SOURCE: Call, Michael J. “René in the Garden.” In Back to the Garden: Chateaubriand, Senacour and Constant, pp. 15-56. Saratoga, Calif.: ANMA Libri & Co., 1988.

[In the following excerpt, Call critiques Chateaubriand's depiction of the American wilderness via the myth of Eden, in René and Atala which represent America as a place for escape and isolation. Call further claims that Chateaubriand countered the expectations of paradisiacal settings as regenerative and portrayed René as a Cain figure.]

The opening lines of René present the image of a young European nobleman living in the wilds of the New World. Upon his arrival there, he has been obligated to take an Indian wife, but the narrative informs us, “il ne vivait point avec elle.”¹ René, with his “penchant mélancolique,” spends entire days hidden away alone in the forest; he appears to be “sauvage parmi les sauvages.” He has sworn off any contact with other men, “renoncé au commerce des hommes,” the term commerce perhaps implying not only the daily association with others, but also the world of trade and business connected with the Old World by its very nature in colonial Louisiana. Along with the two old men, Chactas and Father Souel, the reader is puzzled at the reasons behind this strange behavior, the motivations for René's desire to bury himself “dans les déserts de la Louisiane” (117). This first paragraph contains a strong repetition of the concept of burial: René buries himself in the depths of the forests of Louisiana, and the secret of his strange behavior must remain buried “dans un éternel oubli,” he maintains. This European “bien né” has evidently been forced into the American wilderness as the result of some “malheur” (117); he seeks asylum in the New World where the civilized may come to escape misfortune. The wilderness of America offers itself as a place of forgetting, of escape and isolation in raw nature with its dark savage forests and uncharted terrain.

The myth of the regenerative role of the wilderness and in particular the New World had been preached throughout Europe in the eighteenth century. In his book, The Machine in the Garden, Leo Marx explains: “In its simplest, archetypal form, the myth affirms that Europeans experience a regeneration in the New World. They become new, better, happier men—they are reborn. In most versions the regenerative power is located in the natural terrain: access to undefiled, bountiful, sublime Nature is what accounts for the virtue and special good fortune of Americans.”² It is essentially the image of the Garden as the site of God's presence which molds the myth into a literary symbol. The very geography of America becomes all important, “the symbolic repository of value of all kinds—economic, political, aesthetic, religious” (228).

Marx goes on to suggest that the American myth of a “new beginning” may have been a variation on a much simpler, more primitive myth, that of “a separation from the world, a penetration to some source of power, and a life-enhancing return” (228). Marx explores several works of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in which this theme dominates. In his study of Shakespeare's The Tempest, he points out that the idea of an untainted virgin island visited by highly civilized Europeans is simply a variation on the central myth: “Precisely because [the island] is untainted by civilization, man's true home in history, it offers the chance of a temporary return to first things. Here, as in a dream, the superfluities and defenses of everyday life are stripped away, and men regain contact with essentials. In the wilderness only the essentials count. America, Emerson will say, is a land without history, hence a land ‘where man asks questions for which man was made’” (69). The American wilderness offered itself to the European imagination as a land of new beginnings, a literal Garden of Eden where man could regain contact with his primitive nature.

The great propagandists of the American myth were those who had actually traveled to her shores and written of her beauty. Marx cites the work of one Robert Beverley, who, in 1705, published a book entitled History and Present State of Virginia (86). In it, Beverley describes Virginia as one of the “Gardens of the World.” Marx elaborates on this idea: “Here the garden stands for the original unit, the all-sufficing beauty and abundance of the creation. Virginia is an Edenic land of primitive splendor inhabited by noble savages. The garden, in this usage, joins Beverley's own feelings with that ‘yearning for paradise’ which makes itself felt in virtually all mythology” (85). The translation of this essentially literary metaphor of America as pastoral utopia into America as political Eden was slowly accomplished over the span of the eighteenth century. The emergence of this idea, writes Marx, “illustrates the turning of an essentially literary device to ideological or (using the word in its extended sense) political uses. By 1785, when Jefferson issued Notes on Virginia, the pastoral ideal had been ‘removed’ from the literary mode to which it traditionally had belonged and applied to reality” (73). America, then, was the literal Garden of Delights in more than one sense of the term; in the minds of most Europeans, she had become the embodiment of every desirable element in an ideal human society. Simple contact with her soil was sufficient to spawn natural perfection in individuals, religious harmony with the Creator, and political and social liberties unknown in the Old World.

It is precisely within this context of America as Eden that Chateaubriand writes his novel René. Little is actually said about the setting for the narrative in the opening paragraphs of the novel, for those descriptions were included instead in Atala, the pendant piece for René. In reality, the Prologue to Atala serves as the introduction to the two stories, giving as it does the background for the tales of both Chactas and René. It is here that we find an immediate reference to America as “le nouvel Eden” (33), called that, the narrator explains, by the inhabitants of the United States themselves. The very structure of the Prologue parallels the description of Eden as found in the Bible. In Genesis, the account of the planting of the Garden by God is told simply:

Puis l'Eternel Dieu planta un jardin en Eden, du côté de l'orient, et il y mit l'homme qu'il avait formé.

L'Eternel Dieu fit pousser du sol des arbres de toute espèce, agréables à voir et bons à manger, et l'arbre de la vie au milieu du jardin, et l'arbre de la connaissance du bien et du mal.

Un fleuve sortait d'Eden pour arroser le jardin, et de là il se divisait en quatre bras.

Le nom du premier est Pischon; c'est celui qui entoure tout le pays de Havila, où se trouve l'or …

Le nom du second fleuve est Guihon; c'est celui qui entoure tout le pays de Cusch.

Le nom du troisième est Hiddekel; c'est celui qui coule à l'orient de l'Assyrie. Le quatrième fleuve, c'est l'Euphrate.

L'Eternel Dieu prit l'homme, et le plaça dans le jardin d'Eden pour le cultiver et pour le garder.³

Compare this to the opening lines of the Prologue:

La France possédait autrefois, dans l'Amérique septentrionale, un vaste empire qui s'étendait depuis le Labrador jusqu'aux Florides, et depuis les rivages de l'Atlantique jusqu'aux lacs les plus reculés du haut Canada.

Quatre grands fleuves, ayant leurs sources dans les mêmes montagnes, divisaient ces régions immenses: le fleuve Saint-Laurent qui se perd à l'est dans le golfe de son nom, la rivière de l'Ouest qui porte ses eaux à des mers inconnues, le fleuve Bourbon qui se précipite du midi au nord dans la baie d'Hudson, et le Meschacébé qui tombe du nord au midi, dans le golfe du Mexique.

Ce dernier fleuve, dans un cours de plus de mille lieues, arrose une délicieuse contrée que les habitants des Etats-Unis appellent le nouvel Eden, et à laquelle les Français ont laissé le doux nom de Louisiane.

(33)

The parallels in the structure of the two narratives are arresting even at this point. When the remainder of the Prologue is taken into account as well, there is little doubt that Chateaubriand was consciously recreating the biblical Garden. The proliferation of every type of vegetation and plant life receives first attention in his account, just as in the biblical order of creation the earth was adorned with all its flowers, plants, and trees before animal or human life was created. The narrative flows and builds upon itself as it enumerates the vast variety of vegetation, the proof of the abundant love and omnipotence of God:

Suspendus sur le cours des eaux, groupés sur les rochers et sur les montagnes, dispersés dans les vallées, des arbres de toutes les formes, de toutes les couleurs, de tous les parfums, se mêlent, croissent ensemble, montent dans les airs à des hauteurs qui fatiguent les regards. Les vignes sauvages, les bignonias, les coloquintes, s'entrelacent au pied de ces arbres, escaladent leurs rameaux, grimpent à l'extrémité des branches, s'élancent de l'érable au tulipier, du tulipier à l'alcée, en formant mille grottes, mille voûtes, mille portiques. Souvent égarées d'arbre en arbre, ces lianes traversent des bras de rivières, sur lesquels elles jettent des ponts de fleurs. Du sein de ces massifs, le magnolia élève son cône immobile; surmonté de ses larges roses blanches, il domine toute la forêt, et n'a d'autre rival que le palmier, qui balance légèrement auprès de lui ses éventails de verdure.

(34-35)

On the heels of this description of the plant life, Chateaubriand then continues: “Une multitude d'animaux, placés dans ces retraites par la main du Créateur, y répandent l'enchantement et la vie.” After the plants came the animals, according to Genesis, and Chateaubriand retains the order here in his story. Once more, the variety of species and their rarity in comparison to any European collection are emphasized. Chateaubriand concludes his enumeration of the animals with a reminder to his reader that this is indeed the rarest and most beautiful of worlds: “[Q]uand une brise vient à animer ces solitudes, à balancer ces corps flottants, à confondre ces masses de blanc, d'azur, de vert, de rose, à mêler toutes les couleurs, à réunir tous les murmures; alors il sort de tels bruits du fond des forêts, il se passe de telles choses aux yeux, que j'essaierais en vain de les décrire à ceux qui n'ont point parcouru ces champs primitifs de la nature” (35). The primitiveness of nature and the pristine quality of this savage beauty both mark the region as a veritable New Eden, and Chateaubriand relies on the resonance between his description of Louisiana and the biblical account of Eden to strengthen the metaphor he wishes to develop.

Once the Garden had been prepared sufficiently, according to the account in Genesis, man was placed in it. And likewise, once Chateaubriand has recreated the Garden in his text, he can then introduce man into it. But it is not an innocent Adam he places there but rather the French explorers Marquette and La Salle and the settlers who followed them who come to inhabit the Garden. And finally, according to the narrator, in 1725 arrives a young Frenchman, “poussé par des passions et des malheurs” (36). It is René, and with his arrival the Prologue comes to an end.

In addition to these parallels between the Prologue to Atala and the Garden text in Genesis, there is abundant evidence in Chateaubriand's other writings to confirm the contention that he was working consciously with the Eden myth in René. The author himself made two self-confessed “pilgrimages” to Eden in his lifetime: the first to America in 1791 and the second to Jerusalem in 1806. His private journal, kept while traveling in America, contains the following entry:

Liberté primitive, je te retrouve enfin! Je passe comme cet oiseau qui vole devant moi, qui se dirige au hasard, et n'est embarrassé que du choix des ombrages. Me voilà tel que le Tout-Puissant m'a créé, souverain de la nature, porté triomphant sur les eaux, tandis que les habitants des fleuves accompagnent ma course, que les peuples de l'air me chantent leurs hymnes, que les bêtes de la terre me saluent, que les forêts courbent leur cime sur mon passage.⁴

The phrase “souverain de la nature” applied to Adam in the Old Testament, created as he was to rule over all the creations of God. It was Adam, according to biblical account, who gave the beasts their names as they paraded in front of him: “L'Eternel Dieu forma de la terre tous les animaux des champs et tous les oiseaux du ciel, et il les fit venir vers l'homme, pour voir comment il les appellerait, et afin que tout être vivant portât le nom que lui donnerait l'homme” (Genesis 2.19). Chateaubriand, the young, intrepid explorer of the American wilderness, is the new Adam in the new Eden, free and natural, returning to his primitive home:

Est-ce sur le front de l'homme de la société, ou sur le mien, qu'est gravé le sceau immortel de notre origine? Courez vous enfermer dans vos cités, allez vous soumettre à vos petites lois; gagnez votre pain à la sueur de votre front, ou dévorez le pain du pauvre; égorgez-vous pour un mot, pour un maître; doutez de l'existence de Dieu, ou adorez-le sous des formes superstitieuses, moi j'irai errant dans mes solitudes; pas un seul battement de mon cœur ne sera comprimé, pas une seule de mes pensées ne sera enchaînée; je serai libre comme la nature; je ne reconnaîtrai de Souverain que celui qui alluma la flamme des soleils, et qui, d'un seul coup de sa main, fit rouler tous les mondes.⁵

These are words from the private journal of a passionate young man, and perhaps they must be considered in light of that youth and enthusiasm. But they nonetheless reveal the state of mind of the 24-year-old Chateaubriand in the New World.

