St. Petersburg Dialogues: Or Conversations on the Temporal Government of Providence by Joseph de Maistre (review)

BOOK REVIEWS87 frequent efforts to hold Christ up to the congregation as a model of penance, patience, and humility according to the will of God. This book is quite interesting, and its approach is very original. But when one closes it, some dissatisfactions remain. Its conclusion is too weak, and the comparisons with contemporary thought and circumstances are not satisfactory . The achievement of a lifetime in the distant past is well understood in the present only if it is put into perspective accurately. Philippe LÉcrtvain, S. J. Centre Sèvres Paris St. Petersburg Dialogues: Or Conversations on the Temporal Government of Providence. By Joseph de Maistre. Translated and edited by Richard A. Lebrun. (Montreal, Quebec: McGill-Queen's University Press. 1993- Pp. xxxvi, 407.) Les Soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg was almost but not quite complete at the time of Maistre's death in 1821, and appeared posthumously a few months later. It consists of eleven dialogues, each with three participants, set on long summer evenings in the Russian capital where Maistre served as Sardinian Ambassador 1803—1817. It is a work impossible to categorize, and difficult even to describe. Its nominal scope is le Gouvernement temporel de la Providence ; its actual scope is very wide indeed, touching on war, sacrifice, punishment , suffering, eighteenth-centuryphilosophie, Indian religion, the history of language, revolutionary politics, science and society, the status of women, prayer, and much more. We know that Maistre's intention was to challenge and to contradict, more than to convey his own position; and indeed, the writer of a dialogue cannot be read as agreeing with every statement that he puts in the mouth of every participant. Of the three participants in the Soirées, it is the Count who most often speaks with Maistre's voice, but the other two have distinctive voices which are also at the author's disposal. The important Dialogue 7 is opened with a long introduction by the Senator, and dialogue 8 begins with a recapitulation by the Chevalier. The dialogue form allows the author to soften, or otherwise modify, statements made by one or another character. Further rhetorical flexibility is provided by the extensive endnotes that accompany each dialogue: some of the notes are identified as 'Editor's note,' though we know that Maistre wrote most of them himself! Only very occasionally does Maistre lose his way, as in Dialogue 9 (p. 266) where he seems to forget that it is the Chevalier, not the Count, who is supposed to be speaking. For the most part he maintains a masterly control, literary as well as expository, over a work of nearly 400 pages. It is an energetic work of controversy, and centrally, a work attempting, in 88BOOK REVIEWS the words oíParadise Lost, to justify the ways of God to man—an enterprise always mildly comic, since plans that are divine are not likely to be fully comprehended by minds that are human. Nor does Maistre make any attempt to delimit his task in order to make it more workable; on the contrary, he occupies and defends positions which have only the remotest connection to his central aim, and which admit of no certain conclusion: for instance, that the earliest humans were far superior in abilities to us (Dialogue 2), or that hereditary monarchy, in theory "absurd," is in practice the best form of government (p. 263). He can be quirky, too, about such things as the origins of words (e.g., pp. 49—50). But for the most part he knows very well what he is about. The nature of his argument requires him to contend that the ideas he is attacking are not merely false, but also socially pernicious, (e.g., p. 193) and that the men propounding them are in some way blameworthy for doing so. He is constantly attacking writers for such shortcomings as "a contentious pride" (p. 90), and can often make the charges stick. Locke he considers to be merely "foolish"; Condillac is "brazen," Hume "employed the most talent in the most cold-blooded way to do the most harm" (p. 180), and Voltaire is "... heavy and gross in comedy . . . for the wicked are never...