Rameaus Neffe

Paris, around 1761: in the Café de la Régence, where the chess players meet, a strange character accosts the philosopher. It is Jean-François Rameau, nephew of the famous composer – a music teacher short on skill, and a jester who made his living at the tables of the rich until they showed him the door. What unfolds is a conversation about genius and mediocrity, about money, morals and music, which at the same time turns into a performance: Rameau plays the violin without a violin in his hands, single-handedly performs an entire opera house, and mimics patrons and supplicants alike. That he is a scoundrel he openly admits – and precisely therein lies his danger, for he says out loud what polite society does while keeping silent about it.

The philosopher counters with virtue, reason and the judgement of posterity, but the last word is not his. Diderot himself never published the book. It first appeared in 1805 in Goethe's German translation, while the manuscript of the French original only surfaced in 1890 at a Paris bouquiniste. Hegel recognised in it the »zerrissene Bewusstsein« of modernity, Freud quoted it, and Foucault read it as an appearance of unreason erupting in the very age of reason.

The new translation preserves the wit and directness of the original. Annotations identify the persons, operas and Parisian affairs that figure in Diderot's dialogue.