Byron, Mme de Stael, Schlegel, and the religious motif in Armance

348

jA few years after reading Lauvergne's "Note," Stendhal published a spurious anecdote of his own concerning Byron's fear of damnation in "Lord Byron en Italie" (1830). See uvres 46:255, and cf. Moore 389.

6 On Octave's Byronism, see particularly Adams 149-51; Crouzet 64-68; Rosa, "Pr&sage," "Byronism," "Two Romantic Models." "Sailing"; Thompson, "Clefs."

349

The spiritual plight of Octave also recalls that of Byron's 'Byronic" heroes in such poems as The Co7sai7, Lara, and Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1812-1818), works that Stendhd held in high esteem during the few years leading up to the composition of Armanee (see Iroyages 459, Chronipues 2:190, 288, S:196, 4:104, 5:120, 26B, SSO, 7:78) and whose protagonists all seem attuned to and governed by powers that lie beyond the realm of normal human experience.

Conrad, the hero of The Corsair, whose character Stendhal deemed particularly touching (uves 35:124), is at once a sanguinary fiend, a humble ascetic, and a devoted lover who feels "The hopeless past, the hasting future driven / Too quickly on to guess if Hell or Heaven' (Poetry S:261). Lara, who seems 'a stranger in this breathing world, / An erring Spirit from another hurled," is not only a demon, but also an angel, "With more capacity for love than Earth / Bestows on most of mortal mould and birth" (Poet7y 3:9S5, S36). Childe Harold, in whom 'life-abhorring Gloom / Wrote on his faded brow curst Cain's unresting doom," neuertheless is a visionary whose 'impeded Soul" feels drawn to "the boundless air' as if the heavens were its natural abode (Poetry 2:74, 225). The Corsair, Lara, and Childe Harold'S Pilgrimage--insofar as they could be regarded as autobiographical works--surely buttressed the conception of Byron's spiritual predicament that Stendhal derived from Lamartine and Lauvergne and presumably helped to shape Stendhal's characterization of Octave de Malivert as the victim of a similar predicament.

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s The New Monthly Magazine article in question bears the date February 10, 1826, and presumably was written during the first week or so of the month, which is precisely when Stendhal composed an unknown amount of a lost first draft of Armance. See Ch7oniques 6:112-40 and Leb&gue XXXInl.

SStendhal's article cites as the principal proponents of Christianity's "fourth transformation" such neo-Catholic Restoration writers as the Baron d'Eckstein and Lamennais, contributors to Le Catholique; this periodical, Stendhal claims, "is expected to produce no slight effect among the ladies of the Faubourg St.

Germain, who, for want of anything better to do, have taken a fancy to make a new religion" ( Chro7Lipues 6:130). While it may seem surprising that Stendhal should have associated neo-Catholic writers with a movement to promote Christianity's metamorphosis into a new form of Protestantism, his reasons for doing so are ably explained by Henri-Francois Imbert (392-93): "Le neo-protestantisme n'itait pour Stendhalqu'une forme, entre tant d'autres, du mal romantique.