I would like to say a few words about the distance relationship fit or misfit
between self and setting, between ourselves as individuals and the
stage that we're put on. I'm going to end up using terms like
blindness but not so much just now. That we who read this book with almost
three centuries of distance can see the kind of rift between this noble
protagonist ideal view of human love, of the affairs of the heart and the
actual material setting that he has to negotiate.
Every time he is separated from Manon, he not only rants and raves, I've already
told you that, but he curses the gods, he curses fate,
he curses fortune, he curses the heavens. What he cannot quite see is the money
nexus, the cash nexus, that his love may not stem from material
need, but that the possibility of maintaining that love hinges grotesquely
on material assets and resources, which of course he doesn't have. And the
reason that intrigues me is, I think this book suggests over and over, that he
misreads his world. That there is a marvelous sequence where
he is in his underwear, telling this rich older lover of Manon that he, des Grieux
is of a more noble birth: "Apprends que je suis d?un sang plus
noble que le tien" It's an insulting line:
"I come from higher stock than you do." And he cannot see how grotesque it is,
standing there in his underwear when the old man has all of the leverage.
One reason this interests me is not so much to take the measure of Des Grieux,
to take a measure that he can't take, but also to suggest something broader
and more general, which is the potential gap between all
of our expectations, tools of measurement, ways of gaging reality and
the actual stage that we're on. I suppose it's something I feel
more acutely as I get old, that when I look at the digital culture
of my students, and I still would like to get inside my
computer and wind it up the way you used to wind up a clock,
that I realize that much has changed and that I'm out of phase with the world of
the young, just as they when they get much older
will be out of phase of the young to come.
But there is a question about whether any of us has up-to-date tools for making
sense of our world. For example we still operate by Newtonian
physics, it's what governs our notion of gravity, of the operation of time and
space. Could you imagine having your own psyche,
so to perceive the world in terms that were those of Einstein?
Where time and space and energy are locked in a kind of dance that is
unimaginable to us in terms of what we take to be normal.
What I'm saying is that maybe we are always out of phase, that we're always
obliged, condemned to be using tools that graph the world wrongly,
that belong to an earlier paradigm in any event. We see that to be the case for
this love story. In this case, it's a love paradigm that
hasn't yet come of age. And so we watch the way people in this
text respond to the love gospel of des Grieux:
the father, when he learns how much des Grieux is in love with this Manon
Lescaut, whom he doesn't think much of, he says to him, "my boy, until now I had
proposed to put you into the order of Malta.
But it's plain that your natural inclinations do not lie in that
direction. You are fond of pretty women.
I think we shall have to find one to your liking."
And he says, you know, we've got money,
I can afford to buy you somebody absolutely as pretty as Manon.
Needless to say this is nothing but offensive to des Grieux.
He's not interested in pretty women, he's interested in Manon.
One of the other really quite intriguing characters of this novel is Manon's
brother, Lescaut, and he also is not quite up to the
exalted level of des Grieux's love ethos. So, when Des Grieux complains to him that
the fates and the heavens and the gods are opposed to them,
how can he possibly find a way to secure his relationship with Manon, this is the
answer: "Manon, why worry about her?
Surely, with her you've always got the means to end your worries
whenever you like. A girl like her ought to be able to keep
all three of us." So in other words, this beautiful girl,
my sister, hey, this is the cash cow,
she's going to take care of us entirely. This too, is not particularly what des
Grieux wants to hear. Just send her out on the streets,
attach her to some wealthy male lover, which of course is what's going to
happen. But then the brother takes a good look at
des Grieux and hear this: "He next proposed that I should make
capital out of my own youth and good looks,
and make up to some elderly party who was free with her money."
And we begin to see the prostitution theme here.
Hey, you're good looking, you're attractive, you're seductive,
we can find a match for you, we can even get some income out of this,
this'll work out. All of this, in a sense is the kind of
crass, vulgar materialism the marketplace, the exchange ethos that des
Grieux is at war with. He has this noble exalted picture of love
as the equivalent to religion. In fact, this book will argue about that,
that one of the character whom I've not mentioned,
his friend Tiberge, is also destined for the chruch, and it's Tiberge's life
project to rescue des Grieux for virtue, because he sees des Grieux going off the
deep end with this crazy love affair of his.
