Children of Liberty, Stael, Etc

"Children of Liberty": Idealist Historiography in Stal, Shelley, and Sand
Author(s): Kari Lokke

Source: PMLA, Vol. 118, No. 3, Special Topic: Imagining History (May, 2003), pp. 502-520
Published by: Modern Language Association
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PMLA
"Children of Liberty": Idealist Hist

in Stael, Shelley, and Sand
KARI LOKKE
Succeeding times your struggles, and their fa

With mingled shame and triumph shall relate
While faithful History, in her various page,
Marking the features of this motley age,
To shed a glory, and to fix a stain,
Tells how you strove and that you strove in va
-Anna Letitia Barbauld, "Epistle to William
No drop of blood from the revolution was shed in v

come spirit that now blooms once again in humanity.
Kein Blutstropfen der Revolution ist umsonst gefl

geworden, er bliihtjetzt wieder in der Menschheit.
-Bettine von Arim, Dies Buch Gehiir
A GAINST THE DARK BACKDROP OF FRENCH REVOLUTION-

ary terror and the still uncertain fate of revolutionary goals and
ideals, Germaine de Stael's groundbreaking On Literature Consid-
ered in Its Relationship to Social Institutions (De la litterature consideree
dans ses
KARI LOKKE, professor of English andrapports avec les institutions sociales [1800])' seeks to vindicate
comparative literature at thethe notion of human perfectibility and progress through a demonstration
Univer-
sity of California, Davis, is the author of
of the idea's applicability in the realm of literary history. Claiming pio-
Gerard de Nerval: The Poet as Social
neering status for herself as the first to apply this "system of perfectibil-
Visionary (French Forum, 1987) and co-
ity" ("systeme de la perfectibilite"; 10) to the history of philosophy and
editor, with Adriana Craciun, of Rebel-
lious Hearts: British Women Writers and
literature, Stael further asserts that it has been the stance of "all enlight-
the French Revolution (State U of New ened philosophers for the last fifty years" ("tous les philosophes eclaires
York P, 2001). She recently completed a depuis cinquante ans"; 11). Among the international array of intellectuals
book entitled Romantic Abandon: Gen- whom Stael cites as adherents of perfectibility are Immanuel Kant, Wil-
der, History, and Transcendence in Stael, liam Godwin, and Marie-Jean de Condorcet, all noteworthy for their sup-
Shelley, Arnim, and Sand. port of French revolutionary ideals even after the Terror had frightened
502 5? 2003 BY THE MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA
I18.3 ] Kari Lokke 503
and in
most artists and philosophers away. Indeed, a sense as correctives of Corinne and its
Con-
dorcet's Historical Tableau of the Progress of the
portrait of the female artist as abandoned woman,
Human Mind (Esquisse d'un tableau historique
the three novels offer the opportunity to study
des progres de l'esprit humain [1794]) the
was development
com- of a European and cosmopoli-
tan tradition
posed after the bloody revolutionary tribunal had of the Kiinstlerroman as it was en-
proscribed the French philosophe-proof,
visagedac-
by these prominent women writers of
cording to Stael, of the importance "thinkers
Romanticism (see Gutwirth; Lokke). As a sub-
have attached to this system that promises
genre men
of the Bildungsroman, the Kiinstlerroman
on this earth some of the benefits of furthermore
immortal holds a privileged place in relation
life, a limitless future, [and] uninterrupted conti- of nineteenth-century historiography
to studies
nuity" ("les esprits penseurs ont attache
by..virtue
. a ce of the inseparability of individual
systeme, qui promet aux hommes sur cette terre
aesthetic-moral development and collective Bil-
quelques-un des bienfaits d'une vie immortelle,
dung or historical progress as they were origi-
un avenir sans bornes, une continuite sans inter-
nally conceptualized by Kant, Schiller, Goethe,
ruption"; De la litterature 12). and the German Romantics.
Stael's summary of the implications ofThese
per- novels stand in a fascinating relation
fectibility suggests that in her hands this
of concept,
affinity and tension with idealist historiogra-
far from constituting a system, represents
phy aasRo-
it originated in Kantian and German Ro-
mantic and idealist leap of faith performed with
mantic philosophy. All three represent historical
the ideological aim of rescuing Enlightenment
knowledge as contact with a spirit world in-
aspirations and republican goals from the debris
habited by ghosts, compelling and overpower-
of the Revolution. Indeed, thirty-five years
ing, later,
and envisage the historical agency of the
Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve terms On Liter-
intellectual and artist as communication with
ature "the prospectus for a future romanticism"
this spirit world so that its secrets and wisdom
("le prospectus d'un romantisme futur"; qtd. be
might in passed on to the future. The shadows
Van Tieghem lxi), thus acknowledging the im-
cast, in the direction of both past and future, by
port of Stael's vision of cultural and sociopoliti-
eighteenth-century rationalist conceptions of
cal history as it takes shape in her pioneering
progress refracted through the terrors of the
Revolution come alive in the novels of these
text. In this essay, I trace the fate of Enlighten-
ment concepts of intellectual progresswomen,
and per- provoking conflict, sympathy, and di-
fectibility as Stael transformed them to suit her
alogue with this thrilling yet uncanny spirit
postrevolutionary era and as they were handed
world. Resuscitation of the dead and contact
down to her Romantic descendants. With the in-
with this spirit world ultimately allow these
tent of highlighting previously unacknowledged
novelists to define their own complex relations
contributions of European women writers to historical process and progress. These
to literary
nineteenth-century idealist historiography, I are characterized in all three instances
relations
focus my analysis on Germaine de Stael,
by aMary
tension and a movement between two poles
Shelley, and George Sand. In particular,
of Iresponse
exam- to the phantasms of the past. On the
ine three Kiinstlerromane that depict the
onehistori-
hand, contact with this spirit world can pro-
cal and sociopolitical role of the female artist:
voke a crippling melancholia when historical
Stael's Corinne; or, Italy (Corinne, ou L'Italie
ghosts come to function, in a protopsychoana-
[1807]), Shelley's Valperga; or, The Life and Ad-
lytic sense, as introjected, repressed remainders
ventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca (1823),
that have not been worked through or brought to
and Sand's Consuelo (1842-44). Because Val- of consciousness or symbolic expres-
the level
perga and Consuelo were written in response to over the failure of past projects of
sion. Guilt
504 "Children of Liberty": Idealist Historiography in Stael, Sh elley, and Sand PMLA
perfectibility and over the bloody outcome of Kant's historical writings and
the French Revolution in particular can be over- thetic conceptions of enthusia
whelming. On the other hand, when these spirits lime. Thus I differ with Naom
are deployed aesthetically, they figure as sub- her book on Sand, distances Sand's idealism
lime signs of future potentiality. from its speculative German version, its "high
Michel de Certeau suggests that there are German instantiation" (11). Rather than claim a
two essential types of history writing. One, specifically Kantian influence on these women
characterized by a narrative approach, "claims novelists, however, I want to depict these writ-
to reencounter lived experience, exhumed by ers as key participants in the central philosophi-
virtue of a knowledge of the past," whereas the cal and political debates of their day, debates
other highlights its methods and focuses on "the that are framed in exemplary fashion in Kant's
conditions of understanding" (35). The Roman- historical writings. My essay thus also joins
tic novels featured here are exemplary instances Schor's book in its effort to define "a feminist
of the first type of history written by women idealism" and to rethink idealism "as a way of
who claim a special affinity for and knowledge reclaiming its utopian dimension, the ability of
of that uncanny otherness that Certeau sees as an ideal to empower and to mobilize the disen-
the object of all historical writing. Their choice franchised" (19, 14).3 I am particularly inter-
of the novel to write history allows them to nar- ested in illuminating the distinctive role of
rate complex and ambiguous forms of temporal- women writers in the prestigious and influential
ity that render the woman artist's historical tradition of nineteenth-century philosophical
agency potentially sublime in its ability to tran- idealism, usually assumed to be the exclusive
scend the current moment and to unite past, province of men.
present, and future. This sublimity enables these Kant's Idea for a Universal History with a
female novelists to challenge the transcenden- Cosmopolitan Purpose (Idee zu einer allgemei-
talizing escape from history characteristic of nen Geschichte; Werke 149-66), which appeared
Wordsworth and Coleridge (and so effectively in 1784, and "An Old Question Raised Again: Is
analyzed by scholars such as Marjorie Levinson the Human Race Constantly Progressing?" ("Er-
and Jerome McGann) as well as to offer alterna- neuerte Frage: Ob das menschliche Geschlecht
tives to the mal du siecle typical of Constant, im bestandigen Fortschreiten zum Besseren
Chateaubriand, Stendhal, Musset, and Flaubert sei"; Conflict 140-71), written in 1795, bril-
(and diagnosed by Margaret Waller in The Male liantly articulate the Enlightenment teleology of
Malady). This forward-looking conception of progress and perfectibility to which Stael re-
the female artist's potential for historical agency sponds in On Literature. In contrast to such
also differentiates these novels from the me-
works as Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindications-
dievalism of Arnim, Tieck, and Scott. Thus we
which were part of the English empiricist-
witness in the Kiinstlerromane of Stael, Shelley,
rationalist tradition, were composed from an
and Sand a Romanticism that refuses the cyni-
activist point of view during the early years of
cism and conservatism more typical of their
the Revolution, and took perfectibility for
male counterparts yet is also compelled to rec-
granted-Kant's essays were written well before
ognize the dark irrationalities revealed by the
and after the Terror. In 1784 Prussia, perfectibil-
Revolution as both threats to Enlightenment ity was not a given, and in 1795, corruptions of
teleologies and forces that can be marshaled as
revolutionary goals compelled a highly self-
sources of collective hope and change.2 conscious defense of that doctrine. Besides
My aim here will be to link these womenrepresenting milestones in idealist historiogra-
writers of Romanticism to the utopianism ofphy, then, Kant's essays are useful in the self-
i 18.3 ] Kari Lokke 505
consciousness and transparency with which

und dem Anscheine nach ungereimter Anschlag,
nach einer Idee, wie der Weltlauf gehen miiBte,
they seek to articulate and defend Enlighten-
ment teleologies. wenn er gewissen verntinftigen Zwecken ange-
messen seinof
The emphasis, in Kant's idealist version sollte, eine Geschichte abfassen
zu than
perfectibility, is on collectivity rather wollen;indi-
es scheint, in einer solchen Absicht
konne nur ein Roman
viduality. For Kant, humankind represents a zustande kommen"; 68;
164). In
"class of rational beings who are mortal asthe Kiinstlerromane of Stael, Shelley,
indi-
viduals but immortal as a species" ("Klasse ver-
and Sand, we will see the effort to write exactly
such a novel.
nuinftiger Wesen, die insgesamt sterben, deren Though their narratives refuse the
Gattung aber unsterblich ist"; Idea formulaic
59; Werke happy ending that for Kant belongs to
154), beings meant to develop theirthe novel, the unsystematic, expressly fictional
capacities
fully by overcoming societal conflict and of
nature antag-
the novel as genre allows a freer, fuller
exploration of the contradictions inherent in the
onism through the institution of ever-improving
dialectic
forms of government. Thus struggles of Enlightenment than is possible in
for power
Kant's more
and property, even war, in their challenge programmatic essay form. In con-
to hu-
cluding,
man faculties, serve the ultimate goal however, Kant admits that this "idea of
of human
development. This teleology is "the universal
realization
history" ("Idee einer Weltgeschichte";
69; "although
of a hidden plan of nature" such that 165) follows from a priori assumptions that
folly and caprice creep in at times,are based in ethical concerns. Kant now asks,
enlighten-
What cosmo-
ment gradually arises," and "a universal hope for the future would humankind
politan existence, will at last be have
realized
without ...
this assumption of a plan of nature
within which all the original capacities
or, more
of specifically,
the providence (Vorsehung)?
Despair would
human race may develop" ("die Vollziehung ei- inevitably preclude moral
nes verborgenen Plans der Natur"; "so
agency ent-
and progress. As I have suggested, this
springt allmahlich, mit unterlaufendem Wahne
conflict between utopian hope and a melancholy
und Grillen, Aufklarung"; 66-67; 161, 163; will
defeatism "einplay a central role in the idealist
allgemeiner weltbiirgerlicher Zustand als are
novels that derthe subject of this essay.
SchooB, worin alle urspriingliche Anlagen der on moral agency is even more
This focus
pointed
Menschengattung entwickelt werden, in "An Old Question Raised Again:
dereinst
einmal zustande kommen werde"; 67-68; 163). Race Constantly Progressing?"
Is the Human
Yet Kant, ever on the alert for unearned
(1795), the second essay of The Conflict of the
Faculties
metaphysical assumptions, cannot rest (Der Streit der Fakultdten [1798]),
without
challenging this position of unequivocal opti-
Kant's final published work.4 The move from
mism and faith in the process of European Bil-
Kant to Stael and her literary descendants, in-
deed the
dung. Moving rather archly from a historic move from Kant in 1784 to Kant in
1795, affirms
vision in the mode of comedy or romance to theMarshall Brown's assertion that
ironic, self-conscious stance that Hayden Whitewas the revolutionary reawaken-
"Romanticism
has deemed prototypical of Enlightenment
ing of thephi-
Enlightenment" (46). Reawakening in
losophies of history (60-80), Kant this
allows
sense that
means coming to a fuller conscious-
"it is admittedly a strange and at first
ness sight
of the ab-
implications of Enlightenment per-
surd proposition to write a history according to subsuming that system into a
fectibility and
an idea of how world events mustmore develop ifdialectical conception of history
complex,
they are to conform to certain rational ends; it
that acknowledges and ultimately sublates the
would seem that only a novel could result from
powers of the unconscious, both personal and
such premises" ("Es ist zwar ein befremdlicher
collective. In a fascinating argument, the aging
5o6 "Children of Liberty": Idealist Historiography in Stael, Shelley, and Sand PMLA
Kant virtually ignores the reality of European ture and freedom alone, united in the human
public opinion in 1795 and posits the existence race in conformity with inner principles of
of a universal, disinterested sympathy for the right, could have promised. (159)
French Revolution that, he claims, is proof of
Denn ein solches Phanomen in der Menschen-
the moral disposition of the human race. The
geschichte vergiit sich nicht mehr, weil es eine
mere fact of the existence of this sympathy for Anlage und ein Vermogen in der menschlichen
an event that embodies right and duty-that is, Natur zum Besseren aufgedeckt hat, derglei-
the effort of the French people to create a civil chen kein Politiker aus dem bisherigen Laufe
constitution for a republican government-dem- der Dinge herausgekliigelt hatte, und welches
onstrates unequivocally the moral tendency of allein Natur und Freiheit, nach inneren Rechts-
the human race. Enthusiasm for the Revolution principien im Menschengeschlechte vereinigt,
or "passionate participation in the good" has a verheiBen konnte. (158)
purely moral source that is never to be confused
with self-interest or material reward: "genuine Thus it is that this historical sig
enthusiasm always moves only toward what is Kant to write a "prophetic history of
ideal and, indeed, what is purely moral,... and ("Wahrsagende Geschichte der Men
157, 156), for even if the Revoluti
it cannot be grafted onto self-interest" ("Theil-
nehmung am Guten mit Affekt"; "wahrer Enthu- miscarry and France return to mona
siasm nur immer aufs Idealische und zwar rein moral impulse in humanity will asser
the future repetition of these republi
Moralische geht, ... und nicht auf den Eigen-
until eventually the concomitant increa
nutz gepfropft werden kann"; Conflict 155, 154).
Remarkably, Kant determines this "enthusi- dom ensues. Paradoxically, the huma
asm"-a code word throughout Europe for revo- freedom makes accurate historical
lutionary sympathy-to be the singular cultural possible. In Kantian terms, if revolut
thusiasm is evoked by moral ideas, it
response necessary to point to "the disposition
and capacity of the human race to be the cause of itself, an emotional response that p
the aesthetic of the sublime. An aest
[and the author] of its own advance toward the
better" ("auf eine Beschaffenheit und ein Ver- sponse to the ideals of the Revolution
mogen desselben hinweiset, Ursache von dem asm thus links Kant's systematic r
Fortriicken desselben zum Besseren und ... Ur- with the imaginative mysticism of Stae
heber desselben zu sein"; 151, 150). And, in- and Sand. As Jean-Francois Lyotard a
"The Sign of History," the concluding
deed, revolutionary sympathy is of such import
The Differend, enthusiasm functions f
that it represents an ideal that can never be
an "aesthetic analogue of pure republ
erased from collective human memory, "a his-
vor," "the most extreme sublime" (16
torical sign" (Geschichtszeichen) to be read by
sign that points to ideas of freedom an
countless future generations. In this sense, the
human cultural progress at the same t
idea of the Revolution acquires a numinous re-
ality that transcends the event's immediate his- hovers over the abyss of disillusionm
torical context. political realities and exigencies. The
of the sublime simultaneously evokes
For such a phenomenon in human history is destructiveness as well as infinite hum

not to be forgotten, because it has revealed a ity for creativity. It furthermore sugge
tendency and faculty in human nature for impossibility of clear contact with or kn
provement such that no politician, affecting the past.5 Lyotard's assertion that this
wisdom, might have conjured out of the course painful joy" (166) inherent in all sublim
of things hitherto existing, and one which na- pecially keenly felt in moments of ent
Kari Lokke 507
I 8.3 ]
Stael's
powerfully borne out in the vacillation subsequent writing. For her, as for her
between
fellow
exaltation and despair so prominent in the Romantic
his- women novelists, Shelley and
Sand,
torical sublime of Stael, Shelley, and the comic plot with which Kant endows
Sand.
Whereas Kant self-consciously numbers
universal history will prove elusive indeed and
will
himself among the ranks of Europe's require recourse to nonrational realms of
spectators
of the Revolution, such detachmenthistorical
was impos-consciousness and to complex non-
linear
sible for Stael, who, as the daughter temporalities and teleologies.
of Necker,
Yet many
Louis XVI's minister of finance, watched Stael, like Kant, still makes clear that
the republican
of her friends succumb to the guillotine and was aims of the Revolution are the
foundation
forced into exile herself by the Terror. on which she builds her case for the
And
while Kant treats the atrocities of the Terror as
progressive power of philosophy and literature.
little more than insignificant contingencies,
"[A]s I contemplated the hopes and ruins jum-
Stael recognizes this violence andbled
the together
related by the French Revolution, I
thought
political machinations as grave threats how important it was to understand the
to the
Revolution's intellectual foundationspower
and tothat
its this revolution had over enlightened
republican and emancipatory aims. minds... ." ("en contemplant, et les ruines, et
In her ear-
les
lier The Influence of the Passions on esperances
the Happi- que la revolution frangaise a,
ness of Individuals and Nations (Depour
l'influence
ainsi dire, confondues ensemble, j'ai pense
qu'il importait
des passions sur le bonheur des individus et des de connaitre quelle etait la puis-
nations [1796]), even before hersance
reading of
que cette revolution a exercee sur les lu-
mieres";
Kant, Stael asserts her faith in the power173;
of 18). Also like Kant, Stael posits
the existence
ideas to transform the future, all the whileofac-
a moral will innate in the human
heart as by
knowledging that the wounds inflicted a necessary
the and inextinguishable source
Terror will never heal completely:of"the reader
that "most religious of hopes on earth, the fu-
should be able to imagine that enthusiasm for
ture progress of the human race" ("l'esperance
certain ideas is not mutually exclusive with
la plus con-
religieuse qui soit sur la terre, les progres
futurs
tempt for certain men, and that hope for de l'espece
the fu- humaine"; De la litterature
ture may be reconcilable with hatred
44). Asfor
withthe
Kant, this morality is placed in firm
past. Then, even though the heart is opposition
forevertotorn
utilitarian doctrines of self-interest
that areavilified
by its wounds, the mind can still, after while, in their association with corrupt
rise to general meditations" ("[II est]
andpossible
ambitious de
politicians. Enthusiasm for the
concevoir que l'enthousiasme de quelques idees
good is furthermore associated with a kind of
n'exclut pas le mepris profond pour certains
detached transcendence of personal emotions, a
hommes, et que l'espoir de l'avenirdetachment
se concilie
repeatedly termed by Stael "eleva-
avec l'execration du passe. Alors meme que
tion of the soul"le("l'elevation de l'ame").
coeur est a jamais dechire par les blessures qu'il of the soul makes possible a
This elevation
breadth
a recues, l'esprit peut encore, apres of vision that allows individuals to see
un certain
temps, s'elever a des meditations generales";
their place in the panorama of history, termed by
Folkenflik 152; Des passions 4). Ultimately,
Stael "the vast tableau of destinies" in her dis-
Stael takes refuge and solace, like Kant, inthe

course on anpassions (Folkenflik 170).6 Again,
idealism that encompasses both enthusiasm for
as with Kant, the emphasis is placed on collec-
and disinterested contemplation oftive
revolution-
process rather than on individual heroism,
ary aims. Yet the uneasy mixture of enthusiasm
though this historical understanding is attained
and melancholy articulated abovenot
asthrough
a funda-
reasoning but through the claim to a
mental response to the Revolution haunts all of
kind of transcendent mystical vision, a godlike
508 "Children of Liberty": Idealist Historiography in Stael, Shelley, and Sand PMLA
perspective, that would certainly have unsettled culte de la raison. Neanmoins ils doivent se ra-
Kant. The result, however, bears close resem- nimer en observant, dans 1'historie de l'esprit
blance to Kant's earlier articulated notion of humain, qu'il n'a exist6 ni une pensee utile, ni
providence as the structuring agent of a perfect- une verite profounde qui n'ait trouve son siecle
et ses admirateurs. (De la litterature 18-19)
ibility that comes into view in a millennial per-
spective: "And so time reveals to us a design in
Both Stael and Kant, then, refuse to relinquish
the course of events that seem to be nothing but
faith in the belief that cultural memory will keep
the pure effect of chance, and a thought surfaces,
alive republican ideals, regardless of their im-
always the same, from the abyss of facts and cen-
mediate fate. In this dialectic, then, transcendent
turies" ("Ainsi le temps nous decouvre un des-
idea(l)s prove to be inseparably linked to spe-
sein, dans la suite d'evenemens qui semblaient
cific historical moments. Hence the novel, with
n'etre que le pur effet du hasard; et l'on voit sur-
gir une pensee, toujours la meme, de l'abime des its privileging of the dimension of time, specific
material realities, and individual consciousness,
faits et des siecles; De la litterature 131).7
In her formulation of the French Revolution is the genre chosen by Stael and her descendants
to narrate the uncertainties and ambiguities sur-
as Geschichtszeichen, Stael also recognizes it as
a kind of absolute historical occurrence, an rounding the possible moment of actualization
event not to be forgotten. With an emotional and of revolutionary and emancipatory goals.
experiential power born of her immediate par- This effort to render revolutionary goals
ticipation in and disillusionment with revolu- and idea(l)s imperishable takes the form, in the
tionary struggles, she asserts her unequivocal nineteenth-century novels of Stael, Shelley,
faith in the "cult of reason" (emphasis added) and Sand, of the conjuring of historical ghosts
and the imperishability of thought: whose presence haunts and inspires the novels'
protagonists. Perpetuation of the cult of reason
A revolution's contemporaries often lose all in- into the next century depends on the acknowl-
terest in the quest for truth. So many events de- edgment of this most nonrational of worlds, the
termined by force, so many crimes absolved by spirit world. This Swedenborgian realm that
success, so many virtues withered by blame, so Kant had wittily put behind him in his early
many misfortunes insulted by power, so many Dreams of a Spirit Seer (Trdume eines Geister-
generous sentiments the object of mockery, so
sehers [1766]) returns insistently in his Ro-
many vile calculations glossed with such hy-
mantic descendants. For each of these writers,
pocrisy-everything makes even men who are
historical phantoms embody what Michel De-
devoted to the cult of reason get tired of hoping.
But they should take heart from this observa- lon, in his reading of Stael's Considerations on
tion: in the history of the human mind there has the French Revolution, terms "the unrealit[ies]
never been a useful thought or a profound truth of the past" (26). In sharp opposition to the pos-
that has not found its century and admirers. itivist search for fact, the novels under consider-
(Folkenflik 174) ation here exhibit "the theoretical will to define
history beginning from its unrealized possibili-
Les contemporains d'une revolution perdent
ties in the past and its still open possibilities in
souvent tout int6ret a la recherche de la verite.
the future" (31).8 The aesthetic rendering of the
Tants d'evenemens decid6s par la force, tant de
crimes absous par le succes, tant de vertus fle-
unrealized or the unconditioned is, as I have
tries par le blame, tant d'infortunes insultees suggested, the essence of the historical sublime
par le pouvoir, tant de sentimens g6nereux de- as it takes form in all three novels.
venus l'objet de la moquerie, tant de vils cal- Stael's famous novel Corinne, ou L'talie
culs hypocritement comment6s; tout lasse de (1807) is informed from beginning to end by the
1'esp6rance les hommes les plus fideles au author's concern for the furtherance of French
I I 83 Kari Lokke 509
revolutionary and republican aims inseul

the principe
face of de toutes les actions des hommes:
the current imperial and repressiveet quelle sympathie, quelle emotion, quel en-
Napoleonic
regime. The novel's glorification ofthousiasme
republican pourrait jamais resulter de l'interet
personnel!";
Rome serves this ideological function, as the re- 73; 75). The Romans, Stael sug-
gests
suscitation of historical shades proves bothfurthermore,
pro- were a people capable of
foundly comforting and deeply troubling to the
heroism and "governed by eloquence," thus as-
moder postrevolutionary consciousness. Defin-
serting her faith in the power of words and of
ing the connection of the artist's words toto
her art the
transform political reality and to keep
uncanny realms of history, the improvisatrice
alive "an eternal power in man, a divine spark
Corinne declaims to her lover, the Scottish
... that Lord
you must never grow weary of lighting
Nelvil, "One of the pleasures of Rome
... is
in to say:
yourself and of rekindling ... in others"
Take me along the Tiber's banks; let ("une
us cross the
puissance eternelle, une etincelle divine,
Tiber. It is as if you were conjuring et
history byfaut pas se lasser de l'exciter en soi-
qu'il ne
speaking those words, as if you were bringing
meme, et de la ranimer dans les autres"; 65; 67).
the dead back to life" ("c'est un des plaisirs
Stael'sde
Corinne, however, is unable to keep
Rome que de dire: Conduisez-moi sur lesspark
this bordsalive in herself as her poetic passion is
du Tibre; traversons le Tibre. Il semble qu'en
deflected from her public role as improvisatrice
prononcant ces paroles on evoque l'histoire, et
and "national" poet and displaced onto her self-
qu'on ranime les morts"; Italy 63; Italie 65).
destructive love affair with the Scottish Oswald,
Corinne's voice gradually blends Lord
into and
Nelvil. Oswald, whose father died waiting
is usurped by the novel's insistent narrator,
for him to return to Scotland from France, where
whose disquisition on the role of the
he forum in
was entangled in an unhappy and treacherous
the Roman republic evokes the hypnotic power
love affair with a French aristocrat, is doomed to
of past historical exempla, endowinga them
life ofwith
melancholy and guilt from page 1 of the
the numinous quality attributed by Kant toHis
novel. "his-
participation in the counterrevolu-
torical signs": "has not this Forum engrossed
tionary wars of 1794-95 is represented as a self-
the loftiest geniuses of all times withdestructive
the memo- and futile effort to expiate this guilt.
ries it recalls? Honor then, eternal honor, toOswald abandons the sexually expe-
Ultimately,
brave and free peoples because they rienced
so fascinate
and worldly Corinne and marries her
the gaze of posterity" ("ce Forum, n'a-t-il
virginalpas
half-sister Lucile, knowing that his fa-
occupe, par les souvenirs qu'il retrace,
therles plus
had explicitly rejected Corinne as a suitable
beaux genies de tous les temps? Honneur donc,
marriage partner and thus sacrificing his per-
eternel honneur aux peoples courageux et libres,
sonal desires to guilt and patriarchal sanction.
puisqu'ils captivent ainsi les regards de Corinne's
la poste- self-silencing at the end of the
rite!"; Italy 65; Italie 67). Certainly, novel
"the passion
and her retreat from a spectacularly suc-
for antiquity" ("cette passion pour les tempspublic
cessful an- career represent a kind of involun-
tiques") seems to satisfy a desire for thecapitulation
tary ideal, to patriarchal norms (closely
as Corinne expresses it, echoing theassociated
oppositionwith Oswald's father throughout the
between enthusiasm and self-interest so crucial
novel), norms that relegate women to the do-
to modern historiography for Kantmestic
and Stael:
and the private. Most interesting for the
"We live in an age when self-interest alone
treatment of history in this novel, however, are
seems to determine all of man's acts-and what
the symbolic and psychic mechanisms used to
empathy, what emotion, what enthusiasm
portray can
Corinne's retreat into self-destruction.
ever grow out of self-interest!" ("Nous vivons
Corinne becomes, in essence, a ghostlike punish-
dans un siecle ou l'interet personneling
semble le
instance who replaces Oswald's father as a
510 "Children of Liberty": Idealist Historiography in Stael, Shelley, and Sand PMLA
manifestation of haunting guilt.9 Immediately this striking scene depicts the metamorphosis of
following his and Corinne's tour of the forum and the living Corinne into a ghostlike embodiment
the accompanying historical meditations, Oswald of pain and guilt who is clearly identified with
falls into a deep depression occasioned by the the dead father.
guilt he feels in relation to his dead father, who, The potential for utopian inspiration shades
Oswald knows, would never have approved of into defeatism, as Corinne becomes identified
the independent and seductive Corinne. He with- with the psychic mechanisms at the heart of
draws from her and prepares to leave Rome. Co- Romantic melancholy-the introjection of lost
rinne, wounded by his absence, finds her way (of loved ones or cherished unrealized ideals that
course!) one moonlit night to the Trevi fountain: come to serve as punishing instances in a self-
destructive repetition compulsion. Corinne-who
On the evening of the fourth day of this cruel in the novel's early scene, "Corinne at the Capi-
separation, a full moon shone, and Rome is
tol," is a triumphant emblem of female genius and
beautiful indeed in the silence of the night when
of potentially revolutionary joy and enthusiasm
she seems inhabited by none but her illustrious
as she is crowned with poetic laurels-is now
ghosts. As Corinne returned from the home of a
transformed into a supreme symbol of the guilty
woman friend, her suffering weighed heavily
upon her, and she got out of her carriage to rest conscience, in effect replacing Oswald's father as
at the Trevi fountain.... Oswald, pausing there the all-powerful agent of punishment and emo-
a few minutes later, glimpsed the reflection of tional vengeance. Thus the self-willed demise that
his friend's lovely face. Such intense emotion concludes the novel constitutes an extended act of
gripped him that at first he did not know vengeance performed in the service of a master-
whether his imagination was bringing him sight slave dynamic explicitly evoked in Corinne's last
of Corinne's shadow just as so many times be-
bitter letter to her unfaithful lover: "Do you know
fore it had shown him his father's. (74-75)
that I would have served you like a slave? . . .
Le soir du quatrieme jour de cette cruelle ab- What have you done with an affection unique in
sence, il faisait un beau clair de lune, et Rome est this world? With an unhappiness just as unique?
bien belle pendant le silence de la nuit: il sem- Therefore do not lay claim to happiness, do not
ble alors qu'elle n'est habituee que par ses illus- offend me by thinking you may win it still"
tres ombres. Corinne, en revenant de chez une ("Savez-vous queje vous aurais servi comme une
femme de ses amies, oppressee par la douleur, esclave? ... qu'avez-vous fait de cette affection
descendit de sa voiture, et se reposa quelques in-
unique en ce monde? un malheur unique comme
stants pres de la fontaine de Trevi .... Oswald,
elle? Ne pretendez donc plus au bonheur; ne
qui s'6tait arrete dans le meme lieu peu de mo-
m'offensez pas en croyant l'obtenir encore"; 409;
ments apres, apergut le charmant visage de son
amie qui se repetait dans l'eau. II fut saisi d'une
415). The gap between the narrator's praise for
emotion tellement vive, qu'il ne savait pas d'a- "brave and free peoples" ("peuples courageux et
bord si c'etait son imagination qui lui faisait ap- libres"; 65; 67) in the panorama of history and the
paraitre l'ombre de Corinne, comme tant de fois character's personal self-abasement here is strik-
elle lui avait montre celle de son pere. (77) ing. In asserting her vengeful demands for her
lover's self-punishment, Corinne replicates the
On the one hand, Stael shows Corinne joining role of Oswald's father, who also expects self-
the spirits of the illustrious dead here, thus sacrifice in the name of home and country from
prefiguring her character's incomparable and his son in the counterrevolutionary wars.
haunting presence in the consciousness of virtu- How, then, are these self-destructive psy-
ally all nineteenth-century European and Amer- chic mechanisms relevant to Stael's conception
ican women writers. At the same time, however, of history and perfectibility? If, as Stael sug-
II8.3 I Kari Lokke 511
gests in her earlier Passions, what we and

