PFSCL XXXVII, 72 (2010) Molière’s Dialogism? The Curious Case of Dom Garcie B RUCE E DMUNDS Cronk and Bakhtine have, in series of books and articles, clearly shown the importance of the monologic impulse in French Classicism. 1 So strong is it, Cronk has argued, that even works in overtly dialogic form often betray a deeper commitment to a single, monologic view informed by the canonical virtues of simplicity and clarity (181). Widespread as the trend may be, for Cronk’s characterization of the period is undoubtedly accurate, Molière, at least, appears to buck it. Indeed, as Larry Riggs has amply demonstrated, his plays display a keen sense of the tyranny and danger of the monologic view, and a great interest in showing, in a varied and detailed way, the importance of negotiation in human affairs. 2 From this perspective Dom Garcie, 3 in its apparent espousal of a clear code of conduct, seems to represent a troubling, therefore interesting case. Let us note before tackling the play that few have written about it, despite Michael Koppisch’s insightful remarks and implicit invitation: “To point to the play’s flaws is to recover its interest.” 4 For Koppisch the play 1 For Nicholas Cronk see his article “The Singular Voice: Monologism and French Classical Discourse,” Rethinking Classicism: Overviews, ed. David Lee Rubin (New York: AMS, 1989) 175-202. For Bakhtine see The Dialogic Imagination, trans. C. Emerson and M. Holquist (Cambridge: MIT, 1968). 2 Molière and Plurality: Decomposition of the Classicist Self (New York: Peter Lang Publishing Inc., 1989). 3 I am using the Jouanny edition of Molière’s Œuvres complètes in two volumes (Bordas: Paris, 1989 and 1993). References to Dom Garcie, and Le Misanthrope which are in the first volume, will be identified by verse. References to the prose work Dom Juan, also in the first volume, will be identified by scene and page. References to the Bourgeois Gentilhomme, in volume two, will be identified by act, scene and page. 4 “‘Partout la jalousie est un monstre odieux’: Love and Jealousy in Dom Garcie de Navarre,” Papers on French Seventeenth Century Literature, vol. 12, no. 23 (1985): 461-479, 479. Bruce Edmunds 86 does not succeed as a play because it is generated by two incompatible conceptions of jealousy, one essentialist and one relational. While I do not entirely subscribe to this reading, I would like to respond to the invitation he issued forty years ago, with one modification: rather than discussing the play’s flaws I would like to bring out its fundamental ambiguity regarding the issue of Molière’s putative commitment to dialogism, with all that commitment entails. Such ambiguity should come as no surprise if, as many scholars have argued, the period in which Dom Garcie was composed marks some important transitions. Hélène Baby-Litot, for example, shows how the social shift from hero to honnête homme entails a shift, in comedy, from external to internal obstacles to love. 5 Paul Bénichou details how the warrior ethic and the concomitant cartesianism fall to a more cynical understanding of human limits and possibilities. 6 Situating the play historically in such fashion might well provide a plausible account of how Molière’s ambiguity regarding the supposed transparency of language arose, but that is beyond the scope of this study. My purpose here is more modest: I do not claim that Dom Garcie represents a transitional moment in Molière’s career, much less in French society as a whole. What I would like to show is that the play both supports and undermines the monologic impulse. To this end I will consider Molière’s treatment of the social order, of sickness, and of signs. That Dom Garcie suffers as a result of what he sees is too obvious to require demonstration. Equally evident is the conventional quality of the images used to convey that suffering. Less obvious and far more important for my purposes is the way those conventional images bespeak a concern for integrity and a fear of its loss and in so doing apparently commend the search for clarity and constitute an expression of the monologic impulse. “Partout la jalousie est un monstre odieux,” cries Elvire (v. 101). Reading monstre as a sign of social disorder puts us back in Thebes, returns us to the primordial crisis arising from the failure to make a distinction: mother/ not mother, or here, amour/ jalousie. 7 Oedipus’s blurring of the line sickened the body politic; Dom Garcie’s failure to distinguish between love and jealousy has the same effect, from Elvire’s point of view. The sphinx, the Minotaur, the chimera reveal that the monster is, above all, a mixed being. As such, it can only frustrate the attempt to establish clear categories within thought and discourse; therefore, one must kill it. 5 “Réflexions sur l’esthétique de la comédie héroïque de Corneille à Molière,” Littératures Classiques, 27 (1996): 25-34. 6 Morales du Grand Siècle (Paris: Gallimard, 1967). 7 René Girard explores the meaning of this moment in great detail in his book La Violence et le sacré (Paris: B. Grasset, 1972). See especially chapters two and three. Molière’s Dialogism? The Curious Case of Dom Garcie 87 Kill it? It is true that her lover’s conduct, though perhaps not catastrophic, despite Elvire’s hyperbolic language, is certainly “impertinent.” 8 Now, impertinence, as Grosperrin shows (52-54), is for the esprit classique the refusal of genuine relationship and community implied in the imperfect adherence to its code of conduct. To exhibit jealousy violates this code as flagrantly as would refusing Sganarelles’ offer of tobacco in Dom Juan (Act 1, Scene 1, p. 715). The comparison may seem farfetched, but Michel Serres’ discussion of that particular scene helps illuminate the nature of Dom Garcie’s crime, and measure its weight. If, as Serres argues, taking tobacco and sharing it is the consummately social act, a genuine instance of the true exchange Dom Juan perverts, to refuse it is to refuse the very principle of human sociability. 9 Making Serres’ reading compelling is the fact that what immediately follows the panegyric of tobacco is Sganarelle’s description of his master as a “grand seigneur méchant homme” (Act I, Scene 1, p. 716), as, in other words, a monster, a mixed being whose very existence threatens the social order, and marks a kind of crisis. Like the refusal of tobacco, Dom Garcie’s rejection of the Cartesian distinction between love and jealousy damages the social code in its very essence. He then compounds the crime by arguing repeatedly that not only are love and jealousy compatible, but that jealousy is the expression of love, an idea Elvire calls “un étrange maxime” (v. 100). Finally, and most tellingly, his insistence in varying circumstances on enacting the same judgment is the kind of crispation antithetical to the sociability that is the heart of honnêteté as a code of conduct (Grosperrin, 57). This is the sense in which one could say that it is not so much jealousy, but Dom Garcie’s publicly observable behavior that is the monster. Elvire’s oft-repeated reproach, after all, is that Dom Garcie’s conduct is not that of a lover. This observation, curiously, puts us in the position of tentatively asserting that here at least the social code of the honnête homme, its revulsion for what is “impertinent”, aligns it closely with those who insist on programmatic clarity: in this situation one must do this, in that situation one must do that. We are far from the flexibility and the juste milieu usually ascribed to both honnêteté and Molière. One thinks of those characters who by their willingness to tolerate certain infractions, their reluctance to censure, commend themselves to us, Chrysalde, for example, in L’Ecole des Femmes, Philinte in Le Misanthrope, or Cléante in Le Tartuffe. Tolerating impertinence, though, is not the same as condoning it. The juste milieu has 8 Jean-Philippe Grosperrin, “Variations sur le ‘style des nobles’ dans quelques comédies de Molière,” Littératures (Autumn 1999) 44-71. 9 Hermès ou la Communication (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1968). Bruce Edmunds 88 less to do with the social code itself than with one’s relationship to it. If, as Catherine Daniélou argues, one must class Molière among the post 1660 moralists for whom the defining trait of humanity is inconstancy, 10 both the insistence on fidelity and the insistence on complete trust appear naïve and unworkable. Thus, to cite another example, Arnolphe is not ridiculous because he condemns infidelity, but because he goes to such extraordinary lengths to protect himself from it. His efforts distort his character and leave him twisting in the wind. This would be Elvire’s fate if she persisted in judging Dom Garcie, but this does not imply any ambiguity with respect to the “value” of jealously or grant it any legitimacy. Dom Garcie’s argument that jealousy is a sign of love never gets taken seriously. What makes jealousy impertinent, after all, is not its existence per se, but the ways it produces unacceptable behavior. From this perspective it matters little for Molière whether it arises from a pattern of relationships or inheres in Dom