Jean de Brunhoff's Psychomachia and the Doctrine of Happiness

Babar the elephant-king is entering the seventh decade of his benevolent reign. In the sixty years since his birth in 1931, King Babar's sturdy character and Utopian milieu have remained essentially as de Brunhoff père developed them before he died in 1937. Most importantly, the authors' primary message to young readers is still "Vive le bonheur" ("Long live happiness"). But though many routes to Babarian happiness have been explored—among them the socio-political, literary, anthropological, architectural, and visual—the ethical and religious implications of Jean de Brunhoff's doctrine of happiness remain unexamined. That doctrine is most fully articulated in the dream sequence in his third book, Babar the King (Le roi Babar, 1933). Babar's climactic dream is de Brunhoff's personal adaptation of the Psychomachias, the apocalyptic early-Christian allegories of spiritual struggle in the form of a battle between the virtues and vices.

But first, what exactly is bonheur to a non-religious, bourgeois, family-centered French artist born in 1899? And how is it achieved? Outside of the dream sequence Jean de Brunhoff uses bonheur sparingly; in fact, in three of his seven books the word appears only once and in three not at all. After the coronation. marriage feast in the The Story of Babar (Histoire de Babar, le petit éléphant, 1931), "Le roi Babar et la reine Céleste, heureux, rêvent à leur bonheur" ("King Babar and Queen Céleste are indeed very happy" 46). This bonheur, full of tranquillity, is a fitting culmination to Babar's pluck after his mother's death and his determination fully to embrace life, love, and responsibility. At the end of the bloodless war with the rhinoceroses in the second story, The Travels of Babar (Le voyage de Babar, 1932), the elephant army is jubilant that "La guerre est finie! Ah! Quel bonheur!" ("The war is over! How perfectly splendid!" 46). Again, bonheur is a fitting end to Babar's (and Céleste's) courage, patience, and intelligence in the face of challenging adventures. At the beginning of the fifth book, Zephir's Holidays (Les vacances de Zephir, 1936), the little monkey thinks, "Quel bonheur d'aller revoir sa famille!" ("What fun to go and see his family again!" 3). He has worked hard at school in Célesteville and longs for the complete happiness of his Monkeyville home and well-earned holiday. All three are brief moments of different but complete—even sublime—happiness and well being, the culmination or expectation of experiences that, like many in life, are the result of making choices and decisions.

American editions of Jean de Brunhoff's Babar stories were translated from the French by Merle S. Haas, whose generally sensitive and spirited translations I use here unless noted. But translation is more than a matter of finding linguistic synonyms; dictionaries provide a starting point, but not all definitions apply equally to every verbal situation, and one-word "equivalents" can be misleading unless they are considered in context. When meaning is conveyed additionally in pictures, the full range of lexical usage must be considered in rendering faithfully the author's message. As defined in dictionaries contemporary with Jean de Brunhoff's work, bonheur is "état de parfaite satisfaction intérieure"; its synonyms include "béatitude," "félicité," "plaisir," and "prosperité," for "bonheur est le terme le plus general, et il est compatible avec toutes les situations"; among its antonyms is malheur (Larousse 1930, 768). Emile Littré defines bonheur as "état heureux, état de pleine satisfaction et de jouissance" (1108-09). Invariably, French-English dictionaries of the period give "happiness" as bonheur's first meaning.¹

There is no doubt that every time Jean de Brunhoff uses bonheur he means "happiness," whether at the beginning of a marriage, the end of a war, or the prospect of going home. But in Babar the King he defines "happiness" even further by picturing its parts. And so, Babar dreams that the bonheur angel is the sum of (and rear guard for) eleven other "winged elephants" who "raminent avec eux le Bonheur" ("bring back Happiness" 44...