Bernard Le Bouyer de Vauvenargues

“ The waste of life was appalling; M. de Vauvenargues felt sick and delirious from the constant spectacle of this helpless agony; men dropped to right and left of him, he passed them at every step on the route; two of his fellow-officers had died the same night; it was like a shrieking nightmare to the Marquis to have to leave them, carrion in the snow; and now the strength of young Georges d’Espagnac began to fail; both had long ago lost their horses; M. de Biron himself was walking; there was indeed scarcely an animal left in the army ”

“ In spite of all that was thus against him, Vauvenargues, in those years, few and evil, that were his, thought finely and justly enough to earn for himself a lasting place in the literary history of his nation. He was in the eighteenth century of France, without being of it. You have to separate him in thought from the infidels and the "philosophers" of his time. He belongs in spirit to an earlier age. His moral and intellectual kindred was with such as Pascal, far more than with such as Voltaire. Vauvenargues is, however, a writer for the few, instead of for the many. ”

“ Thus without fortune, or profession, without hope for the future, half-blind, with gangrened limbs that tottered under his feeble body, Vauvenargues started on the steadily downward path which was to lead in less than four years to his grave. History presents to us no more dolorous figure of physical and social failure, nor a more radiant example of moral success. ”

“ M. de Vauvenargues looked back at the figure of the Polish lady. She appeared to be praying with a real and rather sad fervour; her strange, rich, and flamboyant dress, her disarranged hair, her attitude of supplication made her a fitting figure for the sparkling chapel; she looked more like a youth than a woman; she might have been St. Wenceslas himself just before the knife of Boleslav was plunged into his back.
The Marquis passed out into the bitter sombre night, which was filled with the ringing of the bells of many churches. ”

“ The Marquis looked up to see Carola with empty arms.
“Where is the child?” he asked.
“Dead,” she answered, in a tired voice. “And I have laid her under the wagon with my crucifix. I think she was a Hussite, but perhaps God will forgive her, for she was too young to know error.”
“Do you suppose God’s charity less than yours, Mademoiselle?” answered M. de Vauvenargues gently. “You sheltered a heretic child all day—will not God shelter her through all eternity?” ”

“ It distinguishes Vauvenargues at once from all the great French moralists who preceded him, from La Rochefoucauld with his savage cynicism, from Pascal with his contempt of the natural man. Vauvenargues rejected the idea which had so tormented the great spirits of the seventeenth century, that the noblest life was a life of mortification, and he made no demand on the soul to divorce itself from all human interests as being things naturally vile and ignominious. He was to come down to us waving an olive-branch, the most amiable of all idealists, an apostle of tolerance. ”

“ His Characters, very little known in this country, are as excellent as any work in this kind that we are acquainted with, or probably as excellent as such work can be. They are real and natural, yet while abstaining as rigorously as Vauvenargues everywhere does from grotesque and extravagant traits, they avoid equally the vice of presenting the mere bald and sterile flats of character, which he that runs may read. As we have said, he had the quality possessed by so few of those who write about men; he watched men, and drew from the life. ”

“ In the Introduction, in the Reflexions and in the minor fragments, it consists, in fact, of detached and somewhat desultory thoughts on questions of moral philosophy and of literary criticism. Sainte-Beuve has mildly said that as a literary critic Vauvenargues "shows inexperience." His literary criticism is indeed limited to a repetition in crude form of the stock ideas of his time. Thus he exaggerates immensely the value of Racine and Boileau, but depreciates Corneille and even Moliere. As a writer he stands far higher. ”

“ You will not find in the pages of Vauvenargues a distinct revival of that passion for the very soil of France, "la terre sainte, la douce France," which inspired the noble "Chanson de Roland" and has been so strongly accentuated in the recent struggle for Alsace-Lorraine. But he recalled to the memory of a generation which had grown densely material the forgotten ideal of France as the champion of chivalry. We must not forget that we possess in the writings of Vauvenargues merely the commencements of reflection, the first fruit of a life which was broken before its summer was complete. ”

