Some scattered thoughts on Molière and plays [updated]

1/ Some time last year, I read The School for Wives (in Richard Wilbur’s translation). What I didn’t know was that the play was a scandal at the time, virtuous people lost their minds, so Molière wrote a play in response, called The School for Wives Criticised. The attacks continued: a journalist called Donneau de Visé published Zelinde or The True School for Wives Criticised; then the following month, a young playwright called Boursault put on The Painter’s Portrait. Then Molière launched a counter-attack: a play called The Impromptu at Versailles.

I didn’t know any of these things! The French are mad. 

This reminds me of the chain of novels in 19th century Russia: Turgenev published Fathers and Sons, exploring some ideas hot in Russian society at the time; Chernyshevsky wrote What Is to Be Done? as a direct response; Dostoyevsky then wrote Notes from Underground, to criticise the ideas in Chernyshevsky’s (apparently dreadful) novel. The argument was much bigger: Dostoyevsky continued exploring and attacking certain ideas in his later novels; Tolstoy wrote something called What Is to be Done?; Chernyshevsky’s book influenced many people including Lenin, who wrote a pamphlet with the same title; Nabokov lampooned Chernyshevsky in various books, especially in The Gift; there would have been other novels I didn’t know about… but Turgenev – Chernyshevsky – Dostoyevsky was the main chain. They were debating ideas through novels! Lunatics. But now I’ve learnt that Molière and his critics were arguing through plays. 

2/ Recently, someone on Twitter asked whom you would pick if you could read only 10 authors for the rest of your life (I know, it’s one of those stupid questions on the hellsite). Molière was one of my choices. 

I love that Molière knows human beings are all silly and irrational and ridiculous, but he depicts people with such warmth and humour. And he is so funny. 

3/ I don’t have a lot to say about The School of Wives Criticised and An Impromptu at Versailles, which I just read in Maya Slater’s translation. But this passage is interesting: 

“DORANTE You writers make me laugh with your rules: you make people look small if they don’t know them, and you knock the rest of us silly with them—it happens every day. To hear you talk, you’d think that the rules of dramatic art were the greatest mysteries in the world. And yet they’re nothing but a few simple observations, based on common sense, on what can prevent such writings from giving pleasure. With that same common sense that inspired those remarks in the first place, you can come to the same conclusions nowadays, quite simply, without the help of Horace and Aristotle. I wonder—isn’t the greatest rule of all that you must give pleasure to the public? And if a play has done that, hasn’t it followed the right path? How can a whole audience be mistaken about such things? Isn’t a person the best judge of his own enjoyment?” (The School of Wives Criticised, Scene 6)

Compared to the plays of 17th century France, the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries in England have little regard for the classical unities (unity of action, unity of time, unity of time) and other rules. I also argued with someone (on the hellsite) recently about Shakespeare; he said the plays were carelessly written and full of imperfections. But who cares? The concept of perfection in literature is, to me, overrated. Who cares about some flaws and imperfections when we’re facing greatness? Who cares that certain rules are violated when these visionary authors have great ambitions and experiment with new things?  

I’m now imagining Shakespeare writing a play to respond to his critics though. 

4/ Recently I argued again with the “Plays are meant to be seen, not read” crowd. People just love to repeat mantras, don’t they? No matter how well you advocate for reading plays, no matter how many times you explain the differences between plays and film scripts, these idiots still appear and spout the same irritating bollocks. 

The thing is, I don’t even believe that these philistines go to the theatre often. I don’t believe they watched more plays than I read them last year. I have read 9 Molière plays so far. Do those people know more Molière plays? I don’t think so. 

But that’s enough ranting for today. If you haven’t read Molière, you should.

Update on 6/7: I have just read Les Femmes savants (The Learned Ladies, or The Clever Women in Maya Slater’s translation), which means that I have now read 10 plays by Molière. 

The Argonautica: “Dear, dear Medea, why are you in tears?”

1/ The Argonautica has a clear structure: the first half (Books 1 and 2) is about Jason and the Argonauts’ voyage to Colchis for the golden fleece; the second half (Books 3 and 4) is about their time in Colchis, and about the love story between Jason and Medea (whom we have known from Euripides’s play). 

