CHRONOLOGY
- Marie de Rabutin-Chantal.
- Born 1626.
- Married Marquis de Sévigné 1644.
- Husband died 1651.
- Died 1696.
Madame de Sévigné
VI
MADAME DE SÉVIGNÉ
Merely as a literary figure, as a writer, Madame de Sévigné amply justifies her claim to celebrity in the greatest age of French letters. As a mistress of style she is the worthy contemporary of Molière, Corneille, Pascal, and La Fontaine.
Yet she wrote only letters and wrote those letters as naturally as she talked. Just before her came Balzac and Voiture, who wrote epistles, after the fashion of Pliny and James Howell. Now, Madame de Sévigné knows that she writes well and takes pride in it, just as Cicero did; but like him, she knows that letters, to be of any interest, must be sincere, must be written for matter, not manner. Hers flow from her heart direct, as she says; they pour forth all the passion, the curiosity, the laughter of the moment. Often she does not even reread them before sending. The far-fetched felicities of a laborious writer fill her with disgust. Of the style of one such she writes, “It is insupportable to me. I had rather be coarse than be like her. She drives me to forget delicacy, refinement, and politeness, for fear of falling into her juggler’s tricks. Now isn’t it sad to become just a mere peasant?”
Peasant or not, she makes the whole wide world of the French seventeenth century live in her letters, as does Saint-Simon, in his Memoirs, somewhat later; and in Madame de Sévigné it lives more vividly, if in Saint-Simon more profoundly. The great affairs of princes and their petty humanness, the splendor of war and its hideous cruelty, intrigues of courtiers, intrigues of lovers, new books, new plays, new prayers, fashion, folly, tears, and laughter, all mingle in her pages and help us understand to-day and to-morrow by their deep and startling similitude with yesterday. As “human documents” these letters have rarely been surpassed.