-
The Theme of Être and Paraître in the Works of Agrippa D'Aubigné
- Bulletin of the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association
- Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association
- Volume 27, Number 4, December 1973
- pp. 205-211
- 10.1353/rmr.1973.0020
- Article
- Additional Information
- Purchase/rental options available:
THE THEME OF ETRE AND PARAÎTRE IN THE WORKS OF AGRIPPA D'AUBIGNÉ James P. Gtlroy The works of the late Renaissance poet Agrippa D'Aubigné were to a great extent inspired by his feelings of hatred and bitterness toward the Catholic Church and the monarchy of the later Valois's. This hatred often expressed itself in the epic vision of a Protestant crusade against tyranny and injustice. Elsewhere, his feelings expressed themselves in the form of savage satire. This satirical inspiration is most prominent in the first three cantos of his epic poem Les Tragiques and in a prose dialogue entitled Les Aventures du Baron de Vaeneste. The structural principle which is constantly at work in these satires is the contrast between being and appearing, between reality and appearances, between être and paraître. Throughout these works, being is synonymous with truth, justice, and the true faith, things which for D'Aubigné are the hallmarks of the Huguenot cause. Appearing, synonymous with falsehood, injustice, and hypocrisy, is looked upon as the main feature of the royal court and of the Church. This dialectical opposition of the two principles is always strictly maintained. Never is there expressed a possibility of reconciliation . Protestantism is always on the side of right, and Church and monarchy on the side of evil. Les Aventures du Baron de Faeneste is a very bitter invective against all the enemies of Protestantism in France. It is a novel written in the form of a dialogue between a Protestant gentleman named Enay (from the Greek eivoct, to be) and a swaggering young Catholic courtier named Faeneste (from the Greek f œ ??&? ?, to seem). The dialogue form serves to heighten the antithesis between the points of view of the two main characters. There is confrontation here, but no communication. The work remains completely static; there is no development in the characters' ideas. The author states his theme very simply in the preface, and the following three hundred pages constitute a series of tableaux in which the theme is illustrated again and again. As the author puts it: "La plus générale différence des buts et complexions des hommes est que les uns pointent leurs désirs et desseins aux apparences, et les autres aux effects."1 Faeneste's life, like that of Diderot's neveu de Rameau, is made up of the roles he plays. His inner life is a void which is masked by a shining exterior. His family crest represents a window, and the family motto is: "Entre comme 1A. D'Aubigné, Les Aventures du Baron de Faeneste, edited by Prosper Mérimée (Paris: Jannet, 1855), p. 3. 205 206RMMLA BulletinDecember 1973 lou vent" (Faeneste, p. 254). These images of emptiness are reinforced by a statement of Faeneste's valet, who says of his master: "Nostre homme est propre comme un chandelier de bois aux choses qui paroissent; pour le reste ... ! Je lui ai vu mettre tout son argent en une fraise à grand'dentelle blanchie en Flandre, que, sa chemise étant pourrie sur lui, il n'en avoit plus du tout" (p. 127). D'Aubigné uses this same metaphor of clothing to express the être-paraître theme in the second canto of the Tragiques.2 Late in the work, we discover that Faeneste is actually a recent convert to Catholicism. Brought up as a Protestant, he became a Catholic for political reasons (p. 258). His Catholicism, therefore, like everything else about him, is only skin-deep: he is a Catholic for appearance's sake. At this point, one becomes aware of the inherent weakness of D'Aubigné's argument. He has chosen as a general representative of Catholicism someone who is not a sincere Catholic. Enay claims to have no interest in appearances. He feels that France's problems are due primarily to an excessive preoccupation with the outward semblance of things. "Nous sommes malades du parestre aussi bien aux affaires générales qu'aux particulières" (p. 38). He is aware of a dimension of reality which fies beyond the visible world. According to Enay, an action must be judged by the intentions which motivated it and not merely by its...