The Je-Ne-Sais-Quoi in Early Modern Europe: Encounters with a Certain Something

T H E J E - N E - S A I S - Q U O I IN E A R LY M O D E R N E U R O P E

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The Je-Ne-Sais-Quoi in Early Modern Europe Encounters with a Certain Something

RICHARD SCHOLAR

1

3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York ß Richard Scholar 2005 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2005 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd King’s Lynn, Norfolk ISBN 0–19–927440–1

978–0–19–927440–6

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

For Angela, Michael, Tom, and John

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Preface This book is the first full-length study of the je-ne-sais-quoi and its fortunes in early modern Europe; it examines the expression’s rise and fall as a noun and as a topic of debate, its cluster of meanings, and the scattered traces of its pre-history. The term ‘early modern’ is used here primarily to reflect the chronological sweep of a study which focuses on the emergence of the je-ne-sais-quoi during the period 1580–1680 but strays on either side of these limits to trace the expression’s precursors and its later fortunes. The je-ne-sais-quoi is now commonly assumed to be a quintessentially French phenomenon, but in the early modern period it also marks the cultures of France’s neighbours, and this is reflected in my title. It is now commonly assumed too that the je-ne-sais-quoi belongs purely to the realm of the literary, but in the early modern period it serves to articulate hitherto unrelated problems in the domains of natural philosophy, the passions, and polite culture, and for that reason it is examined here from an interdisciplinary perspective. Placing major literary and philosophical figures such as Montaigne, Shakespeare, Descartes, Corneille, and Pascal alongside some of their lesser-known contemporaries, this study argues that the je-nesais-quoi serves above all to trace a series of first-person encounters with a certain something that is as difficult to explain as its effects are intense, and which can be expressed only by being expressed differently. The illustration on the jacket of this book, a detail from Titian’s Bacchus and Ariadne (1520–3), captures in pictorial form that certain something at the very moment of its happening and in a variety of characteristic guises: it may be seen in the ecstatic look that Bacchus and Ariadne steal from each other as her departing lover’s unseen ship slides over the horizon, in the steady gaze with which the two leopards drawing the chariot of Bacchus fix one another, and in the intense glance that the child satyr in the foreground invites the spectator to return. This book shows how the je-ne-sais-quoi comes to express that certain something in the early modern period, and suggests that it remains capable of doing so today.

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Preface

Research for the book, which is a revised version of my D.Phil. thesis, has been generously supported by four institutions in the last seven years. I must first record my gratitude to New College, Oxford for providing funding in my first year of research, when none other was available to me, and for electing me to a Junior Research Fellowship in 2003. I thank the Arts and Humanities Research Board, which awarded me a postgraduate studentship in 1998, the E´cole normale supe´rieure in Paris, where I spent a year teaching in 1999–2000, and The Queen’s College, Oxford, which elected me to a Laming Junior Fellowship in 2001. I am grateful to the staff of several libraries for their assistance: the Taylor Institution, the Bodleian Library, the British Library, the Bibliothe`que de l’E´cole normale supe´rieure, and the Bibliothe`que nationale de France. Those who read or heard sections of this book in the making and offered valuable comments are too numerous to mention here: I thank them none the less warmly. It is a pleasure to be able to name those individuals to whom I am most indebted. Ian Maclean and Tony Nuttall, from whom I was privileged to receive joint supervision, were an unfailing source of instruction, encouragement, and support to me during my years as a graduate student, and have remained so since. Terence Cave and Ullrich Langer, the examiners of my D.Phil. thesis, offered constructive criticisms and suggestions which I found invaluable when I came to revise the work for publication. I have received further help of various kinds from Susannah Carson, Tim Chesters, Richard Cooper, Nicholas Cronk, Emma Gilby, Christina Howells, Ann Jefferson, Richard Parish, Roger Pearson, Will Poole, Dinah Ribard, Sophie Roux, Noel Sugimara, Kate Tunstall, Alain Viala, and Wes Williams. They too have my thanks. Any remaining errors, weaknesses, and idiosyncrasies in the text I acknowledge mine. My co-translator and friend Guillaume Pigeard de Gurbert inspired me both to start this project and to bring it to an end, playing Hyde to my Jekyll and Jekyll to my Hyde as the occasion demanded. This is a chance, finally, to record my thanks to him and to all those who have shared the adventure of the last seven years with me in ways that each knows best. I am thinking in particular of Marjorie Belleguic, Ben Cairns, Alice Hunt, Charlie Marshall, James McConnachie, and Julia Shillingford; of the Kolev family; and of my own family: my two brothers, and our parents. R. W. S.

Contents Note on References, Translations, and Abbreviations

xi

introduction

1 PA RT I . W O R D H I S T O RY

1. a modish name 1.1. The Rise of the Je-Ne-Sais-Quoi

21 21

1.1.1. On Vogue-Words 21 — 1.1.2. Precursors in European Languages 25 — 1.1.3. Sixteenth-Century French Usage 31 — 1.1.4. The Noun in Seventeenth-Century France and England 39

1.2. Defining Moments

43

1.2.1. The Dictionary Makers 43 — 1.2.2. Uses and Definitions 46 — 1.2.3. Coming to Terms 52

1.3. Bouhours’s Topic of Conversation

59

1.3.1. The Realms of the Je-Ne-Sais-Quoi 59 — 1.3.2. The Humiliation of Divine Grace 63 — 1.3.3. Towards a Critical History 69

PA RT I I . C R I T I C A L H I S T O R I E S 2. a secret of nature? descartes and the philosophers

73

2.1. Preternatural Effects and Traditional Explanations

73

2.1.1. The Je-Ne-Sais-Quoi in Nature 73 — 2.1.2. Occult Qualities and Substantial Forms 76 — 2.1.3. The Proponents of Traditional Explanations 86

2.2. The Attack on Tradition

88

2.2.1. The New Philosophers and the Je-Ne-Sais-Quoi 88 — 2.2.2. Qualities and Forms as Refuges of Ignorance 97

2.3. New Explanations and Their Discontents

108

2.3.1. Two Approaches: Bacon and Descartes 108 — 2.3.2. Forceful Objections 114 — 2.3.3. The Nature of the Je-NeSais-Quoi: Leibniz vs. Newton 119

3. the stroke of passion: pascal and the poets 3.1. Theories of the Passions

125 125

Contents

x

3.1.1. A Strange Sympathy 125 — 3.1.2. Vernacular Treatises before Descartes 128 — 3.1.3. Descartes in Love 137

3.2. What the Poets Say

141

3.2.1. Two Observations about Love 141 — 3.2.2. Corneille and the Poetry of the Je-Ne-Sais-Quoi (N.) 153 — 3.2.3. Pascal: Cleopatra’s Nose 162

3.3. From Passion to Pathos

173

3.3.1. La Rochefoucauld, Racine, and Molie`re 173 — 3.3.2. An Instrument of Pathos 180

4. a sign of quality: bouhours and the polite circle 4.1. The Culture of the Je-Ne-Sais-Quoi

182 182

4.1.1. A Subtle Artifice 182 — 4.1.2. Nescioquiddity: The Parlour Game 184

4.2. Signs of Quality

190

4.2.1. Honneˆtete´: A Rough Guide 190 — 4.2.2. Art and Culture 196 — 4.2.3. Urbanite´, Galanterie, Bel Esprit 203

4.2. The Fall of the Je-Ne-Sais-Quoi

212

4.3.1. Me´re´: It Takes One to Know One 212 — 4.3.2. The Phatic Communion of Ariste and Euge`ne 215 — 4.3.3. The Widening Rift 217

PA RT I I I . P R E - H I S T O RY 5. a certain something: montaigne 5.1. Towards a Pre-History

225 225

5.1.1. Like Father, Like Son? 225 — 5.1.2. Experience and Explanation 231

5.2. ‘Plaisants causeurs’

236

5.2.1. The Blind Man 236 — 5.2.2. The Middle Region 249

5.3. The Art of Disaster

255

5.3.1. Making Essays 255 — 5.3.2. Friendship: The Real Thing 261

6. beyond pre-history: the case of shakespeare 6.1. Coda 6.2. Bottom’s Dream

275 275 282

Bibliography

289

Index

317

Note on References, Translations, and Abbreviations references I refer to all titles by the author–date system. The only exceptions are those abbreviated forms listed below and a few standard texts (such as the works of Aristotle) for which it is more appropriate to follow the conventional mode of reference. Direct short references to one text are usually indicated in parentheses within the text; all others are placed in footnotes. Dates placed after the titles of books in the main text refer to their first publication in printed form, except in the case of plays, where I list first performances. I quote all primary sources in their original language except those in ancient Greek, which I quote in a standard English translation. I have used the same spelling conventions as the editions used, except that when quoting early modern texts, I distinguish between ‘i’ and ‘j’, ‘u’ and ‘v’, and resolve abbreviations. Any suggested emendation of spelling or punctuation is placed in square brackets. Cross-references are to numbered sections rather than to pages. translations All quotations in foreign languages are given with an English translation. I have not consistently translated all titles, however, and, in this and other ways, I assume in my reader a degree of familiarity with French. For passages from Montaigne, I have used the translation by Donald M. Frame (Montaigne 2003), the only to include the travel journal and the letters. (Excerpts from Frame, Donald M., translator, The Complete Works of Montaigne, ß 1943 by Donald M. Frame, renewed 1971; ß 1948, 1957, 1958 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved. Used with the permission of Stanford University Press, www.sup.org.) I have modified Frame’s translation in one or two

xii

References, Translations, Abbreviations

places so that it will remain consistent with my analysis of the text. I supply a page reference to this translation as well as to the original after each quotation. All other translations, unless otherwise stated, are my own. I have attempted to keep them fairly literal since their sole aim is to assist the reader.

References, Translations, Abbreviations

xiii

abbreviations BL BnF Bod. CD-ROM

British Library Bibliothe`que nationale de France Bodleian Library, Oxford Dictionnaires des XVIe et XVIIe sie`cles (Champion E´lectronique, 1998–9) CHRP The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy (Schmitt 1988) CHSP The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy (Garber and Ayers 1998) FS French Studies JHI Journal of the History of Ideas LC Litte´ratures classiques Montaigne I refer to the Villey and Saulnier edition of the Essais (Montaigne 1992a). References list book, chapter, and page numbers and then the period of composition, for which I follow the Villey scheme: a refers to the 1580 and 1582 editions, b to the 1588 edition; c to additions made after 1588. I list page references to the Frame translation in the form ‘F 331’. OED The Oxford English Dictionary (1989) Pascal I refer to both the Lafuma (Pascal 1962) and Sellier (Pascal 1991) numberings of the Pense´es. PMLA Publications of the Modern Language Association Shakespeare The Clarendon Press Complete Works (Shakespeare 1988) Tay. The Library of the Taylor Institution, Oxford YFS Yale French Studies

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Introduction It happens sometimes, in our encounters with others, that we are moved by something which leaves us struggling to explain or express what it is even as it transforms our lives. What is that something, and how can it be put into words? Such questions fascinated early modern Europeans and appear in a wide range of their literary and philosophical texts, some of them well known today, others all but forgotten. These texts bear witness to the emergence of a new way of talking and thinking in the period to which they belong. The je-ne-sais-quoi, a term with precursors in Latin and the Romance languages, emerges in France sometime in the early seventeenth century as a keyword in discussions about powerful first-person experiences that are difficult to explain and express. It spreads to other vernacular languages of early modern Europe, particularly English, in the following decades. By the middle of the seventeenth century, the questions with which we started are ready to be rephrased: what is the je-ne-sais-quoi, and how can it be put into words? These questions belong to early modern texts, but not to them alone, for they also animate this book. They allow for a connection to be made between past and present because they can be pursued through the early modern texts in which they appear. Taking these texts seriously means, in my view, attempting to do three different but intimately related things: to read them closely, to see the world from their point of view, and to think for oneself about what they say and how they say it. That, at least, is how I aim to proceed in what follows. To start, then, let us look briefly at a celebrated early modern text that lies at the heart of this study and to which we shall return. Among the eight hundred or so fragments of writing that Pascal left among his papers at his death in August 1662, and that came to be known as the Pense´es, one fragment describes the experience of human love with a force that is all its own: Qui voudra connaıˆtre a` plein la vanite´ de l’homme n’a qu’a` conside´rer les causes et les effets de l’amour. La cause en est un Je ne sais quoi. Corneille.

Introduction

2

Et les effets en sont effroyables. Ce Je ne sais quoi, si peu de chose qu’on ne peut le reconnaıˆtre, remue toute la terre, les princes, les arme´es, le monde entier. Le nez de Cle´opaˆtre s’il euˆt e´te´ plus court toute la face de la terre aurait change´.1 Whoever wishes to know fully the vanity of humankind has only to consider the causes and effects of love. Its cause is a je-ne-sais-quoi (Corneille). And its effects are appalling. This je-ne-sais-quoi, so slight a thing that it cannot be recognized, shakes all the earth, princes, armies, the whole world. Had Cleopatra’s nose been shorter, the entire face of the earth would have changed.

Many readers of this fragment have been struck by its stark vision of human love as a form of vanity, by its sense of the radical disproportion between effects and their causes, and (above all) by its arresting and elliptical reference to Cleopatra’s nose. Fewer have noticed that the entire fragment turns on a single word. The je-nesais-quoi first appears in it as a newly prominent feature of French language and culture, a key expression associated with the most successful playwright of the day (Corneille), which Pascal puts to use in order to encapsulate a pithy observation about love. A shift takes place in the penultimate sentence of the fragment as the je-nesais-quoi ceases merely to be used as a key expression and itself becomes the object of reflection. This shift of attention is made possible, at a grammatical level, by the substantival function increasingly assigned to the expression in the middle decades of the seventeenth century: it now appears to designate a ‘something’ whose nature may be elusive but can certainly be investigated. The je-ne-sais-quoi interests Pascal, in other words, not for its lexical novelty alone but also because it encapsulates a particular view of human experience which he wishes to examine. What is the love that draws humans together, or rather, why is it that they fall so violently in love with one person and not another? The answer may be to recognize, once all explanations have been exhausted, that there is in some human relations a certain something that cannot be fully known or expressed but which changes everything. Pascal invites us to view the je-ne-sais-quoi, not only as a keyword of his age, but as none other than that certain something.

1

Pascal: L. 413; S. 32; I follow Sellier here.

Introduction

3

It is this double invitation that I take up in what follows. I do so by reading early modern texts by Pascal and others in the light of the questions with which I started: what is the je-ne-sais-quoi, and how can it be put into words? This book traces the history of the expression and its cluster of meanings across a range of linguistic, literary, and philosophical contexts in early modern Europe. Taking as its focus the period 1580 to 1680, during which the je-ne-saisquoi rises to prominence, the book places France at the centre of a development that is shown to mark neighbouring cultures in the same period. The book goes further than that, ultimately, and attempts to rescue the je-ne-sais-quoi from its history by showing that it remains capable, now as then, of tracing first-person experiences that elude explanation. Some readers may well consider it a peculiarly quixotic endeavour to devote an entire scholarly study to something of which it is merely possible to say either that one does not know what it is or, at the risk of sounding affected, that it is a certain je-ne-sais-quoi! Other readers may consider that the je-nesais-quoi encourages the most valuable form of intellectual endeavour precisely because it forces us to test the boundaries of what can be known and put into words. These opposing views are both to be found in early modern texts and are examined and assessed in the course of this study. In the final analysis, however, two suggestions about the je-ne-sais-quoi are offered here. The first is that firstperson encounters with a certain something are a vital part of what it is to be human, to the living of a life, because they fall into the realm of experience and outside the limits of the rational; the second is that early modern European literature of the kind written by Montaigne, Shakespeare, and Pascal, which exploits the imaginative and figurative possibilities of language to capture what falls outside the limits of the rational, proves uniquely good at putting these encounters into words. The je-ne-sais-quoi is offered here, in short, as a figure for literature’s myriad encounters with that certain something.

three ways of looking at the je-ne-sais-quoi This figure becomes visible in the course of the book as three ways of looking at the je-ne-sais-quoi are successively adopted. The first involves examining its emergence as a noun and a topic—its word

Introduction

4

history; the second, the uses to which it is put in different literary and philosophical contexts during the same period—its critical histories; the third, the scattered textual traces that appear to anticipate its emergence—its pre-history. Part I of the book traces the word history of the je-ne-sais-quoi, in other words, its emergence in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe as a noun and as a topic of debate. The noun is compared to and contrasted with its precursors and cognates in Latin and Romance languages and the various non-substantival French phrases to which it is closely related. Its rise to prominence in the middle decades of the seventeenth century, first in France and then in England, is described. The word history offered here quickly turns to the cluster of meanings that the je-ne-sais-quoi carries in different utterances. Like Jean Starobinski in his recent study of the coupled terms ‘action’ and ‘reaction’ (1999b), I eschew a rigorously nominalist approach, using my chosen term instead as a lexical tracer of a particular movement of the mind. The first part of the book sketches, accordingly, a provisional definition of the je-ne-sais-quoi that places it within a semantic field of kindred terms. Drawing on evidence from early modern dictionaries and other lexicographical sources, it argues that the word comes above all to designate a certain something experienced by individual human subjects that cannot be explained, a subtle force of sympathy or antipathy with powerful effects, and that this is perceived by early modern thinkers to operate not just in the realm of aesthetic or literary discourse, as much previous historical work on the topic has tended to suggest, but also in the discursive realms of theology, nature, the passions, and culture. The first surviving treatment of the je-ne-sais-quoi as a topic, by the lexicographer and writer of polite prose, Dominique Bouhours, in 1671, constitutes the single strongest piece of evidence for this claim. Bouhours maps these realms of the je-ne-sais-quoi in a text which reflects the word’s recently acquired cultural prominence. Part II of the book looks in detail at three of the discursive realms mapped by Bouhours—nature, the passions, and culture—and offers a critical history of the je-ne-sais-quoi in each.2 It is commonly said in the early modern period that elusive qualities or forces draw natural bodies together; attempts in natural philosophy to explain these forces are the subject of Chapter 2. It is said too that 2

The term’s controversial theological uses are discussed briefly in Ch. 1, below.

Introduction

5

elusive forces draw individual human beings into passionate relations with one another; attempts by philosophers and poets to describe such experiences are the subject of Chapter 3. It is claimed by some early modern writers, finally, that the forces at work in art and society—the realm of culture—are as elusive as those found in the realms of nature and the passions; these claims are the subject of Chapter 4. The je-ne-sais-quoi is used in each chapter as a lexical tracer to direct and control the sample of a large and complex discursive realm. The approach taken in this part of the book is ‘historical’ in that it adopts the methods of intellectual history developed by such figures as Ian Maclean and Quentin Skinner: it seeks to understand each proposition advanced as a move in some pre-existing debate.3 The approach is ‘critical’ in that it also seeks to assess whether particular lexical instances of the je-ne-sais-quoi fit the term’s core meaning, in other words, whether or not we are dealing in each case with the real thing. What the critical histories of Part II tend to suggest is that the je-ne-sais-quoi, in its rise to prominence, refers to a certain something that frustrates all attempts to define its identity and establish its causes even as it invites those attempts. This something, wherever it falls into experience, brings settled forms of explanation and expression to a crisis. It visibly disturbs sedimented terms, passes forcefully through current ones, and abandons these as they in turn undergo the process of cultural sedimentation. The critical histories offered here trace this process in the early modern period. The je-ne-sais-quoi unsettles its semantic precursors in its rise to prominence: one sees this in the debate about occult qualities and nature’s other secrets that divides philosophers throughout Europe in the age of Descartes (Chapter 2). It carries intense semantic force in philosophical and literary writing about the stroke of passion in human relations between the midsixteenth and mid-seventeenth centuries, as can be seen in a wide range of writers, notably Corneille and Pascal (Chapter 3). By the third quarter of the seventeenth century, however, it has settled into the sediment of polite culture after being systematically exploited as a strategically indefinable sign of quality by writers such as Bouhours and Me´re´ (Chapter 4). The very process by which the word acquires its history divorces it from that certain something that it 3 Succinct statements of their methods are to be found in Maclean 1992: 4–5 and Skinner 2002: i. 57–90.

6

Introduction

first served to capture on the page; the sedimentation of the word provokes the scattering of the thing into other terms and phrases. The early modern history of the je-ne-sais-quoi ends in the noun’s loss of semantic force. Part III of the book attempts to rescue the je-ne-sais-quoi from this fate as a supple means of tracing powerful first-person experiences that elude explanation. It undertakes this rescue attempt by altering the direction of the historical narrative and by moving backwards, against the flow of the topic’s history, into its ‘prehistory’. I adopt the pre-historical method from the recent work of Terence Cave (1999, 2001). Pre-history allows one to move backwards from the rise to prominence of a familiar historical phenomenon into the disparate and mobile traces that appear to anticipate this development. By moving against the flow of history, the prehistorian suspends the hindsight that retrospectively awards these traces the status of origins, and encounters them instead in the present tense of their appearance on the page. Cave uses pre-history to apprehend a series of early modern phenomena such as the self, pyrrhonian thought, and the notion of suspense in their early modern historical particularity. I seek, as Cave does, to recover early scattered traces of a particular phenomenon without making these points of origin. I do so, however, not just for methodological reasons, but also because I want to argue that the scattered traces of its pre-history offer a more faithful image of the je-ne-sais-quoi than its subsequent historical development. Montaigne, to whom Chapter 5 is devoted, is offered as the key example of this prehistory because he writes about the experience of the je-ne-saisquoi in the realms of nature, the passions, and culture, and because he does so without ever using the settled noun, but instead draws on various non-substantival forms of the je-ne-sais-quoi and related terms and figures. In so doing, he uncovers in the Essais a form of writing that captures the force of the je-ne-sais-quoi better, I suggest, than the sedimented noun itself. I end the book by suggesting that this pre-history might be developed into a critical approach to literary texts. Chapter 6 offers, as one example of what such an approach might yield, a close reading of Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Bottom’s dream, which encapsulates the play itself, is a bottomless comic encounter with a certain something in human relations that cannot be explained and leaves Bottom stammering for words. The book ends in this way by

Introduction

7

moving the je-ne-sais-quoi outside its history in order to remain faithful to the thing itself.

methodological issues This full-length study of the early modern je-ne-sais-quoi, the first of its kind, both draws upon and complements the work done on the topic in the last hundred years or so. It develops an interdisciplinary approach that tracks the movements of the je-ne-sais-quoi between different modes of writing, philosophical and literary ones in particular, instead of restricting its application to one domain. The topic requires such an approach. Earlier accounts of the je-ne-sais-quoi are of two kinds: those that examine it as a word with a predominantly literary history, and those that treat it as a topic of general philosophy in the Continental tradition. The latter approach has yielded the only other book on the topic, Vladimir Janke´le´vitch’s Le Je-ne-sais-quoi et le Presque-rien (The Je-Ne-Sais-Quoi and the Next-To-Nothing), first published in 1957 and revised heavily for republication (in three volumes) in 1980. Janke´le´vitch defines the je-ne-sais-quoi as the principle of life itself, as a something so inexplicable and insubstantial that it appears to be a ‘next-to-nothing’, but which alone sets philosophical thinking into movement. He says in the book’s opening page: il y a quelque chose d’ine´vident et d’inde´montrable a` quoi tient le coˆte´ inexhaustible, atmosphe´rique des totalite´s spirituelles, quelque chose dont l’invisible pre´sence nous comble, dont l’absence inexplicable nous laisse curieusement inquiets, quelque chose qui n’existe pas et qui pourtant est la chose la plus importante entre toutes les choses importantes, la seule qui vaille la peine d’eˆtre dite et la seule justement qu’on ne puisse dire!4 (There is something inaccessible and indemonstrable that gives spiritual entities their inexhaustible atmospheric quality; something whose invisible presence satisfies us and whose inexplicable absence leaves us strangely unsettled; something that does not exist and yet is the most important thing of all, the only one worth expressing, and yet precisely the only one that cannot be expressed!)

4

Janke´le´vitch 1980: i. 11.

Introduction

8

This fleeting something, this impalpable ‘mood’ of being, Janke´le´vitch calls the je-ne-sais-quoi. He discerns its presence not just in the realm of the aesthetic, as literary historians tend to do, but in the workings of time, charm, and freedom; he considers recognition as the sole process by which it can be apprehended; and he ends by discovering and celebrating the je-ne-sais-quoi as the inexplicable vital impulse of the human will. When casting around for the right term for his elusive object, Janke´le´vitch seems to have been drawn to the je-ne-sais-quoi partly for the word’s resolutely French character. Le Je-ne-sais-quoi et le Presque-rien, first written in the years following the end of the Second World War, includes frequent examples drawn from the Nazi occupation of France; references to German thought, meanwhile, are notable by their absence from the work of a philosopher who wrote his thesis on Schelling.5 Janke´le´vitch looks instead to a predecessor in the French philosophical tradition, Henri Bergson, commenting: ‘cette proprie´te´ pas-comme-les-autres, c’est, pour parler avec Bergson, ‘‘l’impre´visible rien qui fait tout’’’ (this property that is ‘not-like-the-other-ones’ is, to borrow Bergson’s phrase, ‘the unforeseeable nothing that changes everything’) (1980: i. 104). Janke´le´vitch’s book finds a place in the twentieth-century French tradition that stretches from Bergson to Deleuze and beyond. Janke´le´vitch typifies this tradition in his preference for the creation of transhistorical philosophical concepts over the adoption of a historical perspective. He draws upon early modern writing about the je-ne-sais-quoi only insofar as this enables him to pursue his own thinking.6 This need not prevent his je-ne-sais-quoi from coinciding with that described by early modern writers, of course, but any such occasion is and could only be precisely that —a coincidence. Janke´le´vitch’s philosophical turn of mind helps to explain why he has such rich and inventive things to say about what the je-ne-sais-quoi might be. The same turn of mind also helps to explain, perhaps, the relative lack of thought that Janke´le´vitch devotes to the literary question of how the je-ne-sais-quoi is to be put into words. He clearly has an intuitive sense that the question is an important one: his very title, after all, rephrases the je-ne-sais-quoi as ‘le 5

See Janke´le´vitch 1980: i. 99, 102; ii. 16, 29; 1998: 5 (pref.). Other examples of this approach to the je-ne-sais-quoi are less successful because they lack the conceptual rigour of Janke´le´vitch: Cerny (1961), e.g., writes at length about the ‘concept’ of the je-ne-sais-quoi without ever defining what this may be. 6

Introduction

9

presque-rien’ in what seems to be a second attempt to encapsulate its meaning. But the literary question never becomes the focus of his enquiry. Most studies of the je-ne-sais-quoi offer, by contrast with Janke´le´vitch, a predominantly literary history of the word. The prevalent view among these studies has long been—and remains to this day— that the je-ne-sais-quoi primarily belongs to early modern discussions of literary or aesthetic quality. An important early statement of this view is to be found in the historical section of Benedetto Croce’s influential Estetica come scienza dell’espressione (1902). Croce examines the je-ne-sais-quoi as part of a project to establish aesthetics as a form of knowledge that is concerned with the particular, not the universal, and that is theoretical but not rational.7 He identifies the je-ne-sais-quoi as part of an early and failed attempt to articulate aesthetic knowledge (1953: 191–207). Although they proved unsuccessful, he argues, seventeenth-century keywords such as the je-ne-sais-quoi are historically significant as ‘apprehensions of ground still to be conquered’ (1953: 197). Joel Spingarn proves more generous in the single paragraph that he devotes to the topic in the introduction to his Critical Essays of the Seventeenth Century (1908). His remarks set the pattern for much later work. The je-ne-sais-quoi ‘illustrates the process by which the seventeenth century [ . . . ] formulated the terminology of modern criticism’, he asserts, noting the word’s Italian and Spanish precursors as well as its success in England (1957: vol. i, pp. c–ci). Spingarn’s account, it might be observed, belongs firmly to the period in which the fledgling discipline of ‘modern criticism’ felt compelled to cast back into the past for its own origins. E. B. O. Borgerhoff, writing in the wake of Spingarn, describes his own attempt to trace the history of ‘a relatively innocent term’—the je-ne-sais-quoi—as the point of departure for his book The Freedom of French Classicism (1950: p. ix). Borgerhoff, in the end, devotes just one section of the book to the word (1950: 186–200). He follows Spingarn in considering the term as an aesthetic concept—although he concedes that it also refers to other realms of human experience—and in seeing the je-ne-sais-quoi as a means of resisting reductive explanations of certain phenomena. But, unlike Spingarn and indeed Croce, Borgerhoff has no story to tell of the emergence of modernity. 7

Croce 1953: 155; Bulatkin 1955.

10

Introduction

He seeks instead to complicate the adherence to norms of clarity, decorum, and probability commonly used to characterize the French seventeenth-century classical aesthetic, citing the je-ne-sais-quoi as a word that served to crystallize the period’s salutary ‘suspicion of the pat formula and the easy explanation’ (1950: 200). The je-nesais-quoi encapsulates, for Borgerhoff, the freedom of French classicism. Succeeding literary historians have tended to adopt one of these three approaches in considering the je-ne-sais-quoi to be either a temporary impasse for modern literary or aesthetic discourse (after Croce), a source for its development (after Spingarn), or an unruly element within the complex whole of classicism (after Borgerhoff).8 The notion with which the je-ne-sais-quoi is most commonly associated in traditional literary history is the ‘sublime’. This notion has of course a rich literary and philosophical history of its own in the early modern period.9 It becomes a key site of literary debate in late seventeenth-century France when Boileau and others use it to revive a hitherto largely neglected Greek treatise, presumed to be the work of Cassius Longinus, which sets out to describe the quality or force of a text that fills the perceptive reader with wonder. Over a century later, it comes to provide a theoretical framework for Romantic writing, following the publication of the Critique of Judgement (1790) in which Kant borrows the term (das Erhabene in German) to define human experience of impressive objects in nature. Literary historians tend to connect the je-ne-sais-quoi and the sublime on the historical grounds that Bouhours’s treatment of the former pre-dates by a mere three years Boileau’s French translation of Longinus’ Peri hupsous under the title Le Traite´ du sublime (1674). What they then make of this connection depends on their 8 Ernst Cassirer, in his work on the philosophy of the Enlightenment (1932), associates the word with the growing ‘trend towards subjectivism’ in aesthetic judgements (1951: 297–312). Samuel Holt Monk (1944) mentions it in his account of the long pan-European history of ‘grace’ as a critical term before its appearance in Pope’s Essay on Criticism (1711); Paul Zumthor and Hubert Sommer relate the je-nesais-quoi to the notion of genius (1950: 193–5); Eleanor Webster Bulatkin (1955) includes it in a study of the word ‘nuance’. Two German historians, also writing in the 1950s, trace the Begriffsgeschichte (conceptual history) of the je-ne-sais-quoi in a similar vein. Erich Ko¨hler argues that it plays a vital role in the pre-Romantic conception of selfhood (1953–4: 58); Erich Haase sees the je-ne-sais-quoi (in Leibniz’s adoption of the word from Bouhours) as being at the foundation of modern aesthetics (1956: 58). 9 See Sect. 4.2.2, below.

Introduction

11

narrative of literary history. The urge to integrate the je-ne-sais-quoi within a genealogy of modern aesthetics, shared in different ways by both Croce and Spingarn, can be detected in much of the later scholarship. Annie Becq, in a detailed study, places the je-ne-saisquoi along with grace and the sublime at what she calls the Gene`se de l’esthe´tique franc¸aise moderne (source of modern French aesthetics).10 Louis Marin, in a manner reminiscent of Croce, characterizes seventeenth-century notions such as the sublime and the je-ne-saisquoi as confused apprehensions of ground as yet unconquered. The conquering hero, for Marin, is Kant.11 Marin, in a later article, defines Pascal’s treatment of the infinite as the moment of transition between the classical and Kantian notions of the sublime: Pascal, he concludes, ‘provided the Romantics with an aesthetic model [ . . . ] for sublime writing’.12 Marin’s account makes clearer than any other why he and certain other historians of the early modern je-ne-sais-quoi choose to label the term ‘pre-Romantic’.13 The suffix ‘pre-’ is genealogical in character here: it indicates the position ascribed to the je-ne-sais-quoi, high in the family tree of the Romantic sublime, as an imperfect anticipation of later developments. Nicholas Cronk, resisting this teleological tendency, sets out in a recently published book to restore to seventeenth-century notions their historical particularity by tracing the emergence of the je-nesais-quoi and the sublime in the 1670s.14 In so doing he contributes, after Borgerhoff and others, to the long-running debate about the pertinence of the term ‘classicism’ to the literary production of this period. The pioneering scholarship of Croce, Spingarn, and Borgerhoff remains of value. But the historical narratives that all three offer are, in various ways, reductive of the je-ne-sais-quoi. All of them consider it to be primarily a literary or aesthetic topic. Their view fails to reflect the range of the term’s occurrences across a range of different intellectual domains and literary and cultural practices in the early modern period. What it does reflect, in the case of Croce and Spingarn, is their use of hindsight or ‘analepsis’ to project the genesis of later notions and categories back into the past. Their aim 10 11 12 13 14

Becq 1984: 70–1 and 97–115. Marin 1986: 200; see also Cassirer 1951: 276–8. Marin 1989: 345; 1986: 199–200. See also Natali 1951; Ko¨hler 1953–4; Adriaensens 1970: 107. Cronk 2002; see Sect. 4.2.2, below.

12

Introduction

is to establish a genealogy for the Kantian sublime or modern critical discourse; they note, quite correctly in so far as it goes, that the seventeenth-century je-ne-sais-quoi is used to name an apprehension of subtle qualities in a work of art; they then limit the history of the word to its role as a source for the development that interests them. Historians of recent decades have become more wary of the teleological inferences that analepsis makes possible. A major figure in this development, Michel Foucault, powerfully criticizes conventional history of ideas for projecting the object and conditions of present knowledge back into the past.15 There may be no clearer case of this than the je-ne-sais-quoi, which modern aesthetic criticism transforms retrospectively into a fledgling version of itself. Those like Borgerhoff who talk of the je-ne-sais-quoi as ‘classical’ commit themselves to a view equally open to the charge of backward projection: that late seventeenth-century French society contains a distinct and autonomous domain in which the literary arts are practised. Talk of ‘classicism’ implicitly suggests that such a domain exists. But historians in the wake of Bourdieu (1979) have increasingly countered this view by arguing that the je-ne-sais-quoi, like other ostensibly literary and cultural topics, is merely one site of a wider social and ideological conflict in this period.16 This historical argument may—in some cases, does—reflect a wholesale commitment to the theoretical view that artistic pleasure and value are always surface effects of determining material conditions. When such a commitment is present, early modern writers’ perceptions are invariably explained away as mere illusions, and the resulting historical argument proves damagingly reductive of the terms— such as the je-ne-sais-quoi—by means of which those perceptions are articulated. When it is advanced as a critical reassessment of ‘classicism’ as a category, however, the historical argument has considerable force. The category may indeed have outlived its usefulness. But what else are we to call the period? Alain Viala, in two articles (1997a, 1997d), has suggested that no single unifying category should replace ‘classicism’ and that those wishing to think historically would do well to use terms that reflect the period’s wider 15

Foucault 1966: 86; see also Cave 1999: 17. See Dens 1981: 38–59; Viala 1997b: 73–4; 1999: 187; Moriarty 1999; Ch. 4, below. 16

Introduction

13

intellectual, social, and cultural engagements. Of course, the very notion of a ‘period’ needs to be challenged too, since different phenomena suggest different chronological sequences. These developments have made new approaches to the early modern period possible. Of most direct relevance to the present book are those that concern the nature and status of experience in this period. Terence Cave, as I mentioned earlier, has developed his backwards-moving ‘pre-histories’ in an attempt to recover multiple testimonies of past experience in the work of Rabelais, Montaigne, and others. Michael Moriarty, in a recently published study (2003), sets out a powerful alternative view of early modern French thought as one that marks an ‘age of suspicion’ towards spontaneous experience of the world, tracing this attitude through the work of Descartes, Pascal, and Malebranche. For various reasons—the most important of which may simply be that they do not examine the same sequence of authors—Cave and Moriarty offer different assessments of the status of experience in early modern literature and thought. What they share is a renewed sense of the complex history of notions such as experience, the desire to avoid reducing the past either to an excessively coherent vision or to a grand narrative of modernity, and the ambition to trace the presence of early modern notions across disciplinary and discursive boundaries drawn by a later age. These are the conditions that have made it possible to reassess the history of apparently stable literary topics such as the je-ne-sais-quoi and the sublime, itself the object of renewed scrutiny,17 in their relation to problems of experience and expression in different discursive domains.

17 The Longinian sublime and the ways in which it is put to use by 17th-cent. French writers are the subject of Emma Gilby’s as yet unpublished doctoral thesis (2003), which I have been glad to read in part and to discuss with her. Gilby argues that the sublime allows Corneille to rethink dramatic theory, Pascal to reshape apologetic discourse, and Boileau to formulate a series of moral negotiations in the Querelle des anciens et des modernes. In its account of the sublime as a key locus for debates about how experience at its most contingent and ineffable can be represented in and produced by texts, and how this process can enable a certain kind of selfknowledge, Gilby’s work clearly has preoccupations close to mine. One notable area of difference seems to be that where, in Gilby’s account, the Longinian sublime serves primarily to describe the result of an encounter between certain texts and readers, and comes thereafter to be applied to encounters between people, the trajectory of the je-ne-sais-quoi is, in my view, the reverse. This suggests that the traditional identification of the two notions needs, at the very least, to be rethought.

14

Introduction

Such is the approach taken in the present study. I consider that existing philosophical work adds to our understanding of what the je-ne-sais-quoi is, but gives an inadequate account of how it comes to be put into words; that literary historical work adds to our understanding of how the je-ne-sais-quoi is put into words, but gives an inadequate account of what it is; and that one needs to address the two questions at their interdisciplinary intersection. My attempt to do so owes a great deal to the work of philosophers such as Janke´le´vitch as well as to the recent developments in early modern intellectual history and literary studies mentioned above. The results of this attempt may well strike the most philosophicallyminded readers as incomplete in its analysis of concepts and the most historically-minded readers as insufficient in its account of contexts. Both objections would, in a sense, be correct: the study, given its composite approach and the evasive nature of its object, remains little more than an attempt or a preliminary sounding. But its aim is precisely to show that its object can only be apprehended by bringing together questions and methods usually kept separate in the interests of disciplinary hygiene. The work of Michel Foucault, one of the pioneers of interdisciplinarity, provides a useful point of comparison here. In his early writings, Foucault undertakes an archaeology of past forms of knowledge. He uses the notion of the ‘episteme’ to describe the lateral set of discursive relations that makes the various intellectual disciplines and practices of a given period possible.18 This requires him to become a specialist of what Georges Canguilhem calls ‘interregionality’.19 Foucault’s work, with its interregional scope and its mistrust of history as genealogy, has helped create the conditions for much subsequent work, including my own. That said, my understanding of the early modern period differs from his in certain significant respects, which have mainly to do with his notion of the episteme. The episteme of any period, Foucault stresses, can neither be apprehended nor altered by those whose knowledge it determines. When one episteme gives way to another, it does so in a violent and impersonal break that Foucault finds it difficult to account for, since he denies past thinkers the ability to think outside the epistemic grid.20 In Les Mots et les Choses (1966), for example, 18 19 20

Foucault 1966, 1972, and 1969; on the ‘episteme’, see Foucault 1969: 250. Canguilhem 1994: 81–2; Foucault 1969: 273. See Canguilhem 1994: 82–3; Maclean 1998a, 1998b.

Introduction

15

he does little more than assert that an essential break in the Western world took place between what he calls the ‘Renaissance’ and ‘classical’ periods.21 The je-ne-sais-quoi, which rises to prominence in this same shadowy transitional period, offers one way of tracing those early modern perceptions of epistemological uncertainty and change that Foucault ignores. I agree that members of a given culture are conditioned by its dominant modes of explanation and expression. But I do not believe that this precludes them, at particular moments, from thinking and writing at the limits. To characterize such moments I prefer the metaphors of crisis and of geological movement to the inaccessible and inflexible metaphorical grid of the episteme. The je-ne-sais-quoi comes, between the age of Montaigne and that of Pascal, to describe the movement of the ground of knowledge under the speaker’s feet, so to speak, or a fault-line that first-person experience exposes within the bedrock of traditional explanations.22 How, then, is the period between Montaigne and the age of Pascal to be categorized? Tags such as ‘Renaissance’, ‘baroque’, and ‘classicism’ obscure the historical narrative offered here more than they reveal it. Were one to seek a more helpful category, one might do worse than talk of this as ‘an age of experience’, a category which reflects the fact that the rise to prominence of the je-ne-sais-quoi coincides with that of first-person experience as an object of fascination, suspicion, reflection, and debate among thinkers and writers. It seems clear that the first-person character of the je-ne-sais-quoi contributes to its currency in this period as a lexical tracer of epistemological uncertainty in the face of intense lived experience. The related question of who or what the subject of such experience might be also undergoes significant change at a time when, as Terence Cave has shown, the substantival terms le moi and ‘the self’ first become current (1999: 111–29). Other ways of thinking about personal identity already existed of course; the point is merely that a change in the language, once again, seems to crystallize a new way of thinking. Just as Pascal reflects on the je-ne-sais-quoi in one fragment of his writing, so he devotes another to the question ‘Qu’est-ce que le moi?’ (What is the self ?) (L. 688; S. 567); and 21

Foucault 1966: 64; see also Foucault 1972: 58; Dreyfus and Rabinow 1982: 5. This argument is developed more fully in Scholar 2003a; on the metaphor of the ‘fault-line’, see Cave 1999: 15. 22

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Introduction

one has only to think of other writers examined in this book— Montaigne, Shakespeare, and Descartes—to see that this is an age in which the first person is being used in all kinds of innovative ways as a lexical tracer of personal experience and identity. I do not mean to imply, however, that the je-ne-sais-quoi requires those who use it to possess a new and stable sense of something they call ‘the self’. One should be wary of associating the two terms too closely since there are, as we shall see, occasions when the je-ne-sais-quoi is used to designate an encounter so intense that it actually serves to undo the self rather than to shore up its existence. Nevertheless, it does seem helpful to sketch a network of related developments around the je-ne-sais-quoi and to point out that it rises to prominence in an age increasingly concerned, in various and often opposing ways, with intense first-person experiences and with the problems of knowledge and expression that these experiences raise. These questions do not belong to Montaigne, Shakespeare, and their contemporaries alone: they are, it seems, still with us. In recent decades, Western intellectual culture has repeatedly attempted to theorize vital and inexplicable encounters that transform the subject: the work of Vladimir Janke´le´vitch, already cited, is one obvious example; other examples include Roland Barthes’s celebration of jouissance, Gilles Deleuze’s account of life as a series of imperceptible devenirs, and Slavoj Zˇizˇek’s description (through his reading of Alain Badiou) of miraculous events.23 Western mainstream culture is full of fictions, films, poems, and songs about encounters with others in which the protagonists find themselves powerfully moved by a certain something which they can neither explain nor entirely express. Readers of this book may find examples of that certain something in further areas of modern life coming to mind. The choice I have taken to place the emergence of the je-ne-sais-quoi under the sign of the ‘early modern’ will appear, in that case, to take on a double meaning. The term ‘early modern’ is to be understood primarily here as a relatively neutral description of the historical period that stretches from the late fifteenth to the late eighteenth centuries and in the middle of which the je-ne-sais-quoi comes into being. But the same term also carries within it an implicit invitation to consider the je-ne-sais-quoi not as yet another source 23 Barthes 1973 (repr. in Barthes 1993–5: vol. ii); Deleuze and Parnet 1996: 7–26; ˇ izˇek 1999: 127–71. Z

Introduction

17

of modernity (or indeed postmodernity)—this book offers no such genealogical narrative—but as an experience which is shared by authors of the past and twenty-first-century readers alike and which offers, as a result, a means of reading those authors in what Michael Moriarty has memorably called ‘a kind of precarious contact between their present and ours’ (2003: 253). The aim of this invitation is not to demonstrate the continuing ‘relevance’ of early modern literature to the modern or postmodern world—for that, after all, would lead us to contemplate nothing other than a picturesque version of what we have become—but to argue for its intrinsic value. A. D. Nuttall has proposed that ‘no form of literature be regarded as wholly insulated from this varying world’ (1983: 193). Early modern writers like Montaigne, Shakespeare, and Pascal make room for a precarious contact between their present and ours, I suggest, because they reveal not only something about the historical moment to which they belong but also, and more ambitiously perhaps, something about what it is to be alive in this varying world. This much we may come to recognize as we read their encounters with that certain something, which Pascal calls the je-ne-sais-quoi, and which we are still trying to put into words.

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part i

Word History

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1

A Modish Name Je-ne-scay-quoi, four French words, contracted as it were into one, and signifies I know not what. Thomas Blount, Glossographia (1656)

1.1. the rise of the je-ne-sais-quoi 1.1.1. On Vogue-Words In the summer of 2002 the French car company Renault launched an advertising campaign in England for the new Clio car. The television advertisement features Thierry Henry, a famous and stylish French footballer employed by an English club, who announces that the car possesses what he calls va va voom. But what, he wonders, is the French for va va voom? Is it the joie-de-vivre, or is it the je-ne-sais-quoi?1 Drivers are invited to answer the question by experiencing the car’s qualities for themselves. The je-ne-sais-quoi, now a mannered archaism in both French and English, still offers speakers of both languages a way of articulating their experience of a powerful and seemingly inexplicable force. This chapter describes how this first came to be the case. The je-ne-sais-quoi rises to prominence in French writing between the death of Montaigne and the age of Pascal. A term with precursors in Latin and the Romance languages, it spreads to other vernacular languages of early modern Europe; by the early 1670s, when Pascal’s Pense´es were first published, it is established enough in France and England alike to be identified as a word in vogue. A vogue is at the best of times a fleeting, impalpable thing; but when the vogue in question is for the je-ne-sais-quoi, the attempt to 1

See the website devoted to the advertising campaign at www.vavavoom.co.uk.

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1.1

describe it seems doubly uncertain, like grasping at the impalpable in its very evanescence. How does the term come into vogue, what precisely does it mean, and to what may it refer? Such questions elicit responses from twenty-first-century word historians, but not from them alone, for there are early modern writers who reflect upon the rise of the je-ne-sais-quoi within their own language and culture. In so doing, they offer the first sketches of its word history. The history of the je-ne-sais-quoi, like all word histories, can only be narrated provisionally. At times, the problem is a lack of evidence, whether because oral usage is inaccessible or because written records are lost, leaving gaps in the story that cannot be filled. At other times, the problem is an excess of evidence, making it practically impossible to locate and analyse all of the occurrences of a given word or group of words. Such problems are by no means confined to word history, of course: they dog most, if not all, attempts to elaborate narratives of history. The solution is not to abandon such narratives, unless one is also willing to give up the search for historical understanding, but to offer them with a proper sense of where the gaps remain, of how unruly and incorrigibly plural the past can be. Recent practitioners of word history have adopted this attitude in their attempts to recount the life and adventures of their chosen word.2 Jean Starobinski, at the beginning of his word history, quotes the philological dream of Balzac’s hero Louis Lambert: ‘quel beau livre ne composerait-on en racontant la vie et les aventures d’un mot ?’ (would one not compose a fine book by recounting the life and adventures of a word?) (1999b: 9). If one were to attempt just such a life of the je-ne-sais-quoi, then one would need to distinguish between three intimately related processes in its rise to prominence: its emergence as a noun (or substantivization), its period of currency, and its sedimentation. In the earliest phase of its existence, the phrase has many lexical forms and carries multiple meanings as a first-person expression of nescience. Substantivization takes place when the phrase comes to be qualified by an article or determiner, acquires the optional connecting hyphens that spell it as one word, and becomes the subject of sentences. People start talking about ‘a’, ‘the’, or ‘that certain’ je-nesais-quoi. It is not clear why so many language users pick up this particular phrase and make use of it in a wide range of new contexts. 2

Examples include Kenny 1998; Starobinski 1999b; and Cave 1999: 111–29.

1.1

A Modish Name

23

Other ways of saying the same thing are available, of course, and for a long time the substantival phrase remained no more than a dormant possibility of the language. It does seem, in this case, that what Starobinski describes as a complex interaction between ways of talking and thinking produces a simultaneous change in each (1999b: 11). The lexical transformation of the je-ne-sais-quoi marks and reflects a shift in its semantic function; in acquiring substantival status, the phrase serves to crystallize in language a set of experiences that mark the limits of what can be known. The je-ne-sais-quoi enters a period of linguistic and semantic currency. Other metaphors can be used to describe this process: Guez de Balzac says that usage causes neologisms to ‘ripen’, as though they were fruits on the tree of language; Sorel imagines them being ‘in credit’; Kenny, like Sorel, talks in monetary terms of an ‘inflation in the economy of signs’.3 I use the term ‘current’ because it keeps two metaphors, monetary and electrical, in play. A word gains greater currency, in the monetary sense, as language users share it as an item of lexical exchange.4 This causes a stronger semantic current, in the word’s electrical sense, to pass through it as language users come to use the word with ever greater intensity in new contexts. The je-ne-sais-quoi receives a cluster of definitions, core meanings, and referents. This is a threshold moment at which the substantival je-ne-sais-quoi starts to thicken and settle as a stable feature of seventeenth-century language and modes of thinking and, as such, acquires its historicity. This, the process that Merleau-Ponty calls ‘sedimentation’,5 confirms the cultural prominence of a word in vogue. The je-ne-sais-quoi offers one clear sign of its sedimentation when it acquires the status of a topic around which an entire discourse can be organized. The single most influential example comes from Dominique Bouhours’s widely read collection of six conservations on literary and philosophical topics, Les Entretiens d’Ariste et d’Euge`ne (1671), the fifth of which is entitled ‘Le Je Ne Sc¸ay Quoy’.6 Bouhours taught at the Jesuit Colle`ge de Clermont in 3

See J.-L. Balzac 1995: 81; Sorel 1974: 363; Kenny 1998: 162. See Kenny 1998: 161–3. 5 Merleau-Ponty 1960: 86. Merleau-Ponty inherits the metaphor from Husserl (Maclean 1998b: 171). 6 The text had already run to five editions by 1678 and continued to be republished frequently throughout the 18th cent.; full details are given in Beugnot 1990. Bernard Beugnot and Gilles Declerq’s 592–page edition of Bouhours’s text, published by Champion at the end of 2003, is catalogued as including a (much-needed) 4

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1.1

Paris in the second half of the seventeenth century while taking part in his Society’s long-running conflict with the Port-Royal movement. But he is chiefly remembered as a writer on language and literary style who enjoyed considerable authority in his lifetime.7 Saint-Evremond says in one of his letters that no writer has done more for the French language than Bouhours; Racine appears to have sought Bouhours’s approval of the style of one of his plays, probably Phe`dre, despite supporting the Jesuit’s opponents on religious matters; Charles Sorel, a contemporary supporter of the Entretiens d’Ariste et d’Euge`ne, describes their author as the embodiment of elegant literary usage.8 Bouhours was well placed, then, to confirm the status of the je-ne-sais-quoi within polite circles in 1670s France. His text is in fact the second to use the term as a title; the first was written some four decades earlier (see Sect. 1.1.4, below). The publication of Bouhours’s conversation is a pivotal moment in the word’s history: it looks backwards to the origins of the term and forwards to its appearance in the great monolingual dictionaries of the late seventeenth century. The interlocutors in Bouhours’s Entretiens, Ariste and Euge`ne, are two friends indulging in the pleasures of conversation. They start to talk about the je-ne-sais-quoi when Ariste casually uses the phrase and Euge`ne, intrigued, asks him to explain what he means by it (1962: 140). That the word first ‘comes up’ in conversation confirms the observation made by Bouhours’s chief spokesman, Ariste, earlier in the Entretiens: ‘c’est dans la conversation que naissent d’ordinaire les termes nouveaux’ (conversation is where new terms are generally born) (1962: 55). The very emergence of the je-ne-sais-quoi as a vogue-word becomes the two friends’ new topic of conversation, with Ariste pointing out to Euge`ne that ‘le je ne sc¸ay quoy a beaucoup de vogue parmi nous’ (the je-ne-sais-quoi is in full vogue with us at the moment) (1962: 145). The text supports this claim by quoting widely read writers such as Voiture and Corneille, in particular the following passage from Corneille’s tragedy Rodogune (1645): bibliography of Bouhours’s works. It will no doubt supersede Ferdinand Brunot’s 1962 edition. I have not been able to consult this new edition at the time of writing, however, and so the references in this study are to Brunot. 7 The standard monograph on Bouhours remains Doncieux 1886; see also Matore´ 1968: 74–5; Viala 1985: 34–40; Cronk 2002: 51–77 (on the Entretiens). 8 See Cronk 2003: 51–2 (on Saint-Evremond and Racine); Sorel 1974: 338–9.

1.1

A Modish Name

25

Il est des nœuds secrets, il est des sympathies, Dont par le doux rapport les ames assorties S’attachent l’une a` l’autre, et se laissent picquer Par ces je ne sc¸ay quoy qu’on ne peut expliquer.9 (There are certain secret ties and sympathies through whose sweet concord two well-suited souls become attached and find themselves stirred by those je-ne-sais-quoi that cannot be explained.)

The je-ne-sais-quoi here designates the experience of a vital and inexplicable attraction. Bouhours is not alone in offering Corneille’s use as exemplary; so, as we have seen, does Pascal; the playwright is often quoted in the major monolingual dictionaries of the late seventeenth century. Other writers press the word into memorable service. Bossuet describes the body after death as ‘un je ne sais quoi qui n’a plus de nom dans aucune langue’ (a je-ne-sais-quoi for which no name remains in any language);10 Retz offers the disparaging judgement that ‘il y a toujours eu du je ne sais quoi en tout M. de la Rochefoucauld’ (there has always been something of the je-ne-saisquoi about La Rochefoucauld).11 The word spreads through polite literary circles. Ariste reflects on its novelty: ‘le je ne sc¸ay quoy est peut-estre la seule matiere sur laquelle on n’a point fait de livres, et que les doctes n’ont pas pris la peine d’e´claircir’ (the je-ne-sais-quoi is perhaps the only matter on which no books have been written and which the learned have not taken the trouble to clarify) (Bouhours 1962: 150). In the course of their conversation, the two friends have uncovered what may be the only topic still awaiting learned examination. Ariste and Euge`ne, in discussing the problem in these terms, have chanced upon a word whose history remains to be written. 1.1.2. Precursors in European Languages What, then, of the word’s precursors? The je-ne-sais-quoi is the French member of a European family of terms descended from the Latin nescio quid. It owes its literary prestige partly to its Latin ancestor and its Romance cousins; but, unlike them, it goes on to establish itself as a vogue-word and an organizing topic. Modern 9

Bouhours 1962: 141; quoting Corneille 1971–96: ii, Rodogune, 359–62. Bossuet 1914–26: iv. 268; this is a loose translation of a passage from Tertullian (De resurrectione mortuorum, 4), which Bossuet quotes in the text. 11 Retz 1870–96: ii. 180. On Retz’s description, see Marin 1986: 192–3. 10

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philology confirms the suggestion, made by Bouhours in the marginal notes to his text, that the Latin nescio quid is at the lexical origins of the French expression: the verb nescire in Latin is combined with various pronouns and adverbs to form first-person expressions of nescience (nescio quis, nescio quid, nescio quomodo, etc.). We have these in English too—‘I know not who’, ‘I know not what’, ‘I know not how’, and so on—but they sound rather archaic today and we tend to use other expressions. Montaigne and Bacon both quote Virgil’s use of the adjectival phrase to demonstrate the power of the imagination: ‘nescio quis teneros oculus mihi fascinat agnos’ (I know not what eye is bewitching my tender lambs).12 Bouhours quotes passages from Persius, Martial, Cicero, and Augustine that reveal the various functions of the Latin phrase.13 A major difference between nescio quid and its Romance descendants is that the substantival form in Latin, ille nescio quid, remains rare. Lewis and Short list several instances in Cicero, but it seems that the form is not systematically exploited and never acquires the status of a topic.14 Nescio quid continues to be used in medieval and Renaissance Latin, while the form non sapio quid evolves in Romance languages of the Middle Ages as the verb sapere takes over from scire. Word historians have located numerous variants in a wide range of Romance languages and dialects.15 Some have suggested that the spread of non sapio quid through Romance languages was predominantly learned in character.16 Bouhours’s quotations of classical Latin authors are intended to support this view. But there is ample evidence that, in Romance languages of the Middle Ages, non sapio quid also flourished in colloquial forms and expressions.17 In all probability, the phrase owes its spread to coexisting traditions, learned and popular, written and oral. Non sapio quid evolves, in its variant forms, with the development of Romance languages. What distinguishes these variants from the classical Latin nescio quid is that all become current, at some stage, in substantival form. This process does not occur 12 Virgil, Eclogues, iii. 103; quoted in Montaigne: i. 21, 105a; Bacon 1996: ii. 642 (Sylva Sylvarum, §.901). 13 Bouhours 1671: 237–57; 1682: 245–64; some examples are quoted in Sect. 1.3.2, below. See also Haase 1956: 47–8; Lewis and Short 1955: ‘nescio’. 14 Lewis and Short 1955: ‘nescio’; Gaudemar 1998: 8–9. 15 Wartburg 1960–3; Haase 1956: 49. 16 Haase 1956: 48–9; Monk 1944: 146. 17 See the occurrences listed by Wartburg 1960–3.

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simultaneously in Romance languages, as the examples of Italian, Spanish, and French indicate. Non sapio quid seems instead to have spread successively from one European country to another in the manner of a contagion. That particularly nasty early modern contagion, syphilis, offers a point of comparison in so far as the inhabitants of one European country invariably thought the disease had been brought over from the New World by the inhabitants of another; so that where the French blamed the Neapolitans, for example, the English called syphilis ‘the French disease’.18 The story of non sapio quid is rather similar. Italian is the first Romance language to develop its variant form, non so che, into a noun. But the non so che, despite its currency in sixteenth-century Italian, never achieves sedimentation.19 Historians of the non so che cite an early substantival occurrence in Agnolo Firenzuola’s treatise Della bellezza delle donne (1541). Firenzuola uses the noun to name the inexplicable quality of feminine grace: siam forzati a credere che questo splendore nasca da una occulta proporzione, e da una misura che non e` ne’nostri libri, la quale noi non conosciamo, anzi non pure immaginiamo, ed e`, come si dice delle cose che non sappiamo esprimere, un ‘non so che’.20 (We are forced to believe that this splendour is born of some unknown proportion and a measure that can be found in none of our books, which we neither know nor can imagine, and which is, as we say of things that we cannot explain, a non so che.)

Firenzuola uses the non so che with the lexical self-consciousness reserved for terms enjoying a new currency. His gloss uses esprimere to mean ‘explain’ rather than ‘express’, a cognitive act rather than an utterance.21 The non so che allows Firenzuola to name in one gallant stroke that grace in women which ‘we’ experience yet cannot explain. Firenzuola is not the only writer to connect the inexplicability of the new non so che with the sweetness of grace. The art theorist Ludovico Dolce does so too when, in his dialogue on painting L’Aretino (1557), he asserts that Michelangelo’s laboured designs 18

See Arrizabalaga, Henderson, and French 1997. On the non so che, see Natali 1951: 1958. Quoted in Monk 1944: 138–9; see Natali 1951: 45–6. 21 The Cambridge Italian Dictionary lists this sense of the verb (1962: i, ‘esprimere’). 19 20

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(as he sees them) are inferior to the painting of Raphael. Raphael, for Dolce, is the master of a careless grace: e questa e` la venusta`, che e` quel non so che, che tanto suole aggradire, cosı` ne’pittori, ne’poeti, in guisa che empie l’animo altrui d’infinito diletto, non sapendo da qual parte che a noi tanto piace.22 (This is the grace [venusta`] that makes that non so che, which often is so pleasing in the works of painters and of poets alike, because it fills our souls with an infinite delight without our knowing whence arises the thing that so pleases us.)

Dolce applies here to Raphael a topos found in Pliny the Elder and Quintilian about the fourth-century bc Greek painter Apelles, who is commonly said to have been among the greatest of antiquity (although none of his work survives). Pliny, searching for the right Latin term for the artist’s famous ease of execution or ‘grace’, translates charis in Greek as venustas in Latin; Quintilian offers gratia.23 Dolce, modifying the topos as he repeats it in Italian, introduces the non so che as the inexplicable pleasure that accompanies the intervention of grace (venusta`). The semantic connection between grace and the non so che will remain when the latter term passes into French. For ‘grace’ refers, as the je-ne-sais-quoi may do, to a subtle sweet quality that remains irreducible to systems of explanation while setting them into movement.24 The two terms share a similar range of reference: both name this quality in theological discourse as well as in the fields of erotic relations (Firenzuola) and art (Dolce).25 That said, ‘grace’ is in general a more stable term than the volatile je-ne-sais-quoi, and particularly so in theology, where the latter word remains too heavily associated with worldly experiences, erotic and otherwise, for the comfort of the devout (see Sect. 1.3.2, below). Dolce visibly uses the term’s semantic connection with grace to establish the non so che as a feature of current usage. This currency is reflected both in prose and poetry. Tasso, above all, systematically exploits the term in his heroic epic poem Gerusalemme Liberata 22

Quoted in Monk 1944: 141; see Natali 1958: 13. Monk 1944: 133 (quoting Pliny the Elder, Historia Naturalis, xxxv. 36, 79; Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, xii. 10, 6). 24 Janke´le´vitch makes the same point (1980: i. 42). 25 See Borgerhoff 1950: 197–9; Stanton 1980: 210–11; Becq 1984: 97–115; Scholar 2002b: 321–7. 23

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(1581). He is quoted on five occasions by Bouhours’s learned wits, who comment that Italian poets use their non so che on all possible occasions.26 But, unlike their French successors, Italian sixteenthcentury writers do not, as far as I am aware, make the substantival non so che into an organizing topic. It remains widely current, but unsedimented, in early modern Italy. The non sapio quid spreads next to Spain. Bouhours’s learned wits agree: ‘les Espagnols ont aussi leur, no se que, qu’ils meslent a` tout, et dont ils usent a` toute heure’ (the Spanish too have their no se´ que´, which they add to everything and use all the time) (1962: 145). The Spanish form seems more strongly associated with religious experience than its Italian or French counterparts. Comprehensive studies of the Spanish no se´ que´ have emphasized its importance to the mystical tradition as well as to Golden Age literature, listing ´ vila, St John of the Cross, and Ceroccurrences in Teresa of A 27 vantes. St John, in his Ca´ntico espiritual and prose commentary (written c.1584), describes an indescribable longing for divine revelation that only the no se´ que´ can name.28 In another poem, ‘Glosa a lo divino’, the poet expresses the hope that he will be touched by a no se´ que´ of divine grace: Por toda la hermosura nunca yo me perdere´ sino por un no se´ que´ que se alcanza por ventura.29 (For all beauty I shall never lose my way, except for a certain no se´ que´ which is met by chance.)

The term figures here in a devotional refrain about the aleatory interventions of divine grace. In both poems, St John places the no se´ que´ in the realm of the divine. He does so without ever giving the word the status of a topic. The Spanish no se´ que´ remains in this intermediary position, between currency and sedimentation, until the mid-eighteenth century. It is often claimed that Baltasar Gracia´n, the seventeenth-century Spanish Jesuit theoretician of worldliness, was the first writer to raise the 26

Bouhours 1962: 144–5; on Tasso, see Natali 1951: 46–7. See Ko¨hler 1955–6; Porqueras Mayo 1965, 1966; Jam 1995. San Juan de la Cruz 1979: 159–63 (stanza 7); Janke´le´vitch 1980: i. 109–10; Jam 1995: 518–19. 29 San Juan de la Cruz 1979: 344–6; quoted in Gaudemar 1998: 102. 27 28

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no se´ que´ to the level of a concept.30 This is not quite accurate. Gracia´n’s first book El he´roe (1637), a guide to the art of social distinction, includes a chapter on a quality that he calls el despejo. This Gracia´n describes as an assiduously cultivated imperceptible charm without ever using the word no se´ que´ itself.31 The two Spanish terms remain semantically close but lexically distinct. Late seventeenth-century French readers of Gracia´n, however, confuse the two by incorporating despejo within the topic of the je-nesais-quoi. Bouhours, the first French author explicitly to reveal a debt to Gracia´n, quotes his fellow Jesuit in ‘Le Je Ne Sc¸ay Quoy’ where he juxtaposes no se´ que´, brio, and despejo in the same sentence. Amelot de la Houssaye, in his 1684 translation of Gracia´n, follows Bouhours in rendering despejo into French as the je-ne-sais-quoi.32 Gracia´n’s place is in the word history of the French je-ne-sais-quoi, then, not of the no se´ que´. The Spanish form does finally achieve sedimentation in the early modern period; but it does so only in the eighteenth century, when Benito Feijo´o includes a discourse on the no se´ que´ in his nine-volume survey of vulgar errors, Teatro Critico Universal (1726–41).33 The French je-ne-sais-quoi is by this time a well-established topic on which Feijo´o is able to draw. After first spreading through Italy and then Spain, the non sapio quid moves northwards into France.34 Those who first use the new substantival je-ne-sais-quoi often mention its Latin ancestor and modern European cousins. Bouhours does so, as we have seen, to ennoble the term and justify his use of it as a topic. He is merely repeating a commonplace gesture. In his Apologie pour Monsieur de Balzac (1627), the critic Franc¸ois Ogier celebrates his subject’s style by claiming that it possesses ‘ceste Grace, et ceste Venus qu’Apelles inspiroit en ces tableaux, et que les Italiens nomment le je ne sc¸ay quoy’ (that grace and charm which Apelles inspired in his paintings and which the Italians call the je-ne-sais-quoi) (1977: 121). 30

Jacoubet 1935: 59; Janke´le´vitch 1980: i. 42; Jam 1995: 519. Gracia´n 1944: 18 (ch. 13). On Gracia´n and despejo, see Hafter 1966: 130–6; Sect. 4.2.1, below. 32 Bouhours 1962: 145; Gracia´n 1728: 155–9; Jacoubet 1935. On the French reception of Gracia´n, see Delft 1976. 33 Feijo´o 1989; on this text, see Ko¨hler 1955–6; Porqueras Mayo 1965; Adriaensens 1970. 34 Guellouz is unsure whether the form spread from France to Spain or vice versa (1971: 3). 31

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Apelles’s careless grace, celebrated first by Pliny and then by Dolce, appears once more here in a literary topos. Where Pliny offers a Latin translation of the Greek term, and Dolce moves the Latin term into Italian, Ogier translates the Italian non so che into French. The visible act of translation is itself part of the topos: the allusion to a term that is foreign to a particular language emphasizes the position of its referent, the charmingly elusive je-ne-sais-quoi of Apelles, outside all language. The poet Voiture goes one step further, in a letter dated 1642, by simply letting the foreign word stand, in its very strangeness, as though translation were in this case an impossible task. Voiture names the imperceptible movements of grace by evoking not the Italian term but, rather, ‘ce que les Espagnols appellent el no se´ que´’ (what the Spanish call el no se´ que´).35 Germanic languages do the same thing with the French noun later in the century. Non sapio quid, by then, has spread throughout Europe. 1.1.3. Sixteenth-Century French Usage The je-ne-sais-quoi in sixteenth-century French has, like its Latin ancestor and Romance cognates, multiple lexical forms and semantic operations. Its substantival form, which becomes dominant in the seventeenth century, is just one member of a family of terms and phrases. This family has members spread throughout the different parts of speech, and beyond these fixed forms, it traces a semantic movement through the ocean of speech. The je-ne-sais-quoi is slow to excite the attention of early modern lexicographers. Erich Haase’s survey shows that multilingual vernacular dictionaries do not systematically include an entry for the term until the middle decades of the seventeenth century, when its substantival form is established.36 By then lexicographers have long been making use of its non-substantival forms. The phrases nescio quis and nescio quid appear with their vernacular equivalents in French–Latin dictionaries of the sixteenth century.37 Henri Estienne’s Dictionnaire franc¸ois-latin (1539), the first and most 35

Voiture 1650: 398 (letter cxxvii). Haase 1956: 50–1. I have located earlier entries for the non so che in bilingual dictionaries (Florio 1611: ‘non’; Canal 1626: ‘non’). These support the hypothesis that the Italian term becomes current earlier than its Romance cognates. 37 Haase 1956: 50. 36

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significant of these dictionaries, offers an extended inventory of the French language at this stage of its development.38 Estienne gives two entries for nescio quid: ‘Je ne scay quoy, Nescio quid’; ‘Tu has je ne scay quoy, Habes nescio quid’ (you have I know not what) (1549: ‘scavoir’). No semantic context for the term is sketched here. Estienne clearly does not conceive of it as a substantival phrase, since he precedes it with no determining article. Nescio quid and je ne scay quoy seem rather to function here as indefinite pronouns akin to the Latin aliquid, the French quelque chose, or the English ‘something’. The substantival form of the je-ne-sais-quoi may appear to us, looking back at this period with hindsight, to be just one step away. But it is a step that Estienne does not take, and in this respect, he is typical of sixteenth-century language users. The phrase je-nesais-quoi is simply one of the many that combine the negative first-person singular form of savoir with indefinite pronouns and adjectives: the others are je-ne-sais-qui, je-ne-sais-ou`, je-ne-saisquand, and je-ne-sais-comment. Commonly used but apparently banal, this family of phrases is noted by Estienne without further comment. French speakers continue to use each member today pretty much as they did in the sixteenth century.39 To observe the family of the je-ne-sais-quoi in use, we need to look to samples of textual practice. Lexical sampling of this kind remains an inexact science. It has always involved consulting secondary literature, dictionaries, concordances, and other lexicological sources in order to direct one’s reading. Information technology has made sampling more efficient and representative in recent years by making an ever-increasing number of texts available for advanced word-searching on CD-ROM and the Internet.40 If anything, sampling has become deceptively easy: it still cannot claim to be exhaustive, despite recent progress in information technology, and each occurrence needs to be the object of contextual evaluation. The word history of the je-ne-sais-quoi, I stress once more, can only be narrated provisionally. But some hypotheses are possible. In what follows, I shall draw most of my examples of sixteenth-century writing from Montaigne’s Essais, a text famous for its linguistic resourcefulness. Montaigne is simply used here as a 38

39 Quemada 1967: 46. See Robert 1993: ‘savoir’, b. 4. The sample of texts that Dumonceaux uses to dismiss the significance of the je-ne-sais-quoi as a lexical phenomenon now appears far too restrictive (1975: 424–36). 40

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control on the classifications I offer of the forms and semantic functions of the je-ne-sais-quoi and its family at the end of the sixteenth century. These classifications are not intended to be exhaustive, or indeed exhausting, but instead heuristic: they reveal just how various and supple this family of phrases is during this period, and how isolated the instances of the substantival je-ne-sais-quoi. The first of my two classifications relates to the grammatical forms of the je-ne-sais-quoi and its family; the second, to its semantic operations. Six grammatical forms are listed: (1) the indefinite pronoun je ne sais quoi, (2) the pronominal form je ne sais quoi de plus adjective, (3) the adjectival phrase je ne sais quel, (4) the substantival form un or le je-ne-sais-quoi, (5) the indefinite personal pronoun je ne sais qui, and (6) the adverbial phrase je ne sais comment.41 My semantic classification lists three core operations of this family of phrases: affirmative, neutral, and negative. Other classifications, of course, are possible; mine provides a means of locating and analysing with some precision what the je-ne-sais-quoi makes it possible to say. (1) The indefinite pronoun je ne sais quoi is found in sentences such as the one just quoted from Estienne: ‘Tu has je ne scay quoy.’ It is widely used in the sixteenth century and beyond.42 Gre´visse observes that the subject je can be replaced by another, as in the phrases on ne sait quoi, nous ne savons quoi, and Dieu sait quoi (1980: §.1268 n. 62). One might argue that the pronoun in these phrases is in fact the quoi, and that this is the direct object of the adjectival phrase je ne sais. I think it more helpful to follow Gre´visse in grouping je ne sais quoi and the others together with n’importe quoi, quelque chose, and similar phrases under the category of ‘indefinite’ pronouns (1980: §.1266–8). I do not want to suggest, however, that the writers of all sentences including the four words je ne sais quoi understand them as forming a coherent and recognizable set phrase. For these sentences offer a spectrum of differing uses. At one end of the spectrum, the four words do appear contracted into one, as it were, in the form of a pronominal set phrase. This phrase may even be so coherent as to assume the operations of a noun. Gre´visse (1980: §.1299) says about quelque chose that it 41 This grammatical classification is extrapolated from the brief remarks that Gre´visse devotes to the family of the je-ne-sais-quoi (1980: §§.958, 1268, 2254). 42 For examples, see Wartburg 1960–3; Haase 1956: 52–3.

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has the function of a noun when preceded by an article or determiner (‘un quelque chose’, ‘ce quelque chose’). The same is true of the pronominal je ne sais quoi in the sixteenth century. At the other end of the spectrum, the four words ‘je ne sais quoi’ are better understood as a string of syntax than as a fixed form. Syntactic strings, or what Marian Hobson calls ‘micrologies’, are phrases that can be stretched until they lose the ‘lexical membrane’ separating them from the ocean of surrounding speech (1998: 3). Syntactic strings of the je-ne-sais-quoi are most easily located by word-searching when they resemble occurrences of the indefinite pronominal phrase. They perform the same semantic operations as the rest of the family. One could, for example, rephrase Estienne’s entry, ‘tu has je ne scay quoy’ (you have I know not what), in the syntactic string ‘je ne sais ce que tu as’ (I know not what you have) without substantially altering the sense. I retain syntactic strings within my classification for that reason; indeed, their existence is crucial to my argument that writers look beyond set phrases and other habits of speech when they attempt to put the unsettling experience of a certain something into words. The pronominal je-ne-sais-quoi occurs just once in the Essais, when Montaigne remembers from his childhood how ‘une honneste et tresbelle dame [ . . . ] avoit je ne sc¸ay quoy plus en sa parure qu’il n’est permis par les loix de nostre vefvage’ (a good and very beautiful lady [ . . . ] dressed with I know not what more adornment than is permitted by our laws of widowhood) (ii. 35, 745a; F 683). This grammatically idiosyncratic phrase—one would expect ‘je ne sc¸ay quoy de plus’—is closely related to the pronominal form with adjective je ne sais quoi de, which Montaigne uses with much greater frequency, as if he were unwilling simply to assert the presence of an indefinite something without attempting to describe its attributes. The pronominal je-ne-sais-quoi performs, in general, one of three semantic operations. So do the term’s other forms, but it will be sufficient to illustrate the fact in respect of the pronominal form alone. In its affirmative operation, the phrase refers to something that is experienced but cannot be explained. Du Bellay exemplifies this operation in his poetic manifesto, La Deffence et illustration de la langue francoyse (1549), when he asserts: ‘chacune Langue a je ne scay quoy propre seulement a` elle’ (each language has I know not

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what that is peculiar to it alone) (1966: 36). The negative syntax of the phrase serves an affirmative end here: to name a quality of the language, a certain something, that is experienced as immediately present while remaining forever alien to explanation, something really inexplicable and inexplicably real. One might say—to risk a neologism built upon its Latin ancestor—that the je-ne-sais-quoi, in its affirmative operation, articulates a first-person experience of ‘nescioquiddity’.43 In its negative operation, the je-ne-sais-quoi refers not to an inexplicable something, but to a non-entity, a mere word empty of sense and reference. La Boe´tie offers one example of this operation in his political treatise De la servitude volontaire (1574–7), the text around which Montaigne intended to build his first book of Essais. La Boe´tie there criticizes heads of state for being ‘flatte´ par je ne scay quoy, qu’on appelle la grandeur’ (flattered by I know not what which people call ‘greatness’).44 He reduces grandeur to a flatus vocis, an airy nothing given a name, by placing it in apposition here with the pronominal je-ne-sais-quoi. In its neutral operation, the phrase refers to a trivially indefinite object. Ronsard offers one example in his bird poem, ‘Le Gay’ (1556): Va t’en donc tes petis couver, Ou bien afin de leur trouver Je ne sc¸ay quoy pour leur beche´e.45 (Off you go, then, to hatch out your little ones, or to find them I know not what for their beaks.)

The pronominal je-ne-sais-quoi designates here a purely neutral aliquid, a ‘something-or-other’. Often, the neutral operation has a negative or affirmative tendency, and the something-or-other in question starts to look more like a mere airy nothing or a certain irresistible something.46 This should come as no surprise, since 43 This new critical term will be used in the present study to refer to this core semantic operation of the je-ne-sais-quoi as it is detected in a field of kindred terms and phrases. 44 La Boe´tie 1991: i. 76 ; for a second example, see Ronsard 1914–75: xiv. 119 (‘Prosopope´e de Beaumont’). 45 Ronsard 1914–75: vii. 293. 46 For an aliquid with a negative tendency, see Montaigne: iii. 8, 942b; for one with a positive tendency, see i. 31, 208a.

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these operations are not watertight categories so much as parts of a semantic spectrum. (2) The pronominal form je ne sais quoi de allows the indefinite pronoun to be qualified by an adjective. When dedicating to Madame de Grammont twenty-nine sonnets by La Boe´tie, Montaigne compares them to his friend’s already published poems, commenting: ‘certes ceux-cy ont je ne sc¸ay quoy de plus vif et de plus bouillant, comme il les fit en sa plus verte jeunesse, et eschauffe´ d’une belle et noble ardeur que je vous diray, Madame, un jour a` l’oreille’ (certainly these have about them I know not what that is livelier and more ebullient, written as they were in his greenest youth, when he was inflamed by a fine and noble ardour whose details, Madame, I will one of these days whisper in your ear) (i. 29, 196a; F 176). This is one of five occurrences of this complex form in the Essais. By harnessing to the pronominal form je ne sais quoi de its accompanying adjectives, vif and bouillant, Montaigne is able to describe the inexplicable and vital force that sets La Boe´tie’s sonnets apart from his other poems. He then wraps the mystery of this force in a gallant secret by promising to reveal its source to Madame de Grammont alone, some day in the future, in an intimate aside. (3) The adjective je ne sais quel forms a unit of sense with the noun that it describes. It is by far the most frequent form in the Essais, occurring twenty-six times, and the most semantically active too. The key synonym for the affirmative operation of the adjective in the Essais is ‘natural’ (meaning ‘part of the realm of being’). Montaigne juxtaposes the two adjectives within the same unit of sense in the chapter ‘De la gloire’, when he says mistrustfully of the desire for renown: ‘il y a je ne sc¸ay quelle douceur naturelle a` se sentir louer’ (there is I know not what natural sweetness in hearing oneself praised) (ii. 26, 625b; F 575). The two adjectives combine to describe a certain inexplicable sweetness that accompanies the receipt of praise.47 The key synonym for the negative adjective je ne sais quel is ‘imaginary’ (meaning ‘mere mind-stuff’). The adjectival form serves here to unsettle the sedimented noun to which it is attached. The chapter ‘De l’expe´rience’ contains a key example of this operation. Montaigne describes the hopeful beginning of the mind’s doomed search for truth in the following manner: ‘il [l’esprit] pense remarquer de loing je ne sc¸ay quelle apparence de 47

For a second example, see Montaigne: ii. 17, 632–3a.

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clarte´ et verite´ imaginaire’ (it [the mind] thinks it notices from a distance I know not what glimmer of imaginary light and truth) (iii. 13, 1068b; F 995). The extended noun phrase unmasks the mind’s impression of clarity as a mere illusion produced by the erring imagination. In two other instances, Montaigne even uses the adjective je ne sais quel to unsettle naturel, its affirmative synonym.48 The adjective uncovers an active fault-line of nescience within nouns that appeared to be stable semantic elements. (4) The substantival form, which I shall distinguish from the rest of the family as ‘the je-ne-sais-quoi (n.)’, occurs in a handful of isolated cases during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. It is an occasional grammatical mutation of the forms discussed above, particularly the pronominal je-ne-sais-quoi, rather than an autonomous form.49 The Essais, whose three volumes run to well over a thousand pages in most modern editions, contain no occurrence of the je-ne-sais-quoi (n.); this should come as no surprise to word historians. Those few writers who do make use of the substantival form place it in apposition with settled synonyms. This is how Larivey and Louveau, who published their French translation of Gianfrancesco Straparola’s collection of traditional Italian tales Piacevoli notti (1550–3) under the title Face´tieuses nuits (1560), use the term in the bawdy riddle told by Ariane: Je suis difforme, rond, grand, contrefaict et gros, Mais, bien que je sois tel, si ay-je quelque grace, Quelque je ne sc¸ay quoy, qui fait qu’en toute place La dame me che´rit et flatte a` tous propos.50 (I am misshapen, big, deformed, and fat; and yet, despite my appearance, I possess some grace or other, some je-ne-sais-quoi which means that, wherever I may be, the ladies treasure and flatter me on every score.)

Ariane uses the term here to fuel a suggestive quibble: her companions exclaim of this je-ne-sais-quoi that they very well know what it is! Du Bellay’s sonnet sequence Les Regrets (1558) is written, of course, in an altogether higher register. Nevertheless, like Straparola’s French translators, Du Bellay repeats the semantic connection between ‘grace’ and the je-ne-sais-quoi established by Italian uses of 48 50

49 Montaigne: i. 57, 326a; ii. 12, 455a. Dumonceaux 1975: 429. Larivey and Louveau 1857: ii. 241 (x. 2); quoted in Huguet 1965: ‘savoir’.

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the non so che.51 Du Bellay tells Marguerite de France that she distinguishes herself not by her royalty but by her intrinsic grace: Ce qui vous fait ainsi admirer d’un chacun, C’est ce qui est tout vostre, et qu’avec vous commun N’ont tous ceulx-la qui ont couronnes sur leurs testes: Ceste grace, et doulceur, et ce je ne sc¸ay quoy, Que quand vous ne seriez fille, ni sœur de Roy, Si vous jugeroit-on estre ce que vous estes.52 (What makes you admired by all is something all your own and that many of those who wear crowns do not share with you: that grace, sweetness, and je-ne-sais-quoi which mean that, even if you were neither daughter nor sister to a King, people would nevertheless recognize you to be exactly what you are.)

The stanza ends in an imagined and reassuring scene in which Marguerite, like Odysseus returning home after so many years, retains a sign by which she can be recognized for what she is. In Odysseus’s case, the recognition sign is a scar, whereas in Du Bellay’s story about Marguerite, it is a sequence of impalpable qualities culminating in the je-ne-sais-quoi (n.).53 The term here designates the particularity of an individual person, as it does in relation to an individual language in the Deffence, where Du Bellay insists that ‘chacune Langue a je ne scay quoy propre seulement a` elle’.54 Sedimented terms earlier in the sequence like grace and doulceur not only gloss the substantival term in advance; they seem, by their very presence, to lend it lexical weight at the end of the line. This happens in a mere handful of cases, however, and the noun remains an accidental form: Du Bellay and Larivey offer what are rare and isolated occurrences.55 (5–6) My classification would not be complete without a brief mention of two related forms, the indefinite personal pronoun je ne sais qui and the adverbial phrase je ne sais comment. The former is found once in the Essais; the latter, on seven occasions. Je ne sais qui, which can be used substantivally, performs neutral and negative semantic operations but never affirmative ones. Estienne, like 51

See Sect. 1.1.2, above; Ko¨hler 1953–4: 23. Du Bellay 1908–85: i. 191–2 (sonnet 175). On Odysseus’s scar and scenes of recognition, see Cave 1988: 10–24. 54 On the notion of individual proprium, or ‘le propre de l’individu’, see Demonet 1999. 55 For a third example see Boaistuau 1981: 251, discussed in Sect. 3.2.1, below. 52 53

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Montaigne, uses the term neutrally to refer to three individuals: ‘trois je ne scay qui, Tres aliqui’.56 Other dictionaries attest negative, indeed misogynistic, uses.57 The adverbial phrase je ne sais comment adds nescioquiddity to the verb that it qualifies. In ‘Des coches’ (iii. 6), Montaigne uses the phrase in this manner to describe the experience of seasickness.58 Along with je ne sais comment and je ne sais qui, one would need to include the phrase je ne sais ou` and other members of the species if one were looking to produce an exhaustive taxonomy in the style of the botanists. That is not my aim; but, as a parting shot, I offer a final example from the ‘Isle des ferrements’ episode in Rabelais’s Cinquiesme livre (1564). After paying a short visit to an island on which ‘tools’ and other iron fitments grow, Pantagruel, Panurge, and their companions make to leave. The narrator, in describing what they then saw, exhausts the bawdy possibilities of the neutral je-ne-sais-quoi and its family. Since he also indicates the full lexical richness of the species, he should have the last word on the subject: Nous retournans a` nos navires, je vis derrie`re je ne scay quel buisson je ne scay quelles gens, faisans je ne scay quoy, et je ne scay comment, aguisans je ne scay quels ferremens, qu’ils avoient je ne scay ou`, et ne scay en quelle maniere.59 (As we returned to our ships, I spied behind I know not what bush, I know not what people doing I know not what together, and I know not how either, for they were sharpening I know not what tools, which they had I know not where, and in I know not what manner.)

1.1.4. The Noun in Seventeenth-Century France and England The je-ne-sais-quoi (n.), as it slowly distinguishes itself from the rest of its extended family, rises to prominence as a cultural keyword in the first half of the seventeenth century. Precisely when and how this happens is difficult to determine. The development is a complex and uneven one, requiring the participation of individuals and communities within different discursive regions. These are the subject of the following three chapters. What is clear for now is that, by the 56 57 58 59

Estienne 1549: ‘scavoir’; Montaigne: i. 20, 87a. Furetie`re 1690: ‘sc¸avoir’; Richelet 1681: ‘je’; Le Roux 1718: ‘savoir’. Montaigne: iii. 6, 901b; I quote and discuss this passage in Sect. 5.1.1, below. Rabelais 1994: 747 (bk. 5, ch. 9).

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second half of the century, the rise of the noun is complete in France and England alike. This rise starts when the substantival phrase ceases merely to be a rare and isolated mutation of other grammatical forms, and starts to become current in its own right. When does this happen? Early modern lexicographers do not register the noun until the end of the seventeenth century, as we shall see, but they are notoriously slow in reflecting changes of usage.60 It seems likely that the je-nesais-quoi (n.) first starts to emerge in current usage a considerable time before then—most probably in the period 1590–1630. Modern authorities on the French language, from Brunot onwards, attest the substantival phrase in vernacular prose of the 1620s.61 We know that, by the mid-1630s, the currency of the je-ne-saisquoi (n.) was sufficient for it to rise to the level of a topic. On 12 March 1635, the poet Jean-Ogier de Gombauld delivered to fellow members of the newly founded Acade´mie Franc¸aise the sixth in a series of formal speeches on matters philosophical, literary, and linguistic. Pellisson, the seventeenth-century historian of the Acade´mie Franc¸aise, records Gombauld’s chosen title as ‘Sur le je ne sc¸ai quoi’.62 What can Gombauld’s speech teach us about the history of the word? The answer is disappointingly little, since only its title survives, preserved by Pellisson. The fact that the first treatment of the je-ne-sais-quoi, that most elusive of topics, has itself eluded the grasp of later readers has become, since Bouhours, a topos in its own right.63 The loss of Gombauld’s speech allows Bouhours to claim that his use of the topic is new and unburdened by its history. For us, it should perhaps stand as an emblem of the gaps and discontinuities in the history of the word that cannot be filled. Gombauld’s title alone indicates that a discourse on the je-ne-saisquoi was conceivable among Parisian literati of the mid-1630s, and that the word was capable at least of being presented as an organizing topic. To that degree, Gombauld’s speech offers some evidence of the word’s rise to prominence. Gombauld’s use of the pronominal form twice in a short poem on the theme of uncertainty may provide

60

Starobinski 1999b: 99; Matore´ 1988: 15. Brunot 1966– : iii. 66–7; Tre´sor de la langue franc¸aise 1971–94: ‘je-ne-saisquoi’; Robert 1985: ‘je-ne-sais-quoi’. 62 Pellisson 1671: 69. 63 Bouhours 1962: 150; see also Morel 1910: 68; Haase 1956: 57. 61

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one clue to his treatment of the topic.64 But, since the text itself is missing, all such clues are and must remain no more than contextual speculation. Gombauld’s speech marks a gap in the history of the je-ne-sais-quoi, the space of a discontinuity. Between Gombauld’s speech and Bouhours’s treatment of the topic in the early 1670s, more signs appear that the current je-nesais-quoi has assumed the cultural prominence of a vogue-word. One such sign is that, from the middle of the seventeenth century onwards, the je-ne-sais-quoi is ready for export. It moves into the countries of northern continental Europe and to England, where wits sport it as a linguistic fashion item. Germanic languages tend to incorporate the French je-ne-sais-quoi (n.) just as it is, or tel quel, as the English sometimes say. This marks a change in the European spread of non sapio quid. For where the term was translated successively from language to language on its journey through Italy, Spain, and France, it appears in German, Flemish, and English as quintessentially French.65 From then on, as Erich Haase shows in his survey of early modern French–German and French–English dictionaries (1956: 51–2), the native forms and the imported term jostle for supremacy. The English lexicographer Thomas Blount includes the je-ne-sais-quoi in his Glossographia (1656), a dictionary of foreign words used in English. This is the earliest known appearance of the term in English; Cotgrave’s French–English dictionary (1611), for example, does not list the term.66 Blount uses the term idiosyncratically: Je-ne-scay-quoi, four French words, contracted as it were into one, and signifies I know not what, we use to say they are troubled with the Je-nescay-quoy, that faign themselves sick out of niceness but know not where their own grief lies, or what ayls them.67

Blount suggests that the term refers to an inexplicable grief or melancholic affliction whose existence he seems to doubt. His remark, that the je-ne-sais-quoi is a string of words ‘contracted as it were into one’, indicates the currency of the French noun in the 64

See Gombauld 1667: 139 (bk. 3, no. 30). For a similar pattern in the word history of ‘curiosity’, see Kenny 1998: 41–3. 66 Haase lists other English and German bilingual dictionaries of the same period from which the je-ne-sais-quoi is absent (1956: 50–1). 67 Blount 1656: ‘je-ne-scay-quoy’; quoted in OED: ‘je ne sais quoi’. Blount uses ‘niceness’ here in its sense of ‘excessive sensitivity’. 65

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middle of the century.68 Other dictionaries offer similar evidence. Boyer’s French–English Dictionnaire royal (1702) gives ‘Le je ne sc¸ai quoi, S. (Certaine chose qu’on ne peut exprimer) the French je ne sc¸ai quoy, or I know not what, an unexpressible quality’.69 Like Boyer, German and Flemish lexicographers stress the Gallic origins of the French je-ne-sais-quoi while offering native equivalents: German translations include ‘etwas weiß nicht was’ (some I know not what), ‘eine Eigenschaft, die man nicht zu nennen weiß’ (a quality that cannot be named), and ‘ein gewisses Etwas’ (a certain something); Richelet’s 1739 French–Flemish dictionary offers ‘het ick weet niet wat’ (the I know not what).70 One reason why the jene-sais-quoi retains its French air in Germanic languages may be that the native equivalents sounded as cumbersome to seventeenthcentury ears as they do today. It may also be that the word’s foreign provenance imitates the position of its referent outside all systems of determination. What is clear in any case is that, from the middle of the seventeenth century, the je-ne-sais-quoi (n.) appears in Germanic languages as a French export. The term enjoys particular success in the polite literature of Restoration England. It constitutes one example of the vogue for French elegance that Charles II and his courtiers, who spent the period of the Commonwealth in France, brought back with them to England in 1660.71 John Dryden’s play Marriage A-la-Mode (1673) reflects this vogue in its very title. While the je-ne-sais-quoi does not appear in Dryden’s play, it is put on display by Roger Boyle in his tragedy Tryphon, which was first performed in December 1668 and published the following year.72 The date of Tryphon is significant, for it confirms that Bouhours in 1671 is making use of a word already in vogue. The French je-ne-sais-quoi appears in Boyle’s Prologue when the protagonists, Nokes and Angell, attempt to define another fashionable epithet, ‘wit’: Angell. What’s that? Nokes. A wit is in one word—I know not what.

68

69 See also Miege 1679: ‘savoir’. Boyer 1702: ‘quoy’. Haase 1956: 51–2; Ko¨hler 1953–4: 21; Richelet 1739: ‘quoy’. 71 On the pro-French, Catholic sympathies of Charles II, see Holmes 1993: 93–105. 72 See Roger Boyle 1994. 70

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43

Angell. Of that kind Title give your Poet Joy. A wit is then in French, A je ne scay quoi. A modish Name. Nokes. Yes, Sir, that Name to gain, How many of our Writers crack their brain?73

Boyle’s two elegant wits display the je-ne-sais-quoi as a linguistic fashion item in Restoration London. So does Thomas Shadwell in his satire on members of the Royal Society, The Virtuoso (1676), in which the coquettish Lady Gimcrack seduces a young man with the modish confession: ‘the sight of you did stir in me a strange Je ne sc¸ai quoi towards you’.74 In England, the term still retains a certain currency in the eighteenth century. In his collection of polite essays on philosophical themes, Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times (1713), Shaftesbury, with all the irony that a true friend of natural moral truth can muster, refers to that ‘je ne sais quoi of wit, and all those graces of mind which these virtuoso-lovers delight to celebrate’.75 A beau in John Gay’s tragicomic farce The Mohocks (1712) explains his use of the term to his vulgar interlocutor by insisting: ‘Je ne scay quoi is a French phrase much in vogue at the Court end of the Town’ (Gay 1712: 12). Aphra Behn, writing in 1688, complains that we English ‘chop and change our Language, as we do our Cloths, at the Pleasure of every French Tailor’.76 Some fifty years after the French je-ne-sais-quoi was first exported to England as ‘a modish Name’, it retains—at least among English beaux—a certain vogue.

1 . 2 . d e fi n i n g m o m e n t s 1.2.1. The Dictionary Makers But what does it mean to say of something that it is, or has, a certain je-ne-sais-quoi? As the noun becomes current, the pressure to answer this question increases, and the je-ne-sais-quoi reaches a

73 74 75 76

Roger Boyle 1672: fo. A2r; on this sense of ‘wit’, see Lewis 1960: 101–4. Shadwell 1676: 42; on the term ‘virtuoso’, see Houghton 1942. Shaftesbury 1999: 63; also 148, 326; on Shaftesbury, see Klein 1994. Behn 1688: ‘The Translator’s Preface’, pages unnumbered.

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‘defining moment’. The process of definition is invariably a complex and conflictual one.77 The word arrives at not one but a series of defining moments towards the end of the century. Core meanings, as a result, cluster around it. It is possible to identify a largely coordinated attempt among lexicographers of the late seventeenth century to define the meaning of the je-ne-sais-quoi. Having reviewed seventeenth-century definitions of the term, I shall draw upon them to sketch my own. The pressure on writers of all kinds to define the je-ne-sais-quoi (n.) begins to tell as soon as the noun gains currency in the language.78 A common reaction is to add a brief descriptive relative clause to the je-ne-sais-quoi spelling out the term’s meaning. Corneille qualifies the pronominal form in the line from Me´de´e (1635), ‘je ne sais quoi qu’on ne peut exprimer’ (I know not what that cannot be explained), as well as in the much-quoted passage from Rodogune (1645), where he refers to ‘ces je ne sais quoi qu’on ne peut expliquer’ (those je-ne-sais-quoi that cannot be explained).79 Voiture, in 1654, describes a collection of gallant letters as having ‘un je ne sc¸ay quoy semblable a` celuy des beautez, que tout le monde sent et que personne ne peut exprimer’ (a je-ne-sais-quoi akin to that possessed by beauties, and which everybody can perceive, but nobody can explain); and in his Dictionnaire des pre´cieuses (1661), Somaize portrays mutual esteem and love in similar terms: ‘c’est un certain mouvement [ . . . ] qui fait que nous y sentons un certain je ne sc¸ay quoy, a` l’aspect de ceux qui le font naistre, qui ne se peut expliquer’ (it is a certain motion that makes us feel towards those that cause it a certain je-ne-sais-quoi that cannot be explained).80 These examples show striking similarities. All use one of two verbs, exprimer and expliquer, to describe the act that the je-ne-sais-quoi frustrates. These two verbs appear to be used much more interchangeably in this period than in modern French: Furetie`re glosses exprimer as ‘expliquer ses pense´es’; Robert attests an archaic sense synonymous 77 For other examples, see Moriarty 1988: ch. 2; Kenny 1998: ch. 4; Cave 1999: 111–120. 78 Haase 1956: 57–8. 79 Corneille 1971–96: i, Me´de´e, 635; ii, Rodogune, 359–62. The latter is quoted in Bouhours 1962: 141; Furetie`re 1701: ‘quoy’; Richelet 1728: ‘quoi’. 80 Voiture 1654: 399 (letter 34); quoted in Magendie 1970: 420; Somaize 1856: i. 124.

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with expliquer.81 The sense in which writers use exprimer of the je-ne-sais-quoi is much closer to our ‘explain’.82 They use the je-nesais-quoi to describe something that the subject perceives as inexplicable: the verb sentir, which recurs here, may refer either to the sense perception itself or the resulting belief. As writers add a descriptive relative clause to the word, an image of the je-ne-saisquoi—though not a full definition—emerges. For definitions, we need to turn to the major works of late seventeenth-century French lexicography. The most famous of these are the monolingual dictionaries of Pierre Richelet (1680), Antoine Furetie`re (1690), the Acade´mie Franc¸aise (1694), and Thomas Corneille (1695). The ‘remarks’ of other major lexicographers in the period such as Vaugelas, Me´nage, and Bouhours, who also contributed to the making of dictionaries, should also be included.83 These works are all aimed at a polite middlebrow readership interested in the language and literature of the vernacular.84 Taken together, they offer a complex picture of the language: the dictionaries of Richelet and the Acade´mie Franc¸aise contain more detailed information about the vogue-words of polite culture, for example, than the purist Furetie`re’s Dictionnaire universel (1690), a richer source of technical terms from the arts and sciences.85 Such differences of emphasis between the dictionaries reflect deep antagonisms and rivalries between their makers, as historians of the lexicographical movement have shown.86 The movement is divided between two opposing tendencies, with one favouring the norm of ‘correct’ usage (le bon usage), and the other, ‘elegant’ usage (le bel usage). Where Me´nage and Furetie`re exhibit the former tendency, Vaugelas, Bouhours, Richelet, and the Acade´mie Franc¸aise dictionary share the latter. Given the antagonisms that exist between the various dictionary makers, we can be confident that they agree only on objects of wide consensus among their readers in late seventeenth-century France. 81 Furetie`re 1690: ‘exprimer’; Robert 1993: ‘exprimer’, 2; for one example, see Montaigne: i. 28, 188a (quoted and discussed in Sect. 5.3.2, below). 82 For an exemplary use of exprimer in this sense, see Du Bosc 1634: 425–6; quoted in Sect. 3.2.1, below. 83 See Vaugelas 1880; Matore´ 1968: 73; Viala 1985: 37. 84 Matore´ 1968: 87; Viala 1985: 148. Learned readers continue to refer to traditional Latin–French dictionaries. 85 Matore´ 1968: 78–9. 86 See Quemada 1967: 205–18; Matore´ 1968: 70–87; Viala 1985: 34–40.

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1.2.2. Uses and Definitions The je-ne-sais-quoi (n.) appears to be one such object. The dictionaries of Richelet, Furetie`re, and the Acade´mie Franc¸aise offer similar enough accounts of the je-ne-sais-quoi to suggest that the term gathers around it a cluster of meanings at this moment in its fortunes. It is important to note, however, that, even within this comparatively stable partnership, a number of gaps and flaws appear. The first places in which to seek information about the je-ne-saisquoi are, obviously enough, the entries devoted to the term in all three dictionaries. The entries include not just definitions but examples of contemporary usage designed to illustrate or supplement those definitions.87 Recent technological developments have made another group of data about a given term accessible, for interactive transcripts of the dictionaries allow one to locate, at the touch of a button, occurrences of one term in entries devoted to others. These two groups of data need to be distinguished, since the first is a set of meanings deliberately presented to the reader, whereas the second contains the lexicographer’s instrumental uses of a term. What they offer, above all, is a means of comparing the uses to which a word is put and the ways in which it is defined. Dictionary entries devoted to the je-ne-sais-quoi offer limited information about its full range of forms and semantic operations. More is to be found when dictionary makers use the phrase instrumentally in order to define some other term. An analysis of these instrumental uses reveals that the je-ne-sais-quoi continues to have the same variety of forms and semantic operations as it did in sixteenth-century French.88 In entries devoted to the je-ne-sais-quoi, however, the substantival form in its affirmative operation tends to obscure the phrase’s other forms and operations. Here are the entries, listed in chronological order. Richelet (1681): je [ . . . ] Je ne sai quoi. Certaine chose. (Elle a un je ne sai quoi qui [la] fait aimer.) 87 The Acade´mie Franc¸aise and Furetie`re create their own examples; Richelet quotes literary sources. 88 For some examples, see Richelet 1681: ‘barboter’, ‘lumineux’; Furetie`re 1690: ‘sc¸avoir’; Acade´mie Franc¸aise 1694: ‘jargonner’, ‘machiner’, ‘sentir’.

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(i [ . . . ] Je ne sai quoi. A certain thing. ‘She has a je-ne-sais-quoi that makes people love her.’) quoi [ . . . ] Le je ne sai quoi. C’est une influ¨ence des astres et une impression secrette de l’ascendant sous lequel nous sommes nez. C’est le panchant et l’instint du cœur pour un objet qui touche. (Il avoit une grace un je ne sai quoi qui surpasse de l’amour les plus doux apas. Voi[ture] poe¨[sie].) (what [ . . . ] The je-ne-sais-quoi: an influence born of the stars, and a secret impression made by the ascendant star under which we were born; the inclination and instinct that the heart feels for a touching object. ‘He had a certain grace, a je-ne-sais-quoi that surpassed love’s sweetest charms’ (Voiture).)

Furetie`re (1690): sc¸avoir [ . . . ] On dit en termes de me´pris, une je ne sc¸ay qui, pour dire, une femme de mauvaise vie; et, un je ne sc¸ay quoy, des choses dont on ne peut pas trouver la vraye expression. (know [ . . . ] People refer with scorn to a woman as ‘an I-know-not-whom’ to mean a woman of loose morals, and we use the expression, ‘a je-ne-saisquoi’, of things for which we cannot find the right word.) quoy [ . . . ] Il est aussi substantif [ . . . ] On dit, le je ne sc¸ay quoy, d’un certain agre´ment qu’on ne sc¸auroit exprimer, dont le Pe`re Bouhours a fait un beau traite´ dans ses Œuvres. (what [ . . . ], also n. We use ‘the je-ne-sais-quoi’ of a certain attractive quality that cannot be explained, and about which Bouhours has left a fine treatise among his works.)

Acade´mie Franc¸aise (1694): quoy [ . . . ] On dit aussi, [ . . . ] il y a dans cette affaire je ne sc¸ay quoy que je n’entends pas. Il y a dans ce discours je ne sc¸ay quoy qui me semble, etc. pour dire, Il y a je ne sc¸ay quelle chose que je n’entends pas, etc. On dit aussi substantivement. Un je ne sc¸ay quoy, pour dire, Certaine chose qu’on ne peut exprimer. Il y a dans la beaute´ un je ne sc¸ay quoy qui picque plus que la beaute´ mesme. (what [ . . . ] We also say [ . . . ] ‘there is in this business I know not what that I cannot understand’, ‘there is I know not what in that speech which seems to me, etc.’, to mean, ‘there is I know not what thing that I cannot understand’. Also used substantively, in ‘a je-ne-sais-quoi’, to signify a certain thing that cannot be explained. There is in beauty a je-ne-sais-quoi that stirs more than beauty itself.)

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Furetie`re (1701 edn., revised by Basnage): quoy [ . . . ] On dit, le je ne sc¸ay quoy, d’un certain agre´ment qu’on ne sc¸auroit bien exprimer, dont le Pe`re Bouhours a fait la matie`re de l’un de ses Entretiens d’Ariste et d’Euge`ne. Il dit que c’est sa nature d’estre incompre´hensible, et inexplicable. Ces instincts, ces panchans, ces sentiments secrets, sont des termes qui n’expriment qu’imparfaitement, ce je ne sc¸ai quoy que le cœur sent. C’est un agre´ment qui anime toutes les actions, et qui entre jusque dans le moindre geste de la personne qui plaıˆt. Au contraire il y a un je ne sc¸ai quoy choquant qui empoisonne quelquefois, et gaˆte tout le merite des personnes. Ce n’est point un caprice, ou un pretexte pour haı¨r; c’est une raison cache´e, et que la nature seule nous suggere. Ce sont de premiers mouvements qui previennent la reflexion, et la liberte´. Id. Ce qu’on entend par le je ne sc¸ai quoy, consiste en de petites choses qui ne s’apperc¸oivent pas aise´ment. Le Ch.[evalier] de M[e´re´]. L’amour comme l’amitie´ a son agre´able je ne sc¸ai quoy. St Ev[remond]. Le je ne sc¸ai quoy de l’amitie´ a plus de lumie`re que celui de l’amour, parce qu’il agit avec plus de calme. Id. Les ames assorties S’attachant l’un a` l’autre, et se laissent picquer, Par un je ne sc¸ai quoy qu’on ne peut expliquer. Corn[eille]. (what [ . . . ] We use ‘the je-ne-sais-quoi’ of a certain attraction that cannot be properly explained. Bouhours made this the subject of one of his Entretiens d’Ariste et d’Euge`ne. He says that it is in its nature to be incomprehensible and inexplicable: ‘ ‘‘instincts’’, ‘‘inclinations’’, and ‘‘secret feelings’’ are all terms that express no more than imperfectly that je-ne-sais-quoi which the heart feels. It is an attractive charm that gives life to every action and every gesture, even the slightest one, of the person able to please in this way. There is also, on the contrary, an offensive je-ne-sais-quoi that poisons and taints all the merits of some people. This is no mere whim, nor an excuse for hating the person concerned; it is a hidden reason that nature alone offers us. Such things are initial movements that forestall all reflection and freedom’ (Bouhours). ‘What we mean by the je-ne-sais-quoi is made up of tiny things that are not easy to perceive’ (Me´re´). ‘Love, like friendship, has its own pleasing je-ne-sais-quoi. The je-ne-sais-quoi of friendship is more enlightened than that of love because it acts more calmly’ (SaintEvremond). ‘Two well-suited souls, when attached to one another, are stirred by a je-ne-sais-quoi that cannot be explained’ (Corneille).)

I have quoted these definitions in full in order to give the broadest sense possible of how the je-ne-sais-quoi comes to be defined at this key moment in its history. The definitions offer different potential meanings and applications, some of them unrelated, others at odds with one another. In so doing they draw upon a rich sequence of literary texts, from Corneille to Me´re´, to which I shall return in the

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course of this study.89 These definitions also reveal, despite their breadth of reference and differences of emphasis, an orchestrated attempt to embed in the language the je-ne-sais-quoi (n.) in its affirmative operation. All three dictionaries set the substantive apart from the phrase’s other forms; all three promote the idea that it designates some quality, relation, or thing that is as elusive to explanation as it is vitally present in human experience. Behind this consensus stands another of the period’s major lexicographers, Bouhours, whose remarks on the language prolong the elegant tradition started by Vaugelas. The dictionaries to which Bouhours contributed, those of Richelet and the Acade´mie Franc¸aise, do no more than silently incorporate passages from his conversation ‘Le Je Ne Sc¸ay Quoy’ in their entries for the term. Only Bouhours’s rival Furetie`re explicitly refers to him in this context. That Furetie`re should do so confirms the widespread and lasting success of Les Entretiens d’Ariste et d’Euge`ne in establishing the je-ne-sais-quoi as a literary and philosophical topic. Bouhours’s conversation synthesizes earlier uses of the term as well as conditioning its subsequent appearance in the three major monolingual dictionaries. Euge`ne’s suggestion, that Ariste seems to know the je-ne-sais-quoi through its effects, draws this reply from his friend: ‘il est bien plus aise´ de le sentir que de le connoistre [ . . . ] Sa nature est d’estre incomprehensible, et inexplicable’ (it is much easier to perceive than to know [ . . . ] It is in its nature to be incomprehensible and inexplicable) (1962: 140). This general definition, quoted in the 1701 Furetie`re dictionary, affirms, as earlier descriptions of the term do, the irreducible nescioquiddity of the jene-sais-quoi (n.). Ariste insists that it exists not despite, but by virtue of, being inexplicable: it is ‘une chose, qui ne subsiste que parce qu’on ne peut dire ce que c’est’ (something that subsists only because no one can say what it is) (1962: 150). The air of mystery surrounding the je-ne-sais-quoi is a condition of its being rather than a cause for rationalist scorn: the most important things in the world are precisely those that cannot be known! Eugene takes some convincing of this at first, and proposes that the je-ne-sais-quoi may in fact be a form of astral ‘influence’. Ariste provisionally accepts this astrological account, but in then offering a contradictory 89 See below, Sects. 1.3 and 4.3.2 (on Bouhours); 3.1.1 (on Saint-Evremond); 3.2.2 (on Corneille); and 4.3.1 (on Me´re´).

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physiological one, he implicitly disqualifies the validity of both accounts. In this, the exchange between Bouhours’s wits that is repeated in Richelet’s dictionary, the je-ne-sais-quoi appears in the interstices of thwarted explanations. Ariste, in pursuing his case about the insufficiency of available explanations, offers some clues about the concepts and referents to which the je-ne-sais-quoi is most closely connected: mais en disant tout cela et mille autres choses encore, on ne dit rien. Ces impressions, ces penchans, ces instincts, ces sentimens, ces sympathies, ces parentez sont de beaux mots que les sc¸avans ont inventez pour flatter leur ignorance, et pour tromper les autres, apre´s s’estre trompez eux-mesmes.90 (But saying all that, and a thousand other things like it, amounts to saying nothing. These ‘impressions’, ‘inclinations’, ‘instincts’, ‘feelings’, ‘sympathies’, and ‘links’ are all fine words invented by the learned to flatter their ignorance and to deceive others once they have deceived themselves.)

In listing other terms by which the scholars conceal their ignorance, Ariste sketches a ‘semantic field’ around his keyword.91 He and Euge`ne extend this field to include phenomena as diverse as hope, faith, and fevers (1962: 147–9). But the closest and most important semantic neighbours of the je-ne-sais-quoi to emerge in their discussion are the pair ‘sympathy’ and ‘antipathy’. This pair designates a powerful relation between people or things by virtue of which they are affected by the same influence, one which draws them together in the case of ‘sympathy’, and which mutually repulses them in the case of ‘antipathy’. Ariste and Euge`ne use this pair to classify and make sense of the different experiences which the je-ne-sais-quoi serves to articulate (1962: 141, 145–6). At the same time, they take pains to distinguish the je-ne-sais-quoi from neighbouring terms and to argue for its pre-eminence within the semantic field. The je-ne-sais-quoi adds two fundamental features to the concepts of ‘sympathy’ and ‘antipathy’: one is its inbuilt subjective perspective; the other is its pithy assertion that the subject’s experience cannot be explained. Ariste clinches the point when he declares of the je-nesais-quoi: ‘c’est le fondement de ce qu’on appelle sympathie ou antipathie’ (it is the foundation of what people call ‘sympathy’ 90

Bouhours 1962: 140–1. Kittay and Lehrer define a semantic field as ‘a set of lexemes which cover a certain conceptual domain and which bear certain specifiable semantic relations to one other’ (1981: 32). 91

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and ‘antipathy’) (1962: 146). Bouhours, through Ariste, establishes the je-ne-sais-quoi as a keyword for powerful human relations. Relations of sympathy and antipathy presuppose the presence of three things: the two parties mutually affected by the relation, and the relation itself, that subtle tertium quid which links their fortunes. The je-ne-sais-quoi, thanks to its constituent elements and to the different grammatical forms that the phrase can take, may designate each of these three things. When Ariste talks of ‘ces inclinations secrettes qui nous font sentir pour une personne je ne sc¸ay quoy’ (those secret inclinations that make us feel for a particular person I know not what) (1962: 140), he locates the je-ne-saisquoi in the speaker, the je, and the very syntax of his pronominal phrase makes this possible. The phrase of Voiture quoted by Richelet, ‘il avoit [ . . . ] un je ne sai quoi qui surpasse de l’amour les plus doux apas’ (he had [ . . . ] a je-ne-sais-quoi that surpassed love’s sweetest charms), locates the je-ne-sais-quoi, not in the subject, but in the beloved other as an inexplicable property; at a grammatical level, Voiture does this by giving the substantival form the indefinite article un and making it the object of the verb avoir. The emphasis is transferred to the alien quality that the subject cannot explain. Where Ariste emphasizes the perspective of the je, in other words, Voiture underlines the importance of the quoi. This is not to say that Voiture entirely dispenses with a first-person perspective, since its trace remains built into his chosen noun, and one could say the same thing about the residual presence of the alien quality in Ariste’s phrase. In both cases, the je-ne-sais-quoi is the sign of a relation between two parties. The major thrust of Bouhours’s text indeed is to make the term refer to that very relation, and this is achieved by giving the substantival form its definite article and making it the subject of sentences: ‘le je ne sc¸ay quoi fait son effet’ (the je-ne-sais-quoi has its effect) (1962: 143). The term refers here not to the two parties affected, but to the subtle link that operates between them, the inexplicable force of nescioquiddity itself. Bouhours does not in fact use hyphens to connect the four constituent parts of the phrase into one noun substantive; this seems to be a later development; but it is one that merely reflects at a typographical level his view of the je-ne-sais-quoi as a vital relation. Bouhours’s view is embedded in the dictionaries of Richelet and the Acade´mie Franc¸aise, and this means that, in seventeenthcentury dictionaries at least, the je-ne-sais-quoi appears to attract a

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fairly stable cluster of meanings. Furetie`re contributes to this too, but his case is slightly different. By quoting his rival rather than silently incorporating his remarks, Furetie`re presents Bouhours as one authority on the je-ne-sais-quoi to which, in Basnage’s 1701 revisions, others are added. The revised entry gives a complex image of the je-ne-sais-quoi by evoking two objections to Bouhours’s definition of the topic. The first appears in the quotation from Me´re´, who, by defining the je-ne-sais-quoi as a thing merely difficult to perceive, casts doubt on its inexplicability. Is the je-ne-sais-quoi in fact no more than a super-subtle phenomenon well known to the happy few? The long quotation from Bouhours rejects a second objection to the je-ne-sais-quoi and, in so doing, inevitably evokes it: ‘ce n’est point un caprice [ . . . ] C’est une raison cache´e, et que la nature seule nous sugge`re’ (this is no mere whim [ . . . ] It is a hidden reason that nature alone offers us). Is the je-ne-sais-quoi in fact no more than a mind-forged artifice masquerading as a property of nature? Furetie`re’s 1701 entry reveals problems within, and objections to, the stable set of definitions given to the je-ne-sais-quoi in dictionaries and lexicographical works of the period. The work of definition is incomplete. 1.2.3. Coming to Terms It seems indeed, given the nature of the topic, that the work of definition must always remain incomplete. All that the present study can offer, certainly, is work in progress, a new definition of the je-ne-sais-quoi whose purpose is not to achieve a state of completion, but to aid an unfolding process of understanding and reflection. The attempt here is to synthesize earlier definitions while opening up new areas for exploration. The model is Max Weber’s ‘ideal type’, a heuristic device designed to locate and synthesize a series of specific historical instances. Ideal types became rather unfashionable for a time, since they were felt to reduce complex particulars to simplistic classifications. But, in recent years, intellectual historians like Ian Maclean have revived the ideal type as a cautious and rigorous means of noting patterns and tendencies among particular historical phenomena. The ideal type, when used in this way, offers a measure of prediction and synthesis: it predicts the character of instances and establishes patterns of similarity among them in relation to a core meaning. But it remains

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resolutely provisional and non-reductive, since by marking the differences between the proposed core meaning and any historical instance, one allows the latter’s particularity to appear.92 The ideal type remains ever open to change and development from an encounter with some new surprising je-ne-sais-quoi. What follows is a semantic ‘ideal type’ written in the style of a dictionary definition. The je-ne-sais-quoi: a certain something with powerful effects that cannot be explained. Encountered in experience by a subject (je) otherwise capable of knowledge, this something frustrates all positive attempts to explain or fully know what it is, and forces the subject to confess his or her nescience. As it brings available systems of explanation to a crisis, the je-ne-sais-quoi yields descriptions of the situations in which it operates and the effects it produces in experience. It designates a force of sympathy or antipathy in individual human relations, something that passes between two people, a secret link; this force may also define the subject’s relation to a place, a thing, a creature, a work of art, and so on. Its effects vary according to the intensity with which it operates. In its milder form, the je-ne-sais-quoi is a telling detail on the margins of perception by means of which the subject is able to recognize the other person, place, etc., for what it is. This recognition draws the two parties into sympathy or antipathy, but what it also does is confirm their identities: the two parties remain distinctly themselves within a living relation. In its most intense form, the je-ne-sais-quoi falls with the imperceptible stealth and violent effects of a disaster. This draws the subject and other into a process of fusion which alters both beyond recognition: the subject of the je-ne-sais-quoi finds him or herself not only in a state of unknowing, but unable even to say ‘I’.

The je-ne-sais-quoi is defined initially here as an indubitable aliquid of experience. But this definition is insufficient, for one need only evoke synonyms for this aliquid—such as ‘phenomenon’, or ‘something’—to see that none asserts its nescioquiddity. This one can evoke by adding ‘a certain’ to such terms in order to determine their meaning as radically indeterminate. The fact is that any semantic definition must come to terms both with the inexplicable quality of the thing described and the manner of its fall into experience. No word does this better than the je-ne-sais-quoi. My ideal type uses three key terms that need to be defined at this stage: ‘experience’, ‘explanation’, and ‘disaster’. First, it spells out 92

See Weber 1949; Maclean 1998b.

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what remains largely implicit in seventeenth-century definitions: that the je-ne-sais-quoi is the stuff of experience. I use ‘experience’ in a loosely phenomenological sense to mean a subject’s perception of particular, concrete phenomena in the lived world. ‘Experience’ is to be distinguished here from ‘experiment’, a preconceived action that one performs in order to discover something about the world or about one’s faculties. The French word expe´rience covers both ‘experience’ and ‘experiment’ in English.93 Experience may be common to many or particular to one individual, and occur uniquely or repeatedly.94 The je-ne-sais-quoi emphasizes in its very constitution the particular experience, whether unique or repeated, of an ‘I’. Second, the ideal type emphasizes the importance of explanation, and its failure, to the je-ne-sais-quoi. ‘Explanation’ is used here to translate the sense of the verb savoir implicit in the je-ne-sais-quoi. Savoir in the early modern period refers to knowledge of the causal scientific kind (as opposed to connaıˆtre). The standard tag in the Aristotelian tradition of the schools is ‘scire est rem per causas cognoscere’; one speaker at the mid-seventeenth-century Bureau d’Adresse offers a typical French translation: ‘sc¸avoir est connoistre la cause par laquelle la chose est, [ . . . ] en prenant le mot de cause pour principe’ (to ‘know’ something in the scientific sense is to understand the cause whereby the thing is [ . . . ] taking the word ‘cause’ to mean ‘principle’).95 To know something is to explain what causes it, how, and why or to what end. Certain knowledge produces necessary causal explanations and sufficient definitions, in other words, those that are fully convertible with the thing being defined.96 Corneille is one of the many writers to make the semantic connection between knowledge and explanation, savoir and expliquer, when he talks of ‘ces je ne sais quoi qu’on ne peut expliquer’. The je-ne-sais-quoi cannot be explained, but it can be known experientially through its situation and effects. Verbs such as connaıˆtre and sentir describe this contingent and acausal form of 93 See Furetie`re 1690: ‘expe´rience’; Acade´mie Franc¸aise 1694: ‘expe´rience’; Montaigne: ii. 6, 372a (for expe´rience in the sense of ‘experience’); ii. 37, 781a (for expe´rience in the sense of ‘experiment’); Schmitt 1969. 94 Richelet 1681: ‘expe´rience’. Common experience is the basis of explanation in traditional natural philosophy (Sect. 2.1.2, below); repeated experience allows the assimilation and retransmission of imperceptible signs (Sect. 4.2.1, below). 95 Maclean 2002: 146; Renaudot and Renaudot 1638–55: iii. 314 (conf. 84); on the institution of the Bureau d’Adresse, see Sect. 2.2.1, below. 96 CHSP: 513–47 (on explanation); Maclean 1992: 106–7 (on definition).

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knowledge or belief; it yields descriptions rather than explanations of its effects. The ideal type classifies these effects by placing them within a spectrum. At its mildest, the je-ne-sais-quoi operates as a force for recognition of the other by the subject. Recognition depends on an informal and practical process of induction, quite distinct from scientific knowledge, the procedures of which may be acquired but cannot be theorized.97 Cave calls this the ‘cynegetic’ or hunting model of knowledge; it is the means whereby hunters recognize the quarry they seek, or detectives the true culprit, or connoisseurs an original work of art (1988: 251). Recognition occurs when the subject discovers in a sequence of tiny accidental signs or clues the subtle principium individuationis, or quintessential ‘whatness’, that defines the other while remaining inaccessible to formal modes of knowledge. Note that the cynegetic model of recognition is implicitly relational in character: it is in recognizing the other (the tracked beast or the old master) that the subject acquires identity (as a hunter or a connoisseur). What seals the relation between subject and other is the je-ne-sais-quoi. In its most violent effects, the je-ne-sais-quoi acts in the manner of a ‘disaster’, the third of the terms requiring elaboration here. The metaphor is drawn from Richelet’s (deliberately insufficient) astrological definition of the je-ne-sais-quoi as ‘une influ¨ence des astres’ (my italics). The metaphor of the disaster is intended to emphasize the manner in which, at its most intense, the je-ne-sais-quoi falls into the experience of the subject—suddenly, inexplicably, as if from the stars—and the profound alterations it brings to the situation or indeed the very identity of the perceiving subject. This is an aspect of the topic which will gradually unfold in the course of this study.98 What may be noted here is that, at their most violent, the effects produced by the je-ne-sais-quoi are opposite in kind to those found at the other end of the spectrum. The experience is no longer a moment of recognition, but a profound shock to the system; not the confirmation of individual identity, but its ecstatic alteration through a process of becoming other; and not a relation, but a 97

On recognition, see Janke´le´vitch 1980: ii. 117–85; Cave 1988: 242–55. A text in which the notion of disaster has a particularly dark resonance is Blanchot 1980; Blanchot’s attention to the ‘writing’ of disaster rather than its aetiology is of particular relevance to this study. 98

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double capture, as Deleuze puts it, in which two beings are caught in a single evolution.99 My ideal type uses the notions of experience, explanation, and disaster to define the je-ne-sais-quoi as a unit of sense or ‘seme’. This seme appears in sixteenth-century French usage as the affirmative semantic operation, or ‘nescioquiddity’, of the je-ne-sais-quoi in all its lexical forms. It is primarily through the je-ne-sais-quoi (n.) that nescioquiddity passes during the noun’s period of currency. This development does not produce an ideal marriage between seme and lexeme, however; their relation is marked by reciprocal infidelities. The je-ne-sais-quoi (n.) remains capable of receiving semata other than its core one; conversely, the seme passes through non-substantival forms of the je-ne-sais-quoi, and beyond that, through an open-ended field of terms and phrases. This leaves us with two definitions of the je-ne-sais-quoi, one lexical and the other semantic, which do not necessarily coincide with one another. The ideal type seems only to have brought confusion to the word history of the je-ne-sais-quoi. To resolve this confusion once and for all would require abandoning either the word in itself or its meanings. The choices facing word historians are carefully set out and assessed by Neil Kenny in his study of ‘curiosity’ and its early modern word histories (1998: 21–32). One radical post-structuralist solution would be to assume that, as Kenny puts it, ‘concepts are purely linguistic effects of the relational play of differences between signs within the semiological system of language’.100 A purely nominalist word history of the je-ne-sais-quoi would in that case become possible. But such an undertaking would encounter the objection—to my mind a formidable one—that, in communicating with one another, language users clearly rely on a shared understanding that different words may refer to the same meaning or thing. For it is undeniable, as Kenny concedes, ‘that readers make sense of a sentence by reading its 99 Deleuze and Parnet 1996: 8–9. The two opposite effects of the je-ne-sais-quoi are analogous in some respects to the Apolline and the Dionysiac principles whose coupling Nietzsche places at the birth of Greek tragedy (1993). Nietzsche, reading Schopenhauer, sees Apollo as the ‘divine image of the principium individuationis’ and the Dionysiac as its intoxicated fragmentation (1993: 16–17). But, where the Apolline and the Dionysiac remain qualitatively distinct in Nietzsche’s dualistic thought, the opposite effects of the je-ne-sais-quoi result from quantitative differences in the intensity of a single force. 100 Kenny 1998: 25; Foucault 1966: 7–16; 1969: 66.

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words not only against each other [ . . . ] but also against a range of alternatives that the writer has not used’ (1998: 117). Dictionary makers rely on this understanding when they define the je-ne-saisquoi through the use of synonymous terms and strings of syntax. It seems too that early modern readers perceive signs of the je-nesais-quoi in texts from which the word itself is missing.101 Such perceptions would be lost to a purely nominalist history. The second solution to the confusion of words and meanings would be to abandon the lexical strand of the analysis. One would then be entirely free to follow the core meaning of the je-ne-sais-quoi through an open-ended semantic field of other terms and phrases. This choice would raise a formidable methodological problem, for each term and phrase would generate further synonyms requiring examination, and the sample would mushroom uncontrollably. The decision to take one particular word as the point of departure would also come to appear arbitrary. The crucial nominalist insight, that the je-ne-sais-quoi becomes in itself the object of a vogue among language users and a site of conflict between them, would be lost to a purely semantic analysis. Each radical solution of the confusion between words and meanings would end in a Pyrrhic victory. This study retains the confusion between words and meanings as one that is inevitable, indeed valuable, to an analysis of the je-nesais-quoi. This approach makes me what Neil Kenny calls a ‘modern mentalist’, in other words, someone who maintains ‘a potential distinction between words and concepts, arguing that a concept may be tied to a single corresponding term but does not have to be, that the possession of a concept will be standardly signalled by the use of a corresponding term, but not necessarily or sufficiently’ (1998: 24). The mentalist approach commits me to anachronistic critical interventions in the early modern history of the je-ne-saisquoi as I sift through the word’s various occurrences. But that approach, unlike that of the nominalists, reflects a view of the relation between words and things that is shared by most early modern thinkers.102 The choice for word historians is not between anachronism and historical fidelity then, it seems, but between more 101 For one example of this, see the discussion of La Rochefoucauld in Sect. 3.3.1, below. 102 Kenny 1998: 22; see also Maclean 1992: 95–104. Hannah Dawson examines the problem of language in 17th-cent. philosophy, with particular reference to Locke, in her as yet unpublished doctoral thesis (2003).

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or less appropriate kinds of anachronism. All one can do, perhaps, is to be clear about the choice one makes. Mine, in the case of the je-ne-sais-quoi, is to assume a distinction between the word and its meanings in order to study the interactions and rifts between them. I use the lexeme as a tracer of its semantic ideal type as this moves through a field of terms, phrases, and figures.103 The lexeme also functions as a control on the sample taken, since kindred terms and phrases are examined only as and when early modern writers place them in apposition to the je-ne-sais-quoi. I choose the je-ne-saisquoi over its semantic neighbours because it rises to prominence, during the period in question, as a keyword within its field. During this period, the je-ne-sais-quoi becomes a linguistic fashion item and a lexical site of conflict. The word in itself needs to be the focus here rather than the word as a tracer of meaning; but since both are in place, the shift of focus remains possible.104 But in the last analysis, the study gives priority to the semantic over the lexical, to the spirit of the je-ne-sais-quoi over the letter. My choice of approach conditions the development of this study in its later chapters. It requires critical decisions to be made about the degree of ‘fit’, if any, that exists between each of the specific lexical occurrences examined and the ideal type. The making of decisions, of course, is what defines the work of the ‘critic’—krinein in Greek means ‘to decide’—and, for that reason, I have chosen to call the approach taken in later chapters a ‘critical’ history. This approach has two particular limitations. First, the emphasis on a semantic ideal type means that certain fascinating but idiosyncratic uses of the term in this period remain on the margins of this study; one example, which has already been mentioned, occurs in Bossuet’s sermon on death. Second, the use of a lexical control means that appearances of the seme from which the word happens to be entirely absent are beyond the scope of this study. I accept this as a practically necessary omission for which I attempt to compensate by drawing on secondary studies of related terms. I hope that, as well as requiring certain sacrifices, the approach taken here yields insights into the life and adventures of the je-ne-sais-quoi that a strictly nominalist account might preclude. One example is that, 103 Starobinski takes this approach in his study of the couple ‘action’ and ‘reaction’ (1999b: 14). 104 The word in itself is, for example, the focus in Sect. 1.3, below.

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in certain cases, the critic has room to judge that the je-ne-sais-quoi is absent from a sentence in which the word appears, or conversely, that it appears in a sentence from which the word is absent. This is no mere consequence of a particular methodological choice: it is crucial to my unfolding argument about the je-ne-sais-quoi. The experience of a certain something that cannot be explained in the early modern period proves so powerful that it cannot be pinned down in any settled term of art.105 It remains ever on the move. Writing is able to represent the experience in its very nescioquiddity only, in turn, by keeping its lexicon on the move. Terms suited to the task regularly appear. But each of these eventually settles in the bedrock of language; the word loses the force of the thing it first served to trace as it comes to be exploited as a stable refuge of ignorance or the exclusive property of one social group; the thing, meanwhile, disappears in another direction. This is the early modern word history of the je-ne-sais-quoi. It suggests that, with the thing itself, one can never fully come to terms.

1.3. bouhours’s topic of conversation 1.3.1. The Realms of the Je-Ne-Sais-Quoi Bouhours’s ‘Le Je Ne Sc¸ay Quoy’ marks the moment at which the term settles into the sediment of language and thought. In mapping the appearances of the je-ne-sais-quoi in the realms of the passions, nature, culture, and theology, the text establishes a topic of conversation that accommodates hitherto unrelated experiences of nescience. Since I shall use this map of the topic to plot my own interregional critical history of the je-ne-sais-quoi, I offer a overview of it here. But I do not want to suggest that it is a transparent or uncontroversial representation of seventeenth-century perceptions. For while the polite tone of Bouhours’s conversation suggests that his characters are airing mere commonplaces about the je-ne-sais-quoi, matters of general consensus, these commonplaces prove in fact to be stretches of disputed territory between conflicting discourses. The je-ne-sais-quoi belongs, first, to the realm of the passions. It draws two individuals—whether strangers, lovers, or friends—into 105

See Marin 1986: 195 (for a similar view).

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sympathy or antipathy at first sight (Bouhours 1962: 146). It is while reflecting on the sympathy between them, indeed, that the two friends Ariste and Euge`ne chance upon the topic. The je-ne-sais-quoi appears, second, in the realm of culture. Here the je-ne-sais-quoi is not a particular relation, but instead, a universal quality: ‘il y a des je ne sc¸ay quoy universels, dont tout le monde est touche´ e´galement’ (there exist universal je-ne-sais-quoi by which everybody is equally touched) (1962: 146). A culture collectively recognizes a distinguishing quality in certain of its individual members or works of art (1962: 147–8). The je-ne-sais-quoi belongs, third, to the realm of nature. Inexplicable movements of attraction and repulsion regularly occur, Ariste suggests, between the magnet and iron, the tides’ ebb and flow, the human body and the diseases that it suffers: ces acce´s si reglez, ces frissons et ces chaleurs, ces intervalles dans un mal qui dure des anne´es entieres, ne sont-ce pas autant de je ne sc¸ay quoy? Et n’en est-ce pas un aussi que le flux et le reflux de la mer; que la vertu de l’aiman, que toutes les qualitez occultes des Philosophes?106 (These orderly bouts of illness, shivering fits of hot and cold, and intermissions during a long illness; are they anything other than so many je-ne-saisquoi? And is the same not true of the ebb and flow of the tides, the magnet’s virtue, and all the occult qualities of the philosophers?)

The je-ne-sais-quoi designates powerful relations between natural bodies that the philosophers cannot explain. In its interpersonal, natural, and cultural realms, the je-ne-sais-quoi remains sealed within the lived world of created nature. Ariste and Euge`ne finish their conversation by suggesting that it may also belong, fourth and finally, to the transcendental relationship between humans and their divine maker. Ariste describes hope for salvation, and indeed salvation itself, as ‘je ne sc¸ay quoy d’un autre ordre’. The conversation then crosses a sacred threshold: Ainsi donc, interrompit Eugene, le je ne sc¸ay quoy est de la grace aussi bien que de la nature et de l’art.—[Puis], repartit Ariste, la grace elle-mesme, cette divine grace, qui a fait tant de bruit dans les e´coles, et qui fait des effets si admirables dans les ames; cette grace si forte et si douce tout ensemble, qui triomphe de la durete´ du cœur, sans blesser la liberte´ du franc arbitre; qui s’assuje´tit la nature en s’y accommodant; qui se rend maistresse de la volonte´, en la laissant maistresse d’elle-mesme; cette grace, dis-je, qu’est-ce 106

Bouhours 1962: 147.

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autre chose qu’un je ne sc¸ay quoy surnaturel, qu’on ne peut expliquer, ni comprendre?107 (‘So then,’ Euge`ne interrupted, ‘the je-ne-sais-quoi belongs to the realm of grace as well as to art and nature.’ ‘Is it not the case, then,’ Ariste replied, ‘that grace itself, that divine grace which has caused such a fuss in the schools and which has such admirable effects in the human soul, that grace, so strong and yet so sweet, which overcomes the heart’s hardness without damaging free will, which subjugates nature by conforming to it, and which commands the will by leaving it to command itself—what is this grace, I ask you, other than a supernatural je-ne-sais-quoi that can be neither explained nor understood?’)

Ariste here attempts to give to the word the elastic semantic movement that the term ‘grace’ makes between the realms of erotic and religious experience. Bouhours’s map of the je-ne-sais-quoi extends upwards out of the created world into the realm of the divine. This mapping is discreetly systematic. The Jesuits are noted for their adherence to the traditional curriculum of the Schools in the face of the new philosophies, and Bouhours proves no exception.108 Franciscus Toletus, who lists the different kinds of philosophy in his Commentaria una cum quaestionibus in VIII libros De physica auscultatione (1574), provides a classification typical of the European university curriculum until the end of the seventeenth century.109 Toletus divides philosophy into three branches: ‘speculative’, ‘practical’, and ‘factive’. Factive philosophy, which includes necessary arts such as agriculture and useful ones such as navigation, receives little or no attention in the university curriculum. Practical philosophy includes ethics (personal life), œconomics (home and family), and politics (the city and the republic): for Bouhours, ethics covers the je-ne-sais-quoi as it appears in the passions, and politics, its appearance in the realm of polite culture. Speculative philosophy is made up of metaphysics (the study of being qua being), mathematics, and natural philosophy (the study of things that fall under the senses): for Bouhours, metaphysics corresponds to the supernatural realm of the je-ne-sais-quoi, and natural philosophy, to its natural realm. Discreetly but systematically, Bouhours’s map of the je-ne-sais-quoi covers topics in traditional scholastic philosophy. 107 108 109

Bouhours 1962: 149. See Brockliss 1987: 352; Beugnot 1994: 153–4. The following is based on CHRP: 210–13; see also Brockliss 1987: 337–50.

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The learning exhibited in Bouhours’s text is not just discreetly systematic; it is also systematically discreet. Ariste and Euge`ne allow the je-ne-sais-quoi simply to emerge as a topic, as if quite naturally, in the easy flow of conversation. They reveal themselves in this respect to be true beaux esprits, go-betweens connecting the worlds of learning and wit. Bouhours presents them as such at the very beginning of the Entretiens: c’est-la` [on the coast of Flanders] qu’Ariste et Euge`ne eurent quelque temps de ces conversations libres et familieres, qu’ont les honnestes gens, quand ils sont amis; et qui ne laissent pas d’estre spirituelles, et mesme sc¸avantes, quoyqu’on ne songe point a` y avoir de l’esprit, et que l’e´tude n’y ait point de part.110 (There it was that Ariste and Euge`ne had some of those free open conversations that gentlefolk enjoy when they are friends, and which never fail to be witty, even learned, even though the participants do not think of displaying their wit in such conversations and there is no place either for learning.)

Within Bouhours’s fiction Ariste and Euge`ne play the role that their author and his fellow Jesuit, Rene´ Rapin, assumed in late seventeenth-century Parisian society.111 One of their supporters praises Bouhours for teaching young gentlefolk in society to treat learned questions with wit and polish: Dieu et son Eglise ont confie´ a` cette Compagnie l’e´ducation des jeunes gens. Ils sont obligez a` leur apprendre a` parler et a` vivre [ . . . ] en Cavaliers, s’ils sont destinez a` l’estre; en Courtisans, en gens du monde. Les Entretiens d’Ariste et d’Eugene sont le modele des entretiens de ces sortes de personnes; ils parlent de tout ce dont les honestes gens ont accouˆtume´ de parler, et de la maniere qu’il faut qu’ils en parlent.112 (God and his Church have entrusted the education of young people to this Society [of Jesus]. It is obliged to teach them how to talk and live [ . . . ] as cavaliers, if that is what they are destined to become, as courtiers, as people of the world. The Entretiens d’Ariste et d’Euge`ne are the model of the conversations that take place between people of these kinds; they talk about all the things that gentlefolk discuss, and they do so in quite the correct manner.)

The Jesuit teaches young members of polite society not only what to say, but crucially, how to say it. The key is to wear one’s learning 110 111 112

Bouhours 1962: 5–6 (conv. 1). Bourdieu 1979: 80–1; Jam 1995: 519; Ribard 2000: 30–2. Montfaucon de Villars 1671: 34–5; see also Sorel 1974: 339.

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lightly. Their lightness of touch allows Ariste and Euge`ne to take controversial positions while passing them off as commonplace. One such position, as we shall see in the next chapter, is that occult qualities in nature are one form of the je-ne-sais-quoi. 1.3.2. The Humiliation of Divine Grace Bouhours’s text takes a second and particularly controversial position when it suggests that divine grace may also be a form of the je-ne-sais-quoi. This suggestion is met with cries of scandal, relating not to the content of Bouhours’s suggestion, but to his choice of word. The je-ne-sais-quoi, it is said, is a humiliation of divine grace. That the noun has itself become an object of conflict between different groups is a further sign of its sedimentation in late seventeenth-century French culture. The publication of Les Entretiens d’Ariste et d’Euge`ne in 1671 fuelled the long-running battle between the members and supporters of two religious groups: the Society of Jesus, of which Bouhours was a member, and the austere Augustinian community based at the Port-Royal monasteries. Of greatest contention between these two groups in the third quarter of the seventeenth century is the nature of divine grace and its role in human salvation. The Jesuits argue that each and every human may choose to accept from God a grace sufficient for salvation; their opponents at Port-Royal insist, after Augustine, that all Adam’s fallen descendants are full of sin and that God alone, for inscrutable reasons of his own, saves a few of them by means of his efficient grace. The Augustinian theology of grace slowly lost its dominant position in the course of the seventeenth century. A turning-point came when Jansenius’s synthesis of Augustine’s writings on grace, the Augustinus (1640), was in effect condemned on five counts in a Papal bull of 1653. Members and allies of Port-Royal, including Pascal in Les Provinciales (1656–7), mounted a vigorous defence of the work’s orthodoxy. This defence, which earned them the (initially) derogatory epithet ‘Jansenists’ from their Jesuit opponents, also deepened the hostility of the Sorbonne theologians.113 The battle between Jesuits and Jansenists was finally lost by the latter in the early eighteenth century. But when Bouhours entered 113 See Moriarty 2003: 23–31 (on the conflict between Jesuits and Jansenists about grace); Ducheˆne 1985; Parish 1989 (on Pascal’s role in the conflict).

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the fray in the 1660s, it was still raging. Bouhours clearly shares the Jesuit conception of sufficient grace criticized by Pascal.114 But he chooses to serve the Jesuit cause by attacking the style of Jansenism rather than its theology. His Lettre a` un seigneur de la Cour (1668) is an attack on the Port-Royal translation of the New Testament which also criticizes Pascal for his support of the Jansenists (1668: 21). In 1671, Bouhours returns to the attack. The second of his Entretiens, ‘De la langue franc¸aise’, commends salon writers such as La Rochefoucauld and Me´re´ while criticizing Port-Royal writers for the hyperbole and incoherence of their style. The salon writers possess a social polish, Ariste and Euge`ne agree, that the reclusive members (or solitaires) of Port-Royal necessarily lack. The je-nesais-quoi appears as an expression of antipathy towards Bouhours’s enemies: Ariste tells his friend that there is in the style of the PortRoyal Imitation de Jesus-Christ (1662) a je-ne-sais-quoi that shocks and pains him.115 The reply from Port-Royal and its sympathizers is principally to be found in Barbier d’Aucour’s book-length review of Bouhours’s text, Sentiments de Cleanthe sur les Entretiens d’Ariste et d’Euge`ne, also published in 1671. The following year, Antoine de Courtin included criticisms of Bouhours in the second edition of his Nouveau traite´ de la civilite´ qui se pratique en France parmi les honneˆtes gens. The Jesuit counter-attack was equally swift: it includes Charles Sorel’s De la connaissance des bons livres, Montfaucon de Villars’s De la de´licatesse, and Bouhours’s second edition of the Entretiens, all published in 1671. Bouhours silently meets the objections of Barbier d’Aucour by modifying the text of Les Entretiens in this edition. His reply to Courtin comes in his Remarques nouvelles de la langue franc¸aise (1675).116 Montfaucon de Villars defends Bouhours’s Entretiens against Barbier D’Aucour while attacking the Port-Royal edition of Pascal’s Pense´es, which had appeared the year before. These texts form, as it were, a crisscrossing set of epistolary animadversions. That they continued to 114

Pascal 1987: 51–62 (letter 2). Bouhours 1962: 82. Bouhours was not the first to employ the term in this quarrel; in Les Provinciales (1656–7), Pascal uses a pronominal form of the je-nesais-quoi to mock the Jesuits: ‘vos maximes ont je ne sais quoi de divertissant, qui re´jouit toujours le monde’ (your maxims have something inexplicably diverting about them, which invariably amuses people) (1987: 188 (letter 12)). 116 See Bouhours 1973: 46, 272; Courtin 1998: 15 (introd.). 115

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be published late into the eighteenth century testifies to the historical importance of this long-neglected quarrel.117 The quarrel, from Bouhours’s first intervention onwards, continues to be primarily conducted through discussions of style.118 Bouhours’s opponents hope to undermine his censure of Port-Royal texts and his position as an arbiter of taste at one stroke. They combine to condemn his divine use of the je-ne-sais-quoi as a ‘scandal’ in the theological sense, that is, a stumbling-block to faith. The suggestion that divine grace is inexplicable in human terms is not the problem. Rather, Barbier d’Aucour accuses Bouhours of illegitimately applying a profane word—the je-ne-saisquoi—to a divine topic: ‘cette adorable incompre´hensibilite´ de Dieu, et de sa grace, ne devoit pas eˆtre marque´e par un mot, qui est meˆme trop bas pour marquer entre les choses humaines celles a` qui l’on doit du respect’ (the adorable incomprehensibility of God and his grace should not be marked by a word too base even to refer to those human affairs that are worthy of respect) (1776: 127, 269). Bouhours’s critics accuse him of what the rhetoricians call humiliatio, in other words, debasing a noble subject with a scandalously ignoble word.119 Bouhours, Barbier d’Aucour insists (1776: 125), mixes within the topic of the je-ne-sais-quoi the most holy of things with the most profane. Antoine de Courtin, in repeating the accusation, condemns the passage on grace in Bouhours’s text as an example of uncivilized repartee or ‘raillerie’ (1998: 195). He juxtaposes the Bouhours passage with Rabelais’s bawdy variations on the je-ne-sais-quoi in the Cinquiesme livre to illustrate the term’s disreputable character.120 Barbier d’Aucour’s theologian clinches the Jansenists’ point by exploiting the pejorative je-ne-sais-qui: ‘l’Auteur qui parle en ces termes, et de la grace de Dieu, et de Dieu meˆme, et qui les appelle des Je ne sc¸ay quoy; il faut encore un coup qu’il soit un . . . un je ne sc¸ai qui’ (the author who talks in such terms about divine grace and even God himself, and calls them both I know not whats, can himself be nothing more than a—well—an I know not whom) (1776: 128). At the height of 117 The key texts are slowly receiving critical and scholarly attention; examples are Montfaucon de Villars 1980; Courtin 1998; Bouhours 2003. 118 On this conflict, see Busson 1982: 361–3. 119 On humiliatio, see Sonnino 1968: 104. 120 Courtin 1998: 197; the Rabelais passage is quoted at the end of Sect. 1.1.3, above.

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its vogue in polite circles, the je-ne-sais-quoi retains, in theological discourse, a whiff of scandal. Bouhours and his supporters seek, in reply, to justify the divine use of the je-ne-sais-quoi. Like Guez de Balzac in the previous generation, Bouhours claims that using the term is an expression of humility rather than an act of humiliation.121 Attempts to dispel the scandal of the je-ne-sais-quoi only show that it refuses to go away. Charles Sorel defends Bouhours against Barbier d’Aucour by simply reasserting the former’s authority on questions of contemporary usage (1974: 341–3). Bouhours, more subtly, alters the passage in which Ariste suggests that divine grace may be a kind of je-ne-sais-quoi. In the first edition (1671), the passage ends: cette grace, dis-je, qu’est-ce autre chose qu’un je ne sc¸ay quoy surnaturel, qu’on ne peut expliquer, ni comprendre?122 (what is this grace, I ask you, other than a supernatural je-ne-sais-quoi that can be neither explained nor understood?)

In the second edition (also 1671), Bouhours adds at this point a justificatory marginal reference to Augustine’s commentary on Psalm 90 (reproduced after the asterisk below), which he loosely paraphrases in the main text: cette grace, dis-je, qu’est-ce autre chose qu’un je ne sc¸ay quoy surnaturel, qu’on ne peut ni expliquer, ni comprendre, non plus que la gloire qui en est le fruit.* * Nescio quid magnum est quod visuri sumus quando tota merces nostra visio est. S. Aug. in Psalm. 90.123 (What is this grace, I ask you, other than a supernatural je-ne-sais-quoi that can be no more explained or understood than the glory which is its fruit?* * ‘We shall behold I know not what greatness when seeing will be all our reward’ (St Augustine on Psalm 90).)

In the fourth edition (1673), Bouhours strengthens his defence by interpolating an entire paragraph after the sentence in which Ariste suggests that grace is ‘un je ne sc¸ay quoy [ . . . ] qui ne se peut exprimer, et dont on feroit bien de se taire’ (a je-ne-sais-quoi that cannot be explained and about which it would be better to remain

121

122 Borgerhoff 1950: 26–7. Bouhours 1962: 149. Bouhours 1682: 263 (his italics); Augustine 1954– : x. 1277; see Janke´le´vitch 1980: i. 109–10. 123

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silent) (1673: 306). The new paragraph contains a second reference to Augustine, also paraphrased in the text: Mais n’est-ce point parler de la grace indignement, re´pondit Eugene, que de l’appeller je ne sc¸ay quoy? Dites, repartit Ariste, je ne sc¸ay quoy de divin et de surnaturel. C’est ainsi que Saint Augustin luy-mesme en parle dans un endroit de ses Confessions, qui m’est demeure´ dans l’esprit. Mon Dieu, ditil, vous me faites quelquefois entrer dans des sentimens extraordinaires, ou` la nature n’a point de part, et gouster je ne sc¸ay quelle douceur celeste, qui passe toutes les de´lices de la terre, quand elle remplit l’ame parfaitement, et qui est je ne sc¸ay quoy au dessus des connoissances et des biens de cette vie.* * Aliquando intromittis me in affectum multum inusitatum introrsus, et nescio quam dulcedinem, quae si perficiatur in me, nescio quid erit, quod vi[ta] [i]sta non erit. Confess. lib. 10. c. 40.]124 (‘But is it not a shameful way of talking about grace’, Euge`ne replied, ‘to call it I know not what?’ ‘I know not what that is divine and supernatural, you mean’, Ariste returned. ‘That is how Saint Augustine himself talks about grace in a passage from his Confessions that has stayed in my mind. ‘‘My Lord,’’ he says, ‘‘sometimes you make me enter into extraordinary feelings in which nature plays no part, and taste I know not what celestial sweetness, which passes all earthly delight when it entirely fills the soul, and which is something, I know not what, above all the knowledge and riches of this life.’’’* * ‘Sometimes you fill me with an unexpected, intimate feeling and I know not what charm, which if it ever grew to full strength in me, would be I know not what that had nothing to do with this life’ (Confessions, bk. 10, ch. 40).)

Bouhours evokes the charge of humiliatio here to refute it. He justifies his use of the je-ne-sais-quoi by placing Augustine at the term’s origins. His refutation is lexically evasive, however, since he answers attacks on his use of the full je-ne-sais-quoi (n.) by sanctioning the pronominal form and the pronominal form plus adjective (‘dites [ . . . ] je ne sc¸ay quoy de divin et de surnaturel’). He also conceals the crucial generic difference between Augustine’s divine applications of the nescio quid to the divine and his own. For ‘Le Je Ne Sc¸ay Quoy’ is neither a biblical commentary nor a spiritual autobiography but a polite conversation on profane topics that strays into the realm of theology. Montfaucon de Villars’s reply to Barbier d’Aucour is similarly evasive: 124

Bouhours 1673: 306 (his italics); Augustine 1954– : i. 191.

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enfin Cleanthe ne veut pas qu’on applique le je ne sc¸ay quoy a` Dieu et a` la Grace, parce qu’on n’oserait l’appliquer a` la Majeste´ Royale dans un discours serieux. Mais pourquoy ne diroit-on pas au Roy, Vostre Majeste´, Sire, a je ne sc¸ay quoy de divin qui attire le respect et l’amour. Au reste, Cleanthe [ . . . ] finit honnestement ce discours en nous faisant sc¸avoir que le P[e`re] B[ouhours] est un je ne sc¸ay qui.125 (Finally, Cle´anthe does not want the je-ne-sais-quoi applied to God and to grace because, according to him, no one would dare apply the same word to his Royal Majesty in a serious speech. But why should someone not say to the King: ‘Your Majesty has I know not what that is divine and that inspires love and respect’? Moreover, Cle´anthe [ . . . ] finishes his own piece in a gentlemanly manner by informing us that Father Bouhours is an I-knownot-whom.)

Montfaucon de Villars answers the charge of humiliatio no more satisfactorily than Bouhours. He seizes instead on Barbier d’Aucour’s je-ne-sais-qui gibe to imply that he, like Pascal, lacks the true civility of the Jesuit.126 Montfaucon de Villars clearly decides instead that counter-attack is the best form of defence, just as the Jansenist side had done by simply turning Bouhours’s stylistic censure back against him. The two sides sustain their conflict by means of shared polemical strategies. But the evasive replies of Bouhours and his supporters suggest that the Jansenists, in condemning the term as an impious scandal, have scored a palpable hit. Bouhours incurs the charge of impiety above all because he uses the je-ne-sais-quoi to cross the border between the profane and the sacred. Drawing upon the je-ne-sais-quoi in a theological treatise does not in itself expose the writer to the same charge: Pierre Nicole incurs no censure when he repeats Bouhours’s lexical connection between grace and the je-ne-sais-quoi, as well as the accompanying reference to Augustine, in his Traite´ de la graˆce ge´ne´rale (1715).127 Nicole’s text remains within the territory of theology. The dual 125

Montfaucon de Villars 1671: 229–30. On Pascal, see Montfaucon de Villars 1671: 364. 127 Quoted in Bre´mond 1916–71: iv. 436. Fe´nelon, the anti-Jansenist archbishop of Cambrai, offers a second example in his Traite´ de l’existence et des attributs de Dieu (1713) when he writes: ‘ce je ne sais quoi si admirable, si familier et si inconnu ne peut eˆtre que Dieu’ (this je-ne-sais-quoi which is so admirable, so familiar, and so unknown can only be God) (1820–30: i. 204). These two uses of the noun suggest that there may be others too in the same generic context and period and that the relation between the je-ne-sais-quoi and divine grace would merit further study. Fe´nelon is a writer whose enormous and varied output includes prose fiction as well as religious sermons and treatises, of course, and the je-ne-sais-quoi appears at 126

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position of Jesuits like Bouhours and Rapin, within French polite circles and the Roman Catholic clergy, is more dangerous.128 Supporters such as Sorel and Montfaucon de Villars construe Bouhours’s position as that of the ideal go-between. Opponents, however, denounce him as a double agent selling profane goods to the devout and vice versa. Barbier d’Aucour and Courtin make precisely this accusation; their case is strengthened by the general consensus, in early modern France, that writers of profane texts should leave theological controversies to the professionals if they wish to avoid censure.129 Bouhours’s abrupt phrase of transition, ‘mais pour parler chretiennement du je ne sc¸ay quoy’ (but to talk in a Christian manner about the je-ne-sais-quoi) (1962: 149), only supports the perception that he is straying into theology from an erstwhile profane topic. Dictionaries, even those sympathetic to Bouhours, come to confirm this view, describing Bouhours’s text as ‘ridiculous’ when it applies the je-ne-sais-quoi to the realm of divine grace.130 The Jesuits’ scandalous impieties, rather than their pedagogical skill, have become the topic of conversation. 1.3.3. Towards a Critical History The Jansenist attack is not directed solely at Bouhours’s choice of words. Barbier d’Aucour also attacks the Jesuit’s conceptual extension of his topic (see Sect. 4.3.2, below). His attempt is to consign the je-ne-sais-quoi to the realm of error, meaninglessness, and nonbeing. The quarrel between Bouhours and Barbier d’Aucour serves to identify conceptual problems inherent in the je-ne-sais-quoi and its semantic field. But, conditioned as it is by its place in a wider struggle between conflicting interest groups, the quarrel proves to be as sterile as it is heated. The strong pressure that it puts on the je-ne-sais-quoi may help to explain why, from the 1670s onwards, the word shows signs that its fall from grace has already begun.

significant moments of his novel Te´le´maque (1699). His work appears to be a meeting-place for different uses of the term. 128

See Fumaroli’s remarks in Binet 1987: 26–39; Moriarty 2003: 27. See Montaigne: i. 56, 323c; Renaudot and Renaudot 1638–55: i. 4; Rohault 1978: 133; Johns (1998: 236–9) offers a case study in his publishing history of Kenelm Digby’s Two Treatises (1644). 130 Richelet 1728: ‘quoi’; see also ‘savoir’. 129

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How in all this are we to make sense of that certain something which cannot be explained, called the je-ne-sais-quoi? The truth about it, I suggest, falls somewhere between Bouhours’s complacent extension of the topic and Barbier d’Aucour’s unsustainably reductive view of experience. The je-ne-sais-quoi should certainly not be made to embrace all things in heaven and earth, but neither should it be reduced out of existence. Bouhours’s text is important because it establishes the je-ne-sais-quoi, not only as a modish name, but as a topic for the discussion of those powerful relations that are experienced and cannot be explained. Bouhours is no philosopher or literary artist of the je-ne-sais-quoi. He is its lexicographer-inchief, who displays and promotes its new currency, and the topographer who maps its presence in four different realms of experience. In this study I use Bouhours as a preliminary guide to all four realms. Having examined its controversial divine realm, and the lexical quarrel this provokes, I shall now explore in turn the three sublunary regions of nature, the passions, and human culture. The experience of the je-ne-sais-quoi, in each case, provokes a ‘crisis’ in the etymological sense of the word: a decision about the nature of that experience, and about how it is to be put into words. The next three chapters adopt a similarly critical approach to the history of the je-ne-sais-quoi. The term appears in regions of early modern experience as a lexical tracer of its ideal-typical meaning and the crisis that this provokes. A critical history judges between mere lexical occurrences and those significant occasions when seme couples with lexeme. It aims also to describe why, in each case, a problem of explanation arises; what solutions are offered to come to terms with it; and whether the je-ne-sais-quoi, in its various lexical forms and semantic operations, resolves or deepens the problem. Special attention is paid to the je-ne-sais-quoi (n.) as it rises to prominence and then settles into the bedrock of language and thought. It is this process, as we have seen, that makes a word history of the je-ne-sais-quoi possible.

part ii

Critical Histories

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A Secret of Nature? Descartes and the Philosophers 2.1. preternatural effects and traditional explanations 2.1.1. The Je-Ne-Sais-Quoi in Nature Bouhours’s learned wits experience the je-ne-sais-quoi in nature while strolling along the seafront in the first of their conversations (‘La Mer’). The natural backcloth becomes the topic of their conversation when Ariste invites Euge`ne to behold the ‘admirable spectacle’ of the sea, saying: cette immence e´tendue¨ d’eaux; ce flux et ce reflux; le bruit, la couleur, les figures differentes de ces flots qui se poussent regulierement les uns des autres, ont je ne sc¸ay quoy de si surprenant et de si e´trange, que je ne sc¸ache rien qui en approche.1 (This immense watery expanse, its ebb and flow, the sound, the colour, and the different shapes of the waves which push one another forward in so regular a manner, have I know not what so surprising and strange about them that I know of nothing that even approaches it.)

The sea, it seems, is one of nature’s deepest secrets. Ariste, in making his point, uses a pronominal je-ne-sais-quoi to carry two adjectives in a syntactic ebb and flow that imitates the regular movement of the tides. The two friends discuss the different passions that nature’s secrets provoke: aversion, curiosity, and wonder. Euge`ne’s is initially a complex reaction: ‘tout cela inspire je ne sc¸ay quelle horreur accompagne´e de plaisir’ (all that inspires I know not what horror 1

Bouhours 1962: 6.

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accompanied with pleasure) (Bouhours 1962: 7). Ariste suggests that curiosity is a more appropriate reaction: peut-on voir ces flots retourner au terme d’ou` ils sont venus, re´pondit Ariste, sans songer a` la cause d’un si admirable mouvement? Mais c’est en vain que j’y songe, ajouˆta-t-il, comme je ne suis point Philosophe, je n’y comprends rien.2 (‘Can one watch these waves return whence they first came,’ Ariste replied, ‘without reflecting upon the cause of so admirable a movement? But I reflect upon it to no purpose’, he added, ‘for since I am no philosopher of nature, I can understand nothing of it.’)

Behind Ariste’s suggestion lies Aristotle’s celebrated remark that philosophy begins in wonder.3 Natural bodies (such as the sea) move in ways that common experience cannot explain. The tides are one example among countless others. How we should we make sense of nature’s secrets? This is a question for the natural philosophers, those people who do not just spontaneously experience the je-ne-sais-quoi in nature, but actively seek its causes. This chapter offers a critical history of that search in vernacular works of early modern natural philosophy. Unexplained natural phenomena are standard topics in learned treatises and philosophical textbooks of the late medieval and early modern period. They appear too in the growing corpus of middlebrow literature in vernacular languages from the sixteenth century onwards: Montaigne discusses paradigm cases in his Essais, debates are devoted to them in the new institutions of learning, and they become the topic of polite conversational literature of the kind written by Bouhours. Much scholarly work has examined the debate about such phenomena in the predominantly Latin works of learned natural philosophy, medicine, and related disciplines.4 But what has not been noticed is that the je-ne-sais-quoi appears as a key term in the vernacular debate about the secrets of nature and that it becomes a site of lexical conflict between conflicting explanations. Its lexical appearance in this context is best understood as a symptom of the

2

Bouhours 1962: 10–11. Aristotle, Metaphysics, a.2, 982b; Montaigne: iii. 11, 1030c. Three notable recent examples are Des Chene 1996; Daston and Park 1998; Maclean 2002. 3 4

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crisis that besets both the form and content of traditional natural philosophy in the seventeenth century. And not only does the word help articulate philosophical discussions about insensible phenomena, but those discussions also offer access to the nature of the je-nesais-quoi itself: the word and the thing exist in a chiasmus of interaction. Three judgements in particular are offered about its nature: the first places the je-ne-sais-quoi in material substance as its animating spirit; the second reduces such spirits to the status of a mind-forged illusion; the third ascribes the je-ne-sais-quoi to a force that has powerful effects but whose cause remains inaccessible to the senses. The first of these judgements is associated with the scholastic tradition that dominates the teaching of natural philosophy throughout the early modern period; the second, with the new mechanical philosophy that challenges this tradition from without in the middle decades of the seventeenth century; the third, with a succeeding generation of natural philosophers. The je-ne-sais-quoi offers in this way a point of entry into central debates of the period known as the ‘Scientific Revolution’. But such historiographical tags need to be handled with caution. My story is neither one of smooth transition from one scientific paradigm to the next, nor of a revolutionary epistemic break, but rather of a persistent problem of explanation in the early modern period. Two tendencies persist through change in the study of nature. The first emphasizes the role of experience in the study of nature: the je-ne-sais-quoi can be described, measured in its effects, put to use; in practical terms at least, then, it can be known. The second emphasizes the importance of explanation to natural philosophy: the je-ne-sais-quoi is seen as a strange experience that threatens to create a vacuum in knowledge and must be fully explained. Bacon and Descartes each embody one of these tendencies in the first half of the seventeenth century; Newton and Leibniz show that these same tendencies remain in conflict a century later. What is striking about the appearance of the je-ne-sais-quoi in nature is the sheer number of explanations that proliferate around it in the early modern period, from occult qualities, substantial forms, and quintessences to atoms, corpuscles, and forces. The search for a wholly adequate explanation of the je-nesais-quoi in natural philosophy appears to be the symptom of a crisis that is never fully resolved.

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2.1.2. Occult Qualities and Substantial Forms The je-ne-sais-quoi appears in the context of the long-running conflict between traditionalists and innovators over unexplained phenomena in the study of nature. Natural philosophy (otherwise known as ‘physics’ or physiologia) is broadly defined until the eighteenth century as the search for the causes of change in natural things. It is dominated by philosophers who give Christian interpretations of Aristotle in Latin from within universities (the ‘schools’) in the wake of Thomas Aquinas, Scotus, Ockham, and other medieval thinkers. Aristotle remains so central to the scholastic philosophical tradition that he is known simply as ‘the Philosopher’.5 The self-appointed ‘new’ philosophers pose an increasing threat to this tradition from outside the schools. Their challenge to the scholastic tradition concerns the place of experience in natural philosophy, what counts as a sufficient explanation, and the ontological principles underlying change. Innovators accuse traditionalists of using terms of art to conceal their ignorance of unexplained events in nature; traditionalists attack new explanations for being insufficient and seek to clarify their own. The lexical je-ne-sais-quoi appears, in various guises, on both sides of this long-running conflict. Natural philosophers of all persuasions daily encounter effects whose physical causes do not fall in the realm of experience. Boyle and others describe these effects as ‘preternatural’ because they somehow ‘thwart’ nature’s ordinary course from within nature.6 We all observe that a piece of iron moves towards a nearby magnet, but experience can determine neither what is responsible for this attraction nor how it takes place. Other paradigm cases include the fall of heavy bodies, the vacuum, and the tides, whose motion so puzzles Ariste and Euge`ne.7 Strange motions of attraction or repulsion do not just occur between inanimate substances. They are observed throughout nature: between inanimate substances and animate beings (the effects upon humans of the occult qualities and quintessences of drugs such as opium, specific remedies and 5

Copenhaver and Schmitt 1992: 5. Robert Boyle 1996: 40; Daston and Park 1998: 121; I too use the word in this sense (which is to be distinguished from its later synonymy with ‘supernatural’). 7 Renaudot and Renaudot 1638–55: ii. 323–9 (conf. 51 on magnetism); 220–7 (conf. 46 on the vacuum); i. 353–60 (conf. 19 on the tides). 6

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poisons, and the weapon salve);8 between animals (the antipathy between wolves and lambs, the fascination exerted by cats, and the instinct for generation);9 between animals and humans (the bite of the tarantula, the remora fish, and human affinities with domestic animals);10 and between humans (the power of the imagination, love and hatred, sympathy and antipathy).11 These cases are legion. Montaigne, having offered examples, concludes with a rhetorical question: ‘combien trouvons nous de proprietez ocultes et de quint’essences?’ (how many occult properties and quintessences do we discover?) (ii. 12, 526a; F 475). His interrogative syntax leaves room for occult qualities and quintessences to multiply infinitely. Preternatural effects frustrate traditional explanations because their physical causes do not fall within common sensory experience. Aristotle defines the object of physics to be the knowledge of how, what, from what, and why things in nature must be as they selfevidently are. That knowledge starts in the true perceptions of the senses is an Aristotelian axiom.12 A person lacking a sense can have no knowledge of the corresponding phenomena. Aristotle takes the example of a man blind from birth, arguing that were he to reason about colour, he would necessarily be using words without any corresponding thought.13 Common experience—repeated sense perceptions held in the memory—serves as the basis for causal explanations.14 Aristotle establishes four causes: the ‘efficient’ (the force or instrument by which something is produced); the ‘material’ (the matter from which it is produced); the ‘formal’ (its form or essence); and the ‘final’ (the purpose for which it is produced).15 8 Montaigne: ii. 37, 781–2a (on quintessences); Renaudot and Renaudot 1638–55: ii. 275–86 (conf. 49 on specific remedies); Bacon 1996: ii. 645; Fludd 1631; Foster 1631 (on the weapon salve, a cure for weapon wounds said to work at distance). 9 Montaigne: ii. 12, 590a (on animal antipathies); i. 21, 105a (on cats); Cureau de la Chambre 1667 (on animal sympathy and antipathy). 10 Ross 1651: 140 (on the tarantula and the ‘strange and various’ effects its bite has on humans); Montaigne: ii. 12, 468–9a (on the remora fish and its power to halt any vessel to which it attaches itself). 11 Montaigne: ii. 12, 471a; Renaudot and Renaudot 1638–55: i. 588–98 (conf. 32); Scholar 2002a (on the power of the imagination); Ch. 3, below. 12 Maclean 2002: 117. 13 Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, i. 18; Physics, ii. 1, 193a. The figure of the blind man appears in Sextus Empiricus and Montaigne (see Sect. 5.2.1, below), and in Locke (1975: 424–6 (iii. 4)). 14 Harvey 1653: fo. 4r (pref.); Schmitt 1969: 105; Dear 2001: 5–7. 15 Aristotle, Physics, ii. 3, 194b; Metaphysics, a.3, 983b; Daston and Park 1998: 431.

