A deadly masquerade of amour…Les Liaisons Dangereuses

by Richard Subber | Jun 27, 2023 | Book reviews, Books, Human Nature, Joys of reading, Language

…death is an anticlimax…

Book review:

Les Liaisons Dangereuses

by Pierre-Ambroise Choderlos de Laclos

Originally published 1782

Translated as Dangerous Liaisons by Ernest Dowson, New York: Doubleday, 1998

Illustrations by Sylvain Sauvage

Les Liaisons Dangereuses is not a garden of delight.

This is a book about love, but the reader will find precious little of it in these pages.

An acquaintance dismissed this voluptuous tale, thus: “All they do is talk.”

Let’s begin there. The language is rich. I daresay that Laclos turns language into an erogenous zone in Les Liaisons Dangereuses.

If you aspire to a working understanding of good and evil, you could do worse than listen to the riveting chatter of the leading personae, who choose each word with careful, deliciously ribald, austerely cruel, and domineering intent. You really don’t want to be a friend, and you most assuredly don’t want to be an enemy.

Men, en garde! The Marquise de Merteuil impulsively thinks of cojones as table ornaments.

Ladies, away! The Vicomte de Valmont is a pirate lover, he sees women as prize ships ready for boarding.

One might wish to believe that the others are innocents: Cécile Volanges, Danceny, the Présidente de Tourvel. But, hold. Each of them seeks to play the game of love, but they are hardly able to distinguish winning from losing.

Yes, this is a boundless exposé of the worst elements—of human intrigue, self indulgence, hubris, vaunting egos, and careless poaching of souls—that masquerade as amour.

Yes, in a sense, the characters are stereotypes, but each is, remarkably, ingeniously, ingenuously, a masterpiece of the type. Laclos uses every pertinent word to make them real.

Yes, Les Liaisons is an ultimately degraded experience for both the characters and readers…ultimately, the reader must condemn the Marquise and the Vicomte for so many lives destroyed…death is an anticlimax in Liaisons Dangereuses.

The Marquise and the Vicomte are burdened with a moral framework that shuns the absolute—they have unimaginably unsatisfied desires, and no intellectual elaboration of right and wrong.

Yet, a gentle reader may offer these two a bare shred of pity.

The Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont swirl through their lives, casually jousting with each other as they amuse themselves in controlling the fates of other men and women, but remaining unaware that they are not in control of their own fates.

Note for bibliophiles: Whether you read this in the original French, or in the lush translation by Ernest Dowson, accept the pain of experiencing a literary style that is no longer in vogue, prepare yourself for Laclos’ fabulous late 18th century style that discards a simple declarative sentence, readily, with apparent joy, whenever a sentence heavily laden with clauses, phrases, and modifiers will do just as well, heedless of the effect on a reader, whose inclination may be to appreciate the writhing drama of this story, with somewhat fewer words.

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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.

Book review: The Snow Goose

…sensual drama, eminently poetic…

by Paul Gallico

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