SOURCE: “‘L'art de detourner les choses’: Sociability as Euphoria in Madeleine de Scudéry's Conversations,” in Papers on French Seventeenth Century Literature, Vol. XIII, No. 24, 1986, pp. 17-24.

[In the following essay, Goldsmith examines Scudéry's Conversations in light of modern theories of sociability. She argues that, by establishing in this work a utopian arena for conversation set apart from social limitations, Scudéry enabled the creation of a conversational model that could be a new standard for society.]

The writings of Madeleine de Scudéry are often cited as textual enactments of seventeenth-century codes of politesse and sociability. Her novels, writes Magendie, gave their original readers “a wordly education” by depicting an elaborate idealized vision of aristocratic social life.¹ Sainte-Beuve describes her as “une des institutrices de la société”, and he considers her collection of model “conversations” and “entretiens” her best work.² Published over a twelve-year period between 1680 and 1692, the first volumes were comprised of selections from her novels, while many of the conversations in the last three books were new pieces written for the collection.

In deciding to reprint excerpts from her novels and name them “conversations”, Scudéry was also resituating them in a literary tradition committed to the codification of manners. By 1680 the reading public was familiar with a number of texts in this genre, the most popular being courtesy manuals by Faret and Courtin, and a collection of “Conversations” by Méré.³ Like the Renaissance authors of conduct literature beginning with Castiglione, these writers presented to their readers techniques for living in polite society, for obtaining and retaining one's place in elite circles. The single most important activity of court society was conversation, and as such it was viewed as an art essential to the education of honnêtes gens. “Ce n'est pas une affaire à négliger”, writes Méré, “car on passe les plus doux moments de la vie à s'entretenir.”⁴

Within the circumscribed structure of a “conversation”, some of the features of Scudéry's longer narratives which modern readers find difficult to appreciate take on a new meaning. The lack of differentiation between characters, which Magendie calls “a basic flaw” in the novels, in the context of a conversation draws attention to the principle of equality or ressemblance essential to sociable dialogue.⁵ Her imprecise descriptions of place, which Godenne sees as a weakness in the organization of the novels, in the framework of the conversations emphasizes the power of each social encounter to constantly recreate for the speakers a kind of moveable ideal space.⁶ And the inconclusive structure of the novelistic narratives, their perpetual deferral of an ending, in the conversations is a sign of each speaker's proper reluctance to disrupt the euphoric balance of dialogue by imposing a definitive conclusion on it.

In Scudéry's own terms, conversation is “le plus grand plaisir des honnêtes gens”.⁷ The opening selection of her first volume of conversations sets about to define the genre. It is clear, the speakers decide, that all verbal exchange cannot be called “conversation”:“Lorsque les hommes ne parlent précisément que par la nécessité de leurs affaires cela ne peut pas s'appeller ainsi … un plaideur qui parle de son procès à ses juges, un marchand qui négocie avec un autre … tout cela n'est pas ce qu'on doit appeller conversation (p. 2).” The language of true conversation is exclusive and limiting, for the standard of politesse demands that the individual participant submit to the rule of the group: “la véritable politesse … c'est soumettre judicieusement sa raison au bel usage du monde …”⁸

This “bel usage du monde” requires that participants repress individual expressions of self in favor of the group dynamic, seen by Scudéry as a kind of ideal system of verbal exchange. Character traits signifying a reluctance to participate in this system are the most abhorred. “Ingratitude”, for example: “(elle) renverse toutes les lois de la société, qui parmi des gens raisonnables ne devrait être autre chose qu'un commerce continuel de bons offices … (C, II,418).” The test of conversational skill is one's ability to restore the equanimity of polite dialogue whenever it is threatened by personal idiosyncracy: “Je veux enfin qu'on sache si bien l'art de détourner les choses qu'on puisse dire une galanterie à la plus sévère femme du monde; qu'on puisse conter une bagatelle à des gens graves et sérieux, et qu'on puisse parler à propos de science à des ignorans si l'on y est forcé … (C, 42).”

The work of two twentieth-century social theorists, Georg Simmel and Erving Goffman, can help shed light on this verbal balancing act that seems so crucial to Scudéry's definition of perfect conversation. Simmel terms sociable conversation “talking as an end in itself”. He offers as an extreme example of this “falling off of the concrete life-content”, the court society of the ancien régime: “The etiquette of court society became an end in itself; it “etiquetted” no content any longer but had elaborated immanent laws, comparable to those of art, which have validity only from the viewpoint of art and do not at all have the purpose of imitating faithfully and strikingly the reality of the model, that is, of things outside art.”⁹

More recently, Erwing Goffman has used Simmel's definition of sociability as a point of departure for his own theory of “focused encounters”. Arguing that Simmel's distinction between “sociable” and “serious” life is too sharply drawn, Goffman analyzes the “transformation rules” that determine the boundary between the outer world and a focused gathering.¹⁰ Focused encounters are indeed sustained by the participants adhering to rules of “obligatory involvement” and minimizing spontaneous, individual reactions which undermine the ease of group interaction. But no social encounter, however isolated, can be said to fully exclude all externally based attributes from its inner dynamic. The barrier between an artifically created focused encounter and the external order is, he remarks, “more like a screen than like a solid wall (p. 33).” The ways in which external properties are expressed within a sociable gathering will be determined by the particular set of “transformation rules” to which the group adheres. In any given encounter there are ideal circumstances which can “bring actual involvements and obligatory ones into perfect congruence.” These circumstances Goffman calls the encounter's “euphoria function (p. 44).”

The speakers in Scudéry's “conversations” may be said to be committed to enhancing the euphoria function of each encounter, and they collectively formulate the transformation rules that help them to realize this objective. All of the conversations share organizational features which the interlocutors often explicitly regard as essential to the conduct of sociable dialogue. Thus, while each conversation is a debate between members of the group on a specific topic, the differences of opinion are never allowed to polarize the company, and each point of view is carefully balanced against the others. The discussion may end with a judicious bargain being struck between the two members of the group representing the extreme positions in the debate, as in “Contre ceux qui décrient le gouvernement”: “Pisistrate s'engagea à ne parler plus d'affaires d'état à Cléorante: et Cléorante promit aussi à Pisistrate d'endurer qu'il lui dit d'elle et de lui, tout ce qu'il lui plaisait … (C, I,270).”

All of the conversations begin with the members of the group moving to a location apart from the rest of society, usually a bucolic setting, such as a hidden “cabinet” on the grounds of a country estate. By situating their dialogues in locations defined primarily by their separateness, the group creates that barrier between itself and the rest of the world that is so essential to their collective self-image of themselves as an exemplary elite. This kind of group displacement helps to create, in Goffman's phrase, “the membrane that encloses it, cutting it off from a field of properties that could be given weight (p. 79).”

Having established themselves as collectively exceptional but individually equal, the speakers in Scudéry's conversations perceive their own group interactions as a standard by which the rest of society can be judged. Isolated from the ‘outside’ world, the insiders observe it, to more precisely identify the behavior they wish to exclude from their own social interaction. Approaching the problem of defining the meaning of the day's topic, the group typically finds it easier to specify what it is not. That is, in defining conversation, for example, they decide that “avant que de bien définir en quoi consiste principalement le charme et la beauté de la conversation, il faudrait que toutes les personnes qui composent la compagnie se souvinssent des conversations ennuyeuses qui les ont le plus importunées (C,I,3).” At the end of this exercise one participant reviews the dozens of ungracious social exchanges that various members of the group had described and rejected. “Je suis bien embarassée de vous entendre tous parler comme vous faites”, she says. “De quoi faut-il donc parler?” “Et de quoi faut-il que la conversation soit formée, pour être belle et raisonnable?” (pp. 34,36) The answer she is given is simply that there are indeed few other topics of conversation, but they must be addressed in a different manner: “Il faut que ce soit de tout ce que nous avons repris, … Mais il faut qu'elle soit conduite par le jugement. Car enfin, quoi que tous les gens dont nous avons parlé soient incommodes, je soutiens, … qu'on ne peut parler que de ce dont ils parlent, et qu'on en peut parler agréablement.” (pp. 36-37)

