The invention of the stage in the French novel

The context

In March 1678, La Princesse de Clèves appeared without an author's name in Paris, printed by Barbin, the publisher of La Fontaine (1668-1694). Racine has just had his most famous tragedy, Phèdre (1677), performed at the Comédie française. Louis XIV reigns at Versailles and brings France to triumph in Europe, thanks to the Peace of Nijmegen, signed on August 10, 1678 with the United Provinces, which puts an end to the Dutch War: Spain, until then master of northern Europe, cedes Franche-Comté, Artois and a dozen strongholds in Flanders to France. Lorraine was occupied by France  Sweden, allied to Louis XIV, emerged strengthened  the Holy Roman Empire also had to make concessions to France.

Politically and aesthetically, France occupies a dazzling position in Europe. This was the beginning of what would later be known as French classicism, a culture that still sets a major benchmark in the world today in terms of refinement, elegance and simplicity.

French classicism was the beginning of a culture that still sets a major benchmark in the world today in terms of refinement, elegance and simplicity.

La Princesse de Clèves bears witness to both this brilliance and exacting standards. This is not one of those baroque novels of several thousand pages such as written by Gomberville (Polexandre, 1637-1641), La Calprenède (Cassandre, 1642-1645), Georges and Madeleine de Scudéry (Ibrahim ou l'illustre Bassa, 1641-1644 ; Artamène ou Le Grand Cyrus, 1649-1653 ; Clélie, histoire romaine, 1654-1660).

The work is divided into four volumes, bound in two in-12 volumes of around four hundred pages each. In-12 indicates the format of the book : the higher the number, the smaller the format : in-12 means that to print the book, the large sheets of grape paper were folded into twelve. The result is a book that's smaller than today's paperbacks, one that actually fits in your pocket. The printing is in fairly large type : so there's very little text per page ; three pages of the original edition contain about one page of a modern edition.

In fact, La Princesse de Clèves is rather a somewhat extended short story than a true novel in the sense in which it was understood at the time. The circle in which this text was written had tried their hand at this genre, imported from Italy and widely practiced since the 16th century. Segrais¹ had published Les Nouvelles françaises in 1656, five short stories each centered on a character (Adélaïde, Honorine, Mathilde, Aronde, Floridon). Mme de Villedieu² had published the collection of Annales galantes in 1670, and above all Les Désordres de l'amour in 1676, one of whose short stories bears uncanny similarities to La Princesse de Clèves³.

The Author

Although the interested party has always denied writing it, /// Mme de La Fayette has always been credited as the author, if not the sole, then at least the principal author of a text most probably discussed and perhaps even partly written in common with her friends, La Rochefoucauld, the author of the Maximes (1664), Huet and Segrais. It's not for nothing that the regulars at the Hôtel de Nevers, where Mme Du Plessis-Guénégaud held salon, nicknamed her " le Brouillard⁴ " !

François Clouet, Diane de Poitiers jeune et vieille, between 1530 and 1555, Pierre noire and sanguine, Chantilly, Musée Condé

Who is Mme de La Fayette ? Her origin has nothing to do with that of the man who would become her great friend, the Duc de La Rochefoucauld, heir to one of France's oldest and most powerful " maisons " and a major contributor to the Fronde⁵ alongside the great Condé. Born in 1634 to Marie-Madeleine Pioche de la Vergne, Mme de La Fayette was of petite noblesse de robe, i.e. a middle-class family recently ennobled by the purchase of a royal office. Her father, a military engineer in Le Havre, died when she was just fifteen. Her mother, Isabelle Pena, daughter of a king's physician, remarried Chevalier Renaud de Sévigné, Mme de Sévigné's uncle, who would later become involved in the Fronde. Nevertheless, the young woman made a dazzling social ascent. Her marriage in 1655 to the unobtrusive Count François de La Fayette, a gentleman from Auvergne, gave her a name. In 1657, she met Mme de Sévigné. From 1659 onwards, she entertained everyone who mattered to the Court and the City in her private mansion on rue Férou in Paris. In 1661, she joined the Court. In 1663, Louis XIV invited her to join him on a tour of Versailles. In 1665, she befriended La Rochefoucauld.

La Princesse de Clèves is presented as an aristocratic novel, recounting the unhappy love affairs of a court lady, and as a historical novel, set more than a century before the date of its publication. Yet it was written by a parvenue, a demoiselle Pioche who was compromised (by her father-in-law de Sévigné) during the Fronde. The novel's relentless celebration of an ideal aristocratic society, deployed in a world without servants, without people, without landscapes, without places other than the Court, with its brilliance, and the Retraite, with its shadow, must be understood in the light of this social promotion and troubled history.

Characters

It's all about marriages and alliances at the start of this novel, which begins by introducing the main characters of the French court. The action takes place in the mid-sixteenth century, at the end of the reign of Henri II (1529-1559), the son and successor of François I, and the husband of Catherine de Médicis. The Wars of Religion (1562-1598) had not yet begun. Henri II was the talk of the town with his passionate and constant love for Diane de Poitiers, while Elizabeth I (1533-1603), who had just ascended the English throne⁶ (1558), left the suspense of a possible marriage hanging in the European courts. /// all appetites for alliance, will never be concluded.

It is on this general historical picture that Mme de La Fayette grafts the main characters of her fiction :

1. Mme and Mlle de Chartres are newcomers to the court, while their relative le vidame de Chartres is a regular and conducts his intrigues there. Historically, the house⁷ of Chartres no longer existed in the sixteenth century, as the county of Chartres was purchased by the King of France at the end of the thirteenth century⁸. But the title of vidame is a holdover from ancient feudal times, when it was used to designate the bishop's right-hand man. The vidame of Chartres must be distinguished from the house of Chartres. This title was held by the lords of Meslay in the 13th century. It passed into the Vendôme family in the 14th^e and remained there until the death in 1562 of François de Vendôme, vidame of Chartres and one of the leaders of the Protestant party. This François de Vendôme, Prince de Chabanais, of whom we possess a portrait by the workshop of François Clouet, is the vidame de Chartres of La Princesse de Clèves.

Mme de La Fayette didn't simply invent these three characters : in Le Siège de Metz by Bertrand de Salignac (1553), she may have read about the military exploits of " vidame de Chartres " and his comrade-in-arms the Duc de Nemours⁹.

2. The Prince of Cleves, by marrying Mlle de Chartres, will make her the Princess of Cleves. There was indeed a House of Cleves in the sixteenth century. François I de Clèves had two sons and three daughters: the eldest son, François (1538-1562), Duke of Nevers, married in 1561 Anne de Bourbon (1540-1572), daughter of the Duke of Montpensier¹⁰ the youngest, Jacques (1544-1564), would be our hero¹¹. But in 1559, when the fiction begins, Jacques de Clèves is only fifteen, and, historically, he married Diane de La Marck, the granddaughter of Diane de Poitiers. Fiction and history come together in that the Prince of Cleves dies prematurely.

3. The Duc de Nemours is the unhappy lover of the Princesse de Clèves. In fiction, he remains celibate. Historically, Jacques de Nemours (1531-1585) belongs to the House of Savoy : first cousin of François Ier, he is of the highest nobility. His plans to marry Elizabeth of England are also well documented. He was 27 in 1558, when he was supposed to meet the (fictitious) Mlle de Chartres. In 1564, the historical Jacques de Nemours married Anne d'Este, widow of the Duc de Guise and daughter of Renée de France, appointed by François I... duchesse de Chartres! On the other hand, Marie Jeanne Baptiste de Nemours (1644-1724), a direct descendant of the Duc de Nemours of the Valois court, has been linked to Mme de La Fayette since 1654.

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As you can see, Mme de La Fayette is engaged in a veritable tinkering with the history of the French nobility, based on what is delivered to her /// imagination by his new friends from the beautiful world.

