The Disenchanted Duke
The Maxims of the Duc de La Rochefoucauld. Translated, with an introduction and biblio- graphical note, by Constantine Fitz Gibbon. (Allan Wingate, 15s.) THE Fronde is a period of French history that has few attractions for the English reader, a wearisome story of intrigue and violence, made more bewildering by the vagueness of the issues at stake and by the frequency and cynical rapidity with .which many of the protagonists changed sides. Yet the civil wars that kept France in a constant turmoil from 1648. to 1653 had one important literary result. They lielped to prodUce a famous moralist, of whose master- piece Voltaire declared that no other book had had a greater influence upon the formation of a people's taste. Having begun life as a headstrong soldier, the dashing Prince de Marsillac, whose exploits included , a fantastic attempt. not only to rescue the Qttien from her husband but to carry off at the same moment a court lady whom the King loved, he emerged at the end of the struggle, under a new title, with a new character —the disenchanted Duc de La Rochefoucauld, scarred and weary both in body and in mind, a political exile, banished to a remote estate where, like many other distinguished exiles, he began to write his memoirs. Behind him lay the life of the court and the camp; and, when he had completed his autobiography and at length re- turned to Paris in the year 1659, its ill-timed and unauthorised publication seriously offended the youthful Lou4,- XIV. There could be no fur- ther hope of securing royal favour; and La Rochefoucauld, now middle-aged, was obliged to fall back on the mild amusements of a studious private life. His conduct in the Fronde had been `detestable'—so, at least, Sainte-Beuve informs us;. while his contemporary, the Cardinal de Retz, remarks that there was a mysterious Ve ne sais quoi,' a hint of ambiguity and irresolution, about his personal character that -prevented him from quite succeeding in any active role that he ever attempted. Somehow his boldest designs had always miscarried. He was too clear-headed— possibly too cold-hearted—to play the part of a romantic hero.
Yet popular novels remained his favourite reading; some traces of his youthful romanticism survived the disillusionments of middle life; and it was a romantic manqué who produced, the momentous little volume of Reflexions, Sentences et Maximes Morales that appeared in 1665. Here La Rochefoucauld stands forth as the devil's ad- vocate: This was an, age of intense religious feeling, of gallantry and chivalric sentiment, of grandeur and heroic panache. La Rochefoucauld, in his cold, clear voice, dares to question almost every accepted ideal. He is not irreligious; 'Les Maximes de La Rochefoucauld [writes Sainte- Beuve] ne contredisent en rien le Christianisme, bien qu'elles s'en passent. . . . L'homme de La Rochefoucauld est exactement l'homme dechu. . . . ' He is merely the unregenerate man for whom the consolations of faith do not exist, who sees Man as the centre of the universe, but a weak, unstable and ill-balanced centre, the victim of countless irrational beliefs and sentimental prejudices. Mankind has a high opinion of love, fostered, by the poets and novelists; and La Rochefoucauld contributes his "own view-,=he was on the eve of his long liaison with the ex- quisite Madame de Li Fayette : '11 est difficile de definir l'amour: ce qu'on en peut dire est que, dans tame, c'est une passion de regner; dans les esprits, c'est une sympathie; et, dans le corps, ce n'est qu'une envie each& et delicate elt posseder ce que' ainze, 'apres beaucoup de mysteres.' But he hastens to add that what we usually mistake for love is very often pure in' vention. Talk of true love recalls our talk about ghosts. Everybody tells ghost stories; not manY of us can claim to have encountered a spectre. Human beings tend to fall in 'love because they imagine that they ought to fall in love : )' a des gens qui n'auroient jamais ere amoureux: s'ils n'avoient jamais entendu parler de l'amour. In a simnelr spirit he deals with 'friendship and marriage, with female chastity and worldly ambi- tion and the supposed advantages of a courtier's existence. To self-interest he traces the great majority of human feelings, and to self-delusion most of the joys that appear to make our life worth living. How much is left? Perhaps only 3 sense of style, and the knowledge that one pas' sesses a fund of inward strength. There is also 3 somewhat mournful comfort in knowing that one is not deceived, in studying the world as it is rather than as we would have it be. La Rochefoucauld's pessimistic vision takes him far into the realms:of psychology; and on the subject of passion and sexual jealousy he occasionally anticipates the ideas of Proust: 'Plus on aime une maitresse [he announces] plus on est pres de la hair.' But jealousy sometimes outlive passion : `La jalousie nail toujours avec !'amour; mais elk ne meurt pas toujours avec lui.' And a capacity for suffering may prove to be very much more durable than the pleasures from which that suffering sprang.
• That we should banish self-deception and eschew humbug are the only moral remedies that La Rochefoucauld offers. Let us on no account pretend to be more sensitive than we really are or indulge in a parade of fine feelings: 'Nous avons tous assez de force pour supporter les maux d'autrui.' The gifted and warm-hearted Madame de La Fayette, is said to have persuaded her lover to tone down certain of his sternest maxims; but naturally, both in France and abroad, they have made him many fierce enemies. Rousseau re- garded his book as highly pernicious; Voltaire, on the other hand, praised it and delighted in it. La Rochefoucauld, he says, accustomed the civilised writer 'a penser et a renfermer ses pensees dans un tour vif, precis et delicat; c'etait un merite que personne n'avait eu avant lui, Europe, depuis la renaissance de letters.' Can so individual and carefully considered a style be rendered into English prose? Mr. Constantine Fitz Gibbon's courageous attempt has the great virtue of being fresh and readable and never stilted; though here and there a comparison of the French text, and the modern English rendering shows that the latter has lost something of the original pronouncement's point and subtlety. But, on the whole, it is a surprisingly successful effort; and Mr. Fitz Gibbon's preface is a sen- sible and informative piece of writing. A trans- lation cannot hope to convey all the delicate nuances of the author's style; but Mr. Fitt Gibbon catches his general tone and manages to reproduce at least an echo of his voice—cynical without acrimony, reserved and often melan- cholic but without a hint of self-pity. La Roche- foucauld lived on into the Grand Mack and, at length forgiven for his youthful escapades, was accepted as an interesting and picturesque sur- vivor at the court of Louis XIV, dying in 1680 at the age of sixty-six. Madame de Sdvigne lamented his passing, and Bossuet visited his sick- room to administer the last rites.
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