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

the night striding up and down the Cours-la-Reine or the Champs-Elysées. * Dawn finds him back in the city, dressed in yesterday’s clothes for today, and occasionally for the rest of the week. I hold such eccentrics in low esteem. Others seek out their companionship, even their friendship. As for me, maybe once a year I like to stop and spend time with them, because their character contrasts sharply with other men’s, and they break with that tedious uniformity which our education, our social conventions, and our customary proprieties have produced. If one of them appears in a group, he’s like a grain of yeast that ferments, and restores to each of us his natural individuality. He shocks us, he stirs us up; he forces us to praise or blame; he brings out the truth; he identifies honourable men and unmasks scoundrels; itis then that the man of good sense keeps his ears open, and takes the measure of his companions.
    I knew this one from a long while back. He frequented a household where his talents had made him welcome. An only daughter lived there. He used to swear to the mother and father that he’d marry the daughter. They’d shrug, laugh in his face, tell him he was crazy, yet I saw it actually happen. He’d ask me for a few écus, and I’d let him have them. He’d insinuated himself, by what means I do not know, into a number of respectable houses where he was given a seat at the dinner table, on condition that he never spoke without first asking permission. He would keep silent, and swallow his fury with his food. It was wonderful to see him thus constrained. Should he be tempted to break the treaty and open his mouth, at the first word all the guests would exclaim ‘Oh! Rameau!’ and his eyes would flash with rage as he set about swallowing his food even more furiously. You were curious to learn the name of the man; well, now you know it. He’s the nephew of that famous musician who rescued us from Lully’s plainchant, which we’d been droning out for over a hundred years; who wrote such reams of incomprehensible visions and apocalyptic verities on the theory of music, of which neither he nor anyone else ever understood a word, and who left us with a number of operas where we can enjoy various harmonies, unfinished songs, unrelated ideas, uproars, flights, triumphal fanfares, spears, ennoblements, seditious whisperings, endless victories; he also left us dance tunes that will live forever; he buried the Florentine, and will in his turn be buried by the Italian
virtuosi
; this he foresaw and it made him gloomy, depressed, cantankerous; for no one is as ill humoured, not even a pretty woman who wakes up with a pimple on her nose, as an author in danger of outliving his reputation—witness Marivaux and Crébillon the younger.
    He addresses me: ‘Aha! So it’s you, Master Philosopher; and what are you doing here in this company of idlers? Wasting your time too, pushing the wood about?’ (That’s how the scornful refer to playing chess, or draughts.)
    ME : No, but when I’ve nothing better to do, I enjoy spending a few minutes watching those who push it well.
    HIM : In that case, you rarely enjoy yourself; apart from Legal and Philidor, the rest haven’t a clue about the game.
    ME : But what about Monsieur de Bissy?
    HIM : That man’s to chess, what Mademoiselle Clairon is to acting. Both have mastered everything that can be
learnt
about their respective playing.
    ME : You’re hard to please; I can see you’ll allow nothing short of sublime perfection.
    HIM : Yes, in chess, draughts, poetry, eloquence, music, and other such twaddle. What use is mediocrity in those genres?
    ME : Very little, I grant you. But you need a great many people working in them to enable the man of genius to emerge. He’s one in a million. But enough of that. It’s ages since I saw you. I almost never think of you, unless I see you. But I’m always pleased when I do. What have you been up to?
    HIM : What you, I, and everyone