Notes
“[Enjoying] so much noise and movement” Blaise Pascal, Pensées, in P. Sellier (ed.), Paris, Garnier, 1991, fragment 168, p. 217. All translations are by Timothy McInerney, whom the editors and the author would like to thank.
For Descartes, extended objects dictate the way of studying and of understanding nature. Sound does not seem to belong to the realm of the measurable, as it is mobile, changing, unstable. Thus, is not the human voice inseparable from the hypothesis of the embodiment of the human word, which in turn leads to the notion that, to the extent that ,thought being expressed by the human voice, it depends on circumstances extraneous to its intellectual substance?
“Man, who is spirit, is led by his eyes and ears.” La Bruyère, Les Caractères, ou les mœurs de ce siècle, in J. Lafond (ed.), Moralistes du XVIIe siècle, Paris, Robert Laffont, 1992, XI, 154, p. 872.
“Oh reason! Who can resist you when you assume the enthralling accents and voice of Woman?” Diderot D., Le fils naturel, in H. Dieckmann, J. Proust, J. Varlot & al. (ed.), Œuvres Complètes, Paris, Hermann, 1975, t. X, IV, 7, p. 69. References to the work of Diderot all come from this edition, henceforth referred to as DPV followed by the number of the volume and of the chapter when applicable.
“The night obscures forms and fills sounds with horror, be it but the rustle of a leaf in the depths of a forest; it sets imagination in motion” Diderot, Salon de 1767, DPV, t. XVI, p. 234.
“When the different sections of the string are incommensurable, will not a phenomenon occur that is analogous to that reported by certain authors on optics, and which has so very much embarrassed them? It is the muddled vision of an object, when the reflected or broken rays come together in the eye. If this is the case, these are things held in common by two sensations of a very different kind” Denis Diderot, Mémoires sur différents sujets de mathématiques, DPV, t. II, remark in the First Memoir, p. 275. We could also add the Lettre sur les sourds et muets and the Lettre sur les aveugles, which shows how Diderot further studies the idea of sound and of voice. What is a human being when speechless ? What is the reception and the account of sound and voice in a sightless human being? Are they different in a human being who can see? For Mélanie de Salignac, “distraits par leurs yeux, ceux qui voient ne peuvent ni l’écouter [la musique] ni l’entendre comme je l’écoute et je l’entends.” (Additions à la Lettre sur les aveugles, DPV, t. IV, p. 100 “distracted by their eyes, those who see cannot hear it (music) nor listen to it in the way in which I hear and listen to it”).
“When she heard singing, she could distinguish the voices of brunettes and blonds.” Denis Diderot, Additions à la Lettre sur les sourds et muets, DPV, t. IV, p. 99. The allusion to the ocular harpsichord of the Père Castel is clear. See Dubruque J., “Théorie et esthétique musicales dans la Lettre sur les sourds et muets”, RDE, n° 46, 2011, p. 58-70.
“So there he was, seated at the harpsichord […] His voice was like the wind and his fingers flew over the keys, sometimes abandoning the upper ends for the lower, no sooner quitting this accompaniment for the upper end again. One passion succeeded another across his face – one could distinguish tenderness, anger, pleasure, and pain. One felt the pianos and the fortes. And I am sure that one better versed than I would have recognised the piece from its tempo and character, his facial expressions and the snippets of song that escaped from him from time to time.” Diderot D., Le Neveu de Rameau, DPV, t. XII, p. 99. Translation by L. Tancock, Rameau’s Nephew, London, Penguin Classics, 1966, p. 54.
See Hélène Cussac, "Espace et Bruit. Le monde sonore dans la littérature française du XVIIIe siècle", Thèse de Doctorat, Université de Clermont-Ferrand II, 2005.
Speculation on the world of vibrations was very active during the eighteenth century, maintaining the opposition between noise and sound. On the one hand, this was on intellectualist grounds, noise, as an indistinct object, not being open to analysis, according to Furetière; on the other hand, this was mainly on sensualist grounds, as noise does not provide as much pleasure as those sonorous events we call sounds. While the distinction between noise and sound is aesthetically interesting, I will not observe that distinction within the framework of my discussion, because I know that what was of interest for theorists and acousticians in sound was the pleasure it provided. Indeed, Diderot makes only a distinction between sound and noise on a secondary level. Sound is enriched noise: “Noise is one. Sound, on the contrary, never reaches our ears alone. With it we hear other sounds that we call its harmonics.” (Mémoires sur différents sujets de mathématiques, DPV, t. II, remark in the First Memoir, p. 265 ). See our essay : “Anthropologie du bruit au siècle des Lumières”, Actes du colloque « Bruits », dec. 2013, org. Sorbonne Paris 1, CNRS and ENS Louis-Lumière, on-line journal L’Autre musique, 28 mars 2016, http://www.lautremusique.net/lam4/preambule/anthropologie-du-bruit-au-siecle-des-lumieres.html (accessed 30 June 2016).
