Heroism and Passion in Literature: Studies in Honour of Moya Longstaffe (Internationale Forschungen zur Allgemeinen und Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft 77)

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Internationale Forschungen zur Allgemeinen und Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft

In Verbindung mit Dietrich Briesemeister (Friedrich Schiller-Universität Jena) - Guillaume van Gemert (Universiteit Nijmegen) - Joachim Knape (Universität Tübingen) - Klaus Ley (Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz) - John A. McCarthy (Vanderbilt University) - Manfred Pfister (Freie Universität Berlin) - Sven H. Rossel (University of Washington) - Azade Seyhan (Bryn Mawr College) - Horst Thomé (Universität Kiel) herausgegeben von

Alberto Martino (Universität Wien)

Redakteure: Norbert Bachleitner & Alfred Noe Anschrift der Redaktion: Institut für Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft, Berggasse 11/5, A-1090 Wien

Moya Longstaffe

Heroism and Passion in Literature Studies in honour of Moya Longstaffe

Edited by

Graham Gargett

Amsterdam-New York, NY 2004

Cover: Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhoon Coming On), Joseph Mallord William Turner, 1840. Photograph ©2004, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Le papier sur lequel le présent ouvrage est imprimé remplit les prescriptions de “ISO 9706:1994, Information et documentation - Papier pour documents Prescriptions pour la permanence”. The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents Requirements for permanence”. ISBN: 90-420-1692-2 ©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2004 Printed in the Netherlands

Contents Notes on the Contributors

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Moya Longstaffe: A Tribute

1

Bibliography of Moya Longstaffe’s Writings

5

Introduction

7

Part One The Early Modern Period Heroic Discourse? A Note on Racine’s Bérénice H.T. Barnwell

21

The Lost Heroine and the Memetics of Cultural Inscription in Euripides’s Hippolytus and Racine’s Phèdre Angela Ryan

33

The Twilight of Heroism: Ambition and Ambitions in La Princesse de Clèves John Campbell

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Le Héros moliéresque et les pièges du langage Robert McBride

57

A Passion for the Scriptures: The Biblical Sonnets of Laurent Drelincourt Jane McKee

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La Fontaine: Anti-Hero or Reluctant Hero? Marité Oubrier

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Voltaire’s L’Ingénu, the Journal chrétien and Saint-Foix: A New Source for Hercule de Kerkabon? Graham Gargett

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Part Two The Nineteenth Century A Germanic Hero Par Excellence? Richard Wagner in Paris Brian Keith-Smith

105

Stendhal’s Style and the Expression of Passion and Heroism Anne Judge and Solange Lamothe

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Heroes of the Mind: The Intellectual Elite in the Work of Ernest Renan Elisabeth M. Lillie

133

Heroism and Villainy in Les Fleurs du Mal John McCann

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Bel-Ami: postérité d’un héros Henri Godin

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Part Three The Twentieth Century Rimbaud, Claudel: la passion du voyage Marie-Joséphine Whitaker

161

The ‘Last Great Voice of Soldierly Heroism’ and the Philosophy of Rationalism: Péguy on Descartes Alan Gabbey

173

The Passion of Adam von Trott: the Heroic Stance of the Foreign Minister of the German Resistance Michael R. Jones

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Camus’s Passionate Heroes John H. Gillespie

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(Un)Sung Heroes in the Drama of Samuel Beckett Gerard M. Macklin

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Prophets and Heroes: Ideology and Aesthetics in Aimé Césaire’s Poetic Angela Chambers

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The Author as Hero in the New World Order: The Power of Fictionality in Goytisolo’s El sitio de los sitios Stanley Black

233

Evelyn Waugh’s Farewell to Heroism Richard York

245

A Passion for Debate: French Communist Party Internal Opposition from Garaudy to Fiterman Philip Taylor

255

Jewish Outsiders as Anti-Heroes in Jurek Becker’s Novels Pól Ó Dochartaigh

269

Index

279

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Notes on the Contributors H.T. Barnwell is Marshall Professor of French Emeritus at the University of Glasgow, having earlier held appointments at the Universities of Montpellier, where he took his doctorate (on Saint-Évremond), Sheffield, Edinburgh, and the Chair of French at Queen’s University, Belfast. Since 1985, he has been a Fellow of the Institute of Advanced Research in Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Birmingham. He is the author of books, including The Tragic Drama of Corneille and Racine: An Old Parallel Revisited (Oxford, 1982), and articles on seventeenth-century French drama, Pascal, Saint-Évremond, and Mme de Sévigné, and has edited works by Corneille and Racine. From 1978 to 1980 he was President of the Society for French Studies, and was also founder-chairman of the Society for SeventeenthCentury French Studies, of which he is now President. Stanley Black is Head of Spanish at the University of Ulster, where he teaches Spanish language and civilisation. He is a former graduate of Queen’s University, Belfast, where he also obtained his PhD. His research interests include contemporary Spanish literature, in particular the work of the novelist Juan Goytisolo, and literary and critical theory. His study of the novels of Goytisolo, Juan Goytisolo and the Poetics of Contagion, was published by Liverpool University Press in 2001. John Campbell is Reader in French at the University of Glasgow. A former editor of Seventeenth-Century French Studies, he has published studies Racine’s ‘Britannicus’ (London, 1990), Questions of Interpretation in ‘La Princesse de Clèves’ (Amsterdam, 1996), and, with Nadia Margolis, has edited Christine de Pizan 2000 (Amsterdam, 2000). He has also produced a series of articles on French seventeenth-century literature and on contemporary France. He is at present completing a book on the tragedies of Racine. Angela Chambers is Professor of Applied Languages and Director of the Centre for Applied Languages Studies at the University of Limerick. The author of several articles on Aimé Césaire, she has also published articles on language learning and has co-edited two books in that area, including (with Donal Ó Baoill) Intercultural Communication and Language Learning (Dublin, 1999). In addition to the poetry of Aimé Césaire, her current research interests include issues arising from the translation of literary works in a postcolonial context. Alan Gabbey has a B.Sc. and PhD from Queen’s University, Belfast, where he is Reader Emeritus in History and Philosophy of Science. He is now Professor in the Philosophy Department, Barnard College, Columbia University (New York). His interests are mainly in early modern philosophy and science, especially Cartesianism, the Cambridge Platonists, Newtonianism, and Spinoza. He has published widely, including articles on Descartes, Newton, and Spinoza; has contributed to The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy (ed. by Daniel Garber and Michael Ayers, Cambridge University Press, 1997), and is a membre effectif of the Académie Internationale d’Histoire des Sciences.

Graham Gargett is Professor of French Culture and Ideas at the University of Ulster. He graduated in French at the University of Reading and then wrote his PhD at the University of East Anglia on the topic ‘Voltaire and Protestantism’. His publications include Voltaire and Protestantism (Oxford, 1980), Jacob Vernet, Geneva and the ‘Philosophes’ (Oxford, 1994), a monograph on the abbé Trublet published in the Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century in 1996 (vol.336), and, co-edited with Geraldine Sheridan, Ireland and the French Enlightenment 1700-1800 (Basingstoke, 1999). He is currently President of the Eighteenth-Century Ireland Society. John Gillespie is Senior Lecturer in French, Head of the School of Languages and Literature, Director of Research of the Faculty of Arts, and Director of the Centre for the Study of Literature and Belief at the University of Ulster. After graduating at Queen’s University, Belfast, he obtained his doctorate there in 1981 on the subject ‘Sacred and Profane: A Study of Prometheanism in Twentieth-Century French Literature’. His research interests include existentialism, the relation between religion and literature, and the novels of Michel Tournier. He has published articles on Gide, Sartre, Camus, Beckett and Tournier, written extensively on various aspects of computer-assisted language learning and language teaching, and was co-editor (with Lesley Davies and Robert McBride) of Humanitas: Studies in French Literature Presented to Henri Godin (Coleraine, 1984). A member of the Editorial Board of Sartre Studies International, he is currently completing a book on Existentialism. Henri Godin is Emeritus Professor of French at Queen’s University, Belfast. He has published widely in the fields of literature, the history of ideas, language, and the visual arts. Author of Les Ressources stylistiques du français contemporain (Oxford, 1948, reprinted 1964) and L’Euphémisme littéraire: fonctions et limites (Paris, 1953), he has edited Giraudoux’s La Guerre de Troie n’aura pas lieu (London, 1958) and Genevoix’s Rémi des Rauches (London, 1965), and – at an early stage of his career – translated into English Le Charroi de Nîmes (Oxford, 1936). He has reviewed regularly for French Studies since its inception in 1947, and was the founding President of the Modern Language Association of Northern Ireland. Michael Jones is a former Senior Lecturer in German at the University of Ulster where he was Director of the Languages Resource Unit in the Faculty of Arts. He also managed the Fund for the Development of Teaching and Learning ‘SMILE’ Self-Access Language Learning and the European Language Portfolio projects within the University of Ulster. His research publications have included, in addition to the German Resistance to Hitler, articles and contributions to books on such topics as German ab initio at third level, German literature in the nineteenth century, and the general application of IT to language learning and teaching. Anne Judge is Professor of French and Linguistics in the Department of Linguistic, Cultural and International Studies at the University of Surrey. She is co-author, with F.G. Healey, of A Reference Grammar of Modern French (London, 1983) and, with Solange Lamothe, of Stylistic Developments in Literary and Non-Literary French Prose (Lampeter, 1995). She ix

researches and publishes in the field of French tenses. Her other area of research is linguistic policies in France and the francophone world, and, more recently, the UK. Brian Keith-Smith retired in 1996 as Reader in German after 36 years in the University of Bristol. He is now Senior Research Professor (Hon. D.Litt.) for Mellen University, Iowa. He has published monographs on Johannes Bobrowski and Lothar Schreyer, edited the Encyclopedia of German Women Writers (13 vols, Lampeter, 1997-98) and (with Heike Bartel) ‘Nachdenklicher Leichtsinn’, a volume of essays on Goethe (Lampeter, 2001), and is currently working on a new edition of Lother Schreyer’s works. His collected essays, mainly on German literature, appeared in Spring 2001, as did an essay on the Celtic background to Wagner’s Parsifal for the first Australian production. He also lectures on art for the National Association of Decorative and Fine Arts Societies, with two tours in Australia in 2000, and reviews books for leading periodicals. Solange Lamothe graduated from the Université de Lyon and was awarded a doctorat d’État for her work on French compound nouns. For most of her career she held a Chair in French at the Université Jean Moulin, specialising in stylistics related to literary French. She was also a Visiting Professor at the University of Surrey for a number of years, during which time she co-authored, with Anne Judge, Stylistic Developments in Literary and NonLiterary French Prose (Lampeter, 1995). Elisabeth Lillie is Senior Lecturer in French at the University of Ulster and currently also has responsibilities as Teaching and Learning Coordinator in the Faculty of Arts. She is a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, where she also undertook her doctoral studies. Her research interests focus on nineteenth-century thought and literature as well as on teaching and learning in higher education. Her publications include articles on Renan and papers on a variety of aspects of student learning and the teaching of French at advanced levels. Gerald Macklin is Senior Lecturer in French at the University of Ulster, where he teaches French language, literature and civilisation. He has published some twenty papers on the poetry of Arthur Rimbaud, his principal research interest, as well as a book on the poet – A Study of Theatrical Vision in Arthur Rimbaud’s ‘Illuminations’ (Lampeter, 1993). He has also published on Verlaine and Giraudoux and several papers on Beckett. He is currently working on a book on Beckett’s drama. Robert McBride is Professor of French at the University of Ulster, having taught previously at Queen’s University, Belfast. He is interested primarily in the ideas and theatre of seventeenth-century France and has published The Sceptical Vision of Molière: A Study in Paradox (London, 1977); Aspects of Seventeenth-Century French Drama and Thought: Studies on Corneille, Racine, Molière, La Rochefoucauld, Descartes, Pascal, La Mothe Le Vayer (Totowa, NJ., 1979); The Triumph of Ballet in Molière’s Theatre (Lampeter, 1992). He has also edited La Mothe Le Vayer’s Lettre sur la comédie de L’Imposteur (University of Durham, 1994), and a reconstruction of the second version of Molière’s Le Tarfuffe – L’Imposteur de 1667: prédécesseur de Tartuffe (University of Durham, 1999). He is cox

editor (with N.A. Peacock) of the review, Le Nouveau Moliériste, and has just completed a book on the reconstruction of the first version of Molière’s Le Tartuffe. John McCann studied French and Spanish at Queen’s University, Belfast, before being appointed Lecturer in French at the Ulster Polytechnic (subsequently the University of Ulster). Since 1987, he has been based at the Magee Campus of the University, where he has had a range of academic and administrative responsibilities. He has written an MA thesis on the French poet Jules Laforgue and has published articles on Molière, Mallarmé, Laforgue and Camus. Jane McKee started her career in the French Department, Maynooth, but moved in 1986 to the University of Ulster where she is Senior Lecturer in the School of Languages and Literature. She is a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, where she also obtained her doctorate in 1979. She has published several articles on computer-assisted language learning and in her other area of research, the influence of French ideas and the reception of French Huguenots in eighteenth-century Ireland. In 2002-03 she was Chair of the University of Ulster branch of the Association of University Teachers. Pól Ó Dochartaigh is Senior Lecturer in German at the University of Ulster. He has published The Portrayal of Jews in GDR Prose Fiction (Amsterdam, 1997) and edited Jews in German Literature since 1945: German-Jewish Literature? (Amsterdam, 2000), as well as various articles on Heinrich Heine, Arnold Zweig, Jurek Becker, Hans Mayer, Erich Fried, anti-Semitism in the GDR and Pückler-Muskau’s Irish letters. He is currently working on a biography of the Austrian Indo-Europeanist and Celticist Julius Pokorny. Marité Oubrier works as a part-time Lecturer in French at the University of Ulster. She is a graduate of the Université Paul Valéry (Montpellier III) and is currently writing a PhD thesis on La Fontaine. She has contributed an article on aspects of the précieux content in the Fables of La Fontaine to Papers on French Seventeenth-Century Literature. Angela Ryan lectures in the French Department, University College, Cork. Of Irish and French nationality, she graduated in English and French at University College, Dublin, obtained a maîtrise-ès-lettres (1975) on André Breton then a doctorat-ès-lettres (1981) at the Université de Bordeaux III on ‘Literature and Psychoanalysis in France from 1968-1978’. Her research interests include psychoanalysis and philosophy applied to literature; literary theory, especially Barthes, Bourdieu and Compagnon; women and the media; myth, representation and memetics of the tragic heroine, especially in fifth-century Greek, seventeenthcentury French and late twentieth-century tragedy. Her publications centre on work on the heroine and the female subject, in particular ‘The Construction of the Female Subject: Belghoul’s Georgette and Collette’s Claudine à l’école’ (in Women and Representation, ed. D. Knight and J. Still, University of Nottingham, 1994), and ‘The Transformation of the Body: Phèdre and Monique’ (Paragraph, March 1994).

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Philip Taylor was born and educated in Northern Ireland. In 1999, he was awarded a FirstClass Degree in Applied Languages (French and German) at the University of Ulster, where he also completed, in 2003, his PhD thesis on ‘The French Communist Party’s Mutation: Origins, Implementation, and Failure of a Strategy’. In 2001 he contributed an article on the French Communist Party to French Studies Bulletin (no.80; Autumn 2001). Marie-Joséphine Whitaker was born in Poland in a French-speaking family, and was sent to Africa by the British authorities as a war refugee. She studied for a degree in French and Latin at the University of Cape Town, then gained her doctorat d’Université at the Sorbonne. Thereafter she lectured in French at the University of the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg), being appointed to the Chair of French in 1978. Since 1988 she has been Professor Emeritus, and now lives in Paris. She has published La Structure du monde imaginaire de Rimbaud (Paris, 1972), Lorenzo ou Lorenzaccio? Misères et splendeurs d’un héros romantique (Paris, 1989), and a number of articles, notably on Claudel. Richard York took his first degree at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and obtained his PhD at University College, London. He has taught at the New University of Ulster (1969-84) and the University of Ulster (since 1984) and is now Professor of European Literature. His publications include The Poem as Utterance (London and New York, 1969), Strangers and Silence (London, 1994), The Rules of Time (London, 1999), and articles on English and European literature.

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Moya Longstaffe: A Tribute Strangely enough, for someone who has made such an impression on me, I have forgotten exactly when I first met Moya Longstaffe. It must have been in one of the many meetings that took place after the announcement by the government, in 1983, of the merger of the Ulster Polytechnic, where Moya was a lecturer, and the New University of Ulster, where I was teaching. After a nightmare of reorganisation and course planning, Moya moved to the Coleraine campus of what had now become the University of Ulster, and we subsequently worked together on several courses. She became well known not only to me and to other colleagues in languages, but also to numerous other people, both in the University and the local community, where, for example, she played a lively role in the Twinning Association. To put it quite simply, and literally, Moya is an extraordinary person. First of all, one has the greatest respect and admiration for her intellectual qualities. These are not only wide-ranging, but also extremely acute. Her French is outstanding and she has produced a truly remarkable book (which might easily have provided enough material for three); she has innumerable interests; she has taught in so many different institutions that it almost defies belief; moreover, she has so many friends and acquaintances in the academic world that it is scarcely possible to go anywhere she does not seem to have at least one contact! The mere recital of such a plethora of qualities brings us to her character. Lively, animated, amusing, an excellent raconteuse, Moya is given plenty of scope for the latter activity because – again more than anyone I have known – she is genuinely accident-prone. She has fallen off a motor-scooter in Ithaca and had to be ferried for treatment to a neighbouring island; her car caught fire mysteriously one afternoon and was completely destroyed, fortunately after she and her two young sons had escaped; she almost knocked herself out during a teaching exchange in Corsica, had a mystery accident in her office which led to months of painful sciatica, broke her leg a few years ago in Portstewart during an interval in the North West 200 Motor Cycle Races, an event in which Moya had not the slightest interest but as a result of which she had to travel to hospital in Belfast in the same ambulance as one of the injured riders. I can – with a certain amount of guilt – vouch for the truth of the last incident, since it happened when Moya was on the way to have tea in my house. Recently, she and her husband Richard experienced an incident which might seem implausible even in a Feydeau farce and which is not without parallel with the plot of Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer, allegedly based on an incident which happened in his youth.1 They were travelling to visit friends who, to celebrate their sixtieth birthdays, had rented a villa in Italy and generously invited a group of their closest acquaintances there. Arriving in San Geminiano, 1

The play’s subtitle is indeed ‘The Mistakes of a Night’. The claimed connection with his own life was made by Goldsmith’s sister-in-law, Catherine Hodson. On his way to the house of the Rev. Pat. Hughes in Edgeworthstown, Goldsmith mistook the best house in the village of Ardagh for an inn, entered and ordered board and lodging. The owner, who knew Goldsmith’s father, connived in the blunder and waited until the following morning before explaining the real situation to Goldsmith. See ‘Mrs Hodson’s Narrative’, in Goldsmith: Interviews and Recollections, ed. by E.H. Mikhail (New York: St. Martin’s Press, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1993), pp.12-13.

Moya and Richard duly telephoned their friends but were informed that all the available cars were busy ferrying other invitees to the house. However, a neighbour, one Signor Paulo – who spoke no English – was persuaded to fetch them. So the Longstaffes waited patiently outside the town’s medieval gate, until a magnificent car duly arrived. The driver haltingly inquired: ‘Meester and Mrs. Long…’, at which Moya and Richard smiled, nodded, and – in their turn – enquired: ‘Signor Paulo…?’ On receiving an affirmative response, they got into the car. However, to their astonishment, they were driven to an imposing hotel and whisked up to a luxurious set of rooms. It soon of course transpired – as they immediately knew – that a mistake, of fairly operatic proportions, had been made. They were in fact in the Honeymoon Suite, several decades too late. And the young American newlyweds, Mr. and Mrs. Long, who should have been enjoying their nuptials in style in the Hotel San Paulo, were being interrogated by Moya’s and Richard’s indignant friends after being duly deposited at the villa apparently masquerading as Longstaffes. The point about all these accidents is that they reveal perhaps one of the most charming sides of Moya: the way in which she can make light of what have often been painful experiences and recycle them into memorable stories, which one listens to again and again with pleasure, since their amusement really does depend on the way she tells them. Moya Longstaffe is thus a complex character, far from the cerebral academic her list of publications might lead one to expect. Born in Belfast, the then Moya Laverty grew up and was educated in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, her father being in what was in those days the somewhat itinerant profession of meteorological officer, posted from one airfield to another every couple of years. She studied for her degree at Queen’s University, Belfast, and remembers with great affection and delight the lectures of Dr (now Emeritus Professor) Henri Godin, who, she says, opened up for her the enthralling world of French literature and civilisation, not only the highways, but also byways like the history of the Cathars and Albigensians, the inexhaustible lexical riches of a Huysmans, or the astounding poetic drama of Paul Claudel. Moya graduated with a First in French and German, and was then awarded a postgraduate research scholarship. Unable to decide between her two languages, she first spent a year in Heidelberg, teaching as an exchange assistant in the Kurfürst Friedrich Gymnasium and following lectures and classes as a Gasthörerin (freelance student) in the University. At the end of this year, she embarked upon a thesis for a French doctorat d’université entitled ‘Jeanne d’Arc dans les littératures française, anglaise et allemande, de 1870 à nos jours’, under the supervision of the renowned Stendhalien Professor Pierre Jourda, Dean of the Faculté des Lettres of the University of Montpellier. Her own interest in Stendhal at the time did not extend beyond his two major novels, Le Rouge et le Noir and La Chartreuse de Parme, read during her undergraduate days, so – she comments – it is curious that once launched into her own career Stendhal became a major interest, arising out of teaching commitments. In that early part of her career, Moya saw herself primarily as a teacher rather than a researcher, and her changes of post in what was once referred to in an interview as her ‘carrière très accidentée’ meant that her range of lecture topics became fairly extensive, from Molière to Montherlant, not to mention the odd foray into the history of the French Revolution or eventually Chomskyian linguistics. All of which, she observes, did her no harm at all and was very enriching. 2

Moya’s first academic post was as Lecturer in French and German in the then Scottish College of Commerce in Glasgow (soon to be incorporated into the University of Strathclyde). She left this post to take up an appointment in the French Department of the University of Bristol. The incumbent of the Chair of French at the time was Professor William McCausland Stewart (from the City of Derry, and a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin), a man of deep and wide scholarship and great goodwill and courtesy, one-time diplomat, poet à ses heures, friend, admirer and translator of Paul Valéry.2 In the 1930s, he had daringly rescued his future wife, a young barrister, from the perils which surrounded her in the Munich of Nazi Germany. He remained a friend and inspiration to Moya for the whole of his long life. Moya left Bristol for family reasons and in a mood of nostalgia for Ireland, and took up a post briefly in University College, Galway, and then at Queen’s University, Belfast, until her marriage to Richard Longstaffe, in 1969. After this, she and her husband moved first to England, and then to Scotland. From 1971-72 she was Lecturer in French at the University of Edinburgh, but for several years after that (1972-78) she took a prolonged career break, rearing her two young sons, Stephen and Peter. Towards the end of that period she became a tutor for the Open University, and found herself teaching first-year modules on everything from Music and Philosophy to Religion and the History of the Industrial Revolution. Moya says that she much enjoyed the experience of teaching students of all ages, from 21 to 81, and got to know her own postman a lot better, as he was one of the brightest of them. From 1978-80 she was a Lecturer in the Department of Languages at Heriot Watt University, Edinburgh. Again she radically retrained herself, teaching on the Translating and Interpreting degree, at that time the only such undergraduate degree in the UK. She became an autodidacte in the field of linguistics, and also had to learn the techniques for proficiency in the various forms of interpreting (bilateral, consecutive and simultaneous). During and after her period at Heriot Watt she had the high-adrenaline experience of every type of conference interpreting, at venues in Scotland, England, Holland and Ireland. Students on the course in Heriot Watt were highly motivated, and Moya was delighted to discover that the exploration of language with them was just as exhilarating as she had previously found the exploration of literature on the traditional language and literature degree programmes. The post however was a fixed-term contract, the universities were being cut back in funding, and so she had to move on. But Heriot-Watt had restarted her career after a long break and at a very difficult time for higher education, and once again she had the good fortune to become acquainted with an outstanding personality, Professor Henry Prais, a man of great humanity and wit, who had escaped from Germany after a spell in Buchenwald at the age of eighteen (after the Kristallnacht), fought through the war with the British forces, and, alone, young, unqualified and penniless at the end of the war, had struggled his way through nightclasses to a scholarship at the University of Glasgow and eventually to the completion of a PhD on Victor Hugo. In 1981, at a time when posts in higher education were very scarce, Moya was appointed to a lectureship in French in the then Ulster Polytechnic (soon to be merged with 2

Eupalinos: or, The Architect, Translated with a Preface by William McCausland Stewart (London: Oxford University Press, 1932). Valéry’s original text, Eupalinos, ou l’architecte, had been published in 1923.

3

the New University of Ulster at Coleraine). This meant more retraining, since she was recruited primarily to teach on the new European Business Studies degree and was required to undertake a two-year programme of part-time study for a postgraduate qualification in Marketing to enhance her competence. As a result of all these changes of direction in her career, for a number of years she states that she was an academically split personality, teaching and occasionally publishing on business language topics, and simultaneously keeping alive as best she could her research interests in French literature. After moving to the Coleraine campus of the University of Ulster in 1987, Moya played a key part in the development of Modern Languages there. Not only was she, for several years, Senior Course Tutor of the new Applied Languages degree, she also assumed the role of languages coordinator for the European Business Studies degree until her retirement in 1999. Moya has had close contacts with a number of other universities, as well as those listed above; for example, in 1986 she spent a semester as professeur invité in the University of Caen, and thereafter also undertook periods of exchange teaching on Erasmus programmes in Pau, Montpellier, Corte (Corsica) and Berlin. Another European connection is as a member of the editorial board of HB. [Henri Beyle]3 Revue Internationale d’Études Stendhaliennes, whose general editor is the eminent Stendhalien Michel Crouzet. And, having completed a three-year stint as External Examiner on the undergraduate French programme at the University of Surrey, Moya is now currently External for the MA in Translation. Moya’s former colleagues at the University of Ulster and in the other institutions with which she has been connected all wish her a long and happy retirement. Every one of us has been amused, enriched and extended by our contacts with her. I hope that the range and quality of the essays contributed to this book, three of which are by former students (John Campbell, Angela Chambers, and Philip Taylor), will amply testify to the esteem in which she is so rightly held. * * * * * * As editor, I wish to thank all those who have collaborated in this enterprise. Firstly, Moya’s family, who kept things secret at a crucial, early stage. Secondly, the University of Ulster, whose Strategic Publications Committee provided a generous subvention. Thirdly, those colleagues who acted as readers for the various essays and made so many valuable comments and suggestions: I am particularly indebted in this regard to Professors Abigail Lee Six, Haydn Mason, and Ceri Crossley. Special thanks are due to Philip Taylor, who read the entire manuscript with great care and thoroughness. He also put the text into its final camera-ready form and indexed the entire volume. Finally, I am grateful to the authors themselves, who all, without exception, responded to suggestions by the readers and by myself in a most positive and enthusiastic way. I hope that both Moya and all those who read this volume will enjoy it and be stimulated by it.

3

4

The real name of the writer Stendhal, which was a pseudonym.

Bibliography of Moya Longstaffe’s Writings Within each section, all writings are listed in chronological order of publication.

I

Books

Metamorphoses of Passion and the Heroic in French Literature – Corneille, Stendhal, Claudel. Studies in French Literature, vol.35. pp.xvi + 475. Lewiston (New York), Queenstown (Ontario), Lampeter (Wales). Edwin Mellen, 1999

II Articles and Chapters in Books ‘Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher and its place in the work of Claudel’, in Claudel: A Reappraisal, ed. by Richard Griffiths. London: Rapp and Whiting, 1968, pp.63-78 ‘L’Éthique du duel et la couronne du martyre dans Le Rouge et le Noir’, Stendhal Club, 72 (1976), pp.283-306 ‘Le Dilemme de l’honneur féminin dans l’univers stendhalien du duel: le crime de la duchesse Sanseverina’, Stendhal Club, 76 (1977), pp.305-20 ‘Coopération internationale: le diplôme commun Ulster-Caen. Enseignement linguistique et préparation psychologique’, in First International Colloquium on Language and Business Studies. Actes du Colloque. Lyon, 1985 (published by the École Supérieure de Commerce de Lyon; unpaginated) ‘La Nouvelle Bovary: Analysis of a Passage from Mauriac’s Thérèse Desqueyroux’, in Papers of the Northern Ireland Teachers’ Conference. University of Ulster, 1986 (unpaginated) ‘Mensonge et vérité: les paradoxes de l’infidélité dans l’œuvre romanesque de Stendhal’, Stendhal Club, 114 (1987), pp.156-72 ‘Camus et la sagesse humaine. A Reading of Camus’ L’Étranger’, Modern Languages, 69, no.2 (1988), pp.91-95 ‘An Analysis of a Key Passage from the Conclusion of L’Étranger’, Modern Languages, 69, no.4 (1988), pp.253-55 ‘Teaching on Three Different Types of Languages Degrees’, NIMLA (Journal of the Northern Ireland Modern Languages Association), nos.16-19 (1988), pp.43-56

‘Desire and Destiny. The Mythology of Passion in the Drama of Claudel and the Fiction of Stendhal’, Claudel Studies (University of Dallas), 16 (1989), nos.1-2, pp.64-72 ‘A Happy Life and a Happy Death: The Quest of Camus’ Étranger’, The French Review, 64, no.1 (October 1990), pp.54-68 ‘Exploiting the Satellite: Foreign Language Acquisition at Advanced Level in Business Studies Degree Courses’, CALL Austria: Man and the Media IV (Vienna), 15 (1991), pp.117-30 ‘Chronique anglaise: Partage de Midi à Londres’, Bulletin de la Société Paul Claudel (Paris), 125 (1992), pp.25-27 ‘Who’s Afraid of Paul Claudel? Reflections on Two Translations of Partage de Midi: Susannah York and Wallace Fowlie’, Claudel Studies (University of Dallas), 20 (1993), nos.1-2, pp.91-103 ‘On a High Horse: The Fall from Grace of Lucien Leuwen, and Hector de Gribelin À Cheval’, The French Review, 68, no.2 (December 1994), pp.239-50 ‘The Pastor’s Diary: What Do the Examiners Want to Know?’, Francophonie, 10 (December 1994), pp.26-31 ‘La Chute de qui? Meursault, Clamence, et le seul Pascal que nous méritions’, in Albert Camus. Les extrêmes et l’équilibre. Ed. by D. Walker. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1994, pp.227-43 ‘Freedom, Feminism, and Further Reflections on Simone de Beauvoir, Stendhal, and Claudel’, Claudel Studies (University of Dallas) 22, nos.1-2 (Summer 1995), pp.109-22 ‘Reflets stendhaliens dans un paysage dévasté: La Chartreuse de Parme et The English Patient de Michael Ondaatje’, H.B. Revue Internationale d’Études Stendhaliennes, no.3 (1999), pp.71-84 ‘Honneur, Amour, Dieu: Corneille, Stendhal, Claudel’, Bulletin de la Société Paul Claudel, 157 (2000), pp.19-22 ‘Le Coup de pistolet, le concert, et l’audace féminine: la fin de la chasse au bonheur’, Année Stendhal, 4 (2000), pp.5-27 Stendhal, The Red and the Black (translation of Le Rouge et le Noir), introduction and notes. Ware, Herts: Wordsworth Editions, 2001. 6

Introduction Heroism and passion in literature. A wide canvass indeed, and a vast subject, not least because, like so many other words, ‘heroism’ and ‘passion’ have altered their meaning over the centuries. This, of course, is perfectly natural, as every language evolves. However, not only has the meaning of these words changed, the very notions they represent may appear to have become devalued in our own age. Perhaps we should begin with some definitions, even if these have to be modified, refined, or indeed rejected later. According to the Concise Oxford Dictionary, ‘heroism’ means ‘heroic conduct or qualities’. ‘Hero’ is defined firstly, in connection with ‘Greek Antiquity’, as a ‘man of superhuman qualities, favoured by the gods’, or a ‘demigod’. Secondly, it may mean an ‘illustrious warrior’. In addition, it can signify a ‘man admired for achievements and noble qualities’, or it may refer to the ‘chief male character in poem, play, or story’.1 The same dictionary defines ‘passion’ firstly as ‘strong emotion’, an ‘outburst of anger’, ‘sexual love’, ‘strong enthusiasm’, or an ‘object arousing this’. The second meaning indicated is ‘the sufferings of Christ on the Cross’ and the ‘narrative of this from the Gospels’. ‘Heroism’ was originally, in classical times, a martial virtue, generally restricted (pace the Amazons and a few other exceptions like Virgil’s Camilla), to men. It is in fact difficult to see a real difference between the first two definitions given by Concise Oxford since, in Homeric times, military success was arguably the main way – or at least, one of the main ways – in which men considered themselves blessed by the gods, as the Trojan War amply demonstrates. For both the Greeks and Romans, ‘heroism’ signified deeds of exceptional bravery, daring and physical courage, and Horatio’s defence of the Bridge over the Tiber is a good example of a heroic feat that still stirred the imagination as late as the nineteenth century, a fact demonstrated by the poem familiar to generations of schoolboys.2 Indeed, it is clear that this type of heroism is far from having disappeared because, in war or at other times of crisis or danger, physical bravery, especially when exercised on behalf of others, still commands involuntary admiration. As the centuries passed, however, different types of bravery and non-martial courage also became accepted as ‘heroic’. The early centuries of the Christian era saw many examples of heroic self-sacrifice, the bravery of the martyrs, most of whom were canonised, becoming one of the most prized and admired Christian virtues. Thereafter, different types of heroism coexisted, or were even combined. That archetypal hero of the Middle Ages, Roland, was not only brave and courageous to an almost foolhardy degree, he was in many ways the personification of the Christian Knight, with a simple and direct faith that guaranteed him direct entrance to Paradise.3 The Song of Roland moreover contains another character, Archbishop Turpin, who is quite literally a hero both militarily and spiritually. Indeed, the epoch in which the Roland legend was given its de1 2 3

The Concise Oxford Dictionary, New Edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 1982, s.v. See Lord Macauley’s Lays of Ancient Rome. Cf. Roland’s description of his duty, not long before his death: ‘Men must endure much hardship for their liege,/And bear for him great cold and burning heat,/Suffer sharp wounds and let their bodies bleed’ (The Song of Roland, tr. by Dorothy L. Sayers, Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics, 1960, lines 1117-19, p.95).

finitive literary clothing, around the time of the First Crusade, showed many examples of piety and military bravery encapsulated in the same individual, however unappealing or downright repugnant this and the subsequent Crusades appear to modern sensibilities. By the time of the Renaissance and the Reformation, yet new types of hero and heroism had emerged. The notion of the hero as artist found expression not only in the lives of men like Alberti and Michelangelo, it was also given definitive artistic shape in the latter’s David, an iconic representation of heroic manhood which, while preserving a link with the original military virtue (David the Goliath slayer: courage defeating apparently insuperable odds), also exemplifies a new humanist heroism where, even more than the perfect body beloved of the Renaissance, the expression of David’s head hints at the nobility of thought and feeling which Michelangelo and his contemporaries felt was potentially available to all humankind.4 And though aspirations to this type of humanist heroism, in reality the preserve of only a small elite, seemed to have been crushed in the savage wars engendered by the Reformation of the sixteenth century – leading a celebrated humanist like Montaigne to seek refuge in study and withdrawal – the cruel conflicts in themselves produced numerous examples of heroic self-sacrifice and martyrdom, in some ways harking back to the original centuries of Christianity.5 The Counter-Reformation, the Enlightenment, and more recent epochs, have all provided their share of individuals and groups exemplifying – to a greater or lesser extent – some type of heroism. The Protestants remaining in France after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes of 1685 produced many such individuals, ready to accept death or imprisonment rather than renounce their faith. One of the most noteworthy was a woman, Marie Durand, who spent nearly thirty-eight years incarcerated in the Tour de Constance at Aigues-Mortes, and who carved into the wall of her prison a single word – ‘Résistez’.6 By this stage of European civilisation, famous female heroines were no longer the outstanding exception that Joan of Arc had arguably been in the late Middle Ages.7 The nineteenth century produced numerous other examples, from Florence Nightingale to a host of intrepid feminine travellers. But to mention such examples may provoke a certain amount of scepticism. Were their achievements really heroic in the classical or Christian sense? This of course questions to the core what ‘heroism’ is usually taken to mean. After a century of upheaval on a gigantic scale, accompanied by world wars, revolutions, social instability and the 4

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Leon Battista Alberti addressed mankind as follows: ‘To you is given a body more graceful than other animals, to you power of apt and various movements, to you most sharp and delicate senses, to you wit, reason, memory like an immortal god’ (quoted in translation in Kenneth Clark, Civilisation: A Personal View, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1982, p.76). The connection was made explicitly in, for example, Fox’s Acts and monuments of these latter and perillous dayes, touching matters of the Church, wherein ar [sic] comprehended and described the great persecutions [and] horrible troubles, that have bene [sic] wrought and practised by the Romishe prelates, speciallye in this Realme of England and Scotlande […] (London: John Day, 1563), later editions of which were referred to simply as Fox’s Book of Martyrs. She was imprisoned in 1730 at the age of fifteen and finally released in 1768 (Robert Mandrou, et al., Histoire des protestants en France, Toulouse: Privat, 1977, p.192). I do not of course seek to deny that, throughout the history of humanity, there have been innumerable examples of brave and courageous women; however, because of the way society was organised, such individuals rarely became well-known historical figures.

claimed near-collapse of traditional moral and religious values, the anti-hero has perhaps become more pervasive a presence in literature than the hero. This presence, of course, dates back several centuries. Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso burlesqued the martial figure of Roland just as Cervantes even more comprehensively subverted the questing hero of chivalric romance. Frequently, indeed – in our postmodern world – the term ‘heroism’ is used in a faintly, or sometimes downright, ironic sense. ‘She heroically struggled up the hill with her shopping’, we might say. Some would probably claim that we have reached an epoch where the very notion of ‘heroic’ and ‘heroism’ has been devalued to the point of extinction and where such terms are applied only to a pale reflection, if not a caricature, of what was once regarded as ‘heroic’. The same could no doubt be argued as regards ‘passion’, perhaps with even more justification. To state the obvious, as the Concise Oxford definition implies, a strong link has always existed between passion and heroism, the derivation and original meaning of the former being ‘suffering’, exemplified in the Passion of Christ on the Cross, an act of selfsacrificing heroism thereafter imitated by numerous saints and martyrs, as already observed. With the course of time, however – no doubt because of the suffering involved in its operation – ‘passion’ came to be associated with human impulses and feelings, especially when these were given free and uncontrolled rein. For many centuries the ‘passions’ had a rather wide, though generally pejorative, connotation: they represented the unrestrained and unredeemed nature of fallen mankind and, as such, were supposed to be repressed or kept on a tight rein by rational members of society. Hence the famous eighteenth-century paradox, when, in The Fable of the Bees (first edition 1729), Bernard Mandeville argued controversially that these very human passions – lust, pride, ambition, greed, etc. – though harmful individually were beneficial to society as a whole, generating an economic dynamism which would otherwise be absent.8 Mandeville’s thesis was in any case put forward at a time – the early Enlightenment – when the certainty of Christian dogma was being widely questioned by the intellectuals of many countries and when natural impulses were being just as generally rehabilitated and regarded as sound, wholesome and good, rather than as the potential agents of the Devil. And, as the Romantic Movement took hold, this process gained pace. Passion, above all, romantic or sexual passion, was enthroned as perhaps the ultimate form of human fulfilment. From that proto-romantic figure, both heroic and passionate, Lord Byron, to the master of irony and political cynicism, Stendhal – who nonetheless celebrated the flowering, or ‘cristallisation’ of romantic passion – a plethora of nineteenth-century writers, artists, and musicians, influenced not least by yet another military hero, Napoleon, paid eloquent and sustained tribute to the power and importance of ‘passion’. Recent times have seen a dramatic change. Partly because of a general reaction against nineteenth-century (or, in Anglo-Saxon terms, ‘Victorian’) values, partly because of the excesses brought about by passionate political ‘engagement’ in the twentieth century, passion is no longer regarded with the respect it once enjoyed. Moreover, the very notion of romantic love, especially as portrayed in ‘romantic’ novels and films, almost inevitably produces a disdainful – or at best ironic – response from the educated public. And, in gen8

See The Fable of the Bees, with a Commentary Critical, Historical and Explanatory, ed. by F.B. Kaye, 2 vols (Oxford, 1924: reedited Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1991).

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eral linguistic usage, ‘passion’ and its cognate terms have suffered an even more spectacular devaluation than ‘heroism’, ‘hero’, and ‘heroic’. A perfectly feasible observation such as: ‘He is passionately interested in stamp collecting’ could hardly have less to do with the original meaning of the word ‘passion’. Must we conclude then that ‘heroism’ and ‘passion’ are irrelevant concepts in today’s high-tech world? The answer is surely an unambiguous ‘no’, as a moment’s reflection will demonstrate. Although, as I have tried to illustrate, the linguistic terms expressing such notions are generally devalued, the values behind them most certainly are not. An alternative, contemporary, definition of ‘heroism’ to the ones given by the Concise Oxford Dictionary might read: ‘an act of courage or bravery beyond the capacity of most ordinary people; an action in which an individual, through extraordinary efforts extends himself/herself – physically, mentally, or in some other way – so far that admiration or wonder are produced in others’. Such a definition would certainly apply to most of the participants in the 2000 Sydney Paralympics or the 2003 Special Olympics, held in Ireland, and we could all think of other examples, not only of handicapped people, where individuals perform actions or show courage just as impressive as the heroic acts of Classical or biblical history. Indeed, Albert Camus went even further in his novel, La Peste, insisting that contemporary heroism often characterises those least likely to be associated with it: […] s’il est vrai que les hommes tiennent à se proposer des exemples et des modèles qu’ils appellent héros, et s’il faut absolument qu’il y en ait un dans cette histoire, le narrateur propose justement ce héros insignifiant et effacé qui n’avait pour lui qu’un peu de bonté au cœur et un idéal apparemment ridicule.9 ([…] if it is true that men really must have examples and models that they call heroes, and if it is absolutely necessary that there should be one in this story, the narrator suggests precisely that insignificant and withdrawn hero who had in his favour only a little goodness in his heart and an apparently ridiculous ideal.)10 Even if one disagrees with Camus, and even if his stance may be ironic, this passage at the least demonstrates that the notion of heroism, though often subverted or hugely altered, has not disappeared from our collective psyche. With passion, however, we are perhaps in more of a quandary. ‘Enthusiasm’ is generally perceived to be good (unlike at the time of the Enlightenment, when it almost always meant unreasoning or fanatical religious fervour), but ‘passion’ seems slightly suspect or bogus, in a world where cynicism about politicians and those in authority in any field is so rife. Wary detachment appears the reasonable choice in so many situations.

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Albert Camus, La Peste, ed. by W.J. Strachan (London: Methuen, 1970), p.154 (my translation). The novel ostensibly chronicles a plague in the Algerian city of Oran, but Camus’s novel is to a considerable extent an allegorical comment on the Second World War and on French resistance to the Germans. It also exemplifies his existentialist philosophy: nothing exists apart from this life, and each individual needs to give meaning to his/her life by their actions. The passage in question deals with Grand, a minor official whose only pleasure is to write and rewrite constantly the opening passage of what he intends to be the perfect novel. Grand accepts the – apparently – far from heroic task of cataloguing the statistics of the plague’s development. For a more comprehensive consideration of Camus’s position, see John Gillespie’s chapter (below, pp.225-38).

The aim of this volume is to explore the many aspects of ‘heroism’ and ‘passion’ as they have been expressed in literature over a very wide period, from the seventeenth century until the late twentieth, and in a variety of cultural settings, though mostly in France and Britain. This enterprise was inspired by Moya Longstaffe’s wide-ranging and impressive recent volume on three major French authors, Corneille, Stendhal and Claudel. Our present volume is not only a Festschrift, or celebration, of a distinguished academic and university teacher, it is also an attempt to investigate further and more deeply a fascinating theme in a focused manner. Do ‘heroism’ and ‘passion’ still have a meaning for, and a relevance to, the contemporary world? It may be significant, in view of what has been said in the previous paragraph, that the vast majority of contributors have chosen to write about ‘heroism’ rather than ‘passion’. The book is divided into three chronological sections, to maximise the coherence of the treatment. The first part, on the ‘Early Modern Period’, begins with six essays on the authors of France’s grand siècle, that extraordinary cultural flowering which coincided with the highpoint of Absolute Monarchy personified by the Sun King, Louis XIV. Professor Barnwell has contributed an essay on Bérénice, one of the tragedies by the great playwright, Racine. The basis of his argument concerns the characters’ use of the language of heroism: although they speak that language, their understanding of it reveals an incompatibility between their values and those of Cornelian heroism11 and between the moral universes which they inhabit and which only the unpredictable denouement reveals. Barnwell questions some aspects of the interpretation presented in Georges Forestier’s introduction to the play in the new Pléiade edition of the works of Racine (1999). Where Forestier sees a conflict between the ethic of galanterie and that of Roman heroism, Barnwell feels that the real conflict is between an Oriental concept of absolutism and a Roman tradition of law and morality which puts the emperor Titus under a compulsion to honour it. Forestier’s conception of Bérénice as simply a woman in love and not a queen is also questioned. Angela Ryan also deals with Racine. In a general way, she speculates that our society may have reached a stage where the very notion of heroism in its traditional, literary, maledominated sense may be evolving into a new concept, based more on audio-visual communication and the image, and that humanity may be seeking and constructing a nonconflictive, dehierarchised self where the male-female combined human is no longer split. She illustrates this hypothesis through a study of Euripides’s Hippolytus and Racine’s Phèdre, in which she investigates whether the tragic situations involved permit the location of a ‘heroinism’ which can parallel the male archetype: in other words, can the Aristotelian tragic model of the hero be extended to ‘sheroes’? Ryan illustrates graphically the multiple constraints imposed on the Phædra (Euripides) and Phèdre (Racine) characters, concluding that – despite his mastery of the tragic form and his transposition to the psychological realm of the divine curse laid upon Phædra in the Greek version – Racine fails to create a more ‘heroic’ Phèdre than Euripides. 11

In general, the tragic heroes in Corneille’s plays exhibit a powerful sense of will, which enables them to master the situations in which they find themselves, whereas Racine’s heroes and heroines must struggle to reconcile themselves to an apparently insuperable nexus of events.

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John Campbell’s essay attempts to see how ambition, a traditional attribute of heroism, was perceived and treated in the literature of the late seventeenth century, through an examination of one important work, La Princesse de Clèves. Different definitions and uses of the term are provided: these are then contrasted with the manifestations of ambition in this famously complex and ambiguous novel. One example is the Court, where an opening image of ambition as a noble aim is thereafter constantly subverted. The novel’s heroine is trapped between the contradictory ambitions of other characters and her own uncertainties, and it is difficult to determine whether she herself has any settled ambition. In other words, quite different ambitions are at home within the false appearances, paradoxes, ironies and obscurities with which this novel is associated. On this evidence, one reasonable conclusion is that general statements about the identity of heroism, at least as concerns late seventeenth-century France, should be made with a measure of prudence. This need for caution is reinforced by Robert McBride’s contribution, devoted to the heroes of Molière and the snares of language. Basing his essay largely on three of the great author’s comedies – Le Misanthrope, George Dandin, and Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme – McBride demonstrates the relativism of concepts, which can mean different things for different characters. In Le Misanthrope, the hero, Alceste, demands simplicity and sincerity, but McBride shows that his character’s misfortune is to believe in such concepts in a world ruled by the imprecise and extremely metaphorical language of courtly politeness, which evades straightforward analysis and makes fools of those who take it literally. It might moreover be argued that such a mistaken view of language as truth, held by ‘heroes’ as dissimilar as Alceste and Monsieur Jourdan, in Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, arises from a type of passion. A quite different type of passion is analysed by Jane McKee, in her essay on Laurent Drelincourt’s biblical sonnets. These charming poems, composed in a vigorous and imageful French more characteristic of the baroque period than the severer classicism of the grand siècle, hint at a serious, indeed quietly heroic, subtext. Drelincourt’s intimate knowledge and evident love of Scripture, in particular of the Old Testament – so clearly evidenced in his sonnets – was typical of the Huguenot community as a whole. This attachment, and the accompanying perception that the persecution suffered by the Old Testament Jews was being replicated by French Protestants of the seventeenth century, explains perhaps to some extent the bravery shown by this community in face of the unrelenting hostility to which it was subjected by the authorities. The possible ambiguity of the very notion of heroism, suggested in Robert McBride’s piece, is investigated by Marité Oubrier in her essay on La Fontaine. Was the author of the famous Fables – disorganised, grotesquely forgetful, often almost ludicrously eccentric – a seventeenth-century anti-hero, or is there more to his personality than the caricature that has dogged him ever since? Was the very persona he adopted a type of defence-mechanism in the courtly world of the grand siècle, so brilliant and refined on the one hand, so treacherous and dangerous on the other? At the very least, it is intriguing that the La Fontaine who conspicuously stuck by his friends, especially the disgraced former minister Foucquet, to such an extent that he incurred the anger of the King and his minister Colbert, contrived not only to survive but even finally succeeded in becoming a member of the Académie Française, the ultimate mark of official literary success. 12

The last essay in the first section is my own, the single offering on an eighteenthcentury topic. It considers the hero of Voltaire’s most important conte philosophique (philosophical tale) after Candide, L’Ingénu. The passionate hero of this story is a noble savage who, arriving in Brittany, turns out to have had French parents, and this headstrong, though intelligent, young man undergoes a process of civilisation in the course of which he exposes the illogicalities and injustices of pre-revolutionary France. Much more connected with a real historical setting than most of Voltaire’s ‘philosophical’ tales (it is a sort of historical novel set in 1689), L’Ingénu has often led critics to speculate over its possible sources. I argue here the credentials of one possible model, the eccentric Breton nobleman and author, Saint-Foix, and also seek to establish that the first sketch of L’Ingénu probably dates from late 1765, considerably earlier than previously thought. Overall, the section on the ‘Early Modern Period’ establishes several approaches to the subject of heroism and passion: different interpretations of the two terms; the problem of the meaning of language when applied to such concepts; the study of specific examples of ‘heroism’ and possible models. All these approaches are further illustrated in the next two sections of the book. Section Two is devoted to the nineteenth century. Brian Keith-Smith considers Wagner’s experiences in, and comments on, Paris in 1839-42 and 1859-61. These reveal the composer’s hostility to French bourgeois tastes, with particular reference to the opera and to Italian singing. His own poverty, lack of self-confidence and nationalist pride are noted, and reactions to specific operas and to the public’s adulation of tradition examined. Wagner’s literary novellas and essays show how he cultivated a heroic romantic and German persona. The notorious production of Tannhäuser during his second visit to Paris is explained as a personal confession and as a pointer to his unease in Paris. The use of opera as a way towards personal spiritual development, open-ended and with application of Germanic myth, is set in context with the demise of French opera in the 1860s and its resurgence in Bizet’s Carmen that hinted at a new form of heroism. Anne Judge and Solange Lamothe look at a very different aspect of passion and heroism: their impact on style. Focusing particularly on the great novelist Stendhal, author of Le Rouge et le Noir and La Chartreuse de Parme, they trace the development of Romantic style and analyse Stendhal’s rather ambiguous position in the Romantic Movement. Ambiguous because, although he shared many of the aspirations of Romantic writers, Stendhal retained numerous characteristics of Classic style – restraint, detachment and irony being among the more obvious. The essay contains many specific examples illustrating its general thesis, in particular a comparison of passages by Stendhal and that proto-Romantic writer, Victor Hugo. Elisabeth Lillie contributes a piece on Renan and the intellectual elite of his time, illustrating what she sees as the latter’s heroic role. The young Renan of L’Avenir de la science, though disdainful of the populace, was in the last analysis an optimist: he formed a high idea of the task of the intelligentsia, called – like a type of secular priesthood – little by little to enlighten their inferiors and to bring about a more generalised enlightenment. However, the revolution of 1848 and the coming to power of Louis Napoleon (later Napoleon III), shook Renan’s confidence seriously, all the more so since it was accomplished largely through a democratic vote, disturbing proof of the idiocy of the populace. A visit to Italy 13

served only to increase Renan’s despair over the childish credulity of the masses, and his cynicism was completed by the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and its revolutionary sequel, the Paris Commune. This changing attitude becomes clear in Renan’s works, in particular the Dialogues philosophiques and plays like Caliban. The early optimism has now disappeared. The heroism of the elite consists in having the intellectual bravery to play their role with confidence, if necessary even hiding the truth from their inferiors, so that the progress of the human race may be guaranteed by those capable of understanding and encouraging it. John McCann considers heroism and villainy in Baudelaire’s poetic masterpiece, Les Fleurs du mal. Focusing essentially on one poem, À celle qui est trop gaie, which he analyses comprehensively, McCann argues that the general modern view (exemplified, for example, by Sartre) that the judges who condemned Baudelaire’s poems in 1870 were philistines, is worth re-examining. In his reading of this piece from Les Fleurs du Mal, McCann reveals a text which can be seen as revelling in vengeful violence against a woman, an attitude which nearly all contemporary sensibilities – and not only those of feminists – would reject and regard as pornographic, sadistic and profoundly shocking. Beyond this attempt at ‘revisionist’ interpretation, McCann points the lesson of the ultimate impermeability of a poetic text, never completely or accurately interpreted by one critic or one approach, including – as he admits – his own. Or, as one might paraphrase in connection with our book’s theme, one man’s hero is another woman’s monster. The last piece devoted to a nineteenth-century author also bridges the gap with the twentieth and, as Henri Godin himself observes, his investigation of the film versions of Maupassant’s novel Bel-Ami belongs more to the world of the anti-hero than of the hero. Indeed, this short but fascinating piece throws out several ideas important for our subject. According to Godin, Georges Duroy, the cynical ‘hero’ of Maupassant’s novel Bel-Ami, who so personifies the France of the early Third Republic and its desire to succeed materially, to make money at all costs, would figure prominently in a Dictionnaire des idées périmées (Dictionary of outdated concepts), were one to be published,12 since he would personify admirably the disappearance of the traditional type of hero, one whom the reader can admire and seek to emulate. Following a rather disappointing adaptation of Bel-Ami for the cinema by Willi Forst in 1938, Albert Lewin made an excellent version in 1946, entitled The Private Affairs of Bel-Ami. As a foil to the numerous love scenes, Lewin was determined to include the reception given by M. Walther to mark his acquisition of the painting Christ Walking on the Water, but contemporary censorship made the showing of a painting representing Christ impossible. So Lewin, remembering a rare reflective passage in the novel when Duroy puts himself under the protection of Saint Anthony, substituted for the original painting one depicting The Temptation of Saint Anthony. A competition was held, with entries by a galaxy of artists including Salvador Dali, Paul Delvaux and Ivan Le Lorraine Albright, the winner being Max Ernst. The essays contributed to the final section represent an even wider range of approaches than those devoted to the nineteenth, two of them in reality – like Henri Godin’s – straddling the twentieth century and earlier periods, in the first case the late nineteenth century. 12

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Maupassant’s friend and patron, the great novelist Gustave Flaubert, compiled a Dictionnaire des idées reçues, satirising the bourgeoisie and its attitudes.

Marie-Joséphine Whitaker’s essay illustrates the shift in meaning of the word ‘passion’ referred to earlier, since the ‘passion’ for travel of both Rimbaud and Claudel symbolises a deeper, ultimately religious or mystical experience sought, and in the case of Claudel, found. The parallel between the two writers was highlighted by Claudel himself on the grounds that Rimbaud, while experiencing a career so different from his own, exhibited similar spiritual aspirations, despite intermittent examples of blasphemy and a very ambiguous relationship with the Christian God. Claudel’s ‘passion’ – his journey of discovery, in other words – is that of knowledge of the universe, the ultimate secret of which only Scripture and Divine Revelation can communicate to the poet. Rimbaud, for his part, wants to change the world as given, obsessed as he is by the dream of a magic transformation of reality through the power of an inner poetic vision. His pursuit takes the form of a voyage of conquest, of exploration, or yet of a kind of anxious inspection of places and beings, to see whether the poetic miracle has happened. Whitaker concludes that Rimbaud’s impossible ambition leaves him, after failure, with a total distaste for art. Claudel, on the other hand, while set on his way by Rimbaud, will end his earthly journey in expectation of contact with the source of poetry. Alan Gabbey considers two late pieces by Péguy, whom he calls at the beginning of his chapter ‘the last great voice of the tradition of soldierly heroism’.13 These two so-called ‘notes’, in reality long, complex and digressive essays, were prompted largely by Péguy’s wish to defend the philosophy of Bergson, which some of the latter’s critics had condemned on Cartesian grounds for its alleged lack of clarity and rigour. Gabbey investigates Péguy’s quirky, irritating, tendentious, but – in the last analysis – fascinating and often perceptive response to Descartes and his works, in particular the Discours de la méthode. Though he on occasion wilfully misunderstands what Descartes is saying, Péguy’s comments are always creative, with a recognition that a great philosophy is one that is more concerned with asking vital questions than with providing glib answers. Had he known more of Descartes’s works and had different commitments and obsessions in the years before World War I, Péguy might have reacted differently, achieving a closer engagement with the creator of Cartesianism. Michael Jones and John Gillespie next investigate diametrically opposed views of heroism. Jones illustrates a real, historical figure, who exemplifies in his own life qualities which are often associated with fictional characters. Adam von Trott zu Solz, a hero of the German Resistance executed as a member of the ‘July Plot’ against Hitler, revealed a strikingly charismatic and magnetic personality, entering with tremendous passion and energy into the loves and friendships that punctuated his life: many of these date from the two years he spent as a Rhodes scholar at Balliol College, Oxford. Later, as a Third Secretary at the German Foreign Ministry, he was able to travel abroad on a diplomatic passport, covertly forging and maintaining links with Resistance groups in the Nazi-occupied territories, and to meet with representatives of the Western Allies on neutral ground in Sweden and Switzerland. The study draws substantially on the many letters exchanged between Trott and the female friends of his Oxford days, Diana Hubback and Shiela Grant Duff.

13

See below, p.173.

15

John Gillespie studies the evolving views on heroism and passion expressed by the novelist and philosopher, Albert Camus, whose key characters, far from being indifferent, are seen to have many key characteristics of a modern heroism. These ‘passionate heroes’ rebel against transcendent answers and absurdity in an unjust world, where death is the end and life has no meaning. Caligula, the eponymous hero of his earliest play, reacts to the death of his sister by sadism and violence, in an attempt to teach others the bitter truth he has already learned. But Camus’s position – and that of his heroes – evolves. The protagonist of his novel L’Étranger, Meursault, condemned to death for killing an Arab, rejects God and religion and embraces the absurdity of life and the preciousness of each instant, just as the mythic hero Sisyphus (in Le Mythe de Sisyphe) is finally pictured as happy in his eternally pointless task of pushing up a mountain a rock which will always roll back down. This fundamental and ultimately futile choice of life and value by the individual in the face of absurdity is the bedrock of Camus’s humanism. His passionate heroes ultimately exhibit a strong engagement with their fellow beings. Particularly exemplary is Kaliayev, an actual Russian revolutionary, who appears in both the play Les Justes and the philosophical text L’Homme révolté. Kaliayev – and Camus – both reject the idea that any action whatsoever is permissible to achieve political ends, however laudable these may be in the long run. Moreover, Kaliayev is prepared to sacrifice himself and this personal heroism emphasises the belief that a strong commitment to humanist values must balance and legitimise existentialist individualism. The archetypical mythic hero of this phase is Prometheus, who sacrifices himself for others, but also risks becoming like Zeus, or the earthly Caesar. He epitomises, like Kaliayev, the fundamental tension within Camus’s heroes, who are courageous and daring but also flawed. Gerald Macklin also considers a theme linked with the absurd: heroism and stoicism in Samuel Beckett’s drama. Basing his analysis on two of the well-known early plays, Oh les beaux jours (Happy Days) and La Dernière bande (Krapp’s Last Tape) and one of the later and lesser-known shorter pieces, Quad, Macklin investigates the heroic credentials of Beckett’s dramatic protagonists, who are found to be heroes despite themselves. Two main theses are argued. Firstly, that the Beckettian hero is one whose endeavours receive no acclaim but who conducts a quiet, unobtrusive struggle against overwhelming existential odds. In this sense, Winnie and Krapp, together with the walkers in Quad, are ‘unsung’ heroes who pursue their solitary agendas without sympathy or recognition, and lack any company but their own. Secondly, however, they may be seen as ‘sung’ heroes, in that music and song seem to be indispensable accompaniments and consolations as they face up to their daily travails. Their suffering finds expression in songs and rhythms that appear to correspond to their innermost anxieties and aspirations, and this form of expression is felt to transcend any merely verbal communication of pain. It is not enough for them to talk of their life, they must musicalise it in a swan-song. Angela Chambers considers the tension between European and postcolonial literature and values in a chapter entitled ‘Prophets and Heroes: Ideology and Aesthetics in Aimé Césaire’s Poetic’. While Césaire saw the African heritage as the fundamental element in Caribbean cultural identity, and gave several lectures on the ideological role of the poet in the context of decolonisation, critics were quick to observe that his search for a new poetic voice was to a large extent influenced by European models, particularly by the nineteenth 16

and twentieth-century French poetic tradition from Hugo to the Surrealists. Indeed, Césaire made no effort to conceal the influence of the French literary tradition on his poetic vision. This study explores the relationship between his ideological and aesthetic writings and investigates to what extent his views on the writer’s heroic role in the process of decolonisation are determined by the French literary tradition in which the poet is regarded as a voyant or seer. This enables his position in the development from colonial to postcolonial literary and political discourses to be clarified. Stanley Black’s study, entitled ‘The Author as Hero in the New World Order’, concerns Juan Goytisolo’s 1995 novel, El sitio de los sitios. Black illustrates the work’s complex and multi-faceted nature, in which postmodern uncertainty surrounds the status of author, characters, text and readers. Based in the beleaguered Sarajevo of the Bosnian War, the novel denounces the inaction and complicity of the West, identified with the ‘New World Order’ announced by President Bush after the collapse of Communism and what for him was the successful outcome of the Gulf War. Goytisolo’s text casts doubt on the ‘official’ version of history, interweaving ‘fiction’ with ‘fact’ and leading his characters to doubt their own identities; moreover, he includes a further dimension to the novel in the form of a semi-autobiographical element. Black demonstrates that the novel has deep roots in the Spanish literary tradition, recalling not only Cervantes but also the twelfth-century mystic and philosopher, Ibn Arabi. Although, argues Black, the novel’s promotion of its own fictionality is a high-risk strategy, it refuses to negate history, especially the ‘reality’ of the Bosnian War. The author can become a hero of his own narrative, not merely as the protagonist, but in the more truly heroic, even quixotic, sense of struggling against enormous odds (the limitations of writing) in the interests of social transformation. Richard York’s essay, ‘Evelyn Waugh’s Farewell to Heroism’, also deals with what might be termed heroism in a minor key. Waugh’s Sword of Honour trilogy is often regarded as a lament for the passing of an aristocratic and Catholic England and a denunciation of the decadence of the Second World War. This view, argues York, is a partial one. The trilogy uses the concept of heroism to explore the replacement of a period of military splendour, associated notably with the Crusades, by a pragmatic and democratic society, and shows the problems inherent in the concept of the hero: the personal weaknesses of the central character, the real decline of the gentlemanly class which had sustained the ideal of the hero, the often false or absurd Romanticism of children’s literature and of historical legend, and above all the incompatibility of heroism with the selfless charity which Waugh reveres as a Christian virtue. The result is a work of great complexity, in which the author’s attachment to the past is in conflict with his recognition of the inadequacy of such attachment. Philip Taylor’s chapter is concerned with political passion, and examines the attempts of members of the French Communist Party to engage their own often inflexible party leadership in debate over issues such as internal democratic procedure, relations with the French Socialists, reading of Soviet Communism and society, or the PCF’s understanding of the evolving French class system. During Georges Marchais’s tenure as Party leader (he was appointed a few years after the events of May 1968 and left a few years after the collapse of Soviet Communism), such dissidents were usually portrayed by the leadership as heretics, whose opposition could only weaken the all-important party unity to the benefit of the 17

Communists’ many enemies. Taylor argues, however, that the radical process of structural and ideological transformation undertaken by Robert Hue, who replaced Marchais in 1994, has its roots in the ideas of these once much-maligned internal oppositionists, whose passionate efforts of the past several decades have finally succeeded, though this success is more than a little paradoxical in the light of the PCF’s recent electoral meltdown. The chapter draws largely on the dissident books and articles usually published outside the Party press in order to side-step an often tightly-controlled system of censorship of internal criticism. Finally, Pól Ó Dochartaigh looks at another situation conditioned by Communism, this time one which produced literary anti-heroes. Taking the central character in each of the three ‘Jewish’ novels by the East German writer Jurek Becker, Ó Dochartaigh attempts to show that the author constructed anti-heroes who were a challenge to GDR literary orthodoxy on a number of fronts. These include Communist resistance to Fascism, integration into GDR society and acceptance of dominant, collective attitudes to social organisation. In a society that glorifies collective action, whether in the present or the Nazi past, Becker’s three central characters are extreme individualists who are held up as the antithesis of the Communist hero. Yet, although anti-heroes according to GDR literary norms, individually they each display heroic traits in their characters. Readers will thus find the notions of ‘heroism’ and ‘passion’ investigated and illustrated in an extremely wide variety of forms and situations. A suitable tribute to Moya Longstaffe’s impressive work in the field. In what follows, apart from the three essays in French, all foreign-language quotations of more than a few words are translated into English. Unless otherwise stated, all translations are by the author of the chapter in question. G. Gargett,

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July 2003.

Part One The Early Modern Period

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H.T. Barnwell

Heroic Discourse? A Note on Racine’s Bérénice In his introduction to Bérénice1 in the first volume of the new Pléiade edition of the works of Racine,2 Georges Forestier pursues, among others, three important interrelated ideas: that the conflict in the play arises out of the incompatibility of the ethic of galanterie (and of the pastorale) with that of a Cornelian type of heroism; that Titus is a real Roman and Cornelian hero; and that Bérénice is presented as a woman in love and not as a queen. If one begins from evidence within the play, particularly the use of ‘heroic’ vocabulary, and from some remarks by its earliest commentators, one may come to more ambiguous conclusions. In the first, hostile, criticism of the play, La Critique de Bérénice (Pléiade, pp.510-19), published in January 1671, a few weeks after the first performance of the tragedy, the abbé de Villars complains that it is not peopled by ‘des caractères vertueux’, ‘vertu’ being understood in its Latin (virtus) and Italian (virtù) sense of manly courage. He is disappointed that Titus is not ‘héroïque’, not ‘un Héros Romain’, in spite of ‘des retours assez Romains’, and that Racine characterises him as a faithful perfect lover like d’Urfé’s Céladon. The whole play, for Villars, was merely ‘un tissu de Madrigaux et d’Élégies’, in spite of Titus’s showing some ‘commencements de sentiments Héroïques’: as the Emperor himself says, since his accession he has done nothing for honour, but all for love (1030). His resolution on suicide, an action characteristic of a violent person, is inconsistent with Racine’s portrayal of him as a man easily reduced to tears.3 In his ironical Réponse à La Critique de Bérénice (Pléiade, pp.520-33), published in March 1671, the abbé de Saint-Ussans asserts that weeping is not necessarily incompatible 1

2

3

The action of Racine’s play, his simplest from the structural point of view, is an elaboration of the edited quotation from Suetonius’s Life of Titus which he places at the head of his preface. On his accession to the imperial throne of Rome at the death of his father, Vespasian, a week before the tragedy opens, Titus is faced with the political reality which forbids the marriage of an Emperor to a foreign princess. He has concealed that reality from Bérénice, Queen of Palestine, who followed him to Rome after the siege of Jerusalem. He passionately loves her, as she does him. Titus must now find the courage to acquaint the Queen with the truth, which she resists: he cannot marry her. The drama, complicated by the presence in Rome of Antiochus, King of Commagene, Titus’s comrade in arms at the siege of Jerusalem, who is also in love with Bérénice, develops towards an answer to these questions: can Titus follow the advice of his counsellor, Paulin, and find the courage to admit his past deception to the Queen? Will Antiochus, as, encouraged by Arsace, he momentarily hopes, be accepted by Bérenice if Titus does reject her? Can she come to terms with the reality of Titus’s position and go on living? Her threat of suicide provokes those of Titus and Antiochus, and these in turn bring the Queen to her anagnorisis: the Emperor still loves her but must send her away, while his rival, his love not returned, goes back alone to his own country. Œuvres complètes de Racine I: Théâtre et poésie, ed. by G. Forestier (Paris: Gallimard, 1999: henceforth Pléiade), pp.1442-66. References to this edition are in the form Pléiade, page number. Line numbering for the play, in brackets in the text, follows that of standard editions from Mesnard onwards reproduced in the right-hand margin of the Pléiade text. Quotations from the play follow this edition. Italics in quotations are mine throughout. Pléiade, pp.514-18. Cf. Saint-Évremond’s brief critical comment in Sur les caractères des tragédies, probably written in 1672 (Œuvres en prose, ed. by R. Ternois, Paris: Didier, 1966, III, p.332).

with heroism. He finds examples in history and in mythology and imaginative literature, citing at length the case of Agamemnon weeping over the loss of Iphigenia, and drawing the parallel with Titus and Bérénice. Saint-Ussans has no difficulty in quoting passages from the play which illustrate Titus’s firmness of character, even to the point of harshness towards Bérénice, which he himself regretfully terms ‘barbare’. If Titus had possessed ‘cette grandeur d’âme héroïque’ which Villars failed to see, he would have been superhuman. As for the intended suicide, Titus himself recalls the examples of Roman heroes who have taken that path. Bérénice is more than madrigals and elegies (Pléiade, pp.527-33). For all their differences, Villars and Saint-Ussans clearly use the word ‘héroïque’ in what we might call its Cornelian sense, the hero being a man who, after weighing arguments and possible consequences, takes decisive action, whatever the cost, in order to achieve ‘la gloire’. In his preface to Bérénice, a sarcastic reply to Villars’s Critique, Racine affirms, among other conditions necessary for the creation of tragedy, ‘que les Acteurs en soient héroïques’ (‘that its characters should be of noble stature’). The plural suggests that the adjective applies to Antiochus and Bérénice as well as to Titus. That adjective can convey a meaning other than the Cornelian. Indeed, in the first of his three Discours on dramatic art, Corneille himself provides a valuable clue. There, in 1660, he describes, and justifies, his invention of the genre comédie héroïque. Ten years earlier, in the Épître à M. de Zuylichem with which he prefaced Don Sanche d’Aragon, the first example of this genre, which was to be followed, precisely, by Tite et Bérénice (1670) and then by Pulchérie (1672), Corneille had discussed at length the theoretical basis for such plays. He saw no objection to applying the term comedy to plays whose characters were of noble or royal birth provided that they were not involved in threats to their lives, loss of political power, or banishment. In order to distinguish plays of this kind from ‘ordinary’ comedies involving people of lower social status he called them ‘comédies héroïques’. Comedy, he had pointed out, following Heinsius, did not necessarily provoke laughter.4 For Corneille here, the epithet ‘héroïque’ clearly denotes not an ethical but a social characteristic. In his preface, Racine refers moreover to Virgil’s Æneid as ‘un poème héroïque’. He is replying to Villars’s criticism not by asserting that the characters in Bérénice are ethically heroic, but that, participating in an action which has ‘grandeur’, they are possessed of the appropriate ‘dignity’. Taking up Villars’s ‘Cornelian’ use of the word ‘héroïque’, Racine places it, with a truly Cornelian meaning, in a definition of a nonCornelian type of tragedy. This is not necessarily to deny Racine’s characters a degree of ethical heroism. Within the play, the word ‘héroïque’ does not occur at all. The word ‘héros’ appears only twice, first when Paulin calls Titus ‘un héros vainqueur de tant de nations’ (497), and then when the Emperor cites the heroic, if suicidal, actions of unnamed Roman predecessors, probably Cato, Brutus and Seneca, whose example he seeks to follow (1410).5 We must consider here the relationship between Racine’s presentation of the characters as they were before the drama begins and their behaviour within the play. Racine has Arsace recall the exploits of Antiochus, in company with Titus, at the siege of Jerusalem in lines (100–14) which are echoed by the Emperor himself (687–92). These 4 5

22

Pierre Corneille, Writings on the Theatre, ed. by H.T. Barnwell (Oxford: Blackwell, 1965), pp.195-99. Cf. J. Dubu, Racine aux miroirs (Paris: SEDES, 1992), pp.127-28.

passages elaborate a very brief narrative in which Josephus comments on the courage and daring, approved by Titus, of Antiochus.6 In essence, Racine’s portrayal of the two men as comradely heroic warriors is an imaginative development of the historical facts. But he also greatly enhances the ‘dignity’ of Antiochus by making him almost the equal of Titus, who treats him as an independent monarch and distinguished friend, and not as a vassal princeling. It is significant that Antiochus appears in no fewer than fourteen scenes (and speaks 350 lines out of 1506), as compared to Titus’s fifteen scenes and Bérénice’s eleven. Antiochus dominates the first act in predominantly elegiac speeches which may seem to set the tone, unheroic as it were, for the whole tragedy. In emphasising the comradeship of Titus and Antiochus, Racine places them in the lineage of the pairs of great warrior-heroes of tradition. Their prototypes originate from the heroes of Homeric legend, characterised by courage and decisive action taken to achieve glory even if that brought death: not for them death or glory but often death and glory. Hercules, the greatest of heroes, was, in his self-immolation on Mount Oeta, received into Olympus and subsequently worshipped as a god, as Rotrou, following Seneca, in the epiphany in the last scene of Hercule mourant, has him say. Hercules’s twelve labours represent heroic deeds through which the world is purged of evils. This is an aspect of the true hero’s characteristic activity. From Hercules it passed to his younger companion, Theseus, whose similarly heroic actions, to be recalled by Hippolyte in the opening scene of Phèdre, were beneficent to mankind. The companionship of Hercules and Theseus passes into the comradeship of Theseus and Pirithous and has its parallels in that of Castor and Pollux, Achilles and Patroclus and, in French legend, that of Roland and Oliver. As far as their military past is concerned, Racine raises Titus and Antiochus to the same heroic level as these, their predecessors. Moreover, the apotheosis of Hercules is echoed in Bérénice’s picture of that of Vespasian; the centre of that picture is, however, Titus, who is deified by her passion for him. This is, strictly and precisely, hero-worship – while the hero is still alive. As for Bérénice herself, Titus recalls the way in which she was responsible for reforming his earlier, dissolute, conduct (499-519). Here, too, Racine effects a transformation. The Bérénice of history was far from being a good influence on Titus.7 Furthermore, she was never in fact a queen. Racine not only follows Suetonius (‘Titus reginam Berenicen [...] ab Urbe dimisit invitus invitam’ – ‘Against his wishes, and against hers, Titus sent Queen Berenice away from Rome’) in giving her the title: he emphasises that status in the dramatis personae (‘Bérénice, Reine de Palestine’) and in the 41 occurrences of the word ‘Reine’, with capital initial letter, in the text itself. On this account alone, doubt must be cast on Forestier’s assertion (Pléiade, p.1463) that she is portrayed, not as a queen, but simply as a woman in love. Racine raises her moral and social stature, as he does that of Antiochus, and the past ethical status of Titus, to what he considers is the ‘heroic’ level appropriate to tragedy.

6 7

Wars of the Jews, V.xi.3. See C. L. Walton’s summary of the historians’ unflattering accounts of her (Tacitus, Dio Cassius, Suetonius, Aurelius Victor) in his edition of Bérénice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965, pp.26-27). Cf. H.T. Barnwell, The Tragic Drama of Corneille and Racine (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), chapter 2 and pp.244-46.

23

Titus’s recognition of his great moral debt to Bérénice is one of the causes of his anguish in dismissing her (519-20). She is, it has been rightly said, the ‘punished saviour’.8 The Titus she sees in the apotheosis of his father is the Titus she has created. She may have loved him in his unredeemed state, and have loved him for himself (159-62, 1475-78), but when she relives in her imagination the imperial ceremonies she has witnessed she sees in him the man of heroic stature, as her vocabulary shows (e.g., ‘splendeur’, ‘grandeur’, ‘éclat’, ‘pourpre’, ‘or’, ‘gloire’, ‘lauriers’, ‘victoire’, ‘majestueux’). That vision springs from and encourages an illusion (‘il peut tout’) that Titus can, and will, set aside Roman law and tradition (297-98). Bérénice has brought Titus to his present ‘grandeur’ only to be rejected, but not to be unloved: the whole play is constructed in such a way as to dispel her hubristic illusion so that she may accept the paradox of the ironic reality. In spite of her denial to Antiochus in her first meeting with him, she is in fact impressed by the trappings of power in the apotheosis, by Titus’s magnanimous gifts to her, and even by the prospect of being named Empress (171-76). But in her disbelieving reply (908) to the message brought by Antiochus (‘Il ne me quitte point, il y va de sa gloire’) (‘He is not leaving me, it is a question of his glory’), she confuses Titus’s ‘gloire’ as personal honour, her creation, with the reality of his ‘gloire’ in the political sphere. The drama, nowhere to be found in the historians but imagined by Racine, the ‘something’ he has made out of ‘nothing’ (‘invitus invitam’), consists in Titus’s overcoming his reluctance to do what he already knows he must and in Bérénice’s overcoming her resistance to the truth. What has happened in a predramatic time, and is so prominently evoked within the play, forms the essential basis of the drama itself and constitutes its origin. The critical change in the situation in which the characters find themselves, occasioned by Titus’s accession, does not require of him a decision. He questions Paulin concerning the state of Roman opinion about the marriage simply to stiffen his resolve (446-50). Reaching his decision has been painful and difficult. Titus recalls it in the language of martial heroism as a battle: the warrior-hero’s habits of speech live on in him. He may seem merely to use the love-war clichés of préciosité (e.g., 451-54), but he has been a real hero and not, pace Villars, a Céladon. The ‘ardeur’ which drives Titus is now no longer for war but for Bérénice (502, 589): it drives him, not heroically and immediately to act on the decision he has taken, but into cowardice and hesitation.9 Yet he has not lost his nobility (351-58). The Emperor’s ‘gloire’ is not now a source of elation. It must be created and safeguarded in the political sphere, where he is under constant observation (467), by carrying out the decision taken and by reigning for the benefit of mankind (1028-35). When at last he finds the courage to confront Bérénice with his intention, he pleads for her help in the same terms of the heroic ethic: ‘gloire’, ‘raison’, ‘devoir’, ‘vaincre’ (1051–55). Has Titus the will, or what he

8

9

24

R. Parish, Racine: The Limits of Tragedy (Paris, Seattle, Tübingen: Biblio 17, 1993), p.16. The whole of Parish’s discussion (pp.14-26) is of great interest. The significance of ‘gloire’ and ‘victoire’ is emphasised by the rhyming of these words not only here (49192) but in Bérénice’s vision of Titus in Act I, scene 5 (307-08), and in her apostrophe to the absent Emperor (655-56); and in Titus’s recollection of his (and Antiochus’s) military victory (687-88) and of the conduct of the Roman heroes of the past (1167-68).

sees as the cruelty, to achieve his ‘gloire’ as Emperor? Can he be the ruthless hero he was on the battlefield? Ton cœur te promet-il assez de cruauté? Car enfin au combat qui pour toi se prépare C’est peu d’être constant, il faut être barbare. (990-92) (Can you find it in you to be cruel enough? For in the battle which is upon you now Firmness will not suffice. You must be brutal.)

The péripéties of the dramatic action (and Racine’s much-vaunted simplicity does not preclude them) spring from Titus’s conflicting doubts and certainties which are summed up in his soliloquy (Act IV, scene 4). He is tempted there by what he momentarily sees as the possibility of escape from the demands of Empire. He does not reason or argue a case, or rationally weigh the consequences of the possibilities apparently before him. He doubts, and reproaches, himself, with 29 questions in 53 lines.10 In this moment of crisis, Titus can be said to try on personae, moral masks, to see which fits him in his new status, the personae of hero renouncing love, of Emperor losing heroism by defying Rome, of Emperor abdicating, of coward committing suicide. As his discussion with Paulin shows, only the first fits, the one thrust upon him by his dying father. He must find the heroism to wear it (1096-98) for the sake of his ‘gloire’, even at the cost of what he holds most dear:11 ‘Mais il ne s’agit plus de vivre, il faut régner’ (‘But it’s no longer a question of living, I must rule’) (1102). The man must be transformed into the Emperor.12 His first test is upon him now: on its outcome depends the example he will leave to posterity (1172-74). Titus sees no alternative: on his accession Rome has compelled him to maintain her laws (1156-57). He recalls the cruelties to which Atilius Regulus, Manlius Torquatus, and Lucius Junius Brutus had to submit for the sake of ‘la patrie et la gloire’. Titus’s heroism can scarcely be compared to theirs in spite of what he says (1169-70). They faced their own death or ordered that of their sons. If Titus is acting heroically in sacrificing his love, it is with a diminished heroism. His hesitations, his inability to speak out to Bérénice in their first encounter, his request to Antiochus to bear the fateful message to her, the temptation of suicide, all this is unheroic. Of course, Bérénice’s reluctance to see the situation as it really is exacerbates the difficulty for Titus of taking purposeful action.13 But the real hero would leap to action as soon as the decision had been reached: he would then put doubt behind him.

10 11

12

13

Cf. J. J. Supple, Racine: Bérénice (London: Grant and Cutler, 1986), pp.47-51. Cf. Pléiade, 1456-58; C. Delmas, ‘Bérénice comme rituel’, in Racine: théâtre et poésie, ed. by C. M. Hill (Leeds: Francis Cairns, 1991), pp.191-203. Cf. M. Fumaroli, Héros et orateurs. Rhétorique et dramaturgie cornéliennes (Geneva: Droz, 1990), pp.29293, 310-15. Cf. Pléiade, pp.1457-59 on the imago of the monarch. Cf. O. de Mourgues, Racine or The Triumph of Relevance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), p.74, on ‘the contrast between the power a man has in the world and his helplessness against the disastrous effects of passion.’

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We have seen that Titus considers himself to be ‘barbare’ in repudiating Bérénice. Later, when Paulin holds before him the ‘gloire’ which in the future will flow from the Emperor’s action, he protests (1212): ‘Non, je suis un barbare’ (‘No, I am a barbarian’). In the meantime, when Titus puts before Bérénice the ineluctable nature of his decision, she retorts (1175): ‘Non, je crois tout facile à votre barbarie’ (‘No, I believe that everything is easy to your barbarity’). It is important to see the irony in her use of the word. She is a non-Roman, what the Romans would call a ‘barbarian’, a foreigner who does not share the ethical values of Rome. She flings this word at a Roman as an insult. When Titus applies it to himself, it is a terrible reproach, accusing himself of conduct unworthy of a Roman towards a nonRoman whose values are inferior but whom, nevertheless, he loves. The very fact of upholding the laws and values of Rome he sees as betraying them. He falls below the standards demanded of Rome whose name he reiterates, personifying it, seven times, in his soliloquy.14 His barbarity includes the moral roughness and savagery implicit in Caesar’s phrases, ‘homines barbari atque imperiti’ and ‘homines feri ac barbari’. The name of Rome occurs 64 times in the play, balanced against the 41 occurrences of ‘Reine’. The two monosyllables, with their assonance, typify the moral conflict in which Titus is involved. The balance is not even, as he well knows: ‘Rome jugea ta Reine en condamnant ses Rois’ (‘Rome judged your Queen in condemning its kings’) (1017). Bérénice’s tragedy springs from her failure to heed Phénice’s warning 296): ‘Rome hait tous les Rois, et Bérénice est Reine’ (‘Rome hates all kings, and Bérénice is a queen’).15 It is Rome that will drive Bérénice out (488), but Rome acts in the person of the Emperor. As a ‘barbare’, an Oriental accustomed to the ways and rights of despots, Bérénice obstinately fails to understand the constraints imposed upon Titus: she speaks (1149) of ‘d’injustes lois que vous pouvez changer’ (‘unjust laws that you can change’) as against Paulin’s reference (377) to ‘une loi qui ne se peut changer’ (‘a law which cannot be changed’).16 Situating the play in the ethical and literary context of the time in which it was written, Forestier (Pléiade, p.1459) sees the conflict as between the pastoral-galant drama of Bérénice and the Roman-political reality of Titus as Emperor. Within the play, however, resistance to the truth, or incomprehension of it, is rooted in Bérénice’s prejudices which are of the Orient. It is equally true that Titus explicitly rejects abdication which might lead to the kind of idyll associated with the pastoral dream expressed in the conventional terms of préciosité (1399-1402), and of which he, too, has felt the attraction (537-44, 600-01). As an Oriental, and as a queen, Bérénice does not inhabit the moral universe of a Roman Emperor. She is accustomed to being obeyed, hence her moments of anger, especially her determination (1265) to leave Rome in a fit of ‘généreux dépit’ (‘noble spite’), her occasional haughtiness and scorn, her use of imperatives, her proud refusal to remain in Rome to be jeered at by the populace (1178-80, 1312-18). Antiochus shares Bérénice’s oriental and despotic misconceptions (248, 251).

14 15 16

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See R. McBride, ‘Le Rôle de Rome dans Bérénice’, Studi Francesi, 52 (1974), pp.86-91. See also Paulin to Titus (372) and Titus to Bérénice (1396). Delmas (‘Bérénice comme rituel’, p.199) stresses the all-important incompatibility between the laws of Rome and the lawlessness of the Orient.

Titus is by no means a hero in the tradition of la préciosité, a hero completely submissive to his lady.17 He is, however, far from being a Cornelian hero.18 We have observed his cowardice – he sees himself as ‘lâche’ (1024) – in his hesitations and evasions. Yet he persistently uses some of the language of heroism. Of the essential words of that vocabulary analysed by Nadal in his study of Corneille,19 two of the most important, ‘mérite’ and ‘générosité’, are absent from Bérénice. Michael Hawcroft has pointed out that, when he has at last found the courage to confront the Queen with reality, Titus pleads ‘devoir’, ‘gloire’, ‘raison’ (1051-53), but in order to create ‘sympathy for himself as a sufferer’, while expressing sympathy for her. Yet ‘he does not produce substantial arguments to defend his position.’ Titus has already used these terms when rehearsing to himself the inescapability of duty. Rhetorical self-persuasion is the necessary prelude to persuasion of Bérénice, but self-persuasion in solitude is still followed by vacillation when he addresses her.20 He has already said to Paulin: ‘Voici le temps enfin qu’il faut que je m’explique’ (343). That is the defining line of the whole drama. Here I am (‘voici’), says Titus, face to face with the moment (‘le temps’) which I can postpone no longer (‘enfin’), and which imposes on me the necessity (‘il faut’) to reveal myself (‘explique’): to reveal, not to explain.21 Titus’s past deception, his delaying this moment, with his silence and his absence, and their pretext in his mourning for Vespasian, have occasioned not only Bérénice’s distress but her uncomprehending illusions. In this play, stage time is scarcely exceeded by real time. Titus has only two or three hours in which to bring the truth as it really is (‘un aveu véritable’; 1363) to Bérénice: he has tried to conceal it even from himself (717). Now he must act, not decide. In his first interview with Paulin (Act II, scene 2), the play of tenses, past, present, immediate future (‘je vais’), and the repeated ‘maintenant’ (‘now’) mark the end of illusory hope and the call to action. Action can only take the form of speech.22 Titus needs the language of heroism both as self-encouragement and as persuasion, but his use of that language does not mean that he is devoted to heroic ideals. The key word is ‘la gloire’.23 The crucial contradictoriness of Bérénice’s conception of ‘la gloire’ is manifest in the echoing 17 18

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Cf. R. Lathuillère, La Préciosité. Étude historique et linguistique (Geneva: Droz, 1966), p.467. Forestier, however, sees him as a real Roman hero, a perfect Cornelian hero (Pléiade, pp.1443, 1463). Among the many scholarly studies devoted to Corneille’s heroic ethic, one may cite Moya Longstaffe’s important book, Metamorphoses of Passion and the Heroic in French Literature: Corneille, Stendhal, Claudel (Lewiston, Queenston, Lampeter: Edwin Mellen, 1999), especially pp.69-194. Octave Nadal, Le Sentiment de l’amour dans l’œuvre de Pierre Corneille (Paris: Gallimard, 1948), pp.283374. Michael Hawcroft, Word as Action. Racine, Rhetoric and Theatrical Language (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), pp.148, 200-02. See also Antiochus to Arsace (5-6, 127), Arsace to Antiochus (783), Titus to himself (1001), Titus to Antiochus (740-43). The meaning of [s’]expliquer is made clear in Bossuet’s use of the word (Connaisance de Dieu et de soi-même, iv.2): ‘On voit les branches, les feuilles et les fruits s’expliquer et se développer’, i.e. to unfold [cf. Latin explicare], to disclose themselves. G. Pocock, in Corneille and Racine. Problems of Tragic Form (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973, pp.205-08) sees the action of the play precisely as the passage from concealment to revelation. Cf. Forestier’s comments (Pléiade, p.1445). For the word ‘gloire’, see my articles in Jeunesse de Racine (1961, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1966, 1970-71), and Seventeenth-Century French Studies, 14 (1992). See also Charles Bernet’s analysis in Le Vocabulaire des tragédies de Racine (Geneva, Paris: Slatkine, Champion, 1983, especially pp.203-5).

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contrast in these lines: ‘Vous devez d’autres soins à Rome, à votre Gloire’ (‘You owe other duties to Rome, and to your glory) (604). But Titus has to show her that Rome and ‘la gloire’ now make inescapable demands upon him: [...] la Gloire, Madame, Ne s’était pas encor fait entendre à mon cœur Du ton dont elle parle au cœur d’un Empereur. (1096-98) (Madam, I had not yet heard the voice of Glory speak as it does to the heart of an Emperor.)

The individual (‘mon’) has been transformed into the public figure (‘Empereur’). Bérénice’s response (1103) is: ‘Hé bien, régnez, cruel; contentez votre gloire’ (‘Well, reign, cruel man; satisfy your glory’). She always attaches the possessive adjective to the noun (307, 604, 908, 1103, 1331).24 So, sometimes, does Titus, when he is oppressed by it: ‘[...] je penche [...] du côté de ma Gloire’ (454) (‘I tend […] to the side of my glory), ‘Ma gloire inexorable’ (1394) (‘My inexorable glory’), ‘cédons à notre gloire’ (736) (‘let us yield to our glory’). Titus is pursued by the need to safeguard his reputation: he is not looking forward. Even when the noun is preceded by the definite article, and then appears to represent some higher ideal, for Titus it is something to which he must submit rather than aspire: [...] toujours la Patrie et la Gloire Ont parmi les Romains remporté la Victoire. (1167-68) (Devotion to Rome and ‘Glory’ Has always triumphed in Roman hearts.) Ah! que sous de beaux noms cette Gloire est cruelle! (499) (Ah! how cruel, for all its fine language, is this ‘Glory’!)

Leaving a fitting example to posterity (1172-74) is no occasion for elation but for remembrance of the tears of Emperor and Queen (1058-60). Emperor and Queen are at cross-purposes in their use of the word ‘gloire’ because the ethical contexts in which they are placed are incompatible. In the same way, the word ‘devoir’ (‘duty’), inseparable from ‘la gloire’, is uttered only by Titus. His moral universe is not that of Bérénice (or of Antiochus). Titus, however, fulfils his duty only with regret: it is his ‘triste devoir’ (997), his ‘austère devoir’ (1365). In a variant of the 1671 edition, he cites examples of such sacrificial duty performed by his heroic predecessors: Vous les verriez toujours, jaloux de leur devoir, De tous les autres nœuds oublier le pouvoir. (1161-62) (You would see them, devoted to their duty, Always ignore all other bonds.)

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Cf. P. Bénichou, Morales du Grand Siècle (Paris: Gallimard, 1948), pp.149-51.

The ties of duty take precedence over all others, love of life, of sons, and, for Titus, of Bérénice. He must be ‘jaloux de son devoir’, that is, ‘attached’, ‘tied’ to it.25 He can find no release from duty if his ‘gloire’ is to be preserved. Considering how little of worth he has achieved in the days since his accession, he upbraids himself (1027-28). It is ironical that all the public plaudits with which, as Arsace tells Antiochus, Titus is greeted in Rome bind him, and Malgré tous ses soupirs et les pleurs de la Reine, Fixent dans son devoir ses vœux irrésolus. (1276-67) (Despite all his sighs and the Queen’s tears, His wavering yields to firm resolve to do his duty.)

As Bernet points out, the vocabulary of heroism is counterbalanced by that of its opposite. Titus does not with joy embrace imperial power: ‘Je sentis le fardeau qui m’était imposé’ (462) (‘I felt the burden that was laid on me’).26 At the end of his soliloquy (1039), he yields to the demands of duty: ‘Ne tardons plus. Faisons ce que l’honneur exige’ (‘Let us delay no longer. Let us do what honour demands’). Bérénice fails to see the nature of the burden. The Latin exigere suggests compulsory payment, like that of a tax which is due, hence the absence of rational inner deliberation in Titus’s soliloquy: the choices before him are, as he has known from the beginning, illusory. His past situation (‘Maître de mon destin, libre dans mes soupirs’; 457) (‘Master of my destiny, free in my love’), contrasts with the present (‘Maître de l’Univers, je règle sa Fortune; [...]/Cependant de mon cœur je ne puis disposer’; 720, 722) (‘Master of the universe, I ordain its fortune; […]/However, I cannot give away my own heart’). As Odette de Mourgues (op.cit., pp.77-78) puts it, Titus is ‘a prisoner of history’: history is not simply ‘a majestic background’ but a living force. Titus is a prisoner also of his passion.27 The expression ‘il faut’ (‘it is necessary’) occurs 43 times in the play, spoken no fewer than twenty times by Titus, and of those occurrences, fifteen refer to compulsion laid upon him: the impersonal construction, and not ‘je dois’ (‘I must’) makes him the victim of impersonal forces. He sees himself (1365) ‘pressé par les lois d’un austère devoir’ (‘constrained by the laws of an austere duty’). The language of heroism is far outweighed by that of its contrary. ‘Triste’, ‘tristesse’, ‘mélancolie’ number between them 29 occurrences; ‘pleurs’, ‘pleurer’, ‘larmes’, 53; ‘hélas’, 27; ‘mort’, ‘mourir’, 35; ‘adieu(x)’, 25; ‘douleur(s)’, ‘douloureux’, 22; ‘malheur(s)’,

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See Bossuet’s reference to ‘notre grand roi, plus jaloux de sa parole [...] que de ses propres intérêts’ (‘our great king, more jealous of his word […] than of his own interests’ (Oraison funèbre de Henriette de France); and to Marie-Thérèse, ‘toujours jalouse de [la] gloire [du roi], uniquement attachée aux intérêts de son État’ (‘always jealous of [the king’s] glory, solely attached to the interests of his State’ (Oraison funèbre de Marie-Thérèse d’Autriche, in Bossuet, Oraisons funèbres, ed. by J. Truchet (Paris: Garnier, 1961), pp.121, 230). Cf. J.C. Lapp, Aspects of Racinian Tragedy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1964), p.21. Lapp sees Titus belonging, not to himself, but to Rome. The apparent escape routes through the three points of exit from the stage vestibule, to Titus’s quarters, to the city of Rome, to Bérénice’s apartment, lead only to the Senate, the populace and to impossible love, all obstacles to escape.

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‘malheureux’, 28.28 The word ‘funeste’ (‘deadly’) occurs eight times, to be added to ‘mort’ (‘death’) and ‘mourir’ (‘to die’) since its Latin root (funus) signifies many things connected always with death, often violent: grief, mourning, destruction, calamity. Two of the occurrences in Bérénice are noteworthy here, both near the end of the play. The first is in Antiochus’s cry of despairing accusation against the gods: Qu’ai-je donc fait, grands Dieux? Quel cours infortuné À ma funeste vie aviez-vous destiné? (1297-98) (What then have I done, great Gods? To what ill-fated course Have you condemned my baneful life?)

He sees himself as the victim of an evil destiny which has condemned him to a life of death: the striking oxymoron could stand as an epitome of the whole tragedy. The second occurrence is in Bérénice’s last speech. When she suddenly, unpredictably, saves all three principal characters from death by deciding herself to go on living, she says: [...] Je veux, en ce moment funeste, Par un dernier effort couronner tout le reste. (1491-92) (In this our darkest moment, I mean to make my sacrifice complete)

Racine draws attention to this decision, the only real decision within the play, when in his preface he refers to the effort which Bérénice must make and which ‘n’en est pas le moins tragique de la pièce’ (‘is not the least tragic in the play’). He might have written: ‘le moins héroïque’ (‘the least heroic’). Is its unpredictability akin to that of the Cornelian heroes studied by Herland, heroes who finally surpass their moral selves?29 Does it not, in the end, confer upon her an ethical status not unworthy of a Roman? In his account to Titus of the state of public opinion, Paulin had said (375): ‘Elle a même, dit-on, le cœur d’une Romaine’ (‘She even has, they say, the heart of a Roman’). The last speeches of Titus and Antiochus are intimations of intended suicide: cowards’ way out of the unbearable? They make no response other than Antiochus’s final ‘Hélas!’ The end belongs to Bérénice, perhaps a new Bérénice born of her long-delayed, reluctant discovery of the implications of Titus’s ethos. But her final decision does not, within the play, usher in some glorious future, but only life continuing to be lived in a living death, by her and by Emperor and King, in the death of the hope of love (1502-04). Antiochus returns to his loveless kingdom in the Orient, as does Bérénice to hers. Titus must shoulder alone the burden of imperial office. His abundant use of the language of heroism, far from constituting a consistent heroic dis-

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Cf. Supple (Racine: Bérénice, pp.38-39) who refers simply to ‘the leitmotif of sadness’, which is of course part of the elegiac aspect of the tragedy. See also my article, ‘Bérénice: Drama and Elegy of Self-Deception’, Dalhousie French Studies, 49 (1999), pp.90-102; and G. Declerq, ‘« Alchimie de la douleur »: l’élégiaque dans Bérénice, ou la tragédie éthique’, Littératures Classiques, 26 (1996), pp.139-65. L. Herland, ‘L’Imprévisible et l’inexplicable dans la conduite du héros comme ressort tragique chez Corneille’, in Le Théâtre tragique, ed. by J. Jacquot (Paris: CNRS, 1965), pp.239-45.

course, brings him only to a kind of stoical resignation and to the death-wish which haunts him as it does Antiochus and Bérénice herself.30 If, as Forestier suggests, the play is essentially a verbal creation, and if, as d’Aubignac and Corneille long ago insisted, word is action,31 study of Racine’s words in their dramatic situation reveals a Titus using heroic language in a new context but without heroic intent, without the prospect of joyous self-fulfilment,32 an Antiochus unable to rise above elegiac self-pity and regret, and a Bérénice brought to elegiac wistfulness by her false vision of the ‘gloire’ which pursues Titus with all the weight of Roman tradition. But in the end she alone finds the courage to act decisively to avert the threat of suicidal death. She acts then in response to what she sees (1469) as the noble death-wish expressed by Emperor and King (‘Princes trop généreux’): in spite of her melancholy (1471-74), she does momentarily catch a glimpse (1488) of what, according to Suetonius, Titus was to become, ‘amor et deliciae generis humani’ (‘the darling and delight of all mankind’).33 Bérénice saves him for that future, but as it were dutifully and without elation. The moral ambiguities persist to the very end.

