SOURCE: Cooper, Barbara T. “Breaking Up/Down/Apart: ‘L'Eclatement’ as a Unifying Principle in Musset's Lorenzaccio.” Philological Quarterly 65, no. 1 (winter 1986): 103-12.

[In the following essay, Cooper explores the principle of fragmentation in Lorenzaccio, suggesting that the play is “a prototype of modern French drama.”]

In act 3, scene 3 of Musset's Lorenzaccio, Lorenzo de Médicis tries to convince Philippe Strozzi that his idealized, optimistic vision of life and humanity is the product of a (self-) delusion—an illusion.

Ah! vous avez vécu tout seul, Philippe [Lorenzo tells his aged friend]. Pareil à un fanal éclatant, vous êtes resté immobile au bord de l'ocean des hommes, et vous avez regardé dans les eaux la réflexion de votre propre lumière. … Mais moi, pendant ce temps-là, j'ai plongé; je me suis enfoncé dans cette mer houleuse de la vie; j'en ai parcouru toutes les profondeurs, couvert de ma cloche de verre; tandis que vous admiriez la surface, j'ai vu le débris des naufrages, les ossements et les Léviathans.¹

Where Philippe sees a smooth, radiant surface, Lorenzo perceives a turbulent sea whose every wave can be counted. While Philippe stands immobile on the banks of the ocean of life, Lorenzo dives to its bottom and explores its murky depths which he finds littered with the debris of ships and bodies and inhabited by not one, but several sea monsters.² Lorenzo's vision, then, is of a world that has broken up, broken down, broken apart. Yet from the fragments of men and their ambitions that he has seen, Lorenzo creates a whole: a world view. In the pages that follow, I shall attempt to show how Musset's text, like Lorenzo's underwater vision, is composed of fragments that unite to form a whole. In the end, I hope to be able to demonstrate that the fragmentation of the text, the characters, and their fictional universe makes Lorenzaccio a forerunner of many of the twentieth century's most modern dramas.

In recent years, Lorenzaccio has been the object of intense critical scrutiny. Practitioners of structuralism, socio-criticism, and semiotics—to name only a few of the theoretical orientations represented in current Musset scholarship—have all contributed to our understanding of the play in some significant way.³ Yet, as Bernard Masson already predicted in 1974:

Quel que soit, en effet, l'abord choisi, il est frappant que la pièce nous offre à peu près toujours le même visage ambigu: d'une part, la rupture des scènes, les changements de lieux, l'entrecroisement des intrigues, la multiplicité des personnages figurent un univers de la discontinuité … mais, dans le même temps, il n'est pas une scène, pas un décor, pas une intrigue, pas un personnage … qui ne témoignent, en quelque façon, pour un univers continu, homogène, intelligible, clos sur lui-même et ordonné à sa propre nécessité.⁴

Masson, of course, was right. However one approaches Lorenzaccio, one is inevitably struck by the coherence, the underlying unity of this work whose surface is so obviously fragmented. Much has already been written about the temporal and spatial discontinuities and the plural, seemingly disjunctive plot line of the play. The failure of dialogue to convince, to communicate, and to inspire action has also received much attention. I shall not, therefore, repeat those demonstrations here (see note 3). Instead, I shall assume that the breakdown of language, the breaking up of the plot, and the breaking apart of time and space represent a deliberate attempt to create the appearance of a fragmented, disordered, chaotic universe. To go beyond that appearance, to reveal the fundamental unity of Musset's piece, however, one must supplement these analyses of the play's physical components (plot, dialogue, time and space) with an examination of the political, social, and psychological dimensions of the text.

If Florence is a fragmented physical space—and the multiplicity of decors in Musset's drama suggests that it is—it is also a political entity that has broken apart. As the goldsmith tells the silk merchant in act 1, scene 2 (p. 339):

Florence était encore (il n'y a pas longtemps de cela) une bonne maison bien bâtie; tous ces grands palais, qui sont les logements de nos grandes familles, en était les colonnes. Il n'y en avait pas une, de toutes ces colonnes, qui dépassât les autres d'un pouce; elles soutenaient à elles toutes une vieille voûte bien cimentée, et nous nous promenions là-dessous sans crainte d'une pierre sur la tête.

The harmony, the unity, indeed the very integrity of this political edifice has since been destroyed, the goldsmith goes on to tell his interlocutor. “L'empereur a commencé par entrer par une assez bonne brèche dans la susdite maison” and the once protective republican shelter has now become a towering citadel—“un gros pâté informe fait de boue et de crachat”—from which the “bâtard/butor” Alexandre de Médicis and his German troops sweep down on the people of Florence (all quotes p. 339; emphasis mine).⁵ Alexandre exercises his illegitimate authority by means of brute, and brutal, force, the goldsmith claims. The city-home has been destroyed and pillaged. While the vandal Duke Alexandre “couche dans le lit de nos filles, boit nos bouteilles [et] casse nos vitres” (p. 339), many of those who once lived in peace, harmony, and safety have been forced to leave the erstwhile republic.

These exiled citizens—“pauvres bourgeois,” “pères de famille chassés de leur patrie,” republicans reduced to “des ombres silencieuses … sur la route” (1.6, p. 335)—stand as further evidence of the fragmentation of the body politic that was Florence. Dispersed to the four corners of Italy (Pisa, Rome, Venice, Ferrara), they curse the motherland from which they have been expelled (“adieu, mère stérile, qui n'as plus de lait pour tes enfants”) and which they do not recognize as theirs (“adieu, Florence la bâtarde, spectre hideux de l'antique Florence”—both p. 357). Florence, of course, is no longer theirs. It is Alexandre's, or rather, it is the Holy Roman Emperor's and the Pope's, both of whom seek to manipulate their puppet Duke from behind the screen of Cardinal Cibo's red robes.

Were Lorenzaccio a play written in accord with the rules of neo-classical composition, one might expect all of the action to occur in the antechamber to the throne room of the Duke's palace. Even as late as 1825 when Alexandre Soumet wrote his neoclassical tragedy Jeanne d'Arc, unity of place, although expanded to encompass all of Rouen, nonetheless focussed on conventional sites of power—a prison, a hall of justice, a place of execution. Lorenzaccio does not so much break with this dramatic tradition as give shape to a more diffuse, more invasive type of political power that will not be confined or defined by its buildings. The tyranny and debauchery of Alexandre's reign are felt everywhere—in the streets, the marketplaces, the homes of the humble and the palaces of the grand, as well as the Duke's court—and thus all of these spaces are represented in the text. Once united by the ties that link all citizens of a republic to one another, these multiple sites now stand as mute testimony to the shattering, yet perversely binding power of oppression.⁶

Alexandre's rule shatters more than the political unity of Florence, however. It also breaks up families. Mothers sell their daughters (1.1, p. 334 and 3.3, p. 394) and wives sacrifice their honor (2.5, p. 372) to the lustful Duke and his procurers. (See, too, 3.5, p. 398 where Lorenzo's mother accuses her son of trying to prostitute his aunt Catherine and 4.5, p. 416 where Lorenzo declares: “J'allais corrompre Catherine; je crois que je corromprais ma mère, si mon cerveau le prenait à tâche. …”) On those rare occasions when brothers seek to avenge the insults to their sisters' virtue, they are punished by exile (Maffio) or arrested (Pierre and Thomas Strozzi), thus leaving the family even more fragmented than before.

After his sons (“deux enfants de mes entrailles”) have been taken off to prison, Philippe Strozzi assures Lorenzo in 3.3 (p. 389) that “On m'arracherait les bras et les jambes, que, comme le serpent, les morceaux mutilés de Philippe se rejoindraient et se lèveraient pour la vengeance.” What his words express is not so much the intensity of his desire for vengeance as the sense of dismemberment, of radical separation from his children that he experiences as a result of their arrest.⁷ Clearly, the vigor of his assertion is belied by his drooping posture (he has collapsed on a bench) and his repeated references to his advanced age. Nonetheless, Philippe does soon assemble the Strozzi clan of which he is both the patriarch and the head (see 3.7, p. 404: “Je suis le chef de la famille” which, in addition to its literal meaning, can be read as an extension of the body-family image first advanced in scene 3). He chides his family on its willingness to be dominated by the Médicis and asks the meaning of his sons' arrest. “Est-ce à dire qu'on abattra d'un coup de hache les nobles familles de Florence, et qu'on arrachera de la terre natale des racines aussi vieilles qu'elle?” (p. 404) Yet, when his daughter dies after having drunk poisoned wine, Philippe's spirit breaks down under the weight of his accumulated despair and suffering. Refusing to pursue the revenge he had called down on the Médicis only moments before, Philippe now tells his family:

Liberté, vengeance, voyez-vous, tout cela est beau; j'ai deux fils en prison, et voilà ma fille morte. Si je reste ici, tout va mourir autour de moi. L'important, c'est que je m'en aille, et que vous vous teniez tranquilles. … Je m'en vais de ce pas à Venise.

(3.8, p. 407)

Morally “abattu” and physically “arraché de la terre natale,” Philippe will never again be able to reconstitute his once-whole being nor his family. Even after he has been reunited with his sons, Philippe discovers that his paternal authority has been eroded and that Pierre no longer treats him with filial respect. (See Pierre's outburst in 4.6, p. 419: “Vieillard obstiné! inexorable faiseur de sentences! vous serez cause de notre perte” which leads Philippe to reflect: “Ton jour est venu, Philippe! tout cela signifie que ton jour est venu.”) Thus family solidarity has been fragmented as irremediably as political unity and freedom.

Like the Florentine republic and the Strozzi family, Lorenzo, too, breaks down under the weight of tyranny. He, however, is not so much the victim of Alexandre's rule (Lorenzo notes in 4.3, p. 411 that “[Alexandre] a fait du mal aux autres, mais il m'a fait du bien, du moins à sa manière”) as of his own hubris (3.3, pp. 391-392) and ambition. “Cela est étrange,” Lorenzo reflects, “et cependant pour cette action j'ai tout quitté; la seule pensée de ce meurtre a fait tomber en poussière les rêves de ma vie; je n'ai plus été qu'une ruine, dès que ce meurtre … s'est posé sur ma route et m'a appelé à lui” (p. 411, emphasis added). When he thinks back to the time when he loved “… les fleurs, les prairies et les sonnets de Pétrarque, le spectre de [s]a jeunesse se lève devant [lui] en frissonnant.” When he thinks forward to the moment when he will kill Alexandre, “… [il a] peur de tirer l'épée flamboyante de l'archange, et de tomber en cendres sur [s]a proie” (both p. 411, emphasis added). Clearly, what Lorenzo is risking is both his moral and his physical integrity, the unity and whole(some)ness of his mind and body.

Scholars have already insisted on the importance of the many forms of Lorenzo's name used in Musset's play (see, for example, the articles by Bem and Thomas in note 3). What we need most to derive from their analyses is an awareness that the fragmented signifier Lo/renz/acci/o is not the reflection of a plurality of signifieds, but rather of an absent signified. To prove this point, one need only recall the frequency with which Lorenzo is decribed as “une ombre” (1.4, p. 347 and 3.3, p. 397), “une fumée malfaisante” (1.6, p. 355), “une vapeur infecte” (3.3, p. 390), “un spectre” (several places, but especially 2.4, p. 369), “un fantôme” (3.3, p. 395)—that is, a thing without substance. To give shape to his being, Lorenzo has had to put on “[un] masque de plâtre” (3.3, p. 393) and “[les] habits neufs de la confrérie du vice” (3.3, p 394; 4.5, p. 416). He has become an effigy—“un homme de cire,” “une statue”—an empty shell. The uncertainty of Lorenzo's being and identity is further emphasized by the repeated use of interrogative and conditional sentences. In 2.4 (p. 370), for example, Lorenzo's uncle Bindo asks him: “Etes-vous des nôtres, ou n'en êtes-vous pas? voilà ce qu'il nous faut savoir.” In 3.3 (p. 388), Philippe insists: “… Si la hideuse comédie que tu joues m'a trouvé impassible et fidèle spectateur, que l'homme sorte de l'histrion. Si tu as jamais été quelque chose d'honnête, sois-le aujourd'hui.” In the end, Lorenzo is nothing more than his act (see 4.10, p. 426: “C'est toi, Renzo?—Seigneur, n'en doutez pas.” Emphasis added.) It is an act without consequence and thus without duration; it is as ephemeral as it is unsubstantial. Having accomplished his goal, Lorenzo likewise disappears without a trace.

