SOURCE: Charlton, D. G. “The Ambiguity of Chateaubriand's René.” French Studies: A Quarterly Review 23, no. 1 (January 1969): 229-43.

[In the following essay, Charlton analyzes Chateaubriand's René as an example of French Romanticism that constructs the melancholic, solitary individualist. Charlton maintains that Chateaubriand presented an ambivalent view of both melancholy and Christianity.]

No figure is more often connected with French Romanticism than the melancholic solitary. Although recent studies have identified not one kind of héros romantique but several—the poet-prophet, the rebel, the dandy, even the ‘unheroic hero’, amongst others—yet the most typically Romantic character for most readers remains the passion-tossed individualist afflicted with le mal du siècle. And it has commonly been alleged or implied that the Romantic writers do indeed portray this figure as a true hero, as someone to admire, as a superior being whose mental anguish lifts him above the common stock. The Romantics do not merely have sympathy with him in that they themselves have experienced his feelings, suffered like him from frustrated idealism and despairing boredom; in their heart of hearts they admire him, clothing him in the seductive poetry of their high-flown images. Not all their commentators hold this view; a few take seriously their prefatory protestations of morality and interpret their works accordingly. To cite only one example here, even a leading critic of the Romantic attitudes, Maurice Barrès, could declare of them:

Ces écrivains … travaillèrent de leur mieux à reconnaître le mal du siècle, à le dénoncer, à le refouler. Si nous nous sortons du tourbillon où ils se noyaient, c'est grâce à leurs avertissements.¹

But this remains a minority view, and never more so than in regard to the first, most celebrated and influential portrayal of this héros romantique in nineteenth-century French literature—Chateaubriand's René.

René was originally intended as an episode in Les Natchez, but in the event it first appeared in 1802 as a part of its author's apology for the Christian faith, Le Génie du christianisme, and it was only after a number of editions of the whole work that he authorized the story's separate publication in 1805, alongside Atala. Moreover, as is equally well known, in the years immediately following 1802 Chateaubriand claimed for it an important religious and moral purpose. In the Défense du Génie du christianisme (1803) he emphasizes first his apologetic aim, alleging in René and Atala alike ‘une tendance bien visible à faire aimer la Religion et à en démontrer l'utilité’, and asks:

… la nécessité des cloîtres pour certains malheurs de la vie, et ceuxlà même qui sont les plus grands, la puissance d'une religion qui peut seule fermer des plaies que tous les baumes de la terre ne sauroient guérir, ne sont-elles pas invinciblement prouvées dans l'histoire de René?

(126)²

He goes on to stress as well his moral intentions:

L'auteur y combat en outre le travers particulier des jeunes gens du siècle, le travers qui mène directement au suicide … [Il] a voulu dénoncer cette espèce de vice nouveau, et peindre les funestes conséquences de l'amour outré de la solitude.

(126-7)

And he concludes by recalling the story's final pages:

Au reste, le discours du père Souël ne laisse aucun doute sur le but et les moralités religieuses de l'histoire de René.

(129)

Likewise, in the preface to the separate edition of Atala and René in 1805 he refers his readers ‘pour toute préface’ to the Défense and the chapter ‘Du vague des passions’ in Le Génie which immediately preceded the story there, and declares of his aims in René:

On voit, par le chapitre …, quelle espèce de passion nouvelle j'ai essayé de peindre; et, par l'extrait de la Défense, quel vice non encore attaqué j'ai voulu combattre.

(9)

Yet despite these declarations many literary critics and historians have seen the story as almost a glorification of the very spiritual condition the author purported to be criticizing, and indeed one effect of the work upon his contemporaries does appear to have been to encourage this mal du siècle. Chateaubriand himself, in a famous passage in the Mémoires d'outre-tombe, deplored the influence René had had and claimed to regret its very publication.

Si René n'existait pas, je ne l'écrirais plus; s'il m'était possible de le détruire, je le détruirais: il a infesté l'esprit d'une partie de la jeunesse, effet que je n'avais pu prévoir, car j'avais au contraire voulu la corriger.³

Literary scholars have divided in their opinions, but many have followed Sainte-Beuve in his well-known denigration of the moral content of René:

Les paroles de réprimande qu'adresse à ce malade si content de l'être le vénérable Père Souël ne sont que pour l'assortiment, et pour fournir le prétexte d'insérer un tel épisode troublant dans un ouvrage consacré au Christianisme. Elles sont sévères sans être pénétrantes et efficaces. J'appelle cela une moralité plaquée … Plus il s'attaque durement à Jean-Jacques et à l'auteur de Werther …, plus il montre le peu de solidité et même de sincérité de sa plaidoirie.⁴

Thus Jules Lemaitre, for example, contends that René was not—either in its original conception, as he rightly notes, or in its final form—‘une histoire édifiante et propre à montrer la beauté et l'utilité de la religion chrétienne’.⁵ Merlant mentions the discours du père Souël only at the end of his discussion and then merely to deny that it represents ‘la vraie moralité de René’.⁶ The work's best editor, Armand Weil, concludes: ‘Tout aboutit donc, dans la fiction comme dans la réalité, à l'apothéose du héros qui … incarne visiblement son idéal et son rêve.’ And elsewhere he adds: ‘… c'est après coup, et à la suite des critiques dirigées contre son livre, que Chateaubriand s'est préoccupé de rattacher plus étroitement l'épisode de René au dessein général du Génie du christianisme’.⁷ A still more recent editor, Fernand Letessier, seems to share this view. Having expressed his surprise at the author's regrets about René's influence, he adds with heavy irony: ‘Ainsi l'admiration féconde des nouvelles générations aurait reposé sur un grossier contresens de leur part!’⁸ Yet again, Fouilhé comments tartly on the priest's final judgment: ‘Leçon excellente, qui n'a que le tort de venir trop tard et d'être trop rapide!’⁹ Other critics do not go so far as to challenge the author's sincerity in the manner of Sainte-Beuve, but they certainly do not regard as central to the work the religious and moral significance he himself alleged. They concentrate in their appreciations on its autobiographical relevance, or its style, or its historical and documentary interest as the first nineteenth-century expression of le mal du siècle—upon Chateaubriand as the author, in Gautier's famous phrase, ‘qui inventa la mélancolie et la passion moderne’.¹⁰ Only a few critics have accepted Chateaubriand at his word—in common, it may be noted, with at least one or two readers in the year of the novel's first publication.¹¹ Gillot, for example, finds a sincere condemnation of moral ‘defeatism’ and egoistic pessimism, believes Père Souël's stress on social action reflects Chateaubriand's own convictions, and even writes of the ‘profession de confiance en la société, en la civilisation et en la vie’ found here and elsewhere in his writings at this time.¹² Chinard too finds Sainte-Beuve's criticism ‘peu justifiée’. Not only are there many signs of the author's nascent Christianity even in Les Natchez, within which René was originally to appear, but compared with the complex René of Les Natchez, he submits,

le René de 1802, au contraire, est un René sinon guéri et paisible, au moins touché par la grâce et qui ne cherche ni à dissimuler ni à excuser ses fautes.¹³

Likewise, two Canadian editors, R. D. Finch and C. R. Parsons, even suggest that Chateaubriand himself is better identified with Père Souël than with René, and L. Martin-Chauffier also accepts that the priest's judgment on René represents the author's own conclusion.¹⁴

Chateaubriand's religious views and Le Génie du christianisme as a whole have been the subject of protracted debate. Now his ‘religious sincerity’ and his orthodoxy have been defended; now he has been seen as ‘un païen malgré lui’ or even as a conscious hypocrite; now his position has been described as ‘un dilettantisme chrétien’.¹⁵ But the wide differences of critical opinion as to the religious and moral significance of René provide a particularly arresting illustration of the larger controversy, and they also present a puzzling literary-critical problem that seems rarely if ever to have been directly discussed. What can explain such divergencies of interpretation? After not far short of two centuries, in regard to a work that has been so often read and studied, how can such contradictory views still persist? Is René a Christian work or not, and—a different question that requires to be kept separate—is it a condemnation of le mal du siècle or its apotheosis? Are Chateaubriand's claims justified or not?

In discussing the validity of his assertions it is particularly important to note what he said at the time of the story's first appearance and to compare this with his later statements. More generally, it is highly desirable to see it in the context of its original publication.

René followed immediately upon the Second Part of Le Génie du christianisme. In the First Part the author had advanced arguments in favour of Christianity's ‘dogmas and doctrine’; now, under the general title of ‘Poétique du christianisme’, he has turned to consider the impact of its teaching upon literature and the arts, offering what one contemporary, the Abbé de Boulogne, termed ‘un cours de littérature pour faire aimer la religion’. More specifically, Chateaubriand contends that ‘le christianisme a changé les rapports des passions en changeant les bases du vice et de la vertu’ and that the dramatic and psychological power of literature has been enriched by the Christian view of human nature, and particularly by its stress on the conflict of good and evil within man and the choice before him between salvation and damnation. Racine's Phèdre, for example, is heightened by a range of feelings absent in Euripides and Seneca; it presupposes ‘une science de la tristesse, des angoisses et des transports de l'âme que les anciens n'ont jamais connus’. Again, ‘le merveilleux de la position d'Héloïse’ rests upon ‘ce combat entre la chair et l'esprit … qui appartient au dogme et à la morale du christianisme’.¹⁶ Indeed, Chateaubriand goes further still and writes of ‘la religion chrétienne considérée elle-même comme passion’:

Non contente d'augmenter le jeu des passions dans le drame et dans l'épopée, la religion chrétienne est elle-même une sorte de passion qui a ses transports, ses ardeurs, ses soupirs, ses joies, ses larmes, ses amours du monde et du désert.¹⁷

This description itself seems to prefigure René's state of mind, the condition Chateaubriand terms ‘le vague des passions’, and we must now note a point of central importance. This ‘état d'âme’ is regarded by him as deriving in large measure from Christianity, as the analysis in the chapter ‘Du vague des passions’ makes clear. In part, the author begins by noting, it stems from the development of civilization itself, which widens a young man's emotional and imaginative horizons whilst also provoking a premature, sophisticated cynicism.

On est détrompé sans avoir joui; il reste encore des désirs, et l'on n'a plus d'illusions. L'imagination est riche, abondante et merveilleuse, l'existence pauvre, sèche et désenchantée.

(117)

The Greeks and Romans knew little of ‘cette inquiétude secrète’, for they were fully involved in public affairs. Furthermore, they were less affected than modern man by the attitudes of women—‘[qui] ont dans leur existence un certain abandon qu'elles font passer dans la nôtre’ (118). But more important still, he argues, the Christian doctrines, unlike the religious beliefs of the Ancients, have led to dissatisfaction with this life and a preoccupation with the after-life and ‘des plaisirs plus parfaits que ceux de ce monde’. The source of modern melancholy is to be found in Christianity above all—a claim that resembles Madame de Staël's linking of Christianity and melancholy in De la littérature (1800) and may perhaps even have been reinforced in his mind by her argument.

C'est dans le génie du christianisme, qu'il faut surtout chercher la raison de ce vague des sentimens répandu chez les hommes modernes. Formée pour nos misères et pour nos besoins, la religion chrétienne nous offre sans cesse le double tableau des chagrins de la terre et des joies célestes, et par ce moyen elle a fait dans le cœur une source de maux présens et d'espérances lointaines, d'où découlent d'inépuisables rêveries.

(118)

It is noteworthy that the paragraphs propounding this view are omitted in the extract from this chapter given in the preface of the 1805 edition, but in 1802, it is clear, Chateaubriand sees René's ‘singulière position de l'âme’ as the product above all of dissatisfactions and longings inspired by Christianity.

Nor is this the only connection between René and the Christian faith that is proposed in this chapter. First, Chateaubriand seems to see his story as a further example, in the tradition of Phèdre, of Christianity's effect upon literature. ‘Il ne faudroit que joindre quelques infortunes à cet état rêveur des sentimens, pour qu'il pût servir de fond à un drame admirable’ (119). Secondly, he concludes the chapter by stating:

On trouvera d'ailleurs dans cet épisode quelques harmonies des monumens chrétiens et de la vie religieuse, avec les passions du cœur et les tableaux de la nature: ainsi notre but sera doublement rempli

(120, n. 1)

—a passage he glosses in a later edition by declaring that his double aim in René ‘est de faire voir comment le génie du christianisme a modifié les arts, la morale, l'esprit, le caractère, et les passions même des peuples modernes, et de montrer quelle prévoyante sagesse a dirigé les institutions chrétiennes’. (120)¹⁸

If one now turns to the revised version of this chapter and to the Défense (1803), certain differences are apparent. First, a stronger moral emphasis is introduced. In 1802 he had described René by saying:

c'est la peinture du vague des passions, sans aucun mélange d'aventures, hors un malheur qui, sans produire d'événemens remarquables, sert seulement à redoubler la mélancolie de René et à le punir …

—the only reference to punishment outside the story in the original edition (119). The revision of this passage speaks, by contrast, of ‘un grand malheur envoyé pour punir René, et pour effrayer les jeunes hommes qui, livrés à d'inutiles rêveries, se dérobent criminellement aux charges de la société’ (119-20). The Défense is firmer still in stressing the moral and religious significance of the story; its aims are here given as to ‘dénoncer cette espèce de vice nouveau’ and ‘faire aimer la Religion et en démontrer l'utilité’. But there is more than a change of emphasis. In the original version of ‘Du vague des passions’, we have seen, Christianity is identified as the chief source of contemporary melancholy; it is ‘le génie du christianisme’ that provokes René's ‘état rêveur des sentimens’. The paragraphs stating this view are still found in the 1804 edition of Le Génie du christianisme, though they were to be omitted from the extract given in the preface of 1805. And yet in 1803, in the Défense, Chateaubriand puts forward a seemingly quite different account of René's malady. It is there described as ‘le travers qui mène directement au suicide’, stimulated in the young by Rousseau and Werther, and in particular it is now seen as a consequence of irreligion:

depuis la destruction des monastères et les progrès de l'incrédulité, on doit s'attendre à voir se multiplier au milieu de la société …, des espèces de solitaires tout à-la-fois passionnés et philosophes, qui ne pouvant ni renoncer aux vices du siècle, ni aimer ce siècle, prendront la haine des hommes pour de l'élévation de génie, renonceront à tout devoir divin et humain, se nourriront à l'écart des plus vaines chimères, et se plongeront de plus en plus dans une misanthropie orgueilleuse …

(127, my italics)

And there is a second but related change of view—namely in regard to monastic life. In ‘Du vague des passions’ in 1802 he links with Christian melancholy the creation of ‘des couvens, où se retirèrent des malheureux trompés par le monde’, and he adds: ‘Une prodigieuse mélancolie fut le fruit de cette vie monastique …’—an assertion already found in his Lettre à M. de Fontanes of 1800 (119). In the Défense, however, we saw, he claims that modern melancholy has spread ‘depuis la destruction des monastères’ and that his story proves ‘la nécessité des cloîtres pour certains malheurs de la vie’—and indeed he also stresses that Amélie, having withdrawn to the convent, ‘meurt heureuse et guérie’ (128).

It is tempting to see these changes as evidence supporting Sainte-Beuve's charge of insincerity. Yet this is not lightly to be alleged against any author, and that Chateaubriand should offer a new account of René's melancholy in the Défense and leave his previous analysis intact in the 1804 edition of Le Génie du christianisme does not suggest even inefficient hypocrisy so much as uncertainty or complexity of thought. The evidence shows that by 1803 Chateaubriand's ideas had developed in some respects, but this is hardly surprising, especially in a comparatively recent convert still exploring the implications of his faith. A comparable evolution of ideas during the immediately preceding years is reflected in Les Natchez. As Chinard remarks, the ‘contradictions’ in that work reveal ‘les états successifs de sa pensée et les variations de sa philosophie’, and Chateaubriand comments of himself at the time of Les Natchez and the Essai sur les révolutions (itself ‘un livre de doute et de douleur’, he said):

Un jeune homme qui entasse pêle-mêle ses idées, ses inventions, ses études, ses lectures, doit produire le chaos …¹⁹

That this development and confusion should continue, especially following contemporary criticisms of Le Génie du christianisme, would be natural and would certainly not prove insincerity.²⁰ Furthermore, such an accusation would be persuasive only if there were a radical difference between René itself and his later statements about it. It may be the case that René reflects not only the ideas expressed in ‘Du vague des passions’ in 1802 but also the ideas in the Défense in 1803—ideas that had still not wholly crystallized, still less been fully formulated at the time of the composition of René, but which may none the less be present explicitly or as implications.

I believe that this is in fact so, that René embodies an ambivalent view of melancholy in relation to Christianity and that the resulting ambiguity in the novel helps to explain those differences of critical interpretation from which this article began.

Ambiguity does not, however, characterize the whole of the novel's ideological content. Chateaubriand's claim in the Défense that René has ‘une tendance bien visible à faire aimer la Religion et à en démontrer l'utilité’ is already prefigured by the very inclusion of the story in Le Génie du christianisme and, as we noted, by what he says in the chapter ‘Du vague des passions’, and in this regard the text of René itself is hardly less emphatic than the Défense.

Clearly the story does not give an intellectual formulation of the arguments for Christianity presented elsewhere in Le Génie du christianisme. Yet like Pascal before him he wishes to persuade the heart as well as to convince the mind; he notes of René and Atala in the Défense, having summarized his theoretical claims for religion:

… il ne suffisoit pas d'avancer tout cela, il falloit encore le prouver. C'est ce que l'auteur a essayé de faire dans les deux épisodes de son livre.

(126)

And at the emotional and psychological levels René offers marked support for the Christian religion. First—negatively no doubt but as indispensably as for Pascal in his depiction of la faiblesse de l'homme sans Dieu—Chateaubriand takes up throughout the novel the psalmist's theme of the transience of man whose ‘days are as grass’. The death and burial of René's father; René's visit to the decayed ruins of Greece and Rome; the statue he observes in London; his return to his former home—these and other experiences all reiterate the fact of human weakness. ‘La famille de l'homme n'est que d'un jour, le souffle de Dieu la disperse comme une fumée …’ (105). ‘Qu'ai-je besoin [Amélie asks of René] de vous entretenir de l'incertitude, et du peu de valeur de la vie? … Qu'est-ce donc que l'homme, dont la mémoire s'abolit si vite … ?’ (102). After all his travels René can only declare: ‘Cependant qu'avoisje appris jusqu'alors avec tant de fatigue? Rien de certain parmi les anciens, rien de beau parmi les modernes’ (90). Yet at the same time René is aware of la grandeur de l'homme, of his aspirations to transcend his present condition. Man yearns for the ideal, to be free of the burden of sin and imperfection:

Ah! qui n'a senti quelquefois le besoin de se régénérer … ? Qui ne se trouve quelquefois accablé du fardeau de sa propre corruption, et incapable de rien faire de grand, de noble, de juste?

(94)

He senses too that his true home lies in a world to come. Earlier in his life, after his father's death, René has felt convinced of the immortality of the soul. Later, as he wanders in the autumnal countryside, he senses that death will take him ‘vers ces régions inconnues que [son] cœur demande’; ‘un secret instinct me tourmentoit; je sentois que je n'étois moi-même qu'un voyageur …’ (96). Nor is Christianity's doctrine of a future life the only solace it can offer; in this life it possesses (in the words of the Défense) ‘la puissance d'une religion qui peut seule fermer des plaies que tous les baumes de la terre ne sauroient guérir’ (126). René acknowledges this, for instance, as he observes the penitent at prayer:

Je voyois de pauvres femmes venir se prosterner devant le Très-Haut, ou des pécheurs s'agenouiller au tribunal de la prénitence. Nul ne sortoit de ces lieux sans un visage plus serein; et les sourdes clameurs qu'on entendoit au dehors, sembloient être les flots des passions et les orages du monde, qui venoient expirer au pied du temple du Seigneur.

(93)

Amélie's experience too illustrates above all ‘[le] bonheur de la vie religieuse’, ‘la nécessité des cloîtres pour certains malheurs de la vie’, the wisdom of a Church that provides for men's deepest needs, that is ‘la seule ressource dans les grands malheurs de la vie’. Thus she writes of her convent life:

La simplicité de mes compagnes, la pureté de leurs vœux, la régularité de notre vie, tout répand du baume sur mes jours. Quand j'entends gronder les orages, et que l'oiseau de mer vient battre des ailes à ma fenêtre; moi, pauvre colombe du ciel, je songe au bonheur que j'ai eu de trouver un abri contre la tempête … C'est ici la sainte montagne, le sommet élevé d'où l'on entend les derniers bruits de la terre, et les premiers concerts du ciel …

(110)

And René himself notes the contrast between his own melancholy and the serenity of a priest like Père Souël or the happiness of the Christian recluse:

Heureux ceux qui ont fini leur voyage, sans avoir quitté le port, et qui n'ont point, comme moi, traîné d'inutiles jours sur la terre!

(87)

Hardly separable from the Church's power of spiritual healing, furthermore, is ‘le charme de la religion’ (86). Here too it speaks to man's inmost nature—in its ceremonies, for example (as when Amélie takes her vows), even—the most frequent symbol of this ‘charme’—in the ringing of the church bell:

Tout se trouve dans les réminiscences enchantées que donne le bruit de la cloche natale, philosophie, piété, tendresse, et le berceau et la tombe, et le passé et l'avenir.

(86)

Surely, and without need for further illustration, one may fairly conclude that in René itself the author has shown in emotional terms what, in the Défense, he lays claim to have shown—

que la Religion embellit notre existence, corrige les passions sans les éteindre, jette un intérêt singulier sur tous les sujets où elle est employée; … que sa doctrine et son culte se mêlent merveilleusement aux émotions du cœur et aux scènes de la nature; qu'elle est enfin la seule ressource dans les grands malheurs de la vie …

(126)

Here there is no conflict between the novel itself and his later statements about it. Certainly one may think that his apology for Christianity has marked limitations; one may sympathize with Senancour when he declares:

[Les choses que vous annoncez] sont belles sans doute, elles sont morales et poétiques, mystérieuses et pittoresques. Mais ce n'est pas du tout de cela qu'il s'agit: prouvez qu'elles sont vraies.²¹

Yet within the limits of Le Génie du christianisme as a whole René does surely offer emotionally appealing support for Christianity—sufficiently so to justify his claim to ‘faire aimer la Religion et à en démontrer l'utilité’.

But what of the moral significance of the work, we must now ask? In part its presentation of René's state of mind is clearly critical. One may not wish to go as far as Chinard when he claims of René: ‘Son récit est la confession générale d'un chrétien qui commence à entrevoir la lumière de la foi.’²² But in some degree at least, as he tells of his own past, René is now repentant and self-critical. He reiterates, for example, that, prior to his separation from his sister, his melancholy has been in good measure self-generated and without objective cause. He presents himself from the start as ‘un jeune homme sans force et sans vertu, qui trouve en lui-même son tourment’ (85). He recognizes the weakness and irresolution of his nature: ‘Je luttai quelque temps contre mon mal, mais avec indifférence et sans avoir la ferme résolution de le vaincre’ (97). And when he learns of his sister's incestuous emotions and feels himself ‘réellement malheureux’, he measures the full insubstantiality of his previous unhappiness: ‘je sus alors ce que c'étoit que de verser des larmes pour un mal qui n'étoit point imaginaire!’ (108). Criticism comes even more emphatically from his sister and Père Souël. Amélie's first letter is hardly less definite than the priest's final condemnation:

Mais, mon frère, sortez au plus vite de la solitude, qui ne vous est pas bonne; cherchez quelqu'occupation. Je sais que vous riez amèrement de cette nécessité où l'on est en France de prendre un état; ne méprisez pas tant l'expérience et la sagesse de nos pères. Il vaut mieux, mon cher René, ressembler un peu plus au commun des hommes, et avoir un peu moins de malheur.

(101)

It deserves notice that Amélie here anticipates some of the priest's main comments—a fact which perhaps weakens the accusation that his discours is an extraneous, even insincere addition to the novel. His tone is more condemnatory, but his assertions are little more than developments of Amélie's affectionate admonitions. ‘On n'est point, Monsieur, un homme supérieur parce qu'on apperçoit le monde sous un jour odieux.’ ‘Que faites-vous seul au fond des forêts, où vous consumez vos jours, négligeant tous vos devoirs? … La solitude est mauvaise à celui qui n'y vit pas avec Dieu …’ (113). Père Souël sums up and re-emphasizes the attitude expressed by René's sister, and he also gives it a more universal and positive formulation: ‘Quiconque a reçu des forces, doit les consacrer au service de ses semblables …’ (113).

Nor is explicit criticism of René the only way in which a Christian ethic is presented. The central theme of René, one might say, is less melancholy than ‘le bonheur’. Throughout the novel René is engaged, unsuccessfully, upon the search for true happiness and is contrasted with those who have achieved it. He perceives that Chactas and Père Souël have found an inner ‘peace’ that escapes him:

La paix de vos cœurs, respectables vieillards, et le calme de la nature autour de moi me font rougir du trouble et de l'agitation de mon âme.

(85)

He compares himself with the Red Indians amongst whom he lives and whose state he envies: ‘Heureux sauvages, oh! que ne puis-je jouir de la paix qui vous accompagne toujours!’ (91). And Amélie too finds serenity and ‘[le] bonheur de la vie religieuse’ (87). In contrast to their state, René's emotional condition is seen (in Chateaubriand's words in ‘Du vague des passions’) as leading to ‘une chose fort triste’; ‘on est détrompé sans avoir joui …’; ‘il est incroyable quelle amertume cet état d'âme répand sur la vie’ (117). And in the Défense he fairly stresses the comparison: ‘Il ne faut pas perdre de vue qu'Amélie meurt heureuse et guérie, et que René finit misérablement’ (128).

There is thus sound evidence for claiming that the story is critical of René's attitude to life. Yet if this were unambiguously the case, one may doubt whether the story would have been so diversely interpreted. It is hard to doubt that at many moments in the book melancholy is being valued more highly than a happiness found (in Chactas's phrase) ‘dans les voies communes’, and the young idealist may well leave René with a preference for the delights of sadness rather than the somewhat pedestrian tranquillity offered by Père Souël and Chactas.

There are at least two reasons that can explain this reaction. The first lies in the very form in which the story is cast—namely, as presented by René, as seen through his state of mind.²³ Hence, though we observe the Christian reactions of Amélie and Père Souël, we do so from outside; for much of the book, by contrast, we observe René from within. His point of view thereby becomes our point of view, and the experience we bring from our reading is above all his experience, incomplete though Chateaubriand himself may believe it to be, for it carries an immediacy and a conviction, has a centrality within the story, that the attitudes of even Amélie never attain. In part, no doubt, this artistic fact persists from the story's first, pre-Christian version and reflects an earlier stage in the evolution of his thought. Had this version not been to hand as he worked on Le Génie du christianisme, might he not, more effectively, have described René's story through the eyes of Amélie? The question is idle, but certainly the artistic form of René is a part of its intellectual content and one source of its ambiguity.