now term destructive passion and perfect-
enthusiasm,
Romantic melancholy is sociopolitical ibility
in origin,
respectively. This historical novel, set in
a wound to the collective psyche inflicted when
fourteenth-century Italy, tells the tale of the tri-
the French Revolution betrayed its emancipa-
angulated relationships among Beatrice, Eutha-
nasia,
tory ideals by descending into barbaric and the historical Castruccio, known to
violence
and then into tyranny and militarism, Corinne
Shelley through Machiavelli's biography of him
symbolically deepens this wound by and
succumb-
through the History of the Medieval Italian
ing to her passion for vengeance. And if, as
Republics (Histoire des republiques italiennes
Doris Kadish has suggested, Oswald's obses-
du moyen age) of Stael's close friend Simonde de
sion with the death of his father allegorizes
Sismondi. Just as Sismondi, at Stael's sugges-
France's sense of guilt over the execution of to write a history of the Italian
tion, had chosen
Louis XVI, then Corinne's acceptance of the
republics as a vehicle for his critique of Napo-
role of substitute father-king in search of so
leon, retri-
Shelley's Castruccio provides an incisive
bution has profoundly reactionary political asthe seductive appeal and destructive
portrait of
well as psychic implications (24-26).10
potential
In psy- of the Napoleonic-Byronic character
choanalytic terms, Corinne capitulates toThe
type. themysterious prophetess Beatrice enters
endless cycle of parricide and guiltinto
that for
an obsessive love affair with the prince that
Freud in Totem and Taboo underlies all reli- ends in his abandonment of her and her descent
into self-destruction, madness, and death. A Pa-
gious and political institutions in patriarchal so-
terin heretic, she sees in personal and historical
ciety. Significantly, the heroines of Shelley's and
Sand's Kinstlerromane will surmount this fate. fate not the hand of providence but willful
Thus, for Stael, whereas collective historical malevolence and evil.'2 Euthanasia, who has been
ghosts can give rise to pleasurable abstraction and betrothed to Castruccio since childhood, even
hope when they are given aesthetic expression, though he is a Ghibelline and she a Guelph, even-
their introjection into the individual can bring de- tually rejects him after he becomes the tyrannical
pression, incapacitation, and even death. As Si- and ruthless leader of the opposing faction. She
mone Balaye asserts, Stael's fiction constitutes a drowns at the conclusion of the novel, having
challenge to the idealism of her theoretical works, been banned to Sicily for participating in a plot
demonstrating, with powerful honesty, the virtual against her former betrothed. A full analysis of
impossibility of transcending one's historical the significance of these two characters is outside
moment and its ideological and material con- of the scope of this essay.'3 For an understanding
straints.l1 At the same time, however, before she of Shelley's depiction of enlightenment and ide-
dies, Corinne trains little Juliette, the daughter of alist models of progress and perfectibility, I
Oswald and Lucile, in the arts of improvisation. focus here on the novel's representation of the
Stael, true to her faith in the future, thus suggests relation of Euthanasia, countess of Valperga, to
that Juliette, who mirrors Corinne rather than Lu- Italian history-her allegiance to Florentine
cile, may succeed where Corinne failed in defeat- republicanism and her firm and principled oppo-
ing patriarchal melancholy with the powers of sition to Castruccio's tyranny, imperialist mili-
enthusiasm and that out of personal destruction tarism, and Byronic will to power.
can come collective progress and change. In an 1839 intellectual biography of Stael,
Mary Shelley, in Valperga; or, The Life and Shelley acknowledges deep ambivalence in the
Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca, pays face of the fascination that Stael holds for the
tribute to the two sides of Stael and her Corinne nineteenth-century women writers who followed
in the characters Beatrice and Euthanasia, sym- her. On the one hand, Shelley asserts unequivo-
bols of nihilism and utopianism, melancholy cally that "no writer of her epoch ... left such
512 "Children of Liberty": Idealist Historiography in Stael, Sh lelley, and Sand PMLA
luminous ideas on her route," thus paying tribute in mute extacy; never had I b
to the unique power of Stael's ideas to influence universal graspings of my own
and inspire ("Madame de Stael" 342). On the tokens of other spiritual ex

other hand, Valperga was written and Euthanasia
created as a critical response to Corinne, whose These "sure tokens of other sp
have the numinous status, for
heroine Shelley found lacking in moral cour-
age.'4 The pivotal chapter entitled "Euthanasia's historical signs or Stael's im
They signify a call to republic
Narrative," in which Shelley's heroine relates
Shelley writes of her heroine,
her life story to her betrothed, culminates in an
father in "the history of the R
episode that responds to and emulates Corinne's
increased her love of freedom"
Roman tours. Having been taught by her father
the very shadow of freedom wi
to equate the Roman republic with freedom and
thusiasm" (142; emphasis adde
possessed of an eloquence akin to that of Co-
Euthanasia's Roman experien
rinne, Euthanasia describes her approach to
Rome in terms of Staelian enthusiasm for the her father's lessons in history
prepare the heroine for her p
heroic great whose shades still haunt the present
protector of her subjects. Unl
day: "I fearlessly gave myself up to the enthusi-
thanasia never allows her passi
asm that deluged my soul. ... I should draw in
the sacred air which had vivified the heroes of in the ideal of liberty to be s
love for Castruccio. We see he
Rome; their shades would surround me; and the
turning to her Roman meditatio
very stones that I should tread were marked by
justice in an effort to enact t
their footsteps" (149).
and corrupt world of politic
Euthanasia ultimately confirms the present
Valperga is a novel of the spir
reality of these spirits in an experience of the
development of an artist figur
historical sublime crucial to understanding the
was always improving, alw
novel as a whole. Like Corinne, Euthanasia is
new acquirements" (407)-"a c
transformed into a shade, though a spirit of ec-
Tilottama Rajan asserts, to Go
stasy and inspiration rather than punishment and
perfectibility (Introduction
pain: "I felt, as I was told that I appeared to be,
Narrative" conceives her perso
rather a wandering shade of the ancient times,
a collective, cultural effort of
than a modern Italian" (150). To Euthanasia, an
losophers extending into the
adherent of Florentine freedom, these ghosts
limitless future. Euthanasia see
take on the aura of historical signs of an awak-
personal fame, as does Castruc
ening Italian republican consciousness. This
benefit of unknown generation
historical sublime etches her intellectual mem-
ory like "a burning cloud of sunset in the deep And what would not this w
azure of the sky" (151): every man might learn from it
true principles of life, and be
In my wild enthusiasm I called on the shadows which have as yet shone as s
of the departed to converse with me, and to night of ages? If time had not
prophesy the fortunes of awakening Italy. I can of poetry and of genius from h
never forget one evening that I visited the Pan- past would be dark and trackl
theon by moonlight: the soft beams of the planet a track-the glorious foot-mark
streamed through its open roof, and its tall pil- of liberty; let us imitate them,
lars glimmered around. It seemed as if the spirit may serve as marks in the desar
of beauty descended on my soul, as I sat there ture passengers to the founta
II8.3 | Kari Lokke 513
Shelley eloquently asserts, through theagain by Sand, whose monumental masterpiece

