DIDEROT (Denis). Jacques le Fataliste et son maître. A Paris - Lot 37

DIDEROT (Denis). Jacques le Fataliste et son maître. A Paris, chez Buisson, an cinquième de la République [1796]. 2tomes in one volume in-8, (4of which the last is blank)-286 [of which the first 22 are in Roman numerals] +(4of which the 2 versos are blank)-320pp, brown half-basin filleted and fleuronned with title-piece; worn binding with a tear at the upper headband and a split jaw, scattered foxing, rare marginal spotting, few small marginal tears, a few stains including one on the title of the first volume (modern binding). First edition. JACQUES LE FATALISTE, "a grandiose game, [one of] the summits of lightness never reached before or since" (Milan Kundera). The journey of Jacques and his master, through a lively dialogue, leads to a profound reflection on freedom and determinism. Through the very structure of the story, the book also tackles, among other issues, the problem of literary creation, for example by offering three possible endings for the reader to choose from. The publishing history of Jacques le Fataliste proved to be a lengthy adventure: the first draft dates back to 1771, and a first version appeared in 15 issues between 1778 and 1780 in the Correspondance littéraire, but with censorship cuts, restored separately in the same periodical in 1786. In 1787, Schiller published a German translation of a large excerpt in his Thalia, and Paul-Jean-Baptiste Doray de Longrais used this German version as the basis for a French translation in 1793. In fact, it was not until 1796 that the original French edition of Diderot's original text was published, probably based on a copy from the library of Friedrich-Melchior von Grimm. From 1780 until his death, Diderot had also supervised a corrected and enlarged copy intended for Catherine II, which was only recently published in 1976. The panegyric printed as a preface ("Àla mémoire de Diderot") is by Jakob-Heinrich Meister, Friedrich-Melchior von Grimm's successor as head of the Correspondance littéraire, and had first appeared in this handwritten periodical in 1786, then separately in printed form in 1788.