laughter and the smile in stendhal

Laughter and the Smile in StendhalAuthor(s): Michael BishopSource: The Modern Language Review, Vol. 70, No. 1 (Jan., 1975), pp. 50-70Published by: Modern Humanities Research AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3724899 .

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LAUGHTER AND THE SMILE IN STENDHAL

Stendhal's writings reveal a lifelong interest in the psychologies of laughter and the smile, his notes and essays on such matters demonstrating a movement towards a double goal, both social and artistic. To expand one's understanding of man's psychic complexity, to fathom a few minimal truths in all their fragile relativity, is to render happiness more possible. Moreover, such socially applicable knowledge may be also artistically exploited, consciously or unconsciously, its functional nature may be creatively projected on to the imagined and idealized world of literature with which it will become fused. Many critics have sought to re-create the total intellectual and affective evolution of Stendhal, others have explored what is intrinsically comic in Stendhal's novels. No consistent attempt has been made to compare the psychological theories of laughter or the smile with their artistic exploitation.' This present study proposes therefore to examine Stendhal's theories of the psychology of laughter and the smile, and to show how such theoretical configurations are revealed at the functional, structural level of his creative work.2 We shall thus move from an exploration of the psychology of laughter to an assessment of the dichotomy between the forces of this psychology and those of Stendhal's personality. The predispositions of the latter will find their full expression rather in the psychology of the smile, though chronologically it is laughter that supplies the inspirational point of departure. As for the parallelisms that inevitably exist between Stendhal's theories and those of other analysts, space will not permit even their marginal examination here.

It is on the thesis of Thomas Hobbes that Stendhal bases the essence of his theory of the psychology of laughter. It is his definition encountered first in the works of Cailhava3 and later attributed erroneously to Bacon4 that is hurriedly copied into Stendhal's Filosofia Nova: 'La passion qui excite a rire n'est autre chose qu'une vaine gloire fondee sur la conception subite de quelque excellence qui se trouve en nous par opposition a l'infirmite des autres ou a celle que nous avons eue autre- fois: car on rit de ses folies passees, lorsqu'elles viennent tout d'un coup a l'esprit, a moins qu'il n'y ait du deshonneur attache'.5 Vainglory, feelings of superiority and inferiority, pleasure, misfortune, dishonour, suddenness of realization, a dense array of data that stimulates much additional comment and research, often rather loosely organized, particularly in areas that Stendhal readily associates with this psychology of laughter: compassion, indignation, preoccupation.

Laughter then, for Stendhal, is above all symbol, a sign of psychic activity whose nucleus will remain constant, a feeling of triumph and superiority born of the mechanics of man's vanity which demands the apotheosis of self. Man's ego feeds upon a multitude of consolations and recompenses, it feeds upon the other man in an unending comparison of self and other that always demands the demise,

1 Leon Cellier's 'Rires, Sourires et Larmes dans La Chartreuse de Parme', Aurea Parma, 51 (1967), 18-23, provides a useful appraisal of the interrelationship of the signs of laughter, the smile and tears, but there is no significant analysis of the theory.

2 Although reference will be made to all the novels, our analysis will focus particularly upon Lucien Leuwen, Armance, and Lamiel in an effort to demonstrate the general applicability of the arguments proposed and the inspirational unity of Stendhal's fiction.

3 See V. Del Litto, La Vie intellectuelle de Stendhal (Paris, I959), p. 76. 4 Stendhal, La Vie de Henry Brulard (Paris, 1961), p. 342. 5 Stendhal, Pensees: Filosofia Nova, 2 vols (Paris, I93I), I, 117.



MICHAEL BISHOP

misfortune and consequent inferiority of the other. Laughter thus becomes a sign of either conscious or unconscious aggression, of a scorning of what is rightly or wrongly considered inferior. Man's aggressiveness may in fact constitute the expression of a need to counter-attack what is threatening, but may equally and paradoxically indicate the presence of an unconscious inferiority complex, of a superiority that is merely imagined or at the most momentary and fortuitous.'

If the feeling of superiority is too clearly manifested Stendhal often insists on the insensitivity of the person laughing. Thus, M. de Renal's imagined superiority is transformed into inferiority: 'Un eclat de rire grossier, un haussement d'epaules, accompagne de quelque maxime triviale sur la folie des femmes, avaient constam- ment accueilli les confidences de ce genre de chagrins, que le besoin d'epanchement l'avait portee a faire a son mari, dans les premieres annees de leur mariage'.2 The mocking attitude of Lucien Leuwen's military colleagues towards Stendhal's hero is no better spared. The tonal super-structure erected by the omniscient writer reveals the hollow vanity of such superiority. Lucien's falling from his horse upon arrival in Nancy is greeted on all sides by noisy guffaws: 'les officiers du regiment riaient, mais expres'.3 It is the deliberate, conscious and condemning nature of this aggressiveness that makes the laughter odious. Its unexpected quality is its only comprehensible defence. The aggressive plans of the lieutenants formulated later that evening, after an evening's carousing, are even more revealing: 'ce beau dandy n'est pas accoutume au champagne, il est encore detraque d'hier; il faudra l'engager a boire souvent. Nous nous moquerons de lui avant, pendant, et apres; c'est parfait' (Leuwen, pp. 951-2). Boredom, hostility, the need to defend themselves and confirm their own superiority, from a position of security, by debasing what is suspected to be superior, such are the psychological mechanisms in this case.

When laughter is collective it appears to come more easily. Man laughs seeing others laugh. Laughter thus becomes the visible symbol of a physical, nervous sympathy, seemingly involuntary, indicative perhaps of man's suppressed need to rid himself of tensions that develop to paralyse his otherwise natural behavioural patterns. It is in Racine et Shakespeare that Stendhal develops this line of thought, noting, without explanation, that this type of laughter is most frequently associated with girls. He continues his analysis, however, at another level: 'On rit [d'une] anecdote; on voit rire les autres, le rire augmente. Pourquoi cela? Je crois voir deux causes de cet effet: i. Sympathie physique et nerveuse, comme le baillement; 2. Il y a une sympathie d'esprit et non nerveuse, on est confirme dans le jugement qu'on a porte de sa propre superiorite sur le personnage ridicule en voyant tant de gens le trouver egalement ridicule.'4 The central idea of Stendhal's psychology of laughter is stressed here, the contrast, delightful to the aggressor, between his

superiority and the implied inferiority of the object. In this circumstance laughter enjoys protection, the pleasure experienced increases proportionally to the collective confirmation of one's superiority. In Lamiel, when Mme Hautemare backs away seeing the group of washerwomen: 'cette demarche, accompagnee d'un grand air

1 The ideas of Hobbes, adopted and elaborated by Stendhal, are unoriginal, going back to the work of Plato and Aristotle (much useful data has been collected by E. Bergler, Laughter and the Sense of Humour (New York, 1956)).

2 Stendhal, Le Rouge et le Noir (Paris, 1960), p. 36; see also p. 7I. 3 Stendhal, Lucien Leuwen, in Romans, 2 vols (Paris, 1952), I, 794. 4 Stendhal, Racine et Shakespeare, 2 vols (Paris, 1925), I, 148.

5I



52 Laughter and the Smile in Stendhal

de dedain que se donna la femme du bedeau, fit eclater autour du bassin un eclat de rire unanime, universel'.1 Stendhal manages to ridicule Mme Hautemare at the same time as he depicts the vain pleasures and collective crudity of the peasants, whose laughter is only legitimized by their refusal to accept the inherent falsity of all affectation. In Lucien Leuwen Lucien and Coffe become victims of the crowd of mud- slinging, scoffing provincials who bathe in a superficial and gratuitous superiority only after confirming the safety of their position: 'Voyez, comme il est sale; vous avez mis son ame sur sa figure! Ce propos fut suivi d'un petit silence, et puis accueilli par un eclat de rire general qui se prolongea dans toute la rue avec un bruit assourdissant et dura bien cinq minutes' (Leuwen, p. 1192). The baseness and cowardice inherent in such laughter are made evident. The unforeseen quality, the apparently justified, but blind hatred of the mob for the 'commissaires de police' explain somewhat, though in no way excuse, the resultant laughter. Lucien's shocked sensitivity never forgets this humiliation, whereas Stendhal emphasizes the paradoxical inferiority of sneering affectation confirmed in the cowardly conception of its own excellence.

