molière is at the far left (brown clothes). Jodelet, who performed in the Précieuses ridicules, is standing next to him.
Les Farceurs, French and Italian (1670)
Conclusion
Molière did not write comedies in a void. There is a context, such as the Commedia dell’arte, salons,préciosité, l’honnête homme, la galanterie…
I will be sharing my book with you as I did in my last post. The subject, Molière’s comedies, is not obscure and I would prefer not to stay away from my weblog for long periods. I am writing the book itself in French, but the posts will be in English and brief, yet complete. Molière’s plays are online publications, which is very useful. We also have images and music.
Although my book refers to La Farce de Maître Pierre Pathelin, no detail is given. But it is part of the material Molière inherited.
Despite the use of the word “for” (pour), it would appear that Jean-Antoine Watteau‘s (10 October 1684 – 18 July 1721) The Embarkation for Cythera (Louvre version)[1] depicts “a departure” from the island of Cythera, the birthplace of Venus. According to Wikipedia, whose sites dealing with our subject have just been maintained, it symbolises “the temporary nature of human happiness.” (See Fêtes galantes, Wikipedia).
Consequently, the characters portrayed in The Embarkation for Cythera are not leaving our imperfect world to travel to the land of love, a land resembling Madeleine de Scudéry‘s (15 November 1607 – 2 June 1701), famous carte de Tendre, or map of Tendre. They are returning from Cythera.
Antoine Watteau by Rosalba Carriera, 1721 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The Embarkation for Cythera is a painting rather than a text. After Watteau, however, Fêtes galantes re-entered literary works and music. The best-known literary Fêtes galantes is a collection of poems by Paul Verlaine, published in 1869. The theme also suffuses Pierre Louÿs’Les Chansons de Bilitis.
The term Fêtes galantes has roots in both 17th-century honnêteté and préciosité. As mentioned above, there was, on the one hand, a galant homme. He was an honnête homme and at times a précieux. On the other hand, there was un homme galant or a womanizer. The homme galant, was unlikely to be invited to salons, with the possible exception of persons such as Giacomo Casanova (2 April 1725 – 4 June 1798).
The préciosité Molière mocked in his Précieuses ridicules (1659) developed in salons and promoted Platonic love. In Les Précieuses ridicules, Cathos expresses disdain for a man’s body. She tells her uncle Gorgibus:
Comment est-ce qu’on peut souffrir la pensée de coucher contre un homme vraiment nu ? (Les Précieuses ridicules, I, 4)
(How can one suffer the thought of sleeping next to a truly naked man?)
Salon Literature
word games
pastoral and heroic romances
la carte de Tendre
In early salons, the main activity of salonniers and salonnières was literature, witty literature. Salonniers and salonnièresengaged in “word games,” or the creation of ingenuous little poems. For instance, they would be given the end of lines of poetry to which they had to attach a beginning. These bouts-rimés (rhymed ends), as they were called, demanded inventiveness and substantial linguistic skills. A main characteristic of salon literature, poems mainly, is the use of the conceit (la pointe).
However, salonniers and salonnières savoured pastoral romances such as Honoré d’Urfée‘s L’Astréeand heroic romances. Occasionally, they played shepherds and shepherdesses, which were flights from reality, as would be, to a certain extent Paul Verlaine‘s hedonistic and somewhat decadent fin de siècleFêtes galantes. In other words, despite préciosité, love was a main interest in salons.
In fact, to be understood, galanterie must be contextualized. Paul Verlaine’s poems were hedonistic, but they were poems and therefore fictional. There is a Cythera, but Venus is a mythological figure. Madeleine de Scudéry‘s (15 November 1607 – 2 June 1701), carte de Tendre, or map of Tendre,published in Clélie, histoireromaine, is a product of the imagination. Yet, préciosité is a moment in the history of love. Précieuses were real women.
La Guirlande de Julie
One instance of précieux love is the fourteen-year courtship Julie d’Angennes FR (1607 – 15 novembre 1671), Madame de Rambouillet‘s daughter, imposed on the Charles de Saint-Maure, duc de Montausier. Here, however, one senses genuine apprehensions: pregnancy, childbirth, and infant mortality. On her 35th birthday, Montausier gave Julie the exquisite Guirlande de Julie[2] a collection of 62 madrigals,[3]but Julie made the Duke wait five more years. This is how “precious” and perhaps frightened she was. They married on 15 July 1645 and, although the Duc de Montausier was an honnête homme and a galant homme, he was un homme. Julie got pregnant and gave birth to a daughter.
Préciosité, as mocked in Molière’s Précieuses ridicules (1659), was short-lived. However, as noted above, préciosité or disembodied loveis a milestone in the history of love. It belongs to thequerelle des femmes, the woman question. It therefore differs from chivalry and the Roman de la Rose, which promoted courtly love without rejecting sexual intimacy.
