So, why do we call a text, a literary text, an immortal love story?
It's got to be in part because the language of that story - whether it's
Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet or a novel -
the language is somehow, not only commensurate with the splendor of young
love, but it creates an awareness in us: yes, this is what love
means. This is the excitement of human passion,
this is what our hearts are about, our bodies are about, and our minds are
taken over by this as well. And I believe that when we think
about the novel in the eighteenth century,
that's part, I think, of the story of how it becomes an important genre,
how it gets accepted, why people read novels.
It is a good question, why do people read novels?
It is an even better question, do people read novels?
But certainly one reason for reading novels is that it gives us, as
it were, an inside picture of the way people think and feel.
And I believe that when, I mentioned Richardson before,
the story Pamela or Clarissa - these were Pistoner novels,
they're not quite like this one - But readers flock to text like
this, because they seem to have a kind of
immediacy that they put onto the page, The actual roiling feelings of the human
heart. In a way that was not the case in
literature earlier than this. The eighteenth century is, we call it
"l'âge de la sensibilité" in French, the age of the heart, the age of human sensibility, of
emotions. And all of that is very much, it seems to
me, at play and at issue in Preévost's story. That this novel we can look at
historically, I do,
and we can see that it's a novel about crisis,
it's a novel about generational warfare. Actually reminds me a little bit about
the 1960's in both America and in Europe, where you had a kind of edible conflict
between the young and their elders. This book lines up,
according to that same type of binary, it seems to me.
And we see that it's studded with images of imprisonment, of what happens to the
people who challenge the existing mainstream order.
That people are thrown into prison, literally;
that both Manon and des Grieux end up being incarcerated, and the family itself
can be figured as a form of incarceration when des Grieux is essentially abducted by
his father after this affair with Manon begins and brought back forcibly home.
But you won't understand any of that unless you sort of feel like - this is
back to immortal love story - that you know why these people are together as
they are. Des Grieux, who is the protagonist, is
slated for a career in the church for an ecclesiastical career.
He is the second son in the family, which means he will inherit, but he won't
inherit the lion's share of the family assets.
And he knows that, and so therefore, as was often the case, slated for the
church. And it's in that situation where he is en
route, more or less, to his, sort of, religious, continuing his religious
studies, that he comes upon Manon Lescaut and sees her for the first time.
And I want you to hear what this sounds like when this young boy sees this young
girl. He's maybe 18, she's maybe 15,
and he speaks to her and they're infatuated with each other.
Once they get close to each other, physically close to each other,
intimacy becomes possible. We read something like this,
"In a very short time I realized, I was not nearly as callow as I thought."
The French says "j?etais moins enfant que je ne croyais?, I was less of a child than I thought.
"I had all sorts of pleasurable sensations, the like of which I'd never
dreamed of before. A kind of ineffable warmth - "
"Une douce chaleur" is what the French says, a kind of soft heat.
"A kind of ineffable warmth spread through my whole being.
And I experienced such overpowering emotion - "
The French says "transport", - transport, which to an
English ear sounds like a train or something, but it gets across the
kind of vehemence and also the actual kinetic power of human feeling -
it can take you somewhere else, I'll say more about that as I go.
"I experienced such an overpowering emotion that for some time I could not
utter a sound. But let my passion, only let my passion
declare itself through my eyes." And we're meant to understand that this
is a sensual, sexual education. That this is something he, des Grieux tells
us that in part in meeting Manon Lescaut he scarcely knew the difference between boys
and girls. Well he's learning it quick.
And the two of them are like glued to each other.
And he knows early on that this is fate, that this matters.
And it matters to me that I teach this point, too, because I think it's an
almost incredible story today. It's not clear in the 21st century that
any young couple would have this kind, they might have the same passionate
encounter, but whether they would construe this as fate,
and to see this as the markers of their life is less certain today.
It's not clear that we can still read text, such as Romeo and Juliet or
Manon Lescaut. Des Grieux is convinced that this is what
is best in him. This, too, is easy for us to agree to
today, but this seemed quite shocking in 1731.
He says, "L'amour et de passion la innocent", love is an innocent passion.