character
Consueloof
of Euthanasia, the power of poetry (inclusive and its sequel, The Countess Rudolstadt
(La comtesse
philosophy, theology, and history, as well as art) de Rudolstadt), are set in the de-
to bring to the present "the benefits ofcades before the French Revolution of 1789. The
immortal
revolutionary
life, a limitless future, [and] uninterrupted conti- potential of the republicanism of
Stael's Corinne
nuity" that Stael claimed as the consequences of and Shelley's Euthanasia is ful-
a belief in perfectibility. We think here ofinShel-
filled Consuelo as republicanism takes on a dis-
ley's reference to Stael's "luminous ideas."
tinctly In-
socialist and proletarian cast. Just as Sand
deed, Shelley's conception of the "children ofhero Albert Rudolstadt back to life in
brings her
The Countess
liberty" finds itself literalized in the figure of Ju- Rudolstadt after he is dead and
buried
liette at the conclusion of Corinne. This at the end of Consuelo, so she resuscitates
passage
is also of particular interest because Euthanasia
crucial eighteenth-century figures in an effort to
is referring to Dante, a Ghibelline andreveal
member
their political and cultural significance for
a collective,
of the opposing Florentine political party, as anongoing effort to transform Europe
exemplary genius. In the description into
of Dante,
a socialist utopia. More than simply a histori-
we witness Shelley's recognition of thecal novel whose
nature of pages bring to life a fascinating
array ofdi-
aesthetic freedom as the product of a negative cultural and political figures, from
alectic; Dante was free and "none but aJoseph
freeman
Haydn, Voltaire, and Frederick the Great
could have poured forth the poetry
toand elo- and Saint Germain, Consuelo is a
Cagliostro
novel
quence to which I listened: what though he that
wereilluminates the ideal role of the (fe-
banished from his native city, and had espoused
male) artist as an agent of revolutionary change.
For the
a party that seemed to support tyranny; the es- purposes of this essay, I limit my
discussion
sence of freedom is that clash and struggle which of this vast and endlessly fascinating
awaken the energies of our nature .. ."novel to Consuelo's two subterranean or under-
(147).
Euthanasia's life ends, as does Corinne's, in
world journeys, journeys that bring her into con-
personal failure, as the countess decides towith
tact enter
a spirit realm, clearly figured here as
into a doomed plot against Castruccio, a historical
the tortu- unconscious. The striking original-
ous decision that beautifully illustrates the conception of history in Consuelo
ity of Sand's
"clash and struggle" of opposing values and
is her de-
literalization of the concept of historical
sires described above. Drowning in a shipwreck
memory and resuscitation through the metaphor
on her way to her exile in Sicily, Euthanasia
of metempsychosis. The godlike, millennial per-
nevertheless does not really die, becoming,
spectivesasthat provide the solace and hope of
Rajan asserts, "a phantasm in the political un-
progress and perfectibility for Kant, Stael, and
conscious who 'sleeps in the oozy cave of suggest
Shelley the for Sand the possibility of rein-
carnation,
ocean"' (Introduction 38). Thus Shelley finds a individual and collective. Influenced
means of keeping Euthanasia alive to by
haunt the religious thinker Pierre Leroux,
the utopian
historical imagination and to fulfill the heroine's
she writes in 1843, "The human race is being
dream of guiding future adherents of submitted
liberty to
to a long and painful education. Time
the "fountains of life." One can imagine
appears Eu-
long only to us. In God's eyes, it does
not
thanasia's words among those brought toexist at all. Our centuries do not count in re-
light
from the cave of the Cumaean Sybil bytothe
lation eternity because we die in order to be
editor-narrator in the introduction toreborn and progress" ("Le genre humain est
Shelley's
subsequent novel, The Last Man. soumis a une longue et penible education. Le
temps ne
The battle waged for republican liberties byparait long qu'a nous. Aux yeux de
Stail and Shelley is vigorously taken upil once
Dieu n'existe pas. Nos siecles ne comptent pas
PMLA
514 "Children of Liberty": Idealist Historiography in Stael, Shelley, and Sand
dans l'eterit, ... car nous mourons pour renai- retribution who are led by Albert as Satan, the
tre et progresser"; "A Charles Poncy" 329).16 rebellious angel, "the beautiful one, the sorrow-
Thus the historical imagination annihilates time ful, the immortal, proudest among the proud"
in this idealist vision of progress. ("le plus beau des immortels apres Dieu, le
In the fate of Count Albert of Rudolstadt, plus triste apres Jesus, le plus fier parmi les plus
Consuelo's future husband and beloved, Sand fiers"). As Consuelo witnesses him present the
employs the metaphor of time travel or reincar- "chalice of forgiveness, of restoration and of sa-
nation to revisit and rewrite prerevolutionary cred equality" ("le calice du pardon, de la reha-
history. Explaining the need for a collective con- bilitation, et de la sainte egalite"; Consuelo: A
ception of Bildung, Kant suggests that it would Romance 357-58; Consuelo 2: 27-28) to these
require a vast life span to develop fully one's in- men, both heroic and criminal, she pledges her-
dividual capacities (Idea 57); Albert represents self, in a trance, to God and to this Angel of
just such an ancient soul. Endowed with a sec- Grief forever. A demonic and Byronic figure
ond sight that overwhelms him with memories of akin to Manfred in his guilt and to the Giaour in
his past lives, Albert is tormented by guilt over his violence, Albert's avatar Ziska is "the ex-
actions performed in his former existence as the alted yet abhorred ... chief of the Taborites, a
fifteenth-century Slavic insurrectionary and sect which during the war of the Hussites sur-
Protestant heretic Jean Ziska (1376-1424). Fol- passed all other religionists in their energy, their
lower of the martyred Jean Huss, Ziska is de- bravery and their cruelty" ("le nom sublime et
scribed by Sand as a formidable general, said to abhorre du chef des Taborites, sectaires qui ren-
have murdered twenty Augustine monks and ch6rirent durant la guerre des Hussites sur l'6-
hung their bodies from an oak tree over a cistern nergie, la bravoure, et les cruaut6s des autres
that held the remains of ten slaughtered Hussite religionnaires"; 166; 1: 207). Ziska's relentless
followers. Incapacitated by guilt, Albert regu- violence recalls the bloodbath of the Reign of
larly escapes to a secret cavern under this cistern, Terror as it ultimately destroyed the French Rev-
now belonging to his castle, Schreckenstein, for olution and called forth Napoleonic tyranny.
long periods of solitude and penitential medita- The metaphor of past lives, then, for Sand,
tion. Described by Albert as an opponent of des- encodes a historical and sociopolitical critique of
potic imperial and religious power and modeled Romantic melancholy even as it suggests the en-
after Chopin and the Polish poet Mickiewicz, during revolutionary potential of ethnic identity
Ziska appeals to nineteenth-century ethnic, na- and heretical consciousness. In her metaphor of
tionalist, and republican movements in his resis- soul memory, Sand thus represents the inextrica-
tance to the Germanic oppression represented by bility of Romantic melancholy and Romantic ti-
his archenemy, King Sigismund.17 tanism (linked to revolutionary violence), two
At grave risk to her life, Consuelo descends sides of the same coin, states of mind that mire
into Albert's subterranean refuge and, in a re- artists in a vicious cycle of rebellion and guilt and
markably vivid scene, experiences his playing render them culturally and politically ineffectual.
of ancient peasant hymns that bring forth before We saw this same dynamic of vengeance and
the mesmerized Consuelo "the spectral form of guilt defeat Corinne. Consuelo, however, ul-
the heroes of old Bohemia" ("les spectres des timately rejects Byronic deification of self by
vieux h6ros de la Boheme") battling religious challenging Albert's desire "to penetrate the se-
and political tyranny. Consuelo has entered the crets of destiny" ("p6netrer les secrets de la desti-
realm of the collective political and historical n6e; 275; 1: 321) and thus to claim a place equal
unconscious inhabited by "angels of death" ("les to God by embracing in his personal conscious-
anges de la mort"), agents of divine wrath and ness the present and the past. In this rendering of
i 18.3 ] Kari Lokke 515
Romantic satanism and Prometheanism,

