« Libertinul » de Eric Emmanuel Schmitt Of all my plays, this is the most exuberant. I wrote it in the spring, for the spring, with a strong feeling of renewal and renewed vital energies. It looks the most light-hearted, but the play is the result of years of work and research. Diderot, the main character of the play, has been one of my passions since I was a teenager and he was the subject I chose for my academic study. I read and re-read Diderot, I dissected and analysed his writings. I studied all the materials we have about him, and after several years, I ended up with my own perception of the philosopher - a vision I presented in the thesis I wrote in 1987. While finishing my thesis I had promised myself that one day I would dedicate a play to this extraordinary figure. I wanted to portray him as he was in the flesh with all his follies and vitality; I wanted to show how free he had been: free to change his mind, free to contradict himself, free to start everything all over again, always thinking but always doubting. Posterity has struggled to categorise him but has never managed to get rid of him. People have tried to immortalise him, bestow on him the role of a scientific thinker or set him up as a precursor to materialism. But Diderot is not the type to be cast in bronze. Along with Lucretius and Montaigne he is one of the "Knights of Doubt", those who are aware that to think is not to know. A theory is nothing but a fiction, philosophy belongs to literature. To explain the world means to formulate hypotheses, to risk analogies, to have strokes of genius, which are quite similar to fits of madness. It means taking risks. A philosopher must admit that what he puts forward is never beyond doubt; truth is a goal, but a goal you never reach, like the horizon, which retreats as long as you walk towards it. Philosophers like Lucretius, Montaigne and Diderot hold that any thought is constituently fragile but that you have to go on thinking anyway. The Libertine is based on a true anecdote. Diderot and Mme Therbouche had met one day for a sitting. Mme Therbouche wanted to paint Diderot's portrait and she asked him to undress completely. Diderot obeyed and since the lady was rather pretty, his lust was aroused and his desire became obvious. The lady, half-shocked and half-delighted, gave a cry and Diderot came out with the following witty remark: "Don't be afraid madame, I'm not the harder of the two!" I liked the way situations and values were reversed, with a man as the object and a woman as the subject - the philosopher sitting for his portrait without any of the standard clichés that usually symbolize "vanities": the skull, books, a sandglass, the meditation of an old man about to die lit by the weak light of a flickering candle. I inserted the problems Diderot had had for twenty years with the Encyclopedia. Right-thinking readers of the 18th century were shocked that there was no article on the notion of Virtue in what was to be the first encyclopedia in the world. In my play, Virtue has been replaced by Ethics, which is more suggestive for us today. All the difficulties Diderot meets with in one day to write his article on Ethics stand for the struggles he encountered throughout his life in his search for a solid and definitive ethical philosophy. Like so many philosophers, Diderot's ambition was to write a treatise on Moral Philosophy. Maybe he only started writing to achieve this aim. That is how I show him at the beginning of the play. At the end of his career, after a number of attempts, he admitted that he had failed to find the ethics he had been looking for. He had only discovered moral issues that require thorough discussion and which need to be studied one after the other and whose solutions are always improvised, always contingent, always fragile and above all, always debatable. That is how I show him at the end of the play. But what happens in the meantime? From the point of view of the individual, Diderot is in favour of permissive and libertarian morals. Everything is allowed except what you yourself or others may be hurt by. There are no longer any divine or religious referents to pin our behaviour to. So, for Diderot, sexual particularities, from onanism through homosexuality to gang bang, are allowed as far as they are practised by consenting adults. Marriage must not be overburdened with some silly oath of faithfulness, because desire comes in a multitude of different forms and it would be against nature if it were restricted. So, being married is not a code of behaviour or some legal and religious straitjacket, but a contract of mutual commitment which is mainly focused on property and children. Unless it is harmful, any impulse can be satisfied in a man or a woman's life. It is forbidden to forbid. However, when it comes to society, Diderot sees things differently and sticks with a traditional moral code. Marriage remains necessary for the education of children, for their legal future and for the passing on of property. He wishes to marry his daughter to a man he will choose so that she will be settled firmly in society. Diderot is worried because his daughter is too influenced by her desires and he fears her whims might prevent her from finding a rich and respected husband. In brief, passing from the individual to society, or from himself to his children, the libertarian becomes a bourgeois and the revolutionary starts talking like a reactionary. It is true that these contradictions are funny. They are the essence of comedy. And above all they are human. Who has never been torn between desire and the law? Who has never wavered between what they allow themselves to do and what they forbid others to do? Diderot hoped he would find a code of ethics and in fact he found two, often conflicting. Far from finding a unique and coherent thesis, Diderot is always confronted by irreconciable tensions. He gives up writing his Treatise; from now on, he will potter from one case to another in doubt and deliberation. I have purposely made things more difficult by developing the character of Madame Therbouche. If she really was a painter, she was also a true crook who conned Diderot. And yet, once he has been undone by her, he feels angry. Much to his surprise, he is seduced. Why? Because a beautiful crime has aesthetic value. Nearly a work of art. "Nero was an artist when he treated himself to the sight of Rome in flames." Diderot, here, is not far from heresy and not far from Baudelaire. He thinks he is looking for Good and tracking down Evil. In fact, he is looking for Beauty. Beauty in all its forms and styles, including immoral Beauty. "The appeal of a beautiful crime... ." The ethics of Beauty, of the aesthete, the pulverisation of Good and Evil being replaced by Beauty and Ugliness. So, end of the ethics. Poor Diderot! His ethics on the individual were founded on the notion of Pleasure and Displeasure. His social morals on Good and Evil and his implicit and initial ethics on Beauty and Ugliness. The matter was even more complex than he had wanted to admit... If The Libertine looks like a light comedy, it is first and foremost a philosophical comedy. Women come in and leave the stage. Some women are hidden in bedrooms. These women are obviously characters but also ideas. They are all clever, all charming. They make our philosopher's head spin. On the stage, there is only one setting but it is an objective spot: Diderot's studio. It is also the mental space of the character. Its geography is also philosophical. Diderot in The Libertine, like Freud in The Visitor, is going through a meditation, wide-awake, a dream for some, a nightmare for others; in any case, it is a very intimate moment, even if doors are being slammed everywhere and even if, as I always saw in so many performances all over the world, what the play first offers is a moment of charm, full of flesh, silk, elegance and sensual delight. Rome, Italy, 4 July 2000 Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt