Robert Laffont
The writer Jean-Michel Delacomptée is renowned for his numerous literary portraits - Montaigne, Racine, Bossuet, Saint-Simon, in particular - often appearing in the prestigious collection “The One and the Other” by J.-B. Pontalis at Gallimard. Also a novelist and essayist, he has given the public “Notre langue française” (Fayard, 2018), awarded the Grand Prix Hervé Deluen from the Académie française. His new book, “Cabale à la Cour” (Robert Laffont, Les Passe-Murailles collection, 156 p., € 17), has been in bookshops since January 6.
FIGAROVOX.
- You took the plot of your play, enriched by story episodes, from Saint-Simon.
Its starting point is therefore real.
But can we trust the relation of facts by Saint-Simon?
And what attracted you about this story, among all those depicted by Saint-Simon in his Memoirs?
Jean-Michel DELACOMPTÉE.
- In reality, what I wrote is not only a play, because short stories and portraits indeed enrich the theatrical part, hence the original form, innovative I believe, given to this story.
The plot itself is taken from a very particular passage from the Mémoires where Saint-Simon undertakes, with laudable audacity and extraordinary brio, to save from a terrible cabal his friend Philippe d'Orléans, the future Regent, nephew and son-in-law of Louis XIV, having married a daughter born of the latter's relationship with Mme de Montespan.
To avoid his friend a trial for high treason, Saint-Simon advises him to urgently regain the good graces of the king, and, for this purpose, he endeavors to convince him to leave his mistress.
To avoid his friend a trial for high treason, Saint-Simon advises him to urgently regain the good graces of the king, and, for this purpose, he tries to convince him to leave his mistress, Mme d'Argenton, whom he loves passionately, in order to appease his uncle who is irritated and hurt by the disdain, the contempt with which he covers his wife, the Duchess of Orleans.
This is the thread.
Where does the truth of the facts stand?
Like most memorialists, Saint-Simon recounts events from a long time ago.
The case in question here dates back to the years 1709-1710, five years before the death of Louis XIV.
He tells it three decades later.
He therefore presents a necessarily subjective version in which, according to the habit of almost all memorialists, he takes on the good role.
In truth, the threat of a lawsuit was less than he claims.
But what appealed to me was not so much the facts, even if they present a cruel image of the intrigues of the court, as the oratory used by Saint-Simon to achieve his goal. fixed, and which is of a dazzling skill and virtuosity.
What did Louis XIV and Madame de Maintenon reproach the future Regent, Philippe d'Orléans?
And what rumors were circulating about him?
For Louis XIV, these are grievances of a private nature, in that he accuses the Duke of Orleans of humiliating his wife, but above all of a political nature, a rumor assuring that the Duke aims to dethrone the king of Spain Philippe V, grandson of the Sun King.
This rumor even assures us that the Duke of Orleans wants to repudiate the Duchess in order to marry Mme d'Argenton and install her with him on the Spanish throne.
As for Mme de Maintenon, she continues with her hatred of Philippe d'Orléans, in particular because of an offensive joke that he unleashed against her a year earlier.
To these grievances are added the customs of the Duke, a man of great culture and of proven military value, but whose life of unbridled debauchery scandalizes the court confited in devotion under the influence of the Jesuits and Mme de Maintenon, as well. than public opinion crushed by the wars between France and united Europe.
Philippe d'Orléans appears as an ideal scapegoat, whose disastrous fate would have petrified the libertines who displayed themselves shamelessly.
Philippe d'Orléans appears as an ideal scapegoat, whose fatal fate would have petrified the libertines who shamelessly displayed themselves, with, for secondary benefit, the opportunity to demonstrate the intact authority of the old monarch, consequently of the State, and, additional gain, the credit enjoyed by the morganatic wife.
But once again, it is less the historical aspect of the affair which interested me in spite of the importance that Saint-Simon gives to it, than the way in which this one uses all the strings of a rhetoric admirably. mastered to convince the Duke of Orleans to leave his mistress, the only and ultimate way to regain his uncle's trust and escape the trial secretly hatched by the cabal bitter against him.
Your decision is to set up face to face between the future Regent, Philippe d'Orléans, and Saint-Simon, his friend, in his apartments in Versailles.
It's almost a closed session.
Is this a way to identify their two characters as closely as possible?
A closed session, exactly.
In the Memoirs, Saint-Simon's arguments take place over three days, which I have reduced to a single day, that of Wednesday, January 1, 1710, to obtain a unity of time, place and subject, according to the scheme of classical theater whose rigorous tension I love, this compact, collected, muscular side like the hocks of an athlete.
The choice that I made of an ardent dialogue, of a dramatic face-to-face, makes it possible to intensify the arguments of the two protagonists.
In addition, in his Memoirs, Saint-Simon receives the help of Marshal de Bezons, an old grumpy whose presence reassures him and reinforces his approach.
So we have, in the text of the Memoirs but not in my play, three central characters, and others still, including Mme de Saint-Simon, the beloved wife of the little duke.
The choice that I made of an ardent dialogue, of a dramatic face-to-face, makes it possible to intensify the arguments of the two protagonists, to sharpen their reactions and to densify the scenes, thanks to the simplification of the intrigue and the liveliness of the exchanges.
The two characters are remarkable in more than one way, but especially Saint-Simon.
Because one may wonder what drives him to take the risk of protecting Philippe d'Orléans from the powerful enemies who want his downfall.
He's his friend, of course.
But no one has asked him to intervene, and no one has whispered the arguments he is using.
