In Our Time - Germaine de Stael

Episode Date: November 16, 2017

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and impact of Germaine de Staël (1766-1817) who Byron praised as Europe's greatest living writer, and was at the heart of intellectual and literary life in the France of revolution and of Napoleon. As well as attracting and inspiring others in her salon, she wrote novels, plays. literary criticism, political essays, and poems and developed the ideas behind Romanticism. She achieved this while regularly exiled from the Paris in which she was born, having fallen out with Napoleon who she opposed, becoming a towering figure in the history of European ideas.With Catriona Seth, Marshal Foch Professor of French Literature at the University of OxfordAlison Finch, Professor Emerita of French Literature at the University of Cambridgeand Katherine Astbury, Associate Professor and Reader in French Studies at the University of Warwick.Producer: Simon Tillotson.

This is the BBC. Thanks for downloading this episode of In Our Time. There's a reading list to go with it on our website, and you can get news about our programs if you follow us on Twitter at BBC In Our Time. I hope you enjoy the programmes. Hello, Germain de Stahl was born in Paris in 1766, where her father was finance minister to Louis XVI and her mother held dazzling Salon. Stahl was famous and privileged from childhood,

yet she struggled against her father, against Napoleon, and against society to do what men. did freely, to write to be an intellectual, to take lovers, to be influential. She became formidable. It was said Napoleon recognized only three powers in Europe, Britain, Russia, and Germain de Stahl. On her death in 1817, for her novels, her essays and her political sway, she was described as the greatest woman in Europe. With me to discuss Germain de Stahl are Catriona Seth, Marshall Foch, Professor of French Literature at the University of Oxford, Alison Finch, Professor Emeritus of French Literature

at the University of Cambridge, and Kate Asper, associate professor and reader of French studies at the University of Warwick. Katrina says, what's known about Germain de Stahl's childhood? Well, Germain de Stahl in many ways had an enchanted childhood. You mentioned that she was born in Paris, that her father was extremely well-connected. He was a banker of Swiss extraction, and he entertained with his wife, near Suzanne Kurchault, all the intellectuals of the time. They had diplomats coming to their house.

They had people from the government, they had foreign travelers. And so young Germain, or as she was known as a child, Louise, her nickname was also Minette, that this young girl was introduced into her parents' salon and used to sit at her mother's foot and hear these dazzling conversations by the most remarkable people of her time. The founders of the encyclopedia, for instance, Didro and Dalembert were regulars, Buffon, the naturalist. And this meant that alongside her training, and she was educated by, her mother schooled in theology, in history, in geography and so on. She also took part in extremely advanced conversations and was introduced to many political and intellectual figures of the time.

How much was her education? Did she get much classical education? Did she learn Greek, Latin? Did she learn foreign languages as well? Well, Germain de Stares' education was essentially handled by her mother. Her mother was an intellectual, although the word wouldn't have been used at the time, the daughter of a Swiss vicar, the equivalent of a vicar in Switzerland, and she herself had had a very, very advanced education and practiced her intellectual skills as a young woman, wrote a lot, enjoyed the theatre and so on. But when she got married, her husband, Nekker or Nek, as he would have been known at the time, decreed that women had to look after their husbands and do nothing else.

And therefore she threw herself into the upbringing. of their only child. And she schooled the future Germain de Stahl in various subjects. So a lot of them were connected with morals and so on. There would be a lot of sort of reading religious texts, reflecting on sort of aphorisms and this sort of thing. But there was also training in mathematics, for instance. English was something which was of great interest to the family

and indeed the young child was brought to England to London when she was about 10 years old and saw lots of plays in London and so on. So it was a very open education as well as being a formal one. In terms of classics, there was very little study of classical literature for women.

So Greek, for instance, wasn't studied at all. So her mother was very influential, not her father, you tell me what his position was. So when the child was young, little Minette was brought up almost exclusively by her mother. Her father was very busy with his career, making millions and becoming a banker.

Subsequently, her father became a huge influence in her life. And indeed, in most of her books throughout her life, Germain de Stahl refers to him as the model figure of a statement. But when she was young, she had the impression that he objected to women doing the things she wanted to do. Well, I mentioned that Nekker didn't want his wife to write, for instance. And he didn't much like the idea of women intellectuals on the whole. and he referred to his daughter as Monsieur de Saint-Egritoire to tease her. So a man's name, Monsieur and the Saint-Ecriitoir of the Holy Writing Desk, so sort of sir of the Holy Writing Desk,

as a way of showing that this was not an appropriate occupation for a young girl. But you remembered that as much as she later remembered his support. His support came timely when she was going to be successful. Yes, Jean-Mend Astard was very close to her father, very intellectually close to him. They had similar ideas, for instance, about the work. way states should be managed, but also about religion. The Protestant faith is vital for both of them. I think so he was a leading influence in her life. Thank you. Kate Aspre. She was married

off by her parents to a Swedish diplomat. Very many people were considered. I believe Pitta Youngler was considered and a brother-in-law of the King of England was considered. Is that right? That is right. Her parents wanted a Protestant husband for their daughter, but she wanted to stay in Paris. So that did limit the choice quite. dramatically that going to England was not really something that she wanted to do. She wanted to stay in Paris. So they arranged a marriage of convenience to Swedish diplomat, Eric de Staal. It said that he married her millions and she married Paris because by marrying the ambassador to the Swedish King's ambassador to Paris, she was able to stay where she wanted to be the centre of intellectual

life as far as she was concerned. I don't think her husband was ever going to live up to her expectations. He didn't really match her intellectual wit. But it allowed her to gain a status within society. She could hold a glittering salon as ambassadress. And once the revolution arrived, it served her well because she was able to use that notion of diplomatic immunity to help her friends. She also used the marriage in one of her novels. It was, I think, could it be described as a loveless marriage, which you then turned to account in one of her, which became famous novels? It all depends what you mean by love. Well, you've got to do that.

That's the trick of turning questions back on students. There was a certain amount of respect between the two of them, but he didn't really match her wit, her intellectual interests. She was fairly quick to take lovers. It depends on how you define a successful marriage, of course. But I think the two of them do actually support each other to a certain extent because she allows him to maneuver in the field that he wants to maneuver in, her money is useful to him

and he provides her with a status that gives her freedom to do what she wants to do. Were they regard in Paris at the time a celebrated influential couple, do other people write about them? I don't know that they're seen as a couple. I think that's probably not entirely how they were seen that I think most people recognised

that it was, as for many women at the time, a marriage of convenience, that this was about positioning an influence rather than a love match. What it does is allow Germain de Stahl a status and a salon and a way of interacting with the social elite that she couldn't have had very easily from another Protestant husband at the time.

When the French Revolution happened in 1789, what was her attitude towards it? In 1789, she would be described as a liberal. She would be very much, in, or what always was very much, in favour of freedom. she was interested in the idea of constitutional monarchy on English lines. By 1791 she's moved into a moderate camp. The revolution moved so quickly that while she might be seen as leading an intellectual drive in 1789 towards freedom,

by 1791 the position has shifted. She's now somewhere between what she calls the aristocrats and demagoguery. So she's no longer one of those members of the nobility wanting a return to the ancient regime, but she's a well short of those who are wanting republicanism. Did you think the revolution would empower women? I don't know that she ever, I think she hoped that the revolution. Because the book came out in 179 and one called The Rights of Woman by a French writer. You'll remember her name.

Yes, Alamte de Guz. That's her, yeah. That's the one. Right. So did she think that it gave women a better chance? I think that were a lot of intellectuals, actual women writers at the time who hoped that the revolution, with its motto of, liberty, equality, fraternity, would actually mean equality for women as well as slaves, Jews. There are a large number of groups who are excluded from the Declaration of the Rights of Man's notion of equality.

Olamdougouge will end up having her head cut off in part for trying to argue that women... For the rights of women. I think Dostal is a little bit more pragmatic that she quite quickly realizes, partly through her lover Narbon, who is Minister of War, she's influencing his actions, helping him write his speeches. She knows that she can't actually, as a woman, step into the National Assembly and take power. So I think she's more savvy in some ways than Olamte de Gauche. Alison Finch, enter Napoleon.

What did she think of him when he first turned up? Well, to begin with her attitude to him was quite conciliatory, and she sent him one of her books, and he responded to that by saying that, that the best woman alive or dead was the one who'd had the most children, so that wasn't a very good start. And gradually she became aware, as it was inevitable, that their attitudes to almost everything were diametrically opposed. For example, his attitude to other European nations was,

as we all know, that of the belligerent conqueror, the militarist, the imperialist. Stahl, on the other hand, had a much more, well, she had a cosmopolitan attitude to other European nations. She was very intellectually curious about them. She was interested in the ways that European nations could learn from each other. So polls apart in that respect. And then they had very different political views, of course. Napoleon was an absolutist, an autocrat.

She believed in parliamentary democracy. religion Napoleon was trying to re-establish Roman Catholicism as the state religion of France and to that end he negotiated a concord act with the Pope in 1801 well the very next year

Stahl brought out her novel Delphine which pretty overtly promotes Protestantism over Catholicism and then there were their attitudes to French literature and that might not sound so important but it actually was

because French literature had been part of French cultural supremacy in Europe, part of French nationalistic prestige. Napoleon wanted it to stay as it was, as it had been, under the old regime. He didn't want anything to change. He wanted it to be the continuing glory of France, whereas Stahl was much more open, experimental almost in her attitude. She was interested in the way that literature could move forward and then there's their attitude to women, of course.

Shall I, do you like me? Yes, please do, yeah. Okay, so although, as Kate has quite rightly said, Stahl being a realist, realised that women couldn't play a huge part in public affairs as they were. She did still think they could contribute, especially through their writing, as things were in France,

whereas Napoleon very much wanted women to remain in the domestic sphere. and he brought, he introduced a new system of laws for France, the Civil Code between 1808,04, which had all sorts of deleterious effects on the position of women. He relegated women to the status of minors, introduced new punishments, a woman could be sent to prison for adultery, whereas a man couldn't. That situation was so bad that a lot of commentators, felt that women had actually been in a better position under the pre-revolutionary regime.

So again, that was, you know, they were poles apart in that respect. She also thought, as I understand it, that he was anti-intellectual. Yes. It's not completely true. I mean, he did have cultural interests. He even wrote fiction himself.

He used to take novels. Does fiction necessarily prove cultural interest? Well, no, no, quite. I'm sorry, can we move on quickly from that one. It's a very conventional kind. Oh, well. No, it was quite conventional fiction. His tastes were pretty conventional.

But I think he thought that he had cultural interest, and maybe that's why he thought it was all right to loot all those works of art that are still in the Louvre. But again, Stahl was very much against that. We can see that from Corrine. Katjana, when the king was excellent, executed, Nekker, his finance minister, pushed off to Switzerland from where he had come, we had a house there in Coppet, and set up a salon yet again and worked over there.

Can you talk about that salon they had in Switzerland? Yes, so Nekker had bought the Chateau de Coppe, which is a large manor house on the shores of Lake Geneva, before the revolution. And when the revolution came, it became a sort of family bolthole. And Germain de Starr was to use it on and off until the big. end of her life. And because she was exiled at various stages during the revolution and during the empire, it became an increasingly important place for her, even though it was not where she wanted to be ideally. Kate's mentioned the fact that she wanted to be in Paris above all.

And she indeed writes in a letter at one stage that she has all of Switzerland and does in a magnificent horror. So she absolutely detests all of Switzerland. She thinks Switzerland's terribly boring. And so what she does when she discovers that she can't go back to Paris as she wants or set up a salon in Paris, is it in a sense she recreates a salon on the shores of Lake Geneva. And it's what the great writer Stendhal was to call the Estates General of European opinion, what is now known as the Group de Coppe, an very informal group, which was made up of people who were united by their liberal in the sort of classic sense of the term, their sort of liberal-minded attitude.

So Germain de Stal was there with several foreign members of her salon. So, for instance, Schlegel was her son's tutor, so you'd find him here, him there. Benjamin Constant, who was very much her soulmate, was often to be found at Cochbe. He was an activist, this was an essayist, wasn't it? He was an activist and an essayist, and he also wrote a famous novel, Adolf. So Benjamin Constant could be found there. Sismondi, the economist and historian of Italy, used to come, Bonstetten and so on. So it was very much a European melting pot of the...

great intellectuals. And what Germain de Stahl fostered, I think, was a series of conversations, or at least a climate in which you could have a series of conversations which were interspersed with sort of very ordinary activities. There was a lot of amateur dramatics going on, for instance. She loved

the theatre and an occasion for everyone to talk about what mattered. What came out of it? A lot of conversations, that sounds terrific. And a lot of acting in theatre, that sounds terrific. What came out of it? Were they in any sense, in any sense, a sort of formal intellectual court in exile? They are an informal intellectual court in exile.

Yeah, but what do they do then? What comes out of it? What comes out of it? A series of books. They influence each other's writings, I think, greatly. So a lot of publications are, I think, I mean, improved would be the wrong word because it would sort of suggest the question of value, but we're certainly, they certainly developed over time, thanks to these conversations. And I think the whole sort of idea of French liberalism, which somebody like Togville developed subsequently. is in part rooted in the exchanges people were having in Kupi and in the texts which are coming out of Kupi.

And it also, I think, on a sort of world balance, on the scale of world balance, meant that when people were looking at the way intellectuals were thinking, they realized at the time that everything wasn't necessarily happening in Paris and therefore that world order could be different, that there was an active series of ideas, that were people who had suggestions to make. Thank you. Kate, Kate Hasbriere. How, we come to Rousseau. We're in Switzerland.

She was, Jermain was influenced by Rousseau, admired him a great deal. What else? Okay. As a young woman in 1788, she published effectively a work praising Rousseau and commenting on how inspirational she found him. But with one significant supervisor. This is the social contract. Can you just say a tiny bit more than you. Okay. I'll tell you a little bit about Rousseau and tell you a little bit about, about, Rousseau as an intellectual. So Rousseau had published political works like the social contract, discourse on inequality,

but also very influential novels, Le Nouvelle-Louis, and an educational treatise, which was called Emil or Education. And it's this text in particular that Dostal takes up in her letters on Rousseau, where she feels that although he inspires her and she reveres a lot of his writing, she draws the line at his opinion on both,

women writers and on the education of women. Which is? So in Emil or education, Rousseau explains how you might educate an ideal young man to be ordinary, not exceptional. And in the later stages of the book, devises a female companion for him, he calls her Sophie. But she's educated only so far as she needs to be, to be Emil's companion. And this is the sticking point for Dremendous Dahl is that she felt that women should be educated to a same standard as men.

She writes very eloquently about how women should not be expected to be just dolls repeating set phrases or blindly obedient to their husbands. How could you have conjugal happiness if husband and wife aren't equal intellectually? That was very much the idea behind her writing. So in praising Ruth's, so admiring him being influenced by him, she nevertheless draws this line and says, actually he's wrong.

He's wrong to dismiss women writers. He's wrong to limit their education because only by offering equal education and equal opportunities for women to develop their intellectual capabilities can marriage actually work. Did he take note of what she said? By the point at which she's writing, Rousseau is already dead.

Well, that settles that question. That settles that one. She had the last word. That's called Not Enough Homework. Right. So we've finished with Rousseau, or have we finished Rousseau? I think we've finished with Rousseau, yeah. We'll dismiss Rousseau.

The novel Delphine, can you tell us about that and how important it was at the time? It was hugely important at the time. It was translated very quickly into lots of different languages. It was very popular. and it's an epistolary novel which was getting slightly old-fashioned at the time but Stahl uses that structure of all these letters the characters write to each other to very good effect

because it enables them to set out their positions on various issues and the main issue that Stahl is looking at in Delphine the double standards applied to men and women so for example the characters talk about double standards applied to looks looks which are much more important for women than for men. The double standards that are applied to ageing women, there's one character who has lost so much confidence since she aged that she's gone into a convent, which is perhaps a rather extreme reaction.

But anyway, these are issues that we read about in the broadsheets today that we hear about on the Today programme. She's particularly interested in Delphine in the way that women's reputations can be besmirched more easily than men's. Excuse me. Again, an issue that's still with us. Let's keep to the period because it's difficult. Sure, sure, yeah, of course. But she, her reputation was besmirched quite brutally.

She was ridiculed, she was satirized. She took more criticism probably anyone else at the time, didn't she? Yes, she did, yes. And she thought, she said, was it a phrase like, ridicule dries up the imagination. Yes, that's right. Yes, that's part of her romantic agenda, if you like. We could perhaps talk about that later, but certainly she is aware that society can be very cruel to women.

And in a way, it chimes with a broader political interest that she had in public opinion. She was very interested in the way public opinion is formed. So in Delphine we see that worked out on the ground, as it were, in the peer group. We would call it peer group pressure these days. We see scenes of painful ostracism as Delphine, the heroine, is thought to be acting scandalously when she actually isn't. Actually isn't by whose standards? By our standards or by the standards of the day? The standards of the day.

She remains perfectly virtuous. She's in love with a married man, but the love is never consummated. she has a much less sexual life, if you like, than style herself did. But nevertheless, all sorts of false rumours as spread about her, and that creates all kinds of difficulties with her beloved, the chap who's married to someone else. What effect did the book have, Katriona? The book was very widely read.

And I think to come back to something Alison was saying about the fact that Jamenda Stahl was attacked, she was attacked for literary reasons, but she was attacked also for non-literary reasons. And while she was very happy for people to engage with her ideas, and she knew some of her ideas were controversial, not just in Delphine, but also in some of her philosophical works like the 1800 treatise de la literature, she was also the victim of the most sort of horrible scurrilous gossip, caricatures and so on, by people who just didn't like her, who didn't like her because she was a woman in the public sphere,

and that was thought to be unbearable by a certain sort of part of the conservative right wing in France at the time. And so there would be articles about her, about her private life and so on, which no man would suffer in the same way. So I think there was very much, as Alison was suggesting, a gendered reception.

As to the novel itself, the novel, I think, promoted her to a new level of popularity. Germain de Stard was almost an instant celebrity from birth because of her parents' salon, because when she was a young girl, her father became a very important, hugely influential minister, as you mentioned.

She was then quite famous because she was associated with various people. People thought of her as an echo's daughter. People thought of her as Narbonne. Kate reminded us as Narbon's lover during the war during the revolution when he was minister for war. They thought of her as Benjamin Constance, mistress in the years after the revolution.

And Delphine, because it was a novel, had a much wider readership than any of her other texts. And so it was, I think, in terms of reception, the text by which she really gained fame and something which really launched her onto a sort of new level of popularity, but gave her that sort of dual image which persisted to the end of her life

of being an incredibly important writer and intellectual, but also somebody who possibly had a slightly dubious reputation. And if I were to draw an analogy, it would be with Byron. Byron, who was, you know, lionised during his lifetime, but in a sense, you know, nice young ladies wouldn't consort with Byron. And Germain de Sal had that sort of reputation. Some people thought she was a slightly shady character because of her lifestyle, but it had to be recognised that she was a phenomenally important intellectual.