Catherine de Vivonne, Marquise de Rambouillet(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
La Chambre bleue d’Arthénice
Italian-born Catherine de Vivonne, Marquise de Rambouillet (1588 – 2 December 1665) opened the first salon: L’Hôtel de Rambouillet, rue Saint-Thomas-du-Louvre. Its Catherine de Vivonne called herself Arthénice, an anagram of Catherine. Hôtels were private residences (un hôtel particulier) and salon hostesses received once or twice a week. The hostess usually sat in bed and her guests were in a ruelle, literally and alley way, on a side ofthe bed. Madame de Rambouillet received in her blue room, la chambre bleue. Occasionally, salonniers and salonnières went on a picnic. That outing was called un cadeau, a gift. When the Marquise closed her salon,Madeleine de Scudéry (15 November 1607 – 2 June 1701) opened hers. Mademoiselle de Scudéry never married.
Fêtes galantes
Let us return to Watteau’s 18th-century Fêtes galantes, Jean-Antoine Watteau’s paintings depicting “courtship parties.” (See Fêtes galantes, Wikipedia).
In Fêtes galantes personal sentiment is masked by delicately clever evocations of scenes and characters from the Italian commedia dell’arte and from the sophisticated pastorals of 18th-century painters, such as Watteau and Nicolas Lancret, and perhaps also from the contemporary mood-evoking paintings of Adolphe Monticelli.[4]
Fêtes galantes are associated with the commedia dell’arte. Actors were, as in ‘to be,’ “masks.” As well, the sad clown is an archetype. Masquerade balls have survived. Balls go back to the ballet de cour. They are courtly and have a counterpart in festivals and carnavals.
Charles Sorel, who was named the historiographer of France in 1635, wrote Les Loix de la galanterie, first published in 1644, but galants met and discussed the rules of gallantry.
We have several e-copies of Sorel’s Loix or lois de la galanterie. However, despite repeated attempts, I have not found a translation into English of Charles Sorel‘s (c. 1602 – 7 March 1674) Loix de la galanterie. I presume there is a translation, but it is not on the internet. In my next post, I will therefore provide not a translation, but a summary of Les Loix de la galanterie, using Ludovic Lalanne’s text.
Conclusion
The terms honnête homme and galant homme are no longer used, nor is the term gentilhomme. The honnête homme is now called a gentleman in both French and English. The word gallant has survived and is used to describe men who still open the door of a car to help a woman out or hold a heavy door when a fragile individual enters or leaves a building or are very polite. The term “grande dame” is used to describe particularly accomplished women, including women who had a salon.
Fêtes galantes now belong to the discourse on love refined or “galant,” but love as depicted in Watteau’s ethereal Fêtes galantes.
____________________ [1] Another version is housed at theCharlottenburg, in Berlin. [2]Calligraphy by Nicolas Jaret. Paintings byNicolas Robert. [3] A madrigal could be either a song and a poem. [4] “Paul Verlaine”. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2016. Web. 22 Apr. 2016 <http://www.britannica.com/biography/Verlaine-Paul>.
Duel after a Masquerade Ball by Jean-Léon Gérôme (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
There came a point when Préciosité went too far. Playing shepherds and shepherdesses in a salon could not last forever. So by the time Molière, born Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, presented his Précieusesridicules, préciosité had become what Jean-Claude Tournand[i]terms “une fuite poétique,”(a poetical flight).
However, it would be unfortunate to trivialize préciosité and especially salons. For one thing, they did have a civilizing influence on members of Paris’ affluent upper middle-class and on aristocrats, many of whom made a point of becoming honnêtes hommes, in the worldly acceptation of honnêteté.
Molière‘s Précieuses ridicules were played for the first time on 18 November 1659. It is a farce and therefore resembles the Italian commedia dell’arteone-act or short improvised plays. These featured characters such as Pantalone, Dottore Gratiano, Il Capitano (mostly jealous characters), the occasional miles gloriosus (braggart-soldier), Arlecchino, Brighella, Pierrot, Pulcinella: lazzi, zanni (clever servants who help the lovers) vecchi (old and jealous characters), inamorate and inamorati (lover, lovers).
The plot of Les Précieuses ridicules shows the typical reversal of farces, that of the trompeur trompé (or deceiver deceived). Cathos and Magdelon have just moved to Paris and dream of becoming part of the beau monde (the elegant world, that of salons). However, Gorgibus, Cathos’s father and Magdelon’s uncle has different ideas concerning the fate of his daughter and his niece. He wants them to marry sensible and well-to-do young men, in which case “all [would be] well that ends well,” the final outcome of comedies.
Two perfectly suitable young men, Du Croisy and La Grange, come a-courting but they are immediately rejected by Cathos and Madgelon. They are not précieux and call a chair a chair rather than a commodité de la conversation (what is useful to conversation). In their attempt to give the French language a purer taste, the précieuses had indeed renamed many objects.
So the young men are shown the door, which infuriates Gorgibus. He pays a visit on his daughter and his niece as they are “greasing-up” their faces (se graisser le museau [muzzle]). They tell Gorgibus that courting should be as in the country of Tendre, the map of courting featured in Mademoiselle de Scudéry’s Clélie. They name the villages of Tendre: Billets-Doux (love letters), Petits-Soins (tender loving care), Jolis-Vers (pretty or lovely poems). Moreover, they complain because the young men did not wear feathered hats and designer clothes: “de la bonne faiseuse” (from the right maker). They then announce that they are changing their names. Cathos, Gorgibus’s daughter, wants to be called Polixène and her cousin Magdelon, Aminthe.
