Les Liaisons Dangereuses
Page 49
reply: her formal reply to the invitation to Cécile’s wedding.
husband’s death: [Madame de Volanges’s misapprehension shows that, like other scoundrels, Valmont did not betray his accomplices.]
in the neighbourhood: similarly, a friend of Clarissa Harlowe’s warns her against Lovelace and Clarissa asks her to keep an eye on Lovelace’s actions.
Corsica: Corsica was handed over to France by Genoa in 1760; in letter 111 we learn that Gercourt is no longer needed on the island. It would thus seem that, despite Laclos’s other hints, this correspondence dates from the 1760s or later.
little house: an important adjunct to the high society of Paris at the time: a discreet, luxurious villa of assignation, usually nearby in the suburbs—Neuilly was much favoured—where couples could couple at leisure and unobserved, thus, most importantly, creating no scandal.
Le Sopha … La Fontaine: Le Sopha, an erotic oriental fantasy by Crébillon fils (1707–77): a Brahmin’s soul, imprisoned in a series of sofas, will be released only when two pure young lovers consummate their love on one of them; during his longish wait he hears the dialogues and associated sounds of various couples analysing their emotions and, in the main, manœuvring verbally and otherwise towards sexual congress. Eloïsa’s letters: probably not a reference to Rousseau’s novel so much admired by Laclos, but to the letters, easily available, from the unfortunate nun Eloïsa to her even more unfortunate lover Abélard (1079–1142), castrated by Eloïsa’s uncle, a bishop, when their affair came to light—a fate which could appeal to Merteuil’s cruelty. Some of the letters are very passionate. La Fontaine: see note to p. 15.
the cafés: coffee-houses had become enormously popular in Paris, as important as a sociable meeting-place for men as drawing-rooms were for both sexes; many cafés had become centres of discussion of ‘enlightened’ ideas.
romantic: such proceedings were indeed a commonplace in the romances, that is, the novels of the period.
to part for ever: Laclos does not tell us the reason for this decision. The use of ‘joyous’ may, of course, be ironical or merely untrue: Merteuil is certainly too proud to admit that the parting may have been painful; or she may have had another attractive man in mind; or become fed up with Valmont’s bullying; or even suspected him of having his eye on another woman and wanted to ditch him before he ditched her? The extent of any residual ‘love’ of, or resentment towards, Valmont remains a mystery.
knight: this detailed account of her doings is clearly—and perhaps maliciously—intended to arouse Valmont’s jealousy.
transformation: has Tourvel been reading Rousseau’s La Nouvelle Héloïse, a central theme of which was the moral and physical salubrity of country life? Country life in Liaisons hardly supports this view.
Belleroche: [the knight mentioned in Madame de Merteuil’s letters.]
out of a comedy: e.g. Figaro, the resourceful valet in Beaumarchais’s Barber of Seville, first performed in 1775.
writing: [the letter referring to this party is missing. Presumably it is the party proposed by Merteuil and mentioned in Cécile’s earlier letter.] In these little notes, we see Laclos continually striving for plausibility.
for ever: a key phrase. This promise of eternal love was obligatory for any fashionable ‘man of feeling’. Such sensitivity was considered proof of an all-embracing virtue, e.g. Valmont’s ‘feeling’ act of charity in letter 21. However, the social requirement of delicacy of feeling can lead to hypocrisy (Valmont) or smugness (Danceny). It is easy to burst into tears or heave sighs; it can become a useful, self-indulgent party trick.
safe and convenient: we shall meet this apparently harmless phrase in a later very sinister context (see letters 89 and 93).
make him glad: Cécile is naïve but shrewd; her education has begun.
ten louis: extremely generous; Valmont spares no expense for his affairs.
drama: this is the eighteenth-century drame bourgeois, a blend of tragic and comic depicting ordinary domestic and social middleclass life as opposed to the royal or mythical heroes and heroines of classical tragedy; it could fall into sentimentality and pathos. Valmont obviously relishes the irony of his pretence.
my trouble: Laclos’s original text—‘worth ten louis’—was blunt and coarser. He clearly wishes to show Valmont in a less disagreeable, though hardly attractive light; and certainly not a tender lover.
He would not: the ironical implications of her mistake are plain.
the Gazette: the first French newspaper, founded as a weekly in 1631. It later became a bi-weekly called the Gazette de France and an official newspaper under the control of the Minister of Foreign Affairs.
in my tears: is Valmont pretending to be more cynical than he really is, in order to impress Merteuil?
the keyhole: in Richardson’s Clarissa, Lovelace peeps though keyholes too; and enjoys Clarissa’s tears.
24: Versini in his Pléiade edition notes the careful structuring of these six letters dated 20 August; they contain the start of not only the main love-affairs but that of Merteuil’s involvement with Cécile and her crucial terms for letting Valmont go ahead, as well as the closer involvement of Volanges around which so much of the plot hinges; and Volanges’s fruitless warning to Tourvel is matched by Sophie’s equally fruitless warning to Cécile.
hope or fear: the relentless fraudulent campaign has been launched: appeals to female pity are followed by reproaches and accusations of cruelty; insinuation, equivocation, and obfuscation lead to downright lies; and pleas lead to insolence, threats, and blackmail—conduct to be accepted when the partner is a Merteuil, who knows the rules; but Tourvel neither knows nor would accept them. Cécile is equally disadvantaged; but is her convent education really to blame? What sort of education could teach her how to cope with a Valmont or a Merteuil?
everything’s in order: for purposes of blackmail?
which you wrote me: but she fails to mention that she has taken a copy of it; however, taking copies of letters received was common practice.
‘I love you’: Danceny is reading rather more into Cécile’s letter than she wrote: a subtle pressure which soon persuades the naïve Cécile to utter the magic word which, in accordance with the unwritten rules of libertine love, means: ‘You can have me.’
the right moment: another essential term in the libertine’s glossary: the critical moment when the woman has been softened up and needs only to be attacked, sometimes roughly, in order to surrender.
give herself to you: Laclos again tones down his bluntness. Originally he had written: ‘go to bed with you’.
Héloïse: Rousseau’s La Nouvelle Héloïse.
Comtesse de B——: is she the Comtesse de B—— in letter 59 or even the Comtesse de ——in letter 47? It hardly matters: Valmont has had numerous, interchangeable, titled women, apparently all married. Cécile would appear to be something of a novelty and Tourvel certainly falls into a different category. But we must remember that for the libertine, all women in their heart are rakes.
left the room: this scene can hardly have failed to arouse the suspicion in Rosemonde that there is something afoot between Valmont and Tourvel.
two letters: Valmont here reveals something we suspected: letter-writing is for him an art form as well as an artful one.
occupied: the girls won’t have learnt in the convent that in the smart jargon of the day, ‘occupied’ meant: having a lover. Contemporary readers would have taken the mischievous point.
write to you: [we are continuing to leave out Cécile Volanges’s and the Chevalier Danceny’s letters because they are uninteresting and give no information of any events.]
could make: [letter 35.]
‘Le bon sens… m’épouvante’: [Métromanie, Piron.] A verse comedy by Alexis Piron (1689–1773), first performed in 1738. The word metromania means an urge to write verse, something which the young Laclos would have sympathized with.
The translation reads: ‘The rascal’s good sense sometimes appals me.’
Scipio: Publius Cornelius Scipio showed clemency in 209 BC when he captured the southern Spanish city of Cartagena; in particular he allowed a beautiful girl-captive, whom he could have treated as a spoil of war, to go free and rejoin her pledged husband.
to everything: the manuscript contains here a passage omitted from the published work: she agreed to everything, ‘as you might expect, and I was about to go when I noticed that my valet had taken my torch instead of his own, which gave me a chance for a bit of fun: I asked the pretty little thing to show the way with my torch. She wanted at least to slip on some clothes first but I assured her that in view of what had happened there was no need to stand on ceremony and she’d got to carry off this little joke as best she could. And so she came along just as she was and I then handed her over to her loving swain and left’ the happy couple, etc. Laclos may have scrapped this passage, which throws further light on Valmont’s cruel idea of fun with women, because its scabrous quality clashed somewhat with his claim to be writing a moral work.
mention of myself: in other words, she’s hiding things from her husband.
singing his praises: in Clarissa Richardson gives Lovelace a fond uncle; Rosemonde is certainly a fond aunt.
with my death: this letter offers a fine (ironic?) example of the sentimental/passionate jargon demanded of a lovesick suitor to hyperbolize what was possibly quite a sincere feeling.
of a tart: Laclos doesn’t shrink from being scabrous here; however, Versini in his Pléiade edition tells us that this situation was not invented by Laclos (p. 1237).
the Italians: one of the two main Paris theatres, formed in 1762 by a merger between the strolling fairground players (Théâtre de la Foire) and an Italian company. It was at the Comédie-Italienne that the comic opera Ernestine, with libretto adapted by Laclos from an edifying novel by Madame Riccoboni (see Introduction, p. ix) received a single ignominious performance in 1777.
genuineness of my feelings: this brilliantly suggestive pastiche of a Rousseauistic frenzy of passion clearly shows that whatever his feelings for Tourvel may be, Valmont is still a willing exponent of libertinism; and, of course, he’s anxious to impress Merteuil (and make her jealous). Perhaps this scene is his counter to her story of her night with Belleroche.
Céladon: the chivalrous hero of the pastoral novel L’Astrée, by Honoré d’Urfé (1567–1625), a long-winded, idealizing sentimental romance in which members of high society, often recognizable to their contemporaries, appear as shepherds and shepherdesses. Such romances, a great vogue in seventeenth-century society, continued to be read even later; the spectacle of faithful, respectful heroes eventually united—after various mishaps, misunderstandings, and narrow escapes—with their true loves, had considerable appeal. Céladon was the epitome of such virtuous lovers.
reply: [this letter is missing.]
top of the list: presumably because of the reputed homosexual proclivities of members of orders of knighthood.
all and sundry: [the reader will have long since deduced from her morals Madame de Merteuil’s scant respect for religion. We would have deleted the whole paragraph but we thought that when showing the effects, we ought not to omit showing the causes.] Once again Laclos is trying to cover himself against accusations of ungodliness; yet ungodliness continues to triumph.
Versailles: the seat of the court, where Valmont appears to have his entrée. He seems to be taking Danceny under his wing, with ironic consequences.
I promise: we shall be savouring the irony of this promise later.
a shudder through me: in typical fashion, Laclos leaves the reader to speculate on the possible moral and social motives for this shudder.
than Danceny: this letter of Valmont’s is a reply to letter 54 in which Merteuil writes of being physically attracted to Cécile; his reaction—or lack of reaction—to her admission suggests that lesbian feelings raised no eyebrows in their circles—and perhaps that he is refusing to rise to Merteuil’s bait.
La Châtre’s: the Marquis de La Châtre obtained from his beautiful, witty, and notoriously promiscuous mistress Ninon de Lenclos (1620–1705) a written promise that she would not be unfaithful to him, a note she quoted gleefully each time she was. This note had become proverbial.
A sage… their source: [this is thought to be Rousseau writing in Émile: but the quotation is inaccurate and Valmont completely misapplies it here; in any case, had Madame de Tourvel ever read Émile?] Émile, Rousseau’s treatise on how to educate boys, was first published in 1762. The sentence asterisked is an interesting foreshadowing of Freudian psychotherapy.
instrumental… arietta: instrumental recitative is recitative accompanied by the instruments of the orchestra rather than by a continuo instrument such as a harpsichord. Recitative is used as dialogue or to further the narrative whereas the aria or arietta (the diminutive may here be contemptuous) was emotional and lyrical. Valmont’s operatic metaphor reminds us that this drawing-room society saw itself as being a stage on which a part had to be played to create an often deliberately misleading effect: being natural was not only unsmart, it could be dangerous. Valmont is such a notable actor, playing so many often hypocritical parts, that he must surely have difficulty in discovering his true identity; hence, perhaps, his uncertainty as to his true feelings or even whether he has any fixed feelings towards Tourvel.
occupied: see note to p. 77.
preserve: an untranslatable pun here: Laclos uses bois, meaning both a wood and the horns of a stag, deer, or cuckold.
refuse me your help: never-ending irony: Cécile trusts Merteuil, Danceny trusts Valmont; in a moment, Volanges will be appealing to Merteuil.
Athenian architect: a story told by Plutarch (and repeated in La Nouvelle Héloïse): the Athenians were interviewing architects for two big buildings; one came up with a superb prepared speech, the second said laconically: ‘I’ll do what he’s just said.’
‘Les sots … plaisirs’: [Gresset, in his comedy Le Méchant .] Gresset (1709–77), writer of light verse and of this satiric comedy (first performed in 1745) about a malicious and shameless trouble-maker whose activities reflect the cynicism of a scandal-loving and frivolous aristocratic society. The translation reads: ‘Fools are sent to provide us with entertainment.’
local post: Merteuil’s comment suggests that the internal Paris post, which started in 1760, had been recently introduced—a further hint as to the date of the action of the novel.
for ever: [Monsieur Danceny is not telling the truth. He has already confided in Monsieur de Valmont before this event. See letter 57.] In this close-knit society honesty seems impossible; but we need to take into account the motives: Tourvel’s and Danceny’s minor hypocrisies are harmless compared to Valmont’s and Merteuil’s.
two enclosed letters: letters 64 and 65.
the Prince: [reference to a passage in a poem by Monsieur de Voltaire.] Voltaire’s mock-epic poem La Pucelle d’Orléans (The Maid of Orleans), first published in 1755, contains considerable spicy and burlesque elements. Readers familiar with the poem would have realized that if Danceny represents the Prince, the Prince’s friend would be Valmont. In Voltaire’s poem this friend is a euphemism for a pimp; the Prince is the future French king, Charles VII.
Some of them … daughter: [the reader will not be in a position to judge the truth of this statement. We have preferred to leave the question unsettled rather than enlarge this compilation with a host of letters almost all badly written and which Valmont rightly describes as boring. In any case, the possibility of such misrepresentation is inherent in all love-letters.] This note exists only in the manuscript. Laclos, always striving for even-handedness, leaves the question of various responsibilities as open as possible.
paper, pen, and ink: Clarissa was similarly deprived.
as we call it: again, the theatrical image of life
as a show.
she adores me: the plainest statement as yet of phallocentricity, i.e. absolute submission of women to male authority, to which belief Valmont adds his own touch of sadistic cruelty. He also clearly believes that male intelligence is superior to female, an attitude for which Jacques Derrida has coined the amusing barbarism of phallogocentricity.
‘dans le simple appareil… au sommeil’: [Racine’s tragedy Britannicus.] First performed in 1669. The translation is: ‘in the simple attire of a beauty recently snatched from sleep.’
my performance: we note that Valmont fancies himself as a sexual athlete; we must not forget this.
nothing… to me: an ironical echo by Laclos of Terence’s ‘humani nil a me alienum puto’ (nothing human is alien to me).
gentlemanly treatment: such catty malevolence suggests that Merteuil’s feminist libertarian principles don’t extend to other women, particularly if they’ve been to bed with Valmont so enjoyably. The reason she gives for her attitude must be a mere pretext.