They shared a publisher in England, didn't they? Yes. She came to England, so that's part of her. She's moving around. She's going to Sweden. She's in Switzerland, as we know. She comes to England. And they had a friendship of some sort she and Barron.

So Byron and Germain de Stahl know each other and indeed share a publisher in England, the celebrated John Murray. And the whole story of them sharing a publisher is an interesting one because Germain de Stahl has to spend most of the latter part of her life in exile. She speaks of what she calls her 10 years in exile. It's a sort of not a sort of chronologically exact 10 years, but she does spend a number of years in sort of peregrinations around Europe. Europe. And during these perigranations, she discovers different parts of Europe. So she stays in Germany, she goes to Italy. And then subsequently, there's a very long trip you mentioned, which takes her through Russia and Sweden, and then ultimately to England. And one of her aims by taking this long trip is to get to England without doing so obviously because she can't cross France. She's afraid that the imperial forces will stop her from going where she wants to go. And also, she has with her in her luggage, a book. which cannot be published in France, which was being published in France when the press was stopped.

You couldn't have the publication and the proofs were all destroyed, so she has the manuscript, and that's what she wants to bring to England. Kate Asprey, she wrote a very influential book about Germany, called Germany. Can you tell us about that and what influence it had?

I can. So, Catrione has already given us some of the context. This is the book that was pulped by Napoleon So it's a book she starts writing Why did he pulp it? Well, tell us about it. I'll tell you why he pulps it. She started...

Let me know a bit about it before, right. We've come from the end of the story backwards. I'll go back to the beginning. She starts writing it in about 1803. It's ready for publication by 1810. It's a book on Germany, which might seem slightly odd because at the time Germany as a nation doesn't actually exist. She borrows Tacitus's title,

and it's a political statement in itself to call it on Germany. Because at this time, Napoleon has taken over large swathes of Germany and the rest of it a part of satellite kingdoms belonging to the empire. She uses the text to explore how the German literary and intellectual avant-garde might actually provide inspiration for French literary life. So Germany in the 1790s has a number of leading intellectual figures. Kant, the Schlegel brothers, Teke, Goethe, Schötter, Schill. German intellectual life really is for her,

independent, diverse, unrepressed. And so writing about German intellectual life becomes a way for her to indirectly attack Napoleon and the way in which he's trying to suppress freedom of expression. One of the ways in which she does that most effectively is actually through her theatre criticism in Dula, Romania. She uses German theatre as a way to, attack Napoleon. So she comments, for instance, on how ridiculous it is that you might impose a single

repertoire on a whole range of countries, which is precisely what Napoleon was doing in his 1807 theatre decrees. She uses the plots of some of the Germans. Everybody had to do the comedy Francaise. Everyone had to do the Comedy Francaise repertoire. And he takes the Comedy Francaise to Germany. They perform at Airfoot. They perform at Weimar because Napoleon wants to show this intellectual and cultural superiority of France. De Stal is not to take. turn that on its head by saying, well, look at these amazing plays that Gertr and Schiller are writing. And by using their plots, she can talk about tyranny and tyrants. And therefore, she's allowing the French reading public to pick up clues and see Napoleon hidden in these

descriptions of the German plays. And that's what annoys Napoleon the most. So he sees this as an attack on his empire, his intellectual vision for French superiority. And that's why he has the volume suppressed, pulped. Which is to continue classicism, him becoming the emperor, Paris becoming the new Rome and so on. Can I just put one second, go across to Alison, please. How influential was this intrusion or introduction of romanticism to France? Yes, that's the other really important thing that Stalin is doing in de la Mania. I mean, really since her work on literature in 1800, she'd been promoting romantic ideas,

you know, sensibility, spontaneity, sort of thing. But she really goes for it in On Germany, and she says, we've got to start thinking outside the mold, we've got to get away from French classicism. We've got to look at this new movement, which Germany is promoting and staging so very successfully. And so she does that by again, promoting empathy, the idea of rebellion, the idea of casting off the rules that had been

associated with classicism and neoclassicism, which had been getting a bit sterile by the end of the 18th century. And there's one key moment on Germany where she says good taste in literature is like order under despotism. You have to question the price at which you're getting it. Now that was absolute dynamite and it was not only a huge pop at Napoleon, but it was dynamite in terms of literary development. And she also used the term romanticism in on Germany, which had originated in Germany, but it was through style that it reached other European countries in America. Katriona, she's bringing culture and politics together in parallel, and she's using culture, as you pointed out of, to attack the problem. political situation. How much of a threat that we told, somebody said Napoleon had three great enemies, Britain, Russia and Germain de Staal, how much of a threat did Napoleon really think she was?

