Read Jacques the Fatalist: And His Master Online
Authors: Denis Diderot
The title tells us that Jacques is a fatalist, but what does this mean? Many critics have assumed that
Jacques
is about fatalism, that it is an exploration in fictional terms of philosophical issues raised by Diderot’s materialist view of the world – a view which requires the universe to be explained exclusively in terms of matter, its properties and activity. Diderot was led from this position to a commitment to determinism which propounded that if the universe is explicable exclusively in terms of the organization and activity of matter, then there is no room for any ‘play’ in the system. Nothing is chance: all is determined.
At the same time, Diderot was intensely preoccupied by ethical problems and concerns. Resolutely hostile to what he saw as the unnatural and stultifying effects of Christian ethical teaching, he remained equally resolute in seeking some alternative foundation to ethics. But this was where Diderot’s problems began, because the philosophical position he held seemed to deny any possibility of establishing a secure basis for ethics except as a form of utilitarian social engineering: if everything is determined, the argument will run, free will is a nonsense and, if this is the case, although we may attempt by means of an appropriate system of incentives and deterrents to make man what is socially desirable, we cannot make him a moral being.
Freedom or determinism? This becomes the starting-point for a philosophical reading of
Jacques
. The fatalistic Jacques is committed to a form of determinism, believing that all is foreordained, ‘written up above’, in his own words, yet he constantly contradicts his own viewpoint by actions and
feelings which are the behaviour of a moral being. The novel can then be read as an elaboration in fictional form of the philosophical dilemma in which Diderot found himself, committed to a philosophical doctrine which denied his need for a universe in which moral choice was meaningful.
An interpretation of
Jacques
along these lines is plausible, and finds justification both in the text and in Diderot’s practice as a writer (
Jacques
is not the only one of Diderot’s works to explore dilemmas and unresolved tensions of his thought and personality). However, there are dangers in this line of interpretation.
First, it would be wrong to explain this strange and complicated novel simply in terms of its exposition of some philosophical doctrine. Jacques’ fatalism is not really philosophical determinism but is more closely related to certain popular ideas and expressions (the idea of every bullet having its address on it, for instance, and the notion of everything being ‘written up above’) than to any philosophical doctrine. In so far as it relates to any philosophical doctrine the link is a tenuous one whose fallibility is underlined. Jacques’ ‘philosophical’ ideas are derived from his Captain, who in turn derives them from Spinoza. From Spinoza to ‘It’s written up above’ is not a route that is either obvious or direct.
Secondly, if the novel were straightforwardly ‘about’ fatalism one might expect that there would be some developed argument, even perhaps a conclusion reached. This is not the case. Jacques may score points off his master – as when they become involved in the question of free will – but nowhere is there any conventional elaboration and exploration of issues. In pursuing this line, one might ask whether, apart from in the amount of time and space allocated to them, there is any difference between the discussion on fatalism and that on the subject of women which the Narrator tells us could go on interminably without getting anywhere. This is not to deny the importance of the discussion, but to underline the fact that the issue of fatalism is presented in
Jacques
as part of a work of fiction.
If there is no conclusion offered to the alternative of freedom or determinism, it is because the novel as a whole tends towards the representation of such alternatives as fundamentally irresoluble. Indeed the figure of what might be called alternativity runs throughout
Jacques
. Do the duellists love or hate each other? Is Gousse good or bad? Is Jacques servant or master? In
each case the alternative does not allow a simple resolution. We cannot decide but have to cope as best we can with the answer: ‘Both at once’.
Like the great comic works that it avows as its inspiration – Rabelais’ novels, Molière’s comedies, Sterne’s
Tristram Shandy – Jacques
is above all a celebratory work. It proclaims its delight in diversity and difference, and a fascination with the quirkiness and bizarreness of human life. Like these masterpieces it is irreducible to any fixed and limiting scheme of interpretation.
Jacques
has been interpreted as a novel of moral experience, as a critique of the eighteenth-century novel, as an attack on the
ancien régime
, and as a philosophical exploration. It is all of these things but none of them exclusively. The worst misreading of
Jacques
would consist precisely in thinking that one could offer an exhaustive interpretation of it. With due regard to the Narrator’s strictures concerning allegory, we might say that
Jacques
is like the ‘château’ where Jacques and his master spend (or don’t spend) a night. It belongs to everybody and to nobody.
Jacques
calls to the intelligent reader – not the doctrinaire one – and invites us all to write our own conclusion.
How did they meet? By chance like everyone else. What were their names? What’s that got to do with you? Where were they coming from? From the nearest place. Where were they going to? Does anyone ever really know where they are going to? What were they saying? The master wasn’t saying anything and Jacques was saying that his Captain used to say that everything which happens to us on this earth, both good and bad, is written up above.
MASTER
: That’s very profound.
JACQUES
: My Captain used to add that every shot fired from a gun had someone’s name on it.
MASTER
: And he was right…
(After a short pause Jacques cried out:) May the devil take that innkeeper and his inn!
MASTER
: Why consign one’s neighbour to the devil? That’s not Christian.
