A Genius for the Modern Era: Madame De Stael's Corinne.(Critical Essay)

In De l'Allemagne (1813), Madame de Stael describes the francophobe eighteenth-century critic Lessing in the following terms: c'est un esprit neuf et hardi, et qui reste neanmoins a la portee du commun des hommes; sa maniere de voir est allemande, sa maniere de s'exprimer europeenne (130). This bold intelligence, this novel combination of ways of seeing and speaking creates a new kind of genius in Lessing, but Mme de Stael could have made a very similar remark concerning Corinne, the semi-autobiographical heroine of her novel Corinne, ou l'Italie (1807). The following paper will concentrate on the ways Corinne embodies this new genius, this modern genius that is at once heterogamous, having both male and female traits, and heterogeneous, revealing a combination of oppositional but non-gendered characteristics. Any discussion of genius, and especially any discussion of Corinne, demands in part an analysis of the issue of gender since historically, the person or literary character of genius has been almost exclusively male. In the case of Madame de Stael's Corinne, Claudine Herrmann has done an admirable job showing to what extent Corinne's genius, and more specifically in the case of Herrmann's article, Madame de Stael's own genius is gendered. However, genius is not merely a question of gender; other elements constitute creative genius. Corinne's brilliance lies in her portrayal as a combination of many geniuses: female/male, sibyl/prophet, southern/northern temperament, individual/universal genius. Furthermore, Corinne becomes a republican genius, a genius for and by the people, a genius for a new, just nation, which is composed of emancipated individuals--men and women. Corinne's genius can be understood as both heterogarnous, and more generally, heterogeneous. Mme de Stael characterizes her genius as both male and female (heterogamous) at the moments when Corinne acts as both prophet and sibyl. But more importantly Corinne unites elements that are not customarily combined, traits that are not necessarily gendered but that are composed of oppositional elements. We will see how Corinne's heterogeneous genius is exemplified by both the combination of the Judeo-Christian and pagan visionary traditions, and the northern and southern creativity to which she gives voice in her poetry. This heterogeneous creativity emblematizes the best that a republican nation can produce. At the beginning of Mme de Stall's Corinne ou l'Italie, the young Englishman Lord Oswald Nelvil has come to Italy, depressed after the death of his father. Immediately after his arrival in Rome he sees and falls in love with Corinne, the astonishing poet acclaimed throughout all of Italy. We learn that Corinne was raised in Italy by her Italian mother but spent time in England with her father after her mother's death; nevertheless she counts Italy as her native land as she is terribly unhappy elsewhere. The oppressive and stifling life for women in the small English town where her father, Lord Edgermond, and his new wife live is anathema to lively, brilliant Corinne. Prior to the opening of the novel, Lord Edgermond and the elder Lord Nelvil had been close friends and had decided that their children, Corinne and Oswald, would someday marry. However when Lord Nelvil finally met Corinne he understood immediately that this Roman treasure would never be able to endure the life of the proper Englishwoman. He decided that Oswald would be more suited to Lucile, Edgermond's younger daughter and Corinne's half-sister. The years pass, the fathers die, and the novel opens with Oswald and Corinne's first meeting and, as though dictated by destiny, Oswald falls in love with Corinne, ignorant of her history or her family ties. Corinne finally reveals her identity and although Oswald still loves her, his late father's original opposition to the proposed match between him and Corinne nonetheless distresses him. …