Henry De Montherlant (1895-1972): A Philosophy of Failure (Modern French Identities)

Henry de Montherlant (1895–1972): A Philosophy of Failure

Patricia O’Flaherty

PETER LANG

Henry de Montherlant (1895–1972)

Modern French Identities Edited by Peter Collier Volume 22

PETER LANG Oxford • Bern • Berlin • Bruxelles • Frankfurt a.M. • New York • Wien

Patricia O’Flaherty

Henry de Montherlant (1895–1972) A Philosophy of Failure

PETER LANG Oxford • Bern • Berlin • Bruxelles • Frankfurt a.M. • New York • Wien

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Bibliothek Die Deutsche Bibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at ‹http://dnb.ddb.de›. British Library and Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data: A catalogue record for this book is available from The British Library, Great Britain, and from The Library of Congress, USA

ISSN 1422-9005 ISBN 3-03910-013-0 US-ISBN 0-8204-6282-9

© Peter Lang AG, European Academic Publishers, Bern 2003 Hochfeldstrasse 32, Postfach 746, CH-3000 Bern 9, Switzerland [email protected], www.peterlang.com, www.peterlang.net All rights reserved. All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems. Printed in Germany

Contents

Acknowledgements Abbreviations Introduction

9 11 13

Chapter I: Montherlant’s System of Values as expressed by the Carnets and Essais Sources Divinity in the Human The ‘Bastard’ Hero and his Creation A Philosophy of Youth ‘Syncrétisme et alternance’ ‘Service inutile’ The Game Conclusion

17 23 25 29 30 33 35 41

Chapter II: Heroism The Adolescent Hero The Warrior’s Heroic Fantasy in Le Songe [1922] Dominique Soubrier and Stanislaus Prinet: Heroism and Denial of Difference War as the Way to Heroism in Le Songe ‘Les mythes inutiles’ Sport as the War to Heroism in Les Olympiques [1924] The Spiritual Body and the Divine Hero The Heroine’s Body Heroic Friendship: Maturation and Degeneration Hero and Beast in Les Bestiaires [1926] A Dance of Love and Death Mithra, Hero and God ‘La Bête et l’ange’: The Unattainable Prize

45 50 53 60 62 66 72 74 76 79 81 83 87

Chapter III: The Death of Heroism Theatre Greek Tradition and Human Realism Crime and Punishment in Dysfunctional Families Father and Son at War: Fils de Personne [1943] and Demain il fera jour [1949] Anarchy and Matricide in L’Exil [1929] Rebellion and Reparation in La Ville dont le prince est un enfant [1951] Death and the Maiden in Celles qu’on prend dans les bras [1950] Human Heroism

93 94 100 103 110 113 116 118

Chapter IV: Humanist Existentialism: Action or Contemplation The Historical Plays Action and Contemplation in La Reine morte [1942] and Malatesta [1946] Betrayal and Alienation in Le Cardinal d’Espagne [1960] Community of Men in La Mort qui fait le trottoir (Don Juan) [1958] and La Guerre civile [1965]: Community of Women in Port Royal [1954]

121 124 130 135

Chapter V: The Ideal: Les Garçons [1969] and Thrasylle [1983] First Love Adolescent growth through split identity: the case of Alban and Linsbourg, of Thrasylle and the Wolf Thrasylle: the Collective Unconscious in the Process of Change from Child to Adolescent Resolution of Moral Conflict by the Adoption of Universal Ethical Principles in Les Garçons Homosexual Love, Renunciation and Spirituality Death and Afterlife Conclusion

6

145 149 159 164 167 174 177

Chapter VI: Travel Writings Peripeteia Moustique [1986] Encore un instant de bonheur [1934] La Rose de sable [1968] Conclusion

181 184 191 198 203

Chapter VII: Stoicism and Nihilism Distillation and Disintegration of Desire Loss, Death and Nihilism in Les Célibataires [1934] Absurdity, Stoicism and the Game in Les Jeunes filles [1936–1939] Play as Disruption of Structure Nihilistic Process in Le Chaos et la nuit [1963] Mapping Pathogenesis and Moral Responsibility in Un Assassin est mon maître [1971] Madmen and the Prize of Knowledge Loss and Rebirth Conclusion Bibliography Index

207 211 214 217 222 228 233 235 237 241 255

7

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Acknowledgements

I am indebted to Pierre Sipriot, Montherlant’s biographer, and the late Elisabeth Zehrfuss, Montherlant’s friend, for the time and information generously afforded me during my research. I am also grateful to Brian Rogers, Professor Emeritus at the University of the Witswatersrand, who supervised the doctoral thesis which was the starting point for this book and to Gérard Gengembre, Professor of French Literature at the University of Caën, whose advice provided the direction and framework which transformed doctoral research into a book of broader appeal and pertinence. I thank my friends, Christopher English, Peígi Whelan and Maggie Gibbon, for reading and commenting on the manuscript. I wish to record my appreciation to members of Dublin City University’s Centre for Translation and Textual Studies, which provided financial support towards publication. Finally, heartfelt thanks to my daughters, Catherine and Maeve.

9

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List of Abbreviations

M MA PE PRI PRII PT T

Henry de Montherlant, Moustique, La Table Ronde, Paris, 1986. Henry de Montherlant, Mais aimons-nous ceux que nous aimons?, Gallimard, Paris, 1973. Henry de Montherlant, Essais, Gallimard, ‘Pléiade’, Paris, 1963. Henry de Montherlant, Romans et oeuvres de fiction non théâtrales, Gallimard, ‘Pléiade’, Paris, 1959. Henry de Montherlant, Romans, Gallimard, ‘Pléiade’, Paris, 1982. Henry de Montherlant, Théâtre, Gallimard, ‘Pléiade’, Paris, 1972. Henry de Montherlant, Thrasylle, Laffont, Paris, 1983.

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Introduction

Henry de Montherlant is a prolific, fascinating and controversial figure who sits uneasily amongst the panoply of French twentiethcentury writers because of his right-wing stance, his pederasty and an elitist image, which he cultivated and which has done him a disservice in terms of readership in the latter half of the last century and the early years of the twenty-first century. This new study of his literary work proposes an analysis of Montherlant’s writings from the point of view of his system of values. It places Montherlant in the context of twentieth-century French literature as a modern, in his appreciation of human incoherence, his experimentation with form, his provocation of the reader as a thinking being, his concern with reality, his treatment of human passion and his obsessive preoccupation with youth and young people. This study follows the progression of Montherlant’s philosophy as expressed in his work, beginning with an examination of the sources of his system of beliefs and its main tenets, as reflected by the essays and journals. Montherlant is a brilliant practitioner of the Montaigne type of essay, developing the great themes of self-discovery in a language rich in contrasts, comparisons and symmetries. Plato’s writings provide the basis for a consideration of Montherlant’s concept of homosexual love as a journey during which the lovers travel towards a state of spiritual perfection. Les Garçons, one of the twentieth century’s best and mostneglected novels, illustrates the ideal of living and loving, based on renunciation and sacrifice, a way of leading a religious life by believing in man rather than God. Pursuit of knowledge and truth is undertaken, in a quest for a higher form of being, in the company of the beloved and, in this novel, the ideal is achieved, in spiritual transcendence through an act of consciousness resolving internal conflict by sacrifice. Montherlant’s notion of heroism is similar to that of other authors of his generation, whose heroic ideals are dramatically altered by the experience of the First and Second World Wars. Montherlant’s novel, Le Songe, depicts the adolescent hero, who enthusiastically 13

joins up and is confronted by all the horror of the front. Montherlant belongs to the generation of French writers, born at the end of the nineteenth century, which includes Louis Ferdinand Céline, Roger Martin du Gard, François Mauriac, Jean Giraudoux, Robert Brasillach and Marcel Jouhandeau. This generation started out with an ideal of heroism, which was shattered by their World War I experience. During the Second World War, several of these literary figures were associated with the Nazi regime. Although Céline did not collaborate actively, his writings were used in propaganda by the occupying Nazis and he was sentenced to death, in his absence [in Denmark], as a collaborator; Giraudoux was head of the French government’s information service, retiring in 1940, and his reputation suffered from suspicions about his connections with the German administration; Brasillach was shot in 1945 for collaboration. When placed among these inter-war writers, Montherlant is on the right of the political spectrum criticising the French for complacency in the face of Nazi aggression and admiring of German determination, closer to the position of Pierre Drieu La Rochelle and Robert Brasillach than to supporters of the Resistance. Montherlant wrote in praise of the German virtues of courage, hard work and militarism and was condemned to a one-year ban from publishing for his pro-Nazi views, expressed mainly in the essay, Le Solstice de juin. The work of authors publishing in the first half of the twentieth century in France who were on the right of the political spectrum has not received the same attention as those, like Mauriac, who attacked fascism. This book is an attempt to redress the balance. My first chapter provides a general outline of Montherlant’s philosophy, based on his reading of classical authors and on the importance he attributes to the values of the young person. The early novels portray a series of heroic fantasies, engendered by war, sport and bull-fighting. These propose a form of idyllic and idealistic heroism, described in oneiric terms. Discovery of knowledge through the process of living is a common concept; certain principles, however, are unique to Montherlant’s philosophy. He believes that the discovery of knowledge takes place in the company of another person and that it involves an ascent towards a higher form of being, by learning from and teaching the other. The early novels attribute 14

heroic status to their young protagonists through association with mythological or religious characters. The paradigm of educator [father] and pupil [son] continues in Montherlant’s plays, where the ideal of heroism disintegrates before the events of the First and Second World Wars and is replaced by a more realistic vision, which centres on the human being and the acceptance of good and evil in the individual within the framework of self-improvement. Issues of family conflict are explored in plays set against the background of the Occupation and the Resistance. Montherlant’s historical theatre debates the dilemma of choosing between action and contemplation, as valid responses to the Absurd. Montherlant’s acknowledgement of the absurdity of existence starts from the same point as that of the young generation of writers, including André Malraux, Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre, but evolves in a different, even opposing direction. Stemming from the perception of the Absurd, his position is that of the ‘écrivain dégagé’, as opposed to ‘engagé’, who chooses to elaborate a system of values based on passion and personal relationships, rather than political and ideological action. Like Roger Martin du Gard, Montherlant believes that the artist should speak out only indirectly through the creative work. Montherlant’s plays were produced in French theatres at the same time as those of Beckett, Camus and Sartre, but his reaction to the absence of God and the dilemma of existentialism differed from that of the major twentieth-century French philosophical thinkers. He conceives of the human being as a divine entity and focuses attention on the development of a personal philosophy rather than attempting a political and ideological approach to the problem of human existence. Montherlant expresses profound scepticism about metaphysics, religion and abstract systems. His philosophy depends on an act of faith in the possible nobility of man. The descent into the abyss and the failure of the ideal are expressed in the novels written between the age of 35 and 76. These indicate the evolution of Montherlant’s attempt to amalgamate beliefs taken from the Stoics and Nihilists into a system of values where the full appreciation of death as the most meaningful event in life influence the way one lives. The solitary Montherlant hero has been considered by numerous critics, but none so far have taken analysis of 15

this pessimistic view to its logical conclusion by showing how Montherlant’s late novels enact the nihilistic principle, whereby, through negativity, loss and destruction, the hero re-creates himself in a definitive surge of energy drawn from loss. Knowledge is validated as the ultimate goal. The final novel, Un Assassin est mon maître, treats the issue of moral responsibility in an absurd world and this is where Montherlant’s system of values fails as an adequate response to the suffering of the poor and dispossessed. Difference is ultimately denied in the work of Henry de Montherlant and, rather than write from the point of view of the other, to consider and respond to the problem of suffering, the writer, through concentration on the self, describes a philosophy of failure. This book draws together the positive features of Montherlant’s system of values as concern for honesty and depiction of the world and man as they are rather than as they should be, emphasis on a code of behaviour governed by responsibility to the self rather than by what others may think, and courage to explore death as the guiding principle of life.

16

Chapter I Montherlant’s System of Values as expressed by the Carnets and Essais Ces feuilles ne seront proprement qu’un informe journal de mes rêveries. Il y sera beaucoup question de moi, parce qu’un solitaire qui réfléchit s’occupe nécessairement beaucoup de lui-même. [Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Les Rêveries du promeneur solitaire]

Sources The philosophy which underlines all Montherlant’s creative work – his novels, plays and poems – finds its clearest expression in his essays and notebooks,1 which hold the key to an interpretation of his fiction and poetry. A perusal of the essays and notebooks demonstrates the paramount importance which, in Montherlant’s view of life, attaches to the emotional life, in terms of the relations between two young people or between an older man and a young boy. As might be expected, this type of relationship often forms the cornerstone in the structure of a specific novel or play. The notion of youth is central, not only to the love relationship in Montherlant’s writings but also to his whole philosophy, as expressed in his literary works and in his own life. The elements of love and youth are inextricably intertwined. From Faure-Biguet we know that Montherlant began reading Plato at the age of twelve2 and the influence of Plato’s writings, in particular, the Dialogues, Symposium and Phaedrus, is evident in Montherlant’s system of values. 1

2

Volumes of Carnets other than those in the ‘Pléiade’ edition are: Va jouer avec cette poussière, Gallimard, Paris, 1966; La Marée du soir, Gallimard, 1972; Mais aimons-nous ceux que nous aimons?, Gallimard, 1973; Tous feux éteints, Gallimard, 1975. Volumes of Essais other than those in the ‘Pléiade’ edition are: Le Fichier parisien, Gallimard, 1974; Coups de soleil, Gallimard, 1976. Faure-Biguet, J-N. Les Enfances de Montherlant, Henri Lefebvre, Paris, 1948, p. 35.

17

Plato’s writings may serve as a basis for the interpretation of Montherlant’s philosophy, since they best reflect the author’s attitude in the love relationship with the youthful being. The essence of Montherlant’s philosophy, which is centred on the self, or more specifically on the creation of happiness for the self and on the improvement of the self, is a quest for a higher plane of being. The following excerpt from Plato’s dialogue between Socrates and Diotoma demonstrates the similarity between Plato’s and Montherlant’s conception of the self and its relation to love and immortality: All men, Socrates, have a procreative impulse, both spiritual and physical [...]. Now, why is procreation the object of love? Because procreation is the nearest thing to perpetuity and immortality that a mortal being can attain. If, as we agreed, the aim of love is the perpetual possession of the good, it necessarily follows that it must desire immortality together with the good, and the argument leads us to the inevitable conclusion that love is love of immortality as well as of the good.3

Through association with the young person, creative actions ensue which lead to an improvement of the self: lover and beloved are improved and move towards a higher plane of being. Immortality is pursued through the love relationship and the fruits of this ‘give-and-take’ partnership are literary creations. Montherlant never consciously recognizes desire for immortality; this is, nevertheless, the inevitable result of the love relationships, both real and imaginary, which constitute the subject matter of his literary creation. In the Carnets we find many assertions of the prominence of the self in Montherlant’s philosophy, for instance: ‘Ce qui me fait sauter le pas, dans l’audace, c’est l’idée que j’ai de moi-même. Il me suffit d’y songer, et, instantanément, je passe de l’hésitation et de la crainte, à l’acte’. (PE, 1088) Montherlant expresses, in Carnet XXVIII, the idea of passing on a part of oneself to another and thereby improving the self: ‘C’est encore une forme de la possession de soi-même, que nous échapper de notre être, pour ressortir dans les créatures que nous aimons’. (PE, 1153) The children of the pederastic love relationship, according to Plato, represent philosophical ideas discussed at his Academy, literary creativity, laws for governing a State; all these are immortal heritage, fruits of love: 3

18

Plato, The Symposium, translated by W. Hamilton, Penguin, London, 1951, pp. 86– 87.

there are some whose creative desire is of the soul, and who long to beget spiritually, not physically, the progeny which it is the nature of the soul to create and bring to birth. [...] When by divine inspiration a man finds himself from his youth up spiritually fraught with these qualities, as soon as he comes of age he desires to procreate and to have children, and goes in search of a beautiful object in which to satisfy his desire; [...] By intimate association with beauty embodied in his friend, and by keeping him always before his mind, he succeeds in bringing to birth the children he has long desire to have, and once they are born he shares their upbringing with his friend; the partnership between them will be far closer and the bond of affection far stronger than between ordinary parents, because the children that they share surpass human children by being immortal as well as beautiful.4

The life of the mind is crucial; carnal relationships are damaging to intellectual well-being; begetting flesh and blood children is of secondary importance to the creation of ideas. The pederastic love relationship is the primary means of betterment of the self. Montherlant’s appropriation of youthful values, moulded by his reading of classical authors, informs his system of values. There are two important references to pederasty in the Carnets, one from the 1930 to 1944 period and one from 1972: De nos jours, la pédérastie est tenue pour vice ou, comme le suicide, névrose. [...] Rome nous rappelle que suicide et pédérastie sont faits communs chez des hommes parfaitement équilibrés, et l’honneur de leur pays. (PE, 1334–1334)5 Socialement, il faut, bien entendu, que le mineur soit protégé […] puisqu’on m’interroge à partir de La Ville, je dirai qu’on doit être plus sévère quand l’aîné est éducateur, même si son influence est meilleur que celle des parents, parce qu’il a autorité sur le jeune.6

The above comments are cautious defences of pederasty, the first justifying the éraste–éromane relationship with reference to Roman society and the second proposing a system of protection for the young person.

4 5

6

Plato, ibid., p. 91. A further reference to the Ancient World in terms of pederasty occurs in 1972: ‘Dans mes Carnets 1930–1944, je cite les noms de dix-huit grands hommes de l’Antiquité romaine qui ont maîtresses, épouses et enfants, et qui ont été aussi donnés par un auteur, ne fût-ce qu’une fois, pour pédérastes. Au fil de mes lectures depuis lors, j’ai vue qu’il fallait y ajouter Sylla, Titus, Galba, Othon, Vitellius’ (Tous feux éteints, op. cit., p. 152). Ibid., p. 116.

19

Montherlant’s philosophy is constructed around a belief in the intrinsic value of the young person. A system of values is worked, experienced and matured by the author, but the basic precepts of this philosophy were formed from the age of nine with his reading of Quo Vadis and with his early love experiences with a fellow school-mate at the Catholic college of Saint-Pierre de Neuilly: ‘j’ai pu discerner que, durant ces années 1907, 1908, 1909 [...] sa sensibilité avait été violemment bouleversée [...]. « J’ai su, pendant ces années-là, m’a-t-il dit, ce que c’est que d’être amoureux fou, comme je ne l’ai plus jamais été » ’.7 In Plato, the communication between the two lovers involves an Ascent, seen as a movement towards immortality, described as follows: When a man, starting from this sensible world and making his way upward by a right use of his feeling of love for boys, begins to catch sight of that beauty, he is very near his goal. This is the right way of approaching or being initiated into the mysteries of love, to begin with examples of beauty in this world, and using them as steps to ascend continually with that absolute beauty as one’s aim, from one instance of physical beauty to two and from two to all, then from physical beauty to moral beauty, and from moral beauty to the beauty of knowledge, until from knowledge of various kinds one arrives at the supreme knowledge whose sole object is that absolute beauty, and knows at last what absolute beauty is.8

Plato’s Symposium, as an analysis of love as a process evolving from love of beauty to love of knowledge, in the pursuit of truth and a higher form of being, influences the notion of love which Montherlant proposes in La Relève du matin, Thrasylle and Les Garçons. Montherlant’s view of the significance of personal relationships reflects Plato’s concept of an improvement in the individual through his interaction with another. This improvement can, according to an essay entitled ‘Les Chevaléries’, take place in an intimate friendship which is protected by a series of close friendships, called the ‘famille’. The group of young people form a solid unit to encourage, protect and improve its members. (PE, 857–71) Socrates sums up the argument: This, Phaedrus and my other friends, is what Diotoma said and what I believe; and because I believe it I try to persuade others that in the acquisition of this blessing human nature can find no better helper than Love. I declare that it is the duty of every man to honour Love, and I honour and practise the mysteries of Love in an 7 8

20

Faure-Biguet, op. cit., pp. 47–48. Plato, op. cit., p. 94.

especial degree myself, and recommend the same to others, and I praise the power and valour of Love to the best of my ability both now and always.9

Plato offers a concept of love between a mature man and a young boy, in which each improves the knowledge and wisdom of the other and, together, they are involved in an ascending movement towards a perfect state of being, described by Plato as a sort of heaven. The love a man has for a boy is improving and educative because it enables both of them to develop ideas and virtues which otherwise would never have been realized. The boy with whom the man falls in love is someone in whom the divine can be detected. Plato refers to divine madness, caused by possession by a god: This then is the fourth type of madness, which befalls when a man, reminded by the sight of beauty on earth of the true beauty […] and the conclusion to which our whole discourse points is that in itself and in its origin this is the best of all forms of divine possession, both for the subject himself and for his associate, and it is when he is touched with this madness that the man whose love is aroused by beauty in others is called a lover.10

The possibility of divinity in the human being, who is natural, authentic and youthful, is essential to Montherlant’s philosophy, as the perfection to which mortals may aspire. Montherlant differs from Plato in that there is, for him, no after-life, no heaven. This means that the achievement of happiness and the perfection of one’s self should take place here and now, in the present: ‘La vie n’a qu’un sens: y être heureux’. (PE, 1271) Montherlant relates happiness to the pursuit of sensual pleasure, but also, paradoxically, to the renunciation of sensuality, notably in the novel, Les Garçons. Carnality is crucial in giving meaning to life: ‘J’aime que le drap de notre suaire soit celui même qui a contenu les plus exquises délices de notre vie. Être enterré dans ce qui justifia pour nous la terre!’ (PE, 1290) A later note from the Carnets dated 1972, just a year before his death, confirms that physical pleasure is central to Montherlant’s system of values: ‘Ce désir sensuel qui a fait l’unité, le bonheur et la justification de la vie, – toujours omnipotent, et cependant

9 10

Plato, ibid., p. 95. Plato, Phaedrus, translated by W. Hamilton, Penguin, London, 1973, p. 56.

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ne me gênant jamais dans mon art, l’irriguant au contraire, et, loin de me perdre, me sauvant, parce que je le satisfais à satiété’.11 The exception to this advocation of sensuality is Les Garçons, where the prevailing doctrine of abstinence leads to spiritual fulfilment. In Les Garçons, Alban de Bricoule chooses abstinence over sexual gratification, because he does not wish to cause harm to his beloved, Serge. This is the only text in which renunciation not only of physical relation but of the beloved’s physical presence is advocated as the path to the lovers’ spiritual unification with the beloved. This novel is pivotal to an appreciation of Montherlant’s literary journey, even though elsewhere, hedonism is defended as the only honest way to lead one’s life, to the point of denying conventional love: ‘La sensualité alliée à la tendresse ne fait pas chez moi de l’amour. C’est une de mes grandes forces, d’échapper à l’amour, en connaissant, mêlées, la sensualité et la tendresse’. (PE, 1356) Les Garçons is the literary representation of the love relationship, which Montherlant remembered for the rest of his life and to which he constantly refers, as a recent review notes: In the novel, Les Garçons [...] salvation comes via pleasure and love. This book may be read as an apology for pederasty as well as the tale of Montherlant’s life. Based on his adolescent love for a schoolmate, an affair on which he brooded for the next fifty years, it depicts love between young males both as burning sexuality and selfless purity. [...] Les Garçons, which is bathed in tenderness and shows yet another side of Montherlant’s character that he usually concealed, is one of the great novels of this century.12

11 12

22

Tous feux éteints, op. cit., p. 114. McCarthy, Patrick, ‘Montherlant and Vichy’, Times Literary Supplement, 8 October 1993.

Divinity in the Human Plato’s philosophy on love stresses the presence of the divine in the human being; this idea is central to Montherlant’s philosophy which perceives the young person as godlike. La Relève du matin demonstrates the writer’s belief in the evocation of the divine through the presence and voices of young boys [also shown throughout the novel, Thrasylle].13 In Phaedrus, Plato describes how the invocation of a god incorporates the essence of the love relationship: Every man desires to find in his favourite a nature comparable to his own particular divinity, and when he lights upon such a one he devotes himself to personal imitation of his god and at the same time attempts to persuade and train his beloved to the best of his power to walk in the ways of that god and to mould himself upon him. […] This is the aspiration of the true lover, and this, if he succeeds in gaining his object in the way I describe, is the glorious and happy initiation which befalls the beloved when his affections are captured by a friend whom love has made mad.14

This passage relates love for an individual to worship of a god, in that the beloved is taught the ways of the god and divine madness is an element in the process of loving, leading towards a morally improved state. The concept of spirituality and the possibility of the divine in the human being is taken up by Montherlant and related to his heroic ideal represented by the young person. Le Fichier parisien is a collection of essays written about everyday incidents involving children and young adolescents, observed on the author’s peregrinations around Paris. These notes and commentaries, which are too lengthy to quote in detail here, reveal that, for Montherlant, who believes neither in God nor in the afterlife, the young person is associated with a specific concept of the divine. Since there is no life after death, the divine is to be encountered in the here and now; this means that the divine is defined in terms of human qualities such as intelligence, courage, beauty, authenticity. The young boy or girl [girls feature more frequently here than in other writings] is idealized as the divine hero or 13

14

Faure-Biguet demonstrates (Les Enfances de Montherlant, op. cit., p. 193) that certain passages in Thrasylle are replicated in La Relève du matin. This may explain why Montherlant did not publish Thrasylle in his lifetime. Plato, Phaedrus, op. cit., p. 61.

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heroine, demonstrating originality, mysticism and an innate sense of mythology: Les mages d’Orient, fleur de la puissance et de la sagesse humaines et païennes, s’acheminent vers la crèche, conduits non par leur sagesse, mais par un signe d’en haut: « Nous avons vu son étoile. » Ils vont « pour adorer ». [...] L’étoile de leur soir, l’étoile de leur vieillesse et de leur sagesse, est suspendue au-dessus de l’enfance, et les y conduit. [...] si l’enfance n’est pas innocente du mal, elle est innocente de la bêtise, innocence plus importante que l’autre. [...] Celui qui approche de l’enfance en reçoit donc, d’abord, ce don merveilleux: le don d’un monde sauvé de la bêtise. Il en reçoit, d’aventure, un autre don: la communication avec un monde inspiré.15

Only in relation to the young person can the adult hope to achieve communication and inspiration from a divine source. Montherlant appropriates the youthful being, who represents the divine in man, in the present time. Following Plato’s precepts, Montherlant emphasizes the love relationship and its role in the development of the individual. The young person is taught and teaches. Throughout his plays and novels, as well as more theoretically, in the Essais, Montherlant constantly – either directly, or, more obliquely, by inserting a youthful character into a play or novel on another theme – highlights youth. Moulding his philosophy on validation of the young, he considers that society does not properly acknowledge the contribution of the young to the history of mankind: Combien d’entre nous se rendent compte que Britannicus fut empoisonné « au moment qu’il accomplissait sa quatorzième année » (Tacite), en d’autres termes, à treize ans, que le Sophocle de Salamine chez nous serait en culottes courtes, que Béatrice avait douze ans quand Dante l’aima, qu’Iphigénie en avait treize, Juliette treize, que des jeunes filles qui jouaient Esther à Saint-Cyr, « aucune, dit Mme de Maintenon, n’avait plus de quinze ans ». (PE, 167)

An undated note from the Carnets, written between 1930 and 1944, proclaims the virtues of the youthful age of man: 15

24

Montherlant, ‘L’étoile du soir’, Le Fichier parisien, Gallimard, Paris, 1974, pp. 40– 43. Sipriot elaborates: ‘Pour le compte de la Croix-Rouge, Odette Michéli s’occupe de placer dans des Centres d’hébergement ou dans des familles en Suisse, les enfants les plus malingres. Montherlant décide de l’aider dans son travail en faisant don d’une partie de ses droits d’auteur à l’oeuvre, se promettant d’écrire un livre sur les enfants français atteints par la guerre: ce sera L’Etoile du soir qui paraîtra en 1949’.

On ne sait pas assez à quel point les êtres, de l’un et l’autre sexe, sont gentils, et dignes d’être aimés, quand ils sont vraiment jeunes, mettons: jusqu’à dix-sept ans inclus. Il y a une immense quantité d’intérêt, de respect, de sympathie et d’amour qui se perd, parce que l’humanité ne réalise pas bien que c’est à cet âge-là qu’elle atteint son chef-d’oeuvre. (PE, 1360)

Immortality is attained through the young person, both by the adult experiencing a divinity in the presence of the child, and by the adult renewing his own childhood experience, in each encounter with the young person.

The ‘Bastard’ Hero and his Creation The creation of an imaginary family to compensate for the young child’s discovery of the imperfections of his real family is used by Marthe Robert, in Roman des origines et origines du roman, to provide a classification of literature as follows: ‘il n’y a que deux façons de faire un roman: celle du Bâtard réaliste, qui seconde le monde tout en l’attaquant de front; et celle de l’Enfant trouvé qui, faute de connaissances et de moyens d’action, esquive le combat par la fuite ou la bouderie’.16 Robert bases her theory on Freud’s essay, ‘Der Familienroman des Neurotiker’ [‘The Family Novel of the Neurotic’] and explains that every child weaves a story to compensate for the disappointment he feels when discovering that his real parents are not the ideal, god-like creatures he imagined them to be. The child casts himself either in the role of the bastard or in the role of the changeling, found and adopted by ideal parents. With most adults, the story thus woven in childhood is largely forgotten, with only remnants enduring into maturity. The writer, on the other hand, deliberately recalls the story as his creativity prompts him to deal with unresolved conflicts. Montherlant’s essay La Relève du matin and novel, Les Garçons, are conceived according to Robert’s hypothesis of the bastard child, who replaces his family with the ideal school as an environment in which the adolescent hero is able to develop his potential. In La Relève du matin as well as other early works, the young person is the king, the centre of a world, and adults are only present to serve his 16

Robert, Marthe, Roman des origines et origines du roman, Gallimard, Paris, p. 74.

25

needs. While parents are too interfering to allow the king-child to rule properly, in the College, the king-child has other children as his subjects and fellow conspirators, creatures with the ability to communicate with the divine, once they are free from adult supervision and interference. The ideal space of the College allows them this freedom. Montherlant’s early works are written from the point of view of the young hero; the perspective shifts as the author matures and the heroic ideal of the early novels disintegrates before the reality of the two World Wars. In his imagination, the male child appropriates the role of the father in writing him out of the story, as in Montherlant’s early novels [Le Songe, Les Olympiques, La Petite Infante de Castille, Les Garçons] where the father is absent and the son enjoys an intimate relationship with his mother [parents are absent from La Relève du matin]. Negation of the father’s existence empowers the child: En se déclarant illégitime, en effet, l’enfant se place dans une situation qui, étant nécessairement voulue par lui, permet de déduire ses vraies raisons, et le cheminement de ses désirs cachés. D’abord il garde sa mère à ses côtés, [...] puis [...] il relègue son père dans un royaume de fantaisie, dans un au-delà de la famille [...] c’est un fantôme, un mort auquel on peut certes vouer un culte, mais aussi quelqu’un dont la place est vide et qu’il est tentant de remplacer.17

The adolescent narrator of La Relève du matin has appropriated the ability of the father to produce life in creating a whole world, peopled with young male characters, in which the ‘parent’ priests exist only in the background. In Montherlant’s fictional universe, the scaffolding for which is laid out in La Relève du matin, the young person reigns supreme, as hero in the earlier writings, and as object of desire in the literary creation of the mature writer. Robert proposes that the fairy tale, the boy’s adventure story, the ‘mature’ novel are stages in the development of the original ‘roman familial’ conceived by the very young child in his search for an explanation for his existence, wishing to distance himself from imperfect parents. La Relève du matin is a successor of the Romantic movement in terms of the glorification of the young:

17

26

Robert, ibid., p. 51.

Goût du rêve, dégoût du réel et divinisation de la pensée convergent tout naturellement vers la mystique de l’enfance, âge magique par excellence qui, ignorant les disjonctions de la raison, laisse à l’existence son unité primordiale. Tous les romantiques communient dans ce culte de l’enfance prise en soi, non pas par conséquent comme le fragment daté d’une biographie personnelle, mais comme le temps d’avant la chute où êtres, choses et bêtes baignent encore dans le paradis de l’indistinct. Être enfant, redevenir enfant, c’est annuler la séparation irréversible causée par la pensée rationnelle, c’est retrouver la pureté, l’harmonie, la vraie connaissance qu’interdit par la suite la science morcelée. Mais le retour à l’enfance ne marque pas seulement la fin d’un exil, il est aussi un argument terrible contre la condition de l’adulte dans un monde sans âme, en proie aux discordances de l’action et de la pensée.18

The foundling child is distinguished by what she calls ‘la bouderie’; he is essentially an introvert who draws a line of defence between himself and the rest of the world. The bastard child, on the other hand, is an extrovert, who appropriates the world, acting on it, re-creating it to suit his own vision. Montherlant’s early writings demonstrate the latter form of creativity. This is not an inner world; it is microcosm within the outer world, that of the College, peopled with superior beings, children, and a few men who are set apart from other adults, as communicators with the Divine, educators of the children. Robert’s interpretation is particularly germane to such lyrical flights of fancy as these passages from La Relève: Et ici [la chambre du collège] furent soudain déployées des choses divinement belles et hautes, comme une blonde voile de lumière soudainement déployée dans la grisaille du port. Et de faibles doigts inexperts, roulant la pierre éternelle, avaient décelé le puits de la pitié. Et les longs bras du Crucifié dans l’ombre n’étreignaient pas les vivants sur son coeur comme enlaçait cet homme à sa table toute la souffrance créée par ces êtres dont, en cette minute même, des jardins et des ombrages, on entendait venir la joie. (PE, 63) Il [le jeune héros] voyait un peu du collège entre les feuilles; [...] l’espace autour de lui comme le vaste champ du monde; la sphère de bronze au-dessus de sa tête comme le poids somptueux et lourd de sa fortune. Et la ville mauvaise était derrière lui, qu’il entendait bruire mais ne regardait pas. (PE, 93) Nous trouvions au seul endroit de ce parc où je me sente touché, au bord de cette Ile des Enfants, secrète et écartée comme un remords au fond d’un coeur. […] le vieux roi finissant […] et la phrase émouvante […]: « Mettez-moi de l’enfance dans tout cela… ». (PE, 131) 18

Ibid., p. 110.

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The multiplicity of sense in these extracts, expressed in an ambiguous, lyrical, mystical style, places the young person in a position of primary importance, in terms of Montherlant’s philosophy, relating him to the divine. The tendency to run ideas and images into one another reinforces the separateness of the world created in these texts. There is an opposition throughout between the universe of the child [perfect, divine, containing suffering but engendering images of light and life] and the world of the adult [corrupt, noisy, evil, where famine and death reign]. The Christ figure in the first passage is the priest, the educator, who suffers because of the children, but who is happy in his suffering. The young hero in the second passage is crowned with good fortune. The very fact of his youth sets him above the rest of mankind. Around him is the vast space of the world, above which he reigns and behind him the evil noise of the town, where corrupt adults dwell. The old king in the third text represents man, the adult, who looks to the child to save him from himself and the trappings of the world. The themes contained in this naive text, composed by the twentyyear-old author, recur throughout his work. The ageing king who turns to the child for access to knowledge is present in La Reine morte, Le Cardinal d’Espagne and Malatesta. The sad priest becomes l’Abbé de Pradts, who features in the play, La Ville dont le prince est un enfant and the novel, Les Garçons. André, the hero of these pieces, is an early version of Alban de Bricoule, hero of the trilogy comprising Le Songe, Les Bestiaires and Les Garçons. Marthe Robert’s categorization of bastard child and foundling child is appropriate to Montherlant’s early work, including La Rélève du matin and the novels which have the adolescent as hero.

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A Philosophy of Youth The Essais delineate the elements in life which Montherlant considers vital: ‘Je m’accorde avec les enfants parce que nos préoccupations sont les mêmes. Il s’agit de s’amuser et de vivre dans l’instant, sans préjugés et sans devoirs, notamment de gratitude’. (PE, 1092) Pleasure is top of his hierarchy of values: Il y en a qui devant les ruines ont le réflexe: à quoi bon vivre? […] « Ensuite le néant. » Eh bien, va pour le néant. Les écoliers s’empoisonnent-ils leurs vacances parce qu’en octobre il faudra rentrer? Il n’y a pas là matière à soupirer, mais à prendre garde de ne pas perdre son temps. (PE, 205)

Death inspires the individual to live for the pleasure of being alive. It may be argued that pursuit of pleasure is a form of asceticism: Repos, confort d’une part, ascétisme de l’autre, voilà bien de hautes qualités pour une vie de volupté. Y verra-t-on seulement un tour de passe-passe? Je ne pense pas. Si la course à la volupté détruisait le moi, son apologie serait ridicule. Or, pour Montherlant, elle le préserve, l’entretient, fournit une base utile à son développement. Parce qu’en lui elle n’existe pas seule. N’oublions pas la présence de l’Oeuvre. […] le souci de son oeuvre, fournissant aux préoccupations de l’homme un autre pôle, l’aide à établir l’économie de son existence. [...] Nous ne voulons pas avoir l’air – comme tant d’autres, – de connaître Montherlant mieux qu’il ne se connaît lui-même. Nous voulons bien lui accorder que l’absolu est dans les sens, mais il est impossible de nier l’importance de son oeuvre, et de ne pas affirmer que la vérité de l’homme se trouve au moins dans ce dialogue et non dans un seul aspect de sa personnalité.19

Blanc refers above to a synthesis of the various elements in the artist’s life which include his pursuit of sensual pleasure and his quest for selfexpression in the form of literary creation. The conjunction of these two main principles in Montherlant’s life, according to Blanc, leads to ‘l’économie de son existence’. This view is confirmed by an observation from the Carnets: ‘La principale différence entre écrire et faire l’amour, c’est qu’en faisant l’amour on cherche autant le plaisir de l’autre, sinon davantage, tandis qu’en écrivant on ne cherche que le sien’.20 The importance of desire and the pursuit of sensual pleasure is one of the touchstones of Montherlant’s philosophy. He also recognizes, 19 20

Blanc, André, Un Pessimisme heureux, Editions du Centurion, Paris, 1968, 62–63. Tous feux éteints, op. cit., p. 40.

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however, the ‘ennui’ which stems from his hedonistic purpose. A world weariness can be sensed in the series of essays entitled ‘Aux Fontaines du désir’, composed during the author’s peregrinations in north Africa and southern Europe between 1925 and 1929. He comments on ‘Ces êtres, ces corps, toute cette jeunesse dont je me suis gorgé’ and admits ‘c’est un supplice que ce désir de tout ce qui passe, quand, sachant qu’à l’assouvir on n’aura que plus d’amertume’. (PE, 321 & 323) In the 1939 preface to ‘Un Voyageur solitaire est un diable’, Montherlant cautions the reader about the fact that part of what the essays express is no longer representative of what he believes: ‘Aucun de mes ouvrages n’est plus différent de ce que je suis aujourd’hui qu’« Aux Fontaines du désir » (du moins la partie de ce livre intitulée « Sans Remède »)’ (PE, 339–340). Montherlant claims that he grew out of the feeling of ‘ennui’ mentioned above and regained his positive outlook in 1929, but, in fact, a sense of the meaninglessness of existence is always present in his work and finds its full expression in the final novels.

‘Syncrétisme et alternance’ Montherlant functions in the context of an oscillation between two poles of his being; this constitutes one of the central tenets of Montherlant’s philosophy, which is outlined in an essay entitled ‘Syncrétisme et alternance’, (PE, 231–245) in which the author defines his belief in the multiplicity of existence.21 He considers that the only true way to live is to appreciate the existence of a variety of states of being at one and the same time, so that good and evil exist side by side and that one man contains both these and other characteristics, which either are present at the same time or alternate at different periods in one’s life. If we deny the existence of a host of states, both within man and within nature, we are deluding ourselves and failing to recognize truth. The following lyrical passage attempts to describe Montherlant’s concept of multiplicity of desire: 21

30

For a critique of this ethical doctrine and how it relates to Montherlant’s work and his conception of the artist, see Morreale, Gerald, ‘Alternance and Montherlant’s Aesthetics’, The French Review, 37, 1964, pp. 627–636.

J’ai désiré des bêtes, des plantes, des femmes, des êtres qui m’étaient proches, très proches par le sang. Je pense que c’est cela qui est la santé; la possession totale, des hommes qui sont bornés dans le désir, je leur crois aussi l’âme bornée. Maintes fois, j’éprouve le besoin violent de baiser une fleur, du sable, de l’eau, et j’ai posé, perdu mon visage contre le froid des statues de marbre, comme enfoui dans la rose la plus profonde. Dès mon enfance, j’ai eu l’obsession des formes mi-animales, mihumaines sorties du génie antique; elles me faisaient rêver d’un état où je posséderais, sentirais et m’assouvirais plus complètement, où je serais aussi mieux contenté: ayant toutes les natures, et les plus contraires... (PE, 242)

The obsession, referred to by Montherlant, with the half animal, half human form is a major feature of his early ‘conte’, Thrasylle, published posthumously in 1983.22 Montherlant associates desire for various creatures and objects with multiplicity in himself. The human being at his most godlike is capable of feeling and acting on desire for an object of beauty which is not necessarily human, and, if human, not necessarily of the opposite sex. The author’s overwhelming desire to be part of the whole pantheon of living things is more fully explored in the play Pasiphaé, which Blanc alludes to as an ‘exaltation du désir sans limite’, written in 1928 – only three years after the composition of the essay quoted above. The notion of a being who is not so much superior to but different from most men, one who is close to the gods, is related to the capacity for desiring many different creatures. Thus, Pasiphaé justifies her illegitimate passion by affirming her divine status: ‘Je suis la fille du Soleil, et je me restreindrais à n’aimer que les hommes? Et pourquoi les hommes? Et qui a ordonné cette limitation? Où est-ce écrit? Non, non, pas de limites!’(PT, 85) Montherlant recognizes and accepts his own nature, rejoicing in multiplicity, manifest in a limitless capacity for desire. According to Montherlant, we tend to disavow the very consciousness of anything unpleasing, perceived both from within and without ourselves. The poet, as the seeker after truth, cannot afford to do this: ‘Je suis poète, je ne suis même que cela, et j’ai besoin d’aimer et de vivre toute la diversité du monde’. (PE, 241) Montherlant sees Nature as containing all the contradictory elements which exist in man and in society. He advises us to accept the reality of Nature and not to repudiate the existence of evil or destructive phenomena. We can only combat Evil if it is recognized and, in fact, believed in; Montherlant’s philosophy 22

Montherlant, Thrasylle, Laffont, Paris, 1983.

31

dictates that man must acknowledge the good and evil in himself, in society and the wider world: Etre à la fois ou plutôt alterner en soi, la Bête et l’Ange, la vie corporelle et charnelle et la vie intellectuelle et morale, que l’homme le veuille ou non la nature l’y forcera, qui est toute alternance, qui est toute contractions et détentes. [...] Le mérite de l’homme sera de cesser de nier ce rythme essentiel, par aveuglement sur soi-même, ou de le renier, par crainte d’inconséquence, ou de s’en excuser avec des soupirs; il sera de le connaître et de s’y abandonner heureusement comme au bercement même des bras de la Nature. Alors on ne le verra plus blasphémer aujourd’hui ce qu’il sera demain. (PE 240)

To support the argument, reference is made to Tolstoy: « Croire les hommes bons, méchants, sots, intelligents, est une erreur fréquente. L’homme est pareil à un cours d’eau. Il est mobile et tout lui est possible. De sot il devient intelligent; de méchant, il devient bon; on voit aussi l’inverse se produire. C’est ce qui fait la grandeur de l’homme. On ne peut pas se prononcer sur son compte; pendant que tu le condamnes il n’est déjà plus le même. Il n’est même pas possible de dire: je ne l’aime pas. A peine l’a-t-on dit qu’il a déjà changé. » (PE, 331)

Man’s multiplicity forms the centre of Montherlant’s philosophy; ‘La grandeur de l’homme’ derives from his complex and contradictory nature. The ageing heroes of the plays and later novels achieve nobility through their very humanity and weakness. Thus, Montherlant’s counsel in the Essais and, in particular in ‘Syncrétisme et Alternance’, is that we are truly in touch with our own natures when we recognize their multiplicity. But mere acknowledgment is not enough; it must be acted on. Montherlant’s heroes, complex and contradictory as they are, live multiplicity to the full and, in so doing, destroy themselves and those around them.

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‘Service inutile’ This element of Montherlant’s philosophy is referred to above, in the notion of ‘generosity’ as an act involving sacrifice of self, not for another, but for the idea one has of the self. Montherlant writes at length about the subject of ‘service inutile’, notably in a group of 16 essays, which are based on the following notion: Voici ce qu’il me plaît de comprendre: la vie est un songe, mais le bien-faire ne s’y perd pas, quelle que soit son inutilité – inutile pour le corps social, inutile pour sauver notre âme, – parce que, ce bien, c’est à nous que nous l’avons fait. C’est nous que nous avons servi, comme c’est nous qui nous sommes donné la couronne, et les seules couronnes qui vaillent quelque chose sont celles qu’on se donne à soi-même. […] Je n’ai que l’idée que je me fais de moi pour me soutenir sur les mers du néant. (PE, 598)

Morality only exists in relation to the self. The individual has a sense of his self, on which all his actions and reactions are based. This self, Montherlant tells us in ‘Lettre d’un père à son fils’, is conceived of in terms of certain characteristics: ‘Les vertus que vous cultiverez pardessus tout sont le courage, le civisme, la fierté, la droiture, le mépris, le désintéressement, la politesse, la reconnaissance, et, d’une façon générale, tout ce qu’on entend par le mot de générosité’. (PE, 724) Some of these values would seem to contradict the concept of serving the self, in that they advocate a sense of social duty. These values are, however, related to the interest of the individual; patriotism, for example, refers to the self in relation to one’s country. The implication is that we have to draw up codes of behaviour because we live in a social milieu, but that we would do just as well without this milieu. Montherlant’s perception of ‘service inutile’ is suggestive of the cult of the individual as he indicates in the following quotations chosen to precede a lecture on ‘La Possession de soi-même’: ‘Marthe, Marthe, vous inquiétez et vous agitez pour beaucoup de choses. Une seule est nécessaire. Luc, x, 41–42; La plus grande chose du monde, c’est de sçavoir estre à soy. Montaigne, Essais, lib. I, cap. xxxviii; Si le monde entier se renversait ce serait sans raison qu’on s’en troublerait. Et l’âme recevrait de ce trouble plutôt du mal que du bien. Saint Jean de la Croix. Montée, lib. III, cap. v’. (PE, 699) God has been replaced by the self. Christ, when speaking to Martha, states that the believer only need concern himself with the Father and all 33

else will fall into place. Montherlant replaces Christian teaching with his belief that the individual should be preoccupied with the self and that all else will fall into place once this perception of the self – together with adherence to the virtues listed above – is established. The philosophy of ‘service inutile’ relies further on the pleasure principle, which does not try to please others. Montherlant argues that this so-called selfish attitude is in fact a healthy one. When discussing suicide in ‘La Prudence ou les morts perdues’, he claims that the man who commits suicide does so for his own pleasure: Et, en vérité, c’est bien cela, il se sacrifie pour le plaisir. Quel est donc ce plaisir si dominant qu’il en a? Le plaisir d’atteindre à la réalisation absolue de soi-même et de la couronner de la façon la plus haute: qui n’a eu que la vie ne l’a pas eue. Il est parvenu à la cime de sa vie; il y met cette neige éternelle, et qui se verra encore, quand sa vie ne se verra plus. Est-ce tout? C’est aussi le plaisir d’affirmer son indépendance à l’égard de la nature, en se substituant à elle. Et je ne parle que pour mémoire du plaisir de se tirer du commun. Il s’échappe avec un sourire, qui est le sourire de sa supériorité. (PE, 666)

The author’s positive attitude to death, in general, and towards suicide, in particular, is significant, especially in the novels written towards the end of his life. These explore the time of death as a moment when the individual gains absolute knowledge. Montherlant’s life-long praise of suicide is therefore entirely in keeping with his philosophy of ‘service inutile’. In fact, by this construction, suicide is the ultimate pleasure for the individual: it constitutes the apotheosis of his life. This act enables the individual to control his end, to deprive nature of its power and to end his existence at the height of his achievements: ‘Les suicidés ont droit à un amour et à un respect particuliers. Si j’étais chrétien, j’aurais enclavé au cimetière un lieu clos réservé pour eux, lieu non pas maudit, mais béni’.23 The essence of ‘service inutile’ means that the service is ultimately to oneself, no matter what the ostensible motivation might be. If in Montherlant’s view the only important perspective is one’s own, then all acts undertaken by the individual, including suicide, are a definitive affirmation of the cult of the self.

23

34

Tous feux éteints, op. cit., pp. 113–114. A pertinent comment on Montherlant’s own suicide which occurred the year after this note was written.

The Game ‘Jeu’ and ‘jouer’ are key words in the work of Montherlant, who stresses that pleasure motivates writing: ‘J’ai été un homme de plaisir d’abord, ensuite un créateur littéraire, et ensuite rien. Le plaisir est pris; les oeuvres, c’est pour me faire plaisir aussi que je les faisais, et ce plaisir lui aussi est pris. C’est pourquoi tout est bien ainsi’.24 The notion of the game, symbolized by the image of the sand-castle which recurs in Montherlant’s work, is suggested by Nietzsche: ‘Voici ce qu’écrit Nietzsche […] à propos d’Héraclite: « Seuls le jeu de l’artiste et le jeu de l’enfant peuvent ici-bas croître et périr, construire et détruire avec innocence.»’25 The concept of transmutation through play is important, in that the Montherlant hero is constantly in a state of becoming. Through his interaction with the other, he obtains knowledge. In the late novels the hero enters a nihilistic state and through affirmation of himself, he transforms himself yet again, at the point of death. Nietzschean nihilism is explored in Montherlant’s work, where negativity is transformed by: laughter, play and dance as affirmative powers of transmutation: dance transmutes heavy into light, laughter transmutes suffering into joy and the play of throwing [the dice] transmutes low into high. [...] Dance affirms becoming and the being of becoming; laughter, roars of laughter, affirm multiplicity and the unity of multiplicity; play affirms chance and the necessity of chance.26

Only the artist and the child are capable of playing, according to the quotation from Nietzsche, which relates directly to the pleasure of constructing and destroying an artistic creation. Characteristically, Montherlant destroyed numerous texts. He threw some of his diaries into the Seine, along with an early work, Scipion l’Africain, and frequently refuted his own writings later in life. The ultimate pleasure for the author is to write; writing, as well as all other occupations, is considered to be a form of play. An article published in the Nouvelle revue française in March 1940, defines this ludic aspect of Montherlant’s philosophy: 24 25 26

Montherlant, La Marée du soir, Gallimard, Paris, 1972, p. 16. Duroisin, Pierre, Montherlant et l’antiquité, Les Belles Lettres, Paris, 1987, note to p. 92. Deleuze, Gilles, Nietzsche and Philosophy, translated by Hugh Tomlinson, The Athlone Press, London, 1983, p. 194.

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L’essentiel de ce que le sport fut pour moi, Les Olympiques ne l’exprimèrent pas, car je le réalisai plus tard seulement. Cet essentiel est que, galopant dans les stades, je ne faisais que matérialiser, sous sa forme la plus rudimentaire, une notion du jeu que était et qui est restée au centre de ma vie. J’appelle jeu une activité qui a sa fin dans le plaisir qu’on en éprouve, et nulle part ailleurs; un effort qui a une vertu propre, indépendante de la direction dans laquelle on l’exerce, et de son succès. Le jeu ne se discute pas, il est au-delà du doute, hors d’atteinte; la seule forme d’action dont les buts, en apparence les plus décevants qui soient, ne puissent pas être décevants; la seule forme d’action qui soit défendable, la seule qui soit digne de l’homme parce qu’intelligente et instinctive à la fois, et cela d’ailleurs a été dit: «L’homme n’est pleinement lui-même que lorsqu’il joue» [Schiller]; la seule, en un mot, qui puisse être pris au sérieux.27

This definition emphasizes the self and the giving of pleasure to the self. The self comes into closest contact with its own reality when it plays. There is no falsity: the aim of the game is pleasure; no role is adopted, no pose is necessary. The player acts solely for his own pleasure and is, therefore completely natural. The game, according to Montherlant, has a quality of purity; it cannot be discussed or doubted because its meaning is not to be found in anything outside or comparable. The point of playing a game is not, according to Montherlant, to take part or, indeed, to win. Montherlant understands game-playing as dominating life itself, as illustrated by the following passage on war, which forms part of the ‘L’Equinoxe de septembre’ group of essays and follows on from the argument outlined at the end of the previous section, under ‘Service inutile’: Sous un ciel de fer, sans dieux, l’homme est seul avec ses passions et avec ses actes. [...] Souverainement seul, et – ainsi qu’il se doit – souverainement abandonné. [...] il ne jouera pas le jeu, mais son jeu, ou plutôt il jouera les deux à la fois, qui est le Grand Jeu; il ne fera que poursuivre, à travers les circonstances imprévues, son aventure personnelle et son accomplissement personnel; il s’agit moins de dominer l’ennemi, que de dominer la guerre; la guerre est ceci, presque uniquement: une chose à dominer. [...] De toutes façons ce sera l’action (l’action en sa forme parfaite: le jeu), – et dans l’action seulement on peut se connaître [...]. À moi de jouer et de n’être pas joué. À moi de faire honneur à l’homme [...] c’est que l’individu s’y poursuit en ses actes de triomphe, comme demain il se poursuivrait en eux [les jeux] dans la guerre nationale ou sociale, qui est elle aussi un triomphe de l’individu, 27

36

Montherlant, ‘Notes sur Les Olympiques’, La Nouvelle revue française, 1.3.1940, pp. 313–314. Blanc, op. cit. elaborates on this element of Montherlant’s philosophy in a chapter entitled ‘Le jeu’.

puisque l’homme y gagne journellement sa vie contre la mort; et qui elle aussi « fait concurrence » à l’individu, puisqu’elle est un phénomène qui obéit à sa propre loi. (PE, 771–773)

Views such as these, as well as his condemnation of the French ‘morale de midinette’, resulted in Montherlant being accused of collaboration and being banned from publication for one year after the end of World War II. Montherlant’s fascist tendencies are concentrated mainly in the collection of essays entitled Le Solstice de juin, where he ‘condemns and belittles his country and arrogantly announces his readiness, indeed his obligation, to make common cause with the heroic elite of the New Europe, the Nazis themselves’.28 The above passage illustrates the author’s concept of play, an attitude which informs his philosophy and is closely related to his retention and elaboration of youthful values. War, like any other human activity, is viewed as a game, in which the individual gambles his life on a daily basis. The achievement of ‘son aventure personnelle et son accomplissement personnel’, even if this be in death, is still seen as winning – or rather dominating – war. Montherlant’s belief in games is founded on the fact that life has no meaning other than what we give it; it is therefore absurd not to pursue pleasure, and thus life should be viewed as a game to be enjoyed and, ultimately, dominated. This interpretation may seem to imply that Montherlant has scant respect for life. This is not so, however, as throughout the Essais the author demonstrates his reverence for life: ‘Le mot sur lequel se terminent les manuscrits de nos « mystères » du Moyen Age: Explicit mysterium, « Ici finit le mystère ». Ce n’est pas la mort qui est le grand mystère, c’est la vie’. (PE, 507) The enactment of the game is a mark not of nonchalance to life, but of the wish to take life as seriously as possible, precisely because the individual is the only one who can take responsibility for his own life:

28

Golsan, Richard J. ‘Henry de Montherlant, Itinerary of an Ambivalent Fascist’, Fascism, Aesthetics and Culture, University Press of New England, 1992, p. 153. See also Golsan, ‘Montherlant and Collaboration: the Politics of Disengagement’, Romance Quarterly, May 1988; 35 (2), pp. 139–149; Rosenberg, M.A., ‘Montherlant and the Critics of the French Resistance’, The French Review, Vol. XLIV No 5, April 1971, pp. 839–851; Becker, Lucille, Henry de Montherlant: A Critical Biography, Southern Illinois University Press, 1970, pp. 32–35.