However Stendhal's attitude towards group laughter is fairly sympathetic in scenes where vanity and affectation of the other are its object. Stendhal thus suggests that the inferiority of the laughed-at is beyond debate, the feeling of superiority more justified. When Lamiel pokes fun at the travelling salesman who is pestering her with his tiresome gallantry, 'l'eclat de rire fut universel' (Lamiel, p. 986). Clearly the usual psychological mechanisms function but justice prevails, contrary to the norm. The salons of Stendhal's novels provide frequent evidence of this particular shift of attitude. The Leuwen salon thrives on the ridiculing of con- vention, the scorning of affectation, preciosity, the hedonistic drive toward merriment and light-heartedness: 'La, tout le monde se moquait de tout le monde, tant pis pour les sots et pour les hypocrites qui n'avaient pas infiniment d'esprit. Les titres de duc, de pair de France, de colonel de la garde nationale..., n'y mettaient personne a l'abri de l'ironie la plus gaie' (Leuwen, p. I 75). Earlier Stendhal had stressed the strangely impersonal quality of this laughter, which, whilst remaining satirical, attacks ridicule, the vicious per se, without acquiring unsubtle, didactic overtones: 'Dans ce salon dont l'ameublement avait coute cent mille francs, on ne haissait personne (etrange contraste!); mais on aimait a rire, et, dans l'occasion, on se moquait fort bien de toutes les affectations a commencer par le roi et l'archeveque' (Leuwen, p. 769). If the essential goal is relaxation, amusement, the pleasurable side-effects of vanity and superiority continue nevertheless to be clearly associated with this goal. Indeed, M. Leuwen not only expresses his distinct need to mock what is inferior, but declares that his salon is the arena in which the endless struggle of self and other is played out: 'Hors de mon cabinet, je n'ai qu'un interet: me delasser et rire des sots, qu'ils soient sur le trone ou dans la crotte. Ainsi, mes amis, moquez-vous de moi, si vous pouvez' (Leuwen, pp. I I75-6). M. Leuwen's industrial banking friends do not constitute, as does the aristocracy, an anachronism in Stendhal's eyes. Their attempt to unwind does not stem from the ennui that overwhelms the idle rich. They reveal a certain finesse, a degree of perspicacity and mental flexibility that are seldom found in the other salons of Stendhal's universe. Only the salon of the Duchess of Sanseverina

1 Stendhal, Lamiel, in Romans, II, 897.



MICHAEL BISHOP 53

surpasses that of the Leuwens in its gaiety, its almost carnival atmosphere, the delightfully contingent character of its activities. However, in Mme Grandet's salon Lucien perceives nothing but mediocrity, vulgarity, insincerity. Octave de Malivert's misanthropy and disdain are scarcely lessened in contact with Mme de Bonnivert's company and its petty, perfidious artificiality. The society of Armance is judged largely by an outsider who expresses the pretentiousness of a social group that believes itself observed, despite its increasing powerlessness. Julien Sorel, too, sees merely disparagement and envy in the general laughter that surround him at the H6tel de la Mole.

In Lamiel the laughter of the Duchess of Miossens 's'opposait a ce qu'elle se permit rien de ce qu'il faut pour faire naitre la gaiete' (Lamiel, p. 88i). Indeed, if laughter in this Norman salon is paradoxically indicative of the tedium vite that reigns, of the unconsciously felt need for pleasure and flattery, it constitutes also a caricature of the same need to realize these anachronistic dreams of aristocratic superiority that the supernumeraries of the provincial salons of Nancy weave about themselves. In fact, the absurdity of the manias exhibited renders more false the laughter of vain superiority. As in the salons of Nancy and those of Armance, the self dares not laugh at what is genuinely laughable: the tics, the mechanical, for such is the con- gealed Bergsonian core of these salons themselves. Dishonour forbids the self to laugh at self.

The elegance of the Nancy salons, as in Armance, is constantly undermined and questioned by severity of observation. Basically this offers nothing 'au moral que de contourn6, de sec, et de desagreable' (Leuwen, p. 92I). The clumsy hypocrisy, the puerile pretentiousness, the baseness of the aspirations that unfold before him, disgust Lucien: 'Tout, chez eux, meme le rire, est une affectation' (Leuwen, p. 888). Everything opposes the blossoming of the Stendhalian heroic disposition. If the other flatters one's vanity, he can never be the object of laughter, for these salons, partially conscious of their social isolation and importance, must accept such flattery or die. Their fear of ridicule arises fundamentally from the feeling of their own social and political rigidity. Their feelings of superiority can only be sought in the mockery and scorn directed ironically, and in self-defence, at those considered 'en dehors de tout' (Leuwen, pp. 788-9), those who exhibit an impotence and vulnerability even more perceptible than their own. Plunged in this mediocrity, only Mme d'Hocquincourt and M. d'Antin, Mme de Puylaurens and Theodelinde de Serpierre dare confront provincial norms, but they lack that energy, that character, that profound horror, necessary to extricate themselves. Their laughter is franker, gayer, it exposes the facade but does not oblige them to condemn it. The parasite cannot destroy with impunity the substance upon which it feeds.

Laughter then is a sign of real or imagined superiority, of a feeling of strong and clearly aggressive scorn, but as such is not solely associated with secondary charac- ters, often indirectly ridiculed or degraded. The Stendhalian hero, although his laughter is heard more rarely, also manifests his scorn which is often colder, at times misanthropic, as in Octave's case, and which often comes into play either as a means of self-protection from negative external forces or to reveal hatred for threatening mediocrity. Julien Sorel reveals his aggressiveness, his bilious pride, his feelings of real superiority, when he formulates his new duty in the garden of Vergy: 'Julien avait encore a l'oreille les paroles grossieres du matin. Ne serait- ce pas, se dit-il, une fagon de se moquer de cet etre, si comble de tous les avantages




de la fortune que de prendre possession de la main de sa femme, precisement en sa presence? Oui, je le ferai, moi pour qui il a temoigne tant de mepris' (Le Rouge et le Noir, p. 65). It is not the spirit of vengeance alone that accounts for this reaction. Julien's psychology prescribes a horror and a rejection of mediocrity that threatens his honour and intimidates his person. Lucien Leuwen reacts in parallel fashion to Colonel Malher at the ball given by the Marchioness ofMarcilly. Lamiel's scorn for what is inferior is usually absolute and logical in her eyes, as her words to Fedor de Miossens show: 'J'aime Epervier parce qu'il vous rend ridicule; dans ce moment vous l'aimez cent fois plus que celle que vous appelez pompeusement votre maitresse. Cela ne me fait aucune peine, mais cela est ridicule pour vous' (Lamiel, p. 979). The tone soon becomes overwhelmingly disdainful: 'Mes parents m'en- nuient avec des sermons infinis, et c'est pour me moquer d'eux que je me donne a vous. Je ne vous aime pas; vous n'avez pas l'air vrai et naturel; vous avez toujours l'air de jouer une comedie' (Lamiel, pp. 980-I). Hypercritical of conventional morals, the scorn of the Stendhalian hero strips away social masks, shocks vanity, exposes truth. This scorn tends to justify itself, it equates sincerity and virtue, it postulates the suppression of the falsely superior rather than seeking the opportunity to declare its own superiority. Whereas scorn permits the non-hero pleasure, the hero expresses rather an indignation that precludes all possibility of joy. Often the delicate yet imperious nature of his passion or his reverie, contrasting so sharply with the object of his scorn, can only occasion bitterness. That the essential psychological mechanisms of laughter apply at least in principle however to all the characte s of Stendhal's novels may be demonstrated by the following passage from La Chartreuse de Parme: 'Avec ces Franqais il n'est pas permis de dire la verite quand elle choque leur vanite. Mais quant a leur air mechant je m'en moque, et il faut que je le leur fasse comprendre ... I1 s'affermit sur ses etriers, prit de la main gauche le fourreau de son sabre droit, et dit aux quatre Frangais; - Ces gens qui se sauvent sur la grande route ont l'air d'un troupeau de moutons. Ils marchent comme des moutons effrayes.'1 Here the 'mepris content', the 'jouissances de vanite', mentioned by Stendhal in his Histoire de la peinture en Italie,2 the conscious pleasure of Fabrice, resulting from his need for sincerity and truth, tend to fade away before the affectionate ironical smile that Stendhal spreads over the entire Waterloo episode.

At times, then, laughter condemns both its object and its agent, at other times the irony of the tonal superstructure, implied by a sympathy revealed more explicitly elsewhere, ridicules or even debases the agent in order to guarantee the reader's sympathetic comprehension. In fact, if the feeling of superiority experienced by the laughter is often ill-founded, the hero's superiority remains inviolate. His mocking and laughter are rarely pleasurable but are born of a scorn of the intrinsically despicable that may be metamorphosed into misanthropy, but which constitutes also a conscious or unconscious wish for either solitude, with its accompanying melancholy, reverie, or an intimacy in which his sensibility may be fully realized. Anti-social scorn thus becomes another of the multiple indicators of the complex heroic sensibility.

1 Stendhal, La Chartreuse de Parme (Paris, I96I), p. 55. 2 Stendhal, Histoire de la Peinture en Italie, 2 vols (Paris, 1929), I, 78.