4. The queen dauphine, the wife of Henri II's eldest son, the future and short-lived François II (1544-1560), must be distinguished from the queen, the king's wife, who is Catherine de Médicis. In the novel, the Princesse de Clèves is the confidante of the Queen Dauphine. The scene of the stolen portrait takes place in her home. Historically, the queen dauphine is known as Marie Stuart (1542-1587), queen of France for a year (1559-1560) but above all queen of Scotland (1542-1567), then leader in England of the Catholic party, executed by Elizabeth I of England after several plots.

The plot's starting point

The plot begins with Mme de Chartres negotiating her daughter's marriage: " she was a perfect beauty ", " and one of the greatest heiresses of France " (p. 27), " one of the greatest parties there was in France " (p. 28). Suffice to say, the mother intends to bargain dearly for her daughter's hand : " Mme de Chartres, who was extremely glorious¹², found almost nothing worthy of her daughter " (p. 28).

The first party to emerge is the Chevalier de Guise : the Guises, from the powerful House of Lorraine, are the leaders of an ultra-Catholic political party, the League, advocates of all-out war against Protestants. In this house, the Chevalier de Guise is only a second-rate figure. The two Guises who count are the Duc de Guise and the Cardinal de Lorraine, the Chevalier's elder brothers. But the Cardinal de Lorraine is opposed to the marriage, so it falls through.

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Mme de Chartres counters by negotiating a more prestigious alliance for her daughter, with a prince of the blood, i.e. from the king's own family : this is the son of the Duc de Montpensier¹³. The Bourbon-Montpensiers were cousins of the Bourbons, who coordinated the Protestant nobility party. As we can see, the matrimonial question is first and foremost a political one, and Mme de Chartres plays a dangerous game of balance. The counter-attack was not long in coming. Just as the negotiations with the Montpensiers are about to be concluded, the king vetoes them, urged on by his favorite Diane de Poitiers (still referred to in the novel as Mme de Valentinois).

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Two successive failures and a refusal from the king constitute a catastrophe : Mlle de Chartres becomes almost impossible to marry. The Prince of Cleves, who met Mlle de Chartres at a jeweler's and fell madly in love with her, jumps at the chance. Although he's only the youngest in the family, destined in principle either for the arms or the ecclesiastical career, but certainly not for a brilliant marriage, he takes advantage of his father's death and Mme de Chartres' disarray, and takes the piece :

" The death of the Duc de Nevers, his father, which then occurred, placed him in complete freedom to follow his inclination and, as soon as the time of the decorum of mourning had passed, he thought only of the means of marrying Mlle de Chartres. He found himself happy¹⁴ to make the proposal at a time when what had happened had driven away other parties and when he was almost assured that she would not be refused. " (P. 36.)

Politically, M. de Clèves thus makes a good deal : he obtains an alliance unexpected for his rank. Here we touch on the symbolic background on which the whole love story is built : the novel tells how M. de Clèves will pay, to the death, for this undue promotion.

Mme de La Fayette never presents things this way. After the introductory account of this matrimonial negotiation, it is never mentioned again, and Mme de Clèves will never reproach her husband for it. It is never /// says that M. de Clèves is from a less brilliant house than his wife : but we note that Mme de Clèves is the intimate confidante of the queen dauphine, while M. de Clèves is an anonymous gentleman of the court.

A poetics of brilliance

This sordid background of negotiation never appears as such, not only because Mme de La Fayette's language purges all its brutality, but also and above all because of the brilliance in which she bathes the whole story : brilliance of the court, brilliance of amorous passion.

This radiance is certainly evident first and foremost in the narration, and from the outset, with the novel's famous opening sentence :

" Magnificence and gallantry¹⁵ have never appeared in France with such d'éclat as in the last years of the reign of Henri second. "

The éclat is located at the climax of the sentence, all innervated by the tension between its profusion¹⁶ luminous (magnificence, gallantry, so much brilliance) and the negation of this profusion (never, last years of the reign), which projects onto its horizon the tragedy of the king's death, the onset of unrest and civil war.

