SOURCE: “The Moral Structure of Les Liaisons Dangereuses,” The French Review, Vol. XXXVII, No. 3, February, 1964, pp. 383-99.

[In the following essay, Greshoff clarifies the fundamental intellectual, psychological, and moral content of Les Liaisons dangereuses.]

Les Liaisons dangereuses is an accident both in the life of literature and in the life of Laclos. It is the only novel and the only valid piece of literature he ever wrote. The rest of his work is curious merely because it was written by the author of Les Liaisons dangereuses. Giraudoux describes him in his other works as “déclamatoire, maladroitement badin, terriblement plat et sensible. …”¹ As a novel Les Liaisons dangereuses is unique. Superficially it is part of the XVIIIth century tradition of erotic literature; it has also no doubt been influenced by Clarissa Harlowe and La Nouvelle Héloïse. Nevertheless Les Liaisons dangereuses stands alone and Laclos with greater justice than Rousseau could have taken for himself the famous opening sentence of Les Confessions: “Je forme une entreprise qui n’eût jamais d’exemple et dont l’exécution n’aura point d’imitateur.” Laclos however made his own rather bombastic declaration. In London he said to his friend Tilly: “… je résolus de faire un ouvrage qui sortit de la route ordinaire, qui fît du bruit, et qui rententît encore sur terre quand j’y aurai passé.”² In this Laclos succeeded.

Let us first take Les Liaisons dangereuses at its most superficial level. It is a novel in letter form dealing with a number of cold-blooded seductions: the Vicomte de Valmont wants to seduce Mme de Tourvel (also known as La Présidente); in passing, and on the suggestion of Mme de Merteuil, he seduces a young girl, Cécile Volanges; Mme de Merteuil in her turn seduces a young man, the Chevalier Danceny. Yet, even when looking at the novel from this simple point of view, one is struck by the extreme intricacy of the plot: all the actions are interrelated so that each move by each character echoes in the mind or in the actions of the other characters. At the same time the various movements of the plot have a certain formal quality which is equally striking. The reader has the impression of becoming the spectator of a number of highly skilful manoeuvres and counter-manoeuvres, which for all their apparent complication seem nevertheless to obey some rule or law. In fact, he is looking at a highly organised and formalised game which is being played by Valmont and Mme de Merteuil with deadly earnestness, but which does not thereby lose any of its playfulness.

The amorous game played before us in Les Liaisons bears a striking and significant resemblance to the formal wars of the XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries:

“C’est alors que la guerre ressemble vraiment à une partie d’échecs. Lorsque après des manoeuvres compliquées, un des adversaires a perdu ou gagné plusieurs pièces—villes ou places fortes—alors vient la grande bataille: du sommet de quelque coteau, où lui apparaît tout le terrain du combat, tout l’échiquier, le maréchal fait avancer ou reculer habilement ses beaux régiments. … Échec et mat, le perdant range son jeu: on remet les pions dans leur boîte ou les régiments dans leurs quartiers d’hiver, et chacun va à ses petites affaires en attendant la partie ou la campagne suivante.”³

This description of war in the XVIIth century could just as well serve as a description of the actions shown in Les Liaisons dangereuses. For what Laclos deals with in his novel is a war, and it is not merely because Laclos was an artillery officer that he uses the vocabulary of war. The use of such a vocabulary when talking about love goes back to the days of courtly love.

“L’amant fait le siège de sa Dame. Il livre d’amoureux assauts à sa vertu. Il la serre de près, il la poursuit, il cherche à vaincre les dernières défenses de sa pudeur, et à les tourner par surprise; enfin la dame se rend à merci. Mais alors, par une curieuse inversion bien typique de la courtoisie, c’est l’amant qui sera son prisonnier en même temps que son vainqueur. Il deviendra le vassal de cette suzeraine, selon la règle des guerres féodales, tout comme si c’était lui qui avait subi la défaite.”⁴

Here we have, with very few differences, the very vocabulary of Laclos' novel. The originality of Laclos, however, is to use this conventional metaphorical vocabulary almost in its literal sense and thus to make us realise that what we see in this novel is not a sham battle, but a war fought with relentless ferocity and in which people die and get maimed. But it is also a game and a brief glance at its origin will be enlightening.

Like the vocabulary, the game itself goes back to the Middle-Ages and to the beginnings of Courtly Love.⁵ It is the courtly tradition which gives love its style (or a style); and in France the mode was continued, with Petrarchian and Neo-Platonic accretions, into the XVIIth century by l’amour précieux and its playing at passion, its toying with feelings in the framework of a series of conventions. But this stylisation of love in the XIIIth century had grown out of the necessity to curb the primitive ferocity of lust and passion. “To formalize love is the supreme aspiration of the life beautiful … to formalize love is, moreover, a social necessity, a need that is the more imperious as life is more ferocious. Love was to be elevated to the height of a rite. The overflowing of passion demands it. Only by constructing a system of forms and rules for the vehement emotions can barbarity be escaped.”⁶

It is only when one sees the actions of Valmont and Mme de Merteuil against this background that one of the innumerable ironies of Laclos' novel comes to light. For what is happening in Les Liaisons is that Valmont and Mme de Merteuil have brought back in this formal stylized game of love the very cruelty and violence and barbarity which courtly love tried to oust. And in this way the very nature of the game, its innocence, is being negated and betrayed, while at the same time it still retains its external façade of playfulness. Here lies one of the fascinations of the novel and also one of the sources of its tension. The game played by Valmont and Mme de Merteuil is not devoid of risk, neither for them nor for their victims. It is not merely a ballet or a parlour game but it becomes “une tauromachie”. On the surface, however, it retains all the lightness and gaiety of a game. It is here that Laclos uses his language so admirably. Valmont and Mme de Merteuil and, for that matter, all the characters write in the conventional epistolary style of the XVIIIth century. They could not possibly write in any other way. But Laclos uses this gay, sophisticated, elegantly light but conventional language in order to underline, by ironic contrast, the profoundly sinister nature of Valmont's and Mme de Merteuil's activities.

The psychological aspect of Les Liaisons dangereuses is perhaps not the most important but it is certainly the one which attracts the reader's attention most immediately. And, of course, the reality and “vraisemblance” of the relationships between the characters gives substance and body to the novel. But in discussing this psychological side of the novel we come across a very peculiar confusion. Since both the writer and his characters display a considerable amount of psychological insight—but of an entirely different kind—Laclos, by showing us the kind of psychological intelligence Valmont and Mme de Merteuil possess, reveals to us at the same time their limitations.

The action of the novel is based on the psychological perspicacity of its protagonists. It is this perspicacity which, because of its surface brilliance, tends to dazzle us and to hide from us the very much deeper insight which Laclos displays through his heroes into the workings of pride and evil.

The psychological insight of Valmont and Mme de Merteuil, although sharply intelligent, is strictly limited. There comes a point in any game—and let us not forget that it is a game they are playing—when its rules become so sophisticated and so intricate that the knowledge of these rules seems to replace intelligence and insight, and the full exploitation of the possibilities of a game becomes a work of art. Hence the aesthetic satisfaction which Valmont and Mme de Merteuil derive from their activities. But although they display a considerable amount of intelligence, this intelligence remains on the surface: they have only such insight as is immediately useful to them. They are political or diplomatic manoeuverers, no more. When Valmont writes to Mme de Merteuil: “On ne peut que s’humilier devant la profondeur de vos vues, si on en juge par le succès de vos démarches”, he writes, in fact, the very language of the chancelleries and he reveals at the same time ironically that these views are not genuinely profound but superficial since they are directed towards the attainment of an immediate aim which itself is superficial. There is one other obvious factor which limits Valmont's and Mme de Merteuil's psychological insight: their complete lack of sympathy and understanding. They are therefore essentially “intellectuals”; they do have a real intelligence of the game they are playing, and it is characteristic that this intelligence is applied not to life or people but to an abstraction: the game.

Laclos, on the other hand, has both a very real insight into the living psychological mechanism of his characters and, what is more important, a profound knowledge of the moral forces which are revealed through their actions. It is this which gives Les Liaisons Dangereuses its other dimension. For it is, no doubt, a psychological novel, but it is not only that, hence its greatness.

There are three groups of people in Laclos' novel: The victims: Mme de Tourvel, Cécile Volanges and Danceny; the executioners: Mme de Merteuil and Valmont; and finally Mme de Rosemonde and Mme Volanges who, for want of a better word, “represent” society.

Let us look at the victims first. Danceny is, no doubt, important for the working out of the plot, but has otherwise little stature and remains throughout the novel no more than a shadow. The real victims, then, are Cécile and La Présidente. But they are not victims in the same degree. Laclos is careful to establish a hierarchy: they are not equally innocent. The innocence of Mme de Tourvel is a function of her being, she is innocent. But Cécile is innocent only because of her age. If Mme de Tourvel is naturally good, Cécile is naturally debauched. This is how Mme de Merteuil describes her in a letter to Valmont:

“Savez-vous que vous avez perdu plus que vous ne croyez, à ne pas vous charger de cet enfant? elle est vraiment délicieuse! cela n’a ni caractère ni principes; jugez combien sa société sera douce et facile. Je ne crois pas qu’elle brille jamais par le sentiment; mais tout annonce en elle les sensations les plus vives. Sans esprit et sans finesse, elle a pourtant une certaine fausseté naturelle, si l’on peut parler ainsi, qui quelquefois m’étonne moi-même, et qui réussira d’autant mieux, que sa figure offre l’image de la candeur et de l’ingénuité.”

The passage reveals not only her natural corruptness (“ni caractère, ni principes”, “fausseté naturelle”) but also the fact that she is incapable of any feeling (“je ne crois pas qu’elle brille jamais par le sentiment”), which in the novel is shown by her ability to divorce her “sentiments” for Danceny from the pleasure she takes with Valmont. This is where Gide sees quite correctly the root of her debauched nature: “Au demeurant elle (la débauche) n’est pas du côté de la Merteuil et de Valmont, mais bien de Danceny et de la petite Volange; la débauche commence où commence à se dissocier de l’amour le plaisir.”⁷

In order to underline Cécile's real nature Laclos links her closely with Mme de Merteuil. There is little doubt that there exists between these two characters a real affinity. Cécile feels naturally attracted to Mme de Merteuil, who, in turn, recognises in the young girl someone of her own kind. She is as yet young and unformed but she has the vacuous sensuality combined with a lack of feeling which might turn her into a second Mme de Merteuil. What she lacks, however, is intelligence and it is for this reason alone that Mme de Merteuil rejects her:

“Je me désintéresse entièrement sur son compte. J’avais eu quelque envie d’en faire au moins une intrigante subalterne, et de la prendre pour jouer les seconds sous moi: mais je vois qu’il n’y a pas d’étoffe; elle a une sotte ingénuité qui n’a pas cédé même au spécifique que vous avez employé, lequel pourtant n’en manque guère; et c’est selon moi, la maladie la plus dangereuse que femme puisse avoir. Elle dénote, surtout, une faiblesse de caractère presque toujours incurable et qui s’oppose à tout de sorte que, tandis que nous nous occuperions à former cette petite fille pour l’intrigue, nous n’en ferions qu’une femme facile. Or, je ne connais rien de si plat que cette facilité de bêtise, qui se rend sans savoir ni comment ni pourquoi, uniquement parce qu’on l’attaque et qu’elle ne sait pas résister. Ces sortes de femmes ne sont absolument que des machines à plaisir.”

Although the cold-blooded death sentence which Mme de Merteuil passes on her “… pour se servir de celle-ci sans danger, il faut se dépècher, s’arrêter de bonne heure, et la briser ensuite …” fills us with horror, her eventual destruction does not move us and we are clearly, at no stage, intended to be moved by her fate. For she was, in fact, neither seduced nor corrupted but merely yielded to her real nature.

Mme de Tourvel is different. She is, as we have seen, truly innocent and virtuous; it is this which puts her outside the reach of Valmont, just as the absence of true virtue puts Cécile inside Valmont's easy reach. She is also natural and not, like Cécile, superficially spontaneous. This naturalness of Mme de Tourvel is important. It is revealed to us not only by the direct tone of her letters but indirectly by two descriptions of her, one by Mme de Merteuil the other by Valmont. On hearing of the quarry Valmont has chosen to pursue Mme de Merteuil writes:

“Qu’est-ce donc que cette femme? des traits réguliers si vous voulez, mais nulle expression: passablement faite, mais sans grâces: toujours mise à faire rire! avec ses paquets de fichus sur la gorge, et son corps qui remote au menton! Je vous le dis en amie, il ne vous faudrait pas deux femmes comme celle-là, pour vous faire perdre toute votre considération. Rappelez-vous donc ce jour où elle quêtait à Saint-Roch, et où vous me remerciâtes tant de vous avoir procuré ce cpectacle. Je crois la voir encore, donnant la main à ce grand échalas en cheveux longs, prête à tomber à chaque pas, ayant toujours son panier de quatre aunes sur la tête de quelqu’un, et rougissant à chaque révérence.”

The description is obviously coloured by envy or jealousy but what it shows is a person who cannot “dress up” and who is ill at ease in the artificial society in which she moves. In his reply to Mme de Merteuil, Valmont writes:

“Mais que dis-je? Madame de Tourvel a-t-elle besoin d’illusion? non; pour être adorable il lui suffit d’être elle-même. Vous lui reprochez de se mettre mal; je le crois bien: toute parure lui nuit; tout ce qui la cache la dépare: c’est dans l’abandon du négligé qu’elle est vraiment ravissante. Grâce aux chaleurs accablantes que nous éprouvons, un déshabillé de simple toile me laisse voir sa taille ronde et souple. Une seule mousseline couvre sa gorge; et mes regards furtifs, mais pénétrants, en ont déjà saisi les formes enchanteresses. Sa figure, dites-vous, n’a nulle expression. Et qu’exprimerait-elle, dans les moments où rien ne parle à son coeur? Non, sans doute, elle n’a point, comme nos femmes coquettes, ce regard menteur qui séduit quelquefois et nous trompe toujours.”

Leaving aside the erotic innuendoes, Valmont speaks the exact truth and Mme de Tourvel does not need to “dress up”, “il lui suffit d’être elle-même”. It is this directness, this naturalness which brings her so close to Corneille's heroines, or to Mme de Clèves: like Pauline she speaks “à coeur ouvert”, like her she is suddenly assailed by “les suprises des sens” and like Mme de Clèves she fights with all her strength against them, but only, unlike Mme de la Fayette's heroine, to succumb and to be destroyed.

In this context it might be useful to note that Valmont and Mme de Merteuil are also akin to the Cornelian heroes: they are of the race of men and women of action, of the conquerors (“Conquérir est notre destin” writes Valmont). If they seduce it is partly “pour la gloire”, and Mme de Tourvel is sacrificed by Valmont so that he can show himself “worthy” of Mme de Merteuil, in the same way that Rodrigue kills the Count so that he shall remain worthy of Chimène. And at times they talk like characters of Corneille. But they are corrupted Cornelian heroes. The same thing happens here as happened with the game of courtly love. The Cornelian actions and attitudes remain but they are emptied of all content and only serve to conceal a stinking reality.

One other factor makes Mme de Tourvel different: she belongs to an orderly world. She is the only character who is married, and the fact that she is a genuinely devout person is by no means accidental. It all contributes to build up the image of a person who is part of a real and solid world and whose entire life is framed by equally real and solid values.

