DIDEROT: POET AND THEORIST OF THE HOMER AND OSSIANIST REVIVAL

The antithesis between the North and the South celebrated by Mme de Stael in 1800, haunted Enlightenment criticism for nearly one hundred years, becoming finally one of its major themes. When Montesquieu wrote: ‘les peuples des pays chauds sont timides comme les vieillards le sont, ceux des pays froids sont courageux comme Ie sont les jeunes gens’ (Esprit des Lois, XIV, ii), he was even then only repeating an idea which probably dates from the Abbe Du Bos’s Rkpexions critiques sur la poksie et la peinture, I, xi). But, as this eagerly awaited northern poet did not yet exist, in order to justify the theory someone had to bring him to life. It was a Scot whith a fertile imagination who, realising that the public of the 1760s demanded an Ossian, took on the historic task of inventing his poems.

After this, as is well known, the comparison between Homer and Ossian became a common place in the 1760s. There was, especially in the English- speaking countries, a curious revival of the quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns. However, unlike the situation in France at the beginning of the century, there was now a strong argument in favour of the Moderns in the person of a true epic poet, the ‘third-century bard’ neither too far from, nor too close to the present day. Ossian’s superiority over Homer was indubitable: it was no longer based on theories but on experience, on literary texts. This is what was argued by the anonymous author of a work published in London in 1762 entitled Occasional thoughts on the study and character of classical authors, on the course of literature, and the present plan of a learned education with some incidental comparisons between Homer and Ossian. The author claims to have derived much greater pleasure from reading a few recently published extracts of Erse poetry than anything he had found in Homer. Modern poetry, he writes, sees and thinks with true men’s eyes and human language; the images are a striking representation of nature. The critic then undertakes a comparison between the second book of the Iliad in which Homer describes the horse of Eumelus and an equivalent passage in Ossian, which reads as follows:

Before the right side of the car is seen this snorting horse. The high-maned, broad- breasted, proud, high-leaping, strong steed of the hill, loud and resounding in his hoof .... On the other side of the car is seen his fellow - the thin-maned, high-headed, strong-hoofed, fleet, sounding son of the hill ... Within the car is seen the chief; the strong stormy son of the sword.

After such beauty, suggests the critic, if you re-read with an impartial mind the passage of the second book of the ZZiad in which Eumelus’s team is described, you will be struck by the banality of the Greek poet and the artificiality of his mythological ornaments: ‘Now compared with these high mettled coursers, Homer’s two mares might pass for Venus’s doves or two

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tame pigeons. I tried to mend them with a better pair from the chariot-race in the twenty-third book, but without the least success’ (p. 94). Thus the case is clear; although Ossian’s poems are more recent than Homer’s, they reflect a more primitive state of society - that of pure nature - according to Le Tour- neur in the Discours pre‘liminaire of Temoru (p. 1). They have not ‘received the vices of corruption of centuries of civilisation and thus exceed Homer’s in Force and Beauty’.

This argumentation is interesting as it reveals a certain aesthetic ideal, but it raises some important objections. The first is provided by a title of a work which is to be found in the Bodleian and the British Library which reads exactly ‘The Iliad of Homer, translated by James Macpherson esq., in two volumes, in-4“ ... London, 1773’. A significant detail: on the flyleaf of the first volume in the Bodleian copy, there is a handwritten note; ‘To the Baron Dolbach from the Author’. In the twenty-page preface which precedes the translation, Macpherson develops the following idea: until now Homer has only had imitators, none of whom has equalled him. It is time to make him known as he really is. This thought is intriguing, for it implies that there is another Homer, different from the distorted image presented by the classical humanist tradition. What is more, this is the opinion of the author of Ossian. Perhaps there is a secret link between this ‘other Homer’ and Ossian whose mouthpiece he is.

