It is all good. Molière will not enter the Pantheon. The one that Fabrice Luchini nicknamed “the eternal boss” may be 400 years old this Saturday, January 15, the Elysée has opposed an end of inadmissibility. The actor and director Francis Huster, the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, and the president of the Regional Council of Île-de-France, Valérie Pécresse, tried to multiply the steps, nothing helped. At the Élysée, it is claimed that the Pantheon is a symbol of the Enlightenment and only those who have defended the Republic and its ideals enter it.
“It’s totally false”, protests the historian Martial Poirson, author of Moliere. The making of a national glory (Seuil) and curator of the exhibition of the same name which brings together nearly 200 works in Versailles. “On the contrary, the Pantheon was created to honor the precursors of the Enlightenment,” he says. Descartes, who lived at the same time as Molière, was one of the first candidates. For Diderot, Molière heralded the Enlightenment. It’s a shame, because there are few more consensual authors. His entry into the Pantheon would have been a symbol of national reconciliation. »
Three months before the presidential election, would the decision be more electoral than cultural? Anyway, according to his biographer Georges Forestier, we are far from certain to know where Molière’s remains are. Buried at the foot of the great cross in the Saint-Joseph cemetery in the middle of the night (as were the actors who had not signed a waiver of their profession), he was transferred to the Museum of French Monuments to the Revolution, then to Father -Lachaise in 1817, where he rests next to La Fontaine. But, according to Forestier, there is no indication that the bones found there are the right ones.
Tartuffe rediscovered
This decision will not prevent France from celebrating in a thousand and one ways the fourth centenary of the most read, most played and most translated French writer in the world. Credit where credit is due, at Gallimard, the prestigious La Pléiade collection publishes his complete works in two volumes. A scholarly edition annotated by the best specialists. It must be said that since the fall, publishers are having a field day. This ranges from scholarly texts to comic strips and national press specials.
But the big event that will launch the season is the resumption of all his plays by July by the Comédie-Française, otherwise known as “the house of Molière”.
The season opens this Saturday, January 15 with a Tartuffe unpublished directed by the Belgian Ivo van Hove and which features Denis Podalydès and Dominique Blanc. This piece reconstituted by Georges Forestier claims to represent the original text in three acts performed before Louis XIV on May 12, 1664. A text which has disappeared, but which the historian has reconstructed from the indications provided by the documents of the time.
Stuck between the Jansenists and the pope, Louis XIV could not afford to give free rein to such a pamphlet mocking the devout. It will be necessary to wait five years and the return of religious peace for the censorship to be lifted. In the meantime, Molière had added two acts and transformed the devotees into false devotees. This Saturday, the premiere will be broadcast live on the screens of two hundred cinemas throughout France.
Four hundred years later, Molière remains the most universal author of the French language. He belongs to all the regions of France, which he traveled for twelve years before settling and conquering Paris, where he became the first star of French theater, his biographers tell us. Even today, it goes beyond all labels and pleases both the right and the left, Parisians and provincials, Marxists and nationalists. “As we have very little information on the character, who left no manuscript and no correspondence, everyone is able to forge their own Molière”, explains Martial Poirson.
The inventor of modern comedy
From an author protected by the king, the Revolution will make him a republican patriot by putting aside works too closely linked to the monarchy, such as his comedies-ballets created with Lully. During the Restoration, Louis-Philippe will play The misanthrope during the inauguration of the History Museum in the former royal palace of Versailles.
But it’s the IIIand Republic which will make it an absolute myth. With the establishment of free, secular and compulsory schooling, Molière invaded programs, textbooks and competitions. “It represents a sort of secular breviary,” says Poirson. A school of virtue for the people. Because Molière is never contemptuous. It is never overhanging. He includes himself in the criticism. His laughter always warns against excesses. »
After the Great War, with Louis Jouvet then Jean Vilar, he became the author of the people. At the same time, in Quebec, Les Compagnons de Saint-Laurent played Deceits of Scapin and Imaginary sick.
“Molière is the inventor of modern comedy,” says Martial Poirson. It gives its letters of nobility to a despised genre, without renouncing its popular dimension. Drawing inspiration from Italian theatre, he was applauded at court and in literary salons. He will be protected by the monarch by divine right while, paradoxically, he criticizes authority and the abuse of power. »
Strangely, the only regime that will not support Molière is that of Napoleon 1er. Bonaparte nevertheless read it carefully, since we have an edition of his works annotated by the emperor. “Unlike Louis XIV, Napoleon would never have authorized the Tartuffe which he saw as a threat to social order,” Poirson argues.
The only other downside is found in Rousseau, who considers that the theater corrupts morals and society in general. Molière having carried it to its perfection, he recognizes, one cannot therefore approve of it.
As we have very little information on the character, who left no manuscript and no correspondence, everyone is able to forge their own Molière.
Feminist Molière?
“Molière is the French spirit in all its insolence, wrote Francis Huster in Le Figaro. He denounces the hypocrites, the impostors, the power of the powerful. The big winner is freedom of expression. »
For some, like the journalist and actor Christophe Barbier (The world according to Molière, Tallandier), he would even be a feminist before his time. Molière is “a prophet of women’s liberation,” he wrote. […] Never, in any play, does a character who mistreats, humiliates, enslaves or underestimates women emerge victorious from the plot. The phallocrat, without exception, is played, denied, even humiliated”.
Martial Poirson is more circumspect. Even if, he says, “Molière is certainly the author of his time who grants the most space to women. He does not hesitate to raise the question of the condition of women, and we feel in him a real love of female characters. “An attitude that is certainly no stranger to his fusional encounter with Madeleine Béjart, this already confirmed actress who will put her foot in the stirrup both in love and on the boards.
A sign that the author is still as universal as ever, the theater company Kaddu Yaraax, from Dakar, has just translated into Wolof Imaginary sick. In these times of pandemic, she should be on tour in Senegal throughout the year. This author who belongs to the entire Francophonie “has exhausted all the registers of the French language, from the most popular to the most sophisticated, says Martial Poirson. It is a modern language which is never complex, because Molière was an actor as much as a writer”.