SOURCE: "The Seducer as Catalyst," in Molière and the Comedy of Intellect, University of California Press, 1962, pp. 113-29.

[Hubert is an American essayist and critic. In the following essay, he discusses characterization, setting, and language in Dom Juan, which he considers to be one of Molière's most controversial and unique works.]

Dom Juan stands out as Molière's most controversial play. Like Tartuffe, it struck the parti dévot as an abominably irreligious work. Unlike L'Imposteur, it has appeared to many critics, irrespective of their religious convictions, as an artistic failure in spite of a certain number of redeeming scenes. A few admirers of Molière, however, regard this comedy his masterpiece, superior even to Tartuffe and Le Misanthrope. This controversy probably arose from the fact that Le Festin de Pierre differs so greatly from any other play by Molière or his contemporaries. Instead of providing his usual neatly contrived dramatic machine, Molière appears to have strung together a certain number of tableaux. Even the central character, Don Juan, who, by his mere presence, gives a semblance of unity and continuity to the play, behaves at times inconsistently, if not incoherently. But perhaps we should not judge this strange comedy according to so-called classical standards, for it may, after all, possess its own peculiar unity, comparable to the poetic coherence of some of Shakespeare's plays. Professor Doolittle, in an important article ["The Humanity of Molière's Dom Juan," PMLA, June, 1953], has shown that Dom Juan by no means lacks this unity and coherence. We agree with his interpretation according to which the exposure of convention is a central theme. We feel, however, that it is the Don himself, and not only his victims, who behaves in a conventional manner.

Critics have generally placed too much emphasis on Don Juan's belief or disbelief in the same manner that they have overemphasized the psychological aspects of Tartuffe's hypocrisy. And they assume that Molière intended only to create a convincing hypocrite and an equally convincing seducer with atheistic leanings, and therefore that character study preoccupied him more than any other aspect of dramaturgy. Recently however, M. Simon has stressed the importance of Sganarelle [in his Molière par lui-même], who serves as an intermediary between the isolated seducer and the audience. His theory corroborates, in some respects, that of Professor Doolittle's, for it transforms the Don into a different sort of creature, set apart from the general or conventional run of humanity. Still, this isolation—a feature of many of Molière's characters—does not make Don Juan any the less conventional, as we shall presently see. Rather, his separation from the rest of the world puts him at times in the same category as Tartuffe himself, or Arnolphe, or even Alceste.

Enough has been said about Don Juan as a realistic portrait of a seventeenth century libertine and aristocrat, but perhaps too little about the effect he produces on others. After all, his very existence as a legend, and even as a dramatic figure, depends primarily upon the reactions of his victims—and in Molière's version, upon the behavior of Sganarelle. If, in Tartuffe, the gullibility of Orgon and Madame Pernelle matters at least as much as the artifices of the impostor, why then should not susceptibility to temptation count as much as the personality of the seducer? To Orgon's eagerness to play the part of dupe corresponds the enthusiasm with which Don Juan's victims succumb to the first temptation that happens to come their way. After all, Faust did invite the devil; and, as readers, we pay less attention to Mephistopheles than to Faust himself. In Le Festin de Pierre, Don Juan plays on occasion the part of devil, which does not mean that we can consider him as evil incarnate or as the spirit of deprivation. Only on one occasion does the truly diabolical side of his nature come to the fore—in his jealousy of an obviously happy couple:

La tendresse visible de leurs mutuelles ardeurs me donna de l'émotion; j'en fus frappé au cœur et mon amour commença par la jalousie. Oui, je ne pus souffrir d'abord de les voir si bien ensemble; le dépit alarma mes désirs, et je me figurai un plaisir extrême à pouvoir troubler leur intelligence, et rompre cet attachement, dont la délicatesse de mon cæur se tenoit offensée (I, 2).

In most instances, however, he acts as a catalyst of evil as well as of good, and his attempts at seduction serve mainly to test the mettle of others. In short, we may regard Don Juan's role as primarily functional and as analogous in this respect to that of Tartuffe. Nonetheless, we consider both the seducer and the repulsive hypocrite as convincing, lifelike characters, even though this aspect of dramaturgy need not concern us in these pages. The Don, however, is much more complex than Tartuffe, perhaps because we can see in him not only the portrait of a courtier, but because he combines within himself the traits of two quite different characters: that of the Spanish Don Juan Tenorio and that of Hylas. Indeed, this composite nature of Molière's seducer might explain an apparent lack of coherence in his behavior.