So the stage is set for a reversal: the deceiver deceived. The young men both decide that they will each clothe their laquais, or men servant, into garments worn in salons and send them to court our would-be salonnières.
Cathos and Magdelon are so blinded by their own wishes, that Mascarille’s entrance in a chair carried by porteurs is not viewed as inappropriate and ridiculous. Mascarille (played by Molière) is a marquis. He recites an inferior poem, an impromptu, he has written, pausing frequently to comment on the ingenuous manner in which he has worded his poem.
As for the other laquais, Jodelet (played by Jodelet FR), he plays the part of a vicomte and arrives later in the play (Scene XI). Jodelet is a famous but older French actor playing himself, a valet. His face is white because he covers it with flour. The marquis and the vicomte start boasting about their life in various salons and about their abilities as poets and dancers.
The spectators are in stitches, but Cathos and Magdelon so wish to be précieuses that they admire the disguised laquais. A few unacceptable words and references are used, but Cathos and Madgelon do not know the difference. They are totally deceived.
The fantasy comes to an end during a danse. Violinists had been hired, etc. Du Croisy and La Grange come back and undress their valets so they can be seen for what they are. Earlier (Scene IV) Cathos had remarked that the thought of sleeping next to a naked man was repulsive.
Gorgibus returns and the violinists demand to be paid for their services. Gorgibus starts beating them up in the harmless fashion of comedy. So the farce has been played out to its bitter end, bitter for the would-be précieuses and salonnières, and bitter for Gorgibus.
This article was posted in 2011.To my knowledge, it is new to most if not all of you.
With kind regards to all of you. ♥
[i] Jean-Claude Tournand, Introduction à la vie littéraire du XVIIe siècle (Paris : Armand Colin, 1984 [1970]), pp. 47-75.
Les Précieuses ridicules de Molière
avec : M-M Lozac’h à la mise en scène et dans le rôle de magdelon Marie Moriette dans cathos – François Floris dans Mascarille
M-M Losac’h: Magdelon & producer
Marie Moriette: Cathos
François Floris: Mascarille
Physician Preparing an Elixir, Folio from a Materia Medica of Dioscorides, an illustrated manuscript dated A.H. 621/ A.D. 1224, Iraq or Northern Jazira, possibly Baghdad, Islamic (Photo credit: Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY)
President Obama visits King Salman of Saudi Arabia
President Obama was in Saudi Arabia, so many wondered if the President of the United States would attempt to save Raif Badawi.
King Salman’s Best Interest
King Salman has stated he would not change anything. Continuity is the word he used. During the first week he was in power there were four beheadings.
It may be in King Salman’s best interest to release Raif Badawi. There are a large number of Saudi liberals who could be radicalized if Raif Badawi’s sentence is not revoked. Rigidity on the part of the King could therefore lead to civil unrest.
But do absolute monarchs think in this manner and would Saudis revolt? We are dealing with human beings belonging to a different culture. Human nature is a universal, but cultures differ.
Louis XIV and Molière
I am of course remembering Louis XIV of France. Never was absolutism so absolute as in the days of the Sun King. I wrote my PhD thesis on 17th-century playwright Molière and discussed his somber plays. The Misanthrope (4 June 1666) and Dom Juan (15 February 1665) are chief examples. But so is Tartuffe (12 May 1664).
Le Misanthrope
In the Misanthrope, Alceste criticizes the court and says he would like to live in a desert. Molière saves the situation by giving Alceste a friend, Philinte, who is more tolerant of the faults of others. However, he agrees with Alceste:
Philinte to Alceste
Non, je tombe d’accord de tout ce qu’il vous plaît : Tout marche par cabale et par pur intérêt ; Ce n’est que la ruse aujourd’hui qui l’emporte, Et les hommes devraient être faits d’autre sorte. Tous ces défauts humains nous donnent dans la vie Des moyens d’exercer notre philosophie…
(Le Misanthrope, V.i)
“No, I agree with you in all that you say. Everything goes by intrigue, and by pure influence. It is only trickery which carries the day in our time, and men ought to act differently. But is their want of equity a reason for wishing to withdraw from their society? All human failings give us, in life, the means of exercising our philosophy. It is the best employment for virtue; and if probity reigned everywhere, if all hearts were candid, just, and tractable, most of our virtues would be useless to us, inasmuch as their functions are to bear, without annoyance, the injustice of others in our good cause; and just in the same way as a heart full of virtue.” (See The Misanthrope online)
One cannot survive absolutism if one doesn’t learn to bend a little. In fact, one cannot survive without bending a little. Interestingly, Alceste is in love with Célimène who is the embodiment of what he loathes, which suggests a certain ambivalence on his part.
Dom Juan
In Dom Juan (15 February 1665), no one can stop Dom Juan from being a conqueror. His conquests are the women he seduces. It has been suggested that Dom Juan is a Casanova. However, he is driven not by his sexual appetite, but by his need to conquer. He is cataloguing his “conquests.” No one can change him. His wife and his father appeal to him, to no avail. At one point, Dom Juan decides to hide behind the mask of feigned devotion, the perfect mask. However, heaven itself kills him: thunder, kills him.