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Cf. P. Butler, ‘The Tragedy of Bérénice’, in Racine, ed. by R.C. Knight (London: Macmillan, 1969), especially pp.212-13. Abbé d’Aubignac, La Pratique du théâtre (Algiers: Carbonel, 1927), p.282; Corneille, Writings on the Theatre, p.18. Cf. Hawcroft, Word as Action, pp.14-23, et passim. Cf. the vivid contrast with Corneille’s Horace (Horace, 378-79, 492). Life of Titus, I, vii.1-2. Note Racine’s echoing of Suetonius’s phrase in line 1488 (‘délices’ for ‘deliciae’).

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Angela Ryan

The Lost Heroine and the Memetics of Cultural Inscription in Euripides’s Hippolytus and Racine’s Phèdre1

Since tragedy concerns the acquisition of knowledge through suffering, I would like to suggest that Homer offered the tragic poets two basic modes of acquiring knowledge: (1) the male pattern of acquiring it actively as the result of causing someone’s death […] (2) the female pattern of acquiring it passively, through observation and through loss. Christian ethics might encourage us to prefer the second, but the Iliad and the Odyssey seem to suggest that both modes are necessary at once.2

Humanity has for much of its history inscribed its lived experience in oral, lexical, more recently audio-visual forms. Most of the texts so created, from Gilgamesh to Lara Croft,3 have been articulated around a central figure, heroic in so far as he or she is at once the focus of the action or actant,4 and at the same time the humanoid5 ego to whom the reader relates, engagement with whom drives the interest in the story, forming the pre-text to the reader’s and critic’s metatext. Whether within the Aristotelian framework of the tragic hero,6 its seventeenth-century or contemporary counterparts, or more generally, the hero and his/her imaginaire7 has been a central literary preoccupation as well as a site for historical and political action and interpretation. My aim here is to consider whether this memetic preoccupation with the heroic is a situation in which ‘heroinism’ may similarly be located, through a study of Euripides’s Hippolytus8 and Racine’s Phèdre.9 World culture is full of heroes: can the Aristotelian

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‘Meme’ is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as a ‘self-replicating element of culture, passed on by imitation’. The term ‘memetics’ is coined for that which pertains to memes, as in the Journal of Memetics – Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission (http://jom-emit.cfpm.org/about.html ISSN 1366-4786). Mary R. Lefkowitz, Heroines and Hysterics (London: Duckworth, 1981), p.4. The ancient Babylonian epic Gilgamesh was written more than 3,700 years ago. Lara Croft is a contemporary computer-game heroine: see below, p.49. See A.-K. Greimas, ‘Les Actants, les acteurs et les figures’, in Sémiotique narrative et textuelle (Paris: Larousse, 1973 [Littérature]), p.161. In the sense used by R. Barthes, in Sur Racine (Paris: Seuil, 1963). See Aristotle, Poetics, especially 1454a and 1449b (Aristotle, Poetics, ed. by James Hutton, New York and London: Norton, 1982, pp.50-51 and 58-60). See Eidôlon: Cahiers du laboratoire pluridisciplinaire de recherches sur l’imaginaire appliqué à la littérature, Université Michel de Montaigne-Bordeaux III, 33405 Talence. See also Michèle le Dœuff, The Philosophical Imaginary (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990). Euripides, Hippolytus, with an English translation by David Kovacs (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, forthcoming, ISBN: 0674995333). References to this edition are henceforth in the form Hippolytus, verse number; verse numbers follow this edition and translation.

model be extended to ‘sheroes’? Or was lexical cultural inscription – literature – predicated on de-gendered unicity, such that inclusion of women has transformed our mode of creation and re-creation in reading? This would concur with the ethnographic-memetic function of literature as cultural memory, whose primary outcomes were those of (economic) survival, shifting through metaphrase into (cultural) memory, and continuing, according to contemporary theories of memetics, to underpin noöspheric10 evolution, including changes in women’s condition and representation. Current debate about evolutionary psychology, while relevant (not least the idea expressed by writers like Blackmore,11 Dawkins12 and Dennett13 that the human brain evolved more or less to its present capacity before human cultural history had reached a stage where cognitive activities made such a development ‘necessary’) is not central to my focus. Jacqueline de Romilly has suggested that Greek literature was the site of the literary ‘discovery’ of psychology, following Odysseus’s celebrated interior dialogue of reflection before action.14 Antoine Compagnon has developed the Hegelian idea that tragedy is linked to the problematic displacement of archaic mythic figures into the city of antiquity.15 This is to locate the tragic in the site of shift from the oral to the written, as the privileged means of inscription.16 Greek tragedy of the fifth-century BC Golden Age represents, as Compagnon (p.41) reminds us, an important point in world cultural history, from our perspective: Pensons encore à l’ancienne comédie grecque née au Ve siècle av. J.-C., que Hegel, après l’épopée, liée à l’aristocratie, et la tragédie, née avec la cité antique, rattachait à la décadence de cette dernière. La tragédie apprivoise les mythes archaïques en mettant en scène des personnages devenus démesurés dans le cadre de la cité. En face, la comédie présente, par le renversement, une autre manière de dominer les mythes, dans l’allégresse. Eschyle fut ainsi l’auteur non seulement de Prométhée enchaîné, mais d’un drame satirique parallèle, Prométhée allumeur du feu […] (Another example would be the old Greek comedy of the fifth century BC, which, after the epic form, linked to the aristocratic order, and tragedy, evolved from the ancient Greek city, Hegel associated with the latter’s decay. Tragedy tames the ancient myths by representing on stage characters who now appear larger than life when seen in the context of the polis. Comedy, as opposed to this, presents, through reversal, another and more gleeful way of dominating myths. And so Aeschylus composed not only Prometheus Bound, but a parallel satire, Prometheus Bringer of Fire […]) 9

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Racine, Phèdre et Hippolyte, in Œuvres complètes de Racine I : Théâtre et poésie, ed. by G. Forestier (Paris: Gallimard, 1999 [Pléiade]), pp.815-904. All line references to Phèdre et Hippolyte are from this edition in the form Phèdre, line number. See P. Teilhard de Chardin, Le Phénomène humain (Paris: Seuil, 1998 [1955]). Chardin’s thesis is that human evolution has ceased investment in the zoösphere or physiological realm and moved into the noösphere or realm of the mind/spirit. S. Blackmore, The Meme Machine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). R. Dawkins, The Extended Phenotype (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2nd ed., 1999). D.C. Dennett, Consciousness Explained (London: Viking, 1992). ‘Patience mon cœur’: l’essor de la psychologie dans la littérature grecque classique (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1991), pp.9, 11, 53 ff. L’Esprit de l’Europe 3: Goûts et manières (Paris: Flammarion, 1993), p.41. As a gradual process, shift of emphasis rather than discrete change: the move from epic to tragic shifts focus from the narrative line to the theatrical space; the plays are (later) inscribed and to an extent textually fixed, at least inasmuch as that segment of the mythic cycle is given a specific form; the boundaries remain permeable.

Taking a comparable overview of literature as cultural narrative: is the present cultural shift to the image the medium in which feminine heroism becomes ‘inscribable’ and embodied, such that the heroine is truly represented?17 I believe that the heroic function performed a central role in the development of humanity’s sense of itself; that the memetic inscription of the tragic hero will have been a central parameter in cultural evolution; that being so, literature will have lost part of its memetic necessity with the move away from archaic, violent and competitive models of human evolution, and that we are experiencing the consequences in the present-day search for new cultural forms, as well as new forms of human relationships. This is to place this study of the Phædra mytheme in Euripides and Racine in a wider frame; but my focus here is on the phenomenology of this heroine and her textual embedding in the tragic form. Tragedy functions as a nexus of the public and private space, in which the speaking subject is supposé savoir: supposed to know who he is. Know is here a verb of durative aspect, containing the connotations know, discover, find out, quest, assert, but also, become self-aware, reveal and be revealed, be told, meaning both be informed, and take one’s place in the narrative. In the light of Aristotle’s analysis of the heroic function in the Poetics,18 does Phædra function heroically in either case, that is, committing hamartia, arriving at a point of catastrophe leading to self-knowledge, and engaging the audience in catharsis? Racine, one of the most ‘modern’ of dramatists, substitutes acute psychology for Euripides’s use of divine determination to explain the actions of the Phædra and Hippolytus figures. Is Phèdre’s sphere of action thereby augmented to the heroic? My hypothesis is that Racine’s Phèdre does not greatly increase Phèdre’s access to Aristotelian heroism.19 When Jacqueline de Romilly remarked that behind every Greek hero stands a divine figure,20 she was stating a protohistoric ‘fact’. Greek myth as a family tree has Chaos engender Gaia, the first being, along with Thanatos and Eros, then giving birth in nongendered creative power to Uranus as well as the Titans, the Erinyes and other beings, then uniting in gendered procreation with Uranus to produce the earliest gods, the Titans, from whom will come the Olympians then later men and women, heroes (union of the divine with the human) and monsters (union of the human and the bestial). This narrative of origin 17

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For an analysis of the rhetoric and hermeneutic of the representation of the heroine, drawing on heroic topoi from the theatre of antiquity, French Classical drama, and some contemporary texts and paratexts, including those of Hélène Cixous and of televisual popular culture, see Angela Ryan, ‘Voyageuses sans langage: chemin entre womb (ventre) et tomb (tombeau) de l’héroïne tragique de l’antiquité et contemporaine’, Actes du colloque Destins, Destinataires, Destinations, Université de Nantes, 2000 (forthcoming). Racine translated Aristotle: see Principes de la tragédie: traductions de la Poétique d’Aristote par Racine, ed. by E. Vinaver (Paris: Nizet, 1951). This is – to state the sufficiently obvious – description, not judgement: Racine’s project is in no way related to the problematic of this chapter. For specialised analysis of Phèdre and Racine see H.T. Barnwell, The Tragic Drama of Corneille and Racine (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982); G. Forestier, op. cit.; L. Goldmann, Le Dieu caché (Paris: Gallimard, 1956); D. Maskell, Racine: A Theatrical Reading (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991); C. Mauron, L’Inconscient dans l’œuvre et la vie de Jean Racine (Paris: Ophrys, 1957) and Phèdre (Paris: J. Corti, 1968); H. Phillips, Racine: Language and Theatre (Durham: University of Durham Press, 1994). Héros tragiques, héros lyriques (Paris: Fata Morgana, 2000), p.20.

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is a pre-scientific metanarrative of evolution, a ‘proto-Darwinian’ evolution of beings, giving rise, once settlement has taken place in this cycle of myths, in locations in Greek prehistory, to the families, kingdoms and cultural memory-sites whence the myths derived. A goddess stands behind Phædra, as behind most heroines; this does not necessarily empower them. In Euripides’s Hippolytus, Aphrodite gifts love for Hippolytus on Phædra in order to punish Hippolytus for disdaining her, but this saves Phædra neither from guilt nor punishment, nor does a similar metaphoric representation (of the inability of the subject to withstand instinct) later save Racine’s Phèdre. Aphrodite explicitly places Phædra’s preservation lower than Hippolytus’s punishment: her divine ancestry and the goddess’s favour are no strength.21 In Euripides’s Phædra and Racine’s Phèdre one finds principal female characters with personal qualities of courage, intelligence or integrity. A comparison of the tragedies of Greek Antiquity and those of Classical France, from a twenty-first century perspective, locates the search for the unconscious in Greek muthos.22 Freud compared the actions of the gods in mortal affairs to the actions of unconscious forces; apparently invincible or at least difficult to handle, often at odds with our declared outer selves and lives, often related to the past and its un-negotiated conflicts. Taking the Greek legends metaphorically, we arrive at a modern metalanguage of the human psyche; correcting Freud’s readings through feminism and other new metalanguages of the psyche, bringing it up to date in contemporary experimental women’s writing and theatrical forms, we arrive at what I term a memetic model which traces a crucial memory-imaginaire path, a linked metaphoric chain of the heroic representation of women. This representation is of an absence: the heroine became lost somewhere in fifth-century tragedy. This is not to make a more general comment on the reduction of the role of women in Ancient Greece, which, as several authors have demonstrated,23 was more varied and significant than tradition had encoded: I am speaking specifically of the tragic space and the voice hear-able thereon.24 Nicole Loraux’s examination 21

22

23

24

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In Euripides’s Hippolytus the love-goddess Aphrodite, angry at Hippolytus’s disdain of women, causes Phædra to fall in love with him. Phædra declares her love through her Nurse, only to be repulsed. With the Nurse’s agency she accuses Hippolytus of attacking her; Theseus in unthinking anger uses his power to curse his son, who is killed by the power of the sea-god Neptune. In Racine’s Phèdre the story uses psychology to ‘replace’ divine influence: Phèdre falls in love with Hippolyte while Thésée is away pursuing adventure; she is devastated when he repulses her, but her agreement to have the Nurse’s false accusation against him stand is materialised by her learning that he is in love with another women, Aricie (who does not appear in the Greek original, in which Hippolytus’s representation is not inconsistent with the Greek idea of homosexuality). Thésée’s curse on Hippolyte is acted out by a wild sea driving his horses mad and entangling him in the harness. Significantly, Phèdre does not leave a note admitting guilt then hang herself, as in Euripides, but declares the truth face to face, having taken poison, and dies on stage. The word has many meanings, ranging from public speech or design to children’s story, fable, or the plot of a comedy or tragedy: see Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, ed. by Henry Stuart Jones (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940), s.v. See, for example, S. Pomeroy, Goddesses, Whores, Wives and Slaves (London: Random House, 1994); Women’s Life in Greece and Rome: ed. by M.R. Lefkowitz and M.B. Fant (London: Duckworth, 1982); Lefkowitz, Heroines and Hysterics; S. Blundell, Women in Ancient Greece (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995). Cf. M. Noonan, ‘Performing the Voice of Writing in the In-Between’, Nottingham French Studies, 38, no.1 (Spring 1999), pp.67-79.

of the regions of the body in tragedy25 showed that the throat was the privileged mode of death for women. Loraux suggests that the throat is metonymic with the sexual orifice; I would further suggest that this site of women’s vulnerability is also the site of the voice, carrier of tragic signification. The problem of incest-taboo in the Phædra mytheme has been the object of much comment. Forestier remarked (op.cit., pp.1613-14) how Racine maintained the identity of Phèdre as Thésée’s wife, rather than softening the plot to meet the delicate scruples of the period by making her Thésée’s fiancée, thus engaging a problematic of incest which is absent in Euripides, but present in Roman sources because of Roman law with regard to adoption and marriage, therefore present in Canon law. Racine’s textual and narrative articulation is here as elsewhere so subtle that this problematic retains the crucial ambivalence which is the very source of Racine’s eternal modernity. It is just after Phèdre’s admission to Œnone that the (false) report of Thésée’s death arrives (317-22), and Panope’s announcement of Thésée’s death is followed without pause by his statement of Hippolyte’s apparent political ambition (323-34). As a result, two narrative steps are so seamlessly linked that the exact nature of Phèdre’s crime and the precise ethical values of the choices facing her are entwined with each other. Was Œnone’s horreur a reaction to a desire of adulterous love alone, or to incestuous desire? Would Thésée’s death alone have led her to suggest to Phèdre that she now pursue her desire for Hippolyte, and how significant was the implied threat to her safety and that of her children if Hippolyte succeeded his father? Racine’s subtlety has successfully embedded the mother, the desiring woman, the threatened widow, the vulnerable woman, such that Phèdre’s predicament functions powerfully from different standpoints, including the humanistic, as Forestier (p.1613 et passim) emphasises, but not excluding those of the contemporary society’s acceptance both of monarchy and Christianity, and of their link in royal divine right. As it happens, Œnone’s response to the report of Thésée’s death would appear to obviate the concept of incest. Her statement: Vivez, vous n’avez plus de reproche à vous faire Votre flamme devient une flamme ordinaire Thésée en expirant vient de rompre les nœuds Qui faisaient tout le crime et l’horreur de vos feux […] (Phèdre, 349-52) (Live, you do not have to reproach yourself. Your love is now acceptable. When Theseus died, the bonds that made Your passion wrong and horrible were broken […]

would not apply if the relationship of Phèdre and Hippolyte were incestuous, as well as adulterous. Thésée, however, whilst responding to Œnone’s accusation first in terms of the

25

Nicole Loraux, Tragic Ways of Killing a Woman, tr. by Anthony Forster (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987), pp.49-65 (‘Regions of the Body’, especially the section on the throat: pp.50-53).

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affront to his honour, treasonous political ambition, and rape,26 does not use the term of incest. It is Hippolyte who does so: Un jour seul ne fait point d’un Mortel vertueux Un perfide Assassin, un lâche Incestueux […] (Phèdre, 1099-1100) (A virtuous human does not in one day become A treacherous assassin or an incestuous coward)

but without particular application, as yet, since no-one is accusing him of murder. Even Thésée’s implied accusation: Va chercher des Amis, dont l’estime funeste Honore l’adultère, applaudissent à l’inceste […] (Phèdre, 1145-46) (Go and find friends whose cursed good opinion Will honour adultery and applaud incest)

remains at the level of implication, and Hippolyte’s reply (1149): ‘Vous me parlez toujours d’inceste et d’adultère?’ (‘Are you still calling me incestuous and adulterous?’) fails to clarify the matter: ‘Je me tais […]’ (1150) (‘I will not answer […]’). We have thus a statement from Œnone that Phèdre’s love, while criminal because adulterous, is not incestuous – since that would not change with Thésée’s death; then a strong implication from Thésée that it includes incest amongst its criminal aspects. Thésée however is not speaking from a standpoint of assuming his own death, and Hippolyte’s violating his wife whilst he was alive might seem monstrous. His soliloquy in Act IV, scene 3 is preoccupied with his paternal feelings for Hippolytus, and his sense that they are outraged. It is as if the incest is for him located within the father-son relationship itself, as if their common desire for the same woman brought them into a kind of deferred incestuous physical relationship. Hippolyte has just referred (1151-52) to Phèdre’s mother, and her family, as one in which unnatural loves occurred, while in his they did not, to argue the likelihood of her being guilty of unnatural love in her turn. Significantly, however, mother-son (or stepson) incest does not feature in the myths of Minos and his family, but rather love between human and beast (Pasiphäe and the bull). In Hippolyte’s mythic Amazon ancestry love does exist which is ‘against nature’ in a sense, and in Racine’s contemporary world view, that of woman for woman. Mother-son sexuality features twice: the cosmic origin myth of Gaia, and the Œdipus myth itself. Here the réappropriation of Euripides becomes suggestive: if Racine’s Thésée reproaches his son in similar terms to Euripides’s Theseus, the consequent textual accusation of the two, Hippolytus and Hippolyte, reminds us that each tragedy in its way and in its world is engaging a number of male-female dynamics.27 26

27

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‘L’insolent a de la force emprunté le secours’ (Phèdre, 1008) (‘The insolent wretch has used the help of force’). If we look at other reworkings of this mytheme, we find a range of motivations and socio-cultural settings, all serving to explain the central passion as in fact reasonable in the circumstances, as distinct from truly transgressive. T. Harrison’s Phædra Britannica (London: Rex Collings, 1975) is set in the India of the Raj, the Phædra-Hippolytus couple being the Governor’s wife and his son by an earlier cross-cultural union.

Hippolyte and Phædra have been postulated as divided by their desirous modes respectively of homosexuality and heterosexuality: this opens a field of investigation as to what these terms meant exactly in the world of antiquity – and indeed at any time. ‘Exactly’ here may mean no more than ‘how exactly would this model of human sexuality impact upon the play’s action and the characters’ motivation’; at the same time is engaged a series of problematics, not least that addressed by Judith Butler in Antigone’s Claim: Lévi-Strauss makes clear in The Elementary Structure of Kinship that nothing in biology necessitates the incest taboo, that it is the mechanism by which biology is transformed into culture, and so is neither biological nor cultural, though culture itself cannot do without it. By ‘cultural’ Lévi-Strauss does not mean ‘culturally variable’ or ‘contingent’, but rather, operating according to ‘universal’ rules of culture.28

One interesting possible interpretation of Theseus’s accusation of incest (and his alone) is that he is politicising the relationship triangle in a way that goes back to the displacement of Old King by Young King both in the Uranus-Gaia-Cronos and in the Cronos-Rhea-Zeus mythemes. Forestier (p.1613) points to Racine’s ‘réappropriation des passages les plus poétiques’ of Euripides as of other sources, and a close comparative reading of the two plays is interesting both for the straightforward borrowings, the subtle possible reassignments of signification which sometimes underlie these, and the dramaturgic aspects introduced by Racine. In Euripides, Hippolytus and Phædra never meet on stage, and Theseus does not appear until Phædra is dead; in Racine, however, the dialogue between Phèdre and Hippolyte, and later that between Phèdre and Thésée, are of greatly heightened dramatic effect. Racine’s subtle play of motivation-clues enables a reading whereby it is specifically Phèdre’s jealousy of Hippolyte in relation to a rival, Aricie, which triggers, chronologically at least, her crime of false accusation – which is indeed the first unarguably guilty act on her part. Racine’s symmetrical hero-confidant scenes for Hippolyte, then Phèdre, expose the plot at the outset, and Œnone continues to act as Phèdre’s audience for plot development whilst becoming herself involved in initiating dramatic action: in Euripides, the Nurse has a similarly active though differently articulated combined role, as chorus-audience and actor, whereas the expository function is engaged by the goddesses, and by the chorus and chorus leader. The chorus’s sympathy for Euripides’s Phædra: Chorus leader: Phædra, the advice she gives is more expedient in view of the disaster that is upon you, but it is you that I praise. Yet this speech is a harder saying to you than her speech and more painful for you to bear […] (Hippolytus, 482-85)

is made possible by Aphrodite’s early exposition of Phædra’s powerlessness and victimisation: I honour those who reverence my power, but I lay low all those who think proud thoughts against me. For in the gods as well one finds this trait: they enjoy receiving honour from mortals […] He [Hippoly28

J. Butler, Antigone’s Claim: Kinship Between Life and Death (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), p.19.

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tus] shuns the bed of love and will have nothing to do with marriage. Instead, he honours Apollo’s sister Artemis, Zeus’s daughter […] Her [Phædra’s] heart was seized with a dreadful longing by my design […] I shall reveal the matter to Theseus and it will come to light […] Phædra, noble though she is, shall nonetheless die. (Hippolytus, 5-8)

Racine, on the other hand, does not represent Phèdre as foredoomed, whether as a woman (as might become apparent in today’s retrospective feminist analysis), or in a Christian moral universe, Jansenist or other; his careful, step-by-step plot articulation enables the audience to follow, on psychological grounds, the movement of her feelings, from hidden desire, to open admission, to fear for her life, then rage at rejection; that the latter is the final push toward actual guilty action is brilliantly successful and subtle dramatic action, though not heroic action in Aristotle’s sense. Amongst the passages reworked from Euripides by Racine is Phædra’s opening apostrophe: Phædra: Raise up my body, hold my head erect! My limbs are unstrung […] It is grievous to have this head-dress on my head. (Hippolytus,198-99, 201)

To this one may add her leaving the naming of Hippolytus to the Nurse: Phædra: Whatever his name is, son of the Amazon […] Nurse:

You mean Hippolytus.

Phædra: Yours are the words, not mine […] (Hippolytus, 351-52)

and the passage where Phædra emphasises the fatality of her situation and its origins in her family’s past: Nurse:

I’m silent now. The word henceforth is yours.

Phædra:

Unhappy mother, what a love you felt!

Nurse:

For the Cretan bull? Or what is this you mean?

Phædra:

And you, poor sister, Dionysius’ bride!

Nurse:

What’s wrong with you daughter? Why defame your kin?

Phædra:

And I the third, how wretchedly I perish! (Hippolytus, 336-41)

It is interesting that it is the Nurse in Euripides who, when Phædra’s forbidden desire is revealed, refers to the daylight being insupportable in the presence of such guilt, while Racine has Phèdre herself fearing the light of the Sun, her paternal ancestor.29 Another difference relates to Phædra’s cultural posterity, rather than her mythic ancestry – Artemis consoles Hippolytus, saying that Phædra’s love for him will cause him to be honoured by maidens before marriage: ‘And Phædra’s love for you shall not fall nameless and unsung’ (Hippolytus, 1429-30), where, in Racine, Phèdre’s memory is to be proscribed: ‘[…] D’une action si noire/Que ne peut avec elle expirer la mémoire!’ (Phèdre, 1645bis-1646) (‘If only 29

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‘Hateful to me is the day, the light I see!’ (Hippolytus, 355); ‘Mes yeux sont éblouis du jour que je revois’ (Phèdre, 155) (‘My eyes are blinded by the daylight that I see again’), especially read in parallel with Phèdre, 171-72 and 1273bis-1274.

the memory of so black a deed could die with her!’). This difference is all the more interesting since it is in Euripides that Hippolytus is explicit about his rejection of the female,30 and both Phædra herself and the chorus acknowledge a prevalent misogyny.31 I have analysed elsewhere Phèdre’s prevailing personal rhetoric of immobility and impossibility of action or movement, both bodily and spatial.32 Another significant aspect of her constrained heroic space is her incapacity to name: she leads Œnone to name the object of her passion, bringing her gradually by a series of steps in ever-decreasing circles, against her incredulity, to Hippolyte – who is after all apparently the only male of Phèdre’s age and class about the place, and as her stepson, not distanced by kinship taboo. Œnone’s disbelief is mirrored by Hippolyte’s horror at Phèdre’s declaration of love: the likely motivation for this horror in the case of Euripides’s Hippolytus has been given a well-argued reading of homosexual gynophobia,33 the motive in the Greek text originating in Aphrodite’s wish to punish Hippolytus for his dishonour of her, enacted by gifting this unwelcome passion upon Phædra and setting in motion the resulting catastrophe. Phèdre’s guilt at her passionate feelings for Hippolyte are indeed laid by herself at the feet of the goddess: Ce n’est plus une ardeur dans mes veines cachée: C’est Vénus toute entière à sa proie attachée […] (Phèdre, 305-06) (This is no longer a hidden passion pulsing in me: This is Venus herself preying on me […])

I suggest that her feelings of guilt, shame and rage are not all in one psychological package, as it were the goddess’s gift/burden, but that they follow an evolution: feelings, leading to a wish to die, at her unexpressed desire; feelings, on hearing of her husband’s death, when she becomes able with Œnone’s encouragement to express to Hippolyte her love; feelings, at Hippolyte’s rejection of her; feelings, on discovering that Thésée is alive after all; feelings, on discovery of Hippolyte’s love for Aricie. The order of events is significant, but so is the periodicity between them. For example, Aricie is specific to Racine, not Euripides, whose Hippolytus is devoted to the chaste Artemis. A metaphoric link might be established in the respectful, de-eroticised nature of Hippolyte’s declaration to Aricie. Phèdre’s guilt and shame at her feelings at the outset, enough to make her ill, are altered by the news of Thésée’s death, suggesting that it is her duties as wife that she was transgressing, rather than another taboo. Her feelings on being rejected, and on finding that Hippolyte loves Aricie, are different and lead her to hatred directed against the other rather than at herself. Self-hatred will recur later when she admits guilt to Thésée, having already enacted selfrevenge on her body (significantly by ingestion, and that of a poison made by the betrayed 30

31

32

33

‘O Zeus, why have you settled women in the light of the sun, women, this bane mankind find counterfeit? If you wished to propagate the human race, it was not from women that you should have given us this’ (Hippolytus, 616-19). I knew that both the deed and the passionate longing for it were discreditable, knew besides that I was a woman, a thing all men hate’ (Hippolytus, 405-6). A.M.T. Ryan, ‘The Transformation of the Body: Phèdre and Monique’, Paragraph (October 1994), pp.8191. J.J. Smoot, ‘Literary Criticism on a Vase-Painting: A Clearer Picture of Euripides’s Hippolytus’, Comparative Literature Studies, 13, no. 4 (1976), pp.292-303.

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Medea who took revenge through the product of her body, her children). Which event is the main or true trigger of Phèdre’s access of murderous rage: rejection by Hippolyte or double rejection at his loving another? The sequence of events is so handled that this point would remain ambiguous. Having made her declaration to Hippolyte, Phèdre says to Œnone: J’ai déclaré ma honte aux yeux de mon vainqueur, Et l’espoir, malgré moi, s’est glissé dans mon cœur. (Phèdre, 767-78) (I have admitted my shame, face to face, to the man who has conquered me, And, despite myself, hope has crept into my heart.)

When Œnone castigates Hippolyte’s indifference, she retorts: Œnone, il peut quitter cet orgueil qui te blesse. Nourri dans les forêts, il en a la rudesse. Hippolyte, endurci par de sauvages lois, Entend parler d’amour pour la première fois. (Phèdre, 781-84) (Œnone, he could alter this pride you find hurtful. Hippolyte was brought up in the woods, and he is wild in his behaviour, Hardened by the law of the wild; This is the first time anyone has spoken to him of love.)

Phèdre then sends Œnone to stimulate the political ambition she has seen in Hippolyte by representing herself as the gate to his power: Qu’il mette sur son front le sacré diadème, Je ne veux que l’honneur de l’attacher moi-même. (Phèdre, 801-02) (Let him wear the sacred diadem on his head; All I want is to be the one who crowns him.)

Phèdre has approached the site of hamartia, wielding power ‘like a man’ to gain her ends; however this heroinic potentiality is disabled by the news that Thésée is back. Phèdre’s power, and power of hamartia, was merely that of counter-structure to Thésée; with his return she is powerless, and in fear of her life for having desired power. She blames Œnone for her own actions, and ends by relinquishing agency to her: Fais ce que tu voudras; je m’abandonne à toi. Dans le trouble où je suis, je ne puis rien pour moi […] (Phèdre, 911-12) (Do whatever you want : I am in your hands. I am so troubled that I can do nothing for myself […])

She is assuming that Thésée’s rage against Hippolyte will be confined to exile, and that the corollary is Hippolyte’s denouncing her, which would be death (Phèdre, 901-02). In Act IV, scene 5 she realises that Thésée is thinking of invoking Neptune to kill Hippolyte, is confounded, but is interrupted in what seemed to tend towards a plea for mercy when Thésée reveals Hippolyte’s declaration of love for Aricie, a declaration dismissed by Thésée but believed by Phèdre. It is here that she enters into an access of frustrated rage at 42

the rejection of her passion for Hippolyte, now revealed to be not inexperienced with women but indifferent to her. This narrative nexus, which Forestier (p.1634) terms a dynamique des aveux, is crucial to Phèdre’s capacity for heroic action. Euripides uses the term hamartia with regard to Phædra (Hippolytus, 323) and to Theseus (1409), but not Hippolytus himself, who asserts that he has done no wrong (1384). At the same time, Phèdre’s dramatic language does not allow that margin for autonomous action which would enable hamartia; space for catharsis is opened to some extent at the end, with Theseus’s realisation of his error and Hippolytus’s forgiveness. The above analysis of the dynamic chain of motivations displays Racine’s subtlety as a psychologist but at the expense of Phèdre’s capacity for tragic hamartia. Thésée’s appropriation of tragic misstep impacts generally on female capacity for dramatic action in Phèdre. ‘No woman is safe’ or, more significantly for this analysis, autonomously active. I would suggest that Thésée’s appropriation of Aricie at the end of Racine’s Phèdre is, given the representation of Thésée’s predation of women, somewhat sinister, tending to confirm the limitations of Phèdre’s tragic scope: the Queen dead, he reverts to the nearest female signifier, the Princess. The linking of Artemis-Aricie in the comparative model of both plays would point to an occluded space for desire, other than predatory male-centred desire as represented by Theseus. Judging by these plays, neither fifth-century Greece nor seventeenth-century France gives any unambiguous model for other modes of desire. The loss or absence of the heroine which, I suggest, is central to tragedy in the Western tradition is not a structure without counter-structures: amongst the heroines who may be considerd in this light are Racine’s Andromaque,34 Euripides’s Alcestis, Mme de La Fayette’s La Princesse de Clèves, Jane Austen’s heroines, Farida Belghoul’s Georgette, and Flaubert’s Madame Bovary. Aristotle’s description of tragedy gave central place to catharsis: contemporary postpsychoanalysis thought reads this as the idea that representation includes that of the unconscious, and that lexical representation is a mediator between self and other. Nosological considerations are irrelevant here, as are the post-Freudian critiques to which they have given rise.35 Two ideas remain central to the critical process: first, that of the encounter of two discourses, the one telling all in free association, the other receiving with floating attention; second, the basic concepts of condensation and displacement.36 The heroic discourse is that which is pronounced in the tragic space of the theatre, whose acoustic structure enables one voice to be heard. Even the hero was not there from the outset: when the Dionysian dithyramb, a choral dance and song involving all the possible opera of the human mindbody, was first interrupted by the protagonist, reputedly Thespis,37 a voice claimed airspace from the collective body. When the second actor was introduced, reputedly by Aes34

35

36 37

Cf. Œuvres complètes, ed. by Forestier, pp.199-256, and S.B. Pomeroy, ‘Andromaque: un exemple méconnu du matriarcat’, Revue d’Études Grecques, 88 (1975), pp.15-19. ‘Nosology’ is defined as ‘A systematic arrangement, or classification, of diseases’, or as ‘That branch of medical science which treats of diseases, or of the classification’ (http://onlinedictionary.datasegment.com/word/Nosology/). S. Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (London: Penguin, 1997), pp.170-94. S. Goetsch and C.W. Marshall, ‘Introduction to Greek Stagecraft’ (Didaskalia: Ancient Theater Today, [email protected], 1998).

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chylus, and the third, by Sophocles,38 a dramatic action of plot and subplot developed, much as we are now accustomed to think of drama in any form. The stories are still largely the same, not surprising when popular culture alleges that there are only seven stories and three situations in human narrative.39 My suggestion is that humanity’s progress – in the direct sense of movement through time, leaving aside any necessarily logical-positive or nineteenth-century faith in linear scientific progress – is one driven by transgression which later appears (or is constructed) as necessary, a step, however partially successful, towards fulfilment or destiny: a general framework may be assumed, in which the mere energy value of the human system for all its actual and putative years of existence, is possibly expended to some ordered purpose – any attempt to fix that end, history teaches us, is, or becomes, tyrannical, but supposing it to be there is not unreasonable, no more than our deciding to call living the process which we might more logically call dying, since each moment moves us towards that end. The belief which we confer on our vécu as driven by its fleeting present, rather than its certain future, appears needful if we are to invest energy in the production and interpretation of culture, for which we exist; non-logical, but probably necessary. This would give substance to the existence of culture in the first place: the urge to record experience might reasonably be driven by some sense of entelechy (the realisation of human potentialities), or even a simple drive to survival. Culture would thus be the memetic aspect of genetic evolution; further, memetic inscription over time might reveal metaphrastic metaphoric chains such as that which I am tracing in this study, that of the truncated emergence, loss and possible rediscovery of the heroine. Within this model, the hero emerges as the protagonist of fantasy, the latter being defined by Laplanche and Pontalis as a scenario in which the subject is always present, and always as actor or agent.40 Subsequently the heroic subject is embedded in the hieratic and cultural space of tragedy and embodied in the protagonist’s voice. In this hypothesis the heroic subject might be a cultural mediator, emblematic of a particular cultural space/time-frame, whose gradual end might be marked by a change in the psyche, which thenceforth sees humanity’s theory-future self other than as the transgressive, overreaching, attention-appropriating individual, and which therefore downsizes accordingly the heroic imaginaire. In sum, the site where we begin to search for the lost heroine, may be that in which the psyche has already moved on, and our evolving imaginaire is seeking and constructing a non-conflictive, dehierarchised self where the male-female combined human is not split. Such speculation would, at any rate, fit with the present evolution of the heroinic imaginaire in representations like Lara Croft, whose iconic muscle, weaponry and mammary glands make of her the new superhero, and, interestingly, whose formal coiffure and characteristic gesture of reaching back over her shoulder for her weapons refer back to the 38 39

40

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N. Gill, Greek Tragedy III (Sophocles, ancienthistory.about.com/library/weekly/aa11897.htm March 2000). Typically, the seven stories are: boy meets girl; boy loses girl; boy and girl reunite; a village (family/institution) grows; a village (family/institution) declines and falls; despite heroic efforts, a war (conditions for war) is (are) initiated; after many vicissitudes, a conflict is resolved. The three situations are: the quest; the unexpected encounter; the uninvited guest. J. Laplanche and J.-M. Pontalis, Vocabulaire de la psychanalyse (13th ed., Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1997), pp.152-57.

metaphoric chain of representations of the divine Artemis, relocating the chaste selfproviding goddess perhaps in the originating, female/non-gendered generative principle which Aeschylus, before distorting, had begun by celebrating. The emergence, as part of the evolutive process of the cosmogonic schema, of the hero (human and divine) and the monster (human and bestial) would thus be a cultural-evolution metaphor. As Bourdieu says, the ligne de démarcation to which a ritual draws attention is usually there to mask the real difference being constructed by magie sociale.41 The hero/monster couple redraws the cosmogony into a triple: divine-human-bestial, which is really double, divine-human, the bestial being infra-cultural; this occludes the two (or more) levels of divinity and, in particular, the metaphoric shift to sexual-couple engendering (as the histories of conflict associated with it from the outset) and later, to sole or privileged paternal engendering. The reproducing female, as a body within a body, has been metaphorically monstrous, heroically ‘unthinkable’. Is this new heroine-avatar a new metaphor of the originating Gaia? Sadly, no answer is reassuring for literature. Julia Kristéva has speculated that world-explanatory discourse has evolved from that of primitive religion, in turn to that of established religion, that of the Enlightenment, and most recently, to the discourse of the unconscious; I would suggest that human access to, and markers of, power and status have progressed from aggression, to land ownership, to capital ownership, to ownership of knowledge, a process fed by and feeding present aspirations to equality, since responsibilities for reproduction and access to survival need no longer be sexually attributed. A contiguous evolution from oral representation to lexical for five thousand odd years of literature, five hundred of them leading to a focal point where more people can read than cannot, may now be continuing towards audio-visual representation. A prospect terrifying for those of us who live by and for the book, but the meme presumably knows what it is doing.

41

P. Bourdieu, Ce que parler veut dire (Paris: Fayard, 1982), p.125.

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John Campbell

The Twilight of Heroism: Ambition and Ambitions in La Princesse de Clèves It is a commonplace to remark that something happened to heroism in the literature of seventeenth-century France. An example often given is the difference between the major tragedies of Corneille and Racine: in Corneille’s Horace (1640) the eponymous hero is burning to achieve immortal glory in battle, whereas in Racine’s Andromaque (1667) Pyrrhus claims that the fire of love burns more fiercely in him than the flames that destroyed Troy. A similar evolution has been traced in the novel. Though one must guard against generalisation, there seems to be a marked shift of emphasis between the heroic novel of the first half of the century, in which noble protagonists win stirring victories against impossible odds, and the significant fiction of the final decades, with a markedly non-heroic love-theme stitched into titles such as ‘The Disorders of Love’ or ‘Letters of a Portuguese Nun’. Of these latter works the most famous is La Princesse de Clèves, published anonymously in 1678 and later attributed, not with absolute safety, to Mme de Lafayette. The following pages will attempt to use this novel to take the temperature of heroism in the later part of the century, through an examination of one of its traditional manifestations, ambition.1 A first, telling indication is the question that immediately springs to mind: how could ambition play a significant part in La Princesse de Clèves? After all, the word itself appears only six times in all.2 Is this novel not, basically, the story of an unfortunate love between Mme de Clèves and the duc de Nemours, with an overbearing mother and a jealous husband in attendance? ‘Ambition’ suggests the appetite for power and influence in the world of human affairs. What significant role could it play within the introspective intensity of what is often celebrated as the first classic ‘psychological novel’? ‘Ambition’ seems to imply single-mindedness and deliberate design, in a public context. What place could this have in a novel that explores the subtle interplay of appearance and reality within complex emotional states, a novel whose fascination largely derives from the unceasing ambiguities surrounding motive and desire?3 However natural and legitimate, such questions imply a very narrow view of the novel’s structure, and do a disservice to the richness and potential for ambiguity of the whole notion of ambition. In the first place, La Princesse de Clèves does not merely de1

2

3

For an overview of this fiction, see H. Coulet, Le Roman jusqu’à la Révolution, 2 vols, Collection ‘U’ (Paris: A. Colin, 1967), vol. I. See B. Quemada, Index de mots: « La Princesse de Clèves » (Besançon: Faculté des Lettres et des Sciences Humaines, 1960). This question has been largely developed in J. Campbell, Questions of Interpretation in ‘La Princesse de Clèves’ (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996), which also carries a wide-ranging bibliography (further references to this work are in the body of the text, followed by a page-number). Saluons au passage Moya Longstaffe, who first introduced me to this novel, in one of a series of stimulating and enjoyable tutorials at Queen’s University, Belfast.

scribe love relationships and their consequences, but also presents a view of life at the Renaissance Court in France.4 In this novel the Court is self-evidently more than just background scenery or a device to add local colour. The characters live, move and suffer in this environment, must explain absences from it, and are to a large extent defined by it. What happens in this natural theatre of political and personal ambition necessarily influences the conduct of private passion, and vice versa. The fact that the term ambition is itself not used much in La Princesse de Clèves is no sure guide to the importance represented by the idea. The ten tragedies of Racine that follow his very first provide an example. The word ambition is to be found only six times in this considerable corpus, but this does not prevent Racine from plotting the ambitious desires of such as Néron, Mithridate or Athalie. In La Princesse de Clèves as in the theatre of Racine, these desires are conveyed, or referred to, by many other terms, such as, for example, honour, glory, self-advancement, self-interest, envy and jealousy. In addition, ambition itself turns out, on examination, to be no simple phenomenon. Its innate ambiguity is already reflected in the Académie dictionary definition: ‘Désir excessif d’honneur & de grandeur. Se prend quelquefois en bonne part, & on s’en sert pour exprimer un juste désir de faire de grandes actions qui soient dignes d’honneur’ (‘An excessive desire for honour and greatness. It is sometimes used in a complimentary fashion, to express a just desire to achieve great things which might be worthy of honour’).5 A similar ambiguity persists today, as can be seen from the Petit Robert definition, where ambition is, on the one hand, defined as a ‘désir ardent d’obtenir des biens qui peuvent flatter l’amour-propre’ (‘burning desire to gain possession of what can flatter one’s self-esteem’), and, on the other, a ‘désir ardent de réussite dans l’ordre intellectuel, moral’ (‘burning desire to succeed in intellectual or moral spheres’). The preacher’s terminology which encases the first definition (‘flatter one’s self-esteem’) gives way to a sense of noble aim in the second, exemplified in the quotation from Victor Hugo chosen to illustrate it: ‘Les magnifiques ambitions font faire les grandes choses’ (‘magnificent ambitions lead to the achievement of great things’). To complicate further the semantics, these contrasting definitions overlook another sense of the term, expressed so poignantly by Bérénice: Depuis quand croyez-vous que ma grandeur me touche? Un soupir, un regard, un mot de votre bouche, Voilà l’ambition d’un cœur comme le mien.6 (What makes you think I hanker to be great? A heart like mine asks nothing but a word, A look, a sigh.)

In other words, ambition here is still a ‘burning desire’, but with an object more personal and intimate than that apparently allowed by dictionaries such as the Petit Robert. It seems 4

5 6

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See for example A. Couprie, De Corneille à La Bruyère: Images de la Cour (Lille: Atelier de reproduction des thèses, 1984), p.541. Dictionnaire de l’Académie française, 1694. Bérénice, 575-77, in Œuvres complètes de Racine I ; Théâtre et poésie, ed. by G. Forestier (Paris: Gallimard [Pléiade], 1999). The English text is taken from Jean Racine, Berenice, translated by R.C. Knight, completed and edited by H.T. Barnwell (Edinburgh: Durham Academic Press, 1999), p.29.

obvious that one should ask to what extent the characters of La Princesse de Clèves burn with the same ambition as Bérénice. To these general considerations one might add the ambiguity of the novel itself.7 No critical agreement has been reached on any of the major issues that arise from it, and in particular, on what motivates the heroine to persist in her refusal of the man she loves. It can be shown that the vocabulary of the passions, always subtle in seventeenth-century France, is here vast, complex and slippery, and that ethical terms, famously difficult to interpret in this novel, are contingent more on personal realities than on any general belief-system. The uncertainties generated by this vocabulary, sharpened by a vast lexis of appearances as well as terms such as ‘perhaps’ and ‘almost’, are compounded by the narrator’s general refusal to judge, and by the different narrative voices. We are thrown into a world dominated by appearances, where it is as difficult for readers as for characters to gain a stable image of ‘truth’ or ‘reality’. We should not therefore by surprised if we are unable to obtain a single, simple vision of ambition. The Court of Henri II seems a first-class laboratory to study ambition in its ‘worldly’ sense, that is, the desire for personal advancement and self-aggrandisement: ‘L’ambition et la galanterie étaient l’âme de cette cour, et occupaient également les hommes et les femmes’ (p.22) (‘Ambition and love-affairs were the life-blood of the Court, absorbing the attention of men and women alike’). Galanterie is itself as difficult a term to pin down as it is to translate: it can mean a playful love-intrigue, but also a serious, illicit and potentially destructive passion. This disturbing ambivalence makes it the perfect stablemate for ambition. Both can be viewed as the expression of a desire formalised, and thus to some extent neutralised, through its expression in a Renaissance Court where the search for beauty and pleasure became art forms. This formalisation is present from the outset: ‘La magnificence et la galanterie n’ont jamais paru en France avec tant d’éclat que dans les dernières années du règne de Henri second’ (p.3) (‘Never has France seen such a display of courtly magnificence and manners as in the last years of the reign of Henri II’). These opening lines introduce a series of descriptions of courtiers, penned in the kind of hyperbolic language which suggests that both ambition and galanterie belong to an idealised world in which all strive, not for some base personal interest, but for grandeur, beauty and harmony: Jamais cour n’a eu tant de belles personnes et d’hommes admirablement bien faits; et il semblait que la nature eût pris plaisir à placer ce qu’elle donne de plus beau dans les plus grandes princesses et dans les plus grands princes. […] Ceux que je vais nommer étaient, en des manières différentes, l’ornement et l’admiration de leur siècle. (pp.4-5) (No Court has ever brought together so many beautiful women and wonderfully handsome men: it seemed as if nature had bestowed her finest gifts on fair princesses and noble princes alike. […] Those I shall name here were, in their different ways, the ornament and wonder of their age.)

7

All quotations and textual references (with page numbers in brackets in the body of the text) will be from Mme de Lafayette, La Princesse de Clèves (Paris: Livre de Poche, 1972; reprinted 1991). Translations of this text are from ‘The Princesse de Clèves’ with ‘The Princesse de Montpensier’ and ‘The Comtesse de Tende’, translated and edited by T. Cave (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). Translations of other works are mine.

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In this context, anything smacking of ‘ambition’ is assigned a noble aim. An example is the treatment of three most openly ambitious members of the Court, who were to become the sinister godfathers of the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, the Guise brothers (p.6). The eldest, who had an ‘âme noble et élevée’ (‘a noble and lofty soul’) is not pictured as indulging in cut-throat rivalry, but in providing emulation, and inspiring envy in others to show the same military prowess as himself; the qualification assigned to the second son, the cardinal, of being ‘né avec une ambition démesurée’ (‘endowed from birth with an overreaching ambition’), only precedes a description of his great learning and his defence of the Catholic religion; and the youngest is, simply, ‘aimé de tout le monde’ (‘loved by all’). Any hint of a wart, which might lurk in terms such as envy, emulation or ambition, is as though airbrushed out of a quasi-official portrait. What changes after this seemingly anodyne beginning is the presentation of the heroine, Mlle de Chartres, and her mother. Before introducing her daughter at Court, Mme de Chartres presents a starkly different picture of galanterie, as something destructive, and of its very essence pernicious (p.15). This leads to a redefinition of the Court as a place ‘où il y avait tant d’exemples si dangereux’ (p.22) (‘where dangerous examples abounded’). It is thus with this more sombre perspective that we read, in the following sentence, that ‘L’ambition et la galanterie étaient l’âme de cette cour, et occupaient également les hommes et les femmes’ (‘Ambition and love affairs were the life-blood of the Court, absorbing the attention of men and women alike’), a phrase immediately followed by a long illustration of what these abstract qualifications signify in reality: Il y avait tant d’exemples et tant de cabales différentes, et les dames y avaient tant de part que l’amour était toujours mêlé aux affaires et les affaires à l’amour. Personne n’était tranquille, ni indifférent; on songeait à s’élever, à plaire, à servir ou à nuire. (There were countless interests at stake, countless different factions, and women played such a central part in them that love was always entangled with politics and politics with love. No one was tranquil or indifferent; all thoughts were on seeking advancement, gaining favour, helping, or harming.)

A feature of ambition here is thus its disturbing coupling with sexual desire, just as sexual ambition is inseparable from the pleasure of influence. The practical result is the constitution at Court of a series of little groups whose activities are far from the idealised world presented earlier. A symptom is the sharply different context in which the earlier vocabulary is now used: Toutes ces différentes cabales avaient de l’émulation et de l’envie les unes contre les autres: les dames qui les composaient avaient aussi de la jalousie entre elles, ou pour la faveur, ou pour les amants; les intérêts de grandeur et d’élévation se trouvaient souvent joints à ces autres intérêts moins importants, mais qui n’étaient pas moins sensibles. (A state of rivalry and mutual envy existed between these different factions. The women of whom they were made up were also jealous of one another’s social advantage or lovers; it often came about that the interests at stake in the form of ambition and advancement were connected with the other sort of interest, less important perhaps but no less strongly felt.)

Ambition is here shorn of any heroic trappings. It mingles with rivalry, factions, envy, jealousy, the possession of lovers and social advantage, in a situation where the motive power 50

is not the ‘courtly magnificence’ of the novel’s opening phrase but an appropriately-veiled self-interest. It is difficult not to draw a parallel with the picture etched in acid by La Bruyère: L’on se couche à la cour et l’on se lève sur l’intérêt; ce que l’on digère le matin et le soir, le jour et la nuit; c’est ce qui fait que l’on pense, que l’on parle, que l’on se tait, que l’on agit.8 (Courtiers retire for the night, and arise next morning, filled only with self-interest; this is what they digest morning and evening, day and night; it is for this that they think, speak, keep silent or act.)

Ambition, therefore, first seen as an outward and positive drive, a necessary concomitant of aristocratic dignity, the very fuel of courtly magnificence, is presented a few pages later as something hidden, personal and even dangerous. This vision is confirmed in the pages devoted to the atmosphere as the king lies dying, in a Court ‘aussi partagée et aussi remplie d’intérêts opposés’ (p.202) (‘so divided and so full of opposed interests’). This is not to say that the concept has lost its associations with dignity and nobility: there will be other Court ceremonies, and a lexis of Court magnificence as hyperbolic as at the outset (pp.112-13, 197-99). The difference is that an appearance has been replaced by knowledge and uncertainty: knowledge that other, less noble desires stir ceaselessly beneath the surface, and uncertainty as to whether this necessarily subverts the ideal of humankind striving towards a noble end. The treatment of ambition is symptomatic of this uneasy shift within the novel’s exposition, and is partly responsible for it. Just as the glitter of Court hides darker, more poisonous motives, does ambition always, or only sometimes, possess the appearance of nobility? How can we with any certainty say? In this light, it could be said that part of the heroine’s difficulty is caused by an inability to understand what really is the ambition of those closest to her: her mother, husband and lover. Her mother, Mme de Chartres, seems at first possessed of a single-minded desire that what she calls ‘virtue’ should be the sole pursuit of her daughter, and that this aim should best be achieved in a tranquil married relationship of mutual affection offering protection from sexual desire, ‘ce qui seul peut faire le bonheur d’une femme’ (p.15) (‘the only thing that can ensure a woman’s happiness’). This offers a striking illustration of our second dictionary definition of ambition, the burning desire to succeed in a moral sphere. This ambition seems indeed invested with a certain heroic quality. There are, however, problems. Many have pointed out that this is merely the mother’s ambition for a daughter who, when she finds herself alone, cannot rely for orientation on another’s ethical compass. A more intractable difficulty for the heroine is that the first, more pejorative sense of ambition (‘the burning desire to gain possession of what can flatter one’s self-esteem’) is also lurking within. For the mother’s desire is also that marriage for her daughter should be accompanied by an enhancement of social status: ‘Mme de Chartres, qui était extrêmement glorieuse, ne trouvait presque rien digne de sa fille; la voyant dans sa seizième année, elle voulut la mener à la cour’ (p.15) (‘Mme de Chartres, who was exceptionally proud and ambitious, considered almost nothing worthy of her daughter; so, when she was in her sixteenth

8

‘De la Cour’, in La Bruyère, Œuvres complètes, ed. by Julien Benda (Paris: Gallimard [Pléiade], 1934), p.141.

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year, she decided to take her to Court’). Here the past historic form of vouloir (‘decided’) clearly signals the energetic will to bring this ambition to fulfilment. And it is this decision which leads to an inevitable conflict between the two strands of ambition. This potentially lethal ambiguity is already present in the conflicting claims implicit in Mme de Chartres’s education of her daughter: ‘elle ne travailla pas seulement à cultiver son esprit et sa beauté, elle songea à lui donner de la vertu et à la lui rendre aimable’ (p.14) (‘She sought not only to cultivate her wit and beauty but also to make her love virtue and be virtuous’). In other words, the mother’s desire that her daughter make her mark in society (via ‘wit’ and ‘beauty’) means placing her in the very context where her other ambition (‘virtue’) will necessarily be endangered on a daily basis, given that society’s pernicious nature, which she has herself been at pains to stress. This social ambition is evident, after a first rejection of her daughter by the prospective father-in-law as a socially disadvantageous match, in Mme de Chartres’s resentful desire to ‘trouver un parti pour sa fille qui la mît audessus de ceux qui se croyaient au-dessus d’elle’ (p.25) (‘find a match for her daughter which would put her above those who believed themselves to be above her’). It is true that, following the love-at-first-sight encounter between Mme de Clèves and Nemours, Mme de Chartres tells her daughter, on her death-bed, that she is on the edge of the abyss, and summons her to withdraw from such a perilous society (p.66). But the warning is delivered when the poison has already been administered. Mme de Clèves is unable to stifle her desire for Nemours, is unable to withdraw from Court, because of the very social position that her mother had fought so bitterly to achieve. Her mother’s ambition thus plays a significant role in the catastrophe to come: Mme de Clèves is enmeshed in the nets of its ambiguity. With both husband and lover Mme de Clèves becomes similarly caught up in another’s ambition for her. Both Clèves and Nemours bring to the fulfilment of their love a burning intensity that, at first sight, might seem to exclude any other colouring, and partake of the lofty ambition of heroic endeavour. Such simplicity of desire, unsurprisingly, has no place in this novel. Clèves, for example, has, like Mme de Chartres, not one ambition, but two, concerning the woman he wishes to become his wife. For him, he declares, marriage alone is not his ambition: she must love him as passionately as he loves her (pp.32-34). In other words, this most reasonable and lucid of men is blinded by the illusion that his future wife could fix as her ambition the deliberate cultivation of a desire which, to be authentic, has at the same time to be perfectly spontaneous. The jealousy which hounds him to his death, and brings the novel’s denouement, springs from this initial misunderstanding of the difference between ambition, as a willed desire to achieve a goal, and that blind desire, unanswerable to the will, which Mme de Clèves feels only for Nemours. She is caught in the crossfire, with bullets made of her own guilt: ‘elle se faisait un crime de n’avoir pas eu de la passion pour lui, comme si c’eût été une chose qui eût été en son pouvoir’ (p.240) (‘she blamed herself for not having loved him passionately enough, as if it had been in her power so to do’). As for Nemours, it might appear that the term ‘ambition’ could unambiguously be applied only to the motives impelling him forward before his first encounter with Mme de Clèves. Here we are given the picture of an upwardly mobile courtier who has his sights set on a prestigious marriage with Queen Elizabeth of England, ‘entièrement rempli et occupé de ses desseins pour l’Angleterre […] un jeune homme ambitieux qui se voit porté au trône 52

par sa seule réputation’ (p.37) (‘He was wholly preoccupied with his plans for England […] an ambitious young man who finds himself raised up to a throne by his reputation alone’). The ‘vaulting ambition’ of this first state seems aptly captured at the ball, in the image of the confident young nobleman who steps over chairs to reach the dancing more quickly (p.38). It is at this ball that he has the vision of Mme de Clèves, and all ambition is instantly forgotten. This, at least, is what he tells Mme de Clèves: Et ce qui marque encore mieux un véritable attachement, c’est de devenir entièrement opposé à ce que l’on était, et de n’avoir plus d’ambition, ni de plaisir, après avoir été toute sa vie occupé de l’un et de l’autre. (p.94) (And what distinguishes a genuine attachment still more clearly is to become the very opposite of what one was before, to renounce all ambitions and all pleasures when one has spent one’s whole life in pursuit of these things.)

This distinction between love and ambition is not new. For La Rochfoucauld, ‘On passe souvent de l’amour à l’ambition, mais on ne revient guère de l’ambition à l’amour’ (‘The transition from love to ambition is frequent, but ambition is rarely set aside for love’), which might seem to suggest that the two passions are of radically different species.9 But are things quite so simple? ‘Au moins par ambition refusons l’ambition’ (‘let us turn our backs on ambition, if only out of ambition’), declares Montaigne,10 reminding us that some kind of ambition always subsists. For there are evident parallels between ‘the burning desire to gain possession of what can flatter one’s self-esteem’, to return to the first definition of ambition, and Nemours’s desire to possess Mme de Clèves. This desire is often expressed in terms of military conquest, attack, elimination of opponents, surrender of the besieged citadel, the desire for glory and the possession of a precious prize, at whatever the cost to either party: ‘il s’en faisait aimer malgré elle’ (p.109) (‘he was making her love him despite herself’): Il sentait pourtant un plaisir sensible de l’avoir réduite à cette extrémité. Il trouva de la gloire à s’être fait aimer d’une femme si différente de toutes celles de son sexe. (p.169) (Nonetheless, he felt a marked pleasure at having reduced her to this extremity. It flattered his pride that he had inspired love in a woman so different from all others of her sex.) M. de Nemours, qui vit les soupçons de Mme de Clèves sur son mari, fut bien aise de les lui confirmer. Il savait que c’était le plus redoutable rival qu’il eût à détruire. (p.187) (M. de Nemours, who saw that Mme de Clèves was beginning to harbour suspicions towards her husband, was very glad to confirm them. He knew that M. de Clèves was his most dangerous rival and the hardest to eliminate.)

Indeed, one extraordinary argument used by Nemours, in his attempt to persuade the citadel to surrender, is that Mme de Clèves is getting in his way: ‘N’aurai-je envisagé, dis-je, une si grande félicité que pour vous y voir apporter vous-même des obstacles?’ (p.254) (‘Can it 9 10

La Rochefoucauld, Maximes et Mémoires (Paris: Union Générale d’Editions, 1964), no.490 (p.119). Montaigne, Essais, ed. by M. Rat, 2 vols (Paris: Garnier, 1962), II, p.470.

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be, then, that I have glimpsed such bliss only to see you yourself put obstacles in its way?’). He expresses regret for actions with unfortunate consequences only if these have made the ambition harder to fulfil (p.195). Similarly, the decision to suspend for a time the active pursuit of Mme de Clèves is taken (as it turns out, quite astutely) only because silence and respect seem more appropriate means to that end (pp.196, 246). In other words, his character is as though defined by this one ambition. Ironically, therefore, it is this very energy and constancy, brandished as proof of this ambition, which cause Mme de Clèves to question its motives and validity: [...] je crois même que les obstacles ont fait votre constance. Vous en avez assez trouvé pour vous animer à vaincre. […] Vous avez déjà eu plusieurs passions, vous en auriez encore. (p.256) ([…] it seems to me, indeed, that your constancy has been sustained by the obstacles it has encountered. There were enough of them to arouse in you the desire for victory. [...] You have already had a number of passionate attachments; you would have others.)

Mme de Clèves seizes on those very qualities that seem to attest Nemours’s purity of intent as evidence of an ambition that, because it is ambition, would necessarily seek another object when the first goal was achieved. It strikes at the very heart of the idea that there is some quasi-heroic quality in his renunciation of all else to pursue his love. But what, then, of the heroine herself? Is there something heroic in her long resistance? Thus confined by the ambitions others have for her, has the term ‘ambition’ any sense at all in her existence? A key to our difficulties with the idea of ambition lies perhaps in this very question. It is difficult to arrive at any settled interpretation of the novel as a whole to some extent because it is difficult to gain a settled view of what Mme de Clèves actually wants. At the outset at least, as we have seen, she is a passive vehicle. Clèves, when her suitor, warns her with a kind of prophetic blindness that he would be ‘éternellement malheureux si elle n’obéissait que par devoir aux volontés de madame sa mère’ (p.31) (‘eternally unhappy if she obeyed her mother’s wishes only out of duty’). This is precisely what she does, as though the exercise of a personal ambition was nowhere on her agenda. At a late stage, to a jealous husband, she can still beg: ‘réglez ma conduite’ (‘dispose of my conduct’), only to hear the reply ‘je ne me veux fier qu’à vous-même’ (pp.172-73) (‘I wish to place my trust in no one but you’), which leaves her confronted with the problem of her own will, or lack of it. Her love for Nemours is constantly presented less as an active desire for happiness than as a necessary submission to feelings that flood her heart, whatever rational defences she attempts to establish. This means that whatever modest ambitions she does have are swept away, or subverted. For example, she resolves at least not to show her feelings to Nemours, and to avoid him (p.95), only to face the moment when ‘il y avait trop longtemps qu’elle ne l’avait vu pour se résoudre à ne le voir pas’ (p.96) (‘It was so long since she had last seen him that she could not make up her mind to avoid him’). Ambition has no meaning without desire (the term common to both our earlier definitions), but does Mme de Clèves ever know what she really desires? Elle trouva qu’il était presque impossible qu’elle pût être contente de sa passion. « Mais quand je le pourrais être, disait-elle, qu’en veux-je faire? Veux-je la souffrir? Veux-je y répondre? Veux-je m’engager dans une galanterie? Veux-je manquer à M. de Clèves? Veux-je me manquer à moi-même? Et veux-je enfin m’exposer aux cruels repentirs et aux mortelles douleurs que donne l’amour? Je suis

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vaincue et surmontée par une inclination qui m’entraîne malgré moi. Toutes mes résolutions sont inutiles […] ». (p.157) (She felt that it was almost impossible for her to find happiness in his love. ‘But even if I could’, she said to herself, ‘what can I want with it? Do I really want to tolerate it? Respond to it? Am I ready to embark on a love affair? To be unfaithful to M. de Clèves? To be unfaithful to myself? Do I wish to expose myself to the cruel remorse and mortal sufferings that love gives rise to? I am conquered and overcome by an inclination that carries me with it in spite of myself. All my resolutions are of no avail […]’)

Underlying the pathos of this whole passage is the explicit interrogation relating to the identity of the verb vouloir [wish], and the implicit suggestion of its incomprehensibility, even of its possible vacuity: we are far from the brisk voulut [decided] of Mme de Chartres’s fateful decision to introduce her daughter at Court. In this light it can be shown that the socalled confession to her husband, so often presented as an act of the will, is in fact a necessary response to her husband’s growing suspicions.11 The different resolutions made by Mme de Clèves after her husband’s death have no effect on the passion which she can never admit, until the end, to be a desire rooted deeply within her. Ironically, these resolutions are not even expressed as something which she herself actively desires: ‘elle ne ferait dans le reste de sa vie que ce qu’il aurait été bien aise qu’elle eût fait s’il avait vécu’ (p.240) (‘for the rest of her life, she would do nothing he would not have wished her to do had he lived’). This passivity, together with an ill-defined sense of ‘duty’ denounced by Nemours as a ‘fantôme de devoir’ (p.254) (‘phantom of duty’) (in which many have seen the ghostly presence of her mother), means that any desire on the part of Mme de Clèves, apart from her desire for Nemours, is hardly the ‘burning desire’ in which ambition is grounded. In addition, the whole concept of ambition suggests a willed, positive impulsion towards a deliberate goal, whereas all the defensive actions of Mme de Clèves are reactions, refusals and abstentions, a fleeing from rather than a going to. Her quest for repos (‘peace of mind’) is thus akin to a negative ambition, to the extent that she admits that, having definitively refused the object of her love, life itself has no other object: [...] elle voulait bien qu’il sût, qu’ayant trouvé que son devoir et son repos s’opposaient au penchant qu’elle avait d’être à lui, les autres choses du monde lui avaient paru si indifférentes qu’elle y avait renoncé pour jamais. (p.268) (She wished him to know, she added, that, since she had found her duty and peace of mind to be irreconcilable with her desire to belong to him, all other things of this world had appeared so indifferent that she had renounced them for ever.)

It is understandable that Mme de Clèves’s admission, that life without the desire of her heart is an empty shell, can have been viewed by some as the supreme affirmation of the value of both love and ambition. Even if this paradoxical view be accepted, however, it still remains true that it is the bankruptcy of love that the novel presents, and the shipwreck of any ambition. Ambition? Heroism? Purpose? Values? Attempts to interpret La Princesse de Clèves over more than three centuries remind us constantly that the lasting interest of this novel, in 11

See Campbell, Questions of Interpretation, pp.136-51.

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appearance so limpid, is bound up with those ambiguities, paradoxes, ironies, obscurities and uncertainties which partake of its very essence. This general critical perspective has been confirmed by the present attempt to seize the identity of ambition in this novel. In the course of this study it has become clear that what might seem to be an uncomplicated, single-minded desire turns out to be complex, multiple and protean, with dictionary definitions only expressing part of what might be implied by this desire, or the lack of it. This essay has been a necessarily modest and pragmatic attempt to reach beyond generalisations in order to see, in one emblematic work, what perceptions of ambition, that traditional attribute of heroism, were still alive in the literature of the late seventeenth century. It has, at the very least, allowed us to glimpse the complexity of the endeavour. In the end, we are brought back to the sentence most quoted from La Princesse de Clèves, but this time understood not as a direction for an inexperienced courtier but as a suggestion for even the most experienced reader: ‘Si vous jugez sur les apparences en ce lieu-ci, répondit Mme de Chartres, vous serez souvent trompée: ce qui paraît n’est presque jamais la verité’ (p.44) (‘“If you judge by appearances in this place,” replied Mme de Chartres, “you will frequently be deceived: what you see is almost never the truth.”’). This is the most unheroic of conclusions, one inordinately frustrating for any critical ambition that seeks to establish categories, uncover values, make general statements and deliver verdicts. Or perhaps it is a reminder that, in Flaubert’s words, ‘la bêtise est de vouloir conclure’ (‘stupidity is the wish to arrive at a conclusion’).

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Robert McBride

Le Héros moliéresque et les pièges du langage Le point de départ de notre article est à trouver dans le choix des trois comédies de Molière qui figurent au programme des agrégations littéraires de l’an 2000. Bien fin qui saisirait du premier coup le lien entre elles, et, de ce seul fait, nous semble-t-il, digne d’être reçu sans avoir à passer le concours! Le Misanthrope, grande comédie en cinq actes en vers, reconnue par les moliéristes comme chef-d’œuvre parmi ses chefs-d’œuvre, représentée au théâtre du Palais-Royal (1666); George Dandin, comédie, représentée devant le Roi à Versailles (1668), enchâssée dans Le Grand Divertissement de Versailles, dont les trois actes étaient précédés et suivis des chants et des danses de la pastorale, et le tout suivi d’un ballet qui s’efforce de surmonter le chagrin mortel du héros dégonflé (après cette représentation, la comédie, délestée de ses ornements de pastorale et de ballet sans doute pour des raisons financières, trouva par conséquent un son peut-être plus amer au théâtre de Molière); et finalement, Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, chef-d’œuvre des comédies-ballets, qui fit la joie du Roi et de la cour à Chambord (1670). Dans l’espace de quatre ans, Molière donne ainsi la preuve de sa virtuosité, excellant dans des genres aussi disparates que la haute comédie, la farce, et la comédie-ballet. Si on se rappelle qu’entre-temps il avait sur les bras la petite affaire du Tartuffe qui l’accapara cinq ans durant, où il devait faire face aux attaques des dévots enragés, multiplier ses plaidoyers pour sa comédie et satisfaire aux demandes toujours croissantes d’un roi avide de son plaisir, on se fera peut-être une idée des pressions qui pesaient sur lui au point d’en composer sous pression des pièces aussi diverses que celles que nous avons sous les yeux. Nous disons bien « au point de », car on a peut-être trop répété le vieux refrain d’un Molière surmené et exploité: seule la diversité peut convenir au génie, qu’il s’agisse d’un Shakespeare, d’un Gœthe, ou d’un Molière. Le génie la requiert, impérieusement, s’y plaît, s’en réjouit, s’y exalte. Les autres, mortels, la déplorent, s’en désolent, constatant le nombre excessif de règles enfreintes et foulées aux pieds. Suivant La Fontaine, « Diversité, c’est ma devise »,1 nous semble proclamer Molière et le jury de l’agrégation aussi. Loin de la déplorer, il faut s’en réjouir, la célébrer, et, partage humble de ses serviteurs, tâcher de la suivre à la trace. À bien considérer ces trois exemples de la diversité de la création moliéresque, il nous semble qu’il y a un fil commun qui les relie, qu’on peut mettre en relief sans être accusé d’employer des procédés interprétatifs alambiqués. Ce fil conducteur est le langage de ses personnages, et suivre ce langage nous fait toucher du doigt leur raison d’être comique. Déjà dans L’Impromptu de Versailles (1662) Molière s’était montré virtuose dans l’art d’imiter et de caricaturer les comédiens rivaux à l’Hôtel de Bourgogne (scène 1). Pendant toute sa carrière il exploite ce don d’imiter et de pousser à la caricature les voix et les gestes d’autrui. D’après Donneau de Visé, il était « tout comédien depuis les pieds jusqu’à la tête; il semblait qu’il eût plusieurs voix; tout parlait en lui et d’un pas, d’un sourire, d’un clin

1

Pâté d’anguille, La Fontaine, Contes et nouvelles, éd. par G. Couton (Paris: Garnier, 1961), p.310.

d’œil et d’un remuement de tête, il faisait plus concevoir de choses que le plus grand parleur n’aurait pu dire en une heure ».2 Mais il était plus qu’un simple mimique talentueux: il avait une profonde entente de ce qu’on pourrait appeler la problématique du langage, qu’il mettait à contribution suivant le contexte. Il savait mieux que tout autre, à l’exception peutêtre de Pascal3 et de Montaigne, combien l’usage du langage nous expose aux ennuis, aux malentendus à propos même de bagatelles. Si Montaigne nous conseille que « La pluspart des occasions des troubles du monde sont grammairiennes »,4 Molière va plus loin en nous en expliquant la source: « […] puisqu’on doit discourir des choses et non pas des mots, et que la plupart des contrariétés viennent de ne se pas entendre et d’envelopper dans un même mot des choses opposées, il ne faut qu’ôter le voile de l’équivoque […] ».5 Aussi réussit-il ici à faire ce à quoi ne parviendront pas nos trois héros, Alceste, Dandin et Jourdain. Le premier se débat avec le langage de la sincérité, le second se perd dans le dédale du langage conjugal, et le dernier se voit arriver à l’âge de la maturité avant de découvrir que tout ce qui n’est point vers est prose et de constater qu’il ne connaît pas le seul langage qui ait des charmes pour lui, celui qui se parle à la cour. Nous allons considérer brièvement les façons dont Molière exploite trois variantes sur la problématique du langage. Impossible de ne pas s’accorder au grief que fait Alceste à son ancien ami: « Moi, votre ami? Rayez cela de vos papiers » (v.8), et qui nourrit sa colère tout au long de la première scène du Misanthrope. Flatter un inconnu de la façon la plus ostentatoire est une chose: c’en est une autre que d’avouer juste après qu’on a du mal à se souvenir de son nom; et c’est le comble d’avoir été spectateur passif de l’événement, capable d’enregistrer la disparité entre le flux des paroles et le vide du cœur, tout en s’appelant Alceste. Il exige la correspondance entre le geste et l’essence; en un mot – mais le mot le plus traître – la sincérité: Je veux qu’on soit sincère, et qu’en homme d’honneur, On ne lâche aucun mot qui ne parte du cœur. (vv.35-36)

Est-ce si simple d’exiger la simplicité et la sincérité? Cela dépend. Le monde moliéresque est peuplé de héros qui n’exigent pas moins, ou plus. Le malheur d’Alceste, ce malheur dont le spectateur se régale, c’est de croire à la simplicité et à la sincérité dans un monde où règne le langage figuré de la politesse mondaine, qui se dérobe à l’analyse littérale et se moque de ceux qui y croient. Avant d’aller plus loin dans notre étude, constatons une chose primordiale: on ne saurait trop souligner l’importance de la première scène dans une comédie de Molière. Il

2

3

4 5

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Cité dans C. Mazouer, « Trois comédies écrites pour la scène », Littératures Classiques, Molière, 38 (janvier 2000), p.145. Pascal vise surtout en géométricien à éliminer toute ambiguïté dans le discours: « […] il n’y a rien de plus permis que de donner à une chose qu’on a clairement désignée un nom tel qu’on voudra. Il faut seulement prendre garde qu’on n’abuse de la liberté qu’on a d’imposer des noms, en donnant le même à deux choses différentes » (De l’esprit géométrique et de l’art de persuader, Œuvres complètes, éd. par L. Lafuma, Paris: Seuil, 1963, p.349). Essais, éd. par M. Rat (Paris: Garnier, 1962), II (chapitre 12), p.587. Préface au Tartuffe, dans Œuvres complètes, éd. par G. Couton (Paris: Gallimard [Pléiade], 1971: désormais OC), I, p.886.

campe ses personnages dans le feu de l’action. Philinte a beau avertir Alceste de la gigantomachie dans laquelle il se lance: Cette grande roideur des vertus des vieux âges Heurte trop notre siècle et les communs usages […] (vv.153-54)

Peine perdue. Comme dans un roman, les indices, vrais et faux, s’étalent devant nous dès le début. À bon entendeur salut. Nous constatons les critères par lesquels Alceste comprend son monde: c’est un bilieux (vv.89sv), c’est-à-dire, son tempérament est constitué par la bile noire, une des quatre humeurs à la base de la médecine de l’époque.6 Nous savons qu’il est en colère, mais, qui plus est, nous savons la raison de sa colère: « Moi, je veux me fâcher, et ne veux point entendre » (v.5). Il ne veut pas, parce qu’il ne peut autrement. Alceste voit tout en noir. Quand il dit à Philinte: Je veux qu’on soit sincère, et qu’en homme d’honneur, On ne lâche aucun mot qui ne parte du cœur. (vv 35-36)

c’est d’une sincérité noire qu’il parle, disant ses quatre vérités à tout le monde, dégonflant les personnalités de la cour derrière leur dos (voir comment il rive son clou à la vieille Emilie, à Dorilas). C’est sincère, à n’en pas douter, mais une « sincérité de tempérament ». Les choses changent du tout au tout avec l’entrée du poète à la recherche d’une opinion favorable sur son sonnet. Quand Oronte porte Alceste aux nues dès son entrée en scène, ce dernier participe à contrecœur au même jeu social dont il a déjà fait grief à Philinte (vv.49-52). Avide de louange (ne vient-il pas de dire à Philinte (v.63): « Je veux qu’on me distingue » ?), il entend un langage qui flatte son amour-propre, et se trouve tiraillé entre le besoin de démolir un personnage de la cour et le chatouillement de l’amour-propre. Le sonnet, écrit dans le langage figuré d’alors, est destiné à exaspérer Alceste pour une seconde raison: nul doute qu’il s’adresse à Célimène, sous le nom de Philis, et que celle-ci aurait éventuellement donné de l’encouragement au poète. Si Alceste essaie de se dérober à ce premier test de sa prétendue sincérité, en prétextant le défaut « D’être un peu plus sincère, en cela, qu’il ne faut » (Acte I, scène 2, v.300), Oronte semble le seconder: C’est ce que je demande, et j’aurais lieu de plainte, Si, m’exposant à vous pour me parler sans feinte, Vous alliez me trahir, et me déguiser rien. (vv.301-03)

Il est évident que tous deux disent le même mot, sans avoir pris soin d’ «[…] ôter le voile de l’équivoque ». Ce qui l’est moins, c’est que le langage de chaque personnage est également défectueux, dans la mesure où ni l’un ni l’autre ne saurait prétendre à la sincérité absolue. Nous avons vu que « la sincérité » d’Alceste est commandée et définie par un tempérament bilieux qui ne peut que trouver à redire à tout ce qui sent la modernité. En outre, dans la scène du sonnet, son propre intérêt pour Célimène l’empêchera de donner un avis favorable sur le sonnet, même si – et avec des si, comme on le sait, on mettrait Paris en bouteille – il arrivait à trouver beau un langage précieux qui lui est anathème. Quand 6

Les autres humeurs sont le sang, le flegme ou la pituite, et la mélancolie. Voir R. Jasinski, Molière et Le Misanthrope (Paris: Nizet, 1963).

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Oronte demande à Alceste son opinion du sonnet – « Parlez-moi, je vous prie, avec sincérité » (v.340) – remarquons que ce n’est qu’après avoir récolté les éloges de Philinte qui, tout hyperboliques qu’ils sont, ne détonnent nullement dans le contexte d’un salon du grand siècle. Pour lui, la sincérité fait partie essentielle de ce que La Rochefoucauld appelle « […] un ménagement réciproque d’intérêts et […] un échange de bons offices; ce n’est enfin qu’un commerce où l’amour-propre se propose toujours quelque chose à gagner ».7 Il ne fait que verser quelques gouttes de ce liquide onctueux qu’est la flatterie pour huiler les rouages de la politesse, donnant donnant. L’essentiel lors d’une telle rencontre, c’est de laisser l’interlocuteur dans la bonne opinion qu’il a de lui-même, de son sonnet, et de vous.8 Vouloir démolir l’amour-propre d’autrui, c’est donner un sens aussi singulier et particulier à la sincérité que celui que donnera Alceste peu après à son amour pour Célimène. Même besoin pathologique de critiquer son mode de vie à elle, ses amis de salon, et de prétendre que personne n’a aimé comme lui, s’attirant la réponse sèche de la coquette: « En effet, la méthode en est toute nouvelle » (Acte II, scène 1, v.525). Ce langage que lui dicte le tempérament, Alceste ne saura s’en défaire le long de la pièce. Les échos de la querelle avec le poète (scène 2) se prolongent jusqu’à la première scène de l’Acte IV. C’est la mesure du caractère à l’emporte-pièce du personnage, comme l’avoue le très patient Philinte. Mais, quoi qu’on fasse, Propos, conseils, enseignement, Rien ne change un tempérament.9

Jamais personne ne se prête moins au langage de l’amour, moins encore à celui d’une coquette. Pour son malheur, il fait confiance à la seule banalité qu’elle sait lui proférer – comme à tous ses chevaliers servants – quand elle l’assure que par rapport à eux il a le bonheur de se savoir aimé (v.503). Jamais homme n’est moins capable de s’accommoder du langage sentimental, où tout est rarement noir sur blanc (nous n’en voulons pour preuve que ce livre à grand succès qu’est Les Hommes sont de Mars, les femmes de Vénus). Dans la scène du salon, où règne Célimène, ses admirateurs la poussent à faire des portraits satiriques des personnalités de la cour, exercice qu’elle enlève avec un mordant brillant. Et Alceste, outré par les membres du salon qui ne manqueront pas de débiter les mêmes politesses à ceux qu’on vient de dépecer lors de la prochaine rencontre, d’intervenir au nom de – sa sincérité à lui. Suivant la logique de son tempérament, il s’en prend à la reine du salon, alléguant que « Plus on aime quelqu’un, moins il faut qu’on le flatte » (Acte II, scène 4, v.701). Éliante intervient pour lui opposer la leçon de l’amour: celui qui aime se montre rarement lucide au sujet de l’objet de sa passion (vv.711-30). Le langage des passions ne saura prétendre à l’objectivité. Il n’y a qu’Alceste qui en soit capable. 7

8

9

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Maximes, éd. par J. Truchet (Paris: Garnier, 1965), p.26 (no.83). Alceste vient de fustiger Philinte pour sa pratique de « Ce commerce honteux de semblants d’amitiés » (v.68). Cf. La Bruyère: « […] celui qui sort de son entretien content de soi et de son esprit, l’est de vous parfaitement » (De la société, Les Caractères, éd. par R. Garapon, Paris: Garnier, 1962, p.159); et La Rochefoucauld: « […] il faudrait faire son plaisir et celui des autres, ménager leur amour-propre, et ne le blesser jamais » (De la société, Maximes, p.186). Cf. la phrase de La Bruyère: « […] le plaisir le plus délicat est de faire celui d’autrui » (éd. cit., p.159). La Fontaine, Fables, VIII, 16 (L’Horoscope), éd. par G. Couton (Paris: Garnier, 1962), p.225.

Le seul langage dont il est capable le condamne à tourner en rond, à renouveler ses procédés de confrontation et ses scènes où qu’il aille, quel que soit son interlocuteur, jusqu’à son départ en exil à la fin de la pièce. Dans le monde ésotérique du Misanthrope, microcosme sous forme dramatique du monde comme La Princesse de Clèves l’est sous forme romanesque, survivent le mieux, c’est-à-dire avec le moins d’égratignures, ceux qui savent parler plus d’un langage. Les polyglottes, et nous en nommons trois, Philinte, Éliante, et Célimène, savent jouer sur les apparences. Eux savent, à l’instar de La Rochefoucauld, que « […] l’intérêt parle toutes sortes de langues, et joue toutes sortes de personnages, même celui de désintéressé ».10 Prenons le cas de la plus brillante étoile de cette constellation, Célimène. Sachant que la prude Arsinoé est arrivée dans son antichambre, elle la déchire à belles dents devant Alceste, puis – à l’entrée de la prude elle-même – se corrige dans le même vers, ayant l’aplomb de lui décerner un compliment charmant (Acte III, scènes 3 et 4, v.873). Elle aura tôt fait de retrouver sa langue aiguisée et de mettre en morceaux sa rivale pour le cœur d’Alceste. Juste à la fin de la démolition de la prude, elle trouve encore un autre langage, dont on la croirait incapable, tant elle fait figure d’évaporée de salon: le langage de la réflexion, qui est presque un langage de prédicateur, quand elle souligne la leçon qu’il faut tirer de leur prise de bec et qui est semblable à celle des moralistes contemporains, en attirant l’attention sur « Ce grand aveuglement où chacun est pour soi » (Acte III, scène 4, v.968).11 Employer le langage de la lucidité ne garantit aucunement la lucidité elle-même, de même que parler franc n’offre aucune garantie de sincérité. C’est la plus intelligente et spirituelle des créations de Molière qui nous en fournit la preuve. Prodiguant des marques insignifiantes de faveurs à ses nombreux admirateurs, Célimène assure à chacun qu’elle l’aime plus qu’un autre: elle se pique au jeu au point de se dresser son propre piège. Le triomphe de la scène du salon où elle s’est montrée de taille à parler le langage qu’on souhaite qu’elle parle, est équilibré par l’échec relatif qu’est pour elle la dernière scène de la pièce. Face aux anciens admirateurs, chacun possesseur d’une lettre où il se trouve attaqué à coups de griffes, elle est obligée de baisser la crête. Toutefois, il ne s’agit pour elle que d’un contretemps. Elle est beaucoup trop avertie sinon avisée pour ne pas connaître les atouts qui sont les siens, et dont elle tirera pleinement parti. Sa beauté lui sert à la fois d’atout et de stratagème. C’est cette part de lucidité qui l’incite à refuser l’offre que lui fait Alceste de l’accompagner dans son désert: Moi, renoncer au monde avant que de vieillir, Et dans votre désert aller m’ensevelir! (Acte V, scène dernière, vv.1769-70)

Au contraire, elle tient à maintenir le langage et le personnage qui sont les siens, ceux d’une coquette forte de son charme et – comme elle n’a pas manqué de jeter au nez d’Arsinoé – 10 11

Maxime 39, éd. cit., p.15. À comparer avec le passage où La Rochefoucauld décrit les voies de l’amour-propre: « On ne peut sonder la profondeur, ni percer les ténèbres de ses abîmes. Là il est à couvert des yeux les plus pénétrants; il y fait mille insensibles tours et retours. Là il est souvent invisible à lui-même […] De cette nuit qui le couvre naissent les ridicules persuasions qu’il a de lui-même […] cette obscurité épaisse, qui le cache à lui-même, n’empêche pas qu’il ne voie parfaitement ce qui est hors de lui, en quoi il est semblable à nos yeux, qui découvrent tout, et sont aveugles seulement pour eux-mêmes » (Maximes supprimées, éd. cit., p.134). La Fontaine dit: « Lynx envers nos pareils, et Taupes envers nous » (Fables, I, 7 (La Besace), éd. cit., p.40).

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de sa jeunesse. C’est ce détachement d’elle-même (qu’elle partage avec Philinte et Éliante) qui lui fait aimer, tant qu’il dure, le ludique social, et tant qu’elle est d’humeur de le trouver amusant: […] on peut, je crois, louer et blâmer tout, Et chacun a raison suivant l’âge ou le goût. Il est une saison pour la galanterie; Il en est une aussi propre à la pruderie. On peut, par politique, en prendre le parti, Quand de nos jeunes ans l’éclat est amorti: Cela sert à couvrir de fâcheuses disgrâces. Je ne dis pas qu’un jour je ne suive vos traces: L’âge amènera tout, et ce n’est pas le temps, Madame, comme on sait, d’être prude à vingt ans. (Acte III, scène 4, vv.975-84)

Quant à Alceste, ce praticien du langage absolu qui croit encore au mythe de sa propre objectivité, sa sortie par la grande porte est due plus à son manque d’un sens du relatif qu’aux intrigues de ses ennemis. On le sent beaucoup trop jeune pour s’enterrer dans une vie de célibataire et pour se consacrer à la rédaction de ses mémoires dans sa maison de campagne. Il sera privé du plaisir de pester contre les travers de la grande société. La perfection est une charge trop onéreuse pour un mortel. Alceste veut imposer son langage de sincérité à tout son monde. Dandin, par contre, aura à se mettre à l’école de la petite noblesse provinciale pour apprendre son langage à elle, et à oublier le sien. Riche paysan, aspirant à sortir de sa condition, il nous apprend dès le début que « Je suis devenu là-dessus savant à mes dépens, et connais le style des nobles […] » (Acte I, scène première). Nous voyons déjà que Molière lui a donné une vocation – manquée – de pédagogue. Sa connaissance des nobliaux restera en effet incomplète: il ne peut les connaître qu’à moitié, vu sa condition de paysan, depuis la position de serviteur. Sa lucidité partielle quant à son état ajoute du piquant à ses déboires, et a amené des commentateurs à qualifier son spectacle de « comédie rosse »12 et à le situer parmi les « pièces grinçantes » de Molière (OC, II, p.449). C’est pousser les choses trop au noir, nous semble-t-il, et méconnaître la puissance du dramaturge à tout baigner dans l’illusion agréable des mensonges.13 Dandin aura trois « leçons » à apprendre, qui en disent long sur la nature du théâtre comme sur les hobereaux. Première leçon: les apparences sont privilégiées par rapport aux faits, la forme l’emporte sur l’expression littérale. Se plaignant auprès de ses beaux-parents de la conduite de leur fille qui ne fait que porter un nom angélique, il découvre une barrière insurmontable entre le fait et la compréhension: il parle un langage qu’ils n’admettent pas. Si eux peuvent l’appeler « notre gendre », il n’en va pas de même pour lui. Il n’a pas le droit d’ appeler Angélique « ma femme » ou sa mère à elle « belle-mère » et son mari « M.

12 13

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A. Adam, Histoire de la littérature française au XVIIe siècle (Paris: Del Duca, 1962), III, p.369. René Bray, dans une heureuse phrase, qualifie le théâtre moliéresque de « royaume enchanté » (Molière homme de théâtre, Paris: Mercure de France, 1954, p.349).

de Sottenville » pour la bonne raison que « […] tout notre gendre que vous soyez, il y a grande différence de vous à nous, et que vous devez vous connaître » (Acte I, scène 4). Dandin vit une frustration permanente: d’abord dans sa mésalliance; ensuite dans l’expression de sa rage: paysan inculte à l’esprit terre-à-terre, il se voit refuser le seul langage qu’il connaît, grossier et physique à l’occasion14 et, rejeté par ses interlocuteurs, il est contraint aussi de se conformer au langage qu’on lui impose, de s’affubler du titre M. de la Dandinière, et d’accepter à genoux son rôle de battu, cocu et content. La correction mot à mot de sa plainte sert à la minimiser et à la faire évaporer en divertissement pour le public aristocrate, tant à intérieur de la comédie qu’à l’extérieur. Quoiqu’il sache à l’avance chaque nouvelle trahison dont il sera l’objet, Angélique et son amant noble réussissent au moyen d’une série de pas de deux à retourner les apparences contre lui, au point de faire passer la déniaisée pour une honnête femme. Voici le résultat de cette première leçon que doit apprendre Dandin: il suffit qu’un nobliau nie avoir fait ce dont un roturier l’accuse, il a toujours les apparences et le droit de son côté. Cette règle vaut-elle même « si je le trouvais couché avec ma femme? » (Acte I, scène 6). Oui, noblesse oblige. Dandin doit désapprendre le langage trop brutal des faits, et l’échanger, bonnet à la main, contre le langage de soumission, terminant ses excuses dictées par son beaupère envers son trompeur par la phrase « je suis votre serviteur », qu’il ne tarde pas à traduire dans son langage à lui par « cocu » (Acte I, scène 6). La scène comique préfère l’élégance à la banalité des faits qui rappellent trop la réalité qu’on vient de quitter. Seconde leçon, une leçon dure à apprendre pour le gentilhomme en herbe: sur la scène et dans le monde de qualité, le mouvement l’emporte sur la simple parole. À Angélique il fait un beau sermon que ne désavouerait pas Bossuet ou Bourdaloue,15 où il invoque la révérence qu’elle devrait avoir pour le nœud qui les joint, le respect qu’elle doit « à des nœuds aussi vénérables que le sont ceux du mariage », « chaîne à laquelle on doit porter toute sorte de respect » (Acte II, scène 2). En guise de réponse, elle ne fait que lever les épaules, hocher la tête et faire la grimace devant ces mots lourds de moralisateur qui s’est aventuré sur la scène et dans le mariage. Le langage de prédicateur ne passe pas la rampe, et sonne creux en l’occurrence: le sermon d’Alceste au groupe du salon lui vaut aussi un surcroît de moquerie (Le Misanthrope, Acte II, scène 4, vv.681-2). Ce ne sont plus les mots qu’Angélique fait pleuvoir sur Dandin lors de la deuxième découverte par lui qu’elle est de nouveau en train de le trahir avec son amant dans sa maison à

14

15

Dandin a un fond violent dans son caractère: « Il me prend des tentations d’accommoder tout son visage à la compote, et le mettre en état de ne plaire de sa vie aux diseurs de fleurettes », dit-il au sujet de sa femme » (Acte II, scène 2). La violence affleure aussi chez Arnolphe (L’École des femmes, Acte V, scène 5, vv.156467). Dans ses Maximes et réflexions sur la comédie, Bossuet fulmine contre la morale de Molière, lequel « étale cependant au plus grand jour les avantages d’une infâme tolérance dans les maris, et sollicite les femmes à de honteuses vengeances contre leurs jaloux » (cité dans L’Église et le théâtre, éd. par Ch. Urbain et É. Levesque, Paris: Grasset, 1930, p.184); de même Bourdaloue condamne comme le comble du désordre George Dandin où « Un mari sensible au déshonneur de sa maison est le personnage que l’on joue sur le théâtre: une femme adroite à le tromper est l’héroïne que l’on y produit; des spectacles où l’impudence lève le masque et qui corrompent plus de cœurs que jamais les prédicateurs de l’Évangile n’en convertiront, c’est ceux auxquels on applaudit » (Sermon sur l’impureté, 1er mars 1682, cité dans OC, II, p.447).

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lui. Cette fois c’est elle et non pas son amant qui se tire d’un mauvais pas au moyen d’une belle pirouette verbale et acrobatique: la feinte condamnation est pour Clitandre, mais la bastonnade, réelle, même sur la scène comique, est pour Dandin (Acte II, scène 8). Les faits sont pour Dandin, mais le verbe éloquent et le geste opportun sont l’apanage d’une demoiselle de qualité. Dure leçon à avaler pour Dandin, à savoir que le mouvement prime la parole, mais qu’il semble avoir assimilée à l’issue de ce nouvel échec: « Je ne dis mot, car je ne gagnerais rien à parler […] » (Acte II, scène 8). L’occasion qui se présente à Dandin où Angélique se trouve enfermée dehors à l’acte III est trop belle, et lui fait prendre le langage du vainqueur se plaisant à moraliser la rebelle. Angélique, à l’instar de son prédécesseur dans La Jalousie du barbouillé, n’est pas pour autant démunie, mais a plus d’une corde à son arc. Cette polyglotte a plutôt plus d’une langue dans sa poche, comme dans son vocabulaire. Tantôt c’est le langage câlin qui amadoue « mon pauvre petit mari », tantôt un langage désespéré qui lui fait envisager la dernière extrémité (Acte III, scène 6). Le pardon inévitable qu’il est obligé de demander à genoux à sa femme le laisse à la fin sans parole aucune, et il fait bien de se rabattre sur la noyade, soit dans l’eau, soit dans le vin comme nous le laisse envisager le livret de la pastorale. Quoi qu’il en soit, en voilà assez pour nous convaincre que Dandin a un parler qui le condamne à toujours être le dindon de sa propre farce. Il ne dispose que d’un seul genre de vocabulaire, l’expostulation contre « ma carogne/crocodile/pendarde de femme ». Pour le personnage de comédie, la sécurité est à trouver dans le verbe preste et le mouvement leste. Le sort de Dandin ne vaut pas nos larmes: seule exception, nos larmes de joie à la pensée que la scène est enfin débarrassée de pareil maladroit. Dandin apprend le langage noble à son corps défendant, ce qui est à mille lieues de Monsieur Jourdain qui en fait l’apprentissage à cœur joie. Mais le difficile apprentissage que celui d’homme de qualité! Que de langages à maîtriser à la fois, quand on a dépassé l’âge des études! Il faut que Monsieur Jourdain se mette en frais pour combler son retard. L’argent aidant, il met les bouchées doubles, va plus vite que les violons et multiplie les erreurs. Étudiant sérieux, il s’avise d’apprendre les éléments de la langue nobiliaire. Toutefois la grammaire se révèle d’une complexité inouïe: langage musicien, phonétique, vestimentaire, chorégraphique, jargon d’épéiste, chacun comporte des pièges pour le néophyte. Il faut bien les distinguer, savoir « […] éviter les équivoques, et ne pas confondre les conséquences ».16 Il peine à apprendre le langage de la musique et va de bévue en bévue. Croyant que pour l’apprécier comme il convient, il lui faut mettre sa nouvelle robe de chambre rayée, doublée de taffetas aurore et vert,17 et ses nouveaux bas de soie, Monsieur Jourdain appelle « votre petite drôlerie » la composition que vient de préparer le musicien, confond l’usage du terme « écolier » du maître de musique avec l’école, ne goûte pas du tout la chanson sur la cruauté qu’inflige la belle Iris à son pauvre soupirant éconduit, préférant un refrain sur Jeanneton, qui pour ressembler à un mouton, ne laisse pas d’être une tigresse aux abois. Il ne comprend nullement pourquoi il est question d’éternels bergers dans les chansons à la mode (Acte I, scène 2), admire les danseurs qui « se trémoussent bien » (Acte II, scène 1), insiste pour faire inclure dans le petit orchestre qui va jouer tout à l’heure le son 16 17

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Pascal, De l’esprit géométrique, p.350. D’après l’inventaire après décès (OC, II, p.1420).

rassurant de la trompette marine (Acte II, scène 1), s’évertue à transformer sa charge de bœuf en révérence élégante afin d’honorer comme il faut sa marquise, apprend le langage et les mouvements de l’escrime (Acte II, scène 2) si bien que sa servante est capable de le mettre en difficulté (Acte III, scène 3). Il se voit obliger de porter des bas de soie trop étroits, des souliers qui font mal, pour la bonne raison que tel est le langage vestimentaire des gens de qualité (Acte II, scène 5). Sa plus belle réussite consiste en sa pratique du français. Si la phonétique le dépasse quelque peu, il se montre élève éveillé, se rappelant à moitié la différence entre le vers et la prose et réussissant du premier coup un poème qui l’emporte sur toutes les versions que lui propose son très averti maître de philosophie (Acte II, scène 4). Somme toute, la disproportion entre l’effort fourni et les piètres résultats obtenus reste colossale, et cette âme sensible est cruellement exposée au ridicule: tristement, rien ne prête plus à rire qu’ « une disproportion surprenante entre ce qu’on attend et ce qu’on voit ».18 Monsieur Jourdain étudiant, c’est la montagne qui accouche d’une souris. Il a beau s’échiner à semer la bonne parole chez les siens, nul n’est prophète chez soi. Ce visionnaire est puni de la façon la plus brutale qui puisse s’imaginer, c’est-à-dire par le langage omniprésent du sens commun: tantôt par le babil interminable de sa femme, lui jetant son âge au nez, lui cassant les oreilles à propos du mariage de sa fille avec – horribile dictu – un vulgaire bourgeois, rappelant qu’il est la risée du monde, un monde qui parle raison et comprend les voisins se plaignant du vacarme des musiciens et des chanteurs; tantôt par Nicole qui, tout en riant au nez de son maître, lui reproche la boue que laissent tant de ses invités distingués sur le plancher. Ce qui le fait surtout enrager c’est que sa femme s’obstine à nier la valeur de ce qu’il apprend de ses différents professeurs, qu’elle ne se laisse pas persuader que son nouvel ami noble, Dorante, n’est pas du tout le parasite qui lui tire de l’argent à tout moment mais plutôt un ami de qualité parlant du bourgeois en présence du Roi même! (Acte III, scènes 3 et 4). Mais le comble doit être le rappel insistant de ses origines bourgeoises: au dire de sa femme, son père était simple marchand et non pas de la côte de Saint Louis (Acte III, scène 12)! L’irruption de la très prosaïque Madame Jourdain dans le banquet offert chez elle à son insu aux nobles marque une rupture brutale dans le progrès de Jourdain et le point tournant de l’action. Elle se produit juste au moment où il est en train de faire montre de son esprit et de charmer sa marquise: DORIMÈNE : Monsieur Jourdain est un homme qui me ravit. MONSIEUR JOURDAIN : Si je pouvais ravir votre cœur, je serais […] (Acte IV, scène 1)

La qualité chassée par l’intruse, l’illusion de Jourdain est en pièces. Le stratagème de lui jouer le tour du Mamamouchi arrive donc fort à propos pour remplir son vide. Ce n’est pas seulement une astuce pour faciliter le mariage entre le très bourgeois Cléonte et la fille de Monsieur Jourdain. L’invention est conçue surtout pour permettre le plein épanouissement du héros. Son extravagance nous permet de mesurer et la crédulité du personnage et la 18

Pascal, 11e Provinciale, Œuvres complètes, p.420. Cf. Yves Delage: « Pour qu’une chose soit comique, il faut qu’entre l’effet et la cause il y ait désharmonie » (H. Bergson, Le Rire, essai sur la signification du comique, Paris: P.U.F., 1962, p.155).

