French Language > Verbs

The French Literary Subjunctive: Uses
When an Ordinary Tense Is Not Enough

Most of the uses of the literary subjunctive tenses, like those of the present and past subjunctive, are dependent, that is, they occur in subordinate clauses, but one very important one (which you are well-nigh certain to encounter) is independent (see II.A below).

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I. Literary Subjunctive in Secondary Sequence

Sequence of tenses refers to the rules for choice of tense in complex sentences. If the main or introductory verb is present or future, the sequence is called primary, and only certain tenses can follow (which tense in particular is determined by the time relationship between the two verbs).  If the main or introductory verb is in a past tense, ¹ the sequence is called secondary or historical, and, again, only certain verbs can follow.  So, in English:

type of sequence ⇒ subordinate verb is ⇓	Primary	Secondary
simultaneous:	“I know that he is coming.”	“I knew that he was coming.”
posterior:	“I know that he will come.”	“I knew that he would come.”
anterior:	“I know that he came.”	“I knew that he had come.”

Similarly, in French, when the subjunctive is not involved:

type of sequence ⇒ subordinate verb is ⇓	Primary	Secondary
simultaneous:	Je sais qu’il vient.	Je savais qu’il venait.
posterior:	Je sais qu’il viendra.	Je savais qu’il viendrait.
anterior:	Je sais qu’il est venu.	Je savais qu’il était venu.

When the introductory verb is of a kind to require a subjunctive verb in the subordinate clause, the pattern is simpler:

type of sequence ⇒ subordinate verb is ⇓	Primary	Secondary
simultaneous or posterior:	Je suis content qu’il vienne. (I am happy he is coming. I am happy he will come.)	J’étais content qu’il vienne. (I was happy he was coming. I was happy he would come.)
anterior:	Je suis content qu’il soit venu. (I am happy he came.)	J’étais content qu’il soit venu. (I was happy he had come.)

Regarding the above table, note the following two points:

Thus:

In Days of Yore…

Things were not always so. In older texts (and in very literary modern ones as well, but with some limitations as to the persons likely to be used), there were two other tenses, the imperfect and the pluperfect subjunctive, which were used in secondary sequence.  Sequence of tenses using these so-called literary subjunctive tenses goes like this (primary subjunctive verbs are in green, secondary subjunctive tenses are in red):

type of sequence ⇒ subordinate verb is ⇓	Primary	Secondary
simultaneous or posterior:	Je suis content qu’il vienne. (I am happy he is coming. I am happy he will come.)	J’étais content qu’il vînt. (I was happy he was coming. I was happy he would come.)
anterior:	Je suis content qu’il soit venu. (I am happy he came.)	J’étais content qu’il fût venu. (I was happy he had come.)

Le petit prince Lends a Hand

The following examples of literary subjunctive tenses in secondary sequence come from Le petit prince of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, which, though a children’s book, follows the rules of literary French.

• « Elle ne voulait pas qu’il la vît pleurer. » (She didn’t want him to see her cry.)
  • Less literary: Elle ne voulait pas qu’il la voie pleurer.
• « Le roi tenait à ce que son autorité fût respecté. » (The king insisted on his authority being respected.)
  • Less literary: Le roi tenait à ce que son autorité soit respecté.
• « Les seules montagnes qu’il eût jamais connues étaient les trois volcans qui lui arrivaient au genou. » (The only mountains he had ever known were the three volcanoes that reached as high as his knee.)
  • Less literary: Les seules montagnes qu’il ait jamais connues étaient les trois volcans qui lui arrivaient au genou.
• « Je ne voulais pas qu’il fît un effort. » (I didn’t want him to make an effort.)
  • Less literary: Je ne voulais pas qu’il fasse un effort.
• « Pourquoi fallait-il que j’eusse de la peine… » (Why was it necessary that I should feel bad…)
  • Less literary: Pourquoi fallait-il que j’aie de la peine…
• « Il me semblait qu’il coulait verticalement dans un abîme sans que je pusse rien pour le retenir… » (It seemed to me he was slipping straight down into an abyss without my being able to do anything to hold him back.)
  • Less literary: ll me semblait qu’il coulait verticalement dans un abîme sans que je puisse rien pour le retenir…

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II. Literary Subjunctive in Conditional Sentences

You will recall the typical patterns of tenses in conditional sentences…

…being like this:

1. Simple Hypothesis: Present and Future (both Indicative)
   Si je peux, je viendrai. (If I am able, I will come.)
2. Present Unreal ²: Imperfect Indicative and Present Conditional
   Si je pouvais, je viendrais. (If I were able, I would come.)
3. Past Unreal: Pluperfect Indicative and Past Conditional
   Si j’avais pu, je serais venu. (If I had been able, I would have come.)

Things were different in medieval French (9th to 13th centuries of the present era).  Then, the imperfect subjunctive was used regularly to indicate both an unreal condition and its unreal consequence—it was used hence in both the protasis (condition, if-clause) and the apodosis (consequence, then-clause)—and referring to either past or present time (or even future time).  The compound tense, the pluperfect subjunctive, developed somewhat later and was used to indicate without ambiguity that an unreal past was being referred to.

Even today, you will occasionally find verbs in the subjunctive mood in conditional sentences, and in all three kinds of conditional sentence. We will consider them here in reverse order (III-II-I, not I-II-III) of conditional-sentence type.

A. Conditional Sentence Type III: Past Unreal

The usual moods and tenses used for this kind of sentence are pluperfect indicative (in the protasis) and past conditional (in the apodosis). Thus, for instance:

• Si nous ne l’avions pas vu de nos propres yeux, nous ne l’aurions pas cru. (If we hadn’t seen it with our own eyes, we wouldn’t have believed it.)