MICHAEL BISHOP 55

Self does not laugh at self, says Stendhal, for this may imply dishonour of self, and the concomitant risk of seeing oneself inferior in confrontation with the other whose superiority is thus implied by means of a comparison operating against self. This aspect of the psychology of laughter is closely connected with the Stendhalian heroic need for self-knowledge.

Any minor humiliation must be fully recognized, though it remains nevertheless intolerable, working against the heroic goal of happiness. Thus Lucien Leuwen finds himself so startled by the idea of his own dishonour after the Blois incident, thus the idea of failure in successive self-imposed duties enrages Julien Sorel, pushing him to the brink of suicide. This bitter feeling of dishonour stems rather from imagined inferiority, as in the case of Lucien, more delicately sensitive than Coffe, who, being realistic, cynical and worldly, skates over such events, as do the French soldiers confronted at Waterloo with Fabrice's scorn. Thus the intensity and timing of such a feeling of dishonour depend essentially on the hero himself, on his will to defend the image of his honour. That is why Octave, Julien, Lucien, and Fabrice all react impulsively, biliously, in the Stendhal-Cabanis sense, when self-respect is threatened. Such moments are quite rare though highly significant for the understanding of the Stendhalian heroic sensibility. Usually, as we have seen, scorn is adequate, the hero realizes the essentially impersonal nature of the affront, it becomes recognizable as a specific sign of a generalized and natural

disposition of man, an instinctively produced sign of the exigencies of man's ego. It is interesting to note the case of Sansfin in Lamiel. Lucidly aware of his absurdity and its implicit dishonour, incapable of combating his vulnerability to ridicule, Sansfin becomes profoundly depressed, misanthropic, Machiavellian. As in the case of Colonel Malher and the Prefect of Nancy, M. Fleron, his 'atrocious' vanity attempts to bury his dishonour in the oblivion of rarely effective counter-attacks levelled at the local people who plague him (Leuwen, pp. 788-9). His laughter constitutes a weak recompense. He is caught in a vicious circle, unable to attain a balance between his feelings of inferiority and superiority.

To laugh at self, at the little incongruities of one's actions indicates rare

superiority, a sincerity and a lucidity only associated with Stendhal's heroes. We read that: 'M. Leuwen n'etaitjamais absolument serieux; quand il n'avait personne de qui se moquer, il se moquait de soi-meme' (Leuwen, p. 1 I6I). Let us not forget that men such as M. Leuwen and Count Mosca, despite their shortcomings, still constitute extensions of certain potentialities of the total personality of Stendhal. If Stendhal relates more closely to the heroic sensibility, it is because the artist does not feel constrained to don social masks at the level of dream and ideal which exist to enable the discarding of all lies. In fact self-laughter is one of the most distinctive characteristics of Stendhal's elite beings. Mme de Renal's apprehension turns to reassurance at the sight of Julien's delicate feminine features: 'Bient6t elle se mit a rire avec toute la gaiete folle d'une jeune fille, elle se moquait d'elle-meme et ne pouvait se figurer tout son bonheur' (Le Rouge et le JAoir, p. 27). No dishonour can be associated with such laughter, whose object is that which renders her

superior, her own sentimental delicacy. Her discovery of that incongruity existing between reality itself and her imagined projection of reality brings about a release of nervous energy with its contrastive juxtaposition of suddenly felt happiness and

ebbing despair. In the prison of Besangon Julien Sorel recognizes if not the absolute

futility of all human endeavour, then at least its crushingly narrow frontiers. His




ultimate burst of self-laughter banteringly pierces the bubble of his own perceptions, of his own gravity, thus constituting a Leacockian denial of the vain aspirations of life. 'J'oublie de vivre et d'aimer, quand il me reste si peu de jours a vivre' explains Julien (Le Rouge et le Noir, p. 501). The only valid glory, he discovers, is happiness, the realization of one's own potentialities through love and the self's natural disposition. Lucien Leuwen, too, when involuntarily courting Mme Grandet, inwardly mocks his own absurdity: 'D'abord, ses propos furent trop communs; Il se donnait le plaisir de se moquer lui-meme de ce qu'il disait: c'etait de l'esprit d'arriere-boutique' (Leuwen, p. 169). He insists upon a lucid awareness of his behaviour and amusement at this interesting phenomenon that is his exteriorized non-self. His pleasure depends, too, on the as yet unrefined consciousness he maintains of his own skill in deception of the other. Octave's social success is founded essentially on the same psychological mechanisms. The moments of self-truth through self-laughter remain isolated incidents of relative gaiety in a life of anguish. Even his laughter upon finding himself costing his salon and again upon receiving the note from the Marquis de Creveroche retains a bitter, masochistic element, born of that 'fait du Babilanisme',1 which is absent from other heroic self-laughter. One feels the veiled criticism of his own impotence. The laughter is strange, nervous, evoking Stendhal's studies of Pinel.

Stendhal's remarks on 'le rire fou' are closely connected with his commentary on self-laughter. It is again the hero that abandons himself to such laughter. In Racine et Shakespeare, we read that reminiscence may provoke this laughter, though it arises essentially from the comprehension of 'la grave inconvenance commise par un tel rire en un lieu grave'. Stendhal adds: 'Peut-tre rit-on de soi-meme, en cette occasion. Pour moi, ce rire-la me semble le plus irresistible; je tomberais, je crois, sije voulais absolument m'empecher de rire' (Racine et Shakespeare, II, 149). Fabrice's laughter in the Tour Farnese follows these lines and, whilst recalling Mme de Renal's self-laughter, also constitutes perception of the hiatus between heroic-real and normally anticipated behaviours. Stendhal has already shown himself fully conscious of this paradox. Awareness of the 'grave inconvenance commise par un tel rire en un lieu grave' provokes Julien Sorel's laughter when Mme de Fervaques points out to him an incongruity in his correspondence with her. But doubtlessly the basis of his reaction remains the feeling he has of his own mistake. He ridicules the absurdity of his slip, admits at the same time the a priori absurdity of his scheme and suggests by extension the pretentiousness of all human machinations. It is equally the mechanical, hypocritical and absurd action of Doctor du Poirier that triggers Lucien Leuwen's abandonment: 'Lucien eclata de rire. Desole de ce qui lui arrivait, il entreprit de faire des excuses au docteur; mais le fou rire l'emporta de nouveau, les larmes lui vinrent aux yeux; et enfin il pleurait tout a fait a force de rire' (Leuwen, p. 859, see also p. 797). The realization of the impropriety com- mitted constitutes that additional injection of laughability that Stendhal speaks of in his Racine et Shakespeare: 'C'est peut-etre la la maniere dont le rire fou nait le plus frequemment; il faut une nouvelle dose de ridicule, arrivant lorsqu'on rit deja' (Racine et Shakespeare, II, 149). Such laughter reflects the hero's incapability of taking seriously those masks, deceptions and misrepresentations that beset him on all sides. Thus if 'le rire fou' exposes somewhat the laugher's ego by demanding a

1 Stendhal, Armance (Paris, I952), p. 249.



MICHAEL BISHOP 57

sincerity that moreover is in no way dishonourable, it acts also as a social corrective, it instructs. It is, most fundamentally, a momentary explosion of the repressed heroic disposition.1

Man's conception of what is laughable must be sudden, states Thomas Hobbes. Stendhal echoes this assessment in his Racine et Shakespeare: 'I1 est necessaire qu'il y ait une vue nette et rapide de notre superiorite sur autrui'.2 He continues: 'On ne rit pas I. D'un conte fait sans a propos (qui ne vient pas a propos). 2. D'un conte fait trop souvent. 3. D'un conte fait avec trop de lenteur. L'improviste est si necessaire que, quand on refait un conte dans un salon, pour quelqu'un qui arrive, si vous voulez que le reste du cercle, qui le connait deja, rie, il faut en varier la forme; en d'autres termes, creer l'imprevu.' Stendhal at times stresses this sudden, unforeseen and surprising character of laughter. It is the word 'rival' that brings about the release of nervous energy that constitutes, in part at least, Octave's laughter at the Theatre Italien. Lucien Leuwen is 'fort surpris' when Dr du Poirier stops 'tout at coup' in the middle of his sentence. Fabrice succumbs to his 'acces de rire fou' in the Tour Farnese. And when Lamiel offers her frank and un- flattering opinion of the portrait of the son of the duchesse de Miossens, 'cette naivete fut trop imprevue pour le peu d'usage du monde que [l'abbe Clement] avait pu acquerir, il eclata de rire' (Lamiel, p. 933). In his essay Du Style Stendhal continues his commentary on this aspect of laughter: 'nous croyons que l'attendrisse- ment a besoin d'etre amene, prepare; que le rire, au contraire, nait de la surprise. (I1 y a toujours une nuance de crainte dans la surprise. L'homme surpris songe a soi, a son interet, disposition excellente pour le comique, qui est une comparaison de soi a un autre.')3 It is important to observe that this statement in no way contradicts what Stendhal will be seen to say about the necessity of insouciance on the part of the laugher. This interest arises from surprise whereas, as we shall see, it is being preoccupied that prevents laughter. Stendhal thus implies that laughter constitutes in some way the feeling of nervous release that follows the apparently often unconscious, fleeting fear which at all events is rapidly dispelled as a result of the immediate appreciation of one's own security and superiority. Thus, although

1 It is important to observe here that 'le fou rire', when associated with real or potential heroic happiness, tends to merge somewhat with the psychology of the smile with its mixture of tenderness and mirth. Certain laughter experienced by Stendhal himself thus shows a curious dependence upon the psychology of the smile, becoming almost an uproarious smile, a 'sous-rire' without the 'sous'. It is this amalgam of sublimeness, tenderness and mirthful 'over-smiling' that might be read into Stendhal's experience of opera buffa and certain plays by Moliere, Regnard and others. Let us note too, Freud's distinction between laughter in real life and laughter at the unreal, sham life of the stage, where, he maintains, the mechanisms of aggression and superiority are absent (Wit and its Relation to the Unconscious (New York, 1938), p. 776).

