PFSCL, LI, 100 DOI 10.24053/ PFSCL-2024-0009 Incivility, Discourse, and Kinetic Interruption in Molière’s Les Fâcheux (1661) R OLAND R ACEVSKIS T HE U NIVERSITY OF I OWA Talk is cheap; its excess, impolite. Now more than ever in human history, words can be generated in enormous quantities, calibrated to any context, their ultimate attachment to any verifiable truth increasingly questionable, as the very ability to generate discourse emerges as a value in itself. Our sense of discursive decorum, of our place as speaking subjects in a noisy world, becomes destabilized the more we are surrounded by words unmoored from clear reference or purpose. Although the capacity of artificial intelligence to hypertrophize language pushes us into new territory as we approach the second quarter of the twenty-first century, logorrhea as a social problem is nothing new. Molière looked at the issue in a comically pointed way within the social formation of court life under Louis XIV. In this essay I propose to look closely at an early play (and indeed pioneering example of the new comedy-ballet form) by Molière, entitled Les Fâcheux [The Bores], which debuted at Vaux-le-Vicomte, Finance Minister Nicolas Fouquet’s lavish château in 1661, the year of the inception of Louis XIV’s personal rule. As a guide to understanding some of the behaviors in evidence in this farcical comedy, I look to Antoine de Courtin’s Nouveau traité de la civilité qui se pratique en France parmi les honnêtes gens, an ambitious project to codify what was seen as polite behavior in seventeenth-century French high society. What is specific about Les fâcheux is that the characters represented by that insulting term set an incivil example specifically through certain misuses of language in social life. Claire Goldstein gives a concise summary of the play’s minimalist plot: “Molière’s comedy-ballet tells the story of a young noble, Eraste, constantly foiled in his attempts to pursue his beloved Orphise by the interminable interruptions of bores” (41). The device is inherited from an Italian commedia dell’arte tradition, dubbed the interrompimenti, in which “un personnage (un barbon) qui désire en rencontrer un autre (une jeune fille qui le repousse) est arrêté en chemin par des individus de toutes sortes postés Roland Racevskis PFSCL, LI, 100 DOI 10.24053/ PFSCL-2024-0009 140 par ceux qui ont intérêt à empêcher le rendez-vous” (Forestier and Bourqui 1274). A series of pantalone interrupt and delay an increasingly frustrated man of a certain age (a senex Erastus? ) who is thus prevented from speaking to a lady love interest. In the case of Molière’s play, Eraste has great difficulty securing his conversation with Orphise. The frustration grows to the extent that, as Golstein explains, speech and frustration replace action and development. This structure evacuates from dramatic time any significant drama, a technique that attenuates the divide between theatrical time (from which we expect action, intensity, and progression) and the real time the spectators inhabit. A moment of action at the play’s end (Eraste saves the guardian from attackers) functions not as a dramatic motor but as an exit strategy out of the potentially infinite ancillary structure of the play. (42) More like a tragedy, the comedy sets itself up as a trap, and the rare bit of action toward the fall of the curtain provides a way out. As we will see, Molière’s “exit strategy” has potential social meanings with far-reaching implications. Along with commedia dell’arte tradition, Molière likely drew from comic writer and poet Paul Scarron as a source. As Forestier and Bourqui point out, Scarron’s two “Epîtres chagrines” from June 1660 present a parade of some 50 bores of various kinds (1267-68). Interestingly and revealingly, along with presenting this host of social annoyances, Scarron makes the point that the injured party who complains about them always runs the risk of joining their ranks: “Tel est Fâcheux, et Fâcheux diablement, / Qui de Fâcheux se plaint incessamment” (qtd. in Forestier and Bourqui 1274). So ubiquitous are the fâcheux that one risks becoming one of them, paradoxically, in the very act of decrying their vanity. Hence the need for the side door that Eraste eventually finds to close out the comedy. Without it, he would be caught in the indeterminate logorrhea that the vain fops generate and that as Goldstein astutely observes evacuates dramatic action from the stage while disrupting dramatic time. A fundamental problem is that, in the world where Eraste finds himself, the only way to get rid of a bore is to stumble onto another one, “type de personnage envahissant dont seul vous délivre un second importun qui entraîne le premier à sa suite” (Forestier and Bourqui 1272). In total, nine bores assault Eraste’s sensibilities while he is looking for his next conversation with Orphise, each of them obsessed with a different topic related to their narcissistic concerns. But what exactly makes them fâcheux, or as Bourqui and Forestier inquire, “pourquoi ces fâcheux-là plutôt que d’autres, quand il en est tant à la Cour comme à la Ville? ” (1272). Courtin provides some answers, which will guide us further into our discussion of the play. Incivility, Discourse, and Kinetic Interruption in Molière’s Les Fâcheux PFSCL, LI, 100 DOI 10.24053/ PFSCL-2024-0009 141 First of all, in order to speak appropriately in polite society, one shouldn’t fall into excesses of gesture: “Il ne faut pas quand on parle faire grands gestes des mains; cela sent d’ordinaire les diseurs de rien, qui ne sont pathétiques qu’en mouvements, et en contortions de corps” (50-51). Here I want to pay attention to what Courtin calls “diseurs de rien.” Literally, the risk of speaking bombastically and gesticulating wildly is that you might end up saying nothing. La Rochefoucauld famously observed that, “Comme c’est le caractère des grands esprits de faire entendre en peu de paroles beaucoup de choses, les petits esprits au contraire ont le don de beaucoup parler, et de ne rien dire.” (Maximes #142). Interestingly for the inaugural comedy-ballet, a sayer of nothing sacrifices their verbal ability by resorting to bodily contorsions and movements. The danced interludes that interrupt the action or non-action of the play exemplify this substitution. Not only excess hand gesture but also the use of too many words can paradoxically lead to an evacuation of meaning parallel to what Goldstein sees in the erosion of comic action at the hands of interruption and frustration in Les fâcheux. Further, Courtin cautions agains the use of hyperbole: “Ainsi ceux-là se trompent fort, qui mettent tous leurs compliments en hyperboles, et en grandes exaggérations, qui se détruisent d’elles-mêmes” (74). Courtin traces a process by which, in betting too heavily on exaggeration as a means of impressing the other in society, the bore arrives at a radical lack of meaning in their discourse, paradoxically by mobilizing too much of it. Other deleterious side effects ensue, including a considerable waste of time: Mais si les grands parleurs qui parlent longtemps, et ne disent que des bagatelles: si ceux qui ne sauraient parler de rien sans auparavant faire un prelude; si ceux qui contestent sur tout ce que l’on leur pût dire, quand ce ne serait que des choses très-indifférentes: que ceux-ci sont les Oracles et assurent hardiment comme véritable tout ce qu’ils disent, quoi qu’eux-mêmes ne sachent pas si cela est vrai ou faux; si ceux qui ne parlent jamais sans s’échauffer et sans se mettre en colère, quoi que personne ne leur en donne sujet, et seulement pour contredire, et vouloir par une présomption et une opiniâtreté insupportable, obliger tout le monde à suivre leur avis. Si tous ces gens, dis-je, sont incommodes et insociables: ceux qui ne sauraient parler sans élever le ton de la voix, jusqu’à donner la migraine à ceux qui les écoutent, le sont encore davantage. (58-59) A synonym of “diseurs de rien,” the “grands parleurs” do so excessively because they do so “longtemps,” detaining their interlocutor and derailing their plans. A term frequently associated with the vacuity that results from conversational incivility, in Courtin as in Molière, is “bagatelles,” where impolite discourse frequently leads its practitioner. Two other aspects merit Roland Racevskis PFSCL, LI, 100 DOI 10.24053/ PFSCL-2024-0009 142 attention here: first the failure of discourse to achieve veracity when the speaker remains unaware of whether the referentiality of the discourse leads to truth or falsity, and the uncouth raising of the voice that is so characteristic of the incivil interlocutor. Above all, the polite discussant should never interrupt their counterparts: “Que si quelqu’un parlait et faisait quelque récit, il ne faut pas l’interrompre pour dire mieux que lui, parce que c’est une marque de vanité qui est choquante” (35). Through the three acts of Les fâcheux, the protagonist Eraste is incessantly interrupted in his search for conversation with Orphise: Les fâcheux à la fin se sont-ils écartés? Je pense qu’il en pleut ici de tous côtés. Je les fuis, et les trouve; et, pour second martyre, Je ne saurais trouver celle que je désire. (2.1.293-96) The ubiquity of bores makes court life seem like a rainstorm of incivility. It all starts with the loudmouth theatergoer who interrupts Eraste’s appreciation of a performance with an unwelcome critical interrogation: Il m’a fait à l’abord cent questions frivoles, Plus haut que les acteurs élevant ses paroles. (1.1.47-48) The terms “frivoles” and “paroles” in rhyming position drive home the point that the first bore’s discourse remains devoid of meaning, even as he shouts down the performers onstage, doubling down on incivility in speech in the way that Courtin would have seen it. Eraste refers to him revealingly as “un pareil éventé” (1.1.42). The uncouth spectator is an annoying wind bag, an “éventé.” If he were a beer, he would be flat, or stale; a wine, musty and past its prime. The French term in its various uses contains the idea of entropic loss of value and energy. 