The Princesse De Cleves Page 20
8 … the marriages of younger brothers (p. 35): The marriage settlement of a younger brother would divide the family wealth.
9 Chastelart (p. 36): Pierre de Boscasel de Chastelart (1540–64). His tragic love for Mary Stuart is celebrated (and the subject of a poem by Swinburne): he was executed after being found hiding in her room.
10 … the death of his father… occurred around the same time (p. 38): The Duc de Nevers did not die until 1562, but Mme de Lafayette disposes of him here to leave the Prince de Clèves free to marry.
11 … (though I do not know by what means) (p. 46): Mme de Lafayette, however, knows perfectly well by what means, but decides that delicacy should prevent Mme de Chartres from spelling it out: Brantôme, with hardly less delicacy, says that Diane, aged fourteen, sacrificed ‘her most precious possession’ to the King.
12 The seventeen provinces (p. 48): The Spanish Netherlands.
13 The Cardinal de Tournon and the Amiral d’Annebauld (p. 49): Tournon (1497–1562) was a leading political figure under François I; Annebauld, or Annebault (d. 1552), was appointed admiral in 1543. Mme de Lafayette’s sources mention their banishment, as well as that of Villeroy and Taix (in the following paragraph), but not that of Chancellor Olivier, who seems to have held on to his post. The story of Brissac also comes from Mézeray’s Abrégé de l’histoire de France (see Note 1).
BOOK TWO
14 … the princess (p. 73): Elisabeth de France, who married Philip II in June 155 9. See Note 2.
15 … a man… who had a great reputation for astrology (p. 77): Luc Gauric. The story is taken from Le Laboureur (see Note 1). Nostradamus is also supposed to have predicted the King’s death.
16 Mme Marguerite, Duchesse d’Alenςn (p. 80): Marguerite d’ Angoulême (1492–1549), sister of Franςois I, married first the Duc d’ Alenςon and, after his death, Henri d’ Albret, King of Navarre. Her daughter Jeanne, from this second marriage, was the mother of the future King Henri IV (see Note 7). Marguerite was the author of the Heptaméron, a collection of stories modelled on Boccaccio’s Decameron. They were edited in 1558.
Mme de Lafayette draws on various sources for the story of Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII, notably André du Chesne, Le Laboureur and Sanders (see Note 1).
17 It was published… (p. 85): The following paragraph is taken almost word for word from a document reproduced in Pierre Matthieu’s history of the period (see Note 1) and, though Mme de Lafayette has omitted some technicalities, the intention is to provide local colour, so I have not annotated the jousting terms.
18… to take Rhodes (p. 88): From the Turks, who had captured it from the Knights Hospitaliers in 1523. The Chevalier de Guise died in 1563.
19 The Queen (p.94): Catherine de Médicis. Le Laboureur (see Note 1) mentions the rumours of her relationship with the Vidame.
BOOK THREE
20 The Amboise conspiracy (p. 109): A Huguenot plot in 1560, directed against the Guise brothers.
21 The Duc d’ Albe (p. 122 ): The duke was to act as proxy for Philip II. Mme de Lafayette’s description of the marriage ceremony is taken from a book by Père Anselme, Le palais de la gloire, published in 1663, and her account of the tournament comes mainly from Brantôme (see Note 1). As usual, she follows her sources quite closely.
BOOK FOUR
22 The Queen Mother (p. 139): Catherine de Médicis, later also referred to as ‘the Queen’. Following the King’s accidental death, the Guise brothers are able to establish their ascendancy with her help, and the balance between the different factions at court is destroyed, leaving the way open for the religious and political strife of the next three decades. After this summary of events, the narrative makes virtually no further reference to politics.
In Book One, Mme de Chartres warned her daughter not to judge court life by appearances (‘what appears to be the case hardly ever is’). Henri II’s authority managed to contain conflicts of ideology and ambition, but this ‘ordered turbulence’ could not survive his death (‘the complexion of the court changed’), and the dismissal of the Guise brothers’ enemies is open and brutal. There is a parallel here with Mme de Clèves’s breach of social convention (however admirable her motives) in telling her husband of her feelings for the Duc de Nemours, as well as her obsession with avoiding any circumstances that might allow Nemours to make an open declaration of his love to her. The implication is that harmonious relations between states, political factions and individuals are governed by conventions, one of which is that certain things are better left unsaid.
Chronology
1634 Marie-Madeleine de la Vergne born in Paris, eldest daughter of the mathematician and engineer Marc Pioche de la Vergne. She is baptized at the church of Saint-Sulpice on March 18.
1643 Louis XIV, son of Louis XIII and Queen Anne of Austria, succeeds to the throne at the age of five. His father’s first minister, Cardinal Jules Mazarin, is effective ruler of the country during the King’s minority, a period which will be marked until 1654 by the episodes of plotting and political rivalry known as the Fronde.
1649 Marie-Madeleine’s father dies and her two younger sisters are sent to a convent, leaving Marie-Madeleine at home to be groomed for a brilliant marriage.