This desire to flee society was closely connected to the events which preceded his trip to America. It was a France in full revolution that he was fleeing, though he preferred to say in his Voyages en Amérique that he freely chose the type of emigration that suited him best: “Quand je quittai la France, au commencement de 1791, la révolution marchait à grands pas; les principes sur lesquels elle se fondait étaient les miens, mais je détestais les violences qui l'avaient déjà déshonorée: c'était avec joie que j'allais chercher une indépendance plus conforme à mes goûts, plus sympathique à mon caractère … [U]ne terre de liberté offrait son asile à ceux qui fuyaient la liberté de leur patrie” (6: 6-7). Thus, it was the liberty of the New World which also attracted this young nobleman, caught as he was in the middle of the atrocities of the Revolution. He had looked down the mouth of a head impaled on a Revolutionary pike; the memory chased him across the sea to America.

Once there in those vast forests, he was overcome by a strange sort of drunkenness that only a civilized Frenchman of his time could have known: “Lorsqu'après avoir passé le Mohawk, j'entrai dans les bois qui n'avaient jamais été abattus, je fus pris d'une sorte d'ivresse d'indépendance: j'allais d'arbre en arbre, à gauche, à droite, me disant: ‘Ici, plus de chemins, plus de villes, plus de monarchie, plus de république, plus de présidents, plus de rois, plus d'hommes.’ Et, pour essayer si j'étais rétabli dans mes droits originels je me livrais à des actes de volonté qui faisaient enrager mon guide, lequel, dans son âme, me croyait fou.”⁶ A disciple of Rousseau at this point in his life, Chateaubriand most likely felt, if but for a brief moment, the thrill of encountering a portion of the world as close to virgin nature as he would ever see. The thought of being the first man to set foot in that particular section of the forest, naive as it may seem to his reader or, for that matter, to himself as the older writer of the Mémoires, nevertheless engulfed him with feelings of total independence, of liberty, of freedom from society.

In another sense, this American expedition was an act of purification for Chateaubriand, almost a pilgrimage, although as a young intellectual he would have certainly denied any such inference. As an older man, he would write about the significance of the New World as a purifying force for fallen man, saying that God had expressly prepared the New World for “une rénovation d'existence. L'homme s'éclairant par des lumières toujours croissantes et jamais perdues, devait retrouver cette sublimité première d'où le péché originel l'avait fait descendre; sublimité dont l'esprit humain était redevenu capable, en vertu de la rédemption du Christ.”⁷ A return to this new Eden could supply man with the energy and light he had lost through his own degradation.

Later in his life, in 1806, Chateaubriand made another pilgrimage, this time in the direction of the East. His trip to Jerusalem can be regarded as another return to Eden, for it is at Jerusalem that Catholic tradition places the original Garden of Eden. In Les Martyrs (1809), Chateaubriand refers to the legend: “Tous les grands mouvements imprimés à l'espèce humaine sont partis [de Jérusalem], ou sont venus s'y perdre. Une énergie surnaturelle s'est conservée aux bords où le premier homme a reçu la vie; quelque chose de mystérieux semble encore attaché au berceau de la création et aux sources de la lumière.”⁸

The two journeys to the Garden were made 15 years apart, and the Chateaubriand of the American trip was seeking perhaps a much different objective than he sought in Jerusalem. The young admirer of Rousseau, full of his personal “illusions,” as he describes them in the Mémoires, had just begun his existence in 1791; “rien n'était achevé en moi, ni dans mon pays,” he writes of those days (1: 341). Chateaubriand approached America with all the fervor of youth, in hopes of finding not only a new passage through the Northwest or, as he called it, the polar passage, but also his own nature. He came to America ready to rediscover some lost element of the natural man in himself, some type of lost liberty or independence threatened by the turn of events in France. Fifteen years later, he made the journey to Jerusalem hoping to rekindle within himself the energy-producing fire of faith. It was a mission made by one who had hope of a sort of redemption, for he was no longer a youth filled with illusions. Perhaps he hoped for the start of some great movement, spurred on by a personal contact with the legendary birthplace of man. As Marx points out, these returns to paradise often involve the hope for renewed energy; the pilgrim aspires to his own rebirth.

In Chateaubriand's case, however, both journeys resulted in disillusionment. “Déçu dans mes deux pèlerinages en Occident et en Orient,” he wrote in the Mémoires, “je n'avais point découvert le passage au pôle, je n'avais point enlevé la gloire des bords du Niagara où je l'étais allé chercher, et je l'avais laissée assise sur les ruines d'Athènes” (1: 341). Neither Garden could fulfill the dreams of this seeker of glory. And it is the novel René which most poignantly expresses the nature of Chateaubriand's disillusionment.

From the opening lines of René, we are aware that the hero of this tale poses a peculiar problem to the New World mythology of the day. The possibility of rebirth or regeneration normally associated with arrival in the wilderness is negated by René's behavior. Instead of entering into marriage with the native woman and accepting its natural course, René dissociates himself from her. Where fertility and procreation are normally considered the greatest of riches in the Indian community, this European chooses self-imposed sterility. All that the wilderness offers in terms of regeneration is thus denied by René's self-burial. He is little more than a cadaver in the Garden.

Into this mythical Eden, an ever-renewing landscape inhabited by free and natural peoples, René comes, bearing with him the seeds of death. Some dark secret, festering in him like a latent pox, promises to break out at any moment, ravaging the Garden and its inhabitants. With the arrival of the letter telling of his sister's death, René at last consents to reveal the misfortunes which have caused him to behave in this manner. Gathering to him the two father figures, Chactas and Father Souel, he makes his confession.

His is no ordinary tale. By its very method of narration, it is far beyond the story of a single youth's misadventures. The level of its language, the choice of details, and the structure of the narrative itself reveal this is meant to be a philosophical allegory. On the most obvious level, it is the story of a young nobleman's relationship with his sister. On a more symbolic level, however, it becomes the tale of the French aristocracy's plight under the Revolution and the Empire.

The opening paragraph of René's tale-within-a-tale is a perfect example of the allegorical style employed by Chateaubriand here; it sets the mood of the narrative and determines the reader's approach to the remainder of the text. Devoid of any distinguishing details, and yet introducing the important forces at play in the story, it is reminiscent of the rapid, condensed introductory statements of fable or myth. René relates: “J'ai coûté la vie à ma mère en venant au monde; j'ai été tiré de son sein avec le fer. J'avais un frère que mon père bénit, parce qu'il voyait en lui son fils aîné. Pour moi, livré de bonne heure à des mains étrangères, je fus élevé loin du toit paternel” (119). We are made aware here of three vital elements in the story: René's guilt (irrational as it may be) for the death of his mother, the ascendancy of his brother over him, and his banishment from the father's house. René's language renders the actual order of birth of the two brothers ambiguous; the father “sees” the oldest son in the brother and there is a hint that legitimacy has been denied René. It is an echo of Old Testament themes, of Abel and Cain, of Jacob and Esau, or even of Joseph and Reuben. In each of these cases, the younger brother was chosen by God to receive the inheritance because of the elder's unworthiness. In René's case as well, the other brother remains at home with the father, and René is sent away. A key word in the passage is “livré”; in the 1802 edition of René, the word was actually “abandonné.”⁹ René sees himself as abandoned by his father and turned over to foreign hands or strange hands, again the term “étrangères” carrying both meanings. Both his mother and father, she by her death and he by choice, have abandoned René in a world of strangers.

If we consider Chateaubriand as being strongly influenced by the Eden theme and the structure of the Genesis story of the Garden, as has been suggested by our earlier study of the Prologue to the Atala and René texts, then the René character is an obvious Cain figure. His coming into the world is closely associated with death, in this case, that of his mother. Though it seems illogical to the modern mind to impugn guilt to a child for its mother's death in childbirth, nevertheless René's confession implies that the cost for his life was his mother's death. The fact that he feels somehow responsible for her death is indicative of the tremendous burden of guilt he carries with him. If we carry the Garden theme a bit further with René in the Cain role, then his mother would have been Eve, for Cain was Eve's firstborn, according to the biblical account. Catholic theology of the eighteenth century emphasized that Adam and Eve, the perfect couple created by the hand of God himself, would have lived forever in felicity in the Garden had they not succumbed to the temptation of knowing all. That knowledge of good and evil forbidden them by God was sometimes interpreted as carnal knowledge. The damning act in the Garden may have been a sexual one, and with it came mortality and death, as God had promised. Thus, the child conceived in sin was the literal embodiment of the transgression, a physical sign of the rebellion against God. If René projects himself into the firstborn Cain's role, then by extension he could consider himself the messenger of death to his own mother. Furthermore, on an even larger scale, this first mortal child may bring death to a whole planet, to all of mankind. The sense of guilt in this case would be totally debilitating.

We have only to consult the text to confirm this projection of the Cain image in René. In the expanded account of René, published under the title of Les Natchez over 20 years after the first publication of René, we find several references to the Cain figure, including the scene in which René, isolated from his wife and the tribe, living alone in the forests, writes a letter to Céluta in which he questions his destiny in light of the past events of his life and actually asks himself: “Suis-je donc Caïn?”¹⁰ He asks the question because of the very nature of his history and its obvious parallels to the cursed son of Adam who wandered the earth, a marked man with no place to call home. The legendary curse of Cain came from his murder of his younger brother; Cain's sacrifice had been rejected of God while that of Abel had been accepted, for no obvious reason in the sacred text other than the whim of God. In a fit of jealous rage, Cain kills his brother Abel and is banished by God from the territories of his family: “Maintenant, tu seras maudit de la terre qui a ouvert sa bouche pour recevoir de ta main le sang de ton frère. Quand tu cultiveras le sol, il ne te donnera plus sa richesse. Tu seras errant et vagabond sur la terre” (Genesis 4.11-12). Cain is driven from the face of God and dwells among strangers in the land of Nod, east of Eden.

It is in this mode that we find René described in the Natchez: “René avait été atteint d'un arrêt du Ciel, qui faisait à la fois son supplice et son génie; René troublait tout par sa présence: les passions sortaient de lui et n'y pouvaient rentrer; il pesait sur la terre qu'il foulait avec impatience, et qui le portait à regret” (20: 14). The mere presence of this cursed creature brings misery and pain to all who surround him: “[L]e frère d'Amélie devenait la cause invisible de tout: aimer et souffrir était la double fatalité qu'il imposait à quiconque s'approchait de sa personne. Jeté dans le monde comme un grand malheur, sa pernicieuse influence s'étendait aux êtres environnants …” (19: 253; emphasis added). Cursed like Cain to wander as a fugitive and a vagabond among strangers, René implores God: “Rappelle-moi vite à la patrie céleste: je n'ai pas ta résignation pour boire la lie du calice; mes os sont fatigués; mes pieds sont usés à force de marcher: aucun hôte n'a voulu recevoir l'étranger; les portes ont été fermées contre moi” (20: 69).

In some very obvious aspects, then, the René character finds its inspiration in the Old Testament figure of Cain. But whereas the condemnation or punishment of Cain seems justified because of the murder of his brother, a certain aura of mystery surrounds the causes for René's curse. This point is crucial to understanding Chateaubriand's allegory, for what would seem the most important element of the story, the actual cause of René's misfortune, is perhaps the most difficult to unearth from the narrative itself. René's story, as it is told to the two old wise men, presents several possibilities for consideration.

The first is René's own character. In the last lines of the Natchez, the narrator moralizes as follows: “On ne fait point sortir les autres de l'ordre, sans avoir en soi quelque principe de désordre; et celui qui, même involontairement, est la cause de quelque malheur ou de quelque crime, n'est jamais innocent aux yeux de Dieu” (20: 351). Implicit here is a condemnation of René for a defect in his own character, a sort of “principe de désordre.” What this is exactly is difficult to understand from the text itself. René, when describing his childhood, says that he had a “caractère inégal,” “bruyant et joyeux, silencieux et triste” (119). At times, he would take the lead in directing the play of his childhood friends and then abandon them “pour contempler la nue fugitive, ou entendre la pluie tomber sur le feuillage” (119). The 1802 edition of René gives a somewhat more detailed description of the problem: “Ma mémoire était heureuse, je fis de rapides progrès; mais je portais le désordre parmi mes compagnons. Mon humeur était impetueuse, mon caractère inégal; tour à tour bruyant et joyeux, silencieux et triste; tantôt rassemblant autour de moi mes jeunes amis, puis les abandonnant tout-à-coup pour aller me livrer à des jeux solitaires.”¹¹ This original version emphasizes the point of “désordre”; by his very presence, René had brought disorder into the lives of his classmates. There is no doubt that he had been a bright student, perhaps even gifted. He implies also that he had been the natural leader of his peers but unsure of his need for their society.

The problem here seems to be that of a child torn by two opposing desires, the desire to win peer esteem and the desire for individual independence which the group inhibits. Most humans seem to exhibit similar tendencies, and this alleged “disorder” does not appear to be of any great consequence. But it is actually the disorder caused in the minds of his compatriots by his behavior which seems to be blameworthy in René's opinion. René's comrades are unsure of him and of his attachment or commitment to the group. It is difficult to tell whether he is actually friend or enemy to the group, and it is this ambiguity which troubles both him and them, for René realizes very early on that he is a “solitaire,” a loner by choice as much as by prevailing conditions. He tends to reject the company of others, perhaps as a reaction to his own abandonment by both the father and the mother. He has not known the security of the family circle; early on, he is sent away, “élevé loin du toit paternel.”¹² This implicit rejection by the father perhaps causes this strange relationship with his classmates, the fear of further rejection forcing him into the solitary role. However, he cannot remain guiltless for the confusion his behavior causes in his friends; he is still the cause of the disorder and, as such, claims he must bear the blame.

In a like manner, René finds himself the unknowing cause of his sister Amélie's incestuous love for him. She seemed to be the only one during his childhood who, because of their common ancestry or her own natural penchant, had understood him. His relationship with his father had remained difficult throughout his childhood, and it was only Amélie who supplied the caring devotion that he craved: “Timide et contraint devant mon père, je ne trouvais l'aise et le contentement qu'auprès de ma soeur Amélie. Une douce conformité d'humeur et de goûts m'unissait étroitement à cette soeur; elle était un peu plus âgée que moi” (119). Together they would walk the forests of the paternal domain, observing nature, creating poems together. He rejoiced in her presence; she alone could help him find happiness. His need for her, however, is the cause of the tragedy; when she attempts to escape her own incestuous love by fleeing René, he requires her to return by threatening suicide. René saw God's just punishment in all that had transpired: “J'avais voulu quitter la terre avant l'ordre du Tout-Puissant; c'était un grand crime: Dieu m'avait envoyé Amélie à la fois pour me sauver et pour me punir. Ainsi, toute pensée coupable, toute action criminelle entraîne après elle des désordres et des malheurs” (141). Not only would he be guilty for his own thought of suicide but also for fueling Amélie's love for him by requiring her to live with him. Though the request itself appears innocent, it has come from a soul which is guilty in the eyes of God for another crime, and crime engenders disorder and misery in its turn.

We would not be amiss in asking at this juncture whether René himself was not guilty of an incestuous attraction to his sister. The 1802 edition includes passages which tend to dismiss the notion, but the deletions of those passages in later editions may have been made by Chateaubriand in an effort to implicate René in the incestuous affair. In the 1802 edition, for instance, René, having learned of his sister's love for him, remarks: “Eclairé sur les maux de ma soeur, je me figurais tout ce qu'elle avait dû souffrir auprès de moi, victime d'autant plus malheureuse, que la pureté de ma tendresse devait lui être à la fois odieuse et chère, et qu'appelée dans mes bras par un sentiment, elle en était repoussée par un autre … Je me reprochais mes plus innocentes caresses, je me faisais horreur.”¹³ The passage insists on René's innocence in the relationship, but it does not appear after the original edition. Could Chateaubriand have deleted it purposely to cast doubt on the motivations for René's threat of suicide and to strengthen the implicit suggestion that he was equally at fault with Amélie? In any case, the text as published after 1802 insists less on his innocence and focuses instead on the striking image of René embracing Amélie as she lay under the veil and crying out: “Chaste épouse de Jésus-Christ, reçois mes derniers embrassements à travers les glaces du trépas et les profondeurs de l'éternité, qui te séparent déjà de ton frère!” (140).

The implications of disorder and revolt are strong in this passage. René embraces a forbidden sister, doubly forbidden now in that she has become the symbolic wife of Christ himself. It is no longer simply suggested incest but adultery with the wife of God, a revolt against the throne of heaven. His embrace carries with it subtle overtones of a final desperate act of rebellion against God's creation, against God's order of things. If René does indeed carry with him some principle of disorder, as the last paragraph of the Natchez proposes, then this is its most obvious manifestation in the René text. His embracing of Amélie pits René against God; he attempts to wrest her away from death (symbolic in the initiation ceremony) and mystical union with Christ.

René, then, seems to function in a dual mode in the text, as both perpetrator and victim of crime. He obviously feels he has been the victim of events beyond his control, i.e., his father's rejection, his mother's death, Amélie's love for him. But he is equally judged as guilty for his reactions to these events, i.e., his self-isolation, his threats of suicide, and his inability to cope with the conditions of life thrust on him by his father's death and his brother's lack of affection. He admits that by his very presence he brings disorder into the world, that he feels the weight of some sort of God-imposed curse for which he seems both guilty and innocent. This type of character, by its very complexity, poses a challenge to interpretation, and it is little wonder then that critics have struggled to find an adequate explanation either for René's guilt or for his behavior. Since causation remains the focus of this study, however, we must continue the exploration of the René guilt-innocence dichotomy if we hope to understand the text in its allegorical significance.

If we accept the René-Cain symbolism as it is suggested in both René and the Natchez stories, we can possibly view the character as both an individual and a type. That is, René can function first of all as the young nobleman around whom all events recorded in the text transpire. This is the René of micro-history, with a specific birth date and place and a recorded chronology of events, related for the most part by himself in René and by a narrator in the Natchez. In addition to this micro-René, there is a type of macro-René, that is, René as symbol of an entire class, the aristocracy. René is biologically connected to their species; he bears their genes. On a symbolic level, René may be acting out a social drama of large proportions. When this interpretation is applied to the text, it provides some interesting explanations for the puzzling guilt-innocence dilemma of René. In much the same way that Cain functions in the Old Testament narrative as both individual criminal and as criminal type or model, René's duality integrates the individual and the species, and the text takes on important allegorical significance.

Chateaubriand writes that it was “sous l'orme de Childe Harold enfant” that René was born: “C'était alors qu'aigri par les malheurs, déjà pèlerin d'outre-mer, ayant commencé mon solitaire voyage, c'était alors que les folles idées peintes dans le mystère de René m'obsédaient et faisaient de moi l'être le plus tourmenté qui fût sur la terre.”¹⁴ By that time in his life, Chateaubriand had returned from his American voyage, had participated in the unsuccessful Royalist siege of Thionville, and had known incredible misery and deprivation in his wanderings from Belgium to England. He had nearly starved to death several times, had barely survived an attack of the pox, and was living in extreme poverty in England.

To this young émigré, banished from the paternal domain and separated from his family, the Revolution was a monstrous act of rebellion against the natural order of things. Chateaubriand was an arch “légitimiste,” made that way, in part, he said, because of his firsthand experiences with the violence of the Revolution. He wrote his Essai sur les révolutions (1797) to show the similarities and differences between the revolutions of ancient history and that of modern France. In it, he attempted to analyze the causes for the French Revolution, and it was his own class, the aristocracy, which bore the brunt of his criticism.¹⁵ They, who wore the mantle of God-given authority to rule France, had failed in their duties.

