My account of the controversy in France draws on an article
by Andrew Gallix, “Why a 17th-century novel is a hot political issue in
France,” The Guardian, Tuesday, March 31, 2009 which notes “France may
no longer be the centre of world culture, but culture remains at the centre of
what it means to be French,” and a retrospective review of the issue a few
years later by Elisabeth Zerofsky, “Of Presidents and Princesses,” The New
Yorker, November 8, 2012.
The unpretentious translations are my own. The original French texts of quoted passages longer
than a phrase are provided as end-notes.
Though one hardly
expects venal politicians, especially reactionaries, to have any taste,
Nicholas Sarkozy seemed to have entertained a particular animus against Madame
de La Fayette’s novel La Princesse de Clèves (1678). Always a mediocre student, Mr. Sarkozy must
have felt confounded by his literature assignments to such an extent that his
distress was still evident when, decades after his schooldays, he complained of
the poor princess “I’ve suffered greatly by her.” To him it could only have been “either a
sadist or an idiot” that included the novel in civil service examinations. Sarkozy asked a sympathetic audience in
mockery whether “it happens to you often that you ask a counter clerk what she
thought of The Princess of Clèves.”
The fact that
aspiring postal workers in the United
States need not show any familiarity with Moby Dick or the poems of
Emily Dickinson does indeed indicate a cultural difference. The reaction of the French to the denigration
of what is generally considered a cultural treasure is likewise difficult to
imagine occurring in this country. In
reaction to Sarkozy’s remarks, university students staged readings of the
novel, publishers issued three new editions, and booklovers sent copies of Mme.
de La Fayette’s book to the president in protest. (Lovers of literature may be reassured to
recall that Mr. Sarkozy was later twice convicted of peculation.)
In this country,
where respect for the nation’s cultural patrimony is far feebler, we might well
envy the vigorous defense the French mounted in behalf of their Princesse. Yet it remains a useful exercise to ignore
the immediate reaction of considering anyone who would object to the study of
the novel a know-nothing philistine and consider more seriously Sarkozy’s
attitude. What, in fact, is the value to
the average citizen of studying such old literature? And why should such knowledge be encouraged
by the state?
The most
fundamental reason that the novel was required reading is the simple fact that
from the very outset European education has been founded on textual study. From the ancient Greeks through the medievals
education began with the trivium of grammar, logic, and rhetoric, all concerned
with the effective use of language. The
demands on the student increase when the texts that are studied use archaic or
obsolete language and concepts. Europe went
so far as to rely heavily on the challenges of Greek and Latin to provide a
sufficient mental workout to train young people. Oxford today has a flourishing program in
English literature, but the subject was never taught there until 1894 and it
was ten years more before the first chair of the subject was established. Until that time, it was thought that the best
training, no matter what career the student meant to pursue, was the study of
dead languages. Now, over a hundred
years later in America, even the ideal of a liberal education using only English
has been largely discarded in favor of vocational training.
The idea that
people are best educated by reading the classics is not peculiar to
Europe. Traditional Chinese and Indian
scholars had to know historical philology to read documents already
ancient. In China examinations centered
on the Confucian classics determined government appointments from the Sui
Dynasty until the twentieth century.
Westerners who have experienced Ph. D. comprehensives and dissertation
defenses will identify with the anxiety of the Chinese candidates. Similarly, traditional schools in India such
as the great university at Nalanda maintained vast libraries. The focus of study was the Sanskrit Vedas,
including reading and memorization, with attention to philosophy, textual
criticism, prosody, and logic. The only
non-literary topics were astronomy and medicine. .
Of course, those
who succeeded in their studies eventually had to acquire new and more obviously
practical skills once they began their careers as administrators, bankers, or
generals, but (with the exceptions of medicine, law, and theology) this
training was on the job. The location of
literary studies at the center of education, once almost universal, has become
marginal at best, with English 101, a freshman essay-writing class, a sorry
lingering vestige of millennia of practice.
Whether or not
one accepts the reading of literature as the best basis for education, poetry
clearly is an essential tool for the species since it is found in every human
society. Perhaps the most undeniable
function is entertainment. Whatever else
people are doing as they sit around a fire hearing Anansi stories or at home
reading a bestseller or recline in a lounge chair in one chamber of a mall’s
multiplex theater, they are amusing themselves.
As soon as it was published La Princesse de
Clèves was immensely popular.
Demand outstripped supply and a reader in the provinces had a difficult
time obtaining a copy.
The book’s appeal
may have in part derived from its unprecedented realism, as the author, a comtesse,
knew well the court of her own day, but her picture is hardly contained by
rules of verisimilitude. With its center
in the glittering court of Henri II graced by the Pléiade poets and written during
the even more spectacular reign of Louis XIV when Versailles was built, the
narrative doubtless excited reader’s interest just as stories of celebrities,
largely unreal, do yet today.
An idealized glaze covers in particular
the novel’s opening.
