In Search of Lost Conversations

Abstract

The nineteenth-century may well strike us now as an age of lost conversations, mere snatches of which we find recorded in diaries, most notably perhaps those of the Goncourt brothers, or in accounts of various salons and literary cafés, or in such fleeting references as make their way into reviews, autobiographies or letters. We might get an inkling, for instance, of Georges Cuvier’s seductive use of his voice through notes taken during his lectures and particularly during his debates with other scientists, or of Stéphane Mallarmé’s conversation at his Tuesday gatherings through reminiscences left by his disciples or occasionally opponents. We might hear echoes of Gautier’s witty chatter in articles such as that by Charles Asselineau, in the Revue fantastique of September 1861: “la conversation de Gautier mériterait une étude spéciale.