These allusions to animals take us to the heart of the satirical tradition. At one point in the First Satire the narrator excuses himself for writing almost in the manner of the Roman satirist Persius, whose poems had a hard edge, rather than explaining a passage of Horace, whose milder satire was tinged with epicureanism. Both of Diderot’s Satires begin with epigraphs from the Satires of Horace; and the ‘post-scriptum’ to the First Satire, which is a discussion of certain passages in Horace, seems to be the continuation in print of a debate which Diderot was conducting with his friend Naigeon, a learned Latinist. The epigraph of the First Satire is taken from Horace, Satires, 11. i: the line in question, ‘For every thousand living souls, there are as many thousand tastes’, straightforwardly sets the tone for what is to follow. But the dedication to Naigeon which comes after, and which quotes the opening lines of the poem, seems to suggest that Diderot is also alluding to the poem as a whole. Horace opens his second book of Satires with a reflection on the nature of satire itself; his opening poem is cast in the form of a dialogue between the poet and a famous lawyer. Horace pretends to ask for legal advice about how to write satire, the lawyer unhelpfully advises him to write something safer, like epic (the same advice would have held good for Diderot in the eighteenth century). Horace accepts that it would be illegal to publish libellous verses; and the lawyer accepts that even libellous verses, if they are well written and win Caesar’s approval, are safe from prosecution. Horace, secure in his position as a writer, can afford to be ironical, but beneath the surface is a serious discussion about the freedom of speech which a poet can legitimately enjoy; this is a theme which is all too pertinent for Diderot and his fellow philosophes writing in the shadow of the ancien régime’s arcane censorship practices.
The epigraph at the beginning of Rameau’s Nephew is taken from Horace, Satires, 11. vii. Again, the specific reference to Vertumnus, the god who could assume any shape he chose, alludes to the chameleon personality of the Nephew, and seems obvious enough. But to readers steeped in Horace’s poetry (as all educated eighteenth-century readers were), it is hard not to think that Diderot also wants us to bear in mind the poem as a whole. Satire 11. vii is one of two (the other is 11. iii) which Horace sets in Rome during the period of Saturnalia, the annual three-day feast in commemoration of the golden age of Saturn, when the usual proprieties were turned upside-down and all men were treated as equal, thus the very epigraph establishes the theme of carnival. In Lucian’s Saturnalia, for example, a poor man writes to the king asking to be allowed to sup at the table of a rich man during the period of the festival—a request which anticipates the Nephew’s presence in the Bertin household. Horace’s slave Davus makes use of this temporary state of grace to tell his master openly about his faults; the satire is again in dialogue form, and it is the slave here who speaks wisdom as he shows that the master is no freer than his slave, and who goes on to reveal mankind’s follies.
Diderot’s works largely defy easy generic classification, and his description of these two pieces as satires is untypically precise. In signalling the generic link to Horace, he gives us vital clues as to how to read these texts. The term ‘satire’ means etymologically a pot-pourri, a mixture of different things, and it is easy—perhaps too easy—to dismiss the seeming confusion of Rameau’s Nephew as nothing more than satire’s habitual disorderly mix. In this spirit, the French critic Taine in the nineteenth century described Rameau’s Nephew as ‘an incomparable monster and an immortal document’. On the one hand, these two satires are works that satirize the literary world of their day, products of a moment in the 1760s that was one of the tensest in Louis XV’s reign, when the arguments over the censorship of the Encyclopédie were taking place against the backdrop of the Damiens affair (a bungled and amateurish attempt to assassinate the King) and the Seven Years War with England. On the other hand, these literary works are timeless in the way they can be enjoyed even by readers without particular knowledge of the French ancien régime. Many of the specific references in Diderot’s two Satires remain hermetic even now; but it is worth remembering that the same is true of Horace’s work. In neither case does this prevent us from admiring their literary achievement. What makes Diderot’s satires such seminal Enlightenment texts is that they both express the enlightened values of reason and civility and at the same time question them. In their exploration of the ‘sociable animal’ they probe, more than other texts of the period, both man’s social and animal nature.
Above all, we continue to relish these texts because they repeatedly force us to question our own assumptions, and this must surely explain both their lasting fascination and their continuing influence. The First Satire has left a clear trace in the fiction of Balzac.11 As for the Second Satire, it is extraordinary how so many readers, from Goethe and Hegel to Foucault, have been inspired by Rameau’s Nephew. It is a text which, precisely because of its mystery, seems able to inspire different readers to write wholly different texts. Thomas Bernhard, in Wittgenstein’s Nephew (Wittgensteins Neffe, 1983), uses the model of Diderot’s work to provide a framework for an autobiographical narration about his meeting in an asylum with Paul Wittgenstein, grand-nephew of the famous philosopher. Meanwhile Jacques-Alain Miller has recently published a psychoanalytical rewriting of the text (Le Neveu de Lacan, satire, 2003). Alberto Moravia’s novel Me and Him (Io e lui, 1971), in which a man dialogues with his penis, may or may not be indebted to Diderot, but there is a clear influence on Saul Bellow’s first novel, Dangling Man (1944), which describes the isolation of an intellectual in wartime, as he passes the time while waiting to be called up by studying Diderot and other Enlightenment writers: Diderot’s dialogue provides a structural and philosophical model for Bellow’s novel, and there are evident similarities between the hero Joseph and Rameau’s Nephew.12
If Diderot’s Satires continue to fascinate, it is surely because they continue to amuse as well as disturb us. For one critic, Rameau’s Nephew ‘is a moral and aesthetic experiment, one which disturbs complacency at every moment and leads to no restful conclusion’.13 At one point, halfway through the work, ‘Me’ stops ‘Him’ and says: ‘What do you mean, exactly? Are you being ironic, or sincere?’ (p. 44). ‘Him’ continues with his paradoxical defence of wrongdoing, and ‘Me’ again exclaims: ‘I confess that I can’t tell whether what you’re saying is sincere or spiteful. I’m a simple soul: I wish you’d say what you mean to me and not bother about being clever.’ If we feel confused by this, so did Goethe. On 21 December 1804 he wrote to Schiller: ‘This dialogue explodes like a bomb in the middle of French literature, and it takes considerable skill to know what precisely is touched by the fall-out, and how…’
NOTE ON THE TEXT
Rameau’s Nephew
This work (Le Neveu de Rameau) remained unpublished and unknown in Diderot’s lifetime. Various editions appeared in the course of the nineteenth century, all of them based on unreliable manuscripts (see Introduction for details). An autograph manuscript, entitled ‘Seconde Satire’ (‘Second Satire’), was discovered in the late nineteenth century and is now in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York. This manuscript, edited and published for the first time by Georges Monval in 1891, has provided the base text of all modern editions. It remains the only known autograph manuscript, and the other extant non-autograph manuscripts are probably derived from it. The first translation based on the autograph manuscript was by Sylvia Margaret Bell, published in London by Longmans, Green & Co. in 1897. The present translation is based on the edition by Henri Coulet in Œuvres complètes, vol. 12 (Paris: Hermann, 1989), which emends earlier readings of the Pierpont Morgan Library manuscript in some instances.
First Satire
This work (Satire première) first appeared in the October 1778 issue of the manuscript journal Correspondance littéraire. It was first printed in the Naigeon edition of Diderot’s works (1798). The present translation is based on the Coulet edition (see above), which takes as its base text one of the Gotha manuscri
pts of the Correspondance littéraire.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Critical Editions
Le Neveu de Rameau
ed. Jean Fabre (Geneva: Droz, 1950): a pioneering edition, with extensive notes, and a useful ‘Lexique’ to the language of the text.
ed. Roland Desné (Paris: Éditions sociales, 1972).
ed. Jacques Chouillet (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1982).
ed. Henri Coulet, in Diderot, Œuvres complètes (Paris: Hermann), vol. 12 (1989): the most scrupulous edition of the autograph manuscript; excellent introduction.
ed. Pierre Chartier (Paris: Livre de Poche, 2002): the most complete and up-to-date paperback edition.
ed. Michel Delon, in Contes et romans, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 2004).
