SOURCE: Weber, Joseph G. “The Maximes as Theatre.” In L'Image du souverain dans le theatre de 1600 a 1650/Maximes/Madame de Villedieu, edited by Milorad R. Margitic and Byron R. Wells, pp. 15-33. Paris: Papers on French Seventeenth Century Literature, 1987.

[In this essay, Weber argues that the use of personification, movement, disguises, and other elements in the Maximes are characteristic of classical drama.]

Faced with one of the more elusive and cryptic works of literature, analysts have gone to considerable length to identify, contextualize and systematize the Maximes of La Rochefoucauld. The discontinuity of the work itself is suggested by its full title: Réflexions ou sentences et maximes morales (1665). Initially La Rochefoucauld appears to have thought of them as sentences—“la maladie des sentences,” as he put it—but later adopted a suggestion, if we are to believe Huet, to call them maximes. A good number of fragments can indeed be described as réflexions morales.¹

The Maximes are not portraits, although they suggest the art of literary portraiture. A portrait tends to be a reflection and description of individual experiences (as in Réflexions diverses XIX and the “Appendice aux Evénements de ce siècle”), whereas the maxim appears more as a generality, a synthesis of experience, tending toward abstraction. It is a literary shortcut.² The lapidary quality of the Maximes might lead readers to adopt Lanson or Pierre-Henri Simon's contention that there is a single truth to be discovered at the heart of the work. Others see in the Maximes a constant process of recontextualization of truth. Truth in the Maximes is continuously being decoded and recoded. For others still, there is no key to the Maximes. Their structure is labyrinthine and their fundamental ambiguity suggests a work without meaning. In Starobinski's view, there is no possible center for the Maximes. Their center is a “creux,” a “vide,” with no “centre directeur.”³

A given maxim can be said to fix the final state of an experience which has taken place. It can be described as representing a “definitive insight,” an “eternal present,” where there is no opening to the future.⁴ Truth is thus fixed, even transfixed in its iterated appearance, much like a single frame of a moving picture in which we see orgueil, intérêt, vertu, jalousie and other personified moral qualities in a variety of individual contexts. Experience becomes language. Life appears in a given maxim as a completed drama. The reader grasps this from afar as a definitive insight. What we discover is a discontinuous, detemporized, single-frame entry into the essential human drama of the self-in-context, static, immobilized in a fragment of space-time. If Ciceronian prose is the art of transition, the Maximes are the art of the intransitive, of curt style, which creates a sense of movement that Kuentz has described as the “style chatoyant” of the Maximes.⁵

The problem of fixity and movement, meaning and ambiguity in the Maximes has elicited a number of interesting comparisons. La Fontaine referred to them as a river or canal of moving water (“L'Homme et son image”); Lanson a series of pin-pricks that deflate human aspirations; Barthes a string of pearls, a large stone composed of smaller stones, a discontinuous symphony or incantation; Lichtenberg describes them as a picnic to which the author brings words and the reader meaning. Many critics have called them theme and variation; Lewis a ritualistic chant of obsessions; Kuentz surrealistic games. Starobinski and Todorov, like La Rochefoucauld himself, have thought of them as comédie, dramaturgie figurée.⁶ Unlike Balzac's Human Comedy, which is situated within society, La Rochefoucauld's comédie humaine is centered within the human being and the human psyche (M [maxime] 10, 504, Maximes Supprimées 1).

Such a view is clearly supported by the extensive use of personification in the Maximes and the shifting, iterative appearances of the same personifications through a variety of maxims and disguises which elaborate ever more nuanced insights. The device of personification suggests that the readers perspective, too, is not one of fixity but a dynamic, constantly shifting interplay with the text. The internal drama of the mind (psyche) and experience is constantly moving through prismatic realignment to an open and ongoing definition of roles and players in the masking and unmasking of perception. “L'homme n'est donc que déguisement, que mensonge et hypocrisie …” (Pensée 978-543)⁷ “… le monde n'est composé que de mines.” (M 256) Each person is a mask to others and a drama of disguises to themselves. The world of illusion is designed and acted out, both for ourselves and for others (M 119, 152, 373). Mutual disguises assure a kind of internal iteration in which the reciprocity of illusion allows us to enter others and others to enter us (M 246, 254, 282). Such a procedure can be described as characteristic of classical drama in general.⁸ In this drama being is its own spectator.⁹

It is others who force us to disguise our vices as virtues (M 150). The disguise saves us from the free reign of amour-propre, who, aggressive and unrelenting, would run riot over ourselves and others in an act of total destruction and self-annihilation, making men idolaters of themselves and tyrants over others (MS [maxime supprimée]] 1).