I think Napoleon does perceive her as a threat. If we go back to the book on Germany being pulped, Savarie, the minister for police, was the one in charge of the pulping and he gives a reason subsequently to Germain de Stahl. And the reason is, So Livre Né Pancet. This is not a French book. and with the vision which Napoleon had and which Alison has just been mentioning of a united Europe and united by constraints in a sense united by a one-size-fits-all vision of politics and of culture somebody who's saying, look, there are other ways of doing things

I think is extremely dangerous and Germain de Stahl in a sense is the anti-Napolian in intellectual terms. She's the anti-Napolian in that she's forever looking elsewhere. She's interested in difference. She's not interested in similarity. And she talks about it, for instance, very eloquently when she mentions translations. She says, when we translate books, we're borrowing from other literatures.

And actually, we're gaining from other literature. So we shouldn't say that by translating, we're impoverishing our literature. On the contrary, we're welcoming something new, but we're welcoming something new, which can only be to our advantage. And that's her vision of literature, but it's also her vision of politics and the way people should act, for her bringing in something from the inside, looking at what. why people don't react the same way and do things differently, are different, whether they're different because they're foreign, whether they're different, because, I mean, she has characters, for instance, in her novels.

She has black characters in some of her short stories who are sort of, quote, savage, unquote, but she shows they have exactly the same fashions as Westerners would have at the same time. She has handicapped characters. She has characters of different religions, different ages. She's very much somebody who believes that inclusive society is a way of creating new bonds, and of course of making life more interesting, richer and better for everyone. The next big novel, or the other big novels, it was Corrine. Kate, can you briefly tell us something about that and what its importance was?

Okay, I can tell you a little bit about Corrine, yes. So Corrine was published in 1807. It's trailblazing, really, as a novel in its representation of the artist figure. I think probably nowadays we see novels about artists are slightly tried, but at the time it was really quite novel to have a text looking at. the artist and the plight of the artist. But it's also a travelogue. The subtitle to the novel is Corrine, Ulitali, Corrine or Italy.

And so she's trying to merge a plot about an artist, who's a beautiful, inspirational, an intellectual figure, Corrine, who tries to bring a grieving Scottish nobleman out of his misery by introducing him to Italy. that plot is developed through an exploration of Roman architecture, classical art, trips to the edge of the volcano at Vesuvius. So she's trying to bring together different genres in the same text. Certainly critics at the time struggled to know quite what to do with it

because it was part novel and part travel writing. But it allows her to explore things like the function. of literature or the impact of climate, it allows her to think about art, architecture, literature in a way, but by bringing together all of that into a plot about an artist who is condemned to die effectively because the man she loves chooses

the commonplace woman, her half-sister, who's conformist and safe rather than spontaneous. Do you want to pop in cool, group? Simply on Corrine, I think one of the other aspects of Corrine, which is essential, is in the same way that the subsequent book, Germany, is about something which doesn't exist as an entity, which Germanda Stahl is transforming into an entity. Corrine is also speaking of Italy, Italy, in its former glory, but also potentially a united Italy. And that's incredibly important at the time. Italy, again, does not exist. Italy is a set of, you know, papal states, duchies, principalities, and so on. And what Germain de Stal is showing Italy and the Italians

is that here is potentially a great nation, a great nation which has been and a possible future great nation. And that's something incredibly important for the resurgimento too. She's somebody who is giving intellectual impetus to the idea that culture and language can unite a country. Alison Finch, there's a view that novels haven't lasted

as long as well as other works at Europe. And could you tell us why that is? I feel a bit like the bad cop here But if we compare Her novels with those of her contemporary Jane Austen We can sort of see why they fell out of favour Excuse me Stahl loves generalising

So the novels are absolutely full of generalisations If a character is brave We have to have an axiom about the nature of courage The characters are all from a rather restricted social milieu. You know, they're all affluent, they're noble. Corrine, Delphine themselves, said to be very rich.

And somebody has said rather cruelly that Delphine Corrine trail are high and grand eloquent anguish through civilized salons. Well, that is a bit mean, but there's something in it. They're also, again, perhaps a bit mean to compare her to the sublime,

Jane Austen, but they're rather humorous and that's a deliberate decision almost on Stiles' part. She has the heroine delphine say, I could have been witty if I'd wanted to, but I chose not to be. And you can't imagine Lizzie Bennett saying that. Corrine, when she performs comedy, it has to be of a noble kind.

Her gestures are said to be imposing. So you think, oh dear, you know, so I think that is a problem. It's interesting that Jane Austen didn't want to meet her. Yes, that's right. They too had the same publisher. Yes, that's right. Yes.