This conversation on conversation ends with an extended exchange of compliments between all members of the group, who observe that what are doing is enacting ideal conversation. “Enfin, … sans vous donner la peine de parler davantage de la conversation, pour en donner des lois, il ne faut qu'admirer la vôtre, et qu'agir comme vous.” (p. 43) The narrator concludes: “nous fimes ensuite une conversation si galante et si enjouée, qu'elle dura presqu'au soir, que cette belle troupe se sépara (p. 45).”

This movement from a critical and highly specific description of what occurs ‘outside’ the exclusive circle, to an approbatory but much more nuanced observation of the group's own inner dynamic, is typical of the progression in Scudéry's conversation. In this way her speakers inevitably end their conversations by turning inward and indulging in a kind of group narcissism, transforming the object of discussion from a reference to a reality outside into a contemplation of the inner world they have created in juxtaposition to it.

Indeed, Scudéry seems to regard conversation as an elaborate game, but one whose “transformation rules” serve to describe each encounter's tie to the outside world, as much as they serve to break that tie. While the democratic world of her conversations is carefully isolated from the ‘real’ world of power struggles, with its personal victories and defeats, at the same time its separateness is defined precisely by its selective relationship to a wider social reality.

In a conversation entitled “De l'ennui sans sujet”, Scudéry's speakers deal quite explicitly with this relationship of their little circle to the locus of power “outside”. The group is discussing one member, Aminte, and her inability to find relief from that quintessential malaise of the courtier, boredom. Her perpetual ennui separates her from the other members of the group, as she cannot bear to be present in any social gathering for long.

Discouraged by their failure to coax Aminte into a more sociable frame of mind, the three friends try listing all the activities, games, and diversions they can think of that should amuse “une dame d'esprit”: “la lecture, des ouvrages d'or et de soie, la peinture, la musique …,” only to have Aminte respond point by point on why such things would not entertain her. Furthermore, she insists, she is not able to control her responses; ennui overcomes her despite her efforts to be like the others. “Je soutiens que l'ennui n'est pas volontaire, car je voudrais bien ne m'ennuyer point, mais, par malheur, je ne puis m'en empêcher (p. 474).”

At this point the group decides that they are dealing with one of those people “qui ne s'aiment pas eux-mêmes.” Exasperated, Clorélise tells Aminte: “Cet ennui universel … vous fait passer votre vie dans une inquiétude continuelle dont vous ne pouvez rendre bonne raison.” Aminte, true to form, decides to leave, but after a brief excursion away from the company, she returns with Clindor, who was heard about the initiatory fête offered by the king at his new château, Marly. The description this messenger has heard of the event leads him to believe it would have dissipated Aminte's ennui. At this gathering, the king had surprised his guests with a new game. Displaying several rooms full of precious and exotic artifacts which had been acquired for him from all parts of the world, he invited his guests to amuse themselves by gambling with them. This display is orchestrated by the king's oiselier, or “marchand de la cour”, who instructs four other marchands how to present their array of marchandises. Clindor recites an impressive list of hundreds of objects that were offered to the guests to be used in their gaming.

At first the players were inhibited by the variety and wealth of the items, so they played cautiously, fearful of losing: “Et comme cette abondance offrait aux yeux tant de choses différentes à choisir, la suspension fit qu'on ne joua pas d'abord avec empressement; les dames cherchaient à résoudre ce qu'elles voulaient jouer, à proportion de ce qu'elles voulaient hasarder (C,II,492).” But it slowly became apparent that this wealth had no fixed exchange value; these marchands were asking no price: “… comme ces quatre marchands ne s'esxpliquaient pas nettement sur le prix des choses, et se contenter d'exhorter à jouer hardiment, on commença de soupçonner qu'il y avait de mistère; … (p. 494).” And when the king himself began to play, and to lose, the guests changed their attitude: “Mais enfin le roi ayant joué le premier et perdu fort noblement, son exemple fut un commandement de jouer (p. 493).” At the end of the evening the players who kept their winnings as physical reminders of the king's “libéralité”, compared this fête to others, which, while equally grand, had left the guests with only a dream-like memory of them. At Marly, however, the king had magically transformed a familiar game into a diversion of heroic dimensions: “le jeu qui partout ailleurs n'est qu'un plaisir, et qui quelquefois même est un vice quand on y trompe, devient une vertu héroïque dans ce palais … (497).”

