Swiss Review 1/2021

Swiss Review / February 2021 / No.1 13 Literature Europe’s liberal conscience Napoleon’s anger was understandable, because this trib- ute to poetic Germany was in reality a beautifully dis- guised protest against cultural repression in France, proving to him like no other work how eloquent an ad- versary de Staël had become. For France’s potent dictator, Madame de Staël had long become the embodiment of Europe’s liberal conscience. But these were not the only works that annoyed Napoleon. The emperor went as far as penning an anonymous, scathing critique of “Del- phine”, while “Corinne ou l’Italie” enragedNapoleon sim- ply because the novel, despite beingwritten in the year of his Italian coronation, failed to mention him at all. “A work of interest” When Germaine de Staël passed away on 14 July 1817 at the age of 51 after a life full of emotion, passion and sensual experiences, her Pa- risian salon had long since reo- pened in all its old splendour while Napoleon had been ban- ished to Saint Helena forever. There, he confessed to his confi- dant Las Cases in August 1816, af- ter reading de Staël, that his rival and “Corinne” preyed on hismind. “I see her, I hear her, I feel her. I want to flee from her, and I throw the book down. I had a happier recollection of the book than I do today. I will nevertheless perse- vere – I want to know how it ends. It does still seem to me to be a work of interest.” Bibliography: “Über Deutschland”, the German translation of “De l’Allemagne”, is available as a Reclam paperback. CHARLES L INSMAYER IS A L I TERARY SCHOL AR AND JOURNAL IST IN ZÜRICH CHARLES L INSMAYER When asked whom he thought was the most important woman of all time, Napoleon incurredGermaine de Staël’s wrath. “The womanwho breeds themost offspring,” he re- plied. Madame de Staël, a Genevan born in Paris in 1766, could have almost vied for this title, having given birth to five children herself. Although she married a Swedish baron in 1786, de Staël was anything but monogamous. Hardly anyone knew which lover fathered which of her children. Madame de Staël certainly did not cover herself in glory as a mother. Instead, she will be remembered for her bril- liant intellect, for her unbending determination to affirm herself as a woman, and, not least, for her pointed letters that earned European notoriety and infuriated the self-ap- pointed emperor, Napoleon. Madame de Staël survived the Revolution of 1789, to which she was initially well disposed, in her country ref- uge inCoppet near Geneva. However, after the fall of Robe- spierre she returned to Paris in 1794, where she hosted sa- lons for the conservative intelligentsia. She warmed to Napoleon initially, but fell out with him over France’s in- vasion of Switzerland and the subsequent creation of the Helvetic Republic. Italy and Germany Madame de Staël’s literary successes are based on trips abroad that she made despite the precarious times in which she lived. “Corinne ou l’Italie” (Corinne, or Italy; 1807) is both the story of a love affair between a British peer and the beautiful Corinne, and an ardent homage to the culture and history of Italy. “De l’Allemagne” (Ger- many), the book inwhich de Staël famously calls Germany the “country of poets and thinkers”, is based on the au- thor’s visits to Berlin and Weimar in 1803 and 1804, dur- ingwhich she came into contact withGoethe and Schiller. Napoleon banned the first edition of this work from France in 1810, ordering manuscripts and printing plates to be destroyed before forcing the author to retreat to Cop- pet. Madame de Staël still felt unsafe in Switzerland, so she fled to England in 1812, where “De l’Allemagne” was published in 1813. The woman who put Napoleon in his place Germaine de Staël, of Genevan origin, was a woman of letters and a leading intellectual who lived in Paris but had to flee to exile in Switzerland more than once. “Oh society, society! How hard it makes the heart, how frivolous the mind! How it leads us to live only for what others will say of us! If human beings could but meet freed from that influence which all collectively exercise upon each other, how pure the air that would pene- trate into the soul! What new ideas, what genuine emotions would refresh it!” (Excerpt from “Corinne ou l’Italie”, Germaine de Staël; 1807)