The Paradox of the Misanthrope

Author(s): Hans Robert Jauss

Source: Comparative Literature , Autumn, 1983, Vol. 35, No. 4 (Autumn, 1983), pp. 305-
322
Published by: Duke University Press on behalf of the University of Oregon

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1770840

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 FALL 1983

Volume 35, Number 4

HANS ROBERT JAUSS

The Paradox of
The Misanthrope

OUR NEWLY revived historical anthropology starts from the

premise that despite its apparent immutability human nature in
fact has a history and, further, that this history-the sediment of con-
stantly reformulated and superseded projects in the process of human
self-determination-can be understood as man's second nature. The
literary historian can best illustrate what is meant by this formula by
tracing changes in the presentation and interpretation of moral char-
acter types. No matter how timeless these characters may seem in com-
edy and moral reflection, they have not always been a part of Western
tradition. They first appear at a later stage of Greek literature, in the
new comedy of Menander, after Theophrastus had drawn up the first
characterology based on observation of everyday life.' With the ap-
pearance of Theophrastus' work, European comedy acquired a basic
repertory of character types that lived on in the oral tradition of so-
called mimology (short, crude scenes of popular farce), surviving the
interruption of the Christian era in which they were excluded from the
canon of the representable. Christian literature in the Middle Ages
founded its official canon of characters on the ancient animal fables and
on folkloric animal farces. The analogy of animal characters or manners
with human nature revealed a new conception of human existence, and
the newly created animal epic Reynard the Fox at the summit of medie-
val satire opposed the idealism of all heroic and courtly poetry for the
first time.2
The classical repertory of everyday characters was revived by the

1 Menander's reception of the thirty 'fOLKOL XapaKTlpes defined, described, and

classified by Theophrastus and his literary elaboration of them merit a separate
study.
2 See Hans Robert Jauss, Alteritdit und Modernitiit der mittelalterlichen Litera-
tur: Gesammelte Aufsiitze 1956-1976 (Munich, 1977), pp. 26 ff.

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COMPARATIVE LITERATURE

humanist rediscovery of Plautine comnedy and u

fruitful reception culminating in classical Frenc
develol)ment, Moliere's comedy of character, wa
panied by a mnoral-philosophical characterology,
thres ou les floeurs de cc sidcle (1688). This work
passed Theophrastus' characterology by attempt
entire social life of the age of Louis XIV in its c
institutions. La Bruyere thus pursued the goal of
ined his fellow man's behavior and forms of life in order to ascertain
what could be attributed to human nature in general and what was
conditioned by changing times. He thus assumed the role of observer as
well as critic of his times."
The historical thought of the Enlightenment, foreshadowed in La
Bruyere's text, devalued not only the characterology of the classical
moralists, which can be considered a kind of protosociology,4 but also
MoliZere's comedy. By 1800 Goethe could affirm that the time for char-
acter plays was over.5 How he arrived at this prognosis remains a ques-
tion, but its accuracy seems thoroughly confirmed by the subsequent
history of comedy. As Peter Szondi has noted, Hofmannsthal's Der
Schwierige has remained "the only modern figure in the character gal-
lery of great comedy."' As an untimely exception, Der Schwierige
confirms the historical rule in a highly instructive manner. It allows us
to see what was required in order to invent-as a reply to Moliere's
Misanthrope-such an unforgettable figure as Count Biihl, who had to
be a "character" in the eyes of others without having a character in his
own. From this point on characterology was increasingly relegated to
the museum of the history of science. Scientific psychology today recog-
nizes only social norms and functions, and questions whether moral be-
havior is at all classifiable. The concept of "character," which is no
longer found in psychological lexicons, has been replaced by a theory of
"personality" which does not require the notion of "human nature" but
only that of the interaction of disposition and situation.7
I have chosen to examine here the character of the Misanthrope be-
cause it is represented at the beginning, the culmination, and the end of

3 See Gerhard Hess, "Einleitung in La Bruyeres Charaktere," in Gesellschaft,

Literatur, Wissenschaft : Gesammelte Schriften 1938-1966, ed. Hans Robert Jauss
and Claus Mfiller-Daehn (Munich, 1967), pp. 116-22.
4 Roger Caillois, quoted by Jean Starobinski in his introduction to Monte-
squieu's Les lettres persanes (Paris, 1973), p. 13.
5 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, "Dramatische Preisaufgabe" (1800), in Sdimt-
liche Werke, ed. Ernst Beutler (Zurich, 1977), XIV, 61.
6 Theorie des modernen Dramas (Frankfurt, 1956), p. 75. Unless otherwise
indicated, translations of German quotations into English are the translator's.
7 See Handbuch psychologischer Grundbegriffe, ed. Hermann Krings et al.
(Munich, 1977), especially "Moralisches Verhalten" and "Personlichkeitstheorie."
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 THE MISANTHROPE

this tradition in significant works of Menander

only full preserved work-Molieire, and Hofmann
hand, it is noteworthy that the Misanthrope is
Aristotelean classification of the ten affects of the
pleasure or pain, nor in Theophrastus' classification
in social life. Does the Misanthrope fail to appear in
cal or moral-philosophical treatises because to be
enemy of mankind would go against nature and the
human existence? If this conjecture were true, th
would not be accidental invention shaped by poetic
rather a limiting case created to test and explor
what human nature can be-if man is capable of ac
nature-and to see how he can be brought to abandon
and return to IEcdro0r, the ancient ideal of modera
tions allow us to determine in a preliminary fashion
in Menander's creation of a literary character, th
comparable type of social behavior described by Theo
'the distrustful man.' The genuine task of literary h
exploration of such transformations of philosophica
sible literary answers and their testing through
My study will offer an interpretation of the literary
Misanthrope, whose well-documented reception exem
ing horizon of characterology. I shall consider this
background of the history of the concept of charac
provided by the mutual illumination of practical ph
fiction.