Chateaubriand would return again and again to this theme in his writings. In the Mémoires sur le Duc de Berry, for instance, he describes his view of the decline of the aristocracy:

Louis XIV emporta avec lui dans la tombe la splendeur de la monarchie. Le Régent laissa perdre les mœurs: prince brave et voluptueux qui ne permettait pas qu'on troublât ses plaisirs, et qui du moins savait maintenir la paix à la longueur de son épée. Sous Louis XV, l'ordre naturel des choses se dérangea: la médiocrité passa dans les hommes d'Etat, la supériorité dans les hommes privés. Il n'y eut plus d'histoire de France au dehors: elle se renferma toute dans le cabinet des ministres, le salon des maîtresses, la société des gens de lettres. Les vanités, principes des crimes parmi nous, s'exaltèrent. La mollesse de la vie contrastait avec l'âpreté des doctrines: la monarchie tournait à la république, parce que la licence des mœurs amenait l'indépendance des opinions.¹⁶

Key phrases in this passage such as “l'ordre naturel des choses,” “la médiocrité,” and “la supériorité” reveal Chateaubriand's opinion on class distinctions. The loss of legitimate power to the bourgeoisie was the beginning of the end for the French aristocracy. Chateaubriand tried to devise a sequence of cause and effect, beginning with the corruption of the moral order within the aristocracy itself, which in turn brought about a laxity in the control of ideas or opinions. He was, of course, referring to the rise of the “philosophes,” for the most part bourgeois who became extremely influential in aristocratic society. These changes in the “natural order of things” spelled destruction for the French nobility, and a grand and glorious mansion began to crumble: “A voir ainsi le monarque endormi dans la volupté, des courtisans corrompus, des ministres méchants ou imbécilles [sic], le peuple perdant ses mœurs; les philosophes, les uns sapant la religion, les autres, l'Etat; des nobles ou ignorants, ou atteints des vices du jour; des ecclésiastiques, à Paris la honte de leur ordre, dans les provinces pleins de préjugés, on eût dit d'une foule de manœuvres s'empressant à l'envi à démolir un grand édifice.”¹⁷ Chateaubriand felt shame and revulsion at the thought of such behavior in the nobility: “Le règne de Louis XV est l'époque la plus misérable de notre histoire: quand on en cherche les personnages, on est réduit à fouiller les antichambres de M. le duc de Choiseul, ou les salons de Madame d'Epinay et de Madame Geoffrin. La société entière se décomposait: les hommes d'état devenaient des gens de lettres, les gens de lettres des hommes d'état, les grands seigneurs des banquiers, et les fermiers généraux de grands seigneurs … Les poètes chantaient le temps des cinq maîtresses, et détruisaient les mœurs; les philosophes bâtissaient l'Encyclopédie, et démolissaient la France.”¹⁸

The entire society of France was overturned through this evolution of history, and it is evident that, for Chateaubriand, such changes were contrary to the legitimate order of things. The class meant to rule stepped aside and left its place to an inferior class; statesmen became simple literary types, and writers became statesmen. No greater travesty could have been devised, in Chateaubriand's opinion.

In the Génie, he would use the symbol of the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden as a symbol of what happened to France in the eighteenth century. Adam's ingestion of the fruit of Science, as Chateaubriand explained, brought about an imbalance in man's nature which had been heretofore equally divided between the soul (or the heart) and the intellect.¹⁹ Adam sinned in desiring to know all things rather than relying on God's providence and wisdom to reveal things as God would deem appropriate. Once the fruit of Knowledge was consumed, Adam's constitution became dangerously unbalanced and the natural result was death: “On est saisi d'admiration à cette autre vérité marquée dans les Ecritures: ‘l'homme mourant pour s'être empoisonné avec le fruit de la vie’; l'homme perdu pour avoir goûté au fruit de science, pour avoir su trop connaître et le bien et le mal, pour avoir cessé d'être semblable à l'enfant de l'Evangile … Dieu a mis la science à sa portée: il ne pouvait la lui refuser, puisque l'homme était né intelligent et libre: mais il lui prédit que, s'il veut trop savoir, ‘la connaissance des choses’ sera sa mort et celle de sa postérité” (11: 136-37). Chateaubriand saw this as a perfect analogy with the rise of the “philosophes” and the consequent decline in religious faith in France: “L'esprit de Dieu s'étant retiré du milieu du peuple, il ne resta de force que dans la tache originelle qui reprit son empire, comme au jour de Caïn et de sa race” (13: 21). A race of Cains grew up then in pre-Revolutionary France; disorder reigned and the flow of blood began.

Chateaubriand would later describe those characteristics of the Revolution which he felt proved it a truly criminal act:

Le massacre des enfants et surtout des femmes est un trait caractéristique de la révolution. Vous ne trouverez rien de semblable dans les proscriptions de l'antiquité. On n'a vu dans le monde entier qu'une révolution philosophique, et c'est la nôtre. Comment se fait-il qu'elle ait été souillée par des crimes jusqu'alors inconnus à l'espèce humaine? Voilà des faits devant lesquels il est impossible de reculer. Expliquez, commentez, déclamez, la chose reste. Nous le répétons: Le meurtre général des femmes, soit par des exécutions militaires, soit par des condemnations prétendues juridiques, n'a d'exemple que dans ce siècle d'humanité et de lumières. Au reste, quand on nie la religion, on rejette le principe de l'ordre moral de l'univers; alors il est tout simple qu'on méconnaisse et qu'on outrage la nature.

(3: 366-67)

Outrage nature, destroy the natural or moral order of the universe—these are basic themes of Chateaubriand's thesis. The French Revolution had done them all, urged on by the “lumières” of the era.

He would strike even further at the heart of the Revolution by maintaining that the real principle behind it was not liberty after all but rather absolute equality. The idea of absolute equality was revolting to Chateaubriand, a legitimist to the core, who viewed liberty and absolute equality as mutually exclusive. To reverse God's order in the universe, including the social order existing under the supposition of “divine right,” was to dethrone God himself and dismantle his creation. “L'égalité absolue est la passion des petites âmes,” he wrote; “elle prend sa source dans l'amour-propre et l'envie, elle enfante les basses résolutions, et tend sans cesse au désordre et au bouleversement” (26: 265). It was the jealousy of the bourgeoisie for the rank and privilege of the nobility which sparked the Revolution:

Mais cette jalousie de la bourgeoisie contre la noblesse, qui a éclaté avec tant de violence au moment de la Révolution, ne venait pas de l'inégalité des emplois; elle venait de l'inégalité de la considération. Il n'y avait si mince hobereau qui n'eût le privilège d'insulte ou de mépris envers le bourgeois, jusqu'à ce point de lui refuser de croiser l'épée: ce nom de gentilhomme dominait tout. Il était impossible qu'à mesure que les lumières descendaient dans les classes mitoyennes, on ne se révoltât pas contre des prétentions d'une supériorité devenue sans droits. Ce ne sont point les Nobles que l'on a persécutés dans la Révolution; ce ne sont point leurs immunités d'eux-mêmes abandonnées, que l'on a voulu détruire en eux: c'est une opinion que l'on a immolée dans leur personne.

(vol. 5, pt. 3, 438-39)

Because of its decadence, the aristocracy had lost its right to believe in its own superiority. It had become a class without a reason for being and so was eliminated by an enlightened and powerful bourgeoisie.

If René shows up in America in 1725, as the Prologue tells us, then he issues from the very generation Chateaubriand found most blameworthy in the aristocracy's loss of political and social dominance. As the symbol of his generation, he bears the collective burden of guilt imposed on him by history and Chateaubriand's own perspective of it. But at the same time, René functions as Chateaubriand himself, young aristocrat on the eve of his entry into the political life of France, forced into exile by a revolution he had no part in creating. Innocent of any personal crimes against the natural order of things, Chateaubriand nevertheless suffered the consequences of the crimes of his class. If he felt any guilt at all, it could only have been by association, by his birth into a class he felt had betrayed its ancestors. That guilt by association may have extended to the inability of his own generation to win back its power from the revolutionaries. René's “contrainte” before the Father may have been the reflection of Chateaubriand's own guilt feelings for the weakness of his generation in contrast to the strength of Louis XIV and the other forefathers. In any case, Chateaubriand's individual innocence and collective guilt both find expression in the René character.

This dual René, innocent victim and guilty criminal, recreates for his listeners the tale of his personal quest for fulfillment. It is a story of constant movement; René is filled with energy needing an outlet and he hurls himself into each succeeding phase of his quest with characteristic “ardeur.”²⁰ Finding himself disenfranchised at the death of his father, René decides to travel: “[P]lein d'ardeur, je m'élançai seul sur cet orageux océan du monde, dont je ne connaissais ni les ports, ni les écueils” (122). We follow René in his travels to the lands of ancient history, from there to the foreign lands of contemporary Europe, then back to his native France and Paris. He explains his reaction to coming home: “C'était donc bien vainement que j'avais espéré retrouver dans mon pays de quoi calmer cette inquiétude, cette ardeur de désir qui me suit partout. L'étude du monde ne m'avait rien appris, et pourtant je n'avais plus la douceur de l'ignorance” (126).

This “inquiétude” or “ardeur de désir,” which he describes as following him everywhere, increases in intensity with each new frustration. His behavior becomes more and more agitated. He describes his reaction to the idea of isolating himself completely from society: “J'embrassai ce projet avec l'ardeur que je mets à tous mes desseins; je partis précipitamment pour m'ensevelir dans une chaumière, comme j'étais parti autrefois pour faire le tour du monde” (128). While isolated in his “chaumière,” he begins to act as if possessed by some maddening spirit: “[J]e marchais à grands pas, le visage enflammé, le vent sifflant dans ma chevelure, ne sentant ni pluie ni frimas, enchanté, tourmenté, et comme possédé par le démon de mon cœur” (130).

The world seems to offer no satisfaction, no release for the powerful internal energies René manifests in his nature, the “surabondance de vie” which makes itself increasingly felt with the passage of time in isolation. His soul aspires to the infinite, the ideal, the intangible: “Je cherche seulement un bien inconnu, dont l'instinct me poursuit. Est-ce ma faute, si je trouve partout des bornes, si ce qui est fini n'a pour moi aucune valeur?” (128). At the same time, he seeks a peaceful, mundane sort of life: “Cependant je sens que j'aime la monotonie des sentiments de la vie, et si j'avais encore la folie de croire au bonheur, je le chercherais dans l'habitude” (128).

These two seemingly divergent desires begin to merge as the focus of his quest becomes clearer to him. It is a woman he lacks, not just any woman but the Eve of his dreams whom he needs for completion and fulfillment. This isolated Cain figure desires his own Eve: “Il me manquait quelque chose pour remplir l'abîme de mon existence: je descendais dans la vallée, je m'élevais sur la montagne, appelant de toute la force de mes désirs l'idéal objet d'une flamme future; je l'embrassais dans les vents; je croyais l'entendre dans les gémissements du fleuve; tout était ce fantôme imaginaire, et les astres dans les cieux, et le principe même de vie dans l'univers” (128-29).

Obviously, the possession of this idealized love object symbolizes the reproductive act but in a sort of mystical creative process. It is not a problem of adolescent hormonal hyperactivity which is disturbing René's life at this juncture in the narrative, but rather one of self-completion, of self-actualization. To possess this love object is to find life, “le principe même de vie dans l'univers” (129). René pleads with the God of the universe: “O Dieu! si tu m'avais donné une femme selon mes désirs; si, comme à notre premier père, tu m'eusses amené par la main une Eve tirée de moi-même … Beauté céleste, je me serais prosterné devant toi; puis, te prenant dans mes bras, j'aurais prié l'Eternel de te donner le reste de ma vie!” (130). We are once again reminded here of the Garden theme and of the idyllic conditions supposed to have existed there. René feels that if only he had been fortunate enough to possess a woman modeled according to his dreams, taken from his own flesh as Eve had been from Adam's, then his quest would have ended.

