Molière (1622–1673)

“To be flawlessly monstrous is, thank heaven, not easy.”

“life, happily, will not have it.”

It is a bit surreal reading Tartuffe during the first 100 days of this new administration in the United States. These two lines are from the introduction to the Arion Press Tartuffe by translator Richard Wilbur. They give me hope. I haven’t read Moliere before and just wasn’t expecting it to be so relevant 350 years later. At the same time, it seems strange that the play was censored so show more strongly back in its day because even with its portrayal of Tartuffe as a religious hypocrite, it would seem a stretch for the French Roman Catholic Church to take enough offense to almost excommunicate the author. Seems pretty innocuous by the standards of our day. But one of the signs of great literature is when parallels can still be drawn and the relevance can still be there so many years later.

The play was an easy and quick read in Wilbur’s translation and the use of verse did not seem forced or awkward as it does in some translations. Wilbur gives some of his reasons for keeping the rhymes (and making his translation task that much harder, no doubt), saying that “... rhyme and verse are required for other good reasons: to pay out the long speeches with clarifying emphasis, and at an assimilable rate; to couple farcical sequences to passages of greater weight and resonance; and to give a purely formal pleasure,...” His summary of the storyline, from which comes the quote above, breaks it down well:

Tartuffe is only incidentally satiric; what we experience in reading or seeing it, as several modern critics have argued, is not a satire but a "deep" comedy in which (1) a knave tries to control life by cold chicanery, (2) a fool tries to oppress life by unconscious misuse of the highest values, and (3) life, happily, will not have it.

Our own personal experiences, inclinations, and interests obviously affect the parallels and relevance we see in the literature we read. Being in the tea business, I always love running across tea references or quotes above and beyond the ones everyone has heard. So Dorine’s two lines here have already been used a couple times and look to have a long future in appropriate places. This exchange occurs while chiding her mistress for her docile compliance to her father’s wish that she marry Tartuffe despite her love for Valere:

DORINE: Tartuffe's your cup of tea, and you shall drink him.
MARIANCE: I've always told you everything, and relied...
DORINE:No. You deserve to be tartuffified.

Then the clash of the patriarchy and the effects of a father’s (misuse of) authority with respect to a daughter’s morals definitely made me think about my own daughter and how she might respond to something of this sort. Again, it’s Dorine who seems to have one of the most reasonable heads in the play, as she berates Orgon about his decision:

A young girl's virtue is imperilled, Sir,
When such a marriage is imposed on her;
For if one's bridegroom isn't to one's taste,
It's hardly an inducement to be chaste,
And many a man with horns upon his brow
Has made his wife the thing that she is now.
It's hard to be faithful wife, in short,
To certain husbands of a certain sort,
And he who gives his daughter to a man she hates
Must answer for her sins at Heaven's gates.
Think, Sir, before you play so risky a role.

Finally, as a yogi and student of yogic philosophy, I was reminded of one definition of yoga as the “middle path”, when Cleante asks his mad brother Orgon

Ah, there you go--extravagant as ever!
Why can you not be rational? You never
Manage to take the middle course, it seems,
But jump, instead, between absurd extremes.

While that question could be made from the standpoint of many a rational philosophic system, I couldn’t help thinking that Cleante (or Moliere) might have a little yogi in them.

Drama is not something I read a lot of but I have discovered that when I do read it, I really like to read it in folio size, like this edition of Tartuffe. The Letterpress Shakespeare from the Folio Society are similarly sized, and I’ve been reading quite a few of those lately. The large page size allows for a large type for easy reading and that is also easy to read aloud while walking or standing, something I find myself doing fairly often with drama as well as verse.

This Arion Press edition is beautifully designed and crafted. The burgundy moiré silk over boards binding is beautiful, creating a wave-like pattern as light hits it. Instead of a slipcase, it is protected by a stiff Mylar(?) cover. The text is printed in two colors, black for the regular dialogue and a rich burgundy for the decorative type, the text below the illustrations, and the undulating rule that divides the character and dialogue on each page. The Arches mould-made paper is very nice to the touch as you read through the play, maybe even more so than usual since the quick reading of the dialogue gives ample opportunity for turning the page.

The illustrations are well fitted to the play, and reminded me of New Yorker or Playboy ink and pen illustrations even before I learned that William Hamilton has done much work for the former. Unlike a good portion of the Arion Press catalogue, where the illustrations fall more in the “Livres de Artiste” style where the artist does not always seem to have an easily seen direct correlation with the author, these illustrations correspond closely with the characters and action of the plot.

All in all, this book would definitely make it on the list of books I would like to own from the press. It’s place in the canon of Western Literature, its applicability and relevance to our world today, and the beautiful design of this edition make it a no-brainer for me.

AVAILABILITY: This 2004 edition is limited to 300 copies and is still available from the press. The price is $600.

NOTE: The Whole Book Experience would like to thank Andrew Hoyem and the Arion Press for the generosity that made this review possible.

