Lynes Jr., Carlos. “Chateaubriand, Revitalizer of the French Classics.” Romantic Review 31, no. 4 (December 1940): 355-63.

[In the following essay, Lynes Jr. analyzes Chateaubriand's contributions as a literary critic and proponent of classicism, focusing on The Genius of Christianity.]

The Génie du Christianisme, even supplemented by Chateaubriand's other writings, does not present a systematic and complete tableau of French literature in the seventeenth century. Nevertheless in his occasional rôle as a critic Chateaubriand gives us interesting and suggestive judgments on nearly all the seventeenth-century writers whom he finds time to mention. In these comments the critic is generally looking at literature from a certain angle and borrowing illustrations to prove a thesis, or else expressing personal preferences with little regard for theories and dogmas. A constant preoccupation is the desire to annihilate the whole eighteenth century of the philosophes and to link the “littérature nouvelle,” of which he considers himself the prophet, with the seventeenth century—but with a seventeenth century as Chateaubriand himself conceives it, having qualities strongly resembling his own. As a result of this preoccupation, of which certain aspects only can be touched upon here,¹ there dates from the Génie du Christianisme a new and significant conception of the French classics.

This fact has been recognized, of course, by critics and literary historians from Sainte-Beuve and Vinet to Giraud, Moreau, and Gillot; yet little attempt has been made to analyze the originality and value of Chateaubriand's judgments on the individual writers of the age of Louis XIV. Nor has it been sufficiently emphasized that the nineteenth century and even the twentieth have viewed certain of the seventeenth-century masters, generally unwittingly, to some extent through the eyes of the author of the Génie du Christianisme. Yet Chateaubriand first perceived and pointed out in several leading figures qualities which have greatly impressed succeeding generations of readers and critics, so that he stands as a renewer or revitalizer of the French classics, the first to present them in their living and personal qualities after the dry and academic criticism of men like Voltaire, Marmontel, and La Harpe had all but drained them of their vital substance. Even though he pays lip-service to all the classical canons (except in the matter of the “merveilleux chrétien”), Chateaubriand seldom centers his attention on the most classical characteristics of the seventeenth-century masters; instead, he shows his taste for the qualities which are his own—melancholy, lyrical sadness, harmonious eloquence, preoccupation with the eternal commonplaces which were to furnish the themes for countless romantic works. Neither his religious thesis nor his expressed allegiance to classical doctrines avails to make him devote himself with any fervor to writers who do not appeal to his own intimate sensibility. Five who do appeal—and they are five of the greatest masters—are given especially significant treatment by our critic, both for the originality and importance of his “discoveries” about their esthetic and human qualities and for the fortune of these discoveries with contemporary and later generations of critics and readers.

Thus for the revelation of the romantic, or pre-romantic, Pascal—early ancestor of the Renés and Obermanns of the nineteenth century—we are still in Chateaubriand's debt; or rather, as scholars who have sought to destroy this lyrical characterization in the interests of historical truth might insist, our conception of the author of the Pensées is still clouded over by the creation of Chateaubriand's poetic imagination. At any rate, though he recognized the vigor and loftiness of Pascal's moral, political, and religious ideas—reacting here against the “philosophical” criticism which the writer had suffered during the eighteenth century—Chateaubriand looked upon the great Jansenist primarily as the melancholy poet of man's nothingness before the infinite. With his acute feeling for man's dual nature—his “misère” and his “grandeur”—Pascal had been anathema to the Enlightenment. But for Chateaubriand his “tristesse” and “mélancolie”—the results of this dualism—did not constitute a fault, as Voltaire and Condorcet had held, but rather a quality which added immeasurably to the beauty and profound truth of his writings.² This was a new and significant view, which Chateaubriand expressed in such a way as to fix, for more than a century, the figure of a sort of Pascal-René which more exact literary historians have been unable fully to destroy.

