The "Characters" of Jean de La Bruyère

by Jean de La Bruyère

What is the plan and idea of the book of “Characters?” Let La Bruyère himself answer this: “Of the sixteen chapters which compose it, there are fifteen wholly employed in detecting the fallacy and ridicule to be found in the objects of human passions and inclinations, and in demolishing such obstacles as at first weaken, and afterwards extinguish, any knowledge of God in mankind; therefore, these chapters are merely preparatory to the sixteenth and last, wherein atheism is attacked, and perhaps routed, wherein the proofs of a God, such at least as weak man is capable of receiving, are produced; wherein the providence of God is defended against the insults and complaints of freethinkers.”[3]

La Bruyère is not a speculative moralist, but an observer of the manners of men, or, as he likes to call himself a philosopher, and above all a Christian philosopher, such as a friend of Bossuet ought to be. He was the first to make morality attractive, and to paint characters in a literary and delicate manner; he does not dogmatise, and above all shows neither personal hatred nor venom; in other words, to use his own expressions, he “gives back to the public what it lent”[4] him.

Underneath the literary man people often look for the man, with all his passion, his likes and dislikes; hence the many “Keys” of the “Characters,” published during the authorʼs lifetime and after his death, in which all kinds of allusions were attempted, and all sorts of hypothetical explanations ventured on.

Of the concocters of the “Keys” La Bruyère speaks as follows:

“They make it their business, if possible, to discover to which of their friends or enemies these portraits can apply; they neglect everything that seems like a sound remark or a serious reflection, though almost the whole book consists of them; they dwell upon nothing but the portraits or characters, and after having explained them in their own way, and after they imagine they have found out the originals, they publish to the world long lists, or, as they call them, ‘Keys,’ but which are indeed ‘false keys,’ and as useless to them as they are injurious to the persons whose names are deciphered, and to the writer who is the cause of it, though an involuntary one.”[5]

And yet some of these “Keys” have been of great use to modern commentators, and served to elucidate several traits in the “Characters” which otherwise would not have been discovered.

It would be ridiculous to deny that La Bruyère never had any particular personage in view in delineating a certain character, but, as he himself says: “If I might be allowed to be a little vain, I should be apt to believe that my “Characters” have pretty well portrayed men in general, since they resemble so many in particular; and since every one thinks he finds there his neighbour or his countryman. I did indeed paint after the life, but did not always mean to paint, in my book of “Characters,” one individual or another. I did not hire myself out to the public to draw only such portraits as should be true and like the originals, for fear that sometimes they would be thought incredible, and appear feigned or imaginary ones. Becoming yet more difficult I went farther, and took one lineament from one person and one from another, and from these several lineaments, which might be found in one and the same person, I drew some likely portraits, studying not so much to please the reader by describing the characters of certain people, or, as the malcontents would say, by satirising them, as to lay before him what faults he ought to avoid, and what examples to follow.”[6]

Our author, therefore, did not wish to depict individuals, but men in general; for man is the same in all seasons and at all times, and is swayed by the same motives and passions, though they exercise a different influence in various ages, produce different results amongst many races, and do not even act in precisely the same manner in divers centuries, climates, and under heterogeneous circumstances. He had no intention of presenting a series of historical events,[7] but of depicting Frenchmen at the end of the seventeenth century as they lived, breathed, and moved; not animated by violent likes and dislikes, as those of the Ligue or the Fronde were, nor filled by the importance of their own overweening individualities. When we read him, we behold in our mindʼs eye the subdued subjects of Louis XIV., slavishly obeying the “Roi Soleil,” admitting the King can do no wrong, becoming devout to please His Majesty and Madame de Maintenon, inaugurating the reign of courtly hypocrisy, embracing the principle of one religion in one state, and seeing the royal sun gradually decline, and the star of William III. in its ascendancy.

The notes of the present edition are necessary, I imagine, to assist in illustrating the life of a past age, for “no usages or customs are perennial, but they vary with the times.... Nothing can be more opposed to our manners than all these things; but the distance of time makes us relish them.” The “Characters” themselves, as well as the notes, represent a “history of ... times,” when the usual custom was “the selling of offices; that is to say, the power of protecting innocence, punishing guilt, and doing justice to the world, bought with ready money like a farm.” They will also make my readers acquainted with “a great city,” which at the end of the seventeenth century was “without any public places, baths, fountains, amphitheatres, galleries, porticoes, or public walks, and this the capital of a powerful kingdom; they will be told of persons whose whole life was spent in going from one house to another; of decent women who kept neither shops nor inns, yet had their houses open for those who would pay for their admission,[8] and where they could choose between dice, cards, and other games, where feasting was going on, and which were very convenient for all kinds of intercourse. They will be informed that people crowded the street only to be thought in a hurry; that there was no conversation nor cordiality, but that they were confused, and, as it were, alarmed by the rattle of coaches which they had to avoid, and which drove through the streets as if for a prize at some race. People will learn, without being greatly astonished, that in times of public peace and tranquillity, the inhabitants went to church and visited ladies and their friends, whilst wearing offensive weapons; and that there was hardly any one who did not have dangling at his side wherewith to kill another person with one thrust.”[9]