Garcie as his very essence. To put it plainly, if impertinence is any infraction of the social code, honnêteté mandates that one’s response to it be moderate. To condemn vociferously impertinent behavior is itself impertinent. The juste milieu defines not a meeting ground in which two opposing principles (e.g. love excludes jealously, jealously is an expression of love) fold themselves into a third, but a middle way between the principles of extreme tolerance and extreme censure. It’s not just that the monster cannot be killed; one should not even try to do so. Positioning Elvire with respect to the précieuses may help to make the point. One is tempted to see her as a graver version of Cathos and Magdelon, but Elvire’s requirement is based on principle; it is not the rigid, mindless adherence to arbitrary details Molière pillories in his Précieuses ridicules. Indeed, the only element of the précieuses’ program Elvire has adopted is the distinction between love and jealousy, a distinction based upon the kind of careful analysis that would culminate in Descartes’ Les Passions de l’Ame. 11 She may appear dogmatic at times, but let us not forget 10 “Constance et inconstance: Le Misanthrope et la tradition moraliste,” Papers on French Seventeenth Century Literature (2000) 383-404. 11 After noting cases in which jealousy is “honnête,” a captain “qui garde une place de grande importance” or a woman “jalouse de son honneur” (Article 168), Descartes discusses cases in which jealousy is “blamâble,” reserving his most acerbic remarks for the man jealous of his wife: “Et on méprise un homme qui est jaloux de sa femme, parce que c’est un témoignage qu’il ne l’aime pas de la bonne sorte, et qu’il a mauvaise opinion de soi ou d’elle” (Article 169). He then concludes that this is not love at all, but simple desire for exclusive possession of an object. I have used the Monnoyer edition (Paris: Gallimard, 1988), in which the relevant articles are found on pp. 255-6). Molière’s Dialogism? The Curious Case of Dom Garcie 89 that she accepts Dom Garcie and his jealousy in the end. In determining the meaning of this acceptance the choice appears stark: either she is entering into a relationship bereft of love, or she has concluded that her earlier position (that love and jealousy are mutually exclusive) was erroneous. This kind of logic, however, puts her squarely in the camp of the précieuses, which is unfair. In other words, not only is her code based on principle (as opposed to a set of rules taken from the roman précieux) but it is not held to the exclusion of every other consideration. Now if, as Taylor argues, identity is definable only if one takes into account, in addition to moral and spiritual positions, some kind of “defining community” 12 Elvire’s community is closer to that of the honnête homme than that of the précieuses. The précieuses err in bracketing all genuine consideration of moral principle, and pushing the notion of impertinence to the extreme in our effort to understand Elvire’s behavior from the perspective of honnêteté would take us to the same uncomfortable place; of course, if Elvire is not a tyrant like Alceste, neither is she open to the ongoing process of negotiation and adjustment that seems to emerge as the basic ethical stance of many of Molière’s plays. 13 We cannot approve of her altogether, but neither can we simply dismiss her and her position. Shifting our gaze from the collective to the particular reveals an equally surprising truth: if we take images of sickness and weakness seriously jealousy is not a poor choice based on willful ignorance or insufficient information, but “une étrange faiblesse” (v. 764), or an illness, “noirs accès” for which Dom Garcie must seek healing (“guérison”) (vv. 799-800). Dom Garcie confesses in the midst of such a crisis: “Je ne suis plus à moi; je suis tout à la rage” (v. 1297). Madness, illness, attack, all imply the loss of the body’s integrity, or the fact that it is compromised by the presence of a foreign body. The latter interpretation of his malady is brought out most clearly in verse 1485: “Mon plus grand mal se rencontre en moi-même.” Dom Garcie experiences his jealousy as something that is not himself, which he encounters within himself. It may well be ineradicable in the case of Dom Garcie, but this does not make it constitutive of his being any more than terminal cancer constitutes the essence of its victim. Neither Elvire’s demand that he rid himself of jealousy nor his acknowledgment that it is 12 Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989) 36. 