Tartuffe is a hypocrite and a thoroughgoing scoundrel, hiding his hypocrisy behind a mask of Christian virtue. Yet he has managed, through his pretensTartuffe is a hypocrite and a thoroughgoing scoundrel, hiding his hypocrisy behind a mask of Christian virtue. Yet he has managed, through his pretense of piety and humility, to make his way into the good graces of a prominent French paterfamilias named Orgon. How will this villain be prevented from taking every bit of material wealth, and all hope of happiness, from Orgon's unfortunate family? Such is the dramatic scenario behind ²Ñ´Ç±ô¾±Ã¨°ù±ð’s 1664 play Tartuffe; or, The Hypocrite.
²Ñ´Ç±ô¾±Ã¨°ù±ð was the stage name for Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, who can be said to occupy much the same place in French drama and literature that William Shakespeare does for the English. Like Shakespeare, ²Ñ´Ç±ô¾±Ã¨°ù±ð lived and wrote in the 17th century; like Shakespeare, he died young, in his fifties; like Shakespeare, he wrote in a wide variety of dramatic and poetic forms, and had a formative influence on the development of his language â€� so much so that, in ²Ñ´Ç±ô¾±Ã¨°ù±ð’s case, modern French is sometimes known as “the language of ²Ñ´Ç±ô¾±Ã¨°ù±ð.â€� Today, ²Ñ´Ç±ô¾±Ã¨°ù±ð is best-known for his comedies of manners â€� a dramatic form of which Tartuffe is a good example.
As Tartuffe begins, the title character � who does not appear until almost halfway through the play � has already insinuated himself into Orgon's household. As family patriarch, Orgon is used to having his word be law. But from the time when Orgon welcomed Tartuffe into the family’s home, almost everyone in Orgon's family � other than Orgon himself � has come to see what a dissembling hypocrite Tartuffe is.
Dorine, the maid to Orgon’s daughter Mariane, says to Madame Pernelle, Orgon’s mother, that Tartuffe “passes for a saint in your opinion./In fact, he’s nothing but a hypocrite.� Yet Madame Pernelle, like her son, refuses to see the truth about Tartuffe. With regard to Tartuffe’s ongoing refusal to let friends or acquaintances come to the house � supposedly, Tartuffe has been claiming, to avoid the prospect of scandal � Dorine points out that “Those whose own conduct’s most ridiculous/Are always quickest to speak ill of others�. And when Madame Pernelle tries to bring up Orante, an elderly woman of the neighborhood, as a legitimate moral authority who condemns the company that some members of the family keep, Dorine is having none of that, saying that “pious dames� like Orante
…loudly blame their neighbours� way of living, Not for religion’s sake, but out of envy, Because they can’t endure to see another Enjoy the pleasures age has weaned them from.
Such condemnations of pretended virtue � in this case, Orante’s pretending to condemn sensual sin out of religious conviction, when in fact she is simply jealous that she has grown too old to indulge in sensual sin herself � abound throughout Tartuffe.
Orgon, thoroughly taken in by Tartuffe, insists to his brother-in-law Cleante that Tartuffe has become his tutor in piety and Christian virtue; and the hyperbolic terms in which Orgon praises Tartuffe show how completely Tartuffe has caused Orgon to lose touch with basic human reality:
His converse has transformed me quite; he weans My heart from every friendship, teaches me To have no love for anything on Earth; And I could see my brother, children, mother, And wife, all die, and never care � a snap.
Here, ²Ñ´Ç±ô¾±Ã¨°ù±ð makes an important point about Christian piety. While the Christian faith calls upon its adherents to look beyond this world and focus upon the world to come, it does not encourage the believer to disregard their earthly relationships with family members, as Orgon says he now does. Cleante responds to Orgon’s remark by asking, with a certain incredulity, “Will you find no difference between/Hypocrisy and genuine devoutness?â€�
Cleante, who seems to serve in the play as a sort of choral figure, tries in vain to help Orgon see what is inconsistent in the false piety of people like Tartuffe, saying that people of true piety
…don’t attack a sinner tooth and nail, For sin’s the only object of their hatred; Nor are they over-zealous to attempt Far more in heaven’s behalf than heaven would have them. That is my kind of man; that is true living. That is the pattern we should set ourselves. Your fellow was not fashioned on this model. You’re quite sincere in boasting of his zeal; But you’re deceived, I think, by false pretences.