courant then,
electrique d'enthousiasme sublime, de
Sand explicitly endorses the cause offoi ardente
the et de fanatisme terrible"; 2: 277; 3:
Protes-
480;Germanic
tant and Slavic peasants against their my emphasis).
As history
and Catholic rulers while recognizing that Consuelo's initiator into this mysterious
has rendered their violent tactics obsolete. She web of conspirators proclaims, however, the In-
also renders Consuelo victorious over the forces visibles have moved beyond bloody revolt as
that destroyed the heroines of Stael and Shelley: they have renounced the violence and overt po-
Oswald's Romantic melancholy and Castruccio's litical warfare practiced by their ancestors: "we
Byronic-Napoleonic will to power. Thus Albert's still expose ourselves to proscription and pov-
memory of past lives is an emblem of the collec- erty, to captivity and death, for the methods of
tive historical unconscious that Consuelo must tyranny are still the same. But our methods are
experience, understand, and, in a sense, tran- no longer an appeal to a material revolt and the
scend, to envisage her future as a revolutionary bloody preaching of cross and sword" ("nous
artist. In Consuelo's orphic journey, a positive nous exposons encore a la proscription, a la mi-
historical dialectic and agency come to life. sere, a la captivite, a la mort; car les moyens de
The story concludes with Consuelo's initia- la tyrannie sont toujours les memes: mes nos
tion in The Countess Rudolstadt into the Invisi- moyens, a nous, ne sont plus l'appel a la revolte
bles, a secret, underworld society of religious materielle, et la predication sanglante de la
and political heretics whose goal is nothing croix et du glaive"; 2: 114; 3: 365). Hence the
short of freeing the entire human race from all pivotal role played by artists and intellectuals in
"intellectual and material tyranny" ("detruire la their movement and their inclusion of all types
tyrannie intellectuelle et materielle"; Countess and classes of humanity, from worker and peas-
2: 118; La comtesse 367). Under the proleptic ant to prince and priest:
banner "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity," they
seek to found a new egalitarian social order and Our war is wholly intellectual, like our mission.
We appeal to the mind. We act by the mind. It is
a new and universal religion of humanity. Like
not with the strong hand that we can overthrow
her ideological opposite, the Jesuit Abbe Bar-
governments now organized and based upon all
ruel in his Histoire du Jacobinisme (1797-98),
the resources of brute force.... [W]e hurl from
Sand represents the Invisibles as one of innu-
our fortress against altars and thrones the fiery
merable quasimasonic secret societies termed missiles of ardent truth and implacable reason.
by Consuelo's initiator as "subterranean labora- We shall conquer, never doubt it. (2: 114-15)
tories in which is preparing a great revolution,
the crater of which will be Germany or France" Nous nous adressons a 1'esprit. Nous agissons
("laboratories souterrains ou se prepare une par l'esprit. Ce n'est pas a main arm6e que
grande revolution, dont le cratere sera l'Alle- nous pouvons renverser des gouvernements,
aujourd'hui organises et appuyes sur tous les
magne ou la France"; 2: 124; 372). Sand's nar-
moyens de la force brutale .. .; nous lancons
rator credits Adam Weishaupt and the historical
du haut de notre forteresse, tous les boulets
Bavarian Illuminati, descendants of her fictional
rouges de l'ardente v6rite et de l'implacable
Invisibles, with "shaking for an instant all dy- raison sur les autels et sur les tr6nes. Nous
nasties upon their thrones ... and bequeathing vaincrons, n'en doute pas. (3: 365)
to the French Revolution something like an
electric current of sublime enthusiasm, ardent Here Sand passionately sets forth her faith in the
faith, and terrible fanaticism" ("I1 ebranla un in- sublime power of the idea, a faith shared by her
stant toutes les dynasties sur leurs trones ... en predecessors Kant, Stael, and Shelley. This battle
leguant a la Revolution francaise comme un is immortal and collective, Consuelo's initiator
516 "Children of Liberty": Idealist Historiography in Stael, Sh elley, and Sand PMLA
claims, having been begun in ages past by ances- none of the haunting power
tors who are now indistinguishable from their mesmerized Consuelo in her earlier subter-
successors. The Invisibles are by definition ranean trial or of the Roman shades who se-
anonymous and divested of individuality, devot- duce Corinne and Euthanasia. Instead, they are
ing themselves to a process that links them by a merely horrific, harshly physical monuments to
bond of "hereditary religious enthusiasm" ("re- human cruelty and injustice. Completely politi-
ligieux enthousiasme hereditaire") with the past cized, on leaving these gothic chambers of hor-
and generations yet to come. Collective effort ror, Consuelo responds to this revelation with a
transcends glorification of the Romantic hero. vow of perpetual labor in the cause of freedom
This "slower, more secret, and deeper war" and human dignity. Thus Sand concludes her
("une guerre plus lente, plus sourde et plus pro- novel with a vision of the artist that incorporates
fonde"), waged from the subterranean sources socialist and protofeminist elements of the
of power that Consuelo explores in her trials nineteenth-century utopian movements of Saint-
throughout the novel, subsumes the forces of Simon, Fourier, and Leroux that both link Sand
ethnic revolt, nationalism, and class warfare and, to and separate her from Shelley, Stael, and
finally, in its last stages, encompasses the sup- Kant. This vision applies equally to Consuelo,
pressed power of women. As the initiator who daughter of an itinerant street musician, and to
instructs Consuelo in the Invisibles' explicitly her aristocratic husband, Albert, the former
feminist doctrines asserts, "Like Albert, we pro- Count Rudolstadt. In the novel's epilogue, Con-
fess the divine precept of equality between man suelo, accompanied by Albert and their children,
and woman" ("Comme Albert, nous professons returns to her wandering life as an anonymous
le precepte de l'egalite divine de l'homme et de gypsy artist, an artist ministering to the people
la femme"; 2: 125; 3: 374). Consuelo's specific and helping them create the profound social
task for the Invisibles will have the feminist aim, change to come.
still utopian today, of forming an internationalist Sand here anticipates the Communist Mani-
network of women, a network that will unite festo and her crucial role in the revolutions of
women of all social classes and walks of life in 1848. In Consuelo and The Countess Rudol-
their struggle for freedom.18 Here we have a stadt she articulates, through her use of the
cosmopolitan effort as yet unimagined by, but spatial metaphor of the subterranean trial and
certainly in accord with, the spirit of Kant's uni- her concomitant suppression or telescoping
versal history, just as the Invisibles might be seen of chronological time, a triumphantly idealist
as an occult mirror of the cosmopolitan league of nineteenth-century version of the political un-
nations that the philosopher believed would conscious-that "account of the essential mys-
eventually result from human cultural progress. tery of the cultural past," that "single great
If Consuelo's orphic descent under the collective story," that "uninterrupted narrative,"
Schreckenstein reveals to her the voices of the that "single vast unfinished plot" that Fredric
past silenced by official history and brought to Jameson sees it as the task of the Marxist critic
life by the folk melodies of Albert's violin, her to uncover and illuminate (19-20). The descen-
initiation into the Invisibles brings her into di- dants of the Invisibles, the Illuminati, who (led
rect contact with the physical remains of cen- by the historical personage Adam Weishaupt)
turies of oppressed masses buried in ages past in search out Albert to seek his counsel (in the form
the dungeons of their headquarters. She sinks of lectures on Leibnitz, Trismegistus, and Plato)
deep into the ashes and bones of this open col- narrate the final pages of this seemingly inter-
lective grave that she must traverse to complete minable novel as the leaders of the future cata-
her trial. These human remains, however, have clysmic revolution; Sand could not make any
I 18.3 Kari Lokke 517
clearer her reluctance to conclude this wonder- the late-eighteenth-century historical shades of
fully rich and labyrinthine tale. The "sublime en- Ossian and Herder, convincingly shown by Ted
thusiasm" that inspires Consuelo as anonymousUnderwood to be projected onto the inanimate,
artist and member of the Invisibles links her to natural world as emblems of historical other-
Corinne and Euthanasia, who live on in the col- ness, and the material specter haunting the Eu-
lective after death: to Corinne through future fe- rope of Marx's Communist Manifesto in 1848
male artists like Juliette and to Euthanasia and anticipated by the utopian socialism of
Sand's
through her power as footprint "in the desart" forConsuelo.
generations of poets-"children of liberty"-to
Yet ultimately Sand, like Stael and Shelley,
cannot rest in the relentlessly optimistic teleol-
come. In the end, Consuelo is willingly sacri-
ogy of her Invisibles; she must also offer up her
ficed by her creator, as are Corinne and Euthana-
sia, to a kind of Hegelian world spirit, or, asown
Kantcritical dialectic of enlightenment in this
retrospective
would put it, to the immortality of the species as of the eighteenth century:
a whole. Thus Consuelo's disappearance into
[I]f our century ever comes to sum itself up, it
poverty and into "the people" is precipitated by
will also sum up the life of its father, the eigh-
the loss of her unique and spectacular voice.
teenth century, that immense logogriph, that
In what sense, then, do these novels repre-
brilliant nebula, in which so much cowardice is
sent a specifically feminine or feminist idealism,
opposed to so much greatness, so much knowl-
as Schor terms it? Most obviously, they depict
edge to so much ignorance, barbarity to civiliza-
the sociocultural possibilities and obstacles pre-
tion, light to error, seriousness to intoxication,
sented by a specific historical moment to theincredulity to faith,... so much superstition to
imagination of the individual woman artist. They
so much haughty reason ... that frightful labo-
furthermore embody a forward-looking spirit
ratory in which so many heterogeneous forms
that seeks to mobilize forces of change-per-
have been thrown into the crucible that they
sonal and social, nonrational and rational-for have vomited forth in their monstrous ebullition
the benefit of future women and disenfranchiseda torrent of smoke in which we are still walking,
enveloped in shadows and confused images.
others. This activist spirit is brought to life by
(2: 278-79)
the shift performed in each of these works from
emphasis on individual consciousness-the [S]i notre siecle arrive a se resumer lui-meme, il
province of the novel as genre-to a focus on
resumera aussi la vie de son pere le dix-huitieme
the sublimity of collective consciousness-the
siecle, ce logogriphe immense, cette brillante
terrain of idealist historiography from Kant
nebuleuse, oi tant de lachete s'oppose a tant de
grandeur, tant de savoir a tant d'ignorance, tant
through Hegel. Each of these novels performs
de barbarie a tant de civilisation, tante de lumiere
an explicit critique of masculinist Romantic in-
dividualism in the name of women and human- a tant d'erreur, tant de serieux a tant d'ivresse,
tant d'incredulite a tant de foi,... tant de super-
ity as a whole. Corinne and Valperga reveal the
stition a tant de raison orgueilleuse ... labora-
Romantic melancholy and titanism of their he-
toire effrayant, oiu tant de formes heterogenes
roes, Oswald and Castruccio, as seductive but
ont etes jetees dans le creuset, qu'elles ont vomi,
destructive Romantic egotisms.19 And Consuelo
dans leur monstrueuse ebullition, un torrent de
demonstrates in Albert the inextricability of fumee ou nous marchons encore enveloppes de
these two Romantic modes of being even as it tenebres et d'images confuses. (3:481)
supersedes them with the selfless impersonal art
and activism of Consuelo and the revivified Al- With her troublingly modern catalog of antino-
bert at the conclusion of the novel. These Kiinst- mies, Sand explodes Enlightenment myths of
lerromane mark out an idealist interlude between progress and reason even as she prefigures
PMLA
518 "Children of Liberty": Idealist Historiography in Stael, Shelley, and Sand
twentieth-century understandings of historical well as two anonymous readers, for significant clarification
and refinement of its argument.
contingency and existential absurdity. As kin-
1 Unattributed translations are mine.
dred spirits of the creature created by Shelley's
2 Notable exceptions to my generalizations here are Percy
Victor Frankenstein in Ingolstadt, home to the Bysshe Shelley, Hugo, Nerval, and Michelet, but they are
historical Illuminati, the shades and ghosts that not, with the exception of Hugo, first and foremost novelists.
mesmerized and seduced Sand's predecessors 3 It furthermore supports Schor's contention that a femi-
return in new and monstrous forms. Most mon- nist idealism signifies a "refusal to reproduce mimetically
and hence to legitimate a social order inimical to the disen-
strous of all is the plague that visits Shelley's
franchised, among them women" (54).
third novel, The Last Man, and destroys the en-
4 Only Kant's lectures on anthropology appeared after
tire human race but one-Shelley's alter ego andConflict.
narrator, Lionel Verey. In "the glow of enthusi- 5 Rigney, in Imperfect Histories, elucidates a variant of
asm" the young Verney had once imagined that the historical sublime that is produced by a sense of the un-
authorship would provide "a valuable link torepresentability of the past, its resistance "to our attempts to
represent it with whatever information, concepts, and dis-
[his] fellow creatures," such that he would be-
cursive models we have at our disposal" (8). The novelists
come "a citizen of the world, a candidate for im-under discussion here acknowledge anxieties about this un-
mortal honors, an eager aspirant to the praise representability and then counter them with assertions of di-
and sympathy of my fellow men." He is, most rect contact with historical phantasms.
6 Here is the full original sentence: "I tried to discover
fittingly, a biographer of "historical characters,
whether the painful sharpness of personal experience was
especially those... about whom clung obscurity not blunted a little if we placed ourselves in the vast tableau
and doubt" (120). Given the fact that Verney's of destinies, where everyone is lost in his century, the cen-
readers and fellow creatures are doomed to anni- tury lost in time, and time lost in the incomprehensible"
hilation by plague, Shelley seems to be offering ("J'ai essaye si ce qu'il y a de poignant dans la douleur per-
sonnelle ne s'emoussait pas un peu quand nous nous pla-
here a devastating mockery of her artist hero's
cions nous-memes comme une part du vaste tableau des
aspirations and the entire legacy of idealist his- destinees, of chaque homme est perdu dans son siecle, le
toriography outlined in this essay. Yet the reader siecle dans le temps, et le temps dans l'incompr6hensible";
must also acknowledge that Verney's words Folkenflik 170; Des passions 152).
7 The same refrain is repeated in almost obsessive fash-
have survived, since the novel's preface frames
ion throughout De la litterature: "There has been only one
them as prophecies discovered in the cave of the
fact for the enlightened man since the beginning of the
Cumaean Sybil (archetype of female creativity), world, and that is the progress of understanding and reason"
projected into the twenty-first century, and of- ("II n'y a qu'un fait pour l'homme eclaire depuis le com-
fered to the reader by an anonymous nineteenth- mencement du monde, ce sont les progres des lumieres et de
la raison"; 147).
century editor. Having their source beyond time,
8 For another recent treatment of Stael's writing of his-
these "poetic rhapsodies" enter into a tortuous tory, see Leveque.
and inscrutable temporality, accomplishing a 9 Oswald's state of mind accords with Freud's clinical
movement that suspends despair and nihilism by description of the melancholiac in "Mourning and Melan-
clothing fictitious sorrow and regret in "that ide- cholia." Freud writes of melancholia that it constitutes "an
identification of the ego with the abandoned object. Thus,
ality which takes the mortal sting from pain"
the shadow of the object fell upon the ego, so that the latter
and transports the reader to a world "glowing could henceforth be criticized by a special mental faculty
with imagination and power" (5). like an object, like the forsaken object. In this way, the loss
of the object became transformed into a loss in the ego, and
the conflict between the ego and the loved person trans-
formed into a cleavage between the criticizing faculty of the
ego and the ego as altered by identification" (159).
NOTES 10 Kadish examines Corinne's attempt, in replacing fa-

