Rameau's Nephew and D'Alembert's Dream by Denis Diderot

Author:Denis Diderot
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group USA, Inc.
Published: 2010-11-04T00:00:00+00:00

NOTES ON RAMEAU’S NEPHEW

1. The Allée d’Argenson was the name given to the avenue of trees on the east, or Rue de Valois, side of the garden, and the Allée de Foy was the corresponding one on the west, or Rue de Richelieu, side. The garden is virtually unchanged today and is the loveliest oasis in central Paris, probably more beautiful and peaceful than ever before owing to the disappearance of some doubtful shops from the arcades and a thorough cleaning of the stonework.

2. The Café de la Régence was in the Place du Palais-Royal, and the proprietor’s name was Rey.

3. Jean-Baptiste Lully, or Lulli (1632–87) was of Florentine origin, but his career was wholly French. Favourite composer of Louis XIV, he was the founder of French opera, and his influence upon French music was immense, as in the following century Handel’s was to be upon English.

4. Mlle Clairon (1723–1803), one of the most famous actresses of the age, created many of the parts in Voltaire’s tragedies. Her art is discussed in Diderot’s Paradoxe sur le comédien. For an account of her colourful life see J. Christopher Herold, Love in Five Temperaments, London, Hamish Hamilton, 1961, pp. 223–79.

5. Briasson, of the Rue Saint-Jacques, one of the group of publishers behind the Encyclopédie. Barbier was a silk-merchant.

6. Charles Duclos (1704–72), novelist, historian and essayist. His most important work was the Considérations sur les mœurs de ce siècle (1750). In 1755 he became secretary of the Académie française. Although sympathetic towards the Encyclopaedists he was a moderate man and thought Diderot a violent fanatic, and used his influence to keep him out of the Academy. Hence Diderot’s resentment.

The Abbé Trublet (1697–1770) was a deadly enemy of Voltaire and a sarcastic, unpleasant person.

The Abbé d’Olivet (1682–1768), historian of the Académie française, had a reputation for hypocrisy and dissimulation. Diderot is therefore ironically praising this trio for the opposite virtues to their known vices.

7. Voltaire’s Mahomet dated from 1742, but the parliamentary reforms of Maupeou in 1771, though widely disapproved, were praised by Voltaire. This passage shows that Diderot was still revising the dialogue as late as 1772.

8. By Philippe Rameau.

9. Palissot (1730–1814), arch-enemy of the movement, caricatured Diderot and his associates in the comedy Les Philosophes (1760). There were two Poinsinets, cousins, one of whom, Henri Poinsinet (1735–69), known as the younger, attacked the Encyclopaedists in his comedy Le Petit Philosophe (1760). The elder Fréron (1719–76), the great enemy of Voltaire, waged an anti-philosophic warfare in his Année littéraire. His son was born in 1754, which again dates this part of the work well into the 1770s. Les Trois siècles de la littérature française, 3 vols, 1772, by Sabatier des Castres, Palissot and others, a sort of history of French literature, was violently biased and hostile to Voltaire and the Enlightenment. This reference is yet another factor in the dating of the final version of the work.

10. Mlle Hus (1734–1805), actress of the Comédie française, where she was for a time chief rival of Clairon.

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