Les Liaisons Dangereuses (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

In this section, we aim to provide the reader with an array of perspectives on the text, as well as questions that challenge those perspectives. The commentary has been culled from sources as diverse as reviews contemporaneous with the work, letters written by the author, literary criticism of later generations, and appreciations written throughout the work’s history. Following the commentary, a series of questions seeks to filter Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’s Les Liaisons Dangereuses through a variety of points of view and bring about a richer understanding of this enduring work.

Comments

The story [of Les Liaisons Dangereuses] is conducted with great art and address; but it is almost too diabolical to be realized. The pretence of ‘instruction’ is an insult on the understanding of the Public, as the work itself is a daring outrage on every law of virtue and decorum. It is true, the actors in this horrid and disgusting drama, having filled up the measure of their crimes, fall, at length, as victims to their own guilt. But the scenes of seduction and intrigue are laid open with such freedom, that for one who will be ‘instructed’ by the catastrophe, a thousand will be corrupted by the plot. He who could trace the current of human actions through all their intricate channels to their hidden source in the heart, and unfold its most secret springs, could not be ignorant of the tendency of the present publication. In paying this compliment to his penetration, we at the same time pass the severest censure on his principles.

Actions of so atrocious a nature as are here delineated;—devised by cunning; attended in their formation by a contexture of dark and disguised villanies, will not admit of particular description. When we read them, it is not enough to say we are disgusted at such complicated crimes; but we are actually chilled with horror.

For aught we know, such characters may exist as are here described, not only in France, where the scene of action is laid, but in other countries, whose religion and customs may be more favourable to virtue and decorum. However, let them exist where they will, instead of being exposed to the eye of the Public, they should be consigned to that outer darkness to which they belong.—We shall be glad to see this unknown Author’s abilities more happily employed.

I am unable to find any redeeming point in [Les Liaisons Dangereuses ] except that some ingenuity is shown in bringing about the dénouement by a rupture between the villain-hero and the villainess-heroine, M. le Vicomte de Valmont and Mme. la Marquise de Merteuil. Even this, though fairly craftsmanlike in treatment, is banal enough in idea—that idea being merely that jealousy, in both sexes, survives love, shame, and everything else, even community in scoundrelism—in other words, that the green-eyed monster (like “Vernon” and unlike “Ver”) semper viret [“will always live”]. But it is scarcely worth one’s while to read six hundred pages of very small print in order to learn this. Of amusement, as apart from this very elementary instruction, I at least can find nothing. The pair above mentioned, on whom practically hangs the whole appeal, are merely disgusting. Their very voluptuousness is accidental: the sum and substance, the property and business of their lives and natures, are compact of mischief, malice, treachery, and the desire of “getting the better of somebody.” Nor has this diabolism anything grand or impressive about it—anything that “intends greatly” and glows, as has been said, with a black splendour, in Marlowesque or Websterian fashion. Nor, again, is it a “Fleur du Mal” of the Baudelairian suburban. There is neither tragedy nor comedy, neither passion nor humour, nor even wit, except a little horseplay....

The victims and comparses [“walkers-on”] of the story do nothing to atone for the principals. The lacrimose stoop-to-folly-and-wring-his-bosom Mme. de Tourvel is merely a bore; the ingénue Cécile de Volanges is, as Mme. de Merteuil says, a petite imbecile throughout, and becomes no better than she should be with the facility of a predestined strumpet; her lover, Valmont’s rival, and Mme. de Merteuil’s plaything, M. le Chevalier Danceny, is not so very much better than he should be, and nearly as much an imbecile in the masculine way as Cécile in the feminine; her respectable mother and Valmont’s respectable aunt are not merely as blind as owls are, but as stupid as owls are not. Finally, the book, which in many particular points, as well as in the general letter-scheme, follows Richardson closely (adding clumsy notes to explain the letters, apologise for their style, etc.), exhibits most of the faults of its original with hardly any of that original’s merits. Valmont, for instance, is that intolerable creature, a pattern Bad Man—a Grandison-Lovelace—a prig of vice. Indeed, I cannot see how any interest can be taken in the book, except that derived from its background of tacenda [things not to be mentioned]; and though no one, I think, who has read the present volume will accuse me of squeamishness, I can find in it no interest at all. The final situations referred to above, if artistically led up to and crisply told in a story of twenty to fifty pages, might have some; but ditch-watered out as they are, I have no use for them. The letter-form is particularly unfortunate, because, at least as used, it excludes the ironic presentation which permits one almost to fall in love with Becky Sharp, and quite to enjoy Jonathan Wild. Of course, if anybody says (and apologists do say that Laclos was, as a man, proper in morals and mild in manners) that to hold up the wicked to mere detestation is a worthy work, I am not disposed to argue the point. Only, for myself, I prefer to take moral diatribes from the clergy and aesthetic delectation from the artist. The avenging duel between Lovelace and Colonel Morden is finely done; that between Valmont and Danceny is an obvious copy of it, and not finely done at all. Some, again, of the riskiest passages in subject are made simply dull by a Richardsonian particularity which has no seasoning either of humour or of excitement. Now, a Richardson de mauvais lieu [of the gutter] is more than a bore—it is a nuisance, not pure and simple, but impure and complex.

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