Brilliance is the hallmark of Henry II's reign :

" This prince was gallant, well-made and amorous ; although his passion for Diane de Poitiers, duchess of Valentinois, had begun more than twenty years ago, it was no less violent, and he gave no less eclatant testimonies of it. "

" quoique..., elle n'en était pas moins " : in this second sentence, we find the same tension, but oriented towards the past this time, towards the beginnings of Henry II's passion, in the 1530's. Once again, the brilliance of royal passion manifests itself bordered by the anxiety of its possible end, of a possible wear and tear of love, which the narrative strives to ward off. The personal brilliance of the passion, after the collective brilliance of the court, is the result of this tension, between a before (the meeting with Diane de Poitiers) and an after (Henry II's death), between an exhibited magnificence (never appeared; testimonies) and the shadow of wear and death (the last years, more than twenty years).

Scene presentation and sequence

Brightness is the poetic principle of this novel. Because it introduces a narrative condensation (between a before and an after) and a scopic effect (brilliance for the eye), brilliance prepares the advent of an economy of the scene. The word scene, which would become commonplace in the eighteenth-century novel, never appears in the text of La Princesse de Clèves. What we will come to define as scenes are generally referred to in the narrative as " adventures ", the old medieval term that primitively designated a narrative sequence in the novel. The new economy of the stage, which was to become the norm for the novel in the following centuries, is only gradually built up over the course of La Princesse de Clèves, whose key episodes will be less and less narrative and more and more scenic. It would therefore be absurd to mechanically apply to this or that passage of La Princesse de Clèves all the criteria and characteristics we identified in the previous course. The scene of " Paolo and Francesca ", though of medieval origin, is only fully exploited, represented as a scene, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, i.e. when this economy of the scene, from the point of view of literary history, is at its peak. On the contrary, with La Princesse de Clèves, we're at the birth of this mode of representation, this fictional device. What we're interested in here is not to find all the characteristics of a scene, but to see /// by what features first the scene began to exist in the novel.

Here's a list of scenes from The Princess of Cleves. We'll then explain the criteria used to establish :

First part

• 1. The meeting at the jeweler's (p. 21)
  M. de Clèves meets Mlle de Chartres by chance " at an Italian who trafficked [in gems] by everyone ". The vision of Mlle de Chartres triggers M. de Clèves' passion. This episode is defined a few pages later as " l'aventure qui avait arrivé à M. de Clèves, d'avoir vu le premier Mlle de Chartres " (p. 31).
• 2. The ball at the marshal de Saint-André's (pp. 40-41)
  The Duc de Nemours arrives unexpectedly from England and dances with Mme de Clèves without first being introduced to her. Love at first sight is mutual. This episode is immediately defined as " an adventure that had something gallant and extraordinary " (p. 41).

Part Two

• 3. The theft of the portrait (pp. 79-80)
  The queen dauphine has " made small portraits of all the beautiful people of the court to send to the queen her mother¹⁷ ". Mme de Clèves therefore had her portrait painted ; but the Queen Dauphine also asked M. de Clèves to bring the portrait he had of Mme de Clèves, in order to compare it with the one she had just had done. It's the latter portrait that the Duc de Nemours steals, in full view of Mme de Clèves, who can say nothing.
• 4. The accident involving the Duc de Nemours (pp. 83-84)
  M. de Nemours, after a game of paume, rides with the king on horses that have not yet been trained. He falls against a pillar in the riding hall. Mme de Clèves betrays her love to the Chevalier de Guise. This episode is shortly afterwards defined as an adventure :" The king came out of a cabinet where he was and, seeing him among the others, he called him to tell him about his adventure. " (P. 85.)

Part Three

• 5. The confession (pp.109-114)
  This is the novel's most famous episode. After the death of her mother Mme de Chartres, and no longer knowing how to fight her growing passion for the Duke of Nemours at court, Mme de Clèves has retired to the countryside, to her château in Coulommiers. M. de Clèves, who does not understand this retreat, urges her to return to court. Forced to justify herself, Mme de Clèves confesses (very indirectly and allusively) to her husband that she loves another man, and that this retreat is essential to maintain her virtue. However, the Duc de Nemours, who has secretly come to Coulommiers to try to meet Mme de Clèves, to whom he has still not declared his love, attends this confession in secret, unbeknownst to both M. and Mme de Clèves. Back in Paris, Nemours tells his friend the vidame de Chartres, under assumed names, " his own adventures " and " the action of Mme de Clèves " (p. 115), claiming " that one of her friends had told her this aventure " (p. 116 ; see also passim pp. 121-124, 126, 129, 140, 160).
• 6. Explanations at the dolphin queen (pp. 121-125)
  The Queen Dauphine reveals to Mme de Clèves that the Duc de Nemours is in love. The latter enters in the meantime: the dauphine looks on, and a delicate confrontation between Mme de Clèves and her lover ensues, in which neither wishes to reveal their feelings. The king's arrival and a faux pas by Mme de Clèves give her a pretext to get back at him. /// remove.

Part Four

• 7. La canne des Indes (pp. 142-144)
  Mme de Clèves has once again taken refuge in Coulommiers. She spends her nights in the hunting lodge in front of which the confession took place, surrounded by paintings depicting France's recent military victories: the Duc de Nemours is among them. One night, M. de Nemours surprises her in her reverie, as she is tying knots in an Indian cane she has stolen from him. Although Mme de Clèves withdrew immediately, this encounter was caught by one of M. de Clèves' spies: he deduced that, despite her protestations of virtue, Mme de Clèves was deceiving him, and died of grief (p.153). Mme de Clèves recalls the episode to the Duc de Nemours: " Let us not speak of this adventure, she tells him, I cannot bear the thought  it shames me and is too painful for me because of the consequences it has had. It is only too true that you are the cause of the death of M. de Clèves " (pp. 161-162).
• 8. M. de Nemours and Mme de Clèves at the vidame de Chartres (pp. 158-166)
  After the death of M. de Clèves, the Duc de Nemours persuades the vidame de Chartres to organize his chance meeting with Mme de Clèves at his home. She confesses her love for him, but refuses to marry.
• The Duke of Nemours is a great friend of Mme de Clèves.

The episode of the stolen letter : narrative or scene ?

How did we determine this list ? It doesn't exactly coincide with the story's main episodes. For example, we did not include the episode of the stolen letter as a scene.

Let's review the facts. An anonymous letter of amorous spite fell from the pocket of the vidame de Chartres while he was playing jeu de paume with the duc de Nemours ; Chastelart, who picked it up, thought that Nemours had lost it and that it was intended for him (pp. 83, 89, 100). He gives it to the queen dauphine, who gives it to Mme de Clèves (p. 85). We read it with her (pp.86-87). The vidame realizes that he has lost his letter, but secretly begs his friend Nemours not to mislead the Court, in order to preserve the anonymity of the people it implicates: the queen (Catherine de Médicis), to whom he has sworn loyalty; Mme de Thémines, with whom he has had an affair without the queen's knowledge (pp.91-95¹⁸) ; Mme de Martigues, whom he loved without the knowledge of the queen or Mme de Thémines (p.98). Mme de Thémines learns of this latest infidelity, and with her letter she breaks definitively with M. de Chartres. The queen must absolutely remain ignorant of this double intrigue of the vidame, or he would be lost.

