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Montaigne's Aesthetics of Seduction 67 The fundamental axiom of all moral discourse (including Montaigne's on many occasions) is the opposition between appearances and truth. 8 Appearances are often images that seduce, while truth is an a-priori linguistic construct that helps the moral subject to filter the "hazardous" world of appearances. But what if there is no transcendental truth? what if appearances constitute a closed system of signs beyond which there was no "deeper" meaning? These are precisely the questions that the notions of seduction and simulation pose. Derrida defines the seductive woman thus: "Est femme, ce qui n'y croit pas et qui en joue." 9 Although Derrida is refering specifically to women's relationship to the castration complex, given the tone of Epérons, it will not be risky to generalize this axiom to general seduction, male and female: a seducer is the one who does not believe, but who plays the comedy impeccably well: "La plus part de nos vacations sont farcesques. 'Mundus universus exercet histrioniam.' Il faut jouer deuement nostre rolle, mais comme rolle d'un personnage emprunté" (III, 10, 989 B). The seducer manipulates the effects of truth, but only as effects, as surfaces, never as transcendental entities: "[le] simulacre c'est l'effet de vérité qui cache que celle-ci n'existe pas." 10 To simulate one must valorize the signifier (the effect) and devalorize the referent; valorize "cette entremis and d'autres moyens estrangers et d'autres arts," in the words of Montaigne, and devalorize the order of the "Real": "c'est un destour qui nous conduit à la verité par une fauce porte" (III, 5, 845 B). To simulate is to act en connaissance (du manque) de cause ; it is to act within the symbolic order, knowing that the truth does not go beyond the inerplay of signs, the close-circuit interplay of appearances. We are not surprised that Montaigne places the figure of "woman" at the center of his discourse on seduction and simulation. 11 Within 8 See Jean Starobinski, Montaigne en mouvement (Paris: Gallimard, 1982), pp. 11-21 in particular. 9 Jacques Derrida, Spurs: Nietzsche's Styles; Eperons: les styles de Nietzsche [bilingual edition] (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), p. 60. 10 Jean Baudrillard, De la Séduction (Paris: Editions Galilée, 1977), p. 60. 11 The link between seduction and Montaigne's ideology of the self should be all too evident. Seduction aesthetics is perhaps a sort of heavy-handed Egopsychology that could be easily deconstructed in terms of gender, psychology and ideology. For an article on the problems inherent in viewing the woman as
68 Jack I. Abecassis the logic of the essay, the figure of the seductive woman is always opposed to Seneca, the dogmatic male philosopher. Montaigne reserves the seductive paradigm of "Que nostre desir s'accroist par la malaisance" for an ancient female figure, Sabina Poppæa. Her exemplum forms the best illustration of the discourse on the "entremis," on "d'autres moyens estrangers et d'autres arts," that is, the discourse on the veil as the sign of (non)-truth: "La 'vérité' ne serait qu'une surface, elle ne deviendrait vérité profonde, crue, désirable que par l'effet d'un voile: qui tombe sur elle." 12 [C] Pourquoy inventa Poppæa de masquer les beautez de son visage, que pour rencherir à ses amans? [A] Pourquoy a l'on voylé jusques au dessoubs des talons ces beautez que chacune desire montrer, que chacun desire voir? Pourquoy couvrent elles de tant d'empeschemens les uns sur les autres les parties où loge principallement nostre desir et le leur? Et à quoy servent ces gros bastions, dequoy les nostres viennent d'armer leurs flancs qu'à lurrer nostre appetit et nous attirer à elles en nous esloignant? Et fugit ad salices, et se cupit ante videri. [Virgile] [B] Interdum tunica duxit operta moram. [Propertius] (II, 15, 598) Montaigne knows about the exploits of Sabina Poppæa from his reading of Tacitus' Annals, one of his favorite readings. Sabina Poppæa, the object of a famous portrait by an unknown Fontainebleau master, was a well known, if infamous, ancient figure in Renaissance culture. To understand the importance of Montaigne's reference in this context, we must examine an important short chapter from the Annals, the most important intertext for the Renaissance reader on this subject, and a crucial point of departure for our discussion of seduction and the aesthetics of the veil. She was a woman possessed of all advantages but a character. For her mother, after eclipsing the beauties of her day, had endowed her the site of the "truth" of non-truth see: Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, "Displacement and the discourse of woman," in Displacement: Derrida & After, ed. Mark Kruprick (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), pp. 169-194. 12 Derrida, Spurs, p. 58.
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