De l'Allemagne (Madame de Staël)

Overview

De l'Allemagne (1810-1813) is Germaine de Staël's book on German life, literature, philosophy and religion, written during her exile from Napoleon's France. The first edition of 10,000 copies, printed in 1810, was destroyed on the Emperor's orders; the book was published in London in 1813 and exercised a major influence on French Romanticism (Wikipedia, "On Germany"; the author's own preface in the Gutenberg text is dated 1810 and 1813). Part I treats the country and its manners: chapter IX, "Des étrangers qui veulent imiter l'esprit français", argues that since Louis XIV the good society of the whole Continent has taken pride in imitating the French, that conversation is "l'art" in which the French are "passés maîtres", and that foreigners who copy them "affectent plus d'immoralité, et sont plus frivoles qu'eux"; "la gloire et même l'agrément de chaque pays consistent toujours dans le caractère et l'esprit national".

Marie and this chapter

Marie met it in the summer of 1877 and took it personally.

• 15 July 1877 (073.0015): "Je suis assez dégoûtée de ma causerie depuis que j'ai lu ce que dit Mme de Staël sur l'imitation de l'esprit français par les étrangers. A l'écouter on n'a qu'à se cacher dans son trou et ne jamais oser affronter le contact du sublime génie français." The passage is De l'Allemagne I, ch. IX (identified by the title of the chapter; the earlier note read it as "probably De l'Allemagne").
• 7 September 1877 (074.0246): "Il pleut. C'est une chienne de vie. Cette Mme de Staël me rend folle. 'Le soleil, l'amour et les beaux-arts, y remplissent la vie'." The sentence is in the same chapter IX, where Staël says that in the South of Europe "il n'y a point de société: le soleil, l'amour et les beaux-arts remplissent la vie" (Gutenberg text, tome 1).

The other Staël mentions of the diary (067.0928 and 074.0332) are to her novel Corinne.

Notes and doubts

• Marie writes only "Mme de Staël". The two paragraphs above are tied to De l'Allemagne by exact quotation and by the content of the chapter; no secondary source is needed.
• Marie, herself a foreigner writing in French in Paris society, applies Staël's remark to her own conversation; see the surrounding entries of July 1877.

Sources

• Wikipedia, "On Germany": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_l%27Allemagne
• De l'Allemagne, tome 1, Project Gutenberg ebook 66924, Part I, ch. IX.