“Chacun veut être un autre, et n'être plus ce qu'il est …” (RD [réflexion diverse] III) Hell clearly is not others, it is ourself. “Le moi est haïssable.” (Pensée 597-455).¹⁰ It is within the disguises mutually agreed upon and acted out, that we find survival, or what Todorov has called “paradis.”¹¹ Society requires these mutual disguises and man must comply, for he cannot exist outside society (RD III).

Admission to the theaters of society and the mind presupposes playing a part as opposed to being oneself (M 119, 275, 372). At the same time La Rochefoucauld states what pleases is not artful disguise but the naturel (MS 43, RD III). The social necessity of disguise is not then necessarily a moral absolute (RD II, III), for he opts for the prudential ethic of the honnête homme as opposed to the singular ethic of the hero. The heroic posture is no longer viable in the context of a wider critical examination of the declining aristocracy.¹² Roles are constantly shifting in this commedia dell'arte. Each actor must find the role that suits him and must adapt to it (RD III).

Such a circumstance makes clear that there is a relationship between the apparent discontinuous structure of the Maximes and the inner discontinuity within humankind in general and a given individual in particular: le moi désaxé.¹³ In Barthes' Marxist-Freudian view, La Rochefoucauld is obsessed with the society of his peers from which he feels alienated. But the wide range of amour propre's activity precludes reducing unconscious activity to that of a submerged ego.¹⁴ Other critics, such as Jeanson, see this obsession in a different, more existential light. La Rochefoucauld is obsessed with his own superiority over other people. In this view, the whole of La Rochefoucauld's work is an effort to guarantee, affirm and secure his own superiority by pointing up, from the distant posture of the ironic moralist, the inferiority of others (MS 1, “Avis au lecteur”).

The principal actor in this complex drama is, of course, amour-propre. But more than actor, amour-propre, as portrayed in the superb piece of baroque rhetorical bravura of MS 1, appears as producer, director, make-up artist, principal player, author and God. He is everywhere evident and yet hidden in the dynamic of the psychic drama with its seemingly endless series of plays within plays in which each of the characters of a greater comédie or macro-drama becomes the stage for the lesser comédie, the micro-drama whose characters themselves become in turn the stage for yet other micro-dramas, ad infinitum. One might add that this appears not so much a series of plays within plays as theaters within theaters.

The life of amour-propre “n'est qu'une grande et longue agitation” (MS 1). In this baroque drama of the mind, amour-propre cannot be represented or apprehended directly but only in relation, in relation to intrigue, mistaken identity, abduction, duels, battles, private confessions, storms at sea. Amour-propre, the power-broker in the theater of ethical values works behind the scenes, as a magician (MS 1), preferring to be a shadowy yet omnipotent presence, making himself felt and realized through his paid intermediaries, intérêt and orgueil (M 228). Intérêt, like vices, wears many masks (M 187) and pulls many strings and even appears as the very soul of amour-propre (Maximes posthumes 2). He is multilingual, a master of lighting effects, alternating light and darkness (M 39, 40), activating all kinds of virtues and vices (M 253, 305). A criminal, he strangles le bon naturel (M 275). Orgueil, the more intellectual ally and collaborator of a scheming and practical intérêt (M 173), acts differently in each person (M 35), often lowering himself like a Tartuffe, only to raise himself (M 254). Wearing the mask of humility and concealing his faults (M 358), he arouses passions and controls them (M 281). Yet, in his strange behavior, he often acts as false-pride (M 472).

