François-René de Chateaubriand - Memoirs from Beyond the Grave, 1768–1800

FRANOIS-REN DE CHATEAUBRIAND (17681848) was born in Saint-Malo, on the northern coast of Brittany, the youngest son of an aristocratic family. After an isolated adolescence, spent largely in his fathers castle, he moved to Paris not long before the Revolution began. In 1791, he sailed for America but quickly returned to Europe, where he enrolled in the counterrevolutionary army, was wounded, and emigrated to England. The novellas Atala and Ren, published shortly after his return to France in 1800, made him a literary celebrity. Long recognized as one of the first French Romantics, Chateaubriand was also a historian, a diplomat, and a staunch defender of the freedom of the press. Today, he is best remembered for his posthumously published Memoirs from Beyond the Grave.

ALEX ANDRIESSE is a writer and translator. He lives in the Netherlands.

ANKA MUHLSTEIN was awarded the Prix Goncourt in 1996 for her biography of Astolphe de Custine and has twice received the History Prize of the French Academy. Her books include Balzacs Omelette, Monsieur Prousts Library, and, most recently, The Pen and the Brush.

MEMOIRS FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE

17681800

FRANOIS-REN DE CHATEAUBRIAND

Translated from the French by

ALEX ANDRIESSE

Introduction by

ANKA MUHLSTEIN

NEW YORK REVIEW BOOKS

New York

Paris, April 14, 1846;

Revised July 28, 1846

as a cloud... as the swift ships... as a shadow

Job

A S IT IS impossible for me to predict the moment of my death, and at my age the days accorded a man are but days of grace, or rather days of rigor, I am going to offer a few words of explanation.

On September 4, I will have reached my seventy-eighth year. It is high time for me to leave a world that is fast leaving me and that I shall not mourn.

The same sad necessity which has always held its foot against my throat has forced me to sell these Memoirs. No one can know what I have suffered, having been obliged to pawn my tomb; but I owed this final sacrifice to my solemn promises and to the consistency of my conduct. It is perhaps cowardly of me, but I have regarded these Memoirs as private, and I would have liked not to part with them. My plan was to leave them to Madame de Chateaubriand, who could have sent them out into the world as she pleased, or else suppressed them. The latter seems more preferable to me than ever today.

Ah! if only, before leaving this world, I could have found someone trustworthy enough, someone rich enough to buy back the shares of the Societysomeone who would not, like them, be compelled to put my work to press the moment my death knell tolls! A few of the shareholders are my friends, its true, and several others are kind people who have tried to be of use to me; but finally the shares may be sold; they may be transferred to third parties whom I do not know and whose family interests must come first. It is only natural that my life, so long as it continues, should be an importunity to them, or at least a bother. In short, if I were still master of these Memoirs, I would either keep the manuscript to myself or delay their publication until fifty years after my death.

These Memoirs have been composed at different dates and in different countries. For this reason, I have been obliged to add some prefatory passages which describe the places that I had before my eyes and the feelings that were in my heart when the thread of my narrative was resumed. The changing forms of my life are thus intermingled. It has sometimes happened that, in my moments of prosperity, I have had to speak of times when I was poor, and in my days of tribulation, to retrace days when I was happy. My childhood entering into my old age, the gravity of experience weighing on the lightness of youth, the rays of my sun mingling and merging together, from its dawn to its dusk, have produced in my stories a kind of confusion, or, if you will, a kind of ineffable unity. My cradle has something of the grave, my grave something of the cradle; my sufferings become pleasures, my pleasures pains, so that I no longer know, having just finished reading over these Memoirs, whether they are the product of a brown-haired youth or a head gray with age.

I cannot say whether this mixture, which anyhow I cannot remedy, will be pleasing or displeasing to the reader; it is the fruit of my ever-changing lot: the tempests have often left me with no writing table except the rock where I was shipwrecked.

Though I have been pressed to let some pieces of these Memoirs appear in my lifetime, I would prefer to speak from the depth of my coffin. My narrative will then be accompanied by those voices which have something sacred about them because they issue from the sepulcher. If I have suffered enough in this world to be a happy shade in the next, a ray from the Elysian Fields shall cast a protective light on these last pictures of mine. Life fitted me badly; death, perhaps, will suit me better.

These Memoirs have been my constant thought. Saint Bonaventure was granted heavenly sanction to go on writing his book after death: I cannot hope for such a favor, much as I would like to be resurrected one night, at the witching hour, to correct my proofs. Yet soon enough Eternity will have clapped its hands over my ears and, having joined the dusty family of the deaf, I will no longer hear anyone.

If one part of my work has been more captivating to me than others, it is that which concerns my youththe obscurest corner of my life. There, I have had to reawaken a world known only to me; I found, as I wandered in that vanished company, nothing but memories and silence. Of all the people I have known, how many are still alive today?

On August 25, 1828, the inhabitants of Saint-Malo appealed to me, through their mayor, regarding a wet dock that they wanted to build in the harbor. I hastened to reply, asking only that, in an exchange of goodwill, I be granted a few feet of earth for my grave on Le Grand-B. There were difficulties, owing to the opposition of military engineers, but finally, on October 27, 1831, I received a letter from the mayor, M. Hovius. He wrote to me:

The resting place that you requested at the edge of the sea, a stones throw from your birthplace, shall be prepared for you by the filial piety of the Maloans. But how sad it makes us to consider this task! May the monument stand empty a long time yet, though Honor and Glory outlive everything on earth!

I quote M. Hoviuss words with gratitude. There is nothing excessive in them but the word Glory.

I shall go to rest then on the shore of the sea that I have loved. If I should die outside of France, I request that my body not be brought back to my native land until fifty years have elapsed since its first interment. Let my remains be spared a sacrilegious autopsy; let no one search my cold brain or my extinguished heart for the mystery of my being. Death does not reveal the secrets of life. A corpse traveling by post fills me with horror; but dry, white bones are easily transported. They will be less weary on that final voyage than when I dragged them over the earth, burdened with my troubles..

A small island in Saint-Malo harbor.

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Translation copyright 2018 by Alex Andriesse