Pierre Choderlos de Laclos

For more information on Pierre-Ambroise-François Choderlos de Laclos, visit Britannica.com.

Laclos, Choderlos de (Pierre-Antoine-François Choderlos de Laclos) (1741-1803). The literary reputation of Laclos rests on a single work, his epistolary novel Les Liaisons dangereuses (1782). He was by profession an army engineer. Before 1782 he had published some light verse and written the libretto, based on Madame Riccoboni's Ernestine, of an opéra-comique. He wrote, but did not publish, three essays on the education of women (the first two in 1783 and the third after 1795). His critique of Vauban's theory of siege fortifications (1786) attracted disapproval from his superiors, and in 1788 he left the army to become Philippe d'Orléans's secretary. Later he joined the Société des Amis de la Constitution and for a brief period edited their Journal. He was twice imprisoned, facing execution in 1794. However, he was subsequently allowed to resume his military career; as a brigadier-general he saw action with the Rhine army. He was on his way to a posting in Naples when he died of dysentery and malaria at Tarento.

Because of Les Liaisons dangereuses, some of his contemporaries suspected Laclos of being another Valmont: cynically immoral, self-serving, and given to conspiracy. Among critics this view of him persisted well into the 20th c. Such an interpretation of his character is now generally rejected, particularly in the light of his affection for his wife and family, as seen in his letters. His political sympathies—first royalist, then republican, then an admirer of Bonaparte as a great general—still raise queries, but in more general terms he can be seen as a man of conventional morality, and in many respects a disciple of Rousseau.

[Vivienne Mylne]

Laclos, Pierre Ambroise Choderlos De (1741–1803), French novelist. Little in the life of the military officer offers a clue that Choderlos de Laclos was destined to write one of the most controversial and influential French novels of the eighteenth century. Born in Amiens into the lower nobility, he chose an army career in the 1760s. France was at peace and barracks life was routinely dull. He wrote poetry, erotic tales, and a comic opera, Ernestine, which failed when it was produced (1777). In 1779, upon being upgraded to captain and sent to fortify the île d'Aix, he began to form the plan for his novel, Les liaisons dangereuses, composed while he was on leave in Paris, and published in 1782. It met with immediate success, and scandal. He quickly took a military assignment in La Rochelle to avoid the controversy, and there met Marie Soulange-Duperré, with whom he had a child before they were married in 1784.

His criticism of French fortifications (1786) made him equally controversial in the military, and he soon left for service as a secretary to Louis-Philippe, duke of Orléans (1725–1785). At this time he wrote several tracts on military and political topics. During the French Revolution he was protected by Georges-Jacques Danton (1759–1794)—a member of the Paris Commune and minister of justice in the new republic—imprisoned, nevertheless, during the Reign of Terror, liberated, and eventually made a brigadier general (1800) by Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821). Named to a post in Naples, he died in Italy of dysentery in 1803.

Laclos's reputation rests on his single novel, Les liaisons dangereuses. The plot involves interconnecting attempts at seduction and betrayal within a closed, elite segment of society. The vicomte de Valmont is encouraged by his former mistress, the marquise de Merteuil, to seduce the naive and innocent Cécile Volanges, engaged to a young man, Danceny, upon whom Mme de Merteuil seeks revenge. At first Valmont refuses, preferring, instead, to court the virtuous wife of the President de Tourvel. She appears to be slowly yielding, as the two libertines (Valmont, Merteuil) bitterly ridicule each other. Mme de Merteuil sends Valmont a lengthy lesson in seduction (letter 81) and pretends to be seduced by Prevan. Meanwhile, Valmont, learning that Cécile's mother warned the president's wife of his designs on her, decides to accept Mme de Merteuil's challenge and becomes Cécile's lover. The president's wife, still in love with Valmont, finally yields to him. Mme de Merteuil demands that Valmont sacrifice hislove for thepresident'swife ifhe hopes to win her back, and the vicomte complies. Rather than finding love, however, the two libertines are at war with each other, and divulge each other's letters. A young maninlove with Cécileisfuriousand kills Valmont in a duel, Cécile enters a convent, and Mme de Merteuil, disgraced and disfigured by smallpox, flees society, which she had called "that great theater."

The epistolary novel is structured as a series of personal letters exchanged between the main characters. The lack of a narrator, and the conflicting, competing perspectives presented by the different letter writers creates an open, ambiguous moral tone that shocked many contemporary readers. The work can be seen as promoting seduction through Valmont's and Merteuil's presentation of detailed tactics and a rhetoric of temptation, or as condemning this debauchery by the libertines' eventual failure and defeat. The amorality of the seducers, and their victims, is portrayed directly, with a neutrality that made the novel itself appear amoral, if not, indeed, immoral.

The exclusive use of the characters' letters also indicates effectively the hypocrisy of polite society, because they often reveal great differences between public and private conduct. On the one hand is illusion, on the other the reality of Valmont and Merteuil, whom Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) labeled "a Satanic Eve." All the characters maintain a virtuous façade, although the tempters reveal their real intentions and devious machinations to each other. The more innocent women reveal by their letters their slow descent as they yield to Valmont. We learn that he seeks not only to corrupt them but to ruin their reputation, as he plans to use their love letters as proof. When Valmont and Merteuil reveal each other's letters near the novel's end, however, these missives serve as proof of their duplicity and corruption, ruining them and leading to their demise.

Laclos considered himself a follower of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), and we see this not only in the epistolary form of the novel, as in the philosopher's Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse (1761; Julie, or the new Eloise), but also in its content. Rousseau saw society and writing as corrupting influences, opposed to a natural state of purity and oral language. In Laclos's novel, moral degradation and letter writing are inextricably linked. Modern film versions of the novel have considerably extended the work's popularity and influence.