The endless series of micro-dramas parade other characters across the stage of the mind: a Célimène, an Arsinoé, a Béline, a Trissotin, an Oronte, a Monsieur Jourdain. We see vanité struggle with vertu (M 266); amour survives only on hope and fear (M 75), crainte and raison hold coquetterie in check (M 241), jalousie is the twin of amour, unstable and determined, if not always mad (M 361, 32). Passion is a quick-change artist acting out a calculated role for a desired effect (M 6, 8). Vertu and her lighthearted vice go for a long stroll, one egging the other on (M 200). Prudence, like a pharmacist, measures out portions of vice (M 182). Fortune is a strong-arm man, a better disciplinarian than raison and, with humeur, jointly governs the world (M 154, 435). And paresse usurps and destroys the rest (M 266).

The personifications that sustain the dramatic texture of the Maximes appear to be endless, continually emerging and re-emerging in different dramatic disguises, heightening a baroque chiaroscuro effect of light and darkness, fluidity and immobility.

The use of personification also serves to separate out and identify the constituents of the micro-drama and to relate them to the macro-drama, the greater theater of the psyche. La Rochefoucauld's use of personification implies, too, that being is not merely numerous and multifaceted, but innumerable and unlimited. Differentiation in the theater of the mind leads to unification through internal iteration, a structure of recurring functions which appear endless. And the unification points back to differentiation. The individual is abstracted and the abstract is humanized (M 8). Intérêt plays its roles, the sentiments each have their own voices, make gestures and take on expressions (M 39, 255).

The stop-frame technique leaves the reader dazzled and confused amid the multifarious and multi-leveled personifications that present themselves in the micro-dramas, where we find grande comédie, petite comédie, melodrama, tragicomedy, farce and tragedy, all genres interwoven, moving back and forth from one to another in a labyrinth of mirrors with little concern for generic separation, a veritable distillation of baroque theater.

In the macro-drama, the scheming of amour-propre situates man in a role at once of deceiver of self and of others and of both simultaneously (MS 1). Amour-propre dwells in a region of deep and enveloping darkness. Often equated with both psychic unconsciousness and psychic consciousness,¹⁵amour-propre is a personified impulse of the self seen in action:

Il voit, il sent, il entend, il imagine, il soupçonne, il pénètre, il devine tout: de sorte qu'on est tenté de croire que chacune des ses passions a une espèce de magie qui lui est propre.

(MS 1)

It is the very energy of metamorphosis itself, a Vautrin, changeable, many-faceted, a mass of contradictions, known to itself, yet unknown, the consummate actor driven by super-human forces. La Rochefoucauld compares it to the sea, the very power that underlies the ebb and flow of the water (MS 1). It sets in motion the micro-dramas, the social comedies, the comedy of manners, the farces, melodramas and tragedies, all of which provide glimpses into the ongoing confrontation of conflicting egotistical drives, a Fronde intérieure, an internalized, psychic Fronde.

We see in MS 1 that the extended metaphor of amour-propre is not merely a figure of speech devised to enrich and enliven the style of the Maximes. It serves rather to point up the dramatic situation transpiring in the human psyche of a “puissance aliénante,”¹⁶ of a person non grata, an intruder who has infiltrated into the depth of self and, like a Tartuffe, extends his powerful interests throughout the household of the mind, conniving, cajoling, pleasing, seducing, lavishing, threatening, punishing, domineering. It is a “parasite de l'âme,” a usurper in a conquered land.¹⁷ But there is no rex or deus ex machina to shift the balance of power away from this ruthless force of self-satisfaction and self-aggrandizement which is projected outward to a societal ego, the internal manifestation being humeur, corresponding to the external fortune. Yet, the personification of amour-propre suggests some level of consciousness which allows it to perceive and be perceived in the world in which it operates (MS 1).

The choice of the form of maxim is, itself significant as part of the theatrical dissembling. Having no context of its own, the maxim inserts itself in the context of the reader-spectator, who, like the author, is masked in this complex and vast theater of the psyche. La Rochefoucauld is meticulously careful to maintain an ironic distance which allows multiple contextualizations. The individual presence of either author or reader-spectator is concealed beneath the impersonal forms of “on,” “nous,” the moi universel, those universal qualifiers which suggest diversification in unity and unity in diversification, continuity and complementarity of being. The narrative voice is thus neutralized by iteration. Internal iteration conforms to the classical ideal of objectivity and La Rochefoucauld's own stated posture of ironic detachment (“Avis au lecteur”). The material is replaced by the abstract, the singular by the general. It is no accident that the récit itératif has been described as the principal language of moralist literature.¹⁸

