Art.-diderot and the New Novel in France

American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS)

Dialogue, Diderot, and the New Novel in FranceAuthor(s): Emily ZantsSource: Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Dec., 1968), pp. 172-181Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Sponsor: American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS).Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2737631 .

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Dialogue, Diderot, and the New Novel in France EMILY ZANTS

I F ONE OF THE criteria for an author's greatness lies in the possi- bility of a renewed interpretation with each new generation, then the continual discovery of interpretations can only add to a work's richness. Michel Butor's 1966 analysis of the modernity of Diderot was nothing revolutionary insofar as it has been fashionable to dis- cuss his modernity ever since J.-J. Mayoux's 1936 article.1 Butor's analysis does, however, cast a few new highlights on the subject and, looked at from the point of view of the esthetics of the New Novel,2 Diderot's novels reveal a few other modern characteristics.

Several modern aspects are commonly recognized. Le Neveu de Rameau, Jacques le fataliste, and the short stories all demonstrate the contemporary dilemma summarized by Lester Crocker thus: "The results of our acts belie our intent, and there is nothing we can count on. In such a universe, ethical certainty becomes even more delusive, and the foundation of morality more fragile." I The problem is demonstrated not only by the content, but also by the form of Jacques le fataliste. The non sequitur events that compose Jacques' love story and the choice of possible endings underscore the same elusiveness of stable values.

The mixture of traits in the Neveu's nature, the associative proc- esses of ideas, the juxtaposition and plurality of episodes developed simultaneously are also obvious modern elements.4 Characters are presented not by an omniscient author, but by an author as puzzled

1 J.-J. Mayoux, "Diderot and the Technique of Modern Literature," Modern Language Review, XXXI (1936), 518-531.

2 Cf. my Aesthetics of the New Novel in France (Boulder, Colo., 1968). ' Lester Crocker, "Jacques le Fataliste, an 'Experience Morale,"' Diderot Studies, III (Geneva, 1961), 88.

4 Cf. Lucien Scheler's preface to Jacques le Fataliste cited in J. Robert Loy's Diderot's Determined Fatalist (New York, 1950), p. 22; and Alice G. Green, "Diderot's Fictional Worlds," Diderot Studies (Syracuse, 1949), pp. 3, 5.

172



DIDEROT, THE NEW NOVEL IN FRANCE 173

by his character as the reader. Can anyone be as corrupt and immoral as the Neveu, and what happens to Jacques in the end? I

Not that anyone is trying to make a twentieth-century novelist out of Diderot: his profound concern in ethics and the goodness of human nature places the unmistakable stamp of the eighteenth century upon him. Rarely found in other authors of that century, however, are the literary techniques used to convey his problems.6 And these same techniques are indisputably a major part of any modern writer's baggage.

Character changes determined by the presence of an Other have been commonplace ever since Gide's Les Faux-Monnayeurs-not to mention Dostoievsky or Diderot.7 All individuals in the New Novel depend upon the presence of an Other in order to have any "character" at all. A large part of Butor's critique concerning character is based on Diderot's comments about Michel Van Loo's portrait of him. Diderot did not think the expression captured by Van Loo represented him and can explain its effeminacy only by the presence of "that crazy Mrs. Van Loo" while her husband was trying to paint Diderot's portrait. Diderot explains that his physiognomy could have revealed many other expressions just as atypical, depending upon the person Diderot was thinking of at the moment the painter looked up from his canvas.

Only by means of a multiplicity of "portraits" does the New Novelist hope to present an individual representative of reality. This phenomenological approach, in regard to Diderot's portrait, would require, according to Butor, replacing the one portrait amidst several others describing the events of the day that provoked Diderot to look effeminate.8 Truth or reality can only be known thanks to a certain compilation of facts and events surrounding any individual fact, event or character. Diderot's concept of the Encyclopedie pro- vides an interesting comparison, for he, too, was attempting to grasp

5 Cf. Robert Mauzi's article, "La Parodie romanesque dans Jacques le Fataliste," Diderot Studies, VI (Geneva, 1964), 89-132, for a discussion of Diderot's satire of the omniscient author.

6 Sterne obviously offers many parallels with Diderot. Cf. Alice G. Fredman, Diderot and Sterne (New York, 1955).

7Jean Paul Sartre popularized the concept of "the Other" in relation to the Self. Cf. esp. L'Jtre et le Neant (Paris, 1943), Part III.

