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Symbolic Landscapes in Sainte-Beuve's Early Criticism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Richard M. Chadbourne
Richard M. Chadbourne*
Affiliation:
University of Colorado Boulder
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Extract

In recent years we have come to accept less and less begrudgingly the idea of Sainte-Beuve as a poet. Yet the discovery of this idea may not have produced all the fruit of which it is capable. We have recognized his poetic originality and influence, but still tend to think of him as above all a failed poet or as a poet, at best, of very minor excellence. One important kind of continuity between his poetry and his prose has been noted, but we are still prone to believe that he resorted to criticism as a second-best pursuit, a pis aller; and such a view, to some extent supported, it must be admitted, by Sainte-Beuve himself in his more self-disparaging moods, tends to mark his entire work with a certain stigma.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 80 , Issue 3 , June 1965 , pp. 217 - 230
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1965

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References

1 See Carl Viggiani, “Sainte-Beuve (1824–1830), Critic and Creator,” Romanic Review, xxlv (1953), 263–272. The author, with laudable attention to study of vocabulary, stresses the elegiac note common to verse and early prose.

2 It recurs as a motif, for example, in Gustave Michaut, Sainte-Beuve avant les lundis (Fribourg and Paris, 1903).

3 Portraits de femmes, in Œuvres, ed. Maxime Leroy, 2 vols. (Paris; Pléiade edition, 1951, 1956), ii, 1353. The “Revue” is of course the Revue des Deux Mondes.

4 Portraits contemporains, 3 vols. (Paris: Didier edition, 1846), i, 527, ii, 286. I shall refer hereafter to this edition as: PC, i, ii, iii, and to the Pléiade edition (containing Premiers Lundis, Portraits de femmes, and Portraits littéraires, as: P, ii, ii. In order to conserve on footnotes, especially when references in a given paragraph have been numerous, I shall include all references, in the order in which they have appeared, in a single note at the end of that paragraph.

5 See portraits of the critic Magnin (PC, ii, 317: “marquer les temps,” “battre les changements de mesure”) and of the historian Mignet (PC, iii, 343, “marquer la mesure,” 357, “marquer les articulations”). Sainte-Beuve states, “Chaque écrivain a son mot de prédilection, qui revient fréquemment dans le discours et qui trahit par mégarde, chez celui qui l'emploie, un vœu secret ou un faible,” PC, i, 116–117.

6 Pensées et maximes, ed. Maurice Chapelan (Paris, 1954), p. 260. Hereafter to be referred to as: PM. Cf. “Il y a longtemps que je le pense. Dans les critiques que nous faisons, nous jugeons encore moins les autres que nous ne nous jugeons nous-mêmes” (ibid.).

7 PM, p. 263. Italics in text.

8 PM, p. 49: “La critique, telle que je l'entends et telle que je voudrais la pratiquer, est une invention et une création perpétuelle.” Italics in text.

9 Research for this article, as well as for the larger project on the French essay, was made possible by an ACLS Fellowship and by a Faculty Fellowship from the University of Colorado, for both of which I am happy to acknowledge my gratitude here.

10 Vie, poésies et pensées de Joseph Delorme (Paris: Michel Lévy Frères edition, 1863), p. 6.

11 Nouveaux Lundis, 3d ed. (Paris, 1870), ii, 382 (“Ernest Renan”). Taine speaks, in the Introduction to his Histoire de la littérature anglaise, of “la carte psychologique d'une civilisation.”

12 There are very many such references. I shall cite some of the more important ones: P, i, 536–537: art as a château and criticism as a river circulating at its base; P, i, 723–724: Racinian-type poetry like a stairway at Versailles with reassuring “régularité” at every turning, while Shakespearean-type poetry is like a Rhine castle of rough access (the critic must guide through both types of landscape); PC, i, 7: the moral world, like the physical world, has its “physiciens,” “astronomes,” “navigateurs”; PC, i, 483: Villemain opening up long perspectives in the forests of literary history, but the domain has become so vast that the single surveyor is giving way (“hélas!”) to “ingénieurs,” almost to “géomètres”; PC, i, 425–426: the critic as “vigie” (ship's lookout) to signal new talents on the horizon; PC, ii, 328: “Qu'elle [la critique] se borne à relever les hauteurs, à reconnaître les signes, et à constater”; PC, ii, 295–296, Jean-Jacques Ampère, literary historian, compared to “un ingénieur sur le terrain faisant la carte de France”; PC, ii, 388–389, apropos the historian Saint-Priest, history as the art of throwing pontoons over the watery flux of past events. Two projects which Sainte-Beuve sketched in topographical terms are: a history of journalism (PC, ii, 363) and a history of “gaieté en France” (PC, iii, 205).

13 An adaptation of his own phrase, “la région d'un esprit,” PC, ii, 246. Italics in text.

14 PC, iii, 53, 64 (Daunou), 306 (Delavigne), 414 (NeoClassical critics); P, ii, 439, 454 (J. de Maistre).

15 PC, i, 280 (Hugo), 436–437 (Musset); P, i, 880–881 (Diderot).

16 P, i, 812, 810; P, ii, 357.

17 P, i, 355–356, 871, 868, 872, 869, 881–882.

18 P, i, 929–930, 931, 920–921, 925.

19 P, ii, 1058, 1097, 1099–1100.

20 P, i, 324–325; PC, i, 206, 213, 215–216.

21 PC, i, 221–222, 250, 224, 254, 255, 262, 268, 271. Cf. PM, p. 121: “O toi, lac immense, vaste et calme miroir de Goethe, où es-tu?”

22 P, i, 1019 (La Bruyère); P, ii, 522 (Theocritus), 1292 (Mme de Longueville); PC, i, 450 (Balzac).

23 PC, i, 11, 19 (Chateaubriand); PC, ii, 204 (Brizeux); PC, i, 306 (Ballanche; the Aristonoüs referred to is probably one of the founders of the colony of Agrigentum, 6th century B.C.); PC, iii, 342 (Mignet); P, i, 722, 730 (Racine).

24 PC, i, 196 (Saint-Martin); PC, iii, 135 (the image for Parny is quoted from Alexandre Vinet); PC, iii, 384–385 (Constant); P, ii, 340, 345 (Bertrand); PC, i, 454 (Balzac), 282, 296 (Hugo), 122 (Sénancour); P, ii, 311 (Nodier).

25 PC, ii, 263 (Nisard); P, ii, 803 (Rémusat), 192 (Lafayette).

26 PC, i, 175, 141–142, 173–175, 181, 183.

27 P, ii, 130 (Bernardin de Saint-Pierre), 303–304 (Nodier), 352 (Léonard); PC, ii, 318 (Magnin); PC, iii, 11 (Daunou); P, ii, 1032 (Mme de Souza); PC, iii, 123 (Parny), 222 (Gresset), 414 (Voltaire); PC, i, 425–426 (Mérimée), 281, 297 (Hugo).

28 PC, ii, 447 (Thiers); PC, i, 389 (Mme Desbordes-Valmore). Thiers' fellow historian, Guizot, on the other hand, “arrange, systématise le passé; mais il n'a pas d'ouverture à l'horizon,” PM, p. 121.

29 PC, i, 79, 76.

30 PC, iii, 413, 417, 418; PC, ii, 391; PC, iii, 418–419.

31 PC, iii, 419. What we might call Sainte-Beuve's pastoral prejudice stems, of course, less from Homer than from Theocritus: “… en relisant dernièrement Théocrite, j'ai senti se réveiller en moi mon âme pastorale, cette âme de l'âge d'or, que tant de couches d'airain, de terre et de plomb recouvrent, et qu'il faut aller chercher tout au fond de soi et de son passé. Voilà les vrais classiques: en les lisant il semble qu'on retrouve son âme d'autrefois, on se ressouvient” (PM, p. 242). Italics in text.

32 PC, iii, 90; P, i, 476, 489.

33 Another such seeker of vantage points and would-be guide from past to future (they were numerous in the nineteenth-century, especially among the Saint-Simonians) was the philosopher Lerminier, to whom Sainte-Beuve devotes two of the Premiers Lundis, summing up his work in topographical terms: see P, i, 471, 474. A further variation on the “vantage point” theme: P, i, 723–724: the Racinian-type poet (as opposed to the Shakespearean, of “accès plus rude”) who provides us with “degrés,” “points d'appui,” a “plateforme,” from which to contemplate the whole “paysage” of his work. Still another variation, geographical rather than temporal: Switzerland as the “parfait balcon” for observing the panorama of French literature; see PC, iii: “Vinet” (esp. pp. 1–2) and “Topffer.”

34 P, i, 542; in any case, Sainte-Beuve tends, in the volumes we are considering, to view the eighteenth century somewhat negatively as a destructive, rather than as a reconstructive, age. For the Restoration as a “terrasse qui a croulé,” see: P, i, 376–377, 917–918; P, ii, 1044; PC, i, 208–209 (in poem written for Lamartine). For questionings of the Saint-Simonian horizon, see: P, i, 392–393, 458, 464–465.

