[In the following essay, Sylvester analyzes“la scène du Pauvre” from Molière's Dom Juan—a scene considered one of the most misunderstood in all of French drama.]

What has been called “la scène du Pauvre” (III, 2) is one of the most important and controversial scenes in all of French drama. It occurs in the exact middle of the play and it is after this scene that the growing pattern of defeats that Dom Juan suffers increase both in pace and in importance (Guicharnaud 252-58). It also marks a change in Dom Juan's dramatic personality, for it is here that, for the first time, he actually takes the initiative and attacks religion in an active attempt to demonstrate that the truth resides within him and that he is in the right. It is, as J. Guicharnaud has pointed out, “la mise en action de l'incroyance de Dom Juan” (255). The danger that Dom Juan represents to society is multifaceted. He combines in himself many temptations, the power of a man accustomed to being a master, the prestige of a grand seigneur and the resources of his riches, but most of all he is dangerous because he represents the principle of disorder set against the order of the universe. His defeat at the hands of the Pauvre is thus highly significant because symbolically it constitutes his first combat with and defeat by le Ciel.

This scene is striking not only for its great audacity, but also because it is the only time in the play before the end when Dom Juan loses a combat. When the beggar asks him for alms, Dom Juan seizes the opportunity to prove at last that God and His goodness do not exist. In order to do this he uses a Socratic technique consisting of a series of cleverly asked questions designed to lead his interlocutor to uncovering the truths he carries within him. Let us examine the logic that Dom Juan uses and what precedes it in order to understand the cleverness of the manipulator and the importance of the defeat which he suffers. Dom Juan is pleased when le Pauvre asks him for alms, and he understands this plea as proceeding from selfish motives because he so scorns mankind that he refuses to believe in the existence of any totally generous gesture. He plays with le Pauvre and tortures him without pity in order to possess him (as he has succeeded in possessing so many others) by corrupting him. Sganarelle tries to stop this attempt at corruption, but he is unsuccessful against the firm will of his master.

Dom Juan wants to convince the Pauvre that God does not exist and his logic proceeds as follows:

a. If God exists, He is good and rewards prayer;

b. However: You pray fervently to God and you are unrewarded.

c. Since there is no reward, there is no Divine Goodness.

d. In the absence of Divine Goodness, there can be no God.

e. Therefore: God does not exist.

The Socratic irony attempted by Dom Juan fails here because the Pauvre does not understand it; it is too intellectual and sophisticated for him. Dom Juan thus must fall back on sheer corruption, a Satanic technique: logic fails, temptation remains, here in the form of gold. The Pauvre, a man of simple and sincere faith, obstinately refuses to blaspheme against God. For the first time Dom Juan loses his sangfroid, insisting with growing fury that the Pauvre must swear; he must triumph here, the stakes are high and he uses every means at his disposal to succeed. Even Sganarelle cajoles: “Va, va, jure un peu, il n'y a pas de mal” (III, 2). Dom Juan gives way to his fury revealing the anguish he himself is suffering. “Prends, le voilà, prends, te dis-je, mais jure donc.” Here Dom Juan becomes a more somber figure, and he suffers a stunning defeat when the Pauvre stubbornly refuses to become a blasphemer and to renounce his belief. The Pauvre's answer is very simple but utterly final: “Non, Monsieur, j'aime mieux mourir de faim.” Dom Juan fails and the failure is important because it marks the triumph of religion over the corrupting atheism of this “grand seigneur méchant homme” (I, 1).

The next lines have stimulated conflicting interpretations and continue to puzzle most readers and spectators, for after this defeat Dom Juan hurls the louis d'or at the Pauvre with these words: “Va, va, je te le donne pour l'amour de l'humanité” (III, 2). Critics and actors alike read this line in many different ways; and each actor plays the scene in a different way, it may be played seriously, or offhandedly, thus making light of the incident. Is this a truly generous gesture on the part of Dom Juan, one acknowledging the superiority of the Pauvre and his own emotion in the face of unshakable goodness and faith? We might imagine that illumination will suddenly come to him and make of him an homme généreux or even his century's ideal, an homme de bien: we might instead take his words, “pour l'amour de l'humanité” literally; and see him as transformed into an enlightened lover of humanity and of mankind. Nothing in the rest of the play supports either of these possibilities. There is neither conversion to belief, nor respect for established order of any kind, nor evidence of a sudden illumination and awakening of generous love for mankind. Rather the placement of this encounter—at the midpoint of the action and at the beginning of Dom Juan's defeats—seems more likely to predict to its observers the protagonist's fate.

In spite of this defeat by the Pauvre, Dom Juan remains obstinately the same, logical in his character of the révolté; he does not accept the reality of such a defeat. The words “pour l'amour de l'humanité” and the haughty gesture of throwing the gold at the Pauvre affirm his scornful pride. He loses this battle, but he will not admit it; throwing the gold away reestablishes his position as the proud aristocrat who thus erases a defeat that he considers unworthy of him. Some critics have argued that he is indifferent to this defeat and that the gesture is one of “désinvolture et indifférence” (Guicharnaud 255). I prefer to see there a scornful gesture, reinforced by the words amour and humanité. From the heights to which he aspires, as a worthy adversary of heaven, Dom Juan can love nothing and no one but himself, and certainly not humanity, for by such a love he would admit that he also is a mere man and, as such, possessed of all the frailties inherent in the human condition. It is with this gesture that Dom Juan also rejects utterly the call to charity that the established society, his nobility, and religion urge upon him.

Caritas is the act of perfect love and the greatest of the theological virtues. Charity and love, however, are the two things of which Dom Juan is incapable. His statements and actions oppose all that charity in its fullest sense implies. The Pauvre, in his simplicity, and by the real charity of his love for God, confounds the false, blackmailing “charity” with which Dom Juan seeks to tempt him. The word “charité” occurs only once in the play and in a context that clearly devalues it. The occasion is in Act II, Scene 3. Dom Juan attempts to seduce the peasant girl, Charlotte, and her fiancé, the bumbling, rustic Pierrot, (who has just saved Dom Juan from drowning) tries to stop him. He is rewarded for his sincerity by Charlotte's indifference, by her obvious attraction to the handsome aristocrat and by immediate evidence of Dom Juan's physical superiority. Dom Juan begins to push and hit him when, in an uncharacteristically generous movement, Sganarelle, after attempting to restrain his master, counsels Pierrot to go away quietly. His advice fails. Pierrot “fièrement” insists: “Je vais lui dire, moi.” Dom Juan gives a resounding slap intended for Pierrot, who ducks, and it is Sganarelle, caught in the middle, who receives the blow. Dom Juan delightedly cries out: “Te voilà payé de ta charité” (II, 3).¹ The farce and the comedy serve to underline the seriousness of what is being questioned here, what one may call the usefulness of charity. Of what use is charity and self-sacrifice if all it earns is a slap and a beating? Such is the lesson demonstrated by Dom Juan to Sganarelle and Pierrot.² Here, as elsewhere in the play, the farce is not gratuitous but rather serves to intensify the drama and one's consciousness of the multiplicity of duels that Dom Juan must fight in this play (Guicharnaud 229-44). There is the duel of the master against the muddled but bourgeois good sense of his valet, that of the ungrateful son against his own father, and so on in a direct progression to the duel of the rich and proud, unbelieving noble against the simple but sincere Pauvre, to the final, most important duel of all, that most basic of duels, the duel between the truly unbelieving libertin against the power of Heaven and thus of God. Here, as represented in that futile battle of the unbelieving libertin who is fundamentally incapable of charity and of love, one may draw the parallel between Dom Juan and the libertins of his century. For Dom Juan represents as did many libertins of his generation a negative force seeking through revolt to become a positive force. As Molière's text so compellingly suggests, Dom Juan is a negative force, incapable of either charity or love. He is chaos masquerading as order, and he must be destroyed to preserve the principle of order in the universe. Therefore, only transcendent power can destroy him. This destruction is prefigured in the scène du Pauvre, and one may be allowed to think with Molière's blessing that it is Dom Juan's contempt for charity as well as his lack of that virtue that lead to his damnation.

Notes

1. This recalls a sentence of the Préface to Tartuffe in which Molière speaks of his battle to save his play from the implacable enmity of the hypocrites who refuse to give up their harassment: “Ils n'en veulent point démordre; et, tous les jours encore, ils font crier en public des zélés indiscrets, qui me disent des injures pieusement et me damnent par charité” (629). [Emphasis mine]

2. This recalls Montherlant's famous phrase in Le Cardinal d'Espagne: “Les Œuvres charitables par lesquelles il cherche à se débarrasser de la Charité” (I,2).

Works Cited

Guicharnaud, Jacques. Molière, une aventure théâtrale. Paris: Gallimard, 1963. 229-44, 252-58.

Molière. Œuvres complètes. Ed. R. Jouanny. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 1962. Préface à Tartuffe. Vol. 2. 629.

Montherlant, Henry de. Théâtre. Paris: Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1972.