Aminte, of course, agrees that this game would indeed have relieved her ennui, and she has become reengaged in the conversation by Clindor's description. The company concludes with praise for Louis XIV: “la liberté ingénieuse du roi était l'âme de ce commerce héroïque. Le roi seul perdit tout ce que les autres gagnèrent, si toutefois on peut appeller perdre d'avoir le plaisir de donner sans vouloir même être remercié … (p. 494-5).”

The king's gesture is introduced into this conversation as a divertissement which is effective first of all because it surprises the court, it is something new, and at the same time it is compared to another situation in which Louis had used the tactic of surprise: “le roi surprit autant toute sa cour qu'il surprit autrefois la Franche-Comté, lorsqu'il partit à la fin du carnaval pour l'aller conquérir; … (p. 497).” The “heroic” role attributed to the king at Marly is the posture of a conqueror; by making of himself the sole source of goods for the gambling party he asserts his power over his subjects, specifically over a noble class which has been reduced to finding action, glory, and honor all within the confines of polite ceremonial and courtly gaming. The gambling party plays out the political relationship between king and court, while also transforming this relationship into a system of polite “commerce continuel de bons offices”, from which no one ever really has to emerge as a loser.

The fascination of gambling is usually thought to be based on an element of risk, and on the player's obsession with a possible gain. Pascal writes that the pleasure of gambling derives from the uncertainty of winning, which in turn excites the gambler's eagerness to win: “Il faut qu'il s'y échauffe, et qu'il se pipe lui-même en s'imaginant qu'il serait heureux de gagner ce qu'il ne voudrait pas qu'on lui donna à condition de ne point jouer, afin qu'il se forme un sujet de passion et qu'il excite sur cela son désir, sa colère, sa crainte pour cet objet qu'il s'est formé comme les enfants qui s'effraient du visage qu'ils ont barbouillé.”¹¹ The player's ennui can only be relieved by introducing the possibility of losing, and the gambler derives no pleasure from simply being given what he might have won. In his classification of games, Roger Caillois notes that card games combine the two forces of agôn and alea, competition and chance, and Goffman views gambling as a form of “action-seeking” which in a leisure society means taking chances perceived as avoidable.¹²

In her portrait of the ideal gambling party, however, Scudéry emphasizes that the special quality of this diversion, which made it singularly interesting to the perpetually bored Aminte, is precisely that the players are risking nothing. The participants only enter into the spirit of the game when they realize that there are no restrictions on what they can play. What is gambled, moreover, is not money, but a quantity of exotic and foreign objects whose monetary value is, we are told, impossible for the guests to calculate. Thus the initial attempt of the ladies, to “decide what they wanted to play according to what they wanted to risk”, is rendered pointless. In this situation, it is impossible for the participants to experience the game as “action” in Goffman's sense; it is closer to ritual, but without the element of repetition and familiarity that is crucial to ritualized group activity. The only player to actually risk losing anything is the king, and he transforms his material loss into a personal victory. The Marly gambling party clearly functions as an assertion of royal power over the players who all nonetheless ostensibly ‘win’. The spectacle of himself as “noble loser”, his possessions consumed by his subjects, gives a sacramental dimension to the king's political power.

It is obvious, however, that the fête at Marly does not represent simply one in a series of displays and counter-displays of wealth and ritual consumption between the king and his courtiers. What distinguishes this party from a potlatch is the fact that the giver and receivers are clearly not intended to reverse roles. In fact, Louis XIV's lavish displays at Versailles in the 1660's and 1670's had not only established the myth of his limitless wealth, but they also confirmed the king's unique privilege to display it.¹³

The book of conversations for which “De l'ennui sans sujet” was written constitutes, in a sense, Scudéry's attempt to offer the king a gift in partial exchange for one he had given its author. In 1683 Madeleine de Scudéry had been granted a royal pension, and, while most of her previous works had been dedicated to illustrious women, all of the volumes published after 1683 were dedicated to Louis XIV. And it is not only in this conversation on ennui that the king is the central focus of Scudéry's collection of model encounters. In most of the conversations, in fact, the figure of the king is presented as a transcendent model of politesse. The speakers in “De la politesse”, for example, decide that sociability itself is enhanced in an absolute monarchy by the existence of “un premier modèle”: “la source de la politesse étant le désir de plaire … ce désir doit être plus vif dans un état monarchique que dans une république, parce que les grâces dépendant d'un seul, le désir de lui plaire rend capable de plaire à tous … (CN, I, p. 181).” In a republic, on the other hand, “le désir de plaire à tous, ou du moins à un grand nombre, fait qu'on ne plaît quelquefois à personne (p. 184).”

For Scudéry, ideal conversation, as it is enacted within the wider context of aristocratic life under Louis XIV, is an isolated, euphoric circulation of words where, like the gambling party at Marly, nothing is really risked. This, at least, is the pretense, this is the form she gives to her dialogues, as her speakers repeatedly privilege form over substance and promote a use of language which is, as one critic has recently remarked, “unproductive, gratuitous, esthetic”.¹⁴ Yet at the same time the internal structure of these encounters is fundamentally linked to the wider world within which they take place. Goffman's comment on this relationship in contemporary society is even more applicable to Scudéry's world: “We fence our encounters in with gates; the very means by which we hold off a part of reality can be the means by which we can bear introducing it (p. 78).”

Notes

1. Maurice Magendie, La politesse mondaine et les théories de l'honnêteté. Paris: F. Alcan, 1925. p. 635.

2. Causeries du lundi. Paris: Garnier, 1853. IV, 102-106.

3. For an overview of this literature see Magendie, and Roger Lathuillère, La Préciosité: Etude historique et linguistique. Genève: Droz, 1966.

4. Antoine Gombauld, chevalier de Méré, Oeuvres complètes. Paris: F. Roches, 1930. I, p. 51.

5. Magendie, p. 635.

6. René Godenne, Les Romans de Mademoiselle de Scudéry. Genève: Droz, 1983.

7. Conversations sur divers sujets. Paris: Louis Billaine, 1680. I, p. 2-3. Future references to this work will appear within the text as C. The only modern edition is a selection of six conversations edited by Phillip J. Wolfe (Ravenna: Longo, 1977), which includes a good introduction to the genre and Scudéry's use of it.

8. Conversations nouvelles sur divers sujets. Paris: Claude Barbin, 1684. I, p. 126-7. References to this work will appear in the text as CN.

9. On Individuality and Social Forms. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1971. pp. 138-39.

10. Goffman, Encounters. New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1961. p.33.

11. Pensées. Paris: Mercure de France, 1976. p. 97.

12. Roger Caillois, Man, Play, and Games. New York: Schocken Books, 1979. p. 18; and Erwin Goffman, Interaction Ritual. Chicago: Aldine Publishing Co., 1967. p. 192.

13. See Jean-Marie Apostolidès' discussion of this in Le roi-machine. Paris: Minuit, 1981. p. 102. In another recent study of the interdependence of king and courtier in the construction of political myth, Louis Marin sees the Versailles fêtes as illustionistic counterparts to political events. The king's deification of himself is confirmed by his courtiers in the rhetoric of flattery: “… le roi se donne à consommer comme corps symbolique à ses sujets et … ceux-ci le constituent tel par les discours qu'ils lui adressent.” Le Portrait du roi. Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1981. p. 115.

14. Domna C. Stanton, The Aristocrat as Art: A Study of the Honnête Homme and the Dandy in Seventeenth and Nineteenth-Century French Literature. New York: Columbia University Press, 1980. p. 140.