Women -- Biography; Women -- Social and moral questions
published, “De la Littérature Considérée dans ses Rapports avec les
Institutions sociales.” This work must take an abiding place in the
history of the female mind. Few, if any, of her contemporaries of the
male sex could have executed it; and none of her own sex could have
planned it. “Delphine” was published in 1802. This romance greatly
increased her reputation; although subjected to much adverse criticism.
But far superior to it in every respect was “Corinne,” which appeared
in 1807, and which breathes in every page the glowing and brilliant
Italy which it partly paints. Its success was instant and immense, and
won for her a really European reputation. “De l’Allemagne,” was printed
at Paris in 1810, but not published. The whole edition was seized by
the police; the plea afterwards given for its suppression being that it
was an anti-national work. Several years afterwards, it was published
in London. This celebrated work consists of four parts: Germany, and
the German manners; literature and the arts; philosophy and morals;
religion and enthusiasm. Sir James Mackintosh considered it the most
elaborate and masculine production of the faculties of woman. It
exhibits throughout an almost unparalleled union of graceful vivacity
and philosophical ingenuity, and, according to Goethe, broke down the
Chinese wall of prejudice which separated the rest of Europe from the
fruitful and flowery empire of German thought and imagination. Her
unfinished and posthumous book—“Dix Années d’Exil,” was an impassioned
denunciation of Napoleon and his arbitrary rule. The whole was
evidently written under a galling sense of oppression and wrong. The
famous work, “Considérations sur la Revolution Française,” was also
posthumous.
From this necessarily imperfect analysis of Madame de Staël’s writings,
it will be seen that she was endowed in the very “prodigality of
heaven” with genius of a creative order, with boundless fertility of
fancy, with an intellect of intense electric light, with a tendency to
search out the very quintessence of feeling, and with an eloquence of
the most impassioned kind. “She could _mount_ up with wings as an
eagle, she could _run_ and not be weary, she could _walk_ and not be
faint.”
_CHARACTER OF MADAME DE STAËL._
We enjoy the immense advantage of studying Madame de Staël from a
distance that is neither too great nor too little; but she presents so
many sides, that it would be presumption on our part to expect to
render anything like a full and true portrait. She had a good physical
constitution, which is of far more importance than many clever people
seem to imagine. Her personal appearance was plain; she had no good
feature but her eyes. Yet by her astonishing powers of speech she made
herself even more than agreeable. Years increased her charms. Her
beauty—if we may so call it—was of the kind which improves with time.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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