Sweet lover, your exhaustive misunderstanding of my letter has plunged me into an everlasting abyss of peerless, perilous pain. How could I, a reformed man touched by God and His celestial devotee, be seen in such a light by your eyes and not be in everlasting despair? Indeed, your perception of me, the way you gaze at me, that is the only thing. That is the only substance to which I aspire. Appalled, appalled, and yet more appalled as I am reading back my letter, I can only find solace, as I hope I can persuade you to find as well, in that beautiful, accurate denouement, in which I promise a timely return to the heaven that we created, to the Eden of our love. My devotee, do you not remember our promises, the life you swore for my happiness, and the life I swore for yours? Surely nothing as paltry as a letter or a trivial interruption – really quite inconsequential in the grand portrait of our love – could maim every possibility of reconciliation in your soul; no, no, I know for a fact you would not let me drown in that ocean of uncertainty. Tell me truthfully, would you leave me here, with nothing but my agonizing thoughts to eat away at me, until I am over, until unhappiness has consumed me, until this anguish has washed away the memories of the sweetness of your eyes, until you become the war that tears apart my soul forever? No, I refuse. The Sage is right when he says that sin is a question of calculation, for you are committing a grave sin against our love now, a murder with shortsightedness as your weapon, a war with ignorance as your general. Love can never truly die, especially ours. It is as constant as the setting sun, as timely as the opera’s curtain call. I have never ceased being constant to you. Ah, will I ever see your sweet return? It is not too late. You will never fade from my heart, this aching heart that burns for you and you alone. Adieu, my love. In spite of the pain you have caused me, I only wish to see you again. All I ask is the chance to gaze upon your heavenly visage, to prove to you my undying love and devotion, the Godly values bestowed upon me by your own virtue. Tell me, will you come?
Valmont is less expressive than he is reflective. He tends to mimic characters’ manners of speech: the most egregious example of this comes when he quite literally copies a letter that Merteuil sends him in order to have him break things off with Tourvel. Notably, he starts using biblical, religious language when courting Tourvel, but not without combining it with Merteuil’s obsession with war. See letter 6:
“I shall dare to ravish her even from the God she adores. How delicious to be both object and conqueror of her remorse!... I shall indeed be the god she worships before all others” (Laclos 22).
Valmont reflects both the consciousness that is dominating his mind (in this case, Tourvel), and the consciousness of his reader (in this case, Merteuil). This reflectiveness dominates Valmont’s character, and it ties to the greater master-slave dialectic at work in the novel: Valmont’s identity, like that of the Hegelian individual, has no objective mode.
“The presentation of itself, however, as the pure abstraction of self-consciousness consists in showing itself as the pure negation of its objective mode, or in showing that it is not attached to any specific existence, not to the individuality common to existence as such, that it is not attached to life” (Hegel 113). This “negation of the objective mode” is key to understanding the Hegelian dynamic of the characters of Dangerous Liaisons. First, we consider the form of the letter, which Danceny helpfully describes to us as “the portrait of the soul” (Laclos 363). Using the epistolary form, characters become unbound to any determinate existence by showcasing themselves only as they wish to be perceived. Thus, we must add a layer of deception and self-deception to the master-slave dialectic. Before we do that, we must first make sure that we understand Hegel’s original myth: “...first, it has lost itself, for it finds itself as an other being; secondly, in doing so it has superseded the other, for it does not see the other as an essential being, but in the other sees its own self” (Hegel 111). This is the first encounter between the two self-consciousnesses. In said encounter, both souls are confronted with the ambiguity of their consciousness, as they find an other independent existence. As such, both characters are driven to supersede the ambiguity of the other in order to assert the certainty of their self-consciousness. According to Hegel, this first supersession of ambiguity is itself a second ambiguity, as the supersession of the other is a supersession of the self which is found in the other. A familiar example in Dangerous Liaisons would be the interactions between Merteuil and Valmont, where Hegel’s ‘death struggle’ – the battle between the two self-consciousnesses for dominance – manifests itself in the psychological warfare and manipulation that each character subjects the other to in order to receive recognition.
Letter 81 offers us an example of both Hegel’s dialectic and Laclos’ layer of self-delusion. Merteuil opens by mocking Valmont’s inferiority, “how pitiful your fears are, and how thoroughly they prove my superiority over you!” (Laclos 177). She has established herself as the lord to Valmont’s bondsman, and the rest of her self-important letter is characterized by an intense need on her part to be recognized by Valmont as different from the Other, which she characterizes as all other women:
“But I, what have I in common with these empty-headed women? When have you ever seen me break the rules I have laid down for myself or betray my principles? I say my principles, and I use that word advisedly. For they are not, like those of other women, discovered by chance, accepted uncritically or followed out of habit. They are the fruit of my deepest reflections. I have created them, and I can say that I am what I have created” (Laclos 181).
