Alceste, Molière’s famous misanthrope, is angry. He says he sees everywhere “only injustice, self-interest, betrayal, deceit” and admits, for this reason, to having conceived “a terrible hatred” of human nature. He hates some “because they are wicked and evil” and others because they are complacent towards the former.
He hates everyone, with one exception, and that’s his big problem. Alceste, in fact, is in love with the beautiful Célimène, who nevertheless embodies all the faults that he condemns. Inconsistent, sir? Certainly, and he recognizes it, admitting that “reason is not what regulates love”. This is already a beautiful, eternal lesson to be learned from this work, but this masterpiece by Molière still has much more to tell us.
Performed for the first time in 1666, this so-called “high” comedy, because it raises serious questions, is being revived these days at the Théâtre du Nouveau Monde (TNM) in a production by Florent Siaud, with the excellent Francis Ducharme in the title role.
Are we right to believe that beyond the entertainment it provides, this play, 358 years later, still has essential things to reveal to us about our humanity? Yes of course. We have never finished, in fact, wondering whether we should love the human race or be content to support it, whether human nature is perfectible or immutable, whether sincerity is better, in society, than the civility of facade and if wisdom, finally, requires fight or flight.
It is these serious and troubled questions that Molière tackles in this comedy that the critic and academician Émile Faguet (1847-1916) described, in 1914, as a “masterpiece of delicacy, of finesse , wit, the tone of good company and at the same time just and deep psychology.”
Sincerity and tolerance
From scene 1 of the first act, Molière establishes the stakes of the play. When the curtain opens, Alceste is already angry. Philinte, his friend, seeks to understand what explains this anger towards him. The misanthrope doesn’t feel like explaining himself. “Me,” he said, “I want to be angry, and I don’t want to hear. » Philinte demands explanations. Alceste then deigns to elaborate.
He has just seen his friend throw flowers to a man he barely knows. Such hypocrisy scandalizes him. “I want us to be sincere,” he said, “and as a man of honor / We don’t say a single word that doesn’t come from the heart. » For him, “it is to esteem nothing to esteem everyone”, and it is important that, always, “the depths of our heart in our speeches show themselves, / Let it be he who speaks, and that our feelings / Never mask themselves under vain compliments.”
Then begins the exchange between the two friends which is at the heart of the work. Philinte contests the value of the absolute sincerity claimed by Alceste. Politeness, he asserts, sometimes requires “hiding what is in your heart.” What is the point of hurting people unnecessarily? Telling a woman she’s too old to be a flirt? To a verbomotor that these stories bore us? To a Trump voter that he is illiterate?
Philinte also pleads for tolerance. “My God,” he recommends to his friend, “let us worry less about the customs of the times, / And give a little grace to human nature; / Let us not examine it with great rigor, / And see its faults with some gentleness. »
Philinte therefore first appears as a wise armchair stoic, determined to accept realities, even unpleasant ones, which do not depend on him and to deal with them philosophically. “And it’s madness at any other time / To want to get involved in correcting the world,” he believes. True wisdom consists rather in taking “men as they are”.
Faced with an Alceste permanently inhabited by “a dark mood” and “a deep sorrow”, the temptation is strong to opt for the fluid philosophy of his friend. We all know a surly, frustrated Alceste, with a knife between his teeth, always ready to burn down ideas and people that don’t belong to them. For several years, public spaces and social networks have been full of these atrocious fuels for hatred. However, we do not want them as friends and we strive, in order to live happily, not to be them.
Casualness and resignation
So I was going to believe that Philinte is a better model than Alceste when I came across the point of view of the great author, director and actor Francis Huster. In his Molière’s love dictionary (Plon, 2021), Huster makes an Alceste of himself by crushing the “pathetic” Philinte.
In schools, writes the actor, students are taught that Alceste is undrinkable – which is not false – and that, if everyone behaved like him, “the world would become unlivable”, while Philinte is presented as a model of common sense. “In reality,” said Huster, “the world is rotten and disgusting because of these hypocrites from Philinte who, precisely, let everything be done and undone and redone. Those like him who have only been fakes saying yes to everyone, lying down where they should have stood up and fought on the contrary. » Huster is categorical: “No, the example of righteousness and loyalty is Alceste. »
It is true that a careful reading of the work adds to our trouble. Alceste, always quick to “break in the face of all mankind”, is heavy and exhausting. The accommodating Philinte therefore appears to be better company. The latter’s attitude, however, is based on a disillusioned vision of the world which borders on contempt for humankind.
Philinte’s casualness may seem charming, but its underlying nature is frightening. Like Alceste, he sees all the vices of his fellow men, but he welcomes them with resignation because he does not believe in the perfectibility of the human race. “Yes,” he confides to Alceste, “I see these faults of which your soul murmurs / As vices united to human nature; / And my spirit is finally no more offended / To see a deceitful, unjust, self-interested man, / Than to see vultures hungry for carnage, / Evil apes, and wolves full of rage. »
Philinte, in other words, finds men evil by nature, concludes that nothing can be changed and is content to be amused by it. “All these human faults give us in life / The means to exercise our philosophy,” he says to Alceste, who chokes with indignation. Huster is therefore right: Philinte cannot be given as an example to young people since he is only a satisfied coward. With men like him, everything that is bad in the world could only continue or get worse while we laugh.
Alceste without the rage
Back to Alceste, then, whose all-out anger aims to improve the world? When Philinte, for example, reproaches him for having set his sights on the fickle Célimène, Alceste retorts that he clearly sees all the faults of his beauty, but that he hopes that his love for her “from these vices of the time can purge his soul.
At the beginning, we imagine Philinte as an optimistic and luminous character and Alceste as a pessimistic and dark character. Quickly, however, we discover that the first is the true pessimist, and that he only finds happiness by opting for abdication, while the second remains a fragile optimist, who scolds his fellow men in the hope of see change for the better. Alceste is painful, it’s true, but it invites effort towards virtue; Philinte is coolcertainly, but his complacency maintains everyone in their mediocrity.
Think about it: which of the two would you want as a teacher, as a coach, as a parent, as a political leader, as an authority figure? The one, a little rough, sometimes hurtful, who constantly points out what is wrong while inviting others to correct it, who flatters, who maintains the illusion that everything is fine in the only possible world?
These days, the sweet Philinte is popular, but we would sometimes need the demanding Alceste, at school, in the family, in politics, to tell us our four truths, to remind us of the need to a commitment to the better. To be convincing, however, this contemporary Alceste should understand that his anger is not a virtue in itself and that his exaggerations undermine his words.
What if, deep down, we didn’t have to choose, as is almost always the case in literature? What if we should instead combine the best possible? In this case, we would cultivate the taste for the ideal and the moral requirement of Alceste, without which we could end up believing that vices are virtues, but we would also remember the lesson of Philinte according to which tolerance towards what offends us and the art of pleasing in conversation are attitudes necessary for the preservation of harmonious social relations.
Alceste wants to seduce Célimène, but keeps scolding her for all this behavior. The young woman is not wrong to be surprised: “Indeed, the method is completely new, / Because you love people to quarrel with them; / It is only in angry words that your ardor bursts forth, / And we have never seen such a scolding love. »
You don’t convince anyone by insulting everyone. An ideal furiously presented scares away even people of good will. Word to the wise, left and right, hello!