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Publication
Penguin Classics (1986), Paperback, 272 pages
Description
'Your Jacques is a tasteless mishmash of things that happen, some of them true, others made up, written without style and served up like a dog's breakfast.'Jacques the Fatalist is Diderot's answer to the problem of existence. If human beings are determined by their genes and their environment, how can they claim to be free to want or do anything? Where are Jacques and his Master going? Are they simply occupying space, living mechanically until theydie, believing erroneously that they are in charge of their Destiny? Diderot intervenes to cheat our expectations of what fiction should be and do, and behaves like a provocative, ironic and unfailingly entertaining master of revels who finally show why Fate is not to be equated with doom.In the introduction to this brilliant new translation, David Coward explains the philosophical basis of Diderot's fascination with Fate and shows why Jacques the Fatalist pioneers techniques of fiction which, two centuries on, novelists still regard as experimental.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member Paulagraph
I love this book and have already started to reread it in anticipation of my French book club's discussion. Diderot pays unabashed obeisance to Sterne's Tristram Shandy with his constantly interrupted, disrupted, and recommenced tale. As noted in the Preface to the novel (or anti-novel, as Diderot
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might have considered it)Jacques le fataliste is composed of one long chapter (over 300 pages in this edition)and includes around 60 characters, 21 stories and 180 breaks in the narrative. This is 18th century postmodernism and more evidence (if you're not yet convinced) that contemporary literary "experiments" have illustrious antecedents. Jacques (the fatalist) questions our ideas about fate, accident, human liberty, the (im)possibility of judging the morality of human actions as well as our notions of what constitutes a novel. It's a road trip (on horseback), a more than twice-told tale, and a carnivalesque romp with some serious underpinnings. Show Less
LibraryThing member thorold
A wonderful "anti-novel", obviously inspired in part by Tristram Shandy, teasing the reader with all sorts of ideas about how narrative works in an endless and constantly-interrupted discussion between the valet Jacques and his employer as they make their way from somewhere unspecified to somewhere
Between the lines, Diderot has a go at putting us right about social relations in France shortly before the revolution: even if Jacques' peasant bolshieness is an exaggeration, there's no way we can fit his nameless "Maître" into the traditional category of big-wigged aristocrats with absolute power over their peasants. This is a world where the minor gentry, at least, are all in debt to middle-class tradesmen or crooked moneylenders and can't go around offending people at will. Philosophers, on the other hand, seem to be quite happy to offend everyone...
Like so many light, effortlessly discursive books, it seems to have had a difficult birth: Diderot tinkered with it and expanded it over a period of some twenty years. There's obviously more to it than fun and paradox. Diderot's trying to make us think, evidently, and pushing his belief that the world is not as ordered and straightforward as we might think. An alarmingly modern way of looking at things. Obviously, part of it is the recurrent theme of determinism implied by Jacques and his catch-phrase "il est écrit là-haut". We don't get a Candide-style rubbishing of an over-simplified philosophical idea - while Jacques' fatalism is clearly ridiculous, and his behaviour isn't consistent with a belief that everything is predetermined, Diderot also takes care to remind us how difficult it is to demonstrate free will. In the interpolated stories, we're often forced into paradoxical moral positions. Against our best instincts, we are led to admire the tricksters and look down on their dupes, except in the case of Mme de La Pommeraye, who ought by rights to have our sympathy, but loses it because her revenge is so out of proportion with the offence that provokes it.
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else. We get humour both subtle and coarse; the odd bit of good old-fashioned slapstick; high-flying philosophical discussions; love stories high and low; all manner of knavery; discourses on medicine, law, religion, finance and cart-making; and more than a bit of down-to-earth common sense. At one point we even get an authorial aside of a couple of pages defending the use of the French "F-word" in print with arguments that are still just as valid today as they were 200 years ago.Between the lines, Diderot has a go at putting us right about social relations in France shortly before the revolution: even if Jacques' peasant bolshieness is an exaggeration, there's no way we can fit his nameless "Maître" into the traditional category of big-wigged aristocrats with absolute power over their peasants. This is a world where the minor gentry, at least, are all in debt to middle-class tradesmen or crooked moneylenders and can't go around offending people at will. Philosophers, on the other hand, seem to be quite happy to offend everyone...
