Nicolas-Edme Rétif

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Nicolas-Edme Rétif or Nicolas-Edme Restif (October 23, 1734 – February 2, 1806), called Rétif de la Bretonne, was a French novelist. He was the son of a farmer, and was born at Sacy (Yonne). The term retifism was named after him.

He was educated by the Jansenists at Bictre, and on the expulsion of the Jansenists was received by one of his brothers, who was a curé. Owing to a scandal in which he was involved, he was apprenticed to a printer at Auxerre, and, having served his time, went to Paris. Here he worked as a journeyman printer, and in 1760 he married Anne or Agnès Lebgue, a relation of his former master at Auxerre.

It was not until five or six years after his marriage that Rétif appeared as an author, and from that time to his death he produced a bewildering multitude of books, amounting to something like two hundred volumes, many of them printed with his own hand, on almost every conceivable variety of subject. Rétif suffered at one time or another the extremes of poverty and was acquainted with every kind of intrigue. He drew on the episodes of his own life for his books, which, in spite of their faded sentiment, contain truthful pictures of French society on the eve of the Revolution.

The most noteworthy of his works are:

• Le Pied de Fanchette, a novel (1769)
• Le Pornographe (1769), a plan for regulating prostitution which is said to have been actually carried out by the Emperor Joseph II, while not a few detached hints have been adopted by continental nations
• Le Paysan perverti (1775), a novel with a moral purpose, though sufficiently horrible in detail
• La Vie de mon père (1779)
• Les Contemporaines (42 vols., 1780-1785), a vast collection of short stories
• Ingenue Saxancour, also a novel (1785)
• Les Nuits de Paris (beginning 1786: reportage)
• Anti Justine (1793)
• The extraordinary autobiography of Monsieur Nicolas (16 vols., 1794-1797), in which at the age of sixty he has set down his remembrances, his notions on ethical and social points, his hatreds, and above all his numerous loves, both real and fancied. In it, Rétif relates the beginnings of his sexual awakenings between 1738 and 1744, when he remembers experiencing the most pleasurable of sexual stimulations in very early childhood. For instance, in 1738, while still quite a little boy, only four years of age, he had the most diverse and pleasurable sexual experiences with a grown-up girl, Marie Piôt, after she had pulled down his drawers, induced an erection of his penis by tickling it and playing with it and then masturbated him to orgasm. However, the last two volumes are practically a separate and much less interesting work.

The original editions of these, and indeed of all his books, have long been bibliographical curiosities owing to their rarity, the beautiful and curious illustrations which many of them contain, and the quaint typographic system in which most are composed. In 1795 he received a gratuity of 2000 francs from the government, and just before his death Napoleon gave him a place in the ministry of police, which he did not live to take up.

Rétif de la Bretonne undoubtedly holds a remarkable place in French literature. He was inordinately vain, of extremely relaxed morals, and perhaps not entirely sane. His books were written with haste, and their licence of subject and language renders them quite unfit for general perusal.

He is also noted for his advocacy of communism, indeed the term first made its modern appearance (1785) in his book review of Joseph-Alexandre-Victor Hupay de Fueva who described himself as "communist" with his Project for a Philosophical Community.

The works of Charles Monselet, Rétif de la Bretonne (1853), and P. Lacroix, Bibliographie et iconographie (1875), J. Asszat's selection from the Contemporaines, with excellent introductions (3 vols., 1875), and the valuable reprint of Monsieur Nicolas (14 vols., 1883-1884), are sufficient to form a judgment of him. His life, written by his contemporary Cubières-Palmezeaux, was republished in 1875. See also Eugène Dühren, Rétif de la Bretonne, der Mensch, der Schriftsteller, der Reformator (Berlin, 1906), and a bibliography, Rétif-Bibliothek (Berlin, 1906), by the same author.

[edit] Literature

• "Bibliographie et Iconographie de tous les ouvrages de Restif de la Bretonne"
• "Monsieur Nicolas: Or, The Human Heart Laid Bare, trans., ed., and abridged by Robert Baldick" (1966) (Autobiography)
• A. Porter: "Restif's Novels: Or, An Autobiography in Search of an Author" (1967)
• Mark Poster: "The Utopian Thought of Restif de la Bretonne" (1971).

[edit] Reference

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

[edit] Links

Official Website of "Société Rétif de La Bretonne" with biography, bibliography, news, articles, etc. and subscription at newsletter.