Moliére and Tartuffe: Religion and Blind Sights

Moliére, one of the best known and most important names of neoclassicism, gave the most known works of this movement in his works and revealed what neoclassicism is.

Briefly speaking, neoclassicism is a movement that has continued its existence under the influence of ancient Greece and Rome and has influenced Europe in many ways.

When we go back to Moliére, he is known for his theatre plays and writings that cause him to break up with many communities, which seem to be humorous and from life and end with unexpected results. Tartuffe is one of the theatres I mentioned. It is written in verse and presented in 5 acts. 

Is the Molière only comedy writer or more than this?

One of the groups with whom Moliére had a falling out was the religious people, which he caused with his play Tartuffe. Tartuffe was a play that was banned by the church during the Tartuffe period, which led Molière to close his eyes by placing his ‘ The Mirror of Truth’ above religious power, and this closure perhaps meant an awakening for the people.

Tartuffe tells the story of the character who gives his name to the work, and the mischief he does in his house, which he enters by devising various schemes to prove his piety to Orgon. Under the name of religion, he makes the owners of the house, whom he admires him to the degree of bigotry, do what he wants and provides a confidence against himself so much that the people around who warn them will not believe them. However, Tartuffe is after more than just eating their money, living in their houses, sharing their tables, he wants to marry the daughter of the house, which has already been promised to someone else, and he even has his eyes on the lady of the house. Tarttufe, who is insatiable in every sense, is unmasked thanks to the play of the house servant and Orgon sees the truth with his own eyes.

Moliére criticises the clergymen who use religion with his unique language. Tartuffe, a false clergyman, twists and turns religion for himself and organises it for his own deeds. This issue, which caused great incidents during the first performance of the play, is still a problem that has not been overcome both in our country and all over the world. In the ancient Greek period, which was influenced by the neoclassical period, the important element was the will to reason, questioning and thinking, but in the play Tartuffe, we see Orgon and Madame Pernelle characters who accept without questioning. Moliére wanted to reflect this contradiction here and he did this with his own voice, the theatre.

As an example of as a speech Cleante says; Who, skilled in prayer, have always much to ask,

And live at court to preach retirement;

Who reconcile religion with their vices,

Are quick to anger, vengeful, faithless, tricky,

And, to destroy a man, will have the boldness

To call their private grudge the cause of heaven;

All the more dangerous, since in their anger

They use against us weapons men revere,

And since they make the world applaud their passion,

And seek to stab us with a sacred sword. And goes like that.

Cleante wants his brother-in-law to question, to see the truth, just like a philosopher, Cleante represent the philosophers, also he is the one who tell the ideas of Moliére. He tries to find out some things by asking himself, but unfortunately, an eye that does not want to see is completely blind.

Although we see the connection of Orgon, who is from the aristocracy class, to Tartuffe, who is from the religious class, as blindness, it is a work that proves the fact that these two classes feed each other for their interests, and most of the reaction is for this reason. In a way, it can be called 'representatives of order'. Moliére explains this with a covered critical method. 

Here we can say that Orgon is our blind sight, a pair of eyes that do not want to see also turns into a pair of deaf ears, and it is sometimes convenient to play three monkeys because accepting this means that there is no room for questioning and new thoughts, it is easy, and sometimes the easy is more attractive than the right.

Is Tartuffe still alive?

When we look at it after centuries, Tartuffe is still a characterisation that is still in our lives, he is still living among us, only his mask has changed and it is very difficult to say who wears what anymore, and the mask of religion has changed hands and continued to be used for all these years. It would not be wrong to make the following inference, then Molier's criticism is not periodic but universal.

There is a saying in Turkish: ‘Things that have no explanation have humour’. We can say that one of the best examples of the aforementioned saying is Molière. The author, who mixes humour with religion in Tartuffe, draws attention to another problem of the people in another work, for example in The Fool of Politeness. What praise we can offer to Molière, who is the author of comedies that I can perhaps call critical, which will be understood not by those who watch with the eye but by those who observe with the heart

As Karl Marx, born many years after him, said, 'religion is the opium of society'. Although Moliére make an endeavour to show this, people like Orgons will continue this tradition by always existing. Perhaps Molière's greatest desire was not only to laugh, but to think while smiling. Because true enlightenment begins with questioning. Today, the only way to protect ourselves from ‘Tartuffe’ is to ask questions like Cleante.