This creative coup was pulled off by one person and one person only — Louis XIV. In the court of Louis the XIV, there was no rudeness because the penalty for being rude was just too harsh. The rules of politeness were enforced by absolute conformity and the unanimous peer pressure that came with it. Was the politeness suspect because it was the result of coercion? If people can only be made polite by fear, is it worth the cost to frighten them into it? These questions will always be asked about the Sun King’s court. Madame de Sevigne didn’t dwell on them much. She was convinced of the absolute good of politeness. One of her letters describes the terrible cost of being impolite in Louis’ court. A young woman who was in court for the first time was well aware of her beauty and expected to be accorded great attention because of it. As she spoke with Sevigne for the first time, she looked away during Sevigne’s reply to see which men were ogling her. Suddenly the attractive young newcomer noticed the court had gone quiet. All talking had ceased. And then she noticed something vastly more unsettling: everyone was looking at her. The young beauty had looked away while someone was speaking to her. She had been rude. In her letter about the incident, Sevigne guesses the woman won’t make the mistake a second time. Sevigne’s letters shed light on Louis XIV’s decision-making process, and in particular, on his ways of dealing with those who disagreed with him. Louis rarely did anything he didn’t want to. Learn here how his near-dictatorial
approach worked (and see whether you think it was all bad). If this book of letters leaves you curious about Louis’ unique court, you can read more about how people live a polite life in the Maxims of La Rochefoucauld, another leader of Louis XIV’s court. The maxims are also available in an economical Penguin Classics edition.
8. Born Under Saturn: The Character And Conduct Of Artists: Documented History From Antiquity To The French Revolution by Rudolf and Margot Wittkower (Norton, 1969) Although this book covers art up
through the Romantic period, it devotes more space to artists in the years around the Renaissance than to those in more modern times. The book shows that the Renaissance was the time when some artists gained enough power that they were no longer considered mere craftsmen, and instead became powerful figures who could set their own price. Some of them also began to think of themselves as important personalities. Renaissance artists often conformed with contemporary trends in temperament, such as the popular model of melancholy. That gets us to the real story of this book, which is the vast array of eccentricities of the artists, some of whom are still quite well known. This book will give you a portrait of the artist that’s much more extreme than anything you’ll read in Hollywood East or Mme. de Sevigne’s letters. We’re told in detail of Michelangelo’s fears that his deviations from the norm would consign him to damnation. Other extremely talented artists found themselves paralyzed when it came to everyday life because of personal obsessions with miserliness, dirtiness, greed, hypochondria, bizarre sensual indulgences and a host of other vices, fixations and quirks. Naturally, for some of the most tortured figures, the creation of art was the only relief they experienced. 9. The Twelve Caesars by Seutonius (translated by Robert Graves) (Penguin Classics, revised 2007) (Originally written about 100 AD.)
role of creativity in crime. And we can turn to the classics to do it. Although Seutonius’ history covered 12 Caesars — or emperors — of ancient Rome, if you’re the sort of person who likes to skip to the naughty bits, you’ll go straight to the stories of Tiberius and Caligula. In these two figures, we see the contrast between the clever and sometimes creative criminal (Caligula) and the oafish criminal who uses brute force indiscriminately (Tiberius). Caligula often committed crimes or even atrocities because he was working out a complex or ironic scenario. Many of his crimes were more about the idea of being outlandish, com-
We should at least give a nod to the
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LAGNIAPPE
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