Goethe, Diderot, and the Lost Manuscript of Rameau’s Nephew

Reading Andrew Curran’s Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely, I Stumbled across an interesting connection to something I wrote for a book my Buddy Zarko Radakovic and I’ve just finished.

Curran points out that after spending time in prison for a few books (including The Indiscreet Jewels — the stones being talking vaginas controlled by a magical ring), Diderot printed just what seemed within his Encyclopedie. He maintained the manuscripts of everything else that he wrote over the course of his entire life close at hand. One of those unpublished manuscripts was that the publication Rameau’s Nephew.

That title caught my eye. Schiller’s last letter to Goethe before his passing was a response to Goethe’s interpretation of a manuscript from the novel. The translation has been published a couple of months afterwards.

This translation has been the very first book of Diderot’s Le Neveu de Rameau. The very first book in French has been a translation of Goethe! The French manuscript used for the subsequent French variant was discovered later.

Here my writings out of Schiller’s and Goethe’s final letters, part of Zarko’s along with my book “We: A Household ”:

… Schiller to Goethe: 27 March 1805

Tell me how you’ve been. I have finally begun to work again in all seriousness and aim not to be easily distracted. Following such a long hiatus and many unfortunate incidents, it has been difficult to get back to work and that I have had to drive myself. Now, but I’m underway.

The chilly north-east wind will slow your recovery, as it does minebut this time I feel worse than usual at this condition of the barometer.

Can you send me the French Rameau to get Göschen? …

Superior luck to you, I would enjoy a line.

… Goethe into Schiller: 25 April 1805

Here finally the remaining portion of the manuscript. Can you take a peek at it and send it on to Leipzig? …

I’ve started to order the exact Theory of Colors…

Otherwise I am doing well, so long as I ride daily. While I don’t, however, there’s a price to pay. I hope to see you shortly.

Schiller’s last letter, a lengthy one dated 25 April 1805, added copious thoughts about Goethe’s notes that accompanied his translation Diderot’s Rameau’s Nephew.

Meine Gedanken sind meine Dirnen, Goethe’s translation of this early line reads. Leonard Tancock’s translation for Penguin Classics is My thoughts would be my wenches. Supposing truth to be a girl, Nietzsche wrote. Even the New Yorker cartoon on my wall says: What about her spelled difficulty. Unfortunately, it was nighttime and that I thought it spelled out truffles.

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