But Orgon is fixed in his illusions � so much so that he intends to break his promise to give his daughter Mariane to Valere, a good young man whom Mariane loves, and instead to marry Mariane to Tartuffe. Like many a father in the plays of William Shakespeare, Orgon is the kind of self-important patriarch who sees control over a daughter’s marital destiny as an index of his masculinity and power, saying to Mariane, “True, I had promised you to young Valere�, but “I know what’s good for you, and I’m your father.�
Spoiler alert: as in Shakespeare’s work, so in that of ²Ñ´Ç±ô¾±Ã¨°ù±ð, these paternal power games invariably fail.
Mariane states that she would rather take her own life than marry Tartuffe, and the ever-practical Dorine asks Mariane to have done with such nonsensical talk:
Good! That’s a remedy I hadn’t thought of. Just die, and everything will be alright. This medicine is marvellous, indeed! It drives me mad to hear folk talk such nonsense.
While Mariane and Valere quarrel and accuse one another of bad faith, Dorine quietly starts to develop a plan for thwarting Tartuffe’s malice and Orgon’s prideful ignorance.
It takes some time before the playgoer or reader gets to meet the title character of this play; but when Tartuffe does present himself, he is all that the reader might expect, loudly calling for his hair-shirt and scourge to be put away before making a clumsy attempt to seduce Orgon’s wife Elmire. Dreaming of marrying Orgon’s daughter while having an affair with Orgon’s wife, Tartuffe seems to have the sort of view of man-woman relationships that one might find in the Letters section of Penthouse magazine.
Damis, who hid himself in a closet during Tartuffe’s visit to Elmire, gets to hear the would-be seducer Tartuffe declare to Elmire that “On you depends my torment or my bliss�; but when Damis reports Tartuffe’s outrageous behaviour, Orgon responds by accusing Damis of ill faith, and banishing him from the house! Clearly, Orgon is far gone.
Cleante tries to persuade Tartuffe to intervene on Damis� behalf, accurately pointing out the far-fetched arguments and “specious phrases� that Tartuffe is depending upon, and asking, “Why take upon yourself the cause of Heaven?/Does Heaven need our help to punish sinners?� But Tartuffe, cloaking his hypocrisy in a mantle of Christian virtue, says that his “forgiveness� of Damis does not need to entail having Damis welcomed back into his home.
Yet Tartuffe’s ascendancy over the household finally undergoes a reversal when Elmire arranges to have Orgon secretly present in the room the next time Tartuffe tries to woo her. Tartuffe’s hypocrisy becomes particularly apparent when the would-be seducer tries to relieve Elmire’s expressed anxieties about a sexual scandal by stating blithely that “The public scandal is what brings offence,/And secret sinning is not sin at all� � in other words, it’s not really a sin as long as one doesn’t get caught! And when Elmire pleads Orgon’s rights as a husband, Tartuffe reveals (to the secretly listening Orgon) his true opinions regarding his longtime benefactor:
Why take such care for him? Between ourselves, He is a man to lead around by the nose. He’s capable of glorying in our meetings, I’ve fooled him so, he’d see all, and deny it.
And as Tartuffe makes that statement, Orgon emerges from hiding and denounces Tartuffe. Yet there is still one problem: in one of his fits of pique, Orgon had not only promised his daughter Mariane to Tartuffe, but also deeded all his property to the hypocrite; and Tartuffe still has the deed of gift. How can the hypocrite be prevented from taking all the property of Orgon and his family, in accordance with the forms of law � something Tartuffe fully intends to do?
Throughout Tartuffe, ²Ñ´Ç±ô¾±Ã¨°ù±ð takes pains to distinguish between true and false piety; he wants to make clear that he is opposed not to religion generally, but rather to hypocritical pretensions to religious piety. In the France of King Louis XIV â€� he who declared that his kingdom would have â€�une roi, une loi, une foiâ€� (“one king, one law, one faithâ€�) â€� drawing such distinctions was a wise and practical thing to do.
