Looking into the past, it is impossible to describe the atmosphere. Intellectual, refined, socially complex, to be sure; but beyond that we can only surmise and extrapolate. -- Or maybe we can do more. We can sense the ambience between the lines of the literary works that are, in some sense, the emissaries of the Salons. And where better to begin than at Saint-Sulpice?

Ever since the unfortunate "incident of the tossed bone," there has in fact been a special link between the Ninon de Lenclos and the name Saint-Sulpice (the priestly order, not to be confused with our web site). Perhaps Ninon's respect for religion was thus not of the highest order. In any case the 17th C. author Tallémant des Réaux recounts, in a famous Historiette touching on Lent of 1651, that instead of fasting, persons from the Royal Court would feast sybaritically and conspicuously at Ninon's Paris apartments into the late hours. It happened that during one of these indiscreet celebrations, a bone was tossed out of a window and it struck, of all people, a passing priest (who moreover was of Saint-Sulpice!!). The priest, we are saddened to report, complained to his curé, and also embellished on the story, saying not only that bones were being tossed out of windows during nights of the holy fast, but in addition two persons had been killed at the party! The resulting tohu-bohu required an application of Ninon's considerable connections to calm.

Be the case what it may, what we do know is that the women who were the leading figures of the Salons were -- even adjusting for the over refinement known as preciosité and for the baroque romanticism of the atmosphere -- gifted with intelligence and charm. That they also enjoyed the privileges of aristocracy and wealth, including powerful social connections, should not obscure the extraordinary talent and character they displayed. La Princesse de Clèves, a novel published in 1678, written by Mme de La Fayette, is a book altogether too easily dismissible for the artifice of courtly elegance which seems to circumscribe it. Its style may seem stilted from today's vantage, but it is a germinal work in a tradition we can follow to 19th C. Romanticism and even to 20th C. "cool".

The Marquise de Sévigné and Ninon de Lenclos

Mme de Sévigné put an indelible mark on salons even though she spent much of her life outside of Paris. She is synonymous with a natural grace and an unaffected, fluid elegance that is quite inimitable. Born Marie de Rabutin Chantal, she was married at the age of eighteen to the marquis de Sévigné, a charming womanizer who was killed seven years later in a duel fought over a mistress. Through this blessing in disguise, Mme de Sévigné was thrust into veuvage, widowhood, which was the only condition that could create independence for women of a certain social and financial station in 17th C. France. Among other things, this allowed her to develop into quite probably the greatest epistolarienne in French history. Her letters became famous and today can be had in three handsome Pléiade volumes from Gallimard.

The marquise de Sévigné's voice (she detested pretense) is lively, feminine, penetrating, now challenging, now sympathetic. There is a curiously melodic quality to her writing. She displayed a remarkable emotional range and an almost modern flexibility of mind; but she also possessed the gift of intimacy. To the intellectual males who attended the Salons, she and others like her brought a moral and spiritual standard.

We should add to such qualities, a masterfully subtle erotic presence. Ninon de Lenclos (already referred to in Mlle Mauvornin's intro to salons) was as famous for this combination as for her arresting physical beauty. She became something of a legend; "daring sensuality" was Gary Kamiya's characterization in the web-zine Salon. Women like her (although how many could there have been?) were able to link powerful sexual energy to aesthetic and intellectual conversation -- a fusion of idealism, manner and sensuality that would have been quite intoxicating. Just as the desire to surrender can increase proportionately with the danger associated with surrendering, the desire for adventure increases in proportion to the sharpness with which the lines constraining our behavior are drawn. In the 17th-C. social context, a Ninon de Lenclos would be devastating exactly because she presented an entirely different set of standards: the eye of the woman whose mind could grasp the complexities of the intellectual sphere, but whose instincts were closer to the boudoir. She was able to weigh those around her from a more sensually-evolved viewpoint; hence she made notorious observations such as "if men's bodies were as solid as their spirits, few would have much to brag about". She was a great temptress, for some the most dangerous kind of woman -- a "knowing" one, to echo the name of a 20th-C. perfume.