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créativité de Molière. Grâce au stratagème, Jourdain se voit doter du passé qu’il lui faut – Covielle l’assure que quoi qu’en disent les mauvaises langues, son père était bel et bien gentilhomme (Acte IV, scène 3) – ainsi que d’un nouveau présent, en vue de l’anoblissement que lui confère la cérémonie du Mamamouchi. En plus, il s’acquiert une nouvelle famille, celle du Grand Turc, et – chose capitale – une nouvelle langue capable de fermer la bouche aux anciens détracteurs qui font obstacle à son rêve, c’est-à-dire « ce monde-là qui a raison, et qui est plus sage que vous » (Acte III, scène 3), selon sa trop bourgeoise femme qu’il offrira à la fin à qui la voudrait. Désormais, il est capable de lui tenir tête: « Paix ! insolente, portez respect à Monsieur le Mamamouchi » (Acte V, scène 1). Nous sommes maintenant en mesure d’évaluer les progrès faits par le héros. Aussi longtemps qu’il peinait à imiter d’une façon grotesque les productions d’autrui, le décalage entre ambition et réalisation sautait aux yeux. Aussi longtemps que la raison gouverne le jugement de ses spectateurs (« ce monde-là ») il passe pour un fou dont on n’a qu’à se moquer. Une fois que ce monde s’est ajusté « aux visions de votre mari »,19 comme l’explique si délicatement Covielle à Madame Jourdain (scène dernière), tout le monde est complice, participant à la fête qu’est la cérémonie de consécration comme au ballet des nations. Nous avons fini par le rejoindre dans son monde enchanté à lui. C’est lui qui finit par avoir raison de nous: « Ah ! Voilà tout le monde raisonnable », dit-il dans une béatitude de bonze (scène dernière). Nous cessons de nous moquer de Monsieur Jourdain. Si la langue turque dit beaucoup en peu de mots, comme Covielle l’intime au bourgeois ahuri (Acte IV, scène 4), permettant au nouveau Mamamouchi de se rattraper et de brûler les étapes, elle accélère aussi notre joie. Nous acceptons de nous joindre à ce grand carnaval qui débute avec la mamamouchisation et s’épanche dans le ballet des nations qui clôt le spectacle. Ce bourgeois mal équarri au début, albatros voué aux huées d’autrui, nous paraît à la fin un oiseau d’un rare plumage. Source d’émerveillement, certes, mais générateur aussi d’une euphorie inépuisable et universelle, comme en témoigne le ballet des nations issu du spectacle. Nous y constatons le bannissement des trouble-fêtes tels le vieux bourgeois babillard et sa femme, ennemis de la comédie et du ballet autant que Madame Jourdain. Si celleci peut conclure à juste titre que son mari a perdu l’esprit, il a trouvé en revanche sa vraie patrie, l’imaginaire turc. S’il y a une philosophie de Molière, elle est à trouver dans la réjouissance et la gaîté: le Mamamouchi doit y figurer à titre exemplaire. N’est-ce pas là faire un bel éloge à notre auteur inscrit au programme de l’agrégation?

19

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Cf. Béralde, qui, à la fin du Malade imaginaire, explique à Angélique, fille d’Argan, qu’il s’agit dans la cérémonie de réception dans la Faculté de Médecine moins de « le jouer, que [de] s’accommoder à ses fantaisies » (scène dernière).

Jane McKee

A Passion for the Scriptures: The Biblical Sonnets of Laurent Drelincourt A Calvinist Poetic Laurent Drelincourt, pastor of the Église Réformée in Niort and author of the Sonnets Chrétiens (first edition 1677) was the last major French Calvinist poet to be published before the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 scattered the Huguenots to the four corners of the earth. His collection of 160 sonnets was immediately and lastingly popular. Julien Gœury’s has recently listed 53 editions up to 1948, while individual poems have often been included in anthologies of religious or baroque poetry published since then.1 Although the sixteenth century had seen the development of a substantial tradition of Huguenot poetry, much of it biblically inspired, the literary complexion of the Calvinist community changed considerably during the following century. The Calvinist population was becoming weaker and its numbers were being steadily eroded throughout the century by conversions to Catholicism, particularly among the nobility and those seeking public office. Poets such as Saint-Amant and Théophile de Viau who had Huguenot backgrounds became Catholics, although others such as Gombauld and Conrart were more faithful to their Calvinist religion. Conrart was an elder in the church at Charenton (the main Huguenot church in the Paris area) and provided perhaps the most important link between the Calvinist clergy and the literary world, particularly the Académie Française of which both he and Gombauld were founder members. The concern for style and linguistic purity which was such a major subject of debate in the Académie and outside thus found its way into the Calvinist community and reached Drelincourt in his remote parish of Niort in the presentday department of Deux-Sèvres. Pierre Bayle states that Conrart often sought his advice on such matters,2 and Drelincourt’s correspondence with Dr Élie Bouhéreau, now held in Marsh’s Library, Dublin, confirms that he was among those consulted on Conrart’s new translation of the Psalms, although no correspondence from Drelincourt survives in the Conrart papers.3 Despite his contacts with the literary world of the capital, however, Drelincourt did not follow the fashion of his day for classical themes and adornment, choosing rather to found his literary aesthetic primarily upon religious considerations. The Avertissement which preceded the 1678 edition of his Sonnets Chrétiens contains a firm rejection of the current fashion for classical subjects and references, which he describes as pagan, in favour of a poetry inspired by the Christian tradition and, in particular, by the Bible:

1

2

3

Julien Gœury, ‘Bibliographie des Sonnets Chrétiens de Laurent Drelincourt’, Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire du Protestantisme Français, 147 (juillet-août-septembre 2001), pp.399-424. Pierre Bayle, Dictionnaire historique et critique, 4 vols (Rotterdam: Chez Michel Bohm, 1720), II, p.1019, note C. Drelincourt-Bouhéreau Correspondence, Marsh’s Library, Dublin, Z2.2.14 (13).

Chose étrange, qu’il faille être Payen pour ètre Poëte; & que sous le Christianisme l’on encense encore des Idoles! Mais, aille qui voudra dresser des Autels sur le Parnasse, & boire à la Fontaine Cataline. C’est un Lieu où je n’eus jamais envie d’aller. Jamais, graces au vray Dieu, je n’invoquay, ni le faus-Dieu Apollon, ni les Muses profanes, que l’on dit qui lui tiennent compagnie. J’ay toûjours porté mes Voeus en la Montagne de Sion, & au Ruisseau de Siloé.4 (It is a very strange thing that one must be pagan to be a poet and that, in a Christian society, people still worship idols. But let those who will set up their altars on Parnassus and drink of the Castalian fountain. That is somewhere I never wished to go. Through God’s grace, I have never invoked either the false god Apollo or the profane Muses, who, they say, keep him company. I have always been faithful to Mount Zion and Siloam’s rill.)5

This rejection of the classical heritage of Greece and Rome was not unique to Drelincourt. Françoise Chevalier’s recent study of the sermon in the seventeenth-century Église Réformée indicates that such views were widely held among Huguenot preachers and that there were very few references to classical sources in their sermons.6 Drelincourt extends this convention to his poetry, but he found classical references impossible to avoid completely, as a comment in a letter to Bouhéreau suggests. Discussing the line, ‘Le Commerce au Marchand, à Thémis la puissance’ (‘Trade to the merchant, power to Themis’), as a possible improvement to the sonnet Sur la Paix, Drelincourt commented: ‘Je n’aime pourtant guére ces mots Payens: Et j’ay déja Bellone au premier quatrain’ (‘I don’t much like these pagan words: and I already have Bellone in the first quatrain’).7 Despite his protestations in the Avertissement, then, he finds it impossible to rid himself entirely of classical allusions, but such allusions are very few in number in the Sonnets, which remain overwhelmingly Christian and biblical in reference.

Structures and Themes In the Avertissement, Drelincourt also discussed the structure of the collection, describing it as a bunch of flowers and adding: ‘Ainsi, quelque Ordre que j’aye étably dans ce Recueüil, on peut considérer chaque Sonnet, comme une Piéce détachée et indépendante, qui, sans raport aus autres, a dans elle-même tout ce qu’elle est capable d’avoir, ou d’agrément, ou d’utilité’ (‘So whatever order I have established in this collection, each sonnet can be considered as a separate and independent piece which has within itself all the enjoyment or usefulness which it is capable of offering, without any reference to the other poems’). Each poem is an individual unit and the sonnets therefore do not have to be read in sequence, yet the passage above also suggests that the author has chosen a particular order for the collection, which is present but may be ignored if the reader so wishes. It is certainly divided into

4

5 6

7

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Laurent Drelincourt, ‘Avertissement’, Sonnets Chrétiens sur divers sujets: divisés en quatre livres (La Rochelle: Jacob Mancel, 1678), unpaginated. Except where otherwise stated, all translations in this chapter are mine. Prêcher sous l’Édit de Nantes: la prédication réformée au XVIIe siècle en France (Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1994), p.77. Bouhéreau Correspondence, 4 June 1675.

four books, giving it a clearly articulated construction which reflects Calvinist theological values. Book One, Sur la Nature et son Auteur, invokes the greatness of God as shown in the world which he created. Books Two, Sur Diverses Histoires du Vieus Testament, and Three, Sur Diverses Histoires du Nouveau Testament, deal with the Bible; finally Book Four, Sur Diverses Grâces et Divers États, takes as its subject aspects of the Christian life and experience.8 Books One and Two, reflecting the world before it reaches fulfilment with the coming of Christ are, with 39 sonnets each, slightly shorter than Books Three and Four, which have 41 poems each and reflect the New Testament and the Christian life lived in the fullness of Christ. The Bible, in Books Two and Three, lies at the heart of the collection, reflecting its centrality to the theology and spirituality of the Église Réformée. It is with these biblical books that we shall be concerned in the rest of this study. The poems of Book Two take the reader through the Old Testament in roughly chronological order, from Adam and Eve to the return of the Israelites from the Babylonian captivity. With a few exceptions, the poems follow the order in which their subjects appear in the text of the Bible and evoke many of its heroic figures or stories, as follows: Topic

Sonnet

Garden of Eden, sin of Adam Cain and Abel The Flood and Noah Tower of Babel and Sodom and Gomorrah Abraham, Esau and Jacob Joseph, Egypt and the Desert Job Joshua Gideon Jepthah’s daughter Samson Samuel, David and Solomon Elijah Jonah Hezekiah Manasseh Josiah Babylonian captivity, Daniel, Princes, Esther

1-2 3 4-5 6-7 8-10 10-12, 14-20 13 21 22 23 24 25-29 30 31 32 33 34 35-39

Many of the poems can be traced to a single passage of scripture, but others encapsulate a whole book or have a number of sources. Drelincourt relies most heavily on Genesis (Sonnets 1-11), Exodus (12, 14-20) and Kings (28-30, 32-33), followed by Samuel (25-27), Judges (22-24), Chronicles (33-34) and Daniel (36-37), and he devotes one sonnet each to Job, Joshua, Jonah, Jeremiah, Ezra and Esther. He focuses on the historical books of the Old Testament, largely avoiding the poetic books which were so popular in the sermons of

8

My references throughout are to Sonnets Chrétiens divisez en quatre livres par Mr Drelincourt, ed. by A.-M. Schmidt (Paris: Éditions du Chêne, 1948); this is based on the 1678 edition, with some variants taken from the 1680 edition.

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the Église Réformée of the period. In the sermons studied by Françoise Chevalier, the Book of Psalms occurred most frequently, followed by Isaiah, Genesis, Proverbs, Jeremiah and Lamentations, while the historical books are largely ignored (Prêcher sous l’Édit de Nantes, pp.69-75). Drelincourt’s Sonnets, on the contrary, concentrate on historical elements of the Old Testament, with clusters of poems devoted to particular individuals or significant events: Sonnets 11 and 12 deal with Joseph and slavery in Egypt and lead on to a sequence focused on Moses, the departure from Egypt and the wanderings in the desert in Sonnets 14-20; another sequence takes the reader from the calling of Samuel by God (25) to David (26-27) and then to Solomon’s temple and the Queen of Sheba (28-29), and, finally, the events surrounding the Babylonian captivity occupy Sonnets 35-39. As Julien Gœury has also pointed out,9 many of the figures evoked are well known to the point of banality, but they are the great heroes of the Jewish people’s struggle, and the favour shown to them by God must have had a special resonance for the beleaguered flock of the Église Réformée. Book Three, Sur Diverses Histoires du Nouveau Testament, follows a slightly different pattern. It contains several groups of sonnets sharing the same title, but with different subtitles to indicate that a different aspect of the subject is being evoked in each poem. These groups are: Sur la Naissance de Notre-Seigneur (Admiration/Consolation), Sur la Croix de Notre-Seigneur (Sa Cause/Ses Efets), Sur la Résurrection de Notre-Seigneur (Sa pompe/Ses Efets), Sur l’Ascension de Notre-Seigneur (Aplaudissement/Prosopopée des Apôtres), Sur la Pentecôte Chrétienne (Prosopopée des Témoins/Apostrofe au Saint-Esprit). These pairs of poems serve to stress the defining moments of the mission of Christ, with a strong Calvinist emphasis on the Resurrection, the Ascension and the coming of the Holy Spirit. The other sonnets cluster around them, guiding the reader through the life and teaching of Christ. They fall into the following thematic pattern:

Topic

Sonnet

The Gospel

1

Birth of Christ

2-9

Preparation for his ministry

10-12

Teachings of Christ

13-17

Miracles

18

Anointing of Christ

19

Transfiguration

20

9

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Julien Gœury, ‘Dialogue avec le visible. Le spectacle biblique dans les Sonnets Chrétiens de Laurent Drelincourt’, in Poésie et Bible de la Renaissance à l’âge classique 1500-1680: Actes du colloque de Besançon des 25 et 26 mars 1997, ed. by Pascale Blum and Anne Mantero (Paris: Champion, 1999), p.127.

Entry into Jerusalem

21

Agony and betrayal

22-24

Crucifixion

25-29

Resurrection

30-32

Ascension

33-34

Pentecost

35-36

Apostles and their persecutors

37-41

The poems follow the life of Jesus, evoking his Nativity, his preparation for his ministry, his teaching, his affirmation as the Son of God, his Agony and Crucifixion, his Resurrection and Ascension and, importantly, the coming of the Holy Spirit and the activities of the early apostles. The book is primarily focused on the gospels but a few poems at the end evoke the lives of some of the apostles: St Stephen, the first martyr, St Paul, the missionary, and St Peter, the leader of the apostolic church. Rather curiously, a sonnet is also devoted to the death of Herod Agrippa, presented as a warning against presumption.10 There are some interesting omissions from the collection. The Last Supper is absent, perhaps because the issue of transubstantiation was too difficult to deal with in print in Calvinist terms during the 1670s. The miracles of Christ are also largely ignored, meriting only one general poem, although miraculous occurrences were frequently evoked in the Old Testament sonnets. Christ’s teaching, on the other hand, inspires five poems, reflecting the importance of the Bible as a manual for living the Christian life. The selection of the subject matter of the poems in these biblical books, then, generally seeks to evoke stories which had theological significance for the members of the Église Réformée or which echoed in some way the increasing difficulty of their own situation in the latter half of the seventeenth century.

The Text of the Bible As already observed, the Bible was central to the religious experience of French Calvinists who were therefore very familiar with its text. Drelincourt’s treatment of the biblical text differs somewhat from that of some of the earlier Calvinist poets. Many of them had focused their efforts on paraphrase and translation, particularly of the Psalms. Others had chosen the path of meditation on incidents recorded in the Bible, such as the Crucifixion or the Nativity and yet others the evocation of particular incidents recorded in the Bible. Drelincourt did indeed write some Psaumes pénitentiaux which were attached to later editions of the Sonnets Chrétiens, but in the Sonnets themselves there is no evocation of the Psalms and no direct translation of the Bible. He concentrates, as we have seen, on recalling biblical personages and events, adding some sort of commentary, usually after line 11 but also occasionally after line 8. The treatment of the material in the first part of each sonnet is var10

It is tempting to see in this poem a comment on Louis XIV, but any such linkage would have been unimaginably daring in the 1670s.

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ied in terms of its relationship to the text of the Bible. There may be little detailed reference, as in Sur l’Évangile (Book 3, 1), which celebrates the coming of Christ and the salvation which he brought. It announces the Gospel, but does not relate textually to the opening of any of the gospels. Closer to the text of the Bible, Sur le retour de la Captivité de Babylone (Book 2, 38) has no one source, although the notes direct us to Psalms 126 v.1 and 38 v.8, as well as to Revelation 22 vv.1-2, and there is a clear contrastive allusion to Psalm 137 v. 2. In other poems, particularly where the poet is dealing with a historical personage, reducing a whole book to one sonnet, the Bible is evoked only in very general terms, for example in the sonnet on Job, where Job’s suffering and his constancy are mentioned but without direct reference to the biblical text. Some terms, such as ‘poudre’ (dust) and ‘saphirs’ (sapphires) relate to the biblical source, but, in both cases, the context is different from that in which the terms appear in the Bible. This very general approach to the evocation of a Bible story is not, however, the norm in the Sonnets. More frequently, a strong direct link is evident between the text of the poem and that of the passage or passages from the Bible from which it is derived. If we take as an example the sonnet on Elijah, Sur Élie (Book 2, 30), it is clear that a considerable amount of detail is included for which precise reference can be found, ranging from 1 Kings 17 to 2 Kings 2, as follows: Sérafin corporel, dont le Zéle admirable Produit de jour en jour des Miracles nouveaus, Grand Saint, de qui souvent, les Anges,11 les Corbeaus,12 Comme autant d’Oficiers, viennent couvrir la Table: (Seraph with a human body, whose great zeal Produces new miracles every day; Great saint whose table is often waited on By Angels and ravens:) Second Homme Immortel,13 dont la Voix redoutable Tire le Feu14 du Ciel, & maitrise les Eaus:15 Fait trembler les Tyrans,16 fait ouvrir les Tombeaus;17 Et détruit des faus Dieus18 le Culte abominable […] (Second immortal man whose redoubtable voice Draws forth fire from heaven and masters the waters, Makes tyrants tremble, opens graves And destroys the abominable worship of false gods […])

11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

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An angel brought Elijah food in the wilderness (I Kings 19, 5-6). Ravens fed him by Cherith brook (I Kings 17, 4, 6). Elijah did not die but was carried up into Heaven (2 Kings 2, 11). Elijah called fire down from Heaven to strike the soldiers of King Ahaziah (2 Kings 1, 10, 12). He also caused the waters of the Jordan to divide so that he and Elisha could cross (2 Kings 2, 7-8). Ahab and Jezebel (1 Kings 21, 17-24). Elijah brought the son of the widow Zarephath back from the dead (1 Kings 17, 17-21). Elijah defeated the priests of Baal (I Kings 18, 36-38).

Colonne d’Israël, Proféte glorieus; Un char de Feu,19 volant, rapide, radieus, T’enléve, pour-jamais, à notre indigne Terre. (Pillar of Israel, glorious prophet; A swiftly flying radiant chariot of fire Carries you off for ever from our unworthy earth.) Au Tabor,20 néanmoins, descendant une-fois, Ton Zéle, qui toûjours à l’Erreur fit la Guerre, Combattra le Scandale & l’horreur de la Croix. (Yet you will come down to Mount Tabor, And your zeal, which always waged war on error, Will combat the scandal and the horror of the cross).

The poem praises Elijah, making detailed reference to the Bible, but without reproducing the story of his life in narrative form and without translating or quoting directly from the text of the Old Testament. The reader is expected to know the Bible and to understand the references, the poem serving as a reminder of the Bible story. This pattern is the most common in both books of biblical sonnets and may explain why the Sonnets were used in the Refuge as textbooks for young Huguenots, as the Avertissement du Libraire of the 1746 Amsterdam edition explains.21 We do not know which of the versions of the Geneva Bible Drelincourt used as his working text. Indeed it is clear from R.T. Chambers’s Bibliography of French Bibles (Geneva: Droz, 1983) that he could have had access to a large number of variant versions by the mid seventeenth century, but it is clear that he chooses paraphrase rather than translation, remaining close to the information but not necessarily to the language of the versions of the Bible which he knew. Drelincourt does not rely solely on his personal knowledge of the Bible. As a pastor of the Église Réformée, he was expected to be erudite and so his poems are accompanied by scholarly references which occupy a very regular seven lines per sonnet in the Schmidt edition and which justify or explain the expressions used in the poems by reference to Scripture, to the Church fathers, to the Bible, to Christian historians, to scientific and geographical information and even to classical writers such as Plato and Cicero. His embargo on classical sources of inspiration did not extend to the notes on his poems, but such references are very rare, and the authority most frequently quoted is Saint Augustine, with 49 references in the two books, followed at a considerable distance by Saint John Chrysostom with eleven

19 20

21

Elijah was carried off to heaven in a chariot of fire (2 Kings 2, 11). Mount Tabor was traditionally the place where the Transfiguration of Christ had taken place. Elijah and Moses were both present. Jean Catuffe, Avertissement du Libraire, in L. Drelincourt, Sonnets Chrétiens (Amsterdam: Jean Catuffe, 1746); included also in the 1761 and 1766 Amsterdam editions. The permission to publish the Sonnets given to Frédéric Deckherr in 1811 by the Consistoire de Montbéliard is also based partly on their value as a textbook, as the prefatory material in Laurent Drelincourt, Sonnets Chrétiens (Montbéliard: Deckherr fils, 1811) illustrates.

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references and Saint Bernard with nine. This reflects the pattern detected by Chevalier (p.77) in Huguenot sermons of the period, where she found 51 references to Saint Augustine, fourteen to Saint John Chrysostom and fewer to other Fathers of the Church. The Bouhéreau correspondence contains many references to the notes on the poems and it is clear that the poet considered it very important to justify the validity of the elements included in each poem, rather than allowing free rein to his inspiration.22 His sonnets are thus firmly tied to Christian doctrine and belief, acquiring the dignity and scholarly authority of the thoroughly researched sermon. In spite of his emphasis on scholarship, his rejection of contemporary classical taste and his fidelity to the Bible as chief source of inspiration, Drelincourt remains a seventeenth-century educated Frenchman commenting on the stories of the Bible. Thus he is occasionally guilty of altering some of the descriptive elements in the text, as if to make it more acceptable to contemporary taste and to give events and individuals the grandeur which was their due. Adam and Eve, in the Garden of Eden, are described as being in a palace rather than in a garden watered by a river, while Solomon’s temple is decorated with marble, where the Bible (1 Kings 6, 18) says: ‘And the cedar of the house within was carved with knops and open flowers: all was cedar; there was no stone seen’ (Authorised Version). This acceptance of the classical ‘style noble’ is also sometimes accompanied by classical reference, in spite of the comment in the Avertissement. Thus Samson becomes Alcides, or the death of Jephthah’s daughter is compared to that of Iphigenia. On the whole, then, although not without an occasional struggle, Drelincourt remains faithful to his stated aim of producing Christian, biblically-based poetry. But this ambition is not restricted to content and imagery. It extends also to some of the figures of style adopted in the sonnets.

Style and the Bible As far as the language of the sonnets is concerned, the Bible provides situations, ideas, references and comparisons, but not the precise terms in which they are evoked. In terms of poetic form also, Drelincourt favours the modern sonnet rather than attempting to recreate the form of the Psalms or other biblical poetry. He includes a discussion of his choice of form in his Avertissement. In contrast with his desire to use biblical imagery, there is no consideration of the possibility or otherwise of recreating biblical forms: the choice is simply between the epic and sonnet forms. The epic poem is long; it must be read as a whole and is tiring for the reader. Sonnets, on the other hand, ‘par leur briéveté, sont commodes aus Lecteurs, parcequ’ils ne leur donnent pas le Tens de se lasser’ (‘are short and convenient for their readers because they do not give them the time to become weary’). Drelincourt’s choice of poetic form is therefore guided by a desire to appeal to readers who may lack perseverance or time rather than by any concern for linkage with biblical forms, although it seems likely that the linguistic challenge posed to the writer by the intricacies and brevity of the sonnet form may also have been significant for a man who, according to Pierre Bayle ‘ayant [...] étudié si parfaitement la langue française [...] en savait admirablement 22

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Cf. Bouhéreau correspondence, 8 May 1675, 10 September 1675, 22 January 1678, 13 September 1678.

toutes les délicatesses et la pureté’ (‘having […] studied the French language so perfectly had an admirable knowledge of all its finer points and its purity’).23 If we look at the rhetorical devices found in the poems, however, we find clearer links between Drelincourt’s poetry and that of the Bible itself. One of the defining characteristics of biblical poetry is generally considered to be parallelism, the second part of the verse repeating the content of the first, often with some kind of development or variation.24 The following example is taken from the Marot and Bèze translation of Psalm 147, vv.9-11, which is likely to have been the version with which Drelincourt was most familiar:

Au bestail il donne pasture Aux corbillats leur nourriture, Cracquetants en leur nid sans cesse, De necessité qui les presse. Dieu ne prend plaisir à la taille D’un fort cheval pour la bataille La iambe viste & diligente D’un coureur, point ne le contente: Mais il prend esiouissance En ceux qui craignent sa puissance Et qui totalement dependent De sa çlemence [sic] qu’ils attendent.25 (He giveth to the beast his food, And to the young ravens which cry. He delighteth not in the strength of the horse; He taketh not pleasure in the legs of a man. The Lord taketh pleasure in them that fear him, In those that hope in his mercy.) (Authorised Version)

There is repetition of syntactic form between lines one and two, and almost of meaning, the recipient of the food and the name for the food changing but the action of God remaining the same. Later we find a similar parallelism as the poet lists the things which do not give God pleasure, using the second element (in this translation) to reverse the grammatical order of the first, before going on to tell us what He does want. Drelincourt’s poetry is written with an intense awareness of linguistic effects, from alliteration to chiasmus or paradox. Above all, he constantly uses the opportunities afforded by the alexandrine to create parallel structures, restating a picture, image or idea in the sec23

24 25

Bayle, Dictionnaire historique et critique, II, p.1019, note C. My computer-assisted lexical analysis of the Sonnets also revealed very few repetitions, a clear indication of Drelincourt’s concern for elegance of style and a proof of his linguistic virtuosity. Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Poetry (New York: Basic Books, 1985), pp.3-26. Clément Marot and Théodore de Bèze, Les Psaumes: en vers français avec leurs mélodies (Geneva: Droz, 1986), p.485.

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ond half of the line or looking at it in a different light. The sonnet on the Blessed Virgin (Book 3, 2) provides a useful example of his style: Mere du Redempteur, mais toûjours Vierge pure, Que ton Bon-heur est grand, & ton Sort glorieus! Quelle main, quel pinceau, peut former la Peinture De l’immortel Honneur que tu reçois des Cieus? (Mother of our Redeemer, but still a pure virgin, How great is your happiness, how glorious your destiny! What hand, what brush can paint The immortal honour which heaven confers upon you?) Par Toy, le Créateur veut être Créature: L’Infiny se renferme en tes flancs précieus: Ton Père dans la Grace est ton Fils par Nature; Et, sortant de ton Sein, vient paroître à nos yeus. (Through you, the Creator wishes to become a created being; The infinite is enclosed in your precious womb: Your Father in Grace is your Son in Nature; And, leaving your body, he appears to our eyes). Tu mets au Jour l’Auteur des Clartez éternelles: Et tu nourris, du Lait de tes chastes Mammelles, Celuy qui de ses Biens entretient l’Univers. (You give birth to the author of eternal truth: And you feed, with the milk of your chaste breasts, The One who maintains the universe out of his bounty). Ève nous fit mourir, par sa fatale Envie, Mais, ô Vierge! féconde en Miracles divers, Dans le Fruit de ta Foy tu nous donnes la Vie. (Eve made us die because she was fatally tempted, But, O Virgin, fertile in miracles, In the fruit of your faith you give us life).

The poem is constructed on a series of parallels, paradoxes and contrasts. To take the parallels and developments first, they are present in line two with the development from ‘bonheur’ to ‘sort’, line three with ‘main’ and ‘pinceau’, line eight with ‘sortant de son sein’ and ‘vient paroître à nos yeus’ and lines nine to eleven where birth is followed by feeding, itself often an image of motherhood and birth, and the descriptions of Christ, ‘Auteur des Clartez éternelles’ and ‘Celuy qui de ses Biens entretient l’Univers’, are roughly parallel. Paradox and contrast also abound. Mary is at once virgin and mother, the creator has become something created, the infinite is bounded within her body, and the Father has become the Son. The Virgin and her faith are contrasted with Eve and her betrayal of faith and, as the notes 76

explain, Mary through faith produces the tree of life which Eve lost for us in the Garden of Eden. This rhetorical ornamentation has much in common with the style of the poets of an earlier generation defined by Jean Rousset as ‘baroque’, and indeed poems by Drelincourt were included in Rousset’s well-known Anthologie de la poésie baroque (Paris: Armand Colin, 1968). Yet, although Drelincourt’s sonnets are more consistently paradoxical and contrastive than is generally the case in biblical poetry, the use of repetition and parallel constructions is clearly reminiscent of biblical rhythms and may well owe more to the author’s perusal of the Bible or his singing of the psalms of Marot and Bèze than to his reading of the poetry of an earlier generation.

Preaching and Teaching A Calvinist pastor might be expected to exploit the sonnet form for teaching. In Drelincourt’s sonnets, as we have seen, the tercets and in particular the final tercet, are often used to comment on the subject matter of the poem. Yet these comments only rarely take the form of a direct recommendation to the reader, as in the poem Sur l’Embrasement de Sodome where the poet calls upon sinners to repent, or in Sur l’Entrée Royale de NotreSeigneur dans Jérusalem, where he urges his readers to open their hearts to Christ. More often, he uses the comment to explain the Bible and to expound its meaning. In keeping with the Calvinist view of the Old Testament, many of the poems of Book Two end with a look forward to the New Testament and the coming of the Saviour. Sixteen poems (numbers 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 11, 14, 16, 18, 19, 20, 24, 29, 30, 31 and 36) draw parallels between Old Testament characters or events and Christ or the Crucifixion. To take two examples: Sonnet 3, Sur le Meurtre d’Abel, finishes with a parallel drawn between Abel’s blood demanding vengeance and the blood of the crucified Christ demanding forgiveness for man, while Sonnet 19, Sur l’Arche de l’Aliance, ends on a parallel drawn between the Ark of the Covenant and Jesus. In some Old Testament poems, the comment is simply one of admiration either for the heroic activity of the personage evoked or for God’s goodness to him, as in Sonnet 33, Sur la Prison de Manassé, or Sonnet 21, Sur Josué. In other poems, the poet explains the meaning of the events portrayed. Poem 39, Sur la Reyne Ester, ends with a comment on the inevitability of Esther’s choice of God and the sacrifices this might have entailed, while the conclusion of poem 27, Sur Absalon, seeks, rather awkwardly and with the help of Saint Augustine, to explain why David was more upset over the death of the rebel Absalom than over the death of the child he had had by the wife of Uriah the Hittite. Sometimes the didactic intent of the Old Testament sonnets is a little more clearly defined, the central character exemplifying and being praised for behaviour which should clearly be that of all Christians. Thus Abraham is lauded for his obedience in sacrificing Isaac (Sonnet 8) or Job for his fidelity (Sonnet 13). In the poem on Gideon (Sonnet 22) the poet is even more direct, presenting himself as deriving courage from the Old Testament hero:

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Donc, au fort des Dangers, pren courage, mon Cœur: Si le Monde & l’Enfer t’ont déclaré la Guerre, Dans ton Infirmité Dieu te rendra Vainqueur. (So, in the midst of danger, take courage, my heart: If the world and hell have declared war upon you, God will make you victorious in spite of your weakness).

Here, as elsewhere, the poems seem to comment covertly on the situation of the Église Réformée. Sonnet 9, Sur les Larmes d’Ésaü, for example, deals with the baseness of selling one’s inheritance and ends with the comment: ‘Mon Dieu, que d’Esaüs, dans ce Siècle où nous sommes!’ (‘Oh God, how many Esaus there are in our world today!’), an allusion perhaps to the growing numbers of apostates, while the final tercet of Sonnet 37, Sur les Trois Princes Ébreus dans la Fournaise, with its evocation of God’s protection of his Elect, seems designed to offer hope to a beleaguered people. A desire to reflect the situation of the Église Réformée may also, consciously or unconsciously, underlie the stress laid, in the Old Testament section of the Sonnets, on the two great periods of tribulation of the people of Israel – the time of bondage in Egypt and the Babylonian captivity – and on the deliverance and the return to Israel which followed in both cases. It is as if the poet wished to comfort his readers with reminders of God’s preservation of his people after periods of persecution in the past and to assert his belief that God would also save the Elect of the Église Réformée from their current tribulations. In the New Testament poems, the content is different. Jesus has arrived and there is no need any longer to look forward. Indeed, the parallel drawn between Eve and the Virgin at the end of Sur la Sainte Vierge reverses the process and looks back to the Old Testament. Although some poems still end on a note of admiration, as in Sonnet 13, Sur les Sermons de Notre-Seigneur, many more use the last three lines to explain the significance of the events described, whether it is a question of the moral of a parable, as in Sonnet 16, Sur le Farisien et le Publicain, of the meaning of the birth of Christ, as in Sonnet 4, Sur la Naissance de Notre Seigneur: Consolation, or of the importance for us of Christ’s victory over death in Sonnet 33, Sur le Voyage de la Madeléne au Sépulcre de Notre-Seigneur. Unlike the Old Testament poems, where the poet was often an admiring spectator but rarely directly involved, the poems of Book Three have a much more personal resonance, for example in Sonnet 28, Sur les Miracles arrivez à la Mort de Notre-Seigneur, where the poet accepts his responsibility, through his sin, for Christ’s suffering, or Sonnet 31, Sur la Résurrection de Notre-Seigneur, where he declares his own interest in the Resurrection: ‘Mais c’est pour mon Salut que Jésus est Vainqueur’ (‘But it is for my salvation that Jesus gained the victory’). While more personal than the Old Testament poems, the sentiments expressed in these poems have a general as well as a personal significance. Extremely orthodox, they possess an exemplary value, since they are feelings which should be experienced by any Christian. Indeed, in a small number of poems, ‘I’ is replaced by ‘we’ and the poet/preacher speaks on behalf of the whole Christian community. Thus Sonnet 12, Sur la Tentation de NotreSeigneur au Desert, ends with the assertion that we, the faithful, have been saved from Satan by Christ. 78

Françoise Chevalier (p.63) notes the frequency of the inclusive first person plural in sermons of the period, indicating a desire on the part of the preacher to situate himself at the heart of his flock. However, as Julien Gœury has noted (‘Le spectacle biblique dans les Sonnets Chrétiens’, pp.127-35), Drelincourt is not primarily interested in addressing or including his reader in these biblical sonnets. He tends rather to focus his attention on the figures and events of the Bible, striving to give them immediacy by addressing biblical figures as if he were in their presence, or by using exclamations or rhetorical questions to bring life to his evocations, as in Book 2, 26, Sur la Mort de Josias, or Book 3, 26 Sur la Croix de Notre-Seigneur: ses efets. This desire to bring the Bible to life even leads him occasionally to use the prosopopée form, writing as if he were a participant in the action, as in Book 2, 12, Sur la Servitude d’Egypte, where he imagines himself to be one of the Israelite slaves in Egypt. However, in spite of efforts such as these to give added life to his evocations of the Bible, his primary concern remains the meaning of the biblical text for the Christian, and he resists any temptation to exploit more fully the richness of his material, producing a rather subdued evocation of biblical events and figures and giving primacy to comments upon them which reflect the orthodox doctrine of the Église Réformée. Drelincourt’s sonnets, then, have some of the characteristics of the sermon: they are closely based on Scripture and often exegetical, helping the reader to understand the meaning of the Scriptures, with a smaller number making recommendations on behaviour and attitudes. In all cases, the emphasis is on men’s relationship to God rather than to each other. Moreover, in all cases the lessons drawn are extremely orthodox.

Conclusion The biblical books of the Sonnets Chrétiens clearly reflect the importance of the Scriptures in the spiritual life of their author and of the readership for which they were published. For Drelincourt, the Old Testament testifies to the greatness of God, to the mighty deeds which can be done with his support and, above all, to the miracles which preserve his Elect and the deliverance which he brings to his faithful people. The New Testament, on the other hand, tells of the Saviour and his teachings, but, above all, of the eternal life which he has brought to Christians. The situations and events portrayed in the biblical sonnets provide very relevant spiritual nourishment for the reader, and the echoes of biblical rhythms emphasise the centrality of Scripture to the Christian life. In many ways Drelincourt wrote his poems as exegetical sermons, with explanation of the meaning of the biblical texts backed up by references to learned sources and, although he avoids moral exhortations in most of the sonnets, they have a clear moral function which is to encourage reflection on the Bible, a purpose fulfilled during their long career as a schoolbook for the children of the Refuge.

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Marité Oubrier

La Fontaine: Anti-Hero or Reluctant Hero? La Fontaine’s absent-mindedness is legendary and well documented in a variety of humorous or bizarre anecdotes. Whatever their character, they depict a man singularly detached and unconventional. This image of the poet inhabiting his own private world of dreams and fantasy is at odds with La Fontaine’s involvement with the cultural and social life of his time. It fails to explain his courageous stance on issues affecting his friends and patrons. He was a literary figure who enjoyed the friendship and recognition of his peers and yet he never reached the pinnacle of royal patronage. He always remained on the fringe. Was this due to his nature and was it a deliberate avoidance of any kind of responsibility? Or was it the play of circumstance? La Fontaine is mostly known for his fables collected in three consecutive instalments, of which the first and the third were written for the education of royal princes, and the second was dedicated to one of the king’s mistresses, Mme de Montespan. He is the undisputed master of the genre, which he developed and expanded thanks to his vivid descriptive style and acute sense of dramatic suspense and irony. He also wrote tales (Contes), in the style of Boccaccio or Chaucer, which had ribald overtones reminiscent of the French Peasant Tale tradition originating in the Middle Ages, and which disgraced him in the eyes of the king and of his Court. The third instalment of the Contes was seized by the police and prohibited from sale. The Fables and the Contes could be said to represent two tendencies in his life: on the one hand he courted recognition in order to secure patronage, on the other hand he maintained a spirit of independence and rebellion. However this over-simplified picture is complicated by the fact that, shortly before he died, he underwent a religious conversion and publicly renounced his Contes as immoral, reviving in his character a spiritual dimension that had been dormant ever since he had left the Oratory in his youth to fulfil a literary vocation instead. In his personal life he experienced the seventeenth century in all its main trends, from libertinage to Jansenism, and in his public persona he was involved in most of the literary quarrels and philosophical debates that characterise the century. As a writer he was influenced by classical, précieux and epistolary styles and he experimented with the dramatic heroic and the comédie-ballet genres. In many ways he was very much a man of his time. Yet he created for himself a reputation as an eccentric that has lasted to this day.1 It is hard to resist listing the many incidences of La Fontaine’s quirks of behaviour, handed down by his friends and contemporaries for the benefit and enjoyment of posterity. And indeed many writers and critics have passed them on or commented upon them over

1

For further information on La Fontaine see Œuvres complètes (Paris: Gallimard [Pléiade], vol.1, Fables, contes et nouvelles, ed. by Jean-Pierre Collinet, 1991; vol.2, Œuvres diverses, ed. by Pierre Clarac (1958); henceforth OC). These contain the fully annotated text, as well as biographical and bibliographical notes. For an up-to-date survey and analysis of literary criticism relating to La Fontaine’s writings see Marlène Lebrun, Regards actuels sur les Fables de La Fontaine (Lille: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2000).

the centuries. Elizur Wright, one of the few English translators of the Fables, writes: ‘he lacked all that outside care and prudence, – that constant looking out for breakers – which obstruct the growth and ripening of reflective qualities. The vulgar, by a queer mistake, call a man absent-minded, when his mind shuts the door, pulls in the latch-string, and is wholly at home.’2 Paul Valéry, in his essay on Adonis, also warns the reader about the deceptive outward appearance of La Fontaine’s lazy demeanour.3 Lagarde et Michard, commenting on La Fontaine’s claim in his Épitaphe that he undertook to divide his life between sleeping and idling his time away, come to the same conclusion as Valéry.4 Ferdinand Gohin points to the unassuming manner of the poet who tried to divert attention from his literary gift by claiming that his literary production was unfinished due to his unstable and anxious nature.5 Nevertheless there were occasions when he had the ability to attract attention when he least wanted it. The two following farcical anecdotes recounted by Jean Giraudoux provide a good illustration of this. He is said to have gone to a secret meeting under cover of night. To do so he wore white boots and a white hat that shone brightly in the light of a full moon and made him highly visible. Or again, allegedly, he excused himself suddenly during a meal. His reason was that he had to make his way to a meeting at the Académie Française. Someone pointed out that, since the meeting was not due for another two hours, it was too early for him to go. He retorted that he would be taking the long way.6 Le Sage records an equally delicious anecdote. On the first night of La Fontaine’s ballet L’Astrée, at the end of the first act, the author retired to the Café Marion and fell asleep in a corner. An acquaintance found him there, woke him up and asked why he was not attending the performance. La Fontaine replied that he had got bored and that he admired the patience of his Parisian audience because they had stayed to the end.7 Elizur Wright (p.xxvii) tells how ‘when, riding from Paris to Château-Thierry, a bundle of papers fell from his saddle-bow without his perceiving it. The mail-carrier, coming behind him, picked it up, and overtaking La Fontaine, asked if he had lost anything. “Certainly not,” he replied, looking about him with surprise.’ On the next page Wright tells the story about the poet getting so involved in reading Livy that he forgot to eat the meal he had ordered.8 Yet another anecdote is recounted by Voltaire, in the notes to his satirical fable, Le Marseillois et le lion: Il est rapporté dans l’histoire de l’Académie que La Fontaine demanda à un docteur, s’il croyait que St Augustin eût autant d’esprit que Rabelais, et que le docteur répondit à La Fontaine, prenez garde, monsieur, vous avez mis un de vos bas à l’envers; ce qui était vrai.

2

3 4 5 6 7

8

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Preface, ‘On Fable, the Fabulists, and La Fontaine’ (The Fables of La Fontaine, London: Bell and Son, 1888: henceforth Fables), p.xxviii. Au sujet d’Adonis, in Paul Valéry, Œuvres (Paris: Gallimard [Pléiade], 1957), I, p.475. XVII siècle (Paris: Bordas, 1964), p.216. Ferdinand Gohan, L’Art de La Fontaine dans ses Fables (Paris: Garnier, 1929), pp.2-4. Jean Giraudoux, Les cinq tentations de La Fontaine (Paris: Grasset, 1938), pp.24, 61. Mélanges amusants et saillies d’esprit (Paris: Barbier, 1743), pp.159-60. The same anecdote is also mentioned in Giraudoux, Les cinq tentations, p.201. Léon Petit records the same incident in La Fontaine et Saint-Évremond ou la tentation de l’Angleterre (Toulouse: Privat, 1953, p.222).

(It is reported in the history of the Academy that La Fontaine asked a theologian if he believed that St Augustin had as much wit as Rabelais, and that the theologian replied to La Fontaine, take heed, sir, you’ve put on one of your socks inside out; which was true.)

Voltaire concludes that the theologian was a fool.9 A number of anecdotes relate to La Fontaine’s relationship with his wife; particularly the one of his going to visit her on the recommendation of well-meaning friends. According to Elizur Wright (Fables, p.xl): At the earnest expostulation of Boileau and Racine, who wished to make him a better husband, he returned to Château-Thierry himself, in 1666, for the purpose of becoming reconciled to his wife. But his purpose strangely vanished. He called at his own house, learned from the domestic, who did not know him, that Madame de La Fontaine was in good health, and passed on to the house of a friend, where he tarried two days, and then returned to Paris without having seen his wife. When his friends inquired of him his success, with some confusion he replied, ‘I have been to see her, but I did not find her. She was well.’

Giraudoux gives a similar version of the story, quoting the version by Louis Racine, the playwright’s son.10 Walter Thornbury says about ‘that celebrated journey to ChâteauThierry, from which he [La Fontaine] returned without having even seen Madame de La Fontaine – the anecdote is well known: ‘Ah! How charmingly naïve!’ exclaim the biographers; ‘what a delightful illustration of the poet’s habitual bonhomie and abstraction!’ Alas! It is nothing of the kind. […] The whole incident is quite in accordance with the man’s character. His weak resolution induced him at first to yield, but the natural buoyancy of his spirit recovered itself, and triumphed in the end.11

In the same vein is the story of his challenging the ex-captain Poignant to a duel to defend the honour of Mme de La Fontaine. An acquaintance alerted La Fontaine to the fact that since Poignant used to visit his wife while her husband was away he ought to take offence and act upon it. However, the duel never took place. La Fontaine paid lip service to the cause but became best friends with Poignant. He is alleged to have told him: ‘I have satisfied the public, and now you must come to my house, every day, or I will fight you again.’12 Georges Couton, commenting upon La Fontaine’s married life, speculates that it must have provided him and his acquaintances with a subject for jibes.13 The same could be said about his family life in general. Jean Giraudoux claims not to have invented a single anecdote; he then introduces his reader to the poet’s encounter with his son, with whom La Fontaine is supposed to have spent a couple of hours chatting. He enjoyed the young man’s company so much that he asked a friend who he was. Giraudoux backs up this claim with 9

10 11 12 13

Le Marseillois et le lion, in Voltaire, Œuvres de 1768 (II), ed. by Sylvain Menant (vol.66 of The Complete works of Voltaire, Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1999), p.755. Voltaire sourced the anecdote in Pierre-Joseph Thoulier d’Olivet’s Histoire de l’Académie française, depuis 1652 jusqu’à 1700 (Paris, 1729, p.306). Wright (p.xxxiv) also recounts the same anecdote. Les cinq tentations, pp.90-91. Walter Thornbury, The Fables of La Fontaine, An Essay on the Life and Works (New York, 1867), p.xix. Wright, Fables, pp.xxix-xxx. Cf. Giraudoux, Les cinq tentations, pp.89-90. Georges Couton, La Politique de La Fontaine (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1959), p.140.

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the argument that no biographer could make up anything about La Fontaine’s charmed life.14 In contrast, the poet’s failure to recognise his son when he came across him on a flight of stairs as related by Pierre Clarac is likely to be apocryphal.15 Another such story, that La Fontaine, after the death of his patron Mme de La Sablière, on a whim, took refuge with the Hervart family, has been handed down through the centuries: Léon Petit convincingly demonstrates how the poet’s legend survived despite the lack of any concrete evidence to support it.16 Jean Giraudoux (p.160) relates the same story without commenting on it. In the light of such comments, sometimes contradictory, which biographers, critics, and translators have passed on as striking episodes of the life of this anti-hero, one is left with the impression of a man as elusive as a symbol or as mysterious as a legend. Even the poet’s claim that he spent half his life idling and the other half sleeping17 does nothing to dispel the myth. Couton draws a comprehensive portrait of the poet: he argues convincingly that Jean de La Fontaine’s ultimate strength was the native wisdom he was born with because by temperament and inclination he was a free spirit who believed in fate and in following one’s nature. He was adept at avoiding confrontation. And, unlike some of his contemporaries such as Furetière and La Bruyère, as a writer he did not seek influence and power or bear grudges.18 The rural world he was born into nurtured this tendency. Couton (pp.13-21) tells the story of a man impervious to city life even when he lived in Paris and who is only truly lyrical when he describes country life. The fable Un Animal dans la Lune (Book VII, no.17),19 among others, makes plain La Fontaine’s love of a peaceful existence and hatred of war. And, as Jean Giraudoux (p.198) reminds us, he began as a poet with Ode pour la paix, in 1659. What is also very obvious is his love of literature. When he was a pupil at the Oratory, over a period of eighteen months, he showed more interest in the literature of romance (L’Astrée was his constant companion) than in theology. He was invited to leave because of his unconventional practice of paraphrasing the Oratory prayers in verse and of working at night.20 His vocation was not religious but literary. In the seventeenth century literary pursuits were possible only with the financial help and through the influence of a protector and patron. La Fontaine’s first protector was the minister Foucquet. Marie-Odile Sweetser explains at length the importance of Foucquet as a patron of the arts.21 La Fontaine was one of his protégés, Pellisson another. Molière and Corneille also benefited from his patronage. His domain of Vaux was the scene of brilliant festivities, staged by the best artists of the times. He was a powerful and enlightened protector. His political demise came in November 1661, when he was arrested, tried and imprisoned for alleged financial irregularities. Events demonstrated that Foucquet’s friends and supporters were to be found among the literati of his day rather than in the political world of intrigues. 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

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Les cinq tentations, p.24. Pierre Clarac, La Fontaine par lui-même (Paris: Éditions Du Seuil, Écrivains de toujours, 1961), p.42. La Fontaine et Saint-Évremond, pp.315-16. Cf. above, p.94. La Politique de La Fontaine, especially pp.38-39, 43-53. I am currently writing a study of Un Animal dans la Lune to be published at a later date. Pierre Clarac, La Fontaine (Paris: Hatier, 1969), p.6. Marie-Odile Sweetser, La Fontaine (Boston: Twayne, 1987), pp.11-17.

As late as 1671, ten years after Fouquet’s disgrace, La Fontaine published Le Songe de Vaux to honour his debt to his former patron at a time when he needed the protection of the king for his licentious Contes. He expressed his feelings for Foucquet in a letter to his wife on a trip to the Limousin region, where Foucquet was jailed.22 La Fontaine’s letters were collected and published after his death. They are believed to have been passed around and widely read during his lifetime and to have constituted a public acknowledgement of his continuing support for Foucquet running contrary to his ambitions for the ultimate accolade of a seat in the prestigious Académie Française. And there was also the matter of the Ode au Roi, in 1663, in support of Foucquet, which had incurred the wrath of the king and of Colbert. La Fontaine’s loyalty to Foucquet, and other exiled and disgraced friends such as Mme de Bouillon, would have sufficiently warranted the importance of the Fables as a detailed meditation on the workings of power, and of absolute power at that, unfolding over three decades, from 1660 to 1690. In connection with the Foucquet affair Pierre Clarac (pp.26-31) makes an important distinction between La Fontaine and other followers of Foucquet, namely that La Fontaine, through his involvement at Vaux, gained in experience and connections but remained independent. By temperament he was not prone to flattery or servility. By nature, however, he loathed injustice and following Foucquet’s arrest the poet fell ill. Then he took a courageous stance and came out publicly in defence of Foucquet with the Ode au Roi. This adds credence to the view that La Fontaine approached life in a personal manner without reference to others, in a way that excluded competition. He was not alone in continuing to show support to Foucquet throughout his ordeal. Pellisson, Gourville, Maucroix, Mme de Sévigné, and a few others came to his defence.23 In his article ‘Nicolas Foucquet au jeu des miroirs’, Wolfgang Leiner debunks the Foucquet myth. The man, true to his reputation, was clever, generous, and a connoisseur of the Arts. But there was another side to him. He came from a humble background and through his talent fuelled by enormous ambition he made it to the top as a minister to the king. However he took liberties with money from the treasury to organise lavish festivities at Vaux to which he invited the king. This lack of judgement together with his ignorance of etiquette in outshining the king led to his downfall. His ambition, Leiner tells us with the help of contemporary testimonies, grew bigger than him. Another dimension underlined by Leiner, and backed up by Jean-Michel Pelous,24 is the libertine propensities of the minister who used money to satisfy his amorous pursuits and his influence to cover up his indiscretions. 22 23

24

‘La Relation d’un voyage de Paris en Limousin’, letter of 5 September 1663 (OC, pp.546-55). Wolfgang Leiner, ‘Nicolas Foucquet au jeu des miroirs’, Cahiers de l’Association Internationale des Études Françaises, 22 (May 1970), p.273. Pelous, in Amour précieux, amour galant (Paris: Klincksieck, 1980, p. 88), quotes the abbé de Choisy who, in his Mémoires, says that Foucquet was an insatiable womaniser (‘insatiable sur le chapitre des dames’) and that he eagerly pursued attractive women, being confident that his wealth would conquer all (‘il attaquait hardiment tout ce qui lui paraissait aimable, persuadé que le mérite soutenu de l’argent vient à bout de tout’). Pelous also (p.222) mentions an episode in Bussy-Rabutin’s Histoire amoureuse des Gaules, published in 1665, in which an anonymous lady acknowledges receipt of a large sum of money from Foucquet in exchange for sexual favours.

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Rejoining Couton in his assertion that the contact with nature rather than the sophistication of Court life was a determining factor in his character, Giraudoux links this with La Fontaine’s capacity for enduring friendship.25 Foucquet was not alone in inspiring lasting loyalty in the poet. The duchesse de Bouillon, who became his protector after the arrest of Foucquet and who was subsequently disgraced, also did. Giraudoux, in the same passage (p.159), explains how La Fontaine kept in regular contact with her by letters in verse throughout her exile, and how he did not abandon her when the added disgrace of old age struck her. Marie-Anne Mancini, niece of Mazarin, who married the duc de Bouillon, was ‘a pretty, witty, fun-loving woman whose patronage was certainly important to La Fontaine’ (Sweetser, p.75), since her husband was lord of Château-Thierry, La Fontaine’s birth place. Clarac (p.33), who pays homage to her vivacious spirit and attractiveness, reveals that she encouraged him to write the Contes. ‘In fact she was fort galante, moved in a fast set, and at one point was sent to a convent: at that time it was the accepted way to dispose of women whose personal life had become an embarrassment to their husband and family’ (Sweetser, p.75). Two published letters from La Fontaine to Mme de Bouillon, the first dating from June 1671 and the second from November 1687 (OC, p.668), reflect the evolution of their friendship. In the first letter the poet addresses her in the form of a short eulogy in verse to an attractive woman, praising her beauty and comparing her to Venus. Thanks to her introduction, he was at the time a gentleman attached to the service of the duchesse d’Orléans. When he wrote the second letter, Mme de Bouillon was in the initial months of her exile in London. He had been elected to the Academy. The house in which he was born had been sold and he had been for many years under the patronage of Mme de la Sablière. The tone is very different, more sombre, and more reflective. It is a mixture of prose and verse, an essay with philosophical references to Descartes and Anacreon, dotted with allusions to events in her past and present life, and punctuated with panegyric verse. What is remarkable about both Foucquet and Mme de Bouillon is their unconventional lifestyle and strength of character in defying social rules, which would have appealed to La Fontaine as something he could relate to. They also shared an artistic instinct that enabled them to recognise at once the genius of La Fontaine. It is therefore little surprise that La Fontaine repaid them with unflagging loyalty. Mme de la Sablière was the longest serving patron of the poet, from 1673 to her death in 1693. She was a very influential and learned woman who opened the doors of her salon and gave her support to the great and the good in science, travel, philosophy and literature. Her house was the meeting point of innovative ideas and creative people. She was also unconventional: she separated from her husband after fourteen years of marriage and lost custody of her children. From then on she led an independent life, which was very unusual in the seventeenth century. However, she never fell foul of the king: she was neither as flamboyant as Mme de Bouillon nor as ambitious as Foucquet and managed to remain respectable until the end of her long life, when she turned to religion.26 She provided La Fontaine with continuity and stability. His years under her patronage were productive and successful. It is highly significant that his maiden speech at the Academy was a Discours à Madame de 25 26

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Les cinq tentations, pp.156-59. Clarac, La Fontaine, pp.90-91.

la Sablière in which he names her as his muse and praises her wisdom.27 After expressing the errors of his way of life he concludes with a question: Qu’est-ce que vivre, Iris? Vous pouvez nous l’apprendre: C’est jouir des vrais biens avec tranquillité; Faire usage du temps et de l’oisiveté; S’acquitter des honneurs dus à l’Être suprême; Renoncer aux Philis en faveur de soi-même; Bannir le fol amour et les vœux impuissants, Comme hydres dans nos cœurs sans cesse renaissants. (What is it to live, Iris? You may teach us this: It is to enjoy the truly good things of life with tranquillity; To use both time and idleness; To carry out the duties owing to the Supreme Being; To renounce lovers in favour of one’s self; To banish mad love and powerless vows which, Like hydras are ceaselessly reborn in our hearts.)

Her philosophy of life he would embrace after her death. He died two years later. Foucquet, Mme de Bouillon, and Mme de la Sablière were the most significant of La Fontaine’s protectors but a few more should be mentioned: Marguerite de Lorraine, duchesse d’Orléans, the Conti family, M. de Vendôme, Mme de Montespan, and Mme de Thianges. They were all political or social outcasts of a kind. Marguerite de Lorraine contested the inheritance of her daughter-in-law, Mlle de Montpensier. The Conti family was mixed up in the Fronde. M. de Vendôme, Grand Prieur de France in the Order of Malta, was the leading light in a group of libertines.28 Mme de Montespan and her sister Mme de Thianges were implicated in L’Affaire des Poisons, together with Mme de Bouillon and Racine, among others. It was the biggest scandal of the reign of Louis XIV, involving the practice of sorcery and arsenic poisoning with the support of a network of dealers and pushers. A special court was set up by the king, then promptly dismissed when it was discovered that his mistress, Mme de Montespan, was compromised in the affair. Above all protection by the king of an author was necessary to obtain full recognition and was determined through suitable patronage, which was acceptable to the king. La Fontaine did not comply with royal requirements. He had affinities with those who departed from the norm. However, La Fontaine did benefit from some royal patronage. The earlier fables, published in 1668, were dedicated to the Dauphin, and were rewarded with payment. Sweetser (p.48) tells us: […] there is no doubting the success of his [La Fontaine’s] campaign in favor of the fables of 1668. They could not have been dedicated to the young prince without the king’s permission. There may even

27 28

OC, pp.645-46. Dossier biographique, in La Fontaine, Fables, ed. by Marie-Madelaine Fragonard (Paris: Collection Pocket Classiques, 1998). See also Petit, La Fontaine et Saint-Évremond, pp.306-16.

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be some truth in the anecdote which tells of La Fontaine going to court in person to present a copy of the book to the king and to receive a sum of money as a reward for his literary efforts.29

The twelfth and last book, published in 1693, was dedicated to the king’s grandson, the duc de Bourgogne, pupil of Fénelon. Elizur Wright (p.xliii) says that: the eleven books now published sealed the reputation of La Fontaine, and were received with distinguished regard by the king, who appended to the ordinary protocol or imprimatur for publication the following reasons: ‘In order to testify to the author the esteem we have for his person and his merit, and because youth have received great advantage in their education from the fables selected and put in verse, which he has heretofore published.’

This is beyond doubt a royal seal of approval. Wright shares with the reader a very similar anecdote to the one Wadsworth, as quoted by Sweetser above, narrates. With the difference that, allegedly, La Fontaine forgot to bring the book he was due to present to the king and also, on his way home, mislaid the purse of gold he had been given. Léon Petit explains how the young duke himself showed generosity to the poet at a time when Mme de la Sablière had just died and he was old and sick. It is true nevertheless that La Fontaine was never on the king’s official annual list of protégés and therefore never had full royal protection. In all likelihood this was the price he paid for supporting Foucquet.30 It is true also that on 15 November 1683 his peers elected La Fontaine to the Academy to replace Colbert who had just died and that the next day the king vetoed the decision. Was this a royal gesture of loyalty towards Colbert, La Fontaine’s old enemy? Couton thinks not. When Colbert died, he was no longer a favourite of the king and less successful as a patron of the Arts. According to Clarac (p.104), the king explained his refusal by the discontent within the Academy. La Fontaine appealed to the king, promising to disavow his controversial Contes. Boileau took the next vacant seat on 17 April 1684. A few days later, on 24 April 1684, La Fontaine’s election was finally granted royal approval. Georges Couton, through an analysis of the fable Les Membres et l’Estomac, demonstrates that La Fontaine subscribed to the social order in the reign of Louis XIV: social stability wins out over social justice. But, Couton argues (pp.53-6), this is only on the surface because the poet was too perceptive to respect social order and too wise to try to change it. In his fables he certainly depicts a world in which survival of the fittest is the rule. And in La Fontaine’s time the king was the fittest of all. Still on the chapter of Colbert, the poet included praise for the minister in his Poème du quinquina, but to no avail. La Fontaine, who had quarrelled on literary matters with his peers – for instance he had fallen out with Furetière and Boileau over the issue of the Ancients and the Moderns, and with Racine and Boileau again over the two Phèdre Affair31 – never lost their respect and friendship. Famously, on the day La Fontaine was first elected to the Academy, Toussaint Rose, the king’s private secretary, compared him pejoratively to 29

30 31

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Sweetser quotes Philip Wadsworth, La Fontaine, A Study of his Artistic Growth in his Early Poetry and First Fables (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1952), p.211. La Fontaine et Saint-Évremond, pp.331-34. This was yet again a literary quarrel, in which Mme de Bouillon and her entourage turned against Racine. They encouraged the young dramatist Pradon to write his own version of Phèdre, and contributed to his success with artificial backing, against Racine’s play. Racine was in effect forced to retire, to Boileau’s dismay.

Marot: ‘Je vois bien qu’il vous faut un Marot’, were his words.32 Benserade, who had been chosen over La Fontaine to write the fables adorning the Labyrinth at Versailles, the king’s answer to Foucquet’s gardens at Vaux, jumped to his defence with the riposte: ‘Et à vous une marotte’.33 Since a marotte is a fool’s cap bauble, and also means a foolish obsession, Rose’s insult backfired on him. It seems that, as much as the king and perhaps as much as Colbert, Rose was the sworn enemy of La Fontaine. Couton argues that La Fontaine was unlucky in his relations with the great and the powerful and that he contributed to his bad luck by never letting the king or Colbert forget his support for Foucquet. Even La Fontaine’s friendship with Mme de Montespan,34 one of the king’s mistresses, failed to win over Colbert and, even after Colbert’s death, Rose continued the hostility towards the poet. This hostility did not abate with La Fontaine’s death and showed itself in the secretary’s speech of introduction of La Fontaine’s successor to the Academy. Critics have reacted in different ways to these events. What Couton (pp.129-30) concludes is that the rejection suffered by the poet may have fed the bitterness prevalent in the Fables. However, La Fontaine’s natural tendency to do things his own way, unfettered by expectations, meant that he would always be an outsider. René Jasinski quotes La Fontaine’s confessor, who described the poet as a genuine and sincere man who looked at many things differently from anyone else.35 He adds (p.277) that the poet’s spirit of independence together with the people he associated with, even more than the Contes, was perceived as a threat by the king. Clarac (p.29) thinks that the poet’s life is a continuous proof that he was highly skilled in the art of refusing to belong to any faction while retaining sympathies in every camp. Bassy emphasises that it is time to tax the critics of La Fontaine with laziness, rather than the poet himself.36 Giraudoux explains La Fontaine as the embodiment of equilibrium between contradictions: his disparate feelings do not alternate but coexist. What marks him out from certain contemporaries is that, unlike Racine and Molière, who kept apart their personal lives ruled by reason, and their writings portraying extremes, he did not divide life and work.37 Paul Mesnard, quoted by Léon Petit, says that La Fontaine paid back favours to his protectors and behaved towards them in as dignified a way as they did towards him. Petit infers from this that the poet was never indebted to his benefactors.38 Clearly, our reluctant hero displayed idiosyncratic behaviour in everyday life. Even allowing for the apocryphal element in most or all of the anecdotes about him one has to accept a degree of eccentricity in the man. On the other hand he had a down-to-earth love of

32

33

34 35 36

37 38

Clément Marot, the sixteenth-century poet, had a lasting influence on the literature of both seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. His clear and elegant poetic style (style marotique) was taken up and developed by La Fontaine, among others. Clarac, La Fontaine, p.103. The abbé Paul Tallemant, quoted by Clarac, remarked that Benserade’s riposte showed his lack of resentment towards his rival. The second collection of the Fables was dedicated to her. René Jasinski, Histoire de la littérature française (Paris: Nizet, 1965), p.273. Alain-Marie, Bassy, ‘Les Fables de La Fontaine et le labyrinthe de Versailles’, Revue de l’Histoire du Livre, 12 (1976), pp.421-22. Les cinq tentations, pp.168-78. La Fontaine et Saint-Évremond, p.314.

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nature and a great understanding of it. Indeed the fables go beyond the description of animal mores. Even when they lend anthropomorphic traits to animals, thus following the conventions of fable, they make background and characters come alive by selecting just the right authentic detail. This can only be the product of personal observation and of a private passion. La Fontaine’s provincial origins would explain his awkwardness among the aristocratic set his literary gifts propelled him into, his political and social blunders, and his status as an outsider. There is justification in his attraction to like-minded people and to outcasts. It is hard to conceive of someone who would stumble upon things by accident and make so many mistakes yet who, with a combination of hard luck and serendipity, would eventually triumph. Giraudoux (pp.185-243) argues very persuasively when he states that La Fontaine had the ambition to succeed and sought recognition while he never believed he would attain either. His foray into drama, emulating Molière or Racine, got him nowhere. Ballet and opera were equally out of his reach. The heroic genre he so admired eluded him. His failure in the great genres reduced him to expressing himself in the minor medium of the fables in which he experimented with mock-heroic style. He was not even mentioned as a poet in Boileau’s Art poétique. All his life he was hostage to his contentious Contes. Court protocol required that glory should be reserved for the great genres, Giraudoux says, and be ratified with a seat at the Academy. It is a measure of La Fontaine’s achievement that without the required glory he made it to the Academy through sheer force of personality. His genius for friendship and his popularity among his peers transcended political power and influence. A man who endeavoured to be left to his own devices and to enjoy life as it came could only wish to be ordinary and happy, and to be an anti-hero. Yet the more he tried to avoid heroism, the more it forced itself upon him. Perhaps it was inevitable that a poet who permitted no boundary between his life and his art should have realised the heroic dimension he idealised. I now leave the last word to our reluctant hero: On rencontre sa destinée Souvent par des chemins qu’on prend pour l’éviter.39 (Sometimes, take care as we may, We die of that from which we tried to get away.)40

39 40

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Fables, L’Horoscope (Book VIII, no.16, lines 1-2; OC, p.199). Marianne Moore, The Fables of La Fontaine (New York: The Viking Press, 1954), p.188.

Graham Gargett

Voltaire’s L’Ingénu, the Journal chrétien and Saint-Foix: A New Source for Hercule de Kerkabon? It would be hard to deny the heroic credentials of Hercule de Kerkabon, protagonist of Voltaire’s L’Ingénu, arguably his most important conte philosophique after Candide. Brought up as a Huron Indian, this very embodiment of the noble savage – brave, handsome, intelligent and loyal – turns out to be in reality the son of French parents, as he discovers at the beginning of the story, when he arrives in Brittany and stumbles upon his long-lost uncle and aunt, the abbé de Kerkabon and Mlle de Kerkabon, the abbé’s sister. Thereafter, the Ingénu exhibits every variety of heroism and a great deal of passion. He almost singlehandedly repels an English attack. He braves unjust imprisonment in the Bastille for having sympathised with a group of Huguenots fleeing the persecution brought about by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Enraged at the fact that he cannot marry his beloved, Mlle de Saint-Yves, who has unwittingly rendered such a match impossible by becoming his godmother, Hercule breaks into the young lady’s bedroom and is on the point of becoming her de facto husband: Mademoiselle de St. Yves, se réveillant en sursaut s’était écriée: ‘Quoi! c’est vous! ah! c’est vous! arrêtez-vous, que faites-vous?’ Il avait répondu: ‘Je vous épouse’, et en effet il l’épousait, si elle ne s’était pas débattue avec toute l’honnêteté d’une personne qui a de l’éducation.1 (Mademoiselle de St. Yves, waking up with a start had cried out: ‘What! It’s you! Ah! It is you! Stop, what are you doing?’ He had replied: ‘I am marrying you’, and in effect he would have married her, if she hadn’t struggled with all the decency of a person who has some education.)

Later in the story, Hercule, exhibiting a different type of heroism, pardons the infidelity of Mlle de Saint-Yves, who has been forced, in order to obtain his release and that of his friend, Gordon, from the Bastille, to prostitute herself to the minister in charge of prisons, M. de Saint-Pouange. All these varieties of heroism and passion contribute to Hercule’s maturing process throughout the story, as he progressively triumphs over adversity and learns to overcome suffering, both his own and that of his friends: at the end of it all, the heroic noble savage has become a sadder, civilised, but equally heroic, Frenchman. To many, it may seem that little remains to be said about Voltaire’s contes. Over the years critics have investigated every area of these undisputed masterpieces, not only poring over their contents, meaning and structure but also subjecting their background and genesis to exhaustive analysis. After the work of several notable scholars in the early decades of the twentieth century, the 1960s and 70s witnessed a whole host of distinguished essays and critical editions. And, as Theodore Besterman’s monumental editions of Voltaire’s corre-

1

L’Ingénu: histoire véritable, ed. by William R. Jones (Geneva, Paris: Droz, 1957), p.20. All references to this edition.

spondence2 have progressively been digested, further studies have sought to give ever more depth and focus to our knowledge. L’Ingénu, at one stage regarded as a flawed masterpiece, has come in for its share of critical reappraisal, in particular a comprehensive study by Clouston.3 Every aspect of this conte, as of the others, would now appear to have been exhaustively dealt with. Yet, as I have tried to show,4 there is still scope for further investigation, especially as regards the background of L’Ingénu. Could a rather longer genesis than usually envisaged explain its rather singular structure and alleged lack of unity? Basing my argument on an almost unnoticed passage from Voltaire’s 1765 Questions sur les miracles, which is virtually identical with the beginning of L’Ingénu, I have sought to demonstrate that Voltaire was thinking seriously about the conte (at least in embryo) during August and September of that year. Letter 12 of the Questions contains the following lines: J’ai lu dans l’histoire de St. Dunstan, qui est un fameux Saint du païs du Jésuite Nedham, qui [sic] fit venir un jour une montagne d’Irlande en basse Bretagne, lui donna sa bénédiction & la renvoya chez elle. Je ne doute pas que vous n’en fassiez autant que St. Dunstan, vous qui êtes réformé.5 (I have read in the history of St. Dunstan, who is a famous saint from the country of the Jesuit Needham, that one day he caused a mountain to come from Ireland to Lower Brittany, gave it his blessing and sent it back home. I have no doubt that you can do as much as St. Dunstan, you who are a Protestant.)

The similarities with the beginning of L’Ingénu are manifest: Un jour Saint Dunstan, Irlandais de nation & Saint de profession, partit d’Irlande sur une petite montagne qui vogua vers les côtes de France, & arriva par cette voiture à la baye de S. Malo. Quand il fut à bord, il donna la bénédiction à sa montagne, qui lui fit de profondes révérences & s’en retourna en Irlande par le même chemin qu’elle était venue. (p.77) (One day St. Dunstan, Irish by nation and a saint by profession, left Ireland on a wee mountain which travelled towards the coasts of France, and he arrived by this vehicle in the Bay of St. Malo. When he was on dry land, he gave his blessing to his mountain, which bowed profoundly to him several times and returned to Ireland the way it had come.)

2

3

4

5

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I refer here to the definitive edition, Voltaire’s Correspondence and Related Documents, in The Complete Works of Voltaire (Geneva, then Banbury, then Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1968-1977), vols 85-135: hereafter D, followed by the number of the letter in question. John S. Clouston, Voltaire’s Binary Masterpiece: L’Ingénu Reconsidered (Berne, Frankfurt am Main, New York: P. Lang, 1986). The seminal study remains Jacques Van den Heuvel’s Voltaire dans ses contes: de Micromégas à L’Ingénu (Paris: Armand Colin, 1967). G. Gargett, ‘Some Reflections on Voltaire’s L’Ingénu and a Hitherto Neglected Source: The Questions sur les miracles’, in The Secular City: Studies in the Enlightenment, ed. by T.D. Hemming, E. Freeman and D. Meakin (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1994), pp.85-101. Douzième Lettre du Proposant à Mr. Covelle, Citoyen de Genève, à l’occasion des Miracles (Geneva, 1765), pp.3-4.

This textual evidence, along with some other indications from the Questions,6 appears to provide strong support for the thesis, argued notably by Haydn Mason,7 that Voltaire began working on or at least thinking about the scenario of this conte well before the events in 1766, in particular the La Barre case, which seem to have provided the most immediate stimulus for its composition. Further work has moreover convinced me that another significant influence dates from considerably earlier than 1765 and the Questions sur les miracles. In addition, this new source may throw further light on the conception and character of Voltaire’s extraordinary hero, the noble savage who turns into Hercule de Kerkabon, long-lost nephew of a Breton abbé and his sister. 1760 was a highly charged year for Voltaire and other members of the philosophic camp, a time of several important victories in their struggle against ‘reaction’ and the status quo. Encouraged by the suspension of the Encyclopédie, the condemnation of De l’esprit and a hardening of official attitudes after Damiens’s attempt on the life of Louis XV in 1757, champions of tradition like Le Franc de Pompignan and Fréron had set out to harry their enemies with renewed vigour. These attacks prompted a devastating response from Voltaire. In a stream of pamphlets and poems8 and in his comedy L’Écossaise, he demolished several prominent opponents, notably Pompignan, Fréron and the abbé Trublet. One of the lesser-known irritants of the philosophes at this time was the pious Journal chrétien, to which Trublet was the most prominent contributor.9 It was largely because of his connection with this reactionary periodical that the unfortunate abbé was stigmatised in Le Pauvre diable as an inveterate ‘compiler’, but the hostility shown to him was quite unjustified, since Trublet in fact often sought to present himself as a conciliator and penned many moderate articles: the real scourges of the philosophes in the pages of the Journal chrétien were Trublet’s two priestly colleagues, abbés Joannet and Dinouart.10 One particular attack brings us to the connection with L’Ingénu and Hercule de Kerkabon. In May 1760 the abbé Dinouart wrote a review savaging an apparently innocent book, Saint-Foix’s Essais historiques sur Paris, a new augmented edition of which had been published the previous year.11 According to Dinouart, who reproduced a series of passages from the work, it was an insolent attack on religion and the properly-constituted political

6

7

8

9

10 11

In particular as regards the ‘Savanois’, archetypal noble savages (Gargett, ‘Some Reflections’, pp.90-91): cf. below, p.116. ‘The Unity of Voltaire’s L’Ingénu’, in The Age of Enlightenment: Studies Presented to Theodore Besterman, ed. by W.H. Barber et al. (Edinburgh, London: Oliver and Boyd, 1967), pp.101-03. Notably the Relation du voyage de frère Garassise, Réflexions pour les sots, the Dialogues chrétiens, Les Quand, Les Pour, Les Que, etc., the Plaidoyer de Ramponeau, Le Pauvre diable and the Anecdotes sur Fréron. See G. Gargett, ‘Religion, Journalism and the Struggle against philosophie: Trublet at the Journal chrétien (1758-1760)’, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 336 (Oxford, 1996), pp.195-331. Ibid., pp.256-66. See G. Gargett, ‘Une revanche des Lumières: les Essais historiques sur Paris de Saint-Foix et le Journal chrétien’, in Voltaire et ses combats: Actes du congrès international Oxford-Paris 1994, ed. by Ulla Kölving and Christiane Mervaud (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1997), pp.953-62.

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authorities, an attack moreover directly inspired by Voltaire.12 Unfortunately for Dinouart and the Journal chrétien, Germain-François Poullain de Saint-Foix was not a soft target. Although an attentive reading of the Essais historiques sur Paris fully confirms Dinouart’s analysis and shows that the book overflowed with anti-religious passages,13 its author reacted energetically. His complaints to the authorities led to a case being brought, as a result of which, to the delight of their philosophic enemies, the Journal chrétien’s authors were condemned and forced to retract the allegations against Saint-Foix. As Voltaire crowed to several correspondents, here was a welcome triumph for the good cause at a difficult time: Un breton aiant fait, il y a quelques années, des recherches sur la ville de Paris, L’abbé Trublet et consors, l’ont accusé d’irréligion au sujet de la rüe Tireboudin, et de la Rüe Trousse Vache; et le breton a été oblige de faire assigner ses accusateurs au Châtelet de Paris.14 (A Breton having done some research, a few years ago, on the city of Paris, the abbé Trublet and associates accused him of irreligion over what he said about the rue Tireboudin and the rue Trousse Vache; and the Breton was obliged to prosecute his accusers at the Châtelet in Paris.)

Voltaire in fact reprinted Saint-Foix’s factum in his Facéties parisiennes15 and a few months later gave a fuller account of the incident: Je ne sais quels écrivains subalternes se sont avisés, dit on, de faire un Journal chrétien, comme si les autres journaux de l’Europe étaient idolâtres. Mr. de Saint-Foix, gentilhomme breton célèbre par la charmante comédie de l’Oracle, avait fait un livre très utile & très agréable sur plusieurs points curieux de notre histoire de France. La plupart de ces petits dictionnaires ne sont que des extraits des savants ouvrages du siècle passé; celui-ci est d’un homme qui a vu & pensé. Mais qu’est il arrivé? Sa comédie de l’Oracle, & ses recherches sur l’histoire, étaient si bonnes, que mrs du Journal chrétien l’ont accusé de n’être pas chrétien. Il est vrai qu’ils ont essuyé un procès criminel, & qu’ils ont été obligés de demander pardon; mais rien ne rebute ces honnêtes gens.16 (Some insignificant writers or other took it into their heads, apparently, to create a Christian Journal, as if the other journals in Europe were idolatrous. Mr. de Saint-Foix, a Breton gentleman famous for his charming comedy The Oracle had written a very useful and agreeable book on several curious points of French history. The majority of these small dictionaries are nothing but extracts from learned works of the last century; this one is the work of a man who has seen and thought. But what happened? His comedy, The Oracle, and his historical research, were so good that the editors of the Christian Journal accused him of not being Christian. It’s true that they underwent a criminal trial, and that they were obliged to apologise, but nothing puts off these gentlemen.)

The details to be found here and the enthusiasm with which they are recounted surely provide further clear evidence of the impact Saint-Foix and the latter’s attack on the Journal chrétien had had on Voltaire. One reason for this is obvious. Not only was the Breton gentleman an anticlerical ally, he was also an almost fanatical enthusiast for the theatre and, in his day, had considerable 12 13 14 15

16

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Journal chrétien, dédié à la reine (May 1760), pp.43-44. Gargett, ‘Une revanche’, pp.958-60. D9148, 15 August, to the King of Poland. See also D9092 and D9095. Requête présentée à monsieur le lieutenant criminel par l’auteur des Essais historiques sur Paris, in Recueil des facéties parisiennes pour les six premiers mois de l’an 1760 (Geneva, 1760). D9492, 23 December 1760, to Francesco Albergati Capacelli.

success as a playwright. Saint-Foix’s passion for the stage is amply documented by Collé’s journal, where frequent mentions occur of his presence at the theatre in Paris. To appreciate his European success as a littérateur in the eighteenth century one has only to consult the catalogue of the Bibliothèque Nationale, which devotes no fewer than seventeen pages to this now completely forgotten author, detailing translations of his works into five European languages. Further confirmation of these points as well as information on Saint-Foix’s life and contacts may be found in an ‘Éloge historique’ contained in volume 7 of his Œuvres complètes17 and in the relevant article of Michaud’s Biographie universelle.18 Born at Rennes in February 1699, Saint-Foix studied under the Jesuits, then became a cavalry lieutenant ‘dans le Régiment de la Cornette-Blanche’ (‘Éloge’, p.391). Although endowed with a fiery temperament, he was attracted to literature as a very young man, composing his first comedy (Pandore) at the age of twenty-three. In 1733 he went to Italy during the War of the Austrian Succession as the Maréchal de Broglie’s aide-de-camp, ‘et se fit remarquer par son sang-froid à la bataille de Gusastalla (1744)’ (‘made himself noticed through his composure at the battle of Gusastalla’) (Michaud, p.314), yet his military career was cut short: ‘A la paix, il sollicita une Compagnie qu’il n’obtint pas’ (‘When peace was declared, he asked to become an officer, but was unsuccessful’) (‘Éloge’, p.392). Having failed to become a captain, he left the army and bought the charge of maître particulier des eaux et forêts at Rennes. Soon, however, he was drawn to Paris, where he became even more famous for his duels than for his plays. Notorious because of his violence and his irascible temperament, Saint-Foix was clearly an eccentric more reminiscent of some of the characters to be found in contemporary England than in his native France. According to Michaud’s rather uncharitable account (p.314), this was even the explanation for SaintFoix’s literary success! La réputation qu’il s’étoit faite d’un spadassin déterminé retenait les journalistes. Aucun n’osoit se permettre de porter un jugement défavorable sur des ouvrages dont l’auteur avait menacé plusieurs fois de couper les oreilles au premier qui l’attaquerait; et l’on était convaincu qu’il ne s’en tiendroit pas à la menace. (The reputation he had acquired as an inveterate bully intimidated journalists. None of them dared to risk an unfavourable judgment on works whose author had threatened several times to cut the ears off the first person who might attack him; and people were convinced that he would not be satisfied merely with the threat.)

Clearly, there are several similarities between Saint-Foix and Hercule de Kerkabon, Voltaire’s Ingénu, apart from the mere fact that both were Bretons. Poullain de Saint-Foix had been a headstrong young man who insisted on speaking his mind, whatever the consequences. The best-known anecdote about him, steadfastly denied by Saint-Foix, merely confirms the reputation he had acquired, a reputation which, one feels, could easily have been known to Voltaire:

17 18

(Paris, 1777), pp.391-405. Biographie universelle ancienne et moderne, Nouvelle édition publiée sous la direction de M. [J.] Michaud (Discours préliminaire par C. Nodier), 45 vols (Paris, 1843-65), vol.30, pp.313-15.

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Un jour qu’il se trouvait au café Procope, il vit entrer un garde du roi qui demanda du café au lait avec un petit pain, en ajoutant: ‘Cela me servira de dîner. – Vous faites là, lui dit St-Foix, un f… dîner,’ Il répéta si souvent ce propos que le garde offensé lui fit signe de sortir et le blessa d’un coup d’épée au bras: ‘Qu’importe, dit alors St-Foix, cela n’empêche pas qu’un petit pain et une tasse de café ne fassent un f… diner.’ (Michaud, p.314) (One day when he was at the café Procope, he saw a King’s Guard come in and order milky coffee and a piece of bread, and remark: ‘That will do me for dinner.’ – ‘That’s a f…ing useless dinner you’re having’, said St-Foix. He repeated this remark so often that the Guard took offence and motioned to him to go outside where he wounded him in the arm with a sword stroke: ‘What does it matter’, St-Foix then said, ‘that still doesn’t stop a bit of bread and a cup of coffee from being a f…ing useless dinner.’)

In addition, both men bore arms for king and country, both showed bravery under fire and an aptitude for a military career. Like the Ingénu, moreover, Saint-Foix followed the impulses of his heart: according to Michaud (p.313), it was ‘la passion que lui avait inspirée une jeune actrice’ (‘the passion which a young actress had inspired in him’) which made the young Breton into a playwright. On a less superficial level, both Saint-Foix and Hercule were critical of established religion, each pointing out the discrepancy between biblical practices and the rituals of the Catholic Church. Of course, there are many differences, too numerous to detail. All the same, sufficient similarities between Saint-Foix and the Ingénu can be found to give pause for thought. Had the Saint-Foix affair occurred in 1765 or 1766 rather than in 1760, few would question its importance as a potential source for L’Ingénu. At the very least, the impulsive young Breton nobleman has more in common with Hercule de Kerkabon than La Chalotais or the duc d’Aiguillon, often touted as possible models. The undated first (or Leningrad) draft of L’Ingénu makes clear the significance of this possible source: Histoire de l’Ingénu, elevé chez les sauvages puis chez les anglais, instruit de la rellig en basse bretagne [,] tonsuré, confessé, se battant avec son confesseur [,]. Son voyage a versailles chez frere letellier son parent [,] volontaire deux campagnes sa force incroiable [,] Son courage [,] veut être cap de cav [,] étonné du refus. Se marie, ne veut pas que le m soit un sacremt. Meurt en defendant son pays, un capitaine anglais lassiste ala mort avec un jesuite et un janseniste, il les instruit en mourant.19 (The story of the Ingénu, brought up by savages then by the English, instructed in religion in Lower Brittany [,] given the tonsure, made to undergo confession, fights with his confessor [,]. His journey to Versailles to see brother Letellier his relative [,] a volunteer in two campaigns his incredible strength [,] His courage [,] wants to be a cavalry captain [,] astonished when he is refused. Gets married, won’t accept that m is a sacrament. Dies defending his country, an English captain is present at his deathbed together with a Jesuit and a Jansenist, he instructs them as he dies.)

Saint-Foix and the Ingénu are both impressive soldiers; both are disappointed in their desire for military promotion; both are religious sceptics with Breton connections: it is surely not unreasonable to suspect that Saint-Foix was one of the influences in Voltaire’s mind when he conceived the character of Hercule. Expressed in its simplest form, my thesis would be that it was indeed in 1765 that Voltaire began thinking seriously about L’Ingénu, and that, in the last months of that year he inevi19

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Quoted by Clouston, p.3.

tably recalled some of the climactic events of 1760-61. One possible reason may be that he was then preparing the conte Pot-pourri for publication in volume 3 of his Nouveaux mélanges, and it seems likely that at least some of the conte had in fact been composed in 1761.20 In particular Voltaire was reminded of the eccentric Breton nobleman, Saint-Foix, who was not only a lover of the theatre but who had successfully prosecuted the hated Journal chrétien for having accused him (and, by implication, philosophes like Voltaire) of irreligion, a charge which was extremely dangerous in the years following the unsuccessful attempt by Damiens to assassinate Louis XV. This thesis may seem somewhat convoluted, though we do know from many other examples that it sometimes took years for Voltaire’s ideas to gestate and that he frequently recalled previous events or states of mind when composing a new work.21 But to prove what I am claiming is far from simple. To be argued with any degree of probability, my thesis needs to be based on a very close and careful reading of Voltaire’s correspondence for the year in question. It is this task I shall now undertake. My first point would be that the correspondence indicates even more clearly than I have argued previously that 1765 must be regarded as the year in which Voltaire began to think seriously about what would later become L’Ingénu. The evidence is substantial. As has often been observed, the remonstrances of the parlement de Bretagne against Louis XV and his representative, the duc d’Aiguillon, are commented on several times by Voltaire, not always sympathetically. The first remark is typical of his attitude. On 27 February (D12422) he told the duc de Richelieu: ‘Je n’entends rien aux plaintes que les Bretons font de moi; elles sont apparemment aussi bien fondées que leurs griefs contre Mr le Duc d’Aiguillon’ (‘I understand nothing over the complaints the Bretons are making about me; they are apparently as well founded as their grievances against the duc d’Aiguillon’). Similar remarks date from 3 and 20 April (D12522 and 12561). The rebellious attitude of the Breton parlement had thus drawn Voltaire’s attention to their province in the first months of 1765. After an interval of several months, further – though more muted – references occur. On 27 November Voltaire observed: ‘Un temps viendra où les tracasseries de la comédie seront finies comme celles de Bretagne’ (‘A time will come when the vexations of the theatre will be over, just like those in Brittany’). What connection can there be between comments like these and Lower Brittany as portrayed in L’Ingénu’s opening chapters, where the province appears as an admittedly backward and prejudiced, though on balance sympathetic backdrop to Voltaire’s narrative? One important element of a possible response is contained in a letter dated 15 April (D12546) from one K. Daniel to Voltaire. This recounts, with a luxury of details, ‘L’affaire de St Cast en Bretagne arrivée Le 11e de 7bre 1758’ (‘the St Cast affair which occurred on 20

21

See Voltaire, Romans et contes, ed. by F. Deloffre and Jacques Van den Heuvel (Paris: Gallimard [Pleiade], 1979), pp.894-922. I hope to show elsewhere that this is precisely what happened in the case of the first of the two Dialogues chrétiens, which dates from August 1760. One of the themes there is the attempted assassination of the King of Portugal, which had occurred some two years earlier (and which was frequently mentioned in Voltaire’s correspondence for 1758). A similar reference in Pot-pourri to the Portuguese Jesuits might indeed point to a slightly earlier gestation (around August 1760) of at least part of Pot-pourri, which would tend further to strengthen the thesis I am arguing here.

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11 September 1758’). According to Daniel, this was a happy and brilliant day that saved the province. During the incident the duc d’Aiguillon, supported by the Breton nobility, repulsed a landing of some 8000 English troops on the beach of Saint-Cast near Saint-Malo. When reading this account, which Daniel clearly hoped Voltaire might refer to in one of his historical works,22 it is difficult not to think of the incident in L’Ingénu in which the hero, Hercule, similarly distinguishes himself in repelling a treacherous English attack. Evidently, although there is no clear link between this event and Poullain de Saint-Foix, except for the saintly commonality of his name and that of the beach where the action described to Voltaire took place, the Saint-Cast affair is certainly a possible source for one of the conte’s incidents. This likelihood is surely strengthened by a brief comment made by Voltaire to the duc de Richelieu on 15 May (D12599): ‘tel homme qui peut faire capituler une armée d’Anglais, ne peut triompher d’un curé’ (‘a man who may be able to force an English army to capitulate, cannot triumph over a parish priest’). Is this not almost exactly what happens to Hercule de Kerkabon in L’Ingénu? He succeeds in routing the English but is prevented from marrying his beloved because of the laws of the Church. One similarity like this might be regarded as purely coincidental, but we shall see that there are many other pieces of evidence to back up the claim that some of the main themes of L’Ingénu were already in Voltaire’s mind, or were suggested to him, at various stages of 1765. Even as early as 11 or 12 January (D12308), Voltaire remarked to Moultou that Dampier ‘dit qu’il a traversé l’Amérique d’un bout à l’autre sans jamais rencontrer un seul sauvage qui trouvât mauvais qu’il fût de la religion anglicane’ (‘says that he crossed America from one end to the other without ever meeting a single savage who criticised his being an Anglican’); this is extremely reminiscent of the first chapter of L’Ingénu, where it is clear that the English have paid Hercule the same compliment, and for which they are roundly condemned: ‘Hélas! s’écria la Kerkabon, je vois bien que ces malheureux Anglais n’ont pas seulement songé à le baptiser’ (p.15; ‘Alas! exclaimed Mlle de Kerkabon, I can see perfectly that those wretched English did not even think of baptising him’). An even more intriguing passage occurs in a letter to Voltaire of 13 August (D12826) from his fellowphilosophe, d’Alembert. In the course of a long missive complaining about the withholding of his pension as Secretary of the Académie Française, d’Alembert comments: ‘Je puis dire qu’à quelque chose malheur a été bon, puisqu’il m’a fait voir que j’avois en France de la considération et des amis’ (‘I can say that misfortune has been good for something, since it has made me see that I had both respect and friends in France’). Now, although the phrase emphasised by d’Alembert is of course a proverb rather than an original observation, it is impossible not to be struck by the fact that L’Ingénu ends with a reflection on precisely this adage. After many misfortunes, Hercule ‘prit pour sa devise: malheur est bon à quelque chose. Combien d’honnêtes gens dans le monde ont pu dire’, adds the narrator: ‘malheur n’est bon à rien!’ (‘took as his motto: misfortune is good for something. How many decent people in the world have been able to say […] misfortune is no good for anything!’). At the very least we may feel that d’Alembert’s observation struck a chord, and that this was so because Voltaire was already ruminating on the substance and possible content of his conte. 22

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The duc de Richelieu had already criticised Voltaire for not having mentioned the English landing near SaintMalo (D12456, 13 March).

Indeed, August 1765 was the very time (as observed earlier) that Voltaire was revising Potpourri for volume three of the Nouveaux mélanges, and it was this earlier conte that, in my opinion, reminded Voltaire of the events of 1760-61 and Poullain de Saint-Foix. My contention as to the possible significance of d’Alembert’s remark is surely not diminished when one considers that, in the same letter, he refers slightingly to the minister with whom, on many occasions, Voltaire struggled to obtain redress for Huguenot prisoners of conscience and who is portrayed in L’Ingénu under the guise of the rapist, SaintPouange.23 Musing on the failure to pay his pension, d’Alembert comments: ‘Je crois que la cabale des dévots, dont le petit bout de ministre St Florentin a eu peur, y a eu plus de part que lui [the duc de Choiseul]’ (‘I believe that the religious mafia, of whom the piffling little minister St Florentin was afraid, played more of a part in it than him’). Voltaire’s correspondence for 1765 in fact contains several references to Saint-Florentin in this connection.24 Moreover, a hunting accident sustained by the minister in September of that year also ensured that Saint-Florentin’s name would be drawn to Voltaire’s attention precisely at the time when I feel that he was giving sustained thought to preliminary sketches of L’Ingénu.25 If it is accepted that several of the general themes and even specific incidents of L’Ingénu appear to be present in Voltaire’s correspondence for 1765, what references, if any, can be adduced to back up the specific contention that a major influence in the conception of his hero, Hercule de Kerkabon, was the Breton nobleman and dramatist, Poullain de Saint-Foix? One of these, I would argue, concerns the name of an official working for the duc de Praslin, de facto foreign minister in the French government. In the last months of 1765 Voltaire was preoccupied by the dissensions between the various conflicting parties in Geneva, on whose borders he lived. Several letters contain references to ‘Mr De Saintefoi,26 who, in a letter to Gabriel Cramer, is described by Voltaire as the chief lieutenant of the duc de Praslin: ‘Mr De ste Foi son 1er commis digne de toute sa confiance’ (‘Mr De ste Foi his First Secretary, who is worthy of his complete confidence’).27 Once again, the mere similarity of this name to that of Poullain de Saint-Foix might be completely fortuitous, though it is interesting to note that the first reference to him (23 August) occurs on exactly the same day that Voltaire made a sarcastic remark to the duc de Richelieu – ‘Criaillez tant que vous voudrez contre les enciclopédistes; ce sont des gens très dangereux, qui vous ont fait perdre le Canada’ (‘Bawl as much as you like against the Encyclopedists; they are very dangerous people, who have made you lose Canada’) – which certainly seems to indicate that the events of 1760 (when Voltaire had made extremely similar comments ironically defending the philosophes/encyclopédistes) were in his mind. 23

24 25

26

27

On 25 June Voltaire commented to Chabanon: ‘C’est dommage que nous n’ayons eu depuis Pharamond de prince ny ministre qui ait violé des filles’ (‘It’s a pity that, since Pharamond, we have had neither prince nor minister who has violated any maidens’). Cf. D12655, D12661, D13062. For the accident and its consequences see D12876, D12879, D12921. Other references to Saint-Florentin occur in D12661 and D12851. The first reference I have located dates from 23 August (D12485). See also D12287 (17 September), D12914 (2 October), D13301 (28 November). D13017.

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In any case, there are other reminders of 1760-61 in the correspondence. On 10 May Voltaire had specifically referred to the hated Journal chrétien, portraying it as a bastion of obscurantism: Ne craignez rien des théologiens; ils n’ont heureusement rien à faire avec la médecine et la chirurgie […] d’ailleurs, ces pauvres gens sont si décriés aujourd’hui qu’ils n’osent parler, à ce qu’on dit, que dans le journal chrétien […]. (D12591, to Le Cat) (Do not fear anything from theologians; happily, they have nothing to do with medicine or surgery […] besides, these poor people are so discredited nowadays that they only dare say anything, or so people claim, in the Journal chrétien […].)

