Ivo van Hove
Thoughts on Moliere’s The Misanthrope

In 2004, I directed Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, approaching the play as a story of suicide. Hedda has to kill herself in order to be free of the constraints of a society which imprisons her. The society Ibsen describes is based on social controls; people must behave according to generally accepted rules and whoever doesn’t is rejected as a pariah. Only in secrecy can Hedda live her ultimate (mostly sexual) fantasies. I called this a Sign of the Times. I considered Hedda Gabler an existentialist play with Hedda searching but not finding real meaning in this earthly life. As a terrible mathematical consequence her only escape is suicide.
Now we move on to part 2 of the Sign of the Times.

The Misanthrope is most often considered a critical description of a dying world. I believe it is also a look at the beginning of a new way of living together. In either case The Misanthrope (as with most plays by Moliere) should be considered a sociological play, a research of and critical look at society today.
When I first read the play it struck me that a family (father, mother, brothers and sisters) was absent. The characters of The Misanthrope constitute a new kind of family; semi-detached people that abhor the idea of sharing home and household, prefer to keep their bank accounts and friends separate, and share time and space only when they feel like it. These characters live a “liquid life”, as the Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman calls it. In books with titles like Liquid Society, Liquid Love, Liquid Life and Liquid Fear he describes “the risks and anxieties of living together, and apart, in our liquid modern world”.
There is one character in the play that doesn’t share the beliefs and life style of the liquid people: Alceste still believes vehemently in the old fashioned “till death do us part” marriage. He believes in a job for life, true friendship and the existence of absolute truth.
It is the conflict between a liquid society and a society of social cohesion that is central to The Misanthrope.
Of course in the 17th century Moliere was criticizing the morals of his time using Celimene as an icon of that perverse social attitude and Alceste as the excessive but rightful enemy of society as it existed. For Moliere there was a possible positive alternative which he presented in the character of Philinte, a modern man who believes in moderation, compliance and tolerance. Alceste is only destructive; his attitude and views lead to isolation and anti-social behaviour. In the 18th century Rousseau (who hated the play) viewed Alceste’s attitude as a plea for truth and sincerity, which Moliere was ridiculing. Rousseau considered Alceste as a true heroic alternative to the vices of a corrupt society.

It is the strength of a true masterpiece that it has the capacity to allow us a glimpse behind the mirror of the present times. We have to accept the challenge Moliere presents us with in The Misanthrope. We have to take a position!

In our 21st century the central problem of The Misanthrope is how does one live in a society where long term relationships are almost non-existent anymore. Life in big cities is regulated by mobile phones and the internet. We cocoon in a web of calls and messages that make us feel part of society; it feels good to stay connected all the time. In cities everybody is always on the move and our mobile phones give us the illusion of being the sole stable point in a universe of moving objects. However, this feeling of virtual proximity has a shadow side: virtual distance. Proximity no longer requires physical closeness and physical closeness no longer determines proximity. How many times have we seen two people sitting together during a personal meeting or dinner making phone calls or sending text messages to another person? To be open to all possible contacts in the world is to be king of our lives. Another shadow side is that these contacts tend to be short and shallow, too shallow to condense into bonds. Homes are no longer places of intimacy, but rather places where we live apart together and household members may live side by side but through their computers. We live in a world of internet dating because it is easy to press delete, perhaps the easiest thing in the world. The internet is anonymous; dating is possible without any repercussions. Relationships without risks, without sadness, without pain, without plights seem to be the new utopia. This world of virtual relationships is open, flexible and free. It is a world of possibilities where the nature of relationships itself have changed drastically. There are no commitments for life, people have no bonds. The danger of a liquid society is that it treats people as objects of consumption. We can consume each other as long as the product pleases us. Relationships exist as long as they represent value for investment.
One man fulminates against this liquid society. Alceste has nostalgia for a society with a tight social network where people have jobs and relationships for life, with rights and plights. He is inflexible in his dogmatic ideas and is not even prepared to question them. Rather than becoming a misanthrope, he is a misanthrope. For him everything that happens to him is proof that society is in decay. When he loses his lawsuit he is almost relieved, craving the role of martyr in a society without truth and justice. He seems happy when he is totally rejected by that society and its members. However, his all absorbing love for Celimene makes him ambivalent. His love is egocentric and selfish; he wants her to accept his way of life and reject her social pleasures. He demands total surrender. As Professor Higgins he is convinced that he can educate his Eliza and believes it is only a question of time to purify Celimene from all her vices. When this doesn’t work out the only solution for Alceste is to retreat from this hell on earth and live in splendid isolation without his beloved Celimene.
Celimene is his counter part: a vibrant woman, totally independent and living a vivid social life. She is, without doubt, in love with Alceste but is not prepared to give up her liquid life. She doesn’t understand that the pleasures she enjoys cannot be combined with a relationship. She could be considered the opposite of Hedda Gabler. Hedda wants a social life, the dangerous romantic life of men but is excluded from that by the rules of society. Celimene has exactly what Hedda lacked, a whole identity built upon a network. She is surrounded by men all the time and truly enjoys every minute of it. Yet, is her very lively life not as empty as Hedda’s? Celimene’s refusal to look deeper than the surface is perhaps as shallow as Hedda’s existential crisis.

