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Tag Archives: Chateaubriand

Chateaubriand’s Atala

24 Thursday Apr 2014

Posted by michelinewalker in French Literature, Romanticism, The French Revolution

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

Anne-Louis Girodet, Atala, Chactas, Chateaubriand, Christianity and the Romantics, Father Aubry, Herb Weidner, les Natchez, René, Simaghan, The Death of Atala, the Noble Savage

The Funeral of Atala, by Girodet (1808)

The Funeral of Atala, by Girodet, 1808 (Photo credit: Wikipedia) 

An “American” novella: Atala (1801)

In 1791, François-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand, an impoverished aristocrat fleeing revolutionary France, travels to America where he spends nine months an lives in  Philadelphia, Baltimore, New York and the Hudson valley. Born of this stay in America are Atala, René, Les Natchez and Voyage en Amérique, an EBook.

These works were written in England, as was L’Essai sur les Révolutions. Upon his return to Europe, Chateaubriand joined l’Armée des Princes (the Army of Princes) and, after being wounded in battle, he settled in England where he earned a meagre living teaching French mainly. Despite this painful exile, not only did François-René write the afore-mentioned works, but he also became familiar with English literature and, in particular, with seventeenth-century author John Milton‘s Paradise Lost (1667), a work Chateaubriand would later translate into French. (See Chateaubriand, Wikipedia)

Chateaubriand returned to France in May 1800 when an amnesty was issued émigrés. In 1801, he published Atala, and, the following year, René. Both novellas are incorporated in Le Génie du Christianisme (The Genius of Christianity), a large work published in 1802 and available online. In René, Chateaubriand described “le mal du siècle”[i] or, more precisely, the “vague [from vagueness] des passions,” the form of melancholy experienced by sensitive souls who know they are “fallen gods”  (Lamartine, see Le Mal du siècle). Their sorrows bestow superiority on such characters.

“Morbid sadness was mistaken for the suffering of a proud and superior mind.” (See Mal du siècle, Wikipedia.)

088

Atala, illustrated by Gustave Doré (Photo credit: Project Gutenberg [EBook #4447)

Atala, illustrated by Gustave Doré (Photo credit: Project Gutenberg [EBook #44427])

Atala, 1801

Atala, a novella, or short novel, was published in 1801, a year before René. However, although published in 1801, Atala features René, a Frenchman who left France in 1725 and found refuge among the Natchez. The Natchez are a tribe of Amerindians living near the Mississippi and friendly to the French. In Atala, they are near the Ohio River. Chactas could be a “noble savage,” but he is not depicted as such. He is a blind Sachem and a Natchez whose nobility seems to stem from the fact that he is not altogether a “savage.” In a later appearance, Chactas is in France and meets the king.

If Chactas has nobility, which he does, it is mostly because he was brought up by Lopez, the Spaniard who rescued him from the Muscogulges. Lopez also fathered Atala whose mother is a Muscogulge, enemies of the Natchez. Atala’s mother weds the tribe’s magnanimous leader, Simaghan. When Chactas leaves Lopez’ home, he is again captured by the Muscogulges. He is freed by Atala. At this point, le père Aubry, Father Aubry, its fourth (René, Chactas, Atala) and most eloquent character, enters the novella.

Painting by Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson.

F.-René de Chateaubriand, by Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Chactas’ Story

In Atala, Chactas, who has befriended René, tells him his story. After leaving the home of Lopez to rejoin his people, Chactas is captured by Muscogulge Amerindians who quickly prepare to torture and kill him. Kind Atala, a Christian, takes pity on Chactas. She has fallen in love with him and unties him so he can escape torture. The two flee the tribe’s encampment but are caught in a terrible thunderstorm. They then hear the sound of a bell and, suddenly, a dog approaches followed by Father Aubry, a French missionary.

Father Aubry takes Atala and Chactas to his grotto. The priest wants his protégés to wed. However, this prospect saddens Atala profoundly. Atala’s mother made a promise. Her child, Atala, was sick, so she vowed that if Atala survived, Atala would remain a virgin. On her deathbed, Atala’s mother extracted the same promise from Atala herself. Atala does not tell Chactas and father Aubry about her vow of chastity.

While Father Aubry and Chactas are visiting the mission, Atala takes poison. On their return, Chactas and father Aubry find Atala lying down, in agony. She tells her story and Father Aubry quickly explains that the oath she has made to her dying mother can be undone. But it is too late.

Ô ma mère ! pourquoi parlâtes-vous ainsi ! Ô religion qui fais (sic) à la fois mes maux et ma félicité, qui me perds et qui me consoles ! (pp. 52-53)[ii]

(O my mother, why spake you thus? O Religion, the cause of my ills and of my felicity, my ruin and my consolation at the same time!) (“Félicité,” felicity) means “bonheur” (happiness).

Ambivalence towards Christianity is expressed.  A grief-stricken Chactas is indignant and, after rolling on the ground in Amerindian fashion, he says: “Homme prêtre, qu’es-tu venu faire dans ces forêts ?” (Man-priest, why did you come into these forests?). “To save you,” replies the old man who shows considerable anger defending Christianity and then absolves Atala of her suicide. It is not a sin, because she did not know her suicide was a transgression. She is “ignorant.”

“[A]ll your misfortunes are the result of your ignorance. Your savage education and the want of instruction have been your ruin. You did not know that a Christian cannot dispose of his life.”

We then witness Atala’s agony, together with Chactas and le père Aubry. Atala dies but is buried discreetly at the “Groves of Death.” Later, Father Aubry dies when his mission is attacked by Cherokee Amerindians who torture him to death. He will be buried near Atala, and René will come to collect the bones of both Atala and Father Aubry.

Chateaubriand’s Savage: not so Noble

Note that le père Aubry is a white man and that “everything about him was calm and sublime.” Chactas was brought up by Lopez, a Spaniard and a Christian. Moreover, Lopez is Atala’s father. As for René, to whom Chactas told his story, he is a French émigré who moved to Louisiana in 1725. It would appear, therefore, that Atala’s savages are not altogether “savages.”

Atala was “proud” of her Spanish blood and “resembled a queen in the pride of her demeanor, disdained to speak to these warriors.” Until she met Chactas, she felt those “warriors” who surrounded her were not worthy of her. Je n’aperçus autour de moi que des hommes indignes de recevoir ma main; je m’applaudis de n’avoir d’autre époux que le Dieu de ma mère. (p. 53) (I saw myself surrounded by men unworthy of receiving my hand; I congratulated myself upon having no other spouse than the God of my mother.) Obviously, the natives Atala knows seem inferior to Europeans. Yet, the Natchez are René’s refuge. Could this be the case if Chateaubriand considered them irredeemably uncivilized?

Alfred de Musset

Atala is a bittersweet chapter in the tale of the “Noble Savage.” Chateaubriand’s savage is not a noble savage, at least not consistently. In particular, he is extremely cruel. Savages, Iroquois, allies of the British, tortured and burned alive Jesuit missionary Jean de Brébeuf and other missionaries, in 1625. But Chateaubriand is among émigrés who escaped the savage Reign of Terror: 1793. Robespierre and company were barbarians.

However, the setting confers a degree of exoticism to Atala and it allows Chateaubriand feats of style. The Amerindians bring food to our Europeans and Chactas is dressed in bark, etc. It’s called “couleur locale” and it is all the more colourful since Chateaubriand was not closely acquainted with Amerindians.

It is difficult not to agree with Alfred de Musset that  “[t]he entire malady of the present century stems from two causes: the nation that lived through 93 [la terreur or the reign of terror] and 1814 [Napoleon’s defeat: the Battle of Paris] had its heart wounded twice. All there was is no longer; all that will be has yet to come. Seek nowhere else the secret of our ills.” (See Musset’s Confession of a Child of the Century, Preface by Henri Bornier of the French Academy, Project Gutengerg [EBook #3942].