Character (from the Greek xapcrurEtv 'to scrat

basic meaning of something engraved, imprinted, h
corresponding Latin word also signifies a brand,
identification mark, and, in an extended sense,
After Theophrastus, the word is applied not only
but also to inner nature, and XapaKrp thus acquired
of an inscribed personal characteristic. For Theophr
human behavior reflect differences in nature, and a
immutable. This is in accord with his belief that after the child's native

8 For a discussion of the literary function of Ausspekulieren as an approach to

Old French epic, see Alfred Adler, Epische Spekulanten (Munich, 1975).
9 I base my use of this term on C. Seidel's discussion "Charakter" in His-
torisches W6rterbuch der Philosophie, ed. Joachim Ritter (Basel, 1971), I, 984-91.
10o According to Hans Joachim Newiger, this referred initially only to things,
not to people ("Die griechische Kom6die," in Neuen Handbuch der Literaturwis-
senschaft, ed. E. Vogt, Wiesbaden, 1981, II, 216 ff.).
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COMPARATIVE LITERATURE

dispositions have been fully developed no further e

-a view which deviates from Aristotle's. Never
tus uses the Aristotelian principle of fLE-CT)r7T in
ters: their description illustrates a prior definiti
ness is a presumnption of dishonesty against all ma

atrustful man is herepresenting

mosaic portrait, that will . ..."1)
humanthrough observations
behavior which
in terms of compose
excess or
deficiency in relation to an ideal but unmet mean. From the outset,
ethical characters are negatively determined by their failure to attain
the proper measure of the Good Life, and consequently by their weak-
nesses or "vices." Virtues apparently have no characters, as Christian
tradition later confirmed (virtue acting through the holy man tran-
scends all merely individual differences in human nature).
When these ethical characters enter literature, in the passage from
Theophrastus to Menander, they are not merely developed in dramatic
action involving conflict with others. The literary elaboration also draws
attention to the paradox of a consciousness aware of depending upon
nature, against its will to be another nature. The characters of the Boor,
the Distrustful Man, the Superstitious Man, the Shy Man, the Misogy-
nist, and the Misanthrope, all characters corresponding to the titles of
Menander's plays, are not simply the objects of ridicule. The comic
exaggeration of their behavior makes the one-sidedness of their nature
evident and thus confirms, ex negativo, in the eyes of the unconcerned
spectator, the unrealized norm of the Good Life. The comedy sets before
our eyes a character who deviates from the ethical norm and at the
same time remains completely enslaved by his own nature. He may
become more or less aware of his enslavement, he may suffer or obsti-
nately persist in it, even to an extreme, when his affectively rigid, circu-
lar behavior runs counter to his own ends.12 As an example of this kind
of comic effect we may adduce the beginning of the Dyskolos, where the
grumbler Cnemon summarily turns away a visitor by calling him a
"criminal" (even though the visitor wants to offer him an advantageous
business opportunity), pelts him with stones and clods of earth and,
finally, "when nothing else was left," with pears, the hard-won fruit of
his dry, infertile land (I.109-23). Cnemon's contempt for all his fellow
men may not only damage his own interests but may even lead to the
wish to destroy himself. Thus when his future son-in-law Sostrates

11 The Characters of Theophrastus, ed. J. M. Edmonds (New York, 1929), p.

85.
12 1 have discussed elsewhere other examples of this behavior in Plautus'
Aulularia and Moliere's L'Avare. See my contribution in Das franz8sische The-
ater vom Barock bis zur Gegenwart, ed. Jiirgen von Stackelberg (Diisseldorf,
1968), I, 295 ff. All quotations from the Dyskolos are from Menander's Dyscolus,
trans. Warren E. Blake (New York, 1966).