²Ñ´Ç±ô¾±Ã¨°ù±ð’s efforts in that regard, unfortunately, were futile. The Catholic Church condemned Tartuffe, and the Parlement at Paris later banned the play. Yet more than three centuries later, when the records of that censorious Parlement have long since crumbled into dust, Tartuffe remains â€� a trenchant critique of hypocrisy in all its forms, and a strong reminder that people of goodwill must always be ready to speak out on behalf of the truth....more
“Elementary, my dear Lavoisier,� I would have told the great chemist Antoine Lavoisier if I had ever had the chance to meet him. “Your book Elements o“Elementary, my dear Lavoisier,� I would have told the great chemist Antoine Lavoisier if I had ever had the chance to meet him. “Your book Elements of Chemistry doesn’t just systematize and regularize the study of chemistry in a way that had never been done before. It makes chemistry fun, makes it interesting, in a way that once would have seemed impossible to a non-science-savvy reader like me. So � many thanks, Monsieur Lavoisier!�
I never got that chance to offer a personal thanks to Lavoisier, of course. But Elements of Chemistry (1790) lives on. Even a reader who has never felt terribly comfortable with scientific subject matter will feel more confident walking into a science lab once they have read Elements of Chemistry. The reason, I think, is that Lavoisier is a singularly able writer with a mellifluous prose style and a gift for the telling little anecdote that effectively illustrates a larger point.
Born into a wealthy family of Paris nobility in 1743, Lavoisier studied the sciences at the University of Paris, and his gift for scientific reasoning quickly gained him the favourable attention of the university’s most elite faculty. Infused with the spirit of the Enlightenment, Lavoisier wanted to move chemistry away from the intuitive approach of the Greeks and Romans � who, among other things, had believed that there were only four elements � and to reorganize the field along quantitative and measurement-oriented principles based in scientific method. He bestrides the world of chemistry like a colossus. In the field of chemistry, there is the time before Lavoisier, and the time after Lavoisier.
Any working scientist � indeed, anyone who believes in the importance of scientific method as a way of advancing the frontiers of knowledge � must appreciate Lavoisier’s statement, in a preface to Elements of Chemistry, that “in commencing the study of a physical science, we ought to form no idea but what is a necessary consequence, and immediate effect, of an experiment or observation.� Throughout Elements of Chemistry, Lavoisier proceeds in just that sort of cautious, empirically-based manner.
Lavoisier begins with a definition of terms, stating that “we must admit, as elements, all the substances into which we are capable, by any means, of reducing bodies by decomposition.� He anticipates elements of later atomic theory when he writes that “the particles of all bodies may be considered as subjected to the action of two opposite powers � the one repulsive, the other attractive � between which they remain in equilibrio.�
Other suppositions of Lavoisier might not seem so persuasive to modern sensibilities, as when he writes that “we have distinguished the cause of heat, or that exquisitely elastic fluid which produces it, by the term caloric,� and adds that “the same body becomes solid, or fluid, or aëriform [gaseous], according to the quantity of caloric by which it is penetrated.� That “caloric theory,� of heat being produced by an invisible fluid, has long since fallen by the proverbial wayside, thanks to more modern insights regarding thermodynamics; but Lavoisier makes clear throughout Elements of Chemistry that he has no problem with being proven wrong, as long as the person seeking to prove him wrong has based their conclusions upon sound science.
And no one is too likely to crow over Lavoisier being wrong about caloric theory, if one can simply reflect that Lavoisier is the man who, in a very real way, gave us oxygen and hydrogen. In a chapter on “The Several Constituent Parts of Atmospheric Air,� Lavoisier chronicles how he came to call aëriform fluids “gases� � a term that seems to have stuck � and then talks of how, finding that atmospheric air was composed of two main gases, he gave “to the base of the former, or respirable, portion of the air, the name of oxygen�.
