Suzanne's ‘cri animal’: Aural and Musical Imagery in Diderot's La Religieuse

M. SIMONTON Suzanne's 'cri animal': Aural and Musical Imagery in Diderot's La Religieuse Diderot's indebtedness to John Locke's theory of the senses has long provided scholars with a sound extra-literary basis for studies of the sensual imagery in his fiction. While Diderot examined each of the senses, he was primarily interested in vision, a fact which helps explain the critical evaluation of visual imagery in many of his works and particularly in the subject of this study, LA Religieuse.' In his Lettre sur les aveugles (1749) and Lettre sur les sourds et muets (1751), Diderot concentrated on practical applications of Locke's ideas by investigating test cases of the sensory impaired in order to assess normal sensory development. Both of these essays devoted considerable attention to the significance of aural sensitivity ; the Lettre sur les sourds et muets laid the foundation for his aesthetic and musical theories, developing hearing as the link between music and literature. Although there has been some attempt to judge Diderot's contributions to musical theory, few analogies have been drawn between his musical ideas and selected fictional works; the musical components of his writing remain a largely overlooked area of inquiry.2 The role of aural imagery in Diderot's fiction has suffered an even greater neglect by critics, in spite of the fact that, as Roger Kempf observes, 'Diderot ne s'adresse pas ii l'oreille d'un sourd:' This essay proposes a partial remedy to the situation by suggesting the far-reaching importance of aural, including musical and particularly vocal, imagery in La Religieuse. Aside from an abundance of vivid aural description, the novel concentrates on the human voice and especially on the multiple facets of Suzanne's voice. While introducing general aspects of the novel's aural imagery, this article will focus primarily on the operatic features of the heroine's musical voice, and also lay groundwork for the critical connection between music and sensuality. Any approach to aural imagery in La Religieuse must first briefly consider several aspects of Diderot's aesthetics in relation to hearing, music, and language. Diderot's abiding interest in music, coupled with the prevailing idea of art as imitative of nature, led him to view it provisionally as a sort of language. Although music could not strictly correspond to nature, he observed its ability to provoke many different ideas and strong sensations in the listener.4 Diderot's most vivid UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY, VOLUME 55, NUMBER 4, SUMMER 1986 DIDEROT )29 animation of music's affectiveness probably occurs in his characterization of the musician's nephew in Le Neveu de Rameau, written in 1761. But it was in the earlier Lettre sur les sourds el muels that Diderot first conjoined the wonderfully evocative powers of music and poetic language, considering the objective of the poetic hieroglyph to be wholly attained through the simultaneous and multi-levelled effects produced in the listener by music.5 This dual capability of musical sound to evoke in its audience a powerful and usually sensual response while transmitting only vague and therefore highly subjective information is reflected in Diderot's use of music and of aural imagery in La Religieuse. A general recognition of music's ambiguous psychological effects will aid us in understanding something of the ambivalent nature of Suzanne's narrative . But the correspondence that Diderot observed, particularly in the Lettre sur les sourds el muels, between the aural sense and sensuality has a special significance for this study. Regarding music as 'Ie plus violent des beaux arts: he recognized the sexuality implicit in a natuIally voluptuous response to music, citing one enraptured listener who describes herselfas almost 'dying of pleasure.'6 This correspondence operates within the novel through the relationships of the characters and influences the audience's response to the voice of the pitiable and lovely heroine. One result of Suzanne's forced removal to the cloister is that she is deprived of much normal sensory stimulation that Diderot felt was necessary for a healthy development of the faculties. He portrays Suzanne's response to this restriction in a manner that corresponds to his clinical observations of the blind and deaf...