Satire première
ed. Donal O’Gorman, in Diderot the Satirist (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1971): based on the Naigeon printed edition. ed. Roland Desné, in Le Neveu de Rameau (Paris, Éditions sociales, 1972).
ed. Henri Coulet, in Diderot, Œuvres complètes (Paris: Hermann), vol. 12 (1989): based on one of the Gotha manuscripts of the Correspondance littéraire.
ed. Pierre Chartier, in Le Neveu de Rameau (Paris: Livre de Poche, 2002): most accessible edition; text based on Coulet edition.
Critical Studies in English
Herbert Dieckmann, ‘The Relationship Between Diderot’s Satire I and Satire II, Romanic Review, 43 (1952), 12–26.
Hans Robert Jauss, ‘The Dialogical and the Dialectical Neveu de Rameau: How Diderot Adopted Socrates and Hegel Adopted Diderot’, with responses (Berkeley, Cal.: Center for Hermeneutical studies in Hellenistic and Modern Culture, 1983).
Herbert Josephs, Diderot’s Dialogue of Language and Gesture: ‘Le Neveu de Rameau’ (Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 1969).
Apostolos Kouidis, ‘‘The Praise of Folly: Diderot’s Model for Le Neveu de Rameau, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 185 (1980), 237–66.
Donal O’Gorman, Diderot the Satirist (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1971).
Walter E. Rex, ‘Music and the Unity of Le Neveu de Rameau’, Diderot Studies, 29 (2003), 83–99.
Jack Undank, ‘On Being “Human”: Diderot’s Satire première’, Eighteenth-century Studies, 20 (1986–7), 1–16.
Critical Studies in French
Jacques Chouillet, ‘L’Espace urbain et sa fonction textuelle dans Le Neveu de Rameau’:.in La Ville au dix-huitième siècle (Aix-en-Provence: Edisud, 1975), 71–81.
Michèle Duchet and Michel Launay, Entretiens sur Le Neveu de Rameau (Paris: Nizet, 1967).
Pierre Hartmann, ‘Un si lumineux aveuglement: une étude sur Le Neveu de Rameau et la crise des Lumières’, Diderot Studies, 26 (1995), 125–69.
Marian Hobson, ‘Pantomime, spasme et parataxe: Le Neveu de Rameau’, Revue de métaphysique et de morale, 89 (1984), 197–213.
—— ‘Déictique, dialectique dans Le Neveu de Rameau’, Cahiers Textuel, 11 (1992), 11–19.
Philip Knee, ‘Diderot et Montaigne: morale et scepticisme dans Le Neveu de Rameau’, Diderot Studies, 29 (2003), 35–51.
André Magnan (ed.), Rameau le Neveu: textes et documents (Saint-Étienne, 1993).
Roland Mortier and Raymond Trousson (eds.), Dictionnaire de Diderot (Paris: Champion, 1999).
José-Michel Moureaux, ‘Le Rôle du fou dans Le Neveu de Rameau’, in Le Siècle de Voltaire: hommage à René Pomeau, ed. C. Mervaud and S. Menant (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1987), ii. 675–91.
Stéphane Pujol, ‘L’Espace public du Neveu de Rameau’, RHLF, 93 (l993), 669–84.
Jean Starobinski, ‘Le Dîner chez Bertin’, in Das Komische, ed. W. Preisendanz and R. Warning (Munich: W. Fink, 1976), 191–204.
—— ‘L’Incipit du Neveu de Rameau’, Nouvelle Revue Française, 347 (1 Dec. 1981), 42–64.
—— ‘Sur l’emploi du chiasme dans Le Neveu de Rameau’, Revue de métaphysique et de morale, 89 (1984), 182–96.
—— ‘Diogène dans Le Neveu de Rameau’, Stanford French Review, 8 (1984), 147–65.
