Le Compère Mathieu; ou, Les Bigarrures de l’esprit humain by Henri-Joseph Dulaurens (review)

We can thank Robert Darnton for the attention given nowadays to France’s Grub Street, the clandestine writers of the eighteenth-century whom puritanical critics kept out of sight. In recent years we have witnessed the rediscovery of eccentric figures such as Fougeret de Monbron (1706–1760), and, with increasing regularity, the defrocked Jesuit Henri-Joseph Dulaurens (1719–1793): my own edition of Dulaurens’s Candide, second partie appeared in 2003 (University of Exeter Press), and Stéphan Pascau has since published two hefty volumes devoted to his life and works. Didier Gambert’s imposing and expensively produced critical edition of Dulaurens’s best-known novel Le Compère Mathieu (1766) is a worthy tribute to a writer unmentioned in standard anthologies of eighteenth-century literature. In his Introduction, Gambert tells us that Diderot thought highly of Le Compère Mathieu and that he compared Dulaurens favourably with Rabelais. Voltaire, on the other hand, considered it a poor imitation of his own Candide, noting in the margin of his copy of the novel that it was written ‘par un sot’. Today’s readers are likely to side with Voltaire. Le Compère Mathieu mirrors Candide, at least superficially (the genealogy of the pox, the auto-da-fé). But anecdotes are one thing, and wit another. Le Compère Mathieu is ponderous and dull, in spite of its occasional obscenity (‘elle avait le clitoris fait comme un cornichon’ (p. 290)). Its interest today is documentary rather than literary. One difficulty is the novel’s rambling tone. The garrulous all-male characters each represent a specific philosophical temperament. The narrator Jérôme claims to be ignorant, but the others, including the Compère, an apostate Jew, an Englishman, the ultra-Catholic Diego, and the sceptical Père Jean, do not so much compete for the reader’s attention as attempt to out-talk each other. The result is a potpourri of philosophical and theological speculation. Alongside Père Jean’s denunciation of superstition and intolerance we find Diego making ludicrous lists of saints. What do the saints do in heaven? Are men created free? Is Nature amoral? Do animals have a soul? Is cannibalism justifiable? Add to this the Compe`re’s grotesque parody of Rousseau’s social theories and you have an eighteenth-century symposium. Happily, in honour of Rabelais and the Ancients, there is plenty of drink. Didier Gambert spent several years researching Dulaurens, and his efforts are impressive. His Introduction is a massive 190 pages long and provides, among other insights, a detailed look at both the philosophical and the picaresque novels. Then there are the notes, which literally dwarf Dulaurens’s text; the linguistic notes are especially useful, but others are oddly judged (and often too long). Students of the subversive underbelly of the eighteenth century are sure to be delighted, however, as there is plenty here to inspire future research, reflection, and — picking up where the Compère leaves off—interminable debate.