Various short forms of writing (maxims, characters, fables, portraits) exemplify this kind of operation. It is largely here—in the formal varieties of brevity—that we can locate the importance of the moralists for a history of modern French literature. Differences of perspective are proffered in these fragments of thought. It is even possible, from one fragment to the other, to offer contradictory principles. La Fontaine provides a good example of this fluid, contradictory dialectic. In his dedicatory epistle to the king’s son, La Fontaine emphasizes the power of language and, relatedly, the central issue of his own writing as ethical in nature:
Je chante les héros dont Ésope est le père,
Troupe de qui l’histoire, encore que mensongère,
Contient des verities qui servent de leçons.
Tout parle en mon ouvrage, et même les poisons.
Ce qu’ils dissent s’adresse à tous tant que nous sommes.
Je me sers d’animaux pour instruire les hommes.
(I sing those heroes, Aesop’s progeny, / Whose tales, fictitious though indeed they be, / Contain much truth. Herein, endowed with speech— / Even the fish!—will all my creatures teach / With human voice; for animals I choose / To proffer lessons that we all might use.)
Yet there is perceptible irony in the way La Fontaine plays with both the legacy of the ancients and the conventions of the authoritative voice. Speaking animals (even the obvious dumb ones, like fish) are able to give moral lessons, as natural history can be both full of lies and full of truths. Yet some of the fables show how bad it is to speak. Language is a malediction for the crow or the tortoise, because for them speech is above all a matter of vainglory: “She’d have done better/ To go her ways without speaking. … Imprudence, vanity and babble have all the same paternity” (“The Tortoise and the Two Ducks”). Or in “The Arbitrator, the Hospital Visitor, and the Hermit,” despite the witty jests, communication is deceptive and even fatal: “It is good to talk, and better to keep quiet.” The fable as a literary genre lends itself to this kind of instability of perspective, and is very much part of its point for La Fontaine; it is what above all makes his use of this ancient form seem modern.
Very often, such writing stages a problematization of the self insofar as the question of the “self” implicates language as well. Cyrano’s narrator speaks directly to the readers: it is one of the first novels to use a first-person narrator. Nevertheless, since the story narrates a reversal of perspective, the speaking “I” is itself put into question, rendered incorrigibly unstable. The moralists also acknowledged the power of imagination, for creating the possibility of a point of view that is both from above and from inside. But the moralists themselves also belong to the very community they are describing from an apparently exterior position; they are inside as well as above, the Olympian position thus relativized to a purely human scale; this is part of the recognition of what it is to be “modern,” constrained, fragile, and contingent. As Pascal puts it in respect to the freethinker who imagines he could be unconditionally free to think what he, by himself, wants to think: “we are embarked” in the world. For him, all human beings are in a boat that drifts them through the social tempests to an ineluctable and fatal wreckage—if they do not wake up and consider the necessity of a God.
Such a position is also emphasized by La Fontaine at the end of his fable “The Power of Fables.” Despite its social illegitimacy, the power of diversion of the fable reveals a useful political power:
A ce reproche l’assemblée,
Par l’apologue reveille,
Se donne entière à l’Orateur:
un trait de fable en eut l’honneur.
Nous sommes tous d’Athènes en ce point, et moi-même
Au moment que je fais cette moralité,
Si Peau d’âne m’était conté,
J’y prendrais un plaisir extreme.
Le monde est vieux, dit-on, je le crois; cependant,
Il le faut amuser encore comme un enfant.
(Chastened, the popular, agog, is wakened by his apologue:
His lowly fable sets them all abuzz.
In this, we are Athenians, all of us.
And if, even as I am writing thus,
“The Ass’s skin,” this very minute
Were told me, I should revel in it.
Though old our world, however one construes us,
Still, often, like a child must one amuse us.)
We are Athenians all, but now stripped of the dignity of the citizen of the Athenian polis, driven back regressively, via the exposure of frailty and vulnerability, to the condition of childish behaviors. It is a vision both comic and bleak of what it is to be human. At the same time, notwithstanding this belittling of human beings, the power accorded to imagination seems to have resulted in a remarkable invention of forms of writing. That is why ancient forms receive new impetus and development, while new ones were increasingly favored by a growing reading public. They fueled the taste of a larger reading public for writing on practical ways of life as well as for fictional representations. In questioning traditional social structures and imagining new models of behavior, they launched a program of investigation that would be taken further by the writers of the Enlightenment. They also assigned a new, largely social, function to “literature”: literature was now seen as a social means of shaping individual and collective life stories. The ancient question of how to live had become the question for literature, not only to ask but also to answer, model, and regulate.
There was however one great exception, or complicating case: Blaise Pascal. Pascal wrote neither to make a career, nor for pleasure. His appearance in the public sphere was motivated primarily by a sense of indignation. An angry man, Pascal raged against atheists, libertines, and even those whose faith in God was, in his opinion, too weak (Montaigne, for example, with his “me” displayed so conspicuously) or impertinent (Descartes, for example, whom he deemed “vague” and “useless”). His anger, however, was also directed against priests who upheld theological interpretations that he considered unacceptable (the Jesuit priests in particular). Although anger is counted among the human vices, indignation is nevertheless a necessary aspect of Christian behavior, at least insofar as it aims to correct those it criticizes. Indeed saeva indignatio (savage indignation) was a term of both ethics and rhetoric, and in its latter guise was often seen to underlie certain forms of literary writing, above all the genre of satire, of which Pascal would prove himself a major practitioner, crucially in the Lettres provinciales.2 It is with this work that Pascal first entered the public sphere. He wanted to bring to the attention of a larger audience (one that was not restricted to theologians or priests) attacks that were being made against proponents of a strict interpretation of the Bible and the Church Fathers (particularly Saint Augustine). In doing so, Pascal came to the defense of Antoine Arnauld, who was at risk of being condemned by the theology faculty at the Sorbonne. Rather than compose a densely erudite treatise addressing debates on topics such as divine grace and the salvation of humankind, he wrote short epistles. These letters, published immediately after having been composed, one after another, treated laborious theological questions like divine grace or salvation in a clear and concise manner. Published anonymously, and without any mention of the publisher’s name or the place where they were printed, the letters would later be collected in book form, under a false publisher’s address. The police were never able to stop their printing and diffusion.
In order to elicit his reader’s interest, Pascal feigned a position of ignorance in relation to these theological debates, the position of one seeking to inform himself of the views and arguments of the disputing parties, and sending the results to a friend living far from Paris (hence the complete title: Lettres à un provincial de ses amis, abridged as Lettres provinciales). In a sense, he invented the genre of investigative journalism, albeit a type of journalism that was concerned with transcendental questions. But it was of course more than simply an inquiry.
It was a performance, animated by a ferocity of purpose contained and controlled by a scintillating irony, leading him to the conclusion that “these are disputes of theologians, not of theology.”
These theological debates have lost much of their appeal today, but that is not in any case why we read the Lettres provinciales. We do so because they constitute a landmark in the history of French literature, specifically the history of French literary prose. The great French critic, Sainte-Beuve, claimed (controversially) that prose was the natural medium of French literature, and that Pascal was the greatest of its prose artists. Let us see how, for example, he stages the beginning of his third letter, after having shown us an answer from his provincial friend in which his correspondent refers to the public success of the first two letters and the praise they received from a member of the French Academy: “I have received your letter; and, at the same time, there was brought me a manuscript copy of the censure. I find that I am as well treated in the former, as M. Arnauld is ill-treated in the latter. I am afraid there is some extravagance in both cases, and that neither of us is sufficiently well known by our judges. Sure I am, that were we better known, M. Arnauld would merit the approval of the Sorbonne, and I the censure of the Academy. Thus our interests are quite a variance with each other. It is his interest to make himself known, to vindicate his innocence; whereas it is mine to remain in the dark, for fear of forfeiting my reputation.” The elegant and witty binary plays on an inversion of values and social positions, where the author in an ironical demonstration of modesty actually stages Arnauld’s innocence. Pascal does not play only the angry tune of the quarrel or the serious tone of theological inquiry, he also draws on a subtle and playful humor, and he captures his audience by this quick movement from one tone to the other. We see this at work when he publishes the supposed reply of his provincial friend, quoting a lady (probably Madeleine de Scudéry, a famous writer) and in so doing allowing himself a moment of self-publicity: “it is so very ingenious, and so nicely written. It narrates, and yet it is not a narrative; it clears up the most intricate and involved of all possible matters; its raillery is exquisite; it enlightens those who know little about the subject, and imparts double delight to those who understand it.”
Pascal’s letters successfully create a new reading public. But he does not simply smash his opponents by his sarcastic wit; rather, as a good man of science, he regularly gives rules of argumentation while he is making a point: for example, “I never quarrel about a term, provided that I am apprized of the sense in which it is understood,” which permits him a moment later to say to the father he is interrogating: “this is merely playing with words, to say that you are agreed as to the common terms which you employ, while you differ with them as to the meaning of these terms.” Or later, accused of scoffing at religious matters, he replies with a lesson on Christian and charitable mockery and its use by the Church Fathers. He gives a new fashion to the classical rhetorical use of delectare (pleasing) and docere (instructing), with the aim of movere (touching) the reading public in these serious theological and political issues.
