UC-NRLF i||!rlll!l|!li|'"llili B ^ Qb3 3ia ■^. P STUDIES IN DIDEROT'S ESTHETIC NATURALISM BY FELIX \'EXLER, A. M. Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Philosophy, Columbia University NEW YORK 1022 Copyright, 1922 By FELIX VEXLER New York PREFACE As intiniated in \Vx inliodiK-tory cha|itor, iliis work is part of a larj^or one ilcxotcd to the study of Diderot's natural- ism as exemplified in his j^eneral esthetic as well as to his tlieories concernin,^ the arts of music, dancing, drama, acting, painting, sculpture and architecture. The writer wishes to express his heartfelt thanks to Pro- fessor Dino lligongiari without whose encouragement and advice this work would not have been written ; to Professors I'>rnand IJaldensperger and Anatole Le Braz, who guided him in the preliminary stages; to Professors Henri Chamard, Ray- mond Weeks, John Lawrence (ierig, Robert llerndon Mfe, Charles Sears llaldwin, Andre Morize, to whom he is indebted f(^r criticism or information. Professor Frank Wadleigh Chand ler has read and i!-!i])roved an early redaction of the chapter on Acting and llistorial Tragedy, while Profes-or Henry Alfred Todd has made certain helpful sui^gestions — ad iiiajorejii anctoris ijloriam. Thanks are also due Miss Dollie Booth Hep- burn, Mr. h>ederic W. Krb and other members of the staff of Columbia l'ni\ersity Librar}', who in various ways have facil- itated the writer's access to the necessary books. With regard to books, even some of recent date were not obtainable, at least at this writing, for instance M. Joseph Texte's selections from Diderot, the Russian work on the French drama and eighteenth- century philosophy by A. Ivanov, etc. On the fly-leaf of Pro- fessor Hubert Gillot's Qucrclle dcs Ancieiis ct dcs Modcrww (Paris, Champion, 1914), mention is made of another work of his, entitled Un romantique au XVlIIc siccle. Dcitis Diderot. Essai sur son role ct son influence litteraircs (Langres, 1913). Yet all efforts to procure this have remained fruitless. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS In Dc rintcrprctation de la Nature Diderot expressed his conviction that a great scientific "revolution" was impending; the reign of mathematics was near its end; that of natural science was about to begin. And indeed, it cannot be gainsaid that during his Hfetime rationahsm yielded to naturalism to a considerable extent. To realize this one need only compare the leading ideas of Nature, Reason and Humanity as understood in the seventeenth and again in the eighteenth century. To begin with, Nature acquired transcendent importance as it came to be conceived "as endowed with autonomous power and reality surpassing the powers of the mind and tending to oppose God himself." The Cartesian notion that Nature is explained by a system of clear ideas was now attacked on every side. Hylozoists, materialists and spiritualists all united in holding that the relationships between things and phenomena are "not those imagined by the pure understanding left to itself; for now it is the intellect which is supposed to imagine, while experience yields truth." Instead of being thought of as "the faculty of immediately possessing notions or principles from which all certain knowledge must flow," Reason now became the faculty of "consulting experience and relying on it alone. So that the thing which above all was to be interpreted is Nature — by natural means and natural causes." ' Humanity, too, no long- er a passive substratum of pure reason, was regarded as a part of Nature, governed by laws which are not always and not wholly those of the intellect. The "systcmc de la nature," of which Diderot was the most gifted as well as perhaps the most enthusiastic exponent, sprang from the conviction, shared by a group of radical "Philosophers" and "Encyclopedists," that observation and experiment had yielded sufficient data for the elaboration and practical application of a system of social physics based on naturallaws, and therefore intolerant of every- ' Victor Delbos, La philosopMe frangaise (Paris, 1919), p. 190 f., 209 f. 6 DlftEROt'S ESTHETIC NATURALISM thing that is artificial, arbitrary, inconsequent, as well as abnormal and harmful in social and intellectual life — a program which Diderot enounced as follows: "La veritable maniere de philosopher c'eiit ete et ce serait d'appliquer I'entendement a Tentendement; I'entende- ment et I'experience aux sens; les sens k la nature; la nature a rinvestigation des instruments; les Instruments k la re- cherche et a la perfection des arts, qu'on jetterait au peuple pour lui apprendre a respecter la philosophie." - "Le but d'une Encyclopedie est de rassembler les con. naissances eparses sur la surface de la terre, d'en exposer le isysteme aux hommes avec qui nous vivons, et de le trans- mettre aux hommes qui viendront apres nous; afin que les travaux des siecles passes n'aient pas ete des travaux inutiles pour les siecles qui succederont; que nos neveux, devenant plus instruits, deviennent en meme temps plus vertueux et plus heureux; et que nous ne mourions pas sans avoir bien merite du genre humain."^ The scope of the magna instauratio planned by these phi- losophers extended even to the fine arts." The grands classiqnes, "gcomctrcs" and "beaux esprits" who preceded "les philo- sophes" had upheld the notion that art was ancillary to reason and truth; that it must "paint" or "imitate nature" or "embel- lished nature." To be sure, this the "philosophcs" reaffirmed and loudly called for the "strict imitation of nature" and the observance in art of "truth," which is of "all times and places." Yet they also gave the doctrine of natural imitation a turn which was previously foreign to it, save perhaps in the mind of Fenelon. For whilst the "Nature" spoken of by the Classi- cists coincided with what Diderot calls "le froid bon sens" and "pesante raison," that invoked by the "philosophes" was, as we saw, something different from pure "reason" and often imper- vious to it. The esthetic doctrine of "return to nature" which thanks to their efforts slowly encroached on that of reasonable natural imitation, is based on the conception of nature as some- - De Vinteriirftation de la nature (1754), in his CEuvres, ed. Assezat and Tourneux, Vol. ii, p. 19. 'Article "Encyclopedie" (CEuvres. xiv, 415). * Cf. art. ''Encyclopedie" (CEuvres, xiv, 474). INTRODUCTION 7 thing changeable, impulsive, impassioned and withal intolerant of "h's coin'cnaiices" and "Ic )iiOihis." Accordingly, "reason," hitherto considered as the chief esthetic organ, began to be subordinated to "genius," "imagination," "taste" or "sentiment." The preface which d'Alembert wrote for the Encyclopedic marks the official abandonment by the Encyclopedists of strict objectivism in esthetic and a step in the direction of expression- ism and subjectivism, or Romanticism. The studies of which we now offer a first series seek to establish the fact that Diderot strove to conciliate the old esthetic of Classicist or Academicist origin and the theoretical and practical consequences of the new "systcme de la nature". This reconciliation was not completely effected and Diderot's "metaphysic of art" remained dualistic. Tt certainly is not idealistic since its main concern is nature "as it is"; nor is it merely realistic since it looks upon nature as largely "contorted" and therefore an-esthetic. Rather is it ideo-realistic, inasmuch as it presupposes that the disparity between Art and Nature is to be overcome when the "natural estate" shall be actualized. The artist as conceived by Diderot is a sociological and Ency- clopedic virtuoso, capable of conjuring up vivid representations of the conflict between the urgings of nature and the "miserable conventions" enforced by secular and religious despotism, and of preparing humanity for the salutary "revolution" that is to culminate in the great Utopia. An impressionable mind like Diderot's was alive to all the opposing tendencies of a changing age. It is not strange, there- fore, that his esthetic vacillates between subjectivism and objectivism, rationalism and emotionalism, realism and idealism, or, if you will, Classicism and Romanticism. This dismays critics who like clearcut and inflexible classifications. r)ut it is not true (as it is hoped the quotations that constitute the substance of our studies will demonstrate), that Diderot's ideas are hopelessly inconsistent. As Karl Rosenkranz has said, for all his being undialectic, Diderot is not illogical. To guard against the danger of introducing an artificial semblance of order in an author whose contradictoriness and 8 DIDEROT'S ESTHETIC NAURALISM confusion are proverbial, each topic was studied by itself and was associated with other topics only when the example of Di- derot authorized this. The esthetic of music, for instance, was studied in conjunction with that of lyric drama, dancing and pantomime, whilst acting was considered together with historic tragedy and painting with sculpture.^ Again, the realm of plastic arts was somewhat encroached upon when Diderot's conception of the dramtaic poem was considered. It goes without saying that due (thought not superstitious) respect was paid to the chronology of Diderot's utterances. This method entails a con- siderable amount of repetition, but this very fact yields incon- trovertible evidence of the congruity of Diderot's esthetic thought. The writer does not for the present intend to go beyond a presentation of Diderot's ideas concerning artistic imitation of nature in drama and tragedy. He cheerfully refrains from sitting in judgment on an author who is still too "modern" to be regarded as "classc." The study of Diderot "as a career in time," as a center to which converged a world of esthetic thought and from which emanated another and better one, he is content to leave to a future work. Unless otherwise specified, the references are to the vol- umes and pages of the Assezat and Tourneux edition of Diderot's works. Whenever necessary or useful to the argu- ment, they are followed by the titles and dates of the particular works quoted. ' The writer hopes to be able to publish his studies of Diderot's esthetic of the musical and plastic arts in the near future. THE DRAMATIC POEM AND THE "DRAME" THE NEW DRAMATIC SYSTEM The \ast scope of the dramatic changes sponsored by the leader of the Encyclopedic Party may be gauged by the program he outlined in 1757, in the Troisicnic cntrctien sur le Fils naturcl : "La tragedie domestique et bourgeoise a creer. Le genre serieux k perfectionner. Les conditions de I'homme a substituer aux caracteres, peut- etre dans tons les genres. La pantomime a lier etroitement avec Taction dramatique. La scene a changer, et les tableaux a substituer aux coups de theatre. . . La tragedie reelle a introduire sur le theatre lyrique. Enfin, la danse a reduire et a separer de tout autre art d'imitation" (vii, 161). The most important innovation in this new "dramatic sys- tem" is the creation of "domestic tragedy" and the improvement of "serious comedy," two kindred prose genres dealing with home and professional life, preferably as exemplified in morally meritorious actions, with a view to inculcating "philosophic" reflexions and inducing emotional effects, adequate to the tribulations of the dramatic characters and the magnitude of the social issues at stake, and ranging from a sober state of mind analogous to that assumed in serious affairs {"comedie seri- euse," "genre serieux") to pity and terror ("tragedie domestique et bourgeoise"). The sequel will add several details to this definition. For the present we shall quote, from the preface which Diderot wrote for Trudaine de Montigny's translation of Lessing's Miss Sara Sampson (T762V, a few lines which, in succinct form, contain the esthetic motivation of the two new dramatic kinds : ". . . Enfin, il vient un homme de genie qui congoit qu'il n'y a plus de ressource que dans I'infraction de ces bornes 10- • . 'Dfr>E]:lOTS ESTHETIC NATURALISM etroites que I'habitude et la petitesse d'esprit ont raises a I'art. L'un dit: mais puisque les caracteres sont epuises dans la comedie, pourquoi ne pas se jeter sur les conditions? Mais quoi done? le ridicule est-il le seul ton de la comedie? Pourquoi n'y mettrait-on pas des actions honnetes et ver- tueuses? est-ce que ces actions n'ont pas lieu dans la societe? Pourquoi ne rapprocherait-on pas davantage les moeurs tliea- trales des moeurs domsetiques? Dans la tragedje, on fait le meme raisonnement. On dit: mais on n'a mis jusqu'a pre- sent sur la scene que des rols, des princes. Pourquoi n'y mettrait-on des particuliers? Quoi done? N'y a-t-il que la condition souveraine qui soit exposee a ces revers terribles, qui inspirent la commiseration ou I'horreur? Et I'on fait des tragedies bourgeoises" (viii, 440). This statement is important because it sliows that the motives which prompted Diderot's artistic campaign were of a composite nature. Accordingly, in the Entrctiens already men- tioned as in the treatise Dc la Poesie dramatique, which is its sequel, Diderot appears bent on several purposes, viz., to com- mend the new drama to the attention of those who yearned for new esthetic sensations and thus pave the way for artistic freedom ; to proclaim its social utility and, incidentally, take up the cudgels for the hitherto despised inhabitants of Rue Tique- tonnc; finally, to validate the legitimacy of the new theatre by showing that it always holds the mirror up to nature and truth. We shall now scrutinize these efforts. II DIDEROT PRESENTED "LE DRAME" AS AN AUTONOMOUS GENRE IN ORDER TO CONCEAL HIS INTENTION TO ESTAB- LISH IT ON THE RUINS OP THE PRIVILEGED "SYSTEM" There is not the slightest doubt that, at the particular period we are concerned with, Diderot dealt with the stage in a thoroughly revolutionary frame of mind. No compromise was countenanced by the man who wrote in 1758 to ]\Ime Ric- coboni : "Ma premiere et ma seconde piece forment un system? d'action theatrale dont il ne s'agit pas de chicaner un endroit. mais qu'il faut adopter ou rejeter en entier;" and "Tenez, mon "LE DRAME" 11 amie, je n'ai pas etc dix fois au speclaclo dcpuis tiuinzc ans. Le faux de tout ce cpii s'y fait me tue." ' The burthen of Diderot's letter is that no compromise should be entered upon between the old order of things dramatic and the new, but that on the contrary, the old conventions should make room for the dictates of reason. This is the very program of action he had ujiheld in the article "Encyclopedic'' {^7S^) '• "II faut fouler aux pieds toutes ces vieilles pu^rilites. renverser les barriSres que la raison n'aura point posees, rendre aux sciences et aux arts une liberie qui leur est si precieiise. et dire aux admirateurs de I'antiquite: Appelez le Man-hand de Londrcs- comme il vous plaira, pourvu que vous conveniez que cette piece etincelle de beautes sublimes" (xiv, 474 ff.) ^'et in order to overcome the public's antagonism to artistic radicalism, Diderot was careful to have it appear that "le dramc" (to designate Diderot's "systeme d'action theatrale" by the name given to it by friends and foes alike) added to, with- out encroaching upon, the established and privileged "system" of which tragedy and comedy were the mainstays. Fontenelle' had made use of the Leibnizian principle of continuity, which found so much favor with the estheticians of the eighteenth century, to preconize a "dramatic scale" or spectrum, extending from the genre burlesque to heroic tragedy, and a corresponding gradation of emotions — "le plaisant et le ridicule," "le pitoyable et le tendre," "le terrible et le grand" as well as their amal- gamation. In this fashion he was able to justify the comedy of sensibility, the theatre hnnoyant in which "le pitoyable et le tendre" were mingled with the emotions of tragedy and comedy. More conservative than Fontenelle, at least in appear- ance, Diderot does not openly vindicate the mingled emotions, but instead, quoting Aristotle to the effect that in things moral there always is a mean between extremes, concludes that the "tone" of serious comedy must needs stand midway between *vii. 405, 400. " Lillo's London Merchant: first French trans.. 174S. •'' Fontenelle, "Preface generale" in CEuvres (1754), t. vii, p. 5. 12 DIDEROT'S ESTHETIC NATURALISM the mirth of the old comic genre and the pathos of tragedy. The drama thus obtains a niche of its own in which it could not be accused of molesting the genres of Moliere and Racine. Diderot was not alone in this belief.* Freron, to choose a name from among the foes of the Encyclopedists, was of the same mind when he said: "Le sentiment nous a ouvert une route inconnue a Moliere. Nos genres sont tout a fait distingues ; nous ne denaturons rien, nous creons."' As set forth in the manifestos of 1757-58, the extremities of the dramatic scale are formed by two genres that have no foundation in reality, the disreputable burlesque" (herein Diderot agrees with Boileau), and the "merveilleux," which is exemplified in the conventional operatic libretto. Between them, lie the two "real" boundaries of dramatic art, comedy and tragedy proper. These are legitimate poetic kinds, not only because founded on truth and nature, but also because of their "honnctcte" and social utility. (Need we be reminded of the fact that comedy ridicules vice and tragedy holds up to nations and their rulers the edifying spectacle of public catastrophes and princely misfortunes?)' It is obvious that the middle por- tion of the scale rightfully belongs to Ic drame, because of its tone, which, as has been already stated, is intermediate between that of comedy and tragedy; because of the fact, which will be later dwelt upon, that it "generalizes" more than comedy and less than tragedy; and on account of its realism and, we are tempted to add, its prosaicism and honnctcte, qualities in which the new drama surpassed both its predecessors. There are also other reasons, such as its proportion of "action" and "movement." * The following outline of the classification of dramatic genres forms a scheme which is not without analogy to the cholne des ctrcs so popular with Diderot and the natural- ists of the eighteenth century: * Thus, among others, L. Riccoboni, apropos of the comedy of sensibility. (Letter to Muratori, May 30, 1737, cited by A. Eloesser, Das biirc/erliche Drama, p. 64). ° Freron, Lettres sur guelgues ecrits de ce temps, iv, letter I. 'vii, 135 f. 'vii, 308 f. * Cf. vii, 318. O s o u H < Q en ^^ < C H u '-n "-^ O ^ , u .^^ ^ c u O ■^-1 CJ ^ o CO CJ s 8 s ^-N rS 01 CJ -*-) ^ % - _c2 ft V- rt CJ o •- ^ o E CJ ^ ■!-> t. " 4.J O OJ t^ X CO P & e 01 m ^ ^ ■S -^ - ?? cn •«^ =n a; fl > '.n G a; cS M ^ ^ a 8 ^ "rt 2 ?! -c CJ •-' -«-) "So o cn -~ "Z - ?> s o o 61 -l-> o ,„ ■^J 03 * tn V OJ 03 — H ij;3 CO 14 DIDEROT'S ESTHETIC NATURALISM But, Diderot might have been asked, Why create a new genre and not rest satisfied with an admixture to fill in the gap between tragedy and comedy? By way of answer, in addi- tion to the argument from authority and example (for he claimed that his genre was originated by ]\Ienander and Terence),* Diderot again appealed to the principle of continuity. Thus he, too, might have laughed, with Voltaire in Ic Pauvre diable, Aux vains efforts d'un auteur amphibie, Qui defigure et qui brave a la fois, Dans son jargon, Melpomene et Thalie. In the name of the law of continuity and unity, Diderot condemned, along with most of the theatre larmoyant, heroic comedy and tragicomedy {genres in which Diderot should have acknowledged more than one precursor), as well as the still more objectionable tragiburlesque, exemplified to his mind in Otway's Veniee saved and in Hamlet, false genres'" which admixed disparate sentiments (to say nothing of their admitting banter and caricature to the stage of the "honnetes gens"). Diderot, who is in so many respects the prime mover of Roman- ticist drama, would not have tolerated (at least officially) the systematic juxtaposition of the grotesque and terrible and would have relegated the author of Rny Bias to the theatres of the Fairs and Boulevards, or sentenced him to continue the decrepit operatic genre which had been once illustrated by Quinault and La :\Iotte. Not that Diderot frowned upon every attempt to introduce laughter in the drama." To picture Diderot as a dramaturgic Jansenist is as wrong as to state, with certain authors of literary manuals, that he advocated the mingling ad libitum of the = v, 230 f.; vii, 135; cf. Corr. lift., vii, 413. V. Ernest Bernbaum, The drama of sensibility (Boston, 1915), ch. II. "'vii, 137, 374. " Contra, F. Gaiffe, Le drame en France au XVIIIe siecle (Paris, 1910), p. 450. •LE URAME" 15 » serious ami comic.''' Diderot himself owns ihai the J-'ils iiaturel "a iuesc|ue ete fait dans les trois genres" (as "une piece ne s'enferme jamais a hi rii:[ueur dans un genre"), and could be turned into a comedy or neo-tragedy without anv change what- soever in its first acts, lie says of tlie ideal author of a dramc philosophiquc, "A chaijue instant il doit amener le ris sur le bord des levres, et les larmes aux yeux. Je mourrais content si j'avais rempli cette tache comme je la conc^ois." '" ,\gain, speaking of the dramatic Messiah for whom he prayed all his life and who was to "renew the phenomena of ancient tragedy." Diderot uttered the following significant words: "lis [scU.. the phenomena of the ancient theatre] atten- dent, pour se montrer, un homme de genie qui sache com- biner la pantomime avec le discours, entremeler une scene parlee avec une scene muette, et tirer parti de la reunion des deux scenes, et surtout de I'approche ou terrible ou comique de cette reunion qui se ferait toujours" (vii, 116). When we reflect that the "comique" whereof Diderot speaks is to occur in a tragedy intended to bring "trouble and horror"' to the minds of the audience ; when we catch him con- ceding his fondness, "dans I'epique, dans I'ode et dans quelques genres de poesie elevee," for the contrast of sentiments and images and his admiration for "I'art de porter dans Tame des sensations extremes et oj)posees" ; when we witness his noting with satisfaction that, in a certain English i)lay, "( 'n rit et Ton est alternativement attendri" '" — we may be sure that he was not intolerant, even in the drama, of the mingling of pathos and mirth, of the "trcssaillement mele de peine et de plaisir, d'amer- tume et de douceur, de douceur et d'effroi." We should be undulv severe if we accused Diderot of con- tradiction in this connection. In all likelihood Diderot would " Brunetiere (Les cpoques du thrOtre franrnis, Paris, 1S93, p. 230) distinguishes between the "fusion" and "mingling" of genres. This distinction is not clearly sanctioned by Diderot's theory; it nevertheless seems to hold in the main. "vii, 315. '^ vii, 352. "viii, 466. (Of Hugh Kelly's False delicacy). 16 DIDEROT'S ESTHETIC NATURALISM have reconciled his proscribing the melange des genres with his legitimizing the use of mixed comic and tragic moments by means of the proviso that only as much of the melange was licit as did not interfere with the unity of impression. At least, this is a natural inference from the following remark in the Troisieme entretien : "Les nuances empruntees du genre co- mique sont-elles trop fortes? 'L'ouvrage fera rire et pleurer, et il n'aura plus ni unite d'interet, ni unite de coloris". '° Diderot might have gone even further, perhaps, and answered in the affirmative the question, "Si le comique pathetique n'a pas son charme particulier, n'est pas plus vrai et peut-etre plus interes- sant que le comique ordinaire." But on this point we must content ourselves with mere conjecture. Another difficulty concerning the relationship of the "drama" to the other genres presents itself when Diderot im.prudently calls attention to the possibility of several links between the old system and the new. "J'ai essaye de donner, dans le Fils naturel, I'idee d'un drame qui fut entre la comedie et la tragedle. Le Pere de famille, que je promis alors, et que des distractions con- tinuelles ont retarde, est entre le genre serieux du Fils naturel. et la comedie. Et si jamais j'en ai le lolsir et le courage, je ne desespere pas de composer un drame qui se place entre le genre serieux et la tragedie" (vii, 308.) Diderot here points to his plays, written and projected," in order to demonstrate "que I'intervalle que j'apercevais entre les deux genres etablis n'etait pas chimerique." But he proves too much, as the admission of transitional dramatic forms favored the argument of those for whom the genre serieux was a special kind of comedy. Yet this last was not the opinion of Diderot, who held that the "drama" was a true genre admit- ting of little intermixture with the other dramatic kinds : "Les petites nuances qu'il [the genre in question] empruntera d'un genre collateral seront trop faibles pour le deguiser." " In '"Cf. vii, 13S, 135 f. and Grimm's Corresp. lift., viii, 319 f. (April 1st, 1769). ^'vii, 136. '^vii., 136. "LE DRAME" 17 fact, lie was as nuu"li annoyed l)y the conscrxatism wliicli for- bade the adoption of new f(M-ms of art as by the hberaHsm which was blind to ihoir rcNokitionary character: "S'il existe iin genre il est difficile d'en introduire un nouveau. L"elui-ci est-il introduit? Autre prejuge: bientot on imagine que les deux genres adoptes sont voisins et se touchent." '"' Are we to conclude that Diderot faced a logical inipassc? And how shall we account for his predicament? As often hajijiens, the way out of one difficulty suggests itself in wres- tling with anolher one. llitlierto we had assumed, on the strength of Hiderot's emi)loying the terms "draiiic scricux" and "tragcdic douiestiquc" interchangeably whenever he illustrates the poetics of the new theatre, that the two constitute together a single genre, the "draiiie" par excellence. A further assump- tion, which received graphic expression in our outline of the "dramatic scale" in this sub-chapter, was that the "genre scri- cux," rather than boitrgeoisc tragedy, was typical of the whole. This second assumption must be modified, however, in the light of such utterances as the following: "Le genre serieux. . .penche plutot vers la tragedie que vers la comedie" (vii, 13S). "Pendant que Dorval parlait ainsi, jo faisais une refle- xion singuliere. C'est comment, a I'occasion d'une aventure domestlque qu'il avait mise en comedie, il etablissait des pre- ceptes communs a tons les genres dramatiques, et etait tou- j(nirs cntraine par sa melancolie a ne les appliquer quW la tragedie" (vii, 119). "La tragedie domestique aurait . . . I'effet de la tragedie a produire" (vii, 332). This last statement may be compared with what Oidcrot says, in a letter of December 20, iJ^^S, apropos of Sedaine's Philosophe sans le savoir: "Ce sont les terreurs de la t age li-^ produites avec les moyens de I'opera comique.'"" Further, witli '*vii, 308. This may explain in part his reticence concerning La Cliaussee's drama. '"xix. 213. 18 DIDEROT'S ESTHETIC NATURALISM a passage, most likely written by Diderot, in Grimm's Corres- pondancc litteraire : "J'imagine un genre de coraedie bien plus tragique, si Ton peut parler ainsi, que le larmoyant . . . Una telle comedie bien conduite serait plus dans la nature que la plupart de nos tragedies et j'ai dans la tete qu'elle produirait des effets etonnants." ^^ And so we must ask, How can domestic tragedy be spoken of as an intermediate genre when it aims to duplicate the effect of tragedy, that is to say, appear not merely as "serious" and touching, but even as "terrible"? Happily, in the Troisieme Entretien, Diderot dropped the mask of conservatism to the extent of suggesting that the new drama-tragedy was radically different from the old: "On dit qu'il n'y a plus de grandes passions tragiques a emouvoir; qu'il est impossible de presenter les sentiments d'une maniere neuve et frappante. Cela peut etre dans la tragedie, telle que les Grecs, les Romains, les Frangais, les Italiens, les Anglais et tons les autres peuples de la terre Font composee. Mais la tragedie domestique aura une autre action, un autre ton, et un sublime qui lui sera propre" ■' (vii, 146). To him who reads between the lines last quoted, it is evi- dent that our author already held the belief which he explicitly stated only much later, in the Paradoxc siir le comcdicn, viz., that a new tragedy was destined to supplant the old, and not merely to supplement it. The two could not stand together, for "Le systeme dramatique le plus mal entendu, serait celui qu'on pourrait accuser d'etre moitie vrai et moitie faux. Cast un mensonge maladroit, ou certaines circonstances me decelent I'impossibilite du reste."" The tactics of Diderot thus appear to have been, first, to commend the serious genre as an addition to the existing dramatic kinds ; then, upon its gaining accept tance, to use it as an entering wedge for boitrgeoise tragedy; finally, to relegate heroic tragedy to the outer and "marvellous" "Corr. Utt., ii, 334 (April 1st. 1754). ^=vii, 374. "LE DRAME" 19 fringe of the dramatic scale, and in its former place to enthrone the historic drama. It is the same tactics he preconized in connection with the operatic revolution. Thus, albeit by revo- lutionary dialectics, we at last find an answer to the difficulties we have noted in Diderot's theory. Whatever we may think of his tactics, we must concede to Diderot that there is no real contradiction between his presenting the "drama" as a postulate of the dramatic regime then in force, and at the same time considering it as a true autonomous genre, and one admit- ting no intermixing with the older dramatic kinds. If there v>-as a contradiction anywhere, Diderot would have placed it in the old dramatic regime itself, and held the "drama" to be all the more "true" for disclosing the fatal weakness of the privi- leged "system". Ill POLITICAL ENDS OF DIDEROT'S DRAMATURGY. ITS SOCIAL UTILITY The new drama of which Diderot was the theoretician has been defined by its latest historian, M. Gaiffe, as a "genre nouveau cree par le parti philosophique pour attendrir et mora- liser la bourgeoisie et le peuple en leur presentant un tableau de leurs propres aventures et de leur propre milieu."^ This definition gives proper emphasis to the fact that the "drame" was above everything else a vehicle for philosophic propa- ganda. Yet Diderot w^as none too anxious to dwell publicly on its potentialities as an instrument of social and political action by a radical party. Instead, he loved to descant in more or less traditional fashion on the social fvmction of the playwright. In the article Encyclopcdie, for instance, we read: "C'est manquer son but que d'amuser et de plaire quand on pent instruire et toucher."' The end or one of the ends of the dramatic poet, we read in De la Poes'ie dramatique , is to "faire ' F. Gaiffe, Le drame en France au xviiie siecle, p. 78. Contra. W. T. Peirce, The bourgeois from Molifre to BeaumarcJiais (Colum- bus, 0., 1907), p. 71, etc. = xiv, 495. 20 DIDEROT'S ESTHETIC NATURALISM aimer la vertu et hair le vice." ^ The drama, he wrote to Mme Riccoboni, must pursue "un but moral par I'imitation de la nature."^ Therefore, a great poet must also be a moralist; so much the better if the moralist is a good man: "Si vous etes bien ne, si la nature vous a donne un esprit doit et un coeur sensible, fuyez pour un temps la so- ciete des homnies; allez vous etudier vous-meme. Comment I'instrument rendra-t-il une juste harmonie, s'il est desac- corde? Paites-vous des notions exactes des choses; comparez votre conduite avec vos devoirs; rendez-vous homme de bien et ne croyez pas que ce travail et ce temps si bien employes pour riiomme soient perdus pour I'auteur. II rejaillira de la perfection morale que vous aurez etablie dans votre carac- tere et dans vos mceurs, une nuance de grandeur et de justice qui se repandra sur tout ce que vous ecrirez" (vii, 389 f.) To the moral possibilities of the stage must be added the political. "Tout peuple a des prejuges a detruire, des vices a poursuivre, des ridicules a decrier, et a besoin de spectacles- mais qui lui soient propres. Quel moyen, si le gouvernement en sait user, et qu'il salt preparer le changement d'une loi et I'abrogation d'un usage." ' How much good could be accom- plished, exclaimed Diderot, if the government would collaborate with dramatic artists and especially with the philosophers.* With evident pride he tells us, in the Paradoxe sur le comcdicn, that "lorsque je donnai Ic Pcrc de famille, le magistrat de la police m'exhorta a suivre ce genre."' In fact, as early as 1757, re- membering a lesson from Shaftesbury, he made bold to suggest a partnership with the administration, which the comic writers might successfully defend against the aggression of "fanatics," that is to say, Jesuits and Jansenists, and perhaps dangerous political and economic radicals. "Qu'est-ce qu'Aristophane? Un farceur original. Un auteur de cette espece doit etre precieux pour le gouverne- ment, s'il sait I'employer. C'est a lui qu'il faut abandonner = vii, 313; cf. 146, 108 f. " Cf. viii, 3S8 ff. = vii, 313. "vii, 108, 313. 'viii, 401. "LE DRAME" 21 tons les enthousiastes qui troublent de temps en temps la sociote. Si on les expose h la foire, on n'en remplira pas les prisons'* (vii. 319). This proposal from the man who invoked suppression of Palissot's Satiriqiic might seem odious, were it not for his having also once attempted to persuade Mercier "que les lois n'auront pas tort de brulor un athee en place publique," * and for his having pardoned a certain monk his attacks on free thinkers.' Moreover, Diderot's hope of government cooperation was not so preposterous as it may seem. Shortly after the time we are considering, between 1760 and 1770, the Philosophers captured the Academy." ]\Iore than once, Palissot and other adversaries of the Philosophic Party felt the weight of wdiat has been called, with much exaggeration, the "literary despotism" of the philosophers." Freron's Aniice littcraire was suspended for an attack on d'Alembert. "Pen s'en faut," once wrote Grimm, "que meme les meilleurs esprits ne se persuadent que I'empire doux et paisible de la philosophic va succeder aux longs orages de la deraison."" Some act of repression would dash these hopes, but they would be revived again. Tt Is too much to say with ^I. Belin that after the reaction provoked by the Systcme de la nature (1770) had spent itself, under Turgot's ministry, "les philosophes et les economistes de persecutes devenaient persecuteurs." " But the fact remains that Turgot was a viinistre philosophe and radicalism came into power with him. Diderot's anxiety not to arouse unnecessary antagonism at a critical time is responsible for his appearing not to have gone further than La Chaussee, whose lachrymose comedy of sensi- * L. Beclard, .9. Mercier. p. 72. "La tolerance [says Diderot] n'est jamais que le systeme du persecute, systeme qu'il abandonne aussitot qu'il est assez fort pour etre oersecuteur." (M. Tourneux, Diderot et Cat1>rrine TT. Paris, 1S99, p. 307). «vi, 369 f. '"V. Brunei, Les Philosophes et VAcad^-mie (Paris, 1884), Bk. TI. " Delafarge, Tn vie rt les ouvrar/es dr Palissot, p. 310 ff., 549 ff ; F. Cornou, ETip Frrron (Paris. 1922). p. 169, 303. '^Corr. lift. II, 328 (Jan. 15, 1757). " J. P. Belin, Le mouvement philosophique de 171/8 A 17S9 (Paris, 1913). p. 3.51. 22 DIDEROT'S ESTHETIC NATURALISM bility aimed to destroy social prejudices, just like Diderot's "drmnc moral," which was devoted to the "question du suicide, de I'honneur, du duel, de la fortune, des dignites," and Dide- rot's "dramc philosophiquc." His consistent preaching of pro- fessional ideals, his apparent acceptance of the existing social structure and duties as things entirely static, his speaking, even later in the seventies, and in connection with historical drama, of nothing more revolutionary than arousing commis- eration over the fate of the unfortunate, convinced one of the best students of Diderot, vi;:., Rosenkranz, that our philosopher "maintained the moral point of view even while his century had progressed to the political." " Yet even Rosenkranz admits that "in seiner hierin unbewusster Genialitaet," and as early as 1758, Diderot had made the plot of his Pcrc dc famillc revolve about a lettre dc cachet. And we have heard Diderot proclaim the drama an excellent auxiliary to legislation. The truth seems to be that from the beginning of his dramatic crusade, Diderot was fully aware of the opportunities for oppositionist politics which the new theatre afforded, but did not care to be too outspoken just when the Encyclopedia had begun to feel the weight of the temporal and secular powers.'' Further on, in this chapter and in the one on Acting, Diderot will testify to his abiding faith in the social and political revolution which, according to him, was correlated with the artistic. For the present we need only observe that in the discourse Dc la Poesie dramatique, Diderot himself invites us to read between the lines of his plays. In theory at least, his was the subtler kind of propaganda, im- known to the "Reverend Father" La Chaussee and despised by Mercier, which shuns the threadbare tir^ide. It is the method which Sedaine and Beaumarchais were to employ with such marked success : "Qu'un auteur intelligent fasse entrer dans son ouvrage des traits que le spectateur s'applique, j'y consens; qu'il y "Rosenkranz, Diderot (2nd ed.) ii, 213. ^" Like several of his contemporaries Diderot was aware of the existence of class struggle. "Dans la nature, toutes les especes se devorent, toutes les condtions se devorent dans la societe" (v, 421). "Les conditions n'ont-elles pas entre elles les memes contrastes que les caracteres? Et le poete ne pourra-t-il pas les opposer?" (vii, 1.">1). "LE DRAME" 23 rappelle des ridicules en vogue, des vices dominants, des ill fu incuts publics: qu'il plaise, niais que ce soil sans y penser. Si Ton remariiuo son but, il le manque; il cesse de dialoguor, il preche" (vii, 343 f.) .Mercier'" found fault with Racine for having made light of a judge in Les Flaidciirs, and, gravely shaking his head over Moliere's banter, urged the poet : "S'il peint le vice, qu'il ne plaisante point. Le rire deviendrait alors sacrilege. Le vice doit toujours inspirer de I'aversion." Cato-Diderot we are glad to say, redeemed his all too obvious and not quite sincere Puri- tanism by such concessions to dramatic objectivity as the fol- lowing: "II n'y a rien de sacre pour le poete, pas meme la vertu, qu'il couvrira de ridicule, si la personne et le moment I'exigent." '' lie admitted that poetical mores are not morally best," even as he cynically owned that he did not detest great crimes, because they make beautiful subjects in painting. This is why, in Diderot's Joueur, '" Stukely preaches that "Les lois eternelles de la nature son la ruse et la force," and justifies crime by reference to the code of Nature which contains only one word : "Freedom." Diderot's "virtuous" theatre is, happily, not entirely and artificially virtuous. It knows heinous deeds and wretches who are not good at heart and who do not repent. (The originator of the new comedy, Destouches, knew these not and made numer- ous disciples). Diderot felt that, let Rousseau say what he will, he could hold the mirror up to human nature without any of the dire consequences predicted by that misanthropist. While admitting, with Dorval's Constance, that "il n'y avait point d'homme, quelque honnete qu'il fiit, qui, dans un violent acces de passion, ne desirat, au fond de son coeur, les honneurs de la vertu et les avantagse du vice," he believed, or found it expedient to believe, that "les hommes de bien sont plus reelle- ment hommes de bien que les mechants ne sont mechants ; "Z)!< TJinitre (1773), pp. 74, 76. "vii, 363. '*vii. 371. "• vii, 466. It is worth noting that the author of the original Gamble)-, traced crime to free-thinking; an opinion in which Pallissot concurred. 24 DIDEROT'S ESTHETIC NATURALISM que la bonte nous est plus indivisiblement attachee que la mechancete."'" He hoped that in the new theatre even the wicked would "see the hiunan species as it is, and would become reconciled to it. Good men are rare, but they exist."" Owing to an original bent for order and virtue, man, no matter how depraved, is always sensitive to the example of virtue and there- fore capable of moral education."^ So convinced was Diderot of man's perfectibility that he affirmed "qu'il n'y avait rien qu'on ne put sur le cceur humain avec de la verite, de I'hon- netete et de I'eloquence." ^^ — "Je le repete done, I'honnete. II nous louche d'une maniere plus intime et plus douce que ce qui excite notre mepris et nos ris.... — La nature humaine est done bonne? — Oui, mon ami, et tres bonne. L'eau, I'air, la terre, le feu, tout est bon dans la nature.... Ce sont les miserables conventions qui pervertissent I'homme, et non la nature qu'il faut accuser. En effet, qu'est-ce qui nous affecte comme le recit d'une action genereuse? Ou est le malhereux qui puisse ecouter froidement la plainte d'un homme de bien?" (vii, 312). Diderot considered his "drame" admirably fitted for the moral mission of art. Tragedy was too remote from everyday life to be morally effective; comedy taught men how to eschew the ridicule of vice without inspiring in them the decision to be good."^ Now, Diderot might have admitted that the comedy of "sensibility" merely called forth, in the words of the author of Xh^Discours sur I'inegalite, "un sentiment bientot etouffe par les passions, une pitie sterile qui se repait de quelque larmes et n'a jamais produit le moindre acte d'humanite." ^' But he '"vii, 128. Cf. xi, 118 {Salon de 1767). '^vii, 310. "vii, 67 ff. "^ vii, 129. On tlie history of the question of the morality of the stage, see the series of papers by L. Bourquin in Rev. (VMst. lift., t. xxvi ff. -* Cf. V, 443 (le Keveu de Rameau). "^ Cf. the admissions of Diderot in the Salon de 1767. x, 118. The Paradoxe sur le coviedien seems to be the outcome of the realization of the amoral character of false sensibility. "LE DRAME" 25 insisted tliat the new "ilraina of conditions" delivered its social message too directly and forcibly for any one to miss it. "II me semble que cette source est plus f6conde, plus ^tendue, et plus utile que celle des caract^res. Pour peu que le caractere filt charge, un spectateur pouvait se dire k lui meme, ce u'est pas moi. Mais il ne peut se cacher que I'etat qu'on joue devant lui. ne soit le sien; il ne peut nieconnaitre ses devoirs. 11 I'aut qu'il s'applique ce qu'il entend."-" What with the direct and realistic presentation of highly pathetic scenes, the enormous theatres required liy his "system," the contagious emotion in huge crowds, the intensification of emotion by his "simultaneous scenes", Diderot hoped that the frenr^ied enthusiasm of the ancient spectators of the drama might be revixed."' Said Dorval's Constance: "Les passions detruisent plus de prejuges que la philosophic. Et comment le mensonge leur resisterait-il ? Elles ebranlent quelquefois la verite." ^' With the passions of the people at the service of truth, Diderot be- lieved he could work wonders. There can be no doubt that Grimm gave expression to the fondest wish and hope of Diderot when he said, apropos of the FiJs naturcl: "Ceux qui sent en etat de pressentir les revolutions et les evenements qu'elles amenent, pretendent que cette piece fera une revolution sur notre theatre, et que M. Diderot n'a qu'a continuer a travailler dans ce genre pour etre le maitre absolu du theatre. Ma prediction va plus loin: il ne tient qu'a M. Diderot de faire une revolution salutaire dans les mceurs en ramenant les conditions sur la scene, et son Pire (le fnmiUe accomplira cette prediction" (Corr. litt. iii, 357, March 1, 1757). ^'vii, 150. Cf. La Chaussee, Fausse antiimthic. prol. scene viii: also Freron, 7. cit. For somewhat similar claims on behalf of the genre larmoyant. cf. De Bougainville, Disrours de r^-ceptioyi a VAca- (Innie. May 30, 1751, in Vial and Denise. Tdces et doctrines litt. du xviiie s.. p. 223 ff. ='vii, 121 f.. 116. "vii. 126. 26 DIDEROT'S ESTHETIC NATURALISM IV THE GENERAL "POETICS" OF DIDEROT IS IDEO-REALISTIC. IT ALLOWS CONSIDERABLE LATITUDE TO SUBJECTIVISM IN SPITE OF ITS OBJECTIVISTIC FORMULAS Although Diderot was fully aware of the fact that the growth of radical dramaturgy had been conditioned by the social revolution whereby the bourgeoisie had risen to promi- nence/ he nevertheless endeavored to rest the "drama" on the theoretical foundation of the "systcinc de la nature," and pre- sent it as an application of the theory of natural imitation. The essay De la Pocsic dramatlque, the outcome of this en- deavor, cannot be pronounced a thorough success. The critic will no doubt find fault with Diderot's obscure notions, imper- fect distinctions, sweeping omissions, inductions from too few instances, the rather haphazard stringing of esthetic theorems, and so forth. He might find extra-esthetic notions dis- guised as esthetic categories. According to his own point of view, he might be exasperated by Diderot's employing the recognized terms of the critical trade in ways and to pur- poses not sanctioned by tradition, or else wish that Diderot had not tried, as he apparently did, to reconcile Aristotle, Horace, Boileau and Racine to himself and to one another. He may bear witness with Sainte-Beuve to Diderot's abhorence of convention- ality and preciosity, to his sincere effort to recall his contem- poraries to truth of manners, reality of sentiments, and obser- vation of nature. Or he may sadly reflect that truth and nature have always been words to conjure with, and that Diderot employed them to no better purpose than the other founders of literary schools. Scd non nostrum est tantas coui- poncre lites. In this sub-chapter we shall only incidentally dwell on the cogency, filiation or originality of Diderot's ideas, our main purpose being to outline his theory of the drama on the basis of his specifically dramatic writings, elucidating his mani- festos of 1757-58, if need be, by his other contribution to the general "poetics" of dramatic imitation. ^Cf. vii, 151; viii, 440 f. •'LE DRAME" 27 As already stated, Diderot's dramatic system is jiresented as a special chapter of general esthetic, as an application of the far-reaching doctrine of "imitation or painting" of "truth or nature." Like Uatteux and Rameau, Diderot believed that the arts of imitation, or rather all arts (since "les sens ne sont tous qu'un toucher, tons les arts qu'une imitation")" were ren- dered possible because of these two facts: that, on the one hand, nature is constant in its operations and, on the other, that this gratifies our sense of order. Although he refused to call it an "instinct,"' Diderot held, with Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Adam Smith* and many other authors, that the esthetic sense (which he calls "taste") and moral conscience were one and the same thing though applied to different objects. "Je definis," says Dorval speaking for Diderot, "je definis la vertu, le gout de I'ordre dans les choses morales. Le gout de I'ordre en general nous domine des la plus tendre enfance ; il est plus ancien dans notre ame. . qu'aucun sentiment reflechi. . .11 agit en nous, sans que nous nous en apercevions ; c'est le germe de I'honnetete et du bon goiit." - (This, be it said in passing, is worth remem- bering when we come to speak of the connection Diderot per- ceived between moral and esthetical judgments.) It follows from these definitions that the artist or "poet" who endeavors to "paint" reality, obeys the same impulse, pur- sues the same ends of order, clearness and universality as the natural philosopher in quest of the eternal "rapports" nature is made of. In the famous Academic discourse on Taste which entered into the Encydopcdie under the heading of "GoCit," d'Alembert eulogized the "Vittcratcnr pliUosophe" ; Diderot would have said that to be a full-fledged artist one must be a philosopher also. His profession of esthetic faith is thus at the outset thoroughly objectivistic: ^vii. 162. ^xi. 25; X, 27. The bias towards intellectualism differentiates Diderot from Rousseau. * Hutcheson, Enquiry into the original of our ideas of beauty; Adam Smith, Theory of moral sentiments. 'vii. 127. Cf. Batteux's definition of taste. * Reflexions svr Vusage et sur tubus de la philosophie dans les matures de gout (1757). 28 DIDEROT'S ESTHETIC NATURALISM "Un gout dominant de I'ordre. . .nous contraint a mettre de la proportion entre les etres..." (vii, 148). "II n'y a de beautes durables que celles qui sont fondees sur des rapports avec les etres de la nature. Si I'on ima- ginait les etres dans une vicissitude rapide, toute peinture ne representant qu'un instant qui fuit, toute imitation serait superfine. Les beautes ont, dans les arts, le meme fondement que les verites dans la philosophie. Qu'est-ce que la verite? La conformite de nos jugements avec les etres. Qu'est-ce que la beaute d'imitation? La conformite de I'image avec la chose" (vii, 156). "L'art dramatique ne prepare les evenements que pour les enchainer; et il ne les enchaine dans ses productions, que parce qu'ils le sont dans la nature. L'art imite jusqu'a la maniere subtile avec laquelle la nature nous derobe la liaison des effets" (vii, 130). A corollary which Diderot developed in the article "Encyclo- pedic" is that "un ecrivain qui veut assurer a ses ouvrages un charme eternel ne pourra emprunter avec trop de reserve sa maniere de dire des idees du jour, des opinions courantes, des sys- temes regnants, des arts en vogue; tous ces modeles sont en vicissitude. II s'attacbera de preference aux etres perma- nents, aux phenomenes des eaux, de la terre et de I'air, au spectacle de I'univers et aux passions de I'homme qui sont toujours les memes" (xiv, 432). To the objects of imitation here enumerated the discourse Dc la Pocsic dramatique adds, as will be shown later, "les con- ditions," or the various social stations, and, of course, human actions. Accordingly, the poet and especially the dramatic poet, must also be a psychologist and sociologist: "Qu'il soit philosophe, qu'il ait descendu en lui-meme, qu'il y ait vu la nature liumaine, qu'il soit profondement instruit des etats de la societe, qu'il en connaisse bien les fonctions et le poids, les inconvenients et les avantages" (vii, 309). This is why Ariste-Diderot "se livra a I'iiistoire, a la philosophie, a la morale, aux sciences et aux arts; et il fut a ciuquante-cinq ans homme de "LE DRAME" 29 I)it'n, liomme instruit, homme de gout, grand auteur et cri- tinuo excellent" (vii, 394) — Indeed, an acconiplislicd Encyclopedist. This is objectivism with a vengeance. Yet Utile by Httle Diderot manages to mitigate it. To begin with, he establishes a distinction between the aims and methods of the artist and those of the naiuial philosopher (who is concerned with the abstract and general laws of nature and their "interpretation") and of the historian (whom Diderot, retaining the traditional view, pictured as a cataloguer of particular events). Contrasted with these two, the poet appears as a "systematiquc," a framer of hypotheses, and not a seeker of the absolute, of general truths and particular facts. As such he must strive to render the "illusion" only of truth. He must so link the parts of his "poem" as to give the impression of cohesion and necessity. The following lines are of interest because they foreshadow the theory of the "experimental novel" : "Se rappeler une suite necessaire d'lmages telles qu'elles se succedent dans la nature, c'est raisonner d'apres les faits. Se rappeler une suite d'images commes elles se succederalent necessairement dans la nature, tel ou tel phenomene etant donne, c'est raisonner d'apres une hypothese, ou feindre; c'est etre philosophe ou poete selon le but qu'on se propose. Et le poete qui feint, et le philosophe qui raisonne, sont egalement et dans le meme sens, consequents ou Inconse- quents: car etre consequent, ou avoir I'experience de I'en- chainement necessaire des phenomenes, c'est la meme chose" (vii, 334). "Nous cherchons en tout une certaine unite; c'est cette unit6 qui fait le beau, soit reel, soit imaginaire; une cir- constance est-elle donnee, cette circonstance entralne les autres et le systeme se forme vrai, si la circonstance a ete prise dans la nature; faux si ce fut une affaire de convention ou de caprice" (vii, 403; to Mme Riccoboni). "Les vertus s'enchalnent les unes aux autres; et les vices se tiennent pour ainsi dire par la main... c'est une sorte d'association necessaire. Imaginer un caractere c'est trouver d'apres une passion dominante donnee, bonne ou mauvaise, les passions subordonnees qui I'accompagnent, les sentiments, les 30 DIDEROT'S ESTHETIC NATURALISM discours et les actions qu'elle suggere, et la sorte de teinte ou d'energie que tout le systeme intellectuel et moral en regoit; d'ou Ton volt que les peintures ideales...ne peuvent jamais devenir chimeriques" (xiv, 487; art. '■'Encyclopedie"). "Au lieu que la liaison des evenements nous echappe souvent dans la nature, et que faute de connaltre I'ensemble des choses, nous ne voyons qu'une concomitance fatale dans les faits, le poete veut, lui, qu'il regne dans toute la texture de son ouvrage une liaison apparente et sensible; en sorte qu'il est moins vrai et plus vraisemblable que I'historien" (vii, 329). The words "peintures ideales," "beau imaginaire," "poete qui feint" testify to the recognition by Diderot of a certain amount of independence of the data of experience. Thus far, however, the difference between the methods and aims of the poet and those of the naturaHst is only quantitative. The ways of the artist and naturalist are seen to drift fur- ther and further apart when the former is enjoined to eschew the "simple et froide tmiformite des choses communes."' The poet's manner of imitation as well as his models, Diderot tells us (following Aristotle or his commentators) must compel our interest and admiration. Hence the necessary appearance in every "poem" of something "marvellous" or "niervcilleiix," that is to say extraordinary. In this connection we must deplore the loss of Diderot's ideas on the subject of "historical certitude," which for him is the basis of poetics ; it would have been especially instructive to witness his "establishing the delicate shades which distinguish the chimerical from the possible, the possible from the marvel- lous, the marvellous from embellished nature, embellished na- ture from the common."' Fortunately, statements enough have been preserved to enable us to approximate the general trend of his ideas on this head. Some of the distinctions indi- cated above, the "marvellous" for instance, are adumbrated in Dc la Pocsie dranwtiquc : •vii, 329. 'vii, 335. "xix, 242 (Sept. 24, 1767). "LE DRAME" 31 "11 arrive (iiu^liiuefois a I'ordre naturel des choses d'en- chainer des incidents extraordinaires. C'est le m6me ordre qui distingue le merveilleux du miraculeux. Les cas rares sont merveilleux; les cas naturellement impossibles sont miraculeux." " A s])ecial case of the "merveilleux" is the "vernis roinanesqiic" which Diderot defines as follows: "Vn ouvrage sera romanesciue, si le merveilleux nait de la simultaneite des ev6nements; si Ton y voit les dieux ou les hommes trop mfichants, ou trop bons; si les choses et les caracteres y different trop de ce que I'experience ou I'histoire nous les montre; et surtout si I'enchainement des evenements y est trop extraordinaire et trop complique" (vii, 330). We may surmise that the romancsquc or Romanticist veneer is thickest in the epic and novel, though to a lesser extent in the realistic genre of Richardson. But it also "un- happily adheres to the dramatic genre, owing to the necessity of imitating the general order of things only when it is pleased to combine extraordinary incidents; for only such afford dra- matic interest." But whilst the "miraculous" proper is interesting, it does not command lasting or absorbing interest. The fairy way of writing, like the "conte plaisant," " may amuse us, but does little else. How could it when it has no real objects of imitation? Deep and lasting interest attaches only to that which can pro- cure us the "illusion" of reality, and a good poem of any kind must be "marvellous without ceasing to be verisimilar." The extraordinary must be redeemed by the trivial, — a compensa- tory formula which is thus expressed by Diderot : "Le poete ne pent s'abandonner a toute la fougue de son Imagination; il est des bornes qui lui sont prescrites. II a le modele de sa conduite dans les cas de I'ordre general des choses. Voila sa regie. Plus ces cas seront rares et singu- liers. plus il lui faudra d'art, de temps, d'espace et de circon- stances communes pour en composer le merveilleux et fonder '"vii. 329. Cf. xil. 126 (Pensi'cs cUtacMes sur la peinUire, etc.); X, 4S1 CEssai snr la peinture). "V, 276; vii, 1.52. 32 DIDEROT'S ESTHETIC NATURALISM I'illusion. Si le fait historique n'est pas assez merveilleux, il le fortifiera par des incidents extraordinaires; s'il Test trop, 11 I'affaiblira par des incident communs" (vii, 334 f.) In short, Diderot claims on behalf of the artist the privi- lege of practicing what Father Rapin called "le temperament du merveilleux et du vraisemblable." ^^ The similarity of the for- mulas employed by the two critics conceals, however, a marked difference. For while Rapin defined the "marvellous" as some- thing against the order of nature and the "verisimilar" as that which conforms to popular belief, decorum and even technical recipe, Diderot seems to have assimilated the marvellous to the "singular instance" of Baconian physics and the verisimilar to the vera causa of New^tonian fame. It is not surprising, then, if he held a work of art to be a concatenation of fact and fancy resembling that of fact and hypothesis in a "system" of physics. Besides preferring the marvellous and verisimilar to the less "interesting" aspects of nature, the poetic imitation of nature differs from its scientific interpretation inasmuch as the main concern of art, the interesting thing par excellence, is human suffering and human passion. Thus, having begun by the statement that the beauty of art has the same foun- dation as the truth of nature, Diderot ended by saying equally emphatically that : "Autre chose est la verite en poesie; autre chose en philosophie. Pour etre vrai, le philosophe doit conformer son discours a la nature des objets; le poete a la nature de ses caracteres. Peindre d'apres la passion et I'interet, voila son talent" (vii, 363). Folio wi-ng the lead of Du Bos, Diderot regarded the power of art to touch and move as its most important function. Diderot often speaks as if emotion were intrinsically esthetic and one must scrutinize Diderot's writings very closely to learn that the capacity of art to express and arouse emotions is secondary lo that of educing that state of disinterestedness and pleasure in which, estheticians say, consists the spell of art." "Rapin, Reflexi07is sur la povtique; de la poHique en general, se^t. xxiii, in CEuvres (Amst., 1709), vol. II, p. 136. "Cf. xi, 116 (Salon de 1161). "LE DRAME" 33 To pursue our inquiry into the nature of poetic (and there- fore dramatic) imitation, whilst the Aristotelians speak of "idealizing" nature, of carrying out its intention, of "perfecting" and "embellishing" it, Diderot speaks of sentimentalizing it. The artist, says he, must choose the "strongest" nature, ■/. e., that most steeped in passion, and in framing his hypotheses he may, or must, further energize passion by setting it in the medium most favorable to its growth. Other things being equal, he should conceive the tensest situations imaginable. It is this practise which differentiates the dramatic poet from the his- torian. "On lit, dans I'histoire, ce qu'un homme du caractSre de Henri IV a fait et souffert. Mais combien de circonstances possibles oil il eut agi et souffert d'une maniere conforme a son caractere, plus merveilleuse, que I'histoire n'offre pas, mais que la poesie imagine!" (vii, 333). "Si Ton mettait en vers VHistoire de Charles XIl elle n'en serait pas moins une histoire. Si Ton mettait la Henriade en prose, elle n'en serait pas moins un poeme. Mais I'histo- rien a ecrit ce qui est arrive, purement et simplement, ce qui ne fait pas toujours sortir les caracteres autant qu'ils pour- raient; ce qui n'emeut ni n'interesse pas autant qu'il est possible d'emouvoir et d'interesser. Le poete eut ecrit tout ce qui lui aurait semble devoir affecter le plus. II eQt feint des discours. II eut change I'histoire" (vii, 332). Characterization and emotive expression are thus closely interconnected and essential to imitation; moreover, "I'ex- pression est en general I'image d'un sentiment," or somatic translation of emotion." Hence the extensive painting of emotion in Diderot's novels and dramas, and its prominence in his theory. "Qu'est-ce qui nous affecte dans le spectacle de I'homme anime de quelques grandes passions? Sont-ce ses discours? Quelquefois. Mais ce qui emeut toujours, ce sont des cris, des mots articules, des voix rompues, quelques monosyllabes qui s'echappent par intervalles, je ne sais quel murmure dans la gorge, entre les dents... La voix, le ton. le geste. Taction, "x, 484 (Essai sur la peinture). 34 DIDEROT'S ESTHETIC NATURALISM voila ce qui appartient a I'acteur; et c'est ce qui nous frappe surtout dans le spectacle des grandes passions" (vii, 105 f.) He carried out this notion to excess in the Paradoxc sur le comedien (1770-78) by inviting the actor to present the out- ward semblance of emotion, without feehng it." His true opin- ion, however, which harmonizes all his utterances, is that the portrayal of inner struggle must go hand in hand with that of its external manifestations. It is at this point that, albeit surreptitiously, subjectivism: at last enters Diderot's poetics, "eloquence" and "poesy" being by him assigned almost the same mimetic function as the ou^ ward manifestations of expression. As Diderot is not explicit in this connection, it is well to remember two things that make his meaning clearer. First, that the essence of "poetry" (and "eloquence") is the elaboration of "images"; a point on which Diderot agrees with Du Bos'* and countless predecessors. Next, that these "images" inherit the function which La Motte and Shaftesbury (not to mention the Italians that preceded them) ascribed to "design" or desscin, i. e., the mental form which guides the artist's composition and is superimposed on the object of his imitation. Disgusted with the everlasting "fable"^ or fiction," with mythology and allegories. La Mottte had wished for something radically different, for "une fiction de figures et de tours, qui donne de la vie a tout, qui mette la raison meme en images, qui fasse agir et raisonner les vertus et les vices, et qui, en peignant les passions, fasse quelquefois sentir d'un seul mot de genie leur principe, leurs stratagemes et leurs effets." " Diderot, too, sets down reason in images," and emotion and motion beside reason. But he does it in another fashion. Accepting as he did Locke, Condillac and Hume's account of " V. the chapter on acting and tragedy. Cf. the discussion in Jacques le Fataliste (1773), vi, 160. " Cf. Du Bos, Reflexions critiques, pt. i, sect. 33. " La Motte, Discours sur les prix que decernait VAcademie,. Quoted by Dupont, Houdar de la Motte (Paris, 1890), p. 271. "Cf. V, 213 (Eloge de Richardson). "LE DKAME" 35 the origin of ideas," lie held ihat all our abstract iiutioiis had boon dcri\cd from "iiiuicjcs" or "tableaux."'" (lie seems, by the way, to have conceived this pictorial primordium as evolving out of slill more original motor "impressions.")" lie regarded concrete, imaginative, primitivist, or "poetic" thinking as more expressi\e and communicative of feeling than the algebraic symbolism of science and philosophy. These images, directly or through the association with other "iiiiaos, Saint-.Mard, d'Alembert and Chastellux — were straying off the beaten track of objectivism. With Diderot form was a necessary element of art, not the adventitious cloak that, according to the Car- tesians'*^ and even some representatives of the "philosophic spir- it," obscured reason and hindered its communication. lie v>rotc in the Reflexions siir Terence (1762): "Je conviens qu'ou il n'y a point de chose, il ne peut y avoir de style; mais je ne conQoia pas comment on peut oter au style sans oter a la chose. Si un podant s'empare d'un raisonnement de Ciceron ou de Dem; Athene, et qu'il le rfduise en un syllogisme serait-il en droit de pretendre qu'il n'a fait que supprimer des mots, sans avoir altere le fond? L'homme de goiit lui repondra: Eh! qu'est devenue cette harmonie qui me seduisait? Comment se sont evanouies ces images, qui m'assaillaient en foule, et qui me troublaient? Et ces expressions, tantot delicates, tantot energiques, qui r^veillalent dans mon esprit je ne sais combien d'idees acces- soires...qui tenaient mon ame agitee d'une suite presque " Condillac, Essai sur Vorigine des connaissances humaineSr pt. I, sect. I, ch. 2; sect, ii, ch. iii-iv. Cf. especially Hume's Enquiry concerning the human understanding, sect, ii; Treatise of hitman nature, book i. pt. i. "vii, 333 ff. "Cf. ii, 145, 17S ff. "" X, ISS f., xi, 134, etc. Cf. the esthetics of Alison, Quatremfire de Quinry, Taine. Seailles, etc. "The Port-Royalists, Berkeley, even Condillac, ascribed the materialization of expression to the fall of man. 36 DIDEROT'S ESTHETIC NATURALISM ininterrompue de sensations diverses, et qui formaient cet Impetueux ouragan qui la soulevait a son gre; je ne les re- trouve plus." ^* Rhythm, harmony, metaphor cannot be altered with im- punity since, "strictly speaking, when the style is good, there is not a single word but has a function to perform; and a word that has a function to perform stands for something, and some- thing so essential that, if for the proper expression its nearest synonym be substituted, or even the proper expression for its synonym, the meaning conveyed will sometimes be the very opposite of that intended by the orator or poet." " Matter and form, contents and expression, achieve, as it were, a substantial union. Art is Jionw additus naturae, at once subjective and objective. "Poetry" and "eloquence" are to a certain extent "exaggeration and falsehood" ;"* yet they are the interesting thing in art and its soul. It is to them that art is indebted for its suggestiveness and perennial novelty. It is they that ener- gize, amplify, modify and emotionalize nature. In the Reve de d'Alemhert (1769) Diderot goes so far as to compare the poet to a musical instrument which "is either self-winding or wound up by some extraneous cause. It then vibrates within or resounds without ; it silently records the impressions it receives, or causes them to burst out, as sounds in a scale {par des sons convenus)." '' The artist's account, pregnant with "accessory ideas" of subjective origin, is "poetic or historical." (This last word is taken in its highest sense.) Yet Diderot falls short of subjectivism and expressionism ow- ing to his conviction that, in the words of ]\Iatthew Arnold, the artist must subordinate expression to that which it is de- signed to express. His intimate conviction was that, unlike the madman, the great artist perceives real "rapports," that is to say truth, however fragmentary, and all the process of dis- tortion to which his imagination subjects nature is directed to ^■•v, 23.5 (Reflexions sur Terence. 1762). «v, 236. Cf. xi, 267 ff., 326 ff. etc. ='xl, 401 (Salon de 1769). Cf. lii, 486 (Plan d'une tmiversite. 1775-76). "ii, 17S. "LE DRAME" 37 reinforce his impression, and enforce its truth upon us." As the "ends" of poetry are not entirely abritrary, the images and ideas of the artist find an echo in the minds and hearts of the pubHc. To sum up, "poetry or untruth" never quite loses (or at least ought not to lose) contact with nature. Diderot tells us this in /(\s- Deux amis de Bonrbonnc (1770) in which the juxta- position, already noted, of the natural and extraordinary is par- alleled by a compensatory formula which regulates the flights of fancy. The historical narrator (the word "historical" is here synonymous with "poetic") aims at truth; he wishes to compel belief; but he also seeks to interest, touch, move to pity and terror — "effet qu'on n'obtient point sans Eloquence et sans po^sle. Mais I'eloquence est une sorte de mensonge; et rien de plus contraire a I'lllusion que la po^sie; Tune et I'autre exagerent, surfont, amplifient, insplrent la m^fiance; comment s'y pren- dra done ce conteur-ci pour tromper? Le voici. II pars6mera son recit de petites circonstances si liSes h. la chose, de traits si simples, si naturels, et toutefois si difflciles h imaginer, '^ que vous serez force de vous dire en vous meme: Ma foi, cela est vrai: on n'invente pas ces choses-1^. C'est alnsi qu'il sauvera I'exageration de I'eloquence et de la poesie; que la verity de la nature couvrira le prestige de I'art; et qu'il satisfera a deux conditions qui semblent contradictoires, d'etre en meme temps historien et po6te, v6ridique et menteur." "^ Diderot prescribed that energetic characterization and stylistic blandishments must be linked with the prosaic and jejune*' in a chain wherein each element controls its neighbors, as the nexus of fact and hypothesis does in the "systematic" interpretation of nature. For in this way the poet "will redeem tlie exaggeration of eloquence and poetry; the truth of nature will cover the magic spell of art ; and he will satisfy two seem- "xi, 293 (Salon de 1761). ^v, 276 f. Cf. V, 217, 218 (Eloge de Richardson, 1761), •"Cf. xii, 120 f. 38 DIDEROT'S ESTHETIC NATURALISM ingly contradictory requirements, being at once historian and poet, truthful and deceptive."^ Atque ita mentitur, sic veris falsa remiscet, Primo ne medium, medio ne discrepet imum.'^ This system of checks and balances is completed by the opposition of "taste" and "genius," the organs involved in artis- tic creation.'^'' Owing to his ambiguous use of the words "gout," "esprit," and "genie" or "verve," Diderot's meaning can be established only by carefully piecing together a great many of his utterances. When this is done, it will be seen that by "taste" he designates, among other things, the methodic, critical and educable faculty habitually accompanying "judgment" and eliminative of individual details and which apprehends "univer- sal" and "eternal" beauty, i. e., good taste upholding certain formal standards of beauty. As such it stands in contrast to "genius," the intuitive, creative, spontaneous and unstandardized faculty which is dependent upon "sensibility" and "imagination" while transcending their ordinary manifestations, and which appreciates and creates "unusual," "pathetic," "strong," "sub- lime," "irregular," and "negligent" beauties, "bizarre and vio- lent situations," and "seems to change the nature of things" which it tries to shape to its whims and desires.^ Now, wit and judgment often are at strife and "la verve se laisse rare- ment maitriser par le gout." But for all that "it does not ex- clude it" and conversely. For, aside from the fact that Diderot constantly confuses the functions of the two organs, not only is there a "gout de I'homme de genie," which divines and creates permanent ideals, but on a more modest scale, every act of artistic creation may be regarded as the joint product of these two antagonistic organs, one of which makes for regularity, generality, or, if you prefer, ideality, while the other is con- •''' V. 277. ^" De arte pnetira, v. 1;'! f. ^ Cf. iii, 485 (Plan cVune university) ; iv, 26 f. (Fragm. s. le genie); v, 233 f. (Rejl. sur I'ocle); x, 519 (Essai sur la peinture) ; xi, 25, 130 f. (Refl. sur Vocle); xii, 75 ff.. 105 (Pens^es detach^es sur la peinture. etc.); xiv, 42o/'"E}iejiclope(lie") ; xv, 35 tt. ("Genie"') ; xix, 117 (a Mile Volland. Sept. 2. 1762) ; etc. V. infra, subchapter vi. ^ Cf. Hugo's antithesis of the grotesque and sublime. "LE DRAME" 39 cerned in individualizing, in bringing out the characteristic, accidental and irregular. Imagine a painted head, says Diderot in Ics Dciix amis de Bourbonne. All its lines are strong, grand and regular ; it forms the rarest and most perfect whole. "J'eprouve, en lo considerant, du respect, de I'admiration, de I'effroi. J'en cherche le modele dans la nature, et ne I'y trouve pas ; en comparaison tout est faible, petit et mesquin ; c'est une tete ideale; je le sens, je me le dis." Now let the artist mark on its forehead a slight scar and paint a wart on the temple. From ideal, the painting has become a portrait. It is no lon- ger \'enus, but my neighbor. Only now do I become really interested." As the jioet has said: A ces petits defauts marques dans sa peinture L'esprit avec plaisir reconnait la nature. We are now in a position to understand the somewhat cryptic soliloquy of Ariste'"' which ends the treatise De la Pocsic dramatiqne and which, purporting as it does to yield the fruit of Diderot's deepest meditations concerning the nature of ideal beauty in general, is also of capital importance for his dramatic theory in particular. The monologue begins with an enumera- tion of the main causes of the uncertainty of'our ideas of truth, goodness, and beauty. With no two men absolutely alike in physical organization, education, mode of living, social status, etc., and with every individual undergoing continual "revolu- tions," how can one speak of a constant standard of taste or universal notions concerning beauty? Happily, faith in the existence of natural laws and in the inductive and deductive methods of science saves Ariste, who is Diderot himself, from thoroughgoing scepticism. A "module hors de moi" and in function of the constant elements of nature may be employed as a working hypothesis and provisional "models" of beauty, valid for large groups of men, may be framed. We say "models" advisedly, for the existence of one single "modele general ideal de toute perfection" is a chimera. Hoping to approach absolute '■'v, 277; cf. xi, 151 (Saloji de 1767). •'■vii, 300-394. (It may have originated about 1753). 40 DIDEIIOT'S ESTHETIC NATURALISM perfection with the progress of knowledge, let each "condition" (writers, philosophers, etc.) provisionally frame their own model, even as the Greek sculptors had done/' (For we may surmise that "taste," now usually busy imitating existing works of art, was with the early artists engaged in observing and copy- ing Nature when it still retained its primitive and wholesome simplicity and regularity. But this is anticipating Diderot's esthetic of the plastic arts) : "Que rhomme de lettres se fasse un modele ideal de riiomme de lettres le plus accompli, et que ce soit par la bouche de cet liomme qu'il juge les productions des autres et les siennes. Que le philosophe suive le meme plan" (vii, 393). These models are then to be modified, and systematically distorted (no irony is here intended) according to circum- stances. The student, for example, will have round shoulders, the porter strong loins, the pregnant woman will tilt her head backward, etc. The significance of these statements will appear when we speak of the theatre of "conditions." "Voila les observations qui multipliees a I'infini, forment le statuaire, et lui apprennent k alterer, fortifier, affaiblir, defigurer et reduire son modele ideal, de I'Stat de nature k tel autre etat qu'il lui plait. C'est I'etude des passions, des mceurs, des caracteres, des usages, qui apprendra au peintre de rhomme a alterer son modele et a le reduire de I'Stat d'homme a celui d'homme bon ou mechant, tranquille ou colere. C'est ainsi que d'un seul simulacre il emanera une variete infinie de representations differentes qui couvriront la scene ou la toile" (vii, 393 f.) We have reached the Ultima Thulc of Diderot's poetics and wdiat do we discover? An absolute, or quasi-absolute "mod- el of beauty," an ideal substratum, reminiscent of Nature's pris- tine estate, even though distorted in its material exemplifica- tions by a consequent series of modifications which lend it individuality, character and passion. Or, again, if one should prefer to start with the concrete or particular, Diderot might ^Cf. xiii, 75; viii, 390; x, 12, 14-16. "LE DRAME" 41 tell him that "le beau n'est que le vrai releve ])ar des circon- stances possibles, mais rares et merveilleuses." '" Diderot was everywhere minded to balance art with nature, "lie" with truth, imitation with expression, wit with genius, reason with senti- ment, the subjective with the objective. He may be callel with equal propriety a Classicist and a Romanticist. Vet his most appropiate appellation is, perhaps, that of ideo-realist. This would recognize the dualistic nature of his beliefs and empha- size the predominance of the realistic moment. Diderot the sensualist, evolutionist, and vitalist, could not help being more interested in the "vcrrue" than in general man, more attracted liy the protean and exuberant manifestations of passion than by rigidly corect and inexpressive "models." In spite of much he had in common with the Classicists, he would not have fully acknowledged the traditional aims of dramatic art, for instance, those proclaimed by Rapin : "La verite ne fait les choses que comme elles sont, et le vraisemblable les fait comme elles doivent etre. La verite est presque toujours defectueuse, par le melange des con- ditions singulieres qui la composent. II ne nait rien au monde qui ne s'eloigne de la perfection de son idee en y naissant. II faut chercher des originaux et des modeles dans le vraisemblable, et dans les principes universels des choses, on il n'entre rien de materiel qui les corrompe. C'est par la que les portraits de I'histoire sont moins parfaits que les portraits de la poesie" (Riipin, op. cit.. ii, 137). The Entreticns and De la Poesie dramatique are, on the contrary, nothing if not a continual reminder to the dramatic "poet" to imitate the procedure of the painter of genre, to substitute as far as possible nature for art, to set the "naif"— life itself — on his canvas. Even later, in the Salon of 1767 and the Paradoxe sur le coincdien, when the retour a I'antique brought with it the gran gusto and Platonism, and Diderot turned his attention to historical tragedy and history painting, it was not the abstract ideal which fascinated Diderot, but the individual portrait and picturesque reality. '»xii, 125. 42 DIDEROT'S ESTHETIC NATURALISM V THE "POETICS" OF THE "DRAMA OF CONDITIONS" IS A CONSISTENT APPLICATION OF DIDEROT'S GENERAL POETICS Besides obeying the laws of general poetics, the dramatic genre, in its totaHty as well as in its most representative part, "drama" proper, has also laws of its own. Diderot nowhere systematically differentiated dramatic poetry from the principal genres of narrative poetry, i. e., epic and pastoral, and from the novel. It is easy to see, however, that the "merveillcux" pre- dominates in the epic and pastoral, which are therefore beyond the scope of our discussion. Aside from its indirect method of presentation — it paints for the imagination instead of the eye — the novel differs from the drama by its "romantic veneer," its complacence in events more improbable, more protracted, more complicated and more loosely held together than those of the drama, which hastily progresses to a more or less tragic end.* A good novel, says Diderot, need not make a good dramatic poem ; but one may always expect a good drama to be turned into a superior novel. It is most likely that Diderot distin- guished between the comcdic larmoyante which was frequently based on an improbable novel of adventure and his own "dramc," which might be considered the culmination and con- densation of a novel in the manner of Richardson. Yet it is certain that, without Diderot's being aware of it, "le vernis romanesque" is laid thickly in his own dramas and that he had a pronounced bias toward melodrama. Coming to the special "poetics" of the dramatic genre we need not deal at length with the laws which drama shares with "poesy" in general. Some of these laws, that of verisimilitude for example, must be more heeded by the dramatist than by his fellow artists. (The burlesque and fantastic are, of course, disregarded in our discussion.) In the Bijoux indiscrets, Dide- 'Cf. vii, 330, 88, 156, 349; iv, 285; vi. 43, 239; v, 220, 221. Cf. Corr. lift., ii, 333 f., 377 (of Mme de Graffigny) ; Beaumarchais, Ess. s. le genre dramatigue; and Mercier, Du Theatre, p. 106, 140. "LE DRAME" 43 rot IkuI demanded "so exact an imitation of action that the continually deceived spectator would imagine he is witnessing real facts." The Iintrcticns and Dc la pocsic are equally cate- goric ; actions, characters, scenery, acting, declamation, must faithfully imitate real life: "Des habits vrais, des discours vrais, une intrigue simple et naturelle" (vii. 120). "II n'y a rien de ce qui se passe dans le monde qui ne puisse avoir lieu sur la scene" (vii, 378). "La maitresse de Barnwell entre echevelee dans la prison de son amant. Les deux amis s'embrassent et tombent k terre. Philoctete se roulait autrefois a I'entree de sa caverne. II y faisait entendre les cris inarticul6s de la douleur. Ces cris formaient un vers peu nombreux; mais les entrailles du spectateur en etaient dechirees. Avons-nous plus de delica- tesse et plus de genie que les Atheniens?" (vii, 95 f.) As a rule, Diderot speaks as if no selection need be made of the "nature" that is to be represented dramatically. Cer- tainly, no emotion can be strong enough : he dreamed of "giv- ing torture to the spectator, as it were." ^ Colle said of Saurin's drama, Bcverlci, that "elle attache, mais elle n'interesse nulle- ment. On n'y est point attendri, mais oppresse; on n'y pleurt pas, on etouffe; on en sort avec le cauchemar." "^ He found in it a "peinture trop vraie et par cette raison trop effrayante et trop revbltante." To this Diderot would have surely retorted: "Ou'ils se fassent a ces emotions-la !" "Moi. — Qui sait si nous irions chercher au theatre des impressions aussi fortes? On veut etre attendri, touche, effray6; mais jusqu'a un certain point. Dorval. — Pour juger sainement, expliquons-nous. Quel est I'objet d'une composition dramatique? Moi. — C'est, je crois, d'inspirer aux hommes I'amour de la vertu, I'horreur du vice . . . Dorval. — Ainsi, dire qu'il ne faut les emouvoir que jusqu'^ un certain point, c'est pretendre qu'il ne faut qu'ils = vii. 96, 149. 314. ^ Colle, Journal et m^moires. ed. Bonhomme, III, 95. 44 DIDEROT'S ESTHETIC NATURALISM sortent d'un spectacle, trop epris de la vertu, trop eloignes du vice. II n'y aurait point de poetique pour un peuple qui serait aussi pusillanime. Que serait-ce que le gout; ct que I'art deviendrait-il, si Ton se refusait a son energie, et si Ton posait des barrieres arbitraires a ses effets?" (vii, 148 f.) Yet Diderot is not a naturalist in the sense in which we apply this term to the author of Thcrcsc Raqiiin. .Perhaps we ought to say that, like Zola and M. Antoine, he was less of a liber- tarian than he thought. Diderot explicitly admits, to begin with, that "La verite...est souvent froide comme elle est commune et plate... S'il faut etre vrai, c'est comme Moliere, Regnard, Richardson, Sedaine; la verite a ses cotes piquants, qu'on saisit quand on a du genie" (vi, 43, Jacques Ic Fataliste). More than any other poet, the dramatist must try and "extend the sphere of our pleasures,"' he must select not only "les sensations les plus fortes" but also "les plus agreables."" Diderot recognized that the disgusting and atrocious must be placed in a poetic light before they are acceptable to art ; that artistic verisimilitude is something beyond mere truth to fact. There are things, moreover, which the dramatist may allude to — thus turning narrative poet — but cannot resurrect before our eyes, because our senses will react to the physical, instead of the esthetic, impression. Some things must be accentuated, others toned down when transported from real life on to the stage. This is why, in spite of his professed libertarianism, Diderot could beg of Voltaire not to place a scaffold on the stage : "On dit que Mile Clairon demande un echafaud dans la decoration; ne le souffrez pas. morbleu! Cest pent etre une belle chose en soi; mais si le genie eleve jamais une potence sur la scene, bientot les imitateurs y accrocheront le pendu en personne" (xix, 459, November 28, 1760). ^vii, 151. 'vii. 312. Cf. X, 492 (Essai sur la peinture, about 1765); xi, 173 (Salon de 1767). "LE DRAME" 45 "II y a de la difference entre la plaisanterle de theatre et la plaisanterle de societe. Celle-ci serait trop faible sur la scSne, et n'y ferait aucun effet, I'autre serait trop dure dans le monde, et elle offenserait. L.e cynisme, si odieux, si incommode dans la societe, est excellent sur la sc6ne" (vii, 363; cf. viii, 3S9). "Si un valet parle sur la scene comme dans la societe 11 est maussade; s'il parle autreraent il est faux" (vii, 137). Xay, interesting reality and the "verisimilar" (in the phys- ical sense) may look shabby when carried to the stage; they may not appear poetic enough. Diderot says as much in the Troisicnic cntrcticn when he advises the dramatist to paint for the imagination, that is to say, relate those incidents which can- not produce "illusion" when directly presented." Racine did this in the last act of Iphigenic' No actor, be he ever so gifted, could personate the frenzied Calchas, his hair l)ristling on his head in the terrible attitude suggested by the poet. No arti- ficial spectacle could conjure up, as does the poet's account, the light of day obscured by the multitude of darts of a whole army in tumult, the earth besprinkled with blood, a princess with a poniard thrust in her breast, the winds unleashed, the skies ablaze with lightning, a foaming and roaring sea. Even if the audience could be made to see them, these things would contrast with the prosaic realism of the rest of the spectacle, to the detriment of verisimilitude. This example is taken from the "tragedie connue, je ne peux tirer mes exemples d'un genre qui n'existe pas encore parmi nous." A fortiori, the principles he defends hold true of the more realistic "tragedie domes- tique." The truth of the theatre, like that of "poetry" in general, is hypothetical, truth of impression or "illusion" entailing a certain amount of "intellectual exaggeration."' It falls short of verism and admits of conventions: "Je vous ai lu [Diderot tells Dorval. the supposed author of Le Fils naturel] : mais je suis bien trompe, ou vous ne vous etes pas attache a repondre scrupuleusement «vii, 147 f. 'Act V. sc. 7. "vii. 148. 46 DIDEROT'S ESTHETIC NATURALISM aux intentions de monsieur votre pere. II vous avail recom- mande, ce me semble, de rendre les choses comme elles s'etaient passees; et j'en ai remarque plusieurs qui ont un caractere de fiction qui n'en impose qu'au theatre, ou Ton dirait qu'il y a une illusion et des applaudissements de con- vention. D'abord vous vous etea asservi a la loi des unites. . ." (vii, 87). Dorval admitted that so many events could not all happen in the same place, within twenty-four hours, and in exactly the same sequence as in the play. But, he asked in turn : ". . . Si le fait a dure quinze jours, croyez-vous qu'il fallut accorder la meme duree a la representation? Si les €vene- ments en ont ete separes par d'autres, qu'il etait a propos de rendre cette confusion? Et s'ils se sont passes en diffe- rents endroits de la maison, que je devais aussi les repandre sur !e meme espace?" (vii, 87). In life, continues Dorval, our actions constitute a series of rather insignificant incidents, which a novel may reproduce, but which, admitted upon the stage, would kill all interest in X the play. "Au theatre, ou Ton ne represente que des instants particuliers de la vie reelle, il faut que nous y soyons tout en- tiers a la meme chose."" The "laws of three unities" are there- fore "reasonable {sensecs)," although difficult to observe.'* And Diderot would see them introduced even in the opera. "Je serais fache d'avoir pris quelque liceoce contraire k ces principes generaux de I'unite de temps et de I'unite d'action, et je pense qu'on ne peut etre trop severe sur I'unite de lieu. Sans cette unite, la conduite d'une piece est presque toujours embarrassee, louche" (vii, 88). Nature is diverse but a work of art must be one. "Rien n'est beau s'il n'est un." " Diderot is very prodigal of unities. Resides the famous three and that of interest, there is, for instance, the unity of "color" ; "C'est le premier incident qui decidera de la couleur de I'ouvrage entier." '' This may or may not be the same as the important unity of impression which is specific to each genre. Then, there are in the personages of -vii, 88. '"vii, 87. "vii, 347. -^^^g 'iia„ "LE DRAME" 47 tlic drama lesser unities of tone, character, accent. In short, in a play "tout est enchaine" — practically Taine's principle of convergence of effects. Unfortunately, in so numerous and nondescript a company the classical unities lose caste. In characteristic fashion, after having proclaimed them, Diderot set about to undermine them, beginning with the best entrenched, the unity of place. Like La Alotte before and Hugo after hitn, he paid tribute of scorn to a stage in which courtiers conspire against the ruler in the very hall to which they lia\e been called by him. Since the drai)iatis persoiiac remain, sneeringly remarks Diderot, we are asked to imagine that the place has gone. Would we had a stage in which "the setting would change whenever the action must change." " Elsewhere he wishes for a stage in which two actions, in different settings, could be simultaneously repro- duced." The unity of time is even less binding. \Ye have already seen that the unity of impression permitted the admix- ture of joy and sadness. The unity of action, too, was bound to suffer at the hands of Diderot, owing to his secret predi- lection for very complicated plots and biographic details. Xor did he wax enthusiastic over the unity of character f' he admits the possibility of character development in the complex drama. Let us conclude that, as long as regularity was necessary to a system which was to enter the sanctum of the Comedie-Fran- (^aise, it was professed ad hoc; but that while Diderot con- sidered organic unity to be essential to a drama or to anv other work of art. he had neither "undue respect nor undue contempt" for the classic "unities." We may also note here another manifestation of Diderot's realism, namely his rejection of the supernatural. Christian and jiagan : "II y a trop peu de foi sur la terre. Kt puis, nos diables sont d'une figure is gothique, de si mauvais gout." "Le sortilege," "la superstition nationale," deny truth of fact — "I'ordre universel des choses, qui doit servir de base a la raison poetique." Accordingly, they are out of place, even on the lyric 13 vii, 88. "vii, 116. ■■'vii, .^69. 48 DIDEROT'S ESTHETIC NATURALISM stage." Are not these affirmations dictated by extra-esthetical considerations ? And why did our philosopher admit Christian and pagan miracles to pictorial representation? It is difficult to answer with certainty. It is probable, however, that in sanc- tioning as he did the supernatural in painting," Diderot merely acknowledged a fait accompli; on the other hand, putting reli- gion on the stage might entail dangerous consequences from the Philosophers' point of view. Furthermore, he may have believed that, owing to its less material medium, painting is better suited for the representation of events which are real only in the minds of believers, for theatrical "machines" are coarse things and too suggestive of deceit. Diderot's endeavors in behalf of realistic representation of vehement passions led to his preconizing the lavish employment of dumb scenes and picturesque "tableaux" in lieu of roma- nesque ''coups dc theatre" and unnatural "tirades" " Great pas- sions, said Diderot, are silent or monosyllabic ; their rhetoric is confined to a few sentences or fragments of sentences, said over and over. (He was also thinking of the lyric theatre of Metastasio.) Not only might the silent moments, so numerous in the drama of passion, be filled up with expressive mimicry; but dumb scenes could be employed simviltaneously or alter- nately with the spoken, to enhance dramatic effect and speed the progress of action. Diderot employed this scenic method — unfortunately with ludicrous result — in his "tragic" version of le Fils naturel.^^ He demanded of the dramatic poet always to visualize his scenes before writing them down. "Pour moi, je ne congois pas comment le poete peut commencer une scene, s'il n'imagine pas Taction et le mouve- ment du personnage qu'il introduit; si sa demarche et son masque ne lui sont pas presents. C'est ce simulacre qui inspire, le premier mot, et le premier mot donne le reste" (vii, 260; cf. 3S6). '«vii, 155, 157; viii, 474 (review of Hamlet, translated by Duels). "Of. X, 492. >^vii, 94, 105, 116, 145. >^ vii, 141 ff. "LE DRAME" 49 The "tableaux" Diderot makes so much of are the application to pantoniinio of the "law s of jiicturesque composition." Accord- ing to him, it is ahsunl to say they retard dramatic action. Had Diderot lived to sec the pliotoplay he would have hailed it as something he had predicted and wished for : "Ah! si nous avions des theatres oH la dt'^coratlon chan- geat toutes les fois que le lieu de la sc6ne dolt changer!" (vii, 88). "Si le spectateur est au theatre comme devant une toile, oil des tableaux divers se succ^deraient par enchantement, pourquoi le philosophe qui s'assied sur les pieds du lit de Socrate, et qui craint de le voir mourir, ne serait-il pas aussi pathetique sur la scene, que la femme et la fille d'Eu- damidas dans le tableau de Poussin? Appliquez les lois de la composition pittoresque a la pantomime et vous verrez que que ce sont les memes . . . Mais je jette ces vues pour ma satisfaction particuliere et la votre. Je ne pense pas que nous aimions jamais assez les spectacles pour en venir 1^" (vii, 385). Diderot exhibited some embarrassment as to the dramatic vehicle of expression. He asked himself whether domestic tragedy might not be written in verse. Though he answered Xo, he owned he was at a loss for a good reason. It is diffi- cult, however, to believe that none such was contained in the questions he asked in this connection, especially in the last two : "La verite du sujet et la violence de I'interet rejet- teraient-elles un langage symetrise? La condition des per- sonnages serait-elle trop voisine de la notre, pour admettre une harmonic reguliere?" (vii, 332). Most "dramaturgists"** did not hesitate to avail themselves of these arguments to recommend prose as the legitimate medium of dramatic expression. It is therefore all the more remarkable that Diderot should have evinced some hesitation in adopting them. He must have seen an alternative to the exclusive em- ^' Beaumarchais. LJssai sur Ir f/rnrr dram, srrieux; Mercier, Du ThHtre, ch. 26; de Falbaire, Pref. to Ic Fairicant de Londres; Sedaine, Pref. to Maillarrl. Vt Gaiffe, Jc Drame, p. 483 ff. 50 DIDEROT'S ESTHETIC NATURALISM ployment of prose form since he asked: "Ce genre exigerait-il un style particulier dont je n'ai pas la notion?" As these words would not fit the verse of lyric coupe and varying number of syllables which some of Diderot's fellow-dramatists employed, it is not unlikely that he had some hazy notion of a sort of vers libre or "poesie rytlimique"^^ resembling now the verse of Aletastasio, now the blank verse of Shakespeare, now poetic prose, according to personages and dramatic situations. This conjecture is upheld by what Grimm says in a paper in the Correspondance litter aire of 1767." He there pretends to settle an anticipated quarrel between Diderot and Saint-Lambert as to whether prose is more suitable than verse for the "dratne serieux." The odds are in favor of Diderot's agreeing to Grimm's contention that "II ne peut pas etre question s'il faut ecrire les pieces de theatre en prose, lorsque dans une langue la poesie peut avoir tous les avantages de la prose combines avec les avan- tages qui lui soat propres. II est visible qu'il faut donner alors la preference a la poesie." When poetry has the simplicity, facility, flexibility, concision, naturalness and rapidity of prose it should be preferred, but not otherwise : "Je serais bien fache que Metastasio eut ecrit de la prose, je serais bien fache que Terence n'eut pas ecrit en vers, mais quels vers!" (Corr. litt., vii, 415). Who can doubt, (Jrimm went on, that French comic poetry ,^ even in its best representative, Regnard, is too ornate, too ver- bose, too symmetrical, too epic in short," to constitute good dramatic poetry ? Not Diderot, we are sure. And we may surmise that, like Grimm, he was not loath to employ verse in the "dramatic poem," provided the verse was as natural and poetic as he conceived his own prose to be. The following lines from the Second entretien do not contradict our hypothesis : "Cf. vi, 336. "^Corr. litt., vii, 415 f. (Sept. 15, 1767); cf. ibid., viii, 460 ff. (Feb. 15, 1770). ="Cf. also Diderot, viii, 406. "LE DRAME" 51 "Les Anglais ont Ic Manhaiid dc Londrcs et Ic Joucur, tragMies en prose. Les tragedies de Shakespeare sunt nioitiS vers et nioitie prose. Le premier poCte qui nous fit rire avec de la prose, introduisit la prose dans la comf^die. Le premier po^te qui nous fera pleurer avec de la prose, introduira la prose dans la trag^die" (vii, 120). But whilst Grimm was for vers librc, Mercier, on the other hand, recommended to the dramatists the "poetry" of ri-lnnaque and la Nouvclle Hclo'ise; and his point of view was shared by Marmontel."" This is not surprising in view of the success of the doctrine of poetic prose in the eighteenth cen- tury." The two solutions, that of Mercier and that of Grimm, are not mutually exclusive, and were probably reconciled by Diderot who had an exquisite feeling for the vague and touch- ing intimations conveyed by poetic harmony and regarded rhyme as a secondary character of poetry.'* Diderot would not have been at a loss to justify a more exalted and lyrical style of dra- matic expression than ordinary prose. "Nothing makes one so eloquent as misfortune,"" said he, and Beaumarchais added in Diderotian vein that the style of a personage in mortal danger is a little greater than nature. Moreover, j)assion speaks the language of nature, which is lyrical, according to Diderot. / After all, it is likely that he owned with (irimm and in anti- cipation of Hugo, that genius knows wh.ich form best suits its efforts. It v;ould be idle to go through the whole of the "poetics" of the serious genre. Diderot's proscription of the tradit'ona^ comic valets," — "Sont-ce les mceurs qu'on avait il y a deux mille ans ou les notres, qu'il faut imiter?" — the details of ]iis views as to costume, decoration and acting, though quite \\el- come in their time, afford no new theoretical principle^. Dide- rot's remarks on the proprhun of drama and tragedy, /. e.. the =^0n Marmontel, cf. V. Lenel, Marmontcl (Paris, 1902), p. 338 ff., B. Petermann, Der Streit um Vers und Prosn (Berlin, 1913), p. 69 ff. -■ D. Mornet. in Rev. d'Hist. lift., xxi (1914), p. .593. Cf. h:3. Sentiment de In nature en Franee (Paris, 1907), p. 408 ff. "Cf. vii, 328, 332; xi, 331. "vii, 113. "'Cf. vii, 137, 90. 52 DIDEROT'S ESTHETIC NATURALISM tragic or dramatic conflict are of greater interest. Unfortu- nately, they are made in passing and the prevoiling confusion between the drama in general, serious comedy, bourgeoise and heroic tragedy does not make for clearness. Diderot established as a general observation that "if there is anything touching, it is the sight of a man rendered unhappy or guilty through no fault of his own." Fate and the gods were the agents of perdition known to ancient tragedy. Men take their place in the modern. Yet he was no believer in Schik- salsstragocdie : "II faut que les hommes fassent, dans la comedie, le role que font les dieux dans la tragedie. La fatalite et la mechan- cete, voila, dans I'un et I'autre genre, les bases de I'interet dramatique" (vii, 330). The true dramatic situation, we are once told, is that in which all the incidents add to the misfortune of a principal personage who is "gemissant et passif; c'est lui qui parle, et ce sont les autres qui agissent." ^' Diderot may have had in mind his own Pere de famille when he wrote these lines. But the protagonist of his historic tragedy T^r^w^ia is anything but a lachrymose and passive character. It may be that Diderot was led to formulate this too absolute rule by his conviction that "movement is always detrimental to dignity, wherefore the chief dramatic character should but seldom be the 'machiniste' of the play." * Yet his theory of "conditions" makes it plausible that what Diderot really meant was that the tragic situation par excellence is that of a man, good at heart, but worsted in the conflict with his social environment. The hero need not be altogether passive in the contest, although he will suffer in it and react against situations rather than originate them. Diderot says very little about the ethics of tragic conflict beyond what we have already noted. It may be worth mention- ing, however, that in the article "Beau," he ascribed to the "Hutchesonians" certain propositions in which, he says, every- body concurred, viz., that by a moral character Aristotle did :iy Vii, 356. ="viii. 38. "LE DRAME" 53 not mean a \irtuou^ person; that a fabiila bene niorata is an epic or dramatic poem in which action, sentiments, and speeches agree with the characters, good or evil. Yet goodness pleases in itself, and should be given preference. "La seule exception qiril y ait peut §tre h cette r&gle c'est le cas oil la conformity de la peinture avec I'^tat du spectateur gagnant tout ce qu'on ote k la beauts absolue du module, la peinture en devient d'autant plus int^ressante; cet inti^ret qui nalt de I'imperfection, est la raison pour laquelle on a voulu que le heros d'un po6me ^pique ou h6ro- ique ne soit pas sans defaut" (x, 16). In j^hort, Diderot admits in his heroes a moral "verrue" on a basis of primitive and natural goodness," but he prefers to see in serious comedy "the trials and sorrows of virtue," and in domestic tragedy its despair. Here too he pointed the way to the melodrama. A tragic situation attains its maximum of energ)^ and effect in conjunction with a carefully laid out plot. Diderot enjoined the dramatist to begin by sketching his "plan" or plot^' and dis- tinguished between the simple and the complex plot. He paid his tribute of admiration to the simple tragedies of the ancients. Yet he was also pleased with, and perhaps secretly preferred, the complex,^ in w^hich the characters act instead of developing, speeches are scanty and numerous incidents make for interest and rapidity. (We have in fact an imbroglio of Diderot's which is past comprehension.) Whether tlie ])lot be simple or complex, the great law of determinism consistently applied supplies the proper motivations of dramatic incidents and suggests some of the situations. The next step in the construction of a drama after the plot is out- lined is characterization, which, as shown later, is made by keep- ing in mind the situations the dramatic personages are to be placed in and their "conditions." Moreover, on the stage, as in real life, each personage has his own way of pursuing his inte- ^•vii, 131. ^^vii, 332. Cf. Aristotle to whom Diderot refers. "Cf. Beaumarchais' drame mixte, (Pref. to La Merc coupable) ; V. Gaiffe, op. cit., p. 464. '54 DIDEROT'S ESTHETIC NATURALISM rests and a "ton" of his own, indicative of the "passion domi- nantc" and showing in everything he or she says. Dorval, for instance, "avait le ton de la melancoHe ; Constance, le ton de la raison; Rosalie, celui de I'ingenuite; Clairville, celui de la pas- sion, moi [Diderot], celui de la bonhomie."** Character should inspire the "mots dc caracterc." "^ In fact, "les caracteres etant donnes, les discours sont uns." Diderot attached importance also to the cris dc profession, which "often disguise the accent of character." — The scenario and character being determined, the dramatist must next w^rite his scenes in order, from first to last. Keeping order is essential, since in art, as in nature, that which precedes must determine what follows. If the action progresses through the necessity of characters and circumstances, dramatic effect is assured; interest is increased if the outcome of the tragic conflict is expected."^ As we see, Diderot took to heart the lesson of Aristotle according to whom the plot was the seed and also the end of tragedy. This brings us at last to the principal dramatic innovation of Diderot, his substitution, or rather subordination and oppo- sition of "caractere" to "condition," a formula which calls for some preliminary explanation. Diderot sought to justify the secondary role he assigned to character by denying the existence of original types in the society of his time. "Une assimilation qui brouille tous les rangs, I'uniformite nationale, voila la raison pour laquelle la comedie est difficile a faire parmi nous." Under such circum- stances Diderot felt that he was rendering a genuine service to dramatic artists in inviting them to take cognizance of social functions, constantly multiplied by the increasing complexity of society.^' Keeping to the beaten track of character-painting entailed either loss of originality — the basic characters are very few in number"^ and had already been staged — or else waste of **vii, 168. ="vi, 303, 306 (Satire /, sur les Caracteres). «'vii, 341. ='vii, 151. ='vii. 149. Cf. Voltaire, Siccle de Louis XIV, ch. 32; d'Alembert held the same view. "LE DRAME" 55 the artists' energy on shades and details, on the surface of things instead of their philosophic depth. Above all, the com- edy of "conditions" is more efficacious morally: "Pour peu que le caractSre fOt charge, un spectateur pouvait se dire y what a certain "FhUosopJic," who being credited with the interpretations of Horace already alluded to, is none other than Diderot, has to say in the Corrcs- poudancc littcrairc of April 15, 1764. The Philosopher defends Homer against Marmontel'' who found fault with the < Ireek poet because of Achilles' saying "Dear Patroclus, be not angry with me if the news is brought to you in Hades that T sur- rendered Hector's body to his father: for. . ." (not "I could not resist the tears of his unfortunate father," but) . . . "he brought me a ransom worthy of thee." "Ne voyez vous pas [asks our 'Philosopher'] qu'en faisant dire a Achilla : 'car je n'ai pii r^sister aux larmes de ce vieillard," vous lui faites dire une chose commune et triviale, et que ce qui donne de la couleur au discours d'Achille, c'est ce qu'Homere lui fait dire: 'car il m'apporte une rangon digne de moi'? Pourquoi vonlez-vous qu'Achille se laisse flechir par les larmes d'un ennemi dont la querelle a entraine la perte de ce Patrocle si tendrement alm6, si douloureusement regrette? Mais il n'a rien a opposer a la rangon, et il se soumet aux lois de I'usage... "Ce sont les prej^igvs et les moeurs qui en risultent qui rendent nn porme precieux aux yeux d'un homme de gout. Si vous ne savez peindre qu'avec res traits grn^'raux qui con- viennent aux hommes de tous les climats, de toutes les nations, de tous les ages, vous n'attacherez, ni ne toucherez jamais durablenientJ^^ Pourquoi Priam est-il si path^tique? Ce n'est pas parce que c'est un p6re qui pleure la mort de son fils, sans quoi le marechal de Belle-Isle recevant la nou- velle de la mort du comte de Gisors, serait aussi touchant que Priam. Ce qui rend celui-ci pathetique, c'est le soin qu'il met a remplir un devoir r6put6 sacre, celui de donner la sepulture a son fils. Ce devoir si saint est fonde sur un prejuge que vous et moi ne respectons gu6ro: car qu'importe qu'un cadavre soit mange par les oiseaux de proie ou par les vers de terre? Pourquoi done sommes-nous si attendris par la priere de Priam? C'est qu'il n'y a que les prejug4s de touchant en poesie; c'est que celui-ci suppose des moeurs "Marmontel. PoHique fran(:nise, (1763), vol. II, p. 294 ff. •'' (Not italicized in the original.) 74 DIDEROT'S ESTHETIC NATURALISM simples et bien pures, qu'il est fonde sur une infinite de vertus et de qualites honnetes et sociales; et lorsqu'il met un vieillard, venerable par son age et par son rang, dans la neeessite de tomber aux pieds du vainqueur et du meurtrier de son fils, il produit un tableau qui dechire" (Corr. litt., V. 484 f.) There is probably more in these ideas than appears in Grimm's transcription. To explain the paradoxical contrast between Diderot's benevolence toward the Greeks' prejudices and his hatred of those of his own age, we may rightly assume that he regarded the former as beneficial to society and the latter as detrimental to the common weal. But the possibility is not excluded that Diderot, whom Grimm did not fully under- stand on this point, was also endeavoring to establish a parallel between the tragic situations and the heroes of Homer and those of the modern drama-tragedy, in order to assert the identity of the ancient and philosophic tragic genres. Achilles and the Father of the Family are alike heroic, in that they are obliged to stifle their natural feelings out of deference to prejudice. For "heroes, romantic lovers, great patriots, apostles of religion, philosophers a toutc outrancc, all these rare and divine madmen make poetry in life.'"^ Whence we may infer that the heroes of bourgeoise and historical drama and tragedy y are none the less heroic and poetical for their being modern. The legitimacy of the ancestry of the new theatre thus estab- lished, its a-priority would follow as a matter of course. Whether this rapprochement between ancient and Dide- rotian drama is well-founded or not, it is certain that, "poetic" because of the "nature" which was its theme, Greek drama was no less so for its lyricism, for its expression in which a har- mony reminiscent of natural accent accompanied a marvellously plastic language only recently separated from the "langage d'action" ^ If the parallellism of ancient and philosophic drama is to subsist, we must admit that, as already intimated, Diderot did not intend to proscribe "poetic" manners of expression. Dacier tells us that Greek dramatic poetry "was first the daughter of religion, that it then abandoned itself to dissolution ^^'xi, 125 (Salon de J767). ^ Cf. iii, 481. "LE DRAME" 75 and debauchery and finally submitted to the rules of art which came to the rescue of nature, putting an end to its mis- conduct." '' Diderot, on the contrary, seems to ha\ e felt that from the time of its conception "in the wedlock of national superstition and poetry" '^ to that of its perfection by tragedians who were also philosophers and statesmen, the growth of Greek tragedy was entirely unimpeded and natural, a product of free- dom and vcrz'c perfectly apposite to the )uorcs and ideas of the Greeks. It could not have been otherwise in an harmonious society in wliich art sprung from life and returned to it. Tie never tired of recommending the study of the old tragedians as the best companions in the direct observation of nature: "Je ne me lasserai point de crier a nos Frangais: 'La V^rite! La Nature! les Anciens! Sophocle! Philoctete' " (vii, 120). Diderot especially admired the ancients' al)ility to conjure up life in all its energy' and fecundity with the sim!)lest means" — a simple dramatic action taken up toward the end in order that tension be at maximum, and drawn easily and inexorably to its preordained conclusion ; a catastrophe ever imminent and ahvays held back by a simple and true circumstance, a few characters firmly drawn ; energetic ])assions and discourses, direct presentation of action, and beautiful tableaux: no elab- orate decorations, no conventional analyses, intrigues, or coups de theatre. In these respects he hoped that "le drame" might equal ancient tragedy. Was ancient tragedy superior in technique to that perfected by Racine or Corneille? As already stated, Diderot is reticent about the shortcomings of modern tragedy in the Entretlens and De la Pocsie drainat'ujue!^ Yet even before his definitive condemnation of heroic tragedy in the Paradoxc sur le come- ^^ Dacier, La poHique d'Aristote (Paris, 1692), pref. p. iv. ^vii, 155. ''vii, 316, 121. ^ The Additions to the Lettre swr Ics Sottrds (I, 428) would divide honors equally, but Diderot is there trying to prejudice us against the Trevoux journalist. 76 DIDEROT'S ESTHETIC NATURALISM dicn, the Sultana of the Bijoux indiscrets leaves little room for doubt as to its inferiority: "Selim, repondit la sultane, Ricaric vous...clira pour- quoi nos tragedies sont inferieures a celles des Anciens; pour moi, je me ehargerai volontiers de vous montrer que cela est... Mettez a part certaines idees relatives a leurs usages, a leurs mceurs, et a leur religion, et qui ne vous cho. quent que parce que les conjonctures ont change; et con- venez que leurs sujets sont nobles, bien clioisis, interessants, que Taction se developpe comme d'elle meme; que les denouements n'y sont pas forces, que I'interet n'y est point partage, ni Taction surchargee par des episodes. Transportez- vous en idee dans Tile d'Alindala; . . . approchez-vous de la caverne du malheureux Polipsile [i. e.. Sophocles' Philoc- tetes] ; ne perdez pas un mot de ses plaintes, et dites-moi si rien vous tire de Tillusion. Citez-mol une piece moderne qui puisse supporter le meme examen et pretendre au meme degre de perfection, et je me tiens pour vaincue" (iv, 284, cf. iii, 481 f.. viii, 405 f.). One would look in vain in the writings of Diderot for an historical expose of the way in which drama and tragedy re- flected the succesive mental and social revolutions. Bishop Hurd saw in the theatre of American Indians something ap- proaching the genre larmoyant, and Diderot who, in the Bijoux indiscrets, had a savage sit in judgment on French tragedy, might have been also expected to notice the theatre of primitive peoples. He does nothing of the sort, nor does he discuss the "system" of Shakespeare and its relation to that of the an- cients.^' Living in a "Gothic" age, Shakespeare should have vied with Homer in Diderot's esteem: there are enough butch- eries in Shakespeare to stamp him as "poetic." Diderot's enthusiasm for Shakespeare was dampened, however, by the realization that the English poet was w^anting in taste and measure; he lacked the noble simplicity of Homer.'* This is very faint praise, indeed. ^' On Shakespeare in France, v. Baldensperger, Etudes d'histoire litt^raire. .2e svrie (Paris, 1910). ^Cf. vii, 137, 374; ii, 331 (Refutation d'HelvMius) ; xv, 37 (Art. ''Genie"); xix, 465 (To Voltaire, Sept. 29, 1762). "LE DIJAME" 77 "Le sublime et le g^nie brillent dans Shakespeare comme des Eclairs dans une longue nuit." "Convenez que c'est un homme bien extraordinaire que Shakespeare. 11 n y a pas uno de ces scenes dont avcc un peu de talent on ne fit une grande chose... Et puis quelle rapidity et quel nombre!" 'I'liis iiiuch is certain, that Diderot regarded (jallo-cla.s.sic tragedy as ancient tragedy distorted and ill adapted in "matter" and techniciuc to the exigencies of the new age. He specifically mentions two -changes introduced I)y the \ariation in religious beliefs. The "wickedness of men" had replaced in modern tragedy the "Destiny" of the ancients." Again, the modern.s paid more attention to characterization than the ancients, whose religion hypostatized virtues and vices, with the consequence that the poet could not draw well defined characters. For had he done so he would have duplicated the work of mythology' — "II eut double des etres; il aurait montre la memc passion sous la forme d'un dieu et sous celle d'un homme.""" (The psy- chological superiority of Christian writers was asserted later with different motivations by Chateaubriand and Hugo.) lUit to offset these improvements, if we may so call them, a thing Diderot seems reluctant to admit, — "nous n'avons rien epargne pour corrompre le genre dramatique. Nous avons conserve des anciens I'emphase de la versification qui convenait tant a des langues a quantite forte et a accent marque, a des theatres spacieux, a une declamation notee et accompagnee d'instruments; et nous avons abandone la simplicite de I'intrigue et du dialogue, et la verite des tableaux" (vii, 121). The hvbrid tragic "system" then prevailing was something half-true and half- false, that is to say, the worst thing im- aginable. Further down we shall note that Diderot somehow connected the loss of the sense of artistic fitness with the advent of theocracy and the system of privileges. Yet he was ^ For a defence of the Greek conception of fate from the attack of Beaumarchais, v. Corr. Litt., vii, 414. " vii, 155. 78 DIDEROT'S ESTHETIC NATURALISM generous enough to recognize the share which the "philosophic spirit" had in the decadence of art. We say generous, because it is to be supposed that Diderot reaUzed that the "drama" was as much endangered by the philosophic spirit as heroic tragedy. The disappearance of superstition, of feudal and barbarous customs, of prejudices of all sorts, deprived art of its most picturesque material. Diderot believed, with Vico and the adversaries of the "philosophes," that under scientific discipline the imagination was tamed and poetry vanished. In De la Pocsie dramatiquc Diderot had praised the good old times for their poetic color. The crimes of Christianity, he was always glad to point out, made excellent dramatic material. Unfor- tunately, the Age of Reason, by enthroning the "philosophical spirit," dried up the sources of poetic inspiration: "Partout decadence de la verve et de la poesie, a mesure que I'esprit philosophique a fait des progres; on cesse de cul- tiver ce qu'on meprise. Platon chasse les poetes de sa cite. L'esprit philosophique veut des comparaisons plus resserrees, plus strides, plus rigoureuses; sa marche circonspecte est ennemie du mouvement et des figures. Le regne des images passe a mesure que celui des choses s'etend. II s'introduit par la raison une exactitude, une precision, une methode, pardonnez-moi le mot, une sorte de pedanterie qui tue tout. Tous les prejuges civils et religieux se dissipent; et il est incroyable combien I'incredulite ote de ressources a la po6sie. Les moeurs se policent; les usages barbares, poetiques et pittoresques cessent; et il - est incroyable le mal que cette monotone politesse porte a la poesie. L'esprit philosophique amene le style sententieux et sec. Les expressions abstraites qui renferment un grand nombre de phenomenes se multi- plient et prennent la place des expressions figurees. . . ." (xi, 131 f.. Salon de J767). In criticizing the "philosophic spirit" Diderot aimed at something more general than the state of mind of the Ency- clopedists. He had in mind all the exponents of rationalism, including the grands classiqiies. If we are right in identifying him with the "Philosopher" of the Corrcspoiidancc Uttcrairc of 1764, we recognize Diderot's predilection for the biographic sort of tragedy when that "philosopher" informs us that French "LE DRAME" 7l) trag'ic authors liave hoon \vion<; in constantly endeavoring to (.Iraw i^^eneral man, the man of, instead of jor, all a,-;cs and countries. "Le philosophe . . . Pourquoi 6ter ii uiie pierre pr^cleuse ce qui la distingue et lui donne son caract^re? Je ne sais bI c'est la faute de la poesie ou du genie des Frangais; mais, dans nos poemes, la monotonie des moeurs me parait encore plus grande que celle des vers. Convenez que dans Racine et Voltaire, Achille et Henri III, Orosmane et le due de Foix. Burrhus et Lisois, sont le m&me personnage sous une denom- ination et dans une situation differentes. Lc pocte. — Vous croyez done que tons nos pontes n'ont qu'un seul et meme patron sur lequel ils decoupent tons leurs personnages? Le pliilosophe. — Pr6cisement. lis ont des traits generaux pour peindre un jeune heros bouillant et superbe, plein de feu et de generosite; ils en ont pour peindre un vieillard. un tyran, une mere tendre, une amante passionee; mais dans tout cela, rien de national, rien qui rappelle les moeurs et le siecle, rien qui justifie le nom du personnage et qui lui donne de la physionomie et de la verite." ^ The tragic heroes of the moderns thus tend to become schematic figures, mere "rar/rfl/;n-t\s- en beau."*' Xo doubt Dide- rot must have swelled the chorus of those who saw in love and gallantry essentials of traditional French tragedy ; but he did so in order to blame the practice and to point out that realistic "drama" and tragedy were above reproach. Rut the main source of theatrical evil — an evil from whicli the new "drama" was exempt — was the translation of social (or, rather, unsocial) prejudices into esthetic norms. This is a natural consequence of the identification of taste and mores. "Si le systeme moral est corrompu, il faut que le goOt soit faux. La v6rite et la vertu sont les amies des beaux arts." *' ^ Corr. Utt.. V, 485 f. This may be in part a rejoinder to con- temporary criticism by non-French authors, of "French taste." *'Cf. vii. SOS. We have seen that according to Diderot tragedy- is less "general" than comedy. "vii, 318. Cf. also Rousseau, Emile. Bk. iv; Lettrc a (VAleinbert. 80 DIDEROT'S ESTHETIC NATURALISM All his life Diderot was most insistent on the inseparability of beauty from truth and goodness. "Pour juger ici tie quel cote est le bon gout il faut bien determiner tie quel cote sont les bonnes mceurs... Son gout se reduit a ceci; j'alnie le vice; et le mien a ceci; j'aime la vertu. II en est ainsi de presque tons les jugements" (xix, 120). "Une belle ame ne va guere avec un gout faux; peut-on avoir du gout quand on a le cceur corrompu?" (xii, 75). Instead of tracing with Rousseau the origin of art to taste for laziness and ostentation/"' Diderot held with the English writers that both taste and moral sensibility were identical in their origin. The instinct of artistic imitation and that of sociality are correlated. Luxury and the spirit of material gain, the great corruptors of morals, are also the plague of letters. Owing to their influence social coherence is loosened and cer- tain classes gain ascendency. Under such circumstances, "par une veneration ridicule pour certaines conditions, bientot ce sont les seules dont on peigne les moeurs." The middle class is then vowed to comedy as if there were something inherently comical about those vocations which it is safe to attack. (We see here sur le vif how Diderot's political aims squared with his theory.) Presently, the "gout que Ton tient de leducation et de I'habitude du grand monde" is substituted to "celui qui nait du sentiment de I'honnete." No poetics is then possible because there is no unity of esthetic principles." The much vaunted "good" taste of French society, in particular, changed with fashion or bowed to arbitrary "hicnscanccs." "Nous dirions, d'une femme qui ressemblerait a quel- qu'une de ces statues qui enchantent nos regards aux Tui- leries, qu'elle a la tete jolie, mais le pied gros, la jambe forte et point de taille. La femme qui est belle pour le sculpteur sur un S3fa. est laide dans son atelier. Nous sommes pleins de ess contradictions" (vii, 373). •"'Rousseau, Discours sur les arts (1750). "'x. 118; vii, 372. Cf. also E7nile, bk. iv. "LE DRAME" 81 Under such circumstances art takes to "mannerism" or Academicism. "La maniere est dans les beaux-arts ce (jue I'hypocrisie est dans les mceurs."" Tseudo-Classic idealism, the cult of bel-esprit, we may add, is a companion to moral h)'pocrisy. " ''Quelle sera done la ressource d'un po^te, chez un peuple dont les moeurs sont faibles, -petites et manieroes; oil I'imi- tation rigoureuse des conversations ne formerait qu'un tissu d'expressions fausses. insensees et bassos; oil il n'y a plus ni franchise, ni bonhomie; on un pSre appelle son fils mon- sieur, et oil une mere appelle sa fille mademoiselle; oil les ceremonies publiques n'ont rlen d'auguste; la conduite domes- tique, rien de touchant et d'honnete; les actes solennels, rien de vrai? II tachera de les embellir; il choisira les circon- stances qui pretent le plus a son art; il negligera les autres, et il osera en supposer quelques-unes. "Mais quelle finesse de gout ne lui faudra-t-il pas, pour sentir jusqu'oQ les mceurs publiques et particulieres peuvent etre embellies? S'il passe la mesure, il sera faux et roma- nesque. . ." (vii, 372). Was Diderot's age really a "siccle du gout" and not a "sicclc dii genie" f A serious matter that, for once a people is afraid of artistic innovations, once it sets arbitrary limits to the effects of art and upholds false standards of "taste," it might persist in its course for centuries. In such centuries genius slumbers and the voice of nature is not heeded. Dorval was fully aware of the gravity of such a situation: ''Dorval. — Ah! bienseanees cruelles, que vous rendez les ouvrages decants et petits! . . . Mais, ajouta Dorval d'un sang- froid qui me surprit. Ce que je propose ne se peut done plus? Moi. — Je ne crois pas que nous en venions jamais 1^. Dorval. — Eh bien, tout est perdu! Corneille, Racine, Voltaire, Crebillon, ont regu les plus grands applaudisse- ments auxquels des hommes de genie pouvaient pretendre; et la tragedie est arrivee parmi nous au plus haut degre de perfection" (vii, 118). «xii. 121. ^'Cf. xi, 112. 82 DIDEROT'S ESTHETIC NATURALISM V^oltaire, who about the year 1758 seemed to be the only man talented enough to secure a hearing for the new genres,. incensed the false gods of tradition.^ Happily, Diderot never quite lost faith in the coming of a literary Messiah, As Dorval had said: "II y a cependant une ressource: il faut esperer que quelque jour un homme de genie sentira rimpossibilite d'atteindre ceux qui I'ont precede dans une route battue, et se jettera de depit dans une autre: c'est le seul evenement qui puisse nous affranchir de plusieurs prejuges que la philosophie a vainement attaques. Ce ne sont plus des rai- sons, c'est une production qu'il nous faut" (vii, 119; cf. 157, 313). In literature as in politics, the Jacobin expects the good to come out of an excess of evil. Just as Diderot hoped a genius would take to the new tragic genre "out of spite" after failing in the old, he expected the old Bastille of rules and conventions to be stormed by the public "au bout du siecle," 'iorsque I'ennui porte a son comble a enfreint ces bornes etroites et qu'il est devenu I'unique germe de quelques produc- tions nouvelles et la source d'un plaisir." "On fait des tragedies bourgeoises. Que font alors toutes les tetes moutonnieres, tons ces demi-penseurs qui ne remontent a I'essence d'e rien? lis ramassent autorite sur autorite pour decrier le genre nouveau; le peuples les croit; ce sont ses vrais legislateurs. . . Les premiers efforts sont decourages; I'homme de genie s'arrete au premier pas. Une nation plus libre, plus affranchie de prejuges recueille la lumiere que Ton porte a s'eteindre ou en tire parti; ou le peuple, las de s'ennuyer a des redites perpetuelles, force par ce vieux style dont il ne saurait se departir, se prete plus par son interet de plaisir que par sa raison a un nou- veau genre...." (viii, 441, Projet de preface, 1762). In the next chapter we shall see how Diderot's expectations varied with the success of his dramatic experiments. At the time of the Entretiens and Dc la Poesie draniafique he Avas per- force content to praise a few "dramas" and domestic tragedies' "Cf. vii, 120. -LE UIIAME" 83 and to nolo with dolij^ht the si)i"cacl of philosojihic ideas which indicated that tlic "spirit of the century" was becoming active: "Je crois qii'en un ouvraso. (lueUiu'il soil, I'osprit du si^cle doit se renuirquer. Si la morale s*t''pure, si le prejuge s'affaibilit, si les esprits out line pente a la bienfaisance g6n6- rale, si le goilt des choses utiles s'est r^pandu, si le peuple s'interesse aux op). If "la vraie tragedie est encore a trouver," it follows that Diderot did regard conventionality not as the norm of the theatre but as an abuse calling for reniedv. And bv the same token, the definition of dramatic truth, to which appeal those who see in Diderot a convert to "idealism" pure and simple, appears not as an esthetic imperative but as a statement of regrettable fact. If "rien ne se passe exactment sur la scene comme en nature," it is because the plays are "tons composes d'apres un certain systeme de principes," and the dramatic heroes are "des etres inconnus," mere "caricatures assujetties a des regies de convention," "bouffissures prescrites" by special recipes particular to each country.*" The truth of nature might be commonplace and squalid when badly "imitated," or else might seem shabby when confronted with the arbitrary and ex- tra-natural character of all the extant "dramatic systems," which rest on versification, "poetic" modes of expression and ideal- ized characterization.^^ If so, so much the worse for the "systems." In his zeal for naturalism Diderot came near renewing the "i)oetic atheism" of the Cartesians, being saved from it ony by its capacity to appreciate poetry archeologically, so to speak.^ To keep to our main argument, Diderot no more aband- doned his realistic conviction in the Paradoxc than he had done in Dc la Pocsic dromat'iqiic, in which he had avowed that "il y a de la difference entre le plaisir de theatre et le plaisir de societe."^^ If there remain any doubt on this head it will be dispelled by the following portion of the Paradoxe, bearing on ~viii, 404. ^' Cf. Beaumarchais, Kami sur Ir (icnre dram. (1767), in Thnitre complet. ed. d'Heilly and Marescot, vol. I. p. 34. ^Cf. the Corresp. lift, of Feb. 1.5, 1770 (viii, 460 ff.), in which Diderot seems to have lent his ideas to Grimm. "vii, 363. ^ 108 DIDEROT'S ESTHETIC NATURALISM Philoctetes' admonition of Neoptolemus, as related by Sopho- cles, which conclusively shows that Diderot meant to remain faithful to "realism": "Le Premier. — ...Y a-t-il dans ce discours autre chose que ce que vous adresseriez a mon fils, que ce que je dirais au votre? Le Second. — Non. Le Premier. — Cependant cela est beau. Le Second. — Assurement. Le Premier. — Et le ton de ce discours prononce sur la scene differeralt-il du ton dent on le prononcerait dans la so'Ciete? Le Second. — Je ne le crois pas. Le Premier. — Et ce ton dans la societe, y serait-il ridicule? Le Second. — • Nullement. Le Premier. — Plus les actions sont fortes et les propos simples, plus j'admire" (viii, 406; cf. 420). While Diderot felt the charm of Greek tragedy of simple, noble and stirring deeds, spontaneous in its genial inspiration and unhampered by those petty "bienscances" which are the lot of nations divided against themselves, he nevertheless believed that the "formule donnee par le vieil Eschyle,'"^ that "protocole de trois mille ans," was out of keeping with modern ways of thought and expression. Its recast by Racine and Voltaire, the system of the Comedie-Franqaise, Diderot pronounced just "nothing." On the contrary,^' no praise was too lavish for the "true" stage on which the actor, in his capacity of "lay preacher" and representative of the "philosophic poet," would be sure to sway "Ics homines dc nature," "les homines sensibles," by means of the representation of pathetic spectacles, and to delight and instruct "les tetcs de glace" with the faithful enactment of his- torical scenes. On this stage the actor could be at once himself and his personage without fear of violating ridiculous con- ventions and offending absurd proprieties ; the good actor would be certain to please audiences in Paris as well as in London or ^viii, 372. ^''viii, 392, 400. Cf. vii, 108; xix, 397. ACTING AND TRAGEDY 100 Saint Petersburg ;°* no artificial specialization of histrionic tal- ent would be required, all the skill and study of the actor being employed in the preservation of that "unite dc ton" from which all esthetic blessings flow. Even the "comcdien sensible" might show himself to advantage in the scenes (need we say these would abound in the theatre of the future?) calling for the display of virtuous emotions. Me or his hard-headed colleagues might occasionally speak ex tempore," for they would no longer be held to the letter of the text. In short, the new stage would be "everything." All told, far from j)rescril)ing tint Nature and llic Stage be kept apart for ever, Diderot conceived of his "ideal" and "imag- inary" personages, the histrionic chemons which the actor was to imitate, as anticipations of the very real and natural beings of a society that would harbor no prejudices whatsoever." We may make use of his own simile to give a more concrete formulation to this idea : "Mon ami [Diderot wrote in the Paradoxe] il y a trois modeles, Thomme de la nature, I'homme du po6te, I'homme de I'acteur. Celui de la nature est moins grand que celui du poete, et celui-ci moins grand encore que celui du grand comedien, le plus exagere de tous. Ce dernier monte sur les epaules du precedent, et se renferme dans un grand manne- quin d'osier dont il est I'ame; il meut ce mannequin d'une maniere effrayante, meme pour le poete qui ne se reconnait plus, et il nous epouvante. . . .ainsi que les enfants s'epouvan- tent les uns les autres en tenant leurs petits pourpoints courts eleves au-dessus de leur tete, en s'agitant, et en imi- tant de leur mieux la voix rauque et lugubre d'un fantome qu'ils contrefont" (viii, 419). Diderot wished to relieve "riiomme de nature" of this double burden and to have him serve directly as "riioninie du comedien." »«Cf. viii, 344, 364. 394. =• Cf. vii, lO.'). ^Cf. also viii, 390, where the subsistential reality of the "ideal" is implied. -■'viii, 419. Cf. Beaumarchais in Essai sur le genre dramaiique (1767), in TluVitre complct. ed. Heilly-Marescot, I. 36, 37. 110 DIDEROT'S ESTHETIC NATURALISM It is evident that the advent of the natural stage was tanta- mount to a revolution. Though he does not use the word in the Paradoxe,*" Diderot believed inevitable the revolution that was to usher the reign of Reason and Nature which called for the "true" theatre as its dramatic expression. This is the eso- teric meaning of the Paradoxe, which is thus seen to be the esthetic counterpart of the contemporary Rcvc de d'Alemberl and Supplement au Voyage de Bougainville, two of the most revolutionary books the world has ever seen. Diderot held that, because it was only partially adapted to its new social milieu, the old tragedy was doomed to extinction.'" Indeed for a moment Diderot thought himself the man who was des- tined to "quarter the hippogriff" of artistic conservatism. Drunk with joy at the success of his Pcre de famille (1769), he relished the dubious compliment of Duclos: "Trois pieces comme cela tueront la tragedie." "Ou'ils se fassent a ces emotions-la," he wrote to !\llle Volland, "et qu'ils supportent apres cela s'ils peuvent, Destouches et La Chaussee."" The sequel, which included a bare succcs d'estime for his own Fils naturel (1771), may have convinced him that his expectations had been too sanguine. At any rate, we meet in the latest^' additions to the Paradoxe those half -ironic counsels of caution and moderation, like the one we have quoted a few pages above, or his commendation for consistency of that portion of the public which refused to sanction such a horror as Gabrielle de Vergy's perceiving (in the play by Debelloy) her lover's bleed- ing heart in the poison cup from which she was about to drink." Yet the uncertainty of public taste did not chill the revolu- tionary ardor of Diderot,^' who held that it was worse than useless to compromise with the prevailing manifestations of art because the result of this compromise would be an incongruity. It merely inspired him with the determination to ecraser I'in- *" The word and idea appear, however, in Grimm's Corresp. litt. (Ill, 357) in connection with le Pcre de famille (1757). " Cf. viii, 372; also Mercier, Du Theatre, p. vii, viii (preface). "xix. 314, :^20. "About 1777. "viii, 394. " Diderot thought himself infallible as an esthetic prophet. (Cf. xix, 475, Dec. 3, 1765). ACTING AND TRAGEDY 111 fame, the political and economic system, of which the .Maupeou parliament was ihc latest manifestation, and which was ulti- mately responsible tor all c\ils, intellecUial and artistic, no less than social.'"' Prose historical tragedy, defined as "imc hclle jiage histo- rique qui se partage en un certain nombre de repos marques," " was to be one of the instruments of the great social and artistic transformation, ilis Kcgiilus and Tcrcntia (1769-70)" satis- fied Diderot's craving for the "epique et gigantesque" he asso- ciated with the Ciolden Age ;'" the realistic treatment of historical tragedy fulfilled the [postulates of the theory of imitation; the stoicism of its heroes unmistakably resembled that of the "philosophers" and "lay preachers" of Encyclopedism who were preparing the nation for the Age of Reason and Nature when the radicals "were to have their turn." "^ Merein, too. Diderot went the way of his time and gener- ation, though ahead of most of his contemporaries. The advent of prose historical drama had been prepared and aided by the interest in past history which began to be felt during the last years of the reign of Louis XV." Under its influence the stage was submerged under a flood of plays in historical settings, ranging from comic operas in the genre troubadour and comedies like Colle's Partic de chasse de Henri II' to full- fledged tragedies with a fresh tinge of historical color, like those which the Patriarch of Ferney contributed to the philos- ophic cause. In X'oltaire's Olyuipie (given at the Comedie- '«Cf. letter to Wilkes, 14 Nov., 1771, in Cru, Diderot, p. 477; to Princess Dashkoff, April 3, 1771, xx, 28. Cf. also vi, 403 f. and Dide- rot's Essai historique stir la polivr published by Tourneux, Diderot et Catherine II (Paris, 1S99), p. 91-138. It may be worth remember- ing that the war which the dramatic authors waged against the Comediens du Roi in the seventies is part and parcel of the pre- revolutionary war on privilege. Cf. viii, 403 and the works of de Lomenie on Beaumarchais, Beclard on Mercier, Lenel on Marmontel, M. Pellisson, Lcs hommcs de Icttrcs nu xviiie siiclc (Pa.is, 1911). ch. iv; etc. *' viii, 395. Cf. also M. Tourneux, Diderot et Catherine 17. p. 412. *'-Cf. viii, 406. 433. ^" Cf . HI, 4S1, etc. °*To Sartine, June, 1770; xx, 13. "Cf. B. de la Villeherve, Baculard d'Arnaud (Paris, 1920), pt. 2, ch. 3; Gaiffe, Le Drame en France (Paris, 1910), pt. 3, ch. 4. 112 DIDEROT'S ESTHETIC NATURALISM Frangaise in 1764), in les Scythes (1767), in his "imperial and bourgeoisc" tragedy of 1769, les Guebres (the last two never played for obvious reasons), we witness a renewal of Diderot's influence, which had first appeared in Voltaire's "drama" of Tancrede (1759). All of these plays possessed the very Ency- clopedic qualities of universality and propagandism : "Le but du poete [Diderot wrote with reference to les Gueires] est general. II montre aux rois les suites funestes de I'intolerance; il preche aux hommes le respect de la morale universelle; il les approche les uns des autres par le droit de fraternite qui les lie et que la diversite des opinions religieuses ne doit jamais rompre; il leur inspire le plus grand mepris pour ces opinions; il s'adresse a toutes les nations et a tons les temps a venir" (viii, 455 f.) This is not strange since "il faut substituer partout les Fran- qais aux Remains, la Seine ou le Danube a I'Oronte, et les Chretiens aux Guebres ou Perses." Had not Rosenkranz'^ written that the Par ado xe shows Diderot unaware of the war waged in the seventies by the Third Estate on the other two, it would not have been necessary to state that Diderot could not but be fully conscious of the political mission which the prose tragedy inherited from its poetic predecessor. What Diderot hid beneath his demand that the tragedy depict ideals of conduct (for he informs us in the Paradoxc as elsewhere that he did not aspire to the martyr's crown), °^ his disciples and partisans have expressed in words and deeds. Grimm dreamt of the time when "les theatres deviendront un cours d'institutions politiques et morales et les poetes ne seront plus seulement des hommes de genie, mais des hommes d'etat."" Even while Diderot was elaborating his Paradoxe, ]\Iercier dilated upon "/a vraic tragedie," "le drame neuf et vraiment philosophique" that was to serve "le poete legislateur" as a "tribune aux harangues." '" It is in the prose genre of Ic Shcr'if '^^ Rosenkranz, Diderot's Lchen unci ^Verke. 2d ed., II, p. 214. ^=viii, 356, 408; cf. xi, 84 and Corr. litt.. viii, 462. " Corresp. litt.. viii, p. 80. ■" S. Mercier, Du tJuOtre (1773). Cf. especially chapters xiii, xiv, xxi. ACTING AND TRAGEDY 113 that Mcrcior wrote his "drama" of Jeait Ilcnnuycr (1772), the "dramc hi-ro'iquc," Childcric Icr (1774) and his "piece natio- nale," la Destruction dc la Liguc (1782), plays in which one discerned historical epitomes of national laws and mores — "un reflet des affaires qui agitcnt la nation," "la maniere enfin dont nous envisagions Ic trone et la cour, ct les revolutions qui en emanaient." And in the same genre was also that other "trag- edy" illustrative of the doctrine of the Social Contract, the famous Maillard on Paris sauvc, of Sedaine, received at the Comedie-Francaise in 1771 but never played there, not for fear that its success would deal the death-blow to the tragedy of Racine and Voltaire, as its author fondly imagined, but for the excellent reason that, in the words or Mercier, the accents of genuine tragedy can only be heard in the country in which those of liberty are not smothered/' The author of Ics ^leii- thcromanes (1772)" could only give his approval to Mercier when the latter blurted out the confession that in the eyes of the philosophic dramaturge, "....toutes les inegalites produites dans le gouvernement politique doivent disparaitre. . . .car s'il travaillait h. resserrer ces liens malheureux il serait barbare et deviendrait le fau- teur de la tyrannie. II doit tendre au contraire, h retablir I'egalite naturelle, parce que telle est la loi primitive fondee sur la constitution de la nature humaine" (Mercier, Dii theatre, p. 151). Like most writings of Diderot, the Paradoxc is an appeal to action. Diderot's plea against feeling is in reality directed only against morbid and useless "sensibility," °' against the show of emotion that bears no relation to the circumstances '•* L. Giinther, L'oeuvre dramatique de Sedaine, p. 279 ff. =Mx, 9-19. ^^ vi, 206 (Jacques le Fataliste, 1773). There is also something to be said in favor of the opinion of Miss E. F. Jourdain, Dramatic theory and practice in France. 1690-1S08 (London, 1921), p. 78, 174, according to whom Diderot's play Est-il bon. est-il mrchant * contains an undercurent of satire upon sensiJ)ilitr. To be sure, "sensibility" has been since decried as unpractical quite often and in works as discrepant as Daphnr and la Bataillc de dames. 114 DIDEROT'S ESTHETIC NATURALISM that provoke it and is barren of pragmatic results. It is to this false sensibilite that Diderot ascribed the pernicious effects which Rousseau thought were the concomitants of dramatic representation/" At the same time, and herein Diderot shows himself a disciple of the grands classiqiies and a precursor of Gautier/" Flaubert and the neo-realists, he inveighed against those misguided sentimentalists — their tribe increased mightily in the seventies — who, because they thought themselves pos- sessed of "sentiments" and "genius," felt they could dispense with the quest of beauty and with social duties." Inci- dentally, Diderot completed the task left unfinished by Ra- meau,*" since he carried out the doctrine of objectivism to an art which had been hitherto ignored by it, thus proving once more his ability to think consequently, which is so often denied him. Called forth, in all likelihood, by the paradoxical attitude of the Rousseauians, who doted on the stage while decrying it,*^ and of the pseudo-Classic psittacists, who prattled about truth and nature which they ignored in practice^ the "paradox" of Diderot is the esthetic analogue to that of the socialist, who professes to oppose competition and individualism, the battle cries of his opponents, only to reaffirm them in what he calls a truer and higher sense. The "idealism" and "Academicism" of Diderot are but the "realism" of tomorrow. Like Kant, like Schiller," whose contrast of the "naive" and "sentimental" en- larges upon and repeats the basic contradiction of the Paradoxe, Diderot held that h^'^equilibrium between sensibility and under- standing, destroyed by the lapse of man from the natural estate, •*Cf. Rousseau, Discours of 1750; Lettre a d'Alembert. etc. "T. Luitz, Die Aesthetik von Th. Gautier (Freiburg, 1917?). p. 6 ff. Curiously enough, Barbey d'Aurevilly (Goethe et Diderot, Paris, 1S80) ascribed this role to Goethe, whom he regarded as the very antithesis of Diderot. " The Paradoxe thus marks the reaction against the current represented by d'Arnaud, de Treogate, Restif de la Bretonne, the Shandyans and the sensualists of the school of Helvetius. «'V. Rameau's Letter to Houdar de la Motte, Qctober 25, 1727. The parallelism with the Paradoxe is most striking. ''Rousseau, Lettre sur les spectacles (1758); Nouvelle Heloise, 2e partie, lettre 17 (1761); De VImitation thcdtralr (1764). «^V. Basch, La poctique de Schiller (Paris, 1911), 2d ed., p. 6 ff. ACTING AND TRAGEDY 115 was in part restored through the representation in art of an ideal world. "C'est surtout lors(iuc tout est faux qu'on aimc le vrai, c'est surtout lorsque tout est corrompu que le spectacle est le plus epure. Le citoyen qui se presente a I'entree dc la comedie y laisse tous ses vices pour ne les reprendre qu'en sortant." *" lUit he did not concede, with Mercier, the Rous- seauian half of whom obscured the Diderotian," that in the Golden Age the virtuous and realistic theatre is to be a useless and harmful thing. Diderot rather resembles Fenelon" in his vision of an Ideal Age, with an Ideal art, at the end of a period of social and artistic incubation. For he could not bear to think that Art might be permanently divorced from Nature and Society. *-'viii. 402. Cf. ii, 392. vii, 310, xi, 112; etc. ** L. Beclard, S. Mercier, p. 175. '' V. the paper of A. Cherel on "L'idee du 'naturel' et le sentiment de la Nature chez Fenelon," in Rev. d'hist. litt., (1911), p. SlO-826. i VITA Anno 1888 Ikicharcstini, urbe Daciae, natus, primis ibi interfui soholis et lycealem, ut dicunt, testimonium adeptus sum. Deinde anno 1907 Novi Eboraci universitatem Columbiae adii, ubi studiis philologiae ot philosophiac incubui scholasque audivi horum virorum optime de me meritorum : Ayres, Bal- densperger, D. Bigongiari, H. C. Brown, Cattell, Cohen, Dewey, Fitzgerald, Gerig, Gotthcil, A. V. W. Jackson, Lanson, Law- rence, Lovejoy, Montague, de Onis, Prince, Spiers, Sturtevant, E. Thorndike, Todd, Weeks, Woodbridge, Woodworth, Yo- hannan. Doctissimis illis viris gratias ago maximas. Apud universitatem Columbiae ad gradum Alagistri in Artibus perveni a. 1909 post debitam adprobationem thesis meae De a-prioritate spatii ac temporis in philosophia Kantiana. Hoc in Athenaeo officio praeceptoris linguarum Sarmaticarum functus sum (a. 1916), necnon tribus annis post praeceptor studiosis nondum matriculatis in literis nostrae aetatis Gallicis, Iberi- cis, Dacicis legi. Docui et in universitate Neoeboracensi, a. 1921-22. Tentamina, notas et adversaria nonnulla conscripsi quae edita sunt in Columbia University Quarterly, Romanic Review, Journal of Philosophy, etc. CONTENTS Page PREFACE 3 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS 5 THE DRAMATIC POEM AND THE "DRAME" 9 ACTING AND HISTORICAL TRAGEDY 88 RETURN C»*«:U^^j;^Wx___ HOME USE t::^^^;^^^^^^ ;,U BOOKS ^AAY ^^ R^^^^^-^^d by colWng 642-.4U ,,^, ^esk IN b.ACp u ^ 'i il FOR^A NO. DD6, 60m, Oeneraimbmy^ L,D2lA-40m-3,72^ (Q117S8l0)476-A-32 tieneral library . Unive«ity of California Berkeley U C BERKELFY LIBRARIES CD5EbSS^^7 I