Like so many light, effortlessly discursive books, it seems to have had a difficult birth: Diderot tinkered with it and expanded it over a period of some twenty years. There's obviously more to it than fun and paradox. Diderot's trying to make us think, evidently, and pushing his belief that the world is not as ordered and straightforward as we might think. An alarmingly modern way of looking at things. Obviously, part of it is the recurrent theme of determinism implied by Jacques and his catch-phrase "il est écrit là-haut". We don't get a Candide-style rubbishing of an over-simplified philosophical idea - while Jacques' fatalism is clearly ridiculous, and his behaviour isn't consistent with a belief that everything is predetermined, Diderot also takes care to remind us how difficult it is to demonstrate free will. In the interpolated stories, we're often forced into paradoxical moral positions. Against our best instincts, we are led to admire the tricksters and look down on their dupes, except in the case of Mme de La Pommeraye, who ought by rights to have our sympathy, but loses it because her revenge is so out of proportion with the offence that provokes it.
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LibraryThing member csmartinsp
Diderot is one of my favorite writers and I've only read this book from him. Do I need to say more?
One of the funniest and most intelligent books I've ever read.
One of the funniest and most intelligent books I've ever read.
LibraryThing member WorldInColour
'Jacques le Fataliste et son maître' is hardly a novel. In fact, it's a very clever parody on the clichés of narration, blind faith and many other things. One should always keep in mind that this is a conceptual novel, written to challenge the standards and thoughts of 18th century France.
Jacques
The whole makes for a very fragmented book, with lots of unfinished stories and puzzling events. This does not, however, mean that the structure of the book is completely random. The chaos of events and stories hides a very clever attempt to challenge the central themes of 18th century literature, and makes this book a very unique document.
Jacques
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is marked by a form of extreme fatalism - everything that happens to him happens because it was 'meant to be so'; everything is 'written in the stars'. There is, however, no mention of a God who determines this course of events, which points towards an atheism of Diderot's part. Ironically, the figure of Jacques dominates that of his Master, who is much more passive and lacks the talktative nature of Jacques. Whereas the conversations between Jacques and his Master challenge the philosophical and social climate of the time, the narrator exposes the problems of the novel form. Diderot often underlines the fact that this book is in fact not a novel, but a truthful representation of events. Again, this is very ironic, since the narrator intrudes often and violently. The main problems are verisimilitude (how true is a story?) and the boundaries of the author (what is and isn't possible in a novel?).The whole makes for a very fragmented book, with lots of unfinished stories and puzzling events. This does not, however, mean that the structure of the book is completely random. The chaos of events and stories hides a very clever attempt to challenge the central themes of 18th century literature, and makes this book a very unique document.
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LibraryThing member hbergander
Sometimes I am not sure, if I should read a book, which seems to be completely obsolete. But one of the first sentences may arouse interest: « Est-ce que l'on sait où l'on va? » I wanted to know the author’s answer.
LibraryThing member JVioland
Enjoyable for a view into the mind of one of the leading philosophs of France during the time of Voltaire.
LibraryThing member Mango7119
Hating this book
LibraryThing member AlanWPowers
Hilarious. I didn’t know how funny, when I bought this in Quebec City, Libraire Generale Française, over two decades ago. Nor did I know how metaliterary, like its contemporary, Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, but here, Diderot notes all the fictional clichés he refuses to write, telling only the
Such rollicking humor. The surgeon who must repair Jacques’ knee broken by a fall from his horse, tells the housewife to go down “à la cave,” to the wine-cellar, “boirons un coup, cela rends la main sûre.” I’ll have a drink, it’ll make my hand more steady (56). Benefits of wine: Jacques says it helps his memory, "refraîchit la memoire"(182). The surgeon sets up his host holding one leg, the wife holding another, turning patient on his side, then sends the wife back down to the cellar for another bottle. (Why only wives to the wine-cellar? Maybe the ceiling height, maybe her pacing her supply.)