“ In some of his maxims about politics there is also traceable the hollow and confused jargon about tyrants and liberty which did So much to bring about the struggles of the Revolution. It is in morals proper, in the discussion and application of general principles of conduct, that Vauvenargues shines. He is not an exact psychologist, much less a rigorous metaphysician. ”

“ How far to Eger?—how long to the Judgment Day?”
“I am with you, Georges d’Espagnac,” said the Marquis. “We are alive.”
He seemed to hear that.
“Where?” he demanded.
“On the heights,” said M. de Vauvenargues.
It was now quite dark save for the light of the wagon lamp that fell over the straw-coloured silk hangings of M. de Belleisle, the beautiful anguished face framed in the gorgeous hair, the woman in her barbaric splendour clasping the feeble child, and the slender figure of the Marquis in his blue and silver uniform ”

“ On the one or two occasions in which he begins the maxim with the fatal words, Les femmes, he is as little profound as other people who persist in thinking of man and woman as two different species. 'Women,' for example, 'have ordinarily more vanity than temperament, and more temperament than virtue'—which is fairly true of all human beings, and in so far as it is true, describes men just as exactly—and no more so—as it describes women. In truth, Vauvenargues felt too seriously about conduct and character to go far in this direction. ”

“ Vauvenargues said that "he sometimes expressed himself with great energy and no one has more loftly traits, no one has left behind him the idea of a dialogue so closely compacted and so vehement, or has depicted with equal felicity the power and the inflexibility of the soul, which come to it from virtue. ”

“ We think of that gracious touch in Bacon's picture of the father of Solomon's House, that 'he had an aspect as though he pitied men.' If we reproach France in the eighteenth century with its coarseness, artificiality, shallowness, because it produced such men as the rather brutish Duclos, we ought to remember that this was also the century of Vauvenargues, one of the most tender, lofty, cheerful, and delicately sober of all moralists. ”

“ To assist at this accouchement was the aim of all the philosophical midwifery of the age. In 1734 Voltaire, physician-in-ordinary to the century, declared “action to be the chief object of mankind.” But as freedom of action is impossible without freedom of thought Vauvenargues next demanded in clarion tones that “God should be freed.” The idea of “freeing God” in order to free man was an inspiration, and Vauvenargues’ magnificent phrase became the tocsin of the philosophers.
But the chief effect of the Regency upon France, and thus indirectly upon Europe, had been to “free unbelief.” ”

“ The great theologians who surrounded Bossuet, the Eagle of Meaux, had died one by one, and had left successors who were partly pagan, partly atheist. Art and literature tripped after the flowered skirts of the emancipated Duchess of Maine. Looking round the world of France in 1746, Vauvenargues could but cry, like a preacher in the wilderness, "we have fallen into decadence, into moral desuetude," but he cried without anger, remembering that "still the love of gloire is the invisible soul of all those who are capable of any virtue." ”

“ As they rose and saluted M. de Broglie paused.
“Ah, M. de Vauvenargues,” he said excitedly, “what do you read?”
“Corneille, Monsieur,” answered the Marquis.
“I think you are a philosopher,” returned M. de Broglie. “I will give you something to meditate upon. The army leaves Prague to-morrow.”
Georges d’Espagnac looked up with a flush of joy.
“Monsieur,” he cried, “then it is to be action at last!”
The Duke gave him a flickering look of pity.
“A retreat to Eger, my friend. I hope,” he added gravely, “we shall all meet again there.” ”

“ His real strength is in a department which the French have always cultivated with greater success than any other modern people—the expression in more or less epigrammatic language of the results of acute observation of human conduct and motives, for which he had found ample leisure in his campaigns. The chief distinction between Vauvenargues and his great predecessor La Rochefoucauld is that Vauvenargues, unlike La Rochefoucauld, thinks nobly of man, and is altogether inclined rather to the Stoic than to the Epicurean theory. ”

