Chateaubriand, the Romantic Classicist

Chateaubriand ended up broke and recouped as best he could by selling his memoirs. One might forgive him for a certain amount of padding, and there is plenty of padding to forgive.

He was remarkably unreliable. If memory serves, none of his editors believe that he accurately described his travels in North America. A book about how to talk about places you've never been draws heavily on Chateaubriand. I have not read The Genius of Christianity, but his outspoken commitment to Christianity seems not to have constrained him in ways that most Christian sects might have expected of him. Perhaps Sainte-Beuve had it right in calling him "an Epicurean with a Christian imagination."

On the other hand, he was one of very few with the balls to resign an official post when Napoleon had the Duc d'Enghien shot. He resigned the ambassadorship to Rome when Charles X opted for autocracy. And he was quite correct, during the July monarchy, about two things: the disastrous nature of raising the nominal Dauphin in an ultra environment; the probable short lifespan of the Orleans regime.

Proust is said to have admired Chateaubriand, and though I have never tackled Proust in French, I think I can see the parallel: passages of arresting insight, in the middle of unbelievably tedious stuff.

[Edit: a) fixed spelling of "Epicurean"; b) the book I mentioned is How to Talk About Places You've Never Seen by Pierre Bayard.]

> When translated, Chateaubriand sounds long-winded and often vapidly self-absorbed.

You can remove 'when translated'. The long-windedness is somewhat absolved, or at least mitigated by his style and his tempo, at least in my opinion. But vapidity and self-absorbtion are clearly really good definition of the content of his writings.

Chateaubriand is a master of egotism :) Even his tomb is a spectacularly romantic: a lone tomb on a rocky island, facing the tempestuous Ocean :)

> Parts III-IV of this essay series will be published next week.

This essay was well-written and interesting, but one is less than on fire about reading additional installments.

Perhaps that is the point about the subject's body of work?

I tend to prefer the steaks over the writing!