Alain-Rene Lesage

See also: Lesage

Alain-Rene Lesage , born with Sarzeau the December 13rd 1668 and died in Boulogne-sur-Mer the November 17th 1747, is a Romance cier and dramatic author French.

Only sons of a royal notary, Lesage loses his father at the 14 years age and is put in pension at the Jésuites at Vannes where it makes good studies whereas its tutor dissipates his fortune. He studies then the Philosophie and the Droit to Paris. It is believed that having obtained a place in the general Ferme in its native province, it was stripped by it by an injustice which would have entered for something the resentment of the author of Turcaret against the financial ones. Married to twenty-six years and having asked in vain resources the profession of lawyer, it tried to live of its feather and, on the councils of the poet Danchet, of which he was always the friend, he translated without success the gallant Lettres of Aristénète (1695) of the Greek. Being again between the need and the difficulty in drawing from the resources of its spirit, Lesage however did not fear to buy its independence at the price of a hard poverty and refused to be attached to the person of Villars.

In its years of darkness, probably very fertile in observations morals, Lesage met a guard and a guide in the abbot of Lyonne which, not only, ensured a modest pension to him, but initiated it with works of the Spanish literature. It translated successively: the Traitor punished , of Francisco de Rojas Zorrilla and Gift Felix de Mendoce , of Lope de Vega, which it published, without signing, under the title of Spanish Théâtre (1700). In 1702, it could make play the Point of honor , a translated comedy of Rojas, but this Spanish part was out-of-date and dépaysée and does not succeed. Lesage gave another of them to the Th3e4atre Fran1cais, Don César Ursin , translated Calderon, which did not have more success (March 15th 1707).

Spain, up to that point, did not carry happiness in Lesage whose, in the interval, the translation of the Nouvelles adventures of admirable Don Quichotte , of Avellaneda (1704) had not been noticed. It is by making original work, with its small comedy in an act and in prose of rival Crispin of his Master (1707) who was often reprinted and never the repertory left that Lesage broke its bad chance. The great success of this part is due to the truth of the observation, its promptness and the frankness from the spirit, its natural cheerfulness and of good quality.

The same year, Lesage announces as novelist of first order in the lame Devil (1707) where the hero is made transport by the devil on the roof of each house, to see what occurs there and on the occasion to tell an adventure without connection with what precedes nor with what follows. This work was also an imitation of Spanish, but a free imitation, appropriate to the manners French and fertilized by the original and personal observation of the human spirit. Lesage had hardly borrowed from the Spanish author, Guevara, that the idea and the framework of the principal character, the devil, it had made a very new creation while giving him, following the remark of Villemain, “a fine and untied, malicious nature rather than malicious. ” In this work where the marvellous one is there only for the form, a whole diversity of adventures and portraits which ravel quickly in front of the reader, by subjecting to a criticism railleuse and full with smoothness a crowd of the types, all striking of naturalness and truth.

The success of the lame Diable , which was considerable, finally completed to distinguish the name from Lesage of the crowd of the writers. This last work gave course to several anecdotes. Two lords disputed the last specimen of the second edition by putting the sword at the hand in the shop of the bookseller Barbin. Boileau was indignant at such a vogue and threatened, says one, to drive out his lackey, to have introduced at his place the lame Devil while with the theater, the choked gatekeepers could attest the glory of the author.

Lesage had studied the Spanish literature, at the moment when already France had given up this study and what was not that a memory appeared almost an innovation. Its novels however took place of Spanish only the names and of the scene. For the remainder, it is the spirit and French manners which Lesage recalls. The voyage dépayse not the reader who feels, in the malicious painting of the defects and Spanish passions by Lesage, a perpetual allusion to ridiculous of its fatherland.

Lesage had not given all its measurement as novelist yet. Before it to make in Gil Blas , it reached, as dramatic author, by his comedy of Turcaret or the Financier , a height that neither its beginnings nor the pleasant nature of its talent or the indulgence of its character made have a presentiment of. The author showed, in this part, the worthy pupil of Molière and Turcaret is perhaps the work which approaches more of great creations this last. This part, which is almost during Tartufe , is a rough and vigorous satire of natural flatness and defects of loan of arrived of fortune, deprived of education. One reproached Lesage for having put in scene such bad manners, but it is the gasoline of the comedy to paint the social loose morals, those who need to be corrected. It was as said as Turcaret was to miss interest, because it did not offer honest characters and sympathetic nerves to the profit of which the confusion of the defect could turn. This defect, if it is one, is repurchased, in fact, by the truth of paintings, the unforeseen one of the incidents, the comic one, of the situations, the liveliness of the dialog, the promptness of the projections, the prickly cheerfulness of the satire, the movement and the life of whole work. The forms of wear into large could change, and with them the types of those which exert it, but Turcaret did not remain less about it until today the traditional satire of the fortunes improvised by the speculation and agiotage.

Before even appearing, Turcaret had excited against it, the same oppositions as Tartuffe . The financial ones threatened made play all the cabals, tested all the influences, even that of the seduction of the money towards the author. They offered to him, says one, a hundred and thousand books to withdraw its part and are transfered to refuse. While waiting for the public representation, the author produced his comedy in the company. One day that it was to read it in the duchess of Bubble, it was retained with the palate by a lawsuit and arrived late at the aristocratic hotel. The duchess bitterly reproached him for having made lose more than one hour with the company: “Eh well, Madam, set out again to trust Breton, since I made you lose one hour, I will save some to you two” and he withdrew himself, despite everything the authorities to retain it. It was the dolphin, wire of Louis XIV, which put a term at the difficulties by sending to the actors of the king the strict order “to learn the part and to play it without delay”. The first representation took place on February 14th 1709.

