This lies in writings that remained largely unknown to the general public during his lifetime, and which were written both during and after the publication of the Encyclopédie. Thus, Diderot’s masterpiece of scientific speculation, D’Alembert’s Dream, was unknown until 1831. Most of his prose fiction – novels, dialogues and short stories – remained unpublished until after his death, and included such major works as Rameau’s Nephew, The Nun and Jacques the Fatalist and his Master. One reason why Diderot published so little during his lifetime was that it was often dangerous for writers to do so under a regime which exercised a fierce, if inefficient, censorship. Diderot learnt this at first hand when, in 1749, he published anonymously a brilliant exposition of atheist and materialist ideas in a work entitled Letter Concerning the Blind. Diderot’s authorship was soon known to the authorities, and he was arrested and imprisoned for three months. There are, however, other reasons which may explain why Diderot was reluctant to publish many of his works. For example, the content of some of his work might have offended friends, as was the case with D’Alembert’s Dream, which Diderot suppressed at the request of D’Alembert and his mistress, who felt they had been represented in an offensive manner. Another reason may be Diderot’s preoccupation with the usefulness of the intellectual to society. While this never came into direct conflict with his commitment to stating the truth, it is fair to say that Diderot sometimes felt that the public good would not be best served by his broadcasting his more heterodox flights of fancy. Finally – and here Jacques the Fatalist might be taken as an example – it seems likely that Diderot believed his best and most original work would not be properly understood and appreciated in his own time and consciously accepted that, for him, true recognition had to be posthumous.

Jacques the Fatalist was conceived and written over a long period between the late 1760s and 1778 – a time of intense creative activity for Diderot after the depression accompanying the conclusion of work on the Encyclopédie. It was partially published in the Correspondance littéraire between 1778 and 1780. An early and enthusiastic reader was Goethe, but, for the most part, the reception of the work tended to confirm Diderot’s suspicions about the likely reaction to his most original work. Even after the novel became more widely available after its publication in 1796, reactions tended to vary from incomprehension to patronizing indifference. At best it was deemed an amusing pot-pourri, at worst obscene and unreadable. It is only recently, in the last few decades, that both specialist and non-specialist readers have begun to catch up with Diderot and discover the strange originality of Jacques the Fatalist.

FICTION AND REALITY

Jacques the Fatalist is a novel which refers insistently to other novels, to story-telling and fiction. The reader soon becomes aware that a powerful attack is being mounted against a particular sort of novel, and will have little difficulty in recognizing what kind of fiction is under fire – undemanding, escapist literature, full of implausible plotting and stereotyped characterization, relying heavily on a strong love-interest. In its refusal of the romanticizing exaggeration of conventional fiction, Jacques belongs to a long and important tradition in the European novel, a tradition which can be defined by its rejection of the tawdry resources of ‘mere’ fiction and its proclamation of its own adherence to the superior claims of truth. Jacques repeatedly asserts not only that it is not an invented story, but also that it is a true story referring to the real world.

Readers who come to Jacques anticipating a ‘true story’ might find some initial reassurance in the Narrator’s repeated assurances of fidelity to the truth. This might even be reinforced by the presence in the text of some of the indicators readers have come to expect as evidence of the authenticity of the story they are being told. They are, for instance, given dates, places and proper names belonging to people who really existed. They are given explanations about the provenance of the story and its transmission via the Narrator to themselves. However, it soon becomes clear that the mere presence of these indicators does not mean that they work very successfully. A simple example is the matter of historical dates. One might imagine, on a first reading, that the presence of references to major events such as battles and great natural disasters secured the novel in a firm chronological framework. Closer examination reveals that, far from offering the reader the security of a stable historical context, dates are delusory. Jacques was wounded in the knee in 1745 at the battle of Fontenoy, and refers to himself as having limped for twenty years, thus locating the time in which he is telling the story of his loves somewhere in the mid-sixties. What then are we to make of the reference to Mandrin’s gang in the final pages of the novel? Mandrin himself died in 1755. The dates appear to be contradictory. A similar situation arises when the reader pauses to consider the provenance of Jacques’ life story.