Lavoisier went on to establish that water was composed partly or oxygen, and partly of another gas that is found in atmospheric air; having found this gas, he decided that “we must find an appropriate term� to describe it, and finally found that “None that we could think of seemed better adapted than the word hydrogen, which signifies the generative principle of water.�
It is quite a thing, to be on hand at the birth of our world’s modern understanding of hydrogen and oxygen.
Another of the endearing features of Elements of Chemistry is the way Lavoisier is so open and direct about the way things can go wrong in the chem lab. Almost every person who was ever given a chemistry set as a child can probably recall their parents making an awkward joke to the effect of, “Now, don’t go blowing up the house, alright?� Lavoisier knows that chemical experimentation can be dangerous, and takes pains in offering the reader warnings to that effect.
When it comes to combining hydrogen and oxygen in order to form water, for instance, Lavoisier notifies the reader that “the combustion of the two gases takes place instantaneously, with a violent explosion�, and adds that “This experiment ought only to be made in a bottle of very strong green glass�, because “otherwise the operator will be exposed to great danger from the rupture of the bottle, of which the fragments will be thrown about with great force.�
Perhaps the most famous example of that principle being put on display before the whole world was the destruction of the German zeppelin Hindenburg at Lakehurst, New Jersey, on 6 May 1937. The Hindenburg was filled with lighter-than-air hydrogen gas � the United States refused to sell helium, with its potential military applications, to the Nazi regime � and that explosive reaction of hydrogen with oxygen shocked the world.
Indeed, those who find that chemistry is cool because you can blow stuff up will find much to enjoy in Elements of Chemistry. In a chapter on “The Combustion of Phosphorus,� Lavoisier discourses on how substances like ether, alcohol, and essential oils “dissolve in considerable quantity in oxygen gas and, when set on fire, a dangerous and sudden explosion takes place, which carries the jar up to a great height, and dashes it in a thousand pieces. From two such explosions, some of the members of the Academy and myself escaped very narrowly.�
Similarly, a chapter on “The Combustion of Alcohol� provides a vivid description of another chem-lab mishap: “The moment I attempted to set the little morsel of phosphorus on fire by means of the red-hot iron, a violent explosion took place, which threw the jar with great violence against the floor of the laboratory, and dashed it in a thousand pieces.� I am thankful that Lavoisier survived these difficult days at the lab, and lived to write Elements of Chemistry -- a book that has enriched all our lives, including the lives of countless people who have never heard of this book, let alone read it.
Part III of Elements of Chemistry, with its “Description of the Instruments and Operations of Chemistry,� may be of greatest interest to working chemists, because of Lavoisier’s painstaking setting-forth of how to make sure than one has the essential instruments for accurate experimentation and measurement. The generalist may draw more inspiration from Lavoisier’s suggestion that the Latin motto Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu (“Nothing can be understood that was not first experienced through the senses�) expresses “an important truth never to be lost sight of by either teachers or students of chemistry.� Nothing was true, for Lavoisier, until it had been proven.
Lavoisier did receive a measure of recommendation in his time. In 1784, Lavoisier worked with Benjamin Franklin on a royal commission that used controlled-trial methods to debunk the then-popular pseudo-science of "animal magnetism." And just the other day, I saw in the National Archives a lovely thank-you note that Lavoisier sent to Thomas Jefferson in 1787, acknowledging Jefferson's recommendation of Lavoisier for membership in the American Philosophical Society. If only Lavoisier could have continued to live on into a dignified old age, to see his work transforming the study of science world-wide.
Lavoisier was guillotined in 1794, at the age of 52. His exoneration eighteen months later, by a less extreme French government, did him no good. But Elements of Chemistry lives on, a lasting testament to the power of the human mind when it is set free to pursue knowledge in a spirit of scientific rigour....more
Around the year 1870, there was much discussion of the idea that a sufficiently determined world traveller could traverse the entire globe with hitherAround the year 1870, there was much discussion of the idea that a sufficiently determined world traveller could traverse the entire globe with hitherto unimaginable speed. Such discussions engaged the interest of Jules Verne, a writer who was always interested in the ways in which human beings� scientific endeavours were changing the world � and the ultimate result was Around the World in Eighty Days (1872). This novel caused a sensation in Verne’s time, and with its emphasis on adventure and ingenuity, it may be the most characteristically “Vernian� of all Jules Verne’s works.
