MONTESQUIEU

Charles Louis Secondat, Baron de la Brède et de Montesquieu (1689-1755), whose name is usually shortened to Montesquieu, was a French philosopher and author, who is considered one of the founders of sociology as a scholarly discipline. He was among the most influential thinkers of the French Enlightenment. He criticized French society and especially the excesses of absolutism. Montesquieu was born on La Brède near Bordeaux, studied law in Bordeaux where he inhereted the Barony of Montesquieu and became a member of parliament. His main political thesis is that despotism can only be avoided by the presence of a strong nobility, which should secure the implementation of a system of law and should act as an intermediary between the monarch and the people. In 1721 he published his highly influential novel in letters Lettres persanes, which contains a sharp critique of French society presented through the fictional letters of a Persian notable. A second major work is De l’esprit des lois, an extensive study of the government of several countries, in which Montesquieu unfolds his ideas on statecraft and society.

The fragments:

In the anthology we include a fragment of Montesquieu’s epistolary novel Lettres persanes (1721; supplement 1754). The novel shows the influence of the epistolary work Lettres d’un espion turc by Giovanni Paolo Marana (1642-1693), which was first published in Italian in 1684 (in French 1686), and which contains a series of fictional reports about French society, presumably written by a Turkish ‘spy’ observing European societies. It sparked off a true genre of epistolary literature of various kinds, which greatly contributed to all kinds of literary experimentation during the 18th century, throughout Europe. The novel Lettres persanes consists of the correspondence of the Persian notables Usbek and Rica, travelling to Europe, with several persons at home, especially the eunuch of the harem and some of the women. While Usbek and Rica report about their explorations of Europe and comment on the manners and customs they encounter, and the forms of government, the situation in the palace at home deteriorates because of a rebellion of the harem ladies. The novel is not just a ‘mirror’ for European societies, but also shows how a system of Oriental despotism disintegrates due to the absence of the ‘ruler’ and its incompatibility with the feminine ‘temperament’. The novel displays a highly original play with perspectives, oscillating between the Orient and Europe, and commenting both on Persia and France through the various characters and their backgrounds. The connection with the Thousand and one nights can be found [1] in the structure of interrupted stories within the letters; [2] the inserted tales; and [3] in the plot evolving around the relationship between Usbek and his main wife Roxanne and the latter’s refusal to accept her husband’s despotic authority. The fragments contain the beginning, an inserted story, and the closure of the book.

Lettres persanes. Conzague Truc (éd.), Éditions Garnier, Paris 1946, pp. 7-11,127-125, 275-276.