Tartuffe
In Tartuffe (12 May 1664), Tartuffe himself feigns devotion. Orgon, the pater familias who has adopted him, enjoys the fact that so pious an individual can turn every sin into a virtuous deed. (See Casuistry, RELATED ARTICLES). So he gives Tartuffe a box, a cassette, that contains evidence that Orgon was not always a loyal subject of the monarchs.
The play is particularly revealing. The characters manage to show Orgon, the heavy father, that Tartuffe wants to seduce his wife. They convince Orgon to hide under a table behind a table-cloth, so he can see for himself that his “saint” is flesh and blood, but it’s too late. Tartuffe has the incriminating cassette and owns Orgon’s possessions. The king, who sees all, sends an exempt to Orgon house. Orgon believes he is being arrested, but such is not the case. The king knows that Tartuffe has committed crimes. The exempt has come to arrest Tartuffe, not Orgon.
A “deus ex machina”
Therefore, a deus ex machina saves Orgon and his family. The powerlessness of Orgon’s family indicates that one can lose all.
Such is life under a despotic monarch. The King sees… A deus ex machina intervenes when a situation is desperate. A deus ex machina is a machine. When all else fails, God intervenes. Only the King can rescue Orgon and his family.
Tartuffe, or The Impostor, or The Hypocrite, premièred on 12 May 1664, as part of a celebration probably inaugurating Versailles: Les Plaisirs de l’Île enchantée (FR). One can assume that the feast, which lasted from 7 to 13 May 1664, was an attempt to outshine Fouquet’s inauguration of Vaux-le-Vicomte, an event that took place on 17 August 1661. Les Plaisirs de l’Île enchantée was a lavish feast, but it could not match the inauguration of Vaux-le-Vicomte.[1]
La Fontaine, attributed to François de Troy(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Louis XIV and La Fontaine
After the inauguration of Vaux-le-Vicomte, Jean de La Fontaine wrote his “Élégies auxnymphes de Vaux” (FR) a poem in which he praised Fouquet and expressed hope that Louis XIV would be compassionate towards a patron of the arts. Fouquet owned Vaux-le-Vicomte, a castle more beautiful than the King’s Louvre, formerly the main residence of the Kings of France.
Given Fouquet’s imprisonment, Jean de La Fontaine chose prudence. He made animals and vegetation speak and he used old fables, Æsop‘s, who lived in Greece but was born a “Levantin.”[2] Æsop’s fables date back to the Indian Panchatantra, retold in Arabic by Persian scholar Abdullah Ibn al-Muqaffa(750 CE) and given the title Kalīlah wa Dimnah.La Fontaine’s eloquence is a mute eloquence, une éloquence muette. His characters are mostly animals and vegetation. This is the manner in which he could tell the truth. Absolute monarchs will not admit to seeing themselves in a lion. As I have written elsewhere, the lion is king, but the King is not a lion.
Obliqueness
Therefore criticism of the King was worded in a dire-sans-dire, (to say without saying). Writers had to write in an “oblique” fashion, as did La Fontaine, Molière, and scholars of the French Enlightenment. The word “oblique” had been used by Michel de Montaigne (28 February 1533 – 13 September 1592).
(There is consistency to my fantasies, but at times from afar, and they look at one another, but in an oblique fashion. [my translation])
Note the use of the word fantaisies. That is an example of obliqueness in that Montaigne demotes himself. Montaigne’s obliqueness characterizes the writings of La Fontaine, Molière, Pascal (Lettres provinciales [1656 – 1657]), and the works of major figures of the French Enlightenment, not the least of whom was Voltaire (né François-Marie Arouet). Voltaire had found himself “embastillé” (thrown into the Bastille prison),for his attempts to promote tolerance.
Young Man holding a Skull, Frans Hals (Vanitas) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Vanitas Vanitatum
In short, the King’s confessors, Bossuet in particular, were the only persons who could influence Louis. They preached that there was a God, the real God, above the King. So the divine rights of kings were not divine, as kings were mortals. They reminded the king that he would die: memento mori and that all was vanity: vanitas vanitatum. This argument did inspire restraint on the part of Louis XIV, but does King Salman have a confessor, a Bossuet (27 September 1627 – 12 April 1704), whose eloquence is unmatched?
U.S. President Barack Obama meets with Saudi Arabia’s King Salman (R) at Erga Palace in Riyadh, January 27, 2015. Obama is stopping in Saudi Arabia on his way back to Washington from India to pay his condolences over the death of King Abdullah and to hold bilateral meetings with King Salman. (Photo credit: Reuters)
Conclusion
Let us return to President Obama’s visit to Saudi Arabia. Could President Obama speak about Raif Badawi?
I doubt it. King Abdullah had just died and the President went to meet the new king, King Salman. He had business to discuss with King Salman whose country is a member of the coalition fighting IS.
Had President Obama intervened, he may have been perceived as meddling. One cannot walk into someone else’s house, rearrange the furniture and settle in.
However, President Obama has now met King Salman. He travelled to his country. He was well received and the two leaders talked. The above photograph may be our best reassurance. Both leaders seem relaxed and in a jovial mood. So there may be a better future.
