Mimesis (68 page)

Through the special character of the minority to which classical French literature was addressed, and particularly through its social ideal, we can understand or at least view with sympathy the fashion of Baroque and exalted forms and also their being combined with rational categories of taste. It is, further, exclusively on the basis of the taste of the elite, the cultivated society of the inner or more peripheral circles of the court, that it is possible to explain the radical separation of the tragic from the realistic, of which the Baroque forms with their tendency to exalt the tragic personage are only a particularly striking symptom. The separation of styles in French classicism is far more than mere imitation of the ancients as the sixteenth century humanists
meant it. The antique model is transcended, and the result is a sharp break with the millennial popular and Christian tradition of mixed styles. The exaggerated tragic character (
ma gloire
) and the extreme cult of the passions are actually anti-Christian. This is a point which the theologians of the age who condemned the theater had understood very clearly, especially Nicole and Bossuet. Let us quote a few words from Bossuet’s
Maximes et Réflexions sur la Comédie
, written in 1694:

Ainsi tout le dessin d’un poète, toute la fin de son travail, c’est qu’on soit, comme son héros, épris des belles personnes, qu’on les serve comme des divinités; en un mot, qu’on leur sacrifie tout, si ce n’est peut-être la gloire, dont l’amour est plus dangereux que celui de la beauté même. (ch. 4.)

(Thus a poet’s entire design, the entire aim of his labors, is that we, like his hero, should be in love with beautiful women, that we should serve them as if they were divinities; in a word, that we should sacrifice all to them, unless perhaps it be honor, the love of which is even more dangerous than love of beauty.)

That is perfectly true, at least from the standpoint of the theologian. The passion of love as represented in Racine’s tragedies is overwhelming; despite the tragic outcome, it tempts the auditor to admire and imitate so great and sublime a fate. This holds true most strongly in Phèdre’s case. Although, as has often been observed and as Racine himself felt, she has something of the Christian woman to whom God refuses grace, the general effect is certainly not Christian at all. Every young and feeling heart is overpowered with admiration for her great all-forgetting and all-scorning passion. Equally pertinent and still more penetrating are Bossuet’s remarks on
la gloire
: they strike at the exaltation of the tragic personage which, in Christian terms, is nothing but
superbia
.

But neither could Bossuet and Nicole have approved the popular mixed-style Christian theater whose performances had been forbidden a century earlier by the Paris parliament. Their ethico-aesthetic sense of style would have rebelled against it. They were themselves inevitably imbued with the style-separating taste of the age. The great and significant Christian literature of the French seventeenth century (which, compared with the religious crises of the sixteenth century and the Enlightenment of the eighteenth, is rightly considered an age of orthodox Christianity) is consistently elevated and sublime in tone, and
becomes increasingly so as the century advances. It shuns every “base” expression, every type of concrete realism. It too takes part in the exaltation of princely personages, and almost all its productions sound as though they had been written for an elite, for
la cour et la ville
.

We know how great was the power of the classical French style throughout all Europe. It was only much later and under completely changed conditions that tragic seriousness and everyday reality could again meet.

16

THE INTERRUPTED SUPPER

O
N
nous servit à souper. Je me mis à table d’un air fort gai; mais, à la lumière de la chandelle qui était entre elle et moi, je crus apercevoir de la tristesse sur le visage et dans les yeux de ma chère maîtresse. Cette pensée m’en inspira aussi. Je remarquai que ses regards s’attachaient sur moi d’une autre façon qu’ils n’avaient accoutumé. Je ne pouvais démêler si c’était de l’amour ou de la compassion, quoiqu’il me parût que c’était un sentiment doux et languissant. Je la regardai avec la même attention; et peutêtre n’avait-elle pas moins de peine à juger de la situation de mon cœur par mes regards. Nous ne pensions ni à parler ni à manger. Enfin, je vis tomber des larmes de ses beaux yeux: perfides larmes!

“Ah Dieu!”, m’écriai-je, “vous pleurez, ma chère Manon; vous êtes affligée jusqu’à pleurer, et vous ne me dites pas un seul mot de vos peines!” Elle ne me répondit que par quelques soupirs qui augmentèrent mon inquiétude. Je me levai en tremblant; je la conjurai, avec tous les empressements de l’amour, de me découvrir le sujet de ses pleurs; j’en versai moi-même en essuyant les siens; j’étais plus mort que vif. Un barbare aurait été attendri des témoignages de ma douleur et de ma crainte.

Dans le temps que j’étais ainsi tout occupé d’elle, j’entendis le bruit de plusieurs personnes qui montaient l’escalier. On frappa doucement à la porte. Manon me donna un baiser, et, s’échappant de mes bras, elle entra rapidement dans le cabinet, qu’elle ferma aussitôt sur elle. Je me figural qu’étant un peu en désordre, elle voulait se cacher aux yeux des étrangers qui avaient frappé. J’allai leur ouvrir moi-même.

A peine avais-je ouvert, que je me vis saisir par trois hommes que je reconnus pour les laquais de mon père. …

(We were served supper. I sat down at table with an air of great gaiety; but, by the light of the candle which was between her and me, I thought that I saw a sadness on the face and in the eyes of my dear mistress. The thought aroused sadness in me. I noticed that her eyes fixed on me in an unaccustomed way. I could not
make out whether it was love or compassion, although it seemed to me to be a tender and languishing feeling. I looked at her with the same attention; and perhaps she found it not less difficult to judge the situation of my heart by my eyes. We had no thought either of speaking or eating. At last, I saw tears fall from her beautiful eyes: perfidious tears!

“Oh God,” I exclaimed, “you weep, my dear Manon; you are saddened to the point of tears, and you do not tell me one word of your griefs!” She answered only with a few sighs which increased my disquiet. I rose, trembling; I conjured her, with all the urgencies of love, to disclose the occasion of her tears to me; I shed tears myself as I dried hers; I was more dead than alive. A savage would have been softened by these evidences of my grief and my fear.

While I was thus absorbed in her, I heard the noise of several persons mounting the stairs. There was a soft knocking at the door. Manon gave me a kiss; and, slipping out of my arms, she hurried into the next room and at once shut herself in. I imagined that, being a trifle disordered, she wished to conceal herself from the eyes of the strangers who had knocked. I went to let them in myself.

I had hardly opened the door before I found myself seized by three men, whom I recognized as lackeys of my father’s. …)

This text is from the story of Manon Lescaut by the Abbé Prévost. The little novel first appeared in 1731, that is, not long before Voltaire’s
Lettres anglaises
and Montesquieu’s work on the Romans.

The situation in which the two characters, Manon and the Chevalier des Grieux, find themselves at the beginning of the scene is as follows: the Chevalier, a lad of seventeen from a good family, who has just finished school, and Manon, still younger and on her way to enter a convent, had met by chance a few weeks earlier at the posthouse in Amiens and eloped to Paris. There the two had been living merrily and idyllically together until their money threatened to run out. In this predicament Manon has entered into relations with a very rich neighbor, a revenue farmer, who in turn has notified the Chevalier’s family. On the morning of the very day when he is to be abducted, the Chevalier chances to learn of Manon’s connection with the revenue farmer. He is greatly upset, but his naive trust and his love for Manon gain the upper hand. He thinks up a harmless explanation (namely,
that Manon has used the revenue farmer as an intermediary to obtain money from her family, and intends to surprise him with it). When he returns that night, he does not question her, because he expects that she will bring up the subject herself. In this happily expectant though not quite confident mood he sits down to supper. Since the whole novel is in the form of a first-person narrative by the Chevalier, it is he himself who describes the scene.

It is a lively, dramatic scene, almost suitable for the stage in structure, and full of feeling. Three subdivisons can be distinguished in it. The first part contains the mute tension between the two lovers as they sit at table, with a candle between them, furtively watching each other and not eating. He senses that she is oppressed, and this quickly dampens his high spirits. He tries to analyze her sadness; he becomes uneasy, yet in his uneasiness there is far more loving sympathy with her depression than mistrust. The way in which he tries to interpret her emotions, his tenderly loving description of her, and even the reproaches which, as the narrator who already knows the further development of the action, he interjects here and in later passages (
perfides larmes!
) reflect his touching and guileless love, which ignores any grounds for suspicion. In Manon’s easily influenced heart we may suppose pain over the imminent separation (for she does love him in her own way), perhaps a little remorse, and perhaps fear that he will discover her treachery. For she notices too that he is not his usual self. The instinctive contact between two people so young and so close to each other is admirably expressed in this mute scene; it is steeped in sensuality, although actually erotic subjects are not mentioned. And even though he is looking back upon events long past, upon an almost farcical scene in which he is taken in by mean and ridiculous devices, the narrator still treats it with pathos and emotion.