1 In this context, the idea is applied to the behavior of the bore at the theater. Responding to Eraste’s frustration, his servant La Montagne observes that: Le Ciel veut qu’ici-bas chacun ait ses fâcheux, Et les hommes seraient sans cela trop heureux. (1.1.109-10) In order to avoid an excess of happiness—which seems an unlikely emotional situation for the frustrated Eraste—we count on the inevitable bores in our lives to drain some of it off, entropically to rid life of some of its carbonation as we navigate our way through it. Perhaps it is a corrective to our own potential tendency to be wrapped up in our own egos. Rather than overinflate our own happiness, we fall victim momentarily to other, competing narcissists. The problem, as Martine Desfougères notes, is that “[o]n est toujours 1 Robert McBride articulates this phenomenon as “deflation” in the play (53-71). Incivility, Discourse, and Kinetic Interruption in Molière’s Les Fâcheux PFSCL, LI, 100 DOI 10.24053/ PFSCL-2024-0009 143 le fâcheux de celui dont on fait échouer le plan, en jouant un rôle qu’il n’avait pas prévu” (91). We want others to play the role that is convenient in our own life’s itinerary, but, like the pantalone in the interrompimenti, they place themselves in our path in all their otherness, thwarting our forward movement toward the objects of our desires: “Hé! Quoi! Toujours ma flamme divertie! ” (2.2.303). The hubris of the boorish theater spectator is exceeded by Molière’s satire of the pedant in the character Caritidès. Hilariously, this bore’s obsession is ensuring the rhetorical appropriateness of merchants’ storefronts. His initial approach toward Eraste points to the ontological issue at stake in the excessive discourse of pedantry that feeds his ego: Caritidès Enfin, j’aurais voulu que des gens bien instruits Vous eussent pu, monsieur, dire ce que je suis. Eraste Je vois assez, monsieur, ce que vous pouvez être, Et votre seul abord le peut faire connaître. (3.1.637-40) Pointing to the very act of pretentious self-introduction through which Caritidès interrupts his day’s itinerary, Eraste reveals the incivility and vacuity underlying the pedantic persona. It is “votre seul abord,” the clumsy social act, that shows Caritidès’s hand. The ironic “Je vois assez, monsieur, ce que vous pouvez être” reveals that Caritidès is in fact a cipher, a void hiding behind flourishes of falsely scholarly language. The placet that Caritidès wishes to present is lengthy and elaborate, symptomatic of nonproductive hyperglossia at court: “Ce placet est fort long, et pourrait bien fâcher…” (3.2.669). Undaunted, the pedant brings the spectator’s attention to the poetic form in which Molière is operating: J’en veux faire un poème en forme d’acrostiche Dans les deux bouts du vers et dans chaque hémistiche (3.2.679-80) Caritidès doubles down on the pretentiousness of his discourse, allowing Molière to accomplish a sly metadiscursive act to indicate to the spectator that the refinement of this apparent farce is amply generative of the dramatic irony required for actors and spectators alike to laugh at the parade of nine bores that traverses the stage. Proving the rule observed by Bourqui and Forestier that the only way to divest oneself of a bore is to encounter another one, Ormin appears in the following scene to condemn not only Caritidès but scholars in general: Et des gens comme vous doivent fuir l’entretien De tous ces savants qui ne sont bons à rien (3.3.693-94) Roland Racevskis PFSCL, LI, 100 DOI 10.24053/ PFSCL-2024-0009 144 The deflating force of line 694 runs through the conventionally elevated term “savants,” to the negation of “bons,” to the final descent into nothingness, “rien.” In a chiasmatic reversal, Eraste a few lines later places the notion of the good and goods, of productive content, in opposition to the nothingness that he perceives in all of the bores: Voici quelque souffleur, de ces gens qui n’ont rien, Et vous viennent toujours promettre tant de bien. (3.3.697-98) Like the term “éventé” cited earlier, “souffleur” suggests deflation and loss of energy and potential good, and it does so precisely in referring to the discursive practice of the fâcheux Ormin, whose obsession is with turning all seacoasts into ports, in an impossible and ridiculous financial proposition. In his outlandishness, Ormin ironically raises the issue of actual knowledge, of real content to discourse, a referentiality which continues to elude the practice of language in the dialogue of the comedy. Denying the obvious, Ormin claims to bring solidity to the discussion: Je ne me repais point de visions frivoles, Et je vous porte ici les solides paroles (3.3.703-04) As we saw earlier, the rhyme