At any rate, as she is dying, Father Aubry tells Atala that life is a painful journey. “Remerciez donc la bonté divine, ma chère fille, qui vous retire si vite de cette vallée de misère.” (p. 52) “Thank, therefore, the Divine goodness, my dear daughter, for taking you away thus early from this valley of misery.”[iii]

Indeed, a “valley of misery” it is for René who lives in exile, as do all émigrés and will those Natchez, the Amerindians who had adopted René and have survived the destruction of their encampment, Father Aubry’s mission. They are leaving, carrying the bones of their ancestors. Leading the cortège are the warriors, and closing it, women carrying their newborn. In the middle are the older Natchez. There is nobility to these “savages.”

“O what tears are shed when we thus abandon our native land!—when, from the summit of the mountain of exile, we look for the last time upon the roof beneath which we were bred, and see the hut-stream still flowing sadly through the solitary fields surrounding our birth-place!”

Oh ! que de larmes sont répandues lorsqu’on abandonne la terre natale, lorsque du haut de la colline de l’exil on découvre pour la dernière fois le toit où l’on fut nourri et le fleuve de la cabane qui continue à couler tristement à travers les champs de la patrie.” (p. 73)

—ooo—

The final paragraph of Atala is very revealing, and on these words, I will end this post.

“Unfortunate Indians!—you whom I have seen wandering in the deserts of the New World with the ashes of your ancestors;—you who gave me hospitality in spite of your misery—I could not now return your generosity, for I am wandering, like you, at the mercy of men; but less fortunate than you in my exile, I have not brought with me the bones of my fathers.”

Indiens infortunés que j’ai vus errer dans les déserts du Nouveau-Monde avec les cendres de vos aïeux ! vous qui m’aviez donné l’hospitalité malgré votre misère ! je ne pourrais vous la rendre aujourd’hui, car j’erre, ainsi que vous, à la merci des hommes, et moins heureux dans mon exil, je n’ai point emporté les os de mes pères ! 

Anne-Louis%20Girodet-Trioson-497497

atalacloseupfigs

RELATED ARTICLES 

  • The Jesuit Relations: an Invaluable Legacy, revisited  (22 May 2015)
  • Chateaubriand’s Atala (24 April 2015)
  • Le Mal du siècle: 19th-Century (18 April 2014)
  • The Nineteenth Century in France (5 March 2014)
  • The Noble Savage: Lahontan’s Adario (26 October 2012)←

Sources and Resources

Chateaubriand
Atala FR is an online publication Wikimedia Commons FR
Atala EN is Project Gutenberg publication [EBook #44427] EN, illustrations by Gustave Doré
René EN & Complete Works
The Genius of Christianity EN 
Les Martyrs FR, illustrations by Jean Hillemacher 
Mémoires d’outre-tombe EN
Tome I is Project Gutenberg publication [EBook #18864] 
Tome II is Project Gutenberg publication [EBook #23654] 
See Internet Archives
 
Alfred de Musset
Confession of a Child of the Century EN is Project Gutenberg publication [EBook #3942]
 
____________________

[i] The term mal du siècle was coined by Alfred de Musset. Chateaubriand uses the words vague des passions. 

[ii] François-René de Chateaubriand, Atala, René, Le Dernier Abencérage, Les Natchez (Paris: Librairie Garnier Frères, n.d.), pp. 52-53. (a very old edition)

[iii] François de Malherbe (1555 – 16 October 1628), Consolation [Lament] à Monsieur du Périer sur la mort de sa fille. (See Consolation). Malherbe expressed a related thought in Consolation à Monsieur du Périer. This is an instance of intertextualité.

