David Brunat is a partner at LPM Communications, writer and administrator of the Fondation de la Comédie-Française.
It is therefore a question of bringing him into the Pantheon.
“
Why not?
», As one does not say in… the language of Molière.
He would thus become the oldest guest in these places.
It is a concrete candidacy, gilded on edge, indisputable, and a priori immune to any controversy.
He was attacked, calumniated, hated during his lifetime.
He was intensely hated by mediocre people who envied his vast genius and popularity.
Hypocrites and evil-doers of all stripes, whose tricks he brought to light by winning the favor of laughers and good men, sought in vain to silence him.
But all of this is ancient history.
Where to run, where not to run to hear bad things about him today?
Everywhere you will hear nothing but praise, cries of admiration and tears of laughter and emotion.
The cause is heard.
To tell the truth, Molière is already at home in the Panthéon, although he has been resting for a long time at Père Lachaise, this famous Parisian cemetery named after the confessor of Louis XIV, admiring protector and patron of Molière in two ways, as a man of the theater. and as a royal upholsterer.
French is “the language of Molière” and of no one else.
Its immemorial Pantheon, its sentimental house, a building of stones but also of words where the dead are more alive than many living, is located in the heart of Paris.
The Comédie-Française!
His main residence for eternity!
A dream setting that explodes from century to century the dazzling universality of his work.
Like the Pantheon, Molière is a monument.
One of the most extraordinary and most visited in literature.
A cathedral.
An inexhaustible treasure.
Unique by its formidable gallery of characters, complete bestiary of the human condition: courtiers, devout hypocrites or true men of faith, sordid stingy or generous, magnificent, naive or cynical, learned or null doctors, adventurers or homeowners, small marquises and great seducers , beautiful souls, misanthropists, cowards and courageous, clever servants, unscrupulous rascals, ridiculous bourgeois, great ladies, non-learned maids but full of common sense, old men in love, ingenuous young girls (or not) ...
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But what would Molière say to today's doctors?
It is a unique cathedral also by the language that one speaks there, so beautiful, so pure, so raised and familiar at the same time that it became synonymous with the French language, a language which it carried, in verse like in prose, to an unparalleled degree of perfection and humor.
Even Chateaubriand, even Hugo, even Proust did not receive this supreme honor: their language is wonderful, but after all French is "
the language of Molière
" and of no one else.
His art of speaking, of painting men, of directing them, of incarnating them by playing roles written by himself, but also his science of leading a troupe, creating sets, and managing of an enterprise full of material and human hazards: in all these disciplines, he reached summits, ten or a hundred times the height of the Pantheon.
Molière would have reveled in the habits and customs of the French technocracy, in its contemptuous ways, in its comic swelling.
In the art of making people laugh, of making people cry, of edifying, of instructing, of entertaining, Molière is not the mountain of Sainte-Geneviève, it is Mont-Blanc, it is Everest, it is he is a virtuoso who dances on the roof of the world and who breathes the oxygen of the French spirit at the top of his lungs ("
the lung! the lung!
").
This is what Molière is, a giant of his century and his country, a feathered god, an affable Sun King who brought Mr. Jourdain and Harpagon, Alceste and Scapin, into the Pantheon of letters and humor, Diafoirus and many other merry and sad sires.
The height of recognition (or self-mockery?): In 2019, the students of the ENA named their class after him.
A mountebank!
The name of a notorious nonconformist who made fun of the ridiculous of his time and who would have reveled in the habits and customs of the French technocracy, its burlesque jargon, its contemptuous and comical ways, its comical swelling.
A name?
Rather, a symbol.
A jewel of French genius.
And a pseudonym whose origin has remained mysterious since Jean-Baptiste Poquelin has never revealed why he was nicknamed Molière.
If he is admitted to the Pantheon, a chapel, a hut on the scale of this giant, Molière will be with Voltaire one of the few to enter it under a name other than the one he received at baptism (January 15, 1622 , reason why every January 15 the French troupe pays tribute to him on stage).
He would become the oldest to be admitted to the Pantheon.
And he will become the oldest of the band because his elder Descartes, to whom the Convention wanted to offer in 1793 the honors of the Pantheon, did not finally enter, at least in body, if not in spirit.
To great men, therefore, the grateful homeland!
The father of Scapin, Dom Juan, Le Misanthrope, Les Précieuses ridicules, Le Malade imaginaire (to be re-read in times of Covid) and so many other masterpieces has his place in the old church in the street Soufflot ... he who, ironically, was buried on the sly and was almost deprived of Christian funerals despite the protection of Louis XIV, because at that time playing the comedy was worth (in principle) excommunication.
To read also:
David Brunat: In praise of the event
At a time when the actors are prohibited from playing by the effect not of an ecclesiastical decision but of a sentence of "
social distancing
" to the Diafoirian statement, it makes sense to pantheonize this great living, this ardent genius and easygoing, this friend who never disappoints.
Drelin!
Drelin!
The little cat is dead, but the glory of Molière will never be extinguished.
Enter here with your procession of lights and your escort of characters, with your tongue of fire and your unforgettable tirades!
And please Heaven that you do not get bored under the cold vaults of the Pantheon, this starched theater, this temple of Republican splendor where the laughter of the beautiful marquises never resounds, whose beautiful eyes of love are making us die ...