Eric Walter, ‘Un déplacement stratégique dans le Texte-Diderot’, Littérature, 29 (Feb. 1978), 105–15.
—— ‘Les «intellectuels du ruisseau» et Le Neveu de Rameau’, Cahiers Textuel, 11 (1992), 43–59.
Further Reading
Daniel Brewer, The Discourse of Enlightenment in Eighteenth-century France: Diderot and the Art of Philosophizing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
Robert Darnton, The Literary Underground of the Old Régime (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982): in particular, the essays ‘The High Enlightenment and the low-life of literature in pre-revolutionary France’ and ‘A pamphleteer on the run’.
Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, trans. R. Howard (London: Routledge, 2001).
Peter France, Diderot (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983).
—— (trans.), Diderot’s Letters to Sophie Volland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972).
P. N. Furbank, Diderot: A Critical Biography (London: Secker & Warburg, 1992).
David Garrioch, The Making of Revolutionary Paris (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972).
Richard Holmes, Dr Johnson & Mr Savage (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1993).
G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller, ed. J. N. Findlay (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977).
Cynthia Verba, Music and the French Enlightenment: Reconstruction of a Dialogue 1750–1764 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993).
Arthur M. Wilson, Diderot (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972).
See Eva Maria Stadler, ‘Rameau’s Nephew by Diderot ... : un film de Michael Snow’, in Interpréter Diderot aujourd’hui, ed. E. de Fontenay and J. Proust (Paris: Le Sycomore, 1984), 9—116.
Recording in French
CD (Adès 13.259–2), released 1988 (original recording released 1964): extracts from the stage performance given in 1963 at the Théâtre de la Michodière, Paris. ‘Lui’ is played by Pierre Fresnay, ‘Moi’ by Julien Bertheau.
Further Reading in Oxford World’s Classics
Denis Diderot, Jacques the Fatalist, trans. and ed. David Coward.
—— The Nun, trans. and ed. Russell Goulbourne.
Lucian, Selected Dialogues, trans. and ed. C. D. N. Costa.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions, trans. Angela Scholar, ed. Patrick Coleman.
Voltaire, Candide and Other Stories, trans. and ed. Roger Pearson.
—— Letters concerning the English Nation, ed. Nicholas Cronk.
A CHRONOLOGY OF DENIS DIDEROT
1713
5 October: birth of Denis Diderot at Langres, first child of Didier Diderot (1675–1759), a master cutler, and Angélique Vigneron (1677–1748), a tanner’s daughter. There followed Denise (1715–97), Catherine (1716–18), Catherine (II) (171935), Angélique (1720–48), who took the veil and died mad, and Didier-Pierre (1722–87), a strict churchman who could not tolerate his brother’s atheism.
1723
Enters the Jesuit college at Langres.
1726
22 August: receives the tonsure, the first step towards an ecclesiastical career.
1728
Autumn: moves to Paris to continue his education at the Collège Louis-le-Grand, the Jansenist Collège d’Harcourt, and the Collège de Beauvais.
1732
2 September: Master of Arts.
1735
6 August: awarded a bachelor’s degree in theology but, after applying unsuccessfully for a living, abandons his plans for a career in the Church and takes up law, with the reluctant approval of his father.
1737
Abandons law and makes a meagre living as a private tutor, translator, and supplier of sermons to the clergy. Frère Ange, at Diderot’s father’s request, keeps an eye on him.
1741
Contemplates entering the seminary of S
aint-Sulpice in Paris, but falls in love with Antoinette Champion (1710–96).
1742
Meets Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
1743
January: His father refuses to allow him to marry Antoinette and has him detained in a monastery at Langres, from which he escapes a month later. 6 November: marries Antoinette secretly in Paris. Publication of his translation of Temple Stanyan’s History of Greece.
1744
Birth of Angélique, who lives only a few weeks. Meets Condillac and begins following a course of lectures in surgery.
1745
Translates Shaftesbury’s Inquiry concerning Virtue, or Merit.
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