Rameau's Nephew and First Satire (Oxford World's Classics)
Denis Diderot, Margaret Mauldon
Language: English
Pages: 139
ISBN: 0199539995
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
In his brilliant and witty dialogue, Denis Diderot invents a chance encounter in a Paris café between two acquaintances. Their talk ranges broadly across art, music, education, and the contemporary scene, as the nephew of composer Rameau, amoral and bohemian, alternately shocks and amuses the moral, bourgeois figure of his interlocutor. Exuberant and highly entertaining, the dialogue exposes the corruption of society in Diderot's characteristic philosophical exploration.
The debates of the French Enlightenment speak to us vividly in this sparkling new translation, which also includes the only English translation of First Satire, a related work that provides the context for Rameau's Nephew, Diderot's 'second satire.' Edited by distinguished translator Margaret Mauldon, with lively introduction and notes by Nicholas Cronk, the edition includes, for the first time in English, extracts from Goethe's commentary on this seminal Enlightenment work. It will prove a valuable addition to the library to any lover of French literature.
About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
my friend: it’s white, young, pretty, tender, plump; it’s an act of humility that a more fastidious man than you might stoop to on occasion. : Let’s get this clear: there’s kissing arses literally, and kissing arses figuratively. Ask that fat Bergier, who kisses Madame de La Marck’s arse both literally and figuratively; and, upon my word! in that particular case I’d find both equally unpleasant. : If the plan I’ve suggested isn’t to your liking, then have the courage to be a pauper. :
Comédie-Française, was visiting the bouquinistes on the Quai de Voltaire along the Seine and came across a manuscript with the title ‘Second Satire’ which he recognized as an autograph of Le Neveu de Rameau. He bought it, and the following year published what is the first reliable edition of the text. The manuscript which he discovered, after its long European travels, has today come to rest in the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York. This is a story, then, of a French book first published in
a few days later, fuelled a fine bonfire. And that’s how the renegade became the tranquil possessor of the fortune of that accursed descendant of those who crucified our Lord. Rameau’s Nephew : I don’t know which of the two horrifies me more: the villainy of your renegade, or the tone in which you speak of it. : And that’s what I was telling you. The atrocity of the act carries you beyond contempt, and that’s why I’m being sincere. I wanted you to realize just how much I excel at my
shorter, and in so doing pulls the sled towards the wheel. In this manner Horace makes us see that money, like tow, must do the work of the chariot and not of the rope-maker, must follow the twisted rope and not spin it, must render our life more stable, more vigorous, but not control it. The choice and placing of the words that the poet employs indicate that, metaphorically, he was borrowing from a process he had actually watched, and rescued from the pedestrian by his exquisite taste. A P
AT I R E [Epigraph] Quot capitum . . . milia: ‘For every thousand living souls, there are as many thousand tastes’ (Horace, Satires, . i. –; trans. H. R. Fairclough, Loeb edn.). [Dedication] Sunt quibus . . . tendere opus: ‘There are some critics who think I am too savage in my satire and strain the work beyond lawful bounds’ (Horace, Satires, . i. –; Loeb edn.). Diderot quotes again from the same poem: but this remark is aimed at his friend Naigeon. God . . . of his mother: