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Don Juan and Le Misanthrope, or the Esthetics of Individualism in Molière

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Jules Brody
Jules Brody*
Affiliation:
Queens College, Flushing, New York
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Abstract

Don Juan and Le Misanthrope depict a comic world in which success, defined as immunity to ridicule, depends largely on the aristocratic “virtues” of dexterity, style, and form—a world in which the “social esthetic” of honêteté has degenerated into a “moral anesthetic” (Krailsheimer). Thus, Don Juan and his female counterpart, Célimène, enjoy an almost constitutional invulnerability to the comic fate which overtakes their often morally superior antagonists. Don Juan is a dazzling rhetorician and consummate actor who, in contrast to the inept Sganarelle, among others, manages to exploit his individuality to the bitter end with an elegant, lordly coherency. So complete is his impunity that only a deus ex machina can thwart his self-aggrandizing schemes. Although morally wrong, he remains esthetically right. So does the devious and corrupt Célimène whose artful self-possession allows her—where Alceste, the moralist, fails—to assert her personality and speak her mind freely even in the conformistic, hypocritical society that she typifies. Don Juan s deft histrionics, like Célimène's imperturbable grace, constitute an art of living, intended by Molière perhaps as an esthetic compensation or consolation for the irremediable moral ugliness that he discerned in a still splendorous but decadent civilization.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 84 , Issue 3 , May 1969 , pp. 559 - 576
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1969

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References

1 Vie de Molière (Paris: Gallimard, 1929), p. 184.

2 On the fuller implications of this paradox, see J. Brody, “Esthétique et société chez Molière,” in Colloque des Sciences Humaines: Dramaturgie et Société, ed. Jean Jacquot (Paris: Editions du Centre National de Recherche Scientifique, 1968), pp. 307–326. The concluding pages of this essay, which deals chiefly with the comedies-ballets, contain an abbreviated version of the views on Don Juan and Le Misanthrope that will be developed here.

3 Vie de Molière, pp. 165–168.

4 Morales du Grand Siècle (Paris: Gallimard, 1948), p. 167. Bénichou's tightly reasoned analysis of Don Juan as a paean to aristocratic privilege, coupled with Doolittle's powerful contribution (“The Humanity of Molière's Don Juan,” PMLA, lxviii, June 1953, 509–534), sets mighty obstacles in the way of those who would view the titular hero as thecentral comic figure. Comic Don Juans have been proposed by W. G. Moore (“Don Juan Reconsidered,” MLR, lii, 1957, 510–517), R. Laufer (“Le Comique du personnage de Don Juan de Molière,” MLR, lviii, 1963,15–20) and J. Guicharnaud (Molière: une aventure théâtrale, Paris: Gallimard, 1963, esp. pp. 197–199, 225, 326–329).

5 Guicharnaud, pp. 321–322. It is a pleasure to pay public tribute to this remarkable work of criticism which will remain for years to come a landmark in Molière studies. Others who have commented usefully on the centrality of the master-servant relationship are: G. Brunet, “Le Comique de Molière,” Mercure de France, cliii (15 jan. 1922), 319; Moore, as cited in n. 4, above; Alfred Simon, Molière par lui-même (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1957), pp. 107–108.

6 Quotations from Don Juan follow the text of the Amsterdam edition of 1683 as edited by W. D. Howarth (Oxford: Blackwell, 1958).

7 Cf. La Bruyère, Des grands, 1: “La prevention du peuple en faveur des grands est si aveugle, et l'entetement pour leur geste, leur visage, leur ton de voix et leurs manières si général, que, s'ils s'avisaient d'être bons, cela irait à l'idolâtrie.” In commenting on this passage, Jacques Paoli is no doubt right to voice the following reservation: “Ce n'est pas certain. Car, alors la règle du jeu serait changée; les possibilités de jouissance, retournées” (Défilé entre La Bruyère et Bergson in Gbleborgs Hogskolas Ârsskrijt, xlv, 1939, 14).

