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

Comparative Literature, Fall 1994 by Rosa, George M

Unfortunately, we know nothing of what Byron himself may have said at Milan concerning his relations either with Mme de Stael or with Schlegel, as Hobhouse recorded scarcely any of the conversation of his celebrated friend and traveling companion during their stay there. Yet there is one observation attributed to Byron in Hobhouse's journal entry of October 15, 1816, that Stendhal would undoubtedly have interpreted as a reference to the mystical and specifically Schlegelian atmosphere then pervading Mme de Stael's salon.

Describing a discussion that took place between himself, Breme, and Byron, in which Byron explained his conception of God, Hobhouse writes: "B[yron] was against talking of these things to women and children, but he said he could no more be a Christian than he could be an atheist. His sens intime of a divinity, although he could not account for it, was as certain a proof to him that there was a cause for it as the influence upon the compass was a sign there was some cause for the direction of the magnetical needle to the pole."(27) In the encounters that Byron, Hobhouse, and Breme had with Stendhal during the days that followed this discussion, it is possible that the sens intime again was discussed, and it seems likely, in view of the interest the poet's religious views were certain to excite at Milan, that Stendhal heard at least some report of Byron's reference to that mysterious faculty. If so, he could not but be intrigued, as he had been seeking in the weeks before to revise a lengthy footnote of the Histoire de la peinture en alie (OEures 27:54-57n1) that describes Schlegel as "meilleur ap6tre que juge littCraire" and in which the sens intieur is cited seven times and mocked repeatedly.(28) Furthermore, Stendhal perused Cours de litterature dramatique (1814), Mme Necker de Saussure's authorized French translation of Schlegel's Vorlesungen uber dramatische Kunst und Literatur (1809-1811), in August and September 1816--that is, just before Byron, who recently had been given what was quite possibly the same work,29 arrived in Milan. Stendhal's marginal annotations within the Cours, a number of which evidently date from those two months (see OEuvres 35:286-96, esp. 287, 294), confirm that he took a particular inter-est at the time, as one might expect, in Schlegel's religious views. Next to an early passage in Volume I ("l'homme ne peut jamais se detourner en entier de l'infini, et des souvenirs fugitifs de sa celeste patrie viennent par moment lui rappeler ce qu'il a perdu"), Stendhal acidly notes: "Pure philosophie allemande, c'est--dire draison." Next to Schiegel's observation, "la religion est la racine veritable de notre etre," he scribbles, "der[ais]on complete." Elsewhere in the same volume, Stendhal ridicules Schlegel's idea that religion has established "des principes absolus...places bien au-dessus de l'atteinte d'une raison scrutatrice," condemns his "style minemment vague et peu clair," and asserts: "Quand on a lu et compris Helvetius, Tracy, Gibbon et Cabanis, on ne croit a aucune religion" (see Schlegel 1:23,26; OEuvres 35:288-89).