‘I feel a sadness when I come to the end of a book like this one,’ she said: ‘A dreadful, emptied sadness.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know if I’ll ever read it again, or in what place, leading what kind of life—or it may be that I remember the places where I read it before, in earlier days. And the summer’s almost gone now—we’re at the end of our time together.’
‘What about next year?’
‘Next year, of course, yes—but the future’s hidden. We never know what lies ahead.’
‘Why do you think that? Don’t you mean to come back—next year, and the year after, and the year after?’
‘Of course I do, but the years that lie before us aren’t ours by right. If you knew my life, you’d see why I feel this way.’
‘I only know the things you’ve told me while we’ve been reading.’
‘What is the past of a life anyway?’ she said, her voice gentler: ‘Just a collection of events that don’t quite hold together, and glancing incidents that don’t make any sense. Lives have a shape in books. That’s why we read them: that’s their charm.’
‘Doesn’t your life have a shape?’
‘My God, what a question! Who are you to ask me that—the confessor of my soul? You should be asking me about the life of the Princess. Why she acts as she acts. Why she fails to do as the storyline demands. To have any sense of what the answer might be, you’d need to examine her character, and remember everything the book tells you about her experiences, just as if you were trying to read the mind of a man or woman standing here in front of you.’
‘Like a detective?’
‘In a sense, yes—and there are clues to her decision. They’re in the details of her life. Does she think back to the days of her marriage, and find she loves her husband more acutely in his death than his life? Does she feel her fate is somehow already decided, and there’s a path marked out she has to follow? Or is she ashamed, because she looks back, and knows she fell prey to a forbidden love? Is that what makes her hesitate and tremble on the brink of fulfilment?’
‘Maybe she didn’t want to cause a scandal,’ I said.
‘But don’t you see? That’s the heart of everything. It’s a freedom story. Freedom as threat. During all those months of grieving, while the Princess is on her own, she has the chance to change her life. How rarely that’s given to a heroine: almost never. It’s the whole point of the book. Everything else is just the build-up. She has no husband anymore, she has no family—there’s no role left for her to play. She’s in complete seclusion: she only has her own ideas and feelings for company. I see her as if she was standing on a stage, in a bright spotlight, able for the first time in her life to express herself—and she finds there’s no desire she can give herself to, nothing she wants that she trusts to be true. But she wishes very much to be a true, sincere person. It’s love that has bent her out of shape, and all she sees around her is the disasters love brings. I’ve thought about her and her decision and wondered about what lies behind it—many times. What about you? Don’t you have a first impression? We’ve been pressed up against her and her story for days on end, as if she were a real person and we were staring at her through a window, spying on her, like all the characters in the book who spy constantly on each other. Aren’t you curious? Why do you think she did what she did?’
‘Sometimes,’ I said, ‘I don’t even know why I do things—at least not exactly.’
Serghiana fell silent, looked at me in astonishment for a few moments, then shook her head.
‘My poor child,’ she said: ‘When you’re young you really should believe self-knowledge is the path to wisdom. Don’t you think, in fact, the situation’s quite strange? This is a clear book, a transparent book—and a famous one, as well. There was a time, not so long ago, when everybody knew it, everybody could discuss it. It’s a treasure, it’s still taught in schools, it’s even been made into a film by Cocteau, God defend us—but none of the scholars who study it and write about it seem to understand the secret feelings in the heroine’s heart.’
‘And do you?’
‘At first, of course,’ she said, in a very serious tone, ‘I was quite sure, just like every reader who picks up the novel and glides through it once, and finds it elegant, and full of grace, and admires the music of the words, and falls in love with it. I believed we should see the Princess as a noble creature, loyal to her vows and principles, and the book tells us that, several times, too many times, actually, as if Madame de Lafayette was trying to persuade herself. How strongly the weight of all that’s right and fitting seems to be pressing down on the Princess! How caught she is—by position, by youth, by her sense of propriety. She can’t free herself, she has to obey the codes, she has to stay within accepted bounds. But if that were all true, what would the story be? Just a social note. It’s not, though. It’s a deep, private tragedy. Two people, thwarted love. Love that can’t escape to find its fulfilment in another. Surely that came through to you?’
I made a little gesture to show agreement. She swept on.
‘All this only became plain to me when I was older, when I’d taken my first steps in life, when I could think for myself. I reread the book with more attention. I suppose I still believed it was just a sweet, romantic tale. I reached the scene near the end, in the townhouse in Paris, when the Princess sees Nemours for the last time. She says to him—it’s just once, she tells the truth just once, for a second—I fear you will not love me always, I fear the certainty that one day the love you feel for me will die. Do you remember? Just those few words, and nothing more.’
‘And that’s the part that matters most?’
‘Of course. It’s the key to everything: it explains much more than her decision—her refusal. What she’s describing in those words is her fear of life itself. She prefers imagination, and dreams, and the romantic books and tales she knew from childhood: art, form, elegance, not the murky, messy business of life as it’s actually lived. The whole rich world of hope and promise is stretched out before her, an endless vista, a landscape of depths, of shafts of light and unknown shadows, like some receding picture background from the renaissance: beauty, mystery—and she flinches—she can’t bear the idea. For her, love is a fatal weakness, a breach in the castle walls of her own perfection, love is a source of change and chaos and disorder, not joy or strength. And this is the lesson the book holds for us.’
Serghiana was speaking intently: her eyes stared into mine so keenly it was impossible to look away: ‘It tells us that there’s a secret in the hearts of men and women: a dreadful, crushing, all-consuming fear—fear of the world, a fear that’s permanently present, permanently keeping us in check. Look around you. All these people in their summer finery, strolling so easily along, or taking their tea, waited on hand and foot. They look like the class of rulers and masters, don’t they? They aren’t. They’re haunted by the same fear. They want stillness, they want comfort and safety. That’s why they’re here, cocooned in a resort—they’re afraid of all the energies and the discords of life. And that’s why we’ve been reading this book together, and not some undemanding book for imaginative children—so you can keep this in your mind, and never forget it.’
‘The Princess wasn’t brave, then? She wasn’t a heroine at all?’
‘The Princess was like everyone else, the same anguish was in her as in everyone; you see her fighting constantly against her instincts, until she doesn’t know what she wishes for—and the turmoil masters her, it makes her recoil in the face of happiness, and she herself, by the story’s end, has devastated everyone and everything she loves. Fear wins out—her fear of life.’
And is it so very fearful, I wanted to say—should I fear life as well—but I hesitated before Serghiana’s watchful eyes.
‘What made the writer think that way?’ was what I asked: ‘Was it her story as well?’
Serghiana handed the book to me, with a formal flourish, as though dealing a card from a
deck.
‘It’s for you, to keep,’ she said. ‘To find the answer to your question, you would have to know Madame de Lafayette’s life, as well as her book—and perhaps, one day, you will.’
*
Marie-Madeleine Pioche de la Vergne was born in 1634 in Paris, into a family of the provincial nobility. Much like her fictional heroine, she was brought up in seclusion until she reached the age of sixteen, when she made her first appearance at court and was promptly appointed lady-in-waiting to the Queen Regent of France. The circles of royal power were also the circles of learning—she came into contact with the scholar Ménage, who tutored her in Latin, Greek and Italian, developed a lasting fondness for her, and introduced her to the literary fashions of the day. This was a brief idyll. Once she had passed her twentieth birthday she was married off to the Comte de Lafayette, a widower almost twice her age. She followed her impecunious husband to his estates in the Auvergne, bore him children, advised him on his finances and mouldered away. During this rural exile she struck up the friendship that renders her life and character visible to later times: her connection with the French seventeenth century’s best known letter writer, that artless, engaging graphomane the Marquise de Sévigné. Only four years into their marriage, Madame de Lafayette and her lacklustre husband discreetly parted ways. She returned to Paris, set up house in her old family home in the Rue de Vaugirard and established a fledgling literary salon there. Clerics, classicists and poets were among her regulars. Their recollections and surviving correspondence record the milieu and the time; they pay tribute to their hostess, and provide examples of her brilliance and wit. She had transformed herself into a woman of letters, alert to the nuances of every written or spoken word. She was prominent once more in court circles, she befriended Racine and Molière, she became a close companion of the King’s sister-in-law. Then, at the exact midpoint of her life, her thirtieth year, a shadow, cast by a book, fell across her path.
