Used book – Le Misanthrope, Molière, Michel Autrand, Jean-Pierre Vincent

"Betrayed on all sides, overwhelmed by injustice, I will emerge from an abyss where vices triumph; And seek on earth a secluded place Where one can be free to be a man of honour."

As he leaves the stage, Alceste also leaves the world with which he has clashed, and the true subject of the comedy is indeed the confrontation between the misanthrope and this fashionable society that he rejects: certainly by philosophy, but also by that cantankerous spirit of a curmudgeon who makes him the enemy of all sociability, as shown by the incongruous and boorish way in which he expresses to Célimène a love that goes against the rules of gallantry.

This extravagant character is therefore certainly ridiculous. But how can we reproach him, nevertheless, for his uncompromising practice of the virtues of sincerity, justice, and rectitude? Because Alceste denounces the world, it is he who allows Molière, in 1666, to give us a true image of it - even in its contradictions.

Edition by Claude Bourqui.