2 Racine et Shakespeare, II, I33-6. Clarity is, in fact, in Stendhal's view, an essential condition of laughter. Anything tending to obscure the basis of our laughter prevents its blossoming forth. Clarity in its turn depends on the immediate, but logical, delicate and sure organization of each functional element: 'Le plus petit detail, la plus legere circonstance est decisive pour faire naitre ou empecher le rire; rien n'est plus delicat que le rire' (p. 135). Stendhal even goes as far as to add: 'Les details donnent presque seuls prise au ridicule' (p. 146). Only the carefully observed trait can stimulate laughter, mimicking the rigid and inflexible in human activity. Man should be flexibility, adapta- bility, 'naturel'. His actions ought to mould themselves effortlessly to the complex demands of life. If thcs~ actions, numbed, congeal, then the mechanical replaces the living.

3 Stendhal, Melanges de Litterature, 3 vols (Paris, 1933) Itt, i 0-I. It should perhaps also be stated that Stendhal's use of the terms 'colmique' and 'cornedie' is rather loose in that they may apply to either laughter or the smile. Often the distinction is made apparent (see Filosofia Nova, II, 291); at other times it is the psychology of the 'conmique' evoked that reveals its particular affiliation.




many moments of laughter bear no surface traces of fear in the laugher-laughed-at dialectic, certain examples offer clear support to Stendhal's remarks on the relationship existing between surprise and fear. Laughter will seemingly appear only with the disappearance of all trace of fear. Before the comparison between self and other may operate, the self must ascertain the consequences of the comparison. In accordance with the terms of this psychological equation the Blesois remain momentarily locked in fearful silence after the clerk's incisive words addressed indirectly to Lucien. As Dr Sansfin falls from his horse, the washerwomen's fear is evident. The first sudden conception which produces this surprise and the resultant fear, is followed by a second equally sudden realization which, this time, permits the full blossoming of the feeling of superiority, all the more odious, it is true, for the initial egoistic and cowardly nature of this fear.

'Seule borne du rire: la compassion et l'indignation' affirms Stendhal in Racine et Shakespeare (II, I34-5). Compassion implies resemblance which in turn implies an equality exclusive of all idea of superiority. Thus the essence of compassion is directly opposed to the psychology of laughter. Symbolic of conscious or unconscious aggression, laughter is a sign of dissimilarity that is varyingly real, imagined, unconscious or affected: 'on peut tourner en ridicule devant les gens leurs propres confreres, s'ils en rient veritablement, ils ne leur ressemblent pas'.1 The laughter of the officers at Nancy, the sneering of M. de Renal, these are merely external indications of a significant hiatus between the heroic sensibility and that of the laugher. Laughter reveals an absolute lack of sympathetic comprehension and affective subtleness. Whilst attempting to perpetuate in the face of the other the proof of his own superiority, man is caught up in his fear of the very potency of a treacherous drug: 'Tout homme qui ne rit pas d'un ridicule qui est bon (qu'est-ce que bon), le partage' (Filosofia Nova, II, 79). Thus compassion not only makes laughter impossible, but it can make man socially vulnerable because of the resemblance it implies.

However, this lack of compassion, this dissimilarity, often reveal, additionally, a clearly formulated criticism of some affectation. The general merriment of the salesmen at the expense of Lamiel's victim and laughter such as that of the lancers upon seeing M. Fleron, condemn the excessive vanity of the laughed-at and expose his crude artificial mask. The laughter of the Abbe Clement reveals the dissimilarity between himself and the Duchess; his lack of compassion represents both a condemnation of her vanity and affectation and a need to be oneself, to act according to the dictates of an anti-social and perhaps cathartic disposition.

The Stendhalian hero seeks the happiness of naive, innocent almost childlike intimacy. Aggression, lack of compassion, laughter suggest a degree of incompre- hension that is neither sympathetic towards, nor indicative of, the sensitivity demanded by the heroic sensibility in its desire to unbosom itself with sincerity and naturalness, qualities easily ridiculed by the man of wit. This problem is subtly treated in Lucien Leuwen where the hero/anti-hero relationship is steeped in an atmosphere of perpetual tension. The paternally prescribed acceptance of social conditions and the parallel, other-dominating protection involved, constitute from the outset a paradoxical threat to the purity of Lucien's aspirations. Consequently when Lucien seeks the possibility of total sincerity and a sympathy in no way

1 Filosofia Nova, i, 6. See Racine et Shakespeare, ii, I41.



MICHAEL BISHOP 59

cynical, he finds that the bantering ways of the man of the world have rooted themselves too deeply in the character of his father, who, like Lorenzaccio, though lucid and behaviourally knowledgeable, is unable to rid himself of his acquired cloak. The father's laughter becomes, for Lucien, an indisputable sign of lack of compassion, of dissimilarity, and that of an essentially non-heroic sensibility. Lucien seeks equality, intimacy. He sees himself subtly ridiculed, inferior. Such a dissimilarity precludes all possibility of deeply felt filial love and leads Stendhal to articulate occasional, indirect, but highly significant criticisms: Tout ce qui paraissait sublime, gdndreux, tendre a Lucien, toutes les choses desquelles il pensait qu'il etait noble de mourir pour elles, etaient des sujets de bonne plaisanterie pour son pere et une duperie a ses yeux.

A la verite, M.Leuwen etait d'une politesse exquise .. mais, ce fils avait assez de tact pour le deviner, c'etait le sublime de l'esprit, de la finesse de l'art d'etre poli, delicat parfait. (Leuwen, p. 1316)

Thus, despite the fragmentation of Stendhal's personality into a myriad of romantic

realizations, the Stendhalian hero constitutes the most idealized avatar of all Stendhalian dreams. Thus, anything - dissimilarity, aggressiveness, coarseness, insensitivity etc. - opposed to the full embodiment of the dreamed-of heroic

happiness, finds itself directly or indirectly under attack.

Indignation, Stendhal has already been quoted as saying, imposes, like com-

passion, a natural limitation upon laughter. 'Dans l'indignation nous songeons a des interets plus directs et plus chers, nous songeons a nous-memes mis en peril' (Racine et Shakespeare, II, 134). The essential psychological mechanism of indignation is

self-defence, the protection of one's own interests or of those of other victims of

aggression (interests which thus become symbolic of our own). Defence and aggression become then the two opposite poles of indignation and laughter. Without

attempting to indicate all manifestations of this indignation, which is, moreover, essentially only implied, let us content ourselves with the observation that both heroic and non-heroic sensibilities are exposed to such behavioural controls. The

poisonous, dishonouring image of the self's inferiority is thus flashed, self-abusively, before the eyes of the other.

In fact, indignation and compassion constitute two forms of that preoccupation which, according to Stendhal, prevents man from laughing. It is, however, often

very difficult to distinguish between what is pure preoccupation and the form it assumes when indignation and compassion are involved. The latter depend essentially on the finally abortive attempt to provoke laughter and only arise at the

very moment of this abortion. From that moment they constitute real preoccupation, but their substance comes from disillusionment and hardens into an attitude that denies the nonchalance prescribed for the potential success of

laughter. But the question is even more complex. Of course, the urgent demands of interest and passion destroy all possibility of laughter. Any unpleasant and

importunate incursion made into the intimacy of one's occupations runs the risk of

stimulating in the preoccupied person feelings of scorn, irritation, bitterness. But do not the deep-rooted habits and instincts of man constitute also a form of preoccupation whose subconcious drives are no less powerful? In Mme Grandet's salon in Paris the arrogance and brash sentimental exhibitionism outrage Lucien Leuwen. The laughter all around him offends his delicate psyche. 'Le fond de toute cette gaiete est sec et triste', he declares (Leuwen, p. 1173). Indignation and



Laughter and the Smile in Stendhal

instinctive refusal of the mediocre combine to immunize Lucien against the sullying debasement that threatens to engulf him. But his reaction also signals the impossibility of yielding to such laughter and thus reflects the profound essence of Lucien, his search for the comprehending sensibility and the misanthropy resulting from its quasi-total absence. In Armance, Octave de Malivert succumbs to mild indignation when his uncle refers jokingly to 'les courses nocturnes d'Armance'. Provoked certainly by the other's awkward attempt to create laughter, this indignation is also indicative of deep-seated preoccupations: Octave's love for Armance, his 'babilanisme', his horror of the demeaning. It thus symbolizes his passion, his interests, his total sensibility.

