Madame de Sévigné, classique à son insu (review)

In spite of his own reservations – the many reasons to consign 'au rancart et les classiques et leur soi-disant classicisime!' (p. 15), the fact that Sévigné's 'appartenance à cette esthétique ne va pas de soi' (p. 21) - Marcel Gutwirth nonetheless proposes here to find in her Correspondance 'certains points communs à nombre des œuvres auxquelles l'identité classique est reconnue' (p. 22). In order to do so, he examines the letters according to seven different spheres, including 'Plaire – la régle des régles', 'Santé', 'La Cour', and 'Naturel – Dire son moi'. The chapters have the same essential structure: they present, firstly, examples of the feature in question in some major classical authors. They then indicate the aspects of Sévigné's correspondence in each of the seven areas which can be deemed to reveal its classical characteristics, offering convincing evidence of every point. The emphasis of the chapters can vary. Most aim to show the strong parallels between classical texts and the correspondence. 'Tristesse d'Olympio – Larmes rentrées', for example, investigates the theme of tragic loss in Sévigné after her separations from Mme de Grignan, on the one hand, and in Pascal's notion of the 'roi dépossédé' or the tragedies of Racine on the other. Chapter II, entitled 'Santé', adopts a slightly different approach, and in contending that laughter and lucidity are the essence of moral health, seeks to persuade us that 'joyeuseté and 'classicisme' can exist side by side, rather than that the presence of one proves the other. It would be hard to argue that there is anything new in the book, but there is certainly acute textual analysis and striking comparisons between the themes of the Correspondance and lesser known works of, say, La Fontaine, and between the language and stance of Sévigné and those of Phédre or Hermione in Andromaque. The book might most usefully serve as an introduction for those approaching Sévigné for the first time; it causes readers to focus on the significance of the notion of 'classicisme', and why we cannot and indeed need not use it. It is a form of literary history in the Humanist tradition, ranging over many authors, from the seventeenth century looking forward to Romanticism and Proust, including reflections on and examples from Shakespeare and Goethe, among others. The expectation, raised perhaps by the phrase 'classique à insu', that the Correspondance might be read against the grain, is not fulfilled. Yet the thought remains that this is a strange enterprise, and we might argue that the presence of classical features does not make Sévigné a 'classique', just as we might prefer to maintain that Sévigné's correspondence escapes categories and classifications. Nevertheless, this is an informative account of the letters and illustrates their stylistic variation and inventiveness, the wide spectrum of topics which Sévigné covers and the power of her writing.