Key takeaways
- Each line of this inventory pairs an old, cheap thing with the costly thing that replaced it, so the chapter reads like a chain of purchases written out in full.
- Diderot names the force behind it, a "fatal instinct for what goes together," and blames it for empty strongboxes, missing dowries and ruined nations.
- Several purchases are made only to fill a gap the last one created, a space above the desk, an empty corner, a bare stretch of wall.
- By the end, the philosopher's den looks like the study of a rich tax farmer, and Diderot admits it.
The gown has made its point. In this chapter Diderot shows us the damage, one object at a time, in a run of short sentences that read like an inventory taken for a sale. Almost every line has the same shape: the old thing, and the costlier thing that pushed it out. It is the most detailed record of a spending chain in the essay, and the passage that the hub page summarizes in a few lines.
Two choices in this chapter. Much of the French here is a list of fragments hanging from one verb, “I have watched,” so we kept them as fragments rather than turning each into a full sentence. And Diderot’s great outburst begins with Instinct funeste des convenances. Convenances can mean social proprieties, but here it means the fit between things, what suits what. We translated it as “what goes together,” because that is the instinct the whole chapter is about.
The text, with notes
I have watched the Bergamo hanging give up the wall it had been attached to for so long to a hanging of damask.
Two prints that were not without merit, Poussin’s Fall of the Manna in the Desert and his Esther before Ahasuerus: the one, poor Esther, shamefully driven out by an old man by Rubens; the Fall of the Manna blown away by a Storm by Vernet.
Note. The pictures climb in price. Diderot starts with prints, inexpensive engraved copies of two paintings by Nicolas Poussin, one of them the picture of the Israelites gathering manna that now hangs in the Louvre. They give way to originals: an old man’s head by Rubens and a storm at sea by Claude-Joseph Vernet. The puns are Diderot’s own. Esther, a queen who pleaded before a king, is “driven out,” and the manna, which fell from heaven, is “blown away” by a storm.
The straw chair banished to the anteroom by the morocco armchair.
Homer, Virgil, Horace and Cicero lifting their weight off the feeble pine plank that bent beneath them, and shutting themselves away in an inlaid cabinet, a refuge more worthy of them than of me.
A large mirror taking possession of my mantelpiece.
The two pretty plaster casts I had from my friend Falconet, which he had touched up with his own hands, evicted by a crouching Venus. Modern clay broken by ancient bronze.
Note. Étienne Maurice Falconet was a sculptor and a close friend; in 1766 he left for Russia at Catherine the Great’s invitation to make the bronze statue of Peter the Great now known as the Bronze Horseman. His casts, a gift finished by his own hand, are pushed aside by a bronze crouching Venus, a pose known from ancient statues of the goddess surprised at her bath. Diderot’s last sentence sums up the trade: friendship and modern clay lose to money and antiquity.
The wooden table was still holding its ground, sheltered by a crowd of pamphlets and papers heaped every which way, which looked as if they might hide it for a long time from the insult that threatened it. One day it met its fate, and, lazy as I am, the pamphlets and papers went off to file themselves away in the clutches of a costly desk.
Fatal instinct for what goes together. Delicate and ruinous tact, sublime taste that changes, that moves, that builds up and knocks down; that empties fathers’ strongboxes and leaves daughters without dowries and sons without schooling; that makes so many beautiful things and does so much harm. You, who put the fatal and costly desk in my wooden table’s place, you are what ruins nations. You are the one who may someday carry my belongings to the Pont Saint-Michel, where the hoarse voice of a sworn auctioneer will be heard calling out: Twenty louis for a crouching Venus.
Note. The louis was a gold coin fixed at 24 livres, so the auctioneer’s twenty louis comes to 480 livres, nearly half the 1,000 livres a year Catherine the Great was paying Diderot to look after his own library. The daughters left without dowries are not an abstraction either: four years earlier, Diderot had put his books up for sale to provide a dowry for his own daughter. The bridge was where, as a note in the first edition of 1772 explains, furniture seized for debt was sold, so the auction he imagines is a bailiff’s sale. And his word for the belongings that may end up there is mes effets, my effects.
The space between the top of the desk and the Vernet Storm hanging above it left a gap that offended the eye. The gap was filled by a clock, and such a clock: a clock in the Geoffrin style, a clock where gold plays against bronze.
There was an empty corner beside my window. The corner asked for a writing cabinet, and it got one.
Another unpleasant gap, between the top of the writing cabinet and the fine head by Rubens: it was filled by two Lagrenées.
Here is a Magdalene by the same artist; there, a sketch by Vien or by Machy, for I took to sketches too. And that is how the philosopher’s edifying little den turned into the scandalous study of a tax farmer. I too am now an insult to the nation’s poverty.
Note. Diderot’s word is publicain, the tax collector of the Gospels. In his France it pointed at the fermiers généraux, the financiers who bought the right to collect the king’s indirect taxes, grew immensely rich doing it, and were among the great art collectors of the day. Louis-Jean-François Lagrenée, Joseph-Marie Vien and Pierre-Antoine Demachy were living French painters, the kind whose work Diderot reviewed at the Paris Salons. The “clock in the Geoffrin style” nods to Madame Geoffrin, the salon hostess whom a note in the first edition credits with the new furniture.
What to notice
Look at why the last four purchases happen. The clock fills a gap above the new desk. The writing cabinet fills a corner that suddenly “asked” for one. The Lagrenées fill a gap above the writing cabinet. Each purchase creates the empty space that justifies the next, which is the chain in its purest form, and the reason our seven rules for stopping a chain begin by writing the whole thing down before the first purchase. In the next chapter, one shabby rug survives.
Read this chapter in the original French
J’ai vu la Bergame céder la muraille, à laquelle elle était depuis si longtemps attachée, à la tenture de damas.
Deux estampes qui n’étaient pas sans mérite : la Chute de la manne dans le désert du Poussin, et l’Esther devant Assuérus du même ; l’une honteusement chassée par un vieillard de Rubens, c’est la triste Esther ; la Chute de la manne dissipée par une Tempête de Vernet.
La chaise de paille reléguée dans l’antichambre par le fauteuil de maroquin.
Homère, Virgile, Horace, Cicéron, soulager le faible sapin courbé sous leur masse, et se renfermer dans une armoire marquetée, asile plus digne d’eux que de moi.
Une grande glace s’emparer du manteau de ma cheminée.
Ces deux jolis plâtres que je tenais de l’amitié de Falconet, et qu’il avait réparés lui-même, déménagés par une Vénus accroupie. L’argile moderne brisée par le bronze antique.
La table de bois disputait encore le terrain, à l’abri d’une foule de brochures et de papiers entassés pêle-mêle, et qui semblaient devoir la dérober longtemps à l’injure qui la menaçait. Un jour elle subit son sort et, en dépit de ma paresse, les brochures et les papiers allèrent se ranger dans les serres d’un bureau précieux.
Instinct funeste des convenances ! Tact délicat et ruineux, goût sublime qui change, qui déplace, qui édifie, qui renverse ; qui vide les coffres des pères ; qui laisse les filles sans dot, les fils sans éducation ; qui fait tant de belles choses et de si grands maux, toi qui substituas chez moi le fatal et précieux bureau à la table de bois ; c’est toi qui perds les nations ; c’est toi qui, peut-être, un jour, conduiras mes effets sur le pont Saint-Michel, où l’on entendra la voix enrouée d’un juré crieur dire : À vingt louis une Vénus accroupie.
L’intervalle qui restait entre la tablette de ce bureau et la Tempête de Vernet, qui est au-dessus, faisait un vide désagréable à l’œil. Ce vide fut rempli par une pendule ; et quelle pendule encore ! une pendule à la Geoffrin, une pendule où l’or contraste avec le bronze.
Il y avait un angle vacant à côté de ma fenêtre. Cet angle demandait un secrétaire, qu’il obtint.
Autre vide déplaisant entre la tablette du secrétaire et la belle tête de Rubens, il fut rempli par deux La Grenée.
Ici est une Magdeleine du même artiste ; là, c’est une esquisse ou de Vien ou de Machy ; car je donnai aussi dans les esquisses. Et ce fut ainsi que le réduit édifiant du philosophe se transforma dans le cabinet scandaleux du publicain. J’insulte aussi à la misère nationale.
Sources
- Regrets sur ma vieille robe de chambre (Denis Diderot, Œuvres complètes, edited by J. Assézat and M. Tourneux, Garnier, 1875, volume IV, pages 5 to 12) The French text we translate from, in the public domain.
- The Manna (Poussin) (Wikipedia) The Poussin painting behind the first of Diderot's two prints, now in the Louvre.
- Étienne Maurice Falconet (Wikipedia) The sculptor who gave Diderot his plaster casts, and his move to Russia in 1766.
- Crouching Venus (Wikipedia) The ancient statue type of the bronze that replaced the casts.
- French livre (Wikipedia) The value of the louis, fixed at 24 livres.
- Denis Diderot (Wikipédia, in French) The library sale of 1765, made to provide a dowry for his daughter, and his salary as Catherine the Great's librarian.
- Ferme générale (Wikipedia) The tax farmers of the old regime, their wealth and their art collections.
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