The counter-Enlightenment and the low-life of literature in pre-Revolutionary France

Past & Present, May, 1998 by Darrin M. McMahon

But if in these respects Gilbert engaged in a critique of decadence and corruption similar to that expounded by Darnton's underground hacks, there were important differences. For while the libelists and pamphleteers of the literary underground `showed', as Darnton comments, `that social rot was consuming French society', they identified its source at the `top'. To them, the world of elites -- degenerate aristocrats, dissipated clergy and a debased court -- was the source of the contagion that plagued France. Seeing the philosophes as merely part of this larger, privileged monde, they attacked all in turn, slandering `the court, the church, the aristocracy, the academies, the salons, everything elevated and respectable, including the monarchy itself'. Imbued with a hatred of `the system', these men were revolutionaries before the fact.(18)

Gilbert, by contrast, was, though angry, hardly a revolutionary. He devoted his verses to `avenging the public cause', hoping to obtain the `friendly attention' of his king, Louis XVI, whom he wished to serve faithfully. He defended the religion of the Church, and harkened back to halcyon days -- the age of Louis XIV -- when nobles and the people alike carried themselves with manly, Christian virtue, a respect for morals and a fear of God. Far from attacking the system, he aimed to rescue it by `unmasking' the `dangerous sages' who were eating away at the national fibre, corrupting its institutions and its character. These men, Gilbert warned, the philosophes on high, were the real source of the century's depravity. False gods, they `usurped altars', making faith a crime and treating all piety as `blind fanaticism'. They sanctioned mental and physical `aberration' of every kind, placed `atheism in high regard' while putting `God on trial', `honoured license' and `chased the Supreme Being from a deserted heaven'. Their success, moreover, was all too evident. Throughout Europe, `even Russia', people devoured their works in `delirium'. To recount the history of the century was to tell a tale `of the power of the innovators of the times, of their fury to write and of their shameful glory'.(19)

Gilbert thus identified the source of the century's malaise in the writings and posturing of the philosophes. In doing so, he made reference to `two opposing parties': those who fought for the `false gods' of the new century and those who fought against them. And though he admitted that his rivals were `stronger in numbers and vaunted in all places', he vowed to carry on the fight regardless -- a promise he thoroughly fulfilled, publishing numerous diatribes that hammered home the themes outlined above, defending at once the throne and altar.(20)

Such efforts did not go unnoticed. Recommended to the archbishop of Paris, Gilbert earned the prelate's benevolence, as well as that of other important devots, including the pious daughter of Louis XV, Madame Louise de France. The two took steps to secure Gilbert a pension, personally appealing to the devot minister of foreign affairs, Charles Gravier, comte de Vergennes.(21) As Madame Louise emphasized in a letter to Vergennes, dated 15 September 1776, Gilbert was a man of `great talents' who had `entirely devoted himself to the defence of religion', but who none the less lived `without bread'.(22) Stressing in a second memorandum the following month that the `enemies of religion possessed unlimited hidden resources' to win over even the most upright souls, she urged Vergennes to find support for him, lest Gilbert fall prey to the seductions of poverty.(23) The intervention was successful. Following a check of his background, in which the foreign minister verified the poet's moral character through the letters of some fourteen reputable attestants, Vergennes was able to write both Beaumont and Madame Louise with the good news that the king had awarded Gilbert an annual stipend of 1,000 livres.(24) True to his billing, Gilbert continued his war against the philosophes until the end of his short life in 1780, earning his reward as well as the undying enmity of the philosophes.(25)