Later in the year comes another mention, this time in a letter to d’Alembert of 16 October (D12937). Once again, the subject is the refusal of the authorities to pay d’Alembert’s pension, although, comments Voltaire, the rumour is that ‘on donne une pension à l’auteur du Siège de Calais et à ceux du Journal chrétien’ (‘a pension is being given to the author of the Siege of Calais and to the authors of the Journal chrétien’). The significance of this reference is surely heightened considerably by the fact that, only a few days earlier, a letter from Marin to Voltaire (D12931, 11 October) had reminded him of yet another of his targets of 1760, the abbé Trublet, as we have seen the highest profile contributor to the Journal chrétien. Moreover, Trublet was a Breton, as the letter makes clear, and he is quoted in connection with an anecdote concerning another Breton journalist, Elie Fréron, whose notorious periodical L’Année Littéraire was a thorn in the side of many so-called encyclopédistes and who, in 1760, had been satirised memorably by Voltaire in the comedy L’Écossaise: Le Diacre Trublet […] qui vâ Compilant dans les Livres et dans les maisons les pensées d’autrui pour les gâter et se les approprier dans ses ouvrages et qui a le sang breton sans en avoir apparemment le cœur et la teste nous a assuré l’avanture de Rennes. (The Deacon Trublet [..] who goes around compiling from books and from people’s houses the thoughts of others in order to ruin them and misappropriate them in his works and who has Breton blood without apparently having a Breton heart and head, has assured us about the adventure at Rennes.)

Apparently, Fréron was embarrassed while at the theatre in Rennes because he was recognised and people asked that L’Écossaise should be put on; however, he was sufficiently courageous or audacious to support the request (D12931, 11 October).28 A later letter (1st December), from La Brossière to Voltaire, dated Saint-Malo, also mentions ‘les essais du Diacre Trublet’ (D13018). And, at the very end of the year (D13066, 28 December), in one of his many references to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire tells Damilaville that, like Ramponeau, who was briefly in vogue, ‘Rousseau n’est bon qu’à être oublié’ (‘is good only to be forgotten’). Voltaire’s Plaidoyer de Ramponeau had been yet another of his minor satirical pieces of 1760 and provides a further indication to suggest that the events of that time may have been in his mind as 1765 drew to its close, and that the larger-than-life figure of Hercule de Kerkabon can very plausibly be linked with the eccentric Breton nobleman and

28

For this incident see Jean Balcou, Fréron contre les philosophes (Geneva, Paris: Droz, 1975), p.289.

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dramatist, Poullain de Saint-Foix. In the last months of 1765, moreover, Voltaire was preparing an edition of his tragedy Adélaïde Du Guesclin for volume 3 of the Nouveaux mélanges; its original name had been the Duc de Foix and he stated that the basic plot was taken from the annals of Brittany.29 Perhaps the most convincing evidence that the Leningrad draft of L’Ingénu may have been composed in the last months of 1765 comes in a letter to Damilaville dated 4 November (D12965). Voltaire comments: Je suis trop vieux, et je ne me porte pas assez bien pour aller faire un tour chez les Shavanois, mais je les respecte et je les aime. Je connaissais déjà la belle harangue de ce peuple vraiment policé, aux Anglais de la nouvelle Angleterre qui se disent policés […] Les vrais sauvages, sont les ennemis des beaux arts et de la philosophie. Les vrais sauvages sont ceux qui veulent établir deux puissances;30 les vrais sauvages sont les calomniateurs des gens de Lettres. (I am old, and I am not in good enough health to make a trip to see the Shavanais, but I respect and love them. I already know the beautiful speech of this truly civilised people to the English of New England, who claim to be civilised […] The true savages are the enemies of the arts and of philosophy. The true savages are those who want to establish two powers; the true savages are those who slander men of letters.)

Most of this has a clear application to Hercule de Kerkabon, a so-called savage at the beginning of L’Ingénu, but a man who is infinitely more civilised – according to the definitions given here by Voltaire – than the Breton nobility, the corrupt clergy and ministers at Versailles, than the enemies of education and Enlightenment in general. In this letter, moreover, Voltaire comments that he has already written about the ‘Shavanois’, his reference being to Chapter 7 of La Philosophie de l’histoire, an important work (conceived as an introduction to Voltaire’s monumental history, the Essai sur les mœurs) which had been published in 1765 and which is frequently referred to in the correspondence for that year. This chapter establishes the enormous superiority of ‘Le Huron, l’Algonquin, l’Illinois, le Cafre, le Hottentot’, described by Voltaire as ‘prétendus sauvages’ (‘so-called savages’) over the ‘rustres’ (‘rustics’) of Europe. The term ‘Shavanois’ is absent from this celebration of the noble savage, but – as I have pointed out elsewhere – it is most certainly present in letter 16 of the Questions sur les miracles, a work published cumulatively at the end of 1765. A letter from Boston is read out describing how the ‘Savanais’ Indians have brought up a number of English children whom they have subsequently returned to their parents (one remembers that the pretended Huron Indian, Hercule de Kerkabon, was similarly brought up by Indian parents, although his natural parents were both French; moreover, this passage is extremely similar to the first two lines of the Leningrad draft of L’Ingénu). A little later the Countess, one of the characters in letter 16, speaks of ‘les Hurons, & les Savanois’ in the same sentence. Now in a letter to Damilaville (D13007), Voltaire refers to letters 13 and 15 of the Questions. Given that to publish a pamphlet took a few days even for someone with printers like the Cramer brothers at his beck and call, I would argue that Voltaire was probably writing the sixteenth letter of what became the Questions sur les miracles at ex-

29 30

D12909, to an unknown correspondent, dating from September or October 1765. In other words, Church as well as State.

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actly the time he sent his letter of 4 November 1765 to Damilaville. And, when we note that the end of the paragraph mentioning the ‘Shavanois’ quoted earlier refers to Le Franc de Pompignan, arguably the most important of Voltaire’s bêtes noires in 1760 – ‘Son frère L’Evèque Dupuy m’appelle impie […] parce que j’ai trouvé les pseaumes de Pompignan mauvais’ (‘His brother, the bishop of Le Puy, calls me impious […] because I found the psalms of Pompignan poor’)31 – the connection, not only with the genesis of L’Ingénu as a whole, but also with the year in which, on several occasions, Voltaire celebrated the success of Poullain de Saint-Foix, surely becomes ever more plausible. Clearly, at a distance of almost 250 years, a thesis like mine can only be speculative, even with the clues provided by the rich documentary source of Voltaire’s correspondence. Yet L’Ingénu is such an unusual and so intriguing a conte that to illuminate Voltaire’s motivation, inspiration and intentions in any way whatsoever seems more than worthwhile. Some of the points I have mentioned in this chapter have been touched on before, but noone, to my knowledge, has argued that the Leningrad draft of L’Ingénu was probably composed in late 1765 or that a remarkable Breton eccentric, Germain-François Poullain de Saint-Foix, may have been in Voltaire’s mind when he conceived his even more remarkable Hercule de Kerkabon. I hope at any rate to have shown that the influence of Saint-Foix – like the Ingénu a man both passionate and heroic – should be taken seriously in any future assessment of the conte.

31

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D12909 also contains a cryptic reference to Le Franc’s speech to the Académie Française in 1760 denouncing the philosophes.

Part Two The Nineteenth Century

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Brian Keith-Smith

A Germanic Hero Par Excellence? Richard Wagner in Paris To trace the fortunes of any great German figure in Paris is to walk on well-trodden ground, yet despite the many famous Germans in Paris even only in the last 150 years, there are still many stones left unturned, many trails into half-forgotten courtyards left unexplored. Paris was to appear for Richard Wagner in many guises, behind a variety of veils. Some were to lead to his infinite frustration, others towards a sense of fulfilment he had previously not realised. In short, he can be cast as a Germanic hero par excellence. An understanding of the interrelationship between the works he wrote in Paris (critical, literary and musical), his reactions to concerts, opera, ballet and theatre visits, and his private life there, serves to highlight the importance that the two visits had for his development as a writer of the ‘music for the future’ and as a human being.1 My contribution outlines Wagner’s personal fortunes on his first visit to Paris, evaluates his comments on his experiences of French and Italian opera, and describes the novellas and essays he wrote at the time to the German Romantic literary tradition. This forms a background to the controversial production of Tannhäuser on his second visit, a production that broke with the traditions of French and Italian opera. The heroism of both Tannhäuser and Wagner emerges as a counterpoint to conventional heroism in French historical opera, and it was to develop along new paths in the 1870s when Wagner’s ‘music for the future’ was realised in new ways in Bayreuth. To appreciate Wagner’s experiences in and comments on Paris, it is necessary to recapitulate his situation before each of his visits (1839-42 and 1859-61). For the first stay he wrote a long passage in his autobiography, published by him in the Zeitung für die elegante Welt (Leipzig, 1-8 February 1843: see Wagner/Study, pp.14-16). He had left Riga as conductor and composer aware of its provincialism and of his own artistic immaturity, having lost his post to Heinrich Dorn, and had come to seek fame and fortune in Paris. At the start he had very little money but high hopes, depending almost entirely on the promise of support from Giacomo Meyerbeer, who unfortunately was away from the capital during most of Wagner’s stay. Strongly recommended by Meyerbeer, however, Wagner managed to achieve an audition in the Théâtre de la Renaissance for three musical numbers excellently translated by the French dramatist Marion Dumersan from the score of Das Liebesverbot (The Forbidden Love). Unfortunately for him, the theatre suddenly went bankrupt. He spent the winter of 1839 writing an overture to Goethe’s Faust Part 1 and composed several French songs, including a translation of Heine’s ‘Die zwei Grenadiere’ (‘The Two

1

Among other sources used for this essay are: Oswald Georg Bauer, Richard Wagner geht ins Theater (Bayreuth: Bayreuth Festival, 1996), tr. by Stewart Spencer (hereafter Wagner/Bayreuth); Wagner. A Documentary Study, ed. by Herbert Barth, Dietrich Mack and Egon Voss (London: Thames and Hudson, 1975: hereafter Wagner/Study); Richard Wagner, My Life, tr. by Andrew Gray (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983: hereafter Wagner/Life).

Grenadiers’).2 He realised that any effort to translate Rienzi, completed in November 1840, would have been an immense task, and he would have to wait five or six years before it could be staged in Paris, so he sent the score to be launched in Dresden. This was an early sign that he looked on Paris as merely a stage towards a return to success in Germany. Despite his meeting François-Antoine Habeneck, conductor of the Conservatoire, Fromental Halévy and Hector Berlioz, Wagner formed no real musical friendships at first, for, he claimed, all of them at this time were chasing their own careers. Wagner felt that Halévy was interested only in turning out operas and making money. As for Berlioz, though not motivated primarily by money, ‘he lacks any sense of beauty and with few exceptions his music is a grimace’. The orchestral virtuosity of a performance of Berlioz’s new symphony to Romeo and Juliet almost overwhelmed him, but it contained ‘long and frequent stretches that were empty and shallow’. Despite his admiration for Berlioz’s energy and brilliant scoring in his long works, Wagner retained for years ‘a certain painful tension’ towards him. He met in Berlioz perhaps the first musical challenge that opened up perspectives towards new forms of music, but Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and Weber’s Der Freischütz became his benchmarks as a composer.3 They counterbalanced the disillusion he felt for the Italians, such as Giovanni Battista Rubini, the ‘king of tenors’, who received adulation but, according to Wagner, lacked genius. The Théâtre Italien, known as the ‘nightingales’ nest’, was turned by Rossini’s successors into a fashionable meetingplace for the bourgeoisie; after the original house had burnt down and Rubini had left to universal lamentation, this theatre was replaced by the Salle Ventadour. Its main attraction for Wagner lay however not in the singing and music itself, but in the ground-breaking work done by the talented Domenico Ferri as regards the mise en scène and the décor. Ferri’s introduction, for instance, of an English Gothic hall for Bellini’s I Puritani (The Puritans) doubtless helped to inspire Philippe Chaperon’s sets for Tannhäuser and those of Theodor Pixis for Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. Wagner praised the superior talents and performances in the Opéra Comique for their individuality and sense of unity, but criticised the actual music used as ‘amongst the worst that has ever been produced in times of artistic decay’. Not unexpectedly, he continued,

2

3

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Wagner’s work in Paris on Faust was originally planned as a symphony, the title ‘Overture’ being added later, possibly as late as 1843 or 1855, when he revised the work. Wagner had already set seven episodes from Goethe’s drama to music in 1831 and 1832. Brian Coghlan, in ‘Nachdenklicher Leichtsinn’: Essays on Goethe and Goethe Reception, ed. by Heike Bartel and Brian Keith-Smith (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen, 2000), p.207, interprets Wagner’s work on Faust as a significant indicator of turning points in his creative life. Faust, and Wagner, are seen then in their Romantic Weltschmerz. The settings to the Heine poems were originally published but not sold by Maurice Schlesinger in Paris with a title-page lithograph by Ernst Kiez. B. Schotts Söhne reprinted it in Mainz. See Wagner’s account of this in Wagner/Life, pp.185-86. For a full account of Wagner and Berlioz see Wagner/Life, pp.191-92. Wagner’s admiration for Beethoven, Weber, and Mozart began in his early years (see Wagner/Life, pp.27-31).

The sole things of consequence that Paris offers the musician today are the orchestral concerts in the concert-hall of the Conservatoire. The performances of German orchestral music at these concerts made a deep impression on me and reintroduced me to the wonderful mysteries of true art. Anyone who really wants to get to know Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony properly must hear it performed by the Conservatoire Orchestra in Paris. But these concerts are like an oasis; all the rest is desert. (Wagner/Study, p.15)

Wagner declared that his friends in Paris were intellectuals and painters, but not musicians. In fact they included Gottlieb Engelbert Anders, a librarian, Samuel Lehrs, a philologist, and Ernst Benedikt Kietz, a painter, all unsuccessful and poor. Aware that he had no immediate prospects, Wagner nearly gave up attempts to have the Liebesverbot performed,4 referring to his worsening ‘manifold anxieties’: he had to pawn his wife’s jewellery and then sell the pawn tickets, and we read of the soles of his shoes having worn out completely so that they just covered the top of his feet. Helped by the sudden return of Meyerbeer, who put him in touch with Léon Pillet, director of the Grand Opera, he was inspired to write a two or three act opera: Der fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman). For this he came to an arrangement with Heinrich Heine about the latter’s version of the legend, and applied his own experiences at sea off the Dutch and English coasts. Meyerbeer left, but Pillet offered to buy the text to pass on to another composer. Wagner postponed a decision, hoping that Meyerbeer would soon return, and turned next to writing pot-boilers, among them detailed articles for Maurice Schlesinger’s Gazette Musicale (‘On German music’, ‘Virtuosity and free composition’, etc.). His short story, ‘A Pilgrimage to Beethoven’, was well received, and Schlesinger arranged a concert in which one of Wagner’s orchestral pieces, his early Columbus overture, was included (Wagner/Life pp.96-97). Despite its total failure, his name became known in Paris. To earn a little much-needed money, he made musical arrangements for Schlesinger, but had to move out from a hopelessly expensive apartment to Meudon in the spring of 1841, only returning to the city at the end of October. The poet Paul Fouché had been sent Der fliegende Holländer, and Wagner now agreed to sell the text. He then decided to translate his story into German verse, and after nine months of rest from musical activity hired a piano. Despite his fears, he soon discovered that he was still a composer, although material needs kept him from finishing the composition for two months. In Germany, Councillor Küstner was to reject the opera for Munich and Leipzig but in his new appointment as artistic director would accept it in 1842 for Berlin. Rienzi had been taken on at Dresden, and although Wagner now completed his sketch for another opera, Die Bergwerke zu Falun (The Mines of Falun), based on Hoffmann’s version of the legend, he felt that his time in Paris was at an end and left confident of his future in Germany.5 4

5

This ‘grand comic opera’, based on the story of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, was first performed at Magdeburg in 1836. The musical score owed much to Adolphe Adam, Auber and Bellini. A detailed description of Wagner’s plot and as to how this interlinked with his growing relationship with Minna is given in Wagner/Life, pp.110-19. His hopes for a new production in Paris in 1840 soon came to nothing, and his abandonment of the project became a turning point in his career in Paris (see Wagner/Life p.182). Initially he resided in Dresden, where the first performance of Rienzi was given at the Court Theatre on 20 October 1842.

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Here, in brief, we see some essential new experiences for Wagner that would inform his later life. Instinctively he felt an aversion to the contemporary world of French music, and in particular the public’s fashionable adulation of Italian opera and operetta. His painful lack of self-confidence often turned into almost defiant nationalistic pride. A tone of belief in high aesthetic ideals underscores his autobiographical text and it also includes expressions of total despair brought on by material needs. Only when we look more closely at what Wagner probably saw on the stage in Paris can we understand what its contemporary cultural background meant for him as a catalyst to his own genius. Wagner at first had high hopes for himself in Paris, which he saw as the heart of modern civilisation. In 1806 Napoleon elevated the Comédie Française to a national institution and insisted that opera should be the major art form there. It should combine singing and dancing and have no spoken parts; moreover, the songs should be performed in French. Mythological or historical subjects with gods, kings or heroes as the main characters were to be the norm. His parallel decrees for the Théâtre Italien had drawn Italian composers and singers to Paris, in particular Rossini who took over its direction in 1824 and developed his worldwide fame there. Doubtless Wagner, through his experience of these two institutions, first became fully aware of the potential of creating a public forum out of the theatre, and of its huge outreach and influence on bourgeois society. His later development of Bayreuth as a counterpart was to owe much to them. Nor was he indifferent to the financial fortunes of, and social respect for, such figures as the composer Rossini and the librettist Eugène Scribe. It was therefore his primary aim for musical and personal reasons to have an opera performed in the Grand Opera or Académie de Musique, the third main opera house, seating 2,400 spectators, out of a total of nineteen theatres in Paris at the time. The exorbitant sums spent on scenery and costumes enabled true-to-life reproductions of scenes often set in distant countries or epochs. The massive onslaught on the audience’s senses, designed to rivet their attention, was to be paralleled some years later through different means in Bayreuth, where the tradition in the ducal theatre of assembling for a baroque social event had formerly dictated the architecture, mise-en-scène, and even the acting and singing of the performances. Furthermore, in Paris experiments such as the volcanic eruption in Auber’s L’ultimo Giorno di Pompei (The Last Day of Pompei) (1828) had become part of the general attraction of going to the opera. Meyerbeer’s Robert le Diable (1829), Rossini’s William Tell (1829), and Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots (1836), completely dominated the Paris opera scene when Wagner arrived, naïvely expecting with the force of his twenty-six years and coming from nowhere to emulate the fortunes of Rossini, who as an already world-famous composer had first come to Paris in 1823, or of Meyerbeer in 1825 whose Italian fame preceded him, and whose every new work was already eagerly sought by the opera houses in London and Berlin. Despite the claim in his autobiography that Wagner went to the opera only four times in Paris, research has shown that he was able to visit the Grand Opera on frequent occasions with complementary tickets. Among other productions he saw Weber’s Der Freischütz, Donizetti’s La Favorite, Halévy’s La Reine de Chypre (The Queen of Cyprus), Meyerbeer’s Robert le Diable, Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Rossini’s William Tell and Adam’s ballet Giselle. Halévy’s La Juive (The Jewess), with its sumptuous market place setting in Act 108

One for the Opening of the Council of Constance, particularly impressed him. Flamboyant Gothic, used here for maximum decorative effect, would appear again in early productions of Die Meistersinger. He was most enthusiastic about Auber’s La Muette de Portici (Mansaniello), writing in his Erinnerungen an Auber (Reminiscences of Auber) in 1871 of its ‘unaccustomed concision and drastic compactness of form’: The recitatives assaulted us like thunderbolts; a veritable tempest bore us from there to the choral ensembles; amidst the chaos of wrath came sudden energetic injunctions to remain calm or fresh instructions to act; then more wild exultation, murderous frenzy and, between such outbursts, another affecting plaint of anguish or a whole people whispering its prayers. Just as the subject matter lacked nothing in terms of utter terror and utmost tenderness, so Auber’s music captured every contrast, every combination in contours and in colours of such vivid clarity that it was impossible to remember ever having seen its like in such concrete tangibility; we might almost have felt that what we saw before us was actual images in music, and the concept of the picturesque in music could easily have been substantiated here, had it not had to yield to a far more apposite term, that of the most successful and graphic theatricality. (Wagner/Bayreuth p.65)

Wagner’s interest in the orchestral achievements of grand opera is underlined in his report on Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots; it clearly made him aware, at a time when he was working on Rienzi, of what could be achieved with sufficient resources. An outstanding orchestra and sustained careful attention to detail as regards the mise-en-scène became for him a benchmark that could easily transfer into caricature if repeated slavishly for each separate production. Wagner’s objections to local colour as an operatic phenomenon emerged in his Oper und Drama (Opera and Drama) written in 1850-51, where La Muette de Portici was attacked for the unthinking application of folksong and folksy scenes. His comments on the production of Der Freischütz reveal his most nationalist feelings as he attacked the French for failing entirely to understand the Romantic quality of Weber’s work and for staging it with far less care than they expended on the money-spinning favourites of the French bourgeois audience. As for the 1834 adaptation of Don Giovanni to fit the requirements of the Académie Royale de Musique, including resetting it as a five-act opera, he poured scorn on the singers, dancers and machinists: ‘They sang, danced, machined and designed it with such enthusiasm that I finally fell asleep’ (Wagner/Bayreuth, p.66). La Reine de Chypre was the libretto that made him realise the limitations of historically inspired grand opera, which thrived on a series of improbable scenes in order to impress and entertain the audience through its variety. By the end of 1841 when he saw this, both Rienzi and Der fliegende Holländer were complete, and he was reaching towards the composition of a totally different form of opera. Furthermore, he used this example to vent his irony and anger on some 52 German theatre managers who now turned to Paris to import second-rate massproduced works to arouse interest, each of them a variant on a pattern, and each of them dependent on the different, and often surprising, scenic qualities of their settings. Not unexpectedly, Wagner was deeply disappointed with the Opéra Comique, a new generation of French composers having replaced those he had admired in his early years (Isouard, Méhul, Cherubini, Boïeldieu and Auber). Auber in particular had by then debased his talent to accord with the ‘abject quadrille rhythms that are the only sound to be heard clattering through the theatre today’ (Wagner/Study, p.15). Both Halévy’s Le Guitarrero 109

(1841) and Auber’s Les Diamants de la couronne (The Crown Jewels) (1841) were saved for him by Scribe’s libretti. For most of these works the theatre manager found a libretto, and the composer was required to produce a score to fit. This was similar to the German practice of using standard theatre settings hired from a company, until Adolphe Appia and Ludwig Sievert in the early 1900s introduced original settings for each work, and the stage designer became an essential and creative member of the production team. Such divisions of labour between librettist and composer and between stage settings to order and the director’s independent wishes created problems in French and in German opera houses.6 Wagner’s experiences during his first visit to Paris convinced him of the dangers of holding fast to traditions, but also revealed the potential of single-minded experiments responding to one person’s direction. The reputation and the talent of Elisa Félix (alias Rachel), whom Wagner finally saw perform in the theatre early in 1855 on his way through Paris to London, were not in themselves enough to convince him of the importance of the theatre in Paris during his first visit. Similarly, perhaps the most interesting of his many comments on opera in Paris came in his article for the Abend-Zeitung in Dresden of 19 March 1841: I begin with an obituary! The Paris Grand Opera will die at any moment. It awaits its salvation from the German Messiah, from Meyerbeer; if the latter delays his rescue much longer the death rattle will very soon begin. The tragedy is this: Auber has become old before his time, and Halévy has not made an effort for three years; but Meyerbeer, who only plays the fame-game here with big and well-considered moves, has his own reasons for holding back his newest work, upon which every hope rests. So the Opera is labouring and has been obliged for some time to seek its salvation with mediocrities. However the public has the whim of only wanting to applaud excellence, and I must confess that in this particular regard they have won my full esteem. Directors and impresarios are impressed only by brilliant reputations and famous names; but the public is not dazzled by these. And the result is that only what is genuinely excellent can really hold its place. Which is why we keep on seeing Robert and the Huguenots reappearing whenever some second-rate piece has to be withdrawn. In fact Robert le diable seems to possess a strange, almost uncanny quality, and if I were M. Donizetti, M. Rualtz or one of the countless other musicians ‘who have already met their fate in this same risky gamble’, then I should hate this Robert as if he were a real devil. For this is the opera that is the decisive barometer of success or failure for these gentlemen’s works; for if a new opera is not successful after a few performances, out comes Robert le diable again, and if you see this name on the posters then you know that the preceding new opera was a failure. Robert is immortal! […] Robert is still – beside the Huguenots – the one and only successful box-office draw. (Wagner/Documentary, pp.161-62).

Wagner’s literary novellas and essays can be also read as comments on what the musical world in Paris had to offer. Here he enlarges on the anti-capitalist theme, castigating the commercialism of the bourgeois musical world in Paris and paralleling the novels of his 6

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The nineteenth-century tradition of ordering a stage-setting from a specialised company, for example in Coburg, to serve for several different operas, lasted in Germany into the twentieth century until Ludwig Sievert became the first practitioner to develop stage-settings for individual productions. A study of the mainly two dimensional stage-settings for Wagner’s operas reveals how much tradition weighed on productions until Appia’s ideas on lighting and the dramatisation of individual figures in three dimensions were adopted. Sievert’s early work for Expressionist theatre and for Wagner’s operas led to the development of abstract stage designs. Cosima Wagner recognised her husband’s weakness in this respect, and ironically it was only after his death that his operas were staged to fit his otherwise experimental and forward-looking ideas for musical theatre.

contemporary Balzac (especially Illusions perdues of 1837-44). However, the impoverished composer in the big, greedy city was based both on the realities of Wagner’s domestic life and on Hoffmann’s character Ritter Glück in Berlin in 1809. The essay, ‘The Virtuoso and the Artist’ (1840), describes the search for a magical stone as the ‘genius of music’ by two miners, one from Salzburg, the other from Bonn, who are clearly Mozart and Beethoven. They have disappeared having seen the underground sea of light, leaving behind others who are reduced to plunder the earth for nuggets of gold, for partial vision. Wagner here used themes from the German Romantic tradition: Novalis’s Heinrich von Ofterdingen (1802), Ludwig Tieck’s Der Runenberg (The Magic Mountain) (1804), and Hoffmann’s Die Bergwerke zu Falun (1816). Here too Wagner worked for the first time on the link between greed and the treasure to be found in an underground world. The ring to be so desired by Wotan and Alberich as a pledge of love and as a harbinger of misfortune may well have found its inspiration in this reworking of German Romantic tradition. Not for nothing was Wagner’s collection of seven pieces written at this time under the title ‘Ein Musiker in Paris’ (‘A Musician in Paris’) included later in the first volume of his collected writings (1871) between Rienzi and Der fliegende Holländer. Furthermore, the impoverished wanderer in ‘A Pilgrimage to Beethoven’ (1840) resembles Josef Berlinger, Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder’s hero of the Herzensergießungen eines kunstliebenden Klosterbruders (Heartfelt Pleasures of an Art-Loving Monk) (1796), as if Wagner wanted to portray his own wanderings as part of a continued heroic Romantic myth. The novella form is elastic enough to allow the figure of Beethoven to comment on his opera Fidelio and to enlarge his thoughts on musical drama as if he, Beethoven, were quoting Wagner. Use is made here too of the Ninth Symphony as an articulation of the views that Wagner formulated when he heard it played in Paris. The literary form is applied with some irony as an obvious way to criticise the musical world of Paris through both Beethoven and through the fictitious young musician constrained to write gallops and potpourris to earn enough money to allow him to go to Vienna and seek out his idol. His critical attacks on a rich Englishman in his coach will remind the reader too of the parallel novella by Eduard Mörike, ‘Mozart auf der Reise nach Prag’ (‘Mozart’s Journey to Prague’) (1856). The pauper’s funeral of Mozart haunts the story ‘Ein Ende in Paris’ (‘An End in Paris’) (1840) which also contains an autobiographical element in the lost dog and several references to Wagner’s own hopes and fears. Thus it includes the phrase, ‘I believe in God, Mozart and Beethoven’, a statement that marks off Wagner’s position from what he imagined was that of the local French and Italian musical world. The rich Englishman again plays a significant role, but the references to the poor and undisclosed talent of the musician are also reminiscent of Franz Grillparzer’s story ‘Der arme Spielmann’ (‘The Poor Musician’) (1847). As for the essay on the ‘Nature of German Music’ and the other three essays on ‘The Virtuoso and the Artist’, ‘The Artist and his Public’ and on ‘Rossini’s Stabat Mater’ (1840), they are all presented within the framework of the posthumous writings of the dead fictitious musician in the novellas. Wagner’s development of his argument on the German musician already includes attitudes that would be developed into his later racist remarks. The lack of centralisation in Germany is used to explain the varied regional aspects of German music and the rich variety particularly of its instrumental forms. As Wagner points 111

out, there is not a little nationalist and independent pride in the way that Germans borrow from other nations to raise their provincialism to something universal, whilst keeping true to the purity of their own inheritance. Praise is lavished on Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) and on Weber’s Der Freischütz as counterparts to the works of Rossini and Auber’s Muette de Portici as great national achievements. Wagner must already have sensed, doubtless with some envy at their success, how much of the French tradition relied on glories from the past. As a young man still in his twenties, Wagner, however, could not have foreseen how many of the masks used in his literary writings would fit his own future fate.7 Wagner’s second visit to Paris was, to begin with, less traumatic than his first, partly because he had sincerely believed in 1839 that he would take the capital city by storm, whereas in 1859 he felt he was driven there by some inner force of destiny, prompted by his wife Minna and by Liszt. On this occasion, he planned a German theatrical venture in Paris, hoping for an opportunity to present his own works at least in concert form with German singers. After his return to Germany in 1842 he had successfully given the first performances in Dresden of Rienzi (1842), Der fliegende Holländer (1843) and Tannhäuser (1845), and of Lohengrin in Weimar (1850). In 1846 he conducted for the first time Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, a work that had earlier opened up for him the possibilities of great classical music. He took part in the revolution in Dresden in 1849, and this was followed by eleven years in exile. His readings of the tetralogy Der Ring des Nibelungen in Zurich in 1853 and subsequent work on the scores of the individual operas, interrupted by his writing of Tristan und Isolde, completed in Lucerne in 1859, accompanied the development of his close relationship with Mathilde Wesendonck. It was thus a quite different Wagner who arrived in Paris in September 1859, and he expected to settle there for some time, so took out a three-year lease on a house that he redecorated at great expense. Living mainly in isolation, he at first contented himself with visits to smaller theatres, and with arranging performances of his own orchestral works which he conducted with great success. He also established his own salon on Wednesday evenings where he lorded it over his friends, and, when Minna dutifully came to look after him, treated his wife as a convenient chattel.8 He was now an established intellectual, an international figure, anxious to cultivate influential people, and was befriended by the musicians Berlioz, Gounod and SaintSäens, also by Jules Champfleury (the writer, sculptor and painter, Jules Fleury-Husson) and Baudelaire, among others. He visited Rossini in 1860 and entered into a theoretical discussion with him, publishing a memoir on him in 1868. In 1861 Wagner published his

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Wagner was doomed to become a wanderer-figure, and each one of the masks in these works contains features that prefigure his own life as a genius, as an impoverished musician, as a nationalist, and above all as a Romantic hero with a love of the medieval and mythical past. Minna’s feelings were summed up in her comment to a friend: ‘I am just the housekeeper here with nothing to do but give orders to three servants and lose my temper with them, but am also allowed into the drawing room to show off my silk dress’ (Julius Knapp, Wagner und die Frauen, Berlin, 1951, p.186, quoted in Curt von Westernhagen, Wagner. A Biography, Volume 1, tr. by Mary Whitall, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978, p.271).

Zukunftsmusik (Music of the Future) as a letter to the Curator of the Louvre, who was a close friend of the artist Eugène Delacroix.9 The most notorious event of his second stay in Paris was the production of Tannhäuser. Wagner visited the Grand Opera only after Emperor Napoleon III ordered its production, thus setting at nought the hostility of the powerful financier and Minister of State Achille Fould. Wagner records seeing there Donizetti’s La Favorite, whose first production he had witnessed in 1840, Rossini’s Semiramis and Verdi’s Le Troubadour, his only recorded experience of a Verdi opera. This production was not entirely successful, in contrast with the infinite care lavished on Semiramis and with the intricate detailed historical settings for Prince Poniatowski’s opera Pierre de Medici, whose fussiness made Wagner long for the simplicity and naturalness of any Swiss mountain valley. Though Wagner struggled with the orchestra, the conductor, his translators and even at the last moment with his leading German tenor, the production of Tannhäuser still became one of the greatest scandals in the theatre during the nineteenth century, a scandal that inspired Baudelaire to publish the sensitive essay Richard Wagner et Tannhaüser à Paris in 1861. Baudelaire highlighted Wagner’s capacity to portray both material and spiritual space and depth, to give form to the excessive, ambitious visions of man. He also suggested a contrast between Romanticism, favoured by the monarchy and embodied in Wagner’s works, and traditional so-called Classicism preferred by liberals and republicans. He supported Wagner’s critical stance and his use of legends, since they gave his texts a universal quality as opposed to the nationalism of historical themes. Baudelaire found in the overture to Tannhäuser the essential struggle between man’s appetite for the divine and his diabolical nature. For him, the simplicity of the poem increased the intensity of its effect, and this served to underline the passionate and heroic expression of its creator. It demanded above all sustained attention to its serious themes. However, imperial favour aroused envy, and it is this that Baudelaire cites as the main reason for the production’s failure. In fact, the scandal was in no small part due to Wagner’s deliberate attempt to fly in the face of the traditions he had so much despised in his first stay in Paris, thus for instance his refusal to invite the press to the first of his series of concerts. As for the ballet, where Paris had developed the ‘Romantic’ style to long-lasting popular success, its formalism held little attraction for Wagner. The typically hidebound production of Offenbach’s Le Papillon in 1860, with its standard use of a ‘ballet blanc’, contrasted sharply with the singing and miming that had modernised productions of other works in London and Milan. Wagner thus had the greatest difficulty in Paris with his bacchanal for Tannhäuser, and had to struggle with directors and artistes not willing to experiment. The description of Wagner’s intentions for this in his letter to Mathilde Wesendonck of 10 April 1860 (Wagner/Study, pp.193-94) emphasises the contrast between the three Graces lying at the feet of Venus and Tannhäuser and a throng of fauns, nymphs, sirens, centaurs, and the Nordic Strömkarl, taken from Grimm’s Deutsche Mythologie (German Mythology), a dream scene similar to those in Goethe’s ‘Walpurgisnacht’ (‘Witches’ Sabbath’). It is a crowd scene that makes sense as a contrast to the almost existential outpourings of Tannhäuser, yet belongs to him as his 9

Delacroix’s gouache ‘Tannhäuser et Vénus’ is reproduced as Plate 128 in Wagner/Study. This remarkly atmospheric work foreshadows the decadence and oriental style of Aubrey Beardsley or Gustav Klimt.

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dream. Wagner’s wish to show heroic Greek culture in mythic Germanic guise as a clash between Dionysian and Apollonian principles had to be truncated in order to fit the limitations of the dancers. Wagner’s adaptations of German literary sources might not have endeared him to the French public either. These included Hoffmann and Heinrich Heine for Der fliegende Holländer, and more especially the medieval troubadour contest for Tannhäuser. He knew Heinrich Heine’s ‘Der Tannhäuser. Eine Legende’ (1836), also the versions in Arnim and Brentano’s Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Boy’s Magic Horn) (1805 and 1808), in Tieck’s Phantasus (1812-16), in the Grimm brothers’ Deutsche Sagen (German Legends) (181618), and in Ludwig Bechstein’s Venusberg saga from his Sagenschatz des Thüringer Landes (Collection of Thuringian Legends) of 1835. Wagner’s first title for the opera, ‘Der Venusberg’ (‘Venus’s Mountain’), was turned down by the authorities in Dresden as likely to arouse ridicule, and the work was first given in a much shorter version than we know today. Yet Wagner was insistent in his essay directed to conductors and producers of the opera that they should give precise attention to his text and to the many stage directions. In the opera he particularly highlighted the contrast between sensual and spiritual love. The articulation of Tannhäuser’s guilt as he projects this towards Elisabeth and recognises her as a mediator from heaven turns the opera from a Romantic vision into an almost Classical tragedy. Furthermore, Tannhäuser clearly shows a longing to be back in Germany, and the Venusberg is all too easily identifiable as Paris. There are also features evident to musicians as half-quotations of Beethoven’s heroic style. Wagner thus dared with the Tannhäuser song in Act One to develop the stanzas from morbid romantic longing, through a vision that looks forward to being in Germany, and on to a hymn to freedom. It is hardly surprising that such Germanic features, plus the insistent hymnic march of the troubadours, despite several features in the opera within the bel canto traditions of French and Italian opera, produced a challenging mélange that flew in the face of self-repetitive musical and stage traditions. It is significant that the members of the orchestra of the Grand Opera in Paris were enthusiastic at the first rehearsals for Tannhäuser. The real reasons for the production’s failure are well recorded in the memoirs of Malwida von Meysenburg.10 They say much about French society of the time, which seems to have been determined to destroy this production and Wagner’s reputation: On all sides the clouds of discontent, envy and iniquity gathered. Political spectators were dissatisfied that it was Princess Pauline Metternich, wife of the Austrian Ambassador, who had first brought about the introduction of this work that was so foreign to the French temperament. The press were dissatisfied because, unlike Meyerbeer and others, Wagner did not give dîners fins for the critics to suborn their taste in advance. The members of the claque, usually actively engaged by every composer, had been utterly disdained by Wagner and were thus fuming with rage. The orchestra too split into parties, and especially the rather incompetent conductor had become very hostile. (Wagner/Study, p.196)

But above all the Jockey Club members were outraged at the absence of a ballet in the traditional form in Act Two, performed usually by their mistresses. They bought whistles in

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Memoiren einer Idealistin (Stuttgart, 1876), III, pp.290-98.

advance and used them in the second and third performances to create chaos during the Transformation Scene and throughout the latter part of the work. They were almost drowned out by Wagner’s supporters, but the production had to be withdrawn. Wagner’s insistence on using opera to express a heroic idea rather than narrate a story, to reveal essential statements rather than sketch a realistic façade, was probably too serious for his Parisian audiences. He presented a duality between the mind and the soul, a duality that still fitted uncomfortably with political and social concerns of the day. What might have been acceptable for the very first performance in Dresden in 1845 was not yet so in Paris in 1861. The laying bare of Tannhäuser’s inner self suggests more than a personal conflict, resolved in the Dresden production, but left with no reconciliation in Paris. Tannhäuser finds himself at odds with the world of the singers’ contest, as indeed Wagner had felt himself to be with the ‘nightingales’ nest’, and the struggle for salvation that follows hinges on society’s refusal to accept someone eternally cursed. Elisabeth’s love brings him courage to continue, but he still requires the forgiveness of God. This meant for Wagner that the end of Act Two contained the essential dramatic crisis and laid the foundation for the confrontation between institutional religion and a merciful God in the final act. Papal disapproval is countered by divine intervention, and Tannhäuser is given the strength to save himself after his sinful relationship with Venus. The drama thus develops from a personal search for salvation to a perhaps simplistic statement that a merciful God can overrule the Pope. Ironically, Wagner had to accept the leading tenor’s refusal to sing the dramatic climax, so that the main crux of the argument was in any case lost in the Paris version. The authorities were also worried by the possibility that Wagner would actually represent the Pope on the stage, which he realised was a sign of the many public misunderstandings broadcast before the first performance. In as much as Tannhäuser represents an archetypal artist-musician-poet, he can also be interpreted as a partial alter ego for Wagner himself. Wagner’s social and religious acceptance would be as difficult for him in Paris as for Tannhäuser, and the open-ended Parisian version suggested irreconcilable questions that could only be resolved in later works and away from Paris. This precisely made the opera finally unacceptable there and, for many, it was no doubt incomprehensible that a work could portray a stage in the personal ‘heroic’ spiritual development of the composer and at the same time open up awkward questions of faith. It was a far cry from the historical, closed-ended operas of French and Italian tradition. Ironically, opera in Paris that had been so successful in the 1830s had become an anachronism in the 1850s. There were in fact only five new French operas added to the repertory of the Grand Opera between 1852 and 1870, and even Gounod’s Faust had its première in 1859 not there but at the Théâtre Lyrique. The next great French opera was to be Bizet’s Carmen in 1875, but that would represent an age of heroism of a different order and begin a new tradition. Wagner’s operas would not be part of that tradition, but in the Ring cycle and Parsifal would interrelate the worlds of gods and heroes and evolve unique ‘Gesamtkunstwerke’ (‘total works of art’).

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Anne Judge and Solange Lamothe

Stendhal’s Style and the Expression of Passion and Heroism All writers inherit a tradition in the sense that they are brought up with a notion of what is, according to their elders, good or bad style. They will either rebel against these notions or they will refine them still further. Historical events also play a part in the development of a writer’s style, and Stendhal (1783-1842) lived through one of the most turbulent periods in the history of France. To what extent did all these factors influence Stendhal’s own literary style? This chapter will attempt to answer this question by describing both Stendhal’s views on the subject1 and providing an analysis of his style. Stendhal, born in 1783, was educated in the Classical tradition. It was a tradition which he both approved of and criticised, for although he greatly admired many of the Classical writers, he did not think they should be imitated, since the subjects and the manner in which they wrote reflected the specific needs of their period. He stated on numerous occasions that they were the ‘Romantics’ of their day, in other words innovative and daring in relation to the previous generation (cf. Racine et Shakespeare, pp.181-82). He therefore fought for the newly developing ideals of Romanticism and expressed this in a suitably pithy statement (p.127): Le vieillard: - «Continuons.» Le jeune homme: - «Examinons.» Voilà tout le dix-neuvième siècle. (The Old Man said: ‘Let’s continue.’ The Young Man said: ‘Let’s examine.’ That’s the nineteenth century in a nutshell).

He also stated (p.158) that he endeavoured to write in a style suitable for ‘les enfants de la Révolution’. But what did he mean? For Lamartine it was continuing to use a Classical style, as he made clear in a letter dated 19 March 1823:2 [...] le siècle ne prétend pas être romantique dans l’expression; c’est-à-dire écrire autrement que ceux qui ont bien écrit avant nous, mais seulement dans les idées que le temps apporte ou modifie […] ([…] this century does not claim to be romantic as far as expression is concerned, in other words writing differently from those before us, but only in terms of ideas which the passing of time brings or alters […])

He added in the same letter, referring to Stendhal who had been campaigning for the Romantics: ‘il devrait faire une concession: classique pour l’expression, romantique dans la pensée, à mon avis c’est ce qu’il faut être’ (‘he should make a concession: I think that one should be Classical as far as expression is concerned, and Romantic where thoughts are 1

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See especially Racine et Shakespeare: études sur le romantisme (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1993), which includes the two versions (1823 and 1825) of Stendhal’s pamphlet, Racine et Shakespeare, plus other essays and letters, some of which predate the famous pamphlet. Racine et Shakespeare, pp.130-31.

concerned’). This, however, begs the question as to whether it is possible to be a Romantic writer while retaining a Classical style, as was indeed Stendhal’s aim. In order to answer these questions we shall examine briefly the stylistic characteristics of Romanticism (section 1), Stendhal’s style in relation to both Romanticism and Classicism (section 2), and the manner in which he referred to passion and heroism (section 3).3

1. The Stylistic Characteristics of Romanticism Many cracks were appearing in the Classical edifice even before Stendhal was born. The influence of writers such as Rousseau, Chateaubriand, Bernardin de Saint Pierre, the increasing importance of Lamartine, the numerous manifestos on literary issues, all heralded the dawn of the Romantic revolution. There were psychological reasons for this rebellion. The defeat of Napoleon had created a generation lacking a sense of direction and obsessed by le mal du siècle. This coincided with the growing popularity of Chateaubriand’s Atala, René and Le Génie du Christianisme, first published in 1801-02, which concentrated on the cult of the moi, a feeling for nature and a return to the sources of the Middle Ages and the Christian faith. Some years later, a whole new generation of ‘Romantic’ novelists appeared on the scene. Although much criticised by its contemporaries, Romanticism became, nonetheless, the strongest influence of the century, and in this Stendhal played his part. The characteristics of Romantic style emerged through a long process of evolution. Rousseau (1712-78) introduced the most important new development in creating a kind of lyrical prose to express the fluctuating state of his personal emotions. The stylistic means used remain, however, extremely discreet; it is the juxtaposition of many minor stylistic choices that builds up an atmosphere detail by detail, using sometimes quite unexpected imagery. Rousseau had a great influence on later writers. Thus, in Le Rouge et le Noir (1830), Julien Sorel is said to see the world entirely through Rousseau’s Confessions.4 This was probably meant to be ironic since Stendhal, who did not normally indulge in a markedly poetic approach, considered that he had admired Rousseau far too much during his youth, hence his being both critical and positive about him.5 Later Bernardin de Saint Pierre (1737-1814) introduced a luxuriant, evocative vocabulary to provide local colour, to which Chateaubriand (1768-1848) added words with not only strong poetic but also religious connotations. He particularly favoured similes, metaphors and personification. Both authors introduced numerous modifiers to control the rhythm of their sentences. However, it was Victor Hugo (1802-85) who came to symbolise the movement, which meant freedom from convention as regards vocabulary and imagery. He was the first to mix the genres, some passages being written in a realistic manner, some

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Since the translations included in the following pages are meant to make the stylistic points easy to follow for non French specialists, they have been kept as literal as possible (including keeping Arabic numerals where the English would write numerals in letters). Where words have been added for the sake of correct syntax, they are indicated by brackets. Stendhal, Le Rouge et le Noir (Paris: Pocket, ‘Au fil du texte’ in ‘Les Clés de l’œuvre’, collection directed by C. Aziza, 1998), p.40. Cf. Racine et Shakespeare, p.311.

including comedy and wit, while others are violent and sometimes even visionary. He was particularly fond of breathing new life into similes, for either comical or horrifying effect: [...] après plusieurs jours d’extase devant cette grille, Marius, entraîné par cette force qui pousse le fer contre l’aimant et l’amoureux vers les pierres dont est faite la maison de celle qu’il aime, avait fini par entrer dans le Jardin de Cosette comme Roméo dans le jardin de Juliette.6 ([…] after having spent several ecstatic days in front of these railings, Marius, drawn by the force which draws metal towards a magnet, and a lover towards the stones of the house of the loved one, eventually stepped into Cosette’s garden as Romeo [stepped] into the garden of Juliet.)

Hugo was in fact criticised for his wild imagery, such as ‘la phtisie sociale s’appelle misère’ (‘social consumption is the name for destitution’),7 for striking antithetic constructions such as ‘Le gamin de Paris, c’est le nain de la géante’ (‘the kid [typifying] Paris is a dwarf born of a giantess’),8 and for comparing the uncomparable, as when he likens some broken railings to the ‘dents des vieilles gens’ (‘the teeth of old people’).9 But these were to become typically Romantic techniques. Another innovation was to turn images into symbols. Thus Gavroche became a symbol of ‘le gamin de Paris’. A different kind of symbol was representing Satan as Despair, endlessly yawning because of boredom and being unable to sleep. Hugo’s tone could be violent, horrifying and extremely evocative, even when evoking a scene which is very ‘un-Classical’. A brief analysis of the following passage, describing a boulevard, reveals Hugo’s techniques (the sentences have been numbered). This will be contrasted in the next section with a description of a similar scene by Stendhal to highlight the differences in their approach: [1] Si loin que la vue pût s’étendre, on n’apercevait que les abattoirs, le mur d’enceinte et quelques rares façades d’usines, pareilles à des casernes ou à des monastères; partout des baraques et des plâtras, de vieux murs noirs comme des linceuls, des murs neufs blancs comme des suaires; partout des rangées d’arbres parallèles, des bâtisses tirées au cordeau, des constructions plates, de longues lignes froides, et la tristesse lugubre des angles droits. [2] Pas un accident de terrain, pas un caprice d’architecture, pas un pli. [3] C’était un ensemble glacial, régulier, hideux. [4] Rien ne serre le cœur comme la symétrie. [5] C’est que la symétrie, c’est l’ennui, et l’ennui est le fond même du deuil. [6] Le désespoir bâille. [7] On peut rêver quelque chose de plus terrible qu’un enfer où l’on souffre, c’est un enfer où l’on s’ennuierait. [8] Si cet enfer existait, ce morceau de Boulevard de l’hôpital en eût pu être l’avenue [...]10 (As far as the eye could see, there was nothing but abattoirs, the walls surrounding it [i.e. the hospital] and a few rare factory façades, [which looked] like barracks or monasteries; everywhere shacks and rubble, old walls black like shrouds, new walls white like winding sheets; everywhere rows of parallel trees, dead straight buildings, flat constructions, long cold lines, and the lugubrious sadness of right angles. Not an irregularity in the terrain, no [sign of a single] architectural whim, not an undulation. It formed a whole [which was] icy, regular, hideous. Nothing constricts the heart [as much as] symmetry. This is because symmetry equals boredom, and boredom is at the very heart of bereavement. Despair yawns. It is possible to dream of something worse than a hell in which one suffers, it is a hell in which

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Victor Hugo, Les Misérables, ed. by J.-J. Pauvert (Geneva: Club des Bibliophiles, n.d.), p.357: emphasis here and later is ours, unless otherwise indicated. Pauvert based his text on the 1862 edition. Ibid., p.292. Ibid. Ibid., p.357. Ibid., p.99.

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one would be bored. If this hell existed, this bit of the Boulevard [in which there was] the hospital could have been its avenue […].)

This description conveys the dismal meanness of the area comprising an incoherent and ugly mixture of new and old buildings of poor quality, described by nouns (baraques, plâtras, bâtisses, constructions) set in verbless clauses, or in clauses from which lexically full verbs are noticeably absent. When semantically full verbs are used, the impact is that much stronger, as in ‘rien ne serre le cœur’ (sentence 4), ‘le désespoir bâille’ (sentence 6), ‘l’enfer où l’on souffre, l’enfer où l’on s’ennuierait’ (sentence 7). The choice of indefinite rather than definite articles (Hugo uses de and des except in les abattoirs and le mur d’enceinte), or indefinite adjectives (quelques rares façades) emphasises the vague and menacing quality of the scene. The use of the generic definite article (la tristesse, l’ennui) creates the same lack of precision (a technique inaugurated by Bernardin de Saint Pierre). The syntax is varied, at times complicated and pushed to extremes, with sentences and clauses of extremely unequal length following each other. Sometimes the aim is to create a sense of suspense by placing the main clause at the end of the sentence, as in the opening sentence of the following paragraph: Cependant, à la nuit tombante, au moment où la clarté s’en va, l’hiver surtout, à l’heure où la bise crépusculaire arrache aux ormes leurs dernières feuilles rousses, quand l’ombre est profonde et sans étoiles, ou quand la lune et le vent font des trous dans les nuages, ce boulevard devenait tout à coup effrayant. (p.99) (However, at nightfall, at the hour when light fails, in winter mainly, at the time when an icy wind at dusk snatches off the elms the last of their russet [coloured] leaves, when darkness is deep and devoid of stars, or when the moon and the wind make holes in the clouds, [at such a time] this boulevard would become suddenly terrifying).

Hugo’s descriptions rely, as here, on accumulation of detail and evocative language. He not only used evocative nouns but evocative adjectives (hideux, glacial), nominal complements (des bâtisses tirées au cordeau), similes, metaphors and metonymies (some particularly evocative ones are italicised). These are often antithetic (vieux murs noirs which are contrasted with murs neufs blancs). Figures of speech play a particularly important role. In the text above beginning ‘Si loin que […]’, some of the similes evoke an enclosed space (‘pareilles à des casernes ou à des monastères’), and many suggest death (linceuls, suaires, deuil). ‘Les lignes droites se perdaient comme des tronçons de l’infini’ emphasises the infinite and therefore terrifying nature of the scene. This is further strengthened at the end of the passage by the elaborate metaphor comparing the street to a road leading to hell (sentences 7 and 8). ‘Le désespoir bâille’ is a case of metonymy (‘les gens désespérés bâillent’), where an abstract noun has been used instead of its concrete counterpart. This passage also illustrates how Hugo endowed inanimate objects with an existence of their own, making the environment part of the dramatic scene. He exploited all the resources at his disposal: a vocabulary that dwells on ugliness and death; a clever use of grammatical words to emphasise their effect, preferring indefinite determiners to definite ones. The sentences are structured in a varied manner, sometimes with a complex syntax to allow for the accumulation of visual or temporal details, and sometimes with verbless sentences to create terse concision. He goes from expansion to contraction, to suit his mood. 120

As regards rhythm, he tends to employ ternary constructions rather than binary ones, implying the importance of the emotional even in the context of describing a street (sentences 2 and 3). This is in keeping with his tendency to use images that have more to do with physical perception than with the intellect. The hyperbolic accumulation of details leads the reader to expect something tragic. Such techniques were developed or imitated by other writers to create a wide range of effects: gothic as above, poetic as in Gautier, or the kind of realism based on the rejection of the principles of bienséance with Balzac. In all cases, Romanticism implies some degree of stylistic and emotional excess. Stylistic excess suggests an accumulation of detail, often without any order, which stretched syntax beyond the limits of the Classical sentence. From this point on, the sentence could be very long or very short. The normal order – subject/verb/object – could be interrupted, thus creating a dislocated effect. Hence Romanticism, by dissociating language from the Classical norms of equilibrium and harmony, gave it the power to create new worlds. Thus the Romantic Movement was the starting point for all the other movements which were to follow.

2. Stendhal’s Style in relation to Romanticism and Classicism What is striking on a first reading of Stendhal is not the Romantic quality of his style but its ‘Classical’ nature. This may be seen in the opening paragraph of Le Rouge et le Noir (p.21): the description is objective, moderate, and follows a logical progression. In this case there are as yet no feelings to interfere with the style. One of the stylistic characteristics of such writing is the tendency to juxtapose sentences: La petite ville de Verrières peut passer pour l’une des plus jolies de la Franche-Comté. Ses maisons blanches avec leurs toits pointus de tuiles rouges s’étendent sur la pente d’une colline, dont des touffes de vigoureux châtaigniers marquent les moindres sinuosités. Le Doubs coule à quelques centaines de pieds au-dessous de ses fortifications, bâties par les Espagnols, et maintenant ruinées. (The small town of Verrières may be regarded as one of the prettiest in the Franche-Comté. Its white houses with their high pitched roofs of red tiles spread over the slopes of a hill, clumps of sturdy chestnut trees indicating its slightest contours. The Doubs runs some hundreds of feet below its fortifications, built [in times past] by the Spaniards, and now in ruins).

The same desire for objectivity appears in his portraits: Il [Julien] avait les joues pourpres et les yeux baissés. C’était un petit jeune homme de dix-huit à dixneuf ans, faible en apparence, avec des traits irréguliers, mais délicats, et un nez aquilin. De grands yeux noirs, qui, dans les moments tranquilles, annonçaient de la réflexion et du feu, étaient animés en cet instant de l’expression de la haine la plus féroce. Des cheveux châtain foncé, plantés fort bas, lui donnaient un petit front, et, dans les moments de colère, un air méchant. Parmi les innombrables variétés de la physionomie humaine, il n’en est peut-être point qui se soit distinguée par une spécialité plus saisissante. Une taille svelte et bien prise annonçait plus de légèreté que de vigueur. Dès sa première jeunesse, son air extrêmement pensif et sa grande pâleur avaient donné l’idée à son père qu’il ne vivrait pas, ou qu’il vivrait pour être une charge à sa famille. Objet de mépris de tous à la maison, il haïssait ses frères et son père; dans les jeux du dimanche, sur la place publique, il était toujours battu. (Le Rouge et le Noir, p.37)

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(His cheeks were flushed, his eyes downcast. He was a slim youth of eighteen or nineteen, weak in appearance, with irregular but delicate features and an aquiline nose. His large dark eyes, which, in moments of calm, suggested [both] a reflective and fiery spirit, were animated at this instant with an expression of the most ferocious hatred. His dark coloured chestnut hair, growing very low, gave him a narrow brow, and in moments of anger, [he looked really] nasty. Among the innumerable varieties of the human appearance, there is perhaps none that is more strikingly characteristic. A slim and shapely figure signalled suppleness rather than strength. From early childhood, his extremely pensive air and marked pallor had given his father the idea that he would not live, or would only live to be a burden for his family. An object of contempt to the rest of the household, he hated his brothers and father; in the games [played] on Sundays, on the public square, he was invariably beaten.)

This description, at times stereotypical, is outwardly Classical in appearance, and yet it is not completely so. The young man has ‘une taille svelte et bien prise, un nez aquilin’ (seen as a sign of nobility), an ‘air pensif’ and a ‘grande pâleur’. On the other hand he exhibits ‘des traits irréguliers (mais délicats), un petit front, un air méchant’, all negative statements. These traits are more reminiscent of the writings of authors such as Saint-Simon, who aimed at truth, or at least their version of it. It is in the last sentence that this description breaks most clearly with tradition: ‘Objet de mépris de tous à la maison, il haïssait ses frères et son père’, since this no longer belongs to the realm of objective external description. The sentence is, in fact, heavily suggestive of the complex nature of the person described: it implies that he has reason to feel bitter, for Fate has dealt him a poor hand, and the bitterness develops and builds (‘il était toujours battu’), leading the reader to expect him to react against his background. In other words, from the outset, the hero is shown as potentially tragic. From a purely linguistic point of view, the passage typifies Stendhal’s style in its succession of juxtaposed sentences. This has the effect of emphasising a feeling of detachment in respect of each element described; and the use of the indefinite article instead of the possessive adjective in de grands yeux noirs, des cheveux châtain foncé, accentuates this effect. Numerous elements in apposition also create an overall general impressionistic effect, as detail after detail is simply stated in a straightforward sequence. Rousseau had frequently used this technique, as in the Rêveries du promeneur solitaire, in which he remarked, ‘Je suis observateur et non moraliste. Je suis le botaniste qui décrit la plante. C’est au médecin qu’il appartient d’en régler l’usage’ (‘I am an observer and not a moralist. I am the botanist who describes the plant. It is up to the doctor to establish how to use it’).11 This could also apply to Stendhal. Stendhal could be classical in the modesty of his narrative, in a manner sometimes reminiscent of La Princesse de Clèves, although this discretion may also be marked with irony. Thus, describing Julien’s consummation of his affair with Madame de Rênal, he writes (p.111): ‘Quelques heures après, quand Julien sortit de la chambre de Mme de Rênal, on eût pu dire, en style de roman, qu’il n’avait plus rien à désirer’ (‘A few hours later, when Julien left Mme de Rênal’s bedroom, one could have said, [using] a novelistic style, that he had nothing more to desire’). But a little later (p.112) he is less discreet and gives more details than could have been initially expected: ‘Même quand elle n’eut plus rien à lui refuser, 11

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J.-J. Rousseau, Les Rêveries du promeneur solitaire, Appendice (1776-1778) (Paris: Maxi-Poche classique français, 1994), p.155.

elle repoussait Julien loin d’elle, avec une indignation réelle et ensuite se jetait dans ses bras’ (‘Even after she had nothing left to deny him, she would push Julien away from her, with real indignation only to throw herself later into his arms’). Similarly, when he seduces Mathilde de La Mole, a few points de suspension mark the ultimate stage of the episode. Stendhal also set himself apart from the Romantic Movement by his refusal to use ‘local colour’. Thus La Chartreuse de Parme is set outside of time and space; its buildings and characters could belong to any century.12 He is also Classical in construction in that he tended to start from an anecdote and then analysed the mechanical series of causes and effects leading to the denouement. On the other hand, the author frequently intervenes in the story. This is sometimes done indirectly as in the portrait of Julien Sorel quoted above (‘Parmi les innombrables variétés […]’). This is not particularly un-Classical unless the intervention is in the first person, which is what happens frequently in Le Rouge et le Noir. The very first chapter includes sentences such as ‘je ne sais combien de milliers de clous’ (‘I know not how many nails’), or ‘je ne sais quoi’. He sometimes includes an onlooker as in ‘disparaît aux yeux du voyageur’ (‘disappears from the traveller’s sight’) and addresses the reader directly, as in ‘ne vous attendez pas’ (‘don’t expect’). He frequently italicises for emphasis and irony: ‘Eh! elle est à M. le maire’ (‘Ha! It belongs to the Mayor’), ‘ruisseau public’ (‘public stream’), ‘manie de propriétaire’ (‘owner’s quirk’), ‘mauvaise tête’ (‘bad head’, i.e. ‘awkward disposition’), and ‘bête’ (‘stupid’).13 And he sometimes uses local expressions, again highlighted with italics and even explained, as in (p. 157) ‘il passait sa colère, c’est le mot du pays’ (‘he passed his anger, it is the expression used in [that part of] the country’. Other expressions, such as ‘il y a cent à parier contre un’ (‘it is a hundred to one’), belong to a purely spoken register and, although not normally present in traditional Classical style, are not italicised by Stendhal. He thus appears Classical in these pages, but he also demonstrates the freedom from rules where vocabulary is concerned introduced by the Romantic movement. The desire to be detached while noting states of mind in minute detail led Stendhal to make use of free indirect speech (this before Flaubert), rendering speech less definite and enabling the reader to penetrate the speaker’s mind. Le Rouge et le Noir (pp.166-67) contains a whole speech in this form. Stendhal’s prose also exhibits numerous biting ironical statements, some reflecting the views of the author, others conveying the cunning nature of the main character. The presence of such irony, typical of Stendhal, is not surprising given the world described, and became a characteristic of many writers towards the end of the nineteenth century. Such irony is often based on antithetic contrasts or on the unexpected and, as such, is reminiscent of Voltaire: ‘Il [le Comte] avait dans sa voiture le duc Sanseverina-Taxis, joli petit vieillard de 68 ans, gris pommelé, bien poli, bien propre, immensément riche, mais pas assez noble [...]’ (‘He [the Count] had in his carriage the duke Sanseverina-Taxis, a pretty little old man aged 68, dapple-grey, very polished, very clean, im-

12

13

Stendhal, La Chartreuse de Parme (1839), Préface by Michel Crouzet (Paris: Garnier Flammarion, 1964), p.25. All these examples come from Chapter One of Le Rouge et le Noir.

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mensely wealthy, but not as noble [as he should have been]’).14 The use of ‘joli’ is particularly surprising and shocking even, since this word is not normally associated with adult males. Antithetic statements such as (p.195): ‘Il vaut mieux tuer le diable que si le diable vous tue’ (‘Better kill the devil than the devil kill you’), are also reminiscent of Voltaire’s wit. We may conclude, therefore, that Stendhal, educated in the Classical tradition, was affected by it all his life. On the other hand, the Romantic movement – which he warmly embraced – led him to reject the narrowness of traditional Classicism. This enabled him to use a far broader vocabulary, and it also encouraged him to express a Romantic sensitivity, albeit indirectly and without the excesses which came to characterise the Romantic movement. Stendhal’s interest in the sciences created in him a quite natural desire to dissect emotions, rather than be engulfed in them, hence his often rather Voltairean tone. But his style is clearly different from that of earlier Classical writers. A comparison between Hugo’s description of a particularly depressing boulevard (see above) and that of a similar street by Stendhal (in Lucien Leuwen) will highlight both similarities and differences between Stendhal’s style and the Romantic style proper: [1] Enfin, le régiment déboucha dans la grande rue marchande de la ville; tous les magasins étaient fermés, pas une tête aux fenêtres, un silence de mort. [2] On arriva sur une place irrégulière et fort longue, garnie de cinq ou six mûriers rabougris et traversée dans toute sa longueur par un ruisseau infect chargé de toutes les immondices de la ville; l’eau était bleue, parce que le ruisseau servait aussi d’égout à plusieurs ateliers de teinture. [3] Le linge étendu aux fenêtres pour sécher faisait horreur par sa pauvreté, son état de délabrement et sa saleté. Les vitres des fenêtres étaient sales et petites, et beaucoup de fenêtres avaient, au lieu de vitre, du vieux papier écrit et huilé. [4] Partout une vive image de la pauvreté qui saisissait le cœur, mais non pas les cœurs qui espéraient gagner la croix en distribuant des coups de sabre dans cette pauvre petite ville.15 (At last the regiment appeared in the town’s main high street; all the shops were closed, nobody at the windows, a deathly silence. It arrived at a very long and irregular square, with five or six stunted mulberry trees, [through] the whole length of which ran a disgusting stream filled with all the refuse of the town; the water was blue, because the stream was used as a sewer by several dyeing workshops. The washing hanging from the windows to dry was horrifying by its poverty, its appalling state16 and its filth. The window panes were dirty and small, and many windows had, instead of glass panes, old used paper [which had been] oiled. Everywhere a vivid image of poverty which broke one’s heart, but not the hearts [of those] who hoped to win medals by distributing blows with their swords in this poor little town.)

In this case, as in the passage by Hugo, there are few semantically loaded verbs; indeed the very first sentence includes two nominal phrases (‘pas une tête aux fenêtres’; ‘un silence de mort’). In sentence 4, ‘partout une vive image de la pauvreté’ is, again, a nominal phrase. Four verbal phrases out of ten are based on avoir or être used in the imperfect and express a state of affairs (‘l’eau était bleue’), or are in a passive form (‘étaient fermés’). There are also past participles used in a passive sense (garnie, traversée, chargé, étendu). In other words, the emphasis is on the town as a victim. 14 15 16

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La Chartreuse de Parme, p.132. Stendhal, Lucien Leuwen (Paris: Gallimard, 1966), p.271. Literally, its ‘dilapidated state’.

The all-pervading poverty is expressed in what appears at first sight to be very simple style, but which is in fact amazingly succinct. The aim of the author is to appear objective, hence the lack of the kind of images characteristic of Hugo’s text. But Stendhal conveys the same sense of poverty and despair and does so at least as powerfully since the horror is merely suggested rather than being spelled out. One way in which this is achieved is through the choice of vocabulary suggesting filth (‘le ruisseau est infect’, saleté, sale, immondices, égout, vieux). It also implies meanness through reference to size (rabougris, petites). Meanness and filth are further emphasised by being linked syntactically (‘les vitres sales et petites’, ‘un ruisseau infect chargé de toutes les immondices de la ville’). Filth and meanness in turn spell poverty, the word pauvreté appearing twice and pauvre once, but pauvre also figured in the previous paragraph, while délabrement suggests poverty. Pauvre is also highlighted because of its association with petite (‘cette pauvre petite ville’), in which case both adjectives may be interpreted both in a literal and figurative sense. In the sentence, ‘Le linge étendu aux fenêtres pour sécher faisait horreur par sa pauvreté, son état de délabrement et sa saleté’ (our emphasis), the three semantic fields of filth, meanness and poverty are brought together, each reinforcing the other. Infect also implies that the town or village is unhealthy. It is supposed, moreover, that the ‘linge étendu […] pour sécher’ has been washed, and yet it is still horrifyingly dirty. It would appear to have been washed in the ruisseau, which further suggests unhealthiness. Finally, as in Hugo’s text, there is an emphasis on length seen in negative terms (‘une place irrégulière et fort longue’ and ‘traversée dans toute sa longueur’ in sentence 2). It is too long because of its association with irrégulière, which implies an absence of town planning, and since the unhealthy stream goes through the whole village, the whole village is equally unhealthy. The second technique used by Stendhal to create this impact is by being resolutely antipoetical. There are no picturesque details; ‘l’eau était bleue’ could lead the reader to suppose this to be a poetic detail, but any such illusion is immediately removed by what follows (the stream was used as a sewer). The trees are ‘rabougris’, a negative characteristic, and the windows replaced by ‘du vieux papier huilé’. In other words it is a combination of small and sometimes unexpected elements that builds up the complete picture and conveys the sadness and horror of the scene described (‘Le linge […] faisait horreur’: sentence 3, our emphasis). The lack of attributive complement (‘faisait horreur à qui?’) gives the statement a universal quality. The same applies to ‘le cœur’ in sentence 5 (‘Partout une vive image de la pauvreté qui saisissait le cœur’), avoir du cœur meaning to be sensitive. The second part of this sentence (‘mais non pas les cœurs qui espéraient gagner la croix en distribuant des coups de sabre […]’) is an example of Stendhal’s remarkable ability to be concise since it can and should be interpreted in two ways. This is because the relative clause can be seen as either restrictive or non-restrictive. If it is interpreted as restrictive it would mean that all those in the regiment were similarly heartless; if it is interpreted as non-restrictive it means that only those wanting to win medals were so insensitive. Since both readings are combined in one sentence, this not only makes for concision, but asks for ‘active reading’. Again, Stendhal is suggesting rather than stating. From a rhetorical point of view, this sentence contains both a case of syllepsis (le cœur/les cœurs) and an example of metonymy (the concrete term cœur taken with its ab125

stract meaning). The contrast in this case is powerful, if understated, suggesting icy irony. This is, however, the only sentence in the whole extract that uses rhetorical figures. There are no similes and no metaphors, unlike in Hugo’s text. This economy of figures is characteristic of Stendhal in an age that used them with abandon. If the passage is compared with Hugo’s text, what emerges is that Hugo’s description has epic qualities since the scene takes on gigantic proportions; there is also a touch of the fantastic. Stendhal’s description, on the other hand, shows only what is clearly visible to the naked eye. It is merely the accumulation of words such as pauvreté, saleté, laideur that leads the reader to feel pity. In this sense Stendhal is a Classical writer. On the other hand, Stendhal uses expressions which Classical writers would have rejected as ‘bas’ (‘low’) and unworthy to be used in writing; terms such as rabougris, égout, immondices, infect, délabrement, vieux papier. This shows that he was not a prisoner of Classical rules. Moreover, both texts are ‘Romantic’ in their appeal to the sensitivity of the reader, even in the context of the purely descriptive: in other words, Classical writers described emotions, but were not emotional in their descriptions. In both cases the heart rules the choice of words, although this is done indirectly in the case of Stendhal.

3. Stendhal and the Expression of Passion and Heroism As with most Romantic writers, Stendhal’s writing was inspired by events which took place in his own very full life (Lucien Leuwen), or by real anecdotes (Le Rouge et le Noir). This is both a Romantic trait and one that makes him a precursor of realism. Often endowed with similar traits of character to himself, his heroes, particularly Julien Sorel and Fabrice, are shown to be both lucid and passionate, while dreaming nostalgically of a heroic life. Passion is analysed in a ‘lucid’ manner: Stendhal had no romantic illusions as to the long term prospects of such sentiments, except in so far as mediocre characters, under its influence, can become heroic. It is this development from mediocrity, and personal ambition in the case of Julien Sorel, to heroism that is one of the important points of his novels. He therefore wished to stay clear of conventional Romanticism, which he accused of ‘charlatanism’. Thus he writes in Le Rouge et le Noir (p. 59): À Paris, la position de Mme de Rênal eût été bien vite simplifiée; mais à Paris, l’amour est fils des romans. Le jeune précepteur et sa timide maîtresse auraient retrouvé dans trois ou quatre romans, et jusque dans les couplets du Gymnase, l’éclaircissement de leur position. (In Paris, Mme de Rênal’s position would have quickly been simplified; but in Paris, love is the issue17 of novels. The young tutor and his timid mistress would have found in three or four novels, and even in the lyrics of the Gymnase, clarification as to their position).

Similarly, in Lucien Leuwen, he jokes about the impact of romantic love too fully described:

17

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i.e. ‘progeny’.

Le temps s’envolait rapidement pour notre héros. Mais les amants sont si heureux dans les scènes qu’ils ont ensemble que le lecteur, au lieu de sympathiser avec la peinture de ce bonheur, en devient jaloux et se venge d’ordinaire en disant: « Bon Dieu! que ce livre est fade! »18 (Time quickly flew by for our hero. But lovers are so happy in the scenes they have together that the reader, instead of rejoicing in the description of their happiness, becomes jealous and usually takes revenge by saying: ‘Good God! Isn’t this book insipid!’)

For Stendhal, ‘la seule règle est d’être vrai’ (‘the only rule is to be true [to life]’),19 which meant describing the society he was living in and the emotions experienced as precisely as possible. But what he portrays as the truth was only his vision of love and passion and he thought that passion was essentially selfish: Une ou deux fois, durant cette grande scène, Mme de Rênal fut sur le point d’éprouver quelque sympathie pour le malheur fort réel de cet homme, qui pendant douze ans avait été son ami. Mais les vraies passions sont égoïstes. (Le Rouge et le Noir, p.162) (Once or twice, during this big scene, Mme de Rênal was on the point of feeling some sympathy for the real misfortune of this man20 who, for twelve years, had been her friend. But real passions are selfish.)

On the other hand, Julien states (p. 528) that ‘les passions sont un accident dans la vie, mais cet accident ne se rencontre que chez les âmes supérieures’ (‘Passions are an accident in life, but this accident only happens to superior beings’). In such cases passion is seen as conducive to noble sentiments and heroic actions. Thus Clélia, fighting against her love for Fabrice, and realising what a sacrifice she has to make (she has vowed to give up seeing Fabrice if his escape from prison is successful), writes in her last letter to him before his escape: Adieu, Fabrice, je serai en prière, et répandant les larmes les plus amères, vous pouvez le croire, pendant que vous courrez de si grands dangers. Si vous périssez, je ne vous survivrai point; grand Dieu! Qu’est-ce que je dis? Mais si vous réussissez, je ne vous reverrai jamais [...] (La Chartreuse de Parme, pp.391-92) (Adieu, Fabrice, I will be in prayer, and shedding the most bitter of tears, you may believe me, while you run such a great danger. If you perish, I shall not survive you; great God! What am I saying? But if you succeed, I will never see you again […])

Such nobility of spirit and such a sense of self-sacrifice are expressed in a language reminiscent of Cornelian tragedies. Hence the frequent use of words and expressions such as ‘les soupçons les plus cruels’, ‘fatale passion’, ‘jours funestes’ (‘fateful days’), and adjectives such as ‘infâme’, as in ‘infâmes habitudes’, ‘infâme tour’, ‘cœur enchaîné’ (‘enslaved heart’). Stendhal also uses language reminiscent of Mme de La Fayette. Thus Fabrice, when analysing the development of his emotions (p.335), uses vocabulary similar to that of La Princesse de Clèves: ‘[...] jamais il ne s’était figuré que son âme fût de quelque chose dans 18 19

20

Stendhal, Lucien Leuwen (Paris: Gallimard, 1960), p.274. P.-G. Castex and P. Surer, Manuel des études littéraires françaises, XIXe siècle (Paris: Hachette, 1966), p.170. i.e. her husband.

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l’amour pour la Marietta, tandis que souvent il avait cru que son âme tout entière appartenait à la duchesse’ (‘Never had he imagined that his soul would become involved in his love for Marietta, whereas he often had thought that his whole soul belonged to the Duchess’). Despite such lucidity, however, Fabrice still doubts being loved (pp.336-67): ‘[...] s’il eût eu quelque expérience de l’amour, il ne lui fût pas resté de doute: mais jamais femme n’avait occupé son cœur [...]’ (‘if he had had some experience of love, he would have been left without a doubt: but never had a woman occupied his heart’). Indeed, he was incapable of (p.341) ‘un attachement sérieux’ (‘serious attachment’). But real love will lead to a transfiguration. Thus, when he escapes from the Farnese Tower (p.397), ‘comme un héros des temps de chevalerie, il pensa un instant à Clélia. Combien je suis différent, se dit-il, du Fabrice léger et libertin qui entra ici il y a 9 mois!’ (‘like a hero in the days of chivalry, he thought for a moment of Clélia. How different I am, he thought, from the fickle and libertine Fabrice who entered here 9 months ago’). That Stendhal thought passions were powerful and in the end destructive led him to use Romantic techniques at times. Thus the following passage contains two Romantic metaphors (in italics): Leur bonheur était désormais d’une nature bien supérieure, la flamme qui les dévorait fut plus intense. Ils avaient des transports pleins de folie. Leur bonheur eût paru plus grand aux yeux du monde. Mais ils ne retrouvèrent plus la sérénité délicieuse, la félicité sans nuages, le bonheur facile des premières époques de leurs amours, quand la seule crainte de Mme de Rênal était de n’être pas assez aimée de Julien. Leur bonheur avait quelquefois la physionomie du crime. (Le Rouge et le Noir, p.144) (Their happiness henceforth was on a far higher plane, the flame which devoured them was more intense. They experienced transports of ecstatic love. Their happiness would have appeared greater in the eyes of the world. But they never recaptured the delicious serenity, the cloudless felicity, the spontaneous joys of the early period of their love, when the only fear of Mme de Rênal was of not being loved enough by Julien. Their happiness took on at times the appearance of a crime.)

The word facile, which contrasts with physionomie du crime, also highlights the difference between Julien’s new passionate love for Mme de Rênal and his earlier feelings. Another example of a metaphor used to express the dangers of passions would be (p.163): ‘Cette maison est pavée d’ennemis; songez à la haine passionnée qu’Elisa a pour moi’ (‘This house is paved with enemies; think of the passionate hatred Elisa has for me’), which also illustrates that one can be passionate in hatred as in love. Similarly, Stendhal’s writings contain expressions such as ‘cœur malheureux’ (‘unhappy heart’), ‘tête troublée’ (‘troubled mind’), ‘comme une insensée’ (‘like a mad woman’), ‘état horrible’ (‘horrible state’), ‘yeux égarés’ (‘wild eyed’), more linked with Romanticism than Classicism. Real passion often leads to death. When referring to such tragic denouements, Stendhal’s sentences become very spare. Thus at the end of La Chartreuse de Parme (p.508), one reads: ‘[Clélia] ne survécut que de quelques mois à ce fils si chéri [Sandrino, Fabrice’s son] mais elle eut la douceur de mourir dans les bras de son ami’ (‘[Clélia] survived for only a few months a son so [tenderly] cherished, but she [did] experience the happiness of dying in the arms of her friend’). There is no lyricism in such an example; it is more a matter of simple observation of facts: love leads to death, and the loved one left behind will not survive either. On the other hand to die next to the loved one may be seen as romantic in principle 128

and ‘mourir près de ceux qu’on aime’ (‘to die close to those one loves’) appears in italics on p.407 of the same novel. Similarly, when Lucien Leuwen tells his mother that he has been deceived, he uses nearly childlike words, and she in turn goes from the language used for adults, i.e. the vous, to the tu and mon of childhood, which represents the kind of change of register heralded by Romanticism: « Maman je suis fou. Je n’ai pas manqué à l’honneur, mais à cela près je suis le plus malheureux des hommes. – Je vous pardonne tout, lui dit-elle, en lui sautant au cou. Ne crains aucun reproche, mon Lucien. Est-ce une affaire d’argent? J’en ai. – C’est bien autre chose. J’aimais, et j’ai été trompé ». (Lucien Leuwen, p.349) (‘Mother, I am [going] mad. I have not put my honour at risk, but apart from that I am the most unhappy of men’. – ‘I forgive you everything’, she said, leaping to embrace him. ‘Don’t fear any reproaches. Is it a money problem? I have money’. ‘It is something quite different. I loved and I have been deceived’.)

Stendhal’s language is also sometimes closer to the Romantics than to Classical writing in its precise and lyrical detail as in (p.87): ‘Julien, debout, sur son grand rocher, regardait le ciel, embrasé par un soleil d’août’ (‘Julien, standing on his big rock, looked at the sky, set ablaze by an August sun’). He writes (p.88) of the ‘mouvements de passion qui bouleversaient l’âme de ce jeune ambitieux’ (‘movements of passion that deeply moved the soul of this young ambitious man’). He likes the words sombre and folie (‘madness’) as in ‘cette sombre folie’ (p.89). Indeed the expression of passionate love in more Romantic terms can be contrasted with the expression of more moderate feelings such as friendship expressed with Classical restraint: [...] elle [la duchesse Sanseverina] me demandera des transports, de la folie, et je n’aurai à lui offrir que l’amitié la plus vive, mais sans amour; la nature m’a privé de cette sorte de folie sublime [...] Elle croira que je manque d’amour pour elle tandis que c’est l’amour qui manque en moi. (La Chartreuse de Parme, p.170) ([…] she [the Duchess Sanseverina] will call on me to provide rapturous [love], [love] to distraction, and I will only be able to offer the warmest of friendships, but without love; nature has deprived me of that kind of sublime madness [...] She will think I am lacking in love for her , whereas it is love which is lacking in me.)

Passion is based on excess. So is heroism. And the two are often linked since heroism may well be required in the Stendhalian world to win the heart of the heroine. The heart becomes a battlefield. Having had the ‘courage’ to take Mme de Rênal’s hand, Julien falls asleep, a ‘hero’: Un sommeil de plomb s’empara de Julien, mortellement fatigué des combats que toute la journée la timidité et l’orgueil s’étaient livrés dans son cœur. [...] Le lendemain on le réveilla à cinq heures; et, ce qui eût été cruel pour Mme de Rênal si elle l’eût su, à peine lui donna-t-il une pensée. Il avait fait son devoir et un devoir héroïque.21

21

Le Rouge et le Noir, p.78; Stendhal’s italics.

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(Sleep [as heavy as] lead engulfed Julien, exhausted from all the deadly battles that his timidity and his pride had fought all day. [...] The next day he was woken at five; and – but this would have been a cruel [blow] for Mme de Rênal had she known – he hardly gave her a thought. He had done his duty, and [it was] a heroic duty.)

Frequent use is made of expressions such as ‘combat’, ‘victoire’, ‘bataille’, ‘héroïque’, and although Stendhal uses few similes, when he does they may again imply violence, as in the phrase (p.96) ‘Caché comme un oiseau de proie’ (‘hidden like a bird of prey’), because heroism may well involve a victim. Frequent references are made to possible role models such as Napoleon and even Hercules (p.99): ‘Comme Hercule, il se trouvait non entre le vice et la vertu, mais entre la médiocrité suivie du bien-être assuré et tous les rêves héroïques de sa jeunesse’ (‘Like Hercules, he found himself caught not between vice and virtue, but between mediocrity followed by guaranteed comfort and all the heroic dreams of his youth’). But, by the end (p.256), ‘il était fatigué d’héroïsme’ (‘he was tired of heroism’), although heroism and voluptuousness can also become linked (p.258): ‘Les souvenirs de ces moments d’héroïsme et d’affreuse volupté l’attachaient d’une étreinte invincible’ (‘memories of these moments of heroism and dreadful voluptuousness seized her in an almighty grip’). The problem for the Stendhalian hero is, however, identifying what is a real hero and how to become one. Lucien Leuwen in particular is torn (p.94) between his religion – virtue and honour – and the somewhat different values of his epoch, ‘les mœurs élégantes, fruit du gouvernement corrompu de Louis XV’ (‘the elegant mores, fruit of Louis XV’s corrupt government’). He states (p.92) that ‘Les récits de la vie du jeune général Bonaparte, vainqueur au pont d’Arcole, me transportent: c’est pour moi Homère, Le Tasse, et cent fois mieux encore’ (‘the tales of the life of young Bonaparte, victor at the Arcole bridge, transport me: they are for me Homer, Tasso and a hundred times better’). And he adds: ‘Je ne sais ce que je désire’ (‘I know not what I desire’). Which leads him to ask himself (p.94): ‘Sous le rapport de la valeur réelle de l’homme, quelle est ma place? Suis-je au milieu de la liste, ou tout à fait le dernier?’ (‘From the point of view of my real worth as a man, what is my place? Am I half way down the list, or the very last?’). Similarly, Fabrice in his prison in the Farnese Tower, wonders (p.327): ‘Serais-je un de ces grands courages comme l’Antiquité en a montré quelques exemples au monde? Suis-je un héros sans m’en douter?’ (‘Could I be one of those great brave men of which Antiquity has shown a few examples to the world? Could it be that I am a hero without realising it?’). The answer seems to be that only a great passion can change a man into a hero, as may be seen from the heroic death of Julien, a death which could so easily have been avoided, but heroism is not, in fact, that easy to define in Stendhal’s world. To quote Moya Longstaffe: The world of Stendhal’s protagonists is one in which lip service is paid to past values and ideals, but whose reality is the jungle of the shameless pursuit of money and position. In such a world, heroism can only be treated in an essentially ironic mode, but it is an irony

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loaded with affection for the youthful heroes and lovers, and with admiration and nostalgia for the values which are so outraged.22

Conclusion Stendhal wrote, echoing Lamartine (Racine et Shakespeare, p.117): Peut-être faut-il être romantique dans les idées: le siècle le veut ainsi; mais soyons classiques dans les expressions et les tours; ce sont des choses de convention, c’est-à-dire à peu près immuables ou du moins fort lentement changeables. Ne nous permettons, tout au plus de temps à autre, que quelque ellipse, après laquelle soupiraient Voltaire et Racine, et qui semble donner plus de rapidité au style. Encore je ne voudrais pas jurer que cette petite licence ne nous rende peu intelligible à la postérité. (Perhaps we should be Romantic in our ideas since that is what our epoch demands; but let us be Classical in our expressions and constructions; these are matters of convention, in other words immutable, or at least very slow to change. Let us not allow ourselves more than the odd case of the kind of ellipsis Voltaire and Racine sighed after, and which seem to accelerate style; and this only from time to time. And even then I could not swear such a small licence would not make us less intelligible for posterity.)

This was his aim and, one feels, his achievement. He favoured Romanticism but rejected its excesses on the grounds that too much passion prevents clear, meticulous and objective analysis. This led him to write mainly in a suitably detached and simple manner, while maintaining precision in relation to details. His style is ‘Classical’, but it is a new ‘natural’ form of Classicism free from rules. Indeed, the sentence describing the comte de Vaize in Lucien Leuwen (p.620) could equally apply to Stendhal: ‘[C’]est un Voltaire pour l’esprit et un Jean-Jacques pour le sentiment romanesque’ (‘He is spiritually Voltairean and emotionally Rousseauesque’). To this should be added a pinch of Mme de La Fayette for the expression of love, and a dose of Corneille for the expression of passion and heroism. Stendhal’s desire for accuracy – which implies a certain amount of realism – links him stylistically with the Romantic movement, which removed all restrictions in the name of realism. The imprint of the century shows too in the willingness to describe the subtleties of the subconscious. His is a kind of timeless Classical style which should not be seen as being in opposition with Romantic style. On the contrary, his writing is a combination of the qualities of each.

22

Metamorphoses of Passion and the Heroic in French Literature: Corneille, Stendhal, Claudel (Lewiston, Queenston, Lampeter: Edwin Mellen, 1999), pp.197-98.

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Elisabeth M. Lillie

Heroes of the Mind: The Intellectual Elite in the Work of Ernest Renan As a period of far-reaching political change, revolution and war, it seems natural that the nineteenth century in France should have generated an extensive range of writing about the body politic, the role and function of society’s different strata and the nature and effect of human action within political communities. This concern is common to writers, thinkers and political theorists of all types, from Catholic traditionalism (Joseph de Maistre) to liberalism (Alexis de Tocqueville) and near Socialism (Louis Blanc). Such political engagement persists throughout the century, including even the apparently less interventionist writers of its middle years. In a country where everyday life was at times forcibly disrupted by political events and freedom of speech was far from the norm, even the strongest adherents of the mid-century post-Romantic ethic of art or learning were obliged to reflect on political events, as witness Flaubert, stirred during the Franco-Prussian War from an initial disdain of patriotic enthusiasm to joining the National Guard.1 A member of the same generation, like others, Ernest Renan devoted himself to what he perceived as his vocation, a life of learning and scholarship; indeed, he has been called ‘the man who proclaimed as no other the virtue and superiority of the life of the mind’.2 But, from his student days, Renan also reflects on political change and on the role of individuals within this context, thus considering what it means to be a hero. Already, in an early work, he indicates this vision, which has little in common with physical prowess and warlike ideals. For him the true heroes of his time are an elite of thinkers devoted to the Ideal; whether saints, apostles, solitary ascetics, poets or philosophers, they understand more of the essence of life than those who merely cultivate self-interest and the satisfaction of their vanity.3 Indeed, true heroism may consist in a lifetime of unremitting and unsung toil that will add to the sum of human knowledge (OC, III, p.907). Heroism for the youthful Renan can thus be the prerogative only of an elite.4 Although attracted to a life in the priesthood, Renan lost his early vocation and withdrew from his seminary training. Yet he pursued his philosophical and biblical studies, producing in addition a range of other work. In his inaugural lecture to a Chair at the Collège

1

2 3

4

See Michel Winock, Les Voix de la liberté (Paris: Seuil, 2001), especially pp.492-96, for a discussion of Flaubert’s changing attitude during the Franco-Prussian War. David C.J. Lee, Ernest Renan in the Shadow of Faith (London: Duckworth, 1996), p.5. L’Avenir de la science, in Œuvres complètes de Ernest Renan, ed. by Henriette Pshichari (Paris: Calmann Levy, 1947-61: hereafter OC), III, p.795. Drafted in 1848-49, L’Avenir de la science was published in its entirety only in 1890. For the sake of consistency, references will be to the Pshichari edition rather than to later editions of individual works. Like others of his generation, Renan read the classics but regarded the warlike prowess of heroes as characteristic of an earlier age. Cf. Cahiers de jeunesse (OC, IX, pp.104-05) for a comparison of epic heroes from different ages and epochs. Jacqueline de Romilly, ‘Le Héros homérique et la pensée de Renan’ (Études Renaniennes, 48 (1982), pp.4-16, especially p.6), discusses the influence on Renan of the contemporary theory of the collective, spontaneous creation of epic literature.

de France in 1862, he described Christ as an incomparable man, drawing the wrath of the establishment and precipitating his suspension from lecturing and later dismissal. La Vie de Jésus of 1863 led to more opprobrium, Renan’s comments once more being less than orthodox. Although the work sold well, the whole experience was harrowing.5 On the establishment of the Third Republic Renan was reinstated at the Collège de France (November 1870), where he remained till the end of his life. His prolific output included specialist histories of the origins of Christianity and of the Israel of the Old Testament as well as writing of a more reflective nature (essays, dialogues and drames) in which Renan discussed general issues of personal, social and political concern. From the outset Renan was an independent thinker. Like so many others of his century and generation, he meditated on the far-reaching political and social movements through which he lived, including the revolutions in Paris of 1848 and 1871. It is thus unsurprising that his reflective work should frequently discuss the role of an elite whose insights he felt were beyond those of other men or that, at a time of increasing political enfranchisement and social change, he should have considered the relationship of this elite with their fellow citizens who might not appreciate or wish to accept more advanced or unconventional views. While the subject of an enlightened elite is discussed in Renan’s work from his student days, the concept, despite a certain element of constancy, is not wholly static. Though admitting his complete inexperience of life in L’Avenir de la science (OC, III, p.928), Renan nonetheless reveals there an ideal vision that would continue to guide his actions, even if its more hopeful elements became tempered by a variety of experiences. Inevitably, perhaps, these relate most obviously to the interaction between the elite and other sections of society. In L’Avenir de la science, Renan was much less pessimistic as regards the general mass of humanity than later: the studious toil carried out by the heroes of the mind is certainly not accessible to everyone; nonetheless he hopes for the day when all may share in the life of the intellect and appreciate the new faith of ‘science’.6 The pioneers of the new approach to the world are not men of action but genuine thinkers who, through their unremitting and disinterested labours, are the instigators of radical change (p.1092). Despite their centrality to his world-view, Renan recognises that the concerns and aspirations of such an elite may seem remote from the common man. He thus considers the problems of the populace and their relationship with the life of the mind. L’Avenir de la science and letters written at the time show a dual attitude. While Renan admittedly regarded the populace as blind and ignorant, easily beguiled by facile solutions and incapable of appreciating the subtle complexities of life and truth, he thought such people bore no responsibility for the intellectual poverty of their lives (OC, III, p.1009). Is it really the fault of the 1848 revolutionaries, he asks, if society has allowed them to remain in a state of hel-

5

6

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Cf. Renan’s letters to Sainte-Beuve (10 September 1863: OC, X, p.390) and to the editor of L’Empire Libéral (12 May 1869; p.498). The term ‘science’ is here used more in the French sense of learning and knowledge in general rather than in the English connotation, although Renan does draw at different times in the book on the various meanings of the word. In this connection cf. D.G. Charlton, Positivist Thought in France during the Second Empire (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959), p.94.

otism, making them easy prey for unrestrained and unprincipled manipulators (p.998)? He thus apparently argues the elite’s duty to raise the intellectual awareness of their fellow citizens. Elsewhere in this work he states explicitly the moral duty, indeed the political necessity in an age of extended suffrage, of educating the people. This not only illustrates Renan’s sensitivity to political change, it also seems to link intelligence with education since, for him, universal suffrage will be legitimate only when all have the intellectual capacity that makes of them true human beings (pp.999-1000). And, as well as wanting to educate the masses, Renan understands the aspiration of the revolutionaries for a better world and defends (or at least explains) their role to his conservative elder sister Henriette (then a governess with an aristocratic family in Poland) as a justifiable attempt to attain what was denied to them within the law (letter of 1 July 1848; OC, IX, p.1086). Not only did Renan consider the ordinary people worthy in 1848 of being educated by the elite, he even thought their qualities of drive, strength of feeling and originality a force more virile than that generally found in the enfeebled bourgeoisie (letter to Henriette, 16 July 1848; OC, IX, p.1095). Potentially, at least, he could envisage them contributing significantly to a new society which would transcend the existing class structure by uniting the good in each social group (letter to Henriette, 30 July 1848; OC, IX, p.1101).7 The juxtaposition of education and intelligence was thus not the whole story; education and intelligence must also be allied to vigorous personal attributes. Gradually his later experiences began to dent Renan’s faith in the potential of the masses. First came his journey to Italy with Charles Darembourg in 1849-50, commissioned by the French Ministry of Education to study newly-accessible manuscripts. His belief in the perfectibility of the less-educated sectors of humanity was shaken by his impressions of what he regarded as the fanatical Italian populace: his correspondence evokes the dangers to which the unbridled force of their uninformed instincts might lead.8 Yet, despite pessimism, the Renan of 1850 feels strongly that these people must (and can) be educated and brought from their present primitive state into the world of the nineteenth century.9 Renan’s misgivings were, however, to be heightened by the coup d’état in France of 1851. The fact that the common people voted Louis Napoleon to power, an act which Renan described as complete folly, and that they later confirmed the Prince-President’s declaration of himself as Emperor, aroused in Renan a deep pessimism as regards democracy.10 Writing to Gustave Eichtal (30 July 1852; OC, X, p.128) he applies the terms tête (head) and ventre (stomach) to the elite and the ordinary people respectively and expresses his despair at the latter’s lack of intelligence and the difficulties of educating them, a serious 7

8

9

10

For a discussion of Renan’s attitude to the people, which is more sympathetic than that of many other writers, see Pierre Michel, Un mythe romantique: les barbares 1789-1848 (Lyon: Presses Universitaires de Lyon, 1981), pp.343-50. See, for example, his letter to Darembourg of 14 April 1855 (OC, X, p.96). For a fuller discussion of the influence of Italy on Renan’s thought see K.O. Gore, L’Idée de progrès dans la pensée de Renan (Paris: Nizet, 1970), pp.174-78. For the negative effect of Italy on his view of popular sovereignty see also Winock, p.420. OC, X, p.97. See also H.W. Wardman, Ernest Renan: A Critical Biography (London: Athlone Press, 1964), p.59. Letter to Henriette (16 December 1848; OC, IX, p.1146).

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problem indeed in a democracy now dominated by what he sees as a comfort-loving populace. The potential continuum of education, which had been envisaged between the elite and the ordinary people only a short time before, now seems forgotten. The coup d’état was, however, only an early stage in Renan’s growing scepticism as regards the elite hero and the masses. This reached its apogee in the 1870s, fuelled by personal disappointments, in particular the furore over his inaugural lecture at the Collège de France and the hostile reception of his Vie de Jésus. In 1862, for instance, he railed at the great stupidity of the human race.11 Renan experienced the democratic system directly in 1869, when he stood as a parliamentary candidate in Seine-et-Marne, determined to make objective and philosophical, rather than partisan, election speeches, even though he clearly realised that the latter might be more effective.12 He advocated free (but not compulsory) schooling and reiterated his views on the desirability of educating all men to a higher level, yet experience of practical politics did little to lessen his belief that the masses were stupid, a view strengthened by the materialism of small farmers and the working classes.13 Provided they were allowed to pursue their desire for financial gain, such people would approve of any regime for which they were not obliged to make sacrifices.14 The attitudes of the erstwhile seminarist were thus reinforced: Renan was convinced that he belonged to an elite with a more elevated and worthwhile role than that of the common throng. Yet he was also grappling with the highly problematic issue of democratic results which might not coincide with the liberal and humanitarian views of an intellectual elite, and indeed, as may sometimes be seen with the hindsight of history, with the genuine interests of the country concerned. Renan’s promotion of the elite and his pessimism regarding their relationship with the remainder of humanity reached its height with the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and, more especially, its sequel: the Paris Commune. Though supported unthinkingly by many Frenchmen, the war was anathema to Renan, a former admirer of the German academic ideal and a proponent of the supra-national community of the mind. Prussia’s ruthless and immoral tactics horrified him, revealing the undesirable side of a country he had hitherto revered as the idealistic home of serious philosophy and biblical scholarship. Yet, if the war itself disturbed Renan, he was even more shaken by the Commune. Works written at this time (in particular La Guerre entre la France et l’Allemagne of September 1870 and the first manuscript draft of La Réforme intellectuelle et morale15 com11 12

13

14 15

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Letter of 10 May 1862 to Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff (OC, X, p.354). See for instance his letter to the editor of L’Empire Libéral (12 May 1869; OC, X, p.498), or to Bersot (14 May 1869; OC, X, p.500). See La Part de la famille et de l’État dans l’éducation (OC, I, pp.523-24), and La Réforme intellectuelle et morale (OC, I, p.347). This may well be a partial view of rural France, but it is crucial to Renan’s thought in La Réforme: see Maurice Agulhan, ‘La Réforme intellectuelle et morale, texte de circonstance’, Études Renaniennes, 60 (1985), p.11. OC, I, p.351. The first draft apparently dates from February and early March 1871, some five months after La Guerre entre la France et l’Allemagne. The manuscripts contain a shortened version of the present Réforme intellectuelle et morale divided into four parts, dated February and early March, which, with certain later additions and rectifications, approximates very much to the published text (see Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Nouvelles Acquisitions Françaises (henceforth NAF), 11464, folios 71 and 81). The first section is undated; the second

pleted just prior to the Commune) reveal that his pessimism deepened as events unfolded, with the more democratic impulses of his country being weighed, as it were, against the evidence of the war and its effects. While La Guerre entre la France et l’Allemagne goes so far as to praise democracy for being the enemy of war and of the ruthless military deeds committed by some Prussians, La Réforme, in both its first pre-Commune manuscript and the post-Commune published text, reverts to views similar to those held by Renan when Napoleon III gained power, defeat being attributed to France’s state of mind and democratic aspirations.16 Yet the tone of the Réforme cannot be compared to the deep pessimism and bleak vision of elitism which emerge from his Dialogues philosophiques, composed more fully under the influence of the Commune. Despite this political context, the work consists ostensibly of three interlinked dialogues in the manner of Socrates whose characters consider the aim and purposes of life. In the creation of reason and the progress towards an ideal goal, great individuals alone have value and may be described as the aim of humanity, for only they are capable of achieving the advances in knowledge that will lead to progress and to the salvation of mankind as a whole.17 They will become accomplices in the Universe’s evolution, even maintaining certain frauds inherent in life so that advances may continue. If this partially assimilates the hero’s contribution to a role of connivance rather than anything else and a stoical determination to support the movement towards the Ideal even if this involves a certain lack of transparency and openness towards others, Renan also views the role of these heroes in a positive way because of their perception and knowledge.18 Yet, despite their great insights and their vital role in the achievement of progress, the elite are currently devoid of real power. In a phantasmogorical dream, Théoctiste imagines (Dialogues, p.611) a time when the elite will gain effective power by scientific advances. Particularly in the work’s earlier manuscripts and proofs,19 the vision of the disinterested hero assumes the nightmarish quality of an autocratic ruler able to impose a reign of reason through scientific power, whether or not this is the wish of the vast (and, for Renan, unenlightened) mass of the population. Terror, to some extent exemplified by the FrancoPrussian War, has always been a means of compelling assent and Renan envisages such power in the hands of his elite heroes of the future. Swift retribution would meet any opposition to their reign (p.615). The work’s proofs provide a wealth of detail absent from the published version, with Théoctiste describing scientific tortures which would last for years.