These themes of the fantasized Eve partner and the self-completion of the sexual act found here in René reappear in the Vallée-aux-Loups section of Chateaubriand's Mémoires d'outre-tombe, where he recounts the nights spent in that small bedroom in a remote tower of his father's castle in Combourg. His imagination created for him the perfect partner to fill those lonely evenings: “L'ardeur de mon imagination, ma timidité, la solitude firent qu'au lieu de me jeter au dehors, je me repliai sur moi-même; faute d'objet réel, j'évoquai par la puissance de mes vagues désirs un fantôme qui ne me quitta plus” (1: 125). This phantom was the composite of all the women he had known, an Eve drawn from his own rib: “Ignorant tout, sachant tout, à la fois vierge et amante, Eve innocente, Eve tombée, l'enchanteresse par qui me venait ma folie était un mélange de mystères et de passions: je la plaçais sur un autel et je l'adorais” (1: 131).

With his enchantress, Chateaubriand would fly on the wings of his fancy: “Je montais avec ma magicienne sur les nuages: roulé dans ses cheveux et dans ses voiles, j'allais au gré des tempêtes, agiter la cime des forêts, ébranler le sommet des montagnes, ou tourbillonner sur les mers” (1: 131). This flight of sexual fantasy, of sexual prowess, challenged the Creator himself: “Plongeant dans l'espace, descendant du trône de Dieu aux portes de l'abîme, les mondes étaient livrés à la puissance de mes amours. Au milieu du désordre des éléments, je mariais avec ivresse la pensée du danger à celle du plaisir. Les souffles de l'aquilon ne m'apportaient que les soupirs de la volupté; le murmure de la pluie m'invitait au sommeil sur le sein d'une femme. Les paroles que j'adressais à cette femme auraient rendu des sens à la vieillesse, et réchauffé le marbre des tombeaux” (1: 131).

But it is not only a sexual fantasy that we are dealing with here, for Chateaubriand reveals another aspect of this experience: “A cette fureur se joignait une idolâtrie morale: par un autre jeu de mon imagination, cette Phryné qui m'enlaçait dans ses bras, était aussi pour moi la gloire et surtout l'honneur …” (1: 132). We recall it was in the château de Combourg that the young Chateaubriand came into touch with his ancestral roots and the feudal origin of his family. It was here that his father acted out his rites of “seigneur” with the townspeople of Combourg, receiving his servants as he stood on the symbolic “perron” of the castle. The young poet was immersed in medieval lore and ritual at Combourg, and it is little wonder then that this place inspired an idealized love object which embodied not only sexual fulfillment to the adolescent Chateaubriand but also the self-actualization of his class, the nobility. Chateaubriand craved the honor and glory due him by his birth as much as he craved love: “Je trouvais à la fois dans ma création merveilleuse toutes les blandices des sens et toutes les jouissances de l'âme” (1: 132). His Eve made life whole for him.

The ecstasy of those flights of imagination did not last, however, and Chateaubriand described the inevitable return to reality: “Tout à coup, frappé de ma folie, je me précipitais sur ma couche; je me roulais dans ma douleur; j'arrosais mon lit de larmes cuisantes que personne ne voyait et qui coulaient misérables, pour un néant” (1: 132). René too returns to the reality that he is not Adam, that his Eve has not been given him, and that he is alone: “Hélas! j'étais seul, seul sur la terre!”²¹

The phantom-woman proves to be unpossessable in the two texts, a theme further dramatized in René by the incestuous love problem between René and Amélie. Here is the perfect partner René desires, someone of his own flesh in that they are brother and sister. Who could be more like him than this sister, who is genetically bound to him through common parentage? Amélie is the only one who understands him completely because they are so alike, he says, and his attraction to her is based on this commonality of temperaments. About her, he would say: “Il faut vous figurer que c'était la seule personne au monde que j'eusse aimée, que tous mes sentiments se venaient confondre en elle, avec la douceur des souvenirs de mon enfance” (131). But this attraction is doomed from the very beginning, for no brother can possess a sister. She is forbidden him. René's words at her initiation rite into the convent reveal how he longs even then to embrace her “à travers les glaces du trépas et les profondeurs de l'éternité” (140) which now separate her from him. He reaches for her across eternity but is denied her because she, his own sister and the mystical bride of Jesus, has become doubly forbidden. René is blocked off from her forever; this Cain figure will never possess his Eve.

The denial of the female emerges as a very important theme in several Chateaubriand texts, including René, Atala, Les Martyrs, and even the Mémoires, as we have seen. It is essentially a theme of blockage, for the characters involved, be they René, Chactas, Eudore in Les Martyrs, or the young Chateaubriand himself, are cut off from what they consider to be the only promise of self-actualization in their lives. The female eludes them; the phantom-woman remains beyond their grasps.

This inability to complete a union with the female figure represents the frustration of the noble Chateaubriand in the face of his own history. A political exile, first in America, then in London, then at times in France itself under Napoleon and Louis XVIII, he created texts of denial and blockage. Atala (1801) and René (1802) were children born in political exile, Les Martyrs (1809) was written while Chateaubriand was in exile under Napoleon, and the Vallée-aux-Loups section of the Mémoires was produced in 1817 when he was in political disfavor with Louis XVIII. In each period of exile, Chateaubriand found himself barred from the rights he felt given to him by birth, and his exasperation finds expression in being denied the female, the ideal love object, the Eve of his imagination. The phantom-woman, “la patrie,” the honor and glory which he viewed as a God-given right of the aristocracy were being denied him. The movement of history had barred him from acting out his perceived role as statesman and obstructed the consummation of his class's reason for existence. And it is this “impuissance,” this inability to complete union with his self-perceived destiny which manifests itself in the inviolable virgin theme of his exile texts.

Chateaubriand had pursued his Eve, “la gloire et surtout l'honneur” as he defines her, for over 10 years by the time René was first published in 1802, but she had been constantly denied him by what he called a “mauvais génie,” which was in reality nothing more than the movement of history: “Parti pour être voyageur en Amérique, revenu pour être soldat en Europe, je ne fournis jusqu'au bout ni l'une ni l'autre de ces carrières: un mauvais génie m'arracha le bâton et l'épée et me mit la plume à la main.”²² It is evident from his correspondence of these years that the substitution of a literary career for a political one was rather unsatisfactory to the young nobleman who dreamed of filling the role he felt given him by virtue of his birth into the class of “legitimate” rulers.

Writing in June 1803 to his friend Philibert Guéneau de Mussy, he described his state of mind:

Cette vie vagabonde commence à me peser; je ne suis plus soulevé par les espérances de la première jeunesse … Dans quel lieu a donc été ma vie? Sept années au collège, quatorze ans voyageur, je ne puis compter que douze ans d'enfance sur le sol et sous le toit paternels. Ce qui m'épouvante, c'est le vide de mon avenir. De la fumée littéraire? j'en suis rassasié et j'en connais la valeur. Des places? je n'ai point au fond de l'ambition. Des illusions de jeune homme? je suis trop vieux et de plus détrompé. Du bonheur de famille? ma part est faite. Vous êtes bien heureux, mon cher ami, d'avoir encore quelque chose à faire, et de n'être pas comme moi rendu trop tôt au but: il ne faut arriver à l'auberge que pour se coucher.²³

At the time he wrote this letter, Chateaubriand was on his way to Rome, appointed by Napoleon as secretary to the French legate there. He had begged his way back into Bonaparte's favor and had had his name removed from the list of exiles. The Génie had even been dedicated to the Emperor.

But all this servitude must have been gnawing away at his legitimist conscience, especially the fact that he had been separated once more from the paternal domain. It is this that he regrets the most, and in his lamentation, we see the attachment Chateaubriand had to the land of France. It somehow symbolized to him the rights of his class and the family hierarchy. Without the land, he was indeed a vagabond, a drifter, an exiled Cain. To strip away his right to the land was to cut him adrift and eliminate his very identity.

In a letter to Matthieu Molé dating from this same period (1803), he wrote: “Que ferai-je de ce reste de vie, qui s'étendra pour moi dans l'avenir, sans famille, sans propriété, dégoûté du travail et des honneurs littéraires, contenté sous les rapports de l'ambition parce que le but que je poursuis est facile à atteindre et peut-être aussi parce qui cette passion est presque nulle chez moi?” (208). He deprecates literary renown because it is not an acceptable substitute for the loss of what he feels is his true social role, that of the noble statesman. Without a family, without property, he fears the years which lie ahead, since they seem to offer no reversal in the trend his life has been following since his early youth.

It is especially during these times of depression that the simple rustic life of the Garden most appeals to him: “Je le sens jusqu'au fond des entrailles, une chaumière et un coin de terre à labourer de mes mains, voilà après quoi je soupire ce qui est le voeu constant de mon coeur, et la seule chose stable que je trouve au fond de mes souhaits et de mes songes” (217). He maintains that he seeks “le seul plaisir de cultiver en paix un champ qui [m']appartienne, dans quelque coin du monde” (181). More than the land, he seeks stability and order in his life. The Garden represents an order, a tranquillity, a return to a more natural way of life, and it most certainly implies family and progenity, productivity and growth for Chateaubriand, things he had yet to experience in his life up to this point. “J'ai le coeur triste et serré,” he writes to Molé in 1803, “je suis fatigué, mortellement dégoûté de cette vie errante que j'ai commencée dès ma jeunesse” (238). In other letters, he refers to himself as “un Juif sans patrie” and “un pauvre banni” (90, 131). He sees himself as the Cain figure, the vagabond who can lay no claim to either home or family in a world which denies him his ancestral right to land, position, and honor. He is obsessed with returning to the Garden, with recovering his legitimate birthright and restoring order and stability to his existence.

Much of this frustration is projected through the René character, who, like his creator, seeks in vain to possess his Eve, his ideal love object. When René admits he is “seul sur la terre,” he suffers an attack of his “mal,” which he describes as “une langueur secrète” and a “dégoût de la vie.”²⁴ “Bientôt mon coeur ne fournit plus d'aliment à ma pensée,” he explains to Chactas, “et je ne m'apercevais de mon existence que par un profond sentiment d'ennui” (130).

Chateaubriand would call this state “le vague des passions” in the Génie, and René was to be considered the illustration of the problem. In his explanation of this “état de l'âme” (111), Chateaubriand described the conflict between imagination and reality, the conflict which he considered at the root of the problem: “L'imagination est riche, abondante et merveilleuse, l'existence pauvre, sèche et désenchantée. On habite, avec un coeur plein, un monde vide; et sans avoir usé de rien, on est désabusé de tout” (112). The energies normally employed in the drive to obtain the ideal are forced back in on themselves as a result of the nonexistence of the ideal in the real world, “lorsque toutes les facultés, jeunes, actives, entières, mais renfermées, ne se sont exercées que sur elles-mêmes, sans but et sans objet” (111). The goal or object is not there to have, resulting in a bitterness which Chateaubriand calls “incroyable”: “le coeur se retourne et se replie en cent manières, pour employer des forces qu'il sent lui être inutiles” (112). The energy of the passions, lacking an object on which to spend itself, turns inward and consumes itself.

