article RELEASE Books, December 8, 2005 Article by States Gracian
The "Treaty" by Baltasar Gracian are accurate, concise, incisive and dark. The moral of the appearance of the English Jesuit Baroque influenced Nietzsche and Guy Debord.
by Philippe SANDEEL , DAILY RELEASE: Thursday, December 8, 2005
Baltasar Gracian, Treaties political, aesthetic, ethical , presented and translated from English by Benito Pelegrín. Threshold, 937 pp., 33 €.
's latest book and only novel by Baltasar Gracian, the Criticón , begins with a shipwreck. When he thinks die Critilo, which embodies the reason, complained that abuses human nature: "All the knowledge she refuses him at birth, she surrenders to the point of death!" The Life is always behind. Critilo but does not die and the novel follows is the itinerary of the picaresque social and intellectual deflowering of surviving in Spain in the seventeenth century. Critilo Andrenio travel company, which represents passion. Criticon is the one who criticizes everything, and constantly exaggerated: the author uses his allegorical novel to settle scores with the world, his country men. Life here is a persistent work of disenchantment. We are born into illusion finally peeling the artichoke with a bitterness full of delight in the heart of the disillusionment: first principle of English baroque world whose father Gracian, a Jesuit proud and happy acerbic, is one of the last massive. The literature student
Spain when his greatness centralized, culminating with Philip II, becomes petrified before decomposition. The sun never sets on the Empire Hispanic, but the shadow wins. Baroque prose unfolds its splendor in this feeling of infinite twilight. The first generation has Gongora and Lope de Vega, born in 1561 and 1562, the second Quevedo, born in 1580. Gracian belongs to the third, as the playwright Calderón de la Barca: one was born in 1601 and another in 1602. Upon their death, the great Spain is ruined. The France of Louis XIV began to dominate Europe.
's existential and philosophical Gracian resembles that of Critilo and his country's dream of greatness in the sense of decadence on the bottom of immortality - that of God, certainly, but also that of art at the highest level since the second principle and a corollary of the first, announced on the entry of Criticon: "Where the artifice does not, nature is perverted." Art is what sets the joy of humanity who do not deserve, but required. The art of deception by Gracian is a bully educated: active, quick, elliptical, voluntary and joyful. The universal man he celebrates "facilitates life, communicating happiness to his family. (...) Great art of knowing what is good taste. And since nature gave man a short while the world because of its natural grandeur, that art makes a universe for the exercise and cultivation of taste and knowledge. " [...]
Calatayud and Toledo
was made by Baltasar Gracian a model of cynicism. Nothing is further from the truth. It gradually takes note of the world as it is, and, in a series of treaties written for twenty years, intends to civilize men. On the one hand, extolling the virtues of moral hero, the courtier and the man at all, before finally celebrate, for once in his name and style "natural as bread" (Azorín), the art of communion, and secondly, by opening the hunt sad passions, and those things that "shorten the life of folly and wickedness." Stupidity (necedad) is one of the words back in his works, coming and going like a yoyo.
He did not like Don Quixote, it was grotesque, but his posterity is great. Schopenhauer translated. Nietzsche was inspired: the parable of the donkey in the Honest Man, announces that the German philosopher, will this animal. The donkey is always complaining about his fate. Jupiter convenes Fortune, a beautiful woman, it is justified. She looks at the donkey and answered, repressing a smile: "If it is an ass, whose fault is it?" And everyone laughs at his foolishness that the animal has made such. Still there a virtue, says Gracian: he is humble - something "we should greet with a fool." Humility is a virtue Baroque according to the author, it is above all the best preached by the envious. Vladimir Jankélévitch also studying treaties Gracian: in despejo, appearance, comfort, he sees his idea of je ne sais quoi. Clément Rosset him, makes the English master of the naturalistic and Paul Valery, in Tel Quel, imitates his intelligence elliptical.
His most famous treaties ( Hero, the Honest Man, Oracle and manual art of prudence ) were known in Europe during his lifetime. The Oracle manual was the size of a paperback book: This masterpiece of style and intellectual is a practical book and casuistry. Benito Pelegrín publishes the 300 aphorisms numbered not in order, as is customary, but by themes, for emerging themes. Apparently, Gracian teaches rules of behavior and etiquette: the author thought the format so it can accompany the man on a daily basis in his journey office. Actually, it upsets the English language.
