The Nun (Penguin Classics)
PENGUIN CLASSICS
THE NUN
DENIS DIDEROT was born at Langres in eastern France in 1713, the son of a master cutler. He was originally destined for the Church but rebelled and persuaded his father to allow him to complete his education in Paris, where he graduated in 1732. For ten years Diderot was nominally a law student, but actually led a precarious bohemian but studious existence, eked out with tutoring, hack writing and translating. His original works, Pensées philosophiques (1746), Lettre sur les aveugles (1749) and De I’interprétation de la nature (1753), display a preoccupation with the mind-body dichotomy. In the early 1740s, however, he had met three contemporaries of great future significance for himself and for the age: d’Alembert, Condillac and J. J. Rousseau, who were to assist him in the compilation of the Encyclopédie, which Diderot edited right up to its completion in 1773. His boldest philosophical and scientific speculations are brilliantly summarized in a trilogy of dialogues: Entretien entre Diderot et d’Alembert, Le réve de d’Alembert (d’Alembert’s Dream) and Suite de I’entretien (1769). In Le neveu de Rameau (Rameau’s Nephew), written in 1761 or later, he gave to prose fiction a new creative scope. Towards the end of his life he visited St Petersburg at the invitation of Catherine II, to whom he bequeathed his library. He died in 1784.
LEONARD TANCOCK spent most of his life in or near London, apart from a year as a student in Paris, most of the Second World War in Wales, and three periods in American universities as visiting professor. Until his death in 1986, he was a Fellow of University College, London, and was formerly Reader in French at the University. He prepared his first Penguin Classic in 1949 and, from that time, was extremely interested in the problems of translation, about which he wrote, lectured and gave broadcasts. His numerous translations for the Penguin Classics include Zola’s Germinal, Thérèse Raquin, The Débâcle, L’Assommoir and La Bête Humaine; Diderot’s The Nun, Rameau’s Nephew and D’Alembert’s Dream; Maupassant’s Pierre and Jean; Marivaux’s Up from the Country; Constant’s Adolphe; La Rochefoucauld’s Maxims; Voltaire’s Letters on England; Prévost’s Manon Lescaut; and Madame de Sévigné’s Selected Letters.
Denis Diderot
THE NUN
Translated from the French
with an introduction by
Leonard Tancock
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First published by Folio Society 1972
Published in Penguin Books 1974
Copyright © The Folio Society Ltd, 1972
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Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
9781101493274
To Mario
Si on me presse de dire pourquoy je Vaymois, je sens que
cela ne se peut exprimer, qu’en respondant: Par ce que
c’estoit luy; par ce que c’estoit moy.
L.W.T.
Introduction
Denis Diderot (1713–84) is in many ways the most human and attractive of the three great figures in eighteenth-century French literature. As writers Voltaire and Rousseau are of course, each in his way, greater, but as men they have their limitations and are a little inhuman and sometimes even repellent. Diderot was broader in his interests than either and scarcely less deep, his critical insight was unclouded by envy and spite. His humanity and breadth of interests come from his dual nature. On the one side he is a scientific materialist, an atheist whose scheme of things reduces all human activity to the laws of chemistry, physics and physiology, but on the other, and in equal degree, he is an emotional and artistic type, with an intense belief in moral values and the blessed gift of tears. In an undated fragment of a letter to his friend and confidant Sophie Volland he confesses to this eternal duality within himself – a duality so often expressed in his works by the dialogue form: ‘It infuriates me to be enmeshed in a devilish philosophy which my mind is forced to accept but my heart to disown.’ In a word, he is the most complete expression of the eighteenth-century dilemma: the contradiction between scientific determinism and sentimental faith in the social virtues. As editor for over twenty years of the Encyclopédie the first great modern work of reference, Diderot is the supreme figure of the Enlightenment, but alongside this immense activity he was writing some philosophical treatises and dialogues at that time almost terrifying in their anti-religious implications, some rather ponderous and unsuccessful plays, full of sentiment and virtue, but some brilliant dramatic criticism, a series of Salons, the first great examples of that peculiarly French genre, art criticism as a form of literature, and one or two works of fiction, or rather events or philosophical debates fictionalized. These novels, if such they can be called, were not to be published for many years, and some of them not in Diderot’s lifetime, but were circulated among his intimates. It is arguable that these unpublished works, especially Le Neveu de Rameau and Le Rêve de D’Alembert, express the real Diderot, a man far more advanced in his opinions on materialism, religious, moral and sexual emancipation than he could ever have shown himself to be in his ‘official’ writings, which had to withstand the relentless hostility of the establishment of the day, armed with the censorship, which several times jeopardized the publication of the Encyclopédie itself. Of these personal works the one which most clearly comes from the heart and which at the same time comes nearest to being a disciplined, organized novel, even a great work of art, is La Religieuse. And this began as a hoax.