between “frivoles” and “paroles” serves as a clear signal to the spectator/ reader that language in Les fâcheux is by and large empty. Ormin claims to bring real financial possibilities and worthy ideas, but in expressing himself he unwittingly draws a clear opposition between plenitude and vacuity, to his own disadvantage: Non de ces sots projets, de ces chimères vaines, Dont les surintendants ont les oreilles pleines; (3.3.707-08) The objective of covering every centimeter of French seacoast with ports is indeed a “sot projet,” if there ever was one, and the only plenitude ringing in Eraste’s ears right now is the foolishness of Ormin’s hubristic claims. Courtin advises members of society to express themselves in such a way that indeed does lead to solid content in the referentiality of discourse. It is by combining the useful and the pleasing that the speaker can accomplish this: C’est pourquoi il faut encore observer, que cet air soit toujours le milieu entre l’enjoué et le sérieux, c’est-à-dire, qu’il soit modeste et selon les règles de bienséance que nous avons marquées: de même parce que ces sortes de conversations dégénèrent souvent en bagatelles, il faut se proposer de joindre toujours l’utile et l’agréable, je veux dire, que quoi qu’on dise, il y ait toujours du solide. (81) There is a utilitarianism in Courtin’s advice, whereby discourse in society should blend the useful and the pleasing, and there needs to be some solid Incivility, Discourse, and Kinetic Interruption in Molière’s Les Fâcheux PFSCL, LI, 100 DOI 10.24053/ PFSCL-2024-0009 145 content in it, appropriate to the social situation. What Molière dramatizes is of course the complete opposite. The potential for discourse in civil society to lead to truth is undermined by the excess of egotistic self-expression in interruptive time frames. While Courtin advises the speaker to maintain an equilibrium between the useful and the pleasant, in parallel he sets up a bipolar opposition between saying something (presumably with solidity and appropriateness) and saying nothing: Mais, demandent quelques-uns, que dire à ces grands seigneurs et aux dames de qualité, quand on les va visiter? Quelque chose ou rien. Quelque chose, si vous vous proposez quelque fin dans votre visite: et rien si vous allez seulement pour vous montrer et dire sans parler à ce grand seigneur, que vous n’êtes pas mort. Et alors le conte que l’on fait pour rire d’un courtisan, qui disait: Je suis venu, Monseigneur, pour vous faire la révérence, et du seigneur qui répondit brusquement: Faites-la, est tout-à-fait à propos; car il ne s’agit que de cela, et ce serait importuner le grand seigneur, et sortir des règles de la bienséance, que d’en faire et dire davantage. (71-72) Less is more: if you don’t need to extend your discourse, say nothing. Here, gesture is beneficial. Do your révérence. By doing only what is necessary to the social situation, you stay in the bounds of bienséances, and you do not waste the privileged interlocutor’s time ("importuner le grand seigneur"). La Montagne proves sensitive to this issue, in managing his conversations with Eraste. As is typical for the protagonist, hearing nothing from his servant only annoys him further: La Montagne Monsieur, je ne dis rien, de peur d’être fâcheux. Eraste Et c’est l’être en effet que de ne me rien dire (1.2.158-59) La Montagne distinguishes himself significantly from other characters in the play by proving to be self-aware, even at a minimum. In the quick rhythm of a pair of lines of verse, Molière ingeniously creates a chiasmus that outlines the stakes of conversation in this social setting. La Montagne’s use of the verb “dire” conjugated as “dis” is followed by the negation “rien,” followed by the anxiety of being annoying (“être fâcheux”). Eraste then reverses the order: the direct object pronoun in “l’être” points to the ontological problem of the bore with the being verb. Then in the second hemistich, the fall toward the negation “ne me rien dire” ends on the infinitive of the verb “to say.” For Eraste, La Montagne fails in the opposite direction of the bores, who as in La Rochefoucauld’s observation say a lot on the surface to reveal an utter vacuity of meaning. Instead, La Montagne says, simply, nothing. You can say nothing Roland Racevskis PFSCL, LI, 100 DOI 10.24053/ PFSCL-2024-0009 146 by saying too much, and you can say nothing by saying nothing. Both are incivil and both inconvenience Eraste as interlocutor. In the rest of Eraste’s reply, the focus is completely on utterance: “Fais donc quelque réponse . . . Parle, qu’en penses-tu? . . . Dis-moi” (1.2.161-63). La Montagne replies “Je veux me taire” (1.2.163). Eraste swears: “Peste l’impertinent! ” (1.2.165), thus adding to the lexical field of rudeness and incivility while also raising his voice with the exclamation, in imitation of the boorish theatergoer in the first scene. Like in Scarron’s admonition, Eraste through