Even before the Génie du Christianisme, Chateaubriand disputed Mme de Staël's theories on the origins of poetic melancholy by declaring that neither England nor Germany produced Pascal and Bossuet, “ces deux grands modèles de la mélancolie en sentiments et en pensées,”³ and by insisting that Pascal, rather than the English poet Young, was “l'homme de la douleur,” pleasing “aux cœurs véritablement malheureux.”⁴ And in the Génie the critic vigorously denies Voltaire's charge that Pascal was “un fou sublime né un siècle trop tôt,”⁵ to insist that the pages in which the author of the Pensées soars above the greatest geniuses would not even exist had their creator been an unbeliever, since they are concerned with the problem of man's fall.⁶ Still more significantly, he concludes that in such passages Pascal's feelings are remarkable over all for the “profondeur de leur tristesse” and for a certain “immensité” which makes the reader feel as if he were suspended “au milieu de ces sentiments comme dans l'infini.”⁷

As Chateaubriand discovered a new Pascal and fixed for generations to come the image of this great genius as he conceived him, so he discovered a new Bossuet—neither the historian nor the eloquent defender of Catholic orthodoxy, already known to all, but the sublime lyric poet, who by his harmonious periods, his musical rhythms, his deep imaginative insight, and his concern with the poetic theme of man's fate and his relation to the infinite merits the title of “poet” even though his writings are cast in the freer molds of prose. This conception of the lyrical qualities of Bossuet's “oraisons funèbres”—perhaps the thing which has saved these works for literature instead of allowing them to sink into the limbo of other writings in their genre—is familiar to the modern reader because Villemain and especially Brunetière have insisted upon it, but at the time of the Génie du Christianisme it was a new and important contribution to the understanding of the true esthetic and human values of Bossuet's art.

Especially drawn to Bossuet because he saw in this writer qualities which he himself possessed as well as because the great Catholic orator seemed a powerful ally for one attempting to prove the superiority of the Christian masters of the seventeenth century over the ancient pagans and the irreligious philosophes, Chateaubriand discussed him at great length. Only his treatment of Bossuet's “oraisons funèbres” need concern us here, however, and that without regard for the religious implications but simply for its originality as literary criticism.

Chateaubriand points out qualities which earlier critics had overlooked or of which they had failed to grasp the significance. The mention of Bossuet, along with Pascal, as a model for the melancholy of the pre-romantics has already been cited. Later the critic affirms that Bossuet, though living amidst the pomp of Versailles, could still imbue his works with a “sainte et majestueuse tristesse” because he knew how to withdraw into the inspiring solitude of his religion.⁸ Constantly concerned with the tomb, bending over the “gouffres d'une autre vie,” Bossuet fills the silent abysses of eternity with words of time and death, and “il se plonge, il se noie dans des mélancolies⁹ incroyables, dans d'inconcevables douleurs.”¹⁰ For the author of René, of course, this melancholy expressed in harmonious, rhythmic periods is an element of ineffable charm, and he insists upon it in such a way as to make all succeeding generations of readers fully conscious of it.

Other comments, often given in the form of little “explications de textes” on notable passages, show the rôle played by Bossuet's creative imagination in both the content and the style of the “oraisons funèbres.” The critic insists upon his unique diction, in which often the simplest terms, the most commonplace expressions, combined with noble ideas and awesome images, serve—as in the Scriptures—to produce the most powerful and moving effects.¹¹

At last Chateaubriand finds the word to describe accurately Bossuet's genius in these superb compositions: he calls the author a “poet.” Such an appellation does not startle the modern reader, who is well acquainted with the lyrical qualities of Bossuet's works. But at the time of the Génie du Christianisme this appreciation was original enough for the critic to feel it necessary to excuse himself for using the word poet.¹² After doing so, he compares Bossuet with David, and likens a passage from the oration on Anne de Gonzague to the Book of Ruth.¹³ Nor was Bossuet merely a lyric poet, he adds; at times, as in the oration on the Prince de Condé, he assumed the epic mode in true Homeric style.¹⁴

The author of the Génie du Christianisme made equally significant discoveries about several of the purely secular masters. With respect to Molière's genius, for example, he was the first to appreciate the “tristesse” or serious element. Gaiffe rightly observes that “le rire franc de Molière reste pour nous assombri par les commentaires de Rousseau et par près d'un siècle de déformation romantique.”¹⁵ But Rousseau, in the Lettre à d'Alembert, simply attacked Molière on moral grounds, especially for ridiculing the figure of Alceste with whom Jean-Jacques unconsciously identified himself; he did not express any admiration for the serious side of Molière's genius. During the period 1830-1850, as Mr. Fellows has shown,¹⁶ appreciation of the serious side of Molière's comedy became general, but before the romantic era it was virtually unknown. Yet in 1801, in his article on Shakespeare, Chateaubriand declares that while the tragic muse is greater and rarer than the comic, Molière ranks as an equal with Sophocles and Corneille. The reason for this apparent exception to the rule, he finds, is that Molière enjoyed the favors of the tragic muse as well as the comic, since Le Tartuffe and Le Misanthrope, by the profundity and “tristesse” of their comic, approach the tragic.¹⁷ Here, it would seem, rather than in Rousseau, lies the origin of the “déformation romantique” which has made the modern conception of Molière so different from that held by his contemporaries. Chateaubriand did not develop this interpretation, for great as the creator of Tartuffe and Alceste undoubtedly was, he offered no support for the thesis of the Génie du Christianisme and appealed but little to Chateaubriand's intimate taste. We must nevertheless give our critic credit for perceiving and expressing, if not very forcefully, a significant modern attitude toward France's great comic poet.