The Lettres are also of note in that through them Pascal effectively invented a type of public intervention new to the period. In the seventeenth century, anyone who spoke publicly had to be authorized to do so. If one did not have the kind of social position that authorized a public voice, one was expected to speak only on behalf of a recognized body or institution. Under the cover of anonymity, Pascal asserted the contrary: “It is not very likely, standing as I do, alone, without power or any human defence against such a large body, and having no support but truth and integrity, that I would expose myself to lose everything by laying myself open to being convicted of imposture.” Thus, he claimed to speak truth precisely because he was a lone voice, without institutional warrant. By contrast, the Jesuits formed a corporate body, exercised power, and were guilty of imposture. Pascal’s claim, thus, is that of an engaged intellectual who, alone, did not hesitate to denounce the established powers. In France, the invention of this sort of public figure is generally understood to belong to Voltaire or even Zola, but it is clear that, structurally, Pascal was already on the way to “composing” such a figure. “Composing,” literally, because Pascal’s writing was indebted to manuscript files supplied by his friends, Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole. In this sense, he was far from alone in his endeavors. However, it is important to recognize the originality of Pascal’s writing posture, which serves to reinforce a posteriori a reading of his work as that of an engaged intellectual who was already integrated into the semiautonomous world of literature.
In the last years of his life (he was thirty-nine when he died, always having suffered from poor health), he collected a series of reflections (“thoughts”) that were intended as an apologia for the Christian religion. So as to convince those who did not believe, or believed but with reservations, in God, he did not undertake to prove the existence of God nor to impress his readers with the beauty of the celestial machinery. In an innovative manner, he attempted to start from the standpoint of a strictly human anthropology, distanced from any transcendence, in order to better demonstrate its limitations. Thus he outlined a profoundly contradictory feature of human beings, seen both as the masters of the world thanks to their reason and as the slaves of their infinite desire for power and goods. His aim was to make others aware of these contradictions and thereby elicit a deeper interrogation in all with regard to their existence in the world and of themselves. Such a contradiction was supposed to be the proof of the remnants of their original nature and of their fall into a second and miserable nature. With such knowledge, perhaps it would be easier to turn to God. Pascal also used a very unusual mathematical argument, based on a probability calculus: if you wager that God does not exist, and you are right, you risk a finite life against nothing, but if you wager that God exists, and you win, you bet a finite life on earth against an infinite life in paradise. Since libertines are supposed to be rationalists, it is then their rational interest to wager that God exists.
In this way, he sketched a portrait of libertines and skeptics by strategically adopting their postures. By assuming their logic, he hoped to better convert their souls. However, their conversion did not depend solely on rationality. One cannot simply go from the order of reason to the order of charity and belief in God. This can only be accomplished by a radical leap enabled by divine grace. One can, however, prepare the ground rationally (by showing the logical contradictions and constant paradoxes that constitute our way of life) and understand that such a leap is necessary.
These many reflections were written on sheets of paper, some highly worked and well-written, others consisting of only brief notes in the register of the aphorism or the remark. Pascal himself gathered some of the reflections into bundles to which he gave names or headings (Vanity, Wretchedness, Boredom, Contradictions, etc.), or simply left them in disordered form, to be collected in a work still to come, according to a plan he explained in Port-Royal to a few of his friends. But he died before he was able to accomplish this.
In the seventeenth century, it was virtually inconceivable to value shapeless drafts to the point of making them public (it was not until Rousseau and especially Chateaubriand that this would become legitimate). The overall sense of organization that would form a work was its determining feature. But Blaise Pascal was an exception. His writings on mathematics and physics were shown very early on to be those of a child prodigy. His family’s adoration of him and his friends’ immense respect meant that his papers were fastidiously preserved, carefully recopied in the same state he had left them in. In the end, it was agreed that the reflections that seemed useful should be published, even if some needed to be rewritten. Antoine Arnauld (whom Pascal had helped defend) and Pierre Nicole (who also helped with this defense) agreed to take on this task. But it was impossible to turn it into a continuous text. Therefore, its fragmentary state was preserved under a general, vague title, Pensées, and the variou
s elements were reclassified according to themes. This is how the fragments appeared in all editions until those that were published after the Second World War. In these later, modern editions of Pensées, the fragments were presented in the same order in which they had been originally copied, without modification, a presentation that was more legitimate from a philological point of view, in the sense of offering the material to be read as it had been originally written. At the same time, the compositional history does also raise the question of the spirit in which the modern reader is to read them as “fragments,” given the new understandings and valuations of the fragment that arose as part of the legacy of Romantic thought and literature.
But there were two different copies made after Pascal’s death, and editors today choose one or the other, which does not change the text itself but does change the order of presentation and the numbering of the fragments.
One could say that this is unimportant. But let us take one example of what it changes, where Pascal describes the origin of politics:
The bonds securing men’s mutual respect are generally bonds of necessity, for there must be differences of degree, since all men want to be on top and all cannot be, but some can.
Imagine, then, that we can see them beginning to take shape. It is quite certain that men will fight until the stronger oppresses the weaker, and there is finally one party on top. But, once this has been settled, then the masters, who do not want the war to go on, ordain that the power which is in their hands shall pass down by whatever means they like; some entrust it to popular suffrage, others to hereditary succession, etc.
And that is where imagination begins to play its part. Until then pure power did it, now it is power, maintained by imagination in a certain faction, in France the nobles, in Switzerland commoners, etc.
A History of Modern French Literature Page 30