The capital work of Lesage was not however to belong to the dramatic kind, but to the novel: it is the Histoire of Gil Blas de Santillane (1715 - 1735), which one regarded as the masterpiece of the social novel in France. Like the lame Devil , Gil Blas does not have, at the bottom, of another object that the table of the company and manners, but the framework in is at the same time simpler and vaster. The subject of this picaresque Roman is studied under more aspects and, under each one of them, with more depth. The account has as a rule the interest rather than probability, but the truth is the law of paintings. The hero has many and odd adventures. He starts from as low as possible and rises at the most point. He passes by the most various social situations, and on several occasions knows the reverses and the returns of fortune.

One somewhat discussed on morality Gil Blas which does not have, not more than Turcaret , the claim to be an edifying history; it is not the painting of the men, though made by a noble and pure heart, such as they must be: “Neither excesses of the regency of which it was pilot, nor the disorders of the comic life in the medium of which it was thrown, had the capacity to corrupt its imagination; never a licentious image dishonoured its brushes; it could respect the moralities by painting the bad ones. ” The system of Lesage is to let the practical consequences leave themselves a natural and true representation. When, later, it translates romantic and moralizing the Histoire of Guzman d' Alfarache , it will give it “purged superfluous moralities”. The treasure of instructions morals put by Lesage in Gil Blas make a kind of human comedy of it where the author makes the war, with the same weapons, with same ridiculous.

The other works of Lesage do not answer these philosopher's stones. He works with haste and to live. With the theater, the author of Turcaret is rejected by the bad one to want actors. He had written in 1708, for the Th3e4atre Fran1cais, a small comedy, the Protective sacking , of which the actors will make him await the representation (1732) during twenty-four years. Then, tired cabals of the theater and coteries of the Comédie-Française, the author of Turcaret , which its talent and its successes protected in vain, carried, like Piron, its works with the Théâtre of the fair, for which it produced, with various collaborators, at least a hundred parts. Since 1705, this theater subordinate, a long time abandoned with the Italian buffooneries and the pleasures of the rabble, had risen beside the French Comedy, which represented the French dramatic masterpieces. Persecuted by the French Comedy engoncée in its privileges, the open ones had opposed the address to the tyranny of the claims of their rivals. One had prohibited the dialog to them, they had sung; one had proscribed the song to them, they had taken refuge in the mime and they had known to find, in their various metamorphoses, art always to brighten the public. Soon their parts, destinies initially with the people, attracted to the courtiers and licentious cheerfulness, the commonplace buffoonery of their play awoke the satiety of the large lords who left the delicate pleasures of the French scene to seek representations where they had fun while being encanaillant.

Such was the theater for which Lesage worked, by giving up the French scene; but, though it was forced to reduce its genius in these works, the author of Turcaret and Gil Blas still finds himself there. Although they are only outlines, the feature of the Master is distinguished there and the comic merit does not miss there. Lesage does not raise its kind above the spectators, but it replaces the commonplace by a cheerfulness lives still, which is not coarse any more, but produced songs stripped of action and always true tables, sometimes gracious. Lesage can put in scene vanity, the ambition and all passions which it already painted and the intrigue excites and surprises curiosity. Under grotesque varnish of the theater of the fair, Lesage shows that he knew those for which he composed, but behind Gilles or Harlequin, the informed spectator recognizes some heavy parvenu successor of Turcaret or some courtier. Harlequin, Colombine and the puppets becomes, in the absence of other actors, the interpreters of his caustic spirit.

When it paints the pain, Lesage does it simply, naturally, such as it saw it in the people to which it speaks by knowing that it does not have enough refinement yet to corrupt the virtues by the assignment or to cover the defects of a glare of elegant frivolity. This made of Lesage, with several other authors, the founder of one of these kinds of popular literature of kind, the comic opera or rather the light comedy, a kind as old as the French cheerfulness whose easy and merry refrains make circulate the epigrams in their giving the music for passport.

The grace and the facility of the style of Lesage perpetuated and increased each day the reputation of its works. Its expression is like its thought, simple and without assignment; rapid and spiritual, it lends itself with flexibility to cheerfulness in the accounts, with the satire in the portraits. Always free from bad taste, Lesage does not seek the projections, it meets them. Lesage traversed the literary career with glare, but without ambition. Always modest, it is by its works alone that it obtained its reputation, and never it did not seek the literary dignities and titles. It is for this reason that it is quoted in the literary history like the first writer to have lived of his feather.

Lesage had been withdrawn at one of its sons, canon in Boulogne-sur-Mer, where he died in eighty years. The count de Tressan, who ordered then Bolted some and in Picardy, made make with the writer of funerals worthy of the row which the posterity was to immediately give him below Molière.

Two of wire of Lesage had been done, against its liking, actors. One two, Louis-Andre Lesage, known as Montménil , was acquired a celebrity under this name of theater. Born in Paris, the July 31st 1695, it was intended by his/her father at the ecclesiastical state and was pulled by the dramatic vocation. It began with the Thêâtre-French in 1726, then traversed the province, before returning to Paris where it took row among the good comic actors. He played the Turcaret with a success which reconciled it with his/her father. He died in the Villette, close to Paris, the September 8th 1743.

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