Meanwhile, the patient, Jacques quizzes the chirurgeon, “Will I boiter/limp?” The doctor says, You should be glad I didn’t amputate like that other doctor suggested. “Je vous aie vous sauvé votre jambe” I’ve saved your leg. Do you like dancing? You may walk a little worse, but “danserez que mieux …Commère, le vin chaud.” You will dance better…Ma’am, some warm wine? (58)
Mostly a play, with two main speakers, Jacques and Le Maître / Master (no given or family name). Meta-literary, writing about writing, Jacques / the writer again and again rejects interruption to fulfill narrative clichés. But he does employ one common 18th Century novel device, direct address of the reader: “Vous concevez, lecteur…”(26), “Où? lecteur, vous êtes d’une curiosité bien incommode!” Where? What does it matter if the road’s going to Pontoise or Saint-Germain? Your curiosity’s inconvenient.(44) “Je vous supplie, lecteur…”(48). “Ma, si vous m’interrompez, lecteur…”(61).
This book contrasts the speakers (Jacques, Mme La Pommeraye) versus the non-speakers, though sometimes it's merely a situation, as when the Marquis is silent from worry, afraid to tell Mme La P that he did what she told hi not to. He walks around the room, stops in front of her, goes to the windo, then back to the door, all silent. "il se promener...sans mot dire: il allait au fenêtres, il regardait le ciel"(188).
Again and again, Diderot tells us what he will surely not tell us, the expected stories of fiction. For instance, Master and Jacques debate women, one saying “qu’elles étaient bonnes, l’autres méchantes,” and they were both right, one saying they were “sottes, l’autre pleines d’esprit” and they were both right. The one said miserly, the other, generous; the one, they were liars, the other, honest…and again , both were right (44).
After the surgery when the couple learn of the months of recovery, they suggest the “soeurs gris,” the nuns of St Vincent de Paul— who, by the way, had a home for wayward boys (to avoid jail time) down the street from us, at the end of Cornell Road, Westport. (Now they’ve torn down all the bunk rooms, turned the land over to a grandiose Land Trust property, with spindly acceptable maples replacing the century old Norway maples along the road. Invasive Norwegians. But so are Rosa Rugosa, and I don’t see anyone pulling beach roses up.)
One of several times Jacques falls from his horse, he's rescued by a well-dressed man who even gives him a horse--though a badly behaved one which eventually throws him. Later Jacques sees a man with braided hat, well clothed with gold braid, with two big dogs; he runs up to him and embraes him, thanking him. The man is impassive, hardly acknowledges, though he admits he did help him (103). (BTW, Jacques newly-given horse had run straight for the scaffold.) When Jacques askes his Maître who the man is, he is shocked to find he's "Le Bourreau'/ the undertaker. (No wonder the man is unused to gratitude.)
BTW, Diderot wrote this at the end of his life—he a central philosophe whose Enlightenment Encyclopédie suggested the future could be better, a founding idea of the United States. Previously, in the Renaissance, authors like Ben Jonson looked backward to the Golden Age.
Jacques says many things which draw universal agreement, like Long live Dogs (146):
"Vivent les chiens! il n'y a rien de plus parfait sous le ciel."