1650 Not Marie-Madeleine (as expected) but her mother marries Renauld de Sévigné, allying the family with that of Mme de Sévigné (Marie de Rabutin-Chantel, Marquise de Sévigné), who is later to become famous as the author of letters reflecting life at the French court. Marie-Madeleine becomes lady-in-waiting to the Queen Mother, Anne of Austria. At court, her other close friend is the grammarian Gilles Ménage (1613–92), one of the arbiters of literary taste.
1652 Renauld de Sévigné is implicated in the Fronde as a supporter of Mazarin’s opponent, the Cardinal de Retz. He and his family are forced into exile in Anjou (though Marie-Madeleine does not lose her connection with the court and is a frequent visitor to Paris).
1654 Louis XIV is finally crowned King, putting an end to the troubles of the Fronde.
1655 February 15: At Saint Sulpice, Marie-Madeleine marries a widower, Jean-Francois Motier, Comte de Lafayette, eighteen years her senior, and leaves with him for his estates in the Auvergne.
1658 Marie-Madeleine, now Mme de Lafayette, returns to Paris and sets up her salon, presiding over this weekly gathering which attracts many of the best-known literary figures of the time, including the novelist Madeleine de Scudéry and others associated with the tendency known to its critics as préciosité, characterized by artificiality and refinement of language. Many of its practitioners were women, and its focus was the literary salon (gatherings over which women always presided).
1659 Mme de Lafayette writes a portrait of Mme de Sévigné for a collective volume circulated in the court. She settles in her late father’s house in the Rue de Vaugirard and becomes a close friend of Henriette d’Angleterre, daughter of Charles I of England.
1660 Louis XIV marries Marie-Thérése, daughter of King Philip IV of Spain. This alliance paves the way for France to become the dominant power in Europe.
1661 Cardinal Mazarin dies and Louis XIV assumes absolute power. Henriette d’Angleterre marries the King’s brother, the Duc d’Orléans, and (with the tide of ‘Madame’) becomes the centre of a brilliant court circle, to which Mme de Lafayette is admitted as one of Madame’s closest friends.
1662 Mme de Lafayette’s novel, La Princesse de Montpensier, is published anonymously and achieves considerable success.
1664 Mme de Lafayette starts to develop a close friendship with the Duc de la Rochefoucauld (1613–380), a frequenter of the literary salons who devoted his time to literature after being disgraced during the Fronde. This leads to a gradual cooling of her relationship with Ménage. From now on, La Rochefoucauld will take over from Ménage as her chief literary mentor.
1665 Mme de Lafayette starts to write a life of Henriette d’Angleterre.
1669 With the help of La Rochefoucauld, Mme de Lafayette writes the two-volume novel Zaïde, the story
of a Spanish prince who falls in love with a Moorish beauty. It was prefaced by an influential defence of prose fiction, written by the scholar Pierre-Daniel Huet (1630–1721).
1670 Henriette d’Angleterre dies. Mme de Lafayette becomes a less frequent visitor at court.
1672 Mme de Lafayette starts to write her masterpiece, La Princesse de Clèves.
1678 Publication of La Princesse de Clèves. It is an immediate success and starts a heated debate over the question of whether Mme de Clèves was right to confess her feelings for the Duc de Nemours to her husband.
1680 The death of La Rochefoucauld is a bitter blow to Mme de Lafayette, who is herself suffering from ill-health. She resumes her correspondence with Ménage, and occasionally they start to visit one another again, after a long break in their friendship.
1683 M. de Lafayette dies. Mme de Lafayette suffers increasingly from bouts of depression and illness.
1688 Mme de Lafayette starts to write her Memoirs of the Court of France (published posthumously in 1731).
1693 Death of Mme de Lafayette.
Further Reading
This small selection from the large number of writings in English on Madame de Lafayette illustrates some of the varied critical approaches to her work and includes a bibliography for readers who may wish to explore further.
Danahy, Michael, ‘Social, Sexual, and Human Spaces in La Princesse de Clèves’, French Forum, vol. 6, no. 3, September 1981, pp. 212–224.
Green, Anne, Privileged Anonymity. The Writings of Madame de Lafayette, European Humanities Research Centre Monographs in French Studies, no. 1, Oxford, 1996.
Haig, Stirling, Madame de Lafayette, Twayne, New York, 1970.
Kuitzenga, Donna, Narrative Strategies in ‘La Princesse de clèves’, French Forum, Lexington, 1976.
Raitt, Janet, Madame de Lafayette and ‘La Princesse de Clèves’, Harrap, London, 1971.
Scott, J. W., Madame de Lafayette. A Selective Critical Bibliography, Grant and Cutler, London, 1974.
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La Princesse de Clèves
first published 1678
Published in Penguin Books 1962
Reprinted in Penguin Classics 1978
This translation, Introduction and Notes published in Penguin Classics 1992
Reprinted with a Chronology and Further Reading 2004
20
Translation and editorial material copyright © Robin Buss, 1992, 2004
All rights reserved
The moral right of the translator had been asserted
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
ISBN: 978-0-14-196055-5
* Colin Radford, Christopher Shorley, Mary Hossain, Signposts to French Literature (London, Hutchinson, 1988).