The novel begins with Phileas Fogg, a phlegmatic English gentleman who is a member of London’s Reform Club, offering a bet in the context of a conversation about the speed of global travel. In response to the skepticism of some of his fellow club members, Phileas Fogg states that “I bet £20,000 against anyone that I will go around the world in eighty days or less � in other words, 1,920 hours or 115,200 minutes.� Five members of the Reform Club take the bet, and it is a substantial one � for £20,000 in 1872 would be the equivalent of £2.3 million, or about $3 million (U.S.). Phileas Fogg is staking his entire fortune on this 80-days business.
As he sets forth on the settling of this wager, Phileas Fogg has some things going for him and other things going against him. The good news is that Phileas Fogg has a new servant � a Frenchman named Passepartout. The two are well-matched: where Fogg is detached and unemotional, Passepartout is passionate and engaged; Fogg is an intellectual, and Passepartout an athletic man of action. Passepartout is truly the perfect travel companion for Phileas Fogg’s journey.
The intended travel itinerary for Phileas Fogg and Passepartout is as follows:
� London to Suez, Egypt;
� Suez to Bombay, India;
� Across India from Bombay to Calcutta;
� Calcutta via Singapore to Hong Kong;
� Hong Kong to Yokohama, Japan;
� Yokohama to San Francisco, California, U.S.A.;
� Across the United States of America, from San Francisco to New York; and, finally,
� New York to London.
It all seems do-able, in accordance with Phileas Fogg’s gift for meticulous planning � but of course, a variety of things go wrong throughout the trip, making for plenty of moments of intrigue and fast-paced adventure.
In India, for instance, the travellers find, to their dismay, that there is actually a gap of unfinished railroad in the Trans-Indian Railway on which they were planning to cross the subcontinent. As the book’s narrator dryly puts it, “Newspapers are like certain watches that insist on being fast, and they had prematurely announced the completion of the line.� At first, Phileas Fogg insists that he will cross the subcontinent on foot, if need be, but then Passepartout has a suggestion:
“Sir, I think I’ve found a means of transport.�
“What sort?�
“An elephant! An elephant belonging to an Indian who lives only a hundred yards from here.�
“Let’s go and see the elephant,� replied Mr. Fogg.
A pattern is established here; as things go wrong, and the travellers are in danger of falling behind schedule, Phileas Fogg must repeatedly utilize his ingenuity and craft new travel plans in order to stay on pace for completing his 80-day round-the-world voyage on time. Not only do they get across India on time, but they manage, in the process, to rescue a beautiful young Indian widow, one Mrs. Aouda, from being burned alive in the practice of sati.
I was glad that Mrs. Aouda was a presence in the novel. So often, Verne’s adventure novels are so male-dominated, with two or three guys having all the fun � Professor Otto Lidenbrock, Axel, and the Icelandic guide Hans in Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1864); Professor Aronnax, Conseil, and the Canadian harpooner Ned Land in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1870) � and with, at best, a pretty young woman back home, waiting for the adventurer of her dreams to complete his journey. Mrs. Aouda, in Around the World in Eighty Days, humanizes the proceedings considerably � and one gets the sense that she is slowly but surely thawing out Phileas Fogg’s phlegmatic temperament.
Travel problems do, however, persist. At one point, for instance, Phileas Fogg finds himself stuck in Hong Kong � largely, though he does not know this, through the machinations of Fix, who has separated Passepartout from the rest of the group by taking him to an opium den (!), and is hoping that his long-overdue arrest warrant will arrive in British-held Hong Kong, enabling him at last to arrest Phileas Fogg. The ship for Yokohama has left early, meaning that Phileas Fogg’s prospects for completing the voyage on time seem lost.
But Fogg once again seizes the opportunity to find a new way forward toward recommencing the seemingly lost Yokohama-to-San Francisco stage of his voyage, through a chance encounter with a sailor in Hong Kong’s outer harbour:
“Is your honour after a boat?� the sailor said to him, taking his cap off.
