SOURCE: Weber, Joseph G. “The Personae in the Style of La Rochefoucauld's Maximes.” PMLA 89, no. 1 (January 1974): 250-55.

[In the following essay, Weber studies La Rochefoucauld's personification of human traits in the Maximes.]

Moralist literature of seventeenth-century France can be characterized by what might be called a human dialectic. The dynamics of this dialectic derive from the image of person. The author is in dialogue with himself or with an aspect of his personality, or there is a dialogue between the moi and autrui, or between moral principles. One readily thinks of Montaigne and the moi universel, Pascal and his interlocutor, de Retz and the moi politique. In the work of each of the moralistes there is a heightened sense of the dramatic interplay, not only between stylistic figures of person but between the ideas represented. Ideas take flesh in a literal and nonsymbolic way, to such an extent that one is tempted to call seventeenth-century moralist literature a type of dramatic literature.¹

On the surface La Rochefoucauld might appear to be an exception to this type of human dialectic in literature (what I have called elsewhere the dialogic process in moralist literature).² The moi is noticeably absent from the Maximes, and checking the many variants we have of the Maximes, we find that La Rochefoucauld in his melancholy way continually purges the moi from the literary texture of his work and replaces it with on, nous, ils. Indeed, stylistically La Rochefoucauld seems to disappear behind a veil of impersonality. This reminds us of what he said in his self-portrait:

Premièrement, pour parler de mon humeur, je suis mélancolique, et je le suis à un point que depuis trois ou quatre ans à peine m'a-t-on vu rire trois ou quatre fois. … Je suis fort resserré avec ceux que je ne connais pas, et je ne suis pas même extrêmement ouvert avec la plupart de ceux que je connais. … Mais comme un certain air sombre que j'ai dans le visage contribue à me faire paraître encore plus réservé que je ne le suis, et qu'il n'est pas en notre pouvoir de nous défaire d'un méchant air qui nous vient de la disposition naturelle des traits, je pense qu'après m'être corrigé au dedans, il ne laissera pas de me demeurer toujours de mauvaises marques au dehors.³

Although La Rochefoucauld's stylistic withdrawal can perhaps be related to this habitual withdrawal while in society, what is most interesting is that the absence of interventions on the part of the author allows for a new, more diverse and flexible relationship in the dramatic interplay among the various personae in the style of the Maximes. The absence of multiple interventions on La Rochefoucauld's part creates an imaginary framework in the Maximes that supports an extended and more dramatic development of personification.

As we trace the variants of any given Maxim through successive stylistic refinements, the one fact that continually strikes us is the ever-increasing sharpness of the personification that emerges. Let us look at four versions of Maxime 32, the first dating from 1663.

La jalousie ne subsiste que dans les doutes et ne vit que dans les nouvelles inquiétudes; l'incertitude est sa matière.

(Liancourt, No. 239, p. 436)

The personification is vague, seemingly buried under multiple abstractions.

A second version dating from 1665:

La jalousie ne subsiste que dans les doutes, l'incertitude est sa matière; c'est une passion qui cherche tous les jours de nouveaux sujets d'inquiétude, et de nouveaux tourments; on cesse d'être jaloux, dès qu'on est éclairci de ce qui causait la jalousie.

(Première édition, No. 35, p. 292)

The extended stylistic elaboration of the subject here results in a confusing dispersion of the image as well as the idea. What La Rochefoucauld is doing might be compared to the first movements of a sculptor's chisel. Various dynamic contours appear without the clear dominance of any one movement. We might call this version an example of modified curt style. Une idée est en germe: indeed, it seems to explode on the page.

In the following version, the second edition (1666), the final contours of the human figure begin to emerge:

La jalousie se nourrit dans les doutes; c'est une passion qui cherche toujours de nouveaux sujets d'inquiétude et de nouveaux tourments, et elle devient fureur, sitôt qu'on passe du doute à la certitude.⁴

The personification here stands in bold relief. “La jalousie ne subsiste que dans les doutes” gives way to “La jalousie se nourrit dans les doutes.” Eliminating “l'incertitude est sa matière” rids the Maxim of a distracting redundancy. The progression becomes a very direct one: “elle se nourrit dans les doutesrc'est une passion qui cherche … de nouveaux sujetsrelle devient fureur. …” Dropping the attenuating “ne … que” of the first two versions allows for the direct, unencumbered development of jealousy in a way that reminds us of the development of passion in a Racinian heroine. “Elle devient fureur, sitôt qu'on passe du doute à la certitude.”