The last image of the play is striking: we witness Celimene alone on stage; a future full of loneliness awaits her. She couldn’t give up her liquid life nor was she able to fully choose Alceste to be the love of her life. At the same time she is rejected by everybody and remains alone. Her deepest fear becomes her reality, to be like Arsinoe.
There is a strange couple in this play, Philinte and Elianthe. They seem to have the quintessential average relationship without passion. I think there is another truth to be found in Moliere’s text. Let’s assume they are having an affair from the start. That would make their position strong yet also ambivalent. Philinte continually uses his girlfriend to keep Alceste from fleeing society. He shares Alceste’s analyses of the disadvantages of the society they live in but he doesn’t share his solutions. He and Elianthe have found a balance between social behaviour and personal feelings. They have a secret relationship that nobody knows about. They have escaped the gossip and the forces that are able to destroy relationships. They live their love in secrecy thereby preserving it from destruction. They are intelligent and very conscious of the dangers of the life Celimene enjoys. In an almost scientific, objective way they study and observe people, social interactions and relationships. They are observing outsiders. Elianthe has amazing psychological insight; she understands the secret of the impossible love between Alceste and Celimene. She is attracted by the beautiful romantic darkness of Alceste’s way of life. It makes her life with Philinte seem bleak and ordinary in comparison yet, in the end, she recognizes their way of living together is liveable, if not very exciting, adventurous or dangerous. At the same time one can question this attitude. It doesn’t lead to change. Philinte is phlegmatic, moderate and believes in tolerance. He is a man of the end of the 20th century, modern and open minded towards different cultures. These days many people believe that this way of thinking has lead to multicultural drama and eventually to 9/11.

Ambivalence seems to be an apt description of all eight characters in the play. Let’s not drift away from the core of this text by turning them into stock characters. Let us try to give them their own truth. Let’s not turn them into ironical invulnerable people. Even Acaste and Clitandre have different layers. They could be portrayed as loners finding temporary satisfaction in being part of a group of fashionable people, lonely behind their mask of believing in the economics of love. Let’s assume they are chatting behind their computers all day, constantly internet dating. They pretend never to be in love or believe in romanticism. Love is a trade; sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. They are the ultimate representatives of the liquid society where people live virtual lives behind their computers. Oronte could be seen as a young Arthur Rimbaud searching for a father in this society without the social fabric of the conventional family. He needs a standard, somebody who tells him about right and wrong, good and bad. When Alceste totally rejects him, he uses the rules of society and his network to get his day at court and win his lawsuit against Alceste. He becomes a mean, revengeful, angry adult. Oronte’s story is one of a terrible coming of age. He becomes a second Alceste, a bitter misanthrope.

Arsinoe is a double for Celimene. She is what Celimene is fighting against. She is a prisoner of old concepts of love and life and as a result she is no longer part of the vibrant social scene she craves. The symbol for this life is a man to love, Alceste. She tries to seduce him the way Celimene would, by tempting him with her connections to help him receive the recognition he deserves. She hates Celimene yet, at the same time, uses all the same strategies that Celimene does. Arsinoe is totally lost in this new liquid society. She tries to catch up but has lost connection with the times she lives in. Her revenge on Celimene at the end of the play is full of tears because she destroys what she adores and wants to be herself.
It is important that we are not judgemental about this liquid life.

The play deals with the difficulties of living in the beginning of the 21st century in the way Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage dealt with the same problems in the last part of the last century. The difference is that Bergman looked at one couple while Moliere looks at a group of people living together in a new way, where new kinds of families come to life. Alceste’s misanthropic reaction is not able to restore the old way of life. One should never long for times gone by. We have to be optimistic about the future and at the same time look critically at our social behaviour.
The philosopher Anthony Kwame Appiah believes that we can deal with new collective identities, new families by bridging our differences based on race, gender, sexuality, religion and nationhood. We can’t live isolated; we have to think in a universal way. Reasonableness must accommodate competing beliefs and behaviours without polarizing the differences between them. I think this could be the hopeful message of The Misanthrope today.

New York City, august 22, 2007.

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