Mme de Tourvel remains outside Parisian society and her physical remoteness from it, the fact that she lives together with Mme de Rosemonde in an isolated Château, is not solely dictated by the necessities of the form in which the novel is written. A considerable part of the correspondence between La Présidente and Valmont takes place inside Mme de Rosemonde's castle and when Valmont is in Paris he continues nevertheless to correspond with Mme de Merteuil. The real purpose of the physical éloignement of Mme de Tourvel is to emphasise her moral separateness from her society. It goes without saying that she does not belong to the world of Valmont and Mme de Merteuil. But at the same time it would be a mistake to believe that she is part of Mme Volanges' society. The stiff formality with which she writes to Cécile's mother indicates the distance that separates them.

Mme Volanges, in spite of her shadowy appearance, is by no means unimportant in the moral structure of the novel. She represents, in Gide's words, “le parti des bonnes moeurs”, that is, public morality and convention, which is shown here as double faced. For Mme Volanges at one and the same time knows Valmont and condemns him, and yet receives him as a guest, an equal in her drawing room. The distance which separates Valmont from Mme Volanges is far less great than the one which separates him from La Présidente.

Society, then, is a force which is present in Les Liaisons dangereuses. It is not merely represented by Mme Volanges, but it can be said that the whole book is directed against the moral corruption of a society. Giraudoux thinks that the real reason why the publication of Laclos' novel created such a scandal lies in the fact that it was a betrayal of the secret workings of a society.⁸

Now the society which is indirectly shown in Les Liaisons is first of all one where no permanent human relationships seem to exist, but only passing social contacts. It creates the impression of being a society without centre, without order and without authority: it is significant that La Présidente is the sole character who has a husband and that Cécile's father does not exist.

It is also a society which seems to be obsessed by amour propre, intrigue and eroticism. But it is important to see that all three of these obsessions depend for their existence on appearance. The intrigant plays a part and hides his true motives behind a mask. The vain man and the eroticist must make their action public, they must be shown to and shared by a public. Hence, as Seylaz points out, the necessity for Valmont and Mme de Merteuil to write letters.⁹ A society preoccupied by such interests transforms itself into a theatre and its members become actors. Valmont, writing about Prévan, a fellow-intrigant and seducer, says: “En effet, je l’ai empêché longtemps, par ce moyen, de paraître sur ce que nous appelons le grand théâtre”; Mme de Merteuil writes about herself: “Alors je commençai à déployer sur le grand théâtre les talents que je m’étais donnés”; Valmont says of himself and of his activities:

“Au fait, n’y ai-je jouissances, privations, espoir, incertitude? Qu’a-t-on de plus sur un plus grand théâtre? des spectateurs? Hé! laissez faire, ils ne me manqueront pas. S’ils ne me voient pas à l’ouvrage, je leur montererai ma besogne faite; ils n’auront plus qu’à admirer et applaudir. Oui, ils applaudiront; car je puis enfin prédire, avec certitude, le moment de la chute de mon austère Dévote.”

And one could easily find many more such examples.

Perhaps the nature of the society which Laclos shows, and to which Mme de Tourvel is so foreign, might be made clearer by a comparison. It is the exact opposite of the society which Jane Austen shows us in Mansfield Park. Or rather, and the reference to the theatre is apposite, the world of Les Liaisons dangereuses is that of Mansfield Park had Mary Crawford and her brother succeeded with their plans and turned Mansfield Park into a theatre. In Jane Austen's novel the father returns and puts things back into order. But there is no father and no authority in Les Liaisons dangereuses and it is this absence of natural authority which enables the Valmonts and the Merteuils to rule and to dominate.¹⁰

Valmont is, beyond doubt, Laclos' greatest and also his most puzzling creation. For while it is certainly clear what Valmont wants to be, what image of himself he projects before himself, partly to satisfy his vanity, partly for the benefit of Mme de Merteuil, it is much less clear what kind of person he is in actual fact. On the surface this seems simple enough and Laclos multiplies the examples of his needless cruelty, his gratuitous nastiness and the dark corruption of his mind. Yet he is not only and wholly that. He stands in contrast to Mme de Tourvel who is wholly good but also to Mme de Merteuil who is wholly bad. Valmont is not made of one piece, and physically as well as morally he stands between the two.¹¹ One must proceed here with the greatest care. It is not for one moment being suggested that Valmont is not evil, but merely that he is not wholly evil. The ambiguous nature of his feelings for Mme de Tourvel, the ambiguous relationship which exists between him and Mme de Merteuil, finally the fact that he is divided between these two imply Valmont's own ambiguous nature. And this ineradicable question mark placed right in the very heart of the novel is one of its greatest glories.

There is no doubt however that Valmont is the cold-blooded seducer and corrupter of La Présidente. And a passage such as this one shows the sadistic turn of his mind.

“Mon projet, au contraire, est qu’elle sente, qu’elle sente bien la valeur et l’étendue de chacun des sacrifices qu’elle me fera; de ne pas la conduire si vite, que le remords ne puisse la suivre; de faire expirer sa vertu dans une lente agonie; de la fixer sans cesse sur ce désolant spectacle; et de ne lui accorder le bonheur de m’avoir dans ses bras, qu’après l’avoir forcée à n’en plus dissimuler le désir.”

