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in spite of abuses, which he did not hesitate to criticize, the order
was in the main a sound one, and that the King was indeed the pivot
of the whole grandiose and complicated structure. The abuses and
scandals were seen in perspective and treated as flaws in an otherwise
stable order.
It
is true that Racine had some stinging things to say
about the dangers of absolute monarchy, that when we read him
today we detect signs of the coming collapse and that La Bruyere
had some pungent observations to make about the deplorable condi–
tion of the peasantry; but their criticisms were indirect and probably
anything but obvious to contemporary audiences and readers. The
prevailing impression is that the writer was a powerful support to the
existing order. Nor should we forget that Saint-Simon's memoirs,
with their devastating closing paragraph, did not see the light until
the middle of the eighteenth century.
I do not propose to say more than a few words about the position
of the writer in the eighteenth century. It was the century of the
private rather than of the royal patron. It was also a good deal more
democratic and egalitarian than the seventeenth century, and I think
there is no doubt that the barriers between the nobility and the rest
of society did tend to disappear. The private patron was less respon–
sible than Louis XIV. He gave the tame writer plenty of license and
rewarded
him
without much regard for the quality of his work, and
he did not hesitate to administer a beating when the occasion arose.
II
The French Revolution and the destruction of the aristocracy
created a completely new situation. We may think that the profession
of literature had made considerable strides during the eighteenth cen–
tury and that it was possible for the writer to rely to a much greater
extent than before on the actual earnings from the sale of his works.
That is true, but the gap between himself and his own class had also
become wider, and when the aristocratic patron was swept away he
found himself high and dry. This is how M. Jean-Paul Sartre describes
the situation in
his
recent
Baudelaire.
In the eighteenth century, he
says, the writer had been so to speak "aristocratized":
He belonged, however, by family ties, friendships and the mode of
his daily life to a bourgeoisie which no longer had the means to justify