Can we, Catreona, can we, I know you want to come in on that, but we're slightly running out of time. What would you say was her view of Europe? You hinted at it very eloquently a few minutes ago. But what was her view of what Europe could be? Germain de Staal is somebody who is interested in the notion of Europe. And in fact, late in her life, she says that she's lost the roots which tied her to Paris and that she has become European. She actually writes,

Je suis devenu European, which is something quite extraordinary at the time, in that people don't have this cosmopolitan was a word, Alison used, this cosmopolitan view of Europe. And I think certainly for Germain de Stahl, there is a cultural strength to Europe and a cultural strength which should be developed. And indeed, I mean, she talks about Europe, but she would consider what she would have seen

as a sort of civilized world, America beyond also as potentially united, in a sort of republican federation of people who think, She talks about the fact that there are intellectuals the world over who have generous ideas and who are fighting for the common good. And she sees Europe as being, in a sense, what can be founded on these principles. We've omitted to mention so far, and I think we should at least mention it, Catherine, is her Protestantism and how she used the Protestantism versus Catholicism argument as a part of her equipment. It's something that comes through her work repeatedly.

I think Alison has already talked a little bit about how Delphine in particular as a novel is espousing Protestantism as offering more options than Catholicism in her view. One of the irony that the unhappy ending, or at least the first unhappy ending, is caused in part because Delphine won't renounce her vials when she's become a nun. but the Protestant family, the Leibnseye family and the novel are very much presented as both liberal and Protestant as the way forward. So I think that we can see her very much as a voice offering a Protestant way as in direct contrasts in particular. Again, it comes back in part to her opposition to Napoleon

that in reinstating Catholicism as the religion of the majority of the French, she can make a stand against that. Alison, fairly briefly, what do you think her influence has been since her death? Well, the influence of Cochin was huge. Corrine became sort of shorthand for the creative woman. And she appears in the Milan, the Floss, for instance, Maggie Tulliver is George Elliot's Cochin. So there's that. There's also that liberal anti-autocrat agenda that she pursued, which has never gone away.

If I had to pick out one thing, I would say that her questioning of good taste, which was part of classism, part of French aristocracy, aristocratic self-image. That has been hugely important. You know, we've had an awful lot of work since 1800, which have incorporated the tasteless with the beautiful, and we can still see it. I think that she got that ball rolling, if you like. Katrina.

I think there are two things which are related. Her promotion of romanticism and liberty on the one hand, and the vision she had of Germany as a possible partner for France, which I still think has considerable political and cultural implications nowadays. You think that's still a runner, really? I think that's currently still a runner. I think the current French president would agree. I'd be delighted.

And she influenced directly a lot of writers, I mean, Stondale, right, Proust, and on we go. She influenced a lot of writers, and as Alison was saying, a lot of women writers in particular felt empowered by her. Well, thank you for all three very much. Thank you, Katrina, Katriona, Seth. Thank you, Catherine Asbury.

Thank you, Alison Finch. Next week we'll be discussing the ancient Greek city of Thebes. Thank you for listening. And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests. Well, thank you all very much indeed. I was stumbling at the end because I wanted to ask another question, but I knew I hadn't got time.

What was the question? I don't know. I'd have found something. Oh, I see, right. What did I miss out? What did we miss out? Could I come back to what we were saying, or what you were saying,

about Jane Austen and Germain de Stahl not meeting? Because this anecdote is all over the place. Jane Austen apparently was invited to a party in London and then discovered that Germain de Stahl was going to be there and said, oh no, no, I'm definitely not going to go. I don't actually believe this anecdote to be true. It surfaces after Jermend de Stel and Jane Austen both die in 1817 within a few days of each other.

It surfaces several years later in a memoir of Jane Austen written by a member of her family. And I think it's simply destined to show Jane Austen as the anti-Germendostal. Jane Austen as the sort of perfect, obedient, well-bred and discreet woman who lived in her sort of Hampshire retreat and who was nothing like that terribly brash, vulgar, loud and very foreign Germain de Stahl. Fanny Bernice offered a similar position. and Fanny Burnie's sister, Susan Phillips, lived very near to Juniper Hall where Jermaine Dostal and Narbon and others were living in 1793.

And she was very uncomfortable. She was desperate. On an intellectual level, she really wanted to engage with Dostal, but knew that as a single woman with a pension from the Queen, she couldn't really be associated with someone who was actually quite openly living with her lover whilst her husband was in Sweden.

