Born September 4, 1768, Saint-Malo, François-Auguste-René, Viscount of Chateaubriand He was a French author and diplomat and one of the first romantic writers of his country. He was the preeminent literary figure in France in the early 19th century and had a profound influence on the youth of his day.
Younger son of an eccentric and impetuous nobleman, Chateaubriand he spent his school holidays largely with his sister on the family estate of Combourg, with its abandoned medieval castle amid ancient oaks and wild heaths. After dropping out of school, he finally became a cavalry officer.
He went to England in May 1793. Often destitute, he kept translating and teaching. In London he began his Essai sur les révolutions (1797; “Essay on Revolutions”), an emotional study of world history in which he drew parallels between ancient and modern revolutions in the context of recent upheavals in France.
In 1800 Chateaubriand He returned to Paris, where he worked as a freelance journalist and continued to write his books. A fragment of an unfinished epic appeared as Atala (1801); Immediately successful, he combined the simplicity of a classical idyll with the most troublesome beauties of romanticism. Set in a primitive American environment, the novel tells the story of a Christian girl who has promised to remain a virgin but falls in love with a Natchez Indian. Torn between love and religion, she poisons herself so as not to break her vow. Louisiana’s lush surroundings and passionate history are captured in a rich and harmonious prose style that produces many beautiful descriptive passages.
Shortly after his mother’s death in 1798, Chateaubriand he reconciled his conflict between religion and rationalism and returned to traditional Christianity. His treatise of apology extolling Christianity Le Génie du christianisme (1802; “The genius of Christianity”) won the favor of both the royalists and Napoleon Bonaparte, who at the time was concluding a concordat with the papacy and restoring Roman Catholicism as the state religion in France. In this work, Chateaubriand He tried to rehabilitate Christianity from the attacks made on it during the Enlightenment by emphasizing its ability to nurture and stimulate European culture, architecture, art, and literature throughout the centuries. The theology of Chateaubriand it was weak and its apologetics illogical, but its assertion of the moral superiority of Christianity on the basis of its poetic and artistic appeal turned out to be an inexhaustible book for romantic writers. The renewed appreciation of Gothic architecture brought about by the book is the most prominent example of this.
Napoleon rewarded Chateaubriand for his treaty by appointing him first secretary of the embassy in Rome in 1803. But in 1804, when Napoleon surprised France with the unfair trial and hasty execution of the Duke of Enghien on a weak pretext of conspiracy, Chateaubriand in protest he resigned from his position.
The most important of the books he published during the following years is the novel René (first published separately in 1805), which tells the story of a sister who enters a convent instead of surrendering to her passion for her brother. In this thinly veiled autobiographical work, Chateaubriand began the romantic craze of gloomy, world-weary heroes suffering from vague and unsatisfied yearnings for what became known as the mal du siècle (“the disease of the age”). Based on Les Martyrs (1809), a prose epic about the first Christian martyrs in Rome, and Itinéraire de Paris à Jérusalem (1811), an account of his recent Mediterranean voyages, Chateaubriand He was elected a member of the French Academy in 1811.
With the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in 1814, the hopes of Chateaubriand from a political career revived. In 1815 he was appointed viscount and member of the House of Commons. However, his extravagant lifestyle eventually caused him financial difficulties, and he found his only pleasure in his bond with Madame Récamier, who illuminated the rest of his life. It started Mémoires d’outre-tombe (1849-1850), his memoir “Beyond the Grave”, written for posthumous publication and perhaps his most enduring monument. This memoir, which he began to write as early as 1810, is both a history of his thoughts and feelings and a conventional narrative of his life from infancy to old age. The vivid image he draws of contemporary French history, the spirit of the Romantic era, and the travels of Chateaubriand it is complemented by many revealing passages in which the author recounts his unwavering appreciation for women, his sensitivity to nature, and his permanent tendency to melancholy. The memories of Chateaubriand They have proven to be his most enduring work.