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 THE MISANTHROPE

appears, Cnemon first wishes he could go abo

Medusa's head "to turn all those who pestered h
and then complains that "even if a man should so
himself, / there's nowhere he could find the priva
(lines 169-70). Menander's Misanthrope also goe
character of the Distrustful Man, in that Cnemon's unnatural behavior
extends even to the most natural family relations, which Theophrastus'
Distrustful Man still respects.13
Menander raises the Dyskolos to the level of a limiting case that
makes it possible to investigate the most extreme possibilities and con-
tradictions of human nature within the framework of literary fiction.
He achieves this ultimately by means of an astute experiment which he
apparently tried only in this comedy: the reversals of the action-the
fall into the well, the encounter with death, and the rescue by the step-
son Gorgias-bring Cnemon to see that he has fallen prey to an error:
"The mark of inhumanity drops away, and the spectator glimpses the
clenched pain of a tormented soul which calls for pity."'4 Cnemon's
great monologue, in which he recognizes as delusion his belief that he
was "self-sufficient and would need no help" and rejects the philosophi-
cal ideal of autarchy (IV.714), arouses in the modern spectator the
expectation that a different Cnemon, freed from his unnaturalness and
more open to his fellow man, will result from his recantation. We there-
fore find it all the more strange that this expectation will be disappointed
and that, instead, Cnemon's return to his solitary nature in the last act
and his punishment for it in the final harassment scene must have been
fully in accord with the classical spectators' expectations.
This hermeneutic crux permits us to recognize an archaic horizon
which allowed classical comedy to plumb the depths of a character by
playing out the consequences of a limiting case, but only in order to bring
to light his unchangeable and ultimately unmotivated nature. Of course,
Menander is not content merely to show that his Dyskolos' nature is
unmotivated. His comedy implies a question which Theophrastus had
not yet asked in his characterology: how can a person, against his own
nature, become an enemy of mankind ? But the answer that Cnemon's
monologue gives does not illuminate grounds for his misanthropy; it
only reveals his error in having followed the philosophical principle of
autarchy. By saving his life, Gorgias has proven that selfless help among
human beings (Edvoua) is needed and provided (cf. line 718),but Cnemon
13 "And when a neighbour comes a-borrowing drinking-cups he will refuse him
if he can; should he perchance be a great friend or a kinsman, he will lend them,
yet almost weigh them and assay them, if not take security for them, before he
does so" (Characters, p. 87).
14 Armin Schiifer, Menanders Dyskolos: Untersuchungen ,ur dramatischen
Technik (Meisenheim am Glan, 1965), p. 92. See also Newiger, in Vogt, II, 216 ff.
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COMPARATIVE LITERATURE

is not cured of his misanthrophy by being freed f

autarchy. He does not merely repeat the fate of Ti
power, riches, and generosity to ruin and isolati
tempt for human beings and gods; rather, the g
alterability of Cnemon's misanthropy is thrown in
moment of insight when, faced with deadly da
stripped away from him. In an act which is both a
farewell, Cnemon hands over his rights and resp
head to his adopted stepson in order from that time
alone and outside all human society ("No man on
suit me. One thing-let me live the way I wa
decision is the only action that Cnemon himself in
always portrays him-in accord with his charac
acting. But Cnemon's decision to want to be as he b
pelled to be by nature can no more be the comedy'
celebration of the double wedding can be its last sc
religious level of the ritual sacrifices which frame
it fulfills Pan's prediction of a happy ending. Cnem
even the old kitchen servant attend the merry
can be completely alone in the house (IV.868) is an
the solidarity of the family, to which he no longe
also to the entire human community represented b
fice. The provocation of this extreme separation is
humblest members of the community, a slave an
upon themselves to exorcise their former master's
nobling" beating and to close the action of the p
wedding feast.15 Of course we have learned to expl
as a punishment meted out by "poetic justice."
cannot but recognize such a poetic justice as unjust
that the case of the classical Misanthrope seems
meneutic paradox: that is, a perfect explanation of
experience does not necessarily imply an understan

La Bruyere, who translated and further elabo

Characters, designated the aesthetic norm of Frenc
which Molieire's comedy should be measured wh
principal source of comedy is not witticisms, o

15 Schiifer has remarked that the Ludificatio could be

of Theophrastus' theory of Paideia (according to Fragm
preserved in Stobaeus) in that "it does not have the slig
fully performing the purpose set out for it" (p. 74). See
of the comic ending which preserves the Dionysian mom
(Vogt, II, 223).
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 THE MISANTHROPE

tendres, or any other type of linguistic joke. Rat

on characters alone to make a wise, virtuous-h
ence laugh.16 La Bruyire did not explain why hum
produce the purest comic effect, and therefore n
acters could trigger laughter for different reason
Moliere, in turn, did not add much theoretically
tic assertion. Once when he does discuss the pecul
ing the honnites gens laugh, he points out only t
portraying people according to their nature. The
lies in portraying this nature in a way that will br
one's contemporaries. Since tragedy, in Molier
this problem, he considers it a less exacting genr
nor Moliere apparently suffered from any an
them the perfection of their classical models ren
effort to justify their own work theoretically. W
in another cryptic statement by Moliere: "Le
"la forme exterieure et sensible que la providen
qui est deraisonnable."'i Moliire can thus count
cism of the immoral effect of theater: in the
which reveals in the ridiculous a deviation from what is natural and
reasonable in order to reaffirm the "fameux quod decet des anciens,"
cannot but serve the ends of Christian Providence. Has Providence in
its wisdom not placed before us a "perceptible sign" in the form of the
comic so that we might recognize in the defects of human nature what
the golden mean of an upright life demands of us?
In the realm of art, theory and practice seldom coincide, and this is
also true for Moliere. In matters of theory he was an "ancient" and
wanted to raise the ridiculum to the level of an agent of Providence in
order to legitimize the moral claims of classical comedy. But in matters
of practice he was a "modern," and his conception of literary characters
decisively questions the naive harmony posited by his theory. His Miser
or his Hypocrite can no more be understood on the basis of the classical
norm of the comic than can his Sosias or Georges Dandin, his "Malade
imaginaire" or "Bourgeois Gentilhomme." These modern characters
are no longer definable by the mimetic presentation of a one-sided na-
ture; rather, they are caught between having to be and wanting to be
what their nature requires, between natural being and reflective con-
sciousness. They play out their self-contradictions in such a way that
16 See Jean de La Bruyere, (Euvres de La Bruyere, ed. G. Servois (Paris,
1865), I, 14-15.
17 See (Euvres completes, ed. Maurice Rat (Paris, 1951), I, 538. Dorante serves
as a mouthpiece for this opinion in La Critique de l'decole des femmes, scene vi.
18"Lettre sur la comedie de 1'Imposteur," quoted in Georges Poulet, 8tudes sur
le temps humain (Paris, 1952), p. 87.
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COMPARATIVE LITERATURE

