My last post on Molière’s Dom Juan is informative: the Russian connection. However, the text I published was replaced by various drafts. Nothing could lead me back to the text I had published. I returned the post to “private,” to no avail.
Moreover, whenever I tried to quote Molière, in French and English, my post disappeared.
One must keep humble, so I decided to stop working on it. It was published!
My main point is finding that “Dom Juan” (original spelling) is a comedy that uses the “deceiver deceived” (trompeur trompé) plot formula. Imagine a balloon and a needle. Dom Juan keeps defying heaven and earth and shows he is a mediocre human being, despite his rank, that of Grand Seigneur. By delaying the revenge, Dom Carlos shows that noblesse oblige. Dom Carlos is one of Done Elvire’s two brothers.
In Molière’s Dom Juan, the legendary burlador, is a méchant homme. He’s hoping his father will die as soon as possible. Dom Louis, Dom Juan’s father, believes that noblesse oblige. Aristocrats should be honnêtes hommes and never boast. According to La Rochefoucauld, un grand seigneur is an honnête homme and honnêteté precludes boasting: « L’honnête homme est celui qui ne se pique de rien». A gentleman does not boast.
For Dom Juan, his title provides liberty. It’s a mask.
I did not include the scene where Dom Juan explains his “morality:” two and two are four. If two and two are four and four and four are eight, God strikes.
Nor did I include a brief discussion of love. According to Don Juan, love is kept alive through jealousy. One loves a person who is loved. Madame de La Fayette wrote a novel in which the moment love is reciprocated, it dies. Her novel, a masterpiece of psychological novel, is entitled La Princesse de Clèves(1678). It will be discussed separately.
Molière’s Dom Juan is “the last part in Molière’s hypocrisy trilogy, which also includes The School for Wives and Tartuffe.”
In Baroque music, galanteries were also suites of dances (see Galanteries). For instance, most ‘suites’ included a minuet, which is a dance. J. S. Bach composed French Suites, English Suites, and Partitas. Baroque music, however, was considered rather complex: intricate counterpoint, etc. The galant style would advocate simpler and more sentimental music. Bach’s sons composed music in the “galant” style. (See Fêtes galantes: Watteau & Verlaine in RELATED ARTICLES.)
La Galanterie
galanterie
l’honnête homme
préciosité
But galanterie, as we know it, is not music. It is polite behaviour and, in particular, polite behaviour on the part of men courting women. In 17th-century France, l’honnête homme was quietly galant and préciosité demanded galanterie on the part of men. However, galanterie was not a synonym of honnêteté.
La Vraye Histoire comique de Francion, illustration by Martin van Maële (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Nicolas Faret’s L’Honnête Homme, ou l’Art de plaire à la cour
Antoine Gombaud, chevalier de Méré’s letters and L’Honnête Homme et De la Vraie Honnêteté
In 1644, Charles Sorel (c. 1602 – 7 March 1674) published LesLoix de la galanterie, a short book. Sorel’s Loix de la galanterie is a book about the requirements of galanterie: money, fashionable clothes, acceptable manners, cleanliness, and étiquette in general. “Propreté, Civilité, Politesse, Éloquence, Adresse, Accortise, et Prudence mondaine [.]” (See Les Loix de la galanterie.)
As for honnêteté, it was described by Nicolas Faret in L’Honnête Homme, ou l’Art deplaire à la cour, (… the Art of Pleasing at Court) published in 1633, and Antoine Gombaud, known as the “chevalier de Méré ” (1607 – 29 december 1684). Gombaud was a godchild to Antoine de la Rochefoucauld and the author of L’honnête homme et De la vraie honnêteté. (See Antoine Gombaud, Wikipedia.) Honnêteté has social, moral and intellectual goals and honnêteté is not a synonym of galanterie, but l’honnête homme is always impeccable.
However, Antoine Gombaud is best-known for his contribution, with Blaise Pascal, to the development of the théorie des probabilités, the theory of probability, calculating the odds. L’honnête hommeetDe la vraie honnêteté were published posthumously. The chevalier‘s writings are listed under his Wikipedia entry: Antoine Gombaud, Chevalier de Méré. Britannica is in the process of refreshing certain entries.
The Chevalier de Méré, an aristocrat, contributed to the development of the salon,the birthplace of honnêteté and préciosité. Literature was the main activity of salonniers and salonnières but Mademoiselle de Scudéry‘s Clélie, histoire romaine, which contains the map of Tendre, a map of the country of love, has affinities with galanterie. I rather like Petits Soins (tender loving care) (seeCarte du Tendre).
