Dangerous Liaisons
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Dangerous Liaisons
Choderlos de Laclos
Literature
James Mustich
Aug 8, 2018
Witty, wealthy, vengeful, and bored, the glamorous antiheroes of Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’s 1782 novel, Dangerous Liaisons (Les Liaisons Dangereuses), are connoisseurs of sex as pastime, game, and weapon. The sinisterly charming Vicomte de Valmont has his eye on a beautiful but married visitor, Madame de Tourvel, and determines to have her. But his co-conspirator, the Marquise de Merteuil, asks if he won’t concentrate on despoiling the teenage Cécile de Volanges instead, so as to exact some revenge for the Marquise. Entirely epistolary in form, the novel unfolds in the characters’ own words, lending a fraught intimacy to the narrative: Each voice echoes thrillingly in the cruel emptiness that Valmont and the Marquise have made the context of the collective correspondence. Through his scandalous invention, author Choderlos de Laclos made his book a commentary on the corruption and libertinism of the ancien régime less than a decade before its collapse beneath the passionate energies of the Revolution. With its vivid depiction of the depraved impulses of its aristocratic protagonists and the cunning immorality of empowered desire, it’s no wonder Dangerous Liaisons is still seducing readers more than two hundred years hence.
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roppenhe
Feb 18, 2019
The wickedest of wicked fun!
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Wolfgang Laun
Dec 1, 2021
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