The fourth and definitive version of the Maxim (1678) is an excellent example of La Rochefoucauld's stylistic télescopage:

La jalousie se nourrit dans les doutes, et elle devient fureur, ou elle finit, sitôt qu'on passe du doute à la certitude.

(No. 32, p. 14)

As the style has moved forward in the third and fourth versions, we notice a significant growth of the idea and the personification. It is the story not only of a madwoman but of every person. The Maxim is so condensed that, without familiarity with the earlier versions, we might not be able to read beyond the brilliance of the overly polished final version to see the diverse qualities evoked by the other versions. The personification of jealousy has taken flesh before our eyes. We are present at the creation of a character as mad, as obsessed, as an Eriphile or a Hermione.

Maxim 8 falls midway in the early group of eight Maxims that speak of the uses of passion. The passional nature of the orator and of his art of persuasion is at the heart of the sense of the Maxim and of the stylistic variants we shall consider. In each Maxim of this group the passions are either personified, as in Numbers 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, or are closely related to an image of person, as in numbers 5 and 7. For our discussion there are five significant versions of Maxim 8 that shed light on the relationship between a personified abstraction and the image of moral man.

Les passions sont les seuls orateurs qui persuadent toujours; elles sont comme un art de la nature dont les règles sont infaillibles et l'homme le plus simple les persuade mieux que celui qui n'a que la seule éloquence.

(Copies de 1663, No. 128, p. 482)

Les passions sont les seuls orateurs qui persuadent toujours; elles sont comme un art de la nature dont les règles sont infaillibles et l'homme le plus simple, qui sent, persuade mieux que celui qui n'a que la seule éloquence.

(Liancourt, No. 127, p. 424)

Les passions sont les seuls orateurs qui persuadent toujours; elles sont comme un art dans la nature, dont les règles sont infaillibles. Par elles l'homme le plus simple persuade mieux que ne fait le plus habile avec toutes le fleurs de l'éloquence.

(Hollande, 1664, No. 45, p. 447)

Les passions sont les seuls orateurs qui persuadent toujours. Elles sont comme un art de la nature dont les règles sont infaillibles; et l'homme le plus simple que la passion fait parler persuade mieux que celui qui n'a que la seule éloquence.

(Première édition, 1665, No. 8, p. 286)

Les passions sont les seuls orateurs qui persuadent toujours. Elles sont comme un art de la nature dont les règles sont infaillibles; et l'homme le plus simple qui a de la passion persuade mieux que le plus éloquent qui n'en a point.

(Edition de 1678, No. 8, p. 9)

Each of these versions is structured quite differently. In the most obvious difference, the first three versions can be clearly distinguished from the final two versions of the Maxim by their punctuation. The force of the closed proposition (full sentence) in the versions of 1665 and 1678 intensifies their maxim-like quality. It has the effect of absolutizing the personification in the beginning of the Maxim in a way that the earlier versions with their attenuating semicolon do not.

Except for punctuation and the minor variant of “dans la nature” in Hollande, No. 45, the first two members of the Maxim remain unchanged throughout their successive refinements.

Les passions sont les seuls orateurs qui persuadent toujours / Elles sont comme un art de la nature dont les règles sont infaillibles.

The pivotal point of La Rochefoucauld's reworking of the Maxim in terms of personification centers on the third member of the Maxim, which begins: “L'homme le plus simple.” The human image loses the abstract quality of the initial personification found in the first two members and emerges in the simple form of a passionate, eloquent man gifted in the art of persuasion. The personification is thus reduced and man is magnified. Man, or more precisely the image of the orator, steps out of the personification, as an actor out of his role, and dramatizes the abstract principle represented in the personification of the first two members. The person, indeed, can be said to replace the personification in both a visual and a stylistic way.

The variants of the Maxim show us that La Rochefoucauld was working here with a sort of equation: homme ＋ passion = persuasion. The formulation of the equation shows considerable stylistic flexibility when we compare the different versions of the Maxim. The problem element in the equation and the key word in the Maxim as a whole is “passion.” The shifting focus on this word lies behind the successive changes in the several versions of the Maxim. In the Copies de 1663, “les persuade” is clearly an unsuccessful starting point in relating the idea of passion in the first two members of the Maxim to the idea of passion in the third member. It is vague, unclear as to reference, and generally weak. In Liancourt, No. 127, passion is more obviously present, although in the rather embryonic form of “qui sent.” In Hollande, No. 45, the role of passion stands in bold, even awkward relief: “Par elles.” The focus is clear and direct, without ambiguity. This more vigorous allusion to passion strikes the ear as very abrupt, stylistically less smooth, and it breaks the fluid, forward-moving rhythm of the earlier part of the Maxim.

