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

Comparative Literature, Fall 1994 by Rosa, George M

O mon pere! il vous est facile de nejamais murmurer contre l'auteur de votre etre...dans la douce quittude d'une vie exempte d'orages...Moi, jete sur la terre comme un enfant desherite, cree comme tous les hommes pour sentir la felicite et ne devant la trouver jamais,j'erre de climats en climats, en couvant dans mon ame les germes de mon eternelle infortune...Nourri de la haine des hommes, trahi par ceux memes dont je comparais la douceur a celle des anges; atteint d'un mal incurable qui a moissonne mes peres; dites-moi, homme de la verite! si des murmures echappes au sein du desespoir peuvent caracteriser un athee et attirer sur lui tous les fleaux de la colere du ciel. Oh! malheureux Byron, si apres tant d'epreuves mortelles on te ravit ta derniere esperance de salut...eh bien...ici la voix du lord expira. (237-38)

Lauvergne's "Note' is patently spurious:(5) on the occasions in 1810 and 811 when Byron took up lodgings in an Athenian monastery, he was in exceptionally high spirits, and devoted most of his waking hours to pleasurable pursuits (see Marchand 1:253-55, 265-66; Byron, Letters 2:11-14, 27, 37). Stendhai did not question the veracity of Lauvergne's report, however, and perhaps one of the reasons for his credulity is that the "Note" afforded him a purportedly historical correlative of the supernatural conclusion to the Dernier Chant: while both texts depict Byron as an unbeliever haunted by the specter of damnation, the later one permitted Stendhal to interpret that specter from a psychological rather than a metaphysical standpoint as the faptasy of an overwrought mind. Stendhal did in fact so interpret it in the 1826 edition of Rome, Naples et Florence and in "Lord Byron en Italie" (1830), both of which cite Lauvergne's "Note" as evidence that Byron had been prey to moments of madness (see Voyages 495n, OEuvres 46:248). Stendhal's interest in Lamartine's Dernier Chant and in Lauvergne's "Note sur Lord Byron" would appear to be reflected in his first novel, Armance (1827), whose protagonist, the Vicomte Octave de Malivert, is, as recent scholarship has demonstrated, very closely identified with Byron in his sexual, social, and political predicaments, all of which lead the French nobleman, like the English one, to end his days in exile in the course of a military expedition to Greece.(6) The religious aspect of Octave's identification with Byron has yet to be studied, however, and Lamartine's Dernier Chant and Lauvergne's "Note" provide useful points of departure from which to do so. In both texts, Byron is portrayed as oscillating between atheistic tendencies and transcendental aspirations. The skepticism of Lamartine's Harold does not prevent him from taking up residence (as the guest of a saintly monk named Cyrille) in a Greek monastery, where he spends long hours pondering the issue of God's existence (229-35) and avers that "j'ai toujours cherche Dieu!" (234); Lauvergne's Byron, who is unable to stifle his sense of doubt or his blasphemies, nevertheless confesses to Pre Paul--in another Greek monastery--that he wishes God might cleanse his soul of earthly dross and permit him to live on after death "comme un pur esprit" (238, 236). Octave's spiritual plight is similarly paradoxical: he doubts God's existence and questions his laws (16) yet ardently yearns to attain purity of soul, exclaiming, "que je voudrais pouvoir rendre mon lme pure au CrCateur comme je l'ai recue! " (9), and naturally feels attracted by monasteries, which to him embody "l'image de la retraite et de la tranquillite" (13).