In La Fontaine, too, Chateaubriand found an appealing, but previously neglected, element: the quality of melancholy and sadness and dreaminess which always attracted the author of René and which the “immortel fabuliste,”¹⁸ as the modern reader well knows, possessed in considerable measure. His contemporaries may have been unaware of this dreaminess; its poetic value is a modern discovery. A feeling for this aspect of La Fontaine's art appears in Les Natchez¹⁹ and again in the article of 1801 on Young.²⁰ In the Génie du Christianisme the author points out—for the first time—that La Fontaine was one of the very rare seventeenth-century writers who had the quality of melancholy which he considered the most appealing, if not the highest, poetic element.²¹ Indeed La Fontaine, we are told, even used the word “mélancolie” in the sense in which Chateaubriand and his age employed it.²²

The author of René also appreciated—unlike critics who preceded him—the individual quality of La Fontaine's genius, even to the point of declaring that if the poet's “incorrections” were taken from him his poetry would lose much of its charm.²³ He affirmed, Marcellus reports, that the title “grand poète” held for him such a connotation of perfection that he could bestow it only upon La Fontaine and Racine.²⁴ Finally in the Mémoires d'outre-tombe, describing his return journey from Karlsbad to Paris in 1833, the aging René confides that at Château-Thierry he found his “god,” La Fontaine.²⁵

To Racine, the last of the seventeenth-century writers to be considered in the light of Chateaubriand's judgments, the critic devoted his longest and, in some respects, his most interesting discussion. It is also the best known, doubtless, since the “parallel” of Racine and Virgil in the Génie du Christianisme attracted immediate attention and the problem of Racine's Christian elements—first posed in the seventeenth century with regard to the Jansenism of Phèdre but vastly extended in an original way by Chateaubriand's great religious polemic—has not ceased to be a subject for debate. Less attracted to the supreme tragic poet by his religious preoccupation than by the musical and emotional qualities which struck a responsive chord in his own heart, Chateaubriand was the first to perceive and reveal to his contemporaries a new and delightful Racine.

Significantly enough, our critic devotes less attention to Racine's two Biblical tragedies, even in the Génie du Christianisme, than to the others, though he does remark that the poet's works became “purer” as their author became more religious, culminating in Athalie.²⁶ The discussion of Athalie in the Génie deals mainly, however, with the title character's dream, emphasizing especially the “génie sombre” of the Hebrew cult, together with the macabre and fantastic elements which characterize this passage in the tragedy.²⁷ A decade later, in the Itinéraire de Paris à Jérusalem, the critic tells of reading Athalie beside the tomb of Josaphat, and shows full appreciation of the genius—above all of the musical genius—of its author.²⁸ And twenty-five years later, in the Essai sur la littérature anglaise, he does justice to Esther, previously overlooked. Here again Chateaubriand praises the quality which he perceived as perhaps Racine's greatest gift: the subtle melodiousness of his language.²⁹

When Chateaubriand does turn to the religious elements which he finds in Racine's works, the results are sometimes extraordinary. From the scene of Phèdre's jealousy (Phèdre, Act iv, Scene 6), for example, he quotes the unhappy queen's despairing cry:

Hélas! du crime affreux dont la honte me suit,
Jamais mon triste cœur n'a recueilli le fruit.

Discussing this human, but essentially un-Christian, plaint, Chateaubriand goes far beyond his text and transposes Christianity into flagrantly romantic terms to conclude: “Cette femme, qui se consoleroit d'une éternité de souffrance, si elle avoit joui d'un instant de bonheur, cette femme n'est pas dans le caractère antique; c'est la chrétienne réprouvée, c'est la pécheresse tombée vivante entre les mains de Dieu: son mot est le mot du damné.”³⁰ By his inference that Phèdre would willingly undergo eternal torment for a moment of mortal happiness—which Racine does not really imply—Chateaubriand makes her a romantic heroine avant la lettre.

