Word: diderot
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...little to do with their greatness. The academy's mythical "41st chair," reserved by legend for those who never made the grade, has been occupied by such greats as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose loose living and houseful of illegitimate children were too much for the academicians; Encyclopedist Denis Diderot, who was a deal too outspoken; and plump, ill-dressed, Bohemian Honoré de Balzac, who seemed just too much of a mess...
...malevolence. "One could lay a wager that half the court could hardly read, and I would be surprised if more than a third could write," noted Catherine, who was soon wading through the classics of courtcraft (Tacitus, Plutarch, Montesquieu) and such French philosophers as Voltaire, D'Alembert and Diderot. To Encyclopedist Diderot, after her accession, she once wrote: "You philosophers are lucky men. You write on paper, and paper is patient. Unfortunate Empress that I am, I write on the susceptible skins of living beings...
Chardin was in his honored 60s when he painted the picture, and living contentedly as a "King's Pensioner" in the Louvre. When first displayed in 1769 (three years after it was finished), his canvas drew a parade of exclamation points from Encyclopedist Diderot, one of Paris' first professional art critics: "Everyone sees nature; but Chardin sees it profoundly and exhausts himself in rendering it as he sees it; his work on The Attributes of the Arts is proof of this. How perfectly the perspective is observed! How the objects reflect each other! How the masses are handled...
...then, as a student, that Diderot caught that insidious 18th century disease: a chronic high fever to know everything. The Embattled Philosopher tells the story of how Denis Diderot, philosopher, encyclopedist, playwright, novelist, art critic, conversationalist and lover, came to personify the French 18th century, and how he created the intellectual Trojan horse that led to the downfall of the Bourbon monarchy. It is the first biography of Diderot to appear in English in three-quarters of a century, and it is a good one. Author Lester G. Crocker, a Goucher College professor and former movie writer, knows...
...Idea. Papa Diderot objected to his son's studies, but let him be until he learned that Denis planned to marry. He then had the young lover imprisoned in a monastery with a lettre de cachet. But Denis escaped, dashed after his chérie, married her and almost immediately stopped loving her. There followed a succession of mistresses. The first was expensive and forced him to write his early books about philosophy to provide her with pocket money. The second was Sophie, Diderot's great love. "Ah," he rhapsodized, "what a woman! How tender...