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The Authorship of a Curious Eighteenth-Century “Drame”
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
In the year 1761 there was published, it is uncertain where, a French play entitled L'Humanité ou le Tableau de l'Indigence, Triste Drame par un Aveugle Tartare. Although of mediocre dramatic or literary merit, it has attracted the attention of various scholars because it forms the center of a “curious problem of literary history.” The mystery that has hitherto surrounded the play may be satisfactorily cleared up, it seems to me, with the aid of a notice furnished by C. H. Schmid in an eighteenth-century German periodical.
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1930
References
1 Bibliotèque dramatique, de Monsieur de Soleinne, Paris 1843–45, II, 137.
2 Dresden and Warsaw 1761, Hamburg, 1765. Cf. Deutsche Monatsschrift, Dec. 1798, p. 294.
3 Celle 1764 (translated by Johann Heinrich Steffens according to Goedeke). Cf. Der Wohlunterrichtete Theaterfreund, Berlin 1830–60, I, 200.
4 Dictionnaire Portatif Historique et Littéraire des Théâtres etc. Paris 1763, p. 733. This notice as well as the one on Zamir escaped the attention of Tourneux, the editor of Grimm's Correspondance. cf. the latter, IV, 399, note.
5 Correspondance Littéraire, ed. Tourneux, IV, 398–99.
6 Dunciade, canto V. As an essential argument that Palissot based his attack on the London edition, it should be observed that the passage in question does not occur in the earlier publications of his poem, 1764 (3 cantos only), 1771, 1773, or, indeed, in the edition of 1776. It was not inserted until 1781. It is moreover, apparent that Palissot did not care later to insist on his imputation, for in his Mémoires sur la Littérature the article Diderot, which discusses the dramatic pretensions of the Encyclopædist, makes no mention of L'Humanité.
7 Gosche's Jahrbuch für Litteraturgeschichte (1867), p. 99 ff.
8 Diderot's Leben und Werke, Leipzig 1866, I, 268.
9 Rosenkranz himself notes the works by the first three in the preface to his biography (I, vi).
10 Aug. 11, 1866.
11 Œuvres Completes de Diderot, VII, 5. As for the assumption that this attack is aimed “notably” at Diderot, cf. below.
12 Correspondance Litt., IV, 398, note.
13 Le Drame en France au XVIIIe Siècle, Paris 1910, p. 162, note 4. Hettner (Gesch. der französ. Lit. im 18. Jahrh., 4th, ed., pp. 334–35) found the claims of Rosenkranz “probable.” The 5th edition, revised by Heinrich Morf, however, accepts Grimm's notice as definitive: “Indessen beweist eine Stelle der Correspondance Littéraire endgültig, dass Diderot nicht der Verfasser ist.” (p. 331).
14 Le Drame etc., p. 463.
15 Cited by Assézat in his edition of Diderot, VII, 177.
16 It may be added that Gaston Paris had no misgivings concerning the sincerity of the play.
17 P. 85.
18 “Vers dissyllabiques,” which the author of Zamir professes to use, he strangely considers to be “vers de dix syllables” as employed by Voltaire in L'Enfant Prodigue.
19 Lacroix does note properly that L'Humanité is written “sans dist. d'act ni de sc. pr.”
20 III, 294.
21 The discrepancy in time between the appearance of the play and the issue of the Monatsschrift is not as serious as it may seem. Schmid's Chronologie, one of the most valuable sources for the study of eighteenth century German drama, dates back to 1775; his Parterre appeared in 1771; and his occupation with the theatre began the latter part of the same decade in which L'Humanité was published. Nor is it very strange that a German bibliographer is giving information that has not been located among contemporary French commentators. In the middle of the sixties de Bastide went to Holland as an exile; he died, 1798, in Italy. Various of his books were published in London, La Haye, Amsterdam or without indication of the city. Certain anonymous works that are assigned to him are also attributed to L'Abbé Coupé, Graillard de Graville, and Chevrier. L'Humanité, as Tourneux points out, is not even mentioned either in Mouhy's or in La Porte and Chamfort's dramatic bibliographies. Léris in his note on de Bastide informs us: “On a annoncé par erreur dans différents livres, plusieurs de ses ouvrages sous le nom de M. de la Bastide [this accounts for the form used by Schmid], et on l'a qualifié même quelquefois d'Abbé.”
22 cf. his own Mémoires Apologétiques, Barbier's article in the Examen Critique, Paris 1820, and the biographical sketch in the Cabinet des Fées, vol. XXXVII, Paris and Amsterdam, 1786.
23 Lettre à M. Rousseau, p. 5.
24 Apparently we should read “est.”
25 Cf. Le Monde Comme Il Est, IV, 114.
26 After treating Rousseau as a neurasthenic misanthropist (cf. Lettre à M. Rousseau), de Bastide anxiously solicited from him contributions for Le Monde Comme Il Est. For a summary of Rousseau's attitude see his Confessions (Part II, book 2), in which he speaks of “un certain M. de Bastide, auteur d'un journal appelé Le Monde, dans lequel il voulait, bon gré mal gré, fourrer tous mes manuscrits.—Enfin excédé de ses importunités, je pris le parti de lui céder pour douze louis mon extrait de La Paix Perpetuelle.” Likewise, cf. Voltaire's condescending letter (1760) published in his Oeuvres, ed. Moland (XLI, 52–54), his letter of Jan. 12, 1761 incorporated in Le Monde (IV, 110–13), and, above all, de Bastide's protest to the latter (p. 113 ff.). As a result, de Bastide's grievance against Voltaire and Rousseau may be doubly accounted for: envy of their popularity and prominence, resentment of the superior manner in which they regarded his journalistic ambitions.
27 Cf. ed. Assézat, VII, 104.