Chateaubriand - Mémoires d'Outre-Tombe

Chateaubriand was the son of a Count, a fervent royalist, who died in 1786. In 1791, he spent six months in America, visiting Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, the Mississippi, and, like almost all first-time visitors, Niagara Falls. He returned to France when he heard of the arrest of the King. Between 1792 and 1800, he lived, in exile, in Belgium, Germany, and England. In 1799, he begins a monumental work called Le génie du Christianisme [The Genius of Christianity]. The short novel, René, was written to illustrate the chapter on passions.

The sources of René are partly autobiographical (Chateaubriand’s family estate near Saint-Malo, his close relationship with his sister Lucile, social upheaval following the French Revolution, his trip to the New World), partly literary (Rousseau’s Saint-Preux, Goethe’s Werther, 18th century interest in the monastic theme as well as incest).

In 1837, in his Mémoires d’outre-tombe [Memoirs from Beyond the Grave], Chateaubriand writes: «If René did not exist, I would no longer write it; if it were possible to destroy it, I would; it has infested the souls of many youths, an effect which I had not foreseen, for it was this very malady I wished to counter. A family of poets and prose writers has come forth, and one reads only disjointed and melancholy phrases. […] There isn’t an aspiring poet who hasn’t dreamt of becoming the most miserable of men, or a youth of sixteen who, tormented by what he takes for genius, doesn’t feel that his life is over.

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