“They all strode from the hall, and Jason shone 

brilliantly in his grace and beauty, gorgeous 

above the others, and the maiden fixed 

her eyes, sidelong, on him, appraising him

obliquely from behind her veil. Her heart 

was smouldering in its distress. Her soul, 

like a pursuing dream, went fluttering

about his footsteps as he walked…” 

(Book 3) 

(translated by Aaron Poochigian) 

One interesting thing is that I knew the Aeneid was inspired by, and modelled after, the Iliad and the Odyssey, but now I’m pretty sure that it’s also influenced by another Greek epic poem—the Argonautica. There are a few similarities but the main one is that in the Aeneid, Venus makes Dido fall in love with Aeneas so that she helps him and his men in Carthage; in the Argonautica, Hera and Athena help Jason get the golden fleece from King Aeëtes by making Medea fall in love with him and betray her own father. 

(The manipulation in the Aeneid is much crueller and more callous however: Venus knows her son’s fate, knows he has to travel to Italy, knows it’s not going to lead to anything—why does she make Dido fall in love with him? The gods are cruel). 

“Now night was covering the earth in darkness, 

and sailors from their ships were studying 

the stars of Ursa Major and Orion. 

Travelers and watchmen turned their thoughts toward sleep, 

and deep, deep slumber was relieving even 

those mothers who had lately lost their children. 

No dogs were barking in the streets; no voices 

echoed; silence held the blackening gloom. 

Sweet sleep, however, never eased Medea—

No, worry and her love for Jason roused her.

[…] Her heart was fitful, restless in the way 

a sunbeam, when reflected off the water 

swirling out of a pail or pitcher, dances 

upon the walls—yes, that was how her heart 

was quivering…” 

(ibid.) 

When I wrote about the Aeneid a while back, I wrote that unlike Homer, Virgil didn’t really enter his characters’ minds; he didn’t depict Aeneas’s thoughts, didn’t depict any sense of conflict between duty and Dido, didn’t tell us his thoughts on marrying Lavinia (how does she compare to Creusa, or Dido?); but Virgil did depict Dido’s state of mind, her love, her heartbreak. Similarly in the Argonautica, Jason is bland and other characters are seen from the outside, but Apollonius Rhodius enters Medea’s mind and depicts her struggle between love for Jason and loyalty to her father. 

2/ I still think the Argonautica is a kind of anti-heroic epic. Jason doesn’t have the strength and power of Akhilleus, or the wit and craftiness of Odysseus—he’s almost a random dude forced to lead an expedition.   

“His hands were tingling, quivering with vim. 

Think of a warhorse eager for a fight, 

the way it neighs and stamps the ground, the way

it rears its neck and pricks its ears, exulting—

that’s how the son of Aeson looked, exulting 

in the excitement of his newfound strength.” 

(ibid.) 

Our hero only becomes a hero when strengthened by Medea’s witchcraft. 

3/ Like Virgil in the Aeneid, Apollonius depicts his characters, on the way home, encountering the same challenges faced by Odysseus: Calypso, Circe, Charybdis and Scylla, the Sirens, Helioz’s cattle, and so on. There’s some variation though: 

“… And so, 

without delay, and this time to the heroes,

the Sirens hurled lilylike contraltos

out of their mouths. The heroes would already 

have run aground if Orpheus of Thrace, 

son of Oeagrus, hadn’t taken up 

his lyre, set his fingers to the strings, 

and strummed the rhythm of a lively march 

so that their ears were buzzing with a rival 

and upbeat song. And so the lyre’s vibrations

overpowered all those virgin voices.”

(Book 4) 

That’s different. That I like. 

But if Odysseus has to choose between Charybdis and Scylla and make the difficult choice of sacrificing some of his own men, Jason doesn’t—Hera interferes and Thetis guides the Argo through the sea monsters—they have it easier! The Argonautica doesn’t quite explain—or at least I’m not sure—why Hera helps Jason. Odysseus does get help from Athena, but he also finds the way home and regains his kingdom thanks to his own intelligence, cunning, and archery skills, as well as his ability to trust the right people. What does Jason do? He doesn’t seem to have any of that, and also doesn’t do much to get help from Medea, who’s already smitten with him. 