his frustration has become just as incivil as the bores who accost him. In a brief exchange with Orphise, she recognizes this and chides him for it: Je vous trouve fort bon de tenir ces paroles, Quand je me justifie à vos plaintes frivoles! (1.5.251-52) Orphise has Eraste dead to rights as she redeploys the rhyme matching utterance with frivolity. Perhaps she is a key to the potential self-awareness that might lead Eraste out of this maze of narcissistic vacuity? Is she, as her name suggests, an Orphic character, one who may hold the key to a crossing to a different dimension, where speech might be backed up with solid content, knowledge, and civil relationality? Eraste would love to find out, but he still can’t get to speak with her as he continues to encounter the various bores on his path. Unique among these characters is the one reportedly suggested by Louis XIV, the courtier obsessed with hunting. His name is Dorante, and ironically he shares with Eraste the frustration of dealing with a fâcheux, in the process of making himself a fâcheux vis-à-vis Eraste! Dorante recounts his frustration with a bumpkin who imposes himself on an otherwise enjoyable hunt. His only wish was to get rid of his insolent presence, “Sans vouloir dire un mot à ce sot ignorant” (2.6.586). Eraste drives home the irony of what Dorante is saying: Tu ne pouvais mieux faire, et ta prudence est rare : C’est ainsi des fâcheux qu’il faut qu’on se sépare. Adieu. (2.6.587-89) The ironies are acerbic. Rather than proving himself prudent, Dorante has inefficiently used the language of the redundant “sot ignorant.” He uses two times as much language as is necessary to designate the hunting companion’s stupidity. With a meta-remark on the narrative motor of the play, the attempt to separate oneself from bores in society, Eraste ends on the word “sépare,” as he moves to get away from Dorante with a final “Adieu.” At this moment, there is a brief exchange, after which the ballet interlude occupies the stage. The dance as described in the scenic indications refers to the words “arrêtent” Incivility, Discourse, and Kinetic Interruption in Molière’s Les Fâcheux PFSCL, LI, 100 DOI 10.24053/ PFSCL-2024-0009 147 and “interrompre.” The delays and interruptions that define the dialogue in the play continue into the danced interludes. In the first comedy-ballet, significantly, dance constitutes interruption. The hunter is a fâcheux complaining about a fâcheux. Eraste’s attempt to evade him leads into a danced interlude, which models itself on interruption. As McBride states, “[t]he ballet which intervenes at the end of each act ironically embodies the theme of the uninterrupted and unstoppable flux of courtly bores from whom he cannot divest himself” (55-56). 2 This may be the most intense moment in the play in which Eraste realizes that the world of bores is a trap. McBride’s analysis of the alternating dynamics of inflation and deflation in the comedy underscores the apparent inescapability of a social realm structured by egos that are fragile in their inflation and yet protected from the salutary pin that might pop them down to size: “Molière’s refinement on this ultra-common pattern is to constrain Eraste to listen to the vapid outpourings of jejune egos which instinct impels him to puncture and which etiquette constrains him to leave intact” (55). It is by his adherence to codes of basic civility that Eraste fails to protect himself against the bores’ outer shell of egotism. Thus he is impelled into further repetition of the same patterns: “But suitor and fâcheux are forever in transit, the former to pursue his quest and the latter to catch up with Lulli to promote the latest effort in their musical partnership. As Eraste ruefully reflects, egotism and rank reinforce each other to paralyse one’s instinctive wish to puncture the bubble of self-esteem” (57). Ridiculous each in their individual form, the fâcheux have a formidable cumulative impact as building blocks of a seemingly inevitable social structure: “Although as separate creations they have little depth, the fâcheux are wedded by rank to their self-importance and thus cumulatively illustrate the powerful reinforcement which court and class give to the invincible endurance of amour-propre” (58). This La Rochefoucauldian insight shows that self-love is ubiquitous and creates the trap from which Eraste struggles to escape: “De quelque part qu’on tourne, on ne voit que des fous” (2.2.346). McBride points to the epistemological stakes involved: “the same amour-propre which is so seismographically sensitive to injury is also permanently inoculated against self-knowledge” (63). Eraste’s failure to 2 Similarly, the danced interlude in the first act is analyzed by Bourqui and Forestier: “Suivant un procédé voisin, la longue danse en sol mineur des curieux (deuxième entrée du ballet du premier acte), qui ‘tournent aoutour de lui [Eraste] pour le connaître, et font qu’il se retire encore pour un moment’, dépeint les mouvements hésitants de la curiosité et de l’indiscrétion. En dépit d’un phrasé régulier, la mélodie descendante répétitive, traitée en décalage entre les voix, crée l’illusion d’un mouvement continu ou incessant, peut-être agaçant.” (1273). Roland Racevskis PFSCL, LI, 100 DOI 10.24053/ PFSCL-2024-0009 148 pierce the veneer of egotism equates to a failure to provide salutary selfknowledge to the courtly bores who accost him. In the value system developed in the play, this self-knowledge, which it is the task of Molière the moraliste to impart, aligns itself with solidity of discourse, with civility as knowledge, and with the right balance recommended by Courtin between the useful and the pleasing. On the other side, we have verbal excess, loudness of voice, excessive gesture, and constant interruptions that waste our time. As in the above example, the most clearly concretized interruptions in the play come in the form of ballets at the end of each act. I would like to propose that dance in the new form of comedy-ballet both concretizes the inescapability of falsity and vacuity in social discourse (and the attendant intractable nature of the courtly society taking shape in the first years of Louis XIV’s personal reign) and points the way toward forms of expression beyond civility and incivility, in the esthetics of movement and music combined with theater. As each act comes to a close, a ballet interlude stages dancers who further interrupt Eraste’s quest for conversation with Orphise. 3 The danced interludes stage game-playing, interruption, annoyance, rudeness, and the passing of 3 BALLET DU PREMIER ACTE PREMIERE ENTRÉE Des Joueurs de Mail, en criant gare, l’obligent à se retirer, et comme il veut revenir lorsqu’ils ont fait, DEUXIEME ENTRÉE Des Curieux viennent qui tournent autour de lui pour le connaître, et font qu’il se retire encore pour un moment. BALLET DU SECOND ACTE PREMIERE ENTRÉE Des Joueurs de Boule l’arrêtent pour mesurer un coup, dont ils sont en dispute. Il se défait d’eux avec peine, et leur laisse danser un pas, composé de toutes les postures qui sont ordinaires à ce Jeu. DEUXIEME ENTRÉE De petits Frondeurs les viennent interrompre qui sont chassés ensuite. TROISIEME ENTRÉE Par des Savetiers et de Savetières, leurs pères, et autres qui sont aussi chassés à leur tour. QUATRIEME ENTRÉE Par un Jardinier qui danse seul, et se retire pour faire place au troisième Acte. BALLET DU TROISIEME ACTE Incivility, Discourse, and Kinetic Interruption in Molière’s Les Fâcheux PFSCL, LI, 100 DOI 10.24053/ PFSCL-2024-0009 149 time. In practical terms, Molière’s troupe made use of the interludes to change costumes and characters offstage, as the troupe’s numbers were limited in the performance of the play at its premieres. 4 Whether a happy accident or an intentional practice, the combination of music, dance, and comedy constitutes a major generic innovation, as Bourqui and Forestier explain: “l’occasion d’un entremêlement inédit entre théâtre parlé et théâtre dansé, qui fraya la voie à un genre mixte dont Molière et Lully allaient se faire une spécialité pendant toute la décennie, la comédie mêlée de danse et de musique, désignée par la postérité sous le terme de comédie-ballet” (1266). Indeed, Molière along with choreographer and violinist Pierre Beauchamp (Goldstein 31) can be considered “l’inventeur d’une nouvelle esthétique comique.” Something significant happens on the level of form here. Whereas previously there had been juxtapositions of the different performance genres, in the case of the Vaux performance, “l’invention originale consista à passer de l’association à la fusion de la comédie et du ballet en un tout organique, un véritable ballet en comédie, que par la suite les contemporains nommeront indifféremment ballet ou comédie” (1267). The significance of this multi-generic innovation cannot be overstated, as we try to understand what is at stake in Les fâcheux, as this hybrid work made its way from Vaux to Versailles and gained increasing popularity in a number of venues, eventually appearing in published form the following year in 1662. 5 True, it appears as though after the initial forays of Vaux-le-vicomte, where “Molière’s troupe make their entrance out of machines engineered to look like garden statues and trees” (35), the actors at Versailles and beyond dispose of more limited options. 6 They seem to be immobilized in a trap of 4 See Bourqui and Forestier’s “Notice” for a discussion of La Grange’s register, which shows how the troupe tried to reduce the costs associated with the interludes in dance, as the play gained popularity and went through performance cycles in the city of Paris (1270-72). 