MOTAREE.*
ENGLISHMEN have always loved Moliere. He is one of the very few French writers whom we can explore without the uneasy feeling of being in a foreign country ; we are at home with him, and he, we feel, is at home with us. We have, too, given solid proof of our admiration, for there is no other foreign author whom we have imitated so much. Ever since he wrote he has dominated our comic stage. "The frippery of crucified Moliere," as Pope put it, has always been the stock-in-trade of the hack English playwright ; and some of the most famous scenes of Sheridan and Congreve have been "lifted" almost bodily from the author of the Misan- thrope and the Femmes Savantes. The new edition of his plays, prepared, with an English translation, by Mr. A. B. Waller, affords a fresh opportunity to English readers of renewing—or beginning—a delightful acquaintance. Mr. Waller's object in making the translation has been, he tells us, to meat the requirements of " those who, having some slight knowledge of French, might find a rendering in simple modern English, side by side with the French text, not unacceptable as a helpful companion in case of need." A translator is always a bold man. "Que diable allait-il faire dans cette galere P " is the inevitable question which rises to the lips of every reader, and proves more often than not unanswerable. Mr. Waller is particularly courageous ; for he is translating Moliere; and he is translating him with the original on the opposite page. " Translating Moliere," says Mr. Meredith, "is like humming an air one has heard performed by an accomplished violinist of the pure tones without flourish "; and Mr. Waller has not been afraid to put the pure tones of Moliere on one page, and his own hummings on the other. No one, of course, could expect the hummings to rival the pure tones ; but one might reasonably have hoped that, since Mr. Waller has chosen to hum, he should at least do so in tune with his original. Unfortunately, Mr. Waller's translation is not only flat, it is also inaccurate. To those who have only " some Blight knowledge of French " his version will, in too many cases, come as a stumbling-block rather than an aid. It would be easy to multiply instances, but one example will be sufficient to indicate the perfunctory manner in which Mr. Waller has performed a task which deserved the most un- remitting care and the most scrupulous correction. Sganarelle, in the Festin de Pierre, winds up his argument in favour of the providential nature of the universe by a practical demonstra- tion of the exquisite contrivance of the human mechanism. 'How wonderful to be able to move just as one wishes ! Look at me! I can clap my hands, bow my head, swing my legs, turn my body—' and in his excitement he turns too quickly • The Plays of Moliere. In French, with en English Translation and Notes by A. R. Waller, and an Introduction by George Saintabury. 8 vols. Edia• burgh : John Gala. [838s. net.]
and falls flat upon the ground. " Bon! Voilk ton raisonne- ment qui a le nez came " (And now your argument has got a broken nose) is Don Juan's admirable comment. But how does this appear in Mr. Waller's translation ? " Good,
BO your argument has broken your nose." The reader who mistakes that feeble sentence for the sparkling thought of
Moliere must have a very "slight knowledge of French" indeed.
The extreme laxity (to use no stronger word) of Mr. Waller's rendering is particularly disappointing, since the quality of Moliere's genius shows itself nowhere more clearly than in his exquisite precision. Whatever his point may be—and one might compile an infinite gradation of his points, ranging from the broadest buffoonery to the subtlest psychological crux—he can seize it and make the best of it with the same unerring exactitude, the same undeviating certainty of touch. Mr. Meredith's metaphor of the "pure tones without flourish "
is no empty one, for Moliere's best phrases have precisely the rich simplicity of the virtuoso. He can call up with a common sentence a whole universe of reverberating suggestion and pervasive irony. "Nous aeons changg tout cela ! "—It is the epitome of all the cranks of the world. He can make a bad
pun the instrument of eternal mockery. " Veux-tn touts la vie offenser in grammaire ? " the pedantic lady furiously asks her servant, and the country wench replies in all gravity : Qui park d'offenser grand'mere ni grand-pere P " Is not that the last word on the subject ? To read one of his scenes is to watch some wonderful cook at work over a delicious dish—keeping it on the simmer while each savoury ingredient is dropped in : the oil, the olive, the salt—and then at the psychological moment whipping it off the fire, and setting it before you done to a turn. In short, Moliere's workmanship is essentially classical. It is true that his construction is apt to be weak ; the action of his playa is too often " huddled up," as Professor Saintsbury says in his introduction to the present edition ; but the pervading spirit of his work is none the less that very spirit of precision, finish, and refinement which informs all that is most characteristic in the art of his country. men. But it is the great distinction of Moliere that he is not only a classicist, but something else besides. The weakness of the classical ideal lies in its tendency towards the narrow and the confined,—towards a perfection which is only perfect because it has excluded and ignored so much. Pushed to its extremity, it produces a Voltaire,—the most consummate of artists, dancing in a vacuum on the tight-rope of his own wit; and its antithesis is to be found among the dramas of the romantic Elizabethans, whose looseness, vagueness, dis- order, and irregularity are redeemed by the image of large and tumultuous life which those very qualities have brought into being. The marvellous achievement of Moliere was to combine the polished brilliance of the classic with the romantic's sense of humanity. He is as definite, as witty, as complete as Voltaire himself; and yet his pages are throbbing with vitality; his characters stream across them in all the freshness and in all the variety of life; his world is the great world,—the world of Shakespeare and Cervantes, of Balzac and Scott.