So that's still obtained. I think one thing that I'd have like to emphasize a bit more, I mean, you mentioned it towards the very end, Melvin. The style's influence on male writers, I think, you know, we're in danger perhaps of pigeonholing her and a bit saying she was a beacon for women writers. But you mentioned Stondale. Now, I'm sure, it can't be proved,

but I'm sure that he modelled his pseudonym because Stondell was a pseudonym on her name. I mean, he said that he'd taken it from the name. name of a German city, but he would, wouldn't he? I mean, we know that he'd read Stahl, he admired her, he pinched a lot of her ideas, not just about romanticism, but about feminism, because Stondar was a feminist. And about Italy and about love. I mean, I think it's quite right. She's writing about Shakespeare before he does. Yes, and he writes the Charter House of Palmer, which, you know, like Corrine is set in Italy, you know, all sorts of comparisons between

Italy and other countries. And then Proust as well calls his heroine Albertine. Now Albertine was the name of the daughter that Stahl had by Constant. And he does doff his hat to style at the end of Alariechurch. You know, you would think that no novel could be more

different. But he says, you know, Stahl the author of Corrine. So I think, you know, there's a lot there and that political agenda that she worked out. It's very all the influences at the time, we look back on now, we're surprised. I'm always very surprised that Ruskin was such a big influence on Proust.

Do you read, Ruskin? Yes, yeah. Clearly it was. Proust confessed it, translated him as you all know about it. Yeah. Anyway, so there was that. So this business of being a dangerous woman. They really wanted to keep her out of France. She had to avoid it, as you said very, one of you said, you said.

What did they think would happen if they let her in? I think the problem is that Alison mentioned a public opinion at one still. age, Germain de Staal does hold sway over public opinion. She holds sway over public opinion, firstly because she's the daughter of Nekker, who's been the most popular minister of Louis XVI, before the revolution. She also holds sway over public opinion as a very influential writer and as someone who has political intelligence, which practically nobody else does. And when she's working with the men in her life who can have some form of political engagement,

She's also behind them thinking through the ideas. She's also pulling strings. When Narboden becomes the Minister for War, Germain de Salle is the one who's pulled the strings. There's a letter by Marie Antoinette in which she says, you know, sort of, well, you know, there's somebody who must be happy with this nomination of Narbolden as Minister for War. Madame de Stahl, now she has the whole army at her command.

And they knew at the time full well that she was the one controlling his actions and his speeches. I mean, she's very much a political figure. She cannot herself stand. as a politician. I wish we got this in. I mean, these, these extended things are very good for listeners, but they cause me immense irritation.

Sometimes, sometimes, like I keep saying, why didn't we get that bit in? I mean, the idea that she wrote the Minister of War speeches and that is terrific, isn't it? And that's great. Mind you, there's three million of these things. There's plenty of people going to listen to it. There's also one text I would very much have liked to talk about, and we didn't talk about, which is a very short text published in haste in 1793,

in August 1793, when Marie Antoinette is in prison in the conciergerie and nobody knows what her fate will be. The king has been executed and the queen is there and nobody's decided. And Germain de Staal takes up her pen and writes reflections on the queen's trial, even though nobody knows whether there will be a trial. And she's trying to sway the revolutionaries to say, don't put the queen on trial. And she addresses all sorts of different constituencies in this very short text. And for instance, she says to women, be careful if the queen is, put on trial and executed, that means that women are going to be erased from the revolution

in a sense. Women's political agenda will be erased from the revolution, but also values which we associate with women, like sensibility, will disappear from politics, and that can't be allowed. And then she also says, this is a text which is for the revolutionaries. Think about this politically. Think about the fact that if you kill Marie Antoinette, who, after all, is only the Queen Consort, you know, she just happened to have been married to the revolutionaries. Think about this. King. She had no political power at all. If you kill her as a political figure, you're turning her into one. So that means you're making her into a martyr and you're giving her an importance which, in a sense, the Ancien regime didn't give her. And if she's a martyr figure, people will

unite around her. And the sort of whole fashion for Marie Antoinette nowadays, I think, is in large part due to the fact that she was executed. And Germain de Stad is one of the few people who in August 1793 has the clarity of vision to set that out. she was some moment wasn't she? I mean she must have been in hell of the little bit wasn't she? That's what

Benjamin Constant had a tempestuous relationship with her and he says well one has to love her in the sense but he couldn't live without her but he couldn't live with her

he was quite afraid of her because when they met for the first time each of them was already married and he was sort of more or less separated and they lived together on and off and he then remarries

secretly and won't tell her. But not her. But not her. And won't tell her and spends a year not telling her that she's actually married somebody else. And he got aware of it. And he's writing letters all the while

for instance to members of his family saying, you know, it's unbearable to live with a woman whose name is in the papers. You know, I get up in the morning, I open the paper and they're talking about this person and who is she? She's the one I've just, you know, sort of woken up next to it and this sort of thing. So he finds it very difficult but as Kate said, you know, can't live without

are all the same? I think you're being made enough or you can't refuse by John. Tea, coffee. This is the BBC. Hello, I'm Neil McGregor and I'd like to invite you to listen to my new 30-part series

about faith and society. For the whole of human history, believing and belonging have gone together. And in this series, I'm looking at objects and places to see how those shared beliefs have helped to build communities and also to divide them.

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