Reading #2: On Paris vs. the Provinces, Goethe on Suicide, Chateaubriand & Byron on Melancholy and Evil

Okay, we haven't moved forward much on the readings because the CHS class has been working on the French Revolution, for which they've been using other secondary materials more than the reader. Some people have already started reading ahead, but now let's all take a look at the second reading, pp 25-43, and start exploring related issues!

The first short section on Paris & the Provinces is only a couple pages, the first from Stendhal, the cynical realist and the second from Fourier, the utopian madman. Basically trying to at least briefly introduce a key thing to keep in mind throughout the 19^th Century: that Paris was, culturally, almost a separate entity from the rest of France, and was thought of as such by most Parisians and most other French people. While huge numbers of people moved to Paris from the provinces throughout the century, most talk about almost as if they were emigrating. These divisions came into very sharp focus before and after every revolution; Paris was far more to the left politically than most of the country.

The next section tries to begin to indicate what was happening culturally in the rest of Europe, from which France was largely divided for an entire generation, between 1787 and 1815. But while most of Europe was experiencing vast cultural change on an ad-hoc, gradual basis, after the fall of Napoleon all of these developments would pour into France at once, and the generation who grew up during this time would go on to create French Romanticism and eventually revolutionize every aspect of France's cultural life, from poetry to food to history to comedy.

For the first time in Europe, depression, misanthropy and darkness become themes through which to understand culture; how might this have emerged from decades of Revolutionary warfare...

Personally, this is where a lot of the stuff I love first gets introduced: Romanticism, Gothic subculture, and politically motivated literature, all of which will be intertwined to create radical French Romanticism after 1830. (By the way, I’m working right now on putting together the reader that will cover that, and am open for suggestions of things to include in the book for 1827-47.) It was really hard to narrow everything down to a couple texts—at one point or another I’d thought about including work by Scott, Cooper, Ossian, Sterne, Schiller, Klopstock, Novalis, and especially Schlegel. More theory from Mme. De Staël and Stendhal, about recent German and English literature respectively, would have been great too. And I’d have LOVED to have included some English Gothic Fiction—‘Monk’ Lewis, Horace Walpole, Thomas Beckford, Ann Radcliffe for starters….

But one can only justify a little bit of non-French literature in a French culture class. So, I chose the representative of German and English literature who I felt most affected the general cultural milieu of France. We’ll find ourselves often going back to these two guys as we progress into the 19^th Century.

Goethe’s range was absolutely huge, and I couldn’t possibly have suggested it all: It would be great if anybody wanted to find some of Goethe’s texts on folklore, metaphysics, optics, aesthetics and colour theory, theology, linguistics, Classical and Romance literature, minerology, alchemy, etc. Etc. His Faust, of course, is awesome; I chose Werther because it was not only a very influential force on French literature—and not only among intellectuals, it was hugely popular in all walks of society—but because it also explores something new (I think) in Western culture: it takes depression, instability, and failure seriously, as ways of understanding the modern condition, and it describes a generation of intellectuals who were attempting to come to grips with the failure of Western Society to live up to its own increasingly idealistic goals.

Byron’s influence was pretty multifaceted too, though his intellectual breadth isn’t as staggering as Goethe’s. Like Goethe, both his work and his influence brought together the intellectual and the popular worlds, and he became a living symbol of Modernity’s growing contradictions. While Goethe helped make depression, misanthropy, and social alienation a recognized cultural response to Europe’s changing culture, Byron went further, and made them cool. Romanticism already had a long relationship with Gothic pulp-fiction and the budding pop-subculture around it, but Byron made himself into a living, breathing character from a Gothic Novel—something that the French Romantics will soon develop even further than him. Byron was a kind proto-rock star foreshadowing Jim Morrison and other celebrities paradoxically living as both social outcasts and popular icons: swarming with inconsistencies and even hypocricies, but also fomenting all kinds of crazy subcultures and movements in his wake.

Chateaubriand was the first French icon that I know of for this kind of epic melancholy, and was often called ‘the French Byron’, though I’m not sure that this is really all that accurate. He’s certainly melancholy, but lacks Byron’s nihilistic undertone, his bravado, and his constant dance-with-the-devil; still closer to Goethe, I feel (insomuch as it’s possible for anyone to be ‘like’ Goethe). Also importantly, he’s a Monarchist who sees himself as a religious poet, as opposed to Byron’s Liberal politics and satanically-tinged skepticism. Until the late 1820s, nascent Romanticism in France was split into Liberal and Conservative wings, who loathed each other; Chateaubriand was the leading figure for the Conservative group. Nor was this just a personal tendency: Chateaubriand will later become one of the most politically powerful men in France, serving as First Minister to King Charles X. When he finally resigns in protest to the King’s suspension of Freedom of the Press, the right-wing element of Romanticism will fall apart, the most prominent among them reconsidering their position and moving toward the Left.

I've tried to find audio recordings of these texts, but no luck. Sorry!!

I can post some potential prompts if people feel it would be helpful, but it seems like it may not really be necessary—it seems like everyone’s getting ideas on their own, so for the moment, feel to spin off any of the readings, people, genres, or themes here that take your fancy!