(1768-1848)
[Illustration: CHATEAUBRIAND]
Viscount de Chateaubriand, the founder of the romantic school in French
literature, and one of the most brilliant and polished writers of the
first half of the nineteenth century, was born at St. Malo in Brittany,
September 14th, 1768. On the paternal side he was a direct descendant of
Thierri, grandson of Alain III., who was king of Armorica in the ninth
century. Destined for the Church, he became a pronounced skeptic, and
entered the army. In his nineteenth year he was presented at court, and
became acquainted with men of letters like La Harpe, Le Brun, and
Fontanes. At the outbreak of the Revolution he quitted the service, and
embarked for America in January, 1791. Tiring of the restraints of
civilization, civilization, he plunged into the virgin forests of
Canada, and for several months lived with the savages. This remarkable
experience inspired his most notable romantic work.
Returning to France in 1792, he cast his lot with the Royalists, was
wounded at Thionville, and finally retired to England, where for eight
years he earned a bare support by teaching and translating. His first
book was the 'Essay on Revolutions' (1797), which displayed some
imagination, little reflection, and an affectation of misanthropy and
skepticism. The subsequent change in his convictions followed on the
death of his pious mother in 1798. Returning to France he published
'Atala,' an idyll _a la mode_, founded on the loves of two young
savages. Teeming with glowing descriptions of nature, and marked by
elevation of sentiment combined with a sensuousness almost Oriental,
this barbaric 'Paul and Virginia' immediately established the author's
fame. Thus encouraged, in the following year he gave the world his
'Genius of Christianity,' in which the poetic and symbolic features of
Christianity are painted in dazzling colors and with great charm of
style. The enormous success of this book during the first decade of the
century unquestionably did more to revive French interest in religion
than the establishment of the Concordat itself. Napoleon testified his
gratitude by appointing the author secretary to the embassy at Rome, and
afterward minister plenipotentiary to the Valais. When the Duke
d'Enghien was assassinated (March 21st, 1804), Chateaubriand resigned
from the diplomatic service, although the ink was scarcely dry in which
the First Consul had signed his new commission. Two years later the
successful author departed on a sentimental pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
He visited Asia Minor, Egypt, and Spain, where amid the ruins of the
Alhambra he wrote 'The Last of the Abencerrages.' To this interesting
tour the world owes the 'Itinerary from Paris to Jerusalem' (1811), that
book which in Saintsbury's opinion remains "the pattern of all the
picturesque travels of modern times."
With the publication of the 'Itinerary' the literary career of
Chateaubriand virtually closes. On the return of the Bourbons to power,
the man of letters was tempted to enter the exciting arena of politics,
becoming successively ambassador at Berlin, at the court of St. James,
delegate to the Congress of Verona, and Minister of Foreign Affairs. In
1830, unwilling to pledge himself to Louis Philippe, he relinquished the
dignity of peer of the realm accorded him in 1815, and retired to a life
of comparative poverty, which was brightened by the friendship and
devotion of Madame Recamier. Until his death on the 4th of July, 1848,
Chateaubriand devoted himself to the completion of his 'Memoires
d'Outre-Tombe,' an auto-biographical work which was published
posthumously, and which, although diffuse and even puerile at times,
contains much brilliant writing.
His contemporaries pronounced Chateaubriand the foremost man of letters
of France, if not of all Europe. During the last half of this century
his fame has sensibly diminished both at home and abroad, and in the
history of French literature he is chiefly significant as marking the
transition from the old classical to the modern romantic school. Yet
while admitting the glaring faults, exaggerations, affectations, and
egotism of the author of the 'Genius of Christianity,' a fair criticism
admits his best passages to be unsurpassed for perfection of style and
gorgeousness of coloring. 'Atala' is a classic with real life in it even
yet,--powerful, interesting, and even thrilling, in spite of its
theatricality, and often magnificent in description.
In 1811 Chateaubriand was elected to the French Academy as the successor
of the poet Chenier. Among his works not already mentioned are 'Rene'
(1807), a sort of sequel to 'Atala'; 'The Martyrs' (1810); 'The Natchez'
(1826), containing recollections of America; an 'Essay on English
Literature' (2 vols.); and a translation of Milton's 'Paradise Lost'
(1836).