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

Comparative Literature, Fall 1994 by Rosa, George M

Now the work of M. Benjamin Constant is nothing more nor less than the Gospel of the New Religion, which, at this moment, certain Duchesses,(12) and other ladies of the first rank, and of the highest fashion, and at the same time, perhaps, the cleverest of their class, are attempting to get up in Paris...

A large society of these poor neglected women, who have talent, hearts, and habitual belief, for they all learnt their catechism under Buonaparte, is a fine materiel for a new sect. They have imaginations, and they haue the passions and feelings of twenty-five, that period so greedy of emotion--which the prudery of the existing manners controls, and subdues, but at the expense of considerable weariness and disgust. Moreover, since 1820, the triumph of the priests, the knaverj of the Jesuits of Montrouge and St. Acheul, who in a secret manner govern France, and a thousand petty sanctified rogueries and vexations, have disgusted the more generous souls with Papism. The priests have absolutely put the ladies of fashion out of love with their catechism. Behold the moment for the establishment of a new sect! "My salon shall become celebrated through all Paris. I shall take the lead of something; at least, on parlera de moi." A gospel and a creed were only wanting. It does not take much to turn a French head. But, how establish a new religion in Pan's, without being covered with re'dieule! that ridicule which twenty-five years ago quenched the theophilanthropy of Lariveillere-Lepaux. A happy thought suggests itself; our friend Benjamin Constant is just going to publish his history of the religious sentimenthe shall be the St. Paul of the new church. His politics are on the wane: he will be enchanted to head a new school. He shall first prove to the world that the satiment religieux must have a forme, that is, a form of worship; then, with that address and dexterity which we well know enables him to say all, and make all understand, without getting laughed at, he shall show the vices of all the existing forms; then, when he shall have clearly convinced his readers that all the known forms are bad, he must stop: then, at his moment I will open my salon; but all must be done gently and cautiously. Benjamin shall publish this work volume by volume; tread slowly, but surely; and like St. Paul the first in his Epistles to the Corinthians, take measure of their spiritual wants. If Madame de Stail had not been surprised by the sudden death which deprived the world, one may almost say, in the flower of her age, of a woman the most extraordinary that was ever produced; she who carried French conversation, and the brilliant art of improvisation on every subject that fell out, to the highest degree of perfection, would have declared herself the chief of the new religion. Being unable to dazzle by her beauty, and now no longer capable of shining by that amiability which supplied its place; disgusted at the want of that birth indispensable for making a distinguished appearance at the Court of a Bourbon,--Madame de Stal, at the moment of her death, was on the point of opening a rival salon in opposition to the Court. The standard of this salon would haue unfolded to the astonished eyes of all Europe the word religion. (Chroniques 4:196,202,204)