Marianne Alphant's 'Ces choses-là' Embraces the 18th Century Through Fragments

Marianne Alphant's new book 'Ces choses-là' (P.O.L) takes an unconventional approach to writing about the 18th century. Rather than offering a linear historical narrative or psychological novel, Alphant assembles a mosaic of details—from Watteau, Fragonard, Tiepolo, Sade, Marivaux, and Crébillon to the lawns of London admired by Malesherbes, Marat's funeral, gardens at Bagatelle and Chanteloup, playing cards, hot-air balloons, caged birds, and Robespierre's childhood embroidery in Arras. The book is structured as a spiral, with circles expanding and contracting, guided by Saint-Simon's maxim 'L'enchaînement naturel de toutes ces choses m'emporte, il faut se ramener.' Alphant draws on her previous engagements with Blaise Pascal and Claude Monet, suggesting the 18th century occupies a missing face between Pascal's eternal silence and Monet's haystacks. The work emphasizes fragments, details, and contradictions—the galant festivities and the Terror—without moralizing. Writing becomes a form of drawing, a waking reverie that evokes Chardin's still lifes as described by Diderot. The book refuses grand narratives, focusing instead on 'ces choses-là'—these things—as a way to embrace the century.