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brated figures of the early 19th Century. A short list sonal taste for the melancholy, Napoleon was com-
includes Chateaubriand, Gérard7, Angelica pletely repelled by de Staël and eventually came to
Kauffmann, Elisabeth Vigée-Le Brun, Antonio view her as an active threat.9 She was exiled numer-
Canova, Goethe, Schiller, Lord Byron, and in partic- ous times under his regime and it was during one of
ular, August Schlegel and Juliette Récamier. these periods of ostracism that de Staël travelled from
Coppet to Rome, where she began to write Corinne.
On the eve of revolution and hence during its out-
break and progress, de Staël remained in Paris for as Staël constructed Corinne in twenty ‘books’ in which
long as she dared, always jumping into her carriage to she variously introduces and describes her three
investigate first-hand its most significant and often principle characters: the Scottish lord Oswald; his
bloody events, her observations upon which she lover, the poetess Corinne; and Italy, where they
immediately wrote down. She published several meet and play out their doomed romance. In illus-
essays on Rousseauian thought, the ideals of the rev- trating Oswald’s encounter with the elemental
olution, republicanism, and the queen’s show-trial in Corinne at Cape Miseno above the Bay of Naples,
1793.While she was no egalitarian, de Staël remained Gerard adhered closely to Staël’s text. Seated by a
passionately committed to the fight for a constitu- broken column and dressed in a tunic and a peplum,
tional monarchy, and her lack of tact in this regard Corinne prepares to give an encore performance of
poisoned her relationship with Marie-Antoinette to dance and music which had earlier enraptured her
the point that when de Staël devised a viable plan to audience (including Oswald) upon the Capitoline
smuggle the royal family out of France after the Hill. Her audience, Oswald, his English companions,
Varennes fiasco, it was the queen who vetoed it, pos- Prince Castelforte (just behind Oswald), some
sibly further sealing both her and her family’s fate.8 Neapolitan sailors, a Levantine, and natives of the
neighbouring islands of Ischia and Procida are just
During the République, both the Girondists and the about to gather at her feet, when Corinne puts down
Jacobins in turn found de Staël’s opinions and influ- her lyre and looks skyward at the roiling storm
ence objectionable and she was forced to flee France clouds which mirror her own powerful emotions at
on several occasions, decamping to her family home, seeing Oswald again. Madame de Staël describes:
the Château de Coppet, and for a period, Juniper
Hall in Surrey, England. After the fall of Robespierre, “The pure pale glow of the moon lit up her face, the fresh
and the excesses of the Directoire, de Staël’s attention sea breeze blew her hair, and it seemed as if nature delight-
became focused on the young General Napoleon ed in making her lovelier still.Yet Corinne was suddenly
Bonaparte, whom she finally met in December of seized by overwhelming emotion; she contemplated the
1797. Over the next year Staël determined to join enchanting setting, this intoxicating evening, Oswald who
forces with him in the Republican cause, but despite was there beside her, but who might not be there always, and
their shared centrist politics, faith in science and per- tears streamed from her eyes.”
7.Two dinner invitations from de Staël to Gerard, See H. Gérard and A.Viollet- de-Duc, op. cit., p. 327.
8. For an account of this plot and Staël’s estrangement from Marie-Antoinette, as well as her heroic efforts to save other aristocrats from the guillotine
during the terror, see du Plessix-Gray, op. cit., pp. 63-65 and pp. 77-79.
9. Ibid, pp. 101-107.
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