7
FRAN�OIS-RENE DE CHATEAUBRIAND
The Genius of Christianity
1802
Born into an old aristocratic family in Bretagne, Fran9ois-Rene de
Chateau
iand XXXXXXXXXXsought an antidote to his morose childhood
y journeying to America XXXXXXXXXXHe returned to Europe to fight
on the side of the counte
evolution and, after being wounded, went into
exile in England. He
iefly served in the diplomatic corps under Na
poleon but quickly grew disillusioned and left France again. The restora
tion of the Bou
on monarchy
ought Chateau
iand back to France,
where he held various diplomatic posts, including that of foreign min
ister.
A skeptical rationalist in his youth, Chateau
iand had an emotional
crisis during his English exile that led him back to the Catholic faith.
The Genius of Christianity, a product of this personal crisis, appeared
fortuitously only days after the concordat between Napoleon and Pope
Pius VII. Just as that agreement put an end to the anticlerical cam
paigns of the French Revolution, Chateau
iand's book tries to counter a
century of rationalist critique of religion. Significantly, he does not
attempt to defend the doctrinal "truth" of Christianity but shifts the argu
ment to sumptuous descriptions of natural sublimity, the power and
Frarn;ois-Rene de Chateau
iand, The Genius of Christianity, trans. Charles I. White
(Baltimore: John Murphy & Co., 1856), 171-73, 296-98, 384-86.
FRAN<;:OIS-RENit DE CHATEAUBRIAND 85
eauty of ritual, and the emotional satisfactions of faith. Madame For
tunee Hamelin expressed a common response to Chateau
iand's boo!?
when she exclaimed, ''What, this is Christianity? But it is delicious!"
Chateau
iand's boo!? played a significant role in the revival of Catholi
cism in nineteenth-century France, although, lihe many other worhs of
early Romanticism, Chateau
iand's intensely aesthetic view of religion
sits uneasily with rigorous Church doctrine. Chateau
iand also con
tributed to the rise of medievalism in French culture. Indeed, The
Genius of Christianity, along with Victor Hugo's novel The Hunchback
of Notre-Dame (1831), even helped spur the creation of a preservation
ist movement in the 1830s that began to salvage the monuments of
France's Gothic period.
Two Views of Nature
The vessel in which we embarked for America having passed the
earing of any land, space was soon enclosed only by the twofold
azure of the sea and of the sky. The color of the waters resembled that
of liquid glass. A great swell was visible from the west, though the
wind blew from the east, while immense undulations extended from
the north to the south, opening in their valleys long vistas through the
deserts of the deep. The fleeting scenes changed with every minute.
Sometimes a multitude of verdant hillocks appeared to us like a series
of graves in some vast cemetery. Sometimes the curling summits of
the waves resembled white flocks scattered over a heath. Now space
seemed circumscribed for want of an object of comparison; but if a bil
low reared its mountain crest, if a wave curved like a distant shore, or
a squadron of sea-dogs moved along the horizon, the vastness of space
again suddenly opened before us. We were most powerfully impressed
with an idea of magnitude, when a light fog, creeping along the sur
face of the deep, [seemed] to increase immensity itself. Oh! how sub
lime, how awful, at such times, is the aspect of the ocean! Into what
everies does it plunge you, whether imagination transports you to the
seas of the north, into the midst of frosts and tempests, or wafts you to
southern islands, blessed with happiness and peace!
We often rose at midnight and sat down upon the deck, where we
found only the officer of the watch and a few sailors silently smoking
their pipes. No noise was heard, save the dashing of the prow through
the billows, while sparks of fire ran with a white foam along the sides
of the vessel. God of Christians! it is on the waters of the abyss and on
the vast expanse of the heavens that thou hast particularly engraven
94 THE DOCUMENTS
keep the multitude in the paths of virtue. What sensible man has any
doubt of this? By your incessant declamations against superstition,
you will at length open a door for every species of crime. A circum
stance that cannot fail to surprise the sophists is, that, amid all the
evils which they will have occasioned, they will not even enjoy the sat
isfaction of seeing the common man more incredulous. If he shakes
off the influence of religion, he will supply its place vvith monstrous
opinions. He will be seized with a te
or the more strange as he will
e ignorant of its object: he will shudder in a churchyard, where he
has set up the inscription, Death is an eternal sleep; and, while affect
ing to despise the Divine power, he will go to consult the gypsy, and,
trembling, seek his destinies in the motley figures of a card.
