Formes Brèves as Linguistic and Social Meditations in Le Misanthrope

Abstract

The heavy use of literary portrait (1) in Moliere's Le Misanthrope (1666) has been subject of a considerable amount of critical attention, (2) but aphorism's (3) frequent appearance in this much-studied has gone largely unnoticed. Those two classical formes breves serve as main weapons of coquette Celimene and misanthropist Alceste as they spar their way to play's famously ambiguous ending. (4) Declaring, Je veux qu'on soit sincere, et qu'en homme d'honneur, On ne lache aucun mot qui ne parte du coeur (1. 1. 35-36), Alceste presents his sententiousness in opposition to Celimene's performance-driven verbal depictions. However, a close analysis of self-aware forms and different functions of portraits and maxims both in and within its social frame disassembles his binary system. Rather, maxims and portraits here form a linguistic nexus whose energized presence first leads to further recognition of ability of seventeenth-century drama to anticipate modern conversations on philosophy of art and being, as scholars like Shoshana Felman, Larry Norman, and Christopher Braider teach us. (5) Viewing aphorisms and portraits as co-operatives in a circular system, a notion reinforced by circularity of play's unresolved plot, permits us to see again that a principal lesson to be learned in this ecole des salonniers concerns language. More specifically, Le Misanthrope addresses vexed questions about idea of truth value, ability of words to act, and conventionality of language. The misanthropist wants truthful, declarative speech, and yet everything in this comedy of manners suggests speech that acts and impacts, including, as I will show, Alceste's own repliques. Perhaps most importantly, linguistic and social complexity of play's featured classical short forms brings to light their crucial, flexible roles in tumultuous literary and cultural landscape of Moliere's France. While they have been traditionally grouped as fossilized artifacts of machine of cultural production under Louis XIV, maxims and portraits here point equally to modes of resistance, an idea that supports Joan DeJean's compelling argument in Ancients against Moderns: Culture Wars and Making of a Fin de Siecle (1997) that the most glorious years of Versailles knew far less social rigidity and far more social ferment than is generally imagined (xv). Portraits and maxims, seeming possessions of nobility, metamorphose under non-noble playwright's pen into meditations on types of speech and social castes that produce and appreciate them. The play's starring embedded form, salon portrait, provides key to hearing this meditation in virtue of its role as an explicit performance piece on many different levels. Just as Celimene invites her salon guests to stroll through portrait gallery (Et dans la galerie allons faire deux tours) (2. 4. 732), Moliere walks spectator-reader past a series of verbal sketches (6) that structures physically and rhetorically. Associated at time and at present with salon culture and preciosite, portraits first aid in establishing salon atmosphere of Celimene's ruelle, a place where participants cultivate a set of performance skills, one of which is art of portraiture. The art is practiced most fervently by Celimene, whose verbal depictions dramatically call attention to idea of performance at three key moments during first of which occurs in fourth of second act (often called scene des portraits). A play within a play, this pivotal moment features Celimene as star who sketches absent courtiers for her noble audience. She delivers a string of eight portrayals that provokes admiration from attending marquis Acaste and Clitandre (Pour bien peindre les gens vous etes admirable) (2. 4. 650) but sparks direct conflict with her lover Alceste. …