Hypnotic Arousal

There is little doubt that Ninon de Lenclos stimulated the sensual awareness of the persons around her. She raised erotic awareness to the status of a cognitive mode, that is to say, a way of perceiving the world that was valid and that revealed the familiar in a new light. She shifted attention to qualities that are only revealed in the bedroom, and she made these seem important. "It takes a hundred times more spirit to make love well, than to command armies," she is reported to have said. Thus she fascinated, and it may be safe to assume that she was even idolized by members of both sexes. One is reminded of François Boucher's outrageously erotic 1740 painting, "Diana Leaving Her Bath", in which the artist presents one of Diana's nymphs gazing, from a near-crawling position, in hypnotized adoration at the gracefully extended foot of the goddess.

Such states of being hypnotized by the amorous idol disclose a particularly French, and particularly Baroque, even Rococo, formula for what is meant by the folie d'amour. The hypnotic state in which one encounters this type of passion is intimate, private and powerful -- what Marivaux later termed "transports". The lover becomes the emotional prisoner, even slave, of the beloved. These realities are little discussed in the contemporary world because they transcend genders and roles and approacch a state that is purely emotional, instinctive and, at its finest, spiritual. The world is concentrated in the relationship, and nothing else exists. The beloved becomes an idol at whose feet the lover is privileged to offer his ardor. Indeed, it is a sort of schooling. Nothing teaches like ardor; nothing is as memorable as desire when it is experienced with every atom of one's being. Desire is a fire that ravages, consumes and empties. A lover of Ninon's might have felt, through this experience verging on total emotional annihilation, that he was being emptied, feminized - as if he were female and she, more independent, was the male. Caught by this phenomenon, such a lover might have appreciated the delicious irony posed by her last name, which means "enclosure".

Ninon and Mme de Sévigné knew each other well -- perhaps a little too well, as Ninon is known to have seduced both the marquise's husband and her son. Even Mme de Sévigné's son-in-law was reputed to have been tempted, although we do not know the details. Ninon's antagonists were prejudice and moralistic denial of the sensuous, and she found both of these embodied in religious hypocrisy.

The above quote might of course mislead the reader into the impression that Mme de Sévigné was somewhat prudish (nothing could be further from the truth) or, worse, defenseless against Ninon. There is no reason to underestimate either the seductiveness or the sophistication of the marquise, however, nor should one mistake either her exclamations or her warmth for simplicity. Mme de Sévigné's stunningly fluid, unprepossessing style and her capacity for circumspect observation, present many revelations of history and psychology, embedded in loving letters to a daughter, friend or relative. And she was certainly no bore: an idol in her own right, she was intensely courted, not just for her wealth, and was once ejected from a posh Paris hotel for leading too "lively" a life-style.

Maps and Strategies

These vignettes provide sketches of the emotional and psychological tapestry against which the salon conversations took place. In no way should we assume today that we are more advanced in understanding the pathways of the heart and mind, than those who managed to weave romantic and philosophical -- or to cite another classic polarity: sexual and theological -- verities into a coherent vision. Thus the profound insight of these women, and of some of the men who frequented them, into human behavior and mores would have gone beyond the "traditional feminine arsenal" for navigating the treacherous waterways of amour. And what could be more French than a mix of clarity and passion, of sexuality and religion? The more ruthless and clear the vision the better. The enormously admired writer and romantic figure Mlle de Scudéry created a map of the territory of love, the Carte de Tendre, as she called it -- a geography of the journey from first meeting to mad passion and union, through a country irrigated by the river of "Inclination", and if one drifts too far from its magical flow, one encounters the "Lake of Indifference" on one side and the "Sea of Enmity" on the other. The delicacies of the language, combined with the expectations of gallantry made for a richly baroque texture within which the amoureux could pursue their interests.

But behind the whimsical, parlor-game surface of the famous Carte are some hard edged truths. The rules of love were being formulated.

Les Politesses Amoureuses

If we look at the literary products by women who participated in these Salons, from Mme de La Fayette to de Sablé and de Scudéry, we might also temper any criticism with the recognition of the literary conventions of the day and the degree of realism, or lack of it, that was expected at the time. Conventionality was but one mask through which a master weaver worked.