We see the same contrast when they meet Alcinoös and his wife Arete. Odysseus has to impress them, charm them, tell them his story. What does Jason do? Nothing. It’s Medea who begs Arete for help, who then speaks to her husband. 

Apollonius may deliberately create an anti-heroic epic, placing “an average guy” in the centre (why?), but what we have is a main character who is not compelling. Perhaps the author intends to spread out the interest so that not only Jason but the other Argonauts also have a voice, but I don’t think the characters are really alive and distinct. 

4/ The enjoyment of the Argonautica lies mostly in two things: the adventures, with all the strange customs and creatures the Argo encounters (I actually wonder if a few things in the poem inspired Gulliver’s Travels), and the imagery. 

I like this, for example: 

“Hour after hour they lacked a course and drifted 

idly the whole day through. As when a serpent 

wriggles, hissing, on its crooked way

to slip from under a ferocious noon 

and squints all round, its slits aglint with flickers

like little streaks of fire, until it finds 

a crack and glides into a burrow—so

the Argo wandered for a long time seeking

a navigable outlet from the lake.” 

(ibid.) 

The Argonautica may not be on the same level as the Iliad, the Odyssey, or the Aeneid, but it’s a fun narrative.

The Argonautica: “As when a bull/ that has been goaded by a gadfly bolts/ out of the meadows…”

First, some context. Also known as Jason and the Argonauts, this is an epic poem written by Apollonius Rhodius (or Apollonius of Rhodes) in the 3rd century BC and modelled after Homer. This is the same Jason from the Medea myth. 

1/ Argonautica is about Jason and the Argonauts travelling to Colchis to retrieve the Golden Fleece. The Iliad has a famous Catalogue of Ships; the Argonautica begins with a 10-page catalogue of the crew. 

I didn’t know the myth, didn’t know Orpheus and Heracles (Herakles) were part of the crew! 

2/ Let’s look at the writing: 

“As soon 

as radiant Dawn with her resplendent gaze 

looked on the steep cliff face of Pelion, 

and day broke fair, and breezes stirred the sea

that dashed, in turn, upon the headlands, Tiphys 

awoke and roused the dozing crew and bade them 

hasten aboard and man the oars.” 

(Book 1) 

(translated by Aaron Poochigian) 

This reminds me of the image of the Dawn with rosy fingers in Homer.  

I can see other influence from the Iliad and the Odyssey: 

“As a lonely maiden

clings desperately to a gray-haired nurse, 

her last remaining friend, and weeps because 

she lives a heavy-life without protectors, 

only a stepmother who so assails her

with fickle insults and relentless scorn

that she cannot stop weeping, and her heart 

is bound and gagged by all this misery, 

and she cannot sob out the countless sorrows

that throb within her, so Alcimede

was weeping, weeping, and she couldn’t stop.” 

(ibid.) 

This is similar to the long, elaborate similes we find in Homer—known as Homeric similes. Like this one in the Iliad, for instance: 

“Comparable to the throes 

a writhing woman suffers in hard labor 

sent by the goddesses of Travail, Hera’s 

daughters, Twisters, mistresses of pangs, 

the anguish throbbed in Agamemnon now.”

(Book 11, translated by Robert Fitzgerald) 

The Iliad especially is filled with comparisons between the armies and animals—I also see similar ones in the Argonautica. 

“As bees swarm from a rocky hive and buzz 

about the handsome lilies and the dewy

meadow itself rejoices as they flit 

from bloom to bloom collecting sweet fruition, 

so did the women press around the men 

and weep as they embraced them one last time…” 

(Book 1) 

This is a lovely image: 

“Orpheus meanwhile 

plucked his lyre and sang a lovely hymn 

to honor Artemis, the Sailors’ Savior, 

the Potent Father’s Daughter, since she guarded 

the cliffs beside them and the coast of Iolcus. 

Fish both big and small came leaping out of 

the sea to revel in the vessel’s wake. 

In just the way innumerable sheep, 

after a satisfying meal at pasture, 

treat the footsteps of their rustic guide 

back to the paddock, and he leads by playing 

shepherd music on a bright-pitched pipe, 

the shoal of fish accompanied the ship.” 

