The year is 1643.
The infant King Louis XIV plays with his maid in his Chambre du Roi (he is not yet wearing a crown).
A strange instrument filled with liquid silver called a barometer has been unveiled by Evangelista Torricelli.
Jacques La Mercier puts the finishing touches to the Palais-Royal (which the hated Cardinal Richelieu will never inhabit).
The University of Utrecht, led by Gisbertus Voetius, bans the Cartesian method (Descartes wets himself with laughter).
The Grimani Theater in Venice has premiered Monteverdi’s The Coronation of Poppea to great fanfare.
*********
Pierre Gassendi, atomist theorist, quasi-empiricist, defender of the New Physics, refuter of Aristotelian phlegmatics and pseudo-mystics, has written an essay to be read at the salon of harpsichordist Alessandro Constantini, in the bohemian neighborhood of Pont Neuf in Paris. Eight libertine friends have gathered:
Pierre Gassendi (philosopher, physicist, and astronomer),
Jacques Champion de Chambonnières (dancer and famous harpsichordist),
François Le Vayer La Mothe (writer, skeptic, and tutor to the young King Louis XIV of France),
Gabriel Naudé (fortune teller, bibliophile, distinguished librarian, and director of the Mazarin Library),
Jean Baptiste Poquelin (poet and playwright, later known as Molière),
Jean Hesnault (poet, cynic, and libertine),
Claude Emmanuel Chapelle (doctor, poet, and libertine)
Cyrano de Bergerac (young poet, libertine and big-nosed)
They converse animatedly around the table set with loins, cheese, bread and wine. Arguments and discussions are forged over morapio, espiga and horno. We hear emphatic and sustained applause. Pierre Gassendi has read the prologue to Disquisitio Metaphysica.
Chapelle (ominous-looking): Have you heard the news? The University of Utrecht has condemned the Cartesian method.
Chambonnières: What an attack on the method!
Chapelle: A theologian named Gisbertus Voetius.
Those present in unison: CENSOR!
Naudé: Voetius the Gomarist, or is he an Arminian?
The harpsichordist (feigning a cough): Neither one nor the other. Well, well.
Cyrano (satyr with a nasal voice): Messieurs, allow me to elucidate the matter from the perspective of Saveur’s theory of proportions. The Gomarists are to the Arminians what the Manicheans are to the Pelagianists.
APPLAUSE
Chapelle (from a corner): Pelagius, from the pious, pious.
Naudé (à la Nabucco in Dio di Giuda):
“Martyr Pelagius, witness of the faith,
of the King who reigns forever faithful soldier,
as you take up your pen today, come with me,
and thus I may praise you when I sing,
Your martyrdom made you a friend of God.“*
Molière (tenor in Aria of Madness):
“We are heretics, slanderers,
with screams at dawn,
Leave the grapes, gallop!“**
Naudé: Poet Poquelin, mustachioed entelechy, you string together anapests.
Hesnault (arms and palms extended): Ciel! Enough of this nonsense. Let us return to the subject of Voetius. Who masters the six heresies presented by Pope Zosimus?
The harpsichordist: Zosimus? Quello accomodante.
Molière (whining turkey): Cher Hesnault, your knowledge is dark wind stripping the world bare.
(Cyrano falls flat on his heels): The world is a naked call. An archive label.
Molière (clapping in 2/3 time): A signal with the finger.
Cyrano (El Greco’s index finger): A dictionary profile.
Molière (broad right hand): A flag in the wind.
(Hoarse giggles)
La Mothe: Laissez tomber ! Da capo: l’affaire Pelagio.
Gassendi (clearing his throat): “Adam would have died even if he had not sinned.” It is my favorite of the six heresies. I discussed it with Henricus Regius in the salon of the Marquise de Sablé.
La Mothe: I am a witness.
Hesnault (after a sip): Non capisco. Descartes is as devout as the Dutch Pietist.
Gassendi (interrupting): No, Voetius defends the faith. Maître Descartes defends reason.
The harpsichordist: Mon Dieu !
Chapelle: Leave God alone.
(Molière standing, spreading his arms):
God is the only enemy
of the vain,
of the bold,
of the sybarite,
the only hope,
the only friend,
Hesnault and Chambonnières: Brilliant!
Gassendi (chewing on a crust of bread): Molière, are you perhaps adoxastôs? —referring to the category of “unbeliever” mentioned by Sextius Empiricus.
Molière (twisting his moustache): Cher Gassendi, I cordially entertain the possibility of hesitation.
Hesnault (interrupting slowly): Elementary, Gassendi. Honey, for example, seems sweet to us, but is that sweetness in the honey or on our palate?