Chateaubriand's significance as an original interpreter of Racine is perhaps more apparent in other judgments. Thus in the famous “parallel” of Racine and Virgil already mentioned the critic seems—in Sainte-Beuve's phrase—“un pareil qui juge avec amour de ses frères.”³¹ If, on the whole, he really prefers Virgil to Racine, both seem to him almost perfect. He tries, moreover, not to betray his preference openly, since his thesis requires him to declare the Christian poet superior to the pagan. Qualities which the two possess in common include the musical excellence which the author of René finds one of the chief reasons for their irresistible appeal.³² But in the feeling for melancholy and sadness, he is forced to admit, the French poet failed to equal the Latin, doubtless because the society of the capital and court of Louis XIV withdrew the former too much from the solitude of nature.³³ For Athalie, perhaps, Racine should rank higher than Virgil, the critic grants; yet Virgil, the friend of solitary man and of life's “heures secrètes,” has a quality which stirs one's heart more gently and pleasingly. Racine is more admirable, Virgil more lovable; the French poet has “des douleurs trop royales,” whereas the Latin speaks more intimately to all walks of life. Racine's tableaux may be compared with the abandoned parks of Versailles—vast, sad, bathed in solitude, but with the hand of the artist, together with vestiges of grandeur, in the background;³⁴ Virgil's tableaux, however, without being any less noble, are not limited to certain perspectives on life: they represent all nature, including “les profondeurs des forêts, l'aspect des montagnes, les rivages de la mer, où des femmes exilées regardent, en pleurant, l'immensité des flots.”³⁵

In spite of his obvious predilection for what we should term the romantic, or pre-romantic, elements in Racine's art, Chateaubriand still looked upon the dramatist as a brilliant illustration of the validity of the basic principles of classicism, especially of that principle which demands the portrayal of man's universal, permanent traits rather than the particular aspects lent him by his times and circumstances.³⁶ This idea is developed extensively in the Essai sur la littérature anglaise, in 1836, where the critic is anxious to deal a blow at the contemporary romantic drama, for by this date the author of René had turned bitterly against his followers and had repudiated the development which romanticism had taken in abandoning the directions for the “littérature nouvelle” which had been set forth in the Génie du Christianisme.³⁷

Chateaubriand differed less than he imagined from his younger contemporaries, however, for he reserved his greatest admiration for those classical writers who, like Racine, seemed to him to make a large place in their writings for the poignant, tender, melancholy, and musical elements which had nothing to do with the essential principles of classicism. His insistence upon these qualities led to a new conception of Racine's art—one which later critics have had to correct to some extent, but which was a welcome revelation to a generation accustomed only to the dogmatic criticism of Marmontel and La Harpe. For Chateaubriand was the first to find, beneath the polished surface lent Racine's tragedies by the refined society of Louis XIV's court and the strict conventions of the classical age, the natural, human, musical qualities of a timeless poetic genius.

Neglected as it is today, the Génie du Christianisme—with others of Chateaubriand's writings—contains, then, interpretations which were new and significant enough to enlarge and modify previous conceptions of outstanding French classics. This can only mean that, with all his limitations, Chateaubriand was a critic of power, insight, and creative genius, since few, indeed, are the critics who may be cited as originators of new and fruitful interpretations of the great masters, as renewers or revitalizers of a splendid tradition. The poetic value of Pascal's sadness, melancholy, and sense of the infinite, the lyricism of Bossuet the “poet,” the serious side of Molière's dramatic genius, La Fontaine's lyrical melancholy and dreaminess, and the musicality, human tenderness, and Christian character portrayal of Racine's tragedies—these “discoveries” by the author of the Génie du Christianisme are of first importance because they revealed new aspects of these men's genius to readers whose taste and insight had been left undeveloped by the sterile criticism of dogmatic literary arbiters, and, above all, because they have influenced a whole century's conception of the French classics.