13 As Riggs observes, “comedy rejects the idea that there is or can be a realm beyond particularisms where disembodied, uncluttered minds can think and commune” (55). In the human realm, the only realm Molière consents to inhabit, no definitive code or principle may impose itself. Bruce Edmunds 90 destroying him makes sense if it is taken as his essence. The resulting logical conundrum is particularly acute in the case of Dom Garcie, and no less so for being endemic to self-improvement projects: who or what is doing the modification and who or what is being acted upon? The emotional imbalance both Don Garcie and Elvire note seems to connect Dom Garcie’s affliction to the medical model in a different way, but one that also implies the idea of aberration. Molière invokes the theory of the humors explicitly in the Misanthrope, which bears the additional title “l’atrabilaire amoureux.” 14 Of course, absent explicit references to such in Dom Garcie, one cannot assert with any authority that “imbalance” arises from the same medical model, but given the close connection between the two plays and the widespread use of it in Molière’s time, it seems plausible enough. Elvire’s reference to purgation is suggestive in this regard (v. 137). If this is the case then one might well conclude that jealousy in Dom Garcie is not so much the site of a conflict between incompatible logics or the focal point of an underlying cultural shift, but an illness that may or may not be treatable. The “partout” in Elvire’s complaint tempts one to see “monstre” as describing heterogeneity within the individual as well as within the social order, but of course her label refers not to Dom Garcie but to jealousy. Also, if illness costs him his integrity, even permanently, this does not make him a mixed being, a sphinx, a chimera or even Pascal’s ange/ bête. 15 From the perspective of man as a social being, as we have seen, Molière seems to condemn Dom Garcie as a heterogeneous element within the social body that must be contained or expelled. But, and here is the paradox, it is not for embracing the logic of monologism, but for threatening it. Alceste and Dom Garcie are at antipodes in this sense, and mark seemingly opposite positions with respect to the whole Cartesian set of values encapsulated in the term “monologism.” Viewed from the perspective of the self, however, Molière seems to be urging a very different response to Dom Garcie’s condition, a more compassionate one. In other words, the problem cannot be solved by doing away with the monster or, in Pascal’s case, by consenting to the grace that may expel the bête. 14 Note also lines such as the following, in which Philinte uses each humor as a synecdoche for opposing philosophical positions: “Mon flegme est philosophe autant que votre bile” (Le Misanthrope, v. 166); and in which Jourdain justifies his rejection of “la morale” on the grounds that he is “bilieux comme tous les diables” (Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, Act 2, scene 4, p. 450). 15 “L’homme n’est ni ange ni bête, et le Malheur veut que qui veut faire l’ange fait la bête”, Pensée 329 in the Chevalier edition of Œuvres Complètes (Paris: Gallimard, 1954). Molière’s Dialogism? The Curious Case of Dom Garcie 91 This takes us closer to the Molière of the great plays, the Molière who seems horrified with the way the monologic position reduces the scope of legitimate human endeavor to the creation of a body of clear and unchanging principles that would both govern and explain human beings. Admittedly, there is still a long way to go; even in her condemnation of Dom Garcie’s jealousy Elvire cannot provoke the combination of ridicule and disgust that Alceste or Arnolphe do. Indeed, as we have seen, in Dom Garcie Molière seems to be expressing the impulse he will later condemn, but he does so wistfully, without conviction, as if sensing that it may have the effect of taking the mystery out of being human, of offering an account that is detailed, clear, definitive and therefore boring and a bit sad. The mystery of Dom Garcie’s character connects to that of signs. The images of sickness reinforce the sense that he did not choose his affliction. Neither is it within his power, apparently, to end it. To the degree that it arises from the ambiguity of signs, this ambiguity is held up for censure. The solution would seem to be, then, to dispel it. Fortunately, Molière being Molière, the situation is a bit more complicated than that. One cannot overlook the moment in which the evidence of infidelity is simply overwhelming, the moment when