It is only in the final version (1678) that the more assertive “qui a de la passion” reestablishes the initial forward-moving relationship between the parts of the equation: homme ＋ passion = persuasion. “L'homme le plus simple qui a de la passion persuade mieux. …” La Rochefoucauld here delineates the effective parallelism, latent in the earlier versions, which reveals the simple, clear, arithmetic relationship between man, passion, and persuasion.

L'homme le plus simple qui a de la passion persuade mieux que le plus éloquent qui n'en a point.

(No. 8, p. 9)

The final harmony of the relationships is reasserted stylistically after the elimination of incongruities, shifts of movement, or inexact or banal metaphors (“habile homme,” “les fleurs de l'éloquence”), and the final version of this Maxim is clearly superior stylistically to the earlier versions.⁵ It allows for the dramatization, the actualization, of the personified abstraction. The figure of person emerges free of personification in a balanced rhetorical framework.

Another excellent but very different example of the emergence of the personified figure in a Maxim is in the variants of Maxim 12, which falls at the end of the same group of eight Maxims in which Maxim 8 occurs. The first edition (1665) reads:

Quelque industrie que l'on ait à cacher ses passions sous le voile de la piété, et de l'honneur, il y en a toujours quelque endroit qui se montre.

(Première édition, No. 12, p. 287)

The image is rather vague, veiled actually by imprecise metaphors, “industrie,” “cacher,” “endroit.” The Liancourt version reads the same except for one slight and significant change. Endroit at the end of the Maxim gives way to coin. Coin is more clearly related to the image of flesh being concealed under veils of piety.

Quelque industrie que l'on ait à cacher ses passions sous le voile de la piété et de l'honneur, il y en a toujours quelque coin qui se montre.

(Liancourt, No. 179, p. 430)

Even more precise and concrete are the changes made in the version of 1678.

Quelque soin que l'on prenne de couvrir ses passions par des apparences de piété et d'honneur, elles paraissent toujours au travers de ces voiles.

(No. 12, p. 10)

The personification is rich and complete. It is the figure of a voluptuous woman who takes immense care (soin instead of industrie) to cover her passionate nature with the trappings of religion and virtue. Whether a nun, a widow, or a wife, she is a pious fraud. The verb cacher is replaced by the more visual couvrir. Our attention is clearly focused on her body. Note, too, that the image of the veil is reserved for the end of the Maxim, having been only suggested earlier: “couvrir ses passions par des apparences de piété et d'honneur.” The change emphasizes the shock value of seeing a bit too much of a pious woman's bosom, or a suggestive ankle or arm. It is the religious hypocrisy with which Tartuffe would clothe a Dorine, a character resembling La Bruyère's Onuphre.

Passions, feelings, the various traits of character are portrayed as personified, masked, fleeting figures in the shadowy world of truth-and-falsehood, a world populated by skillful deceivers. The human heart La Rochefoucauld describes in the Maximes is continually generating passions (No. 10, p. 9) which are irresistible (No. 122, p. 33). It is an animate world in which the very wellsprings of human nature, the passions, virtues, and vices, are personified in various disguises. It is a world désaxé in which everyone can be assured of being tricked sooner or later by these artful “comédiens” (Première édition, No. 278, p. 346).

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

(No. 282, p. 72)

Whatever the rank, whatever the profession, each man is at once a mask to others and a drama of disguises within himself.

Le monde n'est composé que de mines.

(No. 256, p. 66)

L'intérêt parle toutes sortes de langues, et joue toutes sortes de personnages, même celui de désintéressé.

(No. 39, p. 15)

L'intérêt met en œuvre toutes sortes de vertus et de vices.

(No. 253, p. 65)

In this profusion of disguises, the true, the real are seemingly unknowable.

Dans toutes les professions, et dans tous les arts, chacun se fait une mine et un extérieur qu'il met en la place de la chose dont il veut avoir le mérite, de sorte que tout le monde n'est composé que de mines, et c'est inutilement que nous travaillons à y trouver rien de réel.