JACQUES
: Because while I was getting drunk on his bad wine I forgot to water our horses. My father noticed and got angry. I shook my head at him and he took a stick and hit me rather hard across the shoulders. There was a regiment passing through on its way to camp at Fontenoy,
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and so out of pique I joined up. We arrived. The battle started…
MASTER
: And you stopped the bullet with your name on it?
JACQUES
: You’ve guessed it. Shot in the knee. And God knows the good and bad fortunes that were brought about by that shot. They are linked together exactly like the links of a fob-chain. Were it not for that shot, for example, I don’t think I would ever have fallen in love, or had a limp.
MASTER
: So you’ve been in love then?
JACQUES
: Have I been in love!
MASTER
: And all because of a shot?
JACQUES
: Because of a shot.
MASTER
: You never said a word of this to me before.
JACQUES
: Very likely.
MASTER
: And why is that?
JACQUES
: That is because it is something that could not be told a moment sooner or a moment later.
MASTER
: And has the moment come for hearing about these loves?
JACQUES
: Who knows?
MASTER
: Well, on the off-chance, begin anyway…
Jacques began the story of his loves. It was after lunch. The weather was very close, and his master fell asleep. Nightfall surprised them in the middle of nowhere. There they were, lost, and there was the master in a terrible temper, raining huge blows from his horsewhip on to his valet and at every blow the poor devil cried out: ‘That must also have been written up above!’
So you can see, Reader, that I’m well away and it’s entirely within my power to make you wait a year, or two, or even three years for the story of Jacques’ loves, by separating him from his master and exposing each of them to whatever perils I liked. What is there to prevent me from marrying off the master and having him cuckolded? Or sending Jacques off to the Indies? And leading his master there? And bringing them both back to France on the same vessel? How easy it is to make up stories! But I will let the two of them off with a bad night’s sleep and you with this delay.
Dawn broke. There they were back on their horses carrying on their way.
– And where were they going?
That is the second time you have asked me that question and for the second time I ask you, what has that got to do with you? If I begin the story of their journey then it’s goodbye to Jacques’ loves… They went on for a little while in silence. When they had both recovered a little from their annoyance the master said to his valet: ‘Well then, Jacques, where did we get to in your loves?’
JACQUES
: We had, I believe, got to the rout of the enemy army. Everyone was running away and being chased and it was every man for himself. I was left on the battlefield, buried under the prodigious number of dead and dying bodies. The next day I was thrown onto a cart along with a dozen or so
others to be taken to one of our hospitals. Ah! Monsieur, I do not believe there is any wound more painful than a wound in the knee.
MASTER
: Come along, Jacques, you’re joking.
JACQUES
: No, by God! Monsieur, I am not joking! There are I don’t know how many bones, tendons and other bits called I don’t know what…
Some sort of peasant who was following them with a girl he was carrying on his saddle and who had overheard them interrupted and said: ‘Monsieur is right…’
It was not clear to whom this ‘Monsieur’ was addressed but both Jacques and his master took it badly and Jacques said to this indiscreet interlocutor: ‘Why don’t you mind your own business?’
‘I am minding my own business. I am a surgeon
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at your service and I am going to give you a demonstration…’
The woman he was carrying on the crupper said to him: ‘Monsieur le Docteur, let us carry on our way and leave these gentlemen who don’t want to be given a demonstration.’
‘No,’ replied the surgeon, ‘I want to demonstrate to them and I am going to demonstrate to them…’
And as he was turning round to demonstrate he pushed his companion, made her lose her balance and threw her to the ground, with one foot caught in his coat tails and her petticoats over her head. Jacques got down, freed the poor creature’s foot and pulled her skirts back down. I don’t know whether he started by pulling her skirts back down or freeing her foot, but, to judge the state of this woman from her screams, she had hurt herself badly.
And Jacques’ master said to the surgeon: ‘That’s what comes of demonstrating!…’
And the surgeon said: ‘That’s what comes of not wanting people to demonstrate!…’
And Jacques said to the fallen or picked-up young woman: ‘Calm yourself, my dear. It is neither your fault, nor the fault of Monsieur le Docteur, nor mine, nor my master’s. It was written up above that this day, on this road, at this very hour, Monsieur le Docteur would talk too much, my master and I would both be unfriendly, and you would receive a bump on the head and show us your bottom…’
What might this little incident not become in my hands if I took it into my head to reduce you to despair. I could make this woman somebody important. I could make all the peasants come running. I could bring in stories of
love and strife, because, after all, underneath her petticoats this peasant girl had a nice little body, as Jacques and his master had noticed. Love hasn’t always waited for so seductive an opportunity. Why shouldn’t Jacques fall in love a second time? Why shouldn’t he be, for a second time, his master’s rival – even his preferred rival?
– Had that happened to him before?
Always questions! Do you not want Jacques to continue with the story of his loves then? Once and for all, tell me: Would that give you pleasure, or would it not give you pleasure?
If that would give you pleasure, then let us put the peasant girl back up behind the surgeon, allow them to carry on their way, and return to our two travellers.
