Rameau's Nephew and First Satire (Oxford World's Classics) Read Online Free Page A

period, is allowed to act without check, the Fool who is allowed to speak the truth; and the very fact that the Narrator likes to spend time with the Nephew ‘once a year’ seems to point to a calendar of carnival. In the best carnival tradition, this entire text becomes a ceremoniousdethroning of philosophy. 8 In this context, another model for Diderot is the second-century Greek satirist Lucian, whose philosophical dialogues include, for example, several on the theme of the poor man in the rich man’s house. 9 It is not surprising, therefore, that Bakhtin includes Diderot’s philosophical narratives in his history of carnivalesque literature. 10
    The autograph manuscript of
Rameau’s Nephew
bears the simple title, in Diderot’s hand,
Second Satire
. The further title, ‘Rameau’s Nephew’, is added in another hand, and while one can understand that editors and publishers have always preferred this more racy form (used in every printed edition, from the 1805 German version onwards), there are good reasons for keeping in mind Diderot’s title, as expressed in the only authentic manuscript. Not least, the
Second Satire
usefully reminds us of the shorter and less well-known
First Satire
. Written in 1773, the
First Satire
was initially published in 1778, in the limited manuscript circulation of the
Correspondance littéraire
(where it was entitled simply
Satire
); the work was first printed posthumously, in the so-called Naigeon edition of Diderot’s works, in 1798, where for the first time it acquired its title
First Satire
.
    The question of the relationship of the
First Satire
to the
Second
is a tricky one. If we assume the traditional view that Diderot began
Rameau’s Nephew
in the early 1760s, then the title
Second Satire
must represent an addition to the evolving work made after the composition of the
First Satire
. But if we accept Coulet’s more recent thesis that
Rameau’s Nephew
was composed in one creative spurt around 1773–4, then it becomes entirely possible that he wrote the two
Satires
in numerical order, as itwere, and within a short space of time. In June 1773 Diderot left Paris to travel to Russia by way of Holland; it was the one great journey of his life, and he would not return to Paris until October the following year. On his way to St Petersburg he wrote to his friend Mme d’Épinay from Holland that he had enjoyed himself writing ‘a small satire’ which he had already planned before leaving Paris: this must refer to the
First Satire
. Near the end of the work he asks Naigeon to remember him to his friends in Paris, so he is clearly writing from abroad; and he earlier refers to a conversation he had had with the historian and poet Rulhiére shortly before his departure for Russia. This being the case, it is entirely possible that the
First Satire
was written in Holland in 1773, and that the
Second Satire
was begun soon thereafter. Those who have argued for the composition of
Rameau’s Nephew
over a prolonged period have pointed to the date of the various anecdotes, stretching from around 1760 to 1774; in this connection, it is worth noting that the stories told in the
First Satire
similarly stretch from 1746 to 1773, and we can be certain in this case that the work was written in one go. It seems that both works, with their celebratory frescos of Parisian literary life, were written with the nostalgia of the exile.
    The
First Satire
is cast in the form of a letter addressed by Diderot to his friend and disciple Jacques-André Naigeon, a militant atheist, and like the
Second Satire
, it employs dialogue, with Naigeon seemingly as interlocutor as well as addressee. An obvious link between the two
Satires
is that they have an overlapping cast of characters: Sophie Arnould appears in both works, as does the Abbé de Canaye. There is a further evident link in Diderot’s interest in what he calls ‘the word of character’, that is, the telling phrase or expression which sums up a whole