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La Bruyère as Quietist: A Straussian Reading of La Bruyère's Caractères and Dialogues sur le quiétisme

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 August 2005

Ed Ford
Ed Ford
Affiliation:
Lexington, Massachusetts
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Extract

In October 1687, the Parisian publisher Michallet was granted the right to produce an anonymous work entitled Les Caractères de Théophraste traduits du grec avec les Caractères ou les mœurs de ce siècle. The first edition of the Caractères went on sale in March 1688, and the work became an instant classic. By 1696, Parisian readers hadpurchased eight editions, while an additional three editions had ap-peared in Lyon, and yet another in Brussels. In these later editions, the identity of the author was revealed: Jean de La Bruyère (1645–1696), who had been hired by the Duke of Condé as a tutor for his son and stayed on as librarian in the duke's palace at Chantilly.

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Harvard Theological Review , Volume 98 , Issue 1 , January 2005 , pp. 95 - 112
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© 2005 Cambridge University Press

In October 1687, the Parisian publisher Michallet was granted the right to produce an anonymous work entitled Les Caractères de Théophraste traduits du grec avec les Caractères ou les mœurs de ce siècle. The first edition of the Caractères went on sale in March 1688, and the work became an instant classic. By 1696, Parisian readers had purchased eight editions, while an additional three editions had appeared in Lyon, and yet another in Brussels. In these later editions, the identity of the author was revealed: Jean de La Bruyère (1645–1696), who had been hired by the Duke of Condé as a tutor for his son and stayed on as librarian in the duke's palace at Chantilly.

The popularity of the work had little to do with its claim to present a translation of Theophrastus “from the Greek.” La Bruyère was not very adept in that language, and his own translation was based on a readily available Latin translation of Theophrastus. Indeed, after the fourth edition, the Caractères of Theophrastus retained its position at the head of the volume, but was printed in a smaller typeface. The reading public was far more interested in the Caractères of La Bruyère himself, and this section was expanded in subsequent editions: whereas the first edition contained 420 remarks or reflections arranged in 16 chapters, the number of remarks leaped to 764 in the fourth edition, and peaked at 1120. La Bruyère's own vividly drawn characters constituted a scathing attack on contemporary French society and were eagerly received by many. But the Caractères also attracted opponents. A Carthusian monk named Bonaventure d'Aragonne, writing under the pseudonym Vigneul-Marville, launched an attack on the book.1

Benjamin Rountree, “La Bruyère's Foe in the Monastery: ‘Vigneul-Marville,’ Studi Francesi 79 = 27 (1983) 74–81.

Members of the French Academy also attacked the work on the basis of its topical allusions and innovative clipped style, yet in spite of these objections, La Bruyère was inducted into the Academy on 16 June 1693. With the passage of time, the Caractères has come to be regarded as one of the hallmarks of French literature, and as an eminently familiar work—though perhaps too familiar, for, as Roland Barthes has suggested, early exposure to the Caractères seems to have dampened adult appreciation of the work.2

Roland Barthes, Essais critiques (Paris: Seuil, 1964) 221.

In the present essay, I aim to demonstrate that our ability to appreciate and to interpret the Caractères depends in large part on our ability to place the work in its proper historical context. Over the past three centuries, the Caractères has not failed to generate a large number of critical studies. During the past forty years, scholars have produced a wide variety of literary readings of the literal text of the work that focus on, for example, La Bruyère's unique style,3

Doris Kirsch, La Bruyère ou le style cruel (Montreal: University of Montreal Press, 1977).

his concept of character,4

Michael Koppisch, The Dissolution of Character: Changing Perspectives in La Bruyère's Caractères (Lexington, Ky.: French Forum, 1981).

and his role as a seventeenth-century moraliste.5

Louis van Delft, La Bruyère moraliste (Geneva: Droz, 1971).

This focus on the literary qualities of the text may be contrasted with the interest of earlier generations of critics and scholars, who often sought to identify the historical personages on whom La Bruyère modeled his characters. Such keys to the work were already circulating during the author's lifetime, although he consistently denied that his portraits were drawn from particular models. Reading the Caractères as a sort of roman à clef is one way of constructing a historical context for the work, but it is an approach that can lead us to miss the forest for the trees. When we pause to consider that the first edition of the Caractères, whose final chapter includes an attack on atheism, appeared in the wake of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685), and that La Bruyère's only other major work was the posthumously published Dialogues sur le quiétisme (1699), which treats a brand of mysticism condemned by the Catholic church, we are led to reconsider La Bruyère not as a moraliste but as a writer who addressed questions of religion at a time of extreme religious intolerance.6

See Rountree, “La Bruyère's Foe in the Monastery,” 74–81. Other scholars who have considered La Bruyère's writings from a religious perspective include Louis MacKenzie (“ ‘Avec un style plus chrétien’: Preaching, Philosophizing, and Conversion in La Bruyere's Caractères,” Religion and Literature 22 [1990] 1–17), who suggested that the fifteenth chapter of the Caractères, “On Preaching,” contained Jansenist themes; and François Tavera (L'idéal moral et l'idée religieuse dans les Caractères de La Bruyère [Paris: Mellottée, 1940]), who proposed a Catholic reading of the entire work.

Furthermore, we may ask whether La Bruyère's published writings accurately reflect his private opinions. Did he support the revocation, as a remark in the Caractères would suggest, and did he renounce Quietism, as a cursory reading of the Dialogues would indicate? Or, did La Bruyère conceal heterodox opinions beneath an orthodox veneer? When we review his claims about his ancestry, the circumstances of his employment at Chantilly, and certain passages in his writings, we find reason to question whether La Bruyère was a sincere exponent of Catholic orthodoxy and a committed opponent of Quietism.

First, the question of ancestry. It was long thought that La Bruyère was the grandson of the famous Catholic leader of the same name who had been exiled by Henry II. It appears, however, that La Bruyère himself was the source of this confusion.7

See Raymond Couallier, “Naissance et origines de La Bruyère,” Revue d'histoire littéraire de la France 63 (1963) 441–47.

In the Caractères, he states that if he ever makes his fortune, he will claim descent from a certain Geoffrey de la Bruyère, who was among those “qui suivirent Godefroy de Bouillon à la conquête de la Terre-Sainte: voilà alors de qui je descends en ligne directe” (“who accompanied Godefroy de Bouillon in the conquest of the Holy Land: he [Geoffrey] is the one that I descend from in a direct line”).8

Citations from the Caractères follow the edition of Robert Garapon (Paris: Éditions Garnier, 1962), here 417. The present quotation is remark 14 in “De quelques usages” (“Of Certain Customs”). All translations are mine.

In this passage, his concern to establish, or to suggest, an orthodox lineage would be quite understandable in the climate of intolerance that followed the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, especially if his private opinions were of a variety not to be tolerated.

Second, La Bruyère's appointment at Chantilly seems to have put him in close contact with a circle sympathetic to the Protestant cause. Despite the fact that it was the Catholic Bishop Bossuet who arranged for him to serve as tutor to the Duke of Condé's son, beginning in August 1684, we must assume that La Bruyère's opinions were in harmony with those of his employer. “The Great Condé,” as he was known, was famous for having changed allegiance during the course of the Fronde rebellions of 1648–1653: at first a defender of the court, he subsequently joined the anti-royalist peasants and the nobles who supported them, and even negotiated an alliance with the Spanish. The duke had expected that discontented Protestants would rise to his support; after all, he was the grandson of Louis I of Bourbon, who had led the Huguenot armies during the religious wars of the previous century. The Protestants, however, chose to remain loyal to the king, who in return promised them his eternal gratitude and the perpetual protection of their rights. Eventually the duke was reconciled with the court, and after serving Louis XIV as a general for several years, he retired to Chantilly, where he tried to outshine the court at Versailles by playing host to the luminaries of French culture. Thus, during his tenure at Chantilly, La Bruyère was in the employ of a rebel at heart who had strong Protestant sympathies.

In the year after La Bruyère's arrival at Chantilly, the Edict of Nantes was revoked. During the reign of Louis XIV, the rights of French Protestants had been steadily eroded. As Arthur J. Grant wrote, “From 1679 the attacks on the Huguenots became constant. Between that year and the withdrawal of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 there were more than a hundred and twenty-five documents of different kinds dealing with the Huguenots, and all of them curtailed their liberties or inflicted on them penalties of some kind.”9

Arthur J. Grant, The Huguenots (1934; repr., Hamden, Conn.: Archon, 1969) 163.

The revocation proved to be Louis XIV's great mistake. A large number of Huguenots left the country—estimates vary between one hundred thousand and two million people—taking their wealth to rival nations, including the Netherlands, Germany, and England. In order to remain in France, as he indeed did, La Bruyère would have had to conform, at least superficially, to the officially promulgated Catholicism; consequently, the Caractères, whose first edition appeared in 1688, could present no outward sign of discontent under the new order.

Turning to the third topic for review, La Bruyère's writings themselves, we find a single passage in the Caractères that appears to applaud the revocation.10

Caractères, 288 (“Du souverain ou de la république,” remark 21).

But Guy Turbet-Delof has argued that this brief notice is just a cover, and that La Bruyère was a supporter of religious tolerance.11

Guy Turbet-Delof, “La Bruyère et la révocation de l'Édit de Nantes,” XVIIeI siècle 89 (1970) 47–50.

Thus, we have another indication that La Bruyère may have entertained Protestant sympathies, and that he may indeed have been posing as a Catholic. Furthermore, critics usually assume, on the basis of a superficial reading of the Dialogues, that La Bruyère was hostile to the Quietist movement.12

See, for example, Antoine Adam, Histoire de la littérature française au XVII siècle (5 vols.; Paris: Domat, 1954) 5:177. On Quietism in general, see Henri Brémond, Histoire littéraire du sentiment religieux en France depuis la fin des guerres de religion jusqu'à nos jours (11 vols. in 12; Paris: Librairie Armand Colin, 1967–1968).

On the contrary, La Bruyère was an admirer of Fénelon, the spiritual director of the greatest of the Quietists, Madame Guyon, as is plain in the last remark of the Caractères's chapter “De la chaire” (“Of the Pulpit”).13

Caractères, 457.

Given the religious intolerance that developed in France in the latter part of the seventeenth century, climaxing in the revocation, it is clear that La Bruyère was not able to express freely his opinions on religious matters. Yet he was indeed writing about religion. Therefore, we must at least entertain the possibility that he was concealing heterodox views beneath the orthodox veil of his published work. An impetus for such an inquiry is provided by Leo Strauss. In his essay “Persecution and the Art of Writing,” Strauss discusses the effect that religious intolerance can have upon literature.14

Leo Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1952).

First, and most importantly, Strauss explains that political repression will not put an end to heterodox writings:

Persecution cannot prevent even public expression of the heterodox truth, for a man of independent thought can utter his views in public and remain unharmed, provided he moves with circumspection. He can even utter them in print without incurring any danger, provided he is capable of writing between the lines.15

Ibid., 24.

This point is important: persecution does not stop the expression of heterodox and heretical views, it simply alters the form in which they are expressed; and as one might naturally expect, they are now expressed in a more secretive manner.

According to Strauss, all instances of persecution will give rise to such secretive texts, and the twentieth century offers some choice examples. For example, Shostakovich was long thought to be a pro-Soviet composer, but we have learned to hear the musical ironies that resound in his works. The writings of Bulgakov provide another Russian example. I have elsewhere demonstrated that the French writer Jean Giono practiced a similar detachment in his 1943 Triomphe de la Vie, a pro-resistance book that sought to hide its true opinions from the Nazi censors.16

Jean Giono's Hidden Reality (Lewiston, N.Y.: Mellen, 2004).

