Dangerous Liaisons
Choderlos de Laclos, 1782
Penguin Group USA
448 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780140449570
Summary
Published just years before the French Revolution, Laclos's great novel of moral and emotional depravity is a disturbing and ultimately damning portrayal of a decadent society. Aristocrats and ex-lovers Marquise de Merteuil and Vicomte de Valmont embark on a sophisticated game of seduction and manipulation to bring amusement to their jaded lives.
While Merteuil challenges Valmont to seduce an innocent convent girl, he is also occupied with the conquest of a virtuous married woman. Eventually their human pawns respond, and the consequences prove to be more serious—and deadly—than the players could have ever predicted. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—October 19, 1741
• Where—Amiens, France
• Death—September 5, 1803
• Where—Taranto, Sicily, Italy
Pierre Ambroise François Choderlos de Laclos was a French novelist, official and army general, best known for writing the epistolary novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses.
A unique case in French literature, he was for a long time considered to be as scandalous a writer as the Marquis de Sade. He was a military officer with no illusions about human relations, and an amateur writer; however, his initial plan was to...write a work which departed from the ordinary, which made a noise, and which would remain on earth after his death.
From this point of view he mostly attained his goals, with the fame of his masterwork Les Liaisons Dangereuses. It is one of the masterpieces of novelistic literature of the 18th century, which explores the amorous intrigues of the aristocracy. It has inspired a large number of critical and analytic commentaries, plays, and films.
Laclos was born in Amiens into a bourgeois family, and in 1760 was sent to the École royale d'artillerie de La Fere, ancestor of the Ecole Polytechnique. As a young lieutenant, he briefly served in a garrison at La Rochelle until the end of the Seven Years War (1763). Later he was assigned to Strasbourg (1765-1769), Grenoble (1769-1775) and Besancon (1775-1776).
Despite being promoted to captain (1771), Laclos grew increasingly bored with his artillery garrison duties and the company of the soldiers, and began to devote his free time to writing. His first works, several light poems, were published in the Almanach des Muses. Later he wrote an Opera-comique, Ernestine, inspired by a novel by Marie-Jeanne Riccoboni. Its premiere on 19 July 1777, in presence of Queen Marie-Antoinette, was a failure. In the same year he created a new artillery school in Valence, which was to include Napoleon among its students. At his return at Besançon in 1778, Laclos was promoted second captain of the Engineers. In this period he wrote several works, which showed his great admiration of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
In 1779 he was sent to Ile-d'Aix to assist Marc-Rene de Montalembert in the construction of fortifications there against the British. He however spent most of his time writing his new epistolary novel, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, as well as a Letter to Madame de Montalembert. When he asked for and was granted six months of vacation, he spent the time in Paris writing.
Les Liaisons Dangereuses was published by Durand Neveu in four volumes on 23 March 1782, turning into a widespread success (1,000 copies sold in a month, an exceptional result for the times). Laclos was immediately ordered to return to his garrison in Brittany; in 1783 he was sent to La Rochelle to collaborate in the construction of the new arsenal. Here he met Marie-Soulange Duperre, 18 years his junior, whom he would marry in 1786. The following year he began a project of numbering Paris streets.
In 1788 Laclos left the army, entering the service of Louis Philippe, Duke of Orleans, for whom, after the outbreak of the French Revolution, he carried forward with intense diplomatic activity. Captured by the Republic ideals, he left the Duke to obtain a place as commissar in the Ministry of War. His reorganization has been credited as having a role in the Revolutionary Army victory in the Battle of Valmy. Later, after the desertion of general Charles François Dumouriez, he was however arrested as "Orleaniste," being freed after the Thermidorian Reaction.
He thenceforth spent some time in ballistic studies, which led him to the invention of the modern artillery shell. In 1795 he requested of the Committee of Public Safety reintegration in the army, which was ignored. His attempts to obtain a diplomatic position and to found a bank were also unsuccessful. Eventually, Laclos met the young general and recent First Consul, Napoleon Bonaparte, and joined his party. On 16 January 1800 he was reinstated in the Army as Brigadier General in the Armee du Rhin, taking part in the Battle of Biberach.
Made commander-in-chief of Reserve Artillery in Italy (1803), Laclos died shortly afterward in the former convent of St. Francis of Assisi at Taranto, probably of dysentery and malaria. He was buried in the fort still bearing his name (Forte de Laclos) in the Isola di San Paolo near the city, built under his direction. Following the restoration of the House of Bourbon in southern Italy, his burial tomb was destroyed; it is believed that his bones were tossed into the sea. (From Wikipedia.)
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If this book burns, it burns as only ice can burn.
Baudelaire
Discussion Questions
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Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Dangerous Liaisons:
1. How would you describe the characters of the Vicomte de Valmont and the Marquise de Merteuil (in fact, how does she define herself)? What inspires their games of sexual predation?
2. Describe Cecile Volange and Presidente de Tourvel. Why are they each selected as the objects of Valmont's conquests?
3. How does the Marquise view romantic love? Does she see it as a genuine, selfless emotion...a weakness, a competition... or what?
4. Talk about Valmont's view of love? Is he as immune to sincere feelings as he believes himself to be?
5. How does Valmont manipulate language in his letters to Presidente de Tourvel? In what ways does he play upon, even pervert, her religious beliefs?
6. Madame de Rosemonde claims a difference exists between the ways in which men and women experience happiness. How does she explain the difference...and do you agree with her assessment?
7. Discuss the role of older women in this work, particularly in helping to educate younger women into the ways of society. In fact, how is the term "education" used in this work? Does education refer to scholarly knowledge, tests or trials, loss of innocence...or what?
8. Discuss the distinctions among the classes—the servant class, aristocracy, and the bourgeoisie (the upcoming middle class). How, for instance does Merteuil treat her servant, Victoire.
9. Talk about the ways in which desire and battle are intermingled thematically in this work.
10. What is the role of opera in society and, thematically, in this work itself? For instance, how is the staging of an opera like life? What might de Laclos be saying about artifice or sincerity in the social interactions of his characters?
11. What are Valmont's feelings for Presidente? Why does he decide to abandon her? And why does he agree to sacrifice himself...both through the duel and giving the letters to Danceny?
12. What do you feel about Danceny's abandonment of Cecile at the end? Is he justified or did he betray his own profession of being true and faithful?
13. In this work, how do physical maladies reflect characters' spiritual state?
14. What is with these people? Really.
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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