These treaties have often been brought under different titles. Oracle manual and art had become prudent Human court. El Discreto today the Honest Man , translation more consistent with the original meaning has long been universal human . Benito Pelegrin, professor at the University of Aix and specialist Gracian, retranslated and met in one volume all of these texts. Heroes of (1637) to Art Communion (1655), we can follow and, throughout the other an intellectual and human evolution that concludes, from 1651 to 1657, the Criticón . The Criticón , which is not included in this collection, is a huge grin romantic. The author has aged. He is disappointed in ambition. It will not be tutor of the prince, nor well in court. Under false names, so it adjusts its accounts, its famous patrons, flatters those who can still help. It reveals, above all, tirades in puns, the misery of a world that renounces educate. Borges has harsh words against this brilliant final incontinence: "In the novel teaching El Criticón , the main character neither nor Critilo Andrenio, not more allegorical cronies around him, the monk Gracian, with his genius of a dwarf, with its solemn puns, these salaams to the archbishops and large, with its touchy religion, its appearance and its syrupy bottom of gall. "
Baltasar Gracian y Morales was born under Philip III near Calatayud, on the borders of Aragon and Castile. The poet Martial was also born there, around 40 AD The city reinvented by the Arabs in the eighth century, then called Bilbilis. Gracian says its senses highly concentrated formula is based on the epigrams of the Latin poet. The art of writing is an art and enjoyment of the war: "The proposal must be something violent in its meaning, he says, to cause a surprise, then comes the answer for you, which loosens the tension. "He will sign some of Bilbilis Gracian.
His father is a doctor. It has ten brothers and sisters. The child made his humanities at Calatayud and Toledo, where he attended one of his uncles. In 1619, he entered the novitiate at Tarragona company of Jesus. His studies are excellent, his work on ethics, celebrated his character, arrogant and uncommunicative. He became a priest in 1627. After teaching for three years in his hometown, he was sent near Valencia: first conflicts with the authorities, initial maneuvers. He taught moral theology.
Income in Aragon as confessor and preacher, he wrote his first book, The Hero. The book is published under the pseudonym Lorenzo Gracian, Infanzón (gentleman). Lorenzo is the name of one of his brothers. With the exception of Art Communion, and his only religious book late, Gracian publish his works under pseudonyms, without the authorization of his superiors. Ignatius of Loyola requiring such authorization, she would never have been given to these secular books. But the transparency of the nickname seems made to deceive no one: Gracian likes to play with meaning, words, power, and he wants to be successful. The pseudonym he used to publish the Criticón is no more obscure: Marlon Garcia is an anagram of his name (Gracian y Morales). The Jesuits know what to expect. They complain fast enough. It will eventually impose, at the end of his life, a kind of mutation-punishment. Some even advise the lock without pen or paper. In 1657, he asked to leave the company of Jesus. He died a year later without having received a reply.
We read a lot and soon the books of this Jesuit half ghost. In 1655, a Protestant gentleman, Antoine Brunel, Calatayud describes: "I did not see anything significant, unless one counts for something that I learned that it was the birthplace and the home of Lorenzo Gracian Infanzón. He is a writer of that time, very famous among the Spaniards. It was updated several small treatises of political and moral, and among his works, there is he entitled the Criticon, of which there are only two printed parts which, according to the ages of men, is a kind of satire of everyone smart enough "(1). Hero appears in 1637, the year El Cid: the idea of magnitude is still the heart of man, but this quantity must know and live shows in the eyes and hearts of others. It is used politically in the next book, through the edifying example of King Ferdinand the Catholic: one who, with Queen Isabella made Spain the world's first empire. The third book, Honest Man, widens the scope: Gracian develops through many fables, moral virtues and increasing taxes that a good man and good company. His target is no longer the great man, but anyone who read it. The fourth book, Oracle and manual art of prudence, is a collection of 300 aphorisms. He concentrated and radical, both in substance over form, the teachings of the Honest Man . Spain has lost in Catalonia in 1640. The kingdom is shaken. Gracian is the mirror of his time: he believes in less heroes, more resourcefulness. One of his favorite books is Alfarache Guzman of the great picaresque novel Mateo Aleman.
Lessons for holding and disenchantment of the Oracle, it often seems to have read elsewhere, and has always been: they influenced La Rochefoucauld, Vauvenargues Chamfort, most of the salons of the eighteenth century and Voltaire (who called Baltasar "Gratian"). They are the pinnacle the style and flexibility of the Jesuit in heavy weather. In the epigraph of Heroes, Gracian says to the reader that will "form, with a book dwarf, a giant man." Twenty short chapters to establish the virtues and the program that wants to be a great man. It immediately finds the foundations of his style: short, ellipse pushed to the extreme virtuosity in the use of figures, for multiplying polyphony, through images and sounds, all ambiguities - and the difficulties - meaning. It theorize his work on language in his fifth book, Art and the spirit figures. Gongora, "Swan polyphony" is cited eighty times. We learn that the first law of "laconic" is to refer to "non-intension and extension, even in verse, he fled the redundancy." Is that "the nerve of style lies in the intense depth of the word" niche where the concept, the idea, the soul, which tends the "person", not only giving himself the best and more obstinate. The first principle of
Heroes applies both to the great man and the writer must "apply the funds to make incomprehensible." Gracian compares the hero to a river without a ford before explaining: "We respect a man as we found no limit to his ability as a depth unknown but presumed still maintains, for fear the credit. "In other words:" If one who has dominated, one who conceals never yield. "
Being discovered brings the threat. And that threat hanging over the baroque writer. He must win in hiding, to be loved in shimmering, giving removing. Guided by the influx of the concept, the sinews of war style, and masked sharp advance - by ellipses and figures of speech. It makes the sentence silent force to eliminate the verbs, ankles, conjunctions, adjectives, and it makes it silky encrusting metaphors, neologisms, alliteration: cross movement of maximum concentration and ostentation, fertile contradiction. Style is the image of man in society: parade and concealment. There was the happiness of expression. Gracian invented what he theorized: the joys of obscurity of expression. The sentence carries with it its extinction and its reflections.