For more book reviews, including photos of the physical book and overall reading experience, visit my blog The Whole Book Experience at http://www.thewholebookexperience.com/ show less

"... Everywhere I find nothing but base flattery, injustice, self-interest, deceit, roguery. I cannot bear it any longer; I am furious; and my intention is to break with all mankind.” – Alceste, Act 1, Scene 1

I started reading the book before election results; after the elections, these words take on a whole new meaning.

Alceste is the protagonist and the official “misanthrope” of the story. A straight-shooter and brutally candid, he criticizes the love verses of a fellow nobleman, show more Oronte, who takes him to court over such an insult. Meanwhile, the reader learns Alceste, Oronte, Acaste, and Clitandre all favor one twenty-year-old socialite – Célimène, who is charismatically vocal and a flirt. Meanwhile, Célimène’s jealous older friend, Arsinoé, pines for Alceste and adds salt to every wound she can find. Two characters, Philinte (friend of Alceste) and Éliante (cousin of Célimène) were the only two honest and faithful’s, who were rewarded with each other’s love.

Molière’s 1666 ‘The Misanthrope’ play is more focused on character development than plot progression. Having had two previous plays (‘Tartuffe’ and ‘Dom Juan’) banned by the French government, this one is typically viewed as one of Molière’s more restrained tales even though once again, the nobility is ridiculed (who then complains to the government). Officially a comedy, I must admit that I did not laugh once; I even winced. Reading this, I have visions of Kirsten Dunst in ‘Marie Antoninette’ in the role of Célimène. Surrounded by her admirers, Célimène criticizes various acquaintances as they all laugh at her verbal abuses for entertainment. To their surprise, dun-dun-dun, Célimène has a few choice words about them too, and they all abandon her. Despite Alceste with his misanthropic tendencies being the supposed humor of this comedy, I found some of his words as well as those of Philinte’s to be thought-provoking. When the world is going haywire, does it make sense to retreat and do a ‘Captain Fantastic’? As for Célimène, not an angel herself, she took the blunt of the hate, even though everyone had encouraged and endorsed her behavior. All in all, except for the last scene, this play had saddened me.

Some quotes:

On love:
Éliante: “…in the beloved all things become lovable. They think their faults perfections, and invent sweet terms to call them by. The pale one vies with the jessamine in fairness; another, dark enough to frighten people, become an adorable brunette; the lean one has a good shape and is lithe; the stout one has a portly and majestic bearing; the slattern, who has few charms, passes under the name of a careless beauty; the giantess seems a very goddess in their sight; the dwarf is an epitome of all the wonders of Heaven; the proud one has a soul worthy of a diadem; the artful brims with wit; the silly one is very good-natured; the chatterbox is good-tempered; and the silent one modest and reticent. Thus a passionate swain loves even the very faults of those of whom he is enamored.”

On virtue:
Philinte: “All human failings give us, in life, the means of exercising our philosophy. It is the best employment for virtue; and if probity reigned everywhere, if all hearts were candid, just, and tractable, most of our virtues would be useless to us, inasmuch as their functions are to bear, without annoyance, the injustice of others in our good cause; and just in the same way as a heart full of virtue.” show less

Beautiful rhymed poetic translations of four Molière plays. These transcriptions provide a great introduction to the dramatic world of Molière. First, Tartuffe: One of the most divisive comedies ever written, Tartuffe was the focus of the biggest censorship dispute of the 17th century. Molière's remarkably beautiful drama concerning religious belief fundamentally altered the purposes and goals of comedy. It was extremely brave, if not foolish, of Molière to humorously tackle such a show more subject in a religiously sensitive era that still dealt with heresy at the stake. Tartuffe may have struck a nerve when his detractors interpreted the play's portrayal of religious hypocrisy and fake piety as an assault on religion in general. Still raw from Tartuffe's sting, it is easy to criticize the prejudice and blindness of his contemporaries. At the time of his passing, Molière's fellow clergymen were still resentful of Tartuffe. But the drama still manages to jolt and move spectators in tender places, and the urgency of being able to discern genuine devotion from fakery is as great now as it was in 17th-century France.

Moliere demonstrated that the caricatures of Farce facilitated rather than hindered the investigation of human nature and social experience and that both comedy and tragedy could delve into profound psychological depths and fundamental human concerns. It was a unique character comedy that drew laughs heartily at the mistakes and pretenses of human nature while portraying modern manners in a lifelike manner. Not everyone found it funny. show less

Hilarious satire! My Kindle edition, acquired from Project Gutenberg, didn't have the best translation but the humor still shines in this play. Orgon (and his mother) is completely taken in by Tartuffe, whom the rest of the household dislike. Tartuffe and his hypocrisy are really just foils Molière uses to display the folly of Orgon's gullibility. The saying "There is none so blind as those who will not see" could have been coined to describe Orgon & Madame Pernelle! The most comic scenes show more in the play are when Dorine (his daughter´s maid) and later Damis (his son) try to convince him of his foolishness. I thought Cleante, Orgon's brother-in-law, portrayed the voice of reason & his description of how Orgon had a temperament which flew to extremes was so apt.

Molière has a keen eye for human nature & although Orgon & Tartuffe are exaggerated for comic effect, they still display characteristics which I can recognize in people today. I will certainly be reading more of his plays! show less