Sophie Volland

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Louise-Henriette Volland or just Sophie Volland (* November 27, 1716 , † February 22, 1784 ) was a French enlightened intellectual .

Live and act

Her father, Jean-Robert Volland († 1750), was a lawyer at the Parlement in Paris and inspector general of his majesty's leases, Inspecteur général des fermes de Sa Majesté or directeur des gabelles, and her mother, Élisabeth Françoise Brunel de la Carlière († 1772 ). The couple had a son who died early (around 1750) and three daughters: Marie-Jeanne Élisabeth (* 1715), Louise-Henriette and Marie-Charlotte Volland. Sophie's mother is said to have been a former lover of Louis XIV ; when the king got tired of her, she was given an appanage that allowed her to marry Jean-Robert Volland.

In addition to Paris, the Vollands lived in a castle on Isle-sur-Marne with a six- hectare park, which was built with the assistance of the architect André Le Nôtre . After the death of her father, the widow Madame de la Carlière moved with her daughters to an apartment in Paris on Rue des Augustins .

Sophie Volland's older sister Marie-Jeanne Élisabeth Volland had been married to the financier Pierre Vallet de Salignac († 1760) since 1737 and named herself Madame de Blacy after the death of her husband. Her daughter Mélanie de Salignac had to live with blindness since she was two years old . Denis Diderot knew Mélanie and her family from 1760 to 1763. Mélanie's story of suffering is also reflected in his work Letter about the Blind for Use by the Sighted (1749). Another sister, Marie-Charlotte Volland, was married to the bridge engineer Jean-Gabriel Legendre († 1770) from around 1749 .

Sophie's real first name was Louise-Henriette, but either she or her lover and intellectual partner, the French philosopher Denis Diderot , gave her Sophie ("wisdom"), a name that was very popular in the 18th century, the time of the Enlightenment . Diderot and Sophie Volland met u. a. also in the famous Café Procope in what was then Rue des Fossés Saint-Germain (today n ° 13 Rue de l'Ancienne Comédie ).

She is known for her correspondence with Diderot between 1759 and 1774. The first known letter from Diderot to Sophie could be dated Thursday, May 10th, 1759. Denis Diderot wrote to Sophie Volland, whom he had known since 1755, from 1759 to 1774 over 550 letters, 187 of which have survived. She can be described as a close confidante of Denis Diderot, for example in September 1759 she attended the art exhibitions of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture in the great gallery of the Louvre, Grand Galerie des Louvre also known as le Salon for short . Over the years, both exchanged their diverse aesthetic and intellectual impressions and reflections.

When Sophie Volland's mother died on April 5, 1772, it wasn't just her daughters who died; Denis Diderot was also deeply saddened by this, according to his letters.

Neither letters nor portraits of her have survived. The only surviving document that was handwritten by her is her will, in which she bequeathed Diderot a ring and an eleven-volume edition of Michel de Montaigne's essays, bound in red Moroccan leather .

When she met Diderot, Volland was thirty-nine years old. For him, she was the counterpart to his wife Anne-Toinette Champion, who was in his view "quarrelsome", and his glamorous lover, Mme de Puisieux (1720–1798). At that time she was living in Paris on Rue Vieux-Augustins with her mother, sister and niece Mélanie de Salignac . Your apartment was near the Palais Royal , near the home of Baron d'Holbach in the Rue Royal Saint-Roch . He valued her intelligence, her education, and her common sense. For a woman of her time, she was very well read and, through Diderot, very well informed about the contemporary authors of the time. She was also an important confidante for Diderot, to whom he could tell everything about his work and private life and ask her advice. She had a difficult relationship with her very dominant mother, who Sophie often had to follow to the countryside in Isles , although she would have preferred to live in Paris.

Diderot's letters to Volland give valuable information about his life and work and are themselves considered an important part of his work, while her letters can no longer be found.

literature

  • Anne-Marie Boileau: Liaison et liaisons dans les lettres de Diderot à Sophie Volland. Champion, Paris 1999, ISBN 2-7453-0047-4
  • Denis Diderot: Letters to Sophie Volland. Reclam, Leipzig 1986, ISBN 3-379-00001-9
  • Denis Diderot: Lettres à Sophie Volland. 2 volumes, Gallimard, Paris 1950
  • Denis Diderot: Lettres à Sophie Volland. Gallimard, Paris 1984, ISBN 2-07-037547-1
  • Denis Diderot: Lettres et responses de Diderot à Sophie Volland. Echos personnels, politiques et litteraires. Lettres Modernes, Paris 1967
  • Peter Prange: The philosopher. Novel. Droemer, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-426-19590-9 (fictional representation)
  • Werner Raupp (Ed.): Denis Diderot - Do you ever know where you are going? Ein Lesebuch, Rottenburg aN 2009 2 , ISBN 978-3-936088-95-3 (Introduction: Circle of acquaintances, pp. 61–63; - Chapter VII: Letters to Sophie Volland, pp. 417–426)
  • Alice M. Laborde: Diderot et l'amour. Anma Libri, Saratoga, CA. 1979, ISBN 978-0-915838-22-6
  • Servanne Woodward: Effets de mimétisme: Sophie Volland un monde de demoiselles. In: Diana Guiragossian Carr (Ed.): Diderot Studies. Volume 27, Librairie Droz, Genève 1998, ISBN 2-6000-0246-4 , p. 169

Web links

Wikisource: Lettres à Sophie Volland  - Sources and full texts (French)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sécardin, Olivier: Diderot, côté jardin. Footnote 20
  2. ↑ Denzel di Tirado, Heidi: Biographical fictions: The paradigm Denis Diderot in an intercultural comparison (1765-2005). Königshausen & Neumann, (2009), p. 191, footnote 716
  3. ↑ Proof of marriage
  4. ^ Lepape, Pierre: Denis Diderot. A biography. Campus-Verlag, Frankfurt a / M (1994), ISBN 3-593-35150-1 , pp. 167-168.
  5. ^ Genealogy of the Vallet de Salignac family
  6. ↑ Raymond Trousson: Diderot. Gallimard, Paris 2007, ISBN 978-2-07-034170-2 , p. 118.
  7. ^ Borek, Johanna: Denis Diderot. Rowohlt, Hamburg (2000), ISBN 3-499-50447-2 , pp. 86-92
  8. ↑ Pierre Lepape: Denis Diderot. A biography. Campus, Frankfurt am Main 1994, ISBN 3-593-35150-1 , p. 383 f.
  9. ↑ Blom, Philipp: Evil Philosophers: A Salon in Paris and the Forgotten Legacy of the Enlightenment. Hanser, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-446-23648-6 , p. 136
personal data
SURNAME Volland, Sophie
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Volland, Louise-Henriette (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Beloved of the French philosopher Denis Diderot
DATE OF BIRTH November 27, 1716
DATE OF DEATH February 22, 1784