Marivaux

Marivaux, PIERRE CARLET DE CHAMBLAIN DE, was born at Paris, February 4, 1688. He belonged to a good Norman family and devoted himself to letters. He received but a slight education and in his early writings affected a disdain of the Greek and Latin authors, declaring, for example, that he preferred Gregory of Tours to Tacitus and Vincent Ferrier to Demosthenes. He published L'Homère Travesti, a burlesque of the Iliad, in 1716, and brought out his best comedy, Le Jeu de l'Amour et du Hasard in 1730. He received a pension from Helvétius, and another, of 1000 crowns a year, from Madame de Pompadour. His romance of Marianne came out in 11 parts between 1731 and 1741, but was never concluded by him, the twelfth part being added by Madame Riccomboni. He followed up his first dramatic success by numerous comedies: L'Épreuve, Les Fausses Confidences, Le Legs, Les Sincères, La Méprise, Le Triomphe de l'Amour, &c. They are the work of a clever analyst rather than a dramatist; the dialogue, says Sainte-Beuve, is a perpetual 'moral skirmish'; the writer sacrifices character and situation to an ingenious playing with words. Marivaux, said Voltaire, knew all the bypaths in the human heart, but he did not know the highway. He died at Paris, February 12, 1763. His title to fame rests on Marianne, one of the best novels of the 18th century. Its interest does not lie in exciting adventures, but in the subtle analysis of character and the delicate picturing of contemporary manners. From the peculiarities of Marivaux's finicking style the term Marivaudage was at one time current as a synonym for affected or 'precious' writing. His other romances, Pharamond and Le Paysan parvenu, are greatly inferior to Marianne. See Sainte-Beuve's Causeries du Lundi IX., and Arsène Housaye's Galerie de Portraits du dix-huitième Siècle.