Among the illustrious names which adorn the annals of France, that of
François Auguste de Chateaubriand, the author of “Atala,” “Les Martyrs,”
“The Last of the Abencerages,” and many other brilliant and renowned
works, occupies a proud pre-eminence. But his fame rests not merely upon
his literary achievements. His services as a statesman and the record
and example of his private life-even his sufferings and misfortunes-have
served to enhance his reputation and endear his memory, both among
his own countrymen, and among just, noble and patriotic minds in other
lands. He was great both by his character and abilities; and, while his
celebrity is undiminished by the lapse of time, his works are still read
and will long continue to be read and admired, even through all
changes in the manners and sentiments of mankind. Fashions and modes in
literature and art, as in society, come and go; new institutions
arise, demanding new methods and modifying cherished customs; and men’s
thoughts enlarge and widen with improved conditions, as with the
inevitable progress of the age. But the master mind ever asserts its
power. He who has once truly stirred the human heart in its purest
depths speaks not alone to his own generation, but appeals to all other
hearts and belongs to all his race. His good gifts are the birthright
of the world. The rank of Chateaubriand has been fixed by the united
judgment of his associates and his successors; and since time has
allayed the fierce passions which raged in France during his lifetime,
his character is more and more deeply respected and admired. His
sincerity of purpose and enlightened understanding, his grandeur and
nobility of thought, his energy of action and loftiness of aim, preserve
for him ever his exalted position, made brilliant by the fires of genius
and perpetuated by the force of truth.
Chateaubriand was born at St. Malo in September, 1768, and died in
Paris, after an active and most eventful career, on the fourth of July,
1848. The earlier portion of his life was passed in the quiet of his
home at Combourg. At the termination of his collegiate training at Dole
and Rennes, he entered the army, in which he soon gained promotion. At
about the age of nineteen he was presented at court, became acquainted
with the fashionable world, and was received and welcomed into the
choicest literary circles of Paris, where he gained the friendship of La
Harpe, Fontanes, Malesherbes, and others among the distinguished savants
of that period. It was a troubled and stormy epoch in France. The social
and political forces which culminated in the great Revolution were
beginning to be seriously felt, and faction, turbulence and anarchy
were already rife in Paris when Chateaubriand left his native shores for
America, moved by a desire to discover the northwest passage, but also
with an attendant purpose, long cherished, of observing the mode of life
and studying the characteristics of the aborigines, for the purpose
of embodying in his writings the impressions thus gained of man in a
primitive condition.
From this period to the time of his death his life was a singular series
of vicissitudes--at one time the brilliant and revered statesman, at
another the voluntary abdicator of all his rights and honors; and even,
at one bitter passage of his existence, living in an unwarmed London
garret and obtaining a precarious livelihood by giving lessons in his
native tongue and translating for the booksellers.
The utter upheaval of affairs in France brought the greatest distress
upon himself, his family and his immediate friends, and, with the
sensitive heart of genius, the blows which had fallen so keenly
doubtless engendered the melancholy cast with which his writings are
sometimes tinged. His first work, an idyllic poem, showed little of
the genius so finely developed in after years; but his finest literary
productions--“The Martyrs,” “The Last of the Abencerages” and
“The Genius of Christianity,” to which “Atala” and “René” properly
belong--remain a splendid monument to his powers and exhibit his earnest
desire to be numbered among the benefactors and enlighteners of mankind.
The present work, “Atala,” is the gathered fruit of his previous studies
amid the wilds of America. It abounds in sparkling description, romantic
incident and sentiments tender and heroic. It is pervaded by purity of
tone and elevation of thought, qualities the more commendable and marked
because produced in an age proverbially lax and frivolous.
The illustrations of M. Doré have given an additional value to this
tale, so simple, so unsophisticated, yet blooming with all the wild
luxuriance of nature. The artist has added his gifts to those of the
poet; and those acquainted only with his ready and original powers as
the delineator of farce and drollery, or of the exceptionally tragic and
horrible, will find new cause for admiration in these quiet renderings
of the primeval beauties of the American wild--its plains and forests,
its still lagoons and roaring cataracts, its mountain slopes and deep
defiles--all its aspects of rudest workmanship--and will welcome these
efforts of his genius in the lovely realm of descriptive art, wedded as
they are to the exquisite simplicity of this Indian romance. As in
his other works, here may be noted the same surpassing fertility of
resource, the same alertness of intellect and readiness and swiftness of
touch; but there may also be found new proofs of his complete sympathy
with all that is picturesque in forest beauty and his high intuitive
perception of every possible phase of nature in her wildest caprice and
most tender bloom.
We append the following extracts from different prefaces to the author’s
writings, as constituting what is explanatory of the story that follows:
[From the Preface to the First Edition.]
“I was still very young when I conceived the idea of composing an epic
on ‘The Man of Nature,’ to depict the manners of savages, by uniting
them with some well-known event. After the discovery of America, I saw
no subject more interesting, especially to Frenchmen, than the massacre
of the Natchez colony in Louisiana, in 1727. All the Indian tribes
conspiring, after two centuries of oppression, for the restoration of
liberty to the New World, appeared to me to offer a subject almost as
attractive as the conquest of Mexico. I put some fragments of the work
to paper; but I soon found that I was weak in local coloring, and
that, if I wished to produce a picture of real resemblance, it became
necessary for me, in imitation of Homer’s example, to visit the tribes I
was desirous of describing.
“In 1789 I made M. de Malesherbes acquainted with my idea of going to
America; but, wishing at the same time to give a useful object to my
voyage, I formed the project of discovering the overland passage so long
sought after, and concerning which even Captain Cook himself had left
some doubts. I started, visited the American solitudes, and returned
with plans for a second voyage, which was to last nine years. I proposed
to traverse the entire continent of North America, afterwards to explore
the coasts to the north of California, and to return by Hudson’s Bay,
rounding the pole. M. de Malesherbes undertook to submit my plans to the
Government, and it was then that he listened to the first fragments of
the little work I now offer to the public. The Revolution put a stop
to all my projects. Covered with the blood of my only brother, of my
sister-in-law, and of the illustrious old man, their father; having
seen my mother and another talented sister die in consequence of the
treatment they had undergone in prison, I wandered forth to foreign
lands, where the only friend I had preserved stabbed himself in my arms.
“Of all my manuscripts upon America, I have only saved some fragments,
‘Atala’ in particular, which was itself but an episode of ‘The Natchez.’
‘Atala’ was written in the desert, beneath the huts of the savages. I do
not know whether the public will like the story, which quits all beaten
tracks, and represents a nature and manners altogether foreign to
Europe. There is no adventure in ‘Atala.’ It is a sort of poem, half
descriptive, half dramatic. It consists entirely in the portraiture of
two lovers walking and talking together in the solitudes, and in the
picture of the trials of love in the midst of the calm of the desert.
I have endeavored to give to this work the most antique forms. It is
divided into Prologue, Recital and Epilogue. The principal parts of the
story have each a denomination, such as ‘The Hunters,’ ‘The Laborers,’
etc.; and it was thus that, in the early ages of Greece, the rhapsodists
sang, under different titles, fragments of the ‘Iliad’ and ‘Odyssey.’”
“The moralities I have been desirous of inculcating in ‘Atala’ are
easily discoverable, and as they are summed up in the Epilogue, I need
not speak of them here. I will merely say a word or two concerning
Chactas, the lover of Atala.
“He is a savage more than half civilized, since he knows not only the
living, but also the dead languages of Europe. He can therefore express
himself in a mixed style, suitable to the line upon which he stands,
between society and nature. This circumstance has given me some
advantages, by permitting Chactas to speak as a savage in the
description of manners, and as a European in the dramatic portions of
the narrative. Without that the work must have been abandoned. If I had
always made use of the Indian style, ‘Atala’ would have been Hebrew for
the reader.
“As to the missionary, he is a simple priest, who speaks without
blushing of the Cross, of the blood of his Divine Master, of the
corrupted flesh, etc.; in one word, he is really a priest. I am aware
that it is difficult to depict such a character without awakening ideas
of ridicule in the minds of certain readers. Where I do not draw a tear,
I may raise a smile; that must depend upon individual sentiment.”
“I must say a last word as to ‘Atala.’ The subject is not entirely of my
invention. It is certain that there was a savage at the galleys and
at the court of Louis XIV.; it is certain that a French missionary
accomplished the facts I have related; it is certain that I saw savages
in the American forests carrying away the bones of their forefathers,
and a young mother exposing the body of her child upon the branches of a
tree. Some other circumstances narrated are also veritable, but as they
are not of general interest, it is needless for me to speak of them.”
[From the Preface to “Alain” and “René” published in 1805. ]
“I have been stopped in the corrections neither by the consideration of
the cost of the book, nor by that of the length of the work. A few years
have sufficed to make me acquainted with the weak or defective portions
of that episode. Obedient upon this point to the critics, even so far
as to reproach myself with an excess of docility, I have proved to those
who attacked me that I never remain voluntarily in error, and that,
at all times and upon all subjects, I am ready to give way to lights
superior to my own. ‘Atala’ has been reprinted eleven times--five times
separately and six times in the ‘Genius of Christianity.’ If those
eleven editions were compared, scarcely two would be found to be
altogether alike.
“The twelfth, which I now publish, has been revised with the greatest
care. I have consulted the friends prompt to censure me; I have weighed
each phrase, examined every word. The style, freed from certain epithets
which embarrassed it, proceeds perhaps more naturally and with greater
simplicity. I have introduced more order and logic into certain ideas,
and I have effaced even the slightest inaccuracies of language. M. de
la Harpe observed to me, on the subject of ‘Atala,’ ‘If you will shut
yourself up with me only for a few hours, that time will suffice for
wiping out the spots that cause your critics to cry out so loudly.’ I
have passed four years in the revision of this episode; but it is now as
I intend it to remain. It is at present the only ‘Atala’ I shall ever in
future acknowledge.”
*****
“The new nature and the new manners I have described have also drawn
upon me another ill-considered reproach. I have been taken for the
inventor of certain extraordinary details, whereas I merely repeated
circumstances well known to all travellers. Some notes added to the
present edition of ‘Atala’ would easily have justified this assertion;
but if I had introduced them at every point where each reader might have
looked for them, they would soon have exceeded the length of the work
itself. I therefore gave up the idea of annotations.”
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