Lorenzo's death (5.6, p. 441) provides a reverse image of the assassination of the Duke. It is an image marked by dispersal. Night becomes day; a closed space is replaced by an open space; a known and seen assassin is replaced by one who is unknown and unseen; and the bed, a place of stillness and repose, is replaced by the lagoon, a place of movement and flux. What is more, Lorenzo's wounds and his watery grave point to his physical disintegration. Set upon by a vicious populace (“des Léviathans”?), Lorenzo is shoved into the lagoon where his body will no doubt be transformed into an “ossement,” the anonymous debris of his all too human ambition.

Whereas earlier studies of Musset's play have emphasized the fragmentation of time, space, and the plot line, or the divorce between word and deed, saying and doing, I have tried to show here how the principle of “l'éclatement”—of breaking up/down/apart—operates in the spheres of politics, society, and psychology, on the levels of theme, characterization, and image. One could, of course, multiply the examples given here. A study of the notion of legitimacy would reveal the links among family, state, and psyche that underlie the passages cited above and at the same time would extend our examination of the images of fragmentation even further. Thus when Lorenzo trembles at the sight of a sword in 1.4, the Duke mockingly chides him: “Fi donc! tu fais honte au nom des Médicis. Je ne suis qu'un bâtard, et je le porterais mieux que toi, qui es légitime?” (p. 348, emphasis added). Alexandre's illegitimacy is more than a fact of his birth, however. “Un bâtard, une moitié de Médicis,” as the goldsmith describes him in 1.2 (p. 339), Alexandre is also the illegitimate ruler of Florence. Imposed on the populace by the Emperor and the Pope, he is neither the rightful heir to the throne nor the freely-elected (or consented) choice of “les grandes familles.” Lorenzo, on the other hand, might properly have governed the city. “Sa naissance ne l'appelait-elle pas au trône? … Ne devais-je pas m'attendre à cela?” asks his mother (1.6, p. 355). But if Lorenzo's youthful beauty and noble ambitions once led Marie Soderini to kiss her son on the forehead “en pensant au père de la patrie,” she now judges that “… il fait tourner à un infâme usage jusqu'à la glorieuse mémoire de ses aïeux” (1.6, pp. 354 and 355; emphasis added). Agitated and uncertain as he prepares to assassinate his cousin Alexandre (4.3, p. 411), Lorenzo himself questions the legitimacy of his act (“Que m'avait fait cet homme?”), his motivation (“Le spectre de mon père me conduisait-il, comme Oreste, vers un nouvel Egiste?”), his birth and his humanity (“De quel tigre a rêvé ma mère enceinte de moi? … De quelles entrailles fauves, de quels velus embrassements suis-je donc sorti?”).⁸ The turmoil of his mind is reflected in the repeated use of interrogative sentences and the breakdown of logical progression from one thought to the next. Like these thoughts, illegitimacy is marked by a failure, a breakdown of the principles of succession. It will be recalled that Musset's contemporaries considered this very lack of logical, temporal, and physical succession to be the principal defect of the play. By now, however, it should be obvious that the underlying similarities between the “forme” and the “fond” of the text are in fact the primary source of its aesthetic unity. Having said that, it is time to turn our attention to the broader issue posed by Musset's pervasive use of the themes and techniques of “l'éclatement,” that is, to the question of the play's modernity.

In Part 2, chapter 5 of his book Théâtre et pré-cinéma (Paris: Nizet, 1978), Hassan El Nouty suggested that Lorenzaccio, however disconcerting it might have been for Musset's contemporaries, appeals to the modern reader/viewer because of its cinematographic qualities. Professor El Nouty is right, of course. The cutting and editing techniques, the varied camera angles and distances that are the stock in trade of contemporary filmmakers can all be found in Musset's play. Nonetheless, if we are to discover the connections between Lorenzaccio and the modern French theater, we might do well to look beyond these purely technical devices and examine the way Musset's armchair drama casts its “hero” into the world.