The incessant usage of “I” is crucial. Merteuil needs to be seen, needs to insist on being seen, and most importantly, needs to insist on being seen as superior to the Other. It is not enough that she has “power” over those around her; no, she must insist that they acknowledge this supposed “power.” For Merteuil, her superiority over Valmont and the Other (essentially Tourvel and other women) comes from having created her own system of belief that, for her, supersedes both that of the church and that of love: while Tourvel purports herself to be virtuous and Godly while actually yearning for Valmont’s love, and while Valmont purports not to love Tourvel while for all intents and purposes acting like he sincerely does, Merteuil has her principles. Her system, which I will refer to as the system of war (as opposed to Tourvel’s system of the church, Valmont’s system of love), makes her, in effect, the sovereign of her own state. What Merteuil fails to realize, and maybe never truly realizes, is that her system is just as subjugating for her as the ones she proudly proclaims to be superior to. Her dogmatic refusal to believe in love forms one-half of her eventual downfall, as it is the sincere love of Danceny that leads to her letters – her soul – being exposed to the outside world. Ostracism, crucially, is the second-half of said downfall: her ignorance of her need for recognition, as she claims to be less vain than Valmont, leads to her revealing herself to Valmont, and later on the rest of society. Here we can see both Hegel’s first supersession and the second supersession: she supersedes him by establishing her createdness and self-consciousness as opposed to his enslavement, and she supersedes her self because her need for recognition precisely depends on not being fully perceived.
So, how can we use what we learn from Merteuil’s deceptive dialectic to analyze Valmont’s letter? We must consider the consciousnesses at play: Valmont’s consciousness is dominated by Merteuil at this point in the novel, but what has not changed is that he still needs recognition from Tourvel, the reader. He needs to reaffirm himself as her God and conqueror, but he must simultaneously showcase to us his obsession with having Merteuil, whom he thinks he deserves based on Merteuil’s promise to renew their liaison after he finished seducing Tourvel. This explains why my Valmont stresses the importance of promises and oaths: he is thinking about Merteuil. In fact, my letter is only a few surface-level changes away from simply being a letter to Merteuil, but in part, by Merteuil. The usage of “I” in my letter is intentional: every possible opportunity to use it is taken. More obviously, my Valmont's reference to the Sage – in my case Socrates – parallels Merteuil’s reference to the Sage – in her case Rousseau (Laclos 352). My Valmont’s letter is reflective both in obvious ways – the description of Tourvel as ‘celestial’ comes to mind from Merteuil’s recurring usage (Laclos 324), the use of biblical language – and not so obvious ways, as he adopts the interrogative manner Merteuil loves to use (“Tell me truthfully…”, “do you not remember…”, “will I ever…”, “will you come?”).
“Tell me truthfully, are you deluding yourself or are you trying to deceive me?” (Laclos 344).
“So you were thinking of resuming relations with her, and you sent her my letter?” (Laclos 352).
Perhaps the most reflective aspect of my letter is his refusal to take the blame for what he did to Tourvel, as that would mean lowering himself in his own master-slave relationship. He, like Merteuil, must monopolize self-consciousness. Instead, he shifts the blame indirectly onto Tourvel; it is not his inconstancy, for his love cannot be inconstant by his admission which, to him, is her gospel, but the pain she has caused him by refusing to recognize him that matters. This strikes at a special case of the master-slave dialectic, the natural negation of the self as a result of the death of one of the consciousnesses – “...so death is the natural negation of consciousness… they put an end to themselves, and are done away with as extremes wanting to be for themselves, or to have an existence of their own” (Hegel 114). By both figuratively and literally (though indirectly) killing Tourvel, Valmont has negated his recognition and thus his self; this is different from the first and second supersessions discussed, as what is superseded in those is still maintained and is in fact necessary for self-consciousness. Although the branching reflections may diverge as Merteuil clouds his mind, they converge on the desideratum of recognition from Tourvel, and his despair at being alienated from his love, whether it be for Merteuil or Tourvel. The question of whether or not his love is sincere has a simple answer: it depends on who he’s reflecting. If he is reflecting Tourvel, he is sincere. If he is reflecting Merteuil, he is not. Thus, my Valmont, just like Laclos’, oscillates between love and deception, not just to those around him, but crucially, to himself.