16

17

18 19

is dated 3 February 1871 (f.59); the two last parts (ff.71 and 81) 2 and 4 March respectively. The final work was published after the Commune in November 1871. See E.M. Lillie, ‘The Philosophical Dialogues and Dramas of Ernest Renan’ (unpublished PhD thesis: Trinity College, Dublin, 1972), pp.385-86. La Réforme even praises certain military aspects of discipline and order (far, however, from the ruthless excesses that Renan had so recently witnessed) in contrast to the state of mind in France: see for example OC, I, p.381. Cf. also La Réforme intellectuelle et morale, Introduction de Laudyce Rétat (Bruxelles: Complexe, 1990), p.11. The work of the elite here assumes an almost messianic tone, their action akin to that of a saviour (cf. Dialogues philosophiques, OC, I, p.610). Ibid. After various notes and rough drafts, there are two extant manuscripts of Renan’s work, the first in his own hand and the second in another hand but with corrections by Renan. In addition, the extant proofs have corrections by Renan.

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These might include instruments enclosing a hellish set of horrors in a small box; there would also be the fearful capacity to force people to live with heightened sensitivity to the pain they would have to endure (cut in the second set of proofs: NAF 25109, f.162). In the first proof, the passage in question had been followed by an even greater intensification removed at that stage, suggesting that the terror would be so great that hordes would commit suicide rather that suffer a fate akin to that of the horse, forced to suffer without being able to end its life (NAF 25109, PR 1, f.150).20 Again, in the manuscripts and proofs, a number of direct references to the Commune, later deleted, reveal its role in the intensity of Renan’s vision. His horror at the behaviour of the Communards emerges, for instance, when he suggests that the Commune (representing a veritable democracy) shows the Parisian people manning instruments of war and using them to impose their will against more enlightened views.21 Another manuscript passage sees Renan again linking the dangers of popular power directed against the elite with the outbreak of the Commune (NAF 11465, MS 2, f.156) when he states the need to remember 18 March,22 although he deleted this in the first set of proofs (NAF 25109, f.148).23 Opposition to the reign of the elite is vanquished and heroism – if it exists at all – resides in devotion to the implementation of the greater good of all (which will, of course, prevent in this hypothesis the frightening arsenal being deployed for egotistical and evil means). Ultimately this is only a dream, a vision of what might occur, but its very existence reveals Renan’s deep depression at this time, which led him even to envisage such a scenario. The scientific elite he describes would have acquired in actuality the power that popular imagination formerly attributed to sorcerers. Thus the concept of spiritual power based on intellectual superiority would acquire real substance (Dialogues, p.612). Renan stresses that powers like this could be used only for good ends and that such a development could be envisaged only after colossal progress by the human race, a state of truth and justice beyond anything currently imaginable. Then the world would see an elite of the mind, the genuine incarnation of reason, constituting as it were a truly infallible papacy where the incontrovertible views of the elite would be backed up by real, not counterfeit or imaginary, terror (Dialogues, p.614). Messianic tones and religious vocabulary are evident, as are also the clear hierarchy of roles, with aristocrats of the mind once more figuring as the tête (head) of humanity, with multiple connotations of value and worth. At this time of pessimism, the heroic labour of the scientific ‘monk’ of L’Avenir de la science with his unsung contribution to a distant ideal future disappears before a vision of real and terrifying domination where knowledge is power (Dialogues, p.615). Renan’s ear20

21

22 23

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See Lillie, ‘The Philosophical Dialogues’, p.515. Cf. also Laudyce Rétat, Religion et imagination religieuse: leurs formes et leurs rapports dans l’œuvre d’Ernest Renan (Paris: Klincksieck, 1977), who quotes (pp.31516) from the earlier manuscript notes for the Dialogues (NAF 14 194), which reveal these ideas of force at an embryonic stage. NAF 11465, Ms 2, f.168. The reference to the Commune is deleted in the third set of proofs (NAF 25109, ff.166-78). The date on which an attempt was made to remove the guns from Montmartre. NAF 25109, f.148 (Lillie, ‘The Philosophical Dialogues’, pp.389-90). Rétat indicates references to the Commune and to 18 March at the earlier stages of composition: cf. Ernest Renan, Dialogues philosophiques, ed. by Laudyce Rétat (Paris: CNRS, 1992), p.9.

lier belief that the masses might eventually be perfected and united with other classes in some sort of new order now also seems eroded under the pressure of what he describes as the nineteenth century’s ‘déplorable expérience de la république’.24 Such harsh visions of enforcement contrast sharply with the slight amount of force considered inevitable in L’Avenir de la science – little more than somewhat unethical procedures by governments, machiavellian police tactics and some restriction of civil liberty (OC, III, pp.1000-01) – and with certain essays written during the Second Empire, where the intellectual elite seem the true heroes of the age, since it is they who resist unjust governments.25 While the visions of the Dialogues constitute an extreme and imaginary response, a sort of nineteenth-century philosophical science fiction, abolishing opposition and, in a sense, the need for heroic resistance and perseverance on the part of the elite, this work does not constitute Renan’s final view on the matter. His philosophical drames – plays of ideas – composed in the 1880s, show a more measured and realistic discussion of the role of great individuals. Indeed, for Renan, one of the attractions of the drame form was the chance to portray a range of themes more creatively than was possible elsewhere, thus making them an ideal vehicle for him to explore different facets of his thought in the light of a new situation and new realities. As his fictional characters experience developing – often revolutionary – situations that may be derived from myth or history but which are adjusted to fit the concerns of the author as a nineteenth-century thinker, now living in a republic, Renan confronts anew the dilemmas of the idealist and shows where his true path lies and the nature of the heroism that he is called to exercise. The drames also reveal him finally coming to terms with the movement of power from the wisdom of the enlightened and educated ruler to the middle classes.26 In this context, heroism may well assume different forms as the interrelationship between the hero and his world shifts with movement in the sociopolitical configuration. Caliban is the first of two drames focusing on the Shakespearean character of Prospero, whom Renan restores to his dukedom in Milan; though still holding his subjects in political and intellectual thrall at the start of the drame, Prospero will be deposed by a popular revolution led by Caliban, his erstwhile slave. Like all the heroes of these drames, Prospero belongs to an elite. He is now devoted to scientific progress which will contribute to the greater good of his fellow men: even as the drame begins, he has shed his dukedom in all but name, living amidst his alembics and scientific work, working for a time when reason will restore the world to its full beauty (OC, III, p.387). In this desire he might almost seem to be striving for the scientific enforcement of rationality suggested in the Dialogues philosophiques: as Ariel puts it (p.384), reason will then be armed and reign effectively. Prospero has all the more cause to pursue his scientific studies when he discovers during the popular revolution that his magical effects no longer work, the people now being impervi24 25 26

NAF 14194, f.379, cited in Lillie, ‘The Philosophical Dialogues’, p.392, and Rétat, Dialogues, p.29. Cf. Monsieur de Sacy et l’école libérale (1858); OC, II, pp.24-25. Cf. the introduction to Caliban, where Renan states that he wishes to see Prospero in a situation adapted to his (Renan’s) era (OC, III, p.377). For Rétat, the Drames reflect Renan’s acceptance of the Republic: see Dialogues philosophiques, p.20, and La Réforme intellectuelle et morale, pp.18-19. A full discussion of this reconciliation in relation to Caliban may be found in Ernest Renan, Caliban, suite de la Tempête, ed. by Colin Smith (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1954), pp.20-28.

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ous to superstition. In the second drame, L’Eau de Jouvence, Prospero’s scientific work will replace his magical powers. As with the thinkers in the Dialogues philosophiques, the main characters of the drames all reject conventional religious explanations, embracing a neo-Hegelian philosophy, reflecting Renan’s own views of the forward movement of the universe towards a goal. Heroism, for these dramatic characters, resides in fidelity to their duty and an austere life promoting their ideals (p.476). These heroes have made a conscious choice, despite the difficulties and uncertainties surrounding it, and they can never know absolutely that their way will be correct. Their dilemma resembles a lay version of Pascal’s wager, as witness Prospero’s declaration that the most virtuous alternative should be chosen even if one cannot be sure that virtue is anything other than a mere word (p.482).27 This proviso doubtless reflects Renan’s concern at appearing as a dupe or being shown as misguided by later developments. It also distinguishes these heroes as individuals able to live out their particular brand of heroism in full recognition of the uncertainties marking the human condition. Their stance is quite unlike that of the unthinking soldier who may, in the words of the courtier Orlando in Caliban, be led in his ignorance to actions of physical bravery, which on reflection he might never perform (p.396), or who, it is suggested in a later drame, Le Prêtre de Nemi, may merely kill his opposite number in order to avoid the same fate (p.580). Not that for Renan physical bravery in battle is necessarily always incompatible with the type of heroism exercised by members of the elite: in L’Abbesse de Jouarre, for example, the revolutionary soldier, La Fresnais, appears idealistic and thoughtful, motivated by patriotism and an elevated concept of duty (cf. pp.646-67 and p.673). However, it is perhaps such considerations about the uncertainty underlying belief, about the limitations of human knowledge, and a concern to protect himself against all eventualities lest he might seem to have played the role of dupe that lead Prospero to feel (unlike the principal characters of the Dialogues) that it is no longer appropriate to preach undue asceticism to ordinary people. As he tells two of his disciples, they themselves led a sober youth because they had a mission but, given the difficulties of the way they have chosen, it is impossible to recommend such renunciation to those who lack this. Indeed, the people’s amusement is one way (though a lesser one) in which they may gain some apprehension of the Ideal (p.478). As Renan’s own philosophy evolved towards a greater openness, so too did his conception of appropriate action towards the great mass of humanity on the part of his elite heroes.28 Whereas the visionaries of the Dialogues had stressed that scientific advances and compulsion in the implementation of the Ideal must be used only for laudable ends, the drames exhibit a more measured recognition that discoveries and intellectual insights may be turned to corrupt or even evil purposes. Prospero’s words almost resemble an authorial correction of certain assertions from the Dialogues, when he states that the liquid he has distilled will both kill and vivify or that the powder he had hoped would serve as an arm of 27

28

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J. Pommier (Renan d’après des documents inédits, Paris: Perrin, 1923, p.xiii) makes a comparison between Pascal’s leap of faith and Renan’s, suggesting that whereas for Pascal the essential thing is not to be damned, for Renan, it is not to be duped. See Richard M. Chadbourne, Ernest Renan (New York: Twayne, 1968), pp.103-24.

reason will be double-edged in its effects and that reason will not have a monopoly over its use (L’Eau de Jouvence, p.513). Moreover, it is not only scientific discoveries that risk being put to inappropriate use; the misunderstanding of ideas and an open liberal outlook may also have nefarious consequences. Antistius, protagonist of Le Prêtre de Nemi, is inspired by a vision of the Ideal that has led him to reject the ancient custom of Alba whereby the priest in its sanctuary had to slay his predecessor in order to succeed him. Once duly installed, he tries to institute more modern, humane practices, but his efforts are misunderstood, the great majority wishing to follow the time-honoured rites, whatever their actual morality or validity. Overhearing the cynical views of Ganeo on how to deal with the difficulties inherent in the priestly calling, such as the provision of oracles and his advice on safeguarding oneself from death in battle through various dubious and cowardly practices (OC, III, pp.578-84), Antistius comes to feel that, rather than ennobling men, he has in certain cases merely added to their perversion (p.584). Yet the truly pure do respond to and appreciate the views of this heroic prophet, in particular a young and idealistic couple (p.557). Whatever caveats they may attach to their actions and, sometimes, their immediate effects, these intellectual heroes have no hesitation in recognising the importance of their work. Their views are expressed with assurance and self-possession; even when defeated by political events, they retain their poise, their intellectual certainty and independence of mind. Truly disinterested, they comprehend the world and rise above the vagaries of fortune to reaffirm their beliefs and vindicate their existence. Though he has abandoned his ducal power, Renan’s Prospero remains throughout an aristocrat of the mind, distancing himself from others, speaking down from a height as a prophet, even if no longer an effective mage. Supremely confident in his views, he dispenses wisdom and preaches to his faithful acolytes, who will continue his work (cf. OC, III, p.486). The capacity of these elite heroes for reflection and their unerring devotion to an ideal means that, rather than dashing unthinkingly into a brave but fatal show of defiance, they may be compelled to accept compromises, condemned to go on living in less than perfect circumstances to pursue their work and do their duty. Thus Prospero accepts Caliban’s reign and his protection so as to continue his scientific work in Milan (elsewhere in Italy the Church would condemn it). Only Ariel, who symbolises an ethereal ideal and pure spirit, can brook no compromise with the impure Caliban, and prefers death to dishonour (Caliban, p.434). Heroes like Prospero must sometimes show a different type of valour involving not the vanity of pure idealism but a gritty determination to persist with life in the service of the Ideal. In L’Eau de Jouvence, Prospero indicates to an Ariel now ready to acquiesce in this view that he has preferred his life and work to dignity and vanity (p.516). Since – unlike the medieval studious ‘monks’ described in L’Avenir de la science – members of the Renanian elite can no longer work apart and protected, their heroism has, on occasion, to involve some form of compromise so that they may pursue their mission. The faithful counsellor Gonzalo observes that Prospero was right to yield on relatively unimportant matters in order to safeguard the essential (Caliban, p.434). Yet for Renan and his elite heroes there is compromise and compromise. Persecuted as a heretic at the end of L’Eau de Jouvence, Prospero declines the offer to renounce certain of his scientific discoveries, which would permit his case to be quietly shelved and ultimately 141

allow his freedom. Instead he chooses a scientific version of the Socratic hemlock, gradual asphyxiation by the fumes from an ether-impregnated garment. However, the endings of these two plays involve no contradiction. In Caliban, Prospero merely accepts a less than perfect government. But in the later drame compromise would mean an unthinkable renunciation of Prospero’s own science, tantamount to denying his vision of the Ideal and the way he has served it. Renan himself maintained his philosophical beliefs and accepted the consequences of his views on Christology, despite severe personal repercussions. His ability to compromise according to circumstances and the socio-political context has been recognised,29 but for him the personal foundations on which his life was grounded remained sacrosanct. In other matters, however, his work shows a continuing reflection on the stance appropriate to the intellectual hero, the youthful vision of the heroic solitary toiler after truth in L’Avenir de la science evolving to take account of the wider context and the compromises that may properly be made in the implementation of the elite’s ideals. The heroism of silent labour is in the person of Prospero transmuted to become the heroism of positive compromise which involves an ability to face up to the world and respond to its challenges in the most appropriate way. In the Drames, the vision of the elite’s influence also expands: even if they themselves must accept the duties laid upon them, their goal is a long-term one.30 In Le Prêtre de Nemi the characters are divided by their understanding of, and approach to, the future. Thus the oracles dictated by Antistius are favourable to Rome because he realises that this is where the thrust of History will lead. Like the Prospero of L’Eau de Jouvence, he knows that his life and work are part of a much larger canvas. He is capable of taking a very long view, seeing beyond the short-term advantage of Alba and discerning where the real future of his Latin fatherland resides. Such a vision is unwelcome and the oracles announcing it are viewed as treachery. While humanity in general cannot accept unpalatable truths, Renan’s elite heroes are not afraid to face reality and look beyond the narrow instrumentality of the present towards a future which will be better in real terms even if distasteful to some. This standing firm for the truth constitutes true heroism and, in the case of Antistius, will, as he himself realises, lead to death. Yet he assumes his role and the consequences of his beliefs, stating that time will reveal whether or not one dies for mere insubstantial dreams (OC, III, p.584). The paradox whereby Antistius in this play is considered by the conservative and timebound aristocrat Metius as someone who may be destined for a heroic death but who is actually undermining the basis of popular heroism, highlights the difference between the heroism of the Renanian elite and heroism in the popular sense of the word. Metius, a traditional and bellicose aristocrat, has misunderstood the views of Antistius and would have dismissed them anyway. However, for Renan, Antistius’s heroism will have more far-reaching consequences than could unthinking warlike valour, since the priest, though reviled by his

29

30

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Cf. J. Pommier, ‘Renan moraliste et dilettante’, Revue d’Histoire Littéraire de la France, (April 1964), pp.261-66. Prospero, for example, states that his original hopes for the immediate future may not materialise for 500 years, after innumerable reversals (L’Eau de Jouvence, p.513).

contemporaries, symbolises the Ideal and the pursuit of genuine truth and justice whose reign will one day triumph. Renan’s heroism is very much a masculine ideal; in only one of these drames, L’Abbesse de Jouarre, does the major focus fall on a woman. Here an enlightened and educated abbess pursues the Ideal through membership of a religious order, in effect one of the few careers open to an intelligent woman at the time of the French Revolution. A determined independent actor, she has all the beliefs of a Renanian hero, although she acknowledges that the duties of women are different (stricter) than those of men (OC, III, p.632), something which has led her to enter the religious life following a family tradition. In the event she is not mistress of her own fate, which is decided by various men. D’Arcy, her admirer, persuades her to break her vow of chastity in prison on the eve of their execution. La Fresnais, who has seen her before the tribunal, intervenes with the revolutionary authorities to save her (which means that D’Arcy perishes without her on the guillotine). Finally, her brother overcomes her determined pursuit of solitude and persuades her to marry her new, post-revolutionary admirer, La Fresnais. While this may on one level represent the need to accept the new and compromise with what is positive in times of political upheaval, the play, in addition, confirms the different destinies of men and women: these are also depicted by Renan in a work (Les deux chœurs: fragment de l’histoire primitive de l’humanité) published posthumously, where the two sexes speak of their aspirations, each in their own chorus.31 In L’Abbesse de Jouarre, Julie enunciates her own views but events prove her vulnerable and to an extent wrong; others must guide her and she accepts their counsel in a way which masculine members of the elite never do. From his early writings, disinterested pursuit of the ideal remains a key element in Renan’s concept of heroism as does the intellectual basis underlying the (largely male) hero’s lifestyle and actions. Responding to the contemporary social and political context, Renan engages in a more fully textured and wider consideration of what true heroism involves in a world of complexity and change. To some extent, at least, the position of the elite in his work and their attitude towards the populace is conditioned by the effect that greater democracy had, or seemed likely to have, on the pursuit of ideal and scholarly aims. In an evolving situation where the influence of demos seemed less pernicious than feared (or indeed than other alternatives might have been), the heroism of the elite is to follow their ideal agenda in a realistic and flexible way, while at the same time promoting views that stand against self-indulgent materialism and narrow short-term goals. The Renanian hero remains a member of an elite, hallowed in its own way, but the saintly labour of the medieval monk has been modified to take account of aspects of nineteenth-century modernity.

31

OC, IX, pp.1578-84.

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John McCann

Heroism or Villainy in Les Fleurs du Mal: The Problem of À celle qui est trop gaie

À celle qui est trop gaie

(For the woman who is too gay

Ta tête, ton geste, ton air Sont beaux comme un beau paysage; Le rire joue en ton visage Comme un vent frais dans un ciel clair.

Your head, your movements, your attitude Are beautiful as a beautiful landscape; Laughter plays across your face Like a fresh breeze in a clear sky.

Le passant chagrin que tu frôles Est ébloui par la santé Qui jaillit comme une clarté De tes bras et de tes épaules.

You lightly brush a passing sadness And it is dazzled by the well-being That gushes like a bright light From your arms and shoulders.

Les retentissantes couleurs Dont tu parsèmes tes toilettes Jettent dans l’esprit des poètes L’image d’un ballet de fleurs.

The eye-catching colours That spring from your clothing Create in the minds of poets The image of a ballet of flowers.

Ces robes folles sont l’emblème De ton esprit bariolé; Folle dont je suis affolé, Je te hais autant que je t’aime !

The mad disorder of these clothes Is the emblem of your multicoloured spirit; You are mad and I am mad for you, I hate you as much as I love you!

Quelquefois dans un beau jardin Où je traînais mon atonie, J’ai senti, comme une ironie, Le soleil déchirer mon sein;

Sometimes in a beautiful garden Where I would drag along my listlessness, I have felt the sun pierce My breast like a bitter irony;

Et le printemps et la verdure Ont tant humilié mon cœur, Que j’ai puni sur une fleur L’insolence de la Nature.

And the Spring and the greenness Have so humiliated my heart, That I have taken revenge on a flower For the insolence of nature.

Ainsi je voudrais, une nuit, Quand l’heure des voluptés sonne, Vers les trésors de ta personne, Comme un lâche, ramper sans bruit,

Thus, one night, I should love, When the hour of voluptuousness chimes, To creep like a coward up to the treasures Of your person, without making a sound,

Pour châtier ta chair joyeuse, Pour meurtrir ton sein pardonné Et faire à ton flanc étonné Une blessure large et creuse,

To punish your joyful flesh, To damage your breast freed from sin, And to inflict on your startled belly, A large and deep wound,

Et, vertigineuse douceur! À travers ces lèvres nouvelles, Plus éclatantes et plus belles, T’infuser mon venin, ma sœur!1

And then feel the dizzying sweetness As through these new lips, More brilliant and more beautiful, I inject my poison, oh my sister!)

Heroism, like villainy, may be defined as an indicator of the regard in which one is held. Heroes are perceived as being good people. However, it is usually a judgment arrived at by considering a selection of the actions of the person concerned. Thus, to be judged a hero, some actions are promoted at the expense of others, and the same is true of villains. It is as though a person’s life has been broken down into constituent aspects and then reconstituted on the basis of some of them. The result is that good qualities are enhanced. Villains have their bad points stressed. Heroes and villains are made, not born. If a hero has some defects, these are construed as throwing into relief fundamental goodness. Similarly, the villain may have some admirable qualities but again these are perceived not to alter our basic judgment. Although we may know that real people are more complex than this, we persist in wanting to divide humanity into heroes and villains, creating a special relationship with the former, as though some of the regard we ourselves bestow on them may be reflected back on us for being the only ones capable of truly appreciating them. In 1857 Baudelaire was tried and found guilty of offending public decency in Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil). This judgement is deemed perverse by many modern readers, who feel that it shows his contemporaries’ foolish lack of understanding of Baudelaire’s genius. The original trial may have found against him but nowadays it is the judges who are likely to be censured, as though readers today have some superior grasp of morality, one which aligns itself with Baudelaire who thereby becomes a heroic pioneer in such matters, as Sartre argues: Mais, ne l’oublions pas, c’est en faisant le Mal consciemment et par sa conscience dans le Mal que Baudelaire donne son adhésion au Bien. (But let us not forget that it is through doing Evil consciously and conscientiously that Baudelaire shows his support for Good.)2

It is not just that his contemporaries were wrong about him but also that what they deemed wrong was in fact right, and vice versa. That is why the breach of the rules has to be knowing rather than inadvertent. Baudelaire’s supposed greater awareness overturns the moral basis on which a society rests. It is revolutionary. Sartre, by his argument, is legitimising Baudelaire’s position but is, by association, deriving legitimacy from it, aided by the fact that, by the time of writing, most people would have little sympathy with the judgment handed down against Les Fleurs du Mal. Consequently, for Sartre, as for Sartre’s Baudelaire, deliberately flouting the conventions of what constitutes goodness can further the cause of right. To do so in the face of public displeasure, to be dragged in front of the courts, is a tribute to the bravery of the hero. It confirms his heroism and provides an oppor1

2

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Charles Baudelaire, Œuvres complètes, ed. by Claude Pichois, 2 vols (Paris: Gallimard [Pléiade], 1975: henceforth OC), I, pp.156-57. All references are to this edition and are given in the text. All translations are mine. Jean-Paul Sartre, Baudelaire (Paris, Gallimard, 1947; reprinted 1975), pp.63-64.

tunity for later vindication and for subsequent generations to demonstrate their superior wisdom. However, Graham Robb has remarked that Tout poète maudit exerce une puissante attraction: une fois traîné devant les tribunaux, il sera condamné à être défendu éternellement par des avocats littéraires. En découvrant l’histoire du procès, le lecteur moderne peut se féliciter de ses vues éclairées, mais au risque de faire preuve d’une pudeur, tout aussi nuisible que l’autre. Depuis plus d’un siècle, Les Fleurs du Mal se purifient dans l’air supérieur de la critique académique.3 (Every accursed poet exercises a powerful attraction: once he has been dragged before the courts, he will be condemned to be forever defended by literary lawyers. On uncovering the history of the trial, the modern reader can congratulate himself on his enlightened views, but at the risk of demonstrating a censoriousness that is just as harmful as that of his predecessors. For more than a century the Fleurs du Mal have been purified in the superior air(s) of academic criticism.)

What Robb means can be illustrated by À celle qui est trop gaie. This was one of the poems which the trial judges found to be obscene, imposing a fine of 300 francs, later reduced to 50. As Pichois points out in his note on the trial, subsequent generations disagreed. A law passed in 1946 ‘déchargeait Baudelaire et ses éditeurs du délit d’outrage à la morale publique et aux bonnes mœurs’ (‘exculpated Baudelaire and his publishers of the crime of offending public decency and morality’) (OC, I, p.1183). No doubt many would see this as the long overdue righting of a wrong and the victory of common sense and freedom of speech, the vindication of Baudelaire’s heroic stance against the hypocritical pieties of his age. However, before rejecting the official condemnation as being unenlightened, we should examine the text, for there are attitudes expressed in it that would not find approval in progressive circles nowadays and would indeed be deemed offensive: Ainsi je voudrais, une nuit, Quand l’heure des voluptés sonne, Vers les trésors de ta personne, Comme un lâche, ramper sans bruit,

Thus, one night, I should love, When the hour of voluptuousness chimes, To creep like a coward up to the treasures Of your person, without making a sound,

Pour châtier ta chair joyeuse, Pour meurtrir ton sein pardonné Et faire à ton flanc étonné Une blessure large et creuse,

To punish your joyful flesh, To damage your breast freed from sin, And to inflict on your startled belly, A large and deep wound,

Et, vertigineuse douceur! À travers ces lèvres nouvelles, Plus éclatantes et plus belles, T’infuser mon venin, ma sœur!

And then feel the dizzying sweetness As through these new lips, More brilliant and more beautiful, I inject my poison, oh my sister!)

Sensitivities have changed. It is disturbing to find violence against women expressed in such a fashion. The domination of the woman by the protagonist is linked to her gender. The lips cut in her flesh recall not just the mouth but also the vagina and the venin carries 3

Graham Robb, ‘Érotisme et obscénité des Fleurs du Mal’, Europe, 70 (1992), pp.70-71.

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suggestions of a venereal disease. Such an idea is denied by the Note de l’éditeur (Publisher’s Note) that follows the poem: Les juges ont cru découvrir un sens à la fois sanguinaire et obscène dans les deux dernières stances. La gravité du Recueil excluait de pareilles plaisanteries. Mais venin signifiant spleen ou mélancolie, était une idée trop simple pour les criminalistes. Que leur interprétation syphilitique leur reste sur la conscience. (OC, I, p.157) (The judges thought they had uncovered a meaning that was both bloody and obscene in the last two stanzas. The seriousness of the Collection ruled out such jokes. But venin (poison) meaning depression or melancholy was too simple an idea for the criminal experts. Let their syphilitic interpretation be on their own consciences.)

This is a complex gloss on the poem. It stands on the edge of the main text, a paratext that creates a (false) intertext for, as Pichois points out: Il y a lieu de remarquer que ni le substitut du procureur dans son réquisitoire, ni les juges dans le libellé du jugement n’ont proposé une « interprétation syphilitique »: celle-ci est du fait de Baudelaire! À qui fut seulement reprochée une atteinte à la morale publique. (OC, I, p.1133) (It should be noted that neither the deputy public prosecutor in his closing speech nor the judges in their written judgment put forward a ‘syphilitic interpretation’: the latter is entirely due to Baudelaire! He was merely accused of outraging public morals.)

Baudelaire is seeking to control the reader’s response. He is in fact guiding us towards a judgment on the judges by means of a testimony that is false – in Baudelaire’s note they are not allowed to speak on their own behalf, but are represented by their prosecutor. In a further twist, by drawing attention to the obscene and violent meanings or, as Pichois claims, inventing or elaborating on them, Baudelaire is ensuring that they are very much in our minds. Thus at one level the note is being ironic, making fun of the legal profession’s tendency to take things literally. On the other hand, ironic or not, it draws attention to the complex interaction of literal and metaphorical meanings. What is so objectionable is not just the fact that the woman is imagined being attacked but the exultant language used to describe it in the last quatrain (quoted above). Up until that point, the attack could be described as the outcome of the speaker’s sense of his own inadequacy, his atonie, when faced with a woman who has the power to lighten sorrow and inspire poets. The first quatrain shows a woman who is possessed of what the speaker lacks: Ta tête, ton geste, ton air Sont beaux comme un beau paysage; Le rire joue en ton visage Comme un vent frais dans un ciel clair. (OC, I, p.156) (Your head, your movements, your attitude Are beautiful as a beautiful landscape; Laughter plays across your face Like a fresh breeze in a clear sky.)

The images in the first line demonstrate a progression. Ta tête is physical appearance, ton geste is movement animated by her mind or spirit, while ton air is her spiritual essence. The 148

woman is unconditionally beautiful in body and spirit, as the repetition of the adjective in the second line indicates. The image of the cool breeze in the clear sky is suggestive of a mixture of coolness and warmth that achieves a complementary wholeness and rightness. This rightness is apprehended by touch rather than sight and, although colour is an important element in the description of the woman, it is her ability to affect other senses that gives her portrait its strength. Thus the retentissantes couleurs of the third quatrain takes a visual image and gives it an aural dimension and indeed the adjective chosen makes it verge on the tactile. Technically brilliant, the depiction of the woman is not entirely positive. The trop in the title casts a forward shadow. It evokes a sense of unease, stemming from a realisation that the speaker finds her joy overpowering: he feels threatened by it. Furthermore, although the woman is referred to as tu in the second and third quatrains and as te in the fourth (twice), the majority of references to her are metonymic, the part standing for the whole: ta tête, ton geste, ton air, ton visage, tes bras, tes épaules, tes toilettes and ton esprit. Thus, even in these quatrains, before the slashing of the later quatrains, the woman is, as it were, dismembered. Violence against women is inherent in the way they are thought about. The only reference to the woman as a whole person, apart from the second person pronouns, is folle in the fourth stanza: Ces robes folles sont l’emblême De ton esprit bariolé; Folle dont je suis affolé, Je te hais autant que je t’aime! (OC, I, p.157) (The mad disorder of these clothes is the emblem Of your multicoloured spirit; You are mad and I am mad for you, I hate you as much as I love you!)

It originates in the description of her dress. What is applied initially to a non-essential attribute is appropriated to describe the person. This adjective-become-noun is her essence and all other qualities are subordinate. The word stands at the beginning of the third line, an object placed before its verb and acquiring extra emphasis. That verb is je suis affolé and here the echo (or extension) suggests that it is the woman’s madness that has infected the speaker, a suggestion reinforced by the use of the passive. If at the end of the poem it is the woman who is the passive victim of the speaker’s violence, here it is he who is supposed to be the victim. She is not explicitly blamed, however. The inferences are subtly implied, crude control unnecessary. Baudelaire’s power over words is described by Rivière: Sur les poèmes le poète ne cesse d’exercer son empire. Il les mène, lents et suivis. Il fléchit à son gré leur intention. Il les dirige par l’influence de son goût. Il aime appeler à son service les mots imprévus, – on pourrait presque dire saugrenus. Mais c’est pour réduire aussitôt leur étrangeté, pour faire couler sur elle une harmonie, pour modérer l’écart que par leur caprice il ouvrit. Comme ceux qui se sentent parfaitement maîtres de ce qu’ils veulent dire, il cherche d’abord les termes les plus éloignés; puis il les ramène, il les apaise, il leur infuse une propriété qu’on ne leur connaissait pas.

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Il est poète, c’est-à-dire qu’il façonne des vers comme un ouvrage audacieux, utile et bien calculé.4 (The poet ceaselessly exercises dominion over his poems. He painstakingly takes them in the direction he wishes. Their intention is submitted to his will. His taste directs them. He presses into service unusual words – one might almost call them crazy. But it is in order to reduce their strangeness, to pour a smooth harmony over them, to lessen the gap that through their wilfulness he opened. Like those who feel in complete command of what they wish to say, he first looks for the most outlandish expressions; then he reins them in, softens them and gives them a sense of propriety one did not know they had. He is a poet, that is, he fashions verse like an audacious, functional and well thought-out artwork.)

An example of this is to be found in the Correspondances: Il est des parfums frais comme des chairs d’enfants, Doux comme les hautbois, verts comme les prairies. (OC, I, p.11) (There are perfumes that are fresh as children’s flesh, Sweet as oboes, green as prairies.)

Although they are not the rich, complex perfumes of decay that transport senses and spirit and which end the poem in triumph, these perfumes turn out to be just as fascinating since they testify to the power of Baudelaire’s language to impose meaning. In the two lines quoted above, three adjectives are used to describe the parfums. These adjectives are in turn modified by the nouns or (in the first case) the noun-phrase that follows. The adjective doux stands out at the beginning of its line. On reflection, its application to oboes is problematical because the sound of the oboe is piercing. It can have a plangent quality, a bitter sweetness, but that is as close as we can get to justifying doux in semantic terms. It is possible to interpret it in phonetic terms since hautbois with its long vowel sounds and single pronounced consonant is itself soft. Even so, there is a slippage between the sense of the adjective as applied to parfums and to hautbois. Doux does not have a simple, stable meaning to which one can appeal. The meaning is not innate. The conventions of language (mœurs) are being attacked. Words are used as the poet wills, often wrenched far from what the public consensus is. In linguistic terms it is une atteinte à la morale publique. However, there is no linguistic authority or panel of judges to enforce a definitive judgment. Thus the adjective is foisted on the noun and the oboe is made to sound as Baudelaire wills. It has to accept the sound that is applied to it – like a perfume, an extraneous essence applied to oneself so that one’s own scent (or sense) is changed. The other two descriptions are no less problematical. The adjective frais joins parfums and chairs d’enfants. Yet, perfumes and the flesh of children are fresh in quite different ways. For example, the freshness of a child’s flesh is warm while that of a perfume is cool. There is an antagonism between the elements as well as a sense in which they are apt partners, and the power of the image comes from this fact. Next to this, the application of verts to prairies is simple, bordering on the obvious – so obvious in fact that the application to parfums might pass unquestioned. But what exactly are parfums verts? The use of frais encourages us to interpret it in the sense of immature or unripe, but since unripe is, if any4

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Jacques Rivière, Études (Paris: Gallimard, 1948), pp.15-16.

thing, a negative description, fruits which are unripe are bitter in a positive sense. However, prairies are green in a different way. The adjective refers to colour when applied to them. Thus verts undergoes a metamorphosis of meaning as we read it. The two interpretations are not incompatible since freshness is connoted by the green colour of nature. The reader slips from one to the other, making sense of the whole description: des parfums verts comme des prairies. The process does not end there. Prairies extend for a great distance and give one the impression of going on for ever and, at the end of the first line of the tercet, when we find the complementary rhyme: l’expansion des choses infinies, the collocation casts backwards a sense of infinity, expanding the reach of these perfumes. This is in spite of the fact that it is not these perfumes but those that are corrompus, riches et triomphants that reach out towards infinity. Nonetheless, the rhyme and the comparison strongly suggest that this first set of perfumes also have (or have acquired) this attribute. They refuse to be limited, to be pinned down. A similar semantic expansion is to be found with respect to the way Folle is manipulated in À celle qui est trop gaie. The first usage in robes folles is playful, suggesting freedom and lack of inhibition, a poetic disorder of the clothes that is attractive. When treated as a noun and applied to the woman as a whole rather than just her clothes, it diminishes her, treating her as someone who is incapable of reason. The verb-phrase that follows, dont je suis affolé, creates the impression that this madness has infected the speaker. The use of a verb gives the description a temporal dimension, implying that such a state is not his natural one nor, for that matter, necessarily permanent. A subtle distinction between the two madnesses is drawn, a distinction that is to the speaker’s benefit. This can happen because the speaker, as the word itself suggests, controls language and through it the image of the woman. She is what he says she is. His voice analyses her, dissecting her image and defining her as mad. She is deprived of a voice. This is underlined, ironically, by the description of the wound as ces lèvres nouvelles. The lips surround the mouth, the empty space from which the voice emerges. These marginalia, like Baudelaire’s note, indicate in this instance a silencing of an alternative voice. The lips are displaced to the side of the body away from their natural place and away from their speaking function. Instead, their role as point of entry is given priority. Yet what they admit is Baudelaire’s venom which dissolves the integrity of the other. Thus the lips are displaced to the side but are these new lips the vagina or a gash in the side? Is it murder or rape or infection? In such circumstances meaning is uncertain. The adjective éclatantes may be applied to lèvres because of their bright red colour, a sign of beauty, or it might be applied because of the rawness of the wound. Similarly, belles could be applied because beautiful women traditionally have beautiful lips. However, if the adjective is referring to the image of the lips as wound, then its meaning is changed. Beauty is shown not to be an absolute. The beauty that excites the speaker and which he genuinely experiences is not a beauty that this reader can share in. In fact it is rather disgusting. In this poem, there is something mean and spiteful. The speaker attacks the woman out of fear. Yet this fear does not originate specifically in the woman (or even in womankind). He feels under attack from the sun and punishes a flower on account of the insolence de la Nature. However, in claiming that the sun is cutting his chest open (the counterpart of his attack on the woman) and in attributing insolence to Nature, is not Baudelaire doing what 151

he also does in respect of the judges – making it up by attributing malevolence to sources that cannot reply? Consequently, the conclusion, once we become aware of this strategy, is that Baudelaire’s fears lie not in his apprehension of some real threat in the outside world, but rather are the projection of his own mind. If Baudelaire feels fear, it comes from within himself. If he attacks, it springs not from courage, the heroic virtue, but from fear. It would then be tempting to see the poem as an exercise in crude sexism. The male speaker is thus a villain who attacks the woman, the weaker sex, because he is a coward and cowards attack only those who are weaker than themselves. (This could itself be seen as a piece of crude sexism, not least for its unquestioned assumption that women are the weaker sex.) À celle qui est trop gaie is more subtle than that. Baudelaire’s inner fears are aroused by his confrontation with forces that might be deemed more powerful that he is: the sun, Nature and the judiciary. If therefore the woman arouses fear in him – and the verb is doubly appropriate in the context of this poem – then it is because he sees her as a threat on account of her greater strength. That strength is not physical – in that respect she is weaker and that is why the assault is described in physical terms. The power of the woman lies in her self-possession that allows her to be gay, in her ability to transform a mood of sadness into something beautiful and, not least, in her ability to plant images in the minds of poets. This last is closer to the traditional poetic image of woman as source of inspiration of great artists. However, in this case the image goes further. It is not so much that the poets are reacting to the woman as that she is giving them an image. They have no choice in the matter. The individual poetic voice is stifled and all poets become mouthpieces (reduced, as she will be later, to lèvres). Thus the poets are forced to speak in the way that she deems appropriate. Baudelaire’s attack on her, his attack on her voice, is his way of liberating his own. He is creating his own room to speak by silencing her – just as he is trying to establish his right to freedom of speech in the face of the judiciary. Yet this freedom is still hemmed in by the image of the woman. If he speaks, it is still a speech dominated by her image. He cannot escape the ballet of flowers – which is why his reaction to the insolence of Nature is to attack a flower. The woman is his sister – the same as he is. If the images of horror and violence can be transmuted in his mind to belles, is that any different from the way she transmutes sadness into an image of light? Poetic power circulates between woman and speaker. Neither is completely in control. The fact that the woman is perceived as having access to power and as being a threat may make the poem’s analysis of the relationship between bourreau and victime more complex than implied by the sort of oversimplified view, given above, of the poem as a piece of sexism that denigrates women. For all that, the struggle is depicted as brutal and violent, a resort to physical violence that is less and less acceptable these days. As pointed out earlier, the response of fear to strength in another is not constructive engagement but to find the weakest aspect of the adversary (an adversary that is of one’s own creation, as much a real adversary as the sound of an oboe is doux) and attack that. The question of how to respond to what is depicted still remains. Perhaps, like Borrell, one may dismiss content as being somehow beneath real artists: L’artiste n’est plus un miméticien; les miméticiens, ce sont les autres, les faux artistes, les « singes ». S’il n’est pas miméticien, cela signifie qu’il n’a plus à représenter, le peuple ou l’idéal du beau. Travail-

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leur de la singularité, il a pour tâche de pro-duire, de faire présent, de présenter, en amenant à la présence, ce qui est oublié, refoulé, rejeté ou « bizarre ».5 (The artist is not an imitator; imitators are different, false artists, mere monkeys. If he is not an imitator, that means that he is not constrained to reproduce – either people or the ideal of beauty. Working on the singular, his job is to pro-duce, to make present, to present, to bring into our presence, that which is forgotten, repressed, rejected or ‘bizarre’.)

This appears reasonable. It argues against ideological impositions on the artist. However, when faced with a concrete example of the bizarre, we may hesitate. The moral dimension that has been eliminated from Borrell’s argument returns. Would we accept a depiction of paedophilia or racial prejudice? Both involve issues of power, of domination by violence or the threat of it. The answer would have to be that it would depend on the stance of the author. A depiction seen to promote a positive image of paedophilia would get short shrift in many quarters. As would any promotion of racism. Similarly, the depiction of male violence against women in such a way that it is seen to be pleasurable or beautiful or part of a legitimate struggle against a perceived feminine threat is one that would arouse protests were it to be expressed in a newspaper or from the Bench. Thus, to claim that Baudelaire has some special insight or knowledge that allows him to express violent thoughts towards women and thereby to demonstrate that he is, as Sartre puts it, showing ‘son adhésion au Bien’, is an example of Robb’s claim that Baudelaire’s views are sanitised and falsified by critics determined to demonstrate that he (and they) are on the side of the angels. Compagnon, in his edition of Les Fleurs du Mal, argues that this is part of a wider trend: Chaque fois, un seul poème ou quelques-uns sont censés représenter « le vrai Baudelaire »; toute l’œuvre est perçue à partir de l’entrée qu’ils procurent. […] Or nous isolons du recueil le poème que nous privilégions, comme s’il valait pour l’œuvre entière et qu’il lui conférait un sens absolu; Baudelaire est alors le poète d’Une charogne, ou celui des Correspondances, du Vin des chiffonniers, des Chats, du Cygne, des Petites Vieilles… Ces lectures ne sont jamais tout à fait fausses, mais pas non plus très fidèles. Les Fleurs du Mal sont tout cela à la fois: tous leurs poèmes et toutes les épithètes qu’on a appliquées à leur auteur.6 (Each time, one or just a few poems are supposed to represent ‘the true Baudelaire’; the entire work is approached from the viewpoint they provide. […] We extract from the collection the poem to which we give a special status, as though it contained the whole truth about the entire body of work and we confer on it an absolute meaning; Baudelaire is then the poet of A Rotting Carcass, of Correspondences, of The Rag-and-bone Man’s Wine, of The Cats, of The Swan, of The Little Old Ladies… These readings are never completely false, but they are not overly faithful either. The Fleurs du Mal are all of these at once: all their poems and all the epithets that have been applied to their author.)

Baudelaire, for Compagnon, is not a stable essence, an author of unique status about whom the truth may be recovered once and for all. He is an invention of each reader who builds up a picture based on a reading of one or of a selection of poems. The critical view is always a partial view – just as is this view based largely on À celle qui est trop gaie. The reader does 5

6

Joan Borrell, L’Artiste-Roi: Essai sur les représentations, Bibliothèque du Collège International de Philosophie (Paris: Aubier, 1990), pp.158-59. Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal, ed. by Antoine Compagnon (Paris: Seuil, 1993), p.350.

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to Baudelaire what he does to the woman in the first part of the poem. Both are treated as though the part were the whole. The woman is her clothing, her gestures and so on, while Baudelaire is seen as the poet of this or that poem. The result, as Compagnon points out, is a vision that is neither true nor false. We can only ever have a partial judgement of a poet and that judgment reflects on us as much as on the subject of that judgement. Sartre’s view of Baudelaire is one that reflects his own preoccupations. He recognises and identifies in Baudelaire that which resonates with his own needs and desires. In a like manner, Baudelaire identifies the features of the woman that most correspond to his inner needs and turmoil. He feels threatened and so identifies, in what for other people would be the most innocuous place, a source for that threat, a justification for it. The weakness is his. That he feels threatened by her is true. That she is a threat is more complex. Truth is a process of investigation not a definitive judgment. Laws are not eternal or valid for all places. They are conventions – not convictions based on some Absolute. The only convictions possible are impermanent, like the one handed down by the judges – contested by the author, erased by the National Assembly and, as Robb points out, still debated. Dayan argues that this affected more poets than Baudelaire: Did Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Lautréamont, Mallarmé believe in God? The question is, in the end, irrelevant; because whatever they believed in, it does not speak with the authority of the Christian God. Whatever speaks, in their work, has no absolute authority; and wherever the ideal is, it does not speak.7

The notion of an absolute justice that can be used to regulate human activities is overthrown. The world is a place of contestation where voices struggle. Words are, as in Correspondances, confuses paroles. They lack clarity – not, however, because they are emptied of meaning but because, as we have seen in the extract from the poem, they are invested with a multitude of meanings. The word confuses suggests a fusing together of different elements, not unlike the process Rivière has pointed out above, resulting in complexity and richness. In this world no perfumes, no words can be simple. Thus to seek understanding is futile, as Les sept vieillards (The Seven Old Men) shows: Exaspéré comme un ivrogne qui voit double, Je rentrai, je fermai ma porte, épouvanté, Malade et morfondu, l’esprit fiévreux et trouble, Blessé par le mystère et par l’absurdité! Vainement ma raison voulait prendre la barre; La tempête en jouant déroutait ses efforts, Et mon âme dansait, dansait, vieille gabarre Sans mâts, sur une mer monstrueuse et sans bords! (OC, I, p.88) (Exasperated like a drunk seeing double, I went home and shut my door, in a state of shock, Ill and dejected, my spirits fevered and troubled, Wounded by the mystery and the absurdity!

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Peter Dayan, ‘The Romantic Renaissance’, in Poetry in France, Metamorphoses of a Muse, ed. by K. Asply and P. France (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1992), p.144.

In vain my reason wanted to take the tiller; The tempest blasts undid its efforts, And my soul danced and danced like an old barge Without masts, on a limitless and monstrous sea.)

What is causing Baudelaire’s distress is not the fact that he lives in a world that is emptied of significance but rather that he lives in one where there is order and pattern but whose design he cannot comprehend: there is too much of it. The soul is moving through a reality that is monstrous (non-human or resistant to the human) and limitless. This is reflected at a number of levels within the lines quoted above: for example, he is like a drunk who sees double and the adjective exaspéré is echoed at the end of the second verse of the last quatrain by épouvanté in a way that creates a symmetry. The verb dansait is repeated like a dance step but its meaning is metaphorical rather than literal. Indeed the adverb vainement stands out because it connotes emptiness rather than plenitude. It reveals the futility of seeking to comprehend through the faculty of reason the richness of life. Like the sea, life is huge and without limits – une mer monstrueuse et sans bords. We are borne upon it but, as in a tempest, we cannot control the direction we take. Control is impossible. If we try to grasp the meaning of life, it runs through our fingers and we are left with nothing. Thus life is a mystère, suggestive of meaning, and an absurdité, beyond our comprehension. It is this tension that is captured in the poetry of Baudelaire. Such a view is, of course, only a part of what Baudelaire’s poetry – like a vieille gabarre – conveys. But, as Compagnon has argued, that is both true and false. There is always something modern in Baudelaire’s poems – it is not just a vieille gabarre. Trying to pin Baudelaire’s poem to one particular meaning is at once a heroic and barbaric action. It is an epic attempt to come to terms with the teeming multitude of mystery and meaning. At the same time it is an attack on the integrity of the poetry. The whole can never be inclusively comprehended and each selection is a cut in the body of the poetry. Compagnon, who has alerted us to the dangers, and inevitability, of selecting poems and generalising on that basis, himself selects two poems as the basis of what he recognises as his Baudelaire. His first choice is À une passante (To a woman passing by) ‘parce qu’il n’en reste rien une fois qu’on arrive au bout’ (‘because nothing is left when you come to the end’) (Compagnon, p.390), a phrase that indicates that it is not just the woman who escapes the observer’s grasp but that the poem too is evanescent. Meaning is a journey not a destination. His second poem is the second one named Spleen (Despair) ‘parce que c’est le premier poème de Baudelaire que j’ai lu’ (‘because it is the first poem by Baudelaire that I read’) (ibid.). This poem is contradictorily both second (twice over: the second Spleen and the second in Compagon’s list) and first (because it was the first of Baudelaire’s that he ever read). He continues: C’était pour une explication de texte au lycée et je n’ai pas cessé de vouloir retrouver le choc que j’ai ressenti alors, l’impression de la première fois. (It was for an exercise in practical criticism that I did at school and I have always wanted to reexperience the shock that I felt then, the first impression.)

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It is an impossible search. The first and the second are now inextricably entangled. The exercise, the explication de texte, is an analysis of the text by means of a division into its several aspects before coming to a general conclusion that is supposed to let us now appreciate the totality. Interestingly, the choc that Compagnon felt on reading the poem suggests that, although he views the experience as pleasurable, it was nonetheless an upset. It threatened his previous mindset. Furthermore, it is an irruption into his life like that described in À une passante. His way of reading the poem involves breaking it down and subjecting it to his invasive scrutiny. Thus the explication may be seen as the equivalent of Baudelaire’s slashing of the woman in order to appropriate her and neutralise the choc that she poses to him. It is a reminder that no analysis is neutral in that something of the investigator always gets in among the component parts, as he or she adds a new voice to the silent work – the venin is introduced into the body of the poem. A pure understanding is always denied us by the very investigative procedure that we undertake. Consequently, no understanding is ever definitive. Something is always added by the investigator to the investigation. As we have seen, Sartre adds his own revolutionary concerns to his analysis. This is the dilemma of the critic who approaches a poem thinking, like Sartre, that his predecessors have not done full justice to the work. The problem is actually the reverse. Critics are prevented from having a full understanding of the poem because of what they inevitably add. Baudelaire’s false accusation against the judges rings true precisely because of this. He claims that they read too much into his poems – they injected them with their own venin. That the venin turns out in fact to be his, added by him in his role as critic of their judgment, is only a further demonstration of the process. Justice is impossible and distortion is inevitable. The result is that categories are upset and reassigned. This may be a cause for rejoicing, as Sartre claims. However, he seems to envisage not a process but rather an arrival at some ultimate settled state where justice prevails. This poem viciously attacks such a notion. It poisons the notion of justice. It provokes judgements that are never allowed to be final and it fascinates us like a venomous snake that hypnotises its prey. We the readers receive a shock, like the young Compagnon, and have our ways of thinking turned upside down. We are so fascinated by the beauty and power of the linguistic richness that we fail to see that the aggressor has gained our sympathy, through this assault on our senses and reason, and is accepted as the victim. He manages to be both but, unless we accept the villainy of the speaker along with the heroism, we will continue our complicity in the violence against celle qui est trop gaie which is violence against us all.

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Henri Godin

Bel-Ami: postérité d’un héros Maupassant en voulait à Victor Hugo d’être décédé au moment même où la réclame pour Bel-Ami battait son plein.1 Il écrivait à sa mère en juillet 1885: « je me remue beaucoup pour activer la vente, mais sans grand succès. La mort de Victor Hugo lui a porté un coup terrible ».2 Il envisageait, cependant un tirage de 20.000 à 22.000 dans un proche avenir.3 La coïncidence des événements, que déplorait Maupassant, allait pourtant devenir la cause du succès du roman. Georges Duroy tombait à point. L’idée de « héros » allait s’amenuisant. Elle n’avait plus cours, ayant, comme tant d’autres, fait son temps. On aimerait, aujourd’hui, voir paraître un Dictionnaire des idées périmées et Bel-Ami, en tant que « héros » devenu « arriviste », y figurerait comme un jalon majeur. Maupassant avait parfaitement conscience de la portée humaine de son roman. Bel-Ami passe à l’écran en 1938, grâce au « très médiocre cinéaste autrichien » Willi Forst qui, selon Jean-Louis Bory dans son édition de poche folio de Bel-Ami, a « nappé son don Juan de sexualité viennoise ».4 C’est un léger supplément au personnage, par ailleurs sympathique, chez qui « l’exploit sportif » vient remplacer l’héroïsme d’autrefois. En 1943, le cinéaste bien connu Albert Lewin fait la découverte de Bel-Ami:5 frappé par la facture épisodique du roman il reconnaît aussitôt sa valeur cinématographique et il en fera un excellent film en 1946, The Private Affairs of Bel-Ami, passé par BBC2 le 31 août 1999 et le 3 février 2001. En guise de divertissement au catalogue des scènes amoureuses, Lewin tenait beaucoup à mettre dans son film la réception que donna M. Walter à l’occasion du vernissage de son fameux tableau Le Christ marchant sur les flots du peintre hongrois Karl Marcowitch.6 Malheureusement, la censure de l’époque était impitoyable et il n’était pas question de 1

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Paru « en feuilleton dans le Gil Blas du 6 avril au 30 mai 1885 », Bel-Ami sera édité « la même année en volume chez Havard […] probablement dans la semaine du 11 au 17 mai » (Guy de Maupassant, Bel-Ami, texte établi avec introduction, notes et relevé de variantes par Gérard Delaisement, Paris: Garnier, 1959, p.ii). Cité dans Chroniques, études, correspondance de Guy de Maupassant, recueillies, préfacées et annotées par René Dumensnil avec la collaboration de Jean Loize (Paris: Gründ, 1938), p.332. « Nous sommes à la vingt-septième édition, soit 13.000 vendus. Comme je te le disais nous irons à vingt mille ou vingt-deux mille. C’est fort honorable, et voilà tout […] » (Maupassant à sa mère, lettre du 7 juillet 1885, citée dans Chroniques, études, correspondance, p.332). Trente-sept éditions furent épuisées en quatre mois (Bel-Ami, éd. Delaisement, p.lxxxii). Maupassant, Bel-Ami, Préface et notes de Jean-Louis Bory (Paris: Gallimard, 1973), p.9. Son œuvre cinématographique comprend aussi notamment The Moon and Sixpence (1942), The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), et Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1951). D’après Gérard Delaisement (Bel-Ami, p.304, n.3), « Karl Marcowitch c’est le peintre Munkacsy dont la célébrité fut grande à l’époque ». Le tableau de Munkacsy, Le Christ devant Pilate, fit « une tournée triomphale à travers l’Europe » (ibid.). Pour Marie-Claire Bancquart, Maupassant y fait une allusion directe: « Il s’agit du tableau du peintre hongrois Michel Munkacsy, Le Christ devant Pilate, œuvre de vastes dimensions qui fut exposée chez le marchand de tableaux Sedelmayer avec une mise en scène lumineuse tout à fait comparable à celle qui est décrite dans Bel-Ami » (Maupassant, Bel-Ami, texte présenté et commenté par MarieClaire Bancquart (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1979), p.419 (note à la page 326).

montrer à l’écran le personnage du Christ. Par quoi Lewin allait-il remplacer ce tableau? Il eut alors une idée de génie: connaissant bien son texte, il se souvient de ce passage où BelAmi se fait à lui-même une de ses rares réflexions philosophiques: « Je viens de me mettre sous la protection de saint Antoine, patron des tentations. Maintenant je suis de bronze ».7 Lewin avait trouvé le thème de son tableau: il ne s’agissait plus que de le créer. Dans ce but, il lança un concours auquel il invita des peintres en voie de célébrité. La liste de ces peintres nous est fournie par John Russell Taylor dans son livre passionnant, Strangers in Paradise.8 Un jury distingué9 décerna la palme à Max Ernst et c’est son tableau qui figure dans le film, tourné délibérément en noir et blanc afin que seul le tableau La Tentation de saint Antoine ressorte en couleur. Parmi les « refusés » figure Stanley Spencer qui toucha cinq cents dollars et reprit son tableau, lequel se vendit chez Sotheby’s £297.000 en 1992. Nous pourrions accuser Maupassant d’avoir attribué à Bel-Ami une connaissance de saint Antoine que son manque d’éducation ne justifiait pas. Mais, grâce à cette heureuse erreur, nous avons maintenant des chefs-d’œuvre connus du monde entier dus, entre autres, à Salvador Dali, Paul Delvaux, et Ivan Le Lorraine Albright, responsable du portrait terrifiant de Dorian Gray dans le film d’Albert Lewin, The Picture of Dorian Gray, précurseur et modèle de Bel-Ami.10 Cette extension d’un ouvrage littéraire dans le domaine de la peinture eût enchanté Maupassant.

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Bel-Ami, éd. par Bancquart, p.231. Strangers in Paradise: The Hollywood Emigrants (1933-1950) (London: Faber and Faber, 1983), p.237. Le jury comprenait Marcel Duchamp, Alfred H. Barr, président de la Fédération Américaine des Arts, et Sidney Janis, propriétaire d’une galerie d’exposition à New York (ibid.). Ibid., pp.236-37.

Part Three The Twentieth Century

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Marie-Joséphine Whitaker

Rimbaud, Claudel: la passion du voyage Il voyagea, « terriblement », dit de Rimbaud Verlaine;1 on pourrait en dire autant de Claudel. Et cependant, d’entrée de jeu la question se pose: est-il légitime de comparer deux voyageurs aussi différents? Le diplomate se déplaçant aux frais de l’Etat, en wagon-lit ou en transatlantique de luxe, et le fugueur, le vagabond, le déserteur, le matelot? Le catholique et le blasphémateur? En tout état de cause, pour ce qui est de la motivation première, Claudel lui-même rapproche les deux cas: Les mêmes réflexions qui ont poussé Rimbaud sur la route de l’exploration, de la découverte, sont les mêmes qui m’ont fait entrer aux Affaires étrangères. […] Je désirais avant tout me donner de l’air. Il fallait absolument que je sorte et que je voie le monde.2

Sa propre attitude à l’égard de l’entourage immédiat fut semblable, nous dira-t-il encore, à celle de Rimbaud: elle se résume à un fort sentiment d’incompatibilité. Le jeune poète, écrit-il, a fait « tout ce qu’il pouvait pour secouer de lui la housse détestable de cette famille piétiste, provinciale et bourgeoise ! »3 Et pour ce qui le concerne, Claudel ne nous apprendil pas ceci: « j’ai toujours eu en moi cette envie de m’en aller, de quitter mon milieu, et de courir le monde »? « Paris m’étouffait. La vie de famille m’étouffait. »4 Pour l’un comme pour l’autre, donc, le voyage, nécessité vitale, fut autre chose qu’un simple thème littéraire. En prenant connaissance de la biographie de Rimbaud, on comprend que non seulement sa vie en porte témoignage, mais encore sa mort. Le « texte » ultime de Rimbaud, sa dernière « phrase » dictée par le mourant à sa sœur, a le voyage pour sujet. Adressée de l’Hôpital de la Conception à Marseille, à un Directeur des Messageries Maritimes imaginaire, elle demande: « Dites-moi à quelle heure je dois être transporté à bord… ».5 Il le fut le 10 novembre 1891. Et si tel est le dernier propos de Rimbaud, tel fut aussi le premier: « j’irai loin, bien loin », annonce-t-il dans le premier poème authentiquement rimbaldien, le premier à porter sa marque, selon Étiemble: « Sensation » (p.6). De son côté, Claudel fera allusion à ses « immenses promenades d’enfant autrefois » (Œuvres en prose, p.804). Lorsque Rimbaud croit découvrir un camarade en son jeune professeur, Georges Izambard – car l’amitié, l’amour, Verlaine, Germain Nouveau, éveillent en lui toujours le même désir du départ – que lui confie-t-il, naïvement? « […] j’espérais [...] des voyages, des aventures, des bohémienneries [...] » (p.238). Le rêve de la Vierge folle prendra une forme analogue: « lui me

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Henri Peyre, Rimbaud vu par Verlaine (Paris: Nizet, 1975), p.119. Paul Claudel, Mémoires improvisés (Paris: N.R.F., 1969), pp.64, 86. Dans les citations qui suivent, les italiques sont de nous, sauf indication contraire. Paul Claudel, « Un dernier salut à Arthur Rimbaud », in Œuvres en prose (Paris: Gallimard [Pléiade], 1965), p.525. Mémoires improvisés, pp.30, 85-86. Il formule cependant certaines réserves: voir la fin de cet essai. Arthur Rimbaud, Œuvres complètes (Paris: Gallimard [Pléiade], 1972), pp.707-08. Toutes nos références à Rimbaud se rapportent à cette édition, indiquées simplement par la page.

rendra forte, nous voyagerons » (p.105). « […] il y a une chose qui m’est impossible », Rimbaud écrira-t-il à sa mère un an avant sa mort, « c’est la vie sédentaire » (p.641). Ne pas rester immobile sur une chaise! Celui qui se veut « bohémien » (on n’oublie pas le texte intitulé « Ma Bohème »), ensuite « passant », « piéton », « touriste » (pp.35, 36, 73, 124, 150), s’affirme antithèse vivante de l’Assis, dont Rimbaud nous a laissé la féroce caricature. Le voyageur, faut-il le dire, sera le contraire symétrique de cette grotesque figure. À plus forte raison, le sera celui qui incarne l’idéal rimbaldien, le Génie, qui voyage, et dont nous sont présentes à l’esprit « la terrible célérité » et les « courses » (p.154).6 Et cependant, ceci dit, et tout considéré, pour constituer une œuvre, « assis », il faut l’être. On écrit assis, si on imagine debout, ou en marche. On comprendra qu’allusion est ici faite au contraste entre deux productions littéraires que bien des traits distinguent: l’ampleur de l’une, la brièveté de l’autre. Car ici s’accuse une première divergence entre Rimbaud et Claudel: ce dernier, fils de fonctionnaire, élevé, comme il le dit avec humour, dans « l’odeur de la paperasse » (Œuvres en prose, p.1364), lui-même grand Commis de la République, sut rester sur place et en place, assidu à écrire « des comptes »7 ainsi qu’à rédiger prose, poésie et drames; se donnant le temps, également, de contempler les créatures de Dieu. Dans le beau poème qu’il lui dédie, « Consécration », il n’a pas tort de représenter Rimbaud, le « génie impatient »,8 comme un guetteur plutôt que comme un esprit méditatif: « Il faut trouver le poste juste, et que rien ne distraie ma surveillance. »9 Et, il est vrai, on voit Rimbaud dans Les Illuminations surtout, concentré, à l’affût du moindre signe, mais vite découragé, indigné même, prêt à quitter les lieux si celui-ci tarde à venir: « Assez vu […] Au revoir ici, n’importe où! » (pp.129, 154). Car Rimbaud, qui dit tout tenir « de la déclaration des Droits de l’Homme » (p.94), croit que « tout sonder, – et savoir! » (p.9) est désormais la prérogative de l’esprit humain en général, et du poète en particulier. Dès lors, le fait que les choses ne livrent pas immédiatement ou entièrement leur secret, est vécu par lui comme une incompréhensible injustice, contre laquelle il part en « guerre » (titre d’un poème en prose des Illuminations). Ainsi sa fièvre de savoir nourrit le voyage-fuite-en-avant. L’emploi curieux du verbe « chasser », dans « Guerre » ou dans « Mouvement » semble confirmer cette idée (« L’inflexion éternelle des moments et l’infini des mathématiques me chassent à travers le monde », p.146; « Eux chassés dans l’extase harmonique/Et l’héroïsme de la découverte », p.152). Et si la déconvenue, fréquente, le laisse démuni, ce n’est pas uniquement à cause de son extrême jeunesse, de cette « enfance » et faiblesse dont il se plaint quelquefois; c’est surtout en rai-

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À l’une des occasions (plus nombreuses qu’on ne l’a dit) où Rimbaud, au lieu de blasphémer le Christ, l’invoque, celui-ci apparaîtra, lui aussi, comme une figure du mouvement, et non pas de l’immobilité: « au Christus venit » (« Délires » II, p.111), titre inventé par Rimbaud, qui ne figure pas dans la liturgie, mais qu’il semble avoir emprunté à l’Apocalypse (I, 4). Cf. « Nuit de l’enfer » (p.101): « Jésus marche », « Jésus marchait ». Autre figure du voyage, les Mages (p.115). « Car à quoi sert l’écrivain, si ce n’est à tenir des comptes? », écrit-il plaisamment (Œuvre poétique, Paris: Gallimard [Pléiade], 1967), p.266. Sauf indication contraire, tous les textes claudéliens sont cités dans l’édition de la Pléiade. Ainsi le définit Henri Mondor (Rimbaud ou le génie impatient, Paris: N.R.F., 1955). Œuvre poétique, p.508; Claudel fait parler Rimbaud à la première personne.

son de son investissement, invariablement total et inconditionnel dans le voyage – cette passion du voyage qui donne son titre à notre étude. Déjà à seize ans, pour satisfaire son aspiration fondamentale, ne lui voit-on pas risquer et encourir la prison? Ambition d’une vie, que cette vie a réalisée, mais, ainsi qu’elle le fait presque toujours, autrement que prévu (et à quel prix!) Rimbaud ne devinait pas que ces départs tant désirés, mèneraient à la « cloche » à Londres, avec la conclusion dramatique, la disgrâce que l’on sait; il ne se doutait pas, non plus, que le voyage, ce serait aussi ces trois cents kilomètres effectués sur une civière du Harar à Zeilah en avril 1891 (p.662), s’achevant par « l’échouage » à Marseille, pour nous servir de son propre terme, dans le « Bateau ivre » (p.68). L’eût-il su, y aurait-il renoncé? On peut en douter, si l’on mesure les sacrifices qu’il lui consent. Le prix que Rimbaud attache au voyage se révèle à nous encore dans cette strophe de « Comédie de la soif »: il le choisit à ses risques et périls, en connaissance de cause, parfaitement conscient de ce que cette option pourrait lui ôter la possibilité d’un retour en arrière, d’une réintégration dans le normal, lui en fermant à jamais les portes: Et si je redeviens Le voyageur ancien, Jamais l’auberge verte Ne peut bien m’être ouverte. (p.75)

Ces vers, qui enchaînent sur certaines affirmations de la « Lettre du Voyant » semblent concevoir le voyage comme exploration secrète d’un domaine interdit, de ce qui est contrenature: pourquoi autrement le lieu d’accueil « vert », symbole transparent, devrait-il l’exclure? Les deux, Claudel et Rimbaud, partent à la « découverte » (chacun prononce le mot; cf. supra, p.187), mais dans quel esprit différent! Là où Rimbaud s’insurge, et menace le pouvoir établi d’une « guerre de droit ou de force » (p.146), Claudel, en un retour sur soi, admet d’emblée ses propres manques, et, partant, la nécessité de se développer soi-même. Il aura adopté une carrière « itinérant[e] », où il y aurait « beaucoup à souffrir », nous dit-il (et ici, mutatis fort mutandis, le parallèle est néanmoins frappant avec telle déclaration rimbaldienne),10 mais qui lui apporte la chance d’une évolution personnelle (Mémoires improvisés, pp.64, 86). Notion qui prendra sous sa plume la forme d’un célèbre jeu de mots: connaître en co-naissant, c’est-à-dire en se renouvelant au contact de « cette sainte réalité » (Œuvres en prose, p.423), en re-naissant dans le même mouvement que le monde, qui, de son côté, surgit « intact », « comme au premier jour », neuf, pur, « frais comme le lait » (Œuvre poétique, p.133). La « possession immédiate » (Rimbaud, Œuvres complètes, p.145), l’espoir farouche d’une métamorphose magique, est ce qui hante son jeune confrère, qui tantôt se désespère de son « inhabileté fatale », tantôt se proclame démiurge: « Amour, force ! [...] – démon, dieu, – Jeunesse de cet être-ci: moi! » (« Angoisse », p.143). Rimbaud, au lieu d’attendre que la vie le forme, veut à lui seul agir sur la réalité: il s’interroge et se rassure en conséquence: « Quant au monde, quand tu sortiras, que sera-t-il devenu? », de-

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On se souvient que Rimbaud écrivait à Georges Izambard le 13 mai 1871: « Les souffrances sont énormes, mais il faut être fort, être né poète […] » (p.249).

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mande-t-il, et se répond: « En tout cas, rien des apparences actuelles » (« Jeunesse », IV, p.148). Ce n’est pas un hasard si Claudel, dans les Cinq grandes Odes, rend hommage à la vertu cardinale de la Prudence, définie par Aristote comme la « bonne habitude » qui nous enseigne à choisir les moyens appropriés pour arriver au but. Arriver, les deux le veulent: un chemin est fait pour cela; on part pour arriver, lisons-nous sous la plume du réaliste Claudel (Œuvres en prose, p.1312): car ni Rimbaud ni Claudel n’appartiennent à la catégorie de ces voyageurs « qui partent/ Pour partir », ainsi que l’écrit Baudelaire.11 Mais de quels moyens se sont-ils pourvus, et comment conçoivent-ils leur destination? Dans la réalité comme dans leur vie littéraire, l’un, voyageur sans ou n’ayant que peu de bagages, nourri « du biscuit de la route », l’autre, tel qu’il apparaît sur certaine photo,12 entouré de malles et de valises. Mais on devine que nous voulons parler ici de « bagage » intellectuel: autrement dit de l’équipement qui accompagne chacun sur les voies de la création et de la connaissance. Plus d’une fois, Rimbaud invoque la science, ou plus exactement « des accidents de féerie scientifique » comme instrument d’une « restitution progressive de la franchise première » à laquelle vise également la poésie (p.143). Avec quel enthousiasme il représente dans « Mouvement », déjà cité plus haut, les poètes voyageurs galvanisés, dirait-on, par « l’énorme passade de courant », éclairés par la « lumière inouïe » de la chimie – « Ce sont les conquérants du monde/Cherchant la fortune chimique personnelle » – leur « stock d’études » s’éclairant « au delà de la route hydraulique motrice. » Mais ce qui se lit ici, repris par l’imagination poétique, est le mythe du progrès, généralisé au dixneuvième siècle, associé aux « Lumières » du dix-huitième, mais non étayé par des connaissances précises. Combien différent le cas de Claudel! Ayant approfondi toute sa vie, au sens le plus littéral et concret, biologie, sciences naturelles, mathématiques – ni la théorie des quanta ni l’équation de Heisenberg (Mémoires improvisés, p.235), ni la constitution chimique de la cellule13 n’étant lettre fermée à cet esprit véritablement encyclopédique – Claudel sera en meilleure posture pour dire les limites de la science, comme pour mesurer ses bienfaits. C’est Rimbaud, non Claudel, qui parle de « voyages métaphysiques » (p.153), manifestement dans le contexte de la poésie elle-même; mais c’est le lecteur systématique de la Summa et d’Aristote qui peut donner un contenu précis au mot. Le « stock d’études » rimbaldien, limité d’abord par l’âge du jeune « métaphysicien », le fut également par ses goûts, comme par sa hâte de « trouver le lieu et la formule » (p.137). En plus de la littérature, celle de l’Antiquité comme celle de son temps, le « stock » semble se composer principalement 11 12

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Dans « Le Voyage » (Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal, éd. par A. Adam, Paris : Garnier, 1961, p.155). Voir la dix-septième photographie in Gérald Antoine, Paul Claudel ou l’enfer du génie (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1988), entre les pages 240 et 241. Voir par exemple la comparaison précise qu’inspire à Claudel (Œuvres en prose, p.1316) un « champ magnétique »; dans Journal I (Paris, Gallimard [Pléiade], 1968, pp.105-06) la note sur la constitution chimique de la cellule ; ibid., p.92, sur les recherches de Wallace; ou Journal II (Paris, Gallimard [Pléiade], 1969, pp.9293), ses réflexions sur la théorie des Quanta de L. de Broglie. Dans Mémoires improvisés (p.21), Claudel rend hommage aux professeurs de Louis-le-Grand (parmi lesquels L. Mangin, 1852-1937) qui lui ont enseigné les sciences, disciplines dont il a « gardé le goût ».

des écrivains illuminés, visionnaires, Fourier, Michelet, Ballanche, peut-être Eliphas Lévi. La conséquence pour la présentation du voyage, sa forme chez les deux écrivains, sera sensible. Claudel y verra le moyen de satisfaire sa « passion de l’univers » (voir inter alia Mémoires improvisés, p.85; Œuvre poétique, p.679), comme sa curiosité de ce qui existe, la spécificité et diversité de la création divine. Émerveillé et détaché – en effet, le détachement est pour lui l’un des fruits les plus précieux du déplacement perpétuel – le voyage devient sous sa plume constat de l’impermanence des choses périssables. Non sans que retentisse dans ce contexte une fort humaine note de regret: ainsi pourra-t-il dire de ces « choses » dans son œuvre poétique: Dommage qu’elles ne puissent cesser aux yeux sans qu’elles déchirent le cœur […] Mais pour ce qui est de les voir mourir on est aussi bien ici [au Brésil, en l’occurrence] qu’ailleurs […] Marchons, car nous n’avons pas ici d’habitation permanente. (pp.493, 295)

Prenons conscience ici de sa position dans toute sa spécificité. Claudel, patriote et esprit international, « voyageur et enraciné » (Mémoires improvisés, p.12) qui, tout en vivant loin de la France, souhaite remplir « les volontés latentes du Terroir » (Œuvres en prose, p.800), ne voit aucunement le fait de parcourir le globe comme condition sine qua non de l’accès à la vérité. Violaine, qui est restée sur place, s’entendra féliciter de cela même par son père, revenu de l’autre bout du monde: « ma petite fille a été plus sage ».14 L’apostrophe que Claudel adresse à Rimbaud va dans le même sens (Œuvre poétique, pp.508-10): Rimbaud, pourquoi t’en vas-tu [...] ? Ce que tu cherchais si loin, l’Éternité dès cette vie [est] accessible à tous les sens, […] Ce que tu cherchais [...] au delà de la Mer et des Iles, Ta mère et tes sœurs le savaient, sans qu’elles eussent à bouger de Charleville.

Que l’on ne s’alarme pas devant l’apparente platitude du propos! Son auteur se corrige, complétant sa pensée dans le distique suivant, où il définit le « devoir » spécifique de Rimbaud, cette « tâche » qui le tire vers le « grand territoire sauvage » (p.511). Claudel a néanmoins dit ce qu’il avait à dire: une vérité a été énoncée dans ces vers: une toise, des points de repère, des structures intellectuelles et spirituelles facilitent la lecture du monde. Pour serrer de plus près son point de vue – utilité ou inutilité du voyage? – il convient d’abord de reconstituer le contexte de la citation, contexte conçu par un croyant: les sacrements, veut-il dire, nous mettent corporellement en contact avec l’Eternel, et ceci dès ce monde, même dans une ville de province « supérieurement idiote »15 comme Charleville. Dieu, Cause de tout (Œuvre poétique, p.505), ajoute le poète doublé d’un métaphysicien, étant perceptible à partir de chaque coin du monde comme est visible le soleil, Dieu donc, est l’Être central auquel il est indispensable de se référer. Ayant élaboré la conception entre Rio de Janeiro et Tokyo (1917-22), Claudel constate qu’il suffit d’interroger le texte divin 14 15

Théâtre II (Paris, Gallimard [Pléiade], 1965), p.209. L’expression, bien entendu, est de Rimbaud! (p.238).

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comme « une feuille de papier » « au recto » et au verso (Œuvre poétique, p.647) pour que la lumière, projetée par le corps céleste universel, fasse apparaître l’envers des choses, cette dimension qui élude Rimbaud. C’est le papier transparent japonais qui a instruit l’ambassadeur. Mais il est clair, en même temps, qu’un code ou système interprétatif le suit partout. Quelles que soient cependant les métaphores qu’il en rapporte pour orner son arsenal symbolique, et content comme il l’est d’avoir visité de nombreux pays, Claudel, poèteglobetrotter relativise son activité de fonctionnaire en perpétuelle partance. Le Voyage en tant que tel, avec majuscule, ne devient à aucun moment de son œuvre hantise, ou absolu. Qu’il l’est chez Rimbaud, est évident non seulement pour le lecteur du « Bateau ivre » ou des Illuminations (ce texte surtout, comme on le verra dans un instant), mais encore pour qui se penche sur les premiers poèmes. Rappelons ce « poète de sept ans » qui se révèle subitement à nous, « couché sur des pièces de toile/Ecrue, et pressentant violemment la voile! » (p.45). Et ce qui est vrai des premiers poèmes l’est aussi des « derniers ». L’ordre du départ, de l’absence ou de la fuite y est thématisé, et semble venir de messagers divers, fées, corbeaux, dont l’un en particulier est désigné comme « crieur du devoir ».16 Mais c’est le mode d’apparition du voyage dans les poèmes en prose ou Illuminations qui relève tout particulièrement de l’obsession intérieure. Car on remarquera qu’il surgit hors contexte, à brûle-pourpoint, à propos de rien.17 (Il en était ainsi des « voyages métaphysiques » de « Dévotion », dont il fut question plus haut, que n’introduisait aucun concept intermédiaire). Le Voyage paraît et reparaît sur la page, explicite ou implicite; implicite, car rien que la succession des paysages, la configuration toujours différente du terrain, la sobre campagne et la ville, le caractère différent des « peuples » marquent un déplacement (comme vus par la portière d’un train): pour se retrouver, comme dans « Royauté », « chez un peuple fort doux », il faut y être parvenu d’une manière ou d’une autre! Cette écriture « topographique », régie par une « géographie » mystérieuse, témoigne donc à sa façon de la puissance du thème, du degré de fascination qu’il exerce sur l’esprit du poète. Rimbaud se réfère au voyage comme s’il ne devait jamais cesser: effectivement que nous est-il dit dans « Départ »? – « La vision s’est rencontrée à tous les airs. Assez eu [...] Assez connu [...] » – et tout de suite après, dans la même mouvance, « Départ dans l’affection et le bruit neufs » (p.129). Rien d’étonnant qu’il le mentionne ailleurs comme s’il était perpétuellement en cours, et que nous soyons censés le savoir. « L’aube d’or et la soirée frissonnante trouvent notre brick en face de cette villa […] », écrit-il dans « Promontoire » (p.148), un peu à la manière d’un enfant se racontant des histoires, mais encore plus dans le style de quelqu’un qui tisse une saga ou narre une odyssée. Entièrement absorbante, celle-ci formerait le cadre sous-entendu de l’œuvre, et s’écrirait pour ainsi dire toute seule. Un début de poème comme celui qui vient d’être cité ne rappelle-t-il pas tel « incipit » de chant à l’intérieur de l’Enéide (par exemple)? « Vela dabant laeti » revient en mémoire. 16 17

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« Jeune ménage », p.81; « Les Corbeaux », p.36; « La Rivière de Cassis », p.72. Tout écrivain (même classique) qui connaît les mécanismes de la passion, sait qu’une irruption du sujet obsédant peut déranger la cohérence de la parole. Racine ne fait-il pas intervenir hors de toute logique « l’ombre des forêts » et le char d’Hippolyte dans le discours de Phèdre? (Acte I, scène 3).

Tout évoque le voyage pour Rimbaud, qui le discerne à l’état d’ambition naissante chez les êtres qu’il approche, ainsi dans ces « regards pleins de pèlerinages » perçus dans les yeux des fleurs (p.122); ou autrement, pensera-t-on, le poète s’arrange pour que tout lui en parle: on verra le thème prendre possession d’un texte qui, à première vue du moins, n’a pas de lien logique avec lui, « Veillées » (à première vue, disons-nous, car il s’agit en réalité, et la chose n’est pas sans importance, d’un rêve éveillé): « Les lampes et les tapis de la veillée font le bruit des vagues, la nuit, le long de la coque et autour du steerage » (p.139). Un autre exemple, surgissement analogue du thème, se lirait dans « Nocturne vulgaire »: il est précédé, il est vrai, par une allusion à un carrosse (nous y reviendrons), qui le rend un peu moins surprenant (mais le titre, lui, bizarrement désigne – et dévalorise – un morceau de musique): « Postillons et bêtes de songe reprendront-ils sous les plus suffocantes futaies [...] » (p.142). Sur la même trame sous-jacente à la composition, surgissent tous les moyens de transport imaginables, en plus du brick et du carrosse (« Ornières », p.135; « Nocturne Vulgaire », p.141), ces petites voitures (« Enfance », p.123), ces caravanes qui partent (« Après le déluge », p.121), ces « chars d’argent et de cuivre » (« Marine », p.142), ces barques (« Fairy », p.146), ces embarcations (« Scènes », p.149), ces railways (« Promontoire », p.149), cette malle (« Soir historique », p.150), cette diligence de diamants (« Villes II», p.138), ces poulies qui font monter des « chalets » de cristal ou de bois, telles des cabines de funiculaire (« Villes I », p.135). Partir par tous les moyens, en changeant de véhicule s’il le faut!18 Voici le moment venu d’observer que les grands voyages intercontinentaux interviennent dans la vie de Rimbaud après, et non avant la composition de son œuvre.19 (Ceux de sa vie littéraire se déroulent dans un espace européen relativement limité, entre la France, Londres, et les Pays Bas). On devine quel sera l’effet de cet état des choses sur le thème que nous suivons à la trace: le voyage relèvera en partie du moins, du domaine du désir; nous serons devant le voyage imaginé, rêvé, dont l’autre, géographique, a de tout temps été la figure (souvent allégorique; ici le mode plus souple et plus libre est symbolique). Mais si c’est de rêve qu’il s’agit, il faut souligner tout de suite qu’il ne se veut pas tel; l’acte poétique rimbaldien se choisit lucide, se conçoit accompli les yeux ouverts – d’où son inscription dans « Veillées » – mais par-dessus tout, il souhaite passionnément être autre chose que songe-mensonge! Car c’est du Grand Songe (p.251; nos majuscules) qu’il est question pour Rimbaud – c’est là qu’il convient de chercher le contexte de tout ce qu’il écrit à ce sujet depuis la fameuse Lettre – ce songe des poètes qui doit faire dévier le cours de l’histoire, modifier le sort du monde et bouleverser la société. En d’autres mots, la magie poétique 18

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S’y ajoute la métaphore des « locomotives […] brûlantes » qu’auraient été les Romantiques (p.253). En tout, dans Les Illuminations et Une Saison, nous avons compté une trentaine d’allusions aux moyens de locomotion. Apparaît également lié au voyage le parcours ou l’ascension « sociale » du poète-voyageur: « voyageurs et […] nobles », écrit Rimbaud dans « Promontoire » (p.149). Cf. l’arrivée en sabots, l’apprentissage, l’enfance mendiante, le statut de « gentilhomme » (mais sans faste aristocratique puisqu’en pays « sobre » et « aigre campagne », p.128), la montée en grade, sur « un gradin d’or » (p.141), Roi (p.130), exclu néanmoins des « conseils des Seigneurs » (p.95); ainsi, en fin de compte, la progression s’avérant illusoire. On a voulu prouver le contraire: voir Antoine Adam, « L’Énigme des Illuminations », Revue des Sciences Humaines (Lille, octobre/décembre 1950); mais peu de rimbaldiens aujourd’hui prolongeraient l’activité littéraire de Rimbaud au-delà de 1874.

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ambitionne de s’imposer au réel, et le rêveur compte y retrouver les pays, « régions », comme il l’écrit, visités pendant le sommeil – si sommeil il y eut. « Ou je me réveillerai, et les lois et les mœurs auront changé », dira (p.105) la Vierge folle (songe d’autant plus crédible et pressant que la sphère du physique et métaphysique, du réel et de l’impossible est moins bien délimitée; cf. plus haut). Que voyage et rêve ne peuvent s’associer ni fusionner de la même manière dans l’œuvre de Claudel, est évident, Claudel qui écrit dès 1907, dans sa première composition poétique majeure: « rompons les liens des rêves, et foulons aux pieds les idoles » (Œuvre poétique, p.253); ensuite, trois ans plus tard, dans son Journal: « Avoir toujours fortement le sens de la réalité et du concret » (Journal I, p.166). Mais une différence essentielle vient également de ce que des voyages réels et vécus formeront la base de l’écriture claudélienne. Le potentiel figuratif de tel lieu, de tel périple non-fictif, est bien sûr apparu à celui qui se place lui-même parmi les poètes symbolistes, ses « compagnons » (Œuvres en prose, p.521): en témoigne une métaphore comme « cette terre de mon après-midi » (Œuvre poétique, p.260), qui vient naturellement sous sa plume. Une carte poétique peut être dressée pour Le Soulier de satin par exemple, qui ferait de Mogador le lieu de l’épreuve, de l’Espagne celui de la rigueur, de la forêt sicilienne le cadre de l’idylle.20 (Mais la « Verfremdung »,21 destructrice de l’illusion théâtrale, tout spectateur des pièces de Claudel le sait, y est fréquente). Portant le regard sur la poésie, nous observons également que là où Claudel voyageur se trouve être le protagoniste, un « je » fournit des précisions d’ordre autobiographique et géographique au lecteur, un lecteur à qui il peut même être donné de connaître l’âge de celui qui lui parle! (voir Œuvre poétique, p.492). Le réaliste veille à ce que ne se confondent point le réel et l’imaginaire. Claudel n’étant jamais aspiré ni envoûté par les lieux ou le sujet, on sait qui vit quoi et où.22 Que Rimbaud dise « je », par ailleurs, est loin d’être éclairant pour nous! Le meilleur exemple serait le « je » mystérieux qui descend le long d’une vigne dans « Nocturne vulgaire », pour monter dans un carrosse. Le caractère du véhicule par contre est révélateur, et encore plus l’énergie qui le tire en avant : « […] bêtes de songe » (p.142), dit le poète ; ce sont les puissances oniriques qui s’avèrent être le moteur de son expérience. Ce qui équivaut, pour Rimbaud, à reconnaître que le rêve ne fut que rêve: toute sa fragilité s’est affrontée en vain au réel et à sa solidité! Constat mortel qui marque la fin de l’aventure et les funérailles de ses aspirations: « corbillard de mon sommeil », dira-t-il en son langage pittoresque et précis. Deux cessations ou arrêts du voyage parallèles se lisent dans Les Illuminations: ils prennent la forme d’un « dételage », d’un véhicule qui « vire » au lieu d’avancer, d’un effacement de la route elle-même (p.141). Un deuxième refus de continuer le voyage se produit, conséquent à la réalisation qui suit: « La même magie bourgeoise à tous les points où

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Carte truffée pourtant de détails authentiques: rien n’est plus caractéristique de la manière claudélienne. Voir M. Lioure, L’Esthétique dramatique de Paul Claudel (Paris: Armand Colin, 1971), pp.314-15, 378-81. Nous employons le terme de Brecht: procédé qui consiste à dénoncer l’illusion théâtrale, pour lequel le français ne possède pas de terme propre. Claudel formule des règles très strictes à ce sujet, qualifiant de « propositions idolâtriques » et de « formes décoratives » ce qui ne serait pas l’expression authentique du vécu de l’artiste (Œuvres en prose, p.283).

la malle nous déposera! » (« Soir historique », p.150). Désaveu du songe qui n’a pas su se dépasser! Et il n’est pas difficile de voir en quoi, comment et pourquoi Rimbaud marche à la catastrophe. Elle se profile dans son projet même, qui demande à la poésie plus qu’elle ne peut donner; qui implique une foi, émouvante en sa naïveté, dans le pouvoir de créer de « nouvelles fleurs, de nouveaux astres, de nouvelles chairs […] » (p.116). Rimbaud n’a pas admis, en d’autres termes, que les choses nous soient données une fois pour toutes en tant que signes d’un « ailleurs »: que les splendeurs soient situées, comme l’écrit Baudelaire, audelà du tombeau; que le monde existe, ainsi que le pense Claudel, pour nous parler de Dieu, et témoigner, pendant la période d’attente, de sa présence « ici et là » (sur cette terre comme au ciel; voir Œuvre poétique, pp.493-94). On a beau jeu de montrer en cet endroit l’effet, sur le thème que nous suivons depuis le début, des positions religieuses du poète catholique: point de grande route effacée (p.141) pour celui qui s’amuse à écrire que tous les chemins, « étranges et bénis […] mènent à Rome » (Œuvre poétique, p.501). Si son attitude à l’égard du rêve ne sera pas toujours aussi intransigeante que le disent les textes cités plus haut,23 il reste que ni songe ni fuite ne peuvent représenter pour lui une sortie définitive hors du réel. Il signifiait d’ailleurs son désaccord sur ce point dès le départ: « [...] je n’avais pas envie de me sauver, comme faisait Rimbaud, je savais que ça ne me mènerait à pas grand-chose » (Mémoires improvisés, p.86). Car qu’est-ce qui nourrit la poésie? Sans quitter le monde que nous connaissons tous, Claudel y trouve cette beauté qui, les Pères de l’Eglise le lui ont enseigné, est le reflet de celle du Créateur. (« Ex divina pulchritudine omnium esse […] »). S’il en est ainsi, Dieu, le texte précédemment cité l’affirmait, n’est aucunement absent du monde matériel, tout caduc ou ordinaire qu’il soit. C’est lui, bien entendu, qui est nommé dans le vers qui suit: « Il est mêmement ici, dans la gare de chemin de fer et l’usine, dans la crèche, dans l’aire et dans le chais » (Œuvre poétique, p.297). Et voyons encore quelle comparaison lui suggère le spectacle de la vie de tous les jours: « le poëme lui-même comme [...] une grande rue moderne tout emplie d’une masse de peuple » (Œuvre poétique, p.648). Le banal, le quotidien, le connu (tout ce que dénonce Rimbaud) ne le gêne point; car même caché, invisible, Dieu ne l’est pas aux yeux de la foi. On comprend dès lors que ces êtres « parfaits, imprévus » que postule l’auteur des Illuminations (p.148) ne le sollicitent pas de la même manière, lui qui a pu écrire: « tous pareils comme des pommes » ils sont « des hommes »! (Œuvre poétique, p.533, italiques de Claudel). Soupçonneux et critique à l’égard de l’esthète que recèle peu ou prou tout poète symboliste,24 Claudel morigène Rimbaud sur ce chapitre – songeant sans doute aux « Fleurs » (p.141) de celui-ci.25 « Cet objet entre les fleurs de papier sec, c’est cela qui est la Suprême Beauté » (Œuvre poétique, p.509), lui dit-il à propos du Saint Sa23

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Claudel, alias Furius, se « réserve avec fermeté le droit de [se] contredire » (Œuvres en prose, p.670), et il lui arrive de montrer combien est mince la « Frontière entre les deux mondes » du rêve et de la réalité. Voir Théâtre II, pp.651-53. Pour « l’esthétisme » particulier de Rimbaud, voir notre article, « Haine et amour chez Rimbaud » (Parade sauvage: cent ans après, Colloque no.3, 5-10 septembre 1991, Musée Charleville-Mézières, 1992), pp.25254. Fleurs toutes en tissus somptueux et pierres précieuses que ne désavoueraient ni l’auteur de « Rêve parisien », ni celui d’À Rebours. Il est vrai que dans le poème rimbaldien ces fleurs artificielles semblent « attirer » vers elles le vivant, cela que le texte qualifie de « jeune » et « fort ».

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crement, réalité dont la présence substantielle suffit pour annuler toute laideur. D’ailleurs, la beauté n’est pas la valeur ultime que recherche le poète chrétien, qui se sent « appelé » ailleurs, et qui n’attend que le moment « De ce qui n’était que beauté26 pour passer à ce qui est amour » (Œuvre poétique, p.495). Et, en cela, Rimbaud l’a précédé: que la beauté à elle seule, malgré tout, ne suffit pas, il l’a su et dit. Nous voici sur le terrain commun, sans lequel ne s’expliquerait pas le culte que Claudel, comme on le sait, a voué à Rimbaud. Si jusqu’ici les différences furent soulignées, il nous reste à aborder en conclusion une dernière catégorie de voyage qui suffirait à elle seule pour justifier notre propos: notamment le voyage qui se transforme en quête; la recherche de la joie, de l’amour et du Paradis, qui sont le véritable but des deux poètes. « C’est vrai ; c’est à l’Éden que je songeais !»,27 reconnaîtra Rimbaud au moment de poser la plume (p.113). Et comme il avait mis haut la barre dès le début, dans ces vers où s’énonce le principe même de tout déplacement dans son œuvre! Et sans la promesse Des plus hautes joies. Que rien ne t’arrête […] (p.78)

Ici les deux œuvres convergent. Parmi d’innombrables références au Paradis, contentonsnous de celle, chez Claudel, qui évoque la fin d’Une saison, « ce paradis jadis en qui nous fûmes un seul corps et un homme entier » (Œuvre poétique, p.679). Et on n’en finirait pas de citer tous les textes claudéliens sur la joie! « La joie absolue existe », écrivait l’admirateur de Rimbaud dès 1890-91.28 Point n’est besoin d’insister sur le rapprochement qui s’impose spontanément entre le propos rimbaldien suivant: « Je suis un inventeur bien autrement méritant que tous ceux qui m’ont précédé [...] qui ai trouvé quelque chose comme la clef de l’amour » (« Vies » II, p.128), et la célèbre parole adressée à Dieu dans Partage de midi: « Et au-dessus de l’amour/Il n’y a rien, et pas Vous-même! » (Théâtre I, p.1053). Mais rappelons encore, avant de terminer, cette exclamation dans laquelle Rimbaud établit en des termes inoubliables le lien intrinsèque qui existe entre son étrange géographie de voyageur éternellement insatisfait et l’attente d’un moi, de quelqu’un à qui une parole fut donnée, qui a reçu des gages de l’amour: Ô l’autre monde, l’habitation bénie par le ciel et les ombrages! [...] Non! Nous ne passerons pas l’été dans cet avare pays où nous ne serons jamais que des orphelins fiancés. (p.133)

Un texte pareil, et particulièrement la formule sur laquelle s’arrête notre citation, indique sans ambiguïté où gît l’affinité entre Claudel et Rimbaud: elle tient à la présence de valeurs spirituelles flottantes, certes, confuses, non situées, non rattachées par l’ « orphelin fiancé » à la religion au sein de laquelle ont retenti de telles promesses, mais sur lesquelles se fonde 26

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Elle n’est qu’un « sous-produit », déclarera Claudel (Mémoires improvisés, p.321; cf. Mes idées sur le théâtre, Paris: N.R.F., 1966, p.151). Nous lisons, dans le Journal II (p.400): « L’homme est fait pour autre chose que la Beauté: mais pour cause de la Beauté ». Le même texte évoque les démêlés complexes de Rimbaud avec celle-ci, tantôt « injuriée », tantôt saluée (pp.93, 112). Et personne n’a oublié le cri déchirant qui s’élève (p.98) dans « Nuit de l’enfer »: « Vais-je être enlevé comme un enfant, pour jouer au paradis dans l’oubli de tout le malheur! ». Cahiers, P.C. I (Paris: N.R.F., 1959), p.141.

la célèbre formule claudélienne de « mystique à l’état sauvage » (Œuvres en prose, p.514 ; italiques de Claudel).29 La fin du voyage terrestre de chacun? Claudel décante son expérience variée, et accède à l’universalité, immensément enrichi30 sur le plan artistique. S’enrichir matériellement fut le seul souci des dernières années de Rimbaud, qui répudie son entreprise poétique en trois adjectifs célèbres: « absurde, inutile, dégoûtant »!31 Et cependant ne retrouve-t-il pas en ses moments ultimes métaphore et image dans le texte cité au début, où surgit la barque funèbre, esquif symbolique appartenant à l’imagination universelle, qui nous emportera tous, un jour, en l’autre monde? Paradoxalement, plus fidèle à la poésie dont il faisait moindre cas, Claudel, le jour de sa mort, lit un ouvrage consacré à Rimbaud.32 Le « voyage métaphysique » dont rêvait ce dernier, le vrai, dont on ne revient pas, souhaité par l’un et l’autre poète à trente-quatre ans de distance, ne serait-ce pas celui dont il est parlé dans la « Ballade » claudélienne? (Œuvre poétique, pp.434-35): Nous sommes partis bien des fois déjà, mais cette fois-ci est la bonne [...] nous sommes à bord Nous ne reviendrons plus vers vous.

