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Alexander Lucie-Smith on Antoine François Prévost, Manon Lescaut

Belief in the Blood

If it had not been for Puccini’s opera, I would never have heard of Manon Lescaut. As it was, finding a copy of the novel behind the opera wasn’t easy: it was not kept on the open shelves in my public library, but locked away; and the basilisk stare with which the librarian gave me my copy left me in no doubt that this was a work of the utmost depravity.

And so, happily, it proved: a story of two randy teenagers, a novel about passionate sexual attraction that is described in terms both comprehensible and believable. Few writers evoke passion credibly. Jane Austen does (think of Wickham and Lydia, Mr Crawford and Maria), Dickens emphatically does not; our contemporaries either evoke gales of laughter or win the Literary Review Bad Sex prize. Manon Lescaut, which appeared in 1731, is one of the first novels ever written, and is the template for all subsequent portrayals of human passion. As a youngster of 19 I was enthralled; twenty-five years have passed, and I am enthralled still; no one beats the Abbé Prévost, as he is usually designated, as a chronicler of the organs a short distance below the human heart.

My younger self was further struck by the fact that the author was an ordained Catholic priest. Though a somewhat rackety character, he was a Benedictine monk, albeit one who spent practically no time in the cloister. His novel had the good fortune to be banned soon after publication on grounds of obscenity – surely a publicist’s dream.

The Story of the Chevalier des Grieux and Manon Lescaut, to give the book its full title, is the story the eponymous Chevalier tells ‘a gentleman of quality’ whom he meets on the road to Le Havre. Des Grieux, a young man of good family, is trailing after Manon Lescaut, his mistress, who is being transported to the New World in a convoy of convicted

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If it had not been for Puccini’s opera, I would never have heard of Manon Lescaut. As it was, finding a copy of the novel behind the opera wasn’t easy: it was not kept on the open shelves in my public library, but locked away; and the basilisk stare with which the librarian gave me my copy left me in no doubt that this was a work of the utmost depravity.

And so, happily, it proved: a story of two randy teenagers, a novel about passionate sexual attraction that is described in terms both comprehensible and believable. Few writers evoke passion credibly. Jane Austen does (think of Wickham and Lydia, Mr Crawford and Maria), Dickens emphatically does not; our contemporaries either evoke gales of laughter or win the Literary Review Bad Sex prize. Manon Lescaut, which appeared in 1731, is one of the first novels ever written, and is the template for all subsequent portrayals of human passion. As a youngster of 19 I was enthralled; twenty-five years have passed, and I am enthralled still; no one beats the Abbé Prévost, as he is usually designated, as a chronicler of the organs a short distance below the human heart. My younger self was further struck by the fact that the author was an ordained Catholic priest. Though a somewhat rackety character, he was a Benedictine monk, albeit one who spent practically no time in the cloister. His novel had the good fortune to be banned soon after publication on grounds of obscenity – surely a publicist’s dream. The Story of the Chevalier des Grieux and Manon Lescaut, to give the book its full title, is the story the eponymous Chevalier tells ‘a gentleman of quality’ whom he meets on the road to Le Havre. Des Grieux, a young man of good family, is trailing after Manon Lescaut, his mistress, who is being transported to the New World in a convoy of convicted prostitutes. Two years later, the Chevalier returns to France, meets the gentleman again, and tells him the whole story. He first met Manon at an inn in Amiens; he was 17, a Knight of Malta (hence the designation ‘Chevalier’); she was younger, and about to be forced into a convent by her family. The two elope, make love at a coaching inn at Saint-Denis, and then live together in Paris. However Manon, though she loves her young Chevalier, is addicted to pleasure and comfort, and des Grieux has no money; she betrays him, transferring her affections to a richer and much older man. Des Grieux, kidnapped by his family, is eventually persuaded to forget her. He decides to become a priest and enters the seminary of Saint Sulpice. Here, two years later, Manon finds him, and he returns to her, throwing over the priesthood and all thoughts of virtue. The lovers are blissfully happy, and he forgives her her previous duplicity, but her faithfulness is not destined to last. On the surface this novel is what its priestly author (himself no stranger to love, though biographical details are sketchy) claims it to be: a moral tale, a terrible warning about what happens when young men of good family fall in with bad girls. For Manon is the archetypal bad girl: sexy, affectionate, heartless, self-justifying, a lover of luxury, whose badness, we are sure, a man will forgive again and again. It is a tribute to the author’s skill that he convinces us of this without ever telling us anything about Manon’s appearance. What he does tell us is that she is charmante, a term that must have stronger connotations in French than in English, because for the sake of her charms des Grieux risks imprisonment, exile, poverty and moral degradation. He becomes a bad son, a scrounger, a cardsharper, a liar, a pimp and even a murderer. But if the novel is to be read as a warning against charm and charming girls, then why is Manon so charming? To end up enslaved to such a charmer is a fate most male readers would, if not envy, at least understand. What is outwardly a warning turns into an advertisement for what it condemns. It is true Manon shows us that charm is bad for those who fall under its spell, for no one could rationally choose to end up like des Grieux; however, at the same time, we feel that rationality is not enough, that the world is well lost for love, and that any suffering is worth just one of her embraces. Des Grieux’s fate – to be the lover of Manon – is not really a tragedy, for he gets what he wants. So does she, even though her fate is not what one would rationally choose either: but Manon’s life, as told here, convinces us that the life of passion is the only life worth living. This is a subversive message, and not just in the context of the mores of 1731. Duty, family and ‘virtue’ take second place to personal satisfaction. Manon Lescaut makes the startling claim that one’s sexual behaviour and inclinations, essentially private and unverifiable in the public forum, should be the deciding factor in life. It is a libertine’s charter. The novel is set in the French Regency: Louis XIV and his deeply Catholic morganatic wife Madame de Maintenon are dead, and the duc d’Orléans is ruling on behalf of the child king Louis XV. Orléans presides over an era of licence after the stifling atmosphere of the old reign. Manon Lescaut illustrates how the old ways have run their course: while his father and his friend Tiberge try their best to recall des Grieux to good behaviour, it is clear that ‘virtue’ has lost its powers of persuasion. The path of goodness and religion seems impoverished, and des Grieux’s attachment to the Church is barely mentioned. Des Grieux’s father is described as a good parent, but he appears grumpy and overbearing, a distinctly old-fashioned figure. Tiberge, des Grieux’s fellow student in the seminary, is a much more sympathetic character, but he is quite unable to instil virtue either. Just as charme is the leitmotif for Manon, tendresse is the word associated with Tiberge. However, his tendresse for des Grieux is not returned but rather is exploited by its object. Just as Manon manipulates the man who loves her, so des Grieux manipulates the man who loves him. This unspoken homoerotic subplot emphasizes that des Grieux really has only one thing going for him – his looks. Manon’s immoral brother knows this, and suggests the Chevalier become the lover of a rich old lady in order to make some money; the Chevalier himself knows he is handsome, indeed he tells us so, remarking on his good head of hair (he does not followed the old-fashioned custom of wearing a wig). His looks are what attract Manon: for both, love is purely a physical passion. Virtue, religion and duty have been discarded in a sexual revolution. It is Tiberge, the trainee priest, who utters the line that reminds us that this is, as well as being a love story, a novel of ideas. He visits des Grieux in the prison of Saint-Lazare (an institution that exists to reform debauchees of noble birth, in des Grieux’s case with notable lack of success), who explains to him the impossibility of giving up Manon. Tiberge exclaims: ‘God forgive me! You sound just like one of our Jansenists.’ What he means is that des Grieux has seemingly fallen into the heresy of denying the efficacy of free will. (The Jansensists were followers of Cornelius Jansen, Bishop of Ypres, who, though a Catholic, maintained a Calvinistic idea of divine grace and free will, a doctrine he developed in his commentary on St Augustine, a book entitled Augustinus.) The point about free will is crucial: des Grieux calls Manon ‘the mistress of my soul’, for she has subdued his ability to make decisions; he has been taken prisoner, lost his moral freedom. In tune with Jansen’s theology, des Grieux’s behaviour suggests that human freedom is an illusion, and that as human beings we are powerless to resist temptation. So des Grieux’s experience points in two contradictory directions: only the personal matters; however, what is personal to you is in fact decided by forces beyond your control. Des Grieux places responsibility for his actions at the feet of malign fate: if only he had not taken his evening stroll that day past the inn and not seen Manon. How different everything would have been! Long before D. H. Lawrence, here is a book that seems to maintain that the blood is always right. Lawrence declared: ‘My great religion is a belief in the blood, the flesh, as being wiser than the intellect. We can go wrong in our minds. But what our blood feels and believes and says, is always true.’ The story of des Grieux and Manon is a case study of the truth of this assertion. Tiberge’s reference to Jansen may have another coded meaning. St Augustine has been the obsession of French theologians throughout the ages, and Jansen’s great work was a commentary on Augustine; Augustine, in his Confessions, tells the story of a well-born young man – himself – who strays into a debauchery of sorts but is then reclaimed for virtue and religion. Augustine escapes the straitjacket of the private and personal and discovers in the Christian religion a universal narrative that makes sense of life. Des Grieux takes the opposite journey: he abandons religion and ‘virtue’, which make no sense, for a supposedly real world of love, sex and passion. Philosophers call this solipsism, the belief that only what the individual experiences is real. In this journey des Grieux is a pioneer; and where he has led, many have followed.

Extract from Slightly Foxed Issue 22 © Alexander Lucie-Smith 2009


About the contributor

Alexander Lucie-Smith, like the Abbé Prévost, is a Catholic priest.

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