4 - Idolatry and the Love of the Creature in Sévigné's Letters

Summary

La jolie païenne

In a letter written to her daughter from Livry on Wednesday, April 29, 1671, the marquise de Sévigné recounts a visit to Pomponne to see Arnauld d’Andilly, the eldest member of the noted Jansenist family and a longtime family friend. She tells her daughter:

Je le trouvai dans une augmentation de sainteté qui m’étonna: plus il approche de la mort, et plus il s’épure. Il me gronda très-sérieusement; et transporté de zèle et d’amitié pour moi, il me dit que j’étois folle de ne point songer à me convertir; que j’étois une jolie païenne; que je faisois de vous une idole dans mon coeur; que cette sorte d’idolâtrie étoit aussi dangereuse qu’une autre, quoiqu’elle me parût moins criminelle; qu’enfin je songeasse à moi. Il me dit tout cela si fortement que je n’avois pas le mot à dire. Enfin, après six heures de conversation très-agréable, quoique très sérieuse, je le quittai, et vins ici, où je trouvai tout le triomphe du mois de mai.

I found him in an increased sainthood which astonished me: the closer he comes to death, the more he is purified. He scolded me very seriously, and transported by zeal and friendship for me, he told me that I was crazy to not think of converting myself; that I was a pretty pagan; that I made of you an idol in my heart; that this kind of idolatry was as dangerous as any other, even though it might seem to me to be less criminal; finally, that I should think of myself. He told me all of this so strongly that I had nothing to say. Finally, after six hours of very pleasant, although very serious, conversation, I left him, and came here, where I found the entire triumph of the month of May.

This account, written just a few weeks after Mme de Grignan's departure for Provence, distills the six-hour conversation during which the noted Jansenist laid out the stark opposition between earthly love and religious devotion in just a few skillfully written lines. The symmetry of this passage is striking; the two clauses that contain the verb “songer” open and close a series of observations in the middle of which are found the fateful words “idole” and “idolâtrie,” which the Jansenist uses to characterize Sévigné’s obsession with her daughter.