5 Les fâcheux was “Molière’s third most performed play of the period (it was staged 106 times during Louis XIV’s lifetime)” (Goldstein 32). After the 1664 courtly performance, “[w]ithin the month, the play was performed twice for the king at Fontainebleau, and it arrived in Paris at the Palais-Royal in November of the same year. The following winter, Molière was granted a five-year publishing privilege, and the comedy of his comedy-ballet appeared in print on February 18, 1662” (Goldstein 45). 6 Also at the Vaux premiere Molière appears onstage in a moment of dramaturg’s block, unable to begin the performance, lamenting the time and other constraints that have made the task so difficult. A mythic shell then opens up to break this paralysis. Thus from the outset the problem of stasis in constraint is present in the framing of performance. It is miraculously broken in the first staging. Subsequently Roland Racevskis PFSCL, LI, 100 DOI 10.24053/ PFSCL-2024-0009 150 unproductive court activity: “The nobles on stage create very little but speak very much. Ironically, it is these immobilizing pastimes and systems of etiquette that, three years after Molière’s occasional comedy, the court at Versailles began to impose in earnest” (Goldstein 51). It is a place “[w]here they will be trapped in the unproductive cycle of courtly pursuits, routines, and etiquette.” One of the main reasons there has been so little written about Les fâcheux has been the perceived paucity of the plot: “Already by the eighteenth century, critics such as Riccoboni found the work devoid of narrative thread” (Goldstein 40). As Martine Desfougères points out, dans les pièces où dominent les fâcheux, l’intrigue choisie est toujours très mince, parce que la véritable action réside, semble-t-il, dans l’avortement de toute action; la vérité de l’action c’est qu’il ne peut y en avoir. Une telle gageure dramaturgique n’est réalisable que dans la peinture d’un milieu susceptible d’engendrer une telle paralysie. C’est pourquoi l’arrière-plan social, où se déploie l’activité des fâcheux, est celui de la haute noblesse qui hante les salons, les jardins ou la salle de la comédie à Versailles. (99) At this point we may be tempted to summon the familiar narrative of a nobility increasingly domesticated by absolutist monarchical practices. As Goldstein underscores, “[t]hese nobles do not engage in fighting or acts of feudal valor—rather, they talk (on and on), posturing and acting in a court system based on the theatrical prestige of stylishness and wit” (44). For Desfougères, in the end they confiscate one another’s time, theatrical time, and time itself: “Ce sentiment que le temps est confisqué, que l’action devient impossible, la tension dramatique et le comique qui en résultent prennent une intensité beaucoup plus grande lorsque l’on a affaire aux ‘fâcheux spécifiques,’ ceux qui ont donné leur nom à la comédie de Molière” (95). Like Alain and Georgette in L’école des femmes, servants like La Montagne (or Sganarelle in Dom Juan) reverse power relations as their master becomes enmeshed in their delay tactics: Dépendant d’un maître souvent autoritaire, ils retrouvent une forme de pouvoir en le faisant enrager, c’est-à-dire généralement en lui faisant perdre son temps. C’est leur manière à eux de lui faire antichambre. Par leurs retards, leur incurable maladresse, leur sottise dont on ne sait pas toujours si elle est réelle ou affectée, ils révèlent la vulnérabillité de ce maître qui, privé de leur collaboration, se trouve dans l’embarras et réduit à l’impuissance. (94) Further, “Assurés de l’impunité, les fâcheux s’implantent dans une action, où ils n’ont rien à faire, précisément au moment où ils gênent le plus leur victime pressée par le temps, et ce sans prendre conscience—ou sans vouloir prendre Eraste needs the “exit strategy” to get out of the plot; as it shifts to Versailles culture, more exit strategies are required and are provided by Orphise and the dancers. Incivility, Discourse, and Kinetic Interruption in Molière’s Les Fâcheux PFSCL, LI, 100 DOI 10.24053/ PFSCL-2024-0009 151 conscience—de la perturbation qu’ils entraînent” (96). 7 For servants and for fellow nobles, the pattern hews closely to the origins of the interruption plot in the commedia dell’arte. Wherein lies Molière's comic innovation? This is where we have to return to generic experimentation to find clues for how Molière manages to find those exit strategies, such as the one that Goldstein locates in Eraste’s altercation toward the end of the play. Perhaps this is not the only way out of the trap of courtly society. As dance becomes incorporated, or as Bourqui and Forestier say fused with the comedy in new ways, the kinetic art form is also becoming more strictly codified. The royal academy of dance was founded during this time and imposed significant technical constraints on the esthetics of bodily movement within the emerging social formation at court. On the other hand, dance held the potential for disruption of dramatic action in the interludes of Les Fâcheux. Eraste is accosted by game-players, curious onlookers, frondeurs, and eventually annoying masks at the close. The performance moves out of spoken discourse and into movement and music, and there appears to be a perfect continuity between the speeches of the nine bores throughout the play and the interludes that separate the acts and bring the curtain down at the end. Paradoxically, however, this continuity is guaranteed only by the practice of what Walker calls “interruptions in the form of dance” (26), or, to take the analysis one step further, dance as interruption. 