Diderot: A Critical Biography

by P.N. Furbank

A portrait of one of key figures of the French Enlightenment provides a incisive study of Diderot's private life, public career, and his literary and philosophical works. By the author of E. M. A Life.

Genres: France

524 pages, Hardcover

First published February 10, 1992

About the author

Philip Nicholas Furbank was an English biographer, critic and academic. His most significant biography was the well-received life of his friend E.M. Forster.

Reviews

[William2 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jorge Luis Borges said books about books can be far more fun to write and read than books that are simply stories. I've always thought he was on to something there, though the non-post-modernist tale still holds great fascination for me. He also once advised writers to write novels about imaginary, nonexistent books, which Zachary Mason, to cite one sterling example, did so well in The Lost Books of the Odyssey.

Diderot is a wonderful book about 18th century books and their authors, most if which are inaccessible to me because they're untranslated into English. The sheer size of Diderot's oeuvre requires a degree of concision from author P.N. Furbank that's gratifying. We go galloping through his writings at a mighty clip. From the Essai sur le mérite et la vertu of 1745 to the Letters to Sophie Voland, published posthumously in 1831. Plays, novels, the enormous undertaking of the Encyclopédie ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences des arts et des métiers, criticism, correspondence, etc. There are also discussions of the books and art that influenced the great philosophe. The writing is spritely and wise.

Many hilarious outrages were perpetrated by the younger Diderot. Take the story of Diderot's successful exploit to make fools out of the Sorbonne's Jansenist professors and Parlement in one fell swoop when they unknowingly approved a heretical tract. Or the cultural war over whether Italian or French music was superior. Diderot believed the French language unsuited to both poetry and opera. Rousseau backed the anti-French argument with such zeal that "...the orchestra of the Opéra formed a plot to assassinate him." (p. 107) Overall the view of Diderot here is one of an enormously kind and considerate man. He lived the virtue he espoused.

Then there are the troubles which come to Diderot's friendship with Rousseau, who grows more solitary and problematic with the years. I have not read Rousseau and have for some time considered this an egregious omission; but the more I read about this man who sent each of his six children to an orphanage the moment they were born, the more my interest wanes. By comparison Diderot is eminently rational and hard-working. Neither is he an "egomaniacal mischief maker" like Voltaire, the Genevan exile. His letters—especially those to his lover Sophie Voland—are masterpieces of persuasion and humility, wit and compassion.

His remarks on Rousseau on their final break have the conclusive ring of a court decision; in a private journal he said he was "despised by all who know him," "as vain as Satan, ungrateful, cruel, hypocritical and wicked" and "a monster." (p. 179)

There's a brilliant passage (p. 305) where Furbank quotes a long letter from Diderot to his sculptor friend Falconet of Dec. 1765. It was written during a prolonged discussion between the two Frenchmen about artistic posterity. Falconet has no interest in it. Diderot craves it. And here the reader is enjoying a brilliant biography in which Diderot's achievements are so ably cataloged. It's one of those delightful multi-dimensional moments in the book where Diderot is quoted discussing the very mission of the biographer about the transmission of his posterity about which we read. It's uncanny.

Also discussed (p. 400) is his trip to St. Petersburg in 1773-1774 to see Catherine the Great, who was a patron. Earlier, he'd sold his library to her which he was to keep in situ until his death while she paid him a stipend as its librarian. Diderot also acted as an agent for Catherine in Paris buying scads of paintings which later went to The Hermitage when it was formed in St. Petersburg, 1754. This is a beautiful introduction to the man and an essential exegesis of his works. I now feel prepared to read the texts, some of them: Indiscreet Jewels, Rameau's Nephew, D'Alembert's Dream, Jacques the Fatalist etc. Vigorously recommended.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Furbank seems to have discovered what he wanted to say about Diderot quite near the end of the book. Up to that point I thought that the author had merely typed out note cards that he had sequenced as one would sequence information in a biography - in roughly chronological order. Near the end I could discern Furbank's take on Diderot. So it seems that the book actually documents Furbank's process of learning and discovery of what he wished to say about his subject - acceptable, I suppose, in a first draft, but not in a completed manuscript. His biography would have been much more effective and engaging had he first developed his perspectives/themes and then allowed those judgements to guide his writing from the beginning of the book.