Reading Boileau: An Integrative Study of the Early "Satires"

Chapter Four - Reason, Nobility, and the Pursuit of Happiness

Chapter Four Reason, Nobility, and the Pursuit of Happiness We cannot conclude that the speaker's consistent silence during the wretched dining experience in Satire III is absolute, since the invective contained in the third Satire itself corroborates the systematic degradation.of taste and reason in contemporary society. Boileau's'savage frontal assault on the forces of dullness in Satire III softens, however, in the ensuing poem, Satire IV. Following a long tradition, especially in satirical poetry, this meditation on folly's universal dominion questions many of the assumptions that the speaker so vigorously and unquestionably espoused in the preceding poem. Reason, that stolid queen of human faculties, emerges as something less than an omnipotent guide in this poem. Among Boileau's literary contemporaries, reason and taste were closely allied. To accuse one is to incriminate the other. If reason is not to be trusted as a standard for judgment, what then of individual taste?! Thus the speaker's uncompromising and perhaps self-righteous certitude that he is just and reasonable in his reaction to and evaluation of the company and cheer dished out at the repas ridicule changes in this poem to selfdoubt and skepticism. The dialectical structure of the poem reflects the speaker's antithetical attitude toward reason's role and function. As others have pointed out, the identity of the dedicatee lends to the work a strong sense of the libertin milieu.2 The poem honors the Abbe Ie Vayer. Son of the well-known Pyrrhonian philosopher La Mothe Ie Vayer, he was a friend of both Boileau and Moliere. Le Verrier claims that Satire IV was composed immediately after Satire Irs homage to Moliere, and that it grew out of a conversation with Le Vayerfils and Moliere on mankind 's folie. 3 The poem's cynical view of reason's power 50 Reason, Nobility, and the Pursuit of Happiness reinforces this aura of libertinage. While the subject itself has been debated for many centuries-Horace, Juvenal, Montaigne, and Swift are among the many writers who have treated the subject-this skepticism in seventeenth-century France corresponds to libertin thinkers whose work Boileau most certainly knew.4 Aside from reinforcing the dialectical associations prominent in the poem's developmental structure, the portrait of the contemporar'y freethinker in vv. 23-28-juxtaposed to the "Bigot orgueilleux" in vv. 19-22-enhances this impression. In addition to possible libertin influence, Boileau's debt to Horace, Satires 11.3, remains noteworthy. Horace's poem consists of a long speech addressed to a do-nothing poet outlining diverse vices that epitomize specific kinds of universal madness . Intended to impress on the addressee his own personal brand of insanity, this lively diatribe pays scant attention to the allied problem of individual gratification vis-a-vis irrationality so prominent in Boileau's conclusion. Another important forerunner is Regnier's Satire XlV, in which the speaker poses the elemental quandary confronting the judgmental satirist: C'est de nostre folie un plaisant stratagesme, Se flattant, de juger les autres par soy-mesme. (vv. 11-12) Regnier emphasizes the popular dictum "chacun a sa raison" and asserts that that reason, although an "estrange beste" (v. 155), allows each individual in the human race to cleave to his or her particular conceptions of contentment. In this regard Boileau's poem owes more to Regnier than to Horace, since Satire lV's thematic structure, notably in its conclusion, centers on private happiness. Paradoxically, the right thinking, "tasteful " mortal-not unlike the disapproving speaker at the repas ridicule-who maintains a clear-headed devotion to Reason and its ally, Taste, is in all probability incapable of felicity. On another level Satire IV replicates the ancient tradition of the ironical encomium to folly, best known in Erasmus's 1511 Stultitiae Laus. In this complex work, Erasmus designates the rollicking banquet as locus par excellence for displays of folly among the gods if left undisturbed by the brooding Momus, god of reprehension.5 Detached and alone, the Momus-like speaker in Satire III sits in judglli~nt, listening to his reason. 51 Chapter Four After all, we learn in Satire IV: "C'est Elle [la Raison] qui farouche , au milieu des plaisirs" (v. 115).6 Conversely, it is undeniable that the speaker cannot have pleasure where dullness reigns. What then is his source of pleasure, the wellspring of his own "douce manie" (v. 105)? Sneering at the saps...