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31 32

Formule si souvent contestée pour des raisons d’ordre plus idéologique que littéraire ou textuel. Notons qu’un grand critique sans aucune préconception d’ordre religieux, Yves Bonnefoy, verra dans la promesse qui accompagne Rimbaud tout au long du chemin celle du Christ (Rimbaud par lui-même, Paris: Seuil, 1962, p.184). Selon ce qu’il écrit (Œuvres en prose, p.782): « il faut marcher pour apprendre », et conformément à ce qu’il souhaitait (voir les premières pages de cet exposé). Voir Roger Munier, « Sur trois adjectifs », Archives, 160, Lettres Modernes, 1976 (2), pp.83-85. Voir J. Cassar, « Claudel en son jeune temps », Bulletin de la Société Paul Claudel, 32 (1968), pp.21-22.

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Alan Gabbey

The ‘Last Great Voice of Soldierly Heroism’ and the Philosophy of Rationalism: Péguy on Descartes Charles Péguy figures several times in Moya Longstaffe’s Metamorphoses.1 ‘Le soldat paysan’ (‘the peasant soldier’), as Claudel describes him, was the last great voice of the tradition of soldierly heroism, his Mystère de la charité de Jeanne d’Arc (1908) inspired Claudel, and his terminology serves to characterise the Stendhalian hero (Metamorphoses, pp.4-5, 7, 9-10). A quatrain from La Ballade du cœur qui a tant battu, on Virgilean happiness and Cornelian honour, stands at the head of chapter 4, and Péguy commented perceptively on Corneille’s four great tragedies and on the parallel between heroism in Horace and in Corneille (Metamorphoses, pp.69, 131-32). Heading chapter 8 (p.177) is another quatrain from La Ballade du cœur qui a tant battu, this time on happiness and military honour. Péguy’s terminology is invoked (p.246) to distinguish between mystiques and politiques among Stendhal’s heroes and heroines. In none of these instances from Metamorphoses is there anything dissonant about the match between the cited Péguy sources and the content from which Longstaffe draws profit. However, there is something intriguingly dissonant about Péguy’s Note conjointe sur M. Descartes et la philosophie cartésienne being the source of his claim that the duel was regarded for centuries as the supreme test of courage (Metamorphoses, p.20). It is puzzling that in a text on Descartes and Cartesian philosophy Péguy introduces a distinction between two sorts of war, one ‘a struggle for honour’ and deriving from the duel, the other, deriving not at all from the duel, being ‘a struggle for domination’ (Metamorphoses, pp.23-24). In the same Note conjointe Péguy writes at length on Corneille’s idea of honour (Metamorphoses, p. 42).2 The text to which the Note conjointe is related is the earlier Note sur M. Bergson et la philosophie bergsonienne. This appeared in the Cahiers de la Quinzaine (26 April 1914), the journal founded by Péguy in January 1900 and used as a platform for his own ideas, for other authors and their work, and for his critiques of these authors. Péguy began the Note conjointe in May 1914, but it remained unfinished, its composition being interrupted (1st August) by the general mobilisation for the First World War, in which Péguy was killed on the field of honour at Villeroy, on 5 September 1914, the first day of the Battle of the Marne. He was in his forty-second year.3 Both Notes are very odd pieces of writing. To begin with, they are ‘notes’ only by way of comic understatement. The Note sur M. Bergson fills 33 pages of the Pléiade edition of

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Moya Longstaffe, Metamorphoses of Passion and the Heroic in French Literature: Corneille, Stendhal, Claudel (Lewiston, Queenstown, Lampeter: Edwin Mellen, 1999): henceforth Metamorphoses. Charles Péguy, Œuvres en prose 1909-1914, ed. by Marcel Péguy (Paris: Gallimard [Pleiade], 1957: henceforth Œuvres en prose 1909-1914), pp.1363, 1382-85. Péguy was born in Orléans on 7 January 1873. On his final days as commander of a company of reservists see Jean Delaporte, Péguy dans son temps et dans le nôtre (Paris: Le Monde en 10/18, 1967), pp.74-78.

Péguy’s Œuvres en prose 1909-1914, and the Note conjointe sur M. Descartes et la philosophie cartésienne sprawls over 196 pages. Admittedly, the Note conjointe was an unfinished draft, but it reads nothing like a draft on its titular subject that might have dwindled to note-like proportions had the author lived to tidy it up. As for the content of these texts, about two thirds of the Note sur M. Bergson are about Descartes, and the remainder only touches on Bergson and his philosophy. The Note conjointe sur M. Descartes et la philosophie cartésienne is partly about Descartes and partly about Bergson, maybe three or four pages each in total, but mostly concerns matters that have nothing to do with Descartes or his philosophy. Both pieces, especially the Note conjointe, are prime examples of Péguy’s peculiar style, one distinguished by prolixity, endless repetitions (sometimes in consecutive sentences), digressions that emerge and submerge without a hint of Swiftian impishness, grandiose generalisations and sententious pronouncements that irritate more than they illuminate, exaggerations, gnomic utterances of irrecoverable meaning, interminability that seems to grow the further one reads. There is an enormous irony in the idea of Péguy writing critically about Descartes, a master of expository clarity and conciseness. On hearing that someone was translating Péguy into English, François Mauriac aptly remarked that they should start by translating him into French.4 There is a backcloth to both Notes that helps explain their undisciplined form, the crisscross of titles and content, and which accounts for the feeling as one reads that each Note is itself a digression from something hors texte that might combine with it to make for thematic coherence.5 Both Notes originated in the controversy over Bergson’s philosophy that animated Parisian intellectual life in the early twentieth century. Bergson had been attacked from different sides, from the anti-semites of Action Française, from the Institut Catholique, from Maritain and Maurras, from the Revue Thomiste. His major works were put on the Index librorum prohibitorum on 8 June 1914.6 Péguy was a fervent disciple of Bergson, despite reservations about some of his ideas, especially those in L’Évolution créatrice (1907). He attended at least some of Bergson’s lectures at the École Normale Supérieure, during Bergson’s period there as suppléant and as maître de conférences (1897-1900). On Bergson’s appointment as professeur at the Collège de France in May 1900, his Friday lecture became the high-point of Péguy’s week. The two Notes are the fruit of Péguy’s labours in defence of his philosophical hero during the final months of his life. The immediate target in the Notes was the anti-Bergson polemics of Julien Benda, whose critical Le Bergsonisme ou une philosophie de la mobilité appeared in 1912. Writing in Cahiers de la Quinzaine (23 November 1913), Benda had charged Bergson with offering une philosophie pathétique (‘an affective philosophy’). Benda invoked Descartes to support his attack on the anti-rationalism of Bergson. Péguy retaliated with his Note sur M. Berg4

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Annette Aronowicz, Jews and Christians on Time and Eternity: Charles Péguy’s Portrait of Bernard-Lazare (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), p.146, n. 2. For N. Jussem-Wilson, despite the ‘seemingly endless digressions’ in some of Péguy’s works, each ‘has a profound unity provided by a central theme, inspired by a contemporary event or controversial issue, with which the secondary themes are intimately linked’ (Charles Péguy, New York: Hillary House, 1965, p.33). For an extended account of Péguy and Bergson, which includes a useful discussion of the two Notes and a section on Julien Benda, see A.E. Pilkington, Bergson and His Influence: A Reassessment (Cambridge, London, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1976), pp.27-98 (pp.84-96 on the Notes).

son, published in the Cahiers on 26 April 1914. The Note conjointe was a continuation of Péguy’s meditations on the comparative merits of Descartes, the icon of rationalism, and Bergson, the champion of the real (as Péguy understood it), the opponent of determinism and mechanism. My principal concern in this article is Péguy’s understanding of Descartes, and of philosophy in general, as it emerges from both Notes. From this standpoint, the Note on Bergson is more helpful than the Note conjointe on Descartes. Bergsonism is not ‘une philosophie du pathétique (‘a philosophy of affectivity’), insists Péguy. Rather, it operates internally to le pathétique, not in opposition to logic, mathematics, or the sciences, but within and in parallel with them. Nor is affective philosophy an inferior species of philosophy: in affectivity there is infinitely more knowledge and probing of human nature and destiny than in all three of Kant’s Critiques. We must discard the idea that passion is obscure and reason is clear, that passion is confused and reason distinct (Œuvres en prose 1909-1914, p.1261). Clarity has never excluded profundity, profundity has never excluded clarity (p.1263), save in books and didactic manuals. One of the great triumphs of Bergson’s philosophy has been the denunciation of the predilection of the majority for the ready-made: ready-made visions, ready-made feelings (‘des sentiments tout faits’), ready-made wishes, like many Christians who mechanically repeat the words of the liturgy (p.1266). Bergson’s confrontation of the ready-made and the being-made (‘Bergson oppose le tout fait au se faisant’) is a deep metaphysical contrast between the present and the future, between the present and the past (p.1267). For Bergson, past, present, and future are not merely chronological, they signal also changes of being. Bergsonian philosophy wants our thinking to be ‘made-to-measure’. Even if that were all, Péguy contines, in Bergsonism we would still have a great philosophy. Cartesianism too is a great philosophy. How are we to explain its success? Leave aside the hypocrisies of the schools, solemn editions of the texts, new editions of the complete works,7 leave aside university celebrations, official commemorations, centenaries, the false respects of the scholarly community – all of that is ready-made. Let us be Bergsonian instead on the question of the history of Cartesianism (and of Bergsonism). According to Péguy’s understanding of the history of Cartesianism, everyone who has read Descartes knows that the success of Cartesianism and its founder rests on four or five lines in the Discours de la méthode: the rules of method, ‘quelques principes antérieurs d’hygiène intellectuelle’ (‘a few prior principles of intellectual hygiene’), not the principles, revelations, or conclusions of a system. The Bergsonian philosophy began as a rejection of the readymade, the Cartesian philosophy as a renunciation of disorder, so the Cartesian philosophy became a philosophy of order (wherein Péguy sees ‘great disorders’), just as the Bergsonian philosophy is essentially a philosophy of reality (p.1270). The Discours de la méthode is a programme, like an electoral manifesto, and as little realisable. Descartes was a great philosopher, a great metaphysician, a great mathematician, a great scientist, but he was great

7

Péguy must be referring to the standard edition of Descartes’s Œuvres, whose final tome appeared the year before the Note sur M. Bergson: Œuvres de Descartes, ed. by Charles Adam and Paul Tannery, 13 vols (Paris: Cerf, 1897-1913). See also the new edition of this, ed. by P. Costabel, J. Beaude, B. Rochot, 11 vols (Paris, Vrin, 1964-1974; reprinted Vrin 1996). Henceforth the abbreviation Œuvres de Descartes will refer indifferently to the original edition, the new edition, or the latter’s 1996 reprint.

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among others of the same rank, the same order of certitude, the same order of work, ‘nullement un homme hors pair et hors classe, un homme hors cadre, un homme à qui une soudaine méthode, brusquement apparue dans l’histoire du monde, aurait livré un secret d’infaillible et de totale certitude’ (‘in no way a man without peer, a man who is in a class of his own, second to none, a man to whom an impromptu method, appearing all of a sudden in the history of the world, had delivered the secret of infallible and total certainty’) (p.1271). Descartes’s Discours is in the same category as Bacon’s inductive tables, which never led to any discovery, nor did Bacon himself ever discover anything. Still, Descartes is different from Bacon. He did make discoveries, but not as the results of the methodological prescriptions of the Discours, nor as a ‘continuous creation’ from the Discours. Cartesian vortices are making a come-back in astronomy, celestial physics, and celestial mechanics, notes Péguy, a happy development that he hopes will spread to physics in general. Yet none of this is happening because of the Discours de la méthode, or because the idea of a vortex is clear and distinct, or even because of Cartesian physics as a whole, but because Cartesian vortices provide a better account of the phenomena and of the mathematical findings associated with those phenomena.8 Also, Cartesian vortices take us closer to reality than does Newtonian gravitational attraction or the ether (on which debate flourished among physicists in the decades prior to the composition of Péguy’s Note). Within Descartes’s own system not everything emerged from his rules of method or from the cogito ergo sum. Experience and experiment played a major role, that of coming face to face with deduction to allow a decision between two or more hypotheses from which can be deduced equally satisfactory explanations for a given phenomenon or set of phenomena (pp.1273-74). For Péguy reality is like a city under blockade. The king’s army sets off to bring support, but it will not succeed on its own unless a sortie from the city meets it and offers assistance of its own. This is where the knowledge of truth operates for Descartes, at the mid-point between man and the world, between mind and reality, at the point where the relieving army and the sortie meet. In a note within the Note, Péguy is struck by a close parallel between the Cartesian theory of scientific explanation and the Catholic theory of grace, ‘ce que nous avons le droit de nommer le mécanisme de la grâce’ (‘what we are justified in calling the mechanism of grace’) (p.1274). As experience must confront reason, so liberty must confront grace. Man is the city under siege, sin is the perfectly ordered blockade, and grace is the king’s army come to the rescue. But human liberty must sally out to join up with this army of salvation, otherwise both liberty and grace will lose, a double disaster. 8

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Péguy is probably alluding primarily to the vortex theory of solar energy of William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin), developed in the 1850s, though the vortex notion had spread to physics in general well before 1914. There were the molecular vortices or vortex atoms of William J. Macquorn Rankine (1849), Helmholtz (1858), and Thomson (1867), and in later attempts by Thomson to explain heat, gravity, and elasticity in terms of vortices in incompressible fluids. See Pierre Duhem, L’Évolution de la mécanique, suivie des « Théories de la chaleur », « Analyse de l’ouvrage de Ernst Mach: La Mécanique » (Paris: Vrin, 1992 [1st ed. 1903]), pp.169-76; Crosbie Smith and M. Norton Wise, Energy and Empire: A Biographical Study of Lord Kelvin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp.400-01, 425-44; P. M. Harman, Energy, Force, and Matter: The Conceptual Development of Nineteenth-Century Physics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp.8-10, 67.

Then Péguy quotes a lengthy excerpt from Part VI of the Discours de la méthode. This is where Descartes notes the increasing necessity and complexity of experiments the further one wants to advance knowledge of the physical world. That is the procedure he has tried to follow, beginning with a search for the general principles or first causes […] de tout ce qui est, ou qui peut être, dans le monde, sans rien considérer, pour cet effet, que Dieu seul, qui l’a créé, ni les tirer d’ailleurs que de certaines semences de vérités qui sont naturellement en nos âmes.9 ([…] of all that is or can exist in the world, without considering anything for this purpose other than God alone who has created it, nor deriving these principles from anywhere other than from certain seeds of truth which are naturally in our souls.)

After the words ‘ou qui peut être, dans le monde’, Péguy interjects shrewdly: ‘De tout ce qui est ou qui peut être, là est exactement la fissure’ (‘of all that is or can exist – that is exactly where the gap opens’). Descartes then considered the effects most immediately derived from these causes, thereby enabling him to unveil the heavens, stars, earth, water, air, fire, minerals and other material things that are the simplest and easiest to know. Then, wanting to consider more particular things, Descartes found himself confronted by so many different kinds of objects that he did not think the human mind capable of distinguishing them from an infinity of others that God could have created, except insofar as we infer causes from effects, and use a variety of experiments to achieve this end. There is nothing Descartes cannot explain using the principles he has discovered. But Nature is so complex and vast, and his principles so simple and general, that there was scarcely any effect that could not be explained in many different ways, so there was a difficulty in discovering the real path from principles to phenomena. This is where experiments come into their own, as ways of discovering the true, or at least the best, explanations. But the large number of experiments required for this purpose is much greater than the amount of money required to perform them, so progress in this domain will be in proportion to the amount of experimental investigation that can be carried out in practice. Those who have the good of mankind at heart should communicate to Descartes experiments they have already carried out, and should assist him in what remains to be done.10 Péguy sees here an opening through which the experimental – the non-deductive – can enter, like jumping off the deductive path to touch base with reality, before jumping back again to resume where one left off. A great philosophy is not one without breaches, but one that has citadels. A great philosophy is not one that has never been defeated, whereas an insignificant philosophy is always one that does not even go into battle. Descartes takes us on a strange journey, one of discontinuity, of stops and starts, of departures and arrivals, of comings and goings, of progressions and regressions. But that is no reason not to make the journey, as long as it leads somewhere, as long as there is a reward at journey’s end. A great philosophy is not one that is unchallenged, that is free from reproach, free from faults or lacunae. A great philosophy is not a dictation exercise, but one that challenges and sometimes wins, that is free from fear, that has something to say, or that has something to say 9 10

Œuvres de Descartes, VI, p.64. See Œuvres de Descartes, VI, pp.63-65.

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even if it is unable to say it. It is not a question of confusing people (that is for the scholastics), or even of convincing them. Confusing the adversary is a vulgarity in philosophy. A real philosopher knows that he is not in confrontation with his adversary, but is by his side, face to face with a greater, deeper, and more mysterious reality. If you think that a philosophical debate is a matter of convincing your adversary, of one adversary confounding the other, that shows that you do not know what you are talking about, it shows that you are incapable. It reveals lowness and barbarism, it shows that you are lacking in culture, that you don’t belong. The message of the Discours de la méthode, as Péguy reads it, is that we must advance step by step, with prudence, that the mind’s epistemological progress must be a deductive, continuous progression. The authentic Cartesian journey is an outward journey, then a return and again an outward journey. In Part II of the Discours Descartes advocates moving step by step, then in Part IV the je pense, donc je suis (‘I am thinking, therefore I am existing’) leads him to the heart of being, of the me, and of thought, and to perhaps the most astonishing leap in the history of metaphysics (no mention so far of the Méditations). Descartes thought he had ‘deduced’ the heavens, the stars, the earth. If he had never seen the heavens, perhaps he would not have found them so easy to deduce, feels Péguy, and perhaps he would never have found them. Experience confronted him only when it was a question of dealing with particular things in the world. Few physicists would dare talk so confidently about the physical world being ‘easy to know’. But then, Descartes’s programme was like an electoral programme, as Péguy has already told us, and his method was a historic moment, not because it was a good method, but because it was a method, not because it was victorious, but because it fought, not because it arrived, but because it started out. It led from the front, à la française. Descartes’s method involved provisional maxims of moral conduct that extended to the intellectual realm: the morale provisoire (Discours, Part II) regulates moral conduct, and the method regulates the conduct of the mind. You could say that everything is moral for Descartes, in the sense that the key is resolve and determination. Once determined on a course of action, you should not waver. Péguy quotes Descartes’s simile of travellers lost in a forest. They should not wander round in circles, the greatest of errors, but should set off on a straight path, even one chosen at random. At least they will arrive somewhere, where they will be better off than in the middle of the forest. So it is with both the moral life and the life of the inquirer into the secrets of nature. It is precisely because Descartes’s morale provisoire is not part of his system, because it is floating and ‘unofficial’, that it holds the secret of his thought. Thought too operates within certain constraints, one of them being that anything is better than going round in circles. Had Descartes’s method been a good one, he would not have made the scandalous claim that the heavens and earth are ‘easy to know’, comments Péguy. What is that veridical clarity that is universal and yet does not extend beyond its author, that is eternal and yet does not outlive its author? In sum, une grande philosophie n’est pas celle qui règle les questions une fois pour toutes mais celle qui les pose; […] une grande philosophie n’est point celle qui prononce, mais celle qui requiert […] Une grande philosophie n’est pas celle qui prononce des jugements définitifs, qui installe une vérité définitive. C’est celle qui introduit une inquiétude, qui ouvre un ébranlement […] et les petites philosophies,

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qui ne sont pas même des philosophies, sont celles qui font semblant de se battre […] Une grande philosophie n’est pas celle qui est le premier en composition. Ce n’est pas celle qui est le premier en dissertation. C’est dans les classes de philosophie que l’on vainc par des raisonnements. Mais la philosophie ne va pas en classes de philosophie. (pp.1282-83) ([…] a great philosophy is not the one that decides questions once and for all, but the one that asks questions; a great philosophy is not the one that pronounces, but the one that makes demands […] A great philosophy is not the one that pronounces definitive judgments, that sets up some definitive truth. It is the one that induces anxiety, that sets off a disturbance […] and small philosophies, which are not even philosophies, are the ones that just make a show of being engaged in battle […] A great philosophy is not the one that writes the best essay. It is not the one that writes the best dissertation. It is in philosophy class that reasons enable one to win through. But philosophy doesn’t attend philosophy classes.)

Nor is philosophy a court of justice. It is not a question of being right or wrong. In philosophy, it is uncouth to want to be right, even more so to want to be right in opposition to someone. It is uncouth to witness a philosophical debate – Péguy recalling Pascal, I suspect – with the idea of seeing one of the combatants being right or wrong. Let a philosophy be more thought through (délibérée), like that of Descartes, or more profound, more attentive, more pious. Or more unbounded. Tell me about a rigid philosophy, demands Péguy, or a contented philosophy. Above all, let me hear of a certain faithfulness to reality, which I prize above all else. In this ‘simple note’ Péguy does not want to get to the heart of the debate on Bergsonism. If he does get round to it some day, it will be as a Christian and as a Catholic, and though he will speak without authority, he will not speak without concord and understanding. Péguy argues that a philosophy comes in stages: a stage of method, followed by a stage of metaphysics. Every great philosophy has a first stage of method, and a second stage of metaphysics. When someone says that Platonism is a philosophy of dialectic, Cartesianism a philosophy of order, Bergonism a philosophy of the real, they are talking of all three in their stage of method. When they say that Platonism is a philosophy of the idea, Cartesianism a philosophy of substance, Bergonism a philosophy of duration, they are talking of them in their metaphysical stage. When a simple idea takes a hold, there is a revolution. The Cartesian revolution consisted in halting and reversing the slide towards the habits of disorder; the Bergsonian revolution in halting and reversing the slide towards the ready-made. Bacon reappears towards the end of the Note, and again we are told that Bacon’s rules have produced no discoveries whatsoever (p.1288). Yet the very next sentence claims that since Greek times anyone who has discovered anything has applied Bacon’s rules as a matter of course! I see no sign that Péguy is aware of the inconsistency. There are some good ideas in the Note sur M. Bergson, and some not so good. Whether or not Péguy knew much more of Descartes than the Discours de la méthode, he had sharp insights into his philosophy as a whole, and into philosophy in general. It is quite untrue that the success of Cartesianism was due to the ‘three or four lines’ of method in the Discours. Péguy does not even mention the three highly influential mathematical and scientific Essais (La Géométrie, La Dioptrique, Les Météores) to which the Discours is a prelude, and the bracketing of Descartes’s method with that of Francis Bacon betrays a misunderstanding of both. (The repeated references to Baconian method lead me to wonder if Péguy 179

thought Bacon represented the sum total of the British contribution to methodology in the three or four centuries up to 1914.) Nonetheless, the methodological parts of the Discours and the Regulae ad directionem ingenii (which Péguy does not mention) do read like manifestos. Péguy’s remarks are a prescient critique of aspects of Descartes’s methodology that have become a live issue in Descartes studies only within the past twenty years.11 Again, Péguy is right to underline the importance of experiment and experience in Descartes’s scientific work. For much of the twentieth century it was assumed, despite the evidence of the texts, that Descartes was ‘the armchair scientist’, the rationalist who disdained confronting his theories with the empirical world. Péguy, near the beginning of the century, knew how false this picture is. The pleasing simile of Descartes jumping off and back onto his deductive path to touch base with empirical reality neatly captures something characteristic of Cartesian method. On the other hand, Péguy’s castigation of Descartes’s ‘discovery’ of the heavens, as though it were literally an empirical discovery, is a deliberate misreading with a purpose. It is plain from the text that all Descartes means is that his method and his physics have revealed new ways of explaining the heavens, and in that sense have rediscovered the heavens under a new description. But Péguy’s misreading is intended to spotlight Descartes’s arrogance in claiming to explain everything according to his principles. To that extent Péguy has got it right: however heroic his undertaking, Descartes did have an enlarged sense of his ability to construct a physics of comprehensive applicability. To my mind, the most insightful passage in the Note sur M. Bergson is where Péguy writes that ‘a great philosophy is not the one that decides questions once and for all, but the one that asks questions […] not the one that pronounces definitive judgements, that sets up some definitive truth […but] the one that induces anxiety, that sets off a disturbance’, adding that ‘philosophy doesn’t attend philosophy classes.’ This is the contrast between an original philosophy and the philosophy of the curriculum. In the latter, the problems and the answers are presented in a formal way, all for good propadeutic purposes, to be sure, but a great, original philosophy disturbs the curriculum with questions and problems that may not have answers at all, but which set the agenda for the philosophies to come. An original philosophy is original not because it solves problems, though that often happens, but because it creates them in a way that contributes to the development of philosophy. To put it another way, no great philosopher, past or present, has ever solved a philosophical problem without also creating new problems of philosophical importance. The Note conjointe sur M. Descartes et la philosophie cartésienne is a continuation of the first Note. Péguy’s apparent intention had been to present an extended critical analysis of Cartesian philosophy, most likely resuming in tandem his reading of Bergson. In the Note sur M. Bergson he had recognised that he was not going into the debate on Bergson in 11

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See for example John A. Schuster, ‘Cartesian Method as Mythic Speech: A Diachronic and Structural Analysis’, in The Politics and Rhetoric of Scientific Method: Historical Studies, ed. by John A. Schuster and Richard R. Yeo (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1986), pp.33-95; John A. Schuster, ‘Whatever Should We Do with Cartesian Method? Reclaiming Descartes for the History of Science’, Essays on the Philosophy and Science of René Descartes, ed. by Stephen Voss (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp.195-223; Daniel Garber, ‘Descartes et la méthode en 1637’, in Le Discours et sa méthode: Colloque pour le 350e anniversaire du Discours de la méthode, ed. by Nicolas Grimaldi and Jean-Luc Marion, Collection Épiméthée (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1987), pp.65-87.

depth, and in the Note conjointe he says (p.1465) that he would like to write a cahier on M. Bergson et les catholiques. As Pilkington (p.90) notes, ‘The Cahier was never to be written, but much of the Note conjointe is devoted to this subject.’ The beginning of the Note conjointe is not at all promising. In the first footnote (p.1301) Péguy tells us: Je n’ai pas besoin de dire que je cite ce Descartes d’après l’édition la moins savante que j’ai pu trouver. Ce n’est pas à un vieux typographe comme moi qu’il faut venir raconter ce que c’est qu’une édition savante. (Needless to say, I am quoting Descartes here from the least scholarly edition I could find. An old typographer like me doesn’t need someone to come along and tell him what a scholarly edition is.)

Were we to take this lofty aside at face value, treating it seriously besides, we would be puzzled as to why someone who knows what a scholarly edition is should deliberately search out the worst edition of his subject’s œuvres for his purposes.12 But the remark is not to be read à la lettre. It is a gambit designed to nettle scholarly readers of Descartes, more likely scholarly readers of philosophy in general. For that reason, it risks being taken as a warning not to read any further. At any rate, we fear at the outset that the titular subjects of the Note conjointe might not be recognisable to Descartes scholars, that ‘Descartes and the Cartesian Philosophy’ might be nothing more than convenient points de départ for whatever are the themes of the remaining 195 pages. But to the extent that an old Cartesian scholar like me wants to learn something about Péguy’s views on Descartes in a Note conjointe whose very title promises something on Descartes and his philosophy, my wish is readily met. The text that Péguy finds in his unscholarly edition (which one was it?) is the same passage from Part VI of the Discours de la méthode that was the centre of attention in the Note sur M. Bergson. And he says basically the same things about it as in the Note sur M. Bergson, except that it is in the Note conjointe that we find (p.1303) Péguy’s bestknown comment on Descartes the soldier philosopher: ‘Descartes, dans l’histoire de la pensée, ce sera toujours ce cavalier français qui partit d’un si bon pas’ (‘In the history of thought, Descartes will always be that French cavalryman who set off at such a good pace’). However, in a long draft variant at the beginning of the Note conjointe Péguy repeats at greater length, and in clearer terms, the points on Descartes sketched in the Note conjointe, and gives in addition (pp.1571-76) a commentary on the preface to the Discours de la méthode and on its famous opening (‘Le bon sens est la chose du monde la mieux partagée […]’), and in which he acknowledges the Meditations, the Objections and Replies and the Passions de l’Âme, though there is still no mention of the Essais or the Regulae ad directionem ingenii. Moreover, an insightful page (p.1575) on ‘great philosophies’ develops the basic themes discussed above. Péguy makes a nice point about ‘le bon sens’. Here, at the beginning of a work designed to destroy the Schools’ monopoly on philosophy, is a term that no one fully understands, on whose meaning in Descartes’s mind there is no agreement,

12

Péguy trained as a typesetter while on leave from the École Normale Supérieure in 1895. Whether he knew what a scholarly edition is or not, at least he appreciated the importance of layout and presentation as editor of the Cahiers de la Quinzaine. See Aronowicz, op.cit., especially pp.11-24, and p.147, n.17.

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which allows for a dozen different connotations, and which, accordingly, has engendered numberless dissertations and scholastic disputations! Space allows only a brief comment on the rest of the Note conjointe, Péguy’s last work. Philosophies are contradictory among themselves; some are inconsistent within themselves. Great philosophers are explorers who discover continents: minor philosophers do not think beyond being received in solemn ceremony into the Sorbonne. Benda has visited the Cahiers’ offices in the rue de la Sorbonne and is walking with his friend Péguy down to the boulevard Saint-Germain. One friend is the only anti-Bergsonian who knows what they are talking about: the other, a student and friend of Bergson at the École Normale, is the only Bergsonian who knows what they are talking about. One of them, a philosophical critic of severe standards, and strong at mathematics, is fired with an untiring personal animosity against Bergson. The other, a good Christian, and strong in many subjects that do not end in ‘-ics’, tries to cure him of his anti-Bergsonian animosity. Only Bergson himself could mediate in this critical exchange, could evaluate the issues and make a definitive judgement. The two friends respect each other’s mind, and therefore each other’s person. They would be Kantian on this point, if they liked Kant (which they don’t), though they would like to like Kant. But Kant does not let himself be liked, and Königsberg is far away. If only Kant had been born at Weimar. And so on in this vein for a couple of pages. The two friends are melancholic, and why wouldn’t they be? Everything they love is under threat. They ask themselves if all is not lost. The French are threatened and betrayed on all sides. Our two friends know there have been only two ‘réussites’ (‘successes’) in the history of the world, the Greeks in the ancient world, the French in the modern world. They wonder where another réussite could ever come from; they know there is nowhere in the world where another réussite could ever arise. (Claims of this sort lead me to wonder how much Péguy knew or cared about the real world outside France, or about its history.) The Jewish people were, are, and always will be the race of the non-réussite. Being Jewish involves a certain fatalism from the East, coupled with resignation: being (French) Christian involves a certain revolt from the West, coupled with inconsolability and unhappiness. There are only two kinds of Jew: those consumed by Jewish anxiety who would do anything to deny it, and those consumed by Jewish anxiety who would not dream of denying it. There are only two kinds of Christian: those consumed by Christian anxiety who would do anything to deny it, and those consumed by Christian anxiety who would not dream of denying it. And so on for a dozen pages on comparative and contrasting characteristics of Jew and Christian,13 including the cartoon simplicities of ‘Le Juif sait lire. Le chrétien, le catholique ne sait pas lire […] le Juif est lettré depuis toujours, le protestant depuis Calvin, le catholique depuis Ferry’ (pp.1318, 1320) (‘The Jew can read. The Christian, the Catholic, cannot read […] the Jew has been literate always, the Protestant since Calvin, the Catholic since Ferry’). There follow many pages on race, literacy, newspapers, weights and measures, the physics of the water-drop and its metaphorical reflection in the operation of grace and morality, on Corneille’s tragedy Polyeucte, ‘la plus grande œuvre et la plus parfaite que l’on verra jamais’ (p.1335) (‘the greatest, most perfect work that one will ever see’), on the 13

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For a comprehensive account of Péguy’s sympathetic attitude towards Jews and Judaism, including Péguy as dreyfusard, see Aronowicz, op.cit.

spiritual ‘dead wood’ of the mechanical soul, on Faith, Charity, and Hope (a passing mention of Descartes and continuous creation), on Bergson’s account of time and its bearing on his rejection of determinism,14 on materialism and positivism, on philosophical and poetical genius, on Corneille’s Le Cid and the comments on the duel and on two kinds of war with which I began, on the imperial nature of the Germans and on the absence of any serious notion of liberty in Germany, on Bergsonian liberty as the only possible kind of liberty for the French, France as its only possible birthplace, and French as the only possible language for its expression, on Corneille as a modest and sincere Cartesian on the conflict between duty and passion (p.1381), and a dozen or so pages at the end on the addition of Bergson’s major works to the Index, the news of which came as Péguy was working on the Note conjointe. Many of these pages are illuminating in themselves, but Descartes has been left far behind, though the running-head title lingers on. Given the scattered insights into Descartes’s philosophy and into philosophy in general in the two Notes and elsewhere in Péguy’s shorter pieces,15 I regret (with apologies to students of Bergson) that Péguy’s commitments and obsessions had not been different. A different Péguy would not have boasted of using the least scholarly edition of Descartes he could find. The Péguy of the two Notes already had to hand Adam and Tannery, the best edition of his time and for the next sixty years. In all likelihood, a different Péguy would have used it to the great advantage of the community of Cartesian scholars.

14 15

See Pilkington, pp.91-96. See the philosophical pieces in Péguy tel qu’on l’ignore, ed. by Jean Bastaire (Paris: Gallimard, 1973).

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Michael R. Jones

The Passion of Adam von Trott: The Heroic Stance of the Foreign Minister of the German Resistance Adam von Trott zu Solz (1909-1944) was one of the civilian members of a wartime antiHitler conspiracy, known in German as ‘Der 20. Juli 1944’ and in English as ‘The July Plot’,1 which supported von Stauffenberg’s attempt to assassinate Hitler on 20 July 1944 and to take over the government of Germany by force. From 1940 Trott belonged to a group of intellectuals – in effect the central political ‘think tank’ of the plotters – which later began to meet either at the country home of Helmuth James, Graf von Moltke, at Kreisau in Silesia, hence its later designation in Gestapo files as the ‘Kreisauer Kreis’ (Kreisau Circle),2 or at the Berlin homes of Moltke, of Peter, Graf Yorck von Wartenburg, in Lichterfelde, or of Trott himself in the Rheinbabenallee. As well as aiming to end Hitler’s dictatorship and his regime of terror, the group also wanted a rapid truce with the Allies and the return of Germany to the democratic family of European nations. However, Trott’s opposition to National Socialism began much earlier. Firstly, as a private citizen, he worked tirelessly to thwart the Nazis, and later, through his position in the German Foreign Office – he was eventually appointed Legationsrat (Third Secretary) in November 1943 – Trott was able, during his twenty or so official diplomatic missions between June 1940 and July 1944, to act as a clandestine ambassador for the Resistance. He established links, sought (often successfully) to convince influential figures abroad of the genuine, substantial and reliable nature of German Resistance, and thus gained support. In all this he displayed much shrewd duplicity and personal daring, right up to the time of his arrest and subsequent death. This record of covert diplomacy has caused Trott to be dubbed by historians the ‘Außenminister des Widerstandes’ (‘the Opposition’s Foreign Minister’) (Winterhager, p.26).3 The passion which is the subject of this essay is not a fictional but a real-life one which Trott brought to everything he practised and believed in, both publicly and privately. His unstinting and absolute commitment in the service of his fellow men, which led to Trott’s death, is almost Christ-like in its selflessness and self-sacrifice. Trott exemplifies a very special kind of active and positive heroism, which led this remarkable man to devote his efforts and energies to a political cause he considered more valuable than his own life. 1

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See Roger Manvell and Heinrich Fraenkel, The July Plot. The Attempt in 1944 on Hitler’s Life, and the Men behind it (London: Bodley Head, 1964). Wilhelm Ernst Winterhager, Der Kreisauer Kreis: Porträt einer Widerstandsgruppe. Begleitband zu einer Ausstellung der Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz (Mainz: Hase & Koehler Verlag, 1985). However, Dr. Benigna von Krusenstjern (Max Planck Institut für Geschichte, Göttingen), currently writing Trott’s first full biography by a German historian, feels that this term suggests some sort of protected and official status, which Trott and other members of the Resistance engaged in similar work certainly did not enjoy. I am indebted to Dr. von Krusenstjern for this and other information.

However, the young diplomat who chose the path that eventually led to a particularly horrible kind of martyr’s death (he was hanged from a butcher’s hook in Plötzensee Prison in Berlin on 26 August 1944) was no ascetic hermit; in the private sphere he lived life to the full, exploring a wide range of intense personal relationships. Although not an author as such, Trott did make one sortie into the world of literary criticism, publishing in 1935 a critical edition of Heinrich von Kleist’s Politische und Journalistische Schriften4 which, by subtle analogy, condemned the excesses of the contemporary totalitarian state, just as in his day Kleist had attacked his personal bête noire, Napoleon. Yet Trott was certainly a man of letters in the most literal sense, his many hundreds of letters providing a rounded picture of the man and of his life. When it became clear that the July Plot had failed, one of its leading participants, Henning von Tresckow, declared: ‘Jetzt wird die ganze Welt über uns herfallen und uns beschimpfen’5 (‘Now the whole world will turn on us and make us the object of scorn and contempt’). This is what did indeed occur and commentators, particularly in Germany, have often underpinned their judgements of the conspirators with false assumptions and mistakenly negative impressions. Since much new material has come to light in recent years, historians have re-examined previous judgements of the ‘villains’ of the Third Reich. However, there is an equally pressing need also to re-assess the ‘heroes’ of the epoch, sometimes called the ‘other’, or the ‘good’ Germans,6 not only as an act of respect to the few members of the conspirators’ generation still alive, but also to the memory of those who either became victims of the hangman’s noose at the time or have died since. As Trott’s widow, Clarita, noted in her 1994 monograph on her husband’s life,7 the exigencies of political events in the two German states since 1945 have meant that the recognition accorded by German historians to those who resisted Hitler would be both muted and over-cautious. Indeed, no major work on her husband, other than her own, has so far been produced by a German.8 In contrast, Anglo-Saxon scholars have written three major biographies: Christopher Sykes’s Troubled Loyalty. A Biography of Adam von Trott zu Solz (London: Collins, 1968); Henry O. Malone’s Adam von Trott zu Solz: Werdegang eines Verschwörers 1909-1938 (Berlin: Siedler Verlag, 1986),9 and Giles MacDonogh’s A Good

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(Potsdam: Alfred Protte Verlag, reprinted Berlin: Edition Hentrich, 1995). See also Michael R. Jones, ‘Adam von Trott’s Edition of Heinrich von Kleist’s Politische und Journalistische Schriften’, in Schein und Wiederschein: Festschrift für T.J. Casey, ed. by Eoin Bourke, Róisin Ní Néill, and Michael Shields (Galway: Galway University Press, 1996), pp.117-31. Quoted in Peter Steinbach, ‘Unbewältigter Widerstand; NS-Opposition im Spannungsfeld der Nachkriegszeit’, Universitas (7 July 1989), p.629. Terms like ‘das andere Deutschland’ and ‘der gute Deutsche’ have become accepted synonyms among historians for participants in the German Opposition to Hitler. Cf. Lothar Kettenacker, Das ‘Andere Deutschland’ im Zweiten Weltkrieg: Emigration und Widerstand in internationaler Perspektive (Stuttgart: Publications of the German Historical Institute, London, no.2, 1977), and Giles MacDonogh, A Good German: Adam von Trott zu Solz (London and New York: Quartet Books, 1989). Clarita von Trott zu Solz, Adam von Trott zu Solz: Eine Lebensbeschreibung (Berlin: Schriften der Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand): henceforth Clarita. This deficiency is, however, currently being remedied by Dr. von Krusenstjer – see note 3. Originally an unpublished PhD thesis in English (University of Texas at Austin: 1980).

German, Adam von Trott zu Solz (see note 6). Each of these works, however, has its drawbacks. Sykes is negatively one-sided and his judgments have been overtaken by much new evidence. Malone stops in 1938 and, whilst MacDonogh’s study is packed with factual information, it is apologetic in tone and insufficiently perceptive to provide a rounded picture. Significant too is Diana Hubback’s unpublished account of his life between 1931 and 1940, A Memoir of Adam von Trott (1946),10 although much of the same material also appears in her autobiography, The Incense Tree.11 Of equal importance is Shiela Grant Duff’s The Parting of Ways: A Personal Account of the Thirties, which appeared in 1982.12 In addition, several other authors devote a full chapter to Trott’s memory in their own autobiographies, most notably James Graham-Murray, The Sword and the Umbrella (Isle of Man: Times Press and Anthony Gibbs and Phillips, 1964, pp.202-21); A. L. Rowse, A Cornishman Abroad (London: Jonathan Cape, 1976, pp.282-311); and Ingrid Warburg Spinelli, Erinnerungen 1910-1989 (Hamburg, 1990, pp.109-23). Nevertheless, despite the many pages already devoted to Trott, one cannot but agree wholeheartedly with Peter Steinbach, who not only laments the inability of his fellow German historians to recognise Trott’s true worth but also makes an impassioned plea, inspired by and echoing the words of the distinguished French historian Marc Bloch: ‘Habt Erbarmen und sagt uns ganz einfach, wer [...] [Trott] dann eigentlich war!’ (‘Have pity [on us] and just tell us, who [...] [Trott] really was!’) (Clarita, Introduction, p.11). Although we have a wealth of both primary and secondary material, so much about the life and character, the achievements and failures of Adam von Trott zu Solz lacks firm contours and thus requires closer investigation. It was presumably just such a sense of bafflement, accompanied by the desire to rescue a man of integrity from near oblivion, that originally prompted English and American scholars to take up the Trott cause. It is as if German scholars, while striving to do justice to their Stauffenbergs, Moltkes, Yorcks and Goerdelers, perceive Trott as essentially more of an Anglo-American concern and are content for him to remain so. This is particularly ironic in the sense that, when Trott’s undergraduate studies as a Rhodes scholar came to an end and he left Oxford in the summer of 1933 to return to Germany, many of his English friends interpreted this act as an abandonment of Anglo-Saxon principles and an acquiescence to the despised values of the new Germany. We shall return to this issue later. Trott’s origins lie in the minor ranks of the German aristocracy. His father, August Bodo Wilhelm Klemens Paul von Trott zu Solz (1855-1938), belonged to a distinguished line of soldiers and servants of the state – latterly he had been Kultursminister (Minister of Culture) in the Prussian Government. Adam von Trott zu Solz was born in Potsdam on 9 August 1909 and the family moved back to their estates in Imhausen, Hesse, in 1919. Adam’s

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Typescript copies are available in the collection of von Trott Papers held in the Library of Balliol College Oxford, and in the Julie Braun-Vogelstein Collection at the Leo Baeck Institute in New York. A German version is also listed in the Vorläufiges Verzeichnis of the Nachlaß: Adam von Trott zu Solz (Koblenz: Bundesarchiv). (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982). See especially Chapter 9 (‘Adam von Trott’). (London and Boston: Peter Owen).

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relationship with his father was typical of his generation, the same kind of kinship of ultimate values, described as absolutely normal for the time by Sebastian Haffner in his recently published autobiography, between a fundamentally conservative, decent and honest, dedicated servant-of-the-state father and a dutiful son.13 In marked contrast to this Prussian notion of service to the state, however, was the liberal, democratic tradition into which Trott was also born by virtue of his descendancy from John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the USA.14 His maternal grandmother, Anna Jay, met her husband while her father was serving as the American Ambassador in Vienna, and Adam’s mother, Eleonore von Trott zu Solz (née von Schweinitz), had strong links with the World Council of Churches in Geneva (MacDonogh, pp.12-14). In line with this intercultural tradition, Adam was placed at birth in the care of an English nanny, Louisa Barrett, who tended him until she was forced to return to England when war broke out in 1914. Through Louisa his curiosity about the English-speaking world in general was nourished as he learned the language from the earliest age. As Trott grew into adolescence he felt compelled to discover more about both the American and English approaches to life, religion and politics. After an initial semester studying law at Munich in 1927, he went to Göttingen and urged his mother to introduce him to her politically active, international circle of Christian friends (Clarita, p.42). As a result, Trott was invited to attend an international YMCA gathering at Geneva in September 1928 by Tracy Strong, the organisation’s American Secretary General. There he met and had an intensive political discussion with the leading international Dutch churchman Dr. Willem-Adolf Visser’t Hooft, whose friendship and support were to prove crucial at several decisive stages of Trott’s life. The young student was already displaying his conspicuous talent for making friends or acquaintances who could introduce him into influential national and international intellectual circles, which were a constant source of fascination for him. His love of all things American and British bore fruit when he was invited to the 1929 international conference of the Student Christian Movement of Great Britain and Ireland held in Liverpool in January 1929. As a result of this, his first visit to England, he met the English theologian and Free Churchman Dr. Selbie, who invited him to stay on as a guest at Mansfield College, a Congregational College in Oxford, though not part of the University as such (Sykes, pp.35ff.) The impression made on so many by the young Trott’s fervour for great contemporary causes and ideas was significantly aided by his outstanding degree of both physical attractiveness and personal charm. He was unusually tall at six foot four inches, dark and handsome, and numerous accounts – not only by some of the most physically attractive and intellectually vibrant women of the period, but also by many of their male counterparts – tes-

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Sebastian Haffner, Geschichte eines Deutschen: Die Erinnerungen 1914-1933 (Stuttgart and Munich: Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, 2000), pp.95ff. For details of Trott’s family background see Sykes, pp.9-23. Ingrid Warburg (op.cit., p.16) asserts that Adam always carried a small portrait of John Jay with him wherever he went. Dr. von Krusenstjern, however, believes that Warburg is mistaken and is confusing this with the fact that Trott had a portrait of Jay hanging on the wall of his home in Berlin.

tify to the magnetic qualities of his personality. Geoffrey Wilson, a friend of his Oxford days, observed: The first thing that struck anyone about Adam […] was the extraordinary charm of the man. He had attractiveness in the highest degree. It came in part from his wonderful physical presence and good looks, and in yet greater part from his enjoyable liveliness of mind – there was no turn in the talk to which he did not instantly add something, and he could often anticipate the drift of the discussion. (Sykes, p.20)

Little surprise then that, when he returned to Göttingen to continue his legal studies, Trott soon embarked on a passionate relationship with a somewhat unusual fellow student, Miriam Dyer-Bennet, a forty-year-old divorcée with five children. Trott’s biographers all describe her simply as ‘American’,15 though strictly speaking Miriam, whose maiden name was Clapp, was born in Illinois but had spent the first years of her married life in Leicester (England), before emigrating to America with husband and family in 1925. Her son Richard achieved post-war notoriety as a traditional singer and guitarist. The extant details of Mrs. Dyer-Bennet’s life are sketchy but she was clearly a woman of great emotional and intellectual strength, who for several years would serve as an emotional rock for Trott to lean on. Furthermore, she also helped him meet many who would later become leading academics and who, as students, were frequent visitors to her home (Clarita, pp.48-49; MacDonogh, pp.27-28). The very special and lasting quality of Miriam Dyer-Bennett’s brand of friendship, which Trott acquired under her tutelage, was perhaps above all its absolute nature, the unquestioned giving of one’s all in the expectation of an equal response, which was later to make such a deep impression on everyone who experienced it at first hand, especially those he met when, after gaining his Rhodes scholarship, he returned to Oxford in 1931. His intimate circle included Diana Hubback, Shiela Grant Duff, Isaiah Berlin, David Astor, Douglas Jay and A. L. Rowse. Even several decades later, the quality of these friendships shines with a unique clarity. While preparing A Noble Combat, the Letters of Shiela Grant Duff and Adam von Trott zu Solz 1932-1939,16 Klemens von Klemperer was greatly moved (p.1) by the efforts of the two correspondents to make their particular relationship into ‘the best friendship in Europe’. Similarly, Peter Steinbach (Clarita, Introduction, p.17) stresses the significance of the ‘Grundtugend’ (‘fundamental virtue’) of Adam’s many friendships, namely that of ‘Freundschaft in Treue’ (‘fidelity in friendship’). Little of the extensive correspondence between Trott and Miriam Dyer-Bennet remains,17 but the two best documented friendships, with Diana Hubback and Shiela Grant Duff, are extant, the letters between Adam and Diana preserved in the von Trott Papers at Balliol College and those between Adam and Shiela collected in the volume edited by Klemperer. The first – very special – aspect of the correspondences between Trott and these two friends is their sheer volume: the von Trott-Hubback collection contains 738 letters, whilst Shiela entrusted over 300 letters to Klemperer. Miriam, however, constitutes a constant presence through references to her, the relationship between Trott and his triangle of

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Sykes, p.46; Malone, p.46; MacDonogh, p.27. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). The Nachlaß lists only one letter from Miriam: ‘7.1.41.’ (sic). It should read ‘40’.

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correspondents being remarkably intense. The two Oxford relationships differ in both their nature and emphasis, with Diana closer to him as regards instinct, spirit and emotion, whilst Shiela presented him with a considerable intellectual challenge, equally as confidante and confessor. Miriam, on the contrary, appears to have been primarily concerned to influence his actions. The letters reveal that it was important to Trott that his female friends be minutely acquainted with his thoughts and feelings, not only concerning himself but also towards the others, both severally and in conjunction, even throughout the long periods of physical separation. Equally, this desire for full openness and trust prompted frequent reports to both Shiela and Diana on the state of his relationship with Miriam. His confessions and the invitations to the other two to advise him and frequently to judge his behaviour towards the latter, reveal both the depth of the relationship that bound them all and also the intense emotional struggle which arose as Adam sought to free himself from his emotional ties to Miriam, just as she clung tenaciously to his love right up until his visit to her hometown in the USA shortly before the outbreak of war (MacDonogh, pp.27-28). Since his relationship with Shiela involves less emotional involvement than that with Diana, he feels able to consult her more often in the role of ‘mother confessor’, as witness his revelation (19 August 1934) that Miriam has fallen in love with a ‘Scandinavian boy’ (Klemperer, p.37). Initially Trott foresees an immediate end to his relationship with Miriam. However, Shiela reminds him with gentle irony (22 August 1934; Klemperer, p.39) that his falling for Diana in Oxford so soon after parting from Miriam must have come as an equal shock to her, hinting that for all his philosophisings about the need for absolute loyalty in love, Trott should nevertheless not forget the old maxim, ‘What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander’. As well as the intense debate within the quadrangle of love and friendship, the other fascinating topic pervading the correspondence is the equally charged discussion over Trott’s desire to bring together the Anglo-Saxon world in general and Germany, internationally, diplomatically and personally (Klemperer, pp.6-10). Once he determined to return home and combat Nazism from within, Trott’s foreign correspondence clearly fulfilled a number of differing yet allied functions, at once a safety valve for the thoughts and emotions which he could not express freely in his new surroundings, and a means of justifying himself to a world he could no longer be part of, but whose loyalty and affection he desperately sought to retain. Though for Diana Adam’s politics counted less, in Shiela’s case they not only provided the core of the bond but also the substance of the disagreement which ended their relationship. In the earlier years both shared a fervent hatred of Nazism and all it represented. As Shiela visited the trouble spots of Europe between 1934 and 1939, a journalist committed to unrestrained reporting of the Fascist suppression of freedom in the Saarland, Spain, and later in Central Europe (her best known work, Europe and the Czechs, a Penguin Special, was published in 1938), she found it increasingly difficult to understand the deep game of deception which Adam was playing within the Nazi system. Like a number of Trott’s other friends from the Oxford days, she grew suspicious that he was indulging in a game of double bluff and that, for all his professed anti-Nazi convictions, his absolute loyalty to Ger-

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many meant that he would inevitably succumb to the pressures created by the apparent successes in Europe of Nazi policy.18 Like Isaiah Berlin,19 John Wheeler-Bennett (MacDonogh, p.3) and A.L. Rowse (Sykes, pp.90-91), she also failed Trott in his hour of greatest need. What the latter’s eventual choice would be in the conflict of loyalties between England and Germany was never really in doubt. On 19 October 1932 Trott had written to Diana Hubback: ‘[…] my ultimate wish and ambition [is] to be of the greatest possible political service to my country [...]’.20 Adam von Trott was neither revolutionary nor rebel; he sought to pursue conservative values based on decency, honesty and respect for one’s fellow men, but he was fascinated by the many positive aspects of conflicting ideologies such as Socialism, Christianity and Communism, and he was always eager to test his values in rigorous debate. The proving ground was provided by the sojourns in Oxford, briefly in 1929, and later during the two particularly formative years as a student of Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Balliol from 1931-33. Here he enjoyed the social ambience provided by the leading intellectuals of the day, including Isaiah Berlin, Stafford Cripps, Richard Crossmann, A.L. Rowse, and David Astor. It was also in Oxford that he first articulated to a fellow-student and friend, Pat O’Gorman, his resolve to begin a personal crusade against the evil that Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party represented (MacDonogh, p.39). Yet, although Trott abhorred the Nazis and all they represented, he could not turn his back on Germany, regarding his patriotic duty to his country as something totally distinct and separate from Nazism. As soon as he returned to Germany from Oxford, he was committing himself to a life ‘on the edge’, haunted by the knowledge that the apparatus of the Nazi state might expose his duplicity and crush him at any time. To read his letters even today is a highly emotional experience, and the responses of his correspondents are scarcely less charged. The reason for this return, the humiliation of being an emigrant, is succinctly expressed in a letter to Shiela Grant Duff of 22 July 1933 (Klemperer, p.18). But rather than taking an easy way out, Trott deliberately chose to adopt the role of the mole, who seeks to damage and discredit a political regime from within (MacDonogh, p.48). Trott was aware, even at the outset, that his stance would be misunderstood by many of his Anglo-Saxon friends and acquaintances. Soon afterwards he created further ambiguity through a letter to the editor of the Manchester Guardian (published 21 February 1934) seeking, in an uncharacteristically gauche and inopportune manner, to refute charges made in a recent Guardian article that the German legal system was actively discriminating against Jews in Hesse, where Trott had recently been undergoing his own legal training, close to the family’s estates. Inevitably, in the current politically charged atmosphere, his letter was taken beyond face value and interpreted, even by several of his friends, as an outright declaration of support for the Nazi state (MacDonogh, pp.61ff.). No sooner was the letter sent than Trott recognised his mistake and hoped it would not be printed, but this was too controversial an item to be passed over by any discerning editor. Yet, rather than constituting a declaration of faith in the German legal system, the letter is more an outburst of 18 19 20

The breakdown of her faith in Trott is movingly depicted in Grant Duff, pp.124ff. Michael Ignatieff, Isaiah Berlin: A Life (London: Chatto and Windus, 1998), pp.73ff. Document T13 in Box 1, A. v. T. to D.H, ‘The Papers of Adam von Trott zu Solz’, Balliol Collection.

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rage and frustration at what Trott regarded as the mindless vilification of Germany by elements of the British press. This highpoint of frustration exemplifies Trott’s fury at his inability to stem the tide of negative reporting which was driving the two countries he cared about most ever further asunder. Other, similar, irrational acts of desperation to which Trott was prone in moments of extreme crisis were his proposal of marriage to Shiela Grant Duff just after she had just told him she intended to marry someone else (Grant Duff, pp.96-97), and his fantasising about leaving public life and becoming a humble shepherd on the family estate, or joining the Gestapo, with the hope of subverting it from within (MacDonogh, p.59). The Guardian letter, however, provided ready material for a heated public debate during which much doubt was expressed as to Trott’s real loyalties, a debate later rehearsed again in a series of articles and letters published in Encounter (December 1968-October 1969), the chief participants being Christopher Sykes, recent author of the first biography of Trott, and David Astor. Much of Astor’s criticism stems from frustration at Sykes’s habit of praising aspects of Trott’s actions and attitudes on the one hand, yet appearing to damn them in the next breath.21 In reply, Sykes stands by his claim – which had particularly provoked Astor – ‘that Trott only reached an unequivocally anti-Nazi attitude half-way through the war’,22 thus again contradicting Astor’s assertion that it was primarily constancy of purpose which had characterised Trott’s attitude to Nazism throughout. Sykes’s stance, which has negatively affected Trott’s reputation ever since, would seem to accord with the further claim at the outset of Sykes’s contribution to the debate that Trott was the most likely candidate for the title ‘the Hamlet of the German Resistance’, by analogy with the ‘painful selfquestioning and great reluctance’23 that characterise Shakespeare’s prince. However, whilst Trott doubtless subjected himself to much soul-searching and intense debate with others about the righteousness of his actions, in his political activities he was far from being the kind of ‘ew’ger Zauderer und Säumer’ (‘eternal, indecisive, vacillator’) castigated by Ferdinand Freiligrath in his poem Hamlet (1844),24 when the poet sought to spotlight the canker of dilatoriness that was preventing the would-be German revolutionaries of the day from achieving their political aims. In fact, much evidence exists that, once Trott had resolved to devote his energies to opposing Nazism from within, he never seriously questioned this decision. In his determination to help, where possible, every victim of Nazi oppression he encountered in both private and professional life, he adopted a bold stance which often jeopardised his own position and ultimately his life. Some months after the embarrassing Guardian letter, Trott used his influence as a member of the judiciary to aid a young trainee teacher, Hans Siebert, gaoled in Kassel on suspicion of agitating on behalf of the banned Communist Party. Delegated to interrogate Siebert, Trott made several visits, during which the young patrician soon succeeded in gaining the confidence of the young Communist as they argued the pros and cons

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David Astor, ‘Why the Revolt against Hitler was Ignored’, Encounter, 32, no.6 (June 1969), pp.3-13. Christopher Sykes, ‘The Revolt against Hitler: A Reply to David Astor’, Encounter, 33, no.1 (July 1969), pp.93-94. Christopher Sykes, ‘Heroes and Suspects: The German Resistance in Perspective’, Encounter, 31, no.6 (December 1968), p.39. Ferdinand Freiligrath, Ein Glaubensbekenntnis (Mainz, 1855), p.253.

of Marxism. Each time Trott brought food and smuggled into the cell left-wing and Christian pamphlets and books from the Nazis’ proscription list, finally attempting to dupe his superiors with a report declaring Siebert a harmless idealist who represented no danger to the state and should be released. Siebert was duly liberated but proved to be a ‘loose cannon’, a mere association with whom might have brought about Trott’s immediate arrest, yet Trott greatly admired Siebert’s anti-Nazi stance and took a calculated risk in seeking to employ Siebert’s Communist connections in his own efforts to network the disparate elements that comprised the German Resistance to Hitler at the time. However, a cycle of dependency was established, whereby Siebert would fall foul of the authorities, be arrested and Trott would feel bound to intervene on his behalf. This pattern resulted, two-and-a-half years after the Kassel episode, in Siebert’s finding himself firstly in prison and then in Torgau Concentration Camp for distributing Communist literature (MacDonogh, p.81). Trott obtained his release only by vouching personally for his good behaviour. Thereupon he took Siebert to Hamburg, where he was now working, found his protégé lodgings and a job, and for a while they became close friends. A few months later Siebert moved to Berlin only to be arrested once more. Trott obtained his release and, realising that Siebert had become a dangerous embarrassment, persuaded Diana Hubback to invite him to visit her family in London, where Siebert was subsequently to stay and settle during the war years (Sykes, pp.115-18, 158-66). Trott’s fortitude was again tested in the Spring of 1935 at a time when the Jews were being subjected to an increasing reign of harassment and terror. In a gesture of solidarity, Trott’s friend Hasso von Seebach took a room with the Jewish Braun-Vogelstein family at their country villa outside Berlin. A group of local Nazis terrorised the family by breaking down fencing and trampling bushes and flowers in their garden on several succeeding nights, later intimidating the servants into denouncing individual members of the family and visitors to the house, which resulted in arrests and interrogation by the Gestapo. Trott and Seebach regularly mounted guard on the home for several days and nights. However, the SA thugs informed the local police that guns were being stored illegally at the property and a surprise raid was planned. Trott got wind of the scheme and was present, together with a senior partner in the legal firm he was working for at the time, when the search squad arrived. Fortunately, the police commander was a decent man and, and since the only weapon found was a rusty hunting rifle, together with a World War I gas mask, Trott and his friends won the day. In the following October the Braun-Vogelsteins, together with Seebach, emigrated safely to America (Sykes, pp.148-51, 158; MacDonogh, pp.74-75). Numerous incidences of decisive action, this time on the international stage, are borne out by such testimonies as J.H. van Roijen’s contribution to the Encounter debate, a letter entitled ‘Adam von Trott in Holland’.25 This details several meetings by Trott with members of the Dutch Resistance in Holland. Trott also arranged for other German members of the Resistance to travel there, paved the way for Dutch intermediaries to come to Germany, forewarned the Dutch of likely action against them, and sought to protect prominent Dutchmen who had fallen foul of the occupiers. Further proof of Trott’s courage comes from the playwright William Douglas Home, who admits to having been deeply moved 25

Encounter, 33, no.3 (September 1969), p.91.

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when witnessing Trott’s courage and diplomatic skill as he harangued senior British politicians at the home of the Astors at Cliveden on 3 June 1939.26 Trott was on a semi-official mission from the German Foreign Office to assess the mood of the British Government, but, far from merely listening, he first revealed to the Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, and his colleague Lord Lothian (later wartime UK ambassador in Washington), the innermost secrets of Hitler’s real warmongering intentions, and then proceeded to explain how best to thwart these plans, in the interests of shoring up the fragile peace. Trott advised that the British Government should offer to re-examine some provisions of the Treaty of Versailles, and be prepared, despite the provisions of the Polish Guarantee, to cede Danzig, as a last resort, to Germany, as a means of securing the borders of the so-called ‘rump Czechoslovakia’. He also divulged that the Germans were making overtures to their apparent archenemies the Russians, a piece of information which merely elicited an ‘ice-cold’ response from the Prime Minister when on 7 June Trott met Neville Chamberlain, together with William Douglas Home’s brother Lord Dunglass – later destined to be Prime Minister himself as Alec Douglas Home. After fully detailing his peace strategy to David Astor, Trott flew home to Berlin on 9 June and together with his friend Peter Bielenberg concocted, in David Astor’s words, a carefully worded and subtly loaded report, ‘of which every sentence [had the] object of trying to delay the outbreak of war’ (MacDonogh p.132). Unfortunately, circumstances were unpropitious, and Trott’s bold, last-minute attempts to prevent the start of hostilities fell on diplomatically deaf and unresponsive ears both in Germany and Britain (Douglas Home, pp.112-16; MacDonogh, pp.129-31). Fascinating though these various testimonies to Trott’s extraordinary qualities of fortitude and valour may be, the most intriguing and spine-chilling aperçus of his life come from his wartime Berlin years.27 Born in Saint Petersburg in 1917 of a noble White Russian family, ‘Missie’ Vassiltchivkov lived in several different European countries before ending up in wartime Germany. Having moved to Berlin with her sister in January 1940 to seek work, she encountered Trott that July, shortly after his marriage, at a dinner party given by his close friends Christabel28 and Peter Bielenberg. By December of the same year she was delighted to be asked to become his private secretary and general factotum at a research institute attached to the Sonderreferat Indien (India Special Department) which was largely run by Trott and his staunch friend and anti-Nazi ally, Alexander Werth. The main task of this office was to nurture the ‘Free India Centre’, whose figurehead – the escaped Indian Nationalist Subhas Chandra Bose – advocated the violent overthrow of British rule in India (Missie, p.36). From the outset she and Trott were clearly intrigued by and attracted to each other, and she admitted to her diary that ‘there is something very special about him’ (Missie, p.33). Trott’s admiration for her prompted the comment to his wife in a letter of November 1943: ‘she has something of a noble animal of legend [...] Something free that en-

26

27

28

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William Douglas Home, Half-Term Report: An Autobiography (London, New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1954). See The Berlin Diaries of Marie ‘Missie’ Vassiltchikov, edited by her brother George (London: Chatto and Windus, 1985): henceforth ‘Missie’. Christabel, a niece of Lord Northcliffe, also adds many fascinating insights into the Trott story in her autobiographical work, The Past is Myself (London: Chatto and Windus, 1968).

ables her to soar far above everything and everyone. This, of course, is a little tragic, indeed almost uncanny [...]’ (Missie, p.101). Both undoubtedly enjoyed the fact that circumstances often brought them together, and a bond of friendship ensued. Trott’s wife and young family were living outside the muchbombed capital and this allowed him to spend time mixing, on the fringes at least, with some members of the contemporary jeunesse dorée social set in Berlin. This group consisted generally of young aristocrats of both German and Central European origin, the latter from countries allied with Germany. In the face of the uncertainties of life posed by the British and American bombing raids on the one hand and vengeful Nazi watchdogs on the other, these young people sought to exemplify a motto which would appear to have read: carpe diem et noctem. Intertwined within Missie’s stories of extravagant parties, where she and her friends ‘binged’ on oysters and champagne between raids,29 are understated references to her growing awareness that, behind the scenes, a number of these same young men and women were also engaged in a deadly campaign of conspiracy against their own government. Missie paints an extremely moving picture (pp.179-80) of her constant anxiety about Trott, which bristles with tension as she, guessing at the depth of his involvement in the anti-Hitler movement, seeks to persuade him to be more circumspect in his actions and less openly sarcastic and insolent towards his superiors at the Foreign Office, especially his Nazi boss Dr. Six, whom Trott openly despised. After the drama of the days following the abortive attempt on 20 July, which led to Trott’s arrest and that of many others of her closest friends, Missie was at first devastated but then immediately threw herself into the task of locating where he was being held, visiting the prison several times in an attempt to ensure that food parcels reached him, thereby putting her own safety at great risk. Soon deciding that only an intervention at the highest level could save her friend, she attempted to persuade a leading film star, Jenny Jugo, to plead with Goebbels for Trott’s life. She arranged to meet Jugo on the film set in Potsdam-Babelsberg, but her hopes were shattered when Jugo, during a stroll in a nearby park, declared: ‘he [Goebbels] is a cruel, vicious little sadist [...whose] hatred for all those involved in the attempt on Hitler’s life is beyond belief, [...] he has a visceral loathing for all they stood for [...] he is a real sewer rat’ (Missie, p. 224). In the face of this failure, Missie still did not give up. She ran all over Berlin, attempting to mobilise help for Trott and abandoned her attempts only when she was certain he was no longer alive. Happily, after 1945, when events became clearer, a number of the friends who had wavered and doubted Trott’s integrity publicly repented and took up the cause of his memory, a good example being the autobiography of Shiela Grant Duff. Thus, after his death, the great wealth of friendship and loyalty from which Trott benefited and whose foundations had been laid mainly in the Oxford years, was proved beyond doubt to be genuine. Ultimately, however, one has to acknowledge that the most outstanding of Trott’s defenders and advocates in Britain was always David Astor, the confidant and friend he first encoun-

29

Dr. von Krusenstjern observes that there is no evidence that Trott either shared the values of this set or joined in their unrestrained round of parties.

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tered at the porter’s lodge in Balliol when both came up as freshers in 1931.30 The friendship born on that occasion inspired Astor to rush to Trott’s defence whenever any attempt was made to besmirch his name. Trott was always made most welcome by the Astors when he visited England, right up to the outbreak of the War. After the Encounter episode, Astor’s loyalty remained both vigilant and constant, a moving testimony to the lasting values of the best and most loyal kind of friendship, further and fittingly enhanced when, not long before his death, he financed and dedicated a special room in the Jowett Walk Building at Balliol College as a lasting memorial to his friend, Adam von Trott, who was in a very real sense both a hero and a man of passion.

30

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David Astor, ‘Adam von Trott: A Personal View’, in The Challenge of the Third Reich; Adam von Trott Memorial Lectures, ed. by Hedley Bull (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), p.17.

John H. Gillespie

Camus’s Passionate Heroes François Lyotard, in La Condition post-moderne,1 indicates that the era of grand narratives (grands récits) is past. We do not, or cannot, understand the world that way any longer. According to this criterion, Albert Camus is not a post-modern writer, because he is still concerned with grand narratives and the heroes they contain. Moya Longstaffe addresses the notion of heroism in the introduction to her Metamorphoses of Passion and the Heroic in French Literature, claiming that, in the second half of the twentieth century, ‘the notion of an elite of heroes has been radically discarded’.2 She quotes a passage from Camus’s La Peste (The Plague) to show that this was not a sudden occurrence: Albert Camus had already been the humane voice of the age when he indicated that the hero of La Peste should be the humble and ironically named Joseph Grand, the insignificant and self-effacing hero who has nothing but his goodness of heart to offer. (cf. above, Introduction, p.13)

Quoting Camus’s own comment on heroism: ‘Cela donnera […] à l’héroïsme la place secondaire qui doit être la sienne, juste après, et jamais avant, l’exigence généreuse du bonheur’3 (‘That will give heroism the secondary place it deserves, just after, and never before, the noble demands of happiness’), Longstaffe reminds us (p.5) that Camus’ text restates the old antithesis heroism/happiness, but still in first place comes the quality of Cornelian générosité, the nobility of spirit which distinguishes the true hero, whatever his social status, from the warlord as from the libertine.

This antithesis represents a significant tension in Camus’s thinking on heroism. She also refers (p.31) to Don Juan in Le Mythe de Sisyphe in this connection: Like Stendhal in De l’Amour (On Love), Camus chose Don Juan, in spite of his vices, as the archetype of a certain aristocratic quality of spirit. He represents the heroic code in his stubborn refusal to diminish his own gloire, to bow before death, braving even hell itself. In Le Mythe de Sisyphe he is the hero who refuses hope, who stakes his all on this present life, who risks all. His is a universe in which “la bonté cède la place à la générosité, la tendresse au silence viril, la communion au courage solitaire […]”

I want to respond by considering the Camusian heroism of which Joseph Grand (Rieux, the narrator’s, choice of hero of la Peste) is a misleading example. Understanding Camus’s heroes will help us understand Camus’s works. Crucially, for Camus, heroism is a non-redundant concept.4 1 2

3

4

François Lyotard, La Condition post-moderne (Paris: Minuit, 1979). See, for example, pp.7 and 31. Moya Longstaffe, Metamorphoses of Passion and the Heroic in French Literarure: Corneille, Stendhal, Claudel (Lewiston, Queenston, Lampeter: Edwin Mellen, 1999), p.5. Albert Camus, Théatres, récits, nouvelles, ed. by Roger Quilliot (Paris: Gallimard [Pléiade], 1962: henceforth TRN), p..331. See Longstaffe, op.cit., pp.3-5.

For some it may appear strange to consider heroism and passion in Camus. In L’Étranger (The Outsider), Meursault seems to epitomise the anti-hero – not merely unheroic but positively indifferent to the values of heroism. Indeed a strand of criticism, based upon Claude Treil’s study L’Indifférence dans l’œuvre d’Albert Camus (Montreal: Cosmos, 1971), regards Camus’s work as exemplifying indifference. Treil identifies various forms of indifference – natural, acquired, and absolute – that recur throughout Camus’s work. Clearly Camus, and his characters, particularly in his early writings, confronting the emptiness of an absurd world, react at times with indifference. However such indifference is not central to his thought. We may define a hero as someone who courageously and resolutely confronts death and danger or who sacrifices himself for an ideal or cause. Aristocratic and outstanding in spirit, he is someone to be admired and imitated. These characterisations do not appear, at first glance, to fit Camus’s characters. This impression is mistaken. I would suggest that Camus transforms the notion of heroism to fit his metaphysical stance. Just as he is considered a modern moralist, re-expressing a long-standing French tradition in the contemporary world, he depicts a modern heroism driven by passion for a cause, not for an object of romantic love. Let us consider, then, some of Camus’s heroes in the first two phases of his career: the absurd phase, presided over by Le Mythe de Sisyphe, and his phase of revolt, focused on Le Mythe de Prométhée.5 The scope of this article permits only a limited treatment, but a clear picture of heroism does emerge.

The Heroes of the Absurd The two main characters of Camus’s imaginative absurd writings, Caligula and Meursault, are initially difficult to conceive of as heroic. In Caligula, the eponymous hero acts as he does because ‘les hommes meurent et ne sont pas heureux’ (‘men die and are not happy’), so life has no meaning. Having tasted the despair of absurdity upon the death of his sister Drusilla, his incestuous lover, his mission is to exemplify the logic of the truth that all things are equivalent and to teach it to others by taking that logic to its ultimate conclusion. The illogicality of this ‘logic’ is striking. If all things are equivalent, nothing needs to be taught. If men die, they die. If they choose to ignore that fact, why not? This despotic emperor’s passion for logic drives him to irrational murder, forces the courageous Cherea to oppose him, heroically, in the name of humanity, and leads to a death which Caligula seems, finally, to be encouraging. He realises, in the second version of the play, that he has not chosen the right way.6 Passionate about the absurd, his heroism appears to be morally flawed, since his courage for the truth destroys others. Meursault, in L’Étranger (1942), has been seen as moral monster, anti-hero, absurd man, indifferent to all around him, or, by Camus in his preface to the 1954 edition, as ‘le

5 6

Albert Camus, Carnets, janvier 1942- mars 1951 (Paris: Gallimard, 1964), p.328. ‘Je n’ai pas pris la voie qu’il fallait […] Ma liberté n’est pas la bonne’ (TRN, p.108).

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seul christ que nous méritions’ (‘the only Christ we deserve’).7 Hardly a hero at all, at best a martyr. Yet a close reading provides a different picture. Meursault’s passivity and lack of emotional intensity – his laconic reaction to his mother’s death is always quoted in this regard – reflects his solitary life of simple pleasures on the margins of society surrounded by insignificant characters such as Salamano and Céleste. His expectations of life are limited and he is indifferent towards the standard preoccupations of bourgeois society – career, marriage and social success – without overtly opposing them. His catchphrase, ‘cela m’est égal’ (‘it’s all the same to me’), echoes the equivalence of all human acts championed in Caligula and outlined in Le Mythe de Sisyphe. Moreover, he alludes to a personal philosophy developed in difficult times indicating his awareness of life’s limitations and man’s impotence. He is not unhappy, and he sees no reason to change. Throughout, he takes little account of society’s expectations. He reacts incorrectly to the social cues at the ‘asile’ to demonstrate his sadness at his mother’s death, although his affection for her is clear both then and later.8 Scarcely understood by those around him, even his lover Marie, he hardly appears to understand himself, or the effect he has on others. He appears naïve, taking people at face value, and non-judgmental, seeking to relate well with those with whom he meets (even the disreputable Raymond), although he dislikes the police. His way of life suits him. If left alone, he tries to get on with all those around him. Events show that he lacks a moral sense, is self-centred and self-absorbed. Having killed the Arab, he is more taken up with having disturbed the day and feeling unhappy than with his victim. Under interrogation he shows no remorse, just frustration at being misunderstood and having a crucifix brandished over him. At the trial, society judges Mersault on the basis of these differences as the events of part one of his account are seen through its prejudices. For us, the danger is to misread Meursault as society does, or to exculpate him, as his own account seeks to do. Indifferent, strange, a moral monster, misunderstood, more sinned against than sinning – he seems anything but heroic or passionate. It is the post-verdict that is significant. Beyond his bewilderment, indifference, and amorality, he becomes self-aware. His execution confirmed, his frustrated, violent outburst at the well-meaning chaplain reveals his passion for nature and his fierce antipathy to God and established religion, distractions from its delights. Camus rightly describes Meursault’s reaction as a loss of temper, but it is an important one, for it leads to self-discovery. He becomes conscious of his attachment to the earth, to nature and its joys, and of the rightness of his actions:

Moi, j’avais l’air d’avoir les mains vides. Mais j’étais sûr de moi, sûr de tout, plus sûr que lui [the chaplain], sûr de ma vie et de cette mort qui allait venir. Oui, je n’avais que cela […] Mais du moins, je tenais cette vérité autant qu’elle me tenait. J’avais eu raison, j’avais encore raison, j’avais toujours raison […] C’était comme si j’avais attendu pendant tout le temps cette minute et cette petite aube où je serais justifié. Rien, rien n’avait d’importance et je savais bien pourquoi. Lui aussi savait pourquoi […] Que m’importaient la mort des autres, l’amour d’une mère, que m’importaient son Dieu, les vies qu’on choi-

7 8

TRN, p.1929. See Longstaffe, op.cit., p.396. See, for example, TRN, pp.1183 and 1211.

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choisit, les destins qu’on élit, puisqu’un seul destin devait m’élire moi-même et avec moi des milliards de privilégiés qui, comme lui, se disaient mes frères? Comprenait-il donc? (TRN, p.1210-11) (As for me, it looked as if I had nothing. But I was sure of myself, sure of everything, surer than he was, sure of my life and of that death that was going to come. Yes, that was all I had […] I had been right, I was still right, I was always right […] It was as if I had been waiting the whole time for this minute and this insignificant dawn when I would be justified. Nothing, nothing was important and I knew just why […] He knew why too ]…] What did the death of other people matter to me, the love of a mother, what did his God, the lives one chooses, the destinies one chooses, matter to me since only one destiny was going to choose me, and with me billions of privileged people who, like him, called themselves my brothers.)

Meursault’s anger recapitulates his previous experiences and expresses his frustration at being separated from the earth. Death, soon or distant, renders everything meaningless, of no value, or of equal value. He knows that his has been an absurd life, and is prepared to stand up for that knowledge and rage against the absurdity his previous apparent indifference was seeking to hide. His execution at dawn will be his justification. Thus he attains the Heideggerian state of Sein-zum-Tode (Being unto Death): through facing death he can understand and savour life. Cathartically purged of his frustrations with the society that will execute him and whose views he completely opposes, he is confirmed as an outsider, heroically defying society’s religious and moral conventions and protesting against its unjust condemnation. Robert Champigny famously terms him a ‘héros païen’ (‘pagan hero’).9 Deep in despair, about to be deprived of all sensual enjoyment, he feels at peace with the emptiness of the earth and thinks of his mother, understanding why she was ready to relive everything: Comme si cette grande colère m’avait purgé du mal, vidé d’espoir, devant cette nuit chargée de signes et d’étoiles, je m’ouvrais pour la première fois à la tendre indifférence du monde. De l’éprouver si pareil à moi, si fraternel enfin, j’ai senti que j’avais été heureux, et que je l’étais encore. Pour que tout soit consommé, pour que je me sente moins seul, il me restait à souhaiter qu’il y ait beaucoup de spectateurs le jour de mon exécution et qu’ils m’accueillent avec des cris de haine. (TRN, pp.1211-12) (As if that great anger had purged me of the evil, emptied me of hope, in the fact of that night laden with signs and stars, I opened myself for the first time to the tender indifference of the world. Because I felt it was so like me, so fraternal in fact, I felt that I had been happy and that I still was. So that everything would be complete, to feel less alone, the only thing I wanted was a crowd of spectators on my execution day welcoming me with cries of hatred.)

In romantic fashion he personalises words such as ‘tendre’ and ‘fraternel’, but there is no Pascalian wager for him. Instead he is defiant, a martyr wanting to challenge society at his execution. The victim of injustice, rejected and misunderstood by men, may be seen as a secular Christ, representing a truth and honesty society cannot face. Using the terminology of René Girard, he can be regarded as a ‘bouc émissaire’ (‘a scapegoat’).10 His unwilling9 10

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Robert Champigny, Sur un héros païen (Paris: Gallimard, 1959). René Girard, Le Bouc émissaire (Paris: Livre de Poche, 1982).

ness to conform reveals the fundamental violence, the ‘violence mimétique’ (‘the violence of imitation’), on which, Girard argues, society is based. Because Meursault is unwilling to follow the ‘désir mimétique’ (‘the desire to imitate’), he is destroyed. This unlikely hero shows courage in the face of both death and life. If he is an ‘homme absurde’ (‘absurd man’), it is out of a passion for life and for himself. If he is indifferent, it is the paradoxical indifference to absurdity adopted to enable him to face life. Meursault’s futile metaphysical heroism can be seen to have a moral edge, and his (and Camus’s) narrative encourages this interpretation. But, like Caligula, Mersault is a morally flawed hero. He is no spokesperson for Camus. Despite his honesty, he is devoid of moral scrupule and a killer who shows little remorse for his act, whatever its immediate cause. Society should surely fear someone who kills without reason and exhibits no feelings of guilt. Even his final passion is self-directed. During his outburst the words ‘moi’, ‘je’ and ‘mon’ (‘me’, ‘I’, ‘my’) appear 39 times out of the first 209 words. The Arab and his family are totally forgotten. The focus is on his confrontation with absurdity and religion. In a flawed world, his is a flawed response. His heroism fails to take full account of others.

Sisyphe in Le Mythe de Sisyphe Camus’s essay on the absurd, Le Mythe de Sisyphe (1942), places Caligula and Meursault in the context of metaphysical revolt. Faced with death, which renders all values equivalent and life meaninglessness, and emptiness of life, the absurd man shows a passion for life despite death and the absurd. Maintaining the confrontation between the desire for meaning and its absence by living life to the full, ‘vivre le plus’,11 is the central thrust of Camus’s thought at this time. A number of heroic figures: Don Juan (the lover), the actor, and the conqueror or adventurer, exemplify the absurd man. But Sisyphus, unveiled in the last section, embodies Camus’s argument – the absurd man’s metaphysical situation – most clearly. This lesserknown mythical hero, whose revolt against the gods brings divine punishment, is shown as both courageous and enduring. In an unjust world, Sisyphus is being punished. He is condemned, indefinitely, to roll his stone to the top of the mountain only to see it roll down again, an example of ‘le travail inutile et sans espoir’12 (‘a useless, hopeless task’). Camus approves both Sisyphus’s wisdom and banditry. Like Prometheus, Sisyphus is said to have challenged the gods for man’s benefit: and is punished for preferring earth to heaven. He relates a version of the myth in which Sisyphus returned to earth. Having once more enjoyed its delights, he wanted to return, and lived for years more before being forced back to the underworld, deprived of the earth and its passions. His love of life and of man and his hatred of the gods are why Camus calls him (Essais, p.196) ‘le héros absurde’ (‘the absurd hero’), and a passionate one:

11

12

Albert Camus, Essais, ed. by R. Quilliot and L. Faucon (Paris: Gallimard [Pléiade], 1965: henceforth Essais), p.143. Essais, p.195.

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Il l’est autant par ses passions que par son tourment. Son mépris des dieux, sa haine de la mort et sa passion pour la vie, lui ont valu ce supplice indicible où tout l’être s’emploie à ne rien achever. (Essais, p.196) (He is as much a hero in his passion as in his torment. His scorn for the gods, his hatred of death and his passion for life have brought him to this unspeakable torture where his whole being is directed at never bringing anything to completion.)

Mythical sources tell nothing of the underworld, so Camus imagines the extreme effort of body and will required to push the rock back up the slope. Camus sees Sisyphus as successful, but examines his state of mind while the stone rolls back down the mountainside. Sisyphus overcomes his despair in this hopeless situation. Camus sees him (Essais, p.196) as ‘supérieur à son destin’, adding : ‘Il est plus fort que son rocher’ (‘superior to his destiny. He is stronger than his rock’). He is a tragic hero because he is conscious of his situation without being overcome by it (Essais, p.196). He is victorious because he scorns and overcomes his destiny. Both torment and joy unite in the Oedipean judgement that ‘tout est bien’. For Camus (Essais, p.197), ‘La sagesse antique rejoint l’héroïsme moderne’ (‘ancient wisdom and modern heroism come together’). Sisyphus represents man’s destiny worked out without reference to the gods. His rock is his destiny (Essais, p.197). Death awaits him, his universe is fiercely limited, but it is his universe, without gods and with this tragic independence: Mais Sisyphe enseigne la fidélité supérieure qui nie les dieux et soulève les rochers. Lui aussi est juge que tout est bien. Cet univers désormais sans maître ne lui paraît ni stérile ni futile […] La lutte ellemême vers les sommets suffit à remplir un cœur d’homme. Il faut imaginer Sisyphe heureux. (Essais, p.198) (But Sisyphus teaches the superior faithfulness that denies the gods and lifts rocks. He too thinks that all is well […] This universe, which no longer has a master, does not seem sterile or futile to him […] The struggle to the summit is enough to fill a man’s heart. We must picture Sisyphus as happy.)

Camus’s depiction of Sisyphus, based on his imagination, shows clearly his own metaphysical views. Sisyphus is happy because he is creating his own destiny in the face of futility. He is making the absurd live13 despite the impossibility of success. Yet Sisyphus is admired and respected. His tragic fate is provided by his ‘clairvoyance’ (‘clearsightedness’); he is exemplary in his desire to live against all the odds and not to give in to the gods. He symbolises how the absurd man, the metaphysical hero, should react. For Camus it is a modern, limited victory, based on a revolt that is metaphysical, anti-theistic, individualistic and requires passionate endurance. For Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe is a passionate description of modern nihilism.14 Critics have underlined the weaknesses of Camus’s philosophical arguments and the inadequacy of his morality of equivalence.15 However, the key thrust of the essay is the 13 14 15

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‘Vivre, c’est faire vivre l’absurde’ (Essais, p.138). ‘Lettre au sujet du « Parti Pris » de Francis Ponge’, 27 janvier 1943’, in Essais, p.1666. Starting with John Cruickshank, in Albert Camus and the Literature of Revolt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959).

depiction of a certain kind of person, determined to live against logic. Sisyphus too could be deemed flawed, a criminal, a scapegoat. His heroism could be seen as scarcely enticing. But he characterises precisely Camus’s metaphysical world of passionate courage and rebellion against overwhelming forces where happiness and pride drive the hero on.

The Heroes of Revolt The pattern of passionate heroism continues in Camus’s revolt phase (beginning about 1944), where the emphasis changes from the individualism of the absurd to a concern for others. One of the most striking examples is Kaliayev.

Kaliayev in Les Justes (The Just Assassins) Kaliayev, the central figure of Les Justes (1949), is a sensitive, well-educated, middle class poet, in love with Dora Doulebov his fellow-revolutionary, ready to sacrifice himself for the cause of justice in Tsarist Russia to free the people from oppression. For him violence is an unpleasant necessity. Poetry, not bombs, is truly revolutionary. He has become a revolutionary because he loves life. He is confronted with a paradox (TRN, p.322): ‘Nous acceptons d’être criminels pour que la terre se couvre enfin d’innocents’ (‘We accept being criminals so that the earth will ultimately be filled with innocent people’). However, he cannot be sure that victory will ever come (pp.322-23). He and the other group members, led by Annenkov, are prepared to be provisionally guilty, provided that they pay for their crimes with their own lives, giving a life for a life. Kaliayev’s first attempt to kill the Grand-Duke Serge is aborted because there are children in the carriage with him. Kaliayev famously refuses (TRN, p.338) to kill children, because ‘Même dans la destruction il y a un ordre, il y a des limites’ (‘Even in destruction there is an order and there are limits’). Stepan, his fellow-revolutionary, the representative of totalitarian revolution, believes that the end – the final victory of the revolution – justifies any means, no matter how violent. There are no limits. For Kaliayev the issues are clear but the dilemmas are multiple. He loves the Russian people, repudiates bitterness and hatred, and wants to bring about a reign of justice. He loves Dora. But, by throwing the bomb and by offering a life for a life, he is killing their relationship. He refuses to kill children and yet he will kill adults. He hates violence and killing, yet he kills someone else, and effectively kills himself by seeking martyrdom. His death will inevitably precipitate the death of Dora, who wishes to throw the next bomb. Indeed his sacrifice could be seen as an escape from the moral dilemmas he faces in seeking justice through violence. Significantly, despite believing in God, he rejects his help and does not seek forgiveness. He selflessly dies for the Russian people, and does not betray the group. His passion for justice and nobility of purpose gives him the courage to complete his mission, overcoming his misgivings and the temptations to abjure and save his life provided by Skouratov and the Grand-Duchess. His self-sacrificial death causes him to be seen by some as a Christ

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figure who seeks to die for the people,16 and he uses such words himself in describing his mission (TRN, pp.323-24). Despite the contradictions in his ideas there is the same courageous confrontation of death that we saw in Meursault, this time in self-sacrifice for others for life, justice and truth. Most significantly, his desire for a new world and a new society, which rejects God and religion, places the emphasis on moral values and not on absurdity. But still, he is a flawed hero who kills for an abstraction, as Stepan is accused of doing.

Kaliayev in L’Homme révolté Les Justes was composed while Camus was writing L’Homme révolté (1951), his philosophical essay on revolution in human history and particularly the twentieth century. Kaliayev appears in this study, when Camus discusses his murder of the Grand-Duke Serge in Russia in 1905 organised by Kaliayev’s group, the Parti socialiste révolutionnaire. In Camus’s analysis, the group represents the waning of the age of martyrdom of the religion of revolution. Its members face a crucial weakness: ‘tous, sans exception, s’en remettent, contre leurs juges, à la justice d’autres hommes, encore à venir’ (‘they all commit themselves, in spite of their judges, to the justice of other men who are yet to appear’).17 They sacrifice their lives for an unknown future, which is their only transcendence, the emergence of a new church of justice and love unlike the old one that has betrayed them. The historical figure Kaliayev closely resembles the hero of Les Justes. The incident of the children, his belief in God, his unwillingness to seek the solace of religion, and his determination to die, are accurate. Camus (Essais, p.574) quotes Savinkov, the group’s leader, as saying that Kaliayev passionately desired his sacrifice. What attracted Camus to the group were their doubts and scruples. They were ‘les meurtriers délicats’ (‘the sensitive assassins’). Camus viewed the real Kaliayev (Essais, p.573) as ‘la figure la plus significative du terrorisme’ (‘the most significant figure in terrorism’). Kaliayev recognised the inevitable yet unjustified character of violence (Essais, p.575). He based his idea of sacrifice on the principle of ‘L’équivalence des vies’, which means giving a life for a life. This effectively leads to the creation of a value, that of innocence: and to affirm that reign of innocence, it is necessary to accept a certain degree of guilt (Essais, p.576). These ‘meurtriers délicats’ represent a difficult religious or metaphysical revolt. Driven on by their fraternity and a love for men, their dilemmas are only resolved, according to Camus, by their acceptance of death, which cancels out the guilt of their crimes. They protest (Essais, p.577) against ‘un monde de larmes et de sang’ (‘a world of tears and blood’). Kaliayev, as in the play, rejects the crucifix offered to him before his death. For Camus (p.578) they represent the key value of solidarity: ‘la vraie révolte est créatrice de valeurs’ (‘true revolt creates values’). The attainment of solidarity is the highest point of revolutionary activity.

16

17

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See, for example, Maurice Weyembergh, ‘Théâtre et politique chez Albert Camus’, in Albert Camus et le théâtre, ed. by Jacqueline Lévi-Valensi (Paris: Éditions IMEC, 1992), pp.45-56. Essais, p.572.

Camus is impressed by the fact that Kaliayev had doubts right to the end but still acted. That is why he was the epitome of the purity of revolt (Essais, p.579), ‘l’image la plus pure de la révolte’. In affirming a value beyond himself by giving a life for a life, Kaliayev places himself above history and triumphs over nihilism. He is heroic in incarnating the true ‘homme révolté’ (‘rebel’). He is not imprisoned by the Church, by philosophical abstraction, nor by a totalitarian revolutionary church. For Kaliayev and for Camus, man is more important than the revolution or ‘l’église des hommes’ (‘the church of men’). But there are problems for Kaliayev. His is a flawed innocence and a flawed heroism, and the passion that drives him towards solidarity is a violent and murderous one. He too becomes a scapegoat, and history has shown his faith in revolution to be misplaced.

Prométhée and L’Homme révolté The example of the Russian revolutionaries, imperfect though it may be, points towards a solution of the problem of revolution and political murder with which Camus has been grappling in L’Homme révolté. ‘La pensée de midi’ seeks to provide a middle way between the totalitarianism of an absolute God and the creation of the Marxist god of totalitarian revolution. Camus propounds a ‘pensée des limites’ (‘thought within limits’), defined by the concept of mesure (‘balance’), which occasioned considerable criticism from Camus’s opponents when the book was published.18 However it engages with Camus’s key moral dilemmas, and represents his attempt to condemn the death of morality indicated by political violence. Significantly, in advancing his case, he invokes (Essais, p.438) another mythical figure, better known than Sisyphus – Prometheus: ‘une douleureuse et noble image du Rebelle et […] le plus grand mythe de l’intelligence révoltée’ (‘a noble image of the suffering Rebel and […] the greatest myth of intelligence in revolt’. Prometheus has been mentioned before in his work. He appears in an extract from his Carnets in 1938: L’esprit révolutionnaire est tout entier dans une protestation de l’homme contre la condition de l’homme. En ce sens il est, sous des formes diverses, le seul thème éternel de l’art et de la religion. Une révolution s’accomplit toujours contre les Dieux – à commencer par celle de Prométhée. C’est une revendication de l’homme contre son destin dont tyrans et guignols bourgeois ne sont que des prétextes.19 (The revolutionary spirit is fundamentally a protest of man against his condition. In this sense it is, in many different ways, the sole eternal theme of art and religion. A revolution is always undertaken against the Gods – beginning with Prometheus’s revolution. It is a demand of man against his destiny which uses tyrants and bourgeois puppets as mere pretexts.)

18

19

The controversy began with Francis Jeanson’s article ‘Albert Camus ou l’âme révoltée’ (Les Temps Modernes, 79, mai 1952, pp.2071-90). Albert Camus, Carnets, mai 1935-février 1942 (Paris: Gallimard, 1962), février 1938, p.105.

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Throughout Camus’s career, even during his absurd phase, revolt against both divine and human injustice has been his motivation. Prometheus is evoked as the archetype of creative human revolt against the gods.20 But, in depicting the history of revolution, Camus shows that problems can arise. Even Prometheus the rebel can be led astray by the temptations of power, because men are not heroic and self-sacrificing, they are cowardly and illdisciplined. So Prometheus moves from teaching revolt to dominating men, taking on the characteristics of Zeus and Caesar. In consequence (Essais, p.647), ‘Le vrai, l’éternel Prométhée a pris maintenant le visage d’une de ses victimes’ (‘The true, eternal Prometheus has now taken on the appearance of one of his victims’). For Camus, Prometheus is an eternal hero figure for man in revolt. He is the outcast, punished by the gods. He reflects moral categories that lie outside him, are not identical with him, and are standards by which he is judged. Prometheus does not define heroism, nor does he make heroism possible, but he epitomises heroic values and the spirit of human revolt. The implication is that these heroic qualities and moral values exist and that Prometheus, and everyone else, should conform to them. These characteristics are clear: leadership but not dictatorship, liberty not servitude, justice not injustice, knowledge not gnosis, tolerance not intolerance, humility not pride, courage not cruelty, self-giving not selfglorification. Prometheus, as the hero of revolt, should recognise human evil and seek to prevent it rather than add to it. Not for him the creation of an absolutist dogma, since he is agnostic about such answers and solutions. Rather he should seek to preserve men and work for their good. However, in L’Homme révolté there is little elaboration of how societies should be organised to avoid such oppression and injustice. Camus’s analysis of the history of revolt highlights the dangers for Prometheus, the elite moral figure. Opposed on all sides, how can the hero of revolt avoid being an outcast and, if he is, how can a just social order be created? Le long silence de Prométhée devant les forces qui l’accablent crie toujours […] Coincé entre le mal humain et le destin, la terreur et l’arbitraire, il ne lui reste que sa force de révolte pour sauver du meurtre ce qui peut l’être encore, sans céder à l’orgueil du blasphème. (Essais, p.706) (Prometheus’s long silence before the forces that assail him still cries out […] Caught between human evil and destiny, terror and arbitrary power, all that remains is the strength of his rebellion to save what can be saved from murder without yielding to the pride of blasphemy.)

The same characteristics of the Camusian hero emerge – in a situation that cannot ultimately be improved – but this time the enemies are not just divine or metaphysical, but other men and forces within himself. There is torment over a long period, clear social concern, and, paradoxically, an emphasis on the individual. Prometheus is an exemplary rebel. For him murder is not an option in exercising power: ‘Prométhée a-t-il jamais eu cette face

20

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And that is traditionally how Prometheus has been seen in the history of literature. See my unpublished doctoral thesis: ‘Sacred and Profane: A Study of Prometheanism in Twentieth-Century French Literature’ (Queen’s University, Belfast, 1980).

d’ilote ou de procureur?’ (‘Has Prometheus ever had that face of a Helot or a prosecutor?’).21 Persevering and generous of spirit, he does not seek easy answers. Prometheus also appears in the essay ‘Prométhée aux Enfers’, published in L’Été (Summer) in 1954, but written in 1946 when Camus was preparing L’Homme révolté. The fears of rejection are already present (Essais, p.841): ‘si Prométhée revenait, les hommes d’aujourd’hui feraient comme les dieux d’alors: ils le cloueraient au rocher, au nom même de cet humanisme dont il est le premier symbole’ (‘if Prometheus came back, men today would do the same as the gods of yesteryear: they would nail him to the rock in the name of the humanism of which he is the most prominent symbol’). He, too, would be overcome by the voices of violence. Prometheus stands for the whole and balanced humanism that Camus outlines in more detail in L’Homme révolté, for beauty, liberty and happiness, but above all for a human justice which men must create themselves. This symbolism echoes that of Sisyphus: Au cœur le plus sombre de l’histoire, les hommes de Prométhée, sans cesser leur dur métier, garderont un regard sur la terre, et sur l’herbe inlassable. Le héros enchaîné maintient dans la foudre et le tonnerre divins sa foi tranquille en l’homme. C’est ainsi qu’il est plus dur que son rocher et plus patient que son vautour. Mieux que la révolte contre les dieux, c’est cette longue obstination qui a du sens pour nous. (Essais, p. 844) (In the darkest hours of history, Prometheus’s men, without abandoning their difficult trade, will keep one eye on the earth and on its unfailing grass. Assailed by divine thunder and lightning, the hero in chains retains his faith in man. That makes him tougher than his rock and more patient than his vulture. This lengthy stubbornness makes even more sense to us than his revolt against the gods.)

Both Sisyphus and Prometheus are rebels against the gods, the prevailing order, and are punished for it. As exceptional individuals rebelling against the injustices of society they are victims of the social rejection of ‘violence mimétique’. Camus’s heroes, passionate for justice and mesure, endure in their pride, stubbornness, and aristocratic generosity of spirit, happy to be contending for man. But they remain individuals who point to the values of humanism, yet who fail to exemplify this balanced life since their individualism and générosité come into conflict. This brief overview of Camus’s heroes shows that, while he begins with the absurd, he rebels heroically against it from the start. An early entry in his notebooks states that death gives heroism meaning.22 ‘La mort qui donne au jeu et à l’héroïsme son vrai sens’. Another entry (p.23) related to his composition of the first version of L’Étranger, La Mort heureuse, provides a diagram of his thought with the comment, ‘Au fond les valeurs héroïques’ (‘The values of heroism are the foundation’). Revolt underlines the importance of Camus’s heroes. Despite the inadequacy of Camus’s arguments on absurdity or the limitations of his ‘pensée de midi’, the source of his values of the absurd and of revolt is more significant. His heroes provide the answer. The key move in Camus’s thought is a heroic one, a leap of faith in man against all the odds.

