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‎(BOUREAU DESLANDES, A.F.)‎

Reference : 27235

‎Lettre sur le Luxe.‎

‎A Franckfort, Chez Joseph-André Vanebben, 1745. [8], 96 pp. Small 8vo. Modern half calf, corners, marbled boards, gilt lettering to spine. Querard 516: Conlon 45:606; INED 738; Goldsmiths' 8184; Kress S.3721; not in Einaudi; not in Mattioli. Scarce first edition of this interesting contribution to "the heated and prolonged debate on luxury that took place during the eighteenth century (which can be) best understood as part of the age's growing awareness of fundamental transformations taking place in its socio-economic order. Some of the period's most important and influential thinkers joined in this debate, engaging in what amounted to a comprehensive reevaluation of socioeconomic, political and economic thinking. (.....) This is undoubtedly one of the reasons why the debate on luxury resonated so widely and deeply. At its very inception, it called into question the nature and survival of traditional values in an evolving commercial civilization" (Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment, vol 2, p. 440.) L'auteur, né à Pondichery en 1690, mort à Paris en 1757, "distingue entre le luxe de génie qui est utile, et le luxe de moeurs, celui de la table, des habits et des meubles, qui est néfaste" (INED.)The "Letter" is followed by Examen du IXe chapitre de l'Essai politique sur le Commerce (by Melon), Lequel renferme une espece d'Apologie du Luxe, followed by Fragmens d'un Auteur Grec, trouvés depuis peu dans la Bibliothèque d'Oxfort, & traduits en François, which also deals with the topic of "luxe", and followed by Dialogue pourquoi il est si difficle aux personnes d'un certain mérite de s'avancer dans le monde.Boureau Deslandes Lettre sur le luxe, "written for the Académie royale des sciences de Paris and royal academies of St. Petersburg, London, Edinburgh, Bologna, Prussia, and Sweden, revealed his growing concerns that Frenchmen failed as subjects and citizens. The Lettre begins: "Luxury is a pernicious thing in a state." Boureau Deslandes defined luxury as "an agreeable or brilliant superfluity, that adds to postmortem the indispensable needs of life: they are goods, advantages that one can absolutely do without, but that one procures for oneself out of vanity, due to an intemperance of taste, often because of a strong attachment to what is in style; finally, it is an excess where the price or value depends solely on imagination, and that has nothing in itself to do with reality." He distinguished between two kinds of luxury: luxe de genie and luxe de moeurs. The first was a positive luxury that allowed for the progress of culture, and the development of beauty and perfection; the other led to the corruption of taste and morality. Boureau Deslandes lauded the "noblest" examples of art, painting, literature, philosophy, and science that attested to the "perfection" of culture and the "honor of the state." Such products contrasted against the luxe de table, luxe d'habits, luxe de meubles and "ridiculous" excesses that inundated the market. "France," he argued, "is now a country of decoration," where "simple mores conforming to nature are banished." Extravagance, he described, was most apparent in Paris, where trends in furniture and jewelry changed three times a year. Luxury, he continued, created disorder in the state by confounding orders and ranks. Clothes, fashion, and tastes tended toward uniformity until one failed to distinguish "those who by birth or by employment must necessarily be distinguished." Worse, useless commodities "ruined health" and "rendered men less strong, less courageous, less able to continue work." This luxe, Boureau- Deslandes warned, "prepared the liveliest nation for death"" (Takeda, Junko Thérèse. Between Crown and Commerce: Marseille and the Early Modern Mediterranean, p. 191 ff.) - A bit browned. ‎

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