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Chapter 4. Denis Diderot’s The White Bird—As Holy Ghost/Holy Spirit
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137 CHAPTER 4 Denis Diderot’s The White Bird As Holy Ghost/Holy Spirit AT FIRST GLANCE ONE WOULD NEVER ASSOCIATE Diderot, man of the Enlightenment , with the fairy tale genre. Nonetheless, The White Bird (1749), includes all of its earmarks: a fairy, miracles, transformations, evil geni, and supernatural events. Author of such ground-breaking works as Philosophical Thoughts, Letter on the Blind, D’Alembert’s Dream, Rameau’s Nephew, and Paradox of the Comedian, and general editor of, as well as contributor to one of the century’s great achievements, The Encyclopedia, Methodical Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Trades—Diderot chose the fairy tale to point up the absurdity of certain religious, political, and social ideas. Ultra reflective in its philosophical thrust, The White Bird may be considered a blend of Diderot’s fundamental rebelliousness with high doses of satire, parody, and mystifying intent. Mixed with these are Diderot’s usual provocative signs, sensations , and images whose purpose is to destabilize, if not eradicate, the repressive and regressive religious dogmas, mores, and political regimes flourishing in the France of his day. To his bent for humor, one of the most powerful weapons to gain the reader’s attention, he added an arresting psychological technique which we today label “active imagination.” ECTYPAL ANALYSIS Born at Langres, in eastern France, Diderot belonged to a family that had for several generations been involved in the cutlery trade and in the Church. Taught by the Jesuits, as were many French children of the day, the precocious lad was then sent to the Collège d’Harcourt in Paris, where he completed his formal education. Acquiescing to his father’s wishes, he enrolled at law school, but after two years of desultory study, he opted for what he enjoyed: classics, physics, and mathematics—resulting in his father’s withdrawal of financial support. Although details are scarce concerning the hardships the young man subsequently suffered, certain scenes in some of his works, and particularly in Rameau’s Nephew, reveal that he may have gone many a day without food. Sociable by nature, whenever time and funds permitted the young man spent many pleasant hours at the celebrated Café Procope, and later at the Régence which attracted not only chess players, but the intelligentsia of the day as well. His marriage in 1743 to Antoinette Champion, a simple girl whose mother kept a lace and linen shop, came as a surprise. The two had nothing in common intellectually. Their only surviving child—Diderot’s beloved daughter, Angélique, the future Mme Vandeuil—wrote her father’s memoirs. Life for a person of ideas and ideals was not easy in eighteenth-century France. To write or speak openly on science, religion, and/or politics frequently invited imprisonment, exile, or, even death, yet Diderot, together with his “liberal” contemporaries, determined to infuse a spirit of inquiry into these fields. Deism, for example, an English import, emphasized the existence of an impersonal God who was neither manifest in history nor immanent in nature. Although Deists accepted the notion of immortality of the soul and the reality of good and evil, they considered organized religion superfluous and dangerous—a spreader of bigotry, hatred, and war. In Philosophical Thoughts (1746), Diderot increasingly freed his beliefs from constriction by adopting a virtually pantheistic view of divinity: “Enlarge God,” he wrote, “see Him everywhere or nowhere at all.” In Promenade of a Skeptic (1747), he pointed to his disbelief in religious mysteries and in the supernatural . Nor did he hide his antagonism toward Christianity and its powerful and exploiting clergy. Scientific in thrust, Diderot expressed his virtually atheistic views in his Letter on the Blind (1749). Following its publication , he was predictably condemned by the Parlement of Paris to imprisonment at Vincennes for several months. In the years to come, his literary career burgeoned with D’Alembert’s Dream, Jack the Fatalist, The Paradox of the Comedian, The Nun, Indiscreet Jewels, Salons, and more. Diderot’s innovative thoughts and thirst for knowledge, his perceptions, humor, rambunctiousness, and licentiousness, his gracious, and extroverted temperament, drew friendly and illustrious minds to his side. Among these, were D’Alembert, Condillac, Grimm, and Baron d’Holbach. Meanwhile, Diderot’s reputation, which had spread far and wide, elicited an invitation from Catherine II of Russia to visit her court in 1773. He did so. Not only did 138 FRENCH FAIRY TALES [54.92.135.47] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 14:11 GMT) she buy his...