In the highly literary usage under discussion, a verb in the pluperfect subjunctive can be substituted for either or both of these verbs!!! ³

• Si nous ne l’eussions pas vu de nos propres yeux, nous ne l’eussions pas cru. (If we hadn’t seen it with our own eyes, we wouldn’t have believed it.)

Grammarians may discern a slight stylistic difference when the pluperfect subjunctive is used rather than the ordinary tense here, the effect being that the unreal condition or consequence is removed even farther from the realm of possibility. However, the translation will be the same in either case.

Here is another example, one I find quite striking, taken from a popular song:

—Aimer n’est pas un crime, Dieu ne le défend pas; Il nous eût fait un cœur de pierre, S’il eût voulu qu’on n’aimât 4 pas.

To love is not a crime; God does not forbid it. He would have given us a heart of stone If he had wanted for us not to love.

More ordinary syntax in the last two lines would have:

Here is an example from André Gide (a writer who does not shy away from the literary subjunctive). It is the good (would-be-good) pastor of la Symphonie pastorale who is speaking:

Bref, Dieu mit en ma bouche les paroles qu’il fallait pour l’aider à accepter ce que je m’assure qu’elle eût assumé volontiers si l’événement lui eût laissé le temps de réfléchir et si je n’eusse point ainsi disposé de sa volonté par surprise.
In short, God placed in my mouth the necessary words to help her to accept what I am sure she would have taken on willingly if the circumstances had allowed her the time to reflect and if I had not thus forced the decision on her unexpectedly. –André Gide, La Symphonie pastorale

When a Pluperfect Subjunctive Appears Out of the Blue

The following is something you will inevitably encounter, even if you restrict your reading to recent French prose: namely, a verb in the pluperfect subjunctive appearing simply by itself, in an independent clause (and consequently without any of the usual circumstances requiring subjunctive mood). In such a case, observe this rule:

Here are some examples of this kind of appearing-out-of-the-blue pluperfect subjunctive:

• Sans leur aide, la journée eût été un désastre. (Without their help, the day would have been a disaster.)
  Less literary: …la journée aurait été un désastre.
  Commentary. The protasis is implied in the prepositional phrase sans leur aide = “If they had not helped us, (the day would have been…).”
• On eût dit une marionnette. (You would have said a marionette = She/He/It looked like a marionette.)
  Less literary: On aurait dit une marionnette.
  Commentary. The implied protasis is something like: “If you had been there and seen whatever-it-was, (you would have said: ‘A marionette!’).”
• Chimène. Rodrigue, qui l’eût cru? Rodrigue. Chimène, qui l’eût dit? (Chimène. Rodrigo, who would have thought ⁶ it? Rodrigo. Chimène, who would have said it?) –Corneille, Le Cid 3.4
  Less literary: …qui l’aurait cru? …qui l’aurait dit?
  Commentary. The implicit protasis is a little hard to put into words, but it would be something like: “If, before what happened happened, anyone had been presented with what did happen as a possible outcome, (who would have thought it likely? Nobody).”

B. Conditional Sentence Type II: Present Unreal

This is a construction that I discuss at length in another Language file (French Concessions. Part V). It reached the zenith of its popularity, possibly, in the 18th century, but it has by no means disappeared from recent and contemporary French, and I consider it important that you should become comfortable with it. It involves substituting a present conditional verb or even an imperfect subjunctive verb for the usual kind of verb, imperfect indicative, found in the protasis of a conditional sentence of the second kind (present contrary-to-fact).

C. Conditional Sentence Type I: Simple Hypothesis

I include this construction mainly for the sake of symmetry, so that all three types of conditional sentences can have a section. As you will see, it doesn’t even involve a literary subjunctive tense, but rather plain old present subjunctive; nevertheless, the construction is characteristic of high literary style.

You will occasionally find a present subjunctive verb in the protasis of a simple hypothesis (the present-future kind of conditional sentence), where you would expect a present indicative. Usually it will be conjoined with an ordinary present indicative, thus:

Note that que here stands in for si at the beginning of the second conditional clause (que tu en aies envie).

A Variation on the Above

In older French (scil., 18th-century), possibly even hyper-elegant later French, the same can be done with a Type II condition, alternating imperfect indicative and imperfect subjunctive.

• « O mon père! disais-je en moi-même, si vous viviez encore et que, dans le lieu où vous avez joui d’un sort digne d’envie, vous vissiez votre fils dans une situation déplorable, quelle serait votre douleur! » (“O my Father!” I said to myself, “if you were still alive and if, in the place where you have enjoyed a lot worthy of envy, you saw your son in a deplorable situation, what would your sorrow be!”) –François Pétis de la Croix, Les mille et un jours
• Je crois que si la même aventure vous arrivait à Bagdad, et que vous vous trouvassiez surpris par le grand Haroun-Arraschid dans son sérail (…), vous ne seriez peut-être pas dans un autre état. (I think that, if the same adventure happened to you in Baghdad, and you found yourself ambushed by the great Haroun-Arraschid in his harem, you would perhaps not be in another state.) –François Pétis de la Croix, Les mille et un jours

1. Or in the conditional, which is, you will recall, a FUTURE-IN-THE-PAST.[↩]
2. Or Future-Less-Vivid[↩]
3. Believe it or not![↩]
4. Imperfect subjunctive is required here (in secondary sequence), if literary tenses are being used.[↩]
5. Since we are replacing the pluperfect subjunctive forms with their less literary equivalents, we should also replace the imperfect subjunctive form aimât with the everyday present subjunctive form aime.[↩]
6. Literally, “believed.”[↩]

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