Herb Weidner (composer)
Mémoires à Atala  

self-portrait-1824(1)_jpg!Blog

— Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson, self-portrait (1824), drawing in pencil and Conté crayon, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Orléans, France (Photo credit: wikiart.org)

© Micheline Walker
24 April 2014
WordPress
 

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Le Mal du siècle, 19th-Century France

18 Friday Apr 2014

Posted by michelinewalker in French Literature, Literature, Romanticism, The Human Condition

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

Caspar David Friedrich, Chateaubriand, Goethe, Madame de Staël, mal du siècle, Nineteenth century literature, René, Romanticism, théorie des climats, Werther

The Wanderer above a Sea of Fog, by Caspar David Friedrich

The Wanderer above a Sea of Fog, by Caspar David Friedrich, Kunsthalle, Hamburg (Photo credit: Wikipedia) 

“This well-known and especially Romantic masterpiece was described by the historian John Lewis Gaddis as leaving a contradictory impression, ‘suggesting at once mastery over a landscape and the insignificance of the individual within it. We see no face, so it’s impossible to know whether the prospect facing the young man is exhilarating, or terrifying, or both.’”[i] (See Caspar David Friedrich, Wikipedia.) 

Edgar Degas, Melancholy (c. 1874)

Melancholy, by Edgar Degas, c. 1874 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Le Mal du Siècle

This duality, “mastery” and “insignificance,” could explain the malaise called le mal du siècle (the malady of the century), a term coined by poet Alfred de Musset (11 December 1810 – 2 May 1857) in La Confession d’un enfant du siècle (The Confession of a Child of the Century), an autobiography published in 1836. Moreover, France entered the nineteenth century after a radical revolution that turned into a bloodbath. Yet the nineteenth century in France was inaugurated by the military victories of Napoleon. The  levée en masse, conscription, of 31 August 1793, had given Napoleon his grande armée.

—ooo—

Let’s take a closer look. Le mal du siècle[ii] is associated with François-René de Chateaubriand‘s René, a novella published separately in 1802, but also included, along with Atala (1801), in Chateaubriand’s Génie du Christianisme (The Genius of Christianity), published in 1802. It was also part of Les Natchez, a work written between 1793 and 1799, but not published until 1826. It is about René, a forelorn protagonist. Along with Atala (1801), it was conceived in America and written in Britain. Chateaubriand belonged to an aristocratic family and had to flee France during the French Revolution. He travelled to North-America, as did many émigrés, and then lived in England where he wrote abundantly. He left a superb narrative describing the Mississippi, the river he calls the Meschacebé and which he is unlikely to have seen.

René’s “mal du siècle”

René, the protagonist of René, is a sensitive young man who simply does not belong and whose mal is melancholy. The word melancholy all but summarizes “le mal du siècle,” also called “le vague des passions,” l’ennui (boredom), “spleen” (in Baudelaire). Chateaubriand has René say that he “lacked something to fill the void on his existence[:]”  “Il me  manquait quelque chose pour remplir l’abîme de mon existence[.]” René also says that man’s natural song is sad: “Le chant naturel de l’homme est triste.” In René’s opinion, “[o]ur heart is an incomplete instrument, a lyre missing strings” forcing us to express joy on the same tone as sighs:

“Notre cœur est un instrument incomplet, une lyre où il manque des cordes, et où nous sommes forcés de rendre les accents de la joie sur le ton consacré aux soupirs.” (René)

La théorie des climats

A reader of Montesquieu, Madame de Staël, the author of De l’Allemage (Germany), 1810-1813, theorizes that northerners are more prone to melancholy than people born and living in sunnier environments. This theory is called “la théorie des climats” and, although it is expressed by Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu (18 January 1689 – 10 February 1755), an early representative of the French Enlightenment, it dates back to Greco-Roman antiquity. Madame de Staël’s northerners would be German-speaking people, the inhabitants of the British Isles and, perhaps, the people of Brittany, France, a Celtic nation. These northerners are Romanticism‘s better recruits.

Lamartine and Pascal

To a certain extent, René’s sadness is yet another expression of man’s duality. In “L’Homme” (Méditations poétiques, 1820), French poet Alphonse de Lamartine writes that “L’homme est un dieu tombé qui se souvient des cieux [.]” (Man is a fallen god who remembers heaven.) As Blaise Pascal (19 June 1623 – 19 August 1662) wrote, there is misère in the mortality of humans, but “grandeur” in the fact that humans know they will die. (Wo)man is a roseau pensant: a mere reed, but a thinking reed.

