Persian Letters


Persian Letters is a literary work, published in 1721, by Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu, recounting the experiences of two fictional Persian noblemen, Usbek and Rica, who are traveling through France.

Plot summary

In 1711 Usbek leaves his seraglio in Isfahan to take the long journey to France, accompanied by his young friend Rica. He leaves behind five wives in the care of a number of black eunuchs, one of whom is the head or first eunuch. During the trip and their long stay in Paris, they comment, in letters exchanged with friends and mullahs, on numerous aspects of Western, Christian society, particularly French politics and Moors, ending with a biting satire of the System of John Law. Over time, various disorders surface back in the seraglio, and, beginning in 1717, the situation there rapidly unravels. Usbek orders his head eunuch to crack down, but his message does not arrive in time, and a revolt brings about the death of his wives, including the vengeful suicide of his favorite, Roxane, and, it appears, most of the eunuchs.
The Chronology can be broken down as follows:
The first edition of the novel, which consists of 150 letters, appeared in May 1721 under the rubric Cologne: Pierre Marteau, a front for the Amsterdam publisher Jacques Desbordes whose business is now run by his widow, Susanne de Caux. Called edition A, this is the text utilized in the recent critical edition of Lettres persanes for the ongoing complete works of Montesquieu published in Oxford and Lyon/Paris beginning in 1998. A second edition by the same publisher later in the same year, for which there is so far no entirely satisfactory explanation, curiously included three new letters but omitted thirteen of the original ones. All subsequent editions in the author's lifetime derive from A or B. A new edition in 1758, prepared by Montesquieu's son, included eight new letters – bringing the total at that point to 161 – and a short piece by the author entitled "Quelques réflexions sur les Lettres persanes". This latter edition has been used for all subsequent editions until the Œuvres complètes of 2004, which reverts to the original edition but includes the added letters marked as "supplementary" and, in parentheses, the numbering scheme of 1758.

An epistolary novel

Montesquieu never referred to Lettres persanes as a novel until "Quelques remarques sur les Lettres persanes," which begins: "Nothing about the Lettres persanes was more ingratiating than to find in it unexpectedly a sort of novel. There is a visible beginning, development, and ending ." Initially, for most of its first readers as well as for its author, it was not considered primarily a novel, and even less an "epistolary novel", which was not at that time a constituted genre. Indeed, it has little in common with the sole model at the time, Guilleragues's Lettres portugaises of 1669. A collection of "letters" in 1721 would more likely evoke the recent tradition of essentially polemical and political periodicals, such as Lettres historiques, the Jesuits’ famous Lettres édifiantes et curieuses, not to mention Mme Dunoyer's Lettres historiques et galantes which, in the form of a correspondence between two women, provide a chronicle of the end of the reign of Louis XIV and the beginning of the Regency. The Lettres persanes thus helped confirm the vogue of a format that was already established. But it is in its numerous imitations – such as Lettres juives and Lettres chinoises of Boyer d’Argens, Lettres d’une Turque à Paris, écrites à sa sœur by Poullain de Saint-Foix, and perhaps especially Françoise de Graffigny’s Lettres d’une Péruvienne – not to mention the letter-novels of Richardson – which, between 1721 and 1754, had in effect transformed Lettres persanes into an "epistolary novel." Whence this remark in Montesquieu's Mes Pensées: "My Lettres persanes taught people to write letter-novels".
The epistolary structure is quite flexible: nineteen correspondents in all, with at least twenty-two different recipients. Usbek and Rica by far dominate with sixty-six letters for the former and forty-seven for the latter. Ibben, who functions more as addressee than correspondent, writes only two letters but receives forty-two. Likewise, an unnamed person – if always the same – receives eighteen letters and writes none at all. There is even one complete anomaly, a letter from Hagi Ibbi to Ben Josué, neither of whom is mentioned elsewhere in the novel.
The letters are apparently all dated in accordance with a lunar calendar which, as Robert Shackleton showed in 1954, in fact corresponds to our own, by simple substitution of Muslim names, as follows: Zilcadé, Zilhagé, Maharram, Saphar, Rebiab I, Rebiab II, Gemmadi I, Gemmadi II, Rhegeb, Chahban, Rhamazan, Chalval.

Social commentary

In Paris, the Persians express themselves on a wide variety of subjects, from governmental institutions to salon caricatures. The difference of temperament of the two friends is notable, Usbek being more experienced and asking many questions, Rica less implicated and more free, and more attracted by Parisian life. Both retain Montesquieu's rich satirical tone, as in Rica's Lettre 72:
Je me trouvai l’autre jour dans une compagnie où je vis un homme bien content de lui. Dans un quart d’heure, il décida trois questions de morale, quatre problèmes historiques, et cinq points de physique : Je n’ai jamais vu un décisionnaire si universel ; son esprit ne fut jamais suspendu par le moindre doute. On laissa les sciences ; on parla des nouvelles du temps : il décida sur les nouvelles du temps. Je voulus l’attraper, et je dis en moi-même : Il faut que je me mette dans mon fort ; je vais me réfugier dans mon pays. Je lui parlai de la Perse ; mais, à peine lui eus-je dit quatre mots, qu’il me donna deux démentis, fondés sur l’autorité de messieurs Tavernier et Chardin. Ah ! bon Dieu ! dis-je en moi-même, quel homme est-ce là ? Il connoîtra tout à l’heure les rues d’Ispahan mieux que moi ! Mon parti fut bientôt pris : je me tus, je le laissai parler, et il décide encore.

I found myself recently in a company where I met a man very well satisfied with himself. In a quarter of an hour, he decided three questions in morals, four historical problems, and five points in physics. I have never seen so universal a decider; his mind was not once troubled with the least doubt. We left science, and talked of the current news: he decided upon the current news. I wished to catch him, so I said to myself, “I must get to my strong point; I will betake me to my own country.” I spoke to him of Persia; but hardly had I opened my mouth, when he contradicted me twice, basing his objections upon the authority of Tavernier and Chardin. “Ah! Good heavens!” said I to myself, “what kind of man is this? He will know next all the streets in Ispahan better than I do!” I soon knew what part to play-to be silent, and let him talk; and he is still laying down the law.

Although this takes place in the declining years of the aged king, much of what he has accomplished is still admired in a Paris where the Invalides is being completed and cafés and theatre proliferate. We observe the function of parliaments, tribunals, religious bodies, public places and their publics, state foundations. They describe a thriving culture, where even the presence of two Persians quickly becomes a popular phenomenon, thanks to the proliferation of prints. The café – where debates take place – has become established as a public institution, as were already the theatre and opera. There are still people foolish enough to search at their own expense for the philosopher's stone; the newsmonger and the periodical press are beginning to play a role in everyday life. Everything from institutions via groups to individuals comes to the eye of the reader.
Usbek for his part is troubled by religious contrasts. Though it never occurs to him to cease being a Muslim, and while he still wonders at some aspects of Christianity, he writes to austere authorities to inquire, for example, why some foods are considered to be unclean. He also assimilates the two religions and even all religions with respect to their social utility.
Certain sequences of letters by a single author develop more fully a particular subject, such as letters 11–14 from Usbek to Mirza on the Troglodytes, letters 109–118 from Usbek to Rhedi on demography, letters 128–132 from Rica on his visit to the library at Saint-Victor. They sketch analyses that will later be developed in L’Esprit des lois for many subjects such as the types of powers, the influence of climate and the critique of colonization.

The dénouement

While Usbek appreciates the freer relations among men and women in the West, he remains, as master of a seraglio, a prisoner of his past. His wives play the role of languorous and lonely lovers, he the role of master and lover, with no true communication and without revealing much about their true selves. Usbek's language with them is as constrained as theirs with him. Knowing, moreover, from the outset that he is not assured of a return to Persia, Usbek is also already disabused about their attitude. The seraglio is a hothouse from which he increasingly distances himself, trusting his wives no more than his eunuchs.
Everything cascades in the final letters, thanks to a sudden analepse of more than three years with respect to the preceding letters. From letter 69 to letter 139 – chronologically from 1714 to 1720 – not a single letter from Usbek relates to the seraglio, which is unmentioned in any guise from letter 94 to 143 to 145. Moreover, all the letters from 126 to 137 are from Rica, which means that for about fifteen months Usbek is completely silent. Although he has in the meantime received letters, the reader does not learn of them until the final series, which is more developed after the addition of supplementary letters 9–11 of 1758. Although Usbek has learned as early as October 1714 that "the seraglio is in disorder". As the spirit of rebellion advances, he decides to act, but too late; with delays in the transmission of letters and the loss of some, the situation is beyond remedy.
A dejected Usbek is apparently resigned to the necessity of returning, with little hope, to Persia; on 4 October 1719 he laments: "I shall deliver my head to my enemies". He nevertheless does not do so: late in 1720 he is still in Paris, for letters 134–137, which contain the whole history of Law's "System," are in fact posterior to Roxane's last missive, which he must already have received – the usual time for delivery being about five months – when he writes the latest in date of his own, in October and November 1720.

Critical history

The Lettres persanes was an immediate success and often imitated, but it has been diversely interpreted over time. Until the middle of the twentieth century, it was its "spirit" of the Regency which was largely admired, as well as the caricature in the classical tradition of La Bruyère, Pascal and Fontenelle. No one had the notion of attaching it to the novelistic genre. The Persian side of the novel tended to be considered as a fanciful decor, the true interest of the work lying in its factitious "oriental" impressions of French society, along with political and religious satire and critique.
In the 1950s began a new era of studies based on better texts and renewed perspectives. Particularly important were the extensively annotated edition by Paul Vernière and the research of Robert Shackleton on Muslim chronology; also studies by Roger Laufer, Pauline Kra and Roger Mercier, which put new focus on the work's unity and integrated the seraglio into its overall meaning. Others who have followed have looked into the ramifications of epistolary form, the structure and meaning of the seraglio, Usbek's contradictions. Beginning about 1970 it is religion and especially politics which predominate in studies on Lettres persanes, with a progressive return to the role of the seraglio with all its women and eunuchs or the cultural cleavage of Orient and Occident.

Key themes