This time it was Jacques who spoke first, and he said to his master:
That’s the way the world goes… You, a man who has never in his life been wounded and who has no idea what it is like to be shot in the knee, you tell me, a man who has had his knee shattered and has had a limp for the last twenty years…
MASTER
: You may be right. But that impertinent surgeon is to blame for you still being on that cart with your companions, far from the hospital, far from being cured and far from falling in love.
JACQUES
: Whatever you might think, the pain in my knee was extreme. It was becoming more so with the hard ride in the wagon and the bumpy roads, and at every bump I screamed…
MASTER
: Because it was written up above that you’d scream?
JACQUES
: Undoubtedly! I was bleeding to death and I would have been a dead man if our wagon, which was the last in the column, hadn’t stopped in front of a cottage. There I asked to get down and I was helped to the ground. A young woman who was standing at the door of the cottage disappeared inside and came out again almost immediately with a glass and a bottle of wine. I drank one or two glasses quickly. The carts in front of ours moved off. They were getting ready to throw me back into the wagon amongst my companions, when grabbing hold of the woman’s clothes and everything else within reach I protested that I would not get back in and that, if I was going to die anyhow, I preferred to die on the spot rather than two miles further on. As I finished these words I fainted. When I came to I found myself undressed and lying in bed in the corner of the cottage with a peasant – the
master of the house – his wife, the woman who had rescued me, and a few young children gathered around me. The woman had soaked the corner of her apron in vinegar and was rubbing my nose and temples with it.
MASTER
: Ah! You villain! You rogue! You traitor! I can see what’s coming.
JACQUES
: My master, I don’t think you see anything.
MASTER
: Isn’t this the woman you’re going to fall in love with?
JACQUES
: And if I were to have fallen in love with her, what could you say about that? Is one free to fall in love or not to fall in love? And if one is, is one free to act as if one wasn’t? If the thing had been written up above, everything which you are about to say to me now I would already have said to myself. I would have slapped my own face, I would have beaten my head against the wall, I would have torn out my hair, and it would have been no more or less so, and my benefactor would have been cuckolded.
MASTER
: But if one follows your reasoning there can be no remorse for any crime.
JACQUES
: That objection has bothered me more than once, but for all that, however reluctantly, I always come back to what my Captain used to say: ‘Everything which happens to us in this world, good or bad, is written up above…’
Do you, Monsieur, know any way of erasing this writing?
Can I be anything other than myself, and being me, can I act otherwise than I do?
Can I be myself and somebody else?
And ever since I have been in this world, has there ever been one single moment when it has not been so?
You may preach as much as you wish. Your reasons may perhaps be good, but if it is written within me or up above that I will find them bad, what can I do about it?
MASTER
: I am wondering about something… that is whether your benefactor would have been cuckolded because it was written up above or whether it was written up above because you cuckolded your benefactor.
JACQUES
: The two were written side by side. Everything was written at the same time. It is like a great scroll which is unrolled little by little.
You can imagine, Reader, to what lengths I might take this conversation on a subject which has been talked about and written about so much for the last two thousand years without getting one step further forward. If you are not grateful to me for what I am telling you, be very grateful for what I am not telling you.
While our two theologians were arguing without listening to each other, as can happen in theology, nightfall was approaching. They were coming to a part of the country which was unsafe at the best of times, and even more unsafe when bad administration and poverty had endlessly multiplied the number of malefactors. They stopped at the most sordid of inns. Two camp-beds were made up for them in a room made of partitions which were gaping on all sides. They asked for something to eat. They were brought pondwater, black bread and sour wine. The innkeeper, his wife, their children and the valets all appeared rather sinister. They could hear coming from the room next to them the immoderate laughter and rowdy merriment of a dozen or so brigands who had arrived there before them and requisitioned all the victuals. Jacques was happy enough. This was not at all the case with his master. He was walking his worries up and down, while his valet consumed a few pieces of black bread and swallowed a few glasses of the sour wine, grimacing. At this point they heard a knocking on their door. It was a valet who had been persuaded by their insolent and dangerous neighbours to bring our two travellers all the bones of a fowl they had eaten on one of their plates. Jacques, indignant, took his master’s pistols.
‘Where are you going?’
‘Leave me alone.’
‘Where are you going, I’m asking you?’
‘To sort out those scum.’
‘Do you know there are a dozen of them?’
‘Were there one hundred, the number doesn’t matter if it is written up above that there are not enough of them.’
‘May the devil take you and your impertinent speech!…’
Jacques dodged his master and went into the cut-throats’ room, a cocked pistol in each hand.
‘Quickly, lie down,’ he said. ‘The first one who moves gets his brains blown out…’
Jacques’ appearance and tone were so convincing that these rascals, who valued their lives just as much as honest people, got up from table without saying a word, got undressed and went to bed. His master, uncertain of how this little adventure would end, was waiting for him, trembling. Jacques
returned, loaded up with these people’s clothes. He had taken possession of them in case they were tempted to get up again. He had put out their light and double-locked their door, the key of which he was carrying on one of his pistols.
‘Now, Monsieur,’ he said to his master, ‘all we have to do is to barricade ourselves in by pushing our beds against the door and then we can sleep peacefully.’ And he set about moving the beds, coolly and succinctly recounting to his master the details of his expedition.