The marvellous, a future state, and hope, are required by man,
ecause feels himself formed to survive this te
estrial existence.
Conjuration, sorcery, are with the vulgar but the instinct of religion,
and one of the most striking proofs of the necessity of a public wor
ship. He who believes nothing is not far from believing every thing;
you have conjurors when you cease to have prophets, enchantments
when you renounce religious ceremonies, and you open the dens of
sorcerers when you shut up the temples of the Lord.
l 12 never here attain; that no
. which we strive we can .. d that every mortal
happiness afle1 er entirely fill our souls. an. When the soul,
I HI llOUTME1' I'S
I bjccl can cv t y deception. .
cxtcrna o . fleeting and momen ar. hes out its longing
enjoyment _,s but .a oder the \,illows of ex.tic,
e~\s songs must be
esting as ,t were u , the )rcvailing character o etry of enjoy-
for its distant home, I f the ancients was the po . . the
• I 11 •nee the poetry o h s its foundalton in
mclancho y. ~ . , that of desire: the former a,_ etwixt recollection
mcnt and ours ts h'le the latter hovers b h' flows in
' • I ·, )resent w 1 0 th' t cvcryt mg scene wh1c 1 ts I l
: understood lo af ,rm a . ·e of melancholy
d I Je Let m<· no . cl that the vo1c t
an XXXXXXXXXXT g and complaml. an .· f tragedy was no
one slt am o~ w~t ;:~uclly heard. As the au~te~ ,t: is so l he romantic
must alw_a~~ b\h the joyous views of the f (~~emdst lively gladness;
incompahb e wt every tone, even that o l e bear traces of the
poetry can a~sum<· , in some shape or other, derns is, upon
ut still it will alw~ys ... atcd The feeling of the mo I and their
fr n which il ongm . ore incorporea ' f
source o1 . ·ntense, their fancy ~ . ' the boundaries o
the whole. mot c , )lative In nature, ,t ,s true, t so distinctly
thoughts more ~01~t\1~1one ~other. and things re ~~cing a distinct
objects run 11101 e m h'b't them for the sake o pro cl •• we must ex , t
scparat~ as . . rfect concord and
impression. . . , f humanity consisted m a pe The moderns
' l'h ('recmn idea o atural harmony. . I
c . ' : all the powers, -a n . nal discord wh1c 1
proportion bet~:~~; at the consciousness of the \~: r endeavor of their
again have an, . . ossible· and hence . find our
enders_ such_ ~n ~ii~;' t\:~e- two ~orl~s betwe~'\;~~: .::ther. Th<·
poetry ': ~o , cco I to melt them ind1ssolubly_ 111 , from their my~
selves d1v1ded, anc • arc consecrated, as ,t were. I n the oth('I
· • of the sense~ . cl the sou , 0 impressmns . 'th higher feelings; an . . f infinity, in tlw
terious connectH~n wt b t·n,,. or nameless V1s1ons o
c1· •s ,ts fore Ol, ,.,~.
hand. t•m o t< . ·enses. . . al and unconsciou"
phenomena of __ the -~t and poetry we find an ong111 it has remaim·cl
In the Greuan a b' t· in the modern, so far as 't the two ii
f f rm and su JCC , k truggle to um e ' I
unity o . o , iril we observe a een s Th • Grecian execulr•
true to its own sp . 'lion lo each other. <: d can only clu
t rally in oppos1 . but the mo crn <
l'ing_ na u ed in the utmost pcrfc_cll?'ri ·t • by approximation; anil
:~:;~:~ i<:oii::ndeavors after _wh:~::c~o:\: in greater danger of 11111
}rom a certain ap1?earanc<' of ,mp
eing duly apprec,atc'd.
II
JOHANN GOITLIEB FICHTE
What Is a People in the Higher Meaning
of the Word, and What Is Love of Fatherland?
1808
-------
As a philosophy professor at the University of Jena O XXXXXXXXXX), Johann
Gottlieb Fichte's XXXXXXXXXXradicalized Ka11tian Philosophy and his
support of Jacobinism hravily influe11ced the first German Romantics.
Charges of atluism forced him to leave Jena for Berlin, where he eventu-
ally s
ed as
ctor of tlze n,,w U11iversity of Berlin XXXXXXXXXXFichte
![al'e lertures 011 German 11atio11alism in Berlin in 1/ze winter of 1807
affa Franre'.s defeat of Prussia; he published those lrclures in 1808 as
\ddres:,,es to the German Nation. The Addresses played a vital role in
stimulating nationalist se11timl'11t and rallying
sistancr to the French.
JJzis exc
pt from llzr "Eighth Address'' links the pivotal notion of the
jl(•op!e to t/ze "transce11dl'11ce" and "immortality~ of the nation, and from
!Ital idf'a of worldly immortality, Fichte calls for personal sacrifice to the
~l'(at national rause. 17zis former champion of Jacobinism no longer
,hrnms of creating a republic but s11mmo11s the fatherland to awaken.
1711 po!itiral problem of formi11g a dN11ocratic ''General Wi
fades
l
1
1 (on the vision of a primordial bond betwer11 the People a11d the nation.
lll!ill' the Acldresscs may
ad as a rt'treat from the French RPvolu-
111111 '.s idNLls. do
1•0/utio11ary commitments linger in Fichte's emphasis
011 Jiwdom and tlzr purs11it of rultural expressio11 and creativity as the
111,:Ju,st goals of national life? /,ike Nova/is's UChristianity or Europe,"
f.'tr /1/f 's Addrc·ss<·s Powcrf11/ly illustrate the ambiguities of Romantic Pol-
1111 s a11d the nationalist projert.
------ - - - -----------------
\\ Ital is a P< oplt? This qm•stion is similar to another, and when it is
111 1• t ·r('d t11e other is ,msw<•n•d too. fhe other question, which is
1,11, 11 rais<"d and the answers to which are very different, is tllis: What
I Ii 11111 < ,ot1lid) Fil'hlt "Eil!hlh Addn·,,: \\11a1 b a l'rnplt• in the Highl r J\.fcaning of
I \\ ,.,tf, ,mcl \\ hat Is 1.oV(' of Falht'rlancl?" Addris.srs to 111, C, rnuw Nutifl11, trans. It E
11 111 < ,. II. rurnl>ull (l..aSalk·. Ill.: Opl'll Court Publi,hing Comp:111y, 1922), 130-50.
113
BALLGAME
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BALLGAME
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BALLGAME
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Chateau
iand's Ruins: Loss and Memory after the French Revolution
Chateau
iand's Ruins
Loss and Memory after the French Revolution
Peter Fritzsche
On 17 May, "in the year of grace 1793," the acclaimed memoirist
Chateau
iand a
ived at Southhampton from Jersey. The next day
British authorities handed him a "way-bill," a legal document drawn up
under the Alien Bill, which permitted the refugee of the French
Revolution to go to London. It described the man as follows: "Francois
de Chateau
iand, French officer in the emigrant army, five feet fou
inches high, thin shape,
own hair and whiskers."1 This is one of the
few portraits Chateau
iand leaves of himself. Five feet four inches, thin,
whiskers?we see him, perhaps a bit short but nevertheless fixed in the
mind's eye. Yet this summation, which Chateau
iand laconically adds
"ran in English," is scarcely recognizable. From Southhampton, he
remembered traveling in virtual obscurity, in the company of e
ant
sailors; in London, he took a ga
et room "at the end of a little street off
the Tottenham Court Road." "Poor, sick and unknown," Chateau
iand
was undistinguished as he entered that "wealthy