Les Dégoûts de Voltaire: exploration d’une sensibilité complexe by Marie-Hélène Cotoni (review)

What can the usage and semantic field of one word reveal about the most prolific author of the Enlightenment? Marie-Hélène Cotoni’s book combines monograph and close reading as it explores the appearance of ‘dégoût’ in Voltaire’s works and correspondence. From personal conflicts to the expression of the philosophe’s often adamant aesthetic views, the term incorporates a wide variety of meanings that, contingent upon the receiver or the subject treated, can reflect a satirical and bitter reaction, aversion, or even a direct attack. Whether Voltaire is lamenting the decadence of the French theatre and the rising popularity of Shakespeare, or pondering the actions of the Prussian king, ‘dégoût’ remains a conspicuous term that accompanies him from his early writings. The book is divided into two parts; it separates the disgust of the philosopher as it is represented in a defined personal as well as a professional sphere from his manifold criticism directed towards contemporary thinkers and dominant ideologies. In the first part, we see the challenges of the author and critic unfold: his disenchantment in an archaic, even barbaric political and judicial system; his numerous battles to correct the unauthorized, and often adversely altered publications that tarnished his name; the representations of his works and his discontentment towards changing taste in his country, which had become disinterested in classical theatre. Also examined in this part are the private conflicts and the damaged relationships that gradually led him to isolation in his later years: although there are no Voltairean Confessions, his private correspondence reveals the inner workings and motivations of the philosophe. Thus we are able to examine the reasons behind Voltaire’s departure for Prussia, which inevitably caused his separation from Émilie Du Châtelet, and his subsequent disillusionment with Frederick II, who in the eyes of Voltaire failed, after all, to become the Enlightened sovereign — the Anti-Machiavelli. An examination of the letters to Mme Denis, his niece, gives evidence not only of their retreat in Ferney and the disagreements that were sparked between the elder philosophe and younger relative, but it also reveals the disloyalty of certain friends — the theft of several manuscripts and their clandestine publication — which left its mark on the sensibility of the correspondent. The book’s second part examines the appearance of ‘dégoût’ in relation to the historical and philosophical thinking of Voltaire. A fervent defender of the Enlightenment and the progress of knowledge, he repeatedly expresses his aversion towards the barbaric illusions of religion, fallacious philosophical systems, and erroneous or mythologizing historiography. These impassioned attacks spare neither his contemporaries nor his predecessors. He criticizes buffoonery in English dramas and Rabelais’s work alike, and at the same time launches an attack against those who targeted him in their pamphlets and reviews. Through the analysis of his — sometimes spurious — ‘dégoûts’, the reader obtains valuable insights into the complex rhetoric of Voltaire.