The mute tension ceases when Manon bursts into tears. And a second and violently agitated scene begins. He cannot bear to see her weep, and when she has nothing but sighs in answer to his insistent questions, which are touching in their loving reproachfulness, he loses all self-control. He jumps up; he trembles; and, as he assails her with questions and tries to dry her tears, he begins to weep himself. Even this scene he takes seriously and emotionally in retrospect (
un barbare aurait été attendri …
). In the literature of the eighteenth century tears begin to assume an importance which they had not previously possessed as an independent motif. Their effectiveness in the border region between the soul and the senses is exploited and found to be
especially suited to produce the then fashionable thrill of mingled sentiment and eroticism. It is especially tears flowing singly from the eyes of a beautiful, easily moved, and easily inflamed woman, or rolling down her cheeks, which become increasingly popular in art and literature. They are seen and savored one by one as it were,
on les voit tomber des beaux yeux
, and are almost valued quantitatively in the frequent expression (though it does not occur here)
quelques larmes
, which it is hard to interpret without pedantry but which most strikingly characterizes the stylistic and emotional tenor of the age. It undoubtedly stems from the
Précieux
. I was struck by it for the first time in the dedication of
Andromaque
to Madame (Henriette-Anne d’Angleterre, who died very young), where Racine writes:
… on savait enfin que vous l’oviez
[that is, my tragedy]
honorée de quelques larmes
. … In this case the quantitative limitation expresses the high rank of the princess, who does Racine’s tragedy great honor merely by consecrating “a few” tears to it. In the eighteenth century, however,
quelques larmes
betoken a brief erotic confusion which demands consolation: these tears,
qu’on verse, qu’on fait tomber
, or
qu’on cache
, are waiting to be dried.

Now begins the third scene. People are heard coming up the stairs, there is a knocking at the door. Manon kisses him quickly once again (years later he still remembers that kiss); then she slips from his arms and disappears into the next room. The Chevalier is still entirely without suspicion; she is
un peu en désordre
, perhaps because she had come to supper in
négligé
, perhaps because the preceding, violently emotional scene has been a little hard on her appearance—it is only natural that she prefers not to be seen by the unknown visitors. The Chevalier opens the door himself; the callers are lackeys of his father’s; they seize him; for the moment the lovers’ idyll has come to an end. At this point I should like to say a few words about
désordre
in the feminine toilette. This too is more emphasized during the eighteenth century than in earlier times. We have already come across it, in decorous periphrasis, in a scene from
Britannicus
(
dans le simple appareil / d’une beauté qu’on vient d’arracher au sommeil
); now such motifs are sought out and exploited. The intimately erotic in descriptions and allusions becomes very much the fashion from the Regency on. All through the century we find motifs of this kind in literature (and not only in erotic literature in the strict sense): a disturbed idyll, a gust of wind, a fall, a jump, through which normally covered parts of the female body are revealed or which produce a generally “charming disorder.”
During the classical epoch, in the days of Louis XIV, this form of eroticism does not even exist in comedy, Molière is never lewd. Now erotic and sentimental intimacy are fused and the erotic element appears even in the anecdotes produced by the philosophic and scientific Enlightenment.

The whole course of action in our text reminds us, in its intimacy, of the “domestic frames” of numerous late medieval descriptions; but it is completely lacking in the creatural element which is so significant for the latter. Rather, it is characterized by a smooth and coquettish elegance. Both the subject and its presentation are far removed from every kind of penetration to the depths of existence. Like the book illustrations of the famous etchers who attained masterly perfection at about the same time, it presents us with a neatly framed, vivid, intimate picture for which one might use the term
intérieur. Manon Lescaut
and many other works of the same and a somewhat later period are rich in such
intérieurs
, whose polished elegance, tearful sentimentality, and erotic and ethical frivolity represent a mixture unique in its kind. The subject matter is supplied by scenes of love and family life in which now the erotic, now the sentimental is more strongly emphasized, but in which neither element is rarely completely absent. When the occasion permits, clothes, utensils, furnishings are described or evoked with coquettish meticulousness and great delight in movement and color. There is no question of any strict separation of styles in these works. Secondary characters from all classes, commercial transactions, and a variety of pictures of contemporary culture in general are woven into the action. The
intérieurs
are at the same time
Sittenbilder
, pictures of contemporary mores. In
Manon Lescaut
we hear a great deal about money; there are lackeys, inns, prisons; officials appear; a scene outside a theater is carefully delineated, even to the name of the street; a convoy of prostitutes on their way to be transported to America passes by; there is realism everywhere. On the other hand, the author wants us to take his story seriously; he endeavors to make it in the highest degree moral and tragic. As for its moral aspects, we hear a great deal about honor and virtue, and although the Chevalier becomes a sharper, a cheat, and almost a pander, he yet never gives up his habit of expressing noble feelings and of allowing himself the pleasure of making moralizing observations which, to be sure, are extremely trite and sometimes rather dubious but which the author evidently takes quite seriously. Indeed, even Manon is to his mind “really” virtuous;
only unfortunately her nature is such that she loves pleasure above everything. The
Avis de l’auteur
puts it this way: