La mort de Laclos by Didier Laroque

Abstract

Reviews 259 come. In addition, there are places in her novel far below the reading level of the layman . The author should rewrite and attempt at least two if not three separate works from this one. Alliance Française de Santa Rosa (CA) Davida Brautman Laroque, Didier. La mort de Laclos. Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 2014. ISBN 978-2-87673931 -4. Pp. 159. 15 a. By the early 1800s the intellectual and often libertine values of the Enlightenment were well on their way to being superseded by Romanticism’s exaltation of emotion, nature, and love. Choderlos de Laclos’s Liaisons dangereuses (1782) somewhat belatedly epitomizes the former, while Rousseau’s Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse (1761), though published earlier, represents the latter and, in fact, was a major factor (along with Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther) in creating the Romantic movement. Laroque’s very late entry into this field alludes to both of these French epistolary novels. Rousseau’s Saint-Preux and his beloved Julie are evoked by the names and feelings of Laroque’s protagonist and narrator, Benjamin Saint Trois de Becq, and the woman he loves, also named Julie; further, both couples’stories echo that of Abélard and Héloïse. Laclos himself represents the Enlightenment, appearing in person at the novel’s conclusion. The narration evokes eighteenth-century fiction, as do the diaries and letters, which flesh out the story; the vocabulary and style downplay exciting events while insisting on the power of love and the joys of the countryside. Saint Trois, a light-cavalry lieutenant, wants to leave the army of Napoleon to pursue a “destin contemplatif”(120), but he must overcome inertia and find enough money to live on. He is the sort of figure Joseph Campbell wrote about in The Hero with a Thousand Faces: his father is unknown, and he is sent on a dangerous journey. Helped by a series of mysterious guides, he undergoes a painful mutilation—though not, fortunately, Abélard’s—and at the end discovers his true self. At the start he gloomily “devine le monde parvenu à sa fin”(23),but at the end,“un souffle impétueux [l]’enthousiasm[e]” (158) as he starts his new life. On the literal level of the plot, while Saint Trois is stationed in Dijon in 1803, he is ordered to deliver a sealed letter to Laclos, who has recycled himself as an artillery general and is stationed near the toe of Italy’s boot, where he may be involved in a conspiracy to restore the power of the Pope over the Catholic church in France. Because the packet might contain the conspirators’ plans, Saint Trois is menaced by the anti-clerical faction, and he is also the victim of Julie’s brother, who resents his sister’s secret marriage to a man of lower birth. No supporter of the papacy and repulsed by libertinage,Saint Trois is exalted by German romanticism. In fact, he has already published a Traité de la grandeur in Berlin which, not coincidentally , has almost the same title as a previous book by his creator, Laroque, an architect by profession. This, Laroque’s first novel, is an ambitious attempt to write history and philosophy in the form of fiction. If it is not entirely successful as a novel, it is provocative and engaging. College of San Mateo (CA) Susan Petit Leclair, Bertrand. Le vertige danois de Paul Gauguin. Arles: Actes Sud, 2014. ISBN 978-2-330-02775-9. Pp. 182. 19 a. En novembre 1885, à l’âge de 36 ans, Gauguin quitte la France pour rejoindre sa femme et ses cinq enfants à Copenhague, où il restera jusqu’en juin 1886. Que s’est-il passé pendant ce court séjour nordique, peu traité par les biographes de l’artiste? C’est ce que Leclair explore dans ce roman tout à la fois biographie, étude psychologique et essai sur l’art. Leclair présente cette époque comme un tournant dans la vie d’un homme tiraillé entre son devoir familial et son désir—voire son besoin—de peindre. Ce n’est que depuis peu que Gauguin a abandonné son travail de courtier en bourse...