Pierre Carlet De Chamblain De 1688-1763 Marivaux

MARIVAUX, PIERRE CARLET DE CHAMBLAIN DE (1688-1763), French novelist and dramatist, was born at Paris on Feb. 4, 1688. His father became director of the mint at Riom in Auvergne, and Pierre was brought up there and at Limoges. Marivaux began his literary career by writing plays, admirable and graceful comedies, of which the most famous are Le jeu de l'amour et de l'hasard (1730), Les Fausses Confidences (1736), Le Legs (1736) and L'Epreuve (174o). If they lacked something in depth and characterization, they were full of witty dialogue, much of it about trifles, but exquisite in its way. This dialogue gave a new word to the French language, marivaudage; the style perfectly reflects the gallantry and the sensibility which is the subject matter. Simultaneously Marivaux conducted two or three short-lived periodicals, in the Spectator style : Le Spec tateur francais (1722-23), L'indigent Philosophe (1727), and Le Cabinet du philosophe (1732).

In

1731 Marivaux published the first two parts of his best and greatest work, Marianne, a novel of a new and remarkable kind. The eleven parts appeared in batches at intervals during a period of exactly the same number of years, and, after all, it was left unfinished. In 1735, another novel, Le Paysan parvenu, was be gun, but this also was left unfinished. Marianne is an extremely important step in the legitimate development of the French novel —legitimate, that is, in opposition to the brilliant but episodic productions of Le Sage. Its connection, and that of Le Paysan parvenu, with the work not only of Richardson but of Fielding is also an interesting though a difficult subject. The subject matter of Marivaux's peculiar style has been generally, and with tolerable exactness, described as the metaphysics of love-making.

His characters, in a happy phrase of Crebillon's, not only tell each other and the reader everything they have thought, but everything that they would like to persuade themselves that they have thought. He was elected a member of the Academy in 1742. He survived for more than 20 years, contributing occasionally to the Mercure and writing plays. He died on Feb. 12, aged 75 years.

Marivaux was, though a great cultivator of sensibilite, on the whole decent and moral in his writings, and was unsparing in his criticism of the rising Philosopjies. This last circumstance, and perhaps jealousy as well, made him a dangerous enemy in Vol taire. He had good friends, not merely in the rich, generous and amiable Helvetius, but in Mme. de Tencin, in Fontenelle, and even in Mme. de Pompadour, who gave him, it is said, a consid erable pension, of the source of which he was ignorant.

The best and most complete edition of Marivaux is that of 1781 in 12 vols. reprinted with additions 1825-3o. The plays had been published during the author's lifetime in 174o and 1748. There are modern editions by Paul de Saint Heylli Victor (1863), by G. d'Heylli (1876) and by E. Fournier (1878), while issues of selections and separate plays and novels are numerous. Of works concerning him J. Fleury's Marivaux et le Marivaudage (Paris, 1881), G. Larroumet's Marivaux, sa vie et ses oeuvres (1882 ; new ed., 1894), the standard work on the subject, and G. Deschamps's Marivaux (1897), in the Grands ecrivains francais, are the most important.