Byron, Mme de Stael, Schlegel, and the religious motif in Armance

Comparative Literature, Fall 1994 by Rosa, George M

IN A PASSAGE of Promenades dans Rome (1829) that concerns the destruction o San Paolo fuori le Mura, the great Roman basilica that burned to the ground in 1823, Stendhal writes: "Ainsi cessa d'exister la basilique la plus ancienne non seulement de Rome, mais de la chrretiente tout entiere. Elle avait dure quinze siecles. Lord Byron pretend, mais tort, qu'une religion ne dure que deux mille ans" (Voyages 935-36). The remark by Byron cited in the last sentince of this passage derives from Thomas Medwin's Conversations ofLord Byron, a work that Stendhal read with considerable enjoyment shgrtly after its publication in October 1824, frequently echoed in his writings of the 1820s, and in which Stendhal's own name (Marie-Henri Beyle) was conspicuously associated with that of Byron, much to the French novelist's gratification.(1) The comment on the longevity of religions with which Stendhal takes issue in Promenades dans Rome appears in a section of Medwin's book (84-95) purporting to "throw some light upon...what the religious opinions of Lord Byron really were"--'a subject that," Medwin claims, "cannot fail to excite curiosity" (84). In that section of the Conversations, Medwin quotes Byron as having said: "One mode of worship yields to another; no religion has lasted more than two thousand years" (87). Stendhal's interest in the subject of Byron's religious views would appear to have received an immediate stimulus from his reading of Medwin's Conversations, for whereas none of his writings that antedate the publication of Medwin's book overtly express such an interest, one that appeared shortly afterward does. The text in question is a London Magarine article of July 1825 in which Stendhal reviewed Alphonse de Lamartine's Le Dernier Chant du pilerinage d'Harold (1825), a poetical evocation of Byron's last voyage to Greece. In the Demzier Chant, the irreligion of the protagonist Harold (the name Lamartine uses to designate Byron) is one of his most notable traits, as Stendhal acknowledged, underlining its importance by quoting the following verses from Larpartine's poem:

--du sceptique Harold le doute est la dotrine; Le croissant ni la croix ne couvrent sa poitrine; Jupiter, Mahomet, heros, grands hommes, dieux, (O Christ, pardonne-lui!) ne sont rien a ses yeux. (Quoted in Chroniques 5:216)

Indeed, Lamartine, a devout Catholic, implied at the end of the Dernier Chant that Byron/Harold was likely to be condemned to hell, a conclusion against which Stendhal indignantly protested in the London Magazine. I transcribe that periodical's rendering into English of Stendhal's original text in French, which--like all Stendhal's contributions to the British press quoted in the present study--unfortunately has been lost:

At the end of the poem, in order to conciliate the most rigorous of his patrons, our poet gives us to understand that Lord Byron is damned:

Harold! dit une voix, voici l'affreux moment!

The absurdity of this conclusion shocked everybody. What! is Lord Byron who devotes himself to the liberties of Greece damned What then remains for the members of the Holy Alliance who send officers of artillery to Ibrahim Pacha? (see Chroniques 5:216 and cf. 5:198)

The skepticism that marred Byron's character in the eyes of Lamartine dignified it in those of Stendhal, who argues that Lamartine himself unwittingly enlists the reader's sympathy for Harold's unbelief: "The doubts of Harold concerning the existence and attributes of the Deity who permits so many horrors--who terminates the career of Lord Byron at thirty-seven,(2) and prolongs the life of Ferdinand VII, have been deemed sublime" (Chroniques 5:216).

Stendhal's vehement disapproval of the denouement of the Dernier Chant, which contrasts markedly with the high regard he professed for the poem as a whole (see Chroniques 5:210-17), may have concealed a nagging doubt that the dnouement was less absurd than he was willing to admit, for Stendhal knew full well that the protagonists of Byron's fictional works frequently risk--or invite--damnation.(3) Lamartine's consignment of Byron/Harold to a comparable role was in some measure warranted by the conventions of Byronism, a thought-provoking irony that must have encouraged Stendhal to reflect more deeply on the nature of Byron's religious outlook. Stendhal read numerous biographical and pseudo-biographical publications devoted to Byron in the first few years following the poet's death (see Rosa, "Stendhal, Byron, Mme Belloc" 185-86, 191n11, "Sailing"); among them was Hubert Lauvergne's brief "Note sur Lord Byron" (1826), which Stendhal read in the year it was published,4 and which afforded him a further inducement to such reflection, as it indicated that Byron had been obsessively preoccupied by fears of God's judgment. According to Lauvergne's "Note," Byron once had been driven during a period of "profonde mlancholie" (234) to seek refuge at a monastery in Athens, where he had unburdened his spiritual torments to a venerable monk named Pre Paul d'Ivree: