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Diderot and the Actor's Machine

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2010

Joseph R. Roach Jr
Joseph R. Roach Jr
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of Theatre Arts at Sweet Briar College.
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Extract

On the notorious question of sensibility—whether or not an actor should really “feel” the emotion he expresses—Denis Diderot brought off the best known volte-face in the history of acting theory. An erstwhile champion of inspiration and emotionality in theatrical performance, he came to believe, by the time he wrote the Paradoxe sur le comédien (1773), that an actor should not attempt to experience inwardly the passions he enacts onstage. Considerable speculation and controversy have attended Diderot's late substitution of head for heart as the mainspring of theatrical emotion.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Survey , Volume 22 , Issue 1: French Theatre , May 1981 , pp. 51 - 68
Copyright
Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 1981

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References

NOTES

1 Duerr, Edwin, The length and Depth of Acting (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1962), p. 262.Google Scholar

2 Wilson, Arthur M., in Diderot (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), pp. 618–28Google Scholar, comprehensively surveys these issues and updates his still useful essay, “The Biographical Implications of Diderot's Paradoxe sur le comédien,” Diderot Studies, 3 (1961), 369–383.Google Scholar

3 Roger, Jacques, Les sciences de la vie dans la pensée française du XVIIIe siècle (N.P.: Armand Colin, 1963), p. 585.Google Scholar

4 Bonnichon's, AndréLa psychologie du comédien (Paris: Odette Livetier, 1946), pp. 40–54Google Scholar, which tests the Paradoxe against modern psycho-physiology, and Belaval's, YvonL'esthétique sans paradoxe de Diderot (Paris: Gallimard, 1950)Google Scholar, which argues for its overall cohesiveness within Diderot's oeuvre, provide an informative starting point, particularly when read in conjunction with Dieckmann, Herbert, “La thème de l'actcur dans la pensée de Diderot,” Cahiers de l'assocation Internationale des Etudes Françaises 13 (1961), 157–72CrossRefGoogle Scholarand Josephs, Herbert, Diderot's Dialogue of Language and Gesture (N.P.: Ohio University Press, 1969).Google Scholar

5 For the interwoven scientific and literary usage of this term, see Rousseau, G. S., “Nerves, Spirits, and Fibres: Towards Defining the Origins of Sensibility,” Studies in the Eighteenth Century, III (Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1976), pp. 137–57Google Scholar; Dr. Fouquet's lengthy article “Sensibilité” in the Encyclopédie sums up a number of contemporary meanings.

6 The Paradox of Acting, trans. Pollock, W. H. in The Paradox of Acting and Masks or Faces? (New York: Hill and Wang, 1957), p. 43Google Scholar. Further references to this edition appear in the text.

7 Eléments de physiologie, ed. Jean Mayer (Paris: Didier, 1964), Introduction, pp. LXXII–LXXVII. Further references to this edition appear in the text; I am responsible for the translations, but I would like to thank Professor Laura T. Buckham for her helpful emendations.

8 Vartanian, Aram, “The Enigma of Diderot's Eléments de Physiologie” Diderot Studies, 10 (1968), 300.Google Scholar

9 Vartanian, , Diderot and Descartes: A Study of Scientific Naturalism in the Enlightenment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953), pp. 244–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 D'Alembert's Dream, trans. Birrell, Francis, in Dialogues by Denis Diderot (New York: Brentano's, 1927), pp. 60–61Google Scholar. Further references to this edition appear in the text. Paul Vernière, in his edition of Diderot's aesthetic works, has pointed out several striking parallels between the Paradoxe and the Rêve de d'Alembert: Oeuvres Esthétiques (Paris, Gamier, n.d.) p. XVII, p. 311n.Google Scholar

11 See Proust, Jacques, “Diderot et la physiognomonie,” Cahiers de l'association internationale des Etudes Françaises, 13 (1961), 317–329CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The chapter entitled “Passions” in the Eléments de physiologie simultaneously looks back to Della Porta and Lebrun's comparative anatomy and ahead to Darwin's Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872): “The correspondence of the passions with the movement of the bodily members is observable in men and animals. It is the foundation of the studies of anyone who would imitate nature” (EP, pp. 267–68).

12 Charles McGaw, for instance, in Acting is Believing (1955; 4th ed. rev. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1980), p. 16, confidently assures the student that “the objective of this exercise from The Sea Gull is not to pretend your foot is asleep. It is to make yourself believe your foot is asleep through the actions you take to ease the numbing sensation.”

13 For this point I am indebted to Bonneville, Douglas, “Diderot's Artist: Puppet and Poet” in Literature and History in the Age of Ideas, ed. Williams, Charles G. S. (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1975), p. 248.Google Scholar

14 Ribot, Théodule-Armand, The Psychology of the Emotions, ed. Ellis, Havelock (1896; London: Walter Scott, 1897), pp. 140–71Google Scholar; cf. Constantin Stanislavski, An Actor Prepares, trans. Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood (1936; rpt. New York: Theatre Arts Books, 1975), pp. 156–58.

15 Braun, Theodore E. D., “Diderot, Wordsworth, and the Creative Process,” Comparative Literature Studies, 11 (1974), 151–58.Google Scholar

16 For the later history of these concepts, see my “G. H. Lewes and Performance Theory: Towards a Science of Acting,” TJ, 32 (1980), 312–328.Google Scholar

17 The Paradox of Acting and Masks or Faces?, p. 184.

18 Bonnichon, La psychologie du comédien, p. 47; Belaval, L'esthétique sans paradoxe de Diderot, p. 251.

19 James, William, “What is an Emotion?” Mind, 9 (1884), 197.Google Scholar

20 Further relationships between musician and actor in Diderot's thought have been elaborated by Cartwright, Michael in “Diderot and the Idea of Performance and the Performer”, Studies in Eighteenth-Century French Literature, eds. Fox, J. H., Waddicor, M. H., Watts, D. A. (Exeter, England: University of Exeter, 1975), pp. 31–42.Google Scholar

21 For example, Grotowski, Jerzy, Towards a Poor Theatre (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1968), pp. 211–13.Google Scholar

22 Taylor, George, “‘The Just Delineation of the Passions’: Theories of Acting in the Age of Garrick” in The Eighteenth-Century Stage, eds. Richards, Kenneth and Thompson, Peter (London: Methuen, 1972), p. 62.Google Scholar

23 Cited in Total Theatre, ed. Kirby, E. T. (New York: Dutton, 1969), p. 47.Google Scholar

24 Gorelik, Mordecai, trans., “Bertolt Brecht's ‘Prospectus of the Diderot Society,’” QJS, 47(1961), 114.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25 Creating a Role, trans. Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood (New York: Theatre Arts Books, 1961), p. 62. It should be noted that while most actors, save Coquelin, tend to disagree with Diderot's theories, their objections often make use of his ideas, particularly double consciousness: “Le comédien doit être sensible,” argues Aumont, Jean-Pierre, “mais posséder une sorte de ‘radar.’” —in Paradoxe sur le comédien (Paris: Editions Nord-Sud, 1949), p. 169.Google Scholar

26 The research for this article was supported by a grant from the Mednick Memorial Fund of the Virginia Foundation for Independent Colleges.