Jacques Le Fataliste by Denis Diderot one of the 100 Greatest Books Ever Written http://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/may/08/books.booksnews 10 out of 10

 

Jacques Le Fataliste by Denis Diderot one of the 100 Greatest Books Ever Written http://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/may/08/books.booksnews  

10 out of 10

 

 

I have read recently the marvelous To The Hermitage by Malcolm Bradbury http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/10/notes-on-to-hermitage-by-malcolm.html and found so much more about fabulous Denis Diderot, his visit To the Hermitage where he met with Catherine The Great, one of the few good leaders the Russians have had, think Ivan the Terrible, Stalin, Lenin and even Peter the Great (the latter tortured and killed his own son, among many) and Jacques Le Fataliste is just one of the many contributions to world culture that Diderot has made – one that I have found some decades back is the discovery of…Method Acting avant la lettre, the analyst that discovered the notion that actors who invest the least get the most from their performance, or in other words, those who use their brain, rather than the ‘heart’ and do not immerse into the character…

 

The introduction to Jacques Le Fataliste is phenomenal, mesmerizing…where do they come from, where are they going, and we are immediately captivated by the relativity, the philosophical musing mixed with humor that makes eternal themes, the meaning of life seem so much more accessible, we are generally scared, deterred to ask the fundamental questions, but this is a different, original, creative, humane, humorous approach that invites us to think about perennial themes – memento mori, legend has it that one slave would whisper to the emperor about this, so that he would not indulge in fame, power, and forget that he, like everyone else, is mortal and has to consider this and not waste time…

Jacques seems to believe in God and he repeats that ‘it is written in the book above’, only his belief is original ‘Thou hast known for all time what I needed, Thy will be done…Amen" and could have been labeled blasphemy in that time – we get from To the Hermitage and others sources that Denis Diderot was not a bigot, on the contrary, he must have had a very open mind and the views we have in Jacques Le Fataliste would have us select what we want to believe, if we are atheist or religious, thought he latter might be puzzled here…

 

The position of the Jacques is apparently that of servant, but as almost everything else, there are two sides to this, in reality, he comes across as ‘superior’ to his master and they have at least one dispute, in which Jacques refuses to go down and obey his ‘master’, indeed, it seems that the servant is the main character, we are listening along with the master to his stories and the contribution of the ‘upper class character’ appears to be much less important than that of the narrator of love and other stories…

We have the master encouraging his servant to recount the stories of his love affairs and the latter obliges, telling us how he was wounded, then he happens to be near this house and the wife takes him in, for it was ‘written above’, it was the destiny and we have that repeated, the idea that we have to be resigned, there is nothing we can do, but this being a mesmerizing, smart chef d’oeuvre, things are not that simple.

 

Perhaps we could see things as changeable, maybe it is in our power to make our own destiny, well, at least to a degree, and we should try as hard as we can to make the best of our future – let us consider the great book by Martin Seligman, co-founder around the year 200 of positive psychology, he thought that psychology had so far taken care of people with issues, taking them from minus seven to zero and why not focus on ordinary folks and make them happier, Learned Optimism teaches us that we can be optimistic and should be, for those who are like that live longer, have better, more successful private and professional lives http://realini.blogspot.com/2013/07/learned-optimism-by-martin-seligman.html 

Denis Diderot has an amusing way of talking to the reader, explaining he gets his inspiration from real life, and it is not his fault if we hear embarrassing things (I say hear, because you have various versions of this outstanding magnum opus online, including in audiobook format on YouTube, seeing as the seventy years threshold has been passed long ago, and the chef d’oeuvre is now in the public domain, not protected by copyright, unless of course we are talking of some published translations, which have restricted, paid for access) sometimes connected with the adventures of the protagonist, Jacques Le Fataliste.

 

His relationships with women remind me of The Decameron, and it is interesting that I have written a note ten years ago, with the same idea in mind http://realini.blogspot.com/2012/09/jacques-le-fataliste-by-denis-diderot.html and the simplistic explanation will be, yah, The Decameron and Le Fataliste both depict some amorous stories from the Middle Ages, and while the former is almost page after page with coitus, a carnival of what looks like orgies – the tale with the gardener at the nuns’ monastery comes to mind, where the fellow claims he is deaf and dumb if I remember it well, besides, he is no gardener, and one after another the nuns get him to bed – was it also outside, or I just imagine things – until the mother superior takes it over and has a monopoly over the sexual services of the lucky, poor chap

Jacques pretends he is a novice, so that one woman teaches him the secrets of sex, while admitting eventually that he had known from someone else all about it…it is not all Wine and roses, for he is injured early on and the husband is complains to the wife that was outside when Le Fataliste needed help and now they are stuck with him and he only moves when the doctor agrees to take him home, in exchange for serious money, and when the cash runs out, because Jacques is magnanimous, and gives all he has to a woman in trouble and his deed is talked about, especially after some thugs try to rob the man they had thought rich (otherwise how would he give to that woman) only to find he has nothing, so when an aristo finds about it, he takes the munificent fellow under his protection and we see the advantageous of being generous…

Perhaps the most important aspects would be the meditation on fate and the notion that ‘it is written’, there is a god (I do not think so), all told in a modern way, it seems that the author talking to the reader is such a nouvelle vague, recent thing, but here is Denis Diderot, arguing and playing with his audience…

 

http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html