Nevertheless, situations may be observed in which laughter-inhibiting preoccupation is more clearly designated. After an evening's misfortunes and mis- understandings, 'Octave avait entrepris de rendre a Armance un peu de gaiete ... Sa gaiete reussit fort mal et deplut fort a Armance. Comme elle ne repondait pas, il etait oblige d'adresser ses discours a Mme d'Aumale, qui etait presente et qui riait beaucoup tandis qu'Armance gardait un silence morne' (Armance, pp. 204-5). In Lucien Leuwen, Mme d'Hocquincourt's growing passion for Lucien produces a reaction similar to that of Armance: 'M. d'Antin qui cherchait a l'amuser, dans ce moment, par une histoire plaisante, lui parut un conteur infini dans ses developpe- ments' (Leuwen, p. 10I8). The overwhelming preoccupations of Mathilde de la Mole stimulate feelings of repugnance for the dandies that decorate her father's salon: 'Plus ils plaisantaient avec grace tout ce qui s'ecarte de la mode, ou la suit mal, croyant la suivre, plus ils se perdaient a ses yeux' (Le Rouge et le Noir, p. 327). In this instance Mathilde resembles Lamiel: 's'amuser etait chose etrangere au caract6re d'Amiel, elle etait trop passionnee pour cela' (p. I 35), a clearly significant statement that recalls the more sweeping one made in Racine et Shakespeare (II, 143): 'La nation frangaise . . .vive, legere, souverainement vaniteuse .. ., semble faite expres pour le rire, au contraire de l'italienne, nation passionnee, toujours trans- portee de haine ou d'amour, ayant autre chose a faire que de rire'.

The psychological mechanisms of laughter are multiple and complex. They are intimately associated with the fundamental thematic rhythms of Stendhal's novels. The world is to a certain degree conceived of as a vast arena in which men play out in turn their acts of aggression and their manoeuvres of self-defence, where they exhibit their need for vain pleasures and their horror of seeing themselves inferior and ridiculed. Perhaps it is only in the rare moments in which man laughs gaily at himself, at his own seriousness and pretensions, that laughter constitutes a sign of genuinely salutary and meritorious psychic activity. Indeed if Stendhal attempts to understand the psychological motivation of man's laughter, he does not seek, essentially as an artist, to stimulate laughter. Such an aim implies the at least partial acceptance of the moral, aesthetic and artistic advantage of the psychology of laughter. Moreover, even if the psychology of laughter remains, for Stendhal, undisturbed in its essential lines of force, his will to continue research into the realm of the comic remains relentless. Not only is he beset by certain doubts and enigmas with regard to the comic mechanisms of, for example, Moliere,l but there are signs

1 In Filosofia Nova Stendhal writes: 'La vraie comedie n'admet jamais la terreur, mais pourquoi pas la piti6 avec denouement heureux?' (i, 87); and again: 'Je suis dans une grande erreur sur le plaisant et le comique. Oh est le mot pour rire dans Le Tartufe, Le Misanthrope, Le Philinte?' (i, 151).

6o



MICHAEL BISHOP

that his probings are revealing new horizons born of his growing awareness of certain incompatibilities between, on the one hand, the psychology of laughter and the demands of his research in this domain, and, on the other hand, the very complexities of his own personality and his own psychological drives. Such incompatibilities seem to him to constitute a serious obstacle to the realization of his aspirations as a comic, that is, laughter-orientated, writer. 'Le temperament sanguin', admits Stendhal, 'est evidemment celui du rire, au contraire du bilieux ou du melancolique' (Racine et Shakespeare, II, 144). This from a man who ascribes to himself the melancholic temperament outlined by Cabanis.1 A brief examination of the extent of this divergence between Stendhal's personality and the psychology of laughter will show it to be a divergence which results in the seeking for, and ultimate discovery of, a more subtle, delicate comic mechanism, one more suited to the temperament and intimate dreams of Stendhal, namely the psychology of the smile. It is thus the psychological necessity of the latter's emergence which strikes us in juxtaposing the inherent limitations of the psychology of laughter and the expansive sensibility of Stendhal.

'Je me devoue a etudier des caracteres essentiellement bas et ridicules', Stendhal writes in his Filosofia Nova (II, 217). 'I1 n'est pas etonnant que je ne m'echauffe point.' Indeed, Stendhal's natural disposition leads him rather to an analysis of an a priori greatness needing no reliance on its flattery or mockery of the base and stultifying. He further delimits his feeling in his Filosofia Nova (II, 102-3): 'Je n'ai d'enthousiasme que pour le grand. Ce qui fait que j'ai vraiment de l'enthousiasme pour peindre les defauts et les ridicules de ce qui veut etre grand'. And indeed, what is the history of Fabrice del Dongo, Lucien Leuwen, Julien Sorel, but that of the splendours and misfortunes, the joys and chimeras of a force that is aspiring to the full expression of itself, of its own innate greatness, by abandoning itself to the fires of its passions and the subtleties of its heroic sensibility ?

Moreover, if Stendhal manifests abhorrence of the mediocre, that abhorrence is born of its intrinsic insensitivity, of the coldness of its unsubtle reaction. It is in this context that we must place Stendhal's desperate bid to conform to the requirements of laughter: 'Je serai de sang-froid .. ., c'est peut-etre la seule disposition ou l'on puisse faire du bon comique'. For we must juxtapose Stendhal's 'ame toute passion' and the required 'etat de froideur pour bien rire du ridicule' (Filosofia Nova, iI,

217, 43). A clear dichotomy is thus revealed between the shallowness and absence of subtle comprehension associated with the psychology of sanguine laughter and the warm, almost cloying forces of grandeur, understanding, identification- orientated and bondmaking as they are. For Stendhal is moving rapidly towards a creative basis thriving rather on the idealist and sublimating comparison of self and greatness, on the study of the complex sensibility with its passionate core, than on the humiliation of a misconstrued and condescending appreciation of the superiority of self with reference to the unfortunate. Given, too, Stendhal's passion for happiness, we observe that pleasing of other and pleasing of self become function- ally interdependent, contrary to the exigencies of the psychology of laughter. Furthermore, Stendhalian love tends to avoid the social confirmation of happiness

1 See La Vie de Henry Brulard, p. I9.




sought by the laugher, addressing its elation at most to an unseen, yet potential 'Happy Few'.

Further rifts between psychology and personality become evident as Stendhal confronts the outgoing levity of laughter with that socially vulnerable Rousseauesque reverie and its moments of renewal and idealization whose perhaps chimerical reality affords a no less real happiness. The latter propensities, whilst readily exposed to ridicule, amount to a denial of the human comedy and a renunciation of the hierarchy of values espoused by the laugher.

We recall, too, that the melancholic's constant energy functions only with difficulty, betraying a perpetual doubting of self. To the young Stendhal the facile- ness of the sanguine is foreign or, at most, dilatory and thus socially inapplicable. Insecurity, hesitation, self-criticism and defence, feelings of impotence and even inferiority thus clash violently with the cocky aggressiveness and feelings of secure well-being upon which the explosion of laughter hinges. It is to maintain this security that the laugher becomes treacherously involved in conscious or unconscious hypocrisy. Stendhalian-heroic hypocrisy depends, not on insidious self- expansion, but on the degree of ideal natural effusiveness socially possible. It is thus a protective, but no less factitious and detested mask, true happiness residing in the ability to be oneself, to be genuine. For the question of truth is closely allied to that of hypocrisy and, for Stendhal, remains a simple matter: 'Point de bonheur sans connaissance de la verite' (Correspondance, I, 236). At best the laugher bases the idea of his superiority upon a mere fragment of truth, thus eternalizing an isolated moment. At worst he risks and even embraces the irreparable and self-advantageous denaturing of the truth of things. His arbitrary, inflexible vision makes impossible the potential blossoming of those signs, however faint, of a more delicate, self- comprehending sensibility. For it is clearly in this direction that Stendhal is now drawn, away from the uneasy ground of the psychology of laughter: 'Je cherche a voir la verite et a la peindre de la maniere la plus touchante'. And again: 'Je ne crois pas queje fasse de grandes decouvertes dans l'analyse des sentiments ordinaires de l'homme. Ce n'est pas mon genie, mais je puis decrire les sentiments que j'ai eprouves, analyse qui sera neuve.' And finally: 'Un auteur comique peut esperer un grand succes quand il se peint lui-meme' (Filosofia Nova, I, 209; II, 241; I, 81). Self-multiplication, the sensing of that mediocre-heroic dialectic that marks Stend- hal's work, the tentative movement away from laughter as a basis for artistic creativity, to another domain of the comic, as yet unexplored, yet aligning itself more precisely with the forces of his own personality, these are the implications of such statements from Filosofia Nova. The exigencies of this newly sensed realm of 'comedy' will thus imply constant self-exploration, exposure of self-truth, which, combined with the creative forces of consolatory self-idealization, will lead to that intimate, smiling, smile-psychology-based confession of the complex configuration of the multiple aspects of his sensibility.

