Певец граций: галантный Монтескье («Книдский храм» и «Путешествие в пафос»)

Abstract

The article represents the first academic study of two early Montesquieu’s works — “The Temple of Gnidos” (1725) and “Journey to Paphos” (1727). Under the guise of ancient heroes and gods these “novels with a key” portray real people easily recognizable by contemporaries — the author himself and his entourage. Mixing reality and fiction, Greek and Roman gods, using allegories, Montesquieu creates a “possible impossible world,” characteristic for the Baroque literature of the 17th century. The term was proposed by L. Dolezel, the founder of the theory of “possible worlds,” which allows a deeper understanding of how Montesquieu portrays an ideal world, opposed to the French reality, which he criticizes, as in his first novel “Persian Letters.” However, such features as fragmentation, frivolity, double meaning, hedonism are characteristic of the Rococo aesthetics that took shape in France at the beginning of the 18th century. These features are also inherent to such recognized author’s masterpieces as “Persian Letters” and “The Spirit of Laws” which prove out the unity of his artistic manner. Montesquieu’s early works clearly demonstrate the connection between the Baroque and the Rococo and represent the future author of the “Spirit of Laws” with a completely different side as a “singer of Graces” who contributed to the formation of a new aesthetics.