Certainly, Musset's alienated, corrupt hero is a product of his age and of the influence of English and German romanticism on his creator. Yet it is also true that Lorenzo resembles those twentieth-century protagonists who have lost touch with or become disconnected from a collectivity (humanity) which they frequently despise. Like them, Lorenzo is both victimizer and victim, director and dupe of the absurdity of existence, the irrationality of evil. His radical Otherness, like theirs, is underscored by logical discontinuities, verbal incongruities, and spatial and temporal disjunctions. More than anything else, perhaps, it is this “éclatement,” this breakdown of causality and personality, of communication and community that makes Lorenzaccio a prototype of modern French drama.

In L'Ecole du spectateur (Paris: Editions sociales, 1981), Anne Ubersfeld has written at length about the discontinuities that mark the contemporary theater. It seems appropriate, then, to turn to her for a salutary word of caution before arriving at a conclusion. Ubersfeld notes (p. 302) that

Dans tous les cas la discontinuité n'a pas toujours le même sens ou la même fonction; elle peut: a) donner des images de la dislocation du monde et avoir sur ce point valeur et fonctionnement référentiel; b) montrer chez l'énonciateur la destruction (subjective) d'une vue cohérente du monde, l'impossibilité de penser le monde et surtout de le penser comme représentable; c) elle peut marquer le dégagement par rapport à un sujet centralisé, que ce sujet soit l'énonciateur, le personnage ou le comédien.

Ubersfeld's distinctions are pertinent to our discussion of the modernity of Lorenzaccio precisely because they allow us to perceive the continuities and discontinuities that mark the Weltanschauung of nineteenth- and twentieth-century French dramatists. Thus, although Musset's world may have been different from that of, say, Artaud, Ionesco, or Beckett, one can, I think, defend the thesis that Lorenzaccio, like their works, stands in part as a referential reflection of the dislocations each dramatist observed in the world around him. (Our readings of Musset's play and, for example, of Le Rhinocéros would be as much impoverished by ignoring their referential allusions as by limiting our interpretations of those texts to ideas supported by historical analogies.)

Similarly, Musset may be seen as precursor of modern drama to the extent that his play shows signs of a nascent “dégagement par rapport à un sujet centralisé” (emphasis in the original quote, cited above). To be sure, in typical early nineteenth-century fashion, Lorenzaccio gives his name to Musset's piece. Yet Lorenzo is neither the sole nor always the central subject of the drama. As Atle Kittang and others have convincingly shown (note 3, supra), Lorenzo shares the actantial role of subject with other protagonists in the play just as, on a thematic level, he shares the title of subject with the city of Florence. Musset, however, does not go as far as his twentieth-century counterparts in exploring the problems of subjective unity or unity of subject. However much his work forecasts our modern preoccupations with these problems, it is nonetheless true that Musset's views are firmly rooted in the romantic literature, philosophy, and psychology of his age.

It is doubtless this same romantic vision of the universe that keeps Musset from sharing twentieth-century dramatists' belief that the world is no longer a coherent whole, that it is impossible “de penser le monde et surtout de le penser représentable” (see quote above). On the contrary, as I argued at the very beginning of this study and as I hope to have shown in the pages that followed, the fragmentation that marks Musset's text does not so much render the dramatized world unrepresentable as differently representable—or as the French might say, “représentable autrement.” Just as Lorenzo constructed a unified vision of the world from the underwater debris he poetically equated with humanity and human ambitions, so, too, has Musset created a unified fiction from his fragmented text. As Ubersfeld writes in L'Ecole du spectateur: “A travers le discontinu, il y a toujours quelque part le fil de la continuité …”(p. 302). To my mind, her statement at once describes Musset's play and its relation to modern French drama.

