Atala
"Great passions are solitary, and when you take them out into the wilderness you are setting them into their very own sphere."
They remind me of demons, who supposedly roam the depths of the ocean.
"(...) O dreadful, sublime Nature, were you no more than a device contrived to deceive us, and could you not for an instant conceal a man's joy in your mysterious horrors?" "Man, thou art but a fleeting vision, a sorrowful dream. Misery is thy essence, and thou art nothing save in the sadness of thy soul and the eternal melancholy of thy thought."
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This story adresses a very unsual concept- religion in the savage. It was extremely heroic of Atala and how he could withstand the temptations when there were so many encouragements- culture, and the surroundings. Cachtas represented the reaction of the 'white man's' religion, and in the end, even he admired the powerful "force" he witnessed.
René *****
"These singers come of a divine race and possess the only sure power which heaven has granted earth. Their life is at once innocent and sublime. They speak like like immortals or little children. They explain the laws of the universe and cannot themselves understand the most elementary concerns of life. They have marvelous intuition of death and die with no consciousness of it, like new-born infants."
It is as if they involuntarily and naturally reject life's nonsense "elementary concerns of life" -they are above it, they don't need to meddle with such low and inferior things- contrary to this "divine race". Marvelously said. it is a race, of the select few who have graced us with their presences temporarily on this earth.
"I went down into the valley and up on the mountain, calling, with all the strength of my desire, for the ideal creature of some future passion. I embraced her in teh winds and thought I heard her in the river's moaning. Everything became this vision of my imagination- the stars in the skies and the very principle of life in the universe." "They consider me the victim of an imagination which plunges toward the end of all pleasures as though it suffered form their duration."
To suffer from pleasure! What hell that must be! On the contrary, René got pleasue from sufferin, because that is the only thing that lasted for him.
"The echoes of passion in the emptiness of a lonely heart are like the murmurings of wind and water in the silence of the wilderness- they offer their joy, but cannot be portrayed."
As if it was distant and unachievable. As if it was forever blocked and can only be seen, through glass.
"Our heart is a defective instrument, a lyre with several chords missing, which forces us to express our joyful moods in notes meant for lamentation." "(...) it seemed to me that life grew so strong in the depths of my heart that I had the power to create worlds." "Rise swiftly, coveted storms, coming to bear me off to the spaces of another life! This was my plea, as I plunged ahead with great strides, my face all aflame and the wind whistling through my hair, feeling neither rain nor frost, bewitched, tormented, and virtually possessed by the demon of my heart."
"[...] it seemed to me that life grew so strong in the depths of my heart that I had the power to create worlds."
Reminds me of the Hydrogen clouds in space, and how because of so much energy new stars are created...
"[...] my heart loved God, and my mind knew him not ... but does man always know what he wishes, and is he always sure of what he thinks?"
"Know that solitude is bad for the man who does not live with God. It increases the soul's power while robbing it at the same time of every opportunity to find expression. Whoever has been endowed with talent must devote it to serving his fellow men, for if he does not make use of it, he is first punished by an inner misery, and sooner or later Heaven visits on him a fearful retribution. "
It is as if it commands to be spread out and shared, to be used as a sacrifice for humanity, or it becomes a curse to the bearer. Genius can be a terrible thing if it is kept to one's self.
One can see why he was the father of French Romanticism. I think he has such a pure and non-vulgar style. The rest of the french are all about drama, but he describes the most beautiful thing: to be disillusioned and yet to be pure... I really enjoyed reading René- I wish I could write down the whole story... That it is all hopeless for a poet. He is doomed to die of love, whether it happened in the mind or not.
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Reaction to both:
The difference between Atala and Rene is that Rene managed to not find happiness and hope in anything, while Atala held on till the end. Rene let the mind eat at him through loneliness, and he indulged in it until it at all the happiness away. Shows how the mind, the imagination, can corrupt and prey on its host. That the mind needs to be put to good use "to serve fellow men" or it kills us internally. Very interesting concept- a very dangerous thing, especially for the romantic. It is extremely interesting that Chateaubriand makes this point- the Father of French Romanticism. What a great warning! Also, Rene seems extremely selfish in his indulgence. A certain arrogance develops- he constantly brought beauty in but never out. He was content enough to worhsip and idolize, because his ideal, his creation, was better than reality.
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