Divertissement

The term ‘Divertissement’ appears within the depth-psychology corpus primarily as a contextual marker rather than an explicit theoretical object, yet its presence is not without significance. The corpus engages the concept obliquely, through literary-critical analysis of comedic and farcical forms — most prominently in Erich Auerbach’s Mimesis — and through the satirical pseudo-Freudian ‘cookbook’ passages in Hillman’s A Blue Fire. In Auerbach, divertissement indexes a socio-aesthetic category: entertainment arranged at a safe remove from existential weight, serving the ideological function of class distinction and the neutralization of conflict. In Hillman’s ironic register, divertissement appears as a section heading that frames psychoanalytic earnestness as itself a kind of comic performance — depth psychology as tragicomedy. The implicit tension across the corpus is between divertissement as evasion (Pascal’s sense: distraction from the condition humaine) and divertissement as a legitimate mode of symbolic expression, as in the Dionysian komos traced by Kerényi. The farce, the festive orgy, the tearful comedy — all circulate around the question of whether pleasurable escape constitutes psychological avoidance or a genuine, if temporary, dissolution of ego-tension. This makes ‘Divertissement’ a minor but diagnostically revealing term for the corpus’s ongoing negotiation between play and depth.

In the library 10 passages

No recipe for bread. Why should an old man? Have I not done enough already? But advice I do have: if you would live as long as I, if you want a future that is not an illusion, get yourself a nice loaf of Jewish rye. Enjoy! (Cookbook, 174-177) Divert

Hillman employs ‘Divertissement’ as an ironic section heading within a parodic Freudian cookbook, positioning pleasurable digression as a counterpoint to civilization’s bleached, ego-driven earnestness.

Hillman, James, A Blue Fire: The Essential James Hillman, 1989thesis

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

In these non-dramatic rejoicings, Dionysos was no less present than in the dithyramb, though in a different way: not in dithyrambic tension, but free and unrestrained, a true diastole.

Kerényi locates the festive, non-tragic dimension of Dionysian celebration — the komos — as a form of sacred divertissement, structurally distinct from tragic tension yet equally charged with numinous presence.

Kerényi, Carl, Dionysos: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life, 1976supporting

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

Reality willingly cooperates with a play which dresses it up differently every moment. It never spoils the gaiety of the play by bringing in the serious weight of its troubles, cares, and passions. All that is resolved in Don Quijote’s madness; it transforms the real everyday world into a gay stage.

Auerbach identifies the structural logic of divertissement in Don Quixote: madness functions as a comic mechanism that perpetually suspends the weight of reality, converting existence into theatrical play.

Auerbach, Erich, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, 1953supporting

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

Molière never renounced the effects which his mastery of the technique of the farce put within his reach, and perhaps his most inspired ideas are those which enabled him to work such originally quite mechanical clownish situations into the very essence.

Auerbach argues that farcical divertissement in Molière is not mere entertainment but organically integrated into the moral and psychological substance of the dramatic work.

Auerbach, Erich, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, 1953supporting

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

The popular farce does not enter into our discussion because its realism remains within the limits of the purely comic and unproblematic.

Auerbach excludes the popular farce — the purest form of divertissement — from serious literary-realist analysis precisely because its comic mode forecloses depth and existential problematization.

Auerbach, Erich, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, 1953supporting

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

in stories which employ far more crudely farcical motifs than our example, both language and manner of presentation remain aristocratic, inasmuch as both narrator and audience unmistakably stand far above the subject matter, and, viewing it from above with a critical eye, derive pleasure from it in a light and elegant fashion.

Auerbach demonstrates that divertissement in Boccaccio operates as a class-inflected aesthetic distance: pleasure is secured by the narrator’s ironic superiority over the comic subject matter.

Auerbach, Erich, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, 1953supporting

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

He might take it as nothing but a lower-class orgy of dancing and drinking, of the kind to be found or imagined in Rubens or Jordaens, in Brouwer or Ostade.

Auerbach situates Zola’s festive scenes within the pictorial tradition of lower-class divertissement, before arguing that Zola’s naturalism transforms mere revelry into socially freighted symbolic commentary.

Auerbach, Erich, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, 1953supporting

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

The lowering of all standards was further accelerated by the commercial exploitation of the tremendous demand for reading matter on the part of publishers of books and periodicals, the majority of whom followed the path of least resistance and easy profits.

Auerbach’s critique of nineteenth-century mass reading culture implies a structural critique of divertissement as an instrument of ideological pacification and aesthetic degradation.

Auerbach, Erich, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, 1953aside

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

A further danger, in itself harmless, is that, though authentic contents may be produced, the patient evinces an exclusively aesthetic interest

Jung identifies the exclusively aesthetic attitude toward unconscious material as a subtle evasion — a psychological analogue of divertissement that forestalls genuine integration.

Jung, Carl Gustav, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, 1960aside

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

Related terms