(ibid.) 

I enjoy the writing, enjoy Poochigian’s translation. 

Like Homer, Apollonius compares men to animals. Like Homer, he piles simile upon simile. 

“Imagine how, upon a winder’s day, 

gray wolves will suddenly descend, unmarked 

by herdsmen and precision-sniffing hounds, 

to terrorize a flock of countless sheep—

how, as the wolves glare back and forth deciding 

which one to pound on first and carry off, 

the sheep stand clumped together, tripping over 

each other—that’s the way the heroes sent 

grim panic through the proud Bebrycians. 

And as when beekeepers or herdsmen smoke

a giant hive concealed in a rock, 

the bees at first are crowded and confused, 

abuzz with rage, and then the sooty coils 

of vapor suffocate them, and they all 

dart from the rock and scatter far and wide, 

so the Bebrycians die not hold firm 

for long, but fled in all directions, bearing

news of Amycus’ demise.” 

(Book 2) 

The quote in the headline comes from Book 1, describing Heracles as he hears that disaster has befallen Hylas. 

3/ As Jason and the Argonauts go on a voyage, they have adventures and face dangers and temptations—I see Homer’s influence on the depictions of the Argonauts’ encounters with people and other creatures—I see Homer’s influence on Apollonius’s imagery and comparisons. Jason however is no Odysseus. 

“Jason was so dumbstruck and at a loss 

he uttered nothing one way or the other—

no, he just sat there gnawing at his heart, 

feeling the burden of catastrophe.” 

(Book 1)

Not much of a leader, is he? 

The Argonautica is filled with exciting and dangerous adventures—they stop at Lemnos, where the women have killed all the men; they encounter six-armed giants; they lose a member of the gang to a horny water nymph; they meet an arrogant king who challenges all visitors to a boxing match; they meet Phineus, a seer condemned by Zeus to be tormented by harpies; and so on—many things happen, and yet Jason barely takes the lead, or stands out. It's Heracles, not Jason, who resists temptation and urges the men to leave the women of Lemnos. It’s Peleus, not Jason, who speaks with resolution when “terror blanched their cheeks” after Argus’s warning. As the leader and as the main character, Jason is even more bland than Aeneas. But perhaps that’s the point, perhaps Apollonius is deliberately creating an anti-heroic epic.

Dombey and Son: the good, the bad, the ugly

Yesterday, coincidentally on the anniversary of Dickens’s death (9/6), I was finishing Dombey and Son. That took a while! But now I have finished.

This is in many ways a very good novel. The centre of Dombey and Son is the Dombey family: the coldness of Mr Dombey, the relationship between him and his daughter Florence, the character of little Paul, the pride of Edith. That’s where the interest lies. 

At this point, Dickens is trying a new kind of novel (so I have been told), perhaps unsure of himself, and his supporting characters—his supposedly comic characters—generally lack vitality: Sol Gills and Captain Cuttle are not particularly funny; Walter Gay is bland, especially since his return from seas; Dr Blimber and his pupils don’t leave a strong impression, except Mr Toots; Mrs Pipchin is interesting in the first half of the novel, when little Paul stays at her boarding house, but loses vividness when she becomes Mr Dombey’s housekeeper; James Carker has some excellent scenes and the potential to be a great villain, but pales in comparison with Uriah Heep; Mrs Brown and Alice mirror the relationship between Mrs Skewton and Edith and move the plot forward, but they aren’t interesting characters on their own; even Major Jo Bagstock, who has a distinct manner of speaking, becomes tiresome after a while; etc. Parts of the novel drag because the supporting characters are not very funny or memorable, because Dickens seems bored with them, because he seems to focus his interest on the Dombey family. 

When Dickens returns to the Dombeys however, it is magnificent. Who says Dickens can’t do psychology? Who says Dickens can’t write women? Edith is a great character, full of pride, full of resentment and self-loathing, but also full of affection for Florence. When I wrote about In Search of Lost Time before, I pointed out that Proust’s method of characterisation—his way of conveying the depth and complexity of his characters—was depicting the different facets of a character, at different periods, in different environments, before different characters. Shakespeare, Tolstoy, or Dostoyevsky does something else to convey and explore complexity, but that is what Proust does, and that is also what Dickens does with Edith in Dombey and Son. 