“ Vauvenargues must be added to the list of thinkers and writers whose personal history shows, what men of letters sometimes appear to be in a conspiracy to make us forget, that for sober, healthy, and robust judgment on human nature and life, active and sympathetic contact with men in the transaction of the many affairs of their daily life is a better preparation than any amount of wholly meditative seclusion. He is also one of the many who show that a weakly constitution of body is not incompatible with fine and energetic qualities of mind, even if it be not actually friendly to them. ”

“ Bearing in mind this capacity for indulgence, for pity, and remembering how little it was conceived in the age he lived in, we may look forward a moment to recognize that in his whole teaching Vauvenargues differs from other moralists, but particularly from his great predecessors in France, in that he has a constructive object. He wishes exceedingly to help the unfortunate to live happily, easily and profitably, and he regards almost the whole human race as more or less unhappy. ”

“ I should be much surprised if a great poet were without vivid lights on philosophy, at any rate moral philosophy, and it will very seldom happen for a true philosopher to be totally devoid of imagination.' [31] With imagination in the highest sense Vauvenargues was not largely endowed, but he had as much as is essential to reveal to one that the hard and sober-judging faculty is not the single, nor even the main element, in a wise and full intelligence. ”

“ Similar theories of human nature run through the maxims of Esprit and Saint Evremond, without the exquisite turn which makes each one of La Rochefoucauld's a gem in itself. His tone was that of a disappointed courtier, with a vein of sadness only half disguised by cold philosophy and bitter cynicism. La Bruyere, with a broader outlook upon humanity, had much of the same fine analysis, with less conciseness and elegance of expression. Vauvenargues and Joubert were his legitimate successors. But how far removed in spirit!
"The body has graces," writes Vauvenargues, "the mind has talents ”

“ Marmontel said ‘he held all our souls in his hands.’ He soon resumed, by correspondence, his friendship with Victor Mirabeau; and in their discussions on love—the view he takes of this passion is always a sure test of a man’s character—each letter-writer showed the yawning gulf that divided him from the other.
If Vauvenargues ever met the woman worthy to hold his heart, to be, in the finest and highest understanding of those words, his companion and completion, is not known. He writes of love as if he had felt it. ”

“ The writings of Vauvenargues exist in a confusion which is not likely to be ever remedied, for the bulk of his MSS. were burned during the Commune in May 1871. But much gratitude is owing to Suard (1806) and Gilbert (1857) for their pious labours. A variorum edition might even yet be attempted, and although not complete, might at least be final. ”

“ An attack of small-pox completed the ruin of his health, and thenceforth he led a secluded life devoted to literary pursuits. It is mainly as a novelist that Vauvenargues occupies a place in French literature, although his other works were held in high esteem by his contemporaries.
Edmond and Jules de Goncourt are names famous in French literary history. “Learning something from Flaubert, and teaching almost everything to Zola, they invented a new kind of novel, and their works are the result of a new vision of the world.... ”

“ A good example of this process may be found in comparing the language in which others have treated Vauvenargues' well-known saying: "Pour exécuter de grandes choses, il faut vivre comme si on ne devait jamais mourir." ”

“ If these vain demi-gods of an hour, who trusted to change the world, and who perhaps wished to change it only to make it a temple to their fame, could be awaked from the unmarked graves into which they sunk, to look a little while round on the world for some traces of the success of their projects, would they not be eager to retire again into the chambers of death, to hide the shame of their remembered presumption?" "It is not given to reason," said Vauvenargues, "to cure all the vices of nature." ”

“ VAUGHAN, RICE (fl. 1650) , legal writer, was the son and heir of Henry Vaughan of Machynlleth, Montgomeryshire. He was admitted to Gray's Inn on 13 Aug. 1638 (Foster, Register of Admissions to Gray's Inn) . ”

“ What Vaughan does know is nothing to him; when he salutes the Bodleian from his heart, he is thinking how little honey he has gathered from that vast hive, and how little it contains, when measured with what there is to learn from living and dying. ”

“ Vaughan regarded himself as a philosopher of nature, and although he certainly sought the universal solvent, his published writings deal rather with magic and mysticism than with technical alchemy. They also contain much controversy with Henry More the Platonist. Vaughan was called a Rosicrucian, but denied the imputation. ”