The harpsichordist: Here’s another one. Could God make what is false appear to be true?
Cyrano and Hesnault: Ouh là là !
Gassendi (taking deep puffs on his clay pipe): Lawful, when it comes to the omnipotent being.
La Mothe: Isn’t that the argument of the Franciscan William?
Cyrano (turning his hands): God can do whatever he wants and it will be fine.
Chapelle (wandering in time): That’s Guille’s point, the Gillette.
Chambonnières (performing croise devant): I have another guillermada.
Faith is the strength of invisible truth.
Chapelle: Invisible?
Molière (whispering, leaning toward Chapelle): Faith needs no proof, claim the fideist sons of fideo.
Hesnault: Long live soup. Down with theism!
Chapelle (stiffly): Renounce La raison ? Unreasonable!
Chambonnières (buzzing on tiptoes around the table): Faith or rancid ignorance?
Gassendi (cheerful): Ignorance? Denying the undeniable.
Cyrano: I suggest a pathetic verse from the great Lope.
The human soul is suffering,
so often surrendered to fortune,
perhaps the FAITH of so many times one,
will resist the force of torment.
Very good! (exclaim the libertines)
Naudé (avoiding the ellipsis): Here’s one from the saint of Avila.
He who has God lacks nothing. God alone suffices.
A nocturnal silence permeates the walls.
Chapelle: After all this, is there still any doubt?
Hesnault (with a grimace from Rubens’ “Portrait of Jan”): There’s always room for doubt, aren’t you a libertine?
Chapelle: I’m innocent, to be inaccurate (moustache chuckle).
Cyrano: What are we looking for with all this?
Molière: To argue, to prevaricate, to stir things up…
Cyrano: Or just to fuck things up.
Gassendi (exhaling loudly): Et pourquoi pas? To find the truth.
Cyrano (grabbing Molière by the shoulders):
Our downfall!
An intense struggle,
An endless argument,
A constant coming and going.
Hesnault: Returning to the supreme being. God exists because I think so (attributed to Saint Anselm)
Chapelle: A quibble, is it, then you think so? Or do you think so, then it is?
Gassendi (beating his cassock): Versa and vice versa.
I’ve got it! (exclaims Molière)
Sometimes I think about nothingness and ask myself,
Does nothingness exist?
Chapelle (smoothing his mustache): Bien sûr !…
like when you admit you have nothing when you have it
(Drunken laughter)
Molière (kicking and spreading his arms): I have no sun or evil night
No, there is NOTHING.
Cyrano (resounding kick): Nothingness is the scourge that corrodes us,
the hope that the dream will return.
Chambonnières: I think it was Montaigne who wrote: The finite is annihilated in the presence of the infinite and becomes pure nothingness.
The harpsichordist (with an air of doom): “Being and nothingness,” a cross-eyed philosopher will one day say.
Someone behind a Chinese screen in the living room: If there is nothing, I beg you, leave it alone!
(Laughter)
La Mothe (stalking Gassendi): Pardon. May I say God is not possible?
Gassendi: All impossibility will immediately become necessity (another puff on his pipe and a spit into the spittoon).
Chapelle (pouring himself a lot of wine): I will deny the necessity of God to make him a probability. Do I have the authority?
Gassendi: Deny the necessary necessity? C’est impossible !
CONTRADICTION! (shout Molière, Chapelle, and Cyrano)
Hesnault (melodramatic, hat in hand): I can think of a little rhyme:
Gassendi…
philosopher of the nouveau!
black-robed magician,
pulls a rabbit out of his hat,
to the sound of a whistle,
a divine hiccup, an egg,in the end,
from a stale idol.
Splendid! (they shout)
Chapelle: I can think of a joke. Doubt that doubts already trusts.
Cyrano: Doubt that does not doubt is ignorant.
Hesnault: Oh doubt, doubt me!
Even what we see is not credible,
who knows the secrets of what is clear?
I can barely prove that I exist.
Gassendi (ipso facto): Hesnault, the more you doubt, the more you believe. Now I must leave, it is getting late.
(The circle of friends protests, “how soon,” “a little longer,” “there are more matters to discuss”)
Cyrano (great orator):
Friends, s’il vous plaît…
Night and Gassendi bid farewell,
In the smoke and with wine we argue,
Friends of joys and sorrows,
The wise dead speak to us in our ears,
The indolent living despise us.
Lower your voices,
hugs,
firm handshakes,
each to his hat and cane,
whispered goodbyes.
_____________________
* The Drama of Saint Pelagius, poem by the Saxon nun Roswitha (1649).
** From the libretto of the opera L’egisto (1642) by Giovanni Fustini, composer: Francisco Cavalli.