The passage brings immediately to mind the sadistic order of Camus' Caligula to his executioner: “Strike him so that he feels himself die”. Yet he is, however slightly, involved with Mme de Tourvel. He himself right at the beginning of the book says: “J’ai besoin d’avoir cette femme, pour me sauver du ridicule d’en être amoureux …” And although the word “amoureux” when written by Valmont should be considered with great suspicion, there is other evidence that he is in love with Mme de Tourvel, that he is, as it were tempted by love:

Je suis encore trop plein de mon bonheur, pour pouvoir l’apprécier, mais je m’étonne du charme inconnu que j’ai ressenti. Serait-il donc vrai que la vertu augmentât le prix d’une femme, jusque dans le moment même de sa faiblesse? Mais reléguons cette idée puérile avec les contes de bonnes femmes. Ne recontret-on pas presque partout, une résistance plus ou moins bien feinte au premier triomphe? et ai-je trouvé nulle part le charme dont je parle? ce n’est pourtant pas non plus celui de l’amour; car enfin, si j’ai eu quelquefois, auprès de cette femme étonnante, des moments de faiblesse qui ressemblaient à cette passion pusillanime, j’ai toujours su les vaincre et revenir à mes principes.

And the intensity of this involvement is betrayed when he writes:

Il n’est plus pour moi de bonheur, de repos, que par la possession de cette femme que je hais et que j’aime avec une égale fureur. Je ne supporterai mon sort que du moment où je disposerai du sien. Alors tranquille et satisfait, je la verrai, à son tour, livrée aux orages que j’éprouve en ce moment; j’en exciterai mille autres encore. L’espoir et la crainte, la méfiance et la sécurité, tous les maux inventés par la haine, tous les biens accordés par l’amour, je veux qu’ils remplissent son coeur, qu’ils s’y succèdent à ma volonté.

Now we have here the very language of passion with all its tension. And although immediately after “que j’aime avec fureur” Valmont returns to his sadistic self, love, nevertheless, for a minute showed “le bout de l’oreille”. And finally Mme de Merteuil makes no mistake about the nature of Valmont's involvement with Mme de Tourvel: “Oui, Vicomte, vous aimiez beaucoup Mme de Tourvel, et même vous l’aimez encore, vous l’aimez comme un fou. …”

Valmont then is not completely insensitive and above all he is not totally insensitive to virtue. He is moved by the natural gratefulness of the people he rescues from a “saisie”:

J’examinais ce spectacle! lorsqu’un autre paysan, plus jeune, conduisant par la main une femme et deux enfants, et s’avançant vers moi à pas précipités, leur dit: “Tombons tous aux pieds de cette image de Dieu”; et dans le même instant, j’ai été entouré de cette famille, prosternée à mes genoux. J’avouerai ma faiblesse; mes yeux se sont mouillés de larmes, et j’ai senti en moi un mouvement involontaire, mais délicieux. J’ai été étonné du plaisir qu’on éprouve en faisant le bien; et je serais tenté de croire que ce que nous appelons les gens vertueux, n’ont pas tant de mérite qu’on se plaît à nous dire.

The little pirouette at the end should not take us in as it is meant to do and hide from us the importance of this “movement involontaire mais délicieux”. Moreover part of the attraction Valmont feels for Mme de Tourvel lies in her virtues: “De la vertu c’est bien à elle (Cécile) d’en avoir! Ah! qu’elle la laisse à une femme véritablement née pour elle. La seule qui sache l’embellir, qui la ferait aimer”. It is true that Valmont, like Néron faced with Junie, wants to destroy and outrage this virtue. It is equally true that its sight vaguely stirs in him atrophied and dulled feelings.

The drawing of Valmont is wonderfully balanced, for Laclos is not only careful to enrobe Valmont's velleities towards love and virtue in irony so that we never know how real and serious they are, but he also surrounds them, drowns them in examples of Valmont's corruption and sadism so that they are barely recognisable. But however infinitesimal they are, these stirrings do exist. And it is they which help to make Valmont the profoundly disturbing character he is. “Tout dans ce livre me déconcerte”, writes Gide, but it is Valmont who is the most disconcerting character of all.

Mme de Merteuil is obviously the central figure; it is she who holds in her hands all the strings of the intrigue; it is she who dominates not only the novel but also the society in which she lives. Moreover the story of her relationship with Valmont is one of the important strands of the plot. The exact nature of this relationship remains unsolved and will always remain so, therefore a detailed analysis of it is of little real use. However a few things must be said about it.

It is obvious that Mme de Merteuil dominates Valmont: she is clearly his superior in intelligence, enterprise and immorality, and this forms part of her attraction for him; for in Mme de Merteuil he sees an image of himself, the embodiment of what he wants to be, and it is partly to prove himself her equal that he sacrifices Mme de Tourvel. It is equally obvious that Mme de Merteuil “feels” nothing for Valmont, but at the same time she is jealous of Mme de Tourvel; it is she who kills her (“… quand une femme frappe dans le coeur d’une autre, elle manque rarement de trouver l’endroit sensible, et la blessure est incurable”). The real source of Mme de Merteuil's jealousy and the cause of her action is the fear that Mme de Tourvel is gaining a hold on Valmont, that she is for him something more than merely one of his innumerable victims. Mme de Merteuil is jealous, rather like Agrippine in Britannicus, of her loss of power.