Read in 1989 edition, Pocket, 1989. ISBN 2-266-8322-8
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truth. Ignorant of its humor, I chose this book because of a couple passages in the middle: one, "Never pay in advance, unless you want to be badly served"(112); the other directly opposed my Puritan upbringing, where I/ one must work to get ahead, but one must act morally, or be wracked with guilt. Here? Not at all. All is pre-determined on high, “ecrit en haut” (236).Such rollicking humor. The surgeon who must repair Jacques’ knee broken by a fall from his horse, tells the housewife to go down “à la cave,” to the wine-cellar, “boirons un coup, cela rends la main sûre.” I’ll have a drink, it’ll make my hand more steady (56). Benefits of wine: Jacques says it helps his memory, "refraîchit la memoire"(182). The surgeon sets up his host holding one leg, the wife holding another, turning patient on his side, then sends the wife back down to the cellar for another bottle. (Why only wives to the wine-cellar? Maybe the ceiling height, maybe her pacing her supply.)
Meanwhile, the patient, Jacques quizzes the chirurgeon, “Will I boiter/limp?” The doctor says, You should be glad I didn’t amputate like that other doctor suggested. “Je vous aie vous sauvé votre jambe” I’ve saved your leg. Do you like dancing? You may walk a little worse, but “danserez que mieux …Commère, le vin chaud.” You will dance better…Ma’am, some warm wine? (58)
Mostly a play, with two main speakers, Jacques and Le Maître / Master (no given or family name). Meta-literary, writing about writing, Jacques / the writer again and again rejects interruption to fulfill narrative clichés. But he does employ one common 18th Century novel device, direct address of the reader: “Vous concevez, lecteur…”(26), “Où? lecteur, vous êtes d’une curiosité bien incommode!” Where? What does it matter if the road’s going to Pontoise or Saint-Germain? Your curiosity’s inconvenient.(44) “Je vous supplie, lecteur…”(48). “Ma, si vous m’interrompez, lecteur…”(61).
This book contrasts the speakers (Jacques, Mme La Pommeraye) versus the non-speakers, though sometimes it's merely a situation, as when the Marquis is silent from worry, afraid to tell Mme La P that he did what she told hi not to. He walks around the room, stops in front of her, goes to the windo, then back to the door, all silent. "il se promener...sans mot dire: il allait au fenêtres, il regardait le ciel"(188).
Again and again, Diderot tells us what he will surely not tell us, the expected stories of fiction. For instance, Master and Jacques debate women, one saying “qu’elles étaient bonnes, l’autres méchantes,” and they were both right, one saying they were “sottes, l’autre pleines d’esprit” and they were both right. The one said miserly, the other, generous; the one, they were liars, the other, honest…and again , both were right (44).
After the surgery when the couple learn of the months of recovery, they suggest the “soeurs gris,” the nuns of St Vincent de Paul— who, by the way, had a home for wayward boys (to avoid jail time) down the street from us, at the end of Cornell Road, Westport. (Now they’ve torn down all the bunk rooms, turned the land over to a grandiose Land Trust property, with spindly acceptable maples replacing the century old Norway maples along the road. Invasive Norwegians. But so are Rosa Rugosa, and I don’t see anyone pulling beach roses up.)
One of several times Jacques falls from his horse, he's rescued by a well-dressed man who even gives him a horse--though a badly behaved one which eventually throws him. Later Jacques sees a man with braided hat, well clothed with gold braid, with two big dogs; he runs up to him and embraes him, thanking him. The man is impassive, hardly acknowledges, though he admits he did help him (103). (BTW, Jacques newly-given horse had run straight for the scaffold.) When Jacques askes his Maître who the man is, he is shocked to find he's "Le Bourreau'/ the undertaker. (No wonder the man is unused to gratitude.)
BTW, Diderot wrote this at the end of his life—he a central philosophe whose Enlightenment Encyclopédie suggested the future could be better, a founding idea of the United States. Previously, in the Renaissance, authors like Ben Jonson looked backward to the Golden Age.
Jacques says many things which draw universal agreement, like Long live Dogs (146):
"Vivent les chiens! il n'y a rien de plus parfait sous le ciel."
Read in 1989 edition, Pocket, 1989. ISBN 2-266-8322-8
Show Less
Awards
Language
Original publication date
1796
Physical description
272 p.; 5.35 x 0.67 inches
ISBN
0140444726 / 9780140444728