Diderot and the Encyclopædists (Vol. 1 of 2)Morley, John
History
Diderot and the Encyclopædists (Vol. 1 of 2)
Morley, John
Diderot, Denis, 1713-1784; Encyclopedists
simply that its whole structure and its regulations repel the faculties
of dramatic genius.
Besides the perfection of the _genre serieux_, Diderot insisted that the
following tasks were also to be achieved before the stage could be said
to have attained the full glory of the other arts. First, a domestic or
bourgeois tragedy must be created. Second, the conditions of men, their
callings and situations, the types of classes, in short, must be
substituted for mere individual characters. Third, a real tragedy must
be introduced upon the lyric theatre. Finally, the dance must be brought
within the forms of a true poem.
The only remark to be made upon this scheme touches the second article
of it. To urge the substitution of types of classes for individual
character was the very surest means that could have been devised for
bringing back the conventional forms of the pseudo-classic drama. The
very mark of that drama was that it introduced types instead of
vigorously stamped personalities. What would be gained by driving the
typical king off the stage, only to make room for the generalisation of
a shopkeeper? This was not the path that led to romanticism, to Andre
Chenier, to De Vigny, to Lamartine, to Victor Hugo. Theophile Gautier
has told us that the fiery chiefs of the romantic school who suddenly
conquered France at the close of the Restoration, divided the whole
world into _flamboyant_ and _drab_. In the literature of the past they
counted Voltaire one of the Drab, and Diderot a Flamboyant.[290] If it
be not too presumptuous in a foreigner to dissent, we cannot but think
that they were mistaken. Nothing could be farther removed at every part
from Diderot's dramatic scheme, than _Faust_ or _Goetz von Berlichingen_
or _Hernani_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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