Finally there exists between the two protagonists, right from the start of the novel, a tension which grows into a sort of covert smouldering war and eventually burst into the open with Mme de Merteuil's ominous answer to Valmont's ultimatum: “Eh bien! la guerre”. But while this tension is born from a conflict between two people, it has, at the same time, a curious impersonality which the formal quality of the epistolary style tends to enhance. This impersonality comes from the fact that the conflict which opposes Valmont and Mme de Merteuil transcends their personalities. In her autobiographical letter Mme de Merteuil makes it quite clear that she looks upon man as an enemy. Her “règles” and “principes” are arms used in her fight against man in order to gain her freedom from his domination. She is therefore not only at war with Valmont but he is, as man, her natural enemy. And one of the themes of Les Liaisons dangereuses, although admittedly a minor one, is the clash between the sexes.

Mme de Merteuil, unlike Valmont, is a wholly monstrous character. Morally she is totally deformed. She tells the story of her own wilful distortion in a famous letter (LXXXI) which is a brief spiritual autobiography. What we see here is a woman who through willpower forces her intellect to control her natural being, once again not unlike a corrupted Cornelian character. The corruption comes from the fact that it is not reason, but its disincarnated, cerebral form, intellect, which controls her. She submits and dominates her feelings and their outward signs, she studies love like a science (“Cette première nuit, dont on se fait pour l’ordinaire une idée si cruelle ou si douce, ne me présentait qu’une occasion d’expérience …”) and works out the rules and principles which will guide her every action and her entire life. Mme de Merteuil's actions then are born not from thoughts or feelings but from abstract principles. Because of this Les Liaisons dangereuses is in the world of fiction, the farthest and coldest promontory of rationalism.

It is in this famous letter that we come across one phrase which illuminates so vividly the true implication of Mme de Merteuil's “work”:¹² “Je puis dire que je suis mon ouvrage”. In other words she is an artificial creation and has replaced what is natural by what is unnatural. And the power that has corrupted her is the same one which she in turn will use to corrupt others: intellect. But this intellect, this disembodied form of reason is antithetical to life¹³ that is why it corrupts and kills.

At this point of our analysis we find ourselves in the world of Rousseauistic and romantic values. The point which Laclos makes in his novel is simply this: the further one is removed from Nature, the more corrupt one is. Mme de Tourvel, as we have seen, is natural and therefore she is naturally virtuous; Mme de Merteuil, on the other hand is completely corrupted because she has uprooted everything that was natural in her. But the Rousseauistic, typical XVIIIth century sentimentality about Nature is ironically corrected in Les Liaisons dangereuses by the presence of Cécile Volange who is both natural and corrupt.

With Mme de Merteuil and Valmont in the centre of the action it is natural that we should find the element which defines them, their intellect, in the centre of the novel. It is through their intellect and through their intellect alone that they act. Seduction becomes an intellectual activity. Rarely if ever does Valmont try to move Mme de Tourvel, but he tries to prove to her that the friendship she offers is unreal and a mask for her real feelings, he tries to prove that she should give herself to him. The fact that the novel is written in letter-form is partly linked to this predominant role intellect plays in the novel. (Seylaz has pointed out the organic nature of the letters in this novel). For letters are above all a medium of exposition or a means of exchanging ideas. When they are used to express feelings—and the love letters of Mme de Tourvel are an example of this—they lose their life and become an insanely monotonous repetition of the same sentiment. Malraux, describing Mme de Tourvel's later letters to Valmont, talks aptly of “le langage opiniâtre et maniaque de la passion véritable”.¹⁴

More important, however, is the fact that the particular horror of Les Liaisons dangereuses is also a function of this domination of the intellect, and more especially of the ends towards which this intellect is directed. For what Valmont and Mme de Merteuil seek, eventually, is death and destruction. When intelligence and reason are diverted from their proper end, which is to order and preserve the continuance of human life, and are used to disrupt order and to destroy life, than a state of terror exists. And it is precisely such a state which Laclos describes. Part of the horror of the Concentration Camps comes from this: what inspires terror is not death or torture but the organised way in which they are meted out. And in Les Liaisons dangereuses it is not the fact of seduction which is horrifying but the manner in which Valmont seduces and then destroys Mme de Tourvel.

This is what creates the great difference between Valmont and Don Juan. Don Juan is a professional seducer, he is a hard-hearted Libertin, but he retains nevertheless some human qualities: he has a certain lighthearted gaiety, and a great deal of courage which we cannot but admire: he remains, however corrupted he might be, un grand seigneur. But not so Valmont who is a Don Juan but shorn of those qualities which linked Don Juan to our world. Don Juan, when he seduces, uses his charm, and the fact that he has charm is in itself a proof of his humanity. But Valmont, as we have seen, uses his intelligence, and this dehumanises him.

The diversion of intelligence from its proper ends also affects language. For when intelligence and reason cease to fulfill their right function, language, through which they express themselves, also becomes corrupted. Words are emptied of their content and meaning. The fact that the Nazis put over the entrance gate of one of their Concentration Camps the motto Arbeit adelt den Menschen indicates neither an ironic intent nor cynicism but is merely an example of this linguistic corruption: it means strictly nothing. In Les Liaisons dangereuses we see a very similar phenomenon. Words and notions are emptied of their meaning, turned inside out and upside down. Thus when Mme de Merteuil, writes to Valmont about Cécile: “… si une fois vous formez cette petite …” or about Mme de Tourvel: “peut-être si vous eussiez connu cette femme plus tôt en eussiezvous pu faire quelque chose”, she means exactly the opposite: former becomes déformer; faire, défaire. We find then, especially centering around Valmont, a deep linguistic uncertainty in Laclos' novel. The words Valmont uses when he writes to Mme de Tourvel or when he writes about her,—have they meaning? are they empty words? We find hanging above Les Liaisons dangereuses the same unanswerable question which hangs over Diderot's Neveu de Rameau (the Neveu and the protagonists of Laclos' novel certainly have something in common): Est-ce ironie ou vérité?

