Rameau's Nephew and First Satire (Oxford World's Classics)

by Denis Diderot

  ME: What do you mean, exactly? Are you being ironic, or sincere?

  HIM: The trouble is that these devilish feelings are all inside, there’s not a gleam showing outside. But you can take my word for it, I know, I know very well that they’re there. If not precisely emotions, then something of that sort. You should just see, when we’re in a bad mood, how we treat the valets, how the maids get slapped, how we administer our boot to the Private Parts of the Treasury if it deviates in the slightest from the respect due to our person. She’s a little devil, I tell you, full of feeling and dignity … so, now, you haven’t any idea what I’m talking about, have you?

  ME: 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.

  HIM: Well, that’s what I dish out to little Hus about la Dangeville and la Clairon, with the odd word slipped in to put you wise. I can take your thinking me a good-for-nothing, but not a fool, and only a fool or a man besotted with love would seriously profess so much nonsense.

  ME: But how can you bring yourself to utter this nonsense?

  HIM: It doesn’t happen all at once, you get there one step at a time. Ingenii largitor venter.*

  ME: Surely one would have to be driven by dreadful pangs of hunger.

  HIM: Possibly. However, no matter how egregious you may think it, you must understand that those to whom the nonsense is addressed are more accustomed to hearing it than we are to saying it.

  ME: Is there anyone living there brave enough to think as you do?

  HIM: What do you mean by anyone? That’s how the whole of society feels and speaks.

  ME: Those of your circle who are not utterly worthless must be complete and utter fools.

  HIM: Fools? In that house? I swear to you there’s only one: the man who is host to all of us in exchange for our deceiving him.

  ME: But how can he let himself be so grossly deceived? After all, no one disputes the genuinely superior gifts of la Dangeville and la Clairon.

  HIM: One drinks up a flattering lie in great gulps, whereas a bitter truth one sips drop by drop; and then, we appear to be so utterly convinced, so sincere.

  ME: But surely, you must at some time have sinned against the principles of your art and let slip one or two of these bitter, hurtful truths; for in spite of the wretched, abject, vile, abominable role you fill, I believe that deep down you have a sensitive soul.

  HIM . Me? Not in the least. Devil take me if I have the faintest idea of what I really am. In general, my mind’s as uncomplicated as a sphere and my character as candid as a flower; never false if it’s in my interest to be true, and never true if it’s in my interest to be false. I say whatever comes into my head, if it’s sensible, so much the better, but if it’s pointless, no one pays attention. I make good use of my freedom of speech. Never once in my life have I thought before speaking, while speaking, or after speaking. So I never offend anyone.

  ME: Still, you actually did so in the case of those good people you were living with, who’d treated you so well.

  HIM: What do you expect? It was unfortunate, an unlucky moment, life’s full of them. Happiness can’t last; I was doing too well, it couldn’t go on. As you know, the company there is numerous and most select. It’s a school of benevolence, a return to the hospitality of ancient times. Every fallen playwright is welcomed with open arms. We had Palissot after his Zara,* Bret after Le Faux généreux,* as well as every unsuccessful musician, every unread author, every actress that’s hissed and every actor that’s booed; a bunch of shameful wretches, insipid parasites at whose head I have the honour to stand, the valiant leader of a timorous band. It is I who exhorts them to eat the first time they come; it’s I who makes sure that their glass is filled. They take up so little room, a few shabby young men who don’t know which way to turn, but look presentable enough, and some others, real rogues, who play up to their host and earn his trust, so that they can go gleaning in his wake in the fields of their hostess. We seem a cheerful lot, but in reality we’re all angry, and fiercely hungry. Wolves are not more ravenous, nor tigers more cruel. We devour the way wolves do, when the ground has long been under snow; we tear asunder, as tigers do, anything that meets with success. Occasionally, the Bertin, Monsauge, and Vilmorien gangs join forces: then indeed the din in the menagerie is worth hearing! Never have there been gathered together so many surly, cantankerous, malevolent, and enraged animals. All one hears are the names of Buffon, Duclos, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Voltaire, D’Alembert, Diderot, accompanied by God only knows what kind of epithets. No one credited with the least intelligence, unless he’s as stupid as we are. That’s how the idea for Les Philosophes* came into being; I’m responsible for the scene about the book peddler, after the style of that play about the lady theologian.* You weren’t spared in it any more than anyone else.

  ME: Good. Perhaps they do me greater honour than I deserve. I’d be mortified if those who disparage so many clever, decent men were to speak well of me.

  HIM: There are lots of us, and we must each do our bit. Once we’ve sacrificed the larger beasts, we make offerings of the others.

  ME: To live by insulting learning and virtue—that’s a high price to pay for your daily bread!

  HIM: I’ve already told you, we’re of no importance. We insult everyone and hurt no one. Sometimes we have that ponderous Abbé d’Olivet and the fat one, Le Blanc, also that hypocrite Batteux. The fat Abbé is only spiteful before dinner. After he’s drunk his coffee, he flings himself into an armchair, props up his feet against the chimney-piece, and falls asleep like an old parrot on its perch. If the din gets very loud, he’ll yawn, stretch his arms, rub his eyes, and say: ‘What’s going on? What’s going on?’ ‘We’re trying to decide whether Piron’s wittier than Voltaire.’ ‘Let’s be clear. It’s wit you’re talking about? Not taste? Because if it’s taste, your Piron hasn’t any idea what that is …’ ‘No idea?’ ‘No …’ And we’re off on a disquisition about taste. Then our host signals to us to listen—for he believes himself an authority on taste. ‘Taste,’ he says, ‘taste is something …’ God, I don’t know what he said it was, and neither does he.

  Sometimes our friend Robbé turns up. He treats us to his cynical stories about the convulsionaries and their miracles, which he’s actually witnessed with his own eyes, as well as to recitations of a few cantos of his poem on a subject he knows thoroughly. I detest his poetry but I love hearing him recite. He seems almost possessed. All around him you hear cries of: ‘Now that’s what I call a poet!’ Just between you and me, that kind of poetry is nothing but a charivari of cacophonies, the uncouth cackle of inhabitants of the Tower of Babel.

  We are also visited by a certain simple-looking fellow who gives the impression of being dull and stupid, but who possesses a savage wit, and is craftier than an old monkey: one of those faces that invite jokes and jeers, and were designed by God for the castigation of men who judge by appearances. Their mirror should have taught them that it’s as easy to be clever and look a fool as it is to be a fool behind a clever face. It’s such a common act of cowardice to hand over a good man to the ridicule of others that people never fail to have a go at this one. It’s a trap we set up for new arrivals, and I’ve hardly seen a single one escape being caught.

  Sometimes the accuracy of my madman’s observations on men and their natures surprised me; I told him so. ‘It’s because,’ he replied, ‘you can learn from bad company, just as you can from debauchery. You’re compensated for your loss of innocence by the loss of your prejudices. In bad company, where vice wears no disguise, you learn to recognize such people; and then, I’ve read a bit.’

  ME: What have you read?

  HIM: I’ve read, am reading, and constantly reread Theophrastus, La Bruyère, and Molière.

  ME: Excellent writers.

  HIM: They’re a lot better than is generally believed; but who knows how to read them?

  ME: Ever
yone, to the best of his ability.

  HIM: Almost no one. Could you tell me what people seek in them?

  ME: Entertainment and instruction.

  HIM: But what sort of instruction, that’s the point!

  ME: To recognize one’s duties, to love virtue, to hate vice.

