Le Libertin
book — France — 1997

8.5
Buying this book I had my doubts. A book that`s called "A pervert" isn`t always good. But my intuition was correct this time. And I`m very happy about it, for before this book I had no knowledge of Mr. Schmitt whatsoever, but now I`ve become a real fan of his. The figure of Dennis Diderot is known to many people - he was one significant philosopher, even I have read a book entitled "Ramo`s Nephew" of his, although I don`t remember liking it very much. Still in this play we see him as a fighter for freedom and for pleasure. And we see that a philosopher can believe in things that don`t match one another at all. Diderot`s portrait is made by a young female artist named Trebouche but the cheeky thing is that he`s portrayed naked. And he wants to make love to her, but gets interrupted by lots of different people the whole time. Starting with his wife who`s had enough of him cheating on her, then there`s his daughter who wants to have a child from a friend of Diderot`s, and that`s not all. Diderot also tries to write something about morality for his encyclopaedia but he never quite achieves that, for every next thing that happens to him shows to him that morality isn`t what he thought just ten minutes ago. This is most surely a complete comedy, without any signs of drama, and its almost the perfect comedy, where dialogues are sharper than Albert Einstein.
2004-12-18
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