The smile arises from the perception of happiness, Stendhal states on various occasions.' The psychology of the smile is, in essence, a psychology of happiness. The totality of the divergence between the psychologies of the smile and laughter is

1 Journal, 11, 22I; Racine et Shakespeare, IT, 134-5.



MICHAEL BISHOP 63

sketched out in Stendhal's Filosofia Nova (II, 291): 'Le poete comique nous presente des gens semblables a nous (a ce que nous croyons etre), il les fait agir et reussir; cela nous montrant le bonheur, nous fait sourire. II a outre cela la ressource de donner desjouissances imprevues a notre vanite, par consequent de nous faire rire.' And amongst a few other notes on the comic in Moliere, Shakespeare, La Comedie, Le Rire Stendhal offers us his most formal definition of the psychology of the smile: 'Le poete comique me presente un jeune homme semblable a moi qui, par l'exces de ses bonnes qualites devient malheureux et qui par ces memes qualites devient heureux. Cela me procurant la vue du bonheur m'interesse et me fait sourire... Plus le malheur du personage avec qui je me suis identifie est grand, plus je reflechis profondement pour trouver les moyens d'en sortir, plus il m'interesse' (p. 280). After a brief examination of the essence of the psychology of the smile, we shall find it necessary to reappraise the nature of the Stendhalian fictional happiness in the light of this psychology and shall finally turn our attention to an appreciation of the bi-level presence of the smile and its concomitant implicit overtones in Stendhal's novels.

If laughter hinges on a psychology of dissimilarity, it is clear that the smile stems from a psychology of resemblance. He who smiles likes to resemble the other, with the latter's 'exces de bonnes qualites'. The smiler wishes to parallel the heroic, thus becoming a hero in his turn. The smile bases itself upon a psychology stipulating the identification of self and other, and dictating a natural parallelism of sensibility. Laughter, outlawing all elements of sympathy, and distinguishing clearly between the essence of the laughed-at and the laugher, is thus at loggerheads with the smile and its demands for the superimposition of human and heroic essences. Thus we see that the insouciance inherent in laughter is bluntly antagonistic to the psychological demands of the smile, in whose domain is manifested a total interest in and com- mitment to the fate of the other. The laugher's self-interest and self-aggrandisement, that nonchalantly feed upon the other's misfortunes, clash violently with the smiler's interest, which increases in direct ratio to the aggravation of the other's misfortune. Sympathy thus excludes insouciance, for, in the eyes of the smiler, the misfortune of the other becomes not only shared, but by extension the very misfortune of the one who smiles. The psychology of the smile hence requires a total engagement of self in a world that is at once imagined and become real, a world whose very existence depends on the interested, sympathetic acceptance of the heroic values proposed. Moreover, the dichotomy between laughter and the smile becomes still more complete if we oppose the laugher's dependence on the idea of the other's inferiority with the demand of the psychology of the smile that the other should possess 'un exces de bonnes qualites', an a priori incontestable heroic superiority. It is paradoxically from the latter that the other's misfortune issues, for social incompre- hension, stemming from insensitivity and mediocrity, cannot but impose the logic of its philistine restrictions on him. Misfortune thus becomes at once the sure sign of the other's superiority and that upon which the laugher falsely bases his own superiority. By contrast, the smile arises from the perception of both the ultimate potential happiness of the other and the happiness, real, present (at least for the observer), implied in the very heart of present but fleeting unhappiness, by the 'bonnes qualites' of the heroic sensibility. The latter depends in part on the ability to glimpse the ultimately available happiness, the ultimate and ideal self-realization or success of the other. The smile beams forth as long as this ultimate happiness




remains visible or implied. Should it disappear, the smile in turn fades, for both the heroic smile and the Stendhalian smile depend crucially upon it.1

Romantic happiness exists primarily on two levels: firstly that of ultimate heroic happiness seeking to realize itself in the projected and idealized intimacy of love; and, secondly, that of happiness available to the hero through an appreciation of the total complexity of his own sensibility and of that 'exces de bonnes qualites'. The two happinesses are interdependent. Awareness and realization of ultimate happiness remain possible only because of an optimism persistently throbbing at the heart of disillusionment, misanthropy, and pessimism, and directly dependent on the writer's privileged view of what is ultimately to be. Ultimate happiness comes about sometimes on a terrestrial, tangible level, sometimes on a more dreamed, idealized, somewhat mystical level. It may be suggested by the hero's smile or, more often, by what we shall call the Stendhalian smile, that light bantering tone, that superstructure of affectionate, almost paternal teasing applied to the heroes. It is in the latter that the full creative force of the psychology of the smile is to be felt, that is to say at the level of creative attitude rather than that of character development as is the case with the psychology of laughter. However, it will first be necessary to cast a brief glance at the presence of happiness in Stendhal's novels, the actual heroic smile-symbols, the projected states of heroic happiness, and heroic sensibility as a source of happiness, for it should perhaps here be reiterated that the psychology of the smile is in essence one of happiness and it is upon happiness that the Stendhalian smile builds its delicate scaffolding.

There is a clear absence of uniformity associated with the presence of ultimate happiness, which varies in its configurations and intensity, according to the particular essence of the novel and the resultant nature of the relationships developed between hero and artist. In La Chartreuse de Parme, in which the Stendhalian smile finds its most blissful expression,2 Fabrice and Clelia ultimately enjoy 'trois annees de bonheur divin' (p. 475) following the post-imprisonment intermittence of their bitter-sweet pleasures, a potential happiness prefigured significantly moreover during their first meeting by the self-explicated smile of Fabrice: 'La jeune fille, au lieu de monter dans la caleche, voulut redescendre, et Fabrice continuant a la soutenir, elle tomba dans ses bras. II sourit, elle rougit profondement; ils resterent un instant a se regarder apres que la jeune fille se fut degagee de ses bras. - Ce serait une charmante compagne de prison, se dit Fabrice: quelle pensee profonde sous ce front! elle saurait aimer' (p. 78). This ultimate happiness moreover, will blossom forth also in a mystical domain at a non-terrestrial, dreamed level (p. 475). Fabrice's death, after a single year of charterhouse life, points to the realization of this mystical happiness (p. 480).

1 The smile is, of course, at times associated with secondary, non-heroic figures. Curiously it then often assumes the psychological quality of laughter which is stressed by some supplementary epithet: 'le beau sourire de condescendance' of Ranuce-Ernest IV (La Chartreuse, p. 235), the mocking smile of superiority of old Sorel (Le Rouge et le Noir, p. 6), the 'sourire affreux' of M. de Soubirane (Armance, p. 207), the 'sourires qui voulaient etre malins' of the officers (Leuwen, p. 793). The line between tragedy and smile-psychology comedy is also delicately traced, as we can see from Stendhal's own formulae for the tragic heroes: 'Je ferai des actions superbes a mes heros et les montrerai si aimables, si bonnement naifs, avec des ames si tendres dans la vie commune qu'on desirera vivre avec eux' (Filosofia Nova, nI, 341).

