Étienne Pivert de Senancour (Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, 16 November 1770 - Saint-Cloud

Saint-Cloud

Saint-Cloud is a commune in the western suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the centre of Paris.Like other communes of the Hauts-de-Seine such as Marnes-la-Coquette, Neuilly-sur-Seine or Vaucresson, Saint-Cloud is one of the wealthiest cities in France, ranked 22nd out of the 36500 in...

, 10 January 1846), was a French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 writer.

Life

Much of Senancour's childhood was spent in a state of ill-health. He began his education with a curé

Cure

A cure is a completely effective treatment for a disease.The Cure is an English rock band.Cure, or similar, may also refer to:-Film and television:* The Cure , a short film starring Charlie Chaplin...

 in the vicinity of Ermenonville

Ermenonville

Ermenonville is a small village in northern France. It is designated municipally as a commune within the département of Oise.Ermenonville is notable for its park named for Jean-Jacques Rousseau by René Louis de Girardin...

 before being sent to the Collège de la Marche

University of Paris

The University of Paris was a university located in Paris, France and one of the earliest to be established in Europe. It was founded in the mid 12th century, and officially recognized as a university probably between 1160 and 1250...

. His father, Claude-Laurent Pivert, a Contrôleur des Rentes and Conseil du Roi

Conseil du Roi

The Conseil du Roi or King's Council is a general term for the administrative and governmental apparatus around the king of France during the Ancien Régime designed to prepare his decisions and give him advice...

, wanted him to enter the seminary of Saint-Sulpice

Saint-Sulpice (Paris)

Saint-Sulpice is a Roman Catholic church in Paris, France, on the east side of the Place Saint-Sulpice, in the Luxembourg Quarter of the VIe arrondissement. At 113 metres long, 58 metres in width and 34 metres tall, it is only slightly smaller than Notre-Dame and thus the second largest church in...

 to become a priest

Priest

A priest is a person authorized to perform the sacred rites of a religion, especially as a mediatory agent between humans and deities. They also have the authority or power to administer religious rites; in particular, rites of sacrifice to, and propitiation of, a deity or deities...

. To avoid a profession for which he had no vocation, Senancour, with the help of his mother, fled to Switzerland

Switzerland

Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

 in 1789. On 13 September 1790, he married Marie-Franoise Daguet with whom he had two children: a daughter Eulalie

Eulalie de Senancour

Virginie Pivert de Senancour , the daughter of essayist Étienne Pivert de Senancour, was a French novelist and journalist. She served as her father's secretary and also wrote stories for children. Her work La Conquêtomanie is a satire against Napoleon...

 (1791) who would later follow in her father's footsteps and become a writer, and a son, Floran (1793) who went on to pursue a career in the military. The marriage was not a happy one; his wife refused to accompany him to the Alpine solitude he desired, and they settled in Fribourg

Fribourg

Fribourg is the capital of the Swiss canton of Fribourg and the district of Sarine. It is located on both sides of the river Saane/Sarine, on the Swiss plateau, and is an important economic, administrative and educational center on the cultural border between German and French Switzerland...

.

His absence from France at the outbreak of the Revolution

French Revolution

The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...

 was interpreted as hostility to the new government, and his name was included in the list of émigrés. He visited France from time to time by stealth, but he only succeeded in saving the remnants of a considerable fortune. In 1799 he published in Paris his Rêveries sur la nature primitive de l'homme, a book containing impassioned descriptive passages which mark him out as a precursor of the romantic movement. His parents and his wife died before the close of the century, and Senancour was in Paris in 1801 when he began Obermann, which was finished in Switzerland two years later, and printed (Paris, 2 vols) in 1804. This singular book, which has never lost its popularity with a limited class of readers, was followed in the next year by a treatise De l'amour, in which he attacked the accepted social conventions. During this period, he worked at the magazine Mercure de France

Mercure de France

The Mercure de France was originally a French gazette and literary magazine first published in the 17th century, but after several incarnations has evolved as a publisher, and is now part of the Éditions Gallimard publishing group....

where he made the acquaintance of Louis-Sébastien Mercier

Louis-Sébastien Mercier

Louis-Sébastien Mercier was a French dramatist and writer.-Early life and education:He was born in Paris to a humble family: his father was a skilled artisan who polished swords and metal arms. Mercier nevertheless received a decent education.-Literary career:Mercier began his literary career by...

 and Charles Nodier

Charles Nodier

Jean Charles Emmanuel Nodier , was a French author who introduced a younger generation of Romanticists to the conte fantastique, gothic literature, vampire tales, and the importance of dreams as part of literary creation, and whose career as a librarian is often underestimated by literary...

.

Obermann, which is to a great extent inspired by Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer of 18th-century Romanticism. His political philosophy influenced the French Revolution as well as the overall development of modern political, sociological and educational thought.His novel Émile: or, On Education is a treatise...

, was edited and praised successively by Sainte-Beuve

Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve

Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve was a literary critic and one of the major figures of French literary history.-Early years:...

 and by George Sand

George Sand

Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, later Baroness Dudevant , best known by her pseudonym George Sand , was a French novelist and memoirist.-Life:...