Let us hope Mr Badawi soon joins his family in Canada. The international community is pleading for his release. Nobel Prize laureates and scholars have asked for clemency. Kind-hearted people are ready to be flogged a hundred times each so Mr Badawi is spared further flagellation. Amnesty International is collecting names and funds.
Finally, we, in Canada, are waiting for Mr Badawi, but we cannot release him. That is for the Saudis to decide.
It has to end
Jihadi John is still beheading innocent people. There are constant beheadings, and Syrians have to leave their country.
In fact, President Obama is now being threatened, which was to be expected.
Michel de Montaigne, Essais, Gutenberg [eBook #3600] (EN)
____________________
[1] Molière wrote: “Toutes les peintures ridicules qu’on expose sur les théâtres doivent être regardées sans chagrin de tout le monde. Ce sont miroirs publics, où il ne faut jamais témoigner qu’on se voie ; et c’est se taxer hautement d’un défaut, que se scandaliser qu’on le reprenne.” (La Critique de L’École des femmes, sc. VI.)
(Depictions that ridicule people on stage should not cause grief to anyone. These are public mirrors and people should never show that they see a reflection of themselves; they would be owning up to a fault in the utmost, if it should offend them to see it ridiculed. [my translation and rewording])
Tughra (Official Signature) of Sultan Süleiman the Magnificent (r. 1520–66), ca. 1555–60, Turkey, Istanbul, Islamic (Photo credit: Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Cover, George Barbier (Photo credit: Wikimedia.org, all)
Pierrot and Harlequin, George Barbier
Art Deco
Jean-Gaspard Deburau
Charles Deburau (Jean-Gaspard’s son)
Jean-Louis Barrault
Pantomine and Mine
Les Enfants du Paradis
A few weeks ago, I posted an article on “Leo Rauth’s fin de siècle Pierrot.” Leo Rauth died too young and under tragic circumstances. However, although Rauth‘s artwork predates George Barbier‘s (1882–1932), who is considered an Art Deco artist, both artists depicted commedia dell’arte stock characters: Pedrolino, or Pierrot formerly known as Gilles, and Harlequin (Arlecchino and Arlequin) and did so in “galant” fashion following in the footsteps of Jean-Antoine Watteau (10 October 1684 – 18 July 1721).
Pierrot is a major figure in France. He appears in the art of Antoine Watteau, a student of Claude Gillot (both eighteenth-century artists, middle and late). Pierrot then grows into Jean-Gaspard Deburau‘s Battiste, a role Charles Deburau, Jean-Gaspard’s son, inherited. Pierrot had entered the world of pantomime and mime.
George Barbier: illustrator
japonisme
Printmaking
“pochoirs” (stenciling)
engravings
However, Leo Rauth differs from George Barbier. First, Barbier is considered an Art Deco artist. Second, he was a fashion illustrator at a time when haute couture was developing rapidly and the publishing industry sensed an opportunity it quickly seized. Moreover, japonisme, woodblock printing, would prove the technique of artists who needed copies of their work: posters, illustrations. Printmaking was not new to the western world. François Chauveau engraved the Carte de Tendre.
As you know, the fine arts diversified in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century due, to a large extent, to japonisme. Japanese prints flooded Europe, France and England particularly. They were plentiful and therefore an inexpensive yet beautiful artwork. Illustrators needed such a tool.
Barbier, used pochoirs (stenciling)[I]that enabled him to make replicas of his designs, but many artists chose various forms of engraving. They made etchings (on copper usually), woodcuts (wood), linocuts (linoleum) or some other material.
Engraving is referred to as an intaglio technique. For instance, etchers trace their drawing into a “ground” applied to metal, they use acid to bite into the drawing. They then insert ink that flows into the engraved (etched) parts of the metal and, when pressed onto paper, only the engraved or etched parts of the pieces of metal, the image, will show on the paper. Artists and designers can also make reproductions of their work using lithography, silkscreens (stenciling) and pochoirs (also stenciling).
Chansons de France pour les petits enfants, Maurice B. de Monvel
The Boutet de Monvel Dynasty
Maurice Boutet de Monvel
his son: Bernard Boutet de Monvel
his nephews: George Barbier and Pierre Brissaud
Barbier was also a first cousin to, Bernard Boutet de Monvel, Maurice’s son as well as a first cousin to Maurice’s other nephew, Pierre Brissaud. All three were occasional designers and/or illustrators, or exclusively illustrators and designers.
Barbier also designed theatre and ballet costumes. In fact, he helped Erté, Romain de Tirtoff (23 November 1892 – 21 April 1990) design sets and costumes for the Folies Bergère. In French “R” is pronounced er and “T,” té = Erté. In fact, Barbier led a group nicknamed “The Knights of the Bracelet,” by Vogue.
The Plane Crash: 28 October 1949
Bernard was also an interior designer, a portraitist, and the last of the Paris dandies, a work of art in himself. He died as he lived, conspicuously. Bernard B. de Monvel was killed in the Air France Lockheed Constellation crash of 28 October 1949, in the Azores. Among the forty-eight victims were world-champion boxer Marcel Cerdan (aged 33), Edith Piaf‘s lover, and virtuoso violinist Ginette Neveu (aged 30). Benard B. de Monvel was 68.
Conclusion
As I was going through my neglected email, I found an advertisement for this pochoir.