2 See La Chartreuse de Parme, pp. 27, 36, 42, 47-8, 56, 146, I6I-2.



MICHAEL BISHOP 65

In Lucien Leuwen, where too Stendhal's smiling presence is delicately felt, ultimate happiness exists at a projected terrestrial level: several plans bear witness to the crucial tone-dictating ultimate happy reunions of Bathilde and Lucien (Romans, i, I575, 1589). Henri Martineau comments significantly on one 'qui date tres probablement des premiers mois de la composition du livre et dont la tendresse contenue fait prevoir les dernieres pages de La Chartreuse' (Romans, I, 740, 1527). That this happiness would have been additionally perpetuated in some mystical paralleling of La Chartreuse de Parme cannot be ascertained, though the projected happiness undoubtedly in our view, dictates the continued expansiveness of the tonal quality of Lucien Leuwen.1

Terrestrial happiness in Le Rouge et le Noir awaits the last days ofJulien's life for its most complete fulfilment. Until then, heroic happiness, often rather brittle and fragile, remains somewhat diluted by the intermittent interference of other social forces acting upon the hero. Only with the renunciation of external interests and the totality of the accompanying devotion of hero and heroine in an intimate existential solitude does a full consciousness of their love come about. It is then only, too, that Julien and Mme de Renal glimpse the possibility of the extension of this terrestrial bliss into the mystical domain, an extension symbolized moreover in the heroine's smile: 'En verite, je ne sais pas ce que tu m'inspires. Tu me dirais de donner un coup de couteau au geolier, que le crime serait commis avant que j'y eusse songe. Explique-moi cela bien nettement avant que je te quitte, je veux voir clair dans mon cceur; car dans deux mois nous nous quittons... A propos, nous

quitterons-nous ? lui dit-elle en souriant' (Le Rouge et le Noir, pp. 49I-2). The death of Mme de Renal, hard on the heels of Julien, gives at least the appearance of

confirming the mystical attainment of this state of sublime, pure and ideal happiness. However, it is important to observe that in spite of these two moments of

perception of happiness, the growth of the Stendhalian smile is less vigorous in Le

Rouge et le Noir, though its more fragile presence continues to play a crucial role in the maintenance of the novel's delicate emotive equilibrium.2 That this presence should be muted only serves to stress that the profound nature of Julien's history (like Octave's but unlike Fabrice's or Lucien's) skirts the darker realm of tragedy. The misery occasioned by Julien's setbacks clearly outdistances the misfortunes

experienced by Lucien or Fabrice. His social point of departure, differing significantly from theirs, heightens the need for the most judicious tonal blending, and a consequent muting of amiable quizzing, in an effort to render comprehensible the complexity of this particular heroic sensibility. The intermittent force of this smile creates, as it were, a zone of disarmament, where the tragic becomes tolerable, subtly defused in the light of a fleeting vision of some other time and space, with its sensed aura of the ideally happy.

The bliss of earthly love is beyond realization in the eyes of Octave de Malivert

despite the close alignment of heroic intimacy - unfortunately out ofjoint owing to Octave's 'babilanisme monstrueux' (Armance, p. 224)- and the Stendhalian formulae for ideal love. Octave remains constantly aware of the potential of their

past and present relationship in terms of an ultimate happiness: 'I1 avait besoin

1 Should we read, too, Bathilde's smile upon seeing Lucien for the first time as a sign of ultimate

happiness? Later smile and happiness are specifically associated (See Romans, pp. 794, 966, 987). 2 See Le Rouge et le Noir, pp. 83, 88, I07, 263, 338.

5




de... voir sourire [Armance]; il eut vu dans ce sourire une image de l'ancienne intimite' (p. 204). But this happiness seems destined to come about only beyond the here and the now, in a state of being mirrored in the hero's death smile (p. 245). In the absence of further evidence, we cannot specifically construe, in the subsequent symbolic death to the world of Armance, a spiritual reunion magically bridging the here and the elsewhere. That the smile may denote the view of a more limited and thematically irregular happiness involving spiritual liberation of the heroic sensibility into a sublimely peaceful solitude, would seem no less possible and, indeed, perhaps more in accordance with the main forces of the novel. It is in the light of a more sober mystical happiness that we may read the sign of Octave's melancholy smile before the act of marriage (p. 240). What, in our view, remains of paramount importance, is the very presence of these smiles in situations of com- parable significance in Stendhal's other novels. The particular quality of the happiness signified in Armance will be reflected in the delicacy of the Stendhalian smile. The fragility of both places Armance more firmly alongside Le Rouge et le Noir.

Despite the incompleteness of Lamiel, Stendhal had time to project a state of at least potential ultimate happiness for his heroine. 'L'interet arrivera', he indicates in a note, 'avec le veritable amour' (Romans, II, I03I). Valbayre, it would seem, was destined, with his spiritual impact and unbridled antisocialism, to provoke in Lamiel a profoundly sympathetic heroic reaction. But this blissful elsewhere seems to remain too distant, too hazily delineated, too violent even, perhaps thus creating a deadening void between itself and the writer's attitude to his heroine. Indeed, Stendhal displays a curious uneasiness in the face of an inability to conceive clearly the main driving forces of his novel. Thus, in spite of certain projected stylistic experimentation, indeed probably on account of it and the nauseating necessity of sketching out certain plans, Lamiel reveals a perceptible absence of that stylistically determining 'vue du bonheur'.1

Before turning our attention more specifically to the manifestations of the Stendhalian smile, we shall briefly examine the second basic source of happiness namely that inherent in the 'bonnes qualites' of the heroic sensibility. Multi- origined, this happiness may spring from truth, 'naturel', sincerity, self-knowledge and spiritual expansion of self. It is from this complex totality that all passions and consciousness of bliss result. All misfortunes, too. For heroic misery thus takes as its point of departure that same sensibility which constitutes equally the sine qua non of all ultimate heroic happiness. The particular characteristic that ought to create a state of heroic bliss, but which, owing to the social constrictions prevalent, ironically makes possible one of unhappiness, provokes the artist's smile which, a symbol of his creative overview of ultimate happiness, both operates a transcendence of present misfortune and enables a curious twin concentration upon what might have been now and what nevertheless certainly will be ultimately.

It is in this context that the histories of Stendhal's heroes should be considered. Lucien Leuwen and Octave de Malivert exhibit, with Julien Sorel, humour and scorn in the face of social masks erected by the mediocre. They seek full knowledge of the motivation of their own acts and thoughts. They draw the potential substance of their happiness from within themselves. Their melancholy romantic appetite

1 Romans, II, 1033, I037. See also Correspondance, x, 268.

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MICHAEL BISHOP 67

assumes, in conformity with the thesis of Cabanis, the character of all-consuming passion. Their desire for 'l'ame sensible', for the delicious intimacy the latter promises, being met habitually with blank absence, the heroes turn to the bitter- sweetness of reverie and solitude. It is on the path to this domain that those even more telling signs of Stendhalian heroism reveal themselves: doubt, depression, perplexity, timidity and their resultant emotionalism. Conditions strangely essential to the ultimate realization of heroic happiness. In the case of Lamiel however, although she conforms to the early stages of the heroic 'formula', although she too aspires to full expression of her potentialities in 'amour-passion', it is her bilious energy that seems destined both to dominate her sensibility until her violent death and to control the particular configuration of the supreme happiness that was to be the logical terminal point of her passion. In Lamiel lack of self-confidence and that emotional energy so often thwarted by the melancholy temperament, give way to the impetuosity and impulsive vehemence of bilious contingency. For her the world appears reduced in complexity and subtlety and assumes the set contours of Sansfin's Machiavellism. Such a stimulus produces neither the artistic response of natural sympathy nor its concomitant, the Stendhalian smile.

Given then that the psychology of the smile is one of resemblance between self and other, the Stendhalian smile logically demands that bridge of profound sympathy between hero and artist. It is thus not only a privileged view of happiness but also that smile of delight at the sympathetic savouring of intrinsic happiness as announced in the present moment by the 'exces de bonnes qualites'. For this delight manifests itself in an authentic smile, in gentle gambolling, in a patina of subdued mirth that goes beyond the ruggedness of present misfortune in the creation of a delicate atmosphere of confidence and transcendent optimism.

In Armance we encounter certain low-key smiling observations on the philo- sophical battle waged by Octave against the irresistible passion engulfing him. Now they blossom more perceptibly: 'Tout le bonheur d'Octave qu'il croyait si ferme et si bien assure ne tenait cependant qu'a ce seul petit mot amitie qu'il venait de prononcer. On echappe difficilement a la maladie de son siecle: Octave se croyait philosophe et profond' (p. 85). Now they gather light rather from their delicate accumulation than from their own barely perceptible flicker as they touch down on the hero's instinctive reactions 'que malgre sa philosophie, il etait loin de s'expliquer' (p. 70). And despite heroic sincerity and the drive for self-knowledge, the hero's initial emotional naivety provides a stimulus for the Stendhalian smile: 'Ce qui est admirable, c'est que notre philosophe n'eut pas la moindre idee qu'il aimait Armance d'amour. Il s'etait fait les serments les plus forts contre cette

passion' (p. 73). Fully conscious of his passion, but tormented by his secret, Octave

cruelly exposes the impossibility of reciprocating the sentiments clearly expressed in Armance's smile of greeting (p. 138), only to succumb totally to them upon the heroine's fainting: 'I1 eut la faiblesse de prendre sa main. Toute sa philosophie avait disparu' (p. I40). A fragile smile indeed, but one that betrays the very fragility of romantic happiness available from the original data of this novel. The subtle, breath-taking juxtaposition of tones constitutes an attempt to assault our emotions, to create empathy. The same gamut of stylistic delicacy' is associated with the at times over-romantic activity resulting from the heroic sensibility it in turn

