Laclos Choderlos de - Les Liaisons Dangereuses

Les Liaisons Dangereuses

Even today Les Liaisons remains the one French novel that gives us an impression of danger: it seems to require a label on its cover reserving it for external use only.

Jean Giraudoux

Routledge Classics contains the very best of Routledge publishing over the past century or so, books that have, by popular consent, become established as classics in their field. Drawing on a fantastic heritage of innovative writing published by Routledge and its associated imprints, this series makes available in attractive, affordable form some of the most important works of modern times.

For a complete list of titles visit
www.routledge.com/classics

Pierre Ambroise Franois

Choderlos de Laclos

Les Liaisons Dangereuses

Translated by Richard Aldington

Les Liaisons Dangereuses originally published in 1782

This translation first published under the title Dangerous Acquaintances in 1924

by George Routledge & Sons Ltd

First published in the Routledge Classics 2011

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada

by Routledge

270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Translation Routledge

Introduction Richard Aldington

Typeset in Joanna by

RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk

Printed and bound in Great Britain by

TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

A catalog record for this book has been requested

ISBN 13: 9780415577533 (pbk)

Until 1905, when two biographies of Laclos and his family correspondence were published, his life was only known in outline; the natural tendency to identify him with the Vicomte de Valmont caused misapprehensions of his real character. Unfortunately for us, the bulk of the information collected by Mm. Dard, Caussy and de Chauvigny relates to the last fifteen years of Lacloss life, so that we know more than enough about Laclos the Revolutionary conspirator and general of artillery and comparatively little about Laclos the author of the Liaisons Dangereuses. His character is something of an enigma, made rather more mysterious by his voluble biographers.of active service; finally this correspondence is infected with 18th century self-consciousness and the pose of virtuous sensibility. For these and other reasons the mans letters, generally so useful in determining character, are not of much assistance. How trust the correspondence of a man of such deep reserve and dissimulation as Laclos? And even in prison might he not have played the epistolary part of a good papa? Who knows? The writer of the Liaisons Dangereuses, the calculating Orlanist conspirator, might have feigned anything.

Our knowledge of Lacloss family and early life is slight. He belonged to the petite noblesse, the minor gentry of France, who were exploited by the ancien rgime because they were poor, proud and patriotic and who received their reward under the Revolution too often in the shape of imprisonment and the guillotine. The family of Laclos is supposed to have been Spanish in origin; the earliest notice of the name occurs in 1683. The father of the author, Jean Ambroise Choderlos de Laclos, was scretaire de lIntendence de Picardie et Artois; he married Marie Catherine Gallois. Their son, Pierre Ambroise Franois Choderlos de Laclos, was baptised at Amiens, 19th of October, 1741. The first definite knowledge we have of him is that in 1759 he began to work at mathematics with a view to entering the Artillery. He was received in January 1760; and made sous-lieutenant in March 1761; lieutenant en deuxieme in 1762. He was not made captain until 1771. He saw no active service until after the Revolution and, after spending all his life in the army, received his baptism of fire at sixty. He was in garrison at Toul, Strasbourg, Grenoble and other places. The period at Grenoble, 17691775, is important. Grenoble was then a charming town, sparkling with intelligence, where the women did not allow themselves to be forgotten, says Stendhal, who many years later met Laclos at Milan. Laclos went out into the best society and admitted to Count Tilly in London that he had quelques adventures assez piquantes; though the reports of his senior officers praise his devotion to duty and military knowledge. At Grenoble he is supposed to have known the originals of the principal characters in the Liaisons Dangereuses. Stendhal boasted that as a child he had known the original of Madame de Merteuil, a mysterious Mme. L.T.D.P.M., interpreted as Mme. de la Tour de Pin Monmort. Ccile Volanges is supposed to be derived from a Demoiselle de Blacons. But these identifications are shadowy and remote; all that we can say definitely is that Laclos found some of the material for his book in the society of Grenoble.

He is described at this time as tall, thin, narrow-shouldered, with fine, pale features and blue eyes; under a cold exterior he hid an ardent mind. At twenty he wept over Rousseau; indeed the influence of Rousseau upon him was capital. It is obvious in his work. Possibly, his efforts to force his temperament into a Rousseau-made mould accounted for some of the incoherence and mystery of his personality. He also admired Clarissa and was struck with the character of Lovelace, who certainly has a distant affinity with Valmont. At Grenoble he wrote his first poems, some of which were published in the Almanac des Muses. In 1777 he wrote the libretto of an unsuccessful opera Ernestine, which was laughed off the stage. In 1779 he was detached from his regiment and went to assist the Marquis de Montalembert in the building of a fort on the island of Aix, near La Rochelle, a task upon which he was engaged for some years.

In a few sentences all our essential knowledge of Laclos up to his fortieth year has been related. The reader will see how very meagre are the data upon which we may form a conception of the man who wrote Les Liaisons Dangereuses, for it was at Aix in the months between July 1780 and September 1781 that Laclos wrote his famous novel. What sort of a man was Laclos when he wrote Les Liaisons Dangereuses? What were his motives and his object? If his character had any consistency, if he did not change completely after his marriage and with the Revolution, he cannot have been the mere voluptuary he is often held to be. He cannot have been the original of Valmont. An unscrupulous voluptuary of the Valmont kind would not have been an irreproachable artillery officer and the trusted subordinate of Montalembert. When we come to the period of Lacloss life about which we have ample information we do not find him a dissolute or immoral man at all. On the contrary, we find a clever political agent and a sentimental family man. We may perhaps grant that he followed the current of the times which coincided with his own development; that he was gay and licentious under Louis XV, ardently reforming under Louis XVI, sentimental and republican during the Revolution; but the key to his character and life, as well as to a correct understanding of