A final and considerably more famous example of this sort of writing is the biblical book of Revelation, which uses metaphorical language to condemn the Roman Empire. In times of persecution, people do not necessarily stop publishing proscribed ideas; rather, they present their ideas in disguise. What results is the creation of what Strauss calls a “bivalent text,” which features an exoteric meaning that is clearly stated, readily recognizable, and acceptable to the powers that be, but which also evokes a hidden, esoteric meaning that is intended for a select audience only. Strauss explains:

Persecution, then, gives rise to a peculiar technique of writing, and therewith to a peculiar type of literature, in which the truth about all crucial things is presented exclusively between the lines. That literature is addressed, not to all readers, but to trustworthy and intelligent readers only. It has all the advantages of private communication without having its greatest disadvantage—that it reaches only the writer's acquaintances. It has all the advantages of public communication without having its greatest disadvantage—capital punishment for the author.17

Strauss, Persecution, 25.

How does an author of a bivalent text manage to “write between the lines”—to ensure that a message is legible to the right readers, and opaque to the repressive powers of the day? Strauss himself is not specific, but there are numerous literary techniques for concealing one's true ideas, such as the skillful use of irony. In my study of La Bruyère's writings, I have identified two techniques that the author may be strategically employing to conceal his true meaning. First, by using ambiguous language, La Bruyére can hint at or imply a heterodox concept without stating it forthright. Second—and this is a technique of which La Bruyère is particularly fond—he can conceal his true opinions by prefacing them with an acceptable statement. This, in fact, seems to be the strategy that gives the Caractères its double structure, whereby the “Characters of Theophrastus” are followed by the Caractères of La Bruyère. The anterior placement of the translation is a ruse that permitted La Bruyère to hide his scathing attack on French society by introducing it after a perfectly acceptable “classical” opening. That readers saw through this ruse is evident from the fact that the publisher decided to print the translation in a reduced typeface: the real meat of the book was in the material that La Bruyère placed after the translation. If we read individual remarks as Parisians read the rentire Caractères—that is, by turning to the end first—we are closer to grasping the import of La Bruyère's writings.

Here is an example. At the end of the twenty-fifth remark of the chapter titled “Des esprits forts” (“Of Freethinkers”), La Bruyère distinguishes between speaking “popularly” and “exactly”:

Ainsi, à parler populairement, on peut dire d'une seule nation qu'elle vit sous un même culte, et qu'elle n'a qu'une seule religion; mais, à parler exactement, il est vrai qu'elle en a plusieurs, et que chacun presque y a la sienne.18

Caractères, 466, remark 25.

So, to speak popularly, one could say of a single nation that it lives under one practice, and that it only has one religion; but, to speak exactly, it is true that it has many, and that almost everyone has their own.

This distinction between popular and exact language may be interpreted, in Strauss's terms, as a distinction between exoteric and esoteric forms of expression. The exoteric meaning of this remark is clear: La Bruyère is deploring the fact that people turn religion to their own ends; however, we also notice that the language that La Bruyère uses is decidedly neutral. Moreover, it is the latter clause which is the more exact of the two, and this is the clause we should privilege when evaluating the entire statement: the esoteric meaning of this sentence is the rebellious notion that “everyone has his own religion.” Through deft placement, La Bruyère has hidden his heterodox viewpoint behind a forthright statement that was acceptable to all.

In the remainder of this essay, I shall test the thesis I have adumbrated above— namely, that La Bruyère was a Quietist sympathizer who found it politically expedient to keep quiet about his Quietism in the climate of religious intolerance that prevailed after 1685. La Bruyère never explicitly stated that he was a Quietist, and I do not believe it possible to prove that he was one. But a Quietist reading of the Caractères can be illuminating. I examine first a number of passages in the Caractères that evoke Quietist practice and belief, and I suggest that a religious reading of the Caractères as a whole is sufficient to counter the charges of some critics that the work lacks structure. In the final section of the essay, I turn to La Bruyère's Dialogues sur le quiétisme, arguing that the work's explicit rejection of Quietism, when read “between the lines,” proves to be an outstanding example of the bivalent writing that Strauss associates with times of repression and intolerance.

Quietism and the Caractères

Although religion is only overtly discussed in the final chapter of the Caractères, it is in fact a theme that is found throughout the entire work. In the preface to the speech of acceptance that he delivered to the French Academy, La Bruyère implies that the work as a whole was serving a religious end:

N'ont-ils pas observé que de seize chapitres qui le composent, il y en a quinze qui, s'attachant à découvrir le faux et le ridicule qui se rencontrent dans les objets des passions et des attachements humains, ne tendent qu'à ruiner tous les obstacles qui affaiblissent d'abord, et qui éteignent ensuite dans tous les hommes la connaissance de Dieu; qu'ainsi ils ne sont que des préparations au seizième et dernier chapitre, où l'athéisme est attaqué, et peut-être confondu …?19

Ibid., 496.

Haven't they noticed that of the sixteen chapters which make it up, there are fifteen which, attempting to discover the false and the ridiculous which are found in the objects of passions and human grasping, only serve to break down all of the obstacles which at first weaken, and which then extinguish in people the knowledge of God; that as such they are only preparations for the sixteenth and final chapter, in which atheism is attacked, and perhaps confounded …?

Thus, although they are not explicitly religious in the manner of the final chapter, the first fifteen chapters of the Caractères do serve a religious function: they depict vices that are to be avoided and thereby redirect the reader towards God.

This indirect method of religious instruction may seem somewhat strange to us today; however, it bears a striking resemblance to a style of writing that La Bruyère himself described as Quietist. In the seventh chapter of the Dialogues, La Bruyère explained that because God is experienced quietly, his presence will remain implicit throughout a Quietist work, which, on the surface, will be preoccupied with sin:

Les uns disent que, selon vous, l'âme, par l'union avec Dieu, est si séparée d'intérêt d'avec son corps, que celui-ci peut s'abandonner à la mollesse et à toute sorte de péchés, sans que l'âme en soit le moins du monde coupable. Un livre quiétiste, disent les autres, remet à son chapitre de l'union essentielle avec Dieu, qui n'est autre chose que la parfaite béatitude, à traiter à fond de toutes les ordures qui peuvent salir le corps sans blesser l'âme, qui demeure cependant unie à Dieu, et souverainement heureuse dès cette vie.20

Œuvres de La Bruyère (ed. G. Servois; 3 vols.; Paris: Hachette, 1865) 2:649.