All these original interpretations show common elements which suggest that what Chateaubriand really discovered—led to it as he was by his own temperament, his taste, the nature of his creative talent, and perhaps also by his increasing pessimism and disillusionment—was what one might call, following the title of the famous book by Emile Deschanel, “le romantisme des classiques.” This is true, of course, only if the word “romantisme” is taken in a broad sense as applying to the lyrical, tender, dreamy, melancholy elements of literature as contrasted with the formal, disciplined aspects which earlier critics had over-emphasized. This romanticism is not, in any case, identical with the romanticism of the 1820's and the 1830's, since—and this is evidence of Chateaubriand's impressive, but often unrecognized, stature as a critic—in spite of the reaction against, or the transformation of, romanticism which is still going on, these “romantic” interpretations of five of the greatest French classical masters still deeply color our conception of their genius.

Notes

1. In a forthcoming book on Chateaubriand as a Critic and Historian of French Literature, this whole question is treated in detail, both in relation to the history of criticism and for the light it throws upon Chateaubriand's intellectual biography.

2. Cf. Paul Pierrot, “Chateaubriand et Pascal—l'influence des Pensées sur le Génie du Christianisme,” Revue Générale (Bruxelles), 62^e année (15 août 1929), pp. 137-138.

3. Lettre à Fontanes, 22 décembre 1800, in Correspondance générale de Chateaubriand, Paris, Champion, 1912-1924, i, 34.

4. Article of 1801 on Young, in Chateaubriand, Mélanges littéraires. Vol. xxi of Œuvres complètes, Paris, Ladvocat, 1826-1831, p. 42.

5. Cf. Pierrot, loc. cit., p. 135.

6. Génie du Christianisme, III^e partie, livre ii, chapitre 6, in Œuvres, xiii, 10.

7. Ibid., III, ii, 6, in Œuvres, xiii, 9.

8. Mélanges littéraires, in Œuvres, xxi, 43.

9. After the first edition, Chateaubriand substituted “tristesses” for “mélancolies.”

10. Génie, III, iv, 4, in Œuvres, xiii, 77-78.

11. Ibid., p. 78.

12. Ibid., p. 83.

13. Ibid., p. 83.

14. Ibid., p. 84.

15. Félix Gaiffe, Le Rire et la scène française, Paris, Boivin, 1931, p. 10.

16. Otis E. Fellows, French Opinion of Molière, 1800-1850, Providence, Brown University, 1937.

17. Mélanges littéraires, in Œuvres, xxi, 62.

18. Essai sur les révolutions, in Œuvres, i, 134.

19. Les Natchez, ed. Chinard, Paris, Droz, 1932, p. 210.

20. Mélanges littéraires, in Œuvres, xxi, 33-34.

21. Génie, III, iv, 4, in Œuvres, xiii, 79-80.

22. Ibid., II, iv, 3, in Œuvres, xii, 181-182.

23. Mélanges littéraires, in Œuvres, xxi, 345.

24. Marcellus, Chateaubriand et son temps, Paris, Lévy, 1859, p. 171.

25. Mémoires d'outre-tombe, ed. Biré, Paris, Garnier, n.d., vi, 196.

26. Génie, III, iv, 5, in Œuvres, xiii, 86.

27. Ibid., II, iv, 11, in Œuvres, xii, 219-220.

28. Itinéraire de Paris à Jérusalem, in Œuvres, ix, 295.

29. Essai sur la littérature anglaise, in Œuvres complètes, Paris, Didot, 1843, v, 61.

30. Génie, II, iii, 3, in Œuvres, xii, 125-126.

31. Sainte-Beuve, Chateaubriand et son groupe littéraire, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1889, i, 322-325.

32. Génie, II, ii, 10, in Œuvres, xii, 92-93. Chateaubriand had an excellent ear for the music of French verse, since Maurice Grammont has shown (Le Vers français, Paris, 1904, pp. 370-375), after exhaustive analysis, that of six great poets chosen for their harmonious qualities—Racine, Hugo, Musset, Leconte de Lisle, Boileau, Lamartine—Racine ranks first, with only Hugo coming anywhere near him as a master of verbal music.

33. Génie, II, ii, 10, in Œuvres, xii, 92-93.

34. Ibid., p. 96. Cf. also Génie, III, i, 7, in Œuvres, xii, 320-321, for another “romantic” description of Versailles.

35. Génie, II, ii, 10, in Œuvres, xii, 96-97.

36. Preface to Études historiques, in Œuvres, iv, xlv.

37. Essai sur la littérature anglaise in Œuvres complètes, Paris, Didot, 1843, v, 53-56.