8 Doolittle, p. 515, sees Gusman as but one of several characters in the play who have succumbed to what he so pertinently calls “the illusion of forms” (p. 524).

9 Guicharnaud, pp. 236, 251.

10 This situation surely shares a common comic inspiration with the following exchange between Argan and Béralde in Le Malade imaginaire (iii.xiv):

Béralde. En recevant la robe et le bonnet de médecin, vous apprendrez tout cela [le latin, les remèdes, etc.], et vous serez après plus habile que vous ne voudrez. Aegan. Quoi? l'on sait discourir sur les maladies quand on a cet habit-là?

Béralde, Oui. L'on n'a qu'à parler avec une robe et un bonnet, tout galimatias devient savant, et toute sottise devient raison.

Cf. Jourdain to the Maître de Musique: “Donnez-moi ma robe, pour mieux entendre” (i.ii).

11 Guicharnaud, pp. 249–250. Cf. Doolittle, p. 513: “He ... is more than half willing to believe that his physician's gown has given him medical skill and, more important, the wit to debate with Don Juan.”

12 On Sganarelle's materialism see Doolittle, pp. 512–514.

13 “L'Inhumain Don Juan,” Table Ronde, cxix (Nov. 1957), 72.

14 Howarth, p. xxi. I follow throughout Howarth's meticulous account of the sources.

15 Sganarelle's physical imitation of his master recalls a similar device that consists in presenting, in parallel manner, an elegant and a popular version of the same statement. R. A. Sayce has provided a partial inventory of these verbal parodies: “Quelques réflexions sur le style comique de Molière,” CAIEF, xvi (March 1964), 223–224, 230.

16 Cf. Georges Dandin i.vi: “J'enrage de bon cœur d'avoir tort, lorsque j'ai raison.”

17 Guicharnaud, p. 196. 18 P. 238; cf. p. 466.

19 Howarth, p. xxii.

20 Guicharnaud, pp. 289–293.

21 On the comic aspects of sitting, see Bergson, Le Rire, p. 40. If the author of the Observations sur ..., Le Festin de pierre can be believed, this scene achieved its comic purpose to the satisfaction of Molière's audience (Molière, Œuvres, Grands Ecrivains de la France éd., v, 229–230).

22 Studies in Self-interest: From Descartes to La Bruyère (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962), p. 82.

23 In this connection, we have much to learn from Rousset's fascinating commentary on Don Juan's Protean nature: “Don Juan et le baroque,” Diogène, xiv (April 1956), 3–21.

24 Guicharnaud, p. 312; see also pp. 194, 254, 265. Considerable attention has been lavished on the figure of Don Juan as actor. See, notably, J. Doolittle, “Human Nature and Institutions in Molière's Plots,” Studies in Seventeenth-Century French Literature Presented to Morris Bishop, ed. Jean-Jacques Demorest (Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1962), p. 159; R. J. Nelson, “The Unreconstructed Heroes of Molière,” Tulane Drama Review, rv (March 1960), 19; Rous-set, pp. 14–16. The attraction of critics to this histrionic metaphor testifies to their sense of Don Juan's artful elusive-ness. But Don Juan's special brand of playacting must be distinguished from the self-masking that is characteristic of many of Molière's comic figures. The comic “mask” always reveals, eventually, the real person hiding behind it; Don Juan's dissimulations, on the contrary, evoke the posture of the professional actor as described, in psychoanalytic terms, by Otto Fenichel: “In his ‘part’ the actor shows himself, but not as he really is. Indeed in pretending to be somebody else, he does not show himself; he conceals himself” (“On Acting,” in his Collected Papers, New York: Norton, 1954, ii, 353).

25 See Guicharnaud, pp. 194, 254, 267, 282, 286–287.

26 On the comic consequences of this ill-fated attempt to escape involvement in comedy, see the penetrating remarks by J. Morel, “Molière, ou La dramaturgie de l'honnêteté,” L'Information Littéraire, xv (Nov. 1963), 188.

