Book Review : This History Is for Lovers of the French

French Lovers by Joseph Barry (Arbor House: $19.95)

Sound advice from a debonaire psychologist? Romantic tales to warm the heart and fuel the libido? Original insights into the national character? Instead, “French Lovers” is a conscientious, lavishly footnoted historical treatise in which 10 more or less famous couples are embedded in their centuries like truffles in pate, which is to say a lot of pate to a few shreds of truffle.

An American in Paris for many years, Joseph Barry has been the New York Times Sunday Bureau chief, a columnist for the New York Post and the Village Voice, and the author of five previous books, the most recent a biography of George Sand. His qualifications are impressive, his research formidable, his purpose lofty, his approach “a mixture of Freud and Marx--with a touch of Einstein, and a pinch of Nietzsche.” His attitude is enlightened, treating an assortment of highly unconventional domestic arrangements with solemn respect.

Carefully Selected

Barry has chosen his couples carefully, selecting those who best show how “two people can create a world within a world” and in the happiest cases, form “pairs of equals,” tasks at which he believes the French excel. The message is explicit. One way and another, we can learn from each of these samples.

Though the process should be exciting, informative and fun, somehow it’s merely edifying and occasionally depressing. The problem is partly an excess of zeal, partly a labored style lacking in spontaneity, partly Barry’s tendency to provide so much background information that the amorous figures in the foreground all but vanish into context. Most of all, the difficulty is that the lovers themselves are so completely and utterly atypical, so far outside ordinary human experience, that their problems and solutions can seem irrelevant.

Take Abelard and Heloise. What can we learn from a 12th-Century monk and his inamorata that will help us “live together in a modern mode that is still defining itself?” Where are these “immediate implications?” Where, for that matter, are they in the stories of Henry II and Diane de Poitiers; of Moliere and the young wife said to be his daughter, or in the chronicle of the menage a trois established by Voltaire, Madame du Chatelet and Madame’s husband, obligingly away with his regiment while Voltaire and Du Chatelet’s wife occupied the family chateau?

A True Mismatch

As for the Marquis and Marquise de Sade, they provide a lesson in how not to conduct a relationship. Marie, Comtesse d’Agoult and Franz Liszt were a mismatch made in heaven. Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas have been the subject of a score of previous books; every nuance of their lives scrutinized by one or another of their large circle. Though Barry knew these well, he has little to add to the large body of received information. Like Jean Cocteau and Jean Marais, they’re just too special to provide a guide to the perplexed, nor should they be placed in that uncongenial role.

Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir?” Helas , “there is now explosive evidence that the arrangement was tailored for Sartre, not for both; that in their ‘perfect’ relationship of the ‘modern’ couple there was the age-old pattern of dominant male--subordinate female.” Simone de Beauvoir was miserably unhappy, as readers of her autobiography know.

What remains, then, is a painstakingly thorough examination of the social and cultural milieu in which these couples lived, century by century. Barry has recreated each historical era in astonishing detail, telling us that Abelard’s school was 28 miles southeast of Paris, that Voltaire suffered from a spastic colon, that courtly love effectively ended when the French monarchy invoked the Salic Law in 1316 and again in 1322 to prevent the daughters of Louis X and Philip VI from succeeding to the throne. Thereafter, women could neither hold titles nor inherit land. Under those harsh circumstances, there was little reason for a knight to serve a lady.

Even those familiar with the memoirs of the Marquis de Sade may be surprised to learn that his valet Latour wore a blue and yellow striped sailor suit when arranging an orgy for his master. “French Lovers” abounds with such detail and overflows with quotable treasures drawn from the wits and philosophers of each period. Barry has not only reproduced generous helpings of the work of the writers but also offers sound literary interpretations.

As social history, “French Lovers” is authoritative and frankly Francophiliac, a tribute to French individualism, but as a revelation of the secret of forming “pairs of equals,” it’s useful only in the most extreme--if not bizarre--circumstances.