Montesquieu - Persian Letters (Oxford Worlds Classics)

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PERSIAN LETTERS

Montesquieu was born Charles-Louis de Secondat in 1689 at the chteau of La Brde, south of Bordeaux. He was educated by the Oratoriens at the Collge de Juilly in Meaux and completed a law degree at the University of Bordeaux in 1708. After a few years in Paris he returned to Bordeaux in order to manage the family estates following the death of his father. He married Jeanne Lartigue, a practising Calvinist, with whom he had three children. In 1716 he joined the Academy of Bordeaux and was its director for the year in 1718. On the death of his uncle he inherited the title of baron de Montesquieu and the post of prsi-dent mortier at the Parlement of Bordeaux where he had begun his career in law. From an early age he manifested a ceaseless intellectual curiosity and devotion to extensive scholarship. He pursued through systematic investigation the numerous factors that shape societies and an understanding of them. In 1721 he published the Persian Letters ( Lettres persanes) anonymously in Holland; his authorship, which became an open secret, gained him entry to the literary salons of Paris, where he lived from 1721

to 1725. Elected to the Acadmie Franaise in 1728, he sold his judicial office and travelled around Europe for three years. On his return he continued his scholarly research. His work on the ancient Romans addressed fundamental issues in the philosophy of history and prompted thinking about forms of government that would inform his later work. In 1748 his major work, The Spirit of the Laws ( De lesprit des lois), was published in Geneva.

Despite progressive eye-trouble, he published a Defence of the Spirit of theLaws in which he repudiated the allegation that he was a deist, and began work on An Essay on Taste for Diderots Encyclopedia. In 1754 he published an extensively revised version of the Persian Letters, acknowledging authorship for the first time. He died in Paris in 1755.

Margaret Mauldon has worked as a translator since 1987. For Oxford Worlds Classics she has translated Zolas LAssommoir, Stendhals TheCharterhouse of Parma, Maupassants Bel-Ami, Constants Adolphe, Huysmanss Against Nature (winner of the Scott Moncrieff prize for translation, 1999), Flauberts Madame Bovary, and Diderots Rameaus Nephewand First Satire.

Andrew Kahn is Fellow and Tutor in Russian at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, and University Lecturer in Russian at the University of Oxford.

He works on the literature and history of ideas of the European and Russian Enlightenments. He is the editor of the Cambridge Companion toPushkin (2007), and of Pushkins The Queen of Spades and Other Stories for Oxford Worlds Classics. His most recent book is Pushkins LyricIntelligence (2008).

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OXFORD WORLDS CLASSICS

MONTESQUIEU

Persian Letters

Translated by

MARGARET MAULDON

With an Introduction and Notes by

ANDREW KAHN

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp

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Translation Margaret Mauldon 2008

Editorial material and Appendix Andrew Kahn 2008

The moral rights of the authors have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published as an Oxford Worlds Classics paperback 2008

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat, baron de, 16891755.

[Lettres persanes. English]

Persian letters / Montesquieu; translated by Margaret Mauldon; with an introduction and notes by Andrew Kahn.

p. cm. (Oxford worlds classics)

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-0-19-280635-2

I. Mauldon, Margaret. II. Kahn, Andrew. III. Title.

PQ2011.L5E57 2008

843.5dc22

2007039894

Typeset by Cepha Imaging Pvt Ltd, Bangalore, India Printed in Great Britain by

Clays Ltd, St. Ives plc.

ISBN 978-0-19-280635-2

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

CONTENTS

Introduction

vii

Note on the Text

xxxi

Select Bibliography

xxxiv

Note on the Chronology of the Persian Letters xxxviii

A Chronology of Montesquieu

xxxix

List of Characters

xliii

PERSIAN LETTERS

Preface

Letters

Supplementary Letters

Some Reflections on the Persian Letters

Appendix: Extracts from Montesquieus Sources 229

Explanatory Notes

Concordance of Letter Numbers

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INTRODUCTION

The Persian Letters ( Lettres persanes) is perhaps the first great popular work of the European Enlightenment. Conceived around 1717, it was published anonymously in 1721 and enjoyed immediate notoriety. The playwright Marivaux was critical of its false brilliance about serious subjects, while the historian and journalist Denis-Franois Camusat applauded its brilliance but called the contents dangerous. A cleric, stung by its critical attitude to religion, told Montesquieu that his book would sell like hot cakes. The prediction was correct, and Montesquieu later noted that booksellers, eager to cash in, implored members of the public to write them some Persian Letters. The original two slim volumes clearly caught the mood of the moment.

Montesquieu now stands as one of the great political thinkers of the modern world. His views on the nature of states and their constitutions had a tangible impact on the world around him. In Russia, Catherine the Great drew on his writing in her legislative reforms of the 1760s, and in America the Founding Fathers looked to his great