And in some of the really quite fine sequences, we see des Grieux giving back
as good as he gets. because he explains, look, my love is
what you think of as your religion, except unlike religion, my desire for
Manon is bliss on earth, rather than the much more interrogative notion that
you've got, which is, you're hoping for bliss after
you die, I have it right now, so it seems to me to
be preferable to your code. This, of course, is one of the reasons
that this book is a little bit disruptive for many readers.
It was felt that way that this book is flirting with some very dangerous social
theories. But above all, it seems to me that des
Grieuxis is not equipped to measure the exchange model,
the commodification view of human bodies that the marketplace of Paris seems to
deal with, and that this plot runs headlong into.
That when Manon takes up with an older rich man, Misseur de Bet he's called
Pr?vost writes it this way: "He wooed her in true former general,"
that's the position he's got in the society, rich man, "-style.
That is to say by stating in a letter that payment would be in proportion to
favors received." So, this is quite clearly notched out,
regulated, measured: If you give me this much, I pay you that
much. That's why prostitution seems to me to be,
it's not a metaphor at all.
And later in the book, when the two have been separated, and this time in
a much more fateful way, she has been arrested, she's being
brought to be sent away, she is being brought to the coast to be
sent away to the new world along with other female prisoners who'd been caught
and charged with prostitution, des Grieux is following her on
horseback, he is desperate to spend time with her.
And the people who were guarding her charge him for the amount of time he
can spend with her. And they put it like this: "We will treat
you generously, it will cost you only one ?cu per hour to see whichever of our
young ladies you like best. That is the usually Paris rate," its the
last line that I like so say much. "That is the usual Paris rate," it's like
this is the cost of making a long-distance telephone call,
"this is the Paris rate." Now, this, in a sense, this misfit of
what the French call "décalage, between the exalted aristocratic love code of des
Grieux, that love is a mere ethos, and the
rather crass material world in which he finds himself.
This is, I think, one of the central features of the book, but the book has
more parts to it, even, than that. The book outruns des Grieux beyond even
in terms of his grasp of the world he inhabits.
It takes his measure, and I want to, now, refer to one of the scenes, that's one of
my favorite moments in this book, which is a scene that is put on as a kind
of theatrical moment where this is Manon being fit together with this very wealthy
lover, and des Grieux is actually going to be
brought into the sequence, and he will be introduced to this lover as Manon's
younger brother. And so he's going to look like a kind of
hayseed from the country and he come, is brought into the room,
snd the old lover taps him on the cheek, tells him to be careful in Paris, "it's a
dangerous place. Young people can fall into bad habits."
And des Grieux then starts to perform, and he looks at the old man, and he says,
and I'm going to exaggerate this, "Sir, you see, we two are one."
He's speaking of himself and Manon. "One flesh, and I love my sister like a
second self." And of course we who know that the two of
them have a very powerful erotic bond, know that loving his sister as one flesh,
has a kind of meaning that the old man doesn't quite get.
The old man thinks this is really funny, "'Isn't he clever it's a pity this man
hasn't seen a little more of the world.' 'Oh sir, I see plenty of folk in the
churches at home. I think I shall find lots of people in
Paris, who are not as clever as I am.'" And they are laughing,
all of them are laughing; Manon is laughing and her brother is
laughing, and they're shrieking with laughter.
And Pr?vost writes, "I contrive to tell him his own story."
In other words, des Grieux is trying to tell the old man in this comic way,
without the old man understanding, what's going to happen to him.
"Not excluding the nasty denouement in store for him," because they planned the
two of them to get in bed together, in the old man's bed perhaps that night,
"It was amusing to see Manon and her brother trembling.
Especially when I was doing a lifelike impersonation of him," the old man, "but he
was too vain to recognize himself." And so, it a moment that's a Moli?re
type moment where they're making fun of the old man,
and des Grieux is posturing and he is giving us this farcical rendition of
things, and he claims that the old man was blind
to his own self image, he didn't recognize himself.
And the reason that I quote that to you is that the person who is being mocked
here is not the old man, that that figure of the young naive
person who believes in God and who is a kind of true person who never cheats and
who always plays straight and narrow, that's the kind of hayseed figure that
des Grieux pretends to be here, that's his former self,
that's the self that was destined for the church,
that's what's being made fun of, that's something that the novel shows us
that the character can't see at all.