21 22

Essais, p.703. Carnets, mai 1935-février 1942, p.29.

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Faced with meaninglessness, death, an unjust universe, God or gods, he leaps because of a deep love for life. It is the biological will to live, to survive, in freedom. This fundamental, heroic choice makes man the key value. From it flow the values of Camus’s humanistic values – love, justice, honesty, and solidarity, justified by this heroic rebellion not by philosophical argument. Camus’s heroes are engaged in a passionate struggle in a metaphysical and moral, philosophical and political context. Their struggle against the universe, the fact of death, and the impossibility of lasting meaning is the ongoing ‘grand narrative’ in Camus. His mythical heroes, Sisyphus and Prometheus, rebel against the gods and provide the paradoxical anti-theistic context for the Camusian hero. Sisyphus and Prometheus are punished and suffer, but continue courageously. Whether Camus is considering individual or social concerns, his heroic stance does not alter. The human heroes, Meursault and Kaliayev, fit into the same context. They rebel against society, reject God and also suffer. Camus’s heroes are not merely insignificant figures like Joseph Grand. They exhibit qualities of courage, aristocracy of spirit, and self-sacrifice. However, they call into question the values of love, justice, honesty, and solidarity, because of their moral flaws. Although they have many positive qualities, they do not always relate well to others. Society’s attitude towards those heroes, because they are exceptional, and go against received values, even though it be for good, leads to their death or rejection. They become scapegoats. However, given their limitations and faults, it is easy to see why this should be so. This heroism poses unresolved difficulties, for, behind these morally flawed heroes, Camus suggests an exemplary figure who embodies his key values, based on this continuing act of rebellion. It is against this notional heroic figure that the inadequacies of his flawed heroes are judged. But he is unable to depict such a hero in his writings or to resolve the tensions between the individual and society. His later works, L’Exil et le royaume (The Exile and the Kingdom) and La Chute (The Fall), depict sympathetic, unheroic characters struggling with guilt and the fact of being alive. The key problem remains unresolved. How can a philosophy based on an individualistic heroic stance against the universe, on values derived from being alive, be a humanism espoused by everyone? If rebelling against the absurd requires such heroic passion and fortitude, how can all men share it?

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Gerald M. Macklin

(Un)Sung Heroes in the Drama of Samuel Beckett: Oh les beaux jours, La Dernière bande, Quad

Quand on est dans la merde jusqu’au cou, il ne reste plus qu’à chanter. (Samuel Beckett)

Beckett called Winnie, the central figure in Oh les beaux jours, ‘a mess’ but ‘an organised mess’, going on to add that she was more ‘unaware’ than ‘stoic’.1 Nevertheless, the creator of this unforgettable female character, gradually being buried alive in sand and yet straining to find meaning and joy in every remaining moment of her absurd existence, is clearly much impressed by her resilience. Winnie encapsulates that human quality which defies definition and yet permits us to go on in the face of the most horrible adversities, a quality that Beckett himself referred to in his recently published correspondence with his American director and collaborator Alan Schneider. Upon learning of the death of Schneider’s father after a protracted illness, Beckett writes back to commiserate but does so in a most striking manner: I know your sorrow and I know that for the likes of us there is no ease for the heart to be had from words or reason and that in the very assurance of sorrow’s fading there is more sorrow. So I offer you only my deeply affectionate and compassionate thoughts and wish for you only that the strange thing may never fail you, whatever it is, that gives us the strength to live on and on with our wounds.2

In this movingly brief letter to a friend and colleague at a time of bereavement, Beckett affords us a fascinating insight into his unceasing preoccupation with how we live, how we persist in spite of pain and loss and how we inexplicably manage to contend with an existence beset with inevitable defeat. It is not being simplistic to suggest that all of his drama, for stage, radio and television, engages with these recurring concerns but in an infinite variety of re-presentations. It is our purpose here to examine how the Beckettian protagonist perseveres and there can be no better starting-point than Winnie herself. ‘Blessed are the optimists, for they shall be buried alive’3 is A. Alvarez’s amusing summation of the meaning of Oh les beaux jours. It is indeed tempting simply to laugh at Winnie’s pointless persistence, at the ironic discrepancy between her predicament and her resolute endeavours to remain cheerily positive. Given not only her physical entrapment but equally the abject nature of her relationship with the almost totally passive Willie and her increasingly desperate attempts to stave off the ravages of anno domini, Winnie might easily be seen as a rather ridiculous figure caught somewhere between bathos and pathos. Nevertheless, this would be to ignore the import of Beckett’s words to Schneider about the ineffable something that keeps one going on and also the infinite compassion with which 1 2

3

See Enoch Brater, Why Beckett (London: Thames and Hudson, 1989), p.102. No Author Better Served: The Correspondence of Samuel Beckett and Alan Schneider, ed. by Maurice Harmon (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press, 1998), p.142. A. Alvarez, Beckett (Glasgow: Fontana/Collins, 1978), p.111.

Beckett views his own characters. For Winnie represents, in extremis, all of us as we strive in different ways and at different times to come to terms with what, objectively, seem insurmountable odds. If we accept this premise, then the real interest lies in the minutiae of Winnie’s daily struggle and the tricks and stratagems that she employs to sustain her campaign. Beckettian heroism is seen in the apparent trivialities of the repeated struggle of the Winnies of this world and, as such, it is very much an ‘unsung’ heroism in the sense that it is so frequently not publicised or noticed. From the moment that she announces: ‘Encore une journée divine’4 (‘Another heavenly day’) at the start of the play, Winnie’s smallest actions and pronouncements take on a heroic significance, albeit one that is easily passed over. The act of brushing her teeth – the first in a long sequence of repeated, mechanistic activities – represents her opening gambit in the daily battle to fill time and to overcome silence. In this sense, it could be argued that Beckett’s protagonists are ‘masked’ figures, the mask constantly slipping but constantly being put back in place in their endless pursuit of self-delusion and self-anaesthetisation. Of course, despite Willie’s physical presence at the back of the mound, Winnie is essentially alone and one cannot help feeling that Beckett shared Baudelaire’s sense of the inevitable loneliness of human existence. For all the pairing off and coupling in his drama, the individual remains ineluctably solitary and conscious of that solitude. ‘Le vrai héros s’amuse tout seul’5 perfectly characterises Winnie, Krapp, the old lady in Berceuse, the disembodied Mouth in Pas moi, Henry in Cendres, May in Pas and many others in Beckett’s drama. While Winnie is conscious of her decline (she realises that her sight is less good than it was, for example), she manages miraculously to prevent herself from succumbing to the despair that such a realisation should logically entail. Beckett constantly marvelled at the human propensity for continuing in the face of overwhelming difficulty and it is a recurring feature of his drama that it examines and celebrates this courage, stoicism and patience. The very image that the play presents to us, that of a female body being sucked into sand, might well be construed as a representation of the ravages of Time6 and, given that Winnie is so proud of her own appearance, it might not be excessive to suggest a connection between her ‘hour-glass’ figure (now fading) and the hour-glass itself measuring out time as the sand filters from top to bottom. Like all of Beckett’s protagonists, Winnie finds herself caught up in the immutable and disturbing laws of human life, but the interest in Oh les beaux jours is in observing how she deals with her predicament. So many details of her comportment spring to mind as evidence of her irreducible fortitude. Her headaches are dismissed as minor and trivial; her prayerful routine is adhered to not just as a time-filler but also with the slender hope that some divine being might hear the supplications; the tired, vacuous and disappointing marriage to Willie is exalted in all its little mundanities as a relationship with some value; and the inescapable isolation is miti4

5

6

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Samuel Beckett, Oh les beaux jours (Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1974), p.12. All references to the play will be to this edition. All translations of quotations from the plays are from the English versions Happy Days and Krapp’s Last Tape. In Mon cœur mis à nu (Baudelaire, Œuvres complètes 1, ed. by Claude Pichois, Paris: Gallimard [Pléiade], 1975, p.682). Beckett refers to ‘the Time cancer’ in Proust. See Samuel Beckett, Proust and Three Dialogues with George Duthuit (London: John Calder, 1999), p.18.

gated by the habit of talking to herself, urging herself to go on, chiding herself for her moments of weakness. In this protracted exercise in the search for minor consolations, nothing is as invaluable to Winnie as her handbag which becomes a veritable bag of tricks into which she regularly dips to bring out some further object that might distract her or provide succour and relief. The infinite resourcefulness of the Beckettian hero is unmissable here, that facility for making something out of nothing that is seen in Vladimir and Estragon in En attendant Godot, in Krapp in La Dernière bande, in Joe in Dis Joe and in so many other protagonists. Of course, Winnie is particularly reassured by the revolver, affectionately known as Brownie and treated almost like a pet or surrogate child to make up for the obvious sexual frustration and infertility inherent in the union with Willie. Converting negatives into positives enables her to come up with her refrains such as: ‘Oh le beau jour encore que ça va être!’ (p.20) (‘Oh this is going to be another happy day!’) and ‘dois pas me plaindre’ (p.16) (‘musn’t complain’), and to find satisfaction in the brief snatches of dialogue with Willie. Fortitude, perseverance, solitary resistance – these are all heroic qualities regularly evinced in Oh les beaux jours and throughout the Beckett canon of prose and drama. Yet, significantly, Beckett finds his heroes in the ordinary man and woman, in those who unobtrusively go about their daily routine in all its horror and suffering with understated resilience and determination. Thus, one function of his drama is quietly and indirectly to sing the praises of these ‘unsung’ heroes. Poignantly, there is no need for him to seek out extraordinary exploits performed by larger than life characters since the very fact of being alive, continuing to stay alive and contending with life’s traumas is inherently, ineluctably, heroic. Winnie’s case also shows the Beckettian predilection for dealing with characters who are handicapped. One is familiar with the blind, the dumb, the crippled, and so on as important constituents of his imaginative population but, in a very real sense, he seems to feel that life ultimately and inevitably handicaps us all. Thus Winnie’s entrapment in the sand represents disability (perhaps paralysis, although there is no need to be as specific as this) as does Willie’s near immobilisation behind the mound. It has been pointed out that Beckett favours characters who are essentially over the hill (‘la crête de la vague’)7 (‘crest of the wave’), and his preoccupation with ageing is explicable in terms of how advancing years inevitably rob us of our best physical and mental powers. As life grows more testing with the passage of time, so logically the heroic effort needed to keep going increases and this explains why both En attendant Godot and Oh les beaux jours are in two acts. In both plays the circumstances of the protagonists grow ever more dire and, in Winnie’s case, this is seen dramatically when Act Two reveals her to be buried no longer up to her waist but up to her neck. Beckett has remarked: ‘Quand on est dans la merde jusqu’au cou, il ne reste plus qu’à chanter’ (‘When you are up to your neck in shit, all you can do is sing’), an observation which has a virtually literal application in Oh les beaux jours. Just as, at the start of the second act of En attendant Godot, Vladimir finds himself alone and tries to alleviate his angst 7

See La Dernière bande suivi de Cendres (Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1959), p.14. All references to the play will be to this edition.

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by singing a simple song about a dog – an apparently nonsensical song which becomes a commentary on the theme of death – so in the second act of Oh les beaux jours Winnie eventually resorts to music and song. Beckett criticism has become increasingly aware in recent years of the importance of music in his dramatic œuvre and in 1999 a radio programme was devoted to this very subject.8 It is as if the written or spoken word ultimately proves inadequate in Beckett to register the experiences of the heart and mind and so his protagonists are found frequently to resort to music for consolation, distraction and alleviation. After her interminable prattling, her preoccupation with what is written on the toothbrush, the skirmishes with Willie, the rummaging in the handbag and the reflections on its contents and the story that she tells in Act Two, Winnie ultimately (p.38) comes to her song as the supreme commentary on her plight: ‘Et cependant il est encore un peu tôt, sans doute, pour ma chanson. Chanter trop tôt est une grave erreur, je trouve’ (‘And yet it is perhaps a little soon for my song. To sing too soon is a great mistake, I find’). This shows a totally conscious adoption of music and song and so it becomes possible for us to see Winnie as both an ‘unsung’ and a ‘sung’ heroine. Her travails may go unnoticed by the wider world (the male in the Piper/Cooker couple who stop to observe her seems very unsympathetic) but equally she appears compelled to give voice to her anguish in a song that is so much more than another pastime. Late in the first act, Winnie brings a music-box out of her bag, the music being the Heure exquise waltz from The Merry Widow. It is clear that she relishes this piece, that it affords her consolation and relief, and that it has at least as much significance in her daily routine as the prayer. In fact, right at the end of Act One, we see that she considers the prayer as a substitute for the song on the days when musical inspiration will not come. It is at the end of Act Two that we gain further insight into this phenomenon. It needs to be borne closely in mind that the audience are now looking at one of Beckett’s many disembodied heads:9 Winnie’s mobility is now so drastically reduced that many of her previous options are no longer available to her – rummaging in the bag, the parasol, putting on make-up, swivelling to look at Willie, and so on. The effect of the disembodied head is to compel us to focus on the face of a human being in extremis, of one well past her prime and reduced to the abject humiliation of disability, the ageing process, and imminent death, for we know only too well that, if there were to be a third act in Oh les beaux jours, Winnie would have disappeared, buried alive under the sand. Winnie has now lost a great deal of her previous energy, élan and enthusiasm. She still goes through the motions of her daily routine, still talks to herself, still clings to the vestiges of some order or system. Yet, the overwhelming impression now is of debilitation and abandonment and there is an ironic discrepancy between her words and her abject condition. It is clear that she is endeavouring to bring her day to a climax with song, an effort which coincides with Willie’s laborious and ambiguous struggle to climb up to Winnie at the front of the mound. It is noticeable

8 9

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Ill Seen Ill Sung, broadcast by BBC Radio 3 on 5 September 1999. The most famous example of Beckett’s predilection for the disembodied head is perhaps Pas moi, where we see a mouth in isolation from all other parts of the body. James Knowlson reveals that Beckett informed him that Pas moi was inspired by Caravaggio’s Decollation of St John the Baptist. See Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), p.588.

that his putative gallantry is met with bitter and caustic comments from Winnie which seem to sum up the inveterate deficiencies in their relationship. Eventually, she sings her song: Heure exquise Qui nous grise Lentement, La caresse, La promesse Du moment, L’ineffable étreinte De nos désirs fous, Tout dit, Gardez-moi Puisque je suis à vous. (pp.76-77) (Though I say not What I may not Let you hear, Yet the swaying Dance is saying, Love me dear! Every touch of fingers, Tells me what I know, Say for you, It’s true, it’s true, You love me so!)

It is as if Winnie’s pain, loss and disappointment can only be expressed musically since language is inadequate to do justice to her emotions. Winnie is metaphorically ‘dans la merde’, even if literally being sucked into sand, and the only valid response is to sing. In a way, this is analogous to Ionesco’s sense of the world as a bad joke played upon humanity by a malevolent god with the only proper reaction to being the victim of a joke coming in the ability to laugh at it oneself.10 However, there is more to Winnie’s song than a refusal to admit defeat, for there is something particularly noble about this little song – as if, notwithstanding her ordinariness and the unobserved tragedy of her plight, she becomes her own advocate and literally a ‘sung’ heroine. The dislocation between the sung themes of intense love, romantic promises, passionate embraces and the well catalogued romantic and sexual frustrations of the Willie/Winnie partnership renders these final moments even more poignant. Finally, the use of the word ‘ineffable’ is particularly appropriate for a dramatist whose entire career has involved a movement from words towards silence, a development which can also be seen to be that of Winnie as she moves from garrulous despair towards the silence of her burial in the sand.11 Turning to La Dernière bande, one sees a decrepit protagonist who gives himself the illusion that he can control Time by resorting to a catalogue of tapes upon which his life is recorded. Physically, Krapp represents all the ravages of old age, with the added burden of

10 11

Ionesco expounded this idea in 1989, in the BBC 2 Arena programme, The Joke’s On Us. This is the waltz duet from Franz Lehar’s The Merry Widow, and it makes for a telling commentary on this final image of Winnie and Willie.

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solitude compelling him to populate his empty room with the ghosts of his past selves. Thus, we have Krapp at sixty-nine recalling himself at thirty-nine, while the thirty-nineyear-old harks back to the Krapp of twenty-seven or twenty-nine. As his name indicates, we are here confronted with another character ‘dans la merde’ and, once again, it is fascinating to witness the behavioural pattern of this victim of time. He has the same kind of compulsive routine observance as Winnie, this again involving a heavy reliance upon objects such as bananas and bottles and keys, with the tape-recorder and the boxes of tapes representing the elements upon which he constructs his daily rituals. Early in the play, however, the mask slips as he stares vacantly in front of him with a banana in his mouth. This reveals starkly the consternation of one who can make no sense of himself or of reality, but Krapp quickly immerses himself in the process of selecting and listening to preferred tapes. One notes at a very early stage that, when he talks to himself about the tapes, Krapp evidently relishes language and especially the musical properties of words such as ‘Bobiiine!’.12 This tattered old man displays a musical and poetic sensibility which will find expression in many other moments in the play. When the tape plays the voice of the thirtynine-year-old Krapp, we hear this intriguing sequence: Extraordinaire silence ce soir, je tends l’oreille et n’entends pas un souffle. La vieille Miss McGlome chante toujours à cette heure-ci. Mais pas ce soir. Des chansons du temps où elle était jeune fille, ditelle. […] (Pause.) Est-ce que je chanterai quand j’aurai son âge, si jamais j’ai son âge? Non. (Pause.) Est-ce que je chantais quand j’étais jeune garçon? Non. (Pause.) Est-ce que j’ai jamais chanté? Non. (pp.15-16) (Extraordinary silence this evening, I strain my ears and do not hear a sound. Old Miss McGlome always sings at this hour. But not tonight. Songs of her girlhood, she says. […] (Pause) Shall I sing when I am her age, if I ever am? No. (Pause) Did I sing as a boy? No. (Pause.) Did I ever sing? No.)

Here song seems to have positive associations, which ties in with the theme implicit throughout La Dernière bande of a lost youth, of a golden era that must have existed at some time in Krapp’s past and is now a poignant counterpoint to the decay of his condition as an elderly man. Songs sung in celebration of youth are what Miss McGlome produces, but Krapp seems sure that he will never be able to sing like her and that he never sang himself in his youth. There is a certain romanticism in the thematics of the play at this point and we know that Beckett, as well as being attracted to the formal qualities of certain classical composers, was equally seduced by the romantic power of music. Krapp here clearly regrets that his spoken words, stored permanently on tape, might never attain the status of the sung lyric. His is an ‘unsung’ diary and he, literally, an ‘unsung’ hero at this point. Admittedly, Krapp listens to his recordings in a very fragmentary way, with frequent breaks for reflection or another banana or another drink. Equally, he often rewinds the tape to a particular moment, but it is striking that after hearing the thirty-nine-year-old ask if he will ever sing like Miss McGlome when he is an old man, we then hear the sixty-nine-yearold sing during one of these breaks. As ever in Beckett, the song acts as a commentary on the meaning of the play: 12

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p.11. It is interesting to note this sensitivity on the part of Krapp to the musical potential of words, since it is clearly linked to the desire to sing, which will find expression on two occasions.

L’ombre descend de nos montagnes, L’azur du ciel va se ternir, Le bruit se tait – (p.18) (Now the day is over, Night is drawing nigh-igh, Shadows – )

The lyrics speak of darkness and silence, of day coming to an end, a clear parallel with Krapp’s advancing old age and his sense of impending death. Yet his cough prevents his continuing the song and he returns to listen to his tape once more. Interestingly, the thematic continuity is sustained as the recorded voice talks about the slow death of Krapp’s own mother and, the more one looks at the structure of this part of the play, the more one becomes aware that Beckett has conceived of this and other works in musical terms. As a director of his own plays, he strongly resembles a composer driving onwards towards the most satisfying orchestration of all the notations that go to make up the musical and poetic tonality of his dramas (cf. Brater, pp.56-77). In this connection the vast number of pauses that are encountered in this play – and they are equally numerous in En attendant Godot and Oh les beaux jours – have a crucial role in the musical texture of the work. Even if Krapp is not actually singing, the texture of his recorded delivery is the very antithesis of the prosaic since these countless little silences are like a notation that creates many subtle cadences and rhythms in the spoken word. The final phase in this play comes with Krapp deciding to make another tape from the vantage point this time of the sixty-nine-year-old. He records his incredulity at the thirtynine-year-old version of himself to whom he has just been listening, registers his fascination with the word ‘bobine!’, announces that he has sold seventeen copies of his book, recounts the squalid sexual encounters with old Fanny and notes how the reading of Effie Briest never fails to move him to tears. But, significantly, he comes back to the hymn heard at a visit to Vespers, the same one that he gave us a fragment of a little earlier: L’ombre descend de nos montagnes, L’azur du ciel va se ternir, Le bruit se tait – (Accès de toux. Presque inaudible) – dans nos campagnes, En paix bientôt tout va dormir. (p.30) (Now the day is over, Night is drawing nigh-igh, Shadows – (coughing, then almost inaudible) – of the evening Steal across the sky.)

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As well as reinforcing the themes of death, closure and silence, this reprise fills out the fragment heard earlier and, in connection with Winnie’s closing song in Oh les beaux jours, seems to suggest that the Beckettian hero has a proclivity for a swan song, as he/she approaches death. His voice becomes almost inaudible and the song is then linked to a period of reflection on the desire to be again, to live his youth once more – as if one life were not enough for Krapp or any of us. The beauty and ambiguity of his expression of the need to live again and his equally pressing desire to have done with life for good and all are central to any proper appreciation of La Dernière bande. One cannot but be moved by Krapp’s lyrical evocation of holly-collecting on Christmas eve or Sunday mornings on Croghan walking the dog in the mist and listening to the church bells. These are moments from a generally unpalatable, lonely and unfulfilling existence but perhaps even these few moments have rendered that life meaningful on some level and perhaps they are enough to make Krapp wish for a second existence. And yet this wistful lyricism is but one of Krapp’s voices and it is swallowed up in the sneering cynicism of the continuing recording as he pours scorn on a desire to live again13 by acidly commenting that one journey through ‘toute cette vieille misère’ (‘all that old misery’) should have been enough for Krapp and, by implication, for all of us. Yet the ambiguity of the thought processes of the sixty-nine-year-old Krapp is underlined when he abruptly curtails the making of this tape and throws it away so as to be able to listen yet again to the old recording of the story of the boating trip with his woman friend. It is interesting to note that the words: ‘J’ai dit encore que ça me semblait sans espoir et pas la peine de continuer’ (p.31) (‘I said again I thought it was hopeless and no good going on’) can apply both to the dying of their romance, which they contradictorily continue despite their both agreeing that the relationship is pointless, and to the whole question of going on with life. Krapp, like so many Beckett heroes and heroines, has persisted with his life – unnoticed, ‘unsung’, and unable finally to bring to a close an existence that objectively has little value. Even now, in the twilight of his years, he advances painfully into another evening, another day, another year and, by relentlessly excavating his collection of recordings, is still capable of finding some morsels of significance and pleasure in his past. That Beckett should return to the exquisite poetry of this passage so very near to the end of the play is surely indicative of his and Krapp’s sense that only art, words, and music can give us some compensation in the face of all the pain and distress that existence entails. The sunlight, the play of light and shade, the experience of penetration of another being, the slow drifting in among the reeds, the near silence of the moment punctuated with the music of the wind sighing through the reeds and the motionless couple swayed gently by the rhythms of the water – all of these elements combine to form a description of a highly privileged experience which stands out in relief from the squalid, lonely and generally ugly picture of Krapp that the play evokes.

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In Worstward Ho (London: John Calder, 1999, p.7), Beckett writes: ‘Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better’. This once again points to that obdurate refusal to give in, that persistence and resolve which is dramatised so often in his work – even if there is a rather bitter irony and ambiguity in the injunction ‘Fail better’.

Ironically, this same recording which registers the sublime silence surrounding this encounter goes on to conclude with a prosaic labelling of the narrative as tape three and spool five. In conclusion, the thirty-nine-year-old Krapp tells us that his best years may be behind him and that there is no further chance of happiness. He emphatically states that he would not wish to have his best years again and we imagine that ‘ce feu en moi’ (p.33) (‘the fire in me now’) is the burning desire to be dead and gone. How moving then that La Dernière bande should dramatise an evening thirty years in the future when the aged Krapp is seen still replaying the past, still living on and still wrestling with the insoluble dilemma of whether to cling to life or to die. Like Winnie, Krapp is a dramatic incarnation of human solitude and of the unacclaimed heroism of each individual as he or she battles on. At the same time, the play is another fascinating instance of the importance of music and song in Beckett’s drama and illustrates once more how the human story in his work ultimately becomes a musicalised and sung tragedy. The two examples considered thus far are taken from the early and better known period of Beckett’s dramatic canon. However, since it is acknowledged that Beckett found an infinite variety of ways of saying substantially the same things, we shall take our third and final illustration from the other end of his career. The piece entitled Quad might initially seem to represent a strange choice, in that it has generally been thought of as a highly enigmatic work, it contains no dialogue, and it has been seen by no less a Beckett authority than Martin Esslin as a piece of experimentation that only Beckett might have essayed. Four players march around an illuminated quadrangle, each of similar stature, similarly attired, and each associated with a particular colour and type of percussion. At times we have only one player on stage, at others two or three or four, and this arrangement clearly serves Beckett’s fascination with numerical patterns and permutations. We have individuals, various couples, threesomes and one foursome. Outside of the quad is darkness, at its centre a point that each player strenuously endeavours to avoid and, in a second phase of the piece, entitled Quad 2, the players lose their colour and are reduced to the uniformity of black and white. There is really little else of a factual nature to report about the work. So what are we to make of this bizarre presentation? Certainly, one recognises a number of familiar Beckettian elements – the walking carried out in a ritualistic manner, the obsession with numerical systems and permutations, the rapprochement so evident in many of the later dramatic works between the world of drama and the world of modern art.14 Nevertheless, we have moved away considerably from the babbling of Winnie trapped in the sand and the reflections of Krapp poring over his tapes in seclusion in his den. By comparison with Quad, one might feel, Oh les beaux jours and La Dernière bande seem to be quite accessible. With Quad we have a minimalist drama, a piece that in some ways is representative of the Beckett ‘shorts’ which are so enigmatic and poetic and which signify an artistic process in

14

Knowlson has persuasively shown Beckett’s interest in the work of the Old Masters and how classical paintings have influenced his plays. This interest in tableaux is further suggested by Joe’s face framed in the TV screen in Dis Joe. The bags in Acte sans paroles 2 and the figures in Quad in their gowns and cowls might be to some extent suggestive of forms of more modern abstract art, and the heads protruding from the urns in Comédie certainly have a surreal quality. The protagonist in Catastrophe is worked upon as if he were a work of art, a painting or a sculpture in progress.

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reduction and attenuation as it moves towards silence and nothingness. Over twenty years separate it from the other plays assessed in this study and, of course, it also differs from them in its lack of language and dialogue. Here we have a very visual piece and this reminds us of the highly visual quality of so many of Beckett’s shorter dramas – from Dis Joe to Pas moi and from Berceuse to Ghost Trio. The fact that the players are anonymous, not designated by name or sex or physical characteristics, is significant. There is a certain anonymity about many of Beckett’s characters and this is why we may think of them as ‘unsung’ heroes. Could Beckett be evoking in Quad the mass of anonymous humanity, whether male or female, who make their trek through life’s journey, relying on habit and ritual and with heads bowed as they face insuperable odds? This foursome do not speak or complain but are seen simply to continue, albeit with suggestions of fear and then a deceleration. It is noticeable that Beckett, in his instructions for productions of Quad, should indicate that the repeat begins without interruption and that it should ‘fade out on 1 pacing alone’.15 This might suggest that he is returning to the theme of solitude and that, although there is company of sorts in Quad in terms of couples and larger groupings, the ultimate reality remains the same as that confronted by Winnie and Krapp – the unavoidable isolation of the individual. Indeed the entire play is redolent of this solitude for, even when characters are pacing the quad together, they remain locked in introspection and do not speak to one another or even look at each other. One agrees with James Knowlson (pp.672-73) that Quad illustrates how Beckett’s ‘fascination with the visual image and his interest in musical structure took over from dramatic writing that depended primarily on language’, which leads us to consider the function of sound in this work – both the role of percussion and the walkers’ footsteps. Each player has his particular percussion, ‘to sound when he enters, continue while he paces, cease when he exits’ (p.452). One thinks immediately of other great walkers in Beckett’s drama such as Henry in Cendres, who walks along the shingle to the rhythm of the sea and yearns for the cadence of horses’ hooves to help him mark time. We might also remember May in Pas, who walks nine steps across the stage before wheeling round and walking nine steps in the other direction. Like Henry and May, the walkers in Quad need not only to walk but to beat out their own personal rhythm as they go and thus the suggested percussion instruments – drum, gong, triangle, wood block – all reflect the inner music of the mind that these players hear as they pace the quadrilateral. Like Winnie and Krapp, they aspire beyond language to music not just for consolation but for the expression of their innermost concerns. While clearly there can be no ‘song’ in Quad since the play permits of no language or possible lyric, it remains fascinating to see this further insistence on the isolated character who has recourse to a form higher than language. When more than one player is on stage, different percussion sounds are combined, but Beckett stresses that these be played ‘pianissimo’ and intermittently since the audience must be allowed to hear the footsteps alone at intervals. Again this recalls May in Pas and her need not only to walk but to hear her own footfalls. These gowned and haunting figures, undifferentiated by sex or build, are distinguished musically and also by having their own recognisable footsteps. 15

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See Quad, in Samuel Beckett, The Complete Dramatic Works (London, Boston: Faber and Faber, 1990), p.452.

This becomes particularly important in Quad 2 where the differently coloured gowns give way to identical white cowls and there is no percussion. This second phase allows Beckett to suggest the ravages of time as the quartet trudge the stage at a dramatically reduced rate from the hurried gait of Quad 1: it seems that we are now watching them ‘ten thousand years later’ (Damned to Fame, p.674). In reflecting on Quad, so often dismissed as an oddity late in the Beckett dramatic canon, one is struck by the thematic continuity that it establishes with earlier plays. Solitude, introversion, habit, ageing – these are all major concerns throughout Beckett’s work and so a relationship between Quad and Oh les beaux jours and La Dernière bande is more plausible than might initially seem to be the case. Are not this anonymous quartet every bit as patient and persistent as Winnie and Krapp in their continuing endeavours to deal with what life has meted out to them? Quad 2 shows what the second act of Oh les beaux jours and the recordings of Krapp down the years also illustrate – that what begins as an unpromising situation actually deteriorates through time. Yet the reaction of the Beckettian protagonist remains the same – that obdurate capacity to continue, so wonderfully encapsulated in the first word of Cendres spoken by Henry to himself: ‘Avance’. The four anonymous figures in Quad are an intriguing development upon Winnie and Krapp in their demonstration of the unsung heroism that carries humanity forwards because they are to be construed as representative of the many, whereas Winnie and Krapp enjoy the luxury of being characterised individually. As Knowlson (p.673) states, they recall ‘human beings scurrying frenziedly about their business’16 in that faceless manner so characteristic of modern urban life, and one might also feel that they are like prisoners pacing the courtyard of a penitentiary. However, the effect of the percussion music and the footsteps as differentiating agents reminds us that each has his or her individual journey to make and story to tell and implies that, locked in their atomised worlds, they eschew verbal communication but secretly indulge in an internal music as they project some form of harmony or rhythm upon their condition. One might think of the quadrille and thus of the play as a disturbing variation upon the square dance. As representatives of a Beckettian autism, this quartet render their experience tolerable through the cadences and tempos of the music they make in their heads. As such, they comply in their own way with the dictum: ‘Quand on est dans la merde jusqu’au cou, il ne reste plus qu’à chanter.’

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Cendres (Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit), p.37.

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Angela Chambers

Prophets and Heroes: Ideology and Aesthetics in Aimé Césaire’s Poetic Introduction Aimé Césaire’s ideological and aesthetic writings have received relatively little critical attention to date, despite the fact that they shed considerable light on the views of a major writer whose literary and political career spans not only the twentieth century but also the development of African and Caribbean literature in French from infancy to maturity. The prose writings also help to elucidate the areas of his thought which have received criticism in recent decades, most notably Raphaël Confiant’s attack on his fidelity to the African heritage as the fundamental element in Caribbean cultural identity.1 A second criticism of his contemporary relevance in a postcolonial context can be found in the fact that his search for a new poetic voice was to a large extent influenced by European models, particularly by the nineteenth and twentieth-century French poetic tradition from Hugo to the Surrealists.2 A brief survey of the writer’s many published lectures and articles reveals that he made no effort to conceal the influence of the French literary tradition on his poetic vision. Even more significant, however, is the fact that the aesthetic writings, greatly influenced as they are by the nineteenth and early twentieth-century French literary tradition, are not as distinct from the ideological writings on the writer’s role in the process of decolonisation as one might suppose. Influences on Césaire are generally divided into European and African, even though it has been pointed out that his knowledge of African civilisation was to a considerable extent a result of reading the works of European ethnologists. The aim of this study is to explore the relationship between his ideological and aesthetic writings and to investigate to what extent his views on the writer’s heroic role in the process of decolonisation are determined by the French literary tradition, in which the poet is regarded as a voyant or seer. This will enable us to clarify his position in the development from colonial to postcolonial literary and political discourses.

The Ideological Context While Césaire’s historical, political and ideological writings form by far the largest of the three volumes of the 1976 edition of his Œuvres complètes (Complete Works),3 they are less well known than his poetry or theatre. Indeed his first published work was not written in a literary genre but rather in the form of an article in L’Étudiant Noir (The Black Student), a

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Raphaël Confiant, Aimé Césaire: une traversée paradoxale du siècle (Paris: Éditions Stock, 1993). A detailed analysis of this influence is to be found in A. James Arnold, Modernism and Negritude: The Poetry and Poetics of Aimé Césaire (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981). Ed. by Jean-Paul Césaire (Fort-de-France: Éditions Désormeaux). Césaire continued to publish literary works after this date.

review which he directed in Paris in 1935.4 He explicitly situates the review in the ideological context of Negritude, explaining in an interview: ‘C’était une idéologie négritude qui remplaçait une idéologie assimilationniste’ (‘An ideology of negritude was replacing an ideology of assimilation’).5 In this publication one can already see the first signs of his concept of the ideological role of the writer, leading his people away from alienation to discover an authentic cultural identity: ‘La Jeunesse noire veut agir et créer, elle veut avoir ses poètes, ses romanciers, qui lui diront à elle ses malheurs à elle, et ses grandeurs à elle: elle veut contribuer à la vie universelle, à l’humanisation de l’Humanité’ (‘Black youth wants to act and to create, they want to have their poets, their novelists, who will express their own misery and grandeur. They want to contribute to life universally, to humanise Humanity’).6 The writer’s role is developed in several prose writings as well as in the poetry and plays. A detailed study of Negritude is beyond the scope of this study, but it is important to note the complex relationship between racial, cultural and historical factors, particularly in the development of the concept. Steins, commenting on this very passage, sees a desperate effort to rediscover an authentic existence through a rediscovery of Césaire’s race.7 In defending the concept of Negritude, Césaire has always insisted on the importance of history and culture rather than race in its development: ‘ma conception de la négritude n’est pas biologique, elle est culturelle et historique’ (‘My concept of Negritude is not biological, it is cultural and historical’).8 As we shall see, in his poetic, the writer has a crucial role to play in the cultural and historical realisation of négritude. The ideological background to Césaire’s views on the role of the writer is to be found in his prolific writings on the evils of colonialism, including numerous speeches in the French National Assembly and in particular the Discours sur le colonialisme (Discourse on colonialism),9 as well as in works devoted specifically to the ideological context of literature, such as the debate with René Depestre on the concept of national poetry10 and, most notably, ‘Culture et colonisation’ (‘Culture and colonisation’), a lecture delivered at the First Congress of Black Writers and Artists in Paris in 1956.11 This detailed analysis of the destructive influence of colonisation on the indigenous culture of a colonised people ends with a plea for independence as the only means of preserving African civilisation. These ideas also form the basis of a second lecture, ‘L’Homme de culture et ses responsabilités’ (‘The Man of Culture and His Responsibilities’), delivered at the Second Congress of Black

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‘Nègreries. Jeunesse noire et assimilation’, in L’Étudiant Noir, 1 (March 1935). To my knowledge the article, which was lost for many years, has not been republished in full, though an extract is included in Lilyan Kesteloot, Les Écrivains noirs de langue française: naissance d’une littérature (Brussels: Éditions de l’Institut de Sociologie, Université Libre de Bruxelles, 1963), pp.99-100. Thomas A. Hale, Les Écrits d’Aimé Césaire. Bibliographie commentée, Études Françaises, Numéro spécial, 14, nos.3-4 (Montreal: Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal), October 1978, pp.221-22. Quoted in Kesteloot, Les Écrivains noirs, p.99. Martin Steins, ‘Jeunesse nègre’, Neohelicon, 4, no.1 (1976), p.112. From an interview with Lilyan Kesteloot quoted in Lilyan Kesteloot and Barthélemy Kotchy, Aimé Césaire, l’homme et l’œuvre (Paris: Présence Africaine, 1973), p.236. (Paris: Présence Africaine, 1955). Aimé Césaire, ‘Sur la poésie nationale’, Présence Africaine, 4 (October-November 1955), pp.39-41. Published in Présence Africaine, 8-10 (June-November 1956), pp.190-205.

Writers and Artists in Rome in 1959.12 This lecture, in which he concentrates on decolonisation and the artist’s contribution to that process, forms the most complete statement of his ideological views on the role of the writer. Defining literary creation in terms of participation in the process of liberation, he emphasises that the relationship of coloniser and colonised is not only one of master and servant, but also of creator and consumer. Thus literary creation reverses the historical process by restoring the initiative which has been forcibly removed: ‘Certains ont pu dire que l’écrivain est un ingénieur des âmes. Nous, dans la conjoncture où nous sommes, nous sommes des propagateurs d’âmes, des multiplicateurs d’âmes, et à la limite des inventeurs d’âmes’ (p.118, Césaire’s emphasis) (‘Some have described the writer as an engineer of souls. In our particular situation we are propagators of souls, multipliers of souls, and ultimately inventors of souls’). The artist is presented as a prophet-like, demiurgic figure whose task is the creation or re-creation of a culture destroyed by the process of colonisation. This corresponds very closely to Said’s account of the process of nationalist revival, which he defines as ‘awareness of European and Western culture as imperialism’,13 followed by a revolt against this cultural domination. Said continues: ‘Often this was first done, as Thomas Hodgkin has argued, by “prophets and priests”, among them poets and visionaries, versions perhaps of Hobsbawm’s “primitive rebels”’ (Culture and Imperialism, p.271). Later in the lecture Césaire’s views are further developed, and the artist’s role is seen as a unifying one, bringing together a pre-colonial past, present and future: Quand Sekou Touré, leader d’un pays libre, affirme fièrement: « Je suis le descendant de Samory »,14 il ne s’agit pas d’une puérile vanité généalogique. Cela signifie: « J’assume Samory » et ce faisant il fait une grande chose: il rétablit l’histoire, il remet les choses à leur place. Il dit: la colonisation ce n’est pas l’histoire, ce n’est que l’accident, et il rétablit le « continuum » historique. Il réaffirme ou réinvente la continuité historique rompue par l’intrusion coloniale. Ce n’est pas autre part qu’il faut chercher notre devoir à nous écrivains et artistes noirs: il est de rétablir la double continuité rompue par le colonialisme, la continuité d’avec le monde, la continuité d’avec nous-mêmes. (p.121) (When Sekou Touré, the leader of a free country, proudly affirms: ‘I am the descendant of Samory’, this is no puerile genealogical vanity. It means ‘I assume Samory’, and in doing this he is doing something great. He is re-establishing history, returning things to their rightful place. He is saying, ‘Colonisation is not history, it is merely an accident’, and he is re-establishing the ‘continuum’ of history. He is reaffirming or reinventing the historical continuity broken by the intrusion of colonialism. It is exactly here that we, as black writers and artists, must seek our duty, which is to re-establish the double continuity broken by colonialism, continuity with the world, continuity with ourselves.)

This rejection of colonialism as an intrusion and an accident in the continuum of history confirms the central importance of the African heritage in Césaire’s world view. The link with Africa is above all cultural, not racial. Thus the racism inherent in the ethnologist Fro-

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Published in Présence Africaine, 24-25 (February-May 1959), pp.116-22. Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism (London: Chatto and Windus, 1993), p.270. Almany Samory Touré (circa 1830-1900), was a Guinean warrior who founded an empire in West Africa in 1870 and is seen as an early hero of decolonisation because of his successes against the French army.

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benius’s view that reason is European and emotion African,15 a view which had greatly influenced Césaire and Senghor in the 1930s when they were developing the concept of Negritude, has given way to a confident historical and cultural justification of the ideology. In the years following 1959 this confidence was shared by some, but by no means all critics. Indeed Arnold situates all critiques of Césaire’s work between two poles, represented on the one hand by Lilyan Kesteloot, who presents him and his contemporaries as heroic founders of a new literature, and Marxist critics such as Maryse Condé on the other hand, for whom Negritude, with its return to a mythical African civilisation, is a false process of selfdiscovery.16 Said, while emphasising the pitfalls of Negritude as a form of nativism,17 nevertheless acknowledges ‘the emergence of a new literary style in the works of Césaire, Senghor’ and others as ‘a central part of the global history of modernism’.18 ‘L’homme de culture et ses responsabilités’ concludes with statements on the nature of art in a colonial situation which have also been expressed by many European writers outside the colonial context. Art is described as sacred, transcending reality through its unifying power: ‘Dans les conditions qui sont les nôtres, notre littérature, sa plus grande ambition, doit être de tendre à devenir littérature sacrée, notre art, art sacré’ (p.121, Césaire’s emphasis) (‘In the conditions in which we live, our greatest ambition for our literature must be for it to become sacred literature, for our art to become sacred art’). Combining the vocabulary and ideas of nineteenth-century French poetry, these words illustrate both the parallels which exist between Césaire and his French counterparts in their views on poetry and also the very different starting points from which these views emerge. They also present an ideological statement on the role of art even more grandiose than the vision of the French poets who inspired it: the poet as voyant or seer, a prophetic figure acquiring an ideological significance lacking in the European context. Despite the fact that Césaire often presents the poet as a demiurgic figure in his poems, he clearly distinguishes between his own views and those of the Romantics: Il ne s’agit pas d’une conception messianique de l’artiste ou de l’écrivain. Et je ne dirai jamais, romantiquement, que le poète ou l’écrivain sont créateurs de nations ou de valeurs nationales. Il s’agit d’une chose plus simple et qui est ceci: que l’homme de culture est celui qui par la création, exprime et donne forme. Et cette expression elle-même, par le fait même qu’elle est expression donc mise à jour, crée ou recrée – dialectiquement – à son image le sentiment dont il n’est à tout prendre que l’émanation. (p.117) (This is not a concept of the writer or artist as messiah. I will never claim, in the Romantic tradition, that poets or writers are creators of nations or of national values. It is much simpler than that: the man of culture, through the creative process, expresses and gives a form to reality. And this expression, by the very fact that it is expressing and therefore bringing to light that reality, creates or recreates in its

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Leo Frobenius, Histoire de la civilisation africaine, translated into French by H. Back and D. Ermont (Paris: Gallimard, 1952). A. James Arnold, ‘État présent des écrits sur Aimé Césaire. Bibliographie sélective et raisonnée’, in Césaire 70, ed. by Mwabil a Mpang Ngal and Martin Steins (Paris: Éditions Silex, 1984), p.16. See also Maryse Condé, ‘Négritude césairienne, négritude senghorienne,’ Revue de Littérature Comparée, 3 (1974), pp.40919. Culture and Imperialism, pp.275-76. Ibid., p.293.

own image – in a dialectic process – the sentiment of which he, in the final analysis, is merely the means of expression.)

This statement, that the poet fulfils a prophetic or heroic function only because he is a representative figure, is the cornerstone of Césaire’s poetic vision, and forms the basis of his concept of the poet as hero in the context of universal humanism. The lecture closes with a statement linking artistic and social aims in a vision of universal harmony, corresponding to the development of many of Césaire’s poems, notably of the Cahier d’un retour au pays natal (Return to my Native Land):19 Qu’on le sache: en articulant notre effort dans l’effort de libération des peuples colonisés, en combattant pour la dignité de nos peuples, pour leur vérité et pour leur reconnaissance, c’est en définition pour le monde tout entier que nous combattons et pour le libérer de la tyrannie, de la haine et du fanatisme [...] Nous aurons contribué à donner un sens, à donner son sens au mot le plus galvaudé et pourtant le plus glorieux: nous aurons aidé à fonder l’humanisme universel. (p.122) (Let this be known: by expressing our contribution to the struggle for liberation of the colonised peoples, by fighting for the dignity of our peoples, for their truth and for their recognition, we are by definition fighting for the entire world, to liberate it from tyranny, hatred and fanaticism […] We shall have contributed to giving a meaning, to giving its meaning to the most hackneyed and yet the most glorious expression: we shall have helped to create universal humanism.)

The link between the individual and the universal is a subject of particular interest to Césaire. In literary works, lectures and interviews, he likes to emphasise that his poetry is at once specific and universal, set in the small island of Martinique and at the same time in a universally relevant world of myth. He has described himself as a poet ‘hanté par l’universel’ (‘haunted by the universal’). He explains this apparent contradiction by quoting Hegel: ‘C’est Hegel qui dit: « Il ne faut pas opposer l’universel au particulier. Ce n’est pas par la négation du particulier que l’on va à l’universel, mais par l’approfondissement, la clarification du particulier »’ (‘According to Hegel, “One must not consider the universal and the individual as in opposition. It is not by negating the individual that one gains access to the universal, but by the exploration and clarification of the individual”’).20 The poet’s role is thus to lead his people, in a biblical fashion, out of the alienation and stagnation of colonialism to a promised land of authenticity and universality, providing through his work both a cultural heritage through the rediscovery of the mythical African past and a cultural present and future through his own literary work and that of future writers. Césaire’s fidelity to this ideology is unchanging throughout his life, as can be seen, for example, in his confident description of himself, at the Avignon festival in 1989, as ‘l’humble représentant d’un tiers-monde’ (‘the humble representative of a third world’)21 which, he continues, in

19

20

21

First published in Volontés, 20 (August 1939), pp.23-51. References here are to the edition by Bloodaxe Books (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1995). Charles H. Rowell, ‘C’est par le poème que nous affrontons la solitude: une interview avec Aimé Césaire’, Callaloo, 12, no.1 (1989), p.64. J.-J. Lerrant, ‘Rencontre avec Aimé Césaire’, Le Monde, 23-24 July 1989, p.9.

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its current anguished situation, forces European intellectuals to face their own responsibility in that context. The reference to humility appears ironic in the context of the role which, as we have seen, he ascribes to the writer both in the context of decolonisation and on a global level. There is no doubt that Césaire the ideologist adheres consistently throughout his career to an ideal of universal humanism in which the black writer has a crucial role to play as the saviour not only of his own race but also of a decadent European civilisation. It is easy to understand how the paradox inherent in this ideology, between the revolt against imperialism on the one hand and the reliance on imperialist ideologies on the other, has led at best to a lack of interest in Césaire’s views in a postcolonial and postmodernist environment epitomised by the works of Homi Bhabha and others. Indeed Bhabha’s theory of cultural hybridity can be seen as the opposite of Césaire’s nativism. Referring to Fanon’s writings on Algerian culture, Bhabha comments: ‘The changed political and historical site of enunciation transforms the meanings of the colonial inheritance into the liberatory signs of a free people of the future.’22 The mythical African heritage on which Césaire’s ideology is founded is surpassed here in the new context of continuous cultural hybridity.

Aesthetic writings Césaire’s first aesthetic writings specifically devoted to the nature of poetry and the poet’s role date from after the publication of the Cahier in 1939. The reason for this is clear: it was the act of writing this first literary work which revealed to him his poetic vocation, a revelation well documented by the poet himself.23 In fact the choice of the poetic form did not come easily to him. The period from March 1935 until the publication of the Cahier in 1939 was an extremely difficult one. He is known to have lost interest in his studies and to have taken no part in the intellectual activity of the milieu in which he had been active between 1931 and 1935.24 Steins’s analysis of the Cahier suggests that Césaire’s emergence from this period took the form of a spiritual experience greatly influenced by his reading of Frobenius and expressed in the Christian terminology of salvation through suffering.25 Thus the work emerged not from a specific desire to be a poet, but rather from a pressing need to find a means of self-expression. This total freedom of approach when writing the work undoubtedly exerted considerable influence on his poetic style in the later collections, particularly when coupled with the overwhelming influence of Surrealism which one finds in the poems written in the 1940s, his most prolific period. It is during this period of intense poetic activity that Césaire gradually comes to express his aesthetic views, first as founder of the review Tropiques, which aimed to fill the cultural void which he found in his native islands.26 At this stage in his career, despite his overwhelming desire to create a cultural context in the French-speaking Caribbean based on the

22 23

24 25 26

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Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London, New York: Routledge, 1994), p.38. Mwabil a Mpang Ngal, Aimé Césaire: un homme à la recherche d’une patrie (Dakar: Nouvelles Éditions Africaines, 1975), p.64. Martin Steins, ‘Nabi nègre’, in Césaire 70, pp.235-39. Ibid., pp.239-72. Jacqueline Leiner, ‘Entretien avec Aimé Césaire’, Tropiques (Paris: Éditions Jean-Michel Place, 1978), p.v.

re-establishment of the ruptured historical continuum, he sees no contradiction in including in Tropiques, as a source of inspiration in the context of decolonisation, the literary canon of metropolitan France. Thus the first issue contains a presentation by Césaire of four poems by Charles Péguy, which are reproduced (pp.37-50). Furthermore Number 8-9 includes (pp.7-8) Césaire’s first short article on poetry, ‘Maintenir la poésie’ (‘In defence of poetry’), in which he defends poetry as a violent form of expression, illustrating his comments with references to Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Valéry and Claudel. His major article on poetry, ‘Poésie et connaissance’ (‘Poetry and knowledge’),27 based on a lecture delivered in Haiti in 1944, is similarly imbued with French literary influences, particularly the poetic lineage from Hugo to the Surrealists, to which much of the lecture is devoted. The central theme is the definition of poetry as knowledge (p.115), and Hugo’s view of the poet as seer or prophet is clearly visible in the following lines: ‘Mais un homme sauve l’humanité, un homme la replace dans le concert universel […]; cet homme, c’est le poète’ (p.119) (‘But one man saves humanity, one man restores it to universal harmony […]; that man is the poet’). The poet does not experience life on the same mundane, superficial plane as the rest of humanity, but participates more fully in the total experience of life, and is thus able to express aspects which others do not perceive. For Césaire the poem is the result of a primeval union of man and the universe, a view reminiscent of Rimbaud’s account of the poet as ‘voleur de feu’ (‘he who steals fire’): ‘il devra faire sentir, palper, écouter ses inventions; si ce qu’il rapporte de là-bas a forme, il donne forme; si c’est informe, il donne de l’informe’ (‘he must make his inventions be felt, touched, heard; if what he brings back from the beyond has form, he expresses form; if it is formless, he expresses formlessness’).28 For both writers the poet fulfils a demiurgic function; like Prometheus, he brings to human life attributes normally associated with the supernatural. Indeed, Prometheus and other mythological figures appear in Césaire’s poems as alter egos of the poet. In summary, ‘Poésie et connaissance’ can be interpreted as an attempt by the poet to explain his own evolving poetic and to acknowledge his debt to a number of nineteenth-century French poets in his own development as a poet. Despite the emphasis on nineteenth-century French poetry, it is important to note that André Breton receives considerably more attention in ‘Poésie et connaissance’ than any individual nineteenth-century poet. The well-known definition of the ‘point suprême’ (supreme point) is quoted in full: ‘Tout porte à croire qu’il existe un certain point de l’esprit d’où la vie et la mort, le réel et l’imaginaire, le passé et le futur, le communicable et l’incommunicable, le haut et le bas cessent d’être perçus contradictoirement’29 (‘Everything leads us to believe that in the mind there exists a certain point from which life and death, the real and imaginary, the past and future, the communicable and incommunicable, the heights and depths are no longer perceived as contradictions’). Césaire clearly accepts Breton’s theory as the basis of his own poetic credo, for it is in the context of this quotation

27 28

29

‘Poésie et connaissance’, in Kesteloot and Kotchy, Aimé Césaire, l’homme et l’œuvre, pp.112-26. Arthur Rimbaud, ‘Lettre à Paul Demeny’, in Œuvres complètes, ed. by A. Adam (Paris: Gallimard, 1972), p.252. André Breton, Manifestes du surréalisme (Paris: Éditions Pauvert, 1962), p.154: quoted in ‘Poésie et connaissance’, p.117.

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that the rest of the lecture is set, as he examines the poet’s intimate, intuitive knowledge of the universe, the creative power of his words and the transcendent qualities of his images. Since Breton’s definition thus occupies a most important position in his poetic, it deserves some further examination here. For Carrouges, who devotes considerable attention to this aspect of Breton’s theories, alchemy and the occult form the cornerstone of Surrealism in general and of the ‘point suprême’ in particular: Cette idée essentielle du surréalisme vient de la tradition hermétique. Elle se trouve dans la Cabbale et joue un rôle essentiel dans le Zohar. Dans cette métaphysique, c’est le point d’origine de la Création, le point d’action en lequel Dieu créa le monde et où tout est contenu ab ovo.30 (This idea, which is fundamental to Surrealism, comes from the hermetic tradition. It can be found in the Cabbale and plays an essential role in the Zohar. In this metaphysical context, it is the point of origin of creation, the point of action in which God created the world and in which everything is contained ab ovo.)

The similarity between this account of the ‘point suprême’ and Césaire’s views on the poet’s primeval knowledge of the world and his creative powers is striking. This is not to suggest that, in quoting Breton, he specifically intended to refer to the occult, but rather that the occult and religious connotations which Carrouges sees as fundamental in Surrealism correspond to the religious and sacred nature of poetry for Césaire. Alquié, however, criticises Carrouges’s view of Surrealism as a continuation of alchemy: ‘Breton n’a pas seulement laïcisé l’idée mystique de point suprême. De cosmologique qu’elle était, il semble l’avoir rendue psychologique’31 (‘Breton has not only secularised the mystical concept of the supreme point. He has transferred it from the domain of cosmology to that of psychology’). Césaire’s views, like Breton’s, can be situated at this meeting point of the religious, the secular and the psychological, with poetry replacing religion as the spiritual dimension in life, as well as providing an antidote to the mass psychological alienation resulting from colonialism. In this context the poet’s role combines and replaces those of priest and psychologist. Despite this explicit recognition of the French literary tradition as the basis of Césaire’s poetic, one cannot overestimate the influence of the German ethnologist Leo Frobenius, whose writings on Africa had exerted considerable influence on Césaire as a student in Paris in the 1930s. For Frobenius, African culture is characterised by receptivity to the latent meaning of the natural universe, what Martin Steins in his study of the Cahier d’un retour au pays natal terms ‘sous-réalité’ (‘subreality’) as opposed to ‘sur-réalité’ (‘surreality’).32 For Steins the epiphanic moment when the poet realises that the members of his race ‘s’abandonnent saisis à l’essence de toute chose’33 (‘open themselves up, enraptured, to the essence of all things’) is directly influenced by his reading of Frobenius (p.239). An early scholar of Césaire’s poetry, Janheinz Jahn, writing in the tradition of Frobenius, links this receptivity to poetry to the concept of African word magic: ‘The God of Israel said “Let 30 31 32 33

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Michel Carrouges, André Breton et les données fondamentales du surréalisme (Paris: Gallimard, 1950), p.26. Ferdinand Alquié, Philosophie du surréalisme (Paris: Flammarion, 1955), p.146. ‘Nabi nègre’, p.238. Cahier, p.114. The translation of this phrase is also taken from this edition, p.115.

there be light”, and there was light. In Africa every muntu is capable of such an utterance. Every muntu, even the least of them, is by the force of his word lord over everything, over animal and plant, stone and hammer, moon and stars’.34 The concept of the word as creative act permeates Césaire’s poetry, with a large and significant area of vocabulary referring to expression itself. The views of Frobenius and the French poetic lineage thus presented him with the constitutive elements of his poetic. From Frobenius came the vision of Africa as a place where a single culture was characterised by latent receptivity to the hidden meaning of the natural world, while in the writings of nineteenth and twentieth-century French poets he was influenced by the idea that this receptivity was the specific characteristic of the poet. Steins also points to another area where the influence of the French literary tradition is more evident than that of Frobenius. As Steins notes, Frobenius’s view of culture is not Promethean: L’homme n’est donc pas Prométhée. Il ne crée pas la culture ex nihilo dans cette aventure qu’a décrite R. M. Albérès. Produit direct d’une osmose avec la nature objective, la Culture réalise le sens ontologique du monde. (p.238) (Thus man is not Prometheus. He does not create culture ex nihilo in the adventure described by R. M. Albérès. Culture, a direct result of osmosis with nature, is a realisation of the ontological meaning of the world.)

Césaire’s view of the poet as a representative yet heroic figure clearly draws on both the influence of his reading of Frobenius and his admiration for the French poets of the nineteenth century. As well as these influences, one can observe that of the philosopher Jung, and, more specifically, of Gaston Bachelard. Kesteloot informs us that Césaire was particularly interested in L’Eau et les rêves (Water and Dreams).35 For him the poetic image is a means of discovering not only the ‘fonds ancestral’ (‘ancestral subconscious’) which is peculiar to one culture, in this case the African heritage, but also archetypal images common to all societies.36 These views once again confirm his conviction of the essential unity of the individual and universal planes. It is interesting to note that, despite his use of automatic writing as a technique in certain poems of Les Armes miraculeuses (Miraculous Weapons),37 his belief in the existence of primeval images distances him from the Surrealists in that it contradicts their appreciation of the arbitrary element in the Surrealist image. For Césaire the image is the language of the unconscious and is therefore never arbitrary: […] toutes ou presque toutes les images se ramènent à des images primordiales, lesquelles – incrustées dans l’inconscient collectif, sont universelles, comme le prouve le langage du rêve, identique chez tous les peuples par-dessus la variété des langues et des modes de vie. Au fond, et l’Occident l’a trop longtemps oublié, c’est l’image la vraie langue universelle.38

34 35

36 37 38

Janheinz Jahn, Muntu, tr. by Marjorie Grene (London: Faber and Faber, 1961), p.135. See his comments in a letter to Lilyan Kesteloot, quoted in Lilyan Kesteloot, Les Écrivains noirs de langue française, p.238. ‘Poésie et connaissance’, p.123. Aimé Césaire, Les Armes miraculeuses (Paris: Gallimard, 1946). Letter to Lilyan Kesteloot, quoted in Lilyan Kesteloot, Les Écrivains noirs de langue française, p.238.

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([…] all or almost all images refer back to primeval images, which – lodged in the collective unconscious, are universal, as can be seen in the language of dreams, identical for all peoples despite the variety of languages and ways of life. Basically, and the West has forgotten this for too long, the image is the real universal language.)

The poet’s role is thus to express the collective unconscious from which his race has been alienated by colonialism and from which modern Western society has also become distanced. This grandiose vision of the poet’s role explains the allusions to religion and myth which permeate both Césaire’s poetry and aesthetic writings. References to religions – African, Voodoo and Christian – reinforce the impression that the poems are essentially sacred in nature and also express some of the most fundamental aspects of the poet’s vision. References to African religious rites and to Voodoo are undoubtedly the most important, as they are completely integrated into the vocabulary and themes related to the natural universe, expressing both the poet’s return to his own cultural ancestry for inspiration and his view of poetry as a mysterious and sacred act recreating the harmonious existence which he regards as present in the collective unconscious (as well as in the past of his own race). It is easy to see in this presentation of the natural world a deliberate reflection of the animism which characterises many African cultures and Voodoo. In his poetry, animals, plants and natural forces all express essential aspects of the human condition. Moreover, the close link which Césaire establishes between any aspect of the natural world and the energy it possesses can also be seen as a reference to his African cultural heritage. In his work on Bantu philosophy Tempels, one of Jahn’s sources, comments on this identification of being and energy as follows: La force est inséparablement liée à l’être, et c’est pourquoi ces deux notions demeurent liées dans leur définition de l’être [...] C’est parce que tout être est force, et n’est qu’en tant que force, que cette catégorie embrasse nécessairement tous les êtres: Dieu, les hommes vivants et trépassés, les animaux, les plantes, les minéraux. L’être étant force, tous ces êtres apparaissent aux Bantous comme des forces.39 (Energy is inseparably linked to being, and that is why the two notions remain linked in their definition of being […] It is because every being is energy, and exists only as energy, that this category includes all beings: God, the living and the dead, animals, plants, minerals. As being is energy, all these beings appear to the Bantous as forces.)

Césaire himself comments on this feature of African culture and religion as a fundamental aspect of his poetry: En nommant les objets, c’est un monde enchanté, un monde de « monstres » que je fais surgir sur la grisaille mal différenciée du monde; un monde de « puissances » que je somme, que j’invoque et que je convoque. Dans le Métier de Vivre de Pavese (un grand livre!) je tombe sur cette remarque: le vert de l’arbre c’est sa force (en latin viridis, vert; vis, la force). Rapprochement suggestif. À interpréter à l’africaine!40 39

40

Placide Tempels, La Philosophie bantoue, translated from Dutch by A. Rubbens (Paris: Présence Africaine, 1949), p.35. Quoted in Lilyan Kesteloot, Aimé Césaire (Paris: Seghers, 1962), p.205.

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(By naming objects, I call up an enchanted world, a world of ‘monsters’ from the undifferentiated greyness of the world; I command, invoke and bring together a world of ‘forces’. In Pavese’s The Business of Living (a great book!) I came across this comment: the green of the tree is its force (in Latin viridis, green; vis, force). An evocative comparison. To be interpreted in the African sense!)

References to Christianity also contribute to the impression that the poems are presented as religious rites. Biblical phrases and rhythms, litanies and references to the poet as a prophet-like figure occur frequently. The Cahier is particularly rich in long, litanic passages reminiscent of the Bible. And the poet’s ‘prière virile’ (‘virile prayer’) (p.121) is reminiscent of the Lord’s Prayer, except that it is centred not on Christianity but on the poet himself, with the address to the supernatural in the original replaced by the poet’s confidence in his own natural energy. In addition to this religious element, myth plays an important role, both in the poetry and aesthetic writings. References to the Phoenix and, in one poem, to the Prometheus legend, situate the poetry in the world of myth, in the creation of a new myth into which European, African, Christian and other influences are absorbed. The Prometheus legend provides the subject matter for the short poem ‘Ferment’ (‘Ferment’), which presents the poet’s struggle as a re-enactment and reinterpretation of the myth.41 The relevance of Prometheus’s fate to Césaire’s situation is clear, as he appropriates the poetic tradition of the coloniser in his attempt to create an authentic culture for his people. While specific references to the Egyptian myth of the phoenix, such as those in ‘Spirales’ (‘Spirals’)42 and ‘Tam-tam l’ (‘Tom-tom 1’),43 are not common, the frequent allusions to birds and to rebirth after destruction by fire, often found at the climactic moment, give this myth a position of central importance in the poems. Thus the poet’s role is not only to restore or create a new culture for the colonised and to re-establish universal humanism in a decadent world, but to mend a ruptured link with the collective unconscious and to recreate in the modern world the universal truth formerly expressed through religion and myth.

Conclusion Césaire’s aesthetic is thus based not on a simple desire to rediscover his African roots, but rather on a complex combination of diverse influences, including his discovery of Africa through his meeting with Senghor and other African students in Paris, his readings on ethnology and his interest in Afro-American literature, his extensive knowledge of French poetry from Hugo to Apollinaire, his meeting with Breton in 1941 and discovery of Surrealism, and his erudition in matters relating to philosophy and religion. From all these influences he has developed a syncretic concept of the poet as a heroic creator of a new myth. A study of the expression of this myth in the poems themselves is beyond the scope of this study, but it is important to note that, as Arnold points out (Modernism and Negritude, p.18), different voices can be observed in the poems, ranging from the outbursts of the poet 41 42 43

Ferrements (Paris: Seuil, 1960), p.52. Ibid., p.12. Les Armes miraculeuses, p.50.

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in his role of revolutionary hero to the elegiac voice which one finds in the poems of Ferrements. The poems can certainly be seen as an expression of the aesthetic which has been studied in this chapter, in that the poet does indeed have the heroic role described in ‘Poésie et connaissance’. But, particularly in Ferrements, he is presented as a tragic hero, a role which is also prominent in the plays. The confident assertions made in the 1930s and 1940s give way to a tone of despairing anguish as the reality of postcolonial Africa fails to live up to the poet’s grandiose vision. In the final analysis Césaire’s ideological and aesthetic writings present a heroic vision of the poet which corresponded to the role which he and his contemporaries played in those decades, and which was applauded by Sartre, Breton and other European intellectuals. While his nativist vision does not provide a permanent role for black writers, and has consequently been rejected by many of them, it is arguable that elements of this poetic vision have a continuing relevance in a postcolonial context. Despite his unashamed reliance on Western models in his political and aesthetic writings, and his defence of the continuing centrality of the African heritage in a postcolonial world, his enthusiastic espousal of hybridity, particularly in his poetry, can be said to prefigure later postcolonial ideologies. His literary, political and aesthetic writings can thus be seen not as the discovery of an inauthentic identity, but rather as an illustration of the existence of conflicting impulses at an early stage in the relocation of a culture dominated by colonialism.

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Stanley Black

The Author as Hero in the New World Order: The Power of Fictionality in Goytisolo’s El sitio de los sitios

As I write, the genocide is all but complete. This result has dashed any hope that a book, or a piece of videotape, or a public speech on behalf of Bosnia, will do any good in the practical sense. It is too late for all that now.1 A la fuerza salvaje del enemigo y su doctrina de las fronteras trazadas con sangre, opondríamos el arma perenne y sutil de los débiles: la dispersión seminal de sus voces, las variantes infinitas de la palabra.2 (Against the savage force of the enemy and its doctrine of borders traced in blood, we would oppose the perennial and subtle weapon of the weak; the seminal dispersion of their voices, the infinite variants of the word.)

Juan Goytisolo’s novels have always been characterised by a desire to reconcile aesthetic practice with social and ethical concern. However, his views and his fiction have evolved considerably over the years, both as part of the process of refining and developing his art, and in response to political and social events. In the 1950s he was a member of the generation of writers who practised social realism as a protest against the repressiveness of the Franco regime. Disillusioned with the failure of the novela social, in the sixties and seventies he turned to a more radically experimental novel in which, under the influence of, among other things, structuralist and post-structuralist theory, the ideological critique was carried out through a form of linguistic subversion.3 Over the last decade, the centre of gravity of his writing has shifted slightly from a radically textual approach towards a greater interest in the subversive potential of fiction itself. His 1995 novel, El sitio de los sitios, is an interesting reflection on, and attempt to address, the dilemma of the social function of the artist whose only weapon, writing, the word, seems powerless to affect, let alone alter, extra-textual events. 1 2

3

David Rieff, Slaughterhouse. Bosnia and the Failure of the West (London: Vintage, 1995), pp.17-18. Juan Goytisolo, El sitio de los sitios (Madrid: Alfaguara, 1995), p.130. ‘Sitio’ in Spanish can mean ‘place’ or ‘siege’. So the title could be translated as ‘The Place of the Places’ or ‘The Place of the Sieges’, or even ‘The Siege of Sieges’. A translation by Helen Lane will be published shortly by City Lights with the title ‘State of Siege’. All translations here are my own. Goytisolo’s sense of the failure of the ‘novela social’, explored in detail in the book of essays, El furgón de cola (Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1967), was that the novels failed on two counts: they neither brought about a change in society, nor were they good in literary terms.

In 1993, at the time of the Bosnian conflict and the siege of Sarajevo, Goytisolo travelled to the city twice as a special correspondent for the respected Spanish daily, El País, and his reports printed in the newspaper were subsequently collated into a book, Cuaderno de Sarajevo, published the same year. This was one response to the brutal conflict and humanitarian disaster and reflected Goytisolo’s sense of social conscience, a bearing witness to a scene of injustice and a rational critical analysis, as well as impassioned indictment, of the West’s role in the tragedy. His second response was to write the novel El sitio de los sitios. At the end of the novel, there is a Nota del autor in which he comments: ‘Con mediano valor y algunos puntos de civismo, el escritor estuvo dos veces en Sarajevo durante los peores días del cerco’ (‘With average courage and a little civic awareness, the writer was twice in Sarajevo during the worst days of the siege’). Some readers may quibble with the first adjective and think it an act of considerable bravery for a writer, in his mid-sixties, to don a flack jacket and risk the lottery of Sniper’s Alley. However, Goytisolo would consider the term well chosen since he is more than aware that his actions and their impact dwindle in comparison to the actions of others. The novel’s epigraph dedicates it to the inhabitants of Sarajevo who, ‘pillados en el cepo, luchan contra la cobardía e indiferencia del mundo’ (‘caught in the trap, fight against the cowardice and indifference of the world)’, to Sarajevo’s writers and intellectuals, ‘honor y conciencia de Europa’, and finally to one Western intellectual, Susan Sontag, who encouraged Goytisolo to travel to the scene in the first place. These, Goytisolo implies, are true heroes. The Nota del autor goes on to distinguish between the situation of the writer, for whom fiction acts as an escape or a cure – el horror e indignación de cuanto vio le consumen aún y tuvo que recurrir a la ficción para y curarse de las imágenes que a su vez le asediaban. Tal es el poder de la literatura [...] (the horror and indignation that he saw consumes him still and he had to resort to fiction to flee and cure himself of the images which in turn besieged him. Such is the power of literature [...])

– and the harsh reality of the siege and the continued suffering of the people, deprived of the author’s literary escape route: Pero el sitio continúa y trescientas mil personas siguen atrapadas en la otrora hermosa ciudad sin ninguna posibilidad de huida ni curación a la vista. Tal es el límite final de la literatura. (But the siege is still going on and three hundred thousand people are still trapped in the formerly beautiful city with no possibility of flight or cure in sight. Such is, ultimately, the limit of literature.)

The concluding statement of the power and limits of literature, its inability to impact at all on reality, let alone rescue the suffering, suggests that writing can offer a means of escape and personal solace only to the author. However, the degree to which the author’s note should be taken at face value is doubtful. As far back as 1967, in the essays collected in El furgón de cola, which marked Goytisolo’s turning away from the failed but merit-worthy style of social realism towards a more radical aesthetic, a Barthesian engagement with the discourses of orthodoxy,4 he was dis4

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Roland Barthes’s early works like Le Degré zéro de l’écriture (1953) and Mythologies (1957) had a decisive influence on Goytisolo in the early 1960s, particularly the emphasis Barthes placed on the political implica-

missing the option for the author of escape into art in the face of an intractable reality. In that case the new world order facing the Spanish dissident intellectual was Spain’s irreversible progress towards capitalism under an increasingly secure Franco. Faced with this prospect the thirty-something Goytisolo poses the question: ¿Podemos aún escapar al dilema? En mi opinión, no. A menos de quemar las naves y evadirse como decidió e hizo Rimbaud, como soñó y no pudo hacer Cernuda. Pero, al cabo y a la postre, ¿qué es esta huida sino una forma disfrazada de dimisión?5 (Can we escape the dilemma still? In my opinion, no. Unless we burn our boats and escape as Rimbaud decided to do and did, as Cernuda dreamed of but could not do. But, when all’s said and done, what is this escape other than than a disguised form of giving up?)

In the sixties, social realism was rejected in the face of the evident limits of art to change the world, but in the new mood of structuralism and post-structuralism where reality was perceived as discursively structured, literature, the novel in particular, emerged as an integral part of the linguistic stuff of reality itself, and thus, in its own way, powerful. In the 1995 postscript, Goytisolo can be seen still to be preoccupied with this gap between the world and the word. The early nineties saw political developments which had a profound effect on Goytisolo and other intellectuals, not just at a political level but also at a philosophical one. The fall of Communism had encouraged the hope in the emergence of a different world order, ‘el advenimiento de una nueva era’ (‘the advent of a new era’).6 However, as intellectuals like Chomsky soon concluded, it meant only the victory of the New World Order announced by President Bush in the aftermath of the Allied victory in the Gulf War in 1991.7 For Goytisolo, too, this meant ‘la victoria del liberalismo a ultranza como panacea a todos los males (‘the victory of extreme liberalism as a panacea for all ills’).8 Two years after the Gulf War, the siege of Sarajevo came to confirm the pattern, but for different reasons. Where, in the former conflict, Goytisolo and others criticised intervention by the USA and its allies, the Bosnian conflict drew criticism of the West for its non-intervention. In an essay on the conflict in which he called for action on the part of intellectuals, Goytisolo condemned the silence of those whom he pointedly called ‘posmodernos’, obsessed with media culture. Such absence of ‘ethical reflection’ leaves unchallenged ‘el espectáculo de la política’ (‘the spectacle of politics’), and even undermines our sense of reality (p.286).

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8

tions of textual self-consciousness. David Weisberg sums up the shift in thinking as follows: ‘While the literary politics of the ’30s and ’40s centered on the reductively defined choice of the writer, in the ’60s and ’70s there was a shift toward construing literary politics as a system of textual effects […] the political implications of a work were now seen to reside in the degree to which writing resisted or reinforced “bourgeois” norms of communication and narrative authority’ (Chronicles of Disorder: Samuel Beckett and the Cultural Politics of the Modern Novel, New York: State University of New York, 2000, p.1). El furgón de cola, p.16. Juan Goytisolo, ‘Un orden mundial distinto’, El bosque de las letras (Barcelona: Alfaguara, 1995), p.279. ‘Shortly after the South Commission called for a “new world order” based on justice, equity and democracy, George Bush appropriated the phrase as a rhetorical cover for his war in the Gulf’ (Noam Chomsky, World Orders, Old and New, London: Pluto Press, 1997, p.7). ‘Un orden mundial distinto’, p.283.

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The aftermath of the Gulf War did provoke an intellectual and philosophical debate on the way major conflicts are reported and distorted in the media. Jean Baudrillard’s famous essays on the war, in which he seemed to cast doubt on the reality (or at least the knowability) of the war, existing as it did for most people purely as a media event, seemed to many a classic example of postmodernist excess. According to its critics, this brand of postmodernist relativising implies that there is ‘no point criticising “false” appearances (whether on epistemological or socio-political grounds) since those appearances are all that we have’.9 Now, while Goytisolo’s non-fiction seems to criticise postmodern passivity, his fiction, and in particular El sitio de los sitios, can seem to indulge in precisely the kind of self-reflexive game-playing which postmodernism’s detractors saw more as a symptom of the problem rather than a contribution to its solution. The novel opens with the arrival of a traveller, a Spaniard with the initials ‘J.G.’, at a hotel in Sarajevo. Next morning his room is hit by a mortar and he dies. When a UN Commander arrives to investigate the death, the body has mysteriously disappeared. Left behind is a book of poems and other manuscripts. Baffled by the disappearance, the Commander becomes intrigued by the poems. Subsequent sections reveal that the traveller was not a Spaniard but a Moroccan, called Ben Abú Al Fadaíl. He shares the name with a medieval saint to whom a historian, working at the hotel as a receptionist, has devoted his life. When the latter discovers the dead body the day after, he finds the book of poems, which, to his excited amazement, reproduce word for word the verses of the saint which he himself, like a latter-day Pierre Menard, had recreated in his thesis. To protect his discovery, with the help of a ‘narrator and hispanist’ friend, he decides to hide the body, after giving the deceased a new identity, that of a Spaniard, ‘J.G.’. The two friends substitute a different book of poems by this new J.G. persona which the hispanist, in a clear echo of Don Quixote, had received from a friend in Barcelona who, in turn, had bought it in a second-hand bookshop. The plot of the novel unravels in a disorienting fashion. There is no overall narrator. Each section is told from a different perspective: reports written by the UN Commander, sections narrated by the historian, his friend the hispanist or other members of their circle. There are ‘dreams’ whose narrator is unknown and other sections showing the siege ironically transposed to a Parisian setting, which all seem to be the product of the hispanist.10 The sections interweave and cross-refer in a deliberately confusing manner and layer upon layer of fiction is built up, in such a way that, on the one hand, a picture of the events emerges, and on the other, previous accounts are undermined or shown to be fictitious. As the Commander is forced to admit (p.58), ‘cada día aporta datos que desmienten anteriores conjeturas’ (‘each day brought new information which disproved previous conjectures’). We ourselves, after reading the Commander’s reports, are surprised to learn (p.92) that the hispanist occupies himself writing ‘versiones ficticias del cerco supuestamente escritas por 9

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Christopher Norris, Uncritical Theory: Postmodernism, Intellectuals and the Gulf War (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1992), pp.14-15. Later (p.128) Norris comments that ‘there is a sense in which the Gulf War [...] has [...] become a source of new-found rhetorical and narrative strategies for those proponents of the US “New World Order” who see it as a heaven-sent opportunity to re-write history’. The voice at the end of the first dream sequence is identifiable as the same as for ‘Hipótesis en torno a “J.G.”’. On p.160 we are told he is the ‘autor de los relatos insertos en la primera parte del libro’ (‘the author of the stories inserted in the first part of the book’).

un comandante (‘fictional versions of the siege supposedly written by a Commander’). In the next section, the fifth report of the Commander shows him (p.97) reading these texts that seem to point to his own fictionality. The Commander was already perturbed (p.60) by the fact that one of the documents of the dead person corresponded with the first section of the novel (how does he know it is a book?), in which that character’s own death has been narrated. He asks himself (p.86): ‘Cómo pudo reseñar el huésped de la habitación 435 sus emociones y vivencias del asedio y aludir a ellas en términos de escritura si fue barrido poco después del mundo de los vivos por la carga de un mortero’ (‘How could the guest in room 435 recount his emotions and experiences of the siege and allude to them in terms of writing if he was blown away shortly afterwards by a mortar charge’). He concludes (p.87) that ‘todo el caso se transmuta en ficción y yo mismo en personaje ficticio’ (‘the whole matter is transformed into fiction and I myself into a fictional character’). Such references evoke an intertextual dialogue with two related literary precursors: Borges and Cervantes. Borges has written of the subversive effect of self-conscious texts like Don Quixote and Hamlet in which the ‘[narrative] inversions suggest that if the characters of a fictional work can be readers or spectators, we, its readers or spectators, can be fictitious’.11 Radical fictional play can undermine the reader’s ontological security.12 With Cervantes’s masterpiece, El sitio shares a scepticism in relation to the gap between the world and what we can know or say about it. In a phrase which appears to echo the discursive relativism alluded to earlier, André Brink has said: The key to the ‘problem’ of the Don Quixote is that it does not simply set fiction in opposition to reality: both sides of the equation are products of language. If the Don’s ‘madness’ is the consequence of overindulging in the reading of chivalric romances, the ‘sanity’ of the world is constituted just as much by linguistic strategies.13

While such postmodernist self-consciousness might seem intended to reduce everything to fictionality, this is not quite the case. Rather than trying to undermine history entirely, El sitio de los sitios not only stresses the relation between the word and the world, between fiction and history, but even suggests that fiction can in some way serve as a counter to history. Central to this is the relationship between the two friends, one a historian, the other, a hispanist and author. Their reactions are suitably different. Caught in the horror of the siege, the hispanist, still grieving over the destruction of the library, announces (p.130) that he will oppose the enemy’s ‘fuerza salvaje’ (‘savage force’) with the ‘variantes sutiles de la palabra’ (‘subtle variants of the word’). He devotes himself to undermining the Commander’s authority by laying a web of fictions, vowing (p.126) to ‘extraviar[lo] en efecto en

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Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths (London: Penguin, 1972), p.231. Numerous allusions to Borges occur in El sitio de los sitios, including (p.155) a reference to the ‘laberinto o jardín de los textos que se bifurcan’ (‘the labyrinth or garden of forking texts’). The ‘hispanist’ is a former librarian, as was Borges. Epistemological disorientation gives way to ontological subversion, as when (p.97) the Commander is forced to admit on reading that his reports were fictions written by another: ‘la brutalidad del descubrimiento fue más allá de la incertidumbre: me desengendró’ (‘the shock of the discovery went beyond uncertainty, it undid my very existence’). André Brink, The Novel: Language and Narrative from Cervantes to Calvino (London: Macmillan, 1998), p.31.

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los meandros de un cambalache de textos minucioso y sagaz’ (‘effectively lead him astray in the twists and turns of a clever and detailed exchange of texts’). His friend the historian seems more concerned with preserving history in the face of an imposed ideological distortion when he complains (pp.109-10) of ‘el objetivo de los sitiadores –barrer la sustancia histórica de esta tierra para montar sobre ella un templo de patrañas, leyendas y mitos’ (‘the aim of the besiegers – to erase the historical substance of this land in order to raise up on it a temple of lies, legends and myths’). Of the two, however, it is the hispanist who plays the dominant role as generator of fictions. The confusion for the reader is multiplied when, later in the novel, the historian and the hispanist themselves are plunged into confusion on discovering that the texts which the latter had addressed to the unknown J.G. (p.129) in the certainty that the Commander would find them in his investigations, are subsequently discovered yet the addressee is now the hispanist himself (p.153). Suddenly the authors of the fiction themselves become entangled in the web of fiction. The receptionist is perturbed (p.157) to think that ‘no era sino uno más entre los múltiples hilos del tema’ (‘I was but one more of the multiple strands of the story’). The narrator earlier (p.146) had started to have doubts about the texts they had circulated and confessed to feeling ‘como una mosca atrapada en la urdimbre de una finísima telaraña textual’ (‘like a fly caught in the fabric of a very fine textual web’).14 This theme of literature’s power to infect and subvert runs through the book. Even the hispanist finds himself (p.125) affected by reading the poemario and, importantly, spurred to action: Me dejé contagiar por la locura de los gramáticos sobre la que diserta Erasmo. El contenido místico del poemario y nombre de su autor justificaban en verdad la excitación de mi amigo. (I allowed myself to be infected with the folly of grammarians written of by Erasmus. The mystical content of the book of poems and the name of its author truly justified my friend’s excitement.)

The textual disorientation of the Commander emerges as one response by fiction to history. He is seen (p.155) as a representative of the West’s distortion of the Bosnian conflict, ‘representante del mando multinacional, cuyo doble lenguaje y cinismo contribuyen a perpetuar nuestra desdicha’ (‘representative of a multinational command, whose cynicism and double-language are contributing to the perpetuation of our misfortune’). The hispanist recalls his anger at a meal in which the Commander had referred (p.128) to ‘beligerantes’, ‘partes implicadas’ to avoid the mention of besiegers and besieged, killers and victims. Later (p.128) one of the narrators speaks dismissively of the ‘gran cacería [...] que los llamados onusianos y comunitarios califican de “lucha de facciones” y “guerra tribal”!’ (‘the great hunting spectacle [...] which the UN and EU forces call “factional fighting” and “tribal war”!’). Their fictions and misleading documents stand as revenge for their condition of being ‘víctimas de la brutalidad de la Historia’. This power of subversion constitutes (p.155) ‘el poder mirífico de la literatura’ (‘the amazing power of literature’).

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Jean Franco has noted that a ‘common theme of Borges’s stories is that of a man caught in a trap which he himself has unwittingly constructed’ (An Introduction to Spanish-American Literature, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 3rd ed., 1994, p.315).

Thus, in a world where history is distorted by those in power, literature becomes a vital channel for redress. When the victors impose their version of history by obliterating the version of the victims (the destruction of the library is described as a ‘memoricide’), the novel can play a part in recuperating this erased history, ‘nuestro pasado y memoria’ (p.110), challenging the narration controlled by those in power, ‘una Historia impuesta’ (p.162). This function of ‘setting the record straight’, if only in a limited fashion, undercutting the cynical linguistic distortions of official history would, undoubtedly, be acceptable to the critics of postmodernism and, ironically, recalls the moral premises of the 1950s novela social, moved to portray the social reality that Franco’s propaganda concealed. However, more characteristic of the novel is the preoccupation, which it shares with Borges’s fiction, with subverting the status of truth and denying access to certainty. The danger of this tactic is that it can be counterproductive in that, by denying the reader any firm grounds on which to base an interpretation, the novel might be undermining its own power of critique.15 The characters, like the reader, become involved in an epistemological quest (the truth about the meaning and authorship of the poemario) which quickly develops into an ontological dilemma – when confronted by a final, unmanipulated version of the poemario by one of their number, sworn enemy of the hispanist, they are plunged (p.162) into a ‘cadena de incertidumbres y sospechas que paulatinamente les descreaba y sumía en la irrealidad’ (‘a chain of uncertainties and suspicions which gradually decreated them and plunged them into unreality’). Narrative (ontological) levels are not abolished, but confused in such a way as to impede any kind of logical recuperation. For example, within the text we sense that the Commander is not a fictional character, invented by the hispanist but rather that he shares the same ontological status. Yet the exact status of his reports is irresolvable. These may be the ‘partes ficticios’ spoken of by the hispanist, and yet their content seems to accord with the events as we know them. As we learn that the first section is written by the hispanist and, later, the ‘dream’ sections too, it becomes possible to suspect that the whole novel is the product of the hispanist, yet, as we have noted, there comes a point where the hispanist figure is revealed as a product rather than the producer of the narrative. The question of authorship is thrown totally in question, and this is compounded when we learn that the novel is a text produced by a ‘compiler’ at the behest of an editor. As James Parr shows in his excellent unpicking of the multiple and confused narratorial levels in Don Quixote: ‘the ensemble of narrative voices and presences [...] and their comments and actions that serve to undermine narrative authority’ succeeds in ‘conveying an eminently skeptical stance with regard to the written word’. Furthermore, ‘Don Quixote is a potentially subversive document because it calls into question not only the authority of books of chivalry, but also of translations and, equally important, of history as a reliable medium for truth’.16 However, while this radical epistemological subversion is important both to Cervantes’s

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Jean Franco has noted how Borges’s self-referential fictions made him a ‘useful cult figure [...] in the service of reactionary governments’ (quoted in Landmarks in Modern Latin American Fiction, ed. by Philip Swanson, London: Routledge, 1990, p.236). James A. Parr, Don Quixote: An Anatomy of Subversive Discourse (Newark: Juan de la Cuesta, 1988), pp.3637.

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and Goytisolo’s novels, which both consequently run the risk of succumbing to the charge of a disabling relativism, the opposite is equally true. When we recall that Don Quixote purported to be the product of an Arab historian (thus being tainted with the racist stereotype of the day that all Arabs were liars) but retold by an author ‘Cervantes’, then, as Russell notes, the subversion of the author by Cervantes can serve to preserve history’s status by reminding us ‘that fiction, unlike history, is whatever an author chooses to make it’.17 Thus, El sitio de los sitios, like Don Quixote, deliberately uses fiction to subvert history, while steadfastly maintaining the existence of, and the distinction between, both. The Nota del autor is a key element in that literary game, since its strongly ‘non-fictional’ tone belies the fact that it is no less a part of the fiction than the preceding chapters. For, unlike in his earlier novels, where the self-conscious textuality was a tactic for reducing the real (history) to textual or narrative terms therefore enabling literature to engage ‘directly’ with it, here Goytisolo seems to want to preserve the distinctiveness of fiction, as well as to suggest the fictiveness of what often passes for history. One of the targets of Goytisolo’s novels is a new world order that threatens to impose its values, its history on all, what El sitio refers to as ‘la panacea universal del pensamiento único’ (‘the universal panacea of unitary thinking’). In this novel literature acts as a preserve for the free spirit, the spirit of individualism and difference. Hence, the analogy between the novel and those areas of resistance to uniform thinking. The section ‘Prolegómenos a un asedio’ (‘Prolegomena to a siege’) and the related sections on the siege of the Parisian suburb constitute Goytisolo’s warning (p.32) that the concomitant of the ‘nuevo orden mundial proclamado por los gurús del poder y la banca’ (‘new world order proclaimed by the gurus of those in power and the banking fraternity’) will be the ‘proliferación de identidades exclusivas, sectas y bandas’ (‘the proliferation of exclusive identities, sects and gangs’). The imposition of uniformity does not eradicate difference but distorts it into dangerous and destructive forms. The graffiti on the walls, the ‘mensajes individuales, cínicos o desesperados, contra los miríficos beneficios de la Tienda Global’ (p.33) (‘individual messages, cynical or desperate, against the wonderful benefits of the Global Shop’), show the risk involved as they reflect the mood of social protest, class division and retreat into an aggressive drug-subculture. Later this is stated more explicitly when the character, a thinly-veiled Goytisolo, observes his Parisian neighbourhood, formerly a source of excitement and variety, and has a premonition (p.36) in which ‘el gueto, la guerra interétnica de los guetos, reemplazaría con su brutalidad y tribalismo a la concepción ideal de cives como crisol de culturas’ (‘the brutality and tribalism of the ghetto, the interethnic war of the ghettos, would replace the ideal notion of the city-community as a cultural meltingpot’). This passage on the imaginary siege of Paris is central. It is a supreme illustration of fiction’s power to imagine an alternative reality. But it is not simply fiction as imagination or fantasy. Goytisolo borrows from the characteristics of mystical literature. Fiction has the power of a theophany or illumination. At one point the narrator recollects a street scene where a party of nuns on their way to the Catholic Mission suddenly slip into a hairdressers

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P.E. Russell, Cervantes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), p.53; my emphasis.

and emerge transformed in miniskirts and fashionable hair-dos, but then (p.37) is forced to admit: Pero las teofanías e iluminaciones habían cesado, como si la decretada uniformidad de apetitos y deseos excluyera cualquier disonancia como intrusión perturbadora en el dominio difuso del pensamiento. (But the theophanies and illuminations had ceased, as if the decreed uniformity of appetites and desires excluded any dissonance as a distrubing intrusion in the diffuse dominion of thought.)

In this dystopian vision, the consequence of globalisation is a reduction of our scope for imaginative freedom. Throughout the novel Goytisolo establishes a connection between his text, fiction and the mundus imaginalis of the twelfth-century Sufi mystic and philosopher, Ibn Arabi. Henry Corbin stresses that the Latin term mundus imaginalis does not equate to the term ‘imaginary’, which suggests that which is unreal or utopian, but rather refers to a level of reality which is the intermediary between the world of the senses and the world of the intellect.18 According to Corbin, this intermediate realm is the realm of the prophet, not in the sense of one who predicts the future, but rather one who acts as spokesman of the invisible world, and it liberates the individual from the dilemma of deciding between myth and history, the real and the unreal, fiction and reality.19 The mundus imaginalis thus achieves a synthesis between man’s spiritual and physical existence. In El sitio de los sitios Goytisolo borrows from this notion but secularises it. Fiction becomes a mundus imaginalis in which the two sides of man are kept in contact. In the section entitled ‘Primer Sueño’ (First Dream), there is a glimpse of the mundus imaginalis in which the narrator revisits aspects of his past life, principally his erotic encounters, only to discover that the experiences he witnesses are enactments of his own poems, corresponding to the homoerotic verses ‘Zona Sotádica’ included at the end of the book. His guide calms him with the assurance (p.30) that ‘Todo aquí es escritura’ (‘All here is writing’). Thus it is not hard to see the notion of the theophanic vision, the illumination, as applying to the novel as a whole. Already we have one of the poemarios, (‘Astrolabio), characterised by this style.20 Both it and its homoerotic counterpart have the power to unsettle and transform.

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Such concerns are clearly reminiscent of Romanticism and its dilemmas. Cf. Aidan Day, Romanticism (London: Routledge, 1996), pp.173-74. Commenting on the links between Romanticism and Islamic mysticism, Paul Davies notes that ‘like mysticism, ecology and poetry are imaginative acts whose value is that they are the imaginal aspect of Being not the imaginary invention of a deluded artist’ (Romanticism and the Esoteric Tradition: Studies in Imagination, Hudson, New York: Lindisfarne, 1998, p.180). Henry Corbin, Cuerpo espiritual y Tierra celeste: Del Irán mazdeísta al Irán chiíta (Madrid: Ediciones Siruela, 1996), p.25. The receptionist refers (p.142) to its links with ‘los malamatíes, alumbrados y visionarios próximos al esoterismo de Ibn Arabi y Mawlana’ (‘the malamatis, alumbrados and visionaries close to the esoterism of Ibn Arabi and Mawlana’). ‘Alumbrado’ in Spanish means ‘illuminated’. The malamatis were a sect who ‘attracted public contempt for themselves by outwardly acting against the law, [but who] in private strictly followed the divine commands’ (The New Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th ed., Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1981-84, vol. 9, p.945).

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If the hispanist was ‘infected’ by his reading of the mystical poems, the Commander was no less moved by his encounter with ‘Zona Sotádica’ (‘Sotadic Zone’).21 The novel thus aspires to the status of a heretical, esoteric text within the body of literature and the author to the role of secular prophet.22 The final chapter ‘Último Sueño’ (‘Final Dream’) deals with the compiler’s dilemma.23 Charged by the editor (p.180) with making sense of the documents and fashioning a ‘novela al uso, un presentable y bien hecho producto de mercado’ (‘a typical novel, a presentable and well-made market product’), he finds that he cannot, since the text eludes domestication. This section integrates all the dimensions of his predicament. Unable and unwilling to produce a standard novel, he worries about his elitist distance from human suffering and about his impotence and his possible exploitation of the situation for personal motives: ‘Has ascendido a unas cimas nevadas [...] y abarcas impotente desde el miradero la remota ciudad sitiada’ (‘You have ascended to snow-topped peaks [...] and you look powerlessly from your vantage point at the far-off besieged city’). But then (p.181) he plunges into the thick of the action: ‘corres, corres en zigzag […]’ (‘you run, run in zigzags […]’) and ends by not only witnessing the outcome of the initial scene, the murder of the woman in Sniper’s Alley, but re-experiencing through it the pain of his mother’s death.24 El sitio de los sitios is an artistic response to a real-life tragedy. Like most postmodernist metafiction it chooses to reveal the limitations of literature as part of an attempt to overcome those very limitations. The novel’s promotion of its own fictionality is a high-risk strategy. In so far as it suggests that history is manipulated by those in power and to the extent that it opposes equally fictional but futile counternarratives, the novel can attract the criticism that its subversion of the concept of truth serves the purposes of the manipulators. However, the novel avoids this criticism in several ways. Firstly, in spite of its constant play with fictional levels, it refuses to negate history, especially the ‘reality’ of the Bosnian war. This reality is pressed home by the fact that the woman who attempts to cross Sniper’s Alley on her knees lies dead at the end. The powerful impression is reinforced by an autobiographical element: Goytisolo’s conflation of this tragedy with his own mother’s death in the bombardment of Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War. This is emphasised further by his deliberate imposition of an apparently nonfictional frame in the Author’s Note to the novel’s exploration of fictionality. As with most historiographical metafiction, the incorporation of historical detail ensures that, far from an

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‘Sotadic Zone’ is an expression Goytisolo borrows from the explorer and anthropologist Sir Richard Burton. For Burton it described a geographical area from the Mediterranean to the East as far as China and the South Seas where homosexuality ‘is popular and endemic’. See Fawn Brodie’s biography of Burton, The Devil Drives (London: Penguin, 1967, p.170). Goytisolo refers to this in his essay on Burton included in Crónicas sarracinas (Barcelona: Ruedo Ibérico, 1982, p.170). One of the ‘dreams’ or visions shows the speaker (p.83) tormented by his role as impotent prophet ‘pese a su verbo audaz’ (‘in spite of his bold way with words’). As in Don Quixote, the notion of ‘author’ is deliberately rejected. The references to the Spanish Civil War and the poignant allusions to his mother’s death (the latter only intelligible to those with some knowledge of Goytisolo’s biography) are further examples of Goytisolo’s deliberate play with history, both objective and subjective, to set off the level of fictionality.

evasion into art, this is a problematisation in art of the status of history and the relation between the two.25 Secondly, taking his lead from Cervantes, Goytisolo emphasises in his novel the interpenetration of literature and life. In this Goytisolo follows closely another great mentor, Américo Castro, in his reading of Don Quixote. According to Castro, ‘el libro se incorpora a la experiencia vital de cada uno’ (‘the book becomes an integral part of the life experience of each individual’).26 In El sitio we see the Commander transformed by reading the poemario which either is or recalls his Uncle Eusebio’s written declaration of his homosexual identity in the face of Fascist attempts at ‘rehabilitation’. The experience leads him to retrieve a suppressed memory of, as a child, discovering documents in his mother’s room belonging to his uncle Eusebio, her brother. These consisted of a book of poems, notes, faded photos and several homoerotic sketches. It seems that the book of poems sold in a street-market to the friend of the hispanist and initialled ‘J.G.’ is that of the Commander’s uncle, a homosexual poet persecuted during the Spanish Civil War and confined by the Fascists to a psychiatric hospital in Melilla to be ‘cured’ of his deviation. As a result of the reading experience he determines that, if he takes part in the conflict again, it will be on the side of the victims of the siege. The disturbing nature of the poemario has produced, therefore, a profound process of introspection taking him from his outer active role to an inner passive contemplative role, but still one that is not detached from the world of history. On the contrary, it has led to a renewed sense of commitment to action. Similarly, the sense of aesthetic guilt felt by the ‘compiler’ leads to his transformation into a form of action-hero, who zigags to avoid the bullets. Finally, the deliberate esoterism of the text and the hermeneutical struggle it imposes on the reader are not merely intended as training in a resistance to a facile acceptance of surface meaning, but as a promotion of another reality, ‘un paisaje interior [...] otra historia: la invisible, espiritual’ (p.122) (‘an interior landscape [...] another history: invisible, spiritual’). The novel’s resistance to interpretation and its confounding of the rules of linear narrative deliberately detach the reader from connection with a reality represented in the text and constitute (p.124) a site of contemplation of more internal and eternal verities: ‘Desde la terraza asistes a la interiorización de la luz. Palpita el espacio lleno de vida oculta [...]’ (‘From the terrace you witness the interiorisation of the light. The space palpitates full of a hidden life […]’). The author’s role is similar to that of ‘contemplative prophetism’ which Ibn Arabi saw as the challenge to all forms of repressive orthodoxy and ‘dogmatic magistery’.27 Even as the effect of literature is intimated, it is placed in doubt. The Commander asks (p.97): ‘[…] demorará la luz después de la escritura?’ (‘[…] will the light last beyond the written word?’).