In matters of the politesses amoureuses, we begin with politesse; it is the packaging, and the surprising erotic force and sensuality we may discover deeper within is maintained at all costs within social norms. If we can read La Princesse de Clèves with a readiness to "breathe within the imagery of the work", we can intuit much deeper waters and a sharper consciousness -- in spite of the somewhat relentlessly vague and idealized descriptions of the characters.

But articulation has a price. The vision of love that emerges from the Salons is often taken to be a cynical and pessimistic one. It is a temptingly easy assumption. Love is presented as selfish, because it is driven by the desire to possess; dangerous, because it overflows all control ; humiliating, because it makes the lover a slave; and false, because its satisfaction almost certainly assures the rise of complacency if not of infidelity. In the next century, another great French philosopher of love, Marivaux, wrote:

"De toutes les façons de faire cesser l'amour, la plus sûre est de le satisfaire. Le coeurs ardents et sensibles cessent bientot d'aimer parce qu'ils se hâtent trop d'aimer." (The surest way to end love is to satisfy it. The most ardent and sensitive hearts soon stop loving because they were in too much of a hurry to taste it.")

Stratagems

Why such views might have gained currency is a question that leads us toward a central secret. In the French Baroque view, love is not about fulfillment. It is about desire and what it does to the self. It is a modern psychology because it is an evolutionary psychology: it describes the effects of love in terms of transformation of the lovers. If one rushes to satisfy passion, one risks killing it; one certainly interrupts the sequence of energies and inner events which, if sustained, are creative and transforming.

Ironically, it is for this creative role that the view of love in the Baroque French tradition has been accused of being pessimistic. Yielding to the "sequence" of passion – seen by its disparagers as a kind of elegant parlor version of Hogarth's "Rake's Progress -- or surrendering to forces that may lead to one's peril, are unacceptable to conventional wisdom, which detests adventure involving potential social or financial risk. The French 17th C. view seems strikingly amoral. That is because it sides with the power and force of love itself, not with any individual lover. If the French vision has a virtue, it is that it blames no one. It finds the recipe for tragedy in the very rules of love, in its fateful, inexorable power -- perhaps it is for that reason more closely allied with the Greeks.

In any case, while happiness and fulfillment are possible outcomes, they are neither the goal nor the ideal of this view of love. Happiness and fulfillment were overlaid as ideals upon this vision by the bourgeoisie, who needed to justify marriage economically, and to rationalize their guilt about arranged marriage. It was ok to throw one's daughter into unpredictability and peril, even if the husband seemed boorish or abusive, because love leads to happiness, and love buttressed by money virtually assures it. To the degree that we, in our contemporary world, have laundered our passion by belief in love as the passport to happiness – bad outcomes being accidents or quirks of fate, somewhat like airplane disasters -- it is possible that we have devolved, gone backwards from a more advanced view of passion.

The vision of the salons is that the purpose of love is to subject the personality to the transformations imposed upon it by desire. It is an adventure and nothing is guaranteed. Or, one might say that in the fullness of energy amplified by desire, the self in some sense is fulfilled, it reaches the apogee of its self-knowledge. This self-restraint, which is not imposed but is discovered in the very heart of love, reveals to us an inner relationship between denial and acceptance, surrender and control, monasticism and decadence. The realization that one has never been alive before love, and that one is fully committed to something beyond oneself and feels alive because one is aware of that condition, are crowning moments; but these are not necessarily connected in any way to fulfillment in the conventional sense, which avoids both the risks and rewards of passion. Ninon's lover might have encountered the highest ecstasies of happiness and the greatest depths of despair in a very short period of time. Whether he felt imprisoned by his own passion, or abandoned when her interested waned, the process involved a spiritual transformation – at least as long as it was survived. Insight and self-liberation are profound prizes, and not commonly obtained in the world of the senses.

All of that contrasts with the truly cynical view in which love becomes an object; it is corrupted; the lover becomes a capitalist of the heart. The emotions are then calculatingly used as an element of personal gain. What is then lost is contact with the most thrilling phase of love, its incipience and concealment, where it communicates itself through the subtlest of signals; where torment and longing are inseparable from pleasure, and where the noblest ideals are merged with shameless duplicity and base strategies for possession.

