Corinne, Volume 1

Corinne, Volume 1

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2), by Mme de
Stael This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
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Title: Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) Or Italy
Author: Mme de Stael
Commentator: George Saintsbury
Illustrator: R. S. Greig
Release Date: October 17, 2005 [EBook #16896]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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VOLUME 1 (OF 2) ***

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[Illustration: The crowd break their ranks as the horses pass.]

CORINNE
OR
ITALY
BY
MME. DE STAËL
WITH INTRODUCTION BY
GEORGE SAINTSBURY
(_In Two Volumes_)
VOL. I.
Illustrated by H.S. Greig
LONDON: Published by J.M. DENT and COMPANY at ALDINE
HOUSE in Great Eastern Street, E.C.
MDCCCXCIV

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
THE CROWD BREAK THEIR RANKS AS THE HORSES PASS
Frontispiece.
CORINNE AT THE CAPITOL PAGE 33
CORINNE SHOWING OSWALD HER PICTURES " 235
[Illustration]

INTRODUCTION.
In Lady Blennerhassett's enthusiastic and encyclopædic book on
Madame de Stael she quotes approvingly Sainte-Beuve's phrase that
"with Corinne Madame de Stael ascended the Capitol." I forget in
which of his many dealings with an author who, as he remarks in the
"Coppet-and-Weimar" causeries, was "an idol of his youth and one that
he never renounced," this fancy occurs. It must probably have been in
one of his early essays; for in his later and better, Sainte-Beuve was not
wont to give way to the little flashes and crackles of conceit and
epigram which many Frenchmen and some Englishmen think to be
criticism. There was, however, some excuse for this. In the first place
(as one of Charles Lamb's literal friends would have pointed out),
Madame de Stael, like her heroine, did actually "ascend the Capitol,"
and received attentions there from an Academy. In the second, there
can be no doubt that Corinne in a manner fixed and settled the high
literary reputation which she had already attained. Even by her severest
critics, and even now when whatever slight recrudescence of
biographical interest may have taken place in her, her works are little
read, Corinne is ranked next to _De l'Allemagne_ as her greatest
production; while as a work of form, not of matter, as literature of
power, not of knowledge, it has at last a chance of enduring when its
companion is but a historical document--the record of a moment that
has long passed away.
The advocates of the milieu theory--the theory which will have it that
you can explain almost the whole of any work of art by examining the
circumstances, history, and so forth of the artist--have a better chance
with Corinne than with many books, though those who disagree with
them (as I own that I do) may retort that this was precisely because
Madame de Stael in literature has little idiosyncracy, and is a receptive,
not a creative, force. The moment at which this book was composed
and appeared had really many of the characteristics of crisis and climax
in the life of the author. She was bidding adieu to youth; and though
her talents, her wealth, her great reputation, and her indomitable
determination to surround herself with admirers still made her a sort of

queen of society, some illusions at least must have been passing from
her. The most serious of her many passions, that for Benjamin Constant,
was coming, though it had not yet come, to an end. Her father, whom
she unfeignedly idolised, was not long dead. The conviction must have
been for some time forcing itself on her, though she did not even yet
give up hope, that Napoleon's resolve not to allow her presence in her
still more idolised Paris was unconquerable. Her husband, who indeed
had long been nothing to her, was dead also, and the fancy for replacing
him with the boy Rocca had not yet arisen. The influence of the actual
chief of her usual herd of lovers, courtiers, teachers, friends (to use
whichever term, or combination of terms, the charitable reader pleases),
A.W. Schlegel, though it never could incline her innately unpoetical
and unreligious mind to either poetry or religion, drove her towards
æsthetics of one kind and another. Lastly, the immense intellectual
excitement of her visits to Weimar, Berlin, and Italy, added its stimulus
to produce a fresh intellectual ferment in her. On the purely intellectual
side the result was _De l'Allemagne_, which does not concern us; on
the side of feeling, tinged with æsthetic philosophy, of study of the
archaic and the picturesque illuminated by emotion--the result was