Jesuit, he believes in efficiency, control. The writer must be effective in its way, but it should cause the will of the player. These difficult pleasures are twofold. On the one hand, they chase stupid. Golden Rule: "Do not bother fools. (...) They are dangerous to the conversation superficial and harmful to the intimate confidence. "Worse," they are always unhappy, regular premium of awkwardness, and as if that were not enough, "always contagious."
Moreover, these pleasures are fueling a difficult practical thinking by turning the joy, without exhausting the desire. The famous aphorism 200 of the Oracle manual "clever reward never completely fill the waiting: everything is fear that has nothing to be desired, unhappy happiness. Concern begins where the desire. "We understand why Gracian also influenced Guy Debord (who plays the hero in 1973): with three centuries in advance, he unknowingly effects a radical critique of democratic capitalism, spectacular and merchant.
Translate Language Gracian is either a failure or a regret: one foot in Gongora, Lord of the cultists, one foot in Quevedo, master designs, it creates a Spaniard at once so saturated, so dramatic and so dumb that he lost at the border part of its feathers and its silences. Benito Pelegrín was probably not wrong to write that "it is the writer most difficult of English Literature" (with Gongora and Quevedo, precisely). The university follows his fancy erudite to limit the damage. In his preface, he takes the example of the aphorism 98 of the Oracle manual, entitled "hide its intentions." It translates: "That the attention of the mask competes with the intention that one has to expose: eye of lynx, sepia and a half." In English, Gracian wrote: "A lynx speech sepia interiority . The idea remains the same: like a cuttlefish, we must let go before its ink lynx looking to you to guess.
This strategy of discourse is so perfect because it is a discipline of life. The man, according Gracian, must master develop and appearances. Hence, in a famous fable, praised by the peacock and a fox, a real animal Jesuit, ostentation. Crows, figures of envy, complain that the peacock spread its beauty. In terms of the debate, Fox concludes: "There would be absurd to concede to violence Peacock beauty and forbid him to do the parade." An aphorism agrees: "Things do not go for what they are but for what they seem. Claims and know the show is worth twice. "Some philosophers, like Clement Rosset, conclude that, Gracian, only the fireworks there. Wrong. Reality exists: not his real virtues, man is worthless, but if these virtues do not appear know, it's "as if" they did not exist.
The peacock feather and
The principle of ostentation is immediately corrected by a limit: the assignment. Will make is a delicate art. Too much stirring his feathers, the peacock eventually find its legs, which are ugly. In the Oracle manual, several aphorisms denounce the excesses of ostentation: "No artifice requires more natural than this, which sank in the allocation because it is on the border of the vanity and the latter, the contempt. "La Rochefoucauld wrote," We are never so ridiculous by the qualities that we have, by those that are assigned to have. "The best translation of Gracian, it happens to be him. The ostentatiously demands of taste, judgments, moderation, discernment: qualities essential to the honest man. Gracian lacked neither ostentatious nor trust: in his letters, he brags too much quality and success of his preaching. It describes what can not be.
The man must not only master the appearances. He must seize the opportunities. If aphorisms seem contradictory, it is because he must adapt to circumstances that change. If these aphorisms are brief, it is also because the opportunities go by quickly. Each aphorism is a perfect crime. He enters the consciousness as a short, sharp blade and it leaves quickly, leaving the reader gripped by the folds of the wound, uncertain about the nature and depth of the wound it is made. The reader is a victim chosen. He must be surprised, touched, dizzy, never bored. is the famous aphorism 105: "Lo bueno, if short, bueno dos veces." Pelegrín translated as: "Between two words, one must choose the lesser." Literally, the form captures the best skiing: good if brief, twice good. And life is so long that we must continuously improve and shorten ; The encourcir. A year before his death early in the third part of Criticon, Gracian wrote: "A great player has said a great work that he lacked one thing: either be or not to be so brief that we can know it by heart, either to be so long that we never cease to read it. "He tried to write in his life and one another. Many think he succeeded.
(1) Quoted in "Journey in Spain" (Mouthpieces-Laffont).
Liberation Books, 08 December 2005.
translated and presented by Benito Pelegrin, Editions du Seuil, October 2005, 940 p. 
