The Novel
Page 51
About two-thirds of The Wayward Head and Heart is rendered in dialogue. Crébillon upped this to about 98 percent in his next two novels, his most radical experiments in narrative. The Opportunities of a Night (La Nuit et le moment, written in 1737 but not published until 1755) and Fortunes in the Fire (Le Hasard du coin du feau, written between 1737 and 1740, published in 1763) typographically resemble stage plays, and are Crébillon’s most impressive displays yet of working under self-imposed constraints. Like a handcuffed magician escaping from a box underwater, Crébillon manages to convey in these two short novels a large novel’s worth of material in as few pages as possible and in a totally new way. Why? As the male protagonist of The Opportunities of a Night says of love affairs, “Adventures of that kind have so little variety that one is like a thousand others,” so imaginative form rather than content is necessary to seduce the reader who prefers variety over more of the same.138
The primary narrative begins in the oui hours of the night and ends at seven in the morning. A libertine appropriately named Clitandre, naked beneath a dressing gown, enters the bedroom of Cidalise,139 the young hostess of a weeklong house party attended by other bright young things, all of whom seem to have slept with one another at some point. Cidalise allows her maid to undress her and put her to bed in front of Clitandre, who appreciates the flash of her “exquisite legs” and who pulls up a chair to converse with her. (This in itself is not shocking; while in bed aristocrats back then often received visits by friends, especially in the morning, continuing to chat as they dressed and did their hair.) Set on seducing this woman he has admired for some time, he gradually moves from the chair to her bedside, then flings off his gown and climbs into bed with Cidalise, who makes ladylike objections but doesn’t kick him out. Taking further liberties with his conversation partner, he eventually tires of her polite resistance and rapes her, which leads to proclamations of love on both sides, after which they alternate between lovemaking and storytelling. The stories they tell concern their recent lovers, many of whom are under Cidalise’s roof; hers concern her two previous lovers (she’s young and has only enjoyed two so far), while his star a string of French belles—Araminte, Julie, Célimène, Belise, Julie, Aspasie, Luscinde—and the clever tactics he used to ring their bells. Even though the novel features only two characters (and a smirking stage director/editor who occasionally chimes in), a secondary narrative about their entire set of acquaintances gradually unfolds, along with analyzes of the psychological motives behind their sexual game of musical chairs.
Cidalise and Clitandre credit “modern philosophy” for their enlightened view of sexual relations; as the latter says, “philosophy has reorganized our ideas; but her achievement has been to teach us to understand the motives of our actions, and not to believe that they are governed by chance” (22). Philosophy has also taught them to retire the concept of “love”; Clitandre asks, “what was love but a desire that we amuse ourselves by exaggerating, a movement of the senses transformed by the vanity of men into a virtue?” (23). Libertines like him are driven to score as often as possible, and therefore watch for moments when a woman lets down her guard, then strike like a snake. He’s très blasé about that which heroes of earlier novels risked their lives for: “One lives in the world, one is bored, one notices women who can hardly be said to be amusing themselves: one is young, and vanity combines with idleness. If the possession of a woman is not always a pleasure, it is at least in some sort an occupation” (126). Clitandre recounts two longish anecdotes near the end of the night to illustrate the libertine’s predatory instincts, first a funny one concerning scientifically trained Julie, who is convinced summer heat reduces a man’s sexual desire; since her position invites empirical testing—“She was lying on a sofa in a careless attitude, and was even more carelessly dressed; in fact her attire was merely a simple shift, of which the ribbons were half undone, and a tolerably short skirt” (134)—Clitandre “for the honour of the science of physics” vigorously demonstrates the invalidity of her thesis. He then tells a longer one in which he takes advantage, several times in one night, of a woman named Luscinde who is angry at her lover. But when she hints at a commitment, Clitandre quickly convinces her to make up with her lover—and then smooth-talks her into giving him one more for the road.