Dom Garcie sees Elvire in the arms of another man. The “man” turns out to be a woman in disguise but there is no way for Dom Garcie to know this (vv. 1223-1515). The demand that he believe what is so contrary to the testimony of his senses appears unreasonable, especially in the light of Molière’s keen sense of observation. From that perspective the act of blinding oneself in acquiescence to the precious ideal of faith produces only… blindness. Molière invites the spectator not to commend such an act of intellectual violence but to condemn it. Still, what if the effort to dispel the polyvalence of signs is doomed to fail? Lloyd’s analysis of jealousy suggests as much. Jealousy, she writes, is a kind of circular movement of obsession that generates suffering and severs the victim from genuine connection and community. 16 It is fueled by the 16 Rosemary Lloyd, Closer and Closer Apart (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1995) 7. Later Lloyd observes that in many texts where jealously is a key theme fetishism appears as the effort to consolidate control by substituting an object for the other. This description certainly applies to Lloyd’s example of the famous scene in the Princesse de Clèves in which the titular character tenderly adorns a cane belonging to her lover (84). One might wonder if this could also apply to the torn letter Dom Garcie acquires. At first glance they seem very different: The cane cannot be construed as an expression of another’s consciousness in the same way as a letter can, and if fetishism is an eroticized attempt to suppress such freedom in the name of dominance the letter is a poor Bruce Edmunds 92 insistence on giving a definitive reading of signs whose meanings can never be fixed (140). In a broader context of intellectual striving this is the error of Pynchon’s Slothrop, 17 whose acute sensitivity to multiple meanings plunges him into a horrible world of paranoia and isolation. Dom Garcie is a long way from WWII, but perhaps it is not too anachronistic to suggest that Molière already exhibits an awareness of the danger of Pynchon’s semiotic haze. The complementary error of both Elvire and Dom Garcie is that they wish to settle the issue definitively. Dom Garcie wishes to purge himself once and for all, a chimerical and dangerous undertaking, as Molière’s plays abundantly demonstrate; Elvire wishes to cease providing clarification once and for all, even though that clarification humiliates neither one of them since it arises from the unavoidable limits of perception, interpretation and trust. What thwarts the monologic impulse most powerfully is the ethical stance that arises from the display of the limitations of both Dom Garcie and Elvire, or to put it in positive terms, from the implied injunction to respect both general rules and idiosyncrasy equally. 18 One could say that Molière refuses to philosophize. Or one could say that his assertion of mystery is cleaner and more profound than Pascal’s. For the latter one may observe the replis of the self but ultimately explain them. 19 Molière observes the same replis but offers no explanation, and, here at least suggests that none exists, or that seeking it must never lead to finding it. candidate. If one views the act of interpretation in terms of control, however, the obsessive quality Lloyd discusses pertains to both. Whether the letter is mutilated, in keeping with the novelistic topos of the day, or whole is irrelevant: in either case the text demands and defeats the attempt to assign definitive meanings to it. Ultimately, Lloyd argues, if jealousy is marked by a kind of directionless movement with respect to its victim, it redeems itself by producing narrative. I found little evidence in Dom Garcie of the awareness of such a mechanism, still less of its thematization, but seeking it in other plays might prove interesting. 17 Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow (New York: Viking Press, 1973). 18 Margaret Nussbaum, Love’s Knowledge (Oxford University Press: New York and Oxford, 1990) 70. Such a position, Nussbaum argues, is the only one that makes sense when dealing with matters of love, the only one that provides evidence of genuine ethical maturity. From this perspective, Dom Garcie and Elvire both cling to a childish and unrealizable set of demands. 19 Referring to the doctrine of the transmission of sin, Pascal writes: “Le nœud de notre condition prend ses replis et ses tours dans cet abime; de sorte que l’homme est plus inconcevable sans ce mystère que ce mystère n’est inconcevable à l’homme” (pensée 438).