L‘honnête homme avoided extreme views and he had a good jugement; he was not vain nor boastful, he was insightful, and he was polite, which at times precluded frankness. According to François de la Rochefoucauld, the moralist, “l’honnête homme ne se pique de rien[.]” L’honnête homme never boasts.
Among the dramatis personæ of Molière’s comedies are honnête gens (plural for honnête homme): such as Cléante in Le Tartuffe (1664 – 1669) and Philinte in Le Misanthrope.
In Molière’s Misanthrope, Philinte, who is an honnête homme, would not tell an aging Émilie, la vieille Émilie, that she uses makeup (le blanc) and behaves (faire la jolie) in a manner that does not suit an aging woman (I. i):
Quoi ! vous iriez dire à la vieille Émilie Qu’à son âge il sied mal de faire la jolie, Et que le blanc qu’elle a scandalise chacun ? (I. i)
What! would you tell old Emilie
that ’tis unbecoming at her age to play the pretty girl;
or that the paint she wears shocks every one? Le Misanthrope (I. 1)
The truth would hurt Émilie, which neither galanterie nor honnêteté would allow. If at all possible, one does not offend others in the name of frankness or “truth.”
In scene two, Oronte walks in with a copy of a poem he wishes to read to Alceste, the misanthrope. The poem is mediocre and, although he hesitates for the longest time, Alceste ends up saying that “Franchement, il [le poème] est bon à mettre au cabinet.” Frankly, it’s good for the garbage.) Cabinet is an ambiguous word. It can mean a drawer (cabinet making), but can also mean a toilet. Alceste is franc, but he is not civil. He is acting offensively in the name of sincerity or “honnêteté” in its literal sense.
The above are examples of the polemical nature of many of Molière’s plays. They could lead to debates. When it was first staged, in 1664, Le Tartuffe, whose protagonist feigns devotion and nearly ruins Orgon’s family, was not seen as falsely devout by Orgon and, given its subject matter, the play was banned. It took Molière five years to make Le Tartuffe acceptable.
L’École des femmes, 1719 edition (Wikipedia)
L’École des femmes (Google images)
Les Précieuses ridicules by Moreau le Jeune (Wikipedia)
Les Précieuses ridicules (Google images)
Préciosité
false précieuses
a farce
Similarly, Les Précieuses ridicules (18 November 1661; Petit-Bourbon) was not a depiction of préciosité, except for allusions, such as the use of a purer language. Magdelon and Cathos, who have just arrived in Paris, are besotted by préciosité and salons, but they have yet to set foot in a salon. Real précieuses and salonnières would know that Mascarille and Jodelet are not salonniers. They would not let themselves be courted and amused by the valets of Du Croisy and La Grange, the two suitable young men Magdelon and Cathos rejected. The Précieuses ridicules has the plot of a farce: le trompeur trompé (the deceiver deceived). The tables are turned on Magdelon and Cathos.
Yet, Molière was criticized for portraying Les Précieuses ridicules. In the Preface to Les Précieuses ridicules, he wrote that Magdelon and Cathos were false précieuses and that “Les plusexcellentes choses sont sujettes à être copiées par de mauvaissinges.” (The most excellent things are apt to be copied by bad monkeys.) Besides, comedies of manners are “miroirs publics.”
Louis XIV and Molière by Jean-Léon Gérôme(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Aristocrats and Comédies héroïques
Molière wrote comédies-ballets, but he also wrote comedies featuring gentilshommes, aristocrats and gods: Dom Garcie de Navarre (comédie héroïque; 1661), La Princesse d’Élide (1664), Dom Juan (1665), Amphitryon(1668)… Moreover, as an actor, Molière was fond of playing roles in comédies-héroïques. Critic Paul Bénichou[2] dispelled the commonly held view that Molière advocated bourgeois common sense.
Molière was a human being and humans dream of worlds that are or seem better than the world they inhabit. Aristocrats were privileged individuals. So Molière featured aristocrats in a few of his comedies. For Molière, theatre was at times the goal of theatre. He created a comforting spectacle, an illusion.
Molière neither served nor disserved the “querelle des femmes,” feminists. Moreover, if there is a galant in the comedies of Molière, it is the young man who courts a woman who loves him, but whose marriage to her is threatened by a blocking character. Molière’s honnête homme is Philinte (Le Misanthrope), Cléante (Le Tartuffe) and other figures often called the raisonneur. L’honnête homme does not vilify women.