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Linda Hutcheon, A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction (London: Routledge, 1988), pp.9293. Américo Castro, ‘La palabra escrita y el Quijote’, in ‘El Quijote’ de Cervantes, ed. by George Haley (Madrid: Taurus, 1980), p.65. Henry Corbin, Alone with the Alone: Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), p.83.

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Hence it can be seen that there may be more to the Nota del autor than at first we think. Taken at face value, it strikes us as the author, the real Juan Goytisolo, speaking to us directly and commenting on how the novel was prompted by a sense of inadequacy and impotence in the face of a horrific situation of violence and injustice. Literature, more specifically fiction, appears to be a secondary activity with, at most, a curative or escapist function for the writer. In one sense, the novel’s extreme postmodernist self-reflexiveness seems to encourage such an interpretation. However, it is that very postmodernist play with fiction and fact that ensures that the Nota is part of the fiction, positing a dilemma which the novel attempts to resolve by suggesting that, far from being secondary, the very fictionality of the novel, with its power both to challenge the narrative of history and constitute a vital alternative realm, is of primary importance in the new world order in which we now live. El sitio de los sitios does not arrogantly supplant history with fiction nor does it resignedly deny fiction any purchase on the non-textual. Instead, it directly addresses the admittedly problematic relationship between the two and, by claiming a pivotal significance of fiction for both external and internal experience, it creates a vital role for the writer in contemporary society. The paradox of the novel is that, while it appears to delight in the playfulness of fiction and undermines the figure of the author, in fact it makes a powerful argument for the fundamental importance of writing and the writer.

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Richard York

Evelyn Waugh’s Farewell to Heroism The final section of Waugh’s Sword of Honour trilogy1 is called ‘The Death-Wish’. The term has been anticipated in the second volume, when Corporal-Major Ludovic notes that Major Hound is ‘strangely deficient in the death wish’; the phrase has a cruel irony, for Hound’s eagerness to survive the catastrophic campaign of the British army in Crete leads him to a series of acts of cowardice and pettiness, despite which he does die in the course of the chaotic evacuation of the island – to all appearances at the hand of Ludovic himself. The death wish increasingly seems characteristic of the war-torn society of the mid twentieth century; Ludovic himself has moments of contemplating suicide; the central protagonist, Guy Crouchback, though a faithful Catholic and so incapable of suicide, lacks any taste for life and has in his mind the memory of his brother Ivo, who, many years previously, has allowed himself to starve to death in a London hovel, rejecting life through sheer apathy; Guy tells a priest in the confessional, towards the end of the trilogy, that he wishes to die, that he is in despair. The idea is brought to a focus in a conversation which forms the thematic culmination of the whole work. Guy, liaison officer with the British Army amidst the Communist partisans of Yugoslavia, is talking to Mme Kanyi, the most articulate of a group of Jews whom Guy is doggedly seeking to save from the hostility and indifference of the partisans. He finds that she has profited little from his care: the greatcoat she has been given by the British authorities at Guy’s insistence provokes resentment, so she can only wear it indoors, and, having become prominent and thus suspect, she has been obliged to remain behind while her coreligionists have moved away from the danger area (admittedly to a fate which remains very uncertain). She looks back to the beginning of the war, when people actually wanted war: ‘Is there any place that is free from evil? [...] It seems to me there was a will to war, a death wish, everywhere. Even good men thought their private honour would be satisfied by war.’ And Guy replies, in a sentence that sums up what he has learnt from the six years of war, ‘God forgive me, [...] I was one of them’ (Unconditional Surrender, p.300). The passage is one often quoted by critics and biographers, who recognise it as central to the novel, and to Waugh’s own experience.2 Its phrasing quite strangely recalls the fear of war that is marked in so much of the English literature of the late 1930s, in the prewar novels of Orwell or the verse of Auden and others. That fear, in many minds, had been 1

2

References in the text are to: Evelyn Waugh, Men at Arms (London: Chapman and Hall, 1952); Officers and Gentlemen (London: Chapman and Hall, 1955); Unconditional Surrender (London: Chapman and Hall, 1961); Brideshead Revisited (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1951); Letters of Evelyn Waugh, ed. by M. Amory (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1980); The Diaries of Evelyn Waugh, ed. by M. Davie (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1976). See, for example, S. Hastings, Evelyn Waugh, a Biography (London: Minerva, 1995), p.595; I. Littlewood, The Writings of Evelyn Waugh (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983), p.102, who calls it a ‘devastating moment’; David Lodge, ‘Evelyn Waugh’, in Six Modern British Novelists, ed. by G. Stade (Columbia: Columbia University Press, 1974), p.84.

replaced by patriotic and democratic fervour at the successful resistance of the Allies to Fascism; but Guy, like his creator, has found only disillusion, finally distancing himself from war while others have committed themselves to it. And Mme Kanyi places this bleak vision in the context of a question about heroism: can war contribute to personal honour? There is, of course, a whole heroic tradition that asserts that it can. For Corneille and for Stendhal,3 as for many other writers, war is the test which confirms the status of the hero, the man of courage, dignity and determination, the leader and model; if authors like these are aware of the complexities and ambiguities such a role implies, they have no doubt that the role itself is a real and admirable one. Waugh, in his trilogy, sets out to debate that conception, at least in so far as it can be applied in the conflict of 1939-45. His treatment of soldiering, Lodge (p.79) notes, is ‘consistently ironic and antiheroic’; it is anti-heroic not just as a stylistic procedure, but as part of a complex reflection on what heroism is or can be. Waugh himself had started the war with a sense of pride and triumph, especially in his recruitment to the Commandos; his letters, diaries and journalism show his respect for what he calls ‘a really formidable fighting force’ and for the men who were serving with him. A particularly significant remark appears in one of the letters, when he notes that there was in fact no fighting in the unsuccessful Allied attempt to seize Dakar: ‘Bloodshed has been avoided at the cost of honour’ (26 September 1940; Letters, p.141); honour means bloodshed, or to put it more generally, honour means courage and sacrifice. But he eventually lost any sense of identification with the will to victory, for two reasons: firstly he objected to Britain’s alliance with the Soviet Union – he specifically refers to the massacre of Polish officers by the Soviets, which makes them an unworthy ally and throws into doubt the whole status of the Allied campaign – and later to the Allied support for the Yugoslav partisans (and Waugh lost no opportunity in later years to denounce Tito once he had become leader of a liberated Yugoslavia). Secondly, he himself saw little military action; this was clearly at least in part due to his own difficult personality, which made his superiors distrustful of his ability to cooperate in a smooth-running and well-disciplined organisation, as Waugh seems momentarily to recognise when, reflecting on his being confined to the company of Randolph Churchill (admittedly a situation which anyone might reasonably view as a foretaste of purgatory), he commented that ‘no-one else would have chosen me, nor would anyone else have accepted him’ (27 October 1944; Diaries, p.387). There are of course very serious objections to Waugh’s position, as it implies that the shame of being associated with Communism outweighs the obligation to resist the Nazi government which, as Waugh knew when he was writing in the 1940s and 50s, though no doubt not while he was serving in the forces, was responsible for the Holocaust. We cannot forgive Waugh his tepid response to Fascism and Nazism (he had, before the war, written an article welcoming Mussolini’s invasion of Abyssinia; during the war he told fellow-soldiers – though perhaps as a boutade – that he saw little difference between Hitler’s plans for expansion and the expansion of the Roman empire). This undoubtedly makes it difficult to read the novels. 3

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Despite the brief reference to La Chartreuse de Parme in Officers and Gentlemen, Waugh did not read this novel till June 1957, after the completion of the first two volumes of the trilogy, when he dismissed it as having no relation to humanity as he knew it (Letters, p.492).

What we can, however, gain from them is a sense of the uncompromising judgement of self and others which leads, paradoxically, to a questioning of the romantic self-aggrandisement apparent in the cult of the hero, as well as to a denunciation of a world which no longer allows heroism. Guy, like Waugh, joins the army with enthusiasm. In his case the motive is personal rather than national. He has been divorced eight years earlier and has since then been living in Italy; unable to remarry because of his Catholic convictions and, more profoundly, because of ‘his own deep wound’ (Men at Arms, p.4), his sense of loss and inadequacy, he welcomes the call for action. The point becomes evident later when he reflects with satisfaction on the German invasion of Norway; the enemy’s actions in Austria and Bohemia have been defensible, he reflects, and there was even ‘a shadow of plausibility’ in his invasion of Poland. Norway puts Hitler clearly in the wrong, and so justifies Guy’s enlistment in the Army (Men at Arms, p.220), which in itself, therefore, was obviously lacking moral justification. This love of action – especially action, as this same passage makes clear, against unequal odds – leads Guy to continue to exult in his own exposure to danger and respect for the heroism of his fellows, and the text provides some clear, and indeed sometimes very conventional views of heroic action; Guy feels ‘the most exhilarating sensation of his life’ as he sets foot on enemy territory at Dakar (his experience is more colourful than Waugh’s in the same location) (Men at Arms, p.285), and he comports himself honourably, facing the possibility of death consciously and undramatically, both here and in his dutiful and efficient behaviour during the Cretan rout, after which he is greeted as a ‘returned hero’ (Officers and Gentlemen, p.333). It is suggested that he deserves the Military Cross (but he will not get it because, for public relations reasons, the Army is not eager to reward courage in defeat or in irregular action. The Military Cross actually is won by de Souza, a cynic and crypto-Communist, and the Military Medal, the corresponding award for lower ranks, is won during the very same Cretan defeat by Ludovic, a homosexual and atheistic intellectual of Communist sympathies and working class origins, and so five times damnable.) Guy admires the ‘heroic simplicity’ of his fellow commandos (Officers and Gentlemen, p.146); the ferocious Brigadier Ritchie-Hook is described as ‘his hero’, and Ritchie-Hook’s death is portrayed, admittedly by the publicist Ian Kilbrannon, as a ‘classic story of heroism’ as he single-handedly attacks an enemy stronghold (Unconditional Surrender, p.289). RitchieHook’s death is, in fact, a remarkable example of Waugh’s complexity of feeling on such matters. He is described as a ‘sacrificial victim’, though only in the distorted understanding of the Germans; but his sacrifice is nevertheless a genuine one which has really advanced the fortunes of his side. At the same time it is an act of suicide, a product of the death wish that haunts so many of Waugh’s characters; and it verges on farce because Ritchie-Hook’s last solitary exploit is accompanied by a midget who is in fact an American news photographer. This is the heroism of an eccentric, of a man whose love of warfare reaches the proportions of monomania and deprives him of much resemblance to normal civilised humanity, one of the grotesques that Waugh always delighted in, a sacred monster for whom fighting is an end in itself rather than a service to one’s country. When Ritchie-Hook, during training before the officers are exposed to action, announces that they are about to meet ‘the men you will lead in battle’, Guy is immediately thrilled: ‘It was the old, potent spell, big magic’ (Men at Arms, p.208). When a raid on enemy territory is arranged for publicity pur247

poses, it is a sergeant and not the officer in charge who bombs a German-used railway line, and Ian Kilbrannon, the publicity officer, calls him ‘heroic’. With heroic modesty, the sergeant replies ‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that, sir’ (Officers and Gentlemen, p.197). Heroism is not, then, impossible in the world of Sword of Honour. But it is impeded. Guy reflects late in the sequence of novels on his total experience of battle, which consists of ‘half an hour’s scramble on the beach near Dakar; an ignominious rout in Crete’, concluding: ‘That had been his war’ (Unconditional Surrender, p.217). Apart from this he has been confined to administrative roles or deliberately kept away from action; a colleague views him as ‘cruelly but justly relegated to an unheroic role’ (Unconditional Surrender, p.153). The justice of the situation is acutely observed: age and frequent unfitness quite rightly count against him as a fighting man. So, more gravely and tragically, does the continuing guilt of his having brought about the death of a fellow-officer by giving him whisky while he was feverish. But he is also subject to arbitrary reallocations, and in particular to malicious sidelining: he is banned from action in Northern Italy, where he has previously lived, because of a farcical and secretive series of misunderstandings on the part of Military Intelligence, a series worthy of the broad satirical farce of the younger Waugh, but which brings out the power in wartime of thoughtless decision-making; and, most outrageously, he is sent home from Crete by a slow boat as a result of the machinations of a society lady who wants to prevent him from giving evidence against his colleague Ivor Claire, who has deserted his men. Moreover, heroism ceases to make sense when other people stop believing in it. The inability of modern society to provide a context for real heroism is certainly a major theme of the trilogy, and is the form taken in these volumes by the ‘myth of decline’ which Lodge (p.46) very rightly sees as the essential motif of Waugh’s writing. When people speak of heroism in the trilogy, it is more often than not with all the superficiality implied by the knowing manipulation of image in the mass media (designed to attract the support of the working class and of the United States, neither of which obviously is, in Waugh’s eyes, all that much better as an ally than the Soviet Union). Ian Kilbrannon’s genuine admiration for the heroic sergeant arises in the context of a publicity stunt designed to make a hero out of the idle, selfish, dishonest, incompetent and socially mobile Trimmer (or MacTavish) who, in fact, though in no direct danger, reacts to being on enemy-occupied soil with helpless terror. Ian manipulates the press report and Trimmer is fêted as a hero, until at least new heroes are called for by the movement of fashion. With bitter irony, Ian is able to describe the acts of both Trimmer and Ritchie-Hook to an American officer as like ‘classic stories of heroism’: ‘You wouldn’t have thought, would you, that Trimmer and Ritchie-Hook had a great deal in common?’ (Unconditional Surrender, p.289). They certainly don’t: RitchieHook is selfless (in the most obvious senses, at least) whereas Trimmer lives wholly for self-interest. The bad money of media praise has driven out the good of real devotion to duty. What is implied through such harsh satire, the sense of a society unworthy of heroism because it has no recognition of dignity – albeit that, for Waugh, dignity is all too often inseparable from the possession of an aristocratic past – is argued out articulately in four important passages. These arguments go beyond satire. They raise explicitly the question of whether moral values change, and whether the concept of heroism, therefore, remains a 248

valid one at all. The first point involves Ian Kilbrannon, a nobleman by origin, but rather left-wing and frankly, if humorously, admitting that he wants to be ‘one of the soft-faced men who did well out of the war’ (Men at Arms, p.23). He tells Guy that ‘heroes are in strong demand. Heroes are urgently required to boost civilian morale’. But these are fabricated heroes like Trimmer. Guy’s, and the Commandos’, variety of unpretentiously dutiful heroism is out-of-date: ‘Delightful fellows, heroes too, I dare say, but the Wrong Period. Last-war stuff, Guy. Went out with Rupert Brooke’ (Officers and Gentlemen, pp.129-30). A few pages later (p.146), Guy thinks of an example of the Brooke-like ‘fine flower of the nation’ whom Ian has dismissed in the name of a democratically united society: Ivor Claire, a fellow commando officer, a prominent show-jumper, who has a Brideshead-style charm (though he owns a Pekinese instead of a Teddy bear), a sense of humour, a healthy disrespect for the self-importance and solemnity of some other officers, a constant grace and elegance of movement and appearance, in all a perfect example of the effortless superiority exhibited by the English gentleman. But in the course of the defeat in Crete, Ivor comes to talk to Guy, and asks him whether concepts of military duty and honour can change. Duels, he points out, were once a matter of honour but they no longer are; perhaps now the duty to remain with one’s men to the last moment is similarly no longer valid (Officers and Gentlemen, p.295). Guy protests mildly; and Ivor escapes from Crete, leaving his men behind. This is met with general disapproval; Ritchie-Hook, a soldier beyond all compromise, is thought to be furious at this betrayal. But Ritchie-Hook is a fanatic, and few are as insistent as he on a strict code of military discipline. Gradually it appears that Ivor is being accepted again, as a man who, having escaped the certainty of German imprisonment, can still fight for his country, and indeed does so in the specially grim and wearisome conditions of Burma. The army, in reality, becomes pragmatic; it places success above any code of conduct. Tommy Blackhouse, Guy’s superior, a practical and effective leader of men, decides that no action should be taken against Ivor, since a court-martial for desertion in the face of the enemy would be an unproductive embarrassment for the army (Officers and Gentlemen, p.316). Guy himself faces up to the issue in conversation with Ian. He says, with meticulous fairness: ‘Ivor doesn’t believe in sacrifice. Who does nowadays? But he had the will to win.’ And Ian replies that it’s strange that he is ‘charging off to be a hero now’ (Unconditional Surrender, p.161). Guy’s state of mind is complex; he has lost the will to win, for himself or for his country; he can justify this in the solemn words of a letter from his father, written shortly before the latter’s death, and conceived in profoundly Christian terms: for the Mystic Body ‘Quantitative judgements don’t apply’. Spirituality excludes compromise, and it excludes success as a criterion of value; it is concerned only with the quality of acts. It excludes pragmatism. But even Guy seems to have some hesitations about judging a military career in purely spiritual terms. The final word on this sort of issue – and a telling one – should perhaps lie with Ludovic. If Ludovic is diabolical, at least he has Mephistopheles’s sharp eye and acute judgement. During the Cretan campaign, Guy meets an elderly Greek general whom he has known as a visitor in a country house in his youth; he is not only however a member of the same elite class but also a person of great dignity, self-possession and patience. Ludovic notes in his diary the harmony between the two men: ‘Captain Crouchback is pleased because General Miltiades is a gentleman. He would like to believe that the war is being 249

fought by such people. But all gentlemen are now very old’ (Officers and Gentlemen, pp.248-49). Guy’s is another Grand Illusion; Ludovic points out the essential danger of confusing morality with gentlemanliness, of giving spiritual value to the manners of a caste. Guy, moreover, is not the kind of person who is capable of sustaining a sense of heroism. He lacks the will to assert himself – like the innocents of the early farcical Waugh, as Hastings (p.547) notes, he lets himself be pushed about by cynics and grotesques – and he lacks passion. His besetting sin is accidie.4 In particular, he lacks sexual passion: apart from a futile attempt to seduce his divorced wife, his state of ‘dry and negative chastity’ (Men at Arms, p.11) continues until the last months of the story (when he remarries Virginia). But more generally he lacks real relatedness with other people, so that, for instance, it is a real effort for him to say ‘cheerio’, with its lower-class connotations, when drinking, however kindly his drinking partner. The Italian villagers consider him not to be simpatico – unlike some deplorably vulgar English people; his soul at the beginning of the story (Men at Arms, p.7) is languishing in a wasteland (the echo of Eliot cannot be accidental in the work of the author of A Handful of Dust); and it is only very late in life that he escapes from this derelict world. His ideal, often, is ‘repose and solitude’ (Men at Arms, p.64), difficult qualities to reconcile with the military life. One of his finest moments comes very near the end of the trilogy, when he is sent for parachute training, and Waugh’s language is very emphatic: He experienced rapture, something as near as his earthbound soul could reach to a foretaste of paradise, locum refrigerii, lucis et pacis. The aeroplane seemed as far distant as will, at the moment of death, the spinning earth. […] He was a free spirit in an element as fresh as on the day of its creation. (Unconditional Surrender, p.128)

Guy’s remoteness from the practicalities of the war is revealed, suddenly, as a sort of mysticism, his death wish not just a reaction to boredom and frustration, but an aspiration to the unearthly; he briefly transcends the secular world of military enterprise. Briefly; for he falls badly, injures his knee (the knee he has absurdly injured while playing football with a waste-paper basket in his Mess), and is sent to a more than usually indifferent hospital. His sense of heroism, then, is superficial; Waugh makes the point very clearly, and with a nice humour, by his references to the Truslove saga. Guy as a child has read adventure stories which present a stereotype extrovert military courage, and they recur to his mind on significant occasions. As Ritchie-Hook announces the arrival of the men Guy and his fellows are to lead, his mind goes back to his prep school, when he was spellbound by the story of Truslove amongst the Pathans; a parodistic passage shows Truslove being entrusted with a mission, his senior officer’s words ending, of course: ‘Good luck to you, my boy. You’ll need it’ (Men at Arms, p.208). We realise that Guy is a Romantic about war, and a particularly naïve Romantic at that; the story of the novels is his coming into contact with the unromantic reality of war and power. Power can borrow the trappings of Romance, as with the Sword of Stalingrad – a sword of dishonour, in Waugh’s view, since it gives

4

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Waugh noted meeting, during wartime, ‘a wop intellectual called Moravia’. He presumably failed to recognise one of the great masters of secular accidie.

dignity to our alliance with Russia, but which, although incompetently designed, touches the popular heart with its rich embellishment, and provokes The Times to drop into poetry. More serious, and so more insidious, than the Truslove myth (and one no doubt ought not to underestimate the impact of childhood reading, however we might dismiss it with our rational mind), there is Guy’s solemn and persistent cult of Roger of Waybrooke. When he decides to leave his home in Italy to join the army and rediscover his homeland, he visits the tomb of Sir Roger, a crusader buried in the church of the village where he lives and known to the local people as il Santo Inglese. When Guy calls on Sir Roger to ‘pray for me [...] and for our endangered kingdom’ (Men at Arms, p.7), the sentimentally Romantic note is again inescapable. Moreover, Sir Roger has the merit of being old (older than almost anything in the village) – and Guy and his creator obviously revere what has the aura of history and continuity – and of suggesting an England both Catholic and heroic. The thought of Sir Roger recurs to Guy on many occasions; he clearly forms a model for Guy to emulate. He is recalled during Ritchie-Hook’s pep-talk (together with Truslove, admittedly), and a little later when Guy fails to earn a captaincy; he is recalled in the debacle of Crete as Guy sees the strangely undamaged and peacefully composed body of a British solider, as, that is, he sees death as orderly and significant and aspires to the corporal work of charity of burying him (which in fact proves not to be feasible). Littlewood (p.194), while lucidly insisting on the anti-Romantic force of the trilogy, views this picture of Guy, Sir Roger, and the dead soldier, as a kind of Deposition, asserting the pertinence of a Christian framework. The overall significance of Sir Roger in the book, as we shall see, may give us pause; and the sense of spiritual solemnity is again brief. A harsh realism intervenes: Guy remembers he has to leave a green identification tag with the body – green being the colour of decomposition. Sir Roger recurs in Guy’s memory as he waits for the final stage of his military career, which is to take him to Yugoslavia. Fretting in the ‘limbo’ of Bari, Guy recalls his departure from Italy at the beginning of the war: ‘He had left Italy four and a half years ago. He had then taken leave of the crusader whom the people called “il santo inglese”. He had laid his hand on the sword that had never struck the infidel’ (Unconditional Surrender, p.217). The final observation here is the crucial one. Guy is all too much like Sir Roger, who is no saint and not much of a crusader. He has, as is explained in the first presentation of him, set out for the crusades but been side-tracked after being shipwrecked near Genoa, where he died in the service of a local Count who was fighting against a neighbour (and in principle going on to the Holy Land later). The figure to whom Guy has chosen to dedicate himself, with whom he feels an ‘especial kinship’ (Men at Arms, p.7), has wasted his life. His vow is unfulfilled. The novel as a whole may appear to be hostile to pragmatism; but Waugh discreetly hints that being opposed to pragmatism is rather like being in love with failure. The point is implied also, more pathetically, in Guy’s memories of his two brothers: Ivo, as we have seen, dies of lack of interest in life; Gervase dies in the First World War, and is treated as a model of Catholic sacrifice, Guy continuing to wear his holy medal (as he recalls in Bari, at the same time as he recalls Sir Roger). Guy is given the medal by his father, and comments cynically that it didn’t protect Gervase much (Men at Arms, p.36); the father, saintly or impractical as ever, replies that it had protected him from the temptation to sexual vice to which soldiers are exposed. Gervase died on his first day in France, ‘fresh and clean and unwearied’ (Men at Arms, p.12) (anticipating perhaps the dead soldier in Crete, and 251

contrasting with Guy’s weariness). Another useless life: Gervase has been able to contribute nothing to the war effort. He is a victim rather than a hero, and Guy may be a victim too; he sacrifices not his life but his hope of excitement, of achievement and of belonging. But he does achieve two things in the course of the war, and merits the reader’s serious respect for both. He reflects at one moment that God will someday require something of him: ‘Even he must have his function in the divine plan. He did not expect a heroic destiny. Quantitative judgements did not apply. All that mattered was to recognise the chance when it offered’ (Unconditional Surrender, p.81). Two chances offer. One is directly linked to his military role, though not to any act of hostility against the enemy: he ensures that the Jews are freed from the domination of the Communist partisans and allowed to travel first of all to a camp where their security is still uncertain and finally to another camp in Italy, lacking in comfort but at least free from danger. Waugh attains a moment of real awe: ‘It was indeed as though the Red Sea had miraculously drawn asunder and left a dry passage between walls of water’ (Unconditional Surrender, p.302). Guy, Moses-like, is present at a miracle. He has been an instrument of providence. And he has been so through unheroic work; he has brought about this result by persistence in signalling to headquarters. Unheroic bureaucratic activity (the kind of activity that added to the unpopularity of Waugh himself), but attaining a very precise result in terms of a guarantee of survival and a limited increase in comfort; a pragmatic achievement for modest, un-self-seeking, patient work, accompanied often by a sense of frustrated hopelessness, but finally carried out simply for the rightness of the act. The second issue is in Guy’s private life, and is acutely presented as a real and costly act of personal growth and commitment. Guy agrees to remarry his former wife, Virginia, although he knows that she is pregnant by the proletarian chancer Trimmer. The sacrifice is a genuine one – at least as far as Guy knows. He has been concerned at being the end of his line. Having had no children with Virginia during their initial period of marriage, he expects to be the last of the Crouchbacks, a long-established family whose history is a matter of pride especially for Guy’s much-revered father; and he would not consider defying the Catholic prohibition of remarriage for divorced people simply in order to guarantee the continuity of his line. By taking Virginia back, he thus ensures that the heir to the Crouchback succession is in fact an intruder, and a proof of his wife’s trivial and self-interested character; he connives at the end of his line. The act, we are told, is a ‘chivalrous’ one, and as such arouses the irritation of a more pragmatic and secular character, Ian’s wife Kerstie, who is – very reasonably – confident of Virginia’s unworthiness: ‘You poor bloody fool, […] you’re being chivalrous – about Virginia. Can’t you understand men aren’t chivalrous any more and I don’t believe they ever were?’ (Unconditional Surrender, p.192). The value of chivalry has been asserted earlier in the novels, if in an ironic context: at Ritchie-Hook’s first appearance, the narrator comments on the ‘chivalrous calling’ of warfare (Men at Arms, p.78), while Ludovic’s early Romanticism arises despite a working-class childhood which ‘had furnished few models of chivalry’ (Unconditional Surrender, p.39). Guy disclaims chivalry. He tells Kerstie that he has never ‘done a single, positively unselfish action’, but that the opportunity to save – not Virginia herself but her unborn child, is a task ‘beyond the call of duty’ – which will lead to mockery in his club. Guy at last attains full selfknowledge and self-judgement and chooses to become a holy fool; his chivalrous act, more 252

fundamentally, is a charitable act, and so incompatible with the worldly ethos of Kerstie and the clubmen. Chivalry, etymologically the conduct of a knight, is detached from the military context, and becomes a matter of the private life. But even here Waugh’s irony comes into play. The sacrifice is attenuated. Guy’s ‘positively unselfish action’ is the beginning of a move to everyday happiness. First of all he gains the satisfaction of resuming his sexual relationship with Virginia; then, when Virginia dies in an air-raid, Guy is surprisingly indifferent. He later meets a young woman of impeccable Catholic and aristocratic character who is looking after Virginia’s baby, marries her and has two children with her. The last words of the novel are spoken by Guy’s brother-inlaw, an unimaginative and secular-minded politician, who is precisely one of the clubmen whose mockery Guy had expected: ‘things have turned out very conveniently for Guy’. Yes, they have. The bitterness of the eight years of solitude after the divorce and of the six years of frustration in the army has led to a life of rural comfort and prosperity. Waugh later came to regret this anti-climax, thinking it an unsuccessful piece of irony, which he had intended to heighten the outrage of the dispossession of the true aristocracy by Trimmer’s offspring (letter to Anthony Powell; Letters, p.579). Some readers, on the contrary, may respect it as a final recognition that faith and sacrifice are as elusive a justification for a way of life as are courage and inheritance. The achievement of Sword of Honour may perhaps be most fully appreciated by a comparison with Brideshead Revisited, the novel Waugh wrote while on protracted leave during the war. The narrator, Charles Ryder, is an artist, former Oxford undergraduate and Army officer. He is much afflicted by his subordinate Hooper, a sallow youth with a Midlands accent, who neglects his duties, wears his hair too long and acknowledges instructions by saying ‘Rightyoh’. Hooper is not a Romantic, and Ryder reproaches him with his insensitivity to the glorious military past: Gallipoli, Balaclava, Quebec, Lepanto, Bannockburn, Roncesvales, and Marathon – these and the Battle in the West where Arthur fell, and a hundred such names whose trumpet-notes, even now, in my sere and lawless state, called to me irresistibly across the intervening years with all the clarity and strength of boyhood, sounded in vain to Hooper. (p.13)

The tone recurs in the final paragraphs of the novel, as Ryder reflects on the vanity of ‘the age of Hooper’ and on ‘the flame which the old knights saw from their tombs, which they saw put out’. He concludes: ‘that flame burns again for other soldiers, far from home, farther, in heart, than Acre or Jerusalem’ (p.332). We should not assume that Waugh approves without reservation the sensibility of Ryder, sceptic and adulterer as he has been, sere and lawless as he still is, though Ryder has at least learnt how to pray, and so come closer to the author. But the solemnity of the rhetoric, the listing of the heroic names, the acute vision of the flame in its ‘beaten copper lamp of deplorable design relit before the beaten-copper doors of a tabernacle’ – a vision which both asserts and delimits the value of the aesthetic – certainly may draw the reader into complicity with a view which, for all its richness of expression and feeling, ultimately, and crudely, attacks a facile conception of vulgar democracy and reasseverates a childish Romanticism. Sword of Honour knows the temptation of such Romanticism; it puts it to the test of historic reality, of self-questioning and of the true virtue of charity, and shows how heroism can be overcome. 253

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Philip Taylor

A Passion for Debate: French Communist Party Internal Opposition from Garaudy to Fiterman Few would deny that the French Communist Party played a heroic role in the Resistance to Nazi occupation in World War II. Since then its fortunes have declined dramatically, and heroism is perhaps the last word that could be applied to its current plight. Yet passion has certainly not been absent from its evolving situation in recent decades. Internal critics have called for changes in party policy and structure, changes which it would appear were implemented by Robert Hue, party leader from 1994 to 2001.1 It is the impassioned demands and objections of these internal dissidents faced with an often apparently inflexible leadership which this chapter seeks to outline and analyse. Since its foundation at the Tours Congress of 1920, when a majority of the Socialist Section Française de l’Internationale Ouvrière (SFIO) voted to join Lenin’s Third Communist International, becoming in effect a subsidiary branch of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and pledging allegiance to it, the Parti Communiste Français has never been far from controversy. The immediate and lasting effect of Tours was the splitting of the French Left, with bitter and enduring rivalry ensuing between the PCF and those Socialists who chose not to join the Third International. The Popular Front movement of the 1930s in reaction to Fascism briefly unified the French Left and enabled the PCF to move away from a position of political isolation. The Second World War saw the PCF banned and widely disgraced after its approval of the Hitler-Stalin pact, but the vital role of the party in the French Resistance immediately following the German invasion of the Soviet Union was perhaps its finest hour, and enabled the PCF to emerge from the war as the strongest French political organisation, with over a quarter of the vote. Brief post-Liberation government participation was followed by a long period of isolation as the Cold War took hold, though electoral support remained high during the 1950s and 1960s. Yet, despite Maurice Thorez’s Times interview of 18 November 1946, in which he appeared to reject the Soviet model and expressed his desire to follow a ‘French road to Socialism’, the PCF was nonetheless regarded for much of its postwar history as the most Moscow-orientated of Western European Communist Parties, and was one of the last to question the Stalinist aspects of its organisation. The Common Programme of the 1970s initiated a brief period of Communist-Socialist alliance, but appeared to be of far greater electoral benefit to the Parti Socialiste than to the PCF. The dismantling of the Common Programme heralded a long period of decline, despite, or perhaps in part due to, Communist ministerial participation from 1981 to 1984 in the Socialist-dominated government. From the late 1970s onwards the PCF had also appar-

1

Hue’s term as Secrétaire national began at the Twenty-Eighth Congress in January 1994. At the Thirty-First Congress of October 2001, a dual leadership system was adopted, with Marie-George Buffet becoming Secrétaire nationale and Hue being given the newly-created role of party President.

ently realigned itself with Moscow and steeled itself against internal and external criticism of its political sectarianism and its refusal to ‘modernise’ its own policy and functioning.2 The decline of the French Communist Party’s electoral strength has been one of the most notable developments in French politics in recent times. Not least among suggested reasons for this decline was the party’s negative public image. Georges Marchais, party leader from 1972 to 1994, seemed by his aggressive and uncompromising approach to personify all the least palatable aspects of inflexible Soviet-style Communism. Periodically attacked by internal ‘dissidents’, Marchais largely ignored their calls for modernisation of party policy and functioning. The very lack of internal democracy criticised by such oppositionists meant that Marchais’s leadership was never seriously threatened. Tellingly, Marchais agreed to the removal of the fundamental principle of Democratic Centralism only after having decided to step down as leader. The set of fundamental regulations traditionally governing the functioning of Communist Parties, Democratic Centralism was first developed by Lenin as the necessary system of an underground revolutionary movement requiring the utmost secrecy and military-style discipline in the Tsarist Russia of the early 1900s. The demands of the post-revolution civil war situation in the Soviet Union meant the continuation of the authoritarian methods of Democratic Centralism, and Article 12 of the twenty-one conditions for membership of the Communist International, accepted by the PCF at its foundation, bound parties to be constructed around the principle. Democratic Centralism required the subordination of the lower party bodies to the higher. While debate and criticism of proposals were permitted to all party members, decisions, once passed by the majority, had to be accepted and carried out by all – the outvoted minority was expected to discontinue its opposition, or face accusations of factionalism. A central and much criticised aspect of Democratic Centralism was its ‘filter system’. For example, members of the lowest party organisation, the cell, were free to disagree with the proposed party line, but only if they did so in a majority would their opposition be taken by to the next rung, the local section. Again a majority of those at the section had to be in opposition to the proposal before recognition of the divergence could travel upwards to the next level. Most dissidence was therefore likely to be filtered off long before reaching the party elite for any consideration. The fear of factionalism meant that Democratic Centralism also forbade ‘horizontal’ communication – in other words contact between organisations at the same level, such as between two separate cells or sections.3 PCF internal debate often concerned the interpretation and usage of Democratic Centralism, and, as a result of the hierarchy’s reliance on the principle, disharmony on 2

3

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The most recent and perhaps most authoritative general history of the French Communist Party in English is D.S. Bell and B. Criddle, The French Communist Party in the Fifth Republic (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994) – despite its title, this is a complete history of the Party from 1920 to 1994. The best recent works in French include Stéphane Courtois and Marc Lazar, Histoire du Parti communiste français (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2000), and the more concise Yves Santamaria, Histoire du Parti communiste français (Paris: La Découverte, 1999). See for example R.N. Carew Hunt, A Guide to Communist Jargon (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1957), p.53; Bell and Criddle, The French Communist Party, p.6; M. Adereth, The French Communist Party – A Critical History (1920-84) (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984), pp.30, 284, 287; W. Thompson, The Communist Movement since 1945 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), p.25.

other matters was at once restricted in terms of its internal expression and exaggerated by non-Communist commentators keen to nurture its fractious potential. The Democratic Centralist tradition has meant, as we shall see, that internal dissidents have often been greeted with immediate hostility, and in most cases have finally broken links with a party they have deemed to be unable to accommodate pluralist opinion.

Roger Garaudy Roger Garaudy, as a valued and apparently orthodox party intellectual, was in 1963 given control of the PCF’s Centre d’études et de recherches marxistes (CERM), where he was to oversee dialogue with non-Communist organisations and movements, notably with Christian groups. Such work was strongly supported by the party leadership, and it was not until the events of May-June 1968 that Garaudy began openly to disagree with the PCF hierarchy. The unexpected student unrest and widespread strikes, and the PCF’s negative reaction to these developments, were to change radically both his own ideas and his relationship with the party. At a Central Committee meeting in July 1968, Garaudy berated the PCF leadership for its misreading of recent events. The intervention of Warsaw Pact troops in Czechoslovakia later in the same year saw Garaudy distancing himself further from the party orthodoxy, developing his condemnation of the USSR and its leadership in Pour un modèle français du socialisme4 and Le grand tournant du socialisme,5 complemented by increasingly explicit criticism of the PCF itself, with regard to what he considered its outmoded internal functioning and reliance on dogma. Garaudy was officially cautioned by the PCF’s Central Committee in October 1968 for the public expression of his divergent views, and agreed at this time to fall into line, but he was subjected to a further reprimand by the Political Bureau in September 1969 for an interview given to a Yugoslav newspaper in which he condemned Soviet authoritarianism. Le grand tournant du socialisme was censured by the Political Bureau in December 1969. In February 1970 Garaudy published Toute la vérité (Paris: Grasset), a collection of documents and articles relevant to what had by now become ‘l’affaire Garaudy’, ostensibly aimed at clarifying his disputes with the party leadership and correcting the alleged distortions of his views. Several weeks later he was replaced at the head of CERM, then excluded from his party cell in April. He was, however, allowed to speak at the PCF’s Nineteenth Congress in May 1970, before his expulsion from the party shortly afterwards, on the grounds of ‘revisionism of Marxism-Leninism’. His views on the USSR were given uninhibited expression. For Garaudy, the 1956 Twentieth Congress of the Soviet Communist Party – at which Khrushchev had denounced huge swathes of Stalinist policy and practice – had promised much but delivered little, followed closely as it was by the Soviet crushing of Hungary’s attempts under Nagy to develop an autonomous model, and then by the re-Stalinization Garaudy perceived as inherent in the policies of Khrushchev’s successor Brezhnev. He was outraged by the August 1968 4 5

Roger Garaudy, Pour un modèle français du socialisme (Paris: Grasset, 1968). Roger Garaudy, Le grand tournant du socialisme (Paris: Gallimard, 1969).

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intervention of Warsaw Pact troops in Czechoslovakia, and bitterly disappointed by the PCF’s reaction – the leadership’s initial expression of ‘surprise et réprobation’6 was, by November, seemingly under Soviet pressure, withdrawn. Garaudy was nevertheless at pains to point out his rejection of anti-Sovietism: his criticisms stemmed rather from his belief that Soviet leaders from Stalin onwards had destroyed the great Soviet dream and distorted Marxism beyond recognition. In Garaudy’s analysis, the PCF’s failure adequately to respond to the Soviet Communist Party’s Twentieth Congress by seizing the opportunity to undergo its own process of de-Stalinization was at the root of many of its failings. While believing that Democratic Centralism should be retained as an organisational principle, Garaudy nevertheless identified a tendency for centralism to outweigh democracy and saw the PCF’s application of Democratic Centralism as advantageous to effective downward transmission of the party line yet detrimental to communication in the opposite direction, from the grass-roots to the party hierarchy. Garaudy emphasised that he did not question party statutes or principles: he simply thought that a lively and creative application of these principles was needed. Article 6 of the 1964 party statutes concerned the right, indeed the duty, of all party members to take part in the development of party policy, a right which Garaudy felt was often infringed by the call to discipline and unanimity implicit in the leadership’s application of Democratic Centralism, which he believed prevented much of the innovation and creative reflection that should be an important aspect of the role of a Communist party. The student unrest and industrial action of May-June 1968 seemed to Garaudy of vital historical import. Students and intellectuals, he believed, shared a common aspiration with the working class in their demand for participation at all levels, something which was the common denominator of what he termed the ‘new historic bloc’ – the fusing of workers and intellectuals now being occasioned by technological changes in the workplace. During the May-June events, Georges Marchais, as PCF spokesperson, though not yet leader, had initially seen the student movement as composed of ‘false revolutionaries’ involved in ‘leftist adventurism’ (L’Humanité, 3 May 1968); then, as protests grew, he portrayed their actions as no more than a catalyst for the workers’ strikes. Garaudy, in contrast, felt that the students should have been openly backed by the PCF, firstly because they were the section of society most obviously keen to make a stand for change, but also because many of them were not in fact destined to take over ‘daddy’s business’, as Marchais believed (ibid.), but would go on to play their role in this new historic bloc. Ultimately, Garaudy’s grand tournant referred to a choice of paths confronting French Communists – alignment with the highly centralised and authoritarian Socialism of Stalin and Brezhnev, or the creation of a specifically French model, in accordance with the ideas of Marx and Lenin, and able to attract the support of a wide and pluralistic alliance of the French Left in all its variety.

6

258

Santamaria, p.77.

The Common Programme Years Garaudy’s expulsion was followed by a relatively trouble-free period for the PCF. Internal oppositionist passions eased, as the party united around the concept of the Common Programme negotiated with the Socialists. Importantly, many of the steps taken by the PCF in the post-Garaudy, Common Programme era, were in the direction of recurrent oppositionist demands. Georges Marchais, effectively PCF leader since 1969 due to the continued illness of Waldeck Rochet, officially became Assistant Secretary General in February 1970, then Secretary General in December 1972. His leadership seemed initially to herald a period of progress, and the early to mid 1970s were a time of great optimism for many party members, with a long-desired Common Programme finally signed with the Socialists in June 1972. This era also saw the PCF distancing itself from the USSR and briefly establishing closer links with the Italian and Spanish Communist parties, leading to the creation of the term ‘Eurocommunism’. The PCF’s ‘progressive’ efforts appeared to culminate in, and certainly came to be symbolised by, the party’s Twenty-Second Congress of February 1976, which echoed many of Garaudy’s preoccupations, promising political pluralism and increased internal democracy. The Congress also saw the sudden abandonment of the concept of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, until then largely unquestioned as a cornerstone of Communist belief. The end of Left Union in September 1977, after a PCF call in May for renegotiation of the Common Programme had resulted in failure to reach a new accord, was followed by the defeat of the Left at the March 1978 General Election, with the Socialists (24.7%) overtaking the Communists (20.5%)7 for the first time in the postwar period, a defeat all the more bitter for Socialists and Communists alike since Left victory had, not so long ago, seemed finally to be within grasp. The end of Left Union, electoral defeat, and the leadership’s reaction – denial of any responsibility, exclusive apportioning of blame to the Socialists, who, they argued, had hoped to use their new-found electoral strength to renegotiate and dilute the Common Programme – led to an outbreak of PCF internal dissidence involving the public expression of opposition by party intellectuals such as Althusser and Elleinstein, whose complaints, although initiated by exasperation at the leadership’s denial of any responsibility, encompassed wider issues such as internal democracy and antiintellectualism, issues which, the sudden fury of their expression suggested, had been kept bottled up in the interests of harmony during the years of Left alliance, but which were now to be vented with rage.

Louis Althusser Louis Althusser, philosophy lecturer and party member since 1948, became in the 1960s the perceived leader of a leftist grouping within the PCF which wished to see the party retain its revolutionary character and reject Khrushchev’s ‘peaceful road to Socialism’. Originally a

7

Figures from D.S. Bell and B. Criddle, The French Socialist Party (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), p.274.

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firm believer in party discipline, Althusser had not aired in public any of his grievances with party policy, but had been rebuked by the PCF Central Committee in 1966 for his dismissal of Garaudy’s attempts (in the latter’s pre-dissident role as the PCF’s star intellectual) to equate the essentials of Marxism and Catholicism. Althusser’s Leninist leanings saw him outraged at the sudden decision to abandon the principle of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat at the Twenty-Second Congress of 1976. His conviction that the party had taken an unacceptable ‘rightward’ shift distinguishes Althusser from most of the PCF’s recent dissidents. His belief in the party elite’s inadequate reading of Marxism, his call for a re-analysis of the complexities of the French class situation, his desire for the definition of a policy enabling unity of all ‘forces ouvrières et populaires’, and especially his condemnation of contemporary internal democracy procedures, were however very much in line with other PCF contestataires, before and after him. In April 1978, Althusser went public with his dissident ideas in Le Monde (the party press was, he believed, closed to critical opinion on the orders of the leadership) in a series of four long articles.8 Althusser makes it clear that his intervention has been occasioned by the defeat of the Left and the party hierarchy’s denial of responsibility for it. Such an unwillingness to admit to mistakes is at odds with Althusser’s view of Marxism, according to which errors must be recognised and corrected, not covered up, if they are not to recur interminably. The party’s inadequate understanding of Marxism is also responsible, in Althusser’s view, for what he sees as its fear of any situation it cannot dominate. May 1968 is cited as the most obvious and telling example, when the party ‘deliberately cut itself off from the student and “petitbourgeois” masses, because it did not have control of them’. This runs contrary to the role of a Marxist party, which should judge itself on its capacity to analyse, comprehend and channel just such mass initiatives, spontaneous and complex though they may be. Identifying a lack of internal party democracy, Althusser calls for meaningful debate and for the free and open exchange of ideas. Real decision-making power, he believes, is currently in the hands of the ‘Political Bureau and the Secretariat, or rather in a small nonstatutory group, made up of the Secretariat, some members of the Political Bureau and a few other “experts” and collaborateurs from the Central Committee’. For Althusser, many in the PCF believe that the party ‘machine’ needs to change radically, since Stalinist tradition still survives, despite the hopes seemingly offered by the Twenty-Second Congress of an end to autocratic methods. Yet, like Garaudy before him, he questions only the current interpretation and usage, not the principle, of Democratic Centralism. Althusser regards the party as a victim of its own siege mentality, mistrustful of the masses, withdrawing towards the poorest section of the working class. His equivalent of Garaudy’s grand tournant sees the PCF faced with a choice between a rightward shift entailing the abandonment of its revolutionary tradition and the development of the traits of a bourgeois political institution ‘comme les autres’, or movement towards a new openness to, and involvement with, the masses, leading to the necessary transformation and reinvigoration of the party. Althusser here expresses the common contestataire desire to affirm the validity of initiatives for genu8

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Le Monde, 25-28 April 1978. All quotations are from these articles until the end of this section.

ine societal change coming from outside the party. Frustration with the restrictions of internal party structure undoubtedly leads to a heightened sense of claustrophobia and renders such ideas all the more attractive to those at odds with the party leadership. Althusser’s frustrations seem to have been further exacerbated by disillusionment with the low level of genuine ‘influence’ he felt he could exert on the party line, and his dissident essay was undoubtedly an attempt to transcend the common perception of the role ascribed by the PCF to its intellectuals: that of justifying and embellishing policy arrived at independently by the upper echelons of the party.

Jean Elleinstein Long considered a loyal party member, Jean Elleinstein was regarded throughout much of the 1970s as an important intellectual asset. His work as a historian, in particular his books L’Histoire du phénomène stalinien9 and L’Histoire de l’URSS10, had served as valuable affirmations of the PCF’s distancing of itself from the USSR in the mid-1970s. However, immediately after the Left’s electoral defeat in March 1978, he published a series of articles in Le Monde (after their refusal by L’Humanité), not only rejecting the leadership’s attempts to deny any responsibility, but incorporating many of the recurrent oppositionist grievances.11 Elleinstein called for a genuine internal debate, which he believed would serve as proof of the PCF’s commitment to democratic procedures. It was time for the PCF fully to take on board the spirit of the Twenty-Second Congress. He called for adjustments to, though not the removal of, Democratic Centralism, declaring that the history of the PCF had witnessed ‘more centralism than democracy’. Berating the PCF for its failure to react to the Soviet Communist Party’s Twentieth Congress, as well as for its reluctance openly to condemn Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia in 1968, he maintained that the party’s analysis of Soviet realities and foreign policy still left much to be desired. The USSR was not only unsuitable as a model of Socialism for French Communists, but should in fact serve as an ‘anti-model’. Elleinstein went as far as to suggest that sharing the name ‘Communist’ with those in power in the USSR was in itself a great disadvantage in the PCF’s attempts to woo an increasingly sceptical French electorate. For Elleinstein, the PCF’s Twenty-Second Congress had been a first step in a necessary renovation in the direction of democratisation and de-Stalinization. What was now required was to define a political line based neither on traditional Social Democracy nor the Communism of Tours and the Comintern. Elleinstein also suggested a Garaudy-style ‘alliance of workers, middle-class employees and intellectuals’, which could be further extended by the party’s involvement in social movements to which it had as yet paid insufficient attention. Elleinstein differed from Althusser in his call for a break with Leninism, the ‘revolutionary’ heritage of Communism so dear to the PCF. Elleinstein advocated the unambigu9 10 11

Jean Elleinstein, Histoire du phénomène stalinien (Paris: Grasset, 1975). Jean Elleinstein, Histoire de l’URSS i(Paris: Éditions Sociales, 1975). Le Monde, 13-15 April 1978. All quotations are from these articles until the end of this section.

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ous espousal of reformism as the only viable road to Socialism in late 1970s France. What both intellectuals shared, however, was a belief that the PCF’s self-proclaimed process of de-Stalinization had thus far proved inadequate, and their joint calls for improvements in internal party democracy were the most evident and the most noted aspects of their separate contributions.

The Leadership’s Response Marchais’s reaction to these episodes of intellectual dissidence was immediate and unequivocal. In a report to the Central Committee (26-27 April 1978), he recognised the existence of internal criticism but denied it any importance, claiming that it represented merely a few disgruntled ‘desk-bound’ intellectuals. Marchais attacked any questioning of Democratic Centralism, saying this could only weaken the party’s ‘potentiel de combat’ to the satisfaction of ‘la grande bourgeoisie’ and the Socialist Party, and warned militants of the paralysing effect of too much internal debate. However, the refusal of internal criticism to die away led to the adoption of a more conciliatory approach in the latter part of 1978, culminating in the Vitry meeting of December, a discussion attended by 400 party intellectuals and members of the PCF’s Political Bureau. Proceedings closed with Marchais affirming that such dialogues would continue, and that the spirit of the Twenty-Second Congress would prevail, but in retrospect the initiative would appear to have been designed more as a release of pressure than as a symbol of any new and lasting leadership attitude of increased tolerance towards internal opposition.

Henri Fiszbin and the Paris Federation The next controversy was not far away. Summoned before the Political Bureau on 11 January 1979, the PCF’s Paris Federation was accused of opportunism, of calling into question the class content of party policy, and of a general failure to defend the party line. Instead of presenting the anticipated autocritique, the eight Paris Federation Secretariat members, led by Henri Fiszbin, refused to accept the charges against them, claiming that Parisian initiatives – a revised analysis of the class situation in the capital, attempts at a demystification of the PCF by opening internal meetings to the public, and so on – had been in keeping with the ideas developed at the PCF’s Twenty-Second Congress. Fiszbin resigned from the Paris Federation in protest, allowing the party to present his departure as due to illness. A stalemate followed, during which the leadership hoped the incident would be forgotten, and Fiszbin was re-elected onto the Central Committee in May 1979. However, continued pressure on the Paris Federation by the national leadership led to his resignation from the Central Committee in November 1979. Fiszbin’s decision to publish Les Bouches s’ouvrent,12 his version of events, precipitated his exclusion from the Federal Committee. After founding the exploratory group Rencontres communistes, Fiszbin was expelled from the PCF in June 1981.

12

262

Henri Fiszbin, Les Bouches s’ouvrent (Paris: Grasset, 1980).

Central to the Paris Federation affair was a desire at the heart of much internal opposition: to extend Communist appeal to a wider section of the population. According to Fiszbin, the Paris Federation believed that for too long the party had imagined the population of Paris in its own outdated way. Communism would become a marginal force in the capital if the PCF failed to comprehend the growing diversity and complexity of the Parisian population, the increasingly blurred nature of class distinctions there and the efforts required in the face of much disadvantageous demographic and sociological change, involving as this often did the breaking up of traditional Communist bastions of support. After the end of the Common Programme and the electoral defeat of 1978, the leadership’s subsequent reversal of much of the party line was sure to run into opposition, and the Paris Federation, noted for its attachment to the ideas of the Twenty-Second Congress, provided an obvious focus for dissent during the preparation of the Twenty-Third Congress. The desire to undo the work of the Twenty-Second Congress thus led, not to an autocritique on the part of the national leadership for its ‘errors’ in the Common Programme years, but instead to an attack on the Paris Federation, which had come to symbolise the now redundant line.

Pierre Juquin and the Rénovateurs The PCF participation in the new Socialist-dominated government under Pierre Mauroy from June 1981 can be seen as having had the effect of temporarily defusing the internal debate which had come to a head with the Paris Federation affair. It was not until the PCF’s disastrous 11.2% result at the European Elections of June 1984, followed by new Prime Minister Laurent Fabius’s apparent intention to continue his predecessor’s austerity policies, led to the departure of the Communist ministers in July 1984 that the party, falling back on hard-line positions including violent denunciation of the Socialists, would find itself confronted by new episodes of high-profile internal opposition. Former Communist minister Marcel Rigout appealed for a broad debate on the state of the PCF, and Political Bureau member Pierre Juquin called for a reassessment of the rules concerning Democratic Centralism. During the preparatory discussions for the party’s Twenty-Fifth Congress, Rigout and Juquin similarly rejected the leadership’s assertion that the current stalemate with regard to possibilities of renewed Left alliance was the exclusive fault of the PS, and demanded increased internal democracy and a more critical analysis of Soviet and Eastern Bloc realities. The new wave of internal critics, led by Juquin and Rigout, became known as les rénovateurs. In October 1985, Juquin published Autocritiques,13 in which, while delineating the failure of Social Democratism, he rounded on the PCF for its reluctance to modernise. In an echo of previous contestataires, he cited changes in society and in the workplace as necessitating an expansion of the party’s target audience beyond the working class. Further electoral catastrophe at the March 1986 General Election (9.6%) naturally exacerbated internal tensions and saw an increase in rénovateur activity, including the publication, immediately

13

Pierre Juquin, Autocritiques (Paris: Grasset, 1985).

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afterwards, of a text in Le Monde on 23-24 March, backed by 3000 signatures, calling for an extraordinary Twenty-Sixth Congress to deal with the PCF’s problems. The apparent stubbornness of the leadership in the face of such efforts was met by an intensifying of the rénovateur campaign with the creation of a collectif de coordination des rénovateurs communistes in January 1987 and the launch of a manifesto in February of the same year.14 The document evidenced a class analysis in line with that of previous internal critics, pointing to an evolution of the old working class towards a new ‘bloc historique des travailleurs’. The party leadership was also admonished for its persistent refusal to recognise the seriousness of the decline in the party’s political influence and electoral clout. In a familiar oppositionist stance, the ‘vertical’ nature of PCF internal structure was called into question and the leadership portrayed as employing outmoded forms of democratic organisation and functioning as a means of masking political errors. Demands for a redistribution of decisionmaking power were coupled with calls for increased acceptance of internal diversity of opinion. In June 1987, Juquin resigned from the Central Committee and soon announced his intention to stand in the 1988 Presidential Election as an independent in opposition to the PCF’s official candidate André Lajoinie. This move was met by his expulsion from the PCF in October 1987. Juquin’s references in his presidential campaign to ecological concerns and to the mouvement social demonstrated his desire to explore terrain as yet given low priority by French Communism. In the event, his disappointing 2.1% share of the vote and accusations that he had been ‘too autocratic’15 saw the rénovateurs re-grouping around Claude Llabres’s candidature in the European elections of 1989, where Llabres polled a negligible 0.5%. Meanwhile, a new oppositionist minority grouping, the reconstructeurs, its chief spokesman former Political Bureau member Claude Poperen, emerged in May 1988, immediately after Lajoinie’s disastrous Presidential Election result. The reconstructeurs drew up a text calling for a revision of internal functioning and a new form of Democratic Centralism ‘worthy of the name’.16 The reconstructeurs differed from the rénovateurs in their lower prioritising of the mouvement social and of concerns such as the environment. At variance also was their desire to see the PCF reaffirm its ‘Leninist’ or revolutionary aspect. Where they found common ground, as Althusser and Elleinstein had done in the late 1970s, was in their shared denunciation of the lack of internal party democracy and the perceived abuse of Democratic Centralism.

Charles Fiterman and the Refondateurs In October 1989, the refondateurs emerged, led by Secretariat member and former Transport Minister Charles Fiterman, and backed by two other former Communist ministers, Anicet Le Pors and Jack Ralite. Their opposition to the party leadership became increasingly vocal during the preparations for the PCF’s Twenty-Seventh Congress. Fiterman 14 15 16

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Le Monde, 3 February 1987. Le Monde, 4 May 1988. M. Dreyfus, PCF: Crises et dissidences (Brussels: Éditions Complexe, 1990), p.190.

wanted to see real Left unity based on an ‘entente démocratique’ involving a spirit of cooperation similar to that of the Popular Front in the 1930s or the Common Programme in the 1970s. The PCF leadership, declared Fiterman, should examine critically, and learn from, the rapidly changing situation in the USSR and the Eastern Bloc. The leadership’s wish to present a united front was apparent in Marchais’s opening speech to the Twenty-Seventh Congress, in which he declared that the PCF had in the past been mistaken in its assessment of Soviet and Eastern Bloc realities.17 Although another refondateur aspiration, Left unity, was largely rejected, Marchais promised a new attitude towards internal opposition: ‘We have changed’, he declared, ‘We have learned no longer to fear diversity of approach and difference of opinion amongst ourselves. We have come to understand that these are often stimulating and allow the progression of our shared thinking’.18 Yet Fiterman felt that Marchais’s speech was a disappointment, heralding little significant change. In his own Congress intervention, Fiterman invoked a familiar oppositionist theme by appealing for confirmation of the ‘continued validity of the ideas of the Twenty-Second Congress’,19 while Anicet Le Pors called for the removal of the entire principle of Democratic Centralism. The General Election of 1993 saw the Left crushed. While the PS, embroiled in corruption scandals, saw its vote fall from 37.2% in 1988 to 19%, that of the PCF slipped from 11.1 to 9.1%,20 with Fiterman declaring that the leadership’s attempts to portray the result as a success were risible. In June 1993 Marchais suddenly announced that Democratic Centralism could well be abandoned, and the resolution for the forthcoming Twenty-Eighth Congress did indeed propose its removal. The refondateurs by now felt however that even the complete disappearance of Democratic Centralism would not guarantee internal pluralism, nor in their view did the proposed new statutes do much to alter the procedures concerning elections and promotions within the party. The French Communist Party leadership’s obstinacy in refusing for so long to address the question of thorough party modernisation is all the more remarkable when viewed in the context of both the sharp electoral decline of the PCF and the attempted reform and ultimate collapse of Soviet and Eastern Bloc Communism. Even taking General Elections alone, where the PCF vote often held up better than elsewhere, the downward spiral is immediately apparent. From 20.7% in 1978 the Communist vote fell to 16.1% in 1981, to 9.6% in 1986, then recovered slightly with 11.1% in 1988, before dropping to a new low with 9.1% in 1993.21 Many of the incidents of dissidence discussed in this chapter occurred in reaction to the latest electoral catastrophe. While fresh disaster at the polls set alarm bells ringing amongst many party members, prompting renewed calls for change, the leadership most often attempted to present the figures in the best possible light and then to move hastily on. Particularly after the break-up of Left Union in 1977, the PCF leadership appeared to adopt a siege mentality, rejecting suggestions for any radical renewal as tantamount to a renuncia-

17 18 19 20 21

L’Humanité, 20 December 1990. Ibid. Le Monde, 21 December 1990. Figures from Courtois and Lazar, p.426. Ibid.

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tion of Communist identity, and reacting aggressively to all those who would demand such change, portraying them most often as heretics whose divergences were by nature corrosive of the required party discipline, and whose ideas, taken to their logical conclusion, would see the transformation of the PCF into another reformist, social democratic or bourgeois political institution. Reacting against this inflexibility, dissidents of the various strands sought through their separate campaigns to achieve remarkably similar goals. In the ultimate analysis, the common denominator of all PCF dissenters was undoubtedly the call for internal democratic reform. As oppositionists, they quickly discovered the extent to which the party’s internal workings acted against the venting of dissident opinion. Whether or not they started out with this as their primary grievance, it soon became apparent that the adequate expression of opposition required a radical revision of the Democratic Centralist principles at the heart of party life. The PCF’s internal critics, despite their inability radically to alter the policies of Marchais, helped define and nurture a set of alternative ideas for French Communism, with oppositionists notably concentrating their attacks on analyses deviating from the official line concerning links with the USSR and the Soviet Communist Party; relations with the French Socialist Party; the evolution of the class system; the interpretation of Marx, Lenin, and other fundamental Communist thinkers; and the internal functioning of the party. However disparate the individual campaigns, oppositionist movements acted as invaluable forums for the kind of impassioned and unabashed debates on the future of Communist ideology and practice which the PCF leadership had shown itself perpetually unwilling to undertake. But the ability of successive internal oppositionists to keep the flame of debate alive was perhaps to prove its true value only in retrospect, with arrival of new leader Robert Hue. Hand-picked by Marchais as his successor in January 1994, Hue surprised most observers, including it would seem Marchais himself, by his prompt statement of reformist ambitions for the party, declaring himself ‘profondément rénovateur’ within days of taking office.22 He quickly developed the theme of the mutation of the French Communist Party, a process of modernisation ostensibly aimed at democratically realigning internal procedure and organisation, ridding the party of the last vestiges of its Stalinist heritage, and attempting to develop close links with, indeed to play a tribune role within the established political system for the burgeoning mouvement social – the diverse range of protest groups which have been particularly vocal in France since the mid 1990s. This process of mutation has often been identified primarily with Hue himself, yet the impassioned demands and objections of dissidents in the Marchais era would appear greatly to have influenced his strategy. Re-examination of such dissident analyses was without question among the first tasks of a new PCF leader wishing to avoid the kind of well-publicised internal disputes which had so bedevilled Marchais’s tenure and helped further to tarnish the party’s public image. Yet Hue’s attempt at renewal can only be judged as a failure. An initial period of optimism and electoral stability (8.7% in the Presidential contest of 1995, 9.8% in the General Election of 1997) has been followed by a return to decline (6.8% in the European Elections of 1999) and near collapse (3.4% and 4.9% respectively in the Presidential Election and

22

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Le Monde, 1 February 1994.

General Election of 2002).23 Meanwhile, according to the PCF’s own figures, membership of the party dropped from 590,000 in 1994 to 139,000 in 2001.24 It would appear, then, that by the time the criticisms and demands of several decades of internal dissidence were finally addressed, it was already too late to halt the party’s marginalisation.

23 24

Figures provided by the PCF’s Service de documentation. D. Andolfatto, ‘Le Parti de Robert Hue’, in Communisme, no.67-68 (Paris: L’Âge d’Homme, 2002), p.230.

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Pól Ó Dochartaigh

Jewish Outsiders as Anti-Heroes in Jurek Becker’s Novels Heroism played an important part in the early literature of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Antifascist heroes abounded in the novels of Anna Seghers, Willi Bredel, Arnold Zweig, and others. The new state needed heroes that its population could look up to, and sometimes these were to be found in fiction, at other times in highly stylised portraits of real figures, such as Stephan Hermlin’s volume on individual resisters to Nazism, Die erste Reihe (Berlin: Neues Leben, 1951). In the 1950s the state sought heroes in the new ‘antifascist-democratic’ order that it had created, and these were provided by literature such as Eduard Claudius’s Menschen an unsrer Seite, first published in Berlin by Aufbau in 1951, in which the hero, a bricklayer called Hans Garbe, exceeds all of the production norms to set an example for the new, ‘Socialist’ worker. GDR literary critics spoke of working-class individuals who are aware of their historical responsibility and who are at the centre of an epic plot to create a new, Socialist order.1 GDR citizens, and especially schoolchildren, were fed a constant diet of ‘heroic’ literature, some of it admittedly capable of capturing the imagination of readers far beyond the borders of the GDR. One such example was Bruno Apitz’s 1958 novel about a Jewish child rescued and hidden by Communists at Buchenwald Concentration Camp.2 Most of the writing of this period in the GDR was labelled ‘Socialist realist’. It was expected to offer a ‘realistic’ view of the world from the perspective of the ‘revolutionary working class’. In practice this meant conforming to the dictates of the country’s Stalinist leadership. The ‘revolutionary struggle’ was to be portrayed as something entirely laudable, and participation in it was to be the goal of all good, loyal citizens. Needless to say, criticism was unwelcome. In the 1950s and 1960s an old dictum of Marx’s, namely that the free development of the individual was a prerequisite for the free development of all, was stood firmly on its head.3 The individual was very clearly subordinate to the needs of the party and the new order. In the 1960s one or two writers started to write from a more ‘subjective’ viewpoint, putting individuals at the centre of their work and excluding portrayals of antifascist resistance, ‘socialist development’, and so on. Johannes Bobrowski’s novel Levins Mühle (Berlin: Union, 1964) and some of his short stories are testament to this, as are Christa Wolf’s 1

2

3

Horst Haase et al., Geschichte der Literatur der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik (Berlin: Volk und Wissen, 1985), p.250. Nackt unter Wölfen (Halle: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 1958). See also Ingrid Hähnel and Elisabeth Lemke, ‘Millionen lesen einen Roman’, in Werke und Wirkungen, ed. by Inge Münz-Koenen (Leipzig: Reclam, 1987), pp.21-60. Stephan Hermlin illustrates this point in his 1979 autobiographical text, Abendlicht (Leipzig: Reclam, 1979), p.23. In it the narrator suddenly realises that, conditioned by GDR ideology, he had always misread Marx’s original text to mean that the free development of all was a prerequisite for the free development of the individual.

short story ‘Juninachmittag’ and her novel Nachdenken über Christa T.4 Despite the kind of reactionary speech made by Erich Honecker in 1965 against all forms of ‘bourgeois’ writing, authors were becoming more experimental and were determined to break with the rigid rules of the 1940s and 1950s. In 1969 Jurek Becker made his literary debut with the novel Jakob der Lügner. Set in a concentration camp in Poland during World War II, it was unique in the GDR for both the humour that Becker introduced to the theme and for its complete failure to illustrate any kind of Communist resistance to the Nazis. The central figure, Jakob Heym, is a kind of anti-hero who tries to struggle through ghetto life without getting into trouble. Published in 1976, Becker’s third novel, Der Boxer, looks at a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust, Aron Blank, who struggles with a lonely existence in post-war East Germany. Far from being part of the new Socialist society, Aron has effectively been left behind by it and leads a solitary existence on its fringes. Becker’s sixth novel, Bronsteins Kinder, which appeared in 1986, deals with a Jewish generational conflict over the legacy of the Holocaust and the right to justice and/or revenge. Set in East Berlin, the text presents us with another character peripheral to society in the shape of Arno, who in many ways could be Aron Blank. The central characters in all of these novels are, in one way or another, anti-heroes who attempt to survive a bad situation by refusing to conform. They are an example to no one. It is the similarities and differences between these three portrayals of anti-heroes that I now propose to investigate. Jakob Heym has variously been described as a hero and as a picaro.5 Certainly he undertakes the heroic deed of keeping a child hidden from the Nazis in a Polish ghetto – this act alone probably justifies the description of him as a ‘hero’. That he should be seen as a picaro (in German ‘Schelm’) is less obvious. Jakob is an outsider figure, ‘part swindler and trickster, part scamp and scallywag’.6 Jakob’s cleverness as an individual is hidden behind an assumed naïveté. However, the novel does not really have a social critical or satirical purpose in respect of the society in which Jakob lives. Criticism of Nazi ghettos in occupied Poland did not under any circumstances need to be disguised in the GDR. The portrayal of Jakob as both a hero and a kind of picaro must be seen instead as thinly disguised criticism of the society in which the novel appeared rather than the one in which it is set. And by combining the heroic with the picaresque in one central character, the author has created a

4

5

6

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Christa Wolf, ‘Juninachmittag’, in Christa Wolf, Gesammelte Erzählungern (Berlin, Weimar: Aufbau, 1989), pp.46-73; Nachdenken über Christa T. (Halle, Leipzig: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 1968). Other examples are Franz Fühmann, Böhmen am Meer (Rostock: Hinstorff, 1962); Günter Kunert, Im Namen der Hüte (Munich: Hanser, 1967: extracts were also published in Neue Deutsche Literatur and Sinn und Form in 1967); Werner Heiduczek, Abschied von den Engeln (Halle, Leipzig: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 1968). See, for example, Nancy Lukens, ‘Schelm im Ghetto – Jurek Beckers Roman Jakob der Lügner’, in Der moderne deutsche Schelmenroman, ed. by Gerd Labroisse (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1986), pp.199-218; Jürgen Beckelmann, ‘Jakob, der einsame Held’, Frankfurter Rundschau (20 February 1971, supplement ‘Zeit und Bild’, p.vi); Sibylle Pawel, ‘Heldentum im Ghettoalltag’, Berliner Zeitung (20 June 1969, p.6). See ‘Schelmenroman’, in A Glossary of German Literary Terms, ed. by E.W. Herd and August Obermayer (Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 1992), p.237.

kind of anti-hero who challenges a wide range of assumptions about literature and the Nazi past in the GDR. The first of these assumptions pertains to resistance. Jakob is not the heroic leader of an organised resistance cell. Rather, he is a somewhat timid, almost pathetic figure who, aside from hiding a little girl, Lina, almost involuntarily invents the existence of an illegal radio that provides news for the other residents of the ghetto. The hiding of a child by Jakob is undoubtedly a reference to Bruno Apitz’s best-selling 1958 novel, Nackt unter Wölfen, in which Communists in the Buchenwald Concentration Camp rescue a Polish child from the Nazis. However, in Becker’s novel there is no organised Communist resistance.7 Rather, Jakob is an individual who finds himself in the unwelcome role of being forced to invent news for the ghetto inhabitants, news which is always good and gives them hope. Giving hope to Jews in the face of Nazism can undoubtedly be seen as a form of resistance. Hiding a child from the Nazis is also a form of resistance. If resistance to the Nazis is a form of heroism, then on this level Jakob is a hero. Yet two things turn Jakob into an anti-hero: his reluctance as a bringer of news and his individualism. Let us now turn to these. Jakob’s adventure with the fictitious radio actually begins with a real one. He is ordered to go to the military office for supposedly having been on the streets of the ghetto after the 8 p.m. curfew. The guard on duty realises that the sentry outside was being mischievous and sends Jakob home. However, while inside, Jakob overhears a news report that German troops have beaten back a ‘Bolshevik offensive’ twenty kilometres from Bezanika. In Jakob’s ghetto there is no radio and no news from the outside world. For all Jakob and the others know, the Germans have by now conquered the world and no end is in sight to their miserable ghetto life. Now, suddenly, he is confronted with the news that the Russians are attacking the Germans near Bezanika, which he realises is just 400 kilometres to the east. He is elated. Just as the way in which Jakob heard the news was accidental, so too he shares the news with another ghetto inhabitant, Mischa, almost by accident. In the rail yard where they work, Mischa, on realising that one of the wagons is full of potatoes, wants to attempt to steal some. Jakob is afraid he will be spotted and shot, so he tells Mischa about the Bezanika battle. Mischa refuses to believe him, so Jakob claims to have a radio. Mischa is suddenly given hope and does not risk his life for a few potatoes. The fictitious radio has been born because Jakob was unable to tell the truth about how he got his news for fear of being taken for a German spy. It is only now that Jakob’s troubles begin, since Mischa is incapable of keeping the news to himself. Obviously, possession of a radio means that Jakob must be able to bring more news. He is thus compelled to invent it, which he does, and the news items are always good. The Russians gain a few kilometres each day, while Winston Churchill expresses confidence that the Germans will be defeated. People’s appetite for news is insatiable, and Jakob is under pressure as a result. This leads to some wonderfully comical scenes, such as 7

It is somewhat ironic that the hopelessly unfaithful 1999 Hollywood remake of the film, entitled Jacob the Liar and featuring Robin Williams in the lead role, should inadvertently conform to Stalinist literary expectations by having Jacob elected leader of a ghetto resistance cell. There is undoubtedly a comparative paper waiting to be written about Stalinist literary norms and Hollywood demands for happy endings.

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when the electricity is cut off: the lights flicker and go out at the very moment that an Orthodox Jew, Herschel Schtamm, is praying to God to destroy this source of danger. Everyone in that part of the ghetto is disappointed at the electricity blackout except Schtamm, who is pleased that God has removed power from the devilish radio, and Jakob, who is delighted that the pressure for news is gone because, obviously, his radio cannot now work. Later, the discussions about removing the radio to a street where there is still electricity provide comic relief in the shape of Jakob’s friend, Kowalski, who cleverly hides his cowardice behind reasoned argument against such a move.8 On another occasion, when Jakob is running out of ideas for news, he secretly goes to the German toilet in the rail yard, because he has seen newspapers there. The whole scene is comic, since Jakob finds only German Army sports news while a German soldier with diarrhoea approaches the toilet. Realising that Jakob will be shot if discovered, his friend Kowalski deliberately distracts the attention of the soldier so that Jakob may escape. Kowalski achieves his goal but is beaten for his pains and, as he does not know the reason for Jakob’s foolhardiness, can only assume that his friend is mad. The underlying seriousness of the situation is never allowed to disappear from Becker’s text, the potentially deadly consequences of the Jews’ actions never played down. In an ironic twist to the plot, Schtamm is shot when he goes to a wagon full of Jews to give them the news about Bezanika. A Jewish doctor, Professor Kirschbaum, is called to give treatment to the ghetto commandant, Hardtloff, but prefers to commit suicide on the way. And in the end, all of the Jews are transported off to a death camp anyway. The author offers two potential endings, an ‘invented’ one in which the camp is liberated by the Russians, though Jakob dies trying to escape the night before liberation, and a ‘real’ ending, in which the ghetto inhabitants are all transported off to an extermination camp.9 Jakob’s lies have, in the end, changed nothing. Jakob’s lies, as a challenge to Nazi power, are ultimately ineffective. However, Becker’s narrative, as a challenge to GDR orthodoxy, is anything but. Jakob is, in GDR terms, no antifascist hero. His lies give people hope, and the suicide rate in the ghetto drops to zero. But he is a loner who does not engage in collective resistance. He is not a Communist, he is not working class (he had owned a shop before the war), and his giving of hope is reluctant, almost accidental. Most importantly of all, in the ‘real’ ending, his actions do not change the fate of those in the ghetto. There is no final victory over Nazism in Jakob’s world, nor even the realistic prospect of victory. Had Becker followed the transportation of the Jews to the death camps with news of Russian advances in the war, that would have been a nod in the direction of a final victory over Nazism. Instead, he reverses this. The Russian advances are at the beginning of the novel, and at the end they have achieved nothing for the Jews in the ghetto. Jakob’s role is exactly the opposite to that of a Communist resistance hero. He is a small man with a lot of human decency, kindness, and fear who is

8

9

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Jurek Becker, Jakob der Lügner (Berlin, Weimar: Aufbau, 1969), pp.80-89. Translated as Jacob the Liar (New York: Penguin, 1997). Fittingly, given the revisionist nature of the undertaking, the Hollywood film version used the ‘invented’, happy ending, which is also reminiscent of the happy ending in Nackt unter Wölfen.

trying to struggle through a hopeless situation. It is that which makes him the antithesis of a GDR hero. Aron Blank, in the 1976 novel Der Boxer (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp), could almost be Jakob Heym if he had survived the war. However, whereas Jakob found himself repeatedly in comic, Schwejkian10 situations, Aron is an altogether more serious figure, his life characterised by a singular lack of humour. His is the tale of a financially comfortable life as an outsider, a survivor of Nazi persecution, in the antifascist GDR. Der Boxer presents a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust who, living in Berlin after 1945, finds a child who he thinks is his son. They are the only two survivors from an extended Jewish family. Together with an American woman, Paula, who works with the American Jewish relief organisation ‘Joint’, they set up home in the Soviet sector of Berlin. Later she leaves him, and another woman, Irma, becomes his partner. Aron and Irma raise Mark as a normal GDR citizen, but around 1960 Mark leaves the GDR without warning. He writes a letter to his father every month until June 1967, after which the correspondence ceases, the implication being that he may have been killed in the Six Day War. The narrator is a young man who interviews Aron years later and largely allows him to speak for himself, with only occasional interruptions. The novel may be seen in the context of the degree of liberalisation that occurred in GDR cultural politics after 1971 and which came to an end with the Biermann Affair of November 1976.11 Specifically, Der Boxer represented a challenge to the dominant Stalinist Aufbauliteratur of the 1950s, in which heroic, exemplary figures helped create the new Socialist society that was the GDR. By extension, the novel challenged the smug assumption that the new Socialist society had produced an atmosphere in which all could feel comfortable. Yet though the party and state leadership in the GDR had for the most part opposed Nazism, the majority population had either actively supported or passively tolerated it. After 1945 a period of rapid and largely superficial ‘denazification’ took place, as a result of which the population supposedly became Socialist and antifascist. Aron, by contrast, was a victim of Nazism, and he is anything but the heroic citizen of post-1945 Stalinist propaganda. Becker does not simply allow Aron to be set apart by his Jewishness, however. Instead, he creates a number of incidents and character traits which isolate Aron in an individual way that goes far beyond his Jewishness. Aron is, subjectively, not a particularly likeable individual. If there is anything heroic in him, it is his determination to find his son and raise him in this new society. However, his behaviour reveals other characteristics that make him an anti-hero in terms of the genre challenged by this novel.

10

11

I use this term in reference to the eponymous character in Jaroslav Hasek’s novel, Osudy dobrého voyáka Švejka za světoué války (1921-23) (The Good Soldier Švejk). In November 1976 the East German poet and singer, Wolf Biermann, was deprived of his citizenship for supposedly making statements hostile to the GDR leadership while on a concert tour in West Germany. His expulsion was sharply criticised by prominent GDR writers and performers, which in turn provoked a wave of expulsions from the Communist Party and the Writers’ Union, and even some arrests. For more on this incident see Paul O’Doherty, The Representation of Jews in GDR Prose Fiction (Amsterdam, Atlanta: Rodopi, 1997), pp.152-63.

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The first is his involvement in the black market. At a time when exemplary citizens were helping rebuild Germany after the wartime destruction, Aron finds a job as a bookkeeper for a (Jewish) black marketeer, Kenik. The fact that he subsequently works for the Soviets in East Berlin does not really compensate for his earlier activity. Moreover, the narrator pointedly fails to criticise Aron for his black market activity. Aron also sets himself apart from the dominant ideology in his attitude to the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He supports the action, seeing it as an appropriate response to the aggression of a band of ‘Asian fascists’, whereas by the 1960s the bombing was roundly condemned in GDR historiography. Aron’s stance infuriates Paula. In addition, he supports the deployment of Soviet tanks on the streets of East Berlin in 1953 to put down the ‘workers’ rising’. Though such an attitude may be seen in orthodox GDR terms as praiseworthy, Aron’s reaction is not motivated by support for the regime. Rather, it arises because the sight and sound of Germans demonstrating reminds him of the Nazis. Once again, his response to events is entirely untypical of those around him and of the society in which he lives. It is in Aron’s son, Mark, however, that we see the greatest rejection of GDR society. While at school, Mark is beaten up by bullies, so Aron teaches him to box, thus giving the novel its title. Later, it transpires that Mark has himself become a bully. As a teenager he leaves the GDR, by this action committing the ‘crime’ of ‘Fleeing the Republic’. Finally, it is implied that he died in Israel during the Six Day War, presumably as an Israeli. Since the GDR was staunchly pro-Arab, this is just one more part of Aron’s (and Mark’s) life that sets him apart from most GDR citizens. Aron is the antithesis of the model Socialist citizen. This results in part from his experience of Nazism, which was very different to that of the non-Jewish majority of GDR citizens. Partly, however, it stems from his attitude to people, an attitude both distrustful and cynical, which ultimately not only drives away both of the women with whom he has a relationship12 but may also have contributed to Mark’s departure. Aron is no hero in anyone’s terms. In portraying an individual remarkable only for his fear of his surroundings, but who nevertheless remains in those surroundings leading a solitary, unremarkable existence, Becker has created a character who is an anti-hero simply by virtue of being a nonhero. Socialist society, which aimed to integrate all its citizens in a positive and constructive way, has contrived to leave an individual such as Aron behind. It is thus shown to consist not merely of heroic and model citizens, but also of unremarkable anti-heroes such as Aron. The character of Aron, who had given himself the legal name ‘Arno’ in 1945, is reinvented as Arno in Becker’s 1986 novel, Bronsteins Kinder (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp). Set in East Berlin in 1973-74, the novel approaches themes of revenge and retribution for Nazi war crimes in the context of the ‘Socialist German state’, as the GDR defined itself, and its attempts to deal with Germany’s Nazi past. Arno is the Jewish father of the narrator, an eighteen-year-old called Hans. In 1973 he and two Jewish friends have lured a man they 12

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It must be acknowledged, however, that the catalyst for Paula’s departure is not Aron’s behaviour but the fact that ‘Joint’ has found someone important to her (we are told no more than that) called ‘Walter’.

recognised as a concentration camp guard to Arno’s country house outside Berlin. There they keep him prisoner and torture him in an attempt to extract a confession from him about his activities in the Nazi period. Hans discovers them when he goes out to the house for a rendezvous with his girlfriend, Martha. Suddenly he is confronted with issues that had seemed irrelevant to him as a young Jew in the GDR. Hans’s relationship with both his father and his girlfriend deteriorates as a result of his father’s lack of trust in him and his own lack of trust in Martha. By 1974, the second narrative level, which interchanges freely with the first, Arno is dead while Hans and Martha are no longer a couple. Arno is outwardly a model GDR citizen. He has no obvious connection with Jewishness other than his background and some of his friends. He has, like Aron in Der Boxer, not raised his son with any specific Jewish consciousness, preferring instead the integrationist path. Yet, as the events of the novel unfold, it becomes clear that Arno is anything but a model citizen. He rejects most of the views on the past that are orthodox in the GDR, and it is this rejection that leads him to take part in the crime of kidnapping and torturing the guard. It becomes apparent to Hans that Arno has kept much of his identity and many of his views from his son, retreating into himself and a small clique of Jewish friends who share his cynicism about the people around them and the society they live in, while outwardly playing a full part in that society. Far from being the heroic citizen of the GDR’s Jewish communities, who have survived Nazism and gone on to help build Socialism, Arno, in true anti-hero style, ‘is given the vocation of failure’.13 Unlike many GDR Jews, Arno hates being regarded as a ‘victim of Nazism’. He simply wants to get on with life and occupy no special place in GDR society. He and Hans are agreed that special treatment or privileges for Jews are undesirable. Yet in contrast to this he assumes the special privilege of taking individual, private revenge on a Nazi for the crimes of Nazism. His explanation to Hans as to why he should do this reveals the utter contempt with which he views the society into which he has outwardly been so successfully integrated: he and his co-conspirators were agreed that they lived in an inferior country surrounded by disgraceful people. He has avoided discussing this with his son before now because his son has had to survive in this country: he knew no other. It was true, as his son argued, that Nazi guards would be punished severely by the law in the GDR. But why? Because coincidentally the one occupying power had conquered the country and not the other. If the border just ran a little differently, then the same people would have exactly the opposite convictions, both here and over there. Whoever is strong enough can dictate his convictions to this German scum, whether he’s called Hitler or anything else. That’s why they had decided to take the matter into their own hands. If there was a court recognised by them, they would never have hit on this idea.14

Arno thus challenges GDR orthodoxy on coming to terms with the Nazi past. He also shows other traits that mark him out as different in GDR terms. On one occasion Hans overhears his father and two fellow conspirators discussing the case in Yiddish. Hans had never been aware that his father could speak the language, and the effect of this discovery is utterly alienating, as it would be to most GDR citizens. Again, Arno’s integration is shown

13 14

J.A. Cuddon, Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1992), p.46. Bronsteins Kinder, p.80.

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to be superficial: in the intimate circle of close friends he speaks not German but Yiddish, and even his son is excluded from this close circle. On the subject of Jewishness, Arno appears to challenge not just GDR orthodoxy but universal orthodoxy: he frequently asserts to Hans that there is no such thing as a Jew: Jews were an invention, whether a good one or a bad one can be debated, but in any case a successful one. The inventors had spread their rumour with so much conviction and stubbornness that even those affected and afflicted, the supposed Jews, had fallen for it and now claimed to be Jews. That in turn made the invention all the more credible and bestowed on it a certain reality. (Bronsteins Kinder, p.48)

Arno is, despite appearances, anything but an integrated GDR citizen, the model of a Jewish survivor who, by accepting the new Socialist order, becomes something of a hero. In GDR terms heroes were those who set an example to their fellow citizens by embracing and helping to build Socialism, by opposing Fascism not as individuals but because of a commitment to Socialism. Arno opposes Nazis because of his own experience and that of his friends. He is portrayed as being motivated not by high Socialist ideals but by simple revenge, an entirely human but in no way heroic motivation. Arno is, like Jakob and Aron, set up by Becker as an anti-hero in GDR literary and social terms. Like theirs, his life can be seen as essentially a failure, despite his efforts to come to terms with his surroundings. His attempts to take retribution on the Nazi guard in the name of ‘justice’ actually lead to his own death rather than the guard’s. The strain of reliving his experiences in the Nazi camps and the torturing of the guard are, ultimately, a form of self-torture that achieves nothing positive. In a final twist of irony, it is Arno’s son, Hans, who releases the Nazi guard after Arno’s death. Arno is someone whose hidden life is never to be regarded as a model. It is a failure. Yet the thought remains that, like Aron in Der Boxer, Arno was failed by GDR society, too. The ideal Socialist society that has supposedly provided a new, comfortable home for all its citizens, has done nothing of the sort in Arno’s case. He, as a result, has become an outsider, an anti-hero and, in the last analysis, a failure in life. Ultimately, then, we must reflect on the nature of Becker’s Jewish anti-heroes. Jakob, Aron and Arno are all outsiders to either Communist resistance or Communist (GDR) society, they are failures in life, because their actions do not change anything of significance, and none of them is noted as being dashing, strong or brave. Their lives are essentially solitary and highly individualistic in a GDR social and/or literary context that expects collective action and attitudes. Each of the three is seen to be resourceful as an individual but ultimately to be unsuccessful in his aims. Yet the very act of being individualistic is what makes each of the three an anti-hero. In the case of Jakob, Becker is offering a view of the ghetto in which individuals individually tried to stay alive. In contrast to other GDR literary portrayals, most of the ghetto’s inhabitants are not involved in collaborative resistance. Jakob is, in a very small way, a hero for giving shelter to Lina and hope to all, but he remains a GDR anti-hero because of his individualism and ultimate failure. Aron shows heroism in finding his son and trying to give him a new life in the GDR after 1945, but he is portrayed as the antithesis of the model citizen on account of his individualism, his bitterness and his failure to integrate either himself or his son into the new society. Yet the very act of surviving and continuing with life after 276

1945 provides the heroic foundation on which Aron’s anti-heroic status is built. The same may be said of Arno, though with one important difference: unlike Aron’s son Mark, Arno’s son Hans is so thoroughly integrated into GDR society that he rejects his father’s exclusionist, revanchist concept of justice. Arno’s heroic contribution in GDR terms is not merely to have survived but to have successfully integrated his son. He is an anti-hero by his complete failure to integrate himself. In the final analysis, Becker uses these three Jewish anti-heroes to highlight and challenge the inadequacies of heroism in the GDR’s dominant Socialist realist literary canon.

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Index

Académie Française, 12, 48, 67, 82-83, 85, 98, 102 Alberti, Leon Battista, 8 Albright, Ivan Le Lorraine, 14, 158 Alembert, Jean Le Rond de, 98-100 Althusser, Louis, 259-61, 264 Apitz, Bruno, 269, 271 Apollinaire, Guillaume, 231 Aristotle, 11, 33, 35, 40, 43, 164 Astor, David, 192, 196 Austen, Jane, 43 Bacon, Francis, 176, 179-80 Balzac, Honoré de, 111, 121 Barthes, Roland, 33, 234 Baudelaire, Charles, 14, 112-13, 145-56, 164, 169, 210, 227 Les Fleurs du Mal, 14, 145-56, 164 Baudrillard, Jean, 236 Bayle, Pierre, 67, 74-75 Beardsley, Aubrey, 113 Becker, Jurek, 18, 269-76 Bronsteins Kinder, 270, 274-76 Der Boxer, 273-75 Jakob der Lügner, 270-73, 276-77 Beckett, Samuel, 16, 209-19, 242 Cendres, 210, 219 La Dernière bande, 16, 209, 215, 21719 En attendant Godot, 213-16, 221 Oh les beaux jours, 16, 209-19, 21114, 216-19 Quad, 16, 217-19 Beethoven, Ludwig van, 106-07, 111-12, 114

Bergson, Henri, 15, 174-75, 179-83 Berlioz, Hector, 106, 112 Berlin, Isaiah, 189, 191 Bible, 68-80, 232 Bizet, Georges, 14, 116 Blanc, Louis, 134 Bloch, Marc, 188 Boccaccio, Giovanni, 82 Boileau, Nicolas, 84, 89-91 Bouillon, Marie- Anne Mancini, duchesse de, 86-89 Borges, Jorge Luis, 238-40 Bourdieu, Pierre, 46 Breton, André, 228-29 Camus, Albert, 5-6, 10, 16, 197-208 Caligula, 16, 198-201 La Chute, 208 L’Étranger, 5-6, 16, 198-201, 207 L’Exil et le royaume, 208 L’Homme révolté, 16, 204-07 Les Justes, 16, 203-04 La Mort heureuse, 207 Le Mythe de Sisyphe, 16, 197-202 La Peste, 10, 197 Caravaggio, Michelangelo Merisi da, 212 Cervantes, Miguel de, 9, 17, 237-40, 243 Césaire, Aimé, 16-17, 231-32 Les Armes miraculeuses, 229, 231 Cahier d’un retour au pays natal, 225, 228 Discours sur le colonialisme, 222 Ferrements, 231-32 Chateaubriand, Francois-René de, 118 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 81

Chomsky, Noam, 2, 235 Claudel, Paul, 2, 6, 11, 15, 161-71, 173, 227 Cinq grandes Odes, 164 Mémoires improvisés, 161, 163-65, 169-70 Œuvres en prose, 161-65, 168-71 Claudius, Eduard, 269 Colonialism, 222-25, 228-30, 232 Comédie Française, 108 Communism, 17-18, 191, 235, 255-67, 269-277 Corneille, Pierre, 5-6, 11, 22, 27, 31, 47, 84, 131, 173, 182-83, 246 Croft, Lara, 33, 44 Dali, Salvador, 14, 158 Delvaux, Paul, 14, 158 Democratic Centralism, 256, 258, 260-65 Descartes, René, 15, 86, 173-83 Dinouart, abbé Joseph-AntoineToussaint, 93-94 Drelincourt, Laurent, 12, 67-79 Sonnets Chrétiens, 67-70, 72-73, 79 Duchamp, Marcel, 158 Durand, Marie, 8 Elleinstein, Jean, 259, 261-62, 264 Enlightenment, the, 8-10, 45, 92-93, 101 Ernst, Max, 14, 158 Euripides, 11, 33-45 Hippolytus, 33-45 Fiszbin, Henri, 262- 63 Fiterman, Charles, 264-65 Flaubert, Gustave, 14, 43, 56, 123, 133 Forestier, Georges, 11, 21, 23, 26-27, 31, 34-35, 37, 39, 43, 48 Forst, Willi, 17, 163 French Communist Party, 17, 255-67 Fréron, Élie, 93, 100 Freud, Sigmund, 36, 43 Frobenius, Leo, 224, 226, 228-29 Garaudy, Roger, 257-61 280

German Democratic Republic (GDR), 18, 269-77 Gestapo, 185, 192-93 Gilgamesh, 33 Giraudoux, Jean, 82-84, 86, 89-90 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 105-06, 113 Goytisolo, Juan, 17, 233-44 El sitio de los sitios, 17, 233-44 Grant Duff, Shiela, 15, 187, 189, 191-92, 195 Grillparzer, Franz, 111 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 34, 140, 225 Heine, Heinrich, 105-07, 114 Henri II, 49 Hercules, 23, 130 Hitler, Adolf, 15, 185-86, 191, 193-95, 201, 246-47, 255 Hoffmann, Ernst Theodor Wilhelm (Amadeus), 107, 111, 114 Homer, 7, 23, 33, 130 Hubback, Diana, 15, 187, 189, 191, 193 Hue, Robert, 18, 255, 266-67 Hugo, Victor, 3, 13, 17, 48, 118-20, 12426, 157, 221, 227, 231 Huguenots, 67, 73, 91 Ionesco, Eugène, 213 Journal chrétien, 93-94, 97 Juquin, Henri, 263-64 Kant, Immanuel, 175, 182 Klimt, Gustav, 113 Kleist, Heinrich von, 186 Kristéva, Julia, 45 La Fontaine, Jean de, 12, 57, 81-90 La Rochefoucauld, François, duc de, 53, 60-61 La Sablière, Marie-Madeleine, comtesse de, 84-88

Lafayette, Madame de, 47-56 La Princesse de Clèves, 47-56 Lamartine, Alphonse de, 117-18, 131 Le Franc de Pompignan, Jean-Jacques, 93, 102 Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 39 Lewin, Albert, 14, 158 Llabres, Claude, 264 Longstaffe, Moya, 1-6, 27, 47, 130, 173, 197, 199 Metamorphoses of Passion and the Heroic in French Literature, 5, 27, 131, 173, 197 Lyotard, François, 197 Maistre, Joseph de, 133 Mandeville, Bernard, 9 Marchais, Georges, 17-18, 256, 258-59, 262, 265-66 Marcowitch, Karl, 157 Marx, Karl, 258, 266, 269 Marxism, 193, 205, 224, 257, 260, 262 Maupassant, Guy de, 14, 157-58 Mauriac, François, 5, 174 Michaud, Joseph François, 95-96 Molière, (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin), 2, 12, 57-66, 84, 89, 90 Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, 12, 57 George Dandin, 12, 57-58, 62-64 L'Impromptu de Versailles, 57 Le Misanthrope, 12, 58, 61, 63 Tartuffe, 57-58 Montaigne, Michel de, 8, 33, 53, 58 Mörike, Eduard, 116 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 106, 108, 111-12 Munkacsy, Mihaly, 157 Nazism, 3, 15, 18, 21, 185-96, 246, 255, 269-76 Pascal, Blaise, 6, 58, 64, 140, 179, 200 Péguy, Charles, 15, 173-83, 227 Poperen, Claude, 264 Proust, Marcel, 210

Racine, Jean, 11, 21-31, 33-45, 47-48, 83, 87-90, 117, 131, 166 Bérénice, 11, 21-31, 48-49 Phèdre, 11, 33-45 Renan, Ernest, 13-14, 133-44 L’Abbesse de Jouarre, 140, 143 L’Avenir de la science, 13, 134, 13839, 141-42 Caliban, 14, 139-41 Les deux chœurs, 143 Dialogues philosophiques, 14, 137, 139-40 L’Eau de Jouvence, 140-42 La Guerre entre la France et l’Allemagne, 136-37 Le Prêtre de Nemi, 141-42 La Réforme intellectuelle et morale, 136-37, 139 Vie de Jésus, 134, 136 Rigout, Marcel, 263 Rimbaud, Arthur, 15, 161-71, 227, 235 Les Illuminations, 162, 166-69 Rochet, Waldeck, 259 Romilly, Jacqueline de, 34-35, 133 Rossini, Gioacchino, 106, 108, 111-13 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 100, 118, 122, 131, 128, 137 Saint-Foix, Germain-François Poullain de, 13, 91-102 Saint-Glas, Pierre, abbé de Saint-Ussans, 21-22 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 14, 146, 153-54, 156, 232 Shakespeare, William, 57, 107, 117, 139, 192 Socrates, 137 Sophocles, 44 Spencer, Stanley, 158 Stalin, Joseph, 255, 258 Stauffenberg, Claus von, 185 Stendhal (Henri Beyle), 2, 4-6, 9, 11, 13, 117-31, 173, 197, 246 La Chartreuse de Parme, 2, 6, 13, 123, 127-29, 246 De l’Amour, 197 281

Lucien Leuwen, 6, 124, 126, 129-31 Le Rouge et le Noir, 2, 5-6, 13, 118, 121, 123, 126-28 Suetonius, 21, 23, 31 Surrealism, 17, 221, 226, 229, 231 Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre, 34 Tocqueville, Alexis de, 133 Tresckow, Henning von, 186 Trott zu Solz, Adam von, 115, 185-96 Trublet, abbé Nicolas-Charles-Joseph, 93-94, 100 Valéry, Paul, 3, 82, 227 Verlaine, Paul, 161 Villars, Louis-Hector, duc de, 21-22, 24 Virgil, 7, 22, 173 Voltaire, François-Marie Arouet de, 13, 82-83, 91, 102, 123-24, 131 Adélaïde Du Guesclin, 101 Candide, 13, 91 L’Écossaise, 93, 100 Essai sur les mœurs, 101 L’Ingénu, 13, 102 Le Pauvre diable, 93

282

La Philosophie de l’histoire, 101 Plaidoyer de Ramponeau, 93, 100 Questions sur les miracles, 92-93, 101-02 Wagner, Richard, 13, 105-15 Die Bergwerke zu Falun, 107, 111 Faust, 105 Der fliegende Holländer, 107, 109, 111-12, 114 Das Liebesverbot, 105 Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, 106 Parsifal, 115 Rienzi, 106-07, 109, 111-12 Der Ring des Nibelungen, 112 Tannhäuser, 13, 105-06, 112-15 Tristan und Isolde, 112 Zukunftsmusik, 113 Waugh, Evelyn, 17, 245-53 Diaries, 245-46 A Handful of Dust, 250 Men at Arms, 247, 249-52 Officers and Gentlemen, 247-50 Unconditional Surrender, 245, 247-52