Some say, according to you [the Quietist director], that the soul, by its union with God, has its interests so separated from its body, that the body can aban-don itself to luxury and all sorts of sin, without the soul being in the least bit guilty. A Quietist book, other people say, places in its chapter on the essential union with God, which is nothing less than a perfect blessing, a discussion of all the filth that could soil the body without wounding the soul, which remains nonetheless united with God, and reigns happily in this life.

Therefore, according to La Bruyère, we should not expect a Quietist work to depict virtues, but rather vices “that could soil the body without wounding the soul.” With such a definition of Quietist literature in mind, is it not possible that the blistering portrayal of vice-ridden French society found in the Caractères is simply the “terrestrial” aspect of a Quietist work? In the Caractères, a variety of sins are portrayed in broad and colorful ways, and this is in marked contrast to La Bruyère's representation of virtue, truth, and God as being silent, or colorless, or as that tiny point which the mystic admired by the Quietists, Saint François de Sales, would refer to as the “supreme point of reason.”21

Louis Cognet, Crépuscule des mystiques (Tournai: Desclée, 1958) 24.

La Bruyère places this tiny point that was so important at the end of each chapter.

“Tout est dit” (“All is said”). It is hard to imagine a more fitting Quietist statement than that which opens the first chapter of the Caractères, “Des ouvrages de l'esprit” (“Of Works of the Spirit”). The entire remark is as follows:

Tout est dit, et l'on vient trop tard depuis plus de sept mille ans qu'il y a des hommes et qui pensent. Sur ce qui concerne les mœurs, le plus beau et le meilleur est enlevé; l'on ne fait que glaner après les anciens et les habiles d'entre les modernes.22

Caractères, 67.

All is said, and we come too late, after more than seven thousand years of there being men who think. As to what concerns morals, the most beautiful and the best has been taken away; and we can only glean the leavings of the ancients and the most talented of the moderns.

The opening word is “tout” and, on the whole, the remark seems to be a passive, dejected statement. The “best being taken away” may be a cryptic reference to the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, while the term “gleaning” evokes the biblical notion of the God of the harvest. From this beginning the first chapter describes a progression, the one which La Bruyère alluded to when he spoke of “breaking down” the obstacles to one's belief in God, until finally ending on a high note:

Horace ou Despréaux23

I.e., Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux.

l'a dit avant vous.—Je le crois sur votre parole; mais je l'ai dit comme mien. Ne puis-je pas penser après eux une chose vraie, et que d'autres encore penseront après moi?24

Ibid., 95.

“Horace or Despréaux said it before you.” [La Bruyère imagines the words of a critic.]—I take you at your word; but I have said it as my own. Can I not think after them [i.e., Horace and Boileau-Despréaux] one true thing, which others [it is unclear who these others are; perhaps the Quietists?] will think of after me?

This remark provides an example of La Bruyère's use of neutral language. He never defines what the “one true thing” is, even though he refers to it three times. This remark is constructed so as to contrast with the first remark of the chapter.25

By referring to Boileau as “Despréaux,” La Bruyère also echoes the imagery of gleaning and fields contained in the opening remark. (The biblical text to which this final remark apparently refers is Lk 10:2).

Now it is no longer a vague “tout” that does the talking, but La Bruyère himself. Having begun the chapter in a passive, powerless position (“All is said”), by the final remark La Bruyère has empowered himself through his identification with the ideal that closes the chapter. Rather than being spoken to, now it is La Bruyère himself who speaks—“I have said it as my own”—and his union with God is demonstrated as the chapter closes with the word “moi,” which represents the singular divine point of reason. So the remark moves from the general to the specific. “Après moi” can be interpreted as meaning “sometime after La Bruyère,” but it also connotes “d'après moi” or “according to La Bruyère's opinion,” which, when read from a Quietist point of view, shows an emphasis on personal knowledge of God.

The intermediary chapters break down possible objections to a knowledge of God. Then the fifteenth chapter, “De la chaire” (“On the Pulpit”), builds up to a reference to Fénelon, who was the spiritual director of the greatest Quietist, Madame Guyon. The line reads: “Fénelon en était-il indigne? aurait-il pu échapper au choix du prince que par un autre choix?” (“Wasn't Fénelon worthy? or could he only have eluded the prince's selection by some other choice?”).26

Caractères, 457.

The “other choice,” when read from a Quietist perspective, refers to God's election of his faithful. One also finds La Bruyère lavishing praise on Fénelon in his acceptance speech. The next and final chapter is a sort of sermon against atheism, a logical sequel to a discussion of preaching.

In the above examples, La Bruyère strategically positions his own views at the end of a passage, hiding his singular opinions behind bold opening statements. This is charateristic of his work. Remark 76 of “De l'homme” (“Of Mankind”) provides a typical example of what I would consider to be La Bruyère's Quietism:

Nous cherchons notre bonheur hors de nous-mêmes, et dans l'opinion des hommes, que nous connaissons flatteurs, peu sincères, sans équité, pleins d'envie, de caprices et de préventions. Quelle bizarrerie!27

Ibid., 322.

We search for our happiness outside of ourselves, in the opinion of men, whom we know to be flatterers, hardly sincere, without equity, filled with envy, whims, and prejudices. How strange!

By closing the remark with the statement “How strange!” La Bruyère indicates his dissatisfaction with this state of affairs. This final statement also forces us to reread the remark with this dissatisfaction in mind. Where may we turn for an antidote to such a world? The answer is implicit in the remark itself. The opening clause, “We search for our happiness outside of ourselves,” implies the contrary: that we should be seeking our happiness inside of ourselves. The phrase “and in the opinion of men” also implies its own negation: that we should be seeking our happiness in the eyes of God. And with the following clause, “whom we know to be flatterers, hardly sincere, without equity, filled with envy, whims, and prejudices,” La Bruyère has placed the sad truth of human relations before our eyes so that we may be redirected away from these preoccupations and into the arms of the one God, whom we know to be constant, loving, truthful, and just.

The above examples should suffice to demonstrate that a Quietist reading of the Caractères is not merely possible but indeed credible, given the historical context of the work. Other passages lend further credence to this conclusion. Remark 22 of “De quelques usages” (“Of Certain Practices”) ends with what would seem to be a direct criticism of the Quietists: “N'y a-t-il point dans l'Église une puissance à qui il appartienne ou de faire taire le pasteur, ou de suspendre pour un temps le pouvoir du barnabite?” (“Isn't there in the Church a power above him that could make the pastor be quiet, or suspend for a time the power of the Barnabite?”).28

Ibid., 420. The Barnebites were founded in 1530 in Milan and their “primary objective was to reform the corrupt morals of the time by the example of their own penitent life and mission among the people.” New Catholic Encyclopedia (NY: McGraw-Hill, 1967) 103. Garapon (ibid.) sees this as a very direct allusion to the battle between the curés of Paris and the Quietists. Thus, La Bruyère was not afraid of tackling a controversy, even though doing so was risky. What Garapon does not apparently see is that La Bruyère was using Quietist language—namely, the phrase “suspendre pour un temps”—to side with the Quietists. Why, for example, should they get off with such a light penalty?

But, of course, imposing silence on a Quietist could hardly be considered a punishment; and why should the pastor's powers be suspended only temporarily? The answer would seem to be provided by La Bruyère's introduction (the “Discours sur Théophraste”): “dans la chaire l'on se croit obligé souvent de suspendre l'Évangile pour les prendre par leur faible” (“in preaching one often finds oneself obliged to suspend the Gospels to take them [i.e., a preacher's fellow citizens] by their weaknesses”).29

Ibid., 4. This statement not only contradicts Catholic doctrine, but it is strikingly similar to the comment of the Quietist Anne of Jesus that one should devote oneself to God by “suspension” rather than by imitation (Cognet, Crépuscule des mystiques, 22).

The unnamed power above the preacher that could silence him could be construed as the church authorities, but it could also be read as a reference to God himself. The appeal for a “suspension” of the Gospels was made by other preachers in the seventeenth century; here, however, La Bruyère is using this thoroughly acceptable phrase to indicate a Quietist notion. It would seem that in this remark, La Bruyère was merely recommending that the Quietist pastor practice what he preach and speak less overtly for a time.

Finally, in remark 5 of “De la chaire” (“Of the Pulpit”), La Bruyère gives a lengthy description of the man whom he considers to be the ideal preacher. La Bruyère himself indicates in a footnote that the man in question is P. Séraphin, and Séraphin fell under suspicion of Quietism just a few years later.30

As noted by Garapon (ibid., 446 n. 2).

Although such statements might hint that La Bruyère was a Quietist, they certainly do not prove that he was. If the Caractères does contain a hidden Quietist meaning, literal readings of the text will not reveal it. This is why I would suggest that rather than reading the work in a straightforward manner, and letting the bold opening statement of a given remark shape how we read what follows, we instead give our attention first to the closing thought of each remark, and then reread the entire remark with its conclusion in mind. This contemplative reading technique is basically the one that is recommended by Mme de Guyon in her famous Quietist treatise Moyen court et très facile pour l'oraison (1685);31

The work shows numerous intriguing similarities with the Caractères. For example, they both have a similar thematic organization. Also, in the opening sentence of the penultimate chapter, Mme Guyon complains that “on les charge de mille préceptes pour les exercices extérieurs, il ne se fait que très peu de fruit et il ne dure guère” (Moyen court et très facile pour l'oraison [Grenoble, 1685] 134). In a like manner, in the opening remark of the penultimate chapter of the Caractères, “De la chaire,” there is an attack on superficial doctrine: “c'est un jeu où il y a de l'émulation et des parieurs” (445).

and read in this unusual manner, the entire Caractères blossoms into a shockingly powerful exposition of Quietist thinking.

Not the least significant aspect of viewing the Caractères as a Quietist work is that this new approach enables us to understand the work's structure for the very first time. In his famous study La Bruyère moraliste, Louis van Delft presents the Caractères as an incoherent work, claiming that “under the neatness of an artificial, very arbitrary division, it is a diffuse work.”32

van Delft, La Bruyère moraliste, 50.

Van Delft suggests that there is “nothing less constructed, less coherent, than this edifice that one can enter at all points and leave anywhere.”33

Ibid.

But La Bruyère's contemporaries had already raised this same complaint, and the author himself refuted such a view of his work when he attacked those critics who claimed that

[je] n'étais pas capable de faire rien de suivi, pas même la moindre préface: tant ils estimaient impraticable à un homme même qui est dans l'habitude de penser, et d'écrire ce qu'il pense, l'art de lier ses pensées et de faire des transitions.34

Caractères, 493.

[I] could do nothing sustained, not even the slightest preface: so they assume it impractical for a man even if he is in the habit of thinking, and writing what he thinks, to practice the art of linking his thoughts and making transitions.

La Bruyère believed that there was a unity to his work. Indeed, as mentioned earlier, he stated that throughout it he was breaking down the vices of this world in order to prepare for the concluding attack on atheism. Thus, the Caractères is a religious book that opposes vice, rather than preaching virtue.

A second critic who has attacked the unity of the work is Michael Koppisch. His theory is that between the first and the eighth editions of the work, it underwent a change “from an essentialist view of man to one that emphasizes rather the absence of an essence.”35

Koppisch, The Dissolution of Character, 8.

The obvious failing of such a view is the fact that La Bruyère did not suppress any of the earlier remarks that supposedly represent the essentialist viewpoint. In point of fact, nowhere is the work essentialist. At all times throughout the work's publication history, man is conceived of as void of sense and utterly dependent upon God for meaning in this life. La Bruyère's views are stated more and more clearly with each succeeding edition. La Bruyère felt that he could express his opinions with increasing openness as the work that he initially took the precaution of publishing anonymously continued to meet with public approbation. The work as a whole retains its unity throughout the successive editions.

The first sign that the work is unified is the fact that although the work was expanded from 420 to 1120 remarks over the course of its several editions, the number and order of the chapters always remained the same. Furthermore, the order of remarks within the chapters also remained the same: new remarks were inserted, but the order of the earlier remarks was retained. La Bruyère must have deemed it important to retain the order of the remarks in the face of such drastic changes to the overall work. One aspect of the structure of the work that should be above discussion is that certain remarks clearly clump together. The remarks within the chapters are arranged in clusters of obvious similarities. Given these facts, rather than superciliously assuming that the work is unstructured, it would behoove us to try and understand its order.

I would suggest that the work as a whole marks a progression from the worldly to the spiritual. The entire work is a religious tract that seeks to turn people away from the sins of this world towards a personal faith in God. This message is stated overtly only in the final chapters, where La Bruyère discusses preaching and openly attacks atheism. As mentioned earlier, this is the very structure that La Bruyère was referring to when he stated that the work serves “to break down all of the obstacles which at first weaken, and which then extinguish in people the knowledge of God; that as such they are only preparations for the sixteenth and final chapter.”36

Caractères, 496.

Thus, according to La Bruyère, if we are to understand the real meaning of his work, we are to look to the final chapter. This placement of his true intention at the end is typical of La Bruyère's style. In any given remark, the opinion expressed in the final clause is La Bruyère's true opinion, while the opening portion of the remark merely reflects the state of the world. This explains the somewhat awkward prose style that is found in the Caractères. La Bruyère is not employing a deliberately “cruel” style as Doris Kirsch has argued; rather, he is being circumspect because he was writing in a society in which heterodox views on religion were not tolerated.

Ultimately, each remark expresses La Bruyère's true opinion, which is that God is glorious and should be served. Thus, each remark closes with the statement of an ideal. This is true of the overall arrangement of chapters as well, whereby God is overtly discussed in the final chapter. Since each remark opens with a reflection of the state of the world, it could be said that each remark opens in a fallen state, presenting the antithesis of the ideal that is ultimately evoked. Therefore, the mechanism which links the various remarks together is the use of antithesis. The different remarks are seemingly crocheted together in a progression from the negative to the positive.

By way of example, I cite remark 16 from “Du cœur” (Of the Heart):

Les hommes souvent veulent aimer, et ne sauraient y réussir: ils cherchent leur défaite sans pouvoir la rencontrer, et, si j'ose ainsi parler, ils sont con-traints de demeurer libres.37

Ibid., 139.

Men often want to love, and are not able to succeed: they seek their defeat without being able to encounter it, and, if I dare speak thus, they are con-strained to remain free.

“Men often want to love” is a statement of the way of the world. The remark closes with the fact that they remain free despite themselves. This is the ideal of a Quietist, who believes in direct communication with God. The above remark completely contradicts Koppisch's attack on the structure of the work. Human beings themselves are insufficient. They will remain insufficient. And the entire book will appear to consist of the portraits of insufficient people until we think to add God into the equation. God is the great factor whose presence is felt but seldom overtly stated in the first fifteen chapters. The remarks must be read with God firmly in mind for them to make sense. Without an awareness of the fundamentally religious nature of the work, critics such as van Delft and Koppisch have been at a loss to comprehend its unity.

Quietism and the Dialogues

Given the lack of overtly stated evidence for Quietism in the text of the Caractères itself, I now turn to La Bruyère's only other major work, the Dialogues sur le quiétisme (published posthumously in 1699), and here we find that the evidence in support of his Quietism is, paradoxically, much clearer. The Dialogues has been universally assumed by critics to be a satire of Quietism.38

See, for example, Adam, Histoire 5:183.

It is certainly true that on the surface the Dialogues attacks Quietism quite vociferously; however, such an open attack could mask a hidden message in favor of Quietism. In fact, Strauss predicts that is precisely what we should expect a Quietist work to masquerade as—namely, an attack upon the principles it secretly espouses. Strauss posits just such a book in his seminal study:

We can easily imagine that a historian living in a totalitarian country, a generally respected and unsuspected member of the only party in existence, might be led by his investigations to doubt the soundness of the government-sponsored interpretation of the history of religion. Nobody would prevent him from publishing a passionate attack on what he would call the liberal view. He would of course have to state the liberal view before attacking it; he would make that statement in the quiet, unspectacular and somewhat boring manner which would seem to be but natural; he would use many technical terms, give many quotations and attach undue importance to insignificant details; he would seem to forget the holy war of mankind in the petty squabbles of pedants. Only when he reached the core of his argument would he write three or four sentences in that terse and lively style which is apt to arrest the attention of young men who love to think. That central passage would state the case of the adversaries more clearly, compellingly and mercilessly than it had ever been stated…. The attack, the bulk of the work, would consist of virulent utterances in the holy book or books of the ruling party.39

Strauss, Persecution, 24–25.

This is how it is with the attacks on Quietism in the Dialogues: they are not just drawn in bold letters, they are overdrawn, and I would suggest that they are an “attack” of exactly the sort that Strauss has hypothesized.

The circumstances of the publication of the work require comment. La Bruyère's Dialogues, likely begun in 1694, was not published until two and a half years after his death in 1696, at a time when many people were trading on the popularity of the Caractères by producing keys to that work, as well as new writings ascribed to La Bruyère. Abbé Dupin, who arranged for its publication and provided a preface, claimed that he had reconstructed the last two dialogues from La Bruyère's notes and sketches, and so people have generally accepted the first seven as the work of La Bruyère himself.40

I discuss below the possibility that Dupin's contributions to the Dialogues were more extensive than he admitted.