In L’École des femmes (1662) (The School for Wives), Agnès, who has been raised by Arnolphe to be his faithful wife, falls in love with Horace, whom she sees through her window. She rejects Arnolphe saying that the way Arnolphe’s speaks of marriage makes it sound terrible. Horace, on the other hand, presents marriage as pleasurable, which makes her feel like marrying:
Chez vous le mariage est fâcheux et pénible, Et vos discours en font une image terrible; Mais, las ! il le fait, lui, si rempli de plaisirs, Que de se marier il donne des désirs. (V. iv)
With you, marriage is a trouble and a pain,
and your descriptions give a terrible picture of it;
but there — he makes it seem so full of joy
that I long to marry. (V. 4) The School for Wives (V. 4)
Horace is galant and earns Agnès’ love. In comedy, galanterie is conventional, the goal of comedy being the marriage of young lovers, which would not be possible if the young man were not galant (love). But, as noted above, it is not honnêteté, at least not altogether.
I apologize for the long delay. I couldn’t concentrate due to a bout of mental fatigue and difficulties in gathering recent articles and books. I require these to write my book on Molière. All is not lost. I have contacted a number of sources and have used Jstor for several years, as a private scholar. Would that I still lived across the street from a library. However, when I quote 17th-century authors whose work I do not own, I use Internet Archives, the Project Gutenberg, and Google e-books. These e-books are seldom edited or annotated, but they are immensely useful tools.
[1] Charles Sorel wrote La Vraie Histoire comique de Francion, in the hope of dealing a blow to Honoré d’Urfé‘s pastoral romances. La Vraie Histoire comique de Francion (1623) was a success, but Honoré d’Urfé’s L’Astrée remained popular. However, Le Berger extravagant (1627-1628) did tarnish pastoral romances, or very long novels featuring shepherds and shepherdesses. (See Charles Sorel, Wikipedia.)
[2] Paul Bénichou, Morales du Grand Siècle (Paris : Gallimard, 1948), p. 263.
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 trivialise préciosité and especially salons. For one thing, they did have a civilising 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 or designer clothes). 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 it is covered with flour (enfariné). 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 dance. 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
In The Aristocrat as Art,[i] Domna Stanton states that “the quintessential prototype of the honnête homme was the Greek philosopher, the incarnation of virtue, of the golden mean, and the source of such fundamental notions as human sociability. It was only as eminently social beings, devoid of pedantry, that Greek philosophers earned the label honnête: ‘People can only imagine Plato and Aristotle in the long robes of pedants,’ protested Pascal.”
In seventeenth-century France, l’honnête homme practiceda degree of sprezzatura, anart that did not seem to have been learned or “art that does not seem to be art.” For instance, as François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac (15 Septembre 1613 – 17 March 1680) wrote « L’honnête homme ne se pique de rien. » Maximes 203 (L’honnête homme [the courtier] never boasts [or is never “piqued”] about anything).[ii]We can therefore assume that, conversely, l’honnête homme is also capable of containing his anger: un peu de retenue (take it easy).
In this respect, Molière‘s Philinthe (Le Misanthrope) is the embodiment of honnêteté. Atcourt or in one of the salons of seventeenth-century France, hewould not tell a woman that she has applied too much makeup. This would be the truth, or what Alceste the misanthrope calls sincerity, but it would also be offensive. In such cases, l’honnête homme practices a morally acceptable form of mental reservation, so as not to hurt another human being, in which he is behaving according not only to the dictates of honnêteté, but also according to a moral or ethical code. « Le style c’est l’homme même. » (Georges-Louis Leclerc, comte de Buffon)
There can therefore be communion between galant behaviour and the respect due every human being, whatever his or her place in society. It is called charity and there cannot be grace, grazia,sprezzatura, honnêteté, where there is no charity or compassion. In seventeenth-century France, deceptive appearances, Pascal’s puissances trompeuses, were considered the greatest of ills. It remains however that honnêteté, cannot be altogether superficial. One cannot play honnête homme no more than one can feign devotion.