ther and king, "to propose meaningful alternatives to tra-
This essay is indebted to thoughtful, incisive readings by ditional patriarchal figures of power" (24). In contrast, I
Liz Constable, Adriana Craciun, and Tilottama Rajan, as suggest that Corinne abandons her revolutionary enthusiasm
I I8.3 i Kari Lokke 519
lard movement
once she has accepted the role of substitute father and thatand with its leader John Wycliffe, whose
works
she is then complicit with and imbricated in Huss translated into Czech in 1403.
patriarchal
structures of domination, psychic and political. Furthermore,
18 Her precise mission is as follows: "You will institute
Britain's allegiance with absolute monarchy against
among republi-
women new secret societies founded by us upon the
can France in the counterrevolutionary wars principle
of 1794-95 is but appropriate in their form and com-
of our own,
also a likely unacknowledged source of the Scottish Os-customs and manners of different countries
position to the
and as
wald's guilt. For a fascinating reading of Corinne classes.
ghostYou in
will bring about, as far as possible, the cor-
relation to Scottish national character, see Alliston.
dial and sincere association of the great lady and the bour-
1 "En somme, l'ceuvre critique et politiquegeoisie,
de Mme the rich
dewoman and the humble worker, the virtuous
Stael propose, construit, r6nconforte, pendantmatron and the adventurous artist" ("Tu instituera parmi les
que l'oeuvre
romanesque d6truit en exprimant l'angoisse de femmes des societes secretes nouvelles, fond6es par nous
l'6crivain.
sur le principe
La perfectibilit6 rassurante est vaincue par la peur. Corinne de la n6tre, mais appropri6es, dans leurs
formes
symbolise la d6faite in6vitable.... [C]'est l1 son et dans il
courage; leurs composition, aux usages et aux moeurs
lui fallait bien admettre l'ineluctable, mais ildes divers pays
fallait aussiet des diverses classes. Tu y op6rera, autant
tenter de le surmonter" (168). que possible, le rapprochement cordial et sincere de la
12 For the significance of Paterin heresy togrande
Marydame et de la bourgeoise, de la femme riche et de
Shel-
l'humble ouvriere, de la vertueuse matrone et de l'artiste
ley's art, see Rieger 121-28.
aventureuse"; 2: 126-27; 3: 375).
13 Focusing on Beatrice produces a far less optimistic
19 Critics have often noted an emphasis on collectivity as
reading of the novel. See Rajan, "Mathilda" 62-65, and
D. White 83-92. opposed to individualism as a distinctive feature of women's
Romanticism. Homans writes, for example, that "a collec-
14 See Lokke for a discussion of Valperga as a response
tivizing of self" is essential to women's rewriting of Roman-
to Corinne. Shelley writes that Stael's "novels do not teach
tic egotism and that, for women writers, "the transcendence
the most needful lesson-moral courage" ("Madame de
the Romantics sought... is possible only through collectiv-
Stael" 343).
ity" (233).
15 Freedom and republican liberty mean for Shelley as
for Kant (after Rousseau) a people free in that they give laws
to themselves. Thus Euthanasia and Castruccio talk of "re-
publics, and the energy and virtue that every citizen acquires,WORKS CITED
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We see here an echo of Kant's What Is Enlightenment? (Was teractions in the Romantic Age: Critical Essays in
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Balay6, Simone. "A propos du < pr6romantisme >: Conti-
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Lew. Lew writes, "Despite her hardwon appreciation of his- Ferrand, 29-30 Juin 1972. Ed. Paul Viallaneix. Paris:
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"Children of Liberty": Idealist Historiography in Stal, Shelley, and Sand

Author(s): Kari Lokke

"Children of Liberty": Idealist Hist

Succeeding times your struggles, and their fa

No drop of blood from the revolution was shed in v

Kein Blutstropfen der Revolution ist umsonst gefl

A GAINST THE DARK BACKDROP OF FRENCH REVOLUTION-

502 5? 2003 BY THE MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA

consciousness and transparency with which

For such a phenomenon in human history is destructiveness as well as infinite hum

Stael takes refuge and solace, like Kant, inthe

revolutionary and republican aims inseul

gests in her earlier Passions, what we and

and inspire ("Madame de Stael" 342). On the tokens of other spiritual ex

Shelley eloquently asserts, through theagain by Sand, whose monumental masterpiece

Romantic satanism and Prometheanism,

NOTES 10 Kadish examines Corinne's attempt, in replacing fa-

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