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The Philosopher moves in both directions between sensory experience and causal explanation. He climbs by induction from repeated sense perceptions to the causes underlying change; he then descends, using syllogism and deduction, from the underlying causes to the sense perceptions from which he began.16 Montaigne alludes to this when he says: ‘toute cognoissance s’achemine en nous par les sens [ . . . ] la science commence par eux et se resout en eux’ (all knowledge makes its way into us through the senses [ . . . ] knowledge begins through them and is resolved into them) (ii. 12, 587a; F 539). Nothing comes into the mind that did not start in the senses, say philosophers in the Aristotelian tradition.17 Problems arise for them when effects are commonly experienced whose material and efficient causes remain insensible. Philosophers in possession of all their senses find themselves, like Aristotle’s blind man, deprived of the experience necessary to construct a full causal explanation of such phenomena. These join the lawless no man’s land of the je-nesais-quoi within the territory of natural philosophy. Natural philosophers, in an attempt to colonize this no man’s land, produce a bewildering diversity of terms and concepts. They use terms like ‘occult quality’, ‘sympathy’, and ‘quintessence’ interchangeably, and each has a set of further synonyms. The dense population of terms in this semantic field indicates the widely recognized importance of the problem and the diversity of available explanations. A further complication is that all these terms can name either the event requiring explanation (the ‘explicandum’) or an element of the explanation itself (the ‘explicans’). So it is possible to explain the ‘occult quality’ of the magnet by its ‘sympathetic power’ or vice versa. The task in each occurrence must be to recover the conceptual bedrock underlying the terms of the explanation. Traditional philosophers tend to explain preternatural effects by ascribing them to some kind of spiritual cause within matter. They locate this principle in one of three realms: the universal, the supernatural, or the natural. I offer below brief descriptions of each explanation, the tradition with which it is associated, and its lexicon. Universal principles. There are those who see the universe as a vital unity whose parts are linked by sympathies and antipathies. 16

Stanley 1655–6: 48; Maclean 2002: 114–28. This axiom, of course, is one of those that Descartes contests; see Moriarty 2003: 95–6. 17

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This theory is variously associated with Plato, the Neoplatonist tradition, and natural magicians such as Paracelsus.18 Universal sympathy can describe relations within this world or relations between it and the heavens. It considers that all such relations exist, not between discrete entities, but between parts of one living organism. For that reason, as Bacon observes, universal vitalists avoid dubious talk of action at distance.19 But they tend to assume that all life forms (plants and stones as well as humans) have the same capacities to feel sympathy. Sympathy is seen as an immaterial spirit that vitalizes all parts of the universe: ‘par cet esprit [universel] on entend parler d’une chose qui donne la vie, le branle, et le mouvement a` tout’ (by that [universal] principle is meant something that gives life and motion to everything).20 Universal vitalists posit one immaterial life force. Supernatural principles. Those who invoke supernatural causes posit their distant influence upon sublunary entities. This theory is variously associated with the Aristotelian, Christian, and astrological traditions. It presupposes action at distance, then, but is better able to account for different forms of life than universal vitalist explanations. Aristotelians distinguish between the four elements (fire, water, air, and earth) that make up the corruptible substances of the sublunary world, and a fifth substance, or ‘quintessence’. Quintessence, which alone composes the incorruptible heavens, is latent in all things; particles of the divine are found deep within plants and minerals; alchemy seeks to extract them and medicine to prescribe them as remedies.21 The Jesuit E´tienne Binet ascribes the magnet’s power of attraction at distance to remote heavenly influence in his Essay des merveilles de nature (1621). Binet consciously popularizes traditional philosophical ideas about precious stones and other marvels in a manner designed to improve the eloquence of vernacular orators. He describes his own text, indeed, as a precious stone.22 Binet applies his eloquence to magnetic attraction, explaining: ‘le fer (matiere si rebelle, et 18

Starobinski 1999b: 30; Dear 2001: 24–6. Bacon 1996: ii. 640 (Sylva Sylvarum, §.900). 20 Renaudot and Renaudot 1638–55: i. 114 (conf. 6); see also Camus 1612–20: ix. 128–9. 21 Renaudot and Renaudot 1638–55: ii. 480–1 (conf. 60); Rochon 1672: 156; Bouhours 1962: 143; Furetie`re 1690: ‘quinte-essence’. 22 Binet 1987: 54; Genette 1976. 19

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hardie) plie le gantelet, et se laisse emporter, a` un je ne sc¸ay quoy espars par le vuide de l’air, et s’en va espouser l’Aimant’ (iron, a material otherwise so rebellious and brazen, here gives up the struggle, lets itself be swept away by a je-ne-sais-quoi scattered through the air’s empty space, and goes off to wed the magnet) (1987: 228). The attraction between magnet and iron is conceived here as an amorous coupling. The source of Binet’s je-ne-sais-quoi may be the sixteenth-century poet Re´my Belleau, whose poem on the magnet uses the pronominal form in the same context.23 Binet’s chosen term, the rare new je-ne-sais-quoi (n.), matches its precious object. Christian and astrological modes of thought are clearly present in supernatural explanations. ‘God’, in the discourse of natural philosophy, may designate an intelligent universal spirit or nature. But often the term refers to a remote supernatural force acting in earthly substances.24 The scandal provoked by Bouhours’s extension of the je-ne-sais-quoi to the realm of divine (and therefore supernatural) grace has already been discussed. One of Bouhours’s fellow Jesuits, Michel Boutauld, imitates his colleague’s extension of the term in his set of polite theological conversations, Le The´ologien dans les conversations avec les sages et les grands du monde (1683). Boutauld’s theologian explains to his polite interlocutors how a celestial quintessence in earthly substances causes them to move in mysterious ways. He chooses the controversial example of animal souls to define this quintessence: il me semble, ajouta-t-il, que nous ne pouvons le mieux de´finir que par le mot qui est aujourd’huy fort ordinaire en de semblables occasions, en disant que c’est un je ne sc¸ay quoy, une je ne sc¸ay quelle lumie`re naturelle, ou quelle particule de sagesse et de raison qui est enferme´e dans une ame materielle et brutale.25 (‘It seems to me,’ he added, ‘that we can define it no better than by drawing on the word ordinarily used on such occasions these days, and by saying that it is a je-ne-sais-quoi, an I know not what light of nature or an 23

Schmidt 1953: 583 (‘La Pierre d’aymant’). Renaudot and Renaudot 1638–55: i. 114 (conf. 6); Boutauld 1683: 9; Maclean 2002: 238–9. It would seem to follow that the devil would act in the same way. But most natural philosophers restrict the devil’s room for manoeuvre by denying him the ability to manipulate supernatural causes; see Clark 1997: 233; Daston and Park 1998: 128. 25 Boutauld 1683: 6, 23–4. 24

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I know not what particle of wisdom, which is shut away in the material and animal soul.’)

A God-given spark of ‘natural light’ illuminates an animal’s inner dark core.26 Notice how Boutauld stresses the currency of the je-nesais-quoi (n.) in this context: the word, he asserts, ‘ordinarily’ names the presence of God as a spiritual principle in earthly substances. This, when set in the context of the ongoing quarrel about Bouhours’s ‘humiliation’ of divine grace, looks like a polemical exaggeration on the part of Boutauld to support his fellow Jesuit against Jansenist attacks. Astrological explanations are strongly associated with the Neoplatonist tradition and natural magic. They involve ascribing particular preternatural effects to the influence of the moon or stars.27 Physical astrology explains particular terrestrial events by lunar or astral influence; judicial astrology claims, on the same basis, to predict future events. Those who practise the latter are widely condemned for their impostures.28 Physical astrology, however, provides a traditional thinker like Alexander Ross with an explanation of epidemics on the grounds that ‘the aire is infected with the impression of malignant and occult qualities from the influence of the starres’.29 French writers use the adjective je ne sais quel to name the stars’ imperceptible but determining influence on human destiny. Ronsard, in his ‘Pre´face sur La Franciade touchant le poe¨me he´roı¨que’ (1572), is one: ‘tout homme de`s le naistre rec¸oit en l’aˆme je ne sc¸ay quelles fatales impressions, qui le contraignent suivre plustost son Destin que sa volonte´’ (every man receives in his soul at birth I know not what fatal impressions that impel him to follow his destiny rather than his will).30 The adjective emphasizes here that this influence is ‘disastrous’ in both conventional senses of the word; namely, born of a remote star and ruinous in its effects. 26

On ‘natural light’, see Maclean 2002: 199–200. Renaudot and Renaudot 1638–55: vi. 248–57 (conf. 239); Ceriziers 1651–2: i. 149–50; P. R. Blum 1992: 51–2. 28 Montaigne: i. 32; Ferrand 1623: 120–4; Garin 1990: 1–2. 29 Ross 1651: 131; see also Henry 1997: 28 (on William Harvey’s astrological ideas about blood). 30 Ronsard 1914–75: xvi. 333; quoted in Ko¨hler 1953–4: 25. ‘Homme’ here, as so often, means ‘man’ in its universal sense of homo (human being). I use ‘man’, despite its unfortunate gendered connotations, because ‘human being’ or ‘person’ would make the singular personal pronouns in the rest of the sentence difficult to translate satisfactorily into English. 27

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Bouhours and Richelet suggest astral influence as an analogy for the operations of the je-ne-sais-quoi (see Sect. 1.2.2, above). Suggesting analogies is one thing; delivering explanations is quite another. The objection that supernatural causes tend to face in natural philosophy is that they are too general and remote to provide sufficient explanations of particular phenomena. Natural principles. Those who invoke natural causes explain preternatural effects by ascribing them to hidden qualities within natural bodies. Explanations of this kind—perhaps the most widespread in the period—combine Aristotelian and Neoplatonist elements. They are associated with schools philosophers as well as practitioners of various disciplines (see Sect. 2.1.3, below). Schools philosophers deny that the material world is a mere bundle of accidents, and seek a substantial principle underlying movement and change. This principle they are careful to place in nature, so as to reduce the role of universal or supernatural causes.31 ‘Nature’ tends to mean here either a general principle in the material world or the particular form of an individual being, its principium individuationis, its ‘whatness’.32 General nature is the subject of numerous scholastic axioms such as ‘natura nihil agit frustra’ (nature does nothing in vain) and ‘natura vacuum abhorret’ (nature abhors a vacuum).33 These axioms describe an autonomous being possessed of qualities, intentions, and even (in respect of the vacuum) inclinations. That nature does nothing in vain means that scholastics can attribute to it the final cause of any phenomenon.34 General nature is the secret agent that plans and performs all operations in the material world. The particular nature of an individual being is thought, in the schools tradition, to be the internal principle of that being’s various motions and operations. Late scholastics remain committed to a modified version of Aristotle’s hylomorphic principles.35 An individual substance comes into being, they explain, when prime matter (materia prima) receives substantial form (forma substantialis), 31

Hutchison 1991: 247; Daston and Park 1998: 129. Du Roure 1654: 4–5 (§.10); Robert Boyle 1996: 22–3, 36–7; Maclean 2002: 236–48. 33 Robert Boyle 1996: 31 (listing ten axioms); Montaigne: iii. 1, 790b. 34 CHSP: 529. 35 Aristotle, Physics, i. 7, 190b; CHSP: 429–31 (on the medieval tradition); Des Chene 1996: 53–80 (on late scholastic theories in Jesuit writers). 32

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with privation (privatio) acting as the go-between that motivates matter to desire form. Individual beings emerge, in this manner, from the primal soup. Each individual thereafter retains its substantial form as a metaphysical substratum whose sole purpose is to support the individual’s various qualities.36 The function of these ‘qualities’, otherwise known as ‘accidental forms’, is to cause the individual substance to suffer and perform its characteristic effects.37 Traditionalists describe the four qualities—heat, coldness, moisture, and dryness—that fall under the senses as ‘manifest’, and those that do not, as ‘occult’. The occult qualities of a body are said to proceed directly from its substantial form. That, then, is how the argument runs. But occult qualities prove embarrassing to a philosophy that takes common sensory experience as the basis for causal explanation, since the cause of such qualities remains outside the limits of sense perception. Expositors of traditional philosophy register this embarrassment in different ways. In his standard reference book De rerum definitionibus (1600), Franciscus Piccolomini offers examples of occult qualities, but no explanation for them: ‘similiter numerant qualitates, quas occultas virtutes appellant, per quas ambra paleas, lapis Herculeus ferrum trahit’ (they also count as qualities those things, which they call ‘occult virtues’, whereby amber attracts straw, and the magnet, iron) (1600: 346). A late seventeenth-century scholastic writer, E´tienne Chauvin, offers a fuller definition in his Lexicus philosophicus (1692): qualitas occulta est potentia abscondita vel latens, qua res naturales aliquid agunt, vel patiuntur, cujus vero ratio a priori reddi nequit, utpote a forma substantiale immediate emanans. Vel dicitur: potentia sensibus haud exposita, quaeque effectibus tantum deprehenditur, ideoque proprio nomine designari nequit.38 (An occult quality is a secret or hidden power, by means of which natural things perform or suffer some effect whose true cause or relationship [ratio] cannot be deduced, since it emanates immediately from a substantial form. Or, to express this differently, it is a power, scarcely accessible to the senses, which can be apprehended in its effects alone, and this is why no adequate word can be found for it.) 36

See Le Gallois 1674: i. 20–101 (on substantial form). Ross 1645a: 59; CHSP: 516–18. 38 Quoted in Gilson 1979: 335; see Hutchison 1982, 1991; P. R. Blum 1992 (on the ancient and medieval background). 37

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The magnet feels cold to the touch because it has the manifest quality of coldness; it falls to earth because it possesses the manifest quality of heaviness. Why then does it attract iron? Traditionalists such as Chauvin are left with a critical choice between experience and explanation. Those who prefer explanations must name an occult cause of attraction that cannot be deduced from experience; those, on the other hand, who emphasize experience must ultimately concede that they can find no adequate term to explain the effects observed. Chauvin sets out both choices in his textbook; his ‘vel dicitur’ (or, to express this differently) marks a critical hesitation between them. But most traditional natural philosophers, as one would expect, choose explanation over experience. An anonymous speaker at the Bureau d’Adresse offers one example of that choice in a debate about the causes of tidal motion: Comme il seroit donc inutile de demander [quelle] est la cause du mouvement d’un cheval, veu que les plus ignorans reconnoissent qu’il vient de son ame, qui est sa forme: ainsi y a-il plus d’apparence d’attribuer ce mouvement a` sa forme qu’a` aucune autre chose [ . . . ] C’est une forme intelligente et assistante de la mer, et qui luy a este´ donne´e de Dieu de`s le commencement, pour la mouvoir.39 (Just as it would be fruitless to wonder [what] the cause of a horse’s motion is, given that even the most ignorant people recognize that it comes from the horse’s soul, which is its form; so it seems more obvious to attribute the movement to its form than to anything else [ . . . ] It is an intelligent enabling form of the sea which was given to it by God from the very beginning to set it into motion.)

This speaker explains the sea’s motion by lending it a substantial form or, as he says of the horse in his simile, a ‘soul’.40 Explanations that involve souls privilege, in Aristotelian terms, formal and final causes over efficient and material ones: they allow the speaker here to attribute tidal motion to the God-given ‘intelligence’ of the sea. Schools philosophers, like their anonymous representative at the Bureau d’Adresse, tend to choose explanation over experience. They explain insensible causes with manifest effects as nature’s closely guarded secrets. 39 Renaudot and Renandot 1638–55: i. 359–60 (conf. 19) (an error in the pagination means that the first page is marked ‘459’). 40 Des Chene 1996: 75; Roux 1996: 64–6.

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The je-ne-sais-quoi, in its various lexical forms, allows traditional thinkers to name the secret nature of an individual being all the way from its outlying occult qualities to its underlying substantial form. The Acade´mie Franc¸aise dictionary notes that opium, a drug whose ‘dormitive virtue’ is well known, has damaging side effects: ‘il y a je ne sc¸ay quoy de malin en cette plante-la` [ . . . ] elle a une vertu, une qualite´ maligne’ (there is I know not what in that plant that is malign [ . . . ] it has a malign quality or virtue).41 The pronominal form je ne sais quoi de adds a penumbra of inexplicability here to the malign effect of the drug. Franc¸ois de Belleforest describes the prodigious natural history of basil in similar terms: ‘les anciens [ . . . ] ont trouve´ je ne sc¸ay quoy de prodigieux en la plante que nous appelons vulgairement Basilic’ (the ancients found I know not what that is prodigious in the plant that we commonly call basil).42 Richelet uses the je-ne-sais-quoi (n.) when glossing the term pointe: ‘ce mot se dit du vin et veut dire qu’il y a un je ne sai quoi dans le vin, qui plait et qui chatouille’ (this word is used of wine and means that there is a je-ne-sais-quoi in the wine that pleases and tickles [the palate]).43 Richelet’s readers are offered here a brief demonstration—couched in a language they can understand—in the art of recognizing a fine wine by virtue of the occult qualities emanating from its substantial form. Bouhours, like Richelet, draws a semantic connection between occult qualities and the je-ne-sais-quoi. But where Richelet used the former to explain the latter, Bouhours inverts the relation between explicandum and explicans, and the je-ne-sais-quoi becomes the secret of nature underlying all occult qualities: ces acce´s si reglez, ces frissons et ces chaleurs, ces intervalles dans un mal qui dure des anne´es entieres, ne sont-ce pas autant de je ne sc¸ay quoy? Et n’en est-ce pas un aussi que le flux et le reflux de la mer; que la vertu de l’aiman, que toutes les qualitez occultes des Philosophes?44 (Are these orderly bouts of illness, these shivering fits of hot and cold, and intermissions during a long illness anything other than so many je-ne-saisquoi? And is the same not true of the ebb and flow of the tides, the magnet’s virtue, and all the occult qualities of the philosophers?) 41 Acade´mie Franc¸aise 1694: ‘malin’; we return to the dormitive virtue of opium in Sect. 2.2.2, below. 42 Belleforest 1597: 94, 54; see Ce´ard 1977: 317–36. 43 Richelet 1681: ‘pointe’; T. Corneille 1695: ‘saveur’. 44 Bouhours 1962: 147.

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Substantial form is a metaphysical substratum about which one can say only two things: namely, what perceptible qualities it supports, and the brute fact that it exists to support them.45 These are the two defining elements of Bouhours’s je-ne-sais-quoi: ‘il est bien plus aise´ de le sentir que de le connoistre’ (it is much easier to perceive than to know); ‘[c’est] une chose, qui ne subsiste que parce qu’on ne peut dire ce que c’est’ (it is something that subsists only because no one can say what it is).46 The scholastic tradition provides Bouhours with what might be called the philosophical substratum of his polite conversations, or to pursue a geological metaphor, their bedrock. In this bedrock Bouhours allows the je-ne-sais-quoi to settle. His use of the word follows scholastic explanations in their progression from nature’s hidden physical qualities to the inner core of its substance. The je-ne-sais-quoi, for him, is nature’s God-given secret. 2.1.3. The Proponents of Traditional Explanations Who proposed traditional explanations by occult qualities and substantial forms? Seventeenth-century critics associate them with natural philosophers, doctors, and natural magicians alike. These groups are distinct in one sense, for where philosophers seek causal knowledge of the je-ne-sais-quoi, doctors and magicians tend to put the je-ne-sais-quoi to practical use.47 But the Cartesian commentator on natural philosophy Jacques du Roure, to give one typical example, nevertheless tars these different groups with the same brush: ‘presque tous les Chimistes parlent d’un Arche´e inconnu [ . . . ] Tous les Medecins ensemble et les Philosophes recourent a` certaines Proprietez Specifiques, pour rendre raison des effets dont ils ignorent la cause’ (almost all alchemists talk of an unknown archeus [ . . . ] All the doctors put together and the philosophers have recourse to certain specific properties in order to account for effects whose causes they do not know).48 Traditional scientists and practitioners of arts like medicine and natural magic are all guilty, it seems, of concealing their ignorance beneath the same obscure notions. 45

46 Des Chene 1996: 75. Bouhours 1962: 140, 150. Natural magicians, like well-meaning doctors, put occult qualities to legitimate use; demonic magicians exploit them on behalf of the devil (Clark 1997: 233). 48 Du Roure 1654: 57–8 (§.73); see also Pascal: L. 44–5; S. 78; Robert Boyle 1979: 120–3; Leibniz 1990: 52. 47

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The charge is a powerful one, and it has continued to be made by historians of this period. It has two functions: to consign an entire world of intellectual disciplines and practices to the rubbish bin of history, and to prepare a new era of rational science free from the old errors and deceits of magic and theology.49 This version of events long conditioned the historiography of the ‘Scientific Revolution’—starting with the very name given to the period. Michel Foucault offers an extreme example of this view in his early historical studies: he states that the period between Montaigne and Descartes is marked by ‘une rupture essentielle dans le monde occidental’ (an essential break in the Western world).50 But, as I argued in the Introduction, above, he offers no convincing account of the processes or agents through which such radical epistemic change might have taken place. Many historians of the early modern period now argue that the view obscures the forces for intellectual innovation at work in so-called traditional disciplines and practices. Innovative sixteenth-century figures have been revived: they include Girolamo Fracastoro, who reinterprets spiritual sympathies as quasi-atomistic material seeds bearing contagion; Paracelsus, who recasts astral, alchemical, and scholastic concepts in an iatrochemical doctrine of universal correspondences;51 Girolamo Cardano, who classifies phenomena on the margins of human perception and understanding as forms of ‘subtlety’; and their seventeenth-century successor Daniel Sennert, who attempts to place occult qualities at the centre of a reformed Aristotelian physics by subjecting them to a taxonomy.52 Reviving such figures helps to moderate the radical claims made by the new philosophers and supported by their advocates in the historiographical debate. Some historians argue that the role of medical and magical practices in the making of modern science needs to be reassessed; others seek to demonstrate the continuing vitality of the various seventeenthcentury Aristotelianisms.53 Traditional philosophers, doctors, and natural magicians all have their advocates in the historiographical debate. 49

50 Dear 2001: 28–9. Foucault 1966: 64; 1972: 58. Nutton 1990 (on Fracastoro); Dear 2001: 49–52; Webster 1982 (on Paracelsus). 52 Ce´ard 1977: 338–50; Maclean 1983, 1984 (on Cardano); Hutchison 1982 (on Sennert). 53 Henry 1997: 46–55; Clark 1997 (on forms of magic); Maclean 2002: 333–9 (on medicine); Mercer 1993 (on Aristotelianisms). 51

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A detailed contribution to this debate is not my present purpose. For one thing, the debate tends to privilege the ideas of the learned few, whereas my chosen term appears in middlebrow vernacular texts. It is worth perhaps noting, however, that these middlebrow texts do corroborate the view that philosophers, doctors, and magicians all rely on traditional explanations by occult qualities. Medicine and magic are strongly affiliated, in institutional and epistemological terms, to the natural philosophy of the schools.54 Doctors and magicians draw directly on scholastic principles (hylomorphic metaphysics, substantial form, elements, qualities, and so on) when accounting for their practice.55 One traditional writer on medicine, Alexander Ross, observes that patients urinate blood after the Spanish fly (cantharis) has been applied to their extremities. He explains that the fly’s manifest qualities would work only on the parts that it touched; ‘therefore this action [of the bladder] must be performed by an occult quality, or the specifical forme of the Fly’ (1651: 129). Ross is one of the many doctors and natural magicians who use scholastic principles to explain their use of preternatural effects.56 The scholastic framework does not act as an all-constraining Foucauldian episteme: some practitioners and thinkers criticize certain of its principles or adjust them to suit their practice. But it is true that a doctor like Ross is often tempted, if only for practical reasons, to conclude, in his words, that ‘the safest way is to acknowledge an occult quality’ (1651: 206). The continuing apparent stability of the scholastic tradition makes the temptation all too difficult to resist. Traditional doctors and natural magicians in this respect share the fortunes of schools philosophers, whose secret qualities they acknowledge, and on whose bedrock of explanation they rely.

2.2. the attack on tradition 2.2.1. The New Philosophers and the Je-Ne-Sais-Quoi Natural philosophy did not make a clean break with its past in the seventeenth century; but a complex set of changes does seem to have 54 55 56

Clark 1997: 228–32; Maclean 2002: 80–2. CHSP: 456; Maclean 2002: 236–8. See Bono 1995: 124; CHRP: 264–300; Millen 1985.

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taken place in that period as the schools tradition suffered a slow decline and multiple ‘new philosophies’ attempted to supplant it. The chief legacy of Montaigne and his contemporaries to seventeenth-century philosophy was perhaps, indeed, their very desire to see out the old and bring in the new. Natural philosophers from all over Europe—Bacon, Galileo, and Descartes the best known among them—all define their (very different) work by its novelty.57 All are united in their opposition to schools philosophy. Occult qualities and substantial forms are the focus for their attack on traditional explanations, which they criticize as being no more than a ‘refuge of ignorance’, using the je-ne-sais-quoi in its negative semantic operation to drive their point home. I shall examine the philosophical content of this attack shortly, but it needs first to be set in some historical context, and this means sketching the changes that the innovators brought to the transmission of natural philosophy, in other words its setting, audience, language, and genre. It is as a result of these changes that the je-ne-sais-quoi appears as a keyword in the debate about preternatural phenomena. Innovators in the seventeenth century created new settings and audiences for natural philosophy. Their aim was to shift the discipline from its central institutional setting, the schools, in which relatively few of them held posts.58 Royal courts, libraries, private homes, and botanical gardens all provided homes for new philosophical institutions.59 Two of these institutions, whose development in the first half of the seventeenth century has been well charted, are the academic society and the salon.60 The academic society and the salon both sought to undermine the philosophy of the schools by attracting members of both sexes from the intellectual and social elite; both promoted the elaboration and discussion of ideas by mixing social grace with learning, and pleasure with profit. Salon culture tended to favour the social elite, the discussion of ideas, the display of social grace, and the pleasure principle; academic societies privileged the other half of each couple. Madame de Rambouillet, at one end of the spectrum, established her salon as the fashionable place for literary figures to mingle with members of high society (especially women); the Cabinet Du Puy, at the other

57 59

CHSP: 35–74. Dear 2001: 101–30.

58

CHSP: 13–14; Ribard 2000: 11–13. 60 Viala 1985: 15–51, 132–7; Harth 1992: 15–64.

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end, brought a select group of male scholars together in the more learned setting of a library. Many academic societies and salons fell between these two extremes. One of these, the Bureau d’Adresse, was conceived by its founder The´ophraste Renaudot as a forum for individuals to exchange items of all kinds, above all, learning and ideas. Two confe´rences (‘debates’) were held each week in the Bureau d’Adresse from August 1633 until September 1642.61 The printed proceedings of these debates, which consist of a simple enumeration of anonymous opinions, provide rich information about both the spectrum of explanations available and the terms in which they are articulated. The Cartesian physicist Jacques Rohault, a friend of Molie`re, delivered weekly lectures in his own house during the 1650s and 1660s; the audience is said to have included people of all ages and professions, and in particular, society ladies.62 Rohault was also a member of the Acade´mie Bourdelot, which met to discuss the natural sciences during the second half of the century. Its historian Le Gallois declares proudly of the academy: ‘on n’y e´pouse aucun parti’ (no single cause is espoused there); ‘tout le monde est bien venu dans l’Acade´mie’ (all are welcome in the Academy).63 Renaudot, Rohault, Bourdelot, and other innovators brought philosophy to a wider and more mixed audience than it ever enjoyed as a university discipline. They claim to have established not just a new setting for philosophy, but one that was common to all. The idea that academies and salons were all-inclusive is a utopian exaggeration. Evidence suggests that salons were socially heterogeneous only in that they mixed the old and new nobility with the newly powerful professional classes. These were groups united by their possession of wealth, which gave them a community of interest, and by their need to cultivate signs of quality if they were to be recognized as part of the elite.64 Academies and salons were the place, then, in which the interests of two groups coincided: the polite elite, which could there acquire the culture that it needed in order to maintain its distinctive quality; and the new philosophers, who sought the favour and protection of that elite. In her study of 61

Solomon 1972: 60–100; Mazauric 1994. Rohault 1978: 42–8; Gouhier 1978: 71. Le Gallois 1675: 38–49, 62, 74. 64 Moriarty 1988: 41–52 (quoting Lougee 1976); I return to this issue in Ch. 4, below. 62 63

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Cartesian women, Erica Harth warns against the temptation to celebrate salon culture as a liberation for women, on the grounds that they remained second-class citizens in the largely male seventeenth-century republic of letters.65 One might add that salon culture itself excluded many more women than it ever included, since its criterion of selection reflected the interests of a dominant class more strongly than those of an oppressed gender. The social configuration of academies and salons tended particularly to marginalize unlearned rural labourers (of both sexes) and professional scholars (all male).66 New philosophers regularly distinguish themselves from their counterparts in the schools by ascribing to them the vices of arrogance, lack of taste, and ignorance: in a word, ‘pedantry’. They commonly insult professional scholars (or ‘pedants’), as we shall see, by comparing them to labourers (or ‘peasants’). This gibe suggests that both groups suffered a common exclusion from the new institutions of learning and conversation. Seventeenthcentury new philosophy deliberately seeks to include itself within the polite world of its intended readers. The concept of a ‘republic of letters’ tends to obscure the social codes that its members were required to manipulate.67 These codes become increasingly visible in the new institutions of learning as these grow in popularity and influence. Renaudot’s academy, although initially open to all, seems to have become increasingly selective about its membership; the Acade´mie Bourdelot admits ‘pedants’, but only to treat them as objects of ridicule; English experimental philosophers, Steven Shapin has argued, also shared the codes and prejudices of polite culture.68 The point is an important one. But it should not be overstated: in placing polite culture at the ‘origins’ of experimental philosophy, for example, it seems that Shapin overlooks the difference between the transmission of ideas (where social factors tend to play a determining role) and the formation of truth (where they do not). The weaker claim carries greater force here. Innovators exploited the polite codes of the elite in order to establish new places for the transmission of philosophy outside the institutional setting of the schools. 65

66 Harth 1992: 24, 55. Moriarty 1988: 24–38, 96–100. For an alternative view, see Bots and Waquet 1997: 114. 68 See Renaudot and Renaudot 1638–55: i. fo. A3r (‘Avis au lecteur’); Mazauric 1994; Le Gallois 1675: 74–5; Shapin 1994. 67

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Innovators created new linguistic forms and literary genres in which to transmit philosophy to its changing audience. This is an important development, since the potential readership of books is wider and more diverse than the membership of any salon or learned society could ever be. The books published by the new philosophers distinguish themselves from traditional learned works in their material, formal, and generic features. They tend to be printed by publishers of literary texts, and in pocketbook formats or journals rather than in the larger format of university textbooks; they are generally written not in Latin, but in vernacular languages, and not as systematic treatises or quæstiones, but in genres that mix profit with pleasure.69 These mixed and pluralizing genres—which include essays, letters, maxims, confe´rences, dialogues, and entretiens—enable writers to mediate and refract technical issues in natural philosophy to a wider polite readership outside the schools. In that sense they are all examples of the early modern ‘polygraphic’ literary tradition.70 Polygraphic texts rely for the success of their mediations on a poetics of polite conversation. The Renaudots commend the Bureau d’Adresse debates for exhibiting the social virtue of honneˆtete´, claiming: ‘tous y rencontrent un divertissement honneste’ (all find there an honest distraction) (1638–55: i. 4). Le Gallois characterizes the tone of proceedings in the Acade´mie Bourdelot in similar terms: ‘j’entends la conversation avec des hommes doctes et polis, qui ne sc¸avent pas moins la science du monde que celle du cabinet’ (I mean conversation with learned and polite men, who are no less well versed in knowledge of the world than in knowledge of the study) (1675: 6–7). Dialogic genres allow new philosophers to show their allegiance to polite culture by embodying its modes of behaviour in their written works.71 They generally place a new philosopher in conversation with an inquisitive but unlearned member (male or female) of polite society.72 A third figure, that of the traditional 69 The conflict between innovators and traditionalists in natural philosophy is clearly related, in this respect and others, to the parallel ongoing literary querelle des anciens et des modernes; on this quarrel, see Cave 2003b: 162–4 (for a brief overview); Dejean 1996; Cronk 2002: 118–72. 70 For a concise account of the polygraphic tradition, see Cave 2003a. 71 One visible example is the postponement of controversial questions; see Le Gallois 1675: 5–6; Rohault 1978: 107; Beugnot 1994: 159; Cox 1992: 7. 72 Examples are Rohault 1978 and Fontenelle 1998.

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scholar, appears as a foil to the new philosopher in some contributions to the genre.73 The new philosopher, equally at home in the salon and the library, invariably plays the role of go-between for his polite interlocutor, translating learned terms and technical debates from scholastic Latin into a polite vernacular.74 The new philosopher in this way shows his interlocutor that he speaks his or her language; the interlocutor repays the compliment by subscribing to the new philosopher’s account of the technical debate they are discussing. Each group sees its pre-eminence confirmed by the other. Fontenelle gives a definitive statement of this double purpose in his Entretiens sur la pluralite´ des mondes (1686): ‘j’ai voulu traiter la philosophie d’une manie`re qui ne fuˆt point philosophique; j’ai taˆche´ de l’amener a` un point ou` elle ne fuˆt ni trop se`che pour les gens du monde, ni trop badine pour les savants’ (I have sought to treat philosophy in an unphilosophical manner; I have tried to bring it to a point where it was neither too dry for people in society nor too light-hearted for scholars) (1998: 50). Writing at the end of the century, Fontenelle continues to insist that he is changing the tradition of natural philosophical writing. Innovators constantly renew their alliance with polite culture against their ‘vulgar’ and ‘pedantic’ opponents. Montaigne is frequently invoked as their precursor in forging this alliance. Some innovators cite the chapter ‘De l’art de confe´rer’ (iii. 8) in which Montaigne advocates the ‘art of discussion’ between friends as an alternative to scholastic disputation. Montaigne, writing with aristocratic disdain in that chapter, strips schools philosophers of their institutional trappings, their recourse to the authority of Aristotle, and their use of scholastic Latin in order to unmask their learning as ignorance: j’aymeroy mieux que mon fils apprint aux tavernes a` parler, qu’aux escholes de la parlerie. Ayez un maistre e´s arts, conferez avec luy [ . . . ] Qu’il oste son chapperon, sa robbe et son latin; qu’il ne batte pas nos aureilles d’Aristote tout pur et tout cru, vous le prendrez pour l’un d’entre nous, ou pis.75 (I would rather have my son learn to speak in the taverns than in the schools of talk. Take a Master of Arts, converse with him [ . . . ] Let him strip off his

73 74 75

Examples are Galilei 1953 and Descartes 1997. Pascal’s Lettres provinciales (1656–7) are a prominent example of this strategy. Montaigne: iii. 8, 927b; F 859; see also i. 25, 26, 159c–161c.

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hood, his gown, and his Latin; let him not beat our ears with pure and undigested Aristotle; and you will take him for one of us, or worse.)

It is free and open-ended conversation rather than institutional disputation that sharpens the mind: ‘le plus fructueux et naturel exercice de notre esprit, c’est a` mon gre´ la confe´rence’ (the most fruitful and natural exercise of our mind, in my opinion, is discussion) (iii. 8, 922b; F 855). Montaigne’s decision to displace philosophical questions from their traditional setting by writing in the vernacular polygraphic form of the Essais reflects this conviction. Montaigne, as a result, comes to be seen as a father figure by seventeenth-century innovators. Renaudot is said to have acted on the proposal made by Montaigne in the chapter ‘D’un defaut de nos polices’ (Of a lack in our administrations) (i. 35) when he founded his Bureau d’Adresse.76 Renaudot and Le Gallois, echoing Montaigne, insist that discussion (‘la conference’) is the most excellent and necessary form of communication in the world; Grenaille describes Montaigne as the great enemy of pedantry; Pascal refers to him as ‘l’incomparable auteur de L’Art de confe´rer’.77 New philosophers such as Bacon, Descartes, Boyle, and Leibniz borrow from Montaigne the title of his book when they adopt, in Boyle’s words, ‘that form of writing, which (in imitation of the French) we call essays’.78 Montaigne nowhere uses the term essai as a generic category. But his seventeenth-century successors in the polygraphic tradition claim him as a precursor of their formal and generic innovations. These innovations proved so successful that they forced traditionalists to adopt them in turn. Alexander Ross, Antoine Rochon, JeanBaptiste de la Grange, and Gabriel Daniel all published defences of traditional natural philosophy against the innovators in the second half of the century.79 Ross, a Protestant, resists attempts by English Catholics such as Kenelm Digby to reform natural philosophy; Rochon and Daniel (both Jesuits) and La Grange (a member of the Oratory) defend Catholic theology and schools philosophy against the likes of Gassendi, Descartes, and Rohault. All three 76

Solomon 1972: 38–9. Renaudot and Renaudot 1638–55: i. 1 (pref.); Le Gallois 1675: 6–7; Grenaille 1642: 9; Pascal 1964– : iii. 423 (De l’Esprit ge´ome´trique, pt. 2). 78 Robert Boyle 1965–6: i. 303; on the genre, see De Obaldia 1995. 79 The texts are Ross 1645a, 1645b, 1651; Rochon 1672; La Grange 1675. 77

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have their texts printed in neat pocket-size formats, choose to write in the vernacular, and adopt innovative literary genres. Ross employs a poetics of conversation in his animadversions; Rochon frames his text as a letter written by a philosopher to a Cartesian among his friends; La Grange’s title, Les Principes de la Philosophie, contre les nouveaux Philosophes (1675), recalls one of Descartes’s most celebrated texts; Daniel uses a variety of literary forms including fictional travel narrative, dialogue, and epistolary exchange in his anti-Cartesian Voyage du monde de Descartes (1690) and Suite du voyage du monde de Descartes (1696).80 La Grange describes why he has decided to write his defence of traditional philosophy in French in the following terms: la plupart des Livres de nos nouveaux Philosophes sont Franc¸ois [ . . . ] Je ne sc¸ay comment il est arrive´ que maintenant les plus sc¸avants mesme ayment mieux les Livres Franc¸ois que les Latins; il semble qu’on neglige le Latin, parce qu’il est trop vieux, et que cette Langue doit courir la mesme fortune que la Philosophie ordinaire, dont l’antiquite´ paroist desagreable.81 (Most of the books written by our new philosophers are in French [ . . . ] I do not know how it has come about that even the most learned prefer French books to Latin ones. It seems that Latin is being neglected, on the grounds that it is too old, and that this language must suffer the same fate as ordinary philosophy, whose antiquity now seems rebarbative.)

La Grange, like his opponents, connects the waning fortunes of Latin with those of the schools. Traditionalists, he says, have allowed twenty years to pass without answering Descartes’s criticisms of their substantial forms (1675: 41): he and his colleagues must adopt their opponents’ formal innovations if their rearguard action is to be effective. This they do by redescribing the vices of which they are accused as virtues, and the virtues that the innovators claim to possess, as vices. They argue that the longevity of the schools tradition proves its superiority to newfangled alternatives.82 They seek to undermine their opponents’ image as figures of mediation, as polite gobetweens, by contesting their credentials. La Grange dismisses Digby’s position in the learned world, arguing that he reasons as a 80 Ross 1645a; Daniel 1691: p. iv (‘Ide´e ge´ne´rale de l’ouvrage’); 1696: 166–218 and 221–47. 81 La Grange 1675: 44. 82 La Grange 1675: Avv–Avir (pref.); Ross 1651: A3r–v (pref.).

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knight, not as a philosopher; Rochon insists that the new philosophers have no place in polite society, given their uncivilized attitude towards tradition.83 The new mechanical philosophy of Descartes is fit only for mechanics: polite society should look no further than Aristotle.84 Jesuits like Bouhours, Rapin, and Boutauld make this polite form of Aristotelian orthodoxy their own in the third quarter of the seventeenth century by distancing themselves from the schools and cultivating the profile of learned wits. The publishing strategy of Les Entretiens d’Ariste et d’Euge`ne is designed to promote this mixed profile, with the text appearing in the prestigious quarto printing associated with learned publications and the pocketbook format of vernacular literature in the same year.85 The way in which Bouhours and others choose to defend traditional philosophy reflects their attempt to change with the times, then, but also the innovators’ success in creating new places, forms, and genres for natural philosophy. This is the context in which the je-ne-sais-quoi appears in the debate about occult qualities and substantial forms. The term is not picked up by French writers alone; as we shall see in the next section, its English cognates are used to the same end. This is probably no coincidence, since close relations exist between vernacular writers on natural philosophy in England and France during this period.86 Traces of Montaigne’s Essais, which were translated by John Florio into a richly vernacular version (1603), can be found in the work of English literary writers (Shakespeare and Jonson) as well as philosophers (Bacon, Burton, and Boyle).87 The educational reformer Samuel Hartlib sought permission from Parliament in 1647 to establish an Office of Address on the lines of Renaudot’s Bureau d’Adresse; George Havers later published English translations of all the Bureau’s proceedings.88 Natural philosophers associated with the Royalist cause, such as Thomas Hobbes and Kenelm Digby, took an active part in French intellectual life while in exile 83

La Grange 1675: 306; Rochon 1672: 129–30; see also Ross 1645a: 1–2. Rochon 1672: 182–3, 188–9, 162–5; see also Fontenelle 1998: 64. This does not go unnoticed: Barbier d’Aucour complains that Bouhours has added unnecessary appendices merely to fill a quarto (1776: 169–70). See also Beugnot 1990: 172. 86 More work needs to be done on these relations; for a useful brief overview, see Henry 1997: 61–7. 87 On Florio’s Montaigne, see Yates 1934: 213–46; Boutcher 1997. 88 Havers 1664; Havers and Davies 1665. 84 85

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during the Civil War; Le Gallois expresses admiration for the Royal Society in his polite conversation about the new places of learning.89 In England and France alike, attempts to explain nature’s secrets oppose traditional thinkers and new philosophers, with both groups seeking to win the hearts and minds of a new polite readership. 2.2.2. Qualities and Forms as Refuges of Ignorance The je-ne-sais-quoi is one visible lexical site of the conflict between innovators and traditionalists. New philosophers use the term to attack traditional explanations in natural philosophy as a ‘refuge of ignorance’, whereas their opponents represent the je-ne-sais-quoi as a true secret of nature that the innovators cannot explain. For now, I shall examine the arguments and strategies deployed by new philosophers, from Bacon and Descartes onwards, to point out the problems inherent in the traditional explanation of preternatural effects. We have seen that traditional thinkers ascribe preternatural effects to spiritual causes in the natural, supernatural, or universal realms. All three explanations come under attack from the new philosophers. Bacon dismisses theories that assume the universe to be one vital organism as ‘vast and bottomless follies’ (1996: ii. 641). Many thinkers accept the existence of remote and general supernatural causes—such as God—while insisting that they do not adequately explain particular physical effects and operations.90 Scholastic explanations that invoke spiritual causes in nature, such as occult qualities and substantial forms, come under most sustained fire from the innovators. Three main objections are offered about such explanations: that they are superfluous; that they are anthropomorphic; and that they fail to explain the phenomena even as they claim to do so.91 New philosophers and their allies, in making these objections, deploy the je-ne-sais-quoi in its negative semantic operation to uncover a refuge of ignorance within traditional knowledge. 89

Henry 1982: 228–9 (on Digby in France); Le Gallois 1675: 2–3, 31–2. Renaudot and Renaudot 1638–55: i. 596 (conf. 32); Browne 1981: 365; Ross 1651: 135. 91 For a clear exposition of these issues to which I am indebted, see Roux 1996: 57–80. 90

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The first objection is that the natural principles invoked are superfluous. This is because they are either too particular or too general to have any explanatory force. When discussing explanations that rely on particular occult qualities, some critics invoke the celebrated nominalist principle of elegance known as Ockham’s razor, according to which entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity.92 Descartes’s stroke against ‘tout ce grand attirail de qualitez’ (that whole great paraphernalia of ‘qualities’) relies implicitly on this principle.93 Robert Boyle, in turn, criticizes the schoolmen for entertaining ‘I know not how many qualities’.94 New philosophers also take Ockham’s razor to the use of nature as a general principle, complaining that this is one example where scholastics illegitimately apply a universal metaphysical concept to particular physical phenomena.95 Boyle argues that the notion of nature is often misused in this way to represent a mind-forged ‘semi-deity’ that mediates between what he calls ‘the cosmical mechanism’ and God.96 Boyle uses the native English form of the je-ne-sais-quoi to assert that ‘nature’ in this sense of the word is surplus to requirements, even blasphemous: ‘I think it my duty to pay my gratitude, not to I know not what, but to that deity whose wisdom and goodness [ . . . ] contrived the world’ (1996: 10). The negative je-ne-sais-quoi is a sharp seventeenth-century blade, fitted in Ockham’s razor, which critics take to the traditional notion of nature. The second objection made against traditional explanations is that they are anthropomorphic in the sense that they confuse body and soul or matter and spirit. The very term ‘substantial form’ is redolent of such confusion. This objection comes in two distinct versions. The first version is that schools philosophers confuse the contents of their souls with the properties of material bodies. This objection is made by Descartes when he considers the example of a sensible quality such as colour in his Principes de la Philosophie (1647).97 That we all see a lemon as yellow cannot be explained, he 92 Renaudot and Renaudot 1638–55: i. 66 (conf. 4); Le Gallois 1674: i. 99; see also Compagnon 1980: 23. 93 Descartes 1964–76: ix, Principes, iv. 201; see also Browne 1981: 158–9. 94 Robert Boyle 1979: 22; see also Digby 1644: 2; Rohault 1978: 114. 95 Robert Boyle 1979: 8–9; Du Roure 1654: er–v; see also Roux 1996: 53. 96 Robert Boyle 1996: 10, 37; see also Galilei 1953: 234–5. 97 On Malebranche’s use of the same argument, see Moriarty 2003: 164–7.

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argues, by saying that the lemon possesses the corresponding quality of yellowness. For this explanation involves the illegitimate projection of our sensory experience into the body of the lemon. To make his point, he draws upon the je-ne-sais-quoi: il est donc e´vident, lors que nous disons a` quelqu’un que nous appercevons des couleurs dans les objets, qu’il en est de meˆme que si nous luy disions que nous appercevions en ces objets je ne sc¸ay quoy dont nous ignorons la nature, mais qui cause pourtant en nous un certain sentiment, fort clair et manifeste, qu’on nomme le sentiment des couleurs.98 (It is evident therefore that, when we tell someone we perceive colours in objects, it is as if we were telling them that we perceived in these objects I know not what whose nature we do not know, but which causes in us a certain sensation, one which is very clear and manifest, and which we call the sensation of colour.)

Descartes uses the pronominal je-ne-sais-quoi here to drain of their real being those sensible qualities which scholastics place in bodies. That his chosen phrase is constituted by a first-person singular verb allows him to emphasize that a scholastic quality is merely the experience of a subject (the traditional philosopher) masquerading as an explanation. Descartes spells out the nescience built into the pronoun (‘je ne sc¸ay quoy dont nous ignorons la nature’) to stress that these qualities, which are more obscure than the experience they purport to explain, merely provide a refuge of ignorance. Those who assert that colour is a real quality say no more, he concludes in the following sentence, than that ‘il y a je ne sc¸ay quoy dans les objets’ (there is in objects I know not what). Descartes uses the je-ne-sais-quoi in its adjectival and pronominal forms to negative effect on two further occasions in the Principes.99 He establishes the word’s use, in the literature of the new philosophy, as a weapon with which to attack scholastic explanations. The second version of this objection says that traditional natural philosophers explain the behaviour of a material thing as if it were a body that contained a soul; in other words, as if it were human. Hobbes mocks those who explain the fall of heavy things ‘as if stones and metals had a desire, or could discern the place they would be at, as man does’ (1996: 451). Pascal, in the ‘Disproportion de l’homme’ fragment of the Pense´es, opposes traditional explanations on the 98 99

Descartes 1964: ix, Principes, i. 70. Descartes 1964–76: ix, Principes, ii. 7, iv. 201.

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same grounds. Pascal’s project is of course not that of the innovators: it is to undermine the certainties of the new natural philosophy as well as the old in an attempt to persuade all that truth is to be sought in the living God alone (see Sect. 3.2.3, below). But traditional philosophers come in for criticism because they express common errors in technical terms. We humans all remain caught in the midst of nature, out of all proportion to it, but ever hungry to explain our experience. Mistakenly assuming that we are the measure of all things, we project our complex mixture of matter and spirit into simple material things: ‘nous les teignons de nos qualite´s, et empreignons [de] notre eˆtre compose´ toutes les choses simples que nous contemplons’ (we tinge them with our own qualities, and imprint our composite being upon all the simple things we contemplate).100 Traditional philosophers transform this common error into explanations by sympathy and antipathy: De la` vient que presque tous les philosophes confondent les ide´es des choses et parlent des choses corporelles spirituellement et des spirituelles corporellement. Car ils disent hardiment que les corps tendent en bas, qu’ils aspirent a` leur centre, qu’ils fuient leur destruction, qu’ils craignent le vide, qu’ils ont des inclinations, des sympathies, des antipathies, qui sont toutes choses qui n’appartiennent qu’aux esprits. Et en parlant des esprits, ils les conside`rent comme en un lieu, et leur attribuent le mouvement d’une place a` une autre, qui sont choses qui n’appartiennent qu’aux corps.101 (This explains why almost all philosophers confuse the ideas they have of things, and why they talk about corporeal things spiritually and about spiritual things corporeally. For they say boldly that bodies fall of their own accord, that they long for their centres, flee their destruction, abhor a vacuum, and possess inclinations, sympathies, and antipathies, all of which are things that belong to spirits alone. And when talking about spirits, they consider them as being in a place and attribute to them movement from one place to another, which are things that belong to bodies alone.)

Traditional philosophers, caught in a chiasmus of confusion, treat bodies as if they possess spirits and spirits as if they possess bodies.102 This confusion accounts for ‘almost’ all the philosophers, Pascal says, making an exception for Descartes, whose criticism he is repeating here.103 Pascal radicalizes his attack in a fragment whose 100 101 102

Pascal: L. 199; S. 230; see also Bacon 1996: iv. 54. Pascal: L. 199; S. 230; I follow Sellier here. See also Le Gallois 1674: i. 35–6. 103 See Carraud 1992: 272–86. See Carraud 1992: 279–81.

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subject is related to his unfinished treatise on the vacuum. This fragment is an extended hostile translation of the scholastic axiom that nature abhors a vacuum: qu’y a-t-il de plus absurde que de dire que des corps inanime´s ont des passions, des craintes, des horreurs? Que des corps insensibles, sans vie, et meˆme incapables de vie, aient des passions, qui pre´supposent une aˆme au moins sensitive pour les recevoir? De plus, que l’objet de cette horreur fuˆt le vide? Qu’y a-t-il dans le vide qui leur puisse faire peur? Qu’y a-t-il de plus bas et de plus ridicule? Ce n’est pas tout. [On pre´tend] qu’ils aient en eux-meˆmes un principe de mouvement pour e´viter le vide. Ont-ils des bras, des jambes, des muscles, des nerfs?104 (What can be more absurd than saying that inanimate bodies have passions, fears, and abhorrences; that bodies insentient and lifeless, and even incapable of life, have passions, which presupposes their having at the very least sensitive souls capable of receiving such passions? And, what is more, that the object of this abhorrence should be the vacuum? What is there in the vacuum to scare them? What could be more base and ridiculous? But that is not all. [People claim] that these bodies possess an inner principle of movement in order to prevent a vacuum. Do they also possess arms, legs, muscles, and nerves?)

Pascal here performs a polemical reductio ad absurdum of the scholastic axiom: to say that nature abhors a vacuum need not, after all, imply that nature possesses arms and legs. But it does imply that nature has ‘a kind of soul’, as Boyle puts it, which is capable of feeling passions like horror.105 At such moments, traditional philosophers do seem to lapse into anthropomorphic thinking by projecting their experience into material bodies.106 The third and most widespread objection to traditional thinkers is that, despite their claims to the contrary, they fail to explain the phenomena. The je-ne-sais-quoi, in its negative semantic operation, serves to unmask traditional explanations as a pseudo-learned ‘refuge of ignorance’. The phrase inscitiæ asylum (refuge of ignorance) is used by the sixteenth-century Aristotelian Julius Caesar Scaliger in his defence of occult qualities against the attacks of Cardano and other innovators. Scaliger describes the phrase as their chief term of 104

Pascal: L. 958; S. 795; I follow Sellier here. Robert Boyle 1979: 38; Pascal 1964– : ii. 678. 106 See Des Chene 2000: 76–81 (for a defence of scholastic thought against this objection). 105

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abuse: ‘recentiores, qui detestantur occultas proprietates: easque inscitiæ asylum contumeliosis verbis vocant’ (the innovators, who despise occult qualities, call them with contumely a refuge of ignorance).107 This is certainly true of seventeenth-century innovators. For they make inscitiæ asylum a vernacular commonplace: Bacon dismisses those who invoke ‘a hidden property, a specifical virtue, and a fourth quality, and the like shifts of ignorance’; Hobbes complains that scholastics ‘put for cause of natural events, their own ignorance; but disguised in other words’; Pascal asserts that their ‘causes chime´riques [ . . . ] ne servent qu’a` couvrir l’ignorance de ce qui les inventent, et nourrir celle de leurs sectateurs’ (chimerical causes serve only to conceal the ignorance of those that invent them and to feed the ignorance of their followers).108 Jacques du Roure deals with the topic of occult qualities in his comparative exposition of Aristotelian and Cartesian physics (1654). He sides with Descartes, repeats the refuge of ignorance charge against traditional qualities and forms, and even reinforces this charge by drawing upon the adjectival form je ne sais quel in its negative operation: a` quel propos donq (si ce n’est peut-e´tre que nous voulions cacher notre ignorance sous des termes inconnus) a` quel propos recevrons-nous dans l’explication des choses natureles ces secrets instincts, ces qualitez ocultes et ces formes je ne sc¸ay-quelles qui remplissent aujourd’huy la Philosophie?109 (For what purpose then, unless perhaps because we wish to hide our ignorance beneath unknown terms, should we admit into explanations of natural things these secret instincts, occult qualities, and I know not what forms that abound today in philosophy?)

Du Roure uses the adjective je ne sais quel to spell out in plain language the ignorance that terms such as ‘occult qualities’ conceal. Innovators practise time and again this strategy of hostile translation by bringing terms from the Latin of the schools into the vernacular of the salon. The ‘refuge of ignorance’ topos allows critics to accuse traditional philosophers of committing four paralogisms, or errors of reasoning, 107 Scaliger 1557: exerc. 344, dist. 8; quoted in P. R. Blum 1992: 58. On Scaliger and Cardano, see Maclean 1984. 108 Bacon 1996: ii. 355; Hobbes 1996: 451; Pascal 1964– : ii. 688–9. See also Digby 1973: 15–16; Malebranche 1979–92: i. 948. 109 Du Roure 1654: 12–13 (§.18) (note Du Roure’s partial hyphenation of ‘je ne sc¸ay-quelles’).

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in their explanations: assigning the wrong cause, begging the question, falling into contradiction, and speaking unintelligibly. Sir Thomas Browne and the Port-Royal logicians Arnauld and Nicole list explanations by sympathy and nature’s abhorrence of the vacuum as instances of the wrong cause.110 Particular occult qualities and gravity provide the most celebrated cases of begging the question. Such terms can be used legitimately to name the explicandum; the paralogism occurs when they are transformed into the explanation itself. For to say that the magnet attracts iron because it possesses an attractive quality is to repeat the explicandum in the explicans. The use of a manifest quality such as gravity as an explicans comes in for similar treatment from Hobbes when he, after Galileo, argues that this amounts to saying that ‘bodies descend, or ascend, because they do’.111 Molie`re famously pokes fun at this form of explanation in his satire of traditional doctors, Le Malade imaginaire (1673). A pofaced young student, asked by his learned professors why opium induces sleep, gives the centuries-old answer: Mihi a docto Doctore Domandatur causam et rationem quare Opium facit dormire: A quoi respondeo, Quia est in eo Virtus dormitiva, Cujus est natura Sensus assoupire.112 (I have been asked by the learned doctor to give the cause and reason why opium induces sleep; to which I reply that there is in it a dormitive virtue whose nature is to dull the senses.)

Opium induces sleep, the aspiring doctor explains, because it has a particular virtus dormitiva, in other words, the power to induce sleep! ‘Bene, bene, bene, bene respondere’, his learned superiors intone, and the young man duly joins their ranks. Molie`re’s joke, like Pascal’s fragment on the vacuum, performs a reductio ad absurdum of scholastic explanations through a hostile translation. But their translations move in opposite directions, for where Pascal 110

Browne 1981: 25–6; Arnauld and Nicole 1965: 243–50. Hobbes 1996: 450; Galilei 1953: 234–5. 112 Molie`re 1971: ii. 1173; see also Pascal: L. 907; S. 451; Malebranche 1979–92: i. 640–1 (Recherche, vi. 2); Moriarty 2003: 242–3. 111

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moves horror vacui into the vernacular, Molie`re puts doctors speaking macaronic Latin on the stage. Molie`re’s joke confirms that the innovators’ attack on occult qualities had successfully spread to literary circles by the 1670s. The charge of question-begging has spread by then from occult qualities to scholastic qualities in general and their underlying metaphysics of substantial form. The anti-Aristotelian neo-atomist Pierre Gassendi and his English follower Walter Charleton claim that all scholastic qualities, whether manifest to the senses or occult, are in fact occult.113 In so doing they silently alter the meaning of ‘occult’ from ‘insensible’ to ‘inexplicable’.114 Falling into contradiction is the third paralogism with which traditional philosophers are charged. Boyle observes that schools philosophers award the qualities or accidents of things a real being that is in fact distinct from the individual substances in which they inhere. They do not simply say that the apple is green, for example, but that we experience it as green because it has the real quality of greenness. This draws schools philosophers into contradiction, says Boyle, for ‘they make them accidents in name, but represent them under such a notion as belongs only to substances’.115 Real accidents or qualities are akin to the smile of the Cheshire cat that Alice sees in Wonderland and which lingers even after the cat has vanished. They belong to the realm of the imagination alone. The fourth criticism levelled at scholastic explanations is that they are unintelligible. This criticism reveals a difference of view about causes themselves, for where new philosophers promote efficient and material causes in physical explanations, traditional natural philosophers necessarily privilege final causes in ascribing preternatural effects to a substantial form. But how, their opponents ask, can they hope to know the insensible purpose behind an observed natural phenomenon? Explanations that invoke substantial forms are unintelligible in that they explain an unknown phenomenon only by means of something equally, or still more, unknown: ‘to explain any effect by a substantial form’, Robert Boyle argues, ‘must be to declare (as they speak) ignotum per ignotius, or at least per æque ignotum’ (1979: 67). Boyle uses the logic of the schools here against 113 114 115

CHSP: 469–71; Charleton 1654: 341–2; see also Glanvill 1970: 171. On this see Hutchison 1982. Robert Boyle 1979: 22; Le Gallois 1674: i. 35–6.

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its own natural philosophers while quoting their Latin to hint at its obscurity. Critics use the je-ne-sais-quoi as a hostile vernacular translation that reveals the unintelligibility of substantial forms. Boyle describes it as his chief aim to convince his gentle reader ‘that almost all sorts of qualities, most of which have been by the Schools either left unexplicated, or generally referred to I know not what incomprehensible substantial forms, may be produced mechanically’ (1979: 17). Du Roure, like Boyle, taxes substantial forms with superfluity and unintelligibility. He says of substantial form: ‘il faut pourtant avou¨er que la cause des efets propres a` chaque corps et que les Peripateticiens suposent leur est si inconnue¨, qu’ils ne la sauroient expliquer que par un je ne sc¸ay quoy’ (it must be confessed, however, that the cause of effects particular to each body, whose existence the Peripatetics suppose, is so unknown to them that they are able to explain it only by means of a je-ne-sais-quoi) (1654: 30 (§.38)). Aristotelian philosophers, Du Roure’s restrictive syntax implies, use the je-ne-sais-quoi as nothing more than a refuge of ignorance masquerading as an explanation. The current je-ne-sais-quoi is used in this manner to attack not just substantial forms, but the underlying hylomorphic principles of form, matter, and privation. Bacon, like Montaigne, attacks these principles with characteristic directness: ‘as for the pretty assertion that matter is like a common strumpet that desireth all forms, it is but a wandering notion.’116 Jacques Rohault sets about the same task with more circumspection in his Entretiens sur la philosophie (1671). Rohault offers his readers a polygraphic defence of Cartesian physics and its theological implications against the counterattacks of traditionalists.117 Rohault, writing at a time when it had become dangerous to side with the new philosophy against the reasserted Aristotelian orthodoxy of the schools, skilfully presents Descartes as a descendant of Aristotle who merely provides particular physical explanations of the latter’s general metaphysical concepts (1978: 105). This is necessary if the Philosopher’s legacy is to spur explanations of particular physical phenomena rather than provide a refuge of ignorance. Rohault’s Traite´ de physique (1670) presents this argument in a systematic form; the Entretiens treat it a 116 Bacon 1996: ii. 601 (Sylva sylvarum, §.800); on Montaigne, see Sect. 5.2.1, below. 117 For a detailed contextual account, see Rohault 1978: 31–60 (introd.).

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topic of polite conversation. M. N., Rohault’s interlocutor, wants to know whether his friend truly agrees with Aristotle. Rohault claims to follow Aristotle’s hylomorphic principles while arguing that Descartes alone makes these principles intelligible. To do so he draws upon Cartesian turns of phrase as well as arguments. In his criticisms of scholastic qualities, Descartes uses adjectival and pronominal forms of the je-ne-sais-quoi; writing in the 1670s, Rohault exploits the substantival term as a modish name. He starts with matter, which he defines in the Cartesian way as bodily extension while confessing: je ne puis vous dire nettement ce qu’en a pense´ Aristote. Il fait asse´s comprendre dans ses huit livres de physique, que par le mot hule¯, qu’on a traduit Mati ere, il entend un je ne sc¸ai quoi, qui est commun a` tous les Estres, et qui est le sujet de toutes les formes; ce qui convient fort bien a` la notion que j’ai de la Matiere; Mais comme il n’a pas explique´ en quoy consiste ce je ne sc¸ay quoy, qui est commun a` tous les Estres, on disputera toujours s’il n’a point entendu autre chose que ce que je viens de dire.118 (I cannot tell you exactly what Aristotle thought about it. He makes it clear enough in his eight books of physics that by the word hule¯, which has been translated as ‘matter’, he means a je-ne-sais-quoi which is common to all beings and the subject of all forms. This agrees very well with the notion I have of matter. But, as he did not explain what this je-ne-sais-quoi common to all beings consists of, people will always argue about whether or not he meant something other than what I have just said.)

Rohault plays here the role of the translator: he brings Aristotle’s concept of matter from Greek through Latin into the vernacular, revealing it as an underdetermined je-ne-sais-quoi whose definition Cartesians alone can complete. Aristotle’s concept of form receives the same treatment: ‘il fait assez comprendre qu’il entend par ces mots un je ne sc¸ai quoy, qui donne l’Estre a` la chose [ . . . ]; mais il n’explique en nulle part, la nature de ce je ne sc¸ay quoy’ (he makes it clear enough that he means by these words a je-ne-sais-quoi that gives being to the thing [ . . . ]; but nowhere does he explain the nature of this je-ne-sais-quoi) (1978: 114–15). Rohault reveals Aristotle’s hylomorphic principles to be no more than one I know not what desperately seeking another. Rohault’s polite interlocutor, M. N., agrees that form is nothing but a mere je-ne-sais-quoi requiring further explanation: 118

Rohault 1978: 112.

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je ne vois pas qu’en cecy les lumieres d’un Philosophe soyent plus grandes que celles d’une simple Paysanne, si ce n’est que l’un sc¸ait un mot que l’autre ne sc¸ait pas. En effet, quand une Paysanne voit e´clore un poulet sous une poule, elle comprend aussi bien que le plus habile Philosophe du monde, qu’il est survenu a` l’œuf, un je ne sc¸ai quoy qui lui fait perdre l’estre d’œuf, et qui luy donne l’estre de poulet; et elle n’est pas moins sc¸avante que le Philosophe, qu’en ce qu’elle ignore que ce je ne sc¸ay quoy s’appelle la Forme du poulet.119 (I cannot see how, in this, a philosopher’s enlightenment is any greater than that of a simple peasant woman, apart from the fact that one knows a word that is unknown to the other. For, when a peasant woman sees a chick hatching out underneath a hen, she understands as well as the world’s most skilful philosopher that the egg has undergone a je-ne-sais-quoi that has made it lose the being of an egg and acquire the being of a chick. She is no less learned than the philosopher, except that she does not know that this jene-sais-quoi is called the ‘form’ of the chick.)

M. N. clearly thinks that it is not good enough to answer the age-old question by explaining that what came first was neither the chicken, nor the egg, but its substantial form . . . He repeats the analogy that excludes pedants and peasants from the circles of the new philosophy. The je-ne-sais-quoi serves to unmask the empty metaphysical pretension of those traditional philosophers who talk in general of form and matter. Rohault also employs the je-ne-sais-quoi to this end—and with considerable success—in his Traite´ de physique (1671).120 Laudatory reviews of Rohault’s treatise appeared in the new learned journals of late seventeenth-century France and England. The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society commend Rohault for showing that the hylomorphic principles of Aristotelian thinkers are a refuge of ignorance in physics: ‘Matter [ . . . ] is, according to them, a something I know not what, and Form [ . . . ] such another I know not what; as if giving a meer Name to a thing not known, were enough to make it known.’121 That Rohault’s reviewer should adopt his use of the je-ne-sais-quoi (n.) indicates the term’s currency in this context on both sides of the Channel in the late decades of the seventeenth century.122 119

120 Rohault 1978: 115. Rohault 1672: i. 46 (i. 6). Royal Society 1671; see Rohault 1978: 63 (on the review in the Journal des Savants). 122 The term retains its currency in a related context at the end of the 17th cent. Locke, in his Essay concerning Human Understanding (1689), argues that our general notion of substance ‘is but a supposed, I know not what, to support those 121

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The je-ne-sais-quoi, by the 1670s, has become a lexical commonplace in vernacular discussions of natural philosophy. It encapsulates the crisis that has beset the discipline. The year 1671 is a key moment, for it sees the publication of polygraphic works by Rohault and Bouhours, who use the je-ne-sais-quoi for directly opposed semantic purposes.123 Traditional thinkers (such as Bouhours) can only explain their experience of the je-ne-sais-quoi by placing it in things as their secret spiritual principle. The adoption of the substantival term in its affirmative semantic operation reflects, at a lexical level, their transformation of a strange first-person experience into a substantial form. Earlier in the Entretiens, Bouhours uses the je-ne-sais-quoi in all its various lexical forms.124 In the course of his conversation on the topic, however, the substantival form is established, and Bouhours reveals what Rohault describes as ‘l’accouˆtumance [ . . . ] de penser que tout nom substantif signifie quelque sorte de substance’ (the habit of thinking that every noun substantive signifies some kind of substance) (1978: 114). Rohault and other innovators are correct to point out that those, like Bouhours, who make the substantival je-ne-sais-quoi into a substantial form do not advance the work of philosophy so much as halt it. For they place what Bachelard calls the ‘substantialist obstacle’ in its way (1999: 97–131). No secret quality or substantial form can explain the experience of the je-ne-sais-quoi in nature. 2.3. new explanations and their discontents 2.3.1. Two Approaches: Bacon and Descartes How, other than by occult qualities and the like, is it possible to explain those strange events in nature whose physical causes do not fall in the realm of experience? New philosophers produce different and often contradictory answers whose very proliferation indicates a residual unease about the question. All I can do here is indicate the diversity of these answers in the early modern period by briefly Ideas, which we call Accidents’ (1975: 305 (ii. 23); see also 296). It is not clear whether by ‘substance’ here he means a naked logical subject or a real thing; the debate is usefully summarized in Dawson 2003: ch. 7. In his reply to Locke, Leibniz defends the notion of substance as a naked logical subject (1990: 170 (ii. 23)). 123 124

I sketch the historical context for this moment in Sect. 2.3.2, below. See, e.g., Bouhours 1962: 82, 130, 136, and 139.

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comparing and contrasting the approaches taken by four figures, Bacon and Descartes in the early decades of the seventeenth century, and Newton and Leibniz a century or so later. This sketch should be enough to suggest that those who claim that natural philosophy witnesses a clean epistemic break in this period ignore the persistent crisis of explanation on which the study of nature thrives. I use the metaphors of crisis and geological movement to emphasize that the changes to natural philosophy in this period tend to be uneven and unsettling: it is easier to see out the old certainties than to bring in the new. At one point in his conversation, Bouhours compares the je-ne-sais-quoi to a ghost, alluding to the commonplace story in which the spirit of a murdered person returns to haunt the culprits at the scene of the crime (1962: 146). The je-ne-sais-quoi makes ghostly lexical apparitions of this kind in new explanations. The word reappears at those moments when the experience of the thing itself cannot be ignored or when mechanical explanations are haunted by the possible return of substantial forms. Bacon and Descartes offer contrasting approaches to the problem of how to replace occult qualities and substantial forms in natural philosophy. Preternatural phenomena confront traditional philosophers with the choice between offering a metaphysical explanation that cannot be deduced from experience or conceding that their experience cannot be explained. Bacon and Descartes each transform one of these alternatives. Bacon’s major innovation is to draw preternatural phenomena into a new natural history as articles for further investigation. Like scholastic thinkers, he continues to stress the importance of experience, but he alters the Aristotelian definition of experience as repeated sense perceptions held in the memory whose truth cannot be questioned. Bacon conceives of experience as a process more akin to that which we call ‘experimentation’, in other words, an actively conceived means of testing the external world and the testimony of the senses. Experience, he insists, should not be taken at face value: it ‘must be broken and grinded, and not whole, or as it groweth’ (1996: ii. 336). It should include preternatural particulars or ‘the effects of yet unknown properties’, which may serve to supplement the deficiency of our sense perceptions, for ‘the subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of the senses and understanding.’125 The 125

Bacon 1996: iii. 330; iv. 48.

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purpose of Baconian experience is to spur explanations in natural philosophy and practical inventions in technology alike. The two are interdependent for Bacon who, like many in the natural magic tradition, argues that one knows what a thing is if one knows how to make it.126 Bacon also proposes a new method of induction to arrive at universal axioms built on experiential particulars. Natural history, the meticulous description of such particulars, must precede and inform the axioms of natural philosophy.127 In The Advancement of Learning (1605), Bacon announces his intention to move instances of ‘nature erring or varying’ to the centre of his reformed natural history (1996: iii. 330). Instances of insensible forces (between material bodies and living creatures alike) occupy the final section of his natural history Sylva sylvarum (1627), which William Rawley published after Bacon’s death. Rawley presents this work as the raw materials with which Bacon, before his untimely demise, planned to construct a new edifice of inductive explanation (1996: ii. 336). Bacon’s explanatory ambitions indicate why his natural history contains no assertions of nescioquiddity. Sylva sylvarum, composed as a list of desiderata, illustrates the productive hesitations that characterize Bacon’s reformed natural history. The work includes common as well as personal experiences drawn from both written and anecdotal sources. Bacon has been criticized for relying on the same common experience whose use he attacks in scholastic natural philosophy.128 This is unfair, since instead of fastening such experience to necessary causal explanations (as scholastics tend to do), Bacon prefers instead to ‘set down particulars untried’. He considers that untried particulars, as he puts it, ‘level point-blank at the inventing of causes and axioms’.129 Experiential particulars operate in Baconian natural history as a heuristic spur to progress in explanation. These particulars include some of Bacon’s own experience, as his list of ‘experiments in consort touching the secret virtue of sympathy and antipathy’ reveals: the relations touching the force of imagination and the secret instincts of nature, are so uncertain, as they require a great deal of examination ere we conclude upon them. I would have it first thoroughly inquired, whether there 126 127 128 129

See Henry 1997: 47; Dear 2001: 58. Bacon 1996: iv. 50; see also Jardine 1974: 96. Dear 2001: 138–9. Bacon 1996: ii. 508 (Sylva sylvarum, §.525).

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be any secret passages of sympathy between persons of near blood; as parents, children, brothers, sisters, nurse-children, husbands, wives, etc. There be many reports in history, that upon the death of persons of such nearness, men have had an inward feeling of it. I myself remember, that being in Paris, and my father dying in London, two or three days before my father’s death I had a dream, which I told to divers English gentlemen, that my father’s house in the country was plastered all over with black mortar.130

Bacon treats sympathy here as an explicandum rather than an explicans. He cites his first-person experience of ‘an inward feeling’ at his father’s death to support historical reports of similar cases. Bacon the lawyer knows, however, that personal testimony constitutes fragile evidence without corroboration: this the ‘divers English gentlemen’ provide, if only in rhetorical terms, since they remain anonymous. Such problems of testimony and authority dog experimental philosophy throughout the seventeenth century.131 So too does the problem of what nature’s ‘secret instincts’ may in fact be. Bacon, despite his insistence that experiential particulars level point-blank at causes, supplies none to explain the present strange case. He merely repeats his criticism of traditional philosophers by way of conclusion, while looking to the ‘experience and probation’ of practitioners as one means of filling the explanatory vacuum.132 Sylva sylvarum is designed to gather precisely this kind of experience. Bacon describes occult qualities, sympathies, and quintessences in his new natural history as so many experiences in search of an explanation. Descartes’s major innovation in natural philosophy is to offer a new mechanical explanation of all physical phenomena. He shares with scholastics a commitment to a science of complete and necessary causes, but eliminates their occult qualities and substantial forms from his physics, as we have seen. This leaves a kind of vacuum in the knowledge of nature that Descartes manifestly abhors. Eudoxe, Descartes’s spokesman in his unfinished polite dialogue La Recherche de la ve´rite´ par la lumie`re naturelle, which was not published until 1701 and parts of which are written in Latin rather than French, promises a new and complete philosophy based upon the light of nature to replace the scholastic system: 130 131 132

Bacon 1996: ii. 666–7 (§.986). Licoppe 1996: 53–84. Bacon 1996: ii. 671–2 (§.999).

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je viendrai [aux œuvres] de la nature, et vous ayant fait voir la cause de tous les changements, la diversite´ de ses qualite´s, et comment l’aˆme des plantes et des animaux diffe`re de la noˆtre, je vous ferai conside´rer l’architecture des choses sensibles.133 (I will come next to [the works] of nature and, after showing you the causes of all its changes, the diversity of its qualities, and how the souls of plants and animals differ from our own, I will lead you to consider the architecture of all sensible things.)

Descartes explains all changes and qualities in the physical world by means of the situation, figure, order, and movement of parts of matter.134 He studies the physical world not as an animate being, but as a working mechanism, a machine in movement. ‘Mechanical’ philosophers, of which he is one representative, divide in two groups: corpuscularians like Descartes and Boyle define matter as unique extension, allow it to be infinitely divisible into corpuscles, and deny the existence of the vacuum; atomists like Gassendi and Digby define matter as composed of multiple atoms, which are indivisible, and which whirl around in empty spaces. Corpuscularians and atomists, despite their different conception of matter, share the conviction that all phenomena can be explained by the movement of matter alone. They compare the physical universe to a clock that God, the first cause, designed and then wound into motion.135 Descartes brings insensible as well as sensible phenomena within the province of his new mechanical philosophy of nature. To do so, he relies upon an analogy: matter, he argues, is composed of insensibly subtle particles; these behave in the same way as larger bodies that fall under the senses; both therefore can be explained by the mathematical laws of material movement.136 These laws should replace once and for all the scholastics’ mind-forged fictions, Descartes declares in the Principes de la philosophie, dismissing these with another negative je ne sais quel: il n’y a, ce me semble, personne, pourveu qu’il veuille user de raison, qui ne doive avou¨er que c’est beaucoup mieux philosopher de juger, de ce qui arrive en ces petits corps, que leur seule petitesse nous empeˆche de pouvoir sentir, par l’exemple de ce que nous voyons arriver en ceux . . . que nous 133 134 135 136

Descartes 1997: 23. Descartes 1964–76: xi. 31–48 (Le Monde, vi–vii); CHSP: 519–25. On this see Roux 1996: 97–126; Henry 1997: 56–85. Dear 2001: 86–90.

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sentons, et de rendre raison, par ce moyen, de tout ce qui est en la nature, ainsi que j’ay tasche´ de faire en ce traitte´, que, pour rendre raison des meˆmes choses, en inventer je ne sais quelles autres qui n’ont aucun rapport avec celles que nous sentons, comme sont la matie`re premie`re, les formes substantielles, et tout ce grand attirail de qualitez que plusieurs ont coustume de supposer, chacune desquelles peut plus difficilement estre connue¨ que toutes les choses qu’on pretend expliquer par leur moyen.137 (There is no one, it seems to me, who, provided that they were willing to use their reason, could fail to admit that it is a much better way of doing philosophy to make judgements about what happens in those bodies, whose smallness alone prevents us from perceiving them, by following the example of what happens in those bodies that we can perceive; and that it is better to explain everything in nature by this means, as I have endeavoured to do in this treatise, than it is to invent, in order to explain the selfsame things, I know not what others that bear no relation to the things we perceive, such as ‘prime matter’, ‘substantial forms’, and the entire paraphernalia of ‘qualities’ whose existence some people habitually suppose, and each of which is in fact much more difficult to know clearly than are the very things that people claim to explain by means of them.)

Descartes derives rhetorical energy from his antagonistic comparison of scholastic principles with his own. He is more reticent about the problems that he shares with his opponents. Descartes can prove his analogy between sensible bodies and insensible particles no more than the scholastics can their hylomorphic doctrine. The mechanical philosophy, despite Descartes’s occasional claims to produce a certain science, would seem able to deliver only hypotheses about insensible phenomena.138 This is one of the objections that traditionalists offer as, from the late 1660s onwards, Cartesian physics starts winning support even in the schools. In reply to this objection, successors of Descartes like Rohault, Huygens, and Re´gis all stress the hypothetical nature of mechanical explanations.139 Descartes’s successors also help to transmit his work to a polite audience outside the schools in the same period. Fontenelle’s Marquise shows she has got the message when she suggests to her interlocutor: ‘a` ce compte, [ . . . ] la philosophie est devenue bien me´canique?’ (by this account, [ . . . ] has philosophy now become well and truly mechanical?) (1998: 64). The philosopher gallantly 137 138 139

Descartes 1964–76: ix. Principes, iv. 201; see also Rohault 1978: 125–6. CHSP: 525–6; Roux 1998. Brockliss 1987: 345; Dear 2001: 149–58.

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confirms her intuition that the new philosophy of Descartes and his followers seeks to explain everything in the natural world—even the je-ne-sais-quoi—as the movement of a machine. 2.3.2. Forceful Objections Traditionalists as well as innovators of a non-mechanical persuasion produce a series of objections to the mechanical philosophy relating to its physical explanations and theological implications. In the field of theology, critics argue, the attack of Descartes and his followers on traditional qualities and forms threatens the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation. Two objections are made against mechanical explanations of physical phenomena, the first of which is that they do not sufficiently account for generation and sensation in animals, the second that they fail to explain the dynamic behaviour of material bodies. Mechanical philosophers lack, in both cases, a sufficient concept of dynamic force. Theology provides the most powerful weapon with which to attack mechanical principles in seventeenth-century France. The guardians of the scholastic tradition, in particular the Jesuits, argue that Cartesian philosophy cannot accommodate the orthodox doctrine of the Eucharist. Orthodox Catholics at this time, endorsed by the Council of Trent, believe that the bread and wine of the Eucharist are really transformed into the substance of Christ’s body and blood, the process known as ‘transubstantiation’, while retaining their original accidents. This means that, for Catholics, the qualities or accidents of the bread and wine continue to exist even after their substances have been transformed. Cartesians (their devout critics say) scandalously threaten the sacred mysteries of faith for, without the traditional concepts of qualities and forms, they can neither explain how the accidents of the bread remain nor how the body of Christ is really present.140 Rohault meets both objections in the first half of his Entretiens sur la philosophie (1671) by repeating and developing the answers already given by Descartes. Rohault argues that God is able to maintain the accidents of the bread by miracle, and that when Cartesians declare the manner of Christ’s 140 See La Grange 1675: 110–35; Hutchison 1991: 253–4; Des Chene 1996: 98–9. Threatening Catholic mysteries is of course the explicit project of one English mechanical philosopher, Hobbes, who condemns them as pure nonsense and, for that reason, politically seditious (1996: 448).

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presence in the Eucharist to be miraculous, they are merely following the doctrine established at the Council of Trent.141 The defence was not successful, however, and in 1671 the secular and ecclesiastical authorities banned the teaching of all new philosophy in French universities.142 Traditionalists such as Bouhours (1671), Rochon (1672), La Grange (1675), and Daniel (1691 and 1696) reinforce and exploit this ban by attacking the new philosophy while reviving the old. They turn some of the innovators’ criticisms of scholastic explanations to their own advantage. The hostile commonplace that occult qualities and substantial forms are a refuge of ignorance, for example, Bouhours turns into an Augustinian expression of admiratio (wonder) at God’s inexplicable presence in the natural world.143 Eugene says at the end of his fifth conversation with Ariste: je conclus de tout cela [ . . . ] que le je ne sc¸ay quoy est l’asyle de l’ignorance [ . . . ] cette matiere estant de la nature de celles qui ont un fond impenetrable, et qu’on ne peut expliquer que par l’admiration et par le silence.—Je suis bien aise, dit Ariste en riant, que vous preniez enfin le bon parti, et que vous vous contentiez d’admirer ce que d’abord vous vouliez comprendre. Si vous me croyez, ajouˆta-t-il, nous en demeurerons la`, et nous ne dirons plus rien d’une chose, qui ne subsiste que parce qu’on ne peut dire ce que c’est.144 (‘From all of that I conclude [ . . . ] that the je-ne-sais-quoi is the refuge of ignorance [ . . . ] and that this is one of those matters with an impenetrable bottom that can be explained only by wonder and silence.’ ‘I am glad to see’, Ariste chuckled, ‘that you have at last come over to the right side, and are now happy to wonder at something you first wanted to understand. If you now believe me,’ he added, ‘then we will stop there, and say no more about a thing that subsists only because no one can say what it is.’)

Bouhours transforms the refuge of ignorance into the house of God. While the tone here is one of Augustinian wonder, its metaphysical bedrock is Aristotelian, since Ariste ends by discreetly reviving substantial form as a pious nescioquiddity. Traditional natural philosophy, say its defenders, explains that there is a hidden quality in 141 See Rohault 1978: 118, 133; Gouhier 1978: 71–9; Clarke 1989: 23–7. For a reply to Descartes and Rohault, see Daniel 1691: 132–7. 142 On this see Gouhier 1978: 81–9. 143 See Daniel 1696: 228 (for a similar case); Daston and Park 1998: 39–48 (on Augustinian wonder). 144 Bouhours 1962: 150.

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the magnet, that this inheres in its substantial form, and that this is explanation enough for us mortals. Those still curious should look, not to the innovators’ scandalous mechanical fictions, but to the incomprehensible power of God alone.145 Bouhours combines Augustinian piety and Aristotelian metaphysics to explain the je-nesais-quoi as an inexplicable substance. The ban on the new philosophy and the revival of the schools tradition produce in turn a concerted wave of counter-attacks from innovators in the early 1670s including Boileau’s Arreˆt burlesque (1671) as well as Molie`re’s virtus dormitiva joke in Le Malade imaginaire (1673).146 The new philosophy emerges from this theological scrape bloodied but unbowed; by the first decade of the eighteenth century, some Catholic professors agree with Descartes that there is no need for substantial form to reconcile mechanical physics with the mystery of transubstantiation. The crisis of 1671 is one that the mechanical philosophy eventually overcomes. A more forceful and lasting objection to mechanical explanations is that they fail to explain the vital principle in animals. Cartesians study animals as though they were machines while, at the same time, retaining the rational human soul as the unique substantial form.147 This, traditionalist critics such as La Grange and Daniel object, forces Descartes and his followers to deny the self-evident fact that animals have vital perceptions and powers of generation (and that plants also have the latter).148 To explain these perceptions and powers would require a revival of the vegetative and sensitive souls that the Cartesians banished from natural philosophy along with other substantial forms.149 The heated debate about the Cartesian beˆte-machine also reflects its potential implications for the human soul. For if animals are mere machines, critics ask, then why is the same not true of humans? Rohault discusses these arguments, and the objections with which they meet, in the second half of his Entretiens sur la philosophie.150 He insists that, in the very act of thinking about such questions, we discover that we possess a rational soul (1978: 150). Rohault risks falling here into the error of 145 146 147 148 149 150

Bouhours 1962: 18; Rochon 1672: 184–6; Boutauld 1683: 23–4. See Boileau 1966: 327–30; Mesnard 1992: 97–110. Henry 1997: 68–70, 79–80. See La Grange 1675: 339–50; Daniel 1696: 233–5; CHSP: 536. See Des Chene 2000: 155–69. Rohault 1978: 138–50; on this see Clarke 1989: 27–8.

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which he accuses his scholastic opponents; namely, of using common experience as the basis of a metaphysical explanation.151 Mechanical principles fail to account not only for the vital principle of living creatures, but for the dynamic forces of material bodies. The example of elasticity offers a brief illustration.152 If you fold a material body in two and then release it, you will find that it springs out of its folded state and back into place. Mechanical principles demand that the motion of the material body in question be caused by that of a second body. In this case, the air might be a suitable candidate, but its motion would then also need to be explained by a third body, such as subtle matter, which would in turn require a fourth body to account for its movement, and so on. Infinite regression would follow unless some self-moving substance were found; but even if this substance were found, then it would necessarily remain irreducible to mechanical principles. Most mechanical philosophers presuppose just such a substance, whether this is subtle matter (in the case of corpuscularians) or atoms (in that of atomists).153 The attempt to explain the dynamic properties of bodies—not just their elasticity, but their impenetrability, inertia, and momentum—necessarily leads mechanical philosophers to their own refuge of ignorance. Traditionalists here turn their opponents’ weapons against them. Ross, for example, tells the atomistically-minded Digby: ‘atomes are your sanctuary, to which you flie upon all occasions’ (1645a: 24–6, 48). Ross insinuates that Digby’s exile in France left him prey to Gassendist influences and that his Two Treatises (1644) ‘entertaines us with a French dinner of his owne dressing, or with an airie feast of Philosophicall quelque choses’ (1645a: pref., pages unnumbered). Ross’s phrase is semantically equivalent to the je-ne-saisquoi in its negative operation. La Grange claims that the Cartesians can explain neither momentum nor gravity (1675: 165). They lack the concept of a soul, which is necessary if one wishes to express the unity of a physical movement, as Deleuze explains: ‘les lois me´caniques [ . . . ] expliquent tout sauf l’unite´ d’un mouvement concret, si variable et irre´gulier soit-il. L’unite´ de mouvement est toujours l’affaire d’une aˆme’ (mechanical laws [ . . . ] explain everything 151 152

See Roux 1996: 94–6; Henry 1997: 79. See Roux 1996: 259–60 (from whom I borrow this example); Henry 1997:

74–8. 153

See Montaigne: ii. 12, 544a (for his criticism of atoms).

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except the unity of a particular movement, however variable and irregular this may be. Unity of movement always involves a soul) (1988: 18). The work of subsequent philosophers in the Cartesian tradition can be read in part as an attempt to resolve this problem within a mechanical framework. Occasionalists such as Malebranche introduce God as the motive force that sets and maintains material bodies in motion.154 A collision is no longer seen as the transmission of motion from one body to another, but as an ‘occasion’ for God to move the colliding bodies in accordance with mechanical laws. Occasionalist explanations are open to the same objection as traditional supernatural causes; namely, that they make particular physical events depend on divine intervention.155 Mechanical principles, it seems, overlook the dynamic insensible forces that affect material bodies and living creatures and which are named by traditional terms such as ‘substantial form’ and ‘soul’, if not explained. What then is to be done with the new mechanical philosophy of Descartes and his followers? The Jesuit historian and controversialist Gabriel Daniel offers a pithy answer at the end of his Suite du voyage du monde de Descartes (1696). The text ends with a fabulous tale, entitled ‘Histoire de la conjuration faite a Stokolm contre Mr Descartes’, which purports to recount the true circumstances surrounding the death of Descartes at the court of Christine of Sweden.156 What the tale really represents is the ultimate revenge of the schools tradition over the new philosophy, and it does so in a manner that pre-echoes Lewis Carroll’s delight in the absurd fictional possibilities of philosophical examples and controversies. Daniel’s narrator describes how the principles of the scholastic tradition—occult qualities, real accidents, substantial forms, and the like—all gather together to condemn Descartes for having banished them from natural philosophy. They eventually decide that death is the only fitting punishment for such a crime, and their sentence is carried out when heat—who is of course one of their number—enters the body of the philosopher, provoking a fatal fever. The case against Descartes is summed up as follows by one of 154 CHSP: 536–42; Clarke 1989: 111–19; Moriarty 2003: 244–6; on the concept of force in Descartes’s physics, see Hatfield 1979. 155 See La Grange 1675: 211, 337; Leibniz 1996: 210–11. 156 See Daniel 1696: 219–47.

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the injured parties in a manner that requires no further comment here: qu’apre´s avoir fait esperer qu’il expliqueroit tout d’une maniere aise´e et naturelle, il [Descartes] ne rendoit raison des effets physiques que par certains e´lemens, certain assemblage de parties, certains mouvemens et certaines figures: Que cela n’e´toit gueres different de certaines Entitez, certaines Formes, certaines Vertus, et certaines Qualitez: Et qu’apre`s tout par droit d’anciennete´ le Je ne sc¸ai quoi Scholastique devoit l’emporter sur le Je ne sc¸ai quoi Cartesien.157 (that, after leading people to expect that he would explain everything in an easy and natural manner, he [Descartes] only accounted for physical effects by means of certain elements, arrangements of parts, movements, and figures; that this was hardly any different to certain ‘entities’, ‘forms’, ‘virtues’, and ‘qualities’; and that in the end, for reasons of seniority, the scholastic je-ne-sais-quoi should prevail over the Cartesian je-ne-sais-quoi.)

2.3.3. The Nature of the Je-Ne-Sais-Quoi: Leibniz vs. Newton What, then, is the nature of the je-ne-sais-quoi? The mechanical philosophy, we have seen, fails satisfactorily to replace scholastic explanations that rely on forms, qualities, and quintessences. It does so, above all, because it lacks a sufficient concept of force. This Newton and Leibniz both attempt, in their different ways, to supply at the turn of the eighteenth century. These two figures are associated of course with important changes in the study of nature. They may also be said to exemplify two conflicting tendencies in the early modern period that persist through change: one emphasizes the need for an ever more precise description of experience; the other, the need for necessary causal explanation. In their conflict, as in previous stages of this debate, the je-ne-sais-quoi makes a series of ghostly lexical apparitions. The conflict between Newton and Leibniz leaves the nature of force unresolved at the turn of the eighteenth century. But force is of interest to this study since it provides at least an image of the operations of je-ne-sais-quoi within the realm of nature. Leibniz’s contribution is to unfold a new metaphysical explanation of force. The verb ‘unfold’ is particularly appropriate here: Deleuze (1988) characterizes the philosophy of Leibniz through the 157

Daniel 1696: 242.

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image of the ‘fold’ (pli) which hides within terms such as ‘explicate’ and even ‘multiple’. Leibniz does not claim to break once and for all with the errors of the past, as Descartes does, but rather to explicate the obscure doctrines of all his predecessors within a clear new system conceived on multiple levels. The´ophile, Leibniz’s spokesman in his dialogue with Locke, the Nouveaux essais sur l’entendement humain (written around 1703 but not published until 1765), describes his adoption of this system as a moment of conversion: j’ai e´te´ frappe´ d’un nouveau syste`me [ . . . ]; et depuis je crois voir une nouvelle face des choses. Ce syste`me paraıˆt allier Platon avec De´mocrite, Aristote avec Descartes, les scolastiques avec les modernes, la the´ologie et la morale avec la raison [ . . . ] Je trouve les vrais principes des choses dans les unite´s de substance que ce syste`me introduit, et dans leur harmonie pre´e´tablie par la substance primitive.158 (I have been struck by a new system [ . . . ]; and I now believe I can see a new face of things. This system seems to unite Plato with Democritus, Aristotle with Descartes, the scholastics with the moderns, and theology and morality with reason [ . . . ] I find the true principles of things in the units of substance introduced by this system, and in their harmony pre-established by the primal substance.)

Leibniz reconciles traditionalists with innovators, spiritual principles with mechanical explanations, and metaphysics with physics, by bringing them all into the light of pre-established harmony. His is a chiaroscuro philosophy that plunges into matters obscure and confused in order to bring them into the clear light of explanation.159 Leibniz’s account of force offers one example. Those philosophers and doctors that call on occult qualities, Leibniz asserts, belong to the dark ages (1990: 52). They reveal their barbarism by multiplying refuges of ignorance and by placing in bodies unintelligible quasi-spiritual principles that obscure the divine design.160 Leibniz is equally critical, however, of their mechanical opponents’ inability to explain the vital perceptions of living creatures and the dynamic force of material bodies.161 For spiritual principles as well as mechanical explanations have a necessary place in the true knowledge of nature: ‘tout se peut expliquer me´caniquement dans 158

159 Leibniz 1990: 56 (i. 1). See Deleuze 1988: 44–6. Leibniz–Thomasius 1993: 57; quoted in Roux 1996: 93. 161 Leibniz 1996: 225–6 (Principes de la nature et de la graˆce, §.4); Deleuze 1988: 16–17. 160

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les choses mate´rielles, excepte´ les principes meˆmes du me´canisme, qui ne sauraient eˆtre tire´s de la seule conside´ration de la matie`re’ (everything in material bodies can be explained mechanically, except the principles of the mechanism itself, which could never be drawn from consideration of matter alone) (1996: 208). The missing principle is force. Bodies contain two distinct natures folded within them: one is passive matter, which moves in accordance with strictly mechanical laws; the other is dynamic force (dunamis), which provides the unity of its movement. Leibniz distinguishes his concept of force from scholastic metaphysics by expressing it in a mathematical formula (as equalling mv2 , that is, mass times velocity squared).162 He uses the term ‘monad’ (as well as ‘soul’ and ‘vital principle’) to describe this force as a metaphysical entity.163 God distributes purpose and dynamic force in different degrees to monads throughout creation: ‘chaque Monade est un miroir vivant, ou doue´ d’action interne, repre´sentatif de l’univers, suivant son point de vue’ (each monad is a living mirror, or one that is endowed with internal activity, and which represents the universe according to its own point of view) (1996: 224). Spiritual monads and material bodies remain distinct in kind and yet perfectly coincide with one another: this is the divinely pre-established harmony of the universe. The clarity of mechanics returns to the dark metaphysical core of the monad whence it comes. Leibniz explicates the concept of force by enfolding it within material bodies as their inner vital principle. A single explanation unites the active forces in material bodies and those of self-movement and perception in living creatures. The je-ne-sais-quoi appears in the work of Leibniz as a dark fold of sensory experience that the philosopher unfolds in the light of metaphysical explanation. Newton’s contribution is quite different. He asserts the existence of insensible force and describes its operations in mathematical terms while refusing to offer any hypotheses about its nature. He agrees with Leibniz that mechanical principles are insufficient and includes attraction, repulsion, gravity, and other forces within his account. In his Principia mathematica (1687), he sets out three laws of motion that describe the action of force upon a body.164 Newton 162

See Gueroult 1967: 47. Leibniz 1996: 225–6 (Principes de la nature et de la graˆce, §.4); see also Deleuze 1988: 33. 164 Newton 1999: 416–17; Starobinski 1999b: 33–9. 163

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claims simply to discover the mathematical laws governing the operations of such forces.165 He eschews any explanation that is not derived from experience of these operations. When pressed for an explanation of the nature of gravitational force, he offers contradictory causes that leave the matter unresolved, and ultimately suspends the question: rationem vero harum gravitatis proprietatum ex phaenominis nondum potui deducere, et hypotheses non fingo. Quicquid ex phaenominis non deducitur, hypothesis vocanda est; et hypotheses seu metaphysicae, seu physicae, seu qualitatum occultarum, seu mechanicae, in philosophia experimentali locum non habent. (I have not as yet been able to discover from phenomena the reason of those properties of gravity, and I feign no hypotheses. For whatever is not deduced from the phenomena must be called a hypothesis, and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, or based on occult qualities, or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy.)166

Newton invokes here the Baconian tradition of experimental natural history to express his preference for precise descriptions of experience over hypothetical explanations. In a letter to the churchman Richard Bentley, one of the first popularizers of his natural philosophy, he spells out his position in a language that everyone can understand. Newton wishes to disabuse Bentley of the notion that he considers gravitational force, as scholastics do their occult qualities, to be inherent in matter. To this end Newton produces, not the je-ne-sais-quoi, but a syntactic string: ‘pray do not ascribe that notion to me; for the Cause of Gravity is what I do not pretend to know.’167 Newton distinguishes himself from the scholastic tradition, which transforms the je-ne-sais-quoi into a nescioquiddity within substances, and from the mechanical alternative, which explains it away as an illusion. He suspends the je-ne-sais-quoi as a certain something-or-other whose existence cannot be doubted but whose cause cannot, and indeed need not, be known. He ends the Principia in these terms: ‘satis est quod gravitas revera existat, et agat secundum leges a nobis expositas’ (it is enough that gravity really exists and acts according to the laws that we have set forth).168 165 166 167 168

CHSP: 543; Dear 2001: 162. Newton 1972: ii. 764 (General Scholium); Eng. trans. in Newton 1999: 943. Newton 1978: 298 (letter of 17 Jan. 1692–3). Newton 1972: ii. 764 (General Scholium); Eng. trans. in Newton 1999: 943.

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Newton suspends judgement about the causes of that force while subjecting its effects to a precise mathematical description. Leibniz and Newton each exhibit one of the two tendencies that divide early modern natural philosophers in their approach to the experience of the je-ne-sais-quoi. Leibniz inherits from the schools tradition the ambition to enfold the universe in a single explanation. This leaves him vulnerable to objections frequently made against scholastic natural philosophy. The first is that his explanation, by ascribing purpose and dynamic force to material bodies, proves residually anthropomorphic.169 The second is offered by Newton’s disciple and editor, Roger Cotes, when he accuses Leibniz and the Cartesians of producing unverifiable explanations, or as he puts it, ‘patching up a most absurd figment of their imagination.’170 Leibniz encounters the je-ne-sais-quoi in a dream of metaphysical explanation. Newton, however, refuses to explain the cause of the thing encountered. This leaves him vulnerable to the objection that he is providing a mere description without philosophical validity.171 Leibniz objects that Newton’s gravitational force is ‘inexplicable, unintelligible, precarious, groundless and unexampled, [ . . . ] a chimerical thing, a scholastic occult quality’.172 The charge is that Newton, by refusing to explain force, freezes it as an inexplicable quality in the object. The heated conflict that Leibniz fights with Newton’s followers over the concept of dynamic force in the early eighteenth century suggests that the natural philosophical crisis provoked by the experience of the je-ne-sais-quoi remains unresolved. Force provides no ontological bedrock for the je-ne-sais-quoi. Still less do the occult qualities, substantial forms, quintessences, atoms, corpuscles, and machines encountered earlier in this chapter. Force provides at best what T. S. Eliot calls an ‘objective correlative’ for the vital experience of the je-ne-sais-quoi. Eliot defines the ‘objective correlative’ of an emotion in art as ‘a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts [ . . . ] are given, the emotion is immediately evoked’ (1932: 145). Force, in 169 170 171 172

See Pigeard de Gurbert 2000: 393–411. Newton 1999: 393; quoted in Dear 2001: 165. Dear 2001: 164. Alexander 1956: 94; quoted in CHSP: 503.

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causing movements of attraction and repulsion between bodies, performs the chain of events that produces the experience of the je-ne-sais-quoi. Nothing is more common than such experiences: one has only to watch iron filings moving towards the magnet or the tide drawing up and down the beach. But this force, whose existence cannot be doubted, only invites explanations in order to frustrate them. The je-ne-sais-quoi in nature is nothing other than the experience of a force that is both really inexplicable and inexplicably real. Eliot defines a successful work of art as one that achieves the ‘complete adequacy’ of objective correlative to its experience. Hamlet, he argues, is a failure because its hero is overcome by some experience or emotion that can find no adequate correlative (1932: 145). The je-ne-sais-quoi fails, according to Eliot’s measure, as a concept in natural philosophy for precisely the same reason. But I would argue that its ‘failure’—like that of Hamlet—is more vital than lesser successes. The je-ne-sais-quoi has no adequate ontological or conceptual bedrock: that is both its weakness in natural philosophy and, as we shall see in the next chapter, its life force in the field of human passions.

3

The Stroke of Passion: Pascal and the Poets Qui voudra connaıˆtre a` plein la vanite´ de l’homme n’a qu’a` conside´rer les causes et les effets de l’amour. La cause en est un Je ne sais quoi. Corneille. Et les effets en sont effroyables. (Whoever wishes to know fully the vanity of humankind has only to consider the causes and effects of love. Its cause is a je-ne-sais-quoi (Corneille). And its effects are appalling.) Pascal

3.1. theories of the passions 3.1.1. A Strange Sympathy The je-ne-sais-quoi operates in human relations as the stroke of passion. The opening of Bouhours’s ‘Le Je Ne Sc¸ay Quoy’ finds the two friends, Ariste and Euge`ne, wondering at the unwearied pleasure that both derive from their conversations. Theirs is a friendship so intense, Ariste suggests, that it bears comparison to a chaste kind of love: ‘toute vertueuse qu’elle est, elle [notre amitie´] fait dans nous ce que l’amour fait dans les autres’ (our friendship, virtuous as it is, does to us what love does to other people); Euge`ne can only agree: ‘c’est a` dire [ . . . ] qu’il faut que nous soyons faits l’un pour l’autre, et qu’il y ait une e´trange sympathie entre nos esprits’ (what that means is [ . . . ] that we must be made for one another, and that there is a strange sympathy between our minds) (1962: 140). Sympathy is the strange force that has drawn them into an intimate relation. Ariste, in his reply to Euge`ne, uses the pronominal je-ne-sais-quoi to describe his experience of this force:

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l’ennuy qui me prend de´s que nous sommes separez, la joye que me donnent nos plus longues conversations, le peu de cas que je fais des connoissances nouvelles, et le peu de soin que j’ay de cultiver mes anciennes habitudes, sont apparemment des effets d’une grande sympathie, et de ces inclinations secrettes qui nous font sentir pour une personne je ne sc¸ay quoy, que nous ne sentons point pour un autre.1 (The weariness that overtakes me as soon as we are apart, the joy our longest conversations give me, the little store I set by new acquaintances, and the lack of care with which I keep up my former habits, all appear to be the effects of a great sympathy and of those secret inclinations that make us feel for a particular person I know not what which we feel for nobody else.)

This is the first occurrence of the word to which the two friends are to devote the rest of their conversation. It appears as a pronominal phrase upon which Ariste stumbles in an effort to describe what he means by sympathie. The je-ne-sais-quoi works two semantic effects here: it asserts that the strange sympathy between people is the stuff of first-person experience alone, and it emphasizes the irreducible nescioquiddity of apparently explanatory terms such as sympathie, inclination, amitie´, and so on. Ariste dismisses this entire field of terms as no more than a refuge of ignorance (1962: 140). The je-ne-sais-quoi is a term born of the subject’s first-person experience—my experience—of inexplicable sympathy or passion for a lover or a friend. Twenty-first-century readers who consider that the erotic aspect of love distinguishes it from friendship may find it disconcerting to see early modern writers connecting the two kinds of relation so intimately. But such connections are frequently made. Saint-Evremond offers another example: ‘l’Amitie´ a, comme l’Amour, son agre´able je ne sai quoi’ (friendship, like love, has its own delightful je-ne-sais-quoi).2 The point is that both relations are governed by powerful affects that simply cannot be identified or explained by the subject. Ariste quotes Corneille’s apposite line about ‘ces je ne sc¸ay quoy qu’on ne peut expliquer’ (those je-nesais-quoi that cannot be explained), asserting: ‘un de nos Poe¨tes en a mieux parle´ que tous les Philosophes, il decide la chose en un mot’ (one of our poets has talked about this better than all the philosophers: he settles the matter in a single word).3 Ariste looks to the 1

Bouhours 1962: 140. Saint-Evremond 1966: 533; quoted in Furetie`re 1701: ‘quoy’. Montaigne’s friendship with La Boe´tie is disconcerting for the same reasons; see Sect. 5.3.2, below. 3 Bouhours 1962: 141; quoting Corneille 1971–96: ii, Rodogune, 359–62. 2

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poets, not the philosophers, for a pithy description of the strange sympathy acting upon him.4 This description, he claims later, applies equally well to the inexplicable movement of antipathy that one feels for a particular person. The je-ne-sais-quoi is, in fact, the object of almost all our passions, and it strikes without warning against reason and will: ‘on aime, et on hait d’abord, sans que l’esprit s’en apperc¸oive, et si je l’ose dire, sans mesme que le cœur sc¸ache’ (we love or hate at first sight without our minds noticing, and if I may put it this way, without even our hearts knowing that we do) (1962: 149). The previous chapter took as its object the preternatural forces that act upon material bodies and offered a critical history of conflicting attempts in vernacular natural philosophy to explain those forces. The focus now shifts to the strange attraction exerted, not by parts of matter, but by human beings upon one another. How is it, put simply, that people are so often drawn into forming couples? And why is it that one person appears to another as the true friend or lover? The je-ne-sais-quoi is the first-person experience of passionate relations that excite such questions. My readings in this chapter are drawn from the wide field of vernacular philosophical and literary writing—including treatises, polite conversations, short prose forms, and drama—in which the term appears in its period of lexical currency. I shall identify three tendencies visible in this writing towards the je-ne-sais-quoi in the realm of the passions. The first is to draw it into a systematic theory of the passions; the second—which I place at the heart of the chapter—is to describe its inexplicable onset in particular experiential situations as a stroke of pure passion; the third is to cultivate it as an instrument of pathos. These tendencies appear loosely to correspond to the fortunes of the je-ne-sais-quoi as a word: the first, to its early substantivization, the second, to the noun’s period of currency, and the third, to its sedimentation. In that sense, the word’s occurrences in writing about the passions seem to confirm the shape of its history. But my argument in this chapter is not so much about history as about genre. I treat the je-ne-sais-quoi here less as an idea with a history 4 He also quotes Voiture, Stances sur sa maıˆtresse, vii (Bouhours 1962: 142); on this text, see Ge´netiot 1997: 494. The term ‘poet’ is used here in a broad sense to include dramatists as well as authors of epic or lyric verse: ‘poetry’ may in this context be thought of as largely synonymous with the kind of writing that is now called ‘literature’.

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than as a particular experience that releases different kinds of writing.5 Early modern writers such as Corneille and Pascal describe, in their different ways, a strange sympathy that springs not from any rational choice but from an inexplicable mutual passion. This falls upon the subject at one stroke and, or so the poets say, as a certain je-ne-sais-quoi. 3.1.2. Vernacular Treatises before Descartes The force of sympathy and antipathy in human relations, like that which acts upon material bodies, invites a diverse set of philosophical explanations. The genre of the vernacular treatise exists to reflect upon and transmit this diversity to a middlebrow readership. Authors of treatises from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-seventeenth centuries draw the insights of early modern physiology, psychology, and ethics together in order to offer information about the nature and causes of love and other passions as well practical treatments of their effects. For in the early modern period, as Susan James puts it, ‘the passions were regarded as an overbearing and inescapable element of human nature, liable to disrupt any civilized order, philosophy included, unless they were tamed, outwitted, overruled, or seduced’ (1997: 1). The aim of the vernacular treatise tradition is to produce, through a survey of existing definitions, a systematic philosophical theory of the passions that allows for them to be both understood and controlled. But a certain degree of hesitation and unease about the very possibility of such a theory can also be detected in treatises before Descartes. Treatise writers, surveying the diversity of available explanations, suggest at certain moments that none saves the phenomenon. Some vernacular treatise writers treat love in isolation from the other passions. Pierre Boaistuau does so in his popular and widely read Le The´aˆtre du Monde (1558). Medically trained authors examine lovesickness as a form of melancholy that affects body and soul.6 One of them, Andre´ du Laurens, suggests in his Discours 5 For a transhistorical examination of the first stroke of passion, particularly as it is represented in novels, see Rousset 1981. Rousset stresses both the immediacy of passion and its inexplicability (1981: 69–101). But he never comments on the significance of the je-ne-sais-quoi in the literature, despite the fact that he examines texts—such as those of Corneille—in which the word plays an important role (see e.g. 1981: 92–8). 6 For a full examination of erotic melancholy or lovesickness, see Dandrey 1998: 457–575.

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des maladies melancoliques (1597) that lovers should be treated as true melancholics (1598: 324). His suggestion is developed by Jean de Veyries (1609) and by Jacques Ferrand (1623).7 These writers offer their work as a practical antidote to those suffering from lovesickness.8 Where Veyries frames his Ge´ne´alogie de l’amour as a polite conversation, Ferrand’s De la maladie d’amour draws upon an entertaining variety of sources in a study of lovesickness whose form is reminiscent of a scholastic medical treatise. The work of Ferrand and his predecessors was translated and widely read in England.9 The English reception of French texts on melancholy may explain why the lexicographer Blount, writing in 1656, suggests that those ‘troubled with the Je-ne-scay-quoy’ may be suffering from some unknown melancholic affliction.10 Other vernacular writers accommodate love within a systematic philosophical treatise of all the passions. The genre enjoys a European-wide vogue from the late sixteenth century to the middle of the seventeenth century.11 My choice of the je-ne-sais-quoi as a lexical tracer means that, while I will make occasional forays into related English texts, I will concentrate on the French treatise tradition. The first full-length version of the genre published in France is the work of the bishop of Belley, Jean-Pierre Camus, a faithful servant of the Church as well as the author of edifying prose fiction and a vast collection of miscellaneous writings, Les Diversitez (1609).12 Camus’s miscellany includes an entire book, ‘Traittant des Passions de l’Ame’, in its ninth volume. The Dominican bishop Nicolas Coe¨ffeteau offers practical precepts in his Tableau des passions humaines (1620) about how to employ the passions to virtuous ends; so too does the Oratorian Jean-Franc¸ois Senault in

7

Veyries 1610: fo. ir (‘Au Lecteur’); Beecher and Ciavolella 1990: 26–39. Ferrand 1623: A4r; Veyries 1610: 110. 9 See Beecher and Ciavolella 1990: 14–16. 10 Blount’s definition is quoted in Sect. 1.1.4, above. A key text in English writings on melancholy in this period is, of course, Burton 1989 (first published in 1621). 11 Fumaroli 1980: 389; French examples of the genre are the subject of Levi 1964. English examples include Wright 1604, Greenwood 1657, and Charleton 1674: these are the subject of Mu¨ller 1999. 12 On Camus, see Robic de Baecque 1999. An earlier treatment of the passions is provided by Pierre Charron in the first book (chs. 17–33) of his systematic philosophical treatise on wisdom, De la sagesse (1601). Charron’s treatment of the topic is similar in many respects to those examined here, but is not a distinct treatise in its own right. On Charron, see Belin 1995. 8

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his De l’usage des passions (1641).13 The learned physician and society figure Marin Cureau de la Chambre offers a physiognomic approach to the topic in Les Characteres des passions (1640).14 Descartes’s treatise Les Passions de l’aˆme (1649) is the most famous example of the genre initiated by Camus and, as we shall see in the next section, the most philosophically distinctive. Camus’s treatise is representative of the vernacular genre before Descartes. His self-appointed role as a trustworthy mediator of learned debates to the unlearned, his syncretic approach, and his reliance on the philosophical bedrock of scholastic thought: all these features characterize to a greater or lesser degree the work of his successors. The vernacular treatise genre belongs to the tradition of polygraphic writing: it aims to translate learned work on the passions into a form that a mixed readership can enjoy and understand. Montaigne is in some respects an important precursor, not only because Camus is a self-confessed admirer of his work, but because Les Diversitez owe much in generic terms to the Essais.15 In ‘Sur des vers de Virgile’ (On some verses of Virgil) (iii. 5), his chapter on sexual love, Montaigne criticizes representatives of the learned humanist, Neoplatonist, and scholastic traditions alike for their excessively abstract approach to the most intimate of experiences: [b] Les sciences traictent les choses trop finement [ . . . ] Mon page faict l’amour et l’entend. Lisez luy Leon He´breu et Ficin: on parle de luy, de ses pense´es et de ses actions, et si il n’y entend rien. Je ne recognois pas chez Aristote la plus part de mes mouvemens ordinaires: on les a couverts et revestus d’une autre robbe pour l’usage de l’eschole. Dieu leur doint bien faire! Si j’estois du mestier, je [c] naturaliserois l’art comme ils artialisent la nature.16 (Learning treats of things too subtly [ . . . ] My page makes love and understands it. Read him Leone Ebreo and Ficino: they talk about him, his thoughts and his actions, and yet he does not understand a thing in it. I do not recognize in Aristotle most of my ordinary actions: they have been covered and dressed up in another robe for the use of the school. God 13

Camus 1612–20: ix. 693; Coe¨ffeteau 1620; Levi 1964: 142–52, 214–18. See Doranlo 1939: 13–35; Levi 1964: 248–9; Maclean 2002: 315–19 (on physiognomy). 15 See Camus 1612–20: viii. 409–60 (‘Jugement des essais’); this text is reprinted in Millet 1995: 163–92. See also Boase 1935: 114–35. 16 Montaigne: iii. 5, 874; F 808. 14

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grant these men may be doing the right thing! If I were of the trade, I would naturalize art as much as they artify nature.)

Montaigne strips away the trappings of learned discourse to reveal his page or himself in the most ordinary of actions. Camus retains from Montaigne the ability to criticize available learned explanations in the field of the passions. But he is at once more respectful of traditional learning and institutions and less intent on self-revelation than Montaigne, and for these reasons, Montaigne’s influence is limited.17 Camus’s main concern is that his treatise should prove useful to ‘les simples, pour qui je besongne’ (simple unlearned people, for whom I toil) (1612–20: ix. 119). He and other treatise writers agree that love is a complex experience, affecting body and soul alike, and that theologians, doctors, lawyers, philosophers, and poets all have different lessons to offer.18 Treatise writers draw these lessons into a syncretic survey for their readers. Those with medical expertise quote the Galenic tag ‘optimus medicus philosophicus’ (the best doctor is a philosopher) to justify their use of philosophical sources as well as those drawn from their own discipline.19 Camus fulfils the promise of his title by offering his readers a ‘diversity’ of approaches to the passions as well a critical assessment of each. The intellectual heritage of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century vernacular treatises is a complex and unstable mixture of elements drawn from scholastic psychology, in which passions are seen as dual movements of the soul and body, and from the (revived) stoic moral tradition, which attempts to ‘heal’ the passions by treating them as false judgements.20 Treatise writers agree that love is the most powerful of all the passions: ‘c’est l’Amour qui arme toutes les autres Passions’ (love is the passion that arms all others).21 Camus, typically, accommodates the diversity of philosophical doctrines about love within a scholastic framework. He treats love by examining its nature and division, then its causes, its effects, properties, 17 See Camus 1612–20: viii. 446–7, 459 (‘Jugement des essais’); Scholar 2002a: 133–4. 18 Camus 1612–20: ix, fo. iv; Veyries 1610: fo. ir; Cureau de la Chambre 1658–63: i, fos. 12v–13r. 19 Ferrand 1623: 151; Maclean 2002: 81; Dandrey 1998: 541–3. 20 Theories of the passions in this period are analysed in detail by Levi 1964; Rodis-Lewis 1995; Susan James 1997. 21 Ceriziers 1651–2: iii. 197; Chalesme 1671: 66; Rodis-Lewis 1995: 311–12.

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and finally its object. This provokes the pious reflection that the only true object of love is God. Two concluding chapters describe the love between God and humankind, although Camus proposes to deal exclusively with this subject in a separate work (1612–20: ix. 239). He and other treatise writers, as we shall see, initially suggest that love frustrates definition. But they go on to set out a systematic theory. They ascribe the causes of love to one or more of the same three realms—universal, superlunary, and natural—that philosophers evoke when explaining the effects of insensible forces in nature.22 Universal vitalist explanations by sympathy are widespread in the field of the passions. In Plato’s Symposium, Aristophanes talks of a ‘something else’ (allo ti) for which two lovers search, ‘a something to which they can neither of them put a name, and which they can only give an inkling of in cryptic sayings and prophetic riddles’ (1961: Symposium, 192c–d). The allo ti sought by Aristophanes’s lovers is the other half of the primal unity from which each was divided before birth.23 Treatise writers in France refer to this myth.24 Their division of love bears visible traces of the theory that the Christian Neoplatonist Marsilio Ficino of Florence elaborates in his late fifteenth-century commentary on the Symposium.25 Camus repeats Ficino’s distinction between five sorts of love: divine, angelic, rational (or human), sensitive (or animal), and natural (or inanimate).26 Ficino explains human love in physiological terms as a fascination transmitted through tiny blood particles from the eyes of the beloved to those of the lover.27 ‘Natural’ love is the universal principle that unites all created things: it is ‘cette qualite´ occulte, et ce Principe secrettement infus, et diffus que vulgairement on nomme Nature’ (that occult quality, that secretly infused and diffused principle, which we commonly call Nature) (Camus 1612– 20: ix. 127). ‘Nature’, ‘God’, ‘sympathy’, and ‘love’, Coe¨ffeteau says, are different names for the same universal occult quality (1620: 80). So too is amitie´ (‘friendship’), a term ill-served by its modern English 22 The following survey corresponds therefore to the one offered in Sect. 2.1.2, above. 23 Plato 1961: Symposium, 191d–e; Janke´le´vitch 1980: i. 12. 24 Camus 1612–20: ix. 134; Du Bosc 1635: 426. 25 See Dandrey 1998: 511–21; Allen 1995. 26 Camus 1612–20: ix. 126; see also Coe¨ffeteau 1620: 80–2, Levi 1964: 149. 27 Boaistuau 1981: 214–15; Montaigne: i. 21, 105a; Ferrand 1623: 55–6.

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translation, since it may refer to the metaphysical affinity of form and matter and the physical attraction between magnet and iron as well as powerful interpersonal relations.28 Camus devotes an entire chapter to sympathie (another term ill-served by its modern English equivalent) because it is, he suggests, the most powerful force behind the union of love (1612–20: ix. 131). The inclination of inanimate bodies, the coupling of dumb beasts, and the choices of rational beings are seen as diverse effects of one universal cause. Astrology offers a remote superlunary cause for love: it is said to be the conformity of two souls born under the same star.29 The use of such causes is as controversial in the field of the passions as in natural philosophy. Honore´ d’Urfe´, writing in the same decade as Camus, makes astrological explanations of love popular in his hugely successful pastoral romance L’Astre´e (1607–19).30 Camus refers to astrologers when discussing cases of sympathy or antipathy at first sight: l’on voyt, disent les speculatifs, que de deux hommes, qui me seront esgalement incogneus le prim’abord me conviera d’aymer cettuy-cy et m’alienera de celuy-la`, que toutes les actions de l’un me plaisent, de l’autre me desagre´ent. Si ce sont Astrologues, ils tiendront cela aux aspects des planettes, faisants ployer, et bransler les cieux sous nos inclinations: si ce sont Theologiens, aux mœurs des personnes: si Naturalistes, aux temperamens, mais tous aboutissent en fin a` la sympathie, ou dispathie.31 (We often see, the speculative say, that my first encounter with two men equally unknown to me will cause me to love one of them, while estranging me from the other, and that I will find myself liking all the actions of the former and disliking those of the latter. If they are astrologers, they will ascribe this to the aspects of the planets, making the heavens bend and move under our inclinations; if they are theologians, to the morals of the people concerned; and if natural philosophers, to their temperaments. But they all lead us in the end to sympathy or antipathy.)

Camus is visibly sceptical about the astrological explanation. He uses causative verbal constructions (‘faisants ployer’) to invert the hierarchy between the upper and lower worlds so that the astrologers themselves are seen placing their amorous inclinations on a star. 28 See Renaudot and Renaudot 1638–55: ii. 83–91 (conf. 38); Langer 1994: 71 and 118–20. 29 See Boaistuau 1981: 214; Du Bosc 1635: 427; Nadal 1948: 88–9. 30 Urfe´ 1925–8: iii. 263–4; quoted and analysed in Cue´nin 1987: 91–3. 31 Camus 1612–20: ix. 136.

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The natural causes of love are found both in the body and the soul. Doctors rely on the Galenic theory that the substantial form of each individual possesses in varying degrees four humours— sanguine, phlegmatic, melancholic, and choleric—whose combination makes up that individual’s ‘temperament’ or ‘complexion’.32 Love or sympathy between two people is determined by the happy conjunction of their individual temperaments.33 Boaistuau encapsulates this view: ‘les physiciens disent que ceste furie d’amour [ . . . ] procede de la correspondante qualite´ du sang, et que la complection engendre ce mutuel amour’ (physicians say that this madness of love [ . . . ] proceeds from corresponding qualities of the blood and that the complexion engenders this mutual love) (1981: 214). Philosophers in the scholastic tradition consider the passions able to cross the boundary between the body and the mind. They reproduce Aquinas’s tripartite division and definition of the soul and its passions.34 Aquinas gives a comprehensive definition of the powers that all animate bodies, from plants to humans, possess. These are five in number: nutrition (growth and generation), appetite, sensation, movement, and reason (intellect and will). Of these powers, plants have only the first, which belongs in the ‘vegetative’ soul. Animals possess this as well as the next three powers: these are located in the ‘sensitive’ soul. The human soul has, in addition to the vegetative and sensitive, a third ‘rational’ soul.35 It is by means of appetite, located in the sensitive soul, that humans experience the eleven passions of love and hatred, desire and aversion, joy and sadness, hope and despair, audacity and fear, and anger (which has no opposite). Camus’s definition of passion is traditional: ‘la Passion est un mouvement de l’Ame qui se fait en l’appetit sensitif, pour la suitte d’un bien ou la suitte d’un mal, vray ou apparent’ (passion is a movement of the soul which takes place in the sensitive appetite, in the search for some good or some evil, whether this be true or apparent).36 Passion starts, then, in the lower sensitive part of the soul, where the wild things are; but it can move up into the higher part, where it takes on a rational character. Love is an example of this. 32

Harvey 1975: 4–5. See Acade´mie Franc¸aise 1694: ‘sympathie’; Furetie`re 1690: ‘sympathie’. 34 Aquinas, Summa Theologicae, Ia IIae, 22–48; Camus 1612–20: ix. 96; RodisLewis 1955: 21–8; Susan James 1997: 47–65. 35 Camus 1612–20: ix. 70–4; Harvey 1975: 33; Des Chene 2000: 155–69. 36 Camus 1612–20: ix. 70; see also Cureau de la Chambre 1658–63: i. 7v. 33

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It lurks in the sensitive appetite as the animal inclination, blind and subversive, that we share with the beasts of the field.37 Rational love, which requires prior knowledge and an act of the will, takes place in the human part of the soul. Camus calls this amour d’amitie´ as though rational love were closer to friendship than to animal inclination.38 Bouhours alludes to this rational definition of love in his conversation on the je-ne-sais-quoi: ‘les Philosophes [ . . . ] ont souˆtenu de tout temps que la connoissance precede l’amour; que la volonte´ n’aime rien qui ne soit connu de l’entendement’ (philosophers have always maintained that knowledge precedes love, and that the will loves nothing that is not already known to the understanding) (1962: 142). The higher rational soul directs the passions, from above, towards right and wrong actions. Love is the primary example: ‘le Philosophe [Aristote] tient qu’aymer n’est autre chose que vouloir du bien’ (the Philosopher [Aristotle] holds that to love is no more than to want what is good).39 Human love, according to the scholastic tradition, moves upwards in the tripartite soul from a bestial inclination to become an act of will and reason. Treatise writers in this tradition describe the power of the soul to experience love in corresponding terms. They specify a specific faculty, vis estimativa (power of estimation), by means of which animals and humans experience the insensible forces of sympathy and antipathy: ‘l’estimative connoist ce qui ne tombe pas sous les sens, comme la haine et l’amour’ (the estimative faculty apprehends that which does not fall under the senses, such as hatred and love) (Ceriziers 1651–2: ii. 211). Estimation, one might say, is the sixth sense by which the subject experiences the je-ne-sais-quoi. It is one of the five internal powers of the sensitive appetite, lodged between the memory and the imagination, with which it is sometimes confused. It is a hidden perception or instinct confirmed by reiterated experience. The lamb that feels an instinctive antipathy for the wolf, and the newborn baby that somehow knows how to suck at its mother’s breast, are commonplace examples.40 Philosophers are divided, however, over the nature of estimation in humans. 37

Coe¨ffeteau 1620: 94; see also Camus 1612–20: ix. 126. Camus 1612–20: ix. 129; see also Coe¨ffeteau 1620: 97–113. Camus 1612–20: ix. 86; see also Senault 1987: 162; Levi 1964: 33. 40 See Binet 1987: 553–4; Renaudot and Renaudot 1638–55: ii. 557–9 (conf. 54); Harvey 1975: 41–5. 38 39

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Avicenna attributes the same power to animals and humans alike, arguing that for both it is an instinctive bodily perception. Aquinas, who insists that free will distinguishes humans from animals, rationalizes the power of estimation in humans as a deliberate act of ‘cogitation’.41 Treatise writers follow Aquinas: Binet, for example, refers to ‘cette puissance qu’e´s bestes se dit estimative, e´s hommes cogitative’ (the power that in beasts we call ‘estimative’, and in humans, ‘cogitative’) (1987: 553). Humans may experience love as a bodily inclination, just as animals do, but what makes them human is their ability to choose their object of love. Treatise writers chart the progress of human love from its initial place, close to the body in the sensitive part of the soul, upwards into the rational soul. But how is that the passion manages to rise through the soul in this way? Treatise writers avoid giving a precise answer to this question on the grounds that it would require a full explanation of the mysterious relationship between body and soul. They invoke instead a series of intermediary principles, such as humours, spirits, wits, and passions, that operate as nature’s go-betweens in the relationship that keeps body and soul together.42 Their existence is said to be as self-evident as their location and mode of operation are obscure. Doctors tend to leave such problems to the philosophers while treating symptoms in the body.43 Philosophers, when pressed for an explanation, make for a now familiar refuge of ignorance: it is simply in the nature of the soul, they say, to have such hidden qualities.44 The soul appears at such moments as a certain je-nesais-quoi by another name. Camus says: ‘l’ame humaine est un gouffre abyssal, un secret si obscur et abstrus [ . . . ] que je ne pourrois m’y plonger pour si peu, sans allonger merveilleusement ce chapitre’ (the human soul is an abysmal chasm, a secret so obscure and abstruse [ . . . ] that I could not throw myself into it for so little without wondrously lengthening this chapter).45 He and his successors stop short of asserting the radical nescioquiddity of the human soul. They claim instead that what they all lack is the necessary space for a full explanation, and continue their survey of learned doctrines. 41

Harvey 1975: 45–6, 55. 43 Dandrey 1998: 464; Harvey 1975: 40. Harvey 1975: 23–4. See Des Chene 2000 (on late Aristotelian conceptions of the soul); Susan James 1997 (on the role of the passions in 17th-cent. accounts of the body and mind). 45 Camus 1612–20: ix. 71; see also Cureau de la Chambre 1658–63: 12v. 42 44

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3.1.3. Descartes in Love The tentative suggestion, that there may be in the passions a certain je-ne-sais-quoi that no theory can adequately explain, is one that most treatise writers before and after Descartes offer their readers. How they do so is the subject of the next section. For now, though, I want to examine the contribution of Descartes to the study of the passions. Descartes distinguishes himself from his competitors in this area by eliminating the notion of the je-ne-sais-quoi from his account of the passions. But, as we shall see, he is haunted by the experience. The two main sources for Descartes’s account of the passions are his correspondence and his treatise Les Passions de l’aˆme, which was written in 1645–6 and first published in 1649. Descartes announces at the beginning of the Passions that he writes neither as an orator, nor as a moral philosopher, but as a physicist (1964–75: xi. 326). In so doing, he presents the work as an application of the mechanical framework set out in his Principes to a physiological study of the passions.46 Descartes rejects his predecessors in the treatise tradition both for surveying previous doctrines and for retaining the tripartite soul of the scholastics.47 Earlier treatise writers describe the relation between body and soul as obscure; Descartes attempts to explain this relation by examining the passions as modes of interaction between the immaterial mind and the material body. He argues, in keeping with the thrust of his title (Les Passions de l’aˆme), that the mind ‘suffers’ the actions of the body before in turn reacting to them in its own way.48 His is a theory that sets out to analyse the passions according to their distinct functions in the mind and body. This approach is equally apparent in Descartes’s correspondence on the topic of love with Christina of Sweden, who put a series of questions to him through the French Resident in Stockholm, Hector-Pierre Chanut, between December 1646 and May 1647. Chanut starts by asking Descartes to define the nature of love.49 Descartes, in reply, distinguishes between sensual love (the body’s action on the mind) and rational love (the reaction of the mind). The two, 46 See Descartes 1964–75: ix, Principes, iv. 189–90; Rodis-Lewis 1995: 305–6; Gaukroger 1995: 399–405; Susan James 1997: 87–108. 47 Descartes 1964–75: xi, Passions, §§.1, 47. 48 Rodis-Lewis 1995: 306. 49 Chanut’s question survives in Descartes’s reply (1964–75: iv. 601).

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he argues with reference to the Principes, exist independently of one another, although in constant interaction. Sensual love is a ‘confused thought’ by which the mind is disposed to produce the clear thought of rational love.50 Descartes draws upon the adjective je ne sais quel to characterize the confusion inherent in sensual love: comme en la soif le sentiment qu’on a de la secheresse du gosier, est une pense´e confuse qui dispose au desir de boire, mais qui n’est pas ce desir mesme; ainsi en l’amour on sent je ne sc¸ay quelle chaleur autour du cœur, et une grande abondance de sang dans le poumon, qui fait qu’on ouvre mesme les bras comme pour embrasser quelque chose, et cela rend l’ame encline a` joindre a` soy de volonte´ l’objet qui se presente.51 (Just as the feeling of dryness in the throat that we have when we are thirsty is a confused thought inciting us to drink, but is not the desire to drink itself, so in love we feel I know not what heat about the heart, and a great abundance of blood in the lungs, which means that we open our arms as if to embrace something. This makes the soul inclined to attach willingly to itself the object that appears before it.)

Love is, in the last instance, a clear thought in the mind. But I first experience it as no more than a confused feeling of heat in the body. Descartes emphasizes the subjective nature of this confusion by using the first-person adjective je ne sais quel to describe chaleur. What initially causes this feeling? Descartes suggests that, from the moment that it is first joined to the body, the mind experiences love and other passions as sensations. The principle of association means that the same sensations, from childhood onwards, tend to accompany the same actions of the mind (1964–75: iv. 604). These sensations remain confused and confusing for the subject (1964–75: iv. 606). The task of the philosopher is to dispel this confusion from the rational act of love and promote clear knowledge of the emotions. The account of interpersonal attraction that Descartes offers in the Passions reproduces the distinctions made in the letter to Chanut. The terminology alters so that the term amour comes exclusively to designate the clear thought of rational love: ‘l’Amour est une emotion de l’ame, cause´e par le mouvement des esprits, qui l’incite a` se joindre de volonte´ aux objets qui paroissent luy estre convenables’ (love is an emotion of the soul, caused by a movement of the spirits, which incites the soul willingly to attach itself to 50 51

Descartes 1964–75: iv. 602–3; ix, Principes, iv. 189–90. Descartes 1964–75: iv. 603.

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objects that appear suitable to it) (1964–75: xi, Passions, §.79). The confused initial sensation of the body he describes henceforth as agre´ment (desire); its counterpart he calls horreur (§§.85, 89–90). Desire occurs when one person is strangely attracted to another: lorsqu’on remarque quelque chose en une [personne], qui agre´e davantage que ce qu’on remarque au mesme temps dans les autres, cela determine l’ame a` sentir pour celle la` seule toute l’inclination que la Nature luy donne a` rechercher le bien, qu’elle luy represente comme le plus grand qu’on puisse posseder. Et cette inclination ou ce Desir qui naist ainsi de l’Agr[e´]ment, est appelle´ du nom d’Amour, plus ordinairement que la passion d’Amour qui a cy dessus este´ descrite. Aussi a-t[-]il de plus estranges effects, et c’est luy qui sert de principale matiere aux faiseurs de Romans et aux Poe¨tes.52 (When we observe something in a person which is more pleasing than that which we observe in others, this determines the soul to feel for that person all the inclination that nature has given it to seek good, and which nature represents to the soul as the greatest that can ever be possessed. This inclination or desire that comes from attraction is called by the name of love more commonly than the passion of love described earlier. Moreover, it has stranger effects, and it serves as the main subject-matter for novelists and poets.)

Sensual desire—or what most of us, Descartes says, call ‘love’—is a confused inclination for a person who is felt to possess a unique ‘something’. His indefinite quelque chose is a less ostentatious locution than the je-ne-sais-quoi, but the two are in fact semantically equivalent. Descartes relates the desire provoked to the mind’s search for goodness. He does not explain the nature of this relation, however, and it is difficult to see why, if sensual desire is indeed rationally determined, he should wish to distinguish it from the clear thought of love. Ockham’s razor could simply eliminate desire as a superfluous concept. But Descartes retains the distinction. The implication is that desire is distinct from love because its effects are felt without being understood: these are ‘plus estranges’. It is the very strangeness of this thing called ‘desire’ that makes it the stuff of prose fiction and poetry. Descartes seeks to eliminate the je-ne-saisquoi from his physiological theory of the passions. But the quelque chose which prompts desire is a je-ne-sais-quoi by another name. This critical reaction to Descartes’s theory of the passions may appear to reflect an aggressively modern perspective. But the 52

Descartes 1964–75: xi, Passions, §.90.

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reaction of a contemporary reader of Descartes, Chanut, is the same. Descartes, he suggests, has not satisfactorily answered Christina of Sweden’s question about the nature of love. In a further letter to him, Chanut tries again: ‘la question e´toit de sc¸avoir clairement quelle est cette impulsion secre´te qui nous porte dans l’amitie´ d’une personne plutoˆt que d’une autre, avant meˆme que d’en connoıˆtre le me´rite?’ (The question was: what exactly is this secret impulsion that draws us into intimacy [amitie´] with one person rather than another before we even know about his or her merits?) (Descartes 1964–75: v. 21). Chanut’s talk of an impulsion secre`te that acts before the rational mind has had a chance to operate may be equated with Bouhours’s characterization of the je-ne-sais-quoi as a force that strikes without warning against reason and will.53 Chanut and Bouhours both suggest that desire is an involuntary movement which the subject experiences and acts upon, but which remains inaccessible to any act of cognition: that it is what might now be called an ‘affect’. Descartes’s reply to this suggestion is evasive to say the least. Secret impulses, he says, have distinct causes in the mind and body. He refuses to discuss the former, since it raises fundamental questions about the nature of the soul that he is unwilling to pursue (1964–75: v. 56). The latter he attempts to explain by the principle of association: ainsi, lors que nous sommes portez a` aimer quelqu’un, sans que nous en sc¸achions la cause, nous pouvons croire que cela vient de ce qu’il y a quelque chose en luy de semblable a` ce qui a este´ dans un autre objet que nous avons aime´ auparavant, encore que nous ne sc¸achions pas ce que c’est.54 (So it is that when we are led to love someone without knowing the cause for it, we can suppose that it comes from the fact that there is something in that person which is similar to that which we loved previously in another object, even though we do not know what it is.)

Descartes here defines the quelque chose of the Passions as a bodily trace of a previous love.55 He illustrates his argument by telling a story drawn from his own experience. As a child, he recalls, 53

Bouhours 1962: 147; see Sect. 3.1.1, above. Descartes 1964–75: v. 57. 55 On the causes of the passions in Descartes, see Rodis-Lewis 1995: 322; Susan James 1997: 97–100; Moriarty 2003: 76–86. 54

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‘j’aimois une fille de mon aˆge, qui estoit un peu louche’ (I was in love with a girl of my own age, who squinted a little). For years afterwards he found himself strangely attracted to other women with the same condition until, one day, he made the connection: he loved them because he unwittingly associated them with that first girl (1964–75: v. 57–8). As soon as he understood the association, the spell was broken, and he was no longer prey to irrational attractions of that kind. The principle of association invoked by Descartes may be said to explain his feelings towards the successors of the girl he had known as a child. But it fails to explain what it was in that first squinting girl that affected the young Descartes so powerfully. He says only that he loved her: ‘j’aimois une fille de mon aˆge’. One could of course envisage explanations of Descartes’s love, but none is offered.56 His anecdote subverts its explanatory function and leaves the stroke of passion unexplained. Nothing in the letter indicates that this effect is intentional. The je-ne-sais-quoi that Descartes chases from his treatise on the passions returns, like a ghost, to haunt his letter about love.

3.2. what the poets say 3.2.1. Two Observations about Love Most vernacular treatise writers, in attempting to define love, betray the uncertainty that Descartes seeks to banish from his theory of the passions. They include two commonplace observations about the je-ne-sais-quoi in this area of experience to suggest that love can only ever be subject to what Camus calls ‘indefinite definitions’ (1612–20: ix. 315). The je-ne-sais-quoi undermines explanatory theories of the passions at such moments by naming the involuntary and inexplicable onset of powerful sympathy, friendship, or love in one person for another. The passions, as we saw earlier (Sect. 1.1.3, above), produce two mid-sixteenth-century occurrences of the je-ne-sais-quoi (n.), one in 56 One would be to argue that some prior association caused the onset of love for the girl; this would risk an infinite regression, however (a problem discussed in Sect. 2.3.2, above). Another explanation might invoke a hidden quality of the soul, a quasi-scholastic solution which Descartes avoids. Other explanations are also possible.

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the work of Straparola’s French translators, the other in the poetry of Du Bellay. In an ‘Elegie d’amour’ (1558), the poet uses the pronominal form in a similar context to describe the sudden onset of love between strangers: D’ou` vient souvent qu’on ayme a` l’aventure Un incogneu, et ne sc¸ait on pourquoy, Fors que l’on trouve en luy je ne sc¸ay quoy, Qui a` l’aymer par force nous incite, Comme le fer, qui suyt la calamite.57 (How does it come about so often that we love by chance an unknown person, and we know not why, other than that we find in the person I know not what, which draws us by force into loving them, just as iron follows calamite?)

Du Bellay frames his question as a mini-narrative in which an indefinite subject (on) experiences a certain attractive something in a stranger without being able to explain either what this is or what causes it. The syntactic string ‘et ne sc¸ait on pourquoy’ and the quasi-substantival ‘je ne sc¸ay quoy’ rhyme semantically as well as phonetically. The insensible force in nature that draws the iron towards the magnet is used here as a simile for the stroke of passion that falls, suddenly and as if by chance, upon the amorous human subject. Pierre Boaistuau’s Le The´aˆtre du Monde (1558), published in the same year as Du Bellay’s poem, contains a further occurrence of the je-ne-sais-quoi (n.) in the realm of the passions. Boaistuau presents his text as a vast theatre of human misery in which love is an everactive force. His discussion of love draws patristic, medical, philosophical, and literary sources into an encyclopedic mixture that connects Le The´aˆtre du Monde to the vernacular treatise genre. But where treatise writers offer their work as an antidote to passion, or a guide to its proper regulation, Boaistuau can only warn that love is a disastrous affliction (1981: 221, 218). He proves this to his readers by providing a critical review of medical, astrological, and philosophical attempts to explain the onset of love (1981: 214). Such attempts, he concludes, end in failure: les autres apre`s avoir fantastique´ tout ce qu’ils ont peu, et ne pouvans au vray concevoir la source et origine d’un si furieux mal, ont dict qu’amour 57

Du Bellay 1908–85: v. 80.

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estoit un je ne sc¸ay quoy, qui venoit je ne sc¸ay comment, et s’enflammoit je ne sc¸ay comment, chose certaine et veritable: car qui voudra considerer les gestes, fac¸ons de faire, eclipses de ces pauvres passionez, il confessera qu’il ne veit oncques une metamorphose plus estrange ou spectacle plus ridicule.58 (The others, after speculating as wildly as they could, and finding themselves still unable to conceive of the source and origin of so furious an ill, said that love was an I know not what, which came I know not how, and caught fire I know not how. This is certain and true; for whoever cares to consider the actions, behaviour, and lapses of these poor impassioned people will confess never to have seen a stranger metamorphosis nor a more ridiculous sight.)

The je-ne-sais-quoi (n.) here describes love as an affliction, whose effects are all too manifest, while its cause remains inexplicable (‘qui venoit je ne sc¸ay comment’). Boaistuau repeats the various forms of the je-ne-sais-quoi here in a kind of stammer of nescioquiddity. He presents this, not as his own invention, but as a commonplace saying that he attributes to certain unidentified ‘others’.59 This expresses a truth about love that the rest of us understand, but which has escaped the over-subtle philosophers. Boaistuau and Du Bellay, writing in the mid-sixteenth century, both present the je-ne-saisquoi of love as a common experience that undermines any systematic theory of the passions. Camus’s attempted definition of love is marked by the hesitation and uncertainty typical of vernacular treatises. He starts his review of previous definitions with a warning: ‘toute definition [ . . . ] est perilleuse: mais principalement en ceste matiere d’Amour’ (all definition [ . . . ] is perilous, but especially when it comes to love) (1612–20: ix. 119). Attempts to define love invariably end in failure. Camus lists those of the most important figures, from Socrates through the Church Fathers to Leone Ebreo (1612–20: ix. 119–124). He briefly entertains Leone’s definition but does not, pace Anthony Levi, espouse it.60 For it too is insufficient: ‘il y 58

Boaistuau 1981: 215. I have been able to trace no source for this commonplace. It may come from one of the many Latin or Italian humanist texts from which Boaistuau draws many of his examples. It may also be a popular saying passed on through the oral tradition, although I found no convincing leads in a collection of contemporary proverbs (Flandrin 1975: 89–91). 60 Levi 1964: 128. Levi’s rationalist parti pris (see 1964: 176) leads him to ignore the uncertainties rife in vernacular treatises. 59

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auroit prou a` regratter a` qui voudroit sejourner icy’ (there would plenty to scratch away at for anyone wanting to dwell on this) (1612–20: ix. 123). Camus ends by according the most reluctant support possible to the scholastic notion that to love is to will the good (1612–20: ix. 123–4). He describes this as a ‘mere’ description rather than a full definition.61 For love, Camus suggests later, is subject only to ‘deffinitions indefinies’ (indefinite definitions).62 Camus expresses his uncertainty about the causes of love by repeating the observations found in Du Bellay and Boaistuau. His version of Du Bellay’s mini-narrative about love at first sight has already been quoted and discussed. He repeats the commonplace found in Boaistuau when assessing the contribution of Socrates to the debate about the passions. For Socrates, Camus says, is the first person to have asserted love’s intrinsic nescioquiddity: l’Amour, faict-il, est je ne sc¸ay quoy qui blesse, je ne sc¸ay comment, et brusle d’une maniere je ne sc¸ay quelle; et puis allez trac¸ant des definitions apres ce grand esprit, le premier et plus cher mignon de la Philosophie; il y a bien pense´, et apres avoir profonde´ ce ressort, il nous paye de son ordinaire refrain, Je ne scay.63 (Love, he says, is I know not what that wounds us I know not how, and burns in I know not what manner. Now go off pursuing definitions as long as you like after this great thinker, the first and dearest darling of philosophy; [you will find that] he has always thought of it first, and having gone to the bottom of this force, he fobs us off with his usual refrain: ‘I know not.’)

Camus’s Socrates lists forms of the je-ne-sais-quoi in a confession of nescience about love. Its nature and its efficient cause cannot be known. Only its effects are manifest: it injures and burns the sufferer. Camus proves ambivalent about this description of love. He initially criticizes Socrates for having taken shelter in his usual refuge of ignorance, ‘I know not’. But later in the paragraph, Camus implies that this refuge is in fact justified, because love is by nature obscure. The philosopher can only shed further darkness on love’s dark core: ‘bref il en fait [ . . . ] un Je ne scay quoy’ (in short, he makes of it [ . . . ] a je-ne-sais-quoi) (1612–20: ix. 120). The je-nesais-quoi (n.) names love as an inexplicable force that acts upon the 61 Camus 1612–20: ix. 119, 125; Ferrand 1623: 24; Sect. 1.2.3 above (on definition and description). 62 Camus 1612–20: ix. 315; see also Senault 1987: 160. 63 Camus 1612–20: ix. 119–20.

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subject. Camus expresses a certain hesitant unease about the radical irrationalism of this image of love, as he does subsequently about its rational definitions. The unease is fully exorcized in neither case. Within the diversity of love lurks the je-ne-sais-quoi. Camus, like Boaistuau, presents the je-ne-sais-quoi of love as a quotation from another source. But where Boaistuau uses it to deliver a stroke against philosophy from without, Camus attributes the assertion to a major philosophical figure. There is no clear source for his attribution, which seems to conflate two distinct loci. Plato and Xenophon each wrote a Symposium in which Socrates discusses the subject of love with friends and fellow philosophers. Both texts contain candidates for the je-ne-sais-quoi in Camus. One of these is Aristophanes’ myth of primal unity in Plato’s Symposium (mentioned earlier). Camus introduces the Socratic assertion that love is ‘je ne scay quoy qui blesse’, however, within a different narrative context: il [Socrate] lisoit dans un livre, Alcibiade, pour lire quand et luy, s’appuye sur son espaule: je sentis, dit-il, de ce toucher, comme une picqueure qui me coula du bras dans le cœur, c’estoit une pointure d’Amour (laissons l’abomination Grecque) qu’il descrit comme cela simplement.64 (He was reading a book when Alcibiades, in order to read along with him, leant upon his shoulder. ‘I felt from his touch’, he said, ‘something like a sting that ran down my arm into my heart.’ It was a pinprick of love—let us ignore the Greek abomination—that he describes simply in this way.)

This anecdote, as Genevie`ve Rodis-Lewis has pointed out (1995: 318), is a confused reminiscence of a passage in the Symposium of Xenophon (1968: iv. 28). There Socrates is reminded of the occasion on which he and the beautiful young Critobulus (Camus substitutes Alcibiades) sat reading with their naked shoulders touching, and exclaims: ‘so that is what affected me like the bite of a wild animal! And for over five days my shoulder smarted and I felt as if I had something like a sting in my heart.’ That stinging ‘something’ Camus vividly renders in the assertion that love is I know not what that burns in I know not what manner. Socrates’s anecdote recounts the sudden onset of homoerotic desire, or what Camus, like Montaigne (i. 28, 187a), apologetically calls the ‘Greek abomination’. Love is not the expression of primal unity, or of astral conjunction: 64

Camus 1612–20: ix. 120.

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it is like being bitten by a wild animal. Camus reproduces the narrative content of Socrates’ anecdote in Xenophon here, but he does so in a form more akin to the spirit of definition that governs Aristophanes’ speech in Plato.65 The intertext allows Camus to transform Socrates’ anecdote about Critobulus’ shoulder into an aporetic description of love. The two commonplace observations about the je-ne-sais-quoi of passion that are found in Camus reappear in later vernacular treatises. Some writers place Du Bellay’s example of sudden sympathy between strangers within a pre-existing explanatory framework.66 Others refer to it as a strange case awaiting explanation. In some versions, such as that given by a speaker at the Bureau d’Adresse, the story is slightly different from that told by Du Bellay: ‘lors que voyant deux hommes inconnus joue¨r a` la paulme d’aussi bonne grace l’un que l’autre; je suis neantmoins bien aise que l’un gaigne et l’autre perde’ (when I watch two strangers playing tennis with equal grace, I am nevertheless glad to see one win and the other lose).67 Note that here, as so often, the speaker places his exposition of a philosophical problem—the causes of instantaneous sympathy—into an example involving subjective perception, a story about ‘my’ experience. Nicolas Malebranche ascribes sympathy of this kind to the je-nesais-quoi in his philosophical treatise De la recherche de la ve´rite´ (1674). Malebranche, an Oratorian as well as a natural philosopher, prolongs and modifies Descartes’s thought by reading it with a profound Augustinian pessimism about the capacities of humankind since the Fall. Our problem is not simply lack of knowledge, he insists, but the errors to which our experience of the world is congenitally prey. Malebranche mainly conducts his search for truth through an analysis of the sources of our errors: these are principally the senses, the imagination, the understanding, the inclinations, and the passions (the subject of Book V of De la recherche).68 Malebranche places at the centre of his account those passions that 65 Camus, incidentally, mentions Plato and Xenophon as sources of information about Socrates in the same sentence of his ‘Essay sceptique’ (1612–20: iv. 262–3). 66 See, e.g., Coe¨ffeteau 1620: 82. 67 Renaudot and Renaudot 1638–55: i. 592; see also Wright 1604: 220; Le Gallois 1675: 50. 68 For an acute account of Malebranche’s critique of experience (with particular reference to the role played by the senses, the imagination, and the understanding),

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were marginal in Descartes’s treatise because they are the least accessible to knowledge.69 It is precisely because they are based on purely irrational sense perceptions, Malebranche asserts, that sympathy and antipathy are the most acute of the passions, and the most dangerous: on voit dans une compagnie une personne dont l’air et les manie`res ont de secre`tes alliances avec la disposition pre´sente de nos corps; sa vue nous touche et nous pe´ne`tre. Nous sommes porte´s, sans re´flexion, a` l’aimer et a` lui vouloir du bien. C’est le je ne sais quoi qui nous agite, car la raison n’y a point de part. Il arrive le contraire a` l’e´gard de ceux dont l’air et les manie`res, re´pandent, pour ainsi dire, le de´gouˆt et l’horreur. Ils ont je ne sais quoi de fade qui repousse et qui effraie; mais l’esprit n’y connaıˆt rien, car il n’y a que les sens qui jugent bien de la beaute´ et de la laideur sensible, lesquelles sont l’objet de ces sortes de passions.70 (We see someone in a group of people whose air and manner have secret alliances with the current disposition of our own bodies: the sight of this person touches and penetrates us. We are drawn unreflectingly into loving this person and wishing them well. It is the je-ne-sais-quoi that shakes us, for reason plays no part in it. The opposite happens when it comes to those people whose air and manner spread, so to speak, fear and loathing. They have something, I know not what, insipid about them, which repels and frightens people. But the mind knows nothing of it, for the senses alone judge physical beauty and ugliness, which are the objects of these kinds of passions.)

Malebranche here warns his readers against the irrational passions of sympathy and antipathy. In so doing, and unlike Descartes, he willingly acknowledges their existence. The je-ne-sais-quoi appears here as the secret agent of both sympathy and antipathy. It poses the greatest threat to the rational structures through which, in Malebranche’s view, we need constantly to interrogate our everyday experience. For it ‘shakes’ us into the errors of the sensual. The commonplace observation that love is a je-ne-sais-quoi appears in an entire sequence of vernacular texts starting with Boaistuau. I offer, briefly, five further examples below. Three features of this commonplace persist through its successive alterations: its see Moriarty 2003: 151–248, where Malebranche’s method for finding the path to truth is also examined. 69 Malebranche 1979–92: i. 585–8 (Recherche, v. 12); on Malebranche’s relocation of the passions after Descartes, see Susan James 1997: 108–13. 70 Malebranche 1979–92: i. 588 (Recherche, v. 12).

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assertion that both the nature of love and its causes are inexplicable; its attribution to an anonymous source; its insistent, stammering repetition of the je-ne-sais-quoi in all its forms. On the whole in these texts, however, the je-ne-sais-quoi merely marks a passing moment of uncertainty, a hesitation about love. Marie de Gournay introduces the commonplace in the middle of Le Promenoir de Monsieur de Montaigne (1594). Her place in the chronological sequence comes between Boaistuau and Camus. She presents her text as the written version of a story that she used to tell her father figure, Montaigne, during their walks together.71 Princess Alinda, whose father has reluctantly offered her to his conqueror in battle, falls suddenly in love with a young man that she meets by chance on the way to her future home (Gournay 1996: 55–69). The narrator pauses to consider the causes of this event and ascribes it, not to the young man’s physical beauty, but to his imperceptible natural grace. She asks at this point: semble-t’il point d’ailleurs, que l’amour qui est, dit-on, je ne sc¸ay quoy, doibt sourdre aussi, de je ne sc¸ay quoy? et combien plus sont je ne sc¸ay quoy, la grace et les attraicts, que la beaute´? Qui plus est, Seneque escrivant; Qu’en la vraye et parfaite beaute´, la merveille des parties doibt estre efface´e par celle du total: il s’accorde, selon mon advis, a` la loger en un je ne sc¸ay quoy: puis que ce total n’est rien qu’une certaine harmonie et une cadence du concert et du concours universel des parties. Et pour argument que l’extreme beaute´ consiste plus en je ne sc¸ay quoy, qu’en autre chose, on estime, qu’elle ne peut estre peincte en perfection.72 (Does it not seem by the way that love, which people say is I know not what, must also spring from I know not what? And how much more I know not what are grace and charms than mere beauty? Moreover, when Seneca writes that in true and perfect beauty the wonder of the individual parts must be eclipsed by that of the whole, he proves willing, in my view, to place it in a je-ne-sais-quoi, since that whole is nothing other than a certain harmony and cadence of the union and universal combination of the parts. One argument for saying that extreme beauty consists of I know not what more than of anything else, people reckon, is that it cannot be painted to perfection.)

Gournay retains the major features of the commonplace. She attributes it to an indefinite source (on), she insists on the inexplicability 71 Gournay 1996: 47; it is in fact her version of a story found in Claude de Taillemont, Discours des Champs fae¨z (1553); see Gournay 1996: 1 (introd.). 72 Gournay 1996: 70–1.

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of love, and she reinforces the occurrences of the je-ne-sais-quoi at a semantic level by adding the synonymous adjective certain (‘une certaine harmonie’). In the final sentence quoted, she introduces to the poetics of the je-ne-sais-quoi an important rhetorical form: adynaton, ‘the figure by which we admit that our message is beyond the power of words to convey’.73 But her use of the je-ne-sais-quoi remains no more than a discursive digression within her story of sudden love. The je-ne-sais-quoi appears on the threshold of Jacques Ferrand’s De la maladie d’amour (1623). The work’s publisher, Denis Moreau, commends the work for its mixture of pleasure and profit in a prefatory Epistle. Not only, he says, does the text offer practical suggestions to the doctors of the future about how to prevent or cure lovesickness in themselves and others (Ferrand 1623: fo. A4r–v); it also quotes philosophers, theologians, and poets to add a pleasing variety (fo. A5v). The Epistle itself contains a virtuoso paratextual example of such variety when it critically reviews the various discourses of love on which the text will draw. In an immensely long sentence, only a fraction of which is quoted below, Moreau quotes a long list of definitions from Hesiod to Ficino. He declares all of them insufficient, saying: apres que les Theologiens l’ont nomme´ charite´ et dilection, les Philosophes passion et mouvement de l’ame, les Medecins concupiscence, maladie d’esprit, melancholie, furie, rage: Apres qu’on luy a donne´ des titres d’honneur, et d’infamie [ . . . ], encore se plaint-on de n’avoir pas assez dit, et de n’avoir pas penetre´ assez avant en la cognoissance de sa nature et de son pouvoir. Celuy avoit meilleure grace, qui pour s’exempter de toutes ces difficultez a librement confesse´ que l’Amour estoit je ne sc¸ay quoy, qui vient de je ne sc¸ay ou`, envoye´ de je ne sc¸ay qui, par une fac¸on je ne sc¸ay quelle, nay je ne sc¸ay comment, vivant je ne sc¸ay combien, croissant je ne sc¸ay comment, diminuant et mourant je ne sc¸ay quand, ny de quelle maladie; qui peut deviner encore ce que [c]e peut estre?74 (Although the theologians have named it charity and dilection, the philosophers, passion and movement of the soul, and the doctors, concupiscence, mental illness, melancholy, fury, and rage; although it has received honorific titles, and unspeakable ones too [ . . . ], people still complain that not enough has been said about it, and that they have not gone far enough in gaining knowledge of its nature and its powers. He had better grace who, 73 74

This, Melanchthon’s definition, is quoted in Sonnino 1968: 191. Ferrand 1623: fos. A2v–A3v.

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in order to save himself all these difficulties, freely confessed that love is I know not what, which comes I know not whence, sent by I know not whom, in I know not what manner; which is born I know not how, lives I know not how long, grows I know not how, and then fails and dies I know not when and from I know not what illness. Who can still guess what this thing might be?)

Where Boaistuau and Gournay award the saying to a nameless multitude, Moreau attributes it to one who, when pressed for an explanation, graciously confesses love’s nescioquiddity. He hyperbolically inflates forms of the je-ne-sais-quoi in a gesture that both celebrates and ironizes the topos. Love’s entire biography is told, from its inexplicable birth to its final demise, ‘je ne sc¸ay quand, ny de quelle maladie’. The commonplace indulges the pleasures of indefinition on the threshold of a treatise that sets out a traditional theory of the passion. Jacques Du Bosc dismisses the je-ne-sais-quoi as an error of selflove in his treatise L’Honneste femme (1632). Du Bosc presents his treatise as a companion to Faret’s social manual L’Honneste homme (1630). But where Faret teaches the aspiring courtier the art of raising his position within polite society, Du Bosc teaches his wife to ‘know’ her place by restricting her behaviour and education within bounds set by social convention.75 He is particularly keen to subdue the dangers that desire poses to feminine biense´ance. Sensual inclination, he warns his women readers, is no sufficient basis for a lasting commitment between two people, since if we can say that we are merely following our inclination in loving someone, then can that person not equally say that he is following his own in not loving us? Like Moreau, Du Bosc looks beyond the onset of reciprocal love here to the possibility of its coming to a sudden end, I know not how. He uses the theme of the inexplicability of erotic love as an argument against it: apres tout, cette Inclination n’est bien souvent qu’un Phantosme, les plus sc¸avans ont de la peine, a` en exprimer la cause et la nature: Elle est tellement occulte, que plusieurs ne pouvant comprendre l’Amour qu’elle fait naistre, disent que c’est un je ne sc¸ay quoy, qui se forme je ne sc¸ay comment, et qui nous enchante par je ne sc¸ay quels charmes.76 75 For a comprehensive analysis of this issue, see Le Dœuff 1998; on Faret, see Sect. 4.2.1, below. 76 Du Bosc 1634: 425–6.

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(After all, this inclination is often no more than a ghost: even the most learned have trouble explaining its cause and nature. It is so occult that several people, unable to understand the love that it excites, say that it is ‘an I know not what, which develops I know not how, and enchants us with I know not which charms.’)

Du Bosc alters the semantic charge of the commonplace to suggest that sensual inclination is no more than a ghostly illusion with dangerous effects. He later concludes that it is in fact an expression of ‘l’Amour de nous-mesme’ (self-love) (1634: 428). Inclination is no inexplicable force, then, but the mirror in which we narcissistically adore our own image. Du Bosc instructs women wishing to be modest to limit their inclinations to a love based on rational choice (1634: 430 –5). The je-ne-sais-quoi is a snare and a delusion. Cureau de la Chambre makes the je-ne-sais-quoi the dark zone in his chiaroscuro study of the passions. The project of his treatise Les Characteres des passions (1640) is an ambitious one: to explain the effects that the passions produce in the body and soul by fusing the insights of physiognomy, medicine, and moral philosophy (1658–63: i, fos. 12v–13r, 2–5). Cureau eventually adopts the traditional scholastic definition of love as a movement of the appetite by means of which the soul unites with what it takes to be good (1658–63: i. 29). Before doing so, like Camus and others, he uses the je-ne-sais-quoi to mark a moment of uncertainty about the very possibility of explaining the cause of love: une des plus grandes merveilles qui se rencontre dans l’Amour, est que cette Passion estant si commune et si generale, et dont on peut dire que tous les sc¸avans hommes ont este´ touchez; il ne s’en est point encore trouve´ qui ait bien clairement descouvert sa nature et son origine. Car apres avoir veu tout ce qu’ils en ont escrit, on peut asseurer que l’Amour des Philosophes est aussi bien aveugle que celuy des Poe¨tes; Et que celuy qui disoit que c’estoit un je ne sc¸ay quoy, qui venoit de je ne sc¸ay ou`, et qui s’en alloit je ne sc¸ay comment, n’est pas un de ceux qui a le plus mal rencontre´.77 (One of the greatest wonders of love is that, since it is such a common and universal passion and can be said to have affected all of the learned, none of them has ever clearly uncovered its nature and origin. For having read all that they have written about it, one can be sure that the love of the philosophers is just as blind as that of the poets, and that he who said it 77 Cureau de la Chambre 1658–63: i. 26; see also i. fo. 12v; and i. 5 (for a related occurrence of the je-ne-sais-quoi to describe the effect of passion on the physiognomy).

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was an I know not what, which came in I know not whence, and went away I know not how, was by no means the furthest away from the mark.)

Cureau again uses forms of the je-ne-sais-quoi to sketch the fortunes of a love affair, from its sudden onset to its inexplicable demise. His most significant modification is that, instead of ascribing the commonplace to an undefined speaker or speakers, he associates it with a specifically poetic conception of love. The commonplace’s internal structure, its use of anaphora and the rhythm of its phrasing, certainly makes the association seem natural. No philosopher, Cureau claims, has ever cast light upon (‘clairement descouvert’) the obscure phenomenon of love: we are all blind in this respect, as the poets know. Cureau’s influence on this commonplace is felt in later texts. The English author Walter Charleton silently translates Cureau’s formulation into English when the narrator of The Ephesian Matron (1655), his imitation of Petronius’s satirical story ‘The Widow of Ephesus’, makes a brief digression about the nature of love: ‘[I] think it as well defined by him, who said, It is I know not what, which came in I know not whence, and went away I know not how; as by Socrates, [ . . . ] or, even by St. Thomas himself.’78 Like the je-ne-saisquoi (n.) itself, the commonplace observation about love in which it is embedded crosses the Channel in the mid-seventeenth century. In France, Chalesme, the little-known author of a treatise on social quality entitled L’Homme de qualite´ (1671), explicitly quotes Cureau when he presents the je-ne-sais-quoi as the lesson in love that philosophy should learn from poetry (1671: 67–8). Instead of attributing the commonplace to an unspecified poetic source, Chalesme names the poet of the je-ne-sais-quoi as Corneille, quoting the passage on the je-ne-sais-quoi of reciprocal sympathy in Rodogune (1671: 68). Chalesme, like other treatise writers (and Bouhours), turns to poetry for a pithy statement of the truth about love. But this gesture remains once again nothing more than a momentary expression of uncertainty: Chalesme soon adopts from Cureau the scholastic definition of love (1671: 72). Vernacular treatise writers register no more than a tremor in the explanatory bedrock underlying their theory of the passions. If we are to see the experience of the je-ne-sais-quoi open an unbridgeable fault-line 78

Charleton 1975: 42; on Charleton’s text, see Mu¨ller 1999: 220.

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within knowledge about the passions, then we must—like Chalesme and the treatise writers—turn to the poets. 3.2.2. Corneille and the Poetry of the Je-Ne-Sais-Quoi (N.) The previous section traced the development within vernacular treatises of the observation that love, in its sudden onset and inexplicable demise, is a je-ne-sais-quoi. Treatise writers make of this theme no more than a preliminary hesitation within a theory of the passions. But poets and literary writers show its unsettling and dramatic force. They propose no discursive lesson but, rather, impose a powerful image of the je-ne-sais-quoi at work in interpersonal relations. The transition made here from vernacular treatises to literary texts reveals above all a different way of coming to terms with an experience. Corneille and Pascal portray particular narrative situations in which an inexplicable force with no history acts upon a powerless and unwitting subject. Both writers use the je-nesais-quoi (n.), at the moment of its greatest currency, to describe the experience of passion. A stroke of passion is the result of an inexplicable force of sympathy (or antipathy) acting upon the subject. Sympathy is, as the English lexicographer Cotgrave puts it, a ‘mutuall passion’ (1611: ‘sympathie’). Thomas Corneille (1695) notes in his dictionary’s entry on sympathie that its Greek etymology adds to the idea of ‘suffering’ or ‘passion’ (pathos) the conjunctive prefix sym(‘together’). Sympathy can be wholly attributed neither to a hidden objective quality in the beloved nor to the subjective perception of the lover; it is an event that befalls them both and draws them into a living symbiosis.79 The je-ne-sais-quoi describes sympathy as one person, whose testimony is implicit in the word’s constitutive elements, experiences its force. Dynamic force, I suggested at the end of the last chapter, is the objective correlative of the je-ne-sais-quoi in nature. It is perhaps political force that best correlates with the experience of the je-ne-sais-quoi in the realm of passion. Force is central to the baroque theory of political action proposed by Louis Marin (1988) in his work on Gabriel Naude´’s Conside´rations politiques sur les coups d’E´tat (1639). The coup d’e´tat, Marin argues, is the 79

Janke´le´vitch 1980: i. 98; see also Deleuze and Parnet 1996: 65–6.

