These are the principal incidents in the youthful career of the man who became famous in 1800 as the author of Atala. His character was even more remarkable than his career. High-spirited, ambitious, vain, and shy, perpetually wavering in his faith in his own powers, he was not only endowed with the self-consciousness of genius, but with an egotism which ignored with absolute indifference all that did not immediately concern himself. He came too late into the world, and was educated under too peculiar circumstances, to have faith in the Revolution or the eighteenth century philosophy which partly inspired it. He came into the world too soon to make acquaintance with the science of the nineteenth century, and through it to win a new faith and a new standpoint. He therefore became a kind of Nihilist in the service of the past, a spirit who, as he repeatedly observes, believed in nothing. He adds, when he remembers to do so, "except religion"; but a man is, according to his nature, either a believer or a sceptic, and the idea that it is possible to be a believer in the matter of religion when one believes in nothing else, is a mere delusion, to which the half-educated are specially liable.
Chateaubriand's Mémoires are full of the sort of tirade on the vanity of name and fame which we so often meet with in Byron. There is undoubtedly a good deal of affectation in these outbreaks, but they nevertheless betray genuine ennui and persistent melancholy.
"Unable to believe in anything except religion, I am distrustful of all else.... The trivial and ridiculous side of things is always the first to show itself to me. In reality neither great geniuses nor great deeds exist for me.... In politics the warmth of my conviction does not outlast my speech or pamphlet.... In the whole history of the world I do not know a fame that could tempt me. If the greatest honour in the world lay at my feet and I had but to stoop and take it up, I would not take the trouble. If I had been my own creator, I should probably have made myself a woman, out of passion for the sex; or if I had chosen to be a man, I would first of all have bestowed beauty upon myself; then, to provide against ennui, my worst enemy, I would have been a great but unknown artist, using my talent for myself alone. If we set aside all humbug and examine into what it is that gives life real worth, we find only two things of value, religion in combination with talent, and love in combination with youth, that is to say the future and the present; all the rest is not worth the trouble of thinking about.... I have no belief in anything except religion. If I had been a shepherd or a king, what should I have done with my staff or sceptre? I should have been equally weary of glory and genius, work and rest, prosperity and adversity. Everything irks me. I drag my weariness painfully after me all day long, and yawn my life away (et je vais partout bâillant ma vie)."[1]
How much passion had he not wasted upon fantastic imaginings and poetic dreams before he was reduced to this utter boredom! In Atala the passion still wells up like a hot spring, and its spray stings and scalds.
The old Indian, Chactas, tells the story of his youth to a young Frenchman to whom Chateaubriand has given his own second name, René. Chactas, taken captive by a hostile tribe, is condemned to death upon the pyre. The daughter of the chief of the tribe takes a fancy to him and approaches the place where he lies bound. He mistakes her for the maiden whose part it is to solace the prisoner in the last hour before the consummation of the death sentence; but her intention is to release, not to console. He conceives a sudden passion for her, and entreats her to fly with him and be his; she refuses, and, delayed by her opposition, he is recaptured. He is already adorned for the pyre, crowned with flowers, his face painted blue and red, and beads attached to his ears, when Atala delivers him for the second time and escapes with him. The greater part of the book describes this flight, Chactas's desire, and the mingling of passion and reserve in Atala which makes her constantly vacillate between resistance and surrender. Her behaviour is explained when she tells Chactas that her mother, who was seduced by a white man, had her baptized and made her swear to remain unwed. In her anguish at the vow and her despair of being able to keep it, she takes poison, and dies in her lover's arms, comforted by the old missionary in whose hut the pair have taken shelter.
A full impression of the burning passion and lyrical exaltation of the book can only be gained by reading it, nor can we obtain any idea from descriptions and quotations of the power with which the wonderful scenery is described. It is an easy matter, however, to show how much and how instinctively Chateaubriand relied upon a mingling of the terrible with the erotic to obtain his effects. In the principal love scene we have not only a lavish musical accompaniment of the rattle of snakes, the howling of wolves, the roaring of bears and jaguars, but also a storm which shatters the trees, and impenetrable darkness, torn by flash upon flash of the lightning which finally sets fire to the forest. Round about the lovers the pines are blazing like wedding torches, and Atala is about to yield when a warning flash strikes the ground at her feet. It is after this she takes poison, and the burning passion of her last words to Chactas are in harmony with the conflagration of the forest:
"What torture to see thee at my side, far from all mankind, in these profound solitudes, and to feel an invincible barrier between thee and me! To pass my life at thy feet, to wait upon thee as thy slave, to prepare thy repast and thy couch in some forgotten corner of the universe would have been my supreme happiness. This bliss I had actually attained to, but could not enjoy. What plans have I not planned! what dreams have I not dreamed! Sometimes, looking upon thee, I have been tempted to form desires as wild as they were guilty. I have sometimes wished that thou and I were the only living creatures on earth; sometimes, conscious of a divinity which arrested my horrible transports, I have wished that divinity annihilated, that, clasped in thy arms, I might fall from abyss to abyss amid the ruins of God and the world."
Remarkable as these outbursts of irresistible passion are, and novel as is the scenery which throws them into relief, we feel that both would have been impossible if Rousseau had never lived, and if his literary work had not been carried on by another and greater intellect of another nationality.
[1] Mémoires d'Outre-Tombe, vol. i. p. 207-451; vol. ii. p. 129.