The second objection comes from an analysis of Macpherson’s text itself. I do not intend by this remark any depreciation of Macpherson whom I consider to be a very good poet; perhaps too good for his ideal, which was to translate into a literary work, of necessity adapted to the needs of modern sensibility, a state supposedly close to ‘pure nature’. This is in fact the real face of the Ossianic mystification, which is to use all the resources of art for the purpose of a cultural upheaval, as the result of which what we might call a secondary effect of culture (representation of primitive humanity) becomes the first cause instigating all possible cultural development. For we know that Macpherson was imbued with culture. His contemporaries, among the most partisan defenders of the authenticity of Ossian’s poems, were aware of it, to the extent of seeing this as another proof of their authenticity. From this point of view, Le Tourneur’s testimony in the Discours pre‘liminaire to his French translation of Ossianfils de Fingal in 1777 is extremely revealing. This is how he presents Macpherson (p. lix):

Editeur habile e t en etat de composer lui-meme, i l a fait pour Ossian, ce qu’il parait qu’on a fait pour Homere, dont les poemes ont ete longtemps disperses e t abandonnes au hasard de la memoire, jusqu’a ce que Solon les ait fait transcrire e t reunir e n un seul corps d’ouvrage.

Macpherson’s role was therefore no less important or honourable than that of the Greek bards: which is saying a lot. We may observe how Le Tourneur praises the poetic richness of Ossian’s poems which he compares to those of the Bible. To support his argument he quotes the Song of Songs, the Book of Samuel, Judges and Job. Le Tourneur was very close to the truth! This impression is reinforced by the passage in the Discours pre‘liminaire devoted

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to a comparison of the merits of Homer and Ossian. We should not, he writes, compare the details of their poems. But ’. . . il y a des rkgles generales que les deux poetes ont egalement observees, par ce qu’elles sont dictees par la nature, et cette ressemblance (o. i . ) prouve peut-&tre mieux la justesse de ces r&gles, que tout ce qu’ Aristote a ecrit sur le pokme epique’ (p.liv).

Indeed it would be easy to draw up a comparative list of the techniques used in the two epic poems; one may say that they are the rules of the genre but one must remember that they were used for the first time in the Iliad and re-used afterwards - with some modifications - by all western epic poets, the author of the Song of Roland included. Macpherson could not, any more than any of the others, ignore or avoid them. Briefly they are: the mixture of the human and the divine; the rule of epic exaggeration; the momentary concen- tration of interest on a single combat; the commentary on a battle spoken by the combatants themselves; the call to revenge; the assembly and list of warriors; repeated contacts between the world of the living and the world of the dead. One could add the metaphors taken from animals; the innumerable stylistic clichCs taken from Homer by the pseudo-Ossian. Another indication, this time negative, which is so systematic as to be striking, is Macpherson’s evident desire to substitute for Homer’s local colour - taken from the Medi- terranean world - its opposite, taken from Scotland and characterised by fog, ferns, heather, heaths, wind, moonlight. Finally, we should not forget the daubs of Scandinavian mythology, taken straight from Paul Henri Mallet’s Monuments de la mythologie et de la poesie des Celtes, published in 1756. On the other hand because Macpherson knew his trade, another tribute to his classical model was the fact that he parted company with him on two points that were not essential to the epic poem - names of characters, natural decor.

We must, at this point, ask ourselves what role Diderot played in the diffusion and interpretation of Ossian. Certain facts indicate that the philo- sophe occupied a very special place in the European phenomenon. First of all, it is possible to say, without stretching the truth, that Diderot foresaw this transformation in taste several years before the publication of the first Ossian poems. At the beginning of the Troisieme Entretien sur le Fils naturel, published in 1757, he presents his favourite character. Dorval, in a situation which bears a certain resemblance to the ghost of Fingal amidst the stormy skies of Scotland: Le lendemain, le ciel se troubla; une nue qui arnenait l’orage, et qui portait le tonnerre, s’arr&ta sur la colline, et la couvrit de tenebres. A la distance ou j’etais, les eclairs semblaient s’aliumer et s’eteindre dam ces tenebres. La cime des c h h e s etait agitCe; le bruit des vents se melait au murmure des eaux; le tonnerre en grondant, se promenait entre les arbres; mon imagination, dominee par des rapports secrets, me rnontrait au milieu de cette s c h e obscure, Dorval tel que le I’avais vu la veille dans les transports de son enthousiasrne; et je croyais entendre sa voix harrnonieuse s’elever au-dessus des vents et du tonnere.‘

The following year, not content with having expressed in poetry, this Ossianism avant la lettre, Diderot expressed it as a theory in his Discours de la poksie dramatique. To his mind it was a new poetics which would supplant the Alexandrine school whose tradition was kept alive by the lyric poets of the

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eighteenth century. The general principle behind this theory is that there is an opposition between poetry and the refinement of civilisation: ‘Tout s’affaiblit en s’adoucissant’ . C’est lorsque la fureur de la guerre civile ou du fanatisme arme les hommes de poignards, et que le sang coule a grands flots sur la terre, que le laurier d’Apollon s’agite et verdit. I1 en veut Ctre arrose. I1 se fletrit dans les temps de la paix et du loisir. Le siecle d’or eat produit une chanson peut-@tre ou une elegie. La poesie epique et la poesie dramatique demandent d’autres mceurs.’

This has brought us up to the year 1758, after which events took a new turn. In 1760 appeared the Fragments of ancient poetry. In August the Journal Etranger published a translation of two of Macpherson’s texts. In the spring of 1761, Fingal was published in Edinburgh and London; on the 1st of December 1761, the Correspondance litrkaire presented the ‘Premiere chan- son erse’ translated by Diderot, and in the same month the Journal Etranger published the same translation followed by three other poems. This is sufficient to show the pre-eminent role Diderot played in the reception of Ossian on the Continent. It is as if this phenomenon appeared at precisely the right moment for him to realise one of his dreams and justify his theories. As a translator of English literature, Diderot is in general better than average, but with Ossian his translation becomes poetry and is certainly not inferior to the original:

Celui que j’aime est fils de la montagne; il poursuit le chevreuil Ieger. La corde de son arc a resonne dans l’air, et ses chiens nors sont haletants autour de lui ... Soit que tu reposes a la fontaine du rocher, ou sur les bords du ruisseau de la montagne, lorsque le vent courbe la cime des bruyeres et que le nuage passe au-dessus de ta t&te; que ne puis-je approcher de toi sans &tre aperque! que ne puis-je voir celui que j’aime, du sommet de la colline! . . . . . .

Note the curious mixture of British and French cultures discernible at the end of this passage; for, while translating Macpherson’s English, Diderot uses the famous poetic development in Racine’s Phkdre, Act I, sc. 3:

Dieux! que ne suis-je assise a I’ombre des forCts! Quand pourrai-je, au travers d’une noble poussiere Suivre de I ’ d un char fuyant dam la carriere?

This is the climax of what might be called Diderot’s Ossian period, begun in 1756 when he read Mallet’s Monuments and reaching a crisis at the end of 1761, just before the Eloge de Richardson, published in the Journal Etranger in January 1762, which marks the beginning of a calmer period. As Georges May has indicated (Quatre visages de Denis Diderot, 1951), and I have emphasised, I believe, in my Diderot, this was the most agitated, even painful period of his life, with the suspension of the Encyclope‘die’s privilkge (licence), the dispute with Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Palissot’s play Les Philosophes, and his father’s death. His works in the years 1757-1761, like his life, have a ‘tonalit6 sombre’, to use J.-J. Rousseau’s expression, which naturally inclined him to imitate English models ( L e She‘riff, Le Joueur) and to espouse enthusi- astically Ossian and Ossianism. Among many other temptations to which he succumbed more or less, he abandoned himself with the greatest pleasure to

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the poetry of unhappiness because he saw it as the illustration of his theories concerning artistic creation.

Nevertheless, however straightforward it may be to describe the role of Ossian in Diderot’s life, to interpret it, is a much more delicate task. We began with the traditional antithesis between the literatures of the North and the South which, as we have emphasised, became a dogma after Ossian. We then saw that the comparison between Homer and Ossian was generally favourable to the latter; even though some like Macpherson or Le Tourneur tended to avoid clear-cut opinions, the mass of critics considered the two as diametrically opposed. Here we see Diderot’s originality when seen in the light of contem- porary currents of thought. Far from opposing Homer and Ossian, he felt equal admiration for the two, whom he considered as two faces of a single reality. We set Homer against Ossian because we do not understand them, and we do not understand them because our awareness of poetry has been distorted by centuries of literary tradition. We must, therefore, return to the true poetic spirit. This return to the original takes place in the Lettre sur les sourds et muets: Qu’est-ce que cet esprit? J’en ai quelquefois senti la presence; mais tout ce que j’en sais, c’est que c’est lui qui fait que les choses sont dites e t representees tout a la fois. Dans le m&me temps que I’entendement les saisit, ]’%me e n est Cmue, I’imagination les voit et l’oreille les entend.4

In other words, true poetry is the spirit of life. Its power to move is one of the manifestations of what Diderot called ‘l’energie de nature’, with which there is creation, communication, and without which there are only empty words. He tried several times to formulate the laws of this energy, which can be summed up as follows: energy is in inverse proportion to the quantity of speech. Hence the importance of silence, gestures, mime, expressive short- hand which he calls ‘hieroglyphs’. He also studied the relationship between natural energy and the phenomenon of civilisation which led him to the conclusion that the two are in contradiction. When civilisation is highly developed, poetic genius is stifled; inertia triumphs over energy. Hence his theories of great catastrophes which he considers as necessary in order to bring humanity back to a pre-civilised state: Le genie est de tous les temps; mais les hornmes qui le portent en eux demeurent engourdis, a moins que des evenements extraordinaires n’echauffent la masse et ne les fassent paraitre.5

I shall not dwell any longer on this point, but return to the question of Diderot’s attitude towards Homer and Ossian. Diderot’s judgement of classi- cal literature does not concern only Homer but all of Ancient Greece. He distinguishes clearly between two things: on the one hand the academic tradition whose origins go back to the Alexandrine poets and which was handed down through early Latin literature to the Renaissance poets, and finally to Fenelon and the eighteenth-century lyric poets; on the other, there is the ‘true’ Antiquity, dating back to before the former current, discernible in the Greek tragedies, especially Aeschylus and Sophocles (Euripides repre- sented an earlier stage of development), and finally to the origin of all

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literatures, Homer: or rather Homeric literature, gathered together later in more or less perfect collections. In Diderot’s eyes the first tradition represents civilisation, while the second is directly connected to what he calls, in the Lettre sur les sourds et muets, the formative state of poetry, which immediately follows the state of nature. For him there is a total identification between these first Greek poets and nature, as can be seen in the famous passage from the Entretiens sur le Fils naturel: ‘Je ne me lasserai pas de crier 5 nos Franqais: la Verite! la Nature! les Anciens! Sophocle! Philoct&te!’6 At other times his imagination goes back to Aeschylus’s theatre and he sees Orestes pursued by the Furies:

Ici Oreste adresse sa plainte B la dkesse; la les Furies s’agitent; elles vont, elles viennent, elles courent. Enfin, I’une d’entre elles s’ecrie: ‘Voici la trace du sang que le parricide a laissC sur ses pas . . . Je le sens, je le sens.. .’

And Diderot goes further, representing the effect such scenes would have in the French theatre: ‘C’est alors qu’on tremblerait d’aller au spectacle et qu’on ne pourrait s’en emp&cher’.’ Going back in time, we find at the head of the list, Homer, whom Diderot cannot praise enough. His beauty is discouraging: ‘Quelque genie qu’on ait, on ne dit pas mieux qu’Homkre quand il dit bien’.’ He puts himself in the shoes of his heroes and gives voice to true nature: ‘I1 y a plus de sublime dans ces deux vers d’Homkre que dans toute la pompeuse declamation de Racine’.’ Homer was so much closer to true nature than Racine when he makes Antiloque cry: ‘KECTCIL HCxteoxhoo.. . Patrocle n’est

Nature and Antiquity: the critics used almost the same terms in 1760-1770 to express their admiration on reading Ossian. We have not been able to discover, after 1761, a true theory of Ossianism on Diderot’s part, for the good reason that he had already developed one, in 1758. This passion for wild nature, as the source of all beauty, which we have found in the work De la poksie dramatique, made it unnecessary for him to repeat himself when the first Erse poetry appeared. He simply contributed, as we have seen, to its diffusion. In addition, it is not difficult to find other traces, during 1761, of his admiration for Ossian, particularly in his letters to Sophie Volland. For example, he writes to her on 12th October 1761:

Vous aurez aussi vos chansons Ccossaises. J’en ai le recueil en entier. Celles qu’on a traduites sont belles; celles qu’on a laissees ne le sont guere moins. Mais ce qu’il y a de singulier, c’est que presque toutes sont des chants d’amour et funebres. La premiere fois je vous traduirai la premiere intitulee: Shifric et Vinivela. Ce qui me confond, c’est le gofit qui regne la; avec une simplicite, une force, et un pathetique incroyable: un guerrier partant pour la guerre dit a celle qu’il aime: ‘Mon amie, donnez-moi le casque de votre pere’. L’amie repond: ‘Voila son epee, sa cuirasse, son casque. Ah! mon ami, mon pere Ctait couvert de ces larmes lorsqu’il perdit la vie!’ (Correspondance, 111,

From time to time we can discern in his style reminiscences of Fingal or Temora, even after 1761-1763. See for example this letter to General Betzky, dating from 29th November 1766: ‘Un noble enthousiasme se gagne; mes doigts se portent d’eux-m&mes sur une vieille lyre dont la philosophie avait

plus’.’O

337-38).