Chateaubriand then suggests that this “vague des passions” did not exist in ancient times for three main reasons: the Greeks and Romans had “une grande existence politique,” the influence of women was much less significant in their culture, and their religion focused more on mortality and the pleasures of this world than on those of the next (112). In the spirit of the Génie, he of course emphasizes the last of these three as being most significant, but the fact that the political is placed first in the list is equally significant in the context of our study here. Political activity, “les affaires du forum et de la place publique” (112), left no time for the “vague des passions”; youthful energies found their natural outlet in participation in political and intellectual arenas, according to Chateaubriand.

This would have been the antidote for René's “mal” and his own, to be sure, and the fact that it surfaces as the first and most obvious difference he sees between the ancient and modern worlds is indicative of his consciousness of this factor in his own life. The energies he would normally have devoted to his political career as a nobleman had been blocked off by the Revolution, forced into an alternate channel, i.e., a literary career, which proved inadequate for his total satisfaction. His family and friends scattered, imprisoned, or dead, and he himself in exile, Chateaubriand felt cut off from ever possessing his Eve, “la gloire et surtout l'honneur.” The denial of the object of his search for self-actualization forced his energies back onto himself, as he described the process, causing him to despair of his future in a world where he no longer had a place.

René carries in it the darkest of Chateaubriand's fears: that there was little hope for a return to the order which had defined and enforced his rightful role in society. This concept of “linear history,” in conjunction with the denial of the female theme, is in great part responsible for the depth of the pessimism in the text. The possession of Eve is essential to the reconstruction of the lost order of Eden, and when Cain is denied her, then the dream of a return to the Garden fades rapidly.

An important passage in the text, appearing shortly after Amélie abandons René for the last time, can be seen as the encapsulization of René's assessment of his situation, and because of its importance in understanding the entire René text, I shall analyze it in detail. It is the passage in which René describes his trip to the convent, where he hopes to dissuade his sister from her project of entering into the religious orders. During this trip, he visits the former property of his family, and now, as he sits and tells his story, as Cain in the Garden of the New World, he comments on the significance of the event and its message:

Après avoir hésité sur le parti que j'avais à prendre, je résolus d'aller à B … pour faire un dernier effort auprès de ma sœur. La terre où j'avais été élevé se trouvait sur la route. Quand j'aperçus les bois où j'avais passé les seuls moments heureux de ma vie, je ne pus retenir mes larmes, et il me fut impossible de résister à la tentation de leur dire un dernier adieu.

Mon frère aîné avait vendu l'héritage paternel, et le nouveau propriétaire ne l'habitait pas. J'arrivai au château par la longue avenue de sapins; je traversai à pied les cours désertes; je m'arrêtai à regarder les fenêtres fermées ou demi-brisées, le chardon qui croissait au pied des murs, les feuilles qui jonchaient le seuil des portes, et ce perron solitaire où j'avais vu si souvent mon père et ses fidèles serviteurs. Les marches étaient déjà couvertes de mousse; le violier jaune croissait entre leurs pierres déjointes et tremblantes. Un gardien inconnu m'ouvrit brusquement les portes. J'hésitais à franchir le seuil; cet homme s'écria: “Eh bien! allez-vous faire comme cette étrangère qui vint ici il y a quelques jours? Quand ce fut pour entrer, ell s'évanouit, et je fus obligé de la reporter à sa voiture.” Il me fut aisé de reconnaître l'étrangère qui, comme moi, était venue chercher dans ces lieux des pleurs et des souvenirs.

Couvrant un moment mes yeux de mon mouchoir, j'entrai sous le toit de mes ancêtres. Je parcourus les appartements sonores où l'on n'entendit que le bruit de mes pas. Les chambres étaient à peine éclairées par la faible lumière qui pénétrait entre les volets fermés: je visitai celle où ma mère avait perdu la vie en me mettant au monde, celle où se retirait mon père, celle où j'avais dormi dans mon berceau, celle enfin où l'amitié avait reçcu mes premiers vœux dans le sein d'une sœur. Partout les salles étaient détendues, et l'araignée filait sa toile dans les couches abandonnées. Je sortis précipitamment de ces lieux, je m'en éloignai à grands pas, sans oser tourner la tête. Qu'ils sont doux, mais qu'ils sont rapides, les moments que les frères et les sœurs passent dans leurs jeunes années, réunis sous l'aile de leurs vieux parents! La famille de l'homme n'est que d'un jour; le souffle de Dieu la disperse comme une fumée. A peine le fils connaît-il le père, le père le fils, le frère la sœur, la sœur le frère! Le chêne voit germer ses glands autour de lui: il n'en est pas ainsi des enfants des hommes!

(136-37)

The first line of the paragraph introduces us to the narrator's project: this will be “un dernier effort” to save the sister. Finality is already announced here and finds its echo in the closing line of the paragraph: “il me fut impossible de résister à la tentation de leur dire un dernier adieu.” This visit to the past presents itself as an interlude on the narrator's route toward his final destination. These woods, an image of past happiness, are placed outside of time; they are the same woods where the narrator had known his happiness. It is to these eternal woods that he will say his last good-bye.

The introductory line of the following paragraph reveals that the narrator enters the woods as a stranger, a foreigner: the family heritage, the father's legacy, has passed into the hands of a “nouveau propriétaire” who does not live on the property. The elder brother, the inheritor of the property, has turned over the native land to another, a new person who evidently has no interest in it. “L'héritage paternel” implies more than just the property—it is also the right of lordship, the right to rule. The word “vendu” evokes a monied class: the elder brother, employed here in both the biblical and allegorical sense, has sold the birthright, his right to the inheritance. More specifically, there no longer exists any land, the base of the nobility and the basis of feudal rights. Other terms in the same paragraph evoke the system of the past—the chateau itself, the deserted courtyards, “le perron solitaire” where René had watched his father receiving “ses fidèles serviteurs.”

Here then is a recollection, a remembering not only of the recent past but of ancient history as well, of lords and nobility, of a social system of master and loyal servant. The narrative eye caresses these old monuments of the past and observes the state of abandonment to which they testify, the result of an elder brother's betrayal and the negligence of “un nouveau propriétaire” who does not reside there: “cours désertes,” “fenêtres fermées” or half-broken, the vegetation which is slowly covering the traces of this abandoned society, the steps of the castle covered with moss and the yellow wallflower growing up between “les pierres déjointes et tremblantes.” The substitution of “violier” for the commonly used “giroflée” is also indicative of the narrator's point of view in that it is a more archaic term for the flower and thus carries the overtones of the past, overtones so essential to the effect of the paragraph.

The reverie of the narrative eye, this remembering of the past told in the imperfect tense, is brutally interrupted by the return to the simple past and the entrance of “un gardien inconnu,” who opens the doors abruptly. This “inconnu” now living in places familiar to the narrator speaks to him of an “étrangère.” The blindness of the guardian is contrasted ironically to the statement of the narrator: “Il me fut aisé de reconnaître l'étrangère.” The cold reception of this “inconnu” is also contrasted to the scene just above with the father on the steps of the castle with his servants. The feelings of fidelity and the graciousness of the past lord towards those of an inferior social caste are juxtaposed to the coldness of the guardian with his brusque mannerisms and abrasive speech. Here the present crashes against the memories of a warm and noble past. At the last line of this paragraph, we are conscious of a total reversal of things: the brother and sister are now strangers, even foreigners, on the paternal homestead. Now they are the disinherited.

With his entry into the castle, the narrator returns to the very bosom of the family: “J'entrai sous le toit de mes ancêtres.” In fact, it is now a house of death, for the narrator finds only vestiges of a past life. The emptiness makes itself felt by the sounds of his footsteps echoing in the vacant rooms. There is very little light. He returns to the bedrooms and sees the place of his own birth and the scene of his mother's death. He visits the room where his father habitually withdrew from the family. The verb “se retirer” implies more than the simple action of going to bed—it is also an act of withdrawal and self-imposed isolation. The image of himself alone in his bed, separated from parents and other family members, strongly reinforces the idea of compartmentalization, of separation and dispersion. The repetition of the pronoun “celle” through the description adds to this effect of division. We do not find here any description of the living room or salon where the family normally gathered together but rather that of the bedrooms where the family divided itself up each night to sleep alone, isolated in their own cubicles. Now, in their place, “l'araignée file sa toile dans les couches abandonnées.” The image of the spider and its web, a funereal image now in the place of the living, reminds the reader of the earlier images in the text where nature seemed to be reclaiming its place from the humans, as it perpetuates itself in the very living spaces of the vanished human beings. The image of the abandoned bed, “couche,” a word in which resonate many others such as “se coucher,” “s'accoucher,” “accouchement,” ideas already evoked in the text, thus incorporates in itself the two themes of birth and death.

The château, the heritage of an ancestral line, is no more than a museum now, a museum of a past order or system, empty, black, and abandoned. Here, where the narrator had expected to see places filled with happy memories of youth, of family joy, he finds only the memory of death and separation, of withdrawal and dispersion. The realization of this fact is manifested in the text by an abrupt break in the discourse. Once more from the imperfect of the description the text returns to the simple past: “Je sortis précipitamment de ces lieux, je m'en éloignai à grands pas, sans oser tourner la tête.” Here the shortening of the sentences, the change in rhythm, evokes the rapidity of the flight and evasion of the narrator. He can no longer stay in this place of memories; he can no longer stand the image of a past supplanted by strangers and almost entirely annihilated.

At this point in the text, we encounter a philosophical reflection on the story which has just been presented. The narrator, as observer now of his own story or history, and in his role as reconstructor of his past for the listeners, comments on what he has just recounted. The text passes from a narrative to an allegory by its movement from the specific to the general: “Qu'ils sont doux, mais qu'ils sont rapides, les moments que les frères et les sœurs passent dans leurs jeunes années, réunis sous l'aile de leurs vieux parents!” The image of the children “réunis sous l'aile” of the parents makes allusion to a well-known biblical metaphor (cf. Matthew 22.37). Certain other terms are also found with an equivalent in the Old Testament wisdom books. For instance, the phrase “La famille de l'homme n'est que d'un jour; le souffle de Dieu la disperse comme une fumée” has many parallels in biblical texts such as Job, a text which Chateaubriand admitted to liking especially and which he had quoted in the Génie.²⁵ The last sentence of this paragraph in René picks up an image from Job, that of the tree, which perpetuates itself, in contrast to man, who disappears (cf. Job 14.7-12). The two sentences beginning with “la famille de l'homme” and “le chêne” are even constructed in the Hebraic style of poetry reserved for the proverb: two sentences, very simple in construction, which complement each other to form a single idea.

The similarities of these sentences in René to the biblical text are striking but not surprising when the educational background of Chateaubriand is considered. His primers were the scriptures; he had even studied them in Hebrew.²⁶ Their style and their message were well known to him. Much like the wise man of Ecclesiastes or of Job, the narrator of the René story summarizes all that has preceded in the narrative, judges the past, and applies the individual experience to the universal experience of man. By philosophical extrapolation, he makes of his own experience an allegory in the style of Solomon and the other sages of the Old Testament.

