LACLOS (Pierre CHODERLOS DE). Les Liaisons dangereuses ...

I DO NOT DRINK WATER FROM YOUR FOUNTAIN!

« Fountain, I do not drink your water! » Who can boast of never having uttered this maxim, a fabricated yet popular quote!

 

 

      It seems that only kings had this infinite privilege. In fact, this element became an essential component of life with the French monarchy. Already, the reign of Francis I celebrated the triumph of the precious elixir. The water splashed all its glory upon the king!  It was this source’s myth that created one of the most famous royal residences: Fontainebleau!  Water is the lifeblood of a game bestiary. Hunting and water then explain the monarch’s splendor and the immeasurable love in this area. The “Bains” apartments (now destroyed) in the absence of practiced hygiene during the 16th century, inaugurated the introduction of water within the royal palaces. Gardens, groves, ponds and waterfalls of Versailles were all a staged protocol for royal absolutism.

 

 

      While the 16th and 17th centuries used water as a weapon of power, the 18th century adopted it as  an arm for seduction. Water changed the customs and apartments of Versailles. The toilet becomes a ritual of purification during a century with ideas of regeneration by the Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment: "Anima sana in corpore sano," a healthy mind within a healthy body!»( Satiresde Juvénal, 90-127).  The water is no longer decked out in all evils as in the 17th century, where the outhouse reigned supreme and was imposed as a remedy.  Skin, an organ permeable through its pores, was not dabbed but rubbed with moistened towels soaked in perfume. In contrast, the 18th century praised the ability to make "its polish, finesse, whiteness for the skin" (Natural History of Women,Jacques-Louis Moreau de la Sarthe, 1805).  The invitation to the bathroom was no longer an ancient mythological fantasy circulated in the 18th century by the iconography of Venus’s and Apollo’s ablutions and love of the gods.  The bath became a weapon of seduction in the service of the female persuasion. In fact, men were allowed to attend these intimate moments of eroticism.  Women held somehow a salonin their bathroom!

 

      One mode accompanying another, new manners introduced in 18th century a singular aesthetic.  It involved blush, perfumes and high wigs adorned with fruit, flowers and birds..The initiator and the muse was none other than the popular Marie Antoinette and her equally famous hairdresser Léonard: "The toilet of the queen was also a perpetual subject of criticism for the emperor.  He reproached them for having introduced too many new fashions and was tormented by the use of red  which his eyes could not adjust to.:  One day she took longer than usual, before going to the theater, he advised her to add more, and showed a lady who was in the room who in truth had too much: "A little under eyes, the emperor said to the queen, put the red fury, like Madame.». "(Memoireof Madame Campan, First maid to Marie-Antoinette).

 

 

A very French beauty !

 

      The colors found today on the tricolor French flag are already those of the 18th century, aristocratic beauty. The ultimate was to have skin as white as Carrara marble. To achieve this, the galantescovered themselves with a white make-up called

blanc de céruse.  Red, originating from animal or plant, was applied on the cheeks. The vogue was to highlight the blue veins of the throat in order to highlight the nobility of aristocratic blood.  The wigs were powdered with flour or Iris powder.  When dusting, the galantesused a cornet to protect their face. The whiteness of the skin and the wig was then accentuated by the application of beauty marks on the face.  Small pieces of taffeta were named according to locations on the face "majestic"(forehead), "assassins"(corner of the eye), "trollop"(at the mouth), "rascal"(on the lips), "shameless"(on the nose).

 

 

 

Winds of libertinism, the epistolary novel!

 

      The rigor of the etiquette and the austerity during the reign of Louis XIV gave way to a wave of debauchery!  These thoughts, though born in the 17th century, had a tremendous success in the 18th century.  Libertinism was primarily an emancipation of the individual against the established customs and religion. In the 17th century, the libertine was not a dissolution, but a free thinker vilifying decency and religion. The Enlightenment emphasized these casually overlooked institutions. The regency of Philippe d'Orleans (1715-1723) and the reign of Louis XV (1723-1774) increased the breath of levity where toying with flattery, seduction and mind games were king!  No doubt the libertine novel in the 18th century became the manifesto of this new spirit, a true social, artistic, literary and philosophical revolution.The literary and epistolary libertine novel was born with Dangerous Liaisons.  With Choderlos de Laclos, a new moral freedom and epicurean life emerged with the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont: "Man enjoys the happiness he feels, and the wife of that procured.One’s pleasure is to satisfy desires, where the other is mainly to arise those "(Choderlosde Laclos, Dangerous Liaisons).   

 

 

      Expertissim is proud to offer for sale two volumes of Dangerous Liaisons,pinnacle of the 18th century novel, a sort of profession of faith in the liberalization of the mind and manners of an aristocratic elite, embodied in the fiction by the Marquise de Merteuil and Vicomte de Valmont. Libertinism is not the only upheaval in this century of revolution. ! The water is radically changing its status to become a weapon of seduction in the service of debauchery!

 

FAGES Peter (Etudiant à l’Ecole du Louvre)

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Reference: 2011010092

Items 2

Period: 1934

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LACLOS (Pierre CHODERLOS DE). Les Liaisons dangereuses (Dangerous Liaisons). Paris, Levasseur et Cie, s. d. [1934]. 2 volumes in-4'quarto, paper covers, within same box.

Color illustrations by Georges Barbier.

Printing of 720 copies, this particular one (n' 613), one of the 650 on pure fiber Rives vellum.