(No. 279, p. 347)

The emotions and the passions are quick-change artists (Première édition, No. 278, p. 346) acting out a calculated role for a desired effect. Humilité lowers itself to raise itself (No. 254, p. 65). Hypocrisie is the homage vice renders to virtue (No. 218, p. 56). Intérêt masks itself with vice or virtue as needed (No. 187, p. 48), or, like the dazzling performer it is, intérêt can even resemble the sun—the black sun of melancholy—in the chiaroscuro shading of:

L'intérêt qui aveugle les uns, fait la lumière des autres.

(No. 40, p. 15)

Gesture, clothing, movement, intonation all become part of the life that moral qualities acquire through personification. We might go so far as to paraphrase a Maxim to read:

Tous les traits de morale ont chacun un ton de voix, des gestes et des mines qui leur sont propres, et ce rapport bon ou mauvais, agréable ou désagréable est ce qui fait que les personnifications plaisent ou déplaisent.⁶

The personification of the gamut of moral and spiritual values in the Maximes thus presents us with a veritable dramatis personae of extraordinary diversity and vitality. Let me give a few illustrations.

Jealousy, as we have seen, is a woman, unstable and determined, if not always mad. She is the twin of love and may or may not live as long as he:

La jalousie naît toujours avec l'amour, mais elle ne meurt pas toujours avec lui.

(No. 361, p. 86)

Virtue and her lighthearted vice go for a stroll in a garden:

La vertu n'irait pas si loin si la vanité ne lui tenait compagnie.

(No. 200, p. 50)

Paresse is the mistress of violentes passions. She is scheming and destructive:

C'est se tromper que de croire qu'il n'y ait que les violentes passions, comme l'ambition et l'amour, qui puissent triompher des autres. La paresse, toute languissante qu'elle est, ne laisse pas d'en être souvent la maîtresse; elle usurpe sur tous les desseins et sur toutes les actions de la vie; elle y détruit et y consume insensiblement les passions et les vertus.

(No. 266, p. 68)

There is a generation gap, rivalry between the old and the young:

La vieillesse est un tyran qui défend sur peine de la vie tous les plaisirs de la jeunesse.

(No. 461, p. 105)

Hope is a sweet deceiver:

L'espérance, toute trompeuse qu'elle est, sert au moins à nous mener à la fin de la vie par un chemin agréable.

(No. 168, p. 43)

An abstraction and a concrete image are both personified in the beautiful baroque coloring of Maxime 26. They cannot look upon each other or, indeed, be looked upon:

Le soleil ni la mort ne se peuvent regarder fixement.

(No. 26, p. 13)

Prudence, like a pharmacist, measures out quantities of vice:

Les vices entrent dans la composition des vertus comme les poisons entrent dans la composition des remèdes. La prudence les assemble et les tempère, et elle s'en sert utilement contre les maux de la vie.

(No. 182, pp. 46-47)

Fortune is a strong-arm man, a better disciplinarian than reason (No. 154, p. 40), and with humeur jointly governs the world:

La fortune et l'humeur gouvernent le monde.

(No. 435, p. 100)

Amour-propre is a wily financier in the commercial world of amitié:

Ce que les hommes ont nommé amitié n'est qu'une société, qu'un ménagement réciproque d'intérêts, et qu'un échange de bons offices; ce n'est enfin qu'un commerce où l'amour-propre se propose toujours quelque chose à gagner.

(No. 83, p. 26)

Folie is a person who pursues us throughout our life (No. 207, p. 52). Our passions, as we have seen, are eloquent and even occasionally reasonable persuaders (Nos. 8 and 9, p. 9), but “il est dangereux de les suivre” (No. 9, p. 9). In the salon, confiance is more successful as a conversationalist than esprit (No. 421, p. 98). At times, the personification is so condensed that the Maxim lacks clarity. The final version of a Maxim is not always the clearest:

Quand notre mérite baisse, notre goût baisse aussi.

(No. 379, p. 90)⁷

The personification of humility suggests a Tartuffe, a man driven by pride and a desire for power:

L'humilité n'est souvent qu'une feinte soumission, dont on se sert pour soumettre les autres; c'est un artifice de l'orgueil qui s'abaisse pour s'élever; et bien qu'il se transforme en mille manières, il n'est jamais mieux déguisé et plus capable de tromper que lorsqu'il se cache sous la figure de l'humilité.

