The public, taken as a whole, is not capable of judging talent: for the axioms by which that happens are not born in us, nor does chance transfer them, but only by practice and study can we attain them; on the other hand, judging moral actions is something for which each and every individual is given the most complete yardstick by his own conscience, and everyone finds it agreeable to apply this, not to himself, but to someone else. This is why you find men of letters in particular who are keen to discredit their opponents reproaching them in public with moral weaknesses, with transgressions, imputed bad intentions and probable dire consequences of their each and every action. The real viewpoint for assessing some talented individual’s achievement, poetic or otherwise, is being displaced, and they drag this man, whose special gifts are to the advantage of the world and the people in it, before the general judgement-seat of morality, in front of which in actual fact only his wife and children, his servants, and at best his fellow citizens and local authorities might have been entitled to summons him. No one belongs to the world as a moral individual. Let everyone make these fine general demands of himself and let him make good whatever is deficient with God and his own heart and let him convince his fellow man of whatever is true and good in his nature. On the other hand, as that to which Nature has particularly shaped him, as a man of power, energy, wit, and talent he belongs to the world. Everything excellent can only work for an infinite circle, so let the world accept that with gratitude and let it not imagine that it possesses the competence to sit in judgement on someone in any other respect.
Meanwhile, there’s no denying that nobody gladly rejects the laudable desire to find allied to great merits of the mind and body equally great merits of the soul and heart; and this universal desire, however rarely fulfilled it is, is clear proof of the ceaseless striving for an indivisible whole which is innate in human nature as its finest heritage.
Be this as it may, in returning to our French antagonists we find that, if Palissot neglected no means of detracting from his opponents in a moral sense, Diderot in the present text makes use of everything that genius and hatred, art and bitterness have to offer to represent his opponent as the most depraved of mortals.
The intensity with which this happens would seem to suggest that the dialogue was penned in the first heat of passion, not long after the appearance of the comedy The Philosophers, all the more so, since in it Rameau the elder, who died in 1764, is still being mentioned as a living, active figure. Chiming with this is the fact that Le Faux Généreux of Le Bret, of which mention is made as a flop, came out in 1758.
Lampoons like the one we are dealing with here may have appeared quite regularly at this time, as emerges from the Abbé Morellet’s Vision de Charles Palissot and others. They have not all been printed, and indeed the major work of Diderot remained in obscurity for a long time.
We are far from considering Palissot to be the rascal he is made out to be in the dialogue. He maintained his position as a quite upstanding individual, even through the period of the Revolution, is probably still alive, and he himself jokes in his critical writings—which betray a good brain trained over a long series of years—at the outrageous caricature of himself that his adversaries have been at pains to erect. (pp. 787–92)
Taste
‘Taste, he says, taste is a thing. By God I don’t know what kind of a thing he made taste into, he didn’t know it himself, either.’ In this passage Diderot intends to portray as ludicrous his fellow countrymen who are always uttering the word taste, with and without understanding it, and who dismiss many an important production out of hand by accusing it of lack of taste.
At the end of the seventeenth century French people did not yet use the word ‘taste’ on its own, but rather they lent it a particular interpretation by some adjective. They said bad or good taste, and understood only too well what they meant by it. However, you can already find in a collection of anecdotes and sayings of the time the daring proposition: ‘French writers possess everything, with the single exception of taste.’ If one looks at French literature from its beginnings, it emerges that genius has been making major contributions to it from very early on. Marot was a man of high calibre, and who can fail to recognize the great worth of Montaigne and Rabelais?
The man of genius, like the man with a really good mind, seeks always to expand the limits of his field to infinity. They take over into their creative ambit the most multifarious elements, and are often successful enough to have them completely under control and to be able to use them creatively. However, if such an undertaking does not succeed entirely, if the intellect is not utterly compelled to surrender to it, but if the creative endeavours attain only such a level where the intelligence can still have the advantage of them, then at once there starts up a praising and blaming by individuals, and people are convinced that perfect works can be guaranteed if we analyse punctiliously the individual elements out of which they are supposed to consist.
The French have a poet, Du Bartas, whom they no longer mention, or if they do, then only with contempt. He lived from 1544 to 1590, was a soldier and a man of the world, and he wrote countless alexandrines. We Germans, viewing as we do the circumstances of that other nation from a different perspective, feel prompted to smile when we find in his works, whose title praises him as the prince of French poets, all the elements of French poetics in one place, admittedly in an odd mixture. He tackled important, significant, and broad themes, for example, the Seven Days of Creation, where he took the opportunity of displaying in expository, narrative, descriptive, and didactic mode both his naive view of the world and the manifold knowledge he had gained in an active life. Consequently, these poems conceived in deadly earnest resemble from beginning to end affable parodies, so that they are utterly detestable to any Frenchman viewing them from the current heights of his supposedly superior culture–it would be unthinkable for a French author to bear on his scutcheon–as the Elector of Mainz does the wheel—some kind of symbolic representation of Du Bartas’s Seven Days’ Labours.
But in order to avoid getting diffuse and hence paradoxical in this aphoristic treatment of our essay, let us ask if the first forty lines of Du Bartas’s ‘Seventh Day of Creation’ are not after all excellent, whether they do not deserve their place in every collection of models of French writing, whether they do after all not bear comparison with many a reputable modern product? German cognoscenti will concur with us and will thank us for the attention we have drawn to this work. The French, however, will probably carry on failing to recognize all that is good and excellent in it on account of the oddities it contains.
For that constantly aspiring culture of the mind that finally came to fruition in the age of Louis XIV has at all times been at pains to distinguish precisely all poetic and spoken styles, and moreover, not by starting with the form but from the material, so that people banished certain ideas, thoughts, modes of expression, and words from tragedy, comedy, and the ode—in the case of the latter this was the very reason why they could never come to terms with it–and in their place others were adopted and prescribed in each of these spheres as especially appropriate.
They treated the different poetic genres like different societies in which a special form of behaviour is considered polite. Men, when alone amongst themselves, behave differently, and differently again when they are together with ladies, and the same company will behave differently again when joined by some person of superior social standing to whom they have reason to show deference. The Frenchman, moreover, is not reticent about speaking, even in judgements about products of the mind, of convenances (conventions), a word which can actually be applied only to social proprieties. One ought not to argue the rights and wrongs of the case with him, but should try to see to what extent he is right. One can but be pleased that such a witty and worldly wise nation felt constrained to try this experimentation, and is still compulsively continuing with it.
However, in the higher sense everything depends on what sphere the in
dividual of genius has demarcated for himself in which he intends to create, and which elements he has selected to use as his material. In this he is determined partly through his own inner urgings and his own conviction and partly also by which nation and which century he is working for. In this, it must be admitted, it is the genius alone who hits the mark as soon as he brings forth works that do him credit, delighting and furthering the understanding of his contemporaries. For by wanting to compress his wider ambience into the focus of his nation, he knows how to make use of all the internal and external advantages and simultaneously to satisfy, indeed to satiate, the pleasure-seeking masses. Think of Shakespeare and of Calderón! They stand unimpeached before the highest seat of aesthetic judgement, and if some subtle analyst should stubbornly prosecute them on account of particular passages, then, with a smile, they would produce an image of that nation, of that time for which they had worked, and because of that they would not just have allowances made for them, but because they were able to adapt so successfully they would win new laurels.
The drawing of distinctions among poetic genres and styles of language lies in the nature of poetics and rhetoric themselves; but only the artist can undertake the analysis that he does in fact undertake, for he is mostly successful enough to have a feel for what belongs in this or that circle. Taste is innate in genius, even if it does not achieve perfect development in every case. From this it would admittedly be desirable that the nation might have taste in order to avoid each individual taste having to develop after its own fashion. But unfortunately the taste of those who are by nature unproductive is negative, constricting, exclusive, and in the end it saps the energy and life of the class of those who are creative.
It may well be that among the Greeks and in many Romans we find a very tasteful distinction and sublimation of the different poetic genres, but we northern peoples cannot be directed exclusively to those models. We have other ancestors to boast of, and have many other patterns in mind. If it were not the case that the romantic turn taken by uncultivated centuries had brought the monstrous into contact with the tasteless, from where would we have a Hamlet, a Lear, an Adoration of the Cross, a Constant Prince [La devoción de la Cruz and El principe constante by Calderón]?
Since we shall in all probability never succeed in reaching the merits of antiquity, it is our duty to have the courage to keep ourselves at the high level of these barbaric advantages, and moreover, at the same time it is our duty to make ourselves thoroughly familiar with, and to assess faithfully, what other people think, judge, and believe, and what they produce and achieve. (pp. 763–6)
Music
. . . Since everything we have just stated in general and cursory terms about the nature of music can only have the purpose of casting some light on the present dialogue, we are bound to observe that it is not without difficulty that Diderot’s own standpoint permits itself to be understood.
Over half the previous century all the arts in France were mannered and set apart from all actual artistic truth and simplicity in a way that, for us, is alien and indeed almost beyond belief. Not only had the unreliable edifice of opera become ever more rigid and stiff through tradition, but tragedy itself was played out in hooped skirts, and a hollow, affected style of declamation recited its masterpieces. This went so far that that exceptional man Voltaire used to fall into an expressionless, monotonous, and, as it were, psalmonizing bombast when reading out his own plays, that actually deserved a much better treatment, and he remained entirely convinced that in doing this he was only giving proper expression to their dignity.
It was exactly the same with painting. A certain traditional kind of grotesqueness had come into vogue, to such an extent that it seemed most intrusive and intolerable to the leading intellects of the age that were developing from their own inner natural powers.
Consequently they hit collectively upon the idea of opposing what they called Nature to Culture and Art. How Diderot was in error on this issue we have expounded elsewhere, with all due respect and affection for this excellent man.
He found himself in a special situation in relation to music as well. The compositions of Lully and Rameau belong more in the category of serious than of light, popular music. What the Bouffons brought with them from Italy had more of the pleasing and ingratiating about it than of the serious, and yet Diderot, who is so vehemently in favour of serious music, joins himself to the latter party and looks to see his expectations satisfied by it. But it was probably rather because this new, versatile form appeared to tear down that old, hated inflexible framework, and to level a fresh surface for new efforts, which made him prize it so highly. Additionally, French composers immediately made use of the free space and commenced their old serious musical mode, but more melodically and with a greater artistic veracity, to please a new generation of listeners. (pp. 772–3)
Palissot (born in Nancy in 1730)
. . . In this play [The Philosophers] there appeared, namely, exaggerated poets, pretentious patrons and patronesses, bluestockings and suchlike people whose prototypes are not scarce, once Art and Science begin to make their mark in everyday life. Whatever ludicrous elements they may possess are here portrayed as exaggerated to the point of tastelessness, whereas it is always something to be thankful for when some person of note from the mass of the populace, some society beauty, a rich man, someone of rank chooses to participate in something right and good, even if they do not always set about it in the right way.
Put in absolute terms, nothing belongs less in the theatre than literature and its affairs. Everything that works and weaves in this circle is so delicate and so weighty that no contentious issue from it ought to be brought before the judgement of the gaping and gawping groundlings. And let no one cite Molière as a case, as Palissot and others after him have done. Genius is not to be prescribed to, it flits sure-footedly like a sleepwalker over the sharpest mountain ridges, from which waking mediocrity comes crashing down at the first faltering step. With what a light touch Molière treated such themes will shortly be elaborated upon elsewhere ... (p. 774)
The Philosophers
. . . Palissot’s Philosophers was merely an expanded version of the earlier festival play at Nancy (Le Cercle, ou les Originaux). He goes further, but he does not see any further. As a limited opponent of a particular situation, he has absolutely no insight into what is important at a more general level, and he produces but a cheap and momentary effect on a limited, partisan audience.
If we move to a higher plane, it does not remain hidden from us that a false semblance commonly accompanies art and learning when they go out into the real world: for they work their effects on everyone present and certainly not just on the best minds of the century. Often the part played by half-educated, pretentious natures is sterile, indeed downright harmful. Common sense is shocked at the false use of higher sentiments, especially when they are confronted directly with harsh reality.
And then again, all retiring people who devote themselves to one sole enterprise enjoy a strange respect which people readily find laughable. These individuals do not easily hide the fact that they set great store by what they spend all their lives doing, and they appear to the man who does not know how to appreciate their efforts, or to show understanding for their perhaps too keenly perceived sense of their own deserts, to be arrogant, capricious, and full of their own importance.
All of this springs from the enterprise itself, and only that individual would be praiseworthy who would appreciate how to counter such inevitable evils in such a way that the main purpose would not be missed and the higher benefits for the world of society would not be lost. But it is Palissot’s intention to make a bad thing worse, he determines to write a satire to damage, in the public’s opinion, certain identifiable individuals whose image at best lends itself to being distorted, and how does he set about it?
His play is concisely summed up in three acts. The economy of the work is skilful enough and attests a practised talent, only the plot is t
hin, one finds oneself in the all-too-familiar setting of French comedy. Nothing is new, apart from the bold step of portraying quite unambiguously recognizable individuals of the day.
Before his death an honest burgher had promised his daughter’s hand to a young soldier, but the mother, presently a widow, has become enamoured of philosophy and now intends to bestow her daughter on a member of that profession. The philosophers themselves appear in a repulsive light, and yet in the main they are so unspecifically drawn that one could easily replace them with worthless wretches of any caste or class.
None of them is in any way, by affection, or habit, or anything else, bound to the lady of the house, none of them has fallen a prey to self-deception in respect of her or feels any other human emotion towards her: all that was too refined for our author, although he might have found examples enough to hand in the so-called Bureau d’esprit; no, his aim was to make the company of philosophers hateful. They despise and curse their patroness in the crudest fashion. These gentlemen all only set foot in the house in order to win the girl for their friend Valére. They all declare that once this plan has succeeded none of them will cross the threshold ever again. And by such traits of character we are meant to recognize men like D’Alembert and Helvétius! It is, I suppose, conceivable that the maxim of self-interest postulated by the latter may be taken to its logical conclusion and be presented as leading directly to pickpocketing. Finally some jackanapes of a servant comes in on hands and knees with a head of raw lettuce in his mouth, in order to send up the state of Nature which Rousseau portrays as desirable. An intercepted letter reveals the true attitudes of the philosophers towards the lady of the house, and they are thrown out in disgrace.
So far as its technical merit is concerned, the play was quite able to hold its own in Paris. Its versification is by no means clumsy, and here and there one finds a witty turn of phrase, but it is shot through with an appeal to everything common and vulgar, that artistic ploy of those who are the enemies of excellence, intolerable and contemptible . . . (pp. 776–8)
Rameau's Nephew and First Satire (Oxford World's Classics) Page 16