35 P, i, 469; PC, ii, 70, 327; P, ii, 817–818.

36 PC, i, 355–356. Similar use of the Argonaut metaphor: PC, i, 467, 527; PC, ii, 327–328. Criticism is given the task of rebuilding “une noble escadre, un grand radeau,” from “tous ces débris d'espérances littéraires et de naufrages”; “… hélas, c'est le radeau après le navire …” (PC, i, 527).

37 PM, p. 166; PC, i, 357.

38 PM, p. 165.

39 PC, i, 471; P, ii, 353, 331–332.

40 P, i, 876; PC, iii, 521 (Pensée xxviii: “… Il ressentait cet incurable dégoût de toutes choses qui est particulier à ceux qui ont abusé des sources de la vie …); PC, i, 18.

41 PC, iii, 520, 522; PM, 249, 247.

42 P, ii, 802, 628. Cf. image quoted from Lamennais, PC, i, 185: “D'Antibes à Gênes, la route côtoie presque toujours la mer, au sein de laquelle ses bords charmants découpent leurs formes sinueuses et variées, comme nos vies d'un instant dessinent leurs fragiles contours dans la durée immense, éternelle.”

43 PM, pp. 266–267; P, i, 62 (Molière's is one of these “cinq ou six œuvres” which will reach “le rivage des générations qui recommencent”); PM, p. 53.

44 PC, iii, 419 (Hellenic horizon), 439 (Horatian villa); PC, ii, 414 (the disappearance in the 1840's of the type of “noble centre” and “lieu désintéressé où se groupent avec charme et concert les activités diverses,” enjoyed by Barante toward 1800); PC, ii, 327 (“amphithéâtre”); PM, p. 242: “En littérature, je suis un grand reconnaisseur de terres nouvelles. Je passe en vue, je les signale, quelquefois j'y débarque, rarement je m'y établis” [italics in text]; P, ii, 442 (apropos J. de Maistre): “C'est trop nous hasarder à ces extrémités d'horizon où l'absurde et le possible se touchent; rentrons vite dans la limite qui nous convient” [italics added].

45 PC, iii, 521 (“content” and “contenu” are italicized in text); PC, i, 310. The critic referred to is Cyril Connolly; see his The Unquiet Grave (New York: Compass Books, 1960), p. 122.

46 See C. Day Lewis, The Poetic Image (London, 1947), pp. 58–59; “The Romantic image is a mode of exploring reality, by which the poet is in effect asking imagery to reveal to him the meaning of his own experience. With the Romantic poet, the image-seeking faculty is unleashed and wanders at large, whereas with the Classical it is tethered to a thought, a meaning, a poetic purpose already clarified, and its radius of action is thus far limited.”

47 Cf. P, i, 671 (“Boileau”): “S'adressant à l'esprit et faite avant tout pour lui figurer l'idée, elle [la métaphore] peut sur quelques points laisser l'idée elle-même apparaître dans les intervalles de l'image … Quelle que soit la beauté de l'image employée, l'esprit sait bien que ce n'est qu'une image, et que c'est à l'idée surtout qu'il a affaire.”

48 PM, p. 263, “La critique est pour moi une métamorphose: je tâche de disparaître dans le personnage que je reproduis.” Also, p. 242, “Dans ma critique, je tâche d'appliquer mon âme à celle des autres; je me détache de moi; je les embrasse, je tâche de les revêtir et de les égaler. Ai-je réussi?”

49 PM, pp. 49–50. Also, p. 259, where the idea is repeated with almost the same wording; in this latter statement, Sainte-Beuve adds: “La physiologie gagne avec les années”; but this remains to be proved.

50 P, ii, 520 (Theocritus), 109 (a reference to Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's “magie” occurs in this context, and one is tempted to compare his “magie” to Sainte-Beuve's “charme”), 290 (Joubert is quoted: “Je vais donc me faire une sphère un peu céleste et fort paisible, où tout me plaise et me rappelle, et de qui la capacité ainsi que la température se trouve exactement conforme à la nature et l'étendue de mon pauvre petit cerveau”); P, i, 923 (Jouffroy); P, ii, 924 (Cousin; italics added).

51 P, i, 555–556. Italics in text.

52 PM, pp. 130–131.

53 P, ii, 1267 (or PM, p. 18); P, ii, 953.