the spectator's laughter constantly subsides, ch

pity or alarm. Far from being a perceptible sign of
dential world order, the comic is now aimed at
already knows what is natural and reasonable rathe
weaknesses and vices. I have shown elsewhere in
Harpagon's monologue in L'Avare how a consciou
unnatural greed can again become productive and r
and societal orders.'9 Moliere thereby brings out a
problematic: an evil gradually revealed in the un
contradiction of the characters. In other words, hi
an aspect of fallen human nature. But this mode
remains untouched by the discovery of the individu
of ideas shows as undergoing a change of meaning
ian conception of human nature gradually prevailed
of classical anthropology.

The Christian phase of the history of the concept

supposes a new determination of human nature wh
tually out of a new value placed on individual
who discovered the individual self in the act of con
his norm-building Confessions the constitution of
as from the very beginning a divided, temporally
image of its creator-necessarily imperfect exist
wholeness of the primal nature was restored as soo
tian received through the sacrament of baptism hi
this end, Augustine took over the popular expressi
and extended it as character crucis to the trinitari
According to the subsequent Christian view, sti
Aquinas as well as in Martin Luther, the baptiz
through the sacrament a "spiritual mark on the so
cept seems to move away from the theological tow
meaning of character in that the feature of indelibi
sacrament of baptism and applied to the individual
to distinguish his specific character as the nature o
same word which in the pre-Christian view referr
being of different human types or "natures" acqui
conception a dynamic and later a historical me
19 Von Stackelberg, I, 290-310.
20 See "The Religious Origin and Aesthetic Emancipati
Hans Robert Jauss, Aesthetic Experience and Literary H
chael Shaw, Theory and History of Literature, III (Minn
pp. 142-51.
21 Luther: quoted in Seidel, p. 985.
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 THE MISANTHROPE

Leibniz the power of ideas operated in mathem

more particularly in the formula as a rule-for-co
the comprehension of an infinity of numbers. Le
speak precisely of the "formation [Bildung] of
lend unity to dramatic action. German Idealism t
versal of meaning from character as a determina
acter as a determination of freedom. Kant introduced the distinction
beween physical and moral character, distinguished the latter as a type
of thought from the natural dispositions of what he called temperament
(Naturel), and ultimately defined man as a rational being on the basis
of "what he is willing to make of himself." Hence, more precisely, the
enlightened man "has a character, which he himself creates, insofar
as he is capable of perfecting himself in accord with goals that he estab-
lishes for himself."22
One of the most interesting differences between French and German
language and culture is that the meaning of "character" as defined by
the philosophy of German Classicism appears in French for the first
time only a century later. We do not find a French equivalent to the
famous lines from Goethe's Torquato Tasso-"Es bildet ein Talent sich
in der Stille, / Sich ein Charakter in dem Strom der Welt"23--before
the phrase "former son caractere !" used by Andre Gide and by Andre
Maurois.24 This shows that in France the question of character was
posed primarily in terms of the social nature of man. What La Bruyere
and Moliere interpreted through their characters was further developed
in moral philosophy and psychology as a specific heritage of French
Classicism, and also taken up by the German Enlightenment in the
literary form of "moral portraits." Later this tradition continued in the
so-called "physiologies" or "tableaux" (e.g., of Paris, of France) which
were periodically revived in the nineteenth century as a way of portray-
ing society. Finally, it entered into the ambitious project of Balzac who,
as a historien des moeurs, wanted to produce a complete description of
his time. Contrary to this French development, a process of singulariza-
tion, similar to what Reinhart Koselleck has termed the paradigm
change from histories to history, was initiated in Germany. A singular
character based on the ability of an individual to create and to perfect
22 Kant; quoted in Seidel, p. 988.
23 Torquato Tasso, I.ii.304-05, in SW, VI, 222.
24 See the following entries under caractre in Paul Robert, Dictionnaire alpha-
be'tique et analogique de la langue francaise (Paris, 1965) : number 43, "On ne
peut connaitre son caractetre et surtout l'influence qu'on a sur lui, qu'autant qu'on
a passe par beaucoup d'alternatives de joie et de malheur" (Stendhal is an interest-
ing example of this transition; one's character first becomes evident through ex-
perience "im Strom der Welt!") ; number 44, "Les traits les plus marquants d'un
caracteire se forment et s'accusent avant qu'on en ait pris conscience" (Gide);
number 45, "Mais on peut former son caractere, on peut le refaire" (Maurois).
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COMPARATIVE LITERATURE

