Word: diderot
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...Denis Diderot...
...volume Encyclopedie for which he is best known, Denis Diderot defined satire as a work "dictated by the spirit of invective." The American Repertory Theatre's staging of Diderot's Rameau's Nephew may have other elements besides that of invective, but the cynicism and nastiness with which the title character skewers 18th-Century French society provide most of this play's merriment. Rameau's Nephew skillfully combines old-fashioned satire with modern expletives, and while this production is saddled by the occasional annoying technical gag, as a game of wicked dialogue the results are delicious...
...Diderot's spiked dialogue helps, of course, but it is largely Geidt's dry voice and haughty demeanor which keep us interested. He's a John Houseman of the 18th Century, able to deflate the ego of Rameau's nephew without having to look him in the face. The philosopher also has a knack for preempting our own views of Rameau's nephew, "I believe you have brought the art of debasement to new heights," he declares, "I think I liked you better as a musician than as a moralist...
Beauty, he says, "I found in St. Paul, Lao Tse,Plato, Jefferson, Diderot, Verdi and Mozart...allthose things which give happiness without making$1000 a year seem so little...
...been asked, amid the intellectual and political convulsions that tore Spain asunder between 1790 and 1815, "Whose side are you on?", he would have answered, "Reason's." For Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, the gilder's son from Aragon, did not have the education of a Diderot or a Rousseau, but he was completely a figure of the Enlightenment; his paintings and prints, with their obsessive imagery of the conflict of light and darkness, are perhaps its supreme metaphorical expression in European art outside of the classically formalized work of Jacques-Louis David...