, and had a considerable influence both in France and England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

. It is a series of letters supposed to be written by a solitary and melancholy person, whose headquarters are placed in a lonely valley of the Jura

Jura mountains

The Jura Mountains are a small mountain range located north of the Alps, separating the Rhine and Rhone rivers and forming part of the watershed of each...

. The idiosyncrasy of the book in the large class of Wertherian

The Sorrows of Young Werther

The Sorrows of Young Werther is an epistolary and loosely autobiographical novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, first published in 1774; a revised edition of the novel was published in 1787...

-Byronic

George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron

George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, later George Gordon Noel, 6th Baron Byron, FRS , commonly known simply as Lord Byron, was a British poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement...

 literature consists in the fact that the hero, instead of feeling the vanity of things, recognizes his own inability to be and do what he wishes. Professor Brandes has pointed out that while Chateaubriand

François-René de Chateaubriand

François-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand was a French writer, politician, diplomat and historian. He is considered the founder of Romanticism in French literature.-Early life and exile:...

's novella

Novella

A novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative usually longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000...

 René was appreciated by some of the ruling spirits of the century, Obermann was understood only by the highly gifted, sensitive temperaments, usually strangers to success.

Senancour was tinged to some extent with the older philosophe

Philosophe

The philosophes were the intellectuals of the 18th century Enlightenment. Few were primarily philosophers; rather they were public intellectuals who applied reason to the study of many areas of learning, including philosophy, history, science, politics, economics and social issues...

 form of free-thinking, and had no sympathy with the Catholic

Catholic

The word catholic comes from the Greek phrase , meaning "on the whole," "according to the whole" or "in general", and is a combination of the Greek words meaning "about" and meaning "whole"...

 reaction. Having no resources but his pen, Senancour was driven to hack-work during the period which elapsed between his return to France (1803) and his death at Saint-Cloud; but some of the charm of Obermann is to be found in the Libres Méditations d'un solitaire inconnu. Thiers

Adolphe Thiers

Marie Joseph Louis Adolphe Thiers was a French politician and historian. was a prime minister under King Louis-Philippe of France. Following the overthrow of the Second Empire he again came to prominence as the French leader who suppressed the revolutionary Paris Commune of 1871...

 and Villemain

Abel-François Villemain

Abel-François Villemain was a French politician and writer.-Biography:Villemain was born in Paris and educated at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand. He became assistant master at the Lycée Charlemagne, and subsequently at the École Normale. In 1812 he gained a prize from the Academy with an essay on Michel...

 successively obtained for Senancour from Louis Philippe

Louis-Philippe of France

Louis Philippe I was King of the French from 1830 to 1848 in what was known as the July Monarchy. His father was a duke who supported the French Revolution but was nevertheless guillotined. Louis Philippe fled France as a young man and spent 21 years in exile, including considerable time in the...

 pensions which enabled him to pass his last days in comfort. Senancour also authored the comedic drama Valombré (1807), and late in life wrote a second novel in letters entitled Isabelle (1833). He composed his own epitaph; "Eternité, sois mon asile".

Senancour is immortalized for English readers in two poems by Matthew Arnold

Matthew Arnold

Matthew Arnold was a British poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools. He was the son of Thomas Arnold, the famed headmaster of Rugby School, and brother to both Tom Arnold, literary professor, and William Delafield Arnold, novelist and colonial administrator...

: "Stanzas in Memory of the Author of Obermann" and "Obermann Once More." Obermann itself has been translated into English twice; by A.E. Waite (1903), with a biographical and critical introduction, and by J. Anthony Barnes (1910). See the preface by Sainte-Beuve to his edition (1833, 2 vols.) of Obermann, and two articles Portraits contemporains (vol. 1); Un Prourseur and Senancour (1867) by Jean Levallois, who received much information from Senancour's daughter, Eulalie de Senancour, herself a journalist and novelist; a biographical and critical study Senancour, by J Merlant (1907); and Senancour, dernier disciple de Rousseau by Zvi Lévy.

Quotes

• "I have been seeking through all the valleys to acquire some isolated pasturage which will yet be easily accessible, moderately clement in temperature, pleasantly situated, watered by a stream, and within sound of a torrent or the waves of a lake. I have no wish for a pretentious domain. I prefer to select a convenient site and then build after my own fashion, with the view of locating myself for a time, or perhaps for always. An obscure valley would be for me the sole habitable earth."
• "Man is perishable. That may be; but let us perish resisting and if it is nothingness that awaits us, do not let us so act that it shall be a just fate."

Works

• Les Premiers Ages. Incertitudes humaines (1793)
• Aldomen ou le bonheur dans l’obscurité (1795)
• Rêveries sur la nature primitive de l’homme (1799)
• Oberman (1804) (changed to Obermann in subsequent editions)
• De l’amour (1806)
• Valombré (1807)
• Lettre d’un habitant des Vosges sur MM. Buonaparte, de Chateaubriand, Grégoire, Barruel (1814)
• Observations critiques sur l’ouvrage intitulé "Génie du christianisme", suivies de réflexions sur les écrits de Monsieur de Bonald (1816)
• Résumé de l’histoire de la Chine (1824)
• Résumé de l’histoire des traditions morales et religieuses (1825)
• Isabelle (1833)
• Ynarès ou conjectures sur le sort futur de l'homme (??)

External links

• Célébrations nationales 2004: Senancour publie Oberman

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