Bibliography

Brooks, Peter. The Novel of Worldliness: Crébillon, Marivaux, Laclos, Stendhal. Princeton, 1969.

Conroy, Peter V. Intimate, Intrusive, and Triumphant: Readers in the Liaisons dangereuses. Amsterdam, 1987.

Diaconoff, Suellen. Eros and Power in Les liaisons dangereuses: A Study in Evil. Geneva, 1979.

Rosbottom, Ronald C. Choderlos de Laclos. Boston, 1978.

Roulston, Christine. Virtue, Gender, and the Authentic Self in Eighteenth-Century Fiction: Richardson, Rousseau, and Laclos. Gainesville, Fla., 1998.

Thelander, Dorothy. Laclos and the Epistolary Novel. Geneva, 1963.

Winnett, Susan. Terrible Sociability: The Text of Manners in Laclos, Goethe, and James. Stanford, 1993.

—ALLEN G. WOOD

Pierre Ambroise Choderlos de Laclos.

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Pierre Ambroise François Choderlos de Laclos (18 October 1741 – 5 September 1803) was a French novelist, official and army general, best known for writing the epistolary novel Les Liaisons dangereuses.

A unique case in French literature, he was for a long time considered to be as scandalous a writer as the Marquis de Sade or Nicolas-Edme Rétif. He was a military officer with no illusions about human relations, and an amateur writer; however, his initial plan was to "write a work which departed from the ordinary, which made a noise, and which would remain on earth after his death"; from this point of view he mostly attained his goals, with the fame of his masterwork Les Liaisons dangereuses . It is one of the masterpieces of novelistic literature of the 18th century, which explores the amorous intrigues of the aristocracy. It has inspired a large number of critical and analytic commentaries, plays, and films.

Contents 1 Biography 2 Bibliography 3 References 4 Sources

Biography

Laclos was born in Amiens into a bourgeois family, and in 1760 was sent to the École royale d'artillerie de La Fère, ancestor of the École polytechnique. As a young lieutenant, he briefly served in a garrison at La Rochelle until the end of the Seven Years War (1763). Later he was assigned to Strasbourg (1765-1769), Grenoble (1769-1775) and Besançon (1775-1776).

Despite being promoted to captain (1771), Laclos grew increasingly bored with his artillery garrison duties and the company of the soldiers, and began to devote his free time to writing. His first works, several light poems, were published on the Almanach des Muses. Later he wrote an Opéra-comique, Ernestine, inspired by a novel by Marie-Jeanne Riccoboni. Its premiere on 19 July 1777, in presence of Queen Marie-Antoinette, was a failure. In the same year he created a new artillery school in Valence, which was to include Napoleon among its students. At his return at Besançon in 1778, Laclos was promoted second captain of the Engineers. In this period he wrote several works, which showed his great admiration of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

In 1779 he was sent to Île-d'Aix to assist Marc-René de Montalembert in the construction of fortifications there against the British. He however spent most of his time writing his new epistolary novel, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, as well as a Letter to Madame de Montalembert. When he asked for and was granted six months of vacation, he spent the time in Paris writing.

Les Liaisons Dangereuses was published by Durand Neveu in four volumes on 23 March 1782, turning into a widespread success (1,000 copies sold in a month, an exceptional result for the times). Laclos was immediately ordered to return to his garrison in Brittany; in 1783 he was sent to La Rochelle to collaborate in the construction of the new arsenal. Here he met Marie-Soulange Duperré, 18 years his junior, whom he would marry in 1786. The following year he began a project of numbering Paris' streets.

In 1788 Laclos left the army, entering the service of Louis Philippe, Duke of Orléans, for whom, after the outbreak of the French Revolution, he carried forward with intense diplomatic activity. Captured by the Republic ideals, he left the Duke to obtain a place as commissar in the Ministry of War. His reorganization has been credited as having a role in the Revolutionary Army victory in the Battle of Valmy. Later, after the desertion of general Charles François Dumouriez, he was however arrested as "Orleaniste", being freed after the Thermidorian Reaction.

He thenceforth spent some time in ballistic studies, which led him to the invention of the modern artillery shell. In 1795 he requested of the Committee of Public Safety reintegration in the army, which was ignored. His attempts to obtain a diplomatic position and to found a bank were also unsuccessful. Eventually, Laclos met the young general and recent First Consul, Napoleon Bonaparte, and joined his party. On 16 January 1800 he was reinstated in the Army as Brigadier General in the Armée du Rhin, taking part in the Battle of Biberach.

Made commander-in-chief of Reserve Artillery in Italy (1803), Laclos died shortly afterward in the former convent of St. Francis of Assisi at Taranto, probably of dysentery and malaria. He was buried in the fort still bearing his name (Forte de Laclos) in the Isola di San Paolo near the city, built under his direction. Following the restoration of the House of Bourbon in southern Italy, his burial tomb was destroyed; it is believed that his bones were tossed into the sea.^[1]

Bibliography

• Ernestine (1777, Opéra-comique)[1]
• Les Liaisons dangereuses (1782)
• Des Femmes et de leur éducation (1783)
• Instructions aux assemblées de bailliage (1789)
• Journal des amis de la Constitution (1790-1791)
• De la guerre et de la paix (1795)

References

1. ^ Pierre Choderlos de Laclos at Find a Grave

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Pierre Choderlos de Laclos

French Wikisource has original text related to this article: Dangerous Liaisons

Sources

• Bertaud, Jean-Paul (2003). Choderlos de Laclos l’auteur des Liaisons dangereuses. Paris: Fayard. ISBN 2-213-61642-6. 

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