Saint-Simon possesses a diplomatic talent of the highest caliber, very careful, finesse, sinuosities, conditioned by a prodigious control of his speech.
Even his final explanation of the threat of a trial is open to debate.
Saint-Simon is the figure of the courtier par excellence.
He is an indecipherable being, with multiple drawers and careful calculations, armed with a fundamentally political head.
He has a diplomatic talent of the highest caliber, very careful, finesse, sinuosities, conditioned by a prodigious control of his speech.
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Jean-Michel Delacomptée: "The joy of thinking is not what it used to be"
We too often forget that the court is a machine for producing an exceptional language.
The courtier not only dominates his feelings and emotions, he disciplines his language as well as his physiognomy.
Concerned about his own interests, in perpetual competition with people of his caste, he is a person less flesh than words.
A champion of the point that flatters and the spade that kills, velvet and shine.
An expert in conversation, a goldsmith of speech.
Think of the sublime breadth of Bossuet's sermons, who improvised them with a genius equal to that with which the Mémoires du petit duc flambé, which we see in the manuscript he wrote almost without erasures, in one go.
This verbal power reminds me of that famous passage from Péguy in Un poète dit: "It
is therefore a most singular literary problem, but one of the most interesting, to know how it has happened since the beginning of 'advent of the modern world it has been impossible, literally impossible, to obtain a style, a form which permeated freedom as these old styles of the great French memorialists of the old regimes sweated it
.
A freedom resulting from a social soil, pious and literate, which consisted in expressing one's thoughts with the most careful accuracy and the most eloquent accuracy, a virtue at the antipodes of logorrhea today widespread.
Saint-Simon and Philippe d'Orléans spent their childhood in the space of the Palais Royal, common memories bring them together.
How to explain the friendship between two characters so different?
Two opposing temperaments often attract each other.
But that is obviously not all.
Saint-Simon and Philippe d'Orléans spent their childhood in the space of the Palais Royal, common memories bring them together.
In addition, they are as brilliant, as cultured one as the other.
No doubt Saint-Simon felt flattered by the friendship reserved for him by the king's nephew.
In addition, Louis XIV never ceased to value his bastards to the detriment of the dukes and peers of whom Saint-Simon wants to be the fervent lawyer.
He certainly sees an ally in the Duke of Orleans, similarly disadvantaged by Louis XIV for the benefit of the bastards that Saint-Simon abhors.
We find the most obvious political translation of this friendship after the death of Louis XIV, in the cancellation, by the Parliament of Paris spurred on by Saint-Simon, of his will which privileged his natural children to the detriment of his nephew, then in the active participation of this same Saint-Simon in the government of Philippe d'Orléans, once he was appointed Regent.
Can we know how Saint-Simon convinced Philippe d'Orléans to part with his mistress, with whom he seemed very enamored, and to strive to regain the king's confidence?
Without revealing how things go, let us note that Saint-Simon is an infinitely subtle psychologist.
Performing his score by playing in several registers, he skilfully alternates softness and firmness, observes his friend's reactions, releases the pressure, drives the point home at the risk of angering the prince whose cordial character does not support being abruptly.
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Jean-Michel Delacomptée: "Tyrannical concern for the health of the body and moral rearmament"
But what matters first is his reasoning, the growing insistence of the advice he delivers followed by ever more worrying warnings, the mixture of encouragement and blame, all this technique of persuasion which does not aim to nothing more than to overcome the resistance of the passionately in love libertine.
What role do the story episodes that punctuate the play play, starting with the first, the longest, which is a remarkable painting of the Court of Louis XIV?
Although the theatrical part is intended to be staged, this piece differs from the usual forms in that it does include elements that contextualize the dialogue which develops almost without pauses.
This lighting seemed to me useful to serve the plot and its unfolding given the specificity of the time, which not everyone has in-depth knowledge.
It is normal that the details sometimes remain obscure to the current public.
The challenge for me is, as in the portraits I have painted of Bossuet, Racine, La Bruyère or Saint-Simon precisely, in converting the classical language and the era it bears into modern terms and rhythms. in her.
The characters, for example, have not all left illustrious traces.
The introduction of short narratives into the properly theatrical body helps to highlight the strength of the arguments, the energy of the repartees, the variety of remarks and tones.
This point is extremely important to me.
For me, the stake consists in fact, as in the portraits that I have painted of Bossuet, Racine, La Bruyère or Saint-Simon precisely, in converting the classical language and the time that she carries within her like a blossoming belly carries a magnificent child.
As it unfolds in his Memoirs, Saint-Simon's language testifies to a syntactic and semantic complexity to which access has become quite difficult for us.
The stake then consists, thanks to the transfusion of the spirit which animates it, to lose nothing of its substance.
Because this is how we preserve it, respect it and honor it in such a way as to encourage readers to immerse themselves or to immerse themselves in this linguistic, cultural and, to be honest, French heritage, which seems to me as precious, as glorious, as essential as our cathedrals.
What is it that seduces so much, even today, in the Grand Siècle?
I will summarize it with a formula: the spirit of grandeur, precisely.
Which implies the ambition and the will of superhuman beauties.
The Palace of Versailles continues to fascinate the world because it embodies a need for grandiose elevation subject to an aesthetic requirement without weakness.
We are talking about aristocratic times crippled by inequalities, injustices and miseries, but formidably rich in spiritual, artistic and moral aspirations stoked by an intrepid conception of life here below and by an insatiable desire for eternity.