(No. 254, p. 65)

The humors of the body are tyrants who have a power over mind and body as great as that of oceans or rivers over the face of the earth:

Les humeurs du corps ont un cours ordinaire et réglé, qui meut et que tourne imperceptiblement notre volonté; elles roulent ensemble et exercent successivement un empire secret en nous: de sorte qu'elles ont une part considérable à toutes nos actions, sans que nous le puissions connaître.

(No. 297, p. 74)

Other personifications set up a whole family of relationships:

Les passions en engendrent souvent qui leur sont contraires. L'avarice produit quelquefois la prodigalité, et la prodigalité l'avarice; on est souvent ferme par faiblesse, et audacieux par timidité.

(No. 11, p. 9)

The list of characters is seemingly endless. The plot the Maximes reveals is one of life and death, the futile battle with the powers of darkness, of selfishness, pride, passions. The denouement is clearly seen from the beginning—a human tragedy of universal proportions.

Moral ideas are not, however, necessarily consistent in La Rochefoucauld.⁸ We need only compare any five or ten Maximes on the subject of amitié, femmes, amour-propre. They reveal a multifaceted, complex, contradictory series of ideas on a given topic. We find, on the one hand, that the dramatization and personification of virtues and vices in the Maximes is the way that the moralist tries to work out the paradox. Yet, on the other hand, we find that when he humanizes them through the literary device of personification, he allows the ideas the freedom to remain paradoxical.⁹

The point I should like to make in terms of the human dialectic or the dialogic process mentioned earlier is that La Rochefoucauld, like the other moralistes, gives flesh to his ideas, to moral, spiritual, or political abstractions. This characteristic defines the human dialectic in moralist literature. It is the life situation, the human situation, that takes precedence over a rigorous, rational logic. Otherwise, the Maximes would be an unread, unremembered philosophical tract. His procedure creates a continuing dialogue, a face-to-face encounter between moral values. They have their gestures and their peculiarities as much as Pascal's old Jesuit, or Montaigne's keeper of the arrière-boutique, or Molière's Miser. Indeed, the dramatization of moral principles in the form of personification is to La Rochefoucauld's Maximes what the animals are to La Fontaine's Fables.

Notes

1. Recent critics, such as Moore, have alluded in passing to the dramatic qualities of La Rochefoucauld's Maximes. See W. G. Moore, La Rochefoucauld: His Mind and Art (Oxford: Clarendon, 1969), pp. 31, 72, 91.

2. “Person as Figure of Ambiguity and Resolution in Pascal,” PMLA, 84 (1969), 312-30.

3. La Rochefoucauld, Maximes, ed. Jacques Truchet (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 1967), p. 254. Unless otherwise noted all references are to this edition. Because of certain lacks in each of the authoritative editions, I have been obliged to refer to more than one edition in the course of this article.

4. Œuvres de La Rochefoucauld, ed. D. L. Gilbert and J. Gourdault, 3 vols., Les Grands Ecrivains de la France (Paris: Hachette, 1881), i, 43, n. 3.

5. This is not the case for all the Maxims. See n. 7.

6. Cf. No. 255, pp. 65-66. “Tous les sentiments ont chacun un ton de voix, des gestes et des mines qui leur sont propres. Et ce rapport bon ou mauvais, agréable ou désagréable, est ce qui fait que les personnes plaisent ou déplaisent.”

7. Although the precise meaning of the words “goût” and “mérite” is not clear, and the nature of the personification itself is uncertain, I would like to suggest that “mérite” and “goût” can be seen to represent two persons in a hierarchical social order. If the one, “mérite,” lowers himself in relation to principle, then the other, “goût,” lowers himself in relation to quality. See also Maximes, ed. Truchet, p. 90, n. 1. For other Maxims where the final versions are more abstract—less vivid—than the earlier versions, see Nos. 9 and 101. In both cases, the MS version is more markedly animated than the final version. Compare Liancourt No. 164, p. 428, with No. 9, p. 9; and Liancourt, No. 133, p. 425, with No. 101, p. 29.

8. Moore draws attention to the artistic use of paradox in La Rochefoucauld's handling of images. See Moore, p. 92.

9. The power of personification might also be related to the tendency toward concreteness found in the Maximes. See Sister Mary Francine Zeller, O. S. F., New Aspects of Style in the Maximes of La Rochefoucauld (Washington, D. C.: Catholic Univ. of America Press, 1944), p. 107.