Yet there is a second, perhaps even more important reason for the appeal exerted by melancholy on many readers of the book. Melancholy possesses not only an invigorating dramatic attractiveness; it offers as well its own distinctive pleasures. René speaks of ‘la délectable mélancolie des souvenirs de ma première enfance’; his father's death provokes ‘une sainte douleur, qui approchoit de la joie’; his realization of his sister's true feelings for him leads René to feel ‘une sorte de satisfaction inattendue dans la plénitude de mon chagrin’ (86, 108). And throughout the novel Chateaubriand so gilds René's outlook with the poetic qualities of his style that the reader can hardly but be drawn to his melancholy or feel that indeed ‘our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought’. Yet it is not only that Chateaubriand shares the well-known Romantic sense of the beauty of sadness. We may here recall once more his argument in Le Génie du christianisme that Christianity is the chief source of modern melancholy, that ‘la religion chrétienne nous offre sans cesse le double tableau des chagrins de la terre et des joies célestes …’ Time and again Chateaubriand underlines this two-sidedness of the Christian view of life: Phèdre rests on ‘une science de la tristesse, des angoisses et des transports de l'âme’; Héloïse is so moving because of ‘ce combat entre la chair et l'esprit’ which she experiences; the Christian religion itself provokes ‘ses ardeurs, ses soupirs, ses joies, ses larmes, ses amours du monde et du désert’. Earlier, prior to his conversion, in his Essai sur les révolutions, he had stressed man's transitoriness:

Les hommes sortent du néant et y retournent: la mort est un grand lac creusé au milieu de la nature; les vies humaines, comme autant de fleuves, vont s'y engloutir …²⁴

But whereas he could then only ask: ‘Quelle sera la Religion qui remplacera le christianisme?’,²⁵ in Le Génie du christianisme Christianity is seen both as deepening melancholy and as offering a happiness that lies beyond it. Amélie moves through her despair to that happiness; René fails to do so, yet he has advanced part way along the same road to redemption by his perception of the emptiness of human life without God. René's sadness is the gateway to Christian faith, as Chateaubriand himself had found—‘j'ai pleuré et j'ai cru’—and the author's seductive presentation of melancholy is closely linked with his wider apologetic aims. The sources of René's melancholy are so described that the reader is led to feel that it is an appropriate reaction to man's condition. ‘… Le chant naturel de l'homme est triste, lors même qu'il exprime le bonheur’; as Chactas asserts, ‘une grande âme doit contenir plus de douleurs qu'une petite’ (96, 92).

Yet this reaction should not be final; it should be transcended, as by Amélie and Père Souël. Melancholy is both appropriate and inadequate; true for man's life without God, it is false for life with God. Hence Père Souël accuses René of believing ‘que l'homme se peut suffire à lui-même’ and claims: ‘on ne hait les hommes et la vie, que faute de voir assez loin’ (113, my italics). And it is this ambivalent status of melancholy—appropriate and yet inadequate, a gateway to faith and yet perpetuated by lack of faith and a self-centredness stemming from lack of faith—which underlies the moral ambiguity of the novel. Indeed, René perceives a contrast within himself as he contemplated suicide that extends to his whole character and outlook:

J'étois plein de religion, et je raisonnois en impie; mon cœur aimoit mieux Dieu, et mon esprit le méconnaissoit: ma conduite, mes discours, mes sentimens, mes pensées, n'étoient que contradiction, ténèbres et mensonges.

(97)²⁶

Ambiguity is not necessarily contradiction, however. To move from a view which identifies Christianity as the chief source of modern melancholy to the attitude in the Défense that links René's outlook with ‘la destruction des monastères et les progrès de l'incrédulité’ does involve a development of thought and a change of emphasis, but to grasp the double significance of melancholy for Chateaubriand allows us to see that the later view does not conflict with the former. Although melancholy is inspired by a Christian or quasi-Christian view of unredeemed human life, it is unbelief that prevents René from progressing beyond despair to the serenities of faith.

This analysis also allows us to understand why René has given rise to such conflicting interpretations—and as well, it may be, to transcend certain of them. The story does commend melancholy as in some respects a true, desirable and even Christian reaction to man's condition; it is valued since, in Chateaubriand's own experience, it can lead man on to Christian faith. At the same time, melancholy as a final view of life is portrayed as sterile and imprisoning, as blind to those further Christian truths by which it can be dispelled.

Notes

1. M. Barrès, Les Maîtres, Plon, 1927, pp. 283-4.

2. All page references within the text of the article are to the nouvelle édition of René by Armand Weil, Textes Littéraires Français, Lille, Giard, and Genève, Droz, 1947. Unless otherwise indicated, references to René, the chapter ‘Du vague des passions’, and the Défense du Génie du christianisme are to the first published versions, as given in Weil's edition.

