The counter-Enlightenment and the low-life of literature in pre-Revolutionary France

Past & Present, May, 1998 by Darrin M. McMahon

Take, for example, the case of Nicolas-Joseph-Laurent Gilbert (1750-80), born in the Lorraine town of Fontenoy-le-Chateau in the Vosges.(8) The son of peasants, Gilbert hardly seemed destined for a literary career, yet ambition and a keen intellect earned him the recognition of the village priest who tutored him in Latin and then procured for him a place at the College de l'Arc in Dole. There Gilbert studied humanities and began to write verse and prose, setting out afterwards for Nancy and then Lyon before making his way to Paris in 1770. For like all young hommes de lettres on the make, Gilbert had his sights set on the great French capital. Armed with a dossier of manuscript poems and a letter of introduction to Jean le Rond d'Alembert, he presented himself there full of fantasies of fame and fortune.

The particulars of Gilbert's life in the immediate wake of his arrival in Paris are not well known. But they appear to fall into a recognizable pattern. His overtures to d'Alembert, it is clear, were spurned, the celebrated philosophe having extended him a vague promise of assistance in the form of a minor position as tutor, a post which he then secured unceremoniously for another supplicant.(9) And despite the fact that Gilbert eventually managed to publish a small book of undistinguished verse in 1771, the Debut poetique, the work was greeted with philosophic indifference, `read by no one', Grimm's Correspondance litteraire later mocked, noting that its author had seemingly come to Paris to `make rhymes and die of hunger',(10) The author's lack of sympathy for Gilbert's plight characterized the uncharitable attitude of other of the philosophic brethren. As the anti-philosophe Annee litteraire, the sole Parisian publication to speak favourably of the Debut, commented in 1771: `M. Gilbert, born unhappy and without fortune, knocked on the door of several men of letters, some rich and the others less so. He addressed himself by preference to those who preached the most humanity in their writings; all refused -- very humanely -- to come to his aid'.(11) Two further efforts to penetrate the philosophic establishment also ended in disappointment: a submission of the appropriately entitled `Le Poete malheureux' for the poetry prize of the Academie francaise in 1772; and another offering the following year, an ode on the unlikely theme of divine justice, `Le Jugement dernier'. Disheartened and destitute, Gilbert suffered the disillusion experienced by countless aspirants to the philosophic monde. As the editor of a volume of his poetry, published posthumously in 1788, explained:

Full of seductive and magical ideas, Gilbert rushed to [Paris], the new

Athens, the new Rome with his verses in hand, well assured that he would

find there a crowd of Maecenes. His illusions were soon dispelled. The

young poet had believed that a noble avowal of his indigence would win

him benefactors. But all doors were closed to him. He realized with

bitterness that the stories one heard and read were not always true ...