The “entassement” of family relationships by the repetition, “le père le fils, le frère la sœur, la sœur le frère,” reinforces the strength of the family ties involved. These relationships are now ended. The sentence, broken up by the commas, isolates the pairs of words. The contrast of the period of happiness and innocence of the children to that of the dispersion of the family in the smoke image summarizes all that has preceded in the text. The narrator has made a return to the past, to the place of happy memories, from which he has now fled. The words “précipitamment,” “à grands pas,” “rapides,” and “à peine” reinforce the effect of rapidity and quick destruction of the fragile family structure. The image of the dispersed smoke opposes itself to that of the oak tree, strong and solid, a symbol of eternal nature. The oak, forever fertile, watches as its seeds sprout around it, observing the continuation of its species. Man has no such fortune: his stay is limited to “un jour” in the allegorical language of the text.

This type of language, biblical and allegorical as it is, allows the narrator to make the obvious connections with his intended message. René enlarges the scope of his personal history to include basic human themes associated with another great allegory, that of the Creation and the Garden. Eden was the terrestrial paradise, a place of joy and freedom where brother and sister loved each other without shame or sin under the approving eye of a loving and omnipotent Father. But man, corrupted by his own pride, is banished from the Garden to lead a miserable life in a hostile world, a life rendered even sadder by the memories of a past full of innocence and fulfillment. The desire to return to this past to return to the Garden, never leaves this fallen, wandering creature. When our narrator has the chance to return to this place of enchantment, this magical kingdom of lost innocence, he finds that all has changed. Nature might be able to find rebirth in spite of time and history but, as he sadly admits, “il n'en est pas ainsi des enfants des hommes.” In the place of the family, one finds unknown guardians, corruption, emptiness, abandoned beds, and death. The past, the history evoked by the memories surrounding the castle, the image of the Father himself—all this will never live again. Human history proves itself to be linear, in contrast to that of nature, which follows a circular movement, repeating itself infinitely.

This then is what the narrator realizes by his return to the Garden. It is impossible for him to regenerate himself, to reconstitute the lost family and the dissolved order in which he had known security and happiness. René would exclaim: “Ah! qui n'a senti quelquefois le besoin de se régénérer, de se rajeunir aux eaux du torrent, de retremper son âme à la fontaine de la vie? Qui ne se trouve quelquefois accablé du fardeau de sa propre corruption, et incapable de rien faire de grand, de noble, de juste?”²⁷ All his efforts to do so will be in vain.

René in the New World is Cain who has returned to the Garden in an effort to cleanse or purify himself of his crime, but to no avail. “René avait désiré un désert, une femme et la liberté,” we are told, but upon obtaining all these, he remains a destroyed being: “Il essaya de réaliser ses anciennes chimères: quelle femme était plus belle que Céluta? Il l'emmena au fond des forêts et promena son indépendance de solitude en solitude; mais quand il avait pressé sa jeune épouse contre son sein, au milieu des précipices; quand il l'avait égarée dans la région des nuages, il ne rencontrait point les délices qu'il avait rêvées.”²⁸ René himself finally comes to the conclusion that a return to Eden cannot redeem him and he cries out: “Qu'ai-je gagné en venant sur ces bords? Insensé! ne te devais-tu pas apercevoir que ton cœur ferait ton tourment, quels que fussent les lieux habités par toi?” (20: 68). The landscape of America will not deliver René from his own heart wherein the real sin lies; this son of the city can never become one of those born in the freedom of nature. “Ainsi s'accomplissait le sort de René: tout lui devenait fatal, même le bonheur” (20: 29). René, in the mythical model of Cain, is condemned never to know the permanence of family or home. We are told in the final paragraph of the text that René dies in America “sans y trouver le bonheur.”²⁹

In one sense, the pessimism of René subtly undermines the optimistic philosophy of the disciples of Rousseau, who preached the possibility of a return to the primitive state of man and consequently a happier and more natural state in society. To this, the René text opposed the idea of linear history: man cannot, even by isolating himself in so-called regenerative nature, reverse the movement of social history. René attacks the notion of any eschatology which supposes an eventual return to a state of primitive bliss.

An interesting passage in the Mémoires helps to strengthen this view of the anti-Rousseau message of René. Earlier in this study, I quoted Chateaubriand's description of his feelings at entering the virgin forests of America for the first time, when he was taken by a sort of “ivresse d'indépendance.” This is not the end of the episode, however, for Chateaubriand continues: “Hélas! je me figurais être seul dans cette forêt où je levais une tête si fière! tout à coup, je viens m'énaser contre un hangar. Sous ce hangar s'offrent à mes yeux ébaubis les premiers sauvages que j'aie vus de ma vie” (1: 291). But these savages are not engaged in their primitive, natural pastimes, to the chagrin of this young disciple of Rousseau. Instead, they are being instructed by no less than a French “maître de danse,” a leftover from the French army of General Rochambeau: “Un petit Français, poudré et frisé, habit vert-pomme, veste de droguet, jabot et manchettes de mousseline, raclait un violon de poche, et faisait danser Madelon Friquet à ces Iroquois” (1: 291).

This modern Orpheus, Chateaubriand writes, was bringing civilization to the savage hordes of the New World, though he himself had merely served in the mess kitchens of the French army. Chateaubriand, writing about this episode years later in 1822, comments: “N'était-ce pas une chose accablante pour un disciple de Rousseau, que cette introduction à la vie sauvage par un bal que l'ancien marmiton du général Rochambeau donnait à des Iroquois? J'avais grande envie de rire, mais j'étais cruellement humilié” (1: 291).

Chateaubriand brings this event into focus in the Mémoires because he sees in it the type and shadow of all the disillusionments he had known in his life:

C'est qu'à l'époque de mon voyage aux Etats-Unis, j'étais plein d'illusions; les troubles de la France commençaient en même temps que commençait mon existence; rien n'était achevé en moi, ni dans mon pays … Quinze ans plus tard, après mon voyage au Levant, la République, grossie de débris et de larmes, s'était déchargée comme un torrent du déluge dans le despotisme. Je ne berçais plus de chimères; mes souvenirs, prenant désormais leur source dans la société et dans des passions, étaient sans candeur.

(1: 341)

His turn from illusion to skepticism paralleled the turn of events in France: the Republic instituted with such bloodshed and crime had evolved into a pure dictatorship during the 15 years between his two pilgrimages to Eden. Having left France with the optimistic perspective that things would eventually turn out for the best, he returned disappointed in the American experience and disillusioned at the outcome of the Revolution. The illusions of a new world or a new society, founded on a return to a simpler, more natural state, were lost in the harsh reality of the modern world, a world which appeared to gravitate inexorably toward aggression, disorder, and crime.

His new state of consciousness about the movement of history began to affect the way that he viewed the natural world, the supposed repository of order and truth in Rousseau's system. Once Chateaubriand began to doubt the perfectibility of man, he also began to view nature with a certain measure of distrust. In 1803, he compared his reaction to nature on his first trip to America in 1791 with his current attitude about it:

Je me souviens encore du plaisir que j'éprouvais lorsque, la nuit, au milieu du désert, mon bûcher à demi éteint, mon guide dormant, mes chevaux paissant à quelque distance, j'écoutais la mélodie des eaux et des vents dans la profondeur des bois. Ces murmures tantôt plus forts, tantôt plus faibles, croissant et décroissant à chaque instant, me faisaient tressaillir; chaque arbre était pour moi une espèce de lyre harmonieuse dont les vents tiraient d'ineffables accords.

Aujourd'hui je m'aperçois que je suis beaucoup moins sensible à ces charmes de la nature; je doute que la cataracte de Niagara me causât la même admiration qu'autrefois. Quand on est très jeune, la nature muette parle beaucoup; il y a surabondance dans l'homme; tout son avenir est devant lui; … il espère communiquer ses sensations au monde, et il se nourrit de mille chimères. Mais dans un âge avancé, lorsque la perspective que nous avions devant nous passe derrière, que nous sommes détrompés sur une foule d'illusions, alors la nature seule devient plus froide et moins parlante, les jardins parlent peu.³⁰

Using the analogy of the garden, he emphasizes that once a certain point is passed in life, then nature has little left to offer, for the Garden no longer speaks to the disillusioned.

This passage, taken from his Voyage en Italie, was written when Chateaubriand was only 35 years old and only one year after the publication of René. Ten years of his life up to that point had been spent in political exile from France. The renown that the publication of the Génie had brought him was of little use, for he could see that as a member of the nobility he would never be given the opportunity to play a major role in the Napoleonic regime. The natural order of things, as he had been taught it as a young artistocrat, was now in what seemed to be permanent disarray, and so nature herself, with her cyclical growth and orderly laws, no longer seemed an ally to Chateaubriand. He viewed her now as cold and mute, her perpetual renewal and fecundity mocking his own transitory existence.

If Chateaubriand places the flight of René to America as the last act of his drama, it is probably to emphasize the futility of the hope for regeneration. After all other avenues to happiness have been blocked off to René, then he will make his voyage to paradise, the land without a history, the land of prospective redemption. But the landscape alone cannot save him. Without the necessary Eve, without the reconstructed lost order of Eden, nature alone cannot offer him any consolation. The substitute Eve, Céluta, herself an example of primitive innocence, fails to measure up to the required sister-mate René needs. The proper order, the only one promising fulfillment, had been irretrievably lost with his departure from France: “Je contemplai longtemps sur la côte les derniers balancements des arbres de la patrie, et les faîtes du monastère qui s'abaissaient à l'horizon.”³¹ Before his eyes the symbols of the two most important things in his life—his native country and his only love—sink into oblivion. The trees of the New World could never replace those of “la patrie,” and Céluta would never fill the void left by the forbidden Amélie.

The realization that he cannot possess his Eve and that the New World offers him no renewal destroys René's will to pursue his quest. He becomes in a sense a passive observer of events around him, his motivation paralyzed by the perceived futility of action. He spends days alone in the forests, his characteristic “ardeur” now dissipated, awaiting death, which comes mercifully while he is yet young. The final line of the narrative evokes this passivity and immobility of René in the New World: “On montre encore un rocher où il allait s'asseoir au soleil couchant” (146). The sinking sun evokes a passage into the period of time when activity ceases, as well as the obvious death theme. Both seem to indicate that the will to live had died in René long before his own death. The final image of René is one of silence, immobility, and resignation.

The theme of a lost and irretrievable order reappears in many of Chateubriand's writings even after the Restoration in 1815. Chateaubriand at first welcomed the return of the Bourbons as a dream come true but soon became aware that the Revolution had worked a change in French society that would not be altered by the mere rethroning of a king. A new social order had replaced the old during the years of the Empire, one which he found reprehensible. In a speech to the Chambre des Pairs in 1815, he explained what he felt to be the central problem of the Restoration:

On peut se relever de tous les crimes, quand les bases de la société ne sont pas détruites; on peut revenir à toutes les vertus quand l'esprit de famille n'est pas changé, quand les mœurs domestiques sont demeurées les mêmes, malgré les altérations du gouvernement. Si au contraire la révolution est faite dans la famille comme dans l'Etat, dans le cœur comme dans l'esprit, dans les principes comme dans les usages, un autre ordre de choses peut s'établir; mais il ne faut plus s'appuyer sur des analogies qui n'existent pas, et prendre le passé pour la règle du présent.³²

He evidently felt that indeed the Revolution had penetrated to the very base of society, affecting the people's attitude toward moral issues and changing their principles. Another order had established itself during the absence of the Bourbons.