But if this combination of breadth and refinement is the distinctive feature of Moliere's art, what is the distinctive feature of Moliere himself P What, to use Professor Saints- bury's expression, is the "essence" of Moliere P In his introduction Professor Saintsbury discusses the question,
and discusses it with all his usual vivacity and learning; everything that he says is interesting ; and it is only to be regretted that so much of what he says should be also a
little perverse. One cannot help being reminded of the lines of Celimene :—
"Le sentiment d'autrui n'est jamais pour lui 'Attire: Il prend toujours en main l'opinion contraire, Et penserait paraitre un homme du commun Si l'on voyait qu'il flit de l'avis de quelqu'un."
Moat modern critics have laid stress on the serious side of Moliere's mind ; Professor Saintsbury has taken up l'opinion contraire, and argues forcibly that Moliere was at heart a laugher, and nothing more. He was "the Master of the Laugh." His " essence " simply "asks everything which suggests itself 'Can you help me to make men laugh P' and if so, it takes the thing, and makes it do this. With the rest it n'a que faire, as the French phrase goes." Surely that is as paradoxical as any of the exaggerated statements about Moliere's sole value lying in his tragic power. No one in his senses will doubt for a minute that Moliere was indeed " the Master of the Laugh." But was he (as Professor Saintsbury declares) master of nothing more P Was he not also the Master of the Smile P Is not that, in fact, his true " essence " P Laughter is the expression of a simple emotion ; but a smile (no less than a tear) is an intellectual thing ; and Moliere's greatest work is intellectual to an intense degree. The dis- tinction is nowhere more plainly visible than in one of the best known of all his comedies,—Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme The latter half of that delightful piece is a cataract of rollicking buffoonery, which leaves one with aching sides, gasping for breath. Professor Saintsbury's words exactly fit it; Moliere has taken the foolish tradesman playing the grand seigneur, and has covered him with such enormous ridicule, has plunged him into such preposterous predicaments, that men will laugh over him till the end of time. And if Moliere's sole object had been to do that—to draw the greatest possible quantity of laughter from his subject—all that was necessary was to write the whole play on the same pattern and the thing was done. But that was not his sole object, for the earlier scenes present a complete contrast to the later ones ; it is not their laughableness that makes them valuable, but their psychology. The Monsieur Jourdain whom we love and know, the Monsieur Jourdain whom Moliere has drawn for us so exquisitely, so subtly, so sympathetically,—at him we can hardly laugh at all, at him we must perpetually smile. Aud who can doubt that a creation such as that is really a finer and a greater achievement than the most triumphant evocation of the most Olympian laughter P Professor Saintsbury, indeed, is forced into strange extremes by his theory, for he has to do his best to turn each of Moliere's most profound and complex character-studies into some- thing funny, something that will "help to make men laugh." He has to make excuses for Don Juan (who is never even ridiculous) ; he has to shuffle aside Tartufe (who is nearly always horrible); he has to forget Harpagon altogether. " Helas! mon pauvre argent! mon pauvre argent! mon cher ami ! on m'a prive de toi ; et, puisque to m'es enleve, j'ai perdu mon support, ma consolation, ma joie ; tout est fini pour moi, et je n'ai plus que faire an monde." That is despair ; and despair, surely, is no laughing matter. Over the Misanthrope Professor Saintsbury fights a gallant fight; but it is impossible to believe that any reader who is acquainted with that wonderful drama will be convinced by his arguments. For, indeed, there is no escaping the fact that in the Misanthrope at least Moliere is not only supremely gay and supremely brilliant, but supremely melancholy too. The play is a tragedy in the truest sense of the word, though there is no " sceptred pall" in it, no Shakespearean imagina- tion, no Sophoclean grandeur ; it is the tragedy of actual life. Its climax does not come in death, but in a lady leaving a room. And when that happens, when at the last, amid the silence of the little salon, Celimene, without a word, turns round and passes out for ever from our sight,—who does not feel the same quality of anguish, the same poignancy of desolation, as that which fills us when King Oedipus goes forth into the darkness, or Cordelia dies ?
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