It is of great interest that Dupin, himself a proscribed author, should have chosen to complete and publish an edition of the Dialogues. Indeed, when that edition appeared, Dupin's other works had all been condemned, and there is no indication that his publication of the Dialogues was an attempt to reconcile himself with the Vatican. Did Dupin, by publishing the Dialogues, seize the opportunity to disseminate a work whose hidden Quietist sympathies he had discerned?

Consider the evidence of the preface. Dupin wrote:

Enfin l'auteur a eu soin de prendre toutes les précautions nécessaires pour ne pas donner atteinte à la piété chrétienne, à la vie intérieure, et aux maximes raisonnables des vrais mystiques; s'il plaisante en quelques endroits, c'est que la matière le demande; s'il raille un peu vivement le directeur, ce qu'il en dit ne convient qu'à un quiétiste qui abuse de son ministère, et ne peut en aucune manière être appliqué à ceux dont la foi, la vertu et la piété sont connues.41

Œuvres, 2:544.

Lastly, the author has taken all the necessary precautions so as not to offend Christian piety, the interior life, and the reasonable maxims of the true mystics; if he jokes about them in places, it is because the subject requires it; if he makes a little too much fun of the director, what he says only applies to a quietist who abuses his ministry, and in no way can be applied to those whose faith, virtue, and piety are known.

What does Dupin mean when he writes of La Bruyère's desire “not to offend … the interior life”? But the interior life was precisely what the Quietists were obsessed with, even though this belief was soon to be condemned. And what are we to make of his reference to the “reasonable maxims of the true mystics”? Since when were mystics considered to be reasonable? Clearly Dupin is not writing from a Catholic perspective, and the Dialogues is an attack on false Quietists only.

As Dupin's preface suggests, and as the general design of the work demonstrates, the book as a whole is a triumphant espousal of Quietist beliefs. Based on the interrogation of Mme Guyon, the plot of the Dialogues recapitulates the relationships among Fénelon, Mme Guyon, and Bossuet. The Quietist director (Fénelon) has undertaken the conversion of a penitent (Mme Guyon), who happens to be the sister of a Sorbonnard doctor who rejects Quietism (Bossuet). The doctor heaps invective on the director, but it is obvious that the doctor does not understand the doctrine that he is attacking. Though well versed in the legalisms of church history, the doctor shows himself to be a spiritual incompetent whose fulminations are too bombastic to be effective. Meanwhile, the Quietist director enjoys ample opportunity to expound his beliefs. It is not long before an Epicurean appears on the scene and claims to be a Quietist. It is the utter hypocrisy of the Epicurean that finally convinces the sister to give up her flirtation with Quietism, and she apparently returns to being a devout Catholic. This, however, is merely the neat and theologically correct ending of the work. It is certainly true that the sister has not been converted to Quietism and that she returns to the arms of the church. Nonetheless, the Quietist director has been able to stand his ground—and quite literally so, for the action takes place in his home, and he occupies the center of the work while the other characters come and go. After having had an opportunity to propagate his views with impunity throughout the entire work, the director remains unrepentant to the end. He is a knight of faith whose vision remains undimmed despite the criticisms leveled by the doctor.

Some detailed examples taken from the Dialogues will bear out this overall impression of their purpose. In the first dialogue, the penitent explains why she does not attend mass:

J'étois ce jour là exposée à entendre la messe sans goût, sans attrait, sans la moindre motion divine. Ce fut le jour qu'en suivant votre conseil, je me livrai à Dieu pour la première fois de ma vie, par le parfait abandon; et après trois bonnes heures de simple regard, j'en sortis comme j'y étois entrée, c'est-à-dire dans une sécheresse et une dureté de cœur pour le sacrifice telle que je me crus fort heureuse de trouver toutes les messes dites; car autrement, étant à l'église toute portée, je pouvois succomber, ce qui m'auroit fort éloignée de Dieu.42

Ibid., 2:548–49.

That day I was exposed to the mass without feel for it, without attraction to it, without the least divine motion. It was the day when, following your advice, I surrendered my life to God for the first time, with perfect abandon; and after three hours of simply looking, I came out as I had entered, that is to say in a dryness and a hardness of heart towards the sacrifice, so that I was quite glad that all the masses had been said; for otherwise, having been brought to church, I could have succumbed, which would have alienated me from God.

Here the language used is typical of the Quietists, and the penitent's fear that the church service will alienate her from God is a direct attack on Catholicism. The practice of attending mass is criticized in favor of the Quietist interior illumination. This is an open attack on worshipping in form rather than in spirit. The penitent has made the case that Quietism is more spiritual than traditional Catholicism. This is a bold statement against the church, especially when we consider the time in which it was written.

The director then describes good Catholics as being ignorant on the subject of grace:

Les plus parfaits d'entre eux, avec ces dépendances absolues de la grâce, où ils se croient être, au lieu de l'attendre paisiblement, sans trouble et sous le nom de motion divine, et de Dieu seul, ils la demandent à Dieu sous ce seul nom de grâce, par des prières ferventes et continuelles, dans les larmes, dans les gémissements; ils jeûnent, veillent, psalmodient, usent leur corps par des austérités extérieures, s'excitent à la vertu, font de grands efforts vers la sainteté, ignorant parfaitement en quoi elle consiste.43

Ibid., 2:549–50.

The most perfect among them, with their absolute dependence upon grace, where they feel they are, rather than waiting peaceably, without trouble, and under the name of divine motion, and of God alone, they ask God under this sole name of grace, by fervent and continual prayers, in tears, in moanings; they fast, they stay awake, they sing, give their bodies up to external austeri-ties, become excited about virtue, make great strides towards sanctity, being perfectly unaware of what it consists of.

The term “perfect” is a Quietist term, which, incidentally, was associated with the Albigensian heresy in the Middle Ages. Only the Quietists understand true grace. The Catholics know a lot about the forms of religion, but they are ignorant of its spirit, and what is religion if not the care of the spirit?