“Do you have a boat ready to sail?� asked Mr. Fogg.
“Yes, your honour � a pilot boat: Number 43, the best of the whole lot.�
“Is it fast?�
“Between eight and nine knots, as near as makes no difference. Do you want to see it?�
â€Ô¨±ð²õ.â€�
“Your honour couldn’t ask for more. Is it for a boat trip?�
“No, for a voyage.�
“A voyage?�
“Are you prepared to take me to Yokohama?�
The sailor couldn’t believe what he’d just heard. He just stood there, aghast.
“Your honour must be joking!� he said.
“No. I’ve missed the Carnatic and I must be in Yokohama by the 14th at the latest, to catch the steamer for San Francisco.�
“Sorry,� replied the sailor, “but it’s impossible.�
“I’m offering you £100 a day and a bonus of £200 if you get me there on time.�
“Are you serious?� asked the sailor.
“Deadly serious,� replied Mr. Fogg.
They get across the Pacific Ocean to San Francisco, and begin a train journey across the United States of America. The American railway, unlike its Indian counterpart, is actually complete from coast to coast, but there is still plenty of trouble awaiting the travellers, as Sioux warriors attack the transcontinental train. Passepartout detaches the locomotive from the passenger cars, and the passenger cars safely reach the Kearney station. But Passepartout and a couple of others, with the engine, fall into the hands of the Sioux.
Phileas Fogg at once expresses his determination to rescue Passepartout, even though “In making this decision Phileas Fogg was sacrificing everything. He had just condemned himself to financial ruin. A single day’s delay meant he would miss the steamer from New York. His bet was irretrievably lost. But at the thought of ‘this is my duty� he had not hesitated.�
Phileas Fogg, in his plans to go and rescue Passepartout, asks Fix to look after Mrs. Aouda, leaving the police inspector feeling decidedly conflicted. “How could he let go of this man, whom he had followed so doggedly and with such persistence? How could he let him venture into the wilderness like this? Fix looked at the gentleman intently and despite himself, for all his feelings against Fogg and in spite of the struggle that was going on inside him, he felt uncomfortable when confronted with that calm and honest expression.�
And once Phileas Fogg and the U.S. Army detachment from Fort Kearney have indeed rescued Passepartout, it turns out that there is � once again � an alternate means of transportation, this time across across the frozen Northern plains:
It was a sort of frame built upon two long beams that were turned up at the end like the runners on a sledge, and there was room for about five or six people. A third of the way along the frame, to the front, stood a very tall mast, to which was attached a huge spanker sail. From this mast, which was firmly held in position by cables, stretched an iron stay, the purpose of which was to hoist a very large jib. At the rear a sort of oar-rudder enabled the contraption to be steered.
It was, as can be seen from this description, a sledge, but with the rigging of a sloop. In winter, on the ice-bound plain, when the trains are no longer running because of the snow, these vehicles travel very fast from station to station. What is more, they have an enormous expanse of sail � greater even than a racing cutter, which is liable to capsize � and with the wind behind them they glide along the surface of the prairies as fast if not faster than express trains.
One of the pre-eminent pleasures of Around the World in Eighty Days is looking on as Phileas Fogg, time after time, figures out a new way to continue with his voyage, once his original plans have not worked out. And the journey of this sail-sled across the snowy plains makes for some of the most exciting and fast-moving passages of the novel.
The resolution of the novel is probably not as surprising for readers nowadays as it was in 1872, but it is a fun denouement nonetheless. In an informative foreword to this Penguin Classics edition of Around the World in Eighty Days, science-fiction author and scholar Brian Aldiss reminds us that one can now go around the world in 55 hours (London Heathrow to Sydney to Los Angeles, and then back to Heathrow), whilst effectively setting what may have been Verne’s most popular adventure novel in the context of its time.
I have never travelled around the world as Phileas Fogg and Passepartout did; but I have now visited all of the countries mentioned in Verne’s novel. I’ve visited 85 countries so far, come to that. And as it was when I was a child of 10 or so, so it is now that I am in my sixties: Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingte jours remains one of the most delightful travel adventures ever set down....more
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