In Molière‘s Tartuffe, no one is fooled by the falsely devout Tartuffe, except Orgon, apater familias who needs to be tyrannical with impunity and his mother. Everyone else knows that Tartuffe is a faux-dévot (falsely devout) except Orgon who needs a casuiste under his roof so he can sin with impunity while Tartuffe eats heartily and coveits his wife. He tells her that he knows how to lift scruples; that if she fears offending God (le Ciel [heaven]), this is an obstacle he can remove. (IV.5)
If every member of Orgon’s family, other than Orgon himself, can detect hypocrisy where hypocrisy there is, l’honnête homme will quickly see affectation in a would-be honnêtehomme, which would exclude this would-be honnête homme from the state of grace he would like to achieve. Grace has to be natural or internalized in the manner most of us internalize what we are taught as children. L’honnête homme is an honest man and among his virtues, we find a sense of justice and the realization that one has duties or obligations.
“In Book II, Quintilian sides with Plato’s assertion in the Phædrus that the rhetorician must be just: ‘In the Phædrus, Plato makes it even clearer that the complete attainment of this art is even impossible without the knowledge of justice,’ an opinion in which I heartily concur.” (Quintilian 2.15.29, quoted in Wikipedia)
Castiglione had also read Cicero‘s (January 3, 106 BC – December 7, 43 BC) recently translated (1511) De Officiis (On Duties or On Obligations). According to Cicero, our courtier has duties or obligations.
Noble Birth and sprezzatura: inneism (adjective: innate)
In Italy, the common belief was that the courtier had to be an aristocrat. Yet Castiglione notes that honnêteté coud be innate, but that one could also be innately incapable of honnêteté:
Truth it is, whether it be through the favour of the starres or of nature, some there are borne endowed wyth suche graces, that they seeme not to have bene borne, but rather facioned with the verye hand of some God, and abounde in all goodnesse bothe of bodye and mynde. As againe we see some so unapte and dull, that a man wyl not beleve, but nature hath brought them into the worlde for a spite and mockerie. (First Book of The Book of the Courtier)[iii]
Consequently, noble birth did not guarantee sprezzatura. It is altogether possible to be “borne endowed wyth suche graces” just as it was entirely possible for nature to deny an individual the possibility to acquire sprezzatura. “As againe we see some so unapte and dull, that a man wyl not beleve, but nature hath brought them into the worlde for a spite and mockerie.” (quoted above)
Seventeenth-Century French salons
In this respect, it should be noted that one of the goals of French seventeenth-century salons, before and after runaway préciosité consisted in teaching aristocrat good manners. One does not clean one’s teeth at table using a hunting knife as a toothpick. Many aristocrats were soldiers whose manners left a great deal to be to be desired.
In fact, when Catherine de Rambouillet, “l’incomparable Arthénice (an anagram of Catherine),” (1588 [Rome] – 2 December 1665), opened her salon, rue Saint-Thomas- du-Louvre (between the Louvre, the King’s castle before Versailles was built, and the Tuileries), she provided a meeting-place for individuals who wanted to be in refined surroundings and speak well. Court had yet to be courtly. For instance, Marie de’ Medici, Henri IV’s wife, was not the sort of person well-mannered individuals would invite to dinner. For one thing, she spoke atrocious French.
So both aristocrats and bourgeois found their way to la chambre blue d’Arthénice, Madame de Rambouillet’s blue room, and mingled with one another. Pascal, La Fontaine, Charles Perrault, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, etc. were honnêtes hommes, but notaristocrats. There is an aristocracy above aristocracy: an aristocracy of the mind and of the soul.
Speech: l’Âge de l’éloquence
Speaking well, éloquence, was central to honnêteté.[iv] Quintilian (c. 35 – c. 100) was the author of Institutio oratoria (95 CE) and Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BC – 43 BC) De Oratore (55 BCE). L’honnête homme, practiced contenance, réserve, retenue, discrétion, sagesse, modération, but above all he spoke and wrote well. Buffon was elected to the Académie française (1753) mostly one the basis of his Discours sur le style (“Discourse on Style”), which he had pronounced before the Académie française. Let us hear him speak about writing: “Writing well consists of thinking, feeling and expressing well, of clarity of mind, soul and taste…. The style is the man himself” (“Le style c’est l’homme même”). Buffon had detractors, but if one cannot express a thought, does the thought exist… Thoughts have to be formulated.
Richelieu and the French Academy
It is in no way surprising that the first French academy was l’Académie française, established in 1635 by le Cardinal Richelieu. The French Academy, the first of the five academies, ruled over matters pertaining to language. Richelieu could not let language be didacted by salonniers and salonnières, people who attended seventeenth-century Salons (see Catherine de Rambouillet), where Préciosité flourished. A calamity!
that, it all likelihood, sprezzatura, in France, went beneath the surface. If the courtier had put on an act, everyone would have known, and he would have fallen from grace, so to speak.