“Original pochoir by Bagge Huguet from La Gazette du Bon Ton, a leading Art Deco revue in Paris in the 1920s, showcasing the latest fashion and design. The Art Deco period was a highpoint in French art. Leading artists included Georges Lepape, Georges [sic] Barbier, Edouard Garcia Benito, Erté, and others.”
But let us look at Barbier’s reading of Fêtes galantes. Les Années folles, or the Golden Twenties, were a reborn fête galante,à la Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby (1925) that dictated a degree of resemblance between Rauth and Barbier. However, people danced the Charleston, not the sensual tango a product of the 1890s.
The above image is a book cover of an edition of Mme de Sévigné’s Letters. (Photo credit: Google images)
Born Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, the Marquise de Sévigné‘s (5 February 1626 – 17 April 1696) wrote a considerable number of letters to her daughter Françoise, comtesse de Grignan (1646 – 1705). These letters now belong to the world of literature and they constitute a vivid chronicle of life under Louis XIV. One of Madame de Sévigné’s letters is about François Vatel (born Fritz Karl Watel; 1631 – 24 April 1671), a famous majordomo or maître d’hôtel.
François Vatel at Vaux-le-Vicomte
François Vatel‘s (1631 – April 24, 1671) story takes us back to Vaux-le Vicomte, Nicolas Fouquet‘s castle. In an earlier article, posted on 20 August 2013 (see Related Article), Nicolas Fouquet’s rise and fall was discussed. Fouquet had been France’s Superintendent of Finances since 1653 and had a magnificent castle built. It’s inauguration took place on 17 August 1661.
As majordomo or maître d’hôtel, François Vatel was responsible for Vaux-le-Vicomte’s splendid inauguration, a festivity in honour of Louis XIV. That celebration is one of the two or three most spectacular festivities in the history of France and it has remained fresh in our memory because the day Nicolas Fouquet was host to some 2,000 guests, the culmination of a dream, was the first day of his demise. He did not know he was under any kind of suspicion. However his fall from grace was planned beginning in April 1661.
No, this was not une fête galante, nor was it unefête champêtre. People visitedthe gardens and the orangerie, but a fête champêtre was a more intimate event. Nicolas Fouquet (27 January 1615 – 23 March 1680), Louis XIV’s Superintendent of Finances, had invited 2,000 guests, including the 22-year-old Louis XIV. Molière‘s troupe performed Les Fâcheux and there were divertissements (entertainment) of all kinds, including magnificent fireworks. The inauguration of Vaux-le-Vicomte is considered one of the three or four most sumptuous celebrations in the history of France, but it was a public event and Vatel proved an excellent maître d’hôtel.
The splendour of Vaux-le-Vicomte intrigued the young king. Could it be, for instance, that Nicolas Fouquet, who was the king’s Superintendent of Finances, had embezzled money? Jules Mazarin (14 July 1602 – 9 March 1661), who had been the “chief minister” of France from 1642 until 1661, had no doubt embezzled funds. As well, Fouquet expected to be Minister of Finance, but so did Colbert. There was opposition to Fouquet (also spelled Foucquet).
Be that as it may, Louis XIV had Fouquet arrested by d’Artagnan, whom Alexandre Dumas, pèretransformed into a fictional hero in The Three Musketeers (serialized as of 1844). Fouquet was tried, convicted and imprisoned for life at Pignerol, in the very jail that held the prisoner known as “the man in the iron mask.”
Fouquet had been a generous patron of the arts. Consequently, fabulist Jean de La Fontaine (8 July 1621 – 13 April 1695) a protégé of Fouquet, pleaded for leniency. He wrote to Louis XIV, but although La Fontaine was a superb writer, second only to Victor Hugo in the history of French literature, and recognized as a great author in his own days, he was not appointed to the French Académie, founded in 1635, until 1684. That was his punishment. La Fontaine’s first volume of Fables was published in 1668 (twelve books). The second was published in 1678 (eleven books) and the third, one book, in 1694.
Versailles: Louis copies Nicolas Fouquet
Louis XIV (5 September 1638 – 1 September 1715) was pitiless. When Nicolas Fouquet started serving his life sentence, Louis was busy recruiting the men who had designed Vaux-le-Vicomte: Louis Le Vau, Charles Le Brun, and landscape architect André Le Nôtre. Moreover, architect Jules Hardouin-Mansart, who had built a superb orangerie at Vaux-le-Vicomte, was directed to provide Versailles with an even better one.
Louis was quite anxious to host as magnificent a feast as the inauguration of Vaux-le-Vicomte and attempted to do so in 1664. This seems an early date in the construction of Versailles. Louis XIV’s Les Plaisirs de l’Isle enchantée was a six-day feast. Its title suggests a fairy tale: l’Isle enchantée. It was lavish entertainment. Molière, Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (1622 – 1673), contributed his first version of Le Tartuffe to the event.[I] Moreover, Molière worked with composer Jean-Baptiste Lully (28 November 1632 – 22 March 1687) because the divertissement would include music and dance. Louis XIV was a dancer. Louis’ Plaisirs de l’Isle enchantée was a lesser fête than Nicolas Fouquet’s inauguration of Vaux-le-Vicomte.
Château de Chantilly (Photo credit: Google images)
François Vatel at Chantilly
Madame de Sévigné’s account of François Vatel’s suicide is eloquent, but mine is a mere summary. However, this one story tells in a nutshell about life under Louis XIV. It was a constant ceremonial. Vatel did not feel he could disappoint Louis XIV. Nor could he disappoint le Grand Condé, a military hero, a prince of the blood, i.e. a possible heir to the thrown of France, and his employer.
For the original text, in French, go to Chapter 47, p. 121, online. (Lettres de Mme de Sévigné; Gutenberg project [EBook 43901]FR). But there is an English translation at Internet Archives: Letters of Mme de Sévigné, 45 & 46. I did not find the translation soon enough. The Internet Archives‘ English translation has been appended to this post and so has the French-language text.
Lettre à Françoise de Grignan, 26 April 1771
This is an incomplete excerpt from Chapter 47, p. 121, of Mme de Sévigné’s Lettres (Lettres de Mme de Sévigné: [EBook 43901]FR). The Prince is le Grand Condé: Louis II de Bourbon, Duc de Condé et d’Enghien, the highest ranking aristocrat after Louis XIV. At first, he was feared by Louis XIV because of his involvement in the Fronde(literally a sling). The Fronde was a seventeenth-century revolt (c. 1648-1652) against the increased power of a growingly centralized government that nearly excluded the participation of the higher nobility, including princes of the blood, in governing France. The people also revolted. There were two Frondes.
My abridged excerpt
Vatel said he hadn’t slept for twelve nights and that his head was turning around. There had not been enough roast and now only two loads of fish (or “fruits de mer,” [seafood]) had been delivered. Vatel, who performed his duties most diligently, was very distraught…
“…They had dinner, but there wasn’t enough roast. Vatel felt he had disgraced himself… Gourville [probably Jean Hérault de Gourville, a memorialist] went to see the prince [Condé]. …The prince walked to Vatel’s room and said: “All is well; nothing was more beautiful than the King’s supper.” Vatel answered: “Your Highness, your kindness overwhelms me. I know that roast was missing at two tables.” “Don’t get angry: all is going well,” said the prince, somewhat mockingly.
At midnight, time came for the fireworks. The display was not successful. A cloud blinded the sight; it had cost 16,000 francs! At four in the morning, Vatel started wandering everywhere. Everybody was asleep. He met a young purveyor bringing in two loads of fish [or seafood]. Vatel asked: “Is that all?” The purveyor did not know Vatel had ordered fish from every port. Vatel waited, but other purveyors were not coming … Vatel’s head was getting hot: he thought there would be no more tides. He found Gourville and told him: “Sir I will not survive this affront.” Gourville made fun of him. Vatel went up to his room, attached his sword to a door and ran it through his body three times before he died, which is the very moment the fish started arriving.Everyone was looking for Vatel so the fish could be distributed. They went to his room, knocked on the door and then forced it open, only to find Vatel drowning in his own blood. They ran to the prince who was desperate. The duke [Condé] wept. The success of his trip to Burgundy depended on Vatel. The prince told the king sadly that this had happened because of Vatel’s idea of honour. Vatel was praised, but his courage was blamed.”
Louis XIV went on to say that he had waited five years before travelling to Chantilly. He was afraid there would be too much of a fuss. From then on, tables were to be limited to two, not twenty-five. But, alas, this new policy could not revive Vatel. Two thousand guests were in attendance.
This story is an exceptional example of irony, at every level, and from every angle. It is a devastating testimonial. Vatel’s death did not affect the celebration. It continued as though nothing had happened. Yet, a good man had died who had every reason to fear the king and the duke. Fouquet was serving a life sentence and lawyers are still investigating the case. For a while, Fouquet’s manservant at Pignerol, now located in Italy, was “the man in the iron mask,” except that, in all likelihood, he was wearing a velvet mask. The man has a name, Eustache Dauger, but he has yet to be identified. These were fearful days.
Supper was served, but there was no roast meat at one or two of the tables, on account of Vatel’s having been obliged to provide several dinners more
MADAME DE GRIGNAN. 45
than were expected. This affected his spirits, and he was heard to say, several times: “I have lost my honor! I can not bear this disgrace.” My head is quite bewildered,” said he to Gourville.” I have not had a wink of sleep these twelve nights; I wish you would assist me in giving orders.” Gourville did all he could to coinfort [sic] and assist him; but the failure of the roast meat (which, however, did not happen at the king’s table, but at some of the other twenty-five), was always uppermost with him. Gourville mentioned it to the prince, who went directly to Vatel’s apartment, and said to him: “Every thing is extremely well conducted, Vatel; nothing could be more admirable than his majesty’s supper.” “Your highness’s goodness,” replied he, “overwhelms me; I am sensible that there was a deficiency of roast meat at two tables.” “Not at all,” said the prince; “do not perplex yourself, and all will go well.” Midnight came: the fireworks did not succeed, they were covered with a thick cloud; they cost sixteen thousand francs. At four o’clock in the morning Vatel went round and found every body asleep; he met one of the under-purveyors, who was just come in with only two loads of fish.” “What!” said he, “is this all?” “Yes, sir,” said the man, not knowing that Vatel had dispatched other people to all the sea-ports around. Vatel waited for some time; the other purveyors did not arrive; his head grew distracted; he thought there was no more fish to be had. He flew to Gourville: “Sir,” said he, “I can not outlive this disgrace.” Gourville laughed at him. Vatel, however, went to his apartment, and setting the hilt of his sword against the door, after two ineffectual attempts, succeeded in the third, in forcing his sword through his heart.