The Marquis de Croismare, with whose name the novel opens, was a real person, a pious, sincere Catholic, charitable and kind, but he was also a member of the circle of friends consisting of such “Encyclopedists’ as Madame d’Epinay, F. M. Grimm and Diderot, and they were very fond of him. This incidentally shows the common sense and broadmindedness of so many people of intelligence at that time. It is a gross over-simplification to suppose that in eighteenth-century France, even during the sometimes fierce Encyclopedic war, everybody automatically hated either the Catholics or the Freethinkers. Many people were capable of human friendships transcending ideological or religious opinion. Today we seem to be less fortunate. In 1758 M. de Croismare interested himself in a cause célèbre. A nun in the Paris convent of Longchamp was appealing to be dispensed from her vows and to be allowed to return into the world. Croismare used his influence in her favour, but without success. He never met her personally; his conduct was motivated solely by sympathy for a poor woman trying to extricate herself from a life of misery to which she had been condemned by her parents. This nun, Marguerite Delamarre, lost her case in March 1758 and was forced to remain in religious orders for the rest of her life.
Less than a year
later Croismare, a nobleman from Normandy who had spent much of his time in Paris, decided, since he was now well on in his sixties, to retire to his castle of Lasson, near Caen. He was sadly missed by his circle of friends. Whereupon they hatched a plot to lure him back to Paris by appealing to his kind heart. They pretended that a young nun had escaped from her convent, that she was at present in hiding at the home in Versailles of another member of the group, a Madame Moreau-Madin, to whom all correspondence should be addressed. Madame Madin was known to all parties, and the conspirators arranged for her to hand over to them letters franked from Caen.
The elaborate practical joke began early in 1760. Letters supposedly written by the escaped nun or by Madame Madin herself, but composed by Diderot, were sent via Versailles, letters in which the wretched girl begged Croismare to help her. But almost at once the joke got seriously out of control in two ways.
Firstly, the Marquis showed no signs of wanting to hasten back to Paris, but his expressions of sympathy and offers of help were so immediate that Diderot could hardly believe he was so gullible, and in a letter to Madame d’Epinay on 10 February he feared that Croismare had seen through the plot and was double-bluffing. The kind Croismare was soon offering to find a position for the ex-nun in his own household, and Diderot had to use delaying tactics in the form of letters describing the girl’s impaired state of health which would prevent her travelling. But by the end of March the helpful gentleman was offering to arrange for Suzanne Simonin – the nun’s name – to take the Caen coach, and detailed instructions were being sent. By April the plotters were getting into very deep water, and clearly the only way out was to kill off the unfortunate nun and put an end to the whole business. Accordingly letters ostensibly from Madame Madin were sent describing the terrible illness and last sufferings of the poor girl, culminating in a touching letter dated 10 May describing her death: ‘The dear child is no more; her sufferings are at an end, but ours may still last a long time. She passed from this world into the one whither we all are bound, last Wednesday between three and four in the morning…’ etc.
But secondly the joke got out of hand in a way that produced one of the most remarkable novels of the eighteenth century, for the real sufferings of Marguerite Dela-marre and the fictitious ones of Suzanne Simonin took possession of Diderot’s own imagination, and with his usual single-mindedness he threw himself into a complete story of Suzanne’s life, from childhood to her present plight. Clearly this would have to be in autobiographical form, which at once meant that the nun must still be alive after the end of the story, and indeed, as we know from his correspondence, Diderot was working on La Religieuse all through the summer of 1760, that is long after the account of her death sent to M. de Croismare. The novel, like so many other Diderot texts, was not published. However, in 1768, M. de Croismare came to Paris and saw his old friend Madame Madin who, to his great surprise, was clearly unfamiliar with certain colourful episodes, accounts of which, ostensibly from her, had been sent to him eight years before. So the whole story came out.
As there was now no reason for secrecy about the conspiracy, Grimm published, in 1770, in the Correspondence Littéraire (the periodical circulated to a very small but highly privileged list of subscribers throughout Europe, including Catherine of Russia) an account of the whole story and the text of the letters in the exchanges of 1760. The mere fact that this Préface-Annexe, as it was called, was published, however privately, and a hint in the last letter that the hapless nun had left behind her some account of her earlier life, suggested that further revelations might come at some future time. In 1780 the Correspondance Littéraire, no longer edited by Grimm but by Meister, needed copy, and with Diderot’s consent the text was copied and sent to the very small circle of subscribers. This was the only text published in Diderot’s lifetime.
Then came the Revolution and with it, of course, a change of climate concerning books previously held to be dangerous or subversive. The Directory would obviously welcome exposures of the abuses of the Old Régime. The first proper printed edition appeared in 1796, and it was translated within a year into German, Italian and English.
Real life has its untidinesses and illogicalities, art has its own truth to which it must be faithful. So when Diderot the novelist was presenting the case for a woman without a religious vocation enclosed against her will in an unnatural environment, he instinctively concentrated events, eliminated factors not bearing directly upon the case, introduced elements calculated to make things more acceptable to the general reader, just as a dramatist must do when he makes a play out of some real-life story.
The object of the attack is enforced and unnatural segregation of people of the same sex in an institution, with all its dehumanizing effects. It is not an attack upon Christianity, or even the Catholic Church, which is no doubt why the Church never put it on the Index, as it did many other works of Diderot, and those of Voltaire en bloc. Sister Suzanne’s faith never leaves her, and there are one or two wholly admirable Christian characters. The tone throughout is respectful of sincere religion. The attack is against misconceived Christianity applied by ignorant, warped and unnatural people in a social system where the civil law protects the persecutor and penalizes the victim. At that time in France the age at which binding religious vows could be taken was regulated by the state at sixteen and release from them could only be granted by the state. In 1768 Louis XV, under pressure, raised this age to eighteen. When it is remembered that the legal majority for disposing of one’s own money was twenty-five, the anomaly is seen to be absurd. Thus in this novel Suzanne, under irresistible pressure, could legally dispose of herself, body and soul, for ever at the age of sixteen, but have no say in her money affairs, being still under twenty-five. Now the story of Marguerite Delamarre, who may be regarded as the prototype of Suzanne, was in some respects untypical and unnecessarily complicated. She was over forty when she lost her case, and had been boarded out in various institutions from earliest childhood by a mother who had never wanted her and a miserly father who resented having to pay any money for her, and who had broken off an engagement when the girl was sixteen, presumably because the cheapest convent he could find cost far less money than a marriage dowry. It is true that financial considerations count in the case of Diderot’s Suzanne, but the root cause of her incarceration is that she is illegitimate. Her mother regarded her as a constant reproach, and her mother’s husband knew the circumstances of her birth and loathed the child. Her mother’s selfish and ignorant idea of atoning for her sin was to make her child into a sacrificial offering in order to gain her own salvation. Moreover the psychological and artistic disadvantage of having a suffering victim of over forty was avoided by making Suzanne very young, sensitive and intelligent. Finally, in choosing the elements to be taken out of the real life story of Marguerite Delamarre, Diderot eliminates any reference to the real person’s early engagement to be married, which was forcibly broken by her father. Artistically and psychologically this has the great advantage of concentrating and simplifying the thesis of the book, for by so doing Diderot makes it clear that in no case is abnormality a result of any ‘normal’ but unfortunate sexual experience with a man. These women (especially the Superior) are not what they are because in youth they have been deeply shocked or warped by such things as disgust, violence or even frustrated, unhappy love.
The resulting novel is by no means a flawless work of art. Its great interest lies in its atmosphere and power and in Diderot’s struggles and relative success in overcoming the technical difficulties of his self-imposed task. Not only the circumstances of the original hoax but also the psychological necessities of the novel impose a narrative in the first person by the heroine, who must be young and impressionable throughout her story. The first trouble therefore is that too many adventures have to be crowded into a short time. But that in itself is but the inevitable concentration of all art. More serious is the improbable treatment of time in relation to psychological growth and the lessons o
f experience. In order to give sustained interest Suzanne has to be subjected to a series of trials of increasing severity. But this very fact that she must be afflicted afresh with new and more acute fear and anguish means that she must remain throughout the innocent victim in spite of the manifest presence around her of evil and perversion, and this with her obvious intelligence and in a tale told retrospectively by a narrator perfectly aware of the end. Of course her quasi-miraculous preservation may be attributed to the protecting presence of God, but the question of character cannot altogether be avoided. She remains sweet and kind even to those who torture her, and she does not forget to point this out with a certain smugness. She is wonderfully observant, with Diderot’s eye for the characteristic gesture or facial expression, but in spite of all her experience, including having been accused of masturbation or homosexual practices, she is completely innocent and uncomprehending in the face of the homosexual approaches of the Superior of Sainte-Eutrope. It is true that the evolution of the Superior from a kindly, if somewhat scatterbrained and comic, person to a sinister Lesbian is beautifully graded, but it is stretching credibility to breaking point to make Suzanne quite unaware of the meaning of her Superior’s behaviour when it comes to describing an orgasm in almost clinical detail. One is tempted to compare these passages with the classical method of so much frankly pornographic literature: narration by a young girl of what somebody did to her in terms combining innocence with extreme accuracy of physical description.
But it would be wrong to accuse Diderot of simple negligence or naïveté. The truth is that he was always so involved, mind and heart, in what he was doing at any given time, that he could see it happening and for the time being he was the character he was portraying. Nowhere is this more clear than in his capricious use of tenses, for so often Suzanne refers to an event or person in a continuous present tense, even when that person’s death has already been reported. There is, for example, the terrible muddle over Sister Ursule. Suzanne urges her correspondent, M. de Croismare, to be very prudent because Sister Ursule is still alive, but then she remembers that she is dead, and apologizes for her slip by saying that at least that is what she had told him before. But there was no ‘before’, since she was writing for the first time. The truth is that Diderot, in his creative trance, lives in the eternal vivid present of the world of dreams, outside time, and we have to live with Suzanne as though it were all happening now, before our eyes.