Intellect, thus corrupted and distorted, is nevertheless the force through which Valmont and Mme de Merteuil act. But this intellect is put into the service of higher interests. Valmont and Mme de Merteuil are moved by deeper and darker powers, which use intellect, and of which sex and seduction are but the superficial expression. Here we reach what is in fact the core of this novel. In seeking to seduce, Valmont and Mme de Merteuil do not seek to satisfy a desire, nor is vanity primarily involved. In this sense they go beyond Don Juan. What they seek is to conquer: “Conquérir est notre destin” writes Valmont and it is not by mere chance that this sentence, which illuminates the entire novel, is found in the very first letter Valmont writes to Mme de Merteuil. It is through this sentence that we enter the novel. They seek to conquer, to dominate, and ultimately they seek Power. (It is a great pity the English language does not make the fine and necessary distinction which exists in French between le pouvoir and la puissance). It is because the novel is really about power that sex, which superficially seems to be the central theme, is, in fact, but a marginal one. This might perhaps explain, at least in part, the strange, abstract quality sex has in this novel. But, it seems, the rest of the answer to this question must be sought elsewhere. In Les Liaisons dangereuses sex is literally disembodied by intellect.¹⁵ The profoundly ironic paradox of this novel is that a disincarnated intellect lives, acts and corrupts through the body. It is because of this that both Valmont and Mme de Merteuil are truly satanic forces.¹⁶ Pride and lust for power are Satan's and their driving force. What the hero and heroine of Les Liaisons seek through power is an extension of the self which is, in fact, a desire for spiritual possession of others. Here the role of sex becomes again important: it might be a marginal theme of the novel, but it is the only way by which the possession of one person by another can be directly and concretely expressed.

What Valmont wants is to destroy Mme de Tourvel's will and to replace it by his own; it is in this way too that Mme de Merteuil wants to possess Cécile.

Quant à Gercourt, premier objet de mes soins, je serais bien malheureuse ou bien maladroite, si, maîtresse de l’esprit de sa femme, comme je le suis et vais l’être plus encore, je ne trouvais pas mille moyens d’en faire ce que je veux qu’il soit.

And she sneers at Valmont for not possessing Cécile in this same manner:

Ce n’est même pas à vrai dire, une entière jouissance: vous ne possédez absolument que sa personne! je ne parle pas de son coeur, dont je me doute bien que vous ne vous souciez guère: mais vous n’occupez seulement pas sa tête.

But they want to go further. The possession of people is but a means to control events.

Sans doute, vous ne nierez pas ces vérités que leur évidence a rendues triviales. Si cependant vous m’avez vue, disposant des événements et des opinions, faire de ces hommes si redoutables le jouet de mes caprices ou de mes fantaisies; ôter aux uns la volonté, aux autres la puissance de me nuire.

But in turn this desire to control events is born from the desire to rule out chance, to eradicate contingency, to become destiny. They want, in other words, to become God and the sentence from Mme de Merteuil's autobiographical letter which I quoted earlier (“Je puis dire que je suis mon propre ouvrage”) acquires now an even deeper significance. For what creature is self-created and self-generated but God? Laclos is careful to make clear this parallel between Valmont, Mme de Merteuil and God—hence the profoundly blasphemous nature of these two characters. Valmont writes to Mme de Merteuil:

J’eus l’heureuse et simple idée de tenter de voir à travers la serrure, et je vis en effet cette femme adorable à genoux, baignée de larmes, et priant avec ferveur. Quel Dieu allait-elle invoquer? en est-il d’assez puissant contre l’amour? En vain cherche-t-elle à présent des secours étrangers: c’est moi qui réglerai son sort.

And even more striking still:

Oui, j’aime à voir, à considérer cette femme prudente, engagée, sans s’en être aperçue, dans un sentier qui ne permet plus de retour, et dont la pente rapide et dangereuse l’entraîne malgré elle, et la force à me suivre. Là, effrayée du péril qu’elle court, elle voudrait s’arrêter et ne peut se retenir. Ses soins et son adresse peuvent bien rendre ses pas moins grands; mais il faut qu’ils se succèdent. Quelquefois, n’osant fixer le danger, elle ferme les yeux, et se laissant aller, s’abandonne à mes soins. Plus souvent, une nouvelle crainte ranime ses efforts: dans son effroi mortel, elle veut tenter encore de retourner en arrière; elle épuise ses forces pour gravir péniblement un court espace; et bientôt un magique pouvoir la replace plus près de ce danger, que vainement elle avait voulu fuir. Alors n’ayant plus que moi pour guide et pour appui, sans songer à me reprocher davantage une chute inévitable, elle m’implore pour la retarder. Les ferventes prières, les humbles supplications, tout ce que les mortels, dans leur crainte, offrent à la Divinité, c’est moi qui le reçois d’elle; et vous voulez que, sourd à ses voeux, et détruisant moi-même le culte qu’elle me rend, j’emploie à la précipiter, la puissance qu’elle invoque pour la soutenir!¹⁷

Ultimately then, and at its deepest level Les Liaisons dangereuses deals with Luciferian evil. It is only when this is clearly seen that the end and the “punishment” of Mme de Merteuil becomes understandable. After the death of Valmont, the machinations of Mme de Merteuil become known, she is ruined by losing her procès and, finally disfigured by smallpox, she flees from Paris.

But, and this is of the greatest importance and throws the most revealing light not merely on the end but on the entire novel, Mme de Merteuil does not die. Now, Mme de Merteuil did not, for her evil actions, depend on either her wealth or her looks, but solely on her mind. But this truly satanic mind, now housed in a disfigured body, remains untouched. The real Mme de Merteuil continues to live. She cannot die. She is immortal and indestructible in the same way that evil is immortal and indestructible.

Notes

1. J. Giraudoux, Littérature, Paris, Grasset, n.d., p. 63.

2. Mémoires du Comte de Tilly pour servir à l’histoire des moeurs de la fin du XVIII^esiècle, quoted in Choderlos de Laclos, Oeuvres Complètes. Paris, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, n.d., p. 733. The italics are in the text and indicate that these were the actual words spoken by Laclos.

3. J. Boulenger, Le Grand siècle, quoted by Denis de Rougemont, L’Amour et l’Occident, Paris, Plon, n.d., p. 255.

4. Denis de Rougemont, op. cit., p. 21

5. Valmont and Mme de Merteuil are not unaware of this link with a far removed past, as this passage, in which Mme de Merteuil uses ironically the language of courtly love, clearly shows (p. 37): “Je veux donc bien vous instruire de mes projets: mais jurez-moi qu’en fidèle Chevalier, vous ne courrez aucune aventure que vous n’ayez mis celle-ci à fin. Elle est digne d’un Héros: vous servirez l’amour et la vengeance.”

6. J. Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle-Ages, London, Edward Arnold, p. 96.

7. A. Gide, Oeuvres Complètes, Paris Gallimard, n.d. vol. VII, p. 453.

8. See J. Giraudoux, Littérature, Paris, Grasset, pp. 57-75.

9. I would like to record here my indebtedness to Seylaz's remarkable book, La Création romanesque chez Laclos, Paris, Lib. Michard, 1958.

10. Writing about Balzac, William Troy also gives a clear description of the type of society we find in Laclos' novel: “Even in Antigone, in which the claims of society are held in uncertain balance with more ancient pieties, society stands for order—an objective authoritative norm by which individual conduct can be measured. But the society that Balzac describes is itself given over to unregenerate expression of ‘Will’; it is simply an aggregation of predatory individuals.” (“On re-reading Balzac”, Kenyon Review, summer 1940).

11. It is in this sense that one could speak of Les Liaisons as a manichean novel.

12. “Le travail sur moi-même,” “Je me suis travaillée avec le même soin. …”

13. Writing about the prejudice existing against intellect Jacques Barzun says: “Indeed if we look further into this primal anti-intellectualism, we find it enshrines a true perception and an impulse of respect. The perception is that, like all artifacts, Intellect is the enemy of life.” The House of Intellect, London, Secker and Warburg, 1959, p. 8.

14. A. Malraux, “Choderlos de Laclos”, in Tableau de la littérature française. Paris, Gallimard, n.d., p. 419.

15. It is this which transforms the sexual act into an erotic one, eroticism being essentially an intellectualisation of sex. The French prostitutes call their clients with peculiar tastes des Cérébraux.

16. The corruptible flesh made not the soul to sin, but the sinning soul made the flesh corruptible. From which corruption although there arise some incitements unto sin, and some vicious desires, yet are not all the sins of an evil life to be laid upon the flesh; otherwise we shall make the devil, that has no flesh, sinless: for though we cannot call him a fornicator, a drunkard, or by any one of those carnally vicious names (though he be a secret provoker of man unto all those), yet is he truly styled most proud and envious, which vices have possessed him so far, that on account of them he is destined unto eternal torment in the prisons of this obscure air. Now those vices that domineer in him the apostle calls the works of the flesh, though certain it is that he has no flesh. For he says that enmity, contention, emulation, wrath, and envy are the works of the flesh; to all which pride gives being, yet rules pride in the fleshless devil. (My italics. C. J. G.) St. Augustin, The City of God, Bk. XIV, ch. III.

17. Would it be far fetched to see in this paragraph a parody of Bossuet's famous passage from his Sermon pour le jour de Pâques:

    “Je voudrais retourner en arrière: Marche! marche! Un poids invincible, une force irrésistible nous entraînent; il faut sans cesse avancer vers le précipice. Mille traverses, mille peines nous fatiguent et nous inquiètent dans la route. Encore si je pouvais éviter ce précipice affreux! Non, non; il faut marcher, il faut courir: telle est la rapidité des années. On se console pourtant, parce que de temps en temps on rencontre des objets qui nous divertissent, des eaux courantes, des fleurs qui passent. On voudrait s’arrêter: Marche! marche! Et cependant on voit tomber derrière soi tout ce qu’on avait passé: fracas effroyable! inévitable ruine!”