27 Pp. 309–310. See below, n. 48.

28 Howarth, p. xxvi.

29 Don Juan decided to disguise himself for this reason: “Comme la partie n'est pas égale, il faut user de stratagème, et éluder adroitement le malheur qui me cherche” (ii.v); and he came to Don Carlos' aid for this reason: “La partie est trop inégale, et je ne dois pas souffrir cette lâcheté” (iii.ii).

30 See Doolittle, “The Humanity of Molière's Don Juan” pp. 520–521.

31 Guicharnaud, pp. 323–324.

32 Howarth, p. xxiii.

33 Guicharnaud, pp. 314–315.

34 P. 243.

35 P. 315.

36 “The Unreconstructed Heroes of Molière,” p. 27. Cf. Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe (Paris: Gallimard, 1942), p. 103: “Dans l'univers que Don Juan entrevoit, le ridicule aussi est compris. Il trouverait normal d'être châtié. C'est la règle du jeu. Et c'est justement sa générosité que d'avoir accepté toute la règle du jeu. Mais il sait qu'il a raison et qu'il ne peut s'agir de châtiment. Un destin n'est pas une punition,” Italics in the text.

37 Howarth, pp. xi, xxiii, xxxi-xxxii.

38 P. xxxii.

39 Quoted without indication of source in the appendix to Claude Elsen's Homo erolicus (Paris: Gallimard, 1953), p. 180.

40 Cf. Nelson, p. 16: “the king [in Tarhiffe]—through the exempt—is a key character and his intervention is not a ‘convenient’ way out of the dilemma but the only way out of it.'”

41 Cf. Q. Hope, “Society in Le Misanthrope,” FR, xxxii (Feb. 1959), 336: “Eliante's behavior shows that it is possible to be sincere without offending anyone.”

42 Lettre écrite sur la comédie du Misanthrope in Molière, Œuvres, Grands Ecrivains de la France éd., v, 431. W. G. Moore argues most convincingly that this document was “inspired, perhaps in part dictated, by Molière himself” (“Mo-here's Theory of Comedy,” L'Esprit Créateur, Fall 1966, p. 137).

43 Cf. Bergson, Le Rire, pp. 57–58.

44 “La difformité qui constitue le ridicule, sera ... une contradiction des pensées de quelque homme, de ses sentiments, de ses mœurs, de son air, de sa façon de faire, avec la nature, avec les lois reçues, avec les usages, avec ce que semble exiger la situation présente de celui en qui est la difformité” (Encyclopédie, s.v. Ridicule). Cf. Brody, “Esthétique et société chez Molière,” p. 313.

45 Pp. 436–437.

46 Guicharnaud, p. 477.

47 P. 488.

48 Pp. 490–491. According to Guicharnaud, Célimène's fate must be viewed as comic for the same reasons as Don Juan's. He feeds a gigantic appetite on “miettes” (p. 329); she spends her talents on “broutilles” (p. 486). This position, however, presupposes judgments that are foreign to the plays themselves concerning the value of the occupations and goals of Molière's characters; in Le Misanthrope no one except Alceste even ventures to question whether Célimène's pastimes are worthwhile.

49 Thibaudet has come closest to explaining the paradox of Célimène's triumph-in-defeat: “Nous pouvons ne pas aimer Célimène, mais nous l'admirons toujours un peu, et nous n'en rions jamais. Si elle nous fait rire, c'est... par son esprit.... Ce rire de joie qui secoue la salle quand Tartuffe est démasqué, vous ne l'entendrez pas quand, dans la scène des billets, Célimène est pareillement découverte. Or si nous rions, c'est d'Alceste et des marquis envers lesquels tromperie était justice. Eux partis, on ne rit ni d'Alceste ni de Célimène, et la scène n'a plus rien de comique, elle est simplement humaine” (“Le Rire de Molière,” Revue de Paris, xxix, 15 jan. 1922, 323).