But attributing the letter to a mistress of the Duc de Nemours doesn't do the latter any favors : what will Mme de Clèves think (p. 100) ? M. de Nemours goes to her house and proves his innocence by means of a bill given to him by the vidame, in which the names of the protagonists are explicit (p. 103). Mme de Clèves returns the letter, Nemours returns it to the vidame, and the vidame to Mme de Thémines. But the Queen, who had heard of the letter, claimed it from the Queen Dauphine, her daughter-in-law. Mme de Clèves is then summoned by the queen dauphine to make a forgery to allay the queen's suspicions. Mme de Clèves sends for the Duc de Nemours, and the two of them draw it up from memory: they have a lot of fun doing it, but the result is so mediocre that the queen unravels the truth. From now on, she will pursue both the vidame, and the queen dauphine who was involved in the affair, with her hatred (p. 107).

This whole episode of the stolen letter, complicated and tortuous, is typical of Baroque narration : it is indeed the sinuous unfolding of the narrative, and not the immediate, visual, overall effect of the scene that takes precedence here. We didn't see the letter fall properly  the interview between the vidame and de Nemours is the occasion for a long narrative, to /// In the manner of the interwoven narratives of the Baroque novel. Only the writing of the forgery could give rise to a scene (p.106). The setting, Madame de Clèves' bedroom, lends itself to theatricality. The action takes place under the gaze of a third party, M. de Clèves, who could delimit the space of the scene proper, in the manner of a visual clutch: but this possibility is not really exploited by the text, which merely sketches out the device. Last but not least, both Mme de Clèves and M. de Nemours become pure eyes, immersed and fused in the enjoyment of their mutual contemplation :

" The presence of her husband and the interests of the vidame de Chartres somehow reassured her of her scruples. She felt nothing but the pleasure of seeing M. de Nemours, she had a pure and unmixed joy in it that she had never felt : this joy gave her a freedom and playfulness of spirit that M. de Nemours had never seen in her and which redoubled her love. " (P. 106.)

The gaze of M. de Clèves, who though present sees nothing, is opposed by this double pleasure of seeing, who sees only too well what it is really all about, while the text of the letter to be counterfeited appears only as a pretext, a screen for amorous enjoyment. This text itself constitutes a representation of amorous passion, even if negative, and the very duplicity it denounces puts into abyme what is then being played out insincere between M. de Nemours and Mme de Clèves.

However, while the scenic device is, so to speak, in place, with its geometrical delimitation (the room, M. de Clèves' gaze), its scopic efficacy (the pleasure of seeing) and its self-reflexive play, the temporal condensation necessary for the crystallization of a moment, a pregnant instant, does not take place. On the contrary, time is dilated and diluted, preventing any dramatic effect:

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" As he had not yet had such pleasant moments, his vivacity was increased ; and when Mme de Clèves wanted to start remembering the letter and writing it, this prince, instead of seriously helping her, only interrupted her and said pleasant things. Mme de Clèves entered in the same cheerful spirit, so that it was already a long time since they had been locked up, and one had already come twice on behalf of the Queen Dauphine to tell Mme de Clèves to hurry up, that they had not yet done half the letter.
M. de Nemours was quite comfortable faire durer un temps qui lui était si agréable et oubliait les intérêts de son ami. " (Continued from previous.)

Time disseminates : there isn't one moment in the scene, but " such pleasant moments ", which it's a matter of " making last " by taking advantage of multiple interruptions (internal, as Nemours " was only interrupting ", and external, since " one had already come twice ").

In conclusion, we witness here a phenomenon that we'll often encounter in later novels. The novel doesn't break down into well-defined sequences, each obeying a fixed, determined typology. It's living material: the narrative sets up devices, more or less complete, more or less typified, and these devices trigger, or don't trigger, something¹⁹. The whole episode of the stolen letter converges on a scene that doesn't take place: the two lovers don't fall into each other's arms, their passion isn't discovered. Paolo and Francesca's kiss remains in suspense.

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Mme de La Fayette will precisely take advantage of this inaccomplishment : realizing the precipice at the edge of which she has stopped, Mme de Clèves resolves that very evening (p. 107) to the retreat to Coulommiers, which itself will produce the implacable chain of confession, the death of M. de Clèves, and the definitive renunciation of M. de Nemours.

Notes

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