The Birth of European Romanticism: Truth and Propaganda in Staël's 'De l'Allemagne', 1810-1813 (Cambridge Studies in French)

It was through Stael's best-seller De VAllemagne that the term 'Romanticism', coined in Germany, reached Europe and America. Around this term, Stael built a new and universal agenda: her manifesto offered Napoleon's Europe an alternative to everything he stood for. The new universe she revealed helped to bury the neo-classical world and to shape the nineteenth century. In this ground-breaking work, Dr Isbell reasserts Stael's place in history and analyses her vast agenda, which covers every Classical and Romantic divide in art, philosophy, religion and society from 1789 to 1815. This investigation sheds new light upon the two different revolutions that created modern Europe, seen here by a leader of both.

CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN FRENCH 4 9

THE BIRTH OF EUROPEAN ROMANTICISM

CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN FRENCH

General editor: Malcolm Bowie (All Souls College, Oxford) Editorial Board: R. Howard Bloch (University of California, Berkeley), Terence Cave (St John's College, Oxford), Ross Chambers (University of Michigan), Antoine Compagnon (Columbia University), Peter France (University of Edinburgh), Toril Moi (Duke University), Naomi Schor (Duke University) Recent titles in this series include 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48.

Christopher Johnson: System and Writing in the Philosophy of Jacques Derrida Carol A. Mossman: Politics and Narratives of Birth: Gynocolonizationfrom Rousseau to £ola Daniel Brewer: The Discourse of Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century France: Diderot and the Art of Philosophizing Roberta L. Krueger: Women Readers and the Ideology of Gender in Old French Verse Romance James H. Reid: Narration and Description in the French Realist Novel: The Temporality of Lying and Forgetting Eugene W. Holland: Baudelaire and Schizoanalysis: The Sociopoetics of Modernism Hugh M. Davidson: Pascal and the Arts of the Mind David J . Denby: Sentimental Narrative and the Social Order in France, 1J60-1820: A Politics of Tears Claire Addison: Where Flaubert Lies: Chronology, Mythology and History A complete list of books in the series is given at the end of the volume

THE BIRTH OF EUROPEAN ROMANTICISM Truth and propaganda in StaeVs 'De VAllemagne\ 1810-1813

JOHN CLAIBORNE ISBELL Assistant Professor in French, Indiana University at Bloomington

I I CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521433594 © Cambridge University Press 1994 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 1994 This digitally printed first paperback version 2006 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Isbell, John Claiborne. The birth of European Romanticism: truth and propaganda in StaeTs De PAllemagne / John Claiborne Isbell. p. cm. - (Cambridge studies in French: 49) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0 521 43359 2 (hardback) 1. Stael Madame de (Anne-Louise-Germaine), 1766-1817 - Knowledge Germany. 2. Stael, Madame de (Anne-Louise-Germaine), 1766-1817. De PAllemagne. 3. French literature — German influences. 4. Germany in literature. 5. Romanticism — Europe. 6. Romanticism — France. I. Title. II. Series. PQ2431.Z5182 1994 848'.609-dc20 93-38834 CIP ISBN-13 978-0-521-43359-4 hardback ISBN-10 0-521-43359-2 hardback ISBN-13 978-0-521-03200-1 paperback ISBN-10 0-521-03200-8 paperback

I dedicate thisfruit of seven years' effort to those who made writing it possible, and to those who may read it and go beyond it in the future.

Un republicain ecrit, combat ou gouverne selon les circonstances et les dangers de sa patrie. (Mme de Stael)

Contents

Acknowledgements List of abbreviations Author's note

page

Introduction 1

x xi xiii i

Birth of a nation - Stael's Romantic Germany in 1810

10

2

Romantic literature and politics

55

3

Philosophy and ethics in Napoleonic Europe

108

4

Religion, love, enthusiasm - a new Enlightenment

165

Conclusion

216

Appendix: De VAllemagne titles and dates Notes Bibliography Index

222 224 253 265

IX

Acknowledgements

This book owes its existence to a great number of people. The Universities of Paris and Durham offered me posts which helped pay for this, as did Trinity College, Cambridge, and Cambridge Arts. From Cambridge, I want to thank David Kelley, Roger Paulin and Alison Fairlie, who never got to see this in print; Marian Jeanneret; Peter Bayley; Philip Gaskell and the University and Trinity College Librarians; Ralph Leigh, whom I never met; Malcolm Bowie, Kate Brett and Cambridge University Press. Giles Barber at the Taylorean Institution, Oxford, and Friedrich Izak at the Universitatsbibliothek Wien went out of their way to solve my problems, as did the John Murray publishing house, who allowed me to cite their 1813 ledgers. French Studies allowed me to publish a revised Faust section from their October 1991 issue, 417-34. Within the Societe staelienne, Simone Balaye and Frank Bowman in particular have given me invaluable advice over the years, while M. and Mme d'Haussonville have generously allowed me to consult and cite from three further sets of 1810 proofs for De VAllemagne in their possession. I also want to thank Norman King and Georges Solovieff, and seven authors in particular: W. H. Bruford and Auguste Viatte; Pierre Kohler, I. A. Henning; Beatrice Jasinski and Mme Jean de Pange; and Karl Popper, on whom I built the framework of my thought, such as it is. Finally, private thanks to all who put up with me: my father, friends and family, and Georgina who had five years of this.

Abbreviations

AEM

BJV CA CG CMH

Schiller, Briefe uber die Asthetische Erziehung des Menschen, 1795-6, in his Sdmtliche Werke (1965-7), v 570-669. Bibliotheque nationale, Paris. Stael, Des circonstances actuelles [...], 1799; 1979Correspondance generate de Madame de Stael, 1960- . The Cambridge Modern History, 1906; 14 vols., 1934, IX.

CRF DA DxA DL Esprit Genie IP JA KPV KRV KU LR NCMH

Stael, Considerations sur [...] la Revolution frangoise, 3 vols., 1818. Stael, De VAllemagne, 1810-1813; 5 vols., 1958-60. Stael, Dix annees d'exil, 1821; 1966. Stael, De la litterature [...], 1800; 1959. Montesquieu, De Vesprit des lois, 1748; 2 vols., 1961. Chateaubriand, Le Genie du christianisme, 1802; 1978. Stael, De ['influence des passions [...], 1796. Stael, Journal sur VAllemagne, 1803-4, in Les Carnets de Voyage de Madame de Stael (1971), 21-92. Kant, Kritik derpraktischen Vernunft, 1781; 1961. Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 1788; 1985. Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft, 1790; 1968. Stael, Lettres sur les ouvrages et le caractere de JeanJacques Rousseau, 1788. The New Cambridge Modern History, 14 vols. (I957"79)> XI

xii Necker NSD OC OCFL RHLF RLMC

List of abbreviations Stael, Du caractere de M. Necker [...], in her Manuscrits de M. Necker•, An XIII/1804. Schiller, Uber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung, 1796, in his Sdmtliche Werke (1965-7), v 694-780. Stael, (Euvres completes, 18 vols., 1820-1. The Oxford Companion to French Literature, 1959. Revue d3histoire de la languefrangaise. Rivista di letterature moderne e comparate.

Author's note

All uncredited translations and italics are my own. De VAllemagne references follow the five-volume Pange-Balaye edition (1958-60), giving volume, page and line number, thus: (iv 37/4). Text in quotations is untouched, except for StaePs spelling - here modernised - and editorial interventions in square brackets. These include verifiable textual errors in italics, common in De VAllemagne after Paris 1814 - a text regrettably chosen as source in 1958. The two London 1813 editions contain StaePs last revisions, and fewer misprints. Stael herself wrote j'etois and rqy, but mouvements; see Simone Balaye's 'Liste des particularites orthographiques' in Les Carnets de voyage de Madame de Stael (Geneve 1971), 488-9.

Xlll

Introduction

The sciences have always owed their origin to some great spirit. Smith created political economy; Linnaeus, botany; Lavoisier, chemistry; and Madame de Stael has, in like manner, created the art of analyzing the spirit of nations and the springs which move them. Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, 4 (December 1818), p. 278

Francis Jeffrey of the Edinburgh Review was arguably the most prestigious critic in the English-speaking world in the first two decades of the nineteenth century. In September 1818, he called Mme de Stael 'the most brilliant writer that has appeared in our days'. In the age of Wordsworth and Byron, Goethe and Chateaubriand, the remark may seem shocking to modern eyes. But that brief judgement can be better situated through the words of the novelist Fanny Burney, when she first read De I'Allemagne: 'Such acuteness of thought, such vivacity of ideas, and such brilliancy of expression, I know not where I have met before. I often lay the book down to enjoy for a considerable time a single sentence. I have rarely, even in the course of my whole life, read anything with so glowing a fulness of applause.' 1 In Romantic Europe, Stael's fame needed no introduction. And her works, now emerging from recent neglect, also directly touch our modern world: what do we mean, after all, by Romantic literature and civilisation? Literature itself is only a fraction of this vast panorama. Our entire society is shaped by Romantic beliefs, ranging from the bodice-rippers of Mills and Boon to the academies' endless stream of original doctoral

2

The birth of European Romanticism

theses - a supremely Romantic critical approach, quite alien to the physician's job of acquiring a body of knowledge. Between these extremes of pleasure and would-be science lie the horizons of our Romantic age, from continued nationalism in the Balkans to heroes in the newspapers. Yet our understandable urge to trace the origins of our Romantic society is quickly faced with a bizarre anomaly: the radical divergence, in different countries and disciplines, between what each means by 'Romantic' preoccupations. This is nowhere more evident than when comparing the Germans who invented the term with their successors from Boston to St Petersburg. German Romantic thought was already highly developed, and sold well at home, before 1800, the year Friedrich Schlegel set up his epochal Classical/Romantic distinction. In England, Wordsworth and Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads date from 1798. Even in Italy and Russia, Leopardi and Pushkin were famous by 1820. Why then does France alone generally date Romanticism from as late as 1830, year of the 'bataille d'Hernani'? These Romantic questions led me to De VAllemagne. This, after all, was Europe and America's introduction to the German revolution; published in 1813 by one of the most eminent writers then living, who counted Schiller, Goethe and Schlegel among her personal friends. Let us, then, look for a moment at the origins of Europe's wide-ranging Romantic movements. England, 1820. Dating the word 'Romantic' in its modern sense, the new OED cites not the Lyrical Ballads, but Byron's rejected dedication to Goethe for Marino Falieri, 1820, not published until 1899. Byron knew Stael intimately; he spent 1816 rowing back and forth across Lake Geneva to dine with her. In 1813, seven years before Byron wrote, John Murray's English translation of De VAllemagne had sold 2,250 copies. This was a huge print run for a three-volume work, and it had a linchpin chapter expressly to define the term; his simultaneous first French edition of 1,500 sold out in three days, and he brought out a second six weeks later. Visibly it is time for the OED to revise their reference. At the birth of English Romanticism stands a foreigner, Mme de Stael, her pivotal role as yet uncredited by modern English historians. 2

Introduction

3

Italy, 1818. Leopardi, father of Italian Romanticism, completes his early manifesto, Discours d'un Italien sur la poesie romantique. This text adapts his two rejected letters to Acerbi's Biblioteca italiana, an extended reply to Stael's Sulla maniera e la utilita delle Traduzioni, which opened Acerbi's first issue. Leopardi here defines his new national agenda in reaction to Mme de Stael. In 1821, he admits that reading Stael first turned him toward philosophy. He ranks her with Descartes, Pascal and Rousseau among the greatest of modern philosophers. 3 Russia, 1825. Reading Muchanov's critique of Stael, Pushkin remarks, 'Mme de Stael is ours, do not touch her!' He is angry enough to publish an article honouring this extraordinary woman; citing a friend, he calls her 'the first to render full justice to the Russian people'. Durylin goes on to discuss 'the profound influence of Mme de Stael on Pushkin and all the liberal group of his period'. 4 Boston, 1836. In the United States, Muller-Vollmer amply demonstrates that De VAllemagne circumscribes, for early American writers and thinkers, 'the orbit within which they would advance their own aesthetic program and create their own peculiar discourse'. He gives details on Thoreau and on Margaret Fuller, the Yankee Corinna; as further proof, he offers close analysis of Emerson's famous 1836 essay Nature, 'the inaugural text of New England Transcendentalism', and its massive debts to Stael. He concludes, 'it seems curious that the important role Stael played [...] has escaped the attention of cultural and literary historians for so long'. 5 Here in short are three fathers of their nations' Romantic movements, Leopardi, Pushkin and Emerson, defining their new nationality in terms of Stael the foreigner. Indeed, she coined the word. Our opening motto underlines modern nationalism's debts to this cosmopolitan, herself an early victim of the monster she helped create: who wants to date their nationalism from a foreign aristocrat? Indeed, France itself has shown routine indifference to this Swiss Protestant: the last thirty years of doctorates on her come almost without exception from abroad. Yet Stael's massive

4

The birth of European Romanticism

importance in French cultural history is impossible to dispute. Here too, despite some fundamental documentation, there is far more to be said: for instance, that De VAllemagne^ huge though it is, had twenty-five French editions alone in 1813-83, not counting foreign and pirate editions, or that ten of these were under Napoleon III. These chapters also give snapshots of her influence on any number of nineteenth-century French writers, a vast and barely touched terrain. Sainte-Beuve wrote a book's worth of articles on her; Cousin and Guizot reflect her thought, Vinet and Faguet wrote on her, Renan and Carlyle found their vocation after reading De VAllemagne. There are clear echoes of De VAllemagne in writers from Balzac to Baudelaire. Even in Germany, where Friedrich Schlegel created Stael's Classical/Romantic distinction, Goethe writes in 1814 that her book has 'a wondrous effect'. As we line up the great names of Romantic Europe, we find Mme de Stael at their shoulder. This sort of European fame was unthinkable for Stendhal or Chateaubriand: Stael had access to it because of the very cosmopolitanism she helped destroy.6 Clearly Stael was not the first writer outside Germany to publish a 'Romantic' book. Her originality is this, and I have not seen it thus formulated before. She found scattered, local and half-formed agendas, from Wordsworth to Chateaubriand, still defined within the ambit of neoclassicism; she brought them a single name, Romanticism; a fuller sense of nationhood; a point by point description of the movement's radical novelty, extending from religion to the sciences; and terms that allowed it to be adapted for use from Boston to Moscow. This global coherence was not the Germans', it was her own. In brief: Stael took the German term 'Romantic' as a perfect label for her own global agenda, and sold this private agenda to Europe's half-formed anti-Classical reactions. She thereby invented a European Romanticism, flying her colours or reacting to them: we ignore her at our peril. These unavoidable facts I leave to the attention of national historians, since her role in each of these countries merits a book in itself. Here, I can only clear a path, proving StaePs European importance, and reviewing this sweeping agenda which helped shape the modern world.

Introduction

5

De I'Allemagne's new Romanticism is propaganda. It is full of deliberate lies, and dangerously Revolutionary. Art equals politics in Stael's manifesto, which explains an event unique in the annals of literary criticism: the book's pulping by Napoleon's troops in 1810. In Stael's words, her text was transformed 'en un carton parfaitement blanc sur lequel aucune trace de la raison humaine n'est restee' (1 4/11). There were no such troops to disrupt the dandies at the 1830 'bataille d'Hernani'; Steinwachs in post-war East Germany calls Stael's institution theory 'the first and [...] at the same time also the last attempt, to bind literature and society in a universal historical perspective'. It is that very universalism, that heritage of Enlightenment and Revolution, which puts Stael among the last of the

philosophes.1

In fairness, Stael chose propaganda in 1810 because no choice was left her, as our epigraph remarks: 'un republicain ecrit, combat ou gouverne selon les circonstances et les dangers de sa patrie' (CA 274). Europe belonged to Napoleon, a parody of internationalism; French borders stretched from Dubrovnik to the Baltic. For Stael to make her own conquest of Europe's still-Classical public; to offer them a new world, in all its otherness; even to escape the Imperial Censor; lies would be necessary. Faced with Napoleon's dead European hegemony, Stael uses her works, her only weapon, to assemble her own living Europe of the imagination. She creates a federation of organic national cultures, which does much to explain her European impact. De VAllemagne is the coping-stone of her edifice, a breathtaking attempt to describe the entirety of a nation - from geography to metaphysics - and to fuse this encyclopaedic material into a single coherent block. Napoleon shored up his conquests with a marriage of expediency, Catholic neoclassicism at home and the annihilation of nations abroad. Stael's Romantic nationalism proudly defies them both. She thus offers a unique perspective on a unique and exhilarating moment in history. Disenfranchised leader of the Revolution, correspondent of Goethe, Byron and heads of state from Jefferson to Tsar Alexander I, Stael looks out from her Genevan exile over France's vast European Empire, and asks for something better. Her contemporaries - Stendhal,

6

The birth of European Romanticism

Senancour, Chateaubriand - supported Napoleon or stood by in silence, like Stendhal watching Moscow burn. Hence, Mme de Chastenay: 'Bonaparte had so persecuted her that people said that in Europe one had to count three Great Powers: England, Russia, and Mme de Stael.' Chapter 2 assesses the real extent of Stael's political influence: Wellington paid court to her in Paris in 1814, and Napoleon's Minister of Police blamed her for Napoleon's downfall.8 This book examines Stael's universal Romantic agenda. Four chapters echo De I'Allemagne's division into four great Parties, on the German nation and customs, literature and the arts, philosophy and ethics, and religion and enthusiasm. Stael's 1,200—page manifesto has been reviewed in short articles since its 1813 publication, a method which has overlooked the immense propagandist synthesis at the heart of her undertaking: Romanticism sprang fully formed from Mme de Stael's head. Such short articles are also self-generating: take any author Stael names, find a dozen similarities among her book's 1,200 pages, and announce a new source for the woman's ideas, a new contribution to Romantic history. As Karl Popper remarks, thus collecting echoes while ignoring differences is the opposite of scientific method, however much we dress our argument in jargon. These four chapters will attempt to apply scientific analysis in the Popperian sense to questions of where our European Romanticism originates, hoping to show by example that a truism taken for granted by the scientific community is indeed applicable to literary criticism as such. Only by thus recombining art, science and politics can we hope to reflect the immense scope of the Romantic revolution. In 1810, what we so blithely call 'Germany' did not exist, and Stael's first job was to invent it. Chapter 1 shows that two French authorities prohibited even discussing the Germans in 1810: Napoleon, who was crushing the nation, and Classical prejudice, which called the Germans dull and archaic. Napoleon thus writes to his brother Louis of his aim to 'depayser 1'esprit allemand, ce qui est le premier but de ma politi-

que\ Stael has been reproached since Heine for her idealised

Introduction

7

German nation - in 1916, they called her la prussoldtre. But an etude genetique shows that she utterly transforms her text between draft and print. In manuscript, she mentions a series of German problems, from political division to lack of taste; in print, she replaces these remarks with Romantic propaganda. Her text stresses the old Rhine border, months after Napoleon took French borders to the Baltic; it ignores Germany's massive East/West socioeconomic distinctions, because in 1810, the stump of western Germany formed Napoleon's puppet Rheinbund. Stael here creates a new object, a Romantic German nation-state, handed the torch of the future by an irresistible historical dialectic. 9 Chapter 2 looks at the cutting edge of Europe's Classical/ Romantic battle, and two hundred years of debate about German and European Romantic traditions. It argues that Stael fundamentally distorts her alleged German mentors, for her own ends. She ignores the Berlin Romantics, and the novel which was the heart of their undertaking, but takes their word 'Romantic' as ideal propaganda for her own talk of the Weimar Classicists, who hated the term. Her own focus is on medieval national heroes and historical tragedy; a key early moment in the chequered history of French Romantic theatre. Indeed, every choice Stael makes helps shape the nineteenth century. She stands Goethe's Faust on its head, to make the play less ridiculous for a neoclassical public, and thereby gives Europe an ennui-ridden hero who is damned instead of saved, as in Berlioz. Once again, draft truths - accurate translation from the German - yield to textual propaganda, finally crushing stories of Stael's mistakes or ignorance as a reviewer: she chose to distort, and with good cause. In Don Karlos, a scene thus jumps five acts. Furthermore, her whole book also makes room for endless, veiled references to oppression and revolt. Legend claims that Napoleon saw himself in Stael's portrait of Attila the Hun, and ordered the book's pulping; her manuscripts prove that this high-risk allusion was deliberate. Stael's third section introduced Europe to German idealist philosophy, the bedrock of modern philosophical thought. She here mounts a global attack on the whole framework of Empire

8

The birth of European Romanticism

France, which she calls purely external. She links empiricist claims that our minds are shaped from outside; ethical doctrines of self-interest and utility; Classicism's aesthetic fiats; Catholic ritual; French salon society; and Napoleon's political tyranny. Facing them is a vast Romantic vision of the German inner self, stretching from climate to epistemology. When Stael simplifies German problems, which she does, or glosses over their philosophers' quarrels, she gains on two fronts - making awkward material less illegible to a reluctant Europe, and presenting a united front, not a bickering one, to stand against Napoleonic hegemony. These local effects coincide with Stael's broader propagandist aims, and draft truths again yield to Romantic propaganda. Kant and the Germans are strikingly distorted in the process, though I add proof that Kant owes his famous 'lying to a murderer' dilemma to Stael's own biography. As in literature, we can also pinpoint Stael's pivotal stand between German revolution and French tradition: her own pre-German texts, 1788-1800, repeatedly reveal ideas which later critics thought she took from Germany in 1810. Chapter 4 looks at religion, resurgent throughout Romantic Europe after a period of relative neglect. This fourth section now gets little attention. But Stael's religion chapters again fight a double campaign, attacking the two reigning opinions in Napoleon's France: both the 'enlightened' atheism of the Ideologues — with whom Stael is often somewhat hastily linked — and the Catholic reaction of Chateaubriand, a reaction encouraged by Napoleon's 1802 Concordat with the Pope. Like Rousseau, Stael was Genevan and Calvinist; in 1799, she proposed making France a Protestant republic. De VAllemagne offered French readers a way to bypass the divisive French rift between Catholicism and philosophy, by combining philosophy and religion in a fruitful new synthesis; a new Enlightenment. This synthesis echoed German and her own Swiss Protestant tradition. Stael here stands apart from a strong recidivist current in French and German Romanticism, which glorified the Catholic Middle Ages: Renan and the Americans in particular drew on her framework later in the century. Furthermore, as we retrace Stael's intellectual biogra-

Introduction

9

phy, texts and correspondence yet again prove Germany's minor role in shaping Stael's Romantic opinions; she was religious before the Bastille fell. Here, she finds German mystics to whom she attributes her unnamed Swiss friends' ideas. The Romantic 'Germany' Stael here created was a lever of Archimedes, built by her to move the world. Generations of critics have sought a mythic parent to link all Europe's Romantic movements, and the vast spread of Romantic civilisation: here, explicitly, it stands. Janus-faced, Stael dominates the Romantic catastrophe. Behind lie France and the eighteenth century: the Versailles of her first literary successes; the Bastille, sacked three days after her father's dismissal; French cultural and military hegemony, built on aristocratic cosmopolitanism, and on which Stael built her own European fame. Ahead lie the Romantic and bourgeois nineteenth century which bought twenty-five editions of her book, and the new Europe of nationalities which Stael and De VAllemagne helped bring into the world.

CHAPTER I

Birth of a nation — StaeVs Romantic Germany in 1810

L'Allemagne ne peut attacher que ceux qui s'occupent des faits passes et des idees abstraites. Le present et le reel appartiennent a la France; et, jusqu'a nouvel ordre, elle ne parait pas disposee a s'y renoncer. De VAllemagne\ author made five trips to German lands: brief trips in 1789-93, two high-profile visits in 1803-7, a n d a month in 1812 on her way to London. Exiled by Napoleon in 1803, Stael chose German soil over Coppet, her home outside Geneva: 'je voulais opposer l'accueil bienveillant des anciennes dynasties a l'impertinence de celle qui se preparait a subjuguer la France' (DxA 63). She spent three weeks in Frankfurt, her only stay in western Germany, ten in Weimar where Schiller and Goethe staged their plays for her benefit, and six in Berlin. When her father died in April 1804, she rushed home to Coppet with A. W. Schlegel, prince of German Romantics, as her children's new tutor; he stayed with her until 1817. In 1807, Stael again left her exile in Coppet for a tour of southern Germany: Munich (three weeks) and Vienna. She left Vienna five months later in May 1808 for a week in Prague and Bohemia, returning via Dresden, Weimar and Frankfurt. On 8 July, back in Coppet, she took out her old notes and began her book.1 Many French citizens were in German lands throughout this period. Roughly 50,000 emigres had been in Hamburg since the Revolution, and the amnesties of 1799 still left 145,000 emigres abroad. The Rhine's left bank had been French since 10

StaeVs Romantic Germany in 1810

11

1795, and the French had also campaigned beyond the Rhine since 1796: Moreau in 1800, Napoleon in 1805-6, each had over 100,000 men on German soil. In 1807, Napoleon had 310,000 men in West Prussia, and a further 165,000 arrived in 1809. This may shed some light on Stael's habit of discussing 'Germany' in the imperfect tense: 'L'AUemagne etait une federation aristocratique' (1 37/5). After Prussia took Silesia in 1756, German lands had seen repeated internal threats to their status quo, but this was no preparation for the avalanche that engulfed them after 1795. While France seized the Rhine, Prussia and Austria made amends in the East with two last partitions of Poland, in 1793 and 1795-6 (see 1 228/3). Napoleon since 1800 had tightened his grip on Saxony and all of post-war West Germany, while the two German Great Powers were pushed ever further east. After 1806, Prussia's coastline began at Stettin - in modern Poland - and ran east to the Russian border. As it turned out, Stael was right to treat the old Germany in the past tense: there was little interest in restoring the Empire in 1814. Ironically, the French Revolution had left a more irrevocable mark on German lands than it had on France itself.2 Trying to date the old country's disappearance is a tricky business. Before 1990, Germany's existence as one state lasted just twenty-six years: from the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, which treated with Prussia alone, to the de facto partition of 1945. One might equally date German unification from the Anschluss with Austria in 1938. Yet the four years between StaePs two long stays saw an unprecedented string of events: Austria's defeat at Austerlitz, 1805; the RheinbuncTs creation, Francis IPs abdication, and the Holy Roman Empire's dissolution, July-August 1806; Prussia's defeats at Jena and Auerstadt, October 1806, and the loss of all her territories west of the Elbe. As Stael reached Weimar, another almost equally important measure went into effect: the 1803 Reichsdeputationshauptsckluss, which redistributed one-sixth of the old Empire, four million people. 'The free cities were reduced in number from 50 to 6 [...] the Germany of the Middle Ages, with its

12

The birth of European Romanticism

ecclesiastical States, its orders of knighthood, and the preponderance of the Hapsburgs, vanished, never to return' (CM/794). In short, De VAllemagne is anthropology avant la lettre, the history of a vanishing society — the new century's science and art alike have precedents in this all-inclusive Romantic manifesto. Goethe stressed this aspect in 1814: 'In the present moment, the book has a wondrous effect. Had it been here earlier, people would have attributed to it an influence on these great recent events, now [...] it sounds as if it had been written many years ago. The Germans will barely recognise themselves therein, but find in that fact the surest measure of the huge step they have made.' Goethe's huge step was the birth of German nationalism in 1813, when Stael added her preface: 'J'ai dit dans mon ouvrage que les Allemands n'etaient pas une nation; et certes ils donnent au monde maintenant d'heroi'ques dementis a cette crainte' (1 11/10). In Prussia, whose army Napoleon had cut to 42,000, volunteers brought the number to 300,000 within a year; they took Germany back from the French at the battle of Leipzig. On 2 November 1813, the French recrossed the Rhine. 3 By a splendid coincidence, De VAllemagne appeared in London two days later, the same day as the news of Leipzig. It sold out in three days. But this Europe was utterly different from the one it was written for: the events of 1813 are crucial to understanding De VAllemagne'^ subsequent career. Inevitably, the book's influence weakened as readers began to study Germany firsthand after 1815, and that very examination is a measure of its success - as in the sciences, where a paper's success is gauged by the later papers that remodel it. De VAllemagne thus contributed to its own gradual replacement, but before it was even published, history had already left it behind. Stael's preface dwells on this issue in 1813: 'Le tableau de la litterature et de la philosophie semble bien etranger au moment actuel [...] II y a trois ans que je designais la Prusse et les pays du nord qui l'environnent comme la patrie de la pensee; en combien d'actions genereuses cette pensee ne s'estelle pas transformed' (1 12/20). By August 1815 she was even

StaeVs Romantic Germany in 1810

13

saying to Pictet de Sergy, 'je n'ai vu l'Allemagne que couchee, vous la verrez debout [...] a votre retour, nous ferons ensemble un quatrieme volume de VAllemagne'.4

De VAllemagne never was a complete or accurate index to Germany. It is no Baedeker, and this is quite surprising. By 1813, emigres had given travel literature a new interest; guidebooks were emerging; Chateaubriand, Scott and Byron were making great use of exotic locations. Readers used StaePs 1807 Corinne ou Vltalie as a handy monuments guide, and the title De VAllemagne makes one expect the same. But De VAllemagne'^ local descriptions are few and vague, and it makes an appalling guidebook. Thus, Stael in 1810 never mentions the roads, which were far worse in the North, though she had been explicit in 1804: 'Enfin, apres des chemins horribles, je suis arrivee dans la Saxe' (JA 57). She also twice claims that in Germany, 'les monuments gothiques sont les seuls remarquables' (1 32/5; m 364/2), but names just one Gothic building, St Stephen's cathedral in Vienna. This barely matches reality: Bruford notes that 'except in architecture Germany did not produce any artists of outstanding genius at this period', while Gsteiger wonders if Stael 'n'a reellement pas vu les chateaux [baroques] [...] si elle n'a pas pense un moment a la grande architecture medievale de la France'. Other places are named in passing — Dresden's art galleries — but Stael found nothing in Germany to warrant a monuments guide. She wrote to Necker in April 1804, 'je t'amuserai quelques moments de l'Allemagne, mais je crois le voyage d'ltalie bien plus curieux. Ce qu'il faut ici, c'est lire les livres allemands; les hommes ni les coutumes n'ont pas d'originalite' (CG v.i, 327). For once, even her published 1810 text remains forthright: 'II n'y a que les villes litteraires qui puissent vraiment interesser dans un pays ou la societe n'est rien et la nature peu de chose' (1 90/2). 5 'Germany' has never been a self-evident label, and 1810 was a particularly difficult time to describe it. As StaePs preface makes clear, readers of De VAllemagne from herself onward have noticed discrepancies between StaePs Germany and the Germany they see. That is inevitable, but there are also discrepancies between her book's 'Germany' and anything she

14

The birth of European Romanticism

might have been describing, as above. Perhaps a critic could simply map those discrepancies - providing a list, so to speak, of textual errata - and have done. Two details complicate this solution. First, despite the word's continuity, the region had been transformed utterly since 1789. Is Stael to describe butterfly or caterpillar? She can review one society alone; or discuss Germany's transformation, and have that instantly censored by Napoleon; or attempt a makeshift compromise. As it happens, Stael's experience of the West was broadly limited to an unpleasant three weeks, with poor German, in the Free Town of Frankfurt in 1803. In her five visits to what she calls Germany, the remaining time was spent in the East; about four months in post-war East Germany, eight in modern Austria and Czechoslovakia. Her book thus leans on eastern Germany, where continuity with the past was more apparent. Furthermore, contemporaries necessarily read Stael's text in terms of their received ideas on the subject. Except for emigres and soldiers who had seen Germany themselves, these thoughts came at second hand: from literature, from other books. De VAllemagne has often been reproached for its idealised Germany, but any description is ideal by its nature — and Stael faced an earlier, standard 'description of Germany', notably in France, which she could no more ignore in writing her text than she could ignore Germany itself. As so often, Stael has two French authorities to take on: Napoleon, who occupied Germany, and French tradition, which gave its 'readers' a German stereotype her book sets out to attack. Her description of Germany is necessarily polemical; it was written in exile, and its subjects are the dispossessed. This meant suppressing her own manuscript complaints, as she told Villers in November 1803: 'Ne dis rien de ce que je vous ecris sur l'Allemagne [...] je ne veux pas du tout que Von sache mes impertinencesfrangaises* (CG v. i, 105). 6

There are, then, many discrepancies between De VAllemagne and the Germany it reviews. Some are deliberate, others caused by Stael's indifference, still others quite accidental, products of what Johnson called pure ignorance - but whatever the source of such isolated lapses and distortions, once

StaeVs Romantic Germany in 1810

15

they enter her text they take on a new meaning. Stael's talk of Germany allows a threefold polemical reading, whatever her intention, which many of her discrepancies greatly encourage: first, in defiance of Napoleon, she treats Germany as a coherent unit; second, in defiance of French tradition, she gives Germany a central position in her world history; third, in defiance of both, she calls the Germans admirable. 'L'Allemagne, par sa situation geographique, peut etre consideree comme le coeur de l'Europe, et la grande association continentale ne saurait retrouver son independance que par celle de ce pays' (1 10/21); these words have a remarkably modern ring to them in 1994.7 All this leaves readers two choices when comparing De VAllemagne with its raw material: they can start with Germany, or with Stael's book, considering the effect of her errata within the text as a whole. Above, for instance, Stael deliberately lied because she wanted Germany Gothic, and she wanted northern Germany more modern than the South, for reasons we shall see later. Stael's raw material is important; when she misleads her readers about Germany we should be informed. However, our task is to make sense of De I'Allemagne, not of Germany - to look for coherence, pattern and self-consistency holding this text together. Neatly, these same local distortions, for which Stael is constantly reproached, can themselves offer the very proof we need of her Romantic manifesto's willed global synthesis. ' G E R M A N Y ' AS A UNIT

Quelques traits principaux peuvent seuls convenir egalement a toute la nation allemande [...] on ne saurait comment reunir sous un meme point de vue des religions, des gouvernements, des climats, des peuples meme si differents [...] Le lien politique et social des peuples, un meme gouvernement, un meme culte, les memes lois, les memes interets, une litterature classique, une opinion dominante, rien de tout cela n'existe chez les Allemands. (1 36/1; 57/18) Si le Corps germanique n'existait pas, il faudrait le creer tout expres pour nos convenances. (Bonaparte to the Directory, 8 prairial An V.)8

16

The birth of European Romanticism

Was the 'Germany' Stael talked of in 1810 any more than a geographical concept? It has become too easy to take nationstates for granted. Stael's contemporaries had just three sources for ideas of Germany. Two of them were individual creations: Tacitus' Germania and Charlemagne's Empire. There were also words for German, which should refer to something real. De VAllemagne has five different words for German - tudesque, teutonique, allemand, germanique, and septentrional; ['Empire, for the

old Holy Roman Empire, appears in some historical passages. Septentrional was tied to Germany in 1700; the others are far older, If allemand maps precisely onto the concept 'German' as seen from France, then Stael's other terms either decorate or mean something else: only tudesque and germanique appear in the 1811 Dictionnaire de VAcademie Frangaise.9

Teutonique and tudesque (11 40/3, 1 189/7) match the German deutsch. Stael may use these Gothic words to sound German; the Academie uses tudesque to describe manners which 'manquent [...] de graces, et approchent de la barbarie'. Teutonique echoes the Teutons, Germans in a state of nature, and the chivalrous Teutonic Knights - two key periods in Stael's German history. Indeed, she has a draft chapter called 'De l'influence de l'esprit de chevalerie sur l'amour et l'honneur'. Germain and germanique (iv 277/12) recall Tacitus and the Empire, but also offer the place-name Germanie to match VEmpire and VAllemagne. Contemporaries might also think of the Batavian and Helvetic Republics which the Revolution created and Napoleon dismantled. Septentrional (11 66/14, 183/9) follows a North/South division which Stael made famous in 1800, though Montesquieu is one of many precedents: 'L'on m'a reproche d'avoir donne la preference a la litterature du Nord sur celle du Midi, et l'on a appele cette opinion une poetique nouvelle' (DL 4). Whereas la Germanie suggests a self-contained, even a mercantilist unit, septentrional suggests a much larger creature matching nothing in Europe's political organisation. All Stael's terms share this confusion between German and germanie people, which means that talk of Germans can describe anyone from Vienna to Reykjavik: 'L'analogie qui existe entre les nations teutoniques ne saurait etre meconnue' (1 17/17). Half Europe is

StaeVs Romantic Germany in 1810

17

German in this sense, as the 1930s revealed: those in Germany, thanks to semantic accident, can function as paradigms for the rest.10 This manifesto is proclaimed in the 1810 text's opening sentence, with its talk of Europe's 'trois grandes races differentes: la race latine, la race germanique, et la race esclavonne' (1 13/2). Races are linguistic and cultural - the Latins 'ont refu des Romains leur civilisation et leur langage' (1 15/1), dividing those conquered by Rome like the French from those who eventually conquered Rome instead. Slavs are out of focus, and Celts never appear. One draft variant, 'les Franjais viennent du latin, les Allemands de l'Ossian' (11 42A), is - remarkably all that remains of StaePs great Ossianic theories of 1800; then, Stael had claimed that the Germans 'se rapprochent de toutes les litteratures du Nord, des litteratures ossianiques' (DL 246). The race germanique includes Germans, Swiss, English, Swedes, Danes and Dutch (1 15/2). De VAllemagne has chapters on German and Danish theatre (11/xxv) and the fete d3Interlaken (i/xx), which only belong here if Danish and Swiss events are somehow German. Denmark's upper classes spoke German - the two Danes named, Baggesen and Oehlenschlager, then Denmark's two leading poets, often published in German. The Swiss had no political links with Germany, but cultural links were very strong; the German Aufkldrung is often dated from Bodmer and Breitinger in Zurich, who opposed Gottsched's Leipzig neoclassicism in favour of a visibly German literature, like Stael herself (see 11 38/6).

Pierre Kohler wrote seven hundred pages on Mme de Stael et la Suisse. Her chateau Coppet, bought in 1784, is three leagues from Geneva and a coach-ride from German Switzerland: 'Mme de Stael vivait en Suisse a la frontiere de deux esprits [...] plus d'une fois [...] elle franchit la Sarine et passa quelques jours sur le territoire des vieux cantons.' Stael, born Genevan, spent a dozen years on Swiss soil; De VAllemagne'^ first draft was written at Coppet, 1808-09, interrupted only by trips to Unspiinnen and Geneva. This helps explain the Swiss place in StaePs book; she even wrote to Meister in November 1810,

18

The birth of European Romanticism

'sait-on bien comme mon ouvrage parlait des Suisses et des Allemands?' Moreover, the French cantons did not then have their modern status: 'la Confederation helvetique avant 1815 etait composee essentiellement de cantons germaniques. Sous l'ancien regime [...] les territoires romands ne figuraient dans la Confederation que comme sujets ou allies.' 11 Both Germany itself and our words to describe it visibly shift and fracture when we apply pressure to them. De VAllemagne admits these uncertainties; judging its remarks is a question of proportion not of contradiction. Thus, Stael's Germany roughly follows the boundaries of the Empire from 1795 to 1806, excluding non-German Belgium and Poland, stressing the Rhine border, and adding eastern Prussia; she sites Berlin c au centre du nord de 1'Allemagne' (1 238/5). Within this frame, Stael stresses German geography, Vaspect de VAllemagne. Her terms echo the brand-new concept of natural boundaries: Germany stretches 'depuis les Alpes jusqu'a la mer, entre le Rhin et le Danube' (1 29/6). But Germania 1/2-3 a l s o named the Rhine and Danube, 'fear or mountain ranges' towards Dacia, and ocean to the North - and unlike Danton's French natural boundaries, neither review of German borders is avowedly political. German lands are also far less amenable to such criteria than France or England, and Stael must ignore natural boundaries within 'Germany' to stress those at its edges, such as the Rhine: 'le Danube se divise en plusieurs branches; les ondes de l'Elbe et de la Spree se troublent facilement par l'orage; le Rhin seul est presque inalterable' (1 31/10). The remark looks polemical; Stael's other mentions of the Rhine support this opinion. Crossing it, she imagines being told 'vous etes hors de France' (1 191/3); elsewhere, she comments that 'les rives du Rhin sont pour les Allemands une image vraiment nationale' (11 162/3). Her strongest statement was added in draft C: Teternelle barriere du Rhin separe deux regions intellectuelles qui, non moins que les deux contrees, sont etrangeres l'une a l'autre' (11 20/19). That draft was written after Napoleon's creation of the Rheinbund\ by 1810, French borders had stretched far beyond the Rhine to include the Baltic port of Liibeck.12

StaeVs Romantic Germany in 1810

19

StaePs Part 1, 'De l'Allemagne et des moeurs des Allemands', exposes her main title's implicit link between land and people. Montesquieu had shown climate and soil shaping societies, but there is still something novel about StaePs titles: Corinne ou ritalie; De VAllemagne. Stael suggests an organic link between land and folk, a territorial basis to nationalism without which modern nationalist conflicts would be inconceivable. De VAllemagne's opening pages have some incisive nationalistic comments: 'Les individus doivent se resigner a la destinee, mais jamais les nations [...] le patriotisme des nations doit etre egoiste [...] cette sainte antipathie pour les moeurs, les coutumes et les langues etrangeres, qui fortifie dans tous les pays le lien national' (1 12/7, 39/11, 44/9). This was heady Romantic stuff, in 1810 as in 1914, though French precedents existed compare Savary condemning De VAllemagne: 'Votre dernier ouvrage n'est point frangais' (1 6/5). Yet nations can survive without any territory, as Goethe stressed in 1807: 'In my room was asked [...] if Germany and German speech would totally disappear? No, that I do not believe, said [Goethe], the Germans would like the Jews [...] be everywhere oppressed, but ineradicable, and only really hold together when they have no more fatherland.' 13 Circumstances made StaePs title - Germany, not the Germans - still more emotive. The concept 'German' was always more linguistic than geographical, unlike say Swiss, or American. Modern Switzerland and Austria are deutsch, but not Deutschland\ both post-war German Republics were Deutschland, with rival claims to German history. In 1810, given that visible links between land and people had ceased in 1806 when the last German Emperor abdicated, StaePs title was itself a political statement directly opposed to Napoleon's central ambitions. Stael hinted as much to Meister in October 1811: 'On m'a fait encore offrir de raccommoder le brule, d'oter quelque chose, d'ajouter surtout quelque chose, de changer le titre, et de le faire paraitre.' In May 1810, adding Germany's North Sea coastline to France, Napoleon wrote to Louis, King of Holland, how he had planned to give that territory to him - which 'eut depayse davantage Pesprit alle-

20

The birth of European Romanticism

mand, ce qui est le premier but de ma politique\ I n Paris, Nicolle

had just begun printing De VAllemagne. For Napoleon, the book's very existence was a political provocation.14 Stael had two precedents for ideas of a single German nation, the Holy Roman Empire and Tacitus. She names Tacitus three times, but his influence is greater than that indicates. Stael reviews two works based on the Hermann story from his Annales: Goethe's Hermann und Dorothea and a Klop-

stock ode which she quotes at length. Hermann fought against imperialism; hence his appeal to Stael and the Germans. Charlemagne did the reverse; hence his appeal to Napoleon. The French philosophes also debated the status of king and parlements, with respective apologists quoting precedents in Roman or Frankish law. Montesquieu draws on Tacitus, linking Franks and Germans: 'Les Germains, qui n'avaient jamais ete subjugues, jouissaient d'une independance extreme' (Esprit II 226). The Germania also offers a device which, after Gulliver's Travels, enjoyed European success: describing one country to condemn another. Two famous French examples were Voltaire's Lettres anglaises and Montesquieu's Lettres persanes. Stael's ideal description of Germany owes something to these four Tacitian precedents; echoes include the word Germanie, two millennia out of date, and the title of her first draft: Lettres sur VAllemagne.15

Yet the Germania was most important for its sharp contrast to the Holy Roman Empire, a fundamentally non-geographical concept. The Empire only came to resemble 'Germany' by historical coincidence, being shorn of France, Switzerland, Italy and the Netherlands in turn; at Charlemagne's death, it bore an uncanny resemblance to the extended France of 181 o, a millennium later. Another problem with the Empire was that it had dissolved in 1806, but it was as yet - what it had been for a thousand years - the only available description, other than the Germania and the word itself, that stood for Germany as a whole. As a symbol, it contained two resonant ideas, that of federated independence at home and that of a world-state abroad. Stael claims that in judging Germany, 'je me supposais a cinquante annees du temps present' (1 3/5): she judges

StaeVs Romantic Germany in 1810

21

German art and society within its millenarian political system. The Empire itself had kept Germany from fusing into the sort of centralised state its neighbours were creating - more than that, it provided a great obstacle to the very idea of a German nation, born perhaps in the uprisings of 1813.16 German talk of federation thus reflects their own Empire, not merely abstract argument and the foreign example of Swiss, Dutch and American Republics. Kant argues that for imperfect men, the best possible world state is a Volkerbund or federation: this federative ideal distinguishes the Holy Roman Empire from history's other 'world empires'. De VAllemagne also brought Romantic Europe the Aufkldrung concept of unity in diversity, each reflecting the macrocosm from an individual perspective. Reill calls this the 'traditional Leibnizian definition of perfection': Leibniz derived it from his monad theory. Reill adds, 'by the 1760s the Leibnizian idea of perfectibility had become one of the central concepts in German aesthetics'. Yet when Stael and Herder consider the place for minority cultures within a larger state, the Empire might be borne in mind. 17 A measure of German taste for the old status quo is their distaste for Prussia, which was upsetting it. As Stael remarks, 'les ecrivains philosophes ont eu souvent d'injustes prejuges contre la Prusse; ils ne voyaient en elle qu'une vaste caserne' (1 241/11). It is characteristic of her methods to attribute this same dislike ten pages earlier to a quite different cause Frederick's 'mepris pour le genie des Allemands' (1 230/12). German suspicion of Prussia was well founded, but as Napoleon made clear by example, lands without a strong central authority cannot maintain their autonomy if stronger states intervene. Germany had been hamstrung since the Peace of 1648, 'la grande oeuvre europeenne de l'ancienne France', which divided the Empire until 1803 into 234 separate units. 'After 1648 Germany ceased to be a factor in European politics [...] Germany became virtually a French protectorate.' Princes within the Empire also had vested interests outside; the Emperor had lands in Hungary, the Netherlands and Italy, while the Electors of Saxony, Brandenburg and Hanover

22

The birth of European Romanticism

acquired the crowns of Poland, Prussia and England respectively between 1697 and 1714. This could only encourage particularism or Kleinstaaterei among the smaller states; they called it independence. Hence, Stael's complaint at iv 274/14: 'Us ne comprennent [...] de la liberte que cette subdivision en petits pays qui, accoutumant les citoyens a se sentir faibles comme nation, les conduit bientot a se montrer faibles aussi comme individus.' 18 German borders have always been disputed. The Rhine's left bank was contested into the twentieth century, modern Belgium lay inside the Empire until 1792, two-thirds of Switzerland still speaks German - but borders are vaguest in the East. Until AD I 100, Germany east of the Elbe was Slavic land; the Germans entered it as conquerors. Prussia, though outside the Empire, became thoroughly German: it was acquired with Silesia by Poland in 1945. Herder was born near Konigsberg, now Kaliningrad in modern Russia; Kant lived and died there. Bohemia and Moravia - modern Czechoslovakia - lay inside the Hapsburg Empire until 1919; the aristocracy spoke German. Meanwhile, in 1945 there was still a Slavic community of about 100,000 on the Upper Spree. Joseph II provoked revolt in Hungary when he tried to make German the state language, replacing not Hungarian but Latin. Yet this was hardly a national quarrel, as he himself indicated: 'Si la Hongrie etait la plus importante de mes possessions,' he wrote, 'je n'hesiterais pas a imposer sa langue aux autres pays.' 19 When Stael comes to interpret the mess she calls Germany, her general principles come less from economics, politics or geography than from culture and climate, literature and a propagandist's taste for antithesis. She splits Germany between North and South, Protestant and Catholic, Prussia and Austria. Germany's North/South divide also had economic aspects which Stael chose to ignore: 'First in Bavaria, then in Austria, the struggle [ between towns and Catholic princes ] led to a continual withdrawal of privileges from the towns [...] in the eighteenth century Bavaria had only thirty-nine towns, while Saxony had two hundred.' Stael puts the case differently, at the start of her chapter on southern Germany: 'II etait assez

Sta'eVs Romantic Germany in 1810

23

generalement reconnu qu'il n'y avait de litterature que dans le nord de l'Allemagne, et que les habitants du midi se livraient aux jouissances de la vie physique, pendant que les contrees septentrionales goutaient plus exclusivement celles de Fame' (1 86/1 ). 20 What then are Stael's categories, in opposing North and South? Like Montesquieu, she refers to climate: the North is a land of snow and hoar-frost, frimas (in 198/20), which hardens the northern character and directs it inward, while the softer southern climate promotes indolence. Stael was cold in northern Germany, as she tells Necker in October 1803: 'Quelle entreprise, cher ami, que de traverser le Nord de l'Allemagne au milieu de l'hiver! il y a partout quatre pieds de neige' (CG v.i, 133). Her winter in Vienna was mild by comparison, but Vienna is barely south of Paris - which Stael would hardly consider indolent - and it has far colder winters. Stael also supports her climatic antithesis with a similar Catholic/Protestant divide. Talk of Catholic indolence may well reflect Stael's own experience, but our concern is how her book links cause and effect. Stael's propagandist agenda shows up when her arguments become circular: 'L'existence vegetative du midi de l'Allemagne a quelques rapports avec l'existence contemplative du nord' (1 120/13). In reality, Germany's Protestant/Catholic split dates from 1519. The rough partition between North and South which Stael makes so much of was in 1810 under two centuries old, dating from 1648. There were exceptions - in the North, the Catholic Archbishops of Mainz and Cologne, and the Catholic Elector of Protestant Saxony; in the South, Protestant Bohemia under the Catholic Emperor but it was broadly valid. This split was unparalleled in Europe. Stael, a Calvinist, might condemn Louis XIV's repeal of the Edict of Nantes, but her motto to this section accords with etatiste ideas of a state religion. North Germany's Protestant princes often banded together for mutual defence, but Prussia's emergence as a European power dated only from the Seven Years War (1756-63), and its emergence at the head of a Northern Furstenbund from 1785 - a bare quarter-century before De VAllemagne. De VAllemagne\ North/South dichotomy also reflects two

24

The birth of European Romanticism

aspects of Stael's personal experience. First, her greater knowledge of eastern Germany, where Protestant and Catholic, Prussian and Austrian camps were more defined than in the West. Second, a political reality that had become increasingly true over the years: western Germany did indeed represent a third party in German politics, that of France. This was confirmed in 1806 when Napoleon created the Rheinbund under Jerome, and the Empire dissolved. Stael talks in 1818 of Napoleon's 'gouvernements a ressort [...] qui s'arretaient des qu'on cessait de les faire marcher' (CRF 11 222), but in 1810, she could only delete manuscript talk of a three-part Germany: 'on ne sait [...] si les Autrichiens, les Prussiens, l'Empire sont de vrais Germains' (1 58A) - ideas ofGermanie still appealed. De VAllemagne's opening pages, after sketching German borders, describe 'un pays couvert de chenes et de sapins [...] de vastes bruyeres, des sables, des routes souvent negligees [...] Le midi de l'Allemagne est tres bien cultive' (1 29/7). If southern Germany is tres bien cultive, how can it be couvert de chenes et de

sapins? Stael here exchanges lived reality for propaganda. No draft mentioned southern Germany; one draft, however, remarks on the difficulty du sujet, and another detail was deleted: drafts A and B read after sapins, Textremite septentrionale exceptee'. The printed text says precisely the opposite, allowing Stael a contrast between wild North and cultured South, inside and outside Germany, which lived reality had jeopardised. An etude genetique reveals other propagandist manuscript revisions throughout this controversial text. Stael's De la litterature claims with Montesquieu that geography shapes character. Indeed, Germany divides sharply between the flat North and the mountainous South - between Vienna and Berlin, which have a chapter apiece. De VAllemagne never tells, though drafts mention 'maisons baties de terre dans le nord' (1 31B; see 1 236/6), which implies a soil of clay not rock. Within Stael's text, mountains are essential to the Swiss character alone; to the indolent Viennese, they are accidental. This non-essential detail can have no function in her book, oddly, but decoration; hence it is deleted as confusing and irrelevant. She explains this in 1800: 'II ne faut chercher dans

StaeVs Romantic Germany in 1810

25

un peuple, comme dans un homme, que son trait caracteristique: tous les autres sont l'effet de mille hasards differents; celui-la seul constitue son etre' (DL 181). Stael later suggests why she finds Northern plains uncharacteristic: 'ce qui caracterise le Nord [...] les montagnes herissees de glace' (m 153/4). Those mountains may echo Ossian in Scotland; they are not German. Again draft truth gives way to published propaganda. Despite all this effort, Stael might equally have divided Germany between East and West; when the Germans recrossed the Elbe, they left behind the free institutions praised by Tacitus and Montesquieu. All fifty Imperial Free Towns were in the West; fields east of the Elbe were worked by bond-serfs. Politically and economically, then as now, the Elbe divided eastern and western Europe: 'If conditions in the east closely resembled those in Russia, conditions in the west were very like those in France.' Stael's climatic and religious divides were valued in 1810, but these other categories were not invisible. In fact, despite her ignorance of the West, her text does note these East/West distinctions, they are simply severed from any geography: 'La federation allemande etait composee de forts et de faibles, de citoyens et de serfs, de rivaux et meme d'ennemis' (1 58/15). A North/South divide suits Stael's propagandist aim: it parallels her Europe-wide cultural and historical division between young and old, northern and southern races. Germany's indolent Catholic South can thus be linked with Italy, the productive Protestant North with England. Stael wants to stress just one eastern border, the barriere eternelle du Rhin; she posts the Tacitian ombre d'Arminius on its steep banks (1 32/5). To recognise any internal East/West divide would be to accept Germany's de facto partition by Napoleon. 21 To be a functioning, modern nation—state, Germany must have clear borders and few internal divides; mercantilism and raison d'etat also demand a capital city to coordinate its actions. An index of the problem Stael faces is her inconsistency: she names as capital, in turn, Vienna, nowhere, nowhere, Weimar and Berlin, in the course of a hundred pages. Each city has a chapter, in which the references occur; since Stael elsewhere denies Germany a capital, there is a feeling that these inconsist-

26

The birth of European Romanticism

encies arise because of that chaptering, that Stael treats separate chapters almost like separate countries. Barring these anomalies, Stael talks of Germany's lack of a capital in social and cultural, not political or economic terms, which may account for Weimar's name on the list. In reality, the Reich in 1803 had three Free Towns with 50,000 or more inhabitants Hamburg (150,000), Frankfurt and Cologne - and six other towns this size: Vienna and Berlin (226,000 and 143,000), Munich and Dresden (50,000) were capitals; Prague and Breslau (75,000 and 57,600) were Austrian and Prussian dependencies. Konigsberg (60,000) was in East Prussia. Hamburg, the only Free Town that could rival Vienna or Berlin, one of three German cities over 100,000, is barely mentioned in De VAllemagne. But Goethe in Weimar also calls Germany headless: 'There sits one man in Vienna, another in Berlin, another in Konigsberg [...] think of a city like Paris, where the highest talents of a great realm are all assembled in one spot.' 22 To the eye of a modern social scientist, Stael's aetiology is an erratic affair, moving between science and something else. She lists what capital cities do, both good - 'rassembler les moyens d'etude, augmenter les ressources des arts, exciter l'emulation' - and bad - 'apprendre [...] a mettre de l'adresse et de la grace meme dans l'egoisme' (1 179/20; m 59/3). Two points recur: theatre depends on a 'capitale oii les ressources de la richesse et des arts soient reunies' (11 261/4; see in 23/2, 370/12), and a capital reproduces social values - 'chacun vit a sa maniere dans un pays ou le despotisme de l'usage ne tient pas ses assises dans une grande capitale' (in 190/8; see in 246A). This is unexceptionable, except that theatre needed not a big city but a rich patron — Lessing's theatre survived two years in Hamburg, Germany's richest commercial city, while small absolutist courts were studded with Italian operas and French theatre companies. In 1800, Stael was unequivocal: 'La communication habituelle de tous les hommes distingues [...] etablit une [...] legislation litteraire, qui dirige tous les esprits dans la meilleure route' (DL 244); the phrase la meilleure route implies that in 1800 she has just one model for literary society, shared

Stael3s Romantic Germany in 1810 with Voltaire's 1751 Le Siecle de Louis XIV. By 1810, Stael accepts two models, with German independence the new alternative: 'si cette capitale developpait chez les Allemands le gout des plaisirs de la societe [...] ils y perdraient la bonne foi scrupuleuse, le travail solitaire, l'independance audacieuse qui les distingue' (1 179/22). She builds on this to make a splendid new sociological and reader-oriented distinction between genres, which the nineteenth century could also have made much of, but which receives little space in her text: 'Un contraste singulier merite d'etre remarque. Dans les beauxarts, dont la creation est solitaire et reflechie, on perd tout naturel lorsqu'on pense au public [...] Dans les beaux-arts improvises [...] le bruit des applaudissements agit sur Tame' (in 226/22). 2 3

Just as Germany breaks up geographically, so it was stratified by class distinction. Quoting J. M. von Loen - 'Ignorance is almost the trademark of noble birth' - Bruford adds, 'the life of the German aristocracy [...] was intellectually and morally at a low ebb in the eighteenth century'. Stael admits as much: 'la separation des classes [...] est plus prononcee en Allemagne que partout ailleurs [...] Les nobles y ont trop peu d'idees, et les gens de lettres trop peu d'habitude dans les affaires' (1 42/13). German court and artistic circles lived apart. Yet Stael again restricts this detail to Vienna: Tun des principaux desavantages de la societe de Vienne, c'est que les nobles et les hommes de lettres ne se melent point ensemble' (1 130/1). This is further proof that Stael happily distorted what she saw to accord with her book's propagandist message - contrast her letter to Wieland/rom Berlin in March 1804, on 'la separation complete des deux societes, celle de la cour et celle des savants' (CG v. i, 302). Even in Weimar, Schiller's noble wife Charlotte was not invited to court functions until her husband had been ennobled, and elaborate management was needed before Goethe 'could be allowed to play cards with the young duchess'. Such cases were the norm: masked balls in Mainz demanded a pedigree reaching to one's great-greatgrandparents, and as late as 1816, a northern German town ordered its post office not to deliver letters to middle-class girls

27

28

The birth of European Romanticism

if they were called Frdulein on the envelope. Compare Stael's anecdote about the German philosophy lecture on Baron Leibnitz (i 185/1).24 Above all, German writers lacked the very independence which De VAllemagne celebrates in them: 'no art but literature, and that only [...] late in the century, was able to dispense with the higher aristocracy'. Schlozer in Hanover enjoyed 'a liberty unknown in Germany', but when he ventured a mild comment on the Post Office, he was warned 'not to commit such an act of arrogance again'. German princelings were often tyrants, despite Stael's protestations about Germany's 'anarchie douce et paisible' (1 38/5): Karl Eugen of Wurttemberg held the poet Schubart and the publicist J. J. Moser, not his subjects, in prison for years without a trial. In idyllic Weimar, there 'was no nonsense about the rights of the people'. The French philosophes, Stael among them, could discuss and influence their society to an extent impossible for the German Aufklarer, which raises several problems for Stael in De VAllemagne. Apart from the pragmatic need for caution which still failed to save her book in 1810, apart from the politics it still contains, a certain distance from political engagement also reflects the muzzling of the Germans it reviews.25 Yet Stael does seem more concerned with metaphysical independence than with the physical sort. She has little to say about material conditions: 'Des que Ton s'eleve un peu audessus de la derniere classe du peuple en Allemagne, on s'aperfoit aisement de cette vie intime, de cette poesie de Fame qui caracterise les Allemands [...] les soldats et les laboureurs, savent presque tous la musique' (1 45/3). The very poor reappear briefly later: 'Jamais on ne rencontre un mendiant au milieu de cette reunion, on n'en voit point a Vienne [...] les bases de l'edifice social sont bonnes et respectables' (1 122/7) - bonte here depends primarily on not troubling the rich. Stael's chapter on charities contains her strongest statement: 'Les gens du peuple sont un etat intermediate entre les sauvages

et les hommes civilises; quand ils sont vertueux, ils ont un genre d'innocence et de bonte qui ne peut se rencontrer dans le

StaeVs Romantic Germany in 1810

29

monde [...] inquiets chaque jour, sauves chaque soir [...] leur probite, quand ils en ont, est singulierement scrupuleuse' (1 272/3)^ This is not twentieth-century liberalism. In economic terms, Stael never hints that 'court life with all its splendour was an elaborate superstructure raised upon the basis of an agrarian economy'; 75 per cent of the German population were peasants, where are they in her text? Such charges might seem anachronistic, but besides Stael's intimate links with two famous liberal economists, Necker and Sismondi, De VAllemagne itself stresses ideas of nationality which are senseless unless we look at what a nation is: 'pour juger du caractere d'une nation, c'est la masse commune qu'il faut examiner' (1 152/3). Stael repeats this in 1818: 'les moeurs de la premiere classe n'ont aucun rapport avec celles de la nation' (CRF m 390). Here, we move into an aetiology of national character which modern science handles gingerly, but which visibly mattered to contemporary Europe. Stael's sweeping generalities cannot be set aside: like the religious 'ornament' of chapter 4, they belong not to the frontiers of her text but to the kernel of her arguments. Indeed, they are conceived, precisely, as a scientific undertaking. The British reviewer quoted at the head of the Introduction is explicit: 'The sciences have always owed their origin to some great spirit. Smith created political economy; Linnaeus, botany; Lavoisier, chemistry; and Madame de Stael has, in like manner, created the art of analyzing the spirit of nations and the springs which move them.' Below are some reasons why Stael is forced to simplify: any stress on local German oppression - past history, in any case, after 1806 - will only weaken Stael's attack on Napoleonic France. 26 GERMANY AND WORLD HISTORY

La soumission d'un peuple a un autre est contre nature. (1 12/11)

Germany in De VAllemagne is split between past and future, a country without a present. Stael's review of German language thus notes its 'antique naivete', but describes German words as

30

The birth of European Romanticism

'encore dans toute leur verite' (i 187/23): is this culture old or new? She goes on to say that German is 'jusqu'a present incapable' of French subtlety. Other juxtapositions are more shocking: 'La multitude et Petendue des forets indiquent une civilisation encore nouvelle'; cle pays [...] ressemble au sejour d'un grand peuple qui depuis longtemps Pa quitte' (1 29/1; 32/14). These phrases match two conflicting aspects of Germany's role in Stael's history: unspoilt nature and decayed grandeur, two early Romantic fashions. That textual absence also reflects Germany's occupation since 1806 - describing the place, Stael imagines herself from the outsetfiftyyears in the past - and Germany's function as a counterweight to Napoleon's France, lord of the fleeting present. Stael likewise splits the German character: it is shaped by enthusiasm, which characterised primitive man and will do so again. This is a Romantic topos, but it is also propaganda. Napoleon's censors banned her Herderian talk of exceptional men opposing the remorseless force of history, a theme of hers since 1800: 'Pimpulsion des siecles renverse tout ce qui veut lutter pour le passe contre Pavenir' (DL 261). Doubts concerning the French Empire's stability were not general in the summer of 1810 when the book went to press, though perhaps more visible by the year's end. But to understand how Stael sees Germany's place in history, we must know how she sees history as a whole.27 To begin with, Stael like others dates history from Bishop Ussher's 4004 BC (HI 299/5; IV 268/11), six thousand years shared out between four eras, as in medieval thought. More novel is her idea of history's forward march or perfectibility: 'La marche philosophique du genre humain parait done devoir se diviser en quatre eres differentes: les temps heroiques, qui fonderent la civilisation; le patriotisme, qui fit la gloire de Pantiquite; la chevalerie, qui fut la religion guerriere de PEurope; et Pamour de la liberte, dont Phistoire a commence vers Pepoque de la reformation' (1 76/28). Reill dates German talk of perfectibility from Leibniz; France had Condorcet's Esquisse d'un tableau historique des progres de I'esprit humain.

Compare De VAllemagne: 'II est tres probable que le genre

StaeVs Romantic Germany in 1810

31

humain est susceptible d'education [...] et qu'il y a des epoques marquees pour les progres de la pensee dans la route eternelle du temps' (v 33/4). It may seem trivial to insist how clearly these terms of reference are stated in Stael's first pages, but if she begins by telling readers what to look for in Germany they are more likely to find it thereafter. Players thus lay out the rules of a game before play can begin. This highlights a basic paradox of science stressed by Karl Popper: the difficulty of collecting data without ideas to guide our collecting. How can we give the Germans a place in history if we do not know who they are? Stael puts two texts before De I'Allemagne's first chapter: her 1813 preface, and her 1810 Observations generates which offer a capsule philosophy of history. They are packed with comparatives: the first six paragraphs contain twenty-one sentences; eleven compare the Germans with the French. The book's two middle sections likewise open with paired chapters contrasting French and English opinion, on German literature and on philosophy (11/i-ii, m/ii-iii). Now and again, within the body of the text, another clutch of comparatives redirects the public toward a value system imposed by the author; when these terms are established, Stael can continue her arguments without such overt remarks, leaving her comparisons implicit. One of Stael's major themes is how France has resisted history to create an artificial culture: its culture is antique, although its political ideals since 1789 and despite Napoleon belong to Stael's modern era. France had needed a source of enthusiasm; 'c'est sans doute ce besoin naturel qui tourna des le milieu du dernier siecle, tous les esprits vers 1'amour de la liberte' (1 76/25). Strange to argue that one enthusiasm appeared by besoin naturel because another vanished: one thinks of the Latin tag natura vacuum abhorret. In Germany meanwhile both culture and politics belong to the age of chivalry. This causes a problem in De VAllemagne: praising German culture will mark a historical advance, while praising their politics equally chivalrous — would mark a regression. 'But if so,' one might argue, 'Germany does not split between past and future at all: it is all the past, but French imitation of the classics, like

32

The birth of European Romanticism

French acceptance of Napoleon, is yet more antique.' Stael makes just that distinction in her opening Observations, and at the end of her famous chapter on Classical and Romantic poetry: 'La litterature romantique est la seule qui soit susceptible encore d'etre perfectionnee [...] son origine est ancienne, mais non antique' (n 138/9). Germany's archaism thus has a good and bad side in De FAllemagne. That Romantic divide separates enthusiasm and superstition, picking and choosing from an interdependent past: in France, the parlements were thus extracted from their feudal context to become symbols of modernity, sitting uneasily alongside abstract talk of human rights and natural law. This discontinuity is the essence of kitsch. But in De VAllemagne, that realm is absolutely central. Stael valued the Middle Ages, as represented by the Holy Roman Empire, more as a source of symbols to influence modern life than as a source of institutions to direct it. Stael derives liberty from the German Reformation and from contemporary France, within two paragraphs (1 76). Her argument has paid for her truth about German problems: 'Le regime feodal, cette institution politique triste et severe [...] s'est maintenu dans PAllemagne jusqu'a nos jours [...] L'esprit de chevalerie regne encore chez les Allemands pour ainsi dire passivement [...] Rien de grand ne s'y fera desormais que par l'impulsion liberate qui a succede dans l'Europe a la chevalerie' (1 75/18). After 1789, French thought moved on to Revolution, while in Germany the old regime remained in power. Even France's old regime was better than Germany: chivalry's political expression is feudalism, and to Stael, the French old regime had moved beyond that, while Germany had not (see iv 396A). Elsewhere, Stael opposes modern and feudal Germany, calling Schiller's robber leader 'moins odieux qu'il ne le serait dans le temps actuel, car il n'y avait pas une bien grande difference entre l'anarchie feodale sous laquelle il vivait et l'existence de bandit qu'il adopte' (11 276/4). She lists her full four-part world history only once, but its terms reappear again and again. That review of Die Rauber condemns the play's effects - young men imitated it, and 'honoraient leur gout pour

StaeVs Romantic Germany in 1810

33

une vie licencieuse du nom d'amour de la liberte'. These viewers have confused Schiller's feudal values from history's third era with the fourth era's love of liberty. In these terms, Stael's Germany does hover uneasily between past and present: the esprit humain has moved on to liberty, but Germany retains its feudal system. Stael was explicit in 1800: 'La chevalerie etait necessaire pour adoucir la ferocite militaire [...] mais la chevalerie [...] dut etre consideree comme un mal funeste, des qu'elle cessa d'etre un remede indispensable' (DL 145). This echoes De VAllemagne\ most famous dialectic, condemning France for keeping to Classicism when the esprit humain is Romantic. Stael's partner Constant agrees: cles abus d'aujourd'hui etaient les besoins d'hier'. 28 A recent critic claims that Stael ignored German realities: 'this observer of the age and its problems passed by the questions of Germany's social conditions, blind and almost untroubled [...] Heine's first motto was liberty, equality and fraternity [...] whose application she neither sought nor found in Germany.' On the contrary, Stael clearly looked in vain for German calls to liberty and resigned herself to seeing no popular echo of events in France. Her call for German freedom was among the world's first. She states her case in 1804: 'En Allemagne, il y a des restes d'usages gothiques qui ne sont ni commodes ni agreables et qui se changeront avec le temps [...] j'admire la puissance d'imagination des poetes allemands qui savent ecrire avec tant d'enthousiasme lorsque souvent rien autour d'eux n'a le moindre rapport avec leurs conceptions ideales' (JA 33). In 1810, her complaints are softened, as so often, being incorporated into her propagandist arguments. 'L'independance meme,' she states, 'dont on jouissait en Allemagne [...] rendait les Allemands indifferents a la liberte: l'independance est un bien, la liberte une garantie.' She suggests that 'on ne croyait done pas avoir besoin de fortifications constitutionnelles, quand on ne voyait point d'agresseurs', but instantly remarks, 'on a raison de s'etonner que le code feodal ait subsiste presque sans alteration parmi des hommes si eclaires' (1 59/10; see 229/9, n 2 9/5)- After all, linking art and society had been Stael's avowed programme since 1800 and De

34

The birth of European Romanticism

la litterature consideree dans ses rapports avec les institutions sociales.

Germany gave Stael a knotty problem, because its rift between art and society clashed with her own belief that the two are inseparable: 'Les institutions politiques peuvent seules former le caractere d'une nation; la nature du gouvernement de PAllemagne etait presque en opposition avec les lumieres philosophiques des Allemands5 (i 61/12; see iv 273/5).29 De PAllemagne expresses astonishment at this anomaly and has scattered mentions of it; the issue is nevertheless allowed to recede into the background. Stael's eighty-five chapters on Germany contain not one on German institutions, and references tend rather to repeat her first astonishment than to analyse it. Was this a blind spot? Her remark in the preface that 'je m'etais cependant interdit [...] toute reflexion sur Petat politique de 1'Allemagne' (1 3/2) is true as far as it goes, but one would hardly expect Stael to praise institutions she calls feudal. What makes this suppression important is a convention of praise for Germany's free institutions, going back to Tacitus: this was, with the example of England, an inspiration to the French parlements, and crucial to the careers of Necker and the Revolution. The Esprit des lois contributed to making it a commonplace in French debate - Mirabeau in 1787 remarks on 'le bonheur que PAllemagne a d'etre divisee en un grand nombre de cantons dont l'independance compense quelque partie de ce qui lui manque en liberte', and his inappropriate term cantons links German and Swiss political systems. In 1810, Stael claims that 'cette division de PAllemagne, funeste a sa force politique, etait [...] tres favorable aux essais de tout genre que pouvaient tenter le genie et Pimagination. II y avait une sorte d'anarchie douce et paisible, en fait d'opinions litteraires et metaphysiques' (1 38/1). Germans such as Kant, Herder, and Goethe also found much of value in a loose federation: 'what will become of Germany,' wrote Goethe, 'if people want to level and to neutralise what is meaningful in individual roots? [...] Let us then leave separate what Nature has separated.' Yet in 1804, Stael had sharply distinguished German and foreign federations: 'ce federalisme d'aristocracies

StaeVs Romantic Germany in 1810

35

ne cree point une patrie. Le federalisme des Republiques n'affaiblit point le patriotisme; la liberte en est la vie' (JA 47). Once again, Stael's clear initial grouping of federalism with liberty abroad and with feudalism in Germany is blunted in her printed text: 'II y a plusieurs exemples de gouvernements federatifs qui donnent a l'esprit public autant de force que l'unite dans le gouvernement; mais ce sont des associations d'etats egaux et de citoyens libres5 (1 58/11). 30 Tacitus and Montesquieu also link German liberties with ideas of elective representation, but the Holy Roman Empire had for centuries been little more elective or representative than Napoleon's Consulate. The Empire was an oligarchy, its members autocrats (see 1 52/2). In 1772, the Reickskammergericht had 61,233 cases awaiting trial; in the Reichstag, any legislation was by and for the Chamber of Princes. Germany's only equality before the law was the poll tax. 31 De VAllemagne calls for fortifications constitutionnelles, a promis-

sory contract for governments to honour; Hobbes invented this idea of a contract, standard in eighteenth-century debate. England's (non-existent) constitution was a favoured precedent. De VAllemagne uses it unexpectedly to rank Germany, its subject, below England from the outset: 'les peuples que j ' a d m i r e [...] sont les Anglais d'abord, et a plusieurs egards les

Allemands' (1 8/10). Stael explains her reasons in draft and in her London preface, not in 1810 - 'c'est la constitution seule qui a mis une si grande distance entre l'eclat des deux pays et leur dignite nationale' (11 27A; see 1 17/18) - and she expands on this in 1818: cCe qui constitue les lumieres d'une nation, ce sont des idees saines en politique [...] et une instruction generate dans les sciences et la litterature. Sous le premier de ces rapports, les Anglais n'ont point de rivaux en Europe; sous le second, je ne connais que les Allemands qu'on puisse leur comparer' (CRFni 370). Even English art is preferred to that of Germany: Toriginalite anglaise a des couleurs plus vives, parce que le mouvement qui existe dans l'etat politique en Angleterre donne plus d'occasion a chaque homme de se montrer ce qu'il est' (m 190/12). Stael puts England first, but Voltaire had already written De I'Angleterre; her Germany is

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The birth of European Romanticism

both a paradigm for Germanic nations and an ersatz for their true leader, England. Only German thought is first-rate: 'Ce pays ne peut etre mis au premier rang, ni pour la guerre, ni pour les arts, ni pour la liberte politique: ce sont les lumieres dont l'Allemagne a droit de s'enorgueillir' (v 67/4). Stael's first known letters in Swedish and in English date from 1786 and 1793; on 29 April 1800, she tells Goethe that 'J'apprends l'allemand depuis deux mois.' German was her third germanic language. Analogies between Germany and England remain a constant subtext throughout her book.32 In De VAllemagne^ Stael neither justifies Germany's feudal society, nor really explains how lumieres can arise under such conditions. Can she provide an excuse for German thinkers' lack of political engagement? In reality, German writers were muzzled by their governments, as Stael admits in 1800: 'Le regime feodal, auquel PAllemagne est soumise, ne lui permet pas de jouir de tous les avantages politiques attaches a la federation [...] Les hommes de lettres de l'Allemagne vivent entre eux en republique; plus il y a d'abus revoltants dans le despotisme des rangs, plus les hommes eclaires se separent de la societe et des affaires publiques' (DL 244). That republic is a metaphor, as is Stael's remark that 'les Allemands n'ont point une patrie politique; mais ils se sont fait une patrie litteraire et philosophique' (DL 258). In the new Europe of 1810, rather than admit German oppression, Stael uses this republic to bury her problems, saying that 'les Allemands [...] se plaisent dans l'ideal, parce qu'il n'y a rien dans l'etat actuel des choses qui parle a leur imagination' (11 24/3). As her metaphor expands, heavily charged terms like citoyens link her Germans to the French of 1789: 'Dans le nord de l'Allemagne il n'y a point de gouvernement representatif [...] Les Allemands ont su se creer une republique des lettres animee et independante [...] Les citoyens de cette republique ideale [...] travaillent dans l'obscurite comme les mineurs' (1 200/10). Yet this solution is inconsistent: are German art and society both chivalrous, or is German art an independent creation, distinct from Germany's feudal institutions? Stael takes both views; the problem lies in her use of the past to ensure future

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37

progress. Could she not simply echo Revolutionary calls for a new, Republican literature? At one point, she does just this: 'Rien dans la vie ne doit etre stationnaire, et l'art est petrifie quand il ne change plus. Vingt ans de revolution ont donne a l'imagination d'autres besoins' (11 254/14). But the idea is never really followed through; Stael talks of the 'beautes nouvelles dont les pieces tirees de l'histoire moderne seraient susceptibles', while referring to 'les mceurs chevaleresques' (11 247/3). That passage ends with a circular argument, drawn from the very philosophy of history that is jeopardising the art she likes: 'la tendance naturelle du siecle, c'est la tragedie historique' (11 256/1). These battles between past and future ideals lie at the foundations of European Romanticism: they are rarely better resolved than in this early text. Stael's inconsequence sooner reflects a state of mind than any scientific argument. She is Classical - or Romantic enough to like the past for its own sake: 'il faut pour la tragedie des sujets historiques [...] dans les fictions, comme dans la vie, l'imagination reclame le passe, quelque avide qu'elle soit de l'avenir5 (111 176/12). Hence, her purist's dislike of the drame, which she calls an espece de contrebande de Vart: 'Le drame ne conserverait done qu'un avantage, celui de peindre, comme les romans, les situations de notre propre vie, les moeurs du temps ou nous vivons' (11 272/10). She buries the drame with another circular argument: 'On croit trouver plus d'interet dans le drame [...] mais une imitation trop rapprochee du vrai n'est pas ce qu'on recherche dans les arts.' De I Allemagne contains several phrases out of which readers can build skeletal philosophies of history. One useful tool in explaining how Stael's four eras interact, and how she relates Germany to France, is integral to her medieval four-era source: the concept of translatio or translation of empire, for centuries Europe's standard description of historical change. It states that the world has a single headship which can be translated from place to place, like a torch. Frederick the Great uses it in 1772: 'les sciences voyagent. Elles ont ete en Grece, en Italie, en France, en Angleterre; pourquoi ne se fixeraient-elles pour un temps en Prusse?' Stael warned in 1800, while Bonaparte

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The birth of European Romanticism

seized power, that 'si par quelques malheurs invincibles, la France etait un jour destinee a perdre pour jamais tout espoir de liberte, c'est en AUemagne que se concentrerait le foyer des lumieres' (DL 259). By 1810, De lyAUemagne sets out to fulfil this remarkable warning. Stael was already explicit in a letter to Villers in August 1802: 'Je crois avec vous que l'esprit humain, qui semble voyager d'un pays a l'autre, est a present en Allemagne' (CG iv. ii, 541). 33 Translatio takes three forms: translatio imperil, studii and religionis. Two claims separate this idea from reality - that the world has, so to speak, a single torch, and that its flame is constant: 'leadership is not thought to go under with one people and arise anew with another realm, but [...] remains constant and merely changes its carrier'. When headship is transferred, its previous owner becomes past history. Translatio derives from ideas of empire, and is built on an analogy with rulers - kingship goes on when old kings die. Power often leaves one place for another, but to say that for thought to occur in one place it must cease elsewhere — in France, for instance — is teleology, a superstition no different from thinking a man more evolved than a cow. Cows did not cease to evolve when men came into being: history cannot march, in nature or society. This is the falsehood behind Stael's historicist Romantic dialectic; it later dominated the nineteenth century, and is still sadly current today. 34 Pius VII literally translated empire onto Napoleon on Christmas Day 1804, thus fulfilling the words of Boniface VIII five centuries earlier: 'Peter's heir has the power to transfer empire from the Germans to whomever, should he wish.' Stael does not mention that instance. She uses two arguments which match the idea of translatio studii, saying that the French seventeenth century continued in Germany not France, and that Greek art thus arrived in Germany: 'Les souvenirs de la Grece, le gout des beaux-arts semblent y etre arrives par correspondance' (1 51/16). Correspondance is ambiguous, meaning consequence, communication, or analogy; the first two can hardly apply between cultures two thousand years apart. Stael's bizarre idea that thought has travelled between two distant

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cultures because of an analogy between them has a simple precedent in medieval translatio.35 So far, Stael has suggested three sources for German thought: it is an organic outgrowth of German chivalry; an independent creation; or something transported from the Greeks. Stael also links German thought to France: 'Si les Franfais avaient suivi la direction metaphysique de leurs grands hommes du dix-septieme siecle, ils auraient aujourd'hui les memes opinions que les Allemands; car Leibnitz est dans la route philosophique le successeur naturel de Descartes et de Malebranche, et Kant le successeur naturel de Leibnitz' (iv 63/8). This is a strange way to recuperate Kant for French readers, but its real purpose is to prove that 'les arts en France ne sont pas, comme ailleurs, natifs du pays meme ou leurs beautes se developpent' (11 136/11); organic French culture has been translated to Germany. In reality, Germany had spent the eighteenth century reestablishing a national culture. Later Romantic writers, in France and elsewhere, found in De VAllemagne a model for doing so themselves. These are specific cultures being translated. Stael also describes the esprit humain as such, and how it changes when eras change, matching the concept of translatio religionis. This was early used in talk of the Jews: 'le royaume de Dieu vous sera ote, et il sera donne a une nation qui en rapportera les fruits' (Matt, xxi, 43). Later, Protestants used it of Catholics, as in Werner's Luther^ which Stael quotes: 'les anciennes erreurs disparaitront bientot, et [...] le nouveau jour de la raison va se lever' (in 138/18). Stael uses this argument to show the Catholics leaving history, but also secularises the concept. Just as Jews and Catholics have left history in turn, so each of her four eras must itself leave history when a new era starts: 'Lorsque Maximilien essaya [...] de ranimer la chevalerie, l'esprit humain n'avait plus cette tendance' (11 36/9). This religious dialectic allows Stael to condemn both French Classical culture and German chivalrous institutions — both art and politics - neatly, simultaneously and with the same argument; it is at the heart of her famous chapter on Classical and Romantic poetry.

40

The birth of European Romanticism THE GERMAN CHARACTER

Une vie laborieuse [...] un gouvernement qui n'a eu ni l'avantage de flatter l'orgueil par des prosperites brillantes, ni celui d'elever les ames par le sentiment de la liberte [...] peut-etre aussi un caractere naturellement plus porte a des meditations profondes [...] qu'a des fictions ingenieuses, sont les causes multipliees qui ont rendu l'AUemagne plus sterile en poetes que tous les autres pays que nous venons de parcourir. (Marmontel, Elements de litterature (1787; 1818-19), xv, 'Poesie', 56-7) The French already had a German stereotype before Stael produced a new one in De VAllemagne. This section asks how they differ, arguing that the French relied on a distinction and an identification which Stael simply overrides: they separated thinker and poet, and linked 'spirit' with military courage. Marmontel's remark shows how Stael broke with tradition in giving German science half a chapter: 'Influence de la nouvelle philosophie sur les sciences'. As elsewhere, debating whether Stael was an inadequate scientist is visibly less relevant than showing how her shifts of emphasis produce a different book. It is harder to put science into talk of German character, than literature or philosophy; more science would threaten her book's coherence. Stael instead stresses German taste for work: 'Ce qu'on appelle etudier en Allemagne est vraiment une chose admirable: quinze heures par jour de solitude et de travail' (1 206/5). She said this in 1800: 'Les hommes eclaires, en Allemagne, n'existent que pour l'etude, et leur esprit se soutient en lui-meme par une sorte d'activite interieure' (DL 246); see chapter 3 on interiors. The topos appears early in De VAllemagne - 'le travail solitaire, l'independance audacieuse qui les distinguent' (1 179/24) - and is again linked with interiors in talk of the freres Moraves: 'Chacun travaille avec regularite [...] et Faction interieure des sentiments religieux apaise tout autre mouvement' (v 57/12). German philosophy's place in De VAllemagne is not easy to map out, but its absence would have surprised StaePs public. Just as her Part 3 prepares her public with opposing chapters on English and French philosophy, so Part 2 closes with a

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review of the Schlegels, which introduces German thought. Here is Stael's sharpest encounter with cliched French distinctions between work and imagination. She begins cautiously: 'Le genie poetique [...] pourrait aussi recevoir une impulsion heureuse de l'amour pour la nature, les arts et la philosophic qui fermente dans les contrees germaniques; mais au moins j'ose affirmer que tout homme qui voudra se vouer maintenant a quelque travail serieux que ce soit [...] ne saurait se passer de connaitre les ecrivains allemands' (in 322/5). This is a small advance on Mirabeau's talk in 1787 of 'cette Constance, cette application [...] cette assiduite patiente, vrai type du caractere allemand [...] Ce sont done leurs livres de morale, de sciences, d'economie politique [...] qu'il faut pouvoir consulter.' But Stael's terms strengthen as her argument proceeds: 'Ceux qui plaident en faveur de l'ignorance, comme un garant de la grace [...] oublient que ces hommes ont profondement etudie le coeur humain [...] si ces savants, en fait de societe, voulaient juger la litterature sans la connaitre, ils seraient ennuyeux comme les bourgeois quand ils parlent de la cour.' Stael's argument may be unclear, but its emotional force is not: as so often in De I'Allemagne, it is overtly ad hominem.36

The text continues with a rare direct appeal: 'Lorsque j'ai commence l'etude de Pallemand, il m'a semble que j'entrais dans une sphere nouvelle ou se manifestaient les lumieres les plus frappantes sur tout ce que je sentais auparavant d'une maniere confuse.' Lumieres and confuse are Enlightenment terms, but that linear progression is only half the story. The word auparavant implies another model, one of subsumption; Stael does not discard her past opinions, she reincorporates them in a new synthesis. Without study, that synthesis cannot occur: the French cannot like German literature unless they read it. Her preface thus attacks ignorant critics: 'L'Allemagne intellectuelle n'est presque pas connue de la France [...] un beaucoup plus grand nombre la juge' (1 20/4). She even adds that 'on trouve dans les livres allemands, sur les sujets les plus abstraits, le genre d'interet qui fait rechercher les bons romans'. A later reworking of this argument is again aimed directly at Stael's French public: 'Les Allemands, dans les

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richesses de l'esprit humain, sont de veritables proprietaires: ceux qui s'en tiennent a leurs lumieres naturelles ne sont que des proletaires en comparaison d'eux' (m 342/9). All this talk of thoughtful Germans thus has as subtext a cliched French distinction between thought and grace, which called the Germans thoughtful but graceless. Again Stael's printed text censors her explicit manuscript polemic. In 1804, she stated that 'cette idee bien commune que les Allemands ont du bon sens et les Fran9ais de l'esprit se modifie de mille manieres' (JA 32); in 1810, she allows only scattered echoes of this idea - 'la nation germanique n'est pas aussi vive que la nation frangaise' (1 77/13) - and one or two phrases bridging the divide: 'des hommes a la fois si philosophes et si poetes, si capables d'etude et d'exaltation' (iv 144/4). To see StaePs point, we must know her subtext, as below: 'Pimagination et Perudition pretaient egalement a Winckelmann leurs differentes lumieres; on etait persuade jusqu'a lui qu'elles s'excluaient mutuellement' (11 68/7). The phrase on etait persuade is what remains of StaePs tribute to the French. Other phrases are still more discreet: Stael notes how Germany's ecole nouvelle has linked 'deux penchants qui semblaient s'exclure, la metaphysique et la poesie, la methode scientifique et Penthousiasme' (iv 380/1). In 1800, she was less independent: 'Les Allemands manquent de gout naturellement; ils en manquent aussi par imitation' (DL 253)! Humboldt quotes this brutal phrase to Brinckmann on 30 May 1800, calling it vorzuglich goldwerth: 'Cramer for instance is beside himself, to hear that in his mother's womb he already had no taste [...] Oelsner told Constant it would be interesting to draw a parallel between Father Bouhours and Mme de Stael, to see that people had after all stayed true to the same ideas as 100 years ago.' He adds that Constant mentioned this to Stael, and thinks 'that this detail will stay out in a 2nd edition.' It did so; yet several doubts remain, despite these German objections. The same passage calls the Germans 'naturellement penseurs et meditatifs' (DL 254); Stael records that 'on a souvent reproche aux ecrivains allemands de manquer de grace et de gaiete' (DL 254), yet herself agrees that

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Germans cannot write comedy, explaining, 'le serieux de la raison, l'eloquence de la sensibilite, voila ce qui doit etre le partage de la litterature allemande; ses essais dans les autres genres ont toujours ete moins heureux' (DL 257). Nothing better illustrates the force of the French prejudice Stael finally rejects in 18 io. 37 This stereotype rests on a divide with deep roots in European tradition: one might label it the ^oi)aiKf|/x8xvr| divide, two Greek words for art considered respectively as inspiration or as a craft. It opposes head and heart, claiming that because Germans are craftsmen they cannot be artists. Stael makes the Romantics' choice: 'II faut dans les beaux-arts plus d'instinct que de pensee' (in 374/10). She also links this aesthetic criterion with a broader character attribute: again and again, French sources call the Germans cold. As an empiricist, Montesquieu offers an observed phenomenon to support his theory that climate influences character: 'J'ai observe le tissu exterieur d'une langue de mouton.' Cold retracted the tongue's taste buds, and heat exposed them. He deduces that 'comme on distingue les climats par les degres de latitude, on pourrait les distinguer, pour ainsi dire, par degres de sensibilite' (Esprit 1 252, 241). In other words, northern nations lack sensibility. In 1800, Stael simply says no to Montesquieu: 'C'est a tort, ce me semble, qu'on a dit que les passions etaient plus violentes dans le Midi que dans le Nord' (DL 181). By 1810, she has a new solution. First, she uses Montesquieu's climatic criteria to prove the apparent opposite; she claims that 'les climats temperes sont plus propres a la societe qu'a la poesie' (1 90/8), making Germany and Italy both more poetic than France which lies between them. Second, in a group of textual phrases whose thrust is not immediately apparent, she distinguishes German imagination from the passion typical of southern races, subsuming his terms within a passion/imagination dialectic she previously lacked. These phrases appear in her opening pages: 'il y a chez les Allemands plus d'imagination que de vraie passion' (1 69/8). Still earlier, she calls imagination 'la qualite dominante de l'Allemagne artiste et litteraire' (1 55/3). Yet Stael has not rejected Montesquieu; her passion/

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imagination divide still relies upon his claim that passion is alien to the Germans. In 1796, Stael spent three hundred pages attacking the passions; imagination may not be a virtue as such, but it echoes the mouvement dc repli she opposes to passion as characteristic of modern man. Napoleon is a novel source for talk of German coldness. As late as December 1811, he wrote to Davout contrasting the Spanish with the Germans - 'un peuple si sage, si raisonnable, si froid, si tolerant, tellement eloigne de tout exces qu'il n'y a pas d'exemple qu'un homme ait ete assassine en Allemagne pendant la guerre'. This is not Montesquieu's focus, but their talk of cold is identical. Napoleon's linking of spirit and courage is equally old; Plato's term for spirit similarly refers to military valour alone. But just as Stael's chapters on religion and philosophy sidestep 1810's rival French camps of Ideologic and Catholic reaction, so she clearly separates military glory from the enthusiasm she praises. 38 Indeed, perhaps Stael's greatest appeal is the scope and coherence with which she remaps older categories of thought to match her own beliefs. Chateaubriand and the Ideologues do not face Stael's difficulties - they chose progress or reaction without this complication. Compare their rival reviews of De la litterature: the Decade remarks, 'nous croyons qu'elle n'aurait pas eu plus de peine a prouver que les progres de la raison finiront par etre tres favorables a la litterature', while Chateaubriand writes, 'j'entre dans une saintc colere, quand on veut rapprocher les auteurs du dix-huitieme siecle des ecrivains du dix-septieme'. Mortier notes the tension in Stael's thought 'Mieux que Chateaubriand, mieux meme que Senancour, Mme de Stael occupe une position charniere entre le xvme et le xixe siecle' - and thus excuses her inconsistencies: 'Une telle position n'est ni simple, ni commode.' Stael certainly has a thrill of tension that they lack; her famous inconsistencies are the echo of her battles. 39 In 1810, no-one doubted that Germans liked abstract thought: Napoleon and Stael, Schlegel and Marmontel were in agreement. But the Germans had been called warlike, notably in Tacitus; Stael is often mocked for saying the reverse, though

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Napoleon himself agreed with her. Balaye comments: 'Faute d'avoir compris sa pensee, on l'a parfois accusee d'avoir peint une Allemagne idyllique qui en dissimulait une autre sur laquelle elle se serait tue.' In France, Stael's popularity has not benefited from the three German wars of 1870, 1914 and 1939 - in 1914, they named her la prussoldtrel Heine also condemned StaePs idealism; new propaganda for a post-Napoleonic Europe. In 1799, 1800 and 1818, Stael attacks Napoleon's militarism: 'rien n'est plus contraire a la liberte que Pesprit militaire'; 'L'influence trop grande de Pesprit militaire, est aussi un danger pour les etats libres'; 'c'etait la gloire militaire qui enivrait la nation' (CA 289; DL 35; CRF 11 339). She also attacks la gloire in 1800: 'L'enthousiasme qu'inspire la gloire des armes, est le seul qui puisse devenir dangereux a la liberte' {DL 329). Remarks like these were impossible in 1810, hence their absence in the text. Instead, far from being categorical, Stael spends several pages on unwarlike Germans, again with an acid bow to Napoleon's values: 'si toute la force d'un etat consiste dans son esprit militaire, il importe d'examiner quelles sont les causes qui ont affaibli cet esprit dans la nation allemande' (1 55/13). Her aetiology has seemed erratic; here she devotes ten paragraphs to a cause apiece. The causes are a remarkable jumble: German climate, air, class division, imagination; then a trio they lack - patriotism, a state religion, and the love of liberty - then two causes of their indifference to liberty, in their justice and their independence; then a final reason for their failure in war, their particularism or Kleinstaaterei. This confusion highlights the range of aetiologies Stael employs, juxtaposing climatic, moral and economic criteria. We could investigate each different criterion in turn, but each existed before 1810. De l}Allemagne's novelty is its bid for global synthesis, a world view: its tools are assimilation and juxtaposition; as such, they are better treated in context than in isolation.40 Apart from these two exceptions, StaePs stereotypical German broadly echoes previous French opinion. We can trace her arguments by finding terms she links to Germany, and watching them recur; once that first identification has

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been made, it remains implicit when her terms reappear. Here are fourteen: imagination, analyse, enthousiasme, melancolie; serieux, sincerity simplicity silence; independance, solitude; respect, travail, loyaute, bonte. Stael stresses German enthousiasme in 1800,

before her 1803 visit: 'Tous les esprits en Allemagne [...] sont disposes a l'enthousiasme' (DL 248). This echoes literature. Compare Montesquieu: 'Vous trouverez dans les climats du nord des peuples qui ont peu de vices, assez de vertus, beaucoup de sincerite et de franchise' (Esprit 1 242). Stael's other terms also existed outside Germany; most appear in her first book, on Rousseau. Rousseau, like Stael, builds on two different ideas: modern man, and man in a state of nature. The two themes have a complex influence on Stael's Germans. 41 Modern ideas of man in a state of nature may derive from a simple misreading of Hobbes, who applied Cartesian principles to politics in his Leviathan (1651). Hobbes postulated 'a man isolated from all social bonds (a contradiction in terms for scholastic and classical theorists)', and built society upward from there; readers treated this philosophical hypothesis as a historical fact. Tt is only with Hobbes that the state of nature antedating civil society becomes an essential part of natural law.' If so, this is among the most fruitful misreadings in history; apart from its massive political impact, the idea of a man isolated from all social bonds, either as 'noble savage', or as poet or outsider, has passed through Rousseau, Stael and the Romantics down to the present day. Stael twice links Rousseau to solitude in 1810: 'En lisant les reveries de J.-J. Rousseau [...] je me suis demandee comment un homme d'esprit forme par le monde et un solitaire religieux auraient essaye de consoler Rousseau' (v 120/16); 'Vous avez [...] des amis au loin parmi les solitaires qui vous lisent' (v 123/12). Praise of solitude disturbs Stael's praise for capital cities, but gave tools, to the many 1810 readers who knew Rousseau, with which to approach Stael's new, Romantic model for literary society one of independence instead of centralisation. 42 Stael links her talk of German nature with two distinct literary traditions: Utopian thought - the Germania is again a precedent - and pastoral poetry. This can produce bizarre

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results; a splendid portait of begging gipsies, 'lorsqu'aupres des maisons de poste ils tachent d'interesser les voyageurs par le concert ambulant de leur famille errante' (1 47/16), is followed by groups of decorative 'bergers qui jouent des airs charmants sur des instruments simples et sonores', as if in the gardens of Versailles. Whether Stael found her shepherds in a meadow or on a stage, they echo a tradition as old as Theocritus; talk of begging gipsies is rare before the nineteenth century. But it remains surprising to find these shepherds in 1810, when in 1788 Stael mocked 'ces lieux enchantes, fades comme les bergers qui l'habitent!' (LR 44). Why might she want this pastoral vision? Utopian political visions, like this one, exist nowhere, and thus contrast with lived reality. The Germania is full of references to Rome; Hobbes's Leviathan rejects the subject's right to rebel, two years after Charles Fs beheading. From Plato to Rousseau, Utopian visions are political acts, and De VAllemagne is no exception, as Heine notes: 'Her book De VAllemagne resembles in this respect the Germania of Tacitus, who perhaps likewise, through his apology of the Germans, wanted to write an indirect satire against his compatriots.' In calling the Germans apolitical, the French are implicitly condemned, both for not meeting German standards of virtue and for ending German tranquillity by invading. This gives Stael's imperfect tenses a high emotional charge, as we saw.43 Stael quotes German facts to support her text; should we not prefer those factual sources to literary parallels? If the state of nature demands independence and solitude, German realities matched those criteria: for three centuries, famine, plague and war had kept the German population in check, and independence was built into the old Empire. But deciding Stael's relative debts to reading and to lived reality is a Sisyphean undertaking. To an extent, she saw what her education allowed: only the word interesser hints that those gipsies performed for her out of something more than joie de vivre. Similarly, readers interpreting her text use categories they know already: Germans will lean more on German facts, and foreigners on literary models. Each reader does see a different

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book; a critic might more usefully ask what readings Stael prevents, than draw up a list of sources she draws on. 44 A word like independance may clarify some of these problems. Stael makes ten uses of the word explicit, falling into four groups. There is German independence from outsiders, in resisting foreign invasion and foreign literature; independence from each other, in the Holy Roman Empire and in literature, in the nouvelle ecole and in exceptional men; German independence from the real world, in their taste for abstraction; and a final clutch of general references to independence in the German language, in England and in nature. Language in De VAllemagne or any book is self-perpetuating: each mention of independence in the text is directly and necessarily tied to all other places it is mentioned. Talk of literary independence thus has politics implicit within it, and vice versa (1 17/3, 38/5, 215/9; 11 110/13, 162/14, 277/5, 3 l 6 / l ° ; ni 198/2, 246/5). Sometimes this rapprochement is explicit: a literary passage calls the Germans 'plus independants en tout parce qu'ils sont moins libres' (n 29/5), which reflects an earlier political discussion (1 59/10). Stael links independence with Germany, liberty with England: in 1800, she said that 'L'independance etait le premier et l'unique bonheur des peuples septentrionaux' (DL 182). This again echoes Montesquieu who says that the Germans 'aimaient a se separer [...] Tous ces peuples [...] etaient libres et independants; et, quand ils furent meles, l'independance resta encore' (Esprit 11 209). Elsewhere, Stael describes literary independence as audace or hardiesse, characterizing both the Germans and the great - hence, her claim that a French genius might unite Taudace qui fait sortir de la route commune, au tact du bon gout' (m 227/6). The clearest proof of StaePs special use of independence would be cases where the term mistranslates a foreign word - it does so twice in translating Schiller: 11 34/6, where poete independant renders in eigner Fulle, and m 17/15, where esprit d'independance renders Geist der Freiheit.45

Among the above terms, some describe virtues traceable to Plutarch or Plato's Sparta: serieux, sincerity simplicity silence; respect, travail, loyaute, bonte. Others like independence and soli-

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tude are less new than newly stressed during the eighteenth century. A last group - imagination, analysis, enthusiasm, melancholy - has little tradition in everyday life, though common enough in religious and critical discourse. StaePs French public could find most of this list in her early book on Rousseau. But there is a key distinction between Rousseau's solitaire and StaePs German: in De VAllemagne, he has moved indoors. It is fascinating when, to demonstrate this move, Stael refers us to the author of the Reveries du promeneur solitaire: 'La susceptibilite [...] des hommes de lettres s'est manifestee dans Rousseau, dans Le Tasse, et [...] dans les ecrivains allemands [...] C'est quand on vit beaucoup avec soi-meme et dans la solitude qu'on a de la peine a supporter Pair exterieur' (111 60/4). StaePs talk of avoiding, not being denied, the open air is totally alien to Rousseau; contrast her more familiar talk of 'une maladie de Pimagination que le grand air doit dissiper' (v 214/5; see in 62/12). The simple physical act of moving indoors has far-reaching implications. The success in France of Ossian, Rousseau and Chateaubriand shows well enough the period's taste for an art constructed in opposition to society: an obvious method is to put your artists amid scenes of nature, but the day they can function as rebels from within society is of great convenience to them in the modern world. Macpherson's Ossian is stuck on Scotland's West Coast, Paul et Virginie, on the island of Mauritius; Chateaubriand's Atala is among the native Americans, and all of Lamartine's Meditations are set outside. When neither artists nor public spend their lives amid nature, art using only nature imagery is no better suited to deal with daily experience than the most restrictive Classicism. A workable compromise between these two irrelevancies - a way to bring nature back home - might allow artists to draw on a new imagery and audience alike. Stael handed this new solution to Romantic Europe. This compromise or synthesis was encouraged by StaePs own difficulties with nature: 'Dans sa jeunesse, elle ne pouvait pas supporter la solitude [...] ce n'est que bien tard dans la vie [...] qu'elle a pu, selon son expression, vivre en societe avec la nature.' Yet this accord with StaePs private sentiments

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hardly makes her position unconscious. Compare her letter to Mme Pastoret comparing Atala and her own Delphine: 'J'ai essaye dans mon roman si la vie sociale et la religion naturelle ne pretait pas autant a l'imagination que l'etat sauvage et la superstition.' 46 Stael has three likely reasons for moving her solitaire indoors, all attributable to what she saw in Germany: solitary workers and thinkers, the cold keeping people indoors, and a mouvement de repli or withdrawal from the outside world. When Stael talks of solitary workers and thinkers, once again she is giving Romantic France a workable compromise between two extremes: a vita contemplativa not simply reproducing medieval talk of monks and hermits, and a rebel figure not restricted like Rousseau's solitaire to pastoral kerborisation, nor stuck outdoors like the heroes of Atala or Paul et Virginie. The cold ties this move indoors to two of Stael's other major antinomies between northern and southern races, and between the ancients who lived outdoors and moderns who stay in buildings: 'comment recreer toute cette seve de vie sous nos frimas et dans nos maisons? La civilisation moderne a multiplie les observations sur le coeur humain' (m 198/19). This matches Schlegel's comments in his 1808 Vienna lectures, and the word frimas or hoar-froast is more suited to a German's argument than a Parisian's: 'the Greeks lived, as we still see today with other southern peoples, far more in the open air than we, and thus dealt with much in open places which with us tends to occur in the houses'. 47 In 1804, Stael suggested a political cause for her mouvement de repli: 'j'admire la puissance d'imagination des poetes allemands qui savent ecrire avec tant d'enthousiasme lorsque souvent rien autour d'eux n'a le moindre rapport avec leurs conceptions ideales' (JA 33). By 181 o, it is omnipresent, an integral part of her Romantic vision. A fine piece of dialectic claims first that German novels describe the heart, then that the esprit humain desires such descriptions, concluding: 'Cette disposition tient aux grands changements intellectuels qui ont eu lieu dans l'homme; il tend toujours plus en general a se replier sur lui-meme, et cherche la religion, l'amour et la pensee au plus

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intime de son etre' (in 249/15). Stael elsewhere links this mouvement de repli to the process of thought: 'la pensee de l'homme consiste dans la faculte de se replier sur lui-meme' (iv 258/16). Those terms suggest Schiller, who says of the sentimental poet that 'when he wants to show us his feelings, we do not experience his state immediately and at first hand, but [...] what he as a spectator of himself has thought about it.' Schiller's essay Vber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung played a major

role in shaping German Romanticism, and Stael admits to quoting two distinctions from it: 'partir de Fame pour juger les objets exterieurs, ou des objets exterieurs pour savoir ce qui se passe dans Fame'; and 'le talent qui s'ignore et le talent qui s'observe lui-meme' (111 326/5). Yet Stael's terms, later to become very popular in Romantic Europe, appear in her work as early as 1788: 'la pensee cessant de tomber sur elle-meme, peut voir au-devant d'elle un but qu'elle peut atteindre' (LR 85). In 1794, she admires situations 'ou l'etre infortune put s'observer lui-meme, et fut contraint de peindre ce qu'il eprouve' (£ulma 2). She mentions Goethe in 1800 - 'II n'y a que Rousseau et Goethe qui aient su peindre la passion reflechissante, la passion qui [...] se connait sans pouvoir se dompter' (DL 247) - going on to describe 'l'homme malheureux [...] dirigeant son imagination sur lui-meme, assez fort pour se regarder souffrir, et neanmoins incapable de porter a son ame aucun secours'. But compare her friend Suard, on Ossian, in 1761: 'L'ame, en se repliant sur elle-meme, se detache en quelque sorte des objets exterieurs.' Stael once even denies her Germans the very mouvement de repli in question: 'ils n'observent pas les autres, encore moins sont-ils capables de s'examiner eux-memes sous les rapports exterieurs' (in 189/14). Since this is precisely how she distinguishes Tasso from the Germans in her review of Goethe's play, the remark is surprising - though it might make us pause, once again, before dating all Stael's arguments from Germany. 48 A man indoors has left the state of nature: the emotional weight of this move, in our Christian culture, reflects the Eden myth and ideas of lost innocence. Stael twice mentions the impression penible Germany gives her (1 30/13, 33/9); elsewhere,

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she links her mouvement de repli to sickness, talking of 'les maladies de l'imagination dans notre siecle' (m 248/4), and to crime, which contradicts her earlier description of the wicked as unfleau physique (11 89/11): 'une ame criminelle est toujours si compliquee, qu'elle ne pouvait entrer dans un sujet traite d'une maniere aussi simple' (m 51/21). It is strange to see evil and self-awareness thus hand in hand, but the Eden myth is itself a precedent. Schiller and Goethe define this key Romantic theme: 'our feel for Nature resembles the sensibility of an ill man to health'; 'I call the classic healthy, the romantic sickly.' Did the Germans then give Stael these terms? She talks of Tirritabilite maladive des nerfs qui [...] rend a l'homme l'instinct qu'il devait jadis a la plenitude meme de ses forces' (v 170/3), and links this to Germany, talking of T extreme susceptibilite du caractere des Allemands' (iv 359/10; see in 189/18). She also links it to genius: 'La susceptibilite naturelle a ceux qui pensent plus qu'ils n'agissent' (iv 361/13; see 11 111/10). This might suggest A. W. Schlegel's behaviour at Coppet, but Stael in 1800 already mentions Tirritabilite des caracteres independants' (DL 338); in 1807 she writes, 'quand je me crois superieur, ne suis-je que malade?' (Corinne 37). Besides Stael's study of Rousseau, and the tag genus irritabile vatum, she also met susceptible Germans, and tried with varying success to fit this information within her broader dialectics.49 One might even date Stael's mouvement de repli itself from Eden: it is characterised by an Adamic shift of the gaze to ourselves from the things around us. Stael's circular arguments discussing Tasso's madness show her bending this concept to meet her book's sweeping North/South dichotomy. The Italian, she says, went mad from the 'impression trop vive des objets exterieurs [...] il n'y avait pas dans son caractere, comme dans celui des poetes allemands, ce melange habituel de reflexion et d'activite, d'analyse et d'enthousiasme qui trouble singulierement l'existence' (m 62/18). Stael's reference to objets exterieurs is fascinating - her indoor solitaire thereby unites two major currents of eighteenth-century philosophical thought: the state of nature, from Hobbes and Rousseau, and

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the idea of subjective reality, from the British empiricists and later, Kant. Thus, her book opens by claiming 'que les Fran£ais et les Allemands sont aux deux extremites de la chaine morale, puisque les uns considerent les objets exterieurs comme le mobile de toutes les idees, et les autres, les idees comme le mobile de toutes les impressions' (1 19/6). Bringing nature indoors may seem odd, but doing so offers an artist direct parallels between physical and mental retreats from the world -just what the monastic ideal relied on - and with every sort of independence. Several critics have debated Stael's grasp of German subjectivist philosophy; these remarks begin to suggest how superbly Stael has welded philosophical discourse to talk of history, geography, religion and the German national character, but that broad contextual question has been less commonly discussed. This amounts to a question about the word caractere itself. One could ignore this general question, and examine StaePs German character strand by strand, but that will misrepresent the thrust of her book. I count 243 uses of caractere and its derivatives in De VAllemagne: it refers to personal and national character alike. Plato launched this problem in his Republic, describing the state like a person, as a 'body politic'. If states are treated like people, citizen and nation begin to mingle. The reviewer who claimed that Stael invented 'the art of analyzing the spirit of nations' found in De VAllemagne a machinery with which to generalise about the Germans: to construct a single biography, in effect, for Germany's twenty million inhabitants, their offspring and their progenitors. Modern readers may find this undertaking absurd or even dangerous, but it seemed scientific in 1813, and its aim matches that of Newton's inductive scientific method - to produce valid general inferences from observed data. In short, Stael does not ask only for new books to read; she asks for a new way of life. She calls for France to change both its libraries and its society, using her book's new criteria, led by enthusiasm. Since Plutarch, books have described famous lives for others to live by: StaePs countless Romantic details about German character - and even her thirteen chapters on recent

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German drama - belong within that tradition. She made just this point in 1802: 'Je crois done que les circonstances de la vie, passageres comme elles le sont, nous instruisent moins des verites durables, que lesfictionsfondees sur ces verites' (Delphine 82).

CHAPTER 2

Romantic literature and politics

La description animee des chefs-d'oeuvre donne bien plus d'interet a la critique que les idees generates qui planent sur tous les sujets sans en caracteriser aucun. (m 328/4) L'on pourrait parvenir a adapter au gout fran^ais, peutetre le plus pur de tous, des beautes originales qui donneraient a la litterature du dix-neuvieme siecle un caractere qui lui serait propre.

Delphine, p.85.

LITERATURE

An old axiom states that there is no such thing as proof in literary criticism. In the past two centuries, monographs have called Stael both too faithful and too unfaithful to her German subjects, in literature, politics, and philosophy - her alleged sources are plentiful, but we jump from fact to hypothesis in the gap between her naming a source and her echoing someone else. Several reviews go so far as to split her text, remarkably, into 'true' and 'false' Stael. 'Stael maintained her independence,' writes Walzel, 'when judging writers and literature. In almost all questions of culture, science, religion, and fine art, she crossed over into the Romantic camp. When she presents viewpoints different from the Romantics, these are in general earlier achievements, the fruits of her relation with Villers.' Monchoux finds traces in her third and fourth Parties of the 'mysticisme bizarre de Mme de Kriidener [...] Mais le spiritualisme qui inspire l'ensemble de l'ouvrage est plein de sante et de bon sens. II semble prudent, non seulement de distinguer ces 55

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deux attitudes, mais meme de n'admettre entre elles aucune parente.' Yet amongst all these pronunciamentos about Stael's debts to the Germans, one less scholastic and more scientific approach has been oddly neglected by the critics: that of actually collating her reviews with the works they describe. I know one effective use of this method: Pichois compares Stael's 'Un Songe' with Richter's original, citing Sainte-Beuve and Balzac on the massive popularity of this fragment in 1818-27. Stael, he says, 'a trahi le sens de ce morceau, en le reduisant d'une moitie et en l'amputant de sa conclusion', and he quotes Richter: cCe passage barbare s'est comme tout le reste transforme en un passage cultive.'1 Thirteen of De UAllemagne's eighty-five chapters or 309 of the original 1,196 pages, a full quarter of the text, are devoted to German theatre. Schiller has five chapters, Goethe four. By contrast, all other poetry receives just four chapters; German novels get two chapters, one on Jacobi's Woldemar. Stael does not discuss the delightful and technically brilliant corpus of books since christened German Romantic novels. Assessing De I'Allemagne's part in making German writers famous, this distortion is primordial: Stael's text is focused on German drama, that was what she liked best. De la litterature says that drama reveals national character: 'C'est surtout dans les pieces de theatre qu'on aper9oit visiblement quelles sont les moeurs, la religion et les lois du pays oii elles ont ete composees et representees avec succes' (DL 64). Stael liked novels — she wrote two herself. She did not much like German novels. Athenaeum Romantics like the Schlegels, Novalis or Tieck probably suffered most; Friedrich Schlegel wrote to his brother in January 1813, 'I cannot leaf through that book without a certain antipathy. For the deliberate manner in which I in particular have been pushed into the background was not something I had expected; I had not attributed this degree of ingratitude to her.' Friedrich had some cause: his first stay at Coppet, in October 1804, included unrecorded talks on recent German philosophy; in 1806-7, soon before his conversion, he gave Stael a private lecture on metaphysics.2

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German theatre - Stael distorts her subject

Reviewing Schiller's Die Rduber, Stael states: 'Les Brigands ont ete traduits en franf ais, mais singulierement alteres [...] on n'a pas tire parti de l'epoque [...] La scene se passe dans le quinzieme siecle' (11 275/7). A glance at any modern Schiller edition shows the play to be set not in the fifteenth century but in the Seven Years War, then fifty years in the past. Readers might infer that Stael had minimal knowledge of her source, suggesting that she did little if any research before discussing German literature, or indeed any subject. But one would be foolhardy to draw this conclusion without a closer look, for Die Rduber exists in two different versions: the 1782 Trauerspiel reworked the 1781 Schauspiel for the Mannheim stage, replacing references to the Seven Years War with references to Matthias Corvinus (1443-90). Stael probably knew only the stage version - not easily found nowadays, like most such reworkings - while her comment on the earlier French translation suggests that it used the 1781 text. Such problems crop up repeatedly in Stael's reviews of German literature. 3 Nor is this the end of the story. Two French translations existed: Lamartelliere's melodrama, Robert chef de Brigands, staged in 1792 to rapturous applause due to the hero's waxed mustachios, and Friedel and Bonneville's Les Voleurs, in their 1785 Nouveau theatre allemand - a collection Stael mentions in a footnote (m 24). Two draft mentions of Les Voleurs, not Les Brigands (11 274A, 275B) suggest the 1785 version, but the text seems to refer to 1792 - 'On n'y a conserve pour ainsi dire que la pantomime de Faction' (11 280/14) - and draft B calls it a 'piece tres connue en France sous le nom de Robert, chef des Brigands' (11 276B), confirming that hypothesis. De VAllemagne clearly risks being badly misread by critics without detailed extratextual information. 4 The titles of these chapters changed more than once. Changes reflect Stael's tension between three separate forces: her search for accuracy, her desire to be understood, and her desire to make her book coherent. Draft chapters link plays by

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different authors in thematic terms: 'Drames lyriques: Jeanne d'Arc, Iphigenie et la Fiancee de Messine' (n 347B), and 'Des drames historiques. Gotz de Berlichingen - Guillaume TeW (in 7B). T h e

printed text instead provides a simple author-by-author list. Did Stael retreat to this simpler method because she felt her old one inadequate? Perhaps her draft method seemed to ignore her true subject, by impeding Romantic biographical criticism. Her printed list of synopses also offers the French a new canon to replace shop-soiled neoclassicism: 'Lorsqu'on se penetre uniquement des modeles de Tart dramatique dans l'antiquite; lorsqu'on imite limitation, on a moins d'originalite' (DL 194). Corinne 177 thus opposed creation to imitation, 'une espece de mort'. Yet that sterility does not make the old canon inferior as art: 'rien ne peut etre compare a l'ensemble imposant [...] de nos chefs-d'oeuvre dramatiques: la question seulement est de savoir si en se bornant [...] a l'imitation de ces chefs-d'oeuvre, il y en aura jamais de nouveaux' (n 254/10). Stael is already explicit in 1800: 'II est facile de signaler les defauts [...] mais il ne Test pas egalement d'indiquer quelle est la route que l'imagination doit se tracer a l'avenir pour produire de nouveaux effets' (DL 343). De VAllemagne\ famous Classical/Romantic distinction is an index of her success in this difficult task. Yet Stael's new method has its problems; it risks reducing these sprawling central chapters to an itemised list, akin to reading an encyclopaedia; this hampers the reader's quest for coherence or sustained argument. Compare her letters to Necker and Gerando in February 1804: 'ils se creent un monde ideal [...] et la route pour y arriver m'est inconnue'; 'j'etudie [les] nouveaux systemes de philosophic et d'esthetique de Kant, Schelling, Schlegel [...] pour donner une idee du caractere des Allemands et de l'esprit qui distingue leur litterature, il faut donner une idee simple et populaire de leurs systemes philosophiques' (CG v.i, 215; 247). Ultimately, Stael avoids doing just this: presenting German art in terms of German aesthetics. Dussault remarked that analysing German theatre, Stael 'n'en presente autant qu'elle peut que les beaux cotes; l'artifice

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de ses extraits ingenieux cache une partie des defauts et des ridicules; ses analyses [...] pretent aux drames gothiques, dont elle rend compte, un interet que la representation ne manquerait surement pas de dementir.' Stael's synopses offer her public a direct experience of non-Classical literature which short quotations cannot match; they are also shorter, handier and more palatable than German originals or French adaptations. As she told Suard in November 1803, 'nous ne supporterions pas les ouvrages entiers [...] mais un choix fait par un homme d'esprit et traduit par un homme de talent ouvrirait une carriere nouvelle a ceux qui pensent' (CG v.i, 92). StaePs eventual bare list of titles still has a few distortions, notably Wallstein translating Schiller's Wallenstein. Ein dramatisches Gedicht\ Wallstein is the title of Constant's 1809 version of the play, to which Stael devotes eight of her resume's thirteen pages. Constant's preface to Wallstein is rarely cited among precedents for De VAllemagne\ ideas; parallels between the two works remain underestimated. 5 Interpreting De VAllemagne" % synopses thus demands precise knowledge of its German sources, from full titles to little-read variant states. But one must also know which plays Stael had seen performed. Her review of Gotz von Berlichingen makes this clear; it opens with the prejudicial remark, 'Cette piece n'etait pas destinee au theatre' (m 24/1). This continues an earlier discussion of Goethe: 'Dans les pieces qu'il a faites pour etre representees il y a beaucoup de grace et d'esprit, mais rien de plus. Dans ceux de ses ouvrages dramatiques, au contraire, qu'il est tres difficile de jouer, on trouve un talent extraordinaire [...] en Allemagne [...] les ouvrages dramatiques sont beaucoup plus souvent lus que joues5 (m 21/1-23/3) - she already noted in 1804 that 'les pieces allemandes m'ont fait beaucoup plus de plaisir a lire qu'a voir' (JA 88). But her elegant theory leaves unanswered the question of Gotz's actual theatrical success; it also clashes oddly with her later comment that 'on aime beaucoup cette piece en Allemagne; les moeurs et les costumes nationaux de Pancien temps y sont fidelement representes' (in 29/6). Did Stael see the play or not? And if so, why does she say that it was not destinee au theatre? The 1958

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edition infers that Stael saw it staged, since she mentions costumes and attitudes - but draft A reads coutumes. Moreover, Goethe's Weimar stage version was first performed in September 1804; Stael had returned to Coppet in May. This costumes problem is simply a printer's error. 6 When Stael's synopsis lists Gotz's scenes in bizarre order, that order thus cannot reflect the Weimar stage version. She praises the moment when Goetz 'ordonne qu'on arraehe le plomb de ses fenetres', adding that 'Goetz voit perir tous ses compagnons d'armes' (in 28/18-24). This passage in De VAllemagne follows discussion of Goethe's fourth last scene (pp.384-5). The next episode it cites occurs much earlier (p.350), while the last ends his play (pp.387-9). That rearrangement directly affects our reading of the plot; Goethe's original is famous for its paratactic, haphazard action, and that is what Stael's revisions have removed. She links events separated in Goethe by several years, to echo neoclassical tragedy's inevitability: just what Goethe's play attacked. Questions of what Stael saw performed underlie the stage movements she describes. In Marie Stuart, she notes a scene admirable: 'Talbot, qui vient de sauver la vie a sa souveraine, se jette a ses pieds pour la conjurer de faire grace a son ennemie' (11 324/18). Schiller has no such stage direction - but Stael may have seen it thus acted in Weimar in January 1804. Equally, she may have invented the gesture, suitably unlikely to offend the most timid canons of the pittoresque or sublime. The problem recurs in her chapter on Jeanne d'Arc: 'Les Fran^ais inclinent devant lui [le due de Bourgogne] leurs epees et leurs drapeaux. Charles VII parait, et le due de Bourgogne se precipite a ses pieds' (11 360/26). Schiller says 'Sword and banner slip from her hands [...] La Hire and Dunois drop their swords and rush to embrace him' (Act II Sc.io); no-one else appears on stage. Once again Stael saw the play in Weimar, but Schiller had a hand in these productions, and both her changes involve the same hackneyed gesture. 7 No distortion has yet proven Stael's complicity, nor even her ignorance or inattention. Another comment on Jeanne d3Arc does both: 'la pompe solennelle du couronnement passe sur le

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theatre; Jeanne d'Arc marche au premier rang [...] Avant d'entrer dans l'eglise, elle s'arrete et reste seule sur la scene' (n 362/5). In order to do what Stael describes, Joan of Arc — who leads the procession - must step to one side to let the coronation take place; the large banner she carries gives that image particular charm. Stael here inverts two scenes of Schiller's play, Act IV Sc.6 and Act IV Sc.i, with ludicrous results. Guillaume Tell is interesting because Stael did not see the play but had it read to her, as she told Hochet in 1804: 'j'ai entendu hier la lecture, interpretee un peu par Benjamin, de Guillaume Tell de Schiller. II y a [...] une energie d'amour de la liberte qui ferait un terrible bruit chez nous' (CG v.i, 250). When De VAllemagne invents a gesture for TelPs father and son, Tenfant sur la tete duquel la pomme doit etre tiree le releve et lui dit: Ne vous mettez point a genoux' (m 12/9), this intrusion of melodrama's gestural play may thus come from her partner Constant and not from her. But whoever invented the movement, Stael displays her own taste by retaining, in these short synopses, precisely those gestures as worth recording for posterity. Stael's taste for the pittoresque will reappear. A more subtle series of distortions of German stage directions raises questions about the place publique, a phrase Stael substitutes for three different locations in the originals: 'Gessler a fait elever un chapeau sur une pique au milieu de la place publique, avec ordre que tous les paysans le saluent' (in 9/24); '(Clara) vient sur la place publique de Bruxelles, rassemble par ses cris les citoyens disperses, et leur rappelle [...] leur serment de mourir pour lui' (111 38/6); 'on preparait cette nuit sur la place publique quelque chose de redoutable [...] j'aperfois en fremissant un echafaud eleve' (in 42/13). The original locations are as follows: 'Wiese bei AltdorP (Tellin/1); 'StraBe' (Egmont, p.530); 'Markte' (Egmont, p.538). Does this change produce any logical inconsistencies? It might seem capricious to require an action of all paysans in a town centre with no mention of the townsfolk — but the question is what Stael gains in return. French neoclassical tragedy has no scenes in meadows, nor even in the street. Egmonfs market is a special case because it is not a scene setting, it occurs in

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someone's speech. But public spaces are barely more frequent locations in neoclassical French theatre - another twist of oddity to this whole sequence. This leaves two questions: why the original locations are suppressed, and why places publiques replace them. Stael had severe problems dressing German non-Classical vulgarity for her Classical audience. Goethe's locations are void of any but the most volkstumlich or vulgar symbolic weight: Egmont gains no credit for dying in the marketplace except perhaps with Bible readers. Changing these locations will increase their impact. The 'StraBe' scene is sharply altered: Clara does not 'rassemble par ses cris les citoyens disperses', they are there already. Nor was there any 'serment de mourir pour lui'; Clara remarks only 'was wagen wir? £um hochsten unser Lebert (Egmont, p.530). Stael routinely alters her German originals to provide more picturesque set pieces. Why Stael chose places publiques is less clear. Her revision only mildly raises the tone, changing only the degree of vulgarity. Yet that mildness may be just what Stael wants, to replace crude German Volkstiimlichkeit with the prettier version Voltaire had made acceptable. This saves Stael's sources from Parisian ridicule, while allowing her to put popularity on stage the only way forward, as she saw it, for French drama after 1789. All three revisions stress the political role of the Volk, a very nineteenth-century concept. This may explain Stael's rejection of Schiller's meadow. Gessler has erected a public notice, and Stael may refuse to leave so important a political statement in an empty field when it clearly belongs in the centre of town. Where did Stael find this emotive image ofthe place publique? Not in her German sources. While French neoclassical tragedy and the court of Versailles placed little stress on places publiques, they were greatly stressed in two other places: in Classical Greek tragedy and in the French Revolution. In 1800, places publiques were for Stael above all a symbol of the Classical past: 'A Athenes on pouvait se faire connaitre, et se justifier sur la place publique au milieu de la nation entiere; mais, dans nos associations nombreuses, on ne pourrait opposer que la lumiere

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lente des ecrits au ridicule anime du theatre' (DL 80; see CA 14). But in this context Stael's word citoyens is interesting: in 1787, Goethe's word Burger lacked the echoes given the French word after 1789. The word echafaud would also mean a great deal to older Parisians in 1810 - the guillotine stood from 1792 until 1795 on the Place de la Concorde, a more dignified location for death than any market square. Stael included among her synopses a play by a friend which was not published for another five years: 'J'ai vu jouer [...] une piece de la composition de Werner, intitulee le Vingt-quatre Fevrief (m 154/1). 1810 and 1813 spend five pages on this text, unpublished until 1815, though Stael was not to know that. There is something odd about reviewing books in a survey of German literature that readers cannot buy - once again, it suggests that Stael's main purpose was not simply to incite readers to buy the books she mentions. But for what reasons did Stael include the play? Three come to mind: to praise her friend Werner, to give a fuller idea of his works and character, and to give a fuller idea of German art and German character in general. De VAllemagne has been judged in large part by the sole criterion of accuracy toward its sources: this instance, where Stael's source could not be consulted, shows how surprising Stael might have found that idea. She evidently assumed that it was for her to check her sources, and for her public to decide whether she had created a work of art. For the past two centuries, monographs have tended to describe her text in purely local terms, discussing, so to speak, its pathology to the book's great detriment. Stael herself also revised Werner's play, as she told Mme Recamier in 1809: cce qui m'a pris un peu de temps c'est d'arranger une piece de Werner qu'il veut jouer sur mon theatre'. One wonders whether her revisions still remain in Werner's remarkable text.8 'De VAllemagne'>3s changes of plot

This sound background knowledge of the source plays' textual history lets us discuss De VAllemagne'^ actual distortions, not its imagined ones. Besides Faust, Stael rewrites two plays in particular, Schiller's Don Karlos and Goethe's Egmont. A close look

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at Stael's changes may help explain their occurrence: 'Le marquis de Posa, par une suite de circonstances trop embrouillees, a cru servir don Carlos aupres de Philippe, en paraissant le sacrifier a la fureur de son pere. II n'a pu reussir dans ses projets; le prince est conduit en prison' (11 293/3). In Schiller, Posa becomes Philip's confidant. Carlos visits Eboli, not knowing she is a traitor; Posa finds him there and saves his life by arresting him. At this point, Posa must apparently make himself the scapegoat to save Carlos; it works; he is shot. Did Stael then simply misread this plot? One may attribute her changes to errors, or to a conscious choice; their effect within the text is what matters. But yet, the explanation by inadequacy affects how we read Stael's book - it dismisses her text and cheapens its author. Seen as revisions, Stael's changes are evidence of a coherent pattern governing her text; seen as errors, they reduce it instead to an amateurish, haphazard and badly researched collection of local annotations on the most disparate subjects. De VAllemagne has long suffered from these accusations. But many of Stael's revisions are certainly conscious, and their effect clearly reproduces patterns which recur throughout. Stael's changes to Don Karlos make it more legible to the French: '(don Carlos) redemande le compagnon de sa jeunesse a son pere qui Fa tue [...] don Carlos, condamne lui-meme a perir, apprend tout ce qu'est la mort' (11 293/10). In Schiller, not Carlos but Philip wishes that Posa were restored to life (Act V Sc.9); De I'Allemagne's synopsis removes Schiller's complexity and ambivalence, making Philip a simple villain and Carlos a simple martyr. Nor has Carlos yet been condemned to death: Philip and his court have come in person to set him free. In Schiller, Carlos's death sentence comes after his release from prison, for a quite different crime. Stael's first, seemingly random errors directly support her new, deliberate redirection of Schiller's plot. Stael's new pattern is most visible when she moves a scene across two acts to obtain a precise dramatic effect. In its new context, the scene has totally changed in meaning: 'rien dans toute la piece n'egale l'originalite de Favant-derniere scene du

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cinquieme acte [...] Philippe, poursuivi par sa jalouse haine contre son propre fils [...] envie ses pages qui dorment paisiblement aux pieds de son lit' (11 294/14). Stael's explicit scene number is false; Philip's sleeping pages occur far earlier, in Act III Sc. 1, and their originality is less hackneyed. In Schiller, the scene adds to the complexity of Philip's character: he is kept awake by loneliness and by affairs of state. Stael uses the scene to show the villain's conventional punishment of insomnia, adding to a conventional increase of tension before the fifth-act denouement. Stael's synopsis of Don Karlos is in 1813 just thirteen pages long; within that context, her changes to Schiller strikingly recast his tragedy to meet the neoclassical standards of the French. Stael could largely assume total ignorance of the German plays she mentions: the vast majority of her audience would, unlike a modern critic, accept the plots she describes untroubled by any knowledge of the originals. She could thus provide her readers with a corpus of literary creations quite different from those actually written by her sources - a rare privilege for a critic. Gotz von Berlichingen met this fate: 'on oserait reprocher a Goethe de n'avoir pas mis assez d'imagination dans la forme et le langage de cette piece' (in 30/9). Since Gotz has peasants, gypsies, a lawyer, a bishop, and Gotz himself all using their own versions of quasi-medieval patois, Stael's judgement of the play's language probably stems from having herself missed these linguistic nuances when reading it. Elsewhere she commits striking errors translating German, but the point is less her possible ignorance than the fact that she thereby offers her readers a play quite unlike the one Goethe actually wrote. Stael is equally at liberty to dismiss as irrelevant any play that fails to fit her private standards: 'on ignore quel culte et quel siecle la Fiancee de Messine nous represente; elle sort des usages modernes, sans nous placer dans les temps antiques' (11 373/1). Schiller's Die Braut von Messina is set in Messina, Sicily. That and its Spanish heroes - Don Cesar, Don Manuel - date it quite clearly: it cannot occur before the accession of Pedro III of Aragon in 1282. The religion is Catholic, the heroes

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Spanish. This play is among Schiller's most fascinating experiments; Stael gives it six pages, less than half the space given Don Karlos, and begins her synopsis by saying, 'la Fiancee de Messine a ete composee d'apres [un] systeme dramatique tout a fait different de celui que Schiller avait suivi jusqu'alors, et auquel il est heureusement revenu' (n 370/15) - effectively removing the play from her chronological (and hence goaldirected) description of Schiller's growth as a dramatist. Having excised this play, Stael has little difficulty recuperating Schiller's work compared with the serious problems she faces in the works of Goethe. Gotz and Faust experiment with an episodic plot which deviates radically from neoclassical tragedy's convergent focus; they are revised accordingly. But Goethe's homely vocabulary is also mistranslated, and even a 'well-formed' play like Egmont loses moments of ambivalence or inconsistency that are central to its nature. Stael's synopsis creates a villain, as it did in Don Karlos: II se sert de son jeune fils Ferdinand, pour decider celui qu'il veut perdre a venir chez lui. Ferdinand [...] montre au comte d'Egmont un enthousiasme qui persuade a ce franc chevalier que le pere d'un tel fils n'est pas son ennemi [...] Le due d'Albe est rempli d'une cruelle joie a chaque pas que fait Egmont vers son palais [...] et quand Egmont entre dans la cour, il s'ecrie:- Un pied dans la tombe, deux; la grille se referme, il est a moi. (111 35/16)

This is false, and the last words are invented. Egmont meets Ferdinand just once, by chance, before arriving at Alba's residence - despite Ferdinand's outcry, 'shall I assure you that I learnt of father's designs only late, only at the very last, that I acted as a compelled, a lifeless tool of his will'. As Egmont arrives, Alba is debating his options: 'And so you stand with one foot in the grave! and so with both! [...] And no choice is left me.' Alba's emotion is not impatience but indecision or ambivalence, and Ferdinand's guilt is needless: an instance of dramatic irony. Such details depart notably from conventional plot and characterisation; Stael elsewhere leads us to expect just that of Goethe, and her reviews of his poems are relatively accurate. She may distort Goethe's plays because they offer more room to do so, or because they needed it more to be

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acceptable or even intelligible to the French; the changes increase that intelligibility, simplifying plot and characters to bring them closer to neoclassical stereotypes. 9 Stael may have retold the passage below to allow another discussion of tyrants. Whatever her reason, it again simplifies Goethe's plot: c(le due d'Albe) revoke Tame genereuse du comte d'Egmont, et l'irrite par la dispute pour arracher de lui quelques paroles violentes. II veut se donner l'air d'etre provoque' (111 36/17). Egmont's last words before his arrest are, 'a second conversation may achieve [...] what seems impossible today. With this hope I depart.' There is no dramatic continuity between Egmont's closing words and his arrest, nor any explanation of Alba's waiting. Crucial scenes in Goethe's play are thus redrafted to accord with alien French criteria of taste: 'Le fils du due d'Albe decouvre qu'on s'est servi de lui pour perdre Egmont, il veut le sauver a tout prix; Egmont ne lui demande qu'un service, e'est de proteger Clara quand il ne sera plus' (m 42/29). The original dialogue proceeds as follows: '[Egmont]: "if you loathe the supremacy which has bound me; then save me!" [...] Ferdinand: "You increase my despair with every word. Here there is no way out" [...] Egmont (stamping his foot): "No escape!"' Ferdinand does not offer to save him, despite Egmont's entreaty. Stael had this play to hand; she translates from it accurately. So she can hardly have missed Egmont's striking departure from conventional norms, when he objects to dying. Stael takes from Egmont feelings one might expect and admire in a man of action, substituting the noble resignation of a neoclassical hero which her chapters on religion recommend. 10 In short, Stael simplifies German drama to meet the vastly more restrictive neoclassical tastes of the French. Her description of the trial in Werner's Martin Luther is a telling example: Les divers interets qui meuvent les hommes, la peur, le fanatisme, rambition, sont parfaitement caracterises dans ces avis. Un des votants [...] dit beaucoup de bien de Luther et de sa doctrine; mais il ajoute [...] que, 'puisque tout le monde affirme que cela met du trouble dans l'Empire, il opine, bien qu'a regret, pour que Luther soit

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brule.' On ne peut s'empecher d'admirer dans l'ouvrage de Werner la connaissance parfaite qu'il a des hommes. (m 137/18) Luther iv/1, pp. 146-53. This is intriguing; every character trait Stael praises is absent in the German. Fear may reflect Fugger's placid verdict, 'and we are quite well satisfied, as long as we are left untouched, for Luther, should it please you, to be burnt'. The papal legate is no fanatic, and the scene has no scope for ambition. Stael's quotation seems to combine Fugger with another speaker, who praises Luther but adds that he has already promised to vote guilty: Tt was foolish — I am sorry — but I must keep my word! - and so let Luther be burnt.' Stael has done something very odd. She has taken what is indeed a scene of brilliant characterisations, ignored the character traits described, and substituted three venerable commonplaces from French neoclassical tradition. She then praises Werner as she did Don Karlos for reproducing her commonplaces with such vraisemblance. All this, moreover, despite her own Romantic appeal for more colour in modern tragedy: 'Les Franfais se privent d'une source infinie d'effets et d'emotions en reduisant les caracteres tragiques, comme les notes de la musique ou les couleurs du prisme, a quelques traits saillants, toujours les memes' (n

314/n).11

'De VAllemagne"s mistranslations

Plots must be discussed in turn, but Stael's mistranslations can be globally examined. Some changes seem due to problems with German: 'Quelques-uns d'entre vous portaient leurs enfants sur le seuil de la porte' (m 39/26); 'Da hobt Ihr eure Kinder auf der Tiirschwelle in die Hohe' (Egmont, p.532). Stael has lost track of her German grammar: the children are already on the doorstep, as the dative case indicates. Changes with no visible gain in meaning may share this cause — zuletzt becomes deja (in 42/21). But changes which produce a real shift in meaning are harder to call simple errors. The following solecism allows a bizarre and splendid new image: Tl faut [...] que je m'unisse avec les esprits libres de Vaif

(11 375/12); in

German, 'muB ich [...] in den Ather greifen iiber mir,/ Mit freiem Geist' [Faust 2725-7). This Geist is the speaker's.

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These distortions are no proof of authorial intent, nor do they reflect any larger patterns in the book. Many changes, deliberate or not, can be linked with larger patterns: 'Dieu nous preserve de vous ecouter plus long-tempsl il en resulterait quelque

malheur' (in 39/15); German 'Gott bewahr uns da gibts ein Ungliick' (Egmont, p.531). No German word is mistranslated, but Stael adds a vous which is clearly wrong, and quite in accordance with her book's global tone. Our suspicion that no Burger would use vous to Clara is confirmed seventeen lines above: 'Wie ist dir Madchen?' Doubtless Stael would prefer a heroine not to be addressed in such familiar fashion: consciously or not, her synopses sidestep the issue, falling back on the neoclassical vous. Guillaume Tell offers clearer proof of Stael's intent: 'si tu n'atteins pas ou la pomme ou tonjils, tu periras' (m 11/17); in German, 'ziele gut, daB du/ Den Apfel treffest auf den ersten SchuB,/ Denn fehlst du ihn, so ist dein Kopf verloren' (lines 1886-8). Four pages of accurate translation seem proof that Stael had Schiller in her hands, leaving no excuse for this cheap conceit. Similarly, her draft A reads 'tu periras avec tes deux enfants'; in Schiller, Gessler says no such thing. These changes again show Stael's taste for the pittoresque of the early Romantics, from Revolutionary melodrama to David's historical paintings. Within the text as a whole, Stael's mistranslations take two forms: some allow a new echo, some do not. Many use valuecharged words from elsewhere in De VAllemagne. Stael used independance to render two distinct German terms, evoking themes she stresses elsewhere. She also renders Schiller's Mut or courage as enthusiasm: Tenthousiasme, l'amour, reuniront enfin ce peuple chancelant' (in 41/2). Enthusiasm is the subject of De VAllemagne\ fourth Partie. Stael's mistranslations make her text a single unit, associating her synopses with the mainstream of her book's broad arguments. Elsewhere, Stael's discussion gains a political subtext. Changes occur on an elementary stylistic level, as when Joan of Arc hears 'la voix de celui qui s'est montre a Moi'se [...] et lui a commande de resister a Pharaon' (11 354/23); in German, 'Und

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ihm befahl, vor Pharao zu stehen' (line 403). The change encourages us to see Joan as Stael's own representative, with Pharaoh a figure of Napoleon. De VAllemagne has one synopsis which is notorious for its Napoleonic subtext: the portrait d'Attila, from Werner, infamous enough to merit its own pirate edition by Aime Martin in 1814. In such a case, proving authorial intent is almost impossible; Stael has nothing to gain by revealing that she wanted her public to think of Napoleon, making it especially serendipitous that a suppressed draft variant should resolve all doubt: 'II [Attila] ne fait que la guerre et cependant le luxe et les Beaux Arts lui plaisent comme ses conquetes' (m 144c). This remark matches nothing in Werner; Werner's Attila is no art collector, in striking distinction to Napoleon, as the Louvre's collection testifies. It was added in draft, then wisely removed by Stael before it reached the Imperial Censors. 'Faust9 Je me propose [...] de montrer, par l'examen des principales pieces allemandes, qu'elles renferment toutes en elles-memes une piece a la maniere francaise. (11 260A)

That leaves the case of Faust. A simple index of a play's importance in De VAllemagne is the number of pages Stael devotes to it: Maria Stuart has thirty pages, five times as many as Die Braut von Messina. Faust has forty-four. This disparity is still more striking if we take Stael's draft variants into account: in the 1958 text, Maria Stuart - easily the book's second longest synopsis - covers just twenty-eight pages, while Faust runs to sixty pages, over twice that length. Stael thus heavily revised this synopsis before publication. Yet why is Faust given so much space? What problems caused her elaborate draft revisions? These questions demand a clear idea of how Stael's Faust synopsis differs from the German play it claims to describe. When Faust I appeared in 1808, Goethe was famous in France as the author of Werther, a work published almost forty years before. Stael was better informed than most - she knew Goethe - and she was giving away copies of Faust by 6 June

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1808. She began De VAllemagne a month later. Five thousand copies of her book were at the printer's in September 1810, when Napoleon had them seized by the police; her chapter on Faust had to wait four more years before arriving in Paris on the heels of the allied armies. Though Faust became extremely popular in France during the nineteenth century, it is worth noting that Stael's synopsis of the play went unsupplemented until 1823: particularly so, when one considers Faust's massive distortion at her hands. Her resume's direct influence is hard to gauge - Nerval supplanted her after 1827 - but eighty years later, Albert Sorel is still saying: cMme de Stael y voit ce que Goethe y a mis, et n'y ajoute rien de son cru [...] Tout Franjais qui ignore l'allemand [...] fera bien, avant d'en lire une traduction, de se penetrer de l'analyse de Mme de Stael.' Remarkable to find an eminent writer still saying this in i8 9 3- 1 2 The historical importance of Stael's synopsis has given rise to several commentaries, but in the absence of monographs on De VAllemagne, these are due almost exclusively to germanists who offer few other explanations than ignorance for the distortions they may list. Walzel, the first and best of these reviewers, compares Stael's distortions to those made by A. W. Schlegel: 'To both, Faust is a weakling, vacillating between the highest spiritual problems and the lowest sensuality.' Gibelin in 1934 remarks that 'elle n'a point saisi le plan de l'ceuvre.' Fuchs in 1962 refers to the Fehler or mistakes in her synopsis; Balmas in 1989 attributes changes to 'i limiti della mentalita della Stael', and to her 'istintivo bisogno di chiarezza'. Here are two other explanations for Stael's distortions. First, Stael is not writing a translation but a synopsis, one chapter in a long and complex book. Balmas lists scenes Stael neglects, as if she should have reproduced Goethe's 4,612 verses; Hamlet has almost 4,000 verses, but Faust is by French neoclassical standards far too long for a tragedy - almost three times the length of Phedre with a vast range of interests and subplots. Stael reviews it in forty-four pages, and suppresses accordingly. Second, Stael's constant distortions are again not the product of repeated random error, but conform almost without exception to a

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deliberate and global pattern: they push Goethe's Faust, as Constant did Schiller's Wallenstein, in the direction of French neoclassical tragedy. 13 Why do that? Surprising to find De VAllemagne, the book which introduced Romanticism to France, leaning backward to neoclassical demands. Stael prefaces her synopses with six chapters on these issues, an extended apology for her opinions. She argues, as she did throughout De la litterature in 1800, that art and taste are not absolutes, but are shaped by social institutions. At the same time, she constantly distinguishes private reading from theatrical performance, which is answerable to the public - 'Cet art est soumis au succes comme la politique ou la guerre' (11 225B). With these yardsticks, Stael's own taste and her judgement of public taste inevitably begin to merge: 'il ne faut pas reunir toutes les circonstances [...], mais seulement celles qui font effet a la distance du parterre [...] Pour faire une bonne piece, il faut bien connaitre le point de vue du public, et mesurer d'apres cela la perspective' (11 233B). Here is Stael's central criterion; she has rejected Aristotle, but still sides with Diderot, saying that 'de ces trois unites il n'y en a qu'une d'importante, celle de Faction' (11 240/15). Without this framework, one cannot adequately interpret Stael's approach to her sources: 'Lors [...] qu'il suffirait presque de retrancher pour faire d'une piece allemande une belle piece franfaise, on peut donner de bonnes raisons a l'appui du gout negatif qui conseille de supprimer les evenements superflus' (11 260A). Yet that is only half the story, because Stael also uses her broad social criteria to condemn strict Classicism as sterile and archaic. Indeed, that is the purpose of her book. As so often, she is calling in reality for middle ground: 'pour ouvrir une nouvelle source d'emotions theatrales, il faudrait trouver un genre intermediate entre la nature de convention des poetes franfais et les defauts de gout des ecrivains du nord' {DL 359). 'Urfaust'; 'Faust. Ein Fragment'

Stael's changes are sometimes attributed to her use of these two variant states. The Urfaust was unpublished until 1887, but Faust. Ein Fragment had appeared in 1790. We cannot review

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her distortions until we have laid this ghost to rest. Stael spent ten weeks in Weimar in 1803-4, a n d her journal cites Faust 'L'immoralite satanique seduit Goethe comme poetique, comme profondeur. Dans Faust, le morceau sur la religion, avec Marguerite' (JA 84). Was this reading or conversation? She knew Goethe. The word morceau suggests she saw a text, probably the Fragment, though the Urfaust did exist at court in manuscript. Constant, at Weimar with her, may record both reading and conversation in his Journal intime in February 1804: 'Faust de Goethe. C'est une derision de l'espece humaine [...] Les Allemands y trouvent une profondeur inoui'e.' But this first encounter was brief; in June 1808, Stael describes sending Friedrich Schlegel 'Faust termine tout a l'heure par Goethe, ouvrage, dit-on, tres original.' Fragment and Faust / a r e both in her library at Broglie. 14 Stael did not use Goethe's Fragment alone. It ends with Gretchen fainting in the cathedral, losing three long passages Stael reviews: in 77/3-81/20, Faust 614-784; 106/15-107/16, Faust 3620-775; and 112/1-122/16, Faust 3835-4612 or the entire last section of the play. Stael's jumbled scenes might still echo the Fragment: at 103/11, her synopsis jumps back from Faust 3458 to 3217, and the Fragment also inverts these scenes (pp.206, 211). But Stael's next scene returns to Faust /'s sequence (3511), instead of following the Fragment (p.208), nor does the Fragment again parallel Stael's anomalies. With conclusive proof that Stael based her synopsis on Faust /, and no proof she used the Fragment, there is scant reason to postulate that she did so. A complete analysis of her synopsis might therefore now be conducted, referring to Faust I alone. Plot

Goethe and De VAllemagne give Faust two different plots. Yet Stael never indicates her distortions, and comparison will break up the smooth plot she created. Stael's non-German readers were offered a continuous surface, as a plot summary reveals. Faust in his study summons a genie; extract. He plans suicide; extract. Hearing a church choir changes his mind; extract. Mephistopheles appears, and takes Faust to a witch.

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M takes him into society. M lectures a pupil; extract. Faust meets Gretchen; M meets Martha. Faust seduces Gretchen; extract. He tires of Gretchen; extract. Gretchen causes her mother's death, and becomes pregnant. Faust kills Gretchen's brother. M takes Faust away; Faust is distraught; extract. M lectures him; extract. Gretchen visits church, and is tormented by an evil spirit; extract. M takes Faust to a witches' sabbath; extract. Faust learns Gretchen has killed their baby, argues with M, and goes to rescue Gretchen from prison. He tries to make her leave the prison; she will not; extract. Collation with Goethe, the critic's task, is by comparison an artificial exercise. What follows is a concordance between De VAllemagneh pages on the left, and Faust fs line numbers on the right. Asterisks show scenes relocated by Stael. All synopsis references follow the Pange-Balaye De VAllemagne, volume in: 76/1-77/2 = 354 - 5 1 3 77/3 - 81/20 = 614 - 784/807 81/24-82/2 = 1322-867 82/3-83/3 = 2337-604 •83/17-84/7 = 2073-336 •84/8 - 94/20 = 1868 - 2050 9 5 / l - 9 5 / 7 = 2605-77 95^ - 99/x = 2 8 6 5 - 3°24 101/9-103/11 = 3414-58

*io3/2o- 105/7 = 3 2 I 7 ~ 5 O 106/1 - 106/4 = 3511 - 20 106/15 - 107/16 = 3620-775 * 107/20 - 108/13 = 3352-73 *io8/i4-108/18 = 3588-618 108/18 - 111/3 = 3776 - 834 112/1 - 113/16 = 3835-4214 113/17 - 114/1 = 4398 - Triiber Tag 114/5-122/16 = 4412-612

Do we have something approaching all of Faust here? We lose one 300- and one 500-line passage, 1-353 a n d 785-1321, and five 100-200 line passages: 514-613; 2678-864; 3025-216; 3251-351; 4215-397. This is far more detail than in any other play De VAllemagne reviews. Yet the bare fact that so many passages are mentioned does not mean that they appear undistorted in the French. Synopses leave things out; in De VAllemagne, there is a striking disparity between Stael's long extracts from a very few scenes, and her extremely brief surveys of the vast tracts of plot in between. The 1813 synopsis devotes ten of its forty-four pages to Gretchen in prison: this scene in its entirety fills just 207 of Goethe's 4,612 verses. The proportions of the German play are radically altered in De VAllemagne.

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Let us consider Stael's individual distortions in more detail. Like the Fragment, her synopsis begins 354 verses into Goethe's play with a 'Gothic' opening, five and a half pages on Faust 354-807: Faust summoning the Erdgeist, planning suicide and dissuaded by the choir. The tone of Faust's speech has been substantially revised. This is followed by a very interesting remark: 'Ce moment d'exaltation ne dure pas; Faust est un caractere inconstant, les passions du monde le reprennent. II cherche a les satisfaire, il souhaite de s'y livrer; et le diable, sous le nom de Mephistopheles, vient' (81/21). This has no connection in Goethe with the arrival of Mephistopheles, but it is crucial to understanding Stael's quite different play. The key to her distortion lies in the phrase les passions du monde: Goethe's Faust may have earthly passions, but his deal with Mephistopheles depends on his Streben or striving. In Goethe, this Streben is constant, that is perhaps his central theme. Stael splits this one drive into two opposite forces, repeating the contrast between good and bad behaviour that underlies her book. As a result, her Faust - not supplemented in France before 1823 - is a very different hero from that of Goethe: he is distinguished not by Streben but by Baudelairean ennui. This adds interest to another opening remark: 'Le diable est le heros de cette piece' (71/5). Goethe's hero was not the devil but Faust, and for good reason. Has Stael switched heroes, in this centrepiece of her review of German literature? She begins with sixty-four lines on Mephistopheles before any word on Faust, who then rates only fifteen lines. This seems closer to Marlowe's Doctor Faustus (1604) than Goethe's Faust (1808): a straightforward sale of the soul to the devil. The centre of Goethe's multiform play is Faust himself; Stael's central theme is the conflict between good and evil, exemplified by Mephistopheles. 15 After Mephistopheles appears, the next scenes rattle by: 81/20; 81/24; 82/3 = Faust 784; 1322; 2337. This is a single paragraph in De VAllemagne. After five and a half pages on 430 verses, the next 1,550 verses thus earn just nine lines of commentary. Since Faust 1is 4,612 verses long, this is over a third of Goethe's play. What have we lost? We lose five hundred verses, 785-1321, on Faust with Wagner, among the Volk and trans-

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lating the Bible; jumping from the Erdgeist to Faust's contract with Mephistopheles, from there to the witch's kitchen. Stael's Faust is sold at the outset, changing the meaning of any previous scenes discussed later. Hence, her phrase Mephistopheles conduit Faust (82/3, 83/17), and its variants at 107/17 and 112/1: Mephistopheles is the agent, as befits the hero of the play. From the witch's kitchen {Faust 2604), Stael moves backwards 736 verses, after a brief mention of the pair enjoying themselves (Auerbachs Keller), to Faust 1868, the 200-line Schiiler ('Pupil') scene: three pages long in 1814, it fills ten pages in the 1958 variorum edition, because of the attention given it in Stael's surviving manuscripts. Faust remains offstage here, giving way to Mephistopheles. Another series of jumps in the action take us from the Schiller across 1,364 verses of Faust, 2050-3414, in just twenty-three lines of commentary. The next passage begins with an ennui absent in Goethe: 'Faust s'ennuie, et Mephistopheles lui conseille de devenir amoureux' (95/1; Faust 2603). Here begins the story of Gretchen; Stael has thus far been able to give her synopsis a linear plot with only minor changes, but the story of Gretchen is heavily revised. We go directly, at 95/4, to ten lines on Mephisto's first visit to Marthe (2897), losing the two magical visits to Gretchen's room. Long dialogues between Faust and Gretchen are suppressed, the whole history of their falling in love. These suppressions help excuse Gretchen's behaviour, opposing Mephisto's and Martha's dealings to Gretchen's love for Faust. The 800-verse jump from 2619 to 3414 is made in two sentences: 'Faust, aide par Mephistopheles, seduit cette jeune fille singulierement simple d'esprit et d'ame. Elle est pieuse, bien qu'elle soit coupable, et, seule avec Faust, elle lui demande s'il a de la religion' (101/6).

Like the Schuler scene, the extract on religion between Faust and Gretchen confronts naivety with experience; naive is used in both scenes (85/7; 95/3). This antinomy and that between good and evil are the two axes of Stael's review; the scenes she cuts are those which do not fit this frame. After hearing the choir, Faust fell from enthusiasm into sin. Here, Faust's 'Gefuhl ist alles' ('Feeling is all') speech is followed thus:

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Ce morceau, d'une eloquence inspiree, ne conviendrait pas a la disposition de Faust, si dans ce moment il n'etait pas meilleur, parce qu'il aime, et si Pintention de l'auteur n'avait pas ete, sans doute, de montrer combien une croyance ferme et positive est necessaire, puisque ceux meme que la nature a faits sensibles et bons n'en sont pas moins capables des plus funestes egarements quand ce secours leur manque. Faust se lasse de l'amour de Marguerite comme de toutes les jouissances de la vie; rien n'est plus beau, en allemand, que les vers dans lesquels il exprime tout a la fois l'enthousiasme de la science et la satiete du bonheur. (103/12) Like Faust's earlier falling-off from enthusiasm, so this satiete is manufactured by the translator - Stael jumps backward two hundred verses, from Faust 3458 to 3217. Faust at 3217 has just had his first words with Gretchen; he is hardly tired of her love. After this interpolation, Stael resumes almost where she broke off, at Faust 3511. This concerns Gretchen's most criminal action, causing the death of her mother when Faust stays the night. But Stael's interpolation produces an apparent inconsistency, Faust tiring of Gretchen before he sleeps with her. What does Stael gain in return? A clue may lie in the phrase 'les plus funestes egarements'. Characters in StaePs resume are situated with free will between the conflicting pulls of good and evil, virtue and passion: just as Faust strays in selling his soul, so Gretchen strays in being seduced by him. The word egarements avoids placing responsibility on the sinner; it does not suggest deliberate choice. This device ties in with the new status Stael accords Mephistopheles - responsibility is transferred to him. StaePs use of concessives to describe Gretchen's crime will therefore hardly suprise. 'L'histoire de Marguerite,' says Stael, 'serre douloureusement le coeur. Son etat vulgaire, son esprit borne, tout ce qui la soumet au malheur, sans qu'elle puisse y resister, inspire encore plus de pi tie pour elle.' Thus prepared, we hear that 'Marguerite veut recevoir chez elle Faust a Pinsu de sa mere, et donne a cette pauvre femme, d'apres le conseil de Mephistopheles, une potion assoupissante [...] qui la fait mourir' (105/8). But Goethe does not name Mephistopheles; Faust himself gives Gretchen the potion (3511-20). That key

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revision radically alters our impression of all three main characters; Gretchen in Goethe's version would be most unlikely to take advice from the devil. A diabolus ex machina to excuse the hero's bad behaviour is no rarity in eighteenth-century drama; few tragic heroes are evil by design. Yet it has a strange effect in this resume, making Faust and Gretchen almost spectators in their own plot, with their key actions dictated by someone else. This situation in turn is a bizarre mirror-image of Racinian tragedy, a French neoclassical ideal, whose plots also chronicle the remorseless progression of forces lying beyond the scope of the heroes' own volition. That remorselessness is not there in Goethe, and his characters are not victims in that uncomplicated sense - not least because of the roomy plot they are accorded. After this scene we move on at 106/15 to Faust 3620, the return, duel, and death of Gretchen's brother Valentin. Stael continues: 'Mephistopheles oblige Faust a quitter la ville, et le desespoir que lui fait eprouver le sort de Marguerite interesse a lui de nouveau. "Helas!" s'ecrie Faust' (107/17). This outcry takes us back - for the third time - from Faust 3775 to 3352, over four hundred verses. A series of deliberate distortions rebuild the passage for its new context. The word helas comes from nowhere; in Goethe, Faust and Gretchen have just met. Goethe's Faust offered an extended metaphor: T am like a waterfall, while she is as if in a little Alpine hut; I pound these cliffs to rubble'; 'ich [...] hatte nicht genug,/ DaB ich die Felsen faBte,/ Und sie zu Trummern schlug!' (3356-9). Stael drops the waterfall, and makes the Alpine hut a wish - 'elle eut ete si facilement heureuse, une simple cabane [etc.] auraient suffi' - continuing, 'je n'ai pas eu de repos que je n'aie brise son coeur, que je n'aie fait tomber en ruines sa pauvre destinee' (107/24). These changes — cliffs becoming heart - show that here at least, Stael's reordering of Goethe is just what it seems: no accident, but a deliberate untruth, enabling her to reconstruct his text as she sees fit. After this interpolation, the plot resumes at 108/14 with the scene that in Goethe follows Valentin's death: Gretchen in the cathedral (3776). Stael devotes sixty-eight lines to this sixty-

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verse scene, then moving on with Goethe to the witches' sabbath. In Goethe, this next scene runs from 3835 to 4398, almost six hundred verses: Stael accords it forty-one lines. As with the suppressed Prologue in Heaven, Stael here found it impossible to reconcile Romantic fantasy with Classical vraisemblance. The entrance of Medusa (4194) is made a metaphor with the insertion of the word ainsi (112/24). At the foot of p. 113, faced with cSie kann das Haupt auch unterm Arme tragen' (4207), Stael looked in manuscript for middle ground, as so often - 'Persee aussi n'a-t-il pas tenu la tete de Meduse dans sa main?' - before deleting the problem remark altogether. Stael moves on at 113/17 to Truber Tag ('Bleak Day') Faust's discovery that Gretchen is in prison (4398), closing at 114/5 with the prison scene that ends synopsis and Faust I alike (4412). Stael's greatest distortion lies in devoting almost a quarter of her forty-four pages to a scene filling less than one-twentieth of Goethe's play. The scene hardly advances the plot, seemingly so important to StaePs neoclassical tastes, but it has two other features which may have prompted her to accord it so much space. It lets Gretchen nobly review the sorrows she has unjustly suffered, and lets her resign herself to death rather than accept a freedom offered by the devil's agency. Stael elsewhere stresses the novelty of her procedure: 'je ne sais si Pon se permettrait en France de faire un acte tout entier sur une situation decidee; mais ce repos de douleur, qui nait de la privation meme de Pesperance, produit les emotions les plus vraies et les plus profondes' (11 342/13). In 1800, Stael had named 'les deux situations les plus profondement tragiques que Phomme puisse concevoir [...] la folie causee par le malheur, et Pisolement dans Pinfortune' (DL 205). Her Zjdma and Mirza, 1794-5, both narrate completed plots: Zulma kills her lover and then explains herself to the assembled tribe, leaning on the bow she used; the Avant-propos talks of 'une sorte de sang-froid qui permet de penser sans cesser de souffrir'. The simple polarity which ends StaePs review is equally absent in Goethe: 'L'intention de Pauteur est sans doute que Marguerite perisse, et que Dieu lui pardonne; que la vie de

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Faust soit sauvee, mais que son ame soit perdue' (122/17). This might seem a permissible guess on Stael's part, except that Goethe's Faust is in no danger. Stael thus adds a new detail at 114/1: 'Une sentence de mort est portee contre Faust parce qu'il a tue le frere de Marguerite.' Goethe has no such verdict. Stael's deliberate untruth again supports the bipolar ethics she brings into such relief throughout her synopsis. Faust

Stael's systematic distortion of Faust's character is evident from the opening. She ties his soliloquy to the religious themes of her final Partie: 'les sentiments sublimes que le createur nous avait

donnes se perdent dans les interets de la terre' (78/4). Faust reads 'Die uns das Leben gaben, herrliche Gefuhle,/ Erstarren in dem irdischen Gewiihle' (638-9). The subject of gaben is Gefiihle\ Stael makes it the object, inserting the word 'God'. Later, a non-heretical French singular replaces Faust's plural Gottern: cNon, je ne me suis point compare a la divinitf (78/16). An index of Stael's liberal approach to translation is the instance below, where sixty-two French words render twentyfour in German. Excision and suppression are unavoidable in a synopsis, but tripling a passage in length suggests a different state of mind: 'N'est-ce pas de la poussiere en effet que ces livres dont je suis environne? Ne suis-je pas enferme dans le cachot de la science? Ces murs, ces vitraux qui m'entourent, laissent-ils penetrer seulementjusqu'a moi la lumiere dujour sans Valterer? Que dois-jefaire de ces innombrables volumes, de ces niaiseries sans fin qui remplissent

ma teteV (78/20). Faust reads '1st es nicht Staub, was diese hohe Wand/ Aus hundert Fachern mir verenget,/ Der Trodel, der mit tausendfachem Tand/ In dieser Mottenwelt mich dranget?' (656-9). The entire speech is filled with such interpolations: 'Que partout les hommes se sont tourmentes sur leur sort; que de temps en temps un heureux a paru, et qu'il a fait le desespoir du reste de la terre' (78/27). T h e phrase after paru is not in

Goethe; Stael saw a rhetorical pointe and added it. A moment later, she deletes two comic verses and puts bombast in their place: 'ces machines de tout genre que mon pere avait rassemblees pour servir a ses vains travaux; ces roues, ces cylindres, ces leviers,

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me reveleront-ils le secret de la nature?' (79/1). Faust reads 'Ihr Instrumente freilich spottet mein/ Mit Rad und Kammen, Walz' und Biigel:/ Ich stand am Tor, ihr solltet Schlussel sein;I ^war euer Bart ist kraus, doch hebt ihr nicht die RiegeV (665-73).

Stael's Faust is here unlike anything Goethe had intended; the whole play has changed key. Other bizarre and splendid mistranslations may reflect a simple misunderstanding of the German; whatever their cause, their effect continues to raise the tone of the scene. Thus, Stael's Faust contemplates his vial of poison: 'Je sens deja l'agitation de mon esprit qui se calme; je vais m'elancer dans la haute mer [...] je saurai parcourir les spheres etherees, et gouter les delices des deux' (79/14). Goethe reads 'Ich sehe dich, es wird der Schmerz gelindert,/ Ich fasse dich, das Streben wird gemindert,/ Des Geistes Flutstrom ebbet nach und nach [...] ich fuhle mich bereit,/ Aufneuer Bahn den Ather zu durchdringen,/ Zu neuen Spharen reiner TatigkeiV ('the soul's flood ebbs slowly [...] I feel ready to push through the aether on a new course, to new spheres of pure action') (696-705). Did Stael believe she had correctly translated 'Des Geistes Flutstrom ebbet'? It seems unlikely, though she may have confused ebben with its antonym. Perhaps she wants to make the German more intelligible: besides the different mental equipment of French and German audiences, Goethe has 4,612 verses and a stage to tell his story; Stael has only the forty-four pages of her synopsis. Deciding whether to call Stael's revisions clarification or embroidery is beside the point. Those are two names for the same process of recuperation: to choose between them, one would have to ask the translator. Certainly they result in a markedly more demonstrative text, full of gestures and exclamations verging on melodrama: 'Comme le bruit imposant de l'airain m'ebranle jusqu'au fond de Vame! Quelles voix pures font tomber la coupe empoisonnee de ma main?' (80/21). Faust reads

'Welch tiefes Summen, welch ein heller Ton/ Zieht mit Gewalt das Glas von meinem Munde?' (742-3). Among the patterns of distortion running through Stael's synopsis, it is surprising to see the German mouth replaced by hand. All bodily parts are not equal. These alterations occur in a single scene, nor is this list

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exhaustive. Faust himself is no longer Goethe's hero; as for his deal with the devil, his reasons have changed utterly. One last revision amputates Faust's self-assertive mood, leaving a tristesse more in keeping with French convention: 'faites-vous entendre aux humains que vous pouvez consoler' (81/6). Faust

reads 'soft': 'Klingt dort umher, wo weiche Menschen sind' (764).

That opening is crucial for establishing Faust's character and motives. Hereafter, Stael's description of Faust can remain coherent while making less major alterations to Goethe. One touching instance crops up in Faust's heart to heart with Gretchen - Stael adds the phrase je t'aime: 'tu le sais, je t'aime. Je donnerais pour toi mon sang et ma vie' (101/10). Faust reads 'Du fuhlst, ich bin dir gut;/ Fur meine Lieben lieB' ich Leib und Blut' (3418-19). Ich bin dir gut does not mean 'I love you', and the phrase meine Lieben is in the plural. But this is the only major revision to Faust's speeches outside of his soliloquies: bizarrely, the three major characters have their speeches revised in scenes quite separate from each other. These scenes may be set pieces, retained for the insight they offer into each character in turn. Faust has his striving altered; Mephistopheles, his plaisanteries; and Gretchen, her prison scene. Several manuscript pages show Mephistopheles talking, but almost no dialogue between him and Faust. If the characters do not communicate, this only heightens the impression that they are not, so to speak, guilty of their plot. This is particularly true of Gretchen, whose silencing reduces her to a passive role until after her fate is already decided. In 1800, Stael suggests that women are not, 'pour ainsi dire, responsables d'elles-memes' (DL 150); Corinne adds that 'je ne suis pas responsable de ce que je puis eprouver' (p.390). Stael has few other lies to tell in translating: most of her revisions simply stretch the truth, though her little distortions reflect much larger issues. One final lie is important. Faust calls Mephistopheles a companion he 'cannot do without', and this is turned upside down, to give Stael an easy continuity with the themes oitristesse and ennui she stresses throughout: Hlfaut queje supporte ce compagnon froid, indifferent [...] je passe avec

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ivresse du desir au bonheur; mais au sein du bonheur meme, bientot un vague ennui me fait regretter le desir' (105/1). Faust reads 'Du gabst [...] Mir den Gefahrten, den ich schon nicht mehr/ Entbehren kann [...] So tauml' ich von Begierde zu GenuB,/ Und im GenuB verschmacht' ich nach Begierde' (3235-50). Stael's manuscript B proves that she understood the word entbehren: 'celui dont je ne peux plus me passer.' Once again, she later deemed her faithful draft version needlessly complex, and deleted it. Her magnificent last phrase adds to Goethe two catchwords in later Romantic discussion, vague and ennui - ennui in particular has far more to do with Stael than with Goethe's original, whose Streben is such that his dying words are addressed to the workmen improving his property {Faust II, 11499-510). Mephistopheles

Mephistopheles presents his own problems. One would not expect undue worry here about neoclassical ideas of the sublime, although more than one revision removes or prettifies his more outrageous remarks. But over three-quarters of his speeches were removed between draft and text. Two long scenes have been massively cut, his dialogues with the pupil and with Marthe. This has two effects: it radically alters our view of his role, between draft and text, and apart from two genies, it removes the only minor characters' speeches that Stael had retained. Faust has been streamlined, reduced to a threecharacter plot. Though still the agent of much of this plot, Mephistopheles is reduced almost to a non-speaking role: in draft, he is an individual, while in Stael's text he is barely distinguishable from the devils of history. Again De VAllemagne reneges on the play's modernity. A manuscript explains this decision: 'Quel mauvais gout, dira-t-on, de faire paraitre le diable dans une piece! [...] on pourrait mettre de cote dans la piece de Faust, l'existence surnaturelle de Mephistopheles et le considerer seulement comme un caractere de haute mechancete' (128B). Why now review these deleted scenes? Above all, they serve as a counterpoint to the patterns of distortion elsewhere. In one

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instance, Stael evidently saw on the page only what she expected to see, thus inverting Goethe's meaning and putting a charming echo of Rousseau into the devil's mouth: 'Car ce n'est rien que ce qu'on lit dans les livres' (88B). Faust reads 'DaB er nichts sagt, als was im Buche steht' ('Say nothing but what's in the book') (1961). Deliberate or not, Stael's falsehood again forces Goethe's cynical or vulgar moments into a straitjacket of Romantic orthodoxy, matching obviously wilful distortions later in the same scene. A piece of vulgar advice about gynaecology (2023-37) is magnificently transformed in accordance with Stael's own opinions: 'Apprenez surtout a conduire les femmes [...] leurs innombrables maux peuvent etre gueris de la meme maniere. Si vous savez etre a demi respectueux, vous regnerez sur elles, si vous vous confiez enfin en vous-meme, elles se confieront en vous' (90B). Bizarre to find the devil speaking in terms more fitting for the Vicaire Savoyard. The other of the devil's two lost scenes is his dialogue with Marthe. It deals rather with concrete details than with philosophy; philosophy suffers more from Stael, as with Faust's soliloquies. Revisions here do little but elevate the tone in ways now familiar. A reference to manure is understandably removed: 'Ce lit n'etait qu'un peu de paille humide" (98B) translates 'Es war was befier als von Mist,/ Von halbgefaultem

Stroh' (2952-3). But Stael's most revealing change lies in Mephisto's brief words with Gretchen: 'un homme quifait la com a une jeune femme est toujours un des plus beaux dons du ciel. II serait bien doux de se promener en donnant le bras a cette charmante creature' (98B). Faust reads, 'Ist's nicht ein Mann, sei's derweil ein Galan.l }s ist eine der groBten Himmelsgaben,/ So ein lieb Ding im Arm zu haben' (2946-8). Stael had the word galant before her and rejected it — but her crucial shift is the translation of lieb Ding, or 'sweetie', as charmante creature. At 102/21, the same phrase is used by Faust: 'N'interprete pas mal ce que je dis, charmante creature.' One might suspect that Faust did not address Gretchen as lieb Ding; Goethe's words are 'MiBhor mich nicht, du holdes AngesichtV (dear countenance) (3431). There is thus a failure of tone here, indeed a lack of vocabulary which one may attribute either to Stael, or to the

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French language itself as it appeared at the turn of the nineteenth century. The great scope of Goethe's vocabulary repeatedly suffers in this way, but one is rarely confronted with so simple a failure to distinguish the affective nature of the characters' remarks. Goethe commented in 1829 o n StaePs rendering of Faust's outcry. Was her change unconscious? As Stael said, 'on pourrait composer un traite sur le style d'apres les manuscrits des grands ecrivains; chaque rature suppose une foule d'idees qui decident Pesprit souvent a son insu? (DL 397). Certainly StaePs education, language and culture must share the blame; yet she also had Schlegel at hand to check her translations, and one might expect him to point out her errors. She opens with mentions of Faust's earlier Anglo-German tradition, information she may well have owed to Schlegel; but either she did not have him check her work, or she ignored his advice. Thus, Niebuhr to Dore Hensler in January 1814: 'the major misconceptions and oversights in individual notices are themselves proof that the book is in no wise Schlegel's work under her name. He cannot even have proofread it before printing.' In 1804, Stael also describes Goethe's reaction to her version of c Der Fischer': 'J'avais mis la mer dans les traductions, et Goethe m'a fait mettre lefleuve [...] II me disait que les Frangais dans leur poesie aiment Pimmense qui est le contraire du naif, du naturel, du caracterise' (JA 81). Balaye here notes a detail Stael neglects - her rendition of Todesglut as air brulant, and Goethe's remark that a brasier de cuisine was meant, to cook the fish in. Stael deletes her version in 1810 (11 188/9).16 StaePs Faust synopsis seems to have left all three major characters speaking in indistinguishable fashion. That suggestion is only confirmed when Mephisto's closing remark, Teh lasse dich mit ihr im Stich' (in the lurch) (4606), becomes 'viens, ou je te livre a la mort avec elle' (122/2). These German words have a precise tone: Stael has translated the message alone, giving the information without the affect. Certainly one would not expect that tone six verses from the end of a French tragedy. Again, the blame for changes like this may rest less with Stael than with the tools at her disposal: her drafts

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attempted a literal translation - '[je te laisse] [je t'abandonne]' - before opting for the published version. Gretchen

Problems with Faust's motives seem to govern the revisions he faces, with changes to Mephistopheles caused by more local decisions. The case of Gretchen - consisting almost entirely in the ten page scene ending Stael's forty-four page chapter - is the most sustained and deliberate piece of rewriting De VAllemagne contains. Its distortions have one overriding purpose: to make Gretchen respectable. Even stage directions are altered to this end, from the moment Faust enters the prison cell: 'Marguerite, se soulevant de son lit de paille, s'ecrie' (114/20). Faust reads hiding: 'sich [...] verbergend' (4422). Standing Gretchen up may be more dignified, but the revision causes more problems with stage movements a moment later, when grovelling — 'sich vor ihn hinwalzend' (4424) — is rendered 'Marguerite sejette a genoux* (115/8). The point becomes clear at 115/12, which reads 'Marguerite se releve.' Goethe says the same - but in Faust, Gretchen has never left the floor. For Stael to allow this action, she must first put Gretchen back on her knees. A tragic heroine does not roll on the floor or hide under bedcovers; nor does she expect to be grabbed by anything less than an armed escort. Stael thus renders 'don't grab me' as ne me prends pas la main, continuing the strange exchange of body parts mentioned above: 'Qui t'a donne, barbare, cette puissance sur moi? [...] Ne me prends pas la main avec tant de violence' (115/9). Faust reads 'Wer hat dir, Henker, diese Macht/ Uber mich gegeben! [...] Fasse mich nicht so gewaltsam an!' (4427-39). Several things are going on here. Henker is being used literally; Gretchen thinks Faust is the hangman. Stael deletes bourreau, her own literal translation in draft, preferring a neoclassical metaphor, barbare, which focuses the remark on Faust by removing the excuse of hallucination. As with Stael's stage movements, so each mistranslation here points the same way, turning a low style into a high one. Stael's drafts again prove that her changes are deliberate, routinely

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producing correct translations which she rejects in her printed text: 'Au milieu des hurlements de l'impitoyable mort j'entends la douce et touchante harmonie de sa voix!5 (116/19). Faust reads 'Mitten durchs Heulen und Klappen der HblleJ Durch den grimmigen, teufliscken Hohnl Erkannt' ich den siiBen, den liebenden Ton' (4467-9). Manuscript B mentions enfer and mepris: deleting those terms, and transferring impitoyable to mort, elevates and simplifies our conception of Gretchen's fate; Gretchen at least expects to go to Hell not Heaven after she dies. She is being transformed into a passive victim, with no responsibility for her sin. If Gretchen is to be blameless, Stael must delete all suggestions of physical love. Again the French uses new body parts. Neck and lips are both rendered heart, a safe word with an age-old metaphorical history: 'as-tu done desappris a me serrer contre ton cwur? [...] Ton coeur est done froid et muet?' (117/17). Faust reads 'Und hast's Kussen verlernt?/ Warum wird mir an deinem Halse so bang? [...] deine Lippen sind kalt,/ Sind stumm' (4486-96). A moment later, Gretchen's reference to Schoji (4503) becomes 'tu me reprends de nouveau dans tes bras' (118/4); one cannot expect tragic heroines to climb into someone's lap. Smaller distortions with analogous effect run throughout the scene. Gretchen's description of her drowning baby, 'Es will sich heben,/ Es zappelt nock.r (It's struggling upward, it's still floundering) (4560-1), becomes 'il tendra ses mains vers le ciel; des convulsions les agitent' (120/4). The question of Stael's intent is ultimately irrelevant, in that minor changes, larger revisions and even distortions one might still attribute to simple error all coincide in their effect: indeed, the very act of dismissing a change as a pointless error misrepresents the way such errors take place. Thus, Mephistopheles exclaimed 'ce n'est rien que ce qu'on lit dans les livres', the opposite of his original statement. Below, Stael's evident failure to distinguish German Schopf or forelock from Schopfbrunnen or wellspring ends by replacing a deliberately vulgar remark - 'my hair is on end' with a poetic remark ideal for the scene's new tone: 6L'air est si froid pres de lafontaine. La, ma mere est assise sur un rocher, et sa

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vieille tete est branlante. Elle ne m'appelle pas; elle ne me fait pas signe de venir. seulement sesyeux sont appesantis' (120/11). Faust reads 'Da sitzt meine Mutter auf einem Stein,/ Es faBt mich kalt beim Schopfe!/ Da sitzt meine Mutter auf einem Stein/ Und wackelt mit dem Kopfe;/ Sie winkt nicht, sie nickt nicht, der Kopf ist ihr schwer' (4565-73). StaePs isolated solecism is matched in effect by her other elegant changes: 'her head is wagging' is prettified; wave and nod become faire signe de venir; Kopf becomesyeux. Changes like that from head to eyes are clearly deliberate. The great number of similar distortions, throughout De I 'Allemagne's commentaries but above all in discussing Faust, strongly suggest that these changes are indeed the individual traces - remaining as proof for the critic - of StaePs systematic attempt to replace any unseemly references, remarks, or vocabulary, with alternatives more in keeping with neoclassical conceptions of good taste, or bienseance, in language and in conduct. Certainly the changes have that effect. Good taste is a negative criterion, it depends upon bad taste to exist: if the vulgar is unsayable in literature, our freedom of movement is vastly restricted, and nowhere more so than when translating someone like Goethe. All these themes - misunderstandings, changes of body parts, elevation of tone - come together in Gretchen's final speech, which is heavily distorted in De VAllemagne. She is describing her impending death, it is her leavetaking of Faust. The tone is vital for our conception of her character and their relationship. The French reads, 'mon dernier jour penetre dans ce cachot; il vient pour celebrer mes noces eternelles: ne dis a personne

que tu as vu Marguerite cette nuit [...] nous nous reverrons, mais non pas dans les fetes [...] Us vont Her mes mains, bander mes yeux;je monterai sur Pechafaud sanglant' (121/2). Goethe reads 'der letzte Tag dringt herein;/ Mein Hochzeittag sollt' es sein!/ Sag niemand, daB du schon bei Gretchen warst [...] Wir werden uns wiedersehen;/ Aber nicht beim Tanze [...] Wie sie mich binden und packen!/ Zum Blutstuhl bin ich schon entriickt' (4580-92). Stael has perhaps misread solW or should have been as soil or shall be: hence her talk of noces eternelles. This error's cause is again vastly less important than its effect:

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Fausfs Gretchen regrets life, StaePs Marguerite awaits the divine pardon stressed at the end of the synopsis. But if her future is assured, her past has yet to be accounted for. Other details alter both her relationship with Faust and, amazingly, her social status. Goethe, not Stael, mistakenly gives Gretchen an aristocratic beheading, but other changes are StaePs own. Bei Gretchen thus implies more than seeing her, and Gretchen, no marquise, goes rather to a Tanz than to a fete. StaePs Egmont synopsis rendered du as vous in addressing Egmont's Clara; once again, Stael requires her heroine to climb the ranks of society. Yet the key to a heroine's dignity lies in the space around her. She must not be touched, nor debase herself, as at the beginning of this scene. That becomes crucial when faced with Gretchen's death. Goethe has no mention of Gretchen's hands and eyes, those noble organs: she is to be bound and carried onto the scaffold, a humble end to a life with more pathos than tragedy in the original. Conclusion

Stael wrote over a dozen plays, and acted in as many more. At Coppet, she staged a series of productions, as she told Meister in March 1806: 'Je continue ici mes essais dramatiques [...] et j'en aurai recueilli le genre d'idees que je voulais avoir sur cet art.' She came to Faust with clear ideas, both about what she liked and about what her Napoleonic public might accept. Her 1800 comment is explicit: lorsqu'on veut triompher de la repugnance naturelle aux spectateurs franfais, pour ce qu'ils appellent le genre anglais ou le genre allemand, Pon doit veiller avec un scrupule extreme sur toutes les nuances que la delicatesse du gout peut reprouver, et suivre a cet egard en litterature un principe qui serait egalement vrai en politique: plus Pensemble du projet est hasarde, plus les precautions de detail doivent etre soignees, presque timidement. [DL 357)17 Some such precautions are listed here. Draft speeches by minor characters are ruthlessly suppressed, leaving a threeperson plot. Faust is reduced to man from superman. Mephistopheles muffles his magical powers. Gretchen discreetly moves

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up in the world. Three times, Goethe's narrative is mutilated when Stael goes backward instead of forward. Scenes that interrupt Diderot's unite d'interet are suppressed, glossed over or condemned for that reason: 'La marche de la piece est suspendue par cet intermede, et plus on trouve la situation forte, plus il est impossible de se soumettre meme aux inventions du genie, lorsqu'elles interrompent ainsi Pinteret' (i 12/6). Goethe's play is being turned on its head. But the very extent of these alterations, quite apart from their complex nature, makes it impossible to attribute them to blind authorial ignorance as has been done in the past. The merits of StaePs revisions are open to dispute, in this book that introduced Faust to France; their coherent and systematic effect, pushing Faust back toward neoclassicism, seems indisputable. POLITICAL ALLUSION

II est peu de carriere plus resserree, plus etroite que celle de la litterature, si on la considere, comme on le fait quelquefois, a part de toute philosophic, n'ayant pour but que d'amuser les loisirs de la vie, et de remplir le vide de l'esprit. (DL 324) The previous section gives a literary view of De VAllemagne's literature chapters. It describes StaePs work at the separation between French and German taste in 1810, helping to create the Classical/Romantic divide. That description is precious, since De VAllemagne brought the modern term Romantic to France and England alike. But the book has a second governing principle which this approach neglects, and which was at least as responsible for its massive success after 1813: StaePs political attack on Napoleonic France. She denies the charge: 'Je m'etais [...] interdit dans ce livre [...] toute reflexion sur Petat politique de PAllemagne' (1 3/2). Explicit political remarks would indeed have fallen to the Imperial Censor; such remarks are hidden, creating a text with two levels of discourse. Time has since buried StaePs topical references. Her political subtext has thus escaped the critics, who review the book deadpan, much as a geographer might assess Gulliver's Travels. This vision of De VAllemagne as merely an erratic review of

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German culture accounts neither for its portrait d'Attila, nor for its unprecedented pulping by Napoleon's police.18 De VAllemagne in short has a hidden agenda, which demands readers able to catch its implications. These links form in the reader's mind, not on the page; the most a text can do is make some links impossible. But Karl Popper showed that unlike bad metaphysics, bad science can be proven false. If literary criticism prefers science to art, then it has no choice but to apply the same principle. Since every text is open to infinite exegesis, it is time for critics to show which readings do not hold water. To equate Attila and Napoleon, we must thus provide rigorous support for our hypothesis. Noting that both were tyrants is no proof that Stael means the one when she mentions the other. Political allegory is an old genre. But when Stael's readers find topical issues in supposedly objective reviews, they echo another literary tradition, where authors make someone else responsible for their remarks. Gulliver's Travels, the Lettres persanes, Candide, and the JVouvelle Heloise all claim to be 'found'

books which the author simply edits. This device has many reasons, the risk of censorship not least, under old regime and Napoleon alike - publishing a 'found' text means disclaiming responsibility for what it contains. Stael adds a novel twist to this method by using real writers not imaginary ones as mouthpieces for her political allegory: allegory surfaces in supposedly neutral passages of literary criticism. Yet book reviews are far less visibly political than any fictions they review. Schiller's Die Rduber is political; De VAllemagne reviewing it is a piece of literary criticism. Roughly half De VAllemagne^ 1,196 pages consist of reviews of other authors; counting play titles, twenty of its eighty-five chapter headings include proper names. If these synopses are indeed integrated within the whole text not simply 'quoting' stories, but containing ideas discussed elsewhere - that leaves three questions. Whether these synopses are stories worth telling; how they affect our view of the whole; and lastly, how putting global issues here affects issues and synopses alike. These synopses are generally read as a simple excursus alien

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to the body of the text, only there to introduce Stael's public to other people's literary efforts. This makes boring reading of Parts 2 and 3, half her book. It also encourages critics to judge each chapter in vacuo, by the exclusive light of its German source. But Stael's distortions are systematic, and it is high time to look at that system. Any story has one way to signify more than itself alone: it can represent other stories, functioning as a type. Each story in De VAllemagne is either told purely for its own sake, or also stands for an indefinite number of stories untold, becoming characteristic of a larger group. But Stael has a problem here: exceptional stories are by definition atypical. Stael deleted her draft chapter, 'Un heros allemand': how can talk of great men connect with talk of the Germans in general, or with her readers' everyday lives? France's homogeneous aristocratic public had finally died after 1789; the French Romantics would need new methods, to relate their heroes to their new, bourgeois readers. In this early case, Stael has three points of reference - the Germans, Napoleon, and herself- to give her individual stories a global status. These figures are larger than life, as in the portrait d'Attila: 'Un seul homme multiplie par ceux qui lui obeissent remplit d'epouvante l'Asie et l'Europe. Quelle image de la volonte absolue ce spectacle n'offre-t-il pas!' (in 142/9). Napoleon

II n'y a plus de France. Les idees et les sentiments qui la faisaient aimer n'existent plus. (Corinne, p.313) De I'Allemagne has just one explicit mention of Napoleon, when the 1813 Preface quotes Savary's letter of exile: 'II ne faut point rechercher la cause de l'ordre que je vous ai signifie dans le silence que vous avez garde a Pegard de l'empereur' (1 5/16). Savary had earlier suggested that a line of praise might have saved the book in 1810: 'Vous pensez, monsieur [...] que nous avons fait dix-huit annees la guerre en Allemagne pour qu'une personne d'un nom aussi connu que Madame Votre mere imprime un livre sans parler de nous? Ce livre sera brule' (DxA 108-9).

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Rather than attack Napoleon openly in 1810, Stael indulges in allegory, as in the portrait d'Attila. Her text regularly allows tyrants to parallel Napoleon. When a synopsis devotes a full page (11 288-9) to Philip's pardon of the wrecked Armada's commander, it is worth knowing that Napoleon's reception to Villeneuve after losing Trafalgar made the admiral commit suicide in 1806, as the 1958 edition remarks. Schiller's original Don Karlos lacked the reference: it was published in 1787. So how far does this game go? Several plays reviewed already dealt with volatile political issues: Klinger's Die £willinge, Goethe's Gotz and Egmont, and practically all Schiller's output. When Stael chooses the word independance in translating Wilhelm Tell, one political remark is exchanged for another to accord with changing political circumstance. Both Stael and Schiller use Tell's fight for Swiss independence as a political allegory - but Schiller wrote his play (1804) before Napoleon provided a parallel by occupying Germany, while Stael wrote her synopsis after the event. Bruford sums up the question of political inferences in these German plays: 'to understand any work with a political bearing [...] as it was understood then, we need always to remember that almost every German state was ruled by an autocrat'. That patchwork Germany had vanished even before Napoleon's invasion, with the 1803 Reichsdeputationshauptschluss - leaving these local echoes with no relevance except to literary historians. Political issues in 1810 were of more global urgency.19 Whenever a reader of 1810 saw the word tyran in StaePs reviews, the state of Europe would therefore sooner suggest Napoleon than any princeling it might have suggested to the play's original German public. All De I'Allemagne's references to tyranny allow such political interpretation. With common textual phrases like cle despotisme du bon gout', there is little point in asking what they owe to authorial intent, and what to French neoclassicism's rather limited vocabulary - but when reading that 'les Fran^ais ont fait peur a l'Europe, mais surtout a PAllemagne, par leur habilete dans Part de saisir et de montrer le ridicule' (1 141/4), we should note that a full stop after saisir produces a quite different remark. Stael discusses art

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and literature in metaphorical terms: those terms draw heavily on the language of warfare and oppression. These examples reveal the three main ways StaePs book encourages a political subtext. It uses ambiguous and metaphorical vocabulary, talking of despotisme and tyrannie; it distorts some sources; other sources it quotes unchanged, allowing readers to discern new meanings created by Europe's new political circumstances. Those data are objective. On two occasions, Stael herself states that her phrasing was deliberate: 'on a vu, dans les temps modernes, une armee toute entiere, assistant a ses propres funerailles' (v 60/4); 'Les hommes marchent tous au secours de [...] la terre de leurs aieux, la mer qui baigne les rochers* (v 217/1). Two footnotes in 1813 explain these remarks. The first, 'Padmirable scene a laquelle je faisais allusion, sans oser la designer plus clairement', concerns the Spanish at the siege of Saragossa. The second concerns England, and the italics are StaePs: 'II est aise d'apercevoir que je tachais, par cette phrase et par celles qui suivent, de designer PAngleterre.' Other references are not signposted. Stael gives a long extract from Maria Stuart, asking Elizabeth not to execute Mary, 'la petite-fille de leurs rois' (11 325/10). In 1804, Napoleon had shocked Europe by seizing and executing a prince du sang, the Due d'Enghien. Evidence that Stael wanted the inference comes in an unpublished section of her Dix annees d'exil, disguised as a historical novel; she describes hearing of the execution, but in code, with Napoleon as Elizabeth, Enghien as Mary - thus matching Schiller's tragedy. 20 The question is where to draw the line. Topical inferences may surface in the most seemingly neutral statements: when Stael comments, 'e'est une belle idee de nos peres que d'avoir rendu les etablissements d'education tout a fait libres' (1 249/1), one might note that Napoleon had in 1808 created the Universite imperiale, a centralised state system of higher education which Stael disliked and to which her son was refused admittance. At the same time, her friend Humboldt was founding the new University of Berlin. Yet one can exaggerate these deliberate revisions, as in StaePs portait of Charles V, taken from Werner, author ofAttila: 'La foudre de la toute-puissance est

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dans sa main [...] II ressemble au jeune aigle qui tient le globe entier dans Tune de ses griffes, et doit le devorer pour sa nourriture' (m 134/10). 1958 describes this passage as cite avec complaisance, but a comparison with the German shows all that has been left out: 'Ein Gott an Kraft, ein Teufel an Begier.l Schon jeder sah in ihm den jungen Adler,/ Der stark undfrech genug, den ganzen Erdball/ Zu fassen und zum Futter zu verschlingen [...] Den Donnerton der Kraft vernimmt er nur [...] Der Mifiton seiner eigenen Naturl Mufi ihn und seine Schopfung einst zerschmetterrC (1/2 p.30). Stael has dropped the words Teufel, devil, and Begier, greed; the last sentence - 'he senses only the thunder sound of force [...] the discordance of his own nature must one day smash himself and his creation' — has gone completely. Werner's plays were contemporary, unlike most plays Stael cites; his attack on Napoleon seems already intended. 21 If at least one contemporary reader - its pirate publisher saw Napoleon in the portrait d'Attila, so a group of readers, the Imperial Censors, mark out another series of references they noted and removed from the 1810 text. Their cuts may surprise - they left all the above passages uncensored. Censored lines are perhaps more specific: 'L'ascendant des manieres des Franf ais a prepare peut-etre les etrangers a les croire invincibles' (1 145/1). The Censors' report in fact nicely illustrates reader-response critical method, establishing just what they did see in the text: 'elle s'efforce de representer la France comme gemissant sous un regime qui tend a derober a la nation la connaissance de l'esprit du siecle [...] la recherche des allusions en presente quelques-unes qu'on peut appliquer sans trop d'efTorts'; 'La conclusion des censeurs est que les phrases reprehensibles sont pour la plupart isolees.' But De VAllemagne\ political subtext seems unevenly distributed. Of 1810's three volumes, volume 1 was heavily censored, while 11 and m are almost unmarked; literary parallels for Napoleon like Attila and Charles V were passed intact by the Censors. The chapter on Prussia, an extended parallel between Napoleon and Frederick the Great, was not so lucky — but it is probably Stael's most polemical chapter. Two phrases were excised, for obvious reasons: 'la Pologne fut une conquete machiavelique,

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et Von nepouvaitjamais esperer que des sujets ainsi derobesfussentfideles a Vescamoteur qui se disait leur souverairf (i 228/2); ' U n homme

peut faire marcher ensemble des elements opposes, mais a sa mort Us se separenf (1 226/16). 2 2

Napoleon had tremendous problems producing an heir; hence his 1810 remarriage. This second comment also gained in topicality with Malet's conspiracy in 1812. Malet was a cashiered general who produced forged papers from Napoleon making him emergency governor of Paris; he was discovered by sheer luck after duping the National Guard. Napoleon learnt of this on the Russian front and rushed to Paris, furious to discover how much his entire empire depended on his personal presence (see CMH 143-4). Stael notes in 1818 that 'il ne pouvait souffrir qu'on discutat la chance de sa mort5 (CRF 11 269). De VAllemagne adds two more remarks on Frederick to make its point even clearer: 'Un homme a cree cet empire que la nature n'avait point favorise, et qui n'est devenu une puissance que parce qu'un guerrier en a ete le maitre' (1 220/2); 'depuis qu'il n'est plus, on le cherit autant que pendant sa vie; rare eloge pour un despote!' (1 229/18). The words in italics are deleted in ink on the censor's proof: not by the Censor, but by Stael's publisher, on her own instructions. Evidently she knew how fine a line she was cutting. The Censors visibly attached particular importance to remarks suggesting Napoleon's empire would crumble - a chapter on Austria contains a similar remark on Joseph II, also censored: 'apres sa mort il ne resta rien de ce qu'il avait e'tabli, parce que rien ne dure que ce qui vient progressivement' (1 104/3). Watching this game played with the Imperial Censors, one is still surprised by what they allow through. This may be an index of allegory's success: if any line can refer to Napoleon, deleting all is almost impossible. This line survived: 'au bout d'un certain nombre d'annees les nations injustes succombent a la haine qu'inspirent leurs injustices' (iv 297/2). What is Stael engaged in, in these objectionable phrases? She is distinguishing Napoleon - the exceptional man - from history's normal course, thus removing the despotic Emperor from the forward path of history. After his death, history will resume its

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normal march. There is an age-old paradigm for this device, that of the usurper. To the emigres, Napoleon was just that: he had usurped the Bourbon throne. To Stael, he might better be called a usurper of the liberal Revolution. The term first appears as a metaphor, much like those discussed above: 'En France, celui qui parle est un usurpateur, qui se sent entoure de rivaux jaloux, et veut se maintenir a force de succes' (1 177/2). But its second appearance is not metaphorical in this sense. Here, the verbs of oppression - usurper, soumettre - have only the noun admiration, which cannot be physically usurped, to obscure their literal impact: 'Usurper l'admiration des hommes, est ce qu'il y a de plus coupable [...] La force qui soumet les autres peut n'etre qu'un froid calcuP (v 194/4). Stael thus offers her public a vision of one-man government and its weaknesses, which the Imperial Censors regarded as directly relevant to the Napoleonic Empire. Her book also contains a paradigm for national revolt: the conjuration du Rutli, the oath of allegiance against Austrian oppression that founded the Swiss Confederation. The oath is mentioned three times. It is the centrepiece of Schiller's Wilhelm Tell, given twelve full pages in De VAllemagne - indeed, the synopsis uses the phrase affranchir du joug twice in two pages: Tl n'a point pour but d'affranchir son pays du joug etranger [...] les liberateurs de la Suisse remplissent le serment qu'ils avaient fait de s'affranchir du joug de l'Autriche' (m 16/2-17/20). At m 304-5, Riitli gets another full page. The fete d'Interlaken passage may seem timid, given that it was celebrating the oath's quinquecentenary. But the fete was held in occupied Switzerland in 1808; perhaps a touch too close to the bone. Stael's whole pastoral description was heavily revised in 1810, a jibe about mediation, Napoleon's 1803 term, being excised on the Censor's proof (1 292/10). Similarly, Guillaume Tell proclaims: '"Quand des Alpes aux Alpes des signaux de feu nous appelleront aux armes, tu entendras tomber les citadelles de la tyrannie"' (m 9/17). T h e fete lit the

same fires, described in draft as 'un beau souvenir a travers Vobscurite du present et de Vavenir' (1

288A).

In 1810, any such

references were deleted, and the whole passage carefully

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severed from its dangerous manuscript charge. Finally, even after censorship, the 1810 typeface adds stop press the word jadis - 'c'est ainsi que jadis les liberateurs de la Suisse se donnerent le signal de leur sainte conspiration' (1 287/13).23 Clearly some of these examples are open to differing critical opinion: some are more demonstrably topical than others. But they are drawn almost exclusively from De I'Allemagne's first and second Parties. What of the rest? Chapter 3 argues that the very nature of Stael's philosophical distinctions runs counter to all that Napoleon stood for. Again, like her synopses of German literature, so her most neutral philosophical descriptions repeatedly allow a controversial political interpretation; indeed, Stael's very categories of greatness leave no place for the French Emperor. She wrote the following Stendhalian sentence while Napoleon conquered Europe: 'jusqu'au souvenir meme d'une nature vraiment elevee pourrait bien, un de ces jours, disparaitre tout a fait' (m 206/14). Stael sums up the basic terms of her philosophy in a single beautiful image: 'Le beau est dans notre ame, et la lutte au dehors' (iv 281/7). Her central idea of the individual's irreducible independence is elaborated, using Kant as a formal framework, in terms drawn from Stoic and Christian doctrine: 'La philosophic materialiste livrait l'entendement humain a l'empire des objets exterieurs [...] Kant essaya de tracer les limites des deux empires' (iv 113/14-116/2). That distinction echoes the Bible's 'Rendez done a Cesar', as the word empires stresses. This empire-metaphor, common in Classical French, was in De VAllemagne given new impact by the Napoleonic Empire's physical existence. The text makes the parallel explicit: 'J. P. Richter [...] a dit que l'empire de la mer etait aux Anglais, celui de la terre aux Franfais, et celui de l'air aux Allemands' (1 43/5). Stael often attacks material empires elsewhere, leaving this inference to hand: 'Les preuves de la spiritualite de Fame ne peuvent se trouver dans l'empire des sens, le monde visible est abandonne a cet empire' (iv 45/7). Stael's comments on German philosophy thus have a political message, drawn once again from Christian and Stoic tradition - the doctrine of passive resistance: 'une etincelle du

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feu sacre dans notre sein triomphe de l'univers, puisqu'il suffit de cette etincelle pour resister a ce que toutes les forces du monde pourraient exiger de nous' (iv 137/12). But this stance can be confused with passive obedience. Stael is no enemy of active resistance to tyranny, her praise of Riitli makes that clear: she merely offers her readers a choice. Her fourth section, on religion and enthusiasm, rejects the charge of passive obedience: 'On a souvent accuse les mystiques, et meme presque tous les Chretiens, d'etre portes a l'obeissance passive envers l'autorite, quelle qu'elle soit [...] Rien ne ressemble moins toutefois a la condescendance pour le pouvoir que la resignation religieuse' (v 103/8-104/5). The phrase 'quelle qu'elle soit' looks like an implicit dig at Napoleon; it crops up in a similar context elsewhere. Stael thereby distinguishes authority in general terms from the people who possess it, just the distinction made by the word usurper: 'L'autorite, quelle qu'elle soit, n'a presque rien a craindre de l'esprit de secte [...] mais l'esprit de parti [...] ne se borne point a ces conquetes intellectuelles dans lesquelles chaque individu peut se creer un empire, sans destituer un possesseur' (v 141/2). These philosophy chapters remained untouched by the Imperial Censors. Stael's entire discussion might indeed be treated as just what it purports to be - an academic debate were it not for her constant rhetorical pendants: 'se creer un empire, sans destituer un possesseur'. That line was visibly added to make an explicit political point, but again and again in Stael's text it is impossible to say whether a word or phrase represents a conscious choice, or an almost reflexive expression of her own deep-seated opinions. In the following instance, servility is not intransitive, one must be servile to some authority: 'les passions valent encore mieux, sous beaucoup de rapports, qu'une apathie servile' (v 110/17). Authority, in 1810, was the Emperor Napoleon. Indeed, one of De VAllemagne's main points in favour of its new values is this independence from the yoke of authority. Real independence is the opposite of what Napoleon wanted: he wanted obedience. Stael's key charge against contemporary French ethics, in contrast to Germany, lies in the excuses it offers for servile

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behaviour: 'Ce n'est pas sans motif [...] qu'on met tant d'importance a fonder la morale sur l'interet personnel [...] c'est en resultat une combinaison tres ingenieuse, pour etablir le joug de tous les genres d'autorite' (iv 293/4). Once again, this attack on contemporary French ethics cannot be judged in vacuo: it is engage, part of Stael's overall political stand. She thus ends her attack on self-interest with a jab -famille - at Napoleon's gift of the thrones of Europe to his siblings: 'Quand une fois Ton s'est dit qu'il faut sacrifier la morale a l'interet national, on est bien pres de resserrer de jour en jour le sens du mot nation, et d'en faire d'abord ses partisans, puis ses amis, puis sa famille, qui n'est qu'un terme decent pour se designer soi-meme' (iv 317/1 ). 24 Stael Condamnee a la celebrite, sans pouvoir etre connue. (De Vinfluence des passions, Avant-propos) Bonaparte l'avait persecutee de maniere a ce qu'on dit qu'en Europe il fallait compter trois puissances: l'Angleterre, la Russie et Madame de Stael. (Mme de Chastenay, 1813)25 Stael wrote two novels, Delphine and Corinne, both about exceptional women. She also wrote plays (Un drame: Sapho),

nouvelles (£ulma, Mirza), and the Dix annees d'exil, all with an exceptional woman as the main protagonist. There is no need to decide what here is autobiography — much is, and more was probably assumed to be, as with Byron's best-selling Childe Harold. Men produce enough books about exceptional men. Stael regarded herself not as an anonymous writer but as a public figure with public responsibilities, and with good reason. Georges Poulet has also called Stael the creator of reader-response critical method, stressing her personal response to the text: 'ce qui apparait [...] a la premiere page meme de l'oeuvre de Mme de Stael, c'est ce que nous pouvons appeler un Cogito critique. Non pas je juge, done je suis [...] mais j'admire, done je suis.' Criticism of this sort might be defined as 'the reaction of a finely attuned mind to the work of art': it was to dominate the nineteenth century. 26

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In De VAllemagne, Stael uses both models, appearing as a 'qualified' reader or auctoritas, much like Ruskin, and as a suffering heroine analogous to Joan of Arc and others. Combining these two roles, Stael also appears as a spectator abroad, echoing the travel literature popular in the eighteenth century. Like Byron or Chateaubriand, she is two things: an exceptional figure reporting from exotic places. She had little choice in the matter, spending ten years in exile at Napoleon's hands. Stael was famous from birth as the daughter of Necker, Louis XVI's chief minister. His exile helped bring on the Bastille's fall, as Napoleon said to her son Auguste: 'C'est M. Necker qui a fait la Revolution. Vous ne l'avez pas vue, et moi j ' y etais.' Savary, Napoleon's chief of police, in turn blamed Stael for Napoleon's fall: 'Elle a ete le chainon de l'entrevue d'Abo [...] Voila comment Madame de Stael a servi la restauration.' These exaggerated claims show the extreme weight Napoleon put on her activities. Napoleon had added, 'si je la laissais venir a Paris [...] elle me perdrait tous les gens qui m'entourent [...] n'est-ce pas deja elle qui m'a perdu le tribunat?' From 1789 to 1817, Stael had a considerable role in European events, and was famous for it. 27 StaePs political influence began with the Revolution. Her mother's salon had Buffon and Diderot as regular guests; her own saw much of the 1791 Constitution take shape. Balaye remarks that 'pendant ces quelques annees (1788-91), Mme de Stael utilise son salon au profit de son pere pour multiplier ses partisans dans les societes litteraires et politiques reunies chez elle des son mariage'. In December 1791, her partner Narbonne became Minister for War, and she collaborated on his speeches to the Assemblee. This period, ending with the dismissal of Narbonne, was the peak of StaePs direct political influence. Exiled in 1795, Stael returned with the Directoire and had an old friend, Talleyrand, removed from the list of emigres; like many old friends, he disowned her under Napoleon. All this time, the press was full of her activities. Goethe himself translated her Essai sur les Fictions in 1795. She met the crowned heads of every state she visited. She was a European figure long before that remark about the trois puis-

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sances. In 1803 she began her most visible exile, lasting this time until 1814: hence her autobiography, Dix annees d'exil.28 Throughout Europe, De VAllemagne stood for exile and opposition from the moment Stael set pen to paper, even before Napoleon increased its political status by pulping the first edition. Henning comments that 'son livre a une reputation europeenne bien avant Pedition de Londres'. Stael's persona as famous victim thus has two versions in De VAllemagne^ before and after the infamous 1810 pulping. Easily the most important 1813 addition is StaePs seventeen-page preface, published in Germany before the text itself: its subject is her persecution by Napoleon. The 1813 text also gains eleven authorial footnotes, to show what was censored before the book was pulped. The 1813 proofs and the last printed footnote (v 230) equate la censure and la police^ but the two are different: the Censors changed eleven phrases, the police pulped the book. These footnotes might seem inconsequential, since the Censors' revisions were also pulped, but StaePs confusion of censure and police reveals how her footnotes function; they suggest the book's eventual pulping and not its initial, futile censorship. Stael is giving her public something illicit, a suppressed book: a genre set up during the eighteenth century by censors and authors alike. Just as the century's vogue for 'found' texts gave readers the illicit pleasure of reading other people's mail, so these footnotes remind StaePs public how hard Napoleon tried to have her book destroyed. Calvino once said that no nation has more regard for literature than a police state which works so hard to suppress it. 29 StaePs preface stresses this propagandist selling point: 'II me semble curieux de montrer quel est un ouvrage qui peut attirer maintenant en France sur la tete de son auteur la persecution la plus cruelle [...] II m'importe, je le crois, de faire connaitre au public ce livre calomnie, ce livre source de tant de peines' (1 3/11; 10/13). Her persecution involved more than her book's pulping. Her exile, previously set at forty leagues from Paris, was enlarged to include all of France; she was then imprisoned in her chateau at Coppet. 'Je vins a quarante lieues de Paris pour suivre Pimpression de cet ouvrage, et c'est la que pour la

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derniere fois j'ai respire Fair de France' (1 2/19; 9/4). Whatever her own achievements, De I'Allemagne's author was most famous as Napoleon's victim. This illuminates Balaye's remark: 'Curieusement, il semble que le role de victime lui paraisse preferable a celui d'heroine combattante' (DxA xvm). When a post-1813 reader comes to Stael's synopsis of Goethe's Iphigenia auf Tauris, he has thus already been told about her exile: 'En effet l'exil, l'exil loin de la Grece, pouvaitil permettre aucune autrejouissance que celles qu'on trouve en soi-meme!' (in 50/19). But how much had the pulped 1810 text told about Stael's exile, and how many more exiles did it present? In 1810, Stael did describe her exiled arrival in Germany, 1803, but unlike the 1813 preface she waits until chapter 13. This is perhaps to avoid too polemical an opening; frank as ever, her Journal sur VAllemagne begins with the Rhine crossing. The 1810 text also distorts history, suggesting that Stael was exiled from all France in 1803, and that this visit to Germany was her first: 'Les premieres impressions qu'on refoit' in northern Germany are, she says, 'extremement tristes; et je ne suis pas etonnee que ces impressions aient empeche la plupart des Frangais que l'exil a conduits dans ce pays, de l'observer sans prevention [...] J'etais, il y a six ans, sur les bords du Rhin, attendant la barque qui devait me conduire a l'autre rive' (1 190/1, 192/11). Contrast her unmentioned 1789 trip: 'nous fumes atteintes a Francfort par l'envoye qui portait les lettres du Roi [...] nous touchions au faite des prosperites' (JVecker58).30

Stael thus establishes her affinity with the dispossessed, a motif throughout her work; in 1807, she calls the sun 'brillant et radieux comme un exile qui rentre dans sa patrie' (Corinne 556). Europe's Romantic poets would echo her terms for the next half-century: On ne rencontre personne qui puisse vous parler d'autrefois, personne qui vous atteste Pidentite des jours passes avec les jours actuels; la destinee recommence, sans que la confiance des premieres annees se renouvelle; Ton change de monde, sans avoir change de coeur. Ainsi l'exil condamne a se survivre; les adieux, les separations,

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tout est comme a l'instant de la mort, et Ton y assiste cependant avec les forces entieres de la vie [...] j'entendis le cor des postilions dont les sons aigus et faux semblaient annoncer un triste depart vers un triste sejour. (i 192/2, 195/1) Stael was revolutionary in bringing her solitaire indoors. She now departs from Rousseau, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre or Chateaubriand's Atala in refusing to retreat into the wilderness, thus producing a sharp contrast between her state of mind and those around her: 'De telles plaisanteries accablent les Frangais de tristesse; car on se resigne bien plutot a l'ennui sous des formes graves et monotones, qu'a cet ennui badin qui vient poser lourdement et familierement la patte sur l'epaule' (1 198/8; Stael's italics). In short, Stael already used aj^-narrator in her 1810 text, to make herself an explicit victim. She also allowed her public to make further analogies between her exile and others. The Iphigenia synopsis describes how Ovid, 'condamne a vivre [non] loin de la Tauride, parlait en vain son harmonieux langage aux habitants de ces rives desolees: il cherchait en vain les arts, un beau ciel, et cette sympathie de pensees qui fait gouter avec les indifferents meme quelques-uns des plaisirs de 1'ami tie' (m 50/21). The vast majority of these exiles are women, as in Jeanne d'Arc, 'bannie de l'empire qu'elle vient de sauver' (n 367/9), or in Marie Stuart: 'Le souvenir de la France vient la charmer [...] cette heureuse patrie de son choix [...] le sentiment du bonheur se reveille en elle, sans nulle raison, sans nul motif, mais parce qu'il faut que le coeur respire et qu'il se ranime quelquefois tout a coup a l'approche des plus grands malheurs' (11 322/15, 323/8). A later quotation echoes this mood of Sehnsucht: '"je demande qu'il soit accorde [...] de porter mon coeur en France aupres des miens. Helas! il a toujours ete la'" (11 339/22). Context adds weight to these analogies. Delphine 745 also quotes this passage from Maria Stuart; like Mary, the Genevan Stael called France her patrie de choix. Napoleon refused her French citizenship, despite endless petitions, keeping her foreign and treating her dislike of his empire as synonymous with disliking France. Her 1803 exile made this clear: 'II

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ajoutait qu'etant etrangere, j'etais soumise a la police' (DxA 60). Stael replies to Napoleon in 1813, reviewing 1810's new and fiercer letter of exile: 'quoique le general Savary m'ait declare [...] que mon ouvrage n'etaitpasfrangais, comme je me garde bien de voir en lui le representant de la France, c'est aux Franjais tels que je les ai connus que j'adresserais un ecrit ou j'ai tache [...] de relever la gloire des travaux de l'esprit humain' (1 10/15). Stael had built her own vision of France as early as 1802, when she dedicated Delphine to 'la France silencieuse.'31 Two other exiles feature in Stael's text. One is an early mention of a theme which plays a major role in French Romantic poetry: Thomme, cet exile du ciel, ce prisonnier de la terre, si grand comme exile, si miserable comme captif!' (iv 149/23). Compare much of Vigny, or Baudelaire's UAlbatros. The other is Rousseau, the subject of her first book: 'On vous a exile, il est vrai, mais tous les pays doivent etre egaux a un philosophe comme vous' (v 121/17). Stael continues with another revealing appeal to that Romantic figure, the solitary reader: 'Vous avez des ennemis pres de vous, mais des amis au loin parmi les solitaires qui vous lisent' (v 123/10). These terms echo the 'France silencieuse' of Delphine: Stael not only creates her own legend, she sets up a Romantic following for it. 32 Conclusion

Two individuals in De VAllemagne work as archetypes, opposing each other and also matching local patterns of plot: Stael, both artist and victim, and Napoleon, man of action and tyrant. Any artist or victim named in De VAllemagne is open to analogy with Stael, just as any tyrant or man of action can be a figure of Napoleon. That is the nature of allegory. The text has no split between 'allegorical' and 'non-allegorical' figures; all one can hope to establish is greater or lesser degrees of relevance, greater or lesser benefit from applying each allegorical comparison. Moreover, tyrant and victim share a symbiotic relationship in Stael's pages. If I choose to be rude about Napoleon, my rudeness is disinterested; the same does not apply for Stael, whom he exiled. Stael has linked her fame to

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Napoleon: like Byron, she thus creates her own myth, both in her life and in her books. De VAllemagne'^ great impact upon the nineteenth century cannot be interpreted without taking that myth into account. Stael's use of allegory departs from that of Gulliver's Travels in that her key figures - J o a n of Arc, Attila, Philip II of Spain have not one but two meanings, being people and metaphors simultaneously. Stael often uses literary personae to explain her life; her Dix annees d'exil not only records her own life in terms of Schiller's Maria Stuart, it also retells other lived events in terms of Shakespeare's Richard III, two 'Romantic' dramatists. De VAllemagne is full of the names of StaePs personal friends, and several passages seem quoted for largely private reasons. StaePs synopsis of Voss's Luise devotes a long paragraph (n 168-70) to the pastor's blessing at his daughter's wedding; in February 1804 she told Necker, 'je lisais done la priere religieuse d'un pere en mariant sa fille [...] je ne puis te Pecrire sans me retrouver emue' (CG v. i, 228). Would StaePs European public notice that private reference? It seems very likely, given Necker's 1789 notoriety. Stael comments in 1804 that 'le roi de Pologne, le roi et la reine de Naples, Pempereur Joseph II, offrirent a M. Necker de venir gouverner les finances de leur etat', citing letters from Catherine the Great: 'C'est un homme a qui le ciel a destine la premiere place en Europe' {Necker 37). When the people turn on Egmont, when Joan of Arc is banished, Stael may indeed have thought sooner of Necker than of herself.33 StaePs persona may be better studied in her two novels than in her critical works; this is a description of one crucial aspect of that persona, its political significance, within the text of De VAllemagne. Dealing with an author more famous than her work presents several problems for purely textual criticism, since there is no such thing as a text in vitro. Humans are conditioned from childhood to use language to talk to other people: necessarily we infer a speaker behind any words we read, complete with tonal inflections, private motives, and references to a shared culture. Since intent is almost impossible to prove, it is a convenient fiction to imagine a text as un-

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authored, a spontaneous and abstract construct. Ideally, this method should duplicate in criticism the empirical method used by Newton to found modern science - but when an author's personality intrudes onto the text, it is a useful reminder that one cannot isolate a text from questions of intent, as Newton did nature, without ignoring a fundamental part of the experience of reading. We may tell the truth, but it will not be the whole truth. One final remark. Stael's long synopses characterise two major protagonists, Napoleon and herself, but each synopsis also characterises the Germans it reviews. These individual portraits accumulate into a pattern - they characterise an archetype, that of'the German author.' But what is interesting is how this becomes synonymous with the great man, or hero. De RAllemagne announces that Germany's real heroes are its thinkers and writers. This coincides with the Stael/Napoleon opposition in the text: two individuals placed above the masses. Both are heroes, and here lies one of Stael's central concerns. Empire society in 1810 already had a stereotypical hero, and Napoleon fitted the mould; just as he did for Stendhal's Julien Sorel, and countless Romantics throughout the nineteenth century. This explains Stael's praise of Bernadotte in 1812-13: c le Prince est le Napoleon des honnetes gens'; 'le Prince Royal est le veritable heros de notre siecle, car il joint la vertu au genie, association qui semblait rompue.' In a sense, De rAllemagne was written above all to set up a new type of hero, a different role model for the French. 34

CHAPTER 3

Philosophy and ethics in Napoleonic Europe

Parmi les divers developpements de Pesprit humain, c'est la litterature philosophique [...] que je considere comme la veritable garantie de la liberte [...] Les geometres, les physiciens, les peintres et les poetes recevraient des encouragements sous le regne des rois tout-puissants, tandis que la philosophic politique et religieuse paraitrait a de tels maitres la plus redoutable des insurrections. (De la litterature, 32-3)

Nous en sommes a cette epoque de la civilisation ou toutes les belles choses de Tame tombent en poussiere. (iv 394/7)

This chapter looks at Stael's treatment of the German thinkers she refers to. Two questions arise: is Stael faithful to her sources, and does she have ideas of her own? I argue that Stael constructed the basic framework of her thought long before her first German tour in 1803; that this framework shared key points with the Germans she names; and consequently, that most of her 'Romantic' system in 1810 can be traced with equal accuracy to the Germans or to herself. What is new in De VAllemagne is Stael's fusion of her very diverse sources into a coherent whole. Local distortion will be an inevitable sideeffect of this process. Synthesis and distortion go hand in hand. De I'Allemagne's 21-chapter third Partie, 'La philosophic et la morale', has two chapters on German philosophers. Schelling gets no chapter, despite a monograph on Stael's alleged debt to him. Nor do other Romantics; nor does Fichte. The Schlegels are classed as literary critics. The second Partie had the opposite, a long list of authors and plays where Stael dropped her 108

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ambitious manuscript chapter-headings. Such item lists are avoided in Stael's two previous critical works, De la litterature and the Lettres sur Rousseau. These two Parties thus retrace the two methods open to reviewers, empirical list and rationalist argument. But what about truth? Even putting writers in a list, the least intrusive of methods, must compromise their uniqueness; the problem becomes more urgent when writers are put into alien categories, as occurs in Stael's third Partie. Moreover, Stael's 'great men' intellectual history, which distorts the subjects of her literature chapters by foregrounding Schiller and Goethe and marginalising everyone else, inevitably risks still greater distortion in philosophy - tending to treat thinkers not in analytic terms, but as part of a historical progression. This is encouraged by Stael's lack of taste for precise dialectics: we hear that Locke 'avait combattu victorieusement la doctrine des idees innees dans l'homme' (iv 120/5). If Locke was right, then Kant must be wrong, hardly Stael's meaning. Stael's third Partie, like her second, opens with two chapters opposing France and England. This conceit allies England to Germany, opposing Napoleon's France. It also has another important effect; for over a century, England had been France's rival, in economy and war as in thought and literature - French empiricism was taken in extenso from England. Stael in 1802 compares her undertaking to Voltaire's groundbreaking Lettres anglaises (1734): 'ce n'est que depuis Voltaire que Ton rend justice en France a l'admirable litterature des Anglais; il faudra de meme qu'un homme de genie s'enrichisse une fois par la feconde originalite de quelques ecrivains allemands' (Delphine 84). In these paired chapters, as elsewhere, she shows Germany to France through an English filter. Stael evidently felt these paired introductory chapters an insufficient buffer for German thought. Nor do they even address Germany directly: the second Partie's first two chapters concern foreign views of German literature, while in the third Partie they concern foreign thought with Germany unmentioned. We wait four chapters - fifty-two pages - for talk of la philosophie allemande, Stael's alleged subject. Yet in 1801-17,

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when Villers and Coleridge published books on recent German thought, both flopped. De VAllemagne sold out in three days. Stael's methods contributed to her book's massive success, as Pellegrini saw: Tindecision de certaines idees, par exemple, de la litterature, explique le succes de l'auteur dans des milieux ou son oeuvre n'aurait penetre autrement'. Many times since, notes Henning, 'on a reproche a Mme de Stael de ne pas avoir compris les philosophies allemandes, sans se rendre compte que son ouvrage n'a exerce une si grande influence que parce que Mme de Stael s'est plutot efforcee d'y exposer une philosophic personelle'. He quotes Serres in the Mercure de France: 'si j'entamais cette matiere, je craindrais de trouver les philosophes allemands beaucoup moins raisonnables que ne les fait cette femme celebre'. Stael the propagandist chose her distortions to sell her message. She explained this to Villers in 1802: 'Si vous n'avez pas eu a Paris tout le succes que vous meritiez, c'est [...] que vous n'avez pas voulu avoir de l'adresse dans votre maniere de presenter les idees de Kant et de combattre celles de ses adversaires.'1 DE LA PHILOSOPHIE

This title opens Stael's third Partie. In 1817, Coleridge sharply contrasts the French term Philosophe, for which he had 'the greatest disgust', with the German philosophy he discusses. As early as 1799, Stael is quite aware of the problem she faces: 'Qu'y a-t-il au monde de plus susceptible d'interpretations diverses que la philosophic?' (CA 270). In giving the term a fresh, Romantic meaning, Stael faces a long uphill struggle.2 Stael critics often talk of her gradual shift from philosophy toward religion, sped on by her father's death in 1804. This mirrors other distinctions between France and Germany, indeed between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. That image is not false, but it neglects terms repeated throughout Stael's work, from her first book in 1788: 'Quel avantage la vraie philosophic n'a-t-elle pas sur la plupart des sectes religieuses, quand elle ne tente pas d'ebranler les eternelles bases de toute croyance!' (LR 72). De VAllemagne\ author has not a

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word of this to disavow, her crucial distinctions are already made here: 'la vraie philosophic', 'sectes religieuses', 'quand elle ne tente pas.' Stael also condemns esprit de secte in her book on the passions in 1796. In 1810, she bases her talk of thought and religion on these same divides between true and false philosophy, between internal religious sentiment and external esprit de secte, and between the respective domains of philosophy and of religious faith.3 If a writer's opinions remain constant, their work should have no evidence of conflict, and Stael does sometimes clearly define philosophie: 'J'appelle philosophie, l'investigation du principe de toutes les institutions politiques et religieuses, 1'analyse des caracteres et des evenements historiques, enfin Petude du coeur humain, et des droits naturels de l'homme. Une telle philosophie suppose la liberte, ou doit y conduire' (DL 158). But her works also show recurring problems with the term. In 1796, Stael has two opposing usages in a single paragraph: 'Je ne peindrai point la religion dans les exces du fanatisme. Les siecles et la philosophie ont epuise ce sujet [...] Le theisme des hommes eclaires, des ames sensibles, est de la veritable philosophie' (IP 275). These problems may well come less from StaePs own ambivalence than from the standard cultural definitions she must confront - witness her constant links between philosophy and religion. Ad hominem arguments trace StaePs willed attack on received opinion. In 1800, she treats the word philosophie as a battleground: L'on m'a demande quelle definition je donnais du mot philosophie dont je me suis plusieurs fois servie dans le cours de cet ouvrage [...] je ne donne jamais au mot philosophie [...] le sens que ses detracteurs ont voulu lui donner de nos jours, soit en opposant la philosophie aux idees religieuses, soit en appelant philosophiques des systemes purement sophistiques. (DL 34, note) La philosophie ne doit etre consideree que comme la recherche de la verite par le secours de la raison [...] les idees religieuses ne sont point contraires a la philosophie, puisqu'elles sont d'accord avec la raison [...] les defenseurs des prejuges [...] essayent de faire naitre une opposition apparente entre la raison et la philosophie. (DL 367-8)

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These two passages are remarkable for their simultaneous attack on two different targets, scorners of religion and philosophy alike. As Mortier remarks, 'aussi la voit-on lutter quelque temps sur les deux fronts, ce qui a pu abuser certains de ses commentateurs'. Stael here breaks crucially with the philosophes. Even today, the Vatican recognises only Aquinist philosophy; the Catholic Church had no truck with the philosophes, who proceeded independently of it when not in violent opposition. That rift was less evident in Protestant lands England, Germany and Switzerland: indeed, Stael calls Geneva 'un pays ou les lumieres et la piete sont naturellement inseparables' (iv 56/7). Unlike many philosophes, major Enlightenment figures in these countries - Locke and Hume, Kant and Lessing, Haller and Rousseau - were avowedly religious. Stael shares that background. Like Rousseau, she is a Genevan Calvinist. This offers her a way to avoid opposing religion and philosophy; more than once, she links this to her Protestantism, notably in De I'Allemagne's fourth Partie. Compare Chateaubriand in 1801: 'Quelquefois elle parait presque chretienne [...] Mais Pinstant d'apres, la philosophie reprend le dessus.' Mortier calls this opposition 'absurde, voire vexatoire, dans le vocabulaire et l'ideologie de Madame de Stael'. 4 In a sense, Stael may be the last of the philosophes: apart from some interesting similarities in the scope of her ceuvre and in the texture of her writing, Enlightenment is characterised by Mankind's progress and the individual's perfection, and that is her lifelong concern. Between Chateaubriand's radical break with the philosophes, and La Harpe and the Ideologues, who do little more than rehash the past, Stael marks out a middle route drawn in part from the works of Rousseau, the subject of her first book. In 1802, Stael makes explicit this bid to reopen the Enlightenment by rescuing it from its hidebound interpreters: 'Ce serait [...] un grand obstacle aux succes futurs des Franfais dans la carriere litteraire, que [...] la mode qui proscrit les progres de l'esprit humain, sous le nom de philosophie' [Delphine 85).

By 1810, Stael has twenty years of debate behind her: she

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does not restate all her old arguments, many of her terms are now taken for granted. Instead, she reaffirms the clear continuity of her thought, stressing that any conflict comes from outside, not from herself or the terms she uses. Stael thus refuses to distinguish religious or philosophical enemies of progress: 'les temps sont passes ou Ton s'en tenait en fait d'idees au patrimoine de ses peres. On doit done songer, non a repousser les lumieres, mais a les rendre completes' (1 111/10). Once again, she is fighting on a double front, attacking not philosophy nor religion but those who separate the two: 'On a voulu jeter, depuis quelque temps, une grande defaveur sur le mot de philosophic [...] la philosophic, la liberte, la religion ne changent jamais de valeur [...] Tout ce qui tend a comprimer nos facultes est toujours une doctrine avilissante' (iv 7/1). Perfectibilite

Stael made this term famous in De la litterature (1800), though her preface for the second edition comments, 'le systeme de la perfectibilite de l'espece humaine a ete celui de tous les philosophes eclaires depuis cinquante ans\ It was also the catchword of the Ideologues, with whom Stael is often linked: compare Condorcet's Esquisse d'un tableau historique des progres de Vesprit humain (1795). T h e Ideologues' Decade philosophique presented

Stael as a defender ofphilosophie, and ignored those of her ideas which clashed with their own. A book by Cabanis on the Rapports du physique et du moral de Vhomme (1802) thus concerns

man's dependence on the physical world, inverting Stael's own use of the comparison. Her memoirs damn this parti philosophique: 'Cette miserable ecole n'attaquait pas Napoleon sur une foule d'actes arbitraires [...] mais ces mots de ralliement, les pretres, la superstition, se prononfaient encore' (DxA 253). Stael departs from the Ideologues in the place she gives to religion, as her next words suggest: 'Ce systeme ne peut etre contraire aux idees religieuses. Les predicateurs eclaires ont toujours represente la morale religieuse comme un moyen d'ameliorer l'espece humaine; j'ai tache de prouver que les preceptes du christianisme y avaient contribue' (DL 12). In 1800, Stael is among the first to call the thousand years from Attila to the

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Renaissance a useful contribution to history, because of Christianity's slow growth. 5 De VAllemagne thus derives neither its religious sentiment nor its philosophy of history from StaePs increasing contacts with Germany after 1800: both are articulated in her early works. The Germans brought modifications to her beliefs, and new terminology; there was no radical break with the past. She makes this explicit in 1810: 'j'entrais dans une sphere nouvelle, ou se manifestaient les lumieres les plus frappantes sur tout ce que je sentais auparavant d'une maniere confuse' (in 323/21). This new

context sheds light on a much-quoted phrase Stael wrote as she began her book in 1808: 'J'ecrirai des lettres sur PAllemagne et j'y dirai que j'ai eu tort dans les opinions philosophiques que j'ai exprimees autrefois.' Stael does not renounce philosophy in 1810: at most, she shifts her previous boundaries between philosophy and religion. But one should take care with this letter, written before a single line of the book to a very special audience - StaePs Quietist cousin Gautier in Lausanne. Compare StaePs published remark in 1796: 'L'exaltation de ce qu'on appelle la philosophic, est une superstition comme le culte des prejuges' (IP 203). There is no rupture between this position and those in De I Allemagne.^ One might use the term perfectibility to describe the cooperation of religion and philosophy Stael favours. The idea sits neatly between the French eighteenth century's linear Enlightenment, and another philosophy of history which also impinges on her book - the dialectical vision elaborated in Germany toward the century's end. Perfectibility reopens the problem of producing a new future by re-using the past, a problem already formulated in StaePs book on Rousseau in 1788: "II est remarquable qu'un des hommes les plus [...] distingues par ses connaissances et son genie, ait voulu reduire Pesprit et le coeur humain a un etat presque semblable a Pabrutissement' (LR 7). Her first praise of Kant in 1801 is equally down-to-earth: 'L'ennui que me cause tout cet enthousiasme de Pabsurde m'a fait trouver beaucoup de plaisir dans le discours preliminaire de Charles Villers.' Kant is not a way out of philosophies but a completion of it. 7

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In De VAllemagne, a line or two at most is better explained by German Romantic dialectics than by StaePs independent concept, perfectibility: Ton ne rendra desormais quelque jeunesse a la race humaine, qu'en retournant a la religion par la philosophic, et au sentiment par la raison' (iv 150/10). This suggests Friedrich Schlegel, or Novalis, whose Heinrich von Ofterdingen treats history as moving from nature through society toward an eventual subsumption of the two: 'These are echoes of the old unhuman nature, but also waking voices of the higher nature, the heavenly conscience in us.' Indeed, De VAllemagne quotes his Die Lehrlinge zu Sais - 'Page d'or parut renaitre a l'aide de la pensee' (v 166/10). But again Stael names explicit Weimar precedents, whom she knew better than these Berlin Romantics: 'Goethe a dit sur la perfectibilite de l'espece humaine un mot plein de sagacite: II [sic] avance toujours [, mais] en ligne spirale' (iv 268/14). Stael twice mentioned Goethe's spiral in 1804: 'II [Goethe] convenait que la litterature allemande n'etait pas classique; elle ne se perfectionne pas, elle avance' (JA 84); 'ils disent que l'esprit humain avance par une ligne spirale'. Schiller also, like Stael, had condemned Rousseau with a similar argument: 'His passionate sensuousness must be blamed when he prefers to carry men back to the unintelligent uniformity of his primitive condition, rather than see that struggle carried out in the intellectual harmony of perfect cultivation.' The terms were rife in contemporary German thought. 8 A few other references to the Germans are explicit: 'Us voudraient substituer au factice de la societe, non l'ignorance des temps barbares, mais une culture intellectuelle qui ramenat a la simplicite par la perfection meme des lumieres' (v 111/8). But De VAllemagne elsewhere simply develops StaePs idea of perfectibility, to which she had devoted De la literature's thousand pages. Behler notes that 'la celebre doctrine de Mme de Stael d'une perfectibilite infinie de l'espece humaine est peut-etre le lien le plus direct entre le xvme et le xixe siecle'. Tracing German debts in De VAllemagne will help in judging the emergence of European Romanticism: this process is muddied and confused by beliefs that Stael borrowed German

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systems wholesale because she had no comparable systems of her own. Thus, Goethe, a well qualified judge: 'She went to incredible trouble to take in the notion of us Germans, and she deserves the more praise for it, as one well sees that she talked through the substance of the conversation with excellent men, while opinion and judgement on the contrary she has herself to thank for.'9 De VAllemagne's philosophy of history is rarely signposted, which adds interest to StaePs rare confrontations with alternative models: 'Ceux qui nient la perfectibilite de Pespece humaine, pretendent [...] que la roue de la pensee tourne comme celle de la fortune [...] a cette epoque, preparee par les siecles, l'alliance de la philosophic et de la religion peut etre intime et sincere. Les ignorants ne sont plus, comme jadis, des hommes ennemis du doute' (iv 395/5). Lessing develops this concept of progressive revelation in his Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts. Once again, calling this idea borrowed would be rash: Stael had used it in De la litterature to justify Christianity's role in history. Again Stael links science and superstition, arguing that pseudo-scientific, not religious prejudice is today thought's greatest enemy. So much for StaePs philosophy of history. Two indices of a well constructed system of thought are totality and selfconsistency. Stael offers totality, that is the whole thrust of her book; and she devotes some effort to linking history's perfectibility to that of the individual. Her terms are very close to Lessing or Kant, though they also have well established precedents in Christian tradition: 'La destination de Phomme sur cette terre n'est pas le bonheur, mais le perfectionnement' (iv 320/18). Self-improvement is an ethical process. 10 Metaphysique

Parmi les differentes branches de la philosophic, celle qui a particulierement occupe les Allemands, c'est la metaphysique. (iv 8/12) The word metaphysique gives Stael almost as much trouble as philosophies for similar reasons — it had been typecast during the eighteenth century. Destutt de Tracy ranks metaphysics 'au nombre des arts destines a nous satisfaire, et non a nous

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instruire'. Stael confronts this problem in 1800 - 'II faut se garder de la metaphysique qui n'a pas l'appui de l'experience; mais il ne faut pas oublier que, dans les siecles corrompus, Ton appelle metaphysique tout ce qui n'est pas aussi etroit que les calculs de Pego'isme' {DL 45). In November 1803, Stael called German writing litterature metaphysique — 'Je voulais dire par ma litterature metaphysique que j'ecrirais a M. Suard ce que j'observerais en Allemagne' - splendidly adding to her father a month later that 'Goethe et Schiller ont la tete remplie de la plus bizarre metaphysique que tu puisses imaginer.' She had overcome this French prejudice by 1810.11 An early and derogatory De VAllemagne reference might indeed suggest that Stael found more time for metaphysics when, in her later chapters, she found herself forced to write about it directly: '[Les Allemands] ont un tel degout des idees communes, que, quand ils se trouvent dans la necessite de les retracer, ils les environnent d'une metaphysique abstraite qui peut les faire croire nouvelles jusqu'a ce qu'on les ait reconnues' (11 15/1). There are one or two similar references elsewhere - Stael talks of 'deux penchants qui semblaient s'exclure, la metaphysique et la poesie, la methode scientifique et l'enthousiasme' (iv 380/2), and of metaphysics as 'un nuage qu'il faut mesurer avec la meme exactitude qu'un terrain' (iv 13/13). In 1800, she remarks that 'la metaphysique qui n'a ni les faits pour base, ni la methode pour guide, est ce qu'on peut etudier de plus fatigant' {DL 84), but this remark is again qualified - and she later states that 'c'est uniquement par la methode metaphysique qu'on peut atteindre aux idees vraiment nouvelles' {DL 143). Those remarks from 1800 weaken any claim that Stael accepted metaphysics far later than ethics. Another from 1799 backs this up: 'la metaphysique tiree des objets positifs [...] est le plus beau travail dont l'esprit humain soit susceptible, mais la metaphysique du vague n'est qu'un ecart de l'imagination' (CA 282). Stael visibly had time for metaphysics before her first tour of Germany. That metaphysical distinction suggests an essay Stael allegedly uses: the German, Ancillon divides faux from vrai mysticisme, which 'n'admet des idees confuses que la ou

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les idees claires et distinctes abandonnent 1'homme [...] Le vrai mysticisme acquiert des connaissances positives de tout ce qui peut etre connu.' Stael did not borrow in 1799 from Ancillon's 1809 essay.12 De VAllemagne thus builds on Stael's previous works, a blow to routine claims that she draws heavily on her German sources. Marking off its differences from her early work is trickier, since two different remarks hardly prove a permanent change of mind. But one instance might be mentioned. In 1800, Stael announces that 'de certaines verites sont a l'abri de [I5] empire [des passions] [...] Depuis Locke, Ton ne parle plus des idees innees, Ton est convenu que toutes les idees nous viennent des sens' (DL 377). This extreme empiricism is that of the Ideologue Condillac, the Empire's favourite philosopher; it is the hate-object of the Romantic Idealists. A splendid passage in 1810 reads like a recantation: 'On dirait de nos jours qu'on voudrait en finir avec la nature morale [...] dans la metaphysique surtout, Ton a decide que depuis Condillac on ne peut faire un pas de plus sans s'egarer [...] on voudrait obliger l'esprit humain a courir sans cesse la bague de la vanite autour du meme cercle' (iv 166/3). What has happened? The answer lies perhaps in her remark to Gerando in October 1801: 'il s'agit d'aborder la grande question du kantisme lui-meme [...] il y a une idee premiere qui me frappe et qui est completement d'accord avec mes impressions interieures: il y a quelque chose de plus dans notre etre moral que les idees qui nous viennent par les sens'. Stael is discussing Villers's new book on Kant. In August 1802, she writes to Villers comparing Kant with Condillac, 'un homme qui me parait avoir parfaitement raisonne dans la branche de la metaphysique qu'il a traitee'. She has dropped Condillac by 1810: 'Condillac a rendu la metaphysique experimentale plus claire [...] II est naturel d'etre seduit par la solution facile du plus grand des problemes; mais cette apparente simplicite n'existe que dans la methode' (iv 64/24). 13 Stael uses other splendid metaphors to show French thought as sterile, though seemingly complete. Two images in particular draw on themes of amputation - the fat man and the

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bed of Procrustes. When we read in the last century's philosophical works, says Stael, those much-repeated phrases: '// n'y a que cela de vrai, tout le reste est chimere\ we remember 'cette his-

toire connue d'un acteur franfais, qui, devant se battre avec un homme beaucoup plus gros que lui, proposa de tirer sur le corps de son adversaire une ligne au-dela de laquelle les coups ne compteraient plus' (iv 168/9). The other image, with the same analogy, concerns ethics not metaphysics: 'Les moralistes allemands ont releve le sentiment et l'enthousiasme des dedains d'une raison tyrannique, qui comptait comme richesses tout ce qu'elle avait aneanti, et mettait sur le lit de Procuste l'homme et la nature, afin d'en retrancher ce que la philosophic materialiste ne pouvait comprendre!' (iv 329/18). The world does not end at the places where philosophy must stop. Even when Stael does condemn some metaphysics as a meaningless use of language, she is, like Kant, not condemning the unintelligible as such - neither author has any ethical objection to gibberish. Both say two things: that philosophy has direct use in describing some key areas of experience, and that in other key areas of experience, such discussion is misplaced and indeed nonsensical by definition - another idea echoed in Ancillon. Man has at present no working tools for describing such subjects, leaving us to make decisions concerning them which are independent of dialectical argument: 'Dans la region des verites intellectuelles et religieuses [...] il faut se servir de notre conscience intime [...] La philosophic experimentale est complete en elle-meme: c'est un tout assez vulgaire [...] on aligne avec exactitude les chimeres, et Ton se figure que c'est une armee. II n'y a que le sentiment qui soit au-dessus de la philosophic experimentale' (iv 103/7). Though Stael's idea of sentiment does owe something to Rousseau and sensibility, dismissing her views as irrational would miss a crucial point: for her proposed method is identical to that of Dr Johnson, the great empiricist, in his memorable refutation of the Berkeleyan dilemma. He kicked a large stone, saying 'I refute it thus' Stael put her case more brusquely in conversation: 'En ce qui concernait le monde de l'esprit, des idees, et des relations reciproques de l'esprit et de la matiere, Mme de

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Stael remarqua: 'Mon cocher en sait aussi peu que moi. C'est un mystere.' 14 Exterieur

Plus un ecrivain connait le secret des caracteres naturels et sensibles, moins il est compris par ceux qui se sont formes tout entiers par 1'existence exterieure. (Necker 87) All these terms are present throughout Stael's work. The concept of exteriority is central to her book on the passions, and already appears in her letters on Rousseau: 'les evenements de sa vie se passaient dans sa tete, plutot qu'au dehors de lui' (LR 97). But in De VAllemagne, the concept is given a new impetus and a far wider significance: it is used as the overriding metaphor for a joint discussion of ethics and metaphysics, not to mention literature, which Stael's previous works simply do not attempt in these terms. A concessive in De la litterature suggests that Stael in 1800 still found her metaphor problematic: £ces historiens ne peignent, pour ainsi dire, que l'exterieur de la vie' (DL 119). These authorial concessives vanish in De VAllemagne. 'Exterior to what?', one may ask. Exteriors are half an axis completed by the word interior, and there are few interiors in the world. Buildings have interiors; minds have interiors only by analogy. Hence, the recurrent phrase objets exterieurs: the antonym, objets interieurs, does not appear. Chapter 1 noted how in De VAllemagne the solitaire moves indoors, offering a clear link between literal interiors and the mental metaphor recurring throughout the book. Stael thus talks of'le contraste singulier d'une vie beaucoup plus monotone que celle des anciens, et d'une existence interieure beaucoup plus agitee' (m 248/8). This link is broadly absent in Stael's previous works, which rarely mention the role played by literal interiors in history. More even than talk of Rousseau and the moderns, talk of German interiors links reality and metaphor: crucially, Stael's first Partie sets up a model of Germany as a land dotted with thinkers' houses, isolated by snow, forest and political independence. In this context, Stael's talk of French society and its

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superficiality becomes an integral part of her case for German metaphysics: a remarkable achievement. Her talk of society itself has more than one echo of Rousseau. Indeed, she has monastic precedents: 'il faut choisir [...] entre le murmure importun d'une societe commune et frivole, et le langage que les beaux genies ont tenu de siecle en siecle' (iv 401/10). But some aetiologies are unprecedented - below, Stael's exteriormetaphor links epistemology with a specific code of ethics: 'Dans les pays ou Ton croit que toutes les idees nous viennent par les objets exterieurs, il est naturel d'attacher un plus grand prix aux convenances, dont l'empire est au dehors' (iv 214/5). Stael uses her novel pairings in De VAllemagne to construct a new dialectics. Links between society and objets exterieurs become a minor topos: 'Ce qui rend la societe si sujette a l'ennui, c'est que la plupart de ceux avec qui Ton vit ne parlent que des objets exterieurs' (v 107/9). This attack on society would lose its point if another link were not made explicit Stael treats 'society' and 'France' as virtual synonyms: 'nous avons tellement epuise tout ce qui est superficiel, que, meme pour la grace, et surtout pour la variete, il faudrait, ce me semble, essayer d'un peu plus de profondeur' (1 21/3). Her text explicitly opposes the Germans to this France/society link: 'L'esprit allemand [...] est presque nul a la superficie' (1 142/10). She also links German metaphysics and German culture, in terms which complete her propagandist dialectic by presenting her readers with another direct choice between French and German values: Le caractere distinctif de la litterature allemande est de rapporter tout a l'existence interieure [...] Schiller est le premier, parmi les disciples de Kant, qui ait applique sa philosophic a la litterature; et en effet, partir de Fame pour juger les objets exterieurs, ou des objets exterieurs pour savoir ce qui se passe dans Tame, c'est une marche si differente que tout doit s'en ressentir. (m 324/12) The Censor's proof in the Bibliotheque nationale reveals Stael's extensive last-minute revisions to her chapter on Kant, among them her global replacement of Kant's word phenomenes with the phrase objets exterieurs. The change is unfortunate: the terms are alien to Kant. Furthermore, Kant's Phdnomena, appear-

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ances, are what the senses perceive: they are mental events. His Dinge an sich, objects unperceived by the senses, are called Noumena. These, if anything, are the book's objets exterieurs. Stael has here stood Kant on his head, perhaps her single biggest solecism. This detail may echo Villers - Wellek notes his 'primitive error of calling the thing in itself occasionally an external thing' in his 1801 Philosophie de Kant, though the error is absent on p.278. It may also echo Stael's biography: Gautier cites Stael around July 1807 - 'Je voudrais quelque chose d'intime qui apprit a souffrir et a mourir' - and comments that if the letter had been written after July 1807, when Mme de Stael 'commenfa a subir l'influence du chevalier de Langallerie, le mot interieur serait probablement venu ici a la place d'intime.' Langallerie called his Quietist church the Ames interieures. Once again, Stael's philosophical terms cannot be severed from her biographical context. She draws simultaneously on a vast range of sources.15 Stael's word exterieur for both ethics and metaphysics thus allows a new model to surface throughout these chapters: the inner self. She follows Kant as would Wittgenstein a century later, in marking off whole areas of metaphysics as territory where verbal argument is necessarily nonsense; areas where men have no better guide than faith. That line dividing philosophy and faith reduces metaphysics broadly to epistemology, as Kant remarks: 'the proud name of an Ontology [...] must give place to the modest title of mere analytic of the pure understanding.' Stael's discussion of metaphysics meets this restriction; aetiology and ontology are mentioned in a few scattered phrases. Her 1810 term metaphysique thus concerns the self; roughly the same terrain, in fact, as modern psychology. Out of her eleven chapters on non-ethical philosophy, four concern German thought's influence on German culture: what one might call applied philosophy. Ten chapters directly concern ethics and the self. These human criteria are the framework for Stael's discussion of German philosophers.16 'L'ame est un foyer qui rayonne dans tous les sens' (iv 31/8): there is no better one-line description of Stael's Romantic metaphysics. With this phrase as our a priori hypothesis in

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examining human experience, inside/outside models become inevitable: man and the world are experience's two sources. The idea recurs throughout the works of contemporary Germans like Fichte or Schelling: may we then call it borrowed? Much of our answer to this question depends upon Stael's book on the passions (1796), whose central argument is that passions bind men to external circumstances: 'La philosophie ne fait du bien que par ce qu'elle nous ote' (IP 316). Setting up a double world inside and outside the self is after all no different from Christian teaching. But that concept lacks the Romantic idea of creativity- that the individual, like God, can generate phenomena within himself: just what French empiricism denied. This idea of creativity arose in the separate tradition of literary criticism, and its terms derive ultimately from theological discussion. It had over a century's notoriety at the time of Be VAllemagne. Compare StaePs talk of 'un esprit createur, dans toute la force de ce terme' (iv 65/13), and Schiller on Shakespeare: 'As the Divinity behind the universe, so he stands behind his work.' Stael may yet owe her systematic philosophical development of this sweeping metaphor to the Germans - but the bones of the distinction appear in France and in her early works, and this problem was already central to her, whether or not it was in Germany that she found her solution.17 This creativity-model is the main thesis of Abrams's The Mirror and the Lamp. Pearsall Smith gives a succinct review of the word's changing usage during this period, citing Dryden in 1679 - 'not the first writer to employ in literary criticism the word create^ with its solemn religious associations; but its use in this connexion, before he gave it currency, was sporadic' Muller-Vollmer argues that StaePs first encounter with these terms was through Wilhelm von Humboldt, whom she met in 1798: 'The idea of the creative nature of the self [...] as she first met it in Humboldt's essay, was destined to play a significant role in her work.' Humboldt did not introduce Stael to a concept available since Dryden; but he may well be the first to have shown her that she had here a better stick than Stoic self-abnegation - the subject of the Passions - with which to

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beat the followers of Condillac. She certainly makes use of it in

De I'Allemagne.18

StaePs initial metaphor opens a vast range of implicit textual analogies. Mining is a recurrent image: cLa pensee reside, comme tout ce qui est precieux, au fond de nous-memes; car a la superficie, il n'y a rien que de la sottise ou de Pinsipidite' (iv 176/8). It is at one point linked to Novalis, who was a great user of it (v 163/3). Christian distinctions between the inner self and the outside world have for two millennia produced people who despise the world around them. Such is the whole massive thrust of this distinction. Its merest use is thus already a political act; as Savary made clear to Stael, Napoleon had not set up his remarkable empire in order for France's most famous writer to ignore its existence. Moreover, far from simply refusing to insert a line of praise for the Emperor, Stael explicitly supports a political reading of her central metaphor. This encourages her public to incorporate its terms as an integral part of her savage attack on Imperial values: 's'il n'y a rien dans Fame que ce que les sensations y ont mis, Ton ne doit plus reconnaitre que deux choses reelles et durables sur la terre, la force et le bien-etre, la tactique et la gastronomie [...] il ne nous vient rien que de superficiel par le dehors, et la vie serieuse est au fond de Fame' (iv 81/3). That reference to tactics and gastronomy was written while Napoleon conquered Europe. This Romantic model of the self can be - and often is discussed with no mention of the theological background to its two main hypotheses, individual creativity and independence. But Stael does not do so. It would be misleading to review her chapters on German thought without taking account of the theology she depends on; a critic might equally discuss these chapters in purely Christian terms. It is in fact amazing to see how extensively Stael does just that. She thereby obliterates the very precondition of philosophical argument, given like so much else a single throwaway acknowledgement in her text: 'Le doute universel est Ya b c de la philosophic' (iv 59/8). This is the dark side of StaePs great syntheses. Her global use of a metaphor like exterieur allows far-reaching propagandist

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claims which more disparate terms would not permit. That is part of what holds her text together. Moreover, it allows various global inferences to be made about the German character as a whole, which would be impossible or inconsequent without that background. But something is sacrificed in return, and in StaePs philosophy chapters we can see just what is lost. The philosophers reviewed in De VAllemagne begin philosophy, like Descartes, with a clean slate - that is the precondition of their dialectics. Within that space, hypotheses are made; by applying syllogistic argument to these hypotheses, specific conclusions can be reached. The point of this process is that every step should be verifiable, it has that in common with scientific method. This is an ideal, more or less closely matched in works by different philosophers. StaePs recapitulations of these arguments are distinguished by their repeated substitution of terms drawn from outside this space, for those the philosophers have so laboriously established. What these chapters offer the reader, then, is something parallel to, but quite separate from, philosophy as such - and more locally, from the individual arguments they review. Compare Munteano, on what French readers found in Kant: 'Disons d'abord [...] ce qu'ils ecartent deliberement de leur esprit, a savoir le criticisme en ce qu'il a d'essentiel [...] Le magnifique effort kantien de poser les limites du connaitre et, dans ces limites, d'etablir des regies precises.' It is amusing to see the efforts of the philosophers thus inadvertently burlesqued in the book which was to give them a European audience. 19 Here for instance is StaePs description of the epistemological choice between claims that the self is or is not formed by external circumstances: Tout semble attester en nous-memes l'existence d'une double nature; Pinfluence des sens et celle de Fame se partagent notre etre [...] il y a dans Phomme ce qui perit avec l'existence terrestre et ce qui peut lui survivre [...] de quelque maniere qu'on s'exprime, il faut toujours convenir qu'il y a deux principes de vie differents, dans la creature sujette a la mort et destinee a Pimmortalite [...] selon que nous pla^ons la force en nous-memes ou au dehors de nous, nous sommes lesfilsdu ciel ou les esclaves de la terre. (iv 19/1)

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This is not philosophy but rhetoric. Once again, the vocabulary itself is heavily loaded: dme, terrestre; sujette, fils du del,

esclaves - even destinee, which smuggles teleology into this argument. Indeed, the book has barely a philosophical statement which does not find room for religion. The short passage below uses three loaded terms: 'L'origine de la pensee a occupe tous les veritables philosophes. Y a-t-il deux natures dans l'homme? S'il n'y en a qu'une, est-ce Fame ou la matiere?' (iv 15/14). The terms are veritables, deux natures, and dme. Philosophers are not true or false, they are at most correct or incorrect. Epistemology distinguishes data inside and outside the self, it has no need for a further distinction within the self. As for the Christian dme, Stael's discussion of philosophy uses it almost to the exclusion of any other term, leaving minimal formal distinction between these chapters and those on religion which end her book. In short, Stael is as willing to use rhetoric as argument to attack French empiricism and its stress on external circumstance. Most of her rhetoric derives its emotional charge from analogies with other subjects, such as slavery. Stael also compares French empiricism with non-existence, in a passage linking it with the ethics of interetpersonnel. No stronger analogy exists. The metaphysics which displaces the centre of life, says Stael, in supposing that its impulse comes from outside, robs us of our liberty. It is consequent only when one derives from it, 'comme en France, le materialisme fonde sur les sensations, et la morale fondee sur l'interet [...] On ne saurait considerer comme une question oiseuse celle qui s'attache a connaitre si Tame a la faculte de sentir et de penser par elle-meme. C'est la question d'Hamlet, etre ou n'etrepas' (iv 51/3). La morale

Je demandais un jour a Fichte [...] s'il ne pouvait pas me dire sa morale, plutot que sa metaphysique. 'L'une depend de l'autre,' me repondit-il. Et ce mot etait plein de profondeur. (iv 14/6) Stael works hard to establish a necessary connection between metaphysics and ethics, empiricism and the doctrine of interet personnel: 'Les ecrivains franfais ont eu tout a fait raison de

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considerer la morale fondee sur l'interet comme une consequence de la metaphysique qui attribuait toutes les idees aux sensations' (iv 283/1). Stael in fact owed these terms to Villers, as she told Gerando in 1801: 'quand il compare la metaphysique fondee uniquement sur les sensations a la morale ayant pour base l'interet, je trouve que ce rapport, qui semble eloigne au premier coup dyml^ se rapproche lorsqu'on le remplit de toutes les idees qu'il suppose' (CGrv.ii, 423). Indeed, she repeated this in draft, before deleting the acknowledgement: 'J'ai dit avec Villers dans le cours de mes reflexions sur les divers systemes de la formation des idees, que la metaphysique fondee sur les sensations conduit a la morale dont l'interet etait la base' (iv 283A).20 Why does Stael excise her second clear debt to Villers? Context again helps explain her text. Villers was based in Hamburg. Despite his praise of the Germans in the Spectateur du JVord, from 1798, Stael's Correspondancefirstmentions his views in a letter from 17 September 1801. His book on Kant then had a major impact on her. Yet Villers first contacted Stael in a letter dated June 1802, nor did he see her again after her visit to Metz. On 15 December 1803, she writes to him that 'j'avais commence un journal de mon voyage avec une analyse philosophique et litteraire de 1'Allemagne ou je parlais beaucoup de vous'. Noting his absence in the Journal's pages, Balaye remarks, 'il y a done des pages perdues' (JA 28) - but correspondence falls off thereafter, and other reasons suggest that Stael lost interest in him. She is already marking her distance from Villers ten days later: 'Je vous dirai si vous voulez connaitre l'Allemagne qu'on y est moins allemand que Villers [...] Villers est allemand de systeme, d'entetement.' This shift might reflect more personal causes - she also told Villers, 'de ma vie mon amitie n'a ete offensee comme elle Test par vous'. 21 Villers's ethics/epistemology link haunts Stael's philosophy chapters: 'Une foule de questions morales et religieuses dependent de la maniere dont on considere l'origine de la formation de nos idees [...] l'examen qui touche le plus immediatement a la vertu; savoir si la fatalite ou le libre arbitre decide des resolutions des hommes' (iv 10/13). Her German

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sources, like Fichte, would probably agree on the necessary connection put forward; their works contain fewer assertions of the connection and more justifications of it. What then is StaePs basis for this alleged necessary connection? I find no explicit and coherent statement of her argument. If all our resolutions are governed by fatality, then intent personnel is a nonsense - it cannot exist without free will, just the opposite of StaePs claim. StaePs attempted synthesis does not stand up, though her example does neatly illustrate a broader necessary link between ethics and metaphysics. Virtue does not thus depend on free will: Calvinism, StaePs avowed religion, preaches election and predestination alike. Stael draws other parallels between a thinker's ethics and his metaphysics: Hobbes 'a dit hardiment que Pame etait soumise a la necessite, comme la societe au despotisme [...] II aneantit la liberte morale comme la liberte civile, pensant avec raison qu'elles dependent Pune de Pautre. II fut athee et esclave, et rien n'est plus consequent' (iv 37/11). That last sentence will not do; Hobbes's statements take no position on religious belief. Contrast Calvin's rigid doctrine of predestination, a splendid tool for oligarchy in Geneva and Boston. Stael has better arguments for linking religion and civil liberty, but here her addendum serves mainly to attack an Enlightenment cliche that superstition and despotism go hand in hand. And Hobbes does praise secular authority; once again, Stael lacks only a proof for the necessary connection she asserts.22 In 1796, Stael argues that cil faut que Pexistence parte de soi, au lieu d'y revenir, et que, sans jamais etre le centre, on soit toujours la force impulsive de sa propre destinee' (IP 348). She here sees the self as double - good and bad selves coexist. This is less a problem than a model, irreducible for her, as indeed for thinkers from Plato to Freud. Once again, Stael departs from such writers in using her model without justifying it. That is especially true of De I'Allemagne, though even her book on the passions has little to say on the subject. Chapter 4 examines this apparent weakness: Stael is supported by her heavy reliance on Christian vocabulary, in which acceptable and standard explanations of man's double nature had already been formu-

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lated. Reading Stael's philosophical argument again depends on terms drawn from extratextual Christian tradition. A coherent fusion of religion and philosophy may be interesting in itself, and it does encourage any grand synthesis of subject matter Stael may offer her readers, but it also transforms her philosophy chapters into a genre alien to philosophy as such. Stael goes on to blur the terms vertu and morale. Hence, her remarks on virtue's role in judging philosophical systems: 'L'Evangile nous dit qu'il faut juger les prophetes par leurs oeuvres: cette maxime peut aussi nous guider entre les differentes philosophies; car tout ce qui tend a l'immoralite n'est jamais qu'un sophisme' (iv 11/12). Stael has every right to apply this ad hominem moral criterion to the philosophies she reviews: it is for the reader to be aware that the criterion is in effect. So much for philosophy. Stael leaves the most extreme statement of her position, which after all is no different from that of any church, to one of her German subjects, perhaps Jacobi: 'Un penseur allemand a dit qu'il n'y avail d'autre philosophie que la religion chretienne [...] le christianisme semble indiquer le point merveilleux ou la loi positive n'exclut pas l'inspiration du coeur [...] ce qui est bon et sublime ne nous est revele que par la divinite de notre coeur' (iv 343/13). Two key ideas the individual's creative will, and divine inspiration — are here used in tandem: Tinspiration du coeur', 'la divinite de notre coeur.' Stael's chapter 'De la philosophic franfaise' thus claims that 'la philosophic consiste a trouver Interpretation raisonnee des verites divines' (iv 57/3), hardly the words of a Voltaire. As for ethics, Stael asserts that religion underlies all true ethical activity: 'la religion est le veritable fondement de la morale' (iv 327/14). This statement has a simple polemical point: if it is true, the French doctrine of interet personnel must by definition be false, which would make the case against it irrefutable. Stael's views on ethics and philosophy clearly suffer from prolonged analytical scrutiny. With the outlines of the case against her book now established, let us accept this weakness and focus instead on the outlines of her proposed synthesis, however incoherent. Stael also ties love to religion and to

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ethics: 'la puissance d'aimer tient de tres pres a la morale et a la religion' (iv 357/9). This topos recuperates the love story as a branch of ethics. Stael had precedents calling love stories ethical; few thus describe love itself. Even Rousseau's Julie in the Nouvelle Heloise is redeemed not by love but by her triumph over it. This is emphatically not the case in Stael's works, nor in those of the countless Romantics who followed her. 23 Stael herself uses Julie to make an ethical point in 1788: 'Julie coupable insulte moins a la vertu, que celle [...] qui n'y manque pas par calcul et l'observe sans l'aimer' (LR 27). Love is already involved in this description of virtuous behaviour. The remark also offers new evidence that the basic framework of De VAllemagne's inside/outside metaphor was established long before Stael's encounter with Germany: its terms lie at the heart of this comparison, whose devote has a virtuous exterior but no dme as such, while Julie's actions have betrayed her though she may feel a deep inner love for virtue. The devote is characterised precisely by her lack of emotions - spontaneous upwellings of emotion from within. Indeed, Stael later claims that 'les vertus qui ne different pas des vices aux yeux des hommes, sont les plus difficiles a exercer' (LR 36). Whether or not Stael's code of ethics is the same in 1810 as in 1788, her metaphorical framework is certainly untouched. Summing up the patchwork of Stael's philosophical discussion, various syntheses are being simultaneously attempted: between love and religion, ethics and metaphysics, or between the concept of creativity and that of an internal self. But the terms Stael uses to construct her edifice, even if by nature susceptible of sustained logical analysis, are here presented for whatever reason more or less independently of any such philosophical apparatus. A demanding reader can begin to fill these logical gaps sprinkled through Stael's arguments, from one source in particular, that of Christian tradition. Her book encourages the reader to do so: not only by explicit statements but by the very words it uses, drawn heavily from traditional religious vocabulary. Stael's fusion of vastly different philosophical systems under the aegis of Christian doctrine allows her to do something

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impossible to a more impartial review of contemporary German thought. This is best stated in Stael's own terms: Les moralistes allemands de la nouvelle ecole [...] peuvent etre divises en trois classes: ceux qui, comme Kant et Fichte, ont voulu donner a la loi du devoir une theorie scientifique [...] ceux a la tete desquels Jacobi doit etre place, qui prennent le sentiment religieux et la conscience naturelle pour guides, et ceux qui, faisant de la revelation la base de leur croyance, veulent reunir le sentiment et le devoir [...] Ces trois classes de moralistes attaquent tous egalement la morale fondee sur l'interet personnel, (iv 348/9) As the word revelation suggests, the last class mentioned are Germany's religious mystics. Stael has found a way of presenting the entire scope of contemporary German thought, from Kantian philosophy to religious mysticism, as a vast sequence of directly analogous attacks on contemporary French doctrines of intent personnel. Behler distinguishes the different 'Kants' offered by Crabb Robinson, Villers and others: cDe tous les representants du groupe de Coppet, Mme de Stael fut la seule a developper systematiquement les divers points de vue sur Kant en une synthese originale.' Compare Deguise on Constant: 'Lorsqu'il se tournera vers les mystiques un ou deux ans plus tard, il ne parlera plus de devoir, tandis que Mme de Stael, avec sa puissance etonnante d3assimilation est arrive a inte-

grer le devoir a la liberte, au desinteressement et par consequent a ce qu'elle nomme religion.' 24 KANT

Ge qui nous manque aujourd'hui, c'est un levier pour soulever l'egoisme: toutes les forces morales de chaque homme se trouvent concentrees dans l'interet personnel. (DL 86) Le devoir est la preuve et la garantie de l'independance [metaphysique] de l'homme. (iv 133/25)

Stael's third Partie has surprising proportions, with Kant and Jacobi given a chapter apiece, and the others sandwiched into a chapter called cDes philosophes les plus celebres de l'Allemagne avant et apres Kant.' This section aims to explain the

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prominence Kant is thus given. What did he offer Stael that she did not find in Rousseau, the subject of her first book? Indeed, with Rousseau so prominent in historical discussion, Stael's renunciation of him in favour of Kant makes a splendid iconic break. But to answer this question, one must know two stories: that of Stael's initial problems, and that of Kant's gradual emergence as her solution. The two mottoes above make the point: in 1800, Stael felt a lack to which she had as yet no decent answer. By 1810, Stael proclaims that her lack is answered in Germany. We need 'des armes plus acerees', she writes, to combat those which vice has forged: 'les philosophes de la nouvelle ecole ont pense qu'il fallait une doctrine plus severe, plus energique, plus serree dans ses arguments [...] Nul doute que ce qui etait vrai en morale, il y a deux mille ans, ne le soit encore; mais [...] Les idees communes ne sauraient lutter contre l'immoralite systematique; il faut creuser plus avant' (iv 389/6). These two terms of reference — lack in 1800, answer in 181 o — offer us a crucial line of demarcation between French and German influence in De I'Allemagne, at the birth of Germany's influence on European thought. This line is far more precise in Stael's second Partie; the blurring of edges typical of Stael's method there stands out in sharp relief against her German originals. Except for the chapter on Kant, such originals are broadly absent here. What makes our line of demarcation important? This raises the question of De VAllemagneh iconic role in literary history. As the thresholds of Romanticism are pushed ever further back into the eighteenth century, one major work announces a clean break, a claim taken seriously on its French publication in 1814. As with Voltaire's Lettres anglaises in 1734, the break seems clean because it concerns an alien country and an alien language. Monchoux thus talks of 'YAllemagne de Mme de Stael, qui depasse de loin en importance tout ce qui avait precede et ouvre une ere nouvelle'. Establishing a demarcation within this best-selling text can offer today's readers a group of useable tools for describing a key moment in Romantic history: France, England, Italy and America all owe the modern term Romantic to De VAllemagne.25 Our first concern is to discover the extent to which Stael's

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early works, untouched by German thought, already approach the ethical problem she later finds resolved in Kant. Her 1788 Lettres sur Rousseau have no such terms. De Vinfluence des passions

(1796) is built around independance de Vdme, the cornerstone of Kantian ethics: 'dans la science morale de l'homme, c'est l'independance de Tame qui doit etre l'objet principal' (IP 41). The preface to De VAllemagne uses this same phrase: 'ce que les philosophes mettaient en systeme s'accomplit, et l'independance de Fame fondera celle des etats' (1 12/27). In fact, StaePs book on the passions is devoted to that problem - but her solution there is traditional, amounting to little more than Stoic self-denial. One passage in 1796 comes much closer to Kant's categorical imperative: it is couched in religious terms, but then so is De VAllemagne^ review of Kant. Indeed, this early description barely differs from those Stael offers fourteen years later: 'Quand le vrai chretien s'est acquitte de ses devoirs, son bonheur ne le regarde plus [...] la religion donne pour guide un code, ou, dans toutes les circonstances, ce qu'on doit faire est resolu par une loi' (IP 278). Compare the 1810 motto heading this section, or other similar remarks: Thomme a refu du ciel, pour se decider, le sentiment du devoir' (iv 319/7). Discussing French philosophy, Henning states that 'c'est surtout dans ce domaine que VAllemagne ne restera pas sans effets immediats', naming Cousin and Guizot in particular. It is hard to see what Stael adds here to her own French tradition. An anecdote supports this. Before meeting Stael in 1798, Humboldt copied extracts from her book on the passions into his journal; among them, her definition of liberty as liberte absolue de Vetre moral, and one passage he calls sublime: 'Si Ton parvenait a rallier la nature morale a la nature physique [...] on aurait presque derobe le secret de la Divinite.' MiillerVollmer concludes that if Stael 'adopte une conception kantienne de la subjectivite humaine et la caracterise a son tour dans un langage derive de Kant, Fichte et Schelling, cela doit etre compris comme le prolongement continuel de l'articulation de ces idees et croyances [...] plutot que comme quelque chose a expliquer en termes d'influences causales'. 26 Stael's surviving correspondence does not mention Kant

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before 1801. Her first published references come in 1800: 'Le celebre metaphysicien allemand, Kant' (DL 365). The word celebre suggests that Kant already had some French notoriety, and compare Munteano: 'II y eut en France, sous le Directoire [...] un grand tumulte kantien.' Yet in 1800, Stael does not see Kant as the answer to her own philosophical dilemmas. Her second mention of him makes this explicit: 'Tout ce qu'il peut y avoir d'ingenieux dans l'esprit de Kant, et d'eleve dans ses principes, ne serait point [...] une objection suffisante contre ce que je viens de dire sur l'esprit de secte' (DL 259). Ten years later, these reservations are gone: 'il reconnut les bornes que les mysteres eternels imposent a l'esprit humain; et ce qui sera nouveau peut-etre pour ceux qui n'ont fait qu'entendre parler de Kant, c'est qu'il n'y a point eu de philosophe plus oppose, sous plusieurs rapports, a la metaphysique' (iv 119/4). This may modify our regard for 1800's celebre metaphysicien; that was mixed praise from Stael, as the word metaphysique suggests.27 Stael here echoes Crabb Robinson. Wellek tells the story of Crabb's four English articles, quoting the first: 'Kant is precisely the direct enemy of the metaphysicians.' After 1804, Crabb gave Stael four essays on Kant, 'dont une subsiste a Coppet: "Remarks on Kant's Critical Philosophy", avec en marge des observations de Mme de Stael.' Wellek remarks, 'it is a safe guess that these were identical with the ones sent to the Monthly Register'. Stael very probably reread this essay in 1809, as she wrote her problematic chapter on Kant, and Crabb indeed proclaimed his role as her mentor in German thought. Yet here is a timetable for Stael's acquaintances: Constant, 1794; Humboldt, 1798; Villers, 1801-3, the visit to Weimar, 1803-4. Stael was anything but a tabula rasa when she reached Weimar in 1803, she had fifteen years of writing behind her. Larg notes that Crabb saw Stael six times in all, two of them formal occasions: 'Crabb a du abattre une formidable besogne, car on dit, sur la foi des Reminiscences, que ce fut lui qui, apres Charles de Villers, lequel l'indoctrina tous les jours pendant pres de trois semaines, et avant Guillaume Schlegel qui en fit autant pendant une douzaine d'annees, eut l'honneur d'initier Mme de Stael a la philosophic et l'art allemands.' 28

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Was StaePs first encounter with Kant in 1800? Both 1800 references stress Kant's notoriety, and two facts suggest that Stael had heard of Kant some years before. First, StaePs partner Constant had known a Kantian propagandist, Huber, since 1794, when the man was his guest in Lausanne for a fortnight - two years before StaePs book on the passions. Huber spent that time translating an essay of Kant's on ethical theory and practice. Mme de Charriere comments, 'dans cet instant, il est fort question ici de Kant. On le traduit, on Panalyse, on essaie de le comprendre.' Huber then met Stael, though given her then-difficult relations with Constant, Kant may not have been discussed.29 Constant also attacked Kant in 1797, and De VAllemagne refers directly to their controversy. Constant says that our moral duty to tell the truth, 's'il etait pris d'une maniere absolue [...] rendrait toute societe impossible. Nous en avons la preuve dans les consequences [...] qu'a tirees de ce principe un philosophe allemand, qui va jusqu'a pretendre, qu'envers des assassins qui vous demanderaient, si votre ami qu'ils poursuivent n'est pas refugie dans votre maison, le mensonge serait un crime'; a footnote names Kant. This is interesting, because Kant's remark is introuvable. Munteano comments, 'ou done chercher? Nous Pignorons, et Kant lui-meme Pignore.' Kant's reply came within five months, in the Berlinische Blatter: he there defends the example Constant had wrongly attributed to him. Munteano adds that 'la querelle entre Kant et Constant fit quelque bruit', quoting contemporary journals. That much is common knowledge, but there is more to be said. De VAllemagne uses this same example: 'Kant a porte le respect pour la verite jusqu'au point de ne pas permettre qu'on la trahit, lors meme qu'un scelerat viendrait vous demander si votre ami qu'il poursuit est cache dans votre maison. II pretend qu'il ne faut jamais se permettre [...] ce qui ne saurait etre admis comme loi generale' (iv 323/13). Given StaePs intimate liaison with Constant, and the publicity his controversy with Kant had received, this much of Kant had surely been familiar to her since 1797.30 StaePs biography further illuminates this issue. A 1958 foot-

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note here recalls Stael on the Swedish Embassy's doorstep in 1795, hiding Mathieu de Montmorency from the Republican Police. In 1818, Stael also remembers smuggling a young nobleman out of France in 1793. He would have been 'fusille a l'instant meme, si Ton devinait son nom', and yet the Swiss border agent 'se faisait scrupule d'alterer la verite pour quelque objet que ce put etre [...] C'est la premiere fois qu'il se soit offert a moi une circonstance, dans laquelle deux devoirs luttaient Tun contre l'autre avec une egale force' (CRF 11 135-7). Let us not say that Stael here echoes life not literature: she echoes both. But Stael's partner Constant, writing in 1797, certainly knew about these adventures. Immanuel Kant himself thus owes his infamous test case in ethics to Mme de Stael. Stael's basis for rejecting Kant here is an ethical divide between rigid law and the soul's spontaneous, creative virtue. She had been making the same distinction since her apology for Rousseau's Julie in 1788. It is also the entire basis to Jacobi's objections to Kant. By giving Jacobi the other of her two chapters on individual German philosophers, Stael gives prominent stress to just that ethical alternative. She devotes a third chapter - IV.xiv, 'Du principe de la morale dans la nouvelle philosophic allemande' - to Kantian ethics and Jacobi's objections to them. Mentions of the subject recur elsewhere: 'Kant, en ecartant la religion des motifs de la morale, ne pouvait voir dans la conscience qu'un juge, et non une voix divine' (iv 335/17). We saw Stael's talk of Tinspiration du coeur' and 'la divinite de notre coeur'; that same religious criterion is the fundamental basis of her ethics, making her endlessly divide what philosophy can and cannot describe: 'Ce qui est vraiment divin dans le coeur de l'homme ne peut etre defini' (11 113/1). c

De VAllemagne"s chapter on Kant

This context allows a new approach to Stael's sustained review of Kant in 1810, in the 28-page chapter she accords him. The Censors' proof shows her detailed revisions to this chapter before publication, which involve repeated local distortions

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and solecisms. To begin with, Stael gives him a character, drawn from the terms she uses to describe German writers and the Germans in general: 'il s'est contente du plaisir silencieux de la reflexion. Solitaire, il contemplait son ame avec recueillement' (iv 110/9). Stael adds an index of Kant's rigorous scientific acceptability - he is no dreamer - by announcing that Vest lui qui previt le premier l'existence de la planete Uranus' (iv 112/6). This detail follows Villers. She then offers a summary of Kant's alleged philosophical aims: 'La philosophie materialiste livrait l'entendement humain a l'empire des objets exterieurs, la morale a l'interet personnel, et reduisait le beau a n'etre que l'agreable. Kant voulait retablir les verites primitives et l'activite spontanee dans l'ame, la conscience dans la morale, et l'ideal dans les arts' (iv 113/14). This remark offers only Stael's usual 'mild' distortions of Kant's philosophical terminology. The word verites has no formal connection with Kant's faculties, quite apart from the words' radically different cultural significance; activite spontanee suggests rather Schelling or Fichte's Wille, a creative force, than Kant's Willkur - which more closely resembles a switch in an electrical circuit. Stael also prefers the word vouloir, which Voltaire thought antiquated, for volonte: 's'il est vrai, comme les philosophes allemands ont tache de le prouver, que [...] la vertu ne puisse exister sans la parfaite independance du vouloir' (iv 108/1).31 It is instructive to compare Stael's 'PseudoKant' with the same chapter's statements of her own philosophical aims: Tl faut une philosophic de croyance, d'enthousiasme; une philosophie qui confirme par la raison ce que le sentiment nous revele [...] L'opposition qu'on a voulu mettre entre la raison et le sentiment conduit necessairement la raison a Pegoisme et le sentiment a la folie' (iv 145/1). Is this what Kant offered her? She might find her terms better exemplified in Jacobi; they contradict her own remark that 'le doute universel est Ya b c de la philosophic'. Her chapter closes with a phrase perfectly acceptable in a review of Novalis or even Friedrich Schlegel, but quite out of keeping here: Ton ne rendra desormais quelque jeunesse a la race humaine, qu'en retournant a la

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religion par la philosophic, et au sentiment par la raison' (iv 150/10).

What is the effect of these phrases in a chapter on Kant, rather than in the less prominent chapters where they could be more at home? This effect depends in large part on the respective standing of German thinkers in contemporary Europe. The Romantics were by and large unknown. Kant was not so famous as now, nor Jacobi so ridiculous, but Kant's three mentions in De la litterature suggest that Stael already thought his dialectics highly regarded in France in 1800. Kant was not just another German; he was to be taken seriously. If Stael had left her pet ideas where they belong, with their actual sources, they would not receive this immediate respect; given the nature of Stael's short reviews, she hardly has room to produce any new dialectical arguments in their favour. As suggested by the chapter on German thinkers 'avant et apres Kant 5 , the celebrated Kant is the filter through which Stael shows Germany's other philosophers. Once again, draft truths yield here to textual propaganda. In 1803, Stael calls recent German metaphysics 'pour le moins, inutile*. In 1804, free from the Imperial Censor, she pinpoints the direct political gains in stressing Kant over other Germans: 'Le Schellinisme laisse l'egoi'sme dans toute sa force et n'exige pour toute morale que d'etre en harmonie avec soi-meme [...] Dommage que les forces allemandes se perdent dans les reveries de Schelling' (JA 87, 89). Stael knew Kant by name from 1800, if not 1797 or earlier, and her enthusiasm for him dated from 1801 - that is, some years before her trip to Germany in 1803. The same was not true of Fichte or Schelling. She had evidently settled on the basic framework of her book's discussion while still in Weimar - thus, her letter to Jacobi from March 1804, asking him to dictate to someone 'ce que vous m'auriez dit sur les trois philosophies de Kant, Fichte et Schelling, et leur rapport et leur dissemblance avec vous [...] Je vous avoue que jusqu'a present je m'arrete a Kant, et que je lui trouve une heureuse conciliation du realisme et de l'idealisme qui maintient la liberte en soi et les rapports avec les autres' (CG v.i, 297)-32

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The vast scope, the intestine divisions of what Stael calls Germany's nouvelle ecole are thus brought together under Kant's banner: 'presque tout ce qui s'est fait depuis lors, en litterature comme en philosophic, vient de Pimpulsion donnee par cet ouvrage' (iv 112/14). Stael offers readers her own splendid construction, a single coherent block of thought alien to anything offered by Napoleonic France. She goes on, 'la meme theorie sert de base a ces trois traites' (iv 112/20), and she repeats these terms later: 'Kant applique aux plaisirs de l'imagination le meme systeme dont il a tire des developpements si feconds dans la sphere de l'intelligence [...] ou plutot c'est la meme ame qu'il examine, et qui se manifeste dans les sciences, la morale et les beaux-arts' (iv 135/1). A passage on aesthetics in this chapter may also seem like doubtful Kant: 'qu'on ne dise pas que Pinfini et Peternel sont [m]intelligibles [...] nous reconnaissons la beaute quand nous la voyons parce qu'elle est Pimage exterieure de Pideal, dont le type est dans notre intelligence [...] ils ont dans leur ame des sentiments d'origine celeste que la beaute reveille' (iv 135/10). A phrase like d'origine celeste is not Kant's, but the rest of this critique of judgement in fact follows him remarkably closely: ' Taste is the faculty of estimating [...] by means of a delight or aversion apart from any interest. The object of such a delight is called beautiful.' Kant argues that such a judgement requires an initial term of reference, and concludes: 'Hence this archetype of taste [...] may more appropriately be called the ideal of the beautiful.' He describes the infinite thus: 'precisely because there is a striving in our imagination towards progress ad infinitum, while reason demands absolute totality as a real idea', the fact that our faculty for estimating sensory objects cannot attain to this idea awakens 'a feeling of a supersensible faculty within us'. To that extent, the infinite may be called intelligible. Stael's use of these criteria has been attributed to Ancillon: here at least, her unusual faithfulness to Kant is worth some stress.33 The chapter attributes one other crucial idea to Kant, concerning the roles of analytical argument and of other tools in dealing with experience as a whole. Again Stael proposes two

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more guides to experience, religion and sentiment. This makes her description of Kant's philosophical undertaking rather misleading. Refusing to doubt Kant's 'piete sincere', she adds that 'les belles epoques de l'espece humaine [...] ont ete celles ou les verites d'un certain ordre n'etaient jamais contestees [...] Des despotes et des fanatiques ont essaye de defendre a la raison humaine l'examen de certains sujets'; yet reason gains a new force from 'les bornes qu'elle s'impose a elle-meme', product of 'Pautorite des lois librement consenties' (iv 128/12). This is a bizarre mixture of non-Kant and Kant improperly used. Kant was pious, but that piety is rigidly separated from his dialectics. He talks of consenting to law in one precise ethical context - the absolute moral law of the categorical imperative, which produces freedom because the alternative is the law of causality. Calling a random decision not to discuss religion, a law, is a meaningless use of the term. Equally, saying that des verites d'un certain ordre should not be contested departs from Kant in two ways: contestees means to contest a truth, but since we cannot discuss these questions, it is precisely their truth which is at issue. Kant's own terms are better expressed in another passage: as for metaphysics, Kant 'nie son existence, puisqu'il pretend que le raisonnement ne peut avoir lieu que dans la sphere de l'experience'. Metaphysics is useless beyond these limits, and we must attribute to sentiment 'la prescience et la conviction de tout ce qui sort du monde visible [...] Kant place sur deux lignes paralleles les arguments pour et contre la liberte de l'homme, l'immortalite de Tame, la duree passagere ou eternelle du monde; et c'est au sentiment qu'il en appelle pour faire pencher la balance' (iv 125/8). This description seems entirely accurate, with not even a word at fault: that is most unusual, but Kant after all offered a description of metaphysics which Stael had no reason not to accept wholesale. It is an index of her fierce independence of mind that she is so universally unable to reproduce her sources in their own terms - however much they share with her own point of view — but feels obliged or compelled to distort them time and time again in accordance with her own longstanding preoccupations. That is

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perhaps the most striking feature of Stael's long succession of chapters on Germany and its inhabitants. OTHER GERMAN PHILOSOPHERS

De rAllemagne's axial position in Romantic history adds some interest to precedent-hunting for the new ideas it proposes; this is the common terrain for reviewers during the past two centuries. But the vast majority of Stael's ideas can be recuperated using her earlier works alone, ignoring the Germans she discovered later, and she directly attributes most of the remainder to named sources. This section concerns a group of unattributed ideas with high-profile precedents in recent German thought, and the extent to which these ideas have equally accessible precedents in French thought or in Stael's own writings. As with Stael's apparent references to Napoleon, this game of attribution is of necessity hypothetical: critics have argued that Stael owed her 'Romantic' novelty to Schelling, Ancillon, the Schlegels - even Villers or Crabb Robinson. Stael's great originality lies rather in the global synthesis she attempts than in the individual building-blocks she employs; but when key ideas have been restated by a French author since 1788, it is at best misleading to use their reappearance in 181 o as proof of her debt to the Germans. What such parallels offer instead is evidence that not all Stael's Romantic ideas were as unprecedented in France as is suggested by the huge controversy they aroused in Restoration Paris. Henning argues that in 1814, 'la presse s'est habituee depuis plusieurs annees a attaquer avec acharnement le groupe de Mme de Stael [...] cette querelle est devenue en 1814 une affaire nationale: la publication de VAllemagne coincide avec l'entree des troupes des Allies a Paris'. Monchoux adds, 'ne peut-on penser qu'a cote d'un pareil ebranlement, ceux qu'ont pu produire le Racine et Shakespeare, ou la preface de Cromwell ou meme la

bataille d'Hernani, font figure accessoire et mineure?' 34 Henning also offers a litany of Stael's sources: Villers, Constant, Sismondi, Bonstetten, Gerando, the prince de Ligne,

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alongside the Schlegels, Jacobi, Werner, Hormayr, and Humboldt; Fontenelle, Montesquieu and Voltaire alongside Lessing, Klopstock and Schiller. In France, he suggests, this went unnoticed, but in Germany 'chaque influence nouvelle se detachera nettement contre l'ensemble enchevetre [...] Le resultat en sera une indignation universelle.5 This hunt for sources is not irrelevant; but to understand the book, we need some discussion of the broader effects of these individual details within the context of her text as a whole, something as yet almost entirely neglected. Critics again differ on StaePs debts here. Compare Wellek: 'A reading of the text of De VAllemagne must convince us [...] that surprisingly little trace can be found of all these informants, and that the independence of her judgement was hardly affected.'35 Two accidents make the task of assessing StaePs debt to German Romantics harder than it might be. Her terminology is again nebulous at best, and identifying German sources in this period is a problem massively complicated by the intricate relationships between the Germans in question and by the repeated similarity of their views. Most of the unattributed ideas discussed here have several possible sources, notably in Schiller, Humboldt, Fichte, Schelling, Novalis and the Schlegels. Stael has praise for all these authors, a criterion Holderlin and Hegel both lack. Stael also had an unparalleled German mentor in A. W. Schlegel, who left Berlin in 1804 to follow her around Europe, but remained in touch with German events. When Stael has various possible sources, current scholarship cannot safely distinguish which source Stael used, or indeed whether she thought of a single source and not a group: but it can show whenever an idea absent in StaePs previous work has a German precedent readily to hand. Humboldt's essay Sur VHermann et Dorothee de M. Goethe,

published in French in 1799, illustrates the dangers of this game of attribution. Stael names this essay (11 170/14), and later echoes his remark that German literature 'excelle surtout dans la peinture des caracteres'. But she attributes the idea to her partner Constant's preface to Wallstein, which 'a fait observer que les AUemands peignaient les caracteres dans leurs

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pieces, et les Franfais seulement les passions' (11 249/11). Constant's translation appeared in 1809, the remark in De VAllemagne\ C manuscript: praise for friends' recent works is a minor topos in Stael's writings, and perhaps the primary reason for her choice of attribution. 36 Stael was the opposite of a solitary writer. She wrote De VAllemagne surrounded by friends and endless house-guests, the Groupe de Coppet. Constant's Wallstein, published in January 1809, highlights the problems of attribution thus engendered. Constant left Coppet between 7 December 1808 and 9 May 1809, thus missing half De VAllemagne's first draft. But by 22 September 1808, Stael is writing of 'le Walstein de Benjamin et son discours'; two days earlier, Constant told his aunt that 'les reflexions preliminaires [...] sont aussi a peu pres achevees'. Stael began De VAllemagne by 8 July 1808, her second draft on 13 May 1809: the most approximate of schedules suggests that she had written roughly half her first draft by the end of 1808. This is made relevant by her review of Schiller's Jungfrau von Orleans, which begins on p. 410 of the 1810 edition's 1,175 pages: 'Jeanne d'Arc est bannie de l'empire [...] La foule se disperse; l'infortunee sort de la ville; elle erre dans la campagne; et lorsqu'abimee de fatigue elle accepte une boisson rafraichissante, un enfant qui la reconnait arrache de ses mains ce faible soulagement' (n 367/11). Compare the preface to Wallstein: 'Elle est forcee de fuir; elle cherche un asile [...] apres une route longue et penible, elle arrive dans une cabane [...] la soif la devore; un paysan, touche de compassion, lui presente un peu de lait: au moment ou elle le porte a ses levres, un enfant [...] lui arrache la coupe' (p. 53). Which author has priority? In fact, these passages were probably composed almost simultaneously, during the winter of 1808; though Stael must review this play, unlike Constant. 37 Other parallels with Constant's preface appear elsewhere: Stael calls Wallenstein 'la tragedie la plus nationale qui ait ete representee sur le theatre allemand' (n 299/1), while Constant says that 'tout ce qui se rapporte a la guerre de trente ans [...] est national pour les Allemands' (p. 52). But these references end by proving that priority in this case is not really the point -

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the two works were composed conjointly, by authors sharing the most intimate circumstances: without records of their conversation, our conclusions will be provisional at best. There is room for a detailed comparison of what these two works share, to indicate the problems inherent in assuming that either author here parrots the other. Stael also cites the forgotten essays of Ancillon and Humboldt. Like Wallstein, Ancillon's essay appeared early in 1809, as De VAllemagne's A draft was completed; manuscript dates again become crucial. Stael's phrase, 'on croit parvenir a comprendre l'univers comme espace [...] en reculant les difficultes sans les resoudre' (iv 186/15), resembles Ancillon: 'L'infini est une sphere, Tindefini est une ligne droite [...] nous croyons atteindre l'un en employant l'autre [...] on deplacera les limites, mais on ne les fera jamais disparaitre' (p. 8). But the 1808 A manuscript already talked of'reculant les difficultes en approchant toujours plus de 1'infini', and Kant makes a similar distinction: 'when we say, produce a straight line - it is more correct to say in indejinitum than in infinitum\ Stael's note that Ancillon 'vient de faire paraitre un ouvrage' (v 17/2) occurs fourteen chapters later, at the start of the fourth Partie: this and chronology suggest that any influence he had on her text began after that point. We might thus reject apparent Ancillon precedents for other textual phrases: 'L'analyse [...] s'applique, comme le scalpel, a la nature morte' (iv 33/3). Ancillon writes, 'nous analysons un objet; nous n'eprouvons plus l'impression qu'il faisait sur nous avant d'etre soumis au scalpel' (pp. 29-30), but Stael's remark is again present in the A manuscript. 38 Stael's talk of German novels may echo Humboldt. A phrase like 'le roman fait pour ainsi dire la transition entre la vie reelle et la vie imaginaire' does jar with the rest of her discussion, while Humboldt writes that Tartiste doit aneantir la nature comme objet reel, et la refaire comme production de l'imagination' (in 243/2, p. 10). Berlin Romantics like Friedrich Schlegel pushed this argument further: 'I can scarcely visualize a novel but as a mixture of storytelling, song, and other forms.' Yet in a move full of influence for the nineteenth century, De

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VAllemagne explicitly rejects this crucial German Romantic art form: 'On a voulu donner plus d'importance a ce genre en y melant la poesie, l'histoire et la philosophic; il me semble que c'est la denatured (m 243/7). Direct claims concerning influence in De VAllemagne evidently require extreme care. The Comtesse de Pange has splendidly established Stael's independence from the Schlegels; below is a small proof of StaePs distance from Schelling, which goes unmentioned in the book alleging her debt to him. Stael remarks that 'chaque homme a sa philosophic, comme sa poetique, comme son amour' (iv 97/4): two chapters later, she claims that 'il n'y a qu'une philosophic, selon Popinion de Schelling, ou il n'y en a point' (iv 180/8). 39

Holism

As that shared scalpel analogy suggests, the idea of holism was in great vogue at this time. Stael applies it to the individual, attacking 'cette methode anatomique qui considere les forces intellectuelles chacune a part [...] Chacune de ces facultes ne serait qu'une maladie, qu'une faiblesse au lieu d'une force, si elle n'etait pas [...] completee par la totalite de notre etre' (iv 28/13). Other Berlin precedents include Fichte: 'The science of knowledge will exhaust the whole man; it therefore considers only the totality of his entire capacity. It cannot become generally valid philosophy, as long as education, in so many men, kills one moral faculty to the other's advantage.' Schiller in Weimar often returns to this issue: 'so then the inner bond of Man's nature was torn, and a pernicious conflict divided his harmonious faculties'; 'any division or isolation of these faculties is thus a state of violence, and the ideal of recovery is the recreation of our natural whole'. Stael later echoes Schiller's remarks even more closely: 'Des que Phomme se divise au dedans de lui-meme, il ne sent plus la vie que comme un maP (v 218/14). One thinks of Baudelaire's 'Quand notre coeur a fait une fois sa vendange,/ Vivre est un mal.' But at iv 30/6, Stael quotes Milton to similar effect - and she used almost identical terms in 1802, before her stay in Germany: 'en opposant Pune a Pautre, le sentiment, Pimagination, la raison,

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toutes les facultes de rhomme, on etablirait en lui-meme une division presque semblable a celle qui, en affaiblissant les empires, rend leur asservissement plus facile' (Delphine 89) . 40 The theme of holism indeed runs throughout De VAllemagne thus, the vast synthesis which lies at its heart. But when Stael comes to express the terms of her grand Romantic manifesto, no German sources spring to mind: 'tous les penseurs solitaires, d'un bout du monde a l'autre, cherchent a rassembler dans un meme foyer les rayons epars de la litterature, de la philosophic et de la religion' (v 98/23). This statement better reflects StaePs own lifelong concerns than those of any German she refers to. Wille Stael departed from Kant in treating the will as an active force, a distinction neatly expressed by Schelling: 'That a freedom of the will exists is something the ordinary consciousness can be persuaded of only through the act of choice, that is, by that fact that in every willing we are aware of a choice between opposites. But now it is argued that choice is not the absolute will itself Before Schelling and Fichte, I find no such philosophical stress on the active will — though the idea was widespread in necromancy and mysticism, areas of some interest to Stael. Unlike the mystics, these Germans were broadly unknown in Europe - an important point in assessing StaePs novelty. The passage below may draw on the German Romantics, but it names two much older parallels: 'L'esprit humain, dit Luther, est comme un paysan ivre a cheval, quand on le releve d'un cote il retombe de l'autre.' Ainsi Phomme a flotte sans cesse entre ses deux natures [...] il me semble neanmoins que le moment d'une doctrine stable est arrive: la metaphysique doit subir une revolution semblable a celle qu'a faite Copernic dans le systeme du monde; elle doit replacer notre ame au centre, et la rendre en tout semblable au soleil, autour duquel les objets exterieurs tracent leur cercle, et dont ils empruntent la lumiere. (iv 27/1)41

Despite those names, this passage does suggest the terms of Fichte and Schelling. The reason lies in StaePs superb circle image, common in her correspondence and part of her private

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topology. We have seen the term exterieur. Abrams traces to Plotinus this sun or lamp image for the self, noting its reemergence about 1650 in the writings of the Cambridge Platonists. It plays little part in the eighteenth century's empiricist epistemologies, despite a growing role in aesthetics. Stael thus proclaims in 1807 that 'le genie est essentiellement createur' (Corinne 177). De VAllemagne applies these artist's terms to epistemology. The word empruntent suggests that nature's light is borrowed from the soul; these are not even the terms of the Berkeleyan dilemma, which simply disputed matter's existence. Rather, they are terms made famous after Kant. Abrams does however offer evidence which 'lends greater credibility [...] to Coleridge's reiterated claim that through his early reading in Platonists and mystics, he had acquired the essentials of his idealism prior to his first knowledge of German philosophy'. StaePs background was similar to his. 42 Some examples from Fichte and Schelling may make StaePs parallel clearer. Thus, Fichte: 'The ego as absolute subject is that, the being (essence) whereof consists merely in positing itself as being.' Schelling states that 'everything in the objective world is present, only insofar as the self intuits it therein'. Stael may seem unsure of her opinion on this subject — elsewhere, she mentions 'toutes les reveries bizarres enfin qui naissent de la conviction que Pame est plus forte que la nature' (v 128/29) but she attributes those reveries to '[sectes] d'alchimistes, de magnetiseurs et d'illumines'. Once again, can mysticism and philosophy here be distinguished? Magnetiseurs and illumines also date their fame from after 1775, and they share most of their concerns with the German Romantic philosophers. Schelling indeed makes that very claim: 'Nature cannot act in the proper sense of the word. But rational beings can act.' 43 This framework may suggest that StaePs distinctions between apparent fatality and moral independence - 'notre seule maniere d'influer sur le sort, c'est en agissant sur nousmemes' (v 96/2) - require some knowledge of post-Kantian thought. But once again, StaePs early works make it increasingly difficult to attribute such a phrase unequivocally to the Germans. Thus, Delphine, 81: 'Observer le coeur humain, c'est

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montrer a chaque pas l'influence de la morale sur la destinee.' Indeed, Stael's 1810 remark again contradicts Schelling 'Willing, at the outset, is necessarily directed upon an external object' - leaving us to suggest that Stael, who evidently had already established her basic opinions on this subject, borrowed little from Schelling and Fichte but their stress on the will's un-Kantian active force. Of the many distinctions between their new philosophies and those already available, this is what Stael chooses to make use of. And once again, Schiller provides a more Classical precedent, talking of man's capacity 'to transform the work of compulsion into a work of his free choice, and raise physical necessity to a moral plane.' 44 Correspondances

Schiller's analogy between physical and moral worlds is omnipresent in De VAllemagne. Stael is explicit: 'La plupart des axiomes physiques correspondent a des verites morales' (iv 204/8). She once employs a concessive - 'II y a une telle analogie et une telle difference entre le monde physique et le monde moral' (iv 94/9) - but elsewhere repeats her simple terms: 'Presque tous les axiomes de physique correspondent a des maximes de morale' (iv 246/12). What is meant by correspondent? Stael says elsewhere, 'les vrais causes finales de la nature, ce sont ses rapports avec notre ame et avec notre sort immorteP (v 186/5). This is the subject of the second half of Kant's Kritik der Urteilskraft: 'We have shown in the preceding section that there is ample ground [...] to make us estimate man as the ultimate end of nature.' 45 The outlines of Stael's parallel between moral and physical worlds are simply unattributable to a single source. Schelling himself lists other precedents, 'when Leibniz calls matter the sleeping state of monads, or when Hemsterhuis speaks of it as congealed mind'. But Stael's above claim is not strictly this; indeed, I find just one precedent within contemporary German philosophy, in Schiller: 'if the laws of the human spirit were not also the world's laws [...] no experience would be possible'. Oddly, this key Romantic and Symbolist idea was perhaps more common in still-Classical France. Thus, Chateaubriand

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in 1802: 'les lois physiques et morales de l'univers se tiennent par une chaine admirable' {Genie 598); it again has precedents in mystical thought. Viatte notes Saint-Martin's Romantic insistence that 'tout est symbole', with quotations: 'La lumiere rendait des sons, la melodie enfantait la lumiere, les couleurs avaient du mouvement.' Stael also quotes Saint-Martin in 1810 (V96/12). 46 The preface to Wallstein offers a similar parallel: 'Une grande correspondance existe entre tous les etres moraux et physiques' (p.63). Indeed, this page in Constant has a whole range of ideas given more space in De I'Allemagne's chapter, 'De la contemplation de la nature'. There is nobody, he says, who gazing at the endless horizon, or walking on the shore, or lifting their eyes 'vers le firmament parseme d'etoiles, n'ait eprouve une sorte d'emotion qu'il lui etait impossible d'analyser.' He adds that 'les edifices modernes se taisent, mais les ruines parlent', and then turns back to nature, saying that 'tout l'univers s'adresse a l'homme dans un langage ineffable qui se fait entendre dans l'interieur de son ame, dans une partie de son etre, inconnue a lui-meme, et qui tient a la fois des sens et de la pensee'. Compare De VAllemagne\ 'on entend quelquefois le soir une harmonie plaintive et douce, que la nature semble adresser a l'homme [...] ces objets nous parlent un beau langage, et Ton peut s'abandonner au tressaillement qu'ils causent'. Stael adds that 'jamais peut-etre un chef-d'oeuvre dans tout son eclat n'a pu donner l'idee de la grandeur autant que les ruines', and ends by asking, 'que repondraient la mer et les etoiles aux vanites etroites de chaque homme pour chaque jour?' (v 180/3, 184/10, 221/4). Here in short are two allegedly 'pre-Romantic' French texts, from 1809-10, with the German Romantics already behind them, and full of ideas we expect to find in France after 1830. Stael's pages were probably composed after Constant's preface, though the ideas seem closer in spirit to Stael's work as a whole. She was discussing analogies between physical and moral worlds in 1788: 'si la meme pensee avait cree le monde physique et le monde moral; si l'un etait, pour ainsi dire, le relief de l'autre, pourquoi se refuserait-on a trouver dans

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l'ensemble du systeme de Rousseau la preuve de sa verite?' (LR 56). One reason Stael does not attribute her doctrine oi correspondances to Fichte and Schelling is her belief that their systems prevent this idea. Reviewing them, Stael comments: 'notre sentiment s'accorde mieux avec les systemes qui reconnaissent comme distincts la physique et la morale' (iv 171/12). Schelling announces that 'the one basic prejudice, to which all others reduce, is no other than this: that there are things outside us'. Stael's sweeping programme of correspondances clearly cannot be reduced to the terms made sparingly available by the Berlin Romantics. Two chapters, 'Influence de la nouvelle philosophie allemande sur les sciences', and that on the contemplation of nature, produce idea after idea reemployed later in the nineteenth century: 'le rapport des sons et des formes, des sons et des couleurs [...] L'aveugle-ne Sanderson disait qu'il se representait la couleur ecarlate comme le son de la trompette, et un savant a voulu faire un clavecin pour les yeux [...] Chaque plante, chaque fleur contient le systeme entier de l'univers' (iv 246/22); 'Le ciel est en effet un noble allie de l'Ocean [...] Quelquefois, quand l'orage se prepare dans l'atmosphere, la mer fremit au loin [...] Les diverses figures que la gelee trace sur le verre offrent encore un nouvel exemple de ces analogies merveilleuses' (v 176/13). Gautier's 'Affinites secretes', Baudelaire's 'Correspondances' or indeed the liqueur-organ in Huysmans's A rebours may spring to mind. 47 As the names suggest — Sanderson, un savant — these ideas are not without precedent; what makes De VAllemagne unprecedented is Stael's amalgamation of her local details into a farreaching whole. Sanderson died in Cambridge in 1739, the savant, Castel, in Paris in 1757: Stael juxtaposes such older sources with contemporary German scientists like Chladni and Alexander von Humboldt, and with poets and mystics like Novalis or Schubert, Lavater or the theosophists. Her book is discerning pattern in chaos, the heart of any intellectual enterprise. De VAllemagne grew out of a rich contemporary intellectual culture, which cannot be reduced to the works of the German Romantics alone without drastically misrepresenting

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the complexity of the period. But it is equally true to say that the complexity of Stael's intellectual debts is not a mere reflection of external circumstance: it is her own creation. Stael is not alone responsible for the diversity of her authorities - she lived surrounded by experts - but it should be stressed that of the various great syntheses of such information attempted by the members of the Groupe de Coppet, none had more contemporary success than De VAllemagne^ or more influence on the next generations. Thus, Monchoux: 'Meme par rapport a Chateaubriand, elle merite d'etre situee a distance: il est beaucoup plus traditionaliste qu'elle, plus limite dans ses vues, et d'ailleurs fort peu theoricien. Tous ceux-la d'ailleurs, meme si Ton cumule leurs ecrits, n'apportent pas un corps de doctrine, et elle en fournira un.' 48 On Classical and Romantic poetry

De VAllemagneh main claim upon posterity has been its introduction of this distinction to England and France, as indeed to every country that sold the book where German was not spoken. Among Stael's German precedents, four assume particular importance: Schiller, the Schlegels, and once again Wilhelm von Humboldt. In France, Rousseau offers the general terms of this comparison, with clear precedents for a remark like Schiller's on the 'loss of truth and simplicity in mankind'. But the detailed elaboration of the new aesthetics created by man's new state, and of the way forward this aesthetics offers, dates from Schiller alone -just as Kant offered similar ways forward in metaphysics and ethics. That way forward is the heart of Stael's propagandist message.49 Here also is the kernel of my argument: how much does De VAllemagne depend on German Romantic thought? In a sense, the answer is simple: since Stael puts literature before philosophy, readers must make sense of her book's first half without that crutch. When Stael replaced her draft categories with a simple list of plays, she left her book little scope for presenting German theatre in terms of German aesthetics - evidently we do not need a grasp of German aesthetics to understand German art. Yet Stael adds one key chapter before her synop-

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ses begin. Long before any talk of Kant or Schelling, readers are offered this tool alone - this Romantic model - for reading the long extracts in Section 2. In 1808, when Stael began her book, the direct opposition between Classical and Romantic poetry was eight years old. It was conceived with the new century by Friedrich Schlegel, in an essay for his Athenaeum called Gesprdch u'ber die Poesie. He uses

the sentimental to define 'the peculiar tendency of romantic poetry in contrast with the ancient', saying that it makes no distinction 'between appearance and truth, play and seriousness'. Romantic poetry, he argues, 'is based entirely on an historical foundation'. Yet he adds, 'please do not immediately assume that the Romantic and the Modern are entirely identical for me [...] This is where I look for and find the Romantic - in the older moderns, in Shakespeare, Cervantes, in Italian poetry, in that age of knights, love, and fairytales in which the thing itself and the word for it originated.' 50 Schlegel's essay did not arise ex nihilo, and the word sentimental suggests his precedent, Schiller's Vber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung (1795-6). But Schiller rarely links his sentimental moderns with older literary traditions. He has just two such references, one to Haller, Kleist and Klopstock - 'The character of their poetry is sentimental; it is by the ideal that they touch us, not by sensible reality' - the other to Ossian, whom he contrasts with the Greeks: 'Ossian's human world for instance was indigent and uniform [... enough, to ] pour that elegiac tone over his songs which makes them so moving and attractive for us.' Here, the outlines of StaePs apparent debt to the Germans begin once again to shift, since Ossian is the axis of her own literary history in De la litterature. She published this book three years before her first tour of Germany: Tl existe, ce me semble, deux litteratures tout a fait distinctes, celle qui vient du Midi et celle qui descend du Nord; celle dont Homere est la premiere source, et celle dont Ossian est l'origine' (DL 178). Ossian was presented from the start as the Homer of the North, founder of a Northern tradition: to that extent, De VAllemagne\ celebrated North/South, ancient/modern opposition derives from him. But in 1800, Stael had no knowledge of

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SchlegePs terms, and it seems very unlikely that she knew Schiller's earlier essay. She elaborated her own idea of a Northern tradition necessarily linked to the modern world, independently of recent German developments. As with Kant, so here, Stael already had a basic framework for her thought, well before she discovered the similar if more rigorous systems of the Germans. 51 This makes it odd to find Be la litterature echoing almost the very phrasing of Schiller's essay. Schiller writes of the Greeks, 'it seems that nature interests their reason and their curiosity more than their moral feeling; they do not attach themselves to it [...] with sweet melancholy as we moderns do. Indeed, by personifying and deifying nature [...] they take from it that calm necessity which is precisely what makes it so appealing to us.' Stael says in 1800 that 'les anciens, en personnifiant chaque fleur, chaque riviere, avaient ecarte les sensations simples et directes, pour y substituer des chimeres brillantes'; adding that 'a l'epoque ou nous vivons, la melancolie est la veritable inspiration du talent' (DL 362-5). 52 Stael's Schillerian passage also quotes Kant's terms: 'Kant, en examinant la cause du plaisir que font eprouver [...] tous les chefs-d'oeuvre de l'imagination, dit que ce plaisir tient au besoin de reculer les limites de la destinee humaine' (DL 365). These terms are central to Schiller's essay, which maintains that 'the end to which man tends by civilisation is infinitely superior to that which he reaches through nature'. Schiller goes on to distinguish naive and sentimental poets along these lines: 'I should express it thus: the former's strength lies in the art of limitation, the latter's lies in the art of the infinite.' Stael's distinction seems almost identical to Schiller's. Indeed, he uses the word perfektibel to describe modern poetry in his closing paragraph: the essence of Stael's dialectic.53 Schiller's famous essay and Stael's thousand-page work thus have a more than superficial resemblance. Might she have known his text? In 1800, Stael could not read German. But she had several friends who did, from Constant, who argued with Kant, to Wilhelm von Humboldt, who conveyed a copy of De la litterature to Goethe for her in June 1800. Stael first met

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Humboldt in 1798. His 1799 essay on Goethe, which he in fact wrote for Stael, links ancient poetry with plastic art, modern poetry with music; he thereby echoes Schiller's four-year-old opposition of ancient and modern poetry, and reproduces Schiller's link between the ancients and plastic art. Since Humboldt knew Schiller intimately, this seems hardly an accident. Humboldt's essay does not contain Stael's own Schiller parallels, but he saw her frequently during this period. If Stael had any knowledge of Schiller's essay before 1800, it probably came from Humboldt. Thus, Villers, on Stael's 1803 trip to Germany: 'She did not go there without being prepared by friends like Wilhelm von Humboldt, Jacobi [...] Stapfer, Constant and others.' 54 In September 1798, Humboldt's journal comments, 'lunch with Mme de Stael.' Muller-Vollmer notes that Humboldt was in Paris from Autumn 1797 to Summer 1801; from 1799, he saw Stael routinely. Humboldt adds that 'she [Stael] is occupied with a work on the destinies of literature in the next century': De la litterature. Here precise dates become important. Humboldt left Paris in early September 1799, and his essay appeared after he left. Stael was in Coppet from July to November: he was thus absent, she present when his essay appeared, six months before De la litterature. But he doubtless composed the essay before he left, and his repeated visits to Stael during the summer had concerned literature above all else. His essay was composed for her benefit; Humboldt wrote to Goethe in May 1800 that it was written 'to make Stael and some others acquainted with the main ideas of my German book'.55 Why would Stael suddenly decide to write a thousand-page book around terms her informant neglected? Humbodt may well have told Stael of Schiller's essay, but her book was already under way. It seems certain that the broad framework of Stael's dialectic was in place before any encounter with the Germans. This is important, since it remains the framework for Stael's famous Romantic divide ten years later - leaving us to examine how much its details were modified in the interim. Most key mentions recur - Christianity, the North, the Middle

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Ages, emotional complexity, the perfectibility of modern art though that last term may echo Kant, as Stael's 1800 reference to his aesthetics suggests. Just two ideas in De VAllemagne\ chapter on Romantic poetry are explicitly Romantic in SchlegePs terms. First, the epithet Romantic's explanation as 'la poesie dont les chants des troubadours ont ete l'origine, celle qui est nee de la chevalerie et du christianisme' (11 128/1). Second, the list of popular poets given at 11 136/1: Tasso, Calderon, Camoens, Shakespeare, Goethe and Burger. The two Iberian names are the Schlegels' points of reference. When Stael remarks that 'on a compare aussi dans divers ouvrages allemands la poesie antique a la sculpture, et la poesie romantique a la peinture' (11 129/11), the 1958 edition mentions Tieck and Wackenroder: the above Schiller and Humboldt precedents seem more useful.56 Manuscript C modified a long Humboldtian passage by adding a reference to epic poetry, Humboldt's subject: 'II y a dans les poemes epiques [...] un genre de simplicite qui tient a ce que les hommes etaient identifies a cette epoque avec la nature [...] L'homme, reflechissant peu, portait Faction de son ame au dehors [...] L'evenement etait tout dans l'antiquite, le caractere tient plus de place dans les temps modernes.' Stael goes on to mention the 'rapports clairs et prononces qui existaient dans l'etat civil et social des anciens' (11 131/5). Humboldt has the same references to sculpture, to epic, to clear masses, to living outside oneself, and to character in modern poetry: 'La poesie ancienne', he writes, 'ne nous offre done que de grandes masses bien eclairees', whereas modern poets give us 'le tableau plus interessant encore de l'homme [...] les premiers vivaient toujours au dehors d'eux dans le sein de la nature, au lieu que nous autres nous aimons a nous replier sur nous-memes, et a nous renfermer dans nos pensees et nos sentiments'. He concludes that modern poetry 'excelle surtout dans la peinture des caracteres' (pp.24-28). He even uses the term repli, important throughout De VAllemagne and present in this chapter: 'les modernes ont puise, dans le repentir chretien, l'habitude de se replier continuellement sur eux-memes' (11 133/4). Chapter 1 discusses this idea. Stael knew Humboldt,

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and praises this essay which he wrote for her. It seems unlikely that her parallels are blind coincidence. Humboldt and Schiller both refer to plastic art, but Humboldt makes no appeal to variety. When Stael remarks in 1810 that 'la poesie pai'enne doit etre simple et saillante comme les objets exterieurs; la poesie chretienne a besoin des mille couleurs de l'arc-en-ciel pour ne pas se perdre dans les nuages' (11 134/7), this matches Schiller alone: 'the superiority of the moderns in what relates to ideas is little help to them in the plastic arts [...] in poetic works it is another affair [...] the moderns regain the advantage over the ancients in the wealth of their material, in all that is unrepresentable and inexpressible'. The idea is crucial to StaePs opposition between French and German taste, which she links with 'Pinteret romantique [...] qui varie sans cesse les tableaux' (11 133/20). One thinks of Hugo or Dumas. A moment later, Stael offers a clue to her talk of ancient simplicity: 'La poesie des anciens est plus pure comme art, celle des modernes fait verser plus de larmes' (11 134/10). Evidently Stael never quite accepted these new German terms; she neither derived her initial framework from the Germans, nor accepted in toto even the mildest codifications of this framework, which German authors like Schiller and Humboldt had to offer. She instead maintained her fierce independence of thought. Whatever her reasons, her book could not otherwise have so massively succeeded in its propagandist aim.57 It seems, in short, that Stael spontaneously coined her own Romantic system in De la litterature. De VAllemagne\ great novelty in its famous chapter is its stress on the idea of transplantation or translatio: 'La litterature des anciens est chez les modernes une litterature transplantee: la litterature romantique ou chevaleresque est chez nous indigene [...] La poesie franfaise etant la plus classique de toutes les poesies modernes, elle est la seule qui ne soit pas repandue parmi le peuple [...] les arts en France ne sont pas, comme ailleurs, natifs du pays meme ou leurs beautes se developpent' (11 134/14 — 136/11). Stael attributes a similar attack on imitation — what Auerbach calls Mimesis - to the Germans: 'Les Allemands ne considerent

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point, ainsi qu'on le fait d'ordinaire, l'imitation de la nature comme le principal objet de l'art; c'est la beaute ideale qui leur parait le principe de tous les chefs-d'oeuvre' (iv 225/19). This resembles A. W. Schlegel, though once again, Humboldt said much the same: limitation reste au dessous de son original; l'artiste, au contraire, s'eleve au dessus de notre existence physique' (p. 18). Stael remarks that 'la question pour nous n'est pas entre la poesie classique et la poesie romantique, mais entre l'imitation de l'une et l'inspiration de Pautre' (11 134/12). Stael's argument relies on an organic metaphor. Cut flowers will not grow: 'la litterature romantique est la seule qui soit susceptible encore d'etre perfectionnee, parce qu'ayant ses racines dans notre propre sol, elle est la seule qui puisse croitre et se vivifier de nouveau' (11 138/9). This is an appeal for organic, national art. From the time of the Zurich circle around 1750, that idea played a much larger part in Germany than in France: an ironic measure of their disparity lies in Stael's talk oinotrepropre sol, in a book called De VAllemagne. It is therefore vital for Stael to show Romantic culture as being universally at home: native to France and Germany alike. To do so, she relies heavily on the break between paganism and Christianity. De la litterature had thoroughly mapped out this solution in 1800, thus reclaiming the Middle Ages in a world history quite independent of the Germans. We can put this another way. De VAllemagne has a four-part world history, and a dialectic built upon this basis. With these tools, Stael can show for example how the march of history has left Catholicism behind. The same dialectic underpins this chapter's sweeping antinomies: 'Si Ton n'admet pas que le paganisme et le christianisme, le nord et le midi, Pantiquite et le moyen age, la chevalerie et les institutions grecques et romaines, se sont partage Pempire de la litterature, Pon ne parviendra jamais a juger sous un point de vue philosophique le gout antique et le gout moderne' (11 128/3). Stael's final propagandist flourish, saying not goutfrangais and allemand but gout antique and moderne, is typical of her unrelenting rhetoric; it took her no less than five drafts. Thus, manuscript B: 'II est aise de dire les temps de la barbarie et le regne du bon gout, mais

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ces expressions [...] n'apprennent ni l'influence des religions, ni le genie des peuples [...] Adoptons done les deux grandes divisions, la poesie classique et la poesie romantique.' Stael has learnt, like Napoleon, that silencing other ideas can be more effective than argument. In the Querelle des anciens et des modernes^ Classical culture was

described by the modernes as a product of history and not as a timeless absolute. Stael mentions both views: 'On prend quelquefois le mot classique comme synonyme de perfection. Je m'en sers ici dans une autre acception, en considerant la poesie classique comme celle des anciens, et la poesie romantique comme celle qui tient de quelque maniere aux traditions chevaleresques' (11 129/3). This accords with Stael's four-era world history, but she goes on to make a deeper, Biblical distinction: 'Cette division se rapporte egalement aux deux eres du monde: celle qui a precede Petablissement du christianisme, et celle qui l'a succede.' If Stael begins by telling her public what to look for in Germany, they are more likely to find it there. The opening Observations generates thus advertise 'la litterature qui [...] a regu du paganisme sa couleur et son charme, et la litterature dont l'impulsion et le developpement appartiennent a une religion essentiellement spiritualiste' (1 19/2). Despite all this Romanticism, Stael in 1810 remains Classical enough to separate what she actually likes from the apparent medievalism she celebrates: 'je n'ai cesse de le repeter dans le cours de cet ecrit, il est a desirer que la litterature moderne soit fondee sur notre histoire et sur notre croyance; neanmoins il ne s'ensuit pas que les productions litteraires du moyen age puissent etre considerees comme vraiment bonnes' (m 344/20). This occurs in a passage scolding the Schlegels: apart from any lingering feudalism Stael may note in Germany, she also recognises a new and conscious German turn toward the past. Stael is unhappy with German Romantic philosophies of history, though the Schlegels face the very problem confronted by her own concept of perfectibility: how to use the past as a springboard for new advance. Once again, Stael in 1804 is at her most explicit - 'On dirait en France que tous ces essais nouveaux ne servent qu'a faire retrograder Fart'

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(JA 74) - and despite one or two textual echoes of German dialectics, the body of De VAllemagne shows few obvious debts to any German Romantic system. Stael's review of the Schlegels ends after all in terms little different from those she had attributed to France in 1804: 'il ne s'agit pas de faire reculer l'art, mais de reunir autant qu'on le peut les qualites diverses developpees dans l'esprit humain a differentes epoques' (iv

FRANCE

Stael's attitude to France may be the clearest proof of her changing opinions. Compare De la litterature: 'Le siecle de Louis XIV, le plus remarquable de tous en litterature, est tres inferieur sous le rapport de la philosophic au siecle suivant' (DL 271). De VAllemagne, ten years later, says the opposite: 'les ouvrages composes dans le dix-septieme siecle sont plus philosophiques, a beaucoup d'egards, que ceux qui ont ete publies depuis' (iv 62/9). This was a great subject of debate at the time, with 1789 implicit. Such new terms do have their debts to Schlegel - contrast Stael's comment, 'les critiques allemands ont pretendu que les traits distinctifs du caractere franfais s'etaient effaces pendant le cours du regne de Louis X I V (m 346/6), with her claim that 'les auteurs franfais de l'ancien temps ont [...] plus de rapport avec les Allemands que les ecrivains du siecle de Louis XIV; car c'est depuis ce temps-la que la litterature franfaise a pris une direction classique' (111 279/8). But Stael's attack on contemporary France does not depend on these details. De VAllemagne is a work conceived and written in opposition, an opposition inseparable from the whole framework of its argument, in art, thought and religion alike. This coherent polemical purpose is unmatched in Stael's previous works. To put it another way: there are two sides to De VAllemagne's philosophy chapters, and to the book as a whole. One side is constructive, concerning Romanticism and Germany; the other, destructive, concerns Classicism and France. These are two sides of the same coin, and neither can be understood

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without positing the other: 'les Frangais et les Allemands sont aux deux extremites de la chaine morale' (i 19/6). StaePs amalgamation of German society, literature, thought, and religion is necessarily complemented by her mirror-image amalgamation of these subjects in France. A list of German phenomena with varying degrees of bearing on each other independence, Romanticism, idealism, Protestantism - is opposed by a similar French grouping: central authority, Classicism, empiricism, Catholicism. Thus, Mortier: 'parce que Napoleon est, pour elle, le disciple de Machiavel et de Hobbes, il faut trouver a la politique un fondement moral et une assise religieuse, en dehors de toute question de dogme et de culte'. Inordinate focus on German divisions would only weaken StaePs case against France; this mechanism lies at the heart of her book's propagandist effect. Compare Monchoux: 'Elle ne parle pas de VAthenaeum dont elle avait a Coppet toute la collection [...] Elle ne dit mot des querelles litteraires des Allemands, qu'elle a parfaitement connues.' Nor is Stael entirely wrong in treating these phenomena as more or less linked, and here she once again shares her terms with the Germans, as Schiller shows: 'Egotism has grounded its system amid the heart of the most refined sociability [...] We subject our free judgement to its despotic opinion, and our sentiment to its bizarre usages.'58 Empiricism is the most unexpected member of StaePs second list. What links does it have with Catholic France? Answering this question requires some knowledge of Napoleon and the old regime - his bizarre reconciliation of royalists and republicans. We must remember, notes StaePs cousin in 1820, that when she wrote, 'la France entiere etait dans une fausse position. Tout se fondait sur la Revolution, et Pon detruisait chaque jour le fruit cherement achete de la Revolution, Pesperance de la liberte. Une hypocrisie violente dans le gouvernement n'en imposait a personne.' This led on all sides to 'des contradictions qui ne pouvaient etre voilees que par des sophismes'. In 1810, Napoleon married Marie Antoinette's great-niece; his Minister of Police had voted for her beheading. Understandably, Stael offers only the first half of this story in her important chapter,

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'La philosophic frangaise'. She there stresses that empiricism and Catholicism will not mix: 'tous les grands hommes du siecle de Louis XIV avaient adopte l'idealisme de Descartes: et ce systeme s'accordait beaucoup mieux avec le catholicisme que la philosophic purement experimentale' (iv 55/5). In practice, the two coexisted in Catholic France. Roussel thus notes that 'Volney, parmi les familiers d'Auteuil, refuse avec une particuliere vigueur d'admettre la realite d'une morale qui ne serait pas fondee sur l'interet.' And yet, Henning argues that 'ce n'est guere avant 1820 que Ton associe le regime imperial a la tyrannie de la philosophic sensualiste'. Certainly the most notable French opposition to Condillac during this period was Stael herself- and De I'Allemagne, the vehicle for her attack. 59 Stael's proof that Romantic culture is universally at home and therefore native to France has two stages, discussed in chapter 1 under translatio. First, Stael gives France a parallel history: 'Si les Fran£ais avaient suivi la direction metaphysique de leurs grands hommes du dix-septieme siecle, ils auraient aujourd'hui les memes opinions que les Allemands' (iv 63/8). Her Germans can thus restore France's true past. Second, English thought replaced it: 'L'Angleterre influa beaucoup sur les ecrivains du dix-huitieme siecle' (iv 63/14). French thought has been usurped, and Stael is calling for a restoration. Stael's immense respect for England complicates this simple proof. She thus supplements it with three things: a claim that the influence of ideas depends on their social environment, made already in De la litterature; a further bipartition of the French eighteenth century; and a fascinating light/heat metaphor which runs throughout the chapter. Her supplement begins thus: 'La philosophic des Anglais n'etait sans danger qu'avec leurs sentiments religieux [...] Ce qui manque en France [...] c'est le sentiment et l'habitude du respect, et Ton y passe bien vite de l'examen qui peut eclairer a l'ironie qui reduit tout en poussiere' (iv 63/17). What is good in England may be bad in France: a useful distinction between theory and practice, which stresses the French eighteenth century's local conditions in formulating the book's complaints against it.

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Stael seems less valid, when she splits the French eighteenth century into 'deux epoques parfaitement distinctes, celle dans laquelle l'influence de l'Angleterre s'est fait sentir, et celle ou les esprits se sont precipites dans la destruction: alors les lumieres se sont changees en incendie, et la philosophic, magicienne irritee, a consume le palais ou elle avait etale ses prodiges' (iv 64/5). Her three examples show her own problem with this distinction: Montesquieu and Raynal; Voltaire's early and late work; and finally Condillac and Helvetius, 'quoiqu'ils fussent contemporains' (iv 64/17) - unusual evidence for a historical divide. But StaeTs key postulate is of France's break with history's true course: she must either stress this break, or that marked by English influence. StaeTs argument rests on an implicit metaphor, that of the course of history - like a road or a river. But unlike roads and rivers, history points nowhere; it is not goal-directed. Stael claims that 'Locke, Condillac, Helvetius [...] ont marche progressivement dans la meme route; les premiers pas etaient innocents [...] mais bientot ce grain noir, qui se remarquait a peine sur l'horizon intellectuel, s'est etendu jusqu'au point de replonger l'univers et l'homme dans les tenebres' (iv 67/6). Here Stael has more excuse for her metaphor than usual: philosophical arguments do intend at totality and selfconsistency, and such an argument's gradual refinement which is temporal only by accident - can, as here, fortuitously resemble causal historical progression. But StaeTs use of these terms to set up a 'true' and a 'false' course of history is not thus justified: history merely exists. That road-metaphor recurs throughout Stael's text. The light—heat-metaphor her chapter builds up is rare elsewhere, which makes it very interesting. It appears four times, from the contrast of Texamen qui peut eclairer' with Tironie qui reduit tout en poussiere' (iv 63/17) to the elaborate analogies above, the grain noir and the magicienne irritee. This metaphor has two aspects, signifier and signified. Its signified or underlying concept is what Northrop Frye calls a demonic mode of existence, radically opposing the true nature of apparently similar things - the demonic mode of light is fire. This device allows

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Stael to bisect a seemingly continuous object, the corpus of eighteenth-century French philosophy. Her signifier then becomes important: StaePs light-metaphor is the very definition of the siecle des lumieres. Thus, her adjoining comment on empiricism: 'si [ cette doctrine ] est vraie, faut-il la repousser et

s'aveugler a dessein?' (iv 70/8). 6 0

StaePs alternative world history allows her to co-opt the Enlightenment programme for her own ends. Her focus here is not on the new but the old, the false path of history she attacks. As so often, StaePs point cannot be understood without reference to local French events, the French Revolution in particular. Compare her chapter's closing paragraph: 'Lorsque les sauvages mettent le feu a des cabanes, Pon dit qu'ils se chaufFent avec plaisir a Pincendie qu'ils ont allume; ils exercent alors du moins une sorte de superiorite sur le desordre dont ils sont coupables; ils font servir la destruction a leur usage: mais quand Phomme se plait a degrader la nature humaine, qui done en profitera?' (iv 71/18).61 In this context lies a crucial effect of StaePs switch of allegiance from Rousseau, the subject of her first book, to Kant in De VAllemagne. The French Revolution gave Rousseau central status; his Du contrat social was a Revolutionaries' Bible. Yet after Thermidor, Rousseau paid for his prestige under the Reign of Terror: he was rejected by government and intelligentsia alike. The Ideologue Roederer rejects Rousseau in 1804, c le systeme du philosophe genevois etant au moins suranne', while the Censor Fievee on the other hand 'designe les ideologues comme disciples de Rousseau, en les melant a tout ce qui est ancien jacobin ou ancien revolutionnaire'. Stael herself attacks Rousseau in 1810: 'Tout ce que Rousseau a dit contre cette education routiniere est parfaitement vrai; mais, comme il arrive souvent, ce qu'il propose comme remede est encore plus mauvais que le mal' (1 260/15). She goes on: 'De tels projets sont chimeriques' (1 262/1). In the Decade, Petitain had likewise contrasted Rousseau and Pestalozzi, and Moreau de la Sarthe had also attacked Emile. 'Un ideologue admirateur de Jean-Jacques,' concludes Roussel, 'n'est pas dans une situation confortable.'62

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The Revolution was out of fashion under Napoleon, as a succession of changes make clear: the Concordat, 1802; the abolition of the Revolutionary calendar, 1806; the Hapsburg marriage, 1810. It was still more out of fashion after the Bourbon Restoration. Roussel talks of 'le concert d'antirousseauisme qui se fit entendre dans l'opinion moyenne sous le Consulat et sous l'Empire', noting that the Contrat social had eleven new editions 1794-1804, and none at all 1804-14. Kant, a German, was not thus directly tied to the Revolution, to the rejected past: that key fact makes it easier for him to represent a new future. Stael's self-proclaimed novelty, her overriding appeal to reject the past and accept the new, lies at the heart of her book's success in Paris 1814, in the very months of the Bourbon Restoration -just as it lies at the heart of Napoleon's violent antipathy to it, as he completed ten triumphant years of empire. Henning stresses Teffet avantageux qu'eut sur l'accueil accorde au livre De VAllemagne en France le retard de sa publication apres 1810'. Napoleon's shackled press would have buried the book.63

CHAPTER 4

Religion, love, enthusiasm — a new Enlightenment

Si la religion consistait seulement dans la stricte observation de la morale, qu'aurait-elle de plus que la philosophie? [...] ce qui n'est du qu'au christianisme, c'est l'enthousiasme religieux qui s'unit a toutes les affections de Tame.

(Corinne, p.271)

Les temps sont passes ou Ton s'en tenait en fait d'idees au patrimoine de ses peres. (1 111/10)

De I'Allemagne's fourth and last Partie, 'La Religion et l'enthousiasme', fills less than one-seventh (151) of the 1813 edition's 1,196 pages. But despite this Partie's brevity, the issues it raises have at least three claims to special attention. First, Stael gave these issues a separate section. Second, she put them at the end; unlike a dictionary or encyclopaedia, De VAllemagne has some narrative structure, and a narrative's dynamics give closing chapters special importance. Third, that last Partie is not a fence the passions lie beyond; enthousiasme is used from the outset (1 68/2), and the whole text is full of these issues. As Stael says in listing her four Parties, 'ces divers sujets se melent necessairement les uns avec les autres' (1 22/5). Indeed, De VAllemagne\ greatness lies in the scope and coherence with which it overrides and ignores previous distinctions: 'une des causes de Paffaiblissement du respect pour la religion, c'est de l'avoir mise a part de toutes les sciences, comme si la philosophie, le raisonnement, enfin tout ce qui est estime dans les affaires terrestres ne pouvait s'appliquer a la religion' (iv 56/10). 165

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Without religion, 'cette science de 1'ame' (in 247/10), Stael's talk of thought and art has a beheaded air. Many quotations below come from Stael's opening sections, before she gives readers any systematic description of her terms; her early talk of religion and enthusiasm remains broadly legible without that crutch. Even Kant is described in religious terms - 'II serait injuste de soupfonner la piete sincere de Kant' (iv 128/12). Thus shifting Kant towards Jacobi allows Stael to bend philosophy towards religion as she ends her book. RELIGION

II est peut-etre interessant de connaitre sous quel point de vue la religion est consideree en Allemagne, et comment on a trouve le moyen d'y rattacher tout le systeme litteraire et philosophique dontj'ai trace Vesquisse. (v 10/1)

Critics are in some controversy as to the history of Stael's religious opinions, with most suggesting that her father's death in 1804 marked a turning point in her religious life. Her 1804 biography of him indeed remarks, 'il me representait si bien la religion toute entiere!' (JVecker 108). Yet Stael's grieving correspondence shows no trace of her disowning past opinions: such watersheds occur, if at all, in 1802-7. In 1802, Stael read Villers's book on Kant; in 1807, she came into close contact with religious mystics. Stael was religious throughout her life; she drifted toward rationalism around 1800, but the dates 1802 and 1807 stand apart. This matters, because despite Stael's incidental talk of religion in her previous works, there is little real preparation for the sustained rush of enthusiasm ending De VAllemagne. Bowman adds that 'si Mme de Stael parle beaucoup de religion dans ses ecrits entre 1788 et 1807, elle ne fait point oeuvre de theologien; on n'y trouve rien de comparable aux ecrits de son pere, ni aux chapitres sur la religion dans De VAllemagne'. A late passage in De VAllemagne may explain this 'leap of faith': 'Pendant longtemps on ne croit pas que Dieu puisse etre aime comme on aime ses semblables [...] mais par degres l'ame s'eleve jusqu'a sentir son Dieu pres d'elle comme un ami' (v 124/29). *

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What are Stael's religious opinions? Cordey lists four generations of pastors from her grandfather back, 'deux siecles ininterrompus de theologie protestante'. In February 1807, she advises Gautier de Tournes about her son Auguste: 'je voudrais qu'on ne lui fit pas lire d'ouvrages catholiques; je tiens a notre religion'. In 1799, she calls herself'bonne calviniste5, yet her next words reproduce the very charge that angered Rousseau in 1758: 'les ministres les plus eclaires parmi les protestants, ecartent ce qu'il reste de dogme dans leur croyance. Plusieurs d'entre eux sont sociniens' (CA 230). In 1802, she admits to being 'quelque peu socinienne'. Compare pastor Cellerier's elegant judgement: 'elle me parut desirer que nos dogmes fussent susceptibles de quelques modifications, en particulier celui de la nature divine du Messie'. 2 Stael's early works cite devotion and dogma as religion's two great dangers - 'Le coeur est aussi borne que l'esprit par la devotion proprement dite' (IP 286-7) - though she attacks this commonplace by 1810: 'II n'est pas vrai que la religion retrecisse l'esprit' (v 119/7). Monchoux calls Stael 'en lutte contre [...] le materialisme de la coterie holbachienne [...] et surtout le scepticisme de Voltaire.' Her attitudes are less simple, as she told Villers in 1802: 'dans ce XVIHe siecle, dont les esclaves disent tant de mal aujourd'hui que les amis de la liberte doivent le defendre, il faut distinguer la philosophie de Diderot et d'Helvetius de celle de Rousseau, de Montesquieu et meme de Voltaire dans son bon temps. Les uns ont voulu detruire un grand ennemi, le catholicisme, les autres nous ravir le premier des biens, les idees religieuses.' Around 1800, her religion indeed seems quite Voltairean: 'La religion chretienne [...] separee des inventions sacerdotales, est assez rapprochee du pur deisme [...] La religion chretienne, la plus philosophique de toutes' (DL 186). That 1800 text is famous for its groundbreaking praise of the Middle Ages, but the passage which does so is full of concessives: 'la religion chretienne, lorsqu'elle a ete fondee, etait, ce me semble, necessaire aux progres de la raison' (DL Stael is still attacking dogma in 1802: 'rien n'est plus contraire a l'imagination, comme a la pensee, que les dogmes de

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quelque secte que ce puisse etre' (Delphine 87). Yet religion and dogma are different things. In 1796, she sharply contrasts dogma and sentiment, in a passage attacking la devotion: 'je ne comprends pas dans cette discussion, ces idees religieuses d'un ordre plus releve qui, sans influer sur chaque detail de la vie, anoblissent son but' (IP 290). This same distinction recurs in 1810: 'Tous les dogmes et tous les cultes sont les formes diverses que ce sentiment religieux a revetues selon les temps et selon les pays' (v 95/13). When Stael chooses to amalgamate Germany's different sects, that choice can only support her proclaimed rejection of dogma in favour of sentiment and synthesis. So much for the negative side of Stael's religion. On the positive side, there is a similar though less untroubled continuity - Stael grew up religious, though the term probably meant least to her around 1800. When in 1810 Stael stresses the importance of religious ideas - 'Le langage de la religion peut seul convenir a toutes les situations et a toutes les manieres de sentir' (v 120/14) - this reflects longstanding beliefs. Compare her Neckerian remarks in 1799: 'la moralite des hommes a besoin du lien des idees religieuses [...] je defie de decouvrir aucune idee dont les effets soient aussi simples, aussi semblables et plus egalement d'accord avec toutes les autres diversites des opinions, des caracteres et des situations' (CA 222-3). 4 Finally, some shifts in Stael's religious agenda may echo Napoleon, as after the Papal Concordat of 1802. Thus, two odd remarks in 1810: 'La philosophic des Indiens est idealiste et leur religion mystique: ce n'est certes pas le besoin de maintenir l'ordre dans la societe qui a donne naissance a cette philosophic ni a cette religion' (iv 195/4); 'Aucun de ces hommes recommanderait-il la religion uniquement comme un frein pour le peuple, comme un moyen de surete publique [...]?' (v 77/16). Napoleon's decision to reinstate Catholicism in France after a decade of Revolution could well be read in these terms - not least by Stael, the woman who in 1799 proposed making Protestantism France's state religion. Protestantism La reformation est l'epoque de Phistoire qui a le plus efficacement servi la perfectibilite de Pespece humaine. (DL 188)

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Few would think of calling Rousseau Catholic; it is easy to forget that Stael too was a Genevan Calvinist. This may reflect her decision not to publish her 1799 tract, Des circonstances actuelles [...], which suggests eliminating 'telle ou telle croyance dogmatique qui s'accorde mal avec la nature du gouvernement [...] les republiques ne peuvent succeder aux monarchies que par un changement de religion' (CA 227). In 1810 the only Catholic republic was San Marino; elective Presbyterian churches also match StaePs political ideals. Religion and politics, republics and Protestants stand together in StaePs Genevan thought. Stael thus attacked Catholicism three years before Napoleon's Concordat. Her term dogmatique indeed suggests that later talk of dogma may well equate with Catholicism for her: 'La religion dogmatique est un commandement; la religion mystique se fonde sur P experience intime de notre coeur' (v 108/21). She tells Suard in 1802 that in Delphine 'les situations mettent la religion du coeur au-dessus du catholicisme' (CGrv.i, 570); Broglie remembers Stael preferring 'le sentiment au dogme', like the pastors of Geneva. Religion itself thus supports StaePs majestic inside/outside dialectic in De VAllemagne. Compare the Duchesse de Bourbon's talk of 'chretiens exterieurs attaches a la doctrine enseignee par les pretres', and Mme de Kriidener's remark to Stael that 'tout ce qui parle a Phomme exterieur n'est rien.' 5 De I'Allemagne'sfirstfour religion chapters offer a long comparison of these two faiths, the last great alternative Stael brings to France: Germany has a different society, literature, philosophy and religion alike. Her earlier Parties touch on this Catholic/Protestant distinction. A scene in Werner's Luther shows miners discussing Luther and the reformation: 'ils s'occupent de la liberte de conscience, de Pexamen de la verite [...] de cette autre lumiere qui doit penetrer dans les tenebres de Pignorance' (in 133/8). Lumiere here is a Protestant attribute that Catholics lack. Stael expects French opposition in 1810: 'La religion catholique est plus tolerante en Allemagne [...] on se fait de ses adversaires un fantome qui se dissipe presque toujours par leur presence' (v 63/1). Yet she had already praised Protestants, if less forcefully than in 1799, in her two

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popular novels, Delphine and Corinne (1802-7). Kohler calls Delphine in particular a Genie du protestantisme; it attacks the religious vows which Chateaubriand had just celebrated, while Corinne stresses how superstition kept Italy from developing the manly character which the Scottish Oswald exemplifies. 'La force a Coppet du my the du Nord,' Roussel comments, 'emprunte beaucoup a celle du my the des Lumieres.' Stael indeed told O'Donnell in July 1808 that 'le Midi n'a point ete atteint par la civilisation du xvme siecle.' 6 Just as De VAllemagne\ second and third Parties open with paired chapters opposing French and English taste, so the fourth Partie opens with a chapter apiece on Protestants and Catholics (iv.i-iv). Chapter iv.iii, 'Du culte des freres Moraves', is in some ways more interesting than either. Why this, between the others? Two clues present themselves - first, Stael remarks that 'comme on a beaucoup dit depuis quelque temps que le catholicisme seul parlait a l'imagination, il importe d'observer que ce qui remue vraiment Tame dans la religion est commun a toutes les eglises chretiennes [...] plus la croyance est simple, plus le culte cause d'emotion' (v 61/3). Chateaubriand makes just that claim for Catholicism: 'II est temps de montrer que, loin de rapetisser la pensee, il [le christianisme] se prete merveilleusement aux elans de Tame' [Genie 470). The second clue is different - 'les hommes sont vetus de brun, a peu pres comme les quakers' (v 57/9) - and this Quaker auctoritas is later made explicit: 'Les quakers portent au milieu de la societe les principes des moraves' (v 145/7). Asking why the French might know any more about Quakers than about Moravian brethren, one thinks of the Lettres anglaises, already a clear influence on De VAllemagne\ Voltaire's first four letters of twenty-five are headed 'Sur les Quakers'. StaePs Moravian chapter may owe as much to Voltaire as to Chateaubriand - a reminder that her apparent mysticism is not always what it seems! Stael also mentions the monastic ideal: 'Les etablissements moraves sont les couvents des protestants [...] quoique cette association soit aussi severe qu'un couvent catholique, elle est plus liberate dans les principes' (v 53/16). Bowman remarks, 'il

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faut reconnaitre chez Mme de Stael cette hantise du calme monastique'. But in 1796, she calls monasteries 'ces solitudes profondes ou les Chartreux et les Trappistes adoptaient une vie si contraire a la raison3 (IP 279). Compare her attention to Pestalozzi's school in the first Partie; Stael enjoys describing other ways of living - that is in a sense her major purpose - and these are examples of that urge in microcosm. On every point, Protestant Germany offers an alternative to Catholic France. 7 Stael's detailed talk of daily life stands out in sharp relief against her refusal to discuss dogma. She twice offers readers an excuse: 'la religion de l'Angleterre est plus severe, celle de l'Allemagne est plus vague' (11 30/7); 'Plusieurs personnes trouvent que la religion des Allemands est trop vague' (v 8/9). But this claim loses something of its force when the same book states that 'un grand nombre de sectes diverses partagent l'Allemagne; et la religion catholique elle-meme [...] est interpretee cependant par chacun a sa maniere' (1 57/14). Are vagueness and esprit de secte compatible? In reality, many German writers had studied theology, while most had a cleric in the family. Germany had two types of university student: the poor were theologians, the rich were lawyers. Once again, Stael's local distortion matches her global taste for vague religion. She also avoids any name but protestantisme for German opposition to Concordat France: we are not told that most German Protestants are Lutheran not Calvinist - nor did Stael state in 1799 which Protestant sect in particular she favoured. In De VAllemagne, the words lutheranisme and calvinisme simply do not appear. The book's previous Parties had similar subsumptions: contemporary German literature with its vast range of interests and rivalries is presented as a nouvelle ecole allemande under the banner of Schiller and Goethe; German philosophy has the same fate, with Kant replacing Goethe and Schiller. Here, Protestants and Luther are presented in terms more fitting for Catholics and the Pope. Ironically, Stael thus has great men to govern each Partie but her first.8 Why did Stael feel so strongly that religion should be vague? She talks of 'ces religions intolerantes dont on avait fait pour

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ainsi dire un code penal, et qui donnaient a la theologie toutes les formes d'un gouvernement despotique' (v 22/1). This is as good an insight as any single phrase into such details as the vogue for Pietism in contemporary Germany, 'not interested in niceties of dogma so much as in the raising of moral standards': Voltaire's ideal of tolerance is here expanded, demanding freedom of choice not only between alternative religions but also within religions themselves. The need for this second and individual distinction, so to speak, from the tribe, might seem less pressing to people unconcerned with the individualism and originality stressed during the eighteenth century and trumpeted in De VAllemagne. Certainly this stress on individual liberty coincides with Stael's statements regarding politics, art and philosophy alike. Here, it separates Catholics from Protestants: 'Le droit d'examiner ce qu'on doit croire est le fondement du protestantisme' (v 41/1). 9 This position was no novelty in Stael's thought - her book on the passions condemns religion because it 'nous soumet et a notre propre imagination, et a celle de tous ceux dont la sainte autorite est reconnue' (IP 293). But Protestantism has another link with Germany. Just as Stael stresses the place of Germany's nouvelle ecole in the onward march of history, so she stresses the German Reformation in this great historical sweep: 'la reformation a introduit dans le monde l'examen en fait de religion [...] l'esprit humain etait arrive a une epoque ou il devait necessairement examiner pour croire [...] L'enthousiasme religieux ne pouvait renaitre que par l'examen' (v 30/9). This talk of the esprit humain simply excises the Catholics from history, precisely matching the translatio concept discussed in Stael's chapter on Classical and Romantic poetry: 'Le protestantisme devait done suivre [...] les progres des lumieres, tandis que le catholicisme se vantait d'etre immuable au milieu des vagues du temps' (v 41/8). Stael dismisses Classics and Catholics with the same dialectic. Stael thereby attributes to Catholicism what earlier French philosophes attribute to religion alone. Hence, her splendid anecdotal comparison with the Leaning Tower of Pisa: 'On voit des erreurs durer longtemps; mais elles causent toujours

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une impression penible' (v 37/10). Her attack is explicit, which cannot have pleased Catholic readers: 'Le protestantisme etant beaucoup plus favorable aux lumieres que le catholicisme

[...] les protestants se sont empares, par les universites et par leur tendance naturelle, de tout ce qui tient aux etudes litteraires et philosophiques' (v 62/12). But StaeTs remarks should not be treated in vacuo. Her opinion of Catholicism is no Olympian judgement; it has literary and political implications. StaeTs problem here is the Enlightenment, which proposed a dynamic world history to replace previous broadly static views. When we can predict the future, historical arguments become extremely potent. Enlightenment is also defined in terms of reason and superstition; Stael's no will equal superstition, unless she can find a new world history to give her Romanticism a usable dialectical framework. Yet Stael rarely refers to the systems she rejects. Her most explicit references are again in manuscript: 'II est aise de dire les temps de la barbarie et le regne du bon gout' (11 128B). She calls these terms, oddly, a merveille elegante - perhaps evoking the merveilleux of that Directoire Paris she had known before her exile. In 1799, Stael suggested a way to overcome the ruinous French dichotomy between lumieres and superstition: make France Protestant. But Napoleon's 1802 Concordat forever ended these hopes. Mortier states that the Concordat 'decevra amerement Mme de Stael et la jettera definitivement dans l'opposition'. Stael's nouvelle ecole allemande echoed this Catholic backlash in post-Concordat France: at v 72/5, she discusses Stolberg's 1800 conversion; Friedrich and Dorothea Schlegel followed in 1808. Stael thus had German friends who could wish to delete the eighteenth century from history: 'Apres avoir rendu justice aux rares talents des deux Schlegel, il faut examiner pourtant en quoi consiste la partialite qu'on leur reproche, et dont [...] plusieurs de leurs ouvrages ne sont pas exempts; ils penchent visiblement pour le moyen age, et pour les opinions de cette epoque' (m 342/13). Stael in contrast has little time for negative criteria: for her, the past held less interest than the future. Somehow the Enlightenment had

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ended with Napoleon ruling France; was there an alternative? Providing that alternative is her book's great programme. 10 Stael's programme cannot be understood without knowing that she was in 1810 surrounded by world histories. In producing her own vision, every term she uses, every writer she mentions is charged with significance. Wars encourage people to take sides, and France had been at war for twenty years; but Stael as always went her own way. She steered the liberal's middle course - abused from both sides - despite the Terror, despite ten years of exile, despite the Bourbon Restoration. In 1797, she already talks of a 'systeme philosophique ou la profession de foi du catholicisme le plus superstitieux sert a tout [...] La Republique m'exile; la contre-revolution me pend; il me faut un juste milieu, qui n'est jamais en France qu'un passage si rapide qu'il sert a peine de transition entre un exces et l'autre.' Now she finds herself, a Calvinistphilosophe, praising Catholic converts in the midst of a Catholic backlash: in an unguarded moment, she can write in draft of 'le pas immense qu'a fait l'esprit humain en passant du republicanisme a la chevalerie' (11 129B). Constructing a new and self-consistent system out of disparate material is made only the more difficult when one is oneself ambivalent about central issues.11 As Stael carries out her vast project of redirecting history to meet her own agenda, one of her most brilliant devices comes when she takes a theme the Catholic, Chateaubriand, insists on, and uses it to show how history's march has left Catholicism behind. These passages are full of resonance for the nineteenth century: L'homme personnifiait la nature; des nymphes habitaient les eaux, des hamadryades les forets [...] il faut done que la nature grandisse aux yeux de Vhomme pour quHl puisse s'en servir comme de Vembleme de ses pensees.

Les bosquets, les fleurs et les ruisseaux suffisaient aux poetes du paganisme; la solitude des forets, l'Ocean sans bornes, le ciel etoile peuvent a peine exprimer Peternel et l'infini dont Fame des chretiens est remplie. (11 132/12, 119/24)

Chateaubriand had written, cil a fallu que le christianisme vint chasser ce peuple de faunes, de satyres et de nymphes, pour rendre aux grottes leur silence, et aux bois leur reverie

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[...] le dome des forets s'est exhausse; les fleuves ont brise leurs petites urnes [...] le vrai Dieu, en rentrant dans ses oeuvres, a donne son immensite a la nature' (Genie 719). Yet as it happens, Stael also wrote in 1800 that Christianity 'a fait disparaitre ce cortege d'imagination qui environnait Phomme aux portes du tombeau. La nature, que les anciens avaient peuplee d'etres protecteurs qui habitaient les forets et les fleuves [...] est rentree dans sa solitude, et l'effroi de l'homme s'en est accru' (DL 186). Was StaeFs famous book Chateaubriand's source in 1802? He launched his career in 1801 by reviewing it. In any case, both seem in agreement about history, but Stael has prefaced her 1810 judgement by calling the Divina commedia 'plein d'images et de fantomes, comme la religion exterieure des Italiens' (11 53/15). Her link between Catholics and pagans is later made explicit: 'tout etait exterieur dans le culte pai'en [...] II n'est done pas vrai [...] que la religion protestante soit depourvue de poesie, parce que les pratiques du culte y ont moins d'eclat que dans la religion catholique' ( V 8 I / I ) . This framework gives a double edge to several of StaeFs seemingly neutral comments: 'on a caracterise de toutes les manieres la marche de l'esprit humain, passant des religions materialistes aux religions spiritualistes, de la nature a la Divinite' (11 129/13). Stael left unpublished her call to make France Protestant, but her dialectic here amounts to the same thing: to resist Protestantism is to resist history. Germany's new light is inseparable from its Protestantism, which is why Catholic Germany is given such short shrift. This may also explain occasional silly remarks: 'le nord de l'Allemagne est le pays ou [...] les sentiments religieux sont les plus universels' (v 50/14). With little objective evidence, this claim seems a product of Stael's propagandist agenda. Indeed, the pulped 1810 edition was even more outspoken about Catholic Germany: 'les habitants du midi [...] representaient comme le corps de PEmpire, dont les contrees septentrionales etaient Fame' (1 86/3). An odd textual parallel reveals a private, political subtext to StaePs religious views. Her review of Werner's Luther dwells on his Diet scene, contrasting the pomp of the Catholic prelates

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with the arrival of Luther and his disciples, 'vetus de noir' (m 137/5). In 1818, Stael contrasts the splendour of clergy and nobility at the 1789 Etats-Generaux with the tiers etat in their 'manteaux noirs', which 'attiraient l'attention sur eux' (CRF1 186). In religion as in politics, past corruption here confronts the dawn of a new order. The future II se peut qu'un jour un cri d'union s'eleve, et que l'universalite des chretiens aspire a professer la meme religion theologique, politique et morale, (v 84/15) La religion protestante [...] ne suffit pas a Pimagination des Allemands, et le catholicisme etant oppose, par sa nature, aux recherches philosophiques, les Allemands religieux et penseurs doivent necessairement se tourner vers une maniere de sentir la religion qui puisse s'appliquer a tous les cultes. (v 106/8) Protestants, in StaeTs world history, benefit over Catholics from a decision Luther made three centuries before. This echoes the dialectic that lets her call chivalry a better subject than Classicism for modern artists: 'son origine est ancienne, mais non antique' (11 139/5). But just as the age of liberty is more modern than chivalry, so Stael more than once suggests that Protestantism might give way to a more modern religion, one drawn largely from contemporary mystical thought. Her terms are established in her last Partie's opening chapter: 'peutetre sommes-nous a la veille d'un developpement du christianisme, qui rassemblera dans un meme foyer tous les rayons epars' (v 9/4). This argument echoes StaeTs doctrine of perfectibility. The link is explicit - further evidence, if any were needed, of her book's conscious and coherent amalgamation of its four different Parties into a unified whole. Her chapter on Protestantism, no less, can thus proclaim that 'il y a une harmonie preetablie entre la verite et la raison humaine' (v 39/3). StaeTs philosophy section is full of religious argument, and here the reverse applies - both 'distortions' are part of a single coherent programme at work throughout her text. StaeTs praise of German thought and art met with charges of barbarism and

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bad taste, when seen from an Enlightenment perspective; her praise of religion skirts the harsher charge of recidivism or relapse into crime. But Stael's Protestantism is far closer to philosophy than to superstition: 'c'est une singuliere presomption [...] de s'attribuer la prerogative de se placer, comme Alexandre devant Diogene, pour nous derober les rayons de ce soleil qui nous appartient a tous egalement [...] La recherche de la verite est la plus noble des occupations, et sa publication un devoir' (v 35/6 - 36/6). These are not isolated remarks: a moment later, Stael states that 'II faut bien mal connaitre le christianisme [...] pour recommander a ceux qui veulent y croire l'ignorance, le secret et les tenebres' (v 40/3). Had Stael restricted her praise to Protestantism, all this would be quite straightforward, but her dialectic is complicated by the intrusion of mysticism into her world history. At times, it even undermines her crucial Catholic/Protestant distinction: 'En quoi different-ils done entre eux ces hommes religieux dont l'Allemagne s'honore, et pourquoi les noms de catholique ou de protestant les separeraient-ils?' (v 77/4). Such calls were common among StaePs friends: Schlegel told Montmorency, Toeuvre de la Reformation est terminee; ce qu'elle peut avoir eu de bon est suffisamment assure: a quoi servirait desormais la separation au lieu de Punion qui convient aux chretiens?' Lavater claimed that in future 'catholiques et protestants ne s'opposeront plus', and Viatte describes scandal in Calvinist Geneva when 'pour affirmer Punite de PEglise, Langallerie assiste aux ceremonies catholiques'. Stael's textual inconsistencies derive from her search here for clear patterns of historical progression. She made a temporal distinction between Condillac and Helvetius, 'quoiqu'ils fussent contemporains' (iv 64/17); here, she asserts that 'Lavater a precede quelques-uns des hommes que j'ai cites; neanmoins c'est depuis un petit nombre d'annees surtout que la doctrine, dont il peut etre considere comme un des principaux chefs, a pris une grande faveur en Allemagne' (v 48/8). Stael is understandably concerned to represent mysticism as a modern, not a medieval frame of mind.12 How does Stael justify this historical place for mysticism? By

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direct analogy, as it happens, with the nouvelle ecole allemande whose existence poses such problems for conscientious literary historians: 'La philosophic idealiste, le christianisme mystique et la vraie poesie ont, a beaucoup d'egards, le meme but et la meme source' (v 111/4). In addition to this use of analogy, Stael elsewhere offers the excuse of historical causation. She argues that the revolution in German spirits in the past thirty years 'les a presque tous ramenes aux sentiments religieux. Us s'en etaient un peu ecartes, lorsque l'impulsion necessaire pour propager la tolerance avait depasse son but [...] Au milieu de cette revolution intellectuelle [...] quelques hommes ont ete trop loin, comme il arrive toujours dans les oscillations de la pensee' (v 64/17). Two metaphors here help to situate the place of mysticism in Stael's thought. One is Newtonian physics: impulsion, oscillations. The other is the Age of Terror: revolution, quelques hommes ont ete trop loin. Both serve the same purpose, stressing the idea of a midpoint between two extremes; just what Stael offers, in literature and religion alike. This argument excuses mysticism's place in Stael's world history, though it may seem unsatisfactory. The extreme, she says, lay in man's old choices. Mysticism offers the best of Catholicism, Protestantism and philosophy alike. Stael told Lacretelle that mysticism is 'le plus precieux tresor que le christianisme ait apporte sur la terre'. That remark is apocryphal, but her text gives the same claim more cautious expression - retreating, as routinely happens, behind the safety of a reviewer's voice: 'On a voulu, pour reunir ces deux penchants, creuser plus avant dans Fame; et de la sont venues les opinions mystiques' (v 70/6). Context also sheds new light on some quiet phrases. In 1810, Stael talks discreetly of 'la reforme de la reformation, ou plutot la direction philosophique de la liberte qu'elle a donnee' (v 65/3). In September 1815, she writes to Mme Gerando: Liberte et religion se tiennent dans ma pensee, religion eclairee, liberte juste [...] Je crois le mysticisme, c'est-a-dire la religion de Fenelon, celle qui a son sanctuaire dans le coeur [...] je la crois une reformation de la Reformation [...] qui reunit ce qu'il y a de bon dans le

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catholicisme et le protestantisme, et qui separe entierement la religion de Pinfluence politique des pretres.13 That same caution makes Stael's chapter on mysticism markedly less forceful than her scattered remarks elsewhere. It opens thus: 'La disposition religieuse, appelee mysticite, n'est qu'une maniere plus intime de sentir et de concevoir le christianisme [...] on a cru que les mystiques professaient des dogmes extraordinaires [...] II n'y a de mysteres chez eux que ceux du sentiment appliques a la religion [...] il faut distinguer cependant les theosophes' (v 86/1). De VAllemagne is written in reaction, almost on the defensive, as well it might be in Napoleonic France: throughout the text, 'trace' phrases like on a cru remind today's readers of unvoiced contemporary opinion. Stael does not again stress her clear distinction between mysticism and theosophy, but she had little time for dogmes extraordinaires. Hence, her praise of Fenelon's mystical writings: 'Les diversites des communions chretiennes ne peuvent etre senties a cette hauteur' (v 98/13). There are suggestions that mysticite and error's main difference is elapsed time - mysticism is modern, ergo it is not error: 'C'est ainsi que l'imagination du monde ancien peut renaitre comme le phenix des cendres de toutes les erreurs' (v 171/2). This fascinating analogy appears earlier, in truncated form: 'II n'est plus temps [...] de mettre, a propos de toutes choses, des idees ingenieuses dans les deux cotes de la balance; il faut se livrer a la confiance, a l'enthousiasme, a l'admiration que la jeunesse imortelle de l'ame peut toujours entretenir en nousmemes; cette jeunesse renait des cendres memes des passions' (m 266/2). This talk of ash offers yet another reworking of the fire and light analogies recurring throughout the text. The whole programme of the Enlightenment had become defined in terms of a great metaphor, turning darkness into light, which Stael undertakes to co-opt in its entirety for an opposite purpose. Fire is light's deadly twin, but it can be harnessed. For the ash is not swept away; it is itself- des cendres mime - the birthplace of new advance. This distinction between rejecting and reincorporating the past defines the word subsumption: it lies at

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the heart of German Romantic dialectics. That is why Stael must present mysticism as a new, not an old phenomenon: only its date allows her this neat propagandist distinction between error and rebirth. Another remark thus announces what the Germans are not doing: 'ces philosophies, ces Chretiens et ces poetes [...] voudraient substituer au factice de la societe, non Pignorance des temps barbares, mais une culture intellectuelle qui ramenat a la simplicite par la perfection meme des lumieres' (v 111/8). Quietists, mystics, 'illumines' Cet hiver, elle a beaucoup vu des personnes dont les opinions religieuses sont tres exagerees. 14 Se resigner a la volonte de Dieu, ne vouloir rien que ce qu'il veut, c'est l'acte religieux le plus pur dont Tame humaine soit capable, (v 89/20)

Chapter 7 of StaePs fourth Partie is headed 'Des philosophes religieux appeles theosophes' (v 126/0). Why this bizarre choice of phrase? Certainly polemical, it also echoes her grand synthesis of religion and philosophy. Stael links the two in other odd places: 'II faut distinguer trois especes de [^^to] religieuses et philosophiques en Allemagne' (v 144/1). Those three sects - a passion she condemned in 1796 - are Anabaptists and Moravians, Freemasons, and illumines. Sectes philosophiques do not reappear, and the epithet may owe less to StaePs data than to her global concern with equating philosophy and religion. StaePs pairing of analytic and occult philosophy badly weakens her careful divide between mystics and theosophists. There is no reason to deny sentiment its place, but to refuse any distinction between analytic and sentimental truths makes a joke of all scientific endeavour: a man who feels that two and two are five is here on ground as solid as any mathematician. Stael expresses her position with another light-analogy, oddly reminiscent of Baudelaire: 'De toutes parts entoure par des idees et des objets sans bornes, des pensees innombrables lui apparaissent, comme des milliers de lumieres qui se confondent

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et l'eblouissent' (v 163/9). Analytic truth is distinguished from such modes of thought as religious ecstasy in not springing full-formed from its creator's head: without analysis, it is worthless. With the stunning success of Newtonian physics during the eighteenth century, a growing number of other disciplines used analogies drawn from it - one result being the Ideologie trumpeted by the Decade philosophique, and applied to the whole scope of human activity. Stael rejects that tendency: 'Les theosophes declarent que ce qu'ils pensent leur a ete revele, tandis que les philosophes en general se croient uniquement conduits par leur propre raison; mais puisque les uns et les autres aspirent a connaitre le mystere des mysteres, que signifient a cette hauteur les mots de raison et de folie?' (v Some of the text's most surprising phrases occur on this terrain. Stael's chapter on theosophists calls them 'les veritables seigneurs de l'espece humaine, aupres desquels ceux qui existent sans reflechir ne sont que des serfs attaches a la glebe' (v 128/6); a draft talks of'ce qu'on appelle la raison' (m 93B). These remarkable ad hominem arguments again stress the neoclassical objections Stael anticipates. Elsewhere, while the text blurs the distinction between truth and error, a bizarre minor topos offers the two in symbiosis: 'Presque toutes les opinions vraies ont a leur suite une erreur; elle se place dans l'imagination comme l'ombre a cote de la realite' (11 193/12). That reference occurs early in the text. Stael later strengthens her terms: 'Les erreurs universelles sont toujours fondees sur quelques verites alterees, defigurees peut-etre, mais qui avaient pour base des faits caches dans la nuit des temps' (iv 194/10). These remarks seem directed at that touchstone of Enlightenment concerns, popular superstition. There is no better evidence of Stael's recidivism than this claim that superstition has its virtues. In France, her clearest parallel is again the Genie du christianisme - though it had several successors, among them Mme Cottin's Mathilde, which Stael in 1805 calls a 'capucinage marivaude', adding, 'comme la mode arrange le talent!' Stael's first praise of superstition appears in Corinne, a few months before her flirtation with mysticism in 1807: 'Je trouve

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un charme indefinissable [...] dans tout ce qui est religieux, je dirais meme superstitieux, quand il n'y a rien d'hostile ni d'intolerant dans cette superstition' (p.402). Contrast her remark back in 1796 on the 'exemples qu'il reste encore, d'intolerance superstitieuse, de pietisme, d'illumination, etc., de tous ces malheureux effets du vide de l'existence' {IP 292). Between these two opinions of illuminism, a midpoint may be Stael's remark in 1802, 'si Jeanne d'Arc fut une illuminee sublime, Jacques Clement et tant d'autres furent des illumines atroces'. Viatte claims that Schlegel after 1804 taught Stael of superstition's beauties, but compare Constant's 1809 preface to Wallstein: 'Nous n'envisageons guere en France la superstition que de son cote ridicule. Elle a cependant ses racines dans le coeur de l'homme, et la philosophic elle-meme, lorsqu'elle s'obstine a n'en pas tenir compte, est superficielle et presomptueuse.' 15 Stael's chapter on the sciences in Germany is full of this sort of praise: 'II y a eu peut-etre dans l'antiquite des rapports plus intimes entre l'homme et la nature [...] Ce que nous appelons des erreurs et des superstitions tenait peut-etre a des lois de l'univers qui nous sont encore inconnues' (iv 259/4 - 264/10). Stael does not explain her claim that savages knew things we have forgotten, though the belief is common enough. In De I'Allemagne, it picks up an implicit religious subtext to Stael's world history — she talks of'titres perdus de la race humaine' (v 75/5). These lost titles may echo those of Adam, but their content is a riddle. Stael elsewhere suggests a Romantic explanation: 'l'homme renferme en lui-meme des sensations, des puissances occultes qui correspondent avec le jour, avec la nuit, avec

Vorage* (11 190/21). These Romantic terms are foregrounded by their unexpected occupation of Stael's only chapter on German science! Yet readers hear little more of any occult powers, leaving little to prevent them amalgamating these remarks with the talk of passion recurring throughout the text: 'II y a [...] un cote terrible dans la nature comme dans le coeur humain' (v 158/1). So much for Stael's text. Should one now provide context about mysticism and Stael's actual knowledge of it? Will it help

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make sense of her terms? This method risks promoting just that isolation treatment, severed from the book as a whole, which each Partie in turn has suffered from over the years. Yet there are two reasons for turning to extra-textual information, as throughout De VAllemagne. First, it shows once more how Stael forges her eclectic raw material into a coherent whole. Second, it offers facts, to help end ill-informed controversy about Stael's sources. On the place of mysticism in her text, we find critics in remarkable disagreement, saying either that 'the boldest Romantic notions, the most foolhardy ideas in natural philosophy draw approval from Mme de Stael'; or that 'ce chapitre [on mysticism] prouve [...] que Mme de Stael est toujours restee a cent lieues des vraies effusions mystiques.' Truth lies between these two extremes; or rather, these claims show two sides of a single complex position.16 Like the tales of Stael's 'religious conversion' after 1804, so the history of her alleged drift toward mysticism is doubtful though the year 1807 deserves special attention. Stael's personal acquaintance with mystics has two stages, Swedish and Swiss. The former is older, and due mainly to her husband the Swedish ambassador, who was in Deguise's words 'disciple de Swedenborg, ami de Lavater et lecteur de Saint-Martin. Mais Mme de Stael n'avait pas de gout pour Pilluminisme.' During the Terror, M. de Stael served as intermediary between Silverhielm and Saint-Martin. As early as 1789, Reuterholm met Gombauld, Bousie and the comte de Divonne at the Staels' table; on 24 July 1789, M. de Stael introduced his wife and her father Necker to his friend Lavater. She wrote to Lavater in 1794, and saw him thereafter. He also appears in De UAllemagne, as does Saint-Martin, called in draft 'un homme d'un esprit superieur sur tout autre sujet que celui de la theosophie' (v 130B).17

Stael was related to Swiss mystics. Her cousin Mme Necker de Saussure was the niece of Charles Bonnet; Gautier de Tournes, who played a key role in the events of 1807, was another cousin. In 1797, Stael saved Dupont de Nemours from proscription after the 18 fructidor (CRF 11 190-1), and he became a steady friend. But her meeting with Constant in 1794

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was decisive; he helped shape her next sixteen years. Throughout this period, he was working on his compendious De la religion. We saw his role in introducing Stael to German idealism; he was also first cousin to Lisette de Constant and to Langallerie, who ran the Quietist church of Ames interieures in Lausanne. 18 At this point, in 1802, Lacretelle states that he spent 'dix jours' in Coppet. The date is crucial, because of a conversation he records concerning Stael's religious opinions. Viatte comments that Lacretelle 'parait se tromper de date. Rien ne nous autorise a croire que la chatelaine de Coppet ait temoigne la moindre bienveillance aux adeptes avant la mort de son pere.' This is not strictly true; but the question remains, can this surprising date be verified? Lacretelle states that Necker's book of Dernieres vues had just been published; and Stael tells Hochet in September 1802 of discussing Necker's book with him. Jasinski indeed lists this single visit to Coppet by Lacretelle; one thus has some reason to trust his memory. His content is a different problem: Lacretelle opens the long dialogue by saying that 'ceci n'est point un entretien fictif [...] Le fond en est tres-vrai. Je ne prete a madame de Stael aucun sentiment, ni presqu'aucune idee, qu'elle n'ait exprimee.' As Viatte remarks, Vest dommage qu'il y ait unpresque.'19 The famous conversation is seldom quoted in detail: savez-vous que j'ai ete sur le point de devenir Martiniste illuminee et que je n'en ai ete detournee que par la crainte d'un petit grain de folie. Je n'ai point connu, j'ai lu avec attrait le philosophe SaintMartin [...] qui sait si moi-meme dans le jeune enthousiasme qui m'avait fait ecrire des lettres sur J.-J. Rousseau, je n'aurais pas ete une adepte plus ou moins timide d'une doctrine si attrayante pour le cceur. A moment later, Stael remarks that cla mysticite n'est autre chose que la reverie de l'amour et de l'esperance qui plongent dans l'infini. C'est le plus precieux tresor que le christianisme ait apporte sur la terre.' Some local claims are here refuted Gibelin on Ancillon in 1809 as Stael's source for linking mysticism and the infinite; Viatte's claim that Stael met SaintMartin. What does emerge is evidence that these chance

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encounters were not fruitless: having met these mystics, Stael retired to read their works. If Lacretelle's memory is accurate, it shows not only that Stael's dealings with mysticism are far older than the date of 1807 so often cited, but also that these early dealings, in accordance with her husband's leanings, made room for the very theosophists she later rejects in favour of a much vaguer definition of mystical thought. 20 This in turn gives biographical support to a position suggested by textual evidence: Stael's religious progression was not linear, but on the contrary she moved away from mysticism during the 1790s and back towards it after 1800. Viatte finds this pattern typical of Revolutionary Europe: 'La fin du dixhuitieme siecle,' he notes, 's'agite [...] dans une atmosphere du merveilleux,' adding that '1789 marque virtuellement la fin de l'ancien illuminisme [...] Dix ans s'ecoulent avant qu'ils puissent reprendre leur oeuvre; et c'est pendant ces dix annees que de violentes polemiques deforment l'opinion.' Compare Kohler, on Stael's progress toward Romanticism: 'cet art sera celui de l'Empire avec Corinne, du Consulat avec Delphine, du Directoire avec le livre De la litterature [...] il est, avec %ulma et le traite sur VInfluence despassions, l'art de la Revolution'. 21 The year 1804 brought Necker's death. As evidence of Stael's sudden leaning towards mysticism, Kohler quotes a letter from Rosalie to Charles de Constant in August 1804: 'Dans ce moment elle a envie d'essayer de la secte, que dis-tu de cela? Gautier et Polier l'endoctrinent.' His source, Achard, has misread the manuscript: Deguise reads Cutt, Rosalie's nickname for Langallerie, and celui-la. But this passage should not be quoted in vacuo. Two months later, Rosalie adds that 'la velleite de devotion n'a pas dure longtemps.' This leaves little evidence of Stael's 1804 'conversion': there is none at all in her correspondence. Her 1805 tour of Italy is marked by flippancy at the Catholics' expense. She told the cardinal della Somaglia 'qu'elle lui donnait 40 jours pour la convertir, mais que, s'il n'avait pas fait son miracle a Paques, elle ne pouvait attendre davantage'. Apart from this dabbling, and the pain caused by her father's death, Necker's immediate legacy was the flowering of her taste, dominant in later years, for the mystical

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writings of Fenelon. Thus, a letter to her son Auguste in December 1805 - 'Fenelon est plein de charme, de douceur et de bonte qui, a la mysticite pres, me rappelle ton pere.' 22 It seems impossible to talk of a direct continuity between such details and the renewal of her dealings with her cousin, Gautier. On 5 February 1807, she writes to him from Meulan, saying of Corinne that 'je suis plus religieuse que je ne l'etais quand j'ai ecrit Delphine\ She adds that she has asked a friend for St Frangois de Sales; after a long letter on the 27th, she writes again in early May, saying that 'j'ai lu cet hiver VImitation avec un grand interet; j'ai lu et relu les oeuvres spirituelles de Fenelon'. Corinne appeared on 1 May, and its religious ambivalences merit detailed study: any later developments in Stael's religious thought had to wait over five years, until the Reflexions sur le suicide, to find an audience. In July 1807, she writes to Gerando, 'j'ai bien l'idee que je suis nee pour souffrir et je me fais tout un systeme religieux sur cela' - this in the middle of Coppet's most glorious season. On 19 August 1807, Constant's Journal intime remarks that 'Les mystiques et Gautier pourront me servir pour 2 [la rupture avec Stael].' 23 Stael's religion between 1807 and 1810 is more familiar territory. We have seen the to and fro of its influence, not overwhelming but never absent, over a period of almost twenty years. It was not Necker's death that made Stael religious, nor was she first introduced to mysticism in 1807. Coppet's 'new mysticism' of 1808 thus came less from her than from her friends. Schlegel's brother Friedrich became a Catholic in 1808; he too was tempted to convert, telling Montmorency in 1811 that 'le culte des protestants ne repond pas a mon coeur'. Werner's diary records a talk with Schlegel in October 1808: 'Que les animaux sont les reves, et les hommes les pensees, de la nature ou de la terre [...] Qu'enfin, je dois lire necessairement Saint-Martin.' In July 1808, Constant himself writes to Barante about 'la revolution qui s'est faite en moi, qui a commence il y a environ un an et qui fait des progres dont je m'applaudis'. 24 Two mentors deserve mention here, Werner and Mme de Kriidener. Stael had known Mme de Kriidener in 1804, who

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had since been converted to 'une foi active au contact des Freres moraves de Riga et de Saxe'. On 4 October 1808, her daughter's journal notes that 'Moulinie nous parla de la Stael; il nous assura qu'elle avait beaucoup change dans ses opinions religieuses, que plusieurs personnes travaillaient a une conversion si importante, entre autres un nomme Divonne' - we saw Divonne in the Swedish embassy in 1789. On the 7th, she records Mme de Kriidener's first visit to Coppet - 'Maman parla longtemps religion avec elle [...] Mme de Stael tenait encore a ses opinions, mais avec bien moins de chaleur. Maman fut etonnee du changement qui s'etait operee en elle.' By 1809, the Kriideners had left for Wiirttemberg; their claims may be exaggerated, but the correspondence continues until Stael's death. Werner visited Coppet twice: 14 October-3 November 1808, and all of September-October 1809. Stael sings his praises in a letter to the Grand-Duchess Louise from February 1809: 'Je voudrais qu'il renon9at a ses systemes mis en scene, mais je les aime dans la chambre. Enfin, s'il est un homme qui repare la perte de Schiller, c'est celui-la.'25 Did Stael's 1808 tastes survive into 1809 and 1810? It seems likely. Bonstetten's famous letter dates from 12 October 1808, not 1809: 'Nothing is more changed than Coppet [...] folk are all turning Catholic, Bohmian, Martinist, mystical, all thanks to Schlegel, and on top of that it's all gone German.' But compare Hess's letter to Meister from Geneva, in May 1810: 'elle ne sortira de cet engouement pour toutes les illusions de la vie, qu'en se jetant dans le mysticisme. Le commencement est deja fait; et M. Schlegel travaille, tant qu'il peut, a consommer l'oeuvre.' This gives some truth to the claim that 'La vague de mysticisme qui deferle sur Coppet doit atteindre son apogee entre 1808 et 1810' - which is crucial, since Stael began De VAllemagne in July 1808. She wrote her book amid this same wave of mysticism, in Coppet and nearby Geneva, with Switzerland outside her windows; the Lausanne Quietists were a few miles away.26 This context helps explain her text. When Stael states that 'Popinion dominante parmi les chretiens mystiques, c'est que le seul hommage qui puisse plaire a Dieu c'est celui de la volonte

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dont il a fait don a l'homme' (v 89/13), one now has tools to distinguish this claim from the milder claims of her mysticism chapter. Just as Stael marks off mysticism from theosophy, so a line of demarcation may be drawn between that chapter's vague pronouncements, and Stael's other direct and persistent echoes of the Lausanne Quietists. Constant neatly defines Quietism in a letter to Barante dated November 1808: 'Ma religion consiste en deux points: vouloir ce que Dieu veut, c'est a dire lui faire l'hommage de notre coeur, ne rien nier, c'est a dire lui faire l'hommage de notre esprit.' Quietist beliefs play an important part in Stael's fourth Partie, notably in the chapter 'De la douleur', an expose of her philosophy. Nor is Quietism confined to these last chapters: the preface itself announces that 'les individus doivent se resigner a la destinee' (1 12/7), and two synopses in particular echo these concerns. They are the long confession scene in Schiller's Marie Stuart nine pages out of thirty in 1813 - and the speech in his Fiancee de Messine which ends 'si tu jouis, apprends a perdre, et si la fortune est avec toi, songe a la douleur' (11 374/22). Chapter 3 noted Stael's desire for 'quelque chose d'intime qui apprit a souffrir et a mourir'; Quietism offered her just that. 27 Stael dwelt on death from clear skies after Necker's sudden death. These scenes' innocent victims also echo her Quietist friends; notably Werner, who talks of 'la vertu expiatrice du sang', and Divonne, who 'affirme la decheance de l'homme, plonge dans un monde inferieur a sa destination; mais la Providence ne nous abandonne pas [...] pour nous rendre dignes de la vie, elle nous fait prendre le chemin de la douleur, du renoncement, du sacrifice'. De VAllemagne prefers to cite a German, Stolberg: 'II considere le sacrifice comme la base de toute religion [...] La plupart des religions anciennes ont institue des sacrifices humains; mais dans cette barbarie il y avait quelque chose de remarquable: c'est le besoin d'une expiation solennelle' (v 74/7). This is Stael's only hint at Christ's Passion. Her mention of Stolberg alone is interesting; she uses the word quietisme just once, and half-truths like this make its absence seem deliberate. Stael's term mysticite thus stands for Pietism and Quietism alike, two very different

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things. Protestant in name, Langallerie's Quietist church of Ames interieures was marked by 'les images de piete, les portraits de saints, l'image du crucifix et la veneration des reliques': hardly a Calvinist temple. 28 Stael's Marie Stuart is another victim: '"Dieu m'accorde d'expier par cette mort non meritee le crime dont ma jeunesse fut coupable" [...] "que ta mort serve a t'absoudre! Tombe sur l'autel comme une victime resignee. Le sang peut purifier ce que le sang avait souille"' (11 337/20). A moment later, Marie announces that she has ' "sacrifie a mon Dieu ma haine et mon amour"' (11 338/25). This is Quietist doctrine, as in Constant's letter. But as Deguise remarks, Stael finds 'un pont la ou Constant decouvre un precipice [...] Chez Mme de Stael done, le passage du devoir a la resignation s'opere naturellement; ce n'est nullement un saut dans l'irrationnel [...] Encore une fois Mme de Stael integre avec facilite cette notion de mysticite a l'ensemble de sa pensee.' Stael's clear statement of her opinions again remained unpublished: 'L'accomplissement du devoir est le premier pas vers la divinite; mais il en est un second qui est la recompense du premier, e'est le consentement du coeur a la volonte de Dieu' (v 90B).29 This is important, because Quietism goes radically against the grain of the rest of Stael's thought, which is passionately active. Explaining its place in her text is still not an easy matter. Above all, it encourages calls of passive acceptance of evil. Stael is aware of this charge, answering it three times in four pages: 'On craint en general que la doctrine de la resignation religieuse, appelee dans le siecle dernier le quietisme, ne degoute de l'activite necessaire dans cette vie' (v 99/1), focusing on daily existence; 'on pretend qu'elle [la mysticite] rend trop indulgent sur les oeuvres, a force de ramener la religion aux impressions interieures de Fame' (v 101/6), focusing on traditional theological calls for works as well as faith; and 'on a souvent accuse les mystiques [...] d'etre portes a l'obeissance passive envers Pautorite' (v 103/8), focusing on the Emperor Napoleon. This repetition can only weaken Stael's case, suggesting as it does that she thought one refutation insufficient. One might expect her text to say the opposite elsewhere, and it

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does so: 'Tout ce qui tendrait a nous oter la responsabilite de nos actions serait faux et mauvais' (iv 257/17). Free will is central to Stael's third Partie: 'le fatalisme des modernes [...] detruit necessairement la croyance au libre arbitre' (iv 16/7). 30 Could Stael have avoided this issue? It matched her German agenda: she names Stolberg, a stranger, and ignores the Swiss mystics she knew intimately. Like Stael's blanket term mysticite, this half-truth gives her German product coherence and purpose. Moreover, her German focus had some factual basis. Sismondi writes to the comtesse d'Albany after Werner's stay in Coppet, 'la poesie mystique [...] a pris completement le dessus en Allemagne'; Spenle adds, 'il n'etait guere d'Allemand cultive qui ne fit partie au moins d'un ordre secret, majonnique ou autre'. Stael rightly does not ignore this striking irruption of mysticism in contemporary German thought: 'De toutes les nations, celle qui a le plus de penchant au mysticisme, c'est la nation allemande' (v 105/17). One would also be wrong, as with the phrase nouvelle e'cole, to attack Stael's book for not using our modern epithets: the Lausanne Quietists called themselves the Ames interieures. The word mysticite is thereby put under some strain, but the benefits of this method more than outweigh that disadvantage. 31 Finally, Stael's praise of mysticism must be considered in its historical context. Lavater died in 1801; Saint-Martin in 1803. Meanwhile, Napoleon centralised the mystics as he had France: 'Napoleon acheve d'unifier une Franc-mafonnerie hostile aux theosophes. En 1810, le Grand Orient supprime les loges provinciales.'Joseph Bonaparte was made Grand-Maitre. Viatte also notes mysticism's political drift after 1789 - 'les revolutionnaires usurpent le nom d'illumines' - and the violent anti-Illuminist polemics that ensued. Joseph de Maistre is unequivocal: 'On donne ce nom d'illumines a ces hommes coupables, qui oserent [...] organiser en Allemagne, par la plus criminelle association, l'affreux projet d'eteindre en Europe le Christianisme et la souverainete.' In 1810, Stael lists 'trois classes d'illumines; les illumines mystiques, les illumines visionnaires et les illumines politiques [...] Les illumines politiques n'avaient pris des autres illumines que quelques signes pour se reconnaitre' (v 149/19 - 152/5). These attacks reflect a

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scandal which badly damaged the illumines" prestige, that of the Bavarian, WeiBhaupt. Viatte remarks, 'le proces de Weishaupt, la publication de ses papiers eclairent le dessous de ces organisations dont on vantait la bienfaisance.' Crabb Robinson visited WeiBhaupt in 1804: 'The Illuminati [...] were supposed to have ramifications everywhere. The Kantian philosophy was one of their instruments [...] every variety of thought, opposed to monarchy and popery had about it the suspicion of "Illumination".' Seen in context, StaePs distaste for the term illumines is no great surprise.32 The distinction between old and new mysticism can be taken further. Stael mentions the 1782 congress of Wilhelmsbad (v 149/5), which Viatte calls the high-water mark of religious illuminism. He comments that 'le libre examen, cet individualisme banni desormais du protestantisme officiel, s'etait refugie chez les pietistes d'abord, et de la chez les theosophes.' Here perhaps lies the key to mysticism's place in StaePs text: this passage so closely matches StaePs concerns that it could almost be lifted from her pages. Libre examen is StaePs gift to France, in German thought, art and religion; one vast nouvelle ecole allemande. Napoleon offered discipline instead, even in metaphysics, as Stael told the Grand-Duchess Louise in August 1805: 'Ce n'est pas seulement la liberte, mais le libre arbitre qui me parait banni de la terre' (CG v.ii, 652). In print, Stael can only hint at this in a closing chapter - 'Les efforts individuels finiraient par etre interdits si Pon s'asservissait a la methode qui regulariserait les mouvements de Pesprit, comme la discipline commande a ceux du corps' (v 153/20). But in manuscript, her gloves were off by page 14: 'quand on est seulement entoure de voix qui vous repetent ce qu'il faut juger et sentir [...] Pon se hate de conformer a la discipline morale qui fait marcher lespensees comme des soldats bien alignes' (1 14B). 33 LOVE AND ENTHUSIASM

L'inquietude qui nous devore finira par un sentiment vif et decide, dont les grands ecrivains doivent se saisir d'avance. L'epoque du retour a la vertu n'est pas eloignee. (DL 366) L'ame n'a toute sa force qu'en s'abandonnant. (LR 5)

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Stael opens her chapter, 'De l'influence de l'enthousiasme sur les lumieres', with the words 'ce chapitre est a quelques egards le resume de tout mon ouvrage' (v 200/1). The role of enthusiasm in human endeavour is a leitmotiv throughout her work. Compare De la litterature: 'L'ecrivain [...] doit essayer d'arracher les caracteres egoi'stes a leurs interets, a leurs terreurs, de faire naitre dans ses auditeurs ce mouvement du sang, cette ivresse de la vertu qu'une certaine hauteur d'eloquence peut inspirer momentanement, meme a des criminels' (DL 288). Her 1788 study of Rousseau already matches that Romantic programme, and is littered with similar phrases: 'Celui qui a [...] persuade par l'enthousiasme, s'est servi des qualites et des defauts memes de cet age' (LR iv). But because Stael does not mention other methods, does not mean she is unaware of them, as her manuscripts again reveal: 'On s'etait accoutume dans le dix-huitieme siecle a considerer l'emotion comme indigne des ouvrages serieux et le raisonnement comme la veritable dignite de l'homme' (in 308B).34 Stael's text, which Coleridge probably read after 1813 for his own study of Germany, here predates his famous 'willing suspension of disbelief. A lost draft calls for condescendance theatrale (11 245A); the text observes that 'dans les rapports avec la poesie il faut se livrer' (11 218/13). Billion seems quite right in her diagnosis: 'pour atteindre [...] a l'essentielle unite des fonctions de la vie morale, il faut abandonner le point de vue de l'analyse [...] et, par un acte de synthese hardi, se replacer au centre des forces vives de l'esprit'. De la litterature condemns 'cette analyse superficielle, qui decompose les premieres idees qui se presentent, sans examiner l'objet tout entier' {DL 29). Viatte indeed cites this phrase to claim that in 1800 Stael 'rompt avec les ideologues', champions of that analytic method - but his claims seem excessive, since the word analyse recurs throughout De la litterature. By 1810, Stael has no such time for analysis: there, she asks her readers unequivocally for an aesthetic leap of faith, as would many Romantics thereafter. 35 This enthusiasm is more than artistic. Again, Stael already stresses its social value in De la litterature, her most rationalist work: 'Nous sommes arrives [...] a l'etat des esprits au moment

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de la chute de l'empire romain, et de l'invasion des peuples du Nord. Dans cette periode, le genre humain eut besoin de l'enthousiasme et de l'austerite' (DL 366). Stael's millenarian position draws on two other longstanding concerns of hers: her goal-directed world history, which makes room for ideas of revolution and rebirth; and as so often, her historical context. The eighteenth century had ended in a flood of idealism and revolution, and yet here was Napoleon trying to turn back the clock. Stael could not accept that twenty-five years of hopes and blood were to be deleted from history, as she states in her book on the subject: 'La revolution de France est une des grandes epoques de l'ordre social' (CRFi 2). In a letter to Mme Recamier in October 1815, Stael foresees a new age of enthusiasm which would set apart the nineteenth century, calling Mme de Kriidener 'un avant-coureur d'une grande epoque religieuse qui se prepare pour l'espece humaine'. Stael would thus deny her most cherished hopes if she linked enthusiasm to the past, and not the future. In De VAllemagne^ rationalism not enthusiasm looks toward the past. What separates the centuries, Stael argues, is not 'la nature toujours prodigue des memes dons, mais l'opinion dominante a l'epoque ou Ton vit: si la tendance de cette opinion est vers l'enthousiasme, il s'eleve de toutes parts de grands hommes; si Ton proclame le decouragement [...] il ne reste plus rien en litterature que des juges du temps passe' (v 207/17). 36 Passion

Aimer en apprend plus sur ce qui tient aux mysteres de l'ame que la metaphysique la plus subtile, (iv 32/7) In 1796, Stael published a 400-page tract entitled De Vinfluence des passions sur le bonheur des individus et des nations. T h a t influence

is negative, and her text consists of ways to get around this problem. She lists no less than eleven passions, not counting the varying degrees, such as religion, which fall between the passions and the ressources qu'on trouve en soi. Here is the list: love of glory, ambition, vanity, love (with a word of warning); gambling, avarice, drinking, etc.; envy and vengeance, esprit de

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parti, crime. When De VAllemagne discusses passion, one should not forget StaePs fourteen-year-old monograph on the subject: she draws in 1810 on arguments there elaborated in rather more detail. Why this haste, in 1796, to condemn the passions outright? The answer derives in part from two millennia of European tradition: Classical and Christian authorities both insist on our duty to master our baser urges. Plato suggests calling 'that part of the soul whereby it reflects, rational; and the other [...] we will call irrational appetite'. The Enciclopedia cattolica states that in their origin, 'the passions exile from morality [...] the passions come to find themselves beneath the guide and empire of the reason [...] In Protestant theology however passion is essentially the inclination of corrupt nature to error' - an interesting footnote. Refusing house rights to emotion thus has a very powerful history, running throughout two millennia of European thought. Stael may attack that model, but she turns to it elsewhere: 'Pardente volonte du chasseur [...] etait d'abord innocente comme toutes les facultes de Fame; mais elle se deprave [...] chaque fois qu'il resiste a sa conscience et cede a ses passions' (11 200/20). Her chapter on comedy opens thus: 'L'ideal du caractere tragique consiste, dit W. Schlegel, dans le triomphe que la volonte remporte sur le destin ou sur nos passions; le comique exprime au contraire l'empire de l'instinct physique sur Pexistence morale' (in 187/1). 37 This stigma is such that things which are not passions are bizarrely listed in De VAllemagne's drafts: 'Beaucoup de gens sont prevenus contre Penthousiasme; ils le confondent avec les passions qui egarent, tandis que c'est un sentiment calme et noble, et directement oppose aux passions' (v 187A). A passage on ethics announces that 'des hommes non moins vertueux que Kant [...] ont attribue au sentiment religieux Porigine de la morale. Ce sentiment ne saurait etre de la nature de ceux qui peuvent devenir une passion' (iv 326/8). Bowman describes StaePs answer to French attacks on religion - 'Elle leur oppose ce qui semble une simple substitution verbale; en attribuant a la superstition les maux qu'ils associaient a la religion.' We thus saw Stael use the term mysticite to avoid more loaded terms.

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Here, subtle verbal distinctions again carry considerable emotional weight, as text echoes Stael's broader context: La theorie de Kant en morale est severe et quelquefois seche, parce qu'elle exclut la sensibilite. II la regarde comme un reflet des sensations, et comme devant conduire aux passions [...] Le sentiment et la conscience sont employes dans ses ecrits comme des termes presque synonymes; mais la sensibilite se rapproche davantage de la sphere des emotions et par consequent des passions qu'elles font naitre. (iv 324/1 o)38 This confrontation recurs throughout the text - that is almost unavoidable, given the nature of its programme. Mortier said of Stael's tightrope walk between Ideologie and Catholic reaction, 'une telle position n'est ni simple, ni commode'. Stael can neither condone the passions, nor deny feelings centre stage in her manifesto. She also gives no expose in 1810 of the tenets that make her arguments possible, being unwilling to reproduce discussions given more space in 1796. As a result, even if her text does contain a total description of the self, it will emerge piecemeal. More than a few of her comments also contradict each other - but one cannot read a text in vacuo, and when Stael uses phrases which echo much larger bodies of tradition, the outlines of that subtext are an integral part of the reader's experience. Phrases like this cannot bypass shared Western tradition: CY a-t-il deux natures dans l'homme?' (iv 15/15). Unless prevented from doing so, people recuperate texts using terms they know already. The above remark is already legible without neighbouring remarks on 'cet admirable instinct de Fame, adversaire de l'instinct physique' (iv 43/27). 39 De VAllemagne does contain idiosyncracies which prevent this easy process of recuperation, demanding more work from the reader: 'On a cru trouver dans la nature trois modes d'existence distincts [...] Les uns vegetent comme des plantes, les autres [...] s'irritent a la maniere des animaux, et les plus nobles enfin possedent [...] les qualites qui distinguent la nature humaine' (iv 252/9). But wherever Stael fails to make her idiosyncrasies explicit, readers will reabsorb her alien text within their culture's own prior categories. For example, Stael

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calls Fausfs Erdgeist 'un des genies createurs du second ordre' and 'esprit divin' (in 76/8; 77/11) - Goethe says neither. Many readers will think of cherubim or seraphim, yet Stael in 1809 probably had in mind the Martinist Elohim, 'intermediates dont se servit l'etre supreme pour creer le ciel et la terre'. A fundamental though perhaps little-studied mechanism of reading here allows scattered, vague or inconsistent phrases to imply coherent structure: that structure lies outside Stael's text, in the reader's ordered mind. 40 Starobinski notes one place where passion had in 1810 reigned unchecked for over two centuries: the tragic stage. Tragedy has a vastly disproportionate space in Stael's chapters on German literature. It also played a major part in shaping her views on passion in daily life. Striking evidence of her state of mind comes when, to prove the power of love, she cites a lieu commun of tragedy from the Greeks to Racine: 'les deserts meme de la Thebai'de n'affaiblissent pas la puissance du sentiment' (v 101/2). Does Stael here fail to distinguish life from literature? The answer can only be yes - but her concern is like Plutarch to offer models for emulation, and her role models were hard to come by in Napoleonic France. 41 Praising tragic love and damning other 'passions', Stael sometimes contradicts herself. She claims that 'tout se change en passion dans le coeur de l'homme' (iv 212/4), but earlier, that 'tant d'individus traversent l'existence sans se douter des passions et de leur source, que souvent le theatre revele l'homme a l'homme, et lui inspire une sainte terreur des orages de Fame' (in 213/12). Stael's talk of a source is interesting: is the source of these passions not an instinct physique, as above? Their wellspring may be unknown, but the word sainte is a fairly broad hint. Stael's public is being encouraged to link passion with virtue, not with vice - a remarkable jump, which her talk of passion straddles uneasily. She gives her private opinion on passion to de Souza in 1805: 'n'appelez pas deraison ce qui est inspire par l'elan de Tame: c'est la la veritable raison, celle des hommes superieurs, des coeurs passionnes qui seuls ont senti la vie' (CG v.ii, 569). Stael's 1802 Reflexions sur [...] Delphine seem a midpoint in

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her religious development - they talk of 'sentiments pour lesquels il est juste de souffrir, mais pour lesquels aussi il est juste d'etre plainte' (p.998). De VAllemagne echoes this contrast: 'L'homme a maudit le soleil, Pamour et la vie; il a souffert, il s'est senti consume par ces flambeaux de la nature; mais voudrait-il pour cela les eteindre?' (iv 7/9). Both texts also overtly link love with virtue, still a shocking claim to Stael's Christian readers: 'La puissance d'aimer est la source de tout ce que les hommes ont fait de noble, de pur et de desinteresse sur cette terre' (Delphine 1008); £la puissance d'aimer tient de tres pres a la morale et a la religion' (iv 357/9). Elsewhere, Stael bypasses some of her difficulties by means of another verbal substitution, calling love not a passion but a sentiment. Some traces of this shift remain - the two terms at one point appear in two consecutive sentences: 'L'amour est une passion beaucoup plus serieuse en Allemagne qu'en France. La poesie, les beaux-arts, la philosophic meme, et la religion, ont fait de ce sentiment un culte terrestre' (1 82/13). Bizarrely, Stael for once only hints at a German source, which could neatly resolve all her problems, when Constant like Villers is explicit: 'Nous n'envisageons Pamour que comme une passion de la meme nature que toutes les passions humaines, c'est-a-dire ayant pour effet d'egarer notre raison [...] Les Allemands voient dans Pamour quelque chose de religieux, de sacre.' 42 These instances bear witness to the ease with which StaePs terms shift or retreat, whenever difficulties confront them - one reason for her woollier passages. Her distinctions between sentiment and passion seem little more than a rearrangement of furniture, akin to the scholastic quibbles she so detests. But two crucial points might be stressed. First: dealing with ideas which are common coinage in a period, if we dig beneath their surface to show what they imply, we distort the role of those ideas in that society. The Stock Exchange works on this principle - Stael like Keynes calls credit 'Popinion appliquee aux affaires de finances' (CRF 1 39). Because a share is worth $20 before a market crash and $10 thereafter does not make the share's 'real' value $10. A share's real value, like an idea's 'real' value, is what people think it is, and nothing else. If others

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accepted inconsistency, Stael can hardly be blamed for repeating their terms. Second: these instances fail to show how similar, seemingly aimless play with vocabulary can support StaePs global bid to offer, 'par un acte de synthese hardi', a grand map of our moral being. Phrases like the following recur throughout her text: 'L'amour est une religion en Allemagne, mais une religion poetique' (1 68/10). 'Ante' - the third alternative

Les evenements terribles dont nous avons ete les temoins ont blase les ames, et tout ce qui tient a la pensee parait terne a cote de la toute-puissance de Faction, (v 209/1) De nos jours, si le pouvoir d'un seul s'etablissait en France [...] la raison philosophique opposerait moins de digues a la tyrannie, que l'indomptable croyance, Pintrepide devouement de 1'enthousiasme religieux. (DL 277) StaePs attack on our animal nature is no rationalist programme to hand power to the brain. Nor will she compromise; like Plato, she steps outside the either/or framework of the Enlightenment, with a third alternative named ame. Chateaubriand remarks, 'les philosophes divisaient Phomme moral en trois parts' {Genie 477); Viatte adds that in illuminist thought 'cette division tripartite de Phomme est une des doctrines les plus universellement repandues'. StaePs ame has four main sets of attributes, drawn from four separate traditions: artistic creation, an eighteenth-century concept; love and sentiment, again a modern flavour; and two ancient themes, religion and military valour. Poet, mystic, lover and fighter derive their genius from the same internal source. A draft on Prussia again puts it succinctly: 'II y reste de Penthousiasme pour Phonneur et pour la patrie, mais on a voulu separer cet enthousiasme de celui qu'inspirent la religion et Pamour et cette separation est impossible' (1 242c). 43 These four traditions were broadly as familiar to StaePs public as to Stael herself: she does not create ex nihilo, she recombines accepted concepts. But she thereby bequeathed to Romantic Europe a compendious and systematic vision of

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what 'soul' meant, unrivalled in its scope by other early sources. Fanaticism and war

De VAllemagne three times states that enthusiasm and fanaticism are different things. Compare the first paragraph of its fourth Partie: 'Les nations de race germanique sont toutes naturellement religieuses [...] Cependant, en Allemagne surtout, Ton est plus porte a l'enthousiasme qu'au fanatisme' (v 7/1). This discussion of German character began in the first Partie — Stael thus links her fourth section to those preceding it. Later, her enthusiasm chapters open by claiming that 'beaucoup de gens sont prevenus contre l'enthousiasme; ils le confondent avec le fanatisme, et c'est une grande erreur [...] c'est l'amour du beau, l'elevation de Tame, la jouissance du devouement, reunis dans un meme sentiment qui a de la grandeur et du calme' (v 187/1). Her last comparison is equally explicit: 'L'enthousiasme, je le repete, ne ressemble en rien au fanatisme [...] L'enthousiasme est tolerant [...] l'enthousiasme trouve dans la reverie du coeur et dans l'etendue de la pensee ce que le fanatisme et la passion renferment dans une seule idee5 (v 203/18). Contrast Voltaire in 1765: 'Ce mot grec signifie emotion d'entrailles, agitation interieure.' He adds, 'l'enthousiasme

est surtout le partage de la devotion mal entendue'. 44 Can we accept Stael's distinction? Unlike her talk of passion, it is not inconsistent - enthusiasm and fanaticism are never equated. Bowman makes a surprising claim which seems to match almost precisely with Stael's state of mind: 'attaquer la superstition, pour Mme de Stael, c'est surtout proner le sentiment religieux, defendre la totalite de Fame'. Compare her remark to Lacretelle in 1802: 'moi qui suis assez philosophe ou plutot assez chretienne pour condamner la durete de Calvin'. This is important: defining amour de la gloire in 1796, Stael says that 'pour meriter le nom de passion, il faut qu'il absorbe toutes les autres affections de Fame' (IP 55) - enthusiasm is not a passion, because it fails to do this. Tolerance, an openness to every point of view, lies at the centre of Stael's life and work; in a sense, her message is that nothing should be rejected out of

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hand, thus justifying her bizarre Romantic chapter on German science. Hence also, her distaste for dogma, which forces religious opinion - the opposite of religion's appeal to her. Compare Billion: 'pour elle comme pour Benjamin Constant, le sentiment religieux est la forme la plus haute et la plus pure du sentiment de Pindependance'. Stael's talk of passion may be inconsistent: such problems do not arise in her talk of enthusiasm and the creative self.45 The word enthusiasm was not rare in the eighteenth century, nor always used in a negative sense, despite StaePs concessives. De la litterature nicely illustrates her debts to tradition: 'pour relever de tels vaincus, il fallait Penthousiasme, noble puissance de Pame, Pegarant quelquefois, mais pouvant seule combattre avec succes Pinstinct habituel de Pamour de soi' (DL 132). Compare the motto to this section. Interestingly, the two passages neatly parallel a key discussion in Hume from 1759[enthusiasts] have a natural aversion to episcopal authority [...] which they denominate superstition [...] The same bold and daring spirit, which accompanied [the Puritans] in their addresses to the Divinity, appeared in their political speculations; and the principles of civil liberty [...] which were totally incompatible with the present exorbitant prerogative, had been strongly adopted by this new sect. Elsewhere, he remarks that 'superstition is an enemy to civil liberty, enthusiasm a friend to it'. Hume is discussing StaePs co-religionists, the Calvinist Puritans. 46 StaePs link between enthusiasm and civil liberty thus has a precedent - nor need one assume her ignorance of Hume, whom she cites five times in her philosophy chapters. But that 1800 remark is StaePs only warning of enthusiasm's danger. She found the current state of Europe far too bleak to waste time attacking enthusiasm: 'le parti philosophique [...] n'attaquait pas Napoleon sur une foule d'actes arbitraires [...] mais ces mots de ralliement, lespretres, la superstition, se prononfaient encore, lors meme qu'ils n'avaient plus de sens' (DxA 253). Compare her remark to Brinkman, in July 1804: 'Triste spectacle que Paneantissement de tout Petre moral d'une nation!' (CG v.ii, 391). This was hardly Stendhal or Byron's view of the

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Napoleonic era. Just as Stael's talk of passion confronted an obstacle in previous discussion of the subject, so here Stael faces an equal obstacle, in the massive prestige of Napoleon's military successes - what she calls 'la tactique et la gastronomie'. Stael's aim then is clear: to construct a new Europe to rival that of Napoleon; 'mettre l'empire de la pensee au-dessus de celui des armes' (CRFi 287). Disgraced and exiled in a Europe occupied by the French, Stael's opinions were extremely dangerous. In private, she felt angry enough to risk words on paper, as in her first Germany manuscript of 1804: 'Je croyais alors [...] qu'il existait sur la terre autre chose que la force militaire' (JA 59). In July 1805, she also told Friedrich Schlegel she admired him: 'Si 1'esprit merite ce mot, il vous est du, sans les secours des baionnettes' (CG v.ii, 612). In print, such remarks were impossible. Given that Napoleon in particular valued war and not enthusiasm, since he conquered Europe and pulped her book, Stael sometimes links the two: 'Parmi ceux qui cherchent a tourner des sentiments exaltes en ridicule, plusieurs en sont susceptibles a leur insu. La guerre, fut-elle entreprise par des vues personnelles, donne toujours quelques-unes des jouissances de l'enthousiasme' (v 192/9). Moments later, Stael says the opposite, claiming that a soldier's bravery can become 'une impulsion presque physique' (v 193/18). Her judgements of Napoleon reiterate a similar claim: 'Ses succes tiennent autant aux qualites qui lui manquent, qu'aux talents qu'il possede' (CRFn 200). This echoes the Encyclopedie: 'Dans la signification qu'on donne a ce mot aujourd'hui, il semble n'etre uniquement consacre qu'aux guerriers [...] On definit un hews, un homme ferme contre les difficultes [...] & tres-vaillant dans les combats; qualites qui tiennent plus [...] d'une certaine conformation des organes, que de la noblesse de Tame. Le grand homme est bien autre chose.' Stael's inconsistencies are minor echoes of the massive censorship she faced. The book was pulped in 1810. Her bottom line, as in the Encyclopedie, is this: what is a hero? Long before 1810, Plato's hero acquired new incarnations - 1789's patriotic citizen defending his country; leaders of men such as

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Caesar or Napoleon; and the knight of the age of chivalry, helped back into vogue by the Concordat. Stael's aim is to redefine the term. In 1810, she deleted an entire draft chapter called 'Un heros allemand'. But she kept a second attack on Napoleon's Empire, equally strong if less explicit: her long Plutarchan list of non-Imperial heroes, in her chapters on German drama. As she told the Grand-Duchess Louise in August 1805, 'combien j'ai regrette Schiller! C'est un grand motif de moins d'emulation dans le monde pour tout ce qui est noble et vrai' (CG v.ii, 652). Poetry

Of StaePs four distinct source traditions, religion and poetry assimilate most readily within her new value system, thanks in part to a long tradition of shared vocabulary. Stael says of enthusiasm that 'le sens de ce mot, chez les Grecs, en est la plus noble definition: Penthousiasme signifie Dieu en nous' (v 188/1). She also quotes Seneca: 'Dans le sein de Phomme vertueux, je ne sais quel Dieu, mais il habite un Dieu' (iv 326/14). Two other ancient parallels concern poetry and God - Ovid writes 'est deus in nobis' (Fasti vi.5), and the Bible calls Christ 'Emmanuel; ce qui signifie, Dieu avec nous' (Matt. 1,23). Within four pages, Stael likewise talks both of 'un sentiment religieux qui nous fait eprouver en nous-memes la presence de la divinite', and of modern French odes: 'y en a-t-il une entiere dans laquelle le dieu n'ait point abandonne le poete?' (n 113/9 - 117/14). But the stuff that these phrases 'assimilate' is after all no more a part of life than of literature: Stael at least once loses sight of that very distinction, in her talk of the 'deserts meme de la Thebai'de'. What Stael uses, to give her ame consistency and conviction, is Christianity's appeal to beliefs that Man has a double nature, animal and divine: 'Tout semble attester en nous-memes Pexistence d'une double nature [...] nous sommes les fils du ciel ou les esclaves de la terre' (iv 19/1 - 21/11). More than one critic has dwelt on theological parallels behind eighteenth-century talk of creativity: it seems odd that in a groundbreaking book which proclaims this link, the linking section should be sidestepped by modern reviewers. 47

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At issue is the precise nature of inspiration. There is historical interest in noting that Stael attributes this key Romantic doctrine explicitly to Germany: 'la tendance naturelle des esprits, en Allemagne, est de considerer la poesie comme une sorte de don prophetique, precurseur des dons divins' (v 46/5) - an odd use of the phrase tendance naturelle. But these terms are hardly alien to her text, they have been absorbed into its fabric. She thus condemns Goethe for disliking Werther: 'peutetre alors etait-il possede par son genie, au lieu d'en etre le maitre; peut-etre sentait-il alors que le sublime et le divin etant momentanes dans le coeur de l'homme, le poete est inferieur a ['inspiration qui Vanime' (11 81/9). Stael already made the same claim in 1788, long before her German visits: Thomme enivre par l'esprit divin qui 1'anime, n'est plus lui-meme, quoiqu'il soit plus vrai que jamais' (LR 103). Two things here are crucial - the idea of 'un etre en proie a une imagination plus forte que lui5 (v 120/17), and the stress on the ivresse that accompanies this inspiration: Tenthousiasme enivre Tame de bonheur' (v 227/1). Both imply the same thing: the abdication of the reason, like Caravaggio's Matthew, in favour of ungovernable forces. This abdication is just what attracted Stael to the Lausanne Quietists. All this talk of inspiration is built, as Stael more than once points out, on a theological metaphor - which is interesting, because she is far more willing to accept its metaphorical than its literal usage: 'quelques-uns ont cru sincerement qu'une divination surnaturelle leur etait accordee, et qu'il se manifestait en eux des verites dont ils etaient plutot les temoins que les inventeurs' (v 129/11). Why accept the one inspiration and not the other? The answer seems to be either that Stael in the strict sense accepts neither - that the talk about a writer being plus vrai que jamais is not to be taken literally - or at most, that she had accepted those terms in 1788 but by 1810 no longer does so. If so, Stael's repeated links between religious and poetic activity are exaggerated, to impose greater coherence on her global description of enthusiasm. This is not to say that Stael did not believe what she wrote if that matters. There is waffle, and even humbug, in such

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passages: it is difficult to say how much, as we have seen. But those faults reflect other virtues of her text, above all its bid to amalgamate its vastly diverse sources into a coherent structure, in accordance with StaePs single overriding tenet: 'L'ame est un foyer qui rayonne dans tous les sens' (iv 31/8). This foyer is a favoured metaphor for StaePs third alternative, like the sun adding warmth and light to ideas of centrality. Usefully it also means both hearth and focus, as in manuscript: 'concentrer dans ce foyer, comme dans un miroir ardent, tous les rayons de Punivers' (v 8OA). AS the anatomy of StaePs third alternative begins to take shape, new inconsistencies show up with no attempt to explain them. She has little time for analytic proof: 'L'analyse ne pouvant examiner qu'en divisant, s'applique, comme le scalpel, a la nature morte' (iv 33/3). Instead, she looks to reinterpret the whole scope of human activity using her new categories. New systems of thought are judged by their self-consistent and total descriptions of available facts; Stael differs from most in valuing totality above rigid consistency. Hers, one might say, is the broad sweep, with the fine tuning left to others.48 StaePs global description of enthusiasm also greatly strengthens her book's propagandist effect. Her method thus has a direct utility, as a counterweight to the moral amputation she finds typical of contemporary France: we can no more ignore one of our faculties than we can ignore an arm, eye or leg. A lost draft states that Thomme est un, et que les diverses facultes qu'on lui suppose se tiennent toutes a cette unite' (iv 199c). Her images of the fat man in the duel and the bed of Procrustes (iv 168, 330) both confront just this amputation, when the essential unity of the self is ignored. That is the point of StaePs great synthesis: 'II y a de la religion dans tout ce qui nous cause une emotion desinteressee; la poesie, Pamour, la nature et la Divinite se reunissent dans notre coeur, quelques efforts qu'on fasse pour les separer; et si Pon interdit au genie de faire resonner toutes ces cordes a la fois, Pharmonie complete de Pame ne se fera jamais sentir' (11 344/6).