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Monde sans Dieu, monde sans justice finale, – monde sans lois, monde sans volonté, – monde sans masque et sans brumes, monde aux objets sans ombres, – monde sans complaisance, – combien ainsi, et ainsi seulement, – ô monde! – il est digne de l’homme! (PE, 524)

The world and life are there for man to re-create in his own image; the world is worthy of man, the creator. It is sensible, therefore, to affirm that man should create his world to please himself. Montherlant invariably replaces the Christian idea of God with Man, the individual. The human supplants the divine in his philosophy, but the divine is present in the human being. Existence must be pleasurable if it is to be meaningful. Play, because it is pleasurable, is a serious occupation, denoting a belief in life as a gift, to be lived only once, with no hope of immortality or of a second chance. Make-believe is essential, because of the cult of the self. The individual’s universe is true – or rather, the makebelieve world that he creates – and is, therefore, valid in itself. Just as the child’s make-believe world is real for the child, so the adult should and does have a make-believe world [his own particular view of the universe] which is taken seriously and believed in and which therefore forms the basis for play, albeit on a grander scale than that of the child. The adult engages in a game whose aim is to dominate life. The element of risk and gambling shapes the game. The game is dangerous. The player walks on the edge of the pit, in order to experience the thrill of living life in every circumstance: ‘Avoir marché au bord de l’abîme, toujours. Et jamais n’y être tombé. Ce n’était pas Dieu qui vous tenait la main, c’était toujours un être vivant, un petit être de rien du tout, qui vous tenait la main […]. Et il ne vous a pas trahi’. (PE, 584) The Montherlantian game-player takes risks, but has a youthful companion who minimizes these risks. The essential Other is youth, because Montherlant espouses a youthful philosophy and these writings are a paean to happiness. The father in ‘Lettre d’un père à son fils’ advises the son: ‘ Prenez donc de la souffrance morale tout juste ce qui en est nécessaire pour la richesse et la diversité de votre vie intérieure, mais soyez heureux [...]. Et, quand vous serez heureux, sachez que vous l’êtes, et n’ayez pas honte de confesser un état si digne d’estime’. (PE, 731) Montherlant suggests that to be happy is not generally admired, as he elaborates:

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Qui dénoncera la duperie de souffrir? Qui proclamera une bonne fois que souffrir ne sert à rien, que cela est perdu, totalement perdu? Qui « déshonorera » la souffrance? Il y a bien quelques êtres qui connaissent le secret de ne pas souffrir, secret qui raisonnablement devrait être l’apanage des dieux. Ce secret, ils voudraient le dire, mais ils savent qu’un homme qui s’avoue heureux est tenu pour un benêt, ou pour un poseur, ou pour un égoïste qui insulte au malheur du genre humain; ils craignent que même le don qu’ils feraient de ce secret ne suffît pas pour qu’on leur pardonnât de le détenir. (PE, 716)

Thus, motivation for the game is happiness. Montherlant attaches no guilt to happiness and sees suffering as serving no purpose. The player is light-hearted; he lives for pleasure because he knows that only he is responsible for his own life, and, at the end of this life, he wants to look back on a state of happiness, as confirmed by the letters of Montherlant’s ancestor, Henry de Riancey: ‘« Nous servons pour l’honneur et pour le plaisir, non pour le profit. » Honneur. Plaisir. Désintéressement. Que ces trois mots vont loin en moi! Et qu’il n’ait pas oublié le second!’ (PE, 661) The pleasure of the game is all-important to Montherlant. The game forms an essential element of his relationship with his reader, as André Blanc points out: ‘Même si l’on arrive à dégager de l’ensemble de l’oeuvre de grandes attitudes, comment être sûr qu’il ne s’agit point d’un jeu de sa part?’29 Cheating is part of the art of playing a game. Montherlant loves to cheat in the literary game, by ignoring the conventions, whereby the reader generally takes what he reads at face value. Accordingly, the quartet of novels, Les Jeunes filles, must be read as an elaborate series of games played by the author with his reader. In other novels the ludic element consists of concealing secrets of sexual identity, leaving a trail of clues for the astute reader to interpret.30 The reader is caught up in a kind of treasure hunt, temporarily satisfied with the second or third level of interpretation, only to discover layer after layer of possible meanings, as he foils the author’s attempts to cheat. In playing, the writer demonstrates his domination over life; he proves, by living and creating in the spirit of play, that he has acted as creator of his own life and, in the case of Montherlant, of an elaborate 29 30

Blanc, A. Les Critiques de notre temps et Montherlant, Garnier, Paris, 1973, p. 13. For an analysis of La Rose de sable as a novel composed as a game of concealment, see O’Flaherty, Patricia, ‘La Rose de sable: une déclaration politique inspirée par l’amour’, Australian Journal of French Studies, v. 25(3) 1988, pp. 261–266.

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game of literary communication with his reader. In an extract from the Carnets dated 1964, the author, reflecting on this life-long game with his reader, is anxious to emphasize that, far from denoting a lack of respect for the ‘opponent’, the game of literary communication demonstrates equality between writer and reader: Les dernières lignes de La Rose de sable sont empruntées à un auteur arabe du Moyen Age. Les voici: « D’où viens-tu? demandait-on à Rabi’a. – De l’autre monde. – Et où vas-tu? – Dans l’autre monde. – Que fais-tu donc dans celui-ci? – Je me joue de lui.» Avec cela nous sommes au-dessus d’un abîme. Le monde serait uniquement un objet à duper? Non, je me rebiffe. Et que penser, par exemple, d’un artiste qui, au moment de cesser d’être, se dirait sans plus qu’il a bien roulé son public? De Rabi’a j’accepterais plus volontiers: « Je joue avec lui. » Une équipe de football respecte l’équipe adverse.31

The ludic element in Montherlant’s literary scheme of things consists in treating his reader as an equally intelligent and talented opponent, for whom the writer demonstrates his respect, by playing the game as well as he can. The reader, in turn, is expected to do the same. With the publication of Sipriot’s Montherlant sans masque and of Peyrefitte’s Correspondance, the challenge issued by Montherlant in passages such as that quoted above, has been taken up by his readers. Before these publications appeared, Montherlant’s opponents lacked knowledge of the rules of his game, as illustrated by a recent review, where the critic concludes: ‘il [Montherlant] traite des sujets qui n’ont aucun rapport avec son véritable tourment’. Montherlant lists certain aphorisms essential to his philosophy: Les musulmans d’Afrique du Nord portent à leur cou un étui de cuir contenant des versets du Coran. Ce que je vais citer ici, ce sont des préceptes que j’ai, en quelque sorte, portés à mon cou depuis une trentaine d’années [...]. Ils insèrent dans le jeu la ‘tâche’ ou prétendue tâche, qui n’est qu’une espèce du jeu. « La vie n’est qu’un jeu et un passe-temps. » (Coran, sourate VI, verset 33 2). « Jeune, actif, et se portant bien comme il faisait, que pouvait-il (Jules César) faire de mieux que conquérir le monde? » (La Bruyère).

31

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Va jouer avec cette poussière, op. cit., p. 181.

« Qu’ai-je fait? Je me suis fait plaisir... » Gallieni, sur la pente descendante de sa carrière. (Lyautey, Lettres du Tonkin.).32

The thrust of these maxims is pursuit of pleasure, the pleasure to be found in the game and in the conquest of life encountered and achieved in play. Montherlant believes that life is to be taken seriously, but that the individual must take life seriously, primarily by being true to himself. The only authentic self as far as Montherlant is concerned is that encountered in the state of play or in the experience of pleasure. The pleasure principle is the only one, according to Montherlant, that can be relied on. Energy dispensed on anything else is wasted: J’ai plusieurs fois, dans ces Carnets, parlé de l’énergie inutile. Inutile puisque, énergie ou non, cela finit toujours par le même naufrage. Energie pour éblouir les autres? Ils ne la méritent pas. Pour éblouir soi-même? « Bon Dieu! ce que je peux être énergique! » Cela me laisse froid [...] Mais il y a bien mieux, à quoi je ne pense qu’aujourd’hui: c’est l’énergie ridicule. Réveil à cinq heures du matin, téléphones, secrétaires, affairement, et la journée entière de machinations. Quand on sera mort dans deux ans, et morte l’entreprise à laquelle on a consacré toute une vie d’énergie, – d’energie comment? d’énergie ridicule. – Je ne pensais pas en arriver là.33

Conclusion Montherlant’s Carnets and Essais provide a starting point in a consideration of his system of values and the tenets of his philosophy. In his essays, Montherlant elaborates certain abstract ideas, such as ‘service inutile’ and ‘syncrétisme et alternance’. La Relève du matin stands apart from the other essays; it is more fantasy novella than essay, composed as a prose poem, which focuses on the emotional and physical life of the young narrator. Montherlant’s work contains intellectual, emotional and sensual elements, but precedence is given to the feelings, seen as more important for Montherlant than the intellectual life, in his novels and plays. Perhaps more than his contemporaries, this writer emphasizes human relationships. 32 33

Ibid., pp. 196–197. Tous feux éteints, op. cit., p. 129.

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The complex structures and developments of associations between lovers, parents and children, siblings and friends are portrayed in Montherlant’s fictional works. The early novels create an atmosphere similar to that encountered in the essay, La Relève du matin. These novels are compositions of Marthe Robert’s bastard child, who re-creates his family in imaginative literary terms, casting himself in the leading heroic role. The later novels depict an ageing character and trace the web of his relationship with a youthful figure. The plays frequently represent the betrayal of an old man by a younger man, an act of treason deliberately provoked by the ageing hero. Do the categories of literary creation indicated above form an overall pattern or are they the literary productions of various separate stages of Montherlant’s life, constituting arbitrary indications of mood changes rather than manifestations of an overall design of evolving thought? I argue that the reader can trace the evolution of Montherlant’s thinking through the ecumenical configuration of his work. The educative pederasty elucidated above forms the basis of Montherlant’s interest in the love relationship and influences his thinking. From this starting point, Montherlant develops his system of values, which is influenced by the young person and promotes an initially positive response to the problem of the absurd. Montherlant’s early writings centre on a youthful heroic ideal. Belief in the ideal is erroded with the experience of two wars. The tragedy of World War II is examined through the father–son relationship in the plays Fils de personne and Demain il fera jour, which imply that Montherlant regrets his criticism of France and his pro Nazi writings of the early war years. These plays conclude with the contention that the father figure has betrayed his country and his family, whereas the son has acted with honour and nobility. The philosophy proposed by the Essais and Carnets is essentially joyous. Nihilism takes over in the later novels, when the ageing hero is finally cut off from contact with other human beings and particulary with the youthful companion who accompanies the Montherlantian hero. In Le Chaos et la nuit and Un Assassin est mon maître, the hero loses his balance and descends into the abyss, on the edge of which he has always lived. Montherlant’s philosophy is complex and frequently contradictory, but the main elements are the sense of self as the only real method of 42

interpreting the world, a profound appreciation of what it means to be alive in the physical world, acceptance of death as part of life, an approval of multiplicity, promotion of the human being as an entity containing possiblities for divinity, all of which are expressed by the following passage, which indicates that Montherlant’s lyrical expresssion of his ideas may well be more seductive than the ideas themselves: Les empires passeront; bientôt l’indifférence de l’avenir aura résolu sans effort ce qu’ils appelaient leurs grands problèmes, tiré le calme de leurs tumultes, et l’unité de leurs dissensions ridicules. Mais le corps humain dans sa fleur, au milieu de la nature, et ses représentations, et ce qui est pensé sur lui, cela sera encore actuel dans dix mille ans. On recueille d’Aristophane qu’alors même que les marchés d’Athènes étaient entièrement couverts de neige, on continuait d’y vendre des fruits nouveaux et des violettes. Qu’on ne nous embête donc pas avec le désespoir. Quels que soient les bouleversements et les ruines, il y aura toujours des enfants parmi nous.34

34

‘Notes sur Les Olympiques’, op. cit., pp. 317–318.

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Chapter II Heroism Le destin des héros est de mourir jeunes et seuls. Celui des moutons est aussi de mourir, mais perclus de vieillesse, usés et, si possible, en masse. Les héros sautent d’un coup dans la mort, ils y explosent comme des météores dévoyés, les moutons s’accrochent à la vie jusqu’à la dernière goutte de sang. [Mammeri Mouloud, La Traversée]

The Adolescent Hero Montherlant’s novels of adolescence form part of a movement developing from Romanticism’s vision of the youthful protagonist as a hero who is more aggressive, more complicated in feeling, more significant than in previous times. The self-obsessed adolescent hero first appears in the literature of Romanticism and later, most famously, in the poetry of Rimbaud. In the early twentieth century, writers created adolescent characters who were not expected to grow up and whose very irresponsibility, frivolity, refusal to conform and disrespect for authority constituted a form of heroism. The difference between the adolescent hero of nineteenth-century writers and that of the early twentieth century is that this change in the writer’s perception of adolescence mirrors the changing attitude of society – a process both observed and to some extent advanced by proponents of the new science of psychology. At the beginning of the century social perceptions of young people began to change dramatically.1 The possibility of preserving adolescent values unchanged into adulthood was now perceived as something desirable. Suddenly the young had new psychological rights, new authority. A new mythology developed 1

Hall, G. Stanley, Adolescence: Its Psychology and its Relations to Physiology, Anthropology, Sociology, Sex, Crime, Religion, and Education, 2 vols, Appleton, New York, 1904.

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around this vision, a mythology articulated at various levels. This upsurge in interest in the world of the young can also be observed among French writers with the publication of a stream of novels of adolescence, such as Colette’s ‘Claudine’ books, the first two volumes of Proust’s A la Recherche du temps perdu, Alain-Fournier’s Le Grand Meaulnes and Gide’s Les Faux-monnayeurs.2 Montherlant’s contribution to twentieth-century literary representations of adolescence and to the recognition of the adolescent as a person whose values, modes of behaviour and perception are just as significant as those of the adult, is placed in the context of heroism. The adolescent male of 13 or 14 is the ideal human being for Montherlant. The author writes these novels in a state of anguish because his appropriation of the youthful other is ever more elusive as he grows older. The glorification of the child in a state of metamorphosis into adolescence is the central pivot of Montherlant’s work and, therefore, in Montherlant’s philosophy, the perspective of the young person carries more significance than that of the adult. Montherlant’s particular perspective is characterized by his homosexuality as the love relationships in his work, frequently in the guise of relationships between father and son, are accounts of same-sex love. Three novels, all published before 1930 – when Montherlant was himself still young and all based on adolescent experience – have youthful protagonists: Le Songe, written between the ages of 23 and 26, published in 1922, Les Olympiques, begun in 1920, when Montherlant was 25 and completed in 1925, and Les Bestiaires, written during the summer of 1925 and published in 1926, recounting the author’s experiences of bull-fighting which began at the age of 17. All three novels contain the story of a love relationship between the adolescent hero and a younger boy and the themes are youthful heroism, sacrifice, perfection of the self and achievement of divinity, all interrelated:

2

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Robinson, Christopher. Scandal in the Ink: Male and Female Homosexuality in Twentieth-century French Literature, Cassell, London 1995. See ‘Pederasty and the Cult of Youth’.

Le sacrifice montherlantien s’érige en héroïsme pur, détaché, rédempteur pour l’être qui devient différent de lui-même et qui se tient hors du monde par l’acte de refus qu’implique son sacrifice. Ainsi, selon Montherlant, le sacrifice entretient le culte du « moi », crée « dieu » en nous-mêmes et engendre une liberté intérieure.3

Montherlant’s brand of heroism aims for nothing less than divinity in the here and now, rather than the hereafter. The ideal proponent of this heroism is an adolescent; he aims to win his goal by engaging in sport, war and love. The youthful hero has a perfect body, is at one with nature and, at this stage in Motherlant’s writing, is wilfully unsuccessful in love and friendship. Surely this being, perfect in every way, should also succeed in friendship and love? He is unsuccessful because as a highly idealized creature he does not need other people. Perfection depends on isolation. To this extent, the early novels are puerile and immature, although beautifully written, a fact which Montherlant readily acknowledges in later writings. Montherlant’s damaging reputation as a snob and an elitist is grounded in the isolation of his heroic literary characters and of himself, a man careful to cover his tracks as a homosexual writer, giving female identities to male lovers, building defensive barriers to hide his feelings. There is no doubt that he is pompous, self-seeking and, at times, unscrupulous, but his writings also reveal vulnerability in relation to his own sexuality, as well as remarkable sensitivity to the adolescent experience and to the experience of living. Although the ideal, youthful hero marks a stage in the development of the author’s thinking – ‘La générosité, le goût du sacrifice, une faiblesse sensible pour les sentiments héroïques se sont dégradés en moi depuis ma vingtième année’ – the notion of heroism, albeit in a new form, as part of a system of values, was retained by Montherlant throughout his life, finding its logical conclusion in his suicide. The author’s concept of heroism changes dramatically as his literary career progresses. Even in these early novels, the concept of heroism is flawed, as Alban in Le Songe, for example, soon loses any idealized notions of war and, by the end of the text, is willing to do or say 3

Michel, Jacqueline, ‘Montherlant et Colette – réflexions sur un « éloge »…’, Revue d’histoire littéraire de la France, 76, 1976, pp. 414–415.

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anything to escape the horrors of the front.4 The endings of all three novels are vague, presenting idealized scenes, evoked in lyrical language, which are unrelated to the rest of the text and present dreamlike views of the world. These strange visions, unsatisfactory endings to the novels, contrast with Montherlant’s later philosophical position, which is above all pragmatic and a direct reaction to his perception of reality. The fact that the young author is unable to bring the ideal, heroic existence of the adolescent hero to a satisfactory conclusion is indicative of failure, failure which drives Montherlant to re-form his philosophical position in the light of his perception of reality. Life is absurd; there is no God and no force for good in the world, except in the person of the child and young adolescent. Life, therefore, must be borne with courage, stoicism and service inutile. Henry de Montherlant’s later works may be described as postmodern; they are set in a dislocated world, where negativity and chaos reign. The human response to disorder, confusion and the presence of evil is often pathological, in Celestino’s embracing his doom (Le Chaos et la nuit) and in Exupère’s descent into destitution (Un Assassin est mon maître). The imaginative experience of adolescent heroism normally includes an impulse to return to an idealized past. Authors such as Proust make a deliberate and conscious effort to connect with the past and with childhood, whereas Montherlant relives and recreates his youth as an art form, on an everyday basis, even in pieces written in the months before his death. Montherlant’s association with childhood and adolescence is an innate part of his being and writing and the presence of the adolescent character thoughout his work reflects the author’s life-long obsession with the young. The wish to live as an adolescent in spirit, if not in body, is the primary motivation behind Montherlant’s creativity: ‘Montherlant n’est pas d’une seule pièce. Il y a en lui ce délire de la chasse. Il y a aussi un adolescent préservé. [...] Montherlant a choisi de consacrer son oeuvre au moment où le corps s’éveille. Le moment où l’on vit entre le pur et l’impur’ and these writings focus on the ontology of 4

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The name is probably inspired by Saint Alban, a soldier in the Roman army who exchanged clothes with a fugitive priest whom he sheltered. He was martyred in the priest’s place [c. 304].

youth: ‘un amour de jeunesse foudroyé en plein essor a été la lampe magique qui a enchanté toute sa vie et son oeuvre’.5 Le Songe, Les Olympiques and Les Bestiaires are hymns of praise to the adolescent hero. In spite of, or rather because of, his offensiveness, lack of consideration and complete egotism, the adolescent represents heroism that is the essence of vitality and virility, exemplifying that period of man’s existence when he is at the height of his intellectual, sensual and spiritual development. The heightened sense of self is manifest in communion with nature where the life of the adolescent hero is instinctively linked to the rhythm of the seasons, to the life of plants and animals, engendering a sense of deep satisfaction and happiness which revels in a relationship with nature rather than with other human beings. Immersion in nature is closely related to ‘une religion de la Vie’, in which the young person gives precedence to his senses and to their interplay with his natural surrounding.6 To this effect, the images evoked by Montherlant’s prose are striking in that they present a view of the world, which reflects Baudelaire’s theory of Correspondances, intermingling visual, auditory and olfactory sensations: ‘Images sportives, militaires, animales, végétales, ou d’une provocante trivialité; rapports entre tous les aspects du monde, qui entretiennent les échanges d’une unité universelle’.7 In Le Songe and Les Bestiaires, particularly, the bond with nature is evident in Alban’s references to animals and the intimate feelings they may evoke in the adolescent. The relationship between the natural environment and the adolescent reinforces an enhancement of adolescent values which are natural and, therefore, desirable. In this pantheistic universe, the young hero is the god who invades nature and the material world. The adolescent protagonist’s complete preoccupation with self allows him to pursue a vision of excellence and purity which does not include acknowledgement of the other: ‘Le sens à la fois voluptueux 5 6 7

Sipriot, Pierre. Montherlant sans masque: Biographie 1895–1972, ‘Livre de Poche’, Editions Pierre Laffont, Paris, 1990, p. 709. Michel, op. cit., p. 413. Moreau, ‘Poète, peintre et musicien’, in Les Critiques de notre temps et Montherlant, op. cit., p. 141.

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et sacré de la vie conduit Montherlant à la poursuite d’une « pureté » transcendante qui représenterait [la] troisième ligne de force de [son] Art’.8 The spirituality of the adolescent relates to the time of life identified as ‘le moment où l’on vit entre le pur et l’impur’. The adolescent has privileged access to both the unsullied nature of the child and the corrupt knowledge of the adult. Much of the tension in these three novels stems from the delicate balance between the two worlds. The adolescent is more precious than the child is because he is aware of what is about to be lost and is all the more anxious to preserve it. The climax of heroic transcendence occurs in communion with the divine, often through music, for example in the ‘grand hymne à Dionysus’ in Thrasylle. (T, 46) The desire to preserve purity and thereby retain this spiritual empowerment motivates Alban de Bricoule, the hero of Le Songe, Les Bestiaires and Les Olympiques.

The Warrior’s Heroic Fantasy in Le Songe [1922] Le Songe was written between 1918 and 1922 and is based on wartime events in 1917 and 1918, when Montherlant was 23. For 15 months [from August 1917 to December 1918] the author was an auxiliary soldier. His letters to his grandmother provide a record of this period and, through them, it is possible to trace the fictional episodes of Le Songe by relating them to the author’s experience of military service.9 Montherlant’s letters reveal that Alban’s heroism is complete fabrication, based on the author’s attempt to create a heroic identity, which did not exist. The novel is constructed around a triangular relationship, made up of Alban, Dominique, an athlete who becomes a nurse, and a fellow soldier, Prinet, who is killed in the 1918 offensive against the Germans. The action of the novel is situated during the 8 9

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Moreau, Pierre, ‘Poète, peintre et musicien’, Les Critiques de notre temps et Montherlant, op. cit., p. 141. Real-life incidents recounted in Le Songe are: terror inspired by enemy aircraft (PRI, p. 127 cf Sipriot, op. cit., p. 117); farm courtyard used as hospital (PRI, pp. 135–147 cf. Sipriot, op. cit., p. 128); Alban’s wish to survive. (PRI, cf. Sipriot op. cit., p. 128)

spring and summer of 1918, a time when the season contrasts with the death and destruction of the war and mirrors the flowering of the protagonists, as they come of age. A second woman, Douce, mentioned in the novel, never appears. She is antithetical to Dominique and is described in terms of water imagery. She is the womanly woman, with whom Alban has a sexual relationship. Douce is the opposite of Dominique, in that, as her name implies, she is docile, receptive, totally feminine, in traditional terms, whereas Dominique has more masculine characteristics. Dominique evolves, as the novel progresses and, finally becomes autonomous, breaking away from Alban’s fixed image of the person he believes she should be. The fact that Douce never enters the novel in the flesh is indicative of her nonexistence in any other terms than as ‘régulatrice de [la] vie’: la fille qui a nom Douce, la petite fille silencieuse et qui jamais ne se refusa et dont jamais il ne souffrit, – inutile en dehors de l’amour et qu’il écarte alors avec une douceur ferme. Elle fut autour de lui comme de l’eau, au-dessus, audessous, et il vivait au milieu d’elle comme au milieu d’un ruisseau rapide. (PRI, 11)

Montherlant composes Le Songe not as an adult looking back on adolescence, but as someone who is still very young; he writes from inside his own experience. Le Songe is a heroic fantasy, a product of the imagination based on lived experience serving the purpose of wish fulfilment. The author may be writing from his own experience, but the adolescent protagonist is cast in a fictionalized heroic role. There are several narrators; at times, Alban is the narrator and, at other times, a more distanced narrator recounts events from a sympathetic perspective. Alban does not reject adult values; like a small child, he is only aware of the adult world in terms of his own interests. Rather than try to find a place in the adult world, the adolescent protagonist creates a space of his own. He manipulates the adult world [as the young Montherlant did, through his grandmother] to glorify himself. Adult values are there to be played with; since life is a dream [‘un songe’] why not treat it as such and use it to one’s best advantage? Alban’s arrogance is evident early in the text: ‘Il savait bien que tout ce qu’il désirait serait obtenu.’ (PRI, 8) His attitude is modified after the harsh experiences of the war: ‘A l’heure de la panique, il

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s’était vu écrivant, à droite, à gauche, lettre sur lettre à des parents influents. Aujourd’hui la honte le retenait’. (PRI, 175) Alban succeeds in having himself evacuated and then changes his mind, returning to the front at the end of the novel. The letters, which Mme de Courcy received from her grandson, inform us that nothing restrained the young Montherlant from using influence to obtain what he wanted. Adopting the adolescent’s point of view does not imply condemnation of corrupt adult society; the young are far too busy enjoying themselves in Montherlant’s novels for such serious considerations. The intention of the adolescent is essentially ludic, with the purpose of selfaggrandizement. Alban de Bricoule, the adolescent hero of Le Songe, is the embodiment of everything which Montherlant wanted to be: ‘Outre la personne que je fus, il [le passé] me révèle celle que j’aurais voulu être’.The older Montherlant acknowledges the flaws in his early brand of heroism: ‘Le Songe contient beaucoup de bêtises, et je m’en excuserais bien sur mon âge, mais à tout âge on écrit beaucoup de bêtises’.10 Heroism is achieved through the attribution to other characters of unheroic feelings. Montherlant creates pairs of characters, to this purpose. For example, instead of allowing Alban – associated with the young Montherlant – to fall in love, since being at the mercy of the beloved would undermine his heroic status, the author’s feelings are projected on to Dominique, as he admits in Mais aimons-nous ceux que nous aimons?: Souffrance amoureuse de D2 [la Dominique inventée opposée à la vraie Dominique] dans l’été. – En partie inventé, en partie pris en moi, quand j’étais amoureux de l’Oiseau des îles (« Madame Bovary, c’est moi »). Les sentiments sont justes, mais l’expression n’en est pas celle d’une femme, et pour cause.11

In this respect, Alban de Bricoule has much in common with other early twentieth-century youthful heroes, whose ‘adolescent hubris’, according to Spacks’ study, is marked by ‘blindness to the warnings of the myth – to the wisdom of the race’.12 The adolescent’s oblivion to anything outside himself is justified by events; for example, in 10 11 12

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Montherlant, Mais aimons-nous ceux que nous aimons?, op. cit., p. 102. Ibid., p. 74. Spacks, op. cit., p. 255.

adolescent novels, the family is presented as a negative force on the development of the individual. The youth of Montherlant’s texts creates his own myth, using traditional beliefs as a framework for imaginative creations. These adolescent characters are in fact ‘self-centred monsters’, as indicated in Alban’s prurient remark: ‘Pourtant, sous ses joies vivait un regret, celui de n’avoir pas tué’. (PRI, 78) The result of this enhancement of adolescence by early twentieth-century writers is that ‘Adolescence emblemizes many of the values clustered under the label of ‘modernism’. Its heroes refuse to surpass their youthful condition; instead, heroes and novelists alike give signs of believing that this condition itself surpasses maturity’.13 Montherlant’s early novels glorify adolescence and, at the same time, from the reader’s point of view, subvert the limited values of the youthful hero by demonstrating his inability to sustain any relationship with another human being.

Dominique Soubrier and Stanislaus Prinet: Heroism and Denial of Difference Heroism, according to Montherlant’s conception in these early novels, exists in a void. An act of heroism cannot be undertaken as a couple as it is by Kyo and May in Malraux’s La Condition humaine. The hero is denied female characteristics; Montherlant conceives of the hero as male, virile, isolated. The following shifting, mirror-upon-mirror view of Dominique owes much to the narrator’s scopophilic perception, where the voyeur is also a reflected object: Droite se tenait la fille qui regardait, indemne de tout sourire, un doigt glissé en manière de signet dans un livre, sans un bijou, sans une bague, avec seulement un bracelet d’ivoire au poignet qui n’était pas grêle; droite, avec son nez droit, ses cheveux étroitement tordus serrant la tête et couvrant le front, sa bouche un peu dure, ses sourcils un peu froncés, ses yeux graves où l’on croyait voir une âme, et derrière une autre âme, et derrière une autre âme encore. Et le regard du jeune homme [Alban], en croisant celui-là, fut un des plus beaux regards du monde.

13

Ibid., p. 256.

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Un regard mâle, un noble regard d’homme, chargé d’admiration, de respect, de camaraderie, de gratitude, un regard pareil à une franche poignée de main, qui ne jouit ni ne s'attarde. Platon avait dit: « Un amant est un ami en qui l’on sent quelque chose de divin ». Ce regard définissait celle-ci, sans qu’elle fût une amante: une amie en qui l’on sent quelque chose de divin. (PRI, 13)

Transcendence is possible only within a strictly defined context [at this stage in Montherlant’s evolution]: male, unemotional, asexual. Human relations are sacrificed to the interests of heroism; the adolescent believes himself to be pure only when he is alone; he aims for perfection, as close as possible to divinity. Dominique is perfection itself as long as her sexuality remains hidden. It is significant that the admired image described above is, in fact, a photograph, a fixed unchanging portrait; once the subject’s femininity is manifest it destroys their idealized friendship. The female is held within a fixed framework, like a photograph; once whole-hearted feminity is expressed in an evolving character, the woman is rejected. Dominique is part of Alban, his female self, which, in the end, he rejects, favouring the virile milieu of life amongst soldiers at the front. Indeed, in the final scene between Alban and Dominique, the hero chooses masculine virtues of vigour and strength over what he calls ‘la bassesse’ of the female condition: ‘Les vents peuvent se lever enfin, qui remportent Alban vers la pleine mer de l’ordre mâle. Iphigénie a été égorgée sur l’autel’. (PRI, 216) The relationship between Alban and Dominique demonstrates the growing and finally articulated refusal of the female to suppress her own nature and the resultant rejection of a female disposition by the male. Dominique is, in fact, the feminine part of Alban and of Montherlant, who regularly uses classical myth to illustrate a personal event and his emotional reactions to it. Iphigénie was sacrificed in order that the goddess Artemis, the huntress, would change the winds filling the sails of the Greek fleet, enabling it to set sail from Aulis. By sacrificing Dominique, Alban allows his masculinity to prevail. Artemis represents the athletic Amazonian woman, the image so loved by Alban. Once Dominique betrays this heroic ideal by loving Alban in a sexual sense, as a woman, she refuses to act out the role of virginal sportswoman and platonic friend, and is repudiated.

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The adolescent male protagonist is equated with the author. Sipriot comments on Montherlant’s denial of the feminine in Les Jeunes filles: La révélation par Roger Peyrefitte, dans les Propos secrets, de l’homosexualité de Montherlant a tout de même surpris. Voilà un homme qui écrit sur les femmes avec Les Jeunes filles, un des livres les plus forts de la littérature universelle. […] Un livre de mille pages où l’auteur se donne des airs de Casanova, de Valmont. Voilà l’écrivain de la mâle énergie, des chevaleries, du sport, de la guerre, et qui voulut en faire un système exaltant. Un homme d’une assurance prodigieuse dans la conduite de sa vie. Cet homme qui se veut plus viril que les autres hommes n’a pas cessé de tuer la femme en lui, en s’attaquant aux femmes. Tuer la femme, la masquer aussi.14

Alban’s friendship with Stanislaus Prinet represents the third part of the novel’s triangular structure. Their friendship is dominated by Alban’s attitude of superiority, accompanied by his pleasure at being needed. Prinet is an overgrown child, very unsure of himself, teased by his peers in the army and dependent on his older friend’s support. Initially Alban is sympathetic towards his future comrade in arms: Alors il [Alban] aperçut Prinet […]. Avec son imperméable qui ne laissait apparaître qu’un peu du col noir des chasseurs (il avait conservé l’uniforme de son ancien régiment), avec son béret « tank » couvrant le front, c’était vraiment le même grand garçon, un peu dégingandé, qui montait la rue Soufflot il y a deux ans, un cahier et un livre enfermés dans un petit tapis sous son bras. (PRI, 28)

He soon becomes irritated by Prinet’s dependence: ‘Ne perdait-il pas un peu de son estime pour cet être, à se dire que cet être avait besoin de lui?’ (PRI, 108) The hero cannot bear to be encumbered by emotional ties. In later writings, Montherlant reviews his early notion of heroism, incorporating the experience of life and ageing into this naïve, juvenile outlook, retaining certain essential beliefs, which stem from a reading of classical authors. The mature vision fails, nevertheless, to accept difference and he continued throughout his life and work to expect the other, as well as the self, to live up to certain ideal standards of behaviour. 14

Sipriot, Pierre, Montherlant sans masque, tome I, Laffont, Paris, 1982, p. 43. See also Peyrefitte, Roger, Propos secrets, Alban Michel, Paris 1977, pp. 47–81.

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The two young men experience the horrors of war together until their association comes to an abrupt end; Alban shoots Prinet’s dog, a stray adopted by the latter, because he thinks the animal is increasing the danger for the friends. The adolescent in Montherlant’s early work finds fulfilment in the homosexual rather than in the heterosexual relationship. Alban and Prinet’s friendship is consummated in a chapter called ‘Noctium phantasmata’, where the boys are together in a natural environment, the appropriate setting for the ideal love relationship. The secluded, sylvan space brings the lovers into communion with each other and with the divine. Similar scenes occur in La Relève du matin and Thrasylle. Variations of the private, pastoral arena recur elsewhere: in Les Garçons the intimate space of the college [in this novel, there is sanctum within sanctum, such as the school sports pavilion and the hothouse in the botanical gardens], in Les Olympiques the sports stadium, in Les Bestiaires the bullring. These domains allow normal social order to be shifted, class barriers to be overcome, the gap between adult and child to be bridged, the distance between human being and animal removed. Krémer, in his study on desire in Montherlant, identifies this state of being at one with nature and with a companion as ‘un naturalisme ou un panthéisme où le désir est partout et comme sanctifié’.15 He interprets Alban and Prinet as a heroic couple modelled on classical and mythical counterparts, such as Octavius–Antony, Roland–Olivier, Achilles– Hector [the text contains references to these classical personages]. Krémer’s analogy is most pertinent to Alban’s and Prinet’s night together under bombardment, as intimacy is consummated in a shelter in the woods, accompanied by ‘Chien’. (PRI, 104–121) The chapter evokes the beauty of a night spent in the open as well as the terror inspired by the dropping of shells. The presence of the animal, the quietness of nature and the warm intimacy of the companions are contrasted with the destruction and violence around them. The space created by the dark and by the natural world in the midst of war allows the friendship to pass beyond the bounds of social 15

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Krémer, Jean-Pierre. Le Désir dans l’oeuvre de Montherlant, Lettres modernes, Paris, 1987, p. 36.

conventions. The resulting intimacy forms a frightening but nonetheless privileged idyllic experience, located in the dark and in the earth [the friends are showered by soil and they cannot see each other]. The private space is situated ‘au coeur de ce petit bois qu’alourdit une pluie parfumée’; (PRI, 105) Alban and Prinet are showered with leaves and earth as the bombardment continues: ‘De petites feuilles détachées se posaient sur son visage, discrètes comme des doigts féminins’; (PRI, 113) the presence of the dog lends a gentleness to the setting and allows the protagonists to take on childlike gestures and ways of being: ‘Alban tripote l’animal, [...] lui fait tout ce qu’un chien aime qu’on lui fasse. Chien pousse des cris, par convenance, mais déborde d’allégresse qu’on s’occupe de lui’. (PRI, 107–108) With Prinet, Alban returns to a childlike state: Mais avec Prinet tout était différent. Alban pouvait faire chavirer son âme de cinquante ans pour laisser monter à la surface celle de quatorze, cette âme d’apprenti en goguette qui sans cesse tendait chez lui vers le jour, sans les contraintes et les soucis ridicules de la vie moderne. Et cela seul eût suffi à les unir. (PRI, 30)

Prinet is Alban’s younger self. Their attraction for one another lies, nonetheless, in their difference. Alban is the older, wiser partner in the friendship, but he depends on Prinet’s innocence and childlike qualities to boost his opposing maturity and knowledge. There are occasions when Prinet’s ingenuousness infuriates Alban; finally, his fury destroys their relationship and Alban demonstrates his inability or unwillingness to tolerate difference. On the death of Prinet, Alban realizes that his own reliance on this friendship was greater than he imagined. Alban’s reaction to loss finds its parallel in the older author’s commentary on Le Songe: La bourrasque nous a montré, je crois, qu’il y avait des êtres auxquels nous tenions autant qu’à nous-mêmes, et peut-être ne le savions-nous pas tout à fait auparavant. Mais elle nous a montré aussi la foule d’êtres pour lesquels tout se passe comme si nous tenions à eux, et auxquels en réalité nous ne tenons pas.16 16

Montherlant, ‘La Paix dans la guerre’, speech given in December 1940 [at Lyon and Limoges], La Revue des deux mondes, ‘Montherlant revisité’, p. 26. This essay is not published in its entirety in Essais (1976); it appears in the Grasset edition of Le Solstice de juin (1941).

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After their separation, Alban frantically searches for his friend, only to discover that he has been killed. Prinet’s death brings the reality of war home to Alban and, for the first time, he experiences fear and weakness. While Prinet was alive and afraid of war, Alban could be strong and pretend that the war was a game. As soon as the younger boy dies, previous conceptions of heroism are brought into question, as the would-be hero is obliged to confront his own fear. Montherlant’s note on a letter received from a child reflects how much significance he attributes to communication between adult and child: Moi, c’est mon ‘Genius pueritiae’, mon Génie de ‘sentir’ l’enfance-adolescence qui m’a fait parler; et, lui, c’est son ‘Genius pueritiae’, le Génie de sa propre enfance-adolescence, qui l’a fait répondre d’un trait qui va si loin. Il en naît comme deux colonnes lumineuses qui, un moment, s’élèvent dans la sombre nuit que sont les rapports entre les hommes. 17

During the bombardment, the companions attain understanding and acceptance of each other’s weaknesses and qualities. Alban’s tenderness towards Prinet is increased and he forgets his irritation. Alban is invaded by ‘une sorte d’attendrissement, comme s’il avait veillé un enfant égaré’. (PRI, 119) Their idyllic state is reflected in the esoteric language of childhood: Cet argot et cette petite emphase, ces petits serments dans de la fumée de cigarettes, ces petites phrases d’amour avec des mots de lycéens, écoutons-les, écoutons-les! C’est le murmure sur la poitrine, et il se faut taire pour parler mieux. (PRI, 109)

The idyll ends with the coming of day and the adoption of an adult role by Alban; he shoots Prinet’s dog and Prinet marches away alone: ‘Et plus jamais Alban ne devait voir son visage’. (PRI, 129) Alban spends the rest of the novel looking for his friend, only to discover that he has been killed: Alors dès cet instant même, dès l’instant qu’il eut notion que ce petit point de vie avait disparu et qu’au milieu du désert sournois il était seul, il eut, très distincte, la sensation qu’a l’impotent auquel une main méchante vient d’arracher son bâton. Il coula un regard circulaire, comme pour chercher du secours. Il eut peur. (PRI, 129)

17

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Montherlant, La Marée du soir, op. cit., p.36.

A comparison may be drawn between Alban’s relationships with Dominique and Prinet. He wills the friendship with Dominique to be static, to remain in a state of order, controlled by him. Dominique becomes a nurse and goes to the front without his knowledge; she is aware of the turmoil this change creates: ‘Elle reconnaissait loyalement que ce départ avait déséquilibré sa vie’. (PRI, 42) Prinet and Alban are, on the other hand, constantly on the move physically: ‘Ils s’étaient remis en marche...’; (PRI, 48) ‘Ils se levèrent, marchèrent...’; (PRI, 55) ‘Sur la route [ils] rejoignent leurs compagnies...’. (PRI, 122) Concurrently their companionship evolves to a state of intimacy, knowledge and acceptance of one another. Dominique develops as a character, but with Alban’s active opposition; he refuses to move with her to a state of intimacy and beyond as he does with Prinet. When she wants to take the step towards physical intimacy with him, he first accepts, mourning the loss of their previous ‘noble’ and ‘pure’ friendship and then cannot bring himself to ‘violate’ her body, despising her for avowing her desire: Ce n’était plus le corps d’autrefois, innocent et indifférent et pareil à celui d’un jeune héros; pourtant il rayonnait toujours de la gloire des corps non maniés. [...] La transformation du type de pureté en un type d’impureté, quoi! lui, il collaborerait à cela! (PRI, 210)

Alban’s destructive impulse in love and friendship is part of a quest for heroism and perfection. Montherlant frequently comments on man’s purpose on earth, when speaking, for example, to an audience during the German occupation: ‘Et il n’y a aucune raison, aucune, pour qu’un remue-ménage de faits, petits et grands, nous fasse abandonner notre rôle d’ici-bas, qui est notre perfectionnement’.18 Heroism is the goal, for the young Montherlant, it can only be attained alone. Alban rejects his friends and lovers because he perceives strength in the state of isolation. His mistake is underlined by his desolation on learning of Prinet’s disappearance and by the older author’s commentary on the novel. In Les Garçons, Montherlant retains the concept of sacrifice, but allows his young hero to embark 18

Montherlant, ‘La Paix dans la guerre’, op. cit., p. 30.

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upon a loving relationship and work towards perfection in the company of his beloved.

War as the Way to Heroism in Le Songe Le Songe explores heroism as a virtue, which the individual adheres to, faced with life’s absurdity. Life must be lived and we are asked to live according to a set of values, which involve striving for perfection by being heroic, being selfish in the pursuit of pleasure and, above all, recognizing that we are ultimately alone. War is at once a manifestation of the absurdity of existence and the means by which the human being confronts the meaningless of his state. The novel propounds compassion for the wounded and dying, particularly for the enemy soldiers: ‘La sollicitude de Montherlant pour les blessés et les mourants est une part importante de son oeuvre de guerre. Cette sollicitude est rare à l’époque’.19 Commiseration for wounded German soldiers is based on a philosophical position elaborated in numerous passages, where the author considers the enemy to be worthy of esteem and love, a position attributed to his reading of classical authors, notably Sophocles and Homer: ‘Cet épisode du Songe (PRI, 38–47) préfigure dans le concret les nombreuses déclarations de Montherlant sur le « combat sans la foi », un combat qui suppose qu’on peut estimer son adversaire, et même l’aimer, sans illusion, parce que le bien et le mal s’annulent ou se confondent’.20 Montherlant, therefore, conceives of heroism, in classical terms, in that the hero respects and loves his adversary. Le Songe contains moving, but horrifying descriptions of the broken bodies of adolescent soldiers, of the same generation as Montherlant’s school friends; these real-life companions are models for the boy characters of La Relève du Matin and Les Garçons. During his long search for Prinet, Alban executes a kind of ‘danse macabre’ with his dead and dying fellow soldiers, whom he questions about Prinet. 19 20

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Sipriot, 1982, op. cit., p. 77. Duroisin, Pierre. Montherlant et l’antiquité, Les Belles Lettres, Paris, 1987, pp. 80–81.

The casualties are all very young. Alban comes across a farmyard, full of badly wounded German prisoners of war, whom the French major refuses to help; (PRI, 135–147) he keeps Bellerey, a former college friend, company while he is dying; (PRI, 154–158) he confirms Prinet’s death by questioning a soldier, so badly wounded that he can only move his eyes; (PRI, 160–163) terrified, he spends the night in a crowded cellar sheltering from air bombardment. (PRI, 167–171) Through these experiences Alban evolves, changing from a young man enamoured with the notion of war to someone sickened and degraded, on behalf of humanity, by what he has seen, his whole being taken over by the need to escape from this horror, to save himself. (PRI, 173) The shock caused by the Great War forces Montherlant, like many other inter-war writers, to review pre-war idealistic notions of reality and to construct a system of values, which take into account the apocalyptic experience. André Blanc’s assessment of the author’s attitude to war defines Montherlant’s concept of heroism as part of a system of values to deal with life and with death. War, like athletic activities and bull-fighting, affirms the life force and, by furnishing the opportunity to live more intensely, allows the human being to dominate life and move towards self-improvement: ‘Comme le sport ou la tauromachie, la guerre est donc une ascèse, c’est-à-dire non pas une oeuvre de mort, mais une oeuvre de vie, d’une vie qui domine la mort en l’affrontant [...] et la leçon qu’on en tire est une leçon de vie’.21 War is an incentive to live, just as the awareness of imminent death is an exhortation to appreciate all that is vital. In Les Olympiques, the author is constantly aware of his mortality, of the fact that at twenty-five, he is unable to function as efficiently as his fifteen-year-old companion: ‘A mesure que j’avance vers la fin de ma jeunesse, je sens de plus en plus avec passion le besoin d’user grandement de mon corps pendant le bref automne de son intégrité’. (PRI, 374) Montherlant is aware, perhaps more so than any other literary figures of his generation, of the miraculous gift of life. The constant presence of death in both his personal experience at the front and in bullfighting heightens this awareness. Alban de Bricoule in Le Songe 21

Blanc, André, L’Esthétique de Montherlant, Sedes, Paris, 1995, p. 40.

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and the narrator of Les Olympiques live each moment as if it were the last, savouring their bodies, the natural world and the presence of their youthful companions with rare intensity. The broken bodies of Le Songe are reconstituted in Les Olympiques. Montherlant relates the horror of war, evoking fear and shame in the adolescent hero, but also making him fully aware of the precious gift of life. War experience is a point of departure for a system of values based on the full realisation that there is only one life and it should be lived in the best possible way, by relating honestly and with integrity to the self.

‘Les mythes inutiles’ A few weeks before his suicide in September 1972, Montherlant put the final touches to his journal Mais aimons-nous ceux que nous aimons? This text, published in 1973, is essential as accompanying reading to the early novels because it is presented as a truthful account of the real persons on whom the characters of Le Songe and Les Olympiques are based. Montherlant’s relationships with the real women, on whom Dominique and Douce are modelled, are related in detail in Mais aimons-nous, but Prinet, significantly, does not feature. Are we to assume that he was entirely a creation of the author’s imagination? Given Montherlant’s system of creating fictional characters from the lives of people he has known, this seems unlikely. It is possible that Prinet, as a fictional character, is based on a real-life person with whom Montherlant had ‘une amitié particulière’. The letters to his grandmother published by Sipriot contain no further mention of this person, but these letters are incomplete. Prinet’s prototype may be discovered among Montherlant’s as-yet-unpublished papers. Pierre Sipriot suggests an explanation: ‘Prinet et Peyrony [sont basés sur] des liaisons de Montherlant avec les jeunes garçons commençant tôt dans sa vie puis s’arrêtant 1913–1925 et reprenant après la mort de la grand’mère qu’il craignait d’épouvanter’.22 Peyrony, the beloved younger friend of the narrator in Les Olympiques, has a real life 22

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Letter from Pierre Sipriot to the author, 26 October 1994.

model, the son of a friend of Montherlant’s grandmother. As Sipriot indicates, the objects of the hero’s affection in Montherlant’s fiction are usually imaginative creations, who portray composite characteristics belonging to various real-life persons, like Boualem, Lieutenant Auligny’s companion in La Rose de sable, who is likely to be based on several young Arab men. Montherlant’s relationship with the real Dominique is recounted in Mais aimons-nous, and this portrait indicates how the idealized sportswoman of Le Songe is confined within a given framework: ‘Il fallait la laisser, la confiner dans ce domaine clos de la perfection sportive, où elle était irremplaçable. L’en tirer serait la profaner’. (MA, 61) Montherlant describes making love to Dominique and mocks the idealized notions propounded by his younger self. His account makes entertaining reading as he expresses doubts about Dominique’s virginity leading him to question his own concept of ‘la pureté de l’athlétisme féminin’: J’avais pris trop au coeur un ordre d’idées que je me faisais à partir d’elle; j’avais aimé moins une créature qu’une création de mon esprit. Il ne faut pas créer de mythes inutiles, qui vous retombent sur le nez; si mon récit montre quelque chose, c’est cela qu’il montre. (MA, 160)

Mais aimons-nous sheds light on this important element of Montherlant’s work, explored in Le Songe and recurring throughout his literary career. He admits that heroic ideals are myths and the fact that Dominique is not a virgin leads him to conclude: ‘Le dernier pan de mon édifice s’effondrait’. These false myths are not significant in themselves, but they show how the protagonist and the author are constantly involved in a process of refusal, of questioning and turning back upon themselves. Montherlant is aware of this movement: Peut-être dans cette réserve insinuais-je aussi un sentiment plus subtil, que j’appellerai en souriant: la gloire du refus. Je m’étais braqué une première fois dans cette gloire, au temps d’une grande tendresse grave qui était loin derrière dans ma vie. [...] Refuser ou du moins remettre à plus tard quelque chose qui vous fait envie. Il y avait là une pointe d’élégance: se rappeler à soi-même à quel point on est maître de soi. Et aussi comme un ressouvenir un peu caricatural du temps où ce sacrifice avait été fait sans recours, et pour des raisons honorables, qui ne jouaient pas ou guère ici; je réintroduisais en moi un semblant de ma meilleure part. (MA, 63–64)

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Montherlant constructs artificial ideals in order to rationalize a refusal or denial. In other words, the adolescent hero in Le Songe, for example, treats Dominique in a certain way because of a set of principles, which are recognized as false by the older author. These principles are created to rationalize the protagonist’s refusal to act. Montherlant’s words above recall an incident [concerning the one great love of his life relived in Les Garçons] when denial of love, for the good of the beloved, brought out the best in a movement towards perfection, enacted within the love relationship. The recurring theme of denial, for example in Alban’s refusal to enter into discourse with the other, in the shape of Dominique and Prinet, would suggest that refusal is a denial of difference, to demonstrate dominance over the self, in a movement towards perfection. There are two authorial voices here, one proposing a certain system of values, and, the other constantly holding these up to question and evaluation. In Mais aimons-nous, the real Dominique does not share the spiritual ascendancy with which she is endowed in Le Songe: ‘Elle mentait: je l’avais vue deux fois tricher comme individuelle. Elle comprenait de travers, ou ne comprenait pas, de sorte que c’était avec elle un embrouillamini continuel’ and, finally: ‘Comme j’avais eu raison de continuer à lui dire “vous”, même après ma prise d’elle! Comme j’avais eu raison de ne pas l’aimer!’ (MA, 136–137 & 197) The Dominique conjured up by the author’s imagination is based only very loosely on the real woman: ‘Le réseau où je lançais mon héroïne était tout imaginaire, et par l’aspect que je lui prêtais elle ne ressemblait pas à Dominique’. The older Montherlant refutes the model of athletic heroism, the Dominique of Le Songe, as an impossible ideal, a creation of the adolescent mind. These revelations prove that Dominique is the female part of Alban’s nature, created by drawing on Montherlant’s feminine side, rather than in the image of any ‘real’ woman. Consequently, Alban [and, by extension, Montherlant] discovers, evolves and then destroys difference in the self. Montherlant’s rationalization in Mais aimonsnous of refusal as an idealization of the female athlete, in accordance with ‘l’expression artistique [...] des idées qui étaient dans l’air’, only partly explains Alban’s destruction of friendship with Dominique and Prinet in Le Songe. Speaking of Dominique, Montherlant dis64

tinguishes the ‘créature’ from the ‘création de mon esprit’, touching on the essential reason for Alban’s refusal of a sexual relationship in Le Songe. The hero’s denial of difference protects the ideal; heroism can only exist in an artificial environment, where there is no place for alterity. Mais-aimons nous raises the question as to why the real model for the character Douce, who plays such an important part in the life of the author at this time – ‘pendant neuf ans, elle avait été avec moi une fille parfaite: volupté, simplicité, honnêteté’ (MA, 207) – is excluded from Le Songe? Her very femininity, in terms of difference, makes Douce superfluous to Le Songe, except as a counter-point to Dominique. The essence of Le Songe is the conscious or unconscious decision by the hero to turn away from difference and to concentrate on his perfecting of himself in accordance with his particular, adolescent notion of heroism. The movement towards perfection involves distancing himself from the feminine, the weak and the childlike. Douce creates no tension in Le Songe because she accepts Alban’s treatment; she is envisaged as a womb-like vessel in which he regains strength and equilibrium. Dominique demands more than this; she requires Alban to give of himself intellectually, physically and emotionally. Douce’s difference is accepted but not integrated; Dominique is too like Alban for him to be able to enter into discourse with her. Finally, there is no guarantee that the ‘truth’ recounted in Mais aimons-nous is definitive. The work is a confession made just weeks before his suicide, but this is no reason to believe all that he tells us. Sipriot is convinced, for example, that the scene relating the sexual encounter between the author and Dominique never took place: ‘Montherlant veut nous faire accroire qu’il a couché avec Dominique; il nous prouve qu’il n’a jamais connu une femme’.23

23

Sipriot, ‘Livre de poche’, op. cit., p. 187.

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Sport as the Way to Heroism in Les Olympiques [1924] Alban de Bricoule is replaced in Les Olympiques by an unnamed narrator, who relates his experiences in the sports stadium, through a series of encounters with other sportsmen or women. The characters use sport as a means of achieving the heroic ideal. Like Le Songe, Les Olympiques is situated in an enclosed and protected world; as in Le Songe, the protagonists’ reaction to the natural world is significant and, through this, together with their relationships with one another, they achieve transcendence. The text is striking initially because of its multiformity. A group of three essays, entitled ‘La première Olympique’ and subtitled ‘Le Paradis à l’ombre des épées’ opens the volume and ‘La deuxième Olympique’ comprises the remaining half of the work. Grasset published the two halves of the text separately in the ‘Cahiers verts’ collection in January and June 1924 respectively. The whole was published for the first time in 1938. The narrative of the friendship between Jacques Peyrony, who is fifteen in the first part and seventeen in the second, and the ‘je’ of the text forms the unifying factor, which gives the multifarious parts their cohesion. The action takes place over a period of two years marked by the difference in age of Peyrony in the first and second half of the text. The narrative of ‘La deuxième Olympique’ is interrupted by 26 poems, published in two groups, divided by a short, important essay entitled simply ‘Boxe’. Furthermore, there are two dialogues in Les Olympiques, the shorter one in ‘La première Olympique’ and the longer one, which may be read as an autonomous drama, in ‘La deuxième Olympique’. Both dialogues contain authorial interventions, which are similar to stage directions, indicating how and why the action is taking place. Although, like La Rose de sable and Le Songe, Les Olympiques has two parts, it is more varied in form than these novels and makes up a collection of different genres. Les Jeunes filles is the only other Montherlant text comparable to Les Olympiques as it is composed of letters, conventional narrative, journal extracts and newspaper advertisements. The author may have adopted this disparate composition in order to appeal to a public more interested in sport than in literature, which

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would find self-contained portions of text more accessible. Raimond notes this diversity, recognizing that Les Olympiques could be just as readily published in Montherlant’s Essais. On the other hand, Raimond also observes balances, progressions and counterpoints between one part of the text and the other, considering that ‘Tout cela montre que la variété des textes n’est pas laissée au hasard, et qu’elle s’accompagne d’une assez grande rigueur de composition’.24 In fact, Montherlant’s aim is not so much to write a novel, but to propose a new way of life: Au fond, pourquoi Montherlant se serait-il encombré d’une fiction organisée, cohérente et contraignante, quand son propos était de suggérer un nouvel idéal de vie? Un auteur ici s’adresse aux jeunes hommes de sa génération, il leur propose, au lendemain de la guerre, une éthique qui les aide à vivre. Il n’entend pas leur offrir un divertissement, – le refuge dans une fiction qui les aide à oublier le réel; il veut les inciter à mettre de la beauté dans leur vie même.25

The young person is advised to work towards heroism through integrity, asceticism, friendship, healthy living and love of beauty. Les Olympiques creates a time lapse and conveys the period in the author’s life during which sport was all-important. Montherlant became interested in sport in 1915 before enlisting. After the war he continued to play football and to take part in athletics; these sporting experiences provide the raw material for Les Olympiques: De retour de guerre, parfois traînant la jambe lardée d’éclats d’obus, souffrant de son hypertrophie cardiaque qui l’avait fait réformer, Montherlant risquait d’aggraver son cas en faisant du sport. Mais que faire s’il voulait retrouver le collège, l’équipe et rencontrer une jeunesse avec qui se lier? Il alla voir le Dr de Martel qui permit le foot et la course courte... 26

Les Olympiques achieves unity not only through the story of the youthful friendship between the narrator and Peyrony, but also through the journal form, which records a time when the minutiae of the young Montherlant’s feelings and reactions combine to create a rich, dense tapestry of text. The reader is at times irritated, as the older author also confesses himself to be, by the pretentiousness of youth, but cannot help but be impressed by the confidence of the writer, who, even at 25, is 24 25 26

Raimond, Michel Les Romans de Montherlant, Sedes, Paris, 1982, p. 31. Ibid., pp. 34–35. Sipriot, ‘Livre de Poche’, op. cit., p. 181.

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aware that he is building a literary edifice which will take his life-time to complete: ‘je joue sur quatre-vingts ans; si je meurs avant quatre-vingts ans, mon édifice n’aura pas de toit’. (PRI, 322) Les Olympiques is closely related to Le Songe as an idyllic representation of youth and all that it means in terms of Montherlant’s philosophy. The youthful characters of Les Olympiques, like those of Le Songe, are French. This is an obvious, but important fact since patriotism is an essential element of Montherlant’s philosophy of youthful heroism. In Le Solstice de juin, Montherlant criticizes France for being too passive and for accepting everything, including mediocrity: ‘C’est un des malheurs de la France de ces vingt dernières années qu’elle acceptait tout, l’excellent et l’ignoble, indifféremment: une obnubilation du sens des valeurs, et dans tous les ordres’ (PE, 909) and proposes individual conduct as the antidote to mediocrity: ‘le fil d’or de la conduite individuelle. Souvent, dans le chaos des événements, ce fil d’or m’est un fil d’Ariane’. (PE, 889) Such statements in Le Solstice de juin are procollaborationist, but also constitute an attempt to inculcate a sense of values in the young French person, who is encouraged to strive, through sport, to form a sense of quality and an awareness of what is right, which will serves him in later life. France is the youthful body praised in Les Olympiques: Bon corps de France, ménagé depuis des siècles par la France, et dont chacune des cellules n’oeuvrera qu’à son profit, français dans toute ta superficie comme un coin de terre avec ses prés, avec ses bois, avec ses routes, rien de ce qu’on fait pour toi ne s’arrête à toi. Qui te masse est comme qui sème un champ. (PRI, 257)

The land as an image of the human body is not arbitrary. In Les Olympiques the body is broken down into specific parts [‘ses prés’, ‘ses bois’, ‘ses routes’] in order to rebuild it into a whole in which the divine is present and in which the individual affirms his own identity. Sport is a means of breaking the body down into its constituent parts because it emphasizes certain muscles or limbs. This portrayal of the body gives the key to understanding the youthful heroism of Montherlant’s world. The glorified body is always youthful and beautiful since Montherlant’s essentially visual descriptions are inspired by classical sculpture. Beauty represents the divine on earth. The human body and the land are

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intermingled and the heroic body is a map defined as a specific country, France. Patriotism and heroism are ideals, which prove to be ‘mythes inutiles’ for the elderly, disconsolate protagonists of Montherlant’s later novels. Montherlant’s lyrical prose and his moving portrayal of values are ceaselessly enchanting, but these values ultimately failed him. For Montherlant, the verb ‘jouer’ does not signify an escape from the world of adults, of responsibility and everyday cares; ‘jouer’ is the means of entry into the element of the real. Athletics, football, boxing allow the narrator and author to re-enter the privileged environment where the young person exists. In this milieu, integrity, love and the most excellent part of the self are to be found. Just as the privileged space created by war and military life allows the narrator to pass from an adult macrocosm to the purer, more lucid regions of a microcosm populated by adolescent soldiers in Le Songe, in Les Olympiques, the stadium is the enclosed idyllic space within which the privileged relationship between older and younger adolescent occurs. The inner peace, achieved through this type of friendship, is further inspired by physical communion with the natural world: De la violence ordonnée et calme, du courage, de la simplicité, de la salubrité, quelque chose de vierge et de rude et qui ne s’examine pas soi-même: voilà ce que j’ai aimé dans la guerre, oui, aimé, malgré toute la détresse et l’horreur, et voilà ce que j’ai retrouvé ici, voilà ce que me donnent ces trois jours par semaine, les seuls qui soient à ma mesure dans une vie qui est trop petite pour moi. Tout ici a partie liée avec la nature; la terre, le vent, le soleil sont des copains qui jouent contre nous ou pour nous, et tu as bien vu que nous étions tout à l’heure les frères de la pluie, comme j’étais dans la vieille guerre le frère des racines et de la nuit étoilée. De là sans doute cette bonté profonde. [...] je crois bien voir que cette vie que nous menons est celle qui fut rêvée par les sages ou par « Dieu ». Peyrony! Peyrony! nous avons maintenant de quoi imaginer l’âge d’or... Et si tout cela, comme il faut le croire n’est qu’une introduction à de plus grandes choses, bienvenu soit sur notre âge d’or le dur reflet du siècle de fer. Le paradis est à l’ombre des épées. (PRI, 300–301)

The narrator of this passage yearns for order and finds it in the school, the battlefield and the sports stadium. The heroic state can be attained only within strictly determined confines. In this arrangement, the individual is separate from and yet together with his companions. The team allows the isolated individual to have company without emotional demands. The class, the platoon and the team offer Montherlant the ideal 69

environment for congenial company, which keeps its distance. The Montherlant hero pits himself against his fellows and, through competition, betters himself. Sport is one means of reaching a perfect or almost perfect state of being, which, contrary to the scenario envisaged in Le Songe, may, in Les Olympiques, be achieved with a companion. Peyrony’s role is more than that of sounding board; he is the beloved youth to be taught and helped along the road of life; in turn, he confers his own gifts on the narrator and, for a time, embodies the ideal youthful hero. Pierre-Henri Simon comments on the value of friendship in Montherlant’s work: ‘L’ouverture du coeur à l’amitié, et spécialement à l’amitié virile [...] n’est-ce point dans l’oeuvre de Montherlant, mieux encore que dans celle de Malraux et de Saint-Exupéry, qu’on en trouverait les exemples les plus émouvants’.27 Montherlant’s goal of spiritual unity with a beloved companion is closer to Saint-Exupéry’s search for spiritual fulfilment than to Malraux’s fraternal solidarity, found through action. The friendship between Peyrony and the narrator comes to an abrupt end re-enacting the motif of renunciation: l’opposition entre celle-ci et celle-là, [la première et la deuxième Olympique] [...] est liée à l’expression d’une durée, elle retrace une évolution, – et en particulier, l’évolution fâcheuse de Peyrony, elle est l’histoire de son excès. Il a été, au début, parfait; et, au fil du temps, il a perdu le sens de la mesure, il a corrompu son idéal, il a déçu son aîné. Quant au Narrateur, il lui arrive de se rappeler le passé – la guerre – et de voir devant lui, dans l’accablement de sa fatigue, sa propre mort.

Montherlant looks back on the end of friendship in the above portion of the essay ‘Tibre et Oronte’, excluded from the 1959 Pléiade edition of Les Olympiques.28 Only the last of this three-part essay was published in 1959. The first and second parts describe the author’s reasons for and feelings about abandoning sport, as well as summarizing what he calls ‘la morale du sport’. This early essay further touches on the events and

27 28

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Simon, Pierre-Henri, Procès du héros, Seuil, Paris, 1950, p. 56. Montherlant, Première Olympique, Le Paradis à l’ombre des épées, Grasset, collection ‘Les Cahiers verts’, publiés sous la direction de Daniel Halévy, 1924, pp. 1–24. I am indebted to Pierre Sipriot for presenting me with a copy of this rare publication.

characters of Les Olympiques, and, particularly, on the friendship between the narrator and Peyrony: Dans cette disposition où j’étais, un événement est survenu, et j’ai renoncé pour toujours à mettre le pied sur une piste ou sur un terrain de jeux. [...] Et de la sorte, cette époque close, je me sens disposé aujourd’hui pour la juger. Rien n’est plus simple, délimité avec plus d’exactitude que ces grandes divisions, à la fois superficielles et toutes profondes, qui ont partagé ma vie: 1. la symphonie catholique formée par un collège religieux, les auteurs de Rome ancienne, l’Espagne et, essentiellement, l’esprit taurin; 2. la guerre; 3. le sport. Chacun de ces ordres m’a versé, pièces mêlées, son trésor de félicité et de malheur; quoi qu’il arrive cela est pris sur la mort, et là c’est moi qui tiens le bon bout.29

The conclusion of his friendship with the real Peyrony leads Montherlant to end his association with sport. In the fictional version, ‘Le demi aile’ is betrayed by his younger companion, who reaches a perfect stage of development and then forsakes friendship and loyalty for his own advancement. In fact, betrayal, profound sadness at the thought of decline and death are states through which the narrator passes. The final ‘stage direction’, again alluding to a classical model, describing the boys jumping over piles of burning leaves is essentially optimistic: ‘Ainsi Romulus et ses compagnons sautèrent par-dessus la flamme, pour se purifier, quand ils fondèrent la Ville; et les nôtres, eux aussi, ont leur cité intérieure à fonder’. (PRI, 377) Classical references in Montherlant’s work are associated with a spirit of optimism in times of hardship or change. They explain a point, but are also used to denote the end of an old way of being and the start of a new period. The ‘excès’, mentioned above as a betrayal, is a stage allowing the hero to grow. It is a notion in keeping with the concepts of love, growth, learning and a higher state of being. In the preface to the final dialogue of Les Olympiques, written in 1938, the older author observes the ‘demi aile’ from a more distanced point of view. Whereas, at the time of writing, Montherlant sympathized with the character’s decision to end his friendship with Peyrony, the older author views the situation more calmly and admits that his hero acted hastily and in a nihilistic manner, in keeping with his youthful disposition: ‘Mais il 29

Ibid., pp. 4 & 6.

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n’en reste pas moins que nous ne souscrivons pas aujourd’hui à tous les mouvements du demi aile. Le demi aile était ce jour-là au fond d’une poche de faiblesse’. (PRI, 358)

The Spiritual Body and the Divine Hero In the enclosed world of the stadium, removed from that of ‘les gens de la ville’, the body is of prime importance. For Montherlant, the body means more than physical presence, especially if the body concerned evokes the perfect beauty of youthful form; Montherlant believes in a spiritual body, which is not the vessel of a divine presence, but is, in itself, divine. In one of the short essays of Les Olympiques, the nature of the spiritual body is examined. Montherlant perceives that for the child, the artist and the lover, the spiritual body is fathomed by examining separate parts of the physical body, as if each had a life of its own. The nature of the soul manifest in the body is a concept peculiar to Montherlant: Mais quelle est la nature de cette âme? Serait-elle indépendante de l’âme spirituelle? Serait-elle au contraire l’âme spirituelle elle-même qui, dans son travail pour modeler de l’intérieur le corps, pénétrerait celui-ci et ferait une émanation à la surface? (PRI, 263)

In Montherlant’s work, the young person is the medium for man’s communication with the gods; in Thrasylle, for example, the child is possessed of the spirit of the god. Les Olympiques contains a new concept, which reverses the biblical precept of man being made in God’s image. Les Olympiques is a hymn addressed to God made in the image of man, as in the following passage taken from the essay, ‘Boxe’: O hommes! Cette forme émouvante, ce n’est pas une forme irréelle, ce n’est pas le fantôme d’un paradis de mensonge: C’est le fils Guillet, le fils du plombier, celui qui démonte et remonte tout le temps sa bécane. C’est leur fils à eux, c’est leur frère, c’est eux-mêmes. L’homme à la tête baissée lève la tête et voit Dieu. Et il voit que, Dieu, c’est lui. (PRI, 345)

Montherlant’s philosophy is founded on belief in man, in whom the divine does not come from outside the human being, but is living and present in the body and spirit of man. God, for Montherlant, is Man. 72

The beautiful, youthful human body is a divine entity. In the above passage, the author appeals to humanity to recognize its own divinity in the loveliness of this young man. Conventional religion is ‘le fantôme d’un paradis de mensonge’. The propensity for divinity lies in man, both in terms of his physical beauty and in the higher form of being described above, where, through communion with nature and with each other, the adolescent sportsmen and women achieve heroism and are thereby elevated to the realm of the gods. Montherlant is, above all, concerned with the real, the elements of perfection which are available to us in the here and now. Peyrony has sacrificed heroism by betraying his sports club and wanting to join another where his chances of becoming a national player are greater. The narrator sees this flaw as marking the end of Peyrony’s moment of harmony. (PRI, 365) Diotoma states in Plato’s Dialogue that the beauty of the young boy’s soul is reflected in that of his body; Peyrony’s moment of perfection is also depicted physically: A chaque foulée, avec une régularité de machine, apparaît, puis disparaît le biceps fémoral de sa cuisse. Ses bras glissent comme des bielles. Le buste pivote à droite, à gauche, amusant, sur les reins immobiles. [...] L’Ancien dit qu’on « ne peut pas connaître la nature du corps sans connaître en même temps la nature universelle ». A présent il me semble que, de connaître la nature d’un muscle unique – ce biceps fémoral – je connais la nature universelle. Tandis que Dents de Chien se meut en lui-même et par l’espace, accomplissant sa révolution ellipsoïdale, il m’apparaît emporté dans le même rythme que les planètes. Comme elles, il est tout musique. (PRI, 259–260)

Peyrony’s body is perceived as an efficiently functioning machine executing perfectly symmetrical movements; the parts are more important than the whole. The broken body of Le Songe is reconstructed in Les Olympiques by re-constructing each constituent part and watching this part function independently. The pleasing harmony evoked above is likened to the mathematical balance of the movements of the planets. The miracle of the re-created human body is related to the miracle of the universe, all represented in one Rodin-like male form. Throughout Les Olympiques the pre-eminence of the youthful body is emphasized. The body of the other is glorified in the text, as well as the body of the self:

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J’ai eu comme un éblouissement. Il m’a semblé que tout à coup j’étais de plus grande taille, que tout à coup j’étais devenu le foyer d’un mystère, le tabernacle de quelque chose. J’ai senti mes jambes comme des monuments invincibles. La souplesse et la solidité de mon action m’ont paru empreintes d’une grande majesté. Je suis soutenu par un vaste souffle intérieur. Ma respiration se règle sur ma foulée, ma tête, mes bras battent ma cadence. (PRI, 265)

The former perception is external and the latter internal, but both express a feeling of awe before the wonder of the human body related to musical harmony. The narrator is filled with reverence at the metamorphosis he feels taking place within himself when he runs. He has a sense of power which leads to a strong sense of self, expressed in the repetition of personal pronouns introducing an action or part of the body: ‘ma respiration’, ‘ma foulée’, ‘ma tête’, ‘mes bras’, ‘ma cadence’. The human body in its youthful perfection is divine for Montherlant. In the midst of praising the beauty of the human form, the narrator is, nevertheless, aware of its frailty in terms of time: ‘Platon dit que le corps « ne cesse un seul instant de périr »’. (PRI, 270) Ever conscious of the gradual degeneration of the body, his own in particular, the narrator harbours a concomitant fear of abandonment by the beloved companion: ‘A cette heure Peyrony gambade, et moi je ne le pourrais pas. [...] Allons, qu’est-ce que tu attends, voici le moment rêvé pour te détacher de moi’. (PRI, 270) The theme of abandonment and the consciousness of death run through Montherlant’s work. In Les Olympiques this sharpens the narrator’s appreciation of youthful vigour demonstrated by the sportsmen and women in the stadium. Fear of death is necessary in order to recognize the qualities of life: ‘Je te salue, peur de la mort, qui me donnes mérite de l’écarter’. (PRI, 273)

The Heroine’s Body The portraits of women in Montherlant’s work are frequently misogynistic, but they may be considered in a wider perspective, if we view female characters as projections of the author’s feminine side. Les Jeunes filles is not the only novel to portray women. They are represented, albeit briefly, in Les Olympiques, where, by participating 74

in sport, women cease to be marginalized and dependent emotionally and economically on husbands, fathers, brothers, lovers. A touching example of a woman only temporarily ‘liberated’ by sport is Mademoiselle de Plémeur. (PRI, 281–288) The woman’s body in the sports stadium is not differentiated from the man’s. The woman is rejected in Le Songe, but accepted in Les Olympiques, as she achieves heroic status through sport. The female body achieves the same divinity as the male: Comme la chanteuse, comme la danseuse, comme la joueuse d’harmonies, elle se fait lien entre le sublime et nous. O femme, instrument de l’ineffable, à genoux devant votre valeur. Qu’ai-je parlé de vos erreurs, de vos misères, de vos petitesses? Vous voici totalement justifiée. (PRI, 285–286)

Through sport, this daughter of a Breton aristocrat is transformed from a plain, uninteresting girl, for whom marriage offers the only possible alternative to a life of crippling poverty on her father's manor near Morlaix, into a heroine, a goddess, who runs as if she flies, who is the conduit of the gods. The story of her short-lived salvation from this fate is a sad one, tenderly recounted. As long as she is at the height of her sporting capacity, Mademoiselle de Plémeur is free from the claims of her caste. The athlete quickly grows old, however, and, once beaten in a race, Mademoiselle de Plémeur retires, returning briefly to ask the narrator to time her just in case her defeat was a fluke. This act of hope ends in despair when she is 24 seconds over the record. The narrator claims kinship with this exiled aristocrat as she makes a futile attempt to regain her form. Her body is androgynous in appearance; Mademoiselle de Plémeur is appropriated and transformed by the narrator’s consciousness into a child. As with Peyrony, the narrator takes on the role of parent when witness to courage and sensibility in another human being, male or female. Montherlant is ever anxious to educate parents, to correct his own parents, to take on the role of his perpetually absent father, to become husband to his mother and save the son [his beloved companions] from disastrous parenting. The father–son paradigm reveals more of Montherlant than any memoir could have done, in that it throws light on a sensibility still haunted by childhood. The novels read as manuals to good parenting; the protagonist or narrator is frequently cast in the role of the parent to his 75

younger, beloved companion, urging him towards self-improvement. The relationship with the appropriated child is ultimately unsuccessful as the surrogate father’s attempt to impose a system of values on the companion is rejected by Dominique, Prinet and Peyrony, and the parent cannot tolerate autonomy. Montherlant, in constantly re-enacting the role of ideal parent, fails to accept the other as separate and fails to accept difference in himself; the repressed is refused as an integral part of identity and, therefore, wholeness is forever allusive.

Heroic Friendship: Maturation and Degeneration Inevitable degeneration of friendship results from the innate destructiveness of the heroic enterprise. The concept of friendship proposed by Les Olympiques is educative and improving, as dictated by Montherlant’s reading of Plato. Aware of the fact that the younger person is in a constant state of change, the older friend’s duty is to bring the best possible influence to bear on his companion: ‘Platon le dit: « Il meurt sans cesse, et dans les cheveux et dans la chair, et dans le os et dans le sang »’. (PRI, 256) Plato’s advice in this respect is contained in a section entitled ‘Une seule et même attention’, (PRI, 256–258) where the narrator fears that his influence may not be salutary: ‘Est-ce que je ne vais pas le contaminer?’ (PRI, 256) Although he has tried to inculcate Peyrony with moral courage, he feels that he has not succeeded. At the end of Les Olympiques, there has, in fact, been an exchange of values in just the way described by Plato in the Symposium, but the end of friendship and the end of Montherlant’s interest in sport stem from a failure to incorporate relativism into the system of heroic values proposed by these novels. Montherlant retains Plato’s ideal of loving friendship, but in Les Olympiques he places more emphasis on the sensual, as opposed to the intellectual or spiritual essence of man. The feelings of homosexual desire acted upon in the ‘Noctium phantasmata’ episode of Le Songe are transposed in Les Olympiques to voyeurism, satisfying desire by dwelling on the visual beauty of the body. Virile friendship is played out in the interchange of values between the narrator and Peyrony. The

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climax of their friendship is related in a dialogue, referred to as a ‘dialogue scénique’, in which Peyrony and several other members of the sports club threaten to leave. They discuss their decision heatedly with the captain of the team, the un-named ‘demi aile’, who is the narrator. Reconciliation finally takes place between the captain and Peyrony, but it is tainted with the bitterness felt by the former, who remains deeply discouraged by what he sees as his companion’s failure to live up to his early promise. Peyrony has in fact learnt from his older friend, who has also absorbed a lesson from their friendship. The narrator admits, in a dramatized final conversation with Peyrony, that he cannot face the seriousness of life. He propounds a nihilistic philosophy according to which sport and the game are a ‘desertion’ from life. Peyrony has taught him how to ‘desert’ effectively, how to immerse his whole being and intelligence in the game, how to obscure by means of the body, the soul and the intelligence. In loving his companion, the narrator has gained entry into the world of the body, of the senses. He deliberately turns away from reasoning, since there is no rational way of explaining life, to embrace the domain of the game, where the senses may be satisfied. In their final dialogue he deliberately and almost vindictively suggests a game of football instead of responding to his friend’s questions, expressing his disappointment in Peyrony as follows: J’ai voulu mettre en toi l’amour du corps, afin que tu balances grâce à lui la vie de l’esprit et la vie de l’âme, et ç’aurait été bien beau. Il y a eu un moment où tu as réalisé cette harmonie, et dans ce temps-là je t’ai dit: « Nous savons maintenant ce que c’est que l’âge d’or ». Et puis l’harmonie s’est défaite. (PRI, 365–366)

Montherlant criticizes his youthful concept of heroism. The narrator rejects his friend because the latter has not lived up to his expectations; yet Peyrony’s words indicate that banishment is too harsh a punishment for his crime. In the 1938 preface, the author would seem to agree that Peyrony does not merit rejection, as ‘le demi aile’ is excused as being ‘au fond d’une poche de faiblesse’. Peyrony is a person of quality, aware of his intellectual and spiritual responsibilities in life. Yet, the narrator accuses him of treachery. The actual movement of events indicates that Peyrony has betrayed his friend, regrets this act,

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returns to prove his loyalty, tries to apologize and is rejected: ‘Quant à ce que je t’ai dit tout à l’heure... j’étais en colère. [...] Nous avons vu le point où notre amitié finit’. (PRI, 374) Their relationship, together with the narrator’s sporting experience, is over forever. In Mais aimons-nous Montherlant comments on the nature of parting at the end of a loving friendship: Successivement Dominique, Peyrony, Douce tombaient de moi comme à un souffle plus fort tombent de l’arbre ses feuilles un peu mortes. [...] [les amours] s’évanouissent quand ils avaient donné ce qu’ils avaient à donner, et c’était peutêtre le mieux ainsi. Rien à dire si on sait bien d’avance que tout est perdu, soi compris. Les prétoriens cernaient les bosquets sur les berges de l’étang d’Agrippa. (MA, 206 & 213)30

The final sentence of this passage is a refrain occurring frequently in Montherlant’s prose. The words encapsulate stoicism in the face of danger and inevitable death, but they also acknowledge the pain felt by the author on his day of reckoning. Montherlant recognizes that nothing lasts in life and, knowing this, conduct is all-important. It is not living or dying that counts, it is the way one lives and dies. The end of intimate friendship between two young men or between an older man and a younger boy is accepted with stoicism as a fact of life. The recurring theme of abandonment and rejection is allied to that of renunciation. The youthful Montherlant hero seeks fulfilment in a loving friendship, but considers solitude to be an inevitable stage in his progress towards the ideal. On the other side of the sublime state is the untouchable entity, which is either too pure [Dominique] or too defiled [Peyrony]. Alban achieves a degree of permanence in his relationship with Serge in Les Garçons. In the travel writings [Moustique, Encore un instant de bonheur and La Rose de sable], the older hero encounters younger companions, falls in love with them and their ensuing absence leads to his evolution. In the later novels, abandonment and separation are permanent. Finally, the Montherlant protagonist is unable to reach the 30

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Duroisin, op. cit., p. 17–19. The phrase occurs in Sienkiewicz, Henryk, Quo Vadis?, Dent & Sons, London, 1941, p. 203. The complete sentence reads in English as follows: ‘Around the thickets on the shores of Agrippa’s lake praetorian guards had been stationed to keep the inquisitive mob from disturbing Caesar and his guests’.

heroic state so long sought. It is achieved momentarily in loving encounters, treasured and yearned for by the ageing hero of the later plays and novels. When the possibility of intimate encounter with the beloved is removed, the hero is finally isolated and enters a realm of nihilism where absolute knowledge is possible. The heroic enterprise is doomed because the Montherlant self deforms identity by displacing weakness, desire, cowardice onto the other. The opposite face of divinity, to be attained through heroism, is the forbidden, the outlawed. Repression produces rejection and abandonment of the beloved, played out in the paradigm of renunciation.

Hero and Beast in Les Bestiaires [1926] Jacqueline Michel sees ‘l’emprise du passé’, the immersion in ‘la vie naturelle’ and the quest for ‘pureté transcendante’ as the three distinguishing characteristics of Montherlant’s writing. A young man who re-creates his recent past in search of an ideal heroic state writes Les Bestiaires. Montherlant cherishes above all, the preciousness of youth, knows this period will soon be lost and is anxious to fix it in time. The vegetable world is just as essential to Les Bestiaires as it was to Les Olympiques but, whereas animals occur infrequently in Le Songe and Les Olympiques, Les Bestiaires is the novel most concerned with animals, not only with bulls, but with a greyhound dog, pigeons, cats, and horses. The hero’s fascination with animals is part of his youth, also part of his movement towards heroic perfection. The narrator of Les Olympiques achieves heroism on the sports field and through communion with nature as he pushes his face into the grass and totally immerses himself in the vegetable world. Alban of Les Bestiaires achieves heroism through the integration of his body into that of the bull. Transcendence is achieved through this mystical communion with the animal, in Montherlant’s use of the Mithra legend. Union with the beast transforms man into a god, in an act of sacrificial bloodletting. The text is formally more coherent than Les Olympiques or even Le Songe. It consists of eight chapters and an epilogue. The climax, consisting of Soledad’s challenge to Alban and the latter’s choice of

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‘Mauvais ange’ as the bull he will fight, takes place at the fifth chapter [almost mid-point]. The dénouement consists of a second and real climax, that of the bullfight, as if the first were merely a rehearsal. Raimond sees the novel as Montherlant’s most successful to date, in terms of construction: Chose tout à fait nouvelle [...]: Les Bestiaires sont le premier roman réussi de Montherlant. [...] A quoi tient cette unité organique? A l’unité du sujet: tout se rapporte ici aux taureaux. A la rigueur de la chronologie fictive et la cohérence de la durée narrative. A l’art de la progression dramatique, – l’auteur nous conduisant d’une main ferme vers l’apothéose finale d’Alban. Et à l’amalgame, cette fois parfaitement réussi, entre l’intrigue amoureuse et les exploits du héros.31

Written in the summer and autumn of 1925, Les Bestiaires recalls an earlier period in the author’s life, beginning in 1909, when he was 13 and ending in 1913, at 17. As usual with Montherlant there is some confusion over ages and dates. Raimond puts his age at 16 and situates the action over a period of 6 weeks.32 This is accurate for most of the text, except that at the very beginning the hero is 13, then 15 and 17 in the Epilogue. Pierre Sipriot gives the year as 1909, which is incorrect.33 Montherlant’s comments on the composition of Les Bestiaires, confirm Sipriot’s contention that the novel’s subject ‘c’est la sensualité, la sexualité: Je connus le matador Belmonte, rénovateur de son art [...]. Très coureur, c’est lui qui, le premier, révéla, d’après son expérience personnelle, les rapports entre la tauromachie et l’érotisme’. (MA, 194) The subject of the novel is the body, the body of the animal and of youthful man. A hermeneutics of the body is at work throughout Montherlant’s writings: Les empires se chasseront l’un l’autre; bientôt l’avenir aura fait place nette de leurs édifices dérisoires. Mais le corps nu dans sa fleur, au milieu de la nature, et ses représentations, et ce qui est pensé sur lui, cela sera encore actuel dans dix mille ans. [...] au milieu de l’obscène tohu-bohu de la rue parisienne, soudain, sur un carré pelé de verdure, je vois quelques corps de jeunesse. Des corps? Oh! des petites parcelles de corps: des avant-bras, des genoux, des débuts de cuisses, de garçons ou de filles. Beaux? Pas forcément. [...] Mais ce corps est un corps de jeunesse et flûte pour ses imperfections, s’il en a. Quand 31 32 33

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Raimond, op. cit., p. 42. Ibid., p. 38. Sipriot, ‘Livre de Poche’, op. cit., p. 279.

je peux, je fais arrêter la voiture, et je regarde comme autrefois, ébloui par la grâce humaine. (MA, 199–200)

For Montherlant, the youthful human body is eternal as it is passed on from generation to generation; the miraculous workings of the human body personify the divine in man. The sexual act ultimately celebrates the body and regenerates it where possession consists of energy being given from one partner to the other. Looking at the youthful body or possessing it is a source of life, as we shall see when Alban possesses the bull; here the sexual act and the act of killing are one and the same. Les Bestiaires recounts the game of erotic love in human [Soledad and Alban execute a dance of love according to the rules of the courtly love tradition] and in animal terms [the dance of death executed by bull and matador]. Eroticism and death are closely allied. The symbol of blood is ever present, the spilling of blood being interpreted as a sacrifice which will cause the youthful body to be fruitful in a spiritual sense.

A Dance of Love and Death Les Bestiaires begins by evoking a formal pattern of sexual behaviour between Alban and Soledad. At first, Alban is irritated by her presence, complaining that her hairstyle prevents him from seeing the bullfight; (PRI, 404) then she flatters him, calling him ‘énergique’, when he controls the horse, Cantaor, who is notoriously difficult to ride. Immediately, Alban’s new-found sympathy for the girl turns to desire and his physical domination of the animal is a part of his wish to possess Soledad: ‘La sensation de virilité qui l’occupait, jamais il n’en avait eu une semblable dans sa vie’. (PRI, 417) A series of to and fro movements, electrified by passionate energy, are then executed by Alban and Soledad. He visits her home: ‘A un mètre d’elle, il baigne dans son odeur de chair et de poudre, qui font ensemble une sorte d’odeur vanillée’; (PRI, 449) they are together during a pigeon-shoot: ‘La peau apparaissait derrière la soie noire de ses bas, comme l’aurore derrière la nuit finissante’; (PRI, 456) they walk together in the Alcazar gardens: ‘Il remonta la bouche le long du bras, jusqu’à la saignée du 81

bras, referma la saignée du bras sur sa bouche’. (PRI, 466) Their meetings often take place in a violent, bloody setting: ‘Un homme achevait les pigeons en les jetant violemment par terre, le crâne frappant le premier’, evoking the connection made in this novel between eroticism and death: ‘For Alban, love and violence are so intimately related that there is some question as to which one is responsible for the other’.34 Their concupiscent dance comes to an abrupt end when Soledad adheres to the role of the courtly lady by asking Alban to risk his life in return for her favours: ‘Elle montrait qu’elle n’avait pas de sympathie pour lui […] Et l’indignation étouffait en lui la souffrance’. (PRI, 495) Alban’s attempt to become a hero through heterosexual love comes to an abrupt end when Soledad fails to comply with his ideal and is replaced as his object of desire by the boy, Jésus. Alban’s desire for Jésus is a re-enactment of the relationship with Serge in Les Garçons.35 In fact, the dance of desire between Alban and Soledad is more complex than it appears, as Alban’s feelings for Soledad are displaced by love for her father: ‘Cet homme qui touchait à la vieillesse répandait une odeur de volupté. [...] C’était un fauve humain, avec la sorte de beauté qui excuse tout. […] Alban, qui aimait les fauves, en tomba d’emblée, amoureux’. (PRI, 402) The final partner in this intricate dance of sexual desire and death is, of course, the bull. Alban is almost overcome by fear before the bullfight; he then engages in a disastrous scene with a bull, which shows no spirit and is put to death by Jésus, thereby proving his worthiness of the hero’s friendship and love. Finally, ‘Mauvais Ange’ enters the bullring where the ultimate act of union and possession occurs: il n’y avait plus une succession de passes mais une seule passe, il n’y avait plus qu’une seule bousculade tragique des deux êtres fondus en un seul être, il n’y avait plus qu’une seule caresse brutale et continue où le garçon, rétrécissant à mesure la cape, serrait toujours plus le monstre contre lui, le rapprochait toujours

34

35

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Cor, Lawrence W. ‘Hemingway, Montherlant, and ‘Animal Tragedy’, Proceedings of the Pacific Northwest Conference on Foreign Languages, Apr. 1971, p. 205. Krémer, op. cit., pp. 24–28.

plus de lui, comme on rapproche une femme qu’on va faire entrer dans sa chair, l’enroulait tout autour de lui en même temps que sa cape, sentant le mufle chaud contre sa main mouillée de bave, car le taureau, chaque fois qu’il chargeait, lui mettait de l’écume quelque part, comme la vague en mer sur le rocher. [...] Et cet homme qui répond à chaque mouvement de la bête par un mouvement accordé, cet homme et cette bête qui s’emboîtent chacun tour à tour dans les vides que crée l’autre en se déplaçant, et ce rire qui n’éclate pas, et ces paupières qui s’abaissent au zénith de la sensation trop bonne, et la volupté de ces gestes, c’est le dieu et son prêtre qui édifient leur communion prochaine et la murent dans une danse nuptiale. (PRI, 555–556)

The bull and the man become one; they take possession of one another’s bodies; there is invasion of one by the other. The bull dance is an act of love, compared to which the intricate steps executed by Alban and Soledad are a mere reflection of this more real and passionate exchange. The game of bullfighting is transformed into the reality of living; the pleasure principle governs the movement of the lovers and this is the high point of the novel as it is of life. This passionate exchange in the act of love is what makes life worth living. Through their bodies, the bull and the man accomplish a spiritual apotheosis, which can only culminate in the death of one or other partner. For Montherlant, as for Duras, death represents the ultimate satisfaction of desire.

Mithra, Hero and God Montherlant re-works the classical legend of Mithra in Les Bestiaires, using this non-Christian figure to depict the achievement of the heroic ideal so long sought by the adolescent protagonist, Alban. Montherlant used the well-known work of Franz Cumont as a source for information on the Mithraic religion.36 Cumont’s words and phrases are used to relate Alban’s thoughts on killing the bull. Les Bestiaires is a reenactment of the Mithra legend, both in terms of the actions of the hero, Alban, who represents the god Mithra, and in the roles of secondary 36

Cumon, Franz. Les Mystères de Mithra, Brussels, 1913 and Textes et monuments figurés relatifs aux mystères de Mithra, I, II, H. Lamertin, Brussels, 1896, 1898. References are to Cumont, Franz, The Mysteries of Mithra, translated by McCormack T.J., Dover, New York, 1956, pp. 55 & 132–135.

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characters and animals. There are crucial reasons why this particular set of religious beliefs and practices appeal to the author. Most significantly, Mithra is a god who is eternally youthful; this is an essential element for Montherlant. There are other characteristics of Mithraic religion, which relate to Montherlant’s system of values. In Les Bestiaires as well as in other works [Moustique, La Rose de sable and Les Olympiques for example] Montherlant demonstrates sympathy for ordinary people, as opposed to those of his own class. Cumont tells us that Mithraism was long the religion of the soldier and the slave, before becoming that of the aristocracy: ‘It is certain that he [Mithra] achieved his first conquests among the lower classes of society, and it is an important fact that Mithraism long remained the religion of the lowly’. (81) Montherlant’s belief in the divine part of man is reflected in Mithraism: ‘...they [the Persians] worshipped [...] the divine element that resided in every man and formed part of his soul’. (93) Mithraism spread throughout the Roman Empire because it was the religion of the soldier, incorporating a belief in action as the way of conquering evil, rather than in mystic contemplation or prayer: They [the servitors of Mithra] did not lose themselves, as did the other sects, in contemplative mysticism; for them, the good dwelt in action. They rated strength higher than gentleness, and preferred courage to lenity. [...] A religion of soldiers, Mithraism exalted the military virtues above all others. (141–142)

It is not difficult to see why this religion concurred with Montherlant’s system of values, with its youthful god, belief in the divinity of man and in the virtue of action as a means of reaching the heroic ideal. Intertextual elements in Les Bestiaires and Cumont’s account of the myth are numerous. Several characters and incidents in Les Bestiaires owe their conception to details relating to the Mithra myth, such as ‘Le Galgo’ [the Spanish word for greyhound], Alban’s dog [there is a dog in Le Songe and one in Les Olympiques]. In Les Bestiaires, the vocabulary and images used to describe ‘Le Galgo’ are similar to those conjured up by the illustrations showing the Mithra myth in bas-reliefs found all over Western Europe. ‘Le Galgo’ takes on the characteristics of the dog which is Mithra’s companion and helper in the pursuit of the bull, as Montherlant indicates in the following direct reference to Cumont’s 84

account: ‘Le Galgo dort dans l’herbe, couché en rond, le museau sur sa queue, pareil au serpent mystique symbole du Temps, qui ne finit ni ne commence’. (PRI, 418) This strange image of the dog as a snake is derived from a close reading of Cumont’s description of the Mithraic mysteries. The Mysteries of Mithra includes plates portraying ancient statues of Kronos or Mithraic Saturn, who represents boundless time. Cumont’s interpretation of the serpent which wraps itself six times round the nude body of the god is adopted by Montherlant: ‘The reptile whose sinuous folds enwrap him, typifies the tortuous course of the Sun on the ecliptic’. (105–108) During the final battle with ‘Mauvais Ange’, Alban has two assistants, Gutiérrez and Jésus; both work the bull with their capes. In the final combat, they form a triad: ‘Le Mauvais Ange est là, arrêté, à quatre mètres. Gutiérrez passe derrière Alban. Jésus se place derrière le taureau’ (PRI, 558) reflecting the way in which Mithra is represented in bas-reliefs: ‘It was customary to represent him between two youthful figures, one with an uplifted, the other with an inverted, torch. These youths bore the enigmatic epithets of Cauti and Cautopati, and were naught else than the double incarnation of his person. These two dadophori, as they were called, and the tauroctonous hero formed together a triad, and in this “triple Mithra” was variously seen either the star of day, whose coming at morn the cock announced, who passed at midday triumphantly into the zenith and at night languorously fell toward the horizon; or the sun which, as it waxed in strength, entered the constellation of Taurus and marked the beginning of spring [...]. From another point of view, one of these torch-bearers was regarded as the emblem of heat and of life, and the other as the emblem of cold and of death’. (129–130) Alban’s reluctance to kill the bull is allied to that of Mithra, commanded against his will by the Sun god to sacrifice the animal. The renewal of life, taking place after the death of the bull, is an essential feature of the novel. These elements are present in the following passage, which relates the death of ‘Mauvais Ange’: ‘Quoi qu’il voulût et quoi qu’il fît, rien ne pouvait plus empêcher qu’il l’eût tué. De la double blessure coulait avec l’avidité d’une source le sang générateur et purificateur. [...] Et son âme divine s’échappa’. (PRI, 561) 85

Cumont, in recounting the miracle of regeneration, also emphasizes the bull’s divine nature: The seed of the bull [...] produced all the different species of useful animals, and its soul, under the protection of the dog, the faithful companion of Mithra, ascended into the celestial spheres above, where, receiving the honors of divinity, it became under the name of Silvanus the guardian of herds. Thus, through the sacrifice which he had so resignedly undertaken, the tauroctonous hero became the creator of all the beneficent beings on earth; and, from the death which he had caused, was born a new life, more rich and more fecund than the old. (137)

In Les Bestiaires, Alban is transformed into the god, Mithra, through his courage in the act of working and killing the magnificent animal. He gives his dog to his beloved companion, Jésus, associated with Christ and Mithra. (PRI, 565) This gesture re-enacts the pledge of brotherhood amongst the youths of ancient Greece. The plates depicted in Cumont’s account have been transposed by Montherlant into written form, where Alban, as youthful god, sacrifices the bull, helped by the two dadophori and accompanied by the dog. The Mithraic religion is thought to stem from contemplation of the Orion constellation portraying the warrior god with the constellation of the bull and the dog nearby. Jacqueline Michel is the only critic to have considered the significance of the epilogue to Les Bestiaires, a strange chapter, set apparently during Alban’s journey home from Spain. The chapter, set apart from the rest of the text, introduces new characters. Alban is presented as a novice priest, being tutored by a chief priest; they are sun worshippers and also Christians, members of the Saint-Georges and Notre-Dame de Montserrat monasteries, designating an imagined integration of pagan and Christian religions. Alban’s name is not mentioned, but the young man of the Epilogue is associated with the hero of the novel, when he expresses his wish to dedicate the horns of ‘Mauvais Ange’ to the Sun and the Saints in a former Mithraeum sanctuary, now a Christian church. There is a small company of young men, led by the chief priest whom Alban calls his cousin. In the closing pages, the old man cites a Provençal poem, which tells the story of the sacred bull. The piece evokes spirituality and highlights the theme of love between man and animals.

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Les Bestiaires, as the name suggests, may be read both as a bestiary, a didactic work with the aim of educating the reader in the relationship, which ought to exist between man and beast, and as an account of the lives of the gladiators or the matadors. The novel’s expressed purpose is to persuade the French public to support the introduction of bullfighting in France by the President, Gaston Doumergue. Montherlant believes that communion with animals is necessary for man to live healthily; he further propounds that the violent death of an animal, killed by man, can be a source of good, provided that the death is swift. Les Bestiaires marks an important stage in Montherlant’s early writing; in it Alban at last achieves heroic status through his depiction as the god Mithra, killing the bull in a pagan sacrifice to the sun. Heroism may only be attained in an idealized fantasy world, where perfect harmony between fellow human beings, between man and beast and between ancient and modern religions is enacted in a format which bears no relation to the real world.

‘La Bête et l’ange’: The Unattainable Prize These three novels, written early in Montherlant’s career, depict a series of friendships or love relationships between a young person and an even younger person. The protagonist is always aiming for selfimprovement, working his way towards an ideal of heroism. The relationship evolves to a certain degree in the direction of amelioration and then disintegrates, leaving, nevertheless, the sense that some growth has been achieved. The conclusion of each friendship lies in renunciation, followed by abandonment and finally rejection, but in a spirit of acceptance by the hero that the particular conclusion is somehow right. Prinet and Alban part acrimoniously in Le Songe, Peyrony is rejected because of his ‘betrayal’, Soledad is repudiated. The only objects of desire not rejected or renounced by the hero are the bull, ‘Mauvais Ange’, and the boy, Jésus. The killing of the bull constitutes the only act of consummation in this series of early works. The boy is closely associated with the bull and is, therefore, also ‘possessed’ in the ceremony of bloodletting in which he plays a major

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part. Desire in these novels functions according to the youth and beauty of the object, which is finally repudiated for fear of disruption of the self. Montherlant’s bases his notion of love on Plato’s model whereby the lovers help each other to achieve perfection. Foucault’s comments on the Greeks’ concept of love are pertinent to the pattern of renunciation traced in these novels: while deeply rooted in the habitual themes of the ethics of pleasure, [this doctrine] broached questions that would later have a very great importance for the transformation of this ethics into a morality of renunciation and for the constitution of a hermeneutics of desire. […] the moderation that is required by erotics is of another type still, for even though it does not call for pure and simple abstention, we have seen that it tends in that direction and that it carries with it the ideal of a renunciation of all physical relations with boys. [...] it is in this reflection concerning the love of boys that Platonic erotics raises the question of the complex relations between love, the renunciation of pleasures, and access to truth. 37

Montherlant’s form of heroism requires ‘access to truth’: ‘L’expérience de l’île n’engage sans doute qu’une recherche du bonheur. Elle vaut cependant, j’en suis sûr, pour la recherche d’une vérité’. (PRI, 645) Renunciation results from recognition that the ‘true love’ [a Foucault term] he has shared with Peyrony, Douce and Dominique and with others in other texts, has come to an end. Montherlant’s ‘hermeneutics of desire’ involves renunciation; the reader is conscious that the intensity of pleasure is increased by real or imagined absence: ‘enfin je lui trouvais mille grâces, parce que je savais que dans deux heures il ne serait plus’. (PRI, 644) The repetition of the phrase ‘les prétoriens cernaient les bosquets sur les berges de l’étang d’Agrippa’, is an incantation underlining the sense of isolation which is a prerequisite of heroism. The phrase imparts a nihilistic isolation of the self when confronted with the forces of darkness or death, associated with loss of self. Montherlant uses this mantra, as noted above, in times of adversity or to strengthen himself in the last few weeks of his life [at the time of writing Mais aimons nous]. 37

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Foucault, Michel, The Use of Pleasure. The History of Sexuality, vol. 2, Penguin, U.K., 1987, p. 230.

Montherlant conceives of the love relationship in terms of Plato’s discussions in Phaedrus and The Symposium. In this context, the phenomenon of renunciation occurring in each of the three novels discussed here is related to the conception of love as a quest for truth and heroism, for lover and beloved: it becomes apparent that Platonic erotics [...] introduces the question of truth into the love relation as a fundamental question. [...] The lover’s task, the accomplishment of which will in fact enable him to reach his goal, is to recognize the true nature of the love that has seized him. [...] it is not the other half of himself that the individual seeks in the other person; it is the truth to which his soul is related. [...] The Symposium and the Phaedrus indicate a transition from an erotics structured in terms of ‘courtship’ practice and recognition of the other’s freedom, to an erotics centred on an ascesis of the subject and a common access to truth. 38

When the lover believes that indulgence in sensual pleasures will harm either himself or the beloved, he renounces hedonism in favour of what Foucault calls ‘ascesis’. Montherlant’s early novels depict young characters working their way towards transcendence through purity and the practice of a set of ideals. The young protagonist achieves transcendence in conjunction with his companion. Renunciation of sexual gratification is an essential part of the evolution towards a higher state of being. Throughout the novels, the hero is primarily concerned that he and his beloved should recognize reality and truth. Through this knowledge, they will each, separately, achieve self-knowledge and spiritual advancement. Thus betrayal, abandonment and rejection may either be seen as a nihilistic movement towards further and further isolation of the subject or as a movement of ascendance, through loving, learning and parting, as circumstances and growth dictate. Both pessimistic and optimistic tendencies have informed the evolution of the love relationship between younger beloved and older lover in these novels depicting the mythic adolescent hero. Foucault’s insistence on truth in relation to the self provides an understanding of the pattern of behaviour of lover and beloved. The adolescent is concerned with the spiritual progress of his beloved only for a brief period of time. Alban is more taken up with his own reaction 38

Ibid., p. 252.

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to Prinet’s disappearance than with Prinet’s actual state; the narrator of Les Olympiques is preoccupied by the evolution of Peyrony’s character but, once this development has come to a halt in his view, he forsakes the friendship without hesitation; Alban abandons Soledad without ever having properly commenced a relationship whilst Jésus and the bull are absorbed through death into the being of the mythic hero and thereby achieve heroic status. The protagonist is ultimately concerned with his own progress or movement towards the mastery of truth, which will result in spiritual improvement and achievement of heroic status. The essays refer frequently to reaching down into the depths of the self to bring the essence to the surface. These metaphors of mining the self refer to authenticity, to seeking the truth of the self as part of the heroic enterprise. Montherlant exhorts young people, for example, to play sport to this end: je souhaite que Les Olympiques enrichissent pour eux le stade ou le terrain de football, soit en fournissant quelques motifs, quelques « départs » à leur imagination et à leur sensibilité, soit , plus modestement, en leur révélant […] des sentiments, des sensations et des images qui sommeillaient voilés au fond d’eux. (PE, 650)

In knowing and being true to the self, the individual is asked to live authentically and, therefore, according to principles of quality. Through his love relationships with younger persons, all in the paradigm of the father–son model, the adolescent of Montherlant’s early works pursues Foucault’s ‘truth to which his soul is related’. The fatal flaw in Montherlant system of values is lack of relativism; difference is rejected and, therefore, true knowledge of the self cannot be achieved. Les Bestiaires is the only one of these three novels in which the protagonist does achieve heroic transcendance through association with the god, Mithra. Heroism may, therefore, be a goal of Montherlant’s system of values but it is impossible to achieve, except in terms of mythopoeic process employed as a fantasy. Heroism is an unattainable prize, which Montherlant keeps in view throughout his work. Recognizing not only the absurdity of life but also the futility of striving for the ideal, the Montherlant protagonist sets up a set of principles according to which he lives, as if heroism were possible. In acting as if heroism were

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possible, the individual lives a life of quality and nobility: ‘La vie est un songe, mais le bien-faire ne s’y perd pas, quelle que soit son inutilité – inutile pour le corps social, inutile pour sauver notre âme, – parce que, ce bien, c’est à nous que nous l’avons fait’. (PE, 598) The Montherlant protagonist is guilty of mauvaise foi because, although wholeness is sought through the heroic enterprise, repression and denial of multiplicity in the self leads to delusion and failure to recognize truth. The early novels, in their very attempt to define an ideal of heroism, indicate failure by the author to put his theoretical argument about truth into practice. The advice given in Montherlant’s Essais is not acted on in these fictional works: Etre à la fois ou plutôt alterner en soi la Bête et l’Ange, la vie corporelle et charnelle et la vie intellectuelle et morale, que l’homme le veuille ou non la nature l’y forcera, qui est toute alternance, qui est toute contractions et détentes. […] Le mérite de l’homme sera de cesser de nier ce rythme essentiel, par aveuglement sur soi-même, ou de le renier, par crainte d’inconséquence, ou de s’en excuser avec des soupirs ; il sera de la connaître et de s’abandonner heureusement comme au bercement même des bras de la Nature. Alors on ne le verra plus blasphémer aujourd’hui ce qu’il sera demain. (PE, 240)

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Chapter III The Death of Heroism Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. [Philip Larkin]

Theatre Montherlant abandoned the novel form and began to write for the theatre in the 1940s. His first play to be performed was La Reine morte, at the Comédie-Française on 7 December 1942. The heroic enterprise of his early novels underwent a profound change, as the writer matured in the climate of insecurity and fear engendered by the events taking place in Europe during the 1930s and 40s. The inspiration for his plays came from Greek classical drama, combined with his personal preoccupations relating to sexual orientation, familial conflict and the continued elaboration of a philosophical reaction to the pervading atmosphere in France, with the onset of the second apocalyptic conflict of the century. The historical events related in Montherlant’s theatre are overlaid with matricide, patricide, and infanticide, worthy of the family of Atreus in Greek classical drama. Montherlant is still primarily concerned with the improvement of the individual, but acknowledges the futility of heroism as conceived by his younger self. In the plays, the multiplicity of the individual is painfully acknowledged; the playwright, unlike the novelist, can no longer deny alterity, in an attempt to create the hero. Montherlant’s theatre is all about failure, heightened by the rare occasion of man’s nobility, as noted by Pierre-Henri Simon: Il s’agit bien de gravir ‘les chemins de la liberté’, mais ces chemins sont âpres, glissants, bordés de gouffres, et l’homme n’y monte que de chute en chute. […] On charactériserait assez bien [la philosophie de Montherlant] par un scepticisme approfondi à l’égard des métaphysiques, des religions, des systèmes et des

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abstractions de toute nature, mais qui laisse subsister un acte de foi dans la noblesse possible de l’homme.1

Greek Tradition and Human Realism Montherlant’s dramatic works constitute a family in themselves, because their creator writes extensively on his theatre, treating his plays like children. The prefaces and postfaces are supplemented by notes made during rehearsals and by reactions to critical and audience assessments. Each play is, therefore, a continually expanding artistic creation, whose interpretation extends over a period of years. Montherlant, the dramatist, never ceased to publish these observations, treating his theatrical works as an extended family to be cherished, scrutinized and explained: ‘Consacrer deux cents pages de commentaires à ses ouvrages, quelle fatuité!’ diront certains. Je ne le vois pas ainsi. Entre la gestation, la création, les reprises sur la scène ou à la télévision, les réimpressions en librairie, un auteur a affaire très longtemps à ses personnages. J’ai eu de multiples occasions de penser aux principaux des miens et de réfléchir sur eux. Je leur ai porté l’amour qu’une mère porte à ses enfants, y compris peut-être la classique surestimation maternelle de leurs mérites; ce sont eux, puis-je croire, qui se tiendront au chevet de mon lit de mort, comme les enfants à celui de leurs parents. (PT, 1367–1368)

Montherlant’s comprehensive chronicles on his theatre indicate the playwright’s preoccupation with the portrayal of the innermost workings of the human mind and spirit: ‘mon oeuvre […] me paraît une oeuvre essentiellement humaine. Une oeuvre humaine […] est celle qui montre le plus de sentiments humains sur une échelle allant du meilleur au pire, et qui montre d’autre part que cette échelle se trouve presque toujours dans le même être’. (PT, 1387)

Montherlant portrays the plural nature of the human being, stressing that multiplicity is typically human. The individual achieves his salvation through acknowledging the truth of his complex and contradictory nature. The political or ideological agenda is secondary to the exploration of human nature, and of the individual’s failed attempt to come to terms 1

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Simon, Pierre-Henri, Procès du héros, Seuil, Paris, 1950, p. 69.

with the absurdity of his or her existence. The early novels are twodimensional, portraying an adolescent hero, who rejects alterity, whereas the plays provide examples of the individual who is capable of good or evil acts and who displays the gamut of human qualities and faults between these two extremes. The human flaws examined in this theatre are revealed in a paradigm of familial relations, usually structured around the Greek concept of the eraste–eromane relationship. Nobility of the human spirit is attained when the tragic hero reaches the ultimate point of suffering, either through external forces, or, more often, through the weaknesses in his own nature, he becomes closer to the divine. By experiencing tragedy, man is exalted beyond his human nature and achieves, through suffering, purity akin to that of the divine. Montherlant claims that his primordial interest in humanity differentiates him from other modern writers and constitutes his bond with classical Greek drama: ‘Le théâtre grec est purement et typiquement statique; pourtant, ce qu’on y exprime, ce qu’on y évoque, est beaucoup plus intense que l’action telle qu’on nous la définit quand on parle d’action à propos d’une pièce contemporaine’. (PT, 283) Montherlant allies himself with the Greek classical playwrights and distances himself from the drama of action, which he sees as a characteristic of modern theatre. Classical theatre reflects his interest in the workings of the human spirit and in the contradictory nature of the individual: ‘Les tragédies des Anciens sont celles non seulement des membres d’une même famille, mais aussi des divers individus qu’il y a dans un même être’. (PT, 1368) Montherlant sees the twentieth century as the period of man’s degradation. The refusal to accept the modern age or to find anything positive about the century in which he lives constitutes an important thread running through Montherlant’s philosophy, which underlines the sense of failure permeating his work. God is dead and, as a virtuous, heroic being, so is man. Fear and humiliation have eroded individual courage and man is left as an empty shell, governed by weakness and misplaced pride: En Europe, depuis des années, la peur, on le sait, a pris une place considérable. Nous pouvons suivre la dépréciation croissante de l’homme au cours de ces derniers siècles dans l’évolution du drame scénique, et notamment dans les raisons pour lesquelles les hommes y sont sacrifiés. Chez Corneille ou Racine, chez Schiller ou Goethe, l’homme se sacrifie ou sacrifie son sembable pour des

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idéaux supérieurs: l’amour, la liberté, la patrie. Au XIXe siècle, l’homme se sacrifie ou sacrifie pour des idéaux bourgeois: Ibsen. Mais, voici La Reine morte, où Ferrante sacrifie Inès seulement pour montrer à son entourage, qui en doute, qu’il est encore capable de rigueur: il sacrifie par vanité, et la vanité dans sa forme la plus vile. Voici Fils de personne, où Carrion, s’il sacrifie son fils au nom d’un idéal, le sacrifie aussi [...] en manière de représailles contre sa propre incapacité à s’accorder avec la vie; c’est à dire, là aussi, par faiblesse et égoïsme. Et maintenant, voici Demain il fera jour, où Carrion, descendu d’un degré encore, sacrifie son fils sans autre motif qu’une panique animale. (PT, 601)

Montherlant sets his writing apart from that of previous centuries and from that of his contemporaries, but his philosophy, like that of Malraux, Camus and Sartre, is centred on man. His vision is darker than those of other writers and thinkers of the same generation. Montherlant’s theatre depicts man as he is, capable only momentarily of courage and generosity. The hero sacrifices himself or those he loves not to a set of ideals imposed from outside, but rather to his own weaknesses. Contrary to other twentieth century writers, Montherlant’s literary works depend on feelings: Et le public est troublé avec lui [Georges Carrion], troublé par sa tendresse comme il est troublé par sa dureté. [...] c’est cela qui rend le théâtre de Montherlant si différent de celui des Giraudoux, des Claudel, des Giono, des Sartre. Montherlant est tout autant un intellectuel qu’eux [...]. Mais il est aussi un grand sensible. Il a en lui un foyer de pathétique à peu près inexistant chez la plupart des auteurs français contemporains. (PT, 271)

In constructing a personal philosophy, Montherlant emphasizes emotion and feeling rather than reason; hence the predominance of the love relationship in his novels and plays. He distinguishes himself from other writers and thinkers by this fact. They too contemplate the despair of modern man in a world which is absurd, but whereas Sartre and Malraux propose a solution initiated by the intellect, Montherlant appreciates, on a more pragmatic level, that we rely equally on our feelings and senses to react to the world. The pre-eminence given to sensuality aligns Montherlant with Camus. Montherlant’s philosophy is more holistic and more of the everyday than those of his fellow writers, as he reminds us of the pre-eminence of the senses and the feelings. This particular emphasis constitutes Montherlant’s contribution to the twentieth-century philosophical debate.

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Jacques de Laprade and Philippe de Saint Robert [who provide prefaces to the ‘Pléiade’ volume of Théâtre], as well as Jacques Robichez trace Montherlant’s conception of theatre back through French classical tragedy to that of the ancient Greeks, emphasizing, however, that Montherlant is at the same time very much a man of this century.2 John Cruickshank expresses the essence of Montherlant’s theatre with reference to Le Maître de Santiago: The conception of tragedy lying behind Le Maître de Santiago is very unShakespearian, going back through the classical French theatre to ancient Greek sources. And this tragedy is present in two main forms. It exists externally, so to speak, in the ‘machine infernale’ of the play’s structure, as distinct from it plot. It is also obviously present in the heroism, in some way thwarted or rendered sterile, of the main characters. A sense of tragedy comes to us mainly on the aesthetic level. In the second case we meet tragedy in human, emotional forms. The two combine to give us the experience of witnessing a carefully ‘shaped’ tragic situation in which human and cosmic forces coalesce in ineluctable doom.3

The internal workings of the human being, confronted with the tragic both outside and within, constitute the main interest of Montherlant the dramatist. In consequence, Montherlant is described as a realist, in that his main aim is to portray man in as real and honest a fashion a possible. This may appear to be a strange notion for a playwright, many of whose characters are extraordinary rather than ordinary. The grandeur of certain characters in Montherlant’s theatre may lead critics to disavow their humanity. In fact, Montherlant disclaims this notion of grandeur underlining his wish to present the real-life complexities of the human being as a mass of contradictions, for example, in a BBC interview given in July 1962: – Mes oeuvres [...] ne sont ni des oeuvres d’idées, ni des oeuvres lyriques, ni des oeuvres défendant une thèse, ni des oeuvres ayant une tendance politique. Ce sont des oeuvres qui ne prétendent qu’à faire voir, avec autant d’acuité que possible, les cheminements des âmes humaines. Tout, dans mon oeuvre comme dans ma vie privée, est toujours en fonction des êtres humains. Eux seuls m’intéressent.

2 3

Robichez, Jacques, Le Théâtre de Montherlant, SEDES, Paris, 1973, pp. 203– 245. PT, pp. ix–xxxix. Cruickshank, John, Montherlant, Oliver and Boyd, Edinburgh, 1964, p. 110.

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The notion of ‘human realism’, denoting Montherlant’s specific interpretation of drama depicting the individual and the effects of passion, makes him the direct descendant of Racine. Montherlant’s language is further reminiscent of Racinian verse: ‘quelquefois l’inflexion du langage, la tendresse contenue et la férocité discrète, est très proche du mécanisme de Racine’ (PT, XXXIX) and Racine is the playwright most often referred to in Montherlant’s theatrical commentaries. (PT, 268, 835, 842, 942, 1183, 1374, 1379) Dramatic action takes place within the main character, who is progressively isolated from his fellows, through his own decisions and actions. Degradation of the individual is characterized not only by his descent into old age but also by his ultimate solitude, frequently provoked by his deliberate alienation of those around him. The interest of this theatre lies in what happens to the human being when he is irrevocably alone. Montherlant’s exploration of the human condition departs from the same point as the problematic posed by Sartre and Camus. The world has no sense and the individual must evolve a system of values, based on justice, honour, truth and the human experience of love to deal with the essentially absurd nature of the universe. Laprade interprets Montherlant’s theatre as remaining close to Greek tradition and its French classical heritage whilst placing greater emphasis on the human and psychological element of the drama. Action has not been relinquished; it has been moved from an external to an internal plane. The action of the play takes places on an emotional and psychological level, without resort to outside influences. In his theatrical works, Montherlant abandons the heroic ideal propounded in his early novels for a more realistic portrayal of the human being, where the protagonist initiates his own downfall, explores his own strengths and weaknesses, evolves towards or regresses from a system of morality, conceived in terms of the absurdity of existence in which the only certainty is death. Montherlant, with roots in classical theatre, is very much a twentieth century writer, with his major concern not only the individual, in a general sense, but the self, in a most particular sense. This definition of human realism, with regard to Montherlant’s theatre encompasses his desire to depict the human being in all his intricacy. The individual’s complexity, as he appears from the outside is an issue, as is the fact that 98

the human being is as much a mystery to himself as to others: ‘Entre ce que nous sommes ou ce que nous croyons être et nos actes, il y a une distance infinie que Montherlant nous fait sentir’. (PT, XXVI) The perception of multiplicity within the human psyche is based on Montherlant’s notion of ‘alternance’, analysed in the first chapter of this study. Man contains all possible emotions and drives for good and evil within his self; everything is possible for a human being and it is this capacity for containing contradictory parts within the whole, which lends the individual his nobility and enables him to reach towards the divine. ‘La nature permanente de l’homme’, together with the expression of the absurd nature of our world, is surely the preoccupation of Beckett and Ionesco, as well as that of Montherlant. Montherlant’s theatre is not only a representation of man’s essential being, but also of a metaphysical quest: On peut saisir ici deux versants d’une oeuvre. L’un des versants est l’étude de l’homme, la volonté de le montrer tel qu’il est [...]. Le second des deux versants dont nous avons parlé est cette philosophie particulière à Montherlant [...]. Car Montherlant enseigne la distance. [...] Cette distance qui permet de prendre les choses d’un peu haut sans laisser d’embrasser le monde, de voir errer les hommes, est essentiellement ce qu’on appelle l’élévation. (PT, XLV & XLVII–I)

Montherlant’s distancing enables man to rise above suffering and to attain a state of grace through absolute honesty with himself. John Batchelor also recognizes a movement towards a metaphysical drama. The tragic figure experiences a ‘movement of elevation’ through distancing or detachment, in his striving towards a perfect state: although a person living in the world may not attain to the ‘point sublime’ or the state implied in ‘Parfait’, the movement of elevation – the movement towards – is possible, as is the opposite movement: the descent. Once a certain point (close to perfection) is reached, instead of remaining static, the person in whom the movement takes place comes down again, and it is the total movement, the rise and fall, which is dramatic. This movement within the individual also corresponds to the ebb and flow of attachment and detachment in relations with those around him.4

4

Batchelor, John E., Existence and Imagination in the Works of Montherlant, University of Queensland Press, Queensland, 1967, pp. 230–231.

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Batchelor, like Laprade, acknowledges the role of honesty in this seeking after perfection: ‘everything which is rid of falsity is closest to the divine [...] wisdom resides not in ignorance but in awareness, and the suffering incurred in passing through the various stages from curiosity to enlightenment is in itself a beneficial experience’.5

Crime and Punishment in Dysfunctional Families The quest for self-knowledge and resulting purity is pursued within the violence of betrayal and the paradigm of familial fury: ‘Autant de personnages exécutés par les leurs (Inès par son beau-père, Cisneros par son neveu), dessinant le défilé sanglant du parricide et de l’infanticide – qui court obsessionnellement dans toute la production théâtrale de Montherlant’.6 The violence of Montherlant’s theatre may be interpreted using Melanie Klein’s theories, which consider the child’s aggressive fantasies. The young person in the plays acts out infantile sadism in a destructive fantasy aimed at the parent figure and provoked by him; the adolescent or child is then motivated by feelings of reparation, wishing to restore the destroyed object. The act of reparation is accomplished in the adult’s reaching a form of transcendence in union with the divine, through the intervention of the child. In the plays set during World War II, the child is destroyed and in the historical plays the movement is reversed. Heroism gives way in Montherlant’s theatrical writings to a depiction of the child’s and adult’s oscillation between the ‘paranoidschizoid position’ and the ‘depressive position’, delineating not only human weakness and tragedy, but also the repetition of the familial paradigm of sadism, destruction and reparation. The sense of elevation experienced by his characters forms part of Montherlant’s system of values, as he sees the improvement of the individual as the reason for living. Adversity and generosity are inherited from the Romans, as characteristics, which mark a point 5 6

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Ibid., p. 236. Lancrey-Javal, Robert, Le Langage dramatique de ‘La Reine morte’, Presses universitaires de France, Paris, 1995, p. 33.

when the protagonist demonstrates the best of himself, as an honest and pure being: Que m’ont apporté les Romains « historiques » ? Deux au moins de ces apports doivent être signalés ici, parce qu’ils ont trouvé place dans La Guerre civile. L’un est le sens, le goût, et comme l’attrait de l’adversité haute, adversité qui finit par être le lot d’eux tous avec peu d’exceptions; adolescent, je souhaitais presque l’adversité, ensemble pour la surmonter, pour y devenir pareil à eux, et parce qu’elle est encore une forme du bonheur, en vous forçant à accomplir plus d’humain [...]. L’autre est, d’une façon très inattendue, ce que je ne puis m’empêcher d’appeler la chevalerie romaine. Etrange: la plupart de ces hommes atroces ont un instant de générosité, l’instant du « retour de leur grande âme », et, si horrible à tant d’égards qu’ait été la société antique, elle présenta toujours ces instants de générosité comme dignes d’admiration [...]. (PT, 1308)

These remarks direct our attention to adversity and to the noble moment as elements of Montherlant’s philosophy. The occurrence of adversity, and, indeed, a deliberate creation of adversity by the character where it does not already exist, maps the Montherlant hero’s movement towards achieving the state of elevation. The generosity, which redeems the hero, is a momentary virtue, almost idiosyncratic, but constitutes a sign of nobility. The general consensus of critics is of a theatre of human realism, where the heroism of the adult character is, in the words of Cruickshank, ‘in some way thwarted or rendered sterile’. The tragic situation arises, in every play, from the rupture of a valued relationship between an older person and a younger person: ‘Le thème du rejet d’un être par un autre être, parce que le premier a démérité, hante l’oeuvre de Montherlant qui note, d’autre part: « Le sacrifice d’Abraham est décidément dans mon théâtre une obsession! »’ (PT, XXXI) Betrayal and sacrifice are engendered by infantile sadistic fantasy, enacting destruction of the mother, in the case of Inès, destruction of the child in Demain il fera jour and Fils de personne and of the father in Le Cardinal d’Espagne and Le Maître de Santiago. Montherlant’s theatre of the family deals primarily with conflict. The ‘drama of the child’ is put on stage. The theatre serves to heighten the family conflict and to draw the spectator into the events enacted before him. The different characters are different aspects of the self, where human interaction may be interpreted through the dilemmas and conflicts going on within the individual consciousness. The spectator is drawn to the parents and children portrayed on Montherlant’s stage, 101

consciously unwilling to admit that these issues concern him, but unconsciously only too aware that they do. We are inclined to classify families as ‘good’, ‘bad’, ‘normal’ or ‘abnormal’. Such categorization is invalidated by Montherlant’s theatre. In reality, each family, like each individual, contains good and bad, with abnormality necessarily present in every family because of the heterogeneous nature of the unit. Montherlant’s theatre of family conflict is uncomfortable to watch because it does not distance the spectator from the action as Greek family tragedy does. The issues treated are, on the surface, the disintegration of the traditional Western European patriarchal family, the influence of class on family structure and roles, the study of sex differences, sexuality and the complexities of loyalty and patriotism in war. The subtext of the plays is the drama of the human subconscious, where infantile sadistic fantasy, reparation and desire are enacted in a constantly replayed model of destruction, betrayal, death and transcendence. The spectator is drawn inexorably into this drama of the family, which reflects the essence of the human psyche. Montherlant’s theatre recognizes that parental power is limited by the ability of children to interpret their experiences in their own ways. The earliest manifestation of the generation gap, then, is the gap between the selfhood of the growing child and the attempts of other people to control and define them. As an over-zealous admirer of young people, who spent as much time in their company as possible, Montherlant recognizes their fragility and resilience. The plays claim that some young people thrive in conflict situations, as long as the love–hate complexities of the family structure are not too extreme. The playwright attempts to convince us that the problematic aspects of family interactions may lead to the positive emotional development of the child. Hence, Philippe, in the end, finds the courage to leave his mother, to do what he thinks is best. Even Gillou, suppressed as he is, discusses the French political scene at the end of World War II in a well-informed and courageous fashion in Act II, Scene IV of Demain il fera jour.

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Father and Son at War: Fils de personne [1943] and Demain il fera jour [1949]7 These two plays encapsulate Montherlant’s philosophical position in reaction to the Occupation and the Resistance, as well as to the post-war themes of guilt, self-disculpation, disappointment and disillusionment. Montherlant was banned from publishing for one year after the armistice, because of the anti-French sentiments expressed in Le Solstice de juin. On the one hand, the plays present a dark vision of the human condition in which the father’s morality has been undermined by fear, evil and weakness. On the other, the figure of the son enacts the possibility of recovering courage and of living according to heroic values. Fils de personne and Demain il fera jour are set in occupied France and depict the son as a central character who is controlled and, finally, destroyed by the cowardice of the father. Fils de personne is set in Cannes in 1941 and involves three characters: an illegitimate son, Gillou and his parents, Marie Sandoval and Georges Carrion. The boy has been brought up by his mother, meets his father again at the age of twelve and the play relates a period during their renewed acquaintance, when Georges belatedly takes charge of his family. He is, however, bitterly disappointed in Gillou, who does not live up to his expectations. Incidents of family conflict are presented in which the father’s passionate love for his son, contrasted with his disappointment, creates tragedy not only in the family situation, but, more poignantly, within himself. The play ends when Marie leaves Georges to take Gillou to Le Havre. Georges disapproves of her action, which is dangerous for both herself and her son, but abandons Gillou for the second time, considering him unworthy of paternal love and attention. Montherlant notes his reversal of the victim’s role: ‘c’est Georges lui-même que Georges sacrifie, c’est, en lui-même, son amour pour Gillou, que Georges saigne et sacrifie quand, à la fin de la pièce, il renonce à son fils. [...] Il n’y a pas assassinat; il y a suicide’. (PT, 268) Demain il fera jour, set in Paris at the end of World War II, forms the sequel to Fils de Personne. The characters have developed over a period of time; Georges particularly, has changed because of his wartime 7

A contemporary commentary of these plays is provided by Saint Pierre, Michel de, Montherlant, bourreau de soi-même, Gallimard, Paris, 1949.

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experiences; he is haunted by fear and his own cowardice. The continuing hostility between Georges and Marie makes Gillou the victim of their selfishness. Gillou attempts to break the fatal pattern of family structure and his own submissive role, by joining the Resistance. His bid for freedom is an act of autonomy, which underlines the act as the significant factor in man’s attempt to deal with the absurdity of existence. Failure of his enterprise occurs because he informs his parents of his decision and waits for their approval. Finally, Georges sacrifices his son, hoping that by allowing him to join the Resistance, he will atone for his own sin of collaboration and avoid persecution. Homosexual desire informs the destructive instinct and the playing out of passion in this family drama set in wartime France. Montherlant admired Nazi virility and contrasted it with what he called the ‘midinette’ mentality of the French. These two plays are an important contribution to French Second World War literature, in that they explore a divisive and humiliating episode in French history by pitting a father and son against one another. Georges’ vile character and Gillou’s virtuous and heroic one personify the problem of the existence of Good and Evil, presented in the extreme circumstances of the Occupation. Montherlant demonstrates that man is both admirable and despicable, but places his hope for the future in the hands of the young and in their instinct to move towards nobility, even when the corruption and selfishness of parents blocks their way. Pierre Sipriot confirms that Fils de personne and Demain il fera jour are based on Montherlant’s involvement with a mother and two sons, alluded to in his correspondence with Roger Peyrefitte as ‘la famille N’.8 In 1939 Montherlant made the acquaintance of a young boy called Edmond, nicknamed Doudou, and of his younger brother, called Roland and known as Roro. Montherlant’s relationship with this family, whom he befriended and financially supported between 1939 and 1941, provided the raw material for Fils de Personne and Demain il fera jour. Their friendship may well have continued over a longer period than that indicated by his letters to Peyrefitte, but the last letter mentioning the family is dated 5 December 1941. 8

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Montherlant, Henry de–Peyrefitte, Roger. Correspondance, Laffont, Paris, 1983, p. 43. Montherlant’s friend, Elisabeth Zehrfuss, stated in an interview, dated 24.3.93, that the real name of this family was Brunet.

The triangular pattern of behaviour within the family forms the framework of both Fils de personne and Demain il fera jour. The emotions portrayed within this structure are love, jealousy and fear. Georges rejects his son on two occasions, in the first play because he disapproves of Gillou’s mediocrity and in the second because Georges’ personal integrity has degenerated through circumstance to the extent that he sacrifices his son in the hope of saving his own life. Georges’ fear of mediocrity, weakness, lack of courage and integrity in Fils de personne overwhelms him in Demain il fera jour. He rejects Gillou in Fils de personne for the same reason that Ferrante murders Inès and his unborn grandson in La Reine morte, where the child represents the latent weakness perceived by father and grandfather in their own nature. Each kills weakness in himself. By claiming that Gillou is unworthy of paternal affection: ‘Gillou, depuis trois mois que vous êtes à Cannes, je te le dis, je n’ai pas eu de bonheur de toi. Tu n’es pas comme tu devrais être; […] Je le sais, je devrais t’aimer davantage. Mais comment, tandis que je te vois si indigne?’ (PT, 253), Georges projects his own inadequacies onto his son, accusing Gillou of not meriting love, subconsciously underlining his own lack of self esteem. In Fils de personne, Georges constantly refers to Gillou’s mediocrity and lack of quality, deploring his bad taste in literature and the cinema, mocking him for never having heard of Balzac and for being easily amused by farcical films. (PT, 244–245) Yet in Demain il fera jour, when Gillou has matured, the father continues to undervalue his son’s new-found seriousness and sense of responsibility: MARIE: vous reprochiez à Gillou, il y a quatre ans, d’être « de mauvaise qualité ». Maintenant il a une idée jolie: il veut servir. Et ce n’est pas encore cela. Vous avez l’air de détester de retrouver en lui la belle insouciance, et même les sentiments assez élevés que vous aviez à dix-huit ans. Serait-ce jalousie de votre propre jeunesse? Ou jalousie qu’il veuille faire oeuvre d’homme? Parlons franc: qu’il veuille en faire plus que vous? (PT, 569) GILLOU: Ce qui me frappe surtout, c’est comme papa, qui était si rigide il y a quatre ans, l’est moins aujourd’hui.[...] Et il y a deux mois, quand je ramassais les cadavres dans les équipes de secours, et quand je lui ai dit: « Ça rend dur, ça fait du bien » – et, je t’assure, je le disais sans la moindre pose, – il a haussé les épaules. (PT, 574)

Georges’ decision to allow Gillou to join the Resistance marks the climax of the play and the degeneration of Georges’ character. Initially 105

he is opposed to the idea, claiming that while he no longer loves Gillou, he does not wish to see him die. His change of heart indicates that fear has eroded all nobility and morality. Golsan notes that tragedy in Montherlant’s theatre lies in ‘the destruction of the characters’ exalted self-image as a result of the failure of their heroic projects’, applying this analysis to La Reine morte, Port Royal and Le Cardinal d’Espagne. It is equally true of Georges, the most unheroic of Montherlant’s theatrical characters. He professes to have a rigid code of behaviour to which his son, on pain of rejection and withdrawal of paternal love, must conform. Predictably, Georges fails to live up to the ideal standards he sets for his son, and the son, in turn, pays for the father’s failure, because, through transposition, he has become the father. The parents’ destruction of the child in these plays is fuelled by jealousy. Montherlant explores the entire gamut of parental failings, which trap and eventually destroy the child. The movement of acceptance followed by rejection of Gillou by Georges occurs as the son fulfils or fails to fulfil what Golsan calls the ‘hero’s exalted self-image’. Gillou is manipulated by both parents; he is caught in the trap of their mutual blame for not loving enough [Marie’s blame of Georges] and of loving too much [Georges’ accusation of Marie]. He attempts to escape from this untenable situation by retreating into his own world of philately, magazines and films, but he is still primarily concerned with his parents’ love for him and whether his parents do or do not love him. In Demain il fera jour, Gillou, because he is older, is more aware of his parents’ inadequacies, even if he still cannot cope with them and even though he continues to be baffled by his father’s contradictions. Contrary to Georges’ assessment in Act I, Scene I, he is mature and intelligent enough to perceive that his father is less strict and expects less because his personality has been undermined and he risks punishment as a collaborator in the post-war era. Aware, furthermore, of the detrimental effects of his parents’ love or lack of it on his own character, Gillou expresses his wariness of oppressive maternal affection: ‘Mais qu’est-ce que je pourrais faire pour que tu m’aimes un peu moins?’ (PT, 573) and of the fact that even his father’s professed indifference is a form of love: ‘Papa a horreur des jeunes gens: c’est de son âge. Mais, à sa façon, il m’aime autant que toi [Marie]’. (PT, 574) His statement, which equates maternal and paternal love, is a double condemnation. Even at this 106

point, Gillou is caught in a trap. He is able to argue convincingly with his father during their last conversation, holding his own intelligently and reasonably, but, in spite of this new, mature lucidity, he cannot foresee his father’s betrayal. In these plays, the child is victim both of his parents’ love for him and of their egoism. His mother leads him into danger in the last scene of Fils de personne when she takes him with her to join her lover in Le Havre, which is being bombed by the Allied forces. His father condemns him to death in Demain il fera jour by allowing him to join the Resistance. By their respective natures, Georges and Marie are already fated if not to a tragic, at least to a futile and mediocre existence. Because of his gentle nature, Gillou too is doomed, by his parents’ relentless pursuit of egotistical satisfaction. It is significant that each parent changes their mind as to whether or not the son should join the Resistance. At first, Marie approves, both in order to please him, as Georges claims, but also because she is not fully aware of the danger. Georges, who is only too aware of the risk, initially opposes his son’s desire to serve as a Resistance fighter, then, to Gillou’s surprise both parents change their minds. This about-face is typical of the uncertain atmosphere within the family; neither parent is consistent in thought or action, resulting in confusing role-models for the child. The reason for their constantly changing stance is their hostility towards one another. In their state of permanent opposition, enhanced by their competition for Gillou’s affections, no project or plan can reach fruition. Familial conflict reflects the situation in occupied France, where factions were fighting amongst themselves and the insidious atmosphere of fear and humiliation, together with uncertainty and changing loyalties, led to betrayal, mistrust and suppressed guilt, present in French society, even today. Georges and Marie’s conversations are always hostile, never conciliatory and certainly, never tender. Tenderness, even towards Gillou, is strictly limited in the case of Georges, who does not allow himself the luxury of indulging in expressions of affection. The incident of Gillou’s falling asleep on the couch in Fils de personne (PT, 222–228) is the only time Georges expresses his feelings of love for his son whose temporary absence in sleep gives his father the license to love him. The scene is referred to in Demain il fera jour (PT, 589) and clearly symbolizes sleep 107

as a presentiment of death. It further represents repressed homosexual desire; the father figure hides sexual desire in refusal and rejection. Marie, on the other hand, loves too much. She is not sufficiently distanced to make the right judgements. Both parents are detrimental to the well-being of the child, whether through loving or expressing love inadequately, or through loving too sentimentally. Events within these two plays develop along a series of ‘wrong’ decisions: leaving Cannes for Le Havre, leaving Le Havre for Paris, allowing Gillou to join the Resistance. The plays were not well received because the audience recognized themselves all too accurately in Georges and Marie and wanted to escape from rather than confront issues related to collaboration and the German occupation. The audience found the theatrical representation of French collaboration and concomitant familial conflict disturbing. Gillou attempts reparation, trying to make his parents whole again; Marie too adopts the role of saviour pitted against the destruction of Georges. Krémer interprets the pattern of behaviour in the plays as being due to underlying passions of incest and homosexuality; its cause is also the climate of secret shame felt by the French people during and after the German occupation. Punishment is enacted in the form of patricide–matricide in La Reine morte, La Guerre civile and Le Cardinal d’Espagne9 and infanticide in Fils de personne and Demain il fera jour where Georges imposes retribution on himself for collaboration by betraying his innocent son, who is punished in his place: ‘Si j’ai été coupable! […] Coupable envers lui. Coupable envers vous. Coupable envers tous. Aussi coupable, plus coupable qu’aucun de ceux que j’ai envoyés en prison et déshonorés. Toujours coupable, et jamais puni. Et maintenant puni dans mon fils’. (PT, 589) The subtext of the play expresses sublimated homosexual desire, an argument supported by the real life experience of Montherlant’s relationship with ‘la famille N’, where the older man was the lover and not the father of the ‘son’. Georges’ suppressed passion is disguised by his severity and intolerance, as he adopts a false role as Gillou’s educator. The metalanguage of stage directions reveals that each time a movement of tenderness is initiated by the child, the ‘father’ starts to reciprocate, then stops himself, by resorting to a speech on Gillou’s education in order to 9

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Krémer, op. cit., pp. 70–71.

cover his fear or embarrassment: ‘Je t’aimerais bien peu, si je ne faisais pas attention à tout ce que tu dis. Enfin tu es gentil quand même. Il lui passe la main dans les cheveux’. (PT, 237) The educator role, which Georges assumes to cover his true feelings, recalls that of the éraste and the éromane in ancient Greek civilization. Greek pederasty has its source in a pedagogical system, whereby the older member of the homosexual couple is the educator and the protector of the younger. The older man’s duty is to lead his companion into manhood, to teach him, bringing him to the point of maturity, when the young man is able to take on full social responsibility and the homosexual relationship ends.10 Georges takes on the role of Gillou’s educator [subconsciously linking his role to that of the éraste] and, because of disappointed desire, he rationalizes that the will to be educated is absent in Gillou. Georges may reject his ‘son’, having rationalized his subconscious desire. Motivated by fear of rejection, Georges withdraws his love. In Demain il fera jour, Gillou is lucid, mature, more than able to argue on the same intellectual plane as his father, a hero of the people and of his own generation, more genuinely human and less aristocratic than Alban de Bricoule. Georges’ withdrawal of love manifests itself in Fils de personne by his constant refusal of physical contact with the child, who time and again reaches out to touch him, only to be pushed away: ‘Il tend les bras vers Georges pour l’embrasser. Georges s’écarte avec brusquerie, puis quitte le canapé et va s’asseoir dans un fauteuil éloigné’. (PT, 221) Although Gillou dies, his father is left to a living death. Murder and suicide are the outcome of this drama of passion, where desire, jealousy and war destroy the lives of the protagonists. Parallels may be drawn with the accursed family of Atreus in classical tragedy. Like Orestes, Gillou ‘murders’ his mother, sacrificing her to his father’s honour by telling Georges about her lover in Le Havre. Georges sacrifices his son in the same way as Agamemnon his daughter (PT, 265) and, like Clytemnestra, Marie condemns her son by following her lover. Montherlant comments on the doomed nature of the family: ‘Certains êtres, s’ils trouvaient le fil d’Ariane, l’entortilleraient et s’y prendraient les pieds; rien d’autre. Prisonniers, irrémédiablement.[…] 10

Sergent, Bernard, L’Homosexualité dans la mythologie grecque, Préface de Georges Dumézil, Payot, Paris, 1984, pp. 16–17.

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les êtres qui nagent toujours à contre-courant, dansent toujours à contretemps’. (PT, 266) The family is the labyrinth. ‘Le fil d’Ariane’ is transformed, in Montherlant’s theatre, from a rescuing device to a trap. The tortuous ensnarements of the spiralling trap suck the characters into a fatal pattern of behaviour, which destroys nobility and virtue. The image of the labyrinth and of the twisting rope illustrate the fact that each family member acts out a fatally destructive scenario; inevitably, they fail to find a way out of the labyrinth of emotions, which govern their words and actions: ‘L’obstacle au bonheur est tout intérieur: c’est le mécanisme masochiste (l’autodestruction) qui est à l’origine de la pulsion mortifère’.11 Fils de personne and Demain il fera jour concentrate on the situation of the passive child at the mercy of his parents. The emphasis is shifted in L’Exil and La Ville dont le prince est un enfant where the autonomous child, although influenced by adults, is essentially in control and makes his own decisions.

Anarchy and Matricide in L’Exil [1929] The balance of power is altered in a second group of plays, where the parent figures attempt to rule but where the son rebels and acts autonomously. The child heroes of L’Exil and La Ville dont le prince est un enfant present the action through their own eyes and the adults act only as a corollary to the young person’s decisions. These two plays are similar to the Alban de Bricoule cycle of novels [Les Bestiaires, Les Garçons, Le Songe], where the youthful protagonist enacts the heroic fantasy. The events of L’Exil progress in three stages, all concerning Philippe’s decision whether or not to volunteer for the army. The principal characters are Geneviève de Presles, a widow, her son, Philippe, and his friend, Bernard Sénac. Philippe at first decides against military service, even though he desperately wants to follow his friend, Sénac, into battle. His mother’s emotional blackmail sways him: ‘Si tu lui dis oui, tu me tues’. (PT, 35) The second occasion for refusing to volunteer is the wounded Sénac’s return to Paris. This time, Philippe’s 11

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Krémer, op. cit., p.97.

mother implores him to join the army, because she is afraid of losing his love. He refuses, admitting that his motives are personal rather than patriotic. (PT, 52) Finally, realizing that his friendship with Sénac has been destroyed through their different experience of the war, Philippe decides to volunteer, ending the play with the words: ‘Adieu. Je pars pour me faire une âme comme la sienne [celle de Sénac], pour le retrouver au retour’. (PT, 65) Throughout the play, the parent is subordinate to the child. Even though Geneviève de Presles initially imposes her will by persuading her son not to volunteer, he then exerts his power over her, punishing her for making him take this route. This is the reverse of the power structure between adult and child depicted in Fils de personne and Demain il fera jour. These two plays are set during the Second World War and L’Exil during the First World War. The social situation of the plays are different in that Fils and Demain portray the lower middle class social stratum and L’Exil the upper middle class, where the characters do not work for a living. The greatest difference lies in the personality of the young character. Gillou is passive, accused of mediocrity. Philippe is anything but mediocre. He has high self-esteem, intelligence, and a forceful personality. All three plays examine the problematics of morality in a war situation, dealing with the opposition between patriotism and personal interests and highlighting the overriding importance of feelings in the decisions taken by human beings. The interest of L’Exil lies in the fact that mother and son reveal each other’s true motives. In the eyes of society, Geneviève de Presles is a heroine, who works selflessly in the hospitals and ambulances, is admired and respected by her peers and even receives an honorary citation from the Ministry. (PT, 45–46) Philippe proves that her patriotism is skin deep. Geneviève admits privately that she is not prepared to sacrifice her son to a set of ideals, which she only partially believes in: ‘Les soldats de l’ambulance, ce sont les autres. Mais toi, tu es quelque chose d’unique’. (PT, 33) In all the war plays, Montherlant attempts to convince his audience that appearances are deceptive and people are neither heroic nor cowardly but both, making a plea for the complexity of the human being, in anticipation of post-war retribution against those whose position was less than equivocal.

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Geneviève’s suffocatingly close relationship with Philippe allows her to see that his motivation is not what it seems. Philippe wishes to enlist, not to fulfil a sense of duty, as he claims, but to accompany his dear friend, Sénac. He yearns to extend their idyllic schoolboy friendship to the battlefield so that their bond will be strengthened by this shared experience. Montherlant is concerned with the personal rather than the public, demonstrating that duty and patriotism are empty ideals, when compared with the bond of love, which unites human beings. The individual is loyal to his self only within the bounds of privacy; his public persona makes up reasons to satisfy his private needs. The characters are motivated by their feelings for one another, rather than any high-flown sense of duty. Ideals are sacrificed, in this theatre of the family to feelings, a concept expressed by Montherlant as ‘l’idée que les gens agissent pour des sentiments passionnels, plus que pour des abstractions’. (PT, 12) Love as portrayed in these plays, fascinates the reader or spectator, precisely because of its complex nature, containing love, hate, jealousy, suspicion, distrust. Just as Fils de personne and Demain il fera jour emphasize the dark aspects of family life and of the life of the Parisian community during the Occupation, L’Exil and La Ville dont le prince est un enfant provide a more positive view of the family. In fact, the gamut of possible forms of love is treated in the plays. Parental devotion is destructive, as is filial love. Geneviève destroys her previously happy relationship with Philippe. Because of her emotional blackmail, he becomes morose and uncommunicative. He resents his mother and despises himself for not being able to defy her. Montherlant’s theatrical depiction presents individuals as essentially selfish. Geneviève prevents Philippe from enlisting for selfish reasons – she has lost several members of her family and does not want to be left alone. Georges encourages Gillou to join the Resistance for selfish reasons, to save his own skin. Marie is so sentimentally attached to her son that she cannot see the dangers involved in membership of the Resistance. All three parents fail their children, in their desire to satisfy their own needs. Montherlant’s theatre reflects the tragedy and drama of family life and shocks the audience because it debunks the ideal family as a myth. The real family is full of conflict, jealousy, selfishness, love and hate, of human weakness and folly. Georges, Marie and Gillou are destroyed; 112

the beloved son casts off Geneviève. Only in La Ville do the adult characters survive together with the children. This is because, like its prose counterpart, Les Garçons, La Ville is essentially a fairy-tale. It has an unreal quality which is absent in the other family plays. Parental or pedagogical power is wielded not in the interests of children but for the sake of power itself. As Foucault argues, sexuality is controlled and monitored from the earliest age, as are other manifestations of individuality. The parent or educator’s role, far from benefiting the young persons, is to control and define.

Rebellion and Reparation in La Ville dont le prince est un enfant [1951] In L’Exil and La Ville dont le prince est un enfant the young person challenges and overcomes parental power. La Ville re-enacts the intimate friendship which marked Montherlant, where two school friends, André Sevrais, sixteen years old, and Serge Souplier, fourteen years old love one another. One of the masters, the Abbé de Pradts, is attracted to Souplier and is jealous of his friendship with Sevrais. He makes Sevrais promise to refrain from physical intimacy with the younger boy. Sevrais agrees, arranges to meet Souplier in secret in the school tuck shop, to discuss the terms of their new relationship, is discovered by the Abbé and expelled. The Headmaster of the College, the Abbé Pradeau de la Halle, who is aware of de Pradts affection for Souplier, expels the younger boy, Souplier, and forbids de Pradts to see him again. The friendship between the two boys is idealized and the Abbé de Pradts’ deceitful actions are contrasted with Sevrais’ purity and honesty. La Ville dont le prince est un enfant is an intricate piece of theatre, in which ecclesiastics are acting in loco parentis. The child hero is victorious over the adults, when he is expelled, but he has internalized adult authority and, in an act of what Melanie Klein calls ‘reparation’ he sacrifices contact with the beloved to a higher form of being. Sevrais is portrayed as purer than the adults, with his own code of honour, to which he adheres regardless of the consequences. Even more so than Philippe in L’Exil, Sevrais challenges adult authority asserting his selfhood over their imposed image. The drama is played out through love and jealousy, 113

since Sevrais and de Pradts are rivals for Souplier’s affections. The priest engineers Sevrais’ expulsion, in order to get rid of a rival; justice is enacted by the Superior, who insists that Souplier should also be expelled and that the Abbé de Pradts should agree never to see him again. Ironically, this punishment is exactly what de Pradts had asked of Sevrais, except that the boy accepted his fate with greater grace than the priest. The true innocent, who acts most naturally, is the child, Souplier. He perceives the corruption of the others, is amused when de Pradts lies twice to avoid taking a telephone call (PT, 681–683) and is offended when Sevrais asks him to lie. (PT, 697) Each boy is portrayed as a hero in his own way. Souplier’s characteristic naturalness and purity are admired; Montherlant, as parent–writer, compares him to Gillou: ‘Gillou et Souplier ont le même âge. Gillou, fort en thème, est un médiocre. Souplier, insupportable, n’en est pas un’.12 The narrative is similar to that of Montherlant’s novella, Thrasylle, in that the boys are separated within a moral order and eschew carnal relations in favour of spiritual redemption. In Kleinian terms, the prodigal, who gives up physical relations with the beloved, repairs the damage wreaked upon the parent by the act of rebellion. This play marks a return to the fantastic heroism of Montherlant’s early novels as Sevrais’ integrity and unswerving loyalty to his own code of honour make him a hero, especially when compared to the adults in the play, corrupted as they are, by their complicity in the social system. Souplier, is the first to recognize what will happen to the friends when they are discovered together in the tuck shop storeroom. He twice declares: ‘Nous ne nous reverrons plus maintenant’. (PT, 714) This instinctive knowledge is acted on: he extends his hand to his beloved friend, in a gesture indicating that they will indeed never meet again. The Abbé de Pradts is blind to his emotions and weaknesses; the two boys are lucid, the younger more so than the elder. Their lucidity, courage, energy, poise and sense of justice13 lead to their expulsion. Sacrifice, refusal, renunciation, abandonment, betrayal, all these are

12 13

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Montherlant, La Tragédie sans masque, op. cit., p. 54. Golsan, Richard J., Service inutile: A Study of the Tragic in the Theatre of Henry de Montherlant, Mississippi University Press, 1988, pp. 47–49.

present in the separation of the friends. These elements haunt Montherlant’s work, as part of a movement towards perfection: Je m’aperçois qu’on retrouve, dans toute mon oeuvre [...] le thème de l’être qui rompt avec un autre être, pour ce que celui-ci a démérité à ses yeux. [...] Dans ce que j’écris, il y a toujours quelqu’un qu’on envoie par-dessus bord, sur un jugement de valeur, après l’avoir aimé plus ou moins longtemps. (PT, 266)

The pattern of betrayal, sacrifice and rupture in the novels is manifested in the plays which follow a similar scenario, except that the hero is a mature man, drawn towards stoicism and nihilism as a means of dealing with the absurd. In the early novels, difference is rejected when the beloved friend acts autonomously to the hero. In the plays, a more realistic scenario is enacted involving human tragedy. The ageing hero projects his flaws onto his son, companion or lover, whom he perceives as his younger self, and then banishes him. The pederastic relationship forms the framework for a complex psychological process of creation, which is in itself, an act of reparation. The pattern of betrayal and rejection is broken in Les Garçons and in the dramatic representation of the novel, La Ville, where sacrifice is motivated by ‘service inutile’, a cornerstone of Montherlant’s philosophy. (PE, 571–592) Sevrais is well aware that the Abbé’s arguments are ill-founded and that his own influence on Souplier is not harmful. He, nevertheless, agrees never to see his friend again, in order to deliberately sacrifice that which is most dear to him. A well- known Montherlantian dictum, ‘Je n’ai que l’idée que je me fais de moi pour me soutenir sur les mers du néant’, (PE, 598) clarifies the decision, in terms of the author’s philosophy. The individual’s purpose in living according to a set of principles involves responsibility to the self: man is responsible to no-one but himself and this is the reason to live life well. The idea of service which is futile and which is enacted in order to pursue a heroic enterprise, is based on man’s quest for nobility. Sevrais sacrifices physical contact with his beloved friend to an ideal of the best in himself, and their loving friendship is preserved forever in time. The boys will never grow old, change or grow apart [as do Philippe and Sénac]. Sacrifice is motivated by an aspiration towards the ideal noble self, a conscious or unconscious desire to preserve the perfect relationship between two near-perfect beings.

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The young person of L’Exil and La Ville dont le prince est un enfant is a moral man, unlike his older counterparts, who aspire to perfection and are aware of their failure. The older protagonists are ‘less than all-powerful, less than adamantly convinced of their rightness, and less than supremely endowed with absolute perfection. It is precisely their lack of perfection that permits us to see them as entirely human’.14 The youthful hero does not have to confront the contradictions inherent in his own character or those present in the oppositions of the outside world. The boy heroes, petrified in time and in a world of fantasy achieve nobility, whereas the older protagonists, grounded in reality, are lucid failures. L’Exil and La Ville are not tragic plays; they are idealistic representations of youth which is victorious in its battle against society. In these plays, the cult of youth triumphs; it ennobles the young and preserves them in a kind of Utopia of the spirit.

Death and the Maiden in Celles qu’on prend dans les bras [1950] Celles qu’on prend dans les bras stands apart from the above plays, being neither a family play nor one based on the pederastic model. It presents an ageing, tragic hero, depicts two failed heterosexual relationships and is set in the twentieth century: ‘c’est ici la passion amoureuse qui parle, la passion telle que la connaissent les races méditerranéennes, avec plus de violence encore chez mon héros que chez mon héroine’. (PT, 665) The playwright makes much of the fact that the triangular nature of heterosexual passionate love is essentially tragic, but also appears ridiculous. Ravier, a man of fifty-eight is in love with Christine, a girl of eighteen, whilst Mademoiselle Andriot, a woman of sixty, is in love with Ravier. The culmination of the action occurs when Christine seeks Ravier’s help on behalf of her father, offering her body as payment. In this way, she places herself in the position of being grateful to Ravier. After first sending her away, he possesses Christine, knowing that he will suffer through his love for her.

14

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Johnson, Robert, Henry de Montherlant, Twayne, New York, 1968, p. 101.

The heterosexual nature of the love relationships distinguishes this play from most of Montherlant’s theatre, where same-sex love is thinly disguised as paternal–filial love. The power relations are, nevertheless, similar to those portrayed in L’Exil and La Ville since the young person dominates the older one. Christine is a prickly young woman whose surrender to Ravier seems, at first, at odds with her initial proud selfassurance and refusal of friendship. Celles qu’on prend dans les bras constitutes tragedy in the ‘eternal triangle’ mode, portraying the futility and destruction of unreciprocated passion, but the issue of gender, of sexuality and its relationship with power governs the action. The dichotomy between male and female and between old age and youth provides the tension: ‘Despite her seven years of devoted friendship, tenderness, intelligence, and sensibility, Mlle. Andriot is even closer to death than Ravier himself. Christine, on the other hand, represents to Ravier the youth and vigorous, innocent enjoyment of life which he already feels is slipping away from him’.15 Montherlant is at pains to point out that passionate love is not earned, but engendered gratuitously. Mlle Andriot is far too dedicated to Ravier for his liking and her love is oppressively maternal. The attraction of the other, in this as in all the plays, is their mercurial quality, the ability constantly to elude the grasp of the lover. Christine’s betrayal does not have to be provoked nor is it enacted as part of the plot [as in Camerino’s and Cardona’s act of political betrayal] because it is present in her every word and gesture. Christine’s surrender to Ravier is not inconsistent with her pride because she sees herself as repaying a debt and thereby remaining equal with the man. Ravier will save her father from prison. Christine is a modern heroine, an independent woman, aware of the debilitating effect of passionate love, both for the lover and the beloved. She is anxious to play neither role: ‘je n’ai de sentiment pour personne. Pour personne. Il est probable que cela viendra un jour: je sais bien que je suis condamnée’. (PT, 637) By giving herself to Ravier, she retains her independence. Curiosity and a degree of desire are not entirely absent from her act. As Ravier rightly predicts, she will leave him and he will suffer, although his last words are optimistic; he hopes 15

Batchelor, op. cit., p. 107.

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to enslave her by awakening her desire with his skill as a lover, temporarily closing his mind to the certainty that she will leave. Christine is other to Ravier and Ravier’s recognition of difference makes him more stable than his counterparts, though equally doomed. Ravier’s passion is declared publicly, whereas that of most of the other characters is private and only obvious to the reader or member of the audience who is particularly sensitive to the import of certain pieces of dialogue or stage direction. The mask worn to cover passionate love is part of a taxonomy of secrecy adopted because the playwright chose to disguise homosexual love as paternal love. Celles qu’on prend dans les bras lacks the complexity of the family plays and the portrayal of political power and religious issues of the historical plays is absent. It functions, nevertheless, within the same context of human passion.

Human Heroism In Montherlant’s theatre, the accent is on the emotional life of the hero. The immolation of the hero is caused by the destruction of his love relationship, as well as by loss of political or social power. Passion is central to the hero’s life: that of Georges for Gillou, that of Ferrante for Pedro and then Dino del Moro, that of Philippe for Sénac and Geneviève for Philippe, that of Malatesta for Camerino and Isotta for Malatesta, that of Don Alvaro for the Absolute in the image of God and of Mariana for Don Alvaro, that of the Abbé de Pradts and Sevrais for Souplier, that of Don Juan for adolescent girls, that of Cisneros for Cardona, that of Pompée for his son, that of Soeur Françoise for Soeur Angélique. Montherlant’s theatre emulates the despair of the human condition by portraying the simultaneous destruction of every facet of the hero’s life. His passionate involvement is of a particular kind, the passion of a mature person for someone who is very young. It is not sufficient to rationalize desire by suggesting that the ageing hero wishes a youthful companion in the hour of his death. The explanation goes much deeper than that of mere companionship as the lover wishes to become the beloved, or at least those parts of the beloved, which are most desired. The fact is that the ageing hero wishes to possess the young person 118

because he is no longer innocent, young or enjoys living. By desiring the being who has these characteristics, even without possessing him physically, the hero holds the concept of innocence, youth, the ability to enjoy life, inside his own mind or spirit. This idea of re-discovering the self in the repossession of childhood and adolescence, is expressed in the Carnets as: ‘C’est encore une forme de la possession de soi-même, que nous échapper de notre être, pour ressortir dans les créatures que nous aimons’. (PE, 1155) Montherlant’s philosophy argues that the human being takes up the struggle of living because he/she is sustained by the pursuit of nobility, involving a search for beauty experienced in the feelings of one human being for another. Time and again in his notes, commentaries and journals, he stresses that mutual physical pleasure, affection, tenderness and genuine caring make life worth living. The author’s wariness of our misconceptions of love only underlines the importance it plays in his life and work. References to love, totalling thirty-seven, far outnumber those to any other subject in the Carnets dated from 1930 to 1944. By feeling desire, love or sexual passion for another, the tragic hero reveals his true self to the audience: ‘The need to revere and the need to destroy the ever-present child is an insoluble dilemma [...] In play after play, youthful characters are evoked and then obliterated, physically or emotionally, by an older male protagonist who is then himself destroyed by his own conflicting needs’.16 The nihilistic proclivity of the father figure in these plays is balanced by a more positive attitude demonstrated by the young person, who refuses to be dominated by life’s meaninglessness. The concept of heroism propounded by Montherlant’s early novels is considerably modified in these theatrical writings. The drama of the family, with the familiar elements of Greek theatre, relates to the Oedipal theme in an innovative way. In the plays the ideal heroism of the early novels is abandoned for a more realistic portrayal of the human condition. The form of heroism changes with the presentation of a man, who is not divine, but is completely human, prey to vanity, pride, fear and 16

Arnold, Josephine V. ‘Montherlant and the Problem of the Aging Pederast’, in Wyatt-Brown, Anne M. & Rossen, Janice. Aging and Gender in Literature: Studies in Creativity, University Press of Virginia, Charlottesville, 1993, p. 193.

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cowardice. Death is a major preoccupation, as the most important influence on life. In a world which is absurd and where destiny is predetermined by one’s character, the only act of domination over life is to live it as fully as possible – to love, to fail, to die in the knowledge of having been true to oneself. In old age Montherlant returns to the novel form by creating an anti-hero, the opposite of Alban de Bricoule. Le Chaos et la nuit and Un Assassin est mon maître portray a central figure who is isolated from love and passion resulting in a process of metamorphosis, where he changes the nihilistic experience into a new voyage of discovery. The perverse, complex beings of Montherlant’s theatre express the intricacy of human nature, particularly in the way it operates in relation to passion: ‘Les vieillards meurent parce qu’ils ne sont plus aimés’. (PE, 1191) Their tragedy is that they either fail to experience or know that they will never again experience the joyful human contact expressed in the following passage: Le contour si exact de ce visage et de ce cou si purs, sur le coussin sombre, et ce corps si pur lui aussi, ce visage clair et reposé, si doucement offert, et tout ce qui se prolonge de bon derrière lui: l’affection, la sécurité, quatre ans et demi de cette affection et de cette sécurité, et n’avoir eu, en quatre ans et demi, pas un reproche à adresser... On sort de ce monde, et on rentre dans le monde des indifférents, des enquiquineurs, et des méchants. C’est le monde de ce visage qui vous permet de ne pas mourir de l’autre; c’est lui qui vous justifie la terre. (PE, 1069)

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Chapter IV Humanist Existentialism: Action or Contemplation? Odysseus drew the old man fainting to his breast and held him there And cradled like driftwood the bones of his dwindling father. [Michael Longley, Laertes]

The Historical Plays The family plays show that Montherlant’s early concept of heroism has given way to the establishment of a set of values whereby the individual attempts to counter the absurdity of human existence. Youthful belief in heroism has undergone extensive revision because of the author’s encounters with the terrible destruction of the First World War and the humiliation of the German Occupation during the Second World War, as well as because of the intricacies and demands of human relations. The evolution of Montherlant’s system of values begins at the same starting point as that of other twentieth century authors and thinkers, but his philosophy develops in a different way from those of Sartre, Camus and Malraux. In the historical plays, the notion of the failure of heroism is further explored as the aged, corrupt figure is contrasted with the younger person. Knowledge is valued as the ageing central figure of the plays is made more acutely aware of his faults and weaknesses. His lucidity and the articulation of his approaching downfall and death drives him to ally himself with or to directly oppose the younger man or woman, who represent the more admirable virtues expounded by Montherlant: naturalness, physical beauty, courteous sensitivity to the beloved, beauty of the spirit, in short the possibility of attaining divinity in life on earth through perfecting the self in terms of ‘natural morality’.1 The human being is aware of the absurdity of existence and, furthermore, of the multiplicity of his own nature. Montherlant seeks order through

1

Cruickshank, op. cit., p. 60.

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knowledge: by articulating the human condition, we gain control over chaos. Dramatic conventions are manipulated in Montherlant’s theatre to portray the reality of the human condition: A mainte reprise, Montherlant a raillé les vieilles conventions dramatiques qui postulent l’unité des personnages et leur cohésion. Au nom du réalisme il réclame au contraire pour le dramaturge le droit à l’incohérence et à l’illogisme. (PT, 13; PT, 1389) Il en use avec bonheur dans La Reine morte, Fils de personne, Le Cardinal d’Espagne. C’est parce que, là, cette incohérence du personnage se tient à l’intérieur de certaines limites, celles du réalisme, de la vraisemblance et de l’unité de l’ensemble (puisque l’auteur reste fidèle à cette esthétique). Ailleurs il les transgresse. Le tissu de la pièce se distend, les scènes se suivent sans nécessité et, à l’intérieur même des scènes, le fil semble rompu.2

Saint Robert, in the ‘préface complémentaire’ to the second Pléiade edition of his Théâtre, considers that Montherlant professes a philosophy of distance, which enables man to rise above suffering, attaining a state of grace through absolute honesty with himself. John Batchelor, in his study on Montherlant’s theatre, also recognizes the metaphysical nature of Montherlant’s drama, referring to a ‘movement of elevation’ when distancing or detachment is experienced. He contends that the character in Montherlant’s drama strives towards a perfect state: although a person living in the world may not attain to the ‘point sublime’ or the state implied in ‘Parfait’, the movement of elevation – the movement towards – is possible, as is the opposite movement: the descent. Once a certain point (close to perfection) is reached, instead of remaining static, the person in whom the movement takes place comes down again, and it is the total movement, the rise and fall, which is dramatic. This movement within the individual also corresponds to the ebb and flow of attachment and detachment in relations with those around him.3

Montherlant notes this movement of elevation: ‘[Mes] caractères s’élèvent, par moments, à une certaine hauteur, pour retomber, ensuite, à un niveau moyen ou bas. C’est ce qu’ils ont de commun’.4 Montherlant, as a playwright, was aware that too much honesty encroached on the entertainment value of the play: ‘le public n’aime pas voir les choses

2 3 4

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Robichez, op. cit., pp. 221–222. Batchelor, op. cit., pp. 230–231. Va jouer avec cette poussière, op. cit., p. 136.

comme elles sont, ni dans la vie, ni dans l’art. Ce qu’il aime, c’est la fausse monnaie’. (PT, 1235) In Montherlant’s theatre of the family the spectator reluctantly identifies with the parents portrayed on stage, consciously unwilling to admit that these issues concern him, but unconsciously only too aware that they do. The historical plays present an ageing figure at odds with his social and historical context, with those around him, and, in the final analysis, with himself. Contrary to the family plays, which are set in modern times, these plays are set in or prior to the seventeenth century and are based on historical fact. The playwright adds and subtracts from what is historically known about a person and creates an imaginative re-construction of real events. The characters around whose lives the plays are written are Ferrante, based on the real-life King Alfonso IV of Portugal [La Reine morte], Sigismond Pandolphe Malatesta [Malatesta], Don Alvaro Dabo [Le Maître de Santiago], Soeur Angélique de Saint-Jean [Port-Royal], Don Juan [La Mort qui fait le trottoir (Don Juan)], Cardinal Francisco Ximenez de Cisneros [Le Cardinal d’Espagne] and Pompée [La Guerre civile]. These theatrical works portray a youthful secondary character with whom the central figure has a special relationship. In striving for the higher state of metaphysical being, the central character finds his model in the young person. Madame Zehrfuss, Montherlant’s life-long friend, referred to the author’s childlike qualities, stating that childlike pranks, practical jokes and laughter were an important part of their friendship.5 Through the young characters created by the literary imagination, the author relives his own youth: ‘Montherlant devenait dans ses “chasses” l’adolescent qu’il n’a jamais cessé d’être. [...] Le secret de Montherlant est là: rien n’a d’existence, hormis sa jeunesse. Il a joui d’elle différemment selon les époques de sa vie’.6 In the historical plays, man’s tragic existence is endured by an ageing hero, who, at the end of his life, abandons morality, respect for self, love of his fellow man and commits an evil act, out of weakness and cowardice 5

6

Interview with Mme Elisabeth Zehrfuss, March 1992. See also La Revue des deux mondes, Dossier: Montherlant révisité, octobre 1992, ‘Une amitié incomparable’ par Elisabeth Zehrfuss, pp. 53–64. Sipriot, op. cit., ‘Faust et Eliacin’, p. 710.

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[Ferrante in La Reine morte] or, in spite of the weaknesses inherent in his nature, he almost arbitrarily, commits an act of generosity and courage [the eponymous Malatesta]. In Montherlant’s philosophy, departing from the notion of freedom, the individual acts in full knowledge of his own nature, is responsible for his own actions and is capable of transcendence through generosity of spirit, courage, self-awareness and by acting naturally and honestly. The attainment of perfection close to divinity is, however, a momentary state. It is man’s fate to move upwards towards transcendence and then to descend to a baser level of his nature, where he is incapable of achieving nobility. Man imposes order on an essentially chaotic and meaningless existence through articulating his lucidity or awareness of his condition. The lyrical outpourings of the characters in Montherlant’s theatre constitute the human response to absurdity and to existential freedom.

Action and Contemplation in La Reine morte [1942] and Malatesta [1946] La Reine morte is one of many literary works inspired by the legend of Inès de Castro, who lived at the Portuguese court in the fourteenth century. Ferrante of Portugal, the King, arranges a marriage of convenience between his son Pedro and the Infanta of Navarre. Ferrante learns, as the play progresses, that Pedro and Inès de Castro have already been secretly married and that Inès is expecting a child. The King has Inès murdered for a number of reasons, but, principally, to prove to his courtiers and to himself that he is still a powerful monarch. Ferrante’s tragedy grows as the play advances and he dies in the last scene, abandoned by his followers, his son and the page, Dino del Moro, who all pay tribute to the dead Queen Inès, crowned posthumously. Golsan interprets the play as portraying Montherlant’s conflicting tendencies of force and charity.7 Several critics see the portrayal of Inès, as well as that of other female characters in Montherlant theatre, as redressing the balance of Montherlant’s attitude to 7

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Golsan, Richard J., ‘Henry de Montherlant: Itinerary of an Ambivalent Fascist’, Fascism, Aestetics and culture, Hanover, UP of New England, 1992, pp. 160–163.

women as expressed in Les Jeunes filles. The kind of maternal love demonstrated by Inès is regarded by Debrie-Panel, for example, as incorporating Montherlant’s ideal conception of love, although elsewhere, as we have seen, the mother figure is criticized.8 Malatesta is set in Renaissance Italy, where the political power of Malatesta, ruler of Rimini, is threatened by the Pope. Pope Paul II wishes to remove Malatesta from Rimini and give him instead other Italian territories to govern. Malatesta plots the Pope’s assassination and travels to Rome to accomplish this act. In the presence of the Pope, Malatesta finds he cannot murder him, but is then held under close watch and prevented from returning to Rimini. Isotta [his wife] pleads successfully with the Pope to grant her husband a period of release in Rimini. On his return home, he is poisoned by a disgruntled courtier, Porcellio, who feels obligated to Malatesta for saving his life. History tells us that Malatesta died of natural causes. Johnson offers an explanation for this unlikely outcome in Montherlant’s play: ‘We must return to Montherlantian psychology, which maintains that gratitude fosters obligation; since obligation prevents personal freedom, Porcellio seeks his freedom by killing Malatesta’.9 The same pattern of betrayal and death occurs in Malatesta and in La Reine morte. La Reine morte and Malatesta depict secondary characters, both thirteen years old, a page called Dino del Moro in the former and a girl called Vannella, mistress of Malatesta, in the latter. For Montherlant, as we have seen, thirteen is ‘l’âge d’or’, the age where the child attains perfection, and, after which, he loses the quality of originality and either moves towards mediocrity or intelligence. Dino del Moro brings light relief to the more serious overtones in La Reine morte. He first appears when Inès realizes that the courtiers are plotting her death and, with his lightness of manner, relieves the tense atmosphere and makes Inès smile. The page’s naturalness and candid self-expression are underlined: ‘Vous êtes aussi impuissant, physiquement, à cacher l’aveu de votre visage, que vous l’êtes à soulever un bahut entre vos bras’. (PT, 157) Just as Dino del 8

9

Montherlant’s friend, Elizabeth Zehrfuss, was the model for Inès, particularly her feelings about her unborn child, based on letters from Zehrfuss written during her pregnancy. Johnson, op. cit., p. 108.

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Moro allows Inès to be affectionate towards him in a maternal way, so he touches the heart of Ferrante. In the last scene, the dying King pulls the child to him, addressing his final words to the page: ‘Que l’innocence de cet enfant me serve de sauvegarde quand je vais apparaître devant mon Juge’. (PT, 176) Dino del Moro betrays the King, leaving his side to join Pedro and the courtiers in prayer before the corpse of Inès. The child refutes the adult’s appeal, expressing his right to choose, his right to autonomy. The figure of the young person in Malatesta is less strongly drawn as Vannella appears in one scene only. (Act IV, Sc.I) The ageing tragic heroes of Montherlant’s historical plays are drawn to the company of young people and display childlike qualities. Isotta underlines Malatesta’s trusting naïveté in being duped so easily by the Pope: ‘Avec quelle innocence il a été votre dupe, ce prétendu maître en perfidies!’ (PT, 385) Later she evokes the childlike qualities of her husband: ‘Il y a en lui, par instants, quelque chose de désarmé. Souvent, ses nerfs de femme; et parfois, ses idées d’enfant. Il ne sait pas dissimuler avec persévérance; sa vitalité amère et ingénue le trahira toujours’. (PT, 387) The emphasis on the young person means that the historical plays have a family dimension; they also include taboo subjects, such as incest and sex with an under-aged adolescent, including the physical possession of Vannella by Malatesta, whose appeal to Vannella is very similar to that of Ferrante’s to Dino del Moro: ‘Que je tiens seulement dans ma main le bas de sa robe, et la mort s’arrêtera devant nous et nous entrerons dans l’éternelle impunité’. (PT, 393) The young person is chosen by Montherlant’s heroes to accompany them to the gates of death, as a guard against harm, against punishment. The tragic hero hopes to be purified and redeemed through characteristics which mirror those of the young: naivety, vitality, mischievous originality, creativity, innocence, beauty, allied to naturalness, which represent the divine in man. The older adolescent has a different role from that of the younger and is a source of discord, refusing to conform to the demands of the ageing father figure. As in Fils de personne and Demain il fera jour, portrayal of the older adolescents illustrate the problem of the generation gap. Two such characters who appear in La Reine morte, King Ferrante’s son, Pedro, 26 years old, and the Infante de Navarre, who is 17, are counterparts of one another, as the Infante embodies the qualities Ferrante finds lacking in his

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son. On his father’s death, Pedro takes on his responsibilities as adult and as King and punishes the courtiers who murdered Inès. The post-pubescent son is the source of disappointment, betrayal and hostility, for example, the son-in-law, Camerino, is a surrogate son to Malatesta and is also involved in the betrayal of his benefactor. He acts as the Pope’s messenger and presents Malatesta with the unacceptable proposal that he surrender his beloved city, Rimini. The betrayal, this time, is doubly pernicious, since we are aware of the homo-erotic undertone of Malatesta’s greeting: ‘Alors, mon petit Venier? Je suis content de te voir. Je te regardais danser, à peine lavé de la poussière et de la fatigue du voyage: tu étais encore frais et charmant comme autrefois; tu avais l’air d’un Bacchus indien’, (PT, 350) followed by his rejection of his son-inlaw: ‘Et voilà la proposition que tu oses me faire, avec cette même bouche dont tu caresses ma fille. Combien as-tu touché pour me la faire? Ah! plût au ciel que ma fille fût morte, au lieu de t’épouser. Le meilleur des gendres est le tombeau’. (PT, 352) Malatesta’s greeting, when considered together with the Pope’s accusation of ‘vile’ behaviour suggests a homosexual bond of intimacy between the central character and his son-in-law: ‘Vous couchiez avec votre gendre Camerino lorsqu’il était un adolescent’. (PT, 369) The recurrence of betrayal in Montherlant’s theatre is allied to desire. For Krémer, Malatesta is motivated primarily by desire and this vital force represents ‘le pansexualisme montherlantien, refus d’une société qui prend “au piège” le désir, veut, non seulement libérer l’homme et la femme, adorateurs du soleil et de ses créatures, mais plus encore, les justifier, au nom de leur curiosité et de leur plaisir’. Krémer touches on a cornerstone of Montherlant’s philosophy, pantheism, born from his admiration for the natural in man, and from his belief in living outside the normal constraints imposed by society. Superficiality and artificiality are imposed on the nature of man and produce a falsehood. For Montherlant, true morality is to be found in living as fully as possible, once one appreciates the significance of death as the only certainty. Living as fully as possible is the Montherlant equivalent of Camus’ Myth de Sisyphe, as this myth means that man takes responsibility for his own existence by living, by using all his strength, intelligence and courage to take on the challenge of life, to rebel against the absurd. Montherlant speaks of desire for plants and animals and for human beings who are closely related to him. The pursuit 127

of desire is part of the pantheistic concept involved in accepting life in complete awareness of death. The daughter figure in both La Reine morte and Le Maître de Santiago lives out the ideals of the father, Ferrante and Alvaro. The sacrifice of the girl child has been referred to by a number of critics: ‘Le sacrifice d’une jeune fille, illustré, dès Le Songe, par la référence à Iphigénie, est obsédant dans l’oeuvre de Montherlant [...]. La Reine morte qui sacrifie à la fois l’honneur de l’Infante et la vie d’Inès en est peut-être le paroxysme théâtral’.10 Daughters, in Montherlant’s theatre, do not rebel or betray the parent; they submit totally to the will of their real or adopted father figures. Relations between father and son, on the other hand, are overlaid with passionate feelings of love, hate and revenge, which lead to betrayal. It is unsatisfactory to attempt to explain this breach of faith on the part of the younger man by the natural movement from one generation to another or by rivalry between males. The young man’s actions constitute treachery to the ideals of the older man, as well as to the ideals of his younger self. Pedro and Camerino are considered by their ‘fathers’ to have been loyal and therefore beloved at the age of thirteen, but the older adolescent son is guilty of bad faith and is, therefore, cast out. The cycle of desire and betrayal may be explained through analyzing the false father–son relationships present in Montherlant’s plays. We have already noted that, in the case of Georges and Gillou, the complex web of behaviour is based on homosexual desire of the older man for the adolescent. The same is true of this type of relationship as depicted in the historical plays. This does not explain why betrayal and separation inevitably result from desire. The answer may lie in Lacan’s differentiation of the ‘appetite for satisfaction’ and the ‘demand for love’.11 Desire is distinguished from need and it is suggested that love satisfies need rather than desire. The appetite for satisfaction is maintained by transforming the object of desire [which is attainable] into an impossible satisfaction of the need for love, which, because it is unattainable, maintains desire. By annulling ‘the particularity of everything that can be granted by transmuting it into a 10 11

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Lancrey-Javal, op. cit., p. 73. Lacan, op. cit., p. 287.

proof of love, the very satisfactions that it [demand] obtains for need are reduced to the level of being no more than the crushing of the demand for love’. Malatesta is motivated only by desire and his very vitality depends not on the satisfaction of desire, but on the constant re-kindling of this vital force. Desire must, therefore, never be satisfied and the betrayal of the object of desire is provoked consciously or unconsciously to maintain this state. Lacan describes the process of transference of the object of desire [attainable] into the impossible proof of love [unattainable]. In the light of this interpretation, Malatesta’s assessment of Camerino’s treachery is over-reaction, a deliberate attempt to alienate the beloved. Malatesta interprets Camerino’s actions as failure to demonstrate love and therefore rejects the beloved. In the same way, Ferrante’s rejection of Pedro and his preference for the female ‘son’ figure of the Infante are unrealistic. Pedro is changed from the object of desire into the object of love, of which he is proved, in his father’s eyes, to be unworthy. The ageing hero thwarts desire by tranforming ‘the object of desire [attainable] into the impossible proof of love’. Although there is a cause and effect relationship between desire and betrayal in the work of Montherlant, Lacan’s distinctions only provide one possible perspective. Personal strength and political power are in decline for Malatesta, Ferrante and Cisneros [Le Cardinal d’Espagne] when the action of the play takes place. The heroes grasp desperately at sexual passion in a failed attempt to motivate themselves to act. In the end, both action and contemplation prove futile in the battle against the human condition. The individual is finally overwhelmed by the meaningless of life. Loved ones and friends are alienated as the main character rages against loss of power and approaching death, underscoring the playwright’s belief in the preciousness of life. The old men resent their decline and lash out at anyone who is close to them. This articulation of pain is the natural reaction to death and to life and power passing on to the next generation. In Montherlant’s system of values, a paradoxical situation exists, where the young person is admired and, at the same time, resented.

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Betrayal and Alienation in Le Cardinal d’Espagne [1960] Le Cardinal d’Espagne is an interpretation of events set in sixteenth century Spain, governed by Cardinal Francisco Ximenez de Cisneros and the Queen, Juana la Loca [Jeanne la Folle]. Cisneros serves two masters: a conception of the Absolute in Christianity, and Power in the form of political government. He denies the conflict of loyalties, until Jeanne la Folle, through a series of monologues which belie madness, opens Cisneros’s eyes to the contradiction inherent in his life. Batchelor outlines Le Cardinal d’Espagne’s tragic situation: the interview with the queen suffices to bring home to the cardinal that his activity, in view of his age, is now no more than a ‘manie’. To act, in the way Cisneros continues to act, is to contradict his wearing of sandals and the frieze under his robes. [...] Cisneros [...] is wasted by politics and worldliness so that he has only an intellectual attitude or an inclination with which to echo the call of the absolute.12

The conversation with the Queen is the theatrical articulation of Montherlant’s response to life’s absurdity. He proposes that either one takes up a contemplative state and retires from life or one acts using all of one’s intelligence, courage and integrity, no matter what the cost, to engage with life. Cisneros represents the latter option and the Queen the former, pointing out to the Cardinal that his political governance means nothing in the light of the meaninglessness of existence. The debate is extended when the Cardinal takes it up again with Cardona, his nephew, acknowledging his weariness and his wish to retire from the affairs of state, while the nephew plays devil’s advocate to the notion of devoting oneself to Nothing (Rien). Cisneros, like Ferrante, dies in the last scene, abandoned by his courtiers and friends and betrayed by Cardona and by the young King Charles, whom he has helped to become monarch of Spain. The point made, in these series of dialogues, is that man must choose between the contemplative and the active, which are both valid responses to the full realisation of Absurdity, but that man cannot undertake both positions, as Cisneros is attempting to do. Montherlant opposes prevarication and, in the theatrical debate, argues that the responsible human 12

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Batchelor, op. cit., p. 146.

being must follow through once they have decided on a stance. After 1942, Montherlant increasingly withdrew from the public scene, choosing in his own life, the option of artistic creativity and contemplation over political action. Provocation resulting in the betrayal of the ‘éromane’ by the ‘éraste’ occurs in Le Cardinal d’Espagne, where Cisneros’ fall from power and his death are the direct consequences of his nephew Cardona’s, political manoeuvres. Cisneros alienates his nephew by burdening him with more and more difficult tasks, refusing to make allowances for the man’s true nature [his attachment to his family, his grief at the recent death of a daughter] and by denying compassion or mercy, forcing his nephew to face what he [Cisneros] sees as his responsibilities. This severity stems from the sense of duty valued by Montherlant, together with all the duties and responsibilities, which that implies. Cardona’s revenge is to speak ill of his uncle to King Charles, thereby hastening the Cardinal’s demise. Both the nephew and the young King, whom Cisneros serves loyally, are responsible for the fatal blow to the Cardinal. Cisneros in his role as Regent and because he has engineered Charles’ Kingship of Spain (PT, 1106–1107) is a father figure to the King. Montherlant likens patricide in this play to the fatal blow delivered by the matador: Le matador (qui cette fois n’est plus Cardona, qui est un enfant invisible, un jeune Mithra tauroctone, le roi) s’avance, sous les espèces de Van Arpen, assisté du silencieux La Mota, celui-ci très pareil au banderillero qui assiste son matador, à l’écart, immobile, mais prêt à intervenir s’il le faut. Le coup est porté, enfin mortel. (PT, 1181)

The two male adolescents [Cardona and Charles] deal the death-blow to the bull, Cisneros. The metaphor of the bullfight represents the life of man: ‘le drame du taureau, pendant le quart d’heure de la course, reproduit la vie de l’homme […]. Là est le grand sens du mystère taurin, et non dans la mythologie où je le voyais il y a trente ans’. (PT, 1182) In this play, the younger protagonist is provoked into betraying his older mentor and acting as the instrument of his death, a fact Cardona immediately regrets: ‘Mon Père, pardonnez-moi! Mon Père!’ (PT, 1170) In these historical plays, the consequence of rupture is more serious than isolation, as the younger man, against his will, becomes the instrument of the older man’s destruction which takes the form of the purifying

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sacrifice of the ‘bull’, Cisneros, by the young ‘matadors’, Cardona and Charles. In this act, both executioner and victim achieve purity, within the context of the pagan Mithraic belief in purity achieved through sacrifice in the putting to death of the loved one by the one who loves. Pedro and Dino del Moro’s betrayal of Ferrante may be interpreted in the same sense. Le Cardinal d’Espagne’s discourse demonstrates ‘La prédilection de Montherlant pour ce type de dialogue limité à deux participants, dialogue d’idées et affrontement ou échange de conceptions ou philosophies, relève sans nul doute de l’esthétique de la dualité, au niveau de la structure comme à celui de la stylistique’.13 Theatrical debate heightens the various contradictory elements of Montherlant’s philosophy, for example, belief in service, in the knowledge that service is usually unrecognized and, therefore, only valued by the self and the importance of duty, even though it will usually end in betrayal. Such dialogue frequently takes place between a father figure and his son as a process of teaching and learning. The didactic nature of their conversation outlines the father’s advice to the son on how to conduct one’s life, but also the son’s opposing point of view. The debate in La Reine morte centres, for instance, on the conflict between love and duty, between the emotions and the intellect. Relations between members of the opposite sex are more harmonious in Montherlant’s historical theatre than same-sex relationships because heterosexual relationships are distinguished by the total absorption of the woman in the man. Mariana, Jeanne la Folle, Isotta and, to a lesser extent, Inès, as women who love, reflect the images of their beloved and finally are absorbed into the being of the male. Mariana chooses to sacrifice her selfhood to her father, Alvaro, whose response encourages her: ‘Rapproche-toi de moi encore plus: deviens moi!’ (PT, 653) The men cannot be said to reciprocate this all-consuming love; they are passive receivers of all the woman has to offer, which is her whole self. Lacan’s terms describe the process: ‘in order to be the phallus, that is to say, the signifier of the desire of the Other, a woman will reject an essential part of femininity, namely, all her attributes in the masquerade. It is for that which

13

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Lapaire, Pierre J., ‘Aspects de la dualité du discours montherlantien’, Dalhousie French Studies, 24 (1993), pp. 111–118.

she is not that she wishes to be desired as well as loved’.14 Isotta takes on traditional male attributes, in order to plead for her husband’s freedom from Pope Paul II: ‘Vous, madame Isotta, on vous publie pour une des femmes les plus doctes d’Italie; mais aussi pour prudente, avisée, virile’. (PT, 384) By constantly drinking water, symbolizing her obsessive love for her dead husband, Jeanne la Folle absorbs the man into her body. Both Inès and Jeanne la Folle speak of the dream world in which they live, aware of their cloistered existence, shutting out all else but their love for a man. Another study of the plays [taking into account such characters as Marie Sandoval, Isotta, Geneviève de Presles and Inès] comments on this seemingly selfless love: Concern for the life of another person, under the influence of love, does not escape from the postulate that the individual has in the world no interest more powerful than his own self. In those who love by concentrating their devotion on just one other being, it is their happiness and security of mind which is in constant danger of being destroyed by the failure to envisage and accept the exercise of freedom in the loved one.15

When these female characters are considered more closely, their solipsism offers a different and perhaps more successful position in relation to the absurdity of existence. Montherlant’s woman solipsist denies any knowledge other that that of her own existence and re-creates the male by possessing him completely or being possessed by him, focussing energy and gaining power over existence through this process. While the male hero agonises over choice, torn between strength and weakness, cowardice and courage, the heroine engages in no such debate, eternally certain of her place in the world as the only reality which matters. In what Golsan calls ‘le sacrifice des meilleurs’, Ferrante, Malatesta and Cisneros make sacrificial victims of themselves by provoking the person who matters most to betray them. Belief in their ideal self-image depends on isolation, especially isolation from the one who is desired. Tragedy is present in the fact that the characters are aware of their denial of difference. Cisneros is conscious of the fact that his spiritual self has been weakened by his political role; Ferrante knows that he is a mass of 14 15

Lacan, op. cit., p. 290. Batchelor, op. cit., p. 120.

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contradictions, but, in the end, suffers from loss of identity; Malatesta refuses to accept weakness and old age, believing that his youthful strength is immortal. All suffer from a form of blindness directly resulting from denial of difference. This refusal occurs in the family plays, where Georges rejects Gillou for unfounded reasons. The same accusation is made concerning Pedro, Camerino and Cardona. The tragic hero is aware of the plurality of the self but, at the same time, denies elements of this plurality. Denial of the other means that oblivion in the form of death is the only possible solution to existence. If strength lies in the maintenance of desire by alienation of, and betrayal by, the other, then this movement also leads to self-destruction. Montherlant recognizes the recurrence of betrayal and separation in his theatre and discourages the reader from attempting to interpret these episodes: ‘Cisneros est devant Cardona comme Georges Carrion devant son fils […] Je ne veux rien prouver. Georges est un homme qui est plus faible que sa peur, et Cisneros un homme qui est plus faible que sa sensibilité et que sa vieillesse. C’est tout’. (PT, 1204) Montherlant also acknowledges the intimate affection between ‘father’ and ‘son’ figures: ‘Cisneros étant l’homme qu’il est, il se peut que sa dureté à l’égard de son neveu vienne non pas de ce qu’il sente que son neveu ne l’aime pas, mais de ce qu’il sente que son neveu l’aime’. (PT, 1205) These comments may be read as indirect invitations to investigate the fascinating movements of love and betrayal which distinguish Montherlant’s theatre, but the emotional and psychological content of the plays is inextricably intertwined with the metaphysical content. Montherlant uses theatre as a medium to communicate his system of values. The debate between father and son, man and woman, lover and beloved is a dialogue, which argues back and forth about an appropriate position to adopt in the face of the dilemma of existence. Man is free to act or not act and these are the two possible options available to the individual. If the human being chooses to live life to the full, rather than to take up a contemplative position, then, according to Montherlant, he is right to rage against old age and decline, to use intelligence and courage to dominate life.

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Community of Men in La Mort qui fait le trottoir [Don Juan] [1958] and La Guerre civile [1965]; Community of Women in Port Royal [1954] The only play in the historical cycle, which does not involve betrayal is La Mort qui fait le trottoir [Don Juan]. Don Juan’s son, Alcacer, like Isotta and Mariana, is formed in the image of his father. The most common word in Alcacer’s vocabulary is the second person plural in its pronominal forms, ‘vous’ and ‘votre’ and their frequent usage reflects the total submission of his own personality to that of his father. Don Juan declares his love for his son, a love based on the latter’s loyalty and devotion: C’est d’ailleurs depuis que tu me sers ainsi - depuis onze ans - que je ressens pour toi l’amour paternel, qui, je l’avoue, me titillait assez peu auparavant [...] O mon fils! O ma pensée profonde! Toi qui sais tout de moi, et que je ne crains pas... Ne me quitte jamais. Accompagne-moi jusqu’à la fin. (PT, 1056)

This final plea is familiar, the same uttered by each tragic hero in turn, begging the younger person to remain with him until death. Don Juan differs from the others in that he never attempts to test his son and the movement of betrayal and abandonment between father and son is consequently absent. Alcacer [Don Juan] and Sextus Pompée [La Guerre civile] are the only younger male figures who accede to the father’s request and support the older man unconditionally. Alcacer states his reasons: Je ne vous quitterai jamais, mon père, car je vous dois trop. Ce que j’ai appris à votre école, dans votre tauromachie, c’est la connaissance des êtres, l’art de convaincre, l’ingéniosité et l’agilité de l’esprit, la persévérance, la décision; surtout, avant tout, c’est l’indomptable courage, un courage quelquefois voisin de la folie. (PT, 1056– 1057)

If the movement of betrayal and separation is absent from the Don Juan– Alcacer relationship, it is ever-present in the hero’s dealings with women. Don Juan is perhaps not as different as he would first appear from his counterparts in other plays as desire is maintained by alienating the other and refusing her love. Rejection takes place after consummation, when the hero moves on to another conquest. The women in Don Juan sometimes refute his advances and treat him badly like the 15 year-old Linda and 135

sometimes reciprocate desire, forgiving all, even the murder of a father, like the 17 year-old Ana de Ulloa. When the hero is rejected, his desire increases and the hunt becomes more obsessive. After his desire is satisfied, he moves on. In the case of Ana, for example, Don Juan, who had vowed to save himself for her sake soon revokes this promise and gallops towards Seville, into the arms of death. The other is effectively betrayed and replaced; in the last scene, the ultimate new experience is death. Don Juan does not suffer the crisis of identity which destroys Ferrante and Cisneros as he meets death more peacefully. His essential simplicity relies on his obsession with sexual conquest on the one hand, and death on the other. Don Juan seems to opt for life, pursuing sexual pleasure and ignoring duty, responsibility and service. I propose, however, that his obsession with sex and conquest is a form of nihilism. He may be equated with Jeanne la Folle [Le Cardinal d’Espagne], who opts for a life of contemplation, retiring from the world’s vain pursuits and thinking of nothing but memories of her dead husband. Don Juan’s state of perpetual motion chasing conquest after conquest, is a way of retiring from living and contemplating a state of nothingness. The play was not well received, either by critics or audiences. One reason for its unpopularity [it was withdrawn a little more than a week after its opening] is proposed as follows: ‘The spectacle of an old man’s obsession with youth, sex, and ever-changing partners repelled theatregoers and critics alike’.16 Sipriot accuses Montherlant of striking a false note and of disguising his Don Juan’s desire for young boys as desire for women. He attributes the failure of the play to this act of ‘mauvaise foi’. Arnold takes another view: His [Montherlant’s] Don Juan character is ostensibly a lover of young females, but the heterosexual veneer is thin. The use, whenever possible, of nouns that are not gender-specific in Don Juan’s references to objects of sexual desire creates an intentional ambiguity. [...] The ultimate seducer was the perfect choice for expressing the exigencies of Montherlant’s own sexual identity. A pederast must ceaselessly search for new love objects. 17

16 17

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Arnold, op. cit., p. 108. Ibid., pp. 188 & 191. For Johnson’s assessment of ‘Montherlant’s magnificent failure’ see op. cit., p. 119.

La Guerre civile is situated in the camps of Caesar and Pompée near Dyrrachium in 48 BC, just before the decisive battle of Pharsalus. Laetorius, Caesar’s general, changes loyalties and joins Pompée’s army. This traitor is contrasted with Cato, Pompée’s General, who is more secure in his political convictions. Pompée and Caesar [who does not appear on stage] are presented as equally ambitious, proud, with a love of power. Johnson sees the play as ‘an honest attempt to examine an important theme [civil war] with frankness; the brutality that pervades the drama is the familiar brutality of war. If nihilism also pervades the play, it is properly a part of dramatic horror. Man as he is interests Montherlant, and such a man is always a more fascinating study than man as he is supposed to be’.18 Pompée’s harmonious relationship with his 18 year-old son, Sextus Pompée, in La Guerre civile recalls that of Don Juan, in La Mort qui fait le trottoir. The young man is a mirror image of the older one, advising and encouraging, acting as confidant and sounding board and allowing the hero, during their intimate conversations to reveal his true feelings which he is careful to hide from the other characters. This double act is a straightforward theatrical device as it enables the playwright to reveal the complexities and doubts of his protagonist without resorting to monologue. It also serves as a point of comparison with La Guerre civile’s mood of treason and betrayal by friend, foe, son or father: J’évite mon fils; [Cato to Domitius] mon fils m’évite: un étranger dans notre camp. Je redoute le pire: d’apprendre un de ces jours qu’il est passé en face. Mais il m’aime: de cela pas de doute. Souhaitons que cela le retienne du côté où il ne risque pas de m’assassiner. Et combien de pompéiens sont dans ce cas, avec un fils césarien! Ciceron, Servius, Titinius... Des garçons qui volent d’instinct vers l’ordure, comme les mouches... Une génération maudite. (PT, 1277)

Montherlant’s last play, La Guerre civile, staged seven years before his death, is the work of a mature artist, whose vision has gained in breadth and wisdom what it has lost in optimism. The civil war between César and Pompée is a microcosm for the twentieth-century human condition, as perceived by the playwright. The protagonists are disillusioned primarily with themselves but, at the same time, their debate illustrates Montherlant’s philosophy of ‘service inutile’. Their greatness lies in self18

Johnson, ibid., p. 126.

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knowledge, which is the result of witnessing the daily brutality of a vicious war, together with their leaders’ corruption and political manoeuvring. The characters are acting with conviction, even though they are aware that no matter who wins, their lot will not change. Emphasis is placed on human solidarity, in spite of the fact that petty squabbles, changing sides and falling out with each other is the order of the day. Fraternal solidarity, as a solution to the absurdity of the human condition, is an argument presented by Camus in La Peste and by Malraux in La Condition humaine. La Guerre civile illustrates Montherlant’s similar belief in action undertaken in full knowledge of the futility of the outcome, combined with the will to act in consistence with the truth of one’s nature. In La Guerre civile, betrayal is so general that it relates more to the political and social themes of the play than to the personal and psychological context. Thus the generation gap referred to in the above quotation forms only one part of the tragedy of division and strife, which is relevant to the political issues of the play. It is as if acts of betrayal, killing and corruption are so many games, which do not change the strong bonds of love between men, if we are to believe Cato’s words quoted above. Montherlant portrays the story of Port-Royal by treating a single day in August 1664 at the Jansenist Port-Royal convent in Paris. Archbishop de Péréfixe orders the nuns of Port-Royal to sign the official ‘formulaire’ of obedience to the Church of Rome and to Louis XIV. When they refuse, the nuns are banished from Port-Royal and the one-act play tracks their reactions, both as individuals and as a community. Montherlant portrays a female community under threat from male power. Like the soldiers of La Guerre civile, the women are in a war situation: they are under siege, threatened with separation from one another. Their response is, however, not to act, but to pray and adopt an attitude of contemplation, the alternative reaction posed by Montherlant to the absurdity of existence. To retire from society is one solution to the problem of existence, and the religious order is the most obvious example of withdrawal in Western culture. The female characters of Port-Royal refuse to act, adopting a stance of passive resistance to their persecutors, whereas the male characters of La Guerre civile are involved in action of the most

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destructive kind. These are the two options available to us according to Montherlant, who, after 1942, chose the reclusive life. The nuns live out belief in their order as the only possible way of retaining good faith and self-respect. Choosing between action and inaction is vital in the world of Montherlant’s theatre, where characters, such as Ferrante and Malatesta, who try to do both, to act and to contemplate, are destroyed. The playwright may well be predicting the present neglect of his work, a form of destruction which has occurred partly through his inability to take a firm stance on public issues, preferring the role of the poet who can easily accept the conflict that arises from opposites to that of the politician or even the philospher, ‘who suppress certain elements in order to bring the rest into harmony with a perceived ideology or system’.19 There are no women in La Guerre civile, apart from the voice of civil war. Port-Royal balances this all male cast by presenting theatre where the female characters outnumber and are more important than the men. PortRoyal presents a community of women who adhere to their beliefs in the face of frightening opposition from the Church and the State, symbolized by the presence of the Archbishop and his entourage. Only one in their midst, Soeur Flavie, betrays her companions, whereas treachery is common in La Guerre civile. The community of holy sisters is persecuted, as Soeur Angélique points out, for their difference from other religious orders, and from society outside the cloister. They are persecuted not for the ostensible reason that they pose a threat to the Church and State, but because they refuse to conform: ‘Nous sommes différentes et c’est, en effet, le seul grief qu’on ait contre nous’. (PT, 900) There is an analogy with Camus’ novel, L’Etranger, as Meursault is prosecuted not for murder, but for nonconformity to social norms. Montherlant explores the complex web of relationships between the women at Port-Royal, who seek salvation in the after-life, welcoming persecution and martyrdom. The nuns are compared to the vestal virgins of Roman times, with the playwright pointing out similarities in the practise of their religion and in the origins of their order. The Port-Royal community constitutes, for Montherlant, a return to heroism, but of a more realistic and mature kind. The sisters represent 19

Cruickshank, op. cit., p. 53.

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integrity, courage, honesty and loyalty to one another, as opposed to the devious pursuit of power represented by the male characters. Fear is palpable in the conversations between the sisters themselves and in their dealings with the Archbishop, but unlike Georges in Fils de Personne and Demain il fera jour, the women do not give way to their fear, even when religious faith falters. The play is a mark of Montherlant’s admiration for women, a convincing counterpoint to the argument of Les Jeunes filles, if that argument can be taken seriously. The father–son motif of the other plays is complemented in PortRoyal by the mother–daughter relationship between Soeur Angélique [39 years] and Soeur Françoise [22 years]. Early in the play, the younger woman attempts to establish a special friendship with the mother figure of Soeur Angélique. This movement towards intimacy is refuted and Soeur Angélique advises Soeur Françoise to become a member of the Carmelite order, because of her indivuality and inability to submit to the requirements of a community. This suggestion meets with an outraged response: LA SOEUR FRANCOISE, avec émotion: Vous me rejetez ainsi, ma Soeur! Vous qui déjà me refusiez si fort ce petit peu d’application et de charité que je vous demandais en surcroît de ce qu’ont les autres... [...] LA SOEUR ANGELIQUE: Les créatures sont contagieuses d’elles-mêmes. Rien de tel qu’une affection humaine pour porter de l’ombre sur le soleil de Dieu. (PT, 873)

Their positions as to the apparent strength and weakness of faith or, at least as to Soeur Françoise’s weakness in the interpretation of her faith, are reversed at the end of the play. Throughout, Soeur Angélique has felt her faith being gradually eroded and, by the final scene, she indicates, obliquely, that she no longer believes in God. On the point of being sent away from Port Royal, and isolated from her companions, the older nun, Soeur Angélique, gives way to her feelings of loving friendship for Soeur Françoise: ‘Je vous ai nourrie cinq ans […] Vous êtes assez grande, vous pourriez aller seule, quand même je vous quitterais. Or, je ne vous quitte pas; on ne quitte que ce qu’on cesse d’aimer’. (PT, 914) As in La Guerre civile, this to and fro movement within an intimate relationship is by no means central to the issues of the play. Notwithstanding, it provides a framework for the philosophical arguments and underlines the importance

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of love, passion and friendship and the characters’essential humanity. Batchelor assesses the playwright’s attitude towards religious belief: Like Camus, Montherlant lays a wager that he may find, without God, and without eternal life, happiness, innocence and - why not?- even holiness. [...] God remains for him an idea which broadens as his imagination enlarges upon it, but never becomes a person who exists, who loves him and whom he may love. 20

Montherlant’s replaces non-belief in God with belief in the divinity of man. His conception of the divine centres on the human being, while Camus, having established that God does not exist, moves away from the spiritual and concerns himself primarily with establishing an ideological position. For Montherlant spirituality continues to be an important issue and, as his historically based heroes show, ideology and politics are transitory and of considerably less consequence than spirituality and passion, as experienced by the human being. Love is given more significance in Montherlant’s literary work than in that of other twentieth century writers and thinkers. Malraux and Camus give love a secondary role to the philosophical issues, but Montherlant places human relations centre stage in both the plays and the novels. Relations with others are an integral part of man’s existence: in Montherlant’s universe, love for another human being, for God or for the divine in man, is a way in which the individual finds the best of him/herself. La Mort qui fait le trottoir [Don Juan], La Guerre civile and PortRoyal give the emotional life of the hero the same weight as his philosophical position. There is four-fold failure at the end of the historical plays: ‘disgrace du corps (mort physique de Ferrante et de Cisneros); disgrace politique [...]; disgrace de leur notoriété [...]; disgrace affective (trahison par le dernier fidèle [Dino del Moro ou Cardona])’.21 The immolation of the hero is related to the destruction of his relationship with a younger person, as well as to the destruction of his political and social position. In the hero’s emotional life, the central issue is passion: that of Georges for Gillou, of Ferrante for Pedro and Dino del Moro, of Philippe for Sénac and Geneviève for Philippe, of Malatesta for Camerino and Isotta for Malatesta, of Don Alvaro for the Absolute in the image of God 20 21

Batchelor, op. cit., p. 219. Lancrey-Javal, op. cit., p. 93.

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and of Mariana for Don Alvaro, of the Abbé de Pradts and Sevrais for Souplier, of Don Juan for adolescent girls, of Cisneros for Cardona, of Pompée for his son, of the sisters of Port-Royal for God. Montherlant sees passion as a form of self-knowledge: ‘C’est encore une forme de la possession de soi-même, que nous échapper de notre être, pour ressortir dans les créatures que nous aimons’. (PE, 1155) The fascination of Montherlant’s theatre lies in the exploration of a new form of heroism, which exists mainly in the female characters, who, when faced with the absurdity of existence, use freedom to opt for separation from the world, in order to focus their whole existence on an Absolute. Inès de Castro’s and Soeur Angélique’s heroism exists in a vacuum, separate from society and the problems of politics. The male characters such as Ferrante and Malatesta choose, apparently against their better judgement, to engage with the world, to undertake their civic duty, whilst longing for the contemplative state. They are corrupt, sometimes evil men who also strive for the good, who represent human weakness as well as the yearning for the ideal. Heroism is only possible outside the social arena, in a state of separation. Real life destroys heroism as a sustainable ideal as the human being, when he chooses to act and to live in society, is capable only of moments of heroism, most of existence being taken up with pettiness, cowardice, jealousy and pride. The would-be hero is swallowed by his own weakness. Montherlant’s later novels, Le Chaos et la nuit and Un Assassin est on maître, take the philosophical debate a step further when the central character enters a contemplative state, cutting himself off entirely from the world and from human company, and dies in solitude. The state of purity achieved through the loving and learning relationship [éraste–éromane] is similar to that achieved in death. Through suicide, the hero transforms his life and achieves the innocence and purity evoked by Caton in La Guerre civile: ‘L’homme n’a pas de droit plus sacré que celui de se supprimer s’il lui plaît. Et puis, on peut avoir été n’importe quoi: se tuer purifie tout’. (PT, 1274) Montherlant’s theatre is centred on the feelings of one human being for another. Time and again in his notes, commentaries and ‘carnets’, Montherlant stresses that mutual physical pleasure, affection, tenderness and genuine caring make life worth living. The author’s wariness of our misconceptions of love and of sentimentality only underlines the 142

importance it plays in his life and work. References to love, totalling 37, far outnumber those to any other subject in Montherlant’s Carnets dated from 1930 to 1944. It is by feeling desire, love or sexual passion for another that the tragic hero reveals his true self to the audience. His capacity for feeling is what makes him a credible portrayal of a human being and is what draws us to him. The perverse, complex beings of Montherlant’s theatre express the philosophical debate contrasting action with contemplation. This is interwoven with the characters’ emotional lives: words and actions are influenced by a moral or immoral position in relation to the ideal of heroism and also, by the passionate love felt for parents, children, lovers and friends.

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Chapter V The Ideal: Les Garçons [1969] and Thrasylle [1983] N’en doutez point, madame; et j’atteste les dieux / Que toujours Bérénice est présente à mes yeux. / L’absence ni le temps, je vous le jure encore, / Ne vous peuvent ravir ce coeur qui vous adore. [Jean Racine, Bérénice]

First Love Les Garçons is Montherlant’s most important novel and represents the pinnacle of the human being’s striving towards perfection. The love between two adolescents depicted in this novel portrays Montherlant’s ideal, achieved only once in a lifetime and forever unattainable thereafter. The work is also one of the great and most neglected novels of the twentieth century. It forms part of a trilogy, the overall title of which is La Jeunesse d’Alban de Bricoule. (PRII, 1400) The experience of first love is crucial because it informs Montherlant’s notion of the ideal relationship, to which all others are compared. The heroic ideal aspired to by the soldier hero of Le Songe, the bullfighter of Les Bestiaires and the sportsman of Les Olympiques is allied to an ideal of love. Whereas the heroic ideal founders, the latter endures throughout Montherlant’s work and replaces the heroic ideal annihilated by the destruction of 1914–1918 war. Les Garçons was written over a period of fifty years; it is likely that the author deferred publication, because, like Peyrefitte’s Les Amitiés particulières, it confirmed his homosexuality. Raimond suggests that Les Amitiés particulières prompted Montherlant to re-commence work on Les Garçons, in order to provide his version of the truth. (PRII, 1420) He found it difficult to publish the novel because the experiences related in it were so precious and intimate and constituted such an integral part of his being, that he deferred publication until three years before his death. Michel Raimond 145

recognizes the seminal nature of the text: ‘Cette fiction, dont l’auteur a tracé les premières esquisses en 1914, il l’a portée en lui toute sa vie; il a attendu la vieillesse pour en achever la rédaction’. (PRII, 1360) The Pléiade edition traces four periods of composition, undertaken in 1914, 1929, 1947 and 1965–1967. Pierre Sipriot also acknowledges Les Garçons as Montherlant’s most significant work: ‘Quand Les Garçons paraissent en avril 1969, il y a cinquante ans que Montherlant vit avec ce roman; c’est le résumé de toute sa vie et peut-être de toute son oeuvre’.1 The novel is autobiographical, even though, in an ‘avant-propos’ dated 18 August 1947, Montherlant vehemently refutes this fact: ‘Toute identité donnée à un personnage de ce roman, toute croyance que telle scène ou telle situation ont été « effectivement ainsi » seraient donc de grossières erreurs’. (PRII, 1399) The 1969 preface contains a no less forthright condemnation of any critic presumptuous enough to speculate about the real-life models of the fictional characters. (PRII, 437, Note 2) Raimond scrupulously examines and evaluates the autobiographical content by comparing the fictional representation of the events with Faure-Biguet’s account of Montherlant’s childhood,2 concluding: ‘L’auteur prend soin de présenter comme pure fiction un livre qui peut-être le touche de trop près et est un aveu longtemps différé’. (PRII, 1360–1361) There are similarities between Thrasylle and Les Garçons, which indicate that the themes treated in the early novella are developed in the later work. Both Sipriot and Duroisin acknowledge the relation between Thrasylle and Les Garçons.3 Montherlant wrote Thrasylle in 1914 when he was working for his uncle’s insurance company.4 The text was published in 1983, after being discovered amongst the author’s papers by Jean-Claude Barat, his heir and executor of his will. The novella is closer to Les Garçons than to other early works because it depicts a more rounded and more fully reciprocated loving friendship than those recounted in Le Songe, Les Olympiques, Les Bestiaires and La Petite 1 2 3 4

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Sipriot, op. cit., p. 693. Faure-Biguet, op. cit. Sipriot, op. cit., p. 57; Duroisin, op. cit., p. 53. Sipriot, ibid., p. 56.

Infante de Castille. Furthermore, the element of transcendence is essential to both Thrasylle and Les Garçons, in that the boys involved in the intimate friendship experience a metamorphosis, which allows them to enter a different domain. The other texts show an adolescent hero who evolves in isolation, after abandoning his beloved friend. In the case of Thrasylle, the eponymous hero and Lycas, his beloved friend, the adolescents are both transformed, albeit separately, into animal form.5 Alban and Serge achieve spiritual transcendence together through their love for one another. In both texts, entry into another realm is accomplished through the kind of purity described by Plato: ‘Il est donc évident que Montherlant a développé dans Thrasylle une « pédagogie amoureuse » semblable à celle que Platon développe dans le Banquet, avec le même désir de pureté, au prix des mêmes renoncements’.6 Duroisin traces the concept of re-birth through water which occurs in both Thrasylle and Les Garçons to a quotation from the writings of Pentadius which he translates as ‘pour qu’il puisse (re)naître par cette eau où il a trouvé la mort’.7 Thrasylle is a prototype of Les Garçons; the texts will be discussed concurrently. Thrasylle and Lycas’ loving friendship forms the main subject, complemented by a spirit of fraternity, which typifies the assembly of boy characters. None of these is distinguished individually, but their group activities form a background to the main relationship. The adult characters, on the other hand, are shadowy figures, who are fixed in set roles, as guardian or employer. Parents are notably absent from this world of children. Dialogue is an important feature of the text, but the argot used by the children to communicate amongst themselves in Les Garçons is absent from Thrasylle. The novella demonstrates the creative process of a much younger mind, in that it is less well constructed, but conveys immediacy, in particular with regard to the emotions expressed by the young hero. 5 6 7

See O’Flaherty, ‘Mythopoeic process in Montherlant’s Thrasylle’, Nottingham French Studies, Vol. 32, No. 2, Autumn 1993, pp. 64–70. Duroisin, op. cit., p. 53. Duroisin, ibid., note 18, p. 98. Classical sources for Thrasylle are discussed by Duroisin, pp. 47–54.

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The school in and around which the action of Les Garçons takes place is very unlike any educational establishment with which the reader would be familiar. It is presented as left wing, in that there are lower middle class pupils, as well as sons of the upper middle classes and the aristocracy. The fictional school, Notre-Dame du Parc, is an idealistic establishment with its own class structure: Ainsi, dans ce collège fondé sur la démocratie et le libéralisme, renaissait un esprit de caste qu’on eût dit d’un ordre de moines-chevaliers médiéval: la caste comprenait les cinq prêtres du gouvernement, et puis tous les enfants, y compris le fils du concierge. Quant aux autres, une règle unique à leur égard: les réduire et les écarter. (PR.II, 463)

The scholars are permitted an extraordinary degree of liberty to pursue their friendships; if they do attend class and study conventional subjects and syllabi, these activities are not alluded to. The fictional school is based on the Ecole Sainte-Croix de Neuilly, which Montherlant attended from January 1911 to his expulsion in March 1912. For an unknown reason, the narrative events are dated a year later than the real circumstances on which they are based. The school of the novel is an imaginary institution, which is only tenuously related to any real pattern of scholastic enterprise and, in this respect, Les Garçons is indeed ‘un conte de fées’. (PR.II, 438) Just as the school of Les Garçons is a fanciful creation, unlike any real school of the turn of the century, so the ancient Greece of Thrasylle is ‘si peu grec qu’on s’étonne moins, à le lire, des références [chrétiennes] que Faure-Biguet a faites à La Relève du matin, que des références de Montherlant lui-même à Théocrite et Xénophon, ou de Pierre Sipriot à l’Anthologie.8 The setting of ancient Greece is far enough removed from modern reality to be the ideal backdrop for the enactment of an idyll of adolescent growth, described in a deliberately vague style. Episodes are often incomplete, passages are written in a stream of consciousness mode, in which the subject of a pronoun is often ambiguous, a highly lyrical prose allows the author to be enigmatic; much is left to the reader’s imagination both in terms of action and of overall meaning. There are several explanations for the equivocal nature of the text: Montherlant did not intend to publish and 8

148

Duroisin, ibid., p. 48.

the writing was, therefore, not re-worked or polished; the novella was written when he was 19, before he had properly developed a mature style and the discovery of adolescent sexuality demands an ambiguous style because the writer wishes to convey the confusion and fear felt by the the hero in relation to his own sexuality. Thrasylle explores the implications of his own nature and tries to grasp his sexuality, in terms of an unformed set of principles, as well as to establish an equilibrium between carnality and the intellectual and sentimental facets of his being. Like Les Garçons, the novella describes a search for purity on the part of its young hero, as well as his attempt to establish a moral order. Thrasylle relates only the quest, not its resolution, which is described in Les Garçons. The main reason for Les Garçons’ importance as the touchstone of Montherlant’s philosophy is that the novel delineates the discovery of a moral order by the young hero, Alban de Bricoule. He evolves during the course of the novel and achieves an exceptionally high level of moral maturity for his age. This moral maturity is made possible largely through splitting the hero’s identity and attributing his less admirable behaviour to another character, Paul de Linsbourg.

Adolescent growth through split identity: the case of Alban and Linsbourg, of Thrasylle and the Wolf Duality is a common element in the depiction of childhood and adolescent experience in literature: Perhaps because of prejudices and myths surrounding children’s minds and bodies, few of the autobiographical writers reveal a totally unambiguous attitude to the body in their presentation of the self, and this remains true whether they were eager to reveal the power of the physical in shaping the mind, or whether they thrust to the forefront the importance of the intellect. Some of that conflict is immediately present in the ways in which the desire to express the child’s

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awareness of self – both physical and intellectual – leads so often to images of duality.9

Lloyd distinguishes between the physical and the intellectual, whereas, in Les Garçons, the differentiation made is that between the physical and the spiritual. We shall see, furthermore, that duality is also used to distinguish between good and evil. Montherlant, typically, although quite open about the hero’s deeply felt love for his friend, Serge Souplier, presents Alban as moving on from this episode in his life, by disguising the hero’s profound feelings of grief. Alban’s sentiments [which, according to Raimond, are those of Montherlant] are transposed to his alter ego, Paul de Linsbourg. In this way, the physical and intellectual are separated from the spiritual in what Lloyd refers to as ‘images of duality’. The portion of the novel which is most striking in this regard is the only chapter in the novel with a title: ‘La nuit de mai d’Alban et de Linsbourg’. Raimond’s meticulous scholarship has uncovered the secret of this episode in a codicil sent to Faure-Biguet in which Montherlant speaks of his despair at being expelled and separated from his beloved; at the time, he succeeded in disguising his feelings of hopelessness from Faure-Biguet and probably from everyone else. Raimond comments on the older author’s admission to his real feelings during the years 1912 to 1914: Ce Montherlant mondain, qui fréquent les bals de la bonne société à la veille de la guerre cherchait-il à s'étourdir et agissait-il par désespoir? Non, répond catégoriquement le biographe, qui revoit dans son souvenir un Montherlant qui lui paraissait peu désespéré. Mais sur ce point, Montherlant a protesté et FaureBiguet a fait état d’une note remise à lui par Montherlant pour être insérée: « Il m’est impossible, dit Montherlant, de laisser Faure-Biguet publier ce chapitre sans intervenir pour mettre l’accent sur ce que j'appellerai la grande misère des années 1912–1914. Gosse, j’avais connu la merveilleuse aventure sentimentale de mes onze, douze, treize ans: l’amour. 1912–1914, c’est l’absolue médiocrité. Une sorte d’inhibition. Je n’arrive pas à vivre [...].» Curieusement, cette nostalgie du paradis perdu qu’a été le collège et ce fond de désespoir qui a suivi l’exclusion ont été attribués dans la fiction à Linsbourg. (PR, 1369)

9

150

Lloyd, Rosemary, ‘Embodying Childhood’, Australian Journal of French Studies, Vol.XXX, No. 2, 1993, p. 173.

The sentiments of loss and grief attributed to Linsbourg are in fact those of the hero, Alban. He is devastated not only by the loss of his beloved, but by the loss of the ‘garçonnerie’ at the ‘Ecole Notre-Dame du Parc’. Linsbourg’s role in Les Garçons is ‘le Protecteur’ and Alban’s is ‘l’Incorruptible’. Their fictional identities are most confused at the end of the chapter noted above, where Linsbourg’s attitudes are attributed to Alban and vice-versa, when the two are questioned individually by friends after their meeting: Alban devait ignorer toujours que, le dimanche suivant, Linsbourg ulcéré avait téléphoné à Giboy en inversant tout. Il prêta à Alban sa propre situation [...].De son côté, qu’eût dit Linsbourg s’il avait su qu’Alban, interrogé sur lui par un quidam qui savait qu’ils s’étaient rencontrés, avait répondu: « Il est gaga. Il est neurasthénique »? (PRII, 803 & 804)

This distortion of the situation is a signal to look more closely at the dual construction of the adolescent hero in Les Garçons. The fusion of Alban and Linsbourg is already evident earlier in the text. Montherlant’s device of the split identity is an effective way of re-creating the experience of adolescence and of explaining his hero’s growth and quest for self-knowledge. Bakhtin notes the construction of a dual identity in Dostoevsky’s ‘paired heroes’, where the hero’s intrigue ‘with his double develops as a dramatized crisis of his self-consciousness, as a dramatized confession’.10 Paul de Linsbourg appears in earlier manuscript versions of Les Garçons as De Menvielle, a character modelled on Montherlant's reallife friend, Marc de Montjou. In the 1929 manuscript De Menvielle is referred to only briefly and is not developed as a character in his own right (PRII, 1379). The 1947 manuscript is not published in the Pléiade edition, but Michel Raimond provides a chapter-by-chapter synopsis of the plot, which indicates that De Linsbourg did not become a fully developed character until the definitive version of the text, published in 1969. The crucial episode of the ‘nuit de mai’ does not appear until the final re-working, between 1965 and 1967.

10

Bakhtin, Mikhail, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, translated by R.W. Rotsel, Ardis, 1973, pp. 23 & 181.

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The mature author used Linsbourg’s characterization, together with that of the secondary characters who are members of ‘le Groupe’ or ‘la Protection’, as a device which facilitates the development of Alban’s moral character. The invention of Alban’s mirror image solves the problem of his rather implausible adhesion to morality and allows the evolution of adolescent identity to be explored. Linsbourg provides a counterpoint to Alban’s renunciation of carnal pleasure; together the boys fulfil a paradigm of adolescent behaviour. Linsbourg’s pseudonym, ‘le Protecteur’ denotes his function as leader protecting intimate friendship between older and younger boys, who are referred to by nicknames: De Linsbourg – Denie (Fauvette? Quand) Giboy – Bonbon Salins – Cuicui Moi – De La Maisonfort (?) Bébé – James douces (Fleur de Jambes) Rigal – Bibi Lolo (PRII, 446)

The register of slang adopted by the boys and the narrator creates an esoteric world, closed off from that of the adult. Alban and Linsbourg are the cynosures of the fraternity. Both are admired and imitated by their peers, as well as earning the esteem of their teachers, the Headmaster, l’abbé Pradeau de la Halle and his deputy, l’abbé de Pradts. The two boys represent opposite poles of the same identity. In simplistic terms, Linsbourg incorporates the carnal and Alban the spiritual aspect of the same nature. The textual manifestation of this principle is more complex. Early in the novel, Alban exhibits heroic qualities of abstinence and moral superiority, which he will later adopt and attempt to inculcate in his fellows: ‘Durant tout le dernier trimestre de 1911, Alban pensait encore que lui donner un baiser serait déchoir: il n’y avait d’honorable que l’amour pur’. (PRII, 478) By making Linsbourg the custodian of sensual activities at Notre Dame du Parc, the author creates a second hero, twin of Alban, whose ‘wickedness’ liberates his other half and allows him to be ‘good’. Linsbourg is referred to as ‘un chef de guerre’ (PRII, 501), the ‘grand officier’ of the system of Protection; he is the high priest of ‘cette

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atmosphère d’excitation sentimentalo-sensuelle où vivaient les garçons du Parc, d’incessantes aventures et intrigues…’ (PRII, 508) The friendship between Alban and Linsbourg comes to an end after the ‘nuit de mai’ when the confusion of their identities makes it impossible for Linsbourg to continue to exist as a separate character. They can no longer continue to be friends, not only because they are no longer at Notre Dame du Parc, but also because Linsbourg has outlived his usefulness in terms of Alban’s development as an adolescent character moving towards maturity: Chacun d’eux entra dans son taxi. Leur nuit de mai était close. Chacun d’eux n’aimait pas l’autre. Cela datait de loin, mais ils venaient de se le confirmer. Maintenant c’était bien une brouille comme Alban commençait de les pratiquer, très différente déjà des brouilleries volages de Parc: solide, massive, opaque; une brouille de basalte et de fer. (PRII, 803)

Alban takes the path to purity and, finally, elects to separate himself from Serge for the spiritual improvement of both; by grieving for the loss of the ‘garçonnerie’ Linsbourg spares Alban the indignity of grief. Alban has tears in his eyes during the conversation with de Pradts, but quickly masters his feelings, in keeping with protection of the ideal selfimage: ‘il n’a pas pleuré pour la rupture avec Serge, en partie parce que galvanisé par l’excitation du renvoi, en partie parce que la rupture avec Serge était au-delà des larmes’. (PRII, 816) Alban despises Linsbourg, projecting weakness, pain and fear: Le monde de Linsbourg n’était pas le sien; le problème de Linsbourg n’était pas son problème (à la vérité Alban n’avait pas de problèmes, et flairait, à tort ou à raison, que ce sont presque toujours des imbéciles qui ont des problèmes); l’angoisse de Linsbourg, il n’y entrait pas, ne l’aimait pas, ne voulait pas y entrer, surtout pour l’en plaindre. [...] Fermé, imperméable, implacable, Incorruptible, avec cette férocité particulière qu’on a contre ses amis, quand on s’est brouillé avec eux, et plus particulièrement cet art qui lui [sic] poussait de se retourner violemment et cruellement contre ce qu’il aimait ou donnait l’impression d’aimer. (PRII, 800–801)

This passage is pivotal in terms of the dual construction of the adolescent identity in Les Garçons. By creating two adolescent heroes, the author portrays both noble and ignoble adolescent characteristics and creates a distancing technique, whereby Alban and Linsbourg contemplate certain traits in one another and grasp them more 153

effectively through contemplation. Psychology analyses how the individual conceives of the different elements of his or her personality: Self (or subject) […] refers to that intrapsychic framework in which one is embedded and from which one is unable to create distance; [...] object refers not to our internalized representation of another person at all but rather to more general phenomena that we come to relinquish – ‘to those feelings, thoughts, constructs, and relationships that we can step out of, observe, and thus manipulate’ [...]. The term ‘object’ means literally ‘thrown away from’; […] identity or meaning-making is about the way in which we come to ‘throw away’ something that once was a part of the self, and make it an object to a new restructured self.11

In fictional terms, the distancing technique defined above is affected by attributing to Linsbourg all the characteristics considered to be unheroic. In this way, such ‘weaknesses’ as pain, grief, unhappiness are manipulated and re-assimilated. Psychologists describe this as ‘an ongoing process of change that may continue over the course of the lifespan’. In this novel, the process of re-assimilation referred to above is absent. Grief for loss of the beloved as well as for the passing from one stage of development to another during adolescence is a necessary part of the individual’s process of evolution: ‘there is no moving beyond loss without some experiencing of mourning. To be unable to mourn is to be unable to enter the great human cycle of death and rebirth’.12 Alban does not properly experience grief for fear of weakening his heroic image of self. By portraying two adolescent characters, with ‘good’ and ‘bad’ characteristics respectively, Alban is glorified as the hero, in contrast with Linsbourg, who is shown to be weak and decidedly human. This device means that Alban’s character is idealized throughout the novel.

11 12

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Kroger, Jane, Identity in Adolescence: the balance between self and other, Routledge, New York, p. 142. Lifton, R.J. Preface in Mitscherlich Alexander and Margarete (eds). The Inability to Mourn, Grove Press, New York, Chapter VII, quoted by Kroger, ibid., p. 191.

Although Alban opts for the moral high ground, his love relationship with Serge includes a moral ‘tug-of-war’. The couple indulge in physical embraces, which culminate in their encounter at the ‘Fronton basque’. When de Pradts learns that they have taken a hansom cab together, he calls Alban into his office and persuades him to abandon physicality, in order to ‘improve’ Serge. Alban then takes it upon himself to reform the other boys, encouraging them to abandon sensuality in the interests of spiritual and moral betterment. Initially, he succeeds: ‘Comme, en bons petits Français, ils prennent vite le mot d’ordre! […] Maintenant, comme des mères, […] dans les papotages du Groupe on vantait […] les paroles et les actions « bien » de ses protégés’. (PRII, 617) The reformation is brief: Cependant, […] la nouvelle vie se défaisait peu à peu. D’abord, Alban avait remarqué qu’on ne parlait plus autant que naguère des « progrès » de tel et tel; ensuite, il s’aperçut qu’on se taisait quelquefois à son approche et flaira que les conversations « mauvais genre » avaient repris; enfin, il capta quelques propos et fut frappé de leur crudité […]. (PRII, 658)

At Notre Dame du Parc, Alban functions as the non-conformist, who stands out from the group because he acts independently and is self-aware. There are various stages of adolescent development: Awareness of individual differences begins to emerge at the self-aware level, in contrast to the stereotypic thinking of the conformist; at the more mature ego stages of development, a premium is placed on individual differences. At the self-aware level, the self can be aware of itself, distinct from (though still related to) the group; multiplicity is the conscious preoccupation of this ego state.13

Alban exhibits a high degree of maturity compared to his fellow students and even to the staff. He reluctantly consents to conform to the system of Protection by befriending a younger boy and, when he does, establishes a meaningful, almost adult relationship with a physical, emotional, even spiritual dimension. His heroism lies in his mature individuality which characterizes his dealings with his peers, the priests

13

Kroger, op. cit., p. 119.

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and his mother, and which ensures that he is admired rather than liked by his peers. The dichotomy between Alban and Linsbourg is an essential feature of the novel because it means that the adolescent movement between self and other is depicted and enables Alban to gain control over the now distanced parts of his personality of which he disapproves. Taken as an autonomous entity, Alban is barely credible, first because of his renunciation of carnal pleasure and because of his compliance with de Pradts’ request to abandon Serge. If the reader accepts that Alban and Linsbourg together represent the fully rounded adolescent personality, struggling between carnality and spirituality, the portrayal of adolescence is more credible. Thrasylle, on the other hand, depicts multiplicity through a series of portraits. The first is a face reflected in the water of a spring, the second the eponymous hero’s beloved friend, Lycas, and the third is the wolf, an incarnation of evil. Duality of characters is used in the same way as in Les Garçons, although it is apparent only towards the end of the novella, when the wolf monster appears to Thrasylle. The hero remains pure, as in Les Garçons, because his baser instincts are transferred to another character. The three images in Thrasylle come together in a section which relates the eyes of one as they reflect the other two: Il [Thrasylle] se rappelait les détails [de sa rencontre avec le monstre] [...] il se revoyait penché sur cet être, il n’y a pas une heure, distinguant soudain au fond des larges prunelles noires un tout petit visage qui vacillait. [...] Ce qu’il y avait au fond de ces yeux, ah, il le reconnaissait bien, c’était le visage de la fontaine! [...] Sans doute il s’était penché sur les yeux de Lycas aussi près que sur le visage de cette nuit. Mais alors Lycas dormait. (T, 166)

In this extract, the three objects of Thrasylle’s love are associated through their eyes. The hero recognizes the same look in the eyes of the monster as in the face of the spring and remembers gazing at Lycas’ closed eyes while he slept. The three beings are related to one another and represent at the same time the object of love and the carnal aspect of the hero’s nature. It is a mark of the immaturity of the composition that the beloved is not completely separated from the character who represents evil, as he is in Les Garçons. Thrasylle’s concern for purity 156

functions through the attribution of impure characteristics first to Lycas and then to the wolf monster. The process referred to above as ‘throwing away’ is expressed as follows: Alors il s’épouvanta. Il n’était plus maître de soi. Il était entre les mains d’un autre. Il ne pouvait que se répéter: « Comme j’ai changé! » Il se sentait le siège de deux existences successives, isolées par la mort d’un Thrasylle, et la naissance, – la création spontanée! – d’un nouveau Thrasylle. (T, 39–40)

The division of Thrasylle’s personality into two parts is described as a feeling of death and re-birth. As the novella progresses, the other gradually takes on evil characteristics and is further alienated from the self, enabling Thrasylle to retain purity and achieve metamorphosis. The novella presents the dilemma of adolescent identity, related to a growing awareness of sexuality. Although the hero experiences carnal pleasure at the behest of the hedonist philosopher, Simon, ultimately he is caught in an impasse, a process of change, which he cannot control or understand. Thrasylle achieves knowledge by acting upon his desire, but the result is a state of non-being: C’est en agissant qu’il avait eu la déception de Simon, en agissant qu’il avait appris la nature vraie de l’image, en agissant qu’il avait connu la déchéance de sa beauté! en agissant qu’il avait perdu son âme, car Thrasylle, dans sa chair, était peut-être malade, mais Thrasylle dans son âme était mort. (T, 168–169)

Thrasylle relates a quest for change and for knowledge and expresses a lament for the loss of vitality which knowledge brings. At adolescence the individual is forced to enter a state of consciousness, during which he must, for the first time, deal with adult problems: ‘Problems thus draw us into an orphaned and isolated state where we are abandoned by nature and are driven to consciousness’.14 Thrasylle’s idyllic setting reflects the protagonist’s pre-conscious state. Thrasylle has acted and obtained knowledge, but the sense of loss is extreme:

14

Jung, Carl G., Modern Man in search of a Soul, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1933, p. 110.