Well if you look at the great literature of earlier periods, often love is not an
innocent passion. Love even, as far back as Greek tragedy,
love is something that smites you, something that is almost akin to a
disease, something that robs you of your self
control and of your dignity. That's not the way it is construed or at
least depicted in this novel, that this is what goes deepest in him, cuts deepest
in him, this is how he finds who he is,
this is his soul. These are all the reasons we can call it
pre-Romantic. Well, what is fascinating is
because these are class crossed lovers, because this young man, coming as he
does, from a good family, nonetheless, has no money to speak of,
Because Manon, when he meets her, has been sent fundamentally, to a convent,
with a very small amount of money herself, then it turns out that they have no funds
that they can't live out the lover's dream, very easily at least, which
is what they attempt to do. And that's going to be the enduring
problem of their relationship do they have funds, can they get funds.
in order to stay together as a couple? He, by the way, given his social rank,
cannot simply go out and get a job - that's just not in the cards.
So what can he do to get money in order, not so much to keep this woman, but to
keep themselves? Well, we will watch him, in short order,
become a liar, a sponger, a professional card sharper,
and even a murderer. In other words he goes right off a cliff,
that there's a kind of societal descent into hell in this story and I think he
knows it early on. He senses that this is going to really be
life altering when he separated from Manon earlier because he's abducted by his
father's servants. And he thinks once again staying at home,
sort of imprisoned at home, that he will perhaps seek a career in the
church, and he goes and he meets her.
She surprises him by being there and he realizes that once again, this is his
fate. And he says, "I am going to throw away my
career and good name for you. Yes, I know I am.
I can read it in your eyes. But what sacrifices will not be fully
repaid by your love?" And the same sort of language is heard
throughout the novel, that he does not repent,
he does not feel that he has made a mistake.
At one point he is getting ready to undertake some particularly risky gesture,
action, that it perhaps is going to cost him his life,
it may have to do with murdering somebody, and then he says, "But what has
my blood got to do with it? What matters is Manon's life and how to
keep her alive. All that matters is her love, her loyalty.
Have I anything worthy to be weighed in the balance against her?"
This is what a love ethos sounds like: "Have I anything in the balance to be
weighed against her? Such a thought has never occurred to me
until now. For me, she is -" and here comes the list
of things that would have mattered earlier, would have trumped love,
"For me she is glory, happiness, and fortune.
So, it's almost existential. She replaces all of the traditional
values, all of the traditional horizons of a
young man with his future in front of him.
This is love as an ethos. This character, flawed though he is, is
to become a love apostle. And what is intriguing about the book is
that no one wants to hear these tidings. That this doctrine of love, and it is
really close to a doctrine at times where she replaces God, she replaces glory,
she replaces, because after all he was destined for the church, she replaces
everything else. This is what is new about this book.
This is why we call it, pre-Romantic. Preévost, in his preface, criticizes this
because he had to, that's what you do in a preface in the 18th century novel,
you explain that, really, your book is meant as a kind of celebration of human
virtue and of reason - but the book, of course, tells a
different story altogether. And so, it does lead us to the question
about how love calls into question the assumptions, values of society.
But I'd rather say how a love story calls these values into questions,
and that's what helps to us look at this
book as a kind of thick text, as a text, in the ethological sense, that
it's written in a way that we see what is overt and we say what is covert,
that we see the fault lines of Preévost's society in a way that it's not even clear
he intended, but he felt it. And that's what makes it's way into these
novels, into this story in particular. That we understand the way in which
feeling gangs up other values and that this novel, which became famous because it
was such a powerful tribute, a powerful representation of human
feeling, is in fact a troubling book that it doesn't quite preach insurrection.
But it shows you that human love is a wayward experience, it could be a tragic
experience. It could be the end of any sort of shot
for dignity or control or success. It also says something about the economy
of art, that I don't think that history or sociology tells us these things,
that in this novel, which is going to give us a deep reading of this character,
what he says but what he feels also, we're going to get a sense of the
complexity of human drive, the complexity of what makes relationship
not just desirable but in some sense irresistible in this book, because of the
way it's written, because of the impetuousness and the
authority of what this man feels. We're going to see what a tricky social
formula, what a tricky familial formula, what a tricky material formula, all of
that can be.