The first edition of Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims was closely read on its first appearance, and much discussed, not because of its content but because of its authorship: François, the sixth Duc de La Rochefoucauld, had been a celebrated military commander, a courtier, an intriguer, and one of the leaders of a great rebellion against the crown. His book, a slender volume, no more than a collection of sentences, dry, indeed arid, rather than epigrammatic, outlines a theory of human nature quite at odds with the spirit of his luxuriant age. It borrows elements from stoic and cynic philosophy, its conception of the world is openly materialist, the map it sets out of human motivations is virtually Freudian in its insistence on hidden depths: above all, though, its propositions are a species of dark poetry, the fruit of a sceptical, disabused intellect, a mind resolved to strip bare the pretences of civility, to seek out the essence of life’s theatre, to follow its own intuitions no matter where they might lead, and chase them down to the bitter end. For all this, La Rochefoucauld’s portrait of the shared life men and women move through is a subtle, graduated one: nothing in our world is simple, nothing is pure, not virtue, not vice either. Good and bad are so intermingled that fine, discriminating judgement is necessary to discern the forces that compel us to reflect and act as we do. The mind, in his conception, is an ingenious machine, a device to conceal man’s nature from himself, and render existence bearable by a system of deceits. Self-interest drives us on, yet we regard ourselves as benign and generous. Self-regard blinds us to our true character, while self-preservation leads us to cast a veil over our eventual fate. There is something of the cartographer about La Rochefoucauld, and something of the dualist. ‘Whatever discovery we might have made in the land of egotism,’ he writes, ‘There still remain many unknown territories.’ His prose is sharp and crystalline: through its sheer transparency it reveals the ambiguities that our experience of life presents. Neither the sun nor death may be looked at steadily, he concludes—yet his Maxims close with a lengthy reflection on the end of life, and how best to meet it. It is almost the only extended passage in the book, and it reads very much as the author’s bid to defy his own system. Reason as a trap, love as a lure, God as a nothing—the universe La Rochefoucauld paints is geometric in its elegance, and almost starved of light and hope. Such was the ‘portrait of the heart of man’ that fell from the presses in 1665, and caused a stir of thrilled excitement in the literary salons of Paris. Madame de Lafayette was careful to advertise her horror upon an initial reading: ‘What corruption one must have in mind and heart to be able to imagine all that!’ Privately, she was fascinated, and took steps to secure the company of La Rochefoucauld. So began one of the most poignant and unusual liaisons in literary history. Madame de Lafayette was a fledgling novelist with a decided fondness for romantic plotlines: even in her early writings love is a fierce, implacable force that holds sway over its victims; it shapes lives, accounts for actions, fills up the void in every human being. La Rochefoucauld’s professed view of affection was very different. He was in his early fifties when the Maxims appeared. He was no longer the graceful, flawless man of fashion shown in the paintings and engravings of his youth. He had been gravely wounded in battle, a musket shot to the face had left his eyesight impaired, he was afflicted by gout, he had removed himself from the limelight of court politics to restore his shattered estates. By chance a detailed, closely observed description of La Rochefoucauld’s character exists. It is a candid portrait: it is from his own hand. ‘I have studied myself enough to know myself well,’ he declares. He is of melancholy disposition, he is sometimes thought to be proud, but this is not so, he is merely reserved: he has principles, he controls his passions, he feels no ambition, has no fear of death: he is overly critical, he regards himself as circumspect, a secret-keeper, true to his word, a loyal friend. He has certain gifts in addition to his intellect and wit: ‘I write well in prose and verse and if I were receptive to the glory that comes from writing I believe that with some work I could gain a reputation.’ It is the sketch of a chilly, self-contained individual, a man who values accuracy above sentiment. There is, though, one soft note in the composition. He admits to feeling a reverence for women, he prefers the conversation of a gifted woman to that of men. ‘They have a gentleness that is lacking in men, they express themselves with more clarity, and they give a more agreeable turn to the things they say.’ As for love: fine passions, he feels, for all their disruptive impact, are not incompatible with a virtuous austerity of outlook; in fact, they can indicate a greatness of soul—and it is a source of regret for La Rochefoucauld that he, who knows so much about what is delicate and strong in the transports of love, does not believe this knowledge will ever pass from his mind to his heart.
This self-depiction made a strong case for its author to Madame de Lafayette. The two crossed paths in Paris salons. They began to spend their days together: a bond was formed between them—and the influence of La Rochefoucauld is evident all through the unfolding narrative of the Princesse de Clèves. Many of the book’s early readers believed him to be its co-author, at the very least, but his impact on the thought and writing of the true author was both more subtle and more profound. He is very plainly there, as hero: the Nemours who makes his dramatic entry at the Louvre Palace banquet in the novel’s early pages is a figure drawn in the image of La Rochefoucauld: highborn, dazzling, debonair, a man of presence, central to the schemes and intrigues of the court. Nemours is portrayed as reflective, his cast of mind is analytical, but it is his own condition that he most often probes and calls in question. He is proud, and somewhat aloof. He has been a seducer, his reputation as a lover of noble women is well established, yet he has no experience of the torments of true love that lie in wait for him as the plot unfolds. Like La Rochefoucauld, the Nemours of the book is skilled in arms and diplomacy, he is repeatedly dispatched on important foreign missions, he is a close confidant of the crown. The episode of the misplaced letter the Princess reads is based on a scandal La Rochefoucauld witnessed and describes in detail in the mem
oir he devoted to his early life.
Far more telling than these appropriations, though, is the influence on Madame de Lafayette of La Rochefoucauld’s system—his ideas, the flavour of his thought. The Princesse de Clèves swiftly reveals itself as the product of two outlooks colliding, interpenetrating. It begins as a conventional story of romance, it is engineered with care to yield this outcome, the characters are stock figures, they seem at first like beings in a tapestry, surrounded by the raiment and the splendour of the court. But another pattern, darker, harsher, emerges: the narration is cool, and cooler still when the emotions are hot. Even as the Princess is plunged into the cauldron of her love for Nemours, she struggles to observe and gauge her feelings, to understand them and master them through force of will—and the watching author casts her own dispassionate gaze on both heroine and hero, recording their manoeuvres as they seek an escape from the trap she herself has set. Just as in the Maxims nothing is wholly pure or polluted and every human quality partakes of intermingled opposites, so too in the novel characters find themselves assailed by competing impulses and by emotions they recognise as inconsistent. Here is the Princess, on hearing the first declaration of love from Nemours, in words obliquely coded but clear at once to her: ‘She felt she should respond and not let those words go unchallenged; at the same time she felt she should not listen or give any sign she took them to refer to her. She felt she should speak; she felt she should stay silent. What Nemours had said pleased her and offended her almost equally.’ Here, too, is her husband, the Prince, consumed by contradictory feelings and confessing his predicament to the wife he loves: ‘I have fallen prey to violent, shifting emotions which I cannot master. I no longer see myself as worthy of you, you no longer seem worthy of me; I adore you, I hate you; I offend you, I beg for your forgiveness; I admire you, I am ashamed of my admiration. Within me there remains no trace of reason or tranquillity.’ It is La Rochefoucauld’s version of the human heart—utterly divided. In the slow transformation of the two chief characters over the novel’s course, the dance of opposing outlooks is just as clear. The Princess embarks on her life in court as a child bride, at the mercy of her feelings. By the end of the story she has felt love’s destructive force, her reason has prevailed, she sees love as temptation, a mirage, she has freed herself from its sway and brought down the curtain on her life. Nemours, whose worldly glamour and self-mastery are apparent as the novel opens, becomes progressively more enslaved by his emotions—his love devours him, he loses his purchase on himself, no hope remains to animate him, he is a wraith-like figure by the story’s end. And in this way a sombre tale is fashioned, a work of balance, a keepsake that serves as memorial to the tie between La Rochefoucauld and Madame de Lafayette. Her view of him is in her book; his of her lies in a brief word portrait, anonymous, but ascribed to La Rochefoucauld: its poised style makes the attribution sure. Few love letters are as devoted, or as restrained. How to describe her? Her manner is at once noble, modest, natural and self-possessed. Her blue eyes are calm and lovely, but that calm is the calm of a composed and independent being. By temperament she is melancholy, she prefers to be alone, she is bored by banquets and grand assemblies, books are her favourite province, yet there is no one more charming once in company, no one more able to accommodate herself to those she meets. Swift in understanding, free in imagination, a writer by nature, not through art and effort, she would be flawless, were it not for one strange attribute: she has an invincible aversion to anyone who likes or cares for her—there is in her a hatred of being loved.
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