Grandeur and sophistication have never
appeared in France with as much radiance as in the latter years of the reign of
Henri II.
Never had there been a court with
so many beautiful women and such admirably well-made men. [1]
Even in the context of this
magnificent court, the novel’s leading characters stand out. The Duc de Nemours is “a masterpiece of
nature” 9“un chef-d'œuvre de la nature”) and the Princesse herself
is a similar marvel.
There then appeared at court a beauty,
which attracted the eyes of all the world, and one must believe that she was a
perfect beauty, to be so greatly admired in a setting where people were so accustomed
to see beautiful people. [2]
This excess of
refinement savors of the précieuse sensibility practiced in the salon of
Catherine de Vivonne, Marquise de Rambouillet, and familiar from Molière's
satire Les Précieuses ridicules.
The hyper-aesthetic values of the court recall those of Heian
Japan. Readers who did not dwell in such
lofty circles were nonetheless dazzled by the glory of their betters represented
on the page, as indeed many readers are yet today..
Apart from
internal monologues as the duc and the princesse cope with their
attraction to each other, much of the plot concerns plausible complications
such as the stolen portrait or the note the vidame asks Nemours to claim was
sent to him. Several events, however,
resemble the unlikely coincidences prominent in earlier romances. The scene of Nemours eavesdropping on
Monsieur and Madame de Clèves in the garden and the king’s fateful insistence
on making a final run in the tournament, thus fulfilling a prophecy, would seem
contrived in a narration that truly aims at realism. La Princesse de Clèves thus offers a
plot with a theme of love, founded in realism, but heightened by hyperbole and
turns of plot too good to be true.
Traditionally,
though, apologists for poetry have most often maintained that literature is
essentially justified not as entertainment but as instruction, revealing
“truths” about experience. Very likely
Madame de La Fayette agreed with Pierre Daniel Huet who introduced her novel Zayde
(1670) with an essay “Sur l’origine des romans” that noted “Love must be
the principal subject of novels” (“L’amour doit être principal subjet des
romans”) and specified the goal of fiction writers as “the instruction of
the reader” (“l’instruction des lecteurs”) toward the end of “the
correction of morals” (“la correction des moeurs”). For this reason, he specifies that “virtue
must always be crowned and vice chastised” (“il faut toujours faire
la vertu couronne & la vice châtié”), a requirement
that prefigures the old Motion
Picture Code.
The Princesse is taught
the most conservative moral behavior by her mother.
She frequently described love to her
daughter, showing her what was pleasant about it in order that she might more easily
understand what was dangerous: she told her of men’s deceit, their trickery and
infidelity, the domestic unhappiness caused by liaisons. And she explained to her also, on the other
hand, what peace accompanies the life of an honest woman, and how much virtue
adds to the brilliance and stature of a person who possesses beauty and high
birth. But she showed her as well how
difficult it is to maintain such virtue by an extreme self-control and by
taking extreme care to retain always that which alone can bring a woman
happiness which is to love her spouse and to be loved by him. [3]
Yet the Princess
is such a paragon that she surpasses any ordinary faithful wife. Though she lacks love for her husband and
feels a passionate attraction to the Duke, her behavior remains impeccable. She
is so exceedingly punctilious that even after M. de Clèves’ decease, she insists
on remaining loyal to his memory. The
novel is less a love story than a tale of a quasi-saint. The heroine’s scrupulous morality is no less a
marvel than her beauty and charm, leading her to a heroic act of self-denial. She herself says, “I know that there is
nothing more difficult than what I mean to do.” (“Je sais bien qu'il n'y a
rien de plus difficile que ce que j'entreprends.”) An Olympic athlete of virtue, she elevates
honor, what she calls “duty” (devoir) over love, leaving her beautiful
Duke de Nemours a courtly lover whose affair is, like the “distant love” of
Jaufre Rudel, the more perfect for being unconsummated. Her “austere virtue” (“austère vertu”)
finds a physical alliance with him impossible, while his devotion, equally
“austere” under the circumstances, is likewise exemplary.
In the last
paragraphs M. de Nemours’s emotional energy slowly fades. “In the end, after years had gone by, and
absence had lessened his suffering and extinguished
his passion.” [4] This leaves the Princess shining alone in the
sky, her life blossoming, like the lives of the canonized saints of the church,
with many “examples of matchless virtue” (“exemples de vertu inimitables”).
Though the book
may exalt self-control as a theme, all art aims at beauty, and Mme. de La
Fayette’s prose style has, since the publication of La Princesse, been
considered an outstanding example of anti-Baroque neo-Classicism. Her sentences are clear and concise, lacking
the elaboration and obscurity associated with trends like English Euphuism,
Spanish Gongorism, or Italian Marinism. Her
words are largely abstract with none of the accumulation of concrete specifics
with which Flaubert and Balzac build effects.
Her point of view is less like a camera, recording a series of events
more or less objectively, than it is a stream of consciousness in the minds of
her characters, an exchange of subjectivities in which her readers may
imaginatively share.
The limpid
clarity of her phrasing supports the idealized aspects of the court and enacts
the refined sensibilities of the duc and the princesse. Due to the prestige accorded ancient writers,
a sort of Classical simplicity, combining restraint and elegance, was
considered the pinnacle of beauty. By
praising Mme. de La Fayette’s book, critics might pay homage to France as the
home of a true revival of art, the center of culture in Europe. This nationalistic concern with purity of
language had had earlier been the motive for the foundation of L'Académie
française, which continues to this day its attempts to safeguard the French
language from ordinary linguistic evolution.
Here, of course,
is the source of the demanding curriculum of the lycées générals. To know a book like La Princesse de Clèves
conveys specifics of history which contribute to a sense of nationhood, but it
also cultivates a particular accompanying sensibility, in the French case
privileging abstraction and formal beauty.
A reader who has assimilated the style as well as the content of such
canonical works might be considered authentically French, though his skin be
Senegalese. Texts like Madame de La
Fayette’s novel unite the community of French-speakers in the same way that
learning the lore of a tribe does for oral peoples. And, like any young person being initiated in
the myths of a tribe, the French student hoping only for a high mark comes not
only to know the group’s history and values, but to consider them exceptional
and superior.
Defenders of the
French literary canon might then argue first of all, that, judging by
historical practice, the study of the classics has been found the best training
for general intellectual acuity.
Further, reading “great books” also has been considered a significant
way to inculcate desirable social and ethical behavior. The concept of a shared national heritage
encourages social cohesion, pride, and even nationalism. Such non-aesthetic ends have quite naturally
played a role in the policies of government-run schools, libraries, and civil
service systems, but surely the primary reason for reading Madame de La Fayette
(or Racine or Apollinaire), the paramount motive in fact for consumption of all
art, is the pleasure found in beauty. In
La Princesse de Clèves one may experience the delights of narrative
turns and participate through imagination in the characters’ profound emotional
experiences. The reader will become ever
more sensitive to the appreciation of the beauty of the author’s prose. Such rewards make other considerations
trivial. Politicians, especially the
poor students among them and those insensitive to beauty who think only of
economic value may question whether people in general should know literature. Yet a land of post office workers and motor
vehicle clerks who are at least capable of reading the classics must surely be
a more livable and more humane place than the current United States in which
even otherwise well-educated people consume little art not viewable on their
streaming services.
Most Frenchmen,
politicians and citizens, have long been proud of the prestige enjoyed by their
language and culture. In this country we
have seen the doublespeak of demagogues who call what is in the common interest
elitist while promoting the interests of the one percent. The right-wing Sarkozy’s opposition to La Princesse de Clèves ignores
the rewards acquaintance with her might offer to readers: not only the mental
calisthenics considered through history to be the most beneficial, but also the
same shared culture that unites tribal societies, resulting in a benign sort of
nationalism and encouraging every sort of excellence. The formulation of a national curriculum based
on the classics means that these rewards are available, not only to those who
attend exclusive private schools, but to every citizen equally. Those willing to read with an open mind will
develop a capacity for the appreciation of beauty, an appetite easy and
inexpensive to satisfy, allowing all citizens to spend time with the finest
productions of human ingenuity and in that way to construct bonds with
fellow citizens through their shared experience. Making such texts the basis of education brings
multiple benefits, not the least of which is making available to everyone the
pleasures of aesthetic and intellectual life.
1. La magnificence et
la galanterie n'ont jamais paru en France avec tant d'éclat que dans les
dernières années du règne de Henri second. . . .Jamais cour n'a eu tant de
belles personnes et d'hommes admirablement bien faits.
2. Il parut alors une
beauté à la cour, qui attira les yeux de tout le monde, et l'on doit croire que
c'était une beauté parfaite, puisqu'elle donna de l'admiration dans un lieu où
l'on était si accoutumé à voir de belles personnes.
3. Elle faisait
souvent à sa fille des peintures de l'amour ; elle lui montrait ce qu'il a
d'agréable pour la persuader plus aisément sur ce qu'elle lui en apprenait de
dangereux ; elle lui contait le peu de sincérité des hommes, leurs tromperies
et leur infidélité, les malheurs domestiques où plongent les engagements; et
elle lui faisait voir, d'un autre côté, quelle tranquillité suivait la vie
d'une honnête femme, et combien la vertu donnait d'éclat et d'élévation à une
personne qui avait de la beauté et de la naissance. Mais elle lui faisait voir
aussi combien il était difficile de conserver cette vertu, que par une extrême
défiance de soi-même, et par un grand soin de s'attacher à ce qui seul peut
faire le bonheur d'une femme, qui est d'aimer son mari et d'en être aimée.
4. Enfin, des années
entières s'étant passées, le temps et l'absence ralentirent sa douleur et
éteignirent sa passion.
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