Reasons to mourn my old dressing gown

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Lewitzki : Diderot in a scarlet skirt , 1773, Musée d'art et d'histoire, Geneva.

Reasons to mourn my old housecoat, or: A warning to everyone who has more taste than money (French: Regrets sur ma vieille robe de chambre ou Avis à ceux qui ont plus de goût que de fortune ) is an essay by the French author Denis Diderot , which he wrote in 1768 and which was published in Grimm's Correspondance littéraire the following year . The text was printed and distributed as a brochure in 1772 by the writer and Karlsruhe prince tutor Friedrich Dominicus Ring (1726–1809) without Diderot's consent .

Diderot had M me Geoffrin , whose salon he was occasionally guest, proved a favor. The salonnière, known for its intrusive favors, showed its appreciation by replacing Diderot's shabby furniture with nicer and better pieces and giving him a new scarlet dressing gown.

“An old maid who comes to a parsonage as a housekeeper, a woman who marries a widower, a minister who replaces his overthrown predecessor […] none of them can cause more trouble than the scarlet robe that has taken hold of me . S. 5. "

The gift, which upset the philosopher's peace of mind, inspired Diderot to reflect on the undesirable consequences of wealth and luxury - "the havocs of luxury".

content

Diderot sits at his desk and laments the loss of his worn but beloved housecoat, which with many ink stains testifies to the writer's activity. In the new one he looks like a "rich day thief". Only since he started wearing this luxury skirt did he notice what “junk” was accumulating in his house. It is the "cursed luxury dress", which he now respects proves: there disappear wallpaper and cane chair, the wooden bookshelf, even the old desk, and finally the frameless stapled to the wall engravings of Poussin . Damask wallpaper and Maroquins armchair , a valuable desk, the books from the spruce board are locked in an inlaid cabinet, the beloved plaster casts, gifts from a friend, "smashed on an antique bronze" (p. 7). If he used to be master of his old dressing gown, he has become a slave to the new one. Because everything is to blame for the “unfortunate tendency towards convention”, the “sophisticated taste that changes, discards, beautifies everything, turns everything at the bottom” (p. 7)

“Poverty has its freedoms, wealth its constraints. P. 4. "

All he has left is the poor patchwork quilt that reminds him of who he really is. Even if his room now looks like the “cabinet of a tax farmer” (p. 8), the wealth has not yet corrupted him. He remains Denis, the philosopher whose door is open to everyone who needs help, because his “heart is not poisoned by luxury”.

Claude Joseph Vernet : Stormy Seas with Shipwrecks, 1770

Diderot ends his complaint by invoking heaven that the Lord should punish him when wealth spoils him, take everything away from him, push him back into poverty, but should he please leave him one single image, Vernets "End of the Storm". The essay closes with an emotional and enthusiastic description of the Vernet image and Diderot's self-assurance that he is not “seized by the addiction to pile up beautiful objects” (p. 12) and that the friends he has once made remain with him.

reception

In 1936 Sacha Guitry wrote the one-act play "l'école des philosophes", in which M me Geoffrin also appeared alongside Diderot and a (fictional) maitress . First of all, it deals with Diderot's relationship with his fellow philosopher Voltaire, Rousseau, d'Alembert, and then turns to Diderot's letter, which he is currently writing to Madame Geoffrin to thank her for the new dressing gown. Diderot, clad in the new skirt, goes on about the Geoffrin and her salon, in which only those who are absent are blasphemed, and Madame herself only repeats what philosophers had cleverly formulated beforehand.

The Diderot Effect

The term Diderot effect was coined by the American social scientist and consumer researcher Grant McCracken in his book Culture and Consumption (= culture and consumption from 1988 ). According to McCracken, Diderot's story illuminates the principle of the consumer society : the purchase of a consumer item triggers a series of additional purchases, since the initial purchase provides the impetus for supplementation, completion and harmonious ensemble formation.

expenditure

Reasons to mourn my old housecoat, title page of the 1772 edition
Therein: mourning for my old dressing gown [u. a.] Translated by Christel Gersch.

literature

  • Jane B. McLelland: Changing His Image: Diderot, Vernet and the Old Dressing Gown . In: Diderot Studies. No. 23, 1988, pp. 129-41.
  • François Moureau: Friedrich Dominicus Ring, éditeur de Diderot . IN: Recherches sur Diderot et sur l'Encyclopédie. No. 16 April 1994, pp. 113-23.
  • Samuel Sadaune: L'Ouverture excentrique du Salon de 1769 ou portrait du Philosophe en robe de chambre . In: Recherches sur Diderot et sur l'Encyclopédie. No. 35 October 2003, pp. 7-23.
  • Stephen Werner: Irony and the Essay: Diderot's "Regrets sur ma vieille robe de chambre" . In: Diderot: Digression and Dispersion: A Bicentennial Tribute. Eds. Jack Ingratitude and Herbert Josephs. 1984, pp. 269-77.
Literature on the Diderot effect
  • Grant McCracken: Culture and Consumption: New Approaches to the Symbolic Character of Consumer Goods and Activities. Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1988 ISBN 0-253-31526-3 ; Pp. 118-129
  • Gudrun K. König: Consumer Culture. Staged world of goods around 1900. Vienna: Böhlau 2006. ISBN 978-3-205-77661-1 Therein: Diderots Hausrock. P. 142ff.
  • Juliet B. Schor : "The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don't Need" Harper Perennial; 1st HarperPerennial Ed Pub. 1999 edition. ISBN 0-06-097758-2 ISBN 978-0-06-097758-0

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Le Journal du Louvre. , No. 13, September / October 2010.
  2. ↑ p. 3. All direct quotations from Diderot from: Denis Diderot. Reasons to mourn my old housecoat. Translated by HM Enzensberger. Berlin 2010.
  3. ↑ Heidi Denzel de Traho: Biographical Fiction. The paradigm of Denis Diderot in an intercultural comparison. Würzburg 2008, ISBN 978-3-8260-3954-6 , pp. 223-224. [1]