1 'De la moindre nuance de style depend le comique', writes Stendhal (Romans, I, 1037).




designates. Thus the smile may emerge more reassuringly to the surface as it reacts to Armance's imaginative faculty which 's'egara dans des suppositions de solitude complete et d'ile deserte, tres romantiques et surtout trop usees par les romans pour etre rapportees' (Armance, p. 226); or its barely sensed presence may again draw its strength from its other less fragile manifestations, as when Armance after burning Octave's letter, 'en recueillit les cendres precieusement' (p. I68), or Octave, having buried Armance's purse as a sign of their forced separation, declares: 'Voila ... ma premiere action vertueuse' (p. 136). The strength of Stendhal's waggish persiflage remains, however, inescapably linked to the particular view of happiness in this novel, becoming significantly most evident in Octave's own sensing of the happiness and release promised in the deliverance of death: 'Je puis mourir tout a coup, se dit-il gaiement et en s'efforant de se rappeler quelques idees d'anatomie... oserons-nous l'avouer. Octave eut l'enfantillage d'ecrire avec son sang.. .et avec plus de facilite qu'il ne l'esperait' (pp. I62-3). The ironical bias of this teasing gains strength when we recall that, in Stendhal's view, happiness can only be judged empirically. Smile and glimpsed happiness thus effect a transcendence of the tragic curve of Octave's life. Artist and hero delight together in an atmosphere of contagious merriment significant in its rarity.

Despite the frustrations and occasionally resultant heroic misanthropy of Lucien Leuwen, the intensity of emotional torment is reduced, permitting a freer expansion of the Stendhalian smile than that found in Armance. Lucien's 'faiblesses' and misfortune both point to his heroic sensibility and are the cue for the author's sympathetic, yet smiling delight in them: 'Au point de bon sens et de vieillesse morale ou nous sommes, il faut, j'en conviens, faire un effort sur soi-meme pour pouvoir comprendre les affreux combats dont l'ame de notre heros etait le theatre' (Leuwen, p. Ioo8). And back in Paris, 'Lucien, debout contre la cheminee, avait l'air sombre, agite, tragique, l'air en un mot que nous devrions trouver a un jeune premier de tragedie malheureux par 1'amour' (Leuwen, p. I o70). It is in such circum- stances that we best see that tense equilibrium between hero-artist identification and preparedness to exploit Stendhal's Bergsonian discovery: 'Ce sont les etats de passion qui font les caracteres propices a la comedie, et non pas les passions' (Filosofia Nova, I, 242). Attention is thus drawn to the 'part d'automatisme' of Lucien's behaviour, though, it must be re-emphasized, the otherwise aesthetically inappropriate smile remains essentially dependent for its existence on the artistic overview of happiness in the midst of misfortune. In this process of conversion of misfortune into happiness, heroic timidity and embarrassment provide the com- monest fodder. Examples abound, in conformity with Stendhal's advice to Mme Jules Gauthier: 'Faites faire quelques petites gaucheries a votre heros, parce qu'enfin nous autres heros, nous faisons des gaucheries'.1 At Mme de Commercy's salon, Lucien 'fut commun et presque plat devant Mme de Chasteller. Il le sentit, et en arriva a ce point de misere de chercher a donner de la grace a ses mouvements et au son de sa voix, et l'on devine avec quels succes' (Leuwen, p. 949). Stendhal subtly juxtaposes sympathy and humour in an assessment of'le comique de cette entrevue' with its curious ingredients of heroic humiliation and masochism. Stendhal's words addressed to Pauline are thus made to ring in Lucien's ears: 'Je n'aime pas, quand j'ecris de coeur, etre gene' (Correspondance, I, 4). Unencumbered intimacy alone

1 M. Bardeche, Stendhal Romancier (Paris, 1947), p. 296.



MICHAEL BISHOP

offers the possibility of that total outpouring so much desired, its absence and the resultant smile permitting that dialectic between delight and sympathy and satirical penetration. For this gentle, interested, self-confessing smile presents a complex didactic configuration that may be conveniently demonstrated with reference to Lucien's dislike for the mediocre and the crude. At Nancy, Lucien's fellow officers offer an icy welcome: 'I1 ne l'attribuait qu'a l'eloignement des etres grossiers pour les gens de bonne compagnie. II eut repousse comme un leurre tout temoignage de bienveillance et, neanmoins cette haine contenue, mais unanime, qu'il lisait dans tous les yeux, lui serrait le coeur. Le lecteur est supplie de ne pas le prendre tout a fait pour un sot: ce coeur etait bien jeune encore.'l And at Mme de Marcilly's ball, Stendhal pierces the bubble of Lucien's 'brillante faconde' with his ironic isolation of heroic naivety in a moral and aesthetic cesspool (Leuwen, p. 923). The smile thus delicately shades in the main lines of force: absolute condemnation of the base and insensitive, insistence on truth and sincerity, smiling up-braiding of latent and impotent heroic misanthropy and paradoxical adoration of fractious naivety in the face of inferiority. Indeed it is this very artlessness, this intransigent quest for purity, that constitutes the essence of consequently self-isolating heroic sensibility. For growth of personal force leads to isolation, vulnerability and counteractive social aggression. The Stendhalian smile beams forth in proportion as Stendhal recognizes the hero's instinctive attempts to defend his most cherished values against the perpetually sadistic assault of an insipid and frightened society. Nevertheless, as in Armance, the double security of perceiving both present and ultimate happiness, in moments of respite or even frolicking, seems particularly suited to the Stendhalian smile. Thus the enchanting reverie of Fabrice before 'les aspects sublimes ou touchants de ces forets des environs du lac de C6me' constitutes 'un veritable enfantillage' (La Chartreuse de Parme, p. 162). Thus Stendhal chaffs the gaily innocent childishness of Bathilde's tricks played upon Lucien (Leuwen, pp. 997-8). This abandonment to happiness exposes the hero both to externwll aggressive ridicule of the other and the interested, ironic, sympathetic smile of his equal and creator. After the breathless rhythm of the scene when Lucien kisses Bathilde, upon leaving her salon 'Leuwen descendit l'escalier dans un trouble inexprimable. Bientot il fut ivre de bonheur, ce qui l'empecha de voir qu'il etait bien jeune, bien sot' (p. I037). If here the Stendhalian smile bathes in the double assurance of a sublime present happiness and the projected ultimate happiness; if, too, Stendhal can be felt to be steeping himself in the vicarious pleasures of a transferred and thus mutually experienced happiness, we must not overlook that such smiling moments contain, with their inevitable chink of objective detachment, a veiled and paradoxical sign of the fragility and fugacity of happiness itself. Which is not to ignore the fact that for Stendhal, as for Julien Sorel, a few brief, yet sublimely happy moments far outweigh in value a life of insipid pleasure, but to point up that tension inherent in many a sentence, which constitutes one of the most subtle and characteristic aspects of Stendhal's creative writing.

Upon reading Lamiel, however, we are struck by the absence of smiling paren- theses, of affectionately ironic commentary addressed to the heroine. Indeed the Stendhalian smile is totally missing. Beset by numerous obstacles in composition, Stendhal gropes for the atmosphere and tonal superstructure necessary to express

1 Leuwen, p. 828; compare ibid., p. 780 and p. I030.

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the improvised artistic synthesis of his 'accumulations interieures' and his intimate, at times unconscious, dreams. The heroine-artist relationship remains ill-defined, ultimate heroic happiness seems too distant, almost unreal. The absence of melancholic sensibility severely hampers the process of identification. Lamiel lacks subtlety, delicacy. Her bilious temperament combines with Sansfin's indoctrination to produce an inflexible, cold self-confidence, a positive, cynical heroic force deprived of all sentimentality. Indeed it is Lamiel, who, like M. Leuwen pere (whose role we have already differentiated from the pure hero's) hands out ridicule instead of being its object. Moreover, in Lamiel Stendhal seems to be trying out certain comic recipes whose aim is to create laughter (Romans, II, 868). The rough draft that Lamiel in fact remains, bears unequivocal witness to the failure of his attempt,1 for the novel betrays an 'unhappiness' in every sense of the word. The fine equilibrium of the Stendhalian smile is transformed into farce or caricature. After the fragility of Armance's happiness, after the gradual broadening of the smile that shows itself, still rather coyly, in Le Rouge et le Noir and more openly in Lucien Leuwen, after the perfection of the happiness perceived in La Chartreuse de Parme, the lines blur over, the view of happiness curiously weakens, the smile fades away.

HALIFAX, NOVA SCOTIA MICHAEL BISHOP

1 P. Martino, Stendhal (Paris, I934), p. 217; Bardeche, pp. 446-50; P. Jacoubet, Stendhal (Paris, 1943), p. 211.

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laughter and the smile in stendhal

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