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Beauty

'Le bonheur consiste-t-il dans les facultes qu'on developpe, ou dans celles qu'on etouffe?' (1 106/13). This splendid summation of Stael's concerns again evokes the terms of her leap of faith. When eventually she states that 'il est temps de parler de bonheur!' (v 213/1), one thinks of her famous remark in 1796: 'le bonheur, tel que l'homme le confoit, c'est ce qui est impossible en tout genre' (IP 15). Stael's object in 1796 was to stifle the faculties that have become, in 1810, not only an integral part of her philosophy but a central part of her message; she has exchanged a negative definition of happiness for a positive one. Bowman offers an analogous description of her religious development: cJe crois que la grande etape, c'est qu'elle a pu se delivrer de sa peur de la superstition.' The causes of this development matter less than its effect on her text - but this textual progression reflects Stael's changing religious and philosophical opinions, and the issues are inextricably linked on the page. Her new definition of bonheur is nonsense, unless one understands her parallel claims in religion and philosophy concerning the creative self. As Muller-Vollmer remarks, De VAllemagne\ repeated synthesis of poetry, ethics and religion is 'ancree dans l'idee que l'auteur se fait du moi'. 49 By asserting that our various faculties are of a piece, Stael can bring faculties which had lain outside reason's perimeter to within her expanded description of the self. Hence, her claims of moral amputation, and her talk of 'un superflu d'ame qu'il est doux de consacrer a ce qui est beau' (v 189/6). Or one can put this another way. A system can be self-consistent without being total, like a legless torso. In the fat man's duel, his rival offered to draw a line beyond which blows would not count. That is blindness, and Stael uses other metaphors to attack it: 'quelquefois meme, dans le cours habituel de la vie, la realite de ce monde disparait tout a coup, et Ton se sent au milieu de ses interets comme dans un bal dont on n'entendrait pas la musique' (v 53/2). We are invited to consider our place in the world from the start of the fourth Partie: 'Quand nous contemplons le ciel etoile [...] notre pensee se

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perd dans l'infini [...] Le sentiment de l'infini est le veritable attribut de Tame' (v 12/12). Ancillon talks in 1809 of a 'besoin secret de l'infini', and De VAllemagne does praise his essay. He adds that 'tous les hommes eprouvent un plaisir plus ou moins vif en contemplant la nature'. This is not entirely Stael's position — 'La contemplation de la nature accable la pensee' (v 174/7) — but she does devote a chapter to the subject, dwelling on two things in particular: ideas of infinity and theories of correspondance. To some extent, the two are connected, since Heaven is infinite and yet directly linked to mankind: 'Quand le soir, a l'extremite du paysage, le ciel semble toucher de si pres a la terre, l'imagination se figure par-dela l'horizon un asile de l'esperance, une patrie de l'amour, et la nature semble repeter silencieusement que l'homme est immorteP (v 180/12). Once again, this theological parallel is repeatedly drawn to our attention - Tharmonie divine dont nous et la nature faisons partie' (v 216/8) - and whatever its cause, it produces some of the book's most beautiful passages: 'Mon fils, il faut prier comme on aime, en melant la priere a toutes nos pensees [...] et quand la resignation descendra doucement en vous, tournez vos regards vers la nature' (v 125/4). Stael's nature here has a markedly Romantic flavour.50 Alongside these relatively straightforward passages are bizarre remarks, due perhaps to the influence of theosophy: 'Le sommeil des vegetaux pendant de certaines heures et de certaines saisons de l'annee est d'accord avec le mouvement de la terre [...] Les passagers de ce grand vaisseau qu'on appelle le monde se laissent bercer dans le cercle que decrit leur voyageuse demeure' (v 175/16). A paragraph earlier, Stael talks about 'la sympathie de la nuit avec tous les genres de privations' (v 174/13). One thing holds these passages together, and herein may lie a clue to their source. Again and again, Stael gives these thoughts a time of day: evening and night. Two Germans spring to mind - Schubert and Novalis, authors of the Ansichten von der Nachtseite der Naturwissenschaft

and the Hymnen an die Nacht, in 1808 and 1800. The two indeed figure in Stael's chapter, 'De la contemplation de la nature',

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but this seems less a case of borrowing than of shared inspiration. La Sottise L'on souffre souvent d'etre seul de sa nature au milieu de tant d'etres qui vivent a si peu de frais. (v 220/4) II faut etre severe envers la mediocrite. (11 297B) This section considers Stael's methods for dealing with adverse contemporary opinion, particularly in France. Her pages are littered with pendants and subordinate clauses tracing this battle for today's readers. It would be interesting to count the frequency of the phrase quoi qu'on dise in her text: 'tout ce qui tend a nous rabaisser est mensonge, et c'est, quoi qu'on en dise, du cote des sentiments vulgaires qu'est l'erreur' (v 203/15). Stael's attributions play between simple denial and ad hominem argument, as in the word vulgaires. A chapter earlier, her tone is more pronounced - 'L'egoi'sme se plait a parler sans cesse des dangers de l'enthousiasme' (v 196/6) - and even her more neutral instances remain pointed: 'Quoi que des gens d'esprit en aient dit, il existe une alliance naturelle entre la religion et le genie' (v 110/23). These terms are not argument, they are Stael's shorthand reminder to her public that they live in a prejudiced society. Given their brevity, the terms can hardly persuade; they function simply as a repeated invitation to readers to keep their options open. The massive obstacle Stael faces is sometimes squarely confronted: 'comme la plupart des plaisanteries de societe ont pour but de jeter du ridicule sur l'enthousiasme, on aime l'auteur qui ose prendre corps a corps la prudence, l'ego'isme, toutes ces choses pretendues raisonnables derriere lesquelles les gens mediocres se croient en surete pour lancer des traits contre les caracteres ou les talents superieurs' (in 201/12). Such direct confrontations are rare, but the extent to which the terms penetrate Stael's narrative is remarkable: a lost draft talks of'ce qu'on appelle la raison' (m 93B). My own favourite example of this dialectic is Stael's use of

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the term sans doute. Again and again, it is used as an almost kneejerk recognition of the reader's unvoiced objections, before normal discussion can be resumed. Its subjects offer a rough barometer to idees regues of the Napoleonic era, making room for items like rationalism and amour-propre: 'Sans doute Schiller ne pouvait pas etre exempt d 5 amour-propre [...] mais rien ne difiere autant dans ses consequences que la vanite et l'amour de la gloire; l'une tache d'escamoter le succes, l'autre veut le conquerir' (n 87/18). In 1800, Stael admits that 'sans doute la raison est la faculte qui juge toutes les autres; mais ce n'est pas elle qui constitue l'identite de l'etre moral' {DL 386). One thinks of her talk in 1810 of'mille autre axiomes de ce genre qui ont tous la forme de proverbes, et qui sont en effet le code de la sagesse vulgaire' (v 120/1). Stael's reference to gens d'esprit suggests a major problem she faced. Just as Napoleon was considered heroic, so flippancy and insouciance seemed the opposite of vulgar: 'il s'est conclu depuis quelque temps une singuliere alliance entre l'egoisme et l'elegance' (in 2O6B). We saw Stael use the word vulgaires to attack this alliance. Her remarkable chapter on taste opens by saying, 'ceux qui se croient du gout en sont plus orgueilleux que ceux qui se croient du genie [...] il separe les classes [...] il est un signe de ralliement entre tous les individus de la premiere' (11 216/1). Stael aims to break down this aristocratic prestige; in manuscript, her next chapter had been explicit: 'Dans ce genre les hommes les plus elegants et les plus grossiers se rapprochent. Car les gens du peuple aussi trouvent tres facilement la tragedie ridicule' (11 235B). Stael offers instead the concept of'true' nobility or nobilite du cceur^ which lies at the heart of her biographical method. She argues that we must know a person's character before we can judge their works: 'il m'a semble necessaire', as Stael remarks, 'de caracteriser personnellement les hommes de lettres les plus celebres, avant d'analyser leurs ouvrages' (11 40/15). Ambition and amour de la gloire seem distinguished, as in Stael's talk of Schiller, by the status of the person involved: 'La gloire, valeur morale, ne peut done pas recompenser les ambitieux egoistes.' In the final text, Stael replaces this section's severe draft motto with a call for clemency to genius, the dark side of her coin. As

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that call suggests, judging people an sich is far easier when you have already decided how to judge them - compare the circular arguments used to show that Tasso could not think like a German, because he was an Italian (m 62/14). Two things are here stratified or ranked. Within the self, different motives are stratified; within society, different people. Dividing people into types is a tricky business. The Church, like Plato, simplified matters by making mental and social structures analogous, and Stael's text rarely questions that ancient analogy, whatever social views its author held: 'L'instruction qu'on acquiert chez Pestalozzi donne a chaque homme, de quelque classe qu'il soit, une base sur laquelle il peut batir a son gre la chaumiere du pauvre ou les palais des rois' (1 267/17).51 A draft updates this analogy, using the word proletaries in its new economic sense: 'les proletaires en litterature sont presque toujours les ennemis de ceux qui possedent' (m 337B). Stael's annoyance with those esprits mediocres who display ambition does suggest a baron whose peasants revolt - she earlier talks of gens mediocresfiring'des traits contre les caracteres ou les talents superieurs' (in 202/2). Indeed, considering Stael's famous closing address to France, on 'la trace des torrents de sable, terribles comme les flots, arides comme le desert!' (v 230/12), we might compare a remark in the preceding chapter: 'il n'y a que les gens mediocres qui voudraient que le fond de tout fut du sable, afin que nul homme ne laissat sur la terre une trace plus durable que la leur' (v 207/7). Three things should be distinguished here. First, when Stael makes use of words like vulgaire, she draws her charge from the well of class distinction, doing very little to disown that source. Second, there seems little point in linking this fact to Stael's biography. Our concern is the place of such arguments in her text, where they function as a very handy tool in her battle with contemporary prejudice. But third, one cannot ignore questions of authorial responsibility, and the legacy of a famous book on succeeding generations: ideas of jealous mediocrity and of an aristocracy of writers are common enough in the literature of Romantic Europe. There is room then for a Marxist critique of Stael's text. One critic cannot expect to offer the whole truth about a

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book. Our argument is directed at utility, at the way wildly diverse information and structure in StaePs text coordinate to offer a sustained and coherent attack on Napoleonic values. Within this immediate context, her choice of argument is ideally suited to the problem she faces — standard appeals to an aristocracy of taste are here stood on their head. Furthermore, whatever doubts these means inspire, StaePs aim is never in question: 'Quelle triste economie que celle de Pame! elle nous a ete donnee pour etre developpee, perfectionnee, prodiguee meme dans un noble but' (v 215/4). This returns us to the question of bonheur, which has lost none of its relevance. Stael asserts that contemporary canons of reason and taste, in literature as in society, functioned by deleting a vast range of emotions from the realm of appropriate activity - we might even say that 'reason' and 'taste' are defined by this deletion. She also asserts that these emotions do not lie outside the self, they are an integral part of it; hence, her talk of amputation. In direct confrontation with received ideas, Stael goes on to claim that this group of emotions is not one constituent part of the self, but the very basis of the self as such. Reason is not the basis of our nature, its basis is dme: 'C'est en vain qu'on veut se reduire aux jouissances materielles, Pame revient de toutes parts; Porgueil, Pambition, Pamour-propre, tout cela c'est encore de Pame' (v 213/11). There are rough edges in StaePs case, but the scope and coherence of her arguments remain a magnificent achievement, unparalleled in contemporary French literature: 'Nul autre manifeste romantique,' writes Monchoux, 'n'est comparable a cet ouvrage, ou le plus large expose documentaire et la theorie la plus meditee se font valoir mutuellement.' StaePs two definitions of bonheur are made possible by this dialectic. Bonheur can certainly be defined in a negative sense, as Stael had done in 1796; such a definition is stoicism's basis. But within the new terms of De VAllemagne, it becomes possible, if not unavoidable, to assert that such happiness involves a deliberate decision to atrophy the very basis of our nature. Precise draft statements of StaePs views are again repeatedly suppressed: 'La raison sans enthousiasme est etroite, incom-

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plete, plus de la moitie de la nature lui est inconnue. Les secrets de la vie lui echappent; c'est un anatomiste qui se croit un medecin' (n 292A); 'Les esprits les plus analytiques ne savent rien du principe de la vie, et c'est dans ce principe que reside l'emotion' (m 128B). But these terms still push through into the printed page: 'Les esprits vraiment frivoles ce sont ceux qui [...] se persuadent qu'on peut proceder avec la nature humaine par voie d'exclusion' (v 80/2). A moment later, Stael states that 'le droit chemin de la raison egoiste doit etre [...] de n'estimer dans ce monde que la sante, l'argent et le pouvoir' (v 188/7). Compare her verdict in 1805 on Talleyrand, a man who 'a fait de l'existence un calcul ou n'entrent ni l'honneur, ni la gloire, ni 1'amour'.52 The French had been accused since Rousseau of being severed from nature. Stael talks of Tegoi'sme qui nous separe de la nature bienfaisante' (v 22/10), and her review of the Schlegels indeed links Rousseau and the German Romantics: 'L'esprit general de ces critiques est le meme que celui de Rousseau dans sa lettre contre la musique franfaise' (in 347/1). We saw Stael's debt here to terms made famous by Schiller's Vber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung. Her terms are also

typical of later Romantic thought - 'II y a dans tous les hommes un enthousiasme captif que le poids des choses de ce monde etouffe avec plus ou moins de douleur, selon la noblesse de sa nature' (n 124A) - but unlike many Romantics, Stael builds no great dialectic out of claims that modern man is severed from nature. Indeed, her chapter on the contemplation of nature says the reverse. Nature, like enthusiasm, is there in front of us; to see it, we have only to open our eyes. Hence, her repeated stress on the effort of will involved, not in attaining enthusiasm, but in suppressing it: 'repoussant les mouvements genereux qui renaissent dans leur coeur comme une maladie de l'imagination que le grand air doit dissiper!' (v 214/4). This adds a new charge to Stael's rhetoric - witness the words renferment and tenace, below: 'Us se renferment par vanite dans une mediocrite tenace' (v 214/10). Another draft opposes 'natural' and 'clouded' vision, subverting Kant's distinction between the objective noumenal world and the faculties man

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must see the world through: Tesprit tourne vers la moquerie ne verrait plus rien qu'a travers ce prisme faux et rapetissant' (n 235B). Again the implication is that one has only to remove this prism to see truly. At issue is not only our personal happiness, but also our status in human society. Enlightenment political economists reached a broad consensus on ethics by looking exclusively at the effects of our actions on others. Bentham's doctrine of Utility codifies such views. Like the stylistic rules of neoclassicism, it is preventative not constructive; its ideal is dne of 'negative' liberty. Utility is a big subject, and Stael's parade of remarks on it shows some evidence of ambivalence, but utility in ethics is a different question. Indeed, Stael's second major addition to her text in 1813, besides the thirty-page preface, is the two-page note on Utility closing her chapter on intent personnel. King describes her brilliant verbal attacks on Utility in 1813, the origin of her note. Looking for reasons why De VAllemagne was written, 'to attack utilitarian ethics' is as apt a reply as any. Just as Stael's friend Jefferson made a trio of'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness', so her book wants something more than liberty for mankind. This is a very controversial ideal, and she finds ringing tones to express it: 'Le necessaire en tout genre a quelque chose de revoltant quand ce sont les possesseurs du superflu qui le mesurent' (1 275/18). 53 CONCLUSION: SYNTHESIS

Tous les penseurs solitaires, d'un bout du monde a l'autre, cherchent a rassembler, dans un meme foyer, les rayons epars de la litterature, de la philosophic et de la religion, (v 98/23) Les beaux-arts, la poesie, la gloire et 1'amour, sont des religions dans lesquelles il entre plus ou moins d'alliage. (v 20/4) It seems clear that De I'Allemagne's arguments could not have been conceived in the absence of Christian tradition: 'la piete,' remarks Stael, 's'oppose a la dissipation d'ame, qui est le defaut et la grace de la nation franf aise' (11 17/6). But as we have seen, Christian tradition is only one of several sources which Stael

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recombines within her own Romantic framework: amour and gloire, condemned as passions in 1796, have become religions by 1810. This must have been a shock for StaePs French public. Indeed, despite her repeated use of the word ame, she also uses a whole range of other terms: Tincomplet du langage nous oblige a nous servir d'expressions erronnees, il faut repeter suivant l'usage, tel individu a de la raison, ou de l'imagination, ou de la sensibilite, etc.; mais si Ton voulait s'entendre par un mot, on devrait dire seulement: il a de Vame, il a beaucoup d'ame* (iv 31/12). However loosely the word ame was used in the later eighteenth century, it has a specific theological history. When Stael links other terms to ame - imagination, sensibility, reason - she thereby rejects purely religious or sentimental argument, bidding instead to unify previously quite alien areas of experience. Another draft makes this clear: 'Dans tout ce qui tient a Tame il n'y a que du sentiment ou, ce qui est la meme chose, de la religion, car tout sentiment est une religion' (iv 333A). Two sorts of amalgamation are going on here: of the soul's forces, and of literary traditions. But the two are to some extent concomitant. A review of Bacon thus acquires an eighteenth-century framework, marked by the terms imagination and sensibility. 'II n'est point l'auteur de cette methode anatomique qui semble meconnaitre l'admirable unite de l'etre moral. La sensibilite, l'imagination, la raison servent l'une a l'autre. Chacune de ces facultes ne serait [...] qu'une faiblesse au lieu d'une force, si elle n'etait pas modifiee ou completee par la totalite de notre etre' (iv 28/12). Stael is establishing the analogy, or indeed the identity, of previously distinct traditions and areas of experience, as she had in 1807: 'Laissez-nous done tout confondre, amour, religion, genie, et le soleil et les parfums, et la musique et la poesie' (Corinne 273). In fact, she had been making such remarks in private since 1795, when she told Ribbing, 'je mele ensemble la religion et l'amour' (CG m.i, 327). But by 1810, Stael has replaced poetic outbursts with coherent argument: 'cette attente de l'infini qui se presente, dans la metaphysique, sous la forme des dispositions innees; dans la vertu, sous celle du devouement, dans

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les arts, sous celle de Pideal, et dans la religion elle-meme sous celle de l'amour divin' (v 13/19). Asking in conclusion how much of this argument Stael owed to the Germans, one might remember De VAllemagne\ concern, marked by its title, with stressing German rather than French parallels for its opinions. We hear almost nothing of Rousseau. But two key aspects of this argument seem better to reflect Stael's German connections than any other source: the stress on the soul's independence, and that on the essential unity of the soul's various faculties. De VAllemagne traces German taste for independence through its political and social fragmentation, its artistic criteria, its idealist philosophy and its Protestantism alike. But talk of the soul's unity offers a narrower range of possible sources. StaePs problem here is immediate, lying in the battered terrain of contemporary French opinion, and the restrictive divide between Ideologie and Catholic reaction to which the hopes of the Enlightenment had been reduced. In 1818, Stael calls hidebound Enlightenment beliefs themselves a form of superstition, or fanatismephilosophique (CRFi 57); Balaye stresses StaePs dissatisfaction with the 'Ideologues athees qui lui semblent parfois trop enfermes dans le xvnie siecle, ce qui est egalement contraire a la perfectibilite.' Stael is explicit, aiming not to 'repousser les lumieres, mais a les rendre completes, pour que leurs rayons brises ne presentent point de fausses lueurs' (1 111/12). 54

Stael saw no necessity for this divide - indeed, the point of her religion chapters is to insist on its irrelevance. As Stael herself establishes by the example of her parallel discussions of philosophy and religion, there is no need to sever the two, keeping emotion and reason in violent confrontation. Yet as Cordey remarks, 'pour Mme de Stael, cette conciliation entre les Lumieres et la religion [...] ne represente pas un equilibre conquis de haute lutte. Elle a herite de ces certitudes.' Stael attributes her new Enlightenment, her middle path between Ideologie and Catholic reaction, not only to recent German philosophy but to the Protestant tradition she shared with her German subjects: 'Par une funeste bizarrerie, les hommes

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eclaires en France voulaient se consoler de Pesclavage de ce monde, en cherchant a detruire Pesperance d'un autre. Cette singuliere inconsequence n'aurait point existee [...] dans la religion reformee' (DxA 31). As symbols of this synthesis between reason and emotion, Stael turns in art to the Weimar Classicism of Schiller and Goethe. In philosophy, she turns to Kant: 'L'opposition qu'on a voulu mettre entre la raison et le sentiment conduit [...] la raison a l'egoisme et le sentiment a la folie; mais Kant, qui semblait appele a conclure toutes les grandes alliances intellectuelles, a fait de l'ame un seul foyer ou toutes les facultes sont d'accord entre elles' (iv 145/20). 55

Conclusion

II est impossible a condamner la pensee a revenir sur ses pas, avec l'esperance de moins et les regrets de plus. 295)

I end this book painfully aware of what it leaves unsaid. Others here are precious sources of further information: Kohler, Henning, Pange; Balaye, Solovieff, Jasinski, Nagavajara; the Collogues de Coppet, the Cahiers staeliens. My sketches of Stael's

'mentors' need further review: Humboldt, Villers, Crabb Robinson, the Schlegels. So too does Stael's immediate context, the Groupe de Coppet, perhaps history's only international Romantic movement. Besides Stael and Schlegel, its core includes Necker, Constant, Sismondi, Bonstetten, Barante, Jordan. Contemporaries linked De rAllemagne's publication to that of two other Coppet productions in the same year, Schlegel's Cours de litterature dramatique and Sismondi's De la litterature du Midi de VEurope', all contained definitions of Romanticism, and they were called a Confederation romantique.l Chapter 3 stresses Stael parallels in Schiller, over Germans like Schlegel whom she knew better: her parallels are there by 1800, and Schiller is a key first source, for ideas later so common we cannot hope to attribute them. Stael's nouvelle ecole allemande also stresses Weimar Classicism over Berlin and later Heidelberg Romanticism, but countless details remain unsaid: her chapter on German art is pure Schlegel; it also quotes Goerres's introduction to Die Teutschen Volksbucher. Stael's German library, catalogued in the comtesse de Pange's Schlegel et Stael, has more answers; with Schlegel's library under the same roof, Coppet in 1808 almost certainly contained the best 216

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collection of recent German literature then in France. Stael also borrowed German books from Paschoud. Yet naming French and German sources alone - Voltaire's Essai sur les mceurs, for instance - is after all rather facile. De VAllemagne'^ index lists forty-eight German names, twenty-eight French, twenty-two English and no less than sixty-five Graeco-Roman references, the patina of neoclassicism. To make that point, this review stresses Plato, Tacitus and the medieval concept of translatio: if we want 'intertextuality', let us open our eyes a little wider. De VAllemagne also merits an etude genetique I have time only to sketch out. To speak of Germany in 1810, Stael must confront extratextual requirements - the lines of force of European Romanticism - which will shape her text independently of her volition. When she wrote her book, France and Germany were at war; the text itself is an extension of this war zone, fought over by utterly conflicting views of art, society, and man's place in the world. Draft Romanticism and Revolution repeatedly yield to pragmatic textual propaganda - and this throughout Stael's discussions, from topography to epistemology. In short, Stael did indeed write the faithful De VAllemagne which two centuries of critics have requested; she then saw its inutility, and chose propaganda. Few other texts, not even those of Rousseau, Kant or Goethe, offer so precise, detailed and all-encompassing a mirror of the crucial period 1789-1815, Napoleon and Revolution. Few periods so closely link literature and politics; few did so much to shape modern Europe. In De VAllemagne"'s revisions, Stael stands clear-eyed at the frontier of two worlds. It is hard to imagine an etude genetique^ all repentirs and propaganda, with more importance to Romantic history.2 By a splendid irony, the very 'mistakes' picked out by generations of critics, stood neatly on their head, are themselves our clearest proof of Stael's magnificent global synthesis. They also show her deliberate transformation of neutral and alien raw material into hard-nosed political provocation, proving that De VAllemagne is as much about Napoleon and Revolution as about Goethe or Kant. From Marie Antoinette, complaining

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in 1791 that Stael had 'toute l'armee . . . a elle', to Savary complaining that she caused Napoleon's downfall in 1814, no government felt at ease with Mme de Stael. Indeed, anything written at this watershed between Classical and Romantic civilisations - because that is what we are seeing here - will involve a battle; Hernani showed this as late as 1830. De VAllemagne may seem tame now, but in 1810 it was revolutionary enough to earn one of government's rarest tributes to a piece of ostensible literary criticism, when the entire first edition was seized and pulped by Napoleon's troops. Fifty years later, under Napoleon le petit, it would become terribly easy to be Romantic. Here at the outset, Romantic writers with something to say had two choices. The idealists told the truth, like Villers and Coleridge, and were punished by failure. The pragmatists lied, like Stael, and were rewarded with European success.3 Here, indeed, is a first reason not simply to list Stael's Romantic themes. The idea is tempting, given her place in Romantic history: we still live in a fundamentally Romantic society, and almost any theme dear to Romantic Europe has its parallel somewhere in De VAllemagne. Very many appear in these pages: the nation question, painfully resurgent as we end the twentieth century; art for the masses, post-1789, and the thickening of line that involves; the still-current belief in inspiration which I label the |xoi)aiKf|/i6XVT| divide, saying that craftsmen are not artists; the search for creative, original genius; Byronic 'bad guy chic'; the Zeitgeist; religion and sacrifice. Yet this hunt for Romantic ideas involves selective blindness. Splitting a book, to take what we want and leave the rest, is an artistic lie: it gives us kitsch in place of the art-work's unique existence. Any text stands in its own perfect space, like a chessboard; we can hardly announce which squares we intend to ignore. Literary history is unsurprisingly full of this, and De VAllemagne has suffered more than most from such goaldirected readings. The text may lie between the Germans and their imitators, but it is also its own perfect creation. Focus on the framed text, and a true sense of context, can give books

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back some of the aesthetic autonomy that framed paintings take for granted. The past few centuries have also seen various appeals in criticism to scientific method. Yet science boils down to one thing, as Karl Popper points out: its hypotheses must be refutable. A thousand swans may 'verify' a white swan theory, but one black swan disproves it. Claims that cannot be disproved do not belong to science, they are a form of superstition. This applies to a wide body of remarkably scientific-looking criticism: to any allegorical reading of Kafka, for instance. Any text is thus open to infinite exegesis, harmless enough when not confused with reality. Other less turgid methods may come to seem less futile, whether we prefer true science or instead choose art; returning to a Romantic vision of beautiful criticism, the reaction of a finely attuned mind to the art work. 4 What is left is an anti-thesis. Early Romantic writers are prominent victims of the vice of teleology inherent in the thesis-hunt, privileging sources and 'movements' - the Romantics, Parnassians, Symbolists - over textual autonomy. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are 'characterised', in Staelian manner, by mid-century criteria: Lumieres, Romanticism or the realist novel. When we apply mid-century criteria to art that straddles the century break, it seems undeniably less paradigmatic than our mid-century canon, as it would; but what are we doing applying someone else's values to authors with quite different agendas? We would hardly judge swimmers by their tennis playing. De VAllemagne is simultaneously an Enlightenment and a Romantic text, and that tension is no cause for regret, it is a magnificent source of pleasure for the reader. Indeed, these century-units are an evident fiction, since history and book-writing do not take convenient vacations at centuries' ends. Perpetuating this false break-up of the continuous past is telling a whole series of insidious lies about how the past took shape. The term preromantisme, instead of, say, Early Romanticism, is a damning indictment of this critic's lie: it classifies art before the 1830s bataille d'Hernani, with a splendid circular argument,

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by its loyalty to whatever the French found appropriate after Hugo's^atf. Stael is thus labelled a Romantic manquee because, neither lunatic nor reactionary, she sees value in her Enlightenment heritage. Mustn't for instance a Romantic talk more than she does about Catholicism? Others do. But Stael was Protestant - like Rousseau, like the English Romantics and most of the Germans. Stael had her choice of Romanticisms, as does any artist, and her own Catholic heirs can hardly stop this Genevan being fully Romantic on her own terms. After all, precisely what Stael does hand the nineteenth century is a coherent and universal system of Romantic thought, developed throughout the eighteen volumes of her complete works. As the world's first internationally famous woman critic, to use a modern phrase, StaePs precipitous fall from glory since 1900 is itself worthy of commentary. Given De VAllemagne\ conspicuous and unavoidable presence every time Romantic history is written, it seems amazing that it has been so readily neglected over the past hundred years. But this very neglect has its own revealing lesson about false critical preconceptions and their dangers, which is still very relevant today. For De VAllemagne was anything but a flash in the pan: with twentyfive French editions alone, this vast tome sold consistently throughout the nineteenth century. Nor, bizarrely, was it Napoleon III or even the Franco-Prussian War which put an end to its sales; new editions cease ten years after Sedan, in the 1880s, as intellectual French nationalism is being codified. Victor Hugo's many influential friends and colleagues glorified the 'bataille d'Hernani' because they saw in it a triumph for Romantic art. Later critics and historians, attracted by the pittoresque of the event, have chosen simply to repeat their verdict, however arbitrary. Yet the sales and impact of De VAllemagne, with Hernani a generation away, were a triumph by any measure. It is indeed unclear how much these later watersheds do add to what Stael developed twenty years earlier over 1,200 pages. 'Ne peut-on penser', remarks Monchoux, 'qu'a cote d'un pareil ebranlement, ceux qu'ont pu produire le Racine et Shakespeare, ou la preface de Cromwell ou meme la

bataille d'Hernani, font figure accessoire et mineure?' 5

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Romanticism outside Germany dates its conscious existence from De rAllemagne: recognising its pivotal role will give France back twenty stolen years of literary history, and restore the missing origin of this Europe-wide transformation of art and society. Hugo, Leopardi, Emerson do not come before, they come after: they are a second generation.

Appendix: 'De VAllemagne' titles and dates

De VAllemagne's bibliographical history is considerably more complex than was imagined. Word limits restrict me here to a few brief details. 7 November 1803 litterature metaphysique. 'Je voulais dire par ma litterature metaphysique que j'ecrirais a M. Su[ard] ce que j'observerais en Allemagne'; to Hochet, CG v. i, 98. 13 November 1803 Journal sur I'Allemagne]firstGermany text. Title of StaeTs journal, begun that day in Frankfurt (JA 27). A copy survives. 16-21 January 1804 Voyage litteraire d3Allemagne. Stael to Goethe, CG v. i, 199, 218; compare JA 45. 8 July 1808 Lettres sur I'Allemagne; manuscript A begun. 'J'ai deja fait coudre un cahier pour mes lettres sur l'Allemagne et j'ai ecrit dix lignes que je relis avec une sorte de peur'; Stael to the Prince de Ligne, in Balaye, Lumieres et liberty 159. This title also heads De VAllemagne*s manuscript A; manuscript B is untitled, and the final title first appears on the final C manuscript (undated). This information is new. 2 January i8og Stael mentions 'mes lettres sur 1'Allemagne'; Lettres Stael-Meister, 203. On 23 September 1808, Voght writes to Mme Recamier, 'Gorinne ecrit des lettres delicieuses a l'occasion de l'Allemagne.' This letter has been misdated to 1809: both were then guests at Coppet. Mme Recamier was away in the summer of 1808, hence the letter. 13 May i8og Manuscript B begun. This manuscript is headed '13 may', words not recorded in 1958. The year seems indisputable, since Stael began writing in July 1808, and printing had already begun 222

'De VAllemagne' titles and dates

223

before she left Coppet in April 1810. Was manuscript A already complete at this date? 12 July i8og Stael tells Lauraguais, 'il reste encore un chapitre de mon ouvrage qui n'est pas termine, celui de la douleur' (iv/vi); Jean-Daniel Candaux, 'Revue des autographes du groupe de Coppet vendus au cours des annees 1976-1982', in Cahiers staeliens 31-2 ( 1 9 8 2 ) , 112.

/ / April 1810 Printing has begun; De VAllemagne as title. 'C'est a Blois que j'acheverai de faire imprimer mon ouvrage sur l'Allemagne'; Stael to Gaudot, in Kohler, Stael et la Suisse, 490. Did A. W. Schlegel have proofs before Stael left Geneva on 14 April? He wrote to her there: 'je lirai soigneusement vos epreuves'; Balaye, 'Mme de Stael et le gouvernement imperial', 11; and Pange, Stael et Schlegel, 260. All known proof titles say De VAllemagne. 20 September 1810 Final revisions before 1810 pulping. Manuscript date heading pages 385-414 of the Censor's proof in the BN; this information is new. 4 November 1813 First London edition of 1500 copies sold in three days. 'J'ai publie ce livre ou tout vous rappelle a moi; l'edition a ete enlevee en trois jours'; Stael to A. W. Schlegel, g November 1813, in Pange, Schlegel et Mme de Stael, 470. Edition figure and date with the kind permission of the John Murray archives.

Notes

INTRODUCTION

1 Edinburgh Review 60, p. 275, September 1818; to Mrs Lock, 16 December 1813, in Fanny Burney, Diary and Letters of Madame d'Arblay, edited by C. Barrett, revised by A. Dobson, 6 vols. (London 1904-5), vi 98. 2 OED, 'classical.a.6.' Byron, Marino Falieri, 1820: 'I perceive that in Germany as well as in Italy there is a great struggle about what

they call Classical and Romantic' Published in Goethe Jahrbuch 20 3

4

5

6

7

(1899), 3-36. John Murray details with the kind permission of the John Murray archives. Gilbert Moget, 'En marge du bi-centenaire de Mme de Stael. "Classiques" et "Romantiques" a Milan en 1816', in La Pensee 131 (Feb. 1967), 19-20 (Discours); Maria Gaetana Salvatores, 'Mme de Stael e Leopardi', in Studi e testi 35 (Dec. 1970), 176, 172: 'non credetti di esser filosofo se non dopo lette alcune opere di Madama di Stael'. Olga T. Rossettini, 'Mme de Stael et la Russie d'apres les articles parus en URSS sur l'influence francaise en Russie au debut du xixe siecle', in RLMC 16 (Mar. 1963), 52-3 (Pushkin text), 55 (Durylin), 64 (outburst). Kurt Miiller-Vollmer, 'StaeTs Germany and the Beginnings of an American National Literature', in Germaine de Stael. Crossing the Borders, edited by M. Gutwirth, A. Goldberger and K. Szmurlo (New Brunswick 1991), 146, 141, 151. See I. A. Henning, L3Allemagne de Mme de Stael et la polemique romantique. Premiere fortune de Vouvrage en France et en Allemagne (1814-1830) (Paris 1929), and E. Eggli and P. Martino, Le Debat romantique en France, 1813-1816 (Paris 1933). See in chapter 1, note 3 for Goethe reference. De VAllemagne editions in the Bibliographie de la France and the catalogue of the Bibliotheque nationale, Paris. Stael made this claim herself: 'Je voulais montrer le rapport qui 224

Notes to pages 6-13

225

existe entre la litterature et les institutions sociales de chaque siecle et de chaque pays; et ce travail n'avait etefait dans aucun livre connu' (DL, preface to second edition). Burkhart Steinwachs, Epochenbewufitsein und Kunsterfahrung. Studien zur geschichtsphilosophischen Asthetik an der Wende vom 18. zum ig. Jahrhundert in Frankreich und Deutschland (Munich 1986), 86:

'der erste und [...] zugleich auch der letzte Versuch, Literatur und Gesellschaft in einer universalistischen historischen Perspektive zu verbinden'. 8 'Bonaparte l'avait persecutee de maniere a ce qu'on dit qu'en Europe il fallait compter trois puissances: l'Angleterre, la Russie et Madame de Stael.' Reference in chapter 2, note 25. 9 Napoleon reference in chapter 1, note 14. I

BIRTH OF A NATION

1 Stael told Villers, 15 December 1803: 'On va jouer pour moi Marie Stuart, Jeanne d'Arc et la Fille naturelle de Goethe'; CG v.i, 148. Dates in JA 435-9, and Simone Balaye, Madame de Stael, Lumieres et liberte (Paris 1979), 244-55. Stael left Metz on 8 November 1803, crossing the Rhine near Mainz. On StaeTs 1808 journey, see Olga Rossettini, 'Le Sejour de Mme de Stael a Vienne pendant l'hiver 1807-1808', in RLMC 20 (Sept.-Dec. 1967), 307, for Vienna. Also, Maria Ullrichova, 'Madame de Stael et la Boheme', in RLMC 20 (Sept.-Dec. 1967), 357-8, for Bohemia. 2 'To annex the German territories on the left bank of the Rhine [. . .] was traditional in French policy'; G. Barraclough, The Origins of Modern Germany (Oxford 1946), 387. CMH 15 (emigres); 57, 252-3, 274, 290, 346 (army). 3 Prussia raised half a million thalers in gifts, and girls volunteered for the army; see CMH 509, 522, 540-1. 'In dem gegenwartigen Augenblick tut das Buch einen wundersamen Effekt. Ware es fruher dagewesen, so hatte man ihm einen EinfluB auf die nachsten groBen Ereignisse zugeschrieben, nun [. . .] es klingt als wenn es vor vielen Jahren geschrieben ware. Die Deutschen werden sich darin kaum wiedererkennen, aber sie finden daran den sichersten MaBstab des ungeheuern Schrittes den sie getan haben'; to Sara von Grotthus, 17 February 1814, in J. W. von Goethe, Briefe, edited by K. R. Mandelkow, 4 vols. (Hamburg 1962-7), in 259-60. 4 Pierre Kohler, Madame de Stael et la Suisse (Lausanne 1916), 407. 5 'Even the main roads of Prussia were execrable'; W. H. Bruford,

226

Notes to pages 14—17

Germany in the Eighteenth Century: The Social Background of the Literary Revival (Cambridge 1939), 103, 161. Manfred Gsteiger, 'Realite et utopie de rAllemagne staelienne', in Cahiers staeliens 37 (1985-6), 15. 6 Schopenhauer told Goethe in 1814 that De rAllemagne gave 'an exaggerated portrait of the honesty of the Germans', 'eine ubertriebene Schilderung von der Ehrlichkeit der Deutschen'; Arthur Schopenhauer, Sdmtliche Werke, edited by J. Frauenstadt, 6 vols. (2nd edn Leipzig 1877), iv 17. Heine in Die Romantische Schule, 1836, remarks, 'while I likewise announce these pages as a continuation of Mme de StaeTs De rAllemagne, I must, praising the learning which one can draw from this work, nevertheless recommend a certain care in its use, and label it wholly as a coterie book', 'indem ich diese Blatter gleichsam als eine Fortsetzung des Frau v. Staelschen De rAllemagne ankiindige, muB ich, die Belehrung ruhmend, die man aus diesem Werke schopfen kann, dennoch eine gewisse Vorsicht beim Gebrauche desselben anempfehlen und es durchaus als Koteriebuch bezeichnen'; Heinrich Heine, Werke und Briefe, edited by G. Erler, 10 vols. (Berlin 1961-4), v 13-14. 7 Asked 'how he came to define pastern as the knee of a horse', Johnson answered, 'ignorance, Madam, pure ignorance'; James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., edited by R. W. Chapman (Oxford 1953), 211. 8 Napoleon Bonaparte, Correspondance de Napoleon ier, 32 vols. (Paris 1858-70), in 74; 27 May 1797. 9 H. M. Chadwick, The Nationalities of Europe and the Growth of National Ideologies (Cambridge 1945), 141-3, discusses German epithets. Before 1700, 'no collective term for the Teutonic peoples and languages' was current; 'the earliest, at least in this country, was "Northern" [Septentrionalis)\ Coined in 1700, it lasted 'the greater part of a century', up to De VAllemagne. 1 o The Batavian Republic lasted from 1795 to 1806, when Napoleon made Louis King of Holland: the Helvetic Republic, proclaimed in 1798, dissolved after Napoleon's Act of Mediation in 1803. Roland Mortier, Clartes et ombres du siecle des lumieres (Geneva 1969), 390, comments that 'elle cite a deux reprises [. . .] les travaux de Mallet, en termes qui donnent a penser qu'elle tenait de lui toutes ses notions "sur la litterature runique, sur les poesies et les antiquites du Nord"'. But she does not claim originality. There is room for a monograph on these ideas of North and South in the eighteenth century. Laissez-faire economics emerged in the later eighteenth century.

Notes to pages 18-21

11

12

13

14

227

Adam Smith attacks the balance of trade in 1776: 'Nothing [. . .] can be more absurd than this whole doctrine'; An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, iv/iii part 2. Napoleon's Continental System followed strict mercantilist principles: see CMH 361-3. Kohler, Stael et la Suisse, 62, 80, 528, 539; Lettres inedites de Mme de Stael a Henri Meister, edited by Paul Usteri and E. Ritter (Paris i9°3).213On 31 January 1793, Danton found a rationale for Belgium's annexation. He decreed that French borders were marked out by nature, thereby launching natural boundaries on a prosperous and bloody career: '[Les] limites [de la Republique] sont marquees par la nature. Nous les atteindrons toutes des quatre points de l'horizon; du cote du Rhin, du cote de l'Ocean, du cote des Alpes'; in Archives parlementaires de 1797 a i860 (Paris 1879-1985), premiere serie (1785 a 1799), 95 vols., LVIII (Paris 1900), 102. NCMH 712 remarks that French historians long thought this a very old idea, but dates it - amazingly - only from the Rhinelander J. G. Forster on 15 November 1792. Napoleon attributed his annexation to smuggling on Heligoland. 'None of the Emperor's acts caused more alarm [. . .] the Oldenburg affair [. . .] paved the way for the war of 1812'; CMH 374-5. Stael talks of German soil in 1800 - 'un detachement de la vie, que font naitre, et l'aprete du sol, et la tristesse du cieF (DL 182) and in 181 o: 'la diversite du sol et du climat produit dans la meme langue des manieres de prononcer tres differentes' (11 98/16). She mentions Tinfluence des climats' in 1788 (LR 76). 'Vorgestern ward auf meinem Zimmer [. . .] gefragt, ob wohl Deutschland und deutsche Sprache ganz verschwinden wiirden? Nein, das glaube ich nicht, sagte [Goethe], die Deutschen wiirden wie die Juden sich iiberall unterdriicken lassen, aber unvertilgbar sein, wie diese, und wenn sie kein Vaterland mehr haben, erst recht zusammenhalten'; Christine Reinhard to her mother, 30 May 1807, in Goethe uber die Deutschen, edited by H.-J. Weitz (Frankfurt 1978), section 50. Lettres inedites de Napoleon Ier (An VIII - 1815), edited by Leon Lecestre (2nd edn, 2 vols. Paris 1897), n 33? Lettres Stael-Meister, 221.

15 On French debates, see F. Meinecke, Die Entstehung des Historismus (Munich 1936), 180-1. 16 Charles Webster, The Congress of Vienna 1814-1815 (London 1919), 147-53, assesses German nationalism around 1813, saying the princes had no intention 'of sharing their sovereignty with their

228

17

18

19 20 21 22

23

24

Notes to pages 21-8

peoples [. . .] [The small body of] persons who desired a strong Germany, endowed with institutions capable of giving expression to ideas of self-government, had no influence among the diplomatists.' Germany's rulers intended to remain litres et independants, as they had under the Reich. Meinecke, Historismus, 396, notes Herder's growing laments 'that the drive for power of great warlike peoples suppresses small nationalities', notably the Slavs: 'daB der Machttrieb groBer kriegerischer Volker die kleinen Nationality ten unterdriicke.' Page 401 offers Herder, not Leibniz, as a source for ideas of unity in diversity. Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltturgerlicher Atsicht (1784), in Immanuel Kant, Was ist Aufkldrung? Aufsdtze zur Geschichte und Philosophies edited by J. Zehbe (3rd edn, Gottingen 1985), 47; P. H. Reill, The German Enlightenment and the Rise of Historicism (Berkeley 1975), 65, 38-9. 'Machiavelli [. . .] first said that the disproportion between Germany's natural powers and its political capacities was the result of its defective constitution'; Barraclough, Origins, 364. Albert Sorel, UEurope et la Revolution frangaise, 8 vols. (Paris 1885-1904), 1 270; Barraclough, Origins, 384-6; Bruford has a chapter 'Kleinstaaterei'. The Lusatian Wends are on the Spree; Chadwick, Nationalities, 25. Joseph II is in Sorel, Europe, 1 121. Bruford, Social Background, 174. Bruford, Social Background, 110; Appendix 11 (cities). Capital references: / 145/16; 179/19; 200/12; 213/4; 240/8. On raison d'etat, see F. Meinecke, Die Idee der Staatsrdson in der neueren Geschichte (Berlin 1924). 'Da sitzt einer in Wien, ein anderer in Berlin, ein anderer in Konigsberg [. . .] denken Sie sich eine Stadt wie Paris, wo die vorziiglichsten Kopfe eines groBen Reiches auf einem einzigen Fleck beisammen sind'; 3 May 1827, m J- P- Eckermann, Gesprdche mit Goethe in den letzten Jahren seines Let ens, edited by R. Otto (Berlin 1982), 540. Lessing's Hamturgische Dramaturgie follows Hamburg's German repertory theatre, which lasted 1767-9; Bruford, Social Background, 84-5, has details on French and Italian troupes in German courts. StaeTs talk of capitals hides another detail: contrast Vienna, one writer to 800 inhabitants, and Berlin, one to 675, with Leipzig, one to 170, and Gottingen, one to 100 (Bruford, 290). 'Die Unwissenheit ist beinahe das Kennzeichen einer vorneh-

Notes to pages 28-34

229

men Geburt'; Bruford, Social Background, 64 note 2; also 71-4, 60, 5425 Bruford, Social Background, 19, 35 (Wurttemberg, Weimar), 104-275 (Lessing); Hans Kohn, The Idea of Nationalism (New York 1945), 377 (Schlozer). 26 Bruford, Social Background, 106; Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, 4 278, Dec. 1818. 27 CMH 369 notes Britain's financial crisis in 1810; the disastrous Walcheren expedition, Austria's defeat, Napoleon's Hapsburg marriage, Wellesley's problems in Spain, 'and finally the annexation of Holland, served to produce a general feeling of despondency'. In January 1810, the French captured Andalusia, which 'appeared the crowning disaster of the whole war' (p. 456). A lull preceded the ill-fated French invasion of Portugal on 15 September. StaeTs final revisions, 385-414 of the Censor's proof in the BN, are dated 20 September 1810. Alexander I in December 1810 'virtually allowed the entry of colonial goods into Russia' (p. 379); during 1811, British goods began to arrive. The year 181 o stands as the high-water mark of Napoleonic power. One expression of proto-Romantic taste for decayed grandeur was a vogue for building artificial ruins. It is interesting to contrast Winckelmann's work on ideal Greek art with Piranesi's two collections of Antichita romane (1748-56), which detail vegetable growth amid ruined architecture. In France, Volney's Les Ruines ou meditations sur les revolutions des empires w a s after 1 7 9 1 a runaway success. 28 Benjamin Constant, Melanges de litterature et de politique (Paris 1829), 440. 29 Compare Rahel Levin's notes on 12 March 1804, the day after her long tete a tete with Stael in Berlin: 'Comme ces personnes voyagent, ces gens riches, ces femmes de lettres qui ne savent parler que francais [. . .] elle vous fait caracoler, comme un escadron, ses trois idees nouvelles [. . .] Est-ce ainsi qu'on touche a de pareilles choses et ne faut-il pas, pour les saisir, des outils intellectuels autrement neufs?'; in the comte d'Haussonville's Madame de Stael et VAllemagne (Paris 1928), 176-7. 'DaB diese Beobachterin der Zeit und ihrer Probleme an den Fragen der sozialen Bedingungen Deutschlands nahezu blind und unberuhrt voriibergegangen ist [. . .] Heines Motto war in erster Linie Freiheit, Gleichheit und Bruderlichkeit [. . .] dessen Anwendung sie in Deutschland weder suchte noch fand'; Ruth Jacobi, 'Heines Romantische Schule. Eine Antwort auf Mme de Staels De VAllemagne\ Heine-Jahrbuch 19 (1980), 164-7.

230

Notes to pages 33-8

30 Germania VII/I notes that the Germans elect their kings. Book XXVIII of the Esprit des Lois, devoted to French law's ancient sources, begins by discussing the Germans: 'les Francs [. . .] avaient fait un pas en arriere, et porte leur domination dans les forets de leurs peres'; Esprit, 11 206. H.-G. de Mirabeau, Sur Moses Mendelssohn, sur la reformepolitique desjuifs (London 1787), 13. 'Was soil aus [Deutschland] werden, wenn man das Beteutende der einzelnen Stamme ausgleichen und neutralisieren will? [...] Lassen wir also gesondert, was die Natur gesondert hat'; Goethe uber die Deutschen, 174. 31 Representation: 'On small matters they consult the chiefs, on large matters, everyone'; independence: 'the peoples of Germany never live in cities, and will not have their houses set close together'; Germania X I / I , XVI/I. Bruford, Social Background, 7-9. 32 'The pacts and covenants, by which the parts of this body politic were at first [...] united, resemble that fiat, or the let us make man, pronounced by God in the creation'; Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan: Or the Matter, Forme and Power of a Commonwealth, edited by M. Oakeshott (1651; Oxford 1946), 5. W. Goez, Translatio imperii (Tubingen 1958), 392, comments that 'in the 16th and 17th centuries the idea of this Translatio imperii a populo ad principem ruled almost alone [...] That modern democracy rests upon it is well-known', 'In dem 16. und 17. Jahrhundert ist die Vorstellung dieser Translatio imperii a populo ad principem fast allein herrschend [...] DaB auf ihr die moderne Demokratie beruht, ist allbekannt.' CGi.i, 121 and n.ii, 387; iv.i, 269. StaeTs son Auguste published his own Lettres sur VAngleterre in 1825. 33 Medieval writers offer lists of successive world empires: see J. Le Goff, La Civilisation de VOccident medieval (Paris 1972), 218. This idea matches Jerome's gloss of Daniel 4, 14: see Goez, Translatio, 7Frederick II, (Euvres, edited by J.-D.-E. Preuss, 30 vols. (Berlin 1846-56), XXIII 569.

34 Stael once contradicts the claim she made to Villers: 'La decadence des empires n'est pas plus dans l'ordre naturel, que celle des lettres et des lumieres [...] Cette succession de peuples detrones n'est point une veritable fatalite' (DL 127-8). Yet her first phrase is no more than Goez's remark that 'leadership [...] remains constant'; her second attacks translatio imperii alone. The remarks show that Stael knew these terms, but that they should be used with caution. 'DaB die Vorherrschaft nicht mit einem Volke untergehend

Notes to pages 39-46

35 36

37

38

39

40

41

2 31

und mit einem anderen Reiche neu erstehend gedacht wird, sondern daB sie bestehen bleibt und nur den Trager wechselt'; Goez, Translation 8. 'Successor Petri habet potestatem transferendi imperium a Germanis in alios quoscumque, si vellet'; Goez, Translation 180. On this emotional force, compare Sigmund Freud, Die Traumdeutung (Vienna 1900, 8th edn 1930), 327, on antipathetic people: 'Their punishment matches then generally not their misdemeanour, but their misdemeanour increased by the as yet effectless malevolence directed at them [...] In cases such as this the affect is justified in its quality, but not in its amount'; 'Ihre Bestrafung entspricht dann gewohnlich nicht ihrem Verschulden, sondern dem Verschulden vermehrt um das bisher effektlose Ubelwollen, das sich gegen sie richtet [...] In solchen Fallen ist der Affekt seiner Qualitat nach zwar berechtigt, aber nicht sein AusmaB.' Mirabeau, Mendelssohn, 12-13. 'Cramer z.E. ist auBer sich, daB er schon im Mutterleibe geschmacklos gewesen seyn soil [...] [Oelsner hat] Constant gesagt: daB es interessant ware, eine Parallele zwischen dem Pere Bouhours und der Frau von Stael zu ziehen, um zu sehen, daB man doch seit 100 Jahren denselben Ideen treu geblieben ware', 'daB diese Stelle bei einer 2ten Edition wegbleiben wird'; Wilhelm von Humboldt, Briefe an Karl Gustav von Brinkmann, edited by A. Leitzmann (Leipzig 1939), 126. On Plato's 'spirit', 90|xo-ei5f|<;, compare Julia Annas, An Introduction to Plato's Republic (Oxford 1981), 126: 'it is called "the part that loves honour and winning" (<|)IA6VIKOV, <()I^6TI^OV).' See also Pierre-Henri Simon's useful chapter, 'Le heros philosophe. Decadence et resistance du heros militaire', in Le Domaine heroique desLettresfrangaisesxe-xixesiecles (Paris 1963), and Simone Balaye, 'Le Genie et la gloire dans l'ceuvre de Mme de Stael', in RLMC (Sept.-Dec. 1967), 202-14. Napoleon, Correspondance, xxin 44-5. Decade philosophique, 30 brumaire An IX, 336; Lettre a M. de Fontanes (1801), in Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand, Essai sur les revolutions - Genie du christianisme, edited by M. Regard (Paris 1978), 1277; Mortier, Claries, 125. 'II n'est point d'assemblage plus bizarre que 1'aspect guerrier de l'Allemagne [...] et le genre de vie casanier qu'on y mene' (1 52/6). Balaye, Lumieres et liberte, 161. Thus, enthousiasme: 'Celui qui a [...] persuade par l'enthousiasme, s'est servi des qualites et des defauts memes de cet age' (LR iv);

232

Notes to pages 46-50

imagination, simplicity silence: ' C etait un homme fait pour vivre dans la retraite [...] II vivait dans sa pensee' (LR 99-100); analyse: 'Ne le voit-on pas, des son enfance, dans une sorte d'egarement de meditation?' (LR 105); sincerite: 'Rousseau raconte les fautes de tout genre qu'il a commises' (LR 106); loyaute, bonte: 'II etait ne bon, sensible et confiant' (LR i n ) ; independance, solitude: 'jamais homme n'a tant aime la solitude [...] Les hommes sont peut-etre plus faits pour la solitude qu'ils ne pensent' (LR 114-15); melanco-

lie: 'II etait bien triste, disent-ils, mais il etait bien bon' (LR 125). Travail and respect do not appear. On solitude and silence, compare the Imitatio Christi, i/xx: 'De amore solitudinis et silenti'. 42 Reill, Historicism, 90-1. This is not the whole truth; Cain not Abel founded the first city, and Biblical precedent encouraged thinkers to misread Hobbes. Reill stresses this process of secularisation of Christian myth. Men outside the social contract open two of Rousseau's works, the Contrat social (1762) - 'L'homme est ne libre, et partout il est dans les fers' - and the Reveries du promeneur solitaire (1782): 'Me voici done seul sur la terre.' Compare Chateaubriand, Lettre: Touvrage m'est parvenu dans ma solitude [...] On m'a dit, dans ma retraite, que cette maniere reussissait [...] cette langue des forets qui m'est permise en ma qualite de Sauvage' (1265-9, 1279). 43 StaeTs talk of Vaccueil bienveillant des anciennes dynasties shows another effect to her pastoral Germany. Her book is an answer to the question, 'How did you spend your exile?.' Thus, her review of the fete d'Interlaken: 'Pour aller a la fete, il fallait s'embarquer sur l'un de ces lacs dans lesquels les beautes de la nature se reflechissent' (1 284/3). Stael in exile enjoyed herself. 'Ihr Buch De VAllemagne gleicht in dieser Hinsicht der Germania des Tacitus, der vielleicht ebenfalls, durch seine Apologie der Deutschen, eine indirekte Satire gegen seine Landsleute schreiben wollte'; Heine, Romantische Schule, 14. 44 The 1816 census counted 24.8 million Germans; Bruford, Social Background, 157-9. Bruford guesses at 20 million Germans in 1800, with 24 million French. 45 'Die deutsche Muse', 16 - 'Und in eigner Fiille schwellend', and Wilhelm Tell, iv/3, 2783 - 'Den kecken Geist der Freiheit will ich beugen'; in J. C. F. Schiller, Sdmtliche Werke, 5 vols. (4th edn Munich 1965-7), 1 214, 11 i o n . 46 How did outcasts become popular figures? Voltaire attacked many abuses, but his dislike for Rousseau is an index of his basic affinity with the society Rousseau attacks. Few writers before Rousseau glorify opposition for its own sake: contrast such later

Notes to pages 30-2

233

Sturm und Drang successes as Goethe's Werther and Schiller's Die Rduber. After 1812, Byron encouraged society's taste for what I call bad guy chic. Albertine Necker de Saussure, Notice sur le caractere et les ecrits de Madame de Stael, 1 cclxxxi, in Mme de Stael, (Euvres completes; CG rv.ii, 386, 27 June 1801. 47 'Un de mes plus grands delices etoit surtout de laisser toujours mes livres bien encaisses [...] J'entrepris de faire la Florapetrinsularis et de decrire toutes les plantes de PIsle'; Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Les Reveries du promeneur solitaire, in CEuvres completes, 4 vols., edited by

B. Gagnebin and M. Raymond (Paris 1959-69), 1 1042-3. 'Die Griechen lebten, wie wir es noch heutzutage an andern siidlichen Volkern sehen, weit mehr in freyer Luft als wir und verrichteten daher manches auf offenen Platzen, was bey uns in den Hausern zu geschehen pflegt'; A. W. Schlegel, Ueber die dramatische Kunst und Litteratur, 3 vols. (2nd edn Heidelberg 1817), 180.

48 Schiller's terms are not precisely StaeTs, despite her attribution: 'As the naive poet [...] restricts himself to imitation of reality, so he can have only a single relation with his object'; the sentimental poet 'reflects on the impression which objects make upon him, and only on that reflection is the emotion grounded, into which he himself is carried and carries us', 'Da der naive Dichter [...] sich bloB auf Nachahmung der Wirklichkeit beschrankt, so kann er zu seinem Gegenstand auch nur ein einziges Verhaltnis haben [...] [der sentimentalische Dichter] reflektiert iiber den Eindruck, den die Gegenstande auf ihn machen, und nur aufjene Reflexion ist die Running gegriindet, in die er selbst versetzt wird und uns versetzt' (NSD 720). 'We do not experience his state immediately and at first hand, but [...] what he as a spectator of himself has thought about it', 'erfahren wir nicht seinen Zustand unmittelbar und aus der ersten Hand, sondern [...] was er als Zuschauer seiner selbst dariiber gedacht hat' (NSD 732). Suard, Journal etranger, January 1761, 5. 49 Twice in 1810, Stael's terms are pejorative: 'On est orgueilleux, irritable [...] quand un peu d'esprit vient se meler a la mediocrite du caractere' (11 58/16); 'Les uns vegetent [...], les autres [...] s'irritent a la maniere des animaux' (iv 252/15). Among countless discussions of Romantic pathology, see Mario Praz, La came, la morte e il diavolo nella letteratura romantica (Torino 1930 ), and Alethea Hayter, Opium and the Romantic Imagination (London 1968). 'Unser Gefuhl fur die Natur gleicht der Empfindung des

234

Notes to pages 55-9

Kranken fur die Gesundheit' (JVSD 711); 'Das Klassische nenne ich das Gesunde und das Romantische das Kranke' (2 April 1829, in Eckermann, Gesprdche, 286). 2 ROMANTIC LITERATURE AND POLITICS

1 Balaye, Lumieres et liberty 174, notes the merits of StaeTs method: 'alla-t-elle jusqu'au bout des audaces qu'elle admirait? L'etude de ses traductions pourrait fournir des elements de reponse.' See also Rodrigue Villeneuve, 'Fonctions du "resume dramatique" dans la critique du groupe de Coppet', in Le Groupe de Coppet - Actes et documents du deuxieme Colloque de Coppet, 10-13 juillet 1974 (Geneva

and Paris 1977). 'Frau von Stael hat ihre Selbstandigkeit gewahrt, wo sie Dichtung und Dichter zu beurteilen hatte. In fast alien Fragen der Kultur, der Wissenschaft, der Religion, der bildenden Kunst ist sie ins romantische Lager iibergegangen. Wenn sie Ansichten vortragt, die mit dem Romantischen nicht stimmen, so stellen sie sich meist als Errungenschaften alterer Zeit dar, als Ergebnisse ihrer Verbindung mit Villers'; Oscar Walzel, 'Frau von Staels Buch De VAllemagne und Wilhelm Schlegel', in Forschungen zur neueren Litteraturgeschichte, Festgabe fur Richard Heinzel

(Weimar

1898 ), 332-3. Andre Monchoux, 'Mme de Stael interprete de Kant', in RHLF 66 (1966), 81; C. Pichois, UImage de Jean-Paul Richter dans les lettres frangaises (Paris 1963), 256-9, 264-7. 2 1807 lecture in Kritische Friedrich-Schlegel Ausgabe, edited by E.

Behler, assisted by J. J. Anstett and H. Eichner, 35 vols. (Munich 1967- ), XIII 387-426; see Ernst Behler, 'Kant vu par le groupe de Coppet: la formation de l'image staelienne de Kant', in Le Groupe de Coppet - Actes et documents du deuxieme Colloque de Coppet, 10-13

juillet 1974 (Geneva and Paris 1977), 151-2. 'Das gewisse Buch kann ich nicht ohne einigen Unwillen durchblattern. Denn die absichtliche Art mit der man mich besonders in den Hintergrund geschoben, hatte ich doch nicht erwartet, ich hatte ihr nicht diesen Grad von Undankbarkeit zugetraut'; Friedrich Schlegels Briefe an seinen Bruder August Wilhelm^

edited by O. Walzel (Berlin 1890), 539. 3 The two versions in J. C. F. Schiller, Werke und Briefe, 12 vols. (Frankfurt-am-Main 1988- ), 11, edited by Gerhard Kluge, 11-160, 183-292.

4 Details on Robert's premiere, and on Les Voleurs, in Edmond Eggli, Schiller en France, 2 vols. (Paris 1927), 1 5; 69-71; 146. 5 'Je n'hesite pas a voir, dans la preface trop peu remarquee de son

Motes to pages 6o-y

6

7

8

9

235

drame Wallstein, une reussite d'une originalite plus profonde que les celebres manifestes ulterieurs tels que le Racine et Shakespeare de Stendhal, ou la Preface de CromweW; Kurt Wais, 'Le Probleme de l'unite du 'Groupe de Coppet', in Mme de Stael et VEurope: Colloque de Coppet (Paris 1970), 346. Danielle Johnson-Cousin, 'Les Idees dramatiques du Groupe de Coppet', in Le Groupe de Coppet - Actes et documents du deuxieme Colloque de Coppet, 10-13 juillet igj4 (Geneva and Paris 1977), 241, notes a 'nombre etonnant' of parallels. Journal des Debats, 25 juillet 1814, 2-3; on Creuze de Lesser. 'Goethe a su particulierement representer les moeurs et les coutumes allemandes' (in 26A). For Gbtz dates, see C. A. H. Burckhardt, Das Repertoire des Weimarischen Hoftheaters unter Goethes Leitung ijgi-1817 (Hamburg and Leipzig 1891), 53. The stage version is in J. W. von Goethe, Sdmtliche Werke, 44 vols. (Munich 1909- ), xv 241-343. Stael dates in Balaye, Lumieres et liberty 250-1. Plays mentioned in De VAllemagne and performed in Weimar during StaeTs visit: 1803, 14 December, Don Ranudo de Colibrados; 19 December, Wallensteins Lager, 21 December, Die naturliche Tochter; 23 December, Die Jungfrau von Orleans', 28 December, Nathan der Weise; 31 December, Die Saal-Nixe, 11. Teil; 1804, 2 January, Maria Stuart; 4 January, Hugo Grotius; 9 January, Die Braut von Messina; 21 January, Clavigo; 1 February, Die SaalNixe, 1. Teil; 15 February, Die Hussiten vor Naumburg; 27 February, Armut und Edelsinn (Burckhardt, Repertoire, 50). The CG v.i, 173, dates a letter to Schiller - 'J'ai soif de vous dire tout ce que j'ai pense hier pendant la piece' - to 29 December 1803. The alternative, 3 January 1804, seems likely. Jeanne d'Arc is in StaeTs list of 'spectacles que j'ai vus' (JA 74). 'Schwert und Fahne entsinken ihr [...] La Hire und Dunois lassen die Schwerter fallen und eilen ihn zu umarmen'; Die Jungfrau von Orleans, 11/10, in Schiller, Sdmtliche Werke, 11. Werner's play was performed at Coppet on 13 October 1809, to an audience of twenty, by himself, Schlegel, and Frdulein von Zeuner; Kohler, Stael et la Suisse, 489, and Norman King, 'Coppet en 1809-1810', in Cahiers staeliens 24 (1978), 40-2. Lettres de Madame de Stael a Madame Recamier, edited by E. Beau de Lomenie (Paris 1952), 151. 'Soil ich dir versichern, daB ich erst spat, erst ganz zuletzt des Vaters Absichten erfuhr, daB ich als ein gezwungnes, ein lebloses Werkzeug seines Willens handelte'; 'so bist du mit dem Einen FuB im Grab! und so mit beiden! [...] Und mir bleibt keine Wahl'; Egmont, pp.544, 521, in J. W. von Goethe, Sdmtliche Werke [...], 40 vols. (Frankfurt-am-Main 1987- ), 1.5.

236

Notes to pages 67—73

10 'Es wiirkt vielleicht ein wiederholtes Gesprach [...] was heut unmoglich scheint. Mit dieser Hoffnung entfern ich mich' (Egmont, p.529); 'Egmont: 'Wenn du die Ubermacht verabscheust, die mich gefesselt halt; so rette mich!' [...] Ferdinand: 'Du vermehrst mit jedem Worte meine Verzweiflung. Hier ist kein Ausweg' [...] Egmont (mit dem Fufie stampfend): 'Keine Rettung!' (Egmont, pp.546-7). 11 'Und sind's im Uebrigen gar wohl zufrieden, /Dafern man uns unangetastet laBt, /Den Luther, wenn's beliebig, zu verbrennen'; 'Dumm war's! - es thut mir leid! - Doch halten muB ich's! - /Und also werde Luther denn verbrannt'; Martin Luther, oder: Die Weihe der Kraft, 146-50, in £acharias Werners ausgewdhlte Schriften, edited by his friends, 12 vols. (Grimma 1840-1), m. 12 Details on Faust in Ginette Picat-Guinoiseau, Une eeuvre meconnue de Charles Nodier: Faust imite de Goethe (Brive 1977), 51-3. Stapfer and Sainte-Aulaire published French versions in 1823, Theaulon in October 1827; NervaPs Faust, Goethe's favourite, appeared that December, though dated 1828. Albert Sorel, Mme de Stael (Paris 1893), 173. 13 A monograph on De VAllemagne recently appeared: Georges Solovieff, UAllemagne et Madame de Stael (Paris 1990). Constant's Wallenstein adaptation, begun at Coppet in September 1807, narrowly missed performance there that November; Kohler, Stael et la Suisse, 475. He completed it at Coppet a year later, as Stael worked on De VAllemagne. Walzel, 'De VAllemagne und SchlegeP, 293. Jean Gibelin, UEsthetique de Schelling et VAllemagne de Mme de Stael (Paris 1934), 79. Albert Fuchs, 'Goethe und sein Werk in Mme de Staels Deutschlandbuch', in Stoffe, Formen, Strukturen, Studien zur deutschen Literatur. Festschrift fur H. H. Borcherdt (Munich 1962), 215-17. Enea Balmas, Immagini di Faust nel Romanticismo franeese (Fasano 14 Stael's German library, now in Broglie, contains 'Goethe's Werke, 13 vols., Tubingen 1806': thus, the Comtesse de Pange, Auguste-Guillaume Schlegel et Madame de Stael d'apres des documents

inedits (Paris 1938), 576. This is evidently the Cotta edition, 1806-10, containing Fragment and Faust I alike. See also DA m 105, note. J. W. von Goethe, Faust, edited by E. Trunz (Munich 1985). This contains the Urfaust. Fragment text in Goethe's 1909 Sdmtliche Werke, vi 141-219. Benjamin Constant, (Euvres, edited by Alfred Roulin (Paris 1957), 233; Mme de Stael et Maurice O'Donnell, 1805-1817; d'apres des lettres inedites, edited by Jean Mistier (Paris 1926), 163.

Notes to pages 75-100

237

15 Ferdinand Baldensperger notes this new hero, and his subsequent influence, in Goethe en France (2nd edn Paris 1920), 124. Max Milner, Le Diable dans la litterature frangaise de Cazotte a Baudelaire,

1772-1861 (Paris i960), follows this. 16 Niebuhr did not like Schlegel. 'Selbst die groBen Fehlgriffe und versehen bei einzelnen Notizen beweisen, daB das Buch nichts weniger als Schlegeln unter ihrem Namen angehort. Er kann es nicht einmal vor dem Druck durchgesehen haben'; Barthold G. Niebuhr, Lebensnachrichten uber Barthold Georg Niebuhr [ . . . ] , 3 vols.

(Hamburg 1838-9), 1 579. Goethe in Walzel, 'De VAllemagne und Schlegel', 283. 17 Nine of StaeTs plays appear in her CEuvres completes, 18 vols. (Paris 1820-1), edited by Auguste de Stael. On her acting, see Martine de Rougemont, Tour un repertoire des roles et des representations de Mme de Stael', in Cahiers staeliens 19, 79—92. Meister in Lettres Stael-Meister, 190. 18 Most modern work on De VAllemagne is literary or philosophical. I know just one political reading since 1900: Simone Balaye, 'Pour une lecture politique de De VAllemagne de Madame de Stael', in Stendhal: Vecrivain, la societe, le pouvoir. Colloque du bicentenaire (Gre-

noble 1984), which mentions several issues here discussed. 19 Bruford, Social Background, 20-1. 20 These manuscripts are being edited by Simone Balaye, who decoded this passage. 21 'On n'a pas remarque ce portrait de Charles Quint'; Balaye, Lumieres et liberte, 192. The parallel with Napoleon is indeed transparent, but unlike the Attila portrait, Stael here adds nothing to her source. See the OCFL, 'Universite imperiale'; it was founded in March 1808. On Auguste de StaeTs being refused admittance, see his CEuvres diverses (Paris 1829), l x v 22 A great admirer of Frederick, Napoleon spent two days at Potsdam in 1806 visiting his tomb; CMH 281. The Censors' report is in Simone Balaye, 'Mme de Stael et le gouvernement imperial en 1810, le dossier de la suppression de De VAllemagne', in Cahiers staeliens 19 (Dec. 1974 ), 27-30. 23 On the fete d'Interlaken, see Kohler, Stael et la Suisse, 552-61. 24 Thus, Napoleon's two sisters, Elisa, Princess of Lucca, and Caroline, Queen of Naples; and his brothers Joseph, King of Spain, Louis, King of Holland, and Jerome, King of Westphalia. His estranged brother Lucien's honours were, however, papal. 25 Mme de Chastenay, Memoires de Mme de Chastenay, edited by A. Roserot, 2 vols. (Paris 1896), 11 445. 26 Georges Poulet, La Conscience critique (Paris 1971), 16.

238

Notes to pages 101-y

27 Norman King, 'Mme de Stael et la chute de Napoleon', in Mme de Stael et VEurope: Colloque de Coppet (Paris 1970), 64, comments that Stael reached St Petersburg on 13 August 1812, which Alexander left for Abo on the 20th: this was not her doing. Auguste de Stael, (Euvres diverses, 1 xxxiii-iv; Rene Savary, Me'moires du due de Rovigo (M. Savary), 8 vols. in 4 (Paris et se trouve a Londres (London) 1828 ), vi 91-5. 28 Balaye, Lumieres et liberte, 34. 29 L A . Henning, UAllemagne de Mme de Stael, 28. 30 The Rhine also meant the falls of Schaffhausen by the Swiss border, which Stael saw often after 1793; see CG n.ii, 450-2. 31 Kohler, Stael et la Suisse, 680-1, argues that Stael was Genevan, Swedish and Swiss in succession, but never French. 32 'Les ecrivains qui, pour exprimer ce qu'ils croient bon et vrai, bravent ces jugements connus d'avance, ont choisi leur public; ils s'adressent a la France silencieuse mais eclairee, a l'avenir plutot qu'au present' (Delphine, 90). Compare Thomas a Kempis, De Imitatione Christi libri iv (London 1933), i.xvii, 27: 'consider yourself as an exile and pilgrim upon the earth', 'teneas te tamquam exulem peregrinum super terram'. The Imitatio Christi became very popular in Coppet around 1808. 33 Raymond Picard, La Carriere de Jean Racine (Paris 1956), 276-8, evaluates such contemporary readings of Racine: Coppet saw a famous production of Andromaque where Stael played Hermione, and Constant - who was leaving her - played Pyrrhus. Thus, Constant's Journal, 9 August 1807: 'Repetition &'Andromaque. J'ai eu quelque plaisir de dire les vers de Pyrrhus a Hermione. Mais tout cela n'arrange pas ma vie'; Constant, (Euvres, 620. J. Christopher Herold, Mistress to an Age: A Life of Madame de Stael (Indianapolis 1958), 252-3, remarks on Constant's final offer of marriage to Stael a few days later. Rosalie de Constant notes that Benjamin offered Stael 'ou un prompt mariage ou une rupture a 1'amiable'; Kohler, Stael et la Suisse, 342. 34 Julien Sorel, hero of Le Rouge et le Noir, is a fanatical admirer of Napoleon: 'Depuis bien des annees, Julien ne passait peut-etre pas une heure de sa vie sans se dire que Bonaparte, lieutenant obscur et sans fortune, s'etait fait le maitre du monde avec son epee'; Stendhal, Romans et nouvelles edited by H. Martineau, 2 vols. (Paris 1952), 1 239. King, 'Stael et Napoleon', 71: letters to Brinkman and to the Duchess Louise of Saxe-Weimar, December 1812 - February 1813.

Notes to pages 110-13

239

3 PHILOSOPHY AND ETHICS IN NAPOLEONIC EUROPE

1 Charles de Villers, La Philosophie de Kant, ou Principes fondamentaux de la philosophie transcendantale (Metz 1801); Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Litteraria, 1817, edited by James Engell and W. J. Bate, 2 vols. (Princeton 1983). Both unread books have since received considerable attention from literary historians. Carlo Pellegrini, Les Idees litteraires de Mme de Stael et le romantisme frangais (Ferrara 1929), 5; Henning, UAllemagne de Mme de Stael, 78; Mercure de France, June 1814, 437; CG iv.ii, 539, 1 August 1802. 2 Coleridge, Biographia 11 161-2. 3 Robert de Luppe, Les Idees litteraires de Madame de Stael et Vheritage des lumieres (iygj-1800) (Paris 1969), 70, comments that 'tout s'exacerbe, deux ans plus tard, avec la mort de Necker', adding, 'tant de lettres en temoignent'. He stresses StaePs letters to Gautier de Tournes, but they date from 1807-8. 4 Chateaubriand, Lettre au citoyen Fontanes, 1271; Mortier, Claries et ombres, 138-40. 5 'On compte dans Phistoire plus de dix siecles, pendant lesquels Pon croit assez generalement que Pesprit humain a retrograde [...] je crois, au contraire, que des pas immenses ont ete faits dans le cours de ces dix siecles' (DL 130). Mortier, Clartes et ombres, 128, remarks that 'en effet, Mme de Stael n'est nullement a l'origine de ce revirement', citing Turgot's Discours sur les avantages que I'etablissement du christianisme a procures au genre humain (1750). Her book sold rather better than that essay. 6 'Lettres inedites de Mme de Stael a Francois Gautier de Tournes', edited by L. Gautier, in Cahiers staeliens, 3 (1965), 13; 28 April 1808. On Gautier de Tournes, see Auguste Viatte, Les Sources occultes du romantisme: Illuminisme - Theosophie iyyo-1820, 2 vols. (Paris 1928)511 111-12. 7 CGiv.ii, 410, to Mme Pastoret, 17 September 1801. 8 Compare Schiller: 'Our culture shall lead us back to nature, along the path of reason and freedom', 'unsere Kultur soil uns, auf dem Wege der Vernunft und der Freiheit, zur Natur zuriickfiihren'; NSD 695. See Reill, Historicism. 'Es sind Nachhalle der alten unmenschlichen Natur, aber auch weckende Stimmen der hohern Natur, des himmlischen Gewissens in uns'; Novalis, Werke, edited by G. Schulz (2nd edn Munich 1981), 273/10; 'Seine leidenschaftliche Empfindlichkeit ist Schuld, dafi er die Menschheit [...] lieber zu der geistlosen Einformigkeit des ersten Standes zuruckgefuhrt, als jenen Streit in der geistreichen Harmonie einer vollig durchgefuhrten Bildung

240

Notes to pages 116-20

geendigt sehen'; NSD 731, translation p.299. CG v.i, 179, to Hochet, 4 January 1804. 9 'Sie hat sich eine unglaubliche Miihe gegeben, den Begriff von uns Deutschen aufzufassen, und sie verdient deshalb um so mehr Lob, als man wohl sieht, daB sie den Stoff der Unterhaltung mit vorziiglichen Mannern durchgesprochen, Ansicht und Urtheil hingegen sich selbst zu danken hat'; Goethes Briefwechsel mit Heinrich Meyer, 4 vols. (Weimar 1917-32), 11 337-8, 7 March 1814. Ernst Behler, 'La Doctrine de Coppet d'une perfectibilite infinie et la Revolution francaise', in Le Groupe de Coppet et la Revolution frangaise — Actes du quatrieme Colloque de Coppet, 20—3 juillet 1988 (Lausanne and Paris 1988), 255. 10 Lessing's Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts (1777), sections 8 5 a n d 91, talks of 'the time of perfection, when man [...] will do the right because it is right'; 'die Zeit der Vollendung, da der Mensch [...] das Gute tun wird, weil es das Gute ist.' Compare Kant's Idee

zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte [...] (1784), Satz 8: 'The history of

11

12

13 14

mankind could be viewed on the whole as the realization of a hidden plan of nature in order to bring about an internally [...] perfect constitution; since this is the only state in which nature can develop all faculties of mankind'; 'Man kann die Geschichte der Menschengattung im groBen als die Vollziehung eines verborgenen Plans der Natur ansehen, um eine innerlich- [...] vollkommene Staatsverfassung zu Stande zu bringen, als den einzigen Zustand, in welchem sie alle ihre Anlagen in der Menschheit vdllig entwickeln kann.' A.-L.-C. Destutt de Tracy, Elements d'Ideologie, edited by H. Gouhier, 2 vols. (1801-5; Paris 1970), 1 xvii; CG v.i, 98 and 152, to Hochet and to Necker. Frederic Ancillon, Essai sur Videe et le sentiment de Vinfini, iv 31-2, in his Essais de philosophies 4 vols. (Paris 1832). Two articles assert StaeTs debt to Ancillon: J. Billion, 'Mme de Stael et le mysticisme', in RHLF (Paris 1910), and Jean Gibelin, 'Note sur la religion staelienne', in Revue de litterature comparee (Paris 1954), 191-8. CGiv.ii, 422, 539. Kant lists the unavoidable problems of mere pure reason as God, freedom of the will and immortality. They are the domain of metaphysics - 'a science which is at the very outset dogmatical, that is, it confidently takes upon itself the execution of this task without any previous investigation of the ability or inability of reason for such an undertaking'; 'Metaphysik, deren Verfahren

Notes to pages 122-30

15

16 17 18

19 20 21

22 23

241

im Anfange dogmatisch ist, d.i. ohne vorhergehende Pruning des Vermogens oder Unvermogens der Vernunft' (KRV 55; tr. 28). Boswell, Johnson, 333; Stael in Ernst Behler, 'Madame de Stael a Weimar: 1803-1804', in Studi francesi 37, Jan.-Apr. 1969, 70. 'If, by the term noumenon, we understand a thing so far as it is not an object of our sensuous intuition [...] this is a noumenon in the negative sense of the word. But if we understand by it an object of a non-sensuous intuition [...] this is a noumenon in the positive sense'; 'Wenn wir unter Noumenon ein Ding verstehen, so fern es nicht Objekt unserer sinnlichen Anschauung ist [...] so ist dieses ein Noumenon im negativen Verstande. Verstehen wir aber darunter ein Objekt einer nichtsinnlichen Anschauung [...] das ware das Noumenon in positiver Bedeutung' (KRV 336-7; tr. 186). Either way, the noumenon unlike the phenomenon is defined by its existence outside the self. Rene Wellek, Immanuel Kant in England, 1793-1838 (Princeton 1931), 36; Lettres Stael-Gautier, 8. 'Der stolze Name einer Ontologie [...] muB dem bescheidenen, einer bloBen Analytik des reinen Verstandes, Platz machen' ( A W 3 3 2 ; t r . 185). 'Wie die Gottheit hinter dem Weltgebaude, so steht er hinter seinemWerk' (NSD 713). Logan Pearsall Smith, 'Four Words: Romantic, Originality, Creative, Genius', S. P. E. Tract xvn (Oxford 1924), 20; Kurt Miiller-Vollmer, Poesie und Einbildungskraft: %ur Dichtungstheorie Wilhelm von Humboldts (Stuttgart 1967), 104-5: 'Die Idee von der schopferischen Natur des Ichs [...] wie sie ihr in Humboldts Aufsatz zuerst begegnete, war dazu bestimmt, eine bedeutende Rolle in ihrem Werk zu spielen.' B. Munteano, 'Episodes kantiens en Suisse et en France sous le Directoire', in Revue de litterature comparee 15 (Paris 1935), 453. See Villers, Philosophie de Kant, 159. 'Mme de Stael eut aussi un certain nombre d'objections a faire a propos de l'interpretation de Kant que donnait Villers'; Behler, 'Stael a Weimar', 60 note 3. Behler, 'Stael et Kant', 141, and the comte d'Haussonville, Madame de Stael et M. Meeker d'apres leur correspondance inedite (Paris 1925), 357 offer evidence that Stael used Villers's articles before 1800. CG v.i, 166, to Hochet; 148-9, to Villers. 'Nothing the sovereign representative can do to a subject [...] can properly be called injustice'; Hobbes, Leviathan, 139. Luppe, Les Idees de Stael, 45, notes Stael's new tone when talking of

242

Notes to pages 131-41

Rousseau in 1796: 'on ne se felicite plus du triomphe de la vertu ou du chatiment de la faute, on exalte l'amour'. 24 Behler, 'Stael et Kant', 154; Pierre Deguise, 'Les Ghapitres de De VAllemagne sur "la religion et l'enthousiasme" et De la religion de Benjamin Constant', in RLMC 20 (Sept.-Dec. 1967), 179. 25 J. G. Robertson, Studies in the Genesis of Romantic Theory in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge 1923) traces Romantic ideas in Italian critical thought as early as 1700 - compare the recent re-editions of Vico, to whom Robertson accords a chapter. Andre Monchoux, UAllemagne devant les lettresfrangaises. De 1814 a 1835 (2nd edn Paris 1965), 7. 26 Henning, UAllemagne de Mme de Stael, 130; Wilhelm von Humboldts Gesammelte Schriften, edited by A. Leitzmann, 17 vols. (Berlin 1903-36), xiv 534 (3 July 1798); Kurt Miiller-Vollmer, Tolitique et esthetique: l'idealisme concret de Benjamin Constant, Guillaume de Humboldt et Madame de Stael', in Benjamin Constant, Mme de Stael et le groupe de Coppet: troisieme Colloque de Coppet

(Lausanne 1982), 466-7. 27 Munteano, 'Episodes kantiens', 390. 28 Wellek, Kant in England, 145, 154; David Glass Larg, Madame de Stael: la seconde vie (1800-1807) (Paris 1928), 195, 189; also JA 85. 29 Huber's visit in Munteano, 'Episodes kantiens', 406-7; Mme de Charriere to Mile L'Hardy, December 1794, in Philippe Godet, Madame de Charriere et ses amis, 2 vols. (Geneva 1906), 11 219. 30 Constant, Des reactions politiques (An V/1797), 74. The story is in Munteano, 'Episodes kantiens', 446-51. Behler, 'Stael et Kant', 163 note 20, briefly suggests this inference. 31 Villers, Philosophie de Kant, xv; 'le vouloir n'est plus d'usage', in Les (Euvres completes de Voltaire, edited by T. Besterman, 135 vols., LIV (Danbury 1975), 464 ('Remarques sur Theodore', 1/1). 32 Bottiger's journal, cited by Behler, 'Stael et Kant', 144. 33 'Geschmack ist das Beurteilungsvermogen [...] durch ein Wohlgefallen, oder MiBfallen, ohne alles Interesse. Der Gegenstand eines solchen Wohlgefallens heiBt schon'; 'Daher kann jenes Urbild des Geschmackes [...] besser das Ideal des Schonen genannt werden'; 'eben darum, daB in unserer Einbildungskraft ein Bestreben zum Fortschritte in Unendliche, in unserer Vernunft aber ein Anspruch auf absolute Totalitat, als einer reellen Idee liegt, ist selbst jene Unangemessenheit unseres Vermogens der GroBenschatzung der Dinge der Sinnenwelt fur diese Idee, die Erweckung des Gefuhls eines iibersinnlichen Vermogens in uns' [KU 62, 93, 118-19; tr. 50, 76, 97). 34 'II est tres interessant d'observer combien Chateaubriand reste au

Notes to pages 142-5

35 36

37

38 39

243

second plan dans la polemique d'entre 1815 et 1820. C'est qu'il represente des innovations plus faciles a admettre, ou au moins partiellement admises'; Henning, UAllemagne de Mme de Stael, 15 and 71. The Comtesse de Pange devotes her Schlegel et Mme de Stael to attacking beliefs that Schlegel was StaeTs mentor - for which the best-argued case is probably Walzel, 'De UAllemagne und Schlegel'. The Groupe de Coppet itself has precedents for such claims - thus, Sismondi to Elisa de Recke, 30 April 1808: 'j'ai trouve, depuis que je l'avais quittee, que Schlegel avait pris un singulier ascendant sur son esprit et sur ses opinions'; in L. de Sismondi, Epistolario, edited by Carlo Pellegrini, 5 vols. (Florence 1933-75), 1 237. Compare Luppe, Les Idees de Stael, 123: 'Fidele a notre propos, evoquons de maniere plus precise, derriere Mme de Stael, Marmontel.' Andre Monchoux, 'La Place de Mme de Stael parmi les theoriciens du romantisme francais', in Mme de Stael et I3Europe: Colloque de Coppet (Paris 1970), 365. Henning, UAllemagne de Mme de Stael, 165-6; Rene Wellek, A History of Modern Criticism: 1750-1950, 4 vols. (New Haven and London 1955-66), 11 225. Humboldt, Schriften, 111 28; Benjamin Constant, Wallstein, edited by J.-R. Derre (Paris 1965), 60: 'les Francais [...] ne peignent qu'un fait ou une passion. Les Allemands [...] peignent [...] un caractere entier.' Boufflers in the Mercure de France, March 1809, 491-2, also contrasts French tragedies 'd'action et de passions' and German tragedies, 'de details et de caracteres' - though he might have seen Wallstein. Beatrice Jasinski, 'Liste des principaux visiteurs qui ont sejourne a Coppet de 1799 a 1816', in Le Groupe de Coppet - Actes et documents du deuxieme Colloque de Coppet, IO-IJ juillet 1974 (Geneva and Paris 1977), 474-6 (Constant's absence); Mme de Stael et Maurice O'Donnell, 1805-17; d'apres des lettres inedites, edited by Jean Mistier (2nd edn Paris 1926), 248; Carlo Cordie, 'II Wallstein di Benjamin Constant nelle testimonianze dell'au tore e di alcuni suoi contemporanei', in Studi in onore di Carlo Pellegrini (Turin 1963), 431 (aunt), 437 (Wallstein's release). 'Denn [...] wenn es heiBt: ziehet eine Linie fort, es freilich richtiger lautet, wenn man hinzu setzt, indejinitum, als wenn man es heiBt, in injinitum? (KRV^554; tr. 306). Stael condemned philosophical novels in 1800: 'On ote a l'analyse sa profondeur, au roman son interet, en les reunissant ensemble' (DL256). 'Ja ich kann mir einen Roman kaum anders denken, als ge-

244

Notes to pages 146-8

mischt aus Erzahlung, Gesang und anderen Formen'; Friedrich Schlegel, Gesprdchtiberdie Poesie, 1800, edited by Hans Eichner (Stuttgart 1968), 336; tr. 102. 40 'Semper eadem', lines 3-4, in Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du mal. 'Die Wissenschaftslehre soil den ganzen Menschen erschopfen; sie laBt daher sich nur mit der Totalitat seines ganzen Vermogens auffassen. Sie kann nicht allgemeingeltende Philosophic werden, so lange in so vielen Menschen die Bildung eine Gemuthskraft zum Vortheil der andern [...] todtet'; J. G. Fichte, Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftlehre als Handschrift fur seine ^jihbrer (1794), in

J. G. Fichte - Gesamtausgabe, edited by R. Lauth and H.Jacob, 21 vols. (1964-78), 1.2, Werke 1793-1795 (Stuttgart 1965), 415. 'So zerriB auch der innere Bund der menschlichen Natur, und ein verderblicher Streit entzweite ihre harmonischen Krafte' (AEM 583); 'so ist jede Trennung und Vereinzelung dieser Krafte ein gewaltsamer Zustand, und das Ideal der Erholung ist die Wiederherstellung unseres Naturganzen' (NSD 764; tr. 329). 41 'DaB es eine Freiheit des Willens gibt, davon laBt sich das gemeine BewuBtseyn nur durch die Willkiir iiberzeugen, d.h. dadurch, daB wir in jedem Wollen uns einer Wahl zwischen Entgegengesetzten bewuBt werden. Nun wird aber behauptet, die Willkiir sey nicht der absolute Wille selbst'; in F. W. J. Schelling, System der transzendentalen Idealismus, in Schellings Werke,

edited by M. Schroter, 12 vols. (Munich 1927-54), 11 576; tr. 190. 42 'J'erre autour de ce Paris ou vous etes, comme une planete malheureuse qui ne pourrait ni approcher ni s'eloigner de son centre'; Stael to Mme Recamier, 6 September 1806, in Edouard Herriot, Mme Recamier et ses amis, 2 vols. (Paris 1904), 1 144. M. H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp (Oxford 1953), 346 note 57. 43 Magnetiseurs were the creation of one man, Friedrich Anton Mesmer, and dated their existence from his debut in Paris in 1778. Illuminisme is older, but its notoriety derives from SaintMartin, whose first work, Des erreurs et de la verite, appeared in 1775. See Viatte, Sources occultes, 1 66-71, on Saint-Martin; and 1 223-7, on Mesmer. 'Dasjenige dessen Seyn (Wesen) bios darin besteht, dafi es sich selbst als

seyend, setzt, ist das Ich, als absolutes Subjekt' (Fichte, 259); 'In der objektiven Welt ist alles nur, insofern es das Ich in ihr anschaut'; 'Die Natur kann nicht handeln im eigentlichen Sinn des Worts. Aber Vernunftwesen konnen handeln' (Schelling, 563, 582; tr. 180, 194). 44 'Das Wollen richtet sich urspriinglich nothwendig auf ein auBeres Objekt' (Schelling, 557; tr. 175); 'das Werk der Not in ein Werk

Notes to pages 148-53

45

46

47

48

245

seiner freien Wahl umzuschaffen und die physische Notwendigkeit zu einer moralischen zu erheben' (AEM 574). 'Wir haben im Vorigen gezeigt, daB wir den Menschen nicht bloB, wie alle organisierte Wesen, als Naturzweck, sondern auch hier auf Erden als den letzten Zweck der Natur [...] zu beurteilen hinreichende Ursache haben' (AT/364; tr. 11 92). Viatte, Sources occultes, 1 276, and 11 101: 'Admise chez la duchesse de Bourbon, elle [Stael] y put voir Saint-Martin.' 'Wenn Leibniz die Materie den Schlafzustand der Monaden, oder wenn sie Hemsterhuis den geronnenen Geist nennt' (Schelling, 453; tr. 92); 'wenn die Gesetze des menschlichen Geistes nicht auch zugleich die Weltgesetze waren [...] so wiirde auch keine Erfahrung moglich sein' (JVSD 772-3). Compare Corinne, 62: 'les sons imitent les couleurs.' Theophile Gautier, Emaux et Camees (1852); Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du mal (1857); Huysmans, A rebours (1884). 'Das Eine Grundvorurteil, auf welches alle andern sich reduciren, ist kein anderes, als daB es Dinge auBer uns gebe' (Schelling, 343; tr. 8). Nicholas Sanderson (1682-1739) is given considerable attention in Diderot's Lettre sur les aveugles a Vusage de ceux qui voient (1749).

Louis-Bertrand Castel (1688-1757) invented the clavecin oculaire around 1730. 49 'Verlust der Wahrheit und Simplizitat in der Menschheit' (NSD 699, note 1; tr. 263). 50 'Noch eines liegt in der Bedeutung des Sentimentalen, was grade das Eigentumliche der Tendenz der romantischen Poesie im Gegensatz der Antiken betrifft. Es ist darin gar keine Riicksicht genommen auf den Unterschied von Schein und Wahrheit, von Spiel und Ernst [...] Die romantische Poesie [...] ruht ganz auf historischem Grunde [...] Ich habe ein bestimmtes Merkmal des Gegensatzes zwischen dem Antiken und dem Romantischen aufgestellt. Indessen bitte ich Sie doch, nun nicht sogleich anzunehmen, daB mir das Romantische und das Moderne vollig gleich gelte [...] Da suche und finde ich das Romantische, bei den altern Modernen, bei Shakespeare, Cervantes, in der italianischen Poesie, in jenem Zeitalter der Ritter, der Liebe und der Marchen, aus welchem die Sache und das Wort selbst herstammt'; in F. Schlegel, Gesprdch 335; tr. 100-1. 51 These terms strikingly resemble those of De I'Allemagne's famous chapter: if Stael had remained happy with Ossian, she would have had no reason to attribute the same phenomenon, ten years later, to a quite different source. Perhaps her friends had persuaded her of Macpherson's forgery. 'Der Charakter ihrer Dichtung ist sentimentalisch; durch

246

Notes to pages 153-5

Ideen riihren sie uns, nicht durch sinnliche Wahrheit' (NSD 731; tr. 299); 'Ossians Menschenwelt z.B. war diirftig und einfbrmig [...] [genug, um] iiber seine Gesange jenen elegischen Ton auszugieBen, der sie fur uns so riihrend und anziehend macht' (NSD 710, note). 52 'Die Natur scheint mehr seinen Verstand und seine WiBbegierde als sein moralisches Gefiihl zu interessieren; er hangt nicht [...] mit siiBer Wehmut an derselben wie wir Neuern. Ja, indem er sie in ihren einzelnen Erscheinungen personifiziert und vergottert und ihre Wirkungen als Handlungen freier Wesen darstellt, hebt er die ruhige Notwendigkeit in ihr auf, durch welche sie fur uns gerade so anziehend ist' (NSD 709; tr. 286). 53 'Das Ziel, zu welchem der Mensch durch Kultur strebt, demjenigen, welches er durch Natur erreicht, unendlich vorzuziehen ist' (NSD 718; tr. 278); 'Jener, mochte ich es ausdriicken, ist machtig durch die Kunst der Begrenzung; dieser ist es durch die Kunst der Unendlichen' (NSD 719; tr. 288). 54 'C'est la principalement ce qui distingue la poesie des anciens de celle des peuples modernes. Tout dans les premiers est plastique [...] La poesie moderne, au contraire, nous fait plutot reflet d'une musique sonore et touchante'; Humboldt, Schriften, 11 22. Compare Gibelin, Schelling et Mme de Stael 53: Tour Schelling aussi [...] la poesie antique a un caractere sculptural. 5 One should not cite unusual sources for StaeTs remarks, without recording equally handy parallels among writers whom, unlike Schelling, she knew intimately. 'Sie ging nicht dahin ohne von Freunden wie W. v. Humboldt, Jacobi [...] Stapfer, Constant u.a. vorbereitet zu sein'; in Louis Wittmer, Charles de Fillers (1765-1815), un intermediate entre la France et VAllemagne et un precurseur de Mme de Stael (Geneva and

Paris 1908), 179 note 2. Also, Stael to Goethe, 29 April 1800: 'M. de Humboldt veut bien se charger, Monsieur, de vous envoyer mon ouvrage' (CG iv.i, 268). 55 'Mittagessen bei Frau von Stael', 'Sie [Stael] ist mit einem Werk iiber die Schicksale der Literatur im nachsten Jahrhundert beschaftigt'; Humboldt, Schriften, xiv 625; Muller-Vollmer, Poesie 78, 214-15 (Humboldt dates), 214: 'um die Stael und einige anderen mit den Hauptideen meines deutschen Buches bekannt zu machen.' Les Carnets de voyage de Mme de Stael, edited by Simone

Balaye (Geneva 1971), 249 (Stael dates). 56 A. W. SchlegePs Lecture xxn in his 1808 Vienna lectures compares English and Spanish theatre. Villers was in Hamburg, and his early influence on Stael was exerted in writing; it can be

Notes to pages 156-64

57

58

59

60 61

62

63

247

directly assessed. This is emphatically not the case with members of the Groupe de Coppet, least of all A. W. Schlegel. Unlike the others, he wrote in German; Stael had little reason to search through his German for references when he was only a room or two away. Hence the Comtesse de Pange's justifiable stress on the social, not the textual aspects of their liaison. 'In plastischen Werken hilft daher dem Neuern seine Uberlegenheit in Ideen wenig [...] In poetischen Werken ist es anders [...] so kann der neuere sie [die alten Dichter] wieder im Reichtum des Stories, in dem, was undarstellbar und unaussprechlich ist [...] hinter sich lassen' (NSD 720; tr. 288). 'The time she chose to visit Berlin was unfortunate. Novalis was dead; Tieck was absent; Brentano, Arnim, Hoffmann had not yet arrived; Kleist was there but unknown; Schelling was teaching at Wiirzburg, Schleiermacher at Halle, Hegel at Jena'; Herold, Mistress to an Age, 269. Solovieff, UAllemagne et Mme de Stael, and Monchoux, UAllemagne, 16, have some details on this issue, mingled with the usual remarks about the absence, for instance, of Hegel, who was barely known at the time. 'Mitten im SchoBe der raffiniertesten Geselligkeit hat der Egoism sein System gegriindet [...] Unser freies Urteil unterwerfen wir ihrer despotischen Meinung, unser Gefuhl ihren bizarren Gebrauchen' (AEM 581). Mortier, Clartes et ombres 143. Napoleon's Minister of Police from 1799 until 1810 was the regicide Fouche, expelled from the Convention in 1794 as a terrorist. Necker de Saussure, Notice, cl; J. Roussel, Jean-Jacques Rousseau en France apres la Revolution iygj-i8jo (Paris 1972), 36 (Volney); Henning, UAllemagne de Mme de Stael, 36. Thus, Northrop Frye, The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (London 1982), 166-7, which distinguishes manifest and parody demonic. Did Stael take this image from her father? 'Le ciel l'avait fait imprevoyante, et M. Necker disait qu'elle etait comme les sauvages qui vendent leur cabane le matin et ne savent que devenir le soir'; Necker de Saussure, Notice, ccxviii. Decade philosophique, 10 prairial An XII, Petitain; 20 prairial An VIII, Moreau de la Sarthe. Roussel, Rousseau en France 21 (Thermidor), 61 and 219 (Roederer and Fievee), 38. I am strongly indebted to Roussel for this whole paragraph. Roussel, Rousseau en France, 214, 220 (Contrat social); Henning, UAllemagne de Mme de Stael, 2.

248

Notes to pages 166-yg

4 RELIGION, LOVE, ENTHUSIASM - A NEW ENLIGHTENMENT

1 'Corrigeons done la these qui attribue a la mort de Necker [...] la premiere emotion serieuse de Germaine'; Frank P. Bowman, 'Mme de Stael et l'apologetique romantique', in Mme de Stael et VEurope: Collogue de Coppet (Paris 1970), 157, 166. 2 'Plusieurs pasteurs de Geneve n'ont d'autre religion qu'un socinianisme parfait'; d'Alembert, in the Encyclopedie, 'Geneve'. Rousseau replied in his Lettre a M. d'Alembert. Stael told MartinGourgas in May 1800 that 'j'incline fortement a l'opinion des sociniens, a celle que Rousseau exprime'; CG iv.i, 279. He does not! Pierre Cordey, 'Madame de Stael et les predicants lausannois', in Cahiers Sta'eliens 8 (Apr. 1969), 7; Lettres Stael-Gautier, 11; 1802 in Charles Lacretelle, Testamentphilosophique et litteraire, 2 vols. (Paris 1840), 11 84; Cellerier in Jean Gibelin, 'Note sur le protestantisme de Mme de Stael', in Bulletin duprotestantismefrangais (Paris 1954), "53 Monchoux, 'Stael et Kant', 82; CG iv.ii, 539. 4 'Les vues generates d'administration, l'esprit des loix, la morale, & les opinions religieuses, ont une etroite relation'; Jacques Necker, De Vimportance des opinions religieuses (Londres et se trouve a Paris (London) 1788) 2. 5 Kohler, Stael et la Suisse, 367, says Broglie called her religion 'un latitudinarisme pietiste'. Victor, Due de Broglie, Souvenirs dufeu due de Broglie, 1785-1870, 2nd edn, 4 vols. (Paris 1886), 1 369; Bourbon and Kriidener in Viatte, Sources occultes, 1 294; 11 108. 6 Kohler, Stael et la Suisse, 107; see Genie, 495-505. Roussel, Rousseau en France, 177; Mistier, Stael et O'Donnell, 202. 7 Bowman, 'Stael et l'apologetique', 163. 8 Bruford, Social Background, 247 (students). 9 'Sur tous ces grands sujets je n'ai jamais eu de pensee bien arretee'; CG m.ii, 228, Stael to Roederer, 20 August 1796. Bruford, Social Background, 242, on the Pietist, Francke. On the concept of originality, see Pearsall Smith, 'Four Words'. I o Mortier, Claries et ombres, 131. I1 CGiv.i, 60, to Meister, 22 April 1797. 12 Amelie Lenormant, Coppet et Weimar: Madame de Stael et la GrandeDuchesse Louise (Paris 1862), 200. SchlegePs letter, written in Berne, must date from Winter 1811 - see Pange, Schlegel et Mme de Stael, 307, 372. Viatte, Sources occultes, 1 158 (Lavater); 11 111. 13 Lacretelle, Testament, 11 99; Lettres inedites et souvenirs biographiques de

Notes to pages 180-y

249

Mme Recamier & de Mme de Stael, edited by Baron de Gerando (Metz 1868), 78. 14 Hess to Meister, 30 May 181 o, in Lettres Stael-Meister, 211. 15 CG v.ii, 646, to Meister, 20 August 1805. Lacretelle, Testament, 11 92 (1802); Viatte, Sources occultes, 11 104; Constant, Wallstein, 63. 16 Walzel, 'De VAllemagne und Schlegel', 323: 'Die kiihnsten Ahnungen der Romantik, die verwegensten Blicke der Naturphilosophie finden Beifall bei Frau von Stael'; and Kohler, Stael et la Suisse, 347. This discrepancy reflects the two critics' stress on two different chapters - on German science, and on mysticism. Treating StaeTs text as a whole prevents such misreadings. 17 Deguise, 'De VAllemagne et Constant', 180. On Stael's distortions of Saint-Martin, see Nicole Chaquin and Stephane Michaud, 'Saint-Martin dans le groupe de Coppet et le cercle de Frederic Schlegel', in Le Groupe de Coppet — Actes et documents du deuxieme Colloque de Coppet, 10-13 juillet igj4 (Geneva and Paris 1977), 113-34. On M. de Stael, see Viatte, Sources occultes, 11 100. 18 Bonnet in Viatte, Sources occultes, 11 99; Gautier in Cordey, 'Stael et les predicants', 20. Kohler, Stael et la Suisse, 258, has a Constant family tree. 19 Lacretelle, Testament, 11 67, 73-4, 75; Viatte, Sources occultes, n 118; CGiv.ii, 551; Jasinski, 'Liste des visiteurs', 466. 20 Lacretelle, Testament, 11 88, 99; Gibelin, 'La Religion staelienne'; Viatte, Sources occultes, 11 1 o 1. 21 Viatte, Sources occultes, 11 290, 273; Kohler, Stael et la Suisse, 212. 22 Kohler, Stael et la Suisse, 345; Lucie Achard, Rosalie de Constant, sa famille et ses amis: 1758-1834, 2 vols. (Geneva 1901-2), 11 304; Pierre Deguise, Benjamin Constant meconnu: Le Livre cDe la Religion' (Geneva 1966), 90, and for la velleite de devotion', CG v.ii, 488 n.i (cardinal); Pange, Schlegel et Mme de Stael, 165 (Fenelon). 23 Lettres Stael-Gautier 8-12; Gerando, 72; Constant, (Euvres, 622. 24 Lenormant, Coppet et Weimar, 198; Werner in Viatte, Sources occultes, 11 105; Constant in Deguise, Constant meconnu, 91. 25 Francis Ley, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Mme de Stael, Chateaubriand, Benjamin Constant et Mme de Krudener (Paris 1967), 137, 139-40, 142: the Kriideners left for Lausanne on 14 October 1808. Werner in Viatte, Sources occultes, 11 124; letter in Lenormant, Coppet et Weimar, 154. 26 Karl Victor Bonstetten, Briefe an Friederike Brun, edited by F. von Matthisson, 2 vols. (Frankfurt 1829), l 2 & 2: 'Nichts ist veranderter als Coppet [...] die Leute werden alle noch katholisch, bohmisch, martinisch, mystisch, alles durch Sfchlegel], und obendrein wird alles deutsch.' Kohler, Stael et la Suisse, 347, corrects

250

27 28 29 30

31

Notes to pages i88-g6

1809 to 1808, when Bonstetten was in Coppet. Hess in Lettres Stael-Meister, 211; claim in Pange, Schlegel et Mme de Stael, 333. Deguise, 'De VAllemagne et Constant', 181. Viatte, Sources occultes, 11 116, 122, 109. Jasinski in CG i.i, LVII dates the French term pietisme from StaeTs book on the passions, 1796. Deguise, 'De VAllemagne et Constant', 181. 'Stael a ete elevee dans une religion protestante qui insistait sur le temoignage des omvres'; Bowman, 'Stael et l'apologetique', 158. (Stael liked the way mysticism 'joint l'amour aux oeuvres'; her letter to Mme de Gerando in note 13.) Sismondi, Epistolario, 258; E. Spenle, Novalis: essai sur Videalisme

romantique en Allemagne (Paris 1904), 211. 32 Viatte, Sources occultes, 1 326,11 244,1 296; Les Soirees de Saint-Petersbourg, in Joseph de Maistre, CEuvres completes•, 14 vols. (Lyon 1884-6), v 228-9; Diary, Reminiscences and Correspondence of Henry

Crabb Robinson, edited by T. Sadler, 3 vols. (London 1869), 1 192. 33 Viatte, Sources occultes, 1 28, 147-52: the Grand Orient was not invited to the congress. Viatte notes mysticism's independence at 11 108-26: 'Stael aime dans le mysticisme la conciliation d'une foi sentimentale avec son vieil anticlericalisme,' claiming that 'elle ouvre son cceur aux illumines beaucoup plus volontiers qu'aux representants de l'Eglise.' Mystics are often more eye-catching than pastors; the two were equally common at Coppet. Cordey, 'Stael et les predicants', 8, notes that both Lavater and Meister were pastors. 34 Compare Humboldt, Schriften, m 3: 'pour reveiller notre enthousiasme, le poete doit en eprouver lui-meme'. 35 'That willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith'; Coleridge, Biographia, 11 6. Billion, 'Stael et le mysticisme', 118; Viatte, Sources occultes, 11 101.

36 Lettres Stael-Recamier, 262. 37 The Republic of Plato, iv.439, translated by F. M. Cornford (Oxford 1941), 133; Enciclopedia cattolica, 12 vols. (Roma 1948-54) 'Passione.' 38 Bowman, 'Stael et l'apologetique', 162. 39 Mortier, Claries et ombres, 125. 40 Henri Perrochon, 'Les Sources suisses de la religion de Mme de Stael', in Mme de Stael et VEurope: Colloque de Coppet (Paris 1970),

151, remarks of Stael and Langallerie: 'Certaines de ses idees lui plaisaient. Ainsi, celle des esprits de l'air qui s'insinuent dans nos vies.' Stael asked Mme de Kriidener in February 1809, 'que

Notes to pages ig6-2i2

41 42

43 44

251

pensez-vous de Jung Stilling et de son livre sur les esprits?'; in Ley, Mme de Krudener, 151. Viatte, Sources occultes, 1 122. Jean Starobinski, 'Critique et principe d'autorite (Madame de Stael et Rousseau)', in Le Preromantisme: Hypotheque ou hypothese? Collogue de Clermont-Ferrandjuin igj2 (Paris 1975), 326. 'UErotique comparee3 de Charles de Fillers, 1806, edited by E. Eggli (Paris 1927), 171, says of German love, 'son but unique c'est d'enthousiasmer, de diviniser le coeur dont il s'empare.' Constant, Wallstein, 64. Viatte, Sources occultes, 1 40. Voltaire, Dictionnaire philosophique, edited by R. Naves (Paris

45 Bowman, 'Stael et l'apologetique', 162; Lacretelle, Testament, 11 97; Billion, 'Stael et le mysticisme', 119. 46 David Hume: History of England (London 1832), 424, discussing the reign of Elizabeth I; and Essays Moral, Political, and Literary, edited by T. H. Green and T. H. Grose, 2 vols. (London 1875), l 14947 The 1958 edition attributes this reference to Joseph Weber's 1807 book on Seneca. This does little justice to StaeTs own reading she uses the phrase word for word in 1800, DL 386, and to de Souza, 15 May 1805; in CG v.ii, 557. The idea was important to her. Balaye, 'Le Genie et la gloire', 203, calls this 'le fondement de sa pensee: le genie est ce qui, dans l'homme, est en relation avec Dieu'. 48 Chateaubriand links the word with/oz: 'Que d'idees antiques et touchantes s'attachent a notre seul mot de foyer, dont l'etymologie est si remarquable!'; Genie, 515, 'De la foi'. 49 Bowman, 'Stael et l'apologetique', 161; Miiller-Vollmer, 'Politique et esthetique', 468. 50 Ancillon, Essai sur Vinfini, 10, 13. Ancillon distinguishes bad mysticism from good, characterised by a taste for the infinite: he proclaims 'une espece de mysticisme d'un genre nouveau [...] le seul qui soit legitime, et qui ne soit aucunement dangereux' (p. 31). Stael's mystical opinions were largely formed by 1808; Ancillon's essay appeared in 1809. He is less a source than a parallel for Stael's own beliefs. 51 Balaye, 'Le Genie et la gloire', 207. 52 Monchoux, 'Stael parmi les theoriciens', 363; CG v.ii, 603, to Monti, 22 June 1805. 53 Norman King, ' "The airy form of things forgotten"; Madame de Stael, l'utilitarisme et l'impulsion liberale', in Cahiers Staeliens 11

252

Notes to pages 214-20

(Dec. 1970), 14. Jefferson's words open the American Declaration of Independence, 4 July 1776. 54 France, home of the philosophes, would in 181 o undoubtedly have found some remarks offensive: 'C'etait chez les Allemands qu'une revolution operee par des idees devait avoir lieu' (V27/1). Simone Balaye, 'A propos du 'Preromantisme'; continuite ou rupture chez Madame de StaeT, in Le Preromantisme: Hypotheque ou hypothese? Colloque de Clermont-Ferrandjuin 19J2 (Paris 1975), 165. 55 'Mme de Stael pense dans la continuite. S'il y a un obstacle, elle le surmonte, un fosse, elle le franchit; une difficulte, elle l'integre'; Deguise, 'De VAllemagne et Constant', 180. Munteano, 'Episodes kantiens', 396-7, notes Stapfer's part in the Swiss delegation to France in 1798, and his stress on a 'Kantian' reform of the Swiss Church. Munteano concludes that 'venue d'un tel homme, [cette entreprise] a du faire grand bruit a Paris et renforcer pour une large part la legende d'un Kant reformateur de la religion'. By June 1805, Stael is writing to O'Donnell of'cette raison kantiste, de celle qui reunit toutes les facultes de Fame'; CG v.ii, 610. Cordey, 'Stael et les predicants', 12. CONCLUSION

1 The phrase Confederation romantique appears in the Nainjaune, 20 December 1814. The Bibliographie de lyEmpire frangais dates the three texts: Sismondi, 7 March - 4 June 1813, Schlegel, 10 December 1813, Stael, 21 May 1814. See Eggli and Martino, and my article on this Confederation romantique in the fifth Colloque de Coppet. For author details, see bibliography. 2 Stael asks for 'des idees nouvelles dont nous puissions nous enrichir en les modifiant a notre maniere' (1 23/14): some key concepts pattern her revisions, which offer tools for future work. Le gout, for instance, defined by what is lost - single words and whole genres. Also, checks and balances, melange, antithesis, 'just limits': what suffers is the extreme/novel/original, as in her Faust. 3 Marie-Antoinette to Fersen, 7 December 1791, in Lettres de MarieAntoinette: Recueil des lettres authentiques de la reine, edited by M. de La Rocheterie and the marquis de Beaucourt, 2 vols. (Paris 1895-6), 11 344-5. For Savary reference see in chapter 2, note 27. 4 Karl Popper, The Poverty of Historicism (London 1957), 131—55 Andre Monchoux, in chapter 3, note 34.

Bibliography

This work was in publication when the fifth Colloque de Coppet, and volume vi of StaeTs Correspondance Generate, brought new light to many issues here discussed. I warmly recommend their study. E D I T I O N S AND C O R R E S P O N D E N C E Lonchamp, F.-C, UQLuvre imprime de Mme de Stael (Geneva 1949). Mme de Stael, (Euvres completes, edited by Auguste de Stael, 17 vols. (Paris 1820-1). Des cirConstances actuelles qui peuvent terminer la revolution et des principes qui doiventfonder la republique en France, 1799 (unpublished), edited

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Index

Abrams, M. H. 123, 147 Alembert, Jean d' 248 Alexander the Great 177 Alexander I 5, 229, 238 Ancillon, F. 117-19, 139-41, 144, 184, 206, 240, 251

Aquinas, T. 112 Aristotle 72 Arnim, A. von 247 Attila 7, 70, 106, 113, 237 Auerbach, E. 156 Austria 11, 14, 19, 22—6, 96-7, 229 Bacon, Francis 213 Baggesen,J. 17 Balaye, S. 45, 85, 101-3, 127, 214-16, 222-3, 23I> 234> 237> 2 5 X Baldensperger, F. 237 Balmas, E. 71 Balzac, Honore de 4, 56 Barante, P. de 186-8, 216 Baudelaire, C. 4, 75, 105, 145, 150, 180, 244 Behler, E. 115, 131, 241 Bentham, J. 212 Berkeleyan dilemma 119, 147 Berlin 10, 18, 24-7, 94, 115, 142, 144-5, 150, 216, 228-9, 2 47 Berlioz, H. 7 Bernadotte 107 Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Paul et Virginie 49-50 Bible 39, 51, 62, 98, 129, 158, 163, 202, 230-2 Billion, J. 192, 200 Bodmer and Breitinger 17 Bonaparte, Napeolon 5-8, 10-21, 24-5, 2 9~32> 35'8> 44-5, l^-i, #9-109, 113, 124, 139-41, 158-60, 164,

168-9, 173-4. !79> 189-93, 196, 200-1, 208-10, 217-18, 226—9,

237-8 Joseph 190, 237 Louis 6, 19, 226, 237 Jerome 24, 237 Boniface VIII 38 Bonnet, Charles 183 Bonstetten, K. V. von 141, 187, 216, 250 Boufflers, chevalier de 243 Bouhours, D., le pen 42 Bourbon, duchesse de 169, 245 Bowman, F. 166, 170, 194, 199, 205, 250 Brentano, C. 247 Broglie, due de 169, 248 Bruford, W. H. 13, 27, 93, 225, 232 Buffon, G.-L. de 101 Brger, Gottfried 155 Burney, Fanny (Mme d'Arblay) 1 Byron, Lord 1-2, 5, 13, 100-1, 106, 200, 218, 233

Cabanis, P. 113 Calderon de la Barca 155 Calvinism 8, 23, 112, 128, 167-71, 174, 177, 189, 199-200 Calvino, Italo 102 Camoens, L. de 155 Caravaggio 203 Carlyle, T. 4 Castel, F. 150, 245 Catherine II 106 Catholics 5, 8, 22-5, 39, 44, 65, 112, 157, 160-1, 167-79, 185-7, !94-5> 214, 222 Censors 5, 14, 30, 70, 90,35^9, 102, 121, 136-8, 163, 223, 229, 237 Cellrier, Pastor 167 Cervantes, M. de 152

265

266

Index

character 53, 107, 125, 137, 142, 199, 208-9, 219, 243 Charlemagne 14, 20 Charriere, Mme de 135 Chastenay, Mme de 6, 100 Chateaubriand, F.-R. de 1, 4-8, 13, 44, 49-50, 101, 104, 112, 148-51, 170, 174-5, J 8 i , X98, 232, 242, 251 Chladni, Ernst 150 Classicism 48, 313, 379, 49,5^-62, 65—9, 72, 78-9, 86-90, 93, 148, 131-60, 172, 176, 212, 215-18, 224 Coleridge, S. T. 2, n o , 147, 192, 218, 239> 250 Condillac, E. de 118, 124, 161-2, 177 Condorcet, marquis de 30, 113 Constant, B. 33, 42, 61, 72-3, 131, 134-6, 141, 153-4, 182-9, J97> 200, 216, 236-8, 249 Wallstein 59, 72, 142-4, 149, 235, 243 Rosalie de 185, 238 Copernicus 146 Coppet 10, 17, 52, 56, 60, 89, 102, 131, 143, 151, 154, 160, 184-7, 190, 216, 222-3, 235-8, 243, 247, 250 Cordey, P. 167, 214, 250 Cousin, Victor 4, 133 Cottin, Sophie 181 Dante, Divina commedia 175 Dan ton, G.-J. 18, 227 David, J.-L. 69 Decade philosophique 44, 113, 163, 181, 247 Deguise, P. 131, 183-5, l&9t 252 della Somaglia, cardinal 185 Descartes, Rene 3, 39, 46, 125, 161 Destutt de Tracy, A.-L.-C. 116 Diderot, D. 72, 90, 101, 167, 245 Divonne 183, 187-8 Dryden, J. 123 Dumas, A.,pere 156 Dupont de Nemours, P.-S. 183 Durylin 3 Dussault, F.-J. 58-9

189-94, : 98, 201-4, 207-13, 217, 222-3, 229 exteriors 8, 49-53, 98, i n , 120-6, 146-7, J 55> 169, 175 Faguet, E. 4 Fnelon, F. de 179, 186 Fichte, J. G. 108, 123, 126-8, 131-3, 137-8, 142, 145-8, 150 Fievee, J. 163 Fontenelle, B. de 142 Fouch, J. 247 Francis II 11 Franois de Sales, St 186 Frederick II 21, 37, 95-6, 237 Freud, S. 128, 231 Frye, Northrop 162, 247 Fuchs, A. 71 Gautier, Theophile 150 Gautier de Tournes 114, 167, 183-6, 239 Geneva 3-5, 8-10, 17, 104, 112, 128, 169, 177, 187, 220, 223, 238, 248 Gerando, and Mme de 58, 118, 127, 141, 178, 186, 250 Gibelin, J. 71, 184, 246 Goerres 216 Goethe, J. W. von 1-5, 12, 19-20, 26-7, 34-6, 51-2, $6,5g-go, 93, 101-3, 109, 115-17, 142, 153-5, I71* J96> 203, 215-17, 225-6, 235, 246 Faust 7, 63, 66-go, 196, 236, 252 Werther 70, 203, 233 Gottsched 17 Gsteiger, M. 13 Guizot, F. 4, 133

Haller, A. von 112, 152 Hegel, G. W. F. 142, 247 Heine, H. 6, 33, 47, 226 Helvetius, C.-A. 162, 167, 177 Hemsterhuis, T. 148 Henning, I. A. 102, 110, 133, 141, 161, 164, 216 Herder, J. G. 212, 30, 34, 228 Emerson, R. W. 3, 221 Hermann 20, 25 emigres 10, 14, 97, 101 heroes 92, 96, 107, 196, 2012, 231 Enghien, due d' 94 Hobbes, Thomas 33, 46-7, 52, 128, 160, etude ge'ne'tique, 1810, draft/manuscript 7, 230-3, 241 i3> 17-20, 24, 31-5, 42, 45, 50, Hochet, C. 61, 184, 222 57-60, 70, 76, 79, 83-gg, 102-4, J 2 i , Hoffmann, E. T. A. 247 136, 143, 155-9, 173-5. 181-3, Holderlin, F. 142

Index Holbach, baron d' 167

Homer 152 Hugo, V., Hernani 2, 5, 141, 156, 218—21 Cromwell 141, 220, 235 Humboldt, W. von 42, 94, 123, 133-4, 142-4, 150-7, 216, 246, 250 Hume, David 112, 200 Huysmans, J.-K., A rebours 150 Ideologues 8, 44, 112-13, 118, 163, 181, 195. 214 Jacobi, F. 56, 129—31, 136—8, 142, 154, 166 Jasinski, B. 184, 216, 250 Jefferson, Thomas 5, 212 Jeffrey, Francis 1 Joan of Arc 60-1, 69—70, 101, 104—6, 143, ^ 2 , 235 Johnson, Samuel 14, 119, 226 Jordan, Camille 216 Joseph II 22, 96, 106 Jung Stilling 251 Kafka, F. 219 Kant, Immanuel 8, 21-2, 34, 39, 53, 58, 98, 109-22, 125-7, 131-41, 144-8, i5 J -5> 163-6, 17^ i94-5> 2 I I > 215-17, 240-1, 252 Kempis, Thomas a, Imitatio Christi 186, 232, 238 Keynes, Maynard 197 King, N. 212 Kleist, H. von 152, 247 Klinger, F. M. von 93 Klopstock, F. G. 20, 142, 152 Kohler, P. 17, 170, 185, 216, 223 Kriidener, Mme de 55, 169, 186-7, J93> 249-5° Lacretelle, C. 178, 184-5, X99 LaHarpe, F. C. 112 Lamartine, A. de 49 Langallerie, chevalier de 122, 177, 184-5, X ^9J 2 5° Larg, D. G. 134 Lavater, J. K. 150, 177, 183, 190, 250 Lavoisier, A. L. 1, 29 Leibniz, G. W. von 21, 28-30, 39, 148, 228 Leopardi, G. 2-3 Lessing, G. E. 26, 112, 116, 142, 228, 240

267

Levin/Varnhagen, Rahel 229 Ligne, prince de 141, 222 Linnaeus, C. 1, 29 Locke, J. 109, 112, 118 Loen, J. M. von 27 London 10-12 Louis XIV 23, 159-61 Louis XVI 101 Louise, Grand-Duchess of Saxe-Weimar 187, 191, 202 Luther, M. 67-8, 147, 169—71, 176 Machiavelli, N. 160, 228 Maistre, J. de 190 Malebranche, N. 39 Malet, C. F. de 96 Mallet, P. H. 226 Marie Antoinette 217-18 Marmontel, J. F. 40, 44, 243 Meister, H. 17—19, 89, 187, 222, 250 Mesmer, F. A. 244 Milton, J. 145 Mirabeau, comte de 34, 41 Monchoux, A. 55, 132, 151, 160, 167, 210, 220 Montesquieu, C. de 16, 19-20, 23-5, 34~5> 43~8> 91* X42, 162, 167, 230 Montmorency, Mathieu de 136, 177, 186 Moreau,J. 11 Mortier, R. 44, 112, 160, 195, 226 Miiller-Vollmer, K. 3, 123, 133, 154, 205 Munteano, B. 125, 1345, 252 mystics 9, 117, 131, 146-7, i5°>J77~94, 206, 249—50 Napoleon III 4, 218-20 Narbonne, L. de 101 Necker, J. 13, 23, 29, 34, 58, 101, 106, n o , 117, 166—8, 183-6, 216, 239, 247-8 Necker de Saussure, Mme 183, 247 Nerval, G. de 71, 236 Newton, Isaac 53, 107, 178, 181 Nicolle 20 Niebuhr, B. G. 85, 237 Novalis 56, 115, 124, 137, 142, 206, 247 O'Donnell, M. 170, 252 Oehlenschlager, A. 17 Ossian 17, 25, 49-51, 152, 245 Ovid 104, 202

268

Index

Pange, comtesse de 74, 145, 216, 223, 226, 243, 247 Paris 20, 23, 26, 50, 62, 71, 96, 101-2, n o , 141, 154, 164, 173, 244, 252 Pascal, B. 3 Pastoret, Mme 50 Pearsall Smith, L. 123 Pellegrini, C. 110 Pestalozzi, J. 163, 171, 209 Philippe II 64-5, 106 Pichois, C. 56 Pictet de Sergy 13 Pietism 172, 182, 188, 248-50 Piranesi, G. 229 Pius VII 38 Plato 44, 47-8, 53, 128, 147, 194, 198, 201, 209, 217, 231 Plotinus 147 Plutarch 48, 53, 196, 202 Popper, Karl 6, 30, 91, 219 Poulet, Georges 100 Procrustes 119, 204 Protestants 3, 8, 225, 39, 112, 160, 767-79, ! 89-91, J94> 2I4> 2 2 ° Prussia 11-12, 18, 21—6, 37, 95, 198, 220 Pushkin, A. 2—3 Quietism 114, 122, 18091, 203 Racine, J., Phedre 71, 78, 196, 238 Raynal, abbe de 162 reader-response 14-15, 31, 46—8, 64-5, 89-107, 179, 192, 195-8, 207-8, 213 Recamier, Mme 63, 193, 222, 244 Reill, P. H. 21, 30 Renan, E. 4, 8 Revolution/1789 5, 9—11, 16, 32-7, 62-3, 69, 92, 97, 101, 106, 159-60, 163-4, l 6 8 , 174-85 l83~5> J9°> J93> 201, 217 Rhine 7, 10—12, 18, 22, 25, 103, 225-7, 238 Ribbing, A. L. 213 Richter, Jean Paul 56, 98 Robinson, H..C. 131, 134, 141, 191, 216 Roederer, P.-L. 163, 248 Romantic 1-12, 15, 19—21, 30-3, 37—9, 43, 46, 49-58, 69, 72, 79, 83-4, 90—2, 103-8, 115, 118, 122—4, 130-2, 138, 141-61, 172-3, 182-5, 192, 198—200, 203, 206, 209-13, 216-21, 224, 233, 242,252 Rousseau, J.-J. 3, 8, 46-52, 84, 91,

104-5, I I 2 ~ I 5> I I 9~ 2 I > 130-2, !36, 151, 163—4, 167-9, *84, 19 2 , 211, 214, 217, 220, 232-3, 242, 248 Roussel, J. 161-4, 170, 247 Ruskin,J. 101 Sainte-Beuve, C.-A. 4, 56 Saint-Martin, L. C. 149, 183-7, r9°> 196, 224-5, 2 49 Sanderson 150, 245 Savary, R. 19, 92, 101, 105, 124, 218 Schelling, F. W. J. 58, 108, 123, 133, 137-8, 141-2, 145-52, 246-7 Schiller, J. C. F. 2, 7, 27, 32-3, 48, 51-2, 56-69, 72, 91-4, 97, 104-6, 109, 115-17, 121-3, 142-5, 148, 757-6", 160, 171, 187-8, 202, 208, 211, 215, 233-5, 2 39 Schlegel, A. W. 2, 10, 41, 44, 50-2, 56-8, 71, 85, 108, 134, 141-2, 145, l 1

5 > I57~9> J77>

l82

, 186-7, J94>

211, 216, 223, 235-7, 243, 246—8, 252 Friedrich 2-4, 41, 56, 73, 108, 115, l 37> m-5, i5!-5. !58-9> 173. l 8 6 , 211, 216 Schleiermacher, F. 247 Schopenhauer, A. 226 Schubert, G. H. von 150, 206 scientific method 6, 12, 29-30, 53, 56, 91* I07> !37> 2 I 9 Scott, Walter 13 Seneca 202, 251 Senancour, E. de 6, 44 Serres 11 o Shakespeare, W. 71, 106, 123, 126, 152, 155 Sismondi, J. C. L. 29, 141, 190, 216, 2 43> 2 5 2 Smith, Adam 1, 29, 227 Sorel, A. 71 Souza, dom Pedro de 196, 251 Stael, Auguste de 101, 186 Mme de StaeTs other works: Correspondance generate 13—14, 23, 27,

38, 58-61, 106, 127, 138, 169, 191, 196, 200—2, 213, 222, 225, 235, 2512; Lettres sur Jean-Jacques Rousseau 47, 51, 109-10, 114, 120,

I 3°, J33> l5°, I 9 I ~ 2 > 2O3> 22 7> 231-2; Zulma, Mirza, Sappho 51, 79, 100, 185; Essai sur les fictions 101; De ^influence des passions . . . 100, i n ,

Index 114,120,123,128,133,167-8, 171-2, 180-2, 185, 193-4, 199, 205, 210, 213, 250; Des circonstances

actuelles ... 5, 45, 63, n o , 117, 1 6 7 - 9 ; &e 1°literature

. . . 16-17,

25~6> 3°> 33> 36-48* 51-2, 56-8, 63, 72, 79, 82, 85, 89-90, 108-13, 117-20, 131, 134, 152-3, 156-61, 167-8, 175, 185, 191-3, 198-200, 208, 216, 225—7, 23°>239> 243> 251; Delphine 54, 100, 104-5, 109, 112, 146-7, 168-70, 185-6, 196-7;

Journal sur I3Allemagne 13, 3 3 - 5 , 42,

5°> 59> 73>8 5> IO 3> Il5> I 2 7> J 3 8 > 159, 201, 222, 225, 235; Les Manuscrits de M. Necker 103, 106, 120, 166; Corinne ou Vltalie 52, 58,

82, 92, 100, 103, 147, 165, 170, 181-2, 185-6, 213, 245; Inflexions sur le suicide 186; Considerations sur la Revolution frangaise 24, 29, 35, 45, 96,

136, 176, 183, 193, 197,201,214; Dix annies d'exil

10, 9 2 , 1 0 0 - 5 ,

ll

%

200, 215 Monsieur de 183—5 Stapfer, A. 154, 236, 252 Starobinski, J. 196 Steinwachs, B. 5 Stendhal, Racine et Shakespeare 4 - 6 , 98,

107, 141, 200, 220, 235, 238 Stolberg, F. von 173, 188-9 Suard, J. B. 51, 59, 117, 169, 222 Swedenborg, E. 183 Swift, J., Gulliver's Travels 20, 90-1, 106 Tacitus, Germania 16, 20, 25, 35, 44-7, 217, 230 Talleyrand, G.-M. de 101, 211 Tasso, T. 49-52, 155, 209

269

Theocritus 47 Thoreau, H. D. 3 Tieck, L. 56, 155, 247 translatio 379, 156-61, 172, 217, 230 Turgot, A.-R.-J. 239 Ussher, J . 30 Utility 8, 210-12 Viatte, A. 149, 177, 182-5, I9°~2> X98» 250 Vico, G. B. 242 Vienna 10, 13, 16, 23—8, 228, 246 Vigny, A. de 105 Villeneuve, admiral 93 Villers, C. de 14, 38, 55, n o , 114, 118, 122, 127, 131, 134, 137, 141, 154, 166-7, *97> 216-18, 225, 230, 241, 246, 251 Vinet, A. 4 Volney, C. de 161, 229 Voltaire 20, 27, 35, 62, 91, 109, 129, 132, 137, 142, 162, 167, 170-2, 199, 217, 232 V o s s J . H. 106 Wackenroder, W. H. 155 Walzel,O.F. 55, 71,243 Weimar 10-11, 25-8, 60, 73, 115, 134, 138, 145, 215-16, 235 WeiBhaupt 191 Wellek, R. 122, 134, 142 Wellington, Duke of 6, 229 Werner, Z. 63, 142, 186-90, 235 Martin Luther 39, 67-8, 169, 175-6 Attila 70, 91-5, 237 Wieland, C. M. 27 Winckelmann, J. 229 Wittgenstein, L. 122 Wordsworth, W. 1-4

Cambridge Studies in French

General editor: Malcolm Bowie {All Souls College, Oxford) Editorial Board: R. Howard Bloch {University of California, Berkeley), Ross Chambers {University of Michigan), Antoine Compagnon {Columbia University), Peter France {University of Edinburgh), Toril Moi {Duke University), Naomi Schor {Duke University) Also in the series (* denotes titles now out of print) 1. J . M. Cocking: Proust: Collected Essays on the Writer and his Art 2. Leo Bersani: The Death ofStephane Mallarme * 3. Marian Hobson: The Object of Art: The Theory of Illusion in Eighteenth-Century France 4. Leo Spitzer, translated and edited by David Bellos: Essays on Seventeenth-Century French Literature 5. Norman Bryson: Tradition and Desire: From David to Delacroix , 6. Ann Moss: Poetry and Fable: Studies in Mythological Narrative in Sixteenth-Century France 7. Rhiannon Goldthorpe: Sartre: Literature and Theory 8. Diana Knight: Flaubert's Characters: The Language of Illusion 9. Andrew Martin: The Knowledge of Ignorance: From Genesis to Jules Verne 10. Geoffrey Bennington: Sententiousness and the Novel: Laying Down the Law in Eighteenth-Century French Fiction * 11. Penny Florence: Mallarme, Manet and Redon: Visual and Aural Signs and the Generation of Meaning 12 Christopher Prendergast: The Order of Mimesis: Balzac, Stendhal, Nerval and Flaubert 13. Naomi Segal: The Unintended Reader: Feminism and Manon Lescaut 14. Clive Scott: A Question of Syllables: Essays in Nineteenth-Century French Verse 15. Stirling Haig: Flaubert and the Gift of Speech: Dialogue and Discourse in Four 'Modern' Novels

*i6. Nathaniel Wing: The Limits of Narrative: Essays on Baudelaire, Flaubert, Rimbaud and Mallarme 17. Mitchell Greenberg: Corneille, Classicism and the Ruses of Symmetry * i 8 . Howard Davies: Sartre and eLes Temps Modernes3 19. Robert Greer Cohn: Mallarme's Prose Poems: A Critical Study 20. Celia Britton: Claude Simon: Writing the Visible 21. David Scott: Pictorialist Poetics: Poetry and the Visual Arts in Nineteenth-Century France 22. Ann Jefferson: Reading Realism in Stendhal 23. Dalia Judovitz: Subjectivity and Representation in Descartes: The Origins of Modernity 24. Richard D. E. Burton: Baudelaire in 1859 25. Michael Moriarty: Taste and Ideology in Seventeenth-Century France 26. John Forrester: The Seductions of Psychoanalysis: Freud, Lacan and Derrida 27. Jerome Schwartz: Irony and Ideology in Rabelais: Structures of Subversion 28. David Baguley: Naturalist Fiction: The Entropic Vision 29. Leslie Hill: Beckett's Fiction: In Different Words 30. F. W. Leakey: Baudelaire: Collected Essays, 1953-1988 31. Sarah Kay: Subjectivity in Troubadour Poetry 32. Gillian Jondorf: French Renaissance Tragedy: The Dramatic Word 33. Lawerence D. Kritzman: The Rhetoric of Sexuality and the Literature of the French Renaissance 34. Jerry C. Nash: The Love Aesthetics of Maurice Sceve: Poetry and Struggle 35. Peter France: Politeness and its Discontents: Problems in French Classical Culture 36. Mitchell Greenberg: Subjectivity and Subjugation in SeventeenthCentury Drama and Prose: The Family Romance of French Classicism 37. Tom Conley: The Graphic Unconscious in Early Modern French Writing 38. Margery Evans: Baudelaire and Intertextuality: Poetry at the Crossroads 39. Judith Still: Justice and Difference in the Works of Rousseau: bienfaisance and pudeur 40. Christopher Johnson: System and Writing in the Philosophy of Jacques Derrida 41. Carol A. Mossman: Politics and Narratives of Birth: Gynocolonizationfrom Rousseau to Zjnla 42. Daniel Brewer: The Discourse of Enlightenment in EighteenthCentury France: Diderot and the Art of Philosophizing

4344. 45. 46. 47. 48.

Roberta L. Krueger: Women Readers and the Ideology of Gender in Old French Verse Romance James H. Reid: Narration and Description in the French Realist Novel: The Temporality of Lying and Forgetting Eugene W. Holland: Baudelaire and Schizoanalysis: The Sociopoetics of Modernism Hugh M. Davidson: Pascal and the Arts of the Mind David J. Denby: Sentimental Narrative and the Social Order in France, ij60-1820: A Politics of Tears Claire Addison: Where Flaubert Lies: Chronology, Mythology and History