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If we try to extract the common and essential factors from the almost inexhaustible variety of individual problems found in the period of youth, we meet in nearly all cases with a particular feature: a more or less patent clinging to the childhood level of consciousness [...]. Something in us wishes to remain a child; to be unconscious or, at most, conscious only of the ego; to reject everything foreign, or at least subject it to our will; to do nothing, or in any case indulge our own craving for pleasure or power.15

The adolescent’s grief for the passing of childhood is enacted in Thrasylle’s anguished longing for the lost self. He feels that as a child he was alive, but as an adolescent who gains the knowledge of the adult, he is dead. In despair, he throws himself into the fountain. The text depicts constantly changing states of adolescent emotions. The following passage describes a positive reaction to change, whereas the previous quotation is negative: Maintenant, plus rien ne lui ferait tourner le sang, et il n’avait plus de raison d’enlaidir cet acte, c’était une chose très bonne, […] il n’y avait vraiment rien de désagréable. Pourtant, il ne fallait rien regretter. Oh, non, non, il ne fallait rien regretter! Mais sa vertu principale, c’était de l’avoir délivré de cette inquiétude ravageante qui avait fait de toute son existence, durant deux saisons, une perpétuelle courbe en folie. Enfin il allait être tranquille et se reposer à présent. Et si jamais un de ces malaises lui revenait, eh bien, un seul acte l’en débarrasserait en une seconde, comme cette nuit! (T, 167)

In this passage, Thrasylle appreciates the advantages of knowledge. The two paragraphs are not, however, contradictory; the hero is reacting intellectually in the above passage, whereas, in the first passage, his reaction is emotional; the exclamation marks and truncated phrases indicate the depth of feeling being communicated. Fragmentation of the protagonist’s identity depicts the changes taking place in the adolescent psyche. As the adolescent moves toward adulthood, he is forced to leave his former self behind. The hero undergoes further transmutation as the novella progresses. The frog form, which Thrasylle finally assumes, is significant as an amphibious creature, which exists in two elements, the world of the living and the dead, the world of the body and the spirit. There is no conclusion, but simply another rite of

15

158

Jung, ibid., p. 116.

passage; Thrasylle is in a constantly changing state throughout the work and, at the end, enters a further stage of transition.

Thrasylle: the Collective Unconscious in the Process of Change from Child to Adolescent Thrasylle differs from Les Garçons most strikingly in its use of animal archetypal symbols, which, in Jungian terms relate the myth of Thrasylle to the collective unconscious: These ancient images are restored to life by the primitive, analogical mode of thinking peculiar to dreams. It is not a question of inherited ideas, but of inherited thought-patterns. In view of these facts we must assume that the unconscious contains not only personal, but also impersonal, collective components in the form of inherited categories or archetypes.16

Thrasylle is an oneiric text, recounting adolescent trauma through archetype; there is no plot, no rounded characters, no credible situation in place or time; the style is vague and the sense is frequently ambiguous. The dream-like quality reflects the unconscious mind of the child, which is attempting to resolve conflict with the conscious mind of the adult. Faure-Biguet quotes a letter, dated 1913, when Montherlant was 18: ‘J’ai commencé (avec difficulté; il y a trois ans que je n’ai pas écrit une ligne!) le schéma d’un conte antique’.17 The phrase ‘il y a trois ans que je n’ai pas écrit une ligne’ indicates that the genesis of the story dates from 1910, when Montherlant was 15. The novella is, therefore, a very early composition, which he would probably not have wished to publish. The evidence of youthful creativity is obvious in the lack of structure, the absence of delineation between fantasy and reality and the fact that the feelings of the eponymous hero are given preference, to the exclusion of all else. The adolescent narrator, like the protagonist, is entirely self-absorbed and exhibits no interest in the world outside his own perception. This 16 17

Jung, Carl G. Collected Works, vol.7, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1953, p. 135. Faure-Biguet, op. cit., p. 93.

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myopic approach is very different from the more mature narration of Les Garçons. In Les Garçons, adolescence and the discovery of carnal and spiritual love are presented in a traditional narrative form with a plot, rounded characters and a setting in time and in place. Les Garçons also lacks the archetypal images, which constitute the essence of Thrasylle. Residual traces of the creative unconscious are however present in the dream episodes of Les Garçons. Common themes are transcendent adolescent love, the conflictual relationship between the young hero and adult society and the dilemma of adolescence: The introspective late adolescent, trying to free himself from parents who made and partially determined him, and trying also to face membership in wider institutions, which he has not as yet made his own, often has a hard time convincing himself that he has chosen his past and is the chooser of his future. Moved by his ravenous sexuality, his commanding aggressive power, and his encompassing intellect, he is tempted to make premature choices, or to drift passively.18

Thrasylle portrays a young man who is virtually lost in the confusion of his nascent identity; he is motivated by conflicting forces and is thrown first in one direction and then in another. Sometimes he makes choices, but, at other times, his reaction is that of ‘drifting passively’. Alban, the hero of Les Garçons, is more mature, more decisive, better equipped intellectually and emotionally to manage the conflict with the adult world. Thrasylle describes the passage from childhood to adolescence and the adolescent’s struggle, from the anguished point of view of the young protagonist, who is caught in the midst of the dilemma; Les Garçons is written from the point of view of the older narrator looking back on adolescent crisis. Les Garçons provides resolution of adolescent trauma and a hero who is in control of his destiny, whereas Thrasylle is caught in a whirlwind of emotions and is unable to resolve his feelings of despair and anguish. The form and content of Thrasylle, with animal archetypal images and oneiric scenes, illustrate the subconscious state. Thrasylle

18

160

Erikson, Eric H. Young Man Luther: A Study in Psychoanalysis and History, Norton, New York, 1963, p. 113.

is constantly ‘yearning for a return to the primordial, paradisiacal state of unconsciousness, to a sheltered state free from responsibility and decisions, for which the womb [the grotto containing the spring in Thrasylle] is an unexcelled symbol’.19 The hero struggles to understand the processes taking place as he moves from childhood to adolescence. By using archetypal images in the form of the wolf and the frog, the process of adolescent growth is described; Thrasylle works out a complex: if a complex remains only a greater or lesser nodal point in the collective unconscious, if it is not swollen and overgrown by too much personal material, then it is not harmful but extremely fruitful, for it is the energy-giving cell from which all further psychic life flows; but if it is overcharged and becomes autonomous, or if it invades the realm of consciousness, it may take on any of the forms that generate neurosis and psychosis.20

A complex ‘means that something incompatible, unassimilated, and conflicting exists – perhaps as an obstacle, but also as a stimulus to greater effort, and so, perhaps, as an opening to new possibilities of achievement’.21 The personal complex, caused by the experience of evolution from childhood to adolescence, is transformed in Thrasylle into the collective experience through the use of archetype, thus enabling the protagonist to move on into another state; this new state is not explored in the novella, but in the later novel, Les Garçons. In Thrasylle this psychic process is manifest in stages. Lycas, the beloved with whom Thrasylle lives for a period, bears the name ‘wolf’ [from the Greek lykos] and manifests more and more wolf-like characteristics as the action progresses. Eventually, his transformation into the wolf monster is complete when he appears to Thrasylle as a frightening shadow or apparition, attracting and repelling the hero at the same time. The wolf monster is the archetype described by Jung as the ‘Bad Animal’, the character in fairy tales who eats children: ‘In symbolic

19 20 21

Jacobi, Jolande, Complex/Archetype/Symbol in the Psychology of C.G. Jung, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1959, p. 90. Ibid., p. 27. Jung. A Psychological Theory of Types, Collected Works, op. cit., p. 91.

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language, being devoured represents a kind of descent into the underworld, a sinking back into the womb, resulting in the extinction of consciousness, the death of the ego. Consciousness is engulfed by the darkness of the unconscious’.22 During his encounter with the wolf monster, Thrasylle experiences a sinking feeling: ‘Une main d’acier fouillait dans sa poitrine en même temps qu’il se sentait descendre au fond d’un abîme, dans une chute vertigineuse, avec la vitesse du vent’. (T, 163) The ‘Bad Animal’ signifies the descent of the hero towards his base instincts. The monster, however, ‘not only signifies instinct, but also has another, magical, mystical-religious meaning. It is the expression of a particular state, a ‘“libido analogue” […] representing the ceaseless flow of the psychic process’.23 Thrasylle feels that he has died after gaining knowledge through sexual experience. Knowledge marks the end of his childhood. The apparition of the monster is a manifestation of life, of the fact that Thrasylle’s process of growth, although terrifying, continues. The continuation of the life force is clearly expressed, in terms of archetype. Thrasylle’s wolf monster is the personification of evil. By ‘exteriorizing’ negative elements, the hero comes to terms with the existence of good and evil in his own nature, depicted by Jung as a conversation between the conscious and the unconscious mind: And just as the conscious mind can put the question, ‘Why is there this frightful conflict between good and evil?’ so the unconscious can reply, ‘Look closer! Each needs the other. The best, just because it is the best, holds the seed of evil, and there is nothing so bad but good can come of it’.24

The fairy tale witch, wolf or ogre, in archetypal, symbolic terms, has a bipolar nature and combines positive and negative elements. This character is often the keeper of a sacred place. In Thrasylle, the magical place is the spring in the forest, symbolic of the unconscious: Des aloès monstrueux se multipliaient tout autour de lui, lui barraient le passage, lui égratignaient les jambes avec leurs épines; et quand il les repoussait, il

22 23 24

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Jacobi, op. cit., p. 155. Ibid., p. 157. Jung, Collected Works, op. cit., p. 181.

frissonnait au contact de cette pulpe glauque qui était veloutée comme de la chair; l’herbe sous ses pieds nus avait aussi une chaleur de bête; les basilics, les oeillets d’Inde, les hautes pointes des digitales, les pavots aux fleurs blanches, les hampes nacrées des asphodèles, tout cela semblait grouiller dans la pénombre; [...] Et sur les plantes étalées, sur les rocs, sur les fleurs, sur la pesanteur des masses d’ombre, sur la pesanteur de ces arômes, un silence affreux pesait encore; mais pas ce silence habituel, mais un silence total, glacé, quelque chose d’énorme comme des montagnes, inerte comme la mort. Alors il eut peur et souhaita de quitter ces lieux. (T, 29)

In this passage, nature is portrayed as an all-encompassing monstrous presence, threatening to overwhelm the hero; the setting is contrasted with the sunlit landscapes in the novella, where the boys play or sing together. The plants and the silence, which seems a living thing, are symbols of Thrasylle’s unknown nature; the sanctuary is the place where rite of passage from childhood to adolescence will occur. The area surrounding the spring is a four-sided space: ‘Là-haut, les deux crêtes des murailles resserraient un ruban de ciel’. (T, 29) The foursided space is, in religious tradition, the dwelling place of the soul, the space where god and believer become one. For Jung, the square is ‘the quaternity [which] is a more or less direct representation of the God who is manifest in his creation’.25 Thrasylle calls upon the gods in an attempt to understand his experience: ‘une beauté si effrayante ne pouvait être qu’un signe des dieux’. (T, 36) The two spaces, the spring and the arena where the hymn is sung, depict the hero’s longing to return to the unconscious state of the pre-Oedipal child, a womb-like enclosed space. Thrasylle is both fascinated and frightened by the face reflected in the spring; only on his second visit is fear overcome: ‘Thrasylle ébloui découvrait le monde’. (T, 37) The wolf monster is associated with both the beloved image seen in the spring and with Lycas: L’ombre se rapprocha et murmura un mot. Alors, Thrasylle tomba sur ses genoux et l’adora. Dans son corps, mille frissons brûlants et glacés couraient éperdument. Toute la voiture s’alourdissait de l’odeur connue. Le spectre immobile le

25

Jacobi, op. cit., p. 170.

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regardait, et Thrasylle comprenait maintenant que chacun de ses traits appartenait à un visage qu’il avait aimé. (T, 162)

The second archetype referred to in Thrasylle is, in Jungian terms, that of the ‘Little Animal’. Thrasylle commits suicide by entering the water of the fountain and drowning. Two shepherds watch his bloated body floating downstream, but a child sees something quite different in the form: ‘Mais le gosse arriva, tout essoufflé d’excitation; il gesticulait; ses yeux pétillaient. – Viens voir, cria-t-il, on dirait une grosse grenouille!’ (T, 171) The frog is a component part of the psyche, representing Thrasylle’s re-birth in a transitory form whilst awaiting ‘the counterflow of energy that will activate the positive, spiritual aspect of the collective unconscious and bring about a turn in the intrapsychic struggle’.26 Thrasylle’s death precedes a rebirth, implying an upward movement in the growth of his inner being, an ennoblement enacted through transfiguration, which is explored more fully in Les Garçons. Thrasylle recounts adolescent growth, through archetype: Basically every transition, from one phase of life to another, from sleeping to waking, from unconsciousness to conscious knowledge, etc., signifies a kind of ‘rebirth’. And every new insight in life is accompanied by a transformation in which something superseded must die, must be left behind. Every transformation is actually a mystery and as such an integral part of life. [...] A new ‘creation’ has begun; the destructive activity of the beast of chaos is ended.27

Resolution of Moral Conflict by the Adoption of Universal Ethical Principles in Les Garçons Thrasylle’s evolution stops at the point of his ‘suicide’, which occurs at the point of transformation from a child to adolescent. In Les Garçons, Alban’s moral and spiritual development begins at the same point; the hero is a fully-fledged adolescent whose moral and spiritual development takes place concurrently with the action of the novel. One of the most fascinating dilemmas of Les Garçons is why Alban agrees 26 27

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Jacobi, ibid., p. 160. Jacobi, ibid., p. 178.

never to see Serge again, when he knows very well that he is being manipulated by the jealous and possessive cleric, whose hidden agenda of desire to be with Serge and have influence over him motivates his actions. He does not have any regard for authority and is perspicacious enough to understand adult motivation. Yet he decides to make what, for him, is the ultimate sacrifice. Research on adolescent development reveals that Alban acts in accordance with a set of principles, which he has defined. Psychologists emphasize the stages of moral awareness through which adolescents pass as they mature. There are six stages of moral reasoning, one of which will identify the point at which an individual is functioning at any given time. These six stages are: (i) Obey rules to avoid punishment. (ii) Conform to obtain rewards, have favors returned, and so on. (iii) Conform to avoid disapproval, dislike by others. (iv) Conform to avoid censure by legitimate authorities and resultant gain. (v) Conform to maintain the respect of the impartial spectator judging in terms of community welfare. (vi) Conform to avoid self condemnation.28

Alban, in deciding not to see Serge again, is functioning at the sixth stage of moral reasoning. At this stage, right is determined by one’s own conscience in accordance with self-chosen ethical principles. Such principles involve an abstract notion of justice and may transcend the written law, if that law is in violation of ethical codes, which uphold equality in human rights and a respect for human dignity. At stage (vi) a concern for the equality and dignity of each human being is the primary motivating force in the conceptualization of what is just.29 Serge, in adhering to de Pradts’ request that he should not see Alban again, is reacting in accordance with stage (iii) of the above table, as illustrated by the following: ‘Serge, après « l’affaire », n’avait pas cherché à revoir Alban. La double défense qu’on lui en avait faite – de ses parents, de M. de Pradts – pesait sur lui’. (PRII, 818) The adults in Les Garçons, Mme de Bricoule, Alban’s mother, and l’abbé de Pradts, the deputy head of Notre Dame du Parc, see Alban’s 28

29

Kroger, op. cit., quoting Kohlberg, L. and Gilligan, C. (1971) ‘The adolescent as a philosopher: the discovery of the self in a postconventional world’, Daedelus 100: 1051–1086. Ibid., pp. 90–91.

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action as functioning at the level of (iv). Alban has already been censured by the authorities by being expelled and ostracized, when de Pradts asks him not to see Serge again. De Pradts is, in turn, censured by his superior, who understands why Alban has been expelled and forbids the cleric from contacting Serge. This episode is a late addition and does not occur in earlier versions of the novel. Renunciation results in a reincarnation of Serge’s and Alban’s love in the form of dreams; through this oneiric enactment of their feelings, the young heroes achieve spiritual union, Montherlant’s ideal of love. Pradeau de la Halle recognizes the spiritual nature of Alban’s and Serge’s love during the mass of the resurrection: Il les connaissait presque tous […] Parmi eux il vit Alban et Serge, tels qu’il les voyait il y avait quelques jours encore, à genoux et attendant et candidement offerts. Combien de communions feraient-ils désormais? Qui s’occuperait d’eux? Qui veillerait sur eux? Ils étaient renvoyés et ils étaient là, comme une chose est cette chose et en même temps une autre chose dans les rêves. Et il leur donna le corps du Christ avec un amour particulier. (PRII, 755)

The Supérieur’s vision of Alban and Serge confers a supernatural aspect on the beloved friends, which implies that their relationship exists in two dimensions at the same time. The vision is real to the priest, in that he gives the friends communion as if they were actually present. Hereafter, oneiric references to Serge recur: Serge, qui apparaissait dans les rêves de l’abbé de Pradts […] et dans ceux d’Alban, visitait aussi les nuits de Mme de Bricoule [...] Un matin qu’elle était au plus bas, elle dit à son fils: « J’ai rêvé que je t’avais sur mes genoux, à douze ans, en culottes courtes. Tu baissais la tête pour que je ne puisse t’embrasser que sur les cheveux. Puis tu la relevais gentiment et je te baisais sur les paupières [...]. Mais alors je m’apercevais que ce n’était plus toi; c’était Souplier. Tu étais devenu Souplier... » Dans ses dernières affres, suspendue au-dessus d’un infini terrible, elle confondait ces deux enfants, coupables ou non coupables, pour s’en faire un bien unique. Et lui, il pensait: « Si ma mère l’a vu si souvent en rêve, c’est que j’ai le droit de l’aimer. » (PRII, 778)

Alban’s last dream finds him back at school watching his mother and Serge walk away; he cannot reach them and awakes in tears: ‘Cette fois, c’est dans un rêve d’Alban qu’il revenait, et encore une fois il y était […] Irrésistiblement, il y avait quelque chose qui venait d’un autre

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monde pour faire un seul de ces deux êtres, et les montrer par là justifiés’. (PRII, 823) In these series of dreams the friends attain a spiritual unity, denied them in the physical world. Their union, achieved through the attainment of a higher state of being, is reminiscent of Plato’s definition of the aims of lover and beloved in terms of the perfect friendship. The relationship is preserved at the height of perfection by Alban’s renunciation. Heroic sacrifice is an essential element in Montherlant’s system of values.

Homosexual Love, Renunciation and Spirituality Les Garçons’s subject is the love affair between an older and younger boy. In this fictional reincarnation of a pivotal real life love experience the concept of Good permeates the love experience and through renunciated of physical love, the hero attains purity. A critique referring to Rousseau may be applied to Montherlant’s text: Rousseau est donc amené à introduire un facteur qui, extérieur à la déchirure et à la raison, soit l’expression immuable de la présence éternelle du Bien: la conscience innée du sentiment moral.[...] La déchirure d’exister semble devoir se refermer sur l’apaisement qu’apporte alors la certitude qu’au fond de soi, et malgré la méchanceté de tel ou tel acte, subsiste un sentiment inaltérable, inaltéré, pour le bien. Certitude bien fragile! Chaque faute la remet en cause, impose une justification, un retour sur soi, une confession. Reprendre la plume, c’est tenter – à nouveau – de combler l’écart entre le faire et le vouloir. Paradoxe ultime, véritable onanisme cérébral, l’écriture procure dès ici-bas la jouissance de l’Eternité.30

In Montherlant’s system of values, conventional religious belief is replaced by a belief in the goodness of man, possible within the idealistic loving relationship, such as that depicted in Les Garçons. The phrase ‘combler l’écart entre le faire et le vouloir’ suggests that certain forms of literary creativity enact a wish fulfilment. Les Garçons

30

Tarczylo, Théodore, Sexe et liberté au siècle des Lumières, Presses de la Renaissance, Paris, 1983, pp. 220–1.

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illustrates that central to Montherlant’s thinking is the wish for the perfect love relationship, which undergoes metamorphosis through the selflessness of the lover, to become a complete spiritual union, where lover and beloved are one and the same being. For Montherlant, love and the sense of Goodness as life’s guiding force constitute the new morality. The act of writing, by depicting selfless love as a moral guide for living, no doubt deforms reality but, at the same time, transforms it into ‘la jouissance de l’Eternité’, an expression which aptly describes the paradigm of the Alban–Serge affair, since their pleasure in each other is made eternal through the text. In fictionalizing this love, Montherlant re-creates it, breathes life into his own cherished past and gives the experience an eternal dimension, whilst at the same time highlighting guilt, renunciation and redemption as essential elements of the homosexual love relationship. The narrative follows the progression of the loving friendship. Alban persuades his mother to send him to Notre-Dame du Parc because Serge is to be a pupil at this establishment. At first, Serge is indifferent to Alban’s attention. When Serge turns fourteen, the boys start to become friends and make an oblique declaration of mutual interest during an outing to a fairground: « Je ne vaux pas la peine que tu uses des pellicules pour moi.– Il vaut mieux les user pour toi que pour les autres. – Pourquoi? – Parce que je me fous pas mal des autres. – Et moi aussi tu te fous de moi. – Non, je ne me fous pas de toi. – Oh! tu dis ça parce que tu aurais peur de me vexer. – Non, je t’assure que je ne me fous pas de toi ». (PRII, 535)

This occasion is dated as 9 July 1912, the mechanism of dating certain events lending them significance as milestones in the progression of the relationship. It is possible that these are autobiographical incidents, which are distinguished as such by dating. This procedure only relates to the meetings of Serge and Alban, thereby setting their friendship apart from that of the other boys as something of a higher order. The above declarations of interest have to wait until after the summer holidays to be acted upon. At the beginning of the next school year, their liaison is formalized and Serge is properly ‘collé à’ Alban.

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Besides underlining certain events, Montherlant employs the device of theatrical dialogue to mark momentous portions of text. This technique is adopted for the scene which recounts Alban’s and Serge’s first physical caresses: ‘Et c’était, pour l’un et l’autre, la première fois de gestes qu’ils allaient recommencer toute leur vie’. (PRII, 550) Theatrical dialogue heightens drama and increases tension, marking the scene in the hansom cab as a key moment in the novel: ‘Serge attira la tête d’Alban, et leurs bouches se joignirent, manifestement inexpertes en cette affaire. [...] Ensuite, ils se détachèrent et se turent, chacun d’eux stupéfait de la tendresse de l’autre’. (PRII, 552) The ride in the hansom cab is the first of several outings; Alban and Serge go to the cinema, to the zoological gardens and to the ‘Fronton basque’, a favourite meeting place for couples from the College, because there are cubicles where they can be alone together. This is the setting for the climax of their physical relationship. The literary device used to recount this crucial episode is silence.31 Only the reactions of the boys are described [together with the results of their encounter in the form of a cut on Alban’s finger and a tear in his coat], notably Alban’s response: Nul remords, nulle inquiétude pour l’avenir. Cette sensation de plénitude après quatre ans d’idéalisme. Il en restait stupéfié, vraiment anéanti de bonheur, impuissant à se calmer, ne pouvant se fixer sur autre chose. C’était comme si on avait fait une piqûre à sa vie, qui l’eût anesthésiée tout entière sauf en ce point-là. (PRII, 564)

Silence, on the one hand, heightens the eroticism of the scene, and, on the other, attempts to situate the encounter in a realm outside that of a concrete experience, which can be expressed in words. Silence allows this incident to pass into an oneiric domain, where the friends are to meet after their separation. The transposition of a concrete event into dream is underlined by the term ‘rêve’: ‘Alban avait dit: « C’est pour moi comme un rêve. » Serge avait répondu: « C’est plus qu’un rêve »’. (PRII, 563)

31

See Lapaire, Pierre J., Montherlant et la parole: Etude d'un langage dramatique, Birmingham, Alabama, Summa, 1993, Chapter 3 for Montherlant’s use of silence.

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Alban and Serge are expelled after de Pradts catches them alone together in the tuck shop. The novel ends with the deaths of Serge, of Mme de Bricoule and of de Pradts. Serge is killed in the trenches: L’été de 1916, Alban apprit, par un camarade rencontré, que Serge, engagé à dixhuit ans dans les chasseurs alpins, avait été, quelques semaines après son arrivée au front, décoré pour sa belle conduite de la médaille militaire. Ce fut sa dernière apparition sur la face lumineuse de l’eau. Ensuite celui qui avait « laissé un souvenir brûlant » redescendit et reposa dans cette fraîcheur des grands fonds que les vents n’ont jamais touchés. (PRII, 826)

The last sentence implies that Serge remains ‘forever young’ and that his spirit continues to exist in some untroubled region, evoked in the above passage by the metaphor of water, just as water is the element into which the hero disappears in Thrasylle. Transcendence is achieved through the transmutation of their earthly love into a spiritual union expressed through vision and dream. This attainment of a higher form of being is allied to Alban’s goodness; he follows the path of virtue in giving Serge up so as not to cause him harm and spiritual union with the beloved is Alban’s reward. The school is one of the sacratissima loca, cited in the novel (PRII, 497), where the miracle of transcendence takes place: ‘Ce collège n’est pas seulement lié au passé, à la jeunesse et au bonheur, c’est un haut lieu spirituel, celui de la réforme morale, de la générosité, de l’amour capable de sacrifice’. (PRII, 1428) Transcendent love, as expressed in Les Garçons and Thrasylle, replaces the heroic ideal of the early novels and becomes the focal point in Montherlant’s system of values. In Les Garçons and Thrasylle, the ‘access to truth’, analyzed by Foucault in his History of Sexuality, is achieved by the loving friends.32 The love recounted in Thrasylle is less well defined than the relationship between Serge and Alban. Transcendence does not take place, but the boys live through a loving friendship, which remains with each of them separately. The first encounter between Thrasylle, who is fourteen and Lycas, who is slightly younger, is a fight, which designates the boys as intimate friends who,

32

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Plato’s theories referring to an ascent towards perfection, as achieved by lovers, are treated by Foucault in The History of Sexuality, vol.2, Part V, ‘True Love’, Penguin, 1987, pp. 229–246.

in the midst of battle, are indistinguishable from one another and draw blood from one another: Les deux enfants enlacés […] sentaient couler et s’évanouir en eux toutes leurs petitesses et toutes leurs piques, cependant qu’un flux vermeil qui brûlait plus fort que du vin, montait en bourdonnant de leurs entrailles. [...] ils cherchent à mordre, ces deux enfants [...] il [Thrasylle] se relève, il y a du sang sur son bras, son visage. (T, 15–16)

The interlacing of their bodies and intermingling of their blood imply that the friends, even at this early stage of their friendship, are united in the same way as the protagonists of Les Garçons, where two beings are fused into one. Three days after the fight, the boys are inseparable. The ‘Hymne’, a religious festival with choral singing, is the next episode in their evolving friendship: ‘Lycas qui, tout bas battait la mesure, l’attendrissait. Quelle bonne volonté chez un être si jeune! Cet effort pour atteindre une perfection tout de même très delicate’. (T, 47) Then Thrasylle is fascinated by his child-like physical grace; lastly, the hero is electrified by touching Lycas: Thrasylle avait posé la main sur son épaule nue, et il percevait ces frissons minuscules du corps, ces ondes subtiles qui rayonnent, ces redressements infimes, ces élancements presque insaisissables, le rapprochement de ces épaules lorsqu’il les soulevait pour respirer, et à chacune de ces pressions légères, c’est comme si toute la chaleur de Lycas était passée dans sa main, dans son bras, eût ruisselé jusque dans ses mollets; c’est comme si l’immense tendresse qu’il [Thrasylle] leur dispensait à tous [aux autres garçons] lui fût revenue, en traversant cette chair, enrichie encore et fortifiée. (T, 48)

The overriding sensation recounted above is that of heat, as a life force exchanged from one boy to another. Innocence is emphasized in Thrasylle’s touch; care is taken to erase sexuality from the account, although the scenes are sensual: ‘il [Lycas] se penchait tout près de Thrasylle, un peu au-dessus de lui. Thrasylle sentait contre sa joue l’odeur de prune de sa bouche, et même, à un moment, le contact d’une goutelette minuscule’ (T, 63). The nearness of their mouths, the scent of the mouth and the sensation of saliva anticipate Alban and Serge’s exchange of kisses in Les Garçons. The idyllic natural setting of Thrasylle is recreated in Les Garçons in the palm house of the zoological gardens where Serge and Alban meet:

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Ils pénètrèrent dans le Palmarium, vaste serre à la flore et à la température tropicales. [...] Serge avisa une grotte dérobée: « Là, on pourra s’embrasser. » [...] Serge accrocha son pardessus à un saillant de la rocaille. Puis, les pieds en équilibre sur des pierres que cernait un petit ruisseau, parmi le murmure de l’eau qui coule ou qui s’égoute, ils unirent leurs bouches profondément, – et la bouche de Serge était profonde, diverse et humide comme cette grotte. (PRII, 624–625)

The natural setting, in this case the palm house of the zoological gardens, with stones, plants and running water and even a guardian, ‘un monsieur métis [...] figure touchante de l’exil et de la nostalgie’, represents the enclosed garden which is at the heart of Montherlant’s work, as the ideal setting for ‘la sensualité, le bon humeur, une tendance à la marginalité et à la retraite, une fête à l’écart and une rencontre avec soi-même’.33 Apart from the idyllic natural setting, the details of physical contact in Thrasylle are similar to those found in Les Garçons, except that, in the latter work, the sexual nature of the embraces is more evident and, in the former, physical contact is chaste. In both cases, the beloved’s scent is frequently referred to, as is the sensation of warmth emanating from the skin (PRII, 559). The hair is another common physical attribute; both Thrasylle and Alban are entranced by the smell and the texture of Lycas’ and Serge’s hair. Certain phrases spoken by the young heroes of Thrasylle are similar to dialogue in Les Garcons. One example is Lycas’ pronouncement: ‘Notre amitié sera éternelle’. (T, 70) Duration of love is a concern: ‘SERGE: Moi aussi, je t’aime beaucoup. (un temps). Maintenant, c’est pour toujours. ALBAN, (avec sagesse): Pour le plus longtemps possible’. (PRII, 552) Thrasylle and Lycas grow more and more isolated from their companions, gradually moving towards an exclusive and intimate relationship. After a quarrel with his guardian, Harmenias, Thrasylle decides to live with Lycas in an isolated cabin. At first, their life together is perfectly satisfying, but Thrasylle is anxious that Lycas will

33

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Domenget, Jean-François. Parcs, jardins et squares chez Montherlant, paper delivered on 27.1.95. at the ‘Montherlant aujourd’hui’ Conference, Paris IV, La Sorbonne. Proceedings: Philippe de Saint Robert (ed.), Henry de Montherlant, collectif, Cahiers de l’Herne, 1997.

leave him: ‘il se disait que Lycas allait s’ennuyer, qu’il s’ennuyait, qu’il n’y resterait pas, qu’un beau matin de soleil, il ne le trouverait plus près de lui’. (T, 87) There are happier periods and reconciliations, but, finally, Thrasylle leaves for a neighbouring town, terrified by a growing awareness of sexuality: ‘Thrasylle […] se coucha sur le lit de feuilles en ramenant la couverture sur lui. Mais quand il sentit un corps se glisser contre le sien, d’un mouvement spontané qu’il ne voulut pas, qui fut un réflexe, un geste de sa chair, il s’éloigna’. (T, 99) Thrasylle’s departure is prompted by fear of homosexual attraction, which is perceived as wrong. The friends never meet again, at least while Lycas is in human form, although Thrasylle longs for his beloved friend. He makes several attempts to see him, but they are thwarted until they meet in the vision or dream scene when Lycas appears as a wolf monster. Thrasylle portrays the hero’s doubt and torment on discovery of his sexuality. Renunciation is, once again, the path to redemption: ‘Oui, savoir s’arrêter, avoir le courage de briser les choses dans l’apogée de leur perfection!’ (T, 133) This sentence underlines the pattern taken by loving friendships throughout Montherlant’s early novels. Thrasylle ends at the point of temptation, when the boy knows what fulfillment of desire means and rejects this knowledge by ‘drowning’ himself. The love between Thrasylle and Lycas does not enter the domain of spirituality inhabited by Alban and Serge, but Thrasylle, like Alban, chooses purity. In so doing, both heroes achieve a form of transcendence. The tale of Thrasylle’s and Lycas’ friendship remains suspensed, to be continued as the Alban– Serge story.

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Death and Afterlife Death is an essential theme in Montherlant’s work. The hero engaged with approaching death is a familiar figure in the plays; Celestino and Exupère in Le Chaos et la nuit and Un Assassin est mon maître involve the reader in the process of dying. Montherlant stresses the presence of death in life and uses death as the guiding principle for his system of values. There is a connection between the dying person in Montherlant’s work and the child. In childhood, naturally, and at the point of death, because of circumstances, the person rejects artifice and embraces reality: ‘Il y a deux moments de sa vie où tout homme est respectable: son enfance et son agonie’.34 Alban in Les Garcons reacts negatively to his dying mother; he treats her badly right to the end: ‘Dans cette souffrance vivait encore, cependant, la souffrance que lui causait son fils […]. Mme de Bricoule sentait bien qu’Alban [...] eût cessé de venir la voir, ou ne fût venu que par convenance, en se contraignant beaucoup’. (PRII, 774) In Montherlant’s philosophy, death is an essential part of life and the main motivation for living life well. Alban’s understanding of the relation between love and death is not clear until some time after his mother’s death. At the time, sexual desire is Alban’s reaction to death as an active affirmation of his own life force. (PRII, 806) Later, he appreciates that love and death are part of the process of life. Serge, on the other hand, is a comfort to Mme de Bricoule in her last hours, but as a presence in her dreams. De Pradts is also comforted, at the moment of his death by his contact with young boys: ‘Le ballon brutal tapa de nouveau contre le mur. L’abbé serra la main de la femme, comme pour la retenir, lui dire: « Laissez jouer les garçons. » [...] il dit: « Que c’est beau! Que c’est beau! » Puis son buste retomba sur l’oreiller, et il cessa d’être’. (PRII, 841) De Pradts dies in a state of grace, due to the solace brought to him by children. Mme de Bricoule dies less unhappy than she might, because of the dream presence of Serge and Alban, amalgamated into one beloved child. Finally, the boys themselves die, killed in the slaughter of the First World War. The last lines of the novel 34

174

Tous feux éteints, op. cit., p. 55.

relate the destruction of the College and the untimely deaths of many of its pupils: En 1961, l’Ecole Notre-Dame du Parc a été rasée, ainsi que le Fronton basque, pour faire place à un garage monstre, et à des bâtisses monstres [...]. Ont été rasés les bureaux des prêtres, ont été rasés les dortoirs, a été rasée la resserre, a été rasée la Petite Espérance, a été rasée la chapelle, et dans la chapelle a été détruite avec le reste une plaque de marbre portant une longue, une très longue liste de noms […]. (PRII, 842)

The heroic ideal, a cornerstone of belief for Montherlant and other writers of his generation, ended with the carnage of the war. The war meant that Montherlant was separated from the heroic ideal, which he replaces with an ideal of love, permeated with nostalgia and rejecting of the modern world. This concept of love proposes the transmutation of beloved friends into a spiritual domain. Death is a rite of passage; the spirits of the dead are present in the dreams of the living. Les Garçons is a monument to the boy soldiers whose deaths are listed at the end of the novel, as representative of the 1914–1918 catastrophe of a generation’s annihilation. Montherlant does not believe in the orthodox Christian concept of after-life, but, at least for certain privileged characters, death constitutes an entry into another form of life. The words and images which recount Serge’s death are particularly relevant to Montherlant’s concept of the afterlife: ‘Ce fut sa dernière apparition sur la surface lumineuse de l’eau. Ensuite celui qui avait « laissé un souvenir brûlant » redescendit et reposa dans cette fraîcheur des grands fonds que les vents n’ont jamais touchés’. (PRII, 826) The image of water implies that life and death are part of one continuous cycle, the surface of the water being life as we know it and the depths, death, conceived as another component of the same substance. Serge’s death is related in terms of the natural world: water and wind; ‘fraîcheur’ is associated with life and, particularly, with young life. The verbs ‘redescendre’ and ‘reposer’ suggest that there will be an eventual return to the surface of the water, as if Serge’s life has simply changed form and will continue to be present in some form forever. This metamorphosis is in keeping with the transformation of the hero at the end of Thrasylle, where water is the catalyst through which the human boy changes into animal form. Here also, the beloved

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is visible and present in water and the lover [Thrasylle], through the kiss, is absorbed into the water and transformed into a different form: et le visage d’autrefois radieux comme une rose épanouie, transfiguré déjà, vint se coller en tremblant contre sa bouche. Alors il posa dans l’eau tiède, à même, en y exprimant avec toute sa force tout ce qui existait en lui jusqu’au fond, un de ces baisers qui donnent comme l’avant-goût de l’éternité, peut-être parce qu’ils la contiennent toute. Et son corps glissait dans le courant silencieux, que toute son âme déjà s’en était allée, comme un duvet au fil de l’air. (T, 170)

The love relationships in Les Garçons and Thrasylle result in two beings being fused into one. Thrasylle joins his beloved by entering his reflection in the water; Serge descends into water to rest, but is everpresent in dreams and memory. Death, for the lovers of Thrasylle and Les Garçons, is another state of being with one another. The symbol of blood recurs throughout Montherlant’s work, used for two purposes, first to represent death, particularly in Le Songe, and second to represent a bond of loving friendship between two characters. An accidental or spontaneous blood-letting incident occurs between each couple. Alban’s finger is cut during their intimate encounter at the ‘Fronton basque’. (PRII, 563) Thrasylle and Lycas cut each other in a fight: ‘il [Thrasylle] se relève, il y a du sang sur son bras, son visage’. (T, 16) Peyrony and Alban are witness to the bleeding knee of a girl athlete in Les Olympiques. (PRI, 249) These references present blood as a symbol of death, life, friendship and enduring love. For Montherlant, death is accepted as a natural process, a rite of passage, which is an essential part of the ideal, enabling the beloved friends to enter an eternal domain. The beloved continues to exist after death, as does the enduring spiritual love, which the Montherlant hero seeks as his ideal.

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Conclusion Les Garçons and Thrasylle differ from the novels considered in Chapter II because the loving friendship between two boys involves a more fully reciprocated relationship. In Les Garçons, abandonment or renunciation is not the end of the friendship, but rather the beginning. The process of renunciation in the four early novels leaves the hero in isolation; the process related in Les Garçons results in the hero feeling the spiritual presence of his friend after they cease to see one another and even after the death of Serge. We have seen how the love shared by Alban and Serge enters this eternal domain. The same cannot be said of the love between Thrasylle and Lycas. Thrasylle, however, is an exploratory text, which prepares for the evolved relationship of Les Garçons, since the friends do live together for a period and some kind of metamorphosis takes place in which the adolescent friends are transformed, in this case not together, but separately, into other forms of being. The novella is an experimental prototype for the evolution of the love relationship of Les Garçons. Thrasylle is a tentative exploration of sexual awareness written by a boy who is not yet sure of his identity as lover and beloved. Les Garçons, published when the writer was 74, contains the fully evolved love experience, a literary manifestation of what it meant to Montherlant to love and be loved. In Chapter II, I argued that the isolation of the adolescent hero was a necessary part of what Foucault refers to as seeking after ‘the truth to which his soul is related’.35 In the early novels, renunciation is an essential part of recognition of truth. Renunciation of the beloved also takes place in Les Garçons, but, instead of ending the friendship, this process leads to a more fulfilling and precious love which transcends all material problems, including death, and informs the hero’s way of being for the rest of his life. Alban’s experience of love with Serge is equated with that of Montherlant in Mais aimons-nous ceux que nous aimons?: en cette fin d’année [...] me vint un rêve [...]. Dans ce rêve j’ai vu apparaitre quelqu’un que j’ai aimé en des temps très lointains. [...] Or, ce rêve, je le fais périodiquement. Tous les combien? Mettons tous les six ou sept ans, depuis un

35

Foucault, op. cit., vol. 2, pp. 243–244.

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temps infini [...]. Cette visitation silencieuse est bouleversante pour moi parce qu’elle bouleverse toute l’idée que j’avais de ma vie. Moi qui ai répété tant de fois: « Je ne sais qu’aimer », n’aurais-je aimé qu’une fois? Je ne peux pas dire que j’ai cru aimer bien d’autres fois. Non, de vrai, je ne le croyais pas. Il m’est arrivé quand même d’en avoir une certaine illusion, et les mots « d’amour » que je prononçais étaient prononçés de franc coeur; mais non, on n’aime qu’une fois, et cette pensée s’ouvre pour moi sur la désolation. J’ai lu, et peut-être pensé, et peutêtre écrit que tous les êtres sont remplaçables. J’ai su cette nuit, ce petit matin, que cela n’est pas. (MA, 216–217)

Taken from Montherlant’s later autobiographical writings, this assertion demonstrates his preoccupation with honesty to himself, indicating that the loving friendship, transposed into fictional form in Les Garçons, was the only properly evolved loving relationship in the life of the author. Montherlant’s belief in the divinity of man is allied to improvement through the love experience. The adolescent hero moves on to a higher form of being and of understanding in all of the novels, but only in Les Garçons is he accompanied by his beloved friend. Les Garçons, together with its prototype, Thrasylle, is the only text in which renunciation leads to reincarnation of the love relationship in a spiritual afterlife. The concept of ideal love related to human divinity is central to Montherlant’s system of beliefs. This notion replaces religious belief, but is flawed in real terms, in that the believer, Montherlant, is constantly looking back nostalgically to an idealized past. Because the divinity of man depends on youth it is an ideal to be contemplated in the past and not in the present or future. The heroic ideal, enacted through war, sport and bull-fighting, is replaced in Les Garçons and Thrasylle by the ideal of love, tragically situated in the past, because the author of Les Garçons is an old man. Montherlant’s final two novels, Le Chaos et la nuit and Un Assassin est mon maître explore the writer’s beliefs about life and death in the context of the real; a nihilistic conclusion, in terms of Montherlant’s philosophy, is inevitable, given that transcendence and immortality are only for the young. Les Garçons and Thrasylle mark an idealistic interlude in Montherlant’s overriding concern with honesty; there are virtues to be pursued in life and these are intelligence, independence, honesty, courage, wisdom, but the individual, whilst aspiring to these admirable qualities, is only too aware of the necessity of recognizing

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that the opposite characteristics exist concommittently. Montherlant values integrity and the final novels are a testimony to the author’s wish to see the world and life as it is and to establish a method of dealing with the reality of life and death. The ideal of love sustains the individual in a world beset by human weakness, but this ideal is a failure because it exists beyond the material world and only for the young. Montherlant’s final two novels elaborate a philosophy of nihilism where the youthful beloved companion is lost and the hero is cast back upon himself to find a way of living and dying in a world where the absurdity of existence is fully and inexorably present.

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Chapter VI Travel Writings No one can speak a monologue for long alone: another voice will always make itself heard: every monologue sooner or later becomes a discussion. [Graham Green, The Heart of the Matter]

Peripeteia The works considered in this chapter are travel documents and belong to three different genres: Moustique [1986] is a novella, La Rose de sable [1968] a novel and Encore un instant de bonheur [1934] a collection of poetry. With the exception of the ‘Poèmes d’inspiration française’ [probably written during brief visits to Paris], the three texts are set outside France. Moustique, Encore un instant de bonheur and La Rose de sable, therefore, mark a new stage in Montherlant’s literary output. It coincides with his departure from France, at the age of thirty and reflects the changes which occurred in the author’s perception of his life and work which he detailed in the ‘Avantpropos’ to Service inutile: En effet, depuis le 15 janvier 1925, date de mon départ, et qui fut une charnière dans ma vie, j’ai passé hors de France, courts et longs séjours additionnés, sept ans et deux mois. [...] En deux mots, il me fallait: 1. réaliser la féerie; 2. me désolidariser. Avec cela une grande gourmandise de la créature’. (PE, 572)

These observations help to explain the content and the tone of the travel writings. What does Montherlant mean by ‘la féerie’? According to Robert, ‘féerie’ denotes ‘le monde fantastique, merveilleux des fées’. For Montherlant, the term is the world of the imagination made real by travelling to exotic places, but the term underlines the fact that the account of the journey is a fantasy rather than a portrayal of an intercultural encounter from the points of view of visitor and resident. The verb ‘désolidariser’, meaning ‘rompre les liens de solidarité avec, entre’, expresses the break he made with 181

France and his former life. Indeed, the Mediterranean crossing is much more than a geographical journey; as these three works demonstrate, the decision to turn his back on Europe gave the author a new freedom which allowed him to explore areas of his being which he had previously censored or suppressed. These three works perhaps best put into effect Montherlant’s hedonistic purpose, where he lives out his belief in the pursuit of pleasure, as theoretically propounded in the Essais. The transposition of lived experience into fiction and poetry depends, however, on an exploration of alterity, which is lacking in relationality, as Montherlant, despite claims to the contrary, writes within the colonial European tradition, appropriating subject as object. All three texts contain a strong element of sensuality and illustrate the ‘grande gourmandise de la créature’ of the preface to Service inutile, the consequence of Montherlant’s need for encounters with fellow beings. Larousse defines ‘créature’ as ‘les biens temporels, les personnes, par opposition aux grâces spirituelles’ suggesting that these writings express an escape from the world of the intellectual or spiritual and embrace living on a purely physical level. Sensual relationships form the basis of the novel and the poetry, whilst Moustique functions at the level of a chaste association. There is, however, a background of sexual encounters in the novella: both the narrator and Moustique refer to sexual encounters which occur outside their own friendship and on which they exchange advice. The relationship between the narrator and the adolescent, Moustique, is refreshingly straightforward; besides performing his duties as a domestic servant, Moustique acts as mentor to his older employer, who benefits from his street-wise companion’s common sense. Auligny, the hero of La Rose de sable, is influenced in his political opinions by his carnal relationship with the young Arab girl, Ram. Encore un instant de bonheur is the most erotic of the works and portrays the joyous sensuality experienced in intimate relationships. The texts depict an exotic environment, where the hero’s or narrator’s encounter with his companion sends him on a fertile journey of self discovery.

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Montherlant claimed that La Rose de sable and Moustique or L'Hôpital [as he refers to it using its alternative title] were written for altruistic purposes: ‘J’ai écrit La Rose en faveur des indigènes, et j’ai écrit L'Hôpital en faveur des ouvriers’. (PE, 590) The aim of selfdiscovery, referred to as ‘l’autre patrie, la patrie intérieure, celle qu’à nous-même nous nous sommes créée’ (PE, 592) seems to override altruistic purpose, as this North African adventure was all the more precious to Montherlant after the restrictions of family and social life in France where he had lived in a house inhabited by the elderly. In 1925, he suddenly entered the exotic world previously only glimpsed in his imagination: ‘Cette vie qui semblait sortie d’Hérondas, de Lucien ou de Pétrone, cette vie antique vécue non par l’imagination mais dans la réalité, et non dans une réalité d’artifice et de reconstitution, mais dans une réalité toute spontanée et naturelle’. (PRII, 390) These words are uttered by Guiscart, the hero’s alter ego in La Rose de sable, and articulate what the author means by ‘la féerie’. They express his wish to break the links with one world and enter another, to ‘se désolidariser’. These are the literary consequences of the freedom Montherlant experienced after his departure from France in 1925, and reflect a time of crisis, of constant movement, but also a time of great joy. Although published at considerable intervals, the texts were composed within a single creative period. The poems were written between 1926 and 1934, La Rose de sable between 1930 and 1932 and Moustique in 1929 from notes made between 1926 and 1929.

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Moustique [1986] Discovered amongst Montherlant’s papers by Jean-Claude Barat, the executor of his will, and published posthumously, this novella of approximately 200 pages, relates the adventures of the narrator and his eponymous adolescent companion. The narrative voice is frequently taken over by that of the young companion. Where a particularly vivid incident occurs, the author cedes his place to Moustique who recounts their experiences using a specific ‘street urchin’ style. The dialogue style reflects Moustique’s quick wits and impulsive behaviour; he and Montherlant remain companions for six years, travelling throughout North Africa and Spain before, finally, sharing an apartment in Paris. The narrative point of view adopted in Moustique is unusual, in that the reader knows the text is autobiographical, even though it is presented as fiction.1 Moustique is designated as a novel on the cover; in fact, it defies precise categorization: it is not a novel, it is not a journal, it is not autobiography, but it contains aspects of all of these genres. Moustique is a transitional work and functions as a passage between genres, moving more freely between different forms of writing. Furthermore, the range of narrative view points contributes to the creation of ‘un texte ludique’, whose comic vision functions in an environment which crosses literary and social boundaries. The story of Moustique, like that of La Rose de sable, is based on an economic transaction. The narrator pays for Moustique’s services as a domestic and companion, just as Auligny, the hero of La Rose de sable, pays first for Ram’s services as a prostitute and then Boualem’s as a servant. Montherlant crosses the boundary which places literature in a non-economic space; he bases his plots on monetary transactions and economics therefore play a part in his literary creation, as they do in the sale of the published work. It is significant that both texts remained in manuscript for a period of fifty years and that the author did not gain from the publication of Moustique, while La Rose de sable was published only three years before his death. Both novels portray the dispossessed, those who have literally nothing in material 1

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Sipriot, op. cit., pp. 222–223.

terms, and, in the case of the North African protagonists of Moustique and La Rose de sable, who do not even ‘possess’ their countries since both Algeria and Morocco were occupied by France at the time of composition. Thus, through an economic transaction, the narrator of Moustique and the hero of La Rose de sable enact what we may call the ‘transactional paradigm’, by which ‘the life, health and happiness of some can be expropriated, irredeemably, by others’.2 The narrator of Moustique and the hero of La Rose de sable expropriate the youth of their companions by buying service, loyalty and affection, the same contract which occurs in Encore un instant de bonheur. An affectionate relationship grows up between Moustique and the narrator, which, although initiated by a financial transaction, is based on mutual respect and attachment, although the young Arab rebels against ‘colonial’ supremacy, as his adult awareness develops and the friendship comes to an end. There are many possible reasons for Montherlant’s decision not to publish La Rose de sable until some forty years after its composition and not to publish Moustique at all. One of the reasons may have been the wish not to profit further from the poverty and deprivation of his youthful models, who exchanged their originality, wit [Moustique] and physical beauty [Ram and the beloved youths of the poems] for money. Moustique and La Rose de sable are situated within strictly structured, colonized societies. Moustique begins in Marseille, where the French police are the custodians of Algerian society. The police are a presence in the text: the narrator is involved in a case which they bring against Moustique. Humour is the means of distinguishing the natural qualities of Moustique from the bureaucratic lifelessness of his persecutors. The narrator aligns himself with the adolescent outsider, and against the authorities. In fact, Montherlant’s encounters with the police were not infrequent and, on more than one occasion, he was saved from prosecution by his reputation as a well-known author.

2

During, Simon, Foucault and Literature: towards a Genealogy of Writing, Routledge, London, 1992, p. 207.

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Vincent [Moustique] is released because the narrator takes him into his employ: Vincent tend la main le premier à M. le commissaire Sauvaget. M. le Commissaire a un haut-le-corps, fait « pouh, pouh, pouh... » avec ses lèvres [ Dieu, s’il allait avoir une attaque!], enfin se remet un peu et, très élégamment, serre la main de Vincent. Mais il est encore tant interdit qu’il s’écrie: « C’est bien la première fois que je serre la main à un accusé! » On se congratule encore. Et je me retire, enchanté de mon premier contact avec la justice des hommes, mais tout de même bien content de rentrer dans le privé. (M, 48)

Latent violence characterizes these encounters with the authorities and in the above passage the narrator aligns himself with the members of society who are persecuted by the police. The tone is one of bravado germane to the general tone of Moustique, but understatement emphasizes the threat of brutality. The police are a menacing presence in both Moustique and the life of the author. Peyrefitte refers to Montherlant’s arrest for an offence against morality in 19413 and a recent critic maintains that Montherlant had ‘an extensive police record’.4 In Moustique the authorities are treated in a humourous way, yet – because of this comic tone – there is an underlying menace in the police presence. Fear is displayed not by the narrator, but, through a process of transference, by his young companion: ‘Il n’y avait pas dix minutes que nous étions dans la chambre, à nous déshabiller, quand on frappe à la porte. – “Que hay?” “La policia”. Je vis Moustique changer de figure’. (M, 56) Actual or imminent violence is also a feature of La Rose de sable, because Moroccan society is strictly controlled by the army. Jacqueline Michel has shown how the colonial military presence is depicted in terms of masculine imagery, whereas the colonized country and its inhabitants are feminine.5 Yet the voice of Moustique is frequently that of the Arab adolescent boy, whereas La Rose de sable is recounted from the point of view of a French lieutenant. Montherlant’s position with regard to colonized peoples is ambivalent. 3 4 5

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Montherlant–Peyrefitte, Correspondance, op. cit., p. 160. Arnold, ‘Montherlant and the Problem of the Aging Pederast’, op. cit., p. 189. Michel, Jacqueline, ‘Sur les traces d’un paysage français dans l’oeuvre de Montherlant’, Travaux linguistique et de litéerature, 16 (2), 1978, pp. 155–178.

He claims a ‘disposition not to take the side of those whom history has most advantaged and normalized’, but writes nevertheless with the mindset of the White colonial, even though deferment of publication, in the case of La Rose de sable, is justified by the publicly expressed view that his writings are subversive.6 By comparison with much of Montherlant’s output, Moustique is remarkable for the sustained tone of light-hearted humour. Few critics have appreciated Montherlant’s talent for the comic. In his introduction to the Penguin translation of Les Célibataires, Peter Quennell comments: ‘Montherlant’s comic gifts, I think, have frequently been under-valued: like Henry James, he is usually admired for a very different set of attributes’.7 The tragedy in Moustique is inherent in the poverty of the people with whom the narrator comes into contact. Michel explains the attraction of the young and the poor for Montherlant by relating it to his conception of ‘mépris’: Montherlant aima le milieu populaire [...] parce que [il] pouvait jouir des êtres sans rien en attendre ni de bon, ni de mauvais. Il pouvait vivre son « cher » retirement dans une solitude peuplée, assuré que sa liberté ne serait pas entamée. En effet la distance avec les simples est telle que le mépris n’est plus une barrière. Et d’autre part, Montherlant pouvait être, dans ce milieu, beaucoup plus librement méprisé, sans en être affecté.8

The disdain cultivated by Montherlant towards his fellows is motivated by a desire to remain detached from his peers; it is no longer a prerequisite when it comes to consorting with those who have nothing, neither material wealth nor professional or social aspirations. The author’s position is clearly ambivalent as the youthful companion is subject to a framework constructed by writing, which means that the texts written in the colonial context portray ‘the ethnocentricity of a humanist discourse of dignity and an absence of relationality’.9 The

6 7 8 9

During, op. cit., p. 198. Montherlant, The Bachelors, translated by Terence Kilmartin, with an introduction by Peter Quennell, Penguin, London, 1965, p. 7. Michel, op. cit., p. 59. Hughes, Edward J. ‘Claiming cultural dissidence: Montherlant’s La Rose de sable’, Writing Marginality in Modern French Literature: from Loti to Genet, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2001, p. 83.

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lack of any kind of pretention to a professional or social status is underlined by Moustique’s carelessness about his name. He has a whole series of names and is indifferent as to which is used. The narrator, about to employ Vincent, nicknamed Moustique, attempts to formalize the situation: Je me fais montrer les papiers. Je lis « Gutierez, Albert, Louis, Mariano. » – Alors, il ne s’appelle pas Vincent? – Son vrai nom, c’est Albert, mais on l’appelle Vincent. Et « Vincent », en sourdine: – Albert... Vincent... avec le même geste qu’il avait avant-hier, soulevant l’épaule, voulant dire: « Albert, Vincent, c’est la même chose. Vous en faites pour ça? » (M, 31–32)

The prose poetry of proper names, recited by Moustique’s Algerian family of mother, brother and sister, is invoked by the narrator as an incantation, a kind of ‘Open Sesame’, because, in the case of Moustique, the proper names are code words which enable the narrator to pass into the magical world of adventure in the company of the adolescent magician. Proper names and nicknames – devised by the family or by the narrator [he calls Moustique’s sister ‘la Méjanette’ because the mother is Mme Méjane] – are also used in Les Garçons as part of a language of young people, distinguishing them from adults. In Moustique, the reader enters a domain governed by nicknames and codes, where the narrator discovers the names of Moustique’s family: ‘– Et le petit frère? – C’est Boubou qu’on l’appelle. – Boubou! En voilà un joli nom! Et son vrai nom, c’est... – C’est Edouard. – Et la petite soeur? – On l’appelle Violette. – Moustique! Boubou! Violette! Vous en avez des jolis noms dans votre famille!’ (M, p. 32) This extract may be read as a parody of the nursery rhyme ‘Alouette, gentille Alouette’, where the refrain, citing different parts of the body, begins with ‘et’, for example, ‘Et la tête’ etc. Even if this connection is not made, the rhythm of the extract sets the scene for game-playing. As the narrator gets to know Moustique better, he invents other affectionate names to address his companion, ‘Morenito [petit brun]’, (M, 83) for instance. Exotic names of people and places combine to form a euphoric space in which the precious experience of companionship separates Montherlant and his work from normal society and Europe.

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An unusual feature of this light-hearted text is the introduction of characters from other novels or plays; in the new context, they are viewed in a different light. These are Dino del Moro, the page in La Reine morte, and don Celestino, hero of Le Chaos et la Nuit. The first appears very briefly in Moustique, but he is the catalyst for the author’s decision to find a servant–companion. The narrator sees a child lighting matches and scratching a word with the burnt match on the steps of the statue depicting the Virgin and Child which overlooks Marseille harbour. The child disappears, but the name, which remains, is of interest because of its polyglot nature. It comprises an Italian name [Dino], a Spanish preposition [del] and an Arabic word [Moro] and represents the countries of the Mediterranean. The name don Celestino may be a play on the female character in Spanish literature, Celestina, who traditionally acts as the love broker, who is paid to arrange either a marriage or a liaison. The use of this name is appropriate to don Celestino’s role in Moustique, since he is to arrange a meeting between the narrator and a beautiful young girl. Montherlant reveals here the real-life person on whom the fictional don Celestino was based. He was a Spanish tutor, employed by Montherlant’s parents when he was expelled from school. In Moustique, the character suggests an air of tragedy, as he is dressed in black and uses funereal writing paper. Nevertheless, his existence is a blithe portrayal of living simply for the pleasure of being oneself: ‘don Celestino dit: « Ahora! » avec décision [...]. Et il sortit, animé de grandes intentions sous-entendues par ce mot, ayant précieusement organisé toute sa journée en vue de ne rien faire – je veux dire de ne rien faire d’autre que de jouir d’être castillan’. (M, 72) Don Celestino lives without the sense of anxiety which distinguishes the hero of the same name in Le Chaos et la nuit. Because Moustique is permeated with a sense of fun, even the lugubrious don Celestino is viewed in a positive, humourous light. Throughout the text, the narrator is buoyed up by his companion’s carefree philosophy. For example, Moustique lifts the narrator’s spirits when the latter feels bitter disappointment, having failed to meet Celestino’s beautiful young pupil:

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après un quart d’heure, je fus tenaillé par le désir de dire à Vincent la vérité et nous dialoguions d’un lit à l’autre: – Morenito.– Qué? [Il alluma l’électricité.] – ‘Sabes’: la fille n’est pas une perruche. Seulement je les ai attendus encore pendant un quart d’heure. Alors, après un quart d’heure je suis parti. Je les ai bien vus arriver, à ce moment-là. Mais trop tard. – Vous avez bien fait. – Qu’est-ce que tu ferais, toi, si une femme te faisait attendre un quart d’heure? – Je lui donnerais un grand coup de pied dans le ventre quand elle arriverait. – Carajo! Maintenant, éteins. Cette lumière me crève les yeux. (M, 83)

For the first and, perhaps, only time in Montherlant’s work, the narrator expresses sorrow, weakness and a sense of failure, without the malfunction being transposed to another character, such as Linsbourg in Les Garçons. Feelings of failure are expressed through friendship with the young Arab, who provides a listening ear and cheering support. The exaggerated verbal violence contained in Moustique’s response contains male bravado enables the narrator to cope with his disappointment. This friendship nurtures each partner’s self-belief, in a way which does not occur in the Alban de Bricoule novels. The reason for this is Moustique’s difference from his employer and friend and the fact the boundaries of the relationship are fixed by monetary transaction. The socio-cultural and economic distance between them allows a form of trust to grow; their friendship lacks the ambiguity and uncertainty of the relationships worked through in Le Songe or Les Olympiques. It also lacks the spiritual quality of Alban’s and Serge’s love in Les Garçons; the protagonists do not perhaps travel very far in their quest for Foucault’s ‘seeking after truth’, but their journey is more joyful than in other texts. This atmosphere of confidence in the self constructs a more self-assured narrator, strengthened for the next stage of his quest, the voyage which will lead to the solitary exploration of nihilism in Les Célibataires, Les Jeunes filles, Le Chaos et la nuit and Un Assassin est mon maître. Pierre Sipriot underlines the extraordinary nature of this novella: ‘Moustique est le seul récit de la liberté de vivre et d’agir que Montherlant ait osé écrire’. (M, 193) As Moustique evolves from child to young adult, the framework wrought by the author, within which the colonized subject functions, begins to disintegrate as Moustique asserts his independence. He becomes more sensitive: ‘Ces sortes de contrariétés suffisent à le faire 190

fondre en larmes, lui, grand garçon qui bientôt va avoir dix-huit ans, et qui enfant ne pleurait jamais’ (M, 140–141) and seeks to break away from his employer’s control. Their close relationship is predicated on Moustique’s youthful compliance. Once he asserts himself as an adult, staying out all night and failing to perform his duties the next day, the terms of employment and of companionship are broken: ‘Pour la première fois, nous voici dressés l’un contre l’autre’. (M, 156) Vincent’s desire for independence is incompatible with the essentially colonial mindset of the narrator and ceasing to fulfil the identity of Moustique, he returns to Marseille, as the autonomous individual, Vincent.

Encore un instant de bonheur [1934] Montherlant’s contribution to French poetry remains unacknowledged with his poems excluded from anthologies. Pierre Sipriot and Jacqueline Michel are among the few commentators to make passing reference to Montherlant’s collection of poetry, Encore un instant de bonheur, the former describing the collection as ‘un hymne à la volupté’10 with a pederastic content. The love of which the poems speak is love for the adolescent. Jean-Louis Curtis describes Montherlant’s poetry in acerbic terms: ‘Il y a bien les petits poèmes de Encore un instant de bonheur, où palpite parfois un frisson qui n’est pas seulement de la chair. Mais ces gracieux pastiches de la galanterie arabe ou persane sont tout de même plus proches de l’exercice rhétorique que du lyrisme spontané’.11 Marissel writes more appreciatively and devotes a chapter of his critique to Montherlant’s poetry.12

10 11 12

Sipriot, op. cit., p. 401. Curtis, op. cit., p. 67. Marissel, André, Henry de Montherlant, Editions universitaires, Paris, 1966, Chapitre II.

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Les Olympiques also contains a collection of poetry comprising twenty-six poems whose themes are youth, sport and a celebration of the beauty of the human body. (PRI, 325–356) Encore un instant de bonheur is peopled with children, animals and fairy tale characters, with names such ‘Désir-du-Coeur’, ‘Pourri-de-Rêves’ and ‘le Roi des Oiseaux de l’Amour’. The love described is a strange mixture of despair and violence, and is inspired by the young person, who is frequently referred to as ‘petit’: ‘Toi, si petite, toi, l’amie de toutes les choses petites de la terre’ (PRI, 705), ‘mon petit coeur’ (PRI,708) , ‘Petit tige, petit fleuve ... O ma palme! ô mon eau!’ (PRI, 712), ‘mon petit frère au doux visage’. (PRI, 732) The collection has two parts, ‘Poèmes d’inspiration africaine’ and ‘Poèmes d’inspiration française’. Cruickshank, paying homage to Montherlant as a poet, distinguishes between his ‘French’ and ‘African’ poetry: Montherlant has spoken of his interest in the poets of India, China, and especially Persia. The influence of poets like Saadi and Khayyam is most clearly seen in the 'African' poems of Encore un instant de bonheur, with their hovering between reality and dream, their carpe diem philosophy, their pantheistic exultation, their belief in a bodily soul that is part of the soul of the world, their view of death as the complement of life, their scorn of praise, honours and material wealth. All this is expressed in daring images and hyperboles. They contrast sharply with the restrained, ‘European’ poems of Les Olympiques. 13

The collection offers a great variety of verse, ranging from the classical Alexandrine rhyming couplet [Part II of ‘ Hélène’] to prose poems [Parts X and XI of ‘Thèmes pour une flûte arabe’]. Proper names provide clues as to the poems’ date and circumstances of composition. Douce, who is named in the novel, Le Songe, and again in the journal, Mais aimons-nous ceux que nous aimons?, is addressed directly in ‘Lampe solitaire’ (PRI, 725) and Moustique, the hero of the eponymous novella, is the poet’s companion in ‘Chants de Chitouia’. (PRI, 699) These indications suggest that some of the ‘Poèmes d’inspiration française’ were written before 1922, the publication date of Le Songe, others perhaps on Montherlant’s visits 13

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Cruickshank, op. cit., p. 81.

to Paris during his travels and that the ‘Poèmes d’inspiration africaine’ were inspired by Montherlant’s travels in North Africa from 1926 to 1929 and from September 1930 to March 1932. The opening poem, entitled ‘Chant de Minos’, speaks with the voice of the ageing king, a familiar figure in Montherlant’s theatre. Minos is full of hate and bitterness and yet he sings of a love related to infinity and death, a love which finally heralds the state of nihilism, evoking the evolution of Montherlant’s work. The poem introduces the main themes of the collection: the adoration of the physical beauty of the young, an interest in the animal kingdom, the healing and comforting capacity of the adolescent, the world of the marvellous and of fairytale, despair in love, love and sensuality, love and fulfilment, love and desire, love and death. Many poems express adoration for the poet’s beloved. Minos, for example, invokes the sleep of the loved-one before recalling his hate for his fellow men and threatening to kill all those whom he has loved. The threats and violence of the beginning and end of the poem encompass a central portion of great tenderness, where the king addresses the person he loves and yearns for union with the beloved in infinite space: ‘Ah! que ne pouvons-nous dans une étreinte nous envoler, / l’un dans l’autre, comme volent les mouches accouplées, / emportés jusqu’aux constellations sur le dos géant de l’espace,’. (PRI, 678) The yearning expressed above for a state of physical and spiritual fusion with the beloved is concomitant with the state of ascension to be achieved between lover and beloved, inspired by Plato’s writings. With the coming of the dawn, this longing disappears and the king returns to his former hatred and the wish to create a void in which to rest: ‘Et je me reposerai enfin dans le rien que je convoite’. (PRI, 682) In his poetry, Montherlant uncharacteristically allows the reader to discern what lies behind his habitual mask and allows himself to speak in an intimate, honest tone about his most personal feelings. The poetry is moving in that it unveils the core of a human being who loves and desires to such an extent that his experience is one of ecstasy and pain: ‘« J’ai mal à mon désir, ah! J’ai mal, partout, de toi. Comment puis-je encore parler? Regarde mes lèvres que je mords. Est-ce que tu vois encore de mes lèvres? Regarde mes yeux perdus.»’ (‘Le Sacrifice de la rose’, PRI, 721) The poet, like the ill-fated king, is 193

not afraid to live out his life and allow himself to be absorbed by the beloved: ‘Rester soi-même et devenir autre! Devenir un autre soimême!’ (PRI, 682), no matter whether the consequences are, joy, suffering or death. The vein running through the poems and giving them unity is the oscillating movement between joy and despair or weariness at the beloved’s intrusion into the poet’s life. This vacillation between positive and negative feelings towards the beloved is best expressed in two consecutive poems which communicate both extremes of feeling: ‘Lampe solitaire’ and ‘Il fait beau’. In the first, the poet is rejected by his beloved, who promises to meet him and then does not; the poet is in pain, suffering because of the reluctance of his beloved to give herself to him. He feels hurt and betrayed. In the second, he wishes to turn away from his beloved to return to the everyday, to a life without the torture of love: ‘Allez-vous-en, je suis malade de nous. Allezvous-en, j’ai une horrible envie d’être heureux. Je revivrai./ J’aspirerai l’air. J’achèterai un petit pain. Je serai bon, tout sera facile. Oh! Dieu, des indifférents, quel repos!’ (PRI, 728) Despair also overwhelms the poet in ‘Chants de Chitouia’, where the poet–lover addresses the beloved as ‘Seigneur’: J’ai mal de tenir tant à vous. J’ai mal du bien que je vous veux./ Seigneur, mon petit Seigneur, qui avez empoisonné mes joies. [ ...]/ Il est parti, s’en est allé, s’est dissipé comme un parfum,/ lui, tant de fois attendu, et cette fois attendu sans fin./ Je reste comme du bois mort abandonné. [PRI, 698–699]

In another poem [Part II of ‘Chants du cavalier’], the beloved is addressed as ‘petit prince’, conferring on him a royal and divine character, which is reinforced by his capacity to heal and comfort: ‘Que j’appuie une fois seulement mon front contre sa ceinture et je serai guéri éternellement’ (PRI, 689), a sentence adapted from the Bible. In Part III of ‘Chants de Chitouia’, quoted above (PRI, 699), the image of ‘bois mort abandonnée’ expresses the numb feeling of utter despair at loss of love. The oscillation between joy and despair is complemented by that between purity and sensuality.

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Metaphors of violence describe affectionate gestures: ‘Martelée de baisers comme un champs martelé d’obus’ (PRI, 713); ‘je rongerai ton visage avec mes dents. Je détruirai ton visage comme une orange qu’on déchire et qu’on presse. [...] Par ce bien et ce mal déchirants que me fait chacun des endroits de ton corps, je te jure que tu seras détruite comme une ville’. (PRI, 723) Michel relates this destructive tendency in the poetry to an oscillating movement between purity and sensuality: ‘si le temps de l’ascèse et le temps de la volupté alternent, il se confondent dans une fièvre commune de destruction: anéantir ce qu’on a ardemment convoité’. This ‘alternance’ is further integrated with a belief in Man as a multiple, divine entity: ‘un Homme conscient de son pouvoir sur la Vie et de son anéantissement dans la mort, un Homme qui se sent exister lorsqu’il fait alterner en lui des appétits les plus contraires’.14 The state of the lovers, in several poems, represents a kind of death, oblivion, a space in which to exist outside normal experience. This space is close to death, in the following lines: ‘Sa nuque fait un petit creux. Elle est brûlante comme le sable. / C’est là que j’enfoncerais le poignard si je voulais la tuer. / Mais je ne te tuerai pas, ma bien-aimée, je ne te tuerai pas. / – Je ne vous tuerai pas non plus, me dit ma bien-aimée’. (PRI, 731) Michel interprets the relationship between love and violence, comparing Montherlant’s work to that of François Mauriac, in terms of religious sacrifice: Mais ce « noeud de vipères » [la complexité de l’être humain] n’atteste pas le mal comme chez François Mauriac; il symbolise la nature dans sa réalité cruelle, une nature qui s’épanouira en s’enivrant de sacrifice, en prenant plaisir à « être tour à tour victime et bourreau » – réflexion de Baudelaire que Montherlant reprend dans sa première note sur Port-Royal en 1944. Or, « être tout à tour victime et bourreau», c’est le rite sacrificiel que Montherlant observera « religieusement » dans son oeuvre. 15

14 15

Michel, L’Aventure janséniste dans l’oeuvre de Montherlant, op. cit., pp. 105 & 108. Ibid., p. 39.

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Thus, in Encore un instant de bonheur, lover and beloved are, each in turn, victim and torturer, in keeping with Montherlant’s concept of sacrifice. The destructive cycle of love and death is pervaded by heightened emotion enhanced by religious references, creating an atmosphere similar to that of La Relève du matin. When Michel speaks of ‘la jouissance d’être victime’, she gives the key to an understanding of Montherlant’s love poetry, which speaks of joy, but also of the wounds of pleasure, inflicted as if they were religious stigmata. The ‘jouissance’ referred to above points towards the later novels, in which the heroes [Léon de Coantré of Les Célibataires, Celestino of Le Chaos et la nuit and Exupère of Un Assassin est mon maître] actively seek out the painful ordeal and death. They experience a certain pleasure in their torment. At the opposite spectrum of the dark passion expressed by the above extract, certain poems are songs in praise of beauty. These celebrate the poet’s joy at feeling, tasting, possessing and loving beauty, for its own sake. Here the most frequent images used to describe physical grace are those of water and light. In the poem entitled ‘Calanque’, the companion’s body takes on the features of the marine environment: ‘Son aiselle: une plante de la mer. [...] Sa peau avait, en certaines places, la douceur inhumaine du sable et son goût de sel marin’ (PRI, 713). In another, ‘Le Sacrifice de la rose’, the hands of the beloved are ‘bues, salées comme la mer’ (PRI, 722) and the poem evokes the ‘plages de son coeur’ (PRI, 724). Water, for Montherlant, symbolizes eternity, an endless life-force, present through the re-birth of all living things. Physical beauty is conveyed through water imagery: ‘Ses jambes sont comme des ruisseaux’ (PRI, 699) and ‘ Les doigts de ceux qu’on aime sont des gouttes de pluie’ (PRI, 680), as is the love which unites the poet with his beloved: ‘nous avons été mêlés comme la rive et la rivière’ (PRI, 705). Light is conjured forth most often by the word ‘étoile’ and by metaphors of fire: ‘La traîne de mon amour pour toi traîne au-dessus de l’étoile du berger’ (PRI, 678), ‘Son grain de beauté qui a un nom, comme une étoile’ (PRI, 690); ‘Il rêve qu’il a un fils beau comme une flamme, et qui ne sait pas qu’il est une tentation’, (PRI, 694) ‘La pitié éclata comme une flamme’. (PRI, 724) The metaphor of light is also present 196

in images related to the sun: ‘O visage musicien! Teintes lavées d’aquarelle, visage, faible visage, nuancé comme le couchant et l’aurore’. (PRI, 720] After an encounter with the beloved, the lover is set alight, filled with a form of energy comparable with fire: ‘et si j’allais dans le feu de l’enfer, le feu de l’enfer serait brûlé’. (PRI, 697) At times, the poet’s voice is not that of the lover, but of the adoptive parent, cherishing the young person and overcome by concern for his or her welfare. This is the case in ‘Iphigénie aux cils battants’, so called because, like Iphigenia in classical mythology, she is betrayed by her father: ‘J’ai pleuré en la laissant / sur cette terre, cette terre / pas faite pour les enfants’. (PRI, 718) The natural beauty and wisdom of the young girl, when she is alone – ‘Elle baisait un rai de soleil. / Elle était une petite enfant / sans parures et sans ailes / sans rien que ses cils battants’ – contrasts with the contrived performance staged for her father: ‘Lors parut Monsieur son père / avec sa barbe de chat. / Le bécota, le tripota, / lui dit: « Mon petit papa », / et le reste à l’avenant’. (PRI, 717–718) As ever, Montherlant is contemptuous of parents, suggesting that they do their children more harm than good, as they are too caught up by their own affairs to give proper attention to the child. Although concern with the young person’s welfare is admirable, it should also be noted that Montherlant’s perverse obsession with youth is glossed by adoption of the moral high ground, in his over-generalized condemnation of parenting. While Encore un instant de bonheur stands somewhat outside the mainstream of Montherlant’s work and has received little attention from critics, the collection is of interest as a highly personal and intimate account of love and desire for an object who represents alterity, in terms of youth, race and, in the case of the ‘poèmes d’inspiration française’, gender. Montherlant is an exoticist and his North African writings are part of a colonial archive, which includes such authors as Loti, Leiris, Saint-Exupéry and Camus. Encore un instant de bonheur conveys ‘nostalgia, uneasiness, curiosity, and transracial fantasy [which] are no substitute for relationality’16 but

16

Hughes, op. cit., p. 170.

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which constitute an articulate and moving account of the unhappiness and profound dissatisfaction associated with the colonial experience.17

La Rose de sable [1968] La Rose de sable is set in Morocco between March and October 1932, during the period of the French Protectorate [1912–1956]. The similarities between La Rose de sable and Camus’ Le Premier homme [Gallimard, 1994] are striking. Although written from opposite viewpoints, Montherlant’s from that of the Frenchman abroad and Camus’ from that of the French Algerian, there are correspondences between them. They portray the ‘violently confused psychology of colonial conflict’;18 like Auligny, Jacques Cormery, Camus’ hero, is denied access to the Arab world; the North African landscape is alternatively sympathetic and hostile; the quest for self-discovery motivates the protagonists. Montherlant’s and Camus’ novels are part of an archive of writing on Africa by twentieth-century white French or French Algerian writers, which spans the century. Examples from the early part of the century are André Gide’s Voyage au Congo [1927] and Le Retour du Tchad [1928] and, from the latter half, Marie Cardinal’s Les Mots pour le dire [1975]. The hero of La Rose de sable, Lucien Auligny, a lieutenant in the French army, undergoes a metamorphosis and decides to leave his post because of his dramatically changed moral position on colonialism. His natural sensitivity means that he is predisposed to cultivating a sympathetic attitude towards the indigenous people, but his evolution is also wrought by external factors, primarily his love relationship with a fourteen-year-old Arab girl, Ram, as well as by acquaintances with other secondary French and Arab characters, both adults and children. Among the adult characters are Guiscart, a former 17

18

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O’Flaherty, Patricia, ‘Montherlant’s Musical Appropriation of the Colonial Subject: North African Arab, Child and Woman’, The Irish Journal of French Studies, No. 2, 2002, pp. 45–68. Hughes, Edward, Le Premier Homme, La Peste, University of Glasgow French and German Publications, 1995, p. 30.

school-mate of Auligny, who is a hedonist and artist;19 Yahia, a Tunisian shop-keeper who becomes a teacher; and Bonnel, a socialist French doctor. Among the children are Ram, Auligny’s fourteen-yearold mistress; ‘la petite fille en grenat’, a twelve year old Bedouin girl, with whom Auligny has a brief sexual encounter; Boualem, Yahia’s sixteen-year-old Algerian shop assistant; a ten-year-old postman, known as ‘C’-qu’il-est-bête-c’-gosse-là’ and a fourteen-year-old cook, Zaoui-maquereau. Certain brief encounters, for instance that of Auligny with ‘la petite fille en grenat’, influence the hero’s political and social awareness. The pages of La Rose de sable are filled with casual observations of various young people, either as individuals or in a group. The young person is portrayed as an ideal being, who holds the key to the exotic world of the other, to which the hero longs to have access. Ram is the representative of a group of girls, reminiscent of Proust’s ‘jeunes filles en fleurs’: les cueilleuses de branches semblaient avoir atteint, impubères ou pubères depuis peu, le point extrême de leur grâce. Auligny ne se lassait pas de regarder ces petits miracles de pureté et de gentillesse [...]. Et il croyait comprendre, maintenant, que les Orientaux, plutôt qu’ils n’aiment la femme, aiment l’enfance. L’enfance est pour eux un troisième sexe, et c’est ce sexe-là qu'ils aiment. Ils n’aiment la femme que tant qu’ils sentent en elle l’enfance... (PRII, pp. 248 & 257)

Although La Rose de sable purports to be an anti-colonialist text, the sexual seduction of young Arab girls by the hero constitutes a disturbing manifestation of the exercise of colonial supremacy, particularly as it is not condemned by the author, except in terms of Auligny’s rejection by his young mistress, who simply refuses to communicate with him, withdrawing her presence and indirectly bringing about Auligny’s ‘suicide’ at the end of the novel. The mistress is essentially androgynous, as her name indicates. Auligny chooses to call the girl Ram, when her given name is Rahma. The name, Ram, is usually an Arab surname, the male and female first names of which are Rahim and Rahima. The choice of a surname to designate the young Arab girl is a sign that she is an amalgamation of

19

Guiscart is Auligny’s alter ego; cf. dual characterization in Les Garçons.

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female and male characteristics. In fact, she also represents beauty and desirability in terms of the vegetable world: ‘Ram, [...] cette petite plante du désert’. [PRII, 105], and is frequently referred to in vegetable terms: ‘Sa peau était tellement lisse et douce qu’elle paraissait plutôt un tissu végétal que de la peau humaine [...] et dans l’aisselle imberbe elle avait aussi, à la bouche, un goût de végétal’. (PRII, 101) Lieutenant Auligny’s desire to possess and know her and, through her, her world, is ultimately unsuccessful, as he is thwarted; Auligny misjudges the rules of courtship between a French lieutenant and an under-age Arab girl. He acts as if Ram were a French fiancée, making formal visits to her family and expecting her to take up his anti-colonial stance and accompany him to Fez. These incidents are recounted with a degree of humour and irony. When Ram simply absents herself, Boualem [a ‘débrouillard’, who closely resembles Moustique], replaces Ram as Auligny’s companion. Auligny is as obsessed by this young boy as he was by Ram, although the narrator is defensive about homosexual interpretations: ‘Notons bien qu’à nulle époque de sa vie, même collégien, Auligny n’avait été seulement effleuré par le génie de la pédérastie. […] Il ne voulait du bien à Boualem que parce que Boualem était jeune, et que certaines de ses expressions avaient du charme’. (PRII, 369) The hero loves his young Arab companions obsessively, only to have his insecurity confirmed when they desert him. Auligny employs Boualem and money governs their relations, as Guiscart points out: ‘Je me demande si ton argent ne lui a pas tourné la tête’. (PRII, 394) Boualem, like Ram, disappears in the final pages of the novel and leaves the Frenchman to a nightmarish fate at the hands of the rioting mob. Auligny’s companions, like the beloved subjects of the poet’s longing in Encore un instant de bonheur may be referred to as representing ‘commodified alterity’ and, ultimately, opt for autonomy through absence and silence. In La Rose de sable, the hero’s sympathy towards the Arab cause is equivocal as Lieutenant Auligny appreciates Yahia’s argument in favour of independence and, yet, is irritated when Yahia expresses his liberal opinions openly. In the case of the young person, silence is his 200

or her protection from any possible criticism by Auligny, who eventually makes a decision entirely in favour of the young person’s presumed opinion. The following scene describing a visit to the house of the chief’s son, casts the young person in the role of silent dissenter against the French occupier: Tout ce temps, un des fils de Jilani, un enfant d’une douzaine d’années, accroupi par terre, regardait au-dehors par la fenêtre, sans jamais se retourner vers les assistants, sans prendre part au repas, sans jamais dire un mot, ni qu’on lui en dît un, pareil à une femme qui boude. « Terribles enfants, pas encore hypocrites, songeait Auligny. Celui-là ne fait pas l’homme du monde, et ne déguise pas ce qu’il pense de nous. Et ce qu’il pense, c’est évidemment ce qu’on pense dans sa famille, comme il arrive toujours. Me voilà renseigné sur Jilani. » (PRII, 67)

Ram’s demeanor towards her French lieutenant lover is also characterized by silence. She communicates her true feelings through gesture. The portrayal of Ram and the other young characters is often coloured by the hero’s feelings of guilt towards the colonized peoples. Such is the case in dialogue between Auligny or Guiscart and one of the youthful characters, when the responses of the young person are commented on by either Auligny or Guiscart. When no words are spoken, however, the young Arab characters manifest their own personality and views in a more autonomous way. A similar phenomenon is observed by Bakhtin as a comment on Dostoevsky, where he notes ‘the affirmation of the other’s consciousness as a fullfledged subject, and not as an object, thereby defining the individual’s independence from the hero’.20 In La Rose de sable, the young person’s silence or use of fixed linguistic formulae is a facade concealing true feelings, which are only revealed by gesture and body language. Boualem’s smile, for example, is perceived by Guiscart: ‘Et avec tout cela, maître Boualem a quelque chose de charmant, qui est son sourire, et surtout la signification de son sourire. Il sourit chaque fois qu’il nous ment, c’est-à-dire quasi à chacune de ses phrases, de l’amusement qu’il a à nous tromper’. (PRII, 176) In this observation, Boualem is affirmed as a full-fledged subject in his own right, rather than remaining the object of the hero’s projected guilt. When, at the end of the novel, Boualem abandons Auligny, various interpretations 20

Bakhtin, op. cit., p. 7.

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are offered. Doubt is deliberately cast on each in turn, granting the young boy autonomy and placing him outside the control of hero, author and reader. Montherlant uses the device of sleep and dreams to enact Ram’s independence from Auligny: Plusieurs fois encore elle s’approfondit dans ce sommeil enveloppé. Tantôt le sommeil lui enlevait toute conscience. Tantôt elle y faisait des défenses, comme un cheval, mettait ses mains devant son visage, interposait les coudes, avec des gémissements, ou bien s’entortillait dans le drap du dessus, afin d’être isolée du corps d'Auligny. Réveillée, elle redevenait toute docile. (PRII, 125)

Even when she is conscious, she demonstrates her independence, for example, by refusing to move her limbs; her lover is obliged to place them in the position he wishes. Gradually, Ram responds to Auligny’s caresses and her initial reticence becomes a source of humour between them. Nevertheless, she refuses him access to her most intimate being, demonstrating her independence by denying him certain caresses, by lying to him (PRII, 254) and, finally, by abandoning him. (PRII, 362– 363) The young characters demonstrate their autonomy through silence, gesture, action and ‘sous-conversation’. These youthful characters thereby affirm themselves as ‘subjects’, to use Bakhtin’s term; as representatives of suppressed peoples, they are essentially unknowable and actively bring about the reader’s perception of what Spivak refers to as ‘the problem of subaltern consciousness’.21 In La Rose de sable, the hero’s violent, bloody death not only reflects the turbulence of the colonial situation; it also foreshadows the abandonment of the heroes of the late novels, who, on loss of the beloved youthful companion, enter a nightmarish world of turmoil and destruction.

21

202

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics, Routledge, London, 1987, pp. 202–207.

Conclusion These three texts mark a transitional period in Montherlant’s life and work. By crossing the Mediterranean, the author opened a vein of sensuality and freedom which transformed his literary creativity and produced both the depression, referred to in the preface to ‘Service inutile’ and the happiness, evident in Moustique, Encore un instant de bonheur and certain episodes of La Rose de sable. The features which these three works have in common, and which set them aside from Montherlant’s other writings, comprise the financial basis of the narrator’s or hero’s relationship with North African characters and the non-European setting. Montherlant’s early novels depict relationships between protagonists of the same age, race and social background. All three works considered in this chapter present relationships with young people, who are racially, socially and culturally different from their French companion. Les Bestiaires is the only other novel in which the central friendship – between Jésus and his older French friend Alban – is marked by disparities of social class and nationality. This friendship is, however, never developed and consists essentially of a series of fantasies by Alban, who, at the end of the novel, gives his dog, le Galgo, to Jésus in honour of his courage and god-like qualities. Jésus is other to Alban as Moustique, Ram and the anonymous youths of the poems are other to the narrator of Moustique, to Auligny in La Rose de sable and to the poet of Encore un instant de bonheur. ‘Subaltern consciousness’ is situated in terms of difference rather than identity. The second difference between these three works and others is the presence of monetary exchange. Through economic transaction, the hero gains the freedom to express his own sexuality. Because money has changed hands, Auligny does not feel, as Alban does in Les Garçons, that he causes harm to his mistress by making love to her. The novel is still pervaded by a sense of colonial guilt, associated with the whole Arab nation, not only with Auligny’s Arab mistress, whom he renames Ram, re-claiming her as the definition of his identity. In Encore un instant de bonheur, guilt, nevertheless, appears, in the theme of fear for the beloved’s safety and a pervading sense of

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remorse. Generally, money releases the hero from inhibitions, allowing him greater freedom of expression. The presence of the object of his desire is secured by payment and guilt is therefore appeased. Feelings of joy and melancholy related to sensuality are more explicit in these writings, because the companion is racially and socio-culturally different from the narrator The more relaxed atmosphere and increased freedom of expression is further related to geographical setting. The poems frequently evoke an evening scene, when a hot and sleepy town comes to life: ‘Le ciel est violet. La lune est rose. La musique arrive d’une chambre voisine [...] La nuit rêve. Les étoiles volettent de branche en branche’. (PRI, 692–693) Moustique has a maritime backdrop, which lends a rhythmic timelessness to the text: ‘La mer, couleur gorge-depaon, a des courants plus clairs, comme des chemins d’eau. [...] Cela sent les choses de mer, le nougat, la vanille, les cordages, et puis, brusquement, l’odeur aiguë des frutti di mare’. (M, 42–43) Lyricism is interspersed with humour, reinforcing the light-hearted atmosphere, for example in the following passage describing the oasis in La Rose de sable: ‘Les grenouilles, toujours très infatuées d’avoir été une des plaies d’Egypte, se chantaient leurs louanges à la tombée de la nuit, ce qui leur permettait de s’endormir satisfaites’. (PRII, 300) The background to the relationships recounted in these texts is therefore very different to the northern European ambiance evoked by other writings; this distinction strengthens the sense of freedom from European constraints and places Montherlant among the large group of French writers who lived and wrote in the countries of North Africa. The exotic nature of the geographical setting relates to sensuality, including erotic scenes in La Rose de sable and the poems of Encore un instant de bonheur, which celebrate the joy of carnal passion. If we compare the erotic scenes of these texts with the passion enacted between Alban and Serge, where much is left unsaid, La Rose de sable, for example, portrays a more frankly erotic sensuality. Thus, difference, in terms of the object of desire and the space in which the experience occurs, produces a celebration of the senses, suppressed in other works. In works set in France and Spain the author exercises a form of self-censorship which is relaxed, particularly in La Rose de 204

sable and the poetry, once the setting moves to North Africa. Derrida observes that ‘There is no writing which does not devise some means of protection, to protect against itself, against the writing by which the ‘subject’ is himself threatened as he lets himself be written: as he exposes himself’.22 Movement through space, in Montherlant, is an allegory for the transgressing of moral barriers. In Moustique, Encore un instant de bonheur and La Rose de sable, there is an atmosphere of lively movement and the excitement of travel and change – an atmosphere which is more highly charged than that of Montherlant’s earlier and later works. The Arab characters and the North African setting act as a catalyst and construct new tensions: by crossing the Mediterranean, Montherlant breaks mental and physical barriers; the process of ‘breaching’ is described by Derrida as the ‘tracing of a trail’, which opens up a ‘conducting path’ presupposing ‘a certain violence and a certain resistance to effraction’.23 Violence and effraction in Montherlant’s North African works are expressed by a sense of imminent and actual danger, for example, in Auligny’s death, which prefigures a violent end to colonial power, and in the threat of police brutality in Moustique. These travel writings are light-hearted, but they also express the breach existing between elite European writer and his Arab subject, represented by characters who rebel and escape from being written about and in the form of the land itself, which the writer may only visit and to which he may never belong. The metaphor of breaching, therefore, invokes the obstacle which cannot be overcome or passed through, in this case, the lack of relationality, which means that no real perception or expression of the ‘subaltern consciousness’ takes place. Together with a celebration of beauty and intense joy experienced in sensual pleasure, there is an underlying despair in the inability of the writer to pursue these abandoned, nascent friendships and love affairs. Ultimately, these writings articulate failure to engage with both the inhabitants and the land itself.

22 23

Derrida, Writing and Difference, op. cit., p. 224. Ibid., p. 200.

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Chapter VII Stoicism and Nihilism And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly: I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit. For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow. [Ecclesiastes, 1, 17–18]

Distillation and Disintegration of Desire The novels and plays written in Montherlant’s middle years show the abandonment of the heroic ideal and the adoption of stoicism and nihilism as part of the system of belief, which the author develops from his experience of the absurd. These works were written after 1930, when Montherlant was 35. More important than the date of composition, is that these ‘late’ novels and plays portray a mature or ageing father figure, very different from the young, robust hero of Le Songe, Les Olympiques, Les Bestiaires, La Petite Infante de Castille, Les Garçons and Thrasylle. This figure also differs from the author–narrator of Moustique, the hero of La Rose de sable or the poet of Encore un instant de bonheur, who are more youthful and vigourous, in their appreciation of sensual pleasure and their enjoyment of life. The central figure in the later novels is idiosyncratic, unstable, isolated from his fellows. In Les Jeunes filles, Costals presents a more positive embodiment of these traits, in that he is full of confidence and appears to be victorious in his dealings with other people. On closer examination, however, Costals is just as neurotic and insecure as those female acquaintances, whom he despises. Léon de Coantré in Les Célibataires, Celestino Marcilla in Le Chaos et la Nuit and Exupère in Un Assassin est mon maître are tragic characters experiencing complete isolation and mental instability. They suffer from fear, vertigo, loss of control, loneliness and, finally, madness and death. Montherlant is always fascinated by isolation and favours withdrawal from society. These novels explore the mental state of the protagonist 207

who has recourse only to himself; the individual is the subject of his own knowledge. In these novels, the beloved companion is lost, leaving the hero to meet death alone. The life force of the Montherlant hero lies in the ebb and flow of desire, which is sustained by the presence or absence of the beloved young person. This movement is described by Lacan as: his [the child’s] action destroys the object that it causes to appear and disappear in the anticipating provocation of its absence and its presence. His action thus negatives the field of forces of desire in order to become its own object to itself.1

The child’s discovery of his ability to make an object appear and disappear is germane in that the object of desire is made to appear and disappear from Montherlant’s text and is finally and irrevocably absent in the novels written a few years before the author’s death. Critics have noted the importance of desire in Montherlant’s work and the fact that desire is dependent on lack: ‘Il [Montherlant] constate [...] que le bonheur est dans le seul désir, et non dans l’accomplissement du désir’.2 The appearing and disappearing process is, in these novels, halted and the hero ‘becomes [his] own object to [himself]’. Lacan suggests that death is a kind of revenge on the other, whereby ‘the subject withdraws his precarious life from the sheeplike conglomerations of the Eros of the symbol in order to affirm it at the last in an unspoken curse’.3 The protagonists of Montherlant’s historical plays and of the late novels act according to principles dictated by the author’s concept of stoicism, based on his readings of Marcus Aurelius and the book of Ecclesiastes. Life is vanity, but the way one lives and dies is important and important only to oneself. In Montherlant’s later works, certain elements of Stoic philosophy are present, as part of a system of values, which guides the individual in the act of living. The two poles of contemplation and action remain the basic choice, once the human being decides not to commit suicide. Both contemplation and action involve the acquisition of knowledge about the self, which is the path to truth. The Stoic concept of ‘cognitive certainty achieved through ordinary 1 2 3

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Lacan, op. cit., p. 103 Bordonove, Georges, Henry de Montherlant, Editions universitaires, Paris, 1954, pp. 43–44. Lacan, ibid., p. 105.

sensory encounters’ is adopted by Montherlant, as a means of obtaining knowledge. The Stoic notion of ‘the world as an ideally good organism, whose own rational soul governs it for the best’ is adapted and finds a place in Montherlant’s philosophy as the concept of pantheism, present, for example, in Alban’s and Serge’s encounters in Les Garcons and in the ‘Noctum phantasmata’ episode of Le Songe. The term, ‘phantasia’, is taken from the Stoics, meaning ‘a clear impression’ achieved through ordinary sensory encounters. Montherlant differs from the Stoics, in that he does not view vice as founded on passions. He takes the opposite view of passion as a source of knowledge and a source of good, in that through the albeit rare experience of selfless love the human being achieves the best of him or herself. Montherlant explores the problem of how to live by examining the actions of an old man, condemned to death and betrayed by those whom he loves. The intensely dramatic love–hate dichotomy, which exists in the relationship between father and son, a camouflage in Montherlant’s work for the male homosexual bond, serves the author’s purpose well. Overlapping identity, homosexual overtones, exchange of roles, highly charged emotional atmosphere, murderous intentions, all serve to create a fascinating text or play, where the author’s tortuous and frequently contradictory philosophy is played out by a doomed, stubborn, foolish old man, a figure reminiscent of Montherlant at the time of writing Le Chaos et la nuit and Un Assassin est mon maître. No writer has focussed to such a degree on the subject of dying and the effect of this event on the way we live. The protagonist begins his dance of death by ridding himself of companions and even by enlisting their help as agents in his death. Celestino’s rejection of his daughter occurs in a vengeful way, in order to make his mark by dying in the manner he chooses. As it happens, death outwits him, humiliating him with unforeseen pain. Léon de Coantré and Exupère are different from Celestino, in that they try to relate to others but are unable to do so. Nevertheless, they too seek solitude and death, albeit in a less deliberate and more passive way than Celestino. Lacan sees the process of self-exploration as culminating naturally in the individual’s evocation of death, because death incorporates the essential image of the self:

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It is in effect as a desire for death that he [the subject] affirms himself for others; if he identifies himself with the other, it is by fixing him solidly in the metamorphosis of his essential image, and no being is ever evoked by him except among the shadows of death.4

The definition of the self in terms of death implies that suicide is an act of control over life, which defines the essence of the individual’s being. Death is sought in order to make a mark on life, to distinguish oneself by one’s death, as an individual. The act of suicide is an inevitable conclusion to the Stoic and Nihilistic beliefs, which underpin these later novels. In his long quest for the truth of human nature, Montherlant evokes solitude and death in an exploration of stoicism and nihilism, which constitute the final stage of human existence. In these later novels, Montherlant explores the pathology of the human condition in the person of the isolated individual. The effect of obsession and neurosis in the individual is examined, including the means he uses to defend himself or to face inevitable decline. Deleuze furnishes a definition of nihilism: Nihil in ‘nihilism’ means negation as quality of the will to power. Thus, in its primary and basic sense, nihilism signifies the value of nil taken on by life, the fiction of higher values which give it this value and the will to nothingness which is expressed in these higher values.5

The anti-heroes of Le Chaos et la nuit and Un Assassin est mon maitre question the reality of life; gradually they negate former values [Celestino’s political beliefs] and acknowledge that, in the end, one’s beliefs have no real significance. Nihilism results in the harnessing of negative forces [loss and sadness] and in the enactment of a transformation, brought about by the hero’s self-affirmation at the moment of death.

4 5

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Lacan, ibid., p. 105. Deleuze, op. cit., p. 147.

Loss, Death and Nihilism in Les Célibataires (1934) This novel follows the decline of two elderly bachelors, Elie de Coëtquidan and Léon de Coantré, nephew and uncle, who have lived all their lives as if they were children, taking no responsibility for their own existence. The action takes place over six months, from mid-February to the end of December 1924. The two old men learn that they must leave their house because the death of Mme de Coantré, mother of Léon and sister of Elie, has left them destitute and helpless: ‘Cet homme [Léon] qui depuis vingt ans n'avait eu ni une responsabilité ni un souci’. (PRI, 767) The two old bachelors have led a passive, contemplative existence, but circumstances now force a change in their child-like, dependant state: ‘Le soir, Léon et son oncle veillèrent tard, dans leur pauvre chambre, avec ses deux lits côte à côte, comme les lits de deux grands enfants’. (PRI, 875) Léon de Coantré is the central figure of Les Célibataires; the story relates his decline into poverty, old age, illness and death. The uncle, Léon’s, inner urge to be rid of everything gives the novel a kind of negative energy.6 He feels a sense of satisfaction and plenitude, when, little by little, the sum of money inherited from his mother dwindles: ‘Le désir de payer ses dettes peut provenir soit de l’honnêteté, soit d’un état pathologique. Ce dernier cas était celui de notre comte’. (PRI, 796) In Les Célibataires Montherlant focuses on old age and death. The abyss attracts the protagonist. He succumbs to the temptation of losing everything, experiencing vertigo and schizophrenia, defined by Jung as: The most common form of madness, dementia praecox, or schizophrenia, is, as we know, characterized precisely by the fact that the unconscious almost entirely suppresses the conscious mind and supplants it. The unconscious usurps the reality-function and attributes the value of reality to its own productions.7

Although this pathological condition is demonstrated by Léon de Coantré and by Costals, it is most clearly manifest and taken to the extreme in

6

7

cf. Carey, Peter, Oscar and Lucinda, University of Queensland Press, 1988. The heroine deliberately loses, achieving a heightened sense of pleasure and satisfaction through gambling. Gambling is part of the nihilistic process in Montherlant’s writings. Jung. Collected Works, vol. 7, op. cit., p. 277.

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Celestino and Exupère, the central figures in Le Chaos et la nuit and Un Assassin est mon maitre. In Les Célibataires, Léon and Elie’s pathological shyness prevents them from making contact with a little boy who appears in their garden. So unused to human contact are Léon and Elie, that they are frightened of this six-year-old. Léon sees that the water tap has been left on, but cannot bring himself to go into the garden to turn it off: ‘Car, pour aller au robinet, il fallait passer près du petit garçon. Le petit garçon l’interpellerait peut-être, il devrait faire la conversation, et cela l’effrayait beaucoup’. (PRI, 783) Elie’s reaction is similar: ‘D’évidence, M. de Coëtquidan était bloqué au fond du jardin, – bloqué par la présence du petit garcon’. (PRI, 783) The child recognizes a fellow in Léon: ‘– Vous ne cueillez pas les gratte-culs? demanda le petit garçon. – Eh! non, mon petit... – Pourquoi? Votre maman vous le défend?’ (PRI, 784) Léon and Elie are superannuated children, who have been in an isolated environment for so long that they are unable to function. The natural ability to communicate with fellow human beings is alien to them and the result is fear. Léon reacts differently when a female child or young girl is involved, for instance, his niece, Mlle de Bauret. This twenty-five-year-old is a caricature of bad taste, insensitivity and lack of intelligence. Montherlant’s distaste for anything modern is evident in her portrayal: ‘La véritable tare de Mlle de Bauret, qui était en partie la tare de son âge, et en partie celle de son époque, était que pour elle nouveauté était synonyme de valeur’. (PRI, 818) Yet, it is precisely this person whom Léon cares for, because he pictures her as if she were still a child: Avec l’oncle Léon, elle s’était mise, toute petite, sur un pied de familiarité, un tantinet protectrice, qui était agréable au bonhomme. Epouvanté par les gamins, comme nous l’avons vu, le génie de l’espèce l’emportait sur ses terreurs lorsqu’il s’agissait d’une fillette. (PRI, 819)

Léon’s obsession is traced to an unhappy love affair with Mariette, a simple girl of eighteen, whose gentleness and child-like nature appeals to him. She is reminiscent of Douce in Le Songe: ‘Pas intelligente, l’esprit lent, fronçant les sourcils pour comprendre n’importe quoi, – mais tant de gentillesse, de confiance, de sécurité, de désintéressement. […] M. de Coantré se mit à l’aimer tendrement. (PRI, 832) He loses touch with this young woman, when she and her mother go to Lyon on 212

holiday and do not return to Paris. Léon travels to Lyon and makes every effort to find the woman he loves, but never succeeds. Her disappearance and the pain of this loss dooms him to a pattern of repetition, resulting in a pathological state: ‘Durant vingt ans, M. de Coantré, chaque fois qu’il pensait à Mariette, saignait: elle était toujours fraîche en lui. Le temps n’y fit rien’. (PRI, 835) Elie’s and Léon’s inability to communicate causes their alienation. Elie is mad and, while Léon remains sane, he loses his instinct for selfpreservation and tolerates neglect by those around him to the point of allowing himself to die. Ironically, Elie is, in the end, taken care of, whereas Léon, who perceives those around him as hostile when they are, in fact, indifferent, remains generally lucid and is left to die alone: ‘Il éteignit; le froid lui parut plus vif; il tira le drap sur son visage, comme il faisait du temps de Mariette, quand il voulait penser à elle avec plus d’acuité’. (PRI, 903) Léon’s decline is accompanied by a hallucinatory experience when he draws on negative energy, bringing about transformation at the point of death. Metamorphosis is a significant state in Montherlant’s work, which recurs in Les Célibataires, Les Garçons, Thrasylle and Le Chaos et la nuit. The other provides a link with reality, with human feelings; this presence is essential to the hero’s mental stability, a significance acknowledged by Jacqueline Michel: De fait Montherlant n’est pas homme à se détourner de ce qui angoisse. La possession des êtres ne lui voile pas l’abîme, elle l’empêche d’y tomber: ‘Avoir marché au bord de l'abîme toujours. Et jamais n'y être tombé. Ce n’était pas Dieu qui vous tenait la main, c’était toujours un être vivant, un petit être de rien du tout’. 8

Without the relationship with the other, which Léon yearns for, the hero loses his balance and experiences vertigo, which, for Exupère, leads to insanity, and, for Léon and Celestino, to death. Léon, Celestino and Exupère act in accordance with the classical concept of Stoicism to convert the ordeal of loss into a positive affirmation of their own being and to meet death as creatures in the process of transformation. Montherlant’s philosophical position, as expounded in Les Celibataires and the other late novels is close to Stoicism. He believes, like the Stoics, 8

Michel, op. cit., p. 94. Montherlant quotation is from PE, p. 584.

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that ‘to be happy – the ultimate goal to which we all aspire – is to be totally in tune with nature’. In the case of Leon, Celestino and Exupere, the right way for them to fit in with nature’s plan is to be poor, or sick, or to die. In accordance with Stoic beliefs, if the individual understands why this is the rational and natural thing to happen, then poverty, illness and death are accepted willingly and the project of perfect conformity with nature is furthered.

Absurdity,Stoicism and the Game in Les Jeunes filles [1936–1939] Les Jeunes filles, a tetralogy, is the best known of Montherlant’s novels.9 Publication of the first volume in 1936 caused a great scandal and brought Montherlant notoreity, not least as a misogynist. His most famous censor is Simone de Beauvoir.10 Montherlant put up a strong defence to accusations of mysogyny, claiming that, on the contrary, Les Jeunes filles, has a moral content, warning women to beware of the purveyors of the sentimental, romantic ideal, indeed, taking on the role of feminist before his detractors. Beauvoir cites the plays, La Reine morte and Le Maître de Santiago, as portraying a superior being, who increases his sense of superiority by persecuting women. This criticism does not take into account the complexity of the characterization of Ferrante and Alvaro, who are tyrants but are also wracked by weakness and self-doubt; they are tragic figures, whose humanity is the source of tragedy. Other critics see Inès de Castro of La Reine morte, as an admiring portrait of women. Beauvoir criticizes Montherlant for isolating himself and his heroes from ordinary human experience: ‘Montherlant a eu peur de risquer parmi les hommes sa supériorité; pour s’enivrer de ce vin exaltant, il s’est retiré dans les nuées: l’Unique est assurément

9 10

214

See Roman 20–50, Revue d’étude du roman du XXe siècle, numéro special sur Les Jeunes Filles, No 21, juin 1996. Beauvoir, Simone de, Le Deuxième sexe, Gallimard, Paris, 1949, renouvelé en 1976, tome I, ‘Montherlant ou le pain du dégoût’, pp. 320–341.

souverain’.11 When Montherlant’s elitism is viewed with hindsight, it is clear that the author’s stance is a mask to cover his homosexuality. One critic sums up the purpose of Les Jeunes filles: ‘the real aim is to provide a unilateral condemnation of women and their corrupting influence on contemporary French society’.12 This assessment is accurate, but it is limited, in that there are many other factors to be taken into account when reading Les Jeunes filles. Domenget appeals to readers to persevere with Montherlant’s work, to go beyond public perception of the man and come to grips with a valid appreciation of his writings: ‘le romancier des Jeunes Filles est à la fois célèbre et méconnu, méconnu parce que trop de lecteurs, avant meme de l’avoir lu, se font une mauvaise idée de lui (la brute casquée, le misogyne, le collaborateur, l’académicien, le pédophile, le mystificateur…) et se détournent de ses livres’.13 Montherlant is critical of women, but he argues that his criticism is directed at the romantic ideal propounded by magazines, films, novels and middle class French society. The novel shows that even intelligent, independent women, like Andrée Hacquebaut are drawn into the illusion of romantic love, which Montherlant calls ‘l’Hamour’ and allow themselves to ‘love too much’. At the ‘Montherlant aujourd’hui’ Conference in 1995 participants recognized that in writing Les Jeunes filles, Montherlant was exorcizing the sentimental, female parts of his own nature: ‘C’est Montherlant qui apparaît sous le visage d’une femme’.14 Nicole Debrie-Panel expressed the same view as early as 1966, quoting Thierry Maulnier’s opinion ‘que la virilité est transcendante à l’oeuvre de Montherlant comme pôle compensatoire d’une féminité perpétuellement combattue’.15 Les Jeunes filles constitutes an attack on women, but also an attack by the author on the female part of his own nature. Beauvoir was unaware of this because she was writing before the publication of Sipriot’s biography. There is, 11 12 13 14 15

Beauvoir, ibid., p. 338. Golsan, Richard J., ‘Henry de Montherlant: Itinerary of an Ambivalent Fascist’, op. cit., p. 159. Domenget, Jean-François, ‘Les Jeunes Filles de Henry de Montherlant’, introduction à Roman 20–50, op. cit., p. 5. Clerval, Alain, ‘Le Libertinage dans Les Jeunes Filles’, paper read at the ‘Montherlant aujourd’hui’ Conference, op. cit. Debrie-Panel, op. cit., p. 129.

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furthermore, a ludic element in Les Jeunes filles: ‘La gaîté de son écriture, la variété des registres qu’il adopte, la singularité plaisante des images, la cocasserie bouffonne de certains développements sont les éléments du jeu que joue l’auteur avec son public’.16 Les Jeunes filles is a brilliant take-off of the rake and his victims, a tongue-in-cheek account of seduction and romance. The novel is also a diatribe against the social custom of marriage and the illusions created in the minds of both men and women by overly sentimental concepts of love. The hero of Les Jeunes filles, Costals, is cast in the mould of the Don Juan of Molière’s play, a ‘trickster, a shape shifter and figure of the margins, [who] readily takes up any position which will enable him to undermine the stability of whatever portion of the high moral ground his adversaries try to occupy’.17 Costals’ adversaries are women, conventional society and purveyors of a high-minded moral order, imposed on the individual. The element of play is essential to an understanding of the text. Costals disrupts all preconceived notions of love and marriage, but he is such a caricature of the Don Juan figure that the reader is asked to collude in the game of fiction. Montherlant does not expect the reader to take either the text or its hero seriously. Womens’ expectations of romantic love are exploited shamelessly by Costals in a sadistic game. The reader’s shock at Costals’ behaviour makes him or her take a step back and look again at the game of romance, with a more critical eye. The writer aims to strip the concept of romance of its trappings, thereby encouraging the reader to question the conventions of relationships. Costals is aware of the absurdity of existence and plays out to the full the only aspect of life, which is meaningful to him: the pursuit of pleasure. The principle of play hides a tragic character, who stoically pursues his game of seduction, aware all the while of the meaningless of his internecine venture. The text, furthermore, is a lesson in morality, as French middle-class values are mercilessly lampooned in Montherlant’s dazzling attack on the lie of romantic love and the foolishness of allowing oneself to be trapped in a vicious cycle of over-sentimental 16 17

216

Raimond, op. cit., p. 79. Potts, Denys C. ‘Molière’s Dom Juan and the Trickster: a Coherent Theatrical Reading’, French Studies, Vol. XLIX, No 2, April 1995, p. 145.

ideals, which do not exist in reality. The novels argue against falseness, superficiality and self-delusion and for truth, honesty and reality. In Montherlant’s work, the Stoic concept of dialectic or the science of argument forms the basic structure of the play or novel. The central figure converses with a series of other characters, on a one-to-one basis, in what Plato conceived as a fundamentally two-person activity, involving the interrogation of an interlocutor. Montherlant’s dialectic process is borrowed from Plato and the Stoics. Just as the younger Montherlant created a heroic ideal in Alban de Bricoule, Costals is the opposite, an amalgam of evil characteristics; he is a rake, an unattractive, cruel figure, the macho superman. The great seducer is motivated by a castration complex: ‘Ce Costals accablé par les sollicitations féminines est à la fois un homme couvert de femmes et un homme qui se défie des femmes’.18

Play as Disruption of Structure Les Jeunes filles illustrates the essential nature of the game in Montherlant’s system of values, as a means of disrupting set ideas and structures. The concept forms an essential part of Les Jeunes filles, where Costals’ indulgence in game playing usually involves opponents who are unaware of his rules. With Brunet, Costals’ son, however, the game is played more fairly, because the young boy is the only game-player whose position is given as much weight as that of Costals. When he plays games with his female companions – with the possible exception of Solange [at her most child-like] in the kitchen scene (PRI, 1122–1132) and in the scene with the cats (PRI, 1324–1332) – they are unaware that they are players. Derrida identifies the notion of play as a concept, which serves to deconstruct or decentralize a system of thought. By instigating play, both in the sense of the game and in the sense of play as movement, Montherlant breaks a pattern of behaviour or of thinking. The game has another sense, in terms of nihilism, in that the player is ultimately conscious of the absurdity of all action. Pleasure is all-important because

18

Raimond, op. cit., p. 63.