Chateaubriand felt these changes had particularly influenced the attitudes of the youth: “Ces enfants étaient placés dans des écoles où, rassemblés au son du tambour, ils devenaient irreligieux, débauchés, contempteurs des vertus domestiques” (24: 13). The new generation worried him: “Nos enfants s'élèvent au milieu du désordre des idées morales; leurs oreilles et leurs yeux s'accoûtument à entendre et à voir le mal: ils apprennent à étouffer leurs vertus, à suivre leurs passions” (26: 57).

It became increasingly evident to Chateaubriand that the Revolution had become the great dividing line between the old and new orders, between the Old and New Worlds, as it were. In the Mémoires, the boundary between these two worlds is described as a river of blood: “Passe maintenant, lecteur; franchis le fleuve de sang qui sépare à jamais le vieux monde dont tu sors, du monde nouveau à l'entrée duquel tu mourras” (1: 212). The reader is not promised he will see the “new world,” however, for Chateaubriand was not sure just what kind of society would eventually emerge from the strange blend of royalists and bourgeoisie sharing power in October 1821, when he wrote these words. The Revolution, he affirmed, “a dévoré l'ancien monde, dont elle mourra peut-être, en ne laissant après elle ni vieille, ni nouvelle société” (2: 9). Only one thing appeared certain to him at this point: the old order was definitely gone.

A few years later, in 1826, he once more assessed the state of things in the general preface to the first edition of his complete works and again emphasized the irremediable loss of the old order: “Vingtcinq années se sont écoulées depuis le commencement du siècle. Les hommes de vingt-cinq ans qui vont prendre nos places n'ont point connu le siècle dernier, n'ont point recueilli ses traditions, n'ont point sucé ses doctrines avec le lait, n'ont point été nourris sous l'ordre politique qui l'a régi, en un mot ne sont point sortis des entrailles de l'ancienne monarchie, et n'attachent au passé que l'intérêt que l'on prend à l'histoire d'un peuple qui n'est plus.”³³ The generation born 25 years earlier knew nothing of the way of life under a king: “Les premiers regards de ces générations cherchèrent en vain la légitimité sur le trône, emportée qu'elle était déjà depuis sept années par la révolution” (16: xviij). Without the legitimate ruler ruling France (and in this statement we see Chateaubriand's opinion of the bourgeoisie and Napoleon), the generation of 1800 was left without a proper guide, resulting in a miserable struggle of vulgar ambitions.

The gulf between the two centuries is immense, he writes, almost impossible to breach, and, even more tragically, any remnants of the eighteenth century are quickly disappearing: “Les débris du dixhuitième siècle, qui flottent épars dans le dix-neuvième, sont au moment de s'abîmer: encore quelques années, et la société religieuse, philosophique et politique appartiendra à des fils étrangers aux mœurs de leurs aïeux” (16: xx). But to try to reverse this movement in history is the height of futility:

Et l'on croirait que le monde a pu changer ainsi, sans que rien ait changé dans les idées des hommes, on croirait que les trente dernières années peuvent être regardées comme non avenues, que la société peut être rétablie telle qu'elle existait autrefois! Des souvenirs non partagés, de vains regrets, une génération expirante que le passé appelle, que le présent dévore, ne parviendront point à faire renaître ce qui est sans vie. Il y a des opinions qui périssent comme il y a des races qui s'éteignent, et les unes et les autres restent tout au plus un objet de curiosité et de recherche, dans les champs de la mort. Que, loin d'être arrivé au but, la société marche à des destinées nouvelles, c'est ce qui me paraît incontestable. Mais laissons cet avenir plus ou moins éloigné à ses jeunes héritiers: le mien est trop rapproché de moi pour étendre mes regards au delà de l'horizon de ma tombe.

(16: xxj-xxij)

Chateaubriand had been fated to watch his own “race” with its political philosophy die out, becoming mere objects of curiosity to the later generations. The republicans were not of his blood and he would never understand or tolerate their claim to political equality. They represented a generation with no feeling for the lost ideals, virtues, or order of the past; and Chateaubriand appears ready to leave France to them, a France which elsewhere he described as “une société matérielle qui n'a de passion que pour la paix, qui ne rêve que le confort de la vie, qui ne veut faire de l'avenir qu'un perpétuel aujourd'hui …”³⁴ He once described his feelings of disorientation in the face of such major social and political changes: “Nous sommes ici-bas comme au spectacle: si nous détournons un moment la tête, le coup de sifflet part, les palais enchantés s'évanouissent; et lorsque nous ramenons les yeux sur la scène, nous n'apercevons plus que des déserts et des acteurs inconnus.”³⁵ His homeland, populated by strangers and unknowns, had become at times almost a foreign country to him, and the long years of exile apparently heightened the intensity of this feeling of disorientation in Chateaubriand. The enchanted palaces had disappeared while he was away, and the Garden was destroyed. He would never find them again.

Late in his Mémoires, when he was 62 years old, Chateaubriand described a moment when he thought that finally he could possess the dream of his life. He had just received an appointment as ambassador to Rome and had arranged to have Madame Récamier join him there. Madame Récamier was the embodiment of the ideal woman for Chateaubriand, the literal fulfillment of the Eve of his imagination: “En approchant de ma fin, il me semble que tout ce que j'ai aimé, je l'ai aimé dans Mme Récamier, et qu'elle était la source cachée de mes affections. Mes souvenirs de divers âges, ceux de mes songes, comme ceux de mes réalités, se sont pétris, mêlés, confondus pour faire un composé de charmes et de douces souffrances, dont elle est devenue la forme visible” (3: 397). With this appointment, Chateaubriand was at last to possess the two most important objectives of his life: a major political position and the ideal mate. In much of his fiction, the two had become fused into one all-encompassing symbol of his hopes and aspirations, as we have seen earlier in this study. Now, in reality, he had the promise of having them both, and of this prospect he writes: “Ce moment est le seul de ma vie où j'aie été complètement heureux, où je ne désirais plus rien, où mon existence était remplie, où je n'apercevais jusqu'à ma dernière heure qu'une suite de jours de repos. Je touchais au port; j'y entrais à pleines voiles comme Palinure: inopina quies [calme inattendu]” (2: 559). For the first time, the Garden was almost in reach, and Eve had consented to be his. Chateaubriand reveals that only then could he call himself completely happy, for his lifelong dreams of complete fulfillment, of self-actualization, were coming true.

Even though political events ultimately prevented Chateaubriand from carrying out this project, the passage helps to confirm our earlier contention that it was only when he could act out his perceived role in society that he could feel content. After the Restoration, Chateaubriand held many important political positions: Peer of France, Minister of the State, ambassador to London and Rome, Minister of Foreign Affairs. The micro-René had many a chance to act out his role as statesman, but the macro-René in Chateaubriand, the nobility as a whole, would never be restored to its full powers after Napoleon. It is perhaps for this reason that Chateaubriand considered René his masterpiece, for the political statement it made in behalf of the disenfranchised nobility was as valid in 1848 at his death as it was in 1802.

There was a text, which appeared only two years after René and which bore striking similarities in its themes to those of René, i.e., the Cain figure, the denial of the female, and the lost and irretrievable order of the Garden. Senancour's Oberman (and here again the original spelling of the title of the 1804 edition is retained) was the product of another émigré who, almost exactly the same age as Chateaubriand, had lived through the same historical events. Oberman's lament, by virtue of its birth and lineage, would surely have been accepted by Chateaubriand as one bearing the marks of legitimacy.

Notes

1. François-Auguste-René de Chateaubriand, Oeuvres romanesques et voyages (Paris: Gallimard, 1969) 1: 117. All subsequent quotations from Atala, René, and Chapter ix, Book III, Part Two, “Du Vague des Passions,” of Le Génie du Christianisme are extracted from volume 1 and will be referred to by page number only.

2. Leo Marx, The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America (New York: Oxford UP, 1964) 228.

3. Genesis 2.8-11, 13-15 from La Sainte Bible, trans. Louis Segond (Paris: Alliance Biblique Universelle, 1964). Subsequent quotations will be taken from this edition and indicated by chapter and verse.

4. Chateaubriand, Oeuvres complètes (Paris: Ladvocat, 1826-1831) 6: 68. All citations from this collection have been modernized.

5. Oeuvres complètes 6: 69

6. Chateaubriand, Mémoires d'outre-tombe, ed. Marice LeVaillant, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (Paris: Flammarion, 1949) 1: 290-91.

7. Oeuvres complètes 19: 117.

8. Oeuvres complètes 18: 131.

9. Chateaubriand, Le Génie du Christianisme (Paris: Migneret, 1802) 6: 167.

10. Oeuvres complètes 20: 225.

11. Le Génie 4: 167.

12. Oeuvres romanesques 119.

13. Le Génie 4: 205.

14. Mémoires 4: 404; 1: 465.

15. Oeuvres complètes 2: 70-72.

16. Oeuvres complètes 3: 11-12.

17. Oeuvres complètes 2: 334.

18. Oeuvres complètes 21: 363-64.

19. Oeuvres complètes 11: 144.

20. Oeuvres romanesques 122.

21. Oeuvres romanesques 130.

22. Mémoires 1: 341.

23. Chateaubriand, Correspondance, 1789-1807 (Paris: Gallimard, 1977) 209.

24. Oeuvres romanesques 130.

25. Oeuvres complètes 12: 253-56, 276-80.

26. Mémoires 1: 105.

27. Oeuvres romanesques 127.

28. Oeuvres complètes 20: 13-14.

29. Oeuvres romanesques 146.

30. Oeuvres complètes 7: 251-52.

31. Oeuvres romanesques 143.

32. Oeuvres complètes 23: 58; emphasis added.

33. Oeuvres complètes 16: xvij-xviij.

34. Mémoires 3: 303.

35. Oeuvres complètes 2: 77.

Bibliography

Chateaubriand, François-Auguste-René de. Correspondance générale. Vol. 1, 1789-1807. Vol. 2, 1808-1814. Paris: Gallimard, 1977.

———. Génie du Christianisme. 5 vols. Paris: Migneret, 1802.

———. Mémoires d'outre-tombe. Ed. Maurice Levaillant. 2nd ed. 2 vols. Paris: Flammarion, 1949.

———. Oeuvres complètes. 28 vols. Paris: Ladvocat, 1826-1831.

———. Oeuvres romanesques et voyages. Paris: Gallimard, 1969.

Marx, Leo. The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Idea in America. New York: Oxford UP, 1964.