Die Nonne: Sittenroman aus dem 18. Jahrhundert

Von Denis Diderot

Der Roman wurde erst durch seine Veröffentlichung in Deutschland, Jahre nach dem Tod Diderots, auch in Frankreich, dem Heimatland des Autors, bekannt.
"Die Nonne" (1796), beschreibt den erfundenen Leidensweg einer unfreiwilligen Nonne. Die junge Susanne Simonin erzählt ihre Lebensgeschichte. Von den Eltern wird sie zu einem Dasein als Ordensschwester gezwungen, da für eine standesgemäße Heirat die nötigen Mittel fehlen. Auf ihrer schicksalshaften Odyssee durch verschiedene Klöster und Abteien trifft sie schließlich auf eine fanatische und grausame Äbtissin, die sie zum Ziel von Repressalien und Schikanen macht.
Diderot schrieb diese erfundenen Briefe zusammen mit engen Freunden, um einen gemeinsamen Bekannten aus der französischen Provinz wieder zurück nach Paris zu locken. Dieser Bekannte fixierte sich so sehr auf diese erfundene Nonne, dass Diderots schließlich auch noch ihren Tod erfinden musste.
Aber wie in fast allen Werken Diderots liegt auch diesem Werke eine Tatsache zugrunde. Im Jahre 1757 strengte eine Nonne des Klosters Longchamp einen Prozess gegen ihre Eltern an, die sie gezwungen hatten, Nonne zu werden. Damals ein unglaublicher Skandal, den die katholische Kirche natürlich mit aller Macht zu vertuschen versuchte.
Die Beschreibung der unsittlichen Szenen hat dem Buche den Vorwurf der Frivolität eingetragen.
"Die Nonne ... bewahrt als angemessenen Stil die rhetorische und oratorische Insistenz, die ihr anfechtbarster Aspekt ist, besitzt aber auch die Reinheit und die Gewalt des Tragischen, die sie zu einem Meisterwerk der visionären Kunst machen." [Robert Mauzi]
Der Roman wurde mehrmals verfilmt, zuletzt 2013 von Guillaume Nicloux, mit Isabelle Hupert, Martina Gedeck und Pauline Etienne
1. Auflage
Null Papier Verlag

• Sprache: Deutsch
• Herausgeber: Null Papier Verlag
• Erscheinungsdatum: 13. Jan. 2014
• ISBN: 9783954183913

Denis Diderot

Denis Diderot (1713-1784) was a French philosopher, art critic, and writer of erotic fiction. Born into wealth, he studied philosophy at a Jesuit college before attempting to enter the clergy. In 1734, tiring of religion, he declared his wish to become a professional writer, and was disowned by his father. From this point onward, he lived as a bohemian in Paris, writing anonymous works of erotica, including The Talking Jewels (1748). In 1751, he cofounded the Encyclopédie, a controversial resource on the sciences that drew condemnation from the church and the French government. Despite his relative obscurity and lack of financial success, he was later recognized as a foundational figure in the radicalization of French society prior to the Revolution.

Rezensionen für Die Nonne

[jonfaith · Bewertung: 3 von 5 Sternen]

Man was born to live with his fellow human beings. Separate him, isolate him, his character will go bad, a thousand ridiculous affects will invade his heart, extravagant thoughts will germinate in his brain, like thorns in an uncultivated land.

Given the untimely arrival of our Arctic Vortex, it is fitting that The Nun shudders with a frozen despair. Bone chilling mornings are well suited for such guided tours of the dark side. Abandon your preconceptions of the Enlightenment and moral cautionary tales, Diderot's creation is terrifying. Apparently it was a practical joke used to trick a friend to return to Paris from the countryside. The novel takes the form of an escaped nun tracing her history in a lengthy letter about a series of convents, ones where the prevailing theme is obedience. One thinks of Martin Amis, "give some someone absolute control over another and thoughts soon turn to torture." Forget Sade or Huysmans, I was scared shitless by the novel's second Mother Superior: think Martha Stewart as Torquemada.

[autumnesf · Bewertung: 3 von 5 Sternen]

i was surprised I liked this book but I did. It was interesting to read about a life style so severe that the rich used to pawn off unwed daughters.

[steventx · Bewertung: 4 von 5 Sternen]

The Nun was actually first conceived and written as a hoax played by Diderot and a friend of his upon their friend the Marquis de Croismare. The Marquis had sojourned to his estate in Normandy and, finding country life much to his liking, was reluctant to return to Paris and the company of his friends. Diderot recalled that the Marquis had once taken a strong interest in a case where a nun who had been forced by her family to enter a convent against her will had filed a lawsuit to be allowed to renounce her vows. Diderot concocted a series of letters from this nun to the Marquis recounting how, after years of oppression and temptation, she had escaped from the convent and was now in hiding in Paris imploring his aid. Diderot later reworked the letters into a novel, which was published after his death.The nun, Susan Simonin, was one of three daughters of a middle class couple. Though she was the most attractive and talented, she was the least favored because she was actually the offspring of Mme. Simonin and an unnamed lover. To avoid an expensive dowry, her parents coerced her into entering a convent. Though she is a devout believer, modest, chaste and dutiful, Susan has no taste for conventual life. Susan's complaints and appeals make her hateful to her Superior, who sees that she is punished and ostracized. Even her friends can offer her little hope. "If you are relieved of your vows," one asks, "what will happen to you? What will you do in the world? You have good looks, intelligence, and talents. But I am told that is all useless for a woman who remains virtuous, and virtuous I know you will always be."Sister Susan is transferred from one convent to another. In one institution a particularly noxious Superior nearly kills the girl by having her flogged, confining her in a dungeon, and feeding her only scraps of food tainted with filth. In another convent her Superior falls hopelessly in love with Susan and won't relent in her kisses and caresses. Susan remains completely innocent of sexual matters and finds the other nun's attentions only somewhat embarrassing. When the Superior has an orgasm, Susan tries to run off to summon medical aid. Denis Diderot was an atheist, but The Nun is not anti-religious or anti-Catholic. He is attacking only the idea of monasticism. He maintains that most monks and nuns were either forced or coaxed into taking vows before they were old enough to understand what they were doing, and that the vast majority would leave their cloister if allowed. "Are convents then so necessary to the constitution of a state? Did Jesus Christ institute monks and nuns? Can the Church not possibly get on without them? What need has the Bridegroom of so many foolish virgins? Or the human race of so many victims?... Are all the regulation prayers one repeats there worth one obol given in pity to the poor? Does God, Who made man a social animal, approve of his barring himself from the world?"As a literary work, The Nun is a bridge between the 18th century novels about female abduction by Samuel Richardson (whom Diderot highly admired) and the subsequent Gothic movement. M. G. Lewis, author of The Monk, and Charles Robert Maturin, in Melmoth the Wanderer, may have lifted scenes directly from Diderot's novel.

[alcracka · Bewertung: 4 von 5 Sternen]

Ah...it's pretty good? It doesn't get into the hot girl-on-girl action 'til like halfway through the book, and then it's super not hot. If you're looking for hot 18th-century girl on girl action, you gotta go with Fanny Hill.

It's pleasant and enjoyable to read. I think one problem with The Nun is that I read it right after The Monk, which is way awesomer. If you're only going to read one blasphemous 18th-century lit book this ear, it has to be The Monk, and you can put that on your movie posters.

So, yeah, there you go. Better evil clergy in The Monk; better lesbian sex in Fanny Hill. The Nun, you have a problem.

[miss7owl · Bewertung: 5 von 5 Sternen]

Reading this book is like watching a train wreck in slow motion. Don't get me wrong - it's not entirely excruciating: in fact, the emotive vividness of the translation was singularly impressive - but Suzanne's feelings of helplessness and entrapment are so inescapably evoked that you can't help but be moved by the sheer vulnerability & utter lack of options for women deprived of family or any means of support in the eighteenth century. Yes, things could be worse, but if we withhold sympathy until we find the worst-case scenario then very few of us could escape unscathed.After being forced to choose a C16th, 17th or 18th course for my honours in English a while back I chose the most recent - the C18th, being something of a modernist; and, of course, hated it as a result. It says a lot for this little book that it's done a lot to reconcile me to an entire century! For this book is inimitably C18th style in its attitudes to women and religious paradigms, yet also, ineluctably universal: the outrageous injustice of Suzanne's treatment at the convent in Longchamp in particular speaks of the misery of bullying everywhere, reminding me of Margaret Atwood's "Cat's Eye", or the 2007 Belgian film "Ben X" directed by Nick Balthazar. Over and over again, human misery is shown to result at the hands of other humans - and that, amongst other reasons, is what makes "The Nun" so depressing to me, and at the same time so inescapably real.

[ocgreg34 · Bewertung: 3 von 5 Sternen]

"The Marquis de Croismare's reply, if he does reply, will serve as the opening lines of this tale."With these first words, the tale of Suzanne Simonin, a young woman barely in her twenties, who wishes to leave a Paris convent. She describes to the Marquis through her various letters how she came to live in a nunnery thanks to her mother's attempts to hide her daughter's illegitimacy, how she feels little vocation for life as a nun, and worst of all, how the tortures and horrors she endured at the hands of a ruthless and egotistic Mother Superior served to strengthen her resolve to flee.Author Denis Diderot based this series of letters on an actual incident of 1758 that piqued the interest of his friend the Marquis de Croismare. Though the events in his novel are fictitious, they do paint a damning picture of church practices at the time. At the convent of Longchamp, Suzanne suffers because of her desire to leave: forced to wear a hair-shirt, given little to no food for days, all items stolen from her cell, the lock broken and non-repaired, other sisters entering her cell at all hours to keep her from sleeping so she would hopefully miss a prayer session thus deserving more ridicule and harsher penalties. When Suzanne is removed from Longchamp to another nunnery at Arpajon, she finds herself subjected to another (possible) side of convent life. The Reverend Mother takes a liking to Suzanne, turning her affections away from one of the other Sisters, and unsuccessfully attempts to seduce Suzanne.For the most part, I empathized with Suzanne, all the trials she endured at Longchamp filling me with disgust at the Sisters' inhumanity. But the empathy began to lessen when she reached Arpajon. Diderot makes Suzanne play dumb to the advances of the Reverend Mother, but not once does he have her attempt to put a stop to it until her confessor from a nearby monastery describes how wicked such tastes are and the would go mad and foam at the mouth (which happens to the Reverend Mother). Only then does she put her foot down and avoid the Reverend Mother, treating her a mixture of pity and disgust. She could have stopped the seduction from escalating, but to me seemed very complicit with events, even to the point of encouraging them at times. It seemed to go against the strong character developed at Longchamp, when Suzanne withstood all the torments and harassment with grace and dignity.Perhaps I'm more disappointed with Diderot's view on homosexuality as a psychological problem rather than with Suzanne's response to it, and I'm still trying to reconcile my modern day ideas with those of the 18th century.