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quintessential political act of the baroque period. The term there refers not to a revolutionary uprising against the state, the current meaning of the term coup d’e´tat, but to a decisive act that the state performs in its own interest (Marin 1988: 19). The preparation of this act is carefully guarded as a state secret (1988: 22). When it strikes, it does so as a sudden and extreme manifestation of preexisting political force: ‘le coup d’e´tat [ . . . ] n’est autre que l’e´clat, la violence, le choc de l’absolu de la force’ (the coup d’e´tat [ . . . ] is nothing other than the explosion, the violence, the impact of absolute force) (1988: 20). Marin’s theory of political action provides, in the coup d’e´tat, an objective correlative of the individual experience of passion. The force of sympathy falls upon the unwitting subject from a concealed point of origin as a sudden, violent ‘stroke’ (coup) of passion. This stroke the subject can neither avoid, nor resist, but only suffer as a vital inclination towards the other. This image overturns the scholastic definition of love in two ways: first, it portrays the ‘suffering’ (passion) of an irrational force by the subject, rather than an action of the rational soul; second, it disqualifies the very idea that a ‘sufficient definition’ of love is possible. One cannot define or explain the force of sympathy; one can only lend form to the experience by naming it in its real inexplicability and its inexplicable reality, and by describing its effects. The art of lending written form to the experience of the je-ne-sais-quoi is called ‘poetry’ by seventeenth-century writers; as I have already suggested, ‘poetry’ may in this context be thought of as largely synonymous with what is now called ‘literature’. The je-ne-sais-quoi (n.), while current, serves poetry above all as a forceful nomination of the stroke of passion in its inexplicable force. The term refers to the present participle that is my particular experience of ‘falling’ into love, friendship, or sympathy. The je-ne-sais-quoi is, in this sense, not so much one passion among others as the very suffering of all passion. Marin says similarly of the je-ne-sais-quoi: ‘ce n’est pas une passion mais le pathos de toutes les passions; ce n’est pas une e´motion, mais la motion de toutes les e´motions’ (it is not one passion, but the pathos of all passion, and not one emotion, but the motion of all emotion) (1986: 188). It is the imperceptible force that unleashes the stroke of passion. The je-ne-sais-quoi is remarkable in the early modern French literature of the passions for its sudden incidence and violent effects

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upon the subject. It has in this sense the character of a disaster. Its effects may also be disastrous in the sense of ‘calamitous’, but they may also be benevolent, the beginning of a new and better life. The je-ne-sais-quoi does not offer any such distinctions as to its effects. It can no more be explained by the ethical character of its effects than it can by its causes. The political coup d’e´tat proves an inadequate objective correlative in this respect, for it enacts a project, whereas the je-ne-sais-quoi irrupts into the world free of any intention. It has revolutionary effects in the political world, as we shall see, but their political or ethical character is merely accidental. It simply falls as a disastrous stroke of passion upon the unwitting subject. But what about the character of its effects? The OED usefully notes in its entry on ‘disaster’ that Provenc¸al has twin terms, malastre and benastre, which distinguish between destructive and creative disasters: these terms might be adopted into English as ‘malaster’ and ‘benaster’ in order to describe the different effects of the je-ne-sais-quoi. Pierre Corneille is widely recognized to be the seventeenthcentury poet of the je-ne-sais-quoi (n.). In this chapter we see contemporary readers such as Pascal, Bouhours, and Chalesme all quoting him as the poet who uses the term to ruin philosophical explanation by asserting the terminal nescioquiddity of certain powerful human passions. My purpose here is not to place the theme of the je-ne-sais-quoi within a general treatment of love in the works of Corneille, as others have done.80 It is, rather, to analyse at close quarters passages from two plays, Me´de´e and Rodogune, in which Corneille shows the je-ne-sais-quoi falling as a stroke of passion upon characters in particular dramatic situations. This theme is fundamental to Corneille because it raises two problems with which he and his successors in seventeenth-century theatre consistently grapple. These are the problems of motive and of representation, and I stress that they are ‘problems’ for Corneille, because his plays are assumed all too often to provide easy solutions to them. Motive is a case in point, for although—indeed, because— Corneille’s plays reflect a cultural taste for heroic choice and action, they are also actively concerned with those moments when heroic action is prompted or unsettled by something other than itself: when action is, as it were, a kind of passion. Representation is a 80

See Pinatel 1944; Nadal 1948: 31–47, 87–94; Le Gall 1997: 80–2.

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second problem with which seventeenth-century theatre grapples. What can the theatre show its audience, what are the limits of its showing, and what does the theatre do with that which it cannot show? Corneille, while using machinery and props to increase his representative possibilities, uses the je-ne-sais-quoi to point towards those experiences that are too intimate and powerful to be represented in any other terms.81 The je-ne-sais-quoi appears on stage in the tragedy Me´de´e (1635) as the ‘malaster’ of mutual passion that draws Cre´use and Jason to their destruction. Both characters claim that their passion is anything but the result of an inexplicable attraction, and that it coincides with their calculated interest. Jason explains to his confidant that he stands to rid himself of Me´de´e, his wife and murderous accomplice, and gain the throne of Corinth, where he must remain in exile.82 Cre´use argues that marrying Jason, rather than her royal suitor Æge´e, will allow her to remain in Corinth, near to her own people and her ageing father (655–74). But Jason and Cre´use do not act purely out of self-interest, despite their claims; Corneille complicates their motives by showing them both to be victims of a mutual passion. Jason expresses this in a soliloquy (173–6); Cre´use explains to Æge´e her preference for his rival on the same grounds. That Jason is of lower rank than Æge´e, she insists, serves only to prove the strength of her love for him: Mais si vous connaissez l’amour et ses ardeurs, Jamais pour son objet il ne prend les grandeurs: Avouez que son feu n’en veut qu’a` la personne Et qu’en moi vous n’aimiez rien moins que ma couronne. Souvent je ne sais quoi qu’on ne peut exprimer Nous surprend, nous emporte, et nous force d’aimer Et souvent, sans raison, les objets de nos flammes Frappent nos yeux ensemble et saisissent nos aˆmes.83 (But, if you truly know about love and love’s ardours, you know that it never fixes upon rank or dignity. Confess that love burns for the sake of the person alone, and that you love nothing in me less than my crown. Often, I know not what that cannot be explained surprises us, sweeps us away, and forces us to love; and often, without any reason, the objects of our ardour both strike our eyes and seize hold of our souls.) 81 82 83

On this see Starobinski 1999a: 31. Corneille 1971–96: i, Me´de´e, 41–5. Corneille 1971–96: i, Me´de´e, 632–8.

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Cre´use justifies her inclination for Jason by making it analogous with that felt by Æge´e for herself. If Æge´e loves her, then it must be by a disinterested stroke of passion, and this is equally what draws Cre´use into the arms of his rival. Corneille here dramatizes Du Bosc’s argument against marriage based on irrational sympathy; namely, that it equally justifies rejection on the grounds of antipathy.84 What makes Cre´use’s speech discomforting is that even as she turns this argument to her advantage, she describes her passion for Jason, for she is indeed the victim of an inexplicable force against which she can offer no resistance. None of us can resist the force of the je-ne-sais-quoi, she says, rendering the passivity of all humans in this situation by making her all-inclusive pronoun nous the object of violently active verbs. Cre´use draws on the common metaphor of fire (‘nos flammes’) to describe the experience of passion.85 The dramatist actualizes this metaphor as the real fire that engulfs Cre´use at the end of the play. The audience learns that she covets not only Me´de´e’s man, but also her favourite dress; this Me´de´e duly yields to her, but only after filling the dress with an occult inflammable virtue designed to burn her rival (1045–54). No sooner has Cre´use put on the dress than, as Theudas reports, ‘un feu subtil s’allume’ (a subtle fire is kindled) (1307). A fire that no spectator can see burns Cre´use and her father alive on stage. We hear her cry: ‘Ah! je bruˆle, je meurs, je ne suis plus que flamme; j De graˆce, haˆtez-vous de recevoir mon aˆme’ (Oh, I am burning, dying, there is nothing left of me but flames! Be quick, I beg you, and prepare to receive my soul) (1417–18). That Cre´use should here repeat the rhyme words that she used earlier (in 637–8) to describe her passion indicates the horrific truth: Me´de´e has transformed the burning je-ne-sais-quoi felt by Cre´use for Jason into the subtle fire that engulfs her. The objective correlative of the je-ne-sais-quoi is, once again, a dynamic force free of any elemental substance. It is a malaster that leaves two people dead. Corneille, in his ‘Examen’ (1660) of the play, describes how he decided to make the fire produced by the dress of Me´de´e invisible so as to have Cre´on and Cre´use on stage at the end of the play, or the ‘catastrophe’, as he 84

See also Dryden 1991: ii. 1, 296–302. Compare Camus’s remark: ‘l’Amour [ . . . ] est je ne sc¸ay quoy qui [ . . . ] brusle d’une maniere je ne sc¸ay quelle’ (1612–20: ix. 119–20). 85

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calls it (1971–96: i. 566). The disaster of the je-ne-sais-quoi coincides here with the poetics of ending. Corneille attempts to show his spectators the experience of terminal suffering even as it takes place. He puts the je-ne-sais-quoi of passion on stage in Me´de´e, and by releasing its vital narrative force into the play, makes a catastrophe out of a disaster. Corneille’s tragedy Rodogune (1645) stages the je-ne-sais-quoi in its very imperceptibility. In this play, as in Me´de´e, the stroke of passion falls into a complex political situation. Cle´opaˆtre (the Queen of Syria) holds Rodogune, sister to the king of Parthia, prisoner of war. Cle´opaˆtre is set to reveal which of her twin sons, Se´leucus and Antiochus, is the older, and is therefore also destined to have the throne of Syria and the hand of Rodogune as a means of sealing peace between the warring nations.86 The marriage, while a political settlement, provokes contradictory passions in Rodogune. The twins are both in love with her, and their appearance is identical, a fact that any production of the play should emphasize. The captive princess, nevertheless, suffers a violent attraction towards one twin that is matched only by her inexplicable aversion to the other. Both forces are irreducibly particular to her experience; Corneille contrasts the divided inclinations of Rodogune with the equal admiration in which the Syrian people holds the twins: ‘L’un et l’autre fait voir un me´rite si rare j Que le souhait confus entre les deux s’e´gare’ (each displays such a rare merit that any wish, confused, loses its way between them) (431–2). Rodogune acknowledges the merit of both twins even as she confesses to the confidante of Cle´opaˆtre, Laonice, that one of the two does in fact have her heart: Mais il est malaise´, dans cette e´galite´, Qu’un esprit combattu ne penche d’un coˆte´. Il est des nœuds secrets, il est des sympathies, Dont par le doux rapport des aˆmes assorties S’attachent l’une a` l’autre, et se laissent piquer Par ces je ne sais quoi qu’on ne peut expliquer. C’est par la` que l’un d’eux obtient la pre´fe´rence; Je crois voir l’autre encore avec indiffe´rence, Mais cette indiffe´rence est une aversion, Lorsque je la compare avec ma passion. Etrange effet d’amour! Incroyable chime`re! 86

Corneille 1971–96: ii. Rodogune, 3–4.

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Je voudrais eˆtre a` lui si je n’aimais son fre`re, Et le plus grand des maux toutefois que je crains, C’est que mon triste sort me livre entre ses mains.87 (But, for all their equal worth, it is difficult for a soul fought over by them not to lean to one side. There are certain secret ties and sympathies by whose sweet concord two well-suited souls become attached and find themselves stirred by those je-ne-sais-quoi that cannot be explained. It is thanks to those that one of them has won my preference. It seems to me that I view the other still with pure indifference, but this indifference is nothing less than an aversion when I compare it with my passion. What a strange effect of love this is, and what an unbelievable fancy! I would gladly be his if I did not love his brother, and yet the greatest ill I fear is that my sad fate will place me in his hands.)

The je-ne-sais-quoi has here the intensity of a living link between two individuals on the margins of their perception that moves one to a recognition of the other (see Sect. 1.2.3, above). Rodogune experiences a real and inexplicable force of sympathy by means of which she is able to recognize her beloved, and an equal and opposite force of antipathy towards his unloved fraternal lookalike. To name these forces, she turns the lexicon of astrological explanation towards the subtle nescioquiddity of the je-ne-sais-quoi (n.). Her speech is reminiscent of the explanation that Isabelle—using the same word—offers to her father Ge´ronte, in L’Illusion comique (c. 1635), as to why she is neglecting her suitor Adraste: Mais si votre bonte´ me permet en ma cause, Pour me justifier, de dire quelque chose, Par un secret instinct que je ne puis nommer, J’en fais beaucoup d’e´tat, et ne le puis aimer. Souvent je ne sais quoi que le ciel nous inspire Soule`ve tout le cœur contre ce qu’on de´sire, Et ne nous laisse pas en e´tat d’obe´ir Quand on choisit pour nous ce qu’il nous faut haı¨r. Il attache ici-bas avec des sympathies Les aˆmes que son ordre a la`-haut assorties: On n’en saurait unir sans ses avis secrets; Et cette chaıˆne manque ou` manquent ses de´crets.88 87

Corneille 1971–96: ii, Rodogune, 357–70. Corneille 1971–96: i, L’Illusion comique, 639–48. Editions before 1660 give line 641 as ‘De certains mouvements que le ciel nous inspire’ (certain movements that the heavens inspire in us). In 1660, Corneille replaces ‘De certains mouvements’ with ‘Souvent je ne sais quoi’. 88

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(But, if you will permit me to say something in my own cause in order to justify myself, by a secret instinct that I cannot name, I value him highly, but I cannot love him. Often, I know not what that the heavens inspire in us stirs our entire soul against that which others desire, and leaves us in no state to obey when they choose for us what we can only hate. The heavens use sympathies down in this world to attach together souls that have been matched up above by divine order. None can be united without the secret choice of the heavens, and when the tie is missing, so is their divine decree.)

It is worth comparing the two texts to see that they move in contrary directions between the experience of the je-ne-sais-quoi and the framework of astrological explanation. Isabelle explains her ‘secret instinct’ as an astral je-ne-sais-quoi. Her father is indignant: ‘Insolente, est-ce ainsi que l’on se justifie? j Quel maıˆtre vous apprend cette philosophie?’ (insolent girl, do you really think that is how to justify yourself ? Who taught you this philosophy?) (Illusion, 653–4). Rodogune invokes astral sympathy too. But the term sympathie provides her, not with a ready-made explanation, but with a means of naming the inexplicable forces that attract and repel her as ‘ces je ne sais quoi qu’on ne peut expliquer’ (Rodogune, 362). Bouhours and others recall this line because it reveals, at one stroke, a deep fault-line of particular experience running through the bedrock of astrological explanation: it is one poetic means of remaining faithful to the nescioquiddity of the je-ne-sais-quoi. Something has fallen between Rodogune and each twin, but what it is, she cannot tell. Neither, incidentally, can we. The dramatist, in the third act of the play, places Rodogune alone on stage until she sees the twins approach. She exclaims: Amour, qui me confonds, cache du moins tes feux, Et, content de mon cœur dont je te fais le maıˆtre, Dans mes regards surpris garde-toi de paraıˆtre.89 (O Love, you overcome me, but at least hide your flame; and satisfied with this heart of mine that I surrender to your command, make sure you do not appear in my surprised looks.)

The dramatist creates a strange situation for his spectators as the two identical twins appear on stage, for we know that some force draws Rodogune towards one and away from the other, but we are unable to see what it is. Corneille succeeds in putting the je-ne-sais-quoi 89

Corneille 1971–96: ii, Rodogune, 894–6.

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on stage by making his audience perceive the thing in its very imperceptibility. I have already made it clear that my present purpose is not to analyse the place of the je-ne-sais-quoi within Corneille’s treatment of the passions as a whole. If one were to attempt such an analysis, however, one would need to juxtapose the theme of the inexplicable je-ne-sais-quoi underlying love with another theme present in Corneille’s plays: namely, the tendency of some characters to love others for their unique qualities or distinction. The most famous example of this theme comes in Le Cid (1637). Chime`ne, like Rodogune, has two suitors to choose between; but if she prefers Rodrigue to Don Sanche, it is not that her soul is tied to his by some inexplicable link, but that he is perceived by all to be manifestly the better candidate. It is remarkable, at the beginning of the play, that we learn about Rodrigue’s pre-eminence not from Chime`ne herself so much as from characters with a certain authority over her. Her father says of Rodrigue that ‘ses hauts exploits le rendent sans e´gal’ (his noble exploits mean he has no equal); her Princess, the Infante, confesses to her governess that she herself would have chosen Rodrigue for her husband were it not for his inferior rank.90 The love of Chime`ne and Rodrigue passes through the mediation of a third party; it appears less as an immediate two-way relation than as a ‘triangle’ of desire, to borrow Rene´ Girard’s term (1985: 15–69). The most powerful figure in this triangle is the Infante, who having explained to her governess that she kindled the fires of passion between Chime`ne and Rodrigue to extinguish her own (Le Cid, 103–4), then symbolically gives the two lovers to one another at the end of the play (1773–4). The Infante may of course represent here, at one level, the collective perception and self-interest of the entire Castilian court. Corneille is not the only author to suggest the important role played by mediating third parties in the onset of apparently two-way love: La Princesse de Cle`ves (1678), as we shall see (Sect. 4.2.3, below), reveals similar ambiguities. Juxtaposing the theme of the je-ne-sais-quoi with that of love founded on social distinction may lead one to suspect that one could always explain people’s experience of the former as effects of their need for the latter. Is the experience of the je-ne-sais-quoi not always a surface illusion, a form of divertissement whereby we hide the emptiness of 90

Corneille 1971–96: i, Le Cid, 47, 91–124.

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our emotional lives from ourselves as well as those around us, rather than the effect of a real and truly inexplicable force? 3.2.3. Pascal: Cleopatra’s Nose Many would argue that this is precisely the position that Pascal takes towards the je-ne-sais-quoi when he explicitly borrows the term from Corneille in a fragment on the causes and effects of human love. This is the fragment most famous for its enigmatic reference to Cleopatra’s nose. There is no doubt that the fragment has a place within Pascal’s apologetic project to bring outsiders to the Christian faith by showing them that their experience of the world is shot through with error and self-delusion and that truth can be found only through the search for God.91 But it is equally true that this projected apology of the Christian religion was left incomplete at Pascal’s death in 1662, the subject of most of the eight hundred or so fragments found among his papers and later published as the Pense´es, and that this creates acute interpretative problems for readers attempting to make sense of particular fragments and their projected role within the apology. It may indeed be that the fragmentary and enigmatic nature of the text gives, as Terence Cave has recently suggested, ‘a more deeply engaging and appropriate image of the problem Pascal wished to tackle than any elegantly completed work could have done’ (2003b: 151). This remark certainly applies to the fragment dealing with Corneille, the cause of love, and Cleopatra’s nose. Important work on the Pense´es in recent years has stressed the multiple readings that the text invites, not only on account of its incomplete state, but also because Pascal eschews the largely monologic rational argumentation of theological treatises for dialogic forms of presentation.92 The staging of encounters between different voices and personae, it has been suggested, allows Pascal not only to talk to his readers in a language that they can understand, but also to slide between different perspectives on this-worldly experience, profane as well as Christian, positive as well as critical.93 This suggestion is born out by Pascal’s fragment on the causes and effects of human 91 92 93

See Mesnard 1992: 363–71; 1993; Moriarty 2003: 100–50. See, e.g., Parish 1986; Melzer 1986; Hammond 1994; Marin 1997b: 51–70. This is the approach taken to Pascal by Gilby (2003).

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love, which I am going to examine closely here. Rather than seeking to establish Pascal’s ‘position’ in this fragment, one should perhaps read it as the record of an encounter: one in which the experience of human love, even as it receives a theological critique, is articulated and described with a distinct sense of lasting fascination. This description is of particular interest here, of course, because it encapsulates the core meaning of the je-ne-sais-quoi at the height of the word’s currency. Pascal lends written form to the singular character of the je-nesais-quoi by letting it irrupt into his text at a single point. The point of irruption, fragment 32 in Sellier’s numbering (413 in Lafuma), appears in the first dossier contained in the second manuscript copy of Pascal’s papers.94 This dossier contains notes towards an order of his apology as Pascal was planning it in June 1658. A sketch of the overall argument of Pascal’s projected apology can be found in the course of his Entretien with the spiritual director of Port-Royal-desChamps, Lemaistre de Sacy, a text with a distinct history from that of the Pense´es since it was preserved for posterity by Sacy’s secretary Nicolas Fontaine.95 There Pascal offers a critical review of his favourite authors, Epictetus and Montaigne, who were also widely read by lukewarm Christians and non-believers of his day. Pascal argues that, between them, Epictetus and Montaigne exemplify the failure of all profane thought to make sense of human experience. Experience appears to be made up of an apparently incompatible mixture of error and insight, power and incapacity, grandeur and vanity, until the mixture is understood in the light of the Christian doctrines of fall and redemption (as interpreted by Augustine), which reveal all that is weak and vain in humans to be a consequence of their own fallen nature, and all that is strong and great in them the work of redemptive divine grace. The focus of Pascal’s anti-humanist critique in the Pense´es is at once more general and more anonymous than in the Entretien, and a set of fragments considering miracles as proof of divine grace’s operations in the natural world has been added, but the thrust of the argument appears to be otherwise the same. 94

Lafuma bases his edition on the first copy, Sellier on the second. This text has received renewed critical attention in the decade or so since the original manuscript of Fontaine’s Me´moires was discovered by Pascale MengottiThouvenin at the Bibliothe`que de l’Institut de France: see Pascal 1994; Fontaine 2001; Ribard 2003b; Scholar 2003b. 95

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Where, within the plan of the apology, is Pascal’s fragment about human love meant to fit? Although the most complete version of this fragment is found among the notes towards the order of the apology as a whole, its rightful place seems to be in another dossier, as is indicated in the first sentence of fragment 32 (L. 413): ‘qui voudra connaıˆtre a` plein la vanite´ de l’homme n’a qu’a` conside´rer les causes et les effets de l’amour’ (whoever wishes to know fully the vanity of humankind has only to consider the causes and effects of love). Vanity is the subject of the third classified dossier of fragments. It is asserted to be an inescapable fact of the fallen world: ‘qui ne voit pas la vanite´ du monde est bien vain lui-meˆme’ (whoever cannot see the vanity of the world is truly vain) (L. 36; S. 70). Pascal designs this sentence in such a way that the speaker implicitly accuses anyone prepared to reject the stated law of universal vanity of doing no more than illustrate that law. A brief note indicates that fragment 32 is to be included within the ‘Vanite´’ dossier: Vanite´. La cause et les effets de l’amour. Cle´opaˆtre.96

Pascal refers to fragment 32 on a second occasion in the dossier entitled ‘Transition’ (L. 197; S. 228). On three occasions, then, he refers to human love as something that shows the vanity of fallen humanity with a singular force. The ‘Vanite´’ dossier contains a series of fragments offering examples of the same theme. Some of these fragments are more clearly interrelated than others. Explicit interconnections, for example, link the fragments in which Pascal analyses what he calls, in a marginal aside (L. 45; S. 78), humankind’s internal ‘puissances trompeuses’ (misleading powers): the senses, the imagination, custom, and curiosity.97 But not all the examples of vanity listed in the dossier would fall within his projected chapter on these misleading powers. For there are also powers in the outside world that, though merely accidental and apparently trivial, nevertheless humiliate humankind. One such is the power exercised by flies: ‘la puissance des mouches: elles gagnent des batailles, empeˆchent notre aˆme d’agir, mangent notre corps’ (the power of flies: they win battles, 96

Pascal: L. 46; S. 79; Mesnard 1992: 388. These ‘puissances trompeuses’ are examined by Ferreyrolles 1995; Moriarty 2003: 100–50. 97

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prevent our souls from acting, eat our bodies) (L. 22; S. 56). How then is fragment 32 related to its neighbours in the ‘Vanite´’ dossier? The note marking its place in that dossier (L. 46; S. 79) follows the long fragment devoted to the imagination, ‘cette maıˆtresse d’erreur et de faussete´, et d’autant plus fourbe qu’elle ne l’est pas toujours’ (that mistress of error and falsehood, and all the more treacherous because it is not always so) (L. 44–5; S. 78). The imagination is described in that fragment as, among other things, the cause of all beauty in the world. Some readers have, as a result, assumed—or asserted—that the fragment on the cause and effects of love is a prolongation of the one on the imagination, in other words, that the je-ne-sais-quoi in the realm of the passions is simply one more effect of the imagination.98 This reading has the benefit of making a coherent connection between neighbouring fragments. But the connection comes at a price to fragment 32 in a number of ways. First, in causing fragment 32 to be annexed to its neighbour, it erases the gap that actually separates the two fragments in the text as we have it. One wonders why, if he believes the imagination to be the cause of love, Pascal does not say so in either of the two fragments. Second, it assumes that the experience of the je-ne-sais-quoi is provoked by beauty, and so is an effect of the imagination in turn. But a close reading of fragment 32, as I shall argue later, suggests that the cause of love is an imperceptible flaw in beauty rather than beauty’s perfection. ‘Plaisante raison qu’un vent manie et a` tout sens!’ (laughable reason, which a gust of wind pushes in all directions!), Pascal exclaims when surveying the power of the imagination: ‘je rapporterais presque toutes les actions des hommes, qui ne branlent presque que par ses secousses’ (I would attribute [to it] almost all the actions of men, who move almost only through its jolts) (L. 44; S. 78). Note that the qualifier presque (almost) allows for other forces, beside that of the imagination, to dictate human actions. It seems that one such force is that of the je-ne-sais-quoi in the realm of love and that, in the absence of explicit intertextual connections between it and its neighbours in the same dossier, fragment 32 should be allowed to maintain its distinct identity. That Pascal’s description of human love itself remains singular and unassimilated certainly reflects, at a textual level, the character 98 See Mesnard 1992: 389–92 (who assumes the link); Ferreyrolles 1995: 169–70 (who asserts it).

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of the force described. It is important to examine the provisional context of fragment 32 within Pascal’s incomplete apology, then, but equally important to analyse the text in its very singularity. The fragment reads as follows: Qui voudra connaıˆtre a` plein la vanite´ de l’homme n’a qu’a` conside´rer les causes et les effets de l’amour. La cause en est un Je ne sais quoi. Corneille. Et les effets en sont effroyables. Ce Je ne sais quoi, si peu de chose qu’on ne peut le reconnaıˆtre, remue toute la terre, les princes, les arme´es, le monde entier. Le nez de Cle´opaˆtre s’il euˆt e´te´ plus court toute la face de la terre aurait change´.99 (Whoever wishes to know fully the vanity of humankind has only to consider the causes and effects of love. Its cause is a je-ne-sais-quoi (Corneille). And its effects are appalling. This je-ne-sais-quoi, so slight a thing that it cannot be recognized, shakes all the earth, princes, armies, the whole world. Had Cleopatra’s nose been shorter, the entire face of the earth would have changed.)

All is vanity in a world without God. Anyone needing to be persuaded of this need look no further than love, whose cause is the slightest of things, but which visits disaster upon the world. The Pascalian je-ne-sais-quoi is best conceived in its difference from that of other seventeenth-century writers. For where Bouhours freezes the je-ne-sais-quoi as an omnipresent spiritual substance, Pascal agrees with Descartes that this idea is no more than a refuge of ignorance in the study of nature; but where Descartes attempts to banish the je-ne-sais-quoi from the passions as well as from natural philosophy, Pascal retains the notion and uses it to make sense of the human condition. His je-ne-sais-quoi is neither Bouhours’s substantial thing, nor Descartes’s mere nothing, but a certain something, so slight that it cannot be recognized, which acts powerfully in human experience. What is the ontological status or nature of this something, given its unrecognizable minuteness? For some clarification we might turn to an exchange on the question of infinity between Pascal and the Chevalier de Me´re´. Me´re´, a writer on polite culture as well as mathematics to whom we shall return in the following chapter, explains in a letter to Pascal his wish to avoid the inexplicable 99

Pascal: L. 413; S. 32; I follow Sellier here.

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vertigo of infinite material division: ‘je vous apprens que de´s qu’il entre tant soit-peu d’infini dans une question elle devient inexplicable, parce que l’esprit se trouble et se confond’ (I warn you that as soon as infinity even so much as appears in some question, that question becomes inexplicable, because the mind is unsettled and overwhelmed) (1692: ii. 62 (letter 19)). Me´re´ solves the problem to his own satisfaction by positing the existence of indivisible atoms (1692: ii. 67). He offers, as proof of their necessary existence, the example of the still point at the centre of a revolving globe. He asks Pascal: est-ce quelque chose que ce centre, ou rien du tout? Si ce n’est rien vos demonstrations se fondent sur une Chimere, et vous n’y devez pas avoir beaucoup de foy. Que si c’est je ne sc¸ay quoy a` sa mode, je n’ay pas plus de peine a` me representer ce je ne sc¸ay-quoy rempli que vuide; et neanmoins il faut que je me le figure indivisible, si je veux qu’il soit fixe et sans mouvement quand le Cercle tourne sur son point de milieu.100 (Is this centre something, or nothing whatsoever? If it is nothing, then your demonstrations are based upon a chimera, and you should have little faith in them. If it is I know not what after its own fashion, then I have no more trouble imagining that I know not what full than empty; nevertheless, I must think of it as indivisible, if I want it to be fixed and motionless when the circle turns around its central point.)

Me´re´ is what might be called a strategic atomist: he uses an indivisible thingy je-ne-sais-quoi to keep philosophical speculation within the limits of the thinkable and to avoid being unsettled by the idea of infinity. If Me´re´ is a strategic atomist then Pascal, or at least the speaker in the fragment ‘Disproportion de l’homme’ (L. 199; S. 230), appears as an anxious corpuscularian. Me´re´’s letter reads like a reply to that very fragment and the attempt made in it to imagine the infinite division of matter. Pascal’s speaker takes the smallest material particle available to human perception, the blood vapours of a mite, and explains that many commonly assume this—the point at which human perception stops—to be an indivisible thing and the smallest in nature. But this point is in fact no more than ‘celui au-dela` duquel nos sens n’aperc¸oivent plus rien, quoique divisible infiniment et par sa nature’ (that beyond which our senses can perceive no more, even though it is infinitely divisible by its nature) (L. 199; S. 230). 100

Me´re´ 1692: ii. 62.

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We should see in such a point, not an indivisible thing, but an infinity of ever-unfolding universes.101 Fragment 32 recalls this vertiginous description. Pascal’s je-ne-sais-quoi, ‘si peu de chose qu’on ne le peut reconnaıˆtre’, is as tiny as the infinitely divisible point at the centre of a revolving globe, and as important, for it shakes the entire world into movement. The je-ne-sais-quoi is nothing when compared with everything, something when compared with nothing, a next-to-nothing that makes all the difference, an entity best described as the ‘imperceptible point’ at the centre of a disaster.102 Pascal gives the je-ne-sais-quoi the character of a disaster by stressing the disproportion between its cause and its effects. He takes as his example of its effects the political upheavals that the Roman empire suffered when first Caesar, and then Mark Antony, fell in love with the Queen of Egypt. The story is often told in ancient and early modern literature: Plutarch gives an influential description of Cleopatra’s charm in his life of Antony.103 Camus quotes Plutarch when he recounts the death of Antony, describing Cleopatra as ‘l’unique cause de sa desroutte’ (the sole cause of his ruin).104 Pascal introduces a singular new element by ascribing the cause of Antony’s passion for Cleopatra to her unusually long nose: ‘le nez de Cle´opaˆtre s’il euˆt e´te´ plus court toute la face de la terre aurait change´’ (had Cleopatra’s nose been shorter, the entire face of the earth would have changed). Where Pascal gets the idea to place Cleopatra’s nose at the centre of this story is a question to which I have found no entirely satisfactory answer. Jean Mesnard and others observe that coins distributed during her reign show Cleopatra with a long Ptolemaic nose.105 But this receives no comment in any written source known to them, or to me, before Pascal. Corneille, an obvious potential source, celebrates the enslaving power of Cleopatra’s eyes in his political tragedy Pompe´e (1643), but nowhere mentions her nose.106 Pascal, it seems, has observed a detail in visual representations of Cleopatra which he then uses for his own purposes. 101

See Descotes 1993: 205. I borrow the notion of an ‘imperceptible point’ from a different context in the Pense´es (L. 695; S. 574). 103 On Cleopatra, see Me´nager 1996. 104 Camus 1612–20: ix. 180; see also Veyries 1610: 17–37. 105 Mesnard 1992: 389; Hamer 1993: 3–11; Foss 1997: 80–1. 106 Corneille 1971–96: i, Pompe´e, 393–6, 1276–80. 102

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Mesnard suggests as one possible reading of the fragment that Pascal’s Cleopatra is a woman of perfect beauty, that her beauty determines Antony’s fate, and that Pascal imagines a shorter nose as a flaw in her beauty that might have prevented the onset of passion.107 But this reading is simplistic, as Mesnard himself concludes, and the assumption that Cleopatra embodies perfect beauty is at odds with her historical characterization. She is famous for being a woman whose physical beauty is not incomparable, but whose charm (or bonne graˆce as Amyot’s Plutarch puts it), certainly is.108 The Cleopatra of fragment 32, like that of Plutarch, surely bewitches her Roman lovers, not because she conforms to the canon of beauty, but precisely because something vital proves irreducible to the canon. Pascal finds an objective correlative for that inexplicable charming something in visual representations of Cleopatra’s nose, which exceeds the standard length requirement that the imagination imposes upon noses by the imperceptible length of a je-nesais-quoi. It is the tiny flaw in her beauty, rather than its perfection, that makes Cleopatra so cataclysmically bewitching. What the nose allows Pascal to do, in other words, is radicalize the notion of the je-ne-sais-quoi that he finds in Corneille by pushing the relation between its causes and effects out of proportion. The je-ne-sais-quoi is no longer a link between two people on the margins of their perception that moves one to a recognition of the other, as in Corneille, but an imperceptible point, a trifle, that shakes the entire world. Pascal’s brief history of the English civil war shows the same eye for the all-important detail: ‘Cromwell allait ravager toute la chre´tiente´; la famille royale e´tait perdue, et la sienne a` jamais puissante, sans un petit grain de sable qui se mit dans son urete`re’ (Cromwell was about to ravage the whole of Christendom: the royal family was lost, and his own family was set to be for ever powerful, except for a tiny grain of sand that lodged itself in his urethra) (L. 750; S. 622). A tiny stone in one man’s urethra determined the fate of Christendom, and a woman’s nose, the course of ancient civilization. The history of fallen humanity is full of such disasters. How does the subject experience the je-ne-sais-quoi? Leibniz provides a useful point of comparison with Pascal here. His theory 107 108

Mesnard 1992: 389–92. Plutarch 1818–21: viii. 312–13 (‘Antonius’, §.32); Me´nager 1996: 51.

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of perception develops the scholastic idea that the animal soul contains a ‘sixth sense’ or perceptive faculty, called vis estimativa, by means of which it is able to sense the je-ne-sais-quoi. Leibniz explains that I, or any living creature, constantly experience an infinite number of tiny perceptions. Each is so small as to be insensible; it can be the object of no rational activity on my part; it merely leaves me in a state of animal ‘unease’ (inquie´tude). Multiple miniperceptions, however, combine to form a single clear apprehension. One such is my apprehension of the je-ne-sais-quoi: ces petites perceptions sont [ . . . ] de plus grande efficace qu’on ne pense. Ce sont elles qui forment ce je ne sais quoi, ces gouˆts, ces images des qualite´s des sens, claires dans l’assemblage, mais confuses dans les parties, ces impressions que les corps font sur nous, et qui enveloppent l’infini, cette liaison que chaque eˆtre a avec le reste de l’univers.109 (These tiny perceptions have [ . . . ] much greater efficacy than one would think. It is they who form that je-ne-sais-quoi, those tastes, and those images of qualities in the senses which are clear when they are put together, but confused in their constituent parts; those impressions that bodies make upon us, and which envelop infinity, that relation each and every being has with the rest of the universe.)

Tiny perceptions are to living creatures what forces are to material bodies: they are the insensible but rational causes of their vital movements.110 The uneasy perceptions that I constantly have, whether awake or asleep, contain the traces of the past and the seeds of the future: ‘on peut meˆme dire qu’en conse´quence des petites perceptions le pre´sent est plein de l’avenir et charge´ du passe´’ (it can even be said that, as a result of the tiny perceptions, the present is full of the future and laden with the past) (Leibniz 1990: 42). Leibniz places the je-ne-sais-quoi in a dynamic presenttense apprehension that envelops past and future.111 It exists too in the middle of a dynamic epistemological continuum that stretches from animal unease, through confused apprehension, to distinct explanation. Leibniz distinguishes, in the Discours de me´taphysique, between the initial apprehension of the je-ne-sais-quoi and its explanation:

109 110 111

Leibniz 1990: 42 (pref.). Leibniz 1990: 41–3; Deleuze 1988: 114–15. On the dynamism of time, see Pigeard de Gurbert 2001: 55.

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quand je puis reconnaıˆtre une chose parmi les autres, sans pouvoir dire en quoi consistent ses diffe´rences ou proprie´te´s, la connaissance est confuse. C’est ainsi que nous connaissons quelquefois clairement, sans eˆtre en doute en aucune fac¸on, si un poe`me ou bien un tableau est bien ou mal fait, parce qu’il y a un je ne sais quoi qui nous satisfait ou qui nous choque. Mais lorsque je puis expliquer les marques que j’ai, la connaissance s’appelle distincte.112 (When I can identify one thing among others, without being able to say what its differences and properties consist of, then my knowledge is confused. So it is that sometimes we know clearly, without being in any kind of doubt, whether a poem or a painting is well or badly done, because there is a je-ne-sais-quoi which either satisfies or shocks us. But when I can actually explain my impressions, my knowledge is called distinct.)

Leibniz defines the je-ne-sais-quoi as my confused apprehension of sympathy or antipathy towards a poem, and distinct knowledge, as my ability to explain this apprehension. He unfolds the je-ne-saisquoi within a progressive continuum of infinite explicability. Pascal, rather than unfolding the je-ne-sais-quoi through time, imagines it befalling the subject at one stroke. How is it then that the Pascalian subject experiences the je-ne-sais-quoi? One answer, whose implications have already been discussed, is that the experience is produced by the faculty of the imagination. Another answer may be worth exploring here, since a tangential connection is made in the Pense´es between the esprit de finesse, knowledge of the heart, and the je-ne-sais-quoi. Pascal distinguishes between two kinds of knowledge: the esprit de ge´ome´trie, which develops manifest principles in a rational demonstration, and the esprit de finesse, which correctly senses certain subtle principles without being able to demonstrate them.113 Two fragments repeat this distinction in other terms, with raison or esprit corresponding to the esprit de ge´ome´trie, and cœur to the esprit de finesse. The first fragment is included in the dossier ‘Grandeur’ (L. 110; S. 142). The second appears in the dossier ‘Preuves de Je´sus-Christ’: L’ordre—Contre l’objection que l’Ecriture n’a pas d’ordre. Le cœur a son ordre, l’esprit a le sien, qui est par principe et de´monstration. Le cœur en a un autre. On ne prouve pas qu’on doit eˆtre aime´ en exposant d’ordre les causes de l’amour, cela serait ridicule.114 112 113 114

Leibniz 1957: 62 (§.24). Pascal: L. 511–13; S. 669–71; see also Hammond 1994: 50–9. Pascal: L. 298; S. 329.

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(Order—against the objection that there is no order in the Scriptures. The heart has its order, as does the mind, whose order works by principle and demonstration. The heart has a different one. You cannot prove that you ought to be loved by displaying in order the causes of love. That would be ridiculous.)

Pascal, in order to illustrate his assertion that the heart alone can sense the order of the holy Scriptures, mentions the cause of love as an analogous case. This suggests a tangential connection with the fragment in which he says that the cause of love is a je-ne-sais-quoi. It is possible, as a result, to discern the je-ne-sais-quoi among what Pascal calls ‘les choses de finesse’.115 We experience such things, he says, only by catching a sudden glimpse of them: ‘il faut tout d’un coup voir la chose d’un seul regard, et non pas par progre`s de raisonnement, au moins jusqu’a` un certain degre´’ (one must all of a sudden see the thing in a single glance, not by progressive reasoning, at least to a certain degree) (L. 512; S. 670). Leibniz places the apprehension of the je-ne-sais-quoi in a dynamic temporal vista; but nothing prepares one for a stroke of passion that comes, as the saying goes, I know not whence. The subject suffers the Pascalian je-ne-sais-quoi precisely as it falls into experience; namely, at one stroke in an unladen and prospectless absolute present. When looking to name the stroke of passion, Pascal turns to Corneille, the most successful dramatist of the age. Pascal’s apologetic writing adopts the conversational poetics and diction that characterize new philosophical texts. Like many other writers in this tradition, Pascal looks to Montaigne as one precursor of his own way of writing: la manie`re d’e´crire d’Epicte`te, de Montaigne et de Salomon de Tultie, est la plus d’usage, qui s’insinue le mieux, qui demeure plus dans la me´moire et qui se fait le plus citer, parce qu’elle est toute compose´e de pense´es ne´es sur les entretiens ordinaires de la vie.116 (The writing style of Epictetus, Montaigne, and Salomon de Tultie is the one most in use, that works its way best into the mind, remains longest in the memory, and is most often quoted, because it is entirely composed of thoughts born in the ordinary conversations of life.)

115

See Borgerhoff 1950: 128–9; Dens 1981: 54–5; Lichtenstein 1989: 26. Pascal: L. 745; S. 618; ‘Salomon de Tultie’ is an anagram of Pascal’s pseudonym ‘Louis de Montalte’. 116

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Fragment 32 exemplifies this style by using Corneille and the je-nesais-quoi as a shared point of reference. The fragment holds a provisional place between Cureau de la Chambre and Chalesme in the sequence of texts, examined earlier, that use the je-ne-sais-quoi to encapsulate a singular truth about human love. But fragment 32 remains distinct from the rest of the sequence, since where treatise writers accommodate the commonplace as a preliminary indefinition within a general theory, Pascal lets the je-ne-sais-quoi fall as a singular stroke of passion. His text is the first in the sequence to name Corneille as the poetic source of the commonplace. Members of the Jansenist movement—with which Pascal was of course at one time closely associated—single out Corneille for particular condemnation in their attacks on the theatre.117 Fragment 32 bears out Nicholas Hammond’s argument that Pascal does not condemn the theatre so much as use it to describe and analyse this-worldly human experience.118 Pascal draws upon the term that Corneille has helped make current because it names the stroke of passion in a single word. At this, its moment of greatest currency, the je-ne-saisquoi (n.) is the mot juste.

3.3. from passion to pathos Des coups de foudre. Il faudrait changer ce mot ridicule; cependant la chose existe. (Coups de foudre. This ridiculous word should be changed; however, the thing exists.) Stendhal

3.3.1. La Rochefoucauld, Racine, and Molie`re The previous section set out to show how literary writers, in the middle decades of the seventeenth century, use the current je-ne-sais-quoi (n.) to name and describe the stroke of passion. The intention was not to suggest that the term provides the sole means of doing so. For the core meaning of the je-ne-sais-quoi passes through neighbouring terms in the shifting and fragile 117

Thirouin 1997: 84–5.

118

Hammond 1993: 280.

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seventeenth-century lexicon of love, as passages in La Rochefoucauld, Racine, and Molie`re indicate. That this lexicon is indeed fragile may be seen in the case of the jene-sais-quoi. The noun successfully carries, in Corneille and Pascal, the full semantic force of the experience that it describes. No sooner does it start to settle into the language, however, than it starts to lose this force. Usage soon makes of it an all too settled term for a radically unsettling event. It remains possible—but much more difficult—for a writer to invest the sedimented term with the same semantic force. Stendhal’s observation about the term coup de foudre applies to sympathie, the je-ne-sais-quoi, graˆce, sublime, or any other word in the same semantic field.119 None is adequate to the task, each comes in time to seem more hackneyed than the last, and yet the thing exists and needs to be put into words. All literature can do is to keep the lexicon of love on the move. The adjective je ne sais quel plays a significant supporting role here, for its subordinate position within noun phrases reduces its risk of sedimentation, allowing it to continue uncovering the nescioquiddity concealed within settled terms.120 It achieves in this way the effect that the Russian formalist Victor Shklovsky (1988) calls ostranenie (defamiliarization): it refreshes our perceptions of just how strange a force love is. Literary texts of the late seventeenth century carry the semantic force of the je-ne-sais-quoi by setting the lexicon of love into movement. To show this I am going briefly to examine a few instances, which I indicate as avenues for further reading and exploration. In some, the je-ne-sais-quoi (n.) is implicit; in others, non-substantival forms play an explicit supporting role. Even at the height of the word’s currency, there are other ways than the je-ne-sais-quoi (n.) of saying the same thing. Two readers of La Rochefoucauld, in the years following the first publication of his Maximes (1665), make an explicit connection between the word and its semantic neighbours. Maxims and other short prose forms, like vernacular treatises, attempt to redefine thinking about the passions, but where treatises offer a survey of existing doctrines, maxims lay down the law in a series of pithy and self-sufficient definitions.121 The work of definition is most visible, of course, 119

On sympathie and its uses in the novel, see Rousset 1981: 89–101. An interesting example occurs in the early 17th-cent. imaginary travel narrative, L’Isle des hermaphrodites (1605); see Dubois 1996: 139. 121 On the maxim see Beaujot 1984; Bennington 1985: 1–61. 120

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when it meets with resistance. The sympathy that draws individuals together appears in La Rochefoucauld, for example, as one force that can be defined only as indefinable. One maxim spells this out in its opening sentence: ‘il est difficile de de´finir l’amour’ (it is difficult to define love).122 Maxim 240 is more discreet: On peut dire de l’agre´ment, se´pare´ de la beaute´, que c’est une syme´trie dont on ne sait point les re`gles, et un rapport secret des traits ensemble, et des traits avec les couleurs et avec l’air de la personne. (One can say of charm as distinct from beauty that it is a symmetry whose rules are unknown, and a secret relation between all of a person’s features, as well as between that person’s features, colouring, and manner.)

This maxim distinguishes between beauty and agre´ment (charm), the term that Descartes uses to name the cause of desire. All that can be said about agre´ment, the maxim asserts, is that it is an inexplicable fact of physiognomy. Two phrases, ‘une syme´trie dont on ne sait point les re`gles’ and ‘un rapport secret’, deliver this assertion of nescioquiddity. One might be forgiven for thinking that maxim 240 brings to mind a certain je-ne-sais-quoi. This may appear to be no more than the effect of thinking too long and hard about a single word, a kind of literary ide´e fixe, but if so it is one that is shared by at least two seventeenth-century readers of La Rochefoucauld. Modern editors reproduce the marginal annotations of Christina of Sweden and an anonymous contemporary commentator on the Maximes.123 Christina, whose correspondence with Descartes on love has already been discussed, is said to have written her remarks on the Maximes around 1671, the year in which Bouhours’s conversation ‘Le Je Ne Sc¸ay Quoy’ was first published.124 Christina’s marginal comment on maxim 240 and its definition of agre´ment reads: ‘c’est un je ne sais quoi qui se voit et se sent, et qui ne se peut exprimer par les paroles’ (it is a je-ne-sais-quoi that can be seen and felt, and cannot be expressed in words) (La Rochefoucauld 1967: 615). The maxim receives a similar comment from the anonymous contemporary reader: ‘bonne de´finition, qui revient au je ne sais quoi’ (good definition, which comes down to the je-ne-sais-quoi).125 122 123 124 125

La Rochefoucauld 1967: no. 68; see also nos. 69 and 77. See La Rochefoucauld 1967: pp. iii–iv (avant-propos). La Rochefoucauld 1967: 599. La Rochefoucauld 1967: 62 n. 3; see Borgerhoff 1950: 108.

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Both readers make the semantic connection between inexplicable agre´ment and the je-ne-sais-quoi (n.). The anonymous reader’s formulation indicates that he or she, like Bouhours, conceives of the noun as a discursive topic within which other terms and phrases may be included. This is a further indication that, by the 1670s, the word has achieved sedimentation. One can only speculate as to why La Rochefoucauld chose not to use the word, it seems, most likely to come to his readers’ minds. This may of course have been his very reason for avoiding the je-ne-sais-quoi (n.): evoking the seme without mentioning the word would permit a form of defamiliarization and recharge the je-ne-sais-quoi, as it were, with nescioquiddity. Whatever the author’s intention, at least two of his contemporary readers applaud La Rochefoucauld for evoking the je-ne-sais-quoi. Seventeenth-century dramatists exploit the je-ne-sais-quoi and its narrative force by keeping the lexicon of love on the move. Molie`re and Racine—in very different ways of course—both dramatize the idea that love is a je-ne-sais-quoi. The stroke of passion has profound political effects in Racine’s late biblical tragedy Esther (1689).126 Racine’s Esther resembles another oriental queen, Cleopatra, whose inexplicable charm Pascal describes as having caused a revolution. Esther, wife of the Persian king Assue´rus, risks death by entering the king’s presence without prior invitation to beg mercy for her Jewish people. Assue´rus, initially angered by her transgression, is suddenly overcome by the appearance of his wife. Esther overturns the despotic order of the Persian empire and the fate of the Jewish people at one stroke. This key moment of peripeteia is the subject of Poussin’s dramatic painting Esther devant Assue´rus (c.1654), which Racine seems sure to have known, as well as of Le Brun’s frontispiece to early printed editions of Esther.127 Racine’s play raises a question implicit in contemporary visual representations of this scene: what is it about Esther that acts so powerfully upon the king? Assue´rus tells her: Je ne trouve qu’en vous je ne sais quelle graˆce, Qui me charme toujours, et jamais ne me lasse. 126 On Esther, see Orcibal 1950; Jasinski 1985; Scholar 2002b. Racine’s theatrical representation of the Jewish people is the subject of a forthcoming study by David Maskell. 127 Poussin’s painting is now in the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg. On it and Le Brun’s frontispiece, see Racine 1999: 953 and 1683.

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De l’aimable vertu doux et puissants attraits! Tout respire en Esther l’innocence et la paix.128 (I find in you alone I know not what grace, which always charms and never tires me. What soft and strong attractions lovable virtue holds! Everything in Esther breathes of innocence and peace.)

The phrase ‘je ne sais quelle graˆce’, used here by Assue´rus to describe his wife, encapsulates the dramatic interactions between sacred and profane forces at work in Racine’s theatrical version of the story of Esther.129 The Acade´mie Franc¸aise dictionary definition (1694) displays the semantic ambivalence of the term ‘grace’: ‘Grace, signifie plus estroitement l’aide et le secours que Dieu donne aux hommes pour faire leur salut [ . . . ] Grace, signifie encore, Agre´ment, ce qui plaist [ . . . ] Cette femme est belle, mais elle n’a aucune grace’ (‘grace’ refers more narrowly to the help and assistance that God gives men in order to secure their salvation [ . . . ] ‘Grace’ also means ‘charm’, that which is pleasing [ . . . ]: ‘That woman is beautiful, but she has no grace’). La Pie´te´ uses the term in its religious sense in the Prologue (Racine 1999: 949); the profane despot Assue´rus, however, draws upon its profane sense when Esther appears before him. A force that beggars explanation and acts within everyday experience draws him to his wife. He uses the adjective je ne sais quel to emphasize the intimate nescioquiddity of Esther’s grace. This revelation, as the following line makes clear, is one that Assue´rus has undergone many times before. This repetition does not make of the je-ne-sais-quoi a Leibnizian dynamic force that enfolds past and future within a progressive present. The je-nesais-quoi that overcomes Assue´rus is, instead, the lightning that strikes twice in the same place, every day indeed, and which always charms and never tires him.130 One can incessantly fall in love, as Assue´rus does, with the same person. Each stroke of passion falls in an absolute present. Can one be sure that the je-ne-sais-quoi of passion is a real force? Molie`re places passionate relations in a social context that always threatens to condition them. The je-ne-sais-quoi, when it comes to be a linguistic fashion item, casts doubt over the real inexplicability 128

Racine 1999: Esther, 669–72. This argument is set out in more detail in Scholar 2002b: 323–6. 130 Janke´le´vitch describes this repetition of love at first sight as a form of recognition and a common experience (1980: ii. 159). 129

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of the attraction professed. Its use may be determined by certain factors—a cold attempt at seduction, for example, or the desire to include oneself within fashionable social circles—that make of passion no more than a means to an end. Molie`re’s theatre can be read as a dramatic exercise in this unsettling thought. L’E´cole des Femmes (1662) uses forms of the je-ne-sais-quoi to trace the mutual passion that the young lovers, Agne`s and Horace, experience for one another. When Horace arrives in town, he is greeted by Arnolphe, an old friend of his father who is keen to welcome the young gentleman into his social circle. Arnolphe boasts that the town’s womenfolk have plenty to offer young gallants such as Horace in search of amorous intrigue.131 Horace assures Arnolphe that he has already found this out for himself. He has just met a bewitching young woman who is in a predicament, since her jealous protector keeps her locked away from the world. Arnolphe, of course, is the selfsame protector who intends eventually to take the young woman, Agne`s, as his wife. Horace describes to Arnolphe what he sees in Agne`s: ‘Un air tout engageant, je ne sais quoi de tendre, j Dont il n’est point de cœur qui se puisse de´fendre’ (a most engaging air, something inexplicably tender, which no heart can resist) (1971: i. 561 (i. 4)). He uses a fashionable phrase, the pronominal form je ne sais quoi de plus adjective, to describe his passion to an older man in his social circle. The conversation between Horace and Arnolphe is uncomfortable for those spectators who wish to see Agne`s free to love where she chooses. For her so-called liberation appears to involve a mere substitution of husbands within the same social class. Molie`re eases this discomfort by making Agne`s and Horace speak the same language of passion. Agne`s, like her lover, uses a pronominal form of the je-ne-sais-quoi when describing her new-found feelings to Arnolphe. Horace, she says with visible confusion, tells her: Des choses que jamais rien ne peut e´galer, Et dont, toutes les fois que je l’entends parler, La douceur me chatouille et la` dedans remue Certain je ne sais quoi dont je suis toute e´mue.132

131 132

Molie`re 1971: i. 560 (L’E´cole des Femmes, i. 4). Molie`re 1971: i. 572 (ii. 5).

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(Things that nothing could ever match and which, each time I hear him speak, make me tingle with their sweetness and stir in me a certain something that leaves me all excited.)

Agne`s falls upon the phrase in her untutored attempt to put into words the physical attraction that draws her to Horace.133 This experience, as strange to her as it is irresistible, encapsulates the je-ne-sais-quoi in the word’s core meaning. Agne`s repeats the same thought in her letter to Horace, using no gallant trope but a simple string of syntax: ‘en ve´rite´ je ne sais ce que vous m’avez fait; mais je sens [ . . . ] que je serais bien aise d’eˆtre a` vous’ (in truth, I don’t know not what you have done to me, but I feel [ . . . ] I would be glad to be yours) (1971: i. 589 (iii. 4)). Molie`re places forms of the je-ne-sais-quoi in the mouths of the two lovers in L’E´cole des Femmes to suggest that, despite their different social positions and schooling, both have fallen victim to the same stroke of passion. The play, through its use of the word, first provokes the uncomfortable thought that love may simply sugar the pill of social determination, and then dispels it.134 The tone darkens in Le Misanthrope (1666). The relationship between the misanthropic Alceste and the socialite Ce´lime`ne strikes their friends as so inexplicable that it must be a shared delusion. Eliante, with a glance at various theories of the passions reviewed earlier in this chapter, remarks of the pair: Cela fait assez voir que l’amour, dans les cœurs, N’est pas toujours produit par un rapport d’humeurs: Et toutes ces raisons de douces sympathies Dans cet exemple-ci se trouvent de´menties.135 (That shows clearly enough that love is not always produced in people’s hearts by a link between their humours; and all those explanations by sweet sympathies are belied by the present example.)

This speech, a parody of Corneille’s astrological lexicon of love in L’Illusion comique (quoted in Sect. 3.2.2, above), also denies the pertinence of physiological causes to this particular case of strange sympathy. Eliante’s rejection of available explanations might appear to suggest the positive nescioquiddity of the relation between Alceste and Ce´lime`ne. But the play ends in its breakdown, with 133 134 135

On this see Johnson 1982: 172. For an alternative view, see Johnson 1982: 175. Molie`re 1971: ii. 192 (Le Misanthrope, iv. 1).

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Ce´lime`ne resolved to remain within the social circle, and Alceste determined to abandon it (1971: ii. 217–18). There is of course the promise of a marriage—the eminently reasonable match between Philinte and Eliante—but this is not the one that the audience has been led to imagine and expect. Molie`re stages the endgame of love described by Cureau de la Chambre in his short biography of this strange force as ‘un je ne sc¸ay quoy, qui venoit de je ne sc¸ay ou`, et qui s’en alloit je ne sc¸ay comment’ (an I know not what, which came in I know not whence, and went away I know not how) (1658–63: i. 26). He dramatizes the fortunes of passion as that fleeting je-nesais-quoi which, after its inexplicable onset, departs in a manner no easier to understand. 3.3.2. An Instrument of Pathos There are those too who claim to suffer the je-ne-sais-quoi as a stroke of passion, but who do so merely to use the word as an instrument of pathos, a means of stirring tender emotions in others. The lexical tracer of the je-ne-sais-quoi registers this use only, however, as the word achieves sedimentation. The noun becomes reified as an object capable of serving different uses: it is no longer the mark of a vital passion but, instead, the instrument of a coldly conceived charm offensive.136 One example will suffice. The commonplace of the je-ne-saisquoi makes a late appearance in Jean-Franc¸ois Regnard’s comedy De´mocrite Amoureux (1700).137 The philosopher De´mocrite, a latter-day Alceste with a pedantic turn of mind, lives with his gallant disciple Strabon in a desert retreat. There the lovely Crise´is, who has been brought up as a country girl, comes across them. De´mocrite, smitten, exclaims with characteristic philosophical abstraction: ‘Je sens, en la voyant, la raison et l’amour, j L’homme et le philosophe agite´s tour a` tour’ (on seeing her I feel that reason and love, the man and the philosopher, are being moved in turn).138 The play satirizes the pretension of philosophers who claim to reflect upon the very passions that subvert their reason. De´mocrite attempts to seduce the simple Crise´is by giving her a lesson in love. In his agitation, 136 137 138

On this see Janke´le´vitch 1980: i. 24. On this play, see Orwen 1982: 80–2; Calame 1960: 301–4. Regnard 1876: i. 247 (De´mocrite, i. 5).

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however, he can only stammer pedantically a biological theory of love: it is, he tells the confused young woman, a hidden instinct for reproduction in each individual. Strabon cuts him short and proceeds to court Crise´is, not as a pedant, but with a well-worn gallant commonplace: L’amour, ne vous en de´plaise, est un je ne sais quoi, Qui vous prend, je ne sais ni par ou`, ni pourquoi; Qui va je ne sais ou`; qui fait naıˆtre en notre aˆme Je ne sais quelle ardeur que l’on sent pour une femme: Et ce je ne sais quoi, qui paraıˆt si charmant, Sort enfin de nos cœurs et je ne sais comment.139 (Love, with all due respect, is an I know not what, which takes you I know neither where nor why, goes I know not where, and creates in the soul I know not what ardour that one feels for a woman. This I know not what which seems so bewitching in the end leaves our hearts, and I know not how.)

Strabon’s set-piece is a disenchanted belated version of a commonplace that no longer marks a stroke of passion. It is instead a conventional instrument of pathos or, in plain English, a chat-up line. It fails to work on Crise´is, who replies to the pedantic De´mocrite and the gallant Strabon alike: ‘Vous me parlez tous deux une langue e´trange`re; j Et moins qu’auparavant je connais ce myste`re’ (you are both talking to me in a foreign language, and I now understand this mystery [of love] less than I did before) (1876: i. 248). The meaning of the je-ne-sais-quoi has moved elsewhere. 139

Regnard 1876: i. 248 (i. 5).

4

A Sign of Quality: Bouhours and the Polite Circle JE-NE-SAIS-QUOI [ . . . ] Quelque chose qu’on ne peut ou qu’on feint de ne pouvoir pre´ciser, de´finir ou exprimer nettement. (JE-NE-SAIS-QUOI [ . . . ] Something that one cannot or pretends to be unable to clarify, define, or express clearly.) Tre´sor de la langue franc¸aise

4.1. the culture of the je-ne-sais-quoi 4.1.1. A Subtle Artifice The je-ne-sais-quoi enters history as a sign of quality in polite culture. Ariste insists that powerful and inexplicable qualities are not the province of nature alone: ‘le je ne sc¸ay quoy appartient a` l’art, aussi bien qu’a` la nature’ (the je-ne-sais-quoi belongs to art as much as it does to nature) (Bouhours 1962: 148). Art possesses qualities that are irreducible to the underlying rules: its possession of such qualities may indeed be, in a normative sense, what makes it art. Experience shows that there are some paintings, sculptures, pieces of music, and texts—works of art in the broadest sense of the word—that make one instantly fall under their charm, that alter one’s way of looking at the world. But how are we to make sense of this process? Ariste suggests that the je-ne-sais-quoi may provide a clue. Many people would agree with Ariste, and a great deal of work has been done in the last hundred years on the role of the je-ne-sais-quoi in early modern poetics and rhetoric, and in the

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formation of aesthetics.1 It is principally this body of work that has kept thinking about the topic alive in literary studies. But work of this kind has, at times, tended to overlook the social and ideological charge that the je-ne-sais-quoi and other keywords are made to bear as they rise to prominence in the language and culture of seventeenth-century France. Nowhere is this charge more evident than in those texts that establish the je-ne-sais-quoi as a topic of polite literary conversation in the third quarter of the century. Bouhours’s text provides the central example. How, according to Ariste and Euge`ne, do artists succeed in creating this je-ne-sais-quoi, and by what means may it be judged and appreciated by lovers of art and connoisseurs? Ariste’s view is that the most pleasing art cultivates an apparently inexplicable delicacy of touch, and that true connoisseurs are those able to judge and appreciate that same delicacy without seeking to explain it out of existence. He draws his example from the literary arts, asserting: les pieces delicates en prose et en vers ont je ne sc¸ay quoy de poli et d’honneste qui en fait presque tout le prix, et qui consiste dans ce´t air du monde, dans cette teinture d’urbanite´ que Cice´ron ne sc¸ait comment definir.2 (Delicate works of prose and verse have I know not what that is polite and honest about them, which makes up almost all their worth, and consists of that worldly manner, that tinge of ‘urbanity’ that Cicero does not know how to define.)

Note that all of the terms upon which Ariste draws to describe the inexplicable quality of literary art here are residually social, urbane, ‘worldly’. This detail says a good deal about the way in which Bouhours and most of his contemporaries use the je-ne-sais-quoi in discourse about art. For them, the sliding of terms between the fields of art and worldly conversation is self-evident, since both are expressions of one and the same culture of politeness. Bouhours writes for a circle of readers with shared interests and tastes, in short, a wider reading ‘public’.3 Literature, for him, may speak of 1 The following studies are of particular importance: Croce 1953: 191–207; Spingarn 1957: vol. i, pp. c–ci; Cassirer 1951: 297–312; Monk 1944; Borgerhoff 1950: 186–200; Becq 1984: 97–115; Marin 1986, 1989, 1997a: 11–39; Cronk 2002: 51–77. 2 Bouhours 1962: 148; on Cicero and urbanite´, see Sect. 4.2.3, below. 3 See Merlin 1994: 35–57 (on the 17th-cent. constitution of ‘the public’).

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the tides’ ebb and flow, or of a world that passion turns upside down, but it must above all embody the subtle quality of polite culture. What precisely this quality is, Ariste cannot say, although his use of the first-person pronominal je-ne-sais-quoi suggests a certain intimacy with it, a discreet identification. The previous chapter examined the experience of sympathy and antipathy in passionate relations between individuals. I now turn to the appearance and significance of the je-ne-sais-quoi in the realm of collective cultural relations. The word rises to prominence in the vernacular literature of seventeenth-century polite conversation, and particularly in the works of Bouhours and his contemporary the Chevalier de Me´re´, which accordingly receive the most sustained attention here. This chapter subjects lexical instances of the je-ne-sais-quoi in this realm to a critical question; namely, is the sign of quality in discussions about polite culture a real je-ne-sais-quoi, or is it one that certain people ‘feign’, in the words of Le Tre´sor de la langue franc¸aise, for their own purposes? The answer proposed here is that the ruling class under Louis XIV in the third quarter of the seventeenth century comes to cultivate ever subtler signs of cultural quality in order to distinguish itself from those it wishes to exclude. The je-ne-sais-quoi (n.) encapsulates this process. It settles in late seventeenth-century culture, neither as a force of nature nor as a stroke of passion, but as an artificial sign of quality; not as an inexplicable and vital relation, the catching of fire between two individuals, but as a collective fabrication. The polite circle does not suffer the je-ne-sais-quoi; it makes and distributes it as an inherent quality among its members and their works. This collective process of making and distribution I call the ‘culture’ of the je-nesais-quoi. For the word does not merely appear as one modish name among others in the seventeenth-century lexicon of polite quality: it describes the underlying social fabric from which this entire lexicon is produced. 4.1.2. Nescioquiddity: The Parlour Game If, as was suggested in the Introduction to this study, ‘classicism’ fails to describe the full range of French literary production in the late seventeenth century, what term will do the job better? The contribution of Alain Viala and others has been to describe the third quarter of the seventeenth century as the age in which

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galanterie first appears as an important model of social manners and artistic distinction.4 He sets this in context: a circle of minor nobles and bourgeois around Nicolas Fouquet supports the monarchist cause during the civil disturbances of the Fronde (1648–53); rewarded for their support—Fouquet is made Minister of Finance—these parvenus set about fashioning a social identity for themselves; galanterie, which emphasizes cultural distinction over noble origins, provides them with the model they need. The model is so successful that it spreads outside this circle over the following decades: writers such as Molie`re, Me´re´, Pellisson, Bouhours, Fontenelle, Madeleine de Scude´ry, and others portray its conversational ideal by reproducing it in their works. Viala argues, to my mind correctly, that for these reasons galanterie better describes the literary trends dominant in the two decades after the Fronde than the consecrated term ‘classicism’ (1997a: 109). This is of course the period in which the je-ne-sais-quoi (n.) undergoes sedimentation. But it is not my intention to impose on galanterie the same fate as ‘classicism’ by suggesting that we should talk of the ‘age of the je-ne-sais-quoi’. There is no need: galanterie and the je-ne-sais-quoi (n.) both belong to the same polite lexicon in this period, and in quantitative terms, the former term is more prominent than the latter. My suggestion is qualitative: it is that the je-ne-sais-quoi defines the culture underlying all signs in the lexicon of indefinable quality. The game of nescioquiddity encapsulates this culture. The game takes place in a salon conversation between members of the polite circle. New philosophical dialogues of the period, we saw earlier (Sect. 2.2.1, above), are also sometimes set in a salon. But while they may share the same setting, philosophical dialogues and polite conversations need to be distinguished. For where the former uses the manner of the polite circle to articulate a particular philosophical position, the latter makes the manner itself the topic of conversation. The game of nescioquiddity is the stuff of polite conversation rather than of dialogue. It always follows the same pattern: one member of the polite circle starts the game by wondering out loud what it is that lends some people (and their achievements, literary or otherwise) an air of ‘quality’. The initial name for this quality tends to be honneˆtete´, although others are possible, as 4

See Viala 1994, 1997a, 1997c, 1997d, 1999; Viala et al. 1989; Scude´ry 1998.

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the rest of this chapter will make clear. The interlocutors attempt each in turn to define this elusive quality. The attempt generates a series of adjacent names for the quality; these are used to describe the ways in which it makes itself felt in particular situations; the attempted definition, however, ends in an admission of failure. Each speaker moves the lexicon on to a new term while making the same discovery: that social quality is easier to perceive and describe in its effects than to define or explain. The game of nescioquiddity is unusual in that all those taking part can win at the same time. All they need to do is politely to agree amongst themselves that no sufficient definition or explanation can be found for the quality that they recognize in one another. Nescioquiddity, the semantic operation of the affirmative je-ne-sais-quoi, is the object of the game. Jean Starobinski, in his article ‘La Rochefoucauld et les morales substitutives’ (1966), calls this game of nescioquiddity ‘le syste`me du je-ne-sais-quoi ’. Starobinski’s reading of La Rochefoucauld has been the object of some controversy.5 His description of the ‘system’ of the je-ne-sais-quoi, however, is fundamental to a critical analysis of indefinable social quality. Starobinski proceeds by contrasting the polite culture of La Rochefoucauld and his circle with the (roughly contemporary) political philosophy of Hobbes. La Rochefoucauld and Hobbes, Starobinski argues, share the pessimistic view that the natural state of humankind is one of mutually assured destruction. Both see in language the chance for survival. Language, for Hobbes, permits humanity to establish a commonwealth governed by universal conventions; but La Rochefoucauld and others use it to fix and maintain the limits of a small elite circle (1966: 214–15). Starobinski uses the figures of Hobbes and La Rochefoucauld to distinguish two mutually exclusive forms of social existence, one founded upon a collective political ethics, the other governed by an exclusive polite aesthetics.6 In the second form of existence, which La Rochefoucauld and his circle promote, ‘la seule re`gle consiste a` chercher en commun la fuyante de´finition de l’agre´able’ (the only rule is to seek together the ever-elusive definition of what is pleasing) (1966: 216). The fact that no definition is possible preserves the exclusivity of the group concerned. For you either have ‘it’, or you do not: 5 6

See E. D. James 1969; Defaux 1980: 86–7; Lafond 1998: 26–30. For a similar distinction within a 16th-cent. context, see Langer 1999: 29–30.

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une sorte de graˆce e´lit les rares personnes qui, soucieuses de plaire, parviennent a` leurs fins. Il n’est pas ne´cessaire qu’elles sachent e´lucider elles-meˆmes la raison d’un pareil effet. On n’en finit donc jamais de de´finir agre´ablement les conditions de l’agre´ment: le je ne sais quoi constitue une sorte de re´sidu myste´rieux qui se refuse a` l’analyse. Le syste`me du je ne sais quoi, en insistant sur le caracte`re irrationnel, inde´finissable et rare du vrai me´rite, apporte a` la bonne compagnie l’assurance qu’elle demande: elle demeurera toujours un cercle exigu; le royaume de la qualite´, qui veut avoir d’e´troites frontie`res, trouve de quoi les garantir.7 (Those rare people who are anxious to please and achieve their aims are touched by a kind of grace. They are not themselves required to be able to cast light on the reasons for such an effect. People, therefore, go on charmingly defining the conditions of true charm for ever: the je-ne-sais-quoi constitutes a kind of mysterious residue that resists all analysis. The system of the je-ne-sais-quoi, by insisting on the irrational, indefinable, and rare character of true merit, offers good company the assurance it seeks: it will always remain a tight circle; the kingdom of quality, keen to retain narrow frontiers, has found a way of preserving them.)

Starobinski’s decision to call this process ‘le syste`me du je ne sais quoi’ reflects his greater attention to the semantic structure of polite discourse than to its cultural means of production. When I wish to transfer the emphasis, I talk here of the ‘culture’ of the je-ne-sais-quoi. I use the word in its absolute sense to refer to the refinement of mind, tastes, and manners as it was understood and practised collectively by a group of people (in this case the seventeenth-century social e´lite in France).8 The je-ne-sais-quoi defines the way in which this culture preserves and sustains its sense of distinction. It is in that sense the antithesis of the je-ne-sais-quoi which operates in the realm of the passions. The je-ne-sais-quoi, in that realm, is suffered by an individual within a relation; here it retains its posture as an individual mode of being and perceiving, as a first-person experience that cannot be explained, but it is a posture that is systematically cultivated by a group in order to affirm and maintain its identity.9 Vaugelas provides an early instance of the game of nescioquiddity in his Remarques sur la langue franc¸aise (1647). The lexicographer claims to have based his remarks upon ‘la fac¸on de parler de la plus saine partie de la Cour, conforme´ment a` la fac¸on d’e´crire des 7

8 Starobinski 1966: 216. See OED: ‘culture’, 5. a–b. Moriarty argues similarly that the individualism of ‘taste’ discourse in late 17thcent. France is conditioned by collective modes of perception (1988: 86). 9

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meilleurs Autheurs’ (the style of speech practised by the soundest part of the court in keeping with the best authors’ style of writing).10 The historian of the Acade´mie Franc¸aise, Pellisson, confirms Vaugelas’s position within the polite circle by showering him with signs of quality: there is in his Remarques, Pellisson says, ‘je ne sais quoi d’honneˆte homme [ . . . ] On ne saurait presque s’empeˆcher d’en aimer l’auteur’ (I know not what of the honneˆte homme [ . . . ] One can hardly prevent oneself from loving the author for it) (quoted in Magendie 1970: 806). Vaugelas’s entry on the word galant, which was silently paraphrased by Furetie`re in his Dictionnaire universel (1690) and hailed by the Acade´mie Franc¸aise in its Observations sur les remarques de M. de Vaugelas (1704), demonstrates his credentials.11 He frames his entry as a reported conversation between galants on the meaning of the term that describes them: on demande ce que c’est qu’un homme galant, ou une femme galante de cette sorte, qui fait et qui dit les choses d’un air galant, et d’une fac¸on galante. J’ay veu autrefois agiter la Cour et les plus galans de l’un et de l’autre sexe qui avoient bien de la peine a` le definir. Les uns soutenoient que c’est ce je ne sc¸ay quoy, qui differe peu de la bonne grace; les autres que ce n’estoit pas assez du je ne sc¸ay quoy, ny de la bonne grace, qui sont des choses purement naturelles, mais qu’il falloit que l’un et l’autre fust accompagne´ d’un certain air, qu’on prend a` la Cour, et qui ne s’acquiert qu’a` force de hanter les Grands et les Dames. D’autres disoient que ces choses exterieures ne suffisoient pas, et que ce mot de galant, avoit bien une plus grande estendue¨, dans laquelle il embrassoit plusieurs qualitez ensemble, qu’en un mot c’estoit un compose´ ou` il entroit du je ne sc¸ay quoy, ou de la bonne grace, de l’air de la Cour, de l’esprit, du jugement, de la civilite´, de la courtoisie et de la gayete´, le tout sans affectation, et sans vice. Avec cela il y a dequoy faire un honneste homme a` la mode de la Cour. Ce sentiment fut suivy comme le plus approchant de la verite´, mais on ne laissoit pas de dire que cette de´finition estoit encore imparfaite, et qu’il y avoit quelque chose de plus dans la signification de ce mot, qu’on ne pouvoit exprimer.12 (People ask what it is to be ‘a gallant man’, or ‘a gallant woman of the kind that does and says things with a gallant air and in a gallant manner’. I once saw the Court in a stir about this, and the most gallant members of both sexes, who had great trouble in defining it. Some maintained that it is that je-ne-sais-quoi, which differs little from ‘good grace’; others, that there was not enough to the je-ne-sais-quoi or to ‘good grace’, which are purely 10 11

Vaugelas 1880: i. 13 (pref.); see Matore´ 1968: 87. 12 Furetie`re 1690: ‘galant’; Stanton 1980: 52. Vaugelas 1880: ii. 209.

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natural things, but that both must be accompanied by a certain air, which one takes at Court, and which one acquires only by frequenting great men and ladies. Still others said that these external things were not sufficient, and that the word ‘gallant’ had a wider scope embracing several qualities, that it was, in a word, ‘a mixture made up of je-ne-sais-quoi or ‘‘good grace’’, air of the Court, wit, judgement, civility, courtesy, and gaiety, all of this without affectation or vice’: with that you have the wherewithal to make an honneˆte homme in the style of the Court. This opinion was adopted as the one closest to the truth, but people could not refrain from saying that the definition was imperfect, and that there was something more in the meaning of this word that could not be explained.)

The most gallant members of either sex, as Vaugelas puts it, set out here to define what it is that they all share. They come up with a whole semantic field of signs of quality to which we shall return in the rest of this chapter. Vaugelas reports four contributions to the discussion. The first group proposes a positive definition of galant, which includes the je-ne-sais-quoi (n.), but which the second group rejects as insufficient. The final two contributions repeat the same pattern. The entire sequence witnesses an open-ended proliferation of nuances that places any definition out of reach. The third attempted definition grows to a complex syntactic string including no less than eight synonyms qualified by a string of negations (‘le tout sans contrainte, [etc.]’)—and this, its authors claim, defines galant ‘en un mot’! But even this definition is not good enough to gain general consensus. It is generally agreed to be the best available, but still fundamentally imperfect, for there is beyond all that can be said about galanterie a quintessential something that cannot be explained. The seme of the je-ne-sais-quoi is finally produced here. This happens after the speakers’ lexical resources—including the je-nesais-quoi (n.) itself—have been rejected as insufficient to the task. Vaugelas’s remark, which dates from the late 1640s, rejects this particular word on the grounds that it refers to purely natural qualities; later in its existence, as we shall see, it comes to appear excessively artificial. That the word and its core meaning fail to coincide in this context is no accident. The rejection of the je-nesais-quoi (n.) and all other signs is ultimately inevitable, in fact, since the aim of the game is to place cultural quality, exquisitely but relentlessly, beyond any settled term or definition. The galants maintain in this way their possession of the title. Vaugelas, who

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repeats their game of nescioquiddity, silently places himself within their circle. The polite circle must constantly renew its sociolect if its borders are to be maintained. Members need to keep the outsiders out while continually electing themselves as insiders. The first imperative concerns relations between the circle and the rest of society, the second, relations within the circle. Norbert Elias has argued that, through their necessary contacts with rich bourgeois social strata, the seventeenth-century courtly aristocracy could not prevent ‘the spreading of their manners, their customs, their tastes and their language to other classes’ (1982: 257). Members keep the circle intact by renewing its indefinable signs of quality, its vogue-words, as and when these spread beyond the circle. They do so by playing a parlour version of the game of nescioquiddity.

4.2. signs of quality 4.2.1. Honneˆtete´: A Rough Guide Polite culture transmits its indefinable quality through a succession of lexical signs. Four visibly settle in the language during the period in which the je-ne-sais-quoi (n.) rises to prominence: they are honneˆtete´, urbanite´, galanterie, and bel esprit. Each, as we shall see, enjoys a period of vogue and is thereafter replaced. Honneˆtete´, the dominant term, raises controversial questions about the nature and origins of distinction that apply to the entire semantic field. Members of the polite circle use honneˆtete´ and other words as signs to their fellow-elect, and to those beyond the circle, that they possess a real but indefinable quality. Opposition to this process shows, once again, the conflict between different groups over apparently commonplace words and notions. The critical question, of what kind of ‘thing’ signs of quality are, cannot be ignored. Honneˆtete´ is the most widely used seventeenth-century sign of quality. Bouhours notes that the term and its accompanying adjective hold sway in the language of the day (1962: 55). Literary historians, since Maurice Magendie’s pioneering work of 1925, have established its rise to prominence.13 Magendie distinguishes 13 See Magendie 1970: 467–75, 892–901; Maclean 1977: 119–55; Stanton 1980: 14–30; Moriarty 1988: 46–52.

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between competing ‘bourgeois’ and ‘aristocratic’ conceptions of honneˆtete´: the former offers ethical guidance to those wishing to acquire the quality; the latter celebrates those who already possess it.14 The consensus among historians is that the aristocratic conception of honneˆtete´ becomes prominent in the course of the 1660s, and that this development is related to the rise of the je-ne-sais-quoi.15 Nicolas Faret makes the adjective honneˆte popular in L’Honneste homme ou l’art de plaire a` la court (1630), his influential guide to the art of pleasing people at court.16 He tells would-be courtiers: ‘le comble de ces choses consiste en une certaine grace naturelle [ . . . ] qui se voit en tous ceux qui sont nays pour plaire dans le monde’ (the highest of these things consists of a certain natural grace [ . . . ] which can be seen in all those born to please in the world) (1925: 18–19). Those that do not possess this innate grace by birthright, he insists, can cultivate it. He offers a practical tip: ‘c’est [ . . . ] d’user par tout d’une certaine negligence qui cache l’artifice, et tesmoigne que l’on ne fait rien que comme sans y penser, et sans aucune sorte de peine’ (it is [ . . . ] to make use everywhere of a certain negligence which conceals the artifice, and which shows that one does nothing other than as if one were not even thinking about it, and without any kind of trouble) (1925: 20). Faret’s text is full of unacknowledged borrowings from Baldassare Castiglione’s famous treatise on courtly civility, Il Cortegiano (1528). In this passage, Faret uses ‘negligence’ to translate the term coined by Castiglione, sprezzatura, to name the indefinable air of nonchalance that the courtier must affect in order to appear unaffectedly natural.17 Concealing the art of pleasing the court e´lite is the art itself. Faret, like Me´re´ in the following generation, sees that an indefinable air of distinction is essential at court. Unlike Me´re´, however, he offers a practical guide to those outsiders hoping to gain an entrance. His successors, Jacques Du Bosc (1634, 1635) and Franc¸ois de Grenaille (1642), imitate his treatise in the decade following its publication. All three writers assert that to be honneˆte means conforming to the ethical codes that polite society deems biense´ant 14

Magendie 1970: pp. xxxix–xl; Stanton 1980: 11; Dens 1981: 12–15. Bourdieu 1979: 77, Stanton 1980: 207; Elias 1982: 360; Moriarty 1999: 526; Viala 1999: 187. 16 The text was reprinted eleven times before 1681 (Stanton 1980: 20). 17 Castiglione 1991: i. 26; Montandon 1995: 847–55. 15

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(proper).18 Me´re´ returns to this topic from a different perspective in his discourse ‘De la vraie honneˆtete´’ (1700).19 Biense´ance remains an essential component of honneˆtete´: ‘si quelqu’un me demandoit en quoi consiste l’honneˆtete´, je dirois que ce n’est autre chose que d’exceller en tout ce qui regarde les agre´mens et les biense´ances de la vie’ (if someone were to ask me what honneˆtete´ consists of, I would say that it is nothing other than excelling in all that relates to the charms and proprieties of life) (1930: iii. 70). But the collocation of charm and propriety here reflects the semantic drift of biense´ance, from a code of proper behaviour towards an art of giving pleasure. Me´re´ establishes as the fundamental principle of biense´ance, and by implication of honneˆtete´ itself, that one should be able to win friends and please people within the polite circle. The struggle between competing discourses over honneˆtete´ is particularly intense in the years around 1670. That Me´re´ needs to distinguish his as the ‘true’ honneˆtete´ suggests that this model has its discontents. Antoine de Courtin is one of these. Adopting Nicole’s definition of civility as an ethical duty, Courtin lays down the ‘rules of civility’.20 He attacks Me´re´ and his circle in the second edition of his Nouveau traite´ de la civilite´ qui se pratique en France parmi les honneˆtes gens (1671): in particular, as we have seen (Sect. 1.3.2, above), he takes arms with the Jansenists against Bouhours, whom he attacks personally, and against his ‘scandalous’ extension of the je-ne-sais-quoi to the realm of divine grace. He dismisses aristocratic honneˆtete´ as a pure gift of nature about which nothing can be said (1998: 49). Me´re´ and Bouhours, despite Courtin’s polemical suggestion, do in fact award the polite circle more qualities than a purely natural charm. They agree with Pascal and others that the honneˆte homme should possess a universal knowledge adapted to the practical affairs of the world.21 This universal savoir-faire he should, they say, exercise with generosity, restraint, and modesty.22 But Me´re´ recommends these virtues—and here Courtin’s objection becomes forceful—solely because they are pleasing to those 18

On this group of texts, see Maclean 1977: 123–6, 129. This text was first published posthumously; Dens offers 1677 as the date of its composition (1981: 12). 20 This is Courtin’s title in its English translation (1671); see Courtin 1998: 20, 46. 21 See Pascal: L. 195, S. 228; L. 647, S. 532; in these fragments, Pascal has in mind Montaigne’s remark in ‘Du repentir’ (iii. 2, 805c). See also Saint-Evremond 1966: 86–91. 22 See Me´re´ 1930: i. 76; iii. 157; Bouhours 1962: 122. 19

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within the circle of honneˆtete´; conversely, he condemns injustice, envy, and spite for being not wrong, but ‘disagreeable’ (1930: ii. 19). Me´re´, the Machiavelli of the polite world, reduces ethical questions to the aesthetic criterion of charm. Bouhours, similarly, observes that there are some people of whom one can only say: ‘il est bien fait, il a bonne mine, il a de l’esprit, mais il a je ne sc¸ay quoy qui me de´plaist’ (he is handsome, good-looking, and witty, but he has I know not what that displeases me) (1962: 146). Exclusion from the circle, like inclusion, hangs on an immaterial quality that no one can learn as a rule of civility. Civility, Bouhours assures us when attacking one of his opponent’s rules, is precisely what Courtin lacks: ‘s’il avoit consulte´ les honnestes gens qui sc¸avent vivre; s’il sc¸avoit vivre, ou s’il parloit poliment luy-mesme, il ne se seroit jamais avise´ d’instruire de la sorte ceux qui approchent les personnes de qualite´’ (if he had consulted gentlefolk who know how to live; if he knew how to live, or talked politely himself, he would never have offered such advice to those wishing to approach people of quality) (1973: 45). Bouhours, by replying in kind to his opponent’s personal slurs, reveals the violent struggle between the two groups over honneˆtete´. If honneˆtete´ is indeed the only thing that cannot be learnt, as Bouhours says, then one wonders whence it may come. The various competing groups generally agree on at least one thing: if honneˆtete´ is to achieve its perfect state, then it must be cultivated. Who may succeed in cultivating it, and in what ways they should set about the task, remain the principal points of conflict. Faret, as we have seen, takes the ‘bourgeois’ or meritocratic view that the aspiring courtier need not be born noble to cultivate sprezzatura.23 His view exposes the contradiction that the word ‘meritocracy’, at least in this context, implies: bourgeois courtiers are rewarded on merit for sustaining the codes of the aristocracy. Contemporaries of Me´re´, such as Pellisson and Furetie`re, maintain Faret’s meritocratic position in the age of galanterie.24 The Chevalier de Me´re´, as he aristocratically styles himself, distinguishes himself from the meritocrats. Where Faret and his successors ask the question, ‘how do I get into the circle?’, Me´re´ is interested in a different one: ‘how do I show everyone that I am, and have always been, part of the circle?’ He restricts the je-ne-sais-quoi 23

See also Du Bosc 1635: 339; Maclean 1977: 126.