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coup6 les cordes’.” After this Diderot’s Ossianism seems to decline; at any rate his correspondence no longer bears traces of it; this does not however mean that he ever revised his opinion of Scottish poetry.

Another figure seems to have taken over his role; this is the Baron d’Hol- bach, who, as I have already said, was in personal contact with Macpherson, as can be seen from the dedication in the Bodleian Library. D’Holbach knew England and stayed there for two months in 1765; he had many English friends, such as Wilkes and Garrick. He knew well both English and Scottish literature, mainly the philosophers but also the poets. In 1759 he published a translation of a poem by his former fellow student Mark Akenside, entitled Les Plaisirs de f’imagination, which had a certain importance in the history of eighteenth-century aesthetic ideas. But above all, d’Holbach was responsible for most of the Encyclope‘die articles concerning the mythological heroes of Scandinavian poetry. According to John Lough - Essays on the Encycfope‘die of Diderot and d’Afembert - only one of nine of such articles can be attributed to Diderot (Freya or Frigga), seven to d’Holbach (Isfande (from the Edda), Odin, Runique, Saiga, Scaldes, Vafhalla, Valkyries), and one is anonymous, (Phifosophie des Scandinaves). Except for Freya (vol. VII), they are all contained in volumes dating from after the revocation of the privilege in 1759, and so it is impossible to date their composition. At any rate they prove the Baron’s interest in Scandinavian poetry, although it must be said that he knew it mainly through Mallet’s work. He does however discuss at length its philosophical and theological aspects. What is particularly interesting in these articles is the emphasis placed on the relationship between the political freedom and the warlike courage of the Scandinavian heroes; this was an idea of Montesquieu’s taken up by Diderot and cleverly exploited by Macpherson.

We can conclude that the reference to the past in the theories of Diderot and d’Holbach should evidently be seen as a form of modernity. Through the Iliad and the Scandinavian heroes Fingal and Temora, the Enlightenment philosophers were seeing, under the mask of a false nature which had never existed, political and poetical freedom. It is the image of a society to come. The seed of the idea sown by Diderot was not totally lost. While much of criticism became imprisoned in a false dichotomy of northedsouthern liter- ature, the painters almost unanimously understood the secret link between Homer and Ossian. After the 1770s it became normal when illustrating Ossianic poetry to represent scenes from Fingaf and Temora in the simple, firm lines of Greek statues and often in the way that the Gods of Olympus and the Trojan warriors were traditionally depicted. This is the case for Wright of Derby in England, Girodet-Trioson and Ingres in France, Koch and Runge in Germany, to name only the most important. On the other hand those who represented Homer in Ancient Greece developed a frisson in their interpret- ation which was not so far removed from Ossian’s violence; here we can mention Barry, Mortimer in England and Fiissli in Switzerland.” To conclude, I would like to say that there is no basic antinomy between purity of line and

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violence of passions. The Ossianic revolution, far from running counter to the return to Antiquity, simply reinforced it.

1.

2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

10. 11. 12.

Jacques Chouillet UniversitC de la Sorbonne Nouvelle

Diderot, (Euvres completes (OC), ed. R. Lewinter (Paris, Club FranGais du Livre), Vol. 111, p.172. Ibid., p.481. Ibid., p.483. oc, Vol. 11, p.549. oc, Vol. 111, p.483. OC, Vol. 111, p.157. Ibid., p.152. OC, Vol. 11, p.556. Ibid., p.559. Ibid. Correspondance, ed. G. Roth (Paris, Les Editions de Minuit), Vol. VI, p.356. On all these questions, see Robert Rosenblum, Transformations in late Eighteenth-Century Art (Princeton, 1967).