How to Be Princess

So, dear friends, those dry-looking 17th and 18th century novels and plays might look innocuous, but they are in fact texts of a secret school -- the school of lovers. La Princesse de Clèves is a seminal novel of Baroque French vision. In it, romance is coolly analyzed into its stages. There we learn that the deliciousness of love equals its condition of being veiled and unconsummated. Nobility is related to silence. A large part of the French 17th and 18th C. intellectual legacy regarding love is presented in terms of the clandestine: hidden phases and movements of the heart; refined language, perceptive descriptions.

A remarkable psychological landscape emerges. It presents a highly sophisticated attitude toward relationships, and a dramatically daring practice for how to use the impulses of the heart to enhance the excitement of life. As a philosophy it is hedonistic and ascetic, generous and selfish, noble and base. In the end, La Princesse de Clèves provides, in its own bizarre way, some of the satisfaction of popular romances ("drug-store paperbacks"). The heroine succeeds in doing something nearly superhuman: overcoming her heart's desire. She stops the relationship whose illicit nature had caused such torments to her conscience. To be sure, this only happens AFTER the unveiling, the meeting in which the lovers reveal to each other their longing, and in which, in however abbreviated a fashion, they get to tell each other the story of their suffering and commitment. (As LaRochefoucauld wryly observed, "Lovers are never bored because they are always talking about themselves.") And that meeting is, in effect, the climactic scene -- more profoundly fulfilling than actual physical possession. The fact that it is so, reveals the degree to which love is about communication, the longing for a spiritual completeness which can come simply through the fusion achieved through disclosure.

It seems incorrect to conclude, as does Antoine Adam in a Preface to La Princesse de Clèves, that Mme de La Fayette's view of love is darkly pessimistic. Without question she felt pessimism and even despair; but nothing is that flat and one-dimensional. Her pessimism can also be taken as a posture, as an element of conversation, and a gambit in the game. Mme de la Fayette, through the sophistication of her views, announces the difficulty of reaching her heart; she is a realist; she knows that love deceives; she says that she does not count herself among the fools of passion; but by means of the very articulateness and delicacy of these arguments she presents convincing reasons, for a prospective lover, of why she is a worthy object of mad passion. Her dark view of love is a form of anticipation. In it, she is already possessed by the shadow image of her ideal lover, the magician who can release her from the dungeon of her own pessimism, who can invert her perverse views of right and wrong (the system whose prisoner she has been), who can change the relationship of light and dark, and passion for whom suspends all rules and reason.

Thus Salon philosophy is a conversation; it is a social activity, not a body of thought. What we think about love, or how we judge it, in the end says little about it and much about us. Thus our indictments of the dangers of love are a technique of managing it through a certain verbal and conscious dialogue. Our views on love are designed to bring it into some satisfactory relationship with our intellect and ego, to provide us with a sense of order and comprehension that is, in fact, lacking to the one who is driven by the mad wave of passion. Love is an addiction, and it is humiliating to the ego, with its social visage and posturings, to admit that one is addicted to something that is not in one’s control.

On the wings of these turbulent visions, we enter into the Salon ourselves. The French engage in philosophies of love as an enhancement; intellect is the aphrodisiac, conversation the means by which it is administered; and the subtle lover can find its stimulating effect in the most indirect references and unsuspected connections. It is not always the most intimate conversation that is the most satisfying; it is the one where the complexity, both of relationships and language, is the most suffused by subliminal eroticism, and where the meaning carried by a word or a phrase is the most rich, baroque and inscribed with personal symbolism. That is why the reality of the lover always parallels that of the mystic. It is why “Saint-Sulpice” refers to a public square, but without leaving its religious reference entirely. This parallel, once perceived, invites us to the Sea of Love; on the surface, elegant conversation glides over a heaving main, while in the waters, we experience a fullness; this is the setting; it is dangerous, it is thrilling, it calls to us; at Saint-Sulpice, it is what makes life worth while.

Link to Gary Kamiya's brief intro to Salons in Salon (the webzine)