24

Viala 1994.

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to a happy few within the nobility (including himself), not by claiming that it is in their blood, but by granting the nobility alone the capacity to cultivate it. He makes noble birth, in other words, a necessary though insufficient condition of quality.25 This restriction is a concerted attempt on the part of the old aristocracy to prevent the circle of polite society from widening in the years following the Fronde. Honneˆtete´ may be restricted to people of noble birth, but not all people of noble birth have honneˆtete´, for quality is the perfect marriage of natural disposition and subtle artifice. Me´re´ says as much: ‘je croi, que pour l’acquerir en perfection, il est necessaire que la nature y contribue¨, et que l’art, comme par-tout ailleurs, acheve ce qu’elle a commence´’ (I believe that, to acquire it [honneˆtete´] to perfection, it is necessary for nature to make her contribution and for art, as in all other things, to complete what nature started).26 The marriage between art and nature is invariably described as something made or highly wrought: this is the sense of ‘perfection’ in the previous quotation. Signs of quality are made in the polite circle: they are, as Domna Stanton puts it, ideal ‘artefacts’.27 The metaphor of artifice frequently passes through terms such as ouvrage and chef d’œuvre in writing on politeness. Jacques de Caillie`res says in his treatise La Fortune des gens de qualite´ (1658): ‘ce qu’on appelle un fort honneste Gentilhomme, est un des plus accomplis ouvrages de la Nature et de l’Art’ (what people call a most honest gentleman is one of the most accomplished works of nature and art).28 Gracia´n, the Spanish Jesuit whom Bouhours quotes in his conversation on the je-ne-sais-quoi, says of despejo, his preferred sign of quality, that art must perfect what nature has begun.29 How, then, does one come to perfect these signs? The answer is, at one level, fairly simple: by mixing with the circle that creates and sustains them. Two alternative methods are proposed: education, defined as the conscious absorption of a body of knowledge; repeated experience of the social world, defined as the unconscious 25

Me´re´ 1930: iii. 70; Viala 1997b: 68–9. Me´re´ 1930: iii. 70; see also ii. 32 and iii. 144. 27 Stanton 1980: 176–84; see also Me´re´ 1930: ii. 38, 52; iii. 144. 28 Caillie`res 1664: 299; see also Me´re´ 1930: i. 111; iii. 157. 29 Gracia´n 1944: 18–20; on despejo and its relations with the je-ne-sais-quoi, see Sect. 1.1.2, above. 26

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assimilation of a way of behaving.30 Those who consider honneˆtete´ to be a set of ethical principles stress the importance of education.31 The proponents of honneˆtete´ as a sociable aesthetic, on the other hand, consider experience of the world to be primordial. Me´re´ and Bouhours explicitly distinguish between education and social experience before giving their preference to the latter. Aspirants acquire the quality of honneˆtete´ not in the schools, they say, but in the finishing-school of the salons.32 This Bouhours confirms in his conversation on the French language: ‘en frequentant les personnes polies, on prend insensiblement je ne sc¸ay quelle teinture de politesse, que les livres ne donnent point’ (by frequenting polite people, one imperceptibly takes on I know not what tinge of politeness, which no book can give) (1962: 78). Bouhours uses the language of insensible spirits and occult qualities here, in conjunction with the adjective je ne sais quel, to describe signs of quality. These signs fill the rarefied air of the salon as with a subtle fragrance that the young come to absorb, with repeated exposure, and then start in turn to emit. The analogy between occult qualities in nature and signs of quality only goes so far. The critical difference between them— which Bouhours and others do not mention—is that signs of quality only exist within the circle of polite culture. Me´re´ insists that honneˆtete´ is a universally recognized quality (1930: iii. 93). But it is difficult to see why, if that is the case, one can acquire the quality only by mixing with those who possess it. The more natural a sign of quality appears, in fact, the more highly wrought it proves to be. That honneˆtete´ is repeatedly compared to works of art, and social distinction to artistic quality, lays bare its underlying artifice. The culture of the je-ne-sais-quoi is at its most ‘perfect’ when it makes itself appear natural. This fabrication is necessarily a collective task. It hardly makes sense to talk about individuals in this context, indeed, since they exist only in relation to the circle to which they belong. The polite circle distributes its forms of behaviour, principles of judgement, and signs of belonging to its members in order to preserve and sustain its own existence. The group’s opinion is, as Elias puts it, ‘the foundation of existence’.33 Nothing is but what polite culture deems proper or pleasing. 30

See Bourdieu 1979: 71. See Guyon 1604: 192–202; Courtin 1998: 63, 66. 32 Me´re´ 1930: ii. 109; iii. 72–5; Bouhours 1962: 125–6; Fumaroli makes the same point with specific reference to the je-ne-sais-quoi (1992: 706). 33 Elias 1983: 95; see also Starobinski 1966: 224. 31

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4.2.2. Art and Culture This chapter offers no more than a partial account of the je-ne-saisquoi in the realm of seventeenth-century art. In stressing the pervasiveness of a culture of social elitism, it may seem to overlook the possibility of finding any meaningful discussion of the je-ne-saisquoi in the field of poetics and rhetoric, or indeed aesthetics, during this period.34 Such discussions certainly exist. One might very well imagine looking, for example, at a detailed sequence of texts in the field of poetics and rhetoric dealing with the relationship between inexplicable forces and linguistic expression—the domain of poetic fury and inspiration, admiratio, le merveilleux, and the sublime—in order to examine the use of the je-ne-sais-quoi in this context. If one were to do so, then the task would be to locate and analyse a whole series of occurrences of the je-ne-sais-quoi in this semantic field, asking in each case what underlying question the term serves to answer, and why it should have been chosen over its neighbours. One would find, once again, a more or less stable underlying conceptual framework combining elements drawn from different philosophical traditions. Plato’s description of poetic fury in the Ion is established by Ficino as a commonplace of early modern poetics, and performs a function comparable with theories of improvisation and inspiration, which stress the inexplicable and sudden unleashing of forces beyond the poet’s control.35 In his 1644 French translation of Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia, Jean Baudoin portrays divine fury as the creative force behind poetic images of supernatural things containing ‘je ne sc¸ay quoy d’extraordinaire et de Prophetique’ (I know not what that is extraordinary and prophetic) (quoted in Cronk 2002: 34). Admiratio, according to the sixteenth-century English rhetorician Henry Peacham, is the figure by means of which the orator ‘declareth how much he marvelleth at some thing’ (quoted in Sonnino 1968: 23). We have already seen in 34 These three terms overlap considerably in the secondary literature. Cronk argues that poetics (the study of genre, form, and structure in works of literature) in the 17th cent. forms part of the wider discipline of rhetoric (the art of using language to express oneself eloquently or persuasively) (2002: 82–3). The category of aesthetics allows for comparisons between the literary, visual, and plastic arts; it is generally used by those, such as Marin (1986, 1997a), who place the je-ne-sais-quoi at the origins of 18th-cent. developments in this area. 35 On poetic fury, see Cronk 2002: 34–41; on improvisation and inspiration, see Cave 1979: 125–57.

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Chapter 2 how admiratio can be used either to signal a shift from nescience to knowledge, or a move in the opposite direction, depending on whether one chooses to follow Aristotle or Augustine.36 When its trajectory is towards the confession of nescience, admiratio is clearly related to adynaton, ‘the figure by which we admit that our message is beyond the power of words to convey’ (Sonnino 1968: 191), in the poetics of the je-ne-sais-quoi. The term le merveilleux provides a point of connection between admiratio and the concept of the sublime in late seventeenthcentury France. The key figure of course is Nicolas Boileau, whose Traite´ du sublime (1674), a French translation of Longinus’ treatise Peri hupsous, made the sublime a key concept in literary debate.37 Boileau defines the sublime as ‘le Merveilleux dans le discours’, the wondrous transcendent force with which literary discourse acts upon its reader when it pithily achieves greatness of thought, expression, and phrasing.38 Nicholas Cronk has recently characterized the sublime as the most successful of the concepts ‘invented’ in the 1670s to meet the challenges then facing poetic theory (2002). These challenges include defending the power of poetic language to achieve fullness of expression, asserting its materiality, and providing an ethical defence of the poetic imagination against the Jansenist charge that it is a source of error. Bouhours’s conversation on ‘Le Je Ne Sc¸ay Quoy’ appears in Cronk’s study as an earlier attempt to solve these problems (2002: 51–77). Cronk suggests that Bouhours’s je-ne-sais-quoi amply delivers fullness of expression, but that it demonstrates neither the materiality nor the morality of poetic discourse, whereas Boileau’s sublime meets all three challenges, and more besides, since it also embraces a Platonist notion of enthusiasm (2002: 109). Cronk shows the success of the sublime in this period by tracing the influence of Boileau’s treatise, not just in the debate about poetics, but also in the fields of rhetoric and art theory (2002: 36 On Aristotelian and Augustinian admiratio, see Sects. 2.1.1 and 2.3.2, above. Cave examines the fortunes of wonder in Aristotle’s Poetics and its Renaissance commentaries (1988: 43–4, 57–9). There is a discussion of Montaigne’s response to admiratio, which helpfully situates the concept in a whole context of medieval and Renaissance writing about the ruins of Rome, in Sedley 1998. 37 On the early modern reception of Longinus up to and including that of Boileau, see Logan 1999; Gilby 2003. 38 Boileau 1966: 338; on Boileau and the sublime, see Brody 1958; Zuber 1997: 225–39; Marin 1986, 1989; Cronk 2002: 77–118, 157–9.

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118–41). The art theorist Roger de Piles, a friend of Boileau, integrates the sublime into his theory of sudden and transcendent enthusiasm in painting and poetry alike: ‘il me paroıˆt en un mot, que l’Entousiasme nous saisit, et que nous saisissons le Sublime’ (it seems to me, in a word, that enthusiasm grasps us whereas we grasp the sublime).39 De Piles’s account of enthusiasm recalls the violence with which Corneille describes the stroke of passion. What is more, he turns to the je-ne-sais-quoi on two occasions in his Conversations sur la connaissance de la peinture (1677), to stress that painting and poetry require the intervention of something vital and wondrous— artistic ‘genius’ might be the word for it—to flood their faithful imitations of nature with beauty.40 What the je-ne-sais-quoi positively offers discourse about art at such moments, it seems, is the first-person testimony of an appreciative spectator in front of a work of art, or as Louis Marin eloquently puts it, ‘la promesse de bonheur que se proposent l’une a` l’autre l’œuvre et le regard’ (the promise of happiness that the work and the gaze offer one another) (1997a: 30). These brief remarks are intended to sketch at least one possible sequence of texts dealing with the je-ne-sais-quoi as a topic in poetics, rhetoric, and aesthetics. Much work in this area, of course, has already been done.41 What the present chapter aims to contribute is the thought that one should approach each and every instance of the je-ne-sais-quoi in this field with the suspicion that it may conceal the interests and commitments of a wider culture—that it may be playing the game of nescioquiddity. This critical attitude of suspicion is largely missing from the work that treats the fine arts as an autonomous domain within seventeenth-century French culture. It is cultivated, as was mentioned in the Introduction to this study, in a growing body of studies which argue that the je-ne-sais-quoi, like other key literary or cultural notions such as ‘taste’ and the ‘sublime’ in late seventeenth-century France, can only be understood as 39 Quoted in Cronk 2002: 123; on the relations between rhetoric and painting in this period, see Lichtenstein 1989. Lichtenstein describes the contemporary debate in art theory about the relative merits of line and colour in painting: for Roger de Piles, it seems, colour is none other than the je-ne-sais-quoi of painting (1989: 165–74). 40 See Piles 1677: 55 (on the drawings of Michelangelo and Raphael), 279–80 (on Van Dyck’s use of light and shade), and 308. The first of these occurrences prolongs and modifies the topos about Raphael’s inexplicable grace that appears in 16th-cent. Italian writing about art (discussed in Sect. 1.1.2, above). 41 Further references are listed in n. 1, above.

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the expression of wider conflictual social and ideological forces.42 As a historical argument, this is to my mind largely correct, at least as an assessment of texts—such as those of Me´re´ and Bouhours— that establish the je-ne-sais-quoi as a topic of polite literary conversation. It seems likely too that texts on art also written as polite conversations, such as Roger de Piles’s Conversations (1677), should be approached in the same way. It may be that certain works on poetics, rhetoric, or art would prove beyond suspicion, but one could only set about establishing that once one had analysed the means by which the dominant culture of elitism sustains and also betrays itself. For what is striking about the discourse of art and artistic appreciation in late seventeenth-century French culture is how embedded it is in the discourse of social distinction.43 Me´re´ and Bouhours talk about them as if they were one and the same thing. Me´re´’s editor uses the social credentials of the author to explain the rare qualities that his writing possesses: ‘ce sont des ide´es et des sentimens, dont la de´licatesse e´chappe, si l’usage d’un certain monde n’en a point pre´pare´ l’intelligence’ (these are ideas and sentiments whose delicacy escapes one if one has not had one’s understanding prepared by experience of a certain milieu) (Me´re´ 1930: iii. 66). The coercive implication is clear: failure to find hidden beauties in Me´re´’s text summarily excludes the reader from the refined milieu out of which the text emanates. The appreciative reader, on the other hand, has the chance to become a walking work of polite art by absorbing the qualities of the text (1930: i. 6). The implication, once again, is clear: you too, gentle reader, can learn to exude a certain je-ne-saisquoi by recognizing that my book possesses it. Me´re´ repeatedly uses the je-ne-sais-quoi to describe the charms of a nonchalant or negligent style in conversation, prose style, and painting alike.44 Me´re´, in the wake of Ogier, discerns just such a negligent je-ne-sais-quoi in the paintings of Apelles.45 This air of natural ease, Me´re´ reveals to his reader, hides a subtle artifice: 42 See Bourdieu 1979; Dens 1981: 38–59; Viala 1997b: 73–4; 1997d; Moriarty 1988, 1999. Moriarty, after Althusser, defines ideology as ‘the dimension of existence in which we react [ . . . ] to images of behaviour and belief, which we either reject or accept as having implications for ourselves’ (2003: 29). 43 Dens 1981: 7, 21; Viala 1997b: 68. 44 Me´re´ 1930: ii. 32; and iii. 78–9; see also La Rochefoucauld 1998: 186 (Re´flexions, iv.). On ‘negligence’ and its links with the je-ne-sais-quoi, see Nies 1972: 19–31. 45 Me´re´ 1930: ii. 14–15; see also iii. 192.

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en tous les exercices [ . . . ] on connoist les excellens maistres du mestier a` je ne sc¸ay quoy de libre et d’aise´ qui plaist toujours, mais qu’on ne peut guere acquerir sans une grande pratique [ . . . ] Les agre´mens animent la justesse en tout ce que je viens de dire; mais d’une fac¸on si naı¨ve, qu’elle donne a` penser que c’est un present de la nature. Cela se trouve encore vray dans les exercices de l’Esprit comme dans la Conversation; ou` il faut avoir cette liberte´ pour s’y rendre agreable.46 (In all activities [ . . . ] one recognizes the masters of the craft by I know not what that is free and easy and always pleasing, but which one can hardly acquire without great practical experience [ . . . ] Charms animate correctness in all I have just said, but they do so in such a natural manner that they look like a pure present of nature. This is equally true in activities of the mind, such as conversation, where one needs to have the same freedom if one is to make oneself agreeable.)

The je-ne-sais-quoi is so well made that it tricks others, such as Me´re´’s opponent Courtin, into thinking that it is a gift of nature. Me´re´, the Machiavelli of polite literature, makes the point repeatedly.47 Bouhours spells this out in relation to the je-ne-sais-quoi itself: ‘les grands maistres [ . . . ] ont tasche´ touˆjours de donner de l’agre´ment a` leurs ouvrages, en cachant leur art avec beaucoup de soin, et d’artifice’ (the great masters [ . . . ] have always tried to lend charm to their work by concealing their art with great care and artifice) (1962: 148). The je-ne-sais-quoi in Bouhours is a cultural practice that masquerades as a natural property. The tag ‘ars est celare artem’ (the art lies in concealing the art), found in the rhetorical works of Aristotle, Longinus, and Cicero, here describes an entire culture.48 The insensible distinction of the honneˆtes gens is one product of this culture. Their charm is analogous, Domna Stanton suggests, to Boileau’s notion of the sublime (1980: 120). Boileau himself offers a similar analogy in the Preface to his translation of Longinus, the Traite´ du sublime (1674), when he commends his ancient author to his polite readership as one of their number: ‘le caracte`re d’honneste homme y paroist par tout; et ses sentiments ont je ne sc¸ais quoi qui marque non-seulement un esprit sublime, mais une ame fort e´leve´e au-dessus du commun’ (the character of an honneˆte homme appears throughout, and his sentiments have I know not what that marks 46

47 Me´re´ 1930: ii. 121. See e.g. Me´re´ 1930: iii. 132–3; 1692: ii. 343–4. Aristotle, Rhetoric, iii. 2, 1404b; Longinus 1995: xxii. 1; Cicero 1954: iv. 7. 10; see also Tocanne 1978: 239–40. 48

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not only a sublime mind, but a soul far above the ordinary) (1966: 336). Longinus, in writing about the sublime, displays the je-nesais-quoi that typifies the honneˆte homme.49 Should we conclude from this that honneˆtete´, the je-ne-sais-quoi, and the sublime are all one and the same ‘thing’? We need to proceed here with caution. Michael Moriarty, in his work on the ideology of taste (1988: 61), warns against a totalizing perspective: there is a tendency [ . . . ] to lump together the je ne sais quoi, the esprit de finesse, gouˆt, sentiment, and the rest into a great jumble of perceptions all dealing with some mysterious realm of the ineffable. I agree that this polymorphous proliferation of discursive elements is in itself a fact of great importance, but each of these terms has its own determinate applications within discourses which should not be blurred by the application of a single totalizing perspective.

Moriarty’s warning is salutary, as the significance of each and every term may indeed vary according to its precise discursive context. In the present case, it seems that Boileau does want to produce what Moriarty calls a ‘polymorphous proliferation of discursive elements’. The terms ‘honneste homme’, ‘je ne sc¸ais quoi’, and ‘sublime’ serve to raise Longinus, inexplicably but unmistakeably, above the level of the populace. This particular passage, I suggest, typifies the culture of the je-ne-sais-quoi. But this suggestion is meant to imply neither that all occurrences of the je-ne-sais-quoi in Boileau’s work exemplify this culture, nor that the sublime is always reducible to it. The first page of the 1701 Preface to Boileau’s collected works contains a much-quoted occurrence of the je-ne-sais-quoi in relation to the cause of aesthetic pleasure: ‘que si on me demande ce que c’est que cet agre´ment et ce sel, Je re´pondray que c’est un je ne sc¸ay quoy qu’on peut beaucoup mieux sentir, que dire’ (if I am asked to say what that charm or salt is, my reply will be that it is a je-ne-sais-quoi that one is able to feel much better than to express) (1966: 4). Claude Chantalat is one among many critics who quote this passage to support the view that ‘les e´crivains [ . . . ] font intervenir le je ne sais quoi pour souligner le vague de leur conception’ (writers bring in the je-ne-saisquoi to emphasize the vagueness of their conceptions) (1992: 49). 49 Similarly, Roger de Piles describes Rubens as the very type of the honneˆte homme, commenting: ‘il ne lioit point d’amitiez qu’avec des gens de merite’ (he formed friendships only with people of distinction) (1677: 211–12).

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But Boileau, immediately after this sentence, explains that aesthetic pleasure is caused by the first expression of a thought that everyone has had (1966: 4). The origin of the je-ne-sais-quoi here is not vague: it is universally acknowledged truth. Boileau’s position, Moriarty concludes, is distinct from that occupied by Me´re´, Bouhours, and La Rochefoucauld: ‘Boileau has displaced the aristocratic values of a minority good taste by the universal values of a ‘‘public’’ culture’ (1988: 180). Critics, Moriarty warns (1988: 171), should not allow the occurrence of a particular linguistic sign, such as the je-ne-sais-quoi, to obscure the specificity of an author’s position. This is certainly true, and the older Boileau does tend to distinguish himself from the aristocratic values of the polite circle. But he is perfectly capable of adopting precisely this cultural pose, in what appears to be a purely literary context, when this suits his purposes. One example occurs in his Dissertation sur Joconde (1669), a polemical comparison of two translations of Ariosto’s tale Joconde, in which Boileau takes the side of La Fontaine against his rival Bou¨illon. The text takes the form of a letter written by Boileau to a friend of Bou¨illon’s champion. Boileau uses the language of social quality, dismissing Bou¨illon the translator as ‘un Valet timide’, whereas La Fontaine is a ‘galant homme’ (1966: 310, 320). Boileau admires above all in La Fontaine, he says, ‘une certaine Naı¨vete´ de Langage, que peu de gens connoissent, et qui fait pourtant tout l’agre´ment du discours’ (a certain naivety of language, which few people understand, yet which gives speech all its charm) (1966: 315). He refrains from defining this quality any further by summoning the modish je-ne-sais-quoi (n.): ces sortes de beaute´ sont de celles qu’il faut sentir, et qui ne se prouvent point. C’est ce je ne sai quoi qui nous charme, et sans lequel la beaute´ meˆme n’auroit ni grace ni beaute´. Mais apre`s tout, c’est un je ne sai quoi; et si voˆtre ami est aveugle, je ne m’engage pas a` lui faire voir clair; et c’est aussi pourquoi vous me dispensere´s, s’il vous plaıˆt, de re´pondre a` toutes les vaines objections qu’il vous a faites.50 (These are the kinds of beauty that one needs to feel and which cannot be proven. It is that je-ne-sais-quoi which charms us and without which beauty itself would have neither grace nor beauty. But after all, it is a je-ne-saisquoi, and if your friend is blind, I cannot offer to make him see clearly; and 50

Boileau 1966: 316.

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so you will excuse me, if you please, from replying to all the futile objections he has put to you.)

The reader will not be fooled by the depreciative tone of the third sentence. The je-ne-sais-quoi is no more than a detail, but it happens to distinguish the tasteful few from the tasteless many, the sighted from the blind. The blind man appears in the realm of culture as someone who cannot see that all-important yet indefinable something that he does not have. The occurrences of the je-ne-sais-quoi in the Dissertation sur Joconde and the 1701 Preface are in fact radically different. The Preface is no doubt representative of the late Boileau’s distance from polite culture. But the Dissertation sur Joconde reveals, at the very least, the younger man’s willingness to exploit that culture and its sign of quality during its heyday. It is clear that the je-ne-sais-quoi, like every other term, may indeed vary in meaning according to its precise discursive context. It is clear too that, while one use of the word by Boileau does not fit the culture of the je-ne-sais-quoi, the other is a typical example. The operations of this culture are, as we shall see, visible in a whole field of terms adjacent to honneˆtete´ and the je-ne-sais-quoi. The methodological pressure to establish the specificity of each of these terms should be counterbalanced by the pressure to analyse the culture that produces them all. 4.2.3. Urbanite´, Galanterie, Bel Esprit By the 1680s, honneˆtete´ is losing semantic value, and is being challenged by three more signs of quality. Urbanite´ rises to prominence in the 1640s, galanterie in the following two decades, and bel esprit is used by Bouhours in the 1670s. Members of the polite circle, rather than defining such terms, continue subtly to emit them as signs of quality. The successful emission of any sign, as we have seen, depends upon the speaker ultimately uncovering the nescioquiddity of the quality itself. Guez de Balzac introduces the term urbanite´ in French as a Latin neologism in his polite conversation ‘De la conversation des Romains’ (1644). By the end of the century, as Jean Lafond has shown (1996), the term has been naturalized. Writers use its Latinate etymology to imply that the precursor for French elite society under Louis XIV is Augustan Rome. Roman urbanitas, for Cicero

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and Quintilian, is a set of values that one acquires by living in close proximity with others in the city. Seventeenth-century writers tend to replace the Ciceronian ethical ideal of worthy citizenship with the aesthetic ideal of worldly culture.51 They define urbanite´ differentially as all that is neither pedantic nor rustic.52 Pedants and peasants are not welcome to join the club of urbanite´ because they lack that all-important air of nonchalance.53 What is urbanite´? Guez de Balzac and other writers play the game of nescioquiddity by employing indefinite adjectives, the discourse of occult qualities, and non-substantival forms of the je-ne-sais-quoi. Urbanite´, Balzac says, is ‘une adresse a` toucher l’esprit par je ne sais quoi de piquant, mais dont la piquˆre est agre´able a` celui qui la rec¸oit’ (a skill of striking the mind with something piquant, but whose piquancy is pleasing to the person affected) (1995: 82). It is in the very act of heaping one insufficient definition upon another that Balzac places the quintessence of urbanite´ beyond definition or explanation. Pellisson plays the same game when he borrows the term urbanite´ from Balzac in his Discours sur les Œuvres de M. Sarasin (1656). The conversations of Sarasin are neither didactic nor frivolous, Pellisson argues, but fall perfectly between the two: they possess, like Cicero’s dialogue De Oratore, ‘cette urbanite´ que les mots de civilite´, de galanterie et de politesse n’expliquent qu’imparfaitement, et a` qui notre langue n’a point encore trouve´ de nom assez propre’ (that ‘urbanity’ which the words ‘civility’, ‘gallantry’, and ‘politeness’ only explain imperfectly, and for which our language has not yet found a sufficiently proper name) (quoted in Viala et al. 1989: 56). Pellisson, like Balzac, uses the figure of adynaton to assert that nothing can adequately name this quality. Me´re´, a correspondent and admirer of Balzac, also adopts his coinage of the term urbanite´.54 Me´re´ rejects the restricted application of the term to the verbal art of raillerie (repartee): ‘il me semble que cette urbanite´ n’est point ce qu’on appelle de bons mots, et qu’elle consiste en je ne sais quoi de civil et de poli’ (it seems to me that this urbanity is not found in what are called bons mots, and that it consists of I know not what that is civilized and polite) (quoted in Dens 1981: 13). Me´re´ draws on a pronominal form of the je-ne-sais-quoi here to 51 52 53 54

Stanton 1980: 14–19; Dens 1981: 13. Lafond 1996: 36; Guez de Balzac 1995: 82. Guez de Balzac 1995: 82; Faudemay 1992: 410. Me´re´ 1692: ii. letter 10 (to Guez de Balzac); Me´re´ 1930: iii. 121.

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describe the polish of urbanite´; Bouhours, citing Cicero’s assertion of the nescioquiddity of urbanitas, then subsumes the word under the topic of the je-ne-sais-quoi (see Sect. 4.1.1, above). The idea that there is a certain je-ne-sais-quoi to urbanity has a long afterlife.55 Pierre Bezuhov, one of the heroes of Tolstoy’s War and Peace (1865–9), remains in Moscow during the French occupation. At a social gathering, he meets a captain in the occupying army. They talk in French, a language that is second nature to Pierre, as it is to all polite society in Moscow. That this is so reflects a major theme of Tolstoy’s novel: the fascination that much of the ruling class in Russia feels for the culture of its invaders. Pierre later reveals his nationality to the French captain. Pierre’s urbane manner charms the captain into paying Pierre what is, for this Frenchman, the highest compliment: ‘eh bien, si vous ne m’aviez pas dit que vous eˆtes Russe, j’aurais parie´ que vous eˆtes Parisien. Vous avez ce je ne sais quoi, ce . . . ’ (well, if you hadn’t told me you were Russian, I’d have wagered that you were a Parisian. You have that je-ne-saisquoi, that . . . ) (Tolstoy 1960–5: vi. 414 (bk. 3, pt. 3, ch. 29)). The captain’s aposiopesis expresses his surprise that a Russian should possess the Parisian quality par excellence. The urbane elite of nineteenth-century France evidently continues to emit a certain je-ne-sais-quoi. Galant and its substantival form galanterie become the dominant sign of quality during the third quarter of the seventeenth century.56 Honneˆtete´ is no longer enough: one needs to have it plus that extra indefinable something more (Viala 1997b: 65–7). Definitions of galanterie, such as those offered by Madeleine de Scude´ry in her Conversations (1684), play the game of nescioquiddity: ce je ne sais quoi de galant qui est re´pandu en toute la personne qui le posse`de, en son esprit, en ses paroles, en ses actions, est ce qui ache`ve les honneˆtes gens, ce qui les rend aimables et ce qui les fait aimer.57 (That gallant je-ne-sais-quoi which is diffused throughout the whole of those who possess it—in their minds, their speech, and their actions—is the thing that completes the honneˆtes gens, makes them lovable, and causes them to be loved.)

55 56 57

See Chantalat 1992: 164–5 (for late 17th-cent. examples). See Pelous 1971; Montandon 1995: 417–25. Scude´ry 1998: 53; Magendie 1970: 672.

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Galanterie is the indefinable perfection of honneˆtete´. It lends an erotic charge to sociability. Richelet identifies these connotations of the term: ‘galant se dit [ . . . ] d’un homme [ . . . ] qui taˆche a` plaire, et particulie`rement au beau sexe’ (‘Gallant’ is said [ . . . ] of a man [ . . . ] who tries to please people, and in particular, the fairer sex) (1681: ‘galant’). Galanterie forces women to play a supporting role to men. He who wishes to acquire the title of galant within his circle must first practise the art of seduction on one or more of its female members. Faret advises his aspiring courtier to insinuate himself into the good graces of the ladies. The calculation is that they will then win favours for him from the powerful men of their entourage.58 Faret’s successors repeat his advice: female conversation is essential to the aspiring honneˆte homme.59 This is, Me´re´ says (1930: i. 75), because polite ladies emit certain airs and graces. ‘Grace’ here means a kind of second nature, which others experience as a natural property, but which is in fact a social artefact.60 The gallant man, by imitating the grace of his lady companions, acquires a subtle charm in all his relations (1930: iii. 75). All the world is a stage for the galant homme.61 He must learn to control his passions, according to the demands of polite culture, in order to work on the passions of others: ‘car enfin c’est de l’amour, que naissent la pluˆpart des vrais agre´mens’ (for it is from love, finally, that most true charms spring).62 The act of seduction involves cultivating a sign of quality in such a way that it ‘feels like’ a stroke of passion. Galanterie, in this way, brings those who need to distinguish between love as an end in itself and love as a vehicle of social distinction, between the stroke of passion and a sign of quality, to a moment of crisis.63 Some thinkers have suggested that the crisis is a false one, that passion is itself merely a social construct, and that nothing is more ideological than the notion of ‘personal experience’.64 The language of individual passion and the entire ‘structure of feeling’ underpinning it, they argue, are constituted 58

Faret 1925: 90; see Moriarty 1988: 47–8. Vaugelas 1880: ii. 209; Caillie`res 1664: 286–7; Me´re´ 1930: iii. 75; Maclean 1977: 143–8. 60 Me´re´ 1930: i. 18; Moriarty 1988: 100. 61 Me´re´ 1930: iii. 157; Grubbs 1932: 56; Stanton 1980: 184–92. 62 Me´re´ 1930: iii. 75; see also Faret 1925: 96; Starobinski 1966: 225; Elias 1983: 110–16. 63 We return here to the question posed at the end of Sect. 3.2.2, above. 64 See Bourdieu 1979: 81–5; Moriarty 1988: 22. 59

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by nothing other than social power relations. This claim risks eliding the real problem instead of posing it. It is true that words such as the je-ne-sais-quoi tend to move from individual expressions of passion towards the codified lexicon of an entire group: this reflects the social element in which the spread of language necessarily occurs. It then becomes very difficult to establish whether the use of a particular word composes a social formula or an individual utterance. But the difficulty lies in the very continuing existence of these two possible modes of communication. It is precisely at the moment of their apparent convergence in the je-ne-sais-quoi, in other words, that strokes of passion and signs of quality need to be distinguished.65 On the one hand is an inexplicable, mutual passion suffered by two individuals and, on the other, an act of seduction by which an individual achieves distinction within a social circle. The search for distinction may conceal itself as a stroke of passion; this does not mean that it always does; but it does mean that individuals need to judge when it does and when it does not. Such critical moments are the stuff of prose fiction. A male member of a gallant circle claims to be in love with one of his female counterparts. She suffers a stroke of passion for him. But she also knows that a love affair within the circle is any member’s shortest route to distinction. Is her lover’s declared passion not in fact a subtle cultivation of quality? This is the heroine’s dilemma in Madame de Lafayette’s short prose narrative, La Princesse de Cle`ves (1678), which was described by its early critics as an ‘histoire galante’ (Viala 1997c: 11). The narrator, in her very first sentence, places the court’s culture under the sign of galanterie (Lafayette 1966: 35). Erotic relations and social advancement are placed within a chiasmus of mutual determination: l’ambition et la galanterie e´toient l’aˆme de cette cour [ . . . ] Il y avoit tant d’inte´reˆts et tant de cabales diffe´rentes, et les dames y avoient tant de part que l’Amour estoit toujours mesle´ aux affaires et les affaires a` l’Amour.66 (Ambition and gallantry were the heart of that court [ . . . ] There were so many different interests and factions, and women played so great a part in them, that love was always entangled with business and business with love.)

Madame de Cle`ves, a new member of this circle, finds herself struck with passion for M. de Nemours: ‘je suis vaincue et surmonte´e par 65 66

See Janke´le´vitch 1980: i. 20. Lafayette 1966: 44–5; quoted and discussed in Langer 1994: 179–80.

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une inclination qui m’entraıˆne malgre´ moi’ (I am defeated and overcome by an inclination that carries me along in spite of myself) (1966: 119). She is only too aware of the court culture of quality, however, and tells Nemours: ‘rien ne me peut empeˆcher de connaıˆtre que vous eˆtes ne´ avec toutes les dispositions de la galanterie et toutes les qualite´s qui sont propres a` y donner des succe`s heureux’ (nothing can prevent me from recognizing that you were born with all the inclinations of gallantry and all the qualities required to be successful in love) (1966: 174). That he may exploit their love affair as a sign of quality is the constant anxiety of Madame de Cle`ves. She wonders whether to yield to her passion, asking: ‘veux-je m’engager dans une galanterie?’ (do I really want to become involved in a gallantry?) (1966: 119). The way in which she phrases this question effectively answers it for her. Her refusal to yield to Nemours becomes, ultimately, the means by which she achieves a social distinction of her own. Seventeenth-century fictions such as La Princesse de Cle`ves dramatize the intimate confusion of particular sympathy and social quality as well as the critical need, that people face in their lives, to distinguish between the two. Such crises are also a constant theme of nineteenth-century fiction. Natacha’s infatuation for Anatole Kuragin in War and Peace (bk. 2, pt. 5, chs. 8–20) is one example. Another is the subtle charm that Strether finds in Madame de Vionnet in Henry James’s Parisian novel The Ambassadors (1903). Is this not, he wonders, merely an effect of the Countess’s oldfashioned aristocratic training? Strether feels that there is something more to her charm, but what this something is, he cannot say. James’s narrator reports him as feeling inwardly that ‘little Jeanne was a case, an exquisite case of education; whereas the Countess, whom it so amused him to think of by that denomination, was a case, also exquisite, of—well, he didn’t know what’ (1995: 185 (bk. 6)). The crisis will not go away. Bel esprit is the term that Bouhours and others use to repackage aristocratic honneˆtete´.67 The narrator describes Ariste and Euge`ne as ‘honnestes gens’ at the beginning of their Entretiens (1962: 5–6). The second conversation contains an explicit reference to Bouhours’s most recent precursor in this field, the Chevalier de Me´re´: ‘l’auteur des Conversations, qui parurent l’an passe´ [e´crit] d’une 67

See Viala 1985: 147–50.

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manie`re fort judicieuse, et fort de´licate’ (the author of the Conversations that appeared last year [writes] with great good sense and delicacy) (1962: 81). Bouhours’s reference has obvious publicity value, given the early success of Me´re´’s text.68 Readers of last year’s Conversations will find much to enjoy in the new Entretiens. Bouhours’s fourth conversation, ‘Le Bel Esprit’, establishes this notion as the quintessence of honneˆtete´. Ariste and Euge`ne distinguish true beaux esprits from crude-minded peasants, obtuse pedants, and the super-subtle poetasters who have usurped their title in recent years (1962: 114–15). The beaux esprits form a quasi-aristocratic elite that Ariste and Euge`ne’s intervention serves to protect and sustain. The very fact that such an intervention is deemed necessary suggests that the identity and constitution of this elite is in fact an object of ideological and social conflict. Ariste and Euge`ne play a familiar game when they come to define true bel esprit. Ariste’s definition of bel esprit as ‘le bon sens qui brille’ (good sense with a sparkle) is strategically incomplete (1962: 115). Beyond all the definable qualities of the bel esprit, there is something else: ‘il faut encore y avoir une certaine clarte´ que tous les grands ge´nies n’ont pas’ (one stills needs a certain clarity that not all of the great geniuses possess) (1962: 120). The indefinite adjective (‘une certaine’) adds nescioquiddity here, just as Euge`ne does when he asserts that the bel esprit must possess ‘je ne sc¸ay quel agre´ment’ (I know not what charm) (1962: 126). The quintessence of honneˆtete´ is the bel esprit, certainly, but what is the quintessence of the bel esprit? A certain je-ne-sais-quoi. Ariste and Euge`ne discuss possible supernatural, natural, and cultural causes of bel esprit.69 They agree that, in order to embody this quality, one needs above all to cultivate one’s natural disposition. Euge`ne sets out their thinking: il est certain que la nature ne fait pas toute seule un bel esprit. La plus heureuse naissance a besoin d’une bonne e´ducation, et de ce´t usage du monde qui raffine l’intelligence, et qui subtilise le bon sens. De la` vient que les sc¸avans de profession ne sont pas d’ordinaire de beaux esprits: comme ils sont touˆjours ensevelis dans l’e´tude, et qu’ils ont peu de 68 Editions of the Conversations appeared in 1668, 1669, and 1671; see Me´re´ 1930: i. 115–18. 69 Bouhours 1962: 123, 135; see Viala 1997b: 70–3 (on physiological explanations of galanterie).

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commerce avec les honnestes gens, ils n’ont pas dans l’esprit une certaine politesse, et je ne sc¸ay quel agre´ment qu’il y faut avoir.70 (It is certain that nature alone does not make a bel esprit. Even the most auspicious nativity needs to be accompanied by a good education and that experience of the world which refines the intelligence and rarefies good sense. That is why professional scholars are not as a rule beaux esprits: as they are always buried in their books and have few dealings with honest people, their minds do not have a certain politeness to them, and I know not what charm that one must possess.)

Education and social experience reappear here as the two processes required to bring an individual to perfection. Scholars, who have education alone, are therefore excluded. It is social experience that lends sparkle and subtlety to bon sens and creates, as Euge`ne puts it, ‘je ne sc¸ay quel agre´ment qu’il y faut avoir.’ The subtle charm of the bel esprit is no natural state of affairs but, rather, the work of the polite circle. The bel esprit, embodied by Bouhours and his fellow Jesuit Rapin, is a new synthesis of learning and worldly experience that emerges in the mid-1660s.71 This synthesis is thought essential to any writer wishing to appeal to the new wider reading public. To complete his portrait of the bel esprit, Bouhours claims a writer well known to the wider public, Montaigne, as a precursor: ‘le bon sens dont je parle, est d’une espece toute differente: il est gay, vif, plein de feu, comme celui qui paroist dans les Essais de Montaigne’ (the good sense to which I refer is of a quite different kind: it is merry, lively, and full of ardour, like that which appears in the Essais of Montaigne) (1962: 115). Bouhours projects back on to Montaigne the origins of the bel esprit. The gesture is commonplace in the literature of honneˆtete´. Me´re´ echoes Madame de Sable´’s praise of Montaigne and Voiture as ‘deux excellens genies’ (1692: ii. 327). Grenaille, like many others, repeats the Cardinal du Perron’s description of the Essais as ‘le Bre´viaire des Honne´tes-gens’ (the breviary of the honneˆtes gens).72 Modern critics have often followed 70

Bouhours 1962: 125–6. The English translators of the Bureau d’Adresse debates in Paris refer to their participants at this time as beaux esprits; see the full titles of Havers 1664; Havers and Davies 1665. 72 Faret 1925: 80; Villey 1935: 308–42; Camus 1612–20: viii. 409; Grenaille 1642: unpaginated ‘Avertissement’; Boase 1935: 116–7; Millet 1995: 163, 94. These references to Montaigne complement those discussed in Sect. 2.2.1, above. 71

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suit.73 Readers of Montaigne connected with Port-Royal, including Pascal, condemn him for precisely the same reason: Montaigne’s religious indifference, they argue, explains his interest in the pleasures of conversation, in himself, and in other worldly matters.74 Montaigne, like the ideal of bel esprit he is said to have fathered, becomes yet another territorial commonplace in the ideological conflict between Jesuits and Jansenists in the second half of the seventeenth century. Ariste and Euge`ne can certainly never lay claim to the title of bel esprit if they are to embody it. They must instead play the game of nescioquiddity with the appropriate modesty. But they know that doing so will allow them to embody the very quality that they declare inexplicable. To reveal this strategy at work is to subject all the signs of quality it produces to a critical assessment. The enduring power of this strategy is felt in the choice that it continues to force upon us today. We may choose to identify ourselves with the polite circle and therefore celebrate its cultural values as the origin of our own.75 Or we may resist ‘this comfortable sense of belonging’, as Moriarty calls it (1988: 2), and consider what these cultural values mean, how they function, and whom they exclude. Perhaps the most productive position is that of the traveller who looks into the polite circle from outside with a critical attitude combining curiosity and suspicion. The critical question examined here was whether the je-ne-saisquoi as a sign of quality is the real thing or a subtle artefact. Does it, in other words, correspond to the term’s core meaning as an inexplicable force of sympathy or antipathy? The case put forward here is that signs of quality fail to meet the criterion of inexplicability. The polite circle suggests that its subtle charm is, like magnetic attraction, a truly inexplicable occult quality. But this charm can be shown to be an instrument designed to protect and further the interests of a particular group. It is no ‘I-know-not-what’ but what might be called instead a ‘some-know-very-well-what’. The systematic use of the noun in this context irredeemably weakens its semantic force. The je-ne-sais-quoi (n.), as soon as it acquires its history, starts to fall from grace. 73 Magendie 1970: 387–400; Boase 1935: 307–21; Villey 1935: 341; Stanton 1980: 25; Fumaroli 1992: 690–1; Bury 1996: 48. 74 See Pascal: L. 680; S. 559; Scholar 2002a. 75 This is the position taken, e.g., by Marc Fumaroli (1992: 738–9).

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4.3.1. Me´re´: It Takes One to Know One The cultural conditions in which the je-ne-sais-quoi settles prove its downfall. Writers in the polite circle use forms of the phrase to lead its dominant signs of quality—honneˆtete´, urbanite´, galanterie, and bel-esprit—into strategic nescioquiddity. In so doing, they cultivate the je-ne-sais-quoi (n.) itself. The word rises to prominence in Me´re´ and in Bouhours as the new sign of quality and soon spreads beyond the circle. Signs, once they have spread, become the object of attacks by the discontents of polite culture, and they find no defenders within the circle, which is busily renewing its signs in order to keep itself intact. The je-ne-sais-quoi (n.) can escape its fate no more than any other sign of quality. Me´re´ exemplifies the polite circle’s cultivation of the je-ne-saisquoi (n.) as a sign of quality. The phrase is something of a stylistic tic in his writing. The Chevalier and the Mareschal, in his Conversations, discuss how best to define honneˆtete´ (1930: i. 74). True honneˆtete´, although it appears in many forms, can be instantly recognized by its principal effect: it is always pleasing (1930: i. 75). But recognizing the effects of honneˆtete´ is one thing, and defining the quality itself, quite another. The Chevalier ends a long speech by repeating a previous conversation on the topic with a lady who combines beauty with a turn of mind that her peers find irresistibly pleasing. She embodies the very quality that she asks him to define. Apre´s tout, une Dame parfaitement belle et d’un esprit si aimable, que mesme les plus belles ne pouvoient s’empeˆcher de l’aimer, me demandoit ce que c’estoit qu’un honneste homme, et une honneste femme, car l’un revient a` l’autre: et quand j’eus dit ce que j’en croyois, et qu’elle en eut parle´ de fort bon sens, elle avou¨a bien que tout cela luy sembloit ne´cessaire pour estre ce qu’elle demandoit, mais qu’il y avoit encore quelque chose d’inexplicable, qui se connoist mieux a` le voir pratiquer qu’a` le dire. Ce qu’elle s’imaginoit consiste en je ne sc¸ai quoi de noble qui releve toutes les bonnes qualitez, et qui ne vient que du cœur et de l’esprit; le reste n’en est que la suite et l’e´quipage.76 (After all that, a lady of perfect beauty, and with a wit so lovable that even the most beautiful women could not help loving her, asked me what it was 76

Me´re´ 1930: i. 77.

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to be an honneˆte homme, and an honneˆte femme too, since it amounts to the same thing; and once I had told her what I thought about the matter, and she had talked about it with great good sense, she fully admitted that all of that seemed to her necessary if one were to be that about which she was asking, but that there still remained something inexplicable about it which is easier to recognize when one sees it in practice than to say what it is. What she was imagining is something noble, I know not what, which enhances all the fine qualities, which comes from the heart and wit alone, and of which the other things are merely the retinue and trappings.)

There is, beyond all that can be explained about it, an indefinably noble something that brings honneˆtete´ to perfection. This supplement Me´re´ often describes as a ‘quintessence’.77 It is the subtle but unmistakeable principle that remains after the Chevalier has distinguished true from false honneˆtete´. He evokes the seme of the je-nesais-quoi by discreetly cultivating the word. That the Chevalier and his lady interlocutor fail to define the quintessential charm of honneˆtete´ only implies that they dwell within its circle. The Mareschal raises an ethical objection to the idea that charm is a sufficient proof of honneˆtete´. There are, after all, bad means as well as good of charming others (1930: i. 77). How does one distinguish between them? The Chevalier sweeps away the question: ‘a` cela [ . . . ] on peut re´pondre en deux mots, qu’il y a des personnes qui connoissent le vrai me´rite, et que c’est un bon signe quand on leur plaist’ (one can answer that in two words by pointing out that there are people who recognize true merit, and that pleasing them is always a good sign) (1930: i. 78). The Chevalier’s answer lays down the law: ‘some of us just know whether or not someone has ‘‘it’’. Rest assured that this lady most certainly does. Anyone who thinks otherwise is clearly not one of us.’ Possessing a certain quality oneself means also having the apparently infallible ability to tell whether or not others do: ‘l’honnestete´ juge touˆjours bien’ (honneˆtete´ always judges correctly) (1930: i. 76). That ability depends upon a faculty of intuition that Me´re´ and his contemporaries call ‘le bon gouˆt’ (good taste). And what is that? It is, the Chevalier answers, ‘juger bien de tout ce qui se pre´sente, par je ne sc¸ay quel sentiment qui va plus vite, et quelquefois plus droit que les re´flexions’ (judging correctly in all matters by means of I know not what feeling that moves more quickly, and sometimes 77

Me´re´ 1930: iii. 71; Defaux 1980: 85; Viala 1997b: 66–7.

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more directly, than thoughts).78 Taste is yet another counter, then, in the game of nescioquiddity. How can good taste judgements be distinguished from bad ones? The answer completes the circle: those who fail to judge the true quality of people prove their lack of taste, and vice versa.79 The Chevalier evidently has taste, since he judges that his lady interlocutor possesses true quality; she evidently has quality, since the Chevalier—who has good taste—judges that she does. The argument, by remaining within a polite circle, allows both members to retain their places.80 Membership of the polite circle works on the principle, then, that it takes one to know one. Me´re´, in explaining this fact to an outsider, draws upon the je-ne-sais-quoi (n.) in a letter which demonstrates, in relation to his work at least, the identity of discourse about art and a culture of social elitism. In this letter, addressed to a certain Monsieur de Luns, Me´re´ reviews a book sent to him by his correspondent. He suggests that the book lacks that essential ingredient: On fait bien de travailler quand on le peut, et mesme encore plus que cet Autheur, pourveu que la peine qu’on se donne a` bien e´crire, tende principalement a` rencontrer touˆjours le bon air. Sans cela tout le reste est peu considerable. Sur quoy j’ay a` vous dire en finissant ce billet que dans les manieres de l’esprit, et mesmes dans les expressions, ce qu’on entend par le je ne sc¸ay quoy, consiste en de petites choses qui ne s’apperc¸oivent pas aise´ment. Et neanmoins ce n’est pas le je ne sc¸ay quoy pour tout le monde. Quelques-uns en connoissent la cause, et savent d’ou` cela vient. Cette cause secrette, et qui n’aime a` se montrer qu’a` peu de personnes produit de grands effets, et tout ce qui tient le plus au cœur.81 (One is right to work when one can, and one should do so even more than this author, provided that the pains one takes to write well are mainly aimed at striking the right tone. Without that, the rest is of little import. On this subject I have to tell you by way of conclusion to this letter that, when it comes to modes of thinking and even expressions, what people mean by the je-ne-sais-quoi consists of tiny things that are not easy to perceive. And yet 78

Me´re´ 1930: i. 55; see also ii. 128; Moriarty 1988: 83–105. Me´re´ 1930: ii. 129; see also i. 76–8. 80 The same circularity is dissected by Pascal in his fragment about the nature of agre´ment (L. 585; S. 486). The nature of agre´ment slips there from being relative (‘un certain rapport’) to being an objective property pleasing to those who have good taste (‘le gouˆt bon’). 81 Me ´ re´ 1689: 567–8 (letter 158); part of this passage is quoted in Furetie`re 1701: ‘quoy’ (in Sect. 1.1.2, above); see also Borgerhoff 1950: 95. 79

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it is not the je-ne-sais-quoi for everybody: some people recognize its cause and know whence it comes. This secret cause, which prefers to reveal itself only to a very few people, produces great effects and everything that is closest to the heart.)

The je-ne-sais-quoi (n.) is used here to distinguish those who have it from those who do not. Me´re´ clearly includes himself among the former and Luns among the latter. In an earlier letter he advises the same correspondent, eager to be included within the circle, to adopt his brand of polite Machiavellianism: ‘il ne faut avoir pour principal but que de plaire aux honnestes gens’ (one’s principal aim must only be to please the honneˆtes gens) (1689: 373 (letter 111)). Me´re´’s account of the je-ne-sais-quoi reads like a direct refutation of Pascal’s fragment on the same topic. Pascal’s language of cause and effect, and his emphasis on the disproportionate relation between them, are repeated. But where Pascal describes the stroke of passion as a real je-ne-sais-quoi, Me´re´ reveals his sign of quality to be a polite artefact, for the happy few understand its cause and can manipulate its effects. Me´re´ confirms the critical argument of this chapter that the quality of the polite circle is not so much a true jene-sais-quoi as a certains-savent-bien-quoi: ‘it is not the je-ne-saisquoi for everybody’. Only those who have it can judge what this certain something is or who may emit its signs. The je-ne-sais-quoi appears in Me´re´ as the fashionable sign by which the polite circle shuts out the hapless M. de Luns. The outsiders, like the insiders, know who they are: it takes one, after all, to know one. 4.3.2. The Phatic Communion of Ariste and Euge`ne Bouhours cultivates the je-ne-sais-quoi (n.) by making it a topic of conversation. His Jansenist critic Barbier d’Aucour attacks him for stretching the topic in such a way that it allows him to say nothing about everything. Linguistics distinguishes between the ‘extension’ of a word or topic (the number of things that it can accommodate) and its ‘comprehensiveness’ (the number of elements included within the idea that it expresses).82 The greater the extension of a topic, the less comprehensive it is, and vice versa. Barbier d’Aucour claims that Bouhours has extended the je-ne-sais-quoi to the point of zero comprehensiveness, in other words, meaninglessness (1776: 82

See Gre´visse 1980: §.384; on Barbier d’Aucour, see Sect. 1.3.2, above.

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119–20). The charge is valid but trivial. The Jesuit’s object is not to give a comprehensive account of the je-ne-sais-quoi: it is to allow his characters to talk their way into the polite circle. Ariste and Euge`ne do so by using the je-ne-sais-quoi to play the game of nescioquiddity. Some people, they agree, exude a quality so notoriously indefinable that the je-ne-sais-quoi is the only appropriate name for it. But what is the je-ne-sais-quoi? The next move in the game should be familiar by now: ‘si l’on vient a` examiner tout cela, on ne sc¸ait plus ou` l’on en est, et il en faut touˆjours revenir au je ne sc¸ay quoy’ (if you come to examine all that, you find you no longer know where you are, and you always have to come back to the je-ne-sais-quoi) (Bonhours 1962: 142). What is new here is that the je-ne-sais-quoi, unlike its semantic precursors, spells out its own nescioquiddity. Ariste and Euge`ne, nevertheless, refuse to allow this fact to bring a premature end to their game. They invoke the usual suspects—divine grace, nature, and culture—as mutually exclusive origins for the je-ne-sais-quoi. Ariste insists that, far from offering a false pretext to those wishing to preserve their exclusive social circle intact, the je-ne-sais-quoi is the state of things in nature (1962: 146). Nature distinguishes the courtly elite from the populace. It is God, however, who distinguishes the king from his court.83 The je-ne-sais-quoi is a natural quality, then a gift of grace, then again a subtle cultural artifice, and still there is more: ‘le je ne sc¸ay quoy se trouve presque par tout’ (the je-ne-sais-quoi is to be found almost everywhere) (1962: 147). Bouhours, by extending the origins of the je-ne-sais-quoi to three different realms, pushes his topic into incoherence. He does so, not to capture the incoherence of the world itself, but so that Ariste and Euge`ne can prolong their conversation by talking with wit and polish about this and that. He shares the view of polite conversation expressed by Me´re´: ‘j’aime dans la conversation, que l’on cherche une agre´able diversite´’ (I like it in conversation when people seek a pleasing diversity).84 The object of polite conversation is not to create concepts but, rather, to confirm one’s inclusion within the circle. The manner in which the conversation leads into an elegant 83 Bouhours 1962: 147–8. Pascal reduces the so-called ‘natural’ distinction of kings to a mere habit of the imagination in their subjects (L. 25; S. 59; L. 44; S. 78); on this, and Pascal’s critique of the imaginary apparatus of social life as a whole, see Moriarty 2003: 111–17. 84 Me´re´ 1930: i. 67; see also Bouhours 1962: 5–6.

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expression of nescioquiddity matters a great deal more than its ostensible topic: it is in that sense a ‘phatic communion’.85 Ariste and Euge`ne could have chosen no more appropriate term for such a communion than the topic of their fifth conversation. The je-nesais-quoi is the perfect blank counter with which to play the game of nescioquiddity.86 The je-ne-sais-quoi (n.) settles into the seventeenth-century polite lexicon and, in this way, acquires its history. Ariste’s observation, that one always has to come back to the je-ne-sais-quoi (Bonhours 1962: 142), is in fact an imperative for polite culture. This imperative determines the conditions within which the term, as it is used and used again, rises to prominence and spreads beyond the circle of the e´lite. Saying that something has a certain je-ne-sais-quoi signifies nothing other than one’s desire to be included within the circle.87 The word and its underlying culture become, at this point, indistinguishable. 4.3.3. The Widening Rift The je-ne-sais-quoi, from the 1670s onwards, shows signs of a loss in its semantic force as the spreading of the term makes it seem a precious affectation. Some words—‘curiosity’ and ‘reaction’ are two recently studied examples—remain in their prime for well over a hundred years.88 The je-ne-sais-quoi, however, flits in and out of history with fitting evanescence. Writers keen to make a laughing stock of polite culture soon seize on its new sign of quality. Molie`re is one of them. We saw earlier (in Sect. 3.3.1, above) that the word marks the stroke of passion in L’E´cole des Femmes. But in La Critique de l’E´cole des Femmes (1663), the playwright’s theatrical riposte to his polite critics, he uses the adjective je ne sais quel to poke fun at their affectation. Clime`ne, a pre´cieuse ridicule who claims to have been made ill by 85 ‘Phatic communion’ is language used not to transmit rational thoughts, but to establish an atmosphere in which communication seems possible and even desirable: exchanges about the state of the weather are one famous (English) example. See Jefferson and Robey 1982: 44–5. 86 Marin gives a complementary, though less critical, analysis of the je-ne-saisquoi and its function in conversation (1997a: 26–34); see also Moriarty 1999: 526. 87 This is the criticism made by Cramer in his hostile review of Bouhours’s Entretiens (1694: 25–6). 88 See Starobinski 1999b: 13; Kenny 1998: 13.

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the ordeal of seeing L’E´cole des Femmes, insists that she speaks without affectation.89 She has clearly absorbed the polite principle that one must at all times cultivate an air of natural nonchalance, sprezzatura, je-ne-sais-quoi, or what you will. Elise, in her reply (Molie`re 1971: i. 650), parodies such subtle affectations: on le voit bien, Madame, et que tout est naturel en vous. Vos paroles, le ton de votre voix, vos regards, vos pas, votre action et votre ajustement, ont je ne sais quel air de qualite´, qui enchante les gens. It is quite clear, Madame, that everything about you is natural. Your words, the tone of your voice, your looks, your gait, your behaviour, and your way of dressing have I know not what air of quality that enchants people.

She mimics, in a single sentence, the polite game of nescioquiddity. Molie`re repeats his parody of female salon culture in Les Femmes Savantes (1672). Trissotin, ‘bel esprit’ as the dramatis personae describes him (1971: ii. 984), reads an ill-formed sonnet before Philaminte and Be´lise. It sends the ladies, who are dedicated followers of lexical fashion, into the ecstasies of the day. Philaminte reaches for the je-ne-sais-quoi, exclaiming: ‘On se sent a` ces vers, jusques au fond de l’aˆme, j Couler je ne sais quoi qui fait que l’on se paˆme’ (on hearing these verses, one feels flowing deep into one’s soul I know not what that makes one swoon) (1971: ii. 1023). She faints into the arms of nescioquiddity. Writers, from around the publication of Bouhours’s ‘Le Je Ne Sc¸ay Quoy’ (1671) onwards, lampoon the word as a modish affectation signifying nothing. One attack comes from a writer of maxims, the Abbe´ d’Ailly, whose Pense´es diverses were published alongside the Maximes of Madame de Sable´ in 1678. Both texts were included thereafter in editions of La Rochefoucauld’s Re´flexions (1705). The Abbe´ d’Ailly dismisses the je-ne-sais-quoi in these terms: ces mots de simpatie, de je ne sc¸ay quoy, de qualitez occultes, et mille autres de cette nature, ne signifient rien: on se trompe, quand on pense en estre mieux instruit; on les a inventez, pour dire quelque chose quand on manque de raisons, et qu’on ne sc¸ait plus que dire.90 The words ‘sympathy’, je-ne-sais-quoi, ‘occult qualities’, and countless others of that kind signify nothing: one is mistaken ever to think that one

89

Molie`re 1971: i. 647, 650.

90

Sable´ 1678: 62–3 (no. 39).

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has learnt anything by them; people invented them so as to have something to say when they lack explanations and find themselves at a loss for words.

The je-ne-sais-quoi and its semantic neighbours are derided here as modish refuges of ignorance. D’Ailly’s maxim closely echoes Bouhours’s attack on those precursors of the je-ne-sais-quoi, such as sympathie, which are used to conceal ignorance (1962: 140–1). But where Bouhours makes an exception of his keyword, which he offers as a new and forceful way of naming a radical nescioquiddity, the Abbe´ d’Ailly dismisses this too as a misleading refuge of ignorance. His maxim offers one indication that, by the late 1670s, the word is already beginning to fall from grace. The term’s decadence is particularly apparent in England, where it is always more liable to seem affected than in France because of its provenance, its whiff of exotic pretension. English writers do of course have the native form ‘I know not what’ at their disposal.91 But they satirize the je-ne-sais-quoi as a Gallicism. Baker and Miller’s English translation of La Critique de l’Ecole des Femmes (1739) is a case in point. It will be remembered that Elise parodies Clime`ne’s affectation by finding in her ‘je ne sais quel air de qualite´’. Baker and Miller render the je ne sais quel here simply by turning the French adjective into its modish substantival form. Their Eliza tells Climene: ‘everything is natural in you. Your words, [ . . . ] your looks, your gait, your action and your dress, have a je ne sc¸ay quoy of quality in ‘em that enchants people’ (Molie`re 1929: i. 301). The word, by this time, has long since settled into the linguistic bedrock of polite society. English comedies, from the late 1660s onwards, use the je-nesais-quoi to describe those who would pass for having ‘wit’.92 But one man’s wit is another man’s foppery. Congreve’s The Double Dealer (1694) includes an English pre´cieuse ridicule, Lady Froth, listed in the dramatis personae as ‘a great Cocquet; pretender to Poetry, Wit, and Learning’ (Congreve 1967: 126). Lady Froth senses that Cynthia’s unaffected lover Mellefont lacks what she calls ‘a Manner’. The two then share the following exchange as Lady Froth explains what she means:

91 Hume (1961: 267) offers a particularly rich example of a semantically affirmative ‘I-know-not-what’ when describing personal merit. 92 We return here to a topic discussed in Sect. 1.1.4, above.

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Lady Froth. Some distinguishing Quality, as for example, the Belle-air or Brillant of Mr. Brisk; the Solemnity, yet Complaisance of my Lord, or something of his own, that should look a little Je-ne-scay-quoysh; he is too much of a Mediocrity, in my mind. Cynthia. He does not indeed affect either pertness, or formality; for which I like him.93

Young men wishing to please the likes of Lady Froth should cultivate a certain Gallic something. Her addition of the approximative suffix ‘-ish’ to the je-ne-sais-quoi reveals how irremediably English the vogue for French signs of quality is within the circles of London society.94 Cynthia, in reply, contrasts the affectation of the je-nesais-quoi with the natural quality that truly distinguishes Mellefont. How far the word has come in the half-century since Vaugelas dismissed it as a synonym for galant because it referred to something ‘purely natural’! The je-ne-sais-quoi is now firmly settled as the subtle artifice by which one cultivates a natural manner.95 Henry Fielding marks the word’s English nadir in his picaresque novel Tom Jones (1749). The narrator, undertaking a description of his heroine Sophia Western in the ‘sublime’ style, deploys the figure of adynaton familiar to readers of Me´re´ and Bouhours. But where these two writers use the figure to cultivate the je-ne-sais-quoi as a sign of quality, Fielding’s narrator takes care to distinguish Sophia’s natural qualities from their polite simulacrum. His description ends: Sophia was perfectly well bred, though perhaps she wanted a little of that ease in her behaviour which is to be acquired only by habit and living within what is called the polite circle. But this, to say the truth, is often too dearly purchased; and though it hath charms so inexpressible that the French, perhaps, among other qualities, mean to express this when they declare they know not what it is, yet its absence is well compensated by innocence, nor can good sense and a natural gentility ever stand in need of it.96 93

Congreve 1967: The Double Dealer, ii. 2, 45–54. Lady Upstart, in William Taverner’s comedy The Artful Husband (1716), enthuses: ‘Ah, Mademoiselle, what are we English Ladies indebted to the Politeness of the French! [ . . . ] You bring us the Life, the Spirit, the Belle Ayre, the Jen’sc¸ay quoi’ (Taverner 1716: 20). 95 Reveller, in the opening lines of Benjamin Griffin’s comedy The Masquerade (1717), requires his nephew to ‘appear Alamode’ in ‘an embroider’d Suit, a smart Cock, an agreeable Air, with a Je n’sc¸ay quoy of Negligence in your Behaviour’ (Griffin 1996: 4). 96 Fielding 1963: 131 (my italics). 94

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The je-ne-sais-quoi remains associated with the culture of what Fielding calls ‘the polite circle’ in mid-eighteenth-century England, but by this stage, the word has spread so far beyond the circle that it takes no more than an allusive string of English syntax to evoke it. Fielding’s syntactic string has at the same time the character of a hostile translation. By reminding his readers of the word’s ideal meaning, Fielding’s narrator denounces the artifices of the polite circle. They are anything but the real nescioquiddity that Sophia possesses and that can be described under the sign of adynaton alone (1963: 130). English satire reveals with particular clarity what polite culture makes of the term on both sides of the Channel: the fashion item of the polite circle. Cartier de Saint Philip marks the nadir of the je-ne-sais-quoi in eighteenth-century French writing by choosing to call his literary miscellanea Le Je ne sc¸ai quoi (1724). He recounts in a preface how, when an acquaintance asked him what his collection was to be called, he replied that no definite title came to mind: ‘ma re´ponse,’ the author continues, ‘qui excita a` ce Bel Esprit l’ide´e du Je ne sc¸ai quoi, le porta a` me re´pliquer; He´ bien, intitulez voˆtre Livre le Je ne sc¸ai quoi’ (my reply, which excited in this bel esprit the idea of the je-ne-sais-quoi, led him to reply: ‘Well then, you should call your book The Je-Ne-Sais-Quoi’) (Cartier de Saint Philip 1724: p. ii). The bel esprit merely finds an elegant expression of the author’s mental indolence. The latter shares his blase´ view of the je-ne-sais-quoi, defining it on the same page as ‘[une] expression qu’on met par maniere de dire a` toutes sortes de sauces, et qui ne marque en effet que l’entiere ignorance de ceux qui s’en servent’ ([an] expression employed by people as a jack-of-alltrades way of speaking and which reveals nothing but the entire ignorance of those who use it). Cartier de Saint Philip marks the point at which the fall of the je-ne-sais-quoi into meaningless affectation is complete. The culture of the je-ne-sais-quoi exposes a widening rift between the word and its ideal typical meaning. It is of course to be expected, of a certain something with powerful effects that cannot be explained, that it should prove impossible to pin down to any sedimented noun. In its period of currency, the lexical je-ne-saisquoi is able to carry its ideal typical meaning by reactivating the nescioquiddity hidden with sedimented nouns: it reveals ‘occult

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quality’ as a nominal refuge of ignorance, and sympathy as an inexplicable force in human relations. But by settling as a modish name into the bedrock of polite usage, the je-ne-sais-quoi proves no more able than its precursors were to lend written form to its core meaning. The two drift apart.

part iii

Pre-History

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5

A Certain Something: Montaigne Il y a, au dela` de tout mon discours, et de ce que j’en puis dire particulierement, ne sc¸ay quelle force inexplicable et fatale, mediatrice de cette union. (Beyond all my understanding, beyond what I can say about this in particular, there was I know not what inexplicable and fateful force that was the mediator of this union.) Montaigne

5.1. towards a pre-history 5.1.1. Like Father, Like Son? What does it mean to offer a pre-history of the je-ne-sais-quoi? Since pre-histories generally evoke a remote past when things first started crawling out of formlessness, and since the thing in question eludes form to this day, one might well suppose that the enterprise amounts to no more than wrapping an enigma in a mystery. But the prehistory of the je-ne-sais-quoi is no exercise in obscurantism. It is, rather, an attempt to rescue the topic from its early modern history of sedimentation by defining that threshold moment when it is lexically unformed but vitally alive in early modern literary writing; in this case, in the writing of Montaigne. But why does the je-ne-sais-quoi need to be ‘rescued’ in the first place? The answer to that question has emerged in the course of the preceding chapters as they have traced the lexical, intellectual, and cultural history of the topic in the early modern period. It has been suggested that the je-ne-sais-quoi, when it rises to prominence in seventeenth-century France, comes typically to designate an

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inexplicable force of sympathy or antipathy, a certain something with powerful effects in different realms of human experience. This something brings available forms of explanation to a crisis by unsettling sedimented terms, passing forcefully through current ones, and abandoning these as they undergo the process of cultural sedimentation. This movement can be traced through the history of the je-ne-sais-quoi in the early modern period: the word unsettles its precursors in its rise to prominence as a noun, enjoys a brief period of intense semantic force in philosophical and literary writing, and then settles into the linguistic sediment of polite culture. The very process by means of which the topic acquires its history divorces it from that certain inexplicable something that it first served to trace. A study of the je-ne-sais-quoi could very well end there, in the loss of force that characterizes its early modern lexical history, in the rift between the word and its core meaning. It requires a turn in the method of this study, a critical indirection, to rescue the topic from its history by privileging the core meaning and its literary expression over the word’s history, and the spirit over the letter. To do so means, in effect, two things: first, resisting the historical processes that make of the je-ne-sais-quoi a settled element of language and thought; second, recognizing that the art of capturing that certain something on the page may be structured, not only by the unity and coherence of fixed terms and forms, but also by the forces of multiplicity and restless innovation. There are various ways of doing this. One might decide entirely to abandon the lexical strand of the analysis and follow the core meaning of the word through an open field of related terms and phrases. But one might also observe that the je-ne-sais-quoi carries within it the forces of multiplicity and innovation, and that while these are subdued when the word settles as a noun and a topic, they can be detected in occurrences of its suppler non-substantival and syntactic forms. The idea is not to gather these occurrences together as points of origin for a genealogy of the je-ne-sais-quoi—since that would be to condemn them to a subsequent history of loss of which they know nothing—but to approach them instead as materials for a ‘pre-history’. The pre-historical approach, as pioneered by Terence Cave (1999, 2001), is used to examine a whole series of phenomena that appear constituent features of ‘our’ modernity. The idea is to apprehend and describe early modern perceptions of a particular

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phenomenon—personal identity, for example—without projecting back on to these perceptions the phenomenon’s subsequent history. To adopt this approach to the je-ne-sais-quoi means moving backwards, from the moment at which the word acquires its history, into examples of writing that carry the semantic force of the je-ne-saisquoi but that cannot call upon the sedimented word. Cave’s prehistories are motivated, above all, by a methodological concern to recover multiple testimonies of past experience in their irreducibility to a teleological narrative of modernity. I seek, as Cave does, to recover early scattered traces of a particular phenomenon without making these points of origin. But I do so, not for methodological reasons alone, but also because I want to suggest that the scattered traces of its pre-history offer a more faithful image of the je-ne-saisquoi than its subsequent history. That suggestion is made here with reference to the writing of Montaigne alone. Just as history gives way to pre-history, then, so the method of synthetic analysis studded with particular examples from different authors is replaced by a sustained close reading of one author. Montaigne is singled out for this treatment for two reasons. The first is that he offers a rich and complex account of the object under examination. First published in 1580, some fifty years before the rise to prominence of the je-ne-sais-quoi, the Essais are in a purely chronological sense part of its pre-history: Montaigne, as we saw earlier (Sect. 1.1.3, above), frequently draws upon the phrase without ever using it as a noun. So too, of course, does any number of texts published before the je-ne-sais-quoi acquires its seventeenth-century history. But Montaigne also examines those realms of experience in which, during the previous three chapters, we traced the semantic operations of the je-ne-sais-quoi. He draws upon various current pre-substantival forms of the phrase, in other words, to describe a series of encounters with a certain something. His writing, for that reason, may be taken as a synecdoche for the pre-history of the je-ne-sais-quoi as a whole. The second reason for performing a close reading here is a mirror image of the first: it is that the pre-history of the je-ne-sais-quoi is to be taken as a synecdoche for the writing of Montaigne as a whole. This claim is excessive, of course, and consciously so. It is above all a heuristic device, a means of access both to the questions the text considers and to the way it considers them, a thread to guide the reader through the labyrinth of Montaigne’s work.

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How are we to read the Essais? The question remains a matter of debate to this day.1 It is a debate into which Montaigne himself— that most self-reflective of writers—intervenes. But he does so merely, it seems, in order to place his readers in a critical dilemma. In ‘De la vanite´’ (iii. 9), he describes his text as a dense, oblique, and open-ended description of multiple thoughts and inclinations that are ever on the move (994b–c). At certain moments, he presents the freedom of the text to skilled readers by inviting them to appropriate and transform elements to produce ‘essais’ (soundings) of their own.2 But he is equally capable of asserting, as he does earlier in ‘De la vanite´’, that he has left nothing more to be said (983b). He goes on in the same passage to warn his readers against deforming him, or misreading his book, with a ghostly threat: ‘je reviendrois volontiers de l’autre monde pour de´mentir celuy qui me formeroit autre que je n’estois, fut ce pour m’honorer’ (I would willingly come back from the other world to give the lie to any man who portrayed me other than I was, even if it were to honour me) (983b; F 914). He threatens to haunt any reader guilty of altering his portrait without explaining how he distinguishes between the deformations he foresees here and the legitimate transformations of his text that he elsewhere invites. He leaves his readers uncomfortably perched on the horns of this dilemma as they seek to make sense of his text. The answer, or at least part of the answer, must be to approach Montaigne on his terms. One can best do that, perhaps, by assuming that the positive trace of his thought is to be found first and foremost in the fabric of his text. Making sense of the text means considering what questions it persistently asks, what themes it treats, what ideas it encounters and produces. But it also means recognizing that those ideas inhere in phrases, sentences, chapters, and books, and that they cannot be simply extracted from their internal context. So one needs to combine a thematic study with a lexical, syntactical, and rhetorical analysis; or to put it in another way, the methods of intellectual history and literary criticism need to be brought together within a single approach. Taking this approach requires resisting the temptation to freeze Montaigne into any kind of stable or essential ‘position’ on the ideas he encounters. For the position appears as a mirage as soon as one 1 2

For more ample discussions, see Pouilloux 1969; Cave 1982; McKinley 2001. See Montaigne: i. 40, 251c; Cave 1982: 160–2.

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returns to the text. This temptation is difficult to resist partly because reading Montaigne is an inherently disconcerting experience: one’s instinctive reaction to a text that shifts between different modes of thinking and writing is to pin it down and subdue its extravagances. It is partly too that Montaigne often appears to anticipate ideas that his readers recognize as their own, to lisp modern thoughts, and this makes it doubly difficult to pay proper attention to his idiosyncrasies of mind and expression. Historians of modernity cast back into the ‘early modern’ period and find a series of discrete phenomena in Montaigne’s writing that look rather like their unborn object of study. The tendency is to place these in its genealogical line: earlier forms are seen as no more than the later familiar thing in embryo, imperfect but already there. In precisely this way, Cave argues (1999: 111–14), readers who place Montaigne at the genesis of the modern ‘self’ risk petrifying his mobile lexicon of personal identity. Further examples can be found in the regions of experience that directly concern us. For in them too Montaigne appears as a kind of founding father. His account of the art of conversation, as we have seen, is placed by many at the genesis of the polite seventeenthcentury version of honneˆtete´. His attack on the occult qualities, forms, and quintessences of traditional philosophy provides a second example. Attacks of this kind become commonplace in the Scientific Revolution and so historians tend to place the Essais at the beginning of this grand narrative of modern intellectual history.3 Montaigne, like his near-contemporary Shakespeare, seems in so many ways to occupy the dawn of our age, to have made it possible, to be our ancestor.4 This is of course another version of the ‘like father, like son’ story, discussed in the next section of this chapter, that Montaigne tells about himself. Readers who place him at the origins of the new philosophy or honneˆtete´ appeal to the same genealogical narrative. But they risk freezing his text in a position foreign to it, and in the act, raising Montaigne’s ghost. To propose the je-ne-sais-quoi as an approach to Montaigne runs, of course, the same risk. For it would be tempting to treat it simply as a topic on which the author takes a position, select and extract 3

Starobinski 1982: 183; Hutchison 1982: 235, 249. Harold Bloom, e.g., considers Shakespeare to have ‘invented the human’ (1999); on the case of Montaigne, see Cave 1999: 18. 4

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the relevant passages from their internal context, and then place these at the origins of the topic’s seventeenth-century history. Word historians tend indeed to do just that and to claim Montaigne as a founding father of the je-ne-sais-quoi (n.) when they include his uses of its non-substantival forms in their survey of sixteenth-century occurrences.5 My intention is different. It is to use the je-ne-saisquoi as a means of gathering together and analysing a series of encounters in a non-reductive and open-ended way. The pre-historical approach makes this possible by first exploiting and then resisting the inferences of hindsight. The pre-historian moves backwards from the rise of the je-ne-sais-quoi (n.) into the earlier instances in Montaigne that seem with hindsight to anticipate the word’s sedimentation. But rather than awarding to these instances the status of origins, as genealogical historians tend to do, the pre-historian finds them in the absolute present of their writing as multiple textual traces of Montaigne’s experience and thought. The enterprise has its difficulties. It becomes meaningful to talk about the instances gathered in this way as ‘pre-historical’ only after one has placed them in the shadow of a forwards-moving history. So one spends much of one’s time following the flow of history in order to move backwards into the work of Montaigne. The enterprise may strike some as no more than an exercise in nostalgia. But it may offer certain insights. The je-ne-sais-quoi offers a thematic perspective on Montaigne’s work combined with a textual analysis: it is an approach sensitive to the ways in which modes of expression shift under the pressure of new modes of experience and thought. Using Montaigne as a case study means making the pre-history of the jene-sais-quoi the site of its own dispersal into a field of surrounding terms, phrases, and figures. It becomes possible as a result, not only to mark the differences between the pre-history of the je-ne-saisquoi and its history, but also to assess the means whereby writers in each of the two phases are able to put into words encounters with a certain something. I am going to suggest, indeed, that Montaigne lends written form to these encounters with more sensitivity than the sedimented je-ne-sais-quoi (n.) could allow. For rather than settling for a modish refuge of ignorance, he moves between the experience of powerful forces and the search for an explanation, and rather 5 See, e.g., Spingarn 1957: p.c; Simon 1959: 104; Ko¨hler 1953–4: 22–5; Haase 1956: 49–50. Guellouz (1971: 4–6) is an exception.

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than pinning his writing about this topic to one stable term, he slides between multiple terms, forms, syntactic strings, and rhetorical figures in an attempt to trace the appearances and effects of a certain something that cannot be explained. The experience of the je-nesais-quoi appears at its most vital in Montaigne’s pre-history. 5.1.2. Experience and Explanation Montaigne’s descriptions of his encounters with a certain something produce a series of textual movements between the experience and its possible explanations. Experience, a notion around which Montaigne constructs the last chapter of his book (iii. 13), may take the form of a sudden unforeseen ‘accident’. The word ‘accident’ implies, in its Latin etymology (from cadere, ‘to fall’), an event that suddenly befalls a passive subject. Montaigne often calls upon ‘accident’ to describe events of this kind.6 When we are moved by sudden outer forces or inner inclinations, or observe these in other things or people, we experience the effects of something that we cannot explain. The je-ne-sais-quoi unites these particular experiences within a single succinct formulation. But this formulation is and must always remain under threat since it is simply a synthesis, made in hindsight, of various particular accidents. Each accident requires the telling of a different story, and each story needs to be read closely. In ‘De la ressemblance des enfans aux peres’ (Of the resemblance of children to fathers) (ii. 37), the final chapter of the first edition of the Essais (1580), Montaigne looks back over the seven-year period that has elapsed since he started writing his book. One event that has happened to him during this time, the onset of kidney stones, cannot be overlooked. He has undergone ‘un changement bien soudain et bien rude, estant cheu tout a` coup d’une tres-douce condition de vie et tres-heureuse a` la plus doloreuse et penible qui se puisse imaginer’ (a very sudden and very rough change, having fallen all at once from a very gentle and very happy condition of life to the most painful and grievous that can be imagined) (762–3a; F 701). The illness has the character of an accident: Montaigne ‘falls’ ill just as suddenly as he falls from his horse.7 After the 6 7

See, e.g., Montaigne: i. 57, 326a; ii. 1, 335b; ii. 37, 761a; iii. 2, 805b. On falling ill, see iii. 13, 1090b; Montaigne describes his fall from a horse in ii. 6.

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event, however, kidney stones appear to have been a habitual accident in the Montaigne family rather than a singular one: ‘il est a` croire que je dois a` mon pere cette qualite´ pierreuse, car il mourut merveilleusement afflige´ d’une grosse pierre qu’il avoit en la vessie’ (it is probable that I owe this stony propensity to my father, for he died extraordinarily afflicted with a large stone he had in his bladder) (763a; F 701).8 The strange likenesses between father and son do not end there. For Michel has inherited from his forefathers, not only a physical predisposition to kidney stones, but also a residual mental antipathy towards the doctors who claim to understand and treat the condition. He names that antipathy too by drawing upon the doctors’ own lexicon of occult qualities: ‘mes ancestres avoient la medecine a` contrecœur par quelque inclination occulte et naturelle: car la veue¨ mesme des drogues faisoit horreur a` mon pere’ (my ancestors had an aversion to medicine by some occult natural inclination; for the very sight of drugs filled my father with horror) (764a; F 703). This ‘inclination’ recurs in various synonyms throughout the chapter, as an ‘antipathie [ . . . ] hereditaire’ or a ‘dispathie naturelle’ (764–5a), and a ‘propension naturelle contre les drogues et pratique de nostre medicine’ (a natural aversion to drugs and to the practice of our medicine) (785a; F 724–5). This last phrase yokes a physical antipathy (to the taking of drugs) together with a mental one (to medicine). Montaigne refers to an unsettling something, which he feels within himself everyday, but that he can neither define nor explain. ‘What is it?’ The insistent question recurs: il me semble que, parmy les choses que nous voyons ordinairement, il y a des estrangetez si incomprehensibles qu’elles surpassent toute la difficulte´ des miracles. Quel monstre est-ce, que cette goute de semence dequoy nous sommes produits, porte en soy les impressions, non de la forme corporelle seulement, mais des pensemens et des inclinations de nos peres? Cette goute d’eau, ou` loge elle ce nombre infiny de formes?9 (It seems to me that among the things we see ordinarily there are wonders so incomprehensible that they surpass even miracles in obscurity. What a prodigy it is that the drop of seed from which we are produced bears in itself the impressions not only of the bodily form but of the thoughts and 8 As Montaigne’s father was called Pierre, there may be a pun here on the adjective ‘pierreuse’ (stony); see Compagnon 1980: 188. 9 ii. 37, 763a; F 701. On prodigies in Montaigne and his contemporaries, see Ce´ard 1977; monsters are the subject of a forthcoming study by Wes Williams.

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inclinations of our fathers! Where does that drop of fluid lodge this infinite number of forms?)

The seed of the father is the most domestic of miracles, but a miracle nonetheless, since its prodigious force affects the father’s children throughout their lives in mind and body.10 Montaigne’s writing about occult forms and qualities starts here from the most intimate of experiences: the sharp pain that he suddenly felt in the bladder. Montaigne draws upon lexical forms of the je-ne-sais-quoi to describe such experiences. He records with meticulous care the pain that kidney stones caused him, and his search for a cure in Germany, Switzerland, and Italy in 1580–1, in his Journal de Voyage (first published in 1774).11 The text is divided into four parts.12 His secretary composed what amounts to almost the first half of the journal. Montaigne then wrote two parts in French, between which he writes in Italian (Tuscan), announcing: ‘assagiamo di parlar un poco questa altra lingua’ (let us try to speak this other language a little).13 Non so che, the Italian cousin of the je-ne-saisquoi, appears here on no less than six occasions.14 All but one serves to describe the strange effects upon his body of his condition and the treatments.15 Montaigne’s entries during his second trip to Bains de la Villa are typical. On 18 August, he spends two hours in the same bath, noting: ‘sentii non so che gravezza di reni’ (I felt I know not what heaviness in my kidneys). He finds on the following day that his urine has turned cloudy with gravel, as it had done two days earlier, and comments: ‘scorgeva altresı` non so che movimenti ai reni’ (I also noticed I know not what commotion in my kidneys) (1992b: 198; F 1241). He uses the non so che on three further occasions to trace the strange movements of his bodily experience.16 He turns to a related French form, the adverbial phrase je ne sais comment, for the same purpose in a late chapter of the Essais, ‘Des coches’ (Of coaches) (iii. 6). The opening pages of the chapter describe the nausea that Montaigne feels when travelling by 10 On the interdependence of mind and body, see iii. 12, 1057b; i. 21, 104a; and iii. 13, 1114b. 11 On the Journal, see Friedrich 1968: 266–70; Cave 1999: 168–74. 12 See Montaigne 1992b: pp. xii–xix (introd.). 13 Montaigne 1992b: 167; F 1208; see also Montaigne: iii. 5, 546b. 14 Natali records just three (1958: 14); on the non so che, see Sect. 1.1.2, above. 15 The exception is a description of a wine tasting: Montaigne 1992b: 216. 16 Montaigne 1992b: 175, 176, and 197.

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coach, litter, or boat. The sensation comes upon him not during a storm, he points out, but only in the ebb and flow of a calm sea. This movement to and fro, whose causes provoke pious wonder in Bouhours’s Ariste and Euge`ne (see Sect. 2.1.1, above), makes Montaigne’s stomach turn: ‘par cette legere secousse que les avirons donnent, desrobant le vaisseau soubs nous, je me sens brouiller, je ne sc¸ay comment, la teste et l’estomac, comme je ne puis souffrir soubs moy un siege tremblant’ (by that slight jolt given by the oars, stealing the vessel from under us, I feel my head and stomach troubled, I know not how, as I cannot bear a shaky seat under me) (901b; F 834). Je ne sais comment refers to the sensation of seasickness, which he meticulously describes, but whose efficient cause he cannot explain. The three relative clauses, with je ne sais comment in the middle, follow a syncopated rhythm (of five syllables, five again, and then six) that renders on the page the boat’s fitful movement: ‘c’est un remuement interrompu qui m’offence, et plus quand il est languissant. Je ne sc¸aurois autrement peindre sa forme’ (it is an interrupted motion that upsets me, and most of all when it is languid. I cannot otherwise portray its form) (901b; F 834). Montaigne uses the je-ne-sais-quoi and related phrases in his writerly attempt to ‘portray’ the form of experiences he finds difficult to explain.17 Such experiences leave Montaigne all at sea, buffeted by ‘le vent des accidens’ (the wind of accident) (ii. 1, 335b; F 293), searching for firm land. His writing starts in experience before moving towards explanation, and back again, with the movement to and fro of a boat upon the water. This ternary movement, similar to that which Jean Starobinski has traced (1982: 169–223), takes place either at sentence level or within an entire chapter. It reflects the restless attempt to capture, evaluate, and test human experience of the world which is fundamental to the writing project of the Essais. It starts in the inchoate experience of some unknown accident or force. This accident, sudden in its incidence and often violent in its effects, awakens an instinctive philosophical curiosity in Montaigne. No sooner has he described a strange ‘commotion’ in his kidneys, after his Italian bath, than he embarks upon a search for its causes. The second diary entry that I quoted earlier continues: ‘scorgeva altresı` non so che movimenti ai reni. E s’io dirittamente 17

See also ii. 37, 785a (for a similar search for forme).

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sento, questi bagni possono molto intorno a questo particolare’ (I also noticed I know not what commotion in my kidneys. And if my feelings are correct, these baths have the power to do much in that particular) (1992b: 198; F 1241). The movement towards explanation is immediate here. Montaigne conducts his search for causes by reviewing discourses of knowledge—such as law, medicine, and natural philosophy—in the light of his experience. His criticism of medical explanations, as we have seen, is one example of this. Another is his review, in ‘Des coches’ (iii. 6), of attempts to explain seasickness. There he rejects Plutarch’s explanation, that the condition is caused by fear, asserting: ‘moy qui y suis fort subjet, sc¸ay bien que cette cause ne me touche pas, et le sc¸ay non par argument, mais par necessaire experience’ (I, who am very subject to seasickness, know very well that this cause does not affect me, and I know it, not by reasoning, but by necessary experience) (899b; F 832).18 The impulse to move from lived experience to explanation is acted upon again and again as Montaigne slowly compiles a list of possible explanations of seasickness (901c). He enacts in this way the process described at the beginning of the chapter: nous ne pouvons nous asseurer de la maistresse cause; nous en entassons plusieurs, voir si par rencontre elle se trouvera en ce nombre, namque unam dicere causam j Non satis est, verum plures, unde una tamen sit.19 (We cannot make sure of the master cause; we pile up several of them, to see if by chance it will be found among them, ‘For one cause will not do; j We must state many, one of which is true.’)

Montaigne turns Lucretius’ axiom, that multiple possible causes must be proposed if the main one is to be found, into a constantly renewed search that leads to no such discovery. The frustrations of such a search release a counter-movement that draws the essayist back from explanation towards the initial experience.20 This return may not be definitive, of course, for his 18 Elsewhere Montaigne attacks those that ignore or misapply experience in their causal speculations (iii. 13, 1075–6b). 19 iii. 6, 899b; F 831–2. The Latin quotation is from Lucretius, De rerum natura, vi. 703. 20 Further examples include: the fury of soldiers and poets (ii. 1, 347–8a–c); Montaigne’s antipathy to certain vices (ii. 11, 427–8a–b–c); and the effect of his physiognomy on bandits (iii. 12, 1062b–c).

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philosophical curiosity is never far away: he has, in this respect, ‘le cul entre deux selles’ (his rear end between two saddles) (i. 56, 313c; F 276). But he nevertheless returns to the initial experience with an altered perspective. He no longer seeks necessary scientific knowledge but, instead, a contingent empty-handed apprehension of nescience that he calls inscience. Inscience encourages the attempt to capture a fragment of life in its irreducible particularity, or ‘peindre sa forme’ (to portray its form), as he says in ‘Des coches’. To make this attempt, he retains terms of art from his earlier compilation of possible explanations. But he now uses them acausally to describe his experience from what might be called, to use a later term in a loose sense, a phenomenological perspective: how the thing felt, tasted, or sounded, and what it did to him. With no firm land in sight, Montaigne moves back towards open sea in an attempt to catch the wind of accident.

5.2. ‘plaisants causeurs’ 5.2.1. The Blind Man The search for explanation in natural philosophy is prompted by experiences of pain, bereavement, and sensory deprivation. Montaigne’s kidney stones, and the illnesses suffered by his friends and family, have brought him into frequent contact with the medical profession. Experiences of medical failure and personal bereavement become, in written form, a critical review of medical practice and theory. A blind man of Montaigne’s acquaintance provides a case study for pyrrhonist reflections upon the senses, the qualities we call occult, and the limits of knowledge. Montaigne’s search for explanations of occult qualities and forces does not end in the explanations of traditional philosophers: it provokes, instead, a radical assault upon the selfsame explanations. Forms and syntactic strings of the je-ne-sais-quoi, in its negative semantic operation, reveal philosophers’ talk of causes to be nothing but an anthropomorphic refuge of ignorance. Montaigne reverses the search for scientific knowledge and moves towards a declaration of inscience (nescience). Terms of art like ‘occult quality’ and ‘quintessence’ find themselves drawn into acausal syntactic strings that evoke the je-ne-sais-quoi. Philosophical examples no longer illustrate causal

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explanations: they yield conceptual figures and narratives of particular experience. Montaigne’s search for causes provokes a critique of humankind’s very ability to find them. The most sustained critique comes in the longest chapter of the Essais, the ‘Apologie de Raimond Sebond’ (ii. 12), an enigmatic text most famous for its influential presentation of pyrrhonist doubt to a mixed vernacular readership.21 The ‘Apologie’, as its title suggests, is framed as an ‘apology’ or defence of the late fifteenth-century medieval devotional work by Raimundus Sabundus (or Raimond Sebond) which Montaigne, at his father’s request, translated into French (1569). Montaigne, having rehearsed the criticisms made against Sebond’s natural theology, introduces pyrrhonist thought as one means of undermining the rationalist assumptions of Sebond and his critics alike.22 The result is an unstable balance between the chapter’s framing as an orthodox apologetic discourse and its encounter with an extreme form of doubt that threatens to contaminate all human knowledge.23 Montaigne’s detailed presentation of ancient pyrrhonist thought, as is well known, draws mainly on Sextus Empiricus’ secondcentury compilation, the Hypotyposes or ‘Outlines’ of pyrrhonism, first translated into Latin by the French humanist Henri Estienne in 1562. Montaigne, paraphrasing Sextus, divides philosophers into those who think they have discovered the truth (the dogmatists), those who assert that the truth cannot be discovered (the academics), and those who are still investigating (the sceptics or pyrrhonians) (502a). The pyrrhonians, unable to accept or deny any truth proposition, practise suspension of judgement (epoche¯), which leads them to tranquillity (ataraxia) in matters of opinion. Montaigne lists the phrases they systematically use to express doubt, the phonai skeptikai, such as ‘rien ne semble vray, qui ne puisse sembler faux’ (nothing seems true which may not seem false) (505c; F 454). A little later, he considers the linguistic problems raised by pyrrhonism, and offers his formula, ‘Que sais-je?’ (What do I know?), as the 21 Among the many assessments of Montaigne’s place in the history of pyrrhonist thought, see Popkin 1979; Tournon 1983, 1986; Maclean 1996: 48–51; Brahami 1997; Cave 1999: 23–51; Naya 2000. 22 Simonin suggests that Montaigne invents Sebond’s critics for dramatic effect (1990: 113–16). 23 On the structure of this chapter, see Starobinski 1982: 160–1; Tournon 1983: 228–57; Cave 1999: 39–50.

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phrase that best renders perpetual doubt, since its form as a question allows one to avoid asserting even that one knows with certainty that one is in doubt (527b; F 477). Montaigne uses pyrrhonist arguments with particular intensity in the closing pages of the ‘Apologie’. But pyrrhonism is not the only frame within which he sets his thinking: he uses many other arguments and authors in the chapter to attack human knowledge. By the time he turns to Sextus Empiricus, Montaigne has already compared his method to that of Augustine, who adduces ‘certaines experiences connues et indubitables ausquelles l’homme confesse rien ne veoir’ (certain known and indubitable experiences into which man confesses he has no insight) (449c; F 398). Where Augustine draws on far-flung examples, Montaigne insists that the most common events prove the blindness and presumption of human reason.24 One example, the superiority of animals’ natural powers to our own, sets the tone for the chapter. We humans, Montaigne observes, have placed ourselves above our fellowcreatures in the order of being thanks to the scholastic invention of the tripartite soul (see Sect. 3.1.2, above). This allows us to enjoy the so-called ‘divine intelligence’ of our rational souls while remaining safe in the certainty that animals, who possess sensitive souls alone, are moved by ‘mere’ natural inclinations. But this distribution of capabilities, which the evidence in no way supports, proves nothing other than the inherent presumption of humankind (452a). Montaigne proposes to compare the behaviour of humans and other animals according to the principle that, as he puts it, ‘nous devons conclurre de pareils effects pareilles facultez’ (we must infer from like results like faculties) (460a; F 408). Some experiences seem essentially human. But we share them, in fact, with our fellow-creatures. Inexplicable movements of sympathy are one: ‘il y a certaines inclinations d’affection qui naissent quelque fois en nous sans le conseil de la raison, qui viennent d’une temerite´ fortuite que d’autres nomment sympathie: les bestes en sont capables comme nous’ (there are certain affectionate leanings which sometimes arise in us without the advice of reason, which come from an unpremeditated accident that others call sympathy: the animals are as capable of it as we are) (471a; F 420). Friendship is another (471a). Montaigne lists numerous examples of animals regularly performing 24

See Ce´ard 1977: 430.

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actions that humans are unable to explain or imitate (453–5 and 468–70). He uses these, along with the adjective je ne sais quel, to launch his attack on the rational pretensions of humankind: nous reconnoissons assez, en la pluspart de nos ouvrages, combien les animaux ont d’excellence au dessus de nous et combien nostre art est foible a` les imiter. Nous voyons toutesfois aux nostres, plus grossiers, les facultez que nous y employons, et que nostre ame s’y sert de toutes ses forces; pourquoy n’en estimons nous autant d’eux? pourquoy attribuons nous a` je ne sc¸ay quelle inclination naturelle et servile les ouvrages qui surpassent tout ce que nous pouvons par nature et par art?25 (We recognize easily enough, in most of their works, how much superiority the animals have over us and how feeble is our skill to imitate them. We see, however, in our cruder works, the faculties that we use, and that our soul applies itself with all its power; why do we not think the same thing of them? Why do we attribute to I know not what natural and servile inclination these works which surpass all that we can do by nature and by art?)

Montaigne attaches the adjective je ne sais quel, in its negative semantic operation, to the noun phrase ‘inclination naturelle’. The adjective reveals an anthropomorphic refuge of ignorance within traditional explanations of the sensitive soul and its hidden qualities. The je-ne-sais-quoi here traces the major movement that Montaigne makes in this opening section of the ‘Apologie’ against human reason and its ability to find causal explanations. Montaigne pursues his case against the champions of reason by reviewing the natural principles on which they claim to offer such explanations. Those who claim to know the causes of things— doctors as well as natural philosophers—are his main target. The scholastic philosophy of nature on which such people rely comes under particular pressure in the second half of the ‘Apologie’.26 Montaigne, like the new philosophers of the seventeenth century, dismisses hylomorphic principles as being an unintelligible and superfluous exercise in metaphysics rather than the fabric underlying physical change (540–1). He chooses traditional natural philosophy as the target of his attack on reason and polemically overturns the old certainties underlying causal explanations to reveal a refuge of error and ignorance. 25

Montaigne: ii. 12, 455a; F 404. In this respect, the Essais typify the hostile reception of Aristotle’s Physics in the late 16th and 17th cents., set out in Sect. 2.2, above. 26

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Preternatural cases reveal with particular clarity how traditional thinkers misuse their experience to produce causal explanations. Effects whose efficient and material causes do not fall under the senses are said to emanate from an ‘occult quality’, ‘substantial form’, or ‘quintessence’ (see Sect. 2.1.2, above). Montaigne unmasks these hidden spiritual principles as mere privations of knowledge, gaps in the fabric of explanation, that some people illegitimately transform into real causes. He does so not just in the ‘Apologie’, to which we shall return shortly, but also in the systematic review of medicine undertaken in ‘De la ressemblance des enfans aux peres’ (ii. 37). This review, as Starobinski has shown (1982: 180–6), considers physiology, hygiene, pathology, therapeutics, and semiology in turn. Montaigne, whose antipathy towards medicine has already been discussed, is particularly scathing about doctors’ use of drugs in therapeutics and their underlying explanatory bedrock of occult qualities and quintessences. Nothing in medicine is less believable, he declares, than their claim that each of a drug’s ingredients travels right through the patient’s body, keeping its specific powers intact, before finally penetrating ‘jusques au lieu au service duquel il est destine´ par sa proprie´te´ occulte’ (right to the spot to whose service it is destined by its occult property) (774a; F 712). Montaigne dismisses this claim, not simply for its implausibility, but because he is opposed to doctors using induction to move from their experience of a drug’s effects to explanations of its final cause. Experience of this kind is particular, accidental, and contingent. That it is common to three doctors in no way makes it a stable platform for explanation: ‘quoy, si un autre et si cent autres ont faict des experiences contraires?’ (what if another man, and a hundred others, have had contrary experiences?) (783a; F 722; see also iii. 13, 1088b). Preternatural cases mark active fault-lines of ignorance running through the scholastic bedrock of explanation. Montaigne uncovers these fault-lines by offering a hostile definition of terms of art such as quintessence. His remark, coming as it does right at the end of his review of medicine, has the character of an irresistible afterthought. It produces a syntactic string of the je-ne-sais-quoi: je ne me puis desprendre de ce papier, que je n’en die encore ce mot sur ce qu’ils nous donnent pour respondant de la certitude de leurs drogues l’experience qu’ils ont faite. La plus part, et, ce croy-je, plus des deux tiers des vertus medecinales, consistent en la quinte essence ou proprie´te´ occulte

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des simples, de laquelle nous ne pouvons avoir autre instruction que l’usage, car quinte essence n’est autre chose qu’une qualite´ de laquelle par nostre raison nous ne sc¸avons trouver la cause.27 (I cannot tear myself away from this paper without saying this one word more about their giving us their experience as a warrant of the infallibility of their drugs. The greatest part, and, I believe, more than two-thirds of the medicinal virtues, consists in the quintessence or occult property of simples, concerning which we can have no other instruction than use; for quintessence is nothing else than a quality of which we cannot by our reason find out the cause.)

Doctors, in the search for remedies, grope their blind way through a world of plants and minerals whose causes, for the most part, remain impervious to explanation. That doctors can put simples to therapeutic use, without understanding them, offers Montaigne no comforting lesson in humankind’s empirical arts. It causes him deep-seated anxiety. For it leaves us at the mercy of doctors who simply cannot know what they are doing. The consequences are, at times, disastrous. Montaigne mourns, in a late addition to the chapter, the death of his friend E´tienne de la Boe´tie at their hands: ‘ils me tuarent un ami qui valait mieux que tout, tant qu’ils sont’ (they killed a friend of mine who was worth more than the whole lot of them) (774c; F 713). Doctors transform their blind experience of a preternatural effect into a certain explanation of its cause. They do so, in linguistic terms, by transforming a firstperson-plural admission of explanatory failure (‘une qualite´ de laquelle par notre raison nous ne sc¸avons trouver la cause’) into a substantival explicans (‘la quinte essence ou proprie´te´ occulte des simples’). Montaigne reverses the process, dissolving the noun into a string of syntax. This string performs the same negative semantic operation as the adjective je ne sais quel in the ‘Apologie’. The act of placing nobody knows what ‘quintessences’ in simples, and the attribution of ‘je ne sais quelle inclination naturelle et servile’ to animals, suffer the same criticism. Montaigne’s use of a syntactic string in ii. 37 reveals with particular clarity how traditional thinkers illegitimately reify their blind experience as causal explanations. Montaigne’s criticism of causal knowledge, la science, draws him back towards a declaration of inscience. This return uses the same foundation—experience—as that on which medicine allows its 27

ii. 37, 781–2a; F 721.

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explanations to rest: ‘la medecine se forme par exemples et experience; aussi fait mon opinion’ (medicine is based on examples and experience; so is my opinion) (ii. 37, 764a). The difference is that, for Montaigne, the world of experience contains within it dark voids that no explanation can fill. He sets out his case in the opening pages of ‘Des boyteux’ (iii. 11): [b] je ravassois presentement, comme je faicts souvant, sur ce, combien l’humaine raison est un instrument libre et vague. Je vois ordinairement que les hommes, aux faicts qu’on leur propose, s’amusent plus volontiers a` en cercher la raison qu’a` en cercher la verite´: ils laissent la` les choses, et s’amusent a` traiter les causes. [c] Plaisants causeurs. La cognoissance des causes appartient seulement a` celuy qui a la conduicte des choses, non a` nous qui n’en avons que la souffrance, et qui en avons l’usage parfaictement plein, selon nostre nature, sans en penetrer l’origine et l’essence.28 (I was just now musing, as I often do, on how free and vague an instrument human reason is. I see ordinarily that men, when facts are put before them, are more ready to amuse themselves by inquiring into their reasons than by inquiring into the truth. They leave aside the cases and amuse themselves treating the causes. Comical prattlers! The knowledge of causes belongs only to Him who has the guidance of things, not to us who have only the enduring of them, and who have the perfectly full use of them according to our nature, without penetrating to their origin and essence.)

Montaigne uses rhyme here to draw out the different senses of the Latin term causa, which means chose (‘thing’, or ‘case’ in law) as well as cause (‘cause’). The point is that we should aim to establish the things (choses) that have happened rather than speculating on their causes (causes). Causes are beyond us. By punning on the French verb causer, meaning ‘to chat’ as well as ‘to cause’, Montaigne accuses those who claim to explain causes of being ‘plaisants causeurs’, people who play with words, words, words.29 Curiosity, our natural condition, is a cause-producing factory in perpetual production.30 The search for causes is as ineluctable a part of our experience as the ultimate failure of that search. This does not mean that causes themselves are mere mental fictions. Material and final 28 iii. 11, 1026; F 955. On this chapter and its critique of demonological explanations, see Demonet 1995. 29 Frame says in a footnote to his translation at this point: ‘Montaigne’s play on words, Plaisants causeurs, is beyond my power to render.’ I have left it untranslated in my section heading for the same reason. 30 See i. 11, 41a; i. 31, 203a; iii. 13, 1073c; Kenny 1998.

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causes, along with insensible forces and qualities, occupy a dark zone of being that is inaccessible to our senses and also, therefore, to the speculations of science. We endure causes, without perceiving what they are, capable only of describing the forms of our endurance.31 To recognize this is to reach inscience.32 Montaigne expands upon this idea in the late chapters of the Essais. After criticizing the plaisants causeurs in ‘Des boyteux’, he recalls Aristotle’s remark that philosophy begins in wonder. But, where Aristotle conceives of wonder as the impulse to seek the knowledge of causes, Montaigne makes it the first in a series of movements that end in a learned ignorance: ‘ignorance pour laquelle concevoir il n’y a pas moins de science que pour concevoir la science’ (an ignorance that requires no less knowledge to conceive it than does knowledge).33 He introduces the term inscience in a c-addition to the following chapter, ‘De la phisionomie’ (iii. 12), declaring: [b] je dis pompeusement et opulemment l’ignorance, et dys la science megrement et piteusement; [c] accessoirement cette-cy et accidentalement, celle la` expresse´ment et principalement. Et ne traicte a` point nomme´ de rien que du rien, ny d’aucune science que de l’inscience.34 (I speak ignorance pompously and opulently, and speak knowledge meagerly and piteously, the latter secondarily and accidentally, the former expressly and principally. And there is nothing I treat specifically except nothing, and no knowledge except that of lack of knowledge.)

Montaigne, in opposition to the Philosopher, treats science merely as a means to reach inscience. His object is nothing other than nothing itself, the inexplicable dark zones of knowledge, those things that fall within experience but outside the mind. It is in turning the terms and figures of science towards acausal descriptions of inscience that Montaigne writes the pre-history of the je-ne-sais-quoi. His coinage inscience is itself an example of this turn. Montaigne applies sedimented explicantia to name the very 31 Note that, in this passage from ‘Des boyteux’, Montaigne says that we are able to make sufficient practical use of things for our needs. This should be contrasted with the passage in ‘De la ressemblance des enfans aux peres’ (ii. 37), already discussed, in which he stresses the danger of using natural properties that are not understood in medicine. 32 On inscience, see Baraz 1968: 89–143; Ce´ard 1977: 404–8. 33 iii. 11, 1030c; F 959. For similar remarks in neighbouring chapters, see iii. 12, 1052b; iii. 13, 1075–6b. 34 iii. 12, 1057; F 985–6.

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phenomena that these words cannot explain.35 To spell out their nescioquiddity he employs at certain moments, as we have already seen, forms and syntactic strings of the je-ne-sais-quoi. Philosophical examples subvert their function and grow into anecdotes of experience. A complex instance occurs towards the end of the ‘Apologie’ (ii. 12, 587–601). There Montaigne uses his acquaintance with a blind man as a means of exploring the idea that the imperfection of the senses may reveal our ineradicable ignorance of the world around us. The idea and the example of the blind man come from an early section of the Hypotyposes in which Sextus lists ten modes of argumentation through which the pyrrhonians reach suspension of judgement. The third of these modes derives from the differences of the senses. Not only do the senses disagree with one another, Sextus suggests, but there may even be more qualities in things than we can perceive. To illustrate the latter point, he offers the example of a man born without hearing or sight. This man, Sextus asserts, will think that there is nothing visible or audible in things and that there are no more than the three qualities he is able to perceive. It may be that we are in the same position, convinced that only those qualities we perceive in an apple exist, yet mistaken in our conviction. For there may be other qualities in the apple, which affect sense-organs other than the five we possess, so that we are unable to perceive those qualities.36 It is evident of course that we have no means to test this proposition, so it remains no more than a hypothesis, a means of bringing about the pyrrhonist suspension of judgement. Montaigne expands the argument and example that he finds in the Hypotyposes. He starts by repeating the pyrrhonist suggestion that the human senses may be incomplete: ‘je mets en doubte que l’homme soit prouveu de tous sens naturels’ (I have my doubts whether man is provided with all the senses of nature) (588a; F 540). He pursues this suggestion by thinking through Sextus’ example of the man blind and deaf from birth: ‘il est impossible de faire concevoir a` un homme naturellement aveugle qu’il n’y void pas’ (it is impossible to make a man who was born blind conceive 35

See, e.g., i. 26, 166a; ii. 11, 433a; ii. 12, 526a, 590a–c; Sect. 5.3.2, below. Sextus Empiricus 1562: 31 (i. 96–7). Sextus goes on to contest the view that nature has made the human senses commensurate with their objects (i. 98). 36

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that he does not see) (589a; F 540). Sextus’ blind and deaf man has become simply a blind man—one sensory privation, after all, is enough—and, initially at least, Montaigne limits the blind man to the function of an example within an analogy: just like the blind man, we, who think we possess all the senses in nature, may be lacking some. We cannot be sure that there are not more qualities in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in natural philosophy. Sextus switches to another argument at this point in the Hypotyposes and drops the example of the blind man. Montaigne pauses. He appears at first troubled by the potential objection that some of those born blind do appear, at least in the desires they express, to conceive that they lack something called sight. He answers his own objection by considering what status that ‘something’ has for them: [a] les aveugles nais [ . . . ] ont appris de nous qu’ils ont a` dire quelque chose, qu’ils ont quelque chose a` desirer, qui est en nous, [c] la quelle ils nomment bien, et ses effects et consequences; [a] mais ils ne sc¸avent pourtant pas que c’est, ny ne l’aprehendent ny pres ny loin.37 (Men blind from birth [ . . . ] have learned from us that they lack something, that they have something to desire, which is in us; which they name perfectly well, and its effects and consequences; but nevertheless they do not know what it is, nor do they have a close or distant apprehension of it.)

There are certain things in the world, which blind people learn to name and describe in their effects, but which they have the means neither to experience nor to apprehend. The blind who uncomprehendingly speak the language of sight remain at this point no more than a means of advancing a pyrrhonist argument about all human knowledge. In the succeeding lines, however, Montaigne makes the particular experience of one blind man his theme. This thematic shift is repeated and confirmed at a rhetorical level as the writing moves from argument to anecdote and from the execution of a pyrrhonist mode to the telling of a story witnessed by the author: ‘j’ay veu un gentil-homme de bonne maison, aveugle nay, aumoins aveugle de tel aage qu’il ne sc¸ait que c’est que veue¨’ (I have seen a gentleman of good house, born blind, or at least born from such an age that he does not know what sight is) (589a; F 541). He observes that his blind acquaintance talks the language of sight in his own particular way and then offers a series of detailed examples. He 37

ii. 12, 589; F 541.

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reports the fond words of the blind man for his godson: ‘mon Dieu, dict-il, le bel enfant! qu’il le fait beau voir! qu’il a le visage guay!’ (my, what a handsome boy! How good it is to see him! What a gay face he has!) (589a; F 541). The blind man expresses the pleasure that any godfather feels when he beholds his handsome young godson, the apple of his eye, but he does so sightlessly. The blind man loves hunting, tennis, and shooting. This too is described in detail: ‘l’esteuf, il le prend a` la main gauche et le pousse a` tout sa raquette; de la harquebouse, il en tire a` l’adventure, et se paye de ce que ses gens luy disent qu’il est ou haut ou costie´’ (the tennis ball he takes in his left hand and strokes with his racket; with the harquebus he shoots at random, and gets his fun by having his men tell him that he has shot over or beside the mark) (589a; F 541). The writing has shifted its focus away from the sensory and epistemological privations of blindness, found in Sextus, towards the pleasures that the blind man takes in life and his art of living with blindness. Small-scale shifts of this kind are never permanent in Montaigne, but they should not be ignored, for they track the movement between experience and explanation, between different modes of thought, that characterizes his open-ended experimental writing. The shift comes when his example of the blind man visibly exceeds its topical function. Nominalist philosophers repeat the austere injunction, known as Ockham’s razor, that entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity. Montaigne, like Shakespeare, can be said at certain moments to obey the opposite principle in his writing: he deliberately multiplies experiential particulars. There is no need for us to know, for example, that the blind man picks up tennis balls in his left hand. Here, so to speak, Montaigne’s luxuriant beard blunts Ockham’s razor.38 His example, by exceeding its topical function, leaves the reader wondering whether Montaigne may not in fact have introduced the topic of the senses in order to tell the blind man’s story. The latter appears not as a mere example but as a living person whose experience speaks to Montaigne and haunts his thinking. The blind man is best described for this reason as one of the ‘personnages conceptuels’ (conceptual figures) that, according to Gilles Deleuze and Fe´lix Guattari, stimulate the creation of philosophical concepts (1991: 60–71). Philosophers 38 See Nuttall 1983: 173–81 (from whose account of Shakespeare I borrow this idea).

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think, Deleuze and Guattari argue, by becoming the conceptual figures that haunt them: Plato becomes Socrates, Descartes the Idiot, and Nietzsche Dionysus (1991: 62–3). Each philosopher has his conceptual figures. Montaigne, who is missing from this list, thinks by becoming the Blind Man.39 What, then, does he think through this conceptual figure? His first thought, as we have seen, concerns what it might be like to be blind in a world full of colour and sight. His second thought, a return to the pyrrhonians’ argument about the senses, addresses whether or not sighted humanity is not equally blind: ‘que sc¸ait-on si le genre humain faict une sottise pareille, a` faute de quelque sens, et que par ce defaut la plus part du visage des choses nous soit cache´?’ (what do we know about whether mankind is doing something equally foolish for some lack of sense, and whether by this lack the greater part of the face of things is hidden from us?) (589a; F 541). We, the sighted, may be ‘blind’ in our own way to forces in the world—call them occult qualities, quintessences, or je-ne-sais-quoi—whose effects we feel but whose causes elude our understanding.40 The apple we grasp by almost all our senses may—the suggestion is put here in the form of a question governed by the phrase ‘que sc¸ait-on si . . . ?’—have other qualities that we cannot perceive. Montaigne now makes an explicit connection between this idea, taken from Sextus, and the vexed issue of occult qualities in early modern natural philosophy. Our experience of effects whose causes we cannot perceive seems to take us to the very threshold of a world that exists, all around us, but beyond sense and knowledge. Montaigne consistently thinks about such experiences in liminal metaphors.41 These echo his earlier description in the ‘Apologie’ of the New World in which more lands may yet be discovered (571–2a–b–c). Occult qualities and causes may mark the existence of another New World, but this one is unsettlingly different from a terra incognita across the seas, because it is a realm within our familiar world that must remain for ever unknowable. The problem, of course, is that we simply cannot know what we lack the

39 Blindness returns as a conceptual figure in other chapters: see i. 27, 179a; ii. 25, 689a; iii. 13, 1076c. 40 Martin Milligan, a blind philosopher, makes a similar suggestion in his reflections on blindness (Magee and Milligan 1995: 173). 41 See Maclean 1982.

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senses to experience: the mind reaches its limit. Occult qualities offer a means to cast one’s mind beyond that limit: les proprietez que nous apellons occultes, comme a` l’aimant d’attirer le fer, n’est-il pas vraysemblable qu’il y a des facultez sensitives en nature, propres a` les juger et a` les appercevoir, et que le defaut de telles facultez nous apporte l’ignorance de la vraye essence de telles choses?42 (The properties that we call occult in many things, as that of the magnet to attract iron—is it not likely that there are sensory faculties in nature suitable to judge them and perceive them, and that the lack of such faculties causes our ignorance of the true essence of such things?)

The preternatural realm of magnetic attraction and other insensible forces allows us to catch a glimpse of what lies outside the mind. Those properties that we call ‘occult’—the nominalist gesture here unsettles the sedimented phrase—may indicate the real existence of certain things, beyond sense and knowledge, that move us. If we do lack one or more senses, as the existence of occult qualities may suggest, then this would explain the problems that dog our knowledge of the world: ‘que sc¸ait-on si les difficultez que nous trouvons en plusieurs ouvrages de nature viennent de la`?’ (what do we know about whether the difficulties we find in many works of nature come from that?) (589–90a; F 541). Montaigne— repeating the question ‘que sc¸ait-on si . . . ?’—uses examples, terms, and phrases that seem to place the closing pages of the ‘Apologie’ in the pre-history of the je-ne-sais-quoi. One such phrase we have already met: ‘les aveugles nais [ . . . ] ont appris de nous qu’ils ont a` dire quelque chose, [ . . . ] [c] la quelle ils nomment bien, et ses effects et consequences; [a] mais ils ne sc¸avent pourtant pas que c’est’ (men blind from birth [ . . . ] have learned from us that they lack something, [ . . . ] which they name perfectly well, and its effects and consequences; but nevertheless they do not know what it is) (589; F 541). The final clause quoted, an indirect question using a negative form of the verb savoir, appears closely related to the je-ne-saisquoi in its lexical and grammatical constitution as well as in its meaning. Other instances of syntactic strings are close at hand in the ‘Apologie’.43 So too, as we have seen, is the interrogative use of 42

ii. 12, 590a; F 541–2. See also ii. 17, 632–3a; ii. 37, 763a. Two complex instances are: ‘nostre estat accommodant les choses a` soy et les transformant selon soy, nous ne sc¸avons plus quelles sont les choses en verite´’ (since our state accommodates things to itself and transforms them according to itself, we 43

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the verb savoir in the repeated question: ‘que sc¸ait-on si . . . ?’ This question, given its form and its appearance in a passage heavily indebted to Sextus Empiricus, clearly echoes the question ‘Que saisje?’ with which Montaigne encapsulates his interrogative practice of extreme doubt in the ‘Apologie’. The act of gathering together these various instances suggests the presence of a powerful sequence of first-person expressions of uncertainty in intellectual history. One could start with the phonai skeptikai listed by Sextus and Montaigne and add to them later phrases, such as Montaigne’s own ‘Que sais-je?’, the motto ‘Je ne sais’ that Charron—who draws heavily upon Montaigne’s presentation of pyrrhonist thought—places on the frontispiece of his treatise De la sagesse (1601), and, by the addition of a single syllable, the je-ne-sais-quoi as used by another reader of Montaigne, Pascal, in the Pense´es. Or one could move backwards through the same sequence, writing a pyrrhonist pre-history of the je-ne-sais-quoi as one moved backwards to the ‘Que sais-je’ in the ‘Apologie’. It is not clear, however, that these various phrases do indeed form a coherent sequence. Take the case of the ‘Que sais-je?’ and the je-ne-saisquoi. The ‘Que sais-je?’ is a formulation that allows one to suspend judgement on a matter while searching: it characterizes the interrogative state of mind in which Montaigne moves between experience and explanation (see Sect. 5.1.2, above). That search implies of course an initial experience that is fraught with epistemological unease.44 But the je-ne-sais-quoi describes the experience itself, the encounter with the qualities we call occult and other forces that set the mind into movement, and to which the ‘Que sais-je?’ constitutes one intellectual reaction among others. The two phrases are related but distinct, then, and need to be understood as such. 5.2.2. The Middle Region What about the hidden qualities that distinguish the polite circle? The search for causes, we have seen, provokes a critical review of no longer know what things are in truth) (600a; F 550); ‘et par consequent se trompent et mentent les sens de nature, prenans ce qui apparoit pour ce qui est, a` faute de bien sc¸avoir que c’est qui est’ (consequently the senses of nature are mistaken and lie, mistaking what appears for what is, for want of really knowing what it is that is) (603a; F 555). 44

See Cave 1999: 140–1.

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traditional explanations in natural philosophy; Montaigne attacks the form in which such explanations are made as well as their content; his review embodies an anti-pedantic model of free and open conversation between equals (see Sect. 2.2.1, above). For these reasons, writers of the seventeenth century who make philosophy a topic of polite conversation cite Montaigne as a precursor. This genealogy, I shall argue, is one of those that ought to raise Montaigne’s ghost. Montaigne places the implied readership of his Essais, not within a polite circle, but in the ‘moyenne region’ (middle region). The composition of this region, as we shall see, evolves with the text.45 Montaigne introduces the metaphor of the middle region for his implied readership when, in ‘Des vaines subtilitez’ (Of vain subtleties) (i. 56), he describes a parlour game that he and his household have just been playing. The aim is to find words that link two antithetical extremes together while excluding the middle.46 Montaigne considers, as his final example of this game, the Essais themselves: si ces essays estoyent dignes qu’on en jugeat, il en pourroit advenir, a` mon advis, qu’ils ne plairoient guiere aux esprits communs et vulgaires, ny guiere aux singuliers et excellens: ceux-la` n’y entendroient pas assez, ceux-cy entendroient trop; ils pourroient vivoter en la moyenne region.47 (If these essays were worthy of being judged, I think they might not be much liked by common and vulgar minds, or by singular and excellent ones; the former would not enough understand enough about them, the latter too much. But they might get by in the middle region.)

Montaigne unites two antithetical groups of potential readers in their dislike of his text. The middle region between those two extremes appears here as the natural place for the readership of the Essais. But the rules of the game mean that this region must remain defined only by the groups of readers that it does not contain. So the middle region is left undescribed. Montaigne offers a more positive description in a c-addition to the chapter ‘De la praesumption’ (Of presumption) (ii. 17). There he engages in a dialogue with himself about his intended readership: et puis, pour qui escrivez vous? Les sc¸avans a` qui touche la jurisdiction livresque, ne connoissent autre prix que de la doctrine [ . . . ] Qui ignore 45 46

On this evolution, see Friedrich 1968: 345–8; Cave 1982: 153–6. 47 See Maclean 1983. i. 56, 313a; F 276.

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Aristote, selon eux s’ignore quand et quand soymesme. Les ames communes et populaires ne voyent pas la grace et le pois d’un discours hautain et deslie´. Or, ces deux especes occupent le monde. La tierce, a` qui vous tombez en partage, des ames regle´es et fortes d’elles-mesmes, est si rare que justement elle n’a ny nom, ny rang entre nous: c’est a` demy temps perdu, d’aspirer et de s’efforcer a` luy plaire.48 (And then, for whom do you write? The learned men to whom it falls to pass judgement on books know of no other value than that of learning [ . . . ] Anyone who does not know Aristotle, according to them, by the same token does not know himself. Common, ordinary minds do not see the grace and the weight of a lofty and subtle speech. Now, these two types fill the world. The third class into whose hands you come, that of minds regulated and strong in themselves, is so rare that for this very reason it has neither name nor rank among us; it is time half wasted to aspire and strive to please this group.)

Montaigne claims to write neither for bookish pedants, nor for simple peasants, but a third group of readers who think actively for themselves. So ‘rare’ are its members, however, that this group enjoys little social renown or standing. Montaigne, rather than addressing a pre-existing social circle, worries about the futility of writing for a middle region that appears, at times, all but empty. The author finds individual interlocutors more readily than a group of readers in the middle region. Most prominent among these interlocutors are the various noble ladies whom he addresses during the first two books. He includes, on three occasions, a prefatory dedication to a lady whom he also apostrophizes in the chapter.49 The implication is that Montaigne’s general reflections on a topic, such as the education of children, contribute to an imagined conversation between himself and his dedicatee (see for example i. 26, 148–9a). An apostrophe to a lady appears in the middle of a chapter, unannounced, on two occasions. The ‘Apologie de Raimond Sebond’ (ii. 12) offers a complex case, for not only is the apostrophe made to an anonymous Princess, but its relation to the rest of the chapter is problematic.50 The second apostrophe of 48

ii. 17, 657c; F 605–6. ‘De l’institution des enfans’ (Of the education of children) (i. 26) is dedicated to Madame Diane de Foix, ‘Vingt et neuf sonnets d’Estienne de la Boetie’ (Twenty-nine sonnets of E´tienne de la Boe´tie) (i. 29) to Madame de Grammont, and ‘De l’affection des pe`res aux enfans’ (Of the affection of fathers for their children) (ii. 8) to Madame d’Estissac. 50 See ii. 12, 557–60; Tournon 1983: 241–3; Cave 1999: 39–40. 49

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this kind, to Madame de Duras towards the end of ‘De la ressemblance des enfans aux peres’ (ii. 37), offers Montaigne the setting of the middle region in which to lend form to his criticisms of medical knowledge. His attack on terms of art like quintessence, as we have seen, takes the form of a translation into the vernacular language of conversation. Montaigne claims that his abrupt apostrophe to Madame de Duras reproduces the pleasurable interruption to his writing that her surprise visit afforded him. Medicine is an art by which, he intimates, she sets great store (784a). His intimation allows Montaigne to frame his chapter as one contribution to an ongoing discussion about medicine with Madame de Duras. Montaigne seeks to lend form to his volatile inclinations and antipathies, or as he says to Madame de Duras, ‘former ma vie’ (to form my life) (784a; F 723). Writing serves this purpose by placing him in quasiconversational situations, either with the authors he reads, or with a friend such as Madame de Duras. He seeks to reproduce the style of these informal conversations in his book: ‘je ne veux tirer de ces escrits sinon qu’ils me representent a` votre memoire au naturel’ (I want to derive nothing from these writings except that they represent me to your memory as I naturally am).51 He cultivates conversations with friends in the middle region. Friendship provides the ideal conditions for good conversation. Montaigne’s chapter on conversation likens it to friendship and sex by declaring that all three types of relation require vigorous, combative exchange: ‘j’ayme une societe´ et familiarite´ forte et virile, une amitie´ qui se flatte en l’asprete´ et vigueur de son commerce, comme l’amour, e´s morsures et esgratigneures sanglantes’ (I like a strong, manly fellowship and familiarity, a friendship that delights in the sharpness and vigour of its intercourse, as does love in bites and scratches that draw blood) (iii. 8, 924b; F 856). Montaigne adds an intense erotic charge here: good conversation, like friendship and sex, is at its biting best when it takes place between equal and intimate partners. The empty niceties of the polite circle he views, here and elsewhere, with suspicion.52 The middle region is and must needs be sparsely populated: ‘j’e´cris mon livre a` peu d’hommes et a` peu d’anne´es’ (I write my book for few men and for few years) 51

783a; F 722. See also iii. 2, 806b. A c-addition to the short early chapter ‘Ceremonie de l’entreveue¨ des Roys’ (Ceremony of interviews between kings) (i. 13) commends polite civility if—and only if—it allows strangers to share freely their experiences with one another (49c). 52

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(iii. 9, 982b; F 913). Friendship is the model, for the better it is, the rarer it must be. The remark that Montaigne attributes to Aristotle, ‘O mes amis, il n’y a nul amy’ (O my friends, there is no friend) (i. 28, 190c; F 171), pushes this thought to its melancholy extreme.53 Montaigne’s perfect interlocutor, the person with whom he shared absolute mutual understanding, was his lost friend La Boe´tie (see Sect. 5.3.2, below). The project of the Essais has been read, indeed, as Montaigne’s attempt to sustain an imaginary onesided conversation with the dead La Boe´tie.54 Montaigne continues to search for a single reader who will understand his book as La Boe´tie once did its author. This search persists throughout the book’s long and complex publishing history.55 This started when two books of Essais appeared in 1580. Montaigne revised these and added a third book in 1588. Finally, in 1595, Marie de Gournay and Pierre de Brach published a new edition including some of the manuscript revisions and additions that Montaigne had made to the Bordeaux Copy between 1588 and his death in 1592. By 1588 Montaigne knew that earlier editions of his book had proved a success.56 The knowledge that his book is reaching a wide public serves only to nourish Montaigne’s hope that he will be read in intimacy. He says as much in his chapter which discusses sexual love, ‘Sur des vers de Virgile’ (On some verses of Virgil) (iii. 5): ‘je m’ennuie que mes essais servent les dames de meuble commun seulement, et de meuble de sale. Ce chapitre me fera du cabinet. J’ayme leur commerce un peu prive´. Le publique est sans faveur et sans saveur’ (I am annoyed that my essays serve the ladies only as a public article of furniture, an article for the parlour. This chapter will put me in the boudoir. I like their society when it is somewhat private; when public, it is without favour or savour) (847b; F 781). The imagined scene of female reading is not the parlour but the boudoir. Montaigne expresses the same wish about his male readers. In ‘De la vanite´’ (iii. 9), he renews his (utopian) invitation to any man, 53

See Langer 1994: 16–20 (on the fortunes of this phrase). Starobinski 1982: 52–71; Defaux, in setting out a similar view, usefully lists many of the critics who point out contradictions and changes in Montaigne’s attitude towards his friend (2001: 277–313). 55 For a summary of this history, see C. Blum 1997; for an account of Montaigne’s career as a writer, see Hoffmann 1998. 56 See iii. 9, 965b; Cave 1982: 154–6. 54

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among his growing readership, who may prove to be a friend: ‘j’espere [ . . . ] que, s’il advient que mes humeurs plaisent et accordent a` quelque honneste homme avant que je meure, il recerchera de nous joindre’ (I hope [ . . . ] that if my humours happen to please and suit some worthy man before I die, he will try to meet me) (981b; F 911). This invitation—come and join me in the middle region— makes the author’s isolation seem all the greater for being addressed to an ideal and possibly imaginary reader. If such a reader does exist, then the Essais will have given him an intimate knowledge of Montaigne that would have otherwise taken several years to acquire (981b). Montaigne gained the same head start by reading the work of La Boe´tie before their first meeting (i. 28, 184a). It may be of course that no such reader exists. ‘O my readers, there is no reader’ hangs over this passage as a melancholy possibility as Montaigne looks, among the nameless many now reading his book, for a friend.57 Can the middle region, in which Montaigne hopes to meet his ideal reader, be said to anticipate seventeenth-century honneˆtete´? Its lexical seeds certainly seem to be present in the Essais. One instance occurs in the last passage quoted when Montaigne hopes to meet ‘quelque honneste homme’. Another is found in the chapter ‘De trois commerces’ (Of three kinds of association) (iii. 3): ‘les hommes de la societe´ et familiarite´ desquels je suis en queste, sont ceux qu’on appelle honnestes et habiles hommes’ (the men whose society and intimacy I seek are those who are called worthy and talented gentlemen) (824b; F 758). Montaigne’s emphasis on the currency of the adjectival nomination (‘ceux qu’on appelle . . . ’), coupled with a hesitant use of synonyms (‘honnestes et habiles hommes’), seems to prepare the seventeenth-century sedimentation of the noun honneˆtete´.58 So too does the conversational poetics that he uses to translate traditional terms into a hostile vernacular form. The rare qualities that Montaigne imagines in his ideal interlocutor are, again, largely similar to those the polite circle lends its members. We have seen that writers like Bouhours, wishing to establish a

57 Marie de Gournay describes herself as that friend at the end of her Preface to the 1595 edn. of the Essais; for the relevant passage, see Millet 1995: 124–6. 58 Montaigne in fact uses the noun on one occasion, in an ethical sense, to mean: ‘n’oser faire a` descouvert ce qui nous est honneste de faire a` couvert’ (not to dare to do openly what it is decent for us to do in private) (ii. 12, 584c; F 535).

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genealogy for polite culture, claim Montaigne as a founding father (see Sect. 4.2.3, above). But reading Montaigne pre-historically, as a final destination rather than a point of origin, reveals critical differences beneath these apparent similarities. The polite circle is a collective entity that determines a culture of individual distinction in order to sustain its own existence. The middle region, in which Montaigne hopes to meet his readers, is anything but a collective entity. So fragile is its constitution that it appears at times largely empty, and any member is by definition a singular individual. The tendency is not towards social elitism so much as towards a singular and exclusive intimacy. One negative indication of the difference between Montaigne and seventeenth-century polite writers is that Montaigne never plays their game of nescioquiddity when describing the qualities of the perfect interlocutor. This explains why forms of the je-ne-sais-quoi do not appear in discussions of social qualities in the Essais. The apparent similarities between the middle region and the polite circle mask these critical differences.59 The ghost of Montaigne returns to reject his paternity of the seventeenth-century culture of the je-nesais-quoi.

5.3. the art of disaster Le de´sastre, nous le connaissons peut-eˆtre sous d’autres mots peut-eˆtre joyeux. (Disaster: we know it perhaps by other, perhaps joyful, words.) Maurice Blanchot

5.3.1. Making Essays Montaigne lends form to the experience of the je-ne-sais-quoi by allowing it, as it were, to pass through him on to the page. The kind of writing that makes this possible is a source of preoccupation to its author. How do I write, and why is it in this strange fashion? The question is the source of another kind of ‘preoccupation’, the 59 See Friedrich 1968: 347–8; on the game of nescioquiddity, see Sect. 4.1.2, above.

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strategy named by the rhetorical figure preoccupatio, whereby the author attempts to capture the goodwill of his readers by dealing with potential objections to his text.60 Montaigne uses this strategy on two notable occasions. One comes at the opening of his chapter on friendship (i. 28), to which I shall shortly turn. Another occurs at the beginning of ‘Du repentir’ (Of repentance) (iii. 2) when Montaigne describes himself as having done no more than recorded various accidents in an unlearned and artless form. He asks: ‘est-ce pas faire une muraille sans pierre, ou chose semblable, que de bastir des livres sans science et sans art?’ (is it not making a wall without stone, or something like that, to construct books without knowledge and without art?) (805b; F 741). It may be that a book like his, whose sole form appears to be a continual alteration in form, is a vain undertaking. Montaigne’s disparaging tone here has a function in the economy of his text: it allows him to offer in the same passage, as he also does indirectly in ‘Sur des vers de Virgile’ (On some verses of Virgil) (iii. 5), a positive description of the art of making essays. Essai, like the je-ne-sais-quoi, is a word that requires a prehistorical understanding in Montaigne. The two cases are not exactly parallel, since Montaigne actually uses the word essai, most visibly of course in the title of his book. But his use of the word is pre-historical in that it has a different meaning from the one that the word later acquires by becoming a settled (literary) category. The sedimentation of the ‘essay’ as a genre belongs to the afterlife of his text. The word essai and its various lexical forms, Friedrich has shown, cover a wide semantic field in the period: essai can mean ‘exercise’, ‘prelude’, ‘test’, ‘attempt’, ‘temptation’, and ‘sounding’; essaier means, among other things, ‘to taste’, ‘attempt’, ‘undertake’, ‘tempt’, ‘weigh’, ‘start off’, and ‘run a risk’ (1968: 354). Montaigne draws on these many meanings of both words in his book.61 He uses essai, as he does expe´rience, to describe both his particular observation of events and a testing of his inclinations, thoughts, and faculties. ‘De l’expe´rience’ (Of experience) (iii. 13), Montaigne’s last chapter, offers a well-known example: ‘toute cette fricasse´e que je barbouille icy n’est qu’un registre des essais de ma vie’ (all this fricassee that I am scribbling here is nothing but a 60 61

See Sonnino 1968: 29–30. See Tournon 1983: 257–86; Mathieu-Castellani 1988: 5–22.

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record of the essays of my life) (1079b; F 1007). The essai, for Montaigne, is not a settled literary genre but a process of testing and experimentation which goes on in life as much as in writing (the two, indeed, are indistinguishable). ‘Making essays’ here means that process as Montaigne represents it in the pages of his book. The making of essays is, as the word essai itself implies, fraught with peril. Montaigne is prey not only to the wind of external accident but, equally, to his inner movements: ‘non seulement le vent des accidents me remue selon son inclination, mais en outre je me remue et trouble moy mesme par l’instabilite´ de ma posture’ (not only does the wind of accident move me, but, besides, I move and disturb myself as a result of my own unstable posture) (iii. 2, 335b; F 293). The use of reflexive verbs here, such as ‘je me remue’ (I move myself), divides the subject of the action from its passive object as though one individual were moving another. Disaster may fall upon one from within as well as from the sky. In either case, it falls, inviting the search for causes. The frustration of this search leads Montaigne to take his own philosophical risk: he undoes the settled language of scientific explanation in order to capture powerful and inexplicable experiences in the manner of their passing. The essay is the running of this risk. When, in ‘Du repentir’, Montaigne accuses himself of trying to make a wall without stone, he has already answered the objection in the previous lines. He can do no other: Il faut accommoder mon histoire a` l’heure. Je pourray tantost changer, non de fortune seulement, mais aussi d’intention. C’est un contrerolle de divers et muables accidens et d’imaginations irresolu¨es et, quand il y eschet, contraires: soit que je sois autre moy-mesme, soit que je saisisse les subjects par autres circonstances et considerations. Tant y a que je me contredits bien a` l’adventure, mais la ve´rite´, comme disoit Demades, je ne la contredy point. Si mon ame pouvoit prendre pied, je ne m’essaierois pas, je me resoudrois: elle est toujours en apprentissage et en espreuve.62 (My history needs to be adapted to the moment. I may presently change, not only by chance, but also by intention. This is a record of various and changeable occurrences, and of irresolute and, when it so befalls, contradictory ideas: whether I am different myself, or whether I take hold of my subjects in different circumstances and aspects. So, all in all, I may indeed contradict myself now and then, but truth, as Demades said, I do not 62

iii. 2, 805b; F 740.

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contradict. If my mind could gain a firm footing, I would not make essays, I would make decisions; but it is always in apprenticeship and on trial.)

Montaigne initially maintains the balance between an external principle of movement (chance) and an internal one (intention). The two fuse in a mobile multiplicity of accidents and ideas. For, as he has just said, ‘je ne peints pas l’estre. Je peints le passage’ (I do not portray being: I portray passing) (805b; F 740). The metaphor of painting, which leads one to expect the production of a static portrait, is applied here to the flux of all that passes. Passing, simply, is what there is: a series of accidental movements that carry things in and out of formlessness. The mind (or what Montaigne here calls ‘mon ame’) is not a substantial form but, rather, that-which-isalways-becoming. So too is the world, which Montaigne has just described as being ever on the move: ‘le monde n’est qu’une branloire perenne’ (the world is but a perennial movement) (804b; F 70). The making of essays, which describes his manner of living in the world, is equally a fluid and conditional process rather than the construction of a fixed thing: it finds appropriate expression here in a conditional string of syntax. Since he cannot hold a firm footing, Montaigne must continue making essays, freely and without repentance. It is this process that Montaigne attempts to capture in the written form of his book. The essay is an experiment in writing as much as is in living. Unlike poetry, which, like painting, takes structured forms, the essay tends to formlessness: ‘je peins principalement mes cogitations, subject informe, qui ne peut tomber en production ouvragere. A toute peine le puis je coucher en ce corps ae¨re´e de la voix’ (what I chiefly portray is my cogitations, a shapeless subject that does not lend itself to expressions in actions. It is all I can do to couch my thoughts in this airy medium of words) (ii. 6, 379c; F 332). The essay is the porous membrane in which Montaigne attempts to capture the multiple accidents of the world in their fall.63 Such an attempt requires a passivity alien to the making of poetry. This passivity Starobinski describes as ‘supple’ because it involves consenting to receive the movements and accidents that befall one.64 Montaigne says as much in the opening lines of 63

See Jenny 1997: 19–55 (on Montaigne’s experience of falling). Starobinski 1982: 267–86; see also Jenny 1997: 50–3. One might also relate it to stoic thought. 64

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‘Du repentir’ (iii. 2): ‘je ne puis asseurer mon object. Il va trouble et chancelant, d’une yvresse naturelle. Je le prens en ce point, comme il est, en l’instant que je m’amuse a` luy’ (I cannot keep my subject still. It goes along befuddled and staggering, with a natural drunkenness. I take it in this condition, just as it is at the moment I give my attention to it) (805b; F 740). Recording the contingent presenttense movements of experience in the manner of their happening becomes the aim of the essay. Montaigne apprehends these movements as they unsettle and renew settled linguistic forms. He celebrates writing of this kind when arguing for the superiority of the Latin poets in ‘Sur des vers de Virgile’ (iii. 5): le maniement et emploite des beaux espris donne pris a` la langue, non pas l’innovant tant comme la remplissant de plus vigoureux et divers services, l’estirant et ployant. Ils n’y aportent point de mots, mais ils enrichissent les leurs, appesantissent et enfoncent leur signification et leur usage, luy aprenent des mouvements inaccoustume´s, mais prudemment et ingenieusement. Et combien peu cela soit donne´ a` tous, il se voit par tant d’escrivains franc¸ois de ce sie`cle.65 (Handling and use by able minds give value to a language, not so much by innovating as by filling it out with more vigorous and varied services, by stretching and bending it. They do not bring to it new words, but they enrich their own, give more weight and depth to their meaning and use; they teach the language unaccustomed movements, but prudently and shrewdly. And how little this gift is given to all is seen in so many French writers of our time.)

The strongest poets add to the language, not by creating new words, but by ingeniously stretching and folding the forms and operations of existing words in unfamiliar ways. These unaccustomed movements of the lexicon are valuable in that, as he remarks earlier in the same passage, they directly reflect new turns of thought: ‘quand je voy ces braves formes de s’expliquer, si vifves, si profondes, je ne dicts pas que c’est bien dire, je dicts que c’est bien penser’ (when I see these brave forms of expression, so alive, so profound, I do not say ‘This is well said,’ I say ‘This is well thought’) (873b; F 807). Unaccustomed movements are of course precisely what Montaigne himself brings to the French language and, in particular, to the existing forms and operations of the je-ne-sais-quoi. His attitude 65

iii. 5, 873b; F 807.

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towards the handling of language appears in the same passage of this chapter when he remembers the unease with which he spoke Italian: ‘je disois ce qu’il me plaisoit en devis communs; mais, aus propos roides, je n’eusse ose´ me fier a` un Idiome que je ne pouvois plier ny contourner outre son alleure commune’ (I said whatever I pleased in ordinary talk, but for serious discourse I would not have dared trust myself to an idiom that I could neither bend nor turn out of its ordinary course) (873b; F 807). The implication is that he feels at home only in a language that he feels able to turn away from its settled structures. He says he finds the gift for linguistic variety in few of his French contemporaries, but he does cautiously compare his own writing to that of the poets, not least by belittling his efforts in comparison to theirs.66 The alterations that the poets bring to language and thought are those to which Montaigne lends supple form in the Essais. The means, he claims, are different. Poetry makes things happen, whereas he merely receives them from the world of experience in his book. He shapes, that is, the porous membrane of the essay form in order to offer a portrayal of flux or a register of experience from minute to minute. Their means are different, then, but Montaigne shares with poets like Virgil the same end: to render an experience with more force on the page than the mind, with its propensity to establish causes, can ever apprehend on its own. Montaigne’s discussion of the linguistic vigour of the poets is a detailed account of his claim, early in the same chapter, that some poetry acts on its readers with an inexplicable force. The love poetry of Virgil, he says, has such force that it exceeds the thing it ostensibly represents. To describe that force, Montaigne turns to a form of the je-ne-sais-quoi: mais de ce que je m’y entends, les forces et valeur de ce Dieu se trouvent plus vives et plus anime´es en la peinture de la poesie qu’en leur propre essence, Et versus digitos habet. Elle represente je ne sc¸ay quel air plus amoureux que l’amour mesme.67 (But from what I understand of it, the powers and worth of this god are more alive and animated in the painting of poetry than in their own reality: 66

See Mathieu-Castellani 1988: 90–115; Friedrich 1968: 350–3. iii. 5, 849b; F 782. The Latin quotation is adapted from Juvenal (vi. 196). On the force of poetry, see also i. 37, 231–2c, where Montaigne returns to the example of Virgil and other Latin poets. This force is connected in different ways with the discourse of sublimity by Magnien 1995; Sedley 1998. 67

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‘And verses have their fingers to excite.’ Poetry reproduces I know not what mood that is more amorous than love itself.)

The love poetry of Virgil acts upon Montaigne in a manner that he cannot explain: he can point to its inexplicable force only by falling upon the adjective je ne sais quel. That he later suggests a comparison between his writing and that of the poets suggests that this description might be applied to Montaigne’s own supple art of stretching and unsettling the language in order to put his experience, and the explanations that it provokes, to the test. The making of essays frees the je-ne-sais-quoi from sedimentation. Montaigne lends to the topic, in this way, a je-ne-sais-quoi of its own.

5.3.2. Friendship: The Real Thing Nowhere is this more apparent than in Montaigne’s writing on friendship. Other encounters with a certain something are portrayed in his text. In some cases, such as the moment in ‘De l’exercitation’ (Of practice) (ii. 6) when Montaigne describes how, after his fall from his horse, he felt himself slipping towards death, the experience is one of ‘infinie douceur’ (infinite sweetness) (376a; F 330). But friendship is an altogether more intense experience: it is, he says, the thing that changed his life. The rest, he says in the closing pages of ‘De l’amitie´’ (Of friendship) (i. 28), is mere smoke compared to the four years that he and La Boe´tie spent together (193a). Their friendship appears as an objective correlative for the je-ne-sais-quoi at its most transformative; what is more, in describing the friendship, Montaigne uses non-substantival forms of the je-ne-sais-quoi with a unique insistence. This conjunction of lexical forms and core meaning places Montaigne’s account of his friendship with La Boe´tie in the pre-history of the je-ne-sais-quoi. His account is irreducible, however, to a mere illustration or instance of an ideal type. For Montaigne portrays a certain something more revolutionary in its effects upon the perceiving subject than previously imagined, one that not only eludes his every attempt to pin it down in an explanation, but that leaves him unable to say ‘I’. The je-ne-sais-quoi is the disastrous force that inexplicably fell upon Montaigne and La Boe´tie and left them one indivisible whole. The essayist attempts to lend form to this disaster by letting it irrupt into the conventional language, topics,

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and explanations of friendship. He dismisses the result, in the chapter’s opening preoccupatio, as no more than the grotesque rubble left by a distortion of forms: ‘que sont-ce icy, a` la ve´rite´, que crotesques et corps monstrueux, rappiecez de divers membres, sans certaine figure, n’ayants ordre, suite ny proportion que fortuite?’ (what are these things of mine, in truth, but grotesques and monstrous bodies, pieced together of divers members, without definite shape, having no order, sequence, or proportion other than accidental?) (183a; F 164).68 But one need only reverse the depreciative tone used here to find, in Montaigne’s supple writing about friendship, the art of disaster. The friendship between Montaigne and La Boe´tie is the scene of a double disaster, with their first encounter falling upon them as an affirmative and life-giving ‘benaster’, and the sudden death of La Boe´tie as a negative and destructive ‘malaster’.69 In ‘De l’amitie´’, Montaigne describes the latter event first, as a means of justifying his attempts to house the writings of La Boe´tie in the first book of his Essais. It is known that Montaigne intended initially to make his friend’s political treatise De la servitude volontaire the centrepiece of the book by placing it at the end of his chapter on friendship (i. 28); that in later editions he substituted, in place of the treatise, twentynine sonnets by La Boe´tie (i. 29); and that he decided finally, in the Bordeaux Copy (the c-text), to remove the sonnets altogether. His changing editorial intentions towards his friend’s writing have been the object of much critical scrutiny.70 It is striking that Montaigne, writing by accumulation, leaves traces in both chapters of his discarded intentions. We find as a result, despite the disappearance of the sonnets themselves, an appreciation of their qualities (i. 29) which uses two forms of the je-ne-sais-quoi (the pronominal form plus adjective and the adjectival form) in as many sentences (196a). A c-addition early in ‘De l’amitie´’ spells out the particular reason for Montaigne’s editorial interest in his friend’s papers. The addition is made to an a-sentence that refers to De la servitude volontaire: c’est tout ce que j’ay peu recouvrer de ses reliques, [c] moy qu’il laissa, d’une si amoureuse recommandation, la mort entre les dents, par son testament, 68

On the reference to grotesque art made here, see Friedrich 1968: 349. I define the term ‘disaster’ in Sect. 1.2.3 and the couple ‘benaster’ and ‘malaster’ in Sect. 3.2.2, above. 70 See Starobinski 1982: 52–71; Defaux 2001: 277–313. 69

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he´ritier de sa bibliothe`que et de ses papiers, [a] outre le livret de ses œuvres que j’ay fait mettre en lumiere.71 (That [La Boe´tie’s discourse] was all I could recover of what he left—I, to whom in his will, with such loving recommendation, with death in his throat, he bequeathed his library and his papers—except for the little volume of his works which I have had published.)

La Boe´tie makes his first appearance in the chapter here, with the malaster of death already upon him, as he leaves his friend with his papers and a loving farewell. An account of this episode occurs in Montaigne’s writings long before the first publication of ‘De l’amitie´’ (1580). The edition of La Boe´tie’s Œuvres (1570) to which Montaigne refers in the passage just quoted contains, by way of a postface, an extract from a letter of August 1563 in which he recounts to his father the final illness and death of La Boe´tie.72 The letter is an attempt to describe, in meticulous detail, the sudden and inexplicable onset of his friend’s illness, its gradual course, and the scene of death.73 Montaigne turns to the adjective je ne sais quel on two occasions in his account to mark the sudden irruption of disaster: the fact that, by the time its effects fall in experience, the thing has already happened. The first occurrence of the adjective in the story comes just before La Boe´tie’s illness, and the second on the following evening, when Montaigne is summoned to his friend’s bedside along with a doctor and an apothecary. When Montaigne makes to leave, La Boe´tie begs his friend to remain, finding support from his wife: ‘je m’en allois quand Mademoiselle de La Boe¨tie, qui pressentoit de´ja` je ne sc¸ay quel malheur, me pria les larmes a` l’œil, que je ne bougeasse pour ce soir. Ainsi elle m’arresta, dequoy il se resjouit avecques moy’ (I was leaving when Madame de La Boe´tie, who could already sense I know not what mishap, asked me, with tears in her eyes, not to go that evening. So she stopped me, and he rejoiced with me over this) (1962: 1349; F 1278). Montaigne portrays the wife of La Boe´tie as feeling, at this moment, an inexplicable premonition of some malaster to come. It has already struck. This is suggested by the first instance of the adjective je ne sais quel, which describes the moment when 71 72 73

i. 28, 184; F 165. The text is reproduced in Montaigne 1962: 1347–60; Eng. trans. in F 1276–89. See Friedrich 1968: 23–4; Rigolot 1988: 61–79.

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Montaigne caught sight of his friend on the evening before his illness. Montaigne visited La Boe´tie at home, instead of having him to dinner as planned, for his friend had declared himself to be feeling out of sorts: je l’allay trouver bien tost apres disner: il estoit couche´ vestu, et monstroit de´ja` je ne sc¸ay quel changement en son visage. Il me dit que c’estoit un flux de ventre avec des tranchees, [ . . . ] et que le froit luy avoit souvent fait sentir semblables accidents.74 (I went to see him soon after dinner. He was lying down fully dressed, and already showed I know not what change in his face. He told me it was an attack of diarrhoea with stomach pains, [ . . . ] and that the cold often brought him such ailments.)

Montaigne senses, despite his friend’s assurance that similar mishaps have befallen him in the past, that this is something altogether different. He instantly recognizes its malevolent effect, a radical change in his friend’s features, while remaining unable to explain what has caused it. The adjective je ne sais quel adds a baleful and inexplicable aspect to what La Boe´tie calls a mere ‘accident’. It designates the effect of the malaster which, by the time the two friends meet that evening, has already divided La Boe´tie from Montaigne. The benaster that first brought them together is described in the middle of ‘De l’amitie´’ (i. 28). It is the centrepiece of the chapter and the description of a profound alteration with which Montaigne, and many of his readers after him, find it difficult to come to terms.75 The movement to and fro that takes his writing from an experience towards its possible causes, and back again, takes place here throughout the course of the chapter. Montaigne reviews commonplace practices, definitions, and explanations of friendship in ancient literature and the contemporary world in the light of his experience.76 His review picks up a set of terms and examples that he then turns to an acausal description of the friendship. He subjects, for example, the commonplace definition of friendship as ‘la convenance des volontez’ (the harmony of wills) (186a; F 167) to a subtle transformation. The definition dissatisfies Montaigne 74

Montaigne 1962: 1348; F1277. I refer to various readings of this passage in what follows; for a full bibliography, see Defaux 2001: 348–54. 76 For a review of these commonplaces, see Langer 1994: 14–23. 75

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because it merely places in harmony two wills that remain essentially distinct. But a friendship that deserves the name, he points out in the middle of the chapter, is more than a bond of acquaintance: ‘en l’amitie´ dequoy je parle, elles [nos ames] se meslent et confondent l’une en l’autre, d’un meslange si universel, qu’elles effacent et ne retrouvent plus la couture qui les a jointes’ (in the friendship I speak of, our souls mingle and blend with each other so completely that they efface the seam that joined them, and cannot find it again) (188a; F 168). Montaigne later talks in similar terms of ‘cette confusion si pleine de nos volontez’ (the complete fusion of our wills) (190a; F 171). This phrase recalls the initial definition of friendship, as ‘la convenance des volontez’, even as it subjects that definition to a transformation. Montaigne continues the transformation of convenance (harmony) shortly afterwards with reference to Aristotle: tout estant par effect commun entre eux, volontez, pensemens, jugemens, biens, femmes, enfans, honneur et vie, [c] et leur convenance n’estant qu’une ame en deux corps selon la trespropre definition d’Aristote, [a] ils ne se peuvent ny prester ny donner rien.77 (Everything actually being in common between them—wills, thoughts, judgements, goods, wives, children, honour, and life—and their harmony being that of one soul in two bodies, according to Aristotle’s very apt definition, they can neither lend nor give anything to each other.)

Montaigne retains convenance here. But he pushes the term to the limits of sense, for it implies a relation between two subjects, where friendship places one subject in two bodies. Quoting Aristotle allows him to bring this transformation to his initial definition. That he does so in the c-text shows the continuing importance to him of others’ accounts of friendship. Even his declaration that the experience exceeds its ancient representations includes a quotation from Horace to that effect (193a). Montaigne never issues a definitive rejection of other accounts of friendship. But they leave him unable to come to terms with his experience. Perfect friendship—for Montaigne—is an indivisible thing in and for itself, a powerful and singular relation, alien to any extrinsic cause. The usual rules simply do not apply. Early in the chapter Montaigne lists the four species into which ethical philosophy 77

i. 28, 190 ; F 170.

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divides friendship: that which exists within families, between members of the same society, between host and guest, and between lovers. All fail to capture the essence of friendship because their causes are extrinsic to the relation: ‘[elles sont] d’autant moins amitiez, qu’elles meslent autre cause et but et fruit en l’amitie´, qu’elle mesme’ ([they are] the less friendships, in so far as they mix into friendship another cause and object and reward than friendship itself) (184c; F 165). He finds in each of the existing accounts an element that fails to fit or underdetermines friendship as he has known it. His review of these accounts obeys an underlying syntax of negation that says: ‘our friendship was not that, or that, or that again.’ The ‘not’ serves here to allow something too positive for the usual words to pass into written form. This is no negative theology: it is a positive description of the lived world. Montaigne is describing a certain something that fell in his experience. It was a benaster that no philosophical explanation or definition can contain: ‘en ce poinct, les effects surpassent les preceptes mesmes de la philosophie’ (in this particular the facts surpass even the precepts of philosophy) (192a; F 174). The ultimate test for all philosophical propositions about friendship is experience of the real thing. Montaigne points to the friendship, from within his text, as to something that is and must for ever remain outside its limits. The essay, it seems, as Juvenal says of poetry, has fingers (iii. 5, 849b; quoted in Sect. 5.3.1, above). It needs to point to an experience outside the sphere of the text in order properly to describe its object. ‘Deixis’ describes this process of pointing or showing. Montaigne accompanies one anecdote about friendship with an emphatic deictic gesture: ‘ce sont effects inimaginables a` qui n’en a gouste´’ (these are actions inconceivable to anyone who has not tasted friendship) (192a; F 173). A man caught clowning around with his children by another man, he reports, asked him to say nothing until he himself had become a father. For no one, he believed, could judge his behaviour without first-hand experience of what it is to have a child (192a). Montaigne applies the story to his own situation: ‘je souhaiterois aussi parler a` des gens qui eussent essaye´ ce que je que dis’ (I should like to talk to people who have experienced what I tell) (192a; F 173–4). But, with La Boe´tie gone, does anyone else fit this description? Montaigne warns himself that, given the extreme rarity of friendships like the one that he has known, he is bound to find scant understanding among his readers. The remark expresses a

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now familiar challenge to each and every reader: prove yourself different from the rest if you can, see my experience for what it was, and join me in the middle region. Seeing that experience for what it was is no easy task. Montaigne, in the chapter’s most celebrated instance of deixis, imagines a conversation in which someone pushes him to explain why he loved La Boe´tie: ‘si on me presse de dire pourquoy je l’aymois, je sens que cela ne se peut exprimer, [c] qu’en respondant: Par ce que c’estoit luy; par ce que c’estoit moy’ (if you press me to tell you why I loved him, I feel that it cannot be expressed, except by answering: Because it was he, because it was I).78 The to and fro movement between experience and explanation that characterizes the chapter as a whole occurs here within a single sentence. Montaigne’s imagined interlocutor presses him to explain what caused the friendship. Montaigne, in reply, can offer no explanation. Instead he begs the question, as traditional philosophers do when they invoke an occult quality, by repeating the thing requiring explanation (the explicandum) in the explanation itself (the explicans). But, unlike traditional philosophers, he explicitly turns to this error of reasoning for a positive assertion that his experience of friendship can be explained in no other way. His alexandrine, ‘Par ce que c’estoit luy; par ce que c’estoit moy’, is, as Ullrich Langer says, ‘a perfect incarnation of the singularity, and the a-teleological nature, of his friendship with La Boe´tie’ (1994: 170). The sentence, by keeping the line’s twinned hemistichs on either side of a marked caesura, effectively puts one soul in two bodies. It points to the two friends and their inapprehensible lost union. Deixis risks, as Langer points out (1994: 170–1), leading Montaigne’s text into semantic poverty. It would be a poor text, after all, in which the author could say nothing more about his friendship than that it was inexplicably real to those concerned and really inexplicable to those of us who were not there. The return to experience, in that case, would become a refuge in incommunicability. Montaigne is compelled to run that risk in his attempt to describe a singular friendship. But he tries to say much more about the experience—to run other risks—in the passage that follows. The movement back towards experience releases two positive elements in his writing. The first element is the assertion of nescio78

i. 28, 188a; F 169; for a close reading of this sentence, see Langer 1994: 169–73.

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quiddity: friendship with La Boe´tie was caused by a force that no one, not even the friends themselves, could explain. The second element is the positive ‘description’, as he calls his chapter at this point (188c), of this force, the manner of its irruption, and its effects upon the two friends. The substantial additions to the Bordeaux Copy here reveal a continuing attempt to come to terms with the friendship. Deixis is just one figure among the several to which he turns; anaphora, negation, and tautology are others; so too, as we shall see, is the adjective je ne sais quel. The adjective, in its two appearances, moves the writing in the passage from the assertion of its nescioquiddity towards a description of the effects of friendship. It lends form to the disaster. This passage, with which I am going to end, needs to be quoted it in its entirety: il y a, au dela` de tout mon discours, et de ce que j’en puis dire particulierement, ne sc¸ay quelle force inexplicable et fatale, mediatrice de cette union. [c] Nous nous cherchions avant que de nous estre veus, et par des rapports que nous oyı¨ons l’un de l’autre, qui faisoient en notre affection plus d’effort que ne porte la raison des rapports, je croy par quelque ordonnance du ciel: nous nous embrassions par noz noms. Et a` nostre premiere rencontre, qui fut par hazard en une grande feste et compagnie de ville, nous nous trouvasmes si prins, si cognus, si obligez entre nous, que rien des lors ne nous fut si proche que l’un a` l’autre. Il escrivit une Satyre Latine excellente, qui est publie´e, par laquelle il excuse et explique la precipitation de nostre intelligence, si promptement parvenue a` sa perfection. Ayant si peu a` durer, et ayant si tard commence´, car nous estions tous deux homes faicts, et luy de plus de quelque anne´e, elle n’avoit point a` perdre temps, et a` se regler au patron des amities molles et regulieres, ausquelles il faut tant de precautions de longue et preallable conversation. Cette cy n’a point d’autre ide´e que d’elle mesme, et ne se peut rapporter qu’a` soy. [a] Ce n’est pas une speciale consideration, ny deux, ny trois, ny quatre, ny mille: c’est je ne sc¸ay quelle quinte essence de tout ce meslange, qui, ayant saisi toute ma volonte´, l’amena se plonger et se perdre dans la sienne; [c] qui, ayant saisi toute sa volonte´, l’amena se plonger et se perdre dans la mienne, d’une faim, d’une concurrence pareille. [a] Je dis perdre, a` la verite´, ne nous reservant rien qui nous fut propre, ny qui fut ou sien ou mien.79 (Beyond all my understanding, beyond what I can say about this in particular, there was I know not what inexplicable and fateful force that was the mediator of this union. We sought each other before we met because of 79

i. 28, 188–9; F 169–70.

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the reports we heard of each other, which had more effect on our affection than such reports would reasonably have; I think it was by some ordinance from heaven. We embraced each other by our names. And at our first meeting, which by chance came at a great feast and gathering in the city, we found ourselves so taken with each other, so well acquainted, so bound together, that from that time on nothing was so close to us as each other. He wrote an excellent Latin satire, which is published, in which he excuses and explains the precipitacy of our mutual understanding, so promptly grown to its perfection. Having so little time to last, and having begun so late, for we were both grown men, and he a few years older than I, it could not lose time and conform to the pattern of mild and regular friendships, which need so many precautions in the form of long preliminary association. Our friendship has no other model than itself, and can be compared only with itself. It is not one special consideration, nor two, nor three, nor four, nor a thousand: it is I know not what quintessence of all this mixture, which, having seized my whole will, led it to plunge and lose itself in his; which, having seized his whole will, led it to plunge and lose itself in mine, with equal hunger, equal rivalry. I say lose, in truth, for neither of us reserved anything for himself, nor was anything either his or mine.)

This passage alone has had sufficient force to draw from its readers, as Montaigne predicts elsewhere that his book will do, ‘infinis Essais’ (numberless essays) (i. 40, 251c; F 224). But none has seen that the first meeting between Montaigne and La Boe´tie proves to have been their shared encounter with the je-ne-sais-quoi. Each of the pair is taken by a vital movement of sympathy towards the other, one whose sudden and revolutionary effects are instantly recognized, but whose causes remain for ever inexplicable. Montaigne, in describing the friendship, encapsulates the core meaning of the je-ne-sais-quoi that I sketched earlier (in Sect. 1.2.3, above). To do so, he turns to force and quintessence, two sedimented terms in the same semantic field as the je-ne-sais-quoi. He offers his readers familiar words, that is, but then reveals them to be wholly ill-suited to the task of explaining this strange and powerful friendship. This he achieves by attaching the same agent of disruption to both quintessence and force, namely the adjective je ne sais quel. The adjective uncovers an active fault-line of nescioquiddity within both terms of art and transforms them into acausal names for that which cannot be explained.80 Quintessence and force both belong 80 This is not the only occasion on which Montaigne unsettles quintessence: in his chapter on medicine, as we saw earlier (in Sect. 5.2.1, above), he defines the term as

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to a history of sedimentation that ends in a loss of semantic force. Montaigne does not put the je-ne-sais-quoi (n.) in their place, condemning the new word to the same historical cycle. His adjectival phrase is no modish name waiting to happen but, rather, the stammer of a writer trying to put a disaster into words. Montaigne describes the experience of the je-ne-sais-quoi by charging its nonsubstantival forms with a semantic force that the settled noun rarely possesses and is destined to lose. Montaigne’s encounter with the je-ne-sais-quoi does not produce an assertion of terminal nescioquiddity. It releases instead a positive attempt to capture this force in the exact manner of its falling and in its effects. This attempt can best be traced through the changes that Montaigne wrote in the margins of the Bordeaux Copy (the c-text). Montaigne, as if trying to write his way closer to the disaster, makes changes to both occurrences of the adjective je ne sais quel in the atext. In the first occurrence he replaces the adjective that follows force, the transcendent divine in the a-text, with the terrestrially nescient inexplicable in the c-text. The newly reinforced phrase, ‘ne sc¸ay quelle force inexplicable et fatale’ (I know not what inexplicable and fateful force), instantly provokes a reaction of unease in the writing: ‘am I sure that no one could explain this force?’ The second change to the passage is the long c-addition starting ‘nous nous cherchions’, inserted between the two instances of je ne sais quel, in which Montaigne returns to the start of the friendship and puts its nescioquiddity to the test. The search for causes flickers back into life when he wonders whether the friendship was not, after all, ‘disastrous’ in the word’s astrological sense: influenced by some ordinance from heaven. Friendship seems to have fallen upon the two men with the same unseemly haste as fatal illness came to La Boe´tie. Montaigne alludes to the imminence of this final malaster in the relative clause, ‘ayant si peu a` durer’ (having so little time to last), suggesting that it may account for the precipitate speed of the initial benaster: ‘elle n’avoit point a` perdre temps’ (it [the friendship] could not lose time). The act of revisiting their first meeting serves only to convince Montaigne of its absolute singularity: ‘cette [amitie´] cy [ . . . ] ne se peut rapporter qu’a` soy’ (our friendship has no other model than itself). At the end of the c-addition, the writing moves back towards the particularity of the friendship. ‘une qualite´ de laquelle par notre raison nous ne sc¸avons trouver la cause’ (a quality of which we cannot by our reason find out the cause) (ii. 37, 781–2a; F 721).

