Books: Reason's Playboy

(2 of 3)

Meanwhile, Diderot had been offered a hack job revising an English encyclopedia, and had stumbled on the big idea of his life. The idea was not to attempt a one-man encyclopedia similar to most of those already in existence, but to launch a monumental group effort to wrap up all "the knowledge scattered over the surface of the earth" in one work of many volumes. The conception was both grandiose and absurd, but not so absurd that a shrewd publisher failed to back it. Diderot was the leading spirit behind the enterprise, "a volcano in permanent eruption." He wrote on everything from stocking looms to Spinoza, and had the collaboration of Voltaire on grace and wit, of Jean-Jacques Rousseau on music, of Montesquieu on taste, of D'Alembert on mathematics and of Turgot on economics.

But ancien régime bigwigs considered Diderot a troublemaker, along with other suspect writers and scientists. Work on the encyclopedia was interrupted; Diderot was imprisoned for 3½ months. After all, he believed that "liberty is a gift of heaven, and every individual of the human species has the right to enjoy it as soon as he enjoys reason."

Victory in 28 Volumes. But when Diderot got out of jail, after writing an apologetic letter, the interrupted work went on. Its new ideas permeated French society, penetrated even the palace, where Madame de Pompadour took an interest. At last, after 26 years and 28 volumes, 17 of text, eleven of plates, Diderot's job was completed. It stood as a model (later surpassed) for future encyclopedias, and with all its mistakes and weaknesses, it perfectly expressed the tolerant rationalistic materialism of the Age of Reason.

In the meantime the embattled philosopher had spread his range, written some plays (successful), some novels (pornographic), some candid art criticism (about a painting showing Joseph turning his back on Potiphar's voluptuous wife, he commented: "I can't imagine what Jacob's son could have wanted; I wouldn't have asked for any better, and I have often settled for less").

Fun with Catherine. He was a gay, light-hearted fellow, easily moved to speech and hard to stop once he started talking. After listening to him, old Voltaire dryly commented: "Nature has refused him one talent, and an essential talent: that of the dialogue."

Crowned heads of Europe wanted Diderot as a featured attraction at their courts. He steadfastly refused to meet Frederick the Great, considering the Prussian monarch a tyrant. Catherine the Great proved more appealing. She subsidized the philosopher by buying his library and paying him to keep and care for it. At her court, he made free as always with word and gesture, and afterwards the monarch of all the Russias complained: "I can't get out of my conversations with him without having my thighs bruised and black and blue; I have been obliged to put a table between him and me to shelter myself and my limbs from his gesticulations." It was also Catherine who pronounced a brilliant verdict on most of the 18th century sages when she told Diderot: "Sometimes you seem to have the head of a man 100 years old, at other times that of a child of twelve."