Memoirs of the Count de Comminge and The Misfortunes of Love by Claudine-Alexandrine Guérin de Tencin (review)

By translating two of Tencin’s three novels, previously familiar primarily to those working on French literature in the original, Jonathan Walsh has done a great service for the academic community. Now these compelling novels can reach a wider readership and elicit renewed critical conversations. The translations are part of “The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe,” and, as in the other volumes in the series, the translator provides an extremely useful introduction. Following the series protocol, Walsh begins by giving a short biography of Tencin, in which we learn that, having spent her youth in a convent near Grenoble where she was born, she rebelled against the religious life and the vows she had taken to go to Paris, where she lived with a married sister. Tencin frequented the renowned salon of Anne-Thérèse de Lambert and eventually hosted her own salon through which she was connected to many of the Enlightenment’s influential men of letters and science such as Bernard de Fontenelle, Charles de Montesquieu, Pierre Marivaux, and René de Réaumur. In the early part of her life, beyond her salon activities, Tencin channeled much of her ambition to further her brother’s career in the Church. She began writing novels only in her fifties, the first of which was the Mémoirs du comte de Comminge, published in 1735. She published Le Siège de Calais in 1739 and Les Malheurs de l’amour, her last completed novel, in 1747. All three works were published anonymously and were critically acclaimed throughout the eighteenth century. Like many works by women authors, however, Tencin’s novels were marginalized in the following centuries due to the gender politics of canon formation. Since the 1980s, scholars working on French literature both in France and the U.S. began to rediscover Tencin’s works and put them into circulation in classrooms and scholarly publications.

The logic of translating the Memoirs of the Count of Comminge and The Misfortunes of Love together in one volume lies in their brevity (The Siege of Calais is more than twice as long as these two novels together) and in their thematic parallels. Both highlight the alienating effects of love and the highly refined sensibility of their protagonists, who suffer deeply from love’s pain. The first-person narrator of Memoirs of the Count of Comminge falls in love with the daughter of his father’s enemy. Adelaide reciprocates Comminge’s love, but their fathers’ hatred for each other creates insurmountable difficulties. When, after many plot twists, Comminge learns that Adelaide has died, he retreats to a monastery to mourn her and contemplate her portrait and her letter to him. One day, he is called to attend the death of a fellow monk, who confesses that she is, in fact, Adelaide, who has not died. Instead, on her way to join a convent—dressed as man for safety—she heard the voice of her beloved Comminge, singing God’s praises. In order to be close to him, she joined the monastery. On her deathbed, she confesses her story of love and deception, repenting her sin against God. Comminge is left to grieve and weep.

The Misfortunes of Love features the embedded first-person narratives of three women: the aristocrat, Eugénie; the wealthy bourgeoise, Pauline; and the working-class Hippolyte. Due to a series of emotional conflicts, betrayals, and misinterpretations, each woman loses the man she loves. Yet in the cases of Eugénie and Pauline, the men they love also reciprocate their feelings so that the pain of loss is all the more acute, informing these women’s retreat to the convent. Meanwhile, the hapless Hippolyte falls, unrequitedly, in love with the very man who loves Pauline. Hippolyte is...