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The second instance of je ne sais quel follows. Montaigne uses it in an attempt to describe, not the manner in which his friendship with La Boe´tie started, but the effect that it wrought upon them. The way in which the ideal type described the force of the je-ne-saisquoi at its most strange and intense is directly relevant here (see Sect. 1.2.3, above). For friendship draws the two friends into a process of fusion which alters both beyond recognition. It falls upon two equal partners, divests them of their individual identities, and fuses these into a single living thing. Their friendship is, in this precise sense, a ‘benaster’. Montaigne’s experience of friendship is difficult to conceive and harder still, perhaps, to accept as a model of human relations. He admits, even declares proudly, that his was nothing like the friendships that others have had or will want to have. Many of his readers confirm his prediction by offering opposing views of friendship. One early seventeenth-century English author, Kenelm Digby, borrows from and replies to Montaigne in an untitled autobiographical romance, written in 1628, though not published until the nineteenth century.81 Digby writes particularly against the suggestion, put forward by Montaigne (i. 28, 186), that perfect friendship is unattainable between the sexes because women are incapable of so tight and durable a communion. Many readers today would reject Montaigne’s disparagement of the capacity for friendship in women. They would argue too that true intimacy between two people comes about, not as the result of an absolute fusion, but as and when each party recognizes the other’s difference.82 Maurice Blanchot, in his book L’Amitie´ (1971), defines his friendship with Georges Bataille in opposition to that described by Montaigne. Friendship, he says, is ‘cette se´paration fondamentale a` partir de laquelle ce qui se´pare devient rapport’ (that fundamental separation of two people whereby that which separates becomes a relation).83 Blanchot’s emphasis on the need for alterity and distance within friendship reveals, by contrast, the strange identification and violence at work in the relationship that Montaigne describes. That 81

For reminiscences of Montaigne, see Digby 1968: 5–7, 144. It should be pointed out that this is not Digby’s view. He argues that perfect friendship between the sexes is possible only if the woman is able to imitate the masculine model of friendship (1968: 6). Stelliana does and so, in Digby’s view, she is the ideal woman. 83 Blanchot 1971: 328; on the intertext between Blanchot and Montaigne, see Defaux 2001: 290. 82

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strangeness must be preserved if we wish to avoid raising Montaigne’s ghost by turning his experience into an early modern version of twenty-first-century ways of thinking. There was no room for him and his friend to recognize each other’s difference because, quite simply, there was no difference: no gifts, no obligations, no thanks can exist between that which is one. There is no relation, no more ‘between’. To construct a civic ethics on the basis of perfect friendship, he asserts in a c-addition, seems out of the question.84 For it is hard to imagine how such a friendship could embrace a third person, let alone a polity. He says the following of anyone who supposes that such a thing is possible: ‘il multiplie en confrairie la chose la plus une et unie, et dequoy une seule est encore la plus rare a` trouver au monde’ (he multiplies into a fraternity the most singular and unified of all things, of which even a single one is the rarest thing in the world to find) (191c; F 172). Montaigne strains here, in his variation of terms, to render the sheer full and unmediated oneness of the friendship. The same effort is apparent in the second instance of the adjective je ne sais quel quoted above. There Montaigne describes the friendship by tracing, negatively as it were, what its onset caused to disappear; namely, the identities of the two friends. The a-text describes Montaigne’s will plunging and disappearing into that of his friend; this would suggest, in isolation, that La Boe´tie has expanded his own self by absorbing his friend. The c-addition repeats the relative clause while inverting the relative positions of the pair; this would suggest, in isolation, that Montaigne has expanded his own self by absorbing his friend. But this sentence, like the alexandrine ‘Par ce que c’estoit luy; par ce que c’estoit moy’, must be read as a whole if it is be understood correctly. The question of whether Montaigne is describing his absorption by his friend, or his absorption of his friend, vanishes. For both alternatives adopt the perspective of a self that simply no longer exists. There is no more ‘he and I’; or, when these words cannot be avoided, ‘and’ marks the seal of an absolute fusion. This fusion is captured through a chiasmus of mutual loss of will (‘ma [volonte´]’ j ‘la sienne’, ‘sa [volonte´]’ j ‘la mienne’). But ‘loss’ is hardly the right word, Montaigne says in the following sentence, since the loss of individual will is simply the most visible effect of a double capture, a 84

On this question, see Derrida 1994: 203–15.

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becoming-one, called friendship. Montaigne spells this out in the next sentence: ‘je dis perdre, a` la verite´, ne nous reservant rien qui nous fut propre, ny qui fut ou sien ou mien’ (I say lose, in truth, for neither of us reserved anything for himself, nor was anything either his or mine). The pronouns ma and sa, sien and mien are placed here in the intense proximity of a rhyme just as their meaning disappears.85 Deleuze recalls Blanchot’s luminous remark about those moments when literature shakes the limits of linguistics: ‘quelque chose arrive (aux personnages), qu’ils ne peuvent ressaisir qu’en se de´saisissant de leur pouvoir de dire Je’ (something happens (to the characters) that they cannot recapture without relinquishing their power to say ‘I’).86 For Deleuze and Parnet, this ‘something’ is desire (1996: 108). For Montaigne, it is friendship, and its force is captured through its effect on settled linguistic structures of first-person expressions in his writing. The power to say ‘I’ may seem essential to a writer whose project many define as one of ‘self-portraiture’. But this definition seems particularly reductive of a chapter, such as ‘De l’amitie´’, which portrays the moment at which the subject, ‘I’, becomes something other than itself, at which it undergoes a profound alteration, through the experience of perfect friendship. The power to say ‘I’ appears in the writing, in other words, at the moment of its relinquishment by the writer. This has obvious consequences for the je-ne-sais-quoi, a phrase which requires its subject to say ‘I’. A textual alteration to the first instance of the adjective je ne sais quel in the passage offers a striking image of the relinquishment of the power to say ‘I’ and the alteration of the subject through friendship. The first printed edition of the Essais (1580) refers to ‘je ne sc¸ay quelle force’ (I know not what force), but from the 1582 edition onwards, the je disappears.87 The construction ne sc¸ay quel, close in form to the Latin nescio quid, is current in sixteenth-century writing. Montaigne, however, always includes je when using the phrase elsewhere in the Essais. One might speculate that he makes the change simply for reasons of rhythm. In this singular context, however, a more 85

See Cave 1999: 120–3. Deleuze 1993: 13 n. 6; Deleuze and Parnet 1996: 108; quoting Blanchot 1949: 29–30; Blanchot 1969: 563–4. 87 Andre ´ Tournon records this change in his edition of the Essais (Montaigne 1998: i. 318). 86

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tempting speculation is at hand: the relinquishment of je replicates, at a lexical level, the alteration of the self in perfect friendship. The je-ne-sais-quoi starts to dissolve under the shock of experience as one follows its pre-history into the writing of Montaigne. But the dissolution of the je-ne-sais-quoi, like the syntax of loss and negation at work in this chapter, serves an affirmative function here: to lend form to an experience that is intense and disconcerting, certainly, but entirely positive in its effects. Montaigne, through the successive revisions of his text, writes his way ever closer to the encounter with La Boe´tie and to that certain something that brought their friendship into being.

6

Beyond Pre-History: The Case of Shakespeare 6.1. coda The impulse behind this study is the thought that the most vital encounters in human experience cannot be explained. Vladimir Janke´le´vitch has placed this thought at the heart of a perpetually marginalized tradition of negative philosophy: ‘il y a quelque chose [ . . . ] qui proteste et ‘‘remurmure’’ en nous contre le succe`s des entreprises re´ductionnistes’ (there is something in us that protests and ‘murmurs back’ at the success of reductionist enterprises) (1980: i. 11). In this book I have sought to show how the same thought quickens and disrupts the work of early modern authors— such as Montaigne, Corneille, and Pascal—for whom human experience is, in different ways, an object of fascination and unease. I have not, as Janke´le´vitch does, looked in my authors for instances of a transhistorical negative philosophy. I have chosen, instead, to examine them for what they have to say about early modern ways of coming to terms with experiences that cannot be explained. What, then, is this experience? In the penultimate chapter of his Essais, ‘De la phisionomie’ (Of physiognomy) (iii. 12), Montaigne looks back to two occasions during the recent civil disturbances in which his own face seems to have saved him. The second of these encounters took place, he recounts, on a journey he made through uncertain country during a truce between the warring armies (1061b). Twenty or so masked men ambushed him in a thick forest, seized his money, and demanded ransom. Montaigne maintained his right to be treated according to the conditions of the truce. The men quarrelled over whether to kill him. Then, all of a sudden, some three hours after the ambush, things changed: ‘voicy une soudaine et tres-inopine´e mutation qui leur print’ (a sudden and very

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unexpected change came over them) (1062b; F 991). The leader approached Montaigne and offered him the return of his freedom and his money box. Then and now, even as he writes the succeeding sentences, Montaigne is unable to explain how and why this change took place: la vraye cause d’un changement si nouveau et de ce ravisement, sans aucune impulsion apparente, et d’un repentir si miraculeux, en tel temps, en une entreprinse pourpense´e et delibere´e, et devenue juste par l’usage [ . . . ], certes je ne sc¸ay pas bien encores quelle elle est. (The true cause of so unusual an about-face and change of mind, without any apparent motivation, and of such a miraculous repentance, at such a time, and in a premeditated and deliberate enterprise which had made been made lawful by custom [ . . . ], I truly do not even now well know what it is.)

One ambusher removed his mask, introduced himself to Montaigne, and told him that he owed his deliverance to his physiognomy. The ambusher’s words revisit the haunting scene: a single face, a crowd of masks, and some inexplicable sympathy passing from one to the other. Montaigne encapsulates here the experience of the je-ne-saisquoi. Something, he says, happened to draw us into a strange sympathy; what this something was, or how it happened, I do not know; all I can say is that it fell as if from nowhere and so suddenly that, by the time I felt its effects, the shape of my life was already changed. The previous sentence is one instance of the ideal type of the je-ne-sais-quoi established by this study. Other instances of the ideal type include Montaigne’s friendship with La Boe´tie, the attractions and repulsions experienced by Corneille’s Rodogune, and Pascal’s fascination with Cleopatra’s nose and its effect on the leaders of the Roman world. In each case, the writing describes a first-person encounter with a certain something that unsettles habitual ways of thinking and talking, and it does so by turning to a form of the je-ne-sais-quoi. The instance in ‘De la phisionomie’ shows its difference from the ideal type in that, whereas the subject typically suffers a movement of sympathy towards somebody or something else, Montaigne himself seems on this occasion to possess the charm that works on his assailants. This does not mean, however, that he can understand or control its force any better than they can. Another peculiarity of the present instance is that Montaigne implies, through his use of a temporal marker (encore), that

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explanation may be possible in an indeterminate future. The instance proves irreducible, then, to the ideal type. In this very respect, of course, it is representative of the thing itself. The ideal type is a heuristic fiction: the je-ne-sais-quoi, for better or for worse, is always a shock to the system, a moment of crisis, a disaster (in a positive or a negative sense). It invariably affects systems of explanation as a problem. But to define it solely as a ‘problem’ or a topic would be to take refuge in a reassuring abstraction. The je-ne-saisquoi first appears in an encounter between strangers in a forest: in the beginning was the experience. In what realm of the lived world does this experience properly belong? The foregoing pages have tended to suggest that the je-nesais-quoi is to be understood first and foremost as a certain something with powerful effects in the realm of particular human relations. It is the subtle bond that unites certain lovers or friends, and even enemies, in a singular one-to-one intimacy. This bond describes other relations, such as those that exist between a reader and an author or between a spectator and a work of art, only in so far as these relations are experienced as human and singular as well as powerfully felt and impossible to explain. By no means are all relations properly described by this bond. Traditional thinkers who project human relations into the properties of things use the je-nesais-quoi to explain attractions and repulsions in nature: they succeed only in creating an anthropomorphic refuge of ignorance. Polite thinkers who hypostasize particular relations as a universal quality use the je-ne-sais-quoi to describe the subtle distinction of an entire culture: they succeed only in sustaining the empty artifice of a social network. Bouhours’s claim, ‘le je ne sc¸ay quoy se trouve presque par tout’ (the je-ne-sais-quoi is to be found almost everywhere) (1962: 147), needs to be treated with suspicion, for it indicates the exhaustion of a topic rather than its vigorous expansion. But some intense experiences in the realm of human relations do prove resistant to the interrogations of suspicion. Early modern writers put resistant experiences of this kind into words by drawing upon the je-ne-sais-quoi. Two early modern forms of writing have emerged in this study as vehicles for its expression. Each seeks in its own way to fill the gap created by the indeterminacy of the word and the uncontainable force of its meaning. One is the art of pointedness, associated here with Corneille and Pascal, in which the je-ne-sais-quoi is produced as the singular ‘point’ of a pithy

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observation. The sentence that Corneille ends by attributing the secret relation of two well-suited souls to ‘ces je ne sc¸ay quoy qu’on ne peut expliquer’ (those je-ne-sais-quoi that cannot be explained) (1971–96: ii, Rodogune, 359–62) is a celebrated example of the art of pointedness. So is the fragment in which Pascal quotes Corneille’s observation about love. The force of the writing, in both cases, is centripetal. Its tendency is towards economy of expression, towards the mot juste, and this is precisely what the je-ne-sais-quoi, in its substantival form, offers. When pointed in this way, the term fits Boileau’s definition of sublime writing.1 Even in Corneille’s pointed sentence, however, the je-ne-sais-quoi is no sooner produced than it becomes the object of a relative clause spelling out its meaning. It is as though the term by itself could never quite say enough. This insight is developed by a second form of writing, associated here with Montaigne, in which the meaning of the je-ne-sais-quoi spreads through multiple terms, phrases, figures, and syntactic strings. Montaigne’s phrase in ‘De la phisionomie’, ‘la vraye cause de [ce] changement [ . . . ], je ne sc¸ay pas bien encores quelle elle est’ (the true cause of [this] change of mind [ . . . ], I truly do not even now well know what it is), is a case in point. The force of the writing is, in this case, centrifugal. Its tendency is towards multiplicity and restless innovation, the tracking of a mind on the move, and this is precisely what the je-ne-sais-quoi, in its many forms and operations, makes possible. It belongs to the nameless art of variation and indirection that one finds in the Essais. Compared with systematic prose, this mode of writing has a certain something well described by the comment Montaigne makes about La Boe´tie’s better poems: ‘ceux-cy ont je ne sc¸ay quoy de plus vif et de plus bouillant’ (certainly these have about them I know not what that is livelier and more ebullient) (i. 29, 196a; F 176). At such moments, readers of Montaigne may experience the very object that is under examination in the text, and feel that the art of the je-ne-sais-quoi has a je-ne-sais-quoi of its own. These two literary arts—of pointedness and variation—have been encountered at different moments of the word history of the je-nesais-quoi. That history, which has structured the overall shape of the present study, bears comparison with the plot of a nineteenthcentury roman d’apprentissage. The early promise shown by one 1

On Boileau’s definition of the sublime, see Sect. 4.2.2, above.

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young member of a large family of ancient stock; the diverse energies, both destructive and creative, of the early years, and a series of formative liaisons; the move to Paris, entry into a wider society than the provinces could afford, bringing in its wake brilliant successes and a violent stroke of passion; then, to coincide with the end of the affair, a rekindled social ambition, aided by the now familiar techniques of seduction, which wins membership of the Parisian polite circle and fashionable journeys abroad, but which brings with it, as invariably it seems to, a loss of vital movement, decline, and a fall into affectation: this plot, familiar to readers of Balzac or Maupassant, encapsulates the early modern word history of the je-ne-sais-quoi. This history suggests that one needs to view the conditions determining the spread of language in a culture with suspicion. The word studied here enjoys a brief period of semantic force when writers use it to trace powerful experiences that unsettle habitual ways of thinking and talking. But the word soon loses its force when a dominant group, within that culture, starts to exploit the je-nesais-quoi in order to further the group’s interests. The rise of the word, in these conditions, inexorably determines its fall. Language, whose final cause is communication, must spread within a society; the elite circles of mid-seventeenth-century French society control the means of communication; the manner in which words spread can only, therefore, reflect the interests of those circles. The cultural conditions in which the je-ne-sais-quoi rises to prominence as a noun and a literary topic help bring about the rupture between the word and its core meaning. The former settles down as a substantial and all too explicable thing while the latter remains vitally on the move. The result is decline. A turn in the method of this study was required if, instead of building a tomb for the je-ne-sais-quoi, it was to rescue the topic from its history of decline. One possibility, not explored here, would have been to study the later fortunes of the phrase. It would be tendentious, after all, to say that the word history of the je-ne-saisquoi ‘ends’ altogether in the early decades of the eighteenth century. It certainly experiences depression and semantic exhaustion at that time in France, but it remains a dormant possibility of the language, and thereafter it experiences intermittent returns to prominence in literary and philosophical writing throughout Europe. The first of the word’s returns to prominence occurs in French writing of the 1730s, soon after its first depression. Three writers of

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this period deserve particular mention: Louis de Boissy, whose comedy Le Je Ne Sc¸ai Quoi was first performed in 1731; Marivaux, who includes an allegory of beauty and the je-ne-sais-quoi in the deuxie`me feuille of Le Cabinet du philosophe (1734); and Montesquieu, who devotes a short section of his Essai sur le gouˆt (1757) to the topic.2 One critic, noting that Marivaux and Montesquieu both wrote their texts around 1730, comments that ‘le je-ne-sais-quoi fait alors un retour en force’ (the je-ne-sais-quoi returns at that time to strength).3 Each of these three authors revives the idea, made popular by Bouhours, that the je-ne-sais-quoi is the property of a person or thing possessing an inexplicable charm; each stresses that its interventions into experience provoke surprise; each uses it in a distinct generic context (the theatre, moraliste writing, the essay) as a means of producing ever more subtle and scintillating literary nuances. Writers throughout Europe make use of the je-ne-sais-quoi once more at this time: Benito Feijo´o, mentioned earlier (Sect. 1.1.2, above), reserves the true meaning of the Spanish no se´ que´ for the complex multiple physiognomical expressions of an inner spiritual grace (1989: 52–7 (§§. 27–8)); David Hume, whose French connections are well known, uses the native English noun ‘I know not what’ in his Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751) to refer to an inexplicable agreeable quality that some individuals are acknowledged universally to possess (1961: 267). At the end of the century, the je-ne-sais-quoi seems once again to disappear, associated too heavily perhaps since Bouhours with the elitist social distinctions of the ancien re´gime. Whatever the reason, it seems that the je-ne-sais-quoi flits in and out of history in the eighteenth century as it did once before, and that a long view of its word history would show a wavy succession of peaks and troughs. A second peak occurs in nineteenth-century European fiction. Balzac, Tolstoy, and Henry James are among the novelists who use complex forms of the je-ne-sais-quoi to portray social relations, private passions, and the ambiguous shadow-line between the two.4 Nineteenth-century fiction does not restrict the word’s afterlife to human relations. Victor Hugo, in Les Travailleurs de la mer (1866), 2 Boissy 1731, on which see Thormann 1958; Marivaux 1969: 346–51, on which see Ko¨hler 1953–4: 49–50; Montesquieu 1964: 849, on which see Janke´le´vitch 1980: i. 92; Becq 1984: 346–8. 3 Ehrard 1996: 227; see also Ko ¨ hler 1955–6; Adriaensens 1970. 4 See, e.g., Balzac 1996: 199; on Tolstoy and James, see Sect. 4.2.3, above.

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describes an encounter with an octopus that encapsulates the je-nesais-quoi at its most repellently antipathetic.5 So impersonal and monstrous is the vital force of the je-ne-sais-quoi in nature that, in a virtuoso description, Hugo subjects the word to its own mutation when describing the denizens of the sea: ‘des morceaux d’ombre [ . . . ] subissent des polarisations inconnues, prennent vie, se composent on ne sait quelle forme et on ne sait quelle aˆme avec le miasme, et s’en vont, larves, a` travers la vitalite´’ (pieces of darkness [ . . . ] undergo unknown polarizations, come to life, compose nobody knows what form and soul with the miasma and then head off as larvae through vitality).6 The je-ne-sais-quoi couples with the sea here to engender the impersonal adjective on ne sait quel. The word lives on in its many-tentacled nineteenth-century afterlife. I chose to examine, not the afterlife, but the pre-history. The move backwards derived its initial impulse from a felt critical need to rescue the word from its history of sedimentation. Its pre-history, in that sense, fell under the shadow of its history. Montaigne proved an exemplary case in this respect because, although he appears in hindsight to prepare the formation of the je-ne-sais-quoi (n.), he is better understood as a writer who twists words out of shape in an attempt to let the experience of disaster speak. The pre-historical approach allowed instances in the Essais to be analysed because it first used history to help formulate the topic of the je-ne-sais-quoi and then suspended history in order to encounter the writing in the absolute present tense of its appearance on the page. It would take a third step to move the pre-history of the je-ne-saisquoi beyond the shadow of its history and into the space of a critical method. This method would start from a hypothesis about literature; namely, that it sets itself the vital task of analysing and describing powerful human experiences that fall outside the available schemes of definition and explanation, and that it is by restlessly twisting and renewing conventional language that it best fulfils that task. The je-ne-sais-quoi would function as a heuristic device for tracing this literary process and a point of departure for 5 So does Mr Hyde, in Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel, who provokes a ‘hitherto unknown disgust, loathing and fear’ in those unfortunate enough to encounter him (1987: 19 (ch. 2)). 6 Hugo 1980: 440; on Hugo’s art of the je-ne-sais-quoi, see Pigeard de Gurbert 2001: 60–3.

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an open-ended series of divergent explorations. This method would need to remain open to the possibility of its own alteration under the shock of some new je-ne-sais-quoi if it were to remain faithful to its object. It would adopt and pursue, in its own way, the vision offered in the present study: of the je-ne-sais-quoi coming to life in a series of literary encounters with a certain something.

6.2. bottom’s dream To offer one example of what such a method might uncover, I end with a close reading of A Midsummer Night’s Dream (c. 1595). An entire study of the je-ne-sais-quoi could be devoted to Shakespeare’s plays. They dramatize its main themes, whether the ghostly apparition of an insensible force in nature, the stroke of a disastrous passion, or the super-subtle artifice of signs of quality; they show the characters who undergo such experiences attempting, with extraordinary sophistication, to come to terms with them; and, at such moments, forms of the English phrase ‘I know not what’ tend to appear. Shakespeare’s place in the present study is marginal, since my criterion of inclusion was that a writer should occupy at least a potential place in the historical rise and fall of the je-ne-sais-quoi (n.), and Shakespeare has no place in that history. He stands apart from it, a stranger on its threshold, while effortlessly revealing his mastery of its terms and themes. As with so many of the new approaches and theories that literary critics bring to his plays, one is left with the bardolatrous feeling that Shakespeare saw the whole thing first, that it was in fact he who dreamt up the je-ne-sais-quoi. A Midsummer Night’s Dream exemplifies Shakespeare’s mastery of the je-ne-sais-quoi. A strange force of sympathy falls between certain individuals in this play. The characters discuss the nature of this force obsessively: some attempt to dispel, subdue, and explain it away; others sense that it is something really inexplicable and inexplicably real and, in saying so, they grasp at forms of the phrase ‘I know not what’. The four young Athenian lovers suffer the ebb and flow of this force at home and in the dark wood, outside the city, into which they stray. The night they spend there is full of strange happenings, with the women suffering a breach in their friendship and the men falling in and out of love. At the same time, Titania, Queen of the Fairies, suffers a sudden magical stroke

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of passion for Bottom, the Athenian mechanical who has been ‘translated’ into an ass. The same force falls upon her and the Athenians with revolutionary effects. Malaster—the worst kind of disaster—threatens at every turn. The night’s events are a living illustration of Lysander’s claim that ‘the course of true love never did run smooth’, for even ‘if there were a sympathy in choice’, he explains, ‘war, death, or sickness did lay siege to it’. So it is, he concludes, that ‘quick bright things come to confusion’ (i.i. 132–49). The women prove more constant than the men. Throughout, Hermia loves Lysander, and Helena, Demetrius; both men, however, are drawn irresistibly first to Hermia and then, under the effect of the love-juice that Puck puts on their eyes, to Helena. Puck averts malaster by bringing Lysander and Hermia back together and by leaving Demetrius magically smitten with Helena. He turns the confusions of a darkened pastoral towards the brightness of a comic resolution. But the force that brought the lovers into confusion remains to be explained. What happened to them in the wood? Theseus and Hippolyta, at the beginning of Act V, provide a retrospective commentary on events as the lovers have described them. Theseus, speaking in the clear light of reason and a calm Athenian morning, dismisses the entire phenomenon. Its cause is to be found not in the spirit of the wood, he says, but merely in the power of the imagination, which is all too strong in lunatics, lovers, and poets (v.i. 14–17): And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name.

We saw earlier that La Boe´tie dismisses the ‘greatness’ of statesmen, and Descartes the forms and qualities of the schools, as mere nothings forged and named in the mind.7 Theseus denies ontological value to the strange forces of magic and love in the same manner. He too dismisses the je-ne-sais-quoi as an airy nothing. Hippolyta, however, saves the phenomenon in her reply to Theseus, protesting (v.i. 23–7):

7

On La Boe´tie, see Sect. 1.1.1, above; on Descartes, see Sect. 2.2.2, above.

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But all the story of the night told over, And all their minds transfigur’d so together, More witnesseth than fancy’s images, And grows to something of great constancy; But howsoever, strange and admirable.

She reverses the ontological value that Theseus gave to the events described by the lovers. That they all told the same story, and the manner in which they did so, she insists, are both factors which suggest that the story contains more than an intersubjective mental illusion. The event to which they all refer is not merely real qua dream but, more than that, it ‘grows to something of great constancy’. It is real qua ‘something’. What this ‘something’ may be, Hippolyta cannot say, other than that it is ‘strange and admirable’. Her discussion with Theseus comes to an abrupt end with the arrival of the young lovers themselves. But, by then, the two have raised the critical question about the je-ne-sais-quoi—is it an airy nothing or something of great constancy?—to the level of conscious reflection in the play. This question, when Theseus and Hippolyta come belatedly to discuss it, has in fact already been resolved within the action of the play. For love, the play reveals, is the stuff of life: an I-know-not-what that appears and vanishes like a dream. Demetrius says as much to Theseus when, coming across his ruler in the wood, he attempts to account for his strange change of affections (iv.i. 163–70): But my good lord, I wot not by what power— But by some power it is—my love to Hermia, Melted as the snow, seems to me now As the remembrance of an idle gaud Which in my childhood I did dote upon; And all the faith, the virtue of my heart, The object and pleasure of mine eye, Is only Helena.

Demetrius speaks of a power that has drawn him away from Hermia and towards Helena. His initial parenthetical remark, ‘I wot not by what power—j But by some power it is’, spells out the double semantic charge that the je-ne-sais-quoi carries in affirming both the inexplicable nature of the force and the sheer fact of its presence. The archaic form ‘wot’, in the place of ‘know’, admits a triple internal rhyme (‘wot not by what’) within the syntactic string.

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The rhyme emphasizes the inexplicable whatness or nescioquiddity of the power and mimics phonetically the stammering of Demetrius’ mind under the shock of the experience. Theseus’ reply shows him characteristically keen to avoid entertaining the thought: ‘Of this discourse’, he says hurriedly, ‘we more will hear anon’ (iv.i. 177). But Demetrius is not alone in referring to the operation of some insensible power or force. Titania tells Bottom: ‘thy fair virtue’s force perforce doth move me j On the first view to say, to swear, I love thee’ (iii.i. 133–4). ‘Virtue’ we are to understand here, not in its ethical sense, but in the old Latinate sense of ‘power’ or ‘force’. Titania’s speech, like that of Demetrius, is saturated with the absolute force of love. Love is, of course, not the sole force in operation in the play. Magic is another. A rationalist of Theseus’ persuasion might wish to object that the je-ne-sais-quoi in the play is ‘merely’ magical. The play does not flinch from this objection; indeed, it gives it full expression. We are reminded, each time we see Puck squeezing juice from the flower of love-in-idleness on the eyelids of those asleep in the wood, that magic is at work. The power of magic is such, indeed, that it translates Bottom’s head into that of an ass and then draws Titania into loving him. The existence of magic can be doubted no more than that of love. There is in fact no need for a nominalist excision of either magic or love. The two, simply, coexist. When Puck says of his flower that it has a magical ‘force in stirring love’ (ii.ii. 75), he is speaking with some precision. Love was already there; magic is its efficient cause. Love operates upon people not only in the wood, where magic is present, but also in the Athenian court, where Puck does not venture. Its subversive force at court, indeed, provides the play with its opening. Hermia’s father appears before Theseus to threaten his daughter with Athenian law if she fails to approve his choice of son-in-law (Demetrius) against her own desire (for Lysander). Hermia, pressed by Theseus to submit, offers a defiant reply (i.i. 58–64): I do entreat your Grace to pardon me. I know not by what power I am made bold, Nor how it may concern my modesty In such a presence here to plead my thoughts, But I beseech your Grace that I may know The worst that may befall me in this case, If I refuse to wed Demetrius.

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Her love for Lysander is the strange power that Hermia describes through a syntactic string of the adjectival ‘I-know-not-what’. Invoking such a power allows Hermia to oppose the will of her father and the Duke as well as to name the inexplicable impetus for her disobedience. Theseus, in reply, threatens her with death or a nunnery. Hermia decides to take refuge with Lysander in the wood. The I-know-not-what of love is the prime force behind the plot of A Midsummer Night’s Dream from its opening onwards. Bottom, the mechanical who finds himself so strangely translated, understands what this force is as well as anyone. He effectively refutes Theseus two short scenes before the Duke offers his obtuse rationalistic explanation of the night’s adventures. Bottom, having fallen asleep in Titania’s arms in his ass-like condition, awakes alone and fully human once more. The events that befell him during his transformation return in the confused form of a dream, which he tries to put into words (iv.i. 202–14): I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was. Man is but an ass if he go about to expound this dream. Methought I was—there is no man can tell what. Methought I was— and methought I had—but man is a patched fool if he will offer to say what methought I had. The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was. I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream: it shall be called ‘Bottom’s Dream’, because it hath no bottom; and I will sing it in the latter end of a play, before the Duke.

Bottom’s Dream is nothing other than a bottomless comic je-nesais-quoi. His description of the dream offers a series of syntactic variations on the theme. Each is more distant from the phrase ‘I know not what’ than the utterances of Hermia and Demetrius discussed above since Bottom varies his verbs (‘tell’, ‘say’, ‘report’, verbs of sensory perception, and ‘conceive’). But the semantic trace is there. Bottom captures the core meaning of the je-ne-sais-quoi, in the second sentence quoted, when he declares that the dream he had passes the ‘wit of man’. The cognitive charge of ‘wit’ is important: it is not that Bottom refuses to say what the dream was, but that he cannot say, because it was inexplicable to all. He sums this up in the sentence that so spectacularly misquotes Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians (‘the eye hath not seen, and the ear hath not heard,

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neither have entered into the heart of man those things God has prepared’) (2: 9). Bottom’s confusion of his faculties offers a peculiarly accurate image of his way of talking and thinking under the shock of experience: his ‘tongue’ is indeed unable to ‘conceive’ what his dream was. His sentence is built around a rhetorical figure commonly associated with the je-ne-sais-quoi, adynaton, whereby the speaker admits that the thing needing to be said is beyond the power of words to convey. Its comic effect is achieved through the strenuous variations by means of which the stammering Bottom confesses that he does not know what his dream was. Never before has anyone been so volubly at a loss for words. Bottom’s experience encapsulates the entire midsummer night. ‘It shall be called ‘‘Bottom’s Dream’’,’ he declares, ‘because it hath no bottom.’ The joke raises the question of what place there is for Bottom’s Dream in the realm of being. It may have no bottom because it is a thing of no substance, a ‘mere’ dream, or because it has the bottomless profundity of the world itself. One can predict that Theseus, were Bottom indeed to sing his dream as a ballad, would dismiss it as just that, a mere dream, the credulous ravings of a mechanical. Yet we know that Bottom is in fact remembering what befell him, that this was no dream, but the real stuff of his experience. The playwright carefully places the word ‘dream’ in Oberon’s instruction to Puck: Bottom and the others, he says, should ‘think no more of this night’s accidents j But as the fierce vexation of a dream’ (iv.i. 67–8). That is why Bottom calls his mental traces of the previous night his ‘Dream’. Yet he refers to its contents, time and again, as though he had experienced them in the waking world. This hints at a confused sense in Bottom that his ‘dream’ was something more than that. What this something is, however, he will not and cannot say. His confusion is the only appropriate response to such an event: it proves that, after all, Bottom is no ass. He tells his friends when they are reunited: ‘Masters, I am to discourse wonders: but ask me not what’ (iv.ii. 26). ‘Wonders’ hints at something more than a dream, but about which Bottom, once again, remains volubly silent. We spectators and readers have, of course, witnessed the very wonders that he leaves undescribed. We are invited to fill in the spaces of experience that his aposiopesis (‘methought I was—and methought I had—’) leaves blank. He was, indeed, as he dreamt he was, an ass, tender in disposition and ‘marvellous hairy about the face’

288

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(iv.i. 24). He had, indeed, as he dreamt he did, the love of a woman who wound him in her arms, saying as they found sleep together (iv.i. 41–4): So doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle Gently entwist; the female ivy so Enrings the barky fingers of the elm. O how I love thee! How I dote on thee!

The events that he places in his Dream we know to have fallen inexplicably into Bottom’s world. Shakespeare invites us to recognize as much of his play. In its Epilogue, Puck advises those in the audience who disliked it to think of the play, Theseus-style, as ‘No more yielding than a dream.’ Those who enjoyed it, he implies, will understand that the play is something more than that. It is here that Shakespeare demonstrates his theatrical mastery of the je-ne-sais-quoi. Most writers describe its force, as we have seen, by moving from an initial declaration of its nescioquiddity to a description of its effects. But Shakespeare reverses the usual order. He starts by showing his spectators the night in the wood—its strange accidents and inexplicable forces—so that, when Bottom declares their nescioquiddity, we have already seen these forces at work. We are presented with a je-ne-sais-quoi that has already fallen into our experience and whose effects have moved us. The playwright, in this manner, compels our assent to the thought expressed by Hippolyta. The play itself, we feel, is no mere fiction: it is itself ‘something of great constancy j But howsoever, strange and admirable’—or, in a word, a certain je-ne-sais-quoi. Hippolyta, who makes her remark only after the night has come to an end, merely confirms a thought that had already grown on the spectators. For they, unlike her, were invited to follow Bottom as he led the je-ne-sais-quoi on a midsummer adventure.

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Index This index provides the dates (where known) of the early modern figures mentioned in this book. For most, dates are those of birth and death, but for some they mark the period during which they are presumed to have been active (indicated by fl.). Works are indexed under the names of authors. Acade´mie Bourdelot 90, 91, 92; see also Le Gallois, Pierre Acade´mie Franc¸aise 40, 45, 46, 47, 51, 54 n. 93, 85, 134 n. 323, 177, 188 accidents 231, 234, 264 action at distance 79, 80, 97 admiratio, see wonder Adriaensens, Jose´ M. Navarro de 11 n. 13, 280 n. 3, 30 n. 33 adynaton 48, 149, 186, 189, 197, 204, 221, 287 aesthetics 9, 10 n. 8, 11, 55, 171, 183, 196–203 affects 126, 140 affirmation 34, 49, 274 afterlife 279–81 agre´ment 48, 139, 175, 176, 177, 187, 200, 209, 214 n. 80 alchemy 79, 86, 87 Alcibiades 145 Alexander, H. G. 123 n. 172 Allen, Michael J. B. 132 n. 25 Althusser, Louis 199 n. 42 Amelot de la Houssaye, AbrahamNicolas (1634–1706) 30 amitie´, see friendship Amyot, Jacques (1513–93) 169

analepsis (hindsight) 11–12, 229, 230 animals 77, 80–1, 84, 107, 116–17, 135–6, 164–5, 170, 238–9 anthropomorphism 98–101, 123, 277 antipathy 193, 232, 281; see also sympathy Apelles 28, 30–1, 199 aposiopesis 205, 287 Aquinas, Thomas 76, 134, 136 Ariosto, Lodovico (1474–1533) 202 Aristophanes 132, 145–6 Aristotelianism, see scholastics, scholasticsm Aristotle 74, 76, 77, 78, 82, 96, 105–7, 120, 130, 135, 197, 200, 243, 251, 265 Arnauld, Antoine (1612–94) and Pierre Nicole (1625–95) 103 art 27–8, 60–1, 182, 196–203, 214, 277; see also aesthetics artifice 52, 184, 191, 194–5, 199–200, 211, 215, 220 association, principle of 140–1 astral influence 47, 49, 55, 81–2, 133, 268, 270 astrology 81, 133, 159–60, 179

318

Index

atomism 112, 117, 167 attraction 48 magnetic 60, 76, 79–80, 83, 85, 142, 248 Augustine, Saint, Bishop of Hippo 26, 63, 66–7, 115, 163, 197, 238 Avicenna 136 Bachelard, Gaston 108 Bacon, Francis (1561–1626) 26, 75, 77 n. 8, 79, 89, 94, 96, 97, 100 n. 100, 102, 105, 109–11, 122 Baker, Henry (1698–1774) and James Miller (1706–44) 219 Balzac, Honore´ de 22, 279, 280 Balzac, Jean-Louis Guez, seigneur de (1597–1654) 23, 30, 66, 203–4 Baraz, Michae¨l 243 n. 32 Barbier d’Aucour, Jean (1641–94) 64–6, 69, 96 n. 85, 215 baroque 15, 154 Barthes, Roland 16 Basnage de Bauval, Henri (1656–1710) 48, 52 Bataille, Georges 271 Baudoin, Jean (1590?–1650) 196 Beaujot, Jean-Pierre 174 n. 121 beauty 29, 44, 47, 147, 148, 165, 169, 175, 202, 280 Becq, Annie 11, 28 n. 25, 183 n. 1, 280 n. 2 Beecher, Donald A. and Massimo Ciavolella 129 nn. 7 and 9 Begriffsgeschichte (conceptual history) 10 n. 8 Behn, Aphra (1640–89) 43 bel esprit 62, 96, 208–11, 218; see also wit Belin, Christian 129 n. 12

Belleau, Re´my (1527?–77) 80 Belleforest, Franc¸ois de (1530–83) 85 Bennington, Geoffrey 174 n. 121 Bentley, Richard (1662–1742) 122 Bergson, Henri 8 Beugnot, Bernard 61 n. 108, 92 n. 71, 96 n. 85 Beugnot, Bernard and Gilles Declerq 23–4 n. 6 Bibliothe`que de l’Institut de France 163 n. 95 biense´ance 150, 191–2 Binet, E´tienne, SJ (1569–1639) 79–80, 135 n. 40, 136 Blanchot, Maurice 55, 255, 271, 273 blindness 77, 78, 151–2, 202–3, 244–9 Bloom, Harold 229 n. 4 Blount, Thomas (1618–79) 41, 129 Blum, Claude 252 n. 55 Blum, Paul Richard 81 n. 27, 83 n. 38, 102 Boaistuau, Pierre (d. 1566) 38 n. 55, 132 n. 26, 133 n. 29, 134, 142–3, 144, 145, 150, 182 Boase, Alan 130 n. 15, 210 n. 72, 211 n. 73 body, the 50, 60, 85, 131, 134–5, 169, 231–5 and the soul 136, 137, 140, 233 Boileau, Nicolas Despre´aux (1636–1711) 10, 13, 116, 197–8, 200–3, 278 Boissy, Louis de (1694–1758) 280 Bono, James J. 88 n. 56 Borgerhoff, E. B. O. 9–10, 11, 28 n. 25, 66 n. 121, 172 n. 115, 175 n. 125, 183 n. 1, 214 n. 81

Index Bossuet, Jacques Be´nigne (1627–1704) 25, 58 Bots, Hans, and Franc¸oise Waquet 91 n. 67 Bouhours, Dominique, SJ (1628–1702) 23–5, 26, 29, 40, 47, 48, 59–70, 73–4, 79 n. 21, 108, 109, 115, 116 n. 145, 135, 140, 166, 175, 185, 190, 192, 197, 199, 200, 202, 205, 277 as lexicographer 45, 49–52 attitude to Corneille 44 n. 79 attitude to Me´re´ 208–9 attitude to Montaigne 210 Les Entretiens d’Ariste et d’Euge`ne (1671) 23–5, 62, 63–9, 85–6, 96, 125–7, 182–4, 193, 195, 208–11, 215–17 Remarques nouvelles sur la langue franc¸oise (1675) 193 Bourdieu, Pierre 12, 62 n. 111, 191 n. 15, 195 n. 30, 199 n. 42, 205 n. 64 Boutauld, Michel, SJ (1604–89) 80, 116 n. 145 Boutcher, Warren 96 n. 87 Boyer, Abel (1667–1729) 42 Boyle, Robert (1627–91) 76, 82 nn. 32–3, 86 n. 48, 94, 96, 98, 101, 104, 105, 112 Boyle, Roger (1621–79) 42–3 Brach, Pierre de (b. 1547) 253 Brahami, Fre´de´ric 237 n. 21 Bre´mond, Henri 68 n. 127 Brockliss, L. W. B. 61 nn. 108–9, 113 n. 139 Brody, Jules 197 n. 38 Browne, Sir Thomas (1605–82) 97 n. 90, 98 n. 93, 103 Brunot, Ferdinand 24 n. 6, 40 Bulatkin, Eleanor Webster 9 n. 7

319

Bureau d’Adresse 54, 84, 90, 91, 92, 96, 146, 210 n. 71; see also Renaudot, Euse`be and The´ophraste Renaudot Burton, Robert (1577–1640) 96, 129 n. 10 Bury, Emmanuel 211 n. 73 Busson, Henri 65 n. 118 Cabinet Du Puy 89–90 Caesar, Julius 168 Caillie`res, Jacques de (d. 1697) 194, 205 n. 59 Calame, Alexandre 180 n. 137 Camus, Jean-Pierre (1584–1652) 79 n. 20, 129–36, 143–6, 157 n. 85, 168, 210 n. 72 Canal, Jean-Pierre (fl. 1620s) 31 n. 36 Canguilhem, Georges 14 Cardano, Girolamo (1501–76) 87, 101–2 carelessness 28, 31, 191, 193, 199–200, 204, 218, 220 n. 95 Carraud, Vincent 100 nn. 102–3 Cartier de Saint Philip (fl. 1720s) 221 Cassirer, Ernst 10 n. 8, 11 n. 11, 183 n. 1 Castiglione, Baldassare (1478–1529) 191 causes 54, 104, 166, 214–15, 235, 240, 242–3 Cave, Terence 6, 12 n. 15, 13, 15, 22 n. 2, 38 n. 53, 44 n. 77, 55, 92 nn. 69–70, 162, 196 n. 35, 197 n. 36, 229 n. 4, 233 n. 11, 237 nn. 21 and 23, 251 n. 50, 273 n. 85, 226–7, 228 nn. 1–2, 229, 249 n. 44, 250 n. 45, 252 n. 56

320

Index

Ce´ard, Jean 85 n. 42, 87 n. 52, 232 n. 9, 238 n. 24, 243 n. 32 Ceriziers, Rene´ de (1609–62) 81 n. 27, 131 n. 21 Cerny, Vaclav 8 n. 6 Cervantes, Miguel de (1547–1616) 29 Chalesme, de (fl. 1671–6) 131 n. 21, 152–3, 173 Chantalat, Claude 201, 205 n. 55 Chanut, Hector-Pierre (1604–67) 137, 138, 140 Charles II (King of England) (1630–85) 42 Charleton, Walter (1619–1707) 104, 129 n. 11, 152 charm 47, 175, 193, 206, 208, 213; see also agre´ment Charron, Pierre (1541–1603) 129 n. 12, 249 Chauvin, E´tienne (1640–1725) 83–4 Christianity 76, 79, 169 Christina of Sweden (1626–89) 137, 175 Cicero 26, 183, 200, 203–4, 205 city, the 204 civility 191, 192, 193, 204, 252 n. 52 Clark, Stuart 80 n. 24, 86 n. 47, 87 n. 53, 88 n. 54 Clarke, Desmond 115 n. 141, 116 n. 150, 118 n. 154 classicism 10, 12, 15, 184–5 Cleopatra 164, 166, 168–9, 176 Coe¨ffeteau, Nicolas (1574–1623) 129, 132, 135 nn. 37–8, 146 n. 66 colour 77, 98–9, 104, 198 n. 39 commonplaces 30, 59, 63, 78, 82, 108; see also topics

Compagnon, Antoine 98 n. 92, 232 n. 8 Congreve, William (1670–1729) 219–20 conversation 24, 62, 92, 93–4, 172, 206, 216–17, 252–3 contrasted with dialogue 185 see also topics Copenhaver, Brian P. and Charles B. Schmitt 76 n. 5 coquetry 43, 219–20; see also seduction Corneille, Pierre (1606–84) 2, 13, 48, 54, 13, 126, 152, 153–62, 198, 276 L’Illusion comique (c. 1635) 159–60, 179 Le Cid (1637) 161 Me´de´e (1635) 44, 156–8 Pompe´e (1643) 168 Rodogune (1645) 24–5, 44, 158–61, 278 Corneille, Thomas (1625–1709) 45, 85 n. 43, 153 corpuscularianism 112, 117, 167 Cotgrave, Randle (d. 1634?) 41, 153 coup d’e´tat 153–4, 155 coup de foudre 153–5, 172, 173, 177, 206, 207–8 Courtin, Antoine de (1622–85) 64, 69, 192, 193, 195 n. 31, 200 Cox, Virginia 92 n. 71 Cramer, Johann Friedrich (d. 1715) 217 n. 87 Critobulus 145–6 Croce, Benedetto 9, 10, 11, 183 n. 1 Cromwell, Oliver (1599–1658) 169 Cronk, Nicholas 11, 24 nn. 7–8, 92 n. 69, 183 n. 1, 196, 197–8

Index Cue´nin, Micheline 133 n. 30 culture 60, 184, 187, 196–203, 216, 279; see also polite culture Cureau de la Chambre, Marin (1594–1669) 77 n. 9, 130, 131 n. 18, 134 n. 36, 136 n. 44, 151–2, 173, 180 curiosity 41 n. 65, 73–4, 164, 217, 234, 236, 242 currency 23, 27, 39–43, 80–1, 107, 173, 174; see also vogue-words custom 164 D’Ailly, Abbe´ (fl. 1670s?) 218–19 Dandrey, Patrick 128 n. 6, 131 n. 19, 132 n. 25, 136 n. 42 Daniel, Gabriel, SJ (1649–1728) 94–5, 115, 116, 118–19 Daston, Lorraine and Katherine Park 74 n. 4, 76 n. 6, 77 n. 15, 80 n. 24, 82 n. 31, 115 n. 143 Dawson, Hannah 57 n. 102, 107 n. 122 Dear, Peter 77 n. 14, 79 n. 18, 87 nn. 49 and 51, 89 n. 59, 110 nn. 126 and 128, 112 n. 136, 113 n. 139, 122 n. 165, 123 n. 171 defamiliarization 174, 176 Defaux, Ge´rard 186 n. 5, 252 n. 54, 262 n. 70, 264 n. 75, 271 n. 83 definition 43–4, 46, 52, 53, 54, 143–4, 154, 174–5 deixis 266–7 Dejean, Joan 92 n. 69 Deleuze, Gilles 16, 56, 117–18, 119–20, 121 n. 163, 170 n. 110, 273 and Fe´lix Guattari 246–7

321

and Claire Parnet 153 n. 79, 273 n. 86 delicacy 199 Demades 257 Democritus 120 Demonet, Marie-Luce 38 n. 54, 242 n. 28 Dens, Jean-Pierre 12 n. 16, 172 n. 115, 191 n. 14, 192 n. 19, 199 nn. 42–3, 204 n. 51 De Obaldia, Claire 94 n. 78 Derrida, Jacques 272 n. Des Chene, Dennis 74 n. 4, 82 n. 35, 84 n. 40, 86 n. 45, 101 n. 106, 114 n. 140, 116 n. 149, 134 n. 35, 136 n. 44 Descartes, Rene´ (1596–1650) 13, 16, 75, 78 n. 17, 89, 94, 95, 96, 98, 100, 102, 111–14, 120, 247, 283 as descendant of Aristotle 105–7 correspondence with Christina of Sweden 137–41 reception of 113–14, 114–19, 146 La Recherche de la ve´rite´ par la lumie`re naturelle (1701) 111–12 Les Passions de l’aˆme (1649) 130, 137–9 Principes de la Philosophie (1647) 98–9, 112–13 Descotes, Dominique 168 n. 101 description 55, 123, 144, 236, 268 desire 134, 135, 139–40, 145–6, 150–1, 178–9, 273 as triangle 161 despejo 30, 194 devenirs 16 dialogue 89, 92, 95, 111, 162; see also conversation dictionaries 31–2, 41–2, 44, 45–52, 69

322

Index

Dieu sait quoi 33 Digby, Kenelm, Sir (1603–65) 69 n. 129, 94, 95, 96–7, 98 n. 94, 102 n. 108, 112, 117, 271 Dionysus 56 n. 99, 247 disaster 53, 55–6, 155, 157–8, 255, 261–2, 270–1, 277 distinction 30, 90, 161, 184–5, 199, 207–8; see also merit Dolce, Ludovico (1508–68) 27–8 Doncieux, George 24 n. 7 Doranlo, Robert 130 n. 14 douceur, see sweetness dreams 111, 123, 284, 286–8 Dreyfus, Hubert L., and Paul Rabinow 15 n. 21 Dryden, John (1631–1700) 42, 157 n. 84 Du Bellay, Joachim (1525–60) 34–5, 37–8, 142, 144, 146 Du Bosc, Jacques (d. 1660) 132 n. 24, 133 n. 29, 150–1, 157, 191, 193 n. 23 Du Laurens, Andre´ (1558–1609) 128–9 Du Perron, Jacques Davy, Cardinal (1556–1618) 210 Du Roure, Jacques (fl. 1650s) 82 n. 31, 86, 98 n. 95, 102, 105 Ducheˆne, Roger 63 n. 113 Dumonceaux, Pierre 32 n. 40, 37 n. 49 early modern, the 16–17; see also modernity education 62, 194–5, 208, 209–10, 251 Ehrard, Jean 280 n. 3 elasticity 117 elements, the four 79 Elias, Norbert 190, 191 n. 15, 195 n. 33, 205 n. 62

Eliot, T. S. 123 England 42–3, 169, 219–21, 280, 282–8 relations with France 96–7, 117, 129, 152 Epictetus 163, 172 episteme, the 14–15, 75, 87, 88, 109 epoche¯ (suspension of judgement) 122, 237, 244, 249 error, errors of reasoning 97, 102–5, 146–7, 162, 267 essai, the 228, 234–6, 246, 250, 256–60, 266, 278 Esther 176 Estienne, Henri (1531–98) 237 Estienne, Robert (1503?–59) 31–2, 33, 39 n. 56 estimation 135–6, 170 experience 15–16, 53–4, 77, 162–3, 206, 240–2, 249, 256, 277 and explanation 84, 119, 231–6 erotic 28, 37, 39, 130–1, 178–9 religious 29 social 194–5, 199, 209–10 see also experiment experiment 54, 109, 111, 256, 258 explanation 54, 76, 77–8, 111, 123 crisis of 50, 70, 75, 109, 123–4, 277 see also experience and explanation expliquer, exprimer 44–5, 47, 48 faith 50 Faret, Nicolas (1596–1646) 150, 191–2, 206, 210 n. 72 fascination 77, 132 fatality 81, 268, 270 Faudemay, Alain 204 n. 51 fault-lines 15, 152–3

Index Feijo´o, Benito (1676–1764) 30 Fe´nelon, Franc¸ois de Salignac de (1651–1715) 68 n. 127 Ferrand, Jacques (b. 1575?) 81 n. 28, 129, 131 n. 19, 132 n. 27, 144 n. 61, 149–50 Ferreyrolles, Ge´rard 164 n. 97, 165 n. Ficino, Marsilio 130, 132, 149, 196 fiction 207, 208, 280–1, 288 Fielding, Henry (1707–54) 220–1 Firenzuola, Agnolo (1493–1543) 27, 28 Flandrin, Jean-Louis 143 n. 59 Flemish 41–2 Florio, John (1553?–1625) 31 n. 36, 96 Fludd, Robert (1574–1637) 77 n. 8 Fontaine, Nicolas (1625–1709) 163 Fontenelle, Bernard Le Bovier de (1657–1757) 93, 96 n. 84, 113, 185, 92 n. 72 force, forces 75, 117–18, 119–24, 153–4, 268–9, 270, 285 Foss, Michael 168 n. 105 Foster, William (1591–1643) 77 n. 8 Foucault, Michel 12, 14–15, 56 n. 100, 87; see also episteme, the Fouquet, Nicolas (1615–80) 185 Fracastoro, Girolamo (1478–1553) 87 Frame, Donald M. 242 n. 29 freedom 8, 9, 48, 60–1, 81, 178, 200 Frenchness 41–2 Friedrich, Hugo 233 n. 11, 250 n. 45, 255 n. 59, 256, 260 n. 66, 262 n. 68, 263 n. 73 friendship 125–6, 132–3, 238, 253–5, 261–74

323

Fronde, The 185, 194 Fumaroli, Marc 69 n. 128, 129 n. 11, 195 n. 32, 211 nn. 73 and 75 Furetie`re, Antoine (1619–88) 39 n. 57, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 52, 54 n. 93, 79 n. 21, 134 n. 33, 188, 193, 214 n. 81 galanterie 36, 44, 185, 188–9, 193, 205–8 Galilei, Galileo (1564–1642) 89, 98 n. 96, 103 Garin, Eugenio 81 n. 28 Gassendi, Pierre (1592–1655) 104, 112 Gaudemar, Emmanuelle de 26 n. 14, 29 n. 29 Gaukroger, Stephen 137 n. 46 Gay, John (1685–1732) 43 Ge´netiot, Alain 127 n. 4 Genette, Ge´rard 79 n. 22 genius 10 n. 8, 198, 210 German 41–2 ghosts 100, 109, 150–1, 228 Gilby, Emma 13 n. 17, 162 n. 93, 197 n. 37 Gilson, E´tienne 83 n. 38 Girard, Rene´ 161 Glanvill, Joseph (1636–80) 104 n. 113 God 65, 68, 80–1, 97, 100, 112, 118, 242; see also miracles Gombauld, Jean-Ogier de (1590–1666) 40–1 Gouhier, Henri 90 n. 62, 115 nn. 141–2 Gournay, Marie de (1565–1645) 148–9, 150, 253, 254 n. 57 grace 10 n. 8, 28, 37–8, 43, 47, 174, 176–7, 280 divine 29, 60–1, 63–9, 163, 216

324

Index

grace (cont.) in painting and poetry 28, 30–1, 198 n. 40 in people 27, 38, 148, 169, 191, 206 Gracia´n, Baltasar (1601–58) 29–30, 194 gravity 76, 99, 100, 103, 117, 121–2 Greenwood, William (fl. 1657) 129 n. 11 Grenaille, Franc¸ois de, Sieur de Chatounie`res (1616–80?) 94, 191, 210 Gre´visse, Maurice 33 Griffin, Benjamin (1680–1740) 220 n. 95 Grubbs, Henry 205 n. 61 Guellouz, Suzanne 30 n. 34, 230 n. 5 Gueroult, Martial 121 n. 162 Guyon, Louys (fl. 1600–15) 195 n. 31 Haase, Erich 10 n. 8, 26 nn. 13–14 and 16, 31, 33 n. 42, 40 n. 63, 41, 42 n. 70, 44 n. 78, 230 n. 5 Hafter, Monroe Z. 30 n. 31 Hamer, Mary 168 n. 105 Hammond, Nicholas 162 n. 92, 171 n. 113, 173 n. 118 Harth, Erica 89 n. 60, 91 Hartlib, Samuel (d. 1662) 96 Harvey, E. Ruth 77 n. 14, 134 nn. 32 and 34, 135 n. 40, 136 nn. 41–3 Hatfield, Gary 118 n. 154 hatred 48, 77, 134, 147 Havers, George (fl. 1660s) 96, 210 n. 71 Henry, John 81 n. 29, 87 n. 53, 96 n. 86, 97 n. 89, 110 n. 126,

112 n. 135, 116 n. 147, 117 nn. 151–2 Henry, Thierry 21 heredity 232–3 Hermitage Museum 176 n. 127 Hesiod 149 history: as genealogy 11, 14, 17, 93–4, 226, 229–30 critical 4–6, 58–9, 70, 184, 211 gaps in 22, 40–1 of ideas 15, 229 of the book 92, 95, 96, 253 word 2–3, 22, 40, 56–8, 127, 217, 226, 278–9 Hobbes, Thomas (1588–1679) 96–7, 99, 102, 103, 114 n. 140, 186 Hoffmann, George 252 n. 55 Holmes, Geoffrey 42 n. 71 homosexuality 145–6 honneˆtete´ 62, 92, 190–5, 200–1, 205, 210, 212–13, 254–5 hope 50, 134 Horace 265 Houghton, Walter 43 n. 74 Hugo, Victor 280–1 Hume, David (1711–76) 219 n. 91, 280 humiliatio 65, 66, 67, 68, 81 humours, the 134 Hutchison, Keith 82 n. 31, 83 n. 38, 87 n. 52, 104 n. 114, 114 n. 140, 229 n. 3 Huygens, Christiaan (1629–95) 113 Hyde, Mr 281 n. 5 hylomorphism 82–3, 105–7, 133, 239 hypothesis 113, 122, 244 ‘I know not what’ 26, 98, 219–20, 282–8

Index ideal type, the 52–3, 70, 261, 271, 276–7 identity, personal, see self, the alteration of 53, 55–6, 257–8, 261, 271, 272–4 ideology 183, 199, 206–7 illusion 37, 122, 123, 283 imagination 36–7, 77, 135, 165 as source of error 37, 104, 146, 164–5, 197, 283 imperceptibility 104, 112–13, 135, 158, 161, 168 indefinite pronouns 32, 33 induction 78, 110, 240 inexplicability 27, 48, 104, 211 inexpressibility 7, 42; see also expliquer, exprimer; adynaton infinite regression 117, 141 n. 56 infinity 166–8, 170 information technology 32, 46 inscience, see nescience inspiration 196 instinct 47, 48, 50, 77, 181, 213; see also estimation interdisciplinarity 14 Italian 27, 30, 233, 260 Jacoubet, Henri 30 nn. 30 and 32 Jam, Jean-Louis 29 nn. 27–8, 30 n. 30, 62 n. 111 James, E. D. 186 n. 5 James, Henry 208, 280 James, Susan 128, 131 n. 20, 134 n. 34, 136 n. 44, 137 n. 46, 140 n. 55, 147 n. 69 Janke´le´vitch, Vladimir 7–9, 16, 28 n. 24, 29 n. 28, 30 n. 30, 66 n. 123, 132 n. 23, 153 n. 79, 177 n. 130, 180 n. 136, 207 n. 65, 275, 280 n. 2 Jansenists 63–9, 173, 192, 197, 211; see also Port-Royal

325

Jansenius, Cornelius (1585–1638) 63 Jardine, Lisa 110 n. 127 Jasinski, Rene´ 176 n. 126 je ne sais comment 38–9 Jefferson, Ann and David Robey 217 n. 85 je-ne-sais-ou` 39 je-ne-sais-qui 38–9, 47, 65, 68 Jenny, Laurent 258 nn. 63–4 Jesuits 23–4, 61–2, 63–9, 80–1, 96, 211 Johns, Adrian 69 n. 129 Johnson, Barbara 179 nn. 133–4 joie-de-vivre 21 Jonson, Ben (1573?–1637) 96 jouissance, see pleasure Juvenal 260 n. 67, 266 Kant, Emmanuel (1724–1804) 10, 11 Kenny, Neil 22 n. , 23, 41 n. 65, 44 n. 77, 56–7, 217 n. 88, 242 n. 30 Kittay, Eva, and Adrienne Lehrer 50 n. 91 Klein, Lawrence E. 43 n. 75 knowledge 54–5, 77, 78, 135, 171, 248–9 transmission of 89–97, 130–1 Ko¨hler, Erich 10 n. 8, 11 n. 13, 29 n. 27, 30 n. 33, 38 n. 51, 42 n. 70, 230 n. 5, 280 nn. 2–3 L’Isle des hermaphrodites (1605) 174 n. 120 La Boe´tie, E´tienne de (1530–63) 36, 241, 262–4, 278, 283 De la servitude volontaire (1574–7) 35, 262–3 Œuvres (1570) 262–3

326

Index

Lafayette, Madame MarieMadeleine Pioche de La Vergne de (1634–93) 207–8 La Fontaine, Jean de (1621–95) 202 La Grange, Jean-Baptiste de (fl. 1670s) 94–6, 114 n. 140, 115, 116, 117, 118 n. 155 Larivey, Pierre de (1540–1619), and Jean Louveau (fl. 1560–70s) 37–8 La Rochefoucauld, Franc¸ois de (1613–80) 25, 64, 174–6, 186, 199 n. 44, 202, 218 Lafond, Jean 186 n. 5, 203, 204 n. 51 Lafuma, Louis 163 n. 94 Langer, Ullrich 133 n. 28, 186 n. 5, 207 n. 66, 252 n. 53, 264 n. 76, 267 language 22–3, 43, 45, 46, 174, 186, 279; see also history, word Latin 25–6, 28, 31–2, 74, 83, 92–4, 95, 103–4 law 131, 235 Le Brun, Charles (1619–90) 176 Le Dœuff, Miche`le 150 n. 75 Le Gall, Andre´ 155 n. Le Gallois, Pierre (fl. 1672–80) 83 n. 36, 90, 91 n. 68, 92, 94, 97, 98 n. 92, 100 n. 101, 104 n. 115, 146 n. 67 Le Roux, Philibert (fl. 1700s) 39 n. 57 learned, the, learning 25, 61, 91, 92–4, 209–10, 250–1; see also scholastics, scholasticism; unlearned, the Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm (1646–1716) 75, 86 n. 48, 94, 107 n. 122, 118 n. 155, 119–21, 123, 169–71, 172 Leone Ebreo (b. 1460?) 130, 143

letter forms 92, 95 Levi, Anthony 129 n. 11, 130 nn. 13–14, 131 n. 20, 132 n. 26, 135 n. 39, 143 Lewis, C. S. 43 n. 73 Lewis, C. T., and C. Short 26 n. 14 lexical sampling 32, 34, 46 lexical tracers 15, 16, 56, 58, 74–5, 85, 109, 180 lexicographers 45–6, 70 Lichtenstein, Jacqueline 172 n. 115, 198 n. 39 life force 79, 116 literature 3, 17, 154, 174, 273, 281–2 polite, see polite literature see also essai, the; fiction; maxims; poetry Locke, John (1632–1704) 57 n. 102, 77 n. 13, 107 n. 122, 120 Logan, John 197 n. 37 London 220 Longinus, Cassius 10, 197, 200–1 Lougee, Carolyn C. 90 n. 64 Louis XIV (King of France) (1638–1715) 184 love 44, 48, 77, 125–81, 260–1, 277, 282–3, 284–6, 288; see also coup de foudre lovesickness 128–9, 149 Lucretius 235 McKinley, Mary 228 n. 1 Maclean, Ian 5, 14 n. 20, 23 n. 5, 52–3, 54 nn. 95–6, 57 n. 102, 74 n. 4, 77 n. 12, 78 n. 16, 80 n. 24, 81 n. 26, 82 n. 32, 87 nn. 52–3, 88 nn. 54–5, 102 n. 107, 130 n. 14, 131 n. 19, 190 n. 13, 192 n. 18, 193 n. 23, 205 n. 59, 237 n. 21, 247 n. 41, 250 n. 46

Index Magee, Bryan, and Martin Milligan 247 n. 40 Magendie, Maurice 44 n. 80, 188, 190–1, 205 n. 57, 211 n. 73 magic, natural 79, 81, 86–8, 282–3, 285 Magnien, Michel 260 n. 67 Malebranche, Nicolas (1638–1715) 13, 98 n. 97, 102 n. 108, 103 n. 112, 118, 146–7 Marguerite de France (1523–74) 38 Marin, Louis 11, 25 n. 11, 153–4, 162 n. 92, 183 n. 1, 196 n. 34, 197 n. 38, 217 n. 86 Marivaux, Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de (1688–1763) 280 Mark Antony 168 Martial 26 Maskell, David 176 n. 126 mathematics 112, 121–2 Mathieu-Castellani, Gise`le 256 n. 61, 260 n. 66 Matore´, Georges 24 n. 7, 40 n. 60, 45 nn. 83–6 Maupassant, Guy de 279 maxims 174–5, 218–19 Mazauric, Simone 90 n. 61, 91 n. 68 meaning, core 44, 49–53, 56–8, 173–4, 227; see also ideal type, the meaninglessness 35, 69, 104–5, 215, 221 medicine 86–8, 128, 131, 134, 136, 149, 151, 232, 240–2 melancholy 41, 128–9, 149 Melanchthon, Phillip (1497–1560) 149 n. 73 Melzer, Sara E. 162 n. 92 Me´nage, Gilles (1613–92) 45

327

Me´nager, Daniel 168 n. 103, 169 n. 108 Mengotti-Thouvenin, Pascale 163 n. 95 mentalism 57 Mercer, Christia 87 n. 53 Me´re´, Antoine Gombault, Chevalier de (1610–84) 48, 52, 64, 185, 192–5, 199–200, 202, 204–5, 206, 210, 212–15, 216 correspondence with Luns 214–15 correspondence with Pascal 166–7 ‘De la vraie honneˆtete´’ (1700) 192–3, 194 Les Conversations (1668) 209, 212–14 merit 140, 158, 187, 213, 219 n. 91 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 23 Merlin, He´le`ne 183 n. 3 Mesnard, Jean 116 n. 146, 162 n. 91, 164 n. 96, 165 n. 98, 168–9 metaphysics 61, 98, 116, 120 Michelangelo (Buonarroti) (1475–1564) 27–8, 198 n. 40 Miege, Guy (1644–1718?) 42 n. 68 Millen, Ron 88 n. 56 Millet, Olivier 130 n. 15, 210 n. 72, 254 n. 57 miracles 114–15, 163, 232–3, 276 misogyny 39 modernity 9, 16–17, 227 modesty 192, 211 Molie`re, Jean-Baptiste Poquelin de (1622–73) 90, 177–80, 185 L’E´cole des Femmes (1662) 178–9 La Critique de l’E´cole des Femmes (1663) 217–18, 219

328

Index

Molie`re, Jean-Baptiste (cont.) Le Malade imaginaire (1673) 103, 116 Le Misanthrope (1666) 179–80 Monk, Samuel Holt 10 n. 8, 28 nn. 22–3, 183 n. 1 monsters 232, 262 Montaigne, Michel de (1533–92) 6, 13, 15, 16, 17, 32, 35, 54 n. 93, 74, 89, 148, 225–74, 278, 281 and his readers 228, 250–5, 269 and La Boe´tie 253, 254, 261–74, 276 and pyrrhonism 237–8, 247–9 and the Bordeaux Copy 253, 270 and the early modern 229–30, 272 as embodiment of honneˆtete´ 210–11, 254–5 correspondence 263–4 dedications to noble ladies 36, 251–2 reception of 93–4, 96, 130, 210–11, 271–2 Essais (1580) 253; i. 13 252 n. 52; i. 20 39; i. 21 26, 132 n. 127; i. 26 251; i. 28 145, 253, 261–74; i. 29 36, 251 n. 49; i. 32 81 n. 28; i. 35 94; i. 37 261 n. 67; i. 56 69 n. 129, 250; ii. 12 78, 117 n. 153, 237–9, 244–9, 251; ii. 17 250–1; ii. 26 36; ii. 35 34; ii. 37 231–3, 240–2, 252; ii. 6 258, 261; iii. 1 82 n. 33; iii. 2 256, 257–8, 259; iii. 3 254; iii. 5 130–1, 253, 259–61; iii. 6 233–6; iii. 8 93–4, 251 n. 49, 252; iii. 9 228, 252, 253–4; iii. 11 242–3; iii. 12 243–4, 275–7; iii. 13 36–7, 256–7

Journal de Voyage (1774) 233, 234–5 Montandon, Alain 191 n. 17, 205 n. 56 Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat de (1689–1755) 280 Montfaucon de Villars, NicholasPierre-Henri de (1635–73) 62, 64, 67–8, 69 Moreau, Denis (fl. 1620s) 149–50 Morel, Lydie 40 n. 63 Moriarty, Michael 12 n. 16, 13, 17, 44 n. 77, 63 n. 113, 69 n. 128, 78 n. 17, 90 n. 64, 91 n. 66, 98 n. 97, 103 n. 112, 118 n. 154, 140 n. 55, 146 n. 68, 162 n. 91, 164 n. 97, 190 n. 13, 191 n. 15, 199 n. 42, 201–2, 206 nn. 58, 60, and 64, 211, 214 n. 78, 217 n. 86 Mu¨ller, Marion 129 n. 11 Nadal, Octave 133 n. 29, 155 n. Natali, Giulio 11 n. 13, 28 n. 22, 29 n. 26, 233 n. 14 natural history 109–10, 111, 122 nature 48, 60, 82, 98, 101, 132, 216 light of 80–1 see also proprium (particularity); philosophy, natural Naude´, Gabriel (1600–53) 153 Naya, Emmanuel 237 n. 21 negation 35, 97, 266, 274 negligence, see carelessness Neoplatonism 79, 81, 82, 130, 132 nescience 37, 53, 236, 243–4 nescio quid 25–6, 31–2, 66, 67, 273 nescioquiddity 35, 51, 174–6, 184–90, 267–8, 288

Index neutrality 35 New World, the 27, 247 Newton, Isaac (1642–1727) 75, 121–3 Nicole, Pierre (1625–95) 68, 192 Nies, Fritz 199 n. 44 Nietzsche, Friedrich 56 n. 99, 247 no se´ que´ 29–30 nominalism 35, 56–7, 58, 75, 98; see also Ockham’s razor nonchalance, see carelessness non sapio quid 26–7 non so che 27–9, 31 n. 36, 233 Nuttall, A. D. 17, 246 n. Nutton, Vivian 87 n. 51 objective correlative 123–4, 154, 155, 157, 169, 261 occasionalism 118; see also Malebranche, Nicolas occult qualities 60, 76–86, 87, 88, 132, 240–1, 247–8 attack on 97–105, 113, 120, 218–19 revival of 118–19 see also quintessence; substantial form Ockham, William of 76 Ockham’s razor 98, 139, 246, 285 Odysseus 38 Ogier, Franc¸ois (1597–1670) 30, 199 on ne sait quoi 33, 281 opium 76, 85, 103 Orcibal, Jean 176 n. 126 Orwen, Gifford P. 180 n. 137 Paracelsus (1493–1541) 79, 87 Paris 205, 279 Parish, Richard 63 n. 113, 162 n. 92 Pascal, Blaise (1623–62) 11, 13, 15, 17, 68, 86 n. 48, 94, 102,

329

103 n. 112, 162–73, 192, 249, 276 attitude to Corneille 173 attitude to Descartes 100, 166 attitude to Montaigne 94, 163, 172, 211 Entretien avec Sacy (1728) 163 Les Provinciales (1656–7) 63–4 Pense´es (1670) 64, 162–3; L. 22; S. 56 164–5; L. 36; S. 70 164; L. 44–5; S. 78 164, 165; L. 46; S. 79 165; L. 110; S. 152 171–2; L. 197; S. 228 164; L. 199; S. 230 99–100, 167–8; L. 413; S. 32 1–2, 163–9, 172, 215, 278; L. 512; S. 670 172; L. 585; S. 486 214 n. 80; L. 688; S. 567 15; L. 958; S. 795 101 passions, the 59–60, 61, 125–81, 206; see also coup de foudre; desire; hatred; hope; love Paul, Saint 286–7 Peacham, Henry (1546?–1634?) 196 pedantry 94 Pellisson, Paul Fontanier (1624–93) 40, 185, 188, 193, 204 Pelous, Jean Michel 205 n. 56 periodization 13, 15, 16 Persius 26 personnages conceptuels 246–7 Petronius 152 philosophy 74, 243 in the medieval university curriculum 61; see also scholastics, scholasticism in the modern Continental tradition 7–8, 16, 275 mechanical 112, 113–14, 114–19, 122, 137; see also philosophy, new

330

Index

philosophy (cont.) moral 126–7, 131, 136, 149, 180, 265–6, 280 natural 61, 76, 77, 86–8, 120, 235, 239 new 75, 76, 88–97, 97–107, 120 physiognomy 130, 151, 175, 275–6, 280 physiology 50, 132, 179, 209 n. 69, 240 Piccolomini, Franciscus (fl. 1590s) 83 Pigeard de Gurbert, Guillaume 123 n. 169, 170 n. 111, 281 n. 6 Piles, Roger de (1635–1709) 198, 199, 201 n. 49 Pinatel, J. 155 n. 80 plants 79, 85 Plato 120, 132, 145–6, 196, 247, 79; see also Socrates pleasure 12, 16, 28, 73–4, 89 Pliny the Elder 28 Plutarch 168, 169 poetics 196–203 poetry 126–7, 131, 139, 151–3, 154, 218, 259–61 pointedness, art of 126, 154, 173, 277–8 polite circle, the 186–7, 190, 193–4, 213–15, 216–17, 220, 249–50, 255 polite culture 61, 91, 183–4, 195, 199–200, 202–3, 277; see also salons polite literature 42–3, 45, 67, 74, 92–3, 198–9 politics 61, 186, 272; see also coup d’e´tat polygraphy 92, 94, 105, 130 Popkin, Richard H. 237 n. 21 Porqueras Mayo, Alberto 29 n. 27, 30 n. 33

Port-Royal 24, 63, 64, 103, 163 Pouilloux, Jean-Yves 228 n. 1 Poussin, Nicolas (1594?–1665) 176 pre´ciosite´ 44, 217–18, 219 pre-history 6–7, 13, 225, 226–7, 230–1, 255, 281–2 preoccupatio 255–6, 262 pre-Romanticism 10 n. 8, 11 preternatural, the 76, 77, 88, 109, 240–1 prime matter, matter 82, 105, 106, 112, 113 privation 83 proprium (particularity) 38, 55, 56 n. 99, 82, 98 pyrrhonism 237–8, 244–5, 247–9; see also epoche¯ (suspension of judgement); Sextus Empiricus qualities: in art 60, 214–15 in people 38, 47, 51, 60, 187, 194, 195 occult, see occult qualities Quemada, Bernard 32 n. 38 querelle des anciens et des modernes 13, 92 n. 69 quintessence 79, 213, 240–1, 268–9 Quintilian 28, 204 Rabelais, Franc¸ois (1494?–1553) 13, 39, 65 Racine, Jean (1639–99) 24, 176–77 raillerie 65, 204 Rambouillet, Catherine de Vivonne, Marquise de (1588–1655) 89 Raphael (Raffaello Santi) (1483–1520) 27–8, 198 n. 40 Rapin, Rene´ (1621–87) 62, 69, 210 Rawley, William (fl. 1620s) 110

Index readership 183, 250–5 reason, rationality 3, 127, 134–5, 136, 140, 147, 165, 242 recognition 38, 53, 55, 177 n. 130 refuge of ignorance 50, 86, 101–5, 115, 117, 218–19, 221 Re´gis, Pierre-Sylvain (1632–1707) 113 Regnard, Jean-Franc¸ois (1655–1709) 180–1 relations 51, 53, 83, 127, 271, 277 remarks, genre of 45, 49, 187–8 remora fish 77 Renaissance 15 Renaudot, Euse`be (1613–79) and The´ophraste Renaudot (1586–1653) 54 n. 95, 69 n. 129, 76 n. 7, 77 nn. 7 and 11, 79 nn. 20–1, 80 n. 24, 81 n. 27, 91 n. 68, 92, 97 n. 90, 98 n. 92, 133 n. 28, 135 n. 40, 146 n. 67 Renaudot, The´ophraste (1586–1653) 90, 94 Renault Clio 21 republic of letters 91 Retz, Jean Franc¸ois Paul de Gondi de (1613–79) 25 rhetoric 182–3, 196–203; see also adynaton; aposiopesis; deixis; preoccupatio; wonder Ribard, Dinah 62 n. 111, 89 n. 58, 163 n. 95 Richelet, Pierre (1626–98) 39 n. 57, 42, 44 n. 79, 45, 46–7, 51, 54 n. 94, 69 n. 130, 85 Rigolot, Franc¸ois 263 n. 73 Ripa, Cesare (fl. 1600) 196 Robert, Paul 32 n. 39, 40 n. 61, 44, 45 n. 81 Robic de Baecque, Sylvie 129 n. 12

331

Rochon, Antoine, SJ (fl. 1670s) 79 n. 21, 94–6, 115, 116 n. 145 Rodis-Lewis, Genevie`ve 131 nn. 20–1, 134 n. 34, 137 nn. 46 and 48, 140 n. 55, 145 Rohault, Jacques (1618–72) 69 n. 129, 90, 92 n. 71, 94, 98 n. 94, 105–8, 113, 114–15, 116–17 Romance languages 26 Rome 197 n. 36, 203–4 Ronsard, Pierre de (1524–85) 35, 81 Ross, Alexander (1590–1654) 77 n. 10, 81, 83 n. 37, 88, 94–5, 96 n. 83, 97 n. 90, 117 Rousset, Jean 128 n. 5, 174 n. 119 Roux, Sophie 84 n. 40, 97 n. 91, 98 n. 95, 112 n. 135, 113 n. 138, 117 nn. 151–2, 120 n. 160 Royal Society 43, 107 royalty 38, 68, 156, 216 Rubens, Peter Paul (1577–1640) 201 n. 49 Russia 205 Sable´, Madeleine de (1599–1678) 210, 218 Sabundus, Raimundus (Raimond Sebond) 237 Sacy, Louis-Isaac Le Maistre de (1613–84) 163 Saint-Evremond, Charles Marguetel de Saint-Denis, Seigneur de (1613–1703) 24, 48, 126, 192 n. 21 salons 89–91, 185, 195, 218 salvation 60, 66 San Juan de la Cruz (1542–91) 29 savoir, see knowledge

332

Index

Scaliger, Julius Caesar Scepticism, see pyrrhonism (1484–1558) 101–2 scepticism, see pyrrhonism Schmidt, Albert-Marie 80 n. 23 Schmitt, Charles B. 54 n. 93, 77 n. 14 scholastics, scholasticism 76, 79, 82–4, 86–8, 93, 94–6, 130–1, 134–6, 239 attack on 97–108; see also philosophy, new revival of 115–16, 118–19, 120 Scientific Revolution, the 87 Scotus, John Duns 76 Scude´ry, Madeleine de (1608–1701) 185, 205 secrets 36, 83, 136, 154, 214–15 sedimentation 23, 59, 174, 221, 279, 281 Sedley, David 197 n. 36, 260 n. 67 seduction 178, 180–1, 206, 207; see also coquetry self, the 15–16, 227, 229, 258, 272–4; see also identity, alteration of self-love 150–1 Sellier, Philippe 163 n. 94 semantic field 50, 78, 174 Senault, Jean-Franc¸ois (1601–72) 129–30, 135 n. 39, 144 n. 62 Seneca 148 Sennert, Daniel (1572–1637) 87 sense, sixth, see estimation sense perception 45, 77–8, 83, 109, 146–7, 169–70 senses, the 167, 244–5, 247–8 Sextus Empiricus 237, 238, 244–5, 246, 247, 249 sexual intercourse 80, 252 Shadwell, Thomas (1642?–92) 43

Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of (1671–1713) 43 Shakespeare, William (1564–1616) 3, 6, 16, 17, 96, 124, 229, 246 A Midsummer Night’s Dream (c. 1595) 282–8 Shapin, Steven 91 Shklovsky, Victor 174 Simon, Pierre-Henri 230 n. 5 Simonin, Michel 237 n. 22 Skinner, Quentin 5 societies, learned 89–91 Socrates 143, 144–6, 152, 247 Solomon, Howard M. 90 n. 61, 94 n. 76 Somaize, Antoine Baudeau de (b. 1630?) 44 Sonnino, Lee A. 65 n. 119, 149 n. 73, 196, 197, 256 n. 60 Sorel, Charles (1582?–1674) 23, 24, 62 n. 112, 64, 66, 69 soul, the 80–1, 101, 116–18, 121, 134–6, 138–9, 140, 238; see also body, the; substantial form Spanish 29–30, 280 Spingarn, J. E. 9, 10, 11, 183 n. 1, 230 n. 5 sprezzatura, see carelessness Stanley, Thomas (1625–78) 78 n. 16 Stanton, Domna C. 28 n. 25, 190 n. 13, 191 nn. 14–16, 194, 200, 204 n. 51, 205 n. 61, 211 n. 73 Starobinksi, Jean 4, 22, 23, 40 n. 60, 58 n. 103, 79 n. 18, 121 n. 164, 156 n. 81, 186–7, 195 n. 33, 205 n. 62, 217 n. 88, 229 n. 3, 234, 237 n. 23, 240, 252 n. 54, 258 n. 64, 262 n. 70

Index Stendhal (Henri Beyle) 173, 174 Stevenson, Robert Louis 281 n. 5 stoicism 131, 258 n. 64; see also Epictetus Straparola, Gianfrancesco (1480–1557?) 37 stroke of passion, see coup de foudre style 65, 172, 252, 277–8 subject, the 10 n. 8, 50–1, 53–4, 126, 146, 195, 261; see also self, the sublime, the, sublimity 10–11, 13 n. 17, 174, 196, 197–9, 200–1, 220, 260 n. 67, 278 substance 107 n. 122 substantial form 76–86, 98, 102, 104–5, 106–7, 113, 116, 118–19 substantivization 22, 26–7, 41–2, 46, 47, 49, 51, 56 superfluousness 98, 105 supernatural, the 61, 66–7, 79–82, 133 sweetness 25, 27–8, 36, 38, 67, 178–9, 261 sympathy 25, 50–1, 77, 79, 100, 132–3, 135, 146–7, 218–19, 238 in human relations 110–11, 125–6, 153–4, 158–9, 179 syntactic strings 34, 57, 122, 220, 221, 230–1, 241, 248, 258, 278, 286 syphilis 27 Taillemont, Claude de (b. 1526) 148 n. 71 tarantula, bite of 77 Tasso, Torquato (1544–95) 28–9 taste 65, 170–1, 198–9, 203, 213–14, 280

333

Taverner, William (d. 1731) 220 n. 94 technology 110 Teresa of A´vila, Saint (1515–82) 29 Tertullian 25 theology 63, 68–9, 114–15, 120, 131, 133 theory, see philosophy in the modern Continental tradition Thirouin, Laurent 173 n. 117 Thomas, Saint 152 Thormann, Wolfgang E. 280 n. 2 tides, the 60, 73–4, 76, 84, 85, 234 time 170, 172, 177 Tocanne, Bernard 200 n. 48 Toletus, Franciscus (1532–96) 61 Tolstoy, Leo 205, 208, 280 topics: of conversation 24, 59–63 of discourse 23, 25, 40–1, 49, 61, 69–70, 176, 215 topos, see commonplaces Tournon, Andre´ 237 nn. 21 and 23, 251 n. 50, 256 n. 61, 273 n. 87 translation 31, 92–3, 101, 102, 103–4, 105, 202, 219 transubstantiation 114–15, 116 treatise, genre of 128–36, 146 Tre´sor de la langue franc¸aise 40 n. 61 universal principles 78–9, 97, 132–3 unlearned, the 91, 107, 130–1, 179, 204, 209, 251 urbanite´ 183, 203–5 Urfe´, Honore´ d’ (1567–1625) 133 va va voom 21 vacuum 76, 82, 100, 101, 103 Van Dyck, Anthony (1599–1641) 198 n. 40 vanity 164–5, 166

334

Index

Vaugelas, Claude Favre de (1585–1650) 45, 49, 187–90, 205 n. 59, 220 Veyries, Jean de (fl. 1610) 129, 131 n. 18, 168 n. 104 Viala, Alain 12–13, 24 n. 7, 45 nn. 84 and 86, 89 n. 60, 184–5, 191 n. 15, 193 n. 24, 194 n. 25, 199 nn. 42–3, 209 n. 69 Villey, Pierre 210 n. 72, 211 n. 73 Virgil 26, 260–1 virtue 103, 192–3, 285 virtuoso 43 vogue-words 21–2, 24, 41–3, 45, 190 Voiture, Vincent (1597–1648) 24, 31, 44, 47, 51, 127 n. 4, 210

will, the 9, 127, 134, 135, 138, 140, 264–5, 268, 271–2 Williams, Wes 232 n. 9 wine 85 wit 42–3, 62, 219–20, 286 women 89, 90, 91, 150–1, 178, 253, 271 and galanterie 206 and honneˆtete´ 212–13 and pre´ciosite´ 218 see also grace in people; misogyny wonder 73–4, 79, 115, 196–7, 243, 287 word history, see history Wright, Thomas (1561–1623) 129 n. 11, 146 n. 67

Wartburg, Walther von 26 n. 15, 33 n. 42 weapon salve, the 77 Weber, Max 52–3 Webster, Charles 87 n. 51

Yates, Francis 96 n. 87 Zˇizˇek, Slavoj 16 Zuber, Roger 197 n. 38 Zumthor, Paul 10 and Hubert Sommer 10 n. 8

Xenophon 145–6