“Florence had a dread of him, which made his presence in the room a nightmare to her. She could not avoid the recollection of it, for her eyes were drawn towards him every now and then, by an attraction of dislike and distrust that she could not resist. Yet her thoughts were busy with other things; for as she sat apart—not unadmired or unsought, but in the gentleness of her quiet spirit—she felt how little part her father had in what was going on, and saw, with pain, how ill at ease he seemed to be, and how little regarded he was as he lingered about near the door, for those visitors whom he wished to distinguish with particular attention, and took them up to introduce them to his wife, who received them with proud coldness, but showed no interest or wish to please, and never, after the bare ceremony of reception, in consultation of his wishes, or in welcome of his friends, opened her lips. It was not the less perplexing or painful to Florence, that she who acted thus, treated her so kindly and with such loving consideration, that it almost seemed an ungrateful return on her part even to know of what was passing before her eyes.” (Ch.36) 

Edith is full of life because she’s different towards her mother Mrs Skewton, towards Mr Dombey, towards Florence, and others; she’s different towards Mrs Skewton in public and in private; she’s different towards Mr Dombey before and after the wedding; she’s different towards Florence alone and in the presence of Mr Dombey. She’s alive. She’s flesh and blood. 

The confrontations between Edith and her mother, and between Edith and her husband, are some of the greatest scenes I have read in fiction. 

“If his handsome wife had reproached him, or even changed countenance, or broken the silence in which she remained, by one word, now that they were alone (for Cleopatra made off with all speed), Mr Dombey would have been equal to some assertion of his case against her. But the intense, unutterable, withering scorn, with which, after looking upon him, she dropped her eyes, as if he were too worthless and indifferent to her to be challenged with a syllable—the ineffable disdain and haughtiness in which she sat before him—the cold inflexible resolve with which her every feature seemed to bear him down, and put him by—these, he had no resource against; and he left her, with her whole overbearing beauty concentrated on despising him.” (ibid.) 

The battle of the minds here is one of the best aspects of the novel. Mr Dombey is also a great character—a fascinating study of a cold, proud man. 

“Towards his first wife, Mr Dombey, in his cold and lofty arrogance, had borne himself like the removed Being he almost conceived himself to be. He had been “Mr Dombey” with her when she first saw him, and he was “Mr Dombey” when she died. He had asserted his greatness during their whole married life, and she had meekly recognised it. He had kept his distant seat of state on the top of his throne, and she her humble station on its lowest step; and much good it had done him, so to live in solitary bondage to his one idea. He had imagined that the proud character of his second wife would have been added to his own—would have merged into it, and exalted his greatness. He had pictured himself haughtier than ever, with Edith’s haughtiness subservient to his. He had never entertained the possibility of its arraying itself against him. And now, when he found it rising in his path at every step and turn of his daily life, fixing its cold, defiant, and contemptuous face upon him, this pride of his, instead of withering, or hanging down its head beneath the shock, put forth new shoots, became more concentrated and intense, more gloomy, sullen, irksome, and unyielding, than it had ever been before.” (ch.40)

A cold, proud man, inflexible, unmovable. And yet with Edith, he is baffled, he is conflicted, he feels stuck. Mr Dombey is a great counter-example to the popular claim that Dickens only writes caricatures: he’s complex, he develops, he changes. 

The best part of the first half is little Paul. The best part of the second half is Edith. I have complained about Florence—a spotless heroine is dull—but I think she does improve towards the end, when she leaves, and when she marries Walter Gay, knowing her father would disapprove. It’s fascinating to read Dickens and watch him improve over time: here he was having trouble with the gentle and forgiving Florence, but he figured it out by the time he got to Amy Dorrit and Esther Summerson.

A very good book. 

PS: 11/6 is my birthday. If you’d like to send a gift or support the blog, I’m on Ko-fi. Thanks to Harmon and Shruti for your support. 

Visiting Jane Austen’s House Museum

A few days ago, I finally managed to visit Jane Austen’s House Museum in Chawton, Hampshire. It was great. 

This is where Jane Austen revised her first three novels, and wrote her last three novels Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, and Emma. The table’s much smaller than I thought! 

