event, rather than the intended addressees of a finished work of art.
Not surprisingly, this is precisely the experience of the lone spectator in Le Fils naturel: “the performance had been so true that, forgetting I was a spectator, and an unknown spectator, at various points I had been on the verge of leaving my place and adding a real character to the stage.”61 It is important to note that this experience differs from “sympathetic identification,” the type of reception usually associated with Diderot and bourgeois drama, in which a spectator puts him or herself in the place of a suffering protagonist.62 This mode of reception is indeed common in Diderot’s writings, as evidenced by his advocacy of ordinary protagonists (who are easier to identify with) and his unreserved praise for compassion (which, he argues, guarantees that a spectator will always take the place of the innocent sufferer and never the villain’s).63 This makes it all the more significant, then, that when faced with a reenactment, not a bourgeois drama in an official theater, the spectator of Le Fils naturel reacts differently. Rather than entering the world of the stage through a preexisting character, he is moved to do so as himself, to interact with it and its inhabitants directly, in lieu of experiencing it vicariously. The veracity of the scenic world, as well as its seeming extemporaneity, kindles in the spectator a desire to add a new character and original dialogue to the story, effectively rewriting it. Such an imaginative, participative act differs from sympathetic identification, in which the spectators’ experience is filtered through, and hence constricted by, the object of their compassion. Like Diderot in his Salons, the spectator of Le Fils naturel thus enjoys, in addition to the emotional gratification of being a character, the intellectual freedom and agency of being a participant.
In fact, as Marie-Hélène Huet argues in Rehearsing the Revolution, Diderot believed that people like to attend spectacles partly because they perceive in them the possibility of a transmutation from spectator to participant.64 As evidence, Huet quotes a passage from Diderot’s Jacques le fataliste: “The masses flock to executions to find a scene they can recount upon returning to their district. This scene or another, it matters not, so long as they get to play a role, assemble their neighbors around them, and make themselves heard.”65 Public executions thus trigger in their viewers an impulse similar to the one experienced by the hidden spectator of Le Fils naturel—the desire to become a character (“to play a role”) by participating in the dramatic recreation of an important event (“a scene they can recount”). In fact, Diderot highlights this impulse again in his Salon of 1767, once more in response to an execution: “A spectator will leave Cato dying on stage to watch the execution of Lally. Mere matter of curiosity. If Lally were beheaded every day, one would stay with Cato…. The common man becomes upon his return the neighborhood Demosthenes. Eight days straight he perorates, all listen. He is a character.”66 Why are executions more effective than theatrical performances (even death-filled tragedies) at inspiring their spectators to take on a more active role, to become a “character,” as both Le Fils naturel and the passage above put it? The difference lies, Diderot suggests, in the singularity of capital punishment. The spectators’ impulse to participate depends upon their perception of the spectacle as a unique, unpredictable happening, deserving of their curiosity and that of their future listeners, unlike a staged production, such as Cato’s death, which feels controlled, finished, reiterated, and reiterable. As we have seen, this provision need not disqualify the dramatic arts altogether, but it means that, for a performance to most effectively cultivate among its viewers the desire to become participants, it must foreground its own incompleteness and extemporaneity—that which makes it malleable, open to revision and change, as through the addition of new “characters.”
Dorval’s indeterminate, unfinished reenactment achieves this effect, and indeed, Diderot calls attention to the successful transformation of its sole spectator into a participant by ending Les Entretiens with an intimate dinner involving Dorval, his family, and the hidden spectator, who, despite being unknown to nearly everyone, observes that “in an instant [he] was one of the family.”67 Thanks to Dorval’s reenactment, the spectator becomes a part of the family and of its story outside of the scenic space, just as he had previously imagined himself to be inside of it. Indeed, he credits the ease of his integration to the knowledge he garnered from watching the reenactment, as he identifies the family members he meets through the traits of their characters: “I recognized always the personality that Dorval had given to each of his characters. His tone was melancholic; Constance’s, reasonable; Rosalie’s, candid; Clairville’s, passionate; and mine, amiable.”68 Reality is thus understood through its reenactment, but more significantly, it is also transformed by it, as evidenced by the spectator’s self-inclusion among the list of characters, a sign that he has truly become, as he had wished during the performance, “a real character.”69 Dorval’s reenactment makes the family accessible to new members; it opens up a new future, one in which performers and spectators participate equally. This marks a radical departure from Lysimond’s vision of reenactment, which allowed neither spectators nor alterations. In fact, as Diderot reveals through his ending, reenactments can also function as instruments of change by encouraging their spectators to become participants, to interact with a defining event and rewrite it from their own present perspectives, thereby transforming not just the past but the future as well.
This holds true for the spectators-turned-participants and even truer for the performers, whose direct involvement in both the original event and its reenactment means they have the most to gain (and lose) from any revisions. Indeed, as time passes, and, with it, the fears and sufferings caused by the initial event, the cheerful and mercurial Clairville comes to regard the tale as “an everyday occurrence” and decides to rewrite the family’s past as a comedy. Irritated, less by the act of rewriting itself than by the ridicule the resulting parody casts on him, the moody and austere Dorval takes his revenge by reworking the play once more, this time into a suicide-filled tragedy, exaggerating the perils faced by the family and causing great fright as to what might have been.70 The same event thus takes on a different meaning with each revision, reflecting not only the personalities of their creators but also their different approaches to working through the past (whether by mitigating the severity of a peril until it is easier to dismiss, or by imagining and confronting its worst possible outcome).
As a matter of fact, a subtler yet even more significant and lasting act of rewriting had already taken place. Upon completing the script of Le Fils naturel, Dorval had passed it on to the other members of his family, so that they could, in accordance with Lysimond’s request for a perfectly accurate reenactment, make any adjustments they felt necessary toward enhancing its truthfulness. To his surprise, however, “more to their present state than to their past situation, here they softened an expression; there, they moderated a sentiment; elsewhere, they explained away an incident. Rosalie wished to appear less guilty to Clairville; Clairville, to show an even greater passion for Rosalie; Constance, to display a little more tenderness for a man who is now her husband; and the veracity of the characters suffered from this in a few places.”71 As illustrated by the nature of their revisions, Clairville, Rosalie, and Constance do not consider Dorval’s reenactment a fixed account, anchored to a unique “truth” defined by the past, but regard it rather as an incomplete and thus modifiable performance, in need of their input and participation. In aspiring toward less culpability, more passion, and more tenderness (for the right recipients), their alterations seek to bring about a cathartic resolution by erasing at the source any lingering incestuous and guilty feelings. Indeed, such revisions create a past that is easier to integrate into a historical narrative because, as Dorval notes, it reflects the present situation of the family members (their current happiness, values, and love interests) rather than a truth they no longer recognize. Hence, whereas Lysimond had hoped, through the constant, static resurrection of a prohibition, to protect the family from its shameful past, Clairville, Rosalie, and Constance seek to mobilize that past, revising it in such a way that its performance serves as a catalyst for the collective elaboration of a more harmonious future.
In this, they are successful. As we saw earlier, Diderot’s book ends on the traditional scene of a family reunion, one achieved