References to the voice were indeed often used to make fun of characters; it conveys, more so than sight, potential satire. It might be remembered how La Bruyère ridiculed N*** , who “arrive avec un grand bruit”, “écarte le monde, se fait faire place nette ; gratte, heurte presque ; se nomme…”, (in Les Caractères, R. Garapon (ed.), Paris, Garnier, 1995, XV, 4, p. 223. N*** who “arrives with a great noise,” “pushes through the crowd, sweeping people aside; scratches herself, almost causing injury; known as ...”) “Sight doesn’t make itself noticed; the voice imposes itself. It is a sense that is incapable of being insensitive to events that concern it. We can close our eyes and thus momentarily remove ourselves from the world.” “L’oreille – as Pascal Quignard said– n’a pas de paupière.” , (in La haine de la musique, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1996, p. 118. “The ear”, as Pascal Quignard said, “doesn’t have an eyelid.”)
“rire à gorge déployée”, Diderot, Les Bijoux indiscrets, DPV, t. III, XX, p. 91.
“babillard”, “éclate de rire”, ibid., XIII, p. 104.
“laughter from the stalls, the amphitheatre and the boxes” ibid., p. 71.
“Burst out laughing” Diderot, Le Neveu…, DPV, t. XII, p. 180 (2 occurrences), trans. L. Tancock (ed.), p. 114.
“Everybody rushed out with the speed and babble of a flock of birds escaping from their cage, and the sisters wandered off into each other’s rooms, running, laughing and chattering,” Diderot D., La Religieuse, DPV, t. XI, p. 219, trans. L. Tancock (ed.), The Nun, London, Penguin Classics, 1974, p. 130.
“The immoderate laughter and rowdy merriment of a dozen or so brigands,” Diderot, Jacques le fataliste, DPV, t. XXIII, p. 29. Tr: M. Henry, Jacques the Fatalist, London, Penguin Classics, 1986, p. 26.
Jacques’s master “was splitting his sides laughing” Ibid., p. 81. Tr: p. 71.
He is touched by his “delightful merriment” Ibid., p. 259. Tr: p. 226.
He “started to laugh and whistle” Ibid., p. 255 (two occurrences). Tr: p. 222.
Or while he was “almost crying with joy,” Ibid., p. 273. Tr: p. 238.
“bursts of laughter fit to split open the ceiling,” Le Neveu…, DPV, t. XII, p. 165. Tr: L. Tancock (ed.), p. 103.
"able to imitate with gesture and voice the “sublime monkey-ing” of the “grand comedy, the comedy of the world” of which the actor keeps the memory long after having studied it. So, as a buffoon, Neveu provokes laughter through “the freedom of his spirit Diderot” Le Paradoxe sur le comédien, DPV, t. XX, p. 54 and p. 56.
Ibid., p. 56.
“The gaiety which had never been, absent since my arrival at the convent suddenly disappeared. Everything returned to the strictest discipline,” La Religieuse, DPV, t. XI, p. 263. Tr: The Nun, ed. L. Tancock, p. 170.
Pierre Chartier, preface to his edition of Jacques le fataliste, Paris, Le Livre de Poche, 2000, pp. 10-11.
“à sangloter, pleurer, gémir, soupirer, se désespérer” after having gone “brusquement de ses ris immodérés à des lamentations ridicules” Les Bijoux…, DPV, t. III, XX, p. 91.
“C’est par l’opposition que les caractères se distinguent,” Diderot D., in Leçons de clavecin et principes d’harmonie en dialogues, DPV, t. XIX, p. 196. “It is by opposition that characters are distinguished.”
See Didier B., “La réflexion sur la dissonance chez les écrivains du XVIIIe siècle: d’Alembert, Diderot, Rousseau,” in Revue des Sciences Humaines, 76, 205 (janv.-mars 1987), pp. 13-25. From the same author see also La Musique des Lumières, Paris, PUF, 1985.
Béatrice Didier has addressed this question quite cogently: she shows that changes in the way music was listened to were low and stabilised only during the Enlightenment: 1987, pp. 13-25.
“the dissonances in social harmony are the ones that need skill in placing, preparing for and resolving. Nothing is so dull as a succession of common chords. There must be something piquant, to break up the beam of light and split it into rays,” Le Neveu…, DPV, t. XII, p. 177 (tr. T. McInnerney).
“[…] the fine accompanied recitative in which the prophet depicts the desolation of Jerusalem was mingled with a flood of tears which forced all eyes to weep. Everything was there: the delicacy of the air and expressive power as well as grief. […] He wept, laughed, sighed […]” Ibid., p. 165-166. Tr: pp. 103-104.
“in the direction of the linguistic and in the representation of society and its tensions.” Didier B., “La réflexion…”, 1987, p. 13.
A “very old jewel, sighing heavily” starts to “ramble,” while others “reached such a high pitch, so bizarre and wild that they formed the most extraordinary, noisy, and ridiculous choir that had ever been heard” Les Bijoux …, DPV, t. III, XVIII, p. 102 and XIII, p. 71.
“However, their pieces of jewellery were shouting themselves hoarse with the extent of their singing, this one a Pont-neuf, that one a naughty Vaudeville, another one a quite indecent parody, and for all, eccentricities related to their characters” Les Bijoux…, DPV, t. III, XIII, p. 71.
“We endlessly inveigh against the passions; we attribute them all to be the griefs of man, and we forget that they are also the source of all joys. […] there are only passions, and great passions that can elevate the soul to the greatest things.” Diderot D., DPV, t. II, p. 17.
“It is pain that gives pleasure its bite; it is the shadow that brings out the sun; joy owes its sweetness to weariness; it is a nebulous day that embellishes a serene day; it is vice that sets off virtue; it is ugliness that reveals the radiance of beauty; it is by opposition that characters are distinguished; the magic of painting consists of this chiaroscuro; poets with exquisite taste have rarely neglected to insert a sad idea amidst the most joyous and the most voluptuous images; in this way, the latter become interesting; a little noise from faraway gives an inconceivable charm to silence; a pensive being confined to a nook of solitude, adds to that solitude. A happiness that nothing can alter is a bland one.” Diderot D., Leçons de Clavecin …, DPV, t. XIX, p. 196.
This is not to praise that music of which noise might unduly take advantage, but rather to emphasise how much the sense of hearing had henceforth become a open door onto the nature of Man, no longer contrary to the rationalist attitude of Rameau which applied exclusively to the nature of things. On that point, see the preface by Catherine Kintzler in her edition of Écrits sur la musique de J.-J. Rousseau, Paris, Stock, 1979. See also Sciences, musique, Lumières: mélanges offerts à Anne-Marie Chouillet, Kölving U. et Passeron I. (ed), Ferney-Voltaire, Centre international d’étude du 18e siècle, 2002.
“I will never tire of listening to singing or to a superlative instrumentalist, and if such is the only happiness to be enjoyed in heaven, I will not baulk at being there. You were right when you claimed that music was the most violent of all beaux arts, excepting neither poetry nor rhetoric; that not even Racine could express himself with the delicacy of a harp; that his melody was heavy and monotonous in comparison to that of an instrument.” Diderot D., Additions à la Lettre sur les aveugles, DPV, t. IV, p. 100.
“[Fear,] indignation, anger, vexation [disappointment], one passion after another possessed me, and I had different voices, took on different expressions and made different gestures,” La Religieuse, DPV, t. XI, p. 94, tr: The Nun, L. Tancock (ed.), p. 28.
It is worthwhile to recall the musical image so dear to Diderot, of a man as sensitive as a harpsichord, written by J. Van Effen (La Bagatelle, 11 August 1718): “Ce qu’il y a de machinal dans l’homme répond avec la même nécessité aux inflexions de la voix de quelqu’un que les cordes d’un instrument répondent au doigt ou à l’archet d’un musicien” (“What is mechanical in man answers as necessarily to the inflections of someone’s voice as the strings of an instrument answer to the finger or to the bow of a musician.”) Quoted from F. Deloffre and M. Gilot in their edition on Marivaux, Journaux et Œuvres diverses, Paris, Garnier, 1969, note 20, p. 557.
“ […] I merely heard confused and distant voices buzzing round me; whether it was real speech or singing in my ears, I could make out nothing but this continual buzzing, ” La Religieuse, DPV, t. XI, p. 170. Tr: The Nun, L. Tancock (ed.), p. 91.
“ loud and fierce voice, ” Ibid., p. 169. Tr: p. 90.
“Is man therefore condemned to never agree with neither his kind nor himself?” Diderot D., De la poésie dramatique, DPV, t. X, p. 424.
“ I […] did not know whether to give in to laughter or furious indignation. I felt embarrassed. A score of times a burst of laughter prevented a burst of rage, and a score of times the anger rising from the depths of my heart ended in a burst of laughter. I was dumbfounded […]. He noticed the conflict going on inside me […], ” Le Neveu…, DPV, t. XII, p. 95, tr. L. Tancock (ed.), p. 51.
“ we were busy the Chevalier and I, grieving, consoling ourselves, accusing ourselves, insulting ourselves and begging each other’s pardon, ” Jacques le fataliste, DPV, t. XXIII, p. 276. Tr: M. Henry (ed.), pp. 243-244.
“We became bitter, we shouted, we went from screams to insults.” Les Bijoux …, DPV, t. III, X, p. 62.
“ I was thinking how variable your style is, sometimes lofty, sometimes familiar ”, DPV, t. XII, p. 164. L. Tancock (ed.), p. 94. “ […] “as he grew more impassioned, he raised his voice ,” ibid., p. 102.
“Without movement life is but a kind of lethargy.” Rousseau J.-J., “Cinquième promenade ”, in B. Gagnebin and M. Raymond (ed.), Les Rêveries du Promeneur Solitaire, Œuvres Complètes, Paris, Gallimard, 1959, p. 1047.
See Diderot D., the Rêve de d’Alembert and particularly the definition stated by Bordeu, DPV, t. XVII, p. 145, 170-171, 179-184, or in L. Tancock (ed.), D’Alembert’s Dream, Londres, Penguin Classics, 1966, pp. 186-187.
“Nothing so much resembles actor on stage [...] than children who, during the night, imitate ghosts in cemeteries, by raising a big white sheet with a pole above their heads, and, from under their bier making lugubrious voices which frighten passers-by away.” Diderot D., Paradoxe sur le comédien, DPV, t. XX, p. 52.
“It is the animal cry of passion that should dictate the melodic line […] The simple language and normal expression of emotion are all the more essential because our language is more monotonous and less highly stressed. The cry of animal instinct or that of a man under stress of emotion will supply them.” Le Neveu…, DPV, t. XII, p. 169-170. Tr: L. Tancock (ed.), p. 105 -106.
“the animal moves, becomes restless, screams; I can hear its screams through its shell” Diderot D., La Suite d’un Entretien entre Diderot et d’Alembert, DPV, t. XVII, p. 104.
See Cussac H., “La voix dans le Dictionnaire philosophique de Voltaire,” La voix dans la culture et la littérature françaises, 1713-1875, in J. Wagner (ed.), Clermont-Ferrand, Presses Universitaires Blaise Pascal, 2001, pp. 69-84.
“ She began to cry aloud ,” La Religieuse, DPV, t. XI, p. 191. Tr: L. Tancock (ed.), p. 113.
“ Jacques cried out ” and “ started rolling around on the ground, shouting,” Jacques le fataliste, DPV, t. XXIII, p. 66. Tr: M. Henry (ed.), p. 58.
“ The cell echoing with our lamentations,” La Religieuse, DPV, t. XI, p. 125. Tr: L. Tancock (ed.), p. 53.
“ A loud scream,” Ibid., p. 174. Tr: p. 94.
“There were broken and muffled cries of a man being strangled” Le Neveu…, DPV, t. XII, p. 150. Tr: L. Tancock (ed.), p. 92.
Here “ the natural son of Desglands and the beautiful widow started uttering the most awful cries” Jacques le fataliste, DPV, t. XXIII, p. 263. Tr: M. Henry (ed.), p. 229-230.
She started “ crying – such cries…” Ibid., p. 106. Tr: ibid., p. 94.
Action, says Cicero, is so to tell the eloquence of the body: it has two parts, the voice and the movement. One affects the ear, the other the eyes; two senses, says Quintilian, by which we transfer all our feelings and our passions into the soul of our listeners. Denis Diderot et Jean le Rond d’Alembert, Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, Paris, Briasson, 1751, p. 120.
“She was all dishevelled and half naked, she was dragging iron chains, wild-eyed, tearing her hair and beating her breast, rushing along and shrieking. She was heaping upon herself and everyone else the most appalling curses […] ” La Religieuse, DPV, t. XI, pp. 92-93. Tr: L. Tancock (ed.), p. 27.
“One morning she was found barefoot, in her nightgown, shrieking and foaming at the mouth, running round and round her cell,” Ibid., p. 278. Tr: p. 181.
“Where are the energy of the Leibnizian monad and the cosmic effusions of Shaftesbury to be found? ” Baridon M., “L’imaginaire scientifique et la voix humaine dans le Rêve de d’Alembert”, in S. Auroux, D. Bourel and C. Porset (ed.), L’Encyclopédie, Diderot, l’Esthétique. Mélanges en hommage à Jacques Chouillet, Paris, PUF, 1991, p. 118.
“frémir les cartilages du larynx, et les os de la tête et les parties de la poitrine”” Diderot D., Eléments de physiologie, DPV, t. XVII, p. 397. The Leningrad copy adds “et tout le corps” (“and the entire body”).
See Cussac H., “Espace et bruit…”, 2005. See also number 43 (2011) of the journal Dix-Huitième Siècle devoted to the world of sounds.
“Voices are always changing roles, moving their identities around” Lejeune P., “Paroles d’enfance,” in Revue des Sciences Humaines, 1 (1990), p. 33.
“as for me, am I never at one point in time what I ma at another?” Diderot, De la poésie dramatique, DPV, t. X, p. 424.
“He sang thirty tunes one on top of the other and all mixed up: Italian, French, tragic, comic, of all sorts and descriptions, sometimes in a bass voice going down to the infernal regions, and sometimes bursting himself in a falsetto voice he would split the heavens asunder, taking off the walk, deportment and gestures of the different singing parts: in turn raging, pacified, imperious, scornful.” Le Neveu…, DPV, p. 165. Tr: L. Tancock (ed.), p. 102.
Sounds “have a marvellous capacity to touch us, because they are signs of the passions, instituted by nature from whom they receive their energy.” Du Bos, Réflexions critiques sur la poésie et la peinture, in D. Désirat (ed.), Paris, Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, 1993, p. 155.
“With cheeks puffed out and a hoarse, dark tone he did the horns and bassoons, a bright, nasal tone for the oboes, quickening his voice with incredible agility for the stringed instruments to which he tried to get the closest approximation; he whistled the recorders and cooed the flutes, shouting, singing and throwing himself about like a mad thing: a one-man show featuring dancers, male and female, singers of both sexes, a whole orchestra, a complete opera-house, dividing himself into twenty different stage parts, tearing up and down, stopping, like one possessed, with flashing eyes and foaming mouth,” Le Neveu…, DPV, t. XII, p. 166. Tr: L. Tancock (ed.), p. 103.
“He wept, laughed, sighed, his gaze was tender, soft or furious: a woman swooning with grief, a poor wretch abandoned in the depth of his despair, a temple rising into view, birds falling silent at eventide, waters murmuring in a cool, solitary place or tumbling in torrents down the mountain side, a thunderstorm, a hurricane, the shrieks of the dying mingled with the howling of the tempest and the crash of thunder; night with its shadows, darkness and silence, for even silence itself can be depicted in sound,” ibid., p. 166-167. Tr: ibid., p. 104.
“Paint shows the object, poetry describes it, music barely sketches it. Music can only resort to intervals and the length of sounds; and what analogy is there between this kind of pencil and spring, darkness, solitude, etc, and most objects? How come then that of the three arts imitating nature, the one of which the expression is the most arbitrary and the least precise speaks the loudest to the soul? Would it be that by showing the objects less, it leaves more career to our imagination, or that needing tremors to be moved, music is more able than paint and poetry to create in us that tumultuous effect?” Diderot D., Lettre A Mademoiselle (Additions à la Lettre sur les Sourds et Muets), DPV, t. IV, p. 207..
See Chouillet J., Diderot, poète de l’énergie, Paris, PUF, 1984. And Delon M., L’idée d’énergie au tournant des Lumières (1770-1820), Paris, PUF, 1988.
See our essay : “La Religieuse de Diderot, expérience et contre-pouvoir”, in Expérimentation scientifique et manipulation littéraire au siècle des Lumières, dir. Jean M. Goulemot, Paris, Minerve, 2014, p. 171-190.
See Kremer N., “Entendre l’invisible : la voix de l’œuvre dans la pensée esthétique de Diderot”, RDE, n°49, 2014, p. 71-85.
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