La grandeur de l’homme est grande en ce qu’il se connaît misérable; un arbre ne se connaît pas misérable.[iii]

(Man’s grandeur is immense in that he knows he is miserable [a mere mortal]; a tree doesn’t know it is miserable.)

But René also suffers from a profound sense of alienation from the world and is therefore considered Werther’s French counterpart. Johann Wolfgang Goethe‘s Werther is the protagonist of The Sorrows of Young Werther (Die Leiden des jungen Werthers), an epistolary novel published in 1774, a quarter of a century before Chateaubriand’s René. 

Sturm und Drang

However, Werther has been associated, rightly or wrongly, with the Sturm und Drang movement (the late 1760s to the early 1780s). The Sturm und Drang (storm and stress) movement, named after a play by Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger (17 February 1752 – 25 February 1831), is characterized by the expression of “extremes of emotion,” and is not restricted to literature. It extends to music and the fine arts (examples are listed under Sturm und Drang, in Wikipedia).

The Sorrows of the Young Werther & René

Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832); 1774 In Goethe’s Sorrows of the Young Werther, a bestseller, unrequited love or, love lost, often leads to melancholy, Werther falls in love with Lotte who is about to marry Albert, a man eleven years her senior. He therefore courts rejection. The plot is the classic love triangle. Lotte marries Albert and Werther commits suicide. Werther’s suicide is the expression of an “extreme of emotion.” He has invested his entire self in Lotte (see cathexis, Wikipedia). Chateaubriand (4 September 1768 – 4 July 1848); 1802

François-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand, Anne Louis Girodet Trioson

François-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand, Anne Louis Girodet Trioson (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As for René, also a bestseller, there is no refuge for its protagonist’s melancholia. He visits the Natchez people in Louisiana, still a French colony, and travels to Scotland, the home Ossian. Ossian is an invented bard whose poetry is that of James MacPherson. René considers suicide, but finds a reprieve when he is joined by his sister Amélie, whom he loves. However, Amélie soon leaves him to enter a convent, her love for René being incestuous. René returns to America and is killed by a Natchez. Les Natchez can be considered an episode, or chapter, in the European discourse on the “Noble Savage.” However, Chateaubriand’s savage is not so noble.

There is no refuge for the Werthers and Renés. Romantics often perceived the world as mediocre and hostile which exacerbated the profound sadness called le mal du siècle. But romanticism can also be summarized as an age when sentiment prevailed over reason. It is a reaction against the Enlightenment. Beginning with René Descartes‘ (31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650) Discourse on Method (1637), reason had prevailed over sentiment.

The Reign of Sentiment

Therefore, it would seem to me that romanticism gives free rein to sentiment and subjectivity over reason. The reign of reason had been challenged by Blaise Pascal and otherwise assaulted, but it could be said that La Querelle des Bouffons, (The War of the Comic Actors) was reason’s major defeat (see Related Articles: Pergolesi). It is also a victory of the Modernes over the Anciens. Romantic authors and musicians revived the Medieval era, a Christian era. They sought their roots. The Brothers Grimm collected the folklore that gave German-speaking people their identity and Wagner gave them their glorious past.

Alfred de musset.jpg

Alfred de Musset by Charles Landelle (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Weltschmerz: le mal du siècle

Alfred de Musset: Confession d’un Enfant du siècle

At a deeper level, these “extremes of emotion” may be an expression of man’s duality or the human condition. “Siècle” means both century and the world, or the secular and the profane. In his Confession d’un enfant du siècle, mentioned above, Alfred de Musset wrote that:

“Toute la maladie du siècle présent vient de deux causes : le peuple, qui a passé par 93 et par 1814, porte au cœur deux blessures. Tout ce qui était n’est plus ; tout ce qui sera n’est pas encore. Ne cherchez pas ailleurs le secret de nos maux.”

(The entire malady of the present century stems from two causes : the nation that lived through 93 [la terreur or the reign of terror] and 1814 [Napoleon’s defeat: the Battle of Paris] had its heart wounded twice. All there was is no longer; all that will be has yet to come. Seek nowhere else the secret of our ills.)

Such a definition applies to France, but the industrial revolution was no less traumatic than the French Revolution and Napoléon’s: defeat, i.e. 1814.

However, Werther is the victim of unrequited love, the world is not as it should be. As for René, he is at odds with a world that ended in the Terror of 1793-94: 93. However, Werther is the victim of unrequited love, the world is not as it should be. As for René, he is at odds with a world that ended in the Terror of 1793-94: 93. As an aristocrat, Chateaubriand had to flee France. He went to America, as did several émigrés. He then fought in the Army of Princes but was wounded, which forced him to live in England where he was not idle. He and madame de Staël all but invented French romanticism, she as a theorist and he as the finest writer of the early  19th century. All émigrés were amnestied[iv] by Napoleon on 27 April 1802, but Chateaubriand left England in May 1800, when some émigrés were also amnestied.

Conclusion

Humans have long been described or have described themselves as both tall and small. They combine a degree of “mastery” and “insignificance.” This theme underlies most of Western literature. John Milton‘s Paradise Lost tells that story. René’s mal du siècle, however, is also as described by Alfred de Musset. The French Revolution turned into the above-mentioned bloodbath: 93. The King was guillotined and its wealth was taken away from the Church. This was Talleyrand‘s[v] idea, a priest and a bishop. The vote took place on 10 October 1789. Priests fled to Britain.[vi] A new calendar was adopted. Yet, romanticism happened everywhere and, for many years, Madame de Staël‘s château at Coppet was its nucleus and Madame de Staël herself, a theorist of romanticism. Besides, the industrial revolution, a revolution greater than the French Revolution, was introducing the reign of machines that both empowered and lessened humankind, hence Weltshmerz, a term we owe Jean-Paul Richter. Le mal du siècle may well be the birthplace of l’absurde (see Absurdism, Wikipedia).

RELATED ARTICLES

  • Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, revisited (5 December 2013)
  • J’ai perdu tout mon bonheur:” the Lyrics (5 December 2013)
  • A Portrait of Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (20 December 2011)
  1. On Madame de Staël (12 March 2014)
  2. The Nineteenth Century in France (5 March 2014)
  3. Salons and Cafés survive “la terreur” (19 February 2014)

Sources: Chateaubriand (4 September 1768 – 4 July 1848) 

  • Les NatchezFR by Olivier Catel
  • AtalaFR
  • RenéFR
  • Les Aventures du dernier AbencerageFR
  • Le Génie du ChristianismeFR
  • The Genius of Christianity (contains Atala and René)EN
  • Mémoires d’outre-tombe, Tome I Project Gutenberg [EBook #18864]FR
  • Mémoires d’outre-tombe, Tome II Project Gutenberg [EBook #23654]FR

Montesquieu (18 January 1689 – 10 February 1755)

  • Lettres persanes Project Gutenberg [EBook #30268]FR
  • De l’Esprit des lois Project Gutenberg [EBook #27573]FR
  • Persian LettersEN
  • The Spirit of LawsEN
  • Complete Works Online Library of LibertyEN 

Musset (11 December 1810 – 2 May 1857)

  • Confession of a Child of the Century, by Alfred de Musset is a Gutenberg project [EBook #3942]EN

____________________

[i] John Lewis Gaddis, The Landscape of History (Oxford University Press: 2004), pp. 1-2

[ii] “Mal du siècle,” in J. P. de Beaumarchais, D. Couty, A Rey, Dictionnaire des littératures de langue française (Paris: Bordas, 1984).

[iii] Blaise Pascal, Pensées 114-397 (Lafuma/Brunschvicg), in Henri Gouhier et Louis Lafuma, Œuvres complètes (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1963), p. 513.

[iv] See Decree on Émigrés, Wikipedia

[v] André Castelot, Talleyrand ou le cynisme (Paris: Librairie Académique Perrin, 1980), p. 160. [vi] Many priests were sent to Quebec, where Britain had French-speaking and Catholic subjects.

Daniel Barenboim plays Songs without Words (Opus 30, N° 01) 
Felix Mendelssohn 

Chateaubriand

Chateaubriand, by Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson (Photo credit: Wikipedia) 
Confession d’un enfant du siècle (trailer): film starring Charlotte Gainsbourg and Peter Doherty
(Sylvie Verheyde, director).
untitled
© Micheline Walker
18 April 2014
WordPress

Micheline's Blog

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Salons & Cafés survive “la Terreur”

19 Wednesday Feb 2014

Posted by michelinewalker in French Literature, History

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

Cafés, Chateaubriand, De l'Allemagne, Le Café Procope, Madame de Staël, Romanticism, Salons, Staël theorist, The French Revolution, Victor Hugo

Corbeille de fleurs, by Eugène Delacroix

Corbeille de fleurs by Eugène Delacroix (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“A Basket of Flowers” by Eugène Delacroix (26 April 1798 – 13 August 1863)

The Salon

The world that followed the French Revolution was a new world, but it had kept many of the institutions of the Old World, or l’Ancien Régime. One of these institutions was the salon. The first known French salon was seventeenth-century Catherine de Rambouillet’s Chambre Bleue. Guests enjoyed making believe they were shepherds and shepherdesses and they wrote poems, at times very tricky ones. La Chambre bleue was a magnet. Even Richelieu was inspired to visit.

In the middle of the seventeenth century, Catherine de Rambouillet‘s salon was replaced by Mademoiselle de Scudéry‘s. Mademoiselle de Scudéry was a prolific writer and her favourite subject was love. She drew the map of Tendre, Tendre being the land of love.

In the eighteenth century, the Golden Age of the salon, the most famous was Madame Geoffrin‘s (June 1699 – 6 October 1777). Dignitaries visiting Paris were infinitely grateful for being invited. It was such a privilege, but salons were not as they had been in the seventeenth century. The French eighteenth century was the Age of Enlightenment, so ideas were discussed.

On Monday, Madame Geoffrin received artists and, on Wednesday, men of letters. Ideas were discussed, but never too seriously. That would have been a breach of etiquette. L’honnête homme and the Encyclopédistes were a witty group. All were treated to a fine meal. However, even at Madame Geoffrin‘s salon, love remained a favourite subject.

Madame Geoffrin`s salon in 1755 by Anicet Charles Gabriel Lemonnier. Oil on canvas, Château de Malmaison, Rueil -Malmaison

Madame Geoffrin‘s salon in 1755 by Anicet Charles Gabriel Lemonnier. Château de Malmaison, Rueil-Malmaison (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

madame Récamier and Chateaubriand

Madame Récamier (4 December 1777 – 11 May 1849)
 

After and even during the French Revolution, except for the “Reign of Terror,” people, gentlemen mainly, flocked to salons such as Madame Récamier’s and Madame de Staël‘s. It is also at that time that François-René de Chateaubriand and Madame de Staël (22 April 1766 – 14 July 1817) inaugurated French Romanticism, a literary movement that gave primacy to sentiment.  

Goethe‘s Sorrows of Young Werther (Die Leiden des jungen Werthers) was published in 1774, so France lagged behind both German and English Romanticism. François-René de Chateaubriand would soon publish René and Atala, novellas included in his Génie du christianisme, or Genius of Christianity (1802). It fact, although he is not included in David’s portrait of Madame Récamier, chances are Chateaubriand is looking at the “divine” Madame Récamier. In the early 1800’s, Chateaubriand was the most prominent author in France and Madame Récamier’s finest guest, but as he grew older, he lived like a recluse in a Paris apartment and visited one person only, Madame Récamier, Juliette.

François-René de Chateaubriand by Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson.

Chateaubriand by Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Germaine de Staël

Germaine de Staël (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As for Germaine de Staël, a prominent theorist of Romanticism, Napoleon often banished her from France, causing her to spend several years at Coppet, her family’s Swiss residence. She was the French-born daughter of Swiss and Protestant banker James Necker, Louis XVI’s director of finance. Finding a husband for Germaine was not easy. Her father did not want her to marry a Catholic. Although she lived in the company of men who were fascinated by her extraordinary intellectual gifts and charm, most could not be serious candidates because Frenchmen are Catholics. She therefore married baron Erik Magnus Staël von Holstein, a Swedish diplomat. 

Victor Hugo & Romanticism

Victor Hugo (26 February 1802 – 22 May 1885)

It could be said that Chateaubriand and Madame de Staël founded French Romanticism, a literary movement that spread to the fine arts and music. She is the author, among several books and treatises, of Delphine (1802) and Corinne (1807), novels. But her most fascinating work is De l’Allemagne, or Germany (1810-1813). It is, to a large extent, a manifesto of Western European Romanticism. She discussed L’Allemagne with her excellent friend and lover, Swiss-born novelist Benjamin Constant, or Henri-Benjamin Constant de Rebecque (25 October 1767 – 8 December 1830), a descendant of Huguenots (French Protestant Calvinists).  

However, if French Romanticism has a manifesto, it is Victor Hugo‘s Préface de “Cromwell,” a play published in 1827. The 12-syllable noble verse, called l’alexandrin, had long been broken into two hémistiches of 6 syllables, or “pieds.” Victor Hugo used such alexandrins, but he also divided the 12-syllable verse into 3 groups of 4 syllables or “pieds.”  

Je-mar-che-rai//les-yeux-fi-xés//sur-mes-pen-sées, 4 x 3 (3 trimètres)
Sans-rien-voir-au de-hors,//sans-en-ten-dr’ au-cun-bruit, 6 x 2 (2 hémistiches)
Seul,-in-con-nu,//le-dos-cour-bé,//les-mains-croi-sées, 4 x 3
Trist’,-et-le-jour//pour-moi-se-ra//com-me-la-nuit. 4 x 3
 
from Hugo’s “Demain, dès l’aube…” 
 

Hugo also brought back things medieval, which he did with Notre-Dame de Paris or The Hunch Back of Notre-Dame. Chateaubriand felt seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French literature was somewhat borrowed, which it was. French authors emulated the Anciens or Greco-Roman literature.

At Café Procope: at rear, from left to right: Condorcet, La Harpe, Voltaire (with his arm raised) and Diderot

At Café Procope at rear, from left to right: Condorcet, La Harpe, Voltaire (with his arm raised) and Diderot* 

*our characters may not be at Café Procope, but they could have been

The Cafés

In cafés, however, men of letters discussed more freely. Cafés had become popular in the seventeenth century. Le Café Procope, established in 1686, has never closed shop except for occasional renovations. 

Conclusion

During the French Revolution, Chateaubriand spent 10 years outside France. For one year he was in the United States and then joined an émigré army at Coblenz, Germany. By and large, years émigrés spent abroad were disruptive.

Madame de Staël enjoyed diplomatic immunity in Paris as the wife of Sweden’s ambassador to France. However she lived in England in 1893-1894 with her lover Louis de Narbonne, an émigré. She returned to Paris, via Coppet, her family’s Swiss residence, as soon as the Terreur was over, in the summer of 1794.

She was a successful salonnière under the Directoire (1795-1799), a government toppled by Napoleon’s 18 Brumaire, Year VIII (9 November 1799) coup d’État. She fared poorly under the Consulat, with Napoleon as first Consul. He banished her for nearly a decade but could not prevent her from thinking and writing. Coppet was a beehive. I still enjoy reading Madame de Staël’s De l’Allemagne.

The French Revolution deprived France of tens of thousands of its citizens. But, somehow, tens of thousands survived as did the institutions, salons and cafés, where they congregated to discuss such ideas as liberté, égalité, fraternité.

—ooo—

Sources:
  • Aurelian Craiutu: Faces of Moderation: Mme de Staël’s Politics during the Directory
  • EuropeanHistory.about.com
  • The Encyclopædia Britannica
Cafés
Vangélis 
(Voltaire had a desk at le Café Procope)
Germaine de Staël

Germaine de Staël (Google images)

 
© Micheline Walker
19 February 2014
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