I also wish to state that some people had the ability to learn grace, honnêteté, sprezzatura, while others didn’t: nature played a role;
that one’s aristocratic lineage did not guarantee the possibility of attaining elegance and sociability, i.e. some aristocrats were rotten apples from, perhaps, the moment of conception;
that, conversely, as the French believed, a bourgeois could become an honnête homme,honnêteté being independent of lineage;
that humanitas and virtus are linked to honnêteté;
that the good orator (language) was an honnête homme;
that nonchalance (the term is misleading) is a form of reserve, retenue and often appropriately-applied restriction mentale, as mentioned above;
that the idea of courtly behaviour evolved as it travelled from Italy to its various destinations, and, finally,
that courtly behaviour predates The Book of the Courtier. It belongs to a tradition. It is chevaleresque behaviour: chivalry and it dates back to Græco-Roman Antiquity.
I will therefore close by quoting, once again, Wikipedia’s entry on Baldassare Castiglione.
[t]he perfect gentleman had to win the respect and friendship of his peers and of a ruler, i.e., be a courtier, so as to be able to offer valuable assistance and advice on how to rule the city. To do this, he must be accomplished—in sports, telling jokes, fighting, poetry, music, drawing, and dancing—but not too much. To his moral elegance (his personal goodness) must be added the spiritual elegance conferred by familiarity with good literature (i.e., the humanities, including history). He must excel in all without apparent effort and make everything look easy.
[i]Domna C. Stanton, The Aristocrat as Art (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980), p. 14.
There came a point when Préciosité went too far. Playing shepherds and shepherdess 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]would be unfortunate to trivialize préciosité and 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 of point of becoming honnêtes hommes, in the worldly acceptation of honnêteté.
Molière‘s Précieuses ridicules (1659) were played for the first time on 18 November 1659. It is a farce, and therefore resembles the Italian commedia dell’arte, one-act or short improvised plays featuring stock characters such as Pantalone, Dottore Gratiano, Il Capitano (mostly jealous characters), the occasional miles gloriosus (braggart-soldier), Arlecchino, Brighella, Pierrot, Pulcinella: 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 commodité de la conversation (what is useful to conversation). In their attempt to make the French language more elegant, the précieuses have 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 Scudery ’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.
With kind regards to all of you. ♥
[i] Jean-Claude Tournand, Introduction à la vie littéraire du XVIIe siècle (Paris : Bordas 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
L’honnête homme was not necessarily an honest man. He was a “gentleman,” for want of a better term.[i] As is the case with the French seventeenth-century salons (see below), the idea of honnête homme and honnêteté was imported from Italy.
In 1453, the Byzantine Empire passed into the hands of the Turks. It became the Ottaman Empire and, in 1930, its capital, Byzantium, was renamed Constantinope, today’s Istanbul.
When the Greeks fled Byzantium, they brought with them the treasures of Greek and Latin Antiquity and most settled in what is now Italy. Europe entered its Renaissance (rebirth). Greek and Latin works were translated, but suddenly there also appeared “academies” and less formal institutions, such as the future salons, perhaps best described as somewhat frivolous, but extremely elegant “think tanks.”
The Book of the Courtier (Il Libro del Cortegiano), by Baldassare Castiglione (1478-1529), published in 1528, constitutes Castiglione’s memoirs of his life at the court of the Duke of Urbino[ii] and is a description of the courtier. The book is rooted in Cicero’s treatise on the duties of a gentleman, the newly translated De Officiis (1511), but Castiglione made Il Cortegiano his very own masterpiece. He gave his courtier sprezzatura.
In Il Cortegiano, Castiglione recalls the conversations presided over by Elisabetta Gonzaga (1471–1526), in the Castle of Urbino. Elizabetta was the sister-in-law of Isabella d’Este (1474–1533) who are both credited with having exported the salon to France. Wikipedia provides a good description of the courtier:
[t]he perfect gentleman had to win the respect and friendship of his peers and of a ruler, i.e., be a courtier, so as to be able to offer valuable assistance and advice on how to rule the city. To do this, he must be accomplished—in sports, telling jokes, fighting, poetry, music, drawing, and dancing—but not too much. To his moral elegance (his personal goodness) must be added the spiritual elegance conferred by familiarity with good literature (i.e., the humanities, including history). He must excel in all without apparent effort and make everything look easy.
In France, l’honnête homme was described by Nicolas Faret(L’Honnête Homme oul’art de plaire à la Cour, 1630) and the Chevalier de Méré‘s (Discours sur la vraie honnêteté). The Chevalier de Méré was not a nobleman. His name was Antoine Gombaud. However, he and Faret were l’honnêteté’s foremost theorists.
Therefore, with respect to the Salons, a salonnier did not have be an aristocrat to attend gatherings. However, in his Maximes (1665) François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac (1613–1680) wrote: “L’honnête homme est celui qui ne se pique de rien.” (L’honnête homme is the one who never boasts.) However, piquer can also mean not to get upset or irritated. Despite his rank, he was a prince, La Rochefoucauld may well be the finest example of the honnête homme. Yet, one’s rank did not play a primary role in qualifying as a salonnier, but manners and finesse did, including moral refinement.
Although the word “gentleman” is an acceptable translation of “honnête homme,” it lacks certain details. In seventeenth-century France, l’honnêteté was genuine.
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[i] In French, an honest man would be called un hommehonnête. If the adjective: honnête, follows the noun: homme, the adjective has its literal meaning: honest.
[ii] The House of Montefeltro or the House of della Rovere, families, usually controlled the Duchy of Urbino. However, between 1516–1519, it was ruled briefly by Lorenzo II de Medici, Machiavelli’s prince (his student) who died of the plague in 1519, as did his wife. Their bloodthirsty daughter, Catherine de Médicis, married Henri II, King of France and, in 1572, she made her son, a young king, order the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre (the night of 23-24 August).
Salons are often looked upon as a French institution when in fact Italians brought salons to France. However, although the salon was imported, it became a French institution and it never fully disappeared.
Born in Rome to Jean de Vivonne (marquis of Pisani [1530-1599]) and Giulia Savelli, Madame de Rambouillet (1588-1665) opened the first famous seventeenth-century French salon. Salons were a gathering of persons, aristocrats of all ranks, cardinals, and l’honnête homme. They were, for the most part, well-educated men and women and shared an interest in literature, philosophy and music. However, l’incomparable Arthénice, an anagram of Catherine, who married Charles d’Angennes, marquis de Rambouillet (1577–1652) also turned the salon into a room.
Catherine de Vivonne, marquise de Rambouillet, lived in a private house, l’Hôtel de Rambouillet, rue Saint-Honoré, but l’Hôtel moved to rue Saint-Thomas-du-Louvre in 1618. She received her distinguished guests in a blue room: la chambre bleue d’Arthénice. Arthénice’s guests gathered in a ruelle, perhaps a side of the bed. Beds were not as they are today. They were canopy beds featuring sumptuous drapes that were drawn closed at night, especially on wintry days.
Salons are remembered as places that did not admit anything crude. Only the purest French could be spoken in a salon and one’s manners had to be refined. A male guest was, at the very least, an honnête homme French galanterie goes back to courtly love, but reached a summit in seventeenth-century French salons.
But later in the seventeenth-century, they were rooms where people made believe they were not what they seemed. The salonniers and salonnières, gave themselves new names and, at one point, the aficionados of salons were so influenced by Guarini’s Il Pastor fido, a pastoral set in Arcadia and published in Venice in 1590, and later, by Honoré d’Urfée’s L’Astrée (1607-1627), that they played shepherds and shepherdessess. Fantasy took over.
As well, salons are one of the birthplaces of feminism. Medieval courtly love was revived and revised to emerge as a movement called Préciosité. Women looked upon themselves as precious, hence the noun préciosité and, in some cases, kept suitors waiting for for several years. The Duc de Montausier (1610–1690), courted Julie d’Angennes (1607-1671), Madame de Rambouillet’s daughter, from 1631 until 1645, before she consented to marry him.
Out of this courtship, a book emerged, entitled La Guirlande de Julie. It was given as a present to Julie in 1641 and contained sixty-two madrigals (poems not songs), each featuring a flower. Montausier wrote sixteen of the madrigals, but the preparation of the book was a bit of a contest disguised as a game. Among the authors are Racan, Tallemant des Réaux and others. The challenge consisted in finding the best pointe or conceit, a clever and witty way of saying “little nothings.”
© Micheline Walker
2 October 2011
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