28th December 2009 9:00
By Daniel MacPherson
The words ‘story’ and ‘storytelling’ can be translated into French in a number of ways. These translations shed light on the place Diderot gives storytelling within his wider philosophy. ‘Conte’ is described in Le Nouveau Robert 2009 as ‘aventures imaginaires, déstinés à distraire’, which suggests that storytelling has a subversive quality in shifting attention away from reality. Its synonyms of ‘légende, mythe’ imply a sense of exaggeration in this account. It is interesting to note however, that ‘raconter’ does not include such an overt reference to subversion, rather merely ‘exposer par un récit des faits vrais ou présentés comme tels’. This definition describes a repackaging of ideas to give the appearance of truth. The definition of ‘se raconter des histoires’ sheds further light on this, defined as ‘se faire des illusions.’ The act of telling stories to oneself is thus seen as creating the appearance of truth for self-comfort. In all of these definitions, there is a tension between reality and invention and this lies beneath any ‘story’ or the act of ‘storytelling’. Analysis of Ceci n’est pas un conte, Jacques le Fataliste and Le Neveu de Rameau demonstrate this tension and even suggest that reality may be a series of inventions, or collective stories. In these texts, life is not simply about storytelling, but it is the product of stories both heard and told, and little else. Stories represent the interaction between humans and between man and the natural world. Reality, or life, is the experience of this interaction. Life is a series of disordered stories, demonstrating the absence of fate and destiny.
In all of the above definitions there is an emphasis on an inherent interaction between two agents in a story. Whether stories distract or they present imagined ideas as true, there is a subject and an object in both pursuits. Indeed, there would be little point in telling stories if there were no reader or listener. The narrator highlights the importance of this relationship in Ceci n’est pas un conte when he insists that stories must be heard: ‘lorsqu’on fait un conte, c’est à quelqu’un qui l’écoute.’ Storytelling loses its effect if nobody listens. Storytelling thus does not appear in a vacuum away from society and other people, rather there is an active relationship between the ‘conteur’ and the ‘auditeur’. This interaction often takes the form of interrupting the narrator. The auditeur in Ceci n’est pas un conte continually interrupts the progress of the story by agreeing with what the narrator has just said or by adding personal recognition of a character: ‘moi aussi, je l’ai connue.’ This gives the impression of added validity to the conte and assists in the presentation of the story as true. In Jacques there is interruption on both an inter- and extra-textual level. Jacque’s master interrupts Jacques in order to refocus his attention on the promised story of his love: ‘non Jacques, l’histoire de tes amours.’ Added to this, however, is the repeated interruption the author makes to the narrative in Jacques. ‘Mais pour Dieu, lecteur, vous répondrai-je, est-ce qu’on sait où l’on va? Et vous, où allez-vous?’ By implicating the reader in the story, either in second-guessing the reader’s impression of an episode or asking them a direct question such as ‘où allez-vous’ Diderot exposes the active relationship between reader and author. By interrupting the progress of the narrative the author puts the reader at greater distance from the text in order, according to J R Loy, that the reader does not ‘assume he knows Jacques to the point of directing the action.’ This relationship also acts as a microcosm of a wider worldview. In his Essay Concerning Human Understanding Locke outlined the principle that all knowledge was a product of experience. Life is nothing without contact with others and the outside world, just as a story is nothing without interaction between author, reader and the characters. Man cannot however direct this interaction to the point of controlling the world around him and so must accept each experience on a surface level, just as the reader encounters the story in Jacques.
The act of storytelling can also create reality and shape human life. The title of Ceci n’est pas un conte indirectly makes this point. The contents of the story is not fiction, Diderot seems to claim, and it should be read as reality. As is seen in Jacques, this may be because this reality is only a set of conventions that have been widely accepted. However, there is nothing inherently true about these conventions. The relationship between Jacques and his master, for example, is almost entirely arbitrary. When Jacques refuses to follow his Master’s commands: ‘Jacques restera òu il est, et ne descendra point’, Diderot highlights the fact that the relationship is based on Jacques’ acceptance to remain a slave, and nothing else. There is nothing central to Jacques’ character that renders him indefinitely a slave; rather that it is ‘écrit là-haut que je ne déferai jamais de cet original-là’. This relationship has always been and so always must be, but there is nothing in Jacques’ immediate world that explains it. It is merely a fiction that has come to be accepted. The act of storytelling also gives the storyteller the appearance of controlling reality. As Bremner argues, telling stories promotes the ‘need to push oneself forward, to be at the centre of things.’ The hôtesse’s recounting of the episode involving Mme de la Pomméraye focuses the attention on the servant telling the story as well as the story itself. Having something to relate that someone else wants to hear gives the storyteller a sense of importance that her status would not normally offer. In this sense, storytelling has shaped the hôtesse’s life in providing her with an experience outside of her social class and has thus moderated her perception of reality.
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In conclusion, Diderot’s method of continual interruptions in Jacques disorientates the reader to the extent that they become distanced from the text. The reader is put in a position of discomfort from which they cannot predict what will happen. Readers are thus forced to look at the surface level only. This helps in restraining a reader from putting an all-encompassing label on reality. This is partly because, as demonstrated in the Neveu man cannot effectively have influence over reality. It is also because reality is merely the product of everyday stories and interactions and social rules are based on rationally unexplainable fictions. In Human Knowledge, Its Scope and Limits Bernard Russell wrote ‘all human knowledge is uncertain, inexact and partial. To this doctrine we have not found any limitation whatsoever.’ A system, or the belief in blind fate, creates boundaries and restrictions to our experience of the world and does not allow for the seemingly random link between these experiences as is found in stories such as Jacques. Life is the product of telling stories. All that can be accepted is the uselessness of broad systems and the need to embrace the fact that life is a product of experiences of life in the form of stories. Although he does not wholeheartedly endorse LUI’s behaviour, Diderot seems to suggest that man must use LUI as a base example and navigate through the disorder of these experiences and try to make something positive from them.