8 Even within the codified practices of the royal academy, dance in the emerging comedy-ballet takes a subversive form. As Bourqui and Forestier observe, music and movements are at times repetitive, at times disjunctive, even annoying. It recalls what Eraste calls the convulsions of a court member’s civility (see also Courtin’s use of the term) (1.1.102). But it is this very convulsion, this disruption, that holds the potential to reverse the power relations that constrain the courtier. What is at stake when language fails us in its excess, when it paradoxically reveals a fundamental vacuity beneath the incivil performance of civility? Our very freedom. It is only by deconstructing the binary opposition between civil and incivil that one can navigate one’s way out of the trap of courtly etiquette in its stasis and paralysis. The deconstruction and evasion of the binary occurs through creativity, esthetic experi- 7 As McBride points out, they are protected—the senex iratus cannot burst their egocentric bubble because he must uphold the basic tenets of civility, to the point where he ends up apparently trapped. 8 Bourqui and Forestier recall Le Ballet Royal de l’impatience by Benserade and Lully, arguing that Les fâcheux serves as a reverse echo of the ballet of 1661, which is full of burlesque dancing characters embodying impatience; whereas with Les fâcheux you have one protagonist who is rendered impatient by the multiplicity of the bores (1268). Roland Racevskis PFSCL, LI, 100 DOI 10.24053/ PFSCL-2024-0009 152 mentation, of the sort that La Fontaine endorsed when he recounted the events at Vaux. If for La Fontaine it is “diversité,” so it is also for Molière in the new hybrid form of the comedy-ballet. Rather than seeing Les Fâcheux closed down in its signifying potential by the transfer of performance from Vaux to Versailles (and then Paris), my reading shows that the new interruptive practice of dance in the play provides the exit strategy that the critically thinking subject viewing the play needs in order fully, freely to laugh at what is ridiculous in the characters onstage, in the character who is infuriated with them, and indeed in all of us. Molière the moraliste shows us new angles on both our limitations as egocentric beings with limited control over our discursive effervescence (we can easily become deflated) and our enduring potential for freedom, even at the inception of an authoritarian regime. The counterimpulse to increasing social constraint, as well as to accelerating artificial forms of discursive self-generation, leads the artist to continue creating and experimenting with forms, even from within the limitations more strictly imposed by civil society. It is not incivility that unlocks this new vista on generic innovation moving into the future, but rather a dialectical tension between the civil and the incivil. This tension is initially a constraint that binds us into paralysis, but it is also a spur to find something new, to find the Ariadne’s thread that leads through the labyrinth of the salon, the court, or the city. When faced with social constraint, the emerging comedy-ballet form finds that way out, comically, in the disruptive kinetics of dance. What a society buried under its own aimless signifiers must most urgently create, then, is ironic self-awareness manifested in productively disruptive movement. Works Cited Courtin, Antoine de. Nouveau Traité de la Civilité qui se Pratique en France, Parmi les Honnêtes Gens. Amsterdam: Henri Schelte, 1708. Martine Desfougères, “Sur les fâcheux dans le théâtre de Molière,” in Thématique de Molière. Six études suivies d’un inventaire des thèmes de son théâtre. Ed. Jacques Truchet. Paris: SEDES, 1985. 889-104. Felman, Shoshana. Le scandale du corps parlant: Dom Juan avec Austin ou la séduction en deux Langues. Paris: Seuil, 1980. Goldstein, Claire. Vaux and Versailles: The Appropriations, Erasures, and Accidents that Made Modern France. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008. McBride, Robert. “From Inflation to Deflation: Molière’s Changing Vision of Court Life.” Seventeenth-Century French Studies 10.1 (1988): 53-71. Molière. Œuvres complètes. Vol. 1. Ed. Georges Forestier and Claude Bourqui. Paris: Gallimard, 2010. —. Œuvres complètes. Ed. Pierre-Aimé Touchard. Paris: Seuil (Intégrale), 1963. Walker, Hallam. “Les Fâcheux and Molière’s Use of Games.” L’Esprit Créateur 11.2 (Summer 1971): 21-33.