Madame de Seviñer.

"Pascal's pamphlet, which bears the title of Letters to a Provincial, will perhaps be in the eyes of a dispassionate observer the most obvious confirmation of the advanced principles of Jesuitism. There is hardly a pen more bilious, more irritable, and more despotic than that of Pascal. What does he reproach the Jesuits? Knowledge of the foundations of human society and understanding of the essence of their era. A sullen and fanatical Puritan, Blaise Pascal examined all the principles of the school of St. Ignatius. And what did he find worthy of reproach? Precisely those innovations that were introduced by ideological development into the very heart of Christian doctrine! I know of no one more hostile to the spirit of liberty than the Provincialia."

ZH. — V. — O. — R. Kapefig.

Discourse on the Provincials[1]

Everyone knows on what occasion and under what conditions the Letters to the Provincial were created, published and distributed. If anyone happens to be unaware of this, or has forgotten this, he might be referred to the account of the events mentioned by Nicoles. This source should be supplemented by the information contained in Chapters VI and XVI of the third volume of Port-Royal by Sainte-Beuve, and especially in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth books of Fr. Rapin's Memoirs, in order to hear both sides at least once. I am afraid that before speaking of Jansenism in general, and of the Provincials in particular, more than one critic or commentator has readily forgotten precisely such a requirement.

The public is even better informed about the subject of the famous Letters. Each of them was provided by the same Nicole with a brief and informative summary. Nicolas is also the author of an extensive Table of Contents of Letters. Among the merits of this Table of Contents is that it allows, as it were, to grasp at a glance both the picture of polemics in its entirety, and the very close relations that unite the question of morality and the question of gratitude in the Provincials. But especially an analysis of these relations shows how erroneous is the opinion that Pascal, beginning with the fifth letter, cleverly changed the order of questions (leaving the theologians the main subject of discussion) to somewhat deviated into the field of discussions about morality and the Jesuits. Suffice it to say that it was the Jesuits of Louvain, Paris, and Rome who had been seeking the condemnation of Jansenism for sixteen years, and Jansenia's Augustine was written against them, against Suárez, Vázquez, and Molina (who, according to the allegory which so amused Pascal, were three of Escobar's "four animals"), and also against Lessius. Jansenius accused all these authors of attempts to renew the errors of the "Massilians" and "Semi-Pelagians" in the Church. I am afraid that this is too often forgotten in the case of the Provincials, and in the honour of Pascal's social friends (the Chevalier de Méray, for example), who had supposedly set him, without even thinking of it, on the path of true success.

Finally, I will not mention the triumph with which the Provincialia have been received by the reader, nor of the praise which this work has received even after nearly two hundred and fifty years from its creation, nor of the sentences pronounced upon it: there is hardly anything more generally known. Moreover, "the world has become distrustful," and in such matters admiration for Voltaire or Bossuet has long since ceased to guide, awaken, or limit the freedom of our judgments. We want to look with our own eyes and make our own judgments.

But, if I am not mistaken, it is still possible to do what has always been – and today more than ever – interesting: to clarify the reasons for success; to establish the degree of Pascal's sincerity in his polemics with the Jesuits; perhaps we should also analyze the consequences of the publication of the Provincials. Although the above questions are not new, no one has yet come close enough to answering the first of them. The recent very lively discussions have revived the relevance of the second, which, moreover, it is time to finally expand and, above all, to remove from the framework of the question whether Pascal could more or less literally render the Latin of Escobar and Filiucius. As to the third, I am very far from thinking that it could be reconciled with the answer which is usually given to it.

** *

To begin with, let us discard motives that are unconvincing and insignificant, as well as those that have not been considered as motives for a long time: for example, the desire for mystery or scandal, as well as the motives proposed by Joseph de Maistre[8] — the interest of the group of conspirators "in deriving profit from the libel"; "the qualities of the people whom Pascal attacked in his book." Did not this critic invent the following audacious paradox: if the Letters to the Provincial, with all their literary merits, had been written against the Capuchins, they would not have been spoken of long ago? Only now he forgot to suggest how it is that we no longer read, for example, Shallot's accusatory speeches against the Society of Jesus, written a century later, or the verbose, though small in length, work of this flat type by d'Alembert: To the Refutation of the Jesuits. And how did it happen that the "group of conspirators", being no less interested in this case, was unable to ensure that the Frequent Communion of Artaud or the Visionaries of Nicolas is preserved to this day? [10] After all, at one time these books had a popularity not inferior to the popularity of the Provincials. It is noteworthy that the opponents of Jansenism themselves praised in Frequent Communion "the highest degree of literary skill, combined with the highest examples of eloquence." Nor should it be forgotten that the contemporaries of both thinkers did not even think that it was possible to compare "M. Pascal" and the one whom they unanimously called "the great Arnault."