Cidalise, on the other hand, insists that even modern women want to be courted before engaging in sex (there’s no talk of marriage in this novel): “certain attentions, certain affectionate letters, protestations of eternal love, a thousand things, in fact, that men think nothing of, but to which we women are always unfortunate enough to attach too much importance” (52). Men don’t have time for all that, Crébillon implies, and this conflict between seizing the moment and playing the game causes tension between men and women, a disconnect that, in extreme cases, drives some of the former to rape and some of the latter to embitterment. Clitandre is not proud of his opportunistic sex drive—“you can hardly imagine how we despise ourselves for these shameful exhibitions of weakness” (118)—and Cidalise later belittles “those little evasions which we usually think are due to the modesty of our sex and which, as a matter of fact, are merely a means to serve our vanity” (77–78) and to maintain their reputation. The new generation has learned not to confuse love with lust but continues to struggle (as people still do) with how to reconcile them.
The candor with which Crébillon’s characters discuss these matters is startling and sometimes shocking, as are some of the comments of the sardonic stage editor. Here is his description of Cidalise’s rape:
[The warmth of cidalise’s demeanour seems in some measure to authorize clitandre to attempt some further caresses. His familiarity, though not extreme, is more than she is prepared to allow, and she refuses once, and again. He is irritated, and gives way to a display of violence which, if not unprecedented, is at any rate unusual, and should teach women not to admit anyone to their beds in so lighthearted a manner. . . . She does not fail to reproach him with his insolence; but when a man has so far compromised with his courtesy, there is little merit and possibly still less safety in not persisting in his wickedness. So he continues most unworthily to abuse his superior strength. At last he looks at her with a smile and with as pleased an air as if he had done the most admirable thing in the world, and even tries to kiss her hand. The reader will easily apprehend that, after his disgraceful behaviour, this demonstration of gratitude, though entirely respectful, is somewhat coldly received.] (104–5)
Note the curious mixture of disapproval and scientific disinterest. At times he becomes impatient with the action and invites the reader to fill in “those pleasing and passionate utterances of love’s gratitude” that partners usually exchange after sex, confident “the reader will have the less grounds for complaint, inasmuch as we only deprive him of certain incoherent remarks, which he will much sooner supply for himself in accordance with his own feelings, than peruse here” (109–10). When postcoital Cidalise predictably asks Clitandre, “Do you really love me still?” the editor lets us answer her; Clitandre “Tries to get rid of the fears of cidalise by the most ardent caresses. But, as this method of removing doubts is not favoured by every one, those of our readers who would find it inconvenient may try another: they may invent for clitandre the most admirable sentiments—all that might be best calculated to reassure a lady in a situation of this kind” (111–12).140 Near the end, he wearily notes “not everything that lovers say is of general interest” and begins to “omit their somewhat inconsequent utterances” (146). By turns pedantic, heartless, and knowing—“The reader must not think that from what cidalise is saying to him, she is seriously finding fault with him” (187)—the editor adds the perfect finish to a daring novel, surprising in both form and content.
Crébillon followed this with another short novel in the same form and on the same theme, Fortunes in the Fire (Le Hasard du coin du feu, or colloquially, Getting Lucky by the Fire). It’s a more cerebral variation on the same conflict between
love and inclination (goût), as though Henry James read Opportunities and, after a shot of absinthe, decided to write something similar. The cast adds one more character (plus a walk-on role for a servant) and again features an arch editor, but otherwise remains as formally constrained as the earlier one. The novel opens on a cold winter day as two women—the worldly Marquise and the romantic Célie—discuss romantic involvements in front of the fire in Célie’s boudoir. The latter is surprised that the Marquise doesn’t mind that her current lover, the Duc de Clerval, has meaningless affairs on the side, and that she doesn’t believe in love at first sight, which the Marquise regards as rare as the sight of a ghost. Célie drops hints that she finds Clerval attractive, and after the duke arrives for a visit, the Marquise alerts him to that amusing fact, which he brushes off. The Marquise is then called away to attend her sick mother, at which point another Crébillonesque pas de deux of seduction commences center stage. But first the editor intrudes to inform us that, yes, he remembered to stoke the fire in Célie’s bedroom. “The editor of this dialogue, having put himself beyond reproach in this matter, flatters himself that he may be dispensed from returning to this interesting subject.”141
An older, more distinguished version of Clitandre—which is to say, a libertine still on the lookout for an easy score—Clerval verbally spars with Célie on the difference between male and female expectations in relationships, but at a much higher level of discourse than Opportunities’ slap-and-tickle colloquy. When Célie learns that the duke has been interested in her for some time, she grills him like a bewigged lawyer: “The rococo cadences of their language, as she pursues the matter, and he tries to avoid it, defy description,” one critic has noted (Cherpack, 164). Asking whether a woman interested in him should appeal to his heart or his senses, she tries to pin him down:
THE DUKE: As regards a way of thinking, I have my own way. Nothing is more sure; but it is, like that of all men of the world, so subordinate to circumstances that I should feel dishonestly in endowing myself with an invariable one. As to my constitution, it is such that, I avow, I would not answer for myself very long were the appeal to my senses rather than to my heart.
CÉLIE (smiling): That is to say that with a touch of slight impropriety one would have a very easy success with you.
THE DUKE: I agree. I detest it, but it leads me astray; provided nevertheless, that I am not asked to love, for I say it again, that is not the way to make me love.
CÉLIE: Will you really swear to that?
THE DUKE: A sensible man, above all when it be a question of things in which caprice or fancy may play a far greater part than one thinks, ought not, in my opinion, to swear to anything. All that I know is, merely, that if contempt has never prevented me from feeling desire, it has, up to now, at least, rendered me inaccessible to love.
CÉLIE: That you despise a woman who, in reality, only wants to appeal to your senses, I do not find difficult to believe; but it seems to me that you owe quite a contrary feeling to her who, loving you enough to face in your favour all that they say we owe to ourselves, yet attacks your senses with the intention of reaching your heart by that way. You will perhaps reply that this confidence in her charms might show slightly too much vanity on her part; but when she has the wherewith to justify it, at least one cannot rightfully ridicule her. (70–71)
“The pleasure of reading Crébillon,” Thomas Kavanagh has said of passages like this, “lies in admiring how his characters find new ways to surprise, parry, and elude the rhetorical traps they continually set for one another.”142 Despairing after pages and pages of such interrogation at appealing to Clerval’s heart, Célie aims lower and exposes a leg as though wanting only to warm it by the fire, which has the desired effect. Clerval sexually assaults her, withdraws briefly for more discussion, and then after Célie sprawls in an armchair as invitingly as Julie did in Opportunities, Clerval returns to the fray and apparently achieves orgasm. (The language is quite oblique.) Like Cidalise, Célie doesn’t really object to being (in effect) raped; as in Heian Japan, that seems to be the brutal way the game was played among their set. Autres temps, autres mœurs, as the French say. Like Clitandre eeling his way out of a commitment to Luscinde after he’s had her, Clerval then gets Célie to agree that their mutual friendship with the Marquise makes an affair untenable, but he talks her into pretending to take a new lover to provide cover for the occasional quickie. They squeeze in one more, and then the editor of Fortunes in the Fire returns to have the final, punning word: “The hour of separation arrives, he leaves Célie, he goes to visit the Marquise, who, if she finds the flame of his affection as warm as ever, yet, to use her own expression, should on this occasion, by all appearances, find it burning a little low” (103).
Slower and less playful than The Opportunities of a Night, Fortunes in the Fire is more serious and profound. Crébillon continues to tell us things previous novelists shied away from saying, like the poor choices a dumped woman sometimes makes on the rebound: “Today, I have no less difficulty in understanding it than you,” Célie confesses to Clerval. “Vexation, apparently; that terrible void which follows after passion, so painful for anyone who has tasted of its joys; his [the new guy’s] assiduity; his patience; the boredom of doing nothing, an ill-conceived desire for revenge. . . . In truth! I myself fail to understand it” (58, the author’s ellipses). Not until the 20th-century would readers hear a woman talk that frankly. While females in other novels of the time became suicidal at the merest hint of infidelity, Crébillon expresses the mature woman’s appreciation of the difference between having a man who is constant as opposed to merely faithful. (As Joe Gideon tells Katie Jagger in All That Jazz, “I go out with any girl in town; I stay in with you.”) A military man, Clerval tells us there will never be an end to the war between the sexes: “Could one learn the way of a woman’s mind one would never attack her save in her own method, and the two sexes would be equal gainers; but reduced as one nearly always is on such an essential matter, to walking in the dark and expecting anything, what chance is there of fittingly displaying either boldness or restraint?” (50). He makes no apologies for his carpe diem approach to women, and Célie admits women don’t mind being seized if the moment is right. The “moment” is a key term in Crébillon’s amatory vocabulary, which Clerval defines as “A certain mood of the senses, as unexpected as it is involuntary, that a woman may veil; but which if it is noticed or felt by someone whose interest lies in profiting by it, would place her in the greatest danger in the world of being a shade more complaisant than she believed she either ought to be, or could be” (51). Crébillon keeps us in the moment by way of “live-action” dialogue and the editor’s present-tense commentary, giving the work an immediacy lacking in conventional novels. The editor’s comments are more insightful than those in Opportunities, probing his characters’ thoughts and motivations with considerable subtlety. (These are the passages that bring James to mind.) Both Opportunities and Fortunes look slight and have sometimes been dismissed as high-class erotica, but Cherpack is right to insist “They are, in their way, small masterpieces, exemplifying in parvo Crébillon’s marvelous ear for the cadences of conversation, the complexity of his psychological analysis and generalizing, and some of his basic notions about love and the men and women of his day” (170).
Instead of returning to The Wayward Head and Heart (if indeed he left it unfinished), Crébillon next returned to the faux-Oriental mode of The Skimmer and spent his talent on his most notorious novel, The Sofa (Le Sopha couleur de rose, 1742). The Scarronesque chapter titles advertised in the Table of Contents promise great fun, but turn out to be mostly accurate:
1. The Least Tedious in the Book
2. Will Not Be to Everybody’s Taste
3. Which Contains Some Things Hard to Believe
4. Wherein Some Things Will Be Seen Which Might Well Not Have Been Foreseen
5. Better to Omit than to Read
6. No More Extraordinary than Entertaining
8.
9. In Which You Will Find an Important Point to Settle
10. In Which, Among Other Things, You Will Find a Way of Killing Time
11. Which Contains a Recipe Against Enchantments
12. Not Much Different from the Foregoing
13. The End of One Adventure and Beginning of Another
14. Which Contains More Words than Deeds
15. Which Will Not Amuse Those Who Have Found the Previous One Wearisome
16. Which Contains a Dissertation Which Will Not Appeal to Everyone
17. Which Will Teach Inexperienced Ladies, If Such There Be, How to Evade Embarrassing Questions
18. Full of Allusions Very Difficult to Trace
19. Ah! So Much the Better!
20. Soulful Delights
21. The Final Chapter
I did indeed find chapter 14 “wearisome” and, as warned by the title of chapter 15, was not amused by it either. The premise is no sillier than that of The Skimmer. The grandson of Shahrazad of Arabian Nights fame, Shah Baham of India, inherited her love of stories and commands one of his courtiers to beguile him and his wife with tales for half an hour each day, preferably ones containing “wonders, fairies, talismans,” adding paradoxically, “for those are the only things that are really true.”143 Amanzei unfolds an R-rated serial of metempsychosis over the next three weeks: in a previous dissolute lifetime he was cursed by Brahma to inhabit a series of sofas until he found one upon which two virgins made love. As his soul floats from one sofa to another in the city of Agra, he observes a number of philanderers, adulteresses, libertines, party girls, and sexual hypocrites, until eventually a pair of 15-year-olds have sex on top of him and he reincarnates back into human form. Eavesdropping on people during their most private moments, Crébillon-as-Amanzei exposes the false fronts women in particular put up in public, but neither these revelations nor the bawdy tales in which they’re couched are new. (Indeed, the novel’s supernatural survey of secret lives recalls Lesage’s Devil upon Crutches.) The longest narrative arc, which takes up half the novel (chaps. 10–19), introduces Crébillon’s most calculating libertine yet, a cold-blooded cocksman named Nasses, but his serpentine methods of seduction add little to the playbook the author had already developed in his dialogue-novels. As in those superior works, the dialogue is good and plentiful, but by this point it has lost its freshness. Even the apparent novelty of a voyeuristic sofa wasn’t new; the year before The Sofa appeared, another libertine novelist named Louis-Charles Fougeret de Monbron published Le Canapé couleur de feu (The Flame-colored Couch, 1741), “which contains a sopha that recounts the adventures which took place on its cushions” (Conroy, 145).