The theatrical principle that provides the infrastructure of the Maximes allows mankind to exist in society. Existence in society becomes, in this view, synonymous with existence itself. In the constant interplay between appearing and being, we find the justification for life itself. As in the Malade Imaginaire, the sick man must enter into the comedy being played out within and around him, else he will fall into nothingness. The reader-spectator of the Maximes is drawn in. He feels named and identified by some maxims, unidentified by others, in some he is masked, in others unmasked, at times included and then at other times excluded from the theater of the mind, which heightens the sense of ambiguity and dramatic tension. The linear or surface discontinuity of the Maximes, the irony too, only serve to reinforce what is found in depth, the struggle between being and non-being. Paresse, the power of inertia, of entropy, would appear as the archenemy of the passions, the vertus, of amour-propre's incessant activity (M 266, 398, 487). There is no resolution of the contradictions found in the work as a whole.

In this theater of ambiguity, there are no firm answers on theoretical or dogmatic issues, but the Maximes offer an experimental theater of the possibilities of the human psyche and language in the form of a vast psychomachia. The only truth is the absence of unequivocal truth: the playing out of ultimate meanings in what appears to be a sea of meaninglessness. A theater in search of a message? Perhaps. But it is most of all a theater about the impossibility of a message, an art of the intransitive. The reader-spectator is constantly drawn into the play, like Argan, to search for meaning, to be misled by the lack of meaning or fixity and to take the search itself as the cure-all. The Maximes present us with the theater of self-love in action. The function of the internal iteration is to present in an intelligible form a vision vécue, too vast, too confused, too elusive to be recounted in any other way:

Il y a des faussetés déguisées qui représentent si bien la vérité que ce serait mal juger que de ne s'y pas laisser tromper.

(M 282)

Notes

1. All references to the Maximes and La Rochefoucauld's other works are to Maximes, ed. Jacques Truchet (Paris: Garnier, 1967), M 7, 54, 116, 139, 144, 211, 217, 233, 236, 504, Maximes supprimées 1. For a discussion of the maxim as art form, see W. G. Moore, La Rochefoucauld: His Mind and Art (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), pp. 80-93, and Jean Lafond, La Rochefoucauld: Augustinisme et littérature (Paris: Klincksieck, 1977), p. 274, “Maxime,” passim.

2. Maximes, ed. Pierre Kuentz (Paris: Bordas, 1966), p. 30. Philip E. Lewis, La Rochefoucauld: The Art of Abstraction (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1977), pp. 23-30.

3. Jean Starobinski, “La Rochefoucauld et les morales substitutives,” Nouvelle Revue Française 163-164 (July-August 1966), p. 22.

4. Maximes et Mémoires, ed. Jean Starobinski (Paris: Union générale d'éditions, 1964), p. 182.

5. Kuentz, p. 27.

6. Starobinski, “La Rochefoucauld et les morales substitutives,” p. 16. Tzvetan Todorov, “La Comédie humaine selon La Rochefoucauld,” Poétique 53 (1983), pp. 37-47. See also M 39, 108, MS 1, 6.

7. Pascal, Oeuvres complètes, ed. Louis Lafuma (Paris: Seuil, 1963), p. 637.

8. Danièle Chatelain, “Itération interne et scène classique,” Poétique 51 (1982), pp. 369-81. See also Réflexions diverses III.

9. Todorov, p. 93.

10. Pascal, p. 584.

11. Todorov, p. 42.

12. Cf. Paul Bénichou, L'écrivain et ses travaux (Paris: J. Corti, 1967), pp. 33-37, Morales du grand siècle (Paris: Gallimard, 1948), pp. 155-80, passim.

13. Cf. Kuentz, p. 38, and Lewis, p. 35.

14. Lewis, pp. 56-57, 87-91. See also F. E. Sutcliffe, “The System of La Rochefoucauld,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 49, No. 1 (Autumn 1966), p. 244.

15. Starobinski, p. 18 ff.

16. Starobinski, p. 17.

17. Ibid.

18. Chatelain, p. 371.