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CHATEAUBRIAND, FRANCOIS RENE, VICOMTE DE (17681848) , French author, youngest son of Rene Auguste de Chateaubriand, comte de Combourg,2 was born at St Maio on the 4th of September 1768. He was a brilliant representative of the reaction against the ideas of the French Revolution, and the most conspicuous figure in French literature during the First Empire. His naturally poetical temperament was fostered in childhood by picturesque influences, the mysterious reserve of his morose father, the ardent piety of his mother, the traditions of his ancient family, the legends and antiquated customs of the sequestered Breton
Chateaubriand was not unfavourable to the Revolution in its first stages, but he was disturbed by its early excesses; moreover, his regiment was disbanded, and his family belonged to the party of reaction. His political impartiality, he says, pleased no one. These causes and the restlessness of his spirit induced him to take part in a romantic scheme for the discovery of the North-West Passage, in pursuance of which he departed for America in the spring of 1791. The passage was not found or even attempted, but the adventurer returned enriched with theto himmore important discovery of his own powers and vocation, conscious of his marvellous faculty for the delineation of nature, and stored with the new ideas and new imagery,the derivation of the phaina from the paenula, but I should not lay particular stress upon it. The question is settled by the above-mentioned miniatures." 2 For full details of the Chateaubriand family see R. Kerviler, Essai d'une bio-bibliographie de Chateaubriand et de sa famille (Vannes, 1895). 3 Her Euvres were edited in 1879, with a memoir, by Anatole France. derived from the virgin forests and magnificent scenery of the western continent. That he actually lived among the Indians, however, is shown by Bedier to be doubtful, and the same critic has exposed the untrustworthiness of the autobiographical details of his American trip. His knowledge of America was mainly derived from the books of Charlevoix and others. The news of the arrest of Louis XVI. at Varennes in June 1791 recalled him to France. In 1792 he married Mlle Celeste Buisson
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exile dates the Natchez (first printed in his (Euvres completes, 1826-1831), a prose epic designed to portray the life of the Red Indians. Two brilliant episodes originally designed for this work, Atala and Rene, are among his most famous productions. Chateaubriand's first publication, however, was the Essai historique, politique et moral sur les revolutions .. . (London, 1797), which the author subsequently retracted, but took care not to suppress. In this volume he appears as a mediator between royalist and revolutionary ideas, a free-thinker in religion, and a philosopher imbued with the spirit of Rousseau. A great change in his views was, however, at hand, induced, according to his own statement, by a letter from his sister Julie (Mme de Farcy), telling him of the grief his views had caused his mother, who had died soon after her release from the Conciergerie in the same year. His brother had perished on the scaffold in April 1794, and both his sisters, Lucile and Julie, and his wife had been imprisoned at Rennes. Mme de Farcy did not long survive her imprisonment.Chateaubriand's thoughts turned to religion, and on his return to France in 1800 the Genie du christianisme was already in an advanced state. Louis de Fontanes had been a fellow- exile with Chateaubriand in London, and he now introduced him to the society of Mme de Stael, Mme Recamier, Benjamin Constant, Lucien Bonaparte and others. But Chateaubriand's favourite resort was the salon of Pauline de Beaumont, who was destined to fill a great place in his life, and gave him some help in the preparation of his work on Christianity, part of the book being written at her house at Savigny. Atala, ou les amours de deux sauvages clans le desert, used as an episode in the Genie du christianisme, appeared separately in 18o1 and immediately made his reputation. Exquisite style, impassioned eloquence and glowing descriptions of nature gained indulgence for the incongruity between the rudeness of the personages and the refinement of the sentiments, and for the distasteful blending of prudery with sensuousness. Alike in its merits and defects the piece is a more emphatic and highly coloured Paul et Virginie; it has been justly said that Bernardin Saint-Pierre models in marble and Chateaubriand in bronze. Encouraged by his success the author resumed his Genie du christianisme, ou beautes de la religion chretienne, which appeared in 1802, just upon the eve of Napoleon's re-establishment of the Catholic religion in France, for which it thus seemed almost to have prepared the way. No coincidence could have been more opportune, and Chateaubriand came to esteem himself the counterpart of Napoleon in the intellectual order. In composing his work he had borne in mind the admonition of his friend Joseph Joubert, that the public would care very little for his erudition and very muchfor his eloquence. It is consequently an inefficient production from the point of view of serious argument. The considerations derived from natural theology are but commonplaces rendered dazzling by the magic of style; and the parallels between Christianity and antiquity, especially in arts and letters, are at best ingenious sophistries. The less polemical passages, however, where the author depicts the glories of the Catholic liturgy and its accessories, or expounds its symbolical significance, are splendid instances of the effect produced by the accumulation and judicious distribution of particulars gorgeous in the mass, and treated with the utmost refinement of detail. The work is a masterpiece of literary art, and its influence in French literature was immense. The Eloa of Alfred de Vigny, the Harmonies of Lamartine and even the Legende des siecles of Victor Hugo may be said to have been inspired by the Genie du christianisme. Its immediate effect was very considerable. It admirably sub-served the statecraft of Napoleon, and Talleyrand in 1803 appointed the writer attache to the French legation at Rome, whither he was followed by Mme de Beaumont, who died there.When his insubordinate and intriguing spirit compelled his recall he was transferred as envoy to the canton of the Valais. The murder of the duke of Enghien (21st of March 1804) took place before he took up this appointment. Chateaubriand, who was in Paris at the time, showed his courage and independence by immediately resigning his post. In 1807 he gave great offence to Napoleon by an article in the Mercure de France (4th of July), containing allusions to Nero which were rightly taken to refer to the emperor. The Mercure, of which he had become proprietor, was temporarily suppressed, and was in the next year amalgamated with the Decade. Chateaubriand states in his Memoires that his life was threatened, but it is more than possible that he exaggerated the danger. Before this, in 18o6, he made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, undertaken, as he subsequently acknowledged, less in a devotional spirit than in quest of new imagery. He returned by way of Tunis, Carthage, Cadiz and Granada. At Granada he met Mme de Mouchy, and the place and the meeting apparently suggested the romantic tale of Le Dernier Abencerage, which, for political reasons, remained unprinted until the publication of the Euvres completes (1826-1831). The journey also produced L'Itineraire de Paris d Jerusalem . . . (3 vols., 1811), a record of travel distinguished by the writer's habitual picturesqueness; and inspired his prose epic,. Les Martyrs, ou le triomphe de la religion chretienne (2 vols., 1809). This work may be regarded as the argument of the Genie du christianisme thrown into an objective form. As in the Epicurean of Thomas Moore, the professed design is the contrast between Paganism and Christianity, which fails of its purpose partly from the absence of real insight into the genius of antiquity, and partly because the heathen are the most interesting characters after all. Rene had appeared in 1802 as an episode of the Genie du christianisme, and was published separately at Leipzig
As a politician Chateaubriand was equally formidable to his antagonists when in opposition and to his friends when in office. His poetical receptivity and impressionableness rendered him no doubt honestly inconsistent with himself; his vanity and ambition, too morbidly acute to be restrained by the ties of party allegiance, made him dangerous and untrustworthy as a political associate. He was forbidden to deliver the address he had pre-pared (181r) for his reception to the Academy on M. J. Chenier on account of the bitter allusions to Napoleon contained in it. From this date until 1814 Chateaubriand lived in seclusion at the Vallee-aux-loups, an estate he had bought in 1807 at Aulnay. His pamphlet De Bonaparte, des Bourbons, et de la necessite de se rallier a nos princes legitintes, published on the 31st of March 1814, the day of the entrance of the allies into Paris, was as opportune in the moment of its appearance as the Genie du christianisme, and produced a hardly less signal effect. Louis XVIII. declared that it had been worth a hundred thousand men to him. Chateaubriand, as minister of the interior, accompanied him to Ghent
After the fall of his opponent, the duc Decazes, Chateaubriand obtained the Berlin embassy (1821), from which he was transferred to London (1822), and he also acted as French plenipotentiary at the Congress of Verona (1822). He here made himself mainly responsible for the iniquitous invasion of Spainan expedition undertaken, as he himself admits, with the idea of restoring French prestige by a military parade. He next received the portfolio of foreign affairs, which he soon lost by his desertion of his colleagues on the question of a reduction of the interest
Chateaubriand ranks rather as a great rhetorician than as a great poet. Something of affectation or unreality commonly interferes with the enjoyment of his finest works. The Genie du christianisme is a brilliant piece of special pleading; Atala is marred by its unfaithfulness to the truth of uncivilized human nature, Rene by the perversion of sentiment which solicits sympathy for a contemptible character. Chateaubriand is chiefly significant as marking the transition from the old classical to the modern romantic school. The fertility of ideas, vehemence of expression and luxury of natural description, which he shares with the romanticists, are controlled by a discipline learnt in the school of their predecessors. His palette, always brilliant, is never gaudy; he is not merely a painter but an artist. He is also a master of epigrammatic and incisive sayings. Perhaps, however, the most truly characteristic feature of his genius is the peculiar magical touch which Matthew Arnold indicated as anote of Celtic extraction, which reveals some occult quality in a familiar object, or tinges it, one knows not how, with " the light that never was on sea or land." This incommunicable gift supplies an element of sincerity to Chateaubriand's writings which goes far to redeem the artificial effect of his calculated sophistry and set declamation. It is also fortunate for his fame that so large a part of his writings should directly or indirectly refer to himself, for on this theme he always writes well. Egotism was his master-passion, and beyond his intrepidity and the loftiness of his intellectual carriage his character presents little to admire. He is a signal instance of the compatibility of genuine poetic emotion, of sympathy with the grander aspects both of man and nature, and of munificence in pecuniary matters, with absorption in self and general sterility of heart. Chateaubriand (6 vols., 1902), by A. Teixeira de Mattos, based on the admirable edition (4 vols., 18991901) of Edmond Bit-6. This work should be supplemented by the Souvenirs et correspondences tires des papiers de M1Lo Recamier (2 vols., 1859, ed. Mme Ch. Lenormant). See also Comte de Marcellus, Chateaubriand et son temps (1859); the same editor's Souvenirs diplomatiques; correspondance intime de Chateaubriand (1858) ; C. A. Sainte-Beuve, Chateaubriand et son groupe litteraire sous l'empire (2 vols., 1861, new and revised ed., 3 vols., 1872) ; other articles by Sainte-Beuve, who was in this case a somewhat prejudiced critic, in the Portraits contemporains, vols. i. and H..; Causeries du lundi, vols. i., ii. and x.; Nouveaux Lundis, vol. iii.; Premiers Lundis, vol. iii. ; A. Vinet, Etudes sur la litt. frangaise au XIXe siecle (1849) ; M. de Lescure, Chateaubriand (1892), in the Grands ecrivains francais; Emile Faguet, Etudes litteraires sur le XIXe siecle (1887) ; and Essai d'une bio-bibliographie de Chateaubriand et de sa famille (Vannes, 1896), by Rene Kerviler. Joseph Bedier, in Etudes critiques (1903), deals with the American writings. Some correspondence with Sainte-Beuve was edited by Louis Thomas in 1904, and some letters to Mme de Stael appeared in the Revue des deux mondes (Oct. 1903). End of Article: CHATEAUBRIAND, FRANCOIS RENE, VICOMTE DE (17681848) If you wish, you can link directly to this article.
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