Thalassophobia and Geolatry: Bernardin de Saint-Pierre and the Geography of Virtue

Thalassophobia and Geolatry: Bernardin de Saint-Pierre and the Geography ofVirtue Ziad Elmarsafy Opinions are divided on the generic character of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's Paul et Virginie. From the author himself, who calls it a "pastorale" without explaining why and then compares it to Homeric epics, toJean Fabre, who sees it as an approximation of pastoral, to Jean-Michel Racault, who finds its Utopian pretensions lacking, to Lieve Spaas, who sees in Bernardin's fictional Mauritius a paradise at odds with its native sexuality, critical views abound and readings multiply but provide very few definite answers.1 What sort ofpastoral is it, after all, where slaves are bought and sold and chaste heroines drown? For my purposes, I should like to draw on past interpretations to read Bernardin as a moralistand Paul et Virginieas an exemplary tale, offering a quasi-religious orientation and something like a moral prescription for a better world.2 In doing so I am following die example of Malcolm Cook, who has made a persuasive case for a religious reading ofPaul et Virginie, but here I would like to sug1 Jean Fabre, "Paulet Virginie, pastorale," Lumières et romantisme. Energie et nostalgie de Rousseau à Mickiewia, nouvelle éd. (Paris: Klinksieck, 1980), pp. 225-57;Jean-Michel Racault, "Paul et Virginie et l'utopie: de la 'petite société' au mythe collectif," Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 242 (1986), 419-72; Lieve Spaas, "Paul et Virginie. The Shipwreck of an Idyll," Eighteenth-Century Fiction 13 (2001), 315-24. 2 On the many lessons contained in Paul et Virginie, see Bernard Bray, "Paul et Virginie, un texte variable à usages didactiques divers," Revue d'histoire littéraire de la France 89 (1989), 856-78. EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION, Volume 15, Number 1, October 2002 36EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION gest that the religion in question is more pagan, almost pre-Socratic, than Christian, and idolizes the land rather than Christ.5 While not exactly a roman à thèse, Paul et Virginie nevertheless displays at least some of the salient features of exemplary narrative described by Susan Suleiman: the presence of a dualistic system of values, the (implied) presence of a rule of action addressed to the reader, and finally the support ofa doctrinal intertext.4 In Paul et Virginie , the dualism is found in the Manichean opposition between land and sea at work in the novel: as I shall demonstrate, the land is good in Bernardina system and the sea evil. The lesson addressed to the reader is one about the virtues of not leaving one's homeland . The third criterion listed by Suleiman is harder to discern in Paul et Virginie, since the doctrines at work in her study tend to be well-established ones such as Christianity, socialism, and capitalism. Nevertheless, the case can be made that Paul et Virginie is supported by—indeed illustrates—Bernardina doctrine of the adoration of nature as laid out in the Etudes de la nature, of which Paul et Virginie was originally a part. Thus, for Bernardin as for many others (especially Rousseau, his mentor), fiction provides a far more useful critical and didactic tool than an overt analysis of actual human society, especially in its corrupt late eighteenth-century French guise. Bernardin's many voyages and copious work suggest the possibility that he is driven by the search for a perfect society, or at least one better than France. Like the pastoral poets whom he frequently quotes, he is concerned with the place in the world of human beings, the possibility of their happiness , and the location ofthis happiness. In this essay, I examine the answers to these questions mainly through Paul et Virginie, the Voyage à l'Ile de France, and Etudes de la nature, but Bernardin's concern with ideal locations may be found throughout his other writings, such as his description ofArcadia (in L'Arcadie) and even the brief Voyage en Silésie, where one of the characters reminds the others of the fact that the etymology of Silesia is linked to the Elysian Fields. In any case, a cursory glance at his works reveals Bernardin's taste for idyllic settings . On further inspection, what becomes clear is...