The director goes on to explain the virtues of the Quietists:

Chez nous, dis je, il n'en coûte autre chose que de se mettre en la présence de Dieu, se plonger dans l'oraison de simple regard, écouter Dieu dans le regard intérieur, dans un saint et doux repos et dans une quiétude parfaite.44

Ibid., 2:551.

Among us, I say, all that it takes is to put ourselves in the presence of God, to plunge ourselves into the prayer of the simple look, listen to God with the interior look, in a holy and gentle repose and in a perfect quietude.

This is a clear and open statement of Quietist beliefs. Here we see the Quietist calm, which is to be contrasted with the Catholic incomprehension of spirtual matters. Later, in the seventh chapter, the doctor asks the director whether he is quoting from Mme Guyon's great Quietist tract, the Livre des torrents, and the director replies that he is: “Mot pour mot, Monsieur: je ne vous dérobe rien” (“Word for word, Monsieur: I am not concealing anything from you”).45

Ibid., 2:660.

The director and the doctor then engage in an eleven-page discussion of this work that includes many direct quotations from it. Indeed, many Quietist works are referred to throughout the Dialogues. By quoting directly from Quietist books, and not from Catholic books, the mystics present their beliefs openly and proudly. Thus, the Dialogues is a forum for Quietist thinking that is masquerading as a satire of Quietism.

But is it La Bruyère's satire? Brillon doubted the attribution of the Dialogues to La Bruyere,46

Ibid., 2:531 n. 2.

and we must wonder whether Dupin took the opportunity to deceive the censors by ascribing his own heterodox work to the deceased writer. It is certainly true that by contributing the preface and last two dialogues, Dupin gets the first and last word. But there is no good reason for assigning him the words in the middle—namely, the first seven dialogues. La Bruyère's brother did not question their authenticity, nor did Antoine Bossuet, brother of the bishop, to whom La Bruyère had read portions of the Dialogues shortly before his death. We should conclude that Dupin discovered in La Bruyère's manuscript the views of a kindred spirit, cast in the form of a bivalent work that would celebrate the very views it pretended to denounce.

Important confirmation of La Bruyère's Quietist beliefs comes in a letter he wrote to Jerôme Phélypeaux, an intimate of Bossuet who would later write a history of Quietism. Critics have complained about this letter.47

Caractères, xxvii.

In truth, it is a very exciting letter in which La Bruyère speculates, albeit in a veiled manner, on the future of Quietism. The title of Mme Guyon's Livre des torrents may have suggested to La Bruyère the possibility of using rain as a metaphor for Quietism—and, correspondingly, of playing on Louis XIV's self-designation as the “Sun King.” He writes:

Avant-hier, Monsieur, sur les sept heures du soir, les plombs de la gouttière qui est sous la fenêtre de ma chambre se trouvèrent encore si échauffés du soleil qui avoit brillé tout le jour, que j'y fis cuire un gâteau, galette fouée on fouace que je trouvai excellente; vous voyez sans peine, avec votre sagacité ordinaire, de quelle utilité cela peut être aux intérêts de la ligue [d'Augsbourg], et je ne vous annonce cette particularité qu'avec le déplaisir que vous pouvez vous imaginer. Le temps hier se couvrit et menaça de la pluie toute l'après-dînée; it ne plut pas néanmoins; aujourdhui il a plu; s'il pleuvra demain ou s'il ne pleuvra pas, c'est, Monseigneur, ce que je ne puis décider quand le salut de toute l'Europe en devrait dépendre; je crois avec cela, moralement parlant, qu'il tombera un peu de pluie, et que, dès que la pluie aura cessé, it ne pleuvra plus, à moins que la pluie ne recommence.48

Œuvres, 3:238–39.

The day before yesterday, Monsieur, at seven o'clock in the evening, the metal of the gutter that is under the window of my bedroom was still so hot from the sun that had shined all day that I cooked a cake there, a peasant cake which I found excellent; you can clearly see, with your ordinary sagacity, what interest that would hold for the League [of Augsburg], and I only announce this particularity to you with the annoyance that you can imagine. Yesterday it clouded over and threatened rain all afternoon; but all the same it did not rain; today it rained; if it rains or does not rain tomorrow, it is what I cannot say, even if the salvation of all Europe would depend upon it; I believe that with it, morally speaking, a little rain will fall, and that, as soon as the rain has stopped, it will not rain any more, unless the rain begins again.

La Bruyère has been in contact with the Sun King, and the cake that he cooked up would have been some satirical ideas. What interest would the Protestant League of Augsburg have in a literal cake? Clearly he is writing metaphorically. When he talks about the rain falling, he certainly is not to be taken at his word, because he says that the salvation of all Europe depends upon it. La Bruyère is discussing religion in metaphorical terms, because he does not want to be tried and possibly executed for heterodox beliefs. He is “writing between the lines,” and successfully communicating with his friend. On the basis of this interpretation of the letter, we may conclude that its recipient, Jérôme Phélypeaux, was also a Quietist. Could it be that Phélypeaux's history of the Quietist movement was also a forum for the bivalent expression of Quietist beliefs? This intriguing question goes beyond the scope of this article.

To conclude: we can explain the structure of the Caractères and the condemnation of Quietism in the Dialogues, as well as the puzzling letter to Phélypeaux, by reading these texts in their proper historical context. In the wake of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, La Bruyère developed a style of writing whereby he could publicly express his Quietist beliefs without risking his life. When he complained that his uncomprehending critics “y prennent tout littéralement” (“take all of it literally”),49

In the preface to his acceptance speech before the French Academy (Caractères, 495).

La Bruyère certainly seemed to be implying that the Caractères contain an esoteric teaching of some kind. The period of intolerance in which La Bruyère wrote was well suited for the production of the bivalent writing that Strauss describes; and Dupin himself seems to have been a skilled reader of such writing. Roland Barthes remarked that La Bruyère was lacking even that last dignity of a writer: to be misunderstood, since almost all critics assume that they understand him perfectly.50

Barthes, Essais critiques, 221.

It is hoped that the present essay will open up a new perspective on his religious beliefs and confer at least some measure of this last dignity upon him.