Lettres persanes

Par Charles-Louis Montesquieu (de)

Une édition de référence des Lettres persanes de Montesquieu, spécialement conçue pour la lecture sur les supports numériques.
« Les habitants de Paris sont d’une curiosité qui va jusqu’à l’extravagance. Lorsque j’arrivai, je fus regardé comme si j’avais été envoyé du ciel : vieillards, hommes, femmes, enfants, tous voulaient me voir. Si je sortais, tout le monde se mettait aux fenêtres ; si j’étais aux Tuileries, je voyais aussitôt un cercle se former autour de moi ; les femmes même faisaient un arc-en-ciel nuancé de mille couleurs, qui m’entourait : si j’étais aux spectacles, je trouvais d’abord cent lorgnettes dressées contre ma figure : enfin, jamais homme n’a tant été vu que moi. Je souriais quelquefois d’entendre des gens qui n’étaient presque jamais sortis de leur chambre, qui disaient entre eux : Il faut avouer qu’il a l’air bien Persan. Chose admirable ! je trouvais de mes portraits partout ; je me voyais multiplié dans toutes les boutiques, sur toutes les cheminées, tant on craignait de ne m’avoir pas assez vu. » (Extrait de la lettre XXX.)

• Langue: Français
• Éditeur: Primento Digital
• Date de sortie: 1 janv. 2012
• ISBN: 9782806240545

Avis sur Lettres persanes

[bookomaniac-1 · Évaluation : 3 sur 5 étoiles]

Typische roman in brievenvormKracht: evolutie van de personages; variatie tussen harem-correspondentie (exotisch, sappig) en saaiere filosofische brie-ven (dienen ook als contrapunt); relativering van de absolute geldigheid van gebruiken en inzichtenpersonages- usbek: gericht op wijsheid; inzicht in relativisme en dikwijls sceptisch, maar twijfelaar; meer en meer gericht op rede en deugd; maar niet toegepast op eigen harem; eerder pessimistisch- Rica: jonge, vitale man; sterk ironiserend en satirisch over westerse samenleving; sneller aan het twijfelen en relativerenSterke kracht is de satire: tegen despotisme en absolutisme; tegen godsdienstig fanatisme-tegen sociale hypocrisieuitlopend op universeel relativisme

[maxernst11 · Évaluation : 3 sur 5 étoiles]

Typische roman in brievenvormKracht: evolutie van de personages; variatie tussen harem-correspondentie (exotisch, sappig) en saaiere filosofische brie-ven (dienen ook als contrapunt); relativering van de absolute geldigheid van gebruiken en inzichtenpersonages- usbek: gericht op wijsheid; inzicht in relativisme en dikwijls sceptisch, maar twijfelaar; meer en meer gericht op rede en deugd; maar niet toegepast op eigen harem; eerder pessimistisch- Rica: jonge, vitale man; sterk ironiserend en satirisch over westerse samenleving; sneller aan het twijfelen en relativerenSterke kracht is de satire: tegen despotisme en absolutisme; tegen godsdienstig fanatisme-tegen sociale hypocrisieuitlopend op universeel relativisme

[stillatim · Évaluation : 3 sur 5 étoiles]

The nice thing about reading early 'novels' is that they so often have nothing in common with a typical contemporary novel. That's definitely the case for PL, of which only the first dozen and the last half dozen pages are are connected in any kind of narrative. Not only that, the narrative is immensely dull, unless you're the sort of person who gets off on descriptions of Harem life. Such people are, I'm sure, less common now than they were in the 18th century. A general warning: if you're prone to crying with rage any time a European shows curiosity in Oriental (sic) culture, you'll have to be very, very careful with this book. Some of it smacks of crazy ethnocentrism. On the other hand, the book is much more critical of French society than it is of 'Persian' society.

The meat of the book consists in letters written to and from various 'Persians,' seeing France and some other parts of Europe for the first time. Like all good satire, it takes the normal (well, normal for 18th century French novel readers), views it from another perspective, and finds it to be both hilarious and horrifying. If you've read other 18th century moralists, you'll know what to expect: freedom, intelligence, stoicism, nature good; tyranny, love of money, theology bad.

But I oversimplify, because easily the best thing about the book is how free-floating it is. I found it virtually impossible to tell when Montesquieu wanted his authors to agree with the letter writers and when to disagree. Which had the awful, depressing effect of making me think about things. For that I knock off two stars, because thinking about things is way too hard work for me.

[meditationesmartini · Évaluation : 4 sur 5 étoiles]

In some ways, you've read one epistolatory 18th-century novel satirizing Europeans through the eyes of the Oriental Other, you've read 'em all--and I must be getting kind of close to literally having read them all. But if I could only recommend one, the Persian Letters would surely be it. Usbek and Rica hit Paris, learn, listen, wonder, evaluate, scoff, ask questions, while the time away in this Shangri-La, until word comes that the home front has been neglected too long, the seraglio is in disorder, the wives are poisoned and the eunuchs stabbed. It's a neat way of undermining the wise and evenhanded Usbek and squeezing some more play out of the form--much as he admires certain of the European institutions and seems to pass judgment on others from an eminently reasonable place, at home his only task was to embrace the velvet glove or the iron fist, and it is vacillating that sinks him.

The politics can get tedious when they turn to disquisition, and the satire can be a bit heavy, as it is with these things, and sometimes the crackpot theories on e.g. climate or the extinction of the human race are elaborated on at too much length. But we have to recognize that this is an eruption in its way of the same exuberance we love in these Enlightenmen, and take the bad with the cool allegories about the Troglodytes, perfection out of purgation, and the idea that Adam might have been the last survivor of a dying world; or the Christian fetishing of virginity as parallel to the Muslim fetishing of the female body (such a telling difference from Mary Wortley Montagu's fecund Turks, these constructed Persians feeling the loss of virginity as life's central shame and hard knock); the deft way Montesquieu has Usbek encompass two powerful but problematic positions on affairs of the heart:

"Nothing had made a greater contribution to mutual attachment than the possibility of divorce. A husband and wife were inclined to put up with domestic troubles patiently, because they knew that it was in their power to bring them to an end, and often they had this power at their disposal all their lives without using it, for the unique reason that they were free to do so."

v.

"I find something very sincere, and very great as well, in the words of a king who, on the point of falling into enemy hands, saw his courtiers weeping around him and said "from your tears, I realize that I am still your king."

Perhaps not contradictory, but two true things, in 18th-century France, imaginary Iran, or here and now.