I don’t know what flowers Austen had in her garden back then, but here are a few photos of mine of the flowers now. 

Also wandered around Chawton. Tiny, charming village. 

In case anyone wonders if I have visited Shakespeare’s Birthplace Museum in Stratford-upon-Avon, here are a few photos from 2023. 

On translation and anachronism

The other day, I tweeted about Tom Payne’s translation of The Art of Love: “Picked up this copy of “The Art of Love” but I had to quit after several pages. The translator used phrases like “girlfriend”, “safe sex”, “one-night stand”, etc. This is Ovid!” 

The tweet went semi-viral, attracting some obnoxious people who seem to think that nobody’s allowed to say a single word about a translation from Latin unless they know the language—a phenomenon that never occurred when I discussed translations of Russian, French, Japanese novels over the years—this strangely seems to only happen with Latin and ancient Greek. 

However, I also got many good comments from both people who agreed and disagreed with my complaint and knew Latin. And it led me to think more about this subject: how traditional or modern should a translation be? When is it too modern? When does it appear anachronistic? Because these things seem to be arbitrary, and most of the time, just come down to personal preference. 

When we want to read 19th century Russian novels, for example, we can go for a translation into 19th century English, as the Maudes and Constance Garnett were alive around the same time, or we can go for a modern translation. With Don Quixote, we can read Thomas Shelton if we want 17th century English (it’s also the version that Shakespeare read). But we do not have contemporary English translations—in the sense of “from the same period”—of Homer or Sophocles or Ovid—so all translations are modern—various levels of modernity. I can see the argument that a Victorian translation of Ovid is not any less anachronistic than a new translation—it may even impose Victorian sensibilities on the poems. I however do not buy the argument that because Ovid was modern for his time, he should be translated into today’s English, into the latest slang and colloquial terms (of course Ovid was contemporary to his contemporaries—what kind of argument is that?). However open and modern Ovid appears to us, he’s still a writer from ancient Rome and his works inevitably reflect the lifestyles and customs and values and beliefs of ancient Rome; it’s jarring to come across modern concepts in Ovid. Even if a word accurately conveys the meaning (which some people say “one-night stand” and “safe sex” here do), words don’t only have meanings—words also have connotations and associations—words have baggage. 

It might be arbitrary, and personal, that I prefer “Isn’t she exquisite?” (Aylmer and Louise Maude, revised by Amy Mandelker) to “She is gorgeous, isn’t she?” (Anthony Briggs) in War and Peace, but is it entirely arbitrary and personal when I say that “my ex” sticks out like a sore thumb in The Brothers Karamazov (Ignat Avsey)? Does it not take you out of the story when you read Don Quixote and come across “girlfriend”, “boyfriend”, or “a certain delicious je ne sais quoi” (Tom Lathrop)? Does it not make you stumble when you see “one-night stand” in a Roman poem? The entire translation may be in modern English, but some phrases stick out. Some phrases draw attention to themselves. 

Where we draw the line is the art of translation. Slang, I think, appears more obviously, distractingly anachronistic. 

Another thing to consider as well is that Homeric Greek or Shakespearean English for example wasn’t the way normal people talked. It’s one thing to modernise the language; why do some translators go for something colloquial and mundane when the original is highly literary? Is it not a fair point when readers—whether or not they know the original language—complain that Emily Wilson opts for phrases such as “a complicated man”, “tote bag”, “pep talk”, “playtime is over”, etc. in her translation of the Odyssey? Defenders of Emily Wilson have said “polytropos” means “complicated”, but “poly” means “many” and “tropos” means “turn”—surely Robert Fagles’s “the man of twists and turns” or Robert Fitzgerald’s “that man skilled in many ways of contending” is more interesting and evocative than Emily Wilson’s commonplace “a complicated man”? Those of us who do not know the original language and have to rely on translations may not be able to judge accuracy, but we can comment on other aspects of a translation: how it sounds in the target language, whether it’s good prose/ poetry, whether some choices appear anachronistic, whether we want to read it or switch to a different translation… And yet some people want to shut down the conversation, saying we’re not qualified to say anything if we don’t know the original. 

Let’s have a discussion.