3. Mémoires d'outre-tombe, Flammarion, 1948, 4 vols, ii, 43-4.

4. C. A. Sainte-Beuve, Chateaubriand et son groupe littéraire sous l'Empire, Garnier, 2 vols, 1948, i, 310.

5. J. Lemaitre, Chateaubriand, Calmann-Lévy, 1912, p. 103, and 4^e Conférence, passim.

6. J. Merlant, Le Roman personnel de Rousseau à Fromentin, Hachette, 1905, p. 165.

7. A. Weil, ‘Introduction’, René, op. cit., pp. xxxiii and 120, n. 1.

8. F. Letessier, ‘Introduction’ to Chateaubriand, Atala; René; Les Aventures du dernier Abencérage, Garnier, 1962, p. xlviii.

9. A. Fouilhé, ‘René ou le Beau Ténébreux’, Mélanges offerts à Paul Laumonier, Droz, 1935, p. 486. Similar views are expressed by G. R. Ridge, The Hero in French Romantic Literature, University of Georgia Press, 1959, p. 8, and F. C. Green, French Novelists from the Revolution to Proust, 2nd ed., New York, Ungar, 1964, p. 69.

10. Cf., for example, A. Le Breton, Le Roman français au 19^e siècle: Avant Balzac, Société Française d'Imprimerie et de Librairie, 1901, ch. viii.

11. Cf. Weil, op. cit., pp. xviii-xix.

12. H. Gillot, Chateaubriand: ses idées, son action, son œuvre, Belles Lettres, 1934, pp. 84-6.

13. G. Chinard, ‘Introduction’ to Chateaubriand, Les Natchez, Droz, 1932, pp. 29 and 83; cf. Chinard's article, ‘Quelques origines littéraires de René’, PMLA [Publications of the Modern Language Association], vol. 43 (1928), pp. 288-302, where he even contends of Chateaubriand's treatment of the subject of incest: ‘c'est la reprise sur un mode chrétien d'un thème bien souvent exploité auparavant …’ (p. 302).

14. Chateaubriand, René, University of Toronto Press, 1957, p. 75; and L. Martin-Chauffier, ‘Le romancier: des Natchez à l'Abencérage’, in Chateaubriand: Le Livre du Centenaire, Flammarion, 1949, p. 60.

15. For short discussions of this debate, cf. P. Moreau, ‘L'Auteur du Génie et le christianisme’, in Chateaubriand: Le Livre du Centenaire, pp. 77-111, and R. M. Chadbourne, ‘The Génie du christianisme revisited’, Romantic Review, vol. 48 (1957), pp. 3-16.

16. Chateaubriand, Le Génie du christianisme, Pourrat, 1838, pp. 185-6 and 190. For the reader's convenience, however, references to ‘Du vague des passions’ are made to Weil's edition.

17. Ibid., p. 198.

18. Weil, p. 120, n. 1, considers this modification as ‘la preuve matérielle’ that Chateaubriand has changed his view of René. But these aims are found throughout Le Génie du christianisme, and, moreover, this modified statement is surely not contradictory of the original but rather a development of it.

19. Les Natchez, p. 29, and Mémoires d'outre-tombe, ii, 282 and 283.

20. The case for believing this is strengthened by the argument in P. Moreau, La Conversion de Chateaubriand, Alcan, 1933, which seeks to illustrate ‘la démarche paradoxale qui a fait, de l'auteur du Génie du Christianisme, un converti; et non pas, comme le suppose l'explication courante, du converti l'auteur d'un Génie du Christianisme’. Cf. Moreau, Chateaubriand: Les écrivains devant Dieu, Desclée de Brouwer, 1965, p. 128.

21. Senancour, Rêveries sur la nature primitive de l'homme, Droz, 1940, 2 vols, ii, 79.

22. Les Natchez, p. 83.

23. I am much indebted to Professor I. D. McFarlane both for emphasizing this importance of the novel's ‘point of view’, artistically speaking, and for his other very helpful suggestions and comments on this article.

24. Essai sur les révolutions, Garnier, s.d., p. 620.

25. The title of ch. 55 of the 2^e Partie of the Essai.

26. Chateaubriand notes a similar ambivalence in himself at the time of the Essai sur les révolutions: ‘Dans l'Essai mon indépendance en religion et en politique est complète; j'examine tout: républicain, je sers la monarchie; philosophe, j'honore la religion.’ (Mémoires d'outre-tombe, ii, 282).