  HIM: For my part, I find in them a digest of everything one ought to do, and everything one ought not to say. Thus, when I read L’Avare, I tell myself: be miserly, if you wish, but take care not to talk like the miser. When I read Tartuffe,* I tell myself: be a hypocrite, if you wish, but don’t talk like a hypocrite. Keep those vices which serve you well, but beware of the tone and the air that go with them, and would make you appear ridiculous. To be sure of avoiding that tone and air, one must know what they are; now, those authors have portrayed them superbly. I am myself, and that is what I shall remain; but I behave and talk in a socially acceptable manner. I’m not one of those men who despise the moralists. One can profit greatly from them, particularly from those who depict morals in action. Vice itself is only intermittently shocking. The appearance of vice is shocking at all times. Perhaps it would be better to be an arrogant fellow than to look like one; the man with the arrogant character offends only from time to time; the man with the arrogant face offends all the time. And by the way, you shouldn’t suppose that I’m the only reader of this kind. The sole merit I claim here is having accomplished systematically, through clear thinking and rational, accurate observation, what the majority of others do by instinct. That’s why their reading doesn’t make them better than me, but instead, they go on being ridiculous, whereas I am so only when I mean to be, and then I leave them far behind me; for the same art that shows me how to avoid ridicule in certain situations, shows me also, in other situations, how to achieve it at a superior level. Then I bring to mind everything others have said, everything I’ve read, and I add everything of my own invention, which in this domain is surprisingly abundant.

  ME: You were wise to reveal these mysteries to me, as otherwise I would have thought you contradictory.

  HIM: No, that’s not so; because for every occasion when one must avoid inviting ridicule, there are fortunately a hundred others where ridicule is called for. In high society there’s no better role to play than that of fool. For centuries the king had his officially appointed fool, but never an officially appointed sage. I’m Bertin’s fool and the fool of many others, perhaps yours at this moment—or you, perhaps, are mine. A true sage wouldn’t have a fool. So it follows that he who has a fool is not a sage; if he’s not a sage, he’s a fool; and perhaps, if he were king, the fool of his fool. Anyway, remember that in a subject as variable as manners and morals, nothing is absolutely, essentially, universally true or false, unless it is that one must be whatever self-interest dictates, good or bad, wise or foolish, seemly or ridiculous, honest or vicious. If by chance virtue had been the path to wealth, either I’d have been virtuous or pretended to be so, like everyone else. I was required to be ridiculous, so I made myself ridiculous; as to vicious—nature took care of that entirely by herself. When I say vicious, I’m using your vocabulary; for, were we to talk this through, it might turn out that what you call vice I call virtue, and virtue what I call vice.

  At the house we also meet authors who write for the Opéra-Comique,* and their actors and actresses; and, even more frequently, their managers Corby, Moette—all of them men of wealth and outstanding merit.

  And I was forgetting the great literary critics, L’Avant-Coureur, Les Petites Affiches, L’Année littéraire, L’Observateur littéraire, Le Censeur hebdomadaire,* the whole gang of hired hacks…

  ME: L’Année littéraire, L’Observateur littéraire—impossible! They loathe one another.

  HIM: But it’s true. All the down-and-outs make it up at the feeding trough. That damned Observateur littéraire. To hell with him, and all his sheets of newsprint! It’s that undersized cur of a miserly, malodorous, moneylending priest who’s the cause of my disaster. Yesterday he made his first appearance on the scene. He arrived at the hour that brings us all out of our lairs, the dinner hour. When the weather’s bad, if one of us can come up with a coin for a cab, he’s lucky. Occasionally someone makes fun of a fellow guest who arrives thick with mud from head to foot and soaking wet, only to find himself in a similar state when he returns home. There was one a few months back, I don’t recall his name, who got into a violent row with the boot-black who’d been hanging about our entrance. They’d had some business deals together; the creditor wanted his debtor to pay up, but the latter was not in funds, and couldn’t. Dinner is served; the Abbé’s treated as the guest of honour and seated at the head of the table. I enter, I notice him. ‘So, Abbé,’ I say to him, ‘you’re presiding? That’s fine for today, but tomorrow you’ll please move down one place, and the next day another place; and in this way, place by place, either on the left side or the right, until, from the place that I occupied—once—before you, and Fréron once after me, Dorat once after Fréron, Palissot once after Dorat, you’ll become a fixture next to me, a poor dull fool like you, qui siedo, sempre comme un maestoso cazzo fra due coglioni.’* The Abbé, who’s a good-humoured soul and takes everything in good part, began to laugh. Mademoiselle, struck by the truth of my observation and the aptness of my comparison, began to laugh; all those seated to the Abbé’s right and left, and whom he had shifted down a notch, began to laugh; everyone laughed, except Monsieur, who was annoyed, and spoke to me in a way that wouldn’t have mattered had we been alone: ‘Rameau, you’re impertinent …’ ‘I know I am; that’s the requirement for my being here …’ ‘A cad …’ ‘No worse than the next man …’ ‘A down-and-out …’ ‘Why else would I be here …’ ‘I’ll have you thrown out …’ ‘I’ll leave of my own accord, after dinner …’ ‘I think you’d be wise …’ We had dinner; I didn’t miss a single bite. After dining well and drinking copiously—for after all it was neither here nor there, and there’s never been bad feeling between Messer Gaster* and myself—I made up my mind and prepared to leave. I’d given my word in the presence of such a large gathering that I had no choice but to keep it. I spent quite a time wandering round the room, hunting for my cane and hat in the wrong places, all the while expecting the patron to launch into a fresh torrent of invective, someone to intervene, and that we’d make it up in the end, having exhausted our anger. I wandered back and forth, for I had no cross feelings to work off, but the patron’s looks were gloomier and blacker than those of Homer’s Apollo when he loosed his arrows against the Greek warriors; he was striding up and down the room with his cap pulled down even further than usual and his fist supporting his chin. Mademoiselle came up to me. ‘Mademoiselle, what’s so extraordinary about what I did today, how have I been any different from usual?’ ‘I want him to go.’ ‘I am going, but I haven’t really offended him.’ ‘Excuse me, but Monsieur l’Abbé is my invited guest, and …’ ‘He’s offended himself by inviting the Abbé and receiving me, and with me so many other good-for-nothings like me …’ ‘Come on, Rameau darling, you must beg the Abbé’s pardon …’ ‘What do I want with his pardon!’ ‘Oh come on, Rameau, it’ll all blow over …’ She takes me by the hand and drags me over to the Abbé’s armchair; I stretch my arms out and look at the Abbé with something close to admiration, for who in the world can ever have begged the Abbé’s pardon? ‘Abbé,’ I say, ‘this is all quite ridiculous, isn’t it? …’ And then I start to laugh, and so does he. So there I was, pardoned by that party; but the other one still had to be approached, and what I must say to him was a horse of another colour. I can’t now recall exactly how I phrased my apology … ‘Monsieur, I’m a stupid fool …’ ‘I’ve had to put up with his nonsense for too long; I never want to hear his name mentioned again …’ ‘He’s sorry …’ ‘Yes, I’m very sorry …’ ‘He’ll never do it again …’ ‘Until the next opportunity …’ I don’t know whether he was in one of those black moods when Mademoiselle daren’t go near him or touch him without her velve
t gloves, or whether he misheard what I said, or whether I said the wrong thing; but things were worse than before. What the hell, doesn’t he know what I am? Doesn’t he know that I’m like a child, that there are occasions when I just let everything go? And then, God forgive me, can’t I have one single moment to relax? Even a puppet made of steel would be worn out if its strings were jerked from dawn to dusk and then from dusk to dawn. I have to keep them entertained; it’s the requirement; but I have to have a bit of fun myself now and again. In the midst of all this confusion a disastrous thought came into my head, a thought that made me feel defiant and insolently proud: the thought that they couldn’t do without me, that I was essential to them.

  ME: Yes, I believe you’re very useful to them, but they’re even more useful to you. You’re not going to find, when you need it, another house as good; but they—well for every fool they have to do without, they’ll find a hundred others.