Les Liaisons Dangereuses Pierre Choderlos

Les Liaisons Dangereuses

Pierre Choderlos de Laclos' famous eighteen century novel, Les liaisons dangereuses, is written in the epistolary form, and has two main protagonists: Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont. The immorality of these two main characters is the reason why the novel has been considered scandalous for a long time. They seem to be united in a sort of vicious alliance which makes them plan a number of seductive games and plots that involve almost all the other characters in the novel. Even from the second letter in the book, addressed by the Marquise to the Vicomte de Valmont, part of the scheming of the two is discerned: the Marquise challenges the Vicomte to seduce the innocent and young Cecile de Volanges, who had barely come out of the convent. Valmont's answer reveals an even more audacious plan: he contends that the seduction of Cecile would bring him no glory, being a much too facile task and that he is engaged into a greater undertaking- the temptation of the virtuous, married Madame de Tourvel. The plot of the novel goes on in this way, and the two make a great number of victims besides Cecile and Mme de Tourvel. In the end however, Valmont dies in a duel with Danceny, provoked by the Marquise. Before he dies, he makes all the letters of Merteuil public.

The theme of the novel seems to be perfectly expressed by William Blake in his poem, the Clod and the Pebble. The pebble's 'version' of love seems to be the same that the Marquise and the Vicomte entertain: love is a selfish feeling that seeks only to please oneself:

Love seeketh only self to please,

To bind another to its delight,

Joys in another's loss of ease,

And builds a Hell in Heaven's despite."(Blake, 211) love relationship is not based therefore on a mutual exchange of feelings between two persons, but on a game which does not include sentiments in its rules. In this sense, love is seen as the gratification of sexual desires and aims at pleasure only. However, the satisfaction that comes from this kind of game is not a simple one: the two seducers do not aim merely at gratifying their desires or at obtaining easy victories from their victims. The most important thing is the game itself, and the pleasure derived thereof. As the Marquise emphasizes, the game, although vicious, does not seek to obtain plain pleasure, but such pleasure that is "purified through excess": "Don't hope for any pleasure from it. Is there ever pleasure with prudes? At least, with those who are in good faith reserved even at the height of pleasure, you are only offered a partial fulfillment. The total self-abandon and the delirium of pleasure in which pleasure is purified through excess itself, these benefits of love are unknown to them" (Letter 5) Thus, according to Merteuil, in the game of love, one has to be always one step ahead of the pleasure itself, and delight not in the feelings of love but in those of power and dominance. This theory of love is essentially narcissistic, as the object of love is completely overshadowed by the subject. As Merteuil advises, the other person involved in the game of love should always be treated like an ordinary person, devoid of any special charm, since the only charm is, in fact, the one projected by the person that loves: "What I would ask of you then is, as you can see, cruelty! That this rare, wonderful Madame de Tourvel be nothing more than an ordinary woman to you, as she in fact is; [...] the charm that we think we find in the others, is only in us; it is only love that makes the object of love seem so beautiful."(Letter, 134) Thus, love for another person does not exist, it is only the love for oneself that becomes manifest in any relationship and the love for the game itself. In this sense, love is no longer a human feeling or an impulse, but an art which needs premeditation to be fulfilled. The definition that Merteuil gives of love is very telling: "Don't you recall that love is, like medicine, only the art to help nature?" (Letter 10) the feelings that come naturally must be repressed or transformed by the art of love.

It is the advice that Merteuil herself follows in her affairs. When she describes the moments she shares with her lovers, her feelings are always half premeditation, half sentiment:

There, half out of premeditation, half from sentiment, I threw my arms around him and fell at his knees. 'To prepare you the surprise of this moment,' I said, 'I reproach myself for having troubled you with an appearance of ill-humour, with having veiled for an instant my heart from your gaze. Forgive these faults, I will expiate them by my love.' You may imagine the effect of that sentimental discourse. The happy Chevalier raised me and my pardon was sealed on the same ottoman upon which you and I so gaily and in the same way sealed our eternal separation."(Letter 10)

However, the novel's strength comes in contrasting this king of selfish and dominating love, with the other variant, also given in Blake's poem:

Love seeketh not Itself to please,

Nor for itself hath any care;

But for another gives its ease,

And builds a heaven in Hell's despair."(Blake, 211)