himself is detached from the pluirale tantum of so

acter as singulare tantunz becomes henceforth the
aesthetic formation (Bildung) which, in German
level of the ideal life and given a literary form in
The latter was unknown in France where the ideal of aesthetic forma-
tion seems to be absent in nineteenth-century culture and literature.
The modern character of the Misanthrope created by Molieire is
strongly affected by this multiple, changing horizon, as is shown by the
history of his reception.
In order to summarize Moliere's comedy, I shall follow the example
of French classicism and attempt to construct a portrait "a la manieire
de The'ophraste" from the details of Alceste's behavior. Misanthropy
can be defined as the melancholy temperament of a grouser (esprit
chagrin in the language of Moliere's time) who without any visible
cause is angry at everyone and meddles at every opportunity in order
to condemn the corruption of human nature and in doing so to find his
own solitary satisfaction. The Misanthrope is something like the follow-
ing: he wants to renounce the friendship of his only friend simply
because the latter received a third party with studied politeness and
afterwards had to acknowledge that he was, in fact, indifferent to him.
Alceste goes so far as to claim that if he had been caught behaving in
such a deceitful way he would have hanged himself immediately. When
a lawsuit is brought against him, he relies only on his own righteousness
to win his case, refusing all good advice and announcing that he would
gladly pay a goodly price to lose "Pour la beaute du fait" (I.i.203).25
When his case is lost in the first court, he refuses to appeal to a second
because a 20,000 franc fine would be a small price to pay for the
privilege of complaining with full justification about the injustice of all
humanity. When a would-be poet reads his most recent work to him and
awaits his praise, Alceste tells him candidly, "Franchement, il est bon a
mettre au cabinet" (I.ii.376). To complete the affront, Alceste presents
him with a poem that is an example of good taste-that is, of Alceste's
taste. In matters of the heart, he does not choose the woman who shares
his convictions, but rather confesses his weakness for an extremely
worldly and coquettish young widow, whom he is willing to accept
despite her failings so that he may purge her soul of them. When she
informs him that she favors him, he provokes her by asking if she tells
her other suitors the same thing and expresses his love with the bizarre
compliment: "Et c'est pour mes p6ch6s que je vous aime ainsi" (II.i.-
520). When he decides once and for all to turn his back on all mankind,
he is caught in the contradiction of wanting to take with him a member

25 All quotations from Le Misanthrope are from Volume II of the CEuvres

complhtes, cited in note 17.
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 THE MISANTHROPE

of the very society that is so hateful to him. But h

who is supposed to share his solitude from then on,
agree to this.
This character portrait allows us to see how the modern Misanthrope
contrasts with his ancient predecessor whom Moli"re possibly-if at all
-knew in the modern form of Shakespeare's Timon of Athens. The
scene is no longer a wilderness in which a Cnemon or a luckless Timon
must hoe or dig in the earth; now, society itself is the stage on which
the unsociable man must bear his contradiction, only to finally turn
away into an even deeper solitude. Moliere's Misanthrope is not taught
by others and is not brought back to reason from his delusion of autar-
chy. Nor, at the end of the comedy, when he persists in his unnatural-
ness, is he punished with the beating that fulfilled the classical specta-
tor's expectation of poetic justice. Now it is the Misanthrope himself
who poses as the judge of his age, constantly instructing his friends, his
lover, and eventually everyone.26 At the same time, the comic exaggera-
tion raises questions concerning the more profound justice of social
conventions, and the expected confirmation of poetic justice is not forth-
coming. Thus Moliere suggests, for example, that the "Marshals of
France"-the highest arbiters in courtly society-might decide whether
Oronte's sonnet is as bad as Alceste, doubly provoked, thinks it is. At
this point, the laughter prompted by the absurd cause and the spite of
the misanthropic judge of culture surreptitiously turns around and ends
up being directed against the arrogance of a royal authority that would
decide by decree what shall be considered beautiful.27 The comic in
Moliere is not simply based on a deviation from a societal norm of bien-
seance. Subversively the play draws attention to and revalidates what
had been repressed by the claim of the upper class to be the unques-
tioned representative of reason. The modern Misanthrope, who "im offi-
ziell Geltenden das Nichtige und im offliizell Nichtigen das Geltende
sichtbar werden ld8t," is, according to this famous formula of Joachim
Ritter, at the same time a comic and a morally ambivalent character:
in social matters because of his unconditional righteousness in a society
schooled in the value of biensdance, but also as a character, because of
the pathological foundation of his nature.28

26 La Bruyere's objection to this quality of Alceste is evident in his portrait of

the Misanthrope, which scarcely conceals his criticism of Moliere.
27 Hors qu'un commandement expris du Roi me vienne
De trouver bons les vers dont on se met en peine,
Je soutiendrai toujours, morbleu! qu'ils sont mauvais,
Et qu'un homme est pendable apris les avoir faits.
(II.769-72)
See on this matter Francesco Orlando, Lettura freudiana del Misanthrope e due
scritti teorici (Turin, 1979), pp. 43 ff.
28 See Ritter, "Uber das Lachen" (1940), in Subjektivitdit (Frankfurt, 1974),
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COMPARATIVE LITERATURE

