[In the following essay, Jones explores the polarities of the characters in Molière's Le Misanthrope.]

Two fundamental contrasts strike the audience of Le Misanthrope: the contrast between Alceste and Célimène, and the contrast between Alceste and Philinte. Critics have been sensitive to the psychological, philosophical, and theatrical value of these polarities. “Alceste est l'exacte antithèse de Célimène,”¹ declares Jean Mesnard, while Jacques Guicharnaud defines the hero and his love as “deux univers soumis à quelque attraction réciproque, mais dont les éléments imcompatibles ne parviennent à aucun moment à fusionner.”² Guicharnaud suggests that Célimène's dramatic function is to “s'opposer point par point à Alceste sur le plan de l'amour, comme Philinte … sur le plan de l'amitié …” (p. 396).

Philinte, indeed, has been viewed almost exclusively as a foil to Alceste. “Rien ne fait paraître davantage une chose que celle qui lui est opposée,”³ declared Donneau de Visé of the hero and his friend, in our earliest analysis of the play. Few critics since then have been able to resist taking sides is such a meeting of opposites. Gustave Michaut, in a lengthy ironic footnote, lists the crowd, from Rousseau on, who have opted either for intransigant Alceste or for accommodating Philinte.⁴ Modern scholars, more sensitive since René Bray and W. G. Moore⁵ to the purely theatrical value of this opposition, have remained equally impressed by it. “Le centre du drame, c'est le ‘non’ qu'Alceste oppose à Philinte” (pp. 380-381), says Guicharnaud, in discussing Act I, scene 2.

Less attention has been paid, however, not to what separates Alceste and Philinte but to the friendship that unites them. Some critics would claim that Philinte, “ce lymphatique et tiède personnage,”⁶ is incapable of friendship, that his philosophical detachment cuts him off from human contact as effectively as Alceste's misanthropy. “Alceste hait les hommes, Célimène les méprise, Philinte s'en désintéresse” (p. 75), says Marcel Gutwirth. For the most part, however, spectators have been less severe. We simply tend to take the relationship between the pair for granted. Typically, Jean Mesnard, who discusses perceptively the extent to which friendship within the play is limited by self-interest and the desire to please, concludes: “Sans doute l'amitié de Philinte pour Alceste n'est-elle pas suspecte; mais Molière ne l'analyse pas: c'est une simple donnée de la pièce” (p. 871).

I suggest, on the contrary, that a proper acknowledgment of the relationship between Philinte and Alceste is crucial to our understanding of Le Misanthrope. Three critics in particular have taken steps in this direction. René Jasinski is impressed by Philinte's friendship for Alceste which he sees as one of those virtues that make him Molière's ideal. “On ne saurait trouver plus parfait ami,” he declares, arguing that “il faut que nous ayons été déviés par une longue tradition d'outrances déclamatoires pour que l'on sente en général si peu la qualité d'un tel dévouement.”⁷

Merlin Thomas is concerned not with Philinte's ideological rôle but with his effectiveness as a character on stage. He sees in Philinte's allusion to L'École des maris (v. 100) evidence that these “deux frères” are childhood friends, and argues from his experience as a director that “the first thing for the actor playing Philinte to establish is his relationship with Alceste. They are friends—in so far as Alceste is capable of friendship. From start to finish of the play Philinte does his best for Alceste. … And Alceste cannot do without Philinte.”⁸

The relationship between Philinte and Alceste is brought into sharpest focus in a statement by Louis Jouvet. Advising his students on the interpretation of Act I, scene I, Jouvet insists:

Dis-toi que, Alceste et Philinte, ce sont deux amis (chose qu'on ne montre jamais dans aucune représentation de la pièce d'ailleurs), mais toute la pièce repose sur cette amitié. L'étonnant, c'est l'histoire de ces deux amis, Pylade et Oreste, qui sont tombés dans le salon de Célimène. De ces deux amis, l'un est plus intelligent que l'autre dans la connaissance du monde et de la vie sociale et aperçoit très nettement les dangers que court l'autre, Alceste, tandis que celui-ci se dit: ce sont des dangers, entendu, mais j'aime suffisamment cette femme pour la ramener à des sentiments différents. Le Misanthrope, c'est d'abord ce drame-là.⁹

The particular merit of Jouvert's statement is to remind us that Alceste is after all involved in two relationships, not only eros but philia. The contrast between love and friendship is a common theme in 17th-century literature. One thinks, for example, of La Bruyère's tireless efforts to distinguish between amour and amitié in “Du Cœur.” This distinction is implicit in Le Misanthrope and constitutes, I believe, a third contrast useful to our understanding of the play. The relation between Philinte and Alceste is in ironic opposition to the relation between Alceste and Célimène.

It is easy to see the quality of Alceste's love for Célimène as Racinian, as Jacques Guicharnaud for example has also already noted (p. 448). Egocentric, irrational, demanding, the force which pushes Alceste towards Célimène is as destructive as the passion that hounds Oreste. Erotic love leads Alceste to betray his truest self: “Efforcezvous ici de paraître fidèle,” begs this champion of sincerity. “Et je m'efforcerai, moi, de vous croire telle” (v. 1389-1390). Even fulfilled, this love would not lead Alceste to authentic contact with others, only to a kind of idolatrous solitude à deux. “Que doit vous importer tout le reste du monde?” he aks Célimène (v. 1772), insisting that love means she be ready to “trouver tout en moi, comme moi tout en vous” (v. 1782). Alceste will not be saved from his misanthropy by his love for Célimène, and the most casual observer can see that the couple would be miserable together. The comic perspective of Molière's play should not blind us to the fact that erotic love, in the case of his hero, is presented as an essentially negative force.

The relationship with Philinte, on the other hand, offers Alceste the possibility for a truly redemptive contact with another human being. The friendship of this second couple is characterized by many of the qualities Alceste demands in human relations, most notably sincerity and authenticity. With Philinte, Alceste can be himself, as his constant explosions of ill humour testify, and with Alceste, Philinte abandons those “dehors civils” (v. 66) he claims are necessary for dealing with other people. Alceste's dream that “en toute rencontre / Le fond de notre cœur dans nos discours se montre” (v. 69-70) is in fact fulfilled when he and Philinte are together.

Philinte shows in his dealings with Alceste none of that flegmatic detachment which so irritated Rousseau¹⁰ and which Philinte's own theories of social behaviour might lead us to expect. He intervenes constantly and bluntly to criticize in Alceste those faults he sees as harmful to his friend, and his physical pursuit of Alceste—“Je ne vous quitte pas” (v. 446)—from beginning to end of the play is the sign of his loving involvement.

Furthermore, friendship with Philinte opens the way to friendship with others. Alceste's love for Célimène merely drives him further into isolation as he seeks to retreat with her behind the wall of his misanthropy. His relationship with Philinte, on the contrary, moves him towards other people, not away from them. Philinte tries constantly to help his friend keep his place in the society that represents, whatever else, the sole opportunity for contact with fellow humans. His “faisons un peu grâce à la nature humaine” (v. 146) is not a mere lecture on social conformity; it is part of a loving campaign to keep his friend in touch with other people. His offer to sacrifice his own love for Eliante is his attempt, on the deepest level of generosity, to bring Alceste out of solitude into a relationship with another human being.

In theory Alceste himself is well aware of the distinction between erotic love and friendship. He sees his feelings for Célimène as irrational—“la raison n'est pas ce qui règle l'amour” (v. 248)—even as an “indigne tendresse” (v. 1751). Friendship on the other hand is a freely chosen relationship between equals: “Avec lumière et choix cette union veut naître” (v. 281), he tells Oronte. In fact, however, he is unable to recognize the difference. He brings to his own friendship with Philinte the same jealousy and desire for exclusiveness that mark his relationship with Célimène; and he is, saddest of all, unable to appreciate the special quality of the love that Philinte offers him.

It is fruitful to examine the dénouement of Le Misanthrope with these thoughts in mind. Alceste, like his Racinian counterpart, fails to capture and possess the one he loves, despite the help of his friend. Oreste, in the face of this failure, withdraws into madness and Alceste also prepares to reject reality—the world of social intercourse—to flee to the private désert of his dreams. This is a serious retreat, albeit foreshadowed from the play's beginning. Alceste abandons the possibility of erotic love—“Non, mon cœur à présent vous déteste” (v. 1779)—not only the amour-passion of his relationship with Célimène, but a potential amour-estime with Eliante. He breaks the network of ties, however superficial and frivolous, that bind him to the society of Célimène's salon, a charmed circle in which with all his brusqueness he had a place.

The true importance of this break is his rejection of Philinte's friendship. One by one the characters leave the stage—“C'est la fuite devant le dénouement qui en manifeste la tristesse,” says Jacques Scherer (cited in Bray, p. 271), but the hero is not left alone: Eliante and Philinte do not join the general exodus. It is Alceste who, blind to the love they offer him, announces that he is “trahi de toutes parts” (v. 1803), turns his back on his friends and exits. It matters little whether, as Lionel Gossman argues, Alceste actually desires to be pursued.¹¹ The retreat dramatizes his basic inability to respond fully to friendship, to enter freely into authentic relationship with another human being.

The initiative remains with Philinte. Like Pylade, he rushes to the rescue of the disappointed lover, continuing the same affectionate pursuit of his friend with which he opened the play, and this at a moment when the fulfillment of his own desires with Eliante might well have led him into the more closed and exclusive world of eros. The love he shares with Eliante takes its place, however, within the generous framework of their mutual friendship for Alceste. The relationship of this third couple thus leaves to friendship the privileged position, in relation to erotic love, it holds throughout the play. Philia, in accordance with a long tradition, remains in Le Misanthrope the highest form of human love; and it is Alceste's rejection of this love which is the truest measure of his misanthropy. For charity, the love that enables humans to love each other as God loves them, there is no room in the secular universe of Molière's play.

Notes

1. “Le Misanthrope: mise en question de l'art de plaire,” Revue d'histoire littéraire (Sept.-Déc. 1972), p. 873.

2. Molière: une aventure théâtrale (Paris: Gallimard, 1963), p. 453.

3. Lettre écrite sur la comédie du “Misanthrope.”

4. Les Luttes de Molière (Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1968. Rpt. edit. Paris 1922-25), pp. 208-209.

5. Molière: homme de théâtre (Paris: Mercure de France, 1954) and Molière, a new criticism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962, lst edit. 1949).

6. Marcel Gutwirth, Molière ou l'invention comique (Paris: Minard, 1966), p. 164.

7. Le ‘Misanthrope’ de Molière (Paris: A. Colin, 1951), p. 196 and p. 198.

8. “Philinte and Eliante,” in W. D. Howarth and M. Thomas, Molière: Stage and Study (Oxford: Clarendon, 1973), p. 74. Thomas also makes a convincing case for the love between Philinte and Eliante.

9. Molière et la comédie classique. Coll. Pratique du théâtre (Paris: Gallimard, 1965), p. 13.

10. Lettre à M. d'Alembert sur les spectacles.

11. Men and Masks: A Study of Molière (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1963), p. 83.