Notes

1. Alfred De Musset, Théâtre 1, Texte intégral (Paris: Garnier-Flammarion, 1964), 3.3, p. 393. Further references to Lorenzaccio will be noted in my text. For a recent study of the image of the shipwreck in the nineteenth century, see ch. 10: “Perils of the Deep” in Martin Meisel, Realizations: Narrative, Pictorial, and Theatrical Arts in Nineteenth-Century England. (Princeton U. Press, 1983).

2. In her article “Révolution et topique de la cité: Lorenzaccio,” Littérature 24 (1976): 49, Anne Ubersfeld identifies the Leviathan not with the Biblical monster, but with its Hobbesean descendant, “L'Etat qu'il définit comme le pouvoir de créer et de casser toute loi.” (This definition of Hobbes's Leviathan is not Ubersfeld's but that of Le Petit Larousse illustré [Paris: Larousse, 1982], p. 1466 and the emphasis is mine.) As will be seen, I share her conviction.

3. It would be impossible to list all the recent studies of Lorenzaccio here. Some of the most significant for this examination of Musset's play include Jeanne Bem, “Lorenzaccio entre l'Histoire et le fantasme,” Poétique 11, no. 44 (1980): 451-61; Claude Duchet, “Théâtre et sociocritique: La Crise de la parole dans deux pièces de Musset,” pp. 147-56 in Duchet et al. eds., Sociocritique (Paris: Nathan, 1979); Atle Kittang, “Action et langage dans Lorenzaccio d'Alfred Musset,” Revue romane 10, no. 1 (1975): 33-50; Bernard Masson, Musset et le théâtre intérieur (Paris: Colin, 1974); Walter Moser, “Lorenzaccio: le Carnaval et le Cardinal,” Romantisme 19 (1978): 94-108; Jean-Jacques Thomas, “Les Maîtres-mots de Musset: Peuple et pouvoir dans Lorenzaccio,” pp. 179-96 in Michel Glatigny and Jacques Guilhaumou, eds., Peuple et pouvoir: Etudes de léxicologie politique (Lille: Presses Universitaires de Lille, 1981); Anne Ubersfeld, “Le Portrait du peintre,” Revue des sciences humaines no. 165 (1977): 39-48 and “Le Moi-statue ou le discours auto-réflexif chez Musset,” pp. 63-79 in Journées d'études sur Alfred de Musset (Clermont-Ferrand: SER Faculté de lettres/Société des Etudes Romantiques, 1978).

4. In Musset et le théâtre intérieur, p. 122.

5. Lorenzo's uncle Bindo Altoviti will take up this image again when he declares in 2.4 (p. 370): “Toutes les grandes familles voient bien que le despotisme des Médicis n'est ni juste ni tolérable. De quel droit laisserions-nous s'élever paisiblement cette maison orgueilleuse sur les ruines de nos privilèges?” (emphasis added). On a more personal level, Lorenzo's mother Marie compares her dreams to a fairy palace that has turned into a dilapidated shack. She complains in 1.6 (p. 355): “Cela est trop cruel d'avoir vécu dans un palais de fées, où murmuraient les cantiques des anges, de s'y être endormie, bercée par son fils, et de se réveiller dans une masure ensanglantée, pleine de débris d'orgie et de restes humains, dans les bras d'un spectre hideux qui vous tue en vous appelant encore du nom mère” (emphasis added).

6. A similar argument can be made regarding unity of time. Time can be regulated and harmonious like the workings of a benevolent government or it can be as inexorable and unpredictable as tyranny.

7. Writing about a certain type of modern literature in an article entitled “La Déliaison,” (Littérature 3 [1971]: 48), André Green has suggested that “… il s'agit moins de représenter le corps que de le faire vivre en éclats, fragmentés et morcelés.” It seems to me that this is precisely the effect achieved by Philippe's words.

8. For a recent analysis of the psychological dimension of the play and the theme of the absent father, see Jules Bedner, “Lorenzaccio ou Oedipe à Florence,” Neophilologus 67, no. 1 (1983): 42-54 and Naomi Schor, “La Pèrodie: Superposition dans Lorenzaccio,” pp. 73-86 in Ross Chambers, ed., Discours et pouvoir (Dept. of Romance Langs., U. of Michigan, 1982).