Moliere makes the grandiose one-sidedness of A

playing him off against a counter-character. Alc
Philinte, the melancholic with the phlegmatic
ments of the two men are compared in turn with
figures of Cilime'ne, Eliante, and Arsino&. Th
communicating system of characters who mu
dialogically rather than monologically in reci
ceste's and Philinte's temperament and even th
are presented in accordance with the traditio
bodily humors. This theory was still held in high
science of Moliere's time,2 2 and it is entirely po
Moliere's contemporary audience recognized
pathology in the individual traits of these ch
spectator were acquainted with the pathological b
ures of Alceste and Philinte, the conflict of such
temperaments would have constantly challenged
side he should take and how he might find a r
these two extremes, because Moliere's play assails
and very self-righteousness of his society. But ev
lenges-which interpreters have answered in th
of reception in three different ways-threat
effects in moral reflection, the audience coul
laughter or smiles by the ultimate idiosyncrasy
tinguishes Alceste from Cnemon or Timon and
Bruyere and Boileau, was the very reason the ho
him. The schism between wanting to be and
itself in the comic self-contradiction of an atrabilaire amoureux who is
in principle a misanthrope but, by way of exception, is nevertheless in
love.
The response of Moliere's contemporaries indicates that they had to
change their views and realize why the comic figure Alceste was in bit-

pp. 62-92, and Odo Marquard, "Exile der Heiterkeit," in Das Komische, ed. Wolf-
gang Preisendanz and Rainer Warning (Munich, 1976), pp. 141 ff. I use Mar-
quard's comprehensive formulation.
29 See on this subject Rend Jasinski, Molidre et Le Misanthrope (Paris, 1951),
pp. 125 ff. The original subtitle was "l'atrabilaire amoureux." The following ex-
cerpts from dictionaries and medical tracts of the time can serve to illuminate
Alceste's character: "Maladie qui consiste dans une reverie sans fi6vre et sans
fureur, accompagn&e ordinairement de crainte et de tristesse sans cause apparente"
(Jasinski, p. 127). In the essay Les Caracteres des passions of the physiologist and
doctor Cureau de la Chambre, the final stages of the "haine mdlancolique" are
described: "C'est alors qu'une personne perd le souvenir de ses amis, de ses occu-
pations et de ses divertissements; tous les hommes lui paraissent comme autant
d'ennemis qu'elle fuit et qu'elle voudrait voir perir; enfin elle se hait elle-mime,
et, se degofitant de la vie, elle la laisse consumer peu A peu par la tristesse, ou la
finit par quelque violence" (Jasinski, p. 128).

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 THE MISANTHROPE

ter earnest.30 The spectators in the parterre (me

liere's day) found nothing to laugh at in the pl
connoisseurs and critics) laughed at the wrong time
taught, for example, that Oronte's sonnet, which w
quite beautiful, was being made fun of as a modish, c
by a would-be poet. Symptomatic of this change of
a certain Monsieur de Montausier. He summone
because he had been told that the Alceste everyone
his exact portrait. But the high-born man received
with surprising respect. He had read the work hims
and could now only thank Moliere because his M
most perfect gentleman he had ever encountered in
first public came to esteem Alceste to the extent th
that his ridiculous behavior and bizarre speech were
rare virtue, righteousness, and that no character
effectively against the corruption of his fellow men
Contemporary critics went so far as to praise the con
Alceste "maintains his character""34 in all situatio
his enslavement to his nature but rather his free will and honor which
prompted him to set an example for society. "Soutenir bien son car-
actere"-this newly coined meaning shows that in French Classicism
the concept of character encompassed both nature and will. This new
understanding presupposed that an individual in his social role main-

30 This formulation is taken from Hegel's critique of Moliere's characters.

Hegel maintains that the characters are so bitterly earnest about their goals, so
completely enslaved to their "narrow-minded passions," that they cannot "free
their spirit from its limitations." Therefore, in Hegel's view, Moliere's characters
are not truly comic, insofar as they lack what he attributes to the "more elevated
natures" of Aristophanic comedy: "the happiness and contentment of a subjec-
tivity which, sure of itself, can bear the dissolution of its goals and realizations"
(Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Asthetik, ed. Friedrich Bassenge, Berlin, 1955,
pp. 1103 ff., 1075 ff.). In a naive fusion of horizons, the new aesthetic norm of in-
dividuality is, as a "classic art form," projected back onto ancient Greek comedy
and used to deprive French Classicism's comedy of character of any claim to the
"truly comic."
31 See G. Michaut, Les Luttes de Moliere (Paris, 1925), pp. 203 ff.
32 This example is from a collection of documents concerning the reception of
Moliere's work. See the entry for June 4, 1666, in Recueil des textes et des docu-
ments du XVIIe siecle relatifs a Moliere, ed. Georges Mongredien (Paris, 1965).
33 "Qu'il ne pouvait choisir un personnage qui vraysemblablement pfit mieux
parler contre les hommes que leur ennemy" (Jean Donneau de Vise, "Lettre &crite
sur la comedie du Misanthrope," in Jacques-Gabriel Prod'homme, Vingt chefs
d'ewuvre (du Cid a Madame Bovary) juges par leurs contemporains, Paris, 1930,
p. 40).
34 "Qu'il sofitiendra bien son caractere, puisqu'il commence si bien de la faire
remarquer"; "il fait voir ce que peut l'amour sur le coeur de tous les hommes, et
sur celui du misanthrope mesme, sans le faire sortir de son caractere"; "on peut
dire qu'il sofitient son caractere jusques au bout" (Prod'homme, pp. 41, 43, 46).

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COMPARATIVE LITERATURE

tains the character embedded in him, but it did not

of the singular and the private, of the individual a
a public role. The modern view of Alceste as a misu
in a degenerate society first arose in German Cl
veloped by the Romantics. This major shift in the
Misanthrope was ushered in by Rousseau's critici
The classical understanding of the Misanthr
nounced point by point barely a century later.
Moliere for adapting his comedy to the prevailing
-for not having seen through the ideology of his s
view, Molieire exposed to ridicule the only sincere,
man who had the courage to point out society's
ridicule de la vertu" on stage was to commit the ul
holding from a deluded society the fact that its m
in knowledge and the arts were being purchased by
its morals and virtues. Was the derided enemy of h
the unrecognized friend of humanity; was it not b
humanity that he was compelled to hate and denoun
ideal of human nature was thus imposed by this
the classical meaning. In Rousseau's view, Alc
hoinmme naturel of the French Enlightenment and
cal fate of the "citoyen de Genrve," who in his sin
mask of social appearances and wants to set an e
a natural existence.
It is apparent in the subsequent effects of Rousseau's new interpre-
tation that a new understanding of a classical work often involves both
a gain and a loss in meaning. Rousseau himself recommended that the
text be revised so that Alceste could become a tragic figure. The "misan-
thrope amoureux" should be abandoned and instead Philinte the con-
formist should be exposed to ridicule.37 What Goethe, echoing Rous-
seau, called the solitary "Konflikt mit der socialen Welt, in der man
ohne Verstellung und Flachheit nicht mehr umhergehen kann" no
longer tolerates the spirit of comedy. Moliere's Misanthrope could no
longer be understood simply as a comic subject because in his societal
tragedy the inner world of a great individual had been revealed. Thus
Goethe asked "ob jemals ein Dichter sein Inneres vollkommener und

J5 I shall confine my discussion to this change of horizon, to the second great

transition which runs counter to Rousseau and determines the modern interpreta-
tion, and, finally, to the last literary manifestation of this character, Hofmanns-
thal's reply to Molieire's Misanthrope. I plan to discuss the historical elaboration
of this unusually rich history of reception later in a more detailed study.
36 Jean Jacques Rousseau, "Lettre ' M. d'Alembert sur les spectacles," in Du
contrat social (Paris, 1960), pp. 150 ff.
37 Rousseau, pp. 153 ff.

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 THE MISANTHROPE

liebenswfirdiger dargestellt habe," as did Molier

Schlegel, in Goethe's view, completely failed to recog
the Romantics were not the only followers of the tr
readers of Rousseau drew another conclusion: Al
found ridiculous or tragic during the Ancien Regi
freedom is developed comedy will have exhausted
ceste have lost his right to complain. Perhaps Stendh
he wrote that the children of the revolution could n
to enjoy the pleasures of classical comedy."' Its ch
replaced by a new source of the comic for which
had found the formula: "se tromper sur le chemi
heur." Alceste in particular should have realized th
derived from the power of the monarchy. Therefor
tain only a historical interest for his nineteenth-cen
and this actually happened after 1789-his enemy of
preted as a Jacobin avant la lettre.40
The second great shift in the history of reception
results from a reversal of Rousseau's paradigm. It
questioned premise that sincerity was the ground fo
that is now doubted. The psychoanalytic interpre
liere's character gave rise to a profusion of aest
readings and thereby weakened the prejudice that
proaches to literature reduce the artistic character of
alien to art.41 This new understanding can be summ
ing questions, which had not been asked before: Is th
Alceste rightly and without loss of meaning redu
character of the sincere individual-a character not found in the tradi-
tion before Moliere-or does he not rather remain a profoundly am-
bivalent character ?42 When Alceste demands of Philinte and eventually

38 In Goethe's review of Jules Antoine Taschereau, Histoire de la vie et des

ouvrages de Moliere (1828), in Goethe, SW XIV, 948.
39 Racine et Shakespeare (1823-25), in Stendhal, Oeuvres completes, ed. Pierre
Martino (Paris, 1925), I, 45 79. The formuation "se tromper sur le chemin qui
mene au bonheur" is found at the end of the chapter "Le rire" (pp. 25-38).
40 See Stendhal, Oeuvres Intimes, ed. V. del Litto (Paris, 1981), I, 94, (on
Fabre d'Eglantine's Philinte de Moliere) and I, 119-21 (a trenchant critique of
Le Misanthrope). Camille Desmoulins had already written: "Moliere dans 'Le
Misanthrope' a peint en traits sublimes le caractere du republicain et du royaliste.
Alceste est un jacobin, Philinte un feuillant achev&" (Camille Desmoulins,
(Euvres, Paris, 1874, II, 254); quoted by Peter Schunk in "Zur Wirkungsge-
schichte des Misanthrope," GRM, NS 21 (1971), 7.
41 See Lionel Gossman, Men and Masks (Baltimore, 1963) ; Judd David Hu-
bert, Moli~re and the Comedy of Intellect (Berkeley, 1962) ; Orlando (cited in n.
27) ; and Karlheinz Stierle, "Formen des Komischen und Form der Kom6die in
Molieres Misanthrope," in Moliere, ed. Renate Baader, Wege der Forschung, 261
(Darmstadt, 1980), pp. 406-39.
42 See Lionel Trilling, Sincerity and Authenticity (Cambridge, Mass., 1972).
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COMPARATIVE LITERATURE

of everyone, "Je veux qu'on soit sincere" (I.i.35),

of others in question and never his own ? Why
unconditional recognition of others ("Je veux
I.i.63) when he finds them incorrigible and, indeed
toto ? Is something else hiding behind his dema
sincerity-perhaps the compulsive need to subject
not the initially legitimate protest against the s
self-delusion of society always change suddenly int
who despises the world and considers only himse
Stierle has noted that "in Moliere's Misanthrope
fear-the dissolution of society by the I that po
is thematized in such a way that the public is f
through laughter."43 If the audience of French
itself from such fears through laughter, wouldn't
if today's audience were to see in an enemy of h
appearance of a tyrant ?
It is certainly possible, however, to laugh freel
Der Schwierige. Considering it in relation to Mo
say that this belated comedy of character corrects,
model. If contrary to all classical expectations-e
most intricate action of the play strengthens a
Misanthrope is at last cured, this comic catharsi
the fact that in Count Biihl Hofmannsthal has crea
an eminently modern "character." For this "diff
first conceived in terms of the traditional charact
is in fact far from being a character coined by
Biihl is-like the hero of Musil's contemporary n
qualities" or, better yet, a "man without intention
first wanted to call his hero in a title he later r
natural character of French Classicism and the s
of German Classicism are discarded with the fig
eignty of the "difficult man" originates in that
feature by feature the qualities he lacks in order t
of his being, an image County Biihl denies and f
unexpected action. Thus the self-contradiction o
the schism between his nature and his will, is c
specifically modern contradiction between being fo
for others and dissolved in the cathartic outcom
43 Stierle, p. 409.
44 All quotations from Der Schwierige are from Hugo
Lustspiele II, in Gesammelte Werke, ed. Herbert Steine
the earlier title, Der Mann ohne Absicht, see R. C. Nor
Hofmannsthal's Der Schzwierige: Early Plans and their
(1964), 98 ff.
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 THE MISANTHROPE

this denouement is by no means a triumph of na

principle of individuality. Nor is Count Biihl, wh
think "daB man etwas aus sich machen kann"
the German Idealist sense. His comic dilemma doe
autonomy of a subjectivity that, in Hegel's phras
bear the dissolution of its goals and realizations,"
heteronomy of an action which finally solves his d
bringing him nolens volens back to sociability.
If one sees in Hofmannsthal's comedy a palin
phony to Moliere's comedy of character, then th
rige originates in the contrariness of a plot w
"odiosen Konfusionen" (p. 305) a "man without
nothing seems more demanding than to understa
Sache zur andern kommt" (p. 183). At a soiree wh
awful he sets out to accomplish diplomatically th
intentions: the reconciliation of his former mistr
the engagement of his nephew with Helene, and
whom he loved in secret. What effects the ironic reversal of the classical
role of the Misanthrope is that Count Biihl is no longer the critical
adversary but rather the perfect representative, admired by all, of the
aristocratic society of Old Vienna, who, from a superior position, pre-
sides over its declining art of conversation. His difficulty is caused not
so much by the fact that the medium of conversation, on which he con-
stantly meditates, itself becomes problematic to him. He first gets into
an "unentwirrbarer Knaiuel von MiBverstaindnissen" (p. 154) by not
avoiding the role of lecturing others, although he, in contrast to Alceste,
considers lessons impossible. He fails in his mission at every step and
indeed produces the opposite of what he intended. Helene finally teaches
him the most unexpected, indiscreet, and at the same time simplest of
all lessons which penetrates the wall of confusion he had erected and
relieves him forever of the difficulty implied in his noncharacter. The
lesson of the comedy with respect to the character of the Schwierige is
contained in the explanation Helene gives for his bizarre behavior-an
explanation which is a worthy close to the long history of Misanthrope
interpretations, since it teaches us to see the ultimate cause of his self-
contradiction in a new light: "Was Sie hier hinausgetrieben hat, das
war ihr Mil3trauen, Ihre Furcht vor Ihrem eigenen Selbst . . . Vor
Ihrem eigentlichen tieferen Willen" (p. 297). With respect to the be-
havior of the Schwierige in society the lesson of the comedy is the cure
of the unsociable man by Helene's confession of her love. What seems
to be a social "Enormit+it" (p. 299) allows this remarkable pair to attain
sociability in the process of finding themselves-paradoxically, in the
very act by which they withdraw from society: "Aber es ist die letzte
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COMPARATIVE LITERATURE

Soiree," announces Count Biihl, "auf der sie m

(p. 313).
One of Hofmannsthal's concise and program
erreichte Soziale: die Komondien"'4" His come
ironically, but there is also a "promesse de bonh
comic resolution can only initiate the reconci
cannot complete it. The normative seriousness of
anew since the engagement kiss must be sanction
sister and the bride's father as their delegates. B
comic catharsis a desire to turn the solitude o
regained sociability shared by two, which leaves
I should like to explain this hope by introdu
which, I suppose, may be pertinent not only in
life. If a truth which could convince all would be
truth possessed by one man alone would be too l
things which are true for at least two people?
Helene, who begin history anew as a first couple
and Eve, and who succeed in destroying the i
sessed by a single person (that is, the illusion
well as of modern individualism), thereby pa
which can perhaps someday constitute a "promes
Universitdt Konstanz
(Translated by Sharon Larisch)
45 Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Aufzeichnungen (Frankfurt, 1959), p. 226.

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