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other activities have no purpose and one should, therefore, indulge oneself as much as possible, for example, in play. Costals toys with the idea of marrying Solange; his playing with the decision runs through Les Jeunes filles as a leitmotif. The deliberate introduction of play into the realm of human experience achieves what Derrida, speaking of language, describes as the exclusion of the total and fixed meaning of a given system: If totalization no longer has any meaning, it is not because the infiniteness of a field cannot be covered by a finite glance or a finite discourse, but because the nature of the field - that is, language and a finite language - excludes totalization. This field is in effect that of play, that is to say, a field of infinite substitutions only because it is finite, that is to say, because instead of being an inexhaustible field, as in the classical hypothesis, instead of being too large, there is something missing from it: a center which arrests and grounds the play of substitutions. 19

In Les Jeunes filles, Montherlant is at pains to disrupt bourgeois values and to demonstrate that the rich mosaic of human emotional needs cannot be governed by a purely social invention such as marriage. He introduces the ludic element to show there is no fixed centre to the diverse abundance of the individual psyche. Play is significant, not only for the protagonist of Les Jeunes filles, but for the author. Costals plays with his women friends manipulating them to discover what the next stage in his relationship with them will be. He plays with his son. He plays with his intentions and ideas, stating, at one point, that he will marry Solange given certain conditions and, at another, that he will never marry her. Montherlant, as author, plays with the reader, shocking him or her with the hero’s outrageous behaviour and testing him or her by presenting constantly shifting points of view. This aspect of the novel is related to Montherlant’s role as a moralist, who is constantly challenging his reader: ‘...l’originalité des Jeunes filles est de comporter une leçon, [...] d’éveiller la conscience du lecteur à des problèmes plutôt que de l’endormir par des contes’. 20 Montherlant debunks the enterprise of writing. The narrative tricks and game-playing underline the author’s ludic stance, seemingly pointing out that the reader should not take Costals’ outrageous behaviour seriously. Yet, the fact that Costals causes such pain with his sadistic 19 20

218

Derrida, op. cit., p. 289. Raimond, op. cit., p. 105.

games makes the reader question the social structures and customs which allow the Costals–Valmont–Don Juan figure to behave as he does. Underneath the game-playing, the author’s intent is serious. He requires the reader to question the values of Western mid twentieth-century society relating to love, marriage, parenting, familial relations. The novel is a satire of French middle class society in the first half of the twentieth century, but it is also a critique of the novel form. Les Jeunes filles is an experimental novel; it is a tour de force, using a wide variety of narrative forms, as if the author were deliberately turning somersaults and showing off, composing a conventional third-person narrative, an epistolary novel in the tradition of Les Liaisons dangereuses, using the mise en abyme technique of presenting the narrator as a novelist, as in Gide’s Les Faux-monnayeurs. Whereas Gide produced a separate volume, entitled Le Journal des Faux-monnayeurs, to comment on his theory of writing and his objectives, Montherlant interrupts the narrative with passages of authorial intervention: Si ce roman sacrifiait aux règles du genre, telles qu’elles sont établies en France, la scène à la cuisine, entre Costals et Solonge, y eut été placée à la fin. Tout le monde en fût réjoui: les doctes, parce que la scène culminante doit etre placée à la fin, dans un roman composé à la française, c’est-à-dire dans un roman composé avec logique ; et les moraux, parce que cette scène semble faire prévir que les héros s’uniront: ainsi le roman, se terminant sur une échappée de ciel bleu, devenait édifiant d’un bout à l’autre, car les romans français, à l’instar des âmes chrétiennes, gardent la possibilité de sauver in extremis. (PRI, 1133)

There is hardly an aspect of French intellectual life which is not lambasted in the above diatribe. Neither philosophy, morality nor religion escapes the scathing attack. It is difficult to say which French novels Montherlant is railing against, but it is clear that Les Jeunes filles attempts to overturn conventional notions of writing, whereby there is a beginning, a middle and an end or an introduction, climax and denouement, accounted by a third-person omniscient narrator. Thirdperson narration is used in Les Jeunes filles, but it is combined with letters, advertisements, journal entries, theatrical-style dialogue. Montherlant irrevocably rejects the concept of the happy ending as being out of kilter with real life. Montherlant wishes to portray reality as honestly as possible, as his mouthpiece, Costals, notes: ‘Voyez-vous, j’aime la réalité. J’aime voir ce qui est […]. Les gens disent qu’on est 219

malheureux quand on voit trop tout ce qui est. Moi je vois tout ce qui est, et je suis très heureux’. The attachment to reality does not refer to a realist devotion to detailed description of a real material world, but rather to the portrayal of human feelings as honestly as possible. Like Costals, Montherlant’s aim is to indulge in play to disrupt any fixed point of view, for example, in the following comment, attributed to Costals and designed to shakes the reader’s belief in the verity of the ‘psychological’ novel: ‘La psychologie qu’un romancier met dans ses bouquins, on sait ce que c’est: de a à z, du trompe-l’oeil’. (PRI, 1395) Montherlant’s interventions indicate an awareness of the process of writing and a wish to break with the nineteenth century tradition of vraisemblance. The Russian formalists interpret interruption of the novel’s discourse as a device typical of twentieth century writing, by which the author emphasizes the consciousness of writing: Si l’écrivain, qui, à la page précédente, nous communiquait les pensées secrètes du héros, interrompt le discours, il le justifie en prétendant qu'il n’en a pas entendu la fin; ce n’est pas une motivation réaliste, mais une démonstration du procédé, ou mieux la dénudation du procédé.21

Les Jeunes filles is a parody of the novel of romance and a commentary on the act of writing. Montherlant is one of a series of modern novelists, including Sartre, Gide, Beckett and Céline, who express a loss of faith in literature’s capacity to grasp reality. Experimentation in form reflects their attempts both to reflect the lack of order in life and to provide an appropriate vehicle to convey the doubt, which is at the centre of twentieth-century thinking. Les Jeunes filles’ wide variety of forms of writing and Costals’ shockingly amoral behaviour convey the disorder of real life, as well as the amoral nature of society. Montherlant forms part of a tradition, from Gide to Tournier and Perec, ‘which seeks to render something of the chaos and dispersion of meaning that characterizes the real, by abandoning traditional sources of coherence and intelligibility’.22 21 22

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Todorov, Tzvetan, Théorie de la literature, textes de Formalistes russes, Seuil, Paris, 1965, p. 300. Walker, David H., ‘Formal experiment and innovation’, in Brée, Germaine and Guiton, Margaret, The French Novel from Gide to Camus, Harcourt, Brace and World, New York, 1962, p. 140.

Costals’s play disrupts conventional beliefs relating to love, marriage, the relation between the sexes; the author’s play overturns the reader’s expectations, questions the role of literature and challenges him to play an active role in deciphering the codes of the novel. The world, the individual psyche and human relationships are a mass of contradictions, where rules of behaviour are largely inappropriate. Montherlant, ever the didactic moralist, is urging the reader to re-think, re-form, be endlessly open to developments, metamorphoses, diversity. Costals’ relentless pursuit of pleasure and determination to live a life free of commitments to any other than himself constitute one possible response the central philosophical question, which fascinates Montherlant: what should be the modus operandi of the human being be, in a life which has no meaning, other than that imposed by the individual and his acts? The question is at its most acute when the individual is faced with death, as in the case of Monsieur Dandillot in Les Jeunes filles. Solange’s father is completely alone, in spite of the physical presence of his family and cries out in protest at the dominance of social conventions: ‘Jusqu’à la fin, il faut agir selon ce qui se fait, non selon la réalité’. (PRI, 1179) Montherlant favours isolation, which affects the individual’s system of values, in that conduct is all-important, not in the eyes of others, but in the eyes of one’s self. If the process of improvement of the individual takes place through pursuit of truth and reality, then the acts of the individual will be of benefit to others. Montherlant rejects politics and ideology as futile compared to the power of the individual human being. Sartre’s notion of the writer as a public figure is anathema to Montherlant. Although he spoke in public, speeches often concerned the question of an individual system of values. The single human being should seek to work towards the good; then the right political and ideological acts will follow. If one lives in accordance with natural inclinations, with honesty, refusing to be superficial, then morally right actions will follow. The isolation of the Montherlant hero is related to the author’s belief in the process of individual self-knowledge and self-improvement. When Montherlant returns to the novel form, more than twenty years after the publication of Les Jeunes filles, he resurrects Monsieur Dandillot in the personages of Celestino and Exupère, to explore the beliefs of Nihilism and Stoicism, adopted by the protagonist, who finds 221

himself completely isolated from his fellows. Le Chaos et la nuit and Un Assassin est mon maître treat the disintegration of the individual personality and the despair brought on by age, infirmity and withdrawal from human company.

Nihilistic Process in Le Chaos et la nuit [1963] Le Chaos et la nuit was published nearly 25 years after Les Jeunes filles, the period between the publication of these two novels being occupied by Montherlant’s theatrical writing.23 Montherlant dates the origin of Le Chaos et la nuit at 1952 and the elaboration of its narrative at January 1954. The novel was finally written between July 1961 and May 1962. It is neatly divided into two parts, each comprising four chapters. This tight structure contrasts strikingly with the novel’s content, the descent into chaos and the nihilism of Celestino Marcello, an elderly, exiled Spanish Republican, faced with the ordeal of physical and mental breakdown and death. In this novel, Montherlant is concerned with establishing a system of values for living in the presence of death; the reader is instructed in the art of dying. The hero, Celestino, undertakes the orchestration of his own death, pursuing a nihilistic process, designed to dominate death. In fact, the opposite occurs, with death turning the tables on the protagonist, whose enterprise ends in failure. Le Chaos et la nuit and Un Assassin est mon maître relate the hero’s decline into madness and lead the reader into the realm of hallucination and dream. The novels take over the story of the historical plays, as if the theatrical characters, Ferrante and Cisneros, were reincarnated as ordinary men, condemned to obscurity and gradual decline, rather than a highly dramatic and sudden end. There is a similarity between these two novels and André Breton’s surrealist novel, Nadja [1927], which, like Un Assassin, has a largely oneiric narrative and is presented as a medical case-study. Jacqueline Michel recognizes the presence, in Montherlant’s work, of what she calls ‘une vénération de la peur, une 23

222

See Thweatt, Vivien, ‘La Vieillesse et la mort chez Montherlant’, Revue d’Histoire littéraire de la France, juillet-août 1974, 74e année, Nr. 4, pp. 644–664 for how Les Célibataires and Le Chaos et la nuit relate to plays on the same theme.

attirance pour ce qui effraie’, related to the religious fear which precedes the state of grace.24 In Montherlant’s case, fear is part of reality and part of the cult of self, which leads the hero to explore all aspects of experience. In Le Chaos et la nuit and Un Assassin est mon maître Montherlant investigates the concept of Nihilism, which Gilles Deleuze defines in terms of three ideas: the idea of a power of the negative as a theoretical principle manifested in opposition and contradiction; the idea that suffering and sadness have value, the valorisation of the ‘sad passions’, as a practical principle manifested in splitting and tearing apart; the idea of positivity as a theoretical and practical product of negation itself.25

Stoic belief in knowledge as a virtue is proposed as a guiding principle to the journey through life and as a method of meeting death in these two novels. Celestino and Exupère, in accordance with Deleuze’s principles of negation, become the opposite of what they were. Everyone and everything opposes them; familiar structures are altered and they enter the world of the unknown; they experience fear, loss and sadness; this negation of their lives leads to an affirmation of knowledge. There is also an element of mysticism in Montherlant’s work, which is present in Les Garçons in dreams and the ‘opérations mystérieuses’. In Le Chaos et la nuit and Un Assassin est mon maître, this element is more evident; in fact, dream and hallucination threaten to invade reality. André Blanc analyzes the oneiric aspects of Le Chaos et la nuit, concluding that: ‘Le lecteur ne comprend pas cette fin [la mort de Celestino] et ne peut la comprendre s’il n’a suivi la progression régulière de l’onirisme dans le roman’. 26 The novels are set partly in France and partly in Spain and Algeria, respectively. The last three chapters of Le Chaos et la nuit are situated in Spain and, apart from the Epilogue, Un Assassin est mon maître is set 24 25 26

Michel, op. cit., pp. 65 & 69. Deleuze, op. cit., p. 195. Blanc, André, ‘Un Romancier solitaire est un diable: ironie et onirisme ou le statut du narrateur dans Le Chaos et la nuit’, Lettres et réalités, mélanges de littérature générale et de critique Romanesque, offerts au Professeur Henri COULET par ses amis, Université de Provence, 1988.

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entirely in Algeria. Celestino has devoted his life to the pursuit of a political cause, that of the Republicans against Franco, and he has sacrificed all else, including his daughter’s happiness, to this end. In old age, the abyss of darkness attracts him; the novel recounts his wilful quest for ‘le chaos et la nuit’. Celestino begins by ridding himself of all companions and friends; this movement of retreat is referred to in the text as fuera todos, ‘tout le monde dehors’. Celestino alienates Ruiz and Pineda, and, finally, his daughter, Pascualita. Once isolated from his two friends and, therefore, unable to converse with anyone, Celestino amuses himself by creating situations of risk. He treats pigeons in the square as if they were bulls; like a matador, he rushes through the pigeons, scatters them, and waits until they settle before repeating the performance, spurred on by the outrage of the other people in the square. (PRII, 905– 906) He continues the game by flirting with death, treating the road as the arena and cars as bulls, scandalizing his daughter and passers-by. (PRII, 946) Celestino’s actions are reminiscent of Deleuze’s analysis in his study of Nietzsche’s concept of Nihilism, where the person who destroys is also the creator: ‘Destruction as the active destruction of all known values is the trail of the creator [...] Destruction as the active destruction of the man who wants to perish and to be overcome announces the creator’. 27 As he propels himself into the abyss where life takes on the nil value, Celestino evaluates his former life and rejects it; he re-creates himself in an image of negativity and, finally, takes on death in a kind of superhuman struggle, which he loses. Exupère enacts a similar process. Both heroes are manifestations of the author’s wish to take the exploration of Nihilism to its ultimate conclusion and to present knowledge and understanding of the self as a worthy goal. The pursuit of knowledge as the goal of living, as a way of opposing life’s inherent absurdity and tragedy, is in keeping with Costals’ relentless pursuit of pleasure in Les Jeunes filles. The process is the same in that the central figure strives to find out how people function and how society functions in relation to individuals. The action novels of Montherlant’s early years are transformed into contemplative novels in the latter half of his life. Action, like the bull-fight in Le Chaos et la nuit, is symbolic of man’s 27

224

Deleuze, op. cit., pp. 177–178.

struggle with the opposing forces of living and dying. Action also involves preparing for and, indeed, arranging one’s death. Malraux’s fraternal solidarity, Saint Exupéry’s sacrifice to discipline and duty and Sartre’s political solution have no place in Montherlant’s system of values. Knowledge of and living in conformity with one’s own individual nature and the nature of the world is Montherlant’s response to the absurdity of existence. Celestino’s deeds are deliberately calculated to alienate his daughter, in an effort to isolate himself utterly. Celestino further estranges his daughter by clearing out a room in the flat they share: « Maintenant toutes les autres pièces sont encombrées et en désordre parce qu’on a dû dégager celle-ci. Il n’y faut rien toucher, rien mettre; elle doit être toujours impeccable; c’est la plus jolie pièce de l’appartement... et pour n’y loger personne! C’est la pièce sacrée! – C’est la chambre de ma fiancée. Et tu sais qui est ma fiancée? – L’infirmière? – Non. La mort. » (PRII, 938–939)

These elaborate preparations signify the hero’s need to act: L’action seule nous permet de prendre la mesure de nous-même. Avec Goethe, Montherlant pense qu’on ne se connaît que dans l’action. Elle met à l’épreuve notre pensée, notre intention. Mais elle s’effrite, sujette à l’incohérence dans ses résultats comme dans son essence.28

Celestino cannot wait for death; he must attract it, demonstrate his willingness to face it and, finally, because of his foreknowledge, succumb. Montherlant sees suicide as a whole process, concurring with what Duroisin in his Montherlant et l’antiquité calls the ‘« sortie raisonable » des stoïciens’. Celestino acts in accordance with his creator’s beliefs about death; Montherlant rejects the Christian approach and embraces that of the Romans: ‘Rome nous rappelle que suicide et pédérastie sont faits communs chez des hommes parfaitement équilibrés, et l’honneur de leur pays’. (PE, 1344) Les Garçons is Montherlant’s apologia for pederasty and Le Chaos et la nuit his apologia for suicide. Celestino does not actually succeed in committing suicide, because despite all his elaborate preparations, death still manages to catch him unawares.

28

Blanc, op. cit., p. 201.

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Celestino’s pyromania is part of the destructive instinct, which governs his eccentric behaviour: Au-delà du boulevard Sébastopol, une dense fumée blanche et grise, roulant de fortes volutes, s’élevait dans le ciel. [...] Il y avait assez souvent par là-bas de gros feux de cheminées. Toutes les fois que le feu était maîtrisé sans trop de retard, don Celestino en avait un peu de dépit. Il eût voulu que l’incendie s’étendît à tout le quartier. Nullement par malveillance à l’égard des Français. Le plaisir, quoi... (PRII, 915)

Celestino flirts with danger, rehearsing his final game with death. During this first stage in his alienation of Pascualita, her father rebels against the fact that she has grown up by acting like a child. Their roles are reversed and he protests by indulging in unreasonable, child-like conduct. By the end of the first part of the novel, Celestino no longer needs to create situations of risk because his sister’s sudden death demands his presence in Madrid, where danger awaits: ‘C’était ce danger principalement qui l’attirait: l’attrait de l’abîme’. (PRII, 943) If he goes to Madrid, it is likely that he will be arrested and executed, because he fought against Franco during the Spanish Civil War. Man, in Montherlant’s universe, opposes the absurdity of existence with his will and courage: ‘Seul pour le face à face avec la mort, et faire ce qu’il y avait à faire avec elle, correctement’. (PRII, 1039) Celestino’s wish to hasten his own destruction is similar to Léon de Coantré’s desire to rid himself of his money and bring about his ruin. Montherlant views death as an opportunity for the human being to dominate life by taking control of death; he is also aware that death is a worthy adversary of the man who would take control, in that it is unpredictable and springs surprises on the individual. In Malraux’s La Condition humaine, Tchen is reminiscent of the Montherlant hero, whose active desire to meet death head on, even to enact his own death, is a means of dominating life. The hero’s desire for the absolute leads, inevitably, to death: ‘To desire the infinite, to refuse all limits, is to condemn oneself to dissolution and thus to death’.29 This is in keeping with Lacan’s comment about the individual who brings his ‘solitude to realization’ in 29

226

Thiher, Allen, ‘Desire and Destruction: Montherlant’s Tragic Vision’, Kentucky Romance Quarterly, vol. 23, 1976, p. 529.

the ‘full assumption of his being-for-death’. By experiencing feelings of loss and despair to the full, Celestino harnesses negative energy from the vacuum he has created [‘le vide autour de lui’] and uses it to gain knowledge. Just before dying Celestino does attain absolute knowledge, realizing that issues in life are not right or wrong, that life is essentially chaos and nothing in it makes sense. Had he understood this earlier, he would have lived his life differently. He experiences ‘un quart d’heure d’intelligence dans toute une vie, et au moment qu’on va la quitter!’ (PRII, 1044) Thweatt concludes that Celestino is the only one in Montherlant’s gallery of ageing heroes who dominates death by retaining an attitude of defiance and indifference right to the end: Malgré leurs ressemblances, Celestino devient en fin de compte un anti-Léon dans l’alternance de Montherlant. Il rejette la dépendance que représente l’appel de Léon à Mélanie et l’appel de Ferrante à Del Moro; il rejette également la quête de l’amour, la quête de la foi et la quête du pouvoir. Les autres vieillards tiennent à leur rêve; Celestino refuse le sien.30

By affirming himself, Celestino enacts the Nihilistic principle and through negativity, loss and destruction, re-creates himself: It is only under the sway of affirmation that the negative is raised to its higher degree at the same time as it defeats itself: it is no longer a power and a quality but the mode of being of the one who is powerful. Then and only then, the negative is aggression, negation becomes active, joyful destruction.31

In Le Chaos et la nuit, Pascualita endures all she can of her father’s difficult, demanding character, before fleeing from him. When she abandons him, he descends into darkness and finds strength in his negative feelings for her. This strength enables him to die alone in dreadful abjection and terror. The catastrophe of loss results in the hero’s turning back upon himself, seeking and finding a new kind of energy, which allows him to transform himself in a final metamorphosis, in his encounter with death. When the ebb and flow of passion ceases, as in does in Le Chaos et la nuit and Un Assassin est mon maître, the hero’s life has come full circle and he renews himself in a final surge of energy generated from loss. 30 31

Thweatt, op. cit., p. 662. Deleuze, op. cit., p. 179.

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Mapping Pathogenesis and Moral Responsibility in Un Assassin est mon maître [1971] Un Assassin est mon maitre, like La Rose de sable, is set in North Africa, during the French colonial period. It falls within the colonial archive of works by French writers, such as Loti and Camus, who write from within the colonial mindset whilst trying to transcend it. In Un Assassin est mon maitre Montherlant charts the decline of the French presence in Algeria through his representation of the central character’s mental illness and disintegration. The novel opens in the Algiers suburb of Bab-il-Oued, where the population is largely of Spanish extraction. The protagonist of Un Assassin, Exupère, lives in a state of perpetual terror of the Arabs and his perception of their violent way of life: Il n’est entré qu’une fois dans la ville arabe […]. Ils n’étaient pas là depuis dix minutes qu’ils avaient aperçu un Arabe adossé au mur, et regardant avec une sort de stupeur son ventre, sur lequel il appuyait ses mains, et d’où coulait du sang: il venait d’y recevoir un coup de couteau. Exupère n’avait plus jamais remis les pieds dans la Casbah. (PRII, 1099)

Exupère is the victim of his superior, Saint-Juste, just as the Arab people are subject to brutal repression by the French. The text maps out the pathogenesis of relations between the two librarians, who represent the states of sadism and masochism, symptoms of a diseased society, that of French Algeria. Exupère is a well-educated, cultured man, a librarian, who, through his own overly-sensitive nature, combined with victimization, is driven to destitution and death. His instability represents difference in a society where only the perfectly whole and healthy are accepted. Saint-Juste, Exupère’s professional superior, is as unstable as his victim, but survives by using his position to assert power. The novel examines the seamier aspects of colonial society, whilst evoking the contrasting physical beauty of the sea-port, Algiers. Montherlant explores the issue of responsibility towards one’s fellow human being, in the context of the existence of evil. Saint-Juste consciously destroys Exupère, goaded by his subservience. The cycle of sado-masochism depicts the scenario of bully and victim. Like Les Célibataires, Un Assassin est mon maître presents three male characters: ‘deux excentriques démunis d’argent et le troisième 228

personnage qui a de l’argent, ce troisième personnage joue les deux fois un rôle maléfique’.32 Exupère is the first; the second is Manuel Manoussié, known as Colle d’Épate or simply Colle. Living up to his name, he befriends Exupère, for the purpose of having his meals paid for and being able to borrow money. The pun labels his parasitic nature, onamastics constituting a significant aspect of Montherlant’s work. Exupère is fully aware that he is being ‘used’ by Colle, but enjoys his company and good humour: ‘Il y avait un vrai service qu’il lui rendait, qui était de le distraire’. (PRII, 1116) The third character is Saint-Juste. In Un Assassin est mon maître, Montherlant’s last novel, the hero gradually descends into a state of destitution and mental instability, raising the moral issue of man’s responsibility to man. Through no fault of his own, Exupère falls into penury and destitution. The Epilogue introduces the author as a character, who fails to help Exupère, largely through not acting decisively enough and in a timely fashion. Moral responsibility for the corrupt political and social system which increases poverty and relies on racism, professional bullying and repression in order to survive, is displaced by the author’s belief in pre-determinism, as dictated by the nature of the individual. The atmosphere of Un Assassin is more realistic than Le Chaos et la Nuit. Montherlant is concerned with presenting reality as honestly as possible, although this novel casts doubt on the very nature of reality. Un Assassin est mon maître is, like Le Chaos et la Nuit, an examination of what Lyotard refers to as the invention of ‘allusions to the conceivable which cannot be presented’, manifest in the unconscious taking over the conscious mind, presented in the same manner as surrealist writing in the early part of the twentieth century. Un Assassin may be read as a Surrealist novel because reality is distorted by the mind of the protagonist. Montherlant depicts colonial Algiers through a series of characters, a French child prostitute [Sophie], a spinster [Mlle Rouffignol], Arab waiters and cinema attendants, Exupère’s mistress [Sanchita], all of whom are victims of poverty and are exploited by parasitic individuals such as Manoussié, the equivalent of Guiscart in La Rose de sable, who live off the colonial system. Un Assassin depicts a broad panoply of the 32

La Marée du soir, op. cit., p. 127.

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marginalized, the dispossessed. Exupère loves Sophie, the outcast child, whose tattoo denotes her as ‘l’enfant perdu’, just as Auligny, in La Rose de sable, seeks justification for his equivocal stance on French occupation in his possession of Ram and of the twelve-year-old Bedouin girl. The recurrence of Sophie’s image in Exupère’s mind reflects the need of the Montherlant hero to appropriate the child, as the other through whom he defines himself. Exupère, after only one brief meeting with Sophie, desperately attempts to retain her image, as a source of security and sanity. Contact with the beloved, youthful other is the hero’s lifeline. Montherlant presented the novel formally as a study of a neurotic by asking Jean Delay, an eminent psychiatrist to write the preface, but Un Assassin est mon maître is more important as Montherlant’s final discussion of moral responsibility. He suggests that we are all responsible for the existence of evil and for victimization of the dispossessed and the poor by failing to undertake the small acts of charity, which may alleviate suffering. Christian morality is proposed, without belief in God and, yet the author fails to provide help when it is required. In Un Assassin est mon maître, the reader is forced to confront exploitation, victimization, injustice, but there is no satisfactory response. Montherlant, introduced directly as narrator, patronizes Exupère, instead of helping him; he perceives the need, knows how to meet it and fails to take the final step: Je songeai à l’inviter à déjeuner pour la semaine suivante. Mais le souvenir m’arreta, d’un autre repas pris au restaurant, naguère, avec un pauvre diable d’intellectuel de la meilleure qualité, mais la tête si perdue que j’avais du lui dire d’ôter son imperméable pour dîner ; qu’il prenait avec ses doigts l’os tout dégoutant de ragout et le suçait…’ (PRII 1234–1235)

Hughes claims that ‘for all Montherlant’s liberalizing claims […] La Rose de sable corroborates colonial culture in crucial respects’.33 In Un Assassin, the same vacillating refusal to condemn colonialism colludes with the class system and snobbery. Montherlant raises the question of moral responsibility in this final novel, but fails to provide an adequate response. The awareness of injustice in the depiction of victim and persecutor and the will to help Exupère is present, but overwhelmed by a sense of futility and by the inability to transcend factors of class and 33

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Hughes, op. cit., p. 83.

race. Montherlant’s last novel provides a realistic and moving portrait of social outcasts and the dispossessed, and conveys the vision of a society which will destroy itself through greed and selfishness. There is no solution to the ills of society because, according to Montherlant’s philosophy, any goodness or innocence in man is lost when youth is lost. The author emphasizes the distortion of reality by commenting, in an interview with Alain-Michel Grand, that Saint-Juste may be interpreted as a figment of the hero’s imagination.34 This suggests that external factors are invented by Exupère’s pathological consciousness. This observation relates to the Stoic belief in the nature of man as the primary motivation behind behaviour. Fate functions as a series of mere triggering causes – the openings, provocations with which the world presents us. Given Exupère’s character, he is bound to respond to these prompts in just the way he does. The principle cause of an action lies in the individual nature. This means, therefore, that moral responsibility for another is limited to the ‘could not have done otherwise’ scenario. We can only help others in limited ways, because their misfortune is inherent in their own nature and circumstances. Montherlant believes in the individual consciousness as an entity existing in isolation from others. Moral responsibility, in terms of Montherlant’s system of values, exists primarily in relation to the self; he believes that we are unable to help each other. This is the reason why Exupère’s letters calling for help do not have a sender’s address. Montherlant is, in other words, overwhelmed by reality, in that, first, he sees man as incapable of altruism, and, even if an altruistic action were possible, it would not help those in need, because of the presence of the individual’s inexorable nature, which may or may not bring about ruin. We are condemned by our own natures and by the condition of society and are beyond any outside help. This is the essence of the Montherlant vision, which relates directly to Stoic belief. Un Assassin est mon maître contrasts the functioning of personal consciousness with society’s expectations of the individual. Montherlant emphasizes the fact that the boundaries between instability and normality are ill-defined: ‘Je pense avec nombre d’autres que ce que vous appelez la demi-folie, ou qu’on peut appeler encore la manie, la passion, 34

La Marée du soir, op. cit., pp. 126–135.

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l’originalité, l’irrégularité est si proche de la normalité qu’on peut dire que tout le monde est un peu piqué, et les artistes, évidemment, plus que personne’. In the same interview, Montherlant informs us that the model for Exupère was a civil servant, whom he met in Algeria in 1928. Possible real life models for Exupère are suggested by Paul Lefrancq,35 but I concur with Krémer’s conclusion: ‘Nous croyons [...] que le personnage d’Exupère n’est pas un personnage entièrement réel, mais la projection partielle de l’auteur’.36 The final chapter draws the author into Exupère’s drama and means that in the model of self and other, which may be traced throughout Montherlant’s work, Exupère becomes other to the author’s self. In Un Assassin est mon maître the author is the last person to whom Exupère turns for help. Exupère writes to him expressing desperate need for money, but he does not address his letters. The narrator loses touch with Exupère; yet Exupère is ever-present in his mind and weighs heavily on his conscience: ‘Exupère empoisonnait ma vie. Sa folie me contaminait. Je trainais derrière moi, de plus en plus pesant, le manteau du bien que je ne lui avais pas fait’. (PRII, 1243) The lines of fiction and reality are blurred and the author and narrator are one and the same. In this way, the author is cast back upon himself as object of knowledge, like the fictional Exupère and Celestino: ‘Il [Exupère] ne voulait que retrouver son pire démon: soi-même’. (PRII, 1229) Exupère’s omission of an address [he is lucid enough to remember the poste restante addresses provided by Montherlant] deliberately precipitates his end. Celestino goes to Spain knowing that he will be killed. Exupère, like Léon de Coantré, sinks deeper into destitution knowing that he will die through neglect. Celestino acts in a positive way to bring about his own end; Exupère and Léon are passive, but manage, all the same, to hasten their death. In terms of Nihilism, the process enacted by Léon, Celestino and Exupère may be described as follows: ‘Active destruction means: the point, the moment of transmutation in the will to nothingness. Destruction becomes active at the moment when, with the alliance between reactive forces and the will to nothingness 35

36

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Lefrancq, Paul, ‘Deux bibliothécaires héros d’un roman (Un Assassin est mon maître de Montherlant)’, Mémoires et publications de la Société des Sciences, des Arts et des Lettres du Hainaut, 91 ème volume, 1980. Krémer, op. cit., p. 89.

broken, the will to nothingness is converted and crosses over to the side of affirmation, it is related to a power of affirming which destroys the reactive forces themselves’.37 Léon, Celestino and Exupère are transformed by their harnessing of negative forces; in a sense, they have power over death, in that they have entered the Nihilistic experience and then exerted their own power, affirming themselves in the process. In terms of Montherlant’s philosophy, they dominate life by choosing to die. Stoicism dictates that predetermination exists in terms of one’s nature, that a person lives out their natural inclinations and is responsible for an action only if they could have done otherwise. Montherlant’s characters live out their own natures, making choices, where possible, to enact the Stoic’s orderly exit. Moral responsibility for victims of poverty and oppression is side-lined by a narrow belief in a form of predestination. Montherlant’s early belief in heroism is destroyed by the events of the twentieth century, particularly war and the Occupation, but idealism is replaced by belief in the doomed nature of man, whose only act of domination and control is suicide. In spite of social criticism in Montherlant’s texts, which points towards a humanist, socialist philosophy, based on Christian concepts, the author’s system of values falls short of any substantial response to the problems posed by the existence of Good and Evil.

Madmen and the Prize of Knowledge As with Celestino in Le Chaos et la Nuit, Exupère’s symptoms of instability become more pronounced in the second half of the novel. He begins to have unpleasant dreams (PRII, 1171), there are gaps in his memory (PRII, 1191), he develops obsessive anxiety about whether or not the tap or the electricity has been turned off (PRII, 1193), he imagines that he is being followed (PRII, 1203), his physical strength deteriorates and he acts strangely in public places. (PRII, 1208) Finally, terrified by Saint-Justin, Exupère loses control of his bladder and this incident gives his oppressor the excuse to destroy any hope of a future career as a librarian in France. Exupère is always conscious of his state, 37

Deleuze, op. cit., p. 174.

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to the extent of being able to write notes on Saint-Justin’s persecution, entitling one such essay ‘Pourquoi il me déteste’. (PRII, 1204) He states on several occasions that he is mad. (PRII, 1177, 1192, 1207–1208, 1230) Exupère’s lucidity increases the poignancy of his tragedy, as does Delay’s diagnosis and prognosis in the preface, which recommends a simple cure: ‘Il suffirait d’isoler Exupère, de le séparer de celui qu’il considère comme son persécuteur, de le soumettre à un traitement par les médicaments neuroleptiques, qui mettent au repos complet le système nerveux, pour voir rapidement disparaître son délire’, (PRII, 1089) in addition to the author’s proposed cure in the epilogue: ‘la santé d’Exupère aurait été sensiblement améliorée s’il avait reçu un bon chèque’. (PRII, 1237) Montherlant’s social commentary is trenchant, but falls short of proposing solutions; both the narrator and those who are socially excluded are paralysed, caught in a vacuum, rather than being propelled into action by injustice: L’homme qui n’a pas d’argent est un maudit. Et l’homme qui a une maladie nerveuse est un maudit. Comme l’homme qui sort de prison, ou l’homme qui a un physique hideux. Je suis doublement maudit. Ils me regarderaient comme on regarde un lépreux, et avec raison. D’ailleurs vous savez bien que, dans les circonstances graves, on est toujours abandonné. Chacun sait le mot qu’il faudrait dire pour vous sauver, mais ne le dit pas, et ne vous le dira pas. (PRII, 1233)

The reference to leprosy is recurrent in Montherlant’s work, designating a sort of heroic isolation, as well, in this case, the corruption of a sick society. Saint-Justin is the symbol of the internalized parental figure that judges and declaims Exupère’s thoughts and actions; he is also the representative of ‘normal’ society, which expects and, in fact, insists on a certain mode of living. Saint-Justin may be interpreted further as an imaginative figure, onto whom Exupère projects his persecution complex. His sense of self is ultimately damaged by the absence of human companionship and, opposed by society, his world becomes hostile. He is tormented by hallucinations and nightmares, by irrational fears, until he expresses his ultimate despair on boarding the steamer to cross the Mediterranean: ‘Il hurlait à la mort, la mort de ce qu’il était et la mort de ce qu’il allait trouver’. (PRII, 1229)

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Loss and Rebirth In the nihilistic novels and plays of Montherlant’s later writings, the normal sources of support for the human being are withdrawn. The hero loses his companion or lover, his environment changes and becomes hostile, his family and friends are alienated, he enters a kind of whirlpool where familiar sensations and points of reference are changed around and where chaos reigns. Les Jeunes filles depicts a scenario, where loss is fantasized by Costals, but not enacted. Costals, Léon de Coantré, Celestino and Exupère are the subject of their own knowledge: ‘action [...] negates the field of forces of desire in order to become its own object to itself’. The existential notion of freedom is, for Montherlant, centred on knowledge: in order to achieve knowledge of self, the individual must be free from all forms of social connections. In all of Montherlant’s literary works, the hero rids himself of the props, which normally see the human being through life, friends, family, profession, responsibilities. If we adopt Lacan’s metaphor of death as an end of therapy, because the subject has become the object of his own knowledge, then the Montherlant hero is seen to reach the point of death at the same time as he accesses absolute knowledge about himself and effects the ultimate transformation of the human being. The Montherlant hero functions in relation to desire felt for the youthful other, who is his friend, companion or lover throughout the work. The presence and absence of the other takes place as an ebb and flow movement, which animates the text. For example, the hero’s quest for truth is emphasized by Celestino’s thoughts about Pascualita, just before his death. The protagonist makes a superhuman effort at the time of death, transforming himself by sheer energy, to bring about death and dominate life, in accordance with Stoic philosophy. The transmutation of self which occurs when absolute knowledge is obtained is defined as the last stage of the nihilistic process: the point at which negation expresses an affirmation of life, destroys reactive forces and restores the rights of activity [...] the supreme focal or transcendent point which is not defined by Nietzsche in terms of an equilibrium or a reconciliation of opposites, but in terms of a conversion. [...] In the man who wants to perish, to be overcome, negation has broken everything which still held it back,

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it has defeated itself, it has become of affirming [sic], a power which is already superhuman.38

Truth and knowledge are pursued, in the search for a higher form of being, in the company of a beloved youthful character. Through loss, grief, mental instability, Léon de Coantré, Celestino, Exupère, Ferrrante, Malatesta and Cisneros harness negative forces, bring about their own death and obtain, at the moment of death, power and knowledge. Léon de Coantré dies of pride, because he will not seek help; he finds strength in affirming his isolation: ‘Et toutes ses misères, automatiquement, passaient du plan du sordide à celui de la hauteur, où elles cessaient de lui faire mal’. (PRI, 902) His transfiguration into another self occurs on his deathbed: Tout à coup, il s’éveilla en sursaut. Ce n’était plus le Coantré de la hauteur d’âme, ce n’était plus le Coantré de la petite espérance, c’était encore un autre Coantré, qui se dressa d’un coup sur son séant, s’accrochant au drap avec les poings serrés, et resta ainsi, droit, immobile, les yeux dilatés, comme une chauve-souris clouée contre un mur. (PRI, 906)

This other Coantré possesses great physical strength: he grips the bedclothes, not wanting to die, he poises himself for flight out of fear, like the bat, he cries out, fighting the onslaught of death, like Celestino. Like Exupère, who omits the address from his letters, in order not to receive help, Léon stays in bed, in his house in the forest, slowly dying of hunger, cold and neglect. Léon’s optimism at the time of his death is associated with that of the wild geese overhead flying towards warmth and sunshine. Death, in Montherlant’s work, is a positive force. At the point of death, the hero re-assembles his forces and launches himself towards death in a movement of triumph.

38

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Deleuze, ibid., p. 175.

Conclusion

Henry de Montherlant wrote the truth about his beliefs and about his life, yet, at the same time, he did his utmost to disguise the truth and to manufacture a mask of aristocratic superiority which belied the profoundly human content of his writings. Since his death, Montherlant has been considered as the quintessential ‘old guard’ novelist, whose façade of stuffy old-world values, including idealistic heroism, has been accepted by most readers at face value. Montherlant’s reputation as an elitist, propagating exemplary concepts of human conduct constitutes only part of the picture. I have attempted to take a hammer to Montherlant’s literary edifice, to break down the barriers he set up, in order to expose the detail and to move beyond preconceived notions and behind the reputation of stylist, elitist, misogynist, terms which detract the reader from the bedrock of Montherlant’s thinking. This reading, by working through the various and frequently contradictory tenets of Montherlant’s philosophy, demonstrates that he was all too human, with all the weaknesses inherent in the human state. His human qualities and failings are present in his work, which is a chronicle of his inability to rise above the human condition, an acknowledgement that the disorder and inexplicability of the world must be accepted and lived with. The novels and plays relate their heroes’ aspiration towards a nobler self, but man is burdened by his own nature and his attempts to transform himself, to attain a higher form of being, forever elude him. Montherlant’s work is permeated by a sense of tragedy, partly related to the failure of the twentieth century’s ideologies in terms of solving problems of conflict, poverty and disease and partly related to the doomed nature of sexuality. The beloved youth is, necessarily, constantly changing and constantly unattainable; no emotional stability is possible within Montherlant’s paradigm of the love relationship. By analyzing Montherlant’s work as his ideal of heroism crumbled, as he was forced to revise his system of values and build on his reading of classical authors to come to terms with the social and political 237

upheavals of the twentieth century, Montherlant is revealed as an altogether more sympathetic writer. It is evident that behind the carefully cultivated image of a ‘superior’ individual lies a deeply flawed man who is haunted by fears about loss of face and is convinced, only too rightly, that his work will be misunderstood. Whereas his youthful heroes are beset by over-confidence, the heroes of Montherlant’s mature writings reflect profound doubt and insecurity; they alienate friends and family and are left only with their precarious self-image to keep them from the abyss of nihilism. Once they fall into this abyss, they strive to find another method of strengthening themselves in readiness for death. The quest of Montherlant’s work has come to an end. Significantly, in the Epilogue of Un Assassin est mon maître, the author is cast upon himself as the subject of knowledge. The Montherlant hero is always in a state of becoming and, as a character in his last novel, the author brings the quest for truth full circle, back to himself. Knowledge of the self is the ultimate prize in Montherlant’s system of values. The late novels portray society’s dispossessed, the problem of Good and Evil, the attitude adopted by man faced with an absurd and unjust world. Montherlant’s vision is essentially flawed, however, because it relates first and foremost to the self. There are many positive features to the author’s system of values: the concern for honesty and depiction of the world as it is not as it should be, the desire to rely on empirical knowledge as a basis for belief, the emphasis on a code of behaviour governed by responsibility towards the self rather than caring about what others’ think and the courage to explore death as the guiding principle of life. The author’s humour and sense of fun permeates his writings, particularly the Carnets, and even the final, dark novels. Madame Zehrfuss, a life-long friend, stressed that her friendship with Montherlant was characterized by a keen sense of the comic, that the writer loved to play practical jokes and banned all serious discussion from their meetings. Her recollection of Montherlant as a funloving man, devoting his time to frivolous amusement, is a far cry from the accepted image of him as a cantankerous, high-minded moralist, intolerant of weakness. Montherlant’s position is, nevertheless, limited by failure to take the final step, from awareness of weakness in himself and others, to compassion, by proposing a political, social or personal response to the 238

position of the other. In Montherlant’s work, the young person, the Arab, the woman, the ‘madman’ are appropriated as objects and not subjects of knowledge, in a system of values which works from the conviction that the locus of the human is adult, young, male, and European. Departing from the fall of heroism and the perception of absurdity, Montherlant constructs a system of values, which is carefully established around the honest perception of what is, but which is ultimately limited because it fails to cross boundaries of age, race, gender and health. The detachment which attracted Montherlant meant that ‘in the affairs of society’ he was an ‘unwise legislator’;1 although he was, in fact, in contact with people from the poor strata of society, this tendency towards isolation and detachment, in the end, served him badly, for there is an absence in his writings, where real compassion and sympathy should be. Failure is also related to Montherlant’s tendency, particularly evident in the early novels, to create a world of fantasy where heroism is possible because elements of reality are excluded. The ‘family’ plays admit this omission, as they attempt to take account of the realities of occupation, collaboration and resistance, as well as the problems posed by family relations. Life is lived in the imagination, to a great extent, and, paradoxically, because of Montherlant’s considerable preoccupation with telling the truth about life, experiences which relate reality, as opposed to fantasy, occur in relatively few texts: poverty, illness, death are treated in Les Célibataires, Le Chaos et la nuit and Un Assassin est mon maître. Montherlant’s work appeals to the modern reader precisely because it traces a history of failure: failure to take proper account of the other, failure to face up to the reality of evil in terms of war, collaboration, cruelty and destruction, failure to conceive of political solutions to the terrible scourges of the twentieth century, failure of one generation to make a solid future for the next. Whereas other twentieth-century writers advocate one ideology or another at various stages of their evolution, Montherlant turns back upon the individual human being as the source of knowledge and the source of power to change the human condition, conceiving of the human being as containing the possibility of divinity. Unlike other writers, he makes no attempt to create order out of chaos, 1

Cruickshank, op. cit., p. 119.

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but rather accepts disorder as a sign of the wealth of experience, accepts multiplicity and proposes a system of values which respects and conserves diversity and which seeks to achieve perfection in bringing out the best human characteristics. Montherlant’s quest for perfection, for the divine in the human being, is only attainable momentarily and is ultimately, of course, doomed to failure. It is important, however, to grasp that he is, above all, a lucid writer, aware of ‘service inutile’ and all that the notion implies, in terms of the ultimate impossibility of attaining the ideal, in love or in any other human endeavour. The search for perfection, for the divine in the human, constitutes the journey; the experience of living as honestly as possible contains the perfection which it ostensibly seeks. The human being strives towards what is divine in his own nature because he or she has opted to live and not to commit suicide; failure is inevitable in the imperfect world in which we live. Montherlant’s response to the absurdity of existence is to live with a profound sense of responsibility towards the self as the only judge and jury of the individual’s thoughts and actions. Everything begins and ends with the individual’s perception of the world; this marks the basis of Montherlant’s system of values and contains the reason for its failure. My enterprise to describe and criticize Henry de Montherlant’s philosophical position as expressed by his writings would be considered by the author as, at best, presumptuous and, at worst, mistaken, given his caustic view of philosophers: ‘Incapable de tout dans l’ordre pratique, dans la pensée digne de ce nom, dans la création artistique, etc., il créa un système philosophique, et par là se rendit immortel.’(PE, 1356) By considering Montherlant as a philosopher, nonetheless, I have been able to trace the evolution of his ideas from his early writings to those of his old age and to evaluate his contribution as a twentieth-century writer and thinker, in the context of the events of his time and the writings of his contemporaries. His system of values represents a fascinating counterpoint to the belief systems of those to the left of the political spectrum. As a response to the problems of modern times, it is beautifully expressed, unconventional and contradictory philosophy, which ultimately constitutes a failure.

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Bibliography

Primary Texts by Henry de Montherlant Coups de soleil, Gallimard, Paris, 1976. Essais, préface de Pierre Sipriot, Gallimard, ‘Pléiade’, Paris, 1963. Le Fichier parisien, Gallimard, Paris, 1974. La Marée du soir, Gallimard, Paris, 1972. Mais aimons-nous ceux que nous aimons?, Gallimard, Paris, 1973. Moustique, La Table Ronde, Paris, 1986. Le Paradis à l’ombre des épées, ‘Première Olympique’, Grasset, Paris, 1924. ‘Paternité et patrie’, Nouvelle Revue Française, 54, 1 mars 1940, 309– 318. Théâtre, préface de Jacques de Laprade, Gallimard, ‘Pléiade’, Paris, 1972. La Tragédie sans masque, Gallimard, Paris, 1972. Thrasylle, illustré au burin par Albert Decaris; préface de Pierre Sipriot, Laffont, Paris, 1983. Le Treizième César, Gallimard, Paris, 1970. Romans et oeuvres de fiction non théâtrales, préface par Roger Secrétain, Gallimard, ‘Pléiade’, Paris, 1959. Romans II, édition établi par Michel Raimond, Gallimard, ‘Pléiade’, Paris, 1982. Tous feux éteints, Gallimard, Paris, 1975. Va jouer avec cette poussière, Gallimard, Paris, 1966.

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Index

adolescence, 48, 51, 53, 64, 116, 126, Chapter V passim value system of, 45, 46, 48, 49, 51, 53, 54 representation of, 18, 45, 68 Absurd, 16, 48, 60, 91, 94, 96, 98, 99, 104, 115, 124, 130, 207 Alain-Fournier, 46 archetype, 159–164 Baudelaire, Charles, 49, 195 beauty, 19–20, 67–68, 72–74, 76, 119, 192, 196 Beauvoir, Simone de, 214 Beckett, Samuel, 15, 99 beloved, 52, 60, 64, 70, 79, 89, 90, 170, 194 Brasillach, Robert, 14 Breton, André, 222 bull-fighting, 14, 46, 56, 61–62, 79–87, 131 Camus, Albert, 15, 96, 98, 121, 127, 138, 139, 141, 197, 198 Cardinal, Marie, 198 Céline, Louis Ferdinand, 14 Colette, 146 collaboration, 106–108 colonialism, 228–230, 185–188, 191, 198–205 compassion 60 death, 16, 42, 61, 62, 70, 71, 74, 78, 81– 83, 85–90, 126, 174–176, 209–210, 221, 224–227, 235–236 desire, 29, 59, 76, 81–83, 87–88, 102, 108, 118, 127–129, 208 difference, 16, 55, 57, 64, 85, 90, 134, 228 divine/divinity, 15, 23–25, 38, 46, 50, 68, 72–74, 79, 81, 84, 95, 99–100, 121, 141, 178, 240 Drieu la Rochelle, Pierre, 14

du Gard, Roger Martin, 14, 15 eroticism, 169, 182, 204 failure, 16, 48, 93, 141, 179, 205, 239 Foucault, Michel, 88, 90, 113, 177,190 friendship, 20, 54–59, 64–71, 76–79, 87, 90, 113, 153, Chapter V passim, 185 Gide, André, 198, 220 hero/heroism, Chapter II, Chapter III passim, 121, 139, 142, 155 ageing hero, 76, 79, 126, 209 homosexuality, 46–47, 56,62, 76, 104, 108, 127, 145, 209, 215, 167–173 honesty, 16, 62, 99, 178, 193, 216, 219– 220, 240 see also integrity humanity, 32, 141 ideal, Chapter V passim, 14, 46–47, 57– 58, 64–67, 69, 78–79, 83–84, 89, 91, 95, 98, 115–116 challenge to, 63, 82 immortality, 18 see also transcendence integrity 65, 67, 69, 114, 140, 179 isolation, 59–60, 69, 79, 88, 98, 177, 214, 221–222, 235 Ionesco, 99 Jouhandeau, Marcel, 14 Klein, Melanie, 100, 114 knowledge, 14, 16, 21, 89, 90, 100, 157–158, 162, 208–209, 223–224, 227, 235–236, 238 Lacan, Jacques, 128 loss, 16, 88, 154, 157, 202, 213, 223, 227 Loti, Pierre, 197 Leiris, Michel 197 Malraux, André, 15, 70, 96, 121, 138, 141, 225 Mauriac, François, 14, 195 modernism, 53

255

Montaigne, 13 multiplicity, 30–32, 42, 91, 93–95, 98, 156, 195 mythology, 15, 45, 53–56, 84, 93, 109– 110, 197 nature, 31, 47, 49, 56, 57, 62, 66, 69, 73, 79, 80, 91,163 nihilism, 15, 35, 42, 71, 77, 89, 115, 136, 178–179, Chapter VII passim nobility, 15, 59, 91, 93, 95, 99, 101, 116, 119, 124 the other/alterity, 38, 46, 49, 56, 64, 65, 76, 79, 94, 117, 157, Chapter VI passim pantheism, 31, 49, 56, 127, 192 passion, 97, 209, 116–118 patriotism, 69, 112 pederasty, eraste-eromane, 13, 18–19, 42, 62, 88, 94, 109, 105, 115, 131, 136, 191 Plato, 14, Chapter I passim, 54, 73–74, 76, 88, 89, 147, 193, 217 pleasure/hedonism, 21–22, 29–30, 36– 41, 60, 83, 88–89, 157, 182, 196, 221 purity/purification, 48–50, 59–60, 69, 71, 78–79, 86, 89, 100, 132, 156, 167, 173, 195 Proust, Marcel, 46, 48, 199 sacred/sacré, 49, 56 sacrifice, 13, 33, 46–47, 60, 64, 79, 81, 86, 95, 109, 114–115, 132, 196 Saint-Exupéry, Antoine, 70, 197, 225

256

same-sex, see homosexuality Sartre, Jean-Paul, 15, 96, 98, 121, 225 self, 18, 56, 62, 64, 69, 74, 79, 88, 90, 91, 98 selfhood, 102 self and other, 232 sensuality, 21–22, 76, 80, 89, 155, 171– 172, 182, 204 sexuality, 80, 81, 102, 136, 149, 173, 177, 195 spirituality, 22, 50, 114, 141, 147, 156, 166–168, 175–176 sport, 14, 47– 48, 55–56, 61, 66–72 passim, 73, 75–77, 90, 192 stoicism, 15, 48, 78, 115, Chapter VII passim style 149, 159, 219–220 suicide, 34, 47, 62, 65, 160–163, 225 surrealism, 229 transcendence, 13, 50, 54, 66, 79, 89, 100, 102, 124, 146–147, 170, 173 truth, 13, 65, 88–89, 90–91, 177, 208, 216 values, system of, 17, 47, 61, 62, 64, 68, 69, 76, 134, 174, 219, 222–223, 233, 237–241 World War I, 13, 14, 50, 61, 111, 121, 145, 175 World War II, 13, 37, 42, 103, 102, 111, 121 war, 14, 138 youth, 123, 178, 192 see also adolescence

Modern French Identities Edited by Peter Collier This series aims to publish monographs, editions or collections of papers based on recent research into modern French Literature. It welcomes contributions from academics, researchers and writers in British and Irish universities in particular. Modern French Identities focuses on the French and Francophone writing of the twentieth century, whose formal experiments and revisions of genre have combined to create an entirely new set of literary forms, from the thematic autobiographies of Michel Leiris and Bernard Noël to the magic realism of French Caribbean writers. The idea that identities are constructed rather than found, and that the self is an area to explore rather than a given pretext, runs through much of modern French literature, from Proust, Gide and Apollinaire to Kristeva, Barthes, Duras, Germain and Roubaud. This series reflects a concern to explore the late-century turmoil in ideas and values that is expressed in the works of theorists like Lacan, Irigaray and Bourdieu and to follow through the impact of current ideologies such as feminism and postmodernism on the literary and cultural interpretation and presentation of the self, whether in terms of psychoanalytic theory, gender, autobiography, cinema, fiction and poetry, or in newer forms like performance art. The series will publish studies of individual authors and artists, comparative studies, and interdisciplinary projects, including those where art and cinema intersect with literature.

Volume 1

Victoria Best & Peter Collier (eds.): Powerful Bodies Performance in French Cultural Studies 220 pages. 1999. ISBN 3-906762-56-4 / US-ISBN 0-8204-4239-9

Volume 2

Julia Waters: Intersexual Rivalry A ‘Reading in Pairs’ of Marguerite Duras and Alain Robbe-Grillet 228 pages. 2000. ISBN 3-906763-74-9 / US-ISBN 0-8204-4626-2

Volume 3

Sarah Cooper: Relating to Queer Theory Rereading Sexual Self-Definition with Irigaray, Kristeva, Wittig and Cixous 231 pages. 2000. ISBN 3-906764-46-X / US-ISBN 0-8204-4636-X

Volume 4

Julia Prest & Hannah Thompson (eds.): Corporeal Practices (Re)figuring the Body in French Studies 166 pages. 2000. ISBN 3-906764-53-2 / US-ISBN 0-8204-4639-4

Volume 5

Victoria Best: Critical Subjectivities Identity and Narrative in the Work of Colette and Marguerite Duras 243 pages. 2000. ISBN 3-906763-89-7 / US-ISBN 0-8204-4631-9

Volume 6

David Houston Jones: The Body Abject: Self and Text in Jean Genet and Samuel Beckett 213 pages. 2000. ISBN 3-906765-07-5 / US-ISBN 0-8204-5058-8

Volume 7

Robin MacKenzie: The Unconscious in Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu 270 pages. 2000. ISBN 3-906758-38-9 / US-ISBN 0-8204-5070-7

Volume 8

Rosemary Chapman: Siting the Quebec Novel The Representation of Space in Francophone Writing in Quebec 282 pages. 2000. ISBN 3-906758-85-0 / US-ISBN 0-8204-5090-1

Volume 9

Gill Rye: Reading for Change Interactions between Text and Identity in Contemporary French Women’s Writing (Baroche, Cixous, Constant) 223 pages. 2001. ISBN 3-906765-97-0 / US-ISBN 0-8204-5315-3

Volume 10

Jonathan Paul Murphy: Proust’s Art Painting, Sculpture and Writing in A la recherche du temps perdu 248 pages. 2001. ISBN 3-906766-17-9 / US-ISBN 0-8204-5319-6

Volume 11

Julia Dobson: Hélène Cixous and the Theatre. The Scene of Writing. 166 pages. 2002. ISBN 3-906766-20-9 / US-ISBN 0-8204-5322-6

Volume 12

Emily Butterworth & Kathryn Robson (eds.): Shifting Borders Theory and Identity in French Literature VIII + 208 pages. 2001. ISBN 3-906766-86-1 / US-ISBN 0-8204-5602-0

Volume 13 Victoria Korzeniowska: The Heroine as Social Redeemer in the Plays of Jean Giraudoux 144 pages. 2001. ISBN 3-906766-92-6 / US-ISBN 0-8204-5608-X Volume 14

Kay Chadwick: Alphonse de Châteaubriant: Catholic Collaborator 327 pages. 2002. ISBN 3-906766-94-2 / US-ISBN 0-8204-5610-1

Volume 15

Nina Bastin: Queneau’s Fictional Worlds 291 pages. 2002. ISBN 3-906768-32-5 / US-ISBN 0-8204-5620-9

Volume 16

Sarah Fishwick: The Body in the Work of Simone de Beauvoir 284 pages. 2002. ISBN 3-906768-33-3 / US-ISBN 0-8204-5621-7

Volume 17 Simon Kemp & Libby Saxton (eds.): Seeing Things. Vision, Perception and Interpretation in French Studies. 287 pages. 2002. ISBN 3-906768-46-5 / US-ISBN 0-8204-5858-9 Volume 18

Kamal Salhi (ed.): French in and out of France. Language Policies, Intercultural Antagonisms and Dialogue. 487 pages. 2002. ISBN 3-906768-47-3 / US-ISBN 0-8204-5859-7

Volume 19

Genevieve Shepherd: Simone de Beauvoir’s Fiction. A Psychoanalytic Rereading. 262 pages. 2003. ISBN 3-906768-55-4 / US-ISBN 0-8204-5867-8

Volume 20

Lucille Cairns (ed.): Gay and Lesbian Cultures in France. 290 pages. 2002. ISBN 3-906769-66-6 / US-ISBN 0-8204-5903-8

Volume 21

Wendy Goolcharan-Kumeta: My Mother, My Country. Reconstructing the Female Self in Guadeloupean Women’s Writing. 236 pages. 2003. ISBN 3-906769-76-3 / US-ISBN 0-8204-5913-5

Volume 22

Patricia O’Flaherty: Henry de Montherlant (1895–1972). A Philosophy of Failure. 256 pages. 2003. ISBN 3-03910-013-0 / US-ISBN 0-8204-6282-9

Volume 23

Katherine Ashley (ed.): Prix Goncourt, 1903–2003: essais critiques Forthcoming. ISBN 3-03910-018-1 / US-ISBN 0-8204-6287-X

Volume 24 Julia Horn & Lynsey Russell-Watts (eds): Possessions. Essays in French Literature, Cinema and Theory. 223 pages. 2003. ISBN 3-03910-005-X / US-ISBN 0-8204-5924-0 Volume 25

Steve Wharton: Screening Reality. French Documentary Film during the German Occupation. ??? pages. 2003. ISBN 3-03910-066-1 / US-ISBN 0-8204-6882-7