8 Michel Butor, "Diderot le fataliste et ses maitres," Critique, XXII (1966), 390: "De meme que le moment . . . doit obligatoirement, lorsqu'il s'agit d'un modele aussi divers que Diderot, etre accompagne des autres moments pour devenir veritable, de meme tel texte, moment du visage mental de Diderot tourne dans telle direction, ne peut nous dire la verit6 que si nous le replagons dans las joumre entiere de son activite."



174 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY STUDIES

reality by means of a compendium of knowledge: "By means of the . . . universality of knowledge . . . comparisons are in- creased, interrelations develop in every field . . . fields of knowledge come closer to understanding and strengthen themselves.. . . If our dictionary is good, how many better words will it produce?" 9

Butor manifested a similar belief in the power of his works, like Diderot's Encyclopedie, to create an understanding that might trans- form the present state of things. Leon Delmont, the narrator of La Modification who failed to bring about a change in his own life, decides to write a book about that failure so that others, cognizant of a reality he had not been aware of when he began his project, will not make the same error he did.1"

Butor insists upon Diderot's exploration of forbidden domains as a means of revealing a hidden reality. The censuring of the Encyclo- pedie and other works clearly indicated fields of exploration, fields Diderot proceeded to explore, slipping his discoveries into a desk drawer to be published posthumously. The Neveu's value, according to Diderot, is to break up "that fastidious uniformity introduced by our education, social conventions, and customary proprieties." When Butor was asked how his books were conceived, he explained, in a similar vein: "At first you have the feeling that something has not yet been said, that there is a certain region in our experience which is not spoken of, or which is not spoken about in the proper terms. Therefore a void, an absence is at the origin of each novel. . . .Only the writing of the novel will permit you to elucidate the void." 12 Only the writing of the Encyclopedie, etc., permitted Diderot to clarify his ideas on materialism, transformism, ethics, to dispell part of the cloud of superstition hovering over the eighteenth century. Obviously Butor had no trouble finding his own concepts in Diderot.

And here we must once again return to the role of the Other, for, in order to explore the void, the unknown, the hidden reality, Diderot needed a listener, an interlocutor, and "by having his reader play a role in the story itself, he draws him out of his passivity and

9 Cited in Loy, p. 154. 10 At least this is what Butor claims is the end result of the novel in an

interview with Madeleine Chapsal, "Michel Butor," Les Ecrivains en personne (Paris, 1960), P. 60.

11 Diderot, Oeuvres Romanesques (Paris, 1959), p. 397; my translation. 12 George Markow-Totevy, "Michel Butor," Bucknell Review, X (May 1962),

284.




anonymity" 13-the passivity that was the basis for one of Val6ry's criticisms of the novel as a genre. By drawing him out of it, however, Diderot instituted an esthetic technique known to the New Novelists as reader participation."4 Diderot provokes participation by directly addressing the reader, by carrying on an imaginary conversation with him concerning the development of the plot. In the New Novel, this same technique may become a second person nar- rative in which the "vous" refers either to the reader or to a character in the novel, the confusion resulting in an association of the reader with a character, but differing from simple "reader identification" insofar as the reader must undergo the same condemnations and is not free at the end of the novel, as with "reader identification," to dissociate himself from the story on the grounds that "it could never happen to me." In other words, the reader participates in the creation of the story, just as Diderot's imaginary interlocutor does.

Diderot's demand for reader participation suggests Butor's opera, Votre Faust, where the audience decides at the end of each act how the plot is to develop. Addressing himself to the reader, Diderot asks: "cela vous fera-t-il, cela ne vous fera-t-il pas plaisir? Si cela vous fera plaisir, remettons la paysanne en croupe . " 15 or a little later: "Entre les differents gites possibles, dont je vous ai fait 1'enu- meration qui precede, choisissez celui qui convient le mieux a la circonstance presente." 16 Butor does not refer to this technique in his article on Diderot; but he appreciated a similar one in Balzac- another admirer of Diderot-where each reader has a choice in the composition of La Comedie Humaine by virtue of the order in which he reads the individual novels.

Had Nathalie Sarraute rather than Butor been writing about Diderot, she would certainly have commented on another aspect of Diderot's dialogues which, she would say, permits reader participation. In L'Ere du Soupgon, she objected to the "he said's" and the "I said's" of dialogue because they place an author between the

18 Herbert Dieckmann has discussed this need at length in Cinq Legons sur Diderot (Geneva, 1959), pp. 36 ff.

14Butor's La Modification has already become the classic example, though the end result of reader participation is achieved more successfully, perhaps, in either Degres or Emploi du temps. Regardless, Butor was not the first to use this particular technique, as Jean Hytier noted in Questions de Litterature (Geveva, 1967), p. 215: "Avant Butor, Henri Bachelin, dans Le Serviteur s'adressait directement au heros de son recit."

15 Diderot, Oeuvres Romanesques, p. 497. l6 Ibid., p. 515.




person speaking and the reader. The dialogues in Diderot's works are either typographically arranged so that the reader can follow the speaker without such authorial interventions, or the content of the argument is such that it is impossible to mistake one argument as belonging to the wrong character.

And speaking of dialogue as everyone does, eventually, when speaking of Diderot, try to imagine the preposterous, a dialogue between the Neveu and Jacques. Diderot's romanesque dialogues have received considerable commentary regarding their dramatic character as opposed to Platonic dialogue.'7 Little has been said, however, about the wide realm of possibilities explored by Diderot within the category of dramatic dialogue itself. The difference in the dramatic dialogue of the two novels lies mostly in the stress placed on various techniques, most of the techniques existing to some extent in both novels. But the result is sufficiently varied to warrant a distinction between "dramatic dialogue" for Le Neveu de Rameau and "dialogue dramatized" for Jacques le Fataliste. The subject is relevant here since, in exploring these possibilities, we shall see that the problem of the Other was esthetically just as important for Diderot as for the New Novelists.

If some common ground is necessary for a discussion, Jacques and the Neveu do, after all, have a number of things in common. Diderot, in the role of Moi for Le Neveu de Rameau and of the Master for Jacques le Fataliste, represents the moral, principled individual of society. Both Jacques and the Neveu have a deter- ministic outlook on life: the Neveu claims to be a parasite because of his inherited paternal molecule and his environment that fosters just such a worthless character; for Jacques, there is no effect without a cause, "chaque balle qui partait d'un fusil avait son billet," and "son capitaine disait que tout ce qui nous arrive de bien et de mal ici-bas etait ecrit la-haut." 18 Even their love lives are similar: if

17Cf. H. Dieckmann, and Diderot Studies, III, 112; J. Proust's introduction to Diderot's Quatre Contes (Geneva, 1964), pp. xlv-xlvii; J. Robert Loy, pp. 96-97; and Jacques Smietanski's Le realisme dans Jacques le Fataliste (Paris, 1965), pp. 144-145.

18 Diderot, Oeuvres Romanesques, p. 493. It is not my intention to take up the various interpretations of fatalism, determinism, free will, etc. For a recent statement concerning diverse aspects of the problem, see Otis Fellows, "Jacques le Fataliste Revisited," L'Esprit, Createur, VIII (Spring 1968), 42-52, especially pp. 47-48.




Jacques' Denise would not appeal to the Neveu, Jacques and Bigre's Justine certainly would, just as the Neveu's wife could easily have been Jacques' Madame Suzanne or Marguerite.

Their differences are too numerous to note-Jacques leads his Master and the Neveu is in search of a master, to mention only one of the more obvious points. The major character difference affect- ing the nature of their dialogues lies in Jacques' addiction to talk- ing-a habit that usually condemns a character to monologue-and yet Jacques le Fataliste is a dialogue. Jacques' dialoque even re- sembles the Neveu's in many respects. There is an exchange of ideas in both books, though in neither one does any single idea defended come out triumphant. In general, Jacques defends determinism; his Master, free will. The Neveu defends base parasitism; Moi, moral good. These ideas are developed to some extent by "an exploration and demonstration through the dialectic of conversation." 19 In Le Neveu de Rameau, for instance, the Neveu is criticized by Moi for not having always had common sense and honesty, but the criticism provokes the Neveu to prove not only that society did not want such people, but that people who attempted to be such against their nature simply made matters worse for everyone.20 Moi's comments serve to push the Neveu's concepts to their logical conclusions.

In Jacques le Fataliste, a similar argument occurs when Jacques tries to prove that "le mot douleur etait sans idee, et qu'il ne com- mengait a signifier quelque chose qu'au moment ou il rappelait a notre memoire une sensation que nous avions eprouvee." To coun- terattack this argument, his Master asks him if he sympathizes with the pain of a woman in childbirth, to which Jacques replies that having suffered from his wounded knee, he can sympathize with the suffering, but not with the precise pain.2" In Jacques le Fataliste, however, incidents of the dialectic of conversation are rare com- pared to the almost constant use of this technique in the Neveu de Rameau.

The dialectic of Jacques' conversation is even sufficiently weak to permit a satire of several elements that actually destroy the possi- bility of dialectic. Diderot exploits the medium he is using as well as the concepts he is writing about. First of all, the repetitions and stock phrases kill all discussion. Jacques professes to hate them

19 Otis E. Fellows, "The Theme of Genius in Diderot's Neveu de Rameau," Diderot Studies, II, 173.

20 Diderot, Oeuvres Romanesques, pp. 433-434. 21 Ibid., p. 509.




while maintaining, every time his Master makes an objection or tries to reason with him, that "il est ecrit la-haut . . .", thereby killing any logical discussion.

Secondly, there are the obvious outcomes or conclusions of a story or event that curtail hypotheses. If the Master cannot guess the developments of Jacques' realistic love story, he can guess what will be the outcome of the Mme de la Pommeraye story just as Jacques can guess the outcome of his Master's love story-because these two stories are traditional whereas Jacques' is modern. Ob- vious progressions and conclusions leave little room for discussion, but Jacques' love story permits constant debate as each new event changes the interpretation of past events and opens the way to new possibilities.

Rather than the mental dialectics in the Neveu de Rameau, action is Jacques' favorite means for exploring opposing concepts-in spite of the fact that Jacques likes to talk. His final proof of determinism consists in making his Master fall from his horse. The Master can interpret this act as an act of free will on Jacques' part, and conse- quently the act is no more conclusive than the conversation of the Neveu and Moi. In no way does this imply that Diderot came to believe in acts as more expressive than words. On the contrary, he underscores the fact that acts are as subject to misunderstandings as words when Jacques retrieves (without paying) his Master's watch from a sort of travelling salesman. The salesman screams "Thief!" but no one believes him because Jacques is not acting like a thief: his horse is carrying him along at his usual slow pace.

In the Neveu de Rameau, the pantomimes demonstrate the Neveu's critique of society. The dramatic effect of pantomime on dialogue is particularly well demonstrated in Rameau's pantomime of the "positions," provoking Moi to expostulate on the positions of king and God, and thus find himself arguing the Neveu's ideas. Most of the pantomimes, however, are provoked by the dialectic of the conversation rather than provoking the conversation,22 and herein lies another difference in the stress. Whereas in the Neveu de Rameau the arguments are verbal, in Jacques le Fataliste, the events provide a better commentary on the ideas than the conversation. For instance, Jacques is forced to admit that in spite of all his talk

22Moi, as a matter of fact, uses the pantomimes as an excuse to change the subject of conversation, to get off the topic of ethics; unfortunately for Moi, they always return to ethics and another pantomime. Cf. M. Duchet, Entretiens sur le "Neveu de Rameau" (Paris, 1967).




about fatalism, he cries when he is sad, and laughs when he is happy; his own acts thereby constitute a better criticism of his philosophy of fatalism than any arguments his Master could propose. There- fore one is justified in calling Jacques le Fataliste "dialogue dramatized" and the Neveu de Rameau "dramatic dialogue."

Both dialogues are propelled by interruptions of a story without an end: Is the Neveu accepted back in the house of Bertin, his patron? Does Jacques ever marry Denise? But the interruptions are completely different in nature. J. Doolittle analyzes the form of the interruptions in the Neveu as a kind of systematized association of ideas:

One may compare the conduct of portions of the dialogue to a progres- sion made diametrically through a set of concentric circles from one exterior of the complex to its opposite. The interlocutors introduce a subject; before they conclude it, a second subject or a digression inter- venes. This intervention leads in turn to another one, and so on until a point is reached (the centre of the design) where a subject is begun and concluded, and so on to the end of the discussion, when so to speak the far side of the system is reached.23

In Jacques le Fataliste, the interruptions are not usually inherent in the mental dialectic of the dialogue, but exterior to it.24 Basically, they are made up of events occurring during Jacques' and his Mas- ter's travels, such as the lost watch mentioned above.

Dialogue exists in Jacques le Fataliste because the Master is bored and questions Jacques to pass the time of day. Since Jacques likes to talk, there is no problem. It is rather curious that the Master likes to hear stories for the same reason that the Neveu and Moi read books: for instruction and pleasure. But if we compare the Master's statement, apparently perfectly meaningful, to the statement in the Neveu de Rameau, we discover that, while agreeing in principle, Moi and the Neveu turn out to be looking for different kinds of instruction and pleasure. Moi is looking for "la connaissance de ses devoirs, l'amour de la vertu, la haine du vice" whereas the Neveu "recueille tout ce qu'il faut faire et tout ce qu'il ne faut pas dire." 25

This is an example of another technique of dramatic dialogue, the deceptively common meeting ground, relatively useless as a

23 James Doolittle, Rameau's Nephew: A Study of Diderot's Second Satire (Geneva, 1960), p. 21.

24 In regard to interruptions by the author, see H. Dieckmann, Cinq Legons sur Diderot.

25 Diderot, Oeuvres Romanesques, pp. 447-448.




technique for dramatized dialogue. Examples of conversation propelled by momentary agreement, then disagreement, on certain top- ics, abound in the Neveu de Rameau; none, to my knowledge, exists in Jacques le Fataliste.26 Perhaps a clearer example is the Neveu's statement that self-contempt is unbearable. Moi suddenly thinks he has discovered the existence of a moral fiber in the Neveu, but the ensuing discussion reveals that the Neveu's self-contempt occurs only when some ordinary individual acquires more by base flattery than he with all his talent. The "common" moral concept, it turns out, does not have the same meaning for the Neveu and Moi.27 For Moi, self-contempt comes from stooping too low; for the Neveu, it comes from not stooping low enough.

If Jacques and the Master's dialogue is never propelled by such misunderstandings, Jacques does, curiously enough, explain the mechanism behind them. In answer to his Master's request that he tell the story as it happened, Jacques harangues:

Cela n'est pas aise. N'a-t-on pas son caractere, son interet, son gout, ses passions, d'apres quoi 1'on exagere ou l'on attenue? Dis la chose comme elle est! . . . Cela n'arrive peut-ere pas deux fois en un jour dans toute une grande ville. Et celui qui vous ecoute est-il mieux dispose que celui qui parle? Non. D'oiu il doit arriver que deux fois 'a peine en un jour, dans toute une grande ville, on soit entendu comme on dit.28

Nowhere in the writings of the New Novelists is there a better statement of this particular dilemma, common to all their characters. For this is the problem of dialogue with an Other, the problem of characterization itself, that faces the New Novelist. In regard to Sarraute's Plane'tarium, Butor stated the case somewhat less suc- cinctly than Jacques:

Ou que nous soyons et avec qui, dans notre conversation, nous mentons: ces paroles, nous n'avons pas fini de les prononcer que nous commencons a les regretter: ce n'etait pas cela que je voulais dire, pas tout a fait cela, j'aurais dut . . . Ainsi toute parole que nous pronongons se trouve entouree, commentee ou contredite, amplifi6e ou attenuee par tout un essaim de paroles que nous ne pronongons pas.29

26 See also Oeuvres Romanesques, p. 479, for the misunderstanding on "bonne education"; P. H. Meyer, "The Unity and Structure of Diderot's Neveu de Rameau," Criticism, II (1960), 370, 377, on dignity; and Jean Fabre's critical edition of the Neveu de Rameau regarding "sa chose."

27 Oeuvres Romanesques, p. 411. 29 Ibid., p. 544. 29 Butor, "Le Planetarium, le jeu complique des paroles et des silences,"

Arts, 3 juin 1959, p. 2.




The spoken word, then, must be put back into a whole system of persons, events, and even history, before it can be understood, just as Diderot's portrait, according to Butor, needed to be placed amidst other portraits representing his surroundings before it could be understood.

A desire for communication-an eminently twentieth-century dilemma-inspired many of Diderot's best literary works and con- sequently, many of the modern techniques-such as the deceptively common meeting ground-can be found in them. Whether a dialogue is dramatized or based on a dialectic, it is still dependent on the ever-changing Other just as Diderot's facial expressions were. Diderot's discontent with Van Loo's portrait of him is essentially the same problem faced by the characters of the New Novels. University of California, Davis



Art.-diderot and the New Novel in France

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