Germaine de Staël
Encyclopædia Britannica Article
Germaine de Staël
born April 22, 1766, Paris, Fr.
died July 14, 1817, Paris
Germaine de Staël, portrait by Jean-Baptiste Isabey, 1810; in the Louvre, Paris
Giraudon/Art Resource, New York
in full Anne-Louise-Germaine Necker, Baronne (baroness) de Staël-Holstein , byname Madame de Staël French-Swiss woman of letters, political propagandist, and conversationalist, who epitomized the European culture of her time, bridging the history of ideas from Neoclassicism to Romanticism. She also gained fame by maintaining a salon for leading intellectuals. Her writings include novels, plays, moral and political essays, literary criticism, history, autobiographical memoirs, and even a number of poems. Her most important literary contribution was as a theorist of Romanticism.
Early life and family.
She was born Anne-Louise-Germaine Necker, the daughter of Swiss parents, in Paris. Her father was Jacques Necker, the Genevan banker who became finance minister to King Louis XVI; her mother, Suzanne Curchod, the daughter of a French-Swiss pastor, assisted her husband's career by establishing a brilliant literary and political salon in Paris.
The young Germaine Necker early gained a reputation for lively wit, if not for beauty. While still a child, she was to be seen in her mother's salon, listening to, and even taking part in, the conversation with that lively intellectual curiosity that was to remain her most attractive quality. When she was 16, her marriage began to be considered. William Pitt the Younger was regarded as a possible husband, but she disliked the idea of living in England. She was married in 1786 to the Swedish ambassador in Paris, Baron Erik de Staël-Holstein. It was a marriage of convenience and ended in 1797 in formal separation. There were, however, three children: Auguste (b. 1790), who edited his mother's complete works; Albert (b. 1792); and Albertine (b. 1796), who was allegedly fathered by Benjamin Constant.
Political views.
Before she was 21, Germaine de Staël had written a romantic drama, Sophie, ou les sentiments secrets (1786), and a tragedy inspired by Nicholas Rowe, Jane Gray (1790). But it was her Lettres sur les ouvrages et le caractère de J.-J. Rousseau (1788; Letters on the Works and the Character of J.-J. Rousseau) that made her known. There is in her thought an unusual and irreconcilable mixture of Rousseau's enthusiasm and Montesquieu's rationalism. Under the influence of her father, an admirer of Montesquieu, she adopted political views based on the English parliamentary monarchy. Favouring the French Revolution, she acquired a reputation for Jacobinism. Under the Convention, the elected body that abolished the monarchy, the moderate Girondin faction corresponded best to her ideas.
Protected by her husband's diplomatic status, she was in no danger in Paris until 1793, when she retreated to Coppet, Switz., the family residence near Geneva. It was here that she gained fame by establishing a meeting place for some of the leading intellectuals of western Europe. Since 1789 she had been the mistress of Louis de Narbonne, one of Louis XVI's last ministers. He took refuge in England in 1792, where she joined him in 1793. She stayed at Juniper Hall, near Mickleham in Surrey, a mansion that had been rented since 1792 by French émigrés. There she met Fanny Burney (later Mme d'Arblay), but their friendship was cut short because Mme de Staël's politics and morals were considered undesirable by good society in England.
She returned to France, via Coppet, at the end of the Terror in 1794. A brilliant period of her career then began. Her salon flourished, and she published several political and literary essays, notably De l'influence des passions sur le bonheur des individus et des nations (1796; A Treatise on the Influence of the Passions upon the Happiness of Individuals and of Nations), which became one of the important documents of European Romanticism. She began to study the new ideas that were being developed particularly in Germany. She read the elderly Swiss critic Karl Viktor von Bonstetten; the German philologist Wilhelm von Humboldt; and, above all, the brothers August Wilhelm and Friedrich von Schlegel, who were among the most influential German Romanticists.
But it was her new lover, Benjamin Constant, the author and politician, who influenced her most directly in favour of German culture. Her fluctuating liaison with Constant started in 1794 and lasted 14 years, although after 1806 her affections found little response.
Literary theories.
At about the beginning of 1800 the literary and political character of Mme de Staël's thought became defined. Her literary importance emerged in De la littérature considérée dans ses rapports avec les institutions sociales (1800; A Treatise of Ancient and Modern Literature and The Influence of Literature upon Society). This complex work, though not perfect, is rich in new ideas and new perspectives—new, at least to France. The fundamental theory, which was to be restated and developed in the positivism of Hippolyte Taine, is that a work must express the moral and historical reality, the zeitgeist, of the nation in which it is conceived. She also maintained that the Nordic and classical ideals were basically opposed and supported the Nordic, although her personal taste remained strongly classical. Her two novels, Delphine (1802) and Corinne (1807), to some extent illustrate her literary theories, the former being strongly sociological in outlook, while the latter shows the clash between Nordic and southern mentalities.
Banishment from Paris.
She was also an important political figure and was regarded by contemporary Europe as the personal enemy of Napoleon. With Constant and his friends she formed the nucleus of a liberal resistance that so embarrassed Napoleon that in 1803 he had her banished to a distance of 40 miles (64 km) from Paris. Thenceforward Coppet was her headquarters, and in 1804 she began what she called, in a work published posthumously in 1821, her Dix Années d'exil (Ten Years' Exile). From December 1803 to April 1804 she made a journey through Germany, culminating in a visit to Weimar, already established as the shrine of J.W. von Goethe and Friedrich von Schiller. In Berlin she met August Wilhelm von Schlegel, who was to become, after 1804, her frequent companion and counselor. Her guide in Germany, however, was a young Englishman, Henry Crabb Robinson, who was studying at Jena. The journey was interrupted in 1804 by news of the death of her father, whom she had always greatly admired. His death affected her deeply, but in 1805 she set out for Italy, accompanied by Schlegel and Simonde de Sismondi, the Genevan economist who was her guide on the journey. Returning in June 1805, she spent the next seven years of her exile from Paris for the most part at Coppet.
While Corinne can be considered the result of her Italian journey, the fruits of her visit to Germany are contained in her most important work, De l'Allemagne (1810; Germany). This is a serious study of German manners, literature and art, philosophy and morals, and religion in which she made known to her contemporaries the Germany of the Sturm und Drang movement (1770–1780). Its only fault is the distorted picture it gives, ignoring, for example, the violently nationalistic aspect of German Romanticism. Napoleon took it for an anti-French work, and the French edition of 1810 (10,000 copies) was seized and destroyed. It was finally published in England in 1813.
Meanwhile Mme de Staël, persecuted by the police, fled from Napoleon's Europe. Having married, in 1811, a young Swiss officer, “John” Rocca, in May 1812 she went to Austria and, after visiting Russia, Finland, and Sweden, arrived, in June 1813, in England. She was received with enthusiasm, although reproached by such liberals as Lord Byron for being more anti-Napoleonic than liberal and by the Tories for being too liberal. Her guide in England was Sir James Mackintosh, the Scottish publicist. She collected documents for, but never wrote, a De l'Angleterre: (the material for it can be found in the Considérations sur la Révolution française [1818; Considerations on the Principal Events of the French Revolution], which represents a return to Necker's ideas and holds up the English political system as a model for France).
On the Bourbon Restoration in 1814, Mme de Staël returned to Paris but was deeply disillusioned: the fall of Napoleon had been followed by foreign occupation and had in no way reestablished liberty in France. During the Hundred Days she escaped to Coppet and in September 1815 set out again for Italy. In 1816 she returned to spend the summer at Coppet, where she was joined by Byron, in flight from England after his unhappy matrimonial experience. A strong friendship developed between the two writers.
Mme de Staël's health was declining. After Byron's departure she went to Paris for the winter. Though poorly received by the returned émigrés and suspected by the government, she held her salon throughout the winter and part of the spring, but after April 1817 she was an invalid. She died in Paris in July of that year.
Assessment
Germaine de Staël's purely literary importance is far exceeded by her importance in the history of ideas. Her novels and plays are now largely forgotten, but the value of her critical and historical work is undeniable. Though careless of detail, she had a clear vision of wider issues and of the achievements of civilization. Her involvement in, and understanding of, the events and tendencies of her time gave her an unusual position: it may be said that she helped the dawning 19th century to take stock of itself.
Robert Escarpit
Additional Reading
J. Christopher Herold, Mistress to an Age: A Life of Madame de Staël (1958, reissued 1981), is an excellent English-language introduction to Staëlian studies. Renee Winegarten, Mme. de Staël (1985), places the writer in her historical context and assesses her works. Madelyn Gutwirth, Madame de Staël, Novelist: The Emergence of the Artist as Woman (1978), thoughtfully and lucidly examines the impact of the writer's femaleness on her works as well as on her critics. Charlotte Hogsett, The Literary Existence of Germaine de Staël (1987), traces the development of her style.
- Re: Germaine de Staëlposted on 06/07/2008
Why Germaine de Staël ? Touche能否多说几个字?
我是今天才把拿破仑谱系头一回弄清。
- Re: Germaine de Staëlposted on 06/08/2008
I was reading Borges on Edward Gibbon and learnt that Gibbon's only romance was with Mme de Staël's mother.
I've long been fascinated by star-studded women like Mme de Staël, Lou Andreas-Salomé, etc. Each was at the center of a group of famous men of their time. For someone interested in intellectual history, few things appear more juicy and rewarding than sorting out these intellectual and relationship matrices.
Juicier details in coming week.
- posted on 06/08/2008
Michael Dirda
How two intellectuals fell into scandalous love in post-Revolutionary France.
By Michael Dirda
Sunday, June 8, 2008; BW10
GERMAINE DE STAËL & BENJAMIN CONSTANT
A Dual Biography
By Renee Winegarten
Yale Univ. 343 pp. $35
The poet Sappho, the composer Hildegarde von Bingen, the painter Artemisia Gentileschi, the novelist Marie Madeleine de La Fayette, the professional author Aphra Behn -- these are just a few of the earliest women of artistic genius and achievement. In some fashion, they each found ways to realize themselves as creative spirits, despite societies that would have happily relegated them to the long-established female supporting roles of nun, wife, mother and -- the best deal -- society hostess.
The world has long been able to accept the occasional woman artist, ideally a love poet pressing a thorn to her soft bosom and then recording her cries of sweet pain. The daughters of Eve were thought to have been subject to emotion and feeling, while the sons of Adam governed through noble reason and thought. As a result, any woman before the last part of the 20th century who actually dared to think aloud about social issues, to speculate about philosophical questions or to set herself up as a public intellectual found herself deemed somehow unnatural: a man-woman, a kind of hermaphrodite, a freak. Even now, Hillary Clinton occasionally suffers this disparagement. Such patristic labeling plagued the careers of such polymaths as Simone de Beauvoir and Hannah Arendt, and before them of Mary Ann Evans (aka George Eliot) and, the first great woman intellectual of modern times, Germaine de Staël. Surely, they wouldn't have squawked so much if they'd just been prettier or more feminine!
Germaine de Staël (1766-1817) wasn't considered good-looking, but she possessed real charisma, as well as brains and money. Her father was Jacques Necker, the finance minister of France, at once rich, astute and intellectual, while her mother, nee Suzanne Curchod, remains famous to all students of 18th-century English literature. When Curchod was an impoverished girl in Switzerland, a young Englishman of scholarly bent fell in love with her and proposed. But the match was forbidden by the young man's father. Years later, Edward Gibbon, the historian of the Roman Empire, wrote in his memoirs: "I sighed as a lover, I obeyed as a son." Clearly, Suzanne Curchod attracted men of genius and, from her, Germaine learned stern self-discipline and devotion to principles and duty. Both parents adored their only child, and from an early age she was allowed to hone her wit and conversation in their salon.
After entering into what was essentially a marriage of convenience with a Swedish diplomat, Germaine soon made her new name famous throughout Europe. As Madame de Staël, she brought out such ground-breaking books as On Literature Considered in its Relationship to Social Institutions; a bestselling novel about a "liberated" woman, Corinne, or Italy; the posthumous Considerations on the Principal Events of the French Revolution; and, perhaps most enduringly, a pivotal classic of cultural criticism, On Germany, in which she contrasted that country's romantic enthusiasm and soulfulness with the chilly classicism and Cartesian rationality promulgated in France.