But is it possible to say, after the same de Maistre, that by the time of its appearance, the Provtshchialia turned out to be "the first truly French book in the history of France, moreover, written in prose"? This is untrue of Arnault with his Frequent Communion (1643), of Descartes with his Discourse on Method (1637), of Balzac, and finally of his Letters, the first of which appeared in 1624. Voltaire is closer to the truth when he wants the Provincialinmi to be associated with the era of the "consolidation of language". He is almost right in calling them "the first book of genius to be seen <as such>." Unfortunately, he forgot to enlighten us about what the "fixation of language" is, and about the qualities by which or by virtue of which the Provincialia is a "book of genius," but this is precisely the subject of our interest. When will we end this habit of disagreement, vagueness, and pomposity? If Pascal's speech or phrases have merits that Nicolas's speech or phrases are completely devoid of, then should we not try to enumerate these merits directly? If Pascal's thought penetrates into depths that Arno's thought does not even suspect, then should we not try to measure these depths? And if we should not flatter ourselves with the hope that one day we will be able to define the concept of "genius", then should we not apply our efforts to characterize that special, individual, unique that is always present in genius?

Neither Rabelais nor Montaigne should be discussed in this context. Their language is still too mixed with Latin, their phrases are "inorganic". And even the most individual features of their style, for example, repetitions, enumerations, abounding in Rabelais, as well as Montaigne's metaphors or comparisons, which look as if they come from under his pen, all this, in truth, reflects only the first steps in mastering the element of language. They look for the specificity (ρΓορπέίέ) of the word and, not finding it, leave us as a field of study those various forms which seem to them to convey their own thought almost adequately. Let us confine ourselves to considering Arnaud. Always spacious, always impeccably constructed and, usually, understandable, his phrase often turns out to be ponderous, as a rule, dull and always monotonous. I'm not even talking about its length. Pascal's phrase is by no means shorter than Arnault's. Critics have repeatedly reproached Pascal – and not entirely unjustifiably – that it is often cluttered with parentheses, introductory or subordinate sentences, as well as subordinates who are part of other subordinates. Here is one example of this, noted by Fr. Daniel in his Discourses of Cleander and Eudoxus[13]: "But if I were not afraid of being just as impudent," says Pascal, "I think I would follow the opinion of the majority of the people I see; believing that what had been made public was authentic, they had hitherto believed that these propositions were in the possession of Jansenius, and now they are beginning to suspect the opposite, owing to a strange refusal to show them, which goes so far as to say that I have not yet seen a single person who would tell me that he had seen them there." The above phrase is extracted from the first Provincialia; Perhaps this physicist, this geometer, who had written almost nothing before, was still constrained by the limits of the new application which he had given to his pen here? Here is a sentence from the thirteenth Letter, one of those which, according to Nicolas, was altered by the author seven or eight times: "And so, my fathers, let us conclude: since your doctrine of probability makes the good opinions of some of your authors useless to the Church, and useful only to your policy, they only point out to us by their contradiction your double-mindedness, which you have fully revealed, declaring, on the one hand, that Vázquez and Suárez are against murder, and, on the other hand, that many famous authors are in favor of murder, in order to give people two paths, thus destroying the simplicity of the spirit of God, which curses those who double-mindedness and prepares for themselves two paths: vae duplici corde et ingredienti duahus viis"[15].

But if Pascal's phrase is not short, and if its length is commensurate with the importance, or so to speak, with the nature of the thought it expresses, it is nevertheless always intelligible, more than intelligible, and clear, as follows from the above examples. And it becomes so due to the fact that it is unevenly illuminated. It is in this invention that Pascal's contribution to the history of French prose lies, and it must be said, a significant contribution. Whereas before him, in Arnault as well as in Descartes, the phrase was illuminated only by a white and cold light, everywhere even and somehow evenly diffused, Pascal's phrase is filled with frolicking and playful air, and with the air flame, movement, and life penetrate into it. Pascal is brief when necessary, and extended only insofar as he wants to. Or rather, it is neither extended nor concise, but its phrase, without losing anything in the precision of its contour, becomes elastic, bends, crushes and contracts or lengthens whenever and however it pleases, revealing exceptional pliability, lightness, and liveliness. If naturalness in our language has never gone beyond the level reached by Pascal, it is only because of the lack of further progress in the art of writing, for the essence of the latter does not consist in the striving for external brilliance at the expense of content, but in the search for and acquisition of utterances from all variants capable of being provided by language for one and the same thought, that only which corresponds to it, which is proportional to it, and that single figure of speech which follows it, which copies it, which reproduces, so to speak, all its accidents. I know of only one style, which, in this sense, would be comparable to Pascal's. It may also be called Port-Royal, since I have in mind the style of Racine.