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"The head of a Langrois is on his shoulders like a rooster on top of a tower: it is never fixed at one point, and if she returns to the one she left, it is not stopping there. With surprising rapidity of movement, in desires, in projects, in fantasies, in ideas, they have slow speech. For me, I am of my country only stay in the capital and the diligent application just corrected me. Denis Diderot, Langres became a Parisian, had indeed corrected, but not the way he thought. His mind had kept the quickness to turn, but he had equaled the impetuosity of his speech to the speed of his thought. He is talkative, storyteller, counselor, reasoner. This son of a cutler of Langres was never in the world: it has spread in salons that his fame was opening, slovenly ways, vulgar, but of all worldly conveniences, if there is one that it has trodden under foot, the one that constrains language. Big eater, glutton, he does not grace his indigestion: it is full of his subject, he must speak. It has the gaiety of the people, huge, filthy, where it is, to anyone, it makes it loose the nonsense that seethe in his mind: he must speak. He has the frankness of the people, that of the Auvergne by Labiche rather than Molière's Alceste: he throws in the faces of people of their truths, he thinks, they spring: he must speak. He has friends, he sees action, make plans, arrange their lives: it flows through their lives, through their most intimate feelings, advising, arranging, indiscreet pressing, it is the crow that fells nuts, and that's how he fell out with Rousseau: he wants to keep him in Paris, send it to Geneva, he decides, he directs, he must speak.
Bonhomme rest, obliging, generous, full of good feelings, good son, good brother, good father, good husband even close to the fidelity, good friend, warm heart, enthusiastic, always willing to give and devote himself: if only he could s 'pour out freely, always happy to put themselves forward to be a negotiation of a case where there is burning of the activity, thought to evaporate in words. It is the least selfish, the most disinterested of men, provided it is spent. He crossed his age, constantly in the mouth, packed, overflowing, never tired of the ceaseless fermentation dimmed his brain and he said, he had more to say.
Its robust organization provided all expenses. It was a stunning conversationalist, his conversation was a firework, which we saw go with dizzying speed images, ideas, pranks, science, storytelling, metaphysics, crazy dreams, assumptions fruitful divinations amazing. The fireplace in his house Taranne street at the Cafe de la Regence, the dear Madame d'Epinay Chevrette, at Grandval at the Baron d'Holbach, Diderot was always ready, always heated, leaving a word on a sign. And when he was told well, played, cried, he remained of the surplus that had not given way: he took the pen and continued the conversation at times with the same person, sometimes with another, he wrote or Falconet Mlle Volland. And these conversations and letters, this was only his overflow that flowed. I would have said that the relaxation of his books, if his books had tired.
But he wrote as he spoke easily, merrily, without fatigue or break: it serving his mind, as Aristotle would have said. So can we speak here of artistic work, to slow development, composition and scholarly thought: all these antics are not his way. Write or talk is a natural function for him, there is no way he relieves himself, and there is really shameless in its natural spread in his improvisation at full speed, all the places it is good, and all occasions. It has started to Encyclopedia, and as he wants to your destination safely, he lowers the tone. Nothing allows us to better measure the energy expended by Diderot in this case, that this miracle wrought in him the desire to succeed: he has tried to be decent, not to unleash it on the government or religion that was too scandalous. But as his tongue itch while working so wisely! this task as excited! Everything he could not say in his articles, he threw in another structure, it was not for glory or for gain he wrote, was for him to evacuate his thought. He published his Thoughts on the Nature Interpretation its dramas, its interview with a philosopher madame de *** , etc.. But his D'Alembert's Dream , his Supplement au Voyage de Bougainville his Paradox on the Actor his Religious his Jacques the Fatalist his Neveu de Rameau is to say the best and worst, the most characteristic of his work anyway, all that remained buried in his papers. It was written and it was enough to Diderot, he had drawn from his work the pleasure he expected. With equal indifference, he sowed its pages in the books of his friends: a treatise on harpsichord Bemetzrieder of a history of Abbe Raynal, a gazette of Grimm, everything was good, mainly for him was to write, put his name would not add to its fun! And, after thirty years of this relentless outpouring, I can not guarantee that Diderot did not die with regret at having kept something unsaid in her mind.
This intense refund of thinking was the result of active absorption, and its powerful engine ever produced under pressure and incessant work had to be largely fueled. Diderot is not a creative genius, able to make a world of itself and is far from Descartes, Rousseau even further. This requires him to be a scholar and curious. Emile Faguet has rightly said, it is aware of many things which were not common knowledge in his time. When we stick to the easy arguments of Locke, when our frightened people who do not shrink from Spinoza, not to the boldness, but given the depth of his doctrine, and fear of them breaking the head, Diderot , without ceremony, without fuss, assimilates the drive, the great system of Leibniz and there is no other reason, I believe, it has given France's reputation of being a German head. He made mathematics, he has made the physical he made of natural history, he knows the most recent assumptions, the most striking experiences of science that is currently up and stretch. He knows the painting, music: I'm not saying do reasons a little rhyme, but never the absence of specific knowledge or techniques is the source of its deviations trial. In literature, it has the largest reading, watching it abroad, he knows the seventeenth century. He also knows a lot about antiquity, and it is not vague impressions of a quick read, he sees the details, it looks accurate, and if Horace bed, the bed he philologist, a poet, historian, Pliny, if he reads it the bed still philologist, but also a painter, an archaeologist, a chemist and he takes each item on the side of which the skilled person would take, before you press his personal musings.
Thus shall Diderot's fertility is not spontaneous. He needs a shock from outside to put in motion the whirlwind of his thoughts, he can give himself the flick. There comes the flick That's all in motion, the machine hisses, smokes, spits, cracks, we are amazed at the disproportionate share of its breathtaking and its infernal din with a simple gesture that gave them birth. Sterne and Diderot is in a half-page that entertains: he left it, and place three hundred pages of Jacques the Fatalist . I do not know if he has never done anything that is not the occasion for something, like a huge reaction against its being an external impression. But, it will be said, is not it always thus? No, because first, Diderot, the shock is not any emotion, a fact of experience, is the shock of thinking that has tried to translate into speech or art, then the detachment of the external cause of his internal thought is not, his work, so vast it is, Besides, if I may say, pinned on the margins of the book of others is a stunning Diderot commentator, often more interesting than the text. He excels again at the books of others: he is incapable of judging them. While he seems to listen, he took the starting point where the author has placed, and he travels on his behalf: when you finish, you said the book he would have done your place, and this is his way of hearing the criticism. In conversation, he is the same: everything you tell him in two hours, he hears something, one, he takes the works, the growing and your tiny little thought becomes a large system, and you sometimes rebellion, or you fear. That is the mental mechanism of Diderot spontaneity poor reactions prodigious.
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