Still, Germaine de Staël was more than just a writer. She was first of all a political animal, a defender of civil liberties and Napoleon's bête noire. Her public life was completely entangled with the French Revolution and its aftermath. During the Terror she secreted aristocratic friends in the Swedish embassy. During the early days of the republic she entertained movers and shakers at her salon, helping to launch, in particular, the career of Talleyrand, a name second only to that of Machiavelli in the pantheon of Realpolitik. (When asked what he did during the Revolution and Terror, Talleyrand is reported to have answered: "J'ai survécu" -- I survived.) But early on, this formidable woman's free-thinking and liberal ideas antagonized the ambitious General Bonaparte. By the time the First Consul crowned himself emperor in 1804, de Staël had been exiled from Paris.
But she did not repine. She traveled throughout Europe -- visiting Goethe and Schiller in Weimar, studying the art of Italy -- and she established a dazzling salon at her father's house in Coppet, Switzerland. There, one might find the historian Sismondi, the scholar-intellectuals (and brothers) Friedrich and August von Schlegel (the latter penned a letter in which he promised to be de Staël's slave for life), and the most beautiful woman of her era, Juliette Récamier. De Staël's best friend, Récamier remains legendary to this day because of the magnificent portrait by Jacque-Louis David showing the classically gowned beauty reclining on a chaise lounge. While the two women were both inveterately flirtatious, Récamier bestowed her favors on no one, not even her husband: She lived in a mariage blanc -- an unconsummated marriage -- with a man rumored to be her biological father. Her mother's onetime lover had married her during the Terror as a way of insuring that she would inherit his fortune if he were guillotined. Only at the age of 40 did Récamier enter into a passionate love affair with the most famous writer in France, Chateaubriand. But that's another story.
Necker, Talleyrand, Napoleon, the Schlegels and Récamier were important players in the drama of Germaine de Staël's life, but all of them were unexpectedly overshadowed by its male lead, the Swiss liberal thinker and novelist Benjamin Constant (1767-1830). After an apparently platonic relationship with Isabelle de Charrière -- see Geoffrey Scott's classic The Portrait of Zelide for more about this fascinating woman, once courted by James Boswell -- the young Constant fell hard for de Staël's sparkling eyes and wit. But she viewed him as faintly comic and made fun of his puppyish devotion. Still, Constant persisted. He grew melodramatically impassioned, hinted at suicide, and finally she surrendered. Their subsequent life together -- from roughly 1794 to 1811 -- brought them intense joy and then deep suffering. (She had separated from her husband in 1796.)
They also became Europe's leading power couple, likened by author Renee Winegarten to Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre in the mid-20th century. They shared liberal principles, and de Staël's enthusiasm would fire up the often vacillating and indecisive Constant. Through her efforts he found places in various post-Revolutionary governments, where he spoke up for civil liberties and what we think of as First Amendment rights. His Principles of Politics remains one of the fundamental works of modern liberalism. He yearned for real power, but he never became much more than an influential figure in various legislative assemblies, both during and after Napoleon.
Constant, though, wasn't just a pioneer in the development of modern political thought. His short novel Adolphe stands as one of the glories of French fiction. In it he traces a love affair (partly based on his own with de Staël) and portrays its progress and decay with merciless clarity. The young Adolphe exerts all his powers to seduce Ellénore and finally succeeds in persuading her to abandon a settled life, her two children, everything, for him. At first, he is delighted by her constant shower of affection, then annoyed and finally bored and resentful. Under onslaught from his disapproving father, Adolphe comes to feel that he is shackled to an unworthy woman he doesn't really care for. And yet Ellénore has sacrificed so much for him -- how can he abandon her now? The two live on in an agony of non-communication, without intimacy, each in growing despair. Finally, Ellénore dies -- and only then does Adolphe realize that without this woman his life is absolutely meaningless.
Winegarten tells the story of de Staël and Constant's "marriage of true minds" with absorbing detail. Her format requires her to tick-tock back and forth between her two subjects, and this at times can feel a little mechanical. She also resolutely focuses on the complexities of their relationship and public lives, deliberately scanting any extended engagement with their writing. Yet de Staël's books about literature and Germany merit rediscovery. As it is, they have fallen into the sad category of works read by students of European romanticism and by almost nobody else.
For many readers, I suspect that the names Germaine de Staël and Benjamin Constant are, in effect, just names. If that's the case, take heart: Renee Winegarten's fine dual biography will bring them to blazing life. ·
Michael Dirda's e-mail address is mdirda@gmail.com.
- posted on 06/08/2008
But she did not repine. She traveled throughout Europe -- visiting Goethe and Schiller in Weimar, studying the art of Italy -- and she established a dazzling salon at her father's house in Coppet, Switzerland.
今天看三部曲电影SISI,她也是够风度,够魅力。
当斯卡拉歌剧院迎宾曲从海顿作的奥国歌变换成纳布科的奴隶大合唱
,她丝毫不惊,带头拍手。我觉得城府不深,也许是不懂,这个最好
了--天真。。。难得的女性!
歌德贝多芬间还有一个贝蒂娜,也是够风度的!
- Re: Speak of Coincident!posted on 06/09/2008
花了时间做了家庭作业,很收获啊。
谁讲讲她和拿破仑之间的故事?我没搞得太明白。 - Re: Speak of Coincident!posted on 06/09/2008
Staël, Salomé,maya,
a line?:) - posted on 06/09/2008
关于她和拿破仑,目前我所知的只有以下一些。如另有鱼腥,容后在补。
关于斯泰尔夫人的老爸内克尔,拿破仑有这么句话,“法国革命,内克尔比任何人的责任都大。”意思是作为国家财务主管,内克尔对造成法国革命的财政危机负有主要责任。
斯泰尔夫人的牛逼之处,从这里也可看出:她被认为是拿破仑的私敌。斯泰尔夫人倾向英国式的自由派立宪民主,是拿破仑的政敌。拿破仑下令拒她于巴黎四十英里之外。
有个广为流传的逸闻:斯泰尔夫人问拿破仑什么样的女人是好女人。拿破仑挖苦说小孩生的多的就是好女人。
事实上,斯泰尔夫人不到三十岁就有了三个孩子。而拿破仑的女人屡试不爽。
现在女权主义者们认为斯泰尔夫人是她们的先驱之一。;)
July wrote:
花了时间做了家庭作业,很收获啊。
谁讲讲她和拿破仑之间的故事?我没搞得太明白。 - posted on 06/09/2008
这样,我也怀疑起拿破仑二世的来历了。不过拿破仑行军太累,吃食
不够(马上午餐),休息也不够(往往真的五分钟一盹)。
touche wrote:
关于她和拿破仑,目前我所知的只有以下一些。如另有鱼腥,容后在补。
关于斯泰伊尔夫人的老爸内克尔,拿破仑有这么句话,“法国革命,内克尔比任何人的责任都大。”意思是作为国家财务主管,内克尔对造成法国革命的财政危机负有主要责任。
斯泰伊尔夫人的牛逼之处,从这里也可看出:她被认为是拿破仑的私敌。斯泰伊尔夫人倾向英国式的自由派立宪民主,是拿破仑的政敌。拿破仑下令拒她于巴黎四十英里之外。
有个广为流传的逸闻:斯泰伊尔夫人问拿破仑什么样的女人是好女人。拿破仑挖苦说小孩生的多的就是好女人。
事实上,斯泰伊尔夫人不到三十岁就有了三个孩子。而拿破仑的女人屡试不爽。
现在女权主义者们认为斯泰伊尔夫人是她们的先驱之一。;)
July wrote:
花了时间做了家庭作业,很收获啊。
谁讲讲她和拿破仑之间的故事?我没搞得太明白。 - posted on 06/10/2008
哈哈,看来是拿破仑屡试不爽哈。
这个斯泰伊尔夫人的妈妈是个美人,斯泰伊尔夫人像爹,比妈妈差远了。
xw wrote:
这样,我也怀疑起拿破仑二世的来历了。不过拿破仑行军太累,吃食
不够(马上午餐),休息也不够(往往真的五分钟一盹)。
touche wrote:
关于她和拿破仑,目前我所知的只有以下一些。如另有鱼腥,容后在补。
有个广为流传的逸闻:斯泰伊尔夫人问拿破仑什么样的女人是好女人。拿破仑挖苦说小孩生的多的就是好女人。
事实上,斯泰伊尔夫人不到三十岁就有了三个孩子。而拿破仑的女人屡试不爽。
现在女权主义者们认为斯泰伊尔夫人是她们的先驱之一。;)
July wrote:
花了时间做了家庭作业,很收获啊。
谁讲讲她和拿破仑之间的故事?我没搞得太明白。
Please paste HTML code and press Enter.
(c) 2010 Maya Chilam Foundation