At that instant the carriers arrived with the fish; Vatel was inquired after to distribute it. They ran to his apartment, knocked at the door, but received no answer, upon which they broke it open, and found him weltering in his blood. A messenger was immediately dispatched to acquaint the prince with what had happened, who was like a man in de-
46 LETTERS TO
spair. The duke wept, for his Burgundy journey depended upon Vatel. The prince related the whole affair to his majesty with an expression of great concern; it was considered as the consequence of too nice a sense of honor; some blamed, others praised him for his courage. The king said he had put off this excursion for more than five years, because he was aware that it would be attended with infinite trouble, and told the prince that he ought to have had but two tables, and not have been at the expense of so many, and declared he would never suffer him to do so again; but all this was too late for poor Vatel.
The Original Letter
A Paris, dimanche 26 avril 1671.
Il est dimanche 26 avril; cette lettre ne partira que mercredi; mais ce n’est pas une lettre, c’est une relation que Moreuil vient de me faire, à votre intention, de ce qui s’est passé à Chantilly touchant Vatel. Je vous écrivis vendredi qu’il s’était poignardé; voici l’affaire en détail: Le roi arriva le jeudi au soir; la promenade, la collation dans un lieu tapissé de jonquilles, tout cela fut à souhait. On soupa, il y eut quelques tables où le rôti manqua, à cause de plusieurs dîners à quoi l’on ne s’était point attendu; cela saisit Vatel, il dit plusieurs fois: Je suis perdu d’honneur; voici un affront que je ne supporterai pas. Il dit à Gourville: La tête me tourne, il y a douze nuits que je n’ai dormi; aidez-moi à donner 121 des ordres. Gourville le soulagea en ce qu’il put. Le rôti qui avait manqué, non pas à la table du roi, mais aux vingt-cinquièmes, lui revenait toujours à l’esprit. Gourville le dit à M. le Prince. M. le Prince alla jusque dans la chambre de Vatel, et lui dit: «Vatel, tout va bien; rien n’était si beau que le souper du roi.» Il répondit: «Monseigneur, votre bonté m’achève; je sais que le rôti a manqué à deux tables.» «Point du tout, dit M. le Prince; ne vous fâchez point: tout va bien.» Minuit vint, le feu d’artifice ne réussit pas, il fut couvert d’un nuage; il coûtait seize mille francs. A quatre heures du matin, Vatel s’en va partout, il trouve tout endormi, il rencontre un petit pourvoyeur qui lui apportait seulement deux charges de marée; il lui demande: Est-ce là tout? Oui, monsieur. Il ne savait pas que Vatel avait envoyé à tous les ports de mer. Vatel attend quelque temps; les autres pourvoyeurs ne vinrent point; sa tête s’échauffait, il crut qu’il n’aurait point d’autre marée; il trouva Gourville, il lui dit: Monsieur, je ne survivrai point à cet affront-ci. Gourville se moqua de lui. Vatel monte à sa chambre, met son épée contre la porte, et se la passe au travers du cœur; mais ce ne fut qu’au troisième coup, car il s’en donna deux qui n’étaient point mortels; il tombe mort. La marée cependant arrive de tous côtés: on cherche Vatel pour la distribuer, on va à sa chambre, on heurte, on enfonce la porte, on le trouve noyé dans son sang; on court à M. le Prince, qui fut au désespoir. M. le Duc pleura; c’était sur Vatel que tournait tout son voyage de Bourgogne. M. le Prince le dit au roi fort tristement: on dit que c’était à force d’avoir de l’honneur à sa manière; on le loua fort, on loua et l’on blâma son courage. Le roi dit qu’il y avait cinq ans qu’il retardait de venir à Chantilly, parce qu’il comprenait l’excès de cet embarras. Il dit à M. le Prince qu’il ne devait avoir que deux tables, et ne point se charger de tout; il jura qu’il ne souffrirait plus que M. le Prince en usât ainsi; mais c’était trop tard pour le pauvre Vatel. Cependant Gourville tâcha de réparer la perte de Vatel; elle fut réparée: on dîna très-bien, on fit collation, on soupa, on se promena, on joua, on fut à la chasse; tout était parfumé de jonquilles, tout était enchanté. Hier, qui était samedi, on fit encore de même; et le soir, le roi alla à Liancourt, où il avait commandé media noche; il y doit 122 demeurer aujourd’hui. Voilà ce que Moreuil m’a dit, espérant que je vous le manderais. Je jette mon bonnet par-dessus les moulins, et je ne sais rien du reste. M. d’Hacqueville, qui était à tout cela, vous fera des relations sans doute; mais comme son écriture n’est pas si lisible que la mienne, j’écris toujours; et si je vous mande cette infinité de détails, c’est que je les aimerais en pareille occasion.
