Topical Guide 271
Mark Dorset
L’Esprit de L’Escalier
Lorna brought her hand to her face, tried to speak, but found that only a strangled cry came from her. She looked at her father in terror. She ran from the room and up the stairs to her bed, which she found so cold that she shivered under her quilt. The clouds had dispersed, and moonlight fell across Lorna’s bed. She lay awake, thinking of Herb — mostly of that smile of his, that honest smile. She smiled herself when she recalled his surprise when he’d seen her in the right light, the way he’d paused in folding his umbrella, the way he’d held his hat, the way he’d lost his tongue. She was also thinking of herself, mostly of things she might have said, might have done.
Herb ’n’ Lorna, Chapter 5
Borrowed from French, the expression esprit de l’escalier, or esprit d’escalier, literally wit of (the) staircase, denotes a retort or remark that occurs to a person after the opportunity to make it has passed.
It originally referred to a witty remark coming to mind on the stairs leading away from a social gathering. The image seems to have originated in Paradoxe sur le Comédien (Paradox of the Actor), an essay on theatre by the French philosopher, writer and critic Denis Diderot …Pascal Tréguer, “Meaning and Origin of the Phrase ‘Esprit d’Escalier’” on the Word Histories website (where he also provides many examples of literary uses of the phrase)
Sedaine debuted The Philosopher Who Did Not Know He Was a Philosopher. I was more interested in the success of the play than he was; jealousy of talents is a vice that is foreign to me … . The Philosopher Who Did Not Know He Was a Philosopher staggers at the first, at the second performance, and I am very distressed; at the third he went to the skies, and I was overjoyed. The next morning I throw myself in a cab, I run after Sedaine; … . I approach him; I throw my arms around his neck; my voice deserts me, and tears run down my cheeks. Behold the sensitive and mediocre man. Sedaine, motionless and cold, looks at me and says: “Ah! Monsieur Diderot, how handsome you are!” Behold the observer and the man of genius.
I recounted this episode one day at table, with a man whose superior talents made him destined to occupy the most important place of the State, M. Necker; there were quite a few men of letters there, among them Marmontel, whom I love and to whom I am dear. The latter said to me ironically: “You will see that when Voltaire is sorry at the simple story of a pathetic trait and that Sedaine keeps his cool at the sight of a friend who bursts into tears, it is Voltaire who is the ordinary man and Sedaine the man of genius!” This apostrophe disconcerted me and reduced me to silence, because a sensitive man, like me, loses his mind completely over what is objected to him, and does not recover his wits until he’s at the bottom of the stairs. Another, cold and master of himself, would have replied to Marmontel: “Your reflection would be better in another mouth than yours, because you do not feel more than Sedaine and that you also do very beautiful things, and that, running the same career as him, you could leave it to your neighbor to assess his merit impartially. But without wanting to prefer Sedaine to Voltaire, or Voltaire to Sedaine, could you tell me what would have come out of the mind of the author of The Philosopher Who Did Not Know He Was a Philosopher, of The Deserter, of Paris Saved, if, instead of spending thirty-five years of his life to spoil the plaster and cut the stone, he would have spent all this time, like Voltaire, you and me, in reading and meditating on Homer, Virgil, Tasso, Cicero, Demosthenes, and Tacitus? We will never know how to see like him, and he would have learned to say like us. I look at him as one of Shakespeare’s great-nephews; this Shakespeare, whom I will compare neither to the Apollo of Belvedere, nor to the Gladiator, nor to the Antinous, nor to the Hercules of Glycon, but indeed to Saint Christopher of Our Lady, a shapeless colossus, crudely sculpted, but between whose legs we would all pass without our forehead touching its shameful parts.”Denis Diderot, The Paradox of the Actor (translated by Google, with some assistance from me, MD)
At cocktail time:
Clam Dip, but a Little Hot and Spicy
This revamped 1950s staple, a celebration of canned clams, takes some cues from rich, cheesy crab dip.
By Melissa Clark
[more to come on Wednesday, June 1, 2022]
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