Movement

Molière has neglected at least one of the three classical unities in Le Festin de Pierre: that of place, which changes more frequently than in almost any other play of the period. In this respect, Molière was merely following tradition, for the original version by Tirso de Molina as well as the various Italian and French imitations, contained a wealth of entertaining incidents. But in Molière's play, the perpetual agitation of the hero happens to be merely one aspect of a conflict between motion and immobility. The key word in this antithesis is demeurer. Don Juan succeeds in exerting a strong attraction on people who remain confined to a village or to a convent, but who would love to escape and go to an imagined paradise. He seduces all those who show discontent with their lot, such as Elvire, a nun imprisoned in a convent, or Charlotte, a peasant girl engaged to a rustic whom she does not even like. Characteristically, Don Juan tells Charlotte: "… vous n'êtes pas née pour demeurer dans un village," (II, 2) whereas Sganarelle, upon his master's departure, gives the two peasant girls a piece of advice diametrically opposed to his: "… demeurez dans votre village." (II, 4). Previously, the seducer had confessed to Done Elvire: "… je vous ai dérobée à la clôture d'un couvent," before telling her to return "à vos premières chaînes," or, in other words, to her previous immobility and engagement (I, 3). And the Don, whom Sganarelle describes as "le plus grand coureur du monde," refuses to stay in one place and limit his endeavors to the chains of a single love. His eloquent and lengthy speech about his amorous conquests opens with a question worthy of Honoré d'Urfé's Hylas: "Quoi? tu veux qu'on se lie à demeurer au premier objet qui nous prend?" Concerned only with pursuit and conquest, he speaks in the name of all seducers when he exclaims: "… nous nous endormons dans la tranquillité d'un tel amour, si quelque objet nouveau ne vient réveiller nos désirs." Refusing all limitations in time, space, or numbers, he seeks, like Alexander the Great, new worlds "… pour y pouvoir étendre mes conquêtes amoureuses" (I, 2).

In his conquests, Don Juan sees himself as moving from one seduction to another with so much speed that none of his victims will ever manage to catch up with him; but, unfortunately for him, he no longer moves quite as rapidly as he imagines. We first realize that the Don has slowed down when Elvire "en habit de campagne" unexpectedly catches up with him—an event which greatly annoys him. Worse still, in his pursuit of the young couple whose love had so offended him, he is badly outdistanced and very nearly drowned for his pains, after having miserably failed to separate the lovers by his seductive words. Thus, in his first two encounters, he moves too slowly to maintain his reputation as a coureur, in spite of the fact that his heart, according to Sganarelle, is "le plus grand coureur du monde" (I, 2). Moreover, his enemies (the brothers of Done Elvire) do not give him enough time to damage the reputations of the two peasant girls who have so readily succumbed to his charm and to his promises. In spite of these failures, he maintains throughout the first half of the comedy, a high degree of mobility and the dashing pace of a seducer. While fleeing his pursuers, he encounters the beggar, frustrates the bandits in their attempt to kill Don Carlos, and finally wanders into the cemetery where he finds the statue of an erstwhile victim: the Commander. [In a footnote, the critic adds: "Movement is also a sign of affection, e.g., 'la grosse Thomasse' is always pushing her friend Robin around, whereas Charlotte has no more life to her, according to Pierrot, than a log."] And he attributes to chance almost everything that happens to him.

During the second half of the play, the situation is reversed: everybody seems to wander into Don Juan's house, from Monsieur Dimanche to the marmorean statue of the Commander. In a sense, the hero finds himself besieged and reduced to a state of immobility. He impertinently invites his father to sit down; he orders a chair for the statue; to Elvire he says: "demeurez ici" and "Madame, vous me ferez plaisir de demeurer." But nobody will heed him except the stupid Monsieur Dimanche who accepts his offer of an armchair. Against the ceaseless motion around him, where even a marble monument, "une statue mouvante et parlante," easily catches up with him, he has recourse to hypocrisy (where outward tranquillity hides the agitation going on within) and, as a last resort, to a more intense form of immobility: he strives to make himself inébranlable. As he has made himself motionless and unmovable, he cannot avoid being crushed, for the essence of Don Juan consists in his mobility, in his changeability: he is a coureur both in the literal and figurative sense. In inaction lies his own negation. Conversely, he cannot resist the call to action, a tendency which goes far towards explaining his heroic and spontaneous decision to rush to the help of Don Carlos. We should add, however, that as Don Carlos, in facing a very real peril, does his utmost to defend himself, he is bound to enlist the help of Don Juan whose existence depends to a large degree on the actions of others. Similarly, the strong convictions of the Poor Man practically force Don Juan to give him the Louis d'or. The hero cannot help but render tribute to all those who demonstrate their worth. On the other hand, he shows no pity to those who give evidence of weakness. Thus he plays the part of tempter and devil on a purely secular level, testing everyone he encounters until his destruction by convention—by a convention which he had had himself formally invited. And he cannot survive once he has switched from movement and action to immobility and hypocrisy.

Words

Words, which we may regard in many instances as a form of gesture, appear in all of Molière's comedies as the greatest enemies of action and the staunchest upholders of convention. As such, they fare scarcely better than reasoning. One of the axioms in these comedies is that no amount of raisonnement can ever persuade a person to change the impertinence of his conduct. These raisonneurs are frequently the most frustrated of characters who, though rarely ridiculous in themselves, provoke laughter by the inextricable situations in which they find themselves—and by the inevitability of their failure.

One of the key terms in Dom Juan is the unobtrusive word dire, with related expression such as parler, parole, mot, discours, redites, expliquer—in the sense of putting into words—faire—in the sense of dire—bouche, entendre, ouïr, répondre, disputer…. The verb dire recurs nearly one hundred times in the course of the comedy. By adding the ten or so faire, the thirty-odd parler, and such related verbs as réitérer, sarmonner, répondre, faire signe…, we discover that the idea of communication intrudes some one hundred and fifty times. Moreover, the term parole appears no less than fifteen times. Usually, in Molière's comedies, a key word may reappear six or seven times: just enough to establish a theme, to drive home an idea, to clarify an issue; but this deluge of dire and parler must have a special function, for it does more than establish a theme. Indeed, it appears to express a way of life, a mode of existence. Whereas in previous plays the author had created characters who tend to substitute words and concepts for action and existence, in Dom Juan, he makes speech itself a substitute for action.

Sganarelle does more talking than any other character in the play with the exception of his master. But he constantly acts at cross-purposes: his thoughts and his pronouncements contrast with his behavior. Sganarelle frequently attempts to convert his master by argumentation, in which endeavor he of course fails miserably. As M. Simon has pointed out, the servant represents a reductio ad absurdum of a character typical in Molière's previous comedies: the raisonneur who never convinces even though Molière sometimes rewards him, as in L'Ecole des femmes, with the last laugh. But in Sganarelle, Molière has created a raisonneur who cannot reason and who finally utters a veritable tidal wave of clichés in order to persuade his master of some deep religious truth. Not that we can accuse Sganarelle's arguments of being meaningless. As Professor Doolittle has shown, they do signify even though they sound very much like nonsense.

The conversations between Sganarelle and Don Juan often take the form of an argument or, as the valet calls it, a dispute. The servant, after his master's lengthy speech about the pleasures of seduction, praises him for talking just like a book. Unable to find an answer, he asserts that he will write down his raisonnements in order to convince Don Juan that he, Sganarelle, has truth on his side. Previously, the valet had compared a sequence of events in his master's existence to a chapter in a book. The omnipresence of dire and parler, together with the comparison between Don Juan and a literary work, that is with words in their most finished form, suggests that Molière, for reasons which we intend to discuss later, was gleefully trying to reduce existence to so many words—to its verbalizations. Indeed, in many of the speeches, we notice that characters recount not only actions and events but even conversations. For instance, Pierrot tells his reluctant fiancée not only about his rescue of Don Juan but repeats the dialogue between himself and Lucas which preceded it. Elvire's first speech to Don Juan reveals her inner dialogue or debate: "Mes justes soupçons chaque jour avoient beau me parler: j'en rejetois la voix qui vous rendoit criminel à mes yeux, et j'écoutois avec plaisir mille chimères ridicules qui vous peignoient innocent à mon cœur." If she has thus put herself en campagne to find Don Juan, it is merely to hear more words: "Je serai bien aise pourtant d'ouïr de votre bouche les raisons de votre départ. Parlez, Don Juan, je vous prie, et voyons de quel air vous saurez vous justifier." Her suffering consists mainly in hearing cruel words: "Il suffit. Je n'en veux pas ouïr davantage, et je m'accuse même d'en avoir trop entendu." She finally renounces, at least to a certain extent, the use of words, a domain where she has met with total defeat: "N' attends pas que j'éclate ici en reproches et en injures: non, non, je n'ai point un courroux à exhaler en paroles vaines" (I, 3).

It is thus mainly through words, those Trojan horses of temptation, that Don Juan gains access to the minds of his victims. In Le Misanthrope, words will represent a form of bargaining. But for Don Juan, traditionally a liar, they must serve as weapons with which he will conquer his intended victims. They help him to seek out some inveterate weakness in a human being. He thus derives his power mainly from words and appearances, from empty gestures which cannot prevail against a person like the Poor Man, who has strong convictions and who refuses to compromise. For that reason, words, in this and in many other of Molière's comedies, are frequently equated with money. Don Juan does not hesitate to use flattering words and gestures in order to avoid paying Monsieur Dimanche:

DON JUAN: Je suis votre serviteur et de plus votre débiteur.

DIMANCHE: Ah! Monsieur …

DON JUAN: C'est une chose que je ne cache pas, et je le dis à tout le monde (IV, 3).

Thus, Don Juan clearly pays his debts in words. The Poor Man, on the contrary, receives real money in the name of humanity, not so much because Don Juan happens to take pity on him, but because, as Professor Doolittle has shown, he recognizes in this beggar a man worthy of the name. Characteristically, the seducer asks him to curse—to commit a sin in words. Sganarelle, who thinks nothing of blaspheming from here to tomorrow, encourages him to comply with his master's command. But if the Poor Man had obeyed, the tempter would probably have hypocritically refused to give him a farthing. Such, indeed, was his reaction to Elvire's demand of an excuse. His hypocritical answer, which as he well knows neither Elvire nor anyone else will take seriously, merely corresponds to his

victim's own moral and religious anguish: "Il m'est venu des scrupules, Madame, et j'ai ouvert les yeux de l'âme sur ce que je faisois. J'ai fait réflexion que pour vous épouser, je vous ai dérobée à la clôture d'un couvent, que vous avez rompu des vœux qui vous engageoient autre part, et que le Ciel est fort jaloux de ces sortes de choses" (I, 3). Don Juan ironically and cruelly echoes the sort of reflections that must have passed through Elvire's tormented mind just before she decided to elope with her dashing young lover. In short, he leaves her with her sin and does not even bother to renew his false promises, for he really has no further use for her. Experience will be her sole reward. Still, her seduction may, from a religious standpoint, have served a worthy purpose. Her love for the unattainable tempter has perhaps enabled her to discover her true vocation: she will return to the convent out of choice after having sublimated her earthly passion into spiritual love. Needless to say, both her passion and the resulting vocation come from within her, and Don Juan has acted mainly as a catalyst. We cannot claim, however, on the basis of Elvire's self-discovery, that Le Festin is a religious as opposed to an irreligious play. Indeed, we can derive a secular meaning even from Elvire's conversion: each person must reward himself, in the sense that he has an obligation to seek out his own values and live in accordance with them. Sganarelle, who takes clichés for moral values, superstitions for religion, and who never practices what he preaches, will not even receive his wages at the end of the play. In trying to protect Pierrot, he receives a punch from his master for his pains: "Te voilà payé de ta charité" (II, 3). Thus, the absence of reward stands out as a major theme in this play. Every single character, including the Poor Man, meets, at one time or another, with frustration. The beggar does receive a reward in the form of a gold coin, but most of the time he lives in a state of misery and his prayers go unheeded, at least in this world. Ironically, the only time when he has a reward thrust upon him occurs upon his refusal to utter a word! In this respect, we can regard Dom Juan as a comedy of frustration and paradox, as a play about the absurdity of the human predicament. When Sganarelle asks his master what he thinks about the Commander's tomb, he receives an answer which reveals the absurdity of human values or rather of conventional values: "Qu'on ne peut voir aller plus loin l'ambition d'un homme mort; et ce que je trouve admirable, c'est qu'un homme qui s'est passé, durant sa vie, d'une assez simple demeure, en veuille avoir une si magnifique pour quand il n'en a plus que faire" (III, 5). Don Juan ironically stresses man's tendency to take gestures for values. And the Commander has truly attained the height of absurdity in this respect: "Parbleu! le voilà bon, avec son habit d'empereur romain!" It would seem that the worthy Commander has geared his entire existence to the perpetuation of a magnificent funeral, to the petrification of a commanding gesture. In a sense, the Commander has immortalized himself, or rather that public image of himself which very nearly coincides with status. When Don Juan invites this vain image to supper, Sganarelle raises a very sensible objection: "Ce serait être for que d'aller parler à une statue," thereby establishing a connection between the absurdity of words and this ridiculous marble monument which we may consider as absurdity in its most spectacular and most concrete form.

The Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness

The idea of discernment plays an important part in practically every scene of the play. Like words, it maintains the closest connections with rewards and money. The most impressive scene from the standpoint of discernment is Pierrot's description of the rescue. Pierrot prides himself on his ability to see two men swimming in the sea, as opposed to the blindness of his friend Lucas who accuses him of double vision. Moreover, Pierrot has the wisdom to wager money on his splendid eyesight, and he thus reaps the rewards for his discernment. On the other side of the ledger, Pierrot does not exactly benefit from his rescue of the seducer, a fact which shows once again the discrepancy between service and reward. Indeed, Don Juan tries to seduce his fiancée and then beats him. And the unfortunate Pierrot exclaims: "… ce n'est pas là la récompense de v's avoir sauvé d'estre nayé" (II, 3).

Elvire's speech in Act I, Scene 3 reveals in a more subtle manner the struggle between discernment and imagination, which she defines as "mille chimères ridicules." And she admits: "J'ai été assez bonne … ou plutôt assez sotte pour me vouloir tromper moi-même, et travailler à démentir mes yeux et mon jugement." The eyes appear to be less susceptible to illusion than the ears or the imagination. Actually, Elvire has deluded herself. Paradoxically, she has been Don Juan's chief accomplice in her own seduction.

The idea of discernment reappears in relationship with the marble statute. Don Juan tries at first to deny the testimony of his senses: "… nous pouvons avoir été trompés par un faux jour, ou surpris de quelque vapeur qui nous ait troublé la vue" (IV, 1). He thus finds himself in the same situation as Gros Lucas, who had been indulging in horseplay with his friend Pierrot. Sganarelle, like Pierrot, refuses to deny his senses: "Eh! Monsieur, ne cherchez point à démentir ce que nous avons vu des yeux que voilà." He thus establishes a further connection between discernment in the sense of physical perception, and proof or argumentation. Later in the scene, Don Juan, revolted by his servant's "sottes moralités," threatens to whip him with a bull's pizzle. The valet quickly changes his tone, because his master says things "avec une netteté admirable." Don Juan's "words," which like Hart Crane's gringo canons in "Imperator Victus," "No speakee well / But plain," appear even clearer to Sganarelle than the Commander's nod of acceptance.

What then can be the connection between discernment and proof, between argumentation and words, for these various themes intermingle in various ways throughout the play? Discernment inevitably leads to knowledge; in one instance, it leads, as we have seen, to a reward in the form of a fruitful wager. Pierrot, as a matter of fact, has bet on a sure thing; but Don Juan, who refuses to find any real significance in the signs and warnings which he perceives, will be chastized. Does this mean that we should take his destruction by a preposterous statue seriously? Of course not. But however we interpret this mysterious ending, we still would have to take into account the close connection that both words and perceptions maintain with reasoning.

From the beginning of the comedy until its theatrical dénouement, Molière creates a deliberately false air of philosophical discussion. The play opens with a pseudophilosophical discourse on the virtues of tobacco. In his praise of tobacco, Sganarelle takes the apparently friendly gestures and generosity of smokers or takers of snuff for moral worth: the smoker, by virtue of his favorite drug, becomes an "honnête homme." And the play starts off ludicrously with a sweeping statement: "Quoi que puisse dire Aristote et toute la Philosophie, il n'est rien d'égal au tabac." We encounter in this opening sentence our key word: dire, as well as the idea of value: "il n'est rien d'égal." Professor Doolittle rightly interprets Sganarelle's speech about smoking as a criticism of gesture. We may also regard it as a reductio ad absurdum of reasoning, as a subtle way of connecting Aristotle with smoke and gestures, for tobacco smoke was used by seventeenth century writers as a symbol for meaningless ideas and dreams, or even lies and illusions, as in the current word: fumisterie. In fact, this opening gambit is reminiscent of Saint-Amant's well known sonnet: "La Pipe": "Car l'une n'est que fumée / Et l'autre n'est que vent," showing that the poet equates his dreams of success with the smoke spiralling upwards from his pipe.

Sganarelle's ludicrous equation between tobacco and human worth would imply that Molière never intended that his public take at face value the servant's subsequent pronouncements on religion. Rather, we should regard them as farcical variations on the opening statement. Moreover, Sganarelle exhibits here for the first but certainly not the last time his strange tendency to materialize thought. Referring to tobacco, he claims: "Nonseulement il réjouit et purge les cerveaux humains, mais encore il instruit les âmes à la vertu, et l'on apprend avec lui à devenir honnête homme." Absurdity, in this passage, results not only from the confusion between gesture and moral behavior, but from the still more fruitful identification of material objects such as tobacco or smoke with abstract thought and moral virtue. Later, while discussing with his master the proof of God's existence by proximate causes, he gets carried away by the movement of his own cogitations, much like La Fontaine's Perette, and he falls flat on his face. Don Juan comments, laconically: "Bon! voilà ton raisonnement qui a le nez cassé" (III, 1). The comic effect of this remark depends on the ludicrous confusion between the abstract and the concrete. Similar in nature was Sganarelle's previous statement about the doctor's robe he uses as a disguise: "… cet habit me donne de l'esprit." And the final argument with which the valet hopes to convince his master brings about a total confusion of verbal clichés and concrete examples, all under the guise of thought and reasoning.

An analogous mixture of abstract thought and spiritual values with concrete reality appears in the various signs that obsess the tempter towards the end of the play: the specter, which changes into the conventional symbol of Time the Reaper, and, of course, the marble statue, Previously, Don Juan had discoursed ironically about the discrepancy between spiritual values and material rewards, for instance in his conversation with the Poor Man, whose function in life consists precisely in praying Heaven every day for the prosperity "des gens de bien qui me donnent quelque chose" (III, 2). The beggar probably gave a spiritual meaning to "gens de bien" and even to "prospérité," but this does not prevent his words from suggesting rather subtly the ideas of wealth and material success. Don Juan, on the strength of this equivocation, can remark: "Il ne se peut donc pas que tu ne sois bien à ton aise?" Upon the beggar's negative reply, he exclaims in mock disbelief: "Tu te moques: un homme qui prie le Ciel tout le jour, ne peut pas manquer d'être bien dans ses affaires," as though there must be a direct relationship between material and spiritual values. Under these circumstances, and granting the importance of the confusion between the abstract and the concrete, we can expect that the Heaven which the Poor Man invokes in his prayers should avenge itself on the impious seducer by taking the most preposterously concrete form imaginable: that of the marble statue of a general attired like a Roman emperor. Spiritual values and the supernatural finally materialize themselves in so crude a manner that it almost seems as if poor Sganarelle had planned or imagined the whole spectacle all by himself! Could this strange catastrophe imply that virtue will be rewarded and evil punished when Hell freezes over? Well then, the tempter's unlikely destruction would merely add a final touch to the utter confusion of all values, intellectual as well as moral, which so characterizes the play.

We have to admit, however, that Don Juan, who constantly uses false values and plays the part of a counterfeiter in words, is fully paid back in kind, defeated by an incredible illusion, by a gesture, as empty as his own playful invitation to supper, or his marriage promises, or his indebtedness to Monsieur Dimanche, or Sganarelle's hope of finally receiving his wages. Thus, this creator of illusions is finally crushed by an illusion and a convention. In fact, Don Juan not only creates illusions, but he bases his success on a skilful manipulation of conventions to which he himself subscribes. When he sees Elvire "en habit de campagne," he exclaims in shocked surprise: "Estelle folle, de n'avoir pas changé d'habit, et de venir en ce lieu-ci avec son équipage de campagne?" (I, 2). According to the Don, one should at least keep up appearances and wear appropriate clothing in a palace. When he flees Done Elvire's brothers, he wears country as opposed to courtly clothes, for he can be recognizable only when fashionably attired. Pierrot's minute description of Don Juan's clothes not only makes the peasant ridiculous because of his ignorance of aristocratic dress, but transforms the seducer himself into a figure of fun; and we suddenly have the feeling that he owes his success with women partly to his costume, and partly to his rank, but precious little to his innate charms. Thus our dangerous seducer, who frightens poor Sganarelle into serving him against his will, has some of the silly faults of those petits marquis whom Molière will satirize in Le Misanthrope.

The confusion between abstractions and concrete reality pervades also the realm of morality. Don Juan refuses to be tied down, and he regards the laws of the land as well as those of the Church as so many chains which he has so far succeeded in eluding. However, various other characters complain about these chains and obligations. Don Carlos, for instance, sees the aristocratic concept of honor as a form of enslavement. In a sense, the analogy of chains emerges here and there in the course of the comedy; and practically all of Sganarelle's arguments refer to a chain of causes which bind man morally and physically to his Creator. With the exception of Don Juan, everyone tends to sacrifice existence itself to these imprisoning moral bonds and conventions, everyone including of course the Commander whom the protagonist had killed, honorably, in a duel. His ornate tomb, complete with marble statue, represents the triumph of "moral" essence over life, freedom, and common sense. At the dénouement, all these immaterial obligations, all these social essences which man has created in his own image, but which he attributes to God, finally materialize in order to destroy Don Juan, who had done his utmost either to flout them or to turn them to his advantage. Everything in the play seems to lead up to this apocalyptic materialization.

Stage Props

Although Molière consistently plays with ideas throughout Dom Juan, stressing such intellectual niceties as perception, discernment, moral obligation, the efficacy of good, the goodness of knowledge, one must not attempt to transform the play into an ordered set of philosophical beliefs or moral tenets. That Molière should poke fun at various types of reasoning, both on the religious and the libertin side, does not necessarily mean that he has written a philosophical treatise or a thesis-play. Actually he has used philosophy as grist for his comic mill. And why should we be surprised that an author of the age of rationalism should have written an intellectual farce? In previous plays, Molière had made fun of intellectuals—of people who try to substitute a ready-made system for the vagaries of existence. But in Dom Juan, he has written a comedy not so much about would-be intellectuals as about man's intellectual and moral predicament to which he has given as absurd a solution as the most dogmatic irrationalist could wish. Still, all this intellectualism is no more than the subject matter and the pretext of the comedy. As such, it can tell us very little about Molière's artistic intent.

We might plausibly describe Le Festin as a play about words. Don Juan uses words to great advantage, even the liturgical words pronounced by a priest at a wedding. He also becomes the victim of the word he has given the Commander—the only word for which he will have to pay. But this theory concerning the comedy will not lead very far unless we explain why such a subject appealed to his theatrical talents in the first place. We know that the Italian comedians and other dramatic companies had performed various versions of Dom Juan, a "pièce à machines" that made the public flock to the theater. Indeed, Le Festin de Pierre has a most theatrical plot—so theatrical that even Molière's intellectual version offended many men of classical tastes. (The destruction of Don Juan by a moving statue might appeal to Spaniards.) But Molière may have seen in this strange subject with its tawdry and offensive dénouement the theater incarnate, the theater in all its marvelous absurdity as make-believe. And the sheer scandal of this walking and talking statue crushing an aristocratic and mercurial seducer must have had an irresistible appeal for him. A dramatist, an actor, a theater director could not help seeing in this marble general a stage prop to end all stage props—a stage prop all dressed up in one of Molière's favorite costumes, that of a Roman emperor, that of Julius Caesar! After all, he let Mignard paint him in such a garb. At the end of the play, we have a vision of the very essence of the theatrical crushing the protagonist. In fact, the play seems to put an end to itself by the shere impetus of its own movement, by the final materialization of all its words and concepts. The hero himself, according to Sganarelle, talks like a book and lives by chapters instead of years. Moreover, he needs servants to dress him for the part of seducer. In ordinary clothes, he behaves rather differently, just like Brecht's pope in Galileo Galilei. Finally, like the author himself, he spends much of his time in testing his fellow men, in bringing out their shabbiness or conversely in precipitating their worth. He is the active ingredient, the energumen of the comedy, who sets everything in motion, at least during the first-half of the work. In short, his function resembles that of Mascarille the intriguer, of Scapin, or of the evil Iago. Like them, he seems to create plots as he moves along. This does not mean that the resourceful Don Juan expresses any of Molière's ideas. One may even claim that he does not have any ideas whatever. Nonetheless, the author has entrusted his creative functions to him without forgetting a single artifice. And thus the destruction of this tester and catalyst of all values, of this inventor of stratagems, in short, of the Artist himself, by the strangest and unlikeliest of stage props is perhaps one of Molière's most original dramatic